: , , , , - 28 . HOOVER, Ala., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A conference in Alabama will help executive-level leaders in law enforcement and education learn how to properly design school safety initiatives, including school resource officer programs. The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) will host its first-ever 2017 National Leadership Summit, School-Based Policing and School Safety in the 21st Century, May 8-9, in Hoover. Weve targeted this educational event toward top-level leaders such as police chiefs, sheriffs, school system superintendents and principals, as well as executives in the juvenile justice system, said Mo Canady, NASROs executive director. Those who attend will learn keys to successful school resource officer and other programs that will not only improve the safety of students but will also help protect their organizations from legal liability. More than 150 people from 12 states have registered for the conference, which will take place at the Hyatt Regency - Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover. Scheduled speakers and presentations include: Foundations of a Successful School-Based Policing Program and School Safety in the Twenty-First Century: Canady. Leadership Response Before and During a Critical Incident: Dr. Kimberly Miller, Kimberly A. Miller & Associates. Reunification: Lessons Learned as a Survivor of the Virginia Tech Tragedy: Kristina Anderson, Virginia Tech survivor and founder of the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools. Recovery: Leadership Lessons from Columbine and Beyond: Frank DeAngelis, former principal of Columbine High School. School Safety Legal Update and Legislative Reform: Government Liability and the Failure to Train: Bernie James, law professor, Pepperdine University. More information about the leadership summit, including the full agenda and a registration form, is available on the NASRO website at: https://nasro.org/leadershipsummit/. About NASRO FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Patriot National, Inc. (NYSE:PN), a leading provider of technology and outsourcing solutions to the insurance industry, announced today the appointment of Ernest Csiszar to the Board of Directors, effective today. Mr. Csiszar will serve as the Chairman of the Audit Committee. We are pleased to welcome Mr. Csiszar to our Board of Directors, said Steven M. Mariano, Chairman, President and CEO of Patriot National. Mr. Csiszar has more than ten years of experience serving on public and private company boards, and he brings extensive experience in insurance and risk management, executive leadership and advisory in financial matters. Prior to his retirement, Mr. Csiszar served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, the property and casualty insurance industrys principal trade association. Previously, he served as Director of Insurance for the State of South Carolina and as President of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of American Integrity Insurance Company, a property and casualty insurance company, and is a member of the Board of Directors and Audit Committee for MasTec, Inc. I am familiar with the Company and welcome the opportunity to serve the interests of Patriot Nationals shareholders, said Mr. Csiszar. About Patriot National Patriot National, Inc. is a national provider of comprehensive technology and outsourcing solutions that help insurance companies and employers mitigate risk, comply with complex regulations and save time and money. Patriot National provides general agency services, technology outsourcing, software solutions, specialty underwriting and policyholder services, claims administration services, and self-funded health plans to its insurance carrier clients, employers and other clients. Patriot National is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For more information about Patriot National, please visit www.patnat.com. Forward Looking Statements This press release may include statements that may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "may," "will," "should," "likely," "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "projects," "believes," "estimates," "positioned," "outlook," "Guidance," and similar expressions are used to identify these forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements, including the potential that we may not accelerate our expansion into telemedicine. For example, we may not be able to place insurance policies for our clients, our expenses may be higher than we expect, we may have difficulty integrating new acquisitions, new acquisitions may not perform as anticipated, as well as those matters contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although we base these forward-looking statements on assumptions that we believe are reasonable when made, we caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and that results may differ materially from statements made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Any forward-looking statement that we may make in this press release speaks only as of the date of such statement, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or to publicly announce the results of any revision to any of those statements to reflect future events or developments. KOLKATA: Business schools of three IITs - Kharagpur, Delhi and Roorkee - have featured in the top 10 list of NIRF Management ranking this year. The ranking was made from a total number of 542 business schools who submitted data for the rank, an IIT-Kharagpur release said on Wednesday. The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was approved by the MHRD. IIT Kharagpurs Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) was ranked seventh, while the management schools of IIT Delhi and IIT Roorkee were ranked sixth and eight. The key strength of these three B-schools has turned out to be research and professional practice for which they are the top-ranking B-schools in India, the release said. While teaching and learning remained the primary aspect of every B-school, research and research output such as research publications, intellectual property, consulting services, development programmes, opened up new paradigms of management initiatives. Acting Dean of Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM), IIT-KGP, Prof Prabina Rajib said, Faculty must undertake innovative and deep-learning R&D projects to add new dimensions to classroom teaching. VGSoM was modelled on similar lines of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, while aligning itself to the research focus of its mother institution IIT-KGP. IIT-KGP was the first IIT and among the foremost engineering colleges to set up a business school. VGSoM was set up in 1993. Read Also: NASA's Super Pressure Balloon Takes Off From Wanaka TCS, Infosys Got Only 8.8 Pct Of H-1B Visas, Says Nasscom Contradicting U.S. Official NEW DELHI: European Union (EU)-funded International Urban Cooperation programme (IUC) was officially launched in India on Wednesday. According to a statement from the EU, IUC will consolidate city-to-city pairing cooperation among Indian and EU cities which will work together to develop Local Action Plans in urban sustainable development including addressing the challenges emerging from the climate change. Speaking at the launch, Ambassador of the EU to India, Tomasz Kozlowski said: "The EU is already partnering with India on concrete initiatives on the ground related to offshore wind development, solar parks and solar roof-tops, energy efficiency and smart grids." "The EU together with the 28 European Member States are committed to be a credible long term partner for India to work on a clean energy future, to implement climate commitments, and to support India's urban transformation," he added. With the launch of the programme India and European cities can apply to the programme and the selected cities will be paired to work together on development plans. The European Investment Bank has provided loans and credit lines for more than Euro 1.5 billion to support energy and climate related projects in India. The programme will provide technical and operational support to Indian cities for adaptations needed to mitigate the impact of climate change. The programme is a part of the global IUC programme which is currently operating in South East Asia, Japan, North America and Latin America, will run in India until November 2019. IUC will coordinate with government initiatives such as the AMRUT Mission as well as the 100 Smart Cities Mission. The programme operates in the framework of the Paris Agreement for Climate Action, and the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals. Read Also: Indian Businessman Wins Queen's Enterprise Award Trump Administration Official Discusses Future Of India-U.S. Energy Partnership STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Dongan Hills man, who, authorities said, was a ringleader of a multi-borough heroin-dealing network undone by a text message found on an overdose victim's phone, was sentenced Wednesday to six-and-a-half years behind bars. Justin Bonilla, 28, was among 14 suspects, including several Staten Islanders, charged in the spring of 201, based on a 15-month-probe dubbed "Operation Lost Boys," said authorities. Officials launched the investigation in March 2014 after discovering a drug-related text message left on the cell phone of Jonathan Crupi, 21, a Great Kills man who died of a drug overdose. The message, sent just before Crupi died, came from a contact stored as "Nicholas Sanchez," which listed a phone number Sanchez had previously provided to police, said prosecutors. Sanchez, Crupi's friend and a known drug dealer, was a runner for Bonilla, a primary target of the investigation, said prosecutors. A probe into Bonilla revealed the ring's conspiracy to peddle heroin, prosecutors said. The investigation disclosed that Bonilla ran the day-to-day operation from July 2014 to March 2015 when he was arrested for heroin possession, said authorities. He dealt to mid-level sellers as well as to end-users, authorities said. After Bonilla's arrest, his stepbrother, Robert Alvarado, 36, of Richmond, became the organization's de facto head and took over the daily reins, said officials. Bonilla pleaded guilty two weeks ago in state Supreme Court, St. George, to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. In addition to prison time, Bonilla was sentenced to 18 months' post-release supervision. Eric Nelson represented the defendant. Would you like to comment on this report? Click here to join in the conversation. Things are going from bad to worse for the New York Mets. Losers of five in a row and nine of their last 10 games, and in danger of falling into the NL East basement should they lose Thursday's matinee against the current cellar-dwelling Atlanta Braves, the one thing the Mets have been able to pin their fortunes on is the performance of their top three starting pitchers -- Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey. But now, even that glimmer of hope has been dimmed as the team announced early Thursday that Syndergaard would be scratched from his start due to soreness in the shoulder and biceps of his right (throwing) arm. Harvey will now take the hill for Thursday's 1:10 p.m. start. The bit of good news regarding Syndergaard is that it's not his elbow, where he had surgery in the offseason to clean out bone chips. Syndergaard is eyeing a return to the rotation Sunday against the Nationals in Washington, but Mets manager Terry Collins -- who said that Syndergaard had a "tired arm" -- wouldn't commit to that until the 24-year-old is fully examined. The 6-foot-6 "Thor" had been mentioned as a possible starter for Wednesday's game (following Tuesday's rainout) but the Amazin's announced Wednesday afternoon they were sticking with Robert Gsellman, Tuesday's slated hurler. Gsellman, who has been struggling, surrendered five runs in the first inning and was tagged with the loss in an 8-2 setback. If Syndergaard had taken the ball, he would've opposed Atlanta's R.A. Dickey, whom the Mets traded to Toronto following his Cy Young season in Queens in 2012. The Amazin's got back Syndergaard and catcher Travis d'Arnaud in the deal. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nova Southeastern Universitys (NSU) H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business & Entrepreneurship inducted Per-Olof Loof into its Hall of Fame, the Huizenga Business Colleges highest honor, at an awards ceremony on April 26 at the Signature Grand in Davie, FL. Loof is CEO of the Fort Lauderdale-based KEMET Corporation and the Honorary Consul of Sweden to the State of Florida. The Hall of Fame award honored Loof for being an accomplished leader and his influence and impact on the community. A prominent international electronics industry executive, Loof has been Chief Executive Officer of KEMET Electronics Corporation since 2005. KEMET Electronics, originally founded in 1919, is a leading global supplier of electronic components, known for providing the highest standards of quality, delivery and service. The H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business & Entrepreneurships Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame program celebrated its 28th year in 2017. "It is an honor to receive one of the most prestigious awards from NSU," says Loof. " I am pleased to join the list of remarkable Hall of Fame inductees and great leaders in our community. Loof has served as Honorary Consul of Sweden for the State of Florida since he received his exequatur status from the United States Department of State in 2006. Loof was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2012 in the Carolinas and the South Florida Business Journal 2012 Broward Ultimate CEO. In 2014, he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). He is active in many civic and charitable organizations and his positions include: Member of the Board of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, member of the Board of Governors for the Boca Raton Regional Hospital, a Livery man and Freeman of the City of London and a Founding Member of the Guild of Security Professionals, City of London. Loof has an MSc in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics. About KEMET KEMET Corporation is a leading global manufacturer of electronic components that meet the highest standards for quality, delivery and service. The company offers its customers the broadest selection of capacitor technologies in the industry, along with an expanding range of electromechanical devices, electromagnetic compatibility solutions and supercapacitors. KEMETs corporate headquarters are in South Carolina; the company also operates manufacturing facilities, sales and distribution centers around the world. KEMETs common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol KEM. Additional information about KEMET can be found at www.kemet.com. Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements included herein contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws about KEMET Corporations (the "Company") financial condition and results of operations that are based on management's current expectations, estimates and projections about the markets in which the Company operates, as well as management's beliefs and assumptions. Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," variations of such words and other similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in, or implied by, such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's judgment only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of these forward-looking statements to reflect new information, future events or otherwise. Certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcome and results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements are described in the Companys reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Page Content Over the weekend a small group consisting of Minister Emil Lee and one representative each from INSO, Royal Haskoning, St. Maarten Medical Center, and KPMG, visited the Owen King E. U. Hospital in St. Lucia. During their tour of the hospital built by INSO this group met with the Honorable Minister of Health and Wellness, Minister Mary Isaac. Discussions were had with Minister Isaac on possible areas of cooperation and why the hospital was not yet in use. The Owen King E.U. Hospital, funded by the European Union, was completed approximately two (2) years ago, and has all necessary medical equipment in place, however it is [sadly] still not being used. The completed hospital experienced issues with the financial resources needed to make it operational and the training required to use the available high-tech equipment. Much of the equipment in the Owen King E.U. Hospital is from Siemens and there is a training gap in the skills of the personnel in terms of how to operate the modern equipment. For these reasons, the completed hospital remains non-operational. Visiting the hospital provided insight into what was done well which could be incorporated into the design of the new St. Maarten General Hospital and what mistakes to avoid. The hospital is just a building. If we dont ensure that our staff are up-to-speed and that we have proper protocols and procedures in place, in the end it is just a building, said Minister Lee. While in the construction process, it is important to ensure that the entire healthcare chain, healthcare system, staff knowledge & training and more are all up-to-speed to safeguard that the new General Hospital meets the needs of its population. John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to those who have "demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Awarded through two annual competitions, applicants are pooled by field and examined by experts in that field. After a rigorous selection process, approximately 175 Fellowships are awarded each year. This year, professor Heather Hurst '97 and Laura Somer Harrison '91 were awarded this honor. Recreating Maya artistry Heather Hurst '97 Heather Hurst '97 Her reconstructions of ancient Maya murals, from analyzing pigment chemistry to matching artists lines and brush strokes, have earned faculty member Heather Hurst a Guggenheim Fellowship. A 1997 Skidmore graduate with a self-determined major in architectural archaeology and a second major in art, she holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale. As a Guggenheim Fellow, she will expand on her project to illustrate ancient Maya murals from a site in San Bartolo, Guatemala. The San Bartolo murals, many of them reassembled from worn and broken fragments, provide new insights into Maya art, religion and culture. Hurst's illustrations replicate the ancient art precisely but may also include clarifications of damaged and worn areas. Having worked with murals, sculptures and architecture at several Maya sites, Hurst says the intimate knowledge and precision required to articulate a line in a manner that's true to the original inspired her to explore the creators, to make visible the human lives and social roles of these ancient painters, scribes and sculptors. Hurst's work has appeared in National Geographic, Science, the New York Times, the National Gallery of Art, the Met, and other major venues. In 2004 she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. "The Guggenheim is a prestigious academic award," says her colleague Michael Ennis-McMillan, adding, "Skidmore faculty and students have been fortunate that Heather has shared her talents with us." And...action Laura Somer Harrison '91 Laura Somer Harrison '91 For Laura Somer Harrison '91, a Guggenheim Fellowship is just the latest honor in her career. An English and French major at Skidmore, she became a busy and successful painter. Then she earned an MFA at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts-along with a fellowship to the venerable MacDowell artists colony-in 2012. Next she received a New Artist's Society Scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a second MFA in 2016. Recently her Lingerie Show garnered prizes at top film festivals from Florida to Los Angeles to Madrid. Little Red Giant, the Monster That I Was is her latest creation. Harrison's films focus on marginalized social outcasts and subcultures, exploring issues from diaspora, to gender expression, to losing the sense of touch. They have been screened at festivals in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Croatia, and elsewhere. Based in Chicago, she has served as a visiting artist at Boston's Museum School and at California Institute of the Arts. CALGARY, Alberta, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baytex Energy Corp. (TSX:BTE) (NYSE:BTE) will be holding its Annual Meeting of Shareholders on Thursday, May 4, 2017 at Centennial Place, 3rd Floor, West Tower (Bow Glacier Room), 250 - 5th Street S.W., Calgary, Alberta, commencing at 3:00 p.m. (MDT). Following the meeting, Mr. Edward LaFehr, President and incoming Chief Executive Officer, will deliver a corporate presentation on Baytex. Both the meeting and Mr. LaFehrs presentation will be webcast. The presentation slides and a link to the webcast will be available on the Baytex website, www.baytexenergy.com, at the start of the meeting. The archived webcast of the meeting and presentation can also be accessed via the following URL for 30 days following the meeting: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/g2ik32h6 Baytex Energy Corp. is an oil and gas corporation based in Calgary, Alberta. The company is engaged in the acquisition, development and production of crude oil and natural gas in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and in the Eagle Ford in the United States. Approximately 79% of Baytexs production is weighted toward crude oil and natural gas liquids. Baytex's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BTE. For further information about Baytex, please visit our website at www.baytexenergy.com or contact: DENVER, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Resolute Energy Corporation (Resolute) (NYSE:REN) announced today that it will issue a press release covering operating and financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017, after the market closes on Wednesday, May 3, 2017. An investor conference call to review the first quarter results will be held on Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 4:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Date: Thursday, May 4, 2017 Time: 4:30 PM EDT / 3:30 PM CDT / 2:30 PM MDT / 1:30 PM PDT Call: (800) 311-6662 (US/Canada) and (719) 457-2623 (International) Replay: Available through Thursday, May 11, 2017, at (844) 512-2921 (US/Canada) and (412) 317-6671 (International), Passcode 7502952. About Resolute Energy Corporation Resolute is an independent oil and gas company focused on the acquisition and development of unconventional oil and gas properties in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian Basin of west Texas. Resolute also operates Aneth Field, located in the Paradox Basin in Utah. For more information, visit www.resoluteenergy.com. The Company routinely posts important information about the Company under both the Investor Relations and the News sections of its website. The Companys common stock is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol REN. 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 French English Revenue at 651 million, lower by (6%) at historical exchange rates and (8%) at constant exchange rates Slow start for Enterprise, Machine-to-Machine and Government Programs with acceleration expected in the second semester In response to recent market developments, the Company has launched a transition plan expected to contribute over 50 million to profit from operations annually Update of 2017 outlook after the previously announced action plan review Revenue variations are at constant exchange rates except where otherwise noted. All figures presented in this press release are unaudited. Amsterdam, April 28, 2017 at 12:00am - Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 - GTO), the world leader in digital security today announces its revenue for the first quarter of 2017. Main segments Main activities Patents & Others First quarter 2017 ( in millions) Total Payment & Identity Mobile Embedded software & Products (E&P) Platforms & Services (P&S) Revenue 651 404 247 439 212 1 Year-on-year variation at constant exchange rates (8%) (8%) (7%) (8%) (7%) +35% Year-on-year variation at historical exchange rates (6%) Philippe Vallee, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "The first quarter revenue reflects the significant volatility in our Payment business in line with the unique pattern of EMV migration in the world's largest EMV market, the United States. In addition, the removable SIM business continues to decline while the ecosystem prepares for the next generation of devices. Consequently, Gemalto has launched a transition plan aimed at adjusting its Payment operations and Mobile business to reduced demand. For Enterprise, Government Programs and Machine-to-Machine businesses, Gemalto expects an acceleration in the second part of the year supported by solid backlogs and continues to invest in these businesses in line with their long term trends. The acquisition of the 3M Identity Management Business is on-track with all approvals received." Basis of preparation of financial information Segment information The Mobile segment reports on businesses associated with mobile cellular technologies including Machine-to-Machine, mobile secure elements (SIM, embedded secure element) and mobile Platforms & Services. The Payment & Identity segment reports on businesses associated with secure personal interactions including Payment, Government Programs and Enterprise. The SafeNet acquisition in 2015 is part of the Enterprise business. In addition to this segment information the Company also reports revenues of Mobile and Payment & Identity by type of activity: Embedded software & Products (E&P) and Platforms & Services (P&S). Historical exchange rates and constant currency figures The Company sells its products and services in a very large number of countries and is commonly remunerated in other currencies than the Euro. Fluctuations in these other currencies exchange rates against the Euro have in particular a translation impact on the reported Euro value of the Company revenues. Comparisons at constant exchange rates aim at eliminating the effect of currencies translation movements on the analysis of the Group revenue by translating prior-year revenues at the same average exchange rate as applied in the current year. Revenue variations are at constant exchange rates and include the impact of currencies variation hedging program, except where otherwise noted. All other figures in this press release are at historical exchange rates, except where otherwise noted. Adjusted income statement and profit from operations (PFO) non-GAAP measure The consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and with section 2:362(9) of the Netherlands Civil Code. To better assess its past and future performance, the Company also prepares an adjusted income statement where the key metric used to evaluate the business and make operating decisions over the period 2010 to 2017 is the profit from operations (PFO). PFO is a non-GAAP measure defined as IFRS operating profit adjusted for (i) the amortization and depreciation of intangibles resulting from acquisitions, (ii) restructuring and acquisition-related expenses, (iii) all equity-based compensation charges and associated costs; and (iv) fair value adjustments upon business acquisitions. These items are further explained as follows: Amortization and depreciation of intangibles resulting from acquisitions are defined as the amortization and depreciation expenses related to the intangibles recognized as part of the allocation of the excess purchase consideration over the share of net assets acquired. Restructuring and acquisitions-related expenses are defined as (i) restructuring expenses which are the costs incurred in connection with a restructuring as defined in accordance with the provisions of IAS 37 (e.g. sale or termination of a business, closure of a plant,.), and consequent costs; (ii) reorganization expenses defined as the costs incurred in connection with headcount reductions, consolidation of manufacturing and offices sites, as well as the rationalization and harmonization of the product and service portfolio, and the integration of IT systems, consequent to a business combination; and (iii) transaction costs (such as fees paid as part of the acquisition process). Equity-based compensation charges are defined as (i) the discount granted to employees acquiring Gemalto shares under Gemalto Employee Share Purchase plans; (ii) the amortization of the fair value of share options and restricted share units granted by the Board of Directors to employees, and the related costs. Fair value adjustments over net assets acquired are defined as the reversal, in the income statement, of the fair value adjustments recognized as a result of a business combination, as prescribed by IFRS3R. Those adjustments are mainly associated with (i) the amortization expense related to the step-up of the acquired work-in-progress and finished goods assumed at their realizable value and (ii) the amortization of the cancelled commercial margin related to deferred revenue balance acquired. These non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable IFRS measures and should be read only in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with IFRS. In the adjusted income statement, Operating Expenses are defined as the sum of Research and Engineering expenses, Sales and Marketing expenses, General and Administrative expenses, and Other income (expense) net. EBITDA is defined as PFO plus depreciation and amortization expenses, excluding the above amortization and depreciation of intangibles resulting from acquisitions. Net debt and net cash Net debt is a non IFRS measure defined as total borrowings net of cash and cash equivalents. Net cash is a non IFRS measure defined as cash and cash equivalents net of total borrowings. General information Main segments Main activities Patents & Others First quarter 2017 ( in millions) Total Payment & Identity Mobile Embedded software & Products Platforms & Services Revenue 651 404 247 439 212 1 As a percentage of total revenue 100% 62% 38% 67% 32% 0% For the first quarter of 2017, total revenue came in at 651 million, lower by (6%) at historical exchange rates and by (8%) at constant exchange rates. Payment & Identity posted sales of 404 million, representing 62% of total Company revenue. Embedded software & Products revenue of 439 million was (8%) lower compared to the same period of last year mainly due to lower sales to banks in the United States and to mobile network operators. Embedded software & Products activity for Government Programs continued to show positive trends during the quarter. The Platforms & Services activity posted revenue of 212 million, down by (7%) year-on-year, with moderate growth in Mobile Platforms & Services partially offsetting the lower payment cards personalization services. Platforms & Services activity represented 32% of first quarter Company revenue. Revenue variations by region, at constant and historical exchange rates, are presented in Appendix 1. As announced on March 22, 2017 and based on the recent trends in Payment and removable SIM, Gemalto has launched a transition plan expected to contribute over 50 million to profit from operations annually. The on-going business efficiency program is being expanded to align to the long term market demand in terms of capacity, footprint and resources. One of the first areas of focus is to adjust Payment operations as the market is shifting to a normalized EMV inventory level after the initial United States ramp up. As part of the next multi-year development plan, the Company is also reviewing its portfolio of activities in order to align with its long-term priorities which includes the re-allocation of resources to growth businesses. Segment information Payment & Identity in millions First quarter 2017 First quarter 2016 Revenue 404 433 Year-on-year variation at constant exchange rates (8%) The Payment & Identity segment's revenue came in at 404 million, decreasing by (8%) compared to the previous year. The segment's Embedded software & Products revenue was 246 million and Platforms & Services revenue came in at 158 million. The Payment business decreased by (16%) year-on-year, at 200 million. Sales in Americas were lower by (34%) due to the on-going normalization of US EMV card inventory levels at our customers. Revenue from all regions outside of Americas was stable year-on-year. The Enterprise business revenue increased to 105 million, up +1% on the same period in 2016. The trend in revenue mix within the business continues to move towards a higher proportion of cloud and software services. To meet the market demand, the Enterprise business is increasing investment to expand its services portfolio in this growing sector. The Government Programs business was stable at 99 million on top of a strong +34% increase a year ago. Solid performance in Government Programs Embedded software & Products fully offsets the reduction in Platforms & Services revenue. Backlog continued to expand during the quarter. Mobile in millions First quarter 2017 First quarter 2016 Revenue 247 258 Year-on-year variation at constant exchange rates (7%) The Mobile segment posted revenue of 247 million, (7%) lower at constant exchange rates compared to the first quarter of the previous year. Embedded software & Products revenue for the segment came in at 194 million. SIM sales decreased by (14%) to 118 million due to a lower market share in the first quarter in a more competitive landscape as mobile network operators push out the upgrade of removable SIM to focus on next generation connectivity. This is coupled with soft demand in Middle East and Africa as the result of stricter subscription registration processes. The Machine-to-Machine revenue was slightly lower by (1%) year-on-year, at 75 million, due to temporary weak performance in North America. New design wins recorded during the quarter will progressively drive business expansion across sectors and regions throughout the rest of the year. Platforms & Services revenue for the segment came in at 53 million, up by +3% year-on-year. On demand connectivity solution continues to gain traction following the release of the latest GSMA specifications for embedded SIM and mobile subscription management. Patents & Others in millions First quarter 2017 First quarter 2016 Revenue 0.6 0.4 Year-on-year variation at constant exchange rates +35% Patents & Others revenue was 0.6 million this quarter versus 0.4 million during the same period in 2016. Additional information AT&T strengthens Internet of Things (IoT) offerings with Gemalto's remote subscription management solution Gemalto is supplying AT&T with a remote subscription management solution that will help enable its customers to deploy new and highly secure IoT applications in the U.S. and globally. Gemalto's On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) subscription management solution and GSMA M2M 3.1 compliant Embedded SIMs (eSIMs) will simplify the logistics of providing mobile services for Enterprises requiring global mobile connectivity for IoT applications and provide improved life cycle support for their subscriptions. Gemalto and Microsoft join forces to provide seamless connectivity for Windows 10 devices Gemalto and Microsoft have teamed up to make this advance a reality for end users to have a secure and ubiquitous connectivity experience. Gemalto's On-Demand Connectivity subscription management solution, together with Windows 10 native eSIM support enable consumers to seamlessly manage the connectivity experience of their devices. GigSky chooses Gemalto to enable seamless connectivity for devices around the world Gemalto will supply GigSky with its On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) services on a GSMA compliant embedded SIM (eSIM) with remote management capabilities. Devices enabled with these eSIMs will allow end-users to choose short-term data plans across the globe. GigSky offers mobile connectivity solutions for consumers and businesses with service available in over 140 countries for a large variety of devices including iPad with Apple[1] SIM. Gemalto releases findings of 2016 Breach Level Index Gemalto released the findings of the Breach Level Index revealing that 1,792 data breaches led to almost 1.4 billion data records being compromised worldwide during 2016, an increase of 86% compared to 2015. Identity theft was the leading type of data breach in 2016, accounting for 59% of all data breaches. In addition, 52% of the data breaches in 2016 did not disclose the number of compromised records at the time they were reported. Gemalto's HSM enables Microsoft Azure Information Protection customers to maintain full control of encryption keys Microsoft Azure Information Protection customers can now take advantage of the new "Hold Your Own Key" (HYOK) functionality using Gemalto's SafeNet Luna Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). The integration allows organizations in highly regulated scenarios to manage, own and store their encryption keys in on-premises HSMs and securely share data with complete control over their keys. With this solution, enterprises can easily align data protection policies and business processes without compromising the integrity and security of their data. Gemalto to supply new Digital Identity Solution for the Swedish Tax Agency Gemalto has been awarded a multi-year contract to supply its eGov authentication platform for online services, Premium Polycarbonate eID cards and a comprehensive Enrollment and Issuance solution to Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency. This ID card provides official proof of identity and access to a range of government services and can be issued to all residents, regardless if they have Swedish citizenship or not. In the future, the development of a secure digital identity will enable users to also access online services of Skatteverket and other Swedish authorities2, with eGov enabling strong authentication. Uganda speeds visa issuance and strengthens border security with Gemalto Visa Management System Gemalto is supplying Uganda's Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) with its Coesys Visa Management that combines swift issuance of all visas and permits with biometric enrollment upon arrival. The new scheme allows the authorities to manage the entire visa life cycle from application to issuance. It will help the country achieve its goals to facilitate travel, enhance national security and protect a traveler's identity against theft. Outlook For the second quarter of 2017, business trends continue to be weak in Payment and SIM. As a result, the Company expects its second quarter revenue to be lower by 8% to 10% year-on-year at constant exchange rates. Due to this decrease, the operating leverage will not be fully realized over the semester and, as a result, the first semester profit from operations is expected to be between 90 million and 100 million. For the second semester of 2017, with the expected revenue acceleration in Enterprise, Government Programs and Machine-to-Machine, the Company anticipates its revenue to be stable when compared to the same period of 2016 excluding the integration of 3M Identity Management business. With the combination of this revenue trend, the ramping up of the transition plan and the modest contribution from the 3M Identity Management business, the Company expects its profit from operations to be between 300 million and 350 million for the second semester of 2017. Live Audio Webcast and Conference call Gemalto first quarter 2017 revenue presentation will be webcast in English today at 3pm Amsterdam and Paris time (2pm London time and 9am New York time). This listen-only live audio webcast of the presentation and the Q&A session will be accessible from our Investor Relations web site: www.gemalto.com/investors Questions will be taken by way of conference call. Investors and financial analysts wishing to ask questions should join the presentation by dialing: (UK) +44 203 367 9457 or (US) +1 855 402 7764 or (FR) +33 1 7077 0939 The accompanying presentation slide set is also available for download on our Investor Relations web site. Replays of the presentation and Q&A session will be available in webcast format on our Investor Relations web site approximately 3 hours after the conclusion of the presentation. Replays will be available for one year. Calendar Gemalto N.V. will hold its 2017 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (AGM) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 at the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel & Conference Center, Schiphol Boulevard 101, 1118 BG Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands at 2:00 p.m. CET. The first semester 2017 results will be reported on Friday September 1, 2017, before the opening of Euronext Paris. Stock Exchange Listing Gemalto N.V. is dual listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Paris, in the compartment A (Large Caps). Mnemonic: GTO Exchange Dual listing on Euronext Amsterdam and Paris Market of reference Euronext Amsterdam ISIN Code NL0000400653 Reuters GTO.AS Bloomberg GTO:NA Gemalto has also established a sponsored Level I American Depository Receipt (ADR) Program in the United States since November 2009. Each Gemalto ordinary share is represented by two ADRs. Gemalto's ADRs trade in U.S. dollar and give access to the voting rights and to the dividends attached to the underlying Gemalto shares. The dividends are paid to investors in U.S. dollar, after being converted into U.S. dollar by the depository bank at the prevailing rate. Structure Sponsored Level I ADR Exchange OTC Ratio (ORD:DR) 1:2 DR ISIN US36863N2080 DR CUSIP 36863N 208 Investor Relations Corporate Communication Media Relations Agency Winston Yeo Isabelle Marand Suzanne Bakker M.: +33 6 2947 0814 M.: +33 6 1489 1817 M. : +31 6 1136 8659 winston.yeo@gemalto.com isabelle.marand@gemalto.com suzanne.bakker@citigateff.nl Sebastien Liagre M.: +33 6 1751 4467 sebastien.liagre@gemalto.com This press release contains inside information as referred to in article 7 paragraph 1 of Regulation (EU) 596/2014 (Market Abuse Regulation). About Gemalto Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the global leader in digital security, with 2016 annual revenues of 3.1 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world. Our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between. Gemalto's solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the internet of things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software - enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things. Our 15,000+ employees operate out of 112 offices, 43 personalization and data centers, and 30 research and software development centers located in 48 countries. For more information visit www.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter. This communication does not constitute an offer to purchase or exchange or the solicitation of an offer to sell or exchange any securities of Gemalto. This communication contains certain statements that are neither reported financial results nor other historical information and other statements concerning Gemalto. These statements include financial projections and estimates and their underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, events, products and services and future performance. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates" and similar expressions. These and other information and statements contained in this communication constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of applicable securities laws. Although management of the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors and security holders are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of the Company, that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by the forward-looking information and statements, and the Company cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by the forward-looking statements contained in this communication include, but are not limited to: trends in wireless communication and mobile commerce markets; the Company's ability to develop new technology and the effects of competing technologies developed; effects of the intense competition in the Company's main markets; challenges to or loss of intellectual property rights; ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships in its major businesses; ability to develop and take advantage of new software, platforms and services; profitability of the expansion strategy; effects of acquisitions and investments; ability of the Company's to integrate acquired businesses, activities and companies according to expectations; ability of the Company to achieve the expected synergies from acquisitions; and changes in global, political, economic, business, competitive, market and regulatory forces. Moreover, neither the Company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this communication speak only as of the date of this communication and the Company or its representatives are under no duty, and do 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 except as required by applicable law or regulations. Appendix Appendix 1 Revenue by region in millions First quarter 2017 First quarter 2016 Year-on-year variation at constant exchange rates Year-on-year variation at historical exchange rates EMEA 287 299 (4%) (4%) Americas 222 274 (22%) (19%) Asia 142 118 +17% +20% Total revenue 651 691 (8%) (6%) [1] Apple and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7fe69a04-dd2e-430e-97e7-444268e78d54 SPRINGFIELD, Ill., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Town and Country Financial Corporation (OTC Pink:TWCF) reported first-quarter net income of $1.4 million, or $0.51 per share, a 93% increase from $744 thousand in the first-quarter of 2016. Net income available to common shareholders, after preferred dividends, was $735 thousand in 2016, or $0.26 per share. There were no preferred dividends in 2017. The current quarters reported earnings were impacted by security gains that resulted in additional after-tax income of $228 thousand as compared to an after-tax loss of $79 thousand reported in the year-ago quarter due to security gains and conversion and acquisition costs. Core operating income excluding these items was $1.2 million, or $0.43 per share, as compared to $823 thousand, or $0.29 per share, in the year ago quarter. President and Chief Executive Officer, Micah R. Bartlett commented, The first quarter yielded positive financial and non-financial results, including a return on equity of 12.16% and a return on assets of 0.78%. In addition, asset quality improved as the level of non-performing loans was just 0.43% of total loans and total risk-based capital was strong at 12.39%. Discussion of First Quarter Results Net revenue was $8.1 million, up 30% compared with $6.2 million in 2016. Net interest income was $5.3 million in the quarter, up $1.1 million over the year-ago quarter based upon 2016 bank and branch acquisitions and loan growth, particularly high cash flow residential mortgage loans. Non-interest income was $2.7 million and up $741 thousand from the prior year due to security gains that were $374 thousand in the current quarter compared with $25 thousand in the year ago, a 37% increase in mortgage banking revenue, and the acquisitions. Approximately two-thirds of the increase in mortgage revenue was due to slowing prepayment speeds on the serviced portfolio that resulted in a positive adjustment to the value of the mortgage servicing rights asset. The tax equivalent net interest margin was 3.28% in the current quarter, up from 3.20% in the year-ago. The year-over-year change was due to the February 29, 2016 bank acquisition with loan yields that exceeded those of the acquiring organization, partially offset by higher-rate term deposits that have since repriced, and cash that was invested over the subsequent months in higher-yielding assets. Noninterest expense was $6.0 million, an increase of $966 thousand, or 19%, over the year-ago quarter, the change primarily due to the acquisitions. The provision for loan loss was $158 thousand compared to $160 thousand in the first-quarter of 2016. Net charge offs were $168 thousand, or 0.04% of average loans compared with net recoveries of $6 thousand in the first quarter of 2016. Loans that were past due 30 days or more, including non-accrual loans, totaled 1.18% of loans outstanding compared with 1.02% at December 31, 2016. The allowance for loan loss was 1.09% of total loans, excluding loans held for sale, and this level was unchanged from the end of 2016. The level of nonperforming loans declined to 0.43% of total loans as of March 31, 2017. Total assets were $739 million, generally unchanged from their total at year-end. Net loans were $475 million, down from $477 million at December 31, while total deposits were $600 million and common equity capital was $49 million. The reported book value was $17.35 per common share compared with $16.84 per share at December 31, 2016. Town and Country Financial Corporation is considered a small bank holding company and therefore Basel III capital standards do not apply. Town and Country Banks capital levels remained strong in the quarter under the Basel III transitional standardized approach with common equity tier 1 capital of $64 million, or 11.4%, and total regulatory capital of $67 million, or 12.4%, both ratios stated as a percentage of estimated risk-weighted assets. The parent holding company reported an investment in Town and Country Bank of $71 million at March 31, 2017, borrowings of $13.1 million and trust preferred securities of $13.9 million. Bartlett added, In addition to financial accomplishments, we were pleased that after significant outreach efforts, Town and Country Community Development Corporation, officially established in late 2016, completed its first financing with a housing rehabilitation project for a neighborhood association. We also made the difficult decision to close two branches whose business activity is no longer adequate to support their costs. In recognizing our customers increasing preference for electronic banking services, we also made additional investments in the quarter in those services for both individuals and businesses, including a new bank website and mobile banking options. The Board of Directors declared a $0.04 per share quarterly cash dividend payable on June 15, 2017 to stockholders of record June 1, 2017. Town and Country Financial Corporation is the parent holding company for Town and Country Bank and Town and Country Banc Mortgage Services, Inc. with offices in Buffalo, Decatur, Edwardsville, Fairview Heights, Jacksonville, Lincoln, Mt. Zion, Springfield, Waverly, White Hall and Quincy. Quincy operates under the name of Peoples Prosperity Bank. Town and Country Financial Corporation shares are quoted under the symbol TWCF. 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The ANU and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade-sponsored program aims to make science interactive, accessible and fun for young Africans by helping the science leaders establish institutions like Questacon. Dr Graham Walker from the National Centre for Public Awareness of Science joins recipients of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Australia Awards Fellowships program in igniting butane bubbles on their hands as part of a fun scientific demonstration at an event promoting ANU's Science Circus Africa program. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong Science Circus Africa project officer Graham Walker said there was an opportunity for more science centres in Africa, where only a handful exist. "The teaching of science in a lot of Africa - and a lot of the world, including Australia - requires on a lot of rote learning and memorisation, and it really takes the soul out of science, because science is a living thing, it's a way of understanding the world, so what we try to do in our programs is bring it to life," he said. Mother of two, Rachael Eason, cried when she tried to joke about buying her family onesies to keep warm this winter; facing a choice between keeping her kids warm, or paying rent. Speaking at the launch of Anglicare's rental affordability report on Thursday, Ms Eason said she spent half her wage on rent. Rachael Eason is a mother of two who spends nearly half her wage on rent. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong "The choices I make are, do my kids go on that school excursion, or do I say I can't afford it?" Ms Eason said. "Can I afford to register the car? Do I get food? I'm gonna cry." Ikea now offers same-day "click and collect" in Canberra in response to rising customer demand for online shopping. The faster new service is a first for Ikea Australia and will be considered for other stores if successful. Shoppers pay a flat $20 fee for same-day pickup seven days a week, regardless of the purchase value and size. Orders need to be made by 1pm. The company's national multichannel manager Michael Donath said online shopping now accounted for nearly 10 per cent of sales and the goal was to exceed that by the end of this year. Sydney's CBD and the Macquarie Park-Ryde district topped the list of innovation hotspots followed by North Sydney, Pyrmont, Surry Hills and Neutral Bay. Within that arc are the city's most innovative districts, new research by Deloitte Access Economics shows. It runs from around Kingsford Smith airport through the CBD and North Sydney, north-west to Macquarie University and then south to Homebush Bay and Chullora. An arc of innovation has been revealed in Sydney. But Sydney's arc of innovation includes some surprises. Turrella-Arncliffe, near Sydney Airport, was ranked the 11th most innovative district in the city thanks to its dynamic logistics sector. Rydalmere also had a high ranking because it is home to a Western Sydney University campus and takes in the Homebush Bay precinct. Westmead and Parramatta were identified as districts with the potential to become innovation hotpots of the future. The study, sponsored by the Sydney Business Chamber and University of Technology, Sydney, used 18 indicators to rank business innovation in districts across the metropolitan area. The authors created a "heat map" which shows how much innovative activity there is per employee in each area. Many of the Sydney's innovation hotspots hosted, or were close to, a university underscoring the role of research institutions in the city's economy. "Universities generate knowledge spillovers," the report said. "Beyond pioneering new products, they can help to attract new knowledge resources from outside the region." Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan will get another seven years at the head of the Australian Taxation Office, with the agency looking to hit more multinationals with tax bills amounting to $4 billion. The tax assessments include $2.9 billion in tax liabilities already issued against seven multinational companies. Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan is on "unavoidable leave". Credit:Louie Douvis Mr Jordan was appointed in the top job by former Treasurer Wayne Swan in January 2013. In an unprecedented move, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the reappointment two years ahead of the Commissioner's term expiring. Ramez Katf, who is currently Chief Information Officer and has been handling the ATO's controversial IT changes, has been appointed as Second Commissioner of Taxation. Company directors and corporate lawyers have pushed back against moves to protect whistleblowers who take their complaints public, saying claims of misconduct should be reported internally or to a government regulator. The Australian Institute of Company Directors, which represents 39,000 company directors and senior business leaders, says new whistleblower protections currently being considered by the government should not extend to disclosures made to "third parties", including the media, members of parliament and union representatives. It comes in the wake of a series of banking and wage fraud scandals exposed by the media that have rocked the corporate sector and lead to a number of government inquiries, including ones examining the failure of the regulator to investigate claims. A Senate inquiry is underway to examine whistleblower protections in the corporate, public and not-for-profit sectors. Almost a third of Australians perceived some form of age-related discrimination while employed or looking for work in the last 12 months - starting as early as 45 years of age, our study finds. We conducted a national survey of 2100 men and women aged 45 years and over, and 100 telephone interviews. The most common form of perceived discrimination was negative assumptions about older workers skills, learning abilities or cognition. Older adults in the study described a subtle pressure from their colleagues and management to stop working in order to AAAmake room for the younger generationAAA. Survey participants also reported limited or no opportunities for promotion or training, working in an organisation that undervalued them and difficulty securing work due to age. Our findings align with previous research from the Australian Human Rights Commission where 27 per cent of Australians aged 50 years and over had recent experience of age-based discrimination in the workplace. In this survey the most common forms were limited employment, promotion or training opportunities and perceptions that older people have outdated skills or are too slow to learn new things. We are faced today with a question that has never before arisen in our history. From January 1788, when the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay, to 2008, during the Global Financial Crisis, we've had first Britain and then the USA as both trading partner and strategic ally. But now China is our largest two-way trading partner in goods and services ($150 billion), our largest export market ($86 billion) and our largest source of imports ($64 billion). And the integrated East Asian economic zone is the world's fastest growing. So, how do we negotiate the tension between our major security partner and our major trading partner? China sees as vital to its security the string of archipelagos from northern Borneo to the Kuril Islands north-east of Japan. It has piled sand onto reefs in the South China Sea, creating seven new artificial islands, and has installed missile batteries and radar facilities, giving it effective control over sea and air traffic in the region. I had come to believe that, post Vietnam, I would never see another serious military incident or war in our region in my lifetime. How wrong could I be. Not only is the probability now mounting at an alarming pace, with Donald Trump and tensions over North Korea and the South China Sea, but I fear that we, as a nation, are being caught in the headlights. We are being sucked along as these probabilities mount and unfold, without a clear sense of our national interest, and without a clear strategy as to how we should be positioning ourselves to respond. The Turnbull government obviously didn't expect Trump to win. It didn't even have a phone number at the ready to congratulate him. Then, there was the infamous Trump/Turnbull phone call, again caught off guard. Quite frankly, the government, like most others has been left to fear the worst, as it waits to see just how Trump will transition from his campaign rhetoric to action. But, at best, it is playing catch-up. The Turnbull government's move to restrict gas exports at times of low supply is a band-aid that won't fix an energy situation deteriorating on many fronts. Since the Australian Energy Market Operator's report earlier this year warning of severe gas shortages damaging energy security in several states, the government has scrambled to cobble together a strategy to stave off what would be a disaster for homes and industry in coming years. The government's planned intervention in gas exports rattled shareholders who sent Santos shares tumbling as uncertainty clouded the proposal. Indeed, there are many elements of this plan that are unclear, not surprising given the haste with which the government is trying to find solutions. For a start, how will gas companies forge contracts with customers with the prospect of intervention hanging over them? The Coalition's move risks growing uncertainty around gas exports for companies, likely to give the industry headaches. While it's not the best or only solution to the problem, the government has been forced into it given previous failures to prevent national shortages. At what stage can this side of the triangle, continuing along Northbourne Avenue, have gone astray? How recently could the error have been rectified? It would seem that if Commonwealth Avenue Bridge had been correctly situated, then Northbourne Avenue could have been aligned in continuation without much alteration. Why did this never happen? Will it ever happen? Jack Palmer, Watson The very day after Anzac Parade, I read that the Anzac Park East building is to be replaced with a block of flats. Looking at the notice (Canberra Times, April26, p5) advertising the disposal of public assets, I can understand the Department of Finance wanting to trouser some extra money, but I don't see anywhere the guiding hand of the National Capital Authority. The symmetry of the two portal buildings at the lake end of Anzac Parade are part of the central axis defining the vista intrinsic to Walter Burley Griffin's formal plan for our city. Is the NCA silent on this? Even if through government mismanagement and negligence these buildings have deteriorated, surely they can be rescued: See AMP's plan to refurbish Sydney's first skyscraper at Circular Quay (Canberra Times, April26, p22). Maybe the neglect is so serious that all participants just want the evidence of it to just go away, to be replaced by something new and shiny, and hang the symbolism, the symmetry and the city's landscape plan. Mike Allan, Forrest More on the trams I agree with John Trueman and M.Flint (Letters, April26) in their responses to John Davenport's defence of the tram. Davenport demonstrates what happens when a blind commitment to ideology overrides careful rational analysis. It is obvious there are some savvy and experienced transport people involved in Can the Tram, who are committed to public transport and rapid transit solutions. However, the Gungahlin tram project failed badly on multiple grounds, when the detailed analysis was undertaken by various experts. In contrast, light rail examples such as the Gold Coast make sense in view of the number of visitors daily to that area and enough pivotal institutions along the route to make its use viable. Murray May, Cook So Andrew Barr is thinking about using citizens' juries to let the people have their say on major matters. Pity he didn't do that with the tram. Instead, he used his call-in powers to stop even parliamentary consideration of the issue and let contracts just before the election to stop people having their say there. He won, as it happens, but that election wasn't a referendum on the tram; the Liberals would have gotten the tram right and everything else wrong, which is why people didn't vote for them. Let's hope, if he does go ahead with the idea, that he doesn't get his random sample of voters from the rolls of various ALP sub branches. Stan Marks Hawker Climate canary One of the 7pm ABC news presentations last weekend broadcast an interview with a beekeeper, the significance of which completely escaped the presenter because she is probably captive to ABC groupthink on climate change. The beekeeper reported that he and many others were feeling financial pressures because returns from product honey and pollination services had been declining over recent years because of cold summers. How strange, considering reports on hottest weeks, months, even summers, since whenever. Russian scientists studying climate change and possible links to solar cycles are predicting serious cooling mid-century, not unlike the Maunder Minimum. Is this real evidence? Could bees represent the proverbial canary? Aert Driessen, McKellar A shout for Liberals For the first time ever last election I voted for a Liberal government in the ACT. Jeremy Hanson guaranteed that SHOUT would be given $600,000 over three years to continue the valuable work we do in the community. However, I am now guaranteed I will have a tram, which is probably something I will never use. I ask people who live with chronic conditions and their carers to consider how they will vote in the next election. We do have strengths in numbers to change the government. Paula Calcino, Oxley Sore subject of objectivity Rod Matthews (Letters, April 26) states as received wisdom that the ABC is left-wing in its political analysis. He also suggests that the ABC thinks it is centrist and balanced, thereby implying the organisation is unaware of its bias. At best, this is muddled thinking. To suggest that the ABC is incapable of understanding its positioning on political analysis is insulting and gratuitous. Mr Matthews should also remember two other things. First, a key task of media organisations is to analyse policies and actions of the government of the day, thus ensuring a high degree of accountability. A healthy media is likely to focus on governments more so than other political groups simply because they are in power. Second, perceptions of bias are likely to be influenced by one's personal starting point. Mr Matthews does not acknowledge this. His comments would have been more credible if he'd also made an objective analysis of Australia's other main media organisations. Keith Croker, Kambah White lie fever France's mistreatment of Muslims is worse than Clive Williams reports in ("Why France is a target", April 26, p16). During the French occupation of Algeria until 1962, soldiers butchered 5 million (mainly Muslim) civilians. In their quest for racial purity, Hitler's Nazis were marginally higher. They killed 6 million Jews. To this day, the French government refuses to admit its genocide and apologise to Algerians. Nobody knows how many Aboriginal people were killed in Australia's quest for racial purity. But in 2008, then prime minister Kevin Rudd apologised for Australia's attempted genocide. One day a prime minister may apologise for putting refugees into prison camps. But I'm not holding my breath. Labor and Liberal MPs fear losing votes. The White Australia Policy has gone but the malady lingers on and on. Graham Macafee, Latham Remember misdeeds I wish to inform Mr Dutton that since 1975 boat people have come from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (to some extent Iran and Sri Lanka), predominantly fleeing war-torn situations. It was Mr Dutton's Liberal Party predecessors that got us involved in these wars; therefore they must assume the blame. It was because of our participation in the form of military support in these regions that these asylum seekers considered Australians as friendly forces. They deliberately targeted our shores in the belief that they would be granted refugee status. Mr Dutton should remember the MV Tampa scandal, the Siev X disaster and the Siev 4 children overboard controversy before he apportions blame. Dennis Petrovic, Rutherford, NSW Levels of freedom We deem "freedom of speech" as a key Australian value. This was put to the test this week and we have failed once again. Let's put aside the sentiments and political correctness of right or wrong. The rage at Yassmin Abdel-Magied after her Anzac Day tweet clearly indicates we are a highly biased, misogynist and opportunistic society, looking to exploit the mistakes of others. We have a high level of double standard. It appears we support "freedom of speech" only when it is about what we like to hear. Usman Mahmood, South Bowenfels NSW Ends of the earth The Immigration Department should be sent to Nauru, where there is good accommodation and welcoming locals. The Minister for Science and his department's staff should be sent to Antarctica, and the Prime Minister and his department should be sent to the Norfolk Islands. The Tax Office should be relocated on the Cayman Islands. Susan MacDougall, Scullin Cheek to jowl Good to see our government keeping us tight with the USA. Now we have a government minister with "alternate facts", as popularised by the Trump administration. Minister Dutton is demanding an apology from the ABC for reporting facts from the PNG police on Manus Island, instead of using his alternate facts about the PNG soldiers shooting up the Manus Island "concentration camp" (a term used by Pope Francis). Unfortunately the term "alternate facts" had not been invented at the time of the Howard government's "children overboard" fiasco. I would like to call on the ABC to promise never to use "alternate facts" from our Coalition governments. They are as reliable as a President Trump tweet. Rod Olsen, Flynn The US never has to "go it alone". They can depend on us good old "Arsies" to pour blood and treasure into their wars. Russia has watched in dismay as the US pushes EU membership and compulsory NATO membership ever closer to Russia's western borders. The US has also set up a ring of armaments aimed at Russia. A recent John Pilger documentary showed China and North Korea ringed by US bases. The US taxpayer has footed the bill for overseas bases in some cases since 1945. Add to this constant US intrusion in the western Pacific with war games. The problem is not Russia, China, North Korea; the problem is US provocation. Barrie Smillie, Duffy The coal scuttling Can anyone explain why the federal and Queensland governments continue to promote the Adani mine project? Did Turnbull's 30 pieces of silver include support for Abbott's view that "coal is vital for the future energy needs of the world, so let's have no demonisation of coal"? It is clear that Adani is a scam; the mine will be established, management's cut will be banked in the Bahamas and then, surprise, the price of coal will collapse and the mine will be closed. Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla TO THE POINT NOT FOR HER FAMILY I'm not surprised Lucy Gichuhi wants nothing to do with Cory Bernardi, given his antipathy towards Africans, Asians and Aborigines, in particular ("Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives to merge with Family First", April 25). Michael McCarthy, Deakin PEOPLE THE PROBLEM When will national and international governments wake up to the fact that failing to address the primary cause of climate change population growth will only slow down but not stop climate change? Ed Dobson, Hughes INCREDIBLE DUTTON Peter Dutton's latest shot across the bow of the ABC would be laughable if it wasn't so telling of the man. He is certainly living in la la land if he thinks the ABC has anything to answer for. . D.J Fraser, Currumbin, Qld Do any of these people whining about the "left" ABC ever listen to Amanda Vanstone's program Counterpoint, or Tom Switzer's 'Sunday Profile. Sometimes I think that they never encounter any of the ABC apart fromQ&A. S.W Davey, Torrens JAW JAW NOT WAR WAR The subtitle on the article "There are no easy answers" ("North Korea nuclear stand-off", CT, April 25) got it dead wrong. Nothing could be simpler: use diplomacy, negotiate. Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor THE DARWIN LINE Having US troops stationed in Darwin in case of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, and at the same time calling on China to deter North Korea firing missiles at us, puts us in a precarious position. Glenys Hammer, Narrabundah OUR BEST FEATURES Values are one thing, but perhaps Australia's best features are its peace, democracy, freedoms, liberalism, easy-going character, and welfare system. Rod Matthews, Fairfield Vic James Gralton (Letters , April 26) has succinctly summarised current Australian values as "a selfish, inward-looking and mean society, thinking only of ourselves". What became of the values we celebrated on Anzac Day? Peter Snowdon, Aranda BICKERING SICKENING Anzac Day has become a day for rival factions to bicker over what is respectful and what not. I think the root of all evil stems from our politicians' contagious disease (bickering) that is infecting the whole nation. Mokhles K Sidden, South Strathfield NSW 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. It is a measure of how low-grade Australia's political discourse has become that my initial response to the federal government's latest "values" crusade around citizenship was relief. At least this time, in contrast to when John Howard introduced the test in 2006, Donald Bradman didn't get a guernsey and I did not have to measure my Eastern European migrant parents model citizens but hazy on The Don against some Anglo prototype, and reach the sad conclusion that they were decidedly un-Australian, and I, by virtue of DNA, also suss. This time the "Australian values" mooted as a condition for citizenship, part of the government's "Australia First" measures announced last week, are merely the values that define every liberal democracy. Freedom, equality, a fair go, mutual respect, the rule of law. And according to Barnaby Joyce, the opportunity to see a movie without a security detail, to hang about in T-shirts and shorts and to have a beer, or not. Australia's first female Muslim federal MP Anne Aly has fallen victim to fake news after an unsubstantiated story about her "refusal" to lay a wreath on Anzac Day appeared on a Facebook post. It's a lesson on how fast rumour travels, gains traction and becomes the alternative truth - at least on social media. It began after the Kim Vuga Love Australia or Leave Party Facebook page made a post at 8.30pm on Anzac Day, headed "a must read". It shared a story purportedly from a friend referred to as "Gary" who had been at a dawn service for the Wanneroo RSL sub branch in the northern suburbs of Perth. "Gary" says he was "taken aback" to hear that the local Member, Anne Aly, would not be presenting a wreath. Look on the Upside, you can have new active wear for your winter exercise. Online Only, 26 April- 10 May. Svett which does not follow the usual activewear design patterns comes is a range of sizes. Australian retailer Incu is taking up to 80 per cent off at their Paddington Town Hall warehouse sale. Over three days this weekend, expect international and local labels including A.P.C, Acne Studios, Bassike, Comme des Garcons, Isabel Marant Etoile, Karen Walker, and Saturdays NYC. Paddington Town Hall 249 Oxford Street Paddington. Friday 28, 9am 5pm, Saturday 29, 9am 5pm, Sunday 30, 10am 2pm. If you want to shop online this week, Princess Polly has 30-60 per cent off their colourful fashion, UK site Miss Selfridge has up to 50 per cent off selected lines and accessory brand Kate Hill has 50 per cent off store wide including a selection of their handbags and wallets for $50 or under in the lead-up to Mother's Day. Just Opened Dion Lee moved to New York late last year, with his design studio in tow. But that doesn't mean he won't continue to build strong relationships with his loyal Australian customer base. After moving into the Bondi Junction market in 2014 with a temporary store, it's no surprise Dion Lee has now taken up a permanent residency in the suburb's Westfield hub. The newest Sydney flagship store, which opened last month, continues the designer's slick design collaboration with architect Kelvin Ho from Akin Creative. The change rooms feature blush-pink carpet and walls, a stark contrast to the rest of the space which has an industrial aesthetic with stainless steel beams, concrete counters and clothes hanging from chrome racks. The latest store houses the brand's ready-to-wear collection, including Dion Lee Water (swim), suit, shoes and eyes range, with intricate designs sitting alongside the more structured, timeless pieces that have earned the brand its cult following. Westfield Bondi Junction Level 4, Shop 4072, 500 Oxford St, Bondi Junction. Dion Lee's latest store in Bondi Junction. After opening the first of their planned 35 Australian stores last week in Melbourne, US "off-price" fashion and homeware retailer TK Maxx continues its east coast expansion, with eleven stores opening in NSW on April 27, including seven in the Sydney region. Not to be mistaken as following an outlet store model, the company buys up over-supplied stock from designer and brand vendors, meaning that shoppers can find labels that mirrors the stock on high-street at a fraction of the original price. Following a takeover of discount retailer Trade Secret in 2015, The retailer's "acquire today, sell tomorrow" model means that the stock is turned over continuously. Stocking thousands of brands, expect to find labels including Dolce & Gabbana, Asilio, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Guess, Diane von Furstenberg, Ted Baker, Ben Sherman and even Ivanka Trump's clothing line. The seven locations in Sydney are Campbelltown, Castle Hill, Chatswood, Fairfield, Hillsdale, Mount Druitt and Penrith. Customers with time to search through the racks will be rewarded with designer labels at heavy discounts at TK Maxx. Credit:Jesse Marlow #inthecart The politician who was sacked over the tear-gassing of Northern Territory boys in youth jail says he was the victim of a unbalanced "hatchet job" by the ABC. Former corrections minister John Elferink was fired last year when shocking footage of young offenders being gassed, spithooded and shackled to restraint chairs aired on national television. He told the juvenile justice royal commission the ABC's Four Corners program, which was the catalyst for the inquiry, was "the antithesis of a balanced report and was in fact misleading". "It was presented by the ABC in a way which was calculated to have maximum sensationalist impact," Mr Elferink wrote in a statement. A new 14-storey high school will be built in inner Sydney for 1200 students as the government scrambles to meet a surge in enrolments that will require 12 new schools to be built every year. The new Surry Hills school, to be built on the site of the existing Cleveland Street Intensive English High School, is expected to open in 2020 and is one of five high-rise government schools currently planned for greater Sydney. Education Minister Rob Stokes said most new schools will involve "multi-storey buildings" amid increasing cost and space pressures. "Where land is constrained, we'll have to look at going up," Mr Stokes said. The national auditor has backed the Defence Department's strategy to purchase new submarines replacing its ageing stock in its first probe into the $50 billion build, the largest defence project contract in Australia's history. However the Australian National Audit Office warned by selecting one partner in the project, Defence needed to ensure it returned value for money in the absence of competition in its design phase. Collins class submarine HMAS Rankin, one of many to be eventually replaced by the planned new French submarines. Credit:James Brickwood Its findings come after crossbench senator Nick Xenophon raised concerns about cost blowouts and other potential problems in the mammoth project based in his home state South Australia, and called for more scrutiny. Australia's auditor-general condoned Defence's approach to selecting a partner to build the new subs in a report released on Thursday, saying it effectively designed and implemented the process that saw French company DCNS chosen to construct the 12 submarines in Adelaide. A 12-year-old boy who took the family car and drove more than 1300 kilometres across NSW will not be charged. Mid North Coast Local Area Command's Detective Inspector Kim Fehon said the child was now back in the care of his family and has been referred to support services. The boy left Kendall, near Port Macquarie, about 11am last Friday and travelled along the Pacific Highway before joining the Golden Highway. He made it almost one-third of the way across the country before being stopped by police in Broken Hill in far western NSW. The boy was pulled over about 11am on Saturday after completing more than 1300 kilometres of his journey. The ABC reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna gave assurances she would produce a balanced story on the Northern Territory youth justice system, according to the man sacked as a result of her Four Corners report. Former Minister for Corrections, John Elferink, told the royal commission on Thursday he had made it clear to the journalist that he would not grant access to correctional facilities if she intended to do some sort of "hatchet job" on NT Corrections. Former Northern Territory corrections minister John Elferink alleges widespread sexual abuses among Aboriginal communities when asked about his government's child protection polices. He said the ABC program used vision of a 2014 prison riot quelled by guards using tear gas and other footage where staff actions had been found justified by a Supreme Court justice. "The vision which was broadcast by the ABC is confronting, however in my view it was presented in a way which was calculated to have maximum sensationalist impact and wrongly portray it as the position which apertained in youth corrections in 20126. Just two months ago, proud mother Salafai Loimata posted a photograph online of her two young daughters smiling and dressed neatly in their green and gold school uniforms as they set out for their first day of school for the year. Five-year-old Mariasusana Vaafusuaga, known as Sana, was in kindergarten and was excited to be attending Tacoma Public School on the NSW Central Coast with her big sister, Philomena. She loved school and, within weeks, received an award for being a "kindergarten superstar". On Thursday morning, Ms Loimata shared the same photograph again, this time in memory of Sana, who was killed in a tragic accident as she headed home from school on Wednesday, the first day of the second term. "Love you so much," her mother wrote, alongside other now treasured photographs of her daughter. In the midst of the pre-Christmas rush, security guard Mohammad Hassan Al Bayati led a three-year-old girl from a Sydney shopping centre playground into a locked stairwell. There were no cameras inside the stairwell at DFO Homebush, where Mr Al Bayati and the girl remained for 11 minutes on Sunday, December 18, last year. DFO Homebush, where a security guard allegedly performed an indecent act on a three-year-old girl. Credit:Tamara Dean But the girl allegedly made a disclosure to her father later that day. In an interview with police, Mr Al Bayati allegedly admitted taking the girl down the secluded corridor, but he denied allegations that he had performed an indecent act or exposed himself to her. A speeding truck driver who hurtled down a steep hill and into a line of traffic on Sydney's northern beaches, seriously injuring two police officers on their way to work, has been sentenced to at least three years in jail. Sarmad Shamon Nisan, 42, was travelling at almost twice the speed limit, in the wrong gear, and failed to engage the exhaust brake as he approached a steep descent on Warringah Road in Dee Why in October 2014. Sarmad Nisan, centre, outside court in January. Credit:Wolter Peeters Nisan lost control of his almost fully laden 22-tonne truck, which flipped over and slammed into a line of traffic stopped at a red light at the busy intersection at Pittwater Road. Two police officers driving to work - James McClenaghan and Amy Champion - were among six people who were injured. Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath has refused to say whether any children were hogtied in the state's youth detention centres and defended a decision to redact large parts of a report on alleged abuse in the system. Hundreds of pages of the independent report have been fully or partially censored, which Ms D'Ath says was done on the advice of crown lawyers to avoid identifying minors. Large parts of the report, including names and photographs, were redacted. Credit:Felicity Caldwell Ms D'Ath refused to comment on photos in the report that allegedly showed children tied up. "I'm not going to start talking about the photos that are in (the report). That defeats the purpose of redacting them," Ms D'Ath told reporters on Thursday. Commonwealth Bank has bowed to public pressure and removed contract terms that allow it to put small business borrowers into default, even if they have not missed a repayment. But the lender did not go as far as recommended by small business ombudsman Kate Carnell, who called for banks to remove such contract terms from all loans of less than $5 million. CBA may be plotting a return to the bond market. Credit:Jessica Shapiro Instead, CBA will on Friday pledge to remove contract terms that allow "non-monetary defaults" by small business customers who have borrowed up to $3 million from the lender. CBA said this would cover 95 per cent of its small business customers. Ms Carnell, Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, who last year led an inquiry into small business lending that recommended the practice be banned, welcomed CBA's move. It is the first formal response from a big bank to this recommendation. Wendy Bankes has had enough of hairdressing and thought selling her 12-year-old business would give her some "breathing space" and provide a form of superannuation. "I've been working for myself for a long time, so I just want to release the pressure a bit and just work for somebody else and do a job where I'm not responsible for how people look," Bankes says. "I'm not at the retiring stage yet, but in the hairdressing sense I am." Wendy Bankes, owner of Heavenly Hairdressing in Ivanhoe, has realised she was naive about how she marketed the business. But the 55-year-old has struggled to sell her small business, Heaven Hairdressing in Ivanhoe, after asking $60,000 for it through a business broker. "I've tried to sell my business for about two years, and I realise now that I probably didn't put enough time into the research," Bankes says. Victoria's emergency control centre will soon be monitoring hospital emergency departments in real time following last year's freak thunderstorm asthma crisis that saw thousands of people suddenly require urgent respiratory care and claimed the lives of nine people. Health Minister Jill Hennessy has revealed the new monitoring system, calling it a "canary in the coalmine" to detect surges at emergency departments. The new system is part of a $15.56 million package to ensure the state is better equipped to handle large-scale health crises, which will be included in next week's budget. It comes as Tony Pearce, the Inspector-General for Emergency Services, releases his final report on the crisis that unfolded across the state on November 21 and 22 last year. Trigger warnings should be introduced for English texts to notify students of distressing themes, traumatised VCE students say. It comes as students raise concerns about "depressing" literature on the VCE English text list, including books which focus on genocide, death, homophobia and rape. Ross McNaughton says he has 'decent mental health' but believes some of the books he's studying are 'adding more pressure'. Credit:Joe Armao, Fairfax Media. Victorian Student Representative Council vice-chair David Trevorrow said trigger warnings would help students. But he said schools should not shy away from challenging issues in VCE texts. "We frequently see trigger warnings on challenging digital content; we support the inclusion of similar acknowledgements for VCE texts that are considered to be triggering," he said. A former Perth student on trial for allegedly murdering his father, mother and brother with an axe has returned under escort to the scene of the killings. Henri van Breda, along with the judge and lawyers in his trial, has inspected the home in Stellenbosch where the murders of Martin van Breda, his wife, Teresa, and their eldest son, Rudi, occurred in January 2015. Henri van Breda, centre, accompanied by attorney Lorinda van Niekerk, front, arrives at court. Credit:AP South African media say that during the visit, van Breda gave his version of events on the night of the killings, but they were not allowed to enter the house. Van Breda has said he fought an attacker during the slaughter and pleaded not guilty on Monday as the trial began. Brace yourselves, beer lovers, a better brew is on the way now that a team of international scientists, including researchers from Western Australia, have cracked the genetic code of barley. Murdoch University professor Chengdao Li, who led the WA-based group, says the findings would be used to modify crops so they can adapt to climate change, avoid disease and yield better beer. A better brew is on the way after researchers claim to have cracked the genetic code of barley. Credit:iStock He says the work took 10 years to complete because the genetics of barley was incredibly complex, equal to about twice the size of the human genome. "Australia is the largest malted barley exporter, so we can use the science to enhance competitiveness in the international market," he said on Thursday. Tickets for new non-stop Perth-London Qantas flights go on sale on Thursday morning, with flights to begin March 24, 2018. The national carrier announced in December it would operate non-stop flights from Perth to London using the 787-9 Dreamliner from March 2018 - the first regular, non-stop flight between Australia and Europe. The route of almost 14,500 kilometres will take 17 hours and will be the third-longest passenger flight in the world and the longest Qantas flight. It is expected to cost from $2270 return, according to Australian Business Traveller. Federal MP Anne Aly has responded to false claims by right-wing political activists who said she refused to lay a wreath on Anzac Day, labelling their actions as "offensive" and "disgusting". Dr Aly, Australia's first female Muslim MP, attended a dawn service in Ballajura, laid a wreath and made a speech. Anne Aly has hit back at fake Anzac Day claims. Credit:Paul Kane She also, prior to Anzac Day, sent a letter to those in her electorate about her work with the Australian Defence Force in counter-terrorism and encouraged people to attend one of a number of local services to commemorate the day. "I think it's absolutely disgusting to use a day of commemoration to further your agenda... I know why they're doing it, I know it's got to do with my faith background, but to me the most offensive thing is they would question my respect and the high level of regard I have for our Anzacs," she said. Jakarta: A 26-year-old Australian woman on holiday in Bali has been found dead after the motor scooter she was riding crashed. Ella Knights, from the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont, was riding in the popular beachside village of Canggu on Wednesday night when police believe she lost control of the scooter. Traffic accident unit chief with Badung police, Made Sujana, said the scooter was heading west, right before a corner heading north. "Because of the speed of the scooter she lost control and was dragged to the right and fell to the gutter," Mr Made said. Beijing: China and Russia have vowed "to take further action" against the United States' ambition to build a global anti-missile shield that they argue will give US forces a unilateral military advantage. Chinese and Russian officials met in Moscow on Wednesday within hours of the installation by the US of large parts of the controversial THAAD anti-missile radar at Seonju, 300 kilometres from Seoul. The US is installing the THAAD system in South Korea. Credit:Lockheed Martin "China and Russia will take further action to counter this and to safeguard their security interests and the regional strategic balance of China and Russia," said Major General Cai Jun from the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission in a statement. The South Korean government has said the THAAD system will defend South Korea from any North Korean missile attack, amid increasing activity by Kim Jong-un's missile and nuclear testing program, which breaches United Nations resolutions. Participants in 2017 Operation Locked Shields. Credit:NATO The think tank was set up partly as a response to a 2007 cyber attack on Estonia, when hackers disrupted banking and government systems for weeks during a fierce local debate over the removal of a Soviet war memorial. Many of the attacks originated in Russian computer servers, though Moscow denied any involvement. Siim Alatalu, head of international relations at the CCDCoE, said it would not be "politically correct" to say that Crimsonia was modelled on Russia. Sven Sakkov, Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. Credit:NATO "I would not say that Crimsonia reflects Russia," he said. "It's really a fictional country." The list of 'usual suspects' when it comes to cyber-offensive capabilities would depend on who was drawing it up, he said. Cyber defenders at NATO's Operation Locked Shields exercise in Tallinn, Estonia. Credit:NATO "(It) might include Russia, or People's Republic of China or North Korea. The list has many different possible members, there are many capable countries all over the world. What we try to do is get the 'art of the possible'. Whatever could be thought of as a cyber vulnerability, we try to test it." The simulation was two days of a "whole lot of hacking", Mr Alatalu said. "The task of each team is to survive and cope with an amount of attacks which in their normal work they would experience within a year. The amount of attacks is very big and you need a diverse set of skills to deal with them. They occur in real time, there's no time to unplug your machine, figure out a recipe then plug it back in. If you fail to maintain the services you are tasked to maintain, you're in a very bad place." This is the kind of attack that could take place in a war, he said. "All the attacks, they are based on real technology, real people coming up with offensive strategies and tactics. It's based on real life. "The exercise makes you deal with what you might become faced with in due course." Locked Shields has doubled in size in just two years. The 2015 edition involved more than 400 people and 16 national teams this year there were 800 participants from 25 nations, 19 of which were involved in the entire event and the rest contributed as organisers or observers. Ms Bishop told Fairfax that seeing the exercise in action had been an "eye opening" experience "it really is the next frontier in global challenges," she said. "It reinforced my view that we are on the right track making cyber such a priority." This month Australia and China reached a new agreement on cyber security, agreeing neither country would conduct or support cyber-crime against the other. And last November the government established the position of ambassador for cyber affairs, as part of a $230m cyber security strategy. The minister said that Australia already worked closely on cyber-war strategy with its Five Eyes intelligence allies, but "I still think there are opportunities to expand our engagement". She will ask the government's newly-appointed ambassador for cyber affairs, Dr Tobias Feakin, to visit NATO's cyber-security centre and discuss how Australia might be able to get involved. The Pentagon's top watchdog has launched an investigation into money that former national security adviser General Michael Flynn received from foreign groups, members of the House Oversight Committee said on Thursday. The Pentagon office will try to determine whether Mr Flynn "failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving" the payments, according to an April 11 letter from Defense Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to Representative Jason Chaffetz, the committee chairman. In the past, the Pentagon has advised retiring officers that because they can be recalled to military service, they may be subject to the Constitution's rarely enforced emoluments clause, which prohibits top officials from receiving payments or favours from foreign governments. Mr Flynn received $US45,000 to appear in 2015 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a gala dinner for RT, a Kremlin-controlled media organisation. He also worked as a foreign agent representing Turkish interests for a Netherlands-based company, Inovo BV, which paid his company, Flynn Intel Group, $US530,000 in autumn. Defense Department guidelines warn that the department's top financial officer, the comptroller, "may pursue debt collection" if a retired officer does not seek permission to accept foreign payments before doing so. Any debt collection due to an emoluments clause violation is capped at no more than what an individual makes in retirement pay during a period of unauthorised employment. In Mr Flynn's case, that is more than $US35,000 for the three months of the Inovo project. WILLEMSTAD CURACAO:--- Curacao On Friday, April 28th, Curacao goes to the polls for the parliamentary elections that were called early. The previous government elected in the October 5th, 2016 elections fell after seven weeks. Since then, an interim Government governed the island. The cabinet of Hensley Koeiman fell on February 12th, 2017. Immediately thereafter, new elections were called for April 28th, 2017, to the disagreement of the new coalition installed on March 24th and led by the former Prime Minister and convict Gerrit Schotte. On March 31st the Netherlands took control of the parliamentary elections on Curacao. The interim government of Curacao led by Prime Minister Pik Pisas wanted to cancel the elections on April 28, but demissionary Minister of Kingdom Relations, Ronald Plasterk, and the Kindom Council of Ministers prevented this. "It is of the utmost importance that the people of Curacao express themselves in free and fair elections about the future of the country. The actions of the interim cabinet have seriously affected the integrity of the electoral process. Therefore, the National Council of Ministers considers it necessary to give the Governor the power to ensure a proper course of the elections." With a formal general measure by the kingdom government on April 3rd, it was decided that the powers required for the organization of elections to be held on Curacao on April 28th are with the Governor of Curacao. The measure also stipulates that the Governor may, if necessary, enable national services to guide the elections in an orderly fashion. Curacao The 21 seats in parliament are chosen through the system of proportional representation. Parties already represented in parliament are admitted to the next elections. New parties must exceed a voting threshold in pre-elections. This threshold is stipulated by law as 1% of the number of valid votes in the previous elections. Election results October 5th, 2016 The largest party on the island is MFK, the party of former Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte. From 2010 to 2012 he was head of government on Curacao. However, he is now excluded from participation in the elections because he has been convicted for corruption. Nevertheless, Schotte remains popular among the population. Schotte is still in an appeal for the fact that he cannot participate in the elections. The ruling is expected in May, and so his party wanted to postpone the election. Participating parties April 28th, 2017 List Party Leader Color 1 Korsou di Nos Tur Miro Amparo dos Santos Silver 2 Un Korsou Hustu Omayra Leeflang Violet 3 Partido Inovashon Nashonal Suzy Camelia-Romer Light Blue 4 Partido Alternativa Real Eugene Rhuggenaath Yellow 5 Partido MAN Hensley Koeiman Blue 6 Partido Nashonal di Pueblo Humphrey Davelaar Geen 7 Frente Obrero-Partido Aliansa Nobo Amado Rojer Orange 8 Movementu Futuro Korsou Gerrit Schotte White 9 Pueblo Soberano Jaime Cordoba Creme 10 Movementu Kousa Prome Rene Rosalia Grey 11 Movementu Progresivo Marilyn Moses Magenta The perps were all black youth, the victims were white and Asian professionals. Why not just say it? On Saturday 60 or 70 local kids jumped the turnstiles and committed 60 or 70 robberies of a San Francisco bound BART train, as it sat in the last West Oakland BART Station on it's way to the Transbay Tube. The kids (boys mostly), were filmed as they robbed frightened passengers at knife point. It's a spectacular crime, the kind that happens in some countries a lot, and in the US, not so much. The Bay Area Rapid Transit people have many ways to contact the public, muses the San Francisco Chronicle. So why is no one talking about it? Indeed, why did BART not go public with the crime sooner than Monday, 48 hours after it happened? http://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/BART-s-decision-not-to-publicize-takeover-11098643.php The SF Chronicle knows damn well why not. It's because the perpetrator were all African American kids from local high schools. BART doesn't need the public help, because the entire event was filmed from security cameras all over the station. All they have to do to identify the kids is go to local Oakland high school with photos and ask their teachers. There, I said it. Come arrest me. The passengers were every race, but included many residents and tourists from Europe and Asia. When they finally release the security camera footage, you'll see what I mean. Oakland, which up until ten years ago was the largest majority African American city West of the Mississippi, is still 34% black (I use Black and African American interchangeably in this article; you may also write to flame me for that if you want). But Oakland is gentrifying rapidly as property values throughout the Bay Area skyrocket. Personally, I don't blame these "inner city youth" for being angry. The black kids have mostly been left behind on the rush of money into the East Bay. They know it and they don't like it. That African Americans have largely been left out of the 21st Century Tech Boom in America is just another inconvenient truth. Perhaps if the Oakland School District taught them Science, Technology and Math in school instead of the latest liberal jargon, they would be competitive for jobs. (Footnote: These "youth from the community" must have used social media to coordinate the crime--Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, most probably. So they are not entirely without tech skills. Just saying). They also know that White guilt probably means there will be no consequences for them. They are taught in school by the uber-liberal mostly white teachers, that White privilege is the reason the Caucasians and Asians get most of the six figure tech jobs. They are taught that America owes black people reparations for slavery, which ended 152 years ago. Why shouldn't they jump a few turnstiles? "Tony Ribera, a former San Francisco police chief who directs the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco, said he didn't understand why BART didn't publicize the crime sooner - both to enhance public safety and to enlist help in finding the offenders," marvels the Chronicle. Finally, there is the ridership thing. BART wants people to take the train, of course. This sort of event, if it becomes common and publicized, is a reason to drive into work and leave the train behind. I close with a long excerpt from the SF Chronicle article. Read between the lines. Tony Ribera, a former San Francisco police chief who directs the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco, said he didnt understand why BART didnt publicize the crime sooner both to enhance public safety and to enlist help in finding the offenders. It seems to me rather strange ... but maybe they had other reasons, Ribera said. Usually, the quicker you get information out, the more likely youre going to solve the case. The longer you wait, the less likely that is to happen. Ribera said making the crime public can be critical for locating witnesses and identifying those involved. And releasing surveillance photos and videos, he said, is often key to the effort. A security camera at the West Oakland BART station. The entire incident is on film. BART faces a separate set of issues related to surveillance images of the suspects. Officials declined Tuesday to release images from cameras at Coliseum Station, citing a policy of protecting the identity of juveniles, but did send them confidentially to outside police agencies in a bulletin known as a BOLO, which stands for be on the lookout. The video clearly shows that these were young kids and young teens, said Trost, whose agency has boosted the number of officers patrolling Oakland stations in response to Saturdays robbery and an overall rise in police calls. David Snyder, an attorney and the executive director at the First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael, said such a policy made sense because California law offers special protections for minors accused of a crime. However, Snyder said that doesnt mean the agency cant release images or video with the identifying features of juveniles redacted for instance, with their faces blurred which BART officials have done in the past. Cybersecurity Firm Secuvant Featured on Speaking on Business Show Posted by Publisher Hardware SALT LAKE CITY, UT (Marketwired) 04/26/17 Secuvant and its unique approach to cybersecurity is taking center stage on todays edition of the highly respected Zions Bank Speaking on Business radio show. Todays show highlights the fact that is a full-spectrum, independent cyber security firm, whose services are in demand by small to medium-sized companies in a wide range of industries. Cybercrime resulted in $3 trillion in damages globally in 2016 and is expected to double by 2021. With frequent news headlines highlighting large companies hit with cybersecurity attacks, Secuvant Cofounder and President Todd Neilson said it is a major mistake for small and medium-sized businesses to think they are immune to attacks and the possible resulting damage. Statistics show that forty-three percent of cyberattacks target small businesses, with sixty percent of attacked small businesses going out of business within six months, Neilson said. This ever-increasing danger is why Secuvant strives to provide cost-effective security solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. One reason Secuvant is growing at a rapid rate is that it understands cybersecurity is not an IT problem; it is a business problem. As the Speaking on Business segment points out, Secuvant maps its cybersecurity program to match the areas most relevant to the client, from business disruption and legal liability to brand and reputation. Through this approach, clients receive topline cybersecurity and risk mitigation services at a budget-friendly price while also having the opportunity to increase revenue and position themselves as a secure company. Zions Bank Speaking on Business has been on the air since 1997 and has showcased more than 5,000 businesses in Idaho and Utah. The segment featuring Secuvant is available at , and a listing of affiliates and times can be accessed at . Secuvant, LLC, is a leading network security company based in Utah, specializing in creative, customized solutions that meet the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses. Secuvant offers a wide range of services, from managed security and virtual CISO consulting to cyber risk advisory and data breach recovery assistance. The companys principal consultants have more100 years of combined cybersecurity experience and its staff also includes security analysts, security consultants and expert incident response analysts. Detailed information about Secuvant is available at . Media Contact: Brad Thomas Springboard5 801-208-1100 MobAir Expands Its Footprint In Emerging Markets With A New Office In China BERLIN, GERMANY (Marketwired) 04/26/17 , a mobile growth platform for premium brands, has announced the opening of its new office in Shanghai. MobAir has been working with Chinese advertisers and publishers since 2015, and now, with a local office in Shanghai, the company will be able to provide more personalized services to local partners and establish new connections in the area. Richard OConnell has been appointed as General Manager of MobAir operations in China. Having built and managed in-house media buy teams as VP of Marketing for PapayaMobile, OConnell is the perfect fit for developing the new location. In a January 2017 , eMarketer predicted that the total mobile ad spending in China will climb to 58% this year, and annual growth will expand by at least 20% through 2019. The opening of a new office in China is part of MobAirs strategy to distribute the companys presence in the emerging markets where the rising demand for mobile apps creates new business opportunities. Chinas app economy is accelerating in growth, putting it within striking distance of Japan and the United States, said Barak Aviad, CEO of MobAir. Gaming apps are the biggest market winners in terms of revenue. Therefore, our company, equipped by years of experience in utility and gaming verticals, sees enormous potential in the Chinese mobile market in terms of app advertising growth. MobAir has a rich history of successful campaigns with leading brands in social casino and gaming. Expanding the list of clients with Chinas gaming giants is one of the companys top priorities. Premium clients loyalty is built upon MobAirs native advertising solutions. The smooth integration of the solution into the users journey attracts pre-engaged audiences with closely targeted acquisition campaigns, making sure the quality of traffic meets all of the clients KPIs. MobAir, a Global Digital Marketing Group company, was launched in 2015 as a performance-based mobile app marketing platform that provides solutions for high-quality user acquisition on a large scale. MobAir has six offices across the globe: Shanghai, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Kiev, and Amsterdam. Learn more at Brook Terran Blast PR for GDM Group 805-570-3309 Brocade Global Study Reveals More Than Half of IT Teams Will Struggle Due to a Lack of the Right Skills that Business Demands in Next 12 Months Brocade today announced a new Global Digital Transformation Skills Study, which aims to uncover how well-placed global IT leaders consider themselves and their teams to be in terms of meeting current and future business demands. Of the six markets surveyed, Germany was found to be the best prepared to meet its digital transformation goals, closely followed by the U.S., while the UK lagged well behind its counterparts. The research, which surveyed 630 IT leaders in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Singapore, indicates that many organisations are at a tipping point, as new technology demands are set to outstrip the skills supply. Organisations that address this now through additional skills training will be in the strongest position to ensure business growth and competitive advantage. Overall, an encouraging 74 percent of UK IT leaders acknowledge that IT departments are currently recognised as very important or critical to innovation and business growth. However, almost two thirds (63 percent) predict they will struggle with a lack of IT talent in 12 months. Contributing factors identified from the research include skills shortages, prevalence of outdated skills, lack of commitment to training at the corporate board level, and the rapidly changing technology environment. Businesses are approaching the peak of IT strategic influence. Now is the moment that IT teams feel they have the strongest opportunity to influence the transformation of their organisations, said Christine Heckart, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of ecosystems, Brocade. However, with a rapidly changing technology landscape and potential impact on international labour markets, it is critical that IT receives the right training to further develop their skills and business relevance. The research also found that skills planning had to be aligned with other areas of business planning to avoid the risk of a technology skills deficit, where IT teams are expected to deliver the benefits of technologies that they are ill-equipped to implement. Staff shortages and outdated skills are preventing ITDMs from delivering on current business demands Organisations are attempting to move their IT departments away from their traditional roles, but the lack of skills and the time required to learn those skills have held them back. IT decision makers (ITDM) believe this could be a major contributor to their inability to meet business demands, putting organisations at risk of falling behind their competitors and losing customers. Approximately one in four respondents in Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, and the U.S. claim that they cannot deliver on current business demand due to staff shortages. This number rises to 42 percent in the UK. Respondents claim that the lack of access to talent will prevent them from implementing new technologies efficiently, lead to a decrease in employee satisfaction, and result in the loss of market share. The IT skills gap is only likely to get worse and organisations need to act now The political landscape is also a contributing factor in the widening skills gap. As market uncertainty intensifies in the next few years, it is more important than ever for IT departments to remain agile and take advantage of new technologies. Ninety percent of those questioned in the UK had some level of concern about future hiring of IT staff, while 63 percent were concerned about a lack of skilled talent to choose from. Forty-three percent of global respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the current political climate makes it difficult to hire employees with the right skills. In the U.S. and Australia, the numbers were 52 percent and 54 percent, respectively. Even with the uncertainty surrounding the Brexit situation, EMEA respondents were less concerned, with only 31 percent of UK ITDMs believing it presented a challenge compared to 39 percent in Germany and 35 percent in France. Training time and investment will prove to be business-critical Training continues to be an issue as day-to-day IT maintenance tasks take priority. For organisations to address the technical skills deficit, they first need to invest time and moneyor face the consequences. There is demand in the UK to spend more time on increasing skillsfrom 10 percent of time that is currently spent on this to 20 percent. Respondents reported that insufficient budget (45 percent) and training time (45 percent) are constraining IT departments attempts to develop skills more than any other factors. These were most pronounced in the UK (61% and 50%). Currently, only three hours are allocated per week for learning and skills development, this goes down to one hour for UK respondents. Seventy percent of UK respondents agree that the key to closing the skills gap would be to spend more money on training. IT professionals need to take control of their professional future The research also showed that IT professionals at all levels must take increased responsibility for their own professional destiny, embracing the opportunities delivered by new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and all areas of IoT (from device management to security). Thirty percent of UK respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their organisations IT team does not have the right skills to protect their jobs in the future. When asked to identify the one skill that they see as critical to their future career progression, cybersecurity was the most frequently cited, by 35 percent of respondents in the UK. AI could be a friend or foe AI could revolutionise the IT skills that are required and the way that we work. AI is likely to replace a number of IT roles and tasks, but this doesnt mean the end for the IT department. Employees need to have the right skills to be in a position to work alongside AI and embrace its future impact, so that organisations can unleash its full potential. When asked which current roles were already being replaced by AI in the UK, desktop support (5 percent), data analyst (4 percent), software testers (3 percent) and system architects (4 percent) topped the list. Although the values were much higher globally with 23 percent, 20 percent, 17 percent and 14 percent stating the roles respectively had already been replaced Within the next 10 years, these numbers are expected to increase in the UK: desktop support (30 percent), data analyst (34 percent), software testers (35 percent), system architects (14 percent), and network engineers (28 percent). AI will also impact the role of the CIO, with over a quarter (26 percent) of the UK respondents claiming increased focus from the business. Sixty-two percent of respondents believe that developing AI-related skills is key to securing a role in the future. Vital role of the board in ensuring long-term IT skills development Organisations boards will often dictate whether employees have the time and empowerment to develop their skills, but this is common at organisations that do not have the right support. The boards also have to ensure that skills and training improvements are aligned with other areas of business planning. Forty-four percent of respondents think that new skills acquisition is not seen as being as valuable as it should be by the board. This rises to 59 percent in Australia and 50 percent in the UK. The U.S. (42 percent), Germany (41 percent), Singapore (40 percent), and France (34 percent) had slightly more positive results. Almost a fifth (16 percent) of UK respondents think their boards view gaining knowledge and skills as a cost to the business, rather than an asset. This rises to 35 percent in Australia. Despite respondents (in the UK and globally) claiming that they plan approximately two years in advance for most areas of the business, staffing and recruitment is still on average only planned for a maximum of a year. This is creating a disconnect where organisations are attempting to address key IT challenges with teams not as well equipped in terms of skills and experience as they could be. The research was conducted by independent research house Vanson Bourne in March 2017. 630 IT decision-makers in organisations with more than 500 employees in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Singapore and Australia were surveyed. Photography studio PhotoPano360 selects Urbanimmersive marketplace for all real estate customer transactions LAVAL, QUEBEC (Marketwired) 04/26/17 Urbanimmersive Inc. (Urbanimmersive or the Company) (TSX VENTURE: UI) (OTC PINK: UBMRF), a real estate content marketing platform, is pleased to announce the signing of a 5-year affiliate program agreement with PhotoPano360, a real estate photography agency, for the use of Urbanimmersives visual content marketplace (Centris Marketplace) (Marketplace) for 100% of their real estate customer business transactions. All customer business transactions taking place on the platform will grow Urbanimmersives top-line revenue and the Marketplace will then take a transaction fee in line with its current pricing model on each transaction generated through its platform. The real estate division of PhotoPano360 is expected to generate $100,000 in revenue for 2017. PhotoPano360 offers services in professional real estate photography for brokers, owners, landlords, contractors, architects, renters and designers. The studio is headed by Alain Potvin, a realist photographer, but also an architectural photographer, who strives to put assets and sites to the forefront in order to provide undeniable assistance in the sale and promotion of projects. The business deploys all the technical means necessary to guarantee the success of the photographs including telescopic mast services in every session offered on Centris Marketplace. Alain Potvin is also a member of the APPIQ, a real estate professional photographer association in Quebec. (More information available on .) The Affiliate Program is a win-win situation for everyone. By partnering with us on our platform, affiliates like PhotoPano360 increase their customer outreach. For UI, each additional affiliate represents an opportunity to grow our revenues significantly during this fiscal year and beyond. Stated Ghislain Lemire, CEO of Urbanimmersive. Alain Potvin, PhotoPano360 owner, said, Since We have subscribed to Centris Marketplace, we have effortlessly made 20 new loyal customers in a very short period of time and the platform has significantly improved our agency productivity, customer satisfaction and business cash flow. The Affiliate Program was a no-brainer for us. PhotoPano360 is the latest photography agency to join Urbanimmersive Marketplaces Affiliate Program. The Affiliate Program is offered to visual content providers ready to use Urbanimmersives Marketplace solution for 100% of their real estate business transactions. The program provides real estate photography agencies and photographers an increased marketing visibility in the Centris Marketplace while enabling to effectively manage their internal operations and account receivables. The Affiliate Program offers a white label ordering interface, presenting only services offered by the agency or by other Marketplaces content providers selected by the agency. It also provides a dashboard to manage bookings and payments from incoming customer phone calls, emails and SMS. As part of the Affiliate Program, visual content providers become Urbanimmersive resellers of the Companys internal products and services. About Urbanimmersive Urbanimmersive is a content marketing platform for the real estate industry. The Company connects real estate professionals, photographers and writers in order to simplify and optimize original content production workflow. Urbanimmersive enables its customers to leverage their marketing investment while increasing productivity, competitiveness, their web visibility, consumer engagement with their brand and ultimately, their revenue. The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Certain statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking information that involves various risks and uncertainties. Such statements relating to, among other things, the prospects for the company to enhance operating results, are necessarily subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are significant in scope and nature. These uncertainties may cause actual results to differ from information contained herein. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements are based on the estimates and opinions of the management on the dates they are made and expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements should circumstances or management estimates or opinions change. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other assumptions and risk factors, please refer to the last Corporations MD&A filed with the Canadian securities commissions. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release represent our expectations as of the date hereof. We disclaim any intention and assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Contacts: Urbanimmersive Inc. Ghislain Lemire President & CEO 514-394-7820 X 202 Contact Financial Corp. Frederick Chabot 438-863-7071 DIRTT to Release 2017 Q1 Results on May 3, 2017 CALGARY, ALBERTA (Marketwired) 04/26/17 DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. (DIRTT or the Company) (TSX: DRT), a leading technology-enabled designer, manufacturer and installer of fully customized, prefabricated interiors, will release its fiscal 2017 first quarter financial results on Wednesday, May 3, 2017 after markets close. A conference call and webcast for the investment community will be hosted by DIRTT President Scott Jenkins and Chief Financial Officer Derek Payne on Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 9 a.m. ET (7 a.m. MT) to discuss the first quarter results in greater detail. To access the conference call by telephone, dial +1 877.479.7708 (toll-free in North America). Please call 10 minutes prior to the start time. In addition, a live webcast (listen-only mode) of the conference call will be available at: . Investors are invited to submit questions by email before and during the conference call. Please send them to . A replay of the conference call will be available at +1 855.859.2056 by entering passcode 14653038, from noon (ET) Thursday, May 4, 2017 to midnight (ET) Thursday, May 11, 2017 at , and on DIRTTs website at . About DIRTT DIRTT Environmental Solutions (Doing it Right This Time) uses its proprietary 3D software to design, manufacture and install fully customized prefabricated interiors. The Companys customers in the corporate, government, education and healthcare sectors benefit from DIRTTs precise design and costing; rapid lead times with the highest levels of customization and flexibility; and faster, cleaner construction. DIRTTs manufacturing facilities are in Phoenix, Savannah, Kelowna and Calgary. DIRTTs team supports more than 100 sales distribution partners throughout North America, the Middle East and Asia. DIRTT trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol DRT. For more information visit . Contacts: DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. Scott Jenkins President 403.723.5009 DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. Derek Payne Chief Financial Officer 403.313.9879 Raise Production Inc. Announces 2016 Financial Results and Operations Update CALGARY, ALBERTA (Marketwired) 04/26/17 Raise Production Inc. (TSX VENTURE: RPC) (Raise or the Company) has released its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2016. PRESIDENTS UPDATE The Company is pleased to provide shareholders with an updated report on current activities regarding its Horizontal Wellbore Production System (the System) and recent developments related to its patent pending High Angle Lift Technology. Horizontal Pumping System The System continues to work well in the test partner wellbore. Since activation the System has achieved significant milestones. These include: The Company is implementing various pump activation protocols in this deployment to determine the best practices for optimization of production. Productivity of the wellbore has been erratic due to the testing of different operating parameters. Raise will be meeting with the test well operator shortly to determine the potential for deployment in a higher productivity well for the next deployment. High Angle Lift Technology The Company has referred to the High Angle Lift Technology in previous releases as the Rod Pump. With the successes we have seen in deployments of this technology and the addition of various accessories which will allow this pump to be deployed and activated hydraulically, by linear motor or by conventional rods, the Company has re-named this entire suite of tools and technology as the High Angle Lift Technology. Over the last six months the Company has deployed a number of its High Angle Lift Technology solutions with a major Canadian operator. The installs have all been deployed at angles of 50 degrees to 90 degrees and in wells with high gas to fluid ratios (where artificial lift solutions typically do not perform well). All of these deployments have been performing above expectations in every case in terms of: The following is feedback from a customers experienced engineering staff member related to a recent install: The performance of the High Angle Lift Technology and feedback from our customers has led the Company to hire additional resources to pursue this market immediately as a stand alone commercial product line. The High Angle Lift Technology also acts as an entrance level technology that can precede and continue to work in conjunction with the installation of the System. Future Opportunities The Company has had feedback from some USA operators with interest in pursuing development of the System and the High Angle Lift Technology for use in U.S. basins. The Company is in discussions with a number of companies and will update shareholders as we progress with this initiative. RESULTS OF OPERATIONS Statements of Loss and Comprehensive Loss Raises full audited financial statements and managements discussion and analysis will be filed shortly on the Companys profile on the SEDAR website. About Raise Production Inc. The Company is an innovative oilfield service company that focuses its efforts on the production service sector, utilizing its proprietary products to enhance and increase ultimate production in both conventional and unconventional horizontal oil and gas wells. 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 news release. Certain information included in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements or information typically contain or can be identified by statements that include words such as anticipate, assume, based, believe, can, continue, depend, estimate, expect, forecast, if, intend, may, plan, project, propose, result, upon, will, within or similar words suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. Such forward-looking statements or information are based on a number of assumptions that may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the ability of the Company to obtain required capital to continue to finance its product development, the successful completion of further product development and testing within predicted timelines or at all, the ability to commercialize products and operations, the ability to adequately protect proprietary information and technology from its competitors; the ability to obtain partnering opportunities; the ability to attract and retain key personnel and key collaborators; and the ability to successfully compete in targeted markets. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any of the included forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable Canadian securities law. Forward-looking statements are based upon the current opinions, estimates, projections, assumptions and expectations of management of the Company as at the effective date of such statements and, in some cases, information supplied by third parties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and that information received from third parties is reliable, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. By its nature, forward-looking information involves numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statement will not occur. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the possibility that testing, deployment and commercialization of the System and Rod Pumps may not be successfully completed for any reason (including the failure to obtain the required approvals from regulatory authorities) and regulatory changes. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and such forward-looking statements should not be interpreted or regarded as guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on the Company, investors should review the Companys continuous disclosure filings that are available at . Contacts: Raise Production Inc. Eric Laing President and Chief Executive Officer (403) 699-7675 Susan Scullion Chief Financial Officer (403) 699-7675 Paysafe enhances productivity and customer experience with NewVoiceMedia LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (Marketwired) 04/27/17 , a leading provider of cloud contact centre and inside sales technology that enables businesses to have more successful conversations, today announced that the global payments company increased its customer support centre productivity by 20 percent over the last year using NewVoiceMedias ContactWorld for Service platform. The technology has delivered dramatic improvements to both customer and agent satisfaction. Focused on connecting businesses and consumers globally with borderless, frictionless and empowering payment solutions, Paysafe relocated and expanded its customer service operation, with plans to integrate a newly acquired company and digital wallet product. NewVoiceMedia offered Paysafe a uniform solution that could meet its consistently high standards and provide a service in 20 different languages, seven days a week, 24 hours a day for customers across five continents. ContactWorlds Salesforce integration intelligently routes incoming calls to the most appropriate Paysafe customer service agent, delivering immediate access to a callers information and allowing agents to take notes more efficiently. Additionally, the sophisticated call recording system enables Paysafes quality team to better evaluate call handling, yielding valuable and actionable insights into customer experience and satisfaction. Furthermore, supervisors can monitor calls in real time, better assess their teams workload, and easily change call plans so that the team of hundreds of agents can be allocated optimally to meet customer demand. A year after implementing the technology, Paysafe has seen impressive results: Intelligent call routing has fueled a 20 percent improvement in first-contact resolution Average call-handling time is down by 20 percent The call-abandonment rate has fallen to less than five percent Easy-to-use and time-saving features such as click-to-dial outbound calling have led to high levels of agent satisfaction. With ContactWorld, weve achieved some great results not just for our customer services, but for all our customer-facing teams, said Alessandro Bruno-Bossio, Vice President of Sales and Operations for Digital Wallets at Paysafe. Weve significantly improved our productivity and now have valuable insights into our customer experience. As wrap time is shorter, agents now have more availability to speak to customers and were delighted to have achieved higher levels of customer satisfaction while decreasing customer effort. Were now expanding the use of ContactWorld beyond customer service and into sales and look forward to further efficiency gains across our sales organisation. Scott Sampson, Chief Revenue Officer at NewVoiceMedia, added We are delighted that Paysafe has experienced such incredible success with ContactWorld. Our integration and analytics capabilities have empowered the company to deliver a quality service experience to its millions of customers around the world, while also improving advisor performance, productivity and satisfaction. And, as a cloud solution, our technology will continue to support Paysafe throughout its future growth. For further information about NewVoiceMedia and to download the case study, visit s cloud contact centre and inside sales platform delivers more successful conversations. The leading vendors award-winning customer contact platform helps organisations worldwide build a more personal relationship with every customer or prospect. It joins up all communications channels without expensive, disruptive hardware changes and plugs straight into your CRM for full access to hard-won data. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability. NewVoiceMedias 650+ customers include PhotoBox, MobileIron, Lumesse, Vax, JustGiving and Canadian Cancer Society. For more information, visit or follow NewVoiceMedia on Twitter Nicola Brookes Tel: +44 (0)7500 006 458 Email: Lumenpulse to Be Taken Private by Founder F-X Souvay, His Existing Partners and Power Energy Corporation MONTREAL, QUEBEC (Marketwired) 04/27/17 Lumenpulse Inc. (TSX: LMP) (Lumenpulse or the Company), the parent company of Lumenpulse Group, a leading manufacturer of high performance, specification-grade LED lighting solutions, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an arrangement agreement (the Arrangement Agreement) pursuant to which a group led by Mr. Francois-Xavier Souvay, the Founder, President and CEO of Lumenpulse, several other existing shareholders of the Company and Power Energy Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada (collectively, the Consortium), will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Lumenpulse by way of a plan of arrangement for $21.25 per share in cash. The consideration offered to Lumenpulse shareholders represents a premium of 85.8% to the April 26, 2017 closing price of Lumenpulse shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange and a premium of 44.8% to the 90-day volume weighted average price of Lumenpulse shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange from December 15, 2016 to April 26, 2017. The transaction has been approved unanimously by the Lumenpulse Board of Directors (with interested and non-independent directors abstaining) following receipt of the unanimous recommendation by a Special Committee of Lumenpulse composed entirely of independent directors (the Special Committee). This transaction is another important step for Lumenpulse, its shareholders, employees, agents and valued business partners, said Mr. Souvay. As a private company, we will have the resources and flexibility to continue our growth, increase our focus on innovation and the development of new products, and take another giant step towards becoming a true global leader in the high performance architectural specification grade lighting sector. Power Corporation is pleased to be associating itself with Francois-Xavier Souvay. We have great confidence in his leadership. As the founder and CEO, Francois-Xavier and his talented entrepreneurial management team have grown this Montreal-based company into an important global player. Their philosophy is truly aligned with our long-term value creation model, said Mr. Olivier Desmarais, Chairman of Power Energy and Senior Vice-President of Power Corporation of Canada. Pierre Larochelle, CEO of Power Energy, said, LED technologies have fundamentally changed the lighting industry, creating new global opportunities for innovators like Lumenpulse. This investment aligns with our strategic focus on sustainable technologies and is a natural fit for Power Energy. Continuity was very important to me. As the founder and CEO of Lumenpulse, I am excited and motivated to continue to lead this great organization. We are still full of energy and ideas and together with our new partner Power Energy, we are ready to take the company to the next level, said Mr. Souvay. He added, We are extremely honored to have Power Energy as a partner going forward. They are a knowledgeable, long-term investor that shares our passion for innovation in sustainable lighting technology. Independent Valuation Process The Special Committee is comprised of the following independent directors: Pierre Fitzgibbon, Francois Cote and Josee Perreault. The Special Committee retained CIBC Capital Markets (CIBC) as financial advisor and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) as independent valuator. In arriving at its unanimous recommendation in favour of the transaction, the Special Committee considered several factors which will be outlined in public filings to be made in connection therewith. These include a formal valuation report by PwC and fairness opinions by PwC and CIBC. PwC provided the Special Committee with a formal valuation, completed under the Special Committees supervision, which reflected the determination that, as at April 26, 2017, subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications contained therein, the fair market value of the shares of the Company was between $20.00 and $23.00 per share. Each of PwC and CIBC provided an opinion to the effect that, as at April 26, 2017, subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications contained therein, the consideration to be received by the disinterested shareholders pursuant to the Arrangement Agreement is fair, from a financial point of view, to such shareholders. Copies of the PwC valuation report and the PwC and CIBC fairness opinions and other relevant background information will be included in the management proxy circular that will be mailed to Lumenpulse shareholders for the special meeting of shareholders anticipated to be held in June 2017 to approve the proposed transaction. Mr. Souvay, Nicolas Belanger and Michel Ringuet, each of whom are Lumenpulse directors and members of the Consortium, as well as Mr. Larochelle, who also serves as a Lumenpulse director, did not participate in the deliberations of the Lumenpulse Board in relation to the evaluation of the proposed transaction led by the Special Committee. Messrs. Souvay, Belanger and Ringuet as well as the other existing shareholders who are members of the Consortium (collectively, the Rollover Shareholders) collectively hold approximately 40% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company. Such Rollover Shareholders have indicated that they are only prepared to partner with Power Energy and that they are not prepared to pursue any other transaction. Accordingly, they have entered into irrevocable support and voting agreements and have agreed to vote in favour and support the completion of the proposed transaction for a period of 12 months following todays date. Additional Transaction Details To be implemented, the proposed transaction requires approval of at least 66 2/3% of the votes cast by all holders of Lumenpulse shares. The proposed transaction will also require approval by a simple majority of votes cast by disinterested holders of Lumenpulse shares (excluding for purposes of such vote the Rollover Shareholders). The plan of arrangement is also subject to court approval and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions, including receipts of regulatory approvals. The Arrangement Agreement contains a non-solicitation covenant on the part of the Company, subject to the customary fiduciary out provisions. A termination fee of $8 million would be payable to the Consortium in certain circumstances, including in the context of a superior proposal supported by the Company. The Company would also be entitled to a reverse termination fee of $8 million if the transaction is not completed in certain circumstances. Further details regarding the applicable voting requirements and court and regulatory approvals to be obtained will be contained in the management proxy circular to be mailed to shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. The management proxy circular as well as the Arrangement Agreement will be made available under the profile of the Company at . Mr. Souvay will be the President and Chief Executive Officer of the private company and will remain involved in all aspects of the business and operations. The transaction values the Company at approximately $600 million. Advisors CIBC Capital Markets acts as financial advisor and Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP serves as legal counsel to the Lumenpulse Special Committee. Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP serves as legal counsel to the Company. National Bank Financial Inc. is the financial advisor to the Consortium and Stikeman Elliott LLP acts as its legal counsel. About Lumenpulse Group Founded in 2006, the Lumenpulse Group designs, develops, manufactures and sells a wide range of high performance and sustainable specification-grade LED lighting solutions for commercial, institutional and urban environments. The Lumenpulse Group is a leading pure-play specification-grade LED lighting solutions provider and has earned many awards and recognitions, including several Product Innovation Awards (PIA), three Next Generation Luminaires Design Awards, two Red Dot Product Design Awards, a Lightfair Innovation Award, and an iF Design Award. The Lumenpulse Group now has 670 employees worldwide, with corporate headquarters in Montreal, Canada, and offices in Vancouver, Quebec City, Boston, Paris, Florence, London and Manchester. Lumenpulse Inc., the parent company of the Lumenpulse Group, is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LMP. For more information, visit . About Power Energy Power Energy Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada established in 2012, with an objective to invest in the sustainable and renewable energy sector. Power Energy invests in and develops companies that can provide stable and growing long-term recurring cash flows. Power Energy currently holds investments in two companies: Potentia Renewables Inc., a renewable energy power producer active in North America, and Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, a U.S.-based owner and operator of hydropower facilities. Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information is identified by the use of terms and phrases such as may, would, should, could, expect, intend, estimate, outlook, target, goal, guidance, anticipate, plan, foresee, believe, or continue, the negative of these terms and similar terminology, including references to assumptions, although not all forward-looking information contains these terms and phrases. Such forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements relating to the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction for the Company, the Consortium and their respective shareholders, regulatory, court and shareholder approvals and the anticipated timing of the special meeting of shareholders of the Company and of the completion of the proposed transaction. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the failure of the parties to obtain the necessary shareholder, regulatory and court approvals or to otherwise satisfy the conditions to the completion of the transaction; failure of the parties to obtain such approvals or satisfy such conditions in a timely manner; significant transaction costs or unknown liabilities; failure to realize the expected benefits of the transaction; and general economic conditions. Failure to obtain the necessary shareholder, regulatory and court approvals, or the failure of the parties to otherwise satisfy the conditions to the completion of the transaction or to complete the transaction, may result in the transaction not being completed on the proposed terms, or at all. In addition, if the transaction is not completed, and the Company continues as a publicly-traded entity, there are risks that the announcement of the proposed transaction and the dedication of substantial resources of the Company to the completion of the transaction could have an impact on its business and strategic relationships (including with future and prospective employees, customers, suppliers and partners), operating results and activities in general, and could have a material adverse effect on its current and future operations, financial condition and prospects. Furthermore, the failure of the Company to comply with the terms of the Arrangement Agreement may, in certain circumstances, result in it being required to pay a fee to the Consortium, the result of which could have a material adverse effect on its financial position and results of operations and its ability to fund growth prospects and current operations. Consequently, all of the forward-looking information contained herein is qualified by the foregoing cautionary statements, and there can be no guarantee that the results or developments that we anticipate will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences or effects on our business, financial condition or results of operation. Unless otherwise noted or the context otherwise indicates, the forward-looking information contained herein is provided as of the date hereof, and we do not undertake to update or amend such forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable law. No Offer or Solicitation This announcement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell Lumenpulse common shares. Contacts: David Ryan Edelman Canada 416-455-1927 City of Surrey and PerfectMind Partnership Expands Access to Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services on New Platform BURNABY, BRITISH COLUMBIA and SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA (Marketwired) 04/27/17 PerfectMind, makers of , and the City of Surrey in British Columbia, Canadas third-largest metro area with a population of 517,887, announced today that they are working together to offer a user-friendly new platform to connect members of the Surrey community with parks, recreation and culture services. City of Surrey citizens will be able to more easily engage in wellness, fitness and cultural activities in their community by using the flexible, personalized PerfectMind platform to sign up for programs, reserve and pay for facilities and equipment, and purchase tickets to events online. The partnership advances the City of Surreys commitment to continuously improve digital services for its diverse, tech-savvy community. PerfectMinds unique platform has been deployed by major city governments throughout Canada and the United States. Offered on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) basis, PerfectMind makes it simple for cities to improve digital access to popular services that encourage healthier living by connecting citizens across all demographics to the parks, recreation and cultural events their regions offer embodying user-centric, tech-forward values that are shared by the City of Surrey. PerfectMind improves the customer experience significantly by making it easy to find, reserve and pay for equipment, facilities, services and events using desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Digital access is a key priority for the City of Surrey, which is home to one of the youngest and most diverse populations in Canada. A fast-growing region with abundant jobs, natural resources and cultural assets, the City of Surrey government is committed to building a healthy, sustainable, vibrant community. That commitment is evident in the Citys Innovation Boulevard economic development zone as well as rapid transit initiatives and efforts to promote medical research, with a goal of creating a fully sustainable City that continues to attract new residents and businesses. The PerfectMind platform, which integrates easily with consumer technology and is intuitive to use, fits in with the Citys overall vision of using digital services to improve the customer experience. Were excited about deploying a future-proof platform that more easily connects our community with the many parks and reactional programs and cultural amenities the City offers, said Jason Boyes, Digital Services Manager, IT Division. As our population changes and expectations about how to access services shift, were responding with a platform that can expand and grow along with the City, and PerfectMinds PaaS approach provides the flexibility we need to move forward, ensuring a world-class customer experience for the population we serve. In addition, the data and tools we require on the backend are sufficient so our staff can continue to respond to growth and change efficiently and effectively. The City of Surreys top priority in this upgrade project is to deliver a platform that is easy and intuitive for people to use so citizens can connect with community programming such as sport and fitness services quickly and access cultural enrichment opportunities easily, said PerfectMind CEO, Farid Dordar. The PerfectMind platform makes it simple for citizens of all ages and abilities to connect with City parks and recreation services as well as cultural events. It also streamlines operations for City staff, providing the data employees require for planning as well as the communication tools activity leaders can use to stay in touch with members and expand awareness of programs and activities. For cities and municipalities that require the flexibility to quickly handle changes and continuously improve their communitys access to parks and recreation services, PerfectMinds membership management solutions are a perfect fit. Learn more at . Discover more about the City of Surreys parks, recreation, arts and heritage programs and events at . About the City of Surrey Spanning more than 300,000 square kilometres with a population of 517,887, the City of Surrey is located in the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia and is one of the fastest growing, culturally diverse cities in Canada. Comprised of urban neighbourhoods, suburban communities, agricultural land and more than 200 parks, Surrey has been named a Top 7 Intelligent Community by the Intelligent City Forum (ICF) two years in a row and is globally recognized for its dedication to building vibrant, sustainable communities through technology and innovation. For more information visit . About PerfectMind PerfectMind software is used by more than 5,000 organizations in 21 countries. The companys innovative platform empowers cities, parks and recreation organizations, higher education and health and wellness businesses of all sizes to better connect with their communities. PerfectMind has twice been listed on the Profit100 list of fastest growing companies in Canada and has been selected by city leaders throughout Canada and the United States to enhance increasingly diverse and mobile populations access to city programs and facilities to support healthy, active lifestyles. Find out more at . Contacts: Flory Huang 1.877.737.8030 ext. 6811 Zagster Launches New Mobile App to Streamline Rider Experience CAMBRIDGE, MA (Marketwired) 04/27/17 Zagster, the nations leading provider of public and public/private bike share systems, today announced the release of a new mobile app that simplifies and improves the overall user experience for the companys 80,000 riders nationwide. Available now for Apple, and soon for Android, the free app features one-touch Bluetooth unlocking; new mapping technology that provides point-by-point directions to the nearest docking station; a streamlined process to create a new Zagster account; and easy access to rider support. Collectively, the new features make it easier than ever to join, ride and enjoy Zagster. The new app not only makes the member experience easier and more enjoyable, it also enables Zagster to continue to deploy and manage our national network of shared bikes more efficiently, said Tim Ericson, CEO of Zagster. Our hybrid model, which blends dockless locking for mid-trip stops with fixed station locations for beginning and ending rides, offers the most flexible and reliable service in the industry today. With just the single touch of a button in the new Zagster app, riders can control a Bluetooth-enabled locking system that features two points of security. A ring lock prevents the rear wheel from spinning or being removed, and two sturdy cables one at each station dock, and one on each bike connect to the ring lock, allowing riders to either tether bikes to Zagster stations at the end of their trips, or to public bike racks for mid-ride stops. Enabling mid-ride stops is key to Zagsters rapid success across the country because it allows users to plan their trips around their destinations and not around station locations. The vast majority of Zagsters more than 150 programs are located on university campuses, in small cities and suburbs, and at apartments and corporate complexes. Riders in these environments are more likely to use Zagster for non-commute trips in which mid-ride locking is vital. And indeed, a majority of all Zagster riders regularly use this functionality, according to a recent of more than 3,500 users. Moreover, according to the survey, over 60 percent of respondents said that Zagster has increased their physical activity, and 60 percent said that they ride just for fun. More than two-thirds also highlighted the fact that Zagster makes it easier to enjoy parks, nature and greenspace, and more than 50 percent said Zagster is their only access to a bike. Meanwhile, an impressive 92 said bike sharing was a good investment in their community, while 62 percent said Zagster improved their overall quality of life. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Zagster is the largest and fastest-growing bike-share provider in the United States. Zagster works directly with more than 150 communities in more than 30 states across North America to make bike sharing available in areas where traditional bike-share providers cant reach. Unlike other programs in which riders must drop off bikes at designated stations for every stop, Zagsters programs give users the freedom to ride as long as they want, wherever they want. And because Zagster manages all aspects of its programs from bikes and technology, to maintenance and marketing Zagster partners can create and deploy scalable bike-share systems that best suit their needs and work within their budgets. More information about Zagster and its programs can be found at Jon Terbush Zagster communications manager 617.681.4914 SafeBreach CTO and Co-Founder Itzik Kotler to Present at Chicagos Hacking Conference THOTCON 0x8 Posted by Publisher Internet SUNNYVALE, CA (Marketwired) 04/27/17 , the leading provider of continuous security validation, today announced that CTO and Co-Founder, will provide a live demonstration on how to detect and mitigate a Python program attack during Chicagos hacking conference taking place on May 4-5, 2017 in Chicago, IL. Established in 2009, THOTCON was formed as an idea by a group of Chicago-based hackers who wanted to start a local, inexpensive conference. It is a non-profit, non-commercial event that aims to provide the best hacking tips and tricks possible to an extensive audience-from CISO/CIO/CTO to security engineers to application developers to security consultants and recent graduates. In true hacking fashion, privacy and security measures are taken heavily into consideration. Therefore, the venue is only disclosed to THOTCON attendees and speakers a week prior to the event. : Kotler will give a live demonstration on how a small change in a shell variable can lead to a malicious Python code injected into a Python program and used to hijack Python module(s) and then steal passwords/sensitivity data, tamper with security tools, and turn any Python program that uses sockets into an interactive backdoor. Friday, May 5, 2017 at 12:00 p.m. CDT Day 2 | Track 1 | Talk 7 Kotler has more than a decade of experience researching and working in the computer security space. He is a recognized industry speaker, having spoken at DEFCON, Black Hat USA, Hack In The Box, RSA Conference, CCC and H2HC. He is a former member of the elite Israel 8200 Intelligence unit. Prior to SafeBreach, he served as CTO of Security Art and led SOC activities and research at Radware (RDWR). Most recently, Kotler spearheaded SafeBreach Labss research in its , Adversarial Tactics, Techniques & Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) Framework. The MITRE Corporation is a not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government. SafeBreach is a pioneer in the emerging category of continuous security validation. The companys groundbreaking platform provides a hackers view of an enterprises security posture to proactively predict attacks, validate security controls and improve SOC analyst response. SafeBreach automatically executes breach methods with an extensive and growing Hackers Playbook of research and real-world investigative data. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the company is funded by Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Telekom Capital, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder and investor Shlomo Kramer. SafeBreach is a 2016 SINET16 Innovator, and a finalist for the RSA 2016 Innovation Sandbox and BlackHat Most Innovative Startup competitions. For more information, visit or follow on Twitter @SafeBreach. Image Available: Kayla Krause CHEN PR for SafeBreach 781.672.3148 TopSpin Security Selected to Present on Using Deception Technology to Hunt Cyber-Attackers at the 2017 FS-ISAC Annual Summit MAHWAH, NJ and HERZLIYA, ISRAEL (Marketwired) 04/27/17 TopSpin Security, Inc., the leader in , today announced that John Cebulski, Senior Enterprise Sales Engineer, has been selected to present Using Deception to Hunt Cyber-Attackers at the 2017 Financial Services ISAC (FS-ISAC) Annual Summit, being held April 30 May 3 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Mr. Cebulski will discuss an emerging approach in fighting cybercrime intelligent deception security, which is a proactive detection technology allowing organizations to turn the tables on attackers and expose data breaches quickly and accurately. It helps keep attackers away from organizations real data and facilitates detection mechanisms that identify an attack in progress with a high degree of certainty. The presentation, which is part of the Silver Solutions Showcase, is scheduled from 5 pm EDT 6 pm EDT, on Monday, May 1, in the Atlantic B conference room. During the summit, TopSpin will also demonstrate its DECOYnet Intelligent Deception and Detection Platform, which is the industrys only intelligent deception solution that offers a built-in traffic and security analysis engine enabling highly accurate placement of mini-traps and decoys, an additional security layer through analysis and threat detection, and adaptive and flexible deception that evolves with changing network conditions. With DECOYnet, TopSpin continues to perfect its asset profiling capabilities, uniquely mapping the network by every asset and subnet to build a comprehensive deception layer for each individual network. By constantly breathing the network traffic, DECOYnet actively adapts to dynamic network conditions, including new assets and applications introduced, so the deception layer is always optimized. DECOYnet interacts with any existing security tool, helping organizations manage and correlate security activities across multiple platforms, systems and applications. It alerts organizations when third-party tools and service pose risks, for example if they perform scans or exfiltrate private data to an unauthorized external location. DECOYnet also enhances threat intelligence by combining data from decoys, traps, and internal and egress traffic monitors; and correlating it into single, actionable incidents. John Cebulski joined TopSpin in early 2016 to lead the companys sales engineering efforts in North America. Mr. Cebulskis experience in the cyber-security market spans more than two decades, in which he led security engineering, deployment and consulting projects for leading companies including IBM-Trusteer, Symantec, Itegralis (now NTT Security), CheckPoint, and more. A 2017 Gartner Cool Vendor, TopSpin Security is the leader in intelligent deception and detection technologies which allow organizations to quickly and accurately detect breaches, engage attackers and neutralize advanced cyber-attacks. Its technology is based on a network of decoys that lure attackers by mirroring valuable network assets and are fully adaptive to organizations changing environments. Its unique traffic analysis engine and integration into organizations existing security infrastructure deliver the industrys only deception solution that provides for strategic placement of traps and decoys; added security and internal correlation; and operational advantages such as automated, point-and-click configuration. Once engaged, the decoys interact with attackers, deceiving them and slowing their advances, while providing accurate, actionable alerts and forensics trails. TopSpins DECOYnet is already deployed by leading Global 2000 companies. The companys U.S. operations are headquartered in Mahwah, N.J., with its R&D center in Herzliya, Israel. Learn more at . All brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Dan Spalding (408) 960-9297 WebPT Wins 2017 BBB Torch Awards for Ethics PHOENIX, AZ (Marketwired) 04/27/17 WebPT, the , was recently awarded the 2017 BBB Torch Award for Ethics by the Better Business Bureau Serving Greater Arizona. The company was one of five selected to receive the coveted award, which recognizes businesses that exemplify the BBBs mission and principles of upholding a fair and honorable marketplace. Dr. Heidi Jannenga, WebPTs president and co-founder, credits the companys strong ethical practices to its culture- and people-first philosophy as well as its steadfast commitment to conscious capitalism. Since the companys inception in 2008, it has adhered to a deeper purpose of service one that goes beyond a simple mission statement. The company also relies on its core values to guide every action and business decision. People are at the center of everything we do, and as such weve focused on creating a culture of trust and embracing a higher purpose that serves, engages and integrates the interests of all stakeholders from customers and employees to partners, investors and the community, Jannenga said. Receiving the BBB Torch Awards for Ethics is truly a testament to our amazing team members, who uphold WebPTs people-first approach every day. These winners join a community of trustworthy businesses that understand how important trust, transparency and integrity are to business success, said Matthew Fehling, BBB President/CEO. In addition to implementing a conscious capitalism methodology and maintaining a strong focus on ethics culture, WebPT places a strong emphasis on customer relationships. Beyond operating in a fair, honest, transparent and ethical manner, WebPT is committed to ensuring all customers have a seat at the table and a voice. One lesson Ive learned as a business leader is that people matter most, Jannenga said. Our purpose is to empower the rehab therapy community to achieve greatness in practice, and we constantly look for ways to support that beyond providing innovative software. We are deeply committed to our members, and we truly believe in the work they do. In fact, when we found out one of our customers was up for the BBB Torch Award for Ethics in Alabama, we submitted a letter of recommendation and were proud to say won. We have used WebPT since 2009, and not only do they provide a great web-based documentation platform, but they are dedicated to partnering with their clients to help their clinics grow, innovate and run more efficiently, said Janine Nesin, PT, DPT, OCS, and co-owner and CEO of Nesin Therapy Services. We are excited to see them honored with the Torch Award for their service to customers, the rehabilitation industry, and their employees. WebPT was named a category five winner (an honor reserved for companies with more than 150 employees). Four other local companies including Loud Rumor, Champs Family Automotive, Lucid Agency and Howard Air were also honored. All local honorees are now in the running for the BBBs International Torch Awards. With a 30-percent market share, WebPT is the leading rehab therapy platform for enhancing patient care and fueling business growth. From scheduling, documentation and billing to outcomes tracking, business reporting and software integration, WebPT is the ideal solution for outpatient therapy organizations of all sizes. With a 99-percent retention rate and a 99.99-percent uptime rate, WebPT is the most-trusted and most-reliable solution in the industry. Launched in 2008, the company is based in downtown Phoenixs historic Warehouse District. Learn more at . For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau (BBB) has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. In 2015, people turned to BBB more than 172 million times for BBB Business Reviews on more than 5.3 million businesses and 11,000 charities, all available free at bbb.org. Incorporated locally in 1938, BBB serving Central, Northern and Western Arizona serves 10 counties through its campuses in Phoenix, Lake Havasu City, Prescott and Yuma, supported by over 11,500 BBB Accredited Businesses. Businesses that earn BBB Accreditation contractually agree and adhere to high standards of ethical business practices. BBB provides objective advice, free business reviews and charity reports, and educational information on topics affecting marketplace trust. Heather Thornton 602.538.2274 Beth Cochran 602.758.0750 ZoomerMedia Limited Announces Second Quarter Financial Results TORONTO, ONTARIO (Marketwired) 04/27/17 ZoomerMedia Limited (TSX VENTURE: ZUM) (the Company), the leader in serving the interests of the 45+ Zoomer market in Canada, today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended February 28, 2017. Consolidated Results For the three months ended February 28, 2017 the Company had revenues of $11.8 million, operating expenses of $12.6 million and negative EBITDA of $0.8 million. Net loss for the three months ended February 28, 2017 was $1.0 million. For the comparative three months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $11.2 million, operating expenses of $11.4 million and negative EBITDA of $0.2 million. Net loss for the three months ended February 29, 2016 was $0.8 million. For the six months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $26.1 million, operating expenses of $24.8 million and EBITDA of $1.3 million. Net income for the six months ended February 28, 2017 was $0.2 million. For the comparative six months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $26.5 million, operating expenses of $23.4 million and EBITDA of $3.1 million. Net income for the six months ended February 29, 2016 was $0.9 million. EBITDA is a non-IFRS earnings measure which does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to EBITDA presented by other companies. EBITDA represents earnings before interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization. This measure is important to management since it is used by potential investors to evaluate the Companys operating performance and ability to incur and service debt, and as a valuation metric. Investors are cautioned that this non-IFRS financial measure should not be construed as an alternative to other measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with IFRS. Additional Information Detailed financial information and Managements Discussion and Analysis for the three and six months ended February 28, 2017 can be found on SEDARs website at . The financial information included in this release is qualified in its entirety and should be read together with the interim consolidated financial statements for the three and six months ended February 28, 2017, including the notes thereto. About ZoomerMedia Limited ZoomerMedia is a multimedia company that serves the 45plus Zoomer demographic through television, radio, magazine, internet and trade shows. ZoomerMedias television properties include; Vision TV, Canadas only multi-faith specialty television service; ONE: Get Fit, offering programs on exercise, meditation, yoga, natural health and living a planet-friendly lifestyle; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley, and HOPETV, a lifestyle television service out of Winnipeg devoted to broadcasting Christian programming and is available in approximately 6 million Canadian homes. ZoomerMedias radio properties include CFMZ-FM Toronto The New Classical 96.3FM, CFMX-FM Cobourg The New Classical 103.1FM, CFMO-FM Collingwood The New Classical 102.9FM, Canadas only commercial classical music radio stations serving the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), eastern Ontario and Collingwood, CFZM-AM 740 Toronto and CFZM-FM 96.7FM Toronto Zoomer Radio, Torontos Timeless Hits Station. ZoomerMedia also publishes ZOOMER Magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market. ZoomerMedia is Canadas leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus age group through many properties, the key one being . ZoomerMedia also has trade show and conference divisions that produce the ZoomerShows, annual consumer shows directed to the Zoomer demographic and ideaCity, an annual Canadian conference also known as Canadas Premiere Meeting of the Minds. Cautionary note on forward looking statements The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. Certain statements made in this report are forward-looking statements which may include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future results, performance or achievements, and may contain the words believe, anticipate, expect, estimate, project, will be, will continue, will likely result or similar words or phrases. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in filings by ZoomerMedia Limited with provincial securities commissions. New risk factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors, nor can it assess the impact of all such risk factors on the Companys business 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. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, the following: Given these risks, and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. ZoomerMedia Limited does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Contacts: ZoomerMedia Limited David Vickers Chief Financial Officer +1 416-607-7704 ZoomerMedia Limited Leanne Wright Vice President Communications +1 416-886-6873 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 We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today Military officials quizzed a grieving family about "Trident" after a depressed naval commander from Somerset committed suicide, an inquest heard yesterday. Commander Christopher Smith, 47, a Royal Navy weapons engineer, who lived in Clevedon with his wife Sarah, was found hanged in a flat in Bristol, after he "struggled on and off with bouts of depression", it was heard. But his father Dr John Smith said he did not believe his son had taken his own life, and the doctor's wife started making her own inquiries, it was said. The Bristol Post reports that Cdr Smith's family believe that his death was linked to the stress of the Trident nuclear weapons project. The inquest heard half an hour after returning home from speaking to long-term friends and colleagues two naval officers turned up on their doorstep. Dr Smith said the pair, whose names were not given at the inquest, asked her why she had been asking after Chris and why she had mentioned the word "Trident". In a statement, he added: "She gave them no answer to their questions and after, shut the door on them. How did they know this, and what was their intended motive? "I think these are all relevant points, apart from which he had been rewarded through accelerated promotions all through his naval career - from a lieutenant to a lieutenant commander to a full commander. "He was at the peak of a brilliant engineering career. Why would he have thrown all that away? "During his naval service, he had worked, at times, with intelligence services both abroad and at home. "I will never believe that he committed suicide. Other possibilities should seriously be considered." The inquest at Flax Bourton, near Bristol, heard the weekend before he died father-of-two Cdr Smith had gone home to meet his parents and was in "good form". He told his wife Sarah he would finish work early on January 18, go to Clevedon in Somerset to pick up his daughter and meet her for dinner. His family raised the alarm with police when he did not pick up his daughter, and police forced their way into his flat in Bristol. He was found hanged in a flat in The Atrium in Anvil Road, The Dings, Bristol, on January 19, 2017, Thursday, around 12.10am, with no note. The court also heard Cdr Smith had lived in the US with his wife and daughter Celia to serve as a UK Liaison Officer to US forces during his career. In his report to court, his GP in the Navy said Cdr Smith had suffered from anger management issues and problems sleeping. He thought he might have chronic fatigue, and in January 2009 was prescribed sleeping pills which helped. In November that year, he was put in touch with mental health services to help with his anger management issues. His wife Sarah told the court in a statement: "During the 18 years that Chris and I were together, he struggled on and off with bouts of depression stemming from personal issues in his life. "We as a family are aware of these issues and would like them to remain private." Cdr Smith's son, Shaun, told the court his dad was a "driven man" who pushed himself to excel. He said his dad was private, sensitive and preferred to remain quiet even in times of trouble. Shaun added: "Personal grief and home pressure was why he chose to take his life." He said he did not believe his dad's work was a factor in why he killed himself, but said other family members might come to different conclusions. "He would not have taken his own life as an easy way out," he said. "He would have believed it was the only way out." In a report by the MoD, which was read in court, bosses said Cdr Smith had been displeased with his position at work but showed no other signs of unhappiness. It said there were problems with his marriage and he could have been worried about his contract renewal. In a statement after his death, the MoD said he was involved in "a wide range of complex projects" which required him to "understand not only the complex world of acquisition but also how the Royal Navy's global capability is generated" at Abbey Wood. In summing up, assistant coroner Terence Moore recorded a conclusion of suicide. He said several issues - including his marital problems and finances - had been "preying on his mind". He was survived by his dad John, mum Anthea, sisters Claire, Tracey, Laura and Penny, wife Sarah, children Shaun and Celia, and his stepsons Tom and Kieran. Imagine Hollywood star Will Smith coming to Somerset to rap. He's been linked - along with DJ Jazzy Jeff - to Glastonbury Festival for a while. There was speculation about them coming to Glasto 2016 and at the start of the rumour mill for this year's festival there was also talk about an appearance. But it's hard to tell whether there's anything to the hopeful chatter from fans. What we can say for sure is that Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff WILL be at Blackpool's Livewire festival on August 27. The pair will also be at the MTV Summerblast in Croatia, which is just before Livewire on August 25-26. This is whole two months after Glastonbury, so it doesn't give us much hope. Surely if the Fresh Prince duo are willing to go to Blackpool, though, we can't rule out a trip to the UK and beautiful Somerset for a future Glasto? Fun facts about the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff They're West Philadelphia, born and raised DJ Jazzy Jeff's real name is Jeffrey Allen Townes The Fresh Prince's real name is Willard Carroll Smith Jr (aka Will Smith) After creating songs for the radio, the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was created around Will Smith in 1990 The first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance was awarded to DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith in 1989 for 'Parents Just Don't Understand' (Image: Getty) The lyrics to the hit theme to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (just for fun - come on guys, you know it!) Now this is a story all about how My life got flipped-turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air In west Philadelphia born and raised On the playground was where I spent most of my days Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school When a couple of guys who were up to no good Started making trouble in my neighborhood I got in one little fight and my mom got scared She said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air." I begged and pleaded with her day after day But she packed my suitcase and sent me on my way She gave me a kiss and then she gave me my ticket. I put my Walkman on and said, "I might as well kick it." First class, yo, this is bad Drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass. Is this what the people of Bel-Air living like? Hmm, this might be alright. But wait I hear they're prissy, bourgeois, all that Is this the type of place that they just send this cool cat? I don't think so I'll see when I get there I hope they're prepared for the prince of Bel-Air Well, the plane landed and when I came out There was a dude who looked like a cop standing there with my name out I ain't trying to get arrested yet I just got here I sprang with the quickness like lightning, disappeared I whistled for a cab and when it came nearThe license plate said "Fresh" and it had dice in the mirrorIf anything I could say that this cab was rareBut I thought, "Nah, forget it." "Yo, home to Bel-Air."I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8And I yelled to the cabbie, "Yo home smell ya later."I looked at my kingdomI was finally thereTo sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. THE BIGGEST STORIES ACROSS TAUNTON IN YOUR INBOX Royal Marine Alexander Blackman, known as Marine A, is due to be released from prison early on Friday (April 28), according to The Mirror. The 42-year-old, from Taunton, had a life sentence overturned last month after shooting dead an injured Afghan insurgent whilst on duty. His murder conviction was quashed on appeal and replaced with diminished responsibility manslaughter with a reduced senteced. The Mirror reports that he will be reunited with his wife, Claire, in the early hours of tomorrow morning. It is understood Blackman will be whisked out of Erlestoke prison in Wiltshire by police to avoid a media scrum and be reunited with his wife, Claire, at a secret location. Five judges heard evidence from his wife Claire at his sentencing hearing last month. Her husband watched proceedings via video link from prison. His QC Jonathan Goldberg said: Incarceration of almost three-and-a-half years which he has served is already too much. Mr Goldberg described the 2011 killing in Helmand, Afghanistan as a single blot on an otherwise exemplary career. Blackman, with 42 Commando, was truly the last casualty of a failed war, he added. Blackman was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 10 years in November 2013 by a court martial in Bulford, Wilts. After the appeal his sentence was reduced to seven years and having already spent more than three years behind bars meant he was eligible for release within weeks. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. THE BIGGEST STORIES ACROSS TAUNTON IN YOUR INBOX The famous saying goes: "If it is too good to be true, then it is usually is." So when a promotion voucher claiming to be worth 100 at Primark, which has branches in Yeovil and Taunton, began to do the rounds on Facebook, it got people very excited. But the unfortunately reality is that it is a scam, reports The Mirror . In hindsight the alarms bell should have been ringing straight away because 100 at any of the 174 UK stores can get you an awful lot of low-cost clothing. Nevertheless, it does look genuinely realistic so it is easy to be fooled. But how can you tell that it is a fake, and what are the repercussions if you click on it? What does the voucher look like? The post displays the voucher in the form of a cut-out coupon and also been sent via direct messages to people who have clicked on it. It claims to be a gift as part of the stores anniversary celebrations and says everybody is eligible to cash-in the voucher. It has a fake code underneath a barcode as well as instructions for use. The fraudulent promotion is believed to have first surfaced at the beginning of the year and there have also been reports that unwitting users have had it sent via their direct messages. But how does it affect you? Clicking on the voucher brings up an online survey that tricks users into entering their personal information in order to receive the 100 vouchers. This link takes users to a fake website where you must answer more questions before being requested to share the post. The questions include home addresses, phone numbers and other private information. It has been said that by agreeing to the survey users can unknowingly be signed up to an expensive text messaging service. Website Hoax-slayer told the Daily Post: "The post is not associated with Primark in any way and the claim that vouchers are being given away is a lie. The post is a scam designed to trick users into participating in bogus online surveys. "No matter how many surveys users complete, they will never receive one of the promised vouchers." Victims of the scam have been may also be inundated with unwanted phone calls, emails and junk mail. In all cases, the user never receives the promised voucher. Those who may have unwittingly fallen for the scam are advised to change their Facebook passwords immediately on all devices and to report suspicious posts and apps. Have you been affected? Let us know in the comments below. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss Somerset's latest and breaking news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter Thousands of votes in Somerset could be up for grabs after the UK Independence Party announced it will not be fielding candidates in three constituencies. UKIP put up candidates in the Somerton and Frome, Wells and Yeovil constituencies in the 2015 general election, polling more than 19,000 votes between them. But the BBC has reported that the party will not be fielding candidates in either of these three seats this time around, with committees in each of the seats making the decisions. The party appears to be seeking to prevent the Liberal Democrats - which is opposing Brexit - from retaking these three seats, which were all won by the Conservatives in big swings last time around. Somerton and Frome MP David Warburton and Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh both supported Brexit at last year's referendum, while Wells MP James Heappey campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union. Wells branch chairman Helen Hims told the BBC that they were "broadly supportive" of Mr Heappey's support for Theresa May MP's Brexit plans. The national party has not released a statement on the matter. How could this affect the results? Let's look at each of the seats in turn and the complete results last time. Somerton and Frome (Image: Getty) Mr Warburton won Somerton and Frome convincingly last time, unseating Lib Dem challenger and former MP David Rendel with an 18 per cent swing, following the retirement of Lib Dem MP David Heath. Mr Warburton is a popular MP and it's hard to see the Lib Dems unseating him given how strongly his constituency backed Brexit. The party has not officially announced its candidate, but a possible candidate has spoken to Somerset Live about his policies and what approach his party will take. UKIP finished third last time around, polling 6,439 votes: Candidate Party Votes David Warburton Conservative 31,960 David Rendel Liberal Democrats 11,692 Alan Dimmick UKIP 6,439 Theo Simon Green 5,434 David Oakensen Labour 4,419 Ian Angell Independent 365 Wells Mr Heappey has a majority in excess of 7,000, but Tessa Munt remains a popular local figure. What the impact of her decision to stand in both the county council elections and the general election will be is not clear. Ms Hims told the BBC that their core voters would be voting Conservative, but admitted that their vote share "could be just enough" to allow Ms Munt back in. UKIP finished in a distant third last time around, with 5,644 votes: Candidate Party Votes James Heappey Conservative 26,247 Tessa Munt Liberal Democrats 18,662 Helen Hims UKIP 5,644 Chris Inchley Labour 3,780 Jon Cousins Green 2,331 Paul Arnold Independent 83 Dave Dobbs The Birthday Party 81 Gypsy Watkins Independent 76 Yeovil (Image: John Snelling) Yeovil is the Lib Dems' biggest target out of the three seats - which makes it unfortunate that Daisy Benson has had to pull out of the race. Former Yeovil MP Lord Ashdown has promised to find a strong candidate to replace her and take the fight to Marcus Fysh, who has welcomed the snap election and will hope to repeat his performance against David Laws two years ago. UKIP finished third out of five candidates last time, with Simon Smedley polling 7,646 votes: Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss Somerset's latest and breaking news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter A Yeovil man whose Jekyll and Hyde behaviour made his partner feel her life had been invaded waged a campaign of harassment against her after she ended their relationship. Ryan Lloyd Evans sent a deluge of Facebook message, texts and emails, threatened suicide and then sent up fake social media accounts in a bid to contact her. On several occasions he followed the victim while she was in her car with her mother and threw objects at her windscreen causing it to crack. He also targeted her new boyfriend, bombarding him with rude and abusive messages and telling him he needed to watch his back. When the 22-year-old defendant, of Combe Street Lane, appeared in the dock before Somerset Magistrates he admitted pursuing a course of conduct which amounted to the harassment of his partner between November 11, and December 27 last year after initially pleading not guilty. Prosecutor Christine Hart said that the couple had been in a relationship for six months, but when the victim ended it in November Evanss behaviour escalated and he sent a huge number of Facebook messages, texts and emails using his phone. In them he made threats for his own suicide and used abusive language, and even when she blocked him from Facebook he created other accounts to try and contact her, she said. She received a total of 26 calls from Facebook messages that she didnt answer and she then completely deleted her account after the defendant had tried to gain access to it. On December 5 the victim left for work at 3.30pm with her mother and was driving her car near the KFC roundabout in Yeovil. They became aware that Evans was following them and he then threw something towards them at the car but it missed, said Miss Hart. The complainant drove back to her home and the defendant then passed them and extended his arm through his window and threw another object at the windscreen causing a circular crack. Two days later the victim was driving to work again with her mother when Evans drove past them and again threw an object at the windscreen causing further damage. Later in December she began a new relationship and whilst they were together she had four messages from random social media profiles being rude about her and her new boyfriend saying that he needed to watch his back. In a victim impact statement read to the court, Evans's former partner told of the effect that the defendants controlling behaviour had had on her during their relationship. She wrote: I could see he was starting to become possessive and controlling over my social life and always wanted to know where I was and who I was with. I would feel guilty for going out without him and stopped going out with my own family and friends. This whole situation has completely changed my life and I have now bought a dashcam and am very overprotective of my family and also carry an attack alarm. I get nightmares that he is behind me and I have had to have time off work and cannot concentrate and I never knew I could be so scared of someone that I once loved. He is a completely different person to when I met him and is a complete Jekyll and Hyde character and didnt know he was capable of such nasty things. Probation officer Steve Cox said that there was a set of circumstances that led to the commission of this offence, but did not excuse Evans behaviour. He was upset that a former partner had moved to Australia taking his young child with her, and then in September 2016 his grandfather died who he was very close to. In October he was made redundant and it was at this time that the relationship broke up which was the final straw, but he has now been working with professionals at Holly Court in Yeovil , he said. Defending solicitor Neil Priest said that there were reasons at the time why his client may have lost momentary control of his thought processes. However he has gone a long way himself to receive the appropriate therapy and is genuinely remorseful for what he has done, he said. He has found the whole court process very stressful himself and now wants to draw a line under this and move on with his life and has no wish to make any further contact with the complainant. Chairman of the Bench, David Phillips, said that the victim impact statement was one of the most detailed and harrowing ones he had ever heard saying it was not a pleasant time for the young lady concerned. Be under no illusions that custody was a very distinct possibility for you today, he said. They sentenced Evans to a 12 month community order with a requirement to carry out 150 hours unpaid work. They also ordered him to pay the victim 500 compensation for her distress along with 10 for the windscreen insurance. Costs of 400 and an 85 victim surcharge were also imposed. They also made Evans subject to a two year restraining order during which time he must not contact his former partner directly or indirectly, including via social media. Breakdown of Indiana Statehouse races across South Bend area The 2022 election is a midterm election. Voters will come out to to vote in various Indiana statehouse races Nov. 8 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The SoHo location of Japanese clubstaurant Koi will close this summer because of a sharp decline in businessa sadly common occurance in a competitive city such as oursonly this restaurant is located inside the Trump SoHo hotel on Spring Street. Coincidence? The people who work there don't think so. In a report by Grub Street, the restaurant's management and employees say they see a direct correlation between financial woes and the election of President Trump last November. "Obviously, the restaurant is closing because business is down," Koi Group's general counsel told the website. "I would prefer not to speculate as to why, but obviously since the election it's gone down." Employees say business had been robust since the restaurant opened in 2012, regularly attracting a celebrity clientele including the Kardashians, who've allegedly "stopped coming." Imagine the Kardashians aren't rolling up in your spot anymore...and it's a bad thing? Yikes. One busser/host also told Grub Street that non-celebrity regulars at the restaurant said definitively that "if [Trump] wins, we are not coming here anymore." Many staffersincluding long-time worker Ricardo Acahave already abandoned the sinking ship, and the restaurant is slated to close mid-Junebut employees are quoted as saying they think it'll be "sooner." This isn't the first time Aca has been publicly associated with his (now former) place of employment. During the election he was featured in a video about his experiences as a Mexican immigrant working in a Trump building. "I know I could lose my job just for talking about Trump, but it doesn't make me proud to go to work everyday under his name," he said. Asked about Aca's statements at the time, then-candidate Trump told the NY Times, "We thought he was an illegal immigrant at first." Trump also promised he would not pressure Koi Soho to punish Aca, but added, "I want to check his file." On May Day 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrants participated in actions across the country, skipping work and school in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to protest a bill that would have made it a felony to be in the United States without documentation. The Bush-era legislation ultimately floundered. May Day, rooted in national protests for an eight-hour workday, solidified its status as a day for immigrant action. "Those 2006 demonstrations were huge," said Joshua Freeman, a history and labor professor at CUNY. "It was a little bit of an earthquake in several ways. Never before had so many immigrants publicly presented themselves to support their rights." "We haven't seen anything quite like that since," Freeman added. "It will be interesting to see what happens this year." Actions planned for Monday are a direct response to President Donald Trump's policies on labor and immigration, according to organizers. The main event is a rally and concert in Foley Square at 5:00 p.m., but the rest of the day will be busy as well, with actions, teach-ins and union rallies, starting as early as 7:15 a.m. Gothamist talked to organizers, who broke down their plans and provided tips for workers interested in striking, but fearful of employer retribution. Marches and Rallies Take on Corporate Backers of Hate March Before the workday starts, Make the Road New York is hosting a march through Midtown East to call out large corporate entities that stand to profit from Trump's agenda, including backers of private prisons and immigrant detention centers like JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Ahead of the action, Make the Road today launched a "name and shame" website, with information about each company's affiliations to the Trump Administration and contact information for CEOs and Board Members. 7:15 a.m. / Sidewalk at 5th Avenue and 41st Street at the edge of Bryant Park MAY DAY Solidarity Rally: Stand with B&H Workers! The Democratic Socialists of America are continuing to throw their (increasingly hefty) weight behind the employees of B&H, who recently organized a union in response to allegedly hazardous working conditions in their Brooklyn warehouses. Management has threatened to move these warehouse jobs 75 miles away to New Jersey, while organizers gear up their contract fight. 10:00 a.m. / B&H Photo Video Pro at 420 Ninth Avenue Immigrant Worker Justice Tour Immigrant and worker justice groups including ICE-Free NYC and Brandworkers, which recently helped organize workers at Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City, will rally in Washington Square Park ahead of a downtown walking tour of businesses where workers are currently organizing. "We have every intention of making sure that some of the practices and policies that impact the worker community are brought to light," Brandworkers organizer Gabriel Morales told Gothamist. The tour route is still being solidified but will include a stop at Amy's Bread, where employees have been organizing for higher wages. 12:00 p.m. / Washington Square Park Rise Up New York! Immigrant Rights and Worker Rights The main event. Make the Road New York, the New York Immigration Coalition, New York Nurses Association, New York Central Labor Council, and the service workers union SEIU 32 BJ are organizing the evening rally, which will double as a live concert. "We call on all New Yorkers to rise up and demand an end to this Administration's racist and unjust policies," said Steve Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, in a statement. 5:00 p.m. / Foley Square (Scott Lynch / Gothamist) Striking: Know Your Rights For those planning to strike from work or school on Monday, organizers with the People's Power Assembly are rallying at Union Square from noon until 5:30, ahead of a large-scale march. "It's very much going to be a place for people who are striking," said group member Nate Peters. "That's why it's called for noon." Organizers are punctuating the day with speeches, featuring leaders from the anti-war movement, Black Lives Matter, and indigenous groups, as well as labor and immigrant advocates. Acknowledging the potential for repercussions, the Workers World Party has set up a phone line and email address for anyone facing threats and punishment for striking: 347-674-0515 and nycdefense@protonmail.com. Make the Road New York has also been hosting know-your-rights training sessions specifically for immigrants who want to strike. Their initiative launched in February, when a handful of Long Island warehouse employees were fired after participating in a "Day Without Immigrants" action. Make the Road is now representing those workers in a National Labor Relations Board filing that accuses their employer of violating the National Labor Relations Act. Meg Fosque, an organizer with Make The Road, stressed that all workers have the right to strike, regardless of immigration status, though the repercussions for undocumented workers can be more serious. Fosque advised workers to give their bosses a heads-up, and to try to connect national May Day issues back to specific, concrete workplace demands. "If your workplace won't function without immigrants," she said, "maybe ask your employer to post a sign stating that ICE officials aren't welcome without a judicial warrant." Some individuals participating in the strike are planning to call in sick or take a vacation day, she added. Fosque stressed that there is power in numbers, and that workers planning to strike en masse should contact labor organizers first, to talk strategy and potential legal issues. "To see the most vulnerable workers take risks that more protected workers are afraid of is incredibly powerful," she said. A Queens teenager was fatally stabbed during a dispute in an Internet cafe in Flushing last night. According to police, 19-year-old Yangpu Fan was taken by private means to Booth Memorial Hospital, where officers responded to a 911 call around 9:45 p.m. After gathering information at the hospital, police proceeded to the K&D Internet Cafe on 38-19 Union Street in Flushing, where Fan had been stabbed in the torso. There they found his alleged assailant, still in the cafe at his computer. The 51-year-old man was taken into custody at the scene. Investigators also recovered a knife at the location. Fan was pronounced dead at the hospital this morning, Reached by phone today, an employee at K&D Internet Cafe said the man taken into custody is a "regular customer" who is always "very calm." Employee Paul Then said that the cafe was crowded last night when "the Chinese kids came, and the Korean guy was sitting there, taking a break with his computer off. The kids see him sitting there with his computer off and wanted his seat, but he refused to give up his seat." According to Then, the "kids" left the cafe and returned with a larger group of teens to escalate the dispute over the man's seat. "I think the Korean guy just stabbed one of the kids," Then said. "But when he stabs the kid no one notices it. Very strange. Kid went out with his friend and went to the hospital directly, and nobody knows the kid got stabbed." Then said there was no blood resulting from the stabbing, and the alleged assailant was still there when police returned about a half hour later to investigate. An NYPD spokesperson said no charges had been filed this morning, and declined to provide the name of the man in custody. 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. Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Cloudy. High 68F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies early with showers later at night. Low around 60F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%. The south polar vortex at Saturn's moon Titan stands out against the orange and blue haze layers that are characteristic of Titan's atmosphere. Unlike anywhere else in the solar system, Saturn's moon Titan is brighter during twilight than during daylight, a new study finds. Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury, making it the largest of the more than 60 known moons orbiting Saturn. Titan is also the only moon in the solar system that's known to have a thick atmosphere. In fact, the atmospheric pressure near Titan's surface is about 60 percent greater than Earth's that's about the same pressure found at the bottom of a swimming pool on Earth, according to NASA. In the new study, scientists analyzed data that NASA's Cassini spacecraft collected of Titan's hazy, soupy atmosphere, and studied them in wavelengths of light that ranged from ultraviolet to visible to near infrared. They unexpectedly discovered that on Titan, "twilight is brighter than the dayside," study lead author Antonio Garcia Munoz, a planetary scientist at the Technical University of Berlin, told Space.com. [Titan in Photos: Amazing Views from Cassini] To shed light on why Titan is so bright at twilight, the researchers analyzed how Titan's highly extended atmosphere scattered light. (Previous research found that since Titan is only about 2 percent Earth's mass, its gravity doesn't allow it to hold on to its gaseous envelope as tightly as Earth's does, so Titan's atmosphere extends to an altitude 10 times higher than Earth's nearly 370 miles (600 kilometers) into space, according to NASA.) Clouds on Titan are visible in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft in October, 2016, with the probe's narrow angle camera, capturing light in the near-infrared range, which makes Titan's thick atmosphere slightly more transparent. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Because Titan's atmosphere is both hazy and extends high up, at twilight, more light gets scattered onto Titan's surface than it does during the daytime "at all wavelengths investigated," Garcia Munoz said. In fact, based on computer models and Cassini data, twilight can be up to 200 times brighter than daytime, he added. [How Humans Could Live on Titan (Infographic)] To understand why this happens, imagine Titan as a ball facing the sun. On the side directly facing the sun, it's daytime; on the side facing away from the sun, it's nighttime; and on the border between these sides, it's twilight. The haze particles in Titan's atmosphere tend to scatter light at a forward angle (meaning the light is deflected somewhat, but keeps going in the same general direction). The researchers' calculations showed it is possible that Titan's thick, dense atmosphere could scatter more light toward the twilight regions than the central daylight region, just like Cassini observed. In addition, since Titan's highly extended atmosphere sticks far out into space, a great deal of the photons that would pass right by the sides of a moon with a less-extended atmosphere instead get directed to the rim of the sun-facing side of Titan (above the twilight region). These findings help scientists understand how much solar energy gets absorbed by Titan's surface and atmosphere, Garcia Munoz said. This in turn can shed light on how its weather and seas operate, and what conditions any life that may or may not exist on Titan's surface might face. The researchers also suggest that similar surges in brightness may happen on distant exoplanets outside the solar system. "If one could eventually detect a similar optical phenomenon at an exoplanet, then we could reasonably guess that the exoplanet atmosphere shares some similarities with Titan's. In particular, we could probably guess that its atmosphere is extended and hazy," Garcia Munoz said. "This is important, because determining the properties of exoplanet atmospheres is very challenging," and detecting this effect could help "inform us of their main properties." The scientists detailed their findings (opens in new tab) online April 24 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com. "It was better than a reality show, because it was reality," the climate scientist and retired astronaut Piers Sellers told me as he recalled his coming of age during the Space Race. This was the era of the first satellites, exploratory probes, and advances in spaceflight that culminated in the Apollo 11 moon landing, giving a sense of the present hurtling toward the future. "It all fascinated me," he said, "and because of it I became a scientist. I'm not kidding. That was the thing which made me become a scientist." But Piers Sellers didn't just become a scientist whose work became crucial to the development of climate studies. In his career's second stage, he became an astronaut who spent a total of 839 hours in space, helped to build the International Space Station, and completed six spacewalks, which not only gave him leadership and stature among his peers as an extravehicular activity specialist, but also a unique perspective on the vulnerability of our planet. After retiring as an astronaut, he worked as deputy director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, pioneering research that would change the paradigm of how to use satellite data from space and apply it more readily to life on Earth. "Purely on science alone, Piers was an icon a force of nature defending our fragile Earth," said his former colleague Colleen Hartman, director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at Goddard. British-born and a naturalized American citizen, such was the stature of Sellers's work that none other than Neil Armstrong himself endorsed him for an Order of the British Empire (OBE). Astronaut Piers Sellers during the third spacewalk of STS-122, a demonstration of orbiter heat shield repair techniques. (Image credit: Astronaut Michael Edward Fossum/NASA) Earlier this month, Sellers posthumously received the Space Foundation's General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award, for which I had the honor of nominating him. "I never met a single man, woman, or child who didn't instantly fall in love with Piers," Hartman said as she accepted the award on his behalf. "It is our American exceptionalism which demands that we make sure the Earth Piers defended remains a great place to live for the entire world." RELATED: NASA Images Show New Rift in Greenland Glacier Before passing away in December from pancreatic cancer at the age of just 61, Sellers used the final year of his life to work as hard as possible on efforts to save the planet from the effects of human-induced climate change. "Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon," he wrote of his diagnosis in a New York Times op-ed. "Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible." (Image credit: Rebecca Roth/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) "Piers's work was vitally important," said friend and former NASA astronaut Ron Garan. "He knew it. So important that he dedicated the rest of his life to it. Literally." His last days included a moving appearance in Before the Flood, the climate change documentary produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. But in the face of distressing projections, he somehow never failed to remain unflappably optimistic. RELATED: Coastal Cities Could Flood Three Times a Week by 2045 "Us humans right now are in a bit of a fix, with the damage we've done to the climate system, and it's a serious threat that we're facing. And if we don't take some kind of action over the next few years, things could get very unpleasant," he remarked in a video in which he discussed an insight from one of his spacewalks. "However, human creativity that got us into this mess, I'm pretty sure, could get us out of it. And when I looked down to the cities, I thought of all those millions of people interacting with each other, coming up with great ideas. And I'm sure that some of those ideas can help us get out of the situation that we're facing." Sellers was dedicated to drawing attention to our planet's changing climate and seeking technical solutions to limit humanity's impact. Among his many achievements, he led work that created the first realistic computer model of how the biosphere interacts with climate, and which helped lead major field campaigns to combine ground, airborne, and satellite measurements of photosynthesis. Leonardo DiCaprio visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in April 2016 to interview Piers Sellers for his climate change documentary 'Before the Flood.' (Image credit: Rebecca Roth/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) "Here are the facts: The climate is warming. We've measured it, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now. It correlates so well with emissions and with theory, we know within almost an absolute certainty that it's us who are causing the warming and the CO2 emissions," Sellers stressed in an interview (opens in new tab) with National Geographic two months before his death. "There's a group of climate deniers who have done a first-class job of spreading disinformation and confusion. We have to deal with a negative propaganda machine that uses many of the same strategies as tobacco [companies]. But scientists should fight the clean fight and explain what uncertainty means. It doesn't mean that nothing's going to happen." Garan believes that his friend's efforts and dedication will serve to inspire others to counter the wave of skepticism that has stymied progress on climate policy, with efforts like the approaching March for Science on April 22 pressing the issue publicly. RELATED: March for Science Gears Up Amid Debate Over Diversity Though his name may not be well known outside of the scientific community, Piers Sellers's work will continue to benefit us all. In any event, he had no complaints. "I'm very grateful for the experiences I have had," he told me during a conversation last year. "I've watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God's-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I'm hopeful for its future." Originally published on Seeker. Researchers are studying whether amino acids could act as building blocks for life in alien environments, such as on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Astrobiologists are looking at amino acids and trying to figure out if these building blocks of life can be replicated on other planets. A team in Indiana is about to look at amino acids that have been extracted from meteorites, as well as those that were created in origin-of-life experiments that happened as long ago as the 1950s. The goal is to better identify what characteristics would make extraterrestrial life possible. The challenge, however, is the proteins an organism uses on Earth wouldn't necessarily be used in more exotic locations. "Our main goal with this research is to see if there are structural characteristics of some amino acids that lead to a higher stability in extraterrestrial conditions, and then to see what those characteristics might be," said Claire Mammoser, an undergraduate research assistant at Valparaiso University in Indiana who is working on the project. "Finding trends in amino acid stability would give us an idea of what sort of amino acids may have survived in outer space long enough to create life," Mammoser added. Her team has already analyzed 15 amino acids, some of which are found in life on Earth, and some that are not associated with life at all. They subject vials of the amino acids to extreme temperatures, radiation, acidity, and other items that simulate other environments in the solar system. Examples include Mars, which has a thin atmosphere and moderately high radiation, or Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that has no atmosphere and is famous for sprouting water geysers. RELATED: How Would NASA Search for Extraterrestrial Life on Enceladus? The team then determines how well the amino acid stays together or to what extent it breaks down. Over time, they are looking to find patterns for the stability of amino acids with several characteristics, such as the ability to bind with water an essential function of life. "This work is exciting for us because there is not a lot of previous work in this area," said Mammoser. "Often," she added, "we are privileged to work on extensions of existing areas of research which have been pioneered by great minds in the field, but this project has been different in that we have done a lot of the initial development ourselves. This is both a challenge and extremely exciting, because there is a sense that we are not just gathering data, but we are also making decisions about the best way to measure amino acid stability in our lab every day." Mammoser will present her results at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting, which is being held this week in Chicago. Originally published on Seeker. A newfound alien world is quite Earth-like in some ways, but you wouldn't want to live there. The exoplanet, known as OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, is about as massive as Earth and orbits its star at about the same distance Earth circles the sun. But OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb's parent star is tiny and dim, meaning the alien planet is likely far too cold to host life, its discoverers said. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is not in Earth's neck of the cosmic woods; the alien world lies nearly 13,000 light-years away. The astronomers spotted it using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which involves watching what happens when a massive body passes in front of a star. The closer object's gravity bends and magnifies the background star's light, acting like a lens. [7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets] In many cases, the foreground object is a star as well. If this star has orbiting planets, their existence can be inferred based on their influence on the background star's light curve. And that's indeed what happened with OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb. The planet's microlensing signal was first spotted by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a ground-based survey managed by the University of Warsaw in Poland (hence the newfound world's name). The discovery team then used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network a system of three telescopes, one each in Chile, Australia and South Africa to track and study the microlensing event. These combined observations revealed the existence of OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, and allowed researchers to calculate its mass and orbital distance. That mass is remarkable, it turns out. "This 'iceball' planet is the lowest-mass planet ever found through microlensing," Yossi Shvartzvald, a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. Shvartzvald is lead author of the study announcing the new planet's existence, which was published online Wednesday (April 26) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. (You can read the paper for free at the journal's website.) The team was also able to determine that OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb's host star is tiny, containing just 7.8 percent the mass of Earth's sun. That's so small that the parent may not be a proper star at all, researchers said: Its mass is right on the boundary between the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs and ultracool dwarf stars such as TRAPPIST-1, which hosts seven recently discovered Earth-size planets. Three or four of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may be capable of supporting life, but they orbit much closer to their star than OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb does. Indeed, all seven of the known TRAPPIST-1 worlds would fit inside the orbit of Mercury, if they were transported to our own solar system. Like two other planets detected by Spitzer via microlensing, OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb lies in the Milky Way galaxy's flat disk, not its central bulge. "Although we only have a handful of planetary systems with well-determined distances that are this far outside our solar system, the lack of Spitzer detections in the bulge suggests that planets may be less common toward the center of our galaxy than in the disk," study co-author Geoff Bryden, an astronomer at JPL, said in the same statement. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Artists illustration showing NASA's Cassini spacecraft heading toward the gap between Saturn and its innermost rings. The probe plunged through this gap for the first time ever on April 26, 2017. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has survived its first plunge through the narrow gap between Saturn's cloud tops and the giant planet's innermost rings, a region that no probe had ever explored before. The space agency's Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California picked up Cassini's signal at 11:56 p.m. PDT yesterday (April 26; 2:56 a.m. EDT and 0656 GMT today, April 27) nearly a full day after the historic dive took place. Data began coming in from the probe 5 minutes after contact was established, NASA officials said. "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. [Cassini's 'Grand Finale' Saturn Orbits Explained (Video)] Artists illustration showing NASA's Cassini spacecraft heading toward the gap between Saturn and its innermost rings. The probe plunged through this gap for the first time ever on April 26, 2017. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Cassini zipped through the gap at 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT and 0900 GMT) yesterday, coming within about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's upper atmosphere and 190 miles (300 km) of the visible edge of the innermost rings, NASA officials said. The probe crossed the ring plane at about 77,000 mph (124,000 km/h) relative to Saturn, they added fast enough that a collision with even a small particle could have seriously damaged Cassini. To minimize that possibility, the spacecraft used its dish-shaped, 13-foot-wide (4 meters) high-gain antenna as a shield during the dive. Because the antenna was oriented toward incoming particles, Cassini couldn't communicate with Earth as it dove. The probe was programmed to gather science data during the plunge and then re-establish contact with mission controllers 20 hours later, NASA officials said. (It currently takes 78 minutes for signals to travel from Cassini to its handlers here on Earth.) "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," Cassini project manager Earl Maize, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in the same statement. "I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape," Maize added. Cassini is scheduled to perform 21 more of these dives during the current "Grand Finale" phase of its mission, with the events occurring about once every week. The next plunge will come on May 2. The $3.2 billion Cassini-Huygens mission a joint effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency launched in October 1997 and reached the Saturn system in July 2004. (Huygens was a piggyback lander that touched down on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in January 2005.) Cassini has made a series of remarkable discoveries during its nearly 13 years of orbiting the ringed planet. For example, the probe spotted seas of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan and geysers of water ice, as well as organic molecules and other materials, blasting from the south polar region of fellow Saturn satellite Enceladus. Further Cassini observations have revealed that Enceladus harbors a potentially habitable ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. But Cassini is running out of fuel, and its mission will soon come to an end. The spacecraft will perform an intentional death dive into Saturn's thick atmosphere on Sept. 15, to ensure that it doesn't contaminate Titan or Enceladus both of which may be capable of supporting life with microbes from Earth. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement A pair of street vendors are suing the city over what they say was an unconstitutional seizure and destruction of their property by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In both instances, the vendors say that health inspectors and cops took their carts from them without giving them a chance to challenge the seizures, and both have been unable to recover their property. The plaintiffs in the suit against the city are Sanwar Ahmed, an 86-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant who sold a puffed rice snack, and Ana Buestan, a 43-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant who sold flavored ices. Both Ahmed and Buestan claim that while they were selling food from pushcarts, inspectors from the Department of Health seized their carts with help from the NYPD in the summer of 2016 because they were selling their food without a permit. In both cases, neither vendor got a property voucher they could use to recover their seized carts. According to the lawsuit, when Ahmed attempted to recover his cart, a Department of Health official told his attorney that it might have been thrown away, and the precinct commander at the 115th Precinct where Ahmed's cart was seized told his lawyer that "homemade" carts like his "might be destroyed." A similar fate befell Buestan when she tried to recover her ices cart, according to the suit. In her case, despite paying a $1,000 summons, neither the police precinct where she was fined nor the court she paid her fine to could locate her cart for her. Both plaintiffs are being represented by the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center. Matthew Shapiro, an attorney with the organization, told Gothamist that "we've known for some time" that vendors have their carts seized by the Department of Health with help from the NYPD. For that reason, they filed their lawsuit as a class action, hoping that the city is forced to reveal how many vendors have been affected by this process. The heart of the matter, according to Shapiro, is that "you can't just take people's property away without giving them a chance to contest that seizure." Whether this destruction of what the city deems "homemade" carts is any kind of unofficial policy or not, Shapiro said that the city has never been forced to justify the fact that it doesn't go through the normal procedures for property seizure. (The issue of property seizure/destruction also attracted public attention recently when the city agreed to reimburse a group of homeless men and women whose property was destroyed by police in East Harlem in 2015.) Shapiro also suggested that since many of the vendors this happens to don't have permits from the city, the fastest way to fix the problem is for the city to pass legislation that would increase the cap on the number of food vendors citywide. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for the destruction of Ahmed and Buestan's property, and a judicial ruling that the city's seizure procedures in this case are unconstitutional. Asked for comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the city's Law Department told Gothamist "The lawsuit will be reviewed" 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. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Many women like quick and easy beauty routines that allow them to leave home feeling glamorous, confident, beautiful or all of the above. But once out of the house, it can difficult to find the time to touch up or switch to a look fit for a night out not to mention the fact that carrying around all the essentials can be burdensome. Whether were in the back of an Uber or on a plane or a train, weve got to get ready really quickly, said Westport business owner Gail Sagel. With this in mind, the owner and CEO of Faces Beautiful by Gail Sagel created Face in a Case, a clutch-sized wallet and makeup case featuring two makeup palette options containing all the essentials blush, bronzer, six eyeshadows, lip gloss, two brushes and mascara. Sagel said each palette, which features magnetic products that stay in place within the compartment of the accessory, is meant to work for every woman and in different combinations. I thought the best thing I could do was make it really easy to figure out what works together, Sagel said. Its hard to choose the wrong color (combination). For makeup novices, Face in a Case also comes with a how-to guide for three eyeshadow techniques and explains what items the palette contains. The makeup can also be removed and the compartment used to store other items, like a cellphone. The wallet side offers slots for several credit cards and a pocket for cash. The clutch is offered in three colors black, champagne gold and wild leopard. It costs $68. The palettes are an additional $30 each. Sagel said she came up with the idea for Face in a Case, for which she has a patent, after talking to her customers about their needs. I just listened to my clients, she said. They want simple. My mantra for Faces Beautiful is Beauty for the busy. We all want to be beautiful but we dont want to spend all day to get there. Sagel joined the cosmetics industry roughly 20 years ago, after a decade on Wall Street as an energy derivatives broker and trader. Despite being unhappy in her job, it wasnt until she got hit by a car while riding her bicycle that Sagel decided to move into a career she could be happy in. I said to myself, If this wasnt a wake-up call I didnt know what was, she said. She started out doing freelancing as a makeup artist but was offered jobs in New York City that she declined because her children were small at the time. So in 2000, Sagel opened her Faces Beautiful business, which she moved to her present location at 208 Post Road W. five years ago. Although she began selling other brands, she now only sells her own products, including Face in a Case, which she launched in February. More information on the product can be found at facesbeautiful.com. Sagel and her product will soon be featured on Foxs Good Day New York program and on May 12 she will be at Theory on Main Street in Westport to share her makeup tips and offer free makeovers to the first 12 people to sign up. That event will take place from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. The product will also be available through Amazon beginning May 12. Im really trying to inspire and encourage women to keep trying new things, Sagel said. If you didnt get the look you wanted the first time, go wash your face and try again or theres always tomorrow. ktorres@hearstmediact.com; 203-330-6227 STAMFORD - The judge in the Christmas 2011 fire trial has denied the citys request to impose a gag order on attorneys representing the father of the three girls who were killed. Court documents show that city attorneys wanted the judge to ban the legal team for Matthew Badger from providing statements and information to news outlets because it could create bias in the minds of jurors. Jury selection began Monday in state Superior Court in Hartford, where two jurors had been selected as of Thursday afternoon, said Ilann Maazel of Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, the Manhattan law firm in Badgers case. The trial is scheduled to begin May 24 and take three to four weeks, Maazel said. In a motion filed last week, city attorneys wrote that representatives for Badger, who died in February, have been going to the press to create bias in their favor as a trial date approached. Badgers representatives would have the jury receive half-truths and hearsay, instead of authenticated evidence properly admitted by the trial court, to determine the facts of this case, city attorneys wrote. To avoid such a travesty, the court should make it utterly clear that the trial of this matter will take place in the courtroom and not in the media. The case began in state Superior Court in Stamford and was transferred to the Complex Litigation Docket in Hartford, but that is not enough to reduce the likelihood of prejudicing the proceedings, city attorneys wrote. They cited extensive media coverage since the tragedy, including national print and television interviews given by the girls mother, Madonna Badger, who also lost her parents in the fire. City attorneys wrote that such exposure will reach Connecticut jurors and will predispose them against the city defendants. The case under way pits Matthew Badger, now represented by his brother, S. Campbell Badger, against the city, Director of Operations Ernie Orgera and Chief Building Official Robert DeMarco. It alleges that they improperly inspected renovation work at 2267 Shippan Ave., which could have been a factor in the fire, then had the house quickly torn down and carted away to impede an investigation. The city fire marshals office found that the fire started in a bin of fireplace ashes placed in the mudroom. Madonna Badger has filed a civil suit in state court similar to that of her ex-husband, and another in federal court in New Haven. Order sought for girls mother City attorneys asked the court to include Madonna Badger in the gag order, but Matthew Badgers lawyers countered that she is not a party to his case and they have no control over her actions. In their opposition to the citys request, they wrote that city attorneys failed to cite even one civil case in which a gag order has been imposed and that courts routinely deny such requests in civil cases because they curtail free-speech rights. Besides, a gag order will not stop reporters from attending jury selection or trial, or from reviewing all publicly filed documents, they wrote. On Tuesday Judge Ingrid Moll ruled in favor of Badger. First, Moll said the court has no jurisdiction over Madonna Badger in this case. Three safeguards Moll then cited three safeguards that are adequate to assure an impartial jury and to protect the parties rights to a fair trial. The first is that attorneys from both sides question potential jurors in a process designed to root out any impartiality. Second, the court thoroughly cautions each chosen juror to avoid all publicity and any communications about the case, and instructs them that if that should occur, they must inform the court immediately. Third, lawyers must obey rules of conduct that prohibit them from making public statements that might prejudice any proceeding. The court deems it unnecessary to recast the ethical rule as a court order, Moll wrote. In their opposition, Matthew Badgers lawyers hinted at the contentiousness ahead in trial. The true reason for the citys gag-order request, they wrote, is that for over five years, Stamford and its employees peddled the falsehood that ashes caused this fire. They said so repeatedly, on television, in the press, in official documents released to the press and the public. As a result, almost anyone who has heard of this tragedy believes ashes caused this fire. But it was all one big fraud. City attorneys seeking a gag order would muzzle the truth, they wrote. acarella@stamfordadvocate.com; 203-964-2296; stamfordadvocate.com/angelacarella This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate OXFORD Fernando Pires wants to be perfectly clear there are no members of Derek Jeters family living in the house at 212 Hogs Back Road. Pires, the homes owner, is well aware of the rumors circulating throughout Oxford that the retired Yankee legends parents live in the house. In fact, he gets cards and letters intended for the ballplayer dropped in his mailbox. Thats been going around for years, Pires said, adding that the stories are false. But its not surprising that an urban myth would sprout up about the palatial 10,000-square foot Mediterranean villa built on 35 private acres, which is now listed for sale at $3,195,000. The house and its immediate neighbor, a nearly identical villa formerly owned by Piress brother seem a bit out of place in quiet, quaint Oxford. But Pires said he wanted to be closer to his job, which is in Oxford. So, he and his brother bought more than 70 acres near the Bowers Hill and Quakers Farm neighborhoods and divided the property in half. Though the listing says the house was built in 1997, Pires said the home took more than two years to build and he and his family didnt move in until 2000. Not only is the house Mediterranean in style, but Pires said a significant portion of the building materials including marble, clay tiles and limestone were imported from Portugal, where he was born. The house is filled with lavish details, including 26 marble columns throughout the building. There are murals made of hand-painted tiles, some of which are intended to evoke famous art works, such as Leonardo da Vincis The Last Supper. Theres no wallpaper in the house and the designs on the walls are hand-painted. Theres a stained glass depiction of the four seasons hanging up inside. Indeed, theres no denying the majesty of the sprawling home, which has five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, five fireplaces, a pond, a fountain and its own vineyards. Pires said he even makes his own wines mostly whites, as he said its difficult to make a good red in this region of the country. The house has a wine cellar of course, and a full bar in the basement. Though much of the building materials have an international feel in addition to the Portuguese marble, tiles and such, most of the wood is imported from Brazil Pires went local when designing the bar. The wood in that bar comes from Oxford, he said. Though hes looking to move on, Pires said hes proud of the home and the life he built at Hogs Back road. We decided to build something different, he explained. It seems he achieved that goal even without the help of a certain ballplayers family. Do you know of a house or apartment building with an interesting story? Contact acuda@ctpost.com, and the home could be featured in an upcoming installment of Habitat. H eathrow has seen its fastest growth in passengers for a decade as foreign tourists rush to Brexit Britain to take advantage of the weakened pound. The airport owner said 2017 was on course to set records on the back of a 5% increase in passenger numbers in the first three months of the year. Cargo going through the airport, home of British Airways, has also surged as exporters clamour to capitalise on demand for British goods since the pound plunged on last Junes Brexit vote. New routes to Scotland from Flybe and a new service to China were among the services which helped attract a record 17.9 million passengers to the airport between January and March. Revenue climbed by 2% in the first quarter to 655 million, while pre-tax profit soared by 17% to 27 million. John Holland-Kaye, chief executive, said: We have definitely seen a boost from exchange rates because Britain is a bargain for foreign visitors now. Heathrow is getting on with preparations to begin building its hard-fought-for 16 billion third runway, which was finally given the go-ahead by the Government in October. It expects to have full permission to proceed by the end of 2020, with the expanded airport open for business by 2025. F rench fashion house Hermes on Thursday offered further signs of a recovery in the luxury goods sector after a jump in first-quarter sales. The label, known for its Birkin bags which start at 6500, noted strong handbag sales in the three months to March, as well as good demand for its 300 silk scarves. Adjusted for exchange rates, sales soared 11% to 1.35 billion (1.15 billion). The firm enjoyed growth in Europe, as well as rising demand from Asian customers. The figures come on the back of similar upbeat news from LVMH and Gucci parent Kering this month, which also revealed growth. Previously companies in the high-end fashion sectors have suffered from factors such as weaker footfall in Europe as a result of a spate of terror attacks, and a slower Hong Kong market. Hermes said it was keeping an ambitious goal for revenue growth despite growing economic and geopolitical and monetary uncertainties around the world. Elsewhere, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry said Swiss watch exports rose for the first time in 20 months in March, partly boosted by the weaker pound. P rivate hospitals giant Mediclinic was given a clean bill of health today by investors after the Abu Dhabi government said it would no longer be charging extra to use private health. The government in Abu Dhabi decided to cancel a 20% co-payment for treatment at private facilities for those with private medical insurance. Mediclinic, which has a near-30% stake in UK private hospitals group Spire, has been lobbying for the change for some time, especially given that trading has been tough in Abu Dhabi. South African group Mediclinic listed in London last year after buying UAE-based Al Noor Hospitals Group for 1.4 billion in a deal which gave it more exposure to Abu Dhabi. The decision to scrap the co-payment came as a welcome relief to shareholders as the stock shot up 139p, or 19%, to 870p. However, Rae Ellingham at Charles Stanley, said the share price surge seems excessive, explaining: The UAE is actually the smaller portion of Mediclinics business, generating just 15% of profit. Mediclinic was the stand-out performer on the blue-chip index as the Macron-inspired rally finally ran out of steam, causing the FTSE 100 to slide 36.79 points to 7251.93. Insurance giant Legal & General was the FTSEs big faller. The shares lost 14.9p, or 5.7%, to 246.2p after Credit Suisse rated the shares Underperform and said it is suffering from the new Solvency II rules. Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas talked up the potential for a takeover at Diageo, which slipped 24p at 2237p. They said that if private-equity firm 3G is still keen for a big deal after failing to buy Unilever with Kraft Heinz, the Johnnie Walker maker is the only large spirits maker available. However, it still sees AB InBev as a more likely buyer, but a bid could be years away. Car dealer Pendragon motored 1.06p, or 3.2%, higher to 34.81p after a strong first four months of the year. Oil services group Weir fell 56p to 1998p after going ex-dividend. It also said trading had been line with expectations in the first quarter. Rivals Wood Group and Amec Foster Wheeler agreed a 2.2 billion merger last month. E tsy's UK chief Annette Picardo shares the secrets of her success, including embracing less traditional paths and getting a break through bikram. What do you do? I lead Etsys team in the UK and what were doing to build the brand here and grow our community of buyers and sellers. A typical week starts with us looking at the week before, the highlights and the lowlights. Then we meet as a whole team to look forward, share upcoming projects and the things were hearing or trends were seeing. A big part of it is linking up with the broader Etsy team, including the other international markets and those in the headquarters in Brooklyn, New York City. What do you like about it? Having worked in engineering for Rolls-Royce, I saw the purely technical route was not my cup of tea. In this role, I love that I can combine my creative side with my more analytical and technical side. At Etsy, we are really creating something new, a platform for entrepreneurs who may have not been able to work this way before. A few weekends ago we met sellers and heard stories of how Etsy has helped them grow their business. Thats why we get out of bed. The dream is to find something you love and believe in what the companys about. Is there anything you dislike? A big challenge for us, though an interesting one, is prioritising. There are so many things we can do and we are always working to improve the platform and build tools for sellers. But the community is so large, at 1.7 million sellers across the world, that its hard to fulfil 100% of the needs of 100% of sellers. We need to prioritise things that have the biggest impact overall. What was your biggest break? In terms of my career, it was getting this role. It didnt happen in a very straightforward way. I worked out through the power of online stalking that there wasnt a UK country manager at Etsy, which I thought would be my dream job. So I hunted down my now-boss Nicole [Vanderbilt, international head of Etsy] and managed to get a meeting with her. She explained that I didnt have the experience to be a country manager, so I started at Etsy in a different role, using past experience in consulting and working at notonthehighstreet.com to look at strategy. I loved the role and it played to my strengths. We recruited for a UK managing director but didnt find anyone, and Nicole suggested I take on elements of the role. It went from there. She invested in me and believed in me. What was your biggest setback and how did you overcome it? I was working in consulting but realised that in the long term it wasnt for me. I had written off doing an MBA but decided it would be a good opportunity to take time to figure out what to do next. But when I graduated, I didnt have a job to go to. Id made a clean break but I still didnt know what I wanted to do. It was quite scary. I ended up freelancing and worked on an e-commerce start-up with a friend from business school. We werent paying ourselves a salary and would have weekly or sometimes daily meetings about the cash runway, our way of saying there was no more money left! Some of my friends were working in big consulting firms and being taken out for dinners and flying business class. Id meet them for dinner but arrive after the food and have a glass of water. It was still a fantastic experience and my first in e-commerce, and I realised this was where I wanted to be. The phrase I always have in my head is whats the worst that could happen?. Its my way of taking a big step back and getting perspective. How do you manage your work-life balance? I like to take myself away from things I do at work. I love DIY and doing house renovations, and take great pleasure in connecting with family and friends. My husband works in the online world, so we are strict with ourselves so that we dont end up talking about work. We love to travel and went to Japan recently. Ive been trying bikram yoga and have found that Im so focused on what Im doing that I cant be thinking about anything else. Its a real break. Any tips? Give it a go and take risks. Im always inspired by my mum, who changed careers in her forties and retrained. Risk-taking is something to embrace all the way through a career. Dont feel too constrained by what may seem like traditional paths. B uilder Taylor Wimpey on Thursday said it would pay out 130 million to help customers caught up in a scandal dubbed the PPI of the housebuilding industry. Chief executive Pete Redfern said the move came after a storm of complaints when a number of homeowners realised their ground rent charges could double every 10 years. He said the controversial structure was introduced a decade ago in good faith and the doubling clauses are considered to be legal. However, he added it was clear the impact is now causing some of our customers understandable concern. Last year Labour MP Justin Madders said in a House of Commons debate the issue was nothing short of a national scandal. It is the PPI of the housebuilding industry. Madders welcomed the payout by Taylor Wimpey today. Redfern added: We acknowledge that the introduction of these doubling clauses was not consistent with our high standards of customer service and we are sorry for the unintended financial consequence and concern that they are causing. Taylor Wimpey is negotiating with freeholders and has set aside 130 million which will be used to convert customers leases into those that are materially less expensive. He said: Today is about doing the right thing for our customers and, we believe, the right thing for investors. Customers in the North-West and London were affected, although the company refused to comment on how many were caught up in the scandal. A note from JPMorgan Cazenove said: In the event that the group is not able to reach agreement with freeholders, Taylor Wimpey will pursue other avenues to help customers. We see limited, if any, scope for the cost of this exercise to escalate beyond the 130 million provided for. The group reported a good start to 2017, helped by strong customer demand and mortgage availability. In the year to date its order book stood at 9219 homes, up from 8811 a year earlier. The shares rose 0.55p to 199.05p. How the ground rents worked Between 2007 and 2011, Taylor Wimpey created and sold a number of long leaseholds to homebuyers who paid a lump sum for a home and agreed to pay an annual ground rent fee. The builder then sold on the freeholds of these buildings to private landlords. But clauses in the contracts doubled the ground rent every decade, meaning those who bought a lease in 2007 with a 250-a-year charge, would pay 500 annually from this year, rising to 8000 in 40 years time. Some homeowners say they were unaware their propertys freehold had been sold on to private firms. Ground rent clauses can make some homes virtually unsellable as lenders will often not offer mortgages against them. F or voters who cringe at the thought of ever-growing opinion poll leads for the Tories and who do not want to be steamrollered into a hard Brexit, this election has not started well. Voters are not exactly blessed with choice and I suspect many just do not know how they are going to vote. Many will not want to support Theresa May but do not see an alternative in Jeremy Corbyn. They will toy with the idea of voting Liberal Democrat but then wonder: what is the point? As there was no real purpose in calling the election, apart from Mrs Mays desire for a bigger majority, the verdict of most voters will be that its all a waste of time. And who can say they are wrong? What is the point of an election when voters are not given a genuine choice? But if there is not a positive to vote for, there is always a negative and in this case it is to stop the Tories grabbing a runaway victory that will give them a blank cheque to do what they want. The most important reason to slow them down is where they are heading on Brexit. They are not yet taking the entire British economy over a cliff but unless they are checked that is a very real possibility. I have to give them one thing on Brexit. The Government has certainly got message discipline: theres only one path and it is on it. People with different ideas are not democrats. Those who want to hold up the rush are saboteurs, to quote the Daily Mail. Anyone who thinks there are different ways to skin this cat is betraying the country. The Sun recently devoted an entire editorial to my own treachery because I had the temerity to suggest that with Britain heading for the exit door, the rest of the EU were entitled to look after their own interests rather than ours. For some reason this was not obvious to the wise heads who run that newspaper. UK election: Labour's Brexit strategy in 60 seconds But these are the same people who have been pumping out the propaganda that Europe needs us more than we need it and that a trade deal with Europe on better terms than we enjoy now is within our grasp. And, if not, we have other options to turn to the US, China, India and all those other major economies that apparently owe us a living. For more than four years, as Europes Trade Commissioner, I negotiated with these and other countries. They are all at different stages of development and protection of their markets. But one thing they have in common is that they do not regard trade as some sort of charity auction in which the best prizes go to those who plead the most. International trade negotiation is a rough, tough business, not for the chaste or tender-hearted. If Mrs May thinks other countries are lining up to do us favours just because we ask nicely, she will be disappointed. This is why full steam ahead out of our biggest existing export market is neither the best nor the only option. There are different ways to honour the mandate of the referendum and different choices we can make about what our future relationship with the European Union should be. The only red lines we should set in the negotiations should be a refusal to sacrifice our prosperity or compromise our economic interests. Look before you leap should be our maxim in the Brexit talks, not because the result of last years referendum doesnt matter but because those who voted Leave did not do so to make Britain poorer and themselves worse off. There are all sorts of ways for Britain to make a deal with Europe and thats why all those standing as candidates in this election should be asked to make clear that they will keep an open mind on the negotiations before agreeing to any irrevocable step. Already Mrs May has made a negotiating error in narrowing her options just to make her party happy and ruling out ways in which Britain can both leave the EU and retain its trading rights in the single market. We could do as Norway did when its public voted against joining the EU in the Nineties it opted instead to become part of the European Economic Area, which gives you the same rights to trade although with less say in deciding the rules that govern that trade. The same option is available to Britain but with a difference: we have a bigger economy than Norway, we are more important to the rest of Europe and with the pre-eminent status of a recent influential member of the EU. If, with one foot still in the European camp, we asked for flexible terms, for example in how freedom of movement operates, we would be listened to and, in my view, accommodated. The Prime Minister will not be given this chance if she simply continues as she has started, by laying down the law and spelling out where she wont budge. By doing so she is making it harder to get the best deal for Britain. It is clear, though, that Mrs May and the Tories are the favourites on June 8. This election may not result in a change of government but that does not mean there is not a real choice to be made. A strong parliamentary opposition to the Tories will stop the Prime Minister being given a blank cheque for hard Brexit. Earlier this week Labour shared more of its thinking about the Brexit negotiations. Keir Starmer was clearly giving himself more wriggle-room to test the options available and to keep open the possibility that, on the right terms, Britain would negotiate to remain in the single market after leaving the EU. If this is the best economic settlement the one that secures the greatest continuity of our existing trade it must be the right choice. It would mean politics was no longer driving the negotiation hardline, dog-in-the-manger Tory politics and that growth and prosperity were put first. Yes, it would involve compromise but give and take would need to be offered by everyone, ourselves and the EU. This is the outcome worth voting for. Thats why candidates views should be closely examined and judged not on the basis of some foregone conclusion but in the countrys long-term interests. Peter Mandelson is a leading supporter of Open Britain, the pro-European campaign organisation. A bag of Bolshevik propaganda banned by Scotland Yard is going on show at the British Library in a new exhibition about the Russian Revolution. The books were given to the British Library in 1921 by Soviet Russia leading to fears that they could foment rebellion in the minds of readers. Among the exhibits is a Scotland Yard letter saying that works directly advocating revolution have been set aside as undesirable for immediate issue. After the revolution in February 1917 that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in October and set about imposing communist rule. The country descended into civil war, with the Bolsheviks Red Army fighting foreign forces and so-called White Russians opposed to Lenins rule. By 1922, Russia was mostly in Bolshevik hands. Curator Katya Rogatchevskaia said the parcel, which also included childrens books and medical texts as well as Bolshevik propaganda, was an unwanted gift for the library but was delivered at the insistence of communist leaders in Moscow. She said: I think there was a really strong sense of the value of the library because before the revolution there was a large emigre population in London who studied there. We know Lenin studied there, we still have his library card, and there were others. There was this thinking that this was a world-renowned institution and [Bolshevik] material should be there. Other exhibits in the show, which opens tomorrow, include first editions of the Communist Manifesto, published in London in 1848, and of Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternaks 1957 novel spanning pre and post-revolutionary Russia. White Russian propaganda and leg irons from a Siberian prison camp will also go on display. Ms Rogatchevskaia said it was impossible to understand the world today without an understanding of the Russian Revolution. She said: This is the event that shaped the modern world, the seismic event of the 20th century. This is a very modern story of a political crisis, a refugee crisis, of the masses against their political leaders. Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths runs until August 29. I t is the art worlds biggest event. The one that turns Europes most unique city into a Mecca for art pilgrims from across the globe. It can define the currents and trends of art for the following years, and propel artists from the fringe to the mainstream of international art. It is the most loved and hotly anticipated of all the biennials. And for a few days at the beginning of May, it will prove it has the most glamorous and lavish of openings. British artists have long made waves at the Biennale, from Frank Auerbachs Golden Lion in 1986, to Haroon Mirzas Silver Lion for most promising young artist in 2011. And there is much to look forward to among the offerings from UK-based artists this year. The most famous living British artist has already stuck his oar in the citys canals, of course. In unveiling his opus, Treasures From The Wreck Of The Unbelievable, across the collector Francois Pinaults two grand Venetian venues earlier this month, Damien Hirst avoided his enormous endeavour getting lost amid the 120-artist Biennale show, the 85 national pavilions and dozens of so-called collateral shows open across the city. It gets a second reveal at the Biennale. The artist in the British pavilion this year is a kind of anti-Hirst. In contrast to his monumental mythological bling, Phyllida Barlows work is made of humdrum stuff: wood and board, polystyrene, plastic sheeting, gaffer tape, rope and other detritus, often covered in rough plaster and with expressive painterly passages. She doesnt so much fill the spaces she occupies as subvert them. Her sculptures block entrance ways, teeter over you like towers, lurk in corners, forlornly or threateningly. This is perfect for the neo-classical politeness of the British pavilion, especially as shes the first artist to fill the pavilion since the Brexit vote. This wont be tub-thumping political art, but it might well reflect on the absurdity of nationalism in a location where artists often uneasily fill their countries pavilions. Rachel Maclean, Scotland + Venices choice for 2017, more overtly addresses contemporary issues, albeit through retellings of fairy tales. Spite Your Face, the young artists new film for the Biennale, uses the Italian story of Pinocchio, with his lie-detecting nose, to reflect on our post-truth world. Maclean has honed a richly imaginative filmic language in recent years: seductively grotesque, confectionary-hued yet dystopian. Expect unspeakable things to be done with noses as she takes on the self-styled alt-right and their conspiracy-driven mythologies. If Maclean isnt on next weeks Turner Prize shortlist, its a travesty. One artist whos already been nominated for the Turner Prize is James Richards, Waless artist for the Biennale. Where Maclean assaults the senses, Richardss multimedia installations are more poetic and slow-burning. James Richards, Music For The Gift, 2017, production still. Archive image courtesy The Schwules Museum, Berlin. / James Richards Alongside a sound installation and photographic works is his new film based on photographs and collages he discovered in the archive of Albrecht Becker a photographer, theatre designer and actor once imprisoned by the Nazis for his homosexuality. This years main show, Viva Arte Viva, is organised by the Centre Pompidou curator Christine Macel, and has a smattering of artists living and working in the UK. The works that feature are largely under wraps, but it does include a video by Cerith Wyn Evans, whose light installation currently occupies Tate Britains Duveen Galleries, and work by the late John Latham, whose enormous influence is currently the subject of The Serpentines spring programme. Glasgow-based Karla Black - whose immersive, colourful environments are made of everyday materials such as make-up - features, as does the London-based Italian artist Salvatore Arancio, who makes strange and fantastical sculptures, films and prints. And two London-based veterans, Rasheed Araeen, born in 1935, and David Medalla, born in 1942, are gaining long-overdue wide recognition. So what does this say about British art now? Notably there are no zeitgeist-defining shows of new British art in Venice this year, like General Release, an exhibition at the 1995 Biennale that featured, among others, artists including Douglas Gordon, Fiona Banner, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume and Jane and Louise Wilson, all of whom went on to greater fame. But what is in Venice is evidence of a hugely diverse UK art scene, with powerful work being made in different art centres and across different generations. This article was brought you in association with Hiscox Insurance, proud supporters of the Evening Standard Contemporary Art Prize. To find out more about the competition visit standard.co.uk/artprize. Click here to find out more about Hiscox Home Insurance and the specialist cover we provide for art and high-value items. For more Hiscox What is contemporary art? Growing online art market needs to mind the credibility gap Understanding the role of the art consultant I n her five-star review of Barney Norris's Visitors, Fiona Mountford wrote that "its difficult to decide where to start in listing what Norris gets right". Since then, he's published a novel which has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain) and has a new play as part of Nicholas Hytner's opening season at the Bridge Theatre (Nightfall, opening next April). Before then, his play While We're Here, about old lovers meeting again, is the first play to be performed in the Bush Theatre's new studio space. What was the first play to make you want to write plays? Talking to Terrorists by Robin Soans was profoundly important for me. I was growing up in Salisbury, a quiet place whose theatre served up pretty conservative fare, and Max Stafford-Clarks company Out of Joint visited with this show that was utterly and electrifyingly about our world, our now. I was turned onto the form, really, by that show and the idea that theatre could engage with contemporary reality. What was your background to becoming a playwright? Ive always just tried very hard to be involved in every aspect of the theatre I could get stuck into, and have found some success in some areas, and less in others. Writing is the area where Ive found the greatest appetite for me to be in the band, so thats become my principle focus, but Im also a failed actor who has directed here and there, produces several shows a year and helps load the van at the end of the evening Ill do anything to be near this ritual. Whats the hardest play youve ever written? My last play Echo's End, at Salisbury Playhouse, was a fascinating challenge. I was working away from the established collaborative network Ive developed through my company Up In Arms, writing a play set in the past, for a large stage and a larger company than Ive previously worked with. So much of that was new ground, so I found that a really exhilarating battle with my own technical limitations and inexperience. Which brought you the most joy? My first full-length play Visitors was a particularly joyous occasion, because it had the most extraordinarily disproportionate impact in relation to our resources and expectations. Which playwrights have influenced you the most? When I try to write a play I think of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller. The American and Irish theatres are inspirational because they have made their drama out of the lives of ordinary, working people, and by doing so found the theatre a role in public life as a means of articulating the experience of the many. To over-generalise, Id say that the theatre in England has predominantly oscillated between studying the wealthy, and studying the other (the wealthy are an other as well, of course, but theyve also made up most of the theatre audience of England since its revitalisation in the late nineteenth century, so its a slightly different case of playing to the gallery rather than projecting new realities into the auditorium). English theatre is more frequently a device for imagining other worlds than looking at our own. Lots of exceptions to that on all fronts, of course! Lastly, Id say that these days the greatest living writer in any medium surely has to be Athol Fugard. Every aspect of his practice matters to me, his subjects, his treatment of them, his ensemble practice, everything. What is your favourite line or scene from any play? DH Lawrence, A Collier's Friday Night as much happens for you as for other people. The beginning of everything valuable that writing has had to say in Britain in the last century. Whats been the biggest surprise to you since youve had your writing performed by actors? Everything about that experience is constantly surprising, and thrilling, and magical its the greatest privilege of the job, watching how an actor meets a role. Whats been your biggest setback as a writer? Its actually very hard to think of one, if Im honest. I dont think anything has happened to me that hasnt made my work better all the rejections Ive had have allowed the work to develop further, and me and my company to develop further. And the hardest lesson youve had to learn? Im sure it comes as a shock to each and every creative artist, the first time they realise theyre not actually a visionary genius for whom the seas are going to part, in order to allow them to write plays for the Theatre Downstairs till the day they die! And that they will actually have to work, and work harder than everyone else, to get anything done at all. What do you think is the best thing about theatre? And the worst? I love everything about the theatre, except for the fact that youre very, very lucky if you see more than one piece of work a year that actually matters to you. Last year I saw two Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour and Les Blancs and that was wonderful. Whats your best piece of advice for writers who are starting out? Id refer to Lawrence again. This is a slight paraphrase, but his advice was to bite down and dont let the bastards shake you off till the money starts flowing like blood. Are there any themes and stories you find yourself re-visiting with your plays? I think its a relatively established fact in mathematics that if one is going to have an idea, one has it pretty early, and once the brains formed, the potential for revolutionary new concepts has receded. I think that resonates in the field of creative writing everyone in the world does or does not develop an image that haunts and preoccupies them relatively early in life, which some go on to seek to articulate through writing, of which a few get some of their work in front of the public, of which a very few say something interesting, of which a few in each generation manage to then develop that image theyve burnished and brought to the light so that they remain valuable to us as routes into the human subconscious throughout their lives. Thats a long way of saying we have a song we sing in Up In Arms that goes one play, hes only got one play Are you on Twitter? Do you find it a help or a hindrance as a writer? I am. I will say frankly that I detest it, and the self I project through it, but my publicist has flatly refused my requests to come off it, so thats that. And I run an account for Up In Arms because if I could have sold a single additional ticket through doing something else I didnt try for one of our shows, I wouldnt forgive myself, and I wouldnt deserve the support of the Arts Council. We have to work hard and try everything, or we dont deserve anything. But I think social media across the board is a highly effective lubricant we apply to the endless race to the bottom that constitutes the majority of our cultural and public life. Why did you write While We're Here? I wanted to explore the way that people long for meaning in England now; to articulate a particular strata of unremarked life on our islands; to make another show with my friends and collaborators, and offer up something else to our audience; and to draw attention to the terrible loneliness inflicted on the weakest in society by the way our state is set up to support them. How do you spend opening night? I pace around feeling grateful and afraid. Whats the best play youve seen this year? Ive actually only seen about half a dozen shows this year so far, because Ive made three of my own and been on a book tour of Germany, so Im never around. Id rather say that Im still living in the afterglow of Les Blancs last year, really, Im not ready to transfer my affections to anything else yet. It was so utterly wonderful. Whats your favourite place to watch theatre in London? I think there are very many wonderful places. I cant wait to see the first show in the Bridge Theatre though, Nick Hytner and Nick Starrs new theatre, thats going to be very special. What other art forms do you love when youre not in a theatre? Im much more of a reader than a theatregoer, really, I read a great deal. All my parents are musicians, so music has always been very important to me, and Im getting more and more interested in visual art as I start to develop some of the tools to read it. The more interest you take in any form, the more rewarding it gets, I find. Except the ones you actually work in, where you end up hating anything because you know how all of its done! I can only love theatre when it makes me wonder how on earth theyre doing it these days. Pete Postlethwaites Lear, or whatever, those moments that arent about technique. (Not that his technique wasnt incomparable, but people who saw that performance will know what I mean). If the Prime Minister said they were abolishing the theatre tomorrow, what would you do? This is only conceivable in a very different society, so its hard to engage with the question. Too many variables. While We're Here is at the Bush Theatre until May 27; bushtheatre.com I ts ever so rarely you get a perfect biography, a marvellous match of subject and writer but Thomas Dilworths biography of David Jones is just that. Its not just a full account of a man but a compelling argument as to why Jones should be as admired by us as he was by his contemporaries, who thought him wonderful: T S Eliot; W B Yeats (he bowed from the waist as he entered the sitting room where Jones was having tea , intoning: I salute the author of In Parenthesis); Igor Stravinksy; Kenneth Clark; Dylan Thomas; W H Auden; Eric Gill. That selection (there were umpteen others) of critics who thought him first rate gives a clue about why our generation hasnt given Jones his due. He was that inconvenient creature, a genius in two spheres. Contemporary critics can handle the art, or the poetry, but not both, although Jones considered that his uniqueness as a writer lay in being an artist too. Then theres Joness religion, a problematic matter nowadays: he was a Catholic convert and his faith generous and non-sectarian informed everything he did. His fundamental view was that man is a maker of signs as well as things. He was a medievalist who effortlessly embraced Modernism . His Great War poem, In Parenthesis, is many-layered. Theres the experience of the soldier in the trenches mixed with echoes of the Roman world mixed with Welsh mythology and Christian allegory. His Dai Greatcoat (modelled on a shit-wallah he met in the trenches, carrying buckets of excrement) is an epic figure, with elements of all these things, with a bit of Kiplings Tommy Atkins. His other great poem, The Anathemata (with its sharply perceptive preface about the fissure between religion and contemporary culture), was described by Auden as analogous to sitting at Mass with your mind wandering. This being the centenary of the First World War, it is astonishing that In Parenthesis hasnt been endlessly discussed and that it (and the war art) isnt on exam curriculums with the war poets. In fact, Jones saw more action than any of them when he met Siegfried Sassoon later, they agreed that they could never get away from the war. For him it was like ordinary life only more intensified, with the compensation for the horror being the tenderness of men in action to one another. One impetus for the poem was his re-reading of Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front: Bugger this! I could do better. His father was Welsh, a printer; his mother of London shipwright stock; they lived in Brockley. He went at an early age to art school, where Sickert was his teacher. His good fortune was that he never went to university but was wonderfully well read. After the war he joined Eric Gills artistic-religious community at Ditchling (the religion is now excised from the centre there) where he became engaged to Gills daughter, Petra he never quite got over her breaking it off. His subsequent romantic career was a succession of passionate, unconsummated crushes on beautiful, clever women. But although he absorbed Gills worldview and his craft of lettering, he was never absorbed by it: for him beauty was the goal of art. His own paintings are as many-layered as his writing. They can seem simply lyrical, even whimsical but, close up, they are dense with meaning. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. 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Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review Jones never trusted biographers who were too prolific, who didnt live the life of their subject: well, Thomas Dilworth has done just that. D uring the back and forth of preparing her first novel, Sympathy, for publication, Olivia Sudjics copy editor was dubious about one of its crucial premises. She said: It is completely ridiculous and improbable that Alice would be able to become obsessed with someone before meeting them, Sudjic explains. And I was like: Have you got Instagram? She slams her fist on the table impassionedly, laughing. Sympathy is a story of rankling online obsession. It follows Alice Hare, a lonely, dislocated 23-year-old mixed-race graduate girl who was adopted by American academics and then transplanted to London via Tokyo. When her New York-based grandmother invites her to visit, she escapes a claustrophobic mother for three months in the city. After a sequence of coincidences made simple by our connected modern world, she discovers Mizuko Himura, a Japanese writer also based in New York, and engineers a real-life friendship, drawing on visual clues in her Instagram to create a self that Mizuko will be drawn to. When the friendship falls apart, Alice unravels. The novel barrels forward in time then leaps backwards. Sudjic says that the non-linear structure mirrors the way in which we use the internet, and also represents the fragmentation of modern living: we exist both on and offline, our digital avatars popping up in many different places. She was interested in the non-consensual, unwitting pact that we make with the internet. The more we feed into that with every click or every cookie-consent button we dont fully understand, thats a pound of flesh were giving to the internet that limits our choices, she says. Its as a paradox of privacy versus convenience. The opening scene sets the tone for this power imbalance. Alice obsessively watches Mizuko go on and offline, waiting for her to re-accept her Instagram follow request. Its discomfiting: while exaggerated, the behaviour resonates. Sympathy, the debut novel by Olivia Sudjic When people admit that, I think, Ha! laughs Sudjic. Because obviously this is an extreme version of what I might have personally experienced, but I wouldnt have written that if I hadnt had moments like that. In those moments you start to think: Is this an actual thing between me and this person that Im watching or is it something between me and the weird way the technology is designed? Because it is all designed to be addictive, like gambling the people who design it are former magicians, playing on our vulnerabilities. The age of Instagram makes break-ups hard. It makes you almost feel like youre being cheated on, that their life is carrying on without you and vice versa. De-friend is the most important thing post-relationship. A certain paranoia informed the plot. Sudjic, 28, studied English at Cambridge and after a few meanders started working in brand strategy. Through work she was immersed in some of the internets most pernicious sleights of hand. She had grown spooked, particularly, by what she calls a shadow self: This twin version of ourself that exists online, who the internet thinks you are. She was exasperated by technologys utopian narrative. Id meet a lot of tech bros and its not that I felt that there was something inherently wrong with their aspirations, but it was just a bit like with any cult: technology is a force for good. There was no nuance. 10 books everyone is reading right now 1 /14 10 books everyone is reading right now Shutterstock / Vadim Georgiev Milk and honey Rupi Kaur Amazon Hillbilly elegy - a memoir of a family and culture in Crisis J.D. Vance Amazon Exit west Moshin Hamid Amazon A man called Ove Frederik Backman You are a badass: how to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome live Jen Sincero Amazon The subtle art of not going a f*ck Mark Manson Amazon The stranger in the woods: the extraordinary story of the last true heart Michael Finkel Amazon The hidden life of trees: what they feel, how they communicate Peter Wohlleben Amazon Option B: facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy Sheryl Sandberg Amazon One of the boys Daniel Magariel Amazon Her response was to quit her job and move to New York herself to stay with her own grandmother and write. Mainly because all my family were so appalled by my decision, she deadpans. Sudjic grew up in north London. Her father, Deyan Sudjic, is the director of the Design Museum and her mother, Sarah Miller, is a journalist and brand consultant. At 28 she is positioned perfectly to write a novel about the creeping stranglehold of the online world: I was born at the end of 1988, which means that Im basically the same age as the internet. Did writing Sympathy change the way she uses social media? 100 per cent. For a start, I got a new boyfriend about a year ago. And were not friends on social media. I didnt want that feeling of meeting someone and then being like: Ah, I already know or, I think I already know all about you. Sudjic toys with the idea of digital retreats in the book, though has only attempted a lite version herself, deleting apps: No one wants to come offline because no one else is. She thinks the responsibility for changing habits is at the level of the people who design it to be addictive in the first place. Google has a design ethicist... Do your job! With the pending election Sudjic is, like everyone, worried about how the internet can delude us about politics. I was in New York when Trump got elected and I remember my New York friends who hadnt just weathered a Brexit vote. There were basically no Democrat posters in New York. I thought: Guys, you are so convinced that theres no chance Trump can win because you all live in Brooklyn and are in this echo chamber. Her next book will be inspired, in part, by fake news. Sudjic does not wish to come across as a tinfoil hat-wearer. Her message is to be aware of what were clicking yes to, where we are sharing our location. Its like digital breadcrumbs and then we dont entirely understand how the choices with which we are then presented why what doesnt get shown, doesnt get shown. Meanwhile, were being shunted around by algorithms. Above all, she thinks the danger is in the absence of understanding. Its not a new thing to say that the tools that we create shape things around us. But the fact that now those tools are beyond most peoples human comprehension. How do you think geolocational works who knows? Sympathy, the debut novel by Olivia Sudjic, is published by ONE/Pushkin Press on May 4, price 14.99. Also available on audible.co.uk Follow Phoebe Luckhurst on Twitter: @phoebeluckhurst L aurent Binets first novel HHhH, translated into English in 2012, was a tense account of the assassination attempt on the Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942, divided into short chapters and full of literary knowingness, even playfulness, about the difference between history and fiction. One chapter in its entirety proclaimed: I think Im beginning to understand. What I am writing is an infranovel. An infranovel! In France HHhH was much admired and won the Prix Goncourt for a debut, despite being so much about its own procedures, as well as telling such an intrinsically powerful story. Here some readers found its tricksiness to be a bit self-regarding. Its quite outdone by his new novel, though, which has also won prizes in France. The 7th Function of Language is a smart, spoof thriller, cheekily taking as its cast the most famous Parisian intellectuals on the scene in 1980, the year Roland Barthes was knocked down and killed by a delivery van, just after hed had lunch with Francois Mitterand, then a presidential candidate. Life is not a novel. Or at least you would like to believe so, the book begins gamesomely, before starting off with this scene, just as it took place except that in this book the accident is no accident. In the novel, Barthes is carrying with him a secret document in which the great linguistic theorist Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), who famously (in real life) distinguished the six functions of language, has described a seventh function, one giving those who know about it and can use it the most remarkable power of influence over others. Its this incredibly significant document that has got Barthes murdered and there are many dangerous factions competing to get their hands on it. There are cops and robbers, Bulgarian agents with poison umbrellas, Japanese protectors devoted to the memory of Barthes, gay hustlers and anarchist Italian students plus appearances by every French intellectual from the heyday of theory: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Bernard-Henri Levy... Set on the case by Mitterand is a tough police superintendant, Jacques Bayard, who, since he knows nothing of semiotics, recruits a young lecturer, Simon Herzog, expert at decoding signs in a frankly Sherlock Holmesian way. Together the pair uncover a Dan Brown-style ancient and global secret debating society, the Logos Club and they set off on an academic wild goose-chase that takes them all over, to Bologna, Cornell University in New York State, Venice Numerous outrages on reality are committed. Derrida is killed by ferocious dogs unleashed by the American linguistic philosopher John Searle, he of the performative utterance. Philippe Sollers is castrated for losing a high-flown debate, after uttering a series of idiotic puns, believing this to be the secret power. Morris Zapp jokily reappears from David Lodges campus novel Changing Places. Mitterand is elected after unexpectedly winning the presidential debate against Giscard dEstaing (which happened) after using the 7th function. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review Meanwhile, Simon intermittently complains about the kind of novel he finds himself in. So its all fun and games, ever so clever, and highly self-congratulatory for those of us who wasted years studying the abstruse and ultimately worthless theories of these French thinkers a couple of decades ago and never expected to have any use whatsoever for our knowledge of Signature, Event, Context and the like again. Now at least it gives us, if no wisdom or literary insight, deep background for this spoof. As a thriller, as a detective book, however, The 7th Function of Language soon palls, never even faintly credible. Binet evidently finds intellectual games and narrative trickery more intriguing than addressing the world we live in and in this he is the opposite of the contemporary he loftily despises, Michel Houellebecq. Binet says he likes being played with as a reader. Id say he likes playing with himself as a writer as well. For the girly gram Blush and Blow pedicure 197 New Kings Road, Chelsea. 0203 866 4569 Treatment: Luxury gel pedicure, 65 Salon vibe: Blush and Blow is a beautifully decorated salon in gorgeous pastel colours, complete with a lovely calm vibe that is perfect for a Saturday afternoon manicure. The staff were great too; my beautician Lorraine was lovely and chatty, and made me feel very relaxed and welcome during the treatment. The luxury gel pedicure consisted of a soothing foot bath, scrub and massage, before the CND Shellac gel colour is applied. Normally Im not a big fan of people touching my feet, but this was such an enjoyable experience, I didnt feel any discomfort at all. Great staff, great setting and, honestly, my toes have never looked this good. Amelia Heathman blushandblowlondon.com For the Spa lizards The Bvlgari Hotel Spa 171 Knightsbridge, SW7 1DW, 0207 151 1010 Treatment booked: Gel pedicure, 60 This 2000m spa is a super luxe oasis in the heart of Knightsbridge. The staff are experienced, friendly and attentive. Pedicures take place in the salon area with a good selection of drinks and magazines to enjoy as you sit back and relax in the very comfortable mani/pedi chair. The time flew by as I chatted to my fabulous beautician Javaughn. He took great care to ensure my nails were shaped to my liking with cuticle care and hard skin removal included. The OPI polish resulted in a smooth, shiny finish. I left feeling truly pampered. It is worth dedicating some time pre or post pedicure for a dip in the pool. Clad in textured Vicenza stone, it is the spa's piece de resistance. Amira Hashish bulgarihotels.com For the Germophobes London Grace Locations in Angel, Victoria, Canary Wharf, Clapham, Leicester Square, Marble Arch and Putney Treatment booked: Top Notch Gel Polish Pedicure, 42 Pedicures at London Graces light and bright nail bars come dry-only that means germophobes need not fear bacteria-breeding waterbaths, the eco-conscious can rest easy in the knowledge that London Grace are saving over 100 litres of water a week, and your feet still walk off supple and finely finished with either shellac or polish. Your feet may stay dry, but your evening need not each location has a well-stocked bar offering coffee, cocktails and even champagne. Ailis Brennan Londongrace.co.uk For the Meghan stalkers Nails & Brows 31 Berkeley Street, Mayfair, 020 7499 5245 Treatment booked: Signature Pedicure, 69 Its rumoured to be Meghan Markles beauty salon of choice and set on Mayfairs Berkeley Street, just across the park from Clarence House and Buckingham Palace, the location is certainly good enough for a Duchess. The vibe inside is relaxed, friendly and unpretentious. I had the Signature Pedicure which, to my joy, included a heavenly foot massage. My nails were trimmed and filed, cuticles tidied up and horrid, hard skin buffed away. They use Margaret Dabbs wax to soften your feet and I was so taken with it I bought a tub (20). Nails & Brows offer CND Creative Play, Kure Bazaar and Essie nail polishes. I opted for a dark mauve colour and two weeks later its still going strong. Suzannah Ramsdale Nailsandbrows.me For the problem feet Margaret Dabbs 7 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, 020 7487 5510 Treatment booked: Medical Pedicure, 85 (or 125 with Dabbs herself) Sore? Knobbly? Dryer than the Atacama? If these are words that best summarise the state of your tootsies, you want to hot foot it (sorry) down to Margaret Dabbs stat. Cornering the niche between luxury beauty salon and uber-professional podiatrist, the Margaret Dabbs clinics (located in Marylebone, Notting Hill and within Libertys) are the gold standard when it comes to medical grade pedicures. The first half of the treatment is spent sat with a white-coated podiatrist as they scalpel and soothe your feet, then you skip (light as air!) to the beauty therapists chair where she paints with precision. Guaranteed you'll leave feeling truly cured with a pain-free spring in your step. Chloe Street Margaretdabbs.co.uk For the blow and go Dry By 74 Mortimer St, Marylebone, London W1W 7RZ. 0207 637 9477 Treatment booked: Deep Pedicure, 125 Dry By is spread over two floors, so if you need a blow dry, you can easily kill two birds with one stone at the hair salon on the upper level. The downstairs, however, is where the manicures and pedicures take place and is designed in a refined and elegant modern style with marble decor. The pedicure station is in the cosy corner of the room with big chair and a pregnancy-style pillow for each person that is so comfortable, you could easily fall asleep. We opted for the signature pedicure with all the trimmings. The experience begins with a shaping, followed by a foot exfoliation with a marine salt scrub and a massage, finishing finally with the actual painting. The salon has a buzzing atmosphere with extremely friendly staff and the paint job is still in perfect shape, even after two weeks. Ellie Davis DryBy.co.uk For the zen seekers Coco Nail Bar 267 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, W11 1LR Treatment: Luxury hot stone pedicure, 58 Coco Nail Bar, located in the heart of Portobello Road, rightly has a reputation for offering some of the most relaxing pedicures in London. From the minute you plonk your tootsies into a warm foot bath, youre in for a gloriously indulgent treat, with massage chairs and a delicious cocktail menu all adding to an experience of ultimate zen. The lovely staff are keen to give customers a treat and my beautician Renee provided plenty of useful skincare advice. The hot stone pedicure uses heated stones to release tension in your tired feet, leaving you ready to bounce back and take on the world. Youll also get a full cleanse and polish, so your feet will feel fresh and look fantastic too. Jessie Thompson coconailbar.com For the vintage-loving vegans Painted Lady 65 Redchurch St, London E2 7DJ, 020 7729 2154 Treatment booked: Vegan pedicure, 42 Tucked away on East Londons Redchurch St, The Painted Lady forgoes typical nail salon vibes in place of something wholly bespoke, think vintage furniture and hand-carried foot baths instead of bucket chairs and whirlpools. The newly acquired Vegan gel nail polish range is just as tough as Shellac and radically vibrant, 10 days post pedicure and not a single chip. Staff treat you more like an old friend thats stopped by, rather than just a pair a feet in a queue, its personalised service with artistic flair and a fine place to pamper yourself. Jessica Reynolds Thepaintedladylondon.com For the Soho House set Cowshed, Primrose Hill 115-117 Regents Park Road, London, NW1 8UR - 020 3725 2777 Treatment booked: Ultimate Cowshed, 70 The Cowshed Primrose Hill, one of five London outposts from the Soho House spa group, feels like a real escape. The salon is bright and rustic with its white panelled walls and plush armchairs. The Ultimate Cowshed is a real indulgent experience with the full works included: bath, exfoliation, mask, foot massage and polish. You even get a head and shoulder massage thrown in while the mask works its magic. With a cafe right next door, you can tuck into a cuppa and croissant while your toes are painted with Cowsheds sister brand, Cheeky. I walked out on a cloud, my feet softer than theyve been in months and, a week later, the nails look as good as new. Zoe Paskett cowshed.com T hat this is no ordinary city is clear the moment you arrive at Madrid Barajas Airport, where youre met by the undulating roof of Antonio Lamela and Richard Rogers award-winning design. And so it continues: from phenomenal art to innovative cuisine, Madrid fuses heavyweight cultural credentials with modernity and urban nonchalance. Restaurants are buzzing but not overfull, museums busy but not crowded. Whats left is a supremely liveable city. Where to stay Gran Melia Palacio de los Duques In the 19th century the building that now houses the wonderful Gran Melia Palacio de los Duques was home to the art-loving Dukes of Granada de Ega y Villahermosa, who donated a portrait by the 17th-century great Velazquez to the Prado Museum. The Velazquez link is felt everywhere thanks to the huge reproductions of his work adorning the walls. Located within walking distance of the main sights and shopping areas, its a destination in itself thanks to the presence of the excellent DOS CIELOS restaurant from celebrated chefs, Javier and Sergio Torres. Theres also a rooftop bar with unrivalled views and a brilliant spa offering specialist Thai treatments ideal for the pre-dinner lull. Rooms from 380 (melia.com) Where to shop Madrilenos are seriously stylish and have the shops to match, from the blockbuster stores of chichi Salamanca (including the biggest, best-stocked Zara youve ever seen) to the quirky independents of Justicia. There youll find concept store PINKOCO, selling colourful homewares, and MARGARITA SE LLAMA MI AMOR, a florist with such beautiful displays youll have no choice but to stop and take at least half a dozen photos. PINKOCO Where to drink Never mind the stalls its the rooftop bar that makes Madrids MERCADO SAN ANTON unmissable. Come early evening, its heaving. Order a sangria (yes, really) and take in the views over the buzzing Chueca district. Then head to the quietly glamorous bar cock, a gleaming nearby cocktail bar in a former brothel. What to eat Whether nibbling on rock-star chef David Munozs high-concept fare at DiverXO or tucking into perfect steak at the down-home Casa Paco, you could devote an entire trip to eating. A highlight is sala de despiece, a no-reservation spot in the northern Chamberi neighbourhood. Sit at the bar and feast on thin layers of beef rolled up with truffle and tomato relish, grilled prawns and octopus with chimichurri. Arrive early or risk missing a spot. What to do and see Madrids museums are among the best in the world. The Prado is the headline act, stuffed with work by Velazquez (a recurring theme) and Francisco Goya. The Reina Sofia is another must; its home to Picassos Guernica, a visual sucker punch no matter how many times youve seen it reproduced. Elsewhere, take a stroll around the elegant El Retiro Park and, on Sunday, make like a local and dive into the cheerful chaos of the El Rastro flea market. C raft can sometimes feel like the neglected sibling of design. Makers tend to work quietly behind the scenes, and rarely receive the recognition they deserve. London Craft Week, a citywide celebration from 3-7 May, seeks to correct this injustice. With more than 230 workshops, demonstrations and talks, it will bring the unsung heroes of craft into the spotlight. British craft stands front and centre, with a particularly strong showing from the fashion industry. Burberry is bringing out its artisans to explain the manufacturing of the signature trench coat, while Alfred Dunhill will open the doors to its leather workshop in Walthamstow. Elsewhere, designers Anya Hindmarch and Hussein Chalayan are giving talks on how they work with craftsmen, and the tailors of Savile Row are coordinating their windows to display individual pieces of an outfit that they have jointly produced for Jimmy Beaumont, a fictional 1920s character. Offerings from other disciplines are just as alluring. Aston Martin is running a clay-modelling demonstration, while Plymouth-based Princess Yachts is showing the work of its furniture and metalworking teams. The Geffrye Museum is being taken over by upholsterer Second Sitters, which will put on an exhibition showcasing its industry and the St Bride Foundation has a three-day workshop on hand bookbinding and heritage printing. On the more contemporary end of the spectrum, Heatherwick Studio is organising a talk on digital fabrication methods, including laser-cutting, CNC routing and 3D printing. More eclectic programming includes a display of props from the recent blockbuster Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and a dessert-making session led by the executive pastry chef at Hotel Cafe Royal. This is supplemented by a wealth of international content, including demonstrations in watchmaking, glassblowing and Kintsugi the Japanese art of restoring broken items with lacquer and gold. Georg Jensen is bringing over a master silversmith from Copenhagen, while Swedish restaurant Aquavit is hosting a dinner using tableware by three Nordic ceramicists. There are store installations at Skandium and Bang & Olufsen (the latter by artist Rita Parniczky, offering an immersive experience based on the five senses). And at Carl Hansen & Sn, theres an exhibition of early work by the Danish designer Hans Wegner. I am most intrigued by the guitar-making demonstration by Spanish craftsman Felipe Conde, which precedes a recital by the flamenco guitar legend Juan Martin. What better way to celebrate craft than to observe the process of creation before admiring its results? The building Built in 1776 by Sir Robert Taylor, Ely House has served as a bishops palace, private members club and antiques showroom. It reopens this month as the London gallery of Austrian contemporary art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, with interiors restored by New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf. The opening shows include early work by Gilbert & George, sculpture by German conceptualist Joseph Beuys, and a new acoustic installation by rising star Oliver Beer. (ropac.net) The person Getty Images Sculptor Rowan Mersh works predominantly with seashells, which he painstakingly assembles into intricate patterns. His ethereal works can soon be seen at his first solo show, Praeteritum, Praesens et Futurum, opening at Gallery Fumi on 19 May. This will also be Fumis first exhibition since moving from Hoxton Square to Mayfairs Hay Hill, where it will neighbour contemporary design stalwart Galerie Kreo. (galleryfumi.com) The object Architect David Adjaye has made his first foray into acoustic design with the MA770, a concrete speaker for Master & Dynamic. It has a distinctive, sculptural appearance, with a clean rectangular front and a gracefully sloped back formed of a faceted triangle. Its material innovations include titanium tweeter domes, woven Kevlar woofers and diamond-cut aluminium controls, all intended to deliver an intimate user experience. 1,600 (masterdynamic.co.uk) The experience Following on from its mega-hit, multisensory show on Sixties culture, You Say You Want a Revolution?, the V&A is about to dedicate an entire exhibition to Pink Floyd. Opening on 13 May, this will be the rock bands first international retrospective. In addition to more than 350 artifacts, including cover art, instruments, posters and architectural drawings, there will also be previously unseen concert footage as well as a newly created laser light show. Tickets 20 (vam.ac.uk) E lection hacks, the sort that dont bother GCHQ, are largely benign. Theyre app- and website-led tools designed to make decisions, rather than the electoral roll, easier to decode. For partisan voters exhausted by austerity government, the Tactical 2017 website works to encourage strategic voting to unseat the Conservatives. Type in your constituency and it tells you which non-Tory has the best chance where you live. Our voting system is so imbalanced it is vital that people are as well-informed as possible, both about the parties and the voting system, says spokesperson Becky Snowden. With access to this info in our phones, we literally have the power to bring about change in our hands. Meanwhile, Voting Counts, a website set up by student Rachael Farrington, sets out to extract content from a variety of sources, collating, rewriting and simplifying it, free of bias. We try to help young adults compare the main party policies, enabling them to make their own decisions uninfluenced by friends and family, says Farrington. All our content is written by young adults. This means were not patronising, nor is our content full of jargon. The Daily Election, an online polling app for IoS and Android, is also looking to millennials, gamifying the experience. Topical questions see you climb levels from Pleb (a nod to Andrew Mitchell) to Prime Minister. Youre having fun but youre also signalling your voting intentions. Theres even a Tinder for politics, Voter, which lets you swipe yes or no politicians to match interests. The future looks selfie-centred. Smartmatic believes its facial recognition software is more secure than most online banking or shopping systems. Voters log in to their app with a selfie, which reads their biometric data, and is combined with a government-issued ID card to create a digital identity. Users can then cast their vote remotely from anywhere as long as theyve got signal. While Whitehall says the paper ballot system is most secure, your vote needs to be informed. Reaping the benefits of the information age seems a no-brainer. Follow Samuel Fishwick on Twitter: @Fish_o_wick I n light of the recent news that girls in the UK are regularly missing school because they cannot afford sanitary protection, a tampon brand has pledged to give away all of its profits to empower women in need. OneSqin, an organic cotton tampon brand based in London, has launched a Kickstarter in the hopes of raising 20,000 to provide life-changing education and essential items for girls in need across the globe. The social enterprise is the worlds first health and beauty brand to give 100 per cent of its profits to disadvantaged women. The company says that simply by switching tampon brand, conscious women in the UK can help lift girls across the world out of poverty. The brand also believes that choosing its organic cotton tampons can also benefit customers, as they are made with toxin-free cotton. Tampons can be made of cotton or rayon, but manufacturers are not required to list all the additional chemicals added during manufacturing, the Kickstarter says. So its impossible to know exactly what you are putting in your body. Loading.... The brand will invest the money raised into projects like sponsoring girls in Tanzania to attend the SEGA school, through the non-profit organisation NurturingMindsInAfrica.org. "The SEGA students are vulnerable girls, who have left school before completing their primary education (up to 7th grade)", OneSqin say. "Some have lost their parents to malaria, AIDS or other diseases; some can't afford uniforms, books or transport to traditional government schools; some work to support themselves and their families and have no time to attend school." Luxuries equivalent to the 18k women spend on periods in a lifetime 1 /8 Luxuries equivalent to the 18k women spend on periods in a lifetime 20 Mulberry Bayswater bags Alexa Chungs favourite handbag in a classic oak hue costs a splurge-worthy 895 to buy - but you could buy 20 with your 18k budget Getty A night in the Apartment at The Connaught, London If youre looking for a less practical luxury to splurge your money on, you could blow it all on a night at Mayfair's premier penthouse suite - with lofty living spaces, a luxury four-poster bed and roaring fires to boot. A Tiffany engagement ring (with 5000 spare to spend on the wedding band) A refund on a lifetime of sanitary products is equivalent to being able to buy Tiffany's Soleste ring - a brilliant diamond encircled by a double row of bead-set diamonds... with a cool 5K to spare on a complementary wedding ring. Tiffany A Bente 24 boat Doing away with periods for good could get you your own personal Bente boat. Sailing around the coast or making a lifetime of trips to Boots? We know which one wed choose... Bente 25 Iphone 6 Plus handsets Liable to losing your phone? you can buy 25 32G iPhone 6 Plus back up handsets with change to spare. Getty A Tibetan Mastiff and Samoyed puppy (two of the worlds most expensive breeds) 18k will get you two of the most and expensive and coveted breeds in the world - a Tibetan Mastiff can cost up to 7,000 while a thoroughbred Samoyed can set you back 10,000. Getty The first round of profits will be used to fund the first production run of the tampons, and a natural all-purpose skin cream. If OneSqin can reach its target, it says development will begin on a full range of skincare and personal hygiene products that includes panty liners, pads and menstrual cups. OneSqin products are available to order online, worldwide. Anyone can pledge to kck.st right now, and help the movement take off. O nce known simply as the sleepy, wine industry capital of France, Bordeaux has undergone an architectural and cultural regeneration in recent years. While wine still plays a major part in its appeal, the southwest city has become a hub for artists and foodies thanks to its growing art scene, street markets and abundance of Michelin-star restaurants. Parisians already flock to the city in the summer months, and now the world is finally starting to catch up. Here are 10 reasons why Bordeaux is the perfect mini-break destination this year: 1. The architecture Strolling the streets of Bordeaux Dubbed the Paris of the southwest, Bordeaux is a mix of old and new in more ways than one. Parisian influences are strong in the large, white brick buildings and winding streets and half the city is UNESCO-listed thanks to its jaw-dropping 15th and 16th century monuments. But because of the recent rejuvenation, modern structures have started to spring up all over the city. One of the best ways to experience Bordeaux is simply to stroll through the streets, taking in the impressive Grand Theatre de Bordeaux, Place de la Bourse and Les Alees de Touny stopping off in coffee shop or two along the way. 2. Wine, wine and more wine Bordeaux hasnt been dubbed the wine capital of the world for nothing and the influence of the citys biggest industry is obvious at almost every turn. Every street you walk down has a well-stocked wine bar or shop, while every cafe or restaurant will have its own extensive wine list to accompany every meal. A wine-tasting evening is never difficult to find and some companies even run special wine-walking tours of the city. Food and wine at Logis Stop by La Brasserie Bordelaise for a plate of beef carpaccio and a glass of one of its 700 different wines - and dont forget to check out the impressive cellar on the way out. 3. Foodie heaven Some of the country's best chefs have relocated from Paris to Bordeaux over the last few years, making it a real destination for food lovers. Gordon Ramsay has not one but two impressive restaurants in the InterContinental Bordeaux - Le Grand Hotel, smack bang in the middle of the city. Try his innovative take on snails at the Le Bordeaux Gordon Ramsay Brasserie and then prepare to have your socks completely knocked off with his taster menu Le Pressoir dArgent. 4. Caneles If Michelin-star restaurants are a bit out of your price range, then pick up a box of Caneles for lunch. The small rum and vanilla-flavoured French pastries are Bordeauxs speciality and can be found in every bakery, patisserie and food store you pass. 5. The water mirror One of Bordeauxs most impressive (and Instagram-friendly) attractions is the Miroir des Quais at the Place de la Bourse. Tourists and locals alike flock to the see the worlds largest reflecting pool, made up of large granite slabs covered in a thin layer of water. At various times of the day the water perfectly reflects the surrounding buildings and creates a fog effect every 15 minutes. 6. All about the arts Inside the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design If youre into art then Bordeaux is most definitely the city for you. As well as small galleries and street-side pop up spaces around every corner you turn, big name curators are making the city their own. Constance Rubini recently took over as Director of the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, which boldly mixes 15th century design with contemporary pieces, making it a must-see stop off. 7. Saint-Emilion A 45-minute drive from the city centre leads you straight into wine country and the picturesque town of Saint-Emilion. Chateau Angelus, run by Stephanie de Bouard, is on the outskirts of the town and offers an insight into how some of the worlds best wine is produced. If you fancy embracing your inner Bond, then pick up a bottle of the Premier Grand Cru Classe - as sipped by Daniel Craig in Spectre. Stop for lunch at Logis de la Cadene just dont forget to book. 8. Flea markets Bordeaux Flea Market / Shutterstock If picking up bric-a-brac or a bargain or two is more your thing, then Bordeauxs flea markets are sure to impress. Embrace the citys bohemian vibe at at the market St-Michel district, which runs daily expect for Monday and Saturday. Vintage clothes, old records and even furniture (if you can fit it in your suitcase). The top 25 cheapest city breaks in Europe 1 /33 The top 25 cheapest city breaks in Europe Bratislava, Slovakia Typical price per night: 36 Shutterstock Athens, Greece Typical price per night: 36 Milos Bicanski/Getty Images Vilnius, Lithuania Typical price per night: 35 Maciej Lulko/Flickr Istanbul, Turkey Typical price per night: 27 Chris McGrath/Getty Images Belgrade, Serbia Typical price per night: 27 Shutterstock Wrocaw, Poland Typical price per night: 32 Janek SkarzynskiFP/Getty Images Toulouse, France Typical price per night: 36.50 Rob DeGraff/Flickr Ljubljana, Slovenia Typical price per night: 36.50 Pedro Szekely/Flickr Thessaloniki, Greece Typical price per night: 28 Shutterstock Zadar, Croatia Typical price per night: 36.50 Min Zhou/Flickr Riga, Latvia Typical price per night: 36.50 AFP/Getty Images Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria Typical price per night: 33 Shutterstock Sofia, Bulgaria Typical price per night: 28 Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Tbilisi, Georgia Typical price per night: 24 Shutterstock Nantes, France Typical price per night: 38 AFP/Getty Images Palermo, Sicily Typical price per night: 36.50 Shutterstock Budapest, Hungary Typical price per night: 36 GLars Baron/Getty Images Catania, Sicily Typical price per night: 35 Carlos Bustamante Restrepo/Flickr Leipzig, Germany Typical price per night: 32.50 Shutterstock Krakow, Poland Typical price per night: 32 Jan Kucharzyk/Getty Images Zagreb, Croatia Typical price per night: 32 Shutterstock Saint Petersburg, Russia Typical price per night: 28.50 Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images Bucharest, Romania Typical price per night: 28 Shutterstock Warsaw, Poland Typical price per night: 32 Shutterstock Kiev, Ukraine Typical price per night: 28.50 Marco Verch/Flickr 9. Stylish hotels Bordeaux has everything to offer including budget stays, Airbnbs and large hotels.The InterContinental Bordeaux - Le Grand Hotel does laid-back luxury well, with rich interiors, spacious rooms and even a roof top hot tub to while away summer evenings in. The rooftop at the InterContinental If youre looking for a more boutique option, try out the La Maison Bordeaux or L'Hotel Particulier. 10. It's easy to get to You can fly from Gatwick to Bordeaux in under an hour and a half, meaning that a short weekend trip is no bother at all. British Airways flies to the city, as does EasyJet. Eurostar recently announced plans to run a train straight from London to Bordeaux, which would take just four hours. Stephanie de Bouard-Rivoal and Constance Rubini both feature in the InterContinental Stories of the InterContinental Life campaign, see more here: http://life.intercontinental.com I t used to be overlooked in favour of Lisbon, but slowly and surely, Porto is putting itself on the city break map. And with Monarch's new flight route from Luton to Porto launching this week, there's never been a better time to visit this sun-soaked and wine-drenched city. London restaurateur Max Graham, who has just launched Bar Douro in London Bridge and is from one of Portugal's famous port families, was born in Porto - so who better to recommend where to be fed and watered in the city. "Five years ago, the word grungy might have best described this industrial port, today Porto is full of colour and life," says Graham. "Quaint cobbled streets lined with blue and white azulejo tiles offer a stunning backdrop to a buzzing city, with a new wave of restaurants, bars and boutique hotels serving the growing demand of tourism." Here he recommends his favourite spots to eat and drink in Portugal's second city. (Dom Peixe ) / Dom Pexie On the unassuming Rua Herois de Franca, by the docks in Matosinhos, you will find a strip of tascas grilling the freshest fish over charcoal. Dom Peixe is a perfect spot for dinner; serving char-grilled octopus, turbot and seabass straight from the cold Atlantic waters. Start with some Ameijoas a Bulhao Pato, clams in a white wine coriander sauce. (Dom Pexie ) / Dom Pexie On the same road is Salta-O-Muro, my personal favourite, serving up the daily catch in a rustic no nonsense approach. Pan fried dover sole with punched new potatoes dressed in parsley is perfectly complimented by a glass of cold vinho verde. Rua Herois de Franca, 241, 4450-158 Matosinhos, Portugal Casa Guedes For the best Sandes de Pernil in town head to Casa Guedes on Praca dos Poveiros. The understated tiled tasca is the perfect spot for lunch. Order the pork sandwich with creamy serra cheese washed down with a fino (small beer) of super bock. Get there early as there can be a queue but a perfect place to watch Porto city life go by. Praca dos Poveiros 130, 4000-098 Porto, Portugal Reitoria This is a great little restaurant just off the charming Praca dos Leoes in the centre of town. Downstairs is a tapas bar where they serve delicious focaccia sandwiches. The upstairs steakhouse focuses on different cuts of beef including the intense 32 day matured Boi Velha. It has a great atmosphere and the perfect place to kick off the night before crawling the bars along the Galerias de Paris. R. de Sa de Noronha 33, 4050-159 Porto, Portugal Padaria Ribeiro You can find a Pasteleria pastry shop on most streets in Porto serving up an array of indulgent, eggy custard cakes and pastries. The traditional Paderia Ribeiro serves some of the best pastries in Porto including the mouthwatering doughnut - Bola de Berlim. For a pastel de nata head to Nata Lisboa on the Santa Catarina. Praca de Guilherme Gomes Fernandes 21, 4050 Porto, Portugal Porto - in pictures 1 /13 Porto - in pictures River tours on the Douro Rick Ligthelm/Flickr Serralves gardens, a green park that extends over 18 hectares involving the Museum of Contemporary Art Carmelitas Church, Porto Alessandro Grussu/Flickr A tram and a view of one of the streets in the historical center of the city of Porto Shutterstock Wine tasting, Calem, Porto, Portugal Emily Jackson/Flickr 'Torre dos Clerigos' (Clerics Tower), part of the Clerigos Church, is monumental bell tower 75 meters high and one of the most characteristic symbols of Porto Shutterstock Opened in 1916, the Sao Bento train station in Porto, the second largest city in Portugal, is decorated with blue and white azulejo tile panels Shutterstock Art Deco architecture of the two former garages "Garagem" dating back to the 30s. Now converted into the Coliseu do Porto with a second concert hall facing it in the street Rua de Passos Manuel. - Portugal, area of Porto, North of Portugal, historic province between Douro and Minho Andia/UIG via Getty Images Rosa et Al townhouse hotel in Porto (Yeatman Hotel ) / Yeatman Hotel Its hard to beat the views from the Yeatman Hotel, particularly with a white port and tonic in hand. If budget allows, dine at the two star Michelin restaurant headed by Executive Chef Ricardo Costa. Alternatively, Praia de luz in Foz is a perfect spot to watch the sun set over the Atlantic. Rua do Choupelo, 4400-088 Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal Max Graham is the owner of Bar Douro in London Bridge - find out more here. I n Portland, deciding what to drink is no easy task. Not only are there more than 70 locally owned breweries, there are also hundreds of independent coffee shops, an urban winery collective, an area called Distillery Row where micro-liquors are crafted from regional ingredients, and even tea bars that pour kegged hot beverages on tap. And this summer, you can explore them all as Delta Air Lines launches the first ever non-stop flights to Portland from the UK in partnership with Virgin Atlantic - taking off from London Heathrow from 26 May. Why is Portland the craft drinks capital of the world? Portlanders are renowned for their pioneering spirit - the city is a counterculture hub that favours local firms over big enterprise. And the natural bounty of Oregon means small businesses have easy access to top-quality ingredients - the region is famous for its farm produce and is the second-largest hop-growing state in the US. But with so much choice it can seem hard to know where to start. Handily, Portland also offers lots of opportunities to go behind the scenes with small-batch drinks-makers. Youll be an expert in no time. Take a beer tour An organised brewery tour is a great way to get to know Portlands beer scene - the city has the most breweries per person in the country. Most tours will introduce you to a mix of older and newer brewers, such as Portlands first, Bridgeport, founded in 1984, and Hopworks, which specialises in sustainable and organic beers. Youll get an education in the science of beer, as well as plenty of tasters. Know your craft coffee In 1999, independent coffee roaster Stumptown was founded in Portland, and changed coffee forever. Helping usher in coffees third wave, it swapped coffee chain culture for indie shops that roasted their own beans, experimented with new brewing methods and prized close relationships with farmers. Local, small-batch roasters have now popped up all over Portland, and a coffee tour can help you sample the best. These typically include watching beans being hand-roasted, participating in a coffee cupping (the way professionals evaluate coffee), and learning the difference between the likes of Chemex and aeropress. Try a cocktail class As well as opening their doors for drop-in tastings on weekends, many of Portlands microdistilleries put on classes and special events so you can get hands-on with their craft spirits. From whiskey-making with New Deal, to pop-up parties featuring live music, food and cocktails hosted by Distillery Row, its easy to get involved. Visit a tasting room From coffee cider at Reverend Nats, to specialist tea flights at Steven Smith Teamaker, many of Portlands craft drinks-makers have tasting rooms on their premises. That includes the urban winery scene, too, such as at the Hip Chicks Do Wine warehouse in the trendy Southeast. Bottoms up. Visit delta.com and make summer 2017 the time to get a taste of Portland Marine A who was jailed for shooting dead an injured Taliban fighter will walk free from prison on Friday, campaigners said, Royal Marine Alexander Blackman was originally convicted of murder but this was quashed by the Court Martial Appeal Court and replaced with diminished responsibility manslaughter last month. Now the commando, who has spent more than three years in prison for the shooting in 2011, will leave Erlestoke Prison, near Devizes, Wiltshire. Five judges ruled that Blackman was suffering from an "abnormality of mental functioning" at the time of the incident in Afghanistan. Freed: Supporters of Alexander Blackman celebrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice / Dominic Lipinski/PA His sentence was reduced to seven years, meaning he could be freed within weeks - a decision his wife Claire Blackman described as "the moment that we have all been fighting hard for". The Justice for Marine A campaign group had repeatedly posted that the time and date of Blackman's release would not be made public due to "privacy and safety concerns". But in a statement posted on Facebook on Thursday afternoon, it said: "We are delighted to announce that Al will finally be released tomorrow after what has been a well fought battle by you all. Relieved: Claire Blackman (centre) with her legal team outside the High Court in London / EPA Blackman was convicted of murder at Bulford Court Martial in 2013 and jailed for life, with a minimum term of 10 years. This sentence was later reduced to eight years. His wife Claire led a campaign for Blackman to be released, which was taken up by the Daily Mail. In March, his conviction for murder was quashed and replaced with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Campaign: Claire Blackman (Dominic Lipinski/PA ) / Dominic Lipinski/PA During the original trial in 2013, Blackman was known only as Marine A and his identity was made public after his conviction. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice refused to comment on when Blackman will be released. The Court Martial Appeal Court found the killing was not a "cold-blooded execution" as the court martial concluded but the result of mental illness, an "adjustment disorder". Judges described Blackman as "an exemplary soldier" before his deployment to Afghanistan in March 2011 but said he had suffered from "exceptional stressors" during that tour. They found his ability to "form a rational judgment" was "substantially impaired". Blackman shot the insurgent, who had been seriously injured in an attack by an Apache helicopter, in the chest at close range with a 9mm pistol. He then quoted a phrase from Shakespeare - "shuffle off this mortal coil" - as the man convulsed and died in front of him. The judges concluded that Blackman should be dismissed from the Royal Marines but not with disgrace. CCTV footage charting an ISIS-inspired teenager's alleged plot to blow up commuters on the Tube was shown in court. Damon Smith was 19 when he allegedly packed a rucksack with explosives and deadly ball-bearing shrapnel and left it on a train on his journey to University. Had the device worked, it would have exploded just as people were being evacuated from the Jubilee Line platform at North Greenwich, jurors were told. Footage played in court shows Smith getting off the train at London Bridge, leaving behind his rucksack that a court heard was set to explode just minutes later. Damon Smith, 20, is the alleged bomb plot suspect / Twitter There were at least 10 passengers in the carriage at the time, some of whom spotted the unattended bag and reported it when they arrived at Canary Wharf. The court heard how Smith, now 20 years old, had a keen interest in Islam, guns, explosives and gambling. He collected pictures of extremists, including the alleged mastermind of the 2015 Paris terror attacks, a jury was told. After he was arrested, the autistic student, who moved to London from Devon in June last year, admitted making the device but claimed he only meant it to spew harmless smoke as a prank. CCTV still shows Damon Smith on the platform at London Bridge / PA An only child, Smith was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, an autistic condition which can affect the way he interacts with people and result in a lack of empathy. Before the Tube incident, Smith is said to have printed off an al Qaida article entitled Make A Bomb In The Kitchen Of Your Mom. He made notes in green ink before shredding the sheets of paper, jurors were told. It is alleged the London Metropolitan University student searched the web for an Islamic State magazine featuring an article about the bomb said to have brought down a Russian airliner in 2015. A shopping list for "pressure cooker bomb materials" was also allegedly found on an iPad ending in a note to "keep this a secret between me and Allah InspireTheBelievers". A court heard how the weapons-obsessed teenager plotted carnage in the capital when he planted a homemade bomb on the Tube / PA It contained nearly all the components used in the construction of the device found on the London Underground, including a 2 clock from Tesco and ball bearings described as "shrapnel". Smith boarded a train from Surrey Quays to Canada Water before getting on the westbound Jubilee Line, then going back on himself at Southwark. At 10.49am, the defendant got off at London Bridge leaving behind his rucksack containing the bomb set to explode minutes later at 11.02am. Cordoned off: The scene inside North Greenwich station (Daniel O'Mahony) / Daniel O'Mahony Smith, wearing a brown hoodie and jeans, was seen in the footage leafing through a text book as unsuspecting commuters sat nearby reading newspapers. The driver took the bag thinking it was lost property and carried on towards North Greenwich, prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC said. It was while he was en route to the next stop that the driver noticed wire poking out of a clock. Meanwhile, Smith went to his Holloway university campus and searched for articles for the incident when he got home later. Jurors were told of Smith's interest in poker, YouTube, Islam as well as guns, explosives and other weapons. 'Tube plot' suspect: Damon Smith / Twitter On his faith, Smith allegedly told police he was brought up Christian, but Islam was "more true". He denied being an extremist. A search of Smith's home in Rotherhithe, south London, uncovered a blank-firing self-loading pistol, a BB gun, both bought legally. A knuckleduster and a knife which he showed off in an online video was also found. Pictures were also recovered of Smith with guns, including one on a laptop labelled "2016 an Islamic State fighter". Smith watched YouTube videos on explosions and allegedly posted a picture of himself on Facebook in a Guy Fawkes mask holding handcuffs and a knuckleduster, jurors were told. He also posed next to an image of the Brussels-born Islamic terrorist alleged to have masterminded the attacks in Paris in November 2015, the court heard. Smith denies possession of an explosive substance with intent, contrary to the Explosive Substances Act 1883 but has admitted the lesser offence of perpetrating a bomb hoax. The trial was adjourned until Thursday. A jeweller who stabbed her abusive and controlling boyfriend to death broke down and wept in the dock today as an Old Bailey jury cleared her of murder. Elizabeth Hart-Browne, 27, stabbed her lover Stephen Rayner three times with a kitchen knife after years of emotional bullying and bouts of violence. As 25-year-old Rayner lay dying on the ground, Hart-Browne told police she had just killed the man I love but insisted her lover had his hands around her throat when she inflicted the fatal wound in self-defence. She laid bare the extent of his domestic abuse during an emotionally-wrought trial, telling jurors she was happy in the six-year relationship despite attacks and foul-mouthed abuse from her boyfriend. The stabbing, on September 17 last year, had eerie echoes of Helen Titcheners domestic abuse storyline in The Archers, and happened just five days after the character was acquitted of attempting to murder her partner Rob on the BBC Radio 4 show. At the Old Bailey today, Hart-Browne broke down in the dock and wept as a jury found her not guilty of murder after deliberating for nearly 15 hours. The court heard Rayner had repeatedly attacked Hart-Browne, a mother-of-two, during their turbulent relationship, accusing her of cheating on him and not being a good enough mother. She said Rayner had brandished a knife at her on several occasions, including an incident around 20 months before his death when he grabbed her hair and put the blade to her throat before she managed to wrestle the weapon away. Hart-Browne told how she had once hit him with her stiletto to defend herself when he grabbed her round the throat outside a nightclub. And she revealed how Rayner had knocked her unconscious by pushing her against a mirror while they were staying with her mother. Jurors were shown a stream of abusive text messages Rayner sent to Hart-Browne, accusing her of seeing other men behind his back and not being a fit mother in expletive-ridden rants. But instead of ending their relationship, Hart-Browne repeatedly begged for him to love her. In court she revealed she had taken out a life insurance policy, fearing that Rayner would kill her and her children would be left with nothing. She also told how Rayner had an obsession with Britain's most violent prisoner Charles Bronson. But while admitted their relationship had its ups and down, she insisted she was happy with Stephen. I have never been unhappy with our relationship. I didnt like what went on in our relationship at times, but I wasnt unhappy, she said. Hart-Browne, who was the assistant manager at Ernest Jones flagship jewellery store in the Westfield shopping centre, wept as she relived the night of Rayners death, at her flat in Nightingale Road, Acton. When she returned in the evening from a party, Rayner had already undressed for bed but an argument broke out. She said he did not like her texting other men and jealously believed she was having an affair. Fighting back tears, she described how Rayner grabbed her by the neck and pushed her up against a mirror just yards from where her young daughter was sleeping. Stephen started kicking and punching at me, I was trying to move so he couldnt catch me, she said. He had hold of my hair at one stage, I was telling him to stop. She said she grabbed the kitchen knife which was lying on the living room table, but had forgotten she was holding it when she inflicted the fatal neck wound. I was just trying to get him off me, I wanted him to stop, she said. I had forgotten I had it in my hand at that stage, I just wanted him to get off me. Hart-Browne said she followed Rayner outside and tried to stop the bleeding with her hands after he collapsed to the ground. I wish I had just gone inside and stayed quiet and then none of this would have happened, she told the court. I wish I had never said anything I wish I had just gone home and been quiet and gone to bed. Then he would still be here and our family would still be together. Prosecutors claimed Hart-Browne had stabbed her boyfriend in a jealous rage because she believed he was having an affair, putting emphasis on the fact she had been drinking champagne that evening and washed the knife after the stabbing. Hart-Browne said she wandered round in a daze following the stabbing and began to clean the flat, but said she could not remember washing the knife. She has been held in custody since the night of the stabbing and failed in a bid for bail during the court proceedings. She will now be hoping to be reunited with her children when she is released from prison. Hart-Browne, of Acton, denied murder. F acebooks cutting-edge facial recognition technology could help detectives track down Madeleine McCann, a former forensics expert has claimed. Retired detective chief inspector Mick Neville said the social network could be used to scan for pictures of Madeleine, 10 years after she vanished in Portugal. It comes after Assistant Met Commissioner Mark Rowley said there were "significant investigative avenues" of "great interest" to police. Madeleine, who was aged three at the time, vanished from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3 2007. Missing: Madeleine McCann / PA Mr Neville said Facebooks facial recognition technology would be able to identify anyone with the rare blemish seen in Madeleines right eye. Experts could then inspect all matching images. He told the Sun: There are still opportunities to find out what happened to Madeleine McCann through the use of images. If she was still alive and there is no proof she is not then by using a combined tactic of technology and people with advanced facial recognition skills you could potentially find where Madeleine is today. Plea: Gerry and Kate McCann / PA The retired police officer said it was highly likely that if Madeleine is still alive, there would be a digital image of her out there somewhere. Facebook maps peoples features on every picture and can automatically recognise faces. If an image search was carried out for females in an age range of three to 15 with this eye marking then you may only have a few hundred in the UK and tens of thousands worldwide, continued Mr Neville. It would be an easily manageable number to scan through. Madeleine McCann 10 years on: Detectives still pursuing critical leads Madeleines parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have vowed to "never give up" hope of finding their daughter, who would be 14 now. Last month the Home Office confirmed 85,000 was being given to police to cover operational costs from April to September. More than 11 million has been spent on the UKs inquiry so far. A husband who ran a hedge fund with his wife systematically bullied her to control her life, a court heard. Former Deutsche Bank derivatives expert Guy Mitchinson, 38, is accused of subjecting Alicia Vidler, 37, to assaults which escalated in violence over a seven-month period. He allegedly told Ms Vidler to travel by plane to attend meetings for their Mayfair-based hedge fund Castilium Capital despite debilitating arthritis that often forced her to use a wheelchair. He also forced her to take medication which had severe side effects, Isleworth crown court heard. Ms Vidler told the jury: Hed tell me before business meetings, Youre going to have to get through this, youre probably going to be crippled for life so you have to make this work. Guy did not like me being seen with crutches or a walking stick and Id leave them at reception. Flying makes it much worse, its very painful on the plane. Severe arthritis: Alicia Vidler / Tony Palmer/Square Mile News Caroline Paul, prosecuting, said: This trial is about a man systematically bullying his wife in order to control her. He sought to control her whole life, her work, her sleep pattern, her social life. His wife became his virtual prisoner and he began to interfere with her medical care, forcing her into taking a course of medication when the side effects were severe. "He wanted her to put more hours into the business when she was sick and in a wheelchair and to travel abroad when unwell. He insisted on knowing her precise movements and would call her three to four times an hour to check in on her and insisted knowing all the passwords to her electronic devices. Ms Vidler was an equity derivatives trader with Deutsche Bank in Sydney before moving to the UK, where she studied for a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College. Ms Vidler was allegedly attacked by her husband at the home she shared with him in central London / Tony Palmer/Square Mile News She worked for Merrill Lynch before the couple launched their own investment vehicle in 2012. Ms Paul said Mitchinsons violent behaviour escalated and he attacked her three times at their 3.4 million home in central London. She said: He would grab her wrists and ankles, causing great pain due to her arthritis. He would rip pillows and duvets away when she was trying to rest to cause her pain and to prevent her sleeping. During one row she tried to leave, the jury was told. Mr Mitchinson slammed the door with such force the handle detached and she was fearful and afraid for her safety, Ms Paul said. He pulled her back by her handbag strap, blocked the doorway and slammed her against the wall and repeatedly kicked her in the legs, causing bruising to her elbows and knees. Ms Vidler said the attack only halted when her husband was overcome with emotion. He broke down and threatened to kill himself, said Ms Paul. Ms Vidler told her GP about another alleged assault in July last year, and Mitchinson was arrested and questioned. Mitchinson claims the allegations have been invented as a way for his wife to get out of the marriage and business partnership. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of controlling or coercive behaviour between January 1 and July 23 last year. He also denies three counts of assaulting Ms Vidler at their home address on dates between January 10 and July 16. The trial continues. A teenager who plotted to blow up crowds in Oxford Street in a terrorist attack has pleaded guilty to terror offences. Haroon Ali Syed, 19, from west London, had ISIS as his PIN code for his mobile phone and was planning to detonate a nail bomb in the busy shopping street. The Hounslow man had tried to get bank loans to buy a machine gun, handguns, suicide vest and bomb but his applications were turned down. Instead he tried to source a bomb and made a special request for it to be packed with nails so he could detonate it somewhere busy like central London tourist spot Oxford Street. On Thursday Syed pleaded guilty to preparing for acts of terrorism between April 12 and September 9 last year contrary to the Terrorism Act 2006. He will be sentenced on June 8. The young man was arrested at his home and all of his electronic equipment was seized after a joint investigation by M15 and the Met Police. Commander Dean Haydon from the Mets counter terror squad, said: This is a prime example of how important the public are. It was information we received in respect of Syeds change of behaviour that meant we looked at him and our close working relationship with MI5 ensured that we uncovered his plot to kill and mutilate innocent members of the public. Two other men arrested at the same time were later released with no further action. A world-renowned heart surgeon has been found guilty of molesting women after groping and assaulting them at London hospitals. Mohamed Amrani, 53, who worked at the Harefield Hospital in west London, is on trial at the Old Bailey over accusations from five women between 2001 and 2014. The consultant, of Harrow, west London, denied all the claims against him. A jury deliberated for 20 hours to find him guilty of twice indecently assaulting a woman by groping her breasts through her clothes between 2003 and 2004 and sexually assaulting another woman in 2014. Surgeon: Amrani worked at the Harefield Hospital / Google Maps The court had heard how one victim had complained to the hospital about being indecently assaulted and was allegedly told "just ignore him, he does it to everyone". The NHS Trust was accused of trying to cover up the accusations and it was suggested that Amrani felt women would be too scared to report such assaults due to his medical reputation. The victims husband described it as "a pretty devastating event" in her life. He told the court she came home and was "very very upset", adding: "My wife told me she had been groped and I understood that to be touching her over her clothing in a sexual manner." Amrani was acquitted of four counts of indecent assault, two of assault by penetration and one of sexual assault. The jury were still deliberating on a charge of rape and were later sent home to resume on Friday morning. The consultant has performed a string of life-saving operations around the world and hit the headlines in 2007 when he performed the UK's first double heart valve replacement using keyhole surgery. T he mother of a moped theft suspect chased down by Hollywood superstar Tom Hardy has said she hopes her son will get the help he needs. The actor performed a citizen's arrest this week when he sprinted through the streets of Richmond before grabbing a 16-year-old who allegedly stole a moped. The mother of a boy who was arrested in connection with the incident told The Mirror her son had conditions including ADHD, conduct disorder and autism, and had no understanding of the world around him. She said: This isnt a scummy, naughty child. People with mental health issues need support and cry out for help in many different ways. She said: Im desperate for him to get the help he needs. The boy has been released on bail since his arrest. A teenager is in hospital after being stabbed in a knife attack in east London. Police were called at just before 6pm on Thursday to reports of a stabbing in Plumstead in Greenwich. They found an 18-year-old man had been stabbed on Herbert Road, near to the Co-Op shop and junction with Plumstead Common Road. Paramedics raced to the scene and took the teenager to a south London hospital. According to the Met Police, the victim remains in hospital but the extent of his injuries is not yet known. Police reportedly blocked off part of the road between Plumstead Common Road and Eglinton Road while they investigated. No one has yet been arrested and enquiries continue. A report released by police earlier this month found knife crime is soaring in London. According to year-on-year figures, last year saw a 24 per cent rise in the number of knife crime offences. A teenager faces jail after plotting a bomb attack on an Elton John concert in Hyde Park. Haroon Syed, 19, from Hounslow, pleaded guilty on Thursday at the Old Bailey to a charge of preparation of terrorist acts between April and September last year after a last-ditch attempt to get his case thrown out failed. The court heard how Syed tried to get weapons online, including a bomb vest or explosives, and trawled the web to find a busy area in the capital such as Oxford Circus to launch a mass casualty attack. Syed was caught chatting online with officers from the British Security Service who posed as a fellow extremist who could help him source the weapons. Judge Michael Topolski QC adjourned sentencing until June 8 for a probation and psychiatric report to be done. He said Syed faced a "discretionary life sentence". Syed pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey / Shutterstock As Syed was being drawn in by agents, his older brother was jailed for plotting an Islamic State-inspired Poppy Day attack. At an earlier hearing, the court heard how key evidence was gathered from Syed's communications with the fake contact Abu Yusuf via mobile phone and social media. Syed asked for "gear" for his "op" and when asked to give details, he said he needed a machine gun and an explosive vest "so after some damage with machine gun do martyrdom ... that's what I'm planning to do." When Abu Yusuf said it would be costly, the defendant told him he was "broke" but pressed on, saying: "You have to find out the price for the machine gun, any gun." Initially Syed cried off meeting his contact, complaining that he was being followed by police who will "have eyes on me if I come". An officer pretended to be Abu Yusuf when they did finally get together at a Costa Coffee in Slough and their conversation was taped. Throughout August, the discussions continued about making or getting a bomb and acquiring a gun, even though Syed confessed he had never used one before. On August 30, Syed stressed that he needed a "portable" device, saying: "I might put the bomb in the train and then I'm going to jump out so the bomb explodes on the train ... So ask the brother if he can make that type of bomb with button." Meanwhile, he researched targets and they arranged to pick up the bomb in exchange for 150 the following week. Syed asked Abu Yusuf to make sure there were lots of nails in it and added: "I was thinking of Oxford Street ... If I go to prison, I go to prison. If I die, I die, you understand." He searched the internet for IS, past terrorist attacks, and potential locations which included an Elton John concert in Hyde Park on September 11 last year. Police moved in to arrest the defendant at his home on September 8 and his phone was seized. Asked for the password to unlock the device, Syed said: "Yeah I.S.I.S - you like that?" In legal papers prepared for his defence, Syed was described as "highly vulnerable due to family history, lack of education, addiction to violent online games and the arrest and imprisonment of his brother". He was groomed by radicals online but he never intended to carry out an attack as his chats with the agent were a "fantasy to see how far it would go", according to his defence statement. Syed entered his guilty plea in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt to either get the case thrown out, or exclude the key evidence from the online chat. His lawyer Mark Summers QC argued he should have been given help by the Prevent de-radicalisation group rather than steered in the opposite direction. He said: "The proper response of the State should have been to engage Prevent to help this young man, to steer him away from the path it was feared he was going down, rather than guiding him down it." But the judge refused Mr Summers' application and instead offered an indication of what Syed's likely sentence would be if he admitted the offence, following a defence request. Last June, IS-inspired Nadir Syed, 23, also from Hounslow, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years after he was found guilty of plotting to carry out a Lee Rigby-style beheading around Remembrance Sunday in 2014. A specialist pickpocket squad which targets thieves operating on the London Underground is to be axed in a shake-up of policing on the railways. The so-called Dip Squad which has clocked up hundreds of arrests of pickpockets in recent years is to be disbanded at the end of the week. The move by British Transport Police echoes a decision last year to axe another specialist squad investigating sex attacks on the Tube. That decision was later reversed after outrage over the move when it was revealed by the Standard. Today British Transport Police said the Dip Squad was not getting disbanded as such but their work was being divided between two teams. A spokeswoman said: Well have a dedicated team of detectives responsible for investigating theft of passenger property in London and the South East. Well have six proactive teams in London, responsible for carrying out patrols to target offenders and reduce crime. Previously, all of this work was the responsibility of the Dip Squad. The specialist unit deploys officers in plain clothes who are trained to spot suspicious behaviour and who are expert at spotting the tactics and faces of the pickpocketing gangs. Police say there is an annual issue with pickpocket gangs arriving in London for the summer season and targeting particular events such as Wimbledon. During the 2012 Olympics, the force deployed uniform patrols to deter pickpocketing but also used the covert Dip Squad officers to spot the pickpocket gangs. Insiders say pickpockets are either home grown or from Eastern Europe with some gangs travelling from South America to target London. One source said : These are gangs that will turn up in Barcelona or Paris, they travel wherever there are rich pickings. The decision to disband the unit emerged on Twitter when the squad tweeted this week: We have just arrested a Dip #Holborn after we saw him steal a phone from a lone female. Could be our last one, I am going to miss this. However, the decision to axe the squad was greeted with concern on Twitter with one commentator saying: Bonkers to disband them. @btp declaring open season on commuters by professional pickpockets. Rory Geoghegan, a former Met officer and the head of criminal justice at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, said: Theft from passengers is BTPs single biggest crime problem in London and we know that proactive policing by the Met has cut pickpocketing above ground on Oxford Street by as much as 50 per cent. Its therefore alarming to see a further erosion of highly effective proactive policing in the capital. Last year a gang of pickpockets were jailed for a total of 30 years after making 5million from stealing mobile phones from commuters on the Tube. The 11 thieves earned almost 10,000 a day targeting commuters and police recovered 1,000 phones in raids on their homes. Ringleader Nawid Moshfiq, 39, of Brentford, West London, was handed five years at Blackfriars crown court. BTP said the decision to split the unit into two teams was part of a consultation document on a shake-up on policing the railways published last year. A teenage boy was today stabbed in a broad daylight street attack in south west London. Police rushed to Craneford Way in Twickenham at just before 12.50pm on Thursday following reports of an assault. When officers arrived they found a 17-year-old boy had been stabbed. Paramedics took him to a central London hospital. He is expected to survive but his injuries could be life-changing, the Met Police said. No one has yet been arrested and enquiries continue. One person on social media said the stabbing happened near to Richmond-upon-Thames College. According to the Richmond and Twickenham Times, the college said the incident had no link to the college or its students. Police said their enquiries are continuing and they have asked anyone with any information to get in touch. Witnesses or anyone with information about this incident can call police on 101, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. C elebrities have today expressed their horror after a 24-year-old man was knifed to death on their doorstep in a leafy, south London enclave. Model Imogen Thomas revealed she was petrified to sleep in her home after the victim was stabbed in the neck as he tried to escape an argument that broke out in the heart of Nappy Valley in Wandsworth Common. A passing Au Pair performed first aid on him but he was declared dead at the scene outside Wandsworth Preparatory School which costs 13,000 a year to attend at 7.30pm on Tuesday night. Forensics were still sweeping the scene last night digging up drains and cutting down bushes as they gathered more evidence. Emergency services: An ambulance at the scene of the stabbing / NIGEL HOWARD Former Big Brother contestent Imogen Thomas told of her shock of the killing as her home was cordoned off by police as part of the crime scene. She said on Twitter: [The murder was] literally on my door step. So sad. I was petrified sleeping last night. Thoughts are with the victims family. RIP. Shock: Imogen Thomas / Dave Benett Ready Steady Cook star Ainsley Harriott lives in a house overlooking the murder scene and said the killing had a devastating impact on his community. He told the Standard: Its devastating for us around here. We are a very close community and this is a shock to us all. There were police cars and emergency services all over the place. Stabbing in Wandsworth - the scene of the crime - London Live This knife crime has to stop, I dont know what can be done. Where do you start? If you stop kids carrying knives that may well not put an end to the violence. There are other weapons people can turn to. Its about education thats where it must start. Air ambulance: The helicopter landed near the scene after the stabbing in Wandsworth Wherever you live you have to stop and think, there seems to be another murder every day. We are all talking about this around here. We are very close knit, we are dog walkers and care about our community. This is just awful, awful, awful. A TV journalist, who didnt want to be named, said from his 2.5million house: Life really is cheap sometimes. Its shocking, I was upstairs when it happened and was waiting for it to be on the news. Its worrying you dont wish something like that on your worst enemy. We had that poor kid in Battersea nearby who was killed as well. It just seems never-ending at the moment. Police cordon: the scene in Wandsworth after the stabbing / NIGEL HOWARD The emergency services were excellent, I must say. Their response was phenomenal but sadly nothing could be done. It was upsetting to see him go in the ambulance with no-one with him. Its a sad reality but we just hope the killer is brought to justice. The murder comes days after Mohammed Hasan, 17, was hacked to death by a machete-wielding gang less than a mile away in a Battersea estate. The Met said it was too soon to make any link between the two deaths. Nobody has been arrested in connection with the attack in Wandsworth. Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. P oliticians have praised the bravery of police who tackled a "knifeman" close to Westminster and arrested him on suspicion of terror offences. The 27-year-old was carrying a rucksack containing at least three knives in Whitehall when he was detained on suspicion of terror offences "as part of an ongoing operation, police said. Thursdays incident took place just yards from where Khalid Masood launched a terror attack in March, murdering five people including PC Keith Palmer at the gates of Westminster. Tory MP James Cleverly, who knew PC Palmer, branded the actions of officers on Thursday awe-inspiring. He tweeted: Once again police officers here in Westminster rush to tackle a knife wielding attacker just a month after losing colleague Keith Palmer. Whitehall: Police arrested a man on suspicion of terror offences / AFP/Getty Images The bravery of these men and women is awe-inspiring, he added. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: Thanks to all officers who dealt swiftly & professionally with the incident in Whitehall. Terror: A man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of terror offences / Toby Melville/Reuters The Met Commissioner has briefed me on the arrest. Conservative MP David Mackintosh wrote: Glad nobody appears to be injured in Westminster today. Great work by @metpoliceuk once again. Whitehall 'Knifeman' incident - In pictures 1 /24 Whitehall 'Knifeman' incident - In pictures Tackled: Armed police surrounded the man Twitter/@3213dev Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on the ground on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty Images Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images Armed police talk to man at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Dominic Lipinski/PA Armed police talk to a man at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Yui Mok/PA A man is led away by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Yui Mok/PA A British police forensics officer (R) passes a knife to a colleague as they collect evidence on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images A man is held by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Knives on the ground at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Lauren Hurley/PA A bag and what appears to be at least one knife on the ground, being photographed by forensic officers Guido Fawkes Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Yui Mok/PA Video grab taken from BBC News of the scene in Westminster after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall, BBC A forensics investigator photographs knives on the ground after man in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Police at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Dominic Lipinski/PA Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on the ground on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images A man is held by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Kylie MacLellan/Reuters Police at the scene where a man has been arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London @inapposite/PA Thank you for keeping us safe. The bearded suspect, who was dressed in dark clothing, was wrestled to the ground on a traffic island at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall, close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. Images from the scene showed three knives and what appeared to be a mobile on the ground close to a brown rucksack. Probe: Forensics officer with a knife / AFP/Getty Images An officer in forensic overalls could be seen taking photographs of the knives. The suspect was detained at the scene for several minutes within view of journalists and passers by before he was eventually taken away in a police vehicle. AFP/Getty Images The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that he was held at approximately 2.22pm on Thursday by armed officers from the Specialist Firearms Command. It went on: "The 27-year-old man was arrested in Parliament Street, junction with Parliament Square, by armed officers from the Met's Specialist Firearms Command. "He was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. Knives have been recovered from him. "He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. "Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat." A car reversed into a cafe in front of shocked commuters at a busy south east London station this morning. Dramatic photos showed the vehicle with its rear embedded in the Aroma Cafe at Forest Hill station. Police were called to the scene, beside the staff car park, just before 7am. A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said no one was injured in the crash, despite pictures showing extensive damage to the shopfront. The London Fire Brigade were called just before 7.30am and the area was cordoned off. Crash: Emergency services were called / Cynthia Fasuyi A spokeswoman said: We sent two fire engines after reports of a car in collision with a shop. Nobody was trapped and nobody was injured. Commuter Cynthia Fasuyi told the Standard: "I saw emergency services rush towards Forest Hill Station at 7:20am this morning. "When I got there, two fire engines were present, a police vehicle and part of the station car park was cordoned off by the police.! The cafe opens at 6.30am every weekday, selling coffees and fried breakfasts to south east Londoners. O ne hundred protesters dressed as the Statue of Liberty as part of a mass protest against Donald Trumps immigration policy during his first 100 days in office. The Amnesty International activists gathered for a demonstration outside the US Embassy in London this morning, with signs reading refugees welcome and no ban, no wall. The protest was organised to mark the US President's first 100 days in office, which the Republican politician will celebrate on Saturday. During his tenure, he has already prompted international outrage for signing executive orders placing restrictions on immigrants from some Muslim-majority countries. Mr Trump has claimed the executive orders would help protect the country from terrorists. Protesters held up the Statue of Liberty's torch and covered their eyes / PA The US President has also pledged to follow through on his election promise of building a wall across the US border with Mexico. One hundred demonstrators dressed with the iconic green dress, torch and crown, using the landmarks symbolism as the gateway to America to chastise Mr Trumps policies. Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK director, said: In the space of just 100 days, President Trump has done untold damage to the USAs already less-than-perfect reputation for upholding human rights. If the Statue of Liberty stands for anything, it stands for a willingness to shelter people uprooted through war and intolerance. Its a crying shame that President Trumps administration cares so little for what the Statue of Liberty represents. One hundred people gathered to dress up as the iconic landmark in the anti-Trump protest / PA One protester read extracts from The New Colossus, an American sonnet by Emma Lazarus that was written to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. The first 100 days of a presidency are traditional analysed by US political commentators to look at its symbolic significance. Matching demonstrations were also held outside the US Consulate General in Northern Ireland and Scotland this morning. The US Embassy has been contacted for comment. T he Ministry of Justice spent more than 137,000 in just six months on utility bills for the closed Holloway Prison site, figures show. Once the largest womens jail in Europe, Holloway shut last summer and has been earmarked for a potential 2 billion housing development. Since it closed, the Government has spent 22,500 on gas, 66,000 on electricity, 23,500 on water and 25,500 on waste and other utility costs. The Ministry refused to reveal spending on site security, claiming disclosure would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the MoJ and its suppliers. The Government wants to sell the site as part of its overhaul of the prison service. Property sources believe offers of 200 million could be made for the land, thought to have potential for up to 5,000 homes. But campaigners want it to be used for the community rather than turned into luxury flats. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies obtained the figures via a Freedom of Information request. It advocates a peoples plan for the jail and today invited the public to give their views. Rebecca Roberts, co-ordinator of Community Plan for Holloway, said: Rather than selling to the highest bidder the ministry could put the local community first. A report by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies reveals high poverty and housing problems in Islington. Author Matt Ford said: Out of 326 local authorities in England it is the 24th most deprived and has the fourth highest rate of child poverty in the UK. The redevelopment of the Holloway site could offer a fantastic opportunity. The Ministry of Justice said no decision on its future had been made and heating, electricity and security was reduced to a level necessary to maintain the fabric of the buildings and protect the sites from intruders. A rmed police arrested a man on terror offences after he was found carrying "a bag of knives" in Westminster. Scotland Yard said a knifeman was tackled yards from the Houses of Parliament after a stop and search was carried out as part of an "ongoing operation". The man, 27, was detained on Parliament Street at just after 2.20pm, Scotland Yard said. Nobody was injured. It is thought the suspected terrorist's plot was foiled thanks to an "intelligence-led" joint operation by MI5 and counter-terrorism police. Photos shared on social media show a large carving knife lying on the pavement next to a smaller knife and a bag. Tackled: Armed police surrounded the man / Twitter/@3213dev Reports by eyewitnesses claimed the suspect had been carrying "a rucksack of knives". Luke William said he was driving past as police flooded the area. He told the Standard: There was a man being held against a wall by armed police. Police detain a man following the incident in Whitehall. / EPA On the floor was a backpack with knives falling out of it." He added: "It didn't look like anyone was being attacked. Whitehall 'Knifeman' incident - In pictures 1 /24 Whitehall 'Knifeman' incident - In pictures Tackled: Armed police surrounded the man Twitter/@3213dev Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on the ground on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty Images Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images Armed police talk to man at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Dominic Lipinski/PA Armed police talk to a man at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Yui Mok/PA A man is led away by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London Yui Mok/PA A British police forensics officer (R) passes a knife to a colleague as they collect evidence on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images A man is held by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Knives on the ground at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Lauren Hurley/PA A bag and what appears to be at least one knife on the ground, being photographed by forensic officers Guido Fawkes Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Yui Mok/PA Video grab taken from BBC News of the scene in Westminster after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall, BBC A forensics investigator photographs knives on the ground after man in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Toby Melville/Reuters Police at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall Dominic Lipinski/PA Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on the ground on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament AFP/Getty Images A man is held by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall Kylie MacLellan/Reuters Police at the scene where a man has been arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London @inapposite/PA Armed police descended on the area as the road, near to Westminster Bridge, was sealed off. Photos showed a police cordon surrounding the bag, which had been discarded on a road traffic island. Armed police were seen detaining the bearded suspect, who was dressed in dark clothing, before wrestling him to the ground. He was then seen pinned up against the wall of the HMRC offices being questioned by police before he was taken away in a police vehicle. A forensic officer dressed in blue overalls photographed the knives and bent down to closely inspect the weapons. A forensics officer photographing a discarded bag. / Guido Fawkes The Met Police said the man was arrested at 2.22pm at the junction with Parliament Square during a stop and search. Scotland Yard confirmed they found knives on him. Armed officers from the Met's special firearms squad arrested the man on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. He was detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. Suspect: A man aged 27 was detained by police. / Getty Images According to Reuters news agency, a security source said the suspect was known to counter-terrorism police and British intelligence. Prime Minister Theresa May was away from Number 10 on a campaign visit at the time of the incident on Thursday, which did not disrupt work in Downing Street, said a spokeswoman. The scene on Parliament Street at just after 2.30pm. / @inapposite "This is an ongoing police operation and we are monitoring it," said the Number 10 spokeswoman. "The Prime Minister has been informed by officials and she will be updated, as usual for incidents like this." Traffic was brought to a standstill northbound on Parliament Street as police detained the man. Police descended onto Parliament Street. / BBC Ian Moss told the Standard: I could see a person down on the floor in the middle traffic island. It looked like they were tending to him but kept him under cover of armed police. They later stood him up, handcuffed, and walked him over to the wall by HMRC. There were lots of armed police, 20 or so, unmarked and marked police cars. I was on a bus turning into Whitehall so was close to the incident but didnt see how it had started. Forensic officials inspecting the seized weapons / AFP/Getty Images I could see items on the floor, which I assumed was a weapon but was not close enough to see. The whole incident lasted about 10 to 15 minutes. Everyone was very calm. An employee at HMRC said the main entrance to their building at 100 Parliament Street has been closed. Police with the suspect against the wall of the HMRC offices. / Dominic Lipinski/PA Recruiters Harry Peasnell, 27, and Andy Burnage, 22, were leaving the adjacent building which houses various Government offices after a meeting with officials when they were told over the Tannoy the usual entrance on to Whitehall was closed. As they made their way back towards Parliament from the alternative House Guards Road entrance they said they were pushed back up Great George Street by several plain clothes police officers. They then made their way to Parliament Square where they said they saw a man in his 20s or 30s, who they thought was the suspect, being spoken to by police next to the wall of the offices. The man was taken away in a police vehicle. / Toby Melville/Reuters Mr Peasnell, who says he regularly has meetings in Westminster, said police were "quick on the scene" and that he was not worried like he was during the terror attack in the area just weeks ago. "Last time all the buildings were on lockdown and no one was allowed to leave," he said. The scare happened just yards from where Khalid Masood launched a terror attack in March which killed five, including PC Keith Palmer. The officer was stabbed to death as he carried out his duties on the cobbled forecourt of the Palace of Westminster. At around 4.15pm on Thursday, police started to open up the road. B oris Johnson has launched a scathing attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, branding him a benign Islingtonian herbivore who is a danger to the country. The Foreign Secretary blasted the leader of the Oppositions policy on nuclear weapons and Nato in one of the most savage attacks of the election campaign so far. He called Mr Corbyn a mutton-headed, old mugwump and warned against voting for him in the upcoming election in June. Writing in the Sun the former London Mayor, who himself lives in Islington, said: The biggest risk with Jeremy Corbyn is that people just dont get what a threat he really is. Jeremy Corbyn is fighting Theresa May to become the next Prime Minister / Sky News They watch his meandering and nonsensical questions and they feel a terrible twinge of human compassion. He went on: Have you ever thought the leader of the opposition is an essentially benign Islingtonian herbivore? Have you felt a pang of sympathy for his plight? If so, fight it. Mugwump is a native American term for a war leader, which was adopted in the 1880s to deride Republicans who put principles above party. Mr Johnson revealed his inspiration for the mugwump rempark was childrens author Roald Dahl. Its a long time since I read it, but I think its in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, he told ITV1s Good Morning Britain. I think Willy Wonka says it either to the parents of Violet Beauregarde or Augustus Gloop. In fact, the classic book records Mr Wonka addressing Mrs Bucket as my dear old muddleheaded mugwump. Mr Corbyn has faced criticism after his spokesman questioned Britain sending 800 troops to Estonia as part of a Nato taskforce to deter Russia. In an interview on Sunday, Mr Corbyn said he was against first use of nuclear weapons. The Labour Party has since insisted that it is committed to keeping the UK's nuclear deterrent and will include the policy in its manifesto. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said of Mr Johnson's intervention: "It seems Boris Johnson has finally been allowed out of hiding, on the condition he only talks delusional nonsense. "He talks up a fantastical vision of Britain as a global trading nation, yet he and Theresa May are putting at risk our trade with the EU - by far our largest trade partner - by threatening an extreme Brexit where we crash out on WTO terms. "With his crass and offensive remarks, Boris Johnson has single-handedly damaged Britain's chances of getting a good deal with the EU." B ritain would agree to a request from Donald Trump to join military action against the Syrian regime, Boris Johnson revealed today. The Foreign Secretary also said the Government would be prepared to act without waiting for a vote in the House of Commons if Bashar alAssads forces used illegal chemical weapons. I think it will be very difficult if the United States has a proposal to have some sort of action in response to a chemical weapons attack, he said on BBC radio. And if they come to us and ask for our support, whether its with submarine-based cruise missiles in the (Mediterranean), or whatever... it would be in my view, and I know this is also the view of the Prime Minister, it would be very difficult for us to say no. Asked if MPs would have to approve such action, Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4: I think that needs to be tested. America launched cruise missiles against a Syrian air base three weeks ago after evidence that Assads regime killed scores of people in a sarin-type gas attack on a rebel-held area in Idlib province. Britain is carrying out air strikes against Islamic State (IS) terrorists in Syria and Iraq but has not attacked the Assad regime since David Cameron lost a Commons vote in 2015. Mr Johnson was markedly less warlike over the stand-off with North Korea. He appealed for calm, clear heads and said military action against Pyongyang was not the way forward. He was travelling this afternoon to the United Nations in New York for talks on the nuclear crisis. President Trump is attempting to ramp up pressure on the regime of despot Kim Jong Un by deploying an anti-missile system and US troops in military exercises. The chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, told Congress: All options are on the table. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not to his knees. Mr Johnson said military action could result in huge and hideous reprisals against South Korea and believed it was not likely. He urged economic pressure instead. I think the military options are not good, he said. The best way forward ... is to keep a calm, clear head and to work particularly with Beijing to try to bring pressure on Pyongyang. Boris Johnson dismayed by Russian UN Syria veto German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Britons they are deluding themselves about hanging on to EU perks after Brexit. Striking a firm tone in a speech to the Bundestag she said: I must say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions - that would be wasted time. She was loudly applauded. She also warned that there could be no deal on a future relationship until questions about its exit have been cleared up including a financial agreement. Mr Johnson insisted Britain will not pay any divorce bill before substantive negotiations on future relations begin. EU leaders want the UK to agree to a 50 billion exit bill. He was challenged repeatedly during a round of media interviews about the Leave campaign claim that Britain can spend 350 million a week on the NHS after Brexit. The Foreign Secretary said parliament would have control over the money, but tacitly admitted it would not all go on health. A former member of anti-Islam group Pegida UK has been chosen as the Ukip candidate to fight a south London seat. Anne Marie Waters will fight Labours Heidi Alexander for the second time in Lewisham East after the pair went head to head at the last general election. Ms Waters, director of Sharia Watch UK, sparked outrage when she organised an exhibition of Prophet Mohammed cartoons in 2015. It was later cancelled on the advice of the Mets counter-terror detectives. She has been criticised for past links to Pegida UK. The group was set up by former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson as the British version of German protest group Pegida, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said is full of prejudice. Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said in a 2016 radio interview that party members should not associate with Pegida or take part in marches. When asked last night if she was still in Pegida UK, Ms Waters replied: No, Im not. In a campaign launch video on YouTube she said millions of people in Britain are worried about immigration ... Will we accept rape gangs targeting our daughters? No. "Will we accept violence in the street over cartoons... No. UKIP said she would work hard to promote the party and gender equality. G reen Party leader Caroline Lucas today called on Labour to stand aside in seats they cannot win to help beat the Conservatives. The MP told the Evening Standard she is disappointed Jeremy Crobyn has so far rejected proposals for a progressive political alliance. She claimed the Labour leader is flying in the face of his local parties wishes and pointed out the Greens opted not to field a candidate in Ealing Central & Acton, where Labour MP Rupa Huq has a majority of just 274 votes. Ms Lucas, who has represented Brighton Pavilion since 2010, said: Im disappointed that Jeremy in particular doesnt see that its in his own interests to have some conversations. He is flying in the face of a lot of strong feeling in his own party about this. I think he will be taken by surprise by the interest, energy and enthusiasm about [an alliance] at a local level. Last night the Liberal Democrats agreed not to stand in Brighton Pavilion, which is understood to be a way of thanking the Greens for dropping out of the 2016 Richmond Park by-election where Sarah Olney triumphed over Zac Goldsmith. Ms Lucas said: I warmly welcome it and I hope this is a demonstration of the new way of thinking about the political situation we find ourselves in. The Greens retained Ms Lucas seat and came second in four more constituencies at the 2015 General Election after polling 1.1 million votes and taking four per cent of the national vote share. In London they are targeting Jeremy Corbyns seat in Islington North and Keir Starmers Holborn & St Pancras seat. However, they have asked local parties to consider not fielding a candidate if it looks as though the Green vote may stop a Labour or Lib Dem candidate from toppling the Tories. Tactical discussions have so far taken place in Surrey where the local Labour branch said they wanted to back a single progressive candidate in an attempt to try and unseat Jeremy Hunt in Surrey South West. Labour were defiant today that there will be no alliance or backroom deals and their National Executive Committee will appoint candidates in each seat, regardless of how local branches want to proceed. A Labour spokesperson, said: Theres only one alternative government and thats Labour. The only way to get the change we need, to build a fair economy and strong public services is to vote Labour. People dont want backroom deals. They want to vote for a party theyve got confidence in. The Greens are demanding Labour support them in their battle to take the Isle of Wight from the Conservatives. Ms Lucas said: Its got an unpopular Tory MP, UKIP were second in 2015 and are now in quite a lot of disarray, and we were third ahead of Labour and the Lib Dems. So that would be an obvious place where it really wouldnt hurt Labour. "Theyre never going to win the Isle of Wight. M ore Britons think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one for the first time since the bombshell referendum, according to a new poll. The YouGov poll revealed that 45 per cent of voters now agree Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU, compared to 43 per cent who still think it is the correct decision. A further 12 per cent do not know. It is the first time a poll has found the majority of people disagreeing with the referendum result. The poll, published in the Times, found 89 per cent of remain voters still think leaving the EU is the wrong decision, while 85 per cent of leave voters still back quitting. Theresa May's Easter message: People are uniting after Brexit It comes as Theresa May held "constructive" talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on the Brexit process. Theresa May welcomes European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to Downing Street for talks / REUTERS The Prime Minister hosted Mr Juncker and Brussels' chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier for a working dinner in Number 10 ahead of a summit on Saturday where the leaders of the 27 other EU countries will consider their approach to the talks on the UK's withdrawal. Downing Street said the Prime Minister used the dinner to reaffirm the UK's commitment to a "deep and special partnership" with the EU after Brexit. UK election: Labour's Brexit strategy in 60 seconds A Number 10 spokesman said: "The PM had a constructive meeting this evening with president Juncker of the European Commission. The PM stated the UK's commitment to a "deep and special partnership" with the EU after Brexit / REUTERS "Following the UK's letter of notification under Article 50, she reiterated the UK's commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union. "The PM and president Juncker also discussed a range of other international issues in a useful working dinner." Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has insisted he stands by his controversial claim that Britain sends 350 million a week to the European Union that could otherwise be spent on the NHS. Nigel Farage was quick to distance himself from the crucial 350 million claim after victory / Vincent Kessler/Reuters The claim - emblazoned on the side of Mr Johnson's campaign bus during last year's EU referendum campaign - was denounced by the official statistician as "misleading" and has since been disowned by senior members of the Brexit campaign. Immediately after the Leave victory, then UKIP leader Nigel Farage admitted the figure was a "mistake" and said he would not have made the claim. Challenged over whether he stood by the 350 million claim, Mr Johnson told ITV1's Good Morning Britain: "Of course I do," and insisted the figure was "not disputed". The YouGov poll questioned 1,590 adults on April 25 and 26. O utraged Londoners are calling for Katie Hopkins to be investigated by police over a string of tweets she posted after a suspected terrorist was detained in Whitehall. The controversial columnist sparked outcry when she posted a message on Twitter which read: Explosion in France, shooting at a German hospital, knife attack in London. "And Ramadan has not yet begun." She added: Without food these sods get nasty. It came after armed police arrested a 27-year-old man carrying a bag of knives in Westminster on Thursday afternoon. The Met Police received messages from several people about Ms Hopkins message, which was slammed for being hate speech and racist. Katie Hopkins' most offensive tweets of 2017 One man, called Damian Isherwood, said online to Ms Hopkins: Im reporting you for a hate crime as your hateful tweets towards people of Muslim faith will incite racial violence @MetCC. Another internet user, called Jennifer said: Please do something about this woman. There is a line between free speech and hate speech. Joe Crumb called it racism and a hate crime while someone else called her a hate preacher. The Met told all those making complaints to send officers a private message so they can take some further details. But Ms Hopkins was undeterred and later responded to the criticism and said: I am certain the police do not have anything more pressing to attend to. Why not start a petition as well? In another message posted on Twitter relating to the Whitehall incident, Ms Hopkins referred to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan when she said: Dear Sadiq Khan't. You want to stop hate on-line. I think hate on the streets might be more a pressing priority. Allah Akbar and all that. Another tweet read: Sadiqs prayers are with the knifeman at this difficult time. He has cut his hand. Ambulance staff are administering a halal plaster. T he man kicked off a British Airways flight on a remote Portuguese air base for demanding an upgrade is a 65-year-old cancer sufferer who moved seats because he was in pain, according to the woman who helped him. Londoner Kwame Bantu was ejected from the plane after it touched down at an air force base on the island of Terceira alongside businesswoman Joy Stoney, who had stepped in to defend him. Ms Stoney, 40, said she was furious at the airline for stranding them on the island in the Atlantic Ocean "with no plan" on Thursday following the humiliating, inhumane ordeal the day before. Mr Bantu, who has prostate cancer, is believed to have walked into the first class cabin to stretch his legs and inquired about moving to a seat there to be more comfortable. However, six members of staff reportedly grabbed him after a dispute, dragged him back to his seat in economy and tied him down. Kwame Bantu said he felt 'humiliated' at not being able to go to the toilet / Joy Stoney Ms Stoney, a businesswoman from Yorkshire, told the Standard: He went to the wrong cabin and then they tried to remove him by force. There were six of them on top of one man trying to restrain him. They restrained him by tying his hands, his shoulders and his ankles and then on top of all that they handcuffed him. Ms Stoney, who did not know the man before the incident, stepped in after noticing he clearly needed to go to the toilet but couldnt because of the restraints. Joy Stoney was removed from the flight for defending Kwame Bantu / Joy Stoney She said: I asked to speak to the management and they brought the pilot down, but then I saw the man holding his crotch. They refused to let him go to the toilet. That is inhumane. I said I would walk with him to the toilet but they still refused and said he should defecate in the chair. It was humiliating, Im traumatised, she added. Following the incident, the plane made an unscheduled stop just after 3pm at an air base on the Portuguese island of Terceira in the Atlantic Ocean. The pair were removed and taken for questioning by police, while the plane turned around and headed back to Gatwick at 7.15pm. They were not given their luggage. Military officials from Lajes air base confirmed that the pair were being questioned by police. Emergency services respond after the plane touched down on the island of Terceira A spokesman said: The pilot decided to land in Lajes in the island of Terceira because of a dispute between cabin crew and a couple who wanted to be transferred from economy class to first class. Speaking from the island, which is in the Azores, Ms Stoney said they were desperately trying to work out how to get from no mans land back to London. We have been left in a country in the middle of the ocean surrounded by water, she said. "We don't have our luggage and we can't spend our money here. The only people who are being kind and helping are the Portuguese police and locals." The couple were apparently insisting they were moved from economy to business class A British Airways spokesman stated that the man had been removed for repeatedly abusing crew members and disturbing passengers. The spokesman said: Caring for our customers is our highest priority and we continue to investigate all the circumstances surrounding this incident. We take great care to handle these difficult situations as sensitively as possible. Our cabin crew and one of our pilots repeatedly asked a customer to return to his booked seat in economy after he sat in our business class cabin without permission. He repeatedly refused, verbally abused crew members and disturbed other customers. As a last resort, our cabin crew felt they had no option but to restrain the customer in the interests of the safety of everyone on board and helped him walk back to his original seat. A couple married for 69 years died within an hour of each other while holding hands at a hospital in Chicago. Teresa and Isaac Vatkin passed away in the same room only 40 minutes apart on Saturday. Family members said they took comfort in knowing they were together when they passed away. Staff at the Highland Park Hospital found the couple unresponsive and breathing shallowly and chose to place their beds side by side. Teresa and Isaac Vatkin passed away in the same room only 40 minutes apart The family then positioned their hands so they were touching. Succumbing to Alzheimers disease, 89-year-old Teresa died first. Issac, 91, died 40 minutes later. "I didn't want them to be scared," their granddaughter Debbie Handler told the Daily Herald. "I thought maybe if they knew the other was there, it would help." Their daughter said the married couple 'simply could not live without eachother' At their joint funeral service on Monday, their daughter Clara Gesklin said: "Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other. Mr Vatkin was a kosher meat distributor and Mrs Vatkin a manicurist The couple raised three children in Skokie, Illinois, and had a close relationship with their grandchildren, the family said. Mr Vatkin was a kosher meat distributor and Mrs Vatkin a homemaker and manicurist. P resident Trump today abandoned plans to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Just hours earlier, the White House had said he was considering issuing an executive order for the US to split from the other two nations in the deal, Mexico and Canada, and go it alone. The U-turn, announced today, came despite Mr Trumps repeated campaign attacks on the trade pact, which he described as a disaster and a bad deal for the middle classes. As recently as last week he declared that Nafta which was originally negotiated by Bill Clinton was harmful to American workers and a catastrophic trade deal for the United States. Yesterday an administration official said a full withdrawal was on the table. However, Mr Trump has now told the Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau that America will bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation. The announcement comes before Mr Trumps 100th day in office on Saturday. The White House said: President Trump agreed not to terminate Nafta at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. Mr Trump said he believes the end result will make all three countries stronger and better. Washington analysts saw the apparent change of course as a negotiating ploy intended to get a better deal from Mexico and Canada by taking them to the brink with threats of a withdrawal that would have had serious repercussions for trade between the three nations. Mr Trump has already taken the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal put together under the Obama administration. Although his decision to stay in NAFTA does not have the populist appeal of his campaign rants against the agreement, he can nevertheless say that he has fulfilled a 100-day pledge to renegotiate the pact with Mexico and Canada. Fears of a pull-out had triggered Republican protests, with Senator Ben Sasse warning earlier yesterday that scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office, he added. Yes, there are places where our agreements could be modernised but heres the bottom line: trade lowers prices for American consumers and it expands markets for American goods. Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise. The move came as the US sought to send a strong signal to North Korea by toughening up sanctions and stepping up diplomatic moves aimed at pressuring the rogue regime to end its nuclear and missile programmes. The presidents approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners, said a White House statement. The US already has extensive sanctions in place on North Korea, including a blanket ban on trade and a blacklist of anyone dealing with North Korea. It was notimmediately clear what further sanctions Washington could impose. The ultimatum seemed to carry little weight in Pyongyang. In a rare interview with CNN, a North Korean government official insisted his countrys nuclear tests would never stop as long as the US continued acts of aggression. Meanwhile, Melania Trumps spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham has denied a report in Vanity Fair magazine that the former model never wanted to be a presidents wife. Insiders allegedly told the publication that Mrs Trump, 47, was uncomfortable in the spotlight and that her offices in the East Wing of the White House are like a ghost town. Ms Grisham maintained in a statement that Mrs Trump has always been supportive of all her husbands endeavours. She said the First Lady continues to work on building her agenda in a thoughtful way. She likes things to be done right, and doing things right takes time. A ccording to President Trump, the 100-day mark is a ridiculous standard that simply does not matter. But like much of the Trump presidency, the opposite is actually true. The milestone supposedly matters so little that the White House has an entire section of its website devoted to how he is keeping his promises. It matters so little that Mr Trump is spending the entire week rolling out big initiatives and has ordered his advisers to give dozens of briefings to the media. The idea that a president who is notoriously thin-skinned would be unconcerned with his first report card is about as likely as him giving a job to Hillary Clinton. Mr Trump has made 280 promises in speeches, or on Twitter, including his Contract with the American voter a list of pledges for the first 100 days. Donald Trump's 100 days as president - the key moments He has inspired new confidence in the US economy, slashed regulations, appointed judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, all of which were campaign promises. But almost all have been accomplished through executive orders as of Tuesday Mr Trump had signed 32 of them, more than any other president in modern history in their first 100 days. Mr Trump has been unable to broker any deals with Congress, meaning that the man who wrote The Art Of The Deal has so far been defeated by Capitol Hill. His biggest failure was repealing and replacing Obamacare, President Obamas signature healthcare law, even though Republicans control both the House and Senate. Both of Mr Trumps attempts to ban travellers from Muslim-majority countries were blocked by federal judges. This week he signalled that US funding for the wall on the border with Mexico which he originally said the country would pay for was up for negotiation to avoid a government shutdown. Despite pledging to drain the swamp on Capitol Hill, his lobbying executive orders made it easier for industry executives to get government jobs. The first 100 days of the Trump presidency have been a collision of the fiery candidate with the realities of Washington deal-making. The president pivoted on his support for the Syrian government and launched air strikes after its forces used chemical weapons. Mr Trump also changed his mind on Vladimir Putin amid the ongoing FBI investigation into his election campaigns ties with Russia. So far the presidents supporters are sticking by him and a Washington Post poll found that a staggering 94 per cent of Trump voters still back him. Among all voters his approval ratings are 42 per cent, the lowest recorded at this stage of a presidency since Dwight Eisenhower. Yet if the election was run again today he would still beat Democrat Mrs Clinton by 43 per cent to 40 per cent. O utside Trump Tower, the New York home of Americas divisive president, it is back to business as usual on the surface at least. In the absence of Donald Trump, who has not been back to his hometown since his inauguration in January but whose wife Melania and son Barron remain, the 58-storey building on Fifth Avenue has ceased to be a focal point for his detractors. Cars honk, tourists pause for selfies in front of its garish black and gold facade and the protesters of the early days of the presidency are gone. But while day-to-day life continues, you dont have to look far to find tension bubbling under the surface. Around the corner, Patrick, who was too frightened to give his surname for fear of it affecting his green card application, summed up his feelings on the presidents first 100 days. The Brazilian said: Its scary. Im an immigrant so I dont know whats going to happen. Its made me feel vulnerable, scared, insecure. Fellow New Yorker Blaine Klusky, 49, who works in the energy industry, was more positive describing himself as cautiously optimistic. He backed military action in Syria and thought the first 100 days have not been awful. In Fifth Avenue, New York University theatre student Jose Pelegri, 19, disapproved of the new president but said he was proud of the way the city has reacted since he took office. The city has changed. Theres more activism now that theres something to work against, he added. Although New York voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton the Democratic candidate won 79 per cent of the citys votes overall Mr Trump triumphed in Staten Island. Downtown, the tone of residents as they came off the Staten Island Ferry was in sharp contrast to their Manhattan counterparts. One young Republican, who would only give her first name, Rosemary, proudly said: I agree with most of the things he is doing. Hes just started but hes going to do great. Eric Moore, 50, a Staten Island resident, added: [Im] 50/50. I like that he reinstated the border enforcement, I like that hes encouraging companies to come back. What I dont like is so much on Twitter, it causes unnecessary drama. But most importantly he wanted to see action on healthcare, for which he currently pays $514 (400) a month. Its killing everyone who owns their own business, he said. A Londoner who allegedly fled Syria after spending two years in Islamic State-held territory has reportedly been arrested in Turkey. The man, understood to be Stefan Aristidou, from Enfield, north London, is believed to be being held on suspicion of terror offences after surrendering to authorities near the border between Turkey and Syria. The 23-year-old had been missing since flying to Cyprus in April 2015. According to the Guardian, Aristidou was arrested in Kilis, a Turkish town three miles from the Syria border last week. Aristidou, who is of Greek heritage, told police he had travelled to Syria to settle rather than fight. He reportedly told investigators he had lived in Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS, and al-Bab, a city formerly under IS control. An appeal was launched by the Lucy Blackman Trust, a charity supporting families of Britons missing or murdered overseas, after Aristidou disappeared in 2015. Then 20, he arrived in Cyprus at Larnaca airport on April 5 and made his last contact with loved ones on April 12. Turkish authorities are reportedly seeking to jail Aristidou for between seven-and-a-half and 15 years and he could face further prosecution under terror legislation when he returns to the UK. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are in contact with the Turkish authorities following the detention of a British man on the Turkey/Syria border." According to government figures released in November, approximately 800 individuals "of national security concern" had travelled to take part in the Syria conflict since it began. About half of those had returned at the time the figures were released. Earlier this month, The Met Police charged a 17-year-old girl with terrorism offences for allegedly planning to flee to Syria. A self-styled Rambo killer who escaped capture after shooting a police officer by hiding out in woods for seven weeks has been sentenced to death in Pennsylvania. Eric Frein, a survivalist and military enthusiast, opened fire on a police barracks in the Pocono Mountains on September 12, 2014, killing police Corporal Bryon Dickson, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and critically wounding Trooper Alex Douglass. Frien, 33, led police on a 48-day manhunt after the ambush and was classified as one of Americas most wanted criminals. A friend of the killer compared him to the Sylvester Stallone character Rambo in the 1982 film First Blood. A trial heard Frein kept a journal in which he coolly described shooting Mr Dickson twice and watching him fall still and quiet. Death sentence: Eric Frein / REUTERS In a letter to his parents, written while he was on the run but never sent, he complained about lost liberties, spoke of revolution and said: The time seems right for a spark to ignite a fire in the hearts of men. Prosecutors said Frein is a remorseless killer who attacked troopers at random in hopes of starting a rebellion. The jury delivered a guilty verdict sentencing Frein to die by lethal injection. Jurors have delivered full justice in this case and issued the penalty that is so richly deserved by Eric Frein, said District Attorney Ray Tonkin. The gunman is not expected to face execution for decades, if ever. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, and Pennsylvanias last execution took place in 1999. Freins lawyers said they would launch an appeal. Mr Douglass, who has endured 18 operations and might lose his lower leg, smiled broadly as the sentenced was announced but did not comment afterward. Harrys, Restyled Classic might normally be the best way of describing Harrys of Londons super-comfortable take on driving shoes and loafers, but for SS17 the British footwear manufacturer has had a sporty spruce up. Harrys of London, 745, Harrods.com The best thing to result from its new direction is this very special capsule collection of bright trainers and travel bags all of which are made from rain- and scratch-resistant tech leather, and available exclusively from Harrods. Decks Appeal Having slipped over on his boat in 1935, one Paul A Sperry resolved to cut grip-aiding ridges into the soles of his shoes, and in the process invented the deck shoe. Timberland Lightweight Deck Shoe, 105, Timberland.co.uk Now his creation is a staple of summer footwear, and this seasons best pair can be found at Timberland, the brand having added its remarkably comfortable, EVA-cushioned Sensorflex sole to a classic deck shoe upper for the first time. APC, Gucci and US label Quoddy are also bringing their A-game, meaning it should be simple to be stylish while not slipping over this summer. Sea Sense North Sea fishermen are the inspiration for a collaboration between Italian brand Moncler and Virgil Abloh, the creative polymath behind cult label Off- White. Moncler O Jacket, 795, Moncler.com Entitled Moncler O, the collection of high-tech, high-style functionwear fuses Ablohs love of colour and streetwear-style graphics with Monclers technical expertise. Highlights include an extralong Tramail PVC parka, a padded fishermans jacket with a double collar and a classic black flight jacket. L egendary Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna has died, aged 70. Khanna passed away at the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, in Mumbai, India on Thursday, after a battle with cancer. Khanna had more than 100 films to his name in a career spanning nearly 50 years. He got his first break as the solo lead hero in the film Hum Tum Aur Who in 1971 before going on to star in films including Mere Apne, Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. Active politician: Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna / EPA/STR He received two Filmfare awards one for Best Supporting Actor for Haath Ki Safaai, and later the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2007 he was awarded his second Lifetime Achievement Award at the Zee Cine Awards. Marriage: Vinod Khanna and his wife Kavita (Getty ) / Getty As well as acting, he was a politician and Member of Parliament for Gurdaspur, Punjab. Legions of fans, politicians and stars paid tribute to the late actor on Twitter with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee tweeting: Heartfelt condolences on the passing away of Shri Vinod Khanna, a highly talented and acclaimed actor and MP (sic). Filmmaker Karan Johar posted: His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... Khanna is survived by his wife Kavita Khanna, sons Rahul, Akshaye and Sakshi, and daughter Shraddha Khanna. O rlando Bloom has said he didnt intend to offend the Gypsy and traveller communities when he used the word pikey in a live interview. Bloom, 40, faced a backlash after he used the term to describe himself as a pikey from Kent during an appearance on BBC Radio 1's Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw. When asked about whether he does his own stunts, the Canterbury-born actor replied: Im still a pikey from Kent, boy, Im still a pikey from Kent. You dont want to get on the wrong side of me, boy. Listeners condemned his language on Twitter with one tweeting: No, Orlando Bloom on @R1Breakfast @BBCR1, you're not a 'pikey from kent'. It's a racist slur! #radio1 #traveller #gypsy #racism. Another posted: I love that Orlando Bloom keeps saying pikey on Radio 1 when there was a whole feature on there about how offensive that is the other day. The National Gypsy-Traveller-Roma Council said his use of the racially abusive term is worrying. Bloom later explained his comment, telling fans: I've come from Kent and I grew up with a lot of, like, freewheeling, cool, interesting characters like that. I certainly wasn't taking a slant at that at all. I'm very respectful. Grimshaw apologised to listeners who may have taken offence to Blooms language, saying: So good to have Orlando Bloom on the show... he's a bit of a loose cannon. Apologies if you were offended by anything that Orlando may have said. In a statement, Radio 1 added: As with any live broadcast, we take great care to ensure all guests are briefed about their language before going on air. We apologised to listeners afterwards for any offence caused. Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 - In pictures 1 /48 Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 - In pictures Ruth Wilson poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Sheridan Smith poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Orlando Bloom signs autographs and takes selfies with fans at The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Joan Collins and Elizabeth Hurley at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards the Old Vic London Zak Hussein/SilverHub Billie Piper attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre, London Ian West/PA James McAvoy poses on the red carpet as he attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Lily Donaldson attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett/Getty Images Dita von Teese and attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Elizabeth Hurley poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Dame Kristin Scott Thomas arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Helen McCrory attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Sir Patrick Stewart, Glenn Close and Sunny Ozell arrive at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Elizabeth Debicki arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Michael Gambon poses on the red carpet Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images The Duke of Cambridge attends with Evgeny Lebedev at the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Orlando Bloom attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards h Ian West/PA Amber Le Bon attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Zak Hussein/SilverHub Sheridan Smith poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images MyAnna Buring attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Ruth Wilson attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Glenn Close arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards, Dave Benett/Getty Images Tuppence Middleton attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Ellie Brown attends The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at The Old Vic Theatre John Phillips/Getty Images Ellie Bamber attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett/Getty Images Mary Portas attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre, London Ian West/PA Sir Patrick Stewart and Sunny Ozell arrive at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett/Getty Images Ophelia Lovibond poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Ralph Fiennes arrives at The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at The Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett Emily Berrington attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Kenneth Branagh and Lindsay Brunnock attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatr Ian West/PA Sophie Melville attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA John Malkovich attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Glenn Close and Andrew Lloyd-Webber attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Amber Riley attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett/Getty Images Aoife Duffin attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Bloom was on the show to promote his new film Unlocked. P rofessor Green has revealed that he is currently in hospital battling pneumonia after contracting an infection. The rapper real name Stephen Manderson told fans that he is on the mend after suffering an allergic reaction to the mesh used during a recent hernia operation. Green was forced to return to hospital this week after contracting pneumonia and suffering a series of potentially life-threatening complications including a collapsed lung. After posting a series of photos of himself in a hospital gown on Instagram, Green decided to update all of his followers on his condition. Right I'm on the mend. Turns out I'm only the second person in the world to have an allergic reaction to the mesh used to fix my hernia, he wrote. I've had a giggle on instagram but here's the reality. I didn't wanna worry anyone, least of all my nan. Professor Green and Freddie Flintoff open up about mental health He continued: I came back to hospital with pnuemonia, a partially collapsed lung, distension, fluid build up and ileus (my guts had shut down). I'm getting better. Everything is starting to work again, all my bloods are looking better and I finally got some sleep last night. In the candid post, the Back on the Market rapper said that he had been getting emotional as he was in the most painful situation he had ever been in. He wrote: If I seemed a bit emotional at times it's been because I've been awake most hours of each day and it becomes quite a lot like torture when you have your entire life taken away from you and you're stuck in a room in the most uncomfortable and painful situation you've ever been in (I've only been taking paracetamol as opioids make the problem even worse), not to mention the anxiety that comes with not knowing why any of this is happening. R ussell Crowe showed off his funny side as he made his Instagram debut with a handful of comical posts. The Hollywood star, 53, transformed into Skincare man and cooked up a pot of Ratatouille as he introduced himself to fans on the photo sharing app. Crowe showed off his beauty regime and told budding actors that the key to success lies with the ability to make a perfect Ratatouille. Alongside a picture of himself in his kitchen he posted: To celebrate my foray into Instagram I wanted to share something deeply artistic with you. To those who ask the age old question how do I have a career in acting like yours? this is my answer... You must be able to make a perfect Ratatouille... The Gladiator actor then posted the steps and secrets to creating the dish before finishing: There it is Academy Award winning Ratatouille. I wish you the best in your acting career. He later posted a funny video to introduce his new superhero character Skincare man. Crowe can be seen sporting a white face mask as he slowly reveals himself to the camera before saying: From the DC Universe comes Skincare man. Unable to keep a straight face, the actor records himself laughing at his joke. Crowes decision to join Instagram comes three years after he warned fans of fake accounts claiming to be him. He tweeted: I dont use Instagram, just Twitter. There is someone pretending to be me on Instagrammust be odd to want to do that, embarrassing really. 61 New Scripture Translations Completed Last Year Contact: Gunnar Magi, Global Mission Team: Partnerships & Communications, United Bible Societies, 00-372-503-4980, gmagi@biblesocieties.org SWINDON, UK, April 27, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- In 2016, Bible Societies assisted in the completion of translations in 61 languages spoken by over 428 million people. 2016 was 'a first' for no fewer than 30 languages, spoken by over 95 million people. 17 communities now have their very first Bible, 6 have a New Testament and 7 communities have their first, or additional, portions of Scripture. Languages are constantly developing so Bible Societies are also committed to revising existing translations and providing new translations, when requested, to help as many people as possible engage with the message of the Bible today. In 2016, this resulted in a further 28 new translations and revisions plus 3 study editions with the potential to reach over 333 million people. Status of Bible translation at the end of 2016 The full Bible is now available in 648 languages spoken by nearly 5.16 billion people and a further 1,432 languages spoken by 657 million people have a New Testament. This leaves 434 million people with only some portions of the Bible and a further 253 million people with no Scripture translated in their language at all. Sign Languages Sign Languages are the first or 'heart' language for 70 million Deaf worldwide and there are over 400 unique sign languages. There are over 400 unique Sign Languages and yet the New Testament is only available in American Sign Language. Japan completed Leviticus 1-14 and Luke 1-6. Lithuania, Hungary and Thailand the teams continued releasing parts of Mark's Gospel. Cuba made progress with the first 11 chapters of Luke. Mexico published the DVD of John's Epistles. Scriptures in Braille 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide, of whom 40 million are blind. A Braille Bible usually consists of more than 40 bulky volumes, making the ranscription and production a significant undertaking. To date only 44 languages have a full Bible in Braille. In 2016, new Braille portions were made available in Spanish (Dios Habla Hoy), German, Kirundi. Electronic Scripture Access Growth Continues The Digital Bible Library (DBL) is central to our strategy to make the Bible as widely and easily accessible as possible. By the end of 2016, the DBL contained 1,474 Bibles, Testaments and portions in 1,134 languages. These languages are spoken by over 5.2 billion people. Significant progress was made last year in adding audio Scriptures, so there are now 403 audio Scriptures in 345 different languages. The DBL is owned and maintained by United Bible Societies in partnership with other Bible agencies and with the support of the Every Tribe Every Nation alliance. It makes the Bible accessible by providing Scripture texts to the public through partners such as BibleSearch and YouVersion. Full report The full report and the full list of translations completed in 2016 can be found here: www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/translation/global-scripture-access United Bible Societies: United Bible Societies is a global network of Bible Societies working in over 200 countries and territories across the world. Together, they are the worlds biggest translator, publisher and distributor of the Bible. Bible Societies are also active in areas such as HIV/AIDS prevention, trauma healing and literacy. Bible Societies work with all Christian Churches and many international non-governmental organisations. Read more: www.unitedbiblesocieties.org. Press Contact: Gunnar Magi Global Mission Team: Partnerships & Communications United Bible Societies Email: gmagi@biblesocieties.org 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 Gering High School is one of three schools named as national winners in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest. Lead by construction trades teacher Justin Reinmuth, members of the electronics class were among 10 teams competing. Gerings project involves using drones to spray weeds precisely to limit the amount of chemicals used for spraying. Because of their creative use of STEAM to solve an issue within their community, judges selected Gering High School as a national winner and awarded them the title at a luncheon event on Wednesday, April 26 where several elected officials and dignitaries were in attendance. The students had to go through three different phases in order to get to the national level. The team had to make a video of their project. The three top teams in the competition received a $150,000 grant and $20,000 for the charity of their choice. The Gering team designated the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research & Extension Center as its charity. Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) met with Gering High School students during their trip to Washington, D.C., for the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow national awards luncheon. Smith also gave the students a tour of the U.S. Capitol. It is exciting to see young innovators from western Nebraska especially my alma mater recognized nationally for their ideas on how to advance agriculture, Smith said. I applaud these students and their teacher, Mr. Justin Reinmuth, for the hard work and dedication they put into this winning project. Congratulations on this well-deserved award. SCOTTSBLUFF The Canvases Off Broadway sip and paint series at West Nebraska Arts Center is making its return, Friday, April 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. The class, taught by WNAC Program Manager Maria Lena Soto, costs $35 WNAC members, and $40 for non-members. All of the art supplies are provided, along with your choice of a glass of wine or bottle of beer (but additional pours are available for purchase), and participants get to take the glass and the finished art home with them at the end of the night. The event is ages 21 and over, and all skill levels are welcome, so whether youre a Da Vinci or looking to try your hand at something new, Soto will guide you through a simple, stress-free process to making your own masterpiece. For the first project, students will get the chance to create their own version of a Butterfly on a 16-inch by 20-inch canvas. The series is back thanks to support from the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment. For more information or to register for the class, contact the Maria Lena Soto at 308-632-2226, or lena@thewnac.com or visit the WNAC website at www.thewnac.com. T2 Trainspotting Myrna Loy (R) Grade: B In 1996 Danny Boyle startled us with Trainspotting, a darkly comic journey into heroin addiction in Edinburgh, Scotland. The addicts were a collection of aptly-named misfits: Spud, Sick Boy, Franco and Rent Boy. The drugs led to crime and punishment and trauma of all sorts. Trainspotting became a cult classic thanks to raw uncompromising writing and Boyles masterful direction. Later Boyle would direct Slumdog Millionaire and the rest of the world would awaken to the talent that Trainspotting fans had already spotted. Now in 2017, Boyle stages a reunion to see how the lives of his eccentric addicts worked out. This sequel will likely be loved by fans of the original, but its not clear that it will resonate with mainstream modest moviegoers. The sequel assumes we know these guys and are curious to check back on them 20 years later. Boyle directs with panache, so movie buffs may well appreciate the craft. The score is an assortment of beats including new sounds by Young Fathers, Wolf Alice, British DJ High Contrast. Oldies include Queen, Underworld, Blondie, and The Clash. The new script has revenge as its main plot device. The imprisoned Franco escapes and sets out to punish Mark for stealing from him 20 years ago. That rather random central theme distracts from the deeper drama about the internal state of the addicts a couple decades after their darkest periods. We learn theres still drugs around, but also a desire to do something constructive with their lives. That internal search for balance is the driving force of the film, not the revenge. Each of them has a mission: to reconcile with an estranged son, to become a writer, to manage a popular pub or to reconcile with friends. Some have beaten addiction, some still crave drugs and need crime to fund the habit. And, yes, the story is hopelessly eccentric: a climactic brawl ends with Spud using a toilet bowl to knock out Franco who is then dispatched to the car trunk. Welcome to Trainspotting. The cast, lead by Ewan McGregor, reunites the same actors, with the young woman from 1996 now an attorney who advises them. A new actress young, of course - plays Rentons love interest. The acting is quite good, even though we have to struggle to warm up to these misfits. All of this adds up to a quirky well-directed film with a limited audience. Spud fans, for example, will probably spot the train and happily hop on board. But those with no craving for raw stories about recovering addicts perhaps should catch the next screening of Beauty and the Beast. Drive by Anna Lemieuxs house near 27th and Newport Avenues and youll see a box that, at first glance, looks like a little free library those cabinets meant for the free exchange of books. But the shelves arent filled with reading material. Peer inside and youll see what looks like a kitchen cupboard full of jars of peanut butter, cans of tuna, boxes of cereal and canned vegetables. This wooden box in the Minne Lusa neighborhood is Omahas first little free pantry. But it wont be the last, said Steve and Vicki Holcomb, the couple who brought the idea to the metro area and built the pantry in Lemieuxs yard. As co-founders of Little Free Pantry of Omaha, the couple already have been flooded with phone calls and emails from people who want to add a pantry to their yard or neighborhood. Weve really just watched this idea snowball over the last few months, Steve said. Vicki first heard of little free pantries when some of them popped up in Arkansas about a year ago. Since then, several communities have created similar programs. This idea certainly isnt about replacing any sort of food programs in the city, Steve said. But this is a way to eliminate any limitations someone might have to getting to those, Steve said, adding that some food pantries have limited hours or require clients to bring a photo ID. After years of teaching and working with at-risk youth, Vicki said she just didnt want to imagine children going without a meal. As real estate agents for CBSHome, Vicki and Steve said they had had clients and visited neighborhoods that could benefit from a little free pantry. Plus, we also just really needed a project, Vicki said. With their two daughters both in college, the empty nesters decided to go big or go home, Vicki said. We just said, Weve had this idea, lets do it. So Steve picked up some wood from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and started crafting a pantry. He had grown up learning from his dad, who had worked in the kitchen cabinet industry. And for years he had worked in cabinet sales himself. I probably am spending too much time on these because with that experience, I just really want them to look nice, he said. For now, hes got three pantries assembled and sitting in his garage, just waiting to be put in the ground. More than 10 people have already requested one, including a person in Lincoln. The Holcombs are meeting with the city and with neighborhood associations and churches to find the locations that would have the greatest need. We just want to community to come around this, Steve said. Vicki said she already has seen that Omaha is embracing the idea. The support has been overwhelming, she said. But Im not shocked. People in Omaha are very giving. For more information about Little Free Pantry of Omaha and how to donate, visit www.littlefreepantryofomaha.com. We had a hot week in the Legislature last week. They havent turned on the air-conditioning yet, and they have apparently already solved all the easy problems in Nebraska because the calendar is full of bills that are tough issues. LB 640 was heard on the floor. I also co-sponsored this bill. It would dramatically change the formula used to provide much more State-aid to schools, and bring much-needed property tax relief. I really like this bill, and Sen. Groene (North Platte) did a great job with it, but like a lot of other good bills this session, there simply arent 33 votes to end the filibuster (end the opposition debate with a cloture motion) and get to a vote on the bill where we only need twenty-five votes to pass it. Its a fact of life with anything that is the least bit controversial this year. A lot of really good bills will simply sit and be carried over to next year because they do not have thirty-three votes to end the filibuster. The legislatures failure early in the session to reform the cloture rule is something we get to see the results of every day. Debate began on LB 461. This is the Governors bill brought by Sen. Smith (Papillion). The bill would completely change how AG ground property taxes are assessed and bring income tax relief as well. I introduced an amendment to this bill, AM 1104. It makes changes to some technical language, but most importantly it also addresses residential and commercial property taxes as well. It drives down valuations on all three classes of real property at the same time. I think this approach is vital. AG ground property taxes are not just too high. When farmers and ranchers have to take out second mortgages, when they cant sell a crop of grain or cattle that even covers the tax bill for the ground, when folks on a fixed income have to start taking money out of a retirement account to pay the property taxes on their house thats not just taxes being too high that is taxation that has become immoral. Every Nebraska property owner is being crushed by out-of-control property taxes. This isnt just an urban vs. rural issue. I really hope there is time left for my amendment to be debated on the floor, and it becomes part of this bill. Property Taxes are the #1 issue in the 43rd district. We shall see how debate continues. I cannot tell you enough how important it is we continue to hear from you. Please contact my office with any comments, questions or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov or call us at 402-471-2628. Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (134) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (347) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (440) Jan 2014 (544) Feb 2014 (475) Mar 2014 (525) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (470) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (441) Oct 2014 (471) Nov 2014 (496) Dec 2014 (535) Jan 2015 (535) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (579) Apr 2015 (657) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (921) Nov 2015 (801) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (864) May 2016 (946) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (966) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (879) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (896) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (850) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (808) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (851) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (934) Jul 2019 (949) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (941) Feb 2020 (848) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (787) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (811) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (824) Jul 2021 (830) Aug 2021 (832) Sep 2021 (791) Oct 2021 (754) Nov 2021 (683) Dec 2021 (693) Jan 2022 (694) Feb 2022 (654) Mar 2022 (740) Apr 2022 (745) May 2022 (748) Jun 2022 (701) Jul 2022 (704) Aug 2022 (702) Sep 2022 (699) Oct 2022 (737) Nov 2022 (184) I thank Jim Nelson, a former Montana Supreme Court Justice, for bringing the unconstitutionality of the American Bar Associations (ABA) Rule 8.4(g) out into the public forum; through his recent article entitled Beware the bull, not the kangaroo. Unfortunately, his redundant and intentionally inflammatory rhetoric might have you believe that all Montana attorneys must be immediately bridled and silenced, lest there be an imminent breakdown of Montanan society. He expounded such an arrogant and distasteful view of Montana attorneys -- the very professionals that protect you and me from the potential ravages and abuses of government -- is testament to his limited capacity to think in an unbiased and non-discriminatory manner on this important issue. Even the ABAs own Discipline Committee (legal review) concluded that rule 8.4g was unconstitutional in a multitude of ways. The real issue here, which Mr. Nelson refuses to address, is a Montana Judiciary operating outside of its constitutional bounds, and endeavoring to silence the very professionals that Montanans rely upon for protecting them against the abuses of government. The ABA rule Mr. Nelson supports would subject every single attorney in the state of Montana to a constant governmental surveillance of personal thoughts, actions, opinions, conduct and expression, under threat of losing their license to practice law, and their ability to provide for their families. Then this would prevent them from rightfully pursuing life, liberty and happiness. The rule Mr. Nelson radically embraces, would devastate the First Amendment rights of freedom of expression, thought, conscience, conduct, religion, press and assembly. This would cause the constitutional rights of all Montanan attorneys to be gutted. Then no person in Montana, regardless of their age, military service, physical infirmity, educational level, creed, color, sex or any other characteristic, would be able to find protection against further unconstitutional actions of the state, because there would be no professional attorney there to help protect them! This is why both houses of the Montana Legislature resolved to caution the Montana Supreme Court for their embarrassing and unconstitutional subservience to the radical and ever-changing social agenda of the ABA. The Supreme Court must represent Montanans, and not the ABA. The Supreme Court must reject Rule 8.4(g). So, Mr. Nelson does a disservice to the people of Montana by supporting what the ABA knows is an unconstitutional directive. Instead of grumbling in a public article, and attacking 91 of Montanas duly elected legislators who voted for Senate Joint Resolution 15, he should applaud the Montanas Senate and House of Representatives for reining in a State Supreme Court. Nevertheless, I extend an invitation to Mr. Nelson to visit the Montana Legislature while it is in session, so that he may learn how to properly apply constitutional principles with integrity and insightfulness on behalf of the people of the great state of Montana! Sen. David Howard is a Republican from Park City. Though an $80.3 million bonding bill fell four votes shy in an initial test Wednesday, some supporters think they can get enough lawmakers to change their minds overnight to pass one of the key pieces of legislation this session. Late Wednesday, the House voted 63-37 on a bill that builds new or improves existing roads, water projects, schools and buildings across the state using money from bonding. The robust debate included claims of holding legislation hostage pitted against pleas for the state to approve an amount of bonding thats lower than what some local school districts are asking voters to pass this spring. To approve bonding, the bill needs 67 votes to pass the House, or a two-thirds majority. It passed the Senate last month 34-16. The bill is Miles City Republican Sen. Eric Moores Senate Bill 367, though a version that was slimmed down from $98 million early Wednesday to $80.3 million by the end of the day to look more like a House bill carried by Rep. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka. Cuts to Moores bill included taking the budget for renovations at Romney Hall on the Montana State University campus from $25 million to $22 million. An amendment also lowered the amount of money directed to the Quality Schools Facility Grant program, from $30 million to $16 million. However, that puts the amount at higher than what was given to the schools program in Cuffes bill. Im optimistic for tomorrow, said House Minority Leader Jenny Eck, D-Helena, who voted for the bill. Weve come a long way and had a lot of negotiations in good faith. Part of that good faith, Eck said, includes a motion she made after the vote to revive the long-stalled House Bill 8 that would pay for several rural water projects, something Speaker of the House Austin Knudsen, R-Culbertson, said he feels was held hostage as negotiations over bonding intensified as the Legislature nears its end. Thursday marks the 87th day of the session. The session lasts 90 days. If they want to play games with regional water funding, thats on them, he said when the House adjourned after passing a motion to bring House Bill 8, which includes the water projects, to a vote Thursday. He said the action would not change his vote against the bill. Rep. Rob Cook, R-Conrad, was one of 22 Republicans who joined all 41 Democrats to vote for the bill. He said thered be major efforts to change the minds of at least four lawmakers overnight. The bill will face a final vote in an 8 a.m. session Thursday, likely the final day of the Legislature. Theres a path to victory, Cook said. By releasing (House Bill 8) you're starting to show good faith in an attempt to get an infrastructure solution for the state of Montana. Cuffe, who was disappointed the last infrastructure bill standing wasnt his, still spoke in support of the bonding bill, which he carried on the House floor. Ill be perfectly honest with you. Id rather have a smaller bill, he said, before adding he was still satisfied with the proposal and the projects in it are justified. Not all changes made Wedneday were cuts. A project to fix the water intake in Laurel picked up $1.7 million in funding and improvements in Makoshika State Park in Eastern Montana got $1.5 million. Rep. Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, voted against the bill, saying that the Laurel water project needs $2.5 million and had been used as an ineffective pawn in an attempt to get more Republican support. There are not votes being bought on a one-third discount, he said. Thats a blue-light special. Lenz also criticized the passage of a 4.5 cent increase to the state gas tax and a bill thats still in play to increase the bed tax to pay for a new state Heritage Center building in Helena, saying it was too great a burden for taxpayers to add on bonding. Several members of his party echoed him on the floor Thursday in opposing the bill. Republicans have pushed hard this week the message that the Legislature has paid for infrastructure projects through other bills such as water projects and state-owned buildings. The party also points to the gas tax, which fills a hole in the Department of Transportation's budget than can be used to leverage federal money. You want to vote for bonding, thats fine, but dont tell me we arent funding infrastructure, said Rep. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, who voted against the bill. But Democrats have said bonding is a good deal in a tight budget year and that some local school districts are asking their voters for well over $80.3 million this spring to build local schools and the state should be able to do at least as much. Rep. Jim Keane, D-Butte, said that bonding is a good way for the state to pay for things it cant afford with cash, saying the Capitol was built that way in the late 1890s and early 1900s. This isnt about us, it isnt about you and me. Its about the state of Montana; its about the future, he said. We couldnt be in a better place here. Lets do the right thing for the state of Montana. Rep. Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, voted for the bill, saying its the only way needed improvements to school buildings will get paid for until a Senate bill, which is likely to become law, sets up a long-term solution. We didnt do anything for these local schools last session and if this doesnt pass this session we wont do anything again, he said. Knudsen said a deal to secure 67 votes couldnt be reached after negotiations with Gov. Steve Bullock didnt produce anything. Knudsen said there were two paths to get enough votes either trimming the amount of bonding or a promise the governor would not veto some key Republican bills, but neither happened. What weve seen is Republican priorities are not as important as Democrat priorities, that somehow Democrat priorities take precedence over Republican priorities. After the vote, Bullock released a statement by email saying: "I have worked across the aisle and met the Republican-majority Legislature more than halfway. Montanans want us to create good-paying jobs, build safer roads and bridges, and strengthen our economy. And they want it done this legislative session. It's time to get this bill across the finish line." After an uncommon bout of questioning two weeks ago that held up a proposal to rehab the vacant municipal courts building downtown, a key city commission advanced the project Thursday with a unanimous vote. The St. Louis Tax Increment Financing Commission recommended approving about $8 million in TIF assistance for a $60 million proposal to turn the historic city-owned building on Market Street into a hotel. The measure needs final approval from the Board of Aldermen. A joint venture between Nelson Construction and Development of Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Louis-based Vertical Realty Advisors plans to buy the building from the city for $2.4 million. The building has been vacant since the citys circuit court functions moved to the old federal courthouse across Tucker Boulevard over a decade ago. Their proposal calls for a 150-room hotel project (city documents identify it as a Hyatt Place, but the developer said an official announcement would come later) that would turn old courtrooms into a bar, install an indoor pool and revamp the systems of the century-old Beaux Arts style structure. It had appeared to get caught up earlier this month in mounting concern over the citys development incentive policies, which became a major issue during the recent mayoral campaign. The developers faced more pointed questions than usual at the last TIF Commission meeting, where a 2-1 vote with two abstentions failed to give the project the majority of TIF Commissioner support needed to advance. By Thursday, much of the concern seemed to have subsided after commissioners received market studies on the demand for downtown hotel rooms and additional information on the minority hiring practices of the general contractor, Paric Corp. Just getting the information, the questions answered that I had asked before, just made me a little more comfortable with what we were providing, Commissioner Christina Bennett, who voted against the proposal last time, said after Thursdays meeting. Still, the discussion Thursday ultimately turned to how the city uses development incentives. TIF allows increases in property and other taxes generated by new construction to be used for project costs, and a recent report estimated the value of TIF and tax abatement granted to St. Louis projects at some $700 million over the last 15 years. Commissioner Douglass Petty, who represents the St. Louis Public Schools, pushed for more commission documents to be posted online and asked how the municipal courts project fit into the citys overall plan. Otis Williams, who heads city economic development office St. Louis Development Corp., assured commissioners the city was looking at its incentive policies and trying to fund a city-wide plan. But he also said this project fit into the citys goal to build density and fill up vacant buildings. And hotels, he added, are an important component of the local economy. One of the things that makes this city hum is the tourism industry, Williams said. Developers, for their part, argued that the 1911 structure deserved the city subsidy because of the difficulty of working with the buildings courthouse footprint. Offices and retail probably wouldnt work, making a hotel the highest and most logical use of this property, the developers attorney, Robert Preston of Spencer Fane, told the commission. Preston attributed the commissions hesitation to advance the proposal at its last meeting to a desire for more information. But he also acknowledged the debate on incentive use in the city, which he called healthy. Election cycles always bring some uncertainty and debate on key issues, Preston told the Post-Dispatch. Beyond the TIF, the $60 million project is counting on financing from state and federal historic tax credits, brownfield tax credits and an extra 2 percent in sales taxes from a Transportation Development District and Community Improvement District set up on site. About $4.9 million would come from developer equity and $20.9 million from a loan, or 43 percent of the costs. Developers hope to start construction in August and open in the spring of 2019. Offshore wind turbines are about to become higher than the Eiffel Tower, allowing the industry to supply subsidy-free clean power to the grid on a massive scale for the first time. Manufacturers led by Siemens are working to almost double the capacity of the current range of turbines, which already have wingspans that surpass those of the largest jumbo jets. The expectation that those machines will be on the market by 2025 was at the heart of contracts won earlier this month by German and Danish developers to supply electricity from offshore wind farms at market prices by 2025. Just three years ago, offshore wind was a fringe technology more expensive than nuclear reactors and sometimes twice the cost of turbines planted on land. The fact that developers such as Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG and Dong Energy A/S are offering to plant giant turbines in stormy seas without government support show that the economics of the energy business are shifting quicker than anyone thought possible and adding competitive pressure on the dominant power generation fuels coal and natural gas. Dong and EnBW are banking on turbines that are three to four times bigger than those today, said Keegan Kruger, analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They will be crucial to bringing down the cost of energy. About 50 miles off the coastline in the German North Sea, offshore wind technology is limited only to how big the turbines can grow. Dong has said it expects machines able to produce 13 to 15 megawatts each for its projects when theyre due to be completed in the middle of the next decade much bigger than the 8-megawatt machines on the market now. Just one giant 15-megawatt turbine would produce power more cheaply than five 3-megawatt machines, or even two with an 8-megawatt capacity. Thats because bigger turbines can produce the same power from a fewer number of foundations and less complex grid connections. The wind farms layout can be made more efficient, and fewer machines means less maintenance. Right now, we are developing a bigger turbine, said Bent Christensen, head of cost of energy at Siemens Wind Power A/S, in a phone interview. But how big it will be we dont know yet. Larger turbines are heavier, placing a natural limit on size, said Christensen. Lightweight materials such as carbon fiber may be required to reduce the heaviness of the rotor and the blades as the turbines grow. If we just go 10 years back, nobody could imagine what were doing today, he said. When you try to predict the future you have to be quite careful. The scale of the turbines may not even stop at 15 megawatts. In Albuquerque, N.M., a unit of Lockheed Martin is working on components for a possible 50-megawatt turbine that would have blades nearly 330 feet long. These gigantic blades would be able to fold away to reduce the risk of damage at dangerous wind speeds. Siemens, along with Vestas Wind Systems and General Electric, are advising on the research program thats funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. In the nearer term, Denmark, the home of wind energy, last month said it would expand the countrys main offshore wind test site to demonstrate turbines that will reach nearly 1,100 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. That could take the generation capacity past 10 megawatts, enabling turbine makers like Vestas and Siemens to challenge the boundaries of current capacity. St. Louis is getting a first look at some rare blues photographs in a traveling exhibition opening this weekend at the National Blues Museum. The Sepia Magazine Photo Archive: Blues in Review showcases largely unseen images that originated in Sepia, the classic African-American magazine. The Fort Worth, Texas-based publication by George Levitan ceased operation in 1983. St. Louis is the first city where Blues in Review will be seen; museum visitors can view the exhibit in the Scott and Diane McCuaig and Family Gallery through Oct. 13. A lot of these photographs have never been seen beyond their original publication, says exhibit curator Carole L. Anthony. You could chalk that up to a number of reasons. She says the photos sat ignored in boxes for many years. Thirty-five images are featured in the exhibit. Some blues artists are featured in multiple photos, including B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Johnny Guitar Watson and Ruth Brown. Others include Muddy Waters, WC Handy, Etta James, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Johnnie Taylor, Bo Diddley, Ethel Waters, Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Guitar Slim, Gatemouth Brown, LaVern Baker, Dinah Washington, Little Willie John, Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker and Jimmy Witherspoon. It features artists of the blues genre, some not as well known as others but nevertheless still significant in the evolution of blues music, Anthony says. All of the photos are black and white, and none have been retouched. I wanted to keep the integrity of these photos, she says. The photos date from the late 1940s through the early 60s. The images were made by various photographers, including Calvin Littlejohn, who took several of them. Many of his photos were taken at the Masonic Temple, the only place in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where blacks could go perform, Anthony says. Sepia magazine originally was titled Negro Achievements (1947). I feel from a historical standpoint the magazine carried some weight in its significance with black culture because of the period when it was published and who owned it and who worked for it, Anthony says. The staff were maids and cooks and general laborers who wanted an opportunity. Boxes containing the photos arrived in 2005 at the African American Museum in Dallas. They hadnt been properly cataloged or preserved. Anthony was allowed to go through the boxes, some of which were waterlogged. She jumped right in. I always had an interest and curiosity about Sepia and wondered what happened to it, she says. I remember my sister reading it. My most impressionable experience of reading Sepia was reading the Sepia front cover picture of Tammi Terrell in 1970 announcing her death. The African American Museum gave Anthony the photos about 1,000 in all so she could give them wider exposure. Some eventually could go back to the museum in Dallas . In 2009, Anthony curated a larger exhibit titled The Sepia Photo Archives Celebrating the History of African-Americans in Music for the Rock and Roll of Fame and Museum. Anthony was supposed to bring one of her exhibits to a museum in California, but the exhibition was canceled when the museums funding became restrictive. She is working on a documentary and a book based on the photos. Astronobeads Designer/Founder Bea Doheny Age 21 Home Brentwood What she sells Astronomy-inspired jewelry How to buy Visit astronobeads.com; Challenger Learning Center gift shop in Ferguson; Star Talk Radio podcast online shop, startalkradio.net/shop; or Hazel 2 Blue in Alton. Alhough Bea Doheny has had a lifelong fascination with what it means to look up at the stars, her astronomy business started with a clever idea for a simple friendship gift to classmates at Nerinx Hall High School in Webster Groves. She made her first solar system bracelets as graduation gifts along with a note reading, Whenever you look down, remember that I think youre out of this world. Needless to say, All of my friends loved them. But thats not when she launched her business. Cosmic encounter During her sophomore year at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Doheny sought advice from professor Gregory Bier, who also happens to be the director of the University of Missouris Entrepreneurship Alliance. He convinced her that she didnt have to wait to finish her business degree to start an enterprise from her dorm room. He liked the idea and saw my potential and set me up with a mentor, she said. And although it seemed far-fetched, she said there seemed to be an eager Earth-bound customer for her cosmic accessories. Out of this world She didnt have to court renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, long. Shes one of Tysons millions of fans and has a unique story, so she figured shed send him a note. It was a long shot, but she sent him a message last year telling him that she was a 20-year-old jewelry designer and thought his followers and listeners would like her line. I said something like, it would be nice if you gave me a shout-out, Doheny said. She wasnt trying to be cocky, just honest and sincere. Tyson didnt respond, but one of his staff at the Star Talk podcast did. Doheny started corresponding with them and eventually she sent a package of items including a mens Jupiter and Galilean moons bracelet ($20) that was later worn and photographed on Tyson. The online store associated with his podcast is now one of the top sellers of her work. Long story short Each item includes an educational component to spark interest in the stars, not just quirky adornments. For instance the Jupiter bracelet includes this backstory: When Galileo spotted four little moons revolving around Jupiter, he knew it was time to question everything. He helped prove the heliocentric theory that we are not the center of the universe and there is always room for discovery, Doheny writes on her website. She said, It really means question everything. When Galileo discovered the moons revolving around the other planets, he realized things were revolving around something bigger, so he figured out that we cant be the center because there were other things revolving around the sun. But at the time the church ruled a lot of theory, and they didnt like his new theory. So even if it goes against the norm. We have to discover more. Need space One of Dohenys not-so-secret passions is also space wordplay. She loves the heartfelt (I love you to the moon and back) and the ones that make you groan (Youve got the whole world in your hands). She started by selling a friendship package of three bracelets Earth, moon and sun that she marketed as a great gifting trio. Blue dot One of her favorites is the Pale Blue Dot necklace featuring a light blue bead along a lengthy chain of black beads to symbolize the Earth drifting in the vastness of space. For Earth Day, she promoted a #myspotonthedot contest for customers to post photos of them lifting up their arms and having others guess where the photo was taken. No matter where you are, what you believe or what language you speak, the sun and the planets remind us just how connected we are and how much we have yet to explore and learn, she said. A fan from New Zealand wrote to tell Doheny that she was one in billions of billions. The Senate on Thursday killed an effort by the governor to allow some communities to tax themselves to pay for workforce housing and infrastructure projects in resort towns and oil-and-gas boom communities. A amendatory veto by Gov. Steve Bullock on Wednesday would have let resort communities levy an additional resort tax of up to 1 percent to provide affordable workforce housing. Another would let towns of less than 20,000 in newly created natural resource impact areas ask voters for a 4 percent fee on retail goods and lodging to pay for infrastructure needs like water and sewer projects, as well as public schools and workforce housing. The House approved the changes on a 70-30 vote Thursday morning, but the Senate shot down the vote on a 24-24 vote, with two Republican senators absent and without proxy votes. The resort tax was meant to help areas that rely on Montana's outdoor recreation economy, places where rent can be expensive for low-wage employees who work in the tourism industry. The natural resource impact area Bullock created includes places of less than 20,000 people in an area that has experienced significant growth due to oil, natural gas, mining or timber activity. Speaking in opposition to the amendments Thursday, Sen. Dave Howard, R-Park City, called the local option taxes sales taxes and said it should be the duty of companies to provide affordable workforce housing in resort areas. You can put lipstick on a pig and its still a pig, Howard said. Its still a sales tax.This is not supposed to be on the backs of Montanans. Sen. Eric Moore, R-Miles City, said in support of the bill that oil-and-gas communities in Eastern Montana have seen their infrastructure crumble during an oil boom that ran the last several years and the Legislature's failure to pass an infrastructure bill has left places like Glendive and Sidney hamstrung. "We had people living in cars, we had man camps that were dumping sewage down coulees." Saying the Legislature doesn't appear to support a bonding bill to pay for $80.3 million in projects around the state, Moore said a solution was needed. "Just voting no is not always a solution. How are we going to fix this stuff? I lived through the oil boom in Eastern Montana and we have to do better." Earlier this session a bill to let the state's resort areas -- which include towns such as Red Lodge, Big Sky and Whitefish -- to increase their taxing ability from 3 to 4 percent failed on a final vote in the House in March. ST. LOUIS Coming back to Washington University for their 25th year reunion felt a little odd at first for Heather Calvin and Bonnie Adrian. Their college experience wasnt like most peoples. Their junior year, they sued the university. The issue was over the ThurtenE carnival, touted as the oldest student-run carnival in the country, which was hosted on campus last week. Its the main function of the junior honor society, ThurtenE, that up until 1991 allowed only men as members. Title IX, a federal sex discrimination law, had been around for 20 years before the lawsuit. Among the many issues the law addresses is that social fraternities and sororities are exempt from the rules of gender-specific organizations. An honor society, such as ThurtenE, had no such exemption, but it had continued operating as it traditionally had for decades without any challenge until Calvin and Adrian decided to apply their junior year. I really earnestly thought it would be a very cool thing to be part of the carnival, said Calvin, who works as an associate vice president at the Museum of Science in Boston. When they declined and suggested we join the womens group, that was just so wrong that I felt really compelled to challenge it even if it wasnt going to benefit us, which clearly it wasnt. The two women had been members of the sophomore honor society. But their junior year option of an honor society, Chimes, left them wanting more. Within the year, both organizations would become co-ed. But the challenge to the status quo brought a lot of negative attention to the two women, which they document in a blog that links to old newspaper stories about their case. Im not sure we would have done it if we had as much perspective on how hard it was going to be, Calvin said. Theres a certain bravery that comes with youthful immaturity, and I think that worked to our advantage. It made us willing to take that risk in a different way. A local attorney took on the womens case pro bono and worked the legal angle, while a grievance committee on campus tackled it internally. Eventually, the grievance committee decided there wasnt enough proof that discrimination occurred when Calvin and Adrian applied to ThurtenE, but it did call for changes that led ThurtenE to start accepting female students. The women dropped their lawsuit after they won on their issue. By that point, they were already members of the senior honor society, applying for jobs and trying to capture what was left of their chance of a normal college experience. Adrian, now a research nurse scientist at the University of Colorado Hospital, said she still had mixed feelings toward her alma mater. She remembers feeling that way during graduation, too, describing it as adversarial. Today, five of the 13 members of ThurtenE are women. The members of Thurtene Honorary 2017 recognize the first acceptance of women into the Honorary as an important point in our history, the organizations leaders said in a statement. Calvin said it had been gratifying to see women participating over the years, even if few knew what it took to get there. On the other hand thats a cemented victory that its such a co-ed organization that people forget that 26 years ago it was not, she said. Thats a win. JEFFERSON CITY Missouris cities and counties could lose state funding if they force nonunion contractors to pay workers union wages for public projects, under a measure now headed to Gov. Eric Greitens desk. Current law allows both union and nonunion contractors to bid on public construction projects. But under a project labor agreement, local governments can require nonunion contractors to pay union wages, something Missouri Republicans call an unfair practice that discourages competition. The legislation also would ban local governments from giving preferential treatment to union contractors. Governments that violate those provisions would lose state funding and tax credits for two years. Greitens, a Republican, has listed the elimination of the agreements, or PLAs, among his labor reform priorities, which he says will persuade more businesses to set up shop in Missouri. He already signed a right to work bill into law earlier this year, which prohibits unions from collecting dues as a condition of employment a long-sought policy change for the Missouri GOP. We must do away with expensive Project Labor Agreements that drive up the costs of construction and slow down important projects in our communities, Greitens said in his State of the State speech in January. Democrats maintain that PLAs ensure quality work and a tight budget on public projects such as the construction of schools, libraries or police stations. Rep. Doug Beck, D-St. Louis, said they allowed local entities to use the most highly skilled workers available. The Missouri AFL-CIO argues that PLAs protect public investment by weeding out unqualified contractors and keeping projects on schedule, with fewer injured workers and no strikes or work disputes. But opponents say that mandating union wages costs taxpayers more in the long run. The bill would leave it in the hands of the contractor, and as a result the contractor can choose the most cost-efficient way to get the job done, said Brian Bunten, general counsel of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, in a statement. Thats a win for the contractor, a win for the employees chosen for the job, and its a win for Missouri taxpayers. Sponsoring Rep. Rob Vescovo, R-Arnold, said PLAs amounted to extortion for the 86 percent of the workforce thats nonunion. The PLA bill has already passed the Senate and was awarded final approval by the House on Thursday with a 104-52 vote. The proposal will now head to the governor for his signature. The legislation is SB 182. The Associated Press contributed to this report. School leaders secured some victories at the Montana Legislature to help districts pay for major maintenance projects, but the piece that would provide immediate relief for dozens of schools is at the heart of the sessions most heated and unresolved debate. There are a couple bills that are designed for building up funds in the future, which I think are very good, but that wont help anything in the next two years, said Billings Rep. Kathy Kelker, a Democrat who served on the School Funding Interim Commission that studied school repair needs last year. The bill that hasnt passed has a substantial amount of money in it. Senate Bill 367 would authorize the state to issue $80.3 million in bonds to pay for a variety of infrastructure projects, ranging from water and sewer upgrades to a renovation of Montana State Universitys Romney Hall. It also includes $16.3 million for local school repairs and upgrades. That would fund about three-quarters of 50 projects on a list first vetted, approved and ranked by the state almost six years ago. Those schools have had to wait after the states original funding source river bed rents disappeared after a lawsuit and the 2015 Legislature did not authorize any spending. Now, the projects are tied to the fate of SB367, a proposal that has divided legislators even months before they arrived at the Capitol. On Thursday, the House was two votes shy of passing the measure but agreed to come back Friday morning for another attempt. Theres always a chance for people to take a deep breath, calm down and take another run at it, said Rep. Jeff Essmann, a Billings Republican who also served on the commission. On Thursday, the real estate developer urged his colleagues to support the bonding bill because the state needs to help local districts and the university campuses maintain their investments in buildings and, when necessary, renovate them. Im in the business of buying 50-, 60-, 70-year-old buildings and gutting them and rebuilding them because thats what needs to happen to a 70-year-old building. Its technologically obsolete. You cant serve the needs of the students. The average age of a Montana K-12 school building is 53 years. Sen. Llew Jones, a Conrad Republican who has long worked on state education issues, said he did not understand why some of his colleagues defined infrastructure so narrowly that they opposed SB367 because of particular projects. The basis of our economic engine is not just physical, he said. Im comfortable with the concept that education infrastructure is a key component of bonding along with roads, water and sewer. Ultimately, without an educated workforce today we have a bleak future tomorrow. One of the very few things included in our (Montana) constitution is the recognition that we need to help provide some basis for an educated workforce. Opponents to SB367 cite a variety of reasons, the most common being an opposition to state debt that they see as a burden on future generations. Others are open to bonding for critical public works projects, but do not consider renovations of buildings to be essential. While many admit the state has a special responsibility to assist K-12 schools, they blamed the political process for lumping those good projects with bad projects. Sen. Tom Facey, D-Missoula, led the School Funding Interim Commission last year and watched as the bonding bill failed Thursdays test in the House. The retired Stevensville teacher emphasized that many districts simply cannot pay for major projects like replacing a roof or repairing flood damage -- on their own. Rural schools simply do not have enough property tax base to raise the money locally. Also, state school budget rules strictly limit how much money districts can sock away, in an attempt to equalize the quality of education across the state. The judge said (in a 2005 lawsuit) that were not doing the right thing for facilities and were not giving schools enough money that they could do it on their own, Facey said. Kirk Miller, executive director at School Administrators of Montana, spent Thursday afternoon talking to legislators and calling district leaders across the state to urge them to do the same. They expended a lot of time, energy and, in some cases, money to write those grant proposals, he said of the projects listed in the bonding bill. Miller also lamented the death of HB134. It would have restructured the share of oil and gas taxes that local school districts get to keep and also would have allowed them to save up to $5 million beyond that for major facilities projects. Essmann tried to bring the bill to vote three times in the last week, but all failed. At least, Facey said, two other bills have outlined the framework for a new school facilities program and how it will be funded. Senate Bills 260 and 307 passed both chambers and one has already received approval from Gov. Steve Bullock. In combination, they divert some interest from the Coal Severance Tax Trust Fund to create a new subtrust whose interest will eventually flow into a new School Facility and Technology Account. Unlike the previous grant program which districts disliked because not everyone could afford to compete for that money the new fund will set up individual accounts for every district in the state. Money will be deposited into each based on a formula. Schools can then apply to withdraw some of that money for specific projects, providing plans to legislators as well as proof that they have some local funding to match the state dollars. That money will be easier to raise because of tweaks to state law about permissive levies, which allow districts to temporarily tax property owners up to 10 mills without a community vote so long as they provide advance notice and project details. Its the Montana way that when everybody cooperates with each other and pitch in a bit that allows those communities to have the support of their property taxpayers with a little money coming in from the state to make sure those projects get done, Miller said. Its a blend. And thats the real ingenious and good policy part to that. Jones called the program a good partnership between the State of Montana and local trustees. It was a significant step forward, he said. Its not a panacea. It wont begin tomorrow. Its slow moving. It requires an investment of money and time by local trustees who care deeply for their schools and it requires a commitment of those in the Legislature. 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? BOZEMAN Yellowstone National Park managers are asking employees to help change the workplace culture after a report found evidence of sexual harassment within the park's maintenance division, superintendent Dan Wenk said. The park has increased training and made sure employees know where they can go to report misconduct, Wenk told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on Wednesday. Park managers will be considering other moves to address sexual harassment. "They include personnel actions. They include organizational realignments. They include changes in policies and procedures," Wenk said. "We will be taking action." No disciplinary action has yet been taken, Wenk said. The Interior Department released a report earlier this month that found male supervisors and staff in the maintenance division created a work environment that included unwelcome and inappropriate comments and actions toward women. The allegations were raised last year by a former park employee. Wenk said he reviewed the interview transcripts in the investigation. "While the report said the problems are not systemic throughout Yellowstone National Park," Wenk said, "I also know they're not limited to one unit of Yellowstone National Park." The park held an all-employee meeting about the issue this week, he said. "I told employees that we can't change the culture of Yellowstone by edict. We have to have everybody's help," Wenk said. Maryan Nawaz, daughter of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed on Wednesday that she feared for the fate of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman in the hereafter. The PTI chairman who claimed that he was offered a staggering Rs. 10 billion to keep mum over Panama Leaks went a mile more on Thursday and alleged that a friend of Hamza Shahbaz, son of chief minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif communicated him the message of Sharif family through Dubai channel seeking his silence over Panama Leaks case. Responding to the allegation, Maryam Nawaz took to twitter and expressed that Imran himself was confused as he named Shahbaz Sharif initially but then turned to a friend of Hamza for the task. "Shahbaz Sharif's close aide offered me 10 billion. No,Hamza's friend made an offer to my friend in Dubai." I fear for this man's Hereafter! Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) April 26, 2017 The PTI chairman, while speaking to a gathering at Shaukat Khanum Hospital a day ago, had alleged the Sharif family of offering him Rs. 10 billion in the Panama Leaks case. Just imagine how much money he offered me to be silent. Rs10 billion If he can offer me this much money, just imagine how much he would offer to others. That is why if we dont maintain public pressure this issue then after two months it will be dragged to next year, Khan said. Earlier on Tuesday, Maryam Nawaz dubbed Imran Khan a liar for his claim. WASHINGTON Congress is close to a deal to extend health benefits for more than 22,000 retired miners and widows whose medical coverage is set to expire Sunday, coal-state lawmakers said Wednesday. A "permanent" fix will be included in a measure to keep the government open, said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and other lawmakers. The fix would cost $1.3 billion over 10 years. Manchin said at a rally sponsored by the United Mine Workers of America that President Donald Trump called him Wednesday morning to express support for the miners. Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to revive the struggling coal industry, won West Virginia, Kentucky and other coal-producing states by wide margins last fall. Manchin, who faces re-election next year in the Republican-leaning state, said Trump asked him to relay a message to the mine workers: "Tell them I'm doing everything I can and will do everything I can" to help them. "I'm behind them," Manchin said Trump told him. Manchin said he told Trump that a permanent fix is needed to ensure retired miners and widows continue to receive benefits. "We cannot keep kicking the can down the road," Manchin said. In West Virginia, about 8,500 retired miners and their families face loss of benefits if Congress does not act. Other states affected include Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia and Alabama. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., also was confident that senators would approve the long-term fix and noted that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this week he supports it. "I'm feeling good about it," Capito said to cheers from more than 50 miners and their supporters assembled outside the Capitol. "I want to see it in writing before we can begin to declare victory." House Republican leaders have been pushing a 20-month health care extension, but Capito, Manchin and other lawmakers said they were optimistic Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would agree to a long-term fix. Talks with Ryan are focused on how to pay for the long-term extension, Manchin said, adding that a deal with the House was "75 percent" complete. Manchin and other coal-state Democrats threatened to shut down the government over the health care issue in December, but they retreated after winning a four-month extension that preserves benefits through April 30. This time, a long-term solution is the only acceptable deal, Manchin said. "We're not leaving until this is complete," he said. "You can take that any way you want to take that." The tentative deal does not address pension benefits for unionized miners. A fight over that issue which is far more costly than the health care fix is likely next year, Manchin and other lawmakers said. Speaking at the sixth Moscow Conference on International Security, Pakistans Defence minister Khawaja Muhammed Asif said that Russia must play its part to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan. Discussing the Kashmir issue, the minister said that if left unresolved, it has the potential to threaten the peace and stability of the entire region. The Kashmir issue must be resolved in accordance with the UN resolution, the defence minister said. I must share that all peace overtures and sincere efforts made by Pakistan are not being reciprocated [by India]. He stressed that it is the responsibility of the world community to address some of the long-standing conflicts of the world. India continues to stay away from any plausible diplomatic approach for the resolution of Kashmir issue. Expressing his views on the situation in the Middle East, the minister termed the United States attack on Syria as 'external interference.' Asif said that polarised societies are breeding grounds for terrorism. From Palestine to Kashmir, we have a history of suppression and denial of basic human rights, he said. Extremists garner support by exploiting polarisation - so there is a need to develop stronger counter-narratives, based on interfaith harmony, economic equality, cross-cultural mutual respect, to deny extremists that space, the defence minister stated. The minister stated that Pakistan does not believe in any distinction between terrorist outfits. Talking about the Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad, he said the remaining terrorists are being combed out through the operation. He thanked the Russian defence ministry for inviting and affording Pakistan the opportunity to share the country's perspective on the issues of global security and challenges of the 21st century. Asif complimented the defence ministry of the Russian federation for hosting the important activity "which provides us [Pakistan] a useful platform to interact with the policy makers from across the globe. It also allows us to visit the Russian nation which is home of a great nation. Strong traditions, rich history, and one of the most important players in the emerging polycentric world order." He said the "controversial expectations of democratic peace," continues to be "marred by accentuated regional disputes, political instabilities, rising socio-economic challenges, widespread trans-national terrorism, and a fragile international system to handle all this." The defence minister remarked that as a consequence, "multiple actors have gained prominence, thereby changing the balance-of-power equation across the globe and causing gradual dissuation of the so-called uni polar international system." Unknown persons attacked an army garrison in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK) on Thursday, killing three soldiers and two officers amid an uptick in violence in the restive region. The incident occurred just a day after Indian authorities in the area ordered internet service providers to block 22 social media services including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp for a month to maintain "public order". Indian army spokesman Rajesh Kalia said two attackers were also killed during the pre-dawn assault in Kupwara district near the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Search operations were in progress to see if more attackers were hiding. Aasiya Andrabi arrested in Srinagar The authorities arrested Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) chairperson, Aasiya Andrabi from her residence in Srinagar late Wednesday night. A DeM spokesperson in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Aasiya Andrabi was arrested by the police from her residence at Soura in Srinagar, last night. A contingent of police along with SHO Soura raided the residence of Aasiya at around 11:30 pm and arrested her, added the spokesperson. Roughly 500,000 Indian soldiers are deployed in Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in its entirety. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the Kashmir valley, one of the worlds most heavily militarised spots where most people favour independence or a merger with mainly Muslim Pakistan. Clashes between rebels and government forces have become more frequent since the killing of a popular rebel leader, Burhan Wani, by Indian security forces last July which sparked widespread unrest. In September, 19 Indian soldiers were killed in an attack on the Uri army base, which India blamed on Pakistan-backed militants and which pushed tensions to dangerous levels. Wednesdays move to block social media was the first time the government took such a step, although it regularly blocks the mobile internet signal in the volatile valley. The Abraaj Group that has sold its stake in K-Electric to a Chinese company for $1.77 billion will get only half of total receipts as the first buyer of the countrys largest integrated power utility still keeps its investment through an offshore entity. As per the shareholders agreement, the Abraaj Group has a 50% stake in KES Power the holding company of K-Electric and will get half of the total price, said sources. It means if the deal materialises, the Abraaj Group would have claim over $785 million. But the deal between the Abraaj Group and Shanghai Electric Power, announced in August last year, has not yet been cleared by the federal government. The Abraaj Group had sold KES Power the offshore entity that controls 66.4% of K-Electric shares to the China-based company. The deal is contingent upon settlement of issues between the government and the seller. Pakistan has not yet given the requisite regulatory approvals. Saudi Arabian AlJomiah Group had bought 66.4% stake in the then government-owned Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) at a price of $265 million in 2005. Now, subject to the governments clearance, the remaining $785 million will be distributed among three partners -AlJomiah Group, National Investment Group of Kuwait and a Pakistani businessman. In October 2008, the Saudi investor-led holding company, which owned majority shares in KESC, had handed over a 50% stake along with management control to Abraaj Capital. In the past eight years, the Abraaj Group has been credited with turning around the loss-making entity and it will now reap the benefit in shape of huge returns on investment. The Abraaj Group would get close to half of the total sale price of K-Electric, a senior official of K-Electric confirmed to The Express Tribune. He said there was a well-defined structure among K-Electric shareholders. After the Abraaj Group could not timely conclude the deal, it sought an extension from the buyer as well as the regulator. The seller and the buyer had agreed to conclude the deal by March 17 this year, which has been missed. The delay occurred because of the failure to settle financial dispute between Pakistani authorities and the Abraaj Group, resulting in withholding of the National Security Clearance Certificate to Shanghai Electric. The amount in question was $1.24 billion, which K-Electric owed to two government entities, said officials of the Ministry of Water and Power and Sui Southern Gas Company. In order to give the security clearance certificate, the Privatisation Commission needs no-objection certificates from the Ministry of Water and Power, Ministry of Finance, Federal Board of Revenue, Ministry of Petroleum, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior. Last week, the commission sent a reminder to all the departments, but so far no response has been received, said the sources. The FBR is currently dealing with Rs1.2 billion in outstanding tax claims against K-Electric and a hearing is going to take place on Friday. Without reaching a settlement, the FBR cannot give clearance certificate. Meeting statutory requirements was the most important issue at the moment and there is good progress on that, claimed the senior official of K-Electric. He said both the Abraaj Group and Shanghai Electric Power were still committed to the deal. The deal is very important for the citizens of Karachi as Shanghai Electric Power has announced a plan to expand the generation and distribution capacity with an investment of $9 billion in the company. DECATUR After prosecutors presented witnesses corroborating earlier testimony placing Elliott Murphy as the leader of a teen mob that stomped a 61-year-old man to death in 2009, the defense presented two witnesses who testified that Murphy had nothing to do with the attacks. Murphy, 23, is being retried on charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in connection with the death of Jerry Newingham and serious injury of 46-year-old Kevin S. Wilson on Aug. 24, 2009. Murphy is serving an 80-year prison term in the case. The jury is expected to begin its deliberation today, the fourth day of the trial, after the state presents a rebuttal witness and attorneys for both sides make their closing arguments. Murphy, who was convicted by a jury in August 2011, told Associate Macon County Judge Jeffrey Geisler that he decided not to testify in his new trial. He also waived his right to testify in his original trial. The two witnesses who testified for the defense were twin brothers Fredrick and Dedrick Rhone, 23, both of whom are serving sentences in the Illinois Department of Correction after pleading guilty to charges in connection with the 2009 crimes. One half hour before Fredrick Rhone testified, First Assistant State's Attorney Nichole Kroncke read aloud a lengthy stipulation as to the DNA evidence in the case. Both sides agreed that these were facts that would have been presented by forensic scientists from the Illinois State Police crime lab, if they had appeared in court. The findings included that blood found on both shoes of Fredrick Rhone matched the DNA profile of Kevin Wilson. Fredrick Rhone is serving a 20-year-sentence after pleading guilty to murder for the death of Newingham, which occurred on West Sawyer Street. He testified that he didn't see anything that happened at Garfield Park later that day. Wilson was stomped into unconsciousness at the park, disabled by the attack. Rhone testified that when he got to the park he saw the man unconscious and kept on going, without participating in that incident. You had blood on your shoes? Assistant Public Defender Bruce Berry asked under direct examination. No sir, Rhone replied. Under cross-examination, First Assistant State's Attorney Nichole Kroncke asked Rhone, Do you know Kevin Wilson's blood was on both of your shoes? My understanding was that only blood was from Mr. Newingham, Rhone said. Wrong, Kroncke said. Kevin Wilson's blood was on your shoes. Would you like to change your testimony? No ma'am, Rhone said, adding that his previous attorney told him otherwise. The Rhone brothers both testified that Murphy was in the vicinity of the attacks, but had nothing to do with them. The brothers' testimony came after a state witness, a 22-year-old man who was present with the mob in 2009, told jurors that Murphy stomped on Newingham's head three or four times. Do you remember when you testified before (in the 2011 trial) you said it was ten? Kroncke asked. Yes, the witness replied. He also testified that Murphy punched Wilson at Garfield Park, knocking him down onto concrete in the pavilion, then stomped on him about seven times. Murphy's original convictions were overturned by appellate court judges on the grounds that his trial attorney had a conflict of interest, after previously representing one of the witnesses in the case. The trial resumes at 9:30 today in Macon County Circuit Court. DECATUR Two men were arrested Wednesday in separate cases after Decatur police said they sought sex from undercover officers who were posing as minors. Police said a 69-year-old Michigan resident had placed an online ad looking for younger petite females when a middle-aged detective from the police department started a conversation, posing as a 15-year-old girl. The detective established communication online, agreeing to meet the man and have sex in exchange for money, the Decatur Police Department said in a news release. The man sent a message to the person he believed was the 15-year-old girl, telling her to shut off her phones location functionality and power down her cellphone before going to the meeting location, police said. He arrived at the location Wednesday morning in a van that had a video camera set up inside the back and that could be curtained off for privacy. Police said he left the vehicle, approached and spoke to the undercover officer, at which point he was arrested. He faces preliminary charges of indecent solicitation of a child, solicitation of a sex act and attempted production of child pornography. The other suspect arrested Wednesday was a 52-year-old Decatur man, who police said posted an online ad seeking a younger male. A detective from the police departments juvenile department struck up a conversation, posing as a 15-year-old boy. The suspect arrived at the agreed-upon location Wednesday evening and approached the undercover decoy officer. He was arrested without incident and faces preliminary charges of indecent solicitation of a child and attempted criminal sexual abuse. Both men remained in Macon County Jail on Wednesday night, police said. DECATUR Issues ranging from recruiting a police department that matches the racial make-up of Decatur to the latest frightening trends in Facebook postings of mob violence were covered at a town hall-style meeting Wednesday evening. Decatur police Chief Jim Getz and Lt. Tony Brown with the Macon County Sheriff's Office fielded questions from a predominantly black audience at the Greater Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church. Asked about shootings in the city, Getz said he believed gun violence was trending downwards amid the 60,000-70,000 calls for service his department handles in a typical year. But in response to another question, Getz said one worrying trend was seeing vicious beat-downs of older teen victims posted on Facebook. Three or four of those have come to my attention and they are disturbing, he said. You've got eight or nine people jumping one person and you've got adults letting it happen and laughing about it and recording it. I am thinking 'Who is going to step up here and do the right thing?' Getz said he sent in his detectives to investigate one particularly nasty beating of a girl but the victim did not want to cooperate with police. The chief said, however, that the matter could not be allowed to rest there. So he had contacted the Macon County State's Attorney's office and they are going to try to base a prosecution on the video evidence alone. If that is what we have to do, that is what we have to do, he said. Getz said he wanted to squash this kind of violence because he fears what might happen if an outraged parent of a victim, perhaps armed, steps out to try and stop a mob from inflicting serious injuries. What are they going to do to protect their child? he asked. Brown said policing is a two-way street and the police rely on citizens who are prepared to stand up and call them when they see terrible things happening. The last thing any person would want is to be that person who could have called and maybe stopped a situation where someone lost their life, he said. We need the community to help keep the community free of things like this. Wednesday's town hall meeting was organized by the ALERT group, which stands for Area Leaders Education Response Team. ALERT works with the police to inform the community about what is really happening when serious incidents occur, like a police-involved shooting. The idea is to calm the community by keeping them informed. Asked by ALERT member and NAACP Decatur Branch president Jeanelle Norman what he is doing to build trust with the community he polices, Getz outlined various community outreach efforts. Then he talked about recruitment of new officers, and the task he has set himself to make his department reflect the racial mix of the city it serves. I need to fix the demographics of my police department to match the demographics of the city, said Getz. And so right now the demographics of the city of Decatur is about 23 percent black or African-American, and my department is 6 percent black or African-American, and that is not good enough. The police chief said his recruitment efforts have reached out to black churches, chambers of commerce and schools and colleges within a 150-mile radius of Decatur. He said being a police officer pays well and makes you feel good. We start officers at $55,000 a year and in Decatur that is very good money with benefits, you can raise a family and do a lot of things with that, he added. But the thing of it is, you are getting paid to make a difference in the community. I get paid but I love what I do; I make a difference every day that I come to work. The audience of around 30 applauded both Getz and Brown and said hearing them speak and being able to ask them questions helped put a human face on law enforcement. This was useful; it's just nice to see the police interacting with regular citizens, said LaToya Steele, 44. You get some insight into the police departments, and it's much more personal. It's good. Marineh Papyan, coordinator of the grant programs of the EU delegation in Armenia, was arrested on April 26 on suspicion of embezzling large amounts of funds allocated by the EU. Armenias Investigative Committee says a preliminary investigation is ongoing and that thirteen other individuals have been charged with aiding and abetting in the scheme to siphon money allocated by the EU for projects in Armenia. Members of Taurangas Sikh community attended their first Anzac ceremony on Tuesday, after being invited along by Deputy Mayor Kelvin Clout. The idea came about from local resident Chris Archer, who discovered the Sikh participation in Gallipoli while doing some research on the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. In the process I kept encountering these interesting people called Sikhs, says Chris. I knew we had a strong Sikh community here in Tauranga, and I was impressed to find they were heavily involved in all aspects of the First World War, but they were also at Gallipoli. So I said to Kelvin, we need to get them involved in Anzac Day, as they might not automatically go to such a day. Chris shared what he knew about the Sikh role at Gallipoli including the fact that around 5000 of them served before the deputy mayor suggested they come along and take part on April 25. Tauranga Sikh Temple president Puran Singh says it was the first he had ever been to an Anzac Day ceremony. We were very appreciative. Next time we will all be going. We like it. Mayor Greg Brownless says Anzac Day has always been open to everybody. But this is probably the first time we had Sikhs attending in light of their involvement in the campaign. So I met them afterwards and had a chat. The key thing for me is that as many people as possible come along. That being said, it would appear Anzac Day is gaining more support every year. I attended the dawn service at Mount Maunganui, which was very special. There were crowds so big I couldnt even guess how many were there. SIKHS AT GALLIPOLI Throughout the Gallipoli campaign Sikhs from the British Army of India served alongside Anzac soldiers in the trenches and on the slopes of Gallipoli. Approximately 5000 Sikhs were present and an estimated 1400 were killed. The Sikh mule corps transported supplies and ammunition to the front line by night in order to avoid the dangers of Turkish sniper fire. They often supported the Anzac troops as the 14th Sikh Infantry Regiment and during the third battle of Krithia, in Gully Ravine on June 4, 1915, they unleashed repeated attacks against Turkish machine guns and barbed wire, never retreating in the face of the enemy. In one day the 14th Sikhs lost 379 officers and men killed which represented 82 per cent of those engaged in the fighting. They later earned a special commendation from the Commanding General Sir Ian Hamilton who greatly admired their courage and dependability. After Gallipoli, the Sikh and Gurkha regiments fought in Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia. During the course of WW1 India sent more than 1.3 million men to fight in the British Army, losing nearly 80,000 men. Of the 22 Military Crosses awarded to Indian troops during the First World War, the Sikhs won 14 of them. With several hundred Edgecumbe homes needing to be cleared of sodden furniture, ruined possessions and water damage, the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce together with other Chambers in the region, is putting out a call to businesses and sporting organisations who operate nearby to help. The residents of Edgecumbe are facing the devastation of their homes on a massive scale," says a statement from the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce. "This isnt just about giving money, its about assisting people who are grieving from seeing everything in their homes destroyed and their properties damaged by water and silt. Everything in peoples homes has to be stripped out. For residents its an emotional and traumatic task. They have seen a significant part of their lives destroyed." The volunteers who spent Easter in Edgecumbe left knowing that the job of getting Edgecumbe back together has a long way to go Keeping the volunteer support in place is going to be crucial for some time. Businesses in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato able to assist could make up a team and pitch in for a half day or longer if they can. "It would make a great deal of difference, provide a moral support and be a huge contribution to getting Edgecumbe back up and running as quickly as possible." Businesses and others wanting to assist can contact: edgecumbevolunteers@gmail.com There are other ways to assist our neighbours - Bay of Plenty Floods Appeal 2017 - www.redcross.org.nz/donate/bay-plenty-floods-2017/ The Ngati Awa Volunteer Army is being set up by Te Runanga o Ngati Awa, working with Whakatane District Council and BOP Regional Council. The main tasks for volunteers will be helping remove silt and flood-damaged items from public land, and from private properties where landowners have given consent. Volunteers need to be at least 16 years old, physically fit and healthy enough to work for four hours on a shovel, and preferably with their own gumboots, wet weather gear and old clothing. The first clean-up operation is planned for Saturday, weather permitting. Federated Farmers is asking anyone with surplus feed to consider donating it to farmers in the Edgecumbe area as part of an effort being organised by Hay Man co-owner Jason Hill, who can be contacted on 027 458 5295. Federated farmers also has its own adverse events trust, and asked anyone who wanted to help its charitable work to contact it on 0800 327 646 Consolidation has been increasingly common in the energy space recently, as companies aim to improve efficiency and cut costs in an industry environment featuring low oil prices and substantial challenges. FMC Technologies and Technip came together earlier this year, joining their energy-project expertise and creating TechnipFMC (NYSE: FTI), and many have hoped that the combination would improve their joint prospects going forward. Coming into Thursday's first-quarter financial report, TechnipFMC investors were looking to see exactly how things would pan out in the combined company. Even though the companies are still happy about having merged, TechnipFMC's results reflected the ongoing challenges the industry faces right now. Let's take a closer look at TechnipFMC to see what its numbers look like and how the company shapes up going forward. An introduction to TechnipFMC TechnipFMC's first-quarter financial report continued to indicate the tough situations the combined company faces. Using pro-forma financials that reflect both companies' results before the merger, revenue was down 31% to $3.39 billion. However, adjusted operating profit rose substantially, climbing more than 55% to $573.2 million. Adjusted earnings came in at $0.71 per share, excluding extraordinary items. A look at TechnipFMC's various segments shows the widespread challenges the company faces. In the subsea technologies segment, the company reported revenue of $1.4 billion, which was down more than 40% from year-ago pro forma levels. The company said reduced activity in Europe and Africa was primarily responsible for the decline, with Asia-Pacific gains failing to fully offset the drop. Vessel utilization rates fell 10 percentage points in just the past three months to 68%. However, adjusted pre-tax operating earnings were higher from year-ago levels because of efforts to reduce costs and restructure operations. The onshore/offshore segment showed similar dynamics. Sales of $1.8 billion were down 19% from the year-ago quarter, and TechnipFMC blamed reduced project activity in the Americas and the Middle East for the slump. Project profitability improved, though, helping to boost adjusted pre-tax operating earnings. For the surface technologies unit, things looked a bit worse. Revenue declines of 29% suffered thanks to competitive pricing condition internationally and lower product sales, and the company reported an operating loss for the quarter. But the company was still pleased that the loss was less than expected, citing more favorable cost structures in driving performance. Inbound orders came in at $1.59 billion, reflecting the merged companies' total figures. Backlog was $16.1 billion, most of which is in the onshore/offshore business. What's ahead for TechnipFMC? Company executives were focused on the future of the combined business. In explaining what it means to have become one company, CEO Doug Pferdehirt believes TechnipFMC is "now uniquely able to leverage our industry-leading, front-end engineering capabilities [and] our culture of innovation that is bringing to market next-generation solutions." Solid project management is also a competitive advantage Pferdehirt believes TechnipFMC can use to differentiate itself going forward. TechnipFMC was fairly optimistic about the projections it made about its future. The company believes full-year revenue for the subsea business will be at least $6.1 billion, and TechnipFMC predicts minimum revenue of $7.3 billion for the onshore/offshore business and $1.4 billion in surface technologies. CFO Maryann Mannen stressed the efforts the company is making to drive cost savings and synergies, but more importantly, she sees the market improving. In her words, "The North American recovery is well underway, and we're seeing the greatest impact in our business." Nevertheless, investors in TechnipFMC weren't entirely satisfied with the report, and the stock dropped 7% in the opening minutes of trading following the announcement. With the energy industry still facing substantial obstacles, it will take a lot more work before TechnipFMC can feel entirely confident about the future of its business. 10 stocks we like better than FMC Technologies When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now...and FMC Technologies 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. Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends TechnipFMC. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. plaza The portion of Erie Canal Centre which will be home to two new retail tenants. (Photo by Elizabeth Doran) A third tenant is scheduled to move into the Erie Canal Centre shopping plaza in DeWitt, joining Burlington Coat Factory and Dick's Sporting Goods Michaels, a large national chain selling art supplies, crafts, frames, decorative items and more, is expected to move into the 26,000-square-foot space next to what will soon be Burlington, said Brixmor Property Group. Burlington will move into the larger 40,000-square-foot plaza next to Dick's Sporting Goods, in what used to be Office Max and before that Kmart, according to Brixmor, which owns and operates the plaza. Burlington, a discount clothing retailer, is expected to open at the end of this year; Michaels will open in early 2018, Brixmor officials said. Last year, there was speculation that Whole Foods might move into that space, but that rumor turned out to be unfounded. Dick's Sporting Goods, which operates a 50,000-square-foot store, moved into the plaza in late 2015. Michaels Stores Inc., based in Irving, TX, operates more than 1,350 stores across the U.S. and Canada. In the Syracuse area, Michaels has a location in Destiny USA, at 3483 W. Genesee St. in Camillus and at 3133 Erie Blvd. E. in DeWitt, just 1. 7 miles away from where the new store will be located. A customer shops at a Michaels store (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac) Store clerks at the existing Michaels said they hadn't heard of any plans to close and move the location, but it's unlikely Michaels would operate two stores so close together. The Michaels store in DeWitt has been open for more than 15 years. It is located in the plaza that includes David's Bridal Shop. Brixmor operates more than 500 retail centers across the U.S. Brixmor officials say they plan to make facade improvements to the building before the new tenants move in. DeWitt planners are currently reviewing those plans. Johnny Depp, Pirates 5 Johnny Depp plays Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales." (Video still) Captain Jack Sparrow came to life on one of Disneyland's most famous rides Wednesday. Johnny Depp surprised "Pirates of the Caribbean" fans by posing as his character from the movies based on the theme park attraction. Depp repeated lines from the movie while dressed as the popular swashbuckler and interacted with people riding on boats inside. Johnny Depp Is filming on the pirates ride in Disney land!!!! Crazy!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/Klc1QyEKzR Tkilla (@Twiller0) April 27, 2017 "Everyone was surprised, shocked and excited to see him," one eyewitness told E! News. "He acted exactly like his character in the movies." "It was a surreal moment for everyone on our boat! Crazy experience. Best Disneyland experience our family has ever been a part of," another said. Life is complete! Just saw Johnny Depp on Pirates of the Caribbean @Disneyland !! #PiratesoftheCaribbean pic.twitter.com/33lLTGmHng Patty Marie (@GeminiMarie93) April 27, 2017 The stunt was clearly Disney's effort to build buzz for Depp's return in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales." The fifth movie in the series stars Javier Bardem as deadly ghost chasing Jack, whose only hope is to find the legendary Trident of Poseidon. Depp also needs a hit as he faces $40 million in debt. The actor, who recently divorced from his wife Amber Heard, sued his former managers and blamed The Management Group for alleged financial misconduct; TMG has denied the allegations and accused Depp of overspending in an "ultra-extravagant lifestyle." "Why didn't they drop me as a client if I was so out of control?" Depp told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. "I've worked very, very hard for a lot of years and trusted a lot of people, some who've clearly let me down." "Pirates of the Caribbean 5," also featuring returning stars Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Geoffrey Rush, opens in theaters May 29. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- More than 50 people have been charged in a wide-reaching drug crack down, facing charges ranging from conspiracy to murder to selling drugs, officials announced Thursday. In two separate indictments, the 52 people are facing charges for about 370 crimes, including operating as a major trafficker, various counts of criminal drug sale and possession, and conspiracy charges, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman announced the results of the 12-month investigation, called Operation Bricktown, at a news conference Thursday in Syracuse. About 30 people charged are believed to belong to Syracuse's Bricktown Gang, a group that's operated in Syracuse for more than 10 years, Schneiderman said. Five alleged Bricktown members are facing conspiracy to commit murder charges, according to the attorney general's office. Police surveillance shows they planned to kill rival gang members in Syracuse, with one declaring "it's war time," officials said. Four others, allegedly from a different gang, are also facing conspiracy to commit murder charges for planned hits on rivals, offices said. The state said the accused at one point threw loaded guns out of a window while pursued by police. The defendants were arrested Wednesday and Thursday morning in a series of raids across Syracuse and Cortland, Madison, Monroe and Oswego counties, according to the attorney general's office. Two were found out of state, in Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Family members of the accused and others jammed a court room for arraignments at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in the Onondaga County courthouse. Dozens remained in the hallway after the 50-seat courtroom filled to capacity. The drug sales operation extended across Central New York, with heroin and cocaine being transported throughout Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, Oswego, and St. Lawrence counties, Schneiderman's office states. Through the investigation, authorities seized: Over 2 kilograms of cocaine 1,128 envelopes of heroin and more than 20 grams of loose heroin Ecstasy pills and psychedelic mushrooms a 9-mm Lorcin handgun, loaded, with a destroyed serial number a .40-caliber Glock handgun, loaded with a 30-roun magazine a 9-mm Sig Sauer handgun, loaded with a 15-round magazine a .45-caliber Taurus handgun, loaded a 12-gauge shotgun Drug paraphernalia (including scales, packaging, cutting agents) $3,657 One of the guns -- the 9-mm Lorcin -- was used in about 13 different shots-fired incidents in Syracuse from 2015 to 2016, officials said. This was determined by ballistics testing. Along with last year's Operation Smackdown, which led to the arrest of 72 people across Central New York for drug trafficking, Schneiderman estimate they've gotten more than 120 drug dealers off the streets. "These are the kinds of cases that make a difference in people's lives," Schneiderman said. He said Operation Bricktown is the first campaign in his Suburban and Upstate Response to the Growing Epidemic initiative, a new effort to target gangs an people who deal heroin and commit violence across New York state. The attorney general's Organized Crime Task Force was assisted by the Syracuse Police Department, State Police, the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office, the Onondaga County Probation Department, the State Division of Parole, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the State National Guard Counterdrug Task Force John Giocondo.jpg John Giocondo, 50, of Liverpool. (Provided photo) Syracuse, NY -- An Onondaga County judge has ruled that a former sheriff's office jail deputy will remain in jail while appealing his conviction in a stolen pill case. John Giocondo, 50, of Liverpool, sought an emergency order to release him from a 60-day jail sentence imposed last week by Syracuse City Court Judge James Cecile. But County Court Judge Thomas J. Miller Wednesday night refused to release Giocondo, defense lawyer Paul Carey said. The jail deputy, who retired after his arrest, was convicted after a bench trial of stealing a pill from a nurse's station at the downtown jail. Prosecutor Michael Mordue built a case that Giocondo had a substance abuse problem and was seen on camera going into the nurse's station. He later fell asleep on the job, witnesses said. But Carey argued that no one actually saw Giocondo steal the pill. And appeals lawyer Bruce Bryan suggested there was a good chance the conviction would be overturned on appeal. Bryan also argued that Giocondo's status as a former law enforcement officer should have led to a sentence that didn't include jail. Inmates could put a former deputy's life in danger, he said. Giocondo's appeal will continue, but he'll be freed long before an appellate court hears the case. Giocondo started his 60-day sentence April 18 and is due to be released May 26 after the usual reductions for good behavior are factored in, according to jail records. Appeals can take months or years. Giocondo is being held at a different jail facility than the one he guarded as a deputy. He's at the Onondaga County Correctional Facility in Jamesville, which houses sentenced offenders. Blog_2017-04-26-dn-stabbing.JPG Syracuse police officers put down evidence markers on S. Clinton and Dickerson St's where a large fight occurred with a possible stabbing. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com (Dennis Nett) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- One of the men taken to the hospital for a stab wound after a fight near downtown Syracuse Wednesday is now the main suspect. Gerald J. McGill Gerald J. McGill, 33, of Syracuse, has been arrested for stabbing two other men, the Syracuse Police Department announced today. Officers responded to South Clinton Street near the intersection of Dickerson Street near downtown Syracuse at 11:21 a.m. Wednesday for a stabbing complaint. Several calls came in to the 911 dispatch center alerting authorities. Police at the scene said there had been a large group fight. At least 30 people were nearby, watching police put yellow tape around the crime scene. Sgt. Richard Helterline, a police spokesman, said police are still trying to figure out how many people were directly involved with the fight. Three people were hospitalized for stab wounds. A 21-year-old man was stabbed in the chest. He is in critical condition, but is expected to survive, police said today. A 26-year-old man was stabbed in the arm, and another -- later identified as McGill -- had a small stab or laceration in the head. Their injuries were non-life-threatening, according to the department. McGill was charged with first-degree assault and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Onondaga County jail inmate records state he was also charged with three sanitary code violations. Helterline said the violations were from active warrant charges. McGill is being held without bail and is expected to appear in court today. The Syracuse Police Department asks anyone with information on the incident to call (315) 422-5222, or use their "SPD Tips" app. Reporter Kira Maddox covers crime and safety for Syracuse.com. She can be reached anytime: Email | Facebook | Twitter What happened Shares of ServiceMaster Global Holdings (NYSE: SERV) slid in Thursday trading, falling as much as 11.2% before climbing back to close the day down "only" 8.4%. So what This being earnings season, you might suspect that an earnings report had something to do with investors' sudden decisions to abandon the stock -- and you'd be right. Thursday morning, ServiceMaster reported its fiscal Q1 2017 earnings, and the news was not great. The company -- more familiar to homeowners by its brand names "American Home Shield" and "Terminix" -- reported a 6% rise in Q1 revenue, to $643 million. Unfortunately, gross profit margins on that revenue slid by 50 basis points, net profit margins declined by 30 basis points, and as a result, the company's weakening margins negated all the benefit of its increased revenues. When all was said and done, ServiceMaster ended the quarter with precisely as much profit as it had earned in Q1 last year -- $0.28 per diluted share. Now what Wall Street was unimpressed. With analysts expecting $0.38 per share and ServiceMaster reporting a number $0.10 below that expectation, ServiceMaster stock promptly sold off. Nor did ServiceMaster's guidance for the rest of the year seem to allay their concerns. For the full year, ServiceMaster says it still expects to generate sales of about $2.9 billion -- in line with past guidance, and also with Wall Street's expectations. On the subject of earnings, though, ServiceMaster said only that it expects its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) will range between $700 million and $715 million. No guidance for GAAP profits was given. With ServiceMaster stock now selling for the princely sum of 33.5 times earnings, and now having "missed estimates" three times in the past five reported quarters, that lack of guidance seems to be giving investors little reason to stick around and see how the year plays out. 10 stocks we like better than ServiceMaster Global Holdings When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and ServiceMaster Global Holdings 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 Rich Smith 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. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Fifty-two people have been charged with being part of a large drug trafficking operation that sold drugs in Central and Northern New York, state officials announced today. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the drug ring was responsible for bringing and selling cocaine and heroin in Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, Oswego, and St. Lawrence counties. Thirty of those arrested are also accused of belonging to Syracuse's Bricktown Gang, according to the attorney general's office. The gang has been in Syracuse for more than a decade. The 12-month initiative, called Operation Bricktown, led to their arrest Wednesday and Thursday morning. The following people are charged in two separate indictments for a total of 370 crimes: Charged with conspiracy to commit murder Tonette Butler, 35, Baldwinsville Asian "Ace" McArthur, 28, Syracuse Kamar "Jungle" Parke, 28, Syracuse Glen "Ice" White, 33, Syracuse Savon "Say Boog" Ellick-Sanders, 22, Syracuse Michael "Mitch" Morgan, 27, Syracuse Quincy "Fat Boy" Jones, 25, Syracuse Delaughn Brown, 19, Syracuse Niheim "Boo Boo" Martin, 19, Syracuse Charged with operating as a major trafficker Antwan Lockhart, 31, Oneida William Poole, 33, Syracse Complete list Kelly Babbitt, 24, Cortland Rasue "Sue" Barnett, 37, Syracuse Bishop Black, 25, Syracuse Delaughn Brown, 19, Syracuse Paul Brown, 31, Fulton Rashawn Brown, 28, Syracuse Tonette Butler, 35, Baldwinsville Christopher "Heavy" Caldwell, 27, Syracuse Devon Christman, 28, Florida Artel "Queez" Clarke, 29, Syracuse Wilford "Hoffa" Clarke, 35, Syracuse Khalil Davis, 19, Syracuse Kivon "Kilo" Davis, 25, Syracuse Faniel Denis, 35, Oneida, Miami, Fla Savon "Say Boog" Ellick-Sanders, 22, Syracuse David "Neck" Floyd, 29, Syracuse Lynard "Large" Funderburg, 26, Syracuse Raymond Harris, 33, Syracuse Joshua "Hood" Hester, 26, Syracuse John Horton, 25, Liverpool Shantajah Hunter, 25, Syracuse Matthew Hutchins, 36, Fulton Quincy "Fat Boy" Jones, 25, Syracuse Michael Kaigler, 36, Liverpool James Kelley, 28, Liverpool Terrence Kilmer, 56, Port Byron Emerson Kinsey, 29, Syracuse Shakeem "Jig" Kitchen, 27, Syracuse Antwan Lockhart, 31, Oneida Niheim "Boo Boo" Martin, 19, Syracuse Asian "Ace" Mcarthur, 28, Syracuse Antwan Mcgee, 32, Syracuse Gary Moore, 48, Hastings Michael "Mitch" Morgan, 27, Syracuse Matthew Muldoon, 52, Oswego Michael "Mi" Myers, 31, Syracuse Kamar "Jungle" Parke, 28, Syracuse Joshua Poole, 23, Cortland William Poole, 33, Syracuse Reggie Robinson, 33, Syracuse Yanira Rodriguez, 35, New York City Kendrick Rowser, 27, Syracuse Miquan "Bub" Russo, 26, Syracuse Charles Scott, 27, Syracuse Lacy Sellers, 26, Syracuse Kharif Strange, 22, Syracuse Daquan "Kiss" Sullivan, 30, East Syracuse Demetrius "Meech" Sullivan, 29, East Syracuse David "Dirt" Trapps, 37, Syracuse Terri Tyler, 27, Fulton Glen "Ice" White, 33, Syracuse Sean Young, 33, Ogdensburg Syracuse.com has reached out for further details on the charges. Office officials said the defendants' photos and would be released at a later point. This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon! Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page? Greeted by enormous queues and a packed-out chamber, Stephen Fry is one of the Cambridge Unions first major speakers of a glittering Easter term lineup. His enchanting style of story-telling takes us through his Cambridge years, struggles with bipolar disorder, and friendships with J. K. Rowling, Hugh Laurie and Douglas Adams, and is peppered as always with characteristic sharp wit. At one point in his speech Fry jokes that he loves the sound of his own voice, and he does clearly have something to say about everything, answering questions from the press and audience members alike with tireless warmth. Before his speech I talked to Fry about his own entrance into comedy and how it has changed since he was a Cambridge student like us, before touching on some of his thoughts on mental health. Comedy is a huge palace and it has many rooms, some of which are still people doing sketches about Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche with pipes and tweed jackets but the chances of them getting a wider ventilation to the world is much more remote, than in his own day, he says. We knew we were lucky, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and I when we joined the Footlights. We saw all the Pythons and various other people on the walls of the clubhouse and thought that that door had been closed; we thought thatll never happen again. So the fact that the BBC wanted to do our show on television and things happened we got a new series, then Blackadder happened didnt seem natural, but it was an amazing thing. Looking back, we were incredibly lucky, outrageously so. Im not sure it could ever happen again in quite that way. Now youve just got to feed the beast, feed this TV and radio thing or even this podcast and Youtube thing. In answer to another reporters question on comedy, Fry continues to reminisce about his early days in the Cambridge Footlights. I did plays with Emma Thompson in my first two years, and then she introduced me to to Hugh and Hugh and we just naturally started to write together. Cambridge is unique, he says, because of the three years space we have for creativity: Hugh went to one lecture; I went to three in three years. Hughs one lecture was the basis of one of his sketches. There was no pressure to do exams, or get Firsts, or worry about the academic side of things. Your supervisors and deans in the college would just say oh, youre very funny, we go and see your shows every other term, so you carry on doing that. Dont you worry about any of this other nonsense. Fry was in fact on probation when he arrived at Cambridge, something Queens College was unaware of at the time, simply because they never asked. Getting involved in comedy at Cambridge gave me a career I owe it absolutely everything, he says. Intelligent comedy and satire is still being made as in his own day, he believes, but he has no time for laziness in modern comedy: its so easy to mock Trump, for heavens sake. Theres never been a more obvious cunt! Turning to mental health, Fry says that you really just have to use your wit and intelligence when supporting someone with a mental health problem because minds are not all identical. He uses the analogy of alcohol consumption: having drunk the same amount, someone will become annoying and aggressive. Another one will become maudlin and soppy. Another one will throw up. Theyve all had the same chemicals but theyll respond completely differently. Its the same with mental health and medication. Bipolar or anxiety disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder will play differently with different peoples different attributes and different feelings. I suppose one must use the affection you have for someone and try and figure out what theyd best respond to. Whether talking about his own time at Cambridge, creating comedy during his life or his experiences and opinions on mental health, Fry is as one audience member remarked a supremely eloquent and engaging speaker. Having recently left QI after 13 years and now living in the States, it might seem to most like the end of an era for Stephen Fry but if his Union visit proves anything, its that hes still got it. Zunum Aero, a startup backed by Boeing and JetBlue, on Wednesday announced that it was developing regional hybrid-electric aircraft with backing from Boeings HorizonX innovation cell and JetBlue Technology Ventures. The planes, which will have 10 to 50 seats, are scheduled for launch in the early 2020s. With its regional aircraft, Zunum aims to democratize access to fast, affordable travel over distances of 700 miles at launch, to more than 1,000 miles by 2030. Among the many advantages hybrid aircraft will offer, according to Zunum, are the following: Decrease door-to-door travel times on busy corridors by 40 percent and cut travel time on less-trafficked corridors by 80 percent; Sharply reduce operating costs, enabling ticket prices 40-80 percent below current fares; Cut emissions by 80 percent, falling to zero over time as battery densities improve; and Cut community noise 75 percent, enabling all-hours access to smaller airports. Zunums Dream Zunum is developing technologies to create a regional electric air network that will offer an affordable alternative to highways and high-speed rail. It will operate both as a point-to-point service and as a feeder to hub airports. The company has a long-term partnership with the Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems, an NSF-sponsored research center at the University of Illinois. It also works with a network of collaborators across leading universities and government labs. Zunum has been working with the United States Federal Aviation Administration since 2014 to drive development of certification standards for electric aircraft, a complete set of which is expected by 2018. The first electrics are likely to become certified in 2020. Deconstructing Zunums Vision I like the idea of migrating to hybrid planes and I think the smaller regional planes are a good fit for regional airports not served by the larger airlines, noted Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research. Normally Id be skeptical of a startups ability to accomplish critical mass to make air travel more affordable, he told TechNewsWorld, but Zunums financial backers, Boeing and JetBlue, could make this a reality. Boeing on Wednesday launched HorizonX to invest in early-stage technology companies. The technology exists, observed Wayne Plucker, North America aerospace and defense director at Frost & Sullivan. However, ground recharging is slow, and Zunum shows ducted fans for the engines and hints at fuselage-mounted turbines to recharge the batteries, which would require a flight ceiling of 20,000 to 30,000 feet, he told TechNewsWorld. Further, I doubt the 40-80 percent operating cost reductions, Plucker remarked. Most importantly, each flight needs to get enough passengers to offset its costs, and that makes it hard to make their business case, he noted. Zunum needs a route that has consistent demand for more than 50 people on a daily basis year round and isnt currently served, said Plucker. There arent many of those. Cutting Into the Airline Industry If its plans succeed, Zunum could be a disruptive influence in the airline industry. Think of the impact Teslas having on the auto industry, McGregor pointed out. The same could happen to aircraft. Zunum will also likely disrupt buses, passenger trains and even some shared ride and taxi car services, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. You could have a fleet of these planes instead of buses transport company employees and turn some of the parking lots into short airfields, he told TechNewsWorld. Google seems to have anticipated this with their Moffett Field location in Silicon Valley. However, some place like Dubai, South Korea or China will likely do this in production first, Enderle predicted, largely because these countries are typically far more aggressive with technology and transportation. The Rush to Electric Hybrid Planes Interest in electric plane development has been increasing in recent years. NASA Langley researchers successfully flew a 10-engine electric plane in 2015. Aurora Flight Sciences and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, are working on the XV-24A LightningStrike VTOL experimental plane. Zee Aero is working on its own electric hybrid aircraft. Airbus is working on a hybrid commercial plane through its E-Fan project. In November, aerospace engineers and designers meet in Cologne, Germany, at the Electric & Hybrid Aerospace Technology Symposium 2017. Three high-profile Internet brands this week announced initiatives to combat fake news online. Google on Tuesday revealed that it had tweaked its search processes to help bring high-quality content to the top of search result pages. Wikipedia also took a shot at fake news. Founder Jimmy Wales on Monday announced a new online publication, Wikitribune, which aims to fight fake news by pairing professional journalists with legions of volunteer community contributors. Meanwhile, Facebook on Tuesday said it had begun testing its Related Articles feature, which shows readers Facebooks recommendations for articles related to the topic of an article theyve just read. The new related article feature displays the links to recommended reading in users news feeds, along with the topic article link. Quality and Transparency Improved Among the changes Google has implemented to give high-quality content its due is a revamp of the guidelines used by its quality raters to evaluate the effectiveness of the companys algorithms to identify problematic content, including misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories. These guidelines will begin to help our algorithms in demoting such low-quality content and help us to make additional improvements over time, noted Ben Gomes, a vice president of engineering at Google. The company has tweaked the signals it uses to rank pages, so more authoritative material is displayed and lower-quality content is demoted in search results. Google also has made it easier for searchers to flag inaccurate or offensive content that appears in the Autocomplete and Featured Snippets features on a Web page. Further, it has added more transparency about its practices at its Help Center and How Search Works site. Smart Move Googles latest moves are smart for its business, regardless of whether they have an impact on fake news, suggested John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University. When people start to doubt the reliability of Googles search results, that can undermine what people have relied on Google for since its inception, he told TechNewsWorld. Even though Google says that only one-quarter of 1 percent of its search results link to offensive or inaccurate content, there has been enough press around it to make something Google cant afford not to address, Carroll said. Addressing the problem of fake news is a good idea for Google, at least conceptually, noted Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute. Google has a power and influence here, because most people dont move past the first page of suggestions, he told TechNewsWorld, so if you can elevate things that have more authority and are more likely to be true and accurate, thats powerful. Paper for People, by People Of the three initiatives to foil fake news, Wikitribune is probably the most ambitious. Founder Wales contends the online publication will be the first collaboration between professional and citizen journalists working side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live, and having them fact-checked by a supporting community. I have great hope for the Wikitribune idea, said Mark Marino, director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab at the University of Southern California. Wikipedia has developed a robust system for establishing the veracity of content, he told TechNewsWorld. Whats more, unlike Google and Facebook, the processes are apparent to the people who read Wikipedia. You can see the conversations behind the content, Marino noted. That puts it at a very different level than either Facebook or Google, whose algorithms are invisible to us at all times. While another source of reliable news would be a good thing, the path Wales has chosen is well trodden, BUs Carroll noted. As well intentioned as journalists and entrepreneurs have been in pursuing that kind of collaborative journalism, it hasnt been successful in many of the cases where its been tried, he said. Let the Consumer Decide Its a smart strategy by Facebook to provide more information, rather than being the one that eliminates information, BUs Carroll suggested. One of the difficulties for Facebook in dealing with fake news is it doesnt want to seem like some arbitrary censor that picks whats true and whats not, he continued. Facebook is saying to its users, You decide whats true and whats not. Heres some tools to do that.' Allowing consumers to decide for themselves is good in theory, but it may encounter obstacles in a world of alternative facts. We need to wait and see how valuable the related articles concept is, APIs Rosenstiel said. One truth about algorithms is that people who want to manipulate them continually adapt to them. Manipulating Political Reality The jury is out on how successful these latest efforts to muzzle fake news are likely to be. Im happy to see companies putting some critical energy towards combating fake news, but Id prefer to see people developing stronger media literacy on their own, USCs Marino said. For all the knowns we get in a press release from Google or Facebook about their procedures, theres too many unknowns about how their black box software operates to begin with, he noted. The fake news problem may be larger than even behemoths like Google and Facebook can tackle. The essential problem is theres no punishment for people who tell lies to the world, said Mark Graff, CEO of Tellagraff. Even if Google tweaks its algorithms and Facebook makes it easier to flag fake news, unless theres some cost to spreading lies, people will use the Internet as a megaphone to spread lies, he told TechNewsWorld. As laudable as these latest efforts to smother fake news may be, they raise questions about the human condition in the Internet Age. These companies, through an algorithm, actually shape peoples political reality, said Vincent Reynaud, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at Emerson College. Based on the ability to control searches or what appears in a news feed, he told TechNewsWorld, they can impact the way people understand how politics is working. What I think is amazing about all of the massive data breaches we hear about is that we know most are not reported. In other words, for every email, customer record, or financial theft in the news, there likely are hundreds that remain in the shadows. This problem is huge and yet another incident came to light last week. A clever Lithuanian individual was able to pull a whopping US$100 million from a bunch of unnamed Internet companies using a combination of phishing tactics and fake vendors spread across a multitude of companies. It apparently wasnt a state-level or even organized crime-level attack, which should make you wonder how many billions hostile states and actual criminal organizations are stealing from you daily. You and I are the victims, because this activity raises costs that we pay. The good news is that companies that no longer wish to be targets can take advantage of three broadly used technologies to stop this activity: blockchain, Inky and Varonis. Ill explain and then close with my product of the week: the Lenovo X1 Carbon, which may be the best business laptop currently in market. Frauds Aftereffects The Lithuanian attack brought back memories of one of my most embarrassing moments during my stint running an audit team. Shortly after we completed the audit, someone else discovered that an employee in an area wed audited had embezzled thousands from the company, and I felt personally responsible for missing it. My boss pointed out that my team had caught the control exposure that made the theft possible, and that it simply had not shown up in our sample of vendors. Still, I was embarrassed personally and always have felt I could have done better. When these things hit, they affect everyone up line from them. They can be incredibly hard to catch, but I think it is well worth making the effort. Being connected to something like this can follow your career, even if you had no way of catching or stopping it. Blockchain to the Rescue The best solution for combating false vendors likely is blockchain technology, which is why IBM has been so successful with financial institutions implementing it broadly. Developed around the digital currency bitcoin, it is a way to ensure transactions without financial institutions. It provides a robust multilevel transaction assurance process that is incredibly difficult to break. This doesnt mean a state or very powerful criminal organization couldnt breach it with enough resources, anything is possible. Short of that, however, it represents the most robust and secure trust system currently in market. If the victim companies in the Lithuanian breach had used blockchain, the attacker likely would have chosen other firms to attack. Everledger currently uses blockchain to ensure diamond transactions and eliminate conflict diamonds, which fund some of the most brutal wars and nastiest crimes in the world. It may be the strongest weapon currently available to eliminate this kind of crime. The use of blockchain is evolving to ensure art and other high-value transactions as well, in both the personal and public markets. Email Security Guard When there is a unique exposure, a unique company often steps up to address it. Phishing, particularly spearphishing, is at the heart of many data breaches. One of the biggest I personally ran into was a case of a criminal organization that was able to capture critical identity information of each of a targeted companys execs over the course of a year. It then used that data to convince all of the companys employees to send in their own financial ID credentials in order to commit identity theft at massive scale. I see cases like this all the time now sad stories of people who believe they got a request from their boss, CFO, or even CEO for confidential information. A duped individual supplies it, and then finds out it was a fake note and he or she is now at the heart of an IP theft case as the one who breached policy. Careers often dont survive mistakes like this. Inky is a relatively new email service that focuses on identity validation. Every employee has a unique key, and if the email doesnt have that key it isnt from that employee. You immediately can see that the email that seemed to come from the CEO didnt. Rather than becoming a key portion of the problem and possibly ending your career, you can flag the email to security and be part of the solution. At some point, I expect every email system will have some kind of identity validation built into it, but right not the only one I know that does is Inky. Whos Minding Access? From the DNC email breach to this latest one, the problem in part has been that there was no in-depth monitoring of systems or access. When there is a breach, there is an unusual event taking place but if you have no invasive way to monitor activity and aggressively limit access, you simply dont have the capability to catch a breach when it occurs. At some point during this latest breach, new vendors were being added at an unusual rate. The system should have flagged that as an anomaly, even though different purchasing agents likely were adding them. Such a flag could have resulted in identification of a breach in progress, before the millions were lost. That is why tools like Varonis, which can monitor access and alert system administrators of anomalies are a critical part of the tool kit that successful CSOs use to make sure their firms arent breached. Wrapping Up There are tools to prevent the kinds of financial and intellectual property breaches that have damaged companies and elections. At some point, boards need to start asking if these tools are in place to make sure the firms they oversee arent being negligent with regard to information and financial security. As customers, we may want to start checking to see if the firms we trust to manage our own finances are well secured, because identity theft is a really nasty problem to fix as is getting back money that was pulled from our bank accounts illicitly. Until then, just be aware there are tools that can make both our companies and ourselves far safer. More of us may want to be pointing these out so that were not included in the next set of victims. The best laptop for me may not be the best laptop for you, but Ill bet the Lenovo X1 Carbon comes close. There are four things that stand out for a notebook used for work: light carry weight, because I already put too much crap in my backpack; good keyboard/touchpad; damage resistant, because I dont want something that looks older than I do; and really good battery life, because I dont want to fight or look for plugs on planes or in conferences. The Lenovo X1 Carbon currently does the best job of hitting all those points. It weighs slightly less than two and a half pounds and is just a little more than half an inch thick, which puts it close to large tablet territory. Along with many others who have used it, I think it has the best keyboard currently in any laptop. The ThinkPad black coating has proven to be one of the most durable for decades. Finally, its battery has lasted around 16 hours in tests, which means it is working when you need it to work. Lenovos ThinkPad X1Carbon There are few laptops from anyone, let alone in this weight class, that do anywhere near as well. By the way, another nice thing that is suddenly showing up in a number of laptops is a USB-C charging port, so if you need a charger and there is anyone else with a USB-C laptop charger, you arent screwed. I actually think a USB-C port should be a requirement for every laptop going forward, so we arent forced out of our offices by a growing pile of useless chargers that dont fit our laptops. Granted, it isnt a 2-in-1, but given how few of us use 2-in-1s in tablet mode? I really dont think many would miss that feature. In addition, it doesnt have a touchscreen, which can get a tad annoying if you are used to using one. The one real downside for me is the lack of a GPU, so I cant play good games on it. However, if you add a GPU youll gain weight and lose battery life which even for me sometimes isnt a good tradeoff. (I find Im mostly gaming on a desktop machine at home these days, anyway.) At just under $1,152, the Lenovo X1 Carbon is no cheap date. (Note: Personally, Id buy up to the $1,300 version with the fingerprint scanner they have really improved over the years but it currently is sold out.) If you want what is likely the best workhorse laptop for school or business, there is to my knowledge none better, which is why the Lenovo X1 Carbon is my product of the week. Earlier this week we reported on Verizon's new $70 Fios Gigabit Connection plan that doesn't actually offer gigabit speeds. Now it turns out that the plan isn't really $70 either like Verizon's press release stated. The deal seemed a bit too good to be true so Ars Technica did some digging and discovered a mess of internal pricing structures, temporary discounts, and upgrade confusion. The $70 price tag is actually only for new customers that don't already have Fios service. Existing customers will be charged the standard price of up to $200. Those new customers will also also have to pay router charges and some additional fees, so it looks like no one will actually get the "revolutionary price" of $70. Further complicating things, Verizon's website isn't currently set up to upgrade existing customers despite Verizon advertising an immediate upgrade. That will be delayed until April 30th. An Ars Technica reader spoke with a Verizon customer service rep while attempting to upgrade his service and discovered that the $70 price wasn't even available in the system. After further discussion with Verizon, it turns out that there is no exact price for this plan. The specific price a customer pays to upgrade "depends on what their current pricing is." For those new customers looking to get this new service, be sure to read the fine print very carefully. The service actually costs $195 / month for new customers but is then reduced with a temporary $115 "special bonus discount" and $10 online discount to $70 that may be valid for either one or two years. So the TL;DR of this is Verizon's $70 Gigabit plan is not $70 and not gigabit. In the hopes of someday helping babies born prematurely, a team of scientists from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia created a device that simulates the conditions inside the uterus. This artificial womb was originally designed to sustain lamb fetuses which previous research indicated are good models for human fetal development by recreating the uterus of a pregnant animal. The invention has shown significant progress when tested on eight tiny lambs with ages biologically equivalent to premature babies in the 23- to 24-week gestation stage. Encouraged by their success, the researchers are confident their device could one day be adapted to replicate the uterus of a pregnant woman, possibly in the next three to five years. What The Artificial Womb Is Intended For As the researchers explain, the need for such an invention stemmed from the high number of premature babies born every year in the United States. Almost 30,000 babies a year are delivered in American hospitals at age 26 weeks or younger, more than 10 weeks ahead of the normal gestation period. This condition, known as extreme prematurity, "is the leading cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity," the researchers document in their paper, published April 25 in the journal Nature Communications. Extremely premature infants typically weigh about a pound and only have a 30 to 50 percent chance of survival. Nearly 90 percent of those who survive face severe health problems, such as chronic lung disease and complications arising from poor organ development. Extreme prematurity causes a third of all infant deaths and half of all cerebral palsy diagnoses attributed to preterm births. "If you can just use this device as a bridge for the fetus then you can have a dramatic impact on the outcomes of extremely premature infants," explained Alan Flake, study lead author. This would be a tremendous achievement, he added, considering that as the authors wrote in their paper's abstract "fetal lambs that are developmentally equivalent to the extreme premature human infant can be physiologically supported in this extra-uterine device for up to four weeks." How Could This Device Help Premature Babies? The artificial womb is essentially a clear plastic bag that contains a special liquid fabricated to mimic the amniotic fluid that normally surrounds the fetus in utero. The system is connected to a circuit that supports oxygen flow via the umbilical cord, allowing the heart to pump blood into a machine outside the artificial womb created to substitute the placenta. Probably the biggest innovation of this device is that it doesn't rely on a ventilator to help the fetus breathe. Since even gentle pumps produce pressure that can fatally overload an underdeveloped heart, the fetuses are instead suspended in the amniotic liquid. Blood pumped through the umbilical cord feeds the fetus's bloodstream with oxygen and nutrients, doubling as a system for carbon dioxide removal. "We tried to develop a system that as closely as possible reproduced the environment of the womb, replacing the function of the placenta," mentioned Flake. "This, in theory, should allow support of premature infants for a period of weeks, and thereby reduce dramatically their mortality and morbidity rates and improve their outcomes in both the short and long terms," the researcher detailed. What Are The Potential Ethical Concerns? The Philadelphia scientific community welcomed the advance in neonatal care this invention is intended to bring, and recognized the artificial womb could help researchers learn more about normal fetal development. The device was dubbed a "technological miracle" by pediatrician Jay Greenspan, from the Thomas Jefferson University, and "major breakthrough" by Thomas Shaffer, physiology and pediatrics professor at Temple University. However, other scientists worry about the ethical issues the new invention could potentially raise. One example is bioethicist Dena Davis, from the Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Davis is concerned that, although the device showed success with lamb fetuses, it may not necessarily be a good solution for human fetuses. She points out that, if the system makes it to human investigations, it could put premature babies at risk for stress and pain, without offering substantial chances of success at the start of the testing trials. "If it's a difference between a baby dying rather peacefully and a baby dying under conditions of great stress and discomfort then, no, I don't think it's better," says Davis. If the artificial womb proves successful in helping human preemies, it could end up blurring the lines between a fetus and a baby, potentially impacting abortion politics, she added. Another bioethicist, Scott Gelfand from the Oklahoma State University, suggests the new technology could be wrongly used to serve coercive purposes. To support his theory, he hypothesizes that women who want to get abortions could be required to put their fetuses into artificial wombs. At the same time, the device could be used as a loophole by employers looking to avoid maternity leave, or by insurance companies wanting to evade the financial hassles of complicated pregnancies and deliveries. Moreover, according to sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman, from the City University of New York, the technological transformation of pregnancy could lead to a denied "human connection" among babies being "raised in a machine." What The Inventors Say In answer to all these concerns, Flake points out the ethical concerns should be balanced against the risk of death and severe disabilities faced by extremely premature infants. The scientist clarified the new invention is not meant to extend viability outside of the womb further back than 23 weeks, but to support the infant from 23 weeks to 28 weeks of gestational age, when the effects of prematurity become minimal. "It's certainly not our goal to extend the limits of viability," says Flake, adding that his team's goal "is to improve survival for extremely premature infants." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The LG G6 is a phenomenal smartphone leaps and bounds better than the mediocre G5, its predecessor that had failed to push its modular schtick into wide commercial adoption. LG has gone back to basics to create the G6, eschewing gimmicks and quirks to deliver a top-rank premium phone with a huge screen, but LG's having difficulty selling it. Not because it's not a good phone. Not quite. In fact, the LG G6 might be one of this year's best. LG G6: Unfortunate Timing LG's facing a hard time trying to sell the G6 because of, well, unfortunate timing. Samsung's newest pair of flagships, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, have now launched, and both are taking all the spotlight they can get, which means the G6 now hovers somewhere in the background as the Galaxy S8 takes the stage. So with this in mind, how will LG fight back? More importantly, how can it encourage consumers to pick the G6 over the Galaxy S8? The latter question might prove more difficult to answer, especially since some may view the Galaxy S8's upped chipset, stellar camera, security features, and AI assistant as a better set of features than what the G6 has to offer. Well, TechnoBuffalo has gotten hold of a document fished from an LG presentation that outlines exactly how the company plans to market its flagship device. LG is going to convince users that the G6 is a "trendy phone," and that it offers a "differentiated value" by pitting it directly with the Galaxy S8. LG G6 Campaign Goes Head-To-Head With The Galaxy S8 The document goes on to compare the G6 with the Galaxy S8 in various categories, including design, usability, and ergonomics. LG highlights the G6's stylish and minimalist design, in addition to its "strong heritage in wide-angle cameras." LG will attempt to capture the attention of millennial consumers, which it believes prefers experiences over owning things. LG plans to leverage to these comparisons in an attempt to market itself as a leader in form factor, usability, and reliability. LG is clearly banking on the hope that everyone still remembers the whole Note 7 fiasco. Presumably, LG will target that narrative to present its quality assurance. But LG also knows where it falls short. For example, the G6 doesn't feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip or biometric features, both of which are found on the Galaxy S8. Yet, LG will ignore these facets and instead market the phone in a way that says specifications don't matter much, but "consumer value" does. There's no telling whether that approach will win the hearts of its audience, but because of its lower price, it stands a chance. That said, it's easy to imagine that people would be willing to shell out a bit more for features the Galaxy S8 has that the G6 lacks. Still, there's always the possibility that the G6 will be successful with this type of comparative campaign, but it has to be ready when Samsung retaliates and plots its own response. Let the smartphone wars of 2017 begin. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Galaxy S8 is many things: a gorgeous smartphone, a Note 7 comeback, a top-tier premium-spec'd flagship, and perhaps the most important of all, living proof that Samsung is increasingly getting better at designing its devices, perhaps even levelling Apple, if not totally eclipsing it. Part of what makes the Galaxy S8 stunning is its Infinity display, a 5.8-inch behemoth Super AMOLED screen that's far more beautiful than any LCD on the market. But Samsung knows AMOLED screens are prone to burn-in problems. That's when the display retains a "ghost" of the image displayed for too long. To pave the way for a larger screen, Samsung eliminated the home button and replaced it with a virtual one. But since Samsung gives Galaxy S8 owners to have the home button displayed at all times, burn-in could be an issue. How Samsung Is Trying To Solve Burn-In Issues To prevent it from burning in the screen, Samsung made a small refinement. For those of you worried about burn-in problems, fear not: the button actually moves around a bit to prevent image retention. It's a simple adjustment but a genius one, and it displays the company's attention to detail. Samsung clearly wants to do right by the Galaxy S8 after the whole Note 7 fiasco. People over the Galaxy Club were the first to test this feature. They put a tape on the screen to demonstrate that the button moves around a little bit in different directions. It appears the home button only moves when the phone is switched off, otherwise all three buttons on the navigation bar are static when it's switched on. It's actually not the first time Samsung has used this solution. Last year, it announced that the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge's Always-On Display feature wouldn't cause any burn-in issues because the onscreen elements keep changing positions. The company has simply applied the same trick for the Galaxy S8. Burn-In Issue: What Is It? For the uninitiated, plasma and OLED displays are prone to burn-in issues, one glaring disadvantage these screens have over LCDs. When images stay displayed for too long, they burn up certain diodes, so that's why Samsung's virtual home button moves ever so slightly. Samsung Galaxy S8 And S8 Plus The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are Samsung's newest pair of flagships, announced late March, and released a month later. Both are Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-powered devices, with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. The standard version features a 5.8-inch Super AMOLED Infinity Display; the bigger variant bumps that up to 6.2 inches. Aside from the slightly higher-capacity battery and the screen on the Galaxy S8 Plus, both devices are virtually the same. On the back is a 12-megapixel camera that can do 4K video, and on the front is an 8-megapixel camera. The Galaxy S8 is the first phone to feature Bluetooth 5.0. It also features wireless charging, water resistance, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack, even. Check out our Galaxy S8 coverage to get the full specs. Have you suffered from burn-in issues in the past? What do you think about Samsung's little solution to prevent it? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below! 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Google has been busy over the last few days rolling out the much-awaited, multi-user support for its Google Home smart speaker. For the first time since its release, Google's smart speaker now has an added ability, which its rival Amazon Echo does not. Google is still working on providing additional features to its smart speaker, which would further enhance user experience. On Wednesday, April 26, the company announced that the Google Home smart speaker's Google Assistant would assist users in the kitchen, helping them while cooking. Google Home To Assist In Cooking The company announced that Google Home can recite recipes to users while they are cooking. This feature would be immensely helpful for home cooks who need to keep checking recipes while cooking, which is often inconvenient. "To help you perfect your kitchen skills, we're introducing the ability to cook with the Google Assistant on Google Home," Google revealed in a blog post. With this added functionality, all the user needs to do is search for a recipe using the Google Assistant on their Android smartphone, or Google Search on an iOS device. Google Home will be able to read over 5 million recipes from popular sites such as Bon Appetit, All Recipes, Food Network, and more. How To Use Google Assistant To Recite Recipes After selecting the required recipe, a user will have to select the option "send to Google Home." This will ensure that the recipe gets saved to the Google smart speaker for immediate or later use. Once the user is ready to cook, they will have to use the command "Ok Google, start cooking" or "Ok Google, start recipe." The niftiest feature about this upgrade is that after each step in the recipe, users can ask Google Home to "Ok Google, repeat", which would prompt the speaker to recite the current step once again in case one did not follow it in the first instance. The same can be done with previous steps. For instance a user can command "Ok Google, what's step three?" After a step has been followed, the user will need to say "Ok Google, next step" to proceed with the recipe. The company also revealed that apart from reciting recipes with the aid of the Google Assistant, the smart speaker would be able to play music and perform all its normal activities. Moreover, these tasks will not interfere with the recipe recitation. Similar Feature In Amazon Echo The recipe reciting functionality is already present in the Amazon Echo speaker. However, Google Home gives users the option of selecting from a plethora of different recipes, which the Echo does not. The Amazon Echo, on the other hand, can make recipe suggestions to users depending on what they have stored in their fridge, a functionality which the Google Home does not support. The new Google Home feature will roll out to the smart speaker from next week. Check out a small clip showing the new feature for the Google Home. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Just in case someone attempts to fly a drone over Iraq and Syria, DJI has made sure it will not happen. DJI added parts of Iraq and Syria to its No-Fly Zone or NFZ list. It means DJI-made drones will be prevented from flying in and around the war-torn region, which is currently embroiled in a war. Several news reports stated that terrorist organizations like the Islamic State had been using weaponized drones to cause destruction, prompting countries like France to take drones down using eagles. Iraq And Syria: No-Fly Zone DJI quietly updated its no-fly zone list, adding Syria and Iraq. The list is an extensive log of names and maps around the world where drones are prohibited. The list includes airports, stadiums, and "warning areas" (i.e. military bases). According to DJI, an NFZ is a safety feature in the drone's software that limits flight capability and range due to safety and security reasons. As written on the company's website: "NFZ will in many cases warn you about these areas if you fly towards them, or try to takeoff within them. In certain locations, the device will automatically be prevented from takeoff, or if already in flight towards the location, will pause at the boundary and not enter." The NFZ is an "informational feature" but it is not 100 percent updated. Thus, it falls on the user to be responsible enough to know the area's regulations regarding drone operation, like securing government permit. Drones And Terrorism This addition of war-torn Iraq and Syria in DJI's blacklist of drone operations is not surprising, considering the level of danger in the said region. The move by DJI can also be seen as a PR move for the company, as it recently figured in news reports about terrorist organizations like the Islamic State using drones in their operations. The organization has been using drones not only for reconnaissance but possibly as weapon for dropping bombs or as explosive device itself. DJI was mentioned in the reports, citing the popularity of its drones like the DJI Phantom. The Chinese company is one of the biggest manufacturers of drones in the market today. The drone is readily available online, which can explain why terrorists get their hands on one unit easily. When reached about the no-fly zone updates vis-a-vis terrorism, DJI gave this statement: "DJI makes products purely for peaceful purposes, which is how the overwhelming majority of pilots use them, and we deplore any use of our drones to bring harm to anyone. Our geofencing system is designed to advise pilots of airspace restrictions, and was never intended to enforce laws or thwart people who want to misuse our products. Certain areas vital for aviation safety or national security are marked as restricted in our geofencing system, and we are constantly adjusting those areas to account for temporary conditions that create special restrictions, such as wildfires and major public events." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Portronics Launches Saga VR Headsets; Price Starts From Rs 699 | TechTree.com Portronics has just announced the launch of SAGA and SAGA Mini series of virtual reality headsets with polished HD optical lenses, in order to give you a unique viewing experience of 360 videos, along with 3D and VR Games. The SAGA series of VR Headset has the HD optical lenses with 8 layer nano coating for prolonged high quality viewing. The SAGA series of VR Headset offers an unparalleled Field of View (FOV) with wide refraction range of -5000 to 2000 to let the users have the best VR immersion experience, according to a recent press release. The press note further explains that these VR headsets have the adjustable pupil distance knob and adjustable object distance knob to cater to the requirements of all types of users. The phone holder in the Saga series VR can easily accommodate the mobile phones having screen sizes from 4.6 to 6.0 inches and is compatible with all Android and iOS phones. The Saga series VR headsets have the firm leather strap headbands to keep the device safely in place even during rigorous head movements. Also, the headband is adjustable to best fit different face types and head sizes in the entire family - from kids to grownups. However, the SAGA VR weighs around 357 grams while the SAGA Mini weighs around 158 grams. Both these headsets are available for price tags of Rs 1,299 and Rs 699. TAGS: Portronics Xiaomi And Huami Launch Amazfit Health Band In China | TechTree.com Huami has just unveiled a new fitness and in collaboration with Xiaomi, under the brand Amazfit, in China for a price tag of CNY 699, which is around Rs 6,500. It has been unveiled that the upcoming health band would be available in Deep Black, Rose Gold, and Sapphire Blue color options. It is being said that the Amazfit Health Band comes with standard features that you can generally find in any fitness band; record movement and sleep, and monitor heart rate. Additionally, the health band is also capable of recording ECG data with an inbuilt chip. In-fact, it is being said that this is one of the highlight features of the band. Speaking about the build quality, the Amazfit Health Band is made up of aluminium body and stainless steel casing, and weighs just around 10 grams. It also features an OLED display of 0.42 inches and can be connected to a smartphone as well. It also comes with a 95 mAh battery and is expected to have around 7 days of battery life for just 2.5 hours of complete charge. It also comes with IP67 certification, which means you can actually stay under water with the band for around 30 minutes. The unveil was first reported by PhoneRadar. via TAGS: Xiaomi From the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the United States has a history of latching onto scary ideas and not letting go. Since the presidential election in November 2016, the new U.S. fear has centered around Russia and cybersecurity. Rumors that Trump is in cahoots with Russias Vladimir Putin have had people on edge lately, especially when he didnt sign the new cybersecurity order back in February. Since then, its been revealed that Russian hackers may have had a hand in the series of Yahoo! hacks that have been plaguing the company in the past few years, adding to the general publics apprehension. That growing fear of Russian interference may be part of the reason why 32-year-old Russian hacker Roman Valeryevich Seleznev just received the longest ever prison sentence in the U.S. for hacking. Seleznev was sentenced to 27 years in prison last week in the U.S. for stealing millions of credit card details from businesses. Back in August, Seleznev was found guilty of 10 counts of wire fraud, eight counts of intentional damage to a protected computer, nine counts of obtaining information from a protected computer, nine counts of possession of 15 or more unauthorized access devices and two counts of aggravated identity theft. Seleznev was initially arrested and sent to Guam back in 2014. At the time, the laptop found in his possession contained 1.7 million stolen credit card numbers. Considering that the U.S. authorities claim that, from 2009 to 2013, he infected the point-of-sale systems of more than 500 U.S. businesses with malware meant to capture credit card data, that number isnt exactly shocking. Its believed that that malware is how Seleznev was able to successfully steal and sell so much credit card data. By using online aliases such as Track2, 2pac and nCuX, Seleznev was able to sell millions of credit card details on specialized cybercriminal websites. Earlier this month, Seleznev wrote a letter to the judge in which he took responsibility for his actions. In the letter, he asked the judge for leniency, to which the judge replied with a 27 year prison sentencethe longest jail term imposed for hacking crimes in U.S. history. In my opinion, the sentence certainly fits the crime here. Millions of individuals and businesses had their personal information stolen and sold because of this man, and he certainly deserves to be punished for a long time. However, you have to wonder if the steep prison sentence is at all a product of the American fear of Russian hackers. American hacker and former U.S. Secret Service informant Albert Gonzalez only received a 20 year sentence for similar crimes in 2010are Seleznevs additional seven years a product of public fear? What do you think? Let us know below in the comments! 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. The Republican Party snatched three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives this Tuesday in Florida, so far in the hands of the Democratic Party, becoming the first to change political... | Read More You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Heads up to prevent injury from falls Morning walks in my neighborhood are one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. I love the coolness of daybreak and the special sightings of the stag and two does that frequent our open space. I also enjoy my walk because each day at... Signs that point to the best time for retirement Ive been thinking a lot about retirement lately. One of our amazing staff members, who has been with Senior Concerns for the last 13 years, retired last month. It just doesnt seem real. I always thought of Dana as young. 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Dr. Sarah Van Orman, executive director of University Health Services at UW-Madison, speaks in 2015 about the results of a landmark survey on sexual assault conducted by the Association of American Universities. Baton Rouge rapper Kevin Gates, who canceled a New Orleans performance in October due to "unforeseen incarceration," knows where he'll be spending the next 30 months: In prison. That's the sentence Gates received Wednesday on a felony gun possession charge in a 2013 Illinois case, according to a report by TMZ. Gates' attorney, Herschel Rush, told TMZ the charge carried a maximum of 10 years, so "We are very pleased." Gates had to cancel his scheduled performance at the 2016 Voodoo Fest after he was convicted of kicking a female fan during a performance in Florida. --- Not seeing the video below? Click here. --- A third man is under indictment in a May 2014 robbery and shooting in the Gardere area of Baton Rouge that left two men dead. Plug Lanaute, 21, 8511 Rush Ave. in Baton Rouge, was charged by an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury Wednesday with two counts of second-degree murder in the slaying of Orok Ironbar Jr., 32, and Russell Celestine, 31. Lanaute's cousin, Charles Lanaute, 21, and another man, Darrius Montel Miller, 24, both of St. Gabriel, were indicted in 2015 on two counts each of second-degree murder and have a May 22 trial date. +4 Two indicted in Gardere apartment double slaying Two St. Gabriel men were indicted Wednesday in the May 18 drug-related slaying of two Baton Plug Lanaute spent two years as a wanted man before he was arrested in January in California. +2 Third suspect in 2014 double murder located in California, taken into custody After more than two years as a wanted man, 21-year-old Plug Lanaute was in jail Saturday in The three men allegedly went to a Gardere Lane apartment to sell marijuana on May 18, 2014, according to the affidavit for Plug Lanaute's arrest. Plug Lanaute and Miller then went to another apartment upstairs, robbing the residents and shooting the two victims, authorities said. Investigators said Charles Lanaute told them after his arrest that he saw Plug Lanaute shoot one of the victims. State District Judge Trudy White is presiding over the cases of each man. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission A bill that was initially written to reduce juvenile life without parole sentences in Louisiana was amended to eliminate the sentence entirely on Wednesday. The amended measure passed the state Senate floor on a 22-13 vote, but is facing a more difficult path to victory in the House, with opponents who are concerned about the threat of offering parole opportunities to inmates convicted of violent and heinous crimes. Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, sponsored Senate Bill 16, which was intended to offer parole eligibility after 30 years to about 300 inmates who are serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they were teens. SB16 is part of Gov. John Bel Edwards' criminal justice revamp package. Prosecutors also raise questions about criminal justice reform The states district attorneys Friday released a sheaf of changes that, if adopted, could wi Claitor's bill would have removed the option to prospectively sentence juveniles to life without parole unless it was a first-degree conviction. But state Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, took it a step further. He amended the bill to allow for parole consideration after 25 years instead of 30. His amendment also eliminated the hearing that district attorneys must use in juvenile cases that determines whether the youth is so irredeemably depraved that they are deserving of being denied any opportunity for release. Without that additional hearing, there is no way for a juvenile to receive a life without parole sentence. But eliminating the sentence on the front end doesn't mean that these criminals would be guaranteed release one day. It would offer them the opportunity for parole consideration, if they meet behavioral benchmarks, and only after serving 25 years. Ultimately, the Parole Board would make the final call. Claitor said the amendment answers an important moral question: how do you determine at age 16 whether a criminal is irredeemable? "How do you declare them one of the 'worst of the worst' at the beginning?" he said. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that life without parole sentences for youths has to be "rare and uncommon" and reserved for the "worst of the worst." Despite Supreme Court rulings, parole opportunities for juveniles convicted of murder in Louisiana uncommon A pair of teenagers walked up to a security guard in a New Orleans East apartment complex on But children advocacy groups argue that the harsh sentence is used too frequently for Louisiana's juveniles, while stressing that it's an impossible determination to make at such a young age while a teen's brain is still developing. Aaron Clark-Rizzio, executive director of Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, applauded the bold amendment. "With this vote, the Senate has decided to end death-in-prison sentences for children once and for all a decision that will bring us into full compliance with the Supreme Court's rulings and finally provide clarity in the court's and people's lives," he said in an email. "We urge the House to now put this issue to rest." The Legislature is under pressure this year to pass some change to the current system, because the state is in violation of a pair of Supreme Court rulings. One court ruling, Miller v. Alabama found that life without the possibility of parole for juveniles was considered cruel and unusual punishment and could only be used for the rare, incorrigible cases of juvenile convictions. A subsequent decision Montgomery v. Louisiana found that the prohibition on life sentences for juveniles should be applied retroactively. Voting to eliminate juvenile life without parole sentences (22): President Alario, Sens. Allain, Barrow, Bishop, Boudreaux, Carter, Chabert, Claitor, Colomb, Cortez, Hewitt, Johns, LaFleur, Luneau, Martiny, Mills, Morrell, Morrish, Peterson, G. Smith, J. Smith and Ward. Voting against SB16 (13): Sens. Appel, Donahue, Erdey, Fannin, Gatti, Lambert, Milkovich, Mizell, Peacock, Perry, Thompson, Walsworth and White. Not Voting (3): Sens. Long, Riser and Tarver Total -- 3 State lawmakers are advancing legislation that takes aim at Louisiana's escalating opioid epidemic. The House Health and Welfare Committee on Wednesday unanimously agreed to send legislation that would limit most first-time opioid prescriptions to a seven-day supply, and lawmakers took a step toward establishing an advisory panel to help coordinate the state's prevention and education efforts in response to the drug. "We've done a lot of work over the past several years to address this crisis," said state Rep. Helena Moreno, a New Orleans Democrat who is sponsoring the prescription-limiting House Bill 192. "Obviously, a lot more needs to be done." Louisiana to receive $8.1M to help combat opioid addiction Louisiana is in line to receive $8.1 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Se Meanwhile, the state Senate has signed off on legislation that would require that doctors and other prescribers consult the state's Prescription Monitoring Program before any initial prescription of a Schedule II drug, including opioids, and undergo three hours of continuing medical education every three years. That measure, Senate Bill 55, must now be vetted by the House. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, placed HB192 and SB55 on his list of priority legislation before the session started. Opioids are a commonly-prescribed category of narcotic pain medication. They include OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin and codine. About 20 percent of patients who see doctors for non-cancer pain symptoms or pain-related diagnoses receive an opioid prescription, according to a 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Louisiana has the sixth-highest opioid pain reliever-prescribing rate in the country, according to IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics' analysis of a year-long period through June 30, 2016. It found that there were 102.3 opioid prescriptions for every 100 people, when counting new prescriptions and prescribed refills. The national average was 69.5 prescriptions for every 100 people during that period. The state's drug overdose rate also outpaces the national average, fueled by the rise in prescription opioid abuse and the use of illicit opioids, like heroin, and synthetic black-market opioids, like fentanyl. The CDC placed Louisiana had the 19th highest age adjusted opioid OD rate in 2015. "It's reached epidemic proportions," said state Rep. Joe Stagni, R-Kenner. He said passage of legislation to combat opioid addiction will position the state to address the problem head-on. "I'm really proud for once Louisiana is going to be out in front of it. We need to be," Stagni said. HB192, which would limit first time prescriptions of opioids for acute pain to a week supply before patients have to get them re-upped. It also would limit all acute pain opioid prescriptions for children to seven days. The bill would not apply to prescriptions for chronic pain, cancer or palliative care, and the bill offers some exemptions when alternatives aren't available. Nine states Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont have placed similar limits on opioid prescriptions. Moreno said that the goal is to keep prescription drugs out of the hands of people who don't need them. If a person were to get a prescription beyond the amount they need, for example, they could be inclined to keep the medicine in a cabinet. "I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of people going in for minor procedures and they get a 30-day supply of Percocet," she said. Dr. Karen DeSalvo, a public health expert who served as assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said she also worries that medicines languishing in people's cabinets fall into the wrong hands. "We know from young people that's sometimes where they get started," she told the committee. DeSalvo said the opioid crisis is a public health issue and efforts to rein it in are "laudable." "This bill is an important step forward," she said. "It's a step toward saving lives." Ed Carlson, the chief executive officer at the addiction treatment center Odyssey House Louisiana, said that many clients who are addicted to heroin start out addicted to prescription opioids. He said that the problem is overwhelming programs across the state. "We have to start the process of dealing with this epidemic," he said. "It's a state-wide epidemic." Louisiana has Americas tallest state capitol, but the people who do the lawmaking in the tower that Huey Long built often have short memories The ACT government has signed a series of contracts with consultants to design its second stage of light rail from the city to Woden, using many of the consultants it used on the first leg. Ernst and Young has been appointed commercial adviser, including preparing the business case and economic analysis, market soundings, and advising on how to structure the contracts to deliver stage 2. The company also worked on the stage 1 business case, and was contracted for $2.3 million of work on stage 1 in the three years to June 2016. Work on Canberra's light rail in Northbounre Avenue on Wednesday. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong Arup has been appointed technical adviser for stage 2, and its tasks include engineering design, traffic and access design, underground investigations, urban design, safety planning and planning approvals. Arup, also technical adviser for stage 1, is one of the most highly paid light rail consultants date, winning contracts worth $7.6 million over the three years to June 2016. Canberra Now: News in 90 seconds for Friday 28, 2017 Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later. Dismiss A small electrical fire in a battery backup room at the University of Canberra prompted a evacuation on Thursday morning. ACT Fire & Rescue were alerted when the fire from a malfunctioning battery triggered an automatic fire alarm at 10:35am. A small electrical fire prompted an evacuation at the University of Canberra campus in Bruce. Credit:Rohan Thomson The building on University Drive in Bruce was evacuated, with crews quickly extinguishing the fire and removing the damaged battery. Firefighters were currently conducting atmospheric testing but occupants were expected to be allowed back inside shortly. In a report into the incident, United chief Oscar Munoz said the airline was 'profundly' sorry. Credit:Richard Drew Dao's lawyer, Thomas Demetrio said United's actions are a good first step. "Both Dr Dao and I applaud United for promptly addressing the many issues that have plagued passenger satisfaction in the arena of airline customer service," Demetrio said on Thursday. "All of its policy changes announced today are passenger friendly and are simple, commonsense decisions on United's part to help minimise the stress involved in the flying experience. Dr Dao is proud, despite his ordeal, to have played a role in spearheading these announced changes. And going forward, he hopes United takes the lead in inspiring the entire airline industry to supply passengers the dignity, respect and fairness we all deserve." Demetrio said Dao suffered a concussion, broken nose and two missing teeth, among other injuries. Four aviation security officers involved in the incident have been placed on leave while the investigation continues. In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Munoz called the incident "a system failure across the board." He said outdated policies and procedures, which focused more on operations and logistics than customers put all those involved in "impossible situations." When asked about the conduct of the officers involved in violent removal of Dao from the plane, Munoz said that yes, he thought it was wrong, but again took responsibility for the situation saying, "Did I believe what law enforcement folks did was wrong? Yeah. But once again, it was I and we who put them in that situation." "United Airlines takes full responsibility for what happened," reads the report's introduction. "The intention of this report is to communicate concrete and meaningful actions that will avoid putting our customers, employees and partners in impossible situations." The report lays out four ways in which United says it failed both its passengers and employees. In addition to unnecessarily summoning law enforcement, the airline should not have tried to find space on the flight for crew members at the last minute. It also should have offered more compensation or more transportation options to entice customers to give up their seats voluntarily, but it acknowledged that agents did not have the authority to make such decisions. Finally, the report said the airline has not provided regular training for employees on how to deal with "denied boarding situations." "Our review shows that many things went wrong that day, but the headline is clear: Our policies got in the way of our values and procedures interfered in doing what's right," Munoz said. The report, which outlines 10 changes the airline is making to prevent a repeat of the incident, is the most detailed account yet of the events that led to Dao's removal from Flight 3411. According to the report, Flight 3411, scheduled to leave Chicago at 5:40pm for Louisville, was overbooked by one seat. After no volunteers came forward, the airline bumped a passenger who had not yet received a seating assignment. That person received a check as compensation and was booked on another United flight, the report said. The remaining passengers were allowed to board. At the same time, however, another United flight to Louisville that had been scheduled to depart at 2:55pm was delayed because of mechanical difficulties. The airline needed to get four crew members who had been booked on that earlier flight to Louisville on Sunday night in order to prevent at least one - and possibly - several other flights from being cancelled. And so the crew members were rebooked on Flight 3411. As a result, the airline needed four of the 70 passengers aboard to give up their seats. The gate agent offered $US800 in travel credits plus the cost of meals and a hotel stay and when no one came forward, the agent followed United's procedure for involuntarily bumping passengers. A United supervisor boarded the plane and told a couple they would have to leave. The couple left. The supervisor then told Dao and his wife they would have to leave. Dao refused. After receiving multiple refusals, United officials told Dao they would call authorities if he continued to protest. At this point another passenger volunteered to leave the plane in exchange for $US1000 in compensation. But United officials still needed a fourth seat. Chicago Department of Aviation officers, who the report noted, "historically been effective in getting customers to voluntarily comply" then arrived on the scene. They too were unsuccessful in persuading Dao to leave. According to the report, the United supervisor left the aircraft to call a manager. It was at that point that Dao, the report said, ". . . was physically removed from the aircraft," by the aviation security officers. That moment, captured on video by other passengers aboard the flight, showed Dao yelling as he is pulled from his seat and then dragged down the aisle of the plane. But United is promising change. In addition to increasing the compensation for passengers who voluntarily give up their seats, the airline will create an automated system to identify passengers willing to give up their seats and allow them to set the level of compensation they would be willing to accept. Starting in August, the airline also will offer additional training for front-line staff and later this year will roll out an app that will allow employees to immediately compensate customers when a service issue arises. It also will create a "customer solutions team" charged with finding ways to get displaced passengers where they need to go. Even though United officials say only a small percentage of passengers are involuntarily bumped from the airline's flights, they said they will reduce overbooking on those flights where volunteers are less likely to come forward. Overbooking is not illegal, but has drawn new scrutiny from members of Congress following the airline's treatment of Dao. United's offer of $US10,000 in flight certificates brings it in line with Delta, which announced earlier this month that it was boosting the maximum amount of compensation it would offer passengers. Prior to this most recent change, United agents could offer up to $US500 and supervisors could approve up to $US1500 in travel certificates and $US1350 cash. It's unclear whether United's actions will be enough to satisfy lawmakers who are already demanding changes to the way airlines treat customers. Among the provisions of a bill introduced in the Senate on Wednesday is one that would require the Secretary of Transportation to reexamine airlines' practice of overbooking to determine whether limits should be placed on how many seats an airline can sell. United had already announced some new procedures and changes. Munoz said the airline will limit the use of law enforcement to "safety and security issues only." He also announced that the airline will no longer bump passengers once they have boarded their flight unless it involves a safety or security issue. The report notes that after being removed from the plane, Dao returned and according to video and passenger accounts, his face was bloodied. Incident reports released by the Chicago Department of Aviation this week said Dao became increasingly combative and began swinging his arms with his fists closed after one of the officers tried to grab him. It says the officer was able to pull Dao up from his seat and toward the aisle, but then lost his grip because Dao kept fighting. The police report said Dao was removed from the plane with "minimal but necessary force." Munoz, however, again apologised for the events and took responsibility. Loading "Every customer deserves to be treated with the highest levels of service and the deepest sense of dignity and respect," he said. "Two weeks ago, we failed to meet that standard and we profoundly apologise." Bankrupt former rich-lister "Diamond" Joe Gutnick has faced a court grilling over loans to a New York fraudster and Brooklyn-based community organisation. In a fiery examination at the Federal Court on Thursday, Mr Gutnick was challenged over the validity of two major debts declared in his bankrupt estate, including a $33 million debt to Nochum Sternberg, a long-time friend who was convicted in 1987 for his role in a $US130 million ($174 million) tax evasion scheme. "She is herself a very special gem, a diamond," Joe Gutnick says of his wife. Lawyer for creditors also challenged a $10 million loan he received from Machne Israel, a Chabbad community organisation based in Brooklyn. Raising his voice, leaning over the witness box and pointing at the lawyer for one of his creditors, Philip Crutchfield QC, Mr Gutnick said challenging the loan was outrageous. Stockland and Mirvac, the country's two biggest residential developers, will focus on providing more affordable housing through mixed-use urban redevelopments. Releasing their third-quarter trading updates, the two development giants said that affordable housing was "becoming an increasingly concerning issue", particularly in Sydney, which needed to be addressed. Mirvac has unveiled its new development at Sydney Olympic Park. Stockland is a housing developer, while Mirvac is more focussed on apartments. Both groups are now moving more into mixed-use projects, combining residential property with schools and retail space. They said that prices in Sydney and Melbourne had increased significantly, following a strong spring and summer selling season. Recent moves by financial regulators and lenders may see price growth ease, however demand is expected to remain sound. "More favourable tax rates in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia puts further pressure on our ability to attract investment and for our businesses to remain competitive," Mr Morrison said. More favourable tax rates in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia puts further pressure on our ability to attract investment says Treasurer Scott Morrison. Credit:Cameron Spencer Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder, who has long argued for company tax cuts locally, says the Australian government needs to take action on the corporate tax rate despite uncertainty about where the US rate will ultimately land. "If people think capital isn't global they are kidding themselves," he said. "Australia really is out of step and capital is very mobile." Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder, has long argued for company tax cuts. Credit:Claire Martin "This isn't big business trying to feather its own nest, this is capital markets working. "It's all about investment and jobs and Australia can not afford to be out of the game. Former US president Barack Obama passed "inversions" laws, which were designed to crack down on multinational tax avoidance. Credit:AP "If you have a high tax rate, it just encourages people to set up all these elaborate structures to avoid paying tax." Revenue disputes Mr Croker says if the 15 per cent rate is implemented - and there's no certainty it will pass Congress - the question will be whether the US tax rate will curtail use of low tax jurisdictions to park offshore profits. Fast-food giant Burger King is among 50 US companies that have reincorporated in low-tax countries to reduce their US tax rate. Credit:Brendan Esposito If traditional low-tax countries such as Ireland and Singapore are no longer used as much by US multinationals, then the tax adjustments made by the Australian Taxation Office against US-based companies have the potential to create tax disputes directly between the ATO and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). "Congress is well aware that if the US doesn't get its share of the pie, other countries will," he says. Obama's inversions laws were said to have killed the largest-ever proposed inversion deal between US drug giant Pfizer and Ireland-based Allergan. Credit:Bloomberg Australia now has tougher anti-avoidance laws including the Multinational Anti-avoidance Law (MAAL) and the Diverted Profits Tax. "We hear from US colleagues that the Border Adjustment Tax is becoming too hard politically as lobbyists line up to make Congress aware of the detrimental impact for US domestically focused and import-reliant businesses," Mr Croker says. With a 30 per cent company tax rate, "Australia is less and less likely to be chosen as a location to host key assets, functions and risks," Mr Croker says. Personal tax reforms could also mean the US would become an even more attractive location for furthering one's career and for start-ups, he says. But PwC tax partner Paul Abbey said if enacted, Trump's changes "would be monumentous reform. In essence, he is proposing is a much simpler tax system with much lower tax rates. Reaganomics is back". 'Inversions' rule reversal? On April 21, Trump signed an executive order to review all "significant" regulations from 2016, which include the inversions rules. Fast-food giant Burger King is among 50 US companies that since the early 1980s have reincorporated in low-tax countries to reduce their US tax rate. Bloomberg's list of companies using inversions shows many others fled to low-tax Ireland, where the company tax rate is just 12.5 per cent. Tax experts say a reversal could see a comeback of earnings stripping where multinational companies make inter-company loans to a foreign parent to reduce their taxable income. The US subsidiary pays interest on those loans, so the interest income received by the foreign parent isn't taxed, or is taxed at a lower rate. (In an Australian context, we saw a similar interrelated party deal in the case of Chevron, which used interest payments to Delaware and is now up for a $300 million tax bill). Once Trump has cut the tax rate to 15 per cent, he could in theory argue there won't be a rush of companies moving offshore because other elements of his tax reform package will make it attractive to keep profits in the US. He also wants to give the Fortune 500 a special corporate tax repatriation holiday rate, whereby corporations with money stashed overseas would be able to pay a lower tax rate (again, light on detail; Trump has not as yet confirmed what the rate will be) on that income in order to bring it back into the US. Getting tax reform through Congress Tax Institute Bob Deutsch also believes the rate of corporate inversions could reduce because of the lower tax rate, but the caveat is getting the tax reform package through Congress. If inversions laws are reversed, "there is likely to be a trickle of companies moving to the US in the early days", he says. But as we saw with changes to US healthcare legislation, "it is no lay down misere", he says. "There will be many, maybe even some Republicans, who will oppose a 15 per cent rate, especially if the exact way in which it will ultimately improve the budget bottom line is not spelt out more clearly." Tax Justice Network spokesman Mark Zirnsak says the tax rate makes little difference, given many of the biggest companies paid no tax by taking advantage of global loopholes. "If a company can get away with paying no tax or next to no tax under current arrangements and if they cannot be subject to penalties for doing so, then there is little incentive to bring the profits back to the US and pay tax even at 15 per cent," he says. "Many of the Fortune 500 companies already have negative tax rates; that is, the US government pays them more than they ever pay in tax, so there will be little incentive for this behaviour to change under the Trump plan. It seems like fantasy thinking." Richard Phillips, senior policy analyst at the US-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), says inversions laws should be strengthened, not weakened."Rather making inversions easier by reversing these rules, the Trump administration should support legislation that closes the corporate inversion loophole entirely." Pfizer Allergan merger back on? Obama's inversions laws, which were largely aimed at the pharmaceutical giants, were said to have killed the largest-ever proposed inversion deal between big pharmaUS drug giant Pfizer and Ireland-based Allergan. New York-based analyst and former Lehman Brothers managing director Bob Willens has said that that merger could be back on the table. Grant Wardell-Johnson, KPMG Tax Partner says inversions laws are out of step with the rest of the world, and abolishing them would better facilitate business-driven takeovers. Wardell-Johnson believes that because of the proposed lower US tax rate, some companies could bring money back into country but it's unlikely that money would be reinvested in American jobs. "When the Bush administration introduced the Jobs Creation Act of 2004 at an effective tax rate of 5.25 per cent this did result in substantial repatriation, but it did not lead to significant additional investment in the US," he says. Once is bad enough. Twice is inexcusable. For almost the entire lifespan of this government, the legal aid sector has operated under the constant threat of defunding never able to plan further ahead than the next budget cycle, constantly forced to divert scarce resources to campaigning and lobbying. This needless drama is all the more offensive given the government has known all along how desperately underfunded CLCs already are. The Productivity Commission recommended a $120 million boost in federal funding for the sector back in 2014, finding that domestic violence victims unable to afford legal services were falling into a "justice gap". Instead of acting, the Abbott government ignored the Commission's recommendations for more than a year. Underpinning all of this are the untold stories from CLCs across the country already swamped with more cases of family violence than they can handle. The National Association of Community Legal Centres estimates 160,000 people were turned away from CLCs in 2015 alone. Queensland centres have seen a sixfold rise in the number of people seeking family violence services in the last five years, and are struggling to cope with demand. Last year, Legal Aid NSW reported its Domestic Violence Unit provided more than 1400 services to vulnerable women in six months. In that environment, playing politics with legal aid funding is more than toxic it's very dangerous. When paired with such an abysmal performance, the faux-concern worn by government figures whenever domestic violence is in the public eye starts to look hideously strategic. In 2015, then-Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull waxed lyrical on the need to "start a conversation" about family violence while appearing on The Project. As Turnbull and his ministers know perfectly well, "starting a conversation" is easy because it doesn't cost anything. Project hosts Waleed Aly and Gorgi Coghlan didn't buy what Turnbull was selling, repeatedly asking him: "Where's the money?" He didn't have an answer then, and his government doesn't have an adequate one now. Faced with a national crisis that killed 71 women last year, the government has responded with little more than empty words and crocodile tears. If that mindset goes unchallenged, domestic violence runs the risk of becoming an issue we only care about when something particularly awful happens, because politicians know they can get away with the bare minimum. As Australia continues to feel its way forward on domestic violence, victims deserve more from those meant to protect them. The stage was set for extraordinary scenes in the NSW upper house next month, as a parliamentary committee considered whether to compel a senior executive to appear before it. It would require an application to the NSW Supreme Court for the executive to be subpoenaed to appear before the MPs conducting an inquiry into Sydney toll roads. The name of this potential fugitive from justice? Sydney Motorway Corporation (SMC) chief executive Dennis Cliche, the bloke in charge of delivering the $16.8 billion WestConnex motorway project. Two weeks ago, at the last minute, Cliche declined an invitation by the committee to appear before its inquiry, arguing it is a private company and not responsible for setting policy on road tolls. Regular readers of this column over the years would be well aware there are serious problems with our national anthem - for a start, that it's inexplicably still not 'Pressure Down' by John Farnham. But although this shameful and unpatriotic situation has been allowed to fester, at least some visionaries are prepared to take steps toward erasing the darkest stain on our nation's heart - specifically, that there are not enough references to Australian values in 'Advance Australia Fair'. Queensland government backbencher Andrew "The Lamington" Laming grasped the nettle on Tuesday, telling Fairfax Media the national anthem should have "a first verse that focuses on our natural attributes and a second one that focuses on values". You know, like all national anthems do. "I think that the only way national anthems can distinguish themselves is through their values," he cogently explained, "and I do feel our current second verse has pretty much the same message as the first verse." Congressman Mark Pocan organized a forum last week on the Future of Work, Wages, and Labor that included UW-Madison faculty, members of Congress and others. The discussion went deeper in its examination of the issues than anything thats been happening in the Trump White House or on Capitol Hill. PHOTO BY MICHELLE STOCKER Celebrity hairdresser Joh Bailey is famous for his "stretch and burn" blow-drying technique, which has well-heeled Sydney socialites clamouring to part with $400 for a "private session" with the hair maestro. But, on Thursday morning, it was Bailey's hard-won reputation that was being stretched and burnt. Society hairdresser Joh Bailey at his Double Bay salon. Credit:Dallas Kilponen Reports have surfaced claiming Bailey was "taking a back seat" from his business empire to seek help for "substance abuse" issues, following an incident at Sydney gay bar Stonewall amid claims he was asked to leave the venue. But that was news to Bailey himself, who was driving to work from Bowral as the lurid headlines began. And it's sexy too, like former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, but never obvious. It's all about effortlessness, see. And despite the amount of energy that is put into lumping all French women into one category , it's really awfully tricky to dress like a French woman. For one thing, well, not all French women dress the same. You know, it's the countless articles about how to wear battered ballet flats with a perfect V-neck cashmere sweater and look exactly right. It's an unbuttoned just-so shirt, and gently mussed hair. It's Jane Birkin in a white shirt and jeans, and Caroline de Maigret in a boyish blazer and Coco Chanel in her silk pyjamas. But mostly, because the minute you start trying you're the opposite of effortless, and the cruel thing is, it takes work to look like you haven't tried. The French women with the style that makes it look so easy are not pinning images of French girl style to secret Pinterest boards, or telling their hairdresser to make them look "French". They're just living their lives, stylishly or otherwise (and in the case of Jane Birkin, that meant spilling the contents of her straw basket and inspiring a man to create an iconic luxury handbag in her name). Brigitte with her husband Emmanual Macron. Credit:AP Which brings us to another French woman, one in the spotlight thanks to her much gossiped about marriage. Brigitte Trogneux, 63, who might end up being the next First Lady of France, is a French woman with style. Married to Emmanuel Macron, a man who is 24 years younger than her and was once a student in her high school drama class (cue the quelle horreur!), much has been made of both her marriage, and the way she dresses. Because she does not dress, as British Vogue pointed out, in the way that is expected (or at least projected) of a French woman. Or indeed, and most importantly, a woman of 63. Because lean in a little closer for what I have to write is shocking ... Trogneux wears mini-skirts! As in above the knee! And leather pants. And perilously high heels. Her hair is coiffed in the way that you know is both expensive and definitely not wash and go. Her limbs are lithe and tanned. Her teeth gleam. She has been dubbed the French Jane Fonda. She loves Louis Vuitton bags, and edgy perspex Gianvito Rossi heels and rock chick black ankle boots. Get Out's premise is basically a horror-genre take on Meet the Parents, except the spoilt daughter brings home a black man instead of Ben Stiller, after which things start to get disturbing (yes, even more disturbing than Meet The Parents). When I watched Jordan Peele's debut horror film Get Out recently, though, I had no idea what I was in for. "I think it's about how white people are terrifying," I told my partner who had accompanied me to the horror film festival. I love horror films because they are an experiment in taking someone's ordinary maybe even insignificant fears, and raising them to the heights of possibility or the edges of reality, just to see how that ordinary human might respond. I won't ruin it too much for you, but the movie did reveal that some white people are indeed quite terrifying no spoiler alert needed there however, while most viewers and reviewers saw a cautionary tale on the evils of white liberalism excused by eight years of Obama, I saw my greatest fears of dating outside my culture plastered on screen. While the mostly white audience around me cringed their way through the movie at the thought of their own parents or grandparents (but never themselves) being casually racist, my own eyes widened in horror as I watched my biggest anxieties around interracial dating unfold before me. I should state that I while I cannot relate to the particular politics and trauma surrounding African-American people in mixed-race relationships in the US, or in general, the dynamic of white/non-white relationships would be recognisable to anyone in a similar situation. I found myself glancing sideways at my partner, who was groaning at all the right places, and yet I wondered if he knew just how close-to-home these scenes were. It felt like the movie was checking off my Reasons Why I Worry About Dating White People list. I've read troubling accounts of interracial relationships, of partners being mistaken for friends or nannies, of unaccepting families, and of mixed-race children navigating a world that loves to compartmentalise everything like someone who just discovered bento boxes. Although I'm aware of the external hitches to such a relationship, I wasn't prepared for some of the obstacles to come from within, for some of those obstacles to be my own demons. When I found out my partner had told his parents about me, I remember inquiring whether he had also told them I was brown. "I guess I did, yeah," he said. After noticing my concerned look, he added: "It doesn't bother them! They live in a very Mexican town." (I'm Sri Lankan.) It was a stifling and overcast Australia Day when Rhonda Muxlow, 57, pulled out her camera and captured a ritual thousands of years old. "It was Australia Day 2017 at Circular Quay, you had hundreds of people and a group were crowding around this specific area near the underside of the Harbour Bridge. I went and had a look and saw this beautiful smoking ceremony by this small group of Australian Indigenous men," said Ms Muxlow. Congratulations Rhonda Muxlow, winner of the Clique April Challenge: Rites and rituals. Credit:Rhonda Muxlow/Clique "Every time I wanted to get an image focusing on the men, their faces would be covered by smoke. So the idea occurred to me to focus on the source of the smoke, to make it work for me rather than against me." Focusing on the smoke created a "painterly quality to the human subject of her image" said Peter Rae, photojournalist at Fairfax Media who judged the Clique photography competition. "The winning image by Clique member, Rhonda Muxlow, filled the brief. For anyone who has seen a smoking ceremony, they would understand how special it is. "Muxlow captured the subtle texture and colour of the smoke as it moves around the performers," Mr Rae said. "Her use of a shallow depth of field is fantastic, as the smoke is like a haze blanketing the soft image of the didgeridoo player. Its all most like a water colour painting, just lovely." Ms Muxlow, who lives in Newcastle, goes to Sydney each Australia Day. "It's a bit of a personal ritual that I and a friend have," she said. "It was nice to have a personal ritual lead to an image that would fit in the Clique Rites and Rituals competition." Speaking of the overall quality of the entries, Mr Rae said: "Rites and Rituals is the first challenge, I have judged in a while. The overall standard, and subject matter, was fantastic. I did not know there were so many daily rituals and rites out there." Some of the entries, though good photographs, were overly enhanced. Loading Griffith University says it will need to ask international students to fill 15 of the 50 student places at Queensland's newest medical school. The university has long asked for 50 Commonwealth-funded medical student places for the school at the University of the Sunshine Coast University hospital, which opened last month. Sunshine Coast MPs Ted O'Brien (left) and Andrew Wallace at Sunshine Coast University Hospital. Credit:Twitter / Seven Network Until Thursday, only 35 Commonwealth-funded medical student places had been allocated. An estimated federal government share of $1.57 million is needed over four years a 50 per cent share to cover the cost of the medical student training. Queensland's police commissioner has defended his organisation from a scathing report into crime statistics, saying the mistakes did not constitute corruption. The Queensland Audit Office blasted crime data collection across the state, highlighting an unacceptable level of "incomplete, inaccurate, and wrongly classified" data. It criticised "inappropriate practices" on the Gold Coast, including soliciting victims to withdraw complaints, which left staff "open to claims of manipulation". The report found police practices, including classifying "unsolved" offences as "unfounded", brought the reliability of police data into question. Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman says the federal debate over a backpacker tax was redundant because robots will take their jobs soon anyway. Mr Newman, who is now involved in an agriculture robotics company, was speaking at an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce event on the "rise of the machines" on Thursday night. Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman says robots will remove the need for labourers on some farms within five years. Credit:Renee Melides He said he was asked all the time about whether robotics could rip jobs out of regional Australia. "I suppose, we don't really know, but the first point I make is a lot of the labour has been taken out of farms already," Mr Newman said. Convictions in Australia's biggest art fraud case have been sensationally quashed, with the Crown saying there was a "significant possibility that innocent men have been convicted" of selling 'fake' Brett Whiteley paintings. On Thursday, Crown prosecutor Daniel Gurvich QC told the Victorian Court of Appeal that sentences for Peter Gant and Mohamed Siddique should be set aside. Big Blue Lavender Bay is removed from the Court of Appeal by police. Credit:Justin McManus "There is here a significant possibility that innocent men have been convicted, and each of them should accordingly be acquitted." Justices Mark Weinberg, Phillip Priest and Stephen McLeish agreed to quash the convictions, saying it was an unprecedented case in which the jury had simply got it wrong. A 78-year-old man will front the Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with murder. Homicide Squad detectives charged the man with one count of murder of a woman, also aged 78, at Balarang Court, Patterson Lakes. Police inside the Patterson Lakes home on Sunday night. Credit:Courtesy of Seven News Grandmother Ivanka Kraisnik, 78, was found dead at her home on Sunday about 9pm. . Police are appealing for public assistance to help find missing Prahran woman Renee Lester. The 39-year-old was last seen in Prahran on April 8 and is described as about 160-165cm with a thin build and brown hair. Police hold concerns for her welfare due to the amount of time she has been missing and the fact that she has not been able to be contacted by phone. Ms Lester is known to frequent the Prahran, Elwood and Latrobe Valley areas. Police are urging anyone with information to contact Prahran Police Station on 9520 5200. In this file photo, a Schmidts Auto employee prepares to tow an overturned vehicle on Fish Hatchery Road in Madison. A man wrongly convicted of a home invasion in 2004 will likely apply to have his conviction overturned after it was discovered PathWest bungled a DNA test which wrongly identified him as the offender. Attorney General John Quigley confirmed on Thursday the state government had referred the matter to the Corruption and Crime Commission after it was revealed PathWest employees did not inform the courts or the convicted man of the injustice for a year after it was discovered in April 2016. A WA man was wrongly convicted after a DNA analysis error. Credit:Phil Carrick "It is deeply concerning that the DNA error was apparently discovered 12 months ago and reported by PathWest to WA Police, but the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the wrongly convicted man, were not informed until last week," he said. "The state solicitor has advised me that, as the state's first law officer, he strongly recommends that I refer that 12 month delay to the Corruption and Crime Commission to investigate potential serious misconduct." Istanbul: A Russian naval intelligence ship sank on Thursday after colliding with a merchant freighter in the Black Sea near Istanbul, the Turkish coast guard said. All 78 crew members on the Russian vessel were rescued. The crew of the freighter, a Togo-flagged ship travelling from Romania to Jordan and carrying 8800 sheep, was unharmed and the ship suffered slight damage to its bow, according to local media reports. In Moscow, Russia's Defence Ministry issued a statement confirming that the vessel, the Liman, went down after the collision tore a hole in the hull below the waterline. Russian officials did not immediately provide any information about the Liman's mission. The Russian state-run Sputnik news agency reported in 2016 that the Liman had been deployed in the Black Sea to monitor the joint Sea Breeze naval exercises between Ukraine and several NATO countries, including the United States. Russian officials had complained that the joint exercises were provocative. Survey Reveals Shift In Where People Buy Used Cars LEARN MORE: USED CAR BUYERS GUIDE A survey of 1,289 mycarcheck.com customers has revealed a significant shift in where people buy used cars. 27% of those surveyed in February said they preferred to go to a main dealer or car supermarket, up from 13% of those asked the same question a year ago. The trade has taken this market share from private sellers, down to 35% from 48% the previous year, with independent retailers unchanged on 33%. Gavin Amos, head of valuation services at mycarcheck.com, said: "This shift is interesting to us because these customers tend to use our service for different reasons. Those buying in the private market see us as a vital source of data, whereas those buying from dealers see us as more of a double check for complete peace of mind. Those buying from dealers are often attracted by warranties and manufacturer-approved used car schemes, whereas those buying privately think they can get more for their money." The survey formed part of the Making Better Used Car Choices 2017 report, which showed that the percentage of vehicles checked with at least one serious warning increased from 25.6% in 2015 to 28.5% in 2016. The most common serious risk, write-off, increased from 29% of all warnings in 2015 to 33.6% last year. Outstanding finance accounted for 18.1% of all warnings, up markedly from 13.8% in 2015. The full report is online at: https://www.mycarcheck.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MyCarCheck-vehicle-check-search-data-insight-report-2016?utm_source=BlogPost&utm_medium=Blog&utm_campaign=2016Report With information from the police, DVLA, insurers and finance houses, mycarcheck.com holds comprehensive data on every vehicle on UK roads - things that buyers should be aware of before making an offer. CDL Vehicle Information Services, which owns mycarcheck.com, performs over a million look-ups a day for companies including AutoExpress, CompareTheMarket, Go-Compare, Moneysupermarket, Swiftcover and Tesco. My Car Check, My MotorCycle Check, MyCarCheck Trade, My Text Check and the My Car Check apps are brands of CDL Vehicle Information Services, owned by CDL Group Holdings Ltd of Stockport, Cheshire. CDL Vehicle Information Services is a member of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), the Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCTA), the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA), the Motor Asset Registration Service (MARS), the National Association of Motor Auctions (NAMA) and the Vehicle Remarketing Association (VRA). A man from New Lisbon faces a strangulation and suffocation charge after an alleged domestic abuse incident. Gregory P. Wolfenbarger, 40, could get six years in prison or a $10,000 fine, or both, for the strangulation charge. Wolfenbarger is also charged with one count of misdemeanor battery, which carries a possible penalty of nine months in prison or a $10,000 fine, or both, and disorderly conduct, which could cost him $1,000 or 90 days in prison, or both. All counts are domestic abuse charges. According to a criminal complaint: On April 3, Juneau County deputies were called to investigate a disturbance along Three Rivers Boulevard in the town of Germantown. A neighbor directed them to an upstairs apartment. Wolfenbarger answered the door and told officers he didnt know what was going on but that a female in the apartment was crazy. Officers could hear crying in a closet near the living room. When they found the 31-year-old female, she was lying on the floor crying with a cell phone beside her. She claimed Wolfenbarger drug her down the hallway and choked her. When questioned by police, Wolfenbarger said he was sleeping and awoke upon hearing banging at the door. He opened the door and the female allegedly began pummeling him on the head. He said she became upset after being locked out while outside smoking a cigarette. Wolfenbarger said she kicked the door shut and continued to assault him as he backed into the hallway. He reached the bedroom and locked the door telling police that was his safe place. Wolfenbarger complained of injuries to his head and right ear and told the officer she repeatedly punched him. The female was interviewed separately and told a different story. She said she did go outside to smoke and talk to a friend on the phone. The female said Wolfenbarger would get upset when she smoked and also thought she was cheating on him. After Wolfenbarger let her in, she claimed he locked himself in his room. She kicked on his bedroom door because she thought he had both of her phones. She said when he opened the door he grabbed her by the neck and pulled her into the hallway. A deputy asked her if she lost consciousness; she said she didnt but had trouble breathing. The deputy noticed red marks on both sides of her neck. She also said she hurt her left elbow and left ankle. She completed a statement and lack of consent form and enforced the 72-hour no contact rule. Wolfenbarger was taken to the Juneau County Jail without incident. Wolfenbarger is scheduled to have an initial appearance on May 3 at 9 a.m. at the Juneau County Justice Center. Wolfenbarger was released after signing a $2,000 signature bond on April 5. Steampunk apparently is alive and well in downtown Wisconsin Dells even if hardly anyone knows it yet or, in many cases, even knows what the word means. Steampunk refers to the creative style that combines Victorian-era historical elements with more modern and sometimes fantastical visual fare think: Wild Fun Zone, the downtown Dells indoor arcade that features gigantic creatures crawling above and over its buildings once-stately, turn-of-the-20th-Century facade. The downtown Dells ubiquitous visual mix of old, new and odd throughout the facades that line Broadway from the H.H. Bennett Studio to Ripleys Believe It or Not and from Nigs Bar to more than one jutting tour boat bow makes the area a study in steampunk. In fact, the style is so prevalent if not necessarily intentional that it could be the needed ingredient to give the downtown area a unifying theme and perhaps transform the into a destination within a destination. So said Corena and Kevin Ricks recently during a presentation making the case for steampunk at a Dells Business Improvement District (BID) committee meeting. The Ricks, who own and operate Ripleys, Wizard Quest and several other downtown businesses, told the assembled committee it could be a style that we feel will connect everything (downtown) and give us a theme. Its something in which you can combine different eras and it makes sense, Kevin Ricks said. We already have a unique downtown. Steampunk punctuates our history in a unique way, Corena Ricks said. Theres no other town in the U.S. with that theme. Such a theme would allow the downtown area to maintain its already-eclectic mix of historic facades and modern attractions, the Ricks said. The railroad bridge is steampunk; the Duchess tourboat is steampunk, Kevin Ricks said. So many elements already exist here. The Ricks recent presentation to the BID committee comes on the heels of the recent unveiling, by the Dells River Arts District committee, of the numerous artistic and creative yet historic possibilities downtown, and the couple believes that most if not all of those possibilities would fit into a steampunk-themed downtown. All the theme needs to pop, the Ricks said, are a few visually creative elements such as steampunk-themed mosaics or murals, both of which already have been proposed for downtown to tie it all together. You can get a lot of punch with small changes, he said. You could go so far or so little. Either way, youre going to get an effect. The predominant reaction to the Ricks proposal by the gathered BID committee members present was positive. I think its fantastic its genius, said Original Wisconsin Ducks General Manager Dan Gavinski. I love it, said Alderman and Showboat owner Jesse DeFosse. I think it makes a lot of sense. With the BID committee members intrigued by their lesson in steampunk basics, the Ricks indicated their intent to keep spreading the word about its possibilities, starting with the Dells River Arts District committee, the relatively new city panel charged with overseeing the development of the art in the aforementioned district. When Felix Moffit was a baby, he developed and grew at the same rate as his twin sister. But at about a year and a half, he started to regress. He became completely nonverbal and was diagnosed with autism at age 2. Felix qualified for a children's long-term support waiver, funding that enables children with disabilities to receive services at home, rather than an institution. This allowed his family to get autism therapy that exceeded what their private insurance would cover. The therapy can be upwards of $100,000 for a year, and private insurance only covered about half of that, his mother Anna Moffit said. Thanks to that therapy, Felix, now 10, can say about 100 words like mom, school, pool and dog. The next goal is learning to read. But the waiver, and other programs that made Felixs progress possible, are funded by Medicaid, and theyre potentially under threat, said Moffit, a member of the Madison School Board. Moffit and other disability advocates in Madison say that restructuring Medicaid could lead to drastic cuts to crucial programs that help individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities thrive and contribute to their communities. This will have a dramatic and negative impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our community," Moffit said. The way Medicaid is currently set up, the federal government pays 60 percent of Wisconsins Medicaid costs. Theres no limit in this system; the more the state spends, the more the federal government supplements that spending. But the proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA) would put a cap on federal funds. Dane County has taken advantage of the current system, using Medicaid to create a rich system of support for individuals with disabilities, said Lisa Pugh, state director of the Arc Wisconsin, an organization that promotes the right of individuals with disabilities. The county is invested in helping individuals with disabilities integrate into their neighborhoods, she said, and consequently 80 percent of adults with developmental disabilities have jobs in the community. That is a direct result of the 60-40 funding match, Pugh said. Anne Morgan Giroux has a 22-year-old daughter with an intellectual disability. She lives in her own apartment and works over 30 hours a week at Noodles and Company and Target. She is able to do all this because of what she gets through Medicaid, Giroux said. A lot of times I think people think that people on Medicaid are a drain on the system. The AHCA proposes an entirely different federal-state set up: a block grant (a set amount of Medicaid funding for each state) or a per capita basis (a set amount of funding for each Medicaid enrollee). States would pick up the tab for anything spent over the limit. The Urban Institute estimated that the change would mean Wisconsin would be responsible for an extra $1 billion over the next decade. Moffit said that means Wisconsin would have to find funds by making cuts elsewhere, reducing services, eliminating programs or creating tighter eligibility standards. States are required to provide certain mandatory Mediciad benefits like hospital and physician services, nursing homes and family planning services. But states are not required to fund many of the services that help individuals with disabilities, including physical therapy, prescription drugs, personal services, autism services, school supports and employment and residential supports for adults. They are expected to be the first to go when funding is tight, Moffit said. Every cut is crucial, Pugh said. Even one less hour of support for someone with a significant disability is a really big deal, she said. One less hour of transportation support might mean that someone doesnt get to their job. But no one really knows what will be cut, Moffit said, and that ambiguity is scary. Nobodys really saying whats going to happen or whos going to get the cuts, so we just really want people to be aware that it will have a huge impact, particularly for individuals with disabilities, Moffit said. Pugh said she wishes politicians would more carefully consider that impact. The most frustrating part of this all is there were people who were willing to take a vote on something so quickly ... (with) no idea how much money Wisconsin would be losing and what the real impacts of that decision would be, Pugh said. The Arc and other disability groups are working to make sure that legislators better understand the implications of any future health care bill they may vote on. Politicians including Rep. Mark Pocan, Sen. Tammy Baldwins staff, Rep. Glenn Grothman, Rep. Sean Duffys staff and Rep. Mike Gallagher and his staff have met with disability advocates in their district. Ongoing calls and efforts are being made to meet with Rep. Gwen Moore, Rep. Ron Kind, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Sen. Ron Johnson to arrange a conversation, Giroux said. A statement from Speaker of the House Paul Ryans office argued that the AHCA will give states more control, which will better ensure care for vulnerable patients like the disabled. (The AHCA) will maximize state flexibility by providing the choice between a per capita allotment or a traditional block grant, depending on a states specific needs," Ryan's office said. It will also allow states to implement work requirements and help able-bodied patients transition to other coverage, Ryan's office said: Ultimately, by giving states new control to protect their populations, they can implement solutions that actually work for their most vulnerableespecially the aged and disabled. What works in Wisconsin may not translate to California or South Carolina." Last month, Governor Scott Walker said Medicaid cuts would be aimed at able-bodied adults rather than the elderly or disabled. "We want to care for them, we want to care for our children," said Walker said. Pugh said a typical politician's answer can be, Of course your program isnt going to be cut, thats not our intent. But she doesnt find that answer satisfying. I think its really not fair for someone to promise that those supports wont be impacted by a potentially $1 billion cut to our state, she said. People need to understand thats who's going to be hurt by those changes, and if they don't find that acceptable, they need to speak out, Moffit said. Young Bengals grow up to provide special season in Blythewood The feeling amongst the team is sky high right now, Seidel said. We knew we were young last year and had a lot coming back this year. You dont know... Falcons fall to Lucy Beckham Find these pictures and many more here! One of the most prolific eras in A.C. Flora Falcons girls tennis has come to an end. With a 4-3 loss on... A Blanchester, Ohio man has been arrested after he allegedly kidnapped a woman and held her captive in a pit dug into the bottom of his shed. Dennis Dunn, 45, was arrested early Wednesday morning, after a neighbor reported suspicious noises from Dunns back yard. When police arrived at Dunns home, they discovered a horrifying scene. Inside Dunns backyard shed was a pit, covered by floorboards weighed down by heavy objects. Underneath the boards and shouting for help was the daughter of the neighbor who had called the police. The victim, a 30-year-old woman, had not been missing long. Her mother, who lived next door to Dunn had reported her missing early Wednesday morning, after she stopped answering messages. Then, while she waited for news on her daughters whereabouts, she began hearing cries from the shed on Dunns neighboring property. When police arrived on the scene, they discovered that the noises were not coming from inside the shed, but underneath it. Dunn had apparently pried up the floorboards and dug a pit underneath the shed. He allegedly forced the woman into the pit, and placed the floorboards down over her head, covering them with heavy objects, which police said made the pit impossible to escape from the inside. Police described the pit to a local NBC affiliate WLWT as tight quarters, approximately 40 inches deep and two feet wide. Dunns alleged victim was taken to the hospital, where she was later released. But Dunn appeared unaware that his victim had been freed from the makeshift cell. Reportedly awaiting a warrant, police staked out in front of Dunns house, guns drawn, until Dunn walked out around 8 a.m. We were awaiting the arrival of the tactical entry team from Warren County from the sheriffs office and Dunn came to the front door and walked out like he was going for a stroll and we arrested him, Blanchester Police Chief Scott Reinbolt told WLWT. Dunn has a history of mental health issues, police said. Earlier this month, the small-town police department has cited Dunn as an example of the failings in Ohios mental health system, after he called police to his home four times on April 1. During each of the calls, Dunn claimed that people were trying to break into his house and that he could hear their voices, Reinbolt told Wilmington, Ohios News Journal after the incident. Each time an officer checked the home and surrounding area and found no one about. On the fourth call, police smelled marijuana, which Dunn freely admitted that he grew, telling officers that it calmed him, and that he thought Ohio residents were allowed to grow the plant for personal use. Officers informed him that marijuana farming was, in fact, illegal, and seized several marijuana plants from his home. The following day, Dunn called police twice, both times alleging that someone was trying to break into his home. During the second call, Dunn was armed with a rifle, which he only relinquished after a tense confrontation, police described. He was hospitalized, released, and began placing the same calls to police two days later. This time police charged him with disorderly conduct and marijuana cultivation. At the time, officers described Dunn as falling through the cracks of Ohios mental health system, which has seen many treatment centers close over the decades. This is a case that illustrates the failure of the mental health system in Ohio, Reinbolt told the News Journal after Dunns chronic 911 calls. It would appear to me that Mr. Dunn is in need of some sort of psychiatric treatment. He was taken to a mental health provider in order to receive that treatment. Within 24 hours he was released, but continues to exhibit the same symptoms.Dunns criminal record shows a pattern of driving and drug arrests, but does not appear to show any previous violent crimes. He has been charged with kidnapping for the Wednesday incident. Its not a sonic boom or bunker buster Pyongyang should most fear from the Trump administration. Its the sound of cash registers falling silent, and doors to the outside world shutting, as the U.S. works to convince China and other allies to cut off the oil, access to money and perhaps even communication links to the outside world. That was the word from Trump administration officials Wednesday, explaining a multipronged strategy to defang Kim Jong Uns nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program to lawmakers at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Administration officials made clear that open military confrontation or toppling the Kim regime are the least desirable of all possible optionseven as China appeared to hint that it wouldnt oppose certain American military measures against Pyongyang. We want to solve this through political or economic measures, a senior administration official told The Daily Beast. There are no good military options. The official said any unilateral strike would likely lead to a North Korean counter-strike on U.S. allies South Korea and Japanboth within artillery or missile range of North Koreaas well as threatening tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in the Pacific. We want to bring Kim Jong-Un to his senses, not to his knees, said Adm. Harry Harris, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday. He repeated the administration mantra that all options are on the table, but the tone had decidedly shifted from President Donald Trumps earlier provocative tweets. The U.S. might lobby to put North Korea back on the list as a state sponsor of terror as one of many options to isolate the defiant Asian nation. It had been removed in 2008 under previous negotiations with the Bush administration. Its clear we are in a phase where unless North Korea takes a more provocative action, attacks our allies, attacks us directly, this is a diplomatic phase, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, of Delaware, told The Daily Beast outside the White House after the meeting. We are making military preparations to defend our allies and ourselves, but we are focused on clarifying to the world how destabilizing North Koreas actions are. Preparations include sending a U.S. carrier strike group and speeding up the deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea. Admiral Harris told lawmakers North Koreas progress on building missiles that could reach the continental United States could in the near term spell the need for more missile defenses for Hawaii to supplement its ground-based missile defenses in the U.S.. But the across-the-administration tone was markedly different from more bombastic comments in recent weeks, when Trump said North Korea has gotta behave" and tweeted that North Korea is looking for trouble. Those tauntscombined with the military might the U.S. moved into the regionled Pyongyang to threaten to sink the USS Carl Vinson and even to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. That had diplomats and Asia analysts alike worried that the tensions would lead someone to miscalculate, triggering armed confrontation. But Trump officials believe that risk is receding as China slowly makes good on its promise to increase economic pressure on North Korea. The senior administration official Wednesday cited early indications of China doing a better job enforcing U.N. sanctions on North Korea, as well asin the Chinese press and other areas, a really clear effort to communicate to North Korea that its behavior provocative behaviorthe nuclear tests and the missile tests, the existence of these programscant be tolerated. I think were going to suspend judgement and see how this develops in the coming days and months, the official said. All the administration officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the evolving administration response to North Korea. I am cautiously optimistic that we are seeing early signs that China is helping and cooperating at reining in North Korea, agreed Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican. One of those warnings from Beijing to Pyongyang came in the form of an op-ed in Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, which suggested that China may not come to North Koreas aid if it continues to press ahead with nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests. If Pyongyangs unwavering pursuit of its nuclear program continues and Washington launches a military attack on North Koreas nuclear facilities as a result, Beijing should oppose the move by diplomatic channels, rather than get involved through military action, the newspaper said. The Chinese have refused to talk about the day after, said Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation. But through this, they seem to be saying to Pyongyang, if you guys insist on pushing a nuclear program, we may not come to your rescue. Its an interesting little trial balloon. The article also warns that if the U.S. and South Korea cross the demilitarized zone, Beijing wont let them overthrow the regimea pointed warning to Washington. Its one thing to take down the nuclear programbut this is not a license to change the regime like you guys did in Libya, Cheng said. Another Global Times article warned China might cut off oil supplies to North Koreaand they are the sole exporter to the besieged nation. China has already taken some stepsslowly shutting down the amount of coal it imports from North Korea, though in a stop-start way that had some Asia watchers initially skeptical. China took in a surge of coal supplies in December 2016, but then declared a moratorium on imports for 2017, said Yun Sun, a fellow with the East Asia program at the Stimson Center. China still took delivery of some coal supplies in the first two months of this year, though China didnt go above what was allowed by a November U.N. resolution toughening sanctions on the regime, she noted at the Korean-focused website 38 North. It did allow several North Korean ships laden with coal to dock for humanitarian reasons, she said, but there was no satellite or other evidence she has seen that the coal was unloaded, and as of March, it appears all coal deliveries to China have stopped. I think they are being serious about it. They want to cooperate with the Trump administrationand the Chinese do want to punish North Korea, she said. Cutting off trade completely will be difficult because the rural areas of China bordering North Korea are poor, and have benefited from North Korean trade, according to Dr. John Park, director of the Korean Working Group at Harvard Kennedy School. The Chinese provinces near the border with North Korea are like the Arkansas and Mississippi of Chinaso the coal trade and other types of low level exchanges have been a big stimulus. He was skeptical that China would follow through on measures that might spell an economic hit for locals, and warned to watch for a shell game of sorts. In 2003, China turned off the oil to North Korea for three days. They told (President George W.) Bush, look, were doing something. To North Korea, they said were having technical difficulties in the north oil fields and well bump up production when weve got it fixed. Former Obama administration official Michael H. Fuchs said China had already turned tough on North Korea when it voted for U.N. Security Council sanctions against the regime in March last year, likely spurred by Kim Jong Uns reckless behaviorbut its not clear how far Beijing will go. China is clearly also trying to play to Trump, said Fuchs, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Its hard to tell whether they are genuinely afraid of Trump and what he might do and whether they are confident they can play the U.S. president. Articles in Chinese media and comments from Chinese officials are intended to portray a China that wants to work together is a big challenge, but its not clear how much is it actually doing things it says it is going to do. There are other options the U.S. could pressure China to takelike cutting off the major communications links between North Korea and the outside world, or sanctioning the Chinese banks that do business with Pyongyang. The Bush administration did that briefly to great effect, convincing Macau banking authorities to essentially nationalize the private Banco Delta Asia in 2005, closing Kim Jong Ils accounts. But Pyongyang has since learned from that, and now conducts most of its banking with small Chinese banks that arent subject to international control. So it would be up to Beijing to put the financial hurt on Pyongyang. We can pose to China the choicedo you value the millions of dollars of trade you have with North Korea or the billions you have with the rest of the world, Cheng said, something he thinks Trump may have been getting at when he tweeted: Why should I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korea problem? The stick that is kept silent but displayed can often be as influential as the carrot that is publicly proffered, Cheng said. In other words, If you dont help us, there are consequences. This years White House Correspondents Dinner will take place Saturday 29, 2016 at 9:30 pm in Washington D.C and comedian Hasan Minhaj of "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" will serve as the host for the night. Premiering in 1920, the White House Correspondents Dinner is an annual dinner is meant to honor the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. This year's will be the first time we wont have to sit through awful jokes coming from President Trump mouth. The president opted out of attending this years dinner. However, this is not the first time a sitting president wasnt in attendance. The dinner did not have it first presidential attendance until 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge decided to show up. Ever since, the dinner has become more and more attended with up to 3,000 journalists, politicians, icons and celebrities flocking to Washington D.C. make it one of the most lavish nights ever. While it doesnt seem like there will be as many big names as there were last year, the show must go on. Aside from the jokes, the White House Correspondents Association will also be passing out honors throughout the night. The dinner will be awarding 23 student scholarships and journalism awards. Journalism awards will be presented to Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post, Edward Isaac-Dovere of Politico, and David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post by journalisms finest icons Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. How to Watch the White House Correspondents Dinner You can watch the White House Correspondents Dinner live on Saturday, April 29th at 9:30 pm thanks to C-SPAN. Madison Police Chief Mike Koval knew some city leaders and others who disagree with his assessment of the citys rising crime problems were probably rolling their eyes Tuesday when he made another plea for additional manpower and social services programs following a night of unprecedented gun violence in Madison. But after eight gun-related incidents were reported in the city over a span of four-plus hours Monday night and early Tuesday usually one of the slowest nights of the week for calls, police say Koval was hoping that community activists, city leaders who set public policy and those who are in denial will finally all agree that something truly is amiss in Madison and have a Come to Jesus moment. We are no longer immune to what we see taking place on a national scale. The uptick in gun violence is very real, Koval said. Five of the incidents involved calls of shots fired two on the Southwest Side and one each on the North, South and Far West sides while two incidents were armed robberies on the West Side and one involved a BB gun on the Southwest Side, according to police incident reports. Police investigators dont believe any of Monday nights incidents were connected to one another but they werent ruling anything out, Koval said The incidents occurred with such intensity and chronology the first call was at 8:30 p.m. Monday and the last call at 1:10 a.m. Tuesday that a priority-basis system for all calls was ordered, Koval said. Most gun-related events like that are spaced out over days or weeks, but to have those events over a context of a handful of hours (on a Monday night), thats what I think makes this decidedly different or unique, he said. It was a night of gun violence the likes of which I have not seen in my (33 years) as a police officer here, Koval said. According to police incident reports, a 6-year-old girl was watching TV in a Russett Drive apartment on the Southwest Side around 8:35 p.m. when she was nearly struck by an errant bullet, most likely from someone in a car firing at another car. Armed robbery victims included a 27-year-old man who was hospitalized after he was pistol-whipped multiple times as he entered his apartment on Island Drive around 10:45 p.m. and a 22-year-old man who was robbed at gunpoint by two masked men as he cleaned the Oakcrest Tavern on Old Middleton Road around 1 a.m. Tuesday, the reports showed. Koval told reporters he has been nicknamed Chief Chicken Little The Sky Is Falling for his many declarations that gun violence is growing out of control in Madison and that preventative measures like additional manpower within his department and more social services and outreach programs and networks are needed. Whats different this time is that Koval believes the latest spate of gun violence is a harbinger of even bigger problems. We need to tell people that while last night was indicative of a horribly compelling night of crime, Im not so sure, since we havent even hit summer, that we havent seen the worst of it, Koval said. Through Monday, there have been 48 incidents where shots were fired in Madison compared to 33 at the same point in 2016, according to Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain. There has been only one homicide involving a gun in 2017, but Madison has been lucky, according to Koval. The only reason we dont have a bigger spike in homicides from my perspective is people shooting from moving vehicles at moving vehicles using poor marksmanship skills and faulty ammo. We are on borrowed time. We should have more homicides based on sheer shots fired, Koval said. The Madison Police Department is decidedly short-staffed in patrol officers and detectives and needs to meet the needs of a community with a population of more than 250,000 and more than 122,000 visitors every day, according to Koval. I dont know how much more graphic I have to get in terms of trying to get Madison adjusted to this new reality that is ours. Were a big city, we have a lot of issues, he said. Suspects in gun-violence crimes are lifelong residents of Madison as well as visitors and people who moved here, according to DeSpain. Recent armed carjacking episodes including an incident at Madison Memorial High School, where students were victimized in the parking lot are part of a rise of crimes in Madison generally seen only in bigger cities, DeSpain said. Vehicles carjacked from Chicago were used in the carjacking at the high school, police said. Koval said gun violence doesnt occur just in bad parts of the city late at night. Nobody has that capacity to shroud themselves in the bubble of safety and privacy and ensure it will not happen to them or to their neighborhood, Koval said. It can happen in any neighborhood and, as weve seen, at any time of the day or night. We have to look at this as a new paradigm of challenges for us moving forward, he said. Other victims of Monday nights gun incidents included a 27-year-old Belleville man who was injured by flying glass, a bullet fragment or something else when shots were fired at his car as he pulled into a BP gas station at 4501 Verona Road on the Southwest Side around 8:45 p.m., according to a police report. Police said he was targeted. Gunshots also were heard and casings found around 9:45 p.m. in the 500 block of Northport Drive on the North Side and at an apartment building in the 3100 block of Muir Field Road on the Far West Side around 11:50 p.m, police said. Four bullets hit an apartment building in the 2900 block of Turbot Drive on the South Side around 11:45 p.m. Also, a 15-year-old girl was taken to the hospital after she was shot twice in the legs with BBs at Elver Park sometime before 9 p.m., police said. The girl said a group of boys fired the BB guns at her as she was leaving the park. InfoWars host Alex Jones, an avid supporter of President Trump during the campaign and his administration, said in a video posted to his Facebook on Thursday that Ivanka Trumps policies are beginning to sound a lot like those of Hillary Clinton. We did not elect Ivanka Trump to be the 45th President of the United States, Jones says dressed in a white-collared shirt while driving a car. I think shes talented, shes beautiful, I think the dresses she wears, the clothing line are cool. I have nothing against her personally. Or Jared Kushner, but we didnt elect him to be president either. Hes a Democrat, his dad went to prison for fraud, his 666 buildings going sideways. The remarks come as Jones is in the midst of a contentious child custody battle and just a few days after the yogurt giant Chobani sued him claiming that he had fabricated stories about the company and its CEO Hamdi Ulukuya. Jones is butting heads with Ivanka Trumps recent interest in accepting Syrian refugees into the United Statesa divergence from the platform that Trump ran on as a candidate. That has to be part of the discussion, Ivanka Trump said regarding the admission of refugees during an interview with MSNBC. But thats not going to be enough in and of itself. Jones also took issue with Ivanka Trumps appearance in Germany alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has diverged with President Trump on the policy of admission of foreign refugees. Shes over there in Germany with Merkel who opened the borders up for all the Islamisists [sic], Jones continues in the video. She says for women we should let refugees in. And that her dads wrong and she wants him to change his mind. What? InfoWars has long been a cheerleader of Trumps nationalist agenda. Jones radio show and livestream have recently featured appearances by longtime Trump friend Roger Stone to blast the influence of Jared Kushner in the White House. The two men claim they are criticizing with gentle nudges so Trump keeps his promises to his baseand to not allow the president to be kowtow to the establishment. The rest of the video is slightly more hopeful. Jones contends President Trump is helping to spread the brand of nationalism worldwide and that his listeners and youthful nationalists are helping to defeat globalism. Im Alex Jones, this is in the Info War, Jones says, still driving. The murder of JonBenet Ramsey is an American obsession; one that has given rise to countless articles, books, memoirs, and documentaries. This growing collection of secondary sources has recently added a meta subgenre: self-reflective meditations on why and how we continue to give life to this cold case. This conversationwhat we talk about when we talk about JonBenet Ramseyis at the heart of Casting JonBenet, a new documentary from director Kitty Green. Instead of recreating the events surrounding Ramseys 1996 murder, or interviewing key players, Green splices together footage of citizens auditioning for an unrealized film-within-a-film, set in JonBenets hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Through this clever device, we meet a host of aspiring JonBenet Ramseys, Patsy Ramseys, and John Ramseys, along with a number of satellite suspects. While the actors fixate on the details of the case and the unknowable facets of their charactersall focused on the past, circling a musty collection of observations and Larry King interviewsGreen mines them for personal histories and pathologies. The JonBenet Ramsey case, with its tangle of complex characters and evocative themes, bridges an entire generation of bystanders and gets them talking: about motherhood, pedophilia, love, sex, Santa, and everything in between. Over an expertly paced and constructed 80 minutes, we come to be more fascinated by these strangers than by their shared obsession: the dead little girl who, for whatever reason, has triggered their on-camera confessions. How can we account for the psychological grip of JonBenet Ramsey, which appears to reach across decades and generations? More than 20 years later, why do grown men and women still sob when recalling the details of her case? These are the questions that Casting JonBenet contends withan interesting positionality, given that its audience on Netflix will undoubtedly consist of a good deal of true-crime conspiracy theorists and JonBenet obsessives. Eight-year-old Hector Medrano was a figure so small that his red-black-and-gray sneakers barely brushed the floor as he settled into the witness chair. Hi, Hector, Immigration Judge Mimi Tsankov said. Hi, Hector said. Thank you for coming to court, the judge said. Hector is too young to take the usual oath. The judge instead asked him if he understood the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie. Telling a lie is when youre not telling exactly whats true, Hector said. Telling the truth is when youre saying exactly what happened. The windowless chamber on the 11th floor of the federal building on Varick Street seemed to pause for a collective heartbeat. Thats a very good definition, the judge said. The boys father, 30-year-old Henry Medrano, sat behind him, gazing upon his only child as proudly as is possible when you are in an orange prisoners jumpsuit and your manacled hands are affixed to a chain around your waist. The father had been arrested back on August 1 of last year for making unwelcome advances on a woman in a bathhouse at a public beach on Long Islandkissing her and briefly keeping her from getting away. He had already pled guilty in criminal court to unlawful imprisonment and harassment and served 75 days. Henry Medrano had then been placed in ICE custody and the matter now at hand at this April 3 hearing was whether he would be deported to his native El Salvador after 14 years in America. The fathers lawyer, Livius Ilasz, began the direct examination of the son, who is a native-born citizen of the country whose flag stood to the right of the judge. The seal on the wall attested that the proceeding was under the authority of the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the U.S. Department of Justice. How is your school? Ilasz asked. My school is fine, Hector answered. What grade are you in? Third. Did you go to school today? No, because I had to go in to my dad, check to see if he is coming out. You always live here in New York? I was always here and I was having a happy life here growing up. The pride in the fathers eyes was distilling to tears. You know your father is being questioned by the government so the government can decide if you father can stay Ilasz continued. Hector completed the sentence. Or be deported, Hector said. The boy had wanted to be the one to say it. His words were made all the more wrenching by his even, steady tone. You understand that? Ilasz asked. Yes, the boy said. He then said of his father, Sometimes, hes tired. I always try to cheer him up. And if hes down, I start hugging him. The judge spoke. I dont want him to get too emotional, she said. Lets take a break. This is tough. Hector sat silent and still during a brief pause. He remained preternaturally composed as the lawyer for the government questioned him about how long he had lived in New York and when he had been diagnosed with asthma. The judge then informed Hector that he was done. You did such a good job, she told him. You gave us a lot of helpful information. I know your dad is very proud of you. The father was weeping, tears streaming down his face. Hectors eyes were welling, but he was not so much crying as brimming with more than any boy should feel. I dont know what we did with all the tissues, the judge said. We should have them on hand. A court officer stepped out for a moment and returned with a box of tissues. The officer offered them first to Hector, who took one, though his cheeks were still dry. The officer then held the tissues out to the father. Thank you, the father said. The father dabbed at his tears, but they kept coming. The boy slid out of the witness chair and a court officer asked if he wanted to wait outside the courtroom as the hearing continued. He chose to stay and joined his grandmother and aunt and his fathers girlfriend and two grownup cousins in the spectator benches. And there he sat, dry-eyed, twisting the tissue in his hands. His sole, slender chance of returning to his previously happy life was offered by Section 240A. 1/(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, by which his father could avoid deportation. The statute states: The Attorney General may cancel removal of, and adjust to the status of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States if the alien has been physically present in the United States for a continuous period of not less than 10 years immediately preceding the date of such application; has been a person of good moral character during such period. There was more. The applicant cannot have been convicted of an offense under section 212(a)(2), 237(a)(2) , or 237(a)(3), subject to paragraph (5) 2a/ 5/, generally including violent felonies, narcotics violations and crimes of moral turpitude that carry a penalty of a year or longer. The applicant cannot have been convicted of two crimes of moral turpitude carrying whatever penalty. And the applicant must establish that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to the aliens spouse, parent, or child, who is a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence. The judges call for a break and for tissues might have seemed an acknowledgement of extremely unusual hardship to the child in this case. The father had testified earlier that he was effectively Hectors sole parent, saying the mother had left the home and essentially departed from the boys life when he was just 13 months old. One of the grown cousins now took the stand and added a detail the mother was not available to confirm or deny. His mother left with somebody else, the cousin said. Hector stared straight ahead, his face giving no sign he had even heard it. He continued twisting the tissue in his hands as his father returned to the witness chair and gave additional testimony. The father had already acknowledged that he had been arrested for driving while intoxicated on New Years Day in 2010. He now admitted to the government lawyer that he regularly drove without a license, being unable to obtain one for the same reason he could not secure full legal custody of his son. To go to court and have custody of my son, I need a social security number, the father testified. Does your son ever see his mother? the fathers lawyer asked She went to see him one time when I was working, the father said. They told me she came to see him. The governments lawyer asked the father about his subsequent arrest involving the woman at the bathhouse at Jones Beach. I tried to kiss her and she told me to let her go, the father said. I told her I was sorry. I was attracted to her. The governments lawyer asked if he had persisted after she made it clear his attentions were not welcome. I dont deny it, the father replied. I tried to continue talking to her. Isnt it true you took her to an area secluded by plastic barriers? the governments lawyer inquired. Yes, the father said. The father was on paper a criminal illegal alien, the very bugaboo that Donald Trump had invoked to fire up his rallies and was now invoking to justify The Wall across the very border that the father testified to having crossed on September 15, 2002, at the age of 16. Never mind that the father had done so from Mexicali in Mexico to its sister city of Calexico in the United States, where there already is a wall. The father had made his way from the border to join his parents, who had come before him and settled in Brentwood, Long Island. That suburban town is a hotbed of the murderous MS-13 gang, though nobody in the family is believed to be a member. Henry testified that his own fatherHectors grandfatherwent into hiding after gang members here in America came to suspect the grandfather had been speaking to the police. Henry Medrano had worked in a restaurant and then in construction, most recently as a carpenter, arriving home in time to ensure his son did his homework. He testified that on weekends he took his son to the movies or for ice cream or to the park to any game a kid likes to play. I let him know I am there for him in the good times and the bad times, the father told the court. There remained the question of his behavior with the woman at the beach, which would not and should not be excused just because a number of women have accused Trump of having done much the same in years past. Henry further testified that he no longer had family in El Salvador and would have no place to live there. If you were ordered deported from the United States by this court, would you take your son with you? the fathers lawyer asked. As much as it hurts, I would have to leave him here, because if I take him with me, I would pretty much be taking him to his death, the father said. Hector ceased twisting the tissue and his hands went still, but he otherwise evidenced no reaction to his fathers words. The lawyer, Ilasz, asked the father another question. Is there anything else you want to tell this court to support your application not to be removed? Henry Medrano said, I would like to apologize to the court and to the girl and to my son and my mom and my girlfriend for the mistakes that I made. The apology seemed hardly adequate, but it was also all the father could offer. The governments lawyer questioned whether the father had demonstrated the necessary good moral character and whether he had always been completely truthful in his encounters with the police and whether what the boy faces rises to the level of extreme hardship. Its a sad case, the governments lawyer acknowledged. I dont want you to think the government isnt sympathetic, but The judge noted that she does not wear the usual black robes to court because she often handles cases involving juveniles and does not wish to be intimidating. She seemed the very personification of sympathy, of justice gentled by mercy. Yet, she was still bound by the law. And guidelines set by precedent hold that the required exceptional and extremely unusual hardship be substantially different from or beyond that ordinarily expected, that it be very uncommon and limited to truly exceptional situations. The very absence of the robes and the judges indication that there should always be tissues available at such proceedings suggested that a heartbreaking situation involving a child is not all that uncommon in immigration cases. The judge wondered aloud if the father might agree to depart the U.S. voluntarily before he was officially deported, thereby leaving open the possibilityhowever slimof him someday returning legally. Deportation would mean the door that closed behind him would stay closed. The fathers lawyer indicated that his client was not prepared just to leave the U.S. and therefore his son. The judge could have just issued a verbal ruling on the case right then and there. Instead, she announced that she would be issuing a written decision. The son looked across the courtroom at his father in the orange jumpsuit and the manacles. Hector said not a word as he then left the courtroom with the other members of his family. He had the tissue clenched in his right hand. They rode down in the elevator and went out past the metal detectors. A 53-year-old security guard named Idrissa Camaraan immigrant from Ivory Coasthad been shot to death there in August of 2015 by a crazed native-born American armed with two revolvers. Camara had a daughter serving in the U.S. Army at the time. Hector and his family minus his father continued on into a city that has the biggest immigrant population in the country and the lowest crime rate of any major American city. He returned to suburban Brentwood, where murderous members of MS-13a gang spawned in Americado in fact terrorize innocents, most particularly at the high school where Hector can expect to go if he remains there. MS-13 is believed to have committed eight homicides in Brentwood in 2016 and a quadruple homicide just this month in neighboring Central Islip. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to visit Central Islip and make a speech on Friday. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that he is dispatching a high intensity gang unit of 25 state troopers to the area. A good many MS-13 members remain at large while Hectors father is being held along with other ICE prisoners at the Hudson County jail in New Jersey. As of Wednesday evening, the son was still awaiting word of the judges ruling. Hector will in any event remain a native-born citizen who is as American as anybody. He will also have given us a succinct definition about the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie that our new president and the rest of us should more often honor. And, as few people of any age are as brave and stoic as this astonishing eight-year-old, the new federal budget for the immigration courts should include an extra allocation for tissues. One cold January night in 1977, David Goodwin went to the beach for business. Goodwin had been hired to unload bales of marijuana from a boat anchored at a Florida beach, and haul the bales of weed onto waiting trucks. Goodwin didnt know he was walking into an FBI trap. And he never imagined that shortly after showing up, four bystanders would be killed and that he would be convicted of their murders despite being nearly 150 miles away when the shots were fired. Now after nearly 40 years in prison, including a stint on death row, Goodwin is going free. The 70-year-old inmate was granted parole this month and is scheduled to leave Everglades Correctional Institute in Miami, Florida on May 2. Like his long-time mentor Bill OReilly before him, Fox News host Jesse Watters took a vacation abruptly after he found himself the butt of public outrage. However, unlike OReilly before him, dont expect this to mean hes done at the network. Im going to be taking a vacation with my family, so Im not going to be here tomorrow, the 38-year-old said on Wednesdays edition of The Five, the roundtable gabfest he now co-hosts in its new, post-OReilly timeslot of 9 p.m. ET. Ill be back on Monday, so dont miss me too much. The previous evening, on the shows second night in primetime, Watters made what many perceived to be a sexually crude remark about the way First Daughter Ivanka Trump spoke into a microphone during an event in Germany. Its funny. The left says they really respect women and then when given an opportunity to respect a woman like that they boo and hiss... so I dont really get whats going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone, he said, gesturing with his hand towards his mouth before flashing a signature shit-eating grin at his co-hosts. In an attempt to quell the ensuing outrage, Watters pleaded innocent, stating: During the break, we were commenting on Ivankas voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. This was in no way a joke about anything else. A week after The New York Times revealed five sexual-harassment accusations against OReilly, and advertisers began boycotting en masse, the then-primetime ratings leader suddenly announced he would be going on a two-week Easter vacation. OReilly jetted off to Rome, and was photographed meeting the Pope, but when he returned home, his Fox News career was over and The OReilly Factor was no more. As such, media watchers might be quick to assume Watters sudden family vacation is similarly a move to hide the beleaguered star until the network can decide how to address his on-air antics. And it is certainly odd that he would go on a trip just three days into his newly minted primetime slot. Fox News declined to comment on questions related to his vacation. However, those hoping for serial sexist and race-baiter Watters permanent exitdont get too excited. He survived after outraging the nation over his deeply offensive man-on-the-street segment mocking Asians, and the smirking dudebro will likely survive this. Multiple sources at Fox News told The Daily Beast that Watters vacation is for real. According to one source close to Watters, the hosts trip was originally planned as being this entire week off, but because the OReilly shake-up led to drastic lineup changes, only now does Watterss trip seem suspicious. The sources insisted that there was nothing fishy going on here. Watters will return on Monday, as he said on-air. Come Monday, we shall see. In an effort to reshape Washington, Donald Trump has given the reins of his administration to the same special interests that he pledged as a presidential candidate to purge from the halls of power. Trump promised to be a new kind of Republican, to avoid the moral hazard that he endlessly claimed would corrupt, or had already corrupted, not just his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton but every one of his Republican primary rivals. A Trump-led Washington would be different, he said. His administration would shun special interests. He was wealthy and politically self-sufficient. He didnt need the lobbyist fundraisers or the corporate PAC contributions. He would win without them, and be beholden to none of them. At the 100-day mark of his presidency, no Trump campaign promise remains more divorced from present reality than his pledge to drain the swamp in Washington. Its a problem, in part, of his own making since the presidents brand of Republican politics all but requires him to violate his own standards for the staffing of his administration. The resulting flood of lobbyists and business executives into the administration has led to some glaring discrepancies between Trumps campaign rhetoric and early staffing decisions that appear to run afoul of the spirit if not the letter of campaign promises and ethics rules implemented by a January executive order. Trump has stacked his administration with special interests not because he needs their money, but because he needs them, physically. A short-staffed administration desperate to fill high-level posts needs expertise in top positions, and Trump has fewer avenues for talent recruitment than other Republicans might. Trump routintely railed on Wall Street during the campaign, then brought on veterans of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs to lead the Treasury Department and the White House National Economic Council. He derided the influence of lobbyists on the policymaking process, then secretly waived ethics rules so they could take high-level posts in his administration. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in his previous gig as ExxonMobils chief executive, inked huge business deals with companies owned by adversarial foreign governments. At the Commerce Department, veteran steel investor Wilbur Ross administers trade policy that seeks explicitly to boost the steel industry. Commerce is particularly illustrative of the pitfalls of the Trump administrations hiring needs. As Ross pursues punitive trade actions against Chinese steel imports that compete with a company in which he was invested until January, the nominee to be his top international trade deputy, former steel industry lobbyist Gilbert Kaplan, is slated to impose the precise types of protectionist trade policies for which he has lobbied for years. Trumps explicit hostility to free trade puts him at odds with many conservative think tanks and academics, so drawing top Commerce staff from those groups, still ingrained with Reagan-era ideas about the free flow of goods, was never an option. So he turned to the private sector for top talent, and industry was happy to imbue the White House with its own policy preferences. Trump has drawn on the Republican National Committee and other mainstream conservative and GOP outfits to staff his administration, but to fulfill the policy goals that set him apart from other Republicans, he has had to look beyond established Washington institutions and the agenda items that Trump derided as stale and outdated during the campaign. It was a leading alt-right figure, white nationalist Richard Spencer, who pinpointed the precise problem that approach has created for the Trump administration. One fundamental problem of Trumpism is not so much Trump himself but Conservatism, Inc.: the think-tanks, the people, publications, etc., Spencer wrote this month. Trump had a populist vision, but lacked an infrastructure to carry it out. Hes had to turn to all the same failed people and ideas. Whether or not those ideas have failed, Spencer is correct that the brand of America-First nationalism embodied by chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and embraced by Trump had a very shallow pool of political talent on which to draw. Short of fringe groups such as Spencers National Policy Institute, from which even Bannon would surely decline to hire, there are no nationalist equivalents of Washington political and policy institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, or the RNC, even if those groups and others have moved in Trumps direction ideologically since his victory last year. To the extent that Trump has tried to stack his administration with officials friendly to his nationalist political brandwhich in large part rejects the post-Reagan conservative consensus and its accompanying D.C. institutionshe has been forced to draw staff from the private sector instead of organizations in Washington devoted in large measure to seeding talent for like-minded elected officials. Whereas a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio might have drawn from a deep bench of conservative intellectuals and policy experts, Trump has been forced to in-source major segments of his policy team from the business community and D.C. influence industry, groups that are ostensibly restricted in what they can do in his administration. Trump seems to have realized early on that, absent the types of staffing farm teams that might be available to a more conventional Republican, he would be forced to draw on the private sectorand the Washington influence industry in particular. You dont like it, but your own transition team, its filled with lobbyists, CBSs Lesley Stahl noted in an interview with Trump less than a week after the election. You have lobbyists from Verizon, you have lobbyists from the oil gas industry, you have food lobby. Sure, Trump admitted. Everybodys a lobbyist down there Thats what they are. Theyre lobbyists or special interests. Apparently recognizing that reality, Trump administration ethics rules eliminated an Obama-era provision that barred officials from serving in federal agencies that they had lobbied in the last two years. The result has been an explosion of high-level officials who share some of Trumps nationalist policy preferences but have deep ties to an industry that might have prevented them from serving in the same roles for Trumps predecessor. For example, in his role at Commerce, Kaplan will, if confirmed by the Senate, be in charge of a policy agenda that prioritizes the precise policies that he pressed as a lobbyist in discussions with legislators and administrators, including staff at the department where he now works. That work appears to directly contradict the language of the ethics pledge he will be required to sign upon taking office. Imposed by an executive order in January, it bars all appointees from participating in particular matters of general applicability that overlap with their previous lobbying work. The White House has said that it will consider waiving portions of the pledge if necessary. It has reportedly already done so for officials at the White House and the Labor Department. But due to the opaque manner in which Trumps ethics rules have been applied, there is virtually no way of independently determining whether an administration official has been exempted from those rules. Under Obama administration ethics rules, the Office of Government Ethics was instructed to regularly update its website with notifications of waivers issued to administration officials. Trumps executive order required no such disclosure, and a page on the White House website promising a list of waivers issued by the White House remains blank. Instead, the administration has been secretly issuing waivers to numerous officials who would otherwise be barred from participating in major policymaking decisions due to their previous lobbying work, according to a recent New York Times report. At the same time, former Trump confidantes are spinning the revolving door in the other direction, seeking to influence policy from the outside on behalf of paying corporate clients. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is even marketing his lobbying services as protection against tweet riskor the prospect that the president might say something bad about ones company on his frequently caustic Twitter account. The push by Lewandowski and others in Trumps orbit to monetize their connections, and the lack of public information on who in the administration has been exempted from Trumps ethics rules, creates natural demand for information on the people and organizations seeking to influence White House policy. But on just that sort of transparency, Trump has upended previous practice in an effort to preserve some opacity in his White Houses communications with third parties. It announced this month that it would not publicly release White House visitor logs that recorded meetings with West Wing officials, making it more difficult to determine who is lobbying whom. Trumps pre-presidential rhetoric once again offered a stark contrast to his White Houses decision. Why does Obama believe he shouldnt comply with record releases that his predecessors did of their own volition? he asked in 2012. Hiding something? Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me today and for furthering the discussion of cyber-enabled influence. My remarks today will further expand on my previous testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence where I detailed the research Andrew Weisburd, J.M. Berger, and I published regarding Russian attempts to harm our democracy via social media influence. Ill add further to this discussion and will also provide my perspective having worked on cyber-enabled influence operations and supporting programs for the U.S. government dating back to 2005. Having served in these Western counterterrorism programs, I believe there are many lessons we should learn from and not repeat in future efforts to fight and win Americas information wars. 1) How does Russian nation state influence via social media differ from other influence efforts on social media? As I discussed on March 30, 2017, Russia, over the past three years, has conducted the most successful influence campaign in history using the Internet and more importantly social media to access and manipulate foreign audiences. Russia and other nation states are not the only influencers in social media. Profiteers pushing false or salacious stories for ad revenue, political campaigns running advertisements and satirists looking for laughs also seek to influence audiences during elections, but their online behavior manifests differently from that of Russia. Russias hacking may be covert, but their employment of kompromat ultimately reveals their overt influence campaigns. Furthermore, Russian influence performs a full range of actions to achieve their objectives that distinguish them from other influence efforts. Create, Push, Share, Discuss, Challenge (CPSDC) - Effective State Sponsors Do All Of These In The Influence Space, Others Do Only Some Create - Russia uses their state sponsored media outlets and associated conspiratorial websites to create propaganda across political, social, financial and calamitous message themes. This content, much of which is fake news or manipulated truths, provides information missiles tailored for specific portions of an electorate they seek to influence. More importantly, Russias hacking and theft of secrets provides the nuclear fuel for information atomic bombs delivered by their state sponsored media outlets and covert personas. This information fuels not only their state sponsored outlets but arms the click-bait content development of profiteers and political parties who further amplify Russias narratives amongst Western voters. Push Unlike other fake news dissemination, Russia synchronizes the push of their propaganda across multiple outlets and personas. Using sock puppets and automated bots appearing to be stationed around the world, Russia simultaneously amplifies narratives in such a way to grab mainstream media attention. Many other social media bots push false and misleading stories for profit or politics but their patterns lack the synchronization and repeated delivery of pro-Russian content and usually follow rather than lead in the dissemination of Russian conspiracies. Share - Like-minded supporters, aggregators (gray accounts) and covert personas (black accounts) share coordinated pushes of Russian propaganda with key nodes on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis. This coordinated sharing seeks to further amplify and cement influential content and their themes amongst a targeted set of voters. Their sharing often involves content appealing to either the left or right side of the political spectrum as well as any anti-government or social issue. This widespread targeting often varies from profiteers and political propagandists that seek a high rate of consumption across a narrow set of themes designed for a more narrow target audience. Discuss Russian overt supporters and covert accounts, unlike other digital influence efforts, discuss Russian themes over an enduring period driving the preferred message deep into their target audience. This collaborative discussion amongst unwitting Americans makes seemingly improbable false information more believable. Comparatively, bots and campaigns from profiteers, satirists and political propagandists more frequently appear as fire-and-forget messaging operations. Challenge Heated social media debates during election season have been and will remain commonplace. But Russian influence operations directly challenge their adversaries for unnaturally long periods and at peculiar intervals. Russian covert personas heckle and push chosen themes against political opponents, media personalities and subject matter experts to erode target audience support for Russian adversaries and their political positions. These challenges sometimes provide the Kremlin the added benefit of diminishing Russian opponent social media use. Other social media influence efforts will not go to such lengths. Full Spectrum Influence Operations: Synchronization of White, Gray and Black Efforts Russian cyber enabled influence operations demonstrate never-before-seen synchronization of Active Measures. Content created by white outlets (RT and Sputnik News) promoting the release of compromising material will magically generate manipulated truths and falsehoods from conspiratorial websites promoting Russian foreign policy positions, Kremlin preferred candidates or attacking Russian opponents. Hackers, hecklers and honeypots rapidly extend these information campaigns amongst foreign audiences. As a comparison, the full spectrum synchronization, scale, repetition and speed of Russias cyber-enabled information operations far outperform the Islamic States recently successful terrorism propaganda campaigns or any other electoral campaign seen to date. Cyber-enabled Influence Thrives When Paired with Physical Actors and Their Actions American obsession with social media has overlooked the real world actors assisting Russian influence operations in cyber space, specifically Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers, and Agent Provocateurs. Useful Idiots - Meddling in the U.S. and now European elections has been accentuated by Russian cultivation and exploitation of Useful Idiots a Soviet era term referring to unwitting American politicians, political groups and government representatives who further amplify Russian influence amongst Western populaces by utilizing Russian kompromat and resulting themes. Fellow Travelers - In some cases, Russia has curried the favor of Fellow Travelers a Soviet term referring to individuals ideologically sympathetic to Russias anti-EU, anti-NATO and anti-immigration ideology. A cast of alternative right characters across Europe and America now openly push Russias agenda both on-the-ground and online accelerating the spread of Russias cyber-enabled influence operations. Agent Provocateurs - Ever more dangerous may be Russias renewed placement and use of Agent Provocateurs Russian agents or manipulated political supporters who commit or entice others to commit illegal, surreptitious acts to discredit opponent political groups and power falsehoods in cyber space. Shots fired in a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor by an American who fell victim to a fake news campaign called #PizzaGate demonstrate the potential for cyber-enabled influence to result in real world consequences. While this campaign cannot be directly linked to Russia, the Kremlin currently has the capability to foment, amplify, and through covert social media accounts, encourage Americans to undertake actions either knowingly or unknowingly as Agent Provocateurs. Each of these actors assists Russias online efforts to divide Western electorates across political, social, and ethnic lines while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability with regards to Kremlin interventions. In general, Russian influence operations targeting closer to Moscow and further from Washington, D.C. will utilize greater quantities and more advanced levels of human operatives to power cyber-influence operations. Russias Crimean campaign and their links to an attempted coup in Montenegro demonstrate the blend of real world and cyber influence they can utilize to win over target audiences. The physical station or promotion of gray media outlets and overt Russian supporters in Eastern Europe were essential to their influence of the U.S. Presidential election and sustaining plausible deniability. Its important to note that America is not immune to infiltration either, physically or virtually. In addition to the Cold War history of Soviet agents recruiting Americans for Active Measures purposes, the recently released dossier gathered by ex MI6 agent Chris Steele alleges on page 8 that Russia used Russian emigre & associated offensive cyber operatives in U.S. during their recent campaign to influence the U.S. election. While still unverified, if true, the employment of such agents of influence in the U.S. would provide further plausible deniability and provocation capability for Russian cyber-enabled influence operations. 2) How can the U.S. government counter cyber-enabled influence operations? When it comes to America countering cyber-enabled influence operations, when all is said and done, far more is said than done. When the U.S. has done something to date, at best, it has been ineffective. At worst, it has been counterproductive. Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars since 9/11, U.S. influence operations have made little or no progress in countering al Qaeda, its spawn the Islamic State or any connected jihadist threat group radicalizing and recruiting via social media. Policymakers and strategists should take note of this failure before rapidly plunging into an information battle with state sponsored cyber-enabled influence operations coupled with widespread hacking operations a far more complex threat than any previous terrorist actor weve encountered. Thus far, U.S. cyber influence has been excessively focused on bureaucracy and expensive technology tools - social media monitoring systems that have failed to detect the Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS, the Islamic States taking of Mosul, and most recently Russias influence of the U.S. election. America will only succeed in countering Russian influence by turning its current approaches upside down, clearly determining what it seeks to achieve with its counter influence strategy and then harnessing top talent empowered rather than shackled by technology a methodology prioritizing Task, Talent, Teamwork and Technology in that order. Task Witnessing the frightening possibility of Russian interference in the recent U.S. Presidential election, American policy makers have immediately called to counter Russian cyber influence. But the U.S. should take pause in rushing into such efforts. The U.S. and Europe lack a firm understanding of what is currently taking place. The U.S. should begin by clearly mapping out the purpose and scope of Russian cyber influence methods. Second, American politicians, political organizations and government officials must reaffirm their commitment to fact over fiction by regaining the trust of their constituents through accurate communications. They must also end their use of Russian kompromat stolen from American citizens private communications as ammunition in political contests. Third, the U.S. must clearly articulate its policies with regards to the European Union, NATO, and immigration, which, at present, sometimes seems to mirror rather than counters that of the Kremlin. Only after these three actions have been completed, can the U.S. government undertake efforts to meet the challenge of Russian information warfare through its agencies as I detailed during my previous testimony. Talent Russias dominance in cyber-enabled influence operations arises not from their employment of sophisticated technology, but through the employment of top talent. Actual humans, not artificial intelligence, achieved Russias recent success in information warfare. Rather than developing cyber operatives internally, Russia leverages an asymmetric advantage by which they coopt, compromise or coerce components of Russias cyber criminal underground. Russia deliberately brings select individuals into their ranks, such as those GRU [Russias foreign intelligence agency] leaders and proxies designated in the 29 December 2016 U.S. sanctions. Others in Russia with access to sophisticated malware, hacking techniques or botnets are compelled to act on behalf of the Kremlin. The U.S. has top talent for cyber influence but will be unlikely and unable to leverage it against its adversaries. The U.S. focuses on technologists failing to blend them with needed information campaign tacticians and threat analysts. Even further, U.S. agency attempts to recruit cyber and influence operation personnel excessively focus on security clearances and rudimentary training thus screening out many top picks. Those few that can pass these screening criteria are placed in restrictive information environments deep inside government buildings and limited to a narrow set of tools. The end result is a lesser-qualified cyber-influence cadre with limited capability relying on outside contractors to read, collate and parse open source information from the Internet on their behalf. The majority of the top talent needed for cyber-enabled influence resides in the private sector, has no need for a security clearance, has likely used a controlled substance during their lifetime and can probably work from home easier and more successfully than they could from a government building. Teamwork Russias cyber-enabled influence operations excel because they seamlessly integrate cyber operations, influence efforts, intelligence operatives and diplomats into a cohesive strategy. Russia doesnt obsess over their bureaucracy and employs competing and even overlapping efforts at times to win their objectives. Meanwhile, U.S. government counter influence efforts have fallen into the repeated trap of pursuing bureaucratic whole-of-government approaches. Whether it is terror groups or nation states, these approaches assign tangential tasks to competing bureaucratic entities focused on their primary mission more than countering cyber influence. Whole-of-government approaches to countering cyber influence will assign no responsible entity with the authority and needed resources to tackle our countrys cyber adversaries. Moving forward, a task force led by a single entity must be created to counter the rise of Russian cyber-enabled operations. Technology Over more than a decade, Ive repeatedly observed the U.S. buying technology tools in the cyber- influence space for problems they dont fully understand. These tech tool purchases have excessively focused on social media analytical packages producing an incomprehensible array of charts depicting connected dots with different colored lines. Many of these technology products represent nothing more than modern snake oil for the digital age. They may work well for Internet marketing but routinely muddy the waters for understanding cyber influence and the bad actors hiding amongst social media storm. Detecting cyber influence operations requires the identification of specific needles, amongst stacks of needles hidden in massive haystacks. These needles are cyber hackers and influencers seeking to hide their hand in the social media universe. Based on my experience, the most successful technology for identifying cyber and influence actors comes from talented analysts that first comprehensively identify threat actor intentions and techniques and then build automated applications specifically tailored to detect these actors. The U.S. government should not buy technical tools nor seek to build expensive, enterprise-wide solutions for cyber-influence analytics that rapidly become outdated and obsolete. Instead, top talent should be allowed to nimbly purchase or rent the latest and best tools on the market for whatever current or emerging social media platforms or hacker malware kits arise. 3. What can the public and private sector do to counter influence operations? Ive already outlined my recommendations for U.S. government actions to thwart Russias Active Measures online in my previous testimony on 30 March 2017. Social media companies and mainstream media outlets must restore the integrity of information by reaffirming the purity of their systems. In the roughly one month since I last testified however, the private sector has made significant advances in this regard. Facebook has led the way, continuing their efforts to reduce fake news distribution and removing up to 30,000 false accounts from its system just this past week. Google has added a fact checking function to their search engine for news stories and further refined its search algorithm to sideline false and misleading information. Wikipedia launched a crowd-funded effort to fight fake news this week. The key remaining private sector participant is Twitter, as their platform remains an critical networking and dissemination vector for cyber-enabled influence operations. Their participation in fighting fake news and nefarious cyber influence will be essential. I hope they will follow the efforts of other social media platforms as their identification and elimination of fake news spreading bots and false accounts may provide a critical block to Russian manipulation and influence of the upcoming French and German elections. In conclusion, my colleagues and I identified, tracked and traced the rise of Russian influence operations on social media with home computers and some credit cards. While cyber-influence operations may appear highly technical in execution, they are very human in design and implementation. Technology and money will not be the challenge for America in countering Russias online Active Measures; it will be humans and the bureaucracies America has created that prevent our country from employing its most talented cyber savants against the greatest enemies to our democracy. Military officials explicitly warned Michael Flynn against accepting payments from foreign governments after he left the Pentagon, and instructed him to disclose any such payments if they occurred. But the retired general subsequently took such a payment and failed to disclose it, according to documents released by congressional investigators on Thursday. Documents released by the House Oversight Committee show that the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Flynn directed before joining the White House in January, has no record of him disclosing a $33,750 payment from state-sponsored Russian broadcaster Russia Today. Flynn traveled to Moscow in Dec. 2015 to give an address for the networks tenth anniversary gala. Months later Flynn joined Donald Trumps presidential campaign as an adviser and was served briefly as National Security Adviser before he was fired in February . The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, asked the Army to issue a final determination on whether Flynn had illegally failed to disclose the RT payment, citing the documents released on Thursday. "By all appearances, Lt. Gen. Flynn violated [federal law] by accepting compensation from entities associated with foreign governments without obtaining consent to do so, Chaffetz wrote. Financial disclosure documents released by the White House early this month showed that Flynn had initially failed to inform federal ethics officials of the payment after taking his White House post. If he also failed to inform DIA of that payment, Flynn likely ran afoul of federal laws requiring former government officials to seek approval from the State Department and the agencies that once employed them before accepting a payment from a foreign government. These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a Thursday statement. Flynns attorney Rob Kelner said this week that Flynn had informed DIA that he would travel to Moscow for the RT event, but would not say whether he had disclosed his payment for speaking at it. In an emailed statement Kelner disputed Cummings characterization of DIAs letter, saying it was actually exculpatory. DIAs letter actually confirms, in a terse section that is partly redacted, that General Flynn provided information and documents on a thumb drive to the Department of Defense concerning the RT speaking event in Moscow, including documents reflecting that he was using a speakers bureau for the event, Kelner wrote. We urge DIA and the Committee to release the full, unredacted letter, along with the documents that General Flynn provided to DIA during the briefings and details concerning the in-person briefings provided by General Flynn to DIA. The versions of the documents that were released on Thursday show that DIA has no record of Flynns payment from a Russian government-linked entity. DIA did not locate any records referring or relating to LTG Flynns receipt of money from a foreign source or seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source, the documents state. Flynns foreign payments are currently the subject of an investigation by the Pentagons inspector general, according to additional documents released by the oversight committee. Those documents also show that Flynn was explicitly reminded to seek permission from his former federal employers before seeking or accepting foreign government payments. He was advised of the legal restrictions concerning foreign compensation and instructed to report any potential receipt of compensation in advance, according to the DIA letter. The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution prohibits receipt of consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria, or salary by all retired military personnel, officer and enlisted, regular and reserve, from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained, DIA told Flynn after his resignation. The White House has refused to provide the oversight committee with documents relating to Flynns brief employment, including a questionnaire in his security clearance application that required him to disclose foreign government payments. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that the committees request for Flynns communications with foreign governments was too voluminous to satisfy. The Pentagon had already provided the questionnaire regarding foreign government payments, he said. Other documents, Spicer insisted, the White House can't provide because of its sensitive nature. In a press conference announcing the document release on Thursday, Cummings said that the committee has reviewed additional information that raises further concerns about Flynns foreign government payments. That information, Cummings said, remain under lock and key for now. He urged the White House to declassify them so the American public can see them for themselves. Democratic members of the oversight committee accused the White House on Thursday of attempting to stonewall their investigation. There is obviously a paper trail that the White House does not want our Committee to follow, they wrote in a joint press release that raised the prospect of employing compulsory measures to force the White Houses hand. Thursdays revelations sent ripples through the other investigations currently looking into Trump-Russia ties. Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, such as Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrats who have been urging an aggressive inquiry into the Trump orbit, saw the Flynn news as further evidence that they need to be looking at the financial ties between Trump associates and the Russian government. "Every day that goes by, the more I am convinced at the follow-the-money aspect of this, Wyden said. I just cant begin to count the number of news stories that have highlighted the kind of allegations, the inquiries with respect to the money trail. There is absolutely no logical or appropriate excuse for [an incomplete SF-86]. Its a little mind-bongling, added Heinrich. The money here is what we need to get to, and I think if we understand some of the financial relationships, we may well understand the nature of what was really going on. But Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, however, had another viewthat the Flynn mess was the responsibility of the Pentagon to investigate, not his panel. A majority of Mike Flynns problems right now probably are more DoD-related Im going to let the Department of Defense handle that, he told reporters after a classified briefing Thursday afternoon. Were going to stay focused on questions and concerns as it relates to Mike Flynns contacts with or without consent of a campaign or the White House, and well continue to go down that path, that is jurisdictionally, our responsibility. Tim Mak contributed to this report. Samantha Bee is boycotting this years White House Correspondents Dinner with her own alternative event. The "Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner, is set to air the same night as the actual White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, April 29th. The red carpet begins at 9 PM ET while the actual event airs at 11 PM ET. The Full Frontal host announced her plans to boycott the event with her own broadcast just two weeks after President Trump was elected. Since, Samantha Bee has been going hard with promotion for the event. Its basically going to be a prom for nerds not invited to #NerdProm. she tweeted. She also added "The evening is sure to bring plenty of surprises, music, food, and laughterand if you're not careful you just might learn something. Specifically, you'll learn how screwed we'd be without a free press. Bee has invited many journalist and those she dubs as non-irritating celebrities from around the world. Although, she herself has never attended at White House Correspondents Dinner, she expects many to show up in support of her boycott. The event plans to show support for to the Committee to Protect Journalist with monetary donations whether they like it or not. P.S. Bring Your Own Bottle. Shes not kidding about that either. How to Watch Samantha Bees Not the White House Correspondents Dinner Among the colorful poster art from the Womens March protests, you may have seen the red-white-and-blue face of a Muslim-American woman wearing an American flag hijab--one of a series of inauguration-inspired We the People images by graphic artist Shepard Fairey, he of the Obama Hope poster fame. Commissioned by the non-profit Amplifier Foundation, Faireys We the People posters were alluring visual representations of the resistance movement: a group of diverse people pushing back against the Trump administrations fearmongering and racism. Like most of his work, the posters were sold on his Obey Giant company website for $100 (some $900,000 proceeds were donated to the ACLU), though many of the artists original works have fetched upwards of $70,000 at auction. Today, Fairey has launched a series of limited-edition skateboards in response to Trumps first 100 days as president. Collaborating with the Skateroom, a San Francisco-based contemporary art brand, Fairey has turned his No Future artwork into a kind of skateboard triptych. The Skateroom has also released three skate decks by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, showing Ai flashing his middle finger at the White House. The black-and-white fuck you to the Trump administration is part of a series of images of Ai flipping off various buildings and landmarks around the world. Ai Weiwei, who was not available for an interview, said in a statement about the collaboration: My favorite word is 'act'. I am partnering with the Skateroom for that very reason. Proceeds from Ais collaboration will go to Bridging Peoples, a non-profit charity in Turkey dedicated to combatting all forms of discrimination, and BTselem, an organization supporting human rights in Israeli-occupied territories. During the filming of Human Flow, my documentary on the global refugee condition, I had the opportunity to speak with individuals from both B'Tselem and the Bridging Peoples Association in Turkey, Ai said. What these two organizations do is very valuable to society, both in fighting against injustice and in helping those that are unfortunate. In a conversation over email, Fairey spoke with the Daily Beast about the meaning of No Future, the urgency to create art in the Trump era, and the artists calling for censorship of Dana Schutzs Open Casket painting at this years Whitney Biennial. DB: When did you first conceive No Future and what is the message you are trying to convey with this work? Is it an extension of your drive to question everything? SF: The piece does fall within my philosophy of questioning everything, but there are more specific reasons for the image and text. Im a big fan of wordplay and language in general, so a few of the ideas in the piece began percolating early in Trumps bid for the presidency. Inspired by lyrics from the Sex Pistols ("No Future") and the hubris of the early European inhabitants of what would become the United States that led to their belief that it was Gods will for them to conquer ocean to ocean, I think that what led largely to Trumps election was the manifestation of the too-common mindset that facts dont matter; in other words, manifest destinythe truth will not penetrate the barriers of our ideology if the truth doesnt sit well with our predispositions. I come from punk rock so the Sex Pistols and their song God Save the Queen with the refrain No Future was a big protest anthem for me growing up. However, unlike the nihilism of God Save the Queen my use of No Future employs more of a bait and switch tactic. A lot of people felt defeated and hopeless by Trumps election, but I feel his election should energize people to resist apathy, ignorance, sexism, xenophobia, and racism. DB: Projecting a version of this image onto skate decks in collaboration with the Skateroom is, in a way, a return to your early works as an artistart that is intended to go on four wheels or a wall, as you put it. You've also said that the spirit of skateboard culture is what drives this collaboration. How do you define the spirit of skateboard culture, and how does that spirit interact with or heighten the message of No Future? SF: Skateboarding has always been and continues to be creative and rebellious. Art and design are an extremely important part of skateboard culture, even if its not recognized by the more elitist or pretentious members of the art world. Skateboarding itself requires creative adaptation to the streets and obstacles. My background as a skateboarder helped me to be a better street artist because I was already conditioned to look at the terrain opportunistically. Skateboarders tend to call bullshit on things more quickly than most, and I think the love of rebellious music, whether it be punk, hip-hop, or reggae is another manifestation of that creative and rebellious culture. Placing my art within that culture makes a lot of sense for me because skateboarders are not afraid to go against the grain, which I think is especially important in rejecting and resisting the agenda of the current administration. DB: No Future is darker than the images from your We the People campaign. Are you trying to convey a sense of urgency? To satirize the fearmongering that Trump has thrived on? To reflect the threats to democracy weve seen in Trumps first 100 days as president? SF: No Future and We The People are two sides of the same coin. In my work, I frequently want to celebrate things that are positive such as diversity and human dignity in the case of We The People while Ive also taken the approach of criticizing unjust and poor behavior as a way of suggesting that those behaviors are the wrong course and should not be normalized. I try to find a balance between positivity and negativity, celebration and critique in my work; I think there is room for both. DB: As an artist motivated by political and social activism, do you feel a sense of urgency to create more in our current political climate, especially given the Trump administrations desire to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts? SF: Im always making art about social and political issues, but yes, I feel an urgency to address problems that have been created or at least exacerbated by the current administration. Im all for the NEA but to be honest, I consider defunding the NEA one of the smallest problems were now facing. There are too many bad policy choices to go into that are being pushed by the Trump Administration, but the relaxation of environmental regulations and corporate and banking regulations alone are enough to keep me busy and should be a big concern for every citizen who isnt a billionaire and likes to breathe air. DB: You were galvanized by Obamas 2008 campaign, but were you as motivated to create art during the Obama years as you are now? SF: I was. Obama was inspiring as a candidate but was met with a lot of partisan opposition and hostility which prevented forward motion on a lot of the things that I agreed with him on. I made art about several of those issues like the unfortunately compromised nature of healthcare reform. I also disagreed with Obama on issues like drone warfare and domestic surveillance, which I also made art about. The social and political issues the world faces are bigger than a few leaders. I made a lot of work about corporate influence in government, which is a problem in both parties and under any president. DB: Your work has frequently targeted Republican administrations (the George W. Bush-as-vampire piece, for instance) and conservative ideology. What do you make of criticism of far-left movements on college campuses and the idea that theyre embracing illiberalism? SF: Free speech is important whether you like whats being said or not. The reason why its so important is that the entire spectrum of ideas needs to be heard so that the best ones are embraced and rise to the top. If youre a liberal and dont like conservative speech and you try to stifle that conservative speech, you need to be prepared for your own progressive speech to be stifled when the power shifts out of your favor. I might be botching this quote but I agree with the idea that a measure of society is not how it treats its most powerful but how it treats its most vulnerable, including the poor and incarcerated andI would add to thatthe people whose ideas are not currently in favor. DB: Do you think that the Whitney Museum should have heeded artists calls to remove Dana Schutzs Open Casket painting. [The painting is of a photograph taken of Emmett Tillthe black teenager brutally murdered by two white men in 1955when he was lying in his open casket. Some activists called for the painting to be taken down and destroyed, because it was not acceptable for a white person (Schutz) to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun.] SF: I dont think that the painting should come out of the Whitney Biennial, I agree with the rationale of the curators. Art is not always meant to be decorative or soothing, in fact, it can create uncomfortable conversations and stimulate uncomfortable emotions. I dont agree with most forms of censorship, and I especially dont agree with the idea that one needs to be from the same cultural, ethnic, or religious background as the subjects they portray in order to be qualified to portray those subjects. I believe that compassion and empathy should cross all of those category barriers, and the conversations art creates can be inflammatory initially, but I think are most often constructive and healing in the long run. Shepard Faireys limited edition, 450 hand screen-printed skateboards are available exclusively on Skaterooms website for $450 each. Ai Weiweis limited edition, 666 hand screen-printed skateboards are also available exclusively on the Skaterooms website. The first 66 will be signed by the artist and priced at $3,000 each. A judge in Wisconsin, one of only two states that prohibit the sale of home-baked goods, is considering whether such a ban is unconstitutional. New Jersey is the only other state that bans the sale of home-baked cookies, muffins and other items to the public. Current Wisconsin law requires home bakers to obtain a license, which would mean renting or building a commercial kitchen, submitting to inspections and paying numerous fees. Lafayette County Judge Duane Jorgenson said Thursday he plans to issue a decision May 31 to a legal challenge from three women who say the ban is unconstitutional. The nonprofit Institute for Justice represented Lisa Kivirist, Kriss Marion and Dela Ends in their lawsuit. A bill currently being circulated for co-sponsors in the state Senate would allow for the limited sale of homemade baked goods without a license. Similar bills have passed the Senate the past two sessions but have died in the Assembly because of opposition from Republican Speaker Robin Vos, who says lifting the ban would come at the expense of small businesses already meeting the standards and regulations. The same rules should apply to all businesses, Vos told reporters on Thursday. It seems to me we should focus on guaranteeing that people are treated the same and that we dont create carve outs, he said. We dont allow some people to just set up a shop on the corner and decide to sell gasoline. Thats not allowed; you have to actually go through a process. They cant sell 10 gallons and after that its more. Plaintiff attorney Erica Smith argued the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled protecting other businesses from competition is not a legitimate government interest. The hearing in Darlington drew a few dozen supporters who favor lifting the ban. Allowing such sales can add a source of income for farmers who are struggling financially, Ends said. Becoming a fully certified and licensed kitchen in order to sell baked goods is expensive, she said. Ends used to make and sell cinnamon rolls, until she learned that practice was illegal in Wisconsin and that violators could face up to six months in jail and a hefty fine. So I lost that income stream, which was modest but helpful, she said. Its really hard to make it on a farm. In Wisconsin, these have been hard times, and ways that people can make a little extra money is important. Call it government by whiplash. During Donald Trumps first hundred days in office, the president has issued over 60 executive orders, mostly reversing Obama-era rules on immigration, labor law, and the environment. Tuesday, Trump issued yet another executive reversal, this time instructing the Department of the Interior to review President Obamas designations of national monuments. The monuments in question arent historic plaques on forgotten battlefields, but over 553 million acres of natural areas that Obama had protected from developmentplus 219 million more set aside by Presidents Clinton and Bush. The response from environmental groups was swift. Trump's executive order is an unprecedented attack on America's public lands, the diverse heritage our national monuments conserve, and the $887 billion recreation industry they sustain, Ryan Bidwell, Senior Director of Conservation at the Conservation Lands Foundation, told The Daily Beast. Bidwell called the step a thinly veiled attempt to attempt turn these lands over to oil and gas drillers and sell them off to corporate interests. Indeed, the new order joins Trumps rollback of Obama-era power plant regulations, automobile standards, EPA scientific studies, climate science, water pollution rules, mining restrictions, pesticide regulations, and fracking rules as part of the most anti-environmental first hundred days in U.S. presidential history. Trump may not have been able to repeal Obamacare or build a border wall, but he can be proud of being the brownest president ever to occupy the White House. Its clear who really benefits from this order: oil and gas companies, mining companies, and big agriculture. But since it might also create a few dozen mostly-temporary jobs in those industries, Trump can sell it as putting America back to work. To anyone who learned in civics class that Congress makes laws, the past few months may seem confusing. How can Trump, with the stroke of the pen, undo eight years of government policy? (Overseas friends have asked me that exact question.) The answer is that President Obama governed this way too, issuing executive orders from the White House and regulations from administrative agencies. Thats why conservatives decried his imperial presidency (oddly, they dont seem to be complaining now that the emperor is a Republican). But Obamas government by fiat wasnt a matter of choice; it was a matter of necessity, responding to congressional inaction and gridlock. On immigration, that meant the failure to pass even rudimentary reformnot conservative, not liberal, nothing. On the environment, it meant the failure to recognize the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change or to update 40-year-old environmental laws to account for contemporary problems. Obama rushed in where Congress was unable to tread. President Obama took major strides, said Bidwell, at a time when a historically gridlocked Congress was unable to pass even universally supported legislation that had been languishing for years. But because those strides were executive actions, not laws, its likely that Trumps reversals will mostly prevail. In the case of the monuments reversal, the Executive Order is carefully wordedunlike, for example, the immigration orders, which have thus far failed to withstand judicial review. First, it orders the Interior Department to review all designations from the last 21 years. That accomplishes two goals: it reaches President Clintons designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, which Senator Orrin Hatch has obsessed over since 1996. And by including eight years of George W. Bush designations, it avoids the charge that this is mere partisan maneuvering. Second, the order threads the needle on the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to designate monuments but does not say whether they may un-designate them. Most likely, the Interior Department will recommend shrinking but not eliminating several monuments, an action that has some historical precedent. Third, the fact is that Obamas designationswhich include a 4,913-square-mile monument under the Atlantic Oceando seem to stretch the original intent of the Antiquities Act. That law was passed in the wake of robbers pillaging Native American ruins, and was intended to promote the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest. Its understandable that Obama used it to compensate for congressional paralysis, but its not exactly the plain meaning of the law. Which is what conservatives are arguing now. President Trump actually took the time to listen and understand the heavy toll of such overreaching actions, Senator Hatch said at a press event staged at one of President Obamas larger designations, the Bears Ears National Monument. In President Trump, we have a leader who is committed to defending the Western way of life. On the other hand, Trumps order merely directs the Interior Department to review these designations. When it comes to actually scaling back the monuments in question, theyre going to have a fight on their hands. For example, Bidwell emphasized that the Obama administration conducted public meetings and engaged stakeholders in every single designation, and carefully crafted designations to protect only the smallest area necessary, as required by the Antiquities Act. To win in court, the Trump administration will have to either match that effort, or explain why it was inadequate. And then theres the political pressure. While its clear to see who wins when public lands are auctioned off, its also not hard to see who loses: ordinary people who, poll after poll indicates, think that public lands should be set aside for the public. As the Trump administrations environmental rollbacks are challenged in court, it may be the court of public opinion that matters the most. Of course, one of the problems with Trumps government by whiplash is that its hard to stay focused on anything for long. And just like that, Zombie Trumpcare had a pulse again. But this time, moderate members of the House Republican Conference were the target of its cold, dead stare. And to make matters worse, it was one of their own who put them in the crosshairs. On Wednesday afternoon, the hardline-conservative Freedom Caucus officially announced its support for a revised version of the American Health Care Act, the Obamacare-gutting legislation that originally failed in the House late last month after an aggressive, threat-filled push by the White House. The breakthrough came courtesy of negotiations between Rep. Tom MacArthur, a co-chair of the moderate Tuesday Group, and Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus. They deal pushes the bill even further rightward, threatening to nuke protections for sick people with pre-existing conditions. On its face, it looked like the compromise Republicans had hoped for, except MacArthur was not acting as a representative of the Tuesday Group, which comprises 50 members of more moderate House Republicans. Instead, he single handedly put them in a tough spot while completely exonerating members of the Freedom Caucus, who weeks earlier were publicly blamed and hate-tweeted by Trump after initial Trumpcare efforts imploded. Everything I did, I did as an individual members of Congress, MacArthur told reporters on Thursday. I look at this not through different caucuses,we have a job to do as Congress ideally we should be doing things Im simply looking at which Republicans can we get to support a compromise that is helpful for moving along healthcare reform, which is desperately needed. I would never want to put anyone in a difficult spot thats never my intent, he added, but legislation can be a messy process as we are seeing. Asked by a reporter about the feedback he received from members at the groups weekly meeting on Wednesday, MacArthur smiled. Thats family business and Ive talked to my own colleagues about that, he said. Its a no-win situation for dozens of Tuesday Group membersall for a deal that could very likely still doom Affordable Care Act repeal efforts in the House or Senate. Its a routine that MacArthurs fellow Tuesday Group co-chairman Rep. Charlie Dent has been through many times. Weve been through this before, he said. The business model down here is to load the bill up, make it as conservative as possible, send it to the Senate and you have the Senate, clean it up, send it back, and the very people that are placated on the first launch, wont be there on the final one. And that dog isnt hunting anymore. Dent wasnt alone in his frustration. One House Republican aide told The Daily Beast on Thursday afternoon that MacArthurs comrades were furious at him for screwing them over in the current situation. Another senior GOP aide succinctly characterized Tuesday Group members as pissed. Last month, MacArthurs own colleagues were urging the more moderate members to cut off all diplomatic relations with the Freedom Caucus, who some congressmen were ready to designate a hostile force. I am not speaking for the White House, Im not speaking for the Speaker, but I will speak for the Tuesday Group, Rep. Chris Collins, a Tuesday Group member and a steadfast Trump ally on the Hill, told reporters in late March. We will never meet with the Freedom Caucus, because its not appropriate for a group of ad hoc members. It was just reiterated [in our meeting] that next time one of those calls comes in [from the Freedom Caucus], just hang up, Collins continued. Still, the White House has been pushing for a vote this Friday, in seemingly desperate hopes of racking another spin-able win for Trump before he hits his 100th day in office this weekend. But it was not meant to be. Last Thursday night, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters the vote would not be held Friday or Saturday. Weve been educating people on health care, he said, according to Roll Call. Its not tomorrow. I never said it was going to be tomorrow. ... We are not voting on health care tomorrow. Still, the Republican conferences frustrations arent evaporating any time soon. On Thursday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan held one of his regular press conferences on Capitol Hill, where he was asked about Congressman MacArthurs actions frustrated and angering his Republican, more centrist-tilting colleagues. The speaker deflected, simply responding: I dont know if thats the case. You can smell war. China, according to a U.S. defense official speaking to CNN, has put cruise missile-capable bombers on high alert and brought up other planes to a full state of readiness. The moves are meant, according to the official, to reduce the time to react to a North Korea contingency. Moreover, Beijing, according to various dispatches, is deploying troops and mechanized units to areas bordering the North. Russia reportedly is transporting forces close to its 11-mile border with North Korea. Moscow says the movements, part of previously scheduled exercises, have nothing to do with tensions on the peninsula. U.S. and South Korean troops, tanks, and planes, still participating in regular spring exercises, are at a high state of readiness, and the Carl Vinson strike group is sailing to waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, where it will arrive this week. The USS Michigan, a submarine that can carry 154 cruise missiles, arrived in the South Korean port of Busan on Tuesday, soon to join the Vinson strike group. There are rumors, now denied, that two other carrier groups, centered around the Nimitz and the Ronald Reagan, are ready to rush to the area if needed. The United States is not looking for a fight, so dont give us a reason to have one, Americas ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told Pyongyang on Monday. The last time the U.S. almost had a fight with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was in 1994. In early May of that year, North Korean workers began unloading spent fuel rods from their small reactor in the Yongbyon nuclear complex, apparently in preparation for reprocessing the plutonium. The rods contained enough fissile material for about a half dozen bombs. In the middle of June, the Kim regime heightened the sense of crisis by announcing it was pulling out of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog. In response, the Clinton administration said it would push for UN Security Council sanctions, which North Korea insisted would be a declaration of war. Even Beijing, the Norths long-time protector, was in favor of punitive measuresand had warned Kim Il Sung, then the Norths ruler, that it might side with Washington. The U.S. took Pyongyang at its word when it said sanctions meant war. The Pentagon began marshaling assets for conflict on the Korean Peninsula, and the Air Force updated contingency plans for air strikes on Yongbyon. Enter Jimmy Carter. At the height of the crisis, the former president told the then-current one, Bill Clinton, that he would meet Great Leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang to find a resolution. A wary State Department had blocked the attempts of the 39th president to travel to the North in 1991, 1992, and 1993, but in 1994 he insisted, and a Clinton White House in crisisand in obvious disarraycould not bring itself to prevent the trip. Seoul, which did not want to see Carter go there either, fumbled attempts to block the visit. Carter, in talks with Kim in Pyongyang in mid-June, worked out a tentative deal that in main outline followed a suggestion that Korea analyst Selig Harrison had made to the Great Leader a week before. North Korea, according to the Carter plan, would suspend reprocessing. In return, Kim would get proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. James Earl Carter Jr., as wily as Kim Il Sung in some ways, then made sure Clinton could not repudiate the deal by giving what became a famous live interview from Pyongyang to CNNs Wolf Blitzer. The aged Kim Il Sung died three weeks later from a heart attack, but Carters arrangement survived to be incorporated into the Agreed Framework, signed in Geneva the following October. North Korea pursuant to the Agreed Framework froze its nuclear reactors in Yongbyon and related facilities and agreed to dismantle them when they were replaced by light-water reactors. Before the new reactors went online, Washington agreed to provide 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually. The Norths fuel rods from the old reactors would be disposed of in a safe manner. Pyongyang also committed to remain a part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the global pact that it had threatened in 1993 to leave. The North also agreed to permit IAEA monitoring of facilities. As important, both sides pledged to take steps to build an enduring relationship by reducing barriers to trade and investment, opening liaison offices in each others capital, and moving toward full normalization of political and economic relations. Washington and Pyongyang promised to provide a raft of assurances to each other. The Agreed Framework by its terms could have led to a lasting peace. Washington and Pyongyang, however, made sure that didnt happen by repeatedly violating the comprehensive arrangement. There is blame on both sides, Carter pronounced in late 2002 as he tried to defend his achievement. Carter was correct in this assertion, but his even-handed treatment completely missed the point. Yes, America failed to live up to the deal. Construction of the reactors fell far behind schedule, Washington did not lift some sanctions as promised, and it ended others years late. The U.S. failed to give a promised no-nuclear-attack pledge. Clinton was also slow on commitments to establish relations. What Carter failed to say was that, while America was guilty of infractions, Pyongyang committed a rash of felonies. Pyongyang not only failed to honor various pledges but also, at the time of the signing, was covertly attempting to enrich uranium for weapons. Although the deal focused on the Norths plutonium efforts, the uranium program was still a violation of the Agreed Framework because in that document Pyongyang agreed to abide by two comprehensive agreements, the global nonproliferation pact and a 1991 denuclearization agreement with South Korea. The secret uranium program was one of the most breathtaking betrayals of an international agreement in our time. The North Koreans had, in all probability, started uranium enrichment efforts in the 1980s and had certainly gone beyond the planning stage by the beginning of the following decade, in other words, while inking the Agreed Framework. Yet for all its faults, the Agreed Framework stopped the North Koreans from producing plutonium. As Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, who played a pivotal role in its negotiation, told The Daily Beast, the deal succeeded in halting a frightening downward spiral and got North Korea to put more than 8,000 spent fuel rods in cooling ponds indefinitely. That bought the worlds most precious commodity, time. That the Clinton and Bush administrations did not use the time well was not the fault of the original deal itself. Yet the 1994 agreement has one legacy that we still live with today: It rescued the Kim family at a critical moment. At the time of the Agreed Framework negotiations, the Kim regime was in bad straits, says Robert Collins, a veteran Defense Department adviser based in South Korea. Kim Il Sung had very recently died, and the great famine was affecting all segments of society. The regime needed room, not to mention all of the heavy fuel oil we gave them. At a time when Kim Il Sungs son, Kim Jong Il, had just succeeded his father and therefore needed legitimization, the Agreed Framework provided it. By nothing more than signing the agreement, the Clinton administration essentially signaled Americas acceptance of Kim family rule, not only to the outside world but also to the internal regime figures unsure about Kim Il Sungs heir. No wonder South Korean President Kim Young-sam vociferously opposed the Agreed Framework. Theres an eerie resemblance to today, when another Kim family member, Kim Jong Un, is also trying to consolidate power after the death of his father. From all appearances, the current Kim is having a hard time. So far, to ensure his rule, he has ordered the killing of more than a 150 senior regime figures and at least two family members, his elder half-brother and his aunts husband. Almost 26 million people live in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is only about 30 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Casualties in a general conflict on the peninsula could number in the hundreds of thousandsin the first hours. That was the case in 1994, and that is even more true today when the Norths weapons are far more destructive. Therefore, many say at this time diplomacy is the only way forward. Nonetheless, we have to make sure that any new agreement, deal, or bargain does not perpetuate the horrific rule of the Kims. There will never be peace in Korea as long as they rule halfor any partof it. The crisis is over, Carter declared in June 1994. No, the crisis did not end then. It was just deferred to now, when the North Koreans have used the time they won in 1994 to build long-range missiles and the nuclear warheads to put atop them. Jean Smith is kind of modern day bootlegger, but she doesnt smuggle liquorshe moves butter. Routinely crammed in her car is a stockpile of butter imported from Ireland. Whenever Smith leaves her home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to visit relatives out of state, shell stop in Nebraska to load up on blocks of Kerrygold butter, which is banned in the state that calls itself, Americas Dairyland. Ms. Smith brings back as much Kerrygold butter with her when she visits family in Nebraska, said a civil lawsuit she and three other butter-lovers filed against Wisconsin in a state court last month. She keeps large amounts of the butter in her home refrigerator in the hopes that she will have enough to last her until her next out-state trip. The website is up and running for the world to see, ahead of President Donald Trumps 100th day in office, with Democratic activists roadmap to impeachment. Power to Impeach , a new super-PAC, is not offering a plan for instant gratification. Impeachment would requiring flipping the House of Representatives from red to blue, which cant possibly happen until November 2018, if then. The notion of removing Trump from office is catnip for activists, though, and if Democrats want to get back into power in Washington, impeachment is a great motivator for Democrats to turn out and vote in the midterms. When people vote, Democrats win, says PAC founder Matt Thornton, the former communications director of the DCCC. This is an outlet for activists to put a plan in motion. Democratic turnout typically falls precipitously in these off-year elections, and a smaller, older and whiter electorate helps to keep the House in Republican hands. Under the Constitution, the impeachment process must begin in the House, and with Republicans in control, its unlikely that a majority would vote for Articles of Impeachment, or that Speaker Ryan would even allow such a vote to occur. Tens of thousands of people across the country marching, calling their members of Congress, signing petitions, none of that makes any difference, says Thornton, as long as we have a structural barrier. The only way to get there (impeachment) is by changing who controls the House. Like many Americans who didnt support Trump, Thornton was distressed by the outcome of the election. After what he says was a lot of soul searching with friends and family, he decided to create this impeachment super PAC as an outlet for activists to put a plan in motion to recapture the House. The focus will be on Republican-held seats, mainly in districts Hillary Clinton won. There are 23 of them, and Democrats need to pick up a net total of 24 seats to regain the majority. In a House with 435 seats, that shouldnt be so daunting, but redistricting controlled by Republicans after their big win in 2010 left few truly competitive seats. In 2016, Democrats didnt even enter a candidate in 29 districts, including one in Texas held by Republican Pete Sessions, a district that Clinton carried over Trump. Still, the party in power typically loses seats in its first midterm, and its possible given Trumps lurching style and potentially low poll ratings that he could provoke a major backlash. Bill Clinton two years into his first term saw the Democrats lose 54 seats in the House and the Republicans take over the chamber for the first time in 40 years. Democrats regained the majority in 2006, but President Barack Obama two years into his first term saw Democrats lose 63 seats in the House, and Republicans regain the majority theyve held since. How many races Power to Impeach will play in depends on how the fundraising goes, says Thornton. The special elections in Kansas, where the Democrat lost but came a lot closer than once thought possible in such a red state, and in Georgia, where the Democrat goes into a June runoff as the highest vote-getter from a crowded field, give me hope, says Thornton. The base is very fired up. Jack Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont-McKenna College, says the Impeachment super PAC is a great tool for energizing Democrats, and that it could also raise quite a bit of money. In his area of California, hes already predicting Democrats could pick up seats in Orange County, which was once solidly Republican. Running on impeachment is good for the Democrats short term, he says, but wonders, is it good for the country? He recalls watching the Nixon impeachment proceedings on television, and how the Democrats did not take great pleasure in what was happening. Clintons impeachment was more of a partisan show until the Senate voted to acquit him. At one point, there may be a solid legal case against Trump, says Pitney, adding that its fair to question given todays extreme partisanship whether any Republican would vote to impeach Trump. Recalling that Trump boasted during the campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and wouldnt lose support, Even then, says Pitney, theyd call it self-defense. Pondering his question about whats good for the country, Pitney concludes, Its bad to use impeachment as a political tool, but its also bad to think hell continue in office. Power to Impeach is heady stuff, and the website lays it all out there, the hateful and unconstitutional rhetoricthe executive overreach, conflicts of interest, abuse of power, undermining of core American values. the cloud of alleged foreign collusion by the presidents allies during and after the election. In short: our worst fears about this presidency were realized. For people dismayed at whats happening, flipping the House is a tangible and doable goal, whether it results in impeachment or not. Because Senate control is probably out of reach with ten Democrats running for reelection in states Trump won, some by double digits, the House is the better bet. Also, on impeachment, Thornton points out that the Senate doesnt act until after the House votes, and that a Republican-led Senate does not pose the same structural impediment as the House. Placing pressure on vulnerable senators to do the right thing is a grassroots barrier we can overcome, he says, an outcome that can only happen if the House falls to the opposition. Two people were injured when the van they were traveling in crashed into the back of a tractor Wednesday afternoon on Highway 18-151 west of Verona, authorities say. The crash happened around 4:20 p.m. on the eastbound side of Highway 18-151 near Spring Rose Road in the town of Verona, the 911 center said. A woman who was a passenger in the van was the most seriously injured and was taken to a hospital by helicopter, said Sgt. Ira Simpson of the Dane County Sheriff's Office. A man who was driving the van was also taken to a hospital in an ambulance, Simpson said. Authorities believe the driver may have been impaired, Simpson said. The only injury the farmer, who was legally driving the tractor with its warning lights on, had was a scratch on his left hand, Simpson said. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation said all lanes were closed on the side of the highway where the crash happened, but authorities hoped it would be open by 9 p.m. One westbound lane of the highway was temporarily closed. Both vehicles had significant damage with the New Holland tractor ending up on the shoulder and the van in the median. Several agencies responded to the crash. State Journal reporter Rob Schultz contributed to this report Republican lawmakers would require University of Wisconsin System institutions to discipline and potentially expel students who disrupt speeches on campus, and mandate that UW stay neutral on political controversies. Prompted, its sponsors say, by battles over free speech at UW-Madison and universities across the country, the bill makes Wisconsin the latest state in which lawmakers have sought to ensure controversial ideas are presented on college campuses by limiting the sometimes disruptive tactics of their opponents. We are making a pretty clear statement here that free expression should not be inhibited and will not be inhibited, said Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, the bills lead author. Other authors of the legislation being circulated for co-sponsorship include Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the chairpersons of the Legislatures higher education committees, Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, and Rep. David Murphy, R-Greenville. The liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now blasted the proposal as an attempt to create mandatory safe spaces where conservatives, Republicans, racists and sexists can be exempt from criticism by their peers on campuses across Wisconsin. And UW officials responded that universities already have policies in place to protect free expression and punish students who violate those rules. The bills name, the Campus Free Speech Act, and much of its content mirror model legislation drafted by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Arizona. Pieces of the legislation are also similar to a provision that lawmakers removed from Gov. Scott Walkers 2017-19 state budget proposal earlier this month. Under the bill, the UW Board of Regents would be required to develop a free expression policy stating that universities primary function ... is the discovery, improvement, transmission and dissemination of knowledge, and that it is not the role of an institution to shield individuals from speech protected by the First Amendment, according to an analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau. The legislation also directs the Regents to create a discipline policy including hearing procedures and a range of sanctions for anyone affiliated with a UW institution who interferes with the free expression of others, such as by disrupting a speech. A student found to have violated the policy twice would be subject to a suspension of at least one semester under the bill, or could be expelled. Speakers who feel their free speech rights were violated at a UW campus could sue the institution for damages under the bill. And the legislation would create a council of UW officials that would report to lawmakers on the outcomes of discipline proceedings. Meant to restrict hecklers veto The legislation aims to restrict what is often referred to as a hecklers veto a tactic in which demonstrators disrupt an opponents speech to the point that it cant be delivered. Protests that confronted political scientist Charles Murray at Middlebury College in Vermont and demonstrations that turned violent at the University of California-Berkeley against conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos earlier this year have become flash points in debates over free expression on college campuses. Republicans say similar tactics were used locally last fall when students protested a lecture by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at UW-Madison. According to an account of the Nov. 16 protest from The Badger Herald, demonstrators interrupted Shapiros talk, at one point forming a line in front of the stage where he was speaking. The protesters left the room several minutes later and Shapiro continued with his speech and a question-and-answer session after the demonstration, the Herald reported. But Kremer said the students should have faced discipline from UW-Madison for interrupting the talk. Theyre inhibiting free speech, Kremer said. He felt the same way about more common and less disruptive protests such as, for instance, a heckler who interrupts a speech for a few moments before leaving an event. Thats something that cannot be tolerated, Kremer said, and should be subject to sanctions. Should lawmakers get involved? Democrats countered that protesters who disrupt events are already subject to university discipline and potential criminal charges for disorderly conduct. I disagree strongly that the university needs us to tell them how to handle this, said Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison. I frankly think its an artificial, political controversy and as long as we perpetuate artificial, political controversies we wont solve problems. UW-Madison officials say they share lawmakers goal of ensuring free expression on campus but said policies on the books now allow institutions to both maintain order and discipline students who violate standards of conduct. A UW System spokeswoman noted the Board of Regents approved a policy in 2015 supporting free expression and saying universities must not suppress the exchange of ideas, even if some find them offensive or wrong. Requiring certain sanctions, such as the mandatory suspension detailed in the bill, would mean campus disciplinary committees would not have the power to impose appropriate punishments, UW-Madison spokesman John Lucas said. We urge the Legislature to work with the Board of Regents to identify policies that will address the free exchange of ideas and need for order, while respecting the existing student conduct process that has served institutions well for many years, Lucas said. Requiring UW neutrality The bill also requires that UW institutions strive to remain neutral on the public policy controversies of the day, and may not ... require students or faculty to publicly express a given view of social policy. The section appears to mandate that UW stay out of all political debates, which could restrict universities ability to lobby lawmakers or the public on issues such as the state budget and legislation that affects higher education. Campus officials also occasionally weigh in on issues such as underage drinking, racial discrimination and sexual assault in university statements. Kremer and Murphy said the provision seeks to prohibit UW institutions from requiring that employees or students espouse certain viewpoints, and is not meant to bar UW from lobbying. Murphy said the sections wording may need to be clarified. But Vos took a different tack, saying that while UW leaders can speak about issues as individuals, institutions as a whole should not advocate for one side of a debate. Its not appropriate for the university to take political positions, Vos said. State Journal reporter Mark Sommerhauser contributed to this report. A College Station man was arrested Tuesday on charges he sexually abused three girls for nearly seven years. According to College Station police, a woman reported three girls under the age of 14 told her they had been touched inappropriately by 36-year-old Leopoldo Rodriguez Pena, whom they knew. The girls were taken to Scotty's House for forensic interviews. A police report states one girl detailed years of abuse, saying Pena had touched her inappropriately numerous times over a six-and-a-half-year period. The girl stated Pena would often tell her he loved her and had tried to kiss her in public. The second child also told of being continuously touched inappropriately by Pena and detailed an incident where she locked a door to keep him away, but he broke it down, the police report states. A third girl also told an interviewer that Pena had touched her several times. When police interviewed Pena at his home and asked if he had ever touched the girls, he responded, "Not that I know of," according to police reports. Pena is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a victim under 14, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Pena is being held at the Brazos County Jail on $100,000 bond. UPDATE: Texas lawmakers voted to pass the House version Senate Bill 4 early Thursday morning after hours of debate. As the Texas House debated into Wednesday night the consequences, goals and amendments to Senate Bill 4, which would outlaw "sanctuary" jurisdictions, Texas A&M University sophomore Julio Maldonado predicted if the bill passed, it would harm colleges and universities across the state. "It's going to scare a lot of students that are trying to come to any university," said the 19-year-old DACA student, more commonly known as a "dreamer." SB4 is designed to grant greater power to local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws and punish cities, counties and college campuses that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials. Texas House members began debating at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning and 12 hours later were still going. As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, the 40th amendment out of more than 180 submitted was being considered. The House version of SB 4 -- which the Senate passed in February -- is in some ways less punitive than the Senate one, since law enforcement officers would only be allowed to ask about a person's immigration status if they are arrested, but the House version maintains that sheriffs, constables and police chiefs could receive Class A misdemeanors if they don't cooperate with federal immigration agencies. As written, the House bill, like the Senate version, would require administrators on college campuses -- and campus police -- to comply with the bill, which, according to The Texas Tribune, Democrats argued could result in college students being deported for relatively minor offenses, such as possessing an open container of alcohol. "It'll personally make me more scared of seeing police on campus," said Maldonado. Proponents of the legislation say that it is about the rule of law and ensuring law enforcement agencies follow the same policies. "This bill ensures that there is predictability that our laws are applied without prejudice" no matter who is in custody, State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said when the Senate voted on SB 4 in February. Jose Caraballo-Rivera, a part-time online instructor for A&M and retired senior lecturer from the school's Hispanic Studies Department, wrote in an email that "there is absolutely no place" on college or university grounds that campus police should enforce federal immigration policy. "When a university accepts students to come for their college degree, all of us faculty and administrators have the obligation and responsibility to protect our students," wrote Caraballo-Rivera. Blinn College state government instructor Celina Vasquez, who stressed she was stating her own opinion and not that of the school, said she worried about the "chilling effect" the bill's passage would have for college campuses across the state. Vasquez said "the Bryan Latino community is watching this very carefully" and is asking Rep. John Raney to vote no on SB4, but should he vote yes, it is his "responsibility to educate and inform our community" on the provisions contained within the final, passed version of the bill. In a written statement provided to The Eagle, Raney said, "the institutions of higher education police officers are not required to ask about someone's immigration status, and could not do so unless the student is detained on another charge, so I do not believe that makes them an immigration enforcement force." Raney said that anti-sanctuary legislation such as SB4 "is just another way Texas is safeguarding our communities from those who have illegally immigrated here and committing criminal acts." Nancy Plankey-Videla, associate professor at A&M's Department of Sociology, said the bill could force documented and undocumented students to drop out of school because they're too "fearful and stressed out" to complete their studies. "They're not going to be able to focus on learning," said Plankey-Videla, who added that SB 4's passage would hurt all students, since classrooms would "miss out on [these students'] perspectives, on their unique experiences." The House bill's sponsor, Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, has said the bill wasn't about targeting minorities or racial profiling, but rather about focusing efforts on deporting undocumented criminals. "Most of the [immigrant community] is not a lawless community," he told The Texas Tribune. "And that's why we are going [only] after the ones that are criminals." According to Texas Tribune reporter Julian Aguilar's live-tweeting of the debate, Rep. Mando Martinez, D-Weslaco, proposed an amendment that would exclude campus police from the bill's requirements. The amendment failed 52-89. The Texas Tribune contributed to this story. RICHLAND COUNTY -- Traffic on one of the Highway 130 bridges over the Wisconsin River south of Lone Rock has been reduced to one lane, possibly for as long as eight weeks, after a crash damaged the span. Wisconsin Department of Transportation officials had recently inspected the bridge and determined to reduce traffic over the bridge to one lane in each direction, Richland County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Chad Kanable said. Stop lights have been installed to regulate the traffic, Kanable said, and advisory signs will be placed to warn drivers of the change. Traffic weighing 20 tons or more will not be allowed to cross, Kanable said. John Steiner of DOT said the crash caused structural damage to the middle Highway 130 bridge of the three that cross the river. Only that bridge is affected by the change. Steiner said repairs could take up to eight weeks to complete. The Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets has added another name to its list of high-achieving alumni as former member Randolph D. "Tex" Alles is set to take the reins of the Secret Service It was announced Tuesday that the class of '76 graduate was President Donald Trump's choice to lead the organization, taking him away from his current role as deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Scott Elkins, a former classmate and fellow Corps member who said he was close friends with Alles -- whom he knew as "Randy" -- during their time at A&M, describing him as a "natural leader from Day One." "He was a guy of high moral character," Elkins said. "He was always one of those people that, if something was going astray somewhere, he had a way of knocking it back into the direction it needed to be going." While he said their military service took them down separate paths, Elkins said he believes Alles's character will serve the organization well -- particularly given the Secret Service's recent scandals. Corps of Cadets Commandant Brig. Gen. Joe Ramirez said Alles' selection for the job makes it a "proud day for all Aggies and especially for the Corps of Cadets." "I think it speaks volumes that an Aggie and former member of the Corps of Cadets has been selected for such an important and prestigious position," Ramirez said. "Texas A&M and the Corps of Cadets take great pride in our former students. Former students who have achieved such an honor bring great credit to all of us -- whether we were in the Corps of Cadets or not." Texas A&M senior Everett Findlay, who serves as company commander for the H-1 "Roughriders," said seeing someone who went through similar experiences as himself take on an "honorable position" such as this is inspiring. "It's honorable to see someone who has taken some of the steps I have in the Corps of Cadets in such an esteemed position," Findlay said. "It's great to see a former cadet make it to that spot." Alles follows a number of other Aggies serving in prominent positions in the federal government, including Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of housing and urban development under President Bill Clinton, Marvin Runyon, who served as U.S. Postmaster General under President George H.W. Bush, and most recently Rick Perry as secretary of energy, among others. Even the namesake of Kyle Field, Edwin J. Kyle, served the country as ambassador to Guatemala in the 1940s. As he takes on the role -- which does not require confirmation from the senate -- Alles will be the first director in at least a century not to have first served as an agent. Alles retired as a major general in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2011 after 35 years of service. PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT: Treatment centre for PTSD in first responders, military opens in Nova Scotia Imagine its your job, every day, to be ready to rush to scenes where men, women or even children had been killed or badly injured, often in horrific circumstances. Really, consider what that might be like. If youre like most of us, the thought ... U.S. Rep. Miller-Meeks beats Bohannan in Iowa's 1st District race The Associated Press called the race for Miller-Meeks just after 11 p.m. on Tuesday. Economist Richard Cantillon is credited with having coined the word "entrepreneur," which literally means "bearer of risk." And that makes sense: A risk-averse entrepreneur is as much of an absurdity as a tightrope walker whos afraid of heights. In fact, entrepreneurs actually thrive on uncertainty. They have to be scrappy and resourceful to effectively grow and scale their businesses; and that outlook has a trickle-down effect. According to research by Startup Genome, properly scaled startups grow up to 20 times faster than those that scale prematurely. Moreover, 93 percent of those that scale too quickly fail to ever reach $100,000 in monthly revenue. Reading between the lines of these stats exposes an ugly truth: An entrepreneurs personal finances can often take a hit during the process of launching his or her startup. The reason is obvious: Entrepreneurs often turn to credit cards to help ends meet. And, because of that fact, its important that they take a long-term view of their personal finances. In fact, consumer credit card debt broke records in 2016, with a lower first-quarter pay-down than weve seen in eight years; total credit card debt for the year was expected to increase more than it has since 2007. Those are alarming statistics and they apply to startup founders, because using personal credit to bridge the gaps as a startup launches is a temporary fix. If revenues dont grow at a sustainable rate, founders may lose their businesses and find themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and subsisting on ramen noodles.. While its extremely common for new startups to burn more money than they make, it's important for founders to set themselves up for personal financial success irrespective of their businesss performance. The reason is clear: The faster you scale, the harder you can fall. Even veteran business owners fall victim Personal finance consequences generally fall into two categories: how your decisions are directly affecting you and your family, and how they are affecting your businesss ability to thrive. Unfortunately, naive, inexperienced entrepreneurs arent the only ones who fall prey to crippling debt. Even veteran business owners with vast coffers are capable of making questionable financial decisions. Eike Batista, for example, was Brazils richest person in 2012, with an impressive $35 billion and six companies. But when overspending and a devaluation of his primary company left him more than a billion dollars in debt, he was branded a negative billionaire. Conversely, Jacques Spitzers startup, Raindrop Marketing, experienced triple-digit growth for four consecutive years, yet he had an incessant fear that his financial habits would be his downfall. Spitzer and his partner didnt want to touch any profits before taxes were paid. That's why they paid themselves minimal salaries and saw that strategy pay off: The business thrived. Said Spitzer: Believe it or not, growth became frightening, not fun. Related: 8 Financial Tips for Entrepreneurs Launching a Startup What can budding entrepreneurs learn from these polarizing examples of lavish spending and frugality? Here are three tips to help you strike a balance in the pursuit of a livable income while avoiding crushing debt: 1. Beware of putting all your eggs in one basket. Youre all in, putting a lot of time, effort and money into your business; you know everything youre giving it, so you always feel close to the next success milestone. The problem is that sometimes youre drinking your own Kool-Aid, so to speak. Even if youve had some success, it can be hard to sustain that success quarter over quarter. However, the next milestone is never guaranteed. This is why Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, wisely took two years and $5,000 of her own money to patent her idea and develop prototypes of her-now famous line of shapewear -- all while continuingd to work a full-time job. Granted, time is as much a resource as money, and launching a startup and working a full-time job is not feasible in most cases. But there are other smart decisions you can make. Cutting losses before debt builds up to unsustainable levels is often the best move. A good rule of thumb is to have at least six months of runway, giving your business six months to see a return. 2. Pay yourself based on benchmarks. How much should entrepreneurs pay themselves? Set a benchmark, and pay yourself a predetermined level of compensation once youve reached a certain level of revenue. Of course, benchmarks work only if you can hold yourself accountable. If you depend on the company youre building to pay all of your personal expenses, fluctuations in your private life may bleed over and affect the business when you have to pull money out of it. Instead, develop a business plan with a 12- or 18-month runway. If you just keep pumping more of your own money into it thinking that things will improve, youre going to dig yourself into a hole that could take years to climb out of, hindering your ability to pursue another venture in the future. If you dont reach your targets, consider alternatives to dipping into personal savings, retirement funds or investments. Seek external validation from friends, family or venture capitalists. Related: How Much Should You Pay Yourself as a Business Owner? At my company, YieldStreet, if we dont hit our targets within a certain period, my partner and I will review our salaries. I also set personal benchmarks, and if I miss them, I resort to a contingency plan. These benchmarks force us to reassess our financing before succumbing to an unmanageable debt load. 3. Put yourself in your 65-year-old shoes. The 2015 Mass Mutual Business Owner Perspectives Study found that the majority of small business owners surveyed hadn't prepared for their retirement. And that's not wise: When it comes to product development and strategy, thinking short-term isnt necessarily a bad thing, but with personal finances, you need to take a longer-term view. First and foremost, dont bet the farm on a venture. Funds youve spent years saving should be set aside and considered sacrosanct. Your business needs to reasonably support your retirement savings. If not, you need to ask investors to cover that cost. If theyre not giving it to you, something is wrong with your business, and youll need to dig into that to see why. Pulling money from your personal savings to pay for business expenses can stress out your family. When you dont know how youre going to keep the lights on -- not only at your business, but also at home -- that kind of anxiety can leave you emotionally and intellectually drained. You might be tempted to liquidate your 401(k) and take a penalty, thinking youll recoup that money when your business takes off. Related: You Want to Start a Business -- How Should You Finance It? Decisions such as this only make things worse. When you find yourself making a highly emotional financial decision, think about whether it will leave you in a good place when youre ready to retire. Dont fall from that tightrope or panic when the pressure builds. For all financial decisions -- regarding both your company and your personal life -- dont count on success. Set benchmarks to hold yourself accountable, and try to imagine yourself at 65. If there's a chance you might regret having made that decision, think twice. Related: Don't Wreck Your Retirement: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Personal Finances 10 Steps Everyone Must Take to Get Rich Why Advertisements for Free Credit Reports Are Scams Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved NORWALK Rail commuters whove waited as long as several years for a much-coveted parking space at the East Norwalk Train Station could get some relief shortly. The Norwalk Parking Authority recently had the state-acquired land at the northwest corner of the train tracks and East Avenue regraded and surfaced to create 24 to 26 parking spaces for commuters. The work is near completion. The Connecticut Department of Transportation took the land for use as a staging area when it rebuilds the railroad bridge above East Avenue, but may not need it until two years from now, said Kathryn R. Hebert, Norwalks administrative services manager. They took it as part of the East Norwalk Railroad Station bridge project for an equipment staging area, but the project is not really starting for a while, said Hebert, who is also staff person to the Parking Authority. Were able to get 24 to 26 parking spaces. Were hoping by next week it will be complete. Well be sending out letters to 26 people from the (parking permit) wait list whove been on it the longest. DOT spokesman Judd Everhart said the departments Office of Rail agreed to allow the Parking Authority to utilize the property until such time the Department may require use to support staging needs for area rail projects. The city is currently building the temporary lot at its expense and anticipates it being available in a few weeks, Everhart said. Hebert said the drainage improvement, regrading and resurfacing work, as well as creation of a new sidewalk along East Avenue, cost $50,000. The temporary parking arrangement wont eliminate the parking shortage at the East Norwalk Train Station. About 150 people have their names on the Parking Authoritys waiting list for parking permits. The average wait is two to three years, Hebert said. At present, the Parking Authority has 105 spaces on the eastbound side of the train station and 49 spaces on the westbound side with permits sold for all. The authority lost 88 spaces after an arrangement between the city and St. Thomas the Apostle Church over the use of the latters parking lot was not renewed. The church needed the spaces for its own use, Hebert said. George Stefanatos, owner of East Avenue Pizza at 84 Fort Point St., welcomes the new temporary parking lot next to his business. He plans to put up a sign on the side of his building facing the lot to attract hungry commuters. Hes hopeful that the Parking Authority might open the lot up on evenings and weekends. Im happy the way they made the parking. They did a nice job, Stefanatos said. But you know what would be nicer? If they opened after 5 p.m. to the public. That would be perfect if it were open to the public after 5, or especially on Saturdays and Sundays. Hebert said that would be a policy decision for the Parking Authority to make. The East Avenue bridge replacement is part of the DOTs larger $1 billion plan to replace the 120-year-old Walk Bridge over the Norwalk River starting in 2019. Preliminary work, including upgrading the rail signal system and track alignments, will begin this July, according to the DOT. Hebert is hopeful that the DOT will lease the newly created parking lot to the Parking Authority on a permanent basis after the various railroad projects are completed. WILTON The Fairfield County HAZMAT team was called to a Wilton business Wednesday afternoon after it received a suspicious package containing brochure cutouts and an unknown powdery substance, police said. The substance was ultimately deemed harmless, but not before the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the State Police Emergency Services Unit and both the Wilton police and fire departments responded to the scene. WILTON Connecticut has one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation, and Ron Pinciaros mission is to keep it that way. The Bridgeport man is the executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, a statewide group that identifies, develops, and promotes passage of legislation designed to enhance gun safety at the local, state and national levels. As of now, the state has the second strongest gun laws, Pinciaro said. And the reason that we do is because the people in Connecticut make it known to their legislators that they want strong gun laws, he told a small group of Wilton Democrats Monday night, because smart gun laws save lives. Pinciaro was invited by the Gun Safety Action Group of the Wilton Democratic Town Committee to speak about current legislation in the state and in the nation. Last year, CT Against Gun Violence successfully helped pass a bill that requires people subject to a temporary restraining order to give up their guns. This year, CT Against Gun Violence didnt find such success with a bill it supported. The bill would have required individuals who openly carry a handgun to show their permit upon request of a law enforcement officer if the firearm is visible to such officer, had it been passed. The (legislative) session runs until June 7, but our bill died in committee. So for all intensive purposes, the state legislative session is over for us, he said. However, there are a number of bad bills proposed at the federal level that is backed by the National Rifle Association, Pinciaro said. Such bills would allow people to carry guns in K-12 schools, remove prohibitions for people with mental health deficiencies and take away the $200 tax from the sale of silencers, which have been difficult to buy for decades. But the most concerning bill of all is the so-called reciprocity vote, Pinciaro said, which is a top prioirty and may go to the House the first week of May. If passed, the bill would require Connecticut to allow anybody from any other state to carry guns in the state, no matter how weak their standards are. The National Rifle Association, which is our opposition, donated over $30 million to President Trumps campaign and theyre looking for payback, he said. Pinciaro closed his presentation by encouraging people to contact local legislators, which is the way he got involved with advocating for gun law safety and, eventually, into his current role at CT Against Gun Violence. He didnt have a personal connection to the cause but was spurred on by those who did particularly mothers affected by the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School. He knew one of the organizers of the Million Mom March in D.C. in 2000 and met members of CT Against Gun Violence at the event. Shortly after, he joined as a member and became the executive director a year later in 2001. In the 16 years hes been involved with the group, Pinciaro said hes noticed two big surges in political activism among individuals and special interest groups: one after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and another after the 2016 presidential election. The message they kept giving me was, We werent paying attention before but were paying attention now, Pinciaro said, referring to peoples responses to the Sandy Hook shooting. And the times right now seem to be very similar to that, where theres this sort of organic grassroots thing happening. This seemed to be true for Jackie Kremer, who joined the Wilton Democratic Town Committee just a month ago. She volunteered to help organize Mondays meeting, citing the presidential election as an impetus to become more active and to keep the momentum going for gun safety laws in Connecticut. The issue of gun safety is always important, regardless of what administration there is in Washington, Kremer said. Its something that people of Connecticut really need to be aware of. skim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim Clank. Clank. Clank. A hammer rattles against a piece of hot iron as blacksmith Randy Dack turns the iron into a tool for a customer to use. Dack considers himself a utilitarian blacksmith. I like my iron to be used, not just looked at, Dack said. I make a lot of tools, camping equipment and things of that nature because I like my stuff to be used. Dack has been portraying an 1890s blacksmith in Railroad Town for 18 years at Stuhr Museum. The blacksmith today would still be doing what he did back then, making tools, making hardware, custom hinges and things like that, he said. Dack started out as a farrier after attending the Oklahoma Horseshoeing School. He said getting his wife a Country Sampler magazine led to him venturing out in the blacksmithing world. His wife, Sarah, who saw a piece in the magazine, thought it was neat. So he decided he would make it. I was too cheap to buy it through the magazine, Dack said. I went to town, spent three times as much money, bought some scrap iron and used the forge that I had for making horseshoes. From there, I figured out how to make it. He believes that imagination makes a good blacksmith. You can do anything you want to a piece of iron. Youre only limited by your imagination, Dack said. Being able to use your imagination and being just smart enough to get what you picture in your head down to your hand that is probably the hardest part that the blacksmith has. Each piece he makes is different from the last. He can do things in a fire that arent feasible in a machine. It is for that reason Dack believes blacksmiths are still needed in the modern era. I tell a lot of my customers, If you want something identical to this, go talk to a machinist, he said. Each hammer mark thats in that iron gives it its own character. Blacksmiths often work in solitude. Dack said a blacksmith has to be willing to sweat and work in the smoke. You will get to the point where you look forward to that morning smoke, Dack said. To be a blacksmith, you need to be able to make precise strikes with your hammer. You dont have to be a big, burly person to do it, he said. When the iron is hot, it is just like play dough: You can do anything to it you want. You dont really have to have a lot of strength. One of the best blacksmiths I know is a lady out of Volcano, Calif., who does amazing work. Dack said his favorite part of being a blacksmith is twofold. He enjoys rediscovering an old technique. You can see an old piece and try to reproduce it, but until you figure out how that was made, you cant reproduce it, Dack said. Finding the way that it was done excites the heck out of me. He also enjoys demonstrating the blacksmithing at the museum for kids and seeing their eyes light up when they finally understand what Dack is making. Probably the most enjoyable part of blacksmithing to me is watching the kids finally understand you dont have to get that at Wal-Mart; you can make it, Dack said. Railroad Town opens on May 1 at Stuhr Museum. On that day, you will find Dack right where he wants to be: close to the forge, heating up a piece of iron, ready to make his next piece and make a childs eyes light up. As part of the Nebraska Extension School Enrichment Program, elementary students in Hall County are learning lessons on where the food on their plates comes from. Hall County Extension assistant Melinda Vlieger is in her fourth year of conducting an embryology project with local schools. On Thursday, she was at Newell Elementary and Shoemaker Elementary candling eggs with kindergartners. Vlieger said the four-week program is designed to teach students the life cycle of a baby chick from the time the mother hen lays her egg to the time the egg hatches, which occurs in around 21 days. The eggs Vlieger was candling with students on Thursday were laid 10 days prior. Through the candling process, the students could see the living embryo as the chick develops inside the egg. Throughout the project, Vlieger said, the students are in charge of taking care of the eggs. Depending of the school, every classroom gets an incubator for which she provides 18 fertilized eggs. "It is their job to take care of the eggs as they grow and incubate into chicks," Vlieger said. Vlieger said the embryology program has grown during the four years she has conducted it in Hall County schools. This year, its in 10 schools, reaching 45 different classes. "It has grown every year since I started it, and this is the biggest year so far," Vlieger said. During the eggs time in the incubator, the temperature is kept at about 100 degrees, and the eggs are turned up until several days before they hatch so the embryos dont stick to the egg shell while developing. The yolk and the egg white in the egg provide the developing chick nourishment and fluid. When candling, Vlieger brings a bright light from an old slide project and holds the eggs up to the light. The children can see the developing chick move around, reacting to the brightness of the light. "It is kind of like an X-ray almost for the egg," she said. "We can see the shadow and the blood vessels and air pocket in the egg. We also talk about how some of the eggs might not be growing. That it is just part of nature, and everything doesnt always survive. That helps reinforce the life cycle and helps them understand nature." When Vlieger held each egg before the bright light, she told the students to determine whether the egg fell into one of three categories: a yolker, an egg that hadnt developed at all; a quitter, an egg that began to develop but stopped; or a winner, an egg that is continuing to develop. Vlieger spoke to four kindergarten classes on Thursday at Newell. At her first stop, of the 18 eggs examined, 12 fell into the winner category, five were yolkers, and there was one quitter. Vlieger told the students that, while there were 12 winners, that doesnt necessarily mean there will be 12 baby chicks. Some may stop their development during the remaining 11 days before they hatch. She told the students that science doesnt really have an answer why those chicks stop their development in the egg. Vlieger also explained the struggle the baby chicks go through as they begin breaking out of their egg. She said the chicks use a special tooth on their beak, especially designed during their evolution, to break out of their shell, which could take as much as an entire day. Once the chick is out of the egg, that beak tooth falls off. Vlieger told the students what to expect when the eggs hatch and once the chicks escape the confines of their shells. The chicks, she said, will be wet and exhausted from the rigors of breaking out of their shells. They will rest and dry out and will have enough nourishment and fluids from the egg to survive for three days before taking their first food. The program is designed from students from kindergarten through sixth grade. At each grade level, she said, the program teaches a different aspect of embryology. "It is for them to learn about where their food comes from and where the eggs come from," Vlieger said. "These eggs come from a farm, and they look just like the eggs that come from a store." In March, according to the U.S. Department of Agricultures National Agricultural Statistics Service, all laying hens in Nebraska totaled 8.42 million, which was down from 8.74 million the previous year. However, March egg production per 100 layers was 2,675 eggs, compared to 2,511 eggs in 2016. The Stamp Out Hunger drive by the National Association of Letter Carriers will have a kickoff event from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, May 7, at the Five Points Super Saver. A hot dog, chips and drink will be for sale for $4. With the donation of a can of food or a non-perishable food item, $1 will be taken off the cost of the meal. Half of proceeds will go to the Salvation Army Food Pantry along with donations. The 25th annual NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers) Stamp Out Hunger food drive will be held on Saturday, May 13. People will be able to leave canned food or nonperishable food items by their mailbox that will be picked up by letter carriers. This year letter carriers will provide bags that the food donations may be left in. The bags will be left at houses the week before the food drive. Gable Butt is only 4 weeks old, but hes already saving for college. Gable, the infant son of Ivie and Myles Butt of Central City, was presented a check for $529 during a ceremony Wednesday at CHI Health St. Francis by Nebraska Treasurer Don Stenberg. Gable was the third baby recognized with a state treasurers Nebraska Education Savings Trust (NEST) college savings account. Gable is this months winner of the NEST Birthday Babies sweepstakes. It has been designated a Legacy program by the Nebraska 150 Commission as part of a yearlong celebration of the states 150th anniversary of statehood. Stenberg said his office wanted NEST to be part of the states celebration of the 150th anniversary of statehood. Babies born today are Nebraskas future, he said. This is our way to celebrate by focusing on the next generation of Nebraskans and helping Nebraska families save for college. As part of that celebration, Stenbergs office has been recognizing children born during 2017, awarding them $529 to start a NEST savings account to help with the expense of their college education. Each month a family is selected by a random drawing from people who enter the contest either by mail or at the NEST website. As state treasurer, Stenberg is trustee of NEST, a tax-advantaged 529 college savings plan. It provides four plans to help make saving for college simple and affordable. Families nationwide are saving for college using the 529 College Savings Plan, which has more than 250,000 accounts, including 75,000 in Nebraska. Stenberg said investing in NEST when children are young benefits families in many ways. Investing early gives families more years to plan and save for college, encourages families to develop regular savings habits, enables families to save more because of compound interest, and provides substantial tax savings for families, he said. During the ceremony, Alice Quick, a registered nurse at St. Francis certified in inpatient obstetrics who has worked in labor and delivery for nearly 40 years, spoke about the hospitals birthing services. Gable was born March 27 at St. Francis. Speaking for Gable were his parents. We are extremely grateful for this opportunity, said Myles Butt. College is not cheap at all and it is not getting any cheaper. This is a great start for his future and to better his education in the oncoming years. Gables mom, Ivie Butt, said, Higher education is extremely important to us. To have him already have this savings plan and have such a great contribution to it is very helpful and we are very grateful for it. Ivie said that it was her parents, who after seeing a story about the competition on the news, entered their grandson in it. My dad registered Gable after he was born, she said. This is Ivies and Myles first child. Myles said starting a future education fund for their child is huge. We are trying to pay back our student loans now, he said. Thats not easy. Both of Gables parents said the NEST account is a good start toward their sons future. We are going to add to it, Myles said. Parents and legal guardians may enter Nebraska NEST Birthday Babies at www.nest529.com/newborndrawing. Entries will be accepted until Jan. 10, 2018, for babies born in the calendar year of 2017. If a familys name isnt drawn in the month the family enters, the name will stay in the drawing throughout the year, giving families more opportunities to be chosen. LINCOLN In a stunning reversal, a Lancaster County judge has vacated the decision last week to deny liquor licenses to the four beer-only liquor stores in Whiteclay, Nebraska. District Judge Andrew Jacobsen ruled Thursday morning that the Nebraska Liquor Control Commissions decision was arbitrary and unreasonable, and violated the liquor store owners constitutional rights to automatically renew their licenses, absent some dramatic change in their business. An appeal of the ruling is expected. The liquor licenses for the four stores were scheduled to expire on Sunday, so the judges order allows them to apply online for their license renewals and remain open. Last weeks decision by the liquor commission was labeled as historic because it would end decades of beer sales from the tiny, unincorporated village to residents of the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol is banned. The stores, which sell the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer a year, have been blamed for contributing to the widespread alcoholism problems on the reservation. Whiteclay is known as the Skid Row of the Plains for its street people who openly drink, urinate and pass out on the streets of the unincorporated village. Jacobsens ruling substantially agreed with the arguments made by the liquor stores attorney, Andy Snyder of Scottsbluff. Snyder said that the liquor commission had not followed state law and previous Nebraska Supreme Court rulings in voting 3-0 to deny renewal of the licenses. Snyder said the store owners, who have held liquor licenses for as long as three decades, were pleased with the decision, which was not totally unexpected. If someone looked at this and followed the law, I was confident of what the outcome would be, he said. Bob Batt of Omaha, who chairs the liquor commission, said he was disappointed but respected the judges ruling. We did our part based on the best legal advice that we had, he said, adding, This will continue the suffering of the people of Pine Ridge. Frank LaMere, a Native American activist from South Sioux City who has called for the closing of the Whiteclay stores for 20 years, said that the Oglala Sioux Tribe will be angered by the ruling. The judges decision, he said, ignores the death, the dying and the devastation at Whiteclay. As a Nebraskan I am troubled. As a Native American I am livid. Is this what you think of our people? LaMere asked. The judge said that prior court rulings made it clear that liquor license holders have a constitutional right to renew their licenses unless they change locations or are convicted of a felony. He said that the liquor commission had failed to show that the stores did not qualify to have their licenses automatically renewed. Jacobsen ordered the liquor board to not interfere with the renewal process by the four stores. The legal problems for the beer stores are far from over. The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office has alleged 22 violations of state liquor laws by the four stores. A hearing on those claims which could result in the stores losing their licenses could be held in June. As almost any public school board member or superintendent can tell you, many of our states citizens are screaming for property tax reform while also being fully supportive of adequately funding our public schools. According to a poll conducted by Reform for Nebraskas Future, 77 percent of respondents indicated they were supportive of property tax reform. The vast majority of our elected officials at the state level even campaigned on the promise of property tax reform, and for good reason. n Nebraska K-12 schools receive 49 percent of their funding from local property taxes while the national average is 29 percent. (U.S. Census Bureau, Public Education Finance, 2016 Based on 2014 Survey Data.) n Nebraska K-12 schools receive 33 percent of their funding from state sources while the national average is 47 percent. (U.S. Census Bureau, Public Education Finance, 2016 Based on 2014 Survey Data.) n Nebraska ranks 49th in the country in the percentage of K-12 funding that comes from the state. (U.S. Census Bureau, Public Education Finance Report, June, 2016 https://www2.census.gov/govs/school/14f33pub.pdf) The school funding formula, TEEOSA, which was implemented back in 1990, has only been fully funded two or three times over the past 15 or 16 years. In most instances, due to increasing needs, the TEEOSA calculation comes out more expensive than the state wants to allocate, so in order for the state to balance their budget, they underfund schools and force us to make up the difference with local property taxes. Thats how this current system works. Some folks like to blame spending as the culprit for high property taxes but its really a funding issue. Many of the school districts most reliant on local property taxes, like York, have an annual average spending increase of less than 1.6 percent over the past eight years. Yorks state equalization aid has plummeted from $3.7 million to $225,000 in that same span as land valuations increased. We have a school funding problem, folks. Our state senators must decide soon whether they want to represent their constituents, the 77 percent of Nebraskans that are calling for property tax reform, or if they will succumb to a few very wealthy and powerful people instead. How our state senators handle various bills down the stretch will show us who they truly care about. What to do in Pennsylvania if you made an error on your mail-in ballot Last fall's glut of 20th-anniversary television specials on the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey felt like a race to the bottom: Which program would most grotesquely exploit the 1996 killing of a 6-year-old girl? The competition was stiff. From the title alone, the new Netflix documentary "Casting JonBenet" sounds like the last thing we need. In fact, it might be the only thing we need to move past a case that has generated so much fevered speculation. Australian filmmaker Kitty Green traveled to Ramsey's hometown, Boulder, Colorado, not to reinvestigate the crime but to get a sense of how residents felt about it. To do that, she posted a casting call for local actors to play the central figures in the case, including the tiny beauty pageant contestant herself, her parents, her brother and the police chief. While the documentary includes some dramatizations, the movie consists mostly of interviews with the actors, who discuss the murder and who they think was responsible while also sharing intimate details about their lives. Getting to know these people reveals a lot. One woman, trying out for the part of JonBenet's mother Patsy, is herself a mother approaching 40, so she's highly offended at the theory that Patsy might have lost her mind, simply because she had a big birthday looming. For a different actress, that theory's a no-brainer. In short, "Casting JonBenet" isn't a documentary about a murder, but about how people come to wildly different conclusions, based on the same information. It's also about how easily we judge other people - whether we have the full story or not - and how much our present views are shaped by our pasts. Occasionally the movie cuts away from interviews to re-enact historical events. Shot with a gray-blue palette, these scenes are more austere, and feature very little dialogue. During these moments, the tragedy comes into focus. In one scene, a hearse drives down a street. In another, police officers approach the Ramsey's house the morning after the murder. The interviews with prospective actors, by contrast, can be disarmingly funny. One performer, who moonlights as a sex educator, gives a brief tutorial on how to use different types of whips. At another point, a professional Santa Claus tells the camera that Patsy was probably "a royal b---- of a mother." "The evidence was compromised," one actor laments, in an effort to sound like an expert. Others parse the psychology of the ransom note found at the scene. Just when the movie's talking heads start to grow tiresome, there's a subtle shift in the film. The question-and-answer sessions are suddenly shot, like the re-enactments, with that same grave palette, and the stories become more tragic. One man, trying out for the part of JonBenet's father, opens up about his recent cancer diagnosis; another talks about the ethics of working on this kind of project. His friends warned him, he says, against getting involved with anything associated with the case, but he thought something positive might come from his participation. His instincts were correct. The final moments of the movie are a gorgeously choreographed scene involving many of the actors we've gotten to know, set to a hauntingly spare piano score by Nathan Larson. The participants act out the many different theories (though not the actual murder, thankfully). Watching so much agony on a set made to look like the Ramsey home, we're reminded of the very real tragedy at the heart of a story that was reduced to tabloid fodder. "Casting JonBenet" has no forensic experts or archival footage. It doesn't get us any closer to the truth. But it might just get at something more profound: The idea that we should just acknowledge what this is - an awful, heartbreaking mystery - and let it go. --- "Casting JonBenet," 80 minutes, will begin streaming Friday on Netflix. The Jakarta election is widely seen as a testing ground for the presidential election campaign two years later. Two major changes occurred in this election which will shape the presidential elections in 2019. The first change is well known: the mobilisation of Islamic groups. The broader campaign strategy to appeal via Islamic piety has now proven to be a winning formula in Jakarta. Candidates will look to emulate this campaign style in 2019. It is likely Anies Baswedan will continue to court Islamic groups as Jakarta governor, as Jokowi continued his successful blusukan campaign strategy in 2012 and 2013. If Anies polls well, hell be in the running for president or vice-president in 2019. Prabowo Subiantos attendance at Istiqlal Mosque on the night of the election, praising FPI leader Rizieq Shihab, is one indication he will also be looking to adopt a similar campaign courting conservative Islamic groups. The second game-changer is less discussed: the decline of pluralist volunteer groups in the Ahok-Djarot campaign. While political party machinations were an important part of the Jokowi-Ahok 2012 campaign, volunteers were also vital. Both candidates were nominally members of political parties, but Jokowi and Ahok had populist appeal as men of the people, outsiders, and reformers. Jokowi quickly became the most popular figure in Indonesian politics, a wave he would ride to the presidency in 2014. Jokowi and Ahok provided impetus for non-political party actors to be more involved in shaping democratic discourse, and to assist in the victory of a reformist, non-Jakarta elite candidate. Much of this message was forged in 2012 in the Jakarta campaign. One could see the formation of broader non-political party actors threatening elite decision making around, and execution of, campaign strategy. Indeed, some of these groups were not independent from elite funding. But that a cacophony of disparate groups and interests emerged showed a broader popular support of campaigning that excited a younger generation of Indonesians to be more active in political campaigning. As a former member of the Jokowi Centre volunteer hub told me just last week when we were reflecting on the 2012 campaign, Jokowi had a capacity to attract people through social media. Grassroots organisations to become a hub. Young people, people not connected to political parties, and other communities became involved. Passion was a big part of participation. Where were these people in 2017? Where were the artists, the actors, the punk rockers and other musicians who had previously backed Jokowi and Ahok? Where were the volunteers or the digital media whiz kids, who seemed to be a new force in political campaigning in 2012? Observing the campaign, I suggest these groups have dissipated, and provide a few reasons why this is the case. First, this bottom up mobilisation declined once Ahok chose not to run as an independent and instead to join with a political party, PDI-P. PDI-P chose to run the campaign through their party machine. Teman Ahok, a large group of loyal campaigners who secured over a million signatures to allow Ahok to run as an independent, were sidelined. Ahok distanced himself from them during the campaign. There was no communication around campaign strategy between PDI-P and Teman Ahok throughout the two rounds. Many in Teman Ahok chose to leave after the first round. Others stayed on, creating content for social media and knocking on doors in the hope they could sway the result. But overall the Ahok-Djarot campaign became characterised by top-down decisions through PDIP, rather than one which encouraged the flourishing of a cacophony of bottom-up forces. Second, much of the creative content for this campaign did not really resonate. Lets take one example in 2012: a group of digital-media savvy volunteers created a music video based on a One Direction song depicting Jokowi and Ahok as reformers. It went viral, cementing the pair as the bandwagon for reformist Jakartans to hitch a ride on. No such supporter generated viral material emerged in 2017. The one video that did resonate was a PDIP-sponsored Bhinneka Tunggal Ika [Unity in Diversity] video, which directly confronted the issue of race and religion. It was widely shared but polarised viewers, with the hashtag #iklanahokjahat [Ahoks evil ad] trending on Twitter. Within 24 hours, a campaign source said, PDI-P leadership demanded it be taken down. The backlash from the Bhineneka Tunggal Ika video shows the difficulty of campaigning for Ahok supporters. How do you openly criticise Muslim groups without being accused of adding to sectarian divides? Many chose to remain silent. Others chose to focus on more mundane issues. At a time of religious protests, netizens got excited by Jokowis Zara jacket, or the blue umbrella he carried. The social media response provided humour in a tense situation, but it also showed that many people were wary to openly declare support for Ahok (or Jokowi) against Islamist campaigners. In all, Jakartas non-political party campaigners were far less present, less rambunctious and less relevant in this Jakarta election of 2017. It must also be said that Ahok is not the same figure as Jokowi was in 2012. For a start, hes the incumbent, so it is harder to run on a campaign of new and exciting as Jokowi did from 2012-2014. Ahok was also seemingly unable to bring a disparate and motley crew of volunteers, professional creatives and tech nerds together. Another factor is that by 2017 social media campaigning has become the bad guy. The Jakarta election campaign reflects worldwide trends of online campaigning described as weaponisation through fake news and black/slanderous campaigns. All campaign teams claimed to have been targets of damaging false news or black campaigns. In Ahoks case it was that he was a communist, or had links to the Chinese government. In Anies Baswedans case, it was that he was looking to implement Sharia law in Indonesia. Aguss team said the material being spread via Whatsapp and Facebook that SBY funded the November and December mass rally ultimately hurt their campaign. In Jakarta as elsewhere, social media is a key space for the flourishing of sectarian divisive politics. As we look ahead to 2019, Jokowi should be concerned is that his non-political party supporter base may be dissipating. Many volunteer groups who expected more of a say in his presidency have been disappointed. Others who did not support Prabowo in 2014 rallied behind Anies in 2017. Indonesian democracy is often described as rambunctious and kaleidoscopic, but in the 2017 Jakarta election the leading campaign forces shifted from young, pluralist reformers to Islamic leaders and groups. *** Ross Tapsell is a lecturer in Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He was in Jakarta throughout the first and second round campaign. This article was previously published on the New Mandala. The Jakarta Post has gained permission from the author for this publication. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to academia@jakpost.com. For more information click here. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 The Corruption Eradication Commissions (KPK) decision to name Syarifuddin Arsyad Temenggung, former chairman of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA), a suspect in corruption related to the Rp 144.5 trillion (US$11 billion) bailout of 48 major banks between 1999 and 2002 could open the Pandoras box of the countrys most gigantic corruption scandal. Temenggungs case could be the first step in cracking the Byzantine complexity of the corruption surrounding the liquidity credit program that is widely believed to have implicated former senior economic ministers, many other leading politicians and even possibly then president Megawati Soekarnoputri. The Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) announced after an investigative audit of the bailout program in mid-2000 that Rp 138.44 trillion of the emergency liquidity credit extended by Bank Indonesia (BI) might have been misused. But thus far only a few cases have been brought to court and all those involved only businesspeople, no members of the IBRA. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Edriana Noerdin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 The time has come for intellectuals, activists, survey institutions and the media to stop equating Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Unoss victory in the Jakarta gubernatorial election with the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalism that threatens to snuff out democracy and silence the voice of minorities. This is all just a political fabrication that is not based on real data. Data from Polmark Indonesia on the second round of voting shows that, contrary to what many people believe, Anies-Sandi won votes from across all economic classes. Polmark executive director, Eep Saefulloh Fatah, is Anies political consultant in the Jakarta election. Prior to the runoff, all surveys and campaign teams predicted that it would be a neck-to-neck and too-close-to-call race. However, the surveys were all wrong. Anies-Sandi won by a wide margin of more than 15 percent. Not only did the incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama and Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat fail to maintain the votes they won in the first round, they also lost a significant number of previous supporters. What makes the slippage more surprising is that the defeat of Ahok came about when voter turnout hit a record 78 percent, compared with 77 percent in the first round on Feb. 15. One important factor in the landslide win for Anies-Sandi is the fact that, according to analysis from Polmark Indonesia, the (upper) middle class, who many considered to be Ahoks loyal supporters, turned their backs on the governor at the last minute for several reasons. First, Anies-Sandi won the hearts and minds of the middle class after the final debate organized by the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) on April 12. Of those watching the debate, 47.3 percent considered AniesSandi to have performed well, compared with 28.3 percent who favored Ahok-Djarot. On programs, 53 percent of the respondents chose Anies-Sandi, while 36.5 percent preferred AhokDjarot. The survey also found 57.9 percent of the respondents were convinced that Anies-Sandi could deliver on their campaign promises, against 34.8 percent who believed Ahok-Djarot could accomplish their pledges. It should be noted, however, that the findings contradicted the results of surveys conducted by other polling agencies, which saw a very high satisfaction rate for the Ahok-Djarot programs. Second, during the cooling-off period, the Ahok-Djarot team blatantly violated the commissions rule on vote-buying attempts by distributing staple foodstuffs to people all over Jakarta, specifically those in the Anies-Sandi strongholds. This offense ruined Ahoks image as a clean politician in the eyes of the middle class. The massive vote-buying effort also infuriated the poor and lower middle-class groups who felt they were been treated as economically desperate people ready to sell their votes for a bag of basic commodities. The shift in mood was later reflected in a survey by Polmark Indonesia. The data shows that in the second round, people who voted for Anies-Sandi came not only from the lower middle-classes but also other income brackets. Voters who earn between Rp 1 million and Rp 10 million per month solidly supported Anies-Sandi and 54.1 percent of them voted for the presumptive governor. Only 34.5 percent of voters from this group chose Ahok-Djarot. Similarly, people who live on Rp 10 million to Rp 20 million per month consistently supported the incumbents as evident in the finding that 62.5 percent of them voted for Ahok-Djarot. Whats surprising is that in the runoff, people who earn more than Rp 20 million per month, thought to be staunch supporters of AhokDjarot, shifted to the contenders. About 71.4 percent of voters in this income bracket put their trust in Anies-Sandi and only 28.6 percent stayed with Ahok-Djarot. The shift in the middle class also happened among undecided voters. Polmarks data finds that out of the 13.1 percent of voters who made their choice when they were in the polling booth, 60.2 percent opted for Anies-Sandi and only 32.3 percent went for Ahok-Djarot. Of the 15.1 percent who made up their minds in the coolingoff period, 57.9 percent voted for Anies-Sandi and only 29 percent for Ahok-Djarot. Around 60.8 percent of voters who took a decision one month before the runoff cast their votes for Anies-Sandi as against 25.3 percent for Ahok-Djarot. The ability of Anies-Sandi to convince undecided voters contributed a lot to their big win. The geographical spread of AniesSandis victory also shows that they garnered support from the majority in all five municipalities and the regency. These shifts and the decision of undecided voters defies the framing of the Ahok-Djarot camp that the victory of Anies-Sandi signals the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalism in the capital. Unlike the messages describing Jakarta as fertile home-soil for the Islamic State group that flooded social media as soon as all quick counts confirmed the victory of Anies-Sandi, data from Polmark Indonesia shows that the (upper) middle classes knew better and wouldnt buy into scare tactics. At the end of the day, Jakartans, no matter which economic class they belong to, are rational. They resist the political elites who continue to divide them along class, ethnic and religious lines. *** Edriana Noerdin The writer is program director of Women Research Institute and part of the campaign team for Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno in the Jakarta election. 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 News Desk (Associated Press) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Thu, April 27, 2017 07:33 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb0d96f 2 Books Arab-Saudi,International-Prize-for-Arab-Fiction,books,award,#awards,#books,#ArabSaudi Free A Saudi novelist has won what is considered to be the region's top literary award for Arab fiction for a book about the trials and tribulations of a man on a journey of self-revelation through Andalusia in the 12th century during a turbulent period of history. Mohammed Hasan Alwan was awarded the International Prize for Arab Fiction on Tuesday evening in Abu Dhabi, the 10th annual winner of the prize. Read also: Amos Oz, David Grossman among Intl Booker Prize nominees Alwan will received a $50,000 cash prize and get to have his book translated into English under the title "A Small Death." The prize is run with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation and funded by Abu Dhabi's Tourism and Culture Authority. Alwan was born in Saudi Arabia and resides in Toronto, Canada. He has published five novels. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Kyodo News) Japan Thu, April 27, 2017 11:32 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb18608 2 Lifestyle Tokyo,couple,marriage,#marriage,#Tokyo,Japan,dating Free Kota Ueda, 39, is still single although he has long dreamed of getting married. In short, he has been unlucky in love. Ueda, who did not disclose his real name, is a researcher working for a major manufacturer's office in Tochigi Prefecture in the Kanto region. Most of his colleagues are men. Read also: Intelligent dating app pairs singles based on smarts He also has no childhood friends there as he grew up in a different region. He drives about 20 minutes to work and does not go anywhere in particular afterwards. It is not that Ueda has never dated. But his past serious relationships with two women ended because of distance. He went out with the first woman for five years in his late 20s. But she lived in a town three hours away by car and her parents disapproved of their long-distance relationship. Two years ago, Ueda dated another woman who was a year older and living in a neighboring prefecture. But she dumped him, saying that if they married she had no intention of moving away from her parents. Ueda now travels to Tokyo once every one or two months to attend matchmaking events that he finds reliable, such as those organized by temple priests. Read also: The dating app that matches users with shared hatred On one weekend in early April, Ueda rode a train for two hours to come to Tokyo for his second date with a woman he met at one of the events. They planned to see cherry blossoms. The problem of distance is always in the back of his mind. "Many seem to think that Tochigi is a rural, inconvenient place, far away from Tokyo, despite both being in the same Kanto region. Living outside Tokyo can be a disadvantage when looking for a partner," he said. With the population concentrated in Tokyo, it would appear the best place to find a mate. But nearly one in five women and more than one in four men in the capital had remained unmarried by age 50 as of 2015, according to a report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. The percentage of women and men who had never married by age 50 was 19.2 percent and 26.1 percent, respectively. By prefecture, Tokyo came top for women and third for men. "Tokyo has many places where I can meet men," said Midori Maruyama, 34, a Tokyoite living with her parents. She has signed up for a temple matchmaking event and attends mixers with her friends several times a month. Read also: How to succeed (and fail) at a job interview in Japan Maruyama, who also did not give her real name, said at one recent mixer she hit it off with a man who was around her same age. He told her he wanted a girlfriend but was not interested in getting married until later in life. She said men she is interested in are either already married or not willing to commit. Although she has lots of chances to meet men in Tokyo, she has not been able to find the right one for her. Maruyama, who works for a midsize manufacturer, has been given responsibilities at her job where she has spent more than eight years. She considers it worthwhile continuing. "Even if I fall in love with someone outside Tokyo, I can never think of leaving the city," she said. Maruyama also hopes to stay close to her parents and care for them as they grow old. But she dreads the idea of never finding companionship. "I shudder to think that I might be all alone in old age," she said. "I hope I find a man and we can support each other." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 09:35 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb13518 1 Science & Tech Wikipedia,Wikitribune,Jimmy-Wales,fake-news,#FakeNews Free In order to combat the spread of fake news, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched Wikitribune. Wikitribune will set up professional journalists with a group of volunteer community contributors and pay said journalists with crowdfunded earnings. Described by Wales as news by the people and for the people, the platform will allow those who donate to have a say on which subjects the website will focus on, though he intends for the site as a whole to focus on specific subjects such as politics and science and technology. This will be the first time that professional and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals, writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community checking and rechecking all facts, Wales told The Guardian. Read also: News sites come together to fight fake news While Wikitribune will be launched ahead of the UK general election, Wales said he was pushed by the current political situation in the United States. Someone I know convinced me to give Trump 100 days before making my mind up, but then on day one Kellyanne Conway came out and said her alternative facts line. That was when I really decided to move forward. The crowdfunding campaign currently has support packages to fund the journalists for pre-sale, but like Wikipedia, Wikitribune will be free to access for all. (sul/kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Richard Horstman (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar Thu, April 27, 2017 14:30 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb23577 3 Lifestyle bali,festival,ancient-futures-festival,sustainable,community,#festival Free The international festival scene is a constantly evolving phenomenon, often reflecting changes in culture that are aligned with shifts in human consciousness. Festivals increasingly offer opportunities for personal engagement, the sharing of ideas, networking and debate, attracting seekers, and the like-minded, to safe havens that uphold the open-hearted expression of creativity. Some of the new emerging micro-festivals are a direct response to the current global political, socioeconomic and environmental disorder. Ancient Futures: NewEarth Festival, a new micro-festival held from April 5-9, near Ubud, Bali, was an innovative gathering, connecting a small group of individuals and communities from around the globe who desire personal and collective transformation. The five-day event at the NewEarth Nation Haven, Villa Akasha, in the village of Keliki, north of Ubud, was set on a six-arena site built from bamboo and biodegradable materials. It featured bio-resonance architecture, especially designed to enhance the spirit of connectivity and community. The number of attendees topped 350 during the evening celebration of music and performances. Native Columbian cultural authority and medicine man Anthar Kharana shares his wisdom during a workshop.(Ancient Futures Festival/File) Read also: Recalling the history of the gamelan Combining wisdom and knowledge from the past and present, while emphasizing earth and environmental awareness, the Ancient Futures program featured a world-class line-up of speakers, innovators, artists and musicians. Visionaries and influencers within the field of sustainability, community and wellbeing, such as Dr Nancy Ash, Dan Winter, Dr David Luke, Thomas Joseph Brown and the Founder of NewEarth Nation, Sacha Stone, facilitated talks and workshops. There is now an archetype of festival that has become standard with its approach to combining music, creative expressions, and consciousness, said NewEarth Haven operations director Brian Kelly. The difference with Ancient Futures is it being tied to bringing out information and the sharing of truth, while anchoring a new paradigm of information. We are a response to the festivals that have developed into a party atmosphere with drugs and escapism. As an interactive platform to share experience and ideas, a key focus of the event was the Symposium, which represented a diversity of disciplines and hosted more than 20 talks, panel discussions, workshops and films. German web technologies expert Fabian Vogelsteller discussed cryptocurrencies and the self-regulating networks at the core of blockchain technologies, along with smart contracts. Dr. Nancy Ash from the New Earth University hosted Altruistically Building Community. Topics included Introduction to Ayurveda, Art & Consciousness, Learning From The Ancients To Find Solutions For the Future, Accessing The Creative Spirit and Conscious Living: A New Paradigm For The Future of Media. Festival crowd at the NewEarth Haven.(Ancient Futures Festival/File) Read also: Illuminating Buddhism in a high-tech light In Quantum Art and Rapid Learning, Australian researcher and cross-genre new media artist Joe Crossley outlined the enormous potential for large-scale visual art projects involving video mapping, a technique that combines technology with cutting-edge visual experiences. Topics such as computer singularity, cell art, new media potentialities and quantum computing fascinated the audience. Paradigm Metamorphosis, hosted by Thomas Joseph Brown, an independent researcher into spiritual science and metaphysics, free energy, lost sciences, and more, provided amazing insights into new paradigm information and learning. Another highlight was How Communication Can Drive Our Culture Towards a Sustainable Future: Non-Violent Strategies to Resolve Conflict, presented by Casey Davidson of the Zeitgeist Australia Movement, a worldwide movement for social change (zeitgeist in German means spirit of the times). The Symposium was connected with a program of workshops from respected cultural authorities and facilitators. Morning yoga classes were followed by transformational breathing, meditation, sounding healing sessions and later in the day, cacao and fire ceremonies. Demonstrations of live painting were conducted by visionary artists Luke Brown and Mark Lee. Nighttime celebrations included world music featuring Fanna-Fi-Allah Sufi Qawwali, Tora, Dirtwire, international DJs, and dance and spectacular performances, such as Bboy Neguin, one of the worlds leading breakdancers. High vibration festival food was created on site within the NewEarth Haven kitchen, while the festival adopted a no alcohol on site policy. Opening and closing ceremonies were officiated by Ida Resi Alit, the youngest female Balinese High Priestess of Hindu Dharma. Other offerings from Indonesian and Balinese culture included Jane Chen singing sacred versus and chants from the 13-16 century East Javanese Majapahit Hindu Empire, a presentation on Balis ancient traditional water management system, the subak, and a dynamic evening performance of the Balinese kecak fire dance. A panel debate hosted by NewEarth Nations founder Sacha Stone (center) included Michael Tellinger, Fabian Vogelsteller and Te Kaha as guests.(Ancient Futures Festival/File) Read also: Photographer Bernard Grismayer captures religious ceremonies New technology and innovation was accompanied with the sharing of traditional knowledge from a Council of Wisdom Keepers, where representatives from the indigenous native cultures from around the world communicated their knowledge in talks, healings and ceremonies. The Panel Debates, hosted by Sacha Stone, streamed over the internet, with daily themes were aligned with the elements of earth, water, air, fire and ether. Cultural leaders and experts in various fields shone light on topics crucial, complex and enlightening; South African author scientist, explorer and founder of the global UBUNTU Liberation Movement, Michael Tellinger being a highpoint. The Ancient Futures closing ceremony on April 9 was marked with the first public demonstration of a free energy technology device, the QT~Pi. In his concluding remarks, Sacha Stone said, The essence of what we are bringing to bare with this experiment is a collective envisioning of a world that transcends time, money and fear into art, beauty, consciousness and expansiveness. This is the very first of the annual gatherings to be held in Bali. We will soon launch Ancient Futures in other global locations featuring this world-first festival model, Brian Kelly said. Ancient Futures celebrates the potentiality of where humanity is heading. (kes) 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 News Desk (Kyodo News) Tokyo Thu, April 27, 2017 19:01 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb325b1 2 Lifestyle suicide,Japan,suicidal Free An advisory panel to the Japanese government Wednesday proposed renewed efforts to reduce suicides by focusing more on postpartum depression, overwork and bullying in schools. While the number of suicides in the country has been declining in recent years, the panel urged the government to aim for a 30 percent reduction over the next 10 years in view of lower suicide rates in other developed countries. The number of suicides in Japan fell below 30,000 in 2012 for the first time in 15 years and stood at 21,897 last year, after peaking at 34,427 in 2003, according to the National Police Agency. Based on the proposals, the government will finalize suicide prevention guidelines this summer, which are reviewed every five years. Read also: Caitlyn Jenner talks of suicide, secrets in new book The new proposals come as the government is struggling to raise the birthrate amid a shortage of child care facilities, change the culture of overwork and reduce suicides linked to bullying in schools. The previous guidelines in 2012 called for measures to address bullying and suicides by people affected by the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters. The issue of excessive working hours has attracted renewed public attention since the suicide of a 24-year-old female employee of advertising giant Dentsu Inc. was recognized as a case of "karoshi," or death from overwork. The panel urged a cut in the number of suicides per 100,000 people to less than 13.0 by 2026 from 18.5 in 2015. The number compares with 13.4 in the United States in 2014 and 7.5 in Britain in 2013. Topics : suicide Japan suicidal Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Gianna Francesca Catolico (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network) Thu, April 27, 2017 18:33 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb3188a 2 People the-adventures-of-mina-and-jack,Robert-Kelly,animation Free The lovable kids who crashed their fathers live BBC interview last month have landed their own animated series. Inspired by the online recognition brought about by Pusan National University professor Robert Kellys kids Marion and James, US-based animators Jarryd Mandy and Lauren Martin created The Adventures of Mina and Jack. The series follows Mina and Jack as they annoy their dad and also help him solve crimes. Mandy and Martin pondered on developing the series after watching the viral interview upwards of a hundred times. The Adventures of Mina and Jack - Prologue https://t.co/9u2LMjXSiG via @YouTube Funny take-off of our viral video. I look suitably dorky. Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) April 18, 2017 Read also: Family behind viral professor's BBC live interview speaks out Mina and Jacks outfits and personalities resemble that of Marion, who wears giant glasses, and James, who makes himself comfortable in a walker and with a pacifier. The series pilot episode was uploaded on YouTube last week and Kelly, who describes his animated self as suitably dorky, gave his easy thumbs-up. I thought it was so cute. My wife and I both laughed. They made me look suitably dorky, Kelly said in a press statement. Following his live gaffe, Kelly, his Korean wife, Kim Jung-A, and their children shot to social media stardom and were featured in several interviews. Filipinos can have the opportunity to meet Kelly on May 5 when he lectures on Political Crisis in South Korea and Northeast Asia Regional Security at the Ateneo de Manila University. Topics : This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer 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 Bagus Saragih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 06:15 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb0b5fb 1 National SusiPudjiastuti,illegal-fishing,China,Chinese-flagged-ship,Navy,Chuan-Hong-68 Free The Chinese government has claimed that the massive Chinese hopper dredger MV Chuan Hong 68, which fled Indonesian waters after its arrest by the Indonesian Navy, had been chartered by a Malaysian company, Accenture Strategy Sdn. Bhd. From our initial information it has been engaged in offshore engineering in the waters specified by the Malaysian side according to the contract, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Wednesday as released by the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta. The 8,352 gross ton vessel, measuring 122 meters in length and 32 m in width, was caught by the Indonesian Navy after allegedly scavenging the cargo of the wreck of Swedish supertanker Seven Skies in waters around the Anambas islands, Riau Islands province, last week. (Read Also: 81 more vessels sunk over illegal fishing) The Navy arrested 20 crew members, consisting of 16 Chinese citizens, three Indians and one Malaysian. The vessel, however, fled to international waters as the Navy was about to deploy a military boat to guard it. The Embassy of China in Indonesia has communicated with the Indonesian side about this matter. The Chinese side hopes that Indonesia can coordinate with the Malaysian company to settle the issue and take credible steps to ensure the safety and legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese citizens detained, Geng said. Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti makes a gesture about Chinas protest against Indonesias strong actions in the Natuna waters during a press conference at her office in Jakarta, recently.(Antara/Sigid Kurniawan) Seven Skies sank in the waters between Jemaja and Repong islands in the Anambas islands in 1969, to a depth of 64 m. Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said her ministry would contact Interpol to seek help in locating the dredger. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam Thu, April 27, 2017 19:03 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb33517 1 National immigration,immigration-violations,immigration-policy,Immigration-Office,ImmigrationOffice,Batam,Singaporean-military-personnel,Singaporean Free The Batam Immigration Office has included three Singaporean military personnel on its list of people barred from entering all areas of Indonesia for the next six months. The entry ban was imposed because the three Singaporean military members could not show their passports during a passport check and instead showed their military ID cards to authorities, an immigration official said. Batam Immigration Office head Teguh Prayitno said the three Singaporean military personnel, identified as Ashok Kumar, 22, Kanesan Gunasegaran, 22, and Sakthivel S., 23, had been deported from Indonesia after they were arrested at a pub in Kampung Bule in Batam, Riau Islands, early on April 23. He said the Office later decided to include the three military personnel on its entry ban list. They were not infiltrators. They entered Batam legally. However, they could not show their passports during an immigration check, saying they left their passports at their hotel rooms, Teguh said. Six people were arrested during the security raid at the pub on April 23, three of whom were later identified as Singaporean military personnel. The three others were confirmed as navigation school students. Teguh said the three Singaporean military personnel were deported after a 24-hour questioning session at the Batam Immigration Office. During the April 23 operation, immigration officials netted 72 people, including 40 Indonesian citizens who could not show their resident identity cards. Meanwhile, 32 foreigners were arrested for failing to show either their passports or visas. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ahmad F. Bayuny (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 09:21 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb12e14 1 Business Indonesia,Australia,talks Free The Australian and Indonesian governments have agreed to conclude the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) by the end of this year. We agree with the Indonesian government to conclude the negotiations in December. We will do everything to reach the target, said Steven Barraclough, minister-counselor of economics, investment and infrastructure at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, on Wednesday. Barraclough said the talks should explore profitable businesses and mutual interests for both countries. He said, for example, that Australian companies might develop their factories in Indonesia to benefit from low production costs. The production cost is very high, whereas Indonesias production costs are low. Therefore, we can make an agreement to produce Australians goods and sell them to a third party, Steven added. The IA-CEPA is designed to create a framework for closer economic engagement between the two countries, creating new opportunities and markets for Australian and Indonesian exporters. The visit of President Joko Jokowi Widodo to Australia in February opened the way for further discussions over the IA-CEPA. During the visit, Jokowi promised to abolish or cut a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers. The Indonesian pesticides and herbicides industry has already benefitted from the talks as Australia has pledged to lower its tariffs on Indonesian products in response to Indonesias removal of a tariff on Australian sugar. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, two-way trade between the two countries reached A$15.3 billion (US$11.7 billion) in 2016. (bbn) The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post. Topics : Indonesia Australia talks Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) North Kuta, Bali Thu, April 27, 2017 14:34 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb24715 1 National accident,bali,Australia Free An Australian tourist was killed in a motorbike accident in Bali early on Thursday morning, police say. The 26-year-old tourist, identified as Ella Makeesha Knights, was found in a ditch next to a rice field on Jl. Raya Canggu in North Kuta. "The accident took place at around 3 a.m. in the morning. She was driving alone. It was dark and quiet at the time," Badung Traffic Police chief Adj. Comr. Putu Raka Wiratma said on Thursday. The engine of Knights motorcycle was still running when police came to the location of the accident after being notified by residents. "We assume the victim lost control of her motorcycle and fell. She fell into a ditch, while her motorcycle was thrown into the rice field, Wirama said. Knights stayed at the Litus Rinaya Hotel in North Kuta during her holiday in Bali, he added. "We have coordinated with the [Australian] consulate, and her family has been notified by the consulate. (ary) Topics : accident bali Australia Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27 2017 Squatters who have been protesting against state-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api Indonesias (KAI) plan to demolish their homes in Manggarai, South Jakarta, have been given a temporary lifeline as the operator has suspended its plan for the time being. PT KAI initially planned to carry out the demolition of 11 houses, in which many of the people have been living since the 1950s, on Wednesday. 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 Thu, April 27, 2017 20:47 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb37ee7 1 National house-of-representatives,e-ID,#e-ID,Olly-Dondokambey,North-Sulawesi-governor,Banggar,KPK,#KPK,graft,corruption Free North Sulawesi Governor Olly Dondokambey, a former member of the House of Representatives Budget Committee (Banggar), has denied knowing anything about budgetary allocations for the e-ID project proposed by the Home Ministry. The lawmaker further said he did not handle the budgeting process for the ministry when he was a Banggar member for the 2009-2013 period. As a Banggar deputy chairman, I was in charge of regional transfer-related matters so I didnt know about the funding of projects at ministries, said Olly, when he testified as a witness for graft defendants Irman and Sugiharto, former Home Ministry officials, at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Thursday. (Read also: KPK ready to face Miryams pretrial motion) Olly further explained his two main working areas at that time were to handle the General Allocation Fund (DAU) and the Special Allocation Fund (DAK) sent to local administrations. I was never in charge of the budgeting process for ministries, including the e-ID project, said the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggles (PDI-P) general treasurer. In Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) indictments, Olly is alleged to have received US$1.2 million from the Rp 5.9 trillion ($442.68 million) budget for the project. Olly was one of 10 witnesses, including House Speaker Setya Novantos nephew Irvanto Hendra Pambudi who testified in the e-ID graft case hearing on Thursday. (dis/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Cirebon Thu, April 27, 2017 17:54 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb2f9f2 1 National Women,clerics,congress,Cirebon,marriage Free The inaugural congress of the Indonesian female ulema has issued a fatwa obliging Muslims to prevent early marriage, saying such a practice would bring more harm than good and is therefore un-Islamic. Religion has prescribed its followers to prevent mudarat [harm]. The maslahat [benefit]of a sakinah [peaceful] family can never be gained if there is too much harm. Early marriage has been proven to bring harm. Therefore, preventing early marriage is an obligation, the female clerics said in their fatwa, which was released at the end of the three-day congress in Cirebon, West Java, on Thursday. The religious edict, which is non-binding, said the responsibility to prevent child or early marriage rested in the hands of parents, the community and the state. The female ulema went on that child marriage survivors should be able to get education and protection from any kind of violence and discrimination. One of six Indonesian girls, about 340,000, are married before their 18th birthday every year, according to UNICEF. The country is 37th on a list of global child-marriage rates, the second-highest in Southeast Asia, behind Cambodia. (Read also: Polygamy not part of Islamic teachings: Muslim clerics) In 2015, the Constitutional Court rejected a petition filed by women's activists to raise the legal age for marriage from 16 to 18 or 21. Meanwhile, conservative Muslim groups have intensified campaigns for early marriage on social media. The campaigns got a boost when a renowned Muslim preacher encouraged his 17-year-old son to marry. (ary) Topics : Women clerics congress Cirebon marriage Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 15:33 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb283e6 1 City explosion,Thousand-Islands-regency,ferry-accident Free A ferry carrying 19 passengers and three crewmen exploded on Thursday morning in the waters of Ayer, Thousand Islands regency. North Jakarta Firefighting and Rescue Agency head Satriadi Gunawan said the ferry, Zevolution 9 Princes Debble, burst into flames at 8.30 am. It had departed from Marina dock in Ancol and was bound for Ayer Island, Putri Island, Pelangi Island and Macan Island. On their way, a fire broke out in the engine room and quickly spread, Satriadi said on Thursday as quoted by beritajakarta.com. He added that all passengers had been evacuated by water police officers with the help of local fishermen. His agency, Satriadi said, deployed a fire rescue boat to extinguish the flames, which took about an hour. Police are still investigating the cause of the fire, he said. Thousands Island Police spokesperson First Insp. Ferry Budiharso said that one of the passengers suffered from burns on his arm. (fac) The country's second biggest party, the Golkar Party, is aiming to increase the number of female politicians it has in legislative bodies in the 2019 legislative election. We want more women from Golkar sitting in legislative bodies at the national level, provincial level, as well as regency and city levels, Dany Soedarsono, the chair of Golkar's women wing Himpunan Wanita Karya (HWK), said as quoted by Antara. The organization staged on Wednesday a national working meeting (Rakernas) in Jakarta that aimed to create programs in political education for some 20,000 HWK members across Indonesia, Dany said. We aim to place our best members in strategic position within the Golkar Party. After this Rakernas, we will promote political education programs within HWK in preparation for the 2019 legislative election, she said. (Read also: Why women's participation in politics too crucial to be overlooked) The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in its latest Human Development Index (HDI) report has encouraged Indonesia to push for greater participation of women in legislative bodies. According to the report, women participation remains low at 17.1 percent, slightly more than half of the 30 percent quota for women in legislative seats. (afr) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 19:31 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb35530 1 National press,press-freedom,reporters-without-borders,index Free Indonesia has climbed six notches from its previous place in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Wednesday. The rise, however, is by no means a sign Indonesias press freedom is improving. The country may have risen from rank 130th last year to 124th this year, but its score has slightly fallen from 41.72 last year to 39.93. Indonesia is also still at the lower half of the index, which assesses the level of press freedom in 180 countries. Even Afghanistan (ranked 120th) and Nigeria (ranked 122nd) fared better than Indonesia, which was once seen as a model for Muslim democracy. In the report, the RSF argued that President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has not kept his campaign promises." His presidency continues to be marked by serious media freedom violations, including a lack of media access to West Papua (part of the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea), where violence against local journalists continues to grow, it said. "Radical religious groups also pose a threat to the right to inform. Many journalists say they censor themselves because of the threat from an anti-blasphemy law and the Electronic and Information Transactions [ITE] Law," it added. The RSF's latest index reflects a challenging time for journalists around the world, including in leading democratic countries. Democracies have begun falling in the Index and now, more than ever, nothing seems to be checking that fall, the group said. (ary) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 12:58 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb1cb45 1 Business Eko-Putro-Sandjojo,Malaysia,visit,investment,infrastructure,plantations Free A dozen Malaysian companies have expressed interest in sinking some Rp 55 trillion (US4.14 billion) into Indonesia, according to Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Minister Eko Putro Sandjojo. On President Joko Jokowi Widodos instruction, Eko visited the neighboring country on April 20-21 with the specific task of offering investment opportunities in the archipelago. They were highly interested in investing in Indonesia. Potential investment from Malaysian companies has reached Rp 33 trillion, said Eko in Jakarta on Thursday. Though they expressed interest in various sectors, a majority of these 12 companies had their eyes on Indonesias infrastructure and plantations, he added. Among these is YTL Corporation Berhad, which has been involved in the development of coal-fired power plant (PLTU) Tanjung Jati B in Jepara, Central Java, with a total investment of Rp 32.4 trillion. Another [interested] company is United Engineers Malaysia (UEM), who nearly made a deal to continue the construction of the Palimanan-Solo toll road, said Eko. Business delegates from Malaysia are scheduled to arrive in Indonesia in early May to further discuss their investment commitments in Indonesia, he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 09:18 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb12bec 1 Business investment,#JakartaGubernatorialElection,thomas-lembong,comments Free Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) head Thomas Lembong has stressed that the result of Jakarta gubernatorial election, which saw Anies Baswedan emerge victorious over incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, will not negatively affect the investment climate in the country. What matters most to investors is how the government deals with its deregulation and infrastructure development programs, the official said. He also strongly rejected the view of some international media outlets that interpreted the Jakarta election as a victory for hard-line Muslims. (Read also: Inconsistent regulations hamper investment: Lembong) I strongly reject this interpretation, which called the election result a victory for hard-line Muslims, he told a press conference on Wednesday. Indeed, some conservative groups played a role, but to say it was a victory for hard-line Muslims is too much. He expressed the hope that the ongoing deregulation process and other economic reforms would not be distorted by political demonstrations held by hard-line Muslim groups such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI). Ahok is a Christian and a Chinese-Indonesian. He was charged with blasphemy for a speech he gave during an official visit to Thousand Island regency. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Winda A. Charmila and Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama will leave office in October, but some residents are already mourning his impending departure following his loss in the runoff election on April 19. They have sent nearly 1,000 flower boards to City Hall and made the hashtag #GombalinAhok, which literally means sweet-talking Ahok, explode on Twitter. On one of the flower boards spilling out from the City Hall compound, its senders call Ahok and his Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat their mantan terindah (best exes), while others wrote, from us who cannot move on. A resident of Kedoya Utara, West Jakarta, Agatha Dinny, re-posted her photos when Ahok made a surprise visit to her ill mother Liany on Feb. 9, writing: Its not about moving on. [I] just feel broken-hearted. I have broken up but still keep the fond memory of my best ex, referring to the outgoing governor. 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 Winda A. Charmila and Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27 2017 Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama will leave office in October, but some residents are already mourning his impending departure following his loss in the runoff election on April 19. They have sent nearly 1,000 flower boards to City Hall and made the hashtag #GombalinAhok, which literally means sweet-talking Ahok, explode on Twitter. On one of the flower boards spilling out from the City Hall compound, its senders call Ahok and his Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat their mantan terindah (best exes), while others wrote, from us who cannot 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 Thu, April 27, 2017 17:01 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb2d7aa 1 National KPK,#KPK,Miryam-S-Haryani,Most-Wanted-List,DPO,graft,graft-suspect,corruption,e-ID,#e-ID Free The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on Thursday put perjury suspect Miryam S. Haryani on its most-wanted list (DPO). The former member of the House of Representatives is accused of having given false statements in March when she testified as a witness in an e-ID case hearing for defendants Irman and Sugiharto, two former Home Ministry officials. We sent a letter on the matter to the National Police today, KPK spokesperson Febri Diansyah said as quoted by Antara at the anti-graft body's headquarters in Jakarta on Thursday. He said the KPK had also asked the police to arrest Miryam. Once she is arrested, she will be handed over to the KPK and we will coordinate further [with the police]. (Read also: KPK ready to face Miryams pretrial motion) Febri said the KPK had summoned Miryam to attend a questioning session as a suspect. The commission also agreed to reschedule the questioning after her lawyers said the Hanura Party politician could not fulfill the summons because she was ill. However, the suspect has yet to show up for any kind of questioning. Thus, the KPK believed it needed to issue a DPO letter. Should anyone have information on her whereabouts, they can convey it to the nearest police station because we have sent the DPO letter to the National Police, Febri said. The KPK has searched her house in Tanjung Barat, South Jakarta, her lawyers office on Jl. Rasuna Said, South Jakarta, and houses belonging to two witnesses in Lenteng Agung, South Jakarta, and Pondok Aren, South Tangerang. (mrc/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 15:21 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb283ba 1 National KPK,#KPK,Miryam-S-Haryani,graft,graft-suspect,corruption,pretrial-motion,Hanura,Hanura-Party,e-ID,#e-ID Free Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) spokesperson Febri Diansyah said the anti-graft body was prepared to face the pretrial motion filed by former House of Representatives member and Hanura Party politician, Miryam S. Haryani, against her naming as a suspect in an alleged perjury case on April 5. We will face her pretrial motion. It will not stop the investigations the KPK is currently carrying out on her case, Febri said as quoted by kompas.com at the KPK headquarters in Jakarta on Wednesday. The investigation process included the summoning and questioning of witnesses and searches for evidence, he explained. Miryam said via her lawyer, Aga Khan, that she would not fulfill the KPKs summons as she was waiting for the courts ruling on her pretrial hearing request. KPK investigators have twice summoned Miryam for questioning over the e-ID graft case, however, she skipped both summons. We should remember that in her first summons, she conveyed to the KPK that she was sick and asked the commission to reschedule the questioning. We gave her a chance, but instead, she filed a pretrial motion against us, said Febri. Miryams lawyer said the KPK did not have the authority to name her client a suspect over alleged perjury, believing the former lawmakers case should be processed as a general criminal case, instead of a corruption case. The KPK considered its move to name Miryam a suspect of alleged perjury valid under Law No.31/1999 and in reference to Law No.20/2001 on corruption eradication. (mrc/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 10:11 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb1451e 4 National #Islam,#Indonesia,#MUI,#politics Free Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) secretary-general Anwar Abbas has suggested the establishment of an MUI faction within the House of Representatives, which would work to strengthen Islamic values in the nation. During the 17th MUI consultative board plenary meeting in Jakarta on Wednesday, Anwar said the MUI faction would carry out its mission to provide justice and welfare for the Indonesian people. However, the faction would serve to fight for the interests of all religious groups in the nation and not only for the sake of Islam, Anwar ensured. "It's because Islamic teachings are not only intended for Muslims. [Islamic teachings] dont just benefit Muslims, they benefit all of mankind. Thus, all citizens will have an advantage," Anwar said as quoted by kompas.com. (Read also: MUI chief accused of bias for issuing recommendation on Ahok) He added that as a religious group, the MUI would not be actively involved in politics as this suggested faction would consist of members of existing political parties at the House, Anwar said. "We won't [be involved]; the faction would exist only to uphold Pancasila [state ideology] values and to ensure that the House will uphold the principles of humanity and the country's unity," Anwar said. "There are some groups in the House that don't adhere to Pancasila values and the 1945 Constitution," he added. (afr) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27 2017 The Chinese government has claimed that the massive Chinese hopper dredger MV Chuan Hong 68, which fled Indonesian waters after its arrest by the Indonesian Navy, had been chartered by a Malaysian company, Accenture Strategy Sdn. Bhd. From our initial information [] it has been engaged in offshore engineering in the waters specified by the Malaysian side according to the contract, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Wednesday as released by the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta. The vessel was caught by the Indonesian Navy after allegedly scavenging the cargo of the wreck of Swedish supertanker Seven Skies in waters around the Anambas islands, Riau Islands province, last week. 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 Thu, April 27, 2017 14:26 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb22752 1 National #CentralJava,#Terrorism Free Police are questioning a man who claimed to have escaped from a terrorist camp in Salatiga, Central Java. The man, identified as Yonas Prayoga, turned up at the West Jakarta Police precinct on Wednesday night, claiming he had been abducted by a group of terrorists. As of last night, he [Yonas] is still being questioned by our investigators, said West Jakarta Police spokesman Comr. Purnomo on Thursday. The man seemed dazed, so at the moment, we still cannot confirm anything he has said. Yonas, 26, told police that he was stopped by four men in a car on April 18. The abductors first approached Yonas asking for direction, then convinced him to get into their vehicle. He was later drugged and his head was covered. When he regained consciousness, the four men took him deep into the forest. Before disappearing into the trees, Yonas said he spotted a road sign that read Salatiga. (Read also: Densus 88 arrests 7 suspected terrorists for bomb plan) According to his testimony, the camp was filled with some 80 people, most of whom were women. The camps inhabitants were trained to use firearms and make bombs by about 20 instructors. They were also indoctrinated by hate speech against certain groups. Yonas said he made his escape when one of the inhabitants took him to a bus station. He got off the bus in West Jakarta, then went straight to the West Jakarta Police station. The National Police has sent officers from counterterrorism squad Densus 88 to help with the investigation, he said. (dea) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27 2017 When Indias coal and power minister Piyush Goyal arrived in Jakarta last week he was amazed by the similarities he found between Indonesia and his home country. Both nations have a long history of religious and cultural links. In Indonesia, Indias influence can be traced back to the times of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms in the early Common Era. Even the name Indonesia derives from the Latin Indus, meaning India, and the Greek nesos, meaning island. 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 Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam Thu, April 27, 2017 11:03 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb16e28 1 National Seven-Seas,Tanjungpinang,Riau-Islands,Indonesian-navy,immigration Free A panel of judges at the Tanjung Pinang District Court in Riau Islands has sentenced Singaporean Ricky Tan Poh Hui, the captain of MV Seven Seas Conqueress vessel, to a six-month suspended sentence for illegally entering Indonesian waters. Should Ricky commit a similar offence during his probation period, he would be jailed for three months, said presiding judge Jhonson FE Sirait. Judges also ordered him to pay Rp 5 million (US$376) in fines, which can be substituted with two months imprisonment. The defendant is guilty of violating the 2008 Sailing Law and 2011 Immigration Law, Jhonson said on Wednesday, adding that Rickys actions had compromised bilateral relations between Indonesia and Singapore. The verdict is in line with what was demanded by prosecutors. (Read also: Singapore protests Indonesias move to detain its vessel, passengers) Rickys lawyer, Purwanto Putro, said he accepted his clients guilty, but claimed his actions had been unintentional. We will avoid filing an appeal to higher courts, he said. Ricky was at the helm of the Malaysian-flagged vessel when he was stopped by an Indonesian navy patrol in the waters off Bintan island on Aug. 20 last year. Three crew members and nine Singaporean passengers were released on Sept. 1, 2016, but Ricky was detained and his ship held by the Navy at its Tanjung Pinang base. On March 15, the Singaporean Foreign Ministry issued a protest against Rickys detention. (bbs) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 13:31 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb1d375 1 City eviction,Pasar-Ikan,houses Free Residents have erected semi-permanent dwellings on cleared land in the Pasar Ikan area of North Jakarta after the quick count in Jakartas recent election indicated that Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno will replace incumbents Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama and Djarot Saiful Hidayat as governor and vice governor. As reported by kompas.com on Wednesday, the residents, who were evicted in April last year but refused to move to specially provided low-cost apartments, said they had voted for Anies and Sandiaga in the runoff. They believed Anies and Sandiaga would fulfil their campaign promise to improve their welfare as well as let them build houses and stay in that area. "We believe Pak Anies and Pak Sandi [unlike Ahok] won't destroy the buildings that we built with our hard work," said a 40-year-old resident named Adi. (Read also: Prabowo visits evicted residents in Pasar Ikan) A fisherman named Ujang, 39, who stayed in a tent provided by the Gerindra Party, said he hoped Anies and Sandiaga would revive the Pasar Ikan and Kampung Akuarium area. Since the eviction, he said, residents had lost their jobs. Ujang added that the residents were confident about building homes because they believed Anies and Sandiaga would favor poor people. During the campaign period for the first round of the election on Feb. 15, Anies, together with Gerindra patron Prabowo Soebianto, greeted residents in that area. Prabowo said at the time that Anies and Sandiaga would defend the evicted residents, if elected. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 14:03 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb21a6c 1 Business jasa-marga,TollRoadOperator,profit,Q1 Free State-owned toll road operator PT Jasa Marga recorded 33.9 percent growth in its net profit to Rp 547.25 billion (US$41.1 million) in this year's first three month versus Rp 407.52 billion booked in the corresponding period of last year. The publicly listed firm's revenue skyrocketed by more than 72 percent to Rp 5 trillion over the same period, mainly supported by strong growth in its construction business. The firm's construction sector revenue more than tripled to Rp 2.86 trillion as of March versus Rp 852.12 billion in last year's first quarter, according to Jasa Marga's financial report published at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). (Read also: Jasa Marga proposes building elevated toll road to Soekarno-Hatta) Toll roads and other businesses sectors contributed Rp 2.14 trillion to the company's revenue, marking year-on-year (yoy) growth of 4.4 percent. In line with the construction expansion, Jasa Marga's costs also soared, rising by more than 115 percent yoy to Rp 3.77 trillion, while its liabilities hiked by 15.4 percent to Rp 42.87 trillion. The firm's asset value increased by almost 11 percent yoy to Rp 59.28 trillion as of March. By the end of the first trading session on Thursday, Jasa Marga's stock price had jumped 2.47 percent from the previous close to Rp4,570. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 15:41 2021 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb2844e 1 City #Afghanistan,#Indonesia,#prostitution Free Immigration officers arrested two Afghan citizens at the Kalibata City Apartments in South Jakarta on Wednesday night for alleged involvement in prostitution. South Jakarta Immigration office head Cucu Koswala said the men, identified as Shir Agha Mohammadi, 23, and Ali Hassani, 20, were believed to have worked as prostitutes. "Both men offered their services to males and females," Cucu Koswala said as quoted by kompas.com on Thursday. He added that the authorities had been eyeing the men for a week. The case was uncovered after an immigration officer posed as a customer. "The officer pretended to want to hire their services by communicating with them through Whatsapp," he said. The Afghan men admitted that they advertised themselves through word of mouth, he said. "For now, the men claim that they are not members of any prostitution network," he said, adding that his office would continue delving into the case. (dea) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Michael W. Setjoadi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27 2017 Given the new policy risks, in the form of tobacco import quotas and tariffs, we are lowering our rating of the cigarette sector from Overweight to Neutral. It is possible that weak sales volume growth will continue in the lead-up to the Ramadan fasting period and reduce sentiment on the sector. In terms of import quotas, the government is attempting to cap tobacco import volumes at 20 percent of the total. On the tariff front, it is possible that the government may raise tobacco import duties from the current 5 percent to 60 percent. This could adversely affect cigarette sales, as Indonesia currently relies heavily on tobacco imports, mainly from Brazil, to supply demand. However, on a more positive note, the sector may see some reprieve from an expected lower excise-tax hike this year. Recent data published by Phillip Morris International (PMI) shows that the market share of cigarette maker PT HM Sampoerna (HMSP) in the first quarter (Q1) of this year was down by 20 basis points (bps) quarter-on-quarter (qoq) and by 50 bps year-on-year (yoy). Its sales volume, meanwhile, was down 12.5 percent qoq and 6.9 percent yoy. In comparison, the industry saw stick sales decline by 11.9 percent qoq and 5.5 percent yoy. We believe the poor performance was driven by weak macroeconomic conditions, triggered by delayed government spending, particularly in January and February, which weakened purchasing power and the imposition a higher excise tax in 2016. All these factors decreased cigarette affordability. Both HMSP and PT Gudang Garam (GGRM) have underperformed the market year-to-date (ytd), but we retain our preference for HMSP over the medium term as we believe most of the bad news has been reflected in its share price. We maintain our BUY rating and 12-month target price (TP) for HMSP and GGRM. Our Rp 4,600 TP for HMSP equates to 40 times of our forecast earnings per share (EPS) for this year, while our Rp 81,000 TP for GGRM equates to 21 times of our forcast EPS. We are likely to see a slight margin correction in the first quarter on a changing sales mix as HMSPs most profitable products, under the Dji Sam Soe brand, experienced a sales volume decline. HMSPs aggressive average selling price (ASP) hikes in 2016, especially for the A Mild 12-stick pack, have caused the company to book a lower market share for the brand (down by 10 bps qoq and 40 bps yoy). Note that the A Mild brand contributed around 42 percent of HMSPs total stick sales in the first three months of the year, or around 9.9 billion sticks, down 12.6 percent qoq and 8.2 percent yoy. Based on our channel checks, A Milds ex-factory prices (weighted average of packs of 12-sticks and 16-sticks) for the quarter was up by 2.1 percent qoq and 11 percent yoy. At this stage, we continue to expect disappointing performance for the Dji Sam Soe brand, which contributed some 19 percent to Q1 sales. Although HMSP increased the brands ASPs by smaller figure compared to its other products, Dji Sam Soe still recorded a slight market share loss of 10 bps qoq and 30 bps yoy, resulting in its sales volume dropping 13.3 percent qoq and 9.8 percent yoy. On a brighter note, the Sampoerna U brand, targeting the mid-low segment, was immune to the industry volume decline, possibly due to consumers down-trading in Q1. Contributing 15 percent to HMSPs total stick sales, the Sampoerna U brand booked both strong ASP and volume growth for the quarter. Its ASP rose 3 percent qoq and 15.2 percent yoy, while its volume was also up by 12.9 percent qoq and 5 percent yoy. Its market share, meanwile, increased by 110 bps qoq and 50 bps yoy). ____________________________ The writer is research analyst at Bahana Sekuritas. 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 Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura Thu, April 27 2017 The city of Jayapura in Papua will soon join a select group of cities around the world that feature a giant statue of Jesus Christ. The city, the population of which is 70 percent Christian, has already boasted it will have the worlds tallest Jesus monument. It is going to be the tallest Jesus Christ statue in the world. If the height of the statue in Brazil is 38 meters, then the one we are going to build is 67 meters, Papua Public Works Agency head Djuli Mambaya told The Jakarta Post in Jayapura on Wednesday. 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 Mario Rustan (The Jakarta Post) Bandung Fri, April 28 2017 During the conversation surrounding Indonesian comic book artist Ardian Syafs references to the 212 march and the Al-Maidah controversy in a Marvel publication, the comic community here pondered the different situations in Indonesia and the United States. Muslims in the United States are being discriminated against and stereotyped as terrorists, but American comics have stood up for them, from the aftermath of 9/11 to the current administration of President Donald Trump. On the other hand, Ardian expressed his support for the controversial march in a comic dealing with alienation and minorities. Worse, he was accused of supporting anti-Semitism after drawing Kitty Pryde, a Jewish-American character, standing with a Jewelry sign next to her in perspective. 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 and Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 28 2017 Indonesia will not find it easy to convince people that it is making progress in human rights as reflected by reports issued by United Nations bodies and civil society organizations (CSOs.) The reports, together with a report issued by the government, will be assessed by 93 countries during the quadrennial Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 3. Although not legally binding, the UPR aims to push for political will as the UN Human Rights Council regularly reviews all 193 member countries every four years by comparing the three reports. 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 Danica Kirka (Associated Press) London Thu, April 27, 2017 14:15 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb2224d 2 News United-Airlines,giant-rabbit,Airlines,#airlines Free United Airlines is reviewing its handling of a giant showcase rabbit that died after being shipped across the Atlantic from Britain on one of its flights, the latest in a growing list of customer complaints. Distraught breeder Annette Edwards told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday that a veterinarian had checked Simon a 10-month-old, 3-foot-long continental rabbit shortly before the animal was placed on a United flight from London's Heathrow Airport to Chicago's O'Hare. Edwards said Simon is the offspring of Darius, which the Guinness World Records lists as the world's longest rabbit at 4 feet 3 inches (1.22 meters). "Simon had his vet check just before getting on the plane," she said from Worcestershire in central England. "He was fit as a fiddle." United spokesman Charles Hobart said the rabbit was moving around in its crate and appeared healthy when taken off the plane in O'Hare, waiting to be put on another flight to Kansas City. About a half-hour later, at the company-run pet facility, Simon seemed to be sleeping. Shortly after that, a pet facility employee opened the cage and found the rabbit dead. He says the airline is reviewing its handling of the animal. "We won't know the cause of death, because we offered to perform a necropsy free of charge that's standard procedure but the customer didn't want us to perform a necropsy, and we understand," he said. Read also: Everyone is trolling United for their horrible passenger treatment Giant bunny dies after United Airlines flight https://t.co/JI3WnL1ra8 pic.twitter.com/sgejbTXkZF BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 26, 2017 Hobart said the airline offered compensation to the breeder but would not disclose the amount. Bryan Bergdale, a farmland investment manager, said he bought the rabbit for his boss, who had hoped to show it at the Iowa State Fair. He had driven from the Des Moines area to Kansas City and was nearing the airport last Thursday when United called with the bad news. At first, he didn't believe it. "We'd built a pen and had toys all ready. It's sort of a sad deal," he said. Bergdale, 29, said he'd tracked down the breeder and bought the rabbit for his boss, Steve Bruere, who owns a farm real estate company in the Des Moines suburb of Clive. Bergdale said the rabbit cost 415 pounds ($530) and the shipping was 1,400 pounds ($1,800). Bergdale said the United representative didn't say anything about compensating him for the loss. "We're still in the mourning process," he said. "We're not quite sure what we're going to do." United had the second-highest level of animal deaths and injuries of any U.S. airline last year, or 2.11 per 10,000 animals transported, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Only Hawaiian Airlines was worse at 3.99, the result of three deaths among the 7,518 animals it transported. United transported 109,149 animals last year, second only to Alaska Airlines with 112,281. United reported nine deaths and 14 injuries, the highest figures for each category among U.S. carriers. Alaska reported two deaths and one injury. Read also: Other airlines join in on United Airlines jokes United said it works to protect the safety of animals through its PetSafe program, which is staffed 24 hours a day and allows pet owners to track their animals from point of origin to destination. "Travel can be stressful for animals," Hobart said, adding that the carrier has plenty of tips for those who do decide to ship their animals. United is already working to repair its battered image after a passenger who refused to give up his seat on an overbooked flight was forcibly dragged from a plane at O'Hare Airport. Airport security officers removed David Dao, a 69-year-old from Kentucky, from the United Express flight. Images of his bloodied face were widely circulated on social media, forcing United CEO Oscar Munoz to apologize. Munoz was widely faulted for his early responses to the situation. He first blamed Dao but later apologized repeatedly for United's handling of the situation. Two weeks earlier, United was criticized after a gate agent stopped two young girls from boarding a flight because they were wearing leggings. The airline said leggings violate the dress code of the United Pass program, a benefit for employees and their dependents. The airline said last week that Munoz would not automatically become chairman of the carrier's parent company, United Continental Holdings, next year as originally planned. __ David Koenig and Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, April 27, 2017 13:17 2022 a291276806121264c0bd211cdeb1d257 1 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,investment,tourism-promotion,investment-coordinating-board,tourism,#tourism Free The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, in collaboration with the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), has held the second annual Indonesia Investment Forum to support companies interested in doing business in Indonesia. Held on Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur, the forum is follow-up of last years BKPM regional investment event in Bali. One of the main topics discussed was the tourism industry. According to the head of the Tourism Ministrys team for priority tourist destination development, Hiramsyah Thaib, a panelist at the forum, investment in the tourism industry is growing every year and has the potential to become a primary sector for attracting both local and foreign investors. Read also: Bali declared world's top destination for 2017 Separately, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the sector was the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to increase economic growth, foreign exchange earnings, GDP and employment. In general, Indonesias tourism sector [in 2015] grew at 10.3 percent; the number is above ASEAN, which had 5.1 percent, and global tourism growth of 4.4 percent, Arief explained. Meanwhile, regarding the development of supporting infrastructure, also known as JALI (road, water, electricity and the internet), the Indonesian government shoulders the responsibility to facilitate any investment. Over the past five years, the total contribution made by tourism industry reached Rp 51.2 trillion (US$3.85 billion). From the data collected by the BKPM in 2016, direct investment in tourism reached Rp 15 trillion in total, comprising Rp 2.2 trillion in domestic and Rp 12.8 trillion in foreign investment. (kes) [SIGN PETITION BELOW] From the Lakewood Vaad, Agudath Israel, and Igud Hamosdos: Dear Lakewood Residents, You likely have heard that the Lakewood Public School District is facing yet another major budget deficit. To close the deficit the State of NJ proposed a plan to cut 106 teachers, a staggering 22% of the total teachers in the District. Firing 1 of every 5 teachers would decimate the local public schools, and badly hurt public school kids, their families and our entire town. Every child is precious to us whether they attend a public or private school. No citizen can stand silent while children are hurt; as religious Jews we bear extra sensitivity and concern for the plight of children and we are speaking up. We call on our neighbors and fellow citizens of all faiths and backgrounds to speak up, in unison, with us join hands and add your voice to this petition simply add your name on the right side of this page. The proposed cuts would destroy children and families. Classrooms with 50 kids and 1 teacher are unmanageable, illogical and unfair to any child. This would rob the children of Lakewood, many of whom are vulnerable and have meager resources, of their futures. Lakewoods in-classroom spending is already in the bottom 2% in the State and cannot go any lower. The States proposed budget cuts further eliminates all extra-curricular activities, including sports, outings and after-hour clubs for Lakewoods public school kids. This would deny our public school students any healthy social outlets. Many of their parents work long and hard hours, and many lack transportation too. The kids and their parents would suffer badly as a result; such cuts are plain wrong. Lakewoods Taxpayers are already doing all they can to help the kids we pay $3.4 million dollars each year above our Local Fair Share. This is not enough because the State Funding formula has been shortchanging Lakewood for many years. The State itself acknowledges that its Official State Aid Deficit to Lakewood is $19.3 million dollar each year causing massive disruption in the Public Schools. And thats without counting Jewish kids in the formula the State completely ignores their existence. Counting Jewish kids too would compel the State to add tens of millions of dollars in additional annual aid over and above the $19.3 million dollars that our District is denying us each year. We call on the State with a heartfelt plea: dont hurt the kids. Dont fire teachers. Keep classroom size at a reasonable number. Protect extra-curricular activities. We ask nothing special just fund Lakewood as we deserve fairly and aboveboard, without special legislative handouts, loans or favors. As a community we have made many sacrifices for our public school kids and we will continue to do so. We made major sacrifices in our safety busing (commonly called courtesy busing), and no longer receive this vital service from the District nor the Township. We support Lakewood Township, which took over safety busing for public school kids, paid for at our local expense and out of our tax dollars. Our private schools dont receive any other services from the District, unless required by State or Federal Law (commonly called mandated services). We pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes that fund the Township and District, and have long accepted a high local tax burden sacrifices for the children. We recently approved by a landslide, a $34 million dollar bond to fund repairs to the public schools, many of which are nearly 50 years old another major sacrifice for our public school kids. We now ask State officials publicly that which we have been working tirelessly on quietly for many years join us at this most difficult moment and fix the States funding formula that denies our local children the $40 million in annual funding that we deserve. The State can do this easily simply fund the Official State Aid Deficit, and simply stop discriminating against us and start counting Orthodox Jewish children when calculating the State Funding formula. Doing so would properly fund the public schools and would ensure that every child in Lakewood has a bright future. This petition will be delivered to: New Jersey Governor New Jersey State Senate Senator Cory Booker 3 more decision makers [CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION] The following op/ed was written by Christopher Marte, a candidate for City Council in District 1 (the seat currently held by Margaret Chin) The Lo-Down welcomes Lower East Side-relevant submissions from members of our community. We review submissions from candidates for political office on a case-by-case basis. Editorials on this website represent the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial viewpoint of The Lo-Down. Submissions may be sent to: tips@thelodownny.com. These are contentious times that require unity. As our values are challenged on a national scale, we are required to mobilize within our own neighborhoods. We have heard it at the rallies: the people united will never be defeated. In 31 City Council Districts across New York, the people are given an opportunity to unite as a base like no other. Anyone older than 14, regardless of citizenship, can propose and then vote on how at least $1 million of their taxes are spent by their councilmember. In this process, an otherwise voiceless group of residents are politically empowered. Participatory Budgeting projects range from installing clean energy, to renovating parks, to improving technology, to fixing the infrastructure of schools, to strengthening public safety. The people are given an opportunity to spend their own tax dollars, councilmembers are able to fund popular community initiatives with transparent funding, and everyone enjoys the benefits of the programs enacted. Except for those who live in districts where their councilmember chose not to opt into participatory budgeting. Districts like Lower Manhattan (District 1), where political transparency has become the stuff of legends. The diversity of the district and the lack of community engagement creates an environment in which neighbor is pitted against neighbor, demographic against demographic, and any sense of community is immediately dissipated by confusion as to how much the city can provide. Too many residents are led to believe that whether its for funding or services, they must compete with each other. However with proper budgeting, and the assistance of participatory budgeting, there is enough to go around. This false perception of division in the district allows participatory budgeting to be dismissed before it is even attempted. But our community must unite to demand this program, to demand transparency, and to demand an active voice in the Council. Participatory budgeting should not be a point of debate, or painted as a controversial issue. Residents young and old are given a direct voice in government, and anyone who stands against this is standing against democracy in action. Just north of us in City Council District 3, the councilmember fully funded the top 5 proposals voted on by his constituents. People who never engaged in the political process before had their concerns heard and addressed. Now the entire district will have new trees, new AV equipment will be installed in an elementary school, new air conditioning in a library, new arrival times at bus stops, and a new library at a middle school. All needs that the community expressed, all that might have otherwise been overlooked, and all that will serve not only residents of District 3, but anyone who works or visits there. The major critique of PB is that it requires a lot of extra work for a city councilmember and their office. Since the program is not mandatory, our representative sees it as a choice. For a district that has been riddled by corrupt leaders like Sheldon Silver and scandals like Rivington House, a clear path to transparency and good governance isnt an option. It is a necessity. As we are forced to sit back and watch communities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island deliberate and enact participatory budgeting initiatives, I ask my friends and neighbors to take stock of the difference between them and us. Is it because our district is so divided, or is it because we have a representative that divides us? Prime Minister Theresa May has been accused of ignoring Muslim voters in the General Election by scheduling it during Ramadan. Muslim politicians from Labour and the Scottish National Party fear reduced voter turnout among Muslims on June 8th, which falls during the holy month where fasting from dawn to sunset takes place. A polling station sign in north London (Yui Mok/PA) Labours Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South East, said: It is unfortunate that Theresa May has scheduled the election to take place during the holy month of Ramadan. I know this will present challenges to Muslim voters and those who wish to campaign. At best I can only suggest that this did not even feature in her thinking, which is disappointing. She added: It may be that the election falling during Ramadan reduces turnout among Muslims. Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow (Sean Dempsey/PA) And Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said: The fact that the General Election will fall in the middle of Ramadan is not ideal. Holding an election during Ramadan means there could be a disproportionate effect on voter turnout in those constituencies with a sizeable Muslim population. If anyone thinks that their ability to go and vote will be affected, I urge them to register for a postal vote. Humza Yousaf of the SNP (Andrew Cowan/Scottish Parliament/PA) SNP MSP Humza Yousaf, the Scottish Government Minister for Transport and the Islands, also voiced fears that fewer Muslims will vote, adding that you can never really hold an election at a perfect time. He said: I think it would be fair to say that a lot of people in the Muslim community feel that they were certainly not even factored at all into the conversation or the thinking because it will have an impact, I suspect, on turnout. However, the Muslim Council of Britain said it could see no reason why holding the election during Ramadan which this year is expected to be from around May 27th to June 24th should have any impact on Muslims turning up to vote. The group added: There is probably more voter fatigue generally across the country following the extensive recent campaigns in the lead-up to the 2015 general election and the 2016 EU Referendum. Muslim MPs raised questions over the scheduling of the General Election during Ramadan (Danny Lawson/PA) Muslims fasting during Ramadan will go about their normal daily activities and taking time out to cast a vote will have no impact on their choice to do so. Sayed Yousif Al-Khoei OBE, chairman of the Al-Khoei Foundation, a Shia Muslim organisation, said: In general, Ramadan and fasting is not supposed to impede normal life. Its supposed to be a spiritual experience. But for some people, you know, the combination of the hot weather and lack of foods could be an impediment. But the spiritual uplifting of fasting should really make a Muslim more resilient and that should not really be a pretext for not voting, and I encourage everyone to use their right to vote. A defiant sixth-grade student has gained worldwide support after getting her principal to agree to a policy review of her schools unfair and sexist dress code. See the full Instagram post here Molly Neuner, 12, who studies at The King Middle School in Portland, Maine, purposefully violated her schools dress code in order to protest against the banning of girls wearing strappy tops. Portlands district-wide dress policy says schools can prohibit clothes that cause a material and substantial disruption to the school, including thin-strapped tops. Molly says she was told these types of clothes could be a distraction to boys and that was why they were banned. It was following being told this sexist reasoning she was inspired to go to school dressed in a tank top with the message #iamnotadistraction written down her arm. Molly was joined by around 20 other school girls and gained widespread attention on Instagram, where photos of their dress code violation were shared. Christina Neuner, Mollys mother, wrote a powerful Instagram post, in which she denounced how girls like her daughter are taught to dress in certain ways. In it she argues: We need to teach our daughters that their bodies are beautiful and powerful and their own to display or portray in any way they wish,\" adding, \"(we also) need to teach our young, kind, brave sons that they are smart and strong and capable of controlling their own bodies.\" The schools Principal, Caitlin LeClair, has since said: "We plan to take this feedback and use it as an opportunity to have some students and parents input. The dress code policy will officially be reviewed at the end of the year, ubut ntil then the current policy will remain in place. Molly has said shes happy the principal has agreed to a review but wants to make sure they really do it. This is not the first time dress codes have caused controversy and debate. Earlier this month a 17-year-old Texas schoolgirl was told she needed to change because her long sleeve dress was "inappropriate", w hile a Utah school STA Travel is offering 49 return flights to the tropical paradise of Langkawi, Malaysia, each for the incredibly attractive sum of 49. The flash sale begins at 9am today, exclusively at the travel agency's Manchester Deansgate and London Victoria stores, on a first come first served basis - strictly one ticket per person. Anyone who turns up at either store before 9am, but is not one of the first 49 in the queue, will be entered into a raffle for a fiftieth and final 49 ticket. We are very excited to be able to offer these incredible Malaysia Airlines fares to our customers", stated STA Travel's UK manager Tim Fryer. "Langkawi boasts some of the worlds best beaches, wonderful wildlife and marine life and delicious local delicacies. Whether you just want to chill in Langkawi, team your time with a stay in Kuala Lumpur or use Langkawi as the springboard for a longer trip around south-east Asia, our exclusive 49 fare is the perfect way to start your adventure." Many travel enthusiasts have been camping out at both locations from as early as Monday in order to secure their place as one of the fortunate few. However, for those who miss out on the coveted deal, all is not lost, as a further 25 return tickets will be made available at both locations, for the still fantastic price of just 149. Malaysia Airlines' Chief Commerical Officer Arved Nikolaus Von Zur Muehlen expressed how "absolutely thrilled [they are] to be part of this fantastic promotion with STA Travel" - one of the carrier's key global partners. 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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 Tegra to stay on as ice arena consultant, no change to project cost local Every time there is a threat of a government shutdown by either party, our country is losing, said Davis. Each threat of a government shutdown puts our troops and national security at risk, negatively impacts our markets, and jeopardizes our position as a world leader. Im confident that both parties will come together once again to avert a government shutdown but crisis appropriating is not the way to govern. This bill removes that threat. I want Congress to get back to our regular appropriations process and stop massive, year-end spending deals where the choice is vote for this bill or shut down the government. Instead of relying on these deals negotiated by just a few members of Congress, we should be passing each appropriation bill to give every member a say as we go line-by-line through our budget to reduce and reprioritize spending. Davis bill, similar to a Senate version introduced by Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), would create an automatic continuing resolution (CR) for any regular appropriations bill not completed by October 1. After the first 120 days, CR funding would be reduced by one percentage point, and would continue to be reduced by that margin every 90 days without a bill. Text of the legislation can be found here. The End Government Shutdowns Act would: By Walter E. Williams / The Daily Signal - Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Lets take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in todays environmentalists predictions. In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of The Population Bomb, declared that the worlds population would soon outstrip food supplies. When we speak of India's freedom struggle, millions of memories pour into our minds that rekindle our sense of patriotism and pride. One cannot forget the immense sacrifices, bloodshed and emotional and physical turmoil that our freedom fighters have gone through during the freedom struggle of our country. Speaking about freedom fighters, stories related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose continue to interest people even in today's time ever since he died under mysterious circumstance. However, there are numerous untold and never-before-heard stories during the time of Netaji that have been penned down in a latest historical fiction, by Sanjay Chopra and Namita Roy Ghose, titled The Wrong Turn ~ Love and Betrayal in the Time of Netaji. The Wrong Turn is a story that traverses the cities of Calcutta, Singapore, Rangoon and Kohima, caught up in the blaze of World War-II. It is about the clash of four desperate forces as they come together in Kohima to vie for the brightest jewel in the crown ~ India. "Victory will come to those who possess not just the coldest steel but even colder hearts," said Sanjay during the launch of the book. Sanjay Chopra is an airline pilot, author of two short story collections ~ Said and Done and Tailspin Stories. He is married to actress Tisca Chopra. Set in the pre-Independence era, the novel is a sweeping tale of passion, love and betrayal. Debraj, the rakish playboy and scion of a distinguished Calcutta family, and Nishonko, the fiery revolutionary sworn to the cause of the Indian National Army (INA), must not only fight their common enemy, but also for the love of Aditi, the rebel with the healing touch. A haunting tale of love, friendship and betrayal of an entire nation, The Wrong Turn veers inexorably towards a poignant redemption. The compelling narrative of the book keeps the reader gripped till the end and takes one all the way through the significant niceties of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, INA and their battles. It is set in 1944, in Kohima ~ a small, sleepy town in northeast India, when Subhash Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army (INA), along with the Japanese troops, tried to force the British out of India but inexplicably, the tables turn. They fail to succeed in their attempts. However, 70 years later, the British admit that the Battle of Kohima was the greatest battle they had ever fought. Why was Netaji unsuccessful then? Was it then that old Indian curse ~ betrayal? Someone from within Netaji's own ranks? Were there forces other than the British, waiting in the shadows closer to home, who stood to gain even more from the INA's defeat? Or was it just love that irrevocably altered the course of India's destiny? These questions are answered in the book with a riveting storyline that keeps the readers engrossed. Sharing insights about the book, co-author Namita, said, "This was a story waiting to be told. So much about Netaji was smoke and mirrors, partial views foisted on us by the British and other vested interests. Here was a man who was a personal hero, who was part of the lore of my childhood. And here was a chance to set the narrative straight through the lens of a very human yet universal story of love." The book, published by Om Books International, was launched by journalist Barkha Dutt at Zerruco-Kitchen and Bar in the Capital recently. The book is priced at Rs.295 and a must-read for fans of fiction. In a rare incident, a bride in Bihar's Samastipur district refused to marry a dark complexioned groom, saying he was unsuitable for her, a police official said on Thursday. Not expecting anything of this sort, the "baraat" (marriage party) was shocked to hear the girl's flat refusal to accept the boy as her groom. The incident was reported from Sinhma village under the Rosera police station's jurisdiction in Samastipur district, about 100 km from Patna. "The bride refused to marry the dark complexioned groom immediately after the ritual of 'Jaimal' (exchange of garlands between bride and groom) was performed on Wednesday," a local police official said. Kumkum Kumari, in her early 20s, surprised all when she refused to marry groom Indal Kumar on the ground of his dark complexion. After the incident, the groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is not first such case in rural Bihar where the social scales are tilted heavily against women. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, who were illiterate, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past week. "Times seem to have changed for women as several schemes have been launched for their empowerment by the state and central governments," said an elderly villager, who was to attend the marriage ceremony. There are several such cases across the state that go unreported. In rural Bihar, hundreds of weddings take place in the traditionally auspicious marriage season known as "Lagan", which is in progress now. Till a few years ago, in rural Bihar, it was rare for a woman to refuse a groom selected for her by her parents and family. In fact, the reverse was the rule, as the groom or his parents would often walk out of the wedding venue on grounds like inadequate dowry or the bride's education or her complexion. These days, women going for marriage on their own terms is not a rarity even in rural parts of the state. Two days after visuals of Kashmiri school girls pelting stone on the army went viral, the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday arrested separatist leader Asiya Andrabi under the Public Safety Act. Accused of inciting women in the valley to attack security forces, Andrabi was arrested early morning from her residence, sources said. She is alleged to be responsible for many protests against the police and army which involved stone-pelting and disruption of normal life. (With inputs from agencies) Three days after the Supreme Court ruled in T P Senkumar's favour, the Kerala government is yet to reinstate the IPS officer as the state police chief. On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered the Kerala government to restore Senkumar as the Director General of Police after noting that his removal in May last year was "arbitrary". Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has held numerous meetings over the issue since then. On Wednesday, Law Secretary P G Harindranath submitted a report that Senkumar should be appointed without further delay. The Vijayan government removed Senkumar in 2016 after a public outcry over alleged mishandling of a temple fire tragedy and a murder case. The chief minister will also have to find a new post for present DGP Loknath Behra, who replaced Senkumar. Behra is also holding the additional charge of the Vigilance Department after its chief Jacob Thomas and was asked to proceed on leave in March. Senkumar, meanwhile, has written to Chief Secretary Nalini Netto, saying that he should be allowed to rejoin duty. Senkumar, who is set to retire on June 30, dispelled media speculation that he may go on leave after rejoining duty. Instead, he promised to work till the day he retires. Veteran Bollywood actor-turned politician Vinod Khanna, who was suffering from ill health for a long time, passed away in Mumbai on Thursday. He was 70. As the news of his demise spread, his friends and former colleagues took to social media to express their sorrow and condolences. Here are a series of condolence tweets: Prime Minister Narendra Modi "Will always remember Vinod Khanna as a popular actor, dedicated leader & a wonderful human. Pained by his demise. My condolences". M Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister for Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Information & Broadcasting Pained by the sad demise of #VinodKhanna, my colleague in NDA-1 govt, a legendary actor & MP. My condolences to his family. May his soul RIP M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) April 27, 2017 Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Shri #VinodKhanna ji was a great actor and a gentleman politician will miss him Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 27, 2017 Madhur Bhandarkar, Filmmaker India has agreed to help develop the road infrastructure in Sri Lanka's Jaffna region, official sources said on Wednesday. The issue came up for discussion when Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari called on visiting Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Vickramasinghe. "During the discussions, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister invited the Indian government to take up development of three major road stretches Jaffna to Mannar, Mannar to Vavuniya and Dambulla to Tricomalee," a Ministry official said. Gadkari assured Vickramasinghe, who is on a five-day visit to India, full cooperation in "developing world-class infrastructure" in the region. He also suggested that taking up these stretches for development may only be possible with the active support of Sri Lankan agencies on land acquisition and local clearances. Gadkari reiterated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's commitment to India's active support in strengthening bilateral relations. "Once again I am fighting for a cause I believe in supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, innovators and creators," Duffy wrote last week. "Yet, unlike government, when I make a decision here it actually gets implemented immediately. Very satisfying. [House Speaker] Mike Madigan does not have a say in what I do now!" CHICAGO - It's been a year since Dan Duffy left the Illinois State Senate, and, he says, time has flown by. He's continuing public service, but in a different way. Duffy's now the president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA). Duffy launched his new job leading a rally outside Good Morning America in New York Indeed, President Donald Trump declared April Child Abuse Prevention Month to draw attention to and appreciation for healthy families and community workers that help recognize and help families in crisis. "The family is society's most important institution, and its impact on human potential is unmatched by any other influence that government, education, or even community can wield," Trump's proclamation says. "We must promote strong families. By respecting and supporting parents, we will reduce risks and increase the safety and protection critical to our children's happiness and success." Duffy's first year leading the national organization has been successful, and he's proud of it. "Over this past year we have broken all previous fundraising records and have made the difficult decisions necessary to streamline operations," Duffy told donors in a letter last week. "We have established a solid foundation that will prepare us for future growth." Some of the highlights for the past year include: Increased total revenues from all Chapters and Healthy Family America sites nationwide, including all 501c3s, to over $330 million with a combined staff of 6000 team members. Doubled our National Office cash on hand and exceeded our Strategic Plan fundraising goal. Received TOP-RATED charity awards from every major charity oversight organization, including CHARITY NAMIGATOR, with 92 cents of every dollar donated going directly into our programs and services. of every dollar donated going directly into our programs and services. Streamlined Operations, renegotiated contracts and cut our 2016 budgeted expenses by 10 percent. Visited 24 states (Chapters, Healthy Family America sites and state legislatures) to build relationships with staff, donors and key partners. Branded PCAA and Healthy Families America with the identical pinwheel logo, our symbol of great childhoods. Designed, developed and implemented interactive social media sites that have tripled the number of engaged online donors (www.preventchildabuse.org). When Duffy accepted the position at Prevent Child Abuse America after leaving the Illinois Senate, he said there was no better cause for which to fight. Our whole future, as individuals and as a country, is built on a healthy childhood. This position gives me the opportunity to combine all of my past experiences and passions for business, politics and public service," he said. "My goal is to expand our services across the U.S. and help educate every family in America. Looks like the former senator's well on his way to achieving that goal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched the ambitious Udan, a regional connectivity scheme (Udey Desh Ka Har Nagrik) from Shimla to make the air travel affordable to the common man in the country. Holding that his government is laying the foundation of New India, Modi termed the citizens in the middle class and the middle rung cities in the country as the engines of growth for the country in the next decade. He said that his governments policies will focus on these two powers. Our aim is that hawai chappal wale log bhi hawai Jahaz ke sair kar saken, he said after flagging off the Delhi-Shimla flight and the flights for, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video-conferencing. The Udan would provide air connectivity on low cost fares on unserved and remote routes across the country. PM arrived by IAF chopper from Chandigarh despite rainy weather and was received by governor, Acharya Devvrat, chief minister, Virbhadra Singh, Union health minister, JP Nadda and leader of opposition, Prem Kumar Dhumal at the Jubbarhatti airport in Shimla. He was accompanied by Union ministers P Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha. Modi said that earlier it was believed that air travel is meant only for Raja-Maharaja and elite class and even the in the 'logo' of Air India carried picture of maharaja. He said he had raised this issue with Ravindra Pratap Rudy, the then Civil Aviation minister in the Vajpayee government as well. He said that common man caricature of cartoonist Laxman should be incorporated in the logo. Modi said that the youth of India has huge potential and wish taking capacity and given an opportunity, they can change the fate and picture of the country and better connectivity can play a major role. The PM said 70 airports came up in 70 years for commercial operations in the country. But we have a aviation policy and are developing 30 airports in one year, he said. Modi said the air fare had been capped under UDAN. It would now be less than the taxi fare and cut short the travelling hours to minutes, he said. Advising the Aviation Companies to connect Nanded-Amritsar-Patna, Modi said that it would be good commercial proposition as Sikhs from all over the World would travel on this circuit. The PM also laid foundation stone of the Hydro Engineering College (at Bilaspur) with a click from Jubbarhatti. He said the college would help in providing specially trained manpower for Hydro power sector which has vast potential of over 1.5 lakh MW. As a tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, a museum displaying his belongings as well as the currency, arms and other relics of the Indian National Army (INA) should be set up in Kohima, renowned scholars and researchers have demanded. A resolution demanding the setting up of the 'Azad Hind Museum' was adopted on Wednesday at the end of a two-day seminar on "The Battle of Kohima and its impact on Indian Freedom Movement" held at Ruzazho village in Phek district of Nagaland. The group of scholars, researchers, and professors from across the country also demanded that Ruzazho village which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, as Commander of the Indian National Army (INA) had visited during the Second World War be declared a National Heritage village. "It is resolved that an Azad Hind Museum should be set up at Kohima the capital of Nagaland where all relics concerning Netaji and the INA such as weapons, uniforms and flag, etc used by the INA, Azad Hind currency, books and films on the INA should be maintained and displayed," the resolution said. It also demanded that the route taken by the INA be identified in Nagaland and suitable memorial installed at important places such as Jessami, Sangshak, Sangnyu, Sahpao, Lahe, Ruzazho, Chosezu, Viswema, Mao as also places in and around Kohima, where INA freedom fighters fought their battles. The seminar was organised by the Pfutsero Government College with Netaji Subash Chandra Bose Memorial Development Society Nagaland and Chakhesang Students Union, Phek as co-organisers. (With inputs from agencies) Three jawans of the Indian Army, including an officer and a JCO, were martyred in a suicide terrorist attack at an Army camp in the wee hours on Thursday at Kupwara, near the Line of Control (LOC) in North Kashmir. Two terrorists were also killed while one is suspected to have escaped. Five soldiers were wounded, three seriously, in the attack and they were flown in a helicopter to the military hospital at Srinagar for treatment. One stone pelter is reported to have been killed in clashes as security forces fired gun shots to scare away a mob that pelted stones to disrupt the combing operation in the area to trace a terrorist suspected to have escaped. However, official confirmation to loss of life of the civilian was awaited. The martyred soldiers have been identified as Captain Ayush Yadav of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Subedar Bhoop Singh Gujjar, a resident of Dausa in Rajasthan and Naik Bhoota Venkata Ramanna, resident of Vizag in Andhra Pradesh. This first terrorist attack of the year on the army camp at Panzgam in Kupwara came early in the morning at 4.30 am on the pattern of the attack at the military camp at Uri last year. The terrorists managed to breach the double fence and reach the officers quarters where Captain Yadav lost his life in the encounter. The terrorist attack has come a day after the high level meeting of the Unified Command in which Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti directed the security forces to exercise restraint while dealing with such situations and avoid collateral damage. During search of the area three AK47 assault rifles were recovered as a result of which the troops suspected that the third terrorist might have escaped. A massive search operation was launched in the area but residents of the nearby villages reportedly disrupted the operation by pelting stones and raising slogans. They were demanding that bodies of the slain terrorists be handed over to them for burial. The army camp is about 100 kms away from Srinagar and lies on an infiltration route of terrorists from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK). It is suspected that the terrorists infiltrated through the LOC as snow at the high passes has started melting in the summer. Reports said that the terrorists managed to enter the army camp by breaching the fence at the rear. Spraying bullets at the soldiers sleeping at that time, the terrorists straight reached the officers residential complex. A quick reaction team rushed there and prevented loss of more lives. During search, nine magazines, handgrenades, 2 GPS devices, a matrix sheet and a smart phone were recovered. Similar pattern was witnessed in the three terrorist attacks at army installations at Pathankot, Uri and Nagrota last year when 19 soldiers were martyred at Uri, 7 at Nagrota and 6 at the IAF base at Pathankot. What was disturbing this morning was that a mob started pelting stones and brickbats at the army personnel to divert their attention and provide an opportunity to the terrorists to escape and also to disrupt movement of the army convoy to the site of terror attack. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday expressed concern over the attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir and said such attacks must be met with strategic and decisive action. "Repeated terrorist attacks, especially on Army camps, is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic and decisive action," Gandhi tweeted. "My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack," he added. Three Army men and two militants were killed on Thursday in an attack on an Army camp in the Kashmir Valley's Kupwara district. To make air travel accessible to citizens in regionally important areas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first UDAN flight under Regional Connectivity Scheme in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Three initial flights have been launched in three routes, namely, Shimla-Delhi, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad. The scheme will not only boost regional connectivity but will also provide low-cost air tickets to customers. Here is a list of all that you need to know about the maiden scheme. 1. The Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) scheme was declared by the Union Civil Aviation Ministry in October 2016. 2. Under this scheme, airfare for 1-hour journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30-minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500. 3. At present, the plan is to connect 27 served, 12 underserved and 31 unserved airports across the country. Some of the inactive airports that have been selected include Shimla, Bikaner, Agra, Gwalior, Rourkela, Kadapa, Jharsuguda, Vidyanagar, Burnpur, Kullu, Diu, Mysore, Shillong, Jagdalpur, Salem, Utkela, and Hosur. 4. The airlines selected in the first round include SpiceJet, Air India subsidiary Alliance Air and regional airlines such as Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha Aviation. 5. Of the 70 airports to be covered under the scheme, 24 airports are in the west, 17 in north, 11 in south, 12 in east and 6 in Northeast India. India is emerging globally with a paradigm shift in the market economy. For those interested in shopping for luxury jewellery from the comfort of their home, heres something to look forward to. Bengalurus BlueStone.com, the countrys largest online jewellery brand, has a high penetration in West Bengal with a wide reach in major towns of North Bengal. The online global group unveiled its novel traditional jewellery collections Nava and B-Iconic in Kolkata on the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya. The Indian jewellery business is the largest and fastest-growing market in the country. When it comes to the jewellery groups leading markets in India, West Bengal ranks in the seventh position and Kolkata occupies the sixth position. Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, founder and chief executive officer, BlueStone.com, said, We present the most convenient way for luxury shoppers to buy jewellery online from the comfort of their home and customers are spoilt for choice with our amazing collections. West Bengal forms our key pillar and our customers are young women within the age group of 28 to 34 years. Our jewellery brand caters to 130 cities and major towns in West Bengal and the fast moving jewellery items are gold leaf earring and the circa pendant. Keeping with fast-changing fashion trends, the groups Nava collection comprises antiquethemed jewellery with the recreation of the navaratnas through poetic eyes depicting the architectural grandeur of Hampi. The B-Iconic collection involves beautifully-crafted jewellery with intricate designs based on gold and pearls and is a tribute to the groups logo making a powerful fashion statement. Kushawa said, We have a presence across 18 cities of India where customers have the option for free trail of jewellery items at home. We have a robust market in major cities of West Bengal including Kolkata, Howrah, 24 Parganas, Siliguri and Durgapur. Even customers from remote corners of the state like Nandigram and Hasimara, a miniature town in Alipur Duar district in North Bengal in the vicinity of Bhutan border, have embraced our jewellery products that are very affordable starting Rs 5,000. The manufacturing facility of the group is in Mumbai and the speciality in design makes the jewellery items stand off from others. We believe in creating jewellery that can be worn every day. We add nearly 250 new designs every month. There are embellished jewellery stuff that serve as wedding collections. Our online jewellery business in West Bengal is around 42 per cent and our market share in North Bengal is quite minuscule. But our group has posted around 70 per cent growth in revenue in West Bengal last year, further said Kushwaha. The online jewellery firm has forayed into all the major towns of North Bengal like Siliguri, Malda, Darjeeling, Cooch Behar and Gangtok in Sikkim. Kushwaha said, We hope there would be around a three per cent growth in the online jewellery business in Bengal in the next five years. The post-Brexit scenario is now unfolding in the UK. After the drama and the shock of the vote to leave EU, the process of withdrawal is now beginning to take shape, and with the UK Parliament having agreed that the legislative procedures required for leaving the EU can commence, a stepby-step progress to a new destiny for the UK, and also for EU, is now under way. Experts envisage the need for more than a decade of painstaking dismantling of the political and economic structures that bind the UK to its erstwhile partners in EU. Creating these structures in the first instance was a most challenging task and European integration required the longdrawn-out labours of a highly skilled, multi-national army of officials comprising the formidable EU bureaucracy; undoing what they had worked so hard to put together may prove a no less onerous task. To make matters more difficult, this is no 'velvet divorce' in the making; EU does not seem inclined to make it easy for the UK by permitting a simplified exit, and on the contrary it may well be that every clause of the existing documents will come under scrutiny as multiple voices are raised in deciding what, and how much, is entailed in the smallest rescinding of earlier commitments. While this process endures, the great energies of Europe, historic fount of some of the most momentous initiatives and ideas, are likely to be directed inwards, to the detriment of the European role in the wider world. There could be further complications as EU deals with proposals to preserve some of its features, such as the search for a common foreign policy. This particular quest never achieved as much as some of its advocates demanded: the EU flies a common flag in places like New Delhi but major entities like the UK, while part of the structure of a common EU foreign policy have simultaneously retained their individual international identities and diplomatic traditions. Thus while overall foreign policy goals may be shared by the EU as a whole, differences between members could reemerge and a major development like the departure of the UK could affect the cohesion of the group. One outcome could be that more room would be left for country initiatives, against the earlier trend of greater policy coordination within EU. It is notable that as circumstances change and its relationship with EU has perforce to take a different shape, the UK has become active in searching for alternative partners outside Europe and EU. It has made a special effort to reach out to India, aiming to revive old associations that were once an important part of India's engagements abroad when all roads led through London. Nowadays that sense of closeness has given way to more critical evaluation of their respective interests but even so India continues to find it relatively straightforward to deal with the UK and it is no great struggle for the two countries to develop mutual understanding and cooperation on a wide range of issues. Economic relations tend to top the agenda at high-level meetings among leaders, and there is a healthy process of exchange between them. Thus when UK PM Theresa May came to Delhi a few weeks ago she was able to look at a satisfactory economic relationship that was set to grow steadily in years ahead, with ambitious targets for the future. The bilateral economic tie has always been strong and is not likely to be affected adversely by Brexit. A particular area of interest is Indian investment in the British economy, a relatively recent phenomenon, and several high profile deals over the last few years have established India as one of the important investors in the UK market: currently it is the third largest and the UK is the largest investor in India from the G-20. This is therefore a time in India-UK ties when relations are proceeding steadily across the board; politically there are few unsettling problems, and economic exchanges are doing well. The issues that have recently drawn attention and agitate the media derive largely from efforts to tidy up the bilateral legacy, matters like ownership of the Kohinoor and other historical issues, which are of absorbing interest but cannot be regarded as the pivot of the relationship. UK is making a considerable effort to revive the special character of its ties with India, and it is not insignificant that Mrs. Theresa May chose India for her first official visit as Prime Minister. A useful outcome of her journey was the impetus it gave to revival of the regular exchange of students that has recently been under strain owing to the loss of privileged entry from which Indian students once benefited, so they now often go elsewhere. Mrs. May's visit should bring a new spirit to relations and help revive the strategic and security dialogue that has been in the doldrums for some time. As for the impending elections, initial indications are that Mrs May's Conservative party will be returned with a good majority. The decision to dissolve and call for a general election thus seems, at this juncture, to be a sound one so far as the ruling party is concerned. Many political commentators seem to be of the view that the Leader of the UK Opposition Mr. Corbyn has not established himself as a potential leader of his country and will be hard pressed to mount a challenge to the present leadership. For India, both sides can provide very suitable partners: if the Conservatives tighten the rules on immigration to India's disadvantage, they are also more business-friendly, and both they and Labour are equally open and responsive to India. The problems to be anticipated as the UK heads for the polls are not in the bilateral sphere so much as in the impact of developments elsewhere, especially in Europe. Brexit has opened up adverse possibilities that can affect the stability and progress of the UK itself. The greatest uncertainty is attached to the integrity of the UK and the continuance in one political frame of its sundry components. Scotland's restiveness is well documented, and though they will no doubt reflect carefully before taking any irrevocable step, the Scots have their own aspirations that could shake the structure of the UK. All this points to a period of uncertainty in the affairs of our ancient associate. The links between the two countries are extensive and cannot be easily set aside, and they still have much to gain from each other. As friend and well-wisher, India would certainly like to see the UK emerge from its current uncertainties and once more play the part of a strong and influential factor on the world stage. The writer is Indias former Foreign Secretary. Iam a good teacher, as I do not scold or punish my students. If they do not understand something then I explain it to them, declared a four-year-old who was acting out the role of a teacher; the students were his parents. I always observe children play with great interest. It gives me an opportunity to learn how they think and feel about various issues affecting their lives. While observing the child, it occurred to me that even before attending school, he had developed an understanding about the qualities that made a good teacher. I was also sad to note that the idea of punishment had already entered his life at such a young age! Almost a billion 2-14 year olds were physically punished at home last month. (Source: UNICEF, 2014, quoted in Ending Legalised Violence Against Children, Global Progress Report 2016.) Violent discipline is the most common form of violence against children. Corporal punishment kills thousands of children across the world each year and injures millions more. According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2012-2013 (report published in 2015), 82.3 per cent children (1- 14 years) in Bangladesh experienced psychological aggression or physical punishment during the last one month. In most cases, children are punished by their parents, teachers, employers and caregivers in the name of discipline. There is overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment causes direct physical harm to children, and negatively impacts their psychological and physical health, education and cognitive development in the short as well as long run. This also increases aggression in children and is linked with violence in intimate relationships and inequitable gender attitudes. Corporal punishment of children increases the likelihood of perpetrating and experiencing violence as an adult. So if we continue to allow corporal punishment of children then it will become impossible to break the cycle of violence in our society. Fifty-two states have prohibited all corporal punishment of children, including in the family. Bangladesh is not yet included in the list. But we should be if we are truly serious about childrens rights. A new law prohibiting corporal punishment in all settings (homes, schools, workplace, institutions including alternative care arrangements, etc.) should be enacted. Law reform must be accompanied by awareness raising and public education to ensure knowledge of childrens rights among children and adults, which should include respect for their human dignity, physical integrity and protection from all forms of violence including corporal punishment. Why is it important to prohibit all corporal punishment of children? Here are several strong reasons: children have a fundamental human right to legal protection from violent punishment; laws which allow physical punishment of children are discriminatory and breach childrens right to equality under the law. Sustainable Development Goals recognise that achieving the goal of peace and security must involve ending all forms of violence against children, and this includes ending corporal punishment; no child protection system can be effective while the law fails to prohibit corporal punishment of children. Any initiative on full legal prohibition of corporal punishment is met with resistance by adults (parents, teachers, community members, policy makers etc.). Often we hear parents from various socio-economic backgrounds say that one has to use punishment to discipline children. There are misconceptions among parents, teachers and caregivers that corporal punishment teaches children how to behave. In reality, this increases anti-social behaviour, damages family relationships, and it is less likely that children learn the lessons adults want them to learn. When parents hit their children in the name of discipline, children learn to behave only to avoid punishment, but they do not internalise why that behaviour should be avoided. So it is very likely that they will repeat it. This shows corporal punishment does not work. Alternatively Positive Discipline has proven to be an effective parenting technique. I was hit as a child by my parents, but I turned out to be fine. This is the most common remark made during discussions on prohibiting all corporal punishment. Nobody knows how they would have turned out if their parents had never hit or humiliated them. Many people deny the hurt they experienced when the adults whom they trusted the most thought they could punish them using brute force. There is no need to blame previous generations for this; they behaved according to the culture of their time. But we cannot keep doing something just because it has been done before, especially when we now know that the practice is wrong and hurts human dignity. Some argue that many parents are bringing up their children in challenging conditions, and teachers are often under stress from overcrowding and lack of resources, and thus, they often resort to corporal punishment as the last resort. This argument reflects the lower status of children in our society and the disadvantageous position they are in due to the existing power dynamics with adults. Corporal punishment is often an outlet for adults frustrations in their personal and professional lives rather than an attempt to educate children. In many homes and institutions, adults need more resources and support. But hitting children is never acceptable even when adults face difficulties. We have recently come across cases where people have killed, tortured, or abducted children in order to take revenge on an adult family member. There are several concerns with the argument that adults hit children when they are stressed out. Firstly, we never justify hitting any adult when we have some problems in our lives. Why should this be justified in case of children? If we accept this then we risk creating a society where children become more vulnerable to violence, and their rights are being seriously violated. Let us treat children with respect and dignity and end the legal and social acceptance of corporal punishment. Let us learn to practice Positive Discipline. Isnt it high time that we stop tolerating violence against children? The Daily Star/ANN. Given the strategic stakes and political symbolism, Narendra Modis first prime ministerial visit to Israel is logically overdue, though he had visited the country as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. On the contrary, he has charmingly courted the Arab states by visiting and signing major deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahan, was the Chief Guest at this years Republic Day parade. All this is in addition to the sectarian other in the region ~ Iran ~ with whom the geopolitical alignment on the Chabahar port, energy and Afghanistan, were deftly managed with some tightrope diplomacy, without offending Arab or Israeli sensibilities. Considering the relatively recent formal friendship of the Indo-Israeli framework (full-fledged Embassies opened in 1992), the 25-year journey has witnessed a frenetic pace of mutually-beneficial transactions that were artificially stifled owing to Indias moral and genealogical conundrum of reconciling with a state, created on the basis of a religion. Israel describes itself as a Jewish and democratic state. The other factor is the political and psychological impact on the Indian Muslims on the sensitive issue of Palestine. Civilian trade with Israel is now $5 billion annually and in the ultra-sensitive defence sector, India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weaponry and wares. The implicit trust in the IndoIsraeli equation affords itself to strategic cooperation in intelligence, technology-sharing and joint development of military platforms. Recently, a Rs 17,000 crore deal between DRDO and IAI for joint development of medium-range surface-to-air missile, MR-SAM, was cleared by the cabinet committee on security. Clearly, there is a certain acceptance and understanding of Indias occasional ambivalence towards Israel, and the same is counter-rationalised and contextualized in Tel Aviv as Indias own domestic and historical compulsions. Realpolitik ensures the continuum of expansion in the Indo-Israeli equation. . A healthy and logical geopolitical alignment in the Indo-Israeli framework, overrides Indias historical and moral commitment towards Palestine. But, for all its hard-nosed realpolitik, Israel is not beyond the sensitivities of symbolism. From permanently downgrading its diplomatic ties with New Zealand and Senegal for co-sponsoring anti-settlement resolutions in the United Nations Security Council, to chiding President Obama for a gangup in abstaining from the voting at the UN, to vociferously supporting the ultra-divisive move of shifting the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ~ Israel reacts ferociously against sovereign moves that signify antiIsraeli intent, even if it is without any punitive bite or impact, by attaching a huge value to these symbolic moves. This has been the typical Israeli-Palestinian narrative, where the moves of third countries are keenly watched, analysed and decoded for a for or against verdict. Thus, India is among the rare countries that has managed a certain ambiguous balance and sensitivity towards both Israeli and Palestinian causes, without offending the other. Against this backdrop, the scheduled summer visit of Prime Minister Modi to Israel ~ but not to Palestine ~ ostensibly to dehyphenate the equation is either naive or brazen. In a deeply hyphenated relationship (IndoPak), a visit by the US President to either Delhi or Islamabad, but not to the other, acquires adjectives beyond naivety and innocence. It is clearly tantamount to deliberate political messaging. Similarly, the equally hyphenated Israeli-Palestinian reality was historically respected and the accompanying dignity of affording dual visits to both countries ensured visits to the region of the Biblical lands. Diplomacy ought to be dynamic and not confined to the ghosts of the past. Yet it needs a simple net gain or net loss calculation to ascertain the prudence of either changing or retaining the historical narrative and tradition. Just as the reason to visit both Israel and Palestine simultaneously on a visit to the region was essentially political, now the reason to not go, would similarly be deciphered to be even more political, and not just administrative. The delicate counterpoise of subsequently hosting the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, would be a post-facto balm and perhaps inadequate, especially given the hyper-sensitivity of the polarised times. The Indian governments existing formula in the Middle East has been successful. The trick has been to engage equally with all regional stakeholders i.e. Arabs, Israelis and the Iranians separately, without offending any other. But, Palestine goes beyond a territorial dispute, it is an emotional and strictly hyphenated issue with Israel as far as the global ummah is concerned. It goes beyond sovereign insularities. By de-hyphenating Palestine during this visit, the net gains of playing to the extreme right-wing in the Zionist galleries or even domestically, just does not add up to the potential counter-reaction, both domestically and externally. Palestine has been relegated to the relative backbenches of the Middle Eastern saga with the other self-imploding instincts and sectarian angularities dominating the modern narrative. Yet, Palestine is probably the only issue that all warring factions in the ummah agree upon, as it overcomes the sectarian, theological and political divides that are otherwise tearing apart the region. India, with its own moral high-ground of respecting the Palestinian cause and yet normalising relations with Israel is ensuring a judicious middlepath that works to our commercial, security and moral advantage. Linking Palestinian de-hyphenation with the questionable and duplicitous antecedents of the OIC resolutions on Kashmir will invariably prop up justification of the move, as yet another show of diplomatic muscularity of the incumbent government. However, this does not work to our advantage in the long run. India needs to mesh dignified morality with prudent necessity. The quintessential Indian moment was the Republic Day parade on 26 January 2017, when an Arab leader poignantly applauded the late Havildar Hangpan Dada for fighting terrorists in Kashmir and later clapping simultaneously at the ironical sight of the Arab military contingent walking down Rajpath, only to be followed by weaponry and wares on display, some of them manufactured by Israel. This is the ideal normal that works to Indias advantage without the unnecessary shenanigans and posturings of choosing one over the other. Indias own pluralistic, moralistic and diplomatic instincts will be severely tested in the forthcoming years, as it works towards achieving a permanent seat in the Security Council. This will call for persisting with the winning formula and not succumbing to the more internal and political temptations of looking more decisive. The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands & Puducherry. On the ground there would be few linkages between the raging insurgencies in the Red Corridor across central India and the unrest ~ some deem it an uprising ~ in the Kashmir Valley. The commonality lies in the approach of government to focus on the military aspect of counter-measures, rather than seek any resolution of core issues that have cemented public resentment of the state. The present NDA government cannot explain away the deteriorating situations as inherited problems: it is about to celebrate its third year in office ~ time enough to have taken initiatives to reverse the ground-situation and restore the credibility of the administration. That kind of credibility will not be established by merely reinforcing the might of the state and breaking the back of the insurgencies: if there is a single lesson for Modi sarkar to learn from the last three years, it is that muscle will not suffice. It could actually misfire and prove counter-productive, highlighting the validity of the old saying it is easier to wage war than fight for peace. There is a sickening familiarity to the ambush and killing of 25 men of the CRPF in Sukma. Having tracked the movement of the paramilitary squad on duty to facilitate the construction of a road through the Maoist heartland, over 300 insurgents trapped one section of jawans, fired at them from all directions, possibly having set up booby-traps in spots where the troopers might seek cover. The reds made off with the communications apparatus, so that when the other squad of troopers sought out their mates they walked into a firestorm. There was little coordination with the local police, which is presumed to have intelligence on the terrain. All that the CRPF could say for itself was that it responded robustly, inflicting heavy casualties ~ small comfort that. The real tragedy is that from the Prime Minister downwards all talk centres around making the Maoists pay, but there are no signs of efforts at choking off their supply of weapons and munitions. And not even a stray thought on addressing the basic issue of alienation of tribal lands. The violence is cyclical: the troopers strive for area-domination, than an ambush like Sukma or Dantewada tilts the scales in the other direction. It is not insignificant that in her latest interaction with Mr Narendra Modi, the chief minister of J&K called for a revival of the policy favoured by the other NDA Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee: the present government regurgitates his words but is diffident about emulating his actions. The prevailing set-up condemns the pacifist approach, projects it as a sign of being soft. Yet whose government had the guts to defy international pressure and exercise the nuclear option? A new Republican student association thrives in downtown Chicago at the John Marshall Law School (JMLS). Its headed by Joe Dusek, a second-year law student. Dusek is not your typical student as he is a college math professor at Triton College with a Ph.D. in applied statistics from Loyola University. He has been active in local politics for years trying to elect Republican candidates in Cook County. The JMLS Republican Student Association hosted two events this last semester. On March 28, 2017, the group welcomed Judge James Allegretti as its inaugural speaker. Judge Allegretti is a 1978 JMLS alumnus and was one of just two Republicans elected to the bench in Cook County last November. On April 17, 2017, Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, a 1998 JMLS alumnae, addressed the association and other guests. Dusek said, We were very pleased with the turn out for both events having students from the University of Chicago, IIT-Kent and Loyola schools of law attend, along with representatives from the Chicago Young Republicans and the Chicago Republican Womens Network. Duseks goal is to one day host a countywide Republican student association event. Whats next for the JMLS Republican student association? Dusek was coy with his answer to that question, but promised even more exciting guests for the 2017/2018 academic year. To be added to the groups email list, write republicans@jmls.edu. Mark Weyermuller, Sandee Geringer, Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Sanguinetti, Joe Dusek It was then Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda who brought the question of Hindi to the fore.This time, it is Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju who has done so. Many people in Tamil Nadu then immolated themselves alive to register their protest. Thank god it has not come to that stage yet. Nanda had advised Central government departments to write notes on the files in Hindi to express their opinion. The latest is that DMK leader M.K. Stalin has accused the Centre of trying to relegate people who dont speak Hindi to second-class citizens and of pushing the nation into becoming Hindia. The controversy had been generated after President Pranab Mukherjee accepted the recommendation of the Committee of Parliament on Official Language that all dignitaries, including the President and ministers, especially those who can read and speak Hindi, may be requested to give their speeches or statements in Hindi only. The President has accepted several other recommendations, including making announcements on board aircraft in Hindi followed by English. However, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu has said the allegation that Hindi was being imposed is completely false and the government has no intention of imposing any language, particularly Hindi, on anyone. The sharp reaction by leaders, particularly Stalin, indicates that at least Tamil Nadu is not yet ready to switch over. The issue is several decades old and yet it has not found any satisfactory solution. The nonHindi speaking states repeat Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus assurance that the switch over to Hindi from English will take place only when the non-Hindi speaking people say that they are ready for it. His categorical statement disappointed Hindi fanatics but the nation on the whole heaved a sigh of relief that India had retrieved itself from the brink. The anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in the then Madras state where college students demonstrated against the switch over in 1965. Soon after, a full-scale riot broke out in Madurai sparking off a minor altercation between agitating students and Congress Party members. The riots spread all over the state and continued unabated for a couple of months. They were marked by acts of violence, arson, looting, police firing and lathi charges. The then ruling Congress in the state had to call in paramilitary forces to quell the agitation. But their involvement resulted in deaths of 70-odd people including some policemen. To normalise the situation, Prime Minister Shastri reiterated Nehrus assurance that English would continue to be used as the official language as long as the non-Hindi speaking states wanted. The riots subsided after Shastris promise, as did the student agitation. But then the agitation had led to major political changes in the state. The DMK captured power in the 1967 assembly elections and thereafter the Congress never came to power in Tamil Nadu. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism of the Indian Republic. There were also two similar but smaller agitations in 1968 and 1986 which had varying degrees of success. In fact, within the very first fortnight of Prime Minister Narendra Modis regime, Central government offices had received a circular that Hindi should be used on social media. This was an attempt to enter through the back door. The non-Hindi speaking states spotted the furtive move and protested against it. New Delhi readily withdrew its step and declared that the circular was meant only for the Hindi-speaking states. The latest statement by Home Minister Rijiju has only rekindled the fears of non-Hindi speaking people. And they are afraid of what may happen tomorrow. I am convinced that Modis government is guided, if not goaded, by the Hindi chauvinists. The BJP has several liberal leaders who realise that the pace of switch over to Hindi would have to be slow, keeping in mind unity and diversity. Apparently, they do not have much say. The India of today is very different from what it was 50 years ago, with each linguistic group asserting its identity. The turmoil during the States Reorganisation process should be a warning. The idea of India can be jeopardised. The entire fabric can get torn if the sensitivities of the people are not allayed. What is the hurry? A few more decades wait is a small price to pay for preserving the nations cohesion. India has gone through large linguistic riots in the late 1950s and early 1960s following the Home Ministry instructions to different departments to make preparations for a switchover from English to Hindi as laid down in the Constitution. I wish this bilingualism should continue without anyone tinkering with it. But then Modis men seem to be hastening the process without considering the sentiments of non-Hindi speaking people. The government wants to restrict the use of English to certain fields. Yet, they realise that their haste can tell upon the countrys unity. The non-Hindi speaking states, particularly Tamil Nadu, have accepted the Constitutional provision that Hindi is the Indian Unions language. But they want time to learn it and come up to the standards of people living in the Hindi belt like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan. No doubt, Modi feels at home with Hindi and his sweep in elections is primarily because of the campaign he led in Hindi, somewhat Sanskritised for northern Indians. But he should remember Nehrus promise made in 1963 that both Hindi and English would continue to be the link languages for administration throughout the country. Nehru did not fix any deadline for the exclusive use of Hindi. Heritage is linked with languages and therefore leaders all over the country will have to devise ways and means whereby regional languages get succour. Without a long-term plan to reinvigorate them, some regional languages would fall by the wayside as the days go by. How many regional languages will survive 50 years hence is anybodys guess. The writer is a noted journalist columnist and commentator. Before Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg earned the sobriquet of Ink Street it was Urdu Bazar in the Jama Masjid area that enjoyed that status as it existed since Mughal times. There were papers like the Delhi gazette, the Moffusilite and the Morning Post (to quote Narayani Gupta) and then Master Ram Chandra, who edited two of Delhi's earliest Urdu newspapers ~ the Fawaid-al- Nazarin and the Qiran-us-Sa'adain, besides translating Macaulay's Minute on Education, which advocated the English medium. Much before the 1857 uprising the Urdu Press was abuzz with rumours of an imminent oubreak against the British. To add to the din there was the Zia-ul Akbar and Maulvi Nasir Ali's three newspapers ~ Nusratul- Islam, Nusrat-ul-Akbar and Mihir-ul-Islam, which advocated exposure of beef for sale. "That was after the Multan disturbances on cow slaughter". The Punjab government, which ruled Delhi, banned cattle slaughter in the city and the shops selling meat in Kashmere Gate, Mori Gate and Phatak Habsh Khan were closed and the trade transferred to Mor Sarai, says Gupta. That shows how the local press influenced government policy. After the Capital was transferred to Delhi, the Calcutta papers, like The Statesman, descended from William Carey's Friend of India and The Englishman, began opening branch offices here, but the leader of Allahbad, the Pioneer, and National Herald stayed put in UP (United Provinces) and influenced public opinion in Delhi all the same through the writings of doyens like C Y Chinatamani, Rama Rao amd later M Chhalapathi Rau (Magnus), though the Hindustan Timeshad started publication in the city in 1924, followed by the Times of India office at 10 Daryaganj, Indian Express in Mori Gate and Aljamiat from Gali Qasim Jan. The Moffusilite threw up such moffusil correspondents as Fred Ellis and T Smith and with them Pandit Rajnath Kunzru and Nawab Faiyaz Khan, who graduated in Journalism from California University. Among the Englishmen active in Delhi were Stateman'sJames Cowley, who introduced the concept of a weekly Notebook, and resident editor Ian Stephen, who cycled all the way to Maulana Azad's house on a summer afternoon, wearing a vest, khaki shorts and wooden khadons, and managed to interview him despite communication problems. Then there were editors like Arthur Moore, who had to go back to London after taking up the cause of Indian Independence and Malcolm Muggeridge, who operated from Simla in summer, where he befriended Amrita Sher-gil and later complained of VD and exhaustion. The names of editors like Evan Charlton and Philip Crosland also need mention as Delhiwallah journalists. Through their encouragement came up Prem Bhatia, Pran Chopra, Kishan Bhatia, Mahesh Chandra and S Nihal Singh. The last named travelled with the entourage of Queen Elizabeth II in the 1960s right up to Peshawar and the land of Kipling's Gungadin, to write about Chappali kababs. There was also M L Kotru, who had taken over as Chief Reporter from N N Rana and was lauded as the best feature writer. And his successor R K Raju, who went with wife Bula all the way to Kenya to lay flowers on Jim Corbett's grave, with the memorable epitaph: Until daybreak and the shadows flee away". Of greater note and fame were: the Mahatma's son Devdas Gandhi, S Moolgaonkar, Frank Moraes, Khushwant Singh, Hamdi Bey, Chanchal Sarkar, Shamlal, B G Verghese, Kuldip Nayar, S C Kala and D C Kala. (The former's grand daughter, Leher Kala still writes a trendy weekly column, like Nayar). Then there was Uncle Atkinson, who was murdered by gay cycle mechanincs when Edata Narayan was editing Patriot. Some other names have faded from memory (mutatis mutandi). As for Urdu Bazar, now it is mostly famous for books which fire the imagnation. You can buy the works of any Urdu poet here, be it Mir Taqi Mir, Zauq, Ghalib, Momin, Zafar, Iqbal, Josh, Jigar, Firaq, Maikash, Faiz or the less well-known ones. The shops are stacked with them. You name the "shair" and you get the book you want, pretty cheap, as even M F Husain realised. The bazaar is unique for perhaps nowhere else would you find so many rare Urdu books available easily. The people who sell them are learned in their own way and can recite line and verse from any "shair", who made his mark. They have acquired this mastery over the years, starting off as apprentices in their hereditary shops with beardless chins and then maturing with fullgrown beards. Walk into any shop and you'll find them sizing you up with glasses perched over their nosetips, people who speak a language so refined and cultured that you begin to feel a rustic in front of them and reach the unsettling conclusion that what you have been speaking for years is some coarse variation of the actual tongue. It's like Josh taking a budding votary of the Muse in Delhi to task for pronouncing "untees" (29) as "unatees" which means one less than "tees" (30). He attributed it to the Punjabi influence. But Urdu Bazar is not only books and couplets, quoted to suit any situation. It's much more. It is also kabab and fried chicken stalls and paan, milk, and tea shops, where people discuss the daily happenings. And in the evening it is the rendezvous of vendors, who sell cool kheer, chamcham and rabri. It is also the stink from the chicken and fish shops, which gets smothered in the fragrance of "gajras" sold for milady's hairdo, and the perfume of attar,khas and raat-ki-rani that migles with the smell of chameli and agarbattis. In the 1960s, after the last namaaz had been said and the ongawallahs had lit dry grass to fend off the mosquitoes, one saw the solitary figure of Mir Mushtaq Ahmed looking down from the balcony of his old house ~ before a livelong day had been gathered into the vast mantle of the night. When one occupied a room in Naaz Hotel, just behind the Jama Masjid long ago, one heard from the waiters that M F Husain used to stay there earlier on a monthly basis. He spent most of his time painting steet scenes of the Walled City and in the evening went for a barefoot walk around the area (a practice he continued even after moving to Jangpura). He would go via the new Meena Bazar in Azad Park (then under construction) to the mazar of Sheikh Kalimullah Jehanabadi, linger to hear snatches of the daily qawwali, then return through the fish market, stopping at the shrine of Hare Bhare and his disciple, Sarmad Shaheed, where he would browse through Urdu books at a small stall run by a young mullaji. From there Husain would usually go to Flora Restaurant, then famous for shammi kababs, or to Karim's, where mince samosas were sold, besides seekh kababs before dinner time. Finally, he would go home with some books he had bought on his evening round under his arm. Another one looking for Urdu books and magazines was Chacha Niyaz Haider, a Shia playwright and novelist who, though always short of money, could manage to get some on credit. He did repay later, after borrowing from journalist Saeed Naqvi, then working for The Statesman, besides persuading him to give an extra Rs 5 to buy pint of rum. When Ghulam Rabbani Taban, the late Urdu poet, came from Basti Nizamuddin, he also spent some time looking for books, newspapers and magazines in Urdu Bazar. He used to write under the psedonym of "Farchat" while a student of MA English Literature at St John's College, Agra (favourite pupil of Prof Suraj Prasad, head of department) and once made Sarojini Naidu roll on the stage when he mimicked the cock-crow to signify that morning had come and it was time for the all-night mushaira to end. With maturity he began writing as "Taban" but older folk still preferred his tongue in check verses recited as "Farchakt". All this comes to mind when one visits UrduBazar, once Delhi's Fleet Street before English newspapers gave that name to Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. Twitter's decision to block the British police and intelligence agencies from accessing data to identify terrorist plots has evoked criticism from the government. To ensure that its data is not used for surveillance, the micro-blogging site blocked the access to key streams of information on April 25 that is used by police and M15 to identify potential threats. "We are protesting this decision. We are in talks with Twitter on getting access to this data," The Telegraph quoted a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, as saying. The spokesman also called for other social media companies to be a part of government's fight against terrorism. According to reports, government had paid a third-party company for a service that tracked terms related to potential terror attacks before this was blocked by Twitter cutting off access to its API. This is not, however, for the first time that Twitter has taken a tough stance against a government's surveillance plan using social media data. In December 2016, the social media site blocked US law enforcement agencies from accessing real-time data through a deal with Dataminr. This decision by Twitter has come after a tremendous pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "We prohibit developers using the Public APIs and Gnip data products from allowing law enforcement or any other entity to use Twitter data for surveillance purposes. Period," Twitter had said in a blog post then. Discussions are currently ongoing between the British government and Twitter to resolve the issue. It is believed that the data being requested would be anonymised. The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, the first Indian American to hold a cabinet rank, visited India's UN Mission on Thursday for a wide-ranging discussion with Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin. "We shared perspectives on how India-US can work together at the UN in line with our growing ties," Akbaruddin told IANS after the meeting. Haley described their meeting in a tweet as "great". "We discussed India's economy, peacekeeping reform and the partnership between India and the US." A US Mission statement added that they also discussed "India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth" and "the close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the UN." Permanent Representative to the UN has a cabinet rank in the US government and Haley has emerged as a powerful and outspoken voice on foreign policy in the US, even as she deviated from some of the early positions of President Donald Trump. However, the differences have virtually disappeared as Trump moved closer to her stances due to realpolitik and Congressional pressures. For example, Trump has embraced her hardline on Russia after chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Syria. A critic of how the UN works, Haley has been insistent on reforming it, especially the peacekeeping operations as a cut in US contributions to the world body looms. "I know for a fact that Nikki feels very, very strongly about taking on problems that really people steered away from," Trump said on Monday during a White House lunch for Permanent Representatives of members of the Security Council. Trump thanked Haley for her "outstanding leadership" and said she was doing a "fantastic job." It was not known if the Security Council reforms with a permanent seat for India a priority for New Delhi came up during the conversation with Akbaruddin. President Barack Obama has backed India's quest, but the Trump administration has not publicly endorsed it and Haley has only said that she was open to the idea. Asked about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here in March, she admitted candidly, "First of all, I'm in learning mode. And as I look at that, I know there is conversations of reform of Security Council." She then added: "I'm open to hearing anyone on what they have to say and looking at it and going further." With the US contributing 28.36 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, Washington is giving priority to reforming the operations. Historically India has been the largest troop-contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations and 7,678 are serving now. India has also been advocating reforming the peacekeeping operations, especially how the mandates are set by the Security Council, often without consulting the troop-contributors. As Governor of South Carolina, Haley showed interest in India's economy and its potential and led a trade delegation in 2014 to India seeking investments and stronger commercial ties with her state. 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. 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 ... Following the controversy over coronary stent pricing and companies' announcement to withdraw their product post a price cap, the National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority of India (NPPA) declared that applications for withdrawal of stents have been rejected. The drug regulator declared that the multinational medical devices maker Medtronic had submitted an application for withdrawal of its drug-eluting stents on April 3 on grounds of "commercial unviability" after the price cap. Another multinational, Abbott Healthcare, too had applied for withdrawal. Both the applications have been rejected. In a memorandum announcing the decision, the NPPA said the centre's February order, invoking the emergency clause of the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013, instructs these companies manufacturing stents to maintain production/import/supply of the coronary stents, and to submit weekly reports on stents produced and distributed. According to the order, the companies would have to supply their product in an uninterrupted fashion for six months, starting February. The NPPA also said a status check from the monitoring and enforcement division had revealed that the two companiesAbbott Healthcare and Medtronichad not been complying with the government order. While the drug regulator asked the multinationals to resubmit their request two weeks after the order expires and explore price revisions options, it also asked them to be "cautious and responsible" when taking such business decisions. In March, the US FDA had raised safety concerns about one of Abbott Healthcare's bioresorbable stents, and the NPPA pointed out that if the company was unable to address those concerns, it could approach the government again to withdraw the stent. The style icon of the Bollywood of 1970s and 80s, Vinod Khanna is no more. Also an active politician, Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur, Punjab, Khanna passed away on Thursday morning. The 70-year-old veteran actor was reportedly battling cancer. In his illustrious Bollywood career, Khanna had done more than 100 films. He kickstarted his acting career with a negative role in Sunil Dutt's 1968 film Man Ka Meet. His big opportunity to play the lead came with 1971 film, Hum Tum Aur Woh. Since then, there has been no looking back for Khanna, until he decided to take a break from films in 1982 to follow the path of his guru Osho Rajneesh. He returned to the world of cinema in 1987 with Insaaf and delivered a series of noteworthy performances. He was last seen in Shah Rukh Khan starrer Diwale in 2015. As India mourns the loss of a bright and charismatic actor and politician, let's take a look at Khanna's five career-defining performances. Mere Apne (1971) Veteran poet and filmmaker Gulzar's directorial debut proved to be a path-breaking career opportunity for Khanna. A remake of National Award-winning Bengali film Apanjan, Mere Apne is a simple story of an old woman who finds love and affection among strangers, who later become her family. In the film, Khanna shared the screen space with actor Shatrughan Sinha and legend Meena Kumari. Achanak (1973) Long before Askhay Kumar took home the National Film Award for his role as an Indian Navy officer who kills his wife's paramour in Tinu Suresh Desai's Rustom,Gulzar explored the themebased on the K.M. Nanavati scandalin Achanak. In the film, Khanna played the lead role of an Army officer, Major Ranjeet, who finds out about his wife's affair with his friend and ends up killing both. Khanna's performance as a heartbroken, angry husband who experiences a wide range of emotions, subtly justifying his crime, was well-received by the audience and critics alike. Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony holds a special place in Khanna's filmography. Despite sharing screen space with his contemporaries Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor, Khanna stood out for his portrayal of a kind-hearted, brave policeman Amar Khanna. Amar Akbar Anthony is a story of three brothers who get separated from their parents and each other in childhood. Khanna plays the role of the eldest brother, who later unites with his two brothers to seek revenge from the villain responsible for his family's misfortune. The film went on to become a blockbuster hit, bagging several awards at the Filmfare Awards, and remains to be a cult classic among many Hindi film lovers. Qurbani (1980) Feroz Khan's blockbuster thriller Qurbani was, perhaps, one of the most stylish films of the 1980s. Besides, excellent performances with Zeenat Aman and Feroz Khan bringing the oomph factor to the screen, Khanna contributed a casual flamboyance to his character that only a few actors could boast of at that time. Despite playing a supporting role, Khanna excelled in leaving a mark with his performance. Dabangg (2010) While most his contemporaries hung up their boots, Khanna not only remained active in cinema, but also continued to mesmerise audience with his outstanding performances. Juggling a hectic political career and commitments to films, he delivered a memorable performance in Abhinav Kashyap's Dabangg in 2010. Khanna made his way into the young audience's heart by his effortless portrayal of a loving, concerned father who shared a love-hate relationship with his son, played by Salman Khan. Khanna also featured in the sequel Dabangg 2 (2012). In a country where actors end up being rubber stamp politicians most of the time, veteran actor Vinod Khanna was a welcome exception. He joined the BJP in 1997 and contested elections in 1998. I was only 15-years old when I met him the first time. He had won the Gurdaspur seat and was in my hometown, Amritsar, to visit the Golden temple and meet his BJP counterparts. He obliged everyone with pictures and autographs. It was his image as a cine star that got him all attention. Nobody would have guessed that one day he would conveniently slip into the character of a seasoned politician, and be a game changer in the state. In the next few years, his repeated victories ended the political career of Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, a Congress leader and political scion who had remained undefeated for decades. I met him again in 2014; this time as a photojournalist. I was part of the team that covered his Lok Sabha poll campaign. Dressed in a red t-shirt and aviator glasses he looked every bit of the onscreen hero we grew up watching, but what bowled us over was his modesty and humility. Unlike most cine stars or political honchos, Khanna met us with open arms and drove us to Pathankot from Gurdaspur. "Please don't be amused. Driving rejuvenates me. It's therapeutic so I love doing it," he had told us. The two-hour long journey made us see him in a new light. The moment he took to steering wheel he switched on the stereo and drove as he heard Osho's preaching all the way through. "You might find it boring, but it gives me peace. I have no time to meditate or go for intense self assessment, so I listen to this whenever I get time. I believe that good words get etched in your subconscious mind and seeps into your acts," he had explained. The formula probably worked for him as unlike many other politicians he did not speak about election calculations or political vendetta, but about how a road or flyover was making difference to people. He knew every bit of when was the road sanctioned or built, or which village lacked water or got it or where school still needed to be upgraded. "My constituency became my film set where I was expected to act like a hero and change things. So I took my role and went ahead and seem to have done a good job, which is judged every five years. I am not scared or jittery of elections. Strangely I get same nervous feeling that I used to get before every release during my initial days. I think it is the passion at work and I hope that my heart throbs with it till my last breath," he had said. Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna passed in Mumbai on Thursday. He was 70. Khanna, who worked in 141 films and was a sitting MP from Gurdaspur, Punjab, was hospitalised and later discharged from HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Girgaum, Mumbai due to severe dehydration. He was also reportedly battling cancer for years. Born on October 6, 1946 in a Punjabi family to Kamla and Kishanchand Khanna in Peshawar, Khanna studied commerce at Mumbai's Sydenham College before moving into acting. Khanna was married to Geetanjali between 1971 and 1985 and has two sons with her, Rahul Khanna and Akshaye Khanna. He married Kavita with whom he has two children, Sakshi and Shraddha. He appeared in 141 films between 1968 and 2013 and also forayed into politics by joining the BJP. He was minister of state for tourism and culture in 2002. (With ANI inputs) In a typical commando style, three armed militants descended down the wooded mountains and tip-toed towards the Army garrison at Panzgam in Kupwara at 4.30 am on Thursday. When they began cutting the fence, soldiers on duty challenged them. The three militants had not expected this. They fired at the guards and tried to rush towards the living quarters. Captain Ayush Yadav was woken up by the deafening sound of the gunfire. He sensed something ominous. He threw his blanket away, grabbed his AK 47 and rushed out. The militants were inching towards the living quarters. The young captain charged at the militants and halted the three in their tracks. The young officer was hit with bullets but he held on and didn't allow the militants to proceed. That gave enough time for the troops to retaliate and pin down the militants. Yadav died but prevented the militants from reaching the sleeping soldiers. "Captian Yadav was martyred while preventing the militants from reaching the living quarters," said Colonel Surav Joshi after the encounter ended. Two militants and three army personal including Yadav were killed. "The attack took place at 4.30 am when two to three militants attacked the garrison." Joshi said the militants were detected when they were cutting the fence. He said the soldiers guarding the sprawling camp fired at the militants and fierce gunfight ensued. "Taking advantage of the darkness, the militants tried to move towards the living quarters but heavy volume of fire by the quick reaction team (QRT) pinned them down and forced them to run towards the exit. "Through out the operation, the militants were prevented from reaching the living area by accurate and heavy volume of fire from all directions," Joshi said. Gunner Rishi Kumar of Field Artillery Regiment was on sentry duty when the fire fight started. He observed the terrorists approach and waited for them to come within close range. He then engaged them and was hit on his head but was saved by bullet proof patka. However, the whiplash of the impact caused him to fall down. He immediately recovered and fired back to kill the two terrorists. Running out of ammunition he moved out of his bunker and tried to pick the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third. The third terrorist fired and injured him thus managing to escape. Rishi Kumar is from Ara, Bihar and has eight years of service. Dawn was still 90 minutes away when the firefight began. By first light, the fire from the militants had died down. During the combing operations, the bodies of two militants were recovered. Five soldiers were injured and airlifted to Srinagar Army hospital. But Yadav could not survive and died as gunfire reverberated in the camp. The Army recovered a huge cache of ammunition and three AK 47 rifles which indicated the presence of a third militants. Joshi said the third militant was injured in the encounter and he escaped. Nine magazines, two radio sets and one smart phone were also recovered from the spot. "We have launched a search operation in the adjacent villages to look for him," he said. He said the operation lasted only 35 minutes and the Army succeeded in preventing the militants from attacking the living quarters. While the firefight was on, residents from several villages assembled close to the garrison and started shouting slogans in favour of the militants. They pelted stones at the troops guarding the garrison. One civilian was killed and three others injured after Army allegedly opened fire on the protesters. This is the first fidayeen attack this year and the first major attack after the Uri attack in September, 2016. The Uri attack had led Indian forces to conduct surgical strike along the border in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir. A day after the team of doctors treating Eman Ahmed resigned from her care, Saifee hospital in Mumbai announced on Thursday that the former heaviest woman in the world will be shifted to Burjeel hospital in the UAE. In a statement released by the private hospital, Dr Aparna Bhasker, section chief of bariatric surgery said as her treatment has concluded in Mumbai, Eman will be shifted to Burjeel hospital for secondary physiotherapy and neurological rehabilitation. "Eman currently weights 176.6 kg and she is stable as all her parameters are under control. She traveled to Mumbai in a chartered cargo plane but she will go back as a passenger on a flight in business class." said Dr Bhasker. On Thursday, Maharashtra Health Minister Deepak Sawant visited Eman in the hospital. Sawant said he was happy with the Egyptian national's medical progress while speaking to Dr Muffazal Lakdawala. According to Shaimaa, Eman's sister, she was approached by doctors from Burjeel hospital before her journey to Mumbai. However, Shaimaa says she turned down the offer after Dr Lakdawala convinced her that Saifee hospital has better facilities. In a span of only two and a half months, Eman managed to lose 324 kilos after her sleeve gastrectomy surgery. However, Shaimaa says she is concerned about the fact that her sister is still on a feeding tube. Other than her concerns about Eman's health, Shaimaa alleges that the hospital staff are mistreating her. "On Thursday evening, my sister was thirsty so I gave her some water. The security guards then immediately alerted the COO of the hospital. The security guards visited us in the room which made me feel very scared since I am in an unknown country," said Shaimaa. "I was not informed that I could not give water to Eman. In fact, a few days ago, Dr Lakdawala had given her a chocolate so I wasn't aware she could not drink water. This incident has made me feel scared," added Shaimma. Speaking to THE WEEK, Dr Jayashree Todkar, a Mumbai-based bariatric surgeon, says,"It is possible for a patient to travel with a feeding tube. However, the patient will have to be careful due to the risk of aspirations, which can cause breathing problems. I am confident the doctors who are taking care of her will take care of the risks involved and give the required safety measures." Even as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and its supporters are at Warangal celebrating the party's 16th foundation day, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) issued notices to the Telangana Health Department over a complaint by the opposition Congress on deaths in government hospitals. Representative image | Reuters SHRC Secretary D. Subramanyam asked the government to submit its report on the complaint by August 3, failing which the Commission would take such action as it deems proper. According to the Congress party, there have been over 3,000 deaths in various hospitals across the state since the TRS party took over the government on June 2, 2014. The party also demanded Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia to the families who lost their member in hospital due to negligence, and the setting up of an expert committee to study and present a report on the pathetic conditions in government hospitals. The new development came at a time when the laxity of government hospitals are widely reported in the media. Recently, an injured patient who went to the Gandhi Hospital, could not find a wheelchair, as he refused to pay bribe for the same. He returned to the hospital with his son's three wheeled tricycle to prove a point. After few days, a similar incident was reported again. The health department is accused of failing to take any action over these incidents. The state BJP also hit out at the chief minister saying that he was busy fulfilling all his vows to the Gods but did not bother about giving basic amenities to the citizens of the state of Telangana. In another incident, eight children died at a maternity hospital as the hospital did not have incubators. In another major government hospital, many patients died because of a power outage and a lack of a generator. There have been a number of deaths related to maternal cases. It is alleged that as many as 19 cesareans were performed at the Government Maternity Hospital, whereas only 12 were permitted in a day. There were a series of maternal deaths, but the doctors claimed that this happened because most of the cases were emergency ones. No action has been taken against doctors who performed the surgery, and their identities are still kept confidential. Terming the deaths a result of medical negligence, the opposition party asked the SHRC to direct the DGP to book the doctors and nurses concerned under relevant sections of the IPC. Another suggestion from the opposition party was to start a toll-free help line for patients in government hospitals and also give a docket number for all the callers for monitoring and feedback. Almost two months after a 24-year-old woman died due to haemorrhagic shock during an illegal abortion in Sangli district, yet another unqualified doctor's hospital was raided in the heart of Mumbai for previously conducting illegal abortions. On Wednesday, acting on information given by a confidential source, Maharashtra's Food & Drug officials found that an Ayurvedic doctor, Savita Chavan, who runs Ruby Diagnostic Center and Maternity home in Vikhroli was treating gynaecological patients. Speaking to THE WEEK, FDA Commissioner, Harshdeep Kamble, said, "The raid began at 7.30 pm and went on till the wee hours of Thursday morning. We had seized drugs worth Rs 70,000 and found 15 used Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) kits in Ruby Maternity Home. We also found 11 unused MTP kits." "An Ayurvedic doctor is not allowed to perform medical abortions on patients and Dr Chavan has violated the Bombay Nursing Home Act. On Thursday, we lodged an FIR in Vikhroli police station under the Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Pre-Conception and Pre-Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act. However, we have not been able to get in touch with the doctor, who is currently absconding," added Kamble. Around 10 days earlier, Dr Chavan was issued a show cause notice by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) after the FDA informed them that the Ayurvedic doctor had violated the Bombay Nursing Home Act. On March 5, Swati Jamdade succumbed to haemorrhagic shock at Bharti hospital at Mhaisal in Sangli district after an illegal medical abortion was performed on her by a homeopathic doctor. A post-mortem revealed she had an ectopic pregnancy. Following her death, the illegal abortion racket was exposed which led the police to recover 19 aborted fetuses which were dumped in a plastic bag. The homeopath, Dr Babasaheb Khidrapure, and 11 others were arrested for conducting sex determination tests and illegal abortions. Yechury gets a taste of Kerala party That there is no love lost between the Kerala unit of CPI(M) and its general secretary Sitaram Yechury is an open secret. Yechury once again got a taste of it as the Kerala unit is learned to have put its foot down when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi offered to support him for the upcoming Rajya Sabha vacancy in West Bengal. The Kerala party, which tried its best to scuttle Yechury becoming the general secretary, is learnt to have cited the party convention of not getting involved in parliamentary politics. The Kerala party also made it clear that Yechury reaching RS with the support of Congress will affect the morale of the cadre here which is engaged in direct fight with the Congress. Not just a bureaucrat One of the first files CM Pinarayi Vijayan pushed through, after his ascension as Kerala chief minister, was the removal of T.P.Senkumar from the post of Kerala police chief. Now, as the government is set to celebrate its first anniversary, Senkumar had found his way backand how. The SC, in a landmark judgment, asked the government to reinstate Senkumar. "I will get the attested court order on Thursday and will hand it over to the government without delay. Once the government receives the order, it is bound to implement it within 24 hours,'' Senkumar told The WEEK. It will be counted as contempt of court if the court order is not implemented within the time frame. He said that the SC order will protect officials from being pawns at the hands of political leaders. When asked whether it was political vendetta on the part of the government that he was sidelined, the officer said he cannot comment at this juncture. That the government is in no mood to reinstate the official is apparent, given the government has not made any move despite the SC order. "We are yet to receive the original copy of the order,'' said an official with the home department. It is also learnt that the government had tried to wriggle out from taking Senkumar back even after the SC order. But sane advisors saved the Pinarayi government from further embarrassment. Nostalgic assembly It was a walk down the memory lane for the older MLAs and a totally new experience for the younger ones as the Kerala assembly met in the ancestral original building to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first session. The first session, held on April 27, 1957 in the assembly hall located at the secretariat, had seen the swearing-in of MLAs and the election of a speaker. The last session held in this hall was on June 29, 1998 after it was shifted to the new building a couple of kilometers away. The new building had cost the exchequer a whooping Rs 75 crore. And the session was not just celebratory. It did take up the bill which makes it compulsory to teach Malayalam in all schools in the state. Nothing will change Mani The CPI(M) state committee may have decided to censure Electricity Minister M M Mani for innuendo-ridden speech about Pembilai Orumai, the first ever women-only trade union movement. But Mani, known better for foot-in-mouth syndrome, is capable of more vitriol. His infamous "123 speech", where he publicly exalted at the way the party finishes off the class enemy is still fresh in the public memory. Mani, handpicked by Pinarayi to the cabinet, has been headache to the CM ever since his induction, despite the fact that CM had specifically asked him to tone down his speeches. "Nothing will change Maniyashan; not even ministership,'' said one of his acolytes. May be true. The CM too may have realised this truth and hence the rumours of Mani being dropped in the proposed cabinet reshuffle expected to happen in the coming months. CPI(M) and CPI fight over even Mohanlal The tussle between the CPI(M) and the CPI has stooped to such a level its leaders have started fighting over an award given to actor Mohanlal. When CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran commented that he did not know how and for what Mohanlal was given the national award this time, senior CPI(M) leader E P Jayarajan immediately retorted. Enumerating the great films that Mohanlal has acted in, Jayarajan questioned the sensibility and eligibility of the CPI leader to criticise Mohanlal. The CPI leader gave it back saying that he has been active in theater movement since his younger days and said that the CPI(M) leader need not teach him about film and acting. BJP President Amit Shah held a closed door meeting with select leaders of party unit in West Bengal on the third day of his state visit. According to sources, Shah told the leaders to chalk out the strategy for the upcoming panchayat elections in West Bengal. A top source in the state BJP said Shah came down heavily on some of the leaders who had not done enough to hit the street against ruling Trinamool Congress. That includes many state committee members. He asked them to resign from party positions. Yes, he deplored the fact that we could not manage to reap dividends, even after rampant corruption by Trinamool Congress leaders in the state. He asked us to get our act together and report the progress on monthly basis, said one of the state secretaries of the BJP. Shah told the leaders to immediately reach the booths of the state. According to his advice, we should build up at least 1000 workers in per booth. In many areas, we have been able to do that, said Biswapriya Roychowdhury, general secretary of the state party. Meanwhile, BJP leaders lambasted Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Finance Minister Amit Mitra for using abusive words against Amit Shah. Shah went to Rajarhat, declared by Modi government as a proposed smart city in Kolkata and talked to BJP workers. He had lunch at the house of BJP activists. He will fly back to Delhi at 7.30pm on Thursday evening. Till not too long ago, maps were static. The only time they were redrawn was when countries split or new states were carved. But even as mapping has become dynamic now, the future promises to be something that was never imagined, when the first cartographers drew two dimensional sketches on parchment. "Three dimensional 360 degrees views with near real time imaging. In fact a digital twin of the real world, that is the future of mapping," said Rohan Verma, chief technical officer of MapmyIndia, the country's largest private mapping company. The satellite imagery on maps today give some idea of height, but as map making becomes ultra local, modern day cartographers are now measuring and mapping tall buildings in cities, as well as the narrowest of bylanes and service lanes. Your maps are also going to get a lot more interactive than the lady with the foreign accent whose voice guides your through your navigational manoeuvres. There are several start-ups like Reverie Language Technologies which are working at localising content, with the aim of providing map and navigational information in local languages and regional scripts. Indeed, as mapping becomes less of a geographical exercise and more of an aid for the Internet of Things, even the survey of India, the official mapmaker of the country, has declassified a huge chunk of maps. The survey, which is celebrating its 250th year, is also working towards more definite three dimensional mapping, using the geoid technology, as well as GPS data to estimate heights. The ministry of science and technology also recently released a braille enabled atlas. 'Map in India' seems to be the mantra these days, as the government realises that foreign mapping systems do not seem bound to Indian regulations regarding boundaries. But unless there is a viable alternative, the user will rely on the freely available maps. In fact, even the government has had to use Google maps, because access to Indian maps was such a difficult process, wound as they were in red tape. Minister for science and technology Harshavardhan asked the survey of India last year to declassify maps, saying that anything that is made with public funding should be freely available to the public. Today, India generates its own satellite data with Indian Space Research Organisation satellites. In fact, ISRO's Bhuvan maps are also freely available. MapmyIndia uses satellite data from Bhuvan. "The government too prefers our maps. We provide map data for several government programmes," said Verma. "As an Indian company, we maintain the integrity of the boundaries, we adhere to the government restrictions on mapping vulnerable assets and vulnerable places, which they do not want depicted on maps." President Donald Trump will mark the end of his first 100 days in office with a flurry of executive orders, looking to fulfill campaign promises and rack up victories quickly by turning to a presidential tool he once derided. But Trumps frequent use of the executive order points to his failure to move major legislation through a Congress controlled by his own party. Few of the orders themselves appear to deliver the sweeping changes the president has promised. White House aides said that Trump will have signed 32 executive orders by Friday, the most of any president in their first 100 days since World War II. Thats a far cry from Trumps heated campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against President Barack Obamas use of executive action late in his tenure when he faced a Republican Congress. Trump argued that he, the consummate deal maker, wouldnt need to rely on the tool. The country wasnt based on executive orders, said Trump at a town hall in South Carolina in February 2016. Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He cant even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. Its a basic disaster. You cant do it. But after taking office, Trump has learned to love the executive order. In an email blast to reporters on Tuesday, the White House touted the sheer volume of orders as evidence that Trump has accomplished more in his 100 days than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt. The White House has defended the use of executive orders as necessary to accomplish the speedy solutions it says the American people elected Trump to enact. At first, the presidents West Wing advisers fashioned an onslaught of executive action to set the tone for this term, with the centerpiece of that first-week blitz being Trumps travel ban. But that hastily drawn ban was rejected by the courts. A second replacement order also remains in judicial limbo. Presidents frequently turn to executive orders when they struggle to advance their agendas through Congresses controlled by the opposition party. In Trumps case, hes struggled even though both houses of Congress are in the hands of Republicans; his health care bill never even came for a vote in the House after it drew sharp criticism from moderate and conservative Republicans alike. And in the Senate, Republicans need to win over some Democratic lawmakers to get the 60 votes needed for passage of a contested bill. This president has found that legislating is hard work, said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason Universitys Schar School of Policy and Government. Executive orders are the easiest, simplest way to showcase action by the president to begin to fulfill some of the pledges made in the campaign. A review of Trumps executive orders reveals that a number of them represent necessary first steps at unraveling Obama-era environmental safeguards and financial service regulations. In some cases, there is no other way around those administrative hoops and some of the orders have brought about major changes. Among them: his late March order that directed federal agencies to rescind any existing regulations that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources, a move that rolls back environmental protections that was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists and cheered by Republicans who advocate energy independence. But many of Trumps executive orders signed with great fanfare have had little immediate impact. One order, hailed as historic by White House aides, called for the completion within 90 days of a large-scale report to identify trade abuses. On Friday, Trump signed an order commissioning a review of the nations tax regulations. He is has yet to fully launch his promised tax overhaul, which requires legislation. On Tuesday, Trump is expected to sign an order that will create an inter-agency task force that that will be charged with identifying measures to spur American agricultural growth. On Thursday, hes expected to sign an order to create whistleblower protections in the Office of Veteran Affairs while making it easier to discipline or terminate employees who fail to carry out their duties to help veterans. Hes also poised to sign an order that directs a review of the locations available for off-shore oil and gas exploration. Another will instruct the Interior Department to review national monument designations made over the past two decades. Unlike his predecessor who abused executive authority to expand the size and scope of the federal government in an end run around Congress, President Trump is using his legal authority to restrain Washington bureaucrats, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Obama signed 276 during his eight years in office, slightly less than Bush (291) and Bill Clinton (364) did in their two terms, according to data from the University of California-Santa Barbara. Executive orders were used relatively infrequently until Theodore Roosevelt ushered in a new era of executive action at the beginning of the 19th century, signing more than 1,000 while in office and establishing a template his successors. (AP) Hours after a display of North Korean military power, rival South Korea announced Wednesday the installation of key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system meant to counter the North. South Koreas trumpeting of progress in setting up the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, comes as high-powered U.S. military vessels converge on the Korean Peninsula and as a combative North Korea signals possible nuclear and missile testing. North Korea conducted live-fire artillery drills on Tuesday, the 85th anniversary of the founding of its million-person Korean Peoples Army. On the same day, a U.S. guided-missile submarine docked in South Korea. And the USS Carl Vinson aircraft supercarrier is also headed toward the peninsula for a joint exercise with South Korea. The moves to set up THAAD within this year have angered not only North Korea, but also China, the country that the Trump administration hopes to work with to rid the North of nuclear weapons. China, which has grown increasingly frustrated with North Korea, its ally, and Russia see the systems powerful radars as a security threat. South Korea said in a statement Wednesday that unspecified parts of THAAD were installed. It said that Seoul and Washington have been pushing to get THAAD quickly working to cope with North Koreas advancing nuclear and missile threats. According to the Yonhap news agency, the parts include two or three launchers, intercept missiles and a radar. Some people near the site in the countrys southeast are worried that THAAD may cause health problems, and thousands of police officers assembled Wednesday, blocking the main road, Yonhap reported. About 500 protesters rallied, and 13 villagers and police officers were injured in scuffles and treated at hospitals, reportedly for broken bones, according to the Seongju fire department. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Wednesday that the systems deployment would disrupt the regional strategic balance and further aggravate the tension on the peninsula. Geng said China will firmly be taking necessary measures to defend our own interests but offered no details. Chinas defense ministry has also repeatedly criticized THAADs deployment and said the military will take unspecified actions in response. On Tuesday, North Korea conducted what it called its largest ever combined live-fire drills, near the east coast port city of Wonsan. North Koreas official media reported Wednesday that leader Kim Jong Un personally observed the exercises, which involved the firing of more than 300 large-caliber artillery pieces and included submarine torpedo-attacks on mock enemy warships. Along with sending U.S. military assets to the region in a show of force, President Donald Trump is leaning on China to exert economic pressure on North Korea. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who spoke to Trump on Monday, is urging restraint from both North Korea and the U.S. In Washington, top Trump administration officials are due to brief the entire U.S. Senate on Wednesday. A rapid tempo of North Korean weapons testing in the past year has pushed Kim Jong Uns authoritarian nation closer to developing a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the U.S. mainland. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham voiced confidence that Trump wont allow North Korea to reach that point. Graham, a defense hawk who dined with Trump on Monday night, said North Korea should not underestimate the presidents resolve. The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine, arrived Tuesday at the South Korean port of Busan for what was described as a routine visit to rest crew and load supplies. The U.S. 7th Fleet said two American destroyers were conducting simultaneous maritime exercises with naval ships from South Korea and Japan. North Korea routinely accuses the United States of readying for an invasion, and threatens pre-emptive strikes to stop it. An unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the U.S. administrations policy to maximize pressure on North Korea was little short of lighting the fuse of total war, the state news agency reported Tuesday. The streets of Pyongyang, however, were quiet for Tuesdays anniversary, which was overshadowed by April 15 celebrations of the birthday of the nations late founder, Kim Il Sung, and were marked by a missile test the following day. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is to chair a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Tillerson will be very vocal about nations enforcing sanctions on North Korea, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. Trump said Monday the council must be prepared to impose stronger sanctions. (AP) Theres an unconventional new president in the White House. And the Republicans now have a new lock on both ends of Washingtons Pennsylvania Avenue. But the capital city is still up to its old gridlock tricks. Just as occurred repeatedly during the Obama administration, the government is only days away from a shutdown, and Congress and the White House are engaged in familiar partisan brinkmanship. How little has really changed under President Donald Trump. Some of the issues are different this time around as lawmakers scramble to finish up the annual government-wide spending bills that are Congress most basic function. The $1 trillion catch-all legislation for the remainder of the 2017 budget year is leftover business from last year and comes due Friday at midnight. Without action before then, the government will partially shut down Saturday, which happens to be the 100th day of Trumps presidency. Will that happen? Lawmakers do not expect a shutdown. Instead, a very short-term extension at existing funding levels is likely. Such continuing resolutions are familiar on Capitol Hill when Congress needs a little more time to complete its business, yet signing one to keep the government running while Trump marks his 100th day in office is an ignominious position for him. The difficulties point to a weakness of Trumps administration, some Republicans privately say: Despite his self-proclaimed deal-making prowess, he had little exposure to the rituals and rhythms of Congress before to taking office, and his team is light on experienced legislative hands. The former lawmakers he has brought on board, such as Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, were not known for cutting deals during their time on Capitol Hill. Im sure the president has a much better sense of the legislative process than he did a year ago or even 100 days ago, and every president does, no matter how well prepared they think they are for that job, said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Congress generally works on the calendar not the clock, and when you say that April 28 is going to be the day, I think you have to assume not much gets done before April 28, Blunt added. The remainder of the year will only bring more crucial deadlines. Once this years federal spending is finally set, bills for the 2018 budget year must be passed. And the governments borrowing limit needs to be raised or the U.S. risks an unprecedented default this fall. Under the Obama administration, divisions among Republicans were already causing problems. Over the objections of GOP leaders, a faction of conservatives tried to use must-pass spending bills to promote one pet cause or another, with little to show in the end. An unsuccessful push to defund Obamacare led to a 16-day partial shutdown in 2013, temporarily tanking the GOPs poll numbers. Having an outsider Republican president in the White House has not eliminated those divisions, as has already become clear from the Houses failure to advance a health care bill. On the spending legislation the intraparty divisions emerged in a different form, as Trump himself, or at least some of his White House lieutenants, threw a last-minute wrench into negotiations by suddenly demanding money for construction of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Up until then negotiations had been proceeding fairly smoothly, according to participants. With Democratic votes needed to pass the legislation, senior Republicans had no expectation of achieving the presidents most contentious policy objectives in the spending bill, and instead planned to include border security money that would not be designated specifically for a wall. Trumps sudden push for the wall money sent talks into a tailspin and Democrats into high dudgeon. And even after he backed off, apparently clearing the way for final work toward a deal, the episode left some fellow Republicans questioning whether their party, now in full control of Washington, will be able to perform any better under Trump than under Obama. This remains our challenge here in the House. Weve had a very difficult time performing the very basic fundamental tasks of governing, said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. I certainly hope those dynamics change. Republicans accuse the Democrats of courting a shutdown for political gain. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle feel that any kind of shutdown works in their favor, because Republicans always get blamed for it, said Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota. So theyre negotiating really hard, I mean were really going the extra mile. Democrats, on the other hand, say Republicans have only themselves to blame. I think the main reason theyre really struggling to pass the FY17 appropriations is not because of vigorous opposition from Democrats, its because of internal disagreements, said Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware. The reality is a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Congress ought to be able to get the government funded and moving forward. Thats something else that never changes: No matter whos in charge and what theyre fighting over, the other party is to blame. (AP) Frances foreign minister said on Wednesday that the chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month bears the signature of President Bashar Assads government and shows it was responsible for the deadly assault. According to Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, France came to this conclusion after comparing samples from a sarin attack in Syria from 2013 that matched the new ones. The findings came in a 6-page report published Wednesday. The Kremlin promptly denounced the French report, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used are not enough to prove who was behind it. Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces used chemical weapons and claimed that myriad evidence of a poison gas attack is made up. But Ayrault said France knows from sure sources that the manufacturing process of the sarin that was sampled is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories. This method bears the signature of the regime and that is what allows us to establish its responsibility in this attack, the top French diplomat added, saying that France is working to bring those behind the criminal atrocities to international justice. Frances Foreign Ministry said blood samples were taken from a victim in Syria on the day of the April 4 attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province in which more than 80 people were killed. Environmental samples, the French ministry said, show the weapons were made according to the same production process as the one used in the sarin attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime in Saraqeb on April 29, 2013. Ayrault also said that French intelligence services showed that only Syrian government forces could have launched such an attack by a bomber taking off from the Sharyat airbase. The regimes Air Force. is the only one with these aerial capabilities, Ayrault said. Meanwhile, Frances presidency said the countrys intelligence services presented evidence showing the Syrian government still holds chemical warfare agents, in violation of the commitments to eliminate them that it took in 2013. It said that information will be made public, without offering details. Its thought that Assads government still has a stockpile of tons of chemical weapons, despite saying it had handed over all of them. Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russias position on the attack is unchanged and that that the only way to establish the truth about what happened near Idlib is an impartial international investigation. Russia has previously urged for an international probe, and Peskov expressed regret that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, has turned down the Syrian governments offers to visit the site of the attack and investigate. The French ministers comments came as the OPCW, which is investigating the April 4 attack, held a ceremony in The Hague marking the 20th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. In a video message to the ceremony, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the organizations progress over two decades seeking to eliminate chemical weapons is now under threat. In the Middle East, belligerents are breaking the norm against chemical weapons, he said. The recent attack in Syria was a horrific reminder of the stakes. There can be no impunity for these crimes. The United States has also blamed Assads government for the April 4 attack. The Trump administration fired cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation and issued sanctions on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing non-conventional weapons. Syria has strongly denied the accusations. Earlier Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. airstrike at the Syrian military base damages the prospects of a political settlement for the war-torn country. Lavrov told a security conference in Moscow the U.S. response pushes the prospect for a wide international front on terror even further away. He also dismissed claims that international experts cannot visit the site in Khan Sheikhoun because of security precautions and criticized the OPCW for failing to go there. Lavrov says claims that the experts were warned by a U.N. body against traveling to the location because its unsafe are lies, adding that Moscow went back to the U.N. and found out that there was no such warning. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia had to boost security measures at its air base in Syria after the U.S. airstrike at the Syrian base. Russia has provided an air cover for the governments offensive on Islamic State militants. In other developments, the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces asked for the U.S.-led coalition to provide air cover over northern Syria, to protect them from Turkish and Syrian government air raids. The request came a day after Turkish air strikes killed 20 Syrian Kurdish fighters in attacks that Ankara said targeted Kurdish rebel positions in Syria and Iraq. A video emerged on the internet on Wednesday purporting to show an American officer inspecting the site, drawing large crowds who followed him around. The officer was not identified in the video. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are the U.S.s main partner in the battle against the Islamic State group in northern Syria. NATO member Turkey sees some of the SDF fighters as an extension of a terror insurgency group within its own borders. (AP) For the third time in two months, a federal judge has knocked down an immigration order by President Donald Trump and used Trumps own language against him. In a ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick quoted Trump to support his decision to block the presidents order to withhold funding from sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with U.S. immigration officials. Trump called the sanctuary cities order a weapon against communities that disagree with his preferred immigration policy, Orrick said. The judge also cited a February interview in which he said the president threatened to cut off funding to California, saying the state in many ways is out of control. The first comment was evidence that the administration intended the executive order to apply broadly to all sorts of federal funding, and not a relatively small pot of grant money as the Department of Justice had argued, the judge said. The second statement showed the two California governments that sued to block the order San Francisco and Santa Clara County had good reason to believe they would be targeted, Orrick said. Orricks ruling was another immigration policy setback for the administration as it approaches its 100th day in office later this month. The sanctuary city order was among a flurry of immigration measures Trump signed in January, including a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and a directive calling for a wall on the Mexican border. Trump reacted to the decision on Twitter on Wednesday morning, calling the decision ridiculous and saying he would take his fight to the highest court, tweeting: See you in the Supreme Court. Trump tweeted: First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. Trump tweeted that the 9th circuit has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80 percent). He said, They used to call this judge shopping! Messy system. That was apparently a reference to the 9th circuits liberal reputation and rulings that have often irked conservatives. Trumps words were also cited by federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii, who last month blocked his revised ban on new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland said comments by Trump supported the allegation that the ban was aimed at Muslims. Orricks preliminary injunction against the sanctuary cities order will stay in place while the lawsuits by San Francisco and Santa Clara work their way through court. The government hasnt cut off any money yet or declared any communities sanctuary cities. But the Justice Department sent letters last week advising communities to prove they are in compliance. California was informed it could lose $18.2 million. Orrick said Trump cannot set new conditions on spending approved by Congress. Even if the president could do so, those conditions would have to be clearly related to the funds at issue and not coercive, as the executive order appeared to be, Orrick said. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus described the ruling as another example of the 9th Circuit going bananas. The administration has often criticized the 9th circuit. Orrick does not sit on that court but his district is in the territory of the appeals court, which has ruled against one version of Trumps travel ban. The idea that an agency cant put in some reasonable restriction on how some of these moneys are spent is something that will be overturned eventually, and we will win at the Supreme Court level at some point, Priebus said. The Trump administration says sanctuary cities allow dangerous criminals back on the street and that the order is needed to keep the country safe. San Francisco and other sanctuary cities say turning local police into immigration officers erodes the trust that is needed to get people to report crime. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera praised the ruling and said the president was forced to back down. This is why we have courts to halt the overreach of a president and an attorney general who either dont understand the Constitution or chose to ignore it, Herrera said in a statement. (AP) Leading House conservatives are saying good things about a plan to revive the GOP health care bill. But an influential GOP House moderate is opposing the proposal, leaving party leaders to assess whether the idea could help one of President Donald Trumps premier but most problematic priorities spring back to life. Republican lawmakers were meeting Wednesday to consider how to rescue the GOP drive to repeal much of President Barack Obamas health care law. That salvage effort comes as bipartisan bargainers edge toward agreement on a separate $1 trillion budget bill that would prevent a partial federal shutdown this Saturday. While erasing Obamas statute is solidly opposed by Democrats, the budget measure will need support from both parties because GOP conservatives often oppose spending legislation. Leaders of both parties cited budget progress Tuesday after Trump signaled he was abandoning his demand that the measure include money for his proposed border wall with Mexico, an idea strongly opposed by Democrats and many Republicans. Were pleased hes backing off, said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. With Trumps 100th day in office coming Saturday, a White House looking for achievements had pressured GOP leaders to try pushing health care legislation through the House this week. That seems unlikely now because an effort to sell the plan to rank-and-filed Republicans will likely take time. House leaders say they will hold a vote when they know they can win. This week, next week, we dont know, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Tuesday. Progress is being made and were feeling good about that process as of now. To gain support for the bill, bargainers from the GOPs conservative and moderate camps have proposed letting states get federal waivers to ignore coverage requirements that Obamas statute has imposed on insurers. These include an obligation that they charge seriously ill and healthy customers the same premiums and that they cover specified services like maternity care. Leaders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met Tuesday to consider the suggested changes. They were crafted by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., that caucus leader, and Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., a leader of the moderate House Tuesday Group, with the backing of Vice President Mike Pence, Republicans say. The plan has real merits worthy of consideration for all the Freedom Caucus folks, said Meadows, whose group has roughly three dozen members. Generally speaking, theres a lot of optimism, Meadows said. Another influential conservative and Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the plan was a positive. He and Meadows were among the conservatives who opposed the initial version of the bill last month as did many moderates forcing House leaders to withdraw it before a planned vote, in a mortifying retreat. But moderate leader Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., said the changes ignored his concerns that the health care bill would cut too deeply into the Medicaid program for the poor and leave many people unable to afford coverage. Dent is another leader of the Tuesday Group and is considered a good gauge of the views of many of its roughly 50 members. Same concerns, and this didnt really address them, said Dent, who like Jordan said hed not yet seen legislative details. Under the proposed revisions, states could not obtain exemptions to Obamas requirements that insurers offer coverage to everyone and that family policies cover grown children up to age 26. States getting waivers so insurers could charge higher prices to people with illnesses would have to have high-risk pools, or government-subsidized funds to help those consumers cover costs. Critics say allowing insurers to boost premiums on the ill means insurers can charge them exorbitant premiums, effectively making such coverage unaffordable. They also say high-risk pools have a history of being underfunded. Reflecting the pressure on Republicans to pass a health overhaul, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that failing to do so is the GOPs fault. That was the No. 1 issue in my campaign, said McCain, who was re-elected last fall. And when I dont get it replaced, if its not replaced, then it reflects on my campaign. But an ABC News-Washington Post poll showed that the public wasnt on board. Sixty-one percent said Obamas law should be retained and fixed, with just 37 percent favoring repeal. In the separate budget bill, Trump seemed poised to procure about $15 billion to boost the military. Aided by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Democrats were pushing to extend health benefits for 22,000 retired Appalachian coal miners and their families whose medical coverage is set to expire at the end of April. Another potential stumbling block to the budget bill also seemed to be fading. Trump has threatened to scuttle payments the government makes to insurers under Obamas law that help low-income people afford coverage, a move strongly opposed by Democrats. Both Schumer and White House officials flashed conciliatory signals on that dispute as well. (AP) A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer fired a warning flare toward an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel coming near it in the Persian Gulf, an American official said on Wednesday, the latest tense naval encounter between the two countries. The incident happened Monday as the vessel attempted to draw closer to the USS Mahan despite the destroyer trying to turn away from it, said Lt. Ian McConnaughey, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The Mahan made several attempts to contact the Iranian vessel by bridge-to-bridge radio, issuing warning messages and twice sounding the internationally recognized danger signal of five short blasts with the ships whistle, as well as deploying a flare to determine the Iranian vessels intentions, McConnaughey said in a statement to The Associated Press. The Iranian vessel came within 1,000 meters (1,100 yards) of the Mahan during the incident, the lieutenant said. The vessel later turned and sailed away. Iranian authorities did not immediately report the incident on Wednesday. The U.S. and Iran routinely have tense encounters in the Persian Gulf and the nearby Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes. Iran views the American presence as a provocation and its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard shadows U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf, occasionally firing missiles or rockets nearby. Since the nuclear deal with world powers, the hard-line Revolutionary Guard has stepped up its encounters with the Americans. The Navy recorded 35 instances of what it describes as unsafe and/or unprofessional interactions with Iranians forces in 2016, compared to 23 in 2015. With Mondays event, there have been seven so far in 2017, McConnaughey said. Of the incidents last year, the worst involved Iranian forces capturing 10 U.S. sailors and holding them overnight. (AP) When Sheila Abdus-Salaam agreed to speak this month at an alumni gathering at Columbia Law School, it was business as usual for someone in demand as the first black woman to serve on New Yorks highest court. But only six days before the event at her alma mater, Abdus-Salaams success story took a startling turn: Her body was found floating in the Hudson River, leaving those who knew her trying to reconcile a seemingly stable life with a mysterious death thats still under investigation. The New York Police Department said this week that its still found no signs of foul play, suggesting she may have killed herself after wandering the streets of Harlem for four hours. Her family and admirers insist that doesnt add up. Sheila was one of the most rational, measured and intellectual folks that Ive ever known, said Keith Wright, a former state assemblyman, longtime friend and neighbor who exchanged pleasantries with her in the subway two days before the death. I dont believe she killed herself. In a statement, Abdus-Salaams family has disputed reports that she was battling depression and that, according to police, her death fell around the anniversaries of the suicides of both her mother and brother. Police later admitted that they were wrong about the mothers cause of death. More questions followed after the NYPD tweeted a photo of a flyer last week asking for information from anyone who may have come in recent contact with Abdus-Salaam and after a police official called the death suspicious. But police have stressed that only meant they hadnt reached a conclusion about the death. The news coverage has frequently included unsubstantiated comments concerning my wifes possible mental and emotional state of mind at the time of her death, said the Rev. Canon Gregory Jacobs, her third husband and an Episcopal pastor who shared a home with her in New Jersey. Those of us who loved Sheila and knew her well do not believe that these unfounded conclusions have any basis in reality. The 65-year-old Abdus-Salaam was raised with six siblings in a working-class family in Washington. She graduated from Barnard College before attending Columbia Law School, where she was on a committee organizing a 40th class reunion in June. After she rose from a lawyer for low-income Brooklyn residents to state court justice, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed her to the state Court of Appeals in 2013. She once said that she wanted people to consider me to be a judge who listens and gives them a fair shot. Her death brought an outpouring of accolades. Cuomo called her a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all. Said Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio: Someone who got so far and was lost so soon. Unable to locate any witnesses, police so far have relied on security video to try to retrace the last hours of Abdus-Salaams life. She spent her workweeks in the city at an apartment on West 131st Street in Harlem. After staying home from work on April 11, she was seen on video leaving the home at around 8:30 p.m. and walking several blocks north, then eventually west on West 145th Street to an elevated park on the Hudson River, where a final video shows her alone there at about 12:30 a.m. on April 12, according to two law enforcement officials. Her body was found in the water about 13 hours later without obvious signs of trauma. She was in the same clothes sweatshirt, sweatpants and white sneakers as seen in the videos. The law enforcement officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasnt been completed. Results of an autopsy are pending. I dont get it, Wright said of the death. I dont understand it. Hopefully, well have some answers soon. (AP) The Supreme Court seems ready to impose limits on when the government can strip an immigrant of U.S. citizenship for lying during the naturalization process. Wednesdays lively argument included a sharp rebuke of a Justice Department lawyer by the courts longest-serving justice. The Trump administration contends that even minor lies about driving too fast or omitting childhood nicknames can lead to loss of citizenship. Justice Anthony Kennedy tells lawyer Robert Parker that his argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts says the governments reading of immigration law could lead to prosecutorial abuse. The court is considering the case of an ethnic Serb from Bosnia who was stripped of U.S. citizenship for lying about the circumstances that brought her to the United States. (AP) President Donald Trump is lashing out at a judges ruling blocking his attempt to strip funds from sanctuary cities that dont cooperate with U.S. immigration authorities, calling it ridiculous and vowing to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the third Trump executive order on immigration to be thwarted by the federal courts. Here is a look at Tuesdays ruling and what lies ahead: WHAT DID THE FEDERAL JUDGE SAY ABOUT THE SANCTUARY CITIES ORDER? U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said the president has no authority to attach new conditions of his own to spending that was approved by Congress. The judge further ruled that Trumps order threatened a wide swath of funding not the relatively small amount the Justice Department claimed and that the government cannot cut off funding if there is no clear connection between the money and the policy at issue. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said late Wednesday the president was well within his power to issue the executive order and the DOJ would continue to fight the cases in court. It was not clear, however, whether he planned to appeal Orricks ruling. WHAT COULD TRUMP DO NEXT? Trump could appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But that was the court that blocked the presidents first travel ban against seven Muslim countries. Eighteen of the 25 active judges on the court were appointed by Democrats. Trump has said he wants to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have the final say if it decided to take up the case. Trump could also revise his executive order to explicitly tie it to the three relatively modest Justice Department and Homeland Security grants that the administration argued were at stake. Orrick said his ruling does not affect the administrations ability to enforce existing conditions on federal grants. WHAT ELSE COULD THE ADMINISTRATION DO? Trump could push Congress to pass a law giving him clear authority to revoke certain funding, said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor and former head of civil rights at Homeland Security during the Obama administration. But Schlanger said whatever action is taken may not survive court scrutiny if its seen as unduly coercive. Suppose you said you cant have any money at all unless you participate fully in immigration arrests, she said. That would be so big it would be coercive. Additionally, for the law to survive, there must be a connection between the money at stake and the immigration policy the president is seeking to enforce, Schlanger said. It is not clear how close that link has to be, but Trump presumably would not be allowed to withdraw funding for, say, highway construction to force a city to stop protecting immigrants from deportation. WHAT OTHER CHALLENGES LIE AHEAD FOR THE SANCTUARY CITIES ORDER? Orrick ruled on two cases brought by the city of San Francisco and Californias Santa Clara County. Seattle and two cities in Massachusetts, Lawrence and Chelsea, have also sued. WHAT WAS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATIONS STAND ON FUNDING FOR SANCTUARY CITIES? Last year, the Justice Department notified recipients of criminal justice grants that they must obey a federal law that says local governments cannot forbid their employees from cooperating with U.S. immigration authorities. Recipients were reminded that that they could face penalties, such as the loss of grants, for not complying. An inspector generals memo from last year said authorities were unaware of any legal action taken by the Obama administration to compel states or local governments to cooperate. (AP) The Trump administration told lawmakers Wednesday it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action against an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous U.S. adversary. President Donald Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defense secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. The same team also met with House members in the Capitol to outline the Norths escalating nuclear capabilities and U.S. response options to what they called an urgent national security threat. After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Trumps approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners. It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the U.S. would defend itself and friends. The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Koreas progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. A flurry of military activity, by North Korea and the U.S. and its partners on and around the divided Korean Peninsula, has added to the worlds sense of alert. While tensions have increased since Trump took office, theyve escalated dramatically in recent weeks as American and other intelligence agencies suggested the North was readying for a possible nuclear test. Although such an explosion hasnt yet occurred, Trump has sent high-powered U.S. military vessels and an aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while the North conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, earlier this week. On Wednesday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns. Americas Pacific forces commander, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational within days. He said any North Korean missile fired at U.S. forces would be destroyed. If it flies, it will die, Harris said. The Trump administration has said all options, including a military strike, are on the table. But the administrations statement after briefing senators all 100 members were invited outlined a similar approach to the Obama administrations focus on pressuring Pyongyang to return to long-stalled denuclearization talks. Trumps top national security advisers said they were open to negotiations with the North, though they gave no indication of when or under what circumstances. The strategy hinges greatly on the cooperation of China, North Koreas main trading partner. China is the key to this, said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who got a preview of Trumps message at a dinner with the president this week. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California agreed. I think the best approach for the administration is to bring the maximum pressure to bear diplomatically on China, as well as North Korea, but otherwise to walk softly and carry a big stick, he told reporters after attending the Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday. Among the options are returning North Korea to the U.S. state sponsor of terrorism blacklist, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week was under consideration. His spokesman, Mark Toner, said Wednesday that another tactic is getting nations around the world to close down North Korean embassies and consulates, or suspending them from international organizations. But sanctions will be the greatest tool at the Trump administrations disposal. Tillerson is chairing a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday designed to get nations to enforce existing penalties on North Korea and weigh new ones. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Harris said he expects North Korea to soon be able to develop a long-range missile capable of striking the United States, as Kim has promised. One of these days soon, he will succeed, Harris said. North Koreas U.N. mission said Wednesday the nation would react to a total war with Washington by using nuclear weapons. It vowed victory in a death-defying struggle against the U.S. imperialists. Trump, like presidents before him, faces difficult options. Sanctions havent forced Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear efforts, but a targeted U.S. attack to take out its weapons program risks a wider war along a heavily militarized border near where tens of millions of South Koreans live. The threat would extend to nearby Japan, another country North Korea regularly threatens. China has urged restraint by both Pyongyang and Washington. In Berlin Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said North Korea must suspend its nuclear activities, but on the other side, the large-scale military maneuvers in Korean waters should be halted. That was a reference to U.S. and South Korean war games. China opposes the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, being installed in South Korea, rejecting American assurances that it will only target North Korean missiles. Russia also sees the systems powerful radars as a security threat. In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said THAAD would upset the regions strategic balance. China will take necessary measures to defend our own interests, he promised. (AP) As President Donald Trump marks 100 days in office, he is vowing to keep his campaign promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Despite widespread skepticism and Mexicos refusal to pay for the wall, as Trump has demanded, the U.S. government has been soliciting bids and test sections could be built as soon as this summer. Physical barriers are as old as humanity and have proven to be effective over the centuries at protecting borders. But fences can also have unwanted consequences, like destroying city neighborhoods, harming the environment and preventing innocent victims from reaching safety. Here is a look at some of the worlds barriers. Some are rather simple, while others are massive enterprises that cost billions. Generally they have been paid for through standard budgeting procedures, with none sparking a funding dispute of the kind that has emerged with Mexico. THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO A third of the U.S.-Mexico border is already studded with an assortment of fences, but closing off the rest will be no easy task. Much of the border in Texas is blocked by the Rio Grande or other natural barriers, or runs along land owned by private citizens, many of whom oppose the wall. There also is much skepticism over whether the fence would stem drug trafficking, illegal immigration or gang violence. ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK Israel began construction of its 150-mile (250-kilometer) separation barrier in 2002 in response to Palestinian suicide bombings that killed more than 1,500 people. Israel says the structure is a crucial defense measure. But because it frequently juts into the occupied West Bank, the Palestinians see it as a land grab that impedes their dream of establishing an independent state. KASHMIR India needed just two years to build a 550-kilometer (340-mile) fence along the disputed border area with Pakistan a decade ago. Now a high-tech barrier, it is laced with thermal imaging devices, motion sensors and lighting systems along a mined strip of land between two rows of coiled razor wire. The Indian military calls it an anti-infiltration obstacle system, designed to keep Pakistan-based rebels from crossing over in their fight for Kashmirs independence or merger with Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are deployed on both sides, sometimes standing eye to eye, making it one of the worlds most militarized areas. CYPRUS A U.N.-controlled buffer zone and frontier stretches 180 kilometers (120 miles) from coast to coast across the tiny island, separating the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north from the internationally recognized south. The division dates to 1974, when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. The frontier is rarely marked by a physical wall, with the notable exception of the capital, Nicosia, where one runs through the heart of the Old City. At its narrowest point, just a few meters (yards) separate Greek Cypriot national guardsmen from Turkish and Turkish Cypriot troops. Decrepit, crumbling buildings inhabiting this no-mans land stand in stark contrast to the trendy bars and coffee shops that have sprouted up nearby. THE KOREAN PENINSULA The Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige, was created in 1953 after the Korean War ended with an armistice. Running from coast to coast, the 4-kilometer (2 1/2-mile)-wide, 248-kilometer (154-mile)-long DMZ bisects the peninsula and forms the de-facto border between the Koreas. Mined on both sides, with a razor-wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of troops, the DMZ is the worlds most heavily fortified border. More than a million mines are believed to be buried within it. Some 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea. The DMZ also includes the truce village of Panmunjom, which despite animosities is a popular tourist spot drawing visitors on both sides. KENYA AND SOMALIA Kenya decided to erect a wall along its Somalia border after an April 2015 attack by Islamic extremists killed 148 people, most students, at a university. Initially the Kenyan government announced a 700-kilometer (435-mile) wall, but officials say just 30 kilometers (18 miles) of fencing have been completed. Some doubt whether the wall will be effective given the busy cross-border smuggling trade, which benefits powerful officials on both sides. HUNGARY Hungary built fences along its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia in 2015, when thousands of migrants were passing through each day headed to Germany and other destinations in western Europe. Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a staunch opponent of migration, and Hungary has been accepting only a few hundred asylum-seekers a year. Human rights groups and U.N. agencies have been critical of the fences and the countrys restrictive asylum policies. There are increasing reports from aid groups about police brutality against migrants being pushed back to Serbia, allegations Hungary denies. FRANCE A concrete wall, one kilometer (half a mile) long and four meters (13 feet) high, is the finishing touch on an already elaborate defense system against migrants in the northern French port city of Calais. Britain doled out the 2.7 million euros ($2.9 million) to pay for the edifice along the highway leading to the Calais port, much used by truckers crossing the English Channel. Migrants flocked to Calais for years, hoping to sneak into Britain, often in freight trucks. A huge makeshift camp was dismantled in October, with thousands of migrants bused to special centers. SPAIN Spain has built six-meter (20-foot) layered border fences around its two North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, to dissuade migrants, now mostly from sub-Saharan countries, from entering them via Morocco. The fences, along with cooperation between Spain and Morocco, have helped keep out migrants. But rights groups say both Spanish and Moroccan security forces have beaten migrants caught scaling the wall. They also criticize Spains use of razor-blade coils which have caused many injuries and its expelling those who make it over without letting them apply for asylum. (AP) Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) expressed concern this morning regarding the absence of the Anti-Defamation League on the matter of racist, propagandist Linda Sarsours planned commencement speech at CUNY. The ADL, whose mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all has been conspicuously silent on the matter since the announcement was made. I hope everyone at the ADL is ok, said Hikind. Im genuinely concerned. I know theyd never be silent about an issue as important as this if everything was normal. The ADL speaks out 24/7 on defamation of the Jewish people and nothing can be more defamatory than Linda Sarsours statements about Jews and her glorification of Arabs throwing rocks at Israelis. But following the invitation from CUNY for Sarsour to address their graduates, the ADLs silence has been deafening and shameful. Sarsour, a self-proclaimed activist who glorified and encouraged terrorist stone throwers as courageous, was invited by the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy to address this years graduating class. Hikind has called upon Governor Andrew Cuomo prevent this outrage from occurring. Linda Sarsours record of advocating for terrorists speaks for itself, says Hikind. If she had only called Arabs who hurl rocks at moving cars the definition of courage, that would have been enough. Stones killed Adva Bittons three-year-old daughter Adele and badly injured her other two small children in 2013 in Israel. But theres so much more! Sarsour publicly called for violence against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist Muslim author who opposes violence She recently shared a stage with and praised Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convicted by an Israeli court for her role in the murder of two students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe, in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing. The United States and the rest of the free world are locked in conflict with terrorists and rogue nations that employ the cruelest tactics against innocent victims. Those who applaud terrorists must be exposed for what they are. It would be bad enough if a private university were to offer Sarsour a platform, but a City university funded by our tax dollars? Sarsour is not the benevolent voice of peaceful Islam. She does not seek to build bridges. She is a propagandist and an apologist for terrorists. She is not someone CUNY should be inviting to speak to its graduates. (YWN Headquarters NYC) Delta flight 468 from JFK to Tel Aviv made an unscheduled landing on Tuesday night. The aircraft suffered some type of leak (possibly involving water), and landed in Paris. According to people on the flight, the airline kept the passengers on the plane for 4 hours as crews attempted to correct the issue. Eventually, Delta booked the entire flight hotel rooms near the airport, They rescheduled the flight as Delta 9868 departing tomorrow from Paris to Tel Aviv. Sadly, one passenger missed his mother funeral as a result of the incident. (Charles Gross YWN) Two reports from Israel are making headlines. As YWN reported on Wednesday, President Trump is planning a visit to Israel in May. According to Israels largest newspaper Yedidoth Achronot, Trump will recognize an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The report continues and says Trump will not implement his election campaign pledge to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Arutz 7 reports that Congressman Ron DeSantis stated at a recent event that when President Donald Trump arrives in Israel he will announce the transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Neither report has been confirmed. Meanwhile, according to multiple published reports, the Trump visit will be on May 22. A 25-member US delegation was slated to arrive in Israel Thursday to lay the groundwork for the presidents visit next month. (Chaim Shapiro YWN) [PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Twenty wounded IDF soldiers and veterans went for a motorcycle tour of Jerusalem last Friday thanks to Belev Echad, which organized the tour with the international Gold Wing Road Riders Association motorcycle club. Escorted by Israeli police, 30 Goldwing members and supporters of Belev Echad took the wounded veterans around Jerusalem for a daylong tour, stopping at the Kosel and in East Talpiot and the Judean Hills for a view of the city. Belev Echad was founded by Rabbi Uriel and Shevy Vigler in 2009. The organization aims to show the Jewish peoples gratitude to IDF veterans for putting their lives on the line to protect and defend the Jewish state. Belev Echad brings wounded soldiers on life-changing therapeutic trips to New York, and also helps the soldiers receive prosthetic limbs and other therapies, scholarships and counseling. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Courtesy of Belev Echad) Police have arrested a number of people suspected of illegal activity in the chareidi municipality of Emanuel including current and former officials. The arrests follow an undercover investigation taking place during recent months, leading to the arrests related to their current or former positions in the municipality. The primary suspect is an official of the local Chabad community who allegedly was involved in deal-making in local elections in 2013 in exchange for support at the polls. In addition, there are allegations of taking bribes from local contractors to advance building projects in the city. police on Tuesday morning arrested three primary suspects as well as conducting a search in the municipality offices. Persons who know the primary suspect told the media This is a man who illegally invaded the area and submitted dozens of complaints to police after the head of the local council ordered him to be removed from the area. Reports that permission was given for limud Torah in the local community center are false. The document published is false. The fact is, Chabad did not enter the community center for limud. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Customs Authority inspectors in the Eilat Airport terminal this week prevented smuggling 94 cartons of cigarettes by a couple carrying Russian passports. The two arrived on a charter flight from Moscow and they attracted customs officials by their odd behavior. An inspection of their suitcases revealed they were trying to smuggle cigarettes to avoid about NIS 20,000 in tax fees. The tourist told agents during questioning he simply was trying to earn some easy money along with his wife. They studied the matter on the internet and concluded that one can earn good money by smuggling cigarettes into Israel due to the high price of cigarettes in the country due to taxes. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Customs Authority) [PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheich had words of praise for the program involving raising foals for the department, a program that began in 2013 as part of the educational curriculum of police studies program in Kfar Noar. These horses are raised in compliance with the special operational needs of the department. This saves the department work and resources on the one hand while providing the youths working in the stables receive the tools that will assist them in their lives. Police trends in the youth villages constitute the essence of the perception of the role of the police, as one who sees itself as also responsible for improving the norms of obedience to the law in the State of Israel. The curriculum as part of the police studies program is an integral part of realizing this vision. During these years, the department attempts to instill social and national values in an intensive framework of study, culture and society. The goal of the program is to create an educational framework in which the emphasis will be placed on the study of democracy, the rule of law, and the ways in which the rule of law systems operate. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) A new business mapping initiative looks to gather input from Jerusalem residents and those who work in the city, and connect local supply with local demand. The Jerusalem Municipality and the Jerusalem Innovation Team (JLM i-team), together with Maof Jerusalem, the operating arm of the Small and Medium Business Agency at the Ministry of Economy and Industry, and the Digital Israel at the Ministry for Social Equality, announce the launch of Coming Soon, a citywide business mapping initiative, which uses crowdsourcing to determine which businesses are lacking in each neighborhood and business district, and connects local demand with local entrepreneurs looking for new opportunities. The app goes live on Wednesday, 30 Nissan, and will be active for one month. Jerusalem residents and those who work in the city are invited to access the app at bekarov.jerusalem.muni.il and have their opinions heard. Coming Soon asks Jerusalemites what it is they are missing in their neighborhoods and workplace environments and shares the data with entrepreneurs, who receive a package of referrals to municipal- and government-subsidized training and incentives to help the new businesses become sustainable and successful. The purpose of the initiative is threefold: to use digital crowdsourcing as a way to procure insights for business development in the city, to help entrepreneurs start businesses based on genuine market demand and with tools and training to help them flourish, and to promote a sense of community and impactful civic participation among residents. In the past few years, we have placed special emphasis on large, diverse investments in neighborhoods throughout the city, as well as making Jerusalem attractive to the business sector, says Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat. The Coming Soon initiative integrates these two strategies through an innovative, creative and out-of-the-box model that is based in collective wisdom. Residents themselves will be able to influence what is happening in their neighborhoods. This will impact the city through enhanced quality of life for residents and advance the business sector a win-win for all involved. Small and medium-sized businesses are the central growth engine of the economy and we are here to give them the support they need in order to succeed, says Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen. Operating under the auspices of the Small and Medium Business Agency of the Ministry of Economy and Industry, Maof works to assist entrepreneurs and business owners at every stage. Connecting the needs of residents with local entrepreneurs is undeniably the right way to achieving a stable and successful business. Residents of Jerusalem neighborhoods usually know what they are missing whether it is a supermarket, a pet store, a hair salon or a locksmith but local entrepreneurs do not have the market research available to those who spend time chatting with parents at the local playground or with seniors at their weekly bridge game, says Sharone April, Director of the JLM i-team. Coming Soon aims to make that connection so that new businesses open up exactly where they are needed, giving residents a voice and entrepreneurs a greater opportunity to succeed. One of the core missions of the JLM i-team is tackling the challenge of Jerusalems economic development a mission identified by Mayor Nir Barkat. Recent statistics show that approximately 50% of new businesses in the city close within five years of opening a sobering survival rate. The JLM i-team, together with its municipal and government partners, has been working on a series of initiatives to strengthen entrepreneurs and small and medium businesses in the city, in order to contribute in a meaningful way to help Jerusalem thrive. Coming Soon works to support new businesses while taking into consideration the traditional centrality of neighborhood clusters in Jerusalem, a function of topography, history, politics and social/communal trends. Coming Soon hopes to achieve its goal of getting as much input as possible from residents through the use of a fun, game-like interface. Users will have the opportunity to pinpoint specific businesses missing in their surroundings, receive suggestions based on their areas of interest, share results with friends and have a meaningful impact on the commercial development of their neighborhoods and workplace environment. At the end of the month, the data procured will be shared with entrepreneurs and with the public-at-large, with the hope that residents will not only want to share their opinions but also more consciously support their local businesses. Businesses that open as a direct result of the Coming Soon campaign will be celebrated in the coming year. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The PA (Palestinian Authority) Committee for Support of the Palestinian Prisoners Hunger Strike on Tuesday, 29 Nissan, announced a general strike, a showing of solidarity with terrorists imprisoned in Israeli prisons. The strike impacts all PA autonomous areas, businesses and schools and the days events included a rally in support of the terrorists. While the PA is working to encourage hunger-strikers to continue, only about 1,100 of the 6,000 imprisoned terrorists undertook to hunger strike and hundreds have dropped out in the first week. Hunger strike organizers worked hard, albeit with minimal success, to enlist the support of the international community for the strikers and against Israel. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Police were summoned to investigate after a 5-month-old baby arrived at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv unconscious. The infant was brought by a woman who operates a daycare in her Tel Aviv home. According to preliminary reports from the hospital, the infant sustained a fractured skull, leading to the involvement of police, who questioned the woman on suspicion of abuse or neglect. The matter is also being probed by social services. Hospital officials list the childs condition as moderate, confirming the fractured skull and internal cranial bleeding. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The Lod District Court on Wednesday morning 30 Nissan released HaPeles Editor Nati Grossman to house arrest, overruling the decision of the lower court which ordered him held in jail for an additional week. The district court also ordered the release of the newspapers CEO Shmulik Elyashiv and manager Avraham Trager. Grossmans attorney Yair Golan told the court there is no reason to fear his client will attempt to interfere with the investigation since police have not satisfied their burden of proof to present this fear before the court. The court also realized Grossman does not present a threat to public safety and since he does not have a criminal past, there is no justification for not permitting his release, albeit to house arrest. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg sent a letter to German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Tuesday night the eve of 1 Rosh Chodesh Iyar, accusing him of hypocrisy. In the letter, Peleg wrote: I read your response to Prime Minister Netanyahus statement concerning your meeting with the anti-Israel NGOs Breaking the Silence and BTselem, and I wish to tell you on behalf of Im Tirtzu, the largest Zionist movement in Israel, that we view your statement as inherently flawed, hypocritical and insulting. Peleg continued: The only organizations in Israel that the German government funds are political propaganda organizations that promote defamatory criticism against Israel including false accusations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and additional crimes against humanity. In the letter, Peleg asked the foreign minister how he would react if foreign governments funded millions of euros to radical German NGOs whose aim was to undermine the government: Would you be willing to accept Israeli funding of German propaganda organizations that accuse the German army of perpetrating crimes against humanity in Afghanistan? Would you be so tolerant if German propaganda organizations would receive funds from foreign governments in order to accuse the chancellor of violating the human rights of millions of Syrian refugees, after you paid money to Turkey to prevent them from entering Germany? Would it be acceptable to you if the Israeli government would fund German propaganda organizations whose goal is convince the German public to vote in favor of leaving the European Union? The letter concluded: This is subversion, and nothing less. It is a breach of fundamental agreements between two friendly democratic countries that have no business interfering in the internal affairs of one another. Your insistence on meeting with these anti-Israel NGOs is unwarranted, and represents the actions of a persona non-grata. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Israel and the White House are in preliminary discussions about a visit to Israel by U.S. President Donald Trump as early as next month, an Israeli government official said on Wednesday. A Trump visit would mark an early personal engagement by the new Republican president in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump in the White House in February, one of the first foreign leaders to do so after the wealthy businessman took office in January, and has spoken of positive change in U.S. Middle East policy after years of friction with Trumps Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. There are preliminary contacts between the (Israeli) Foreign Ministry and the White House and there is a 70 percent chance that a (Trump) presidential visit will happen, the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because a trip had not been finalized. A senior U.S. administration official said last week a stop in Saudi Arabia might be added. (AP) The growing chareidi tzibur in Israel now represents 9% of the Jewish population in Israel, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reports ahead of Independence Day 69. 11% of the Jewish population of the state identify themselves as religious; 12% religious/traditional; and 24% view themselves as traditional but not really religious. According to the numbers, most of the worlds Jews do not live in Israel as only 43% of world Jewry live in Israel today. According to the pre-Independence Day report, 174,000 Israelis were born since last Independence Day and 30,000 new immigrants moved to Israel during the same time period. Some other populations facts include: Jews comprise 74.7% of the population (6,484,000) Arabs comprise 20.8% of the population (1,808,000) Others comprise 4.5% of the population (327,000) The population grew by 1.9% since last Independence Day (159,000) 75% of the population are sabras; born in Israel Farming exports today stand at 3% as compared to 48% in the 1950s There are 3,239,000 vehicles on the road; 95 times the number of vehicles in 1951 34.6% of the population is between newborn and 18-years-old The majority (54.3%) are between 19 and 64-years-old The seniors, 65 and older, comprise 11.1% of the population At the end of 2016, there were 45,000 Israelis 90 and over 89% of respondents are satisfied with their quality of life 52% of respondents believe their lives will improve in the future 44% of respondents believe their economic situation will improve In 1948, there was only one city with 100,000 or more residents. Today there are eight cities with over 200,000 residents In 1961, the average salary was 275 lirot, while today, it is NIS 9,800. According to the CBS, there is a total of 8.68 million Israelis today. The prediction is that by 2048, when the state marks its 100th anniversary, Israel will be home to 15.2 million citizens. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) How sad it is that nearly a decade after the financial crisis, which devastated the lives of so many people, banks are still swamped with consumer complaints. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reports that the number of problems reported in the second half of last year was 3.04 million. Even if one excludes the 895,000 payment protection insurance (PPI) claims, the outcome is still shocking. In the red: Alex Brummer said the figure that caught his eye was the number of complaints against Lloyds Banking Group Much will be made of the Queens bankers Coutts and Midlands-based Secure Trust being the worst offenders per customer, but the figure that caught my eye was the number of complaints against Lloyds Banking Group. The Government and the banks management under chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio are celebrating the fact that taxpayer money has been paid back and a fragile balance sheet stabilised, but Lloyds has little to boast about when it comes to customer treatment. In the second half of last year it received 603,877 complaints about service, including 285,882 about banking and credit cards. The banks Black Horse offshoot, which lends against caravans and mobile homes, had more complaints than balances! Given the less than glorious record it might have been thought that Lloyds might have desisted from splashing out 1.9 billion on buying the MBNA credit card business. Putting the banks existing affairs in order should have been a priority. Only this week Lloyds finally acknowledged that mistakes might have been made in the way it dealt with fraud at the former HBOS branch in Reading. It appointed former judge Dame Linda Dobbs to look into the affair. The trouble with such internally generated probes is that they often plough the field, making it more difficult for the authorities to get at the facts. The absolute numbers of FCA complaints in the final six months rose strongly because the regulator now includes all moans, including those dealt with rapidly. The data throws a very clear light on the struggle of customers against the big banks, with state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland the most complained about for its banking and credit card services. One of the difficulties is that many of the UKs banks still have dated legacy IT systems which are not up to modern demands. Therein lies a problem not just for customers, but for shareholders too. Building modern systems is hugely expensive and could eat earnings and returns. But not doing anything will allow newer players to steal the lunch of the established players. The march of fintech is a reality that challenger banks are using to good effect. In at the deep end: Newly empowered GlaxoSmithKline chief executive Emma Walmsley has an early challenge managing the gap created by patent loss on asthma blockbuster Advair Budget pressures How terrific that British Government borrowing came in at 52 billion in 2016-17 some 20 billion below the previous year and less than one-third of the Tory-led governments inheritance from Labour. Nevertheless, the task of the new Parliament, if it is to continue bringing borrowing, debt and interest charges down, looks more considerable each day. The two biggest tax increases in Philip Hammonds March budget already have bitten the dust. Gone in the face of political pressure is the 2.1 billion which was to have been raised over four years from increasing national insurance contributions from the self-employed. Now we learn a further 2.2 billion of income, over the same period, has been lost in the Commons as the Labour opposition sought to nix the extra tax on dividends in the so called wash-up the emergency finance bill designed to keep the Government going. No one much liked either of these tax measures, which looked to be an attack on self-reliance and entrepreneurship, but they were a potent symbol of why the lock on the big three tax groups - income tax, VAT and national insurance - together with the ring-fencing of great swathes of Government spending, has been so distorting. That is why it is so important for the Tories to lift the monkey in their manifesto to clear the way for a big autumn, if not summer, budget. GSK gets tough Newly empowered GlaxoSmithKline chief executive Emma Walmsley has an early challenge managing the gap created by patent loss on asthma blockbuster Advair. There was reassurance from Walmsley that GSKs laser focus will be on its historical expertise as a science based enterprise focused on prioritising R&D. Less welcome may be Walmsleys veiled warning that there will have to be some tough and disciplined choices aimed at delivering more competitive science and medicines. Sounds like some people will have to hang up their lab coats. Tame by HBOS standards: Leonardo di Caprio in the Wolf of Wall Street The story of how bankers at HBOS 'financially raped' small businesses to the tune of 1billion, now subject to an independent inquiry, is compared to the 2013 Leonardo DiCaprio film The Wolf Of Wall Street. Might the HBOS scandal, a heady tale of drugs, prostitutes and ill-gotten cash, be worthy of the Hollywood treatment itself? John Malkovich could pass as disgraced boss James Crosby. Hispanic heartthrob Antonio Banderas was born to play his sultry namesake Antonio Horta-Osorio, who's had to clear up the mess after HBOS was later bought by Lloyds. What a pity Sir John Gielgud isn't around to play Lloyds' creaky chairman, Lord Blackwell. Veteran private equity tycoon Guy Hands says the industry is now in 'uncharted waters' thanks to recent political events, remarking: 'I started in 1982. 'This is the most difficult investing environment I have seen in my lifetime as an investor.' No doubt bouffant-haired Hands, 57, said to be worth 250million, will battle on with customary aplomb. He likes to conclude meetings by crooning Frank Sinatra's My Way. The 750-odd staff at City Lawyers Mishcon de Reya each received an envelope recently containing a crisp 20 note. The firm say it was 'just a small gesture, intended to bring a big smile'. They might have warned its over-worked lawyers. Many mistook the gift for their annual pay rise. Sainsbury's neatly pressed boss Mike Coupe is reportedly penning an autobiography. Last week, Virgin Money's vivacious Jayne-Anne Gadhia released her own bittersweet memoir, The Virgin Banker. Shareholders would be forgiven for wondering where their well-remunerated chieftains find the time. Nobby bankers Coutts & Co are to host a party at their swank offices overlooking the Strand for customers who've remained banking with them for more than 50 years. Cue collective molar-grinding among scores of long-serving Coutts clients who've recently ditched their accounts in protest at the lender's exorbitant 900-a-year banking charges. Sorrell has admitted it's tough out there WPP has seen its shares fall this session after the ad giant posted a fall in sales at its North America business. Sales in the region, which accounts for almost 40 per cent of the company's revenue, fell 1.1 per cent. It comes after the firm rattled investors in March when it cut its 2017 sales forecast, citing an ultra competitive environment in which rivals were having to scrap for every dollar of advertising spending. From 3.1 per cent net sales growth in 2016, WPP cut its 2017 target to a 'conservative' 2 per cent to reflect tepid economic growth and weaker net new business trends. This session the group as a whole reported a 0.8 per cent rise in first quarter sales growth, slightly shy of expectations at 1 per cent, after 2016 contract losses - including VW and AT&T - took their toll. Kepler Analyst Conor O'Shea said: 'It's a soft start to the year and they have a bit of catching up to do. The big swing factor is the US market, which has been a problem for the whole sector.' As a result shares are off 1.8 per cent, or 31.1p, at 1690.8p, adding to a 10 per cent fall since its outlook cut in March. However the group said it had seen an improvement in the amount of new business it was winning, enabling it to reiterate its full-year target. It won $2.1billion of net new work in the first three months of the year, compared with $1.8billion in the same quarter last year. Chief executive Martin Sorrell told Reuters: 'We had challenges on the new business front last year but it's picked up now. But it's a tough environment.' Having outperformed rivals for several years, WPP lost contracts from major corporates in 2016 and could suffer this year after consumer goods giant Unilever, its third-biggest customer, said it planned to cut advertising spending. Like all advertising groups, the owner of agencies including JWT and Ogilvy & Mather is being squeezed by clients who are struggling to raise prices, forcing them to cut costs. Unilever, which is looking to raise growth after recently fighting off a takeover bid, has said it intends to cut the number of advertisements it makes by a third and the number of agencies it works with by half. Analysts said the numbers were a little weak, but unlikely to affect forecasts. The update came as the firm's digital investment arm snapped up American innovation studio Deeplocal, which recorded group revenues of $12million last year. Short call: Wall Street trader Eric Yip is betting shopping malls will collapse Eric Yip spent his childhood working in his parents' store at a shopping mall in a small New Jersey town. The family sold homewares and T-shirts from the Burlington Center. In the early 1980s, the 103,000 sq ft retail complex had more than 100 stores and was the heart of the community, credited with creating a development boom in the town. Today, though, just a handful of shops remain and it is virtually silent. The fate of his home mall has prompted Yip, now a hedge fund boss in New York, to make one of the most talked-about trades on Wall Street. With echoes of The Big Short the Oscar-winning movie about how a few finance gurus got rich betting the US sub-prime mortgage market would collapse Yip is gambling that the US is facing a retail apocalypse. Using a previously little-known index, he is betting that bonds containing mortgages paid by shopping malls will fail to be repaid as stores go bust. He is so convinced that it is thought up to half his 155million fund at Alder Hill Management is invested in these bonds, known as CMBX 6. It's a gigantic stake on just one asset. He is trying to encourage other investors to take a punt, too, having written a dossier which he sent round Wall Street outlining what he believes is the bleak outlook for US shops. Yip suggested that more than two dozen malls in the US could default, and that bankruptcies were likely to be 'just a matter of timing'. Russ Mould, from the British broker AJ Bell, said: 'Investors are sensitive at the moment. If the Fed raised rates too quickly, or rolled up quantitative easing, there could be problems. For a hedge fund prepared to sit and wait, possibly for years, they could be proven correct.' Born in Hong Kong, Yip, 42, moved to New Jersey at five. He studied accounting and became an analyst with legendary hedge fund boss Carl Icahn. In 2014, he started work for Alder Hill. A year later it lost 13.6 per cent, and Yip became convinced that all was not well with US shopping malls. So he began to visit shopping centres across the country. He noticed many seemed poorly maintained and outdated. A high number had family-run businesses which he realised probably weren't paying much rent. He began to cast a critical eye on shop debt, looking at the CMBX 6 index. He noticed it had been trading well with few defaults, and predicted this would not continue. So he made a large bet. Film: Christian Bale stars as Michael Burry in the Big Short. Burry made millions betting that mortgage-backed securities would fail. Could the same thing happen with shopping malls? At the start of 2016, the index plunged 20 per cent. It rose a little, but has since fallen. Meanwhile, Alder Hill gained 7 per cent last year. It is a move that has drawn comparisons with the actions of Michael Burry, the real-life hedge fund guru depicted by Christian Bale in The Big Short. Before the financial crisis, Burry bet that mortgage-backed securities would fail because thanks to the US banks' reckless lending homeowners would not be able to afford to repay their home loans. Burry shocked the financial world, and many of his investors, by acting at a time when all the big banks were denying there were problems with their mortgage books. But after Lehman Brothers collapsed, Burry was to be proved right and made millions. Yip's bet is similar. The CMBX index was largely ignored by mainstream investors. It is a credit-default swap that bets on whether mortgages for shops will be repaid. Yip looked in detail at this swap and discovered 40 of the 1,500 loans it contained were shopping malls. Looking further he discovered that around half of them had weak sales data. If most of these weaker malls began defaulting on their loans and were liquidated, investors would stand to make a killing. It's a bet that has paid off so far. Concerns about stores are mounting. And fears are growing that these property groups could struggle as they find themselves saddled with more and more empty units they can't rent out. Analysis has shown a 50 per cent drop in visits to US malls over the past three years and that there were more retail bankruptcies in the first three months of the year than in the whole of 2016. It has been suggested 3,500 shops in US malls could close in the next couple of months, forcing many malls themselves to shut. Yip's bet against the retail market has seen his fund gain 8 per cent in the first three months of the year. Bets against the owners of big shopping malls in the US are now rising steadily. About 5 per cent of the shares of the biggest real estate investment trust around 770million are held by short sellers, and most are betting on a fall in smaller malls. Shares in these are down as much as a third this year. By contrast, the shares of larger malls have been doing well, although many expect this will not last. But there are critics who believe that Yip, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, may have made the wrong call. Mark McAllister, of the US fund Clearbridge Investments, said: 'There have been closures and bankruptcies. Most are retailers which have too much debt, don't have the right products or are bad merchants. 'Over time, good companies will do well. I think this shorting phenomenon is overblown and a harsh judgment on the mall industry.' Only time will tell whether Yip's giant bet foretold the beginning of the end for US mall retailers. There could be a revolt by investors over the pay packet of Standard Chartered boss Bill Winters Bankers at Standard Chartered have mounted a staunch defence of the pay packet of boss Bill Winters ahead of a possible revolt by investors. Shareholders - who will get a non-binding vote on pay at next weeks annual meeting - have been angered at plans to cut the targets for the chief executive, making it easier for him to earn a long-term bonus. But yesterday finance chief Andy Halford insisted the bank had held positive talks with major investors. There have been perfectly understanding discussions with shareholders, he said. When we get the voting next week, well see. Standard Chartered is seeking to hit a return on equity a core measure of profitability - of 10 per cent. But Winters will get cash if returns hit just 5 per cent. One investor likened it to a bonus for just coming to work. It came as Standard Chartered unveiled a 771 million profit for the first three months of 2017, up from 389 million a year earlier. Swinton is set to close branches due to the rise of price comparison websites A total of 900 jobs face the axe at insurance broker Swinton as it shuts branches due to the rise of price comparison websites. The 60-year-old business could close 84 of its 194 High Street outlets, and is also reviewing a call centre in Norwich. It follows a previous decision to shutter 130 branches by the middle of this year. Swinton currently has 3,000 staff - meaning it will be losing almost a third of its workforce. The business was founded in 1957 by Ken Scowcroft in the front room of his house in Manchester, and by 2008 was Britains third-largest insurance retailer. But bricks-and-mortar brokers have been undermined in recent years by the growing popularity of comparison websites. Chief executive Gilles Normand said: This change is difficult for all colleagues, especially those who are directly impacted by the proposals, but is vital if we are to remain competitive in a challenging insurance market. He also announced a 45 million investment in IT and digital technology. Juicy carrot: A number of banks are offering current account switching incentives M&S Bank is offering enhanced banking 'bribes' for those wanting to switch to its current account from today. New customers heading to the bank part-owned by HSBC will get a 125 Marks and Spencer gift card, along with 5 each month they deposit 1,000 for the first year. On top of this, customers can also open an exclusive M&S monthly saver with a 'five per cent' rate of interest. This savings account allows up to 250 per month to flow into it, meaning maximum potential interest of 81. In order to qualify, customers must use the current account switch service and set up two direct debits. Up until today, new customers would receive a 50 voucher along with 5 per month for the first two years a total of 170 worth of 'freebies'. This compares to this enhanced switching deal of 185, which can be gained in just a year instead, although it is worth noting that previously, it did offer an even better 220. Current account customers earn 1 in loyalty points for every 1 spent in M&S 100 points equals 1 in M&S vouchers. They also earn double Sparks points when shopping in M&S, a loyalty card that any shopper with the high street giant can obtain. Accounts come with a 100 interest-free overdraft. It has 29 branches attached to shops across the country. Many of Britain's banks offer incentives to get you to switch current account. But despite this, latest figures from the current account switching service show there were 949,047 switches in the 12 months to 31 March 2017. This compares to 1,061,144 in the year previous. WHAT OTHER CURRENT ACCOUNTS WITH PERKS ARE THERE? Firstly, when picking a new current account, it is important not to just get suckered into to one offering a headline-grabbing incentive do your research. You can run your details through a government-backed service, Midata, which will show the accounts if any that will better suit your needs. The main rival to the M&S Bank offering is from First Direct, which is also part of HSBC. It offers 100 to switch, and that is hard cash, rather than vouchers. It also has a five per cent exclusive savings account rate. You need to pay in 1,000 per month and switch using the current account switching service. Elsewhere, the Co-op is offering a 110 carrot to switch to its standard current account. You can also jump through some hoops to get an extra 5.50 per month with its everyday rewards scheme We have crunched most current accounts from the major banks, check out our guide here: This is Money's five of the best current accounts MBABANE Like Mzansi, social media in Swaziland lost its chill this past weekend as throngs of fans and local music fanatics defended first-time number one artist Eskay following some reckless criticism posted by a relatively unknown artist by the name Pro-Hustler Spare-Wheel. Eskay, a Swazi artist currently based in South Africa, last week clinched the coveted number one spot on the popular SBIS Top 20 chart show with his blazing single About you which features Kaspero a Mpumalanga-bred rapper. While many listeners of the chart show and voters on its Facebook page congratulated Eskay for finally scoring his first number one song in five years of his flourishing music career, a troll posted a picture snapshotted from Pro-Hustler Spare-Wheels timeline where he claimed that Eskay copies other popular artists styles in his raps. Facts. Eskay akanaso stayela sakhe. Wacale wahlabelisa kwa Kena, Wahlabelisa kwa Ghetto Villa, Wahlabelisa kwa Mp, Wahlabelisa kwa Eimsofly & a lilbit of Kwesta, I wonder whose (sic) gonna be next, maybe Mellifluous. Kwaaaaah. No beef,only facts, (Fact, Eskay is a copycat. At first, he mimicked Kena, then Ghetto Villah, then MP, then Eimsofly and to some extent; Kwesta. Wondering whos next. Perhaps Dr Melliflous. No beef, only facts), read the budding rappers status. However, this did not go down well with the majority of social media users as they reduced both the troll who posted and Spare-Wheel. Shokutsi lokusebentisa titayela tebantfu kuyamsebentela ngoba naku siyamati nyalo. Wena ke? (Perhaps using those styles works just fine given that we now know and support him, unlike you,), wrote popular social media user, Mpumuzo Dlamini. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Mark Hallum Multiple Long Island Rail Road trains going to and from Penn Station were delayed or canceled Tuesday as power problems in one of the East River Tunnels created more transportation nightmares for commuters. While rumors swirled that the LIRR would sue Amtrak for the repeated disruptions in service, the federal agency announced it will need to buckle down on a major overhaul despite the ensuing delays. Penn Station, the nations busiest rail hub, which is owned by Amtrak, has been besieged by two recent derailments, power outages in the East River and Hudson River tunnels, and scattered infrastructure failures, all of which have inconvenienced hundreds of thousands of commuters. Amtrak is responsible for maintaining the tracks. The latest electrical problems, which began Tuesday evening, were preceded by an Amtrak train that was stuck in a tunnel in the morning hours. The breakdown had the LIRR cross-honoring fares with the MTA. Between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., the LIRR reported a multitude of delays and cancellations through its Twitter page on lines such as the Port Washington and Babylon. Aaron Donovan, a spokesman from the MTA, confirmed Wednesday that 131 trains were scheduled during the peak hour in the evening. Ultimately, 44 trains were delayed and 21 trains were canceled. There was a 50.38 percent on-time performance for LIRR Tuesday, Donovan said. Delays ranged from 6 to 30 minutes in length, while the average delay was 12 minutes. Amtrak spokeswoman Christina Leeds said the upgrades planned for the stations infrastructure would result in the delays and disruptions of service. This renewal effort will replace and rejuvenate the selected infrastructure, providing needed updates, and is different than the ongoing repair work, Leeds said. Well have more on the plans in the coming days and will be working with LIRR and NJTransit to schedule this work and minimize service impacts. MTA spokeswoman Beth DeFalco denied rumors that the LIRR was planning a lawsuit as a direct and immediate result of the infrastructure breakdowns. There are no imminent plans to sue Amtrak, she said. As is always case, lawyers look into these types of things to explore all options, but again, there is no legal action imminent. Amtraks CEO Wick Moorman admitted to letting the whole region down in early April when he revealed the tracks in Penn Station have been in need of repair for a prolonged period of time and were the cause of two recent derailments that disrupted LIRR travel in a transit calamity that played out across several states. The statement came following an April 3 New Jersey Transit derailment caused by a compromised wooden railroad tie, which the agency had known was failing prior to the incident. We had notations that these timbers needed to be replaced, he said. We clearly did not have the understanding that there was an imminent failure. Eight of the 21 tracks in Penn Station were shut down by the Jersey Transit derailment April 3. The tracks were not up and running again until April 7, upending commutes for many passengers on the LIRR. It was the second derailment in the station within 10 days. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for greater funding to Amtrak and infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor after the April 3 incident, warning that lack of capital investment could have dire consequences. Even the smallest of maintenance issues, left unchecked, can become the reason for the next big delay or worse disaster. For far too long, Amtrak has been tremendously undercapitalized to the point that they now have an over $28 billion state-of-good-repair backlog, Schumer said. In addition, transit systems across the region lack the necessary funding to make much-needed repairs. So, simply put, no matter how hard Amtrak or other rail systems work to prioritize safety, because of a lack of funding, some projects and improvements are just not getting done. In a letter to Moorman and the Federal Railroad Administration, the governors of New York and New Jersey pointed out their states had not been invited to a review of Amtraks repair and maintenance procedures and asked to be included. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Bill Parry Mayor Bill de Blasio chided the Trump administration after a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the presidents executive order to cut federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge William Orricks temporary restraining order against President Trumps executive order comes days after a bitter feud broke out between the mayor and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions sent a threatening letter to New York and eight other cities warning officials that defiance of federal immigration law would cost those cities federal grants. In the letter, the Department of Justice deemed the NYPD as soft on crime despite record-low crime statistics. When Police Commissioner James ONeills read the statement, he said my blood began to boil. Sessions walked back the tough talk on a Sunday morning talk show, but when the judges ruling came down, de Blasio slammed the White House. Once again, a federal court has told the Trump administration: No you cant. The president is going beyond his authority when he tries to cut vital funding to cities that dont share his illogical and unconstitutional desire to scapegoat immigrants, de Blasio said. New York is the safest big city in America because we work with all our residents, not against some of them. We said from the beginning that a stroke of a pen in Washington would not change our values or how we protect our people. White House officials responded angrily, accusing the court of egregious overreach, while Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called the ruling bananas. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights), the Democratic Caucus chairman, called the ruling welcome news. President Trumps threat to withhold critical federal funds for some cities was misguided. The executive order could have done serious damage to the productive relationships between law enforcement and the immigrant communities needed to keep our communities safe, Crowley said. If the president was actually serious about tackling our nations broken immigration system, he would join Democrats in supporting comprehensive reform in an intelligent way not punish cities, like New York City, that simply welcome immigrants to live, work and contribute to society. The White House drew the ire of another Queens lawmaker last week after federal agents deported Juan Manuel Montes, 23, back to his native Mexico. Montes failed to produce ID after he left his wallet in a friends car. He had lived in the United States since the age of 9, becoming the first Dreamer to be deported despite Trumps pledge to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Beneath every claim that Trump is targeting only bad hombres, that DHS is using targeted enforcement, is the cold reality that innocent immigrants, including Dreamers, will inevitably become collateral damage, state Assemblyman Francisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights) said. That is the lesson that anyone claiming otherwise should learn from Juan Manuel Montes story. After Trump told the AP his administration is not after the Dreamers, we are after the criminals, Sessions said that Dreamers, like everyone that enters the country unlawfully are subject to deportation. This is a wake-up call, Moya said. Youre either OK with kicking kids whove only ever known the United States out and into a foreign land, or youre not. Choose a side. Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Astoria) fired off a letter to Justice Janet Di Fiore, the chief judge of the State of New York and head of the Office of Court Administration, strongly urging Di Fiore to implement a policy to limit the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in courthouses in order to maintain access to justice for all people. Without adequate protections, the courts become a perfect trap where immigrants can easily be hunted and captured by ICE, rather than being in a place where justice is served, Simotas wrote. She said allowing ICE to track and detain immigrants within the courts makes crime victims and witnesses less likely to come forward, which means criminals go free. Doing nothing, or waiting and monitoring the situation, has the very real potential to turn immigrants into a subclass of people to whom justice is denied, Simotas wrote. She stressed that OCA has no way to know the true extent of the problem since ICE agents often wear plainclothes with no badges or identification. Simotas said that since the president said anyone in the country illegally is deportable, any undocumented immigrant who shows up in our courts is at risk of being taken into custody. She discounted ICE claims that courts are used as a last resort when they are pursuing an immigrant. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Naeisha Rose Funeral arrangements have been made for four family members who perished in a fast-moving Queens Village house fire Sunday that gutted the frame house at 112-16 208 St. The victims ranged in age from 2 to 20. The members of the family who will be laid to rest May 6 at New Greater Bethel Ministries on Jamaica Avenue from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. are Chayce Lipford, 2; Rashawn Matthews, 10; Jada Foxworth, 16; and Destiny Dones, 20. A reception will be held immediately afterwards from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. A separate service will be conducted for Melody Edwards, 17, who also died in the fire. She was on the volleyball team at Queens High School of Teaching and Liberal Arts and had plans to become a lawyer after graduating finishing her final year this summer, according to her mother, Rozetta Edwards. She planned to attend SUNY Purchase. Neighbors saw smoke around 2:30 p.m., and at 2:36 p.m. a passing motorist, Zedias Mudzimba, called 911. The FDNY rushed to the scene and was joined by the NYPD, Con Edison workers, American Red Cross responders and the medical examiner. Stunned neighbors gathered outside the fire-ravaged home, along with elected officials. Near the site, state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and state Assemblyman Clyde Vanel (Cambria Heights) consoled relatives and neighbors. Sheener Bailey Briggs, the sister of the homeowner, arrived at the scene after 6 p.m. and was distraught. As she screamed in despair, Comrie held her in his arms, trying to comfort her as tearful neighbors spoke with Vanel. The cause of the fire was still not known. The house belonged to Dajuana Green, who was not home when the house caught fire because she left to buy a smoke detector, the New York Times reported. She is the mother of Rashawn Matthews, also the son of Maurice Matthews, 46, who escaped the fire by jumping out the second-floor window. He was later brought to New York Hospital Center and is considered to be in satisfactory condition. Greens Facebook page is filled with memories of the people she lost. The pictures captured moments of Rayshawn holding school awards, on vacation with the family, and in one photo, playing with his nephew and Greens grandson, Chayce, the youngest victim of the fire. Chayce had just turned 2 last month. His birthday party was Paw Patrol-themed, complete with a three-tier cartoon cake with his name and life-sized versions of the shows cast. Green is also the aunt of Melody, Jada and Destiny, according to a GoFundMe page that was set up to help her rebuild her house. Over $9700 of the $50,000 goal had been raised by press time. Maude Rennie, who was at her aunts house with her cousin at a backyard christening, witnessed Matthews jump. A bystander in a white shirt gave his phone to the grandfather in the brown pants who tried to go back into the house, but the grandfather fell back after the house blew up, Rennie said. The grandfather became sick and vomited during the ordeal. Matthews was screaming that I got to call my wife and had a slight burn on his hand, she said. He said that there were two kids on the second floor and he was arrested after trying to go back in. After digging through the rubble, fire marshals were able to determine that there were no working smoke detectors in the house. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro gave brief updates via Twitter. Its a very, very sad day for the people of our city when five promising young lives are taken from us, read one tweet. Around this time last year, Commissioner Nigro released a statement on the NYC.gov page for the FDNY about smoke detectors, and fires that occurred in 2015. More than 80 percent of fire deaths occurred in private homes or apartments where there was no working smoke alarm present. The day after the tragedy, firefighters gathered near the site and passed out information about fire safety. Comrie would later send out a press release addressing the issue. In the coming weeks and months, my office will work with the FDNY and other emergency response agencies and local civic organizations in order to disseminate fire safety information and resources to community members. Investigators are continuing to look for clues to what sparked the fast-moving fire. It might take a few days to see unofficial results in Pa. Here's why politics This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Correction: A previous headline on this article misstated who testified at the trial on Thursday. A video authorities made of their questioning of Alexander West, the defendant in this case, was played at his trial on Thursday. West did not testify QUEENSBURY -- Robert Knarr was a grandfather seven weeks removed from heart surgery enjoying a quiet night on Lake George behind the wheel of his 1928 wooden boat. Alexander West was a young boater cruising in his motorboat after a day with friends at Log Bay Day, an annual party on the lake. On July 25 their boats and lives collided near Cramer Point in a crash that killed Knarr's 8-year-old granddaughter, Charlotte McCue. On Thursday, jurors in West's manslaughter trial in Warren County heard from both West and Knarr both of whom told police they only had two drinks that night and were sober. "Everybody else was drinking. I was not drinking," West, 25, told police on a video of his July 26 police interrogation played for the jury by county prosecutors. "I really was 100 percent sober ... there was no alcohol in my system," West said. He said he drank two Corona beers and had no drugs in his system. He said he was not feeling well, which is why he limited his alcohol consumption. "I was definitely not intoxicated," West told police. West said the crash came "out of nowhere." He said he asked people on the other boat if they were all right but the boat just sailed to shore and did not respond. The crash, near Cramer Point, was at 9:22 p.m. Police interviewed West on July 26 just after 9:06 a.m. Prosecutors played the video of West's interrogation during the testimony of Investigator John Maday, one of at least two department investigators who interviewed West. "So how much did you have to drink?" Investigator Terri Jeffords asked West. "Just those two Coronas," West replied. He said he drank nothing at dinner. Prosecutors allege West drank two Moscow Mules, a vodka-laced drink, at dinner in Bolton Landing before the crash. West repeatedly told investigators he and his four passengers panicked and were scared after the crash, but they did not know anyone was seriously hurt in the other boat. Maday asked West how he saw people on the other boat had made it shore and yet he didn't go over to them. West said he panicked and feared sinking and upsetting his father about damage to the boat. "Did you happen to learn what happened?" Jeffords asked West, referring to the death of the child and severe injury to her mother, Courtney McCue, who was in court Thursday. "My mom told me," West replied, his head down. "I just wish I saw them." West's remarks on the videotape were contradicted by blood evidence which showed cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana in his system after the crash. District Attorney Kate Hogan andFirst Assistant Jason Carusone cannot show that evidence to jurors because investigators drew the blood before obtaining a warrant. At least three witnesses have said West snorted cocaine on his boat during Log Bay Day earlier that day. Knarr, 68, a business executive in the medical device industry, broke down on the witness stand and cried uncontrollably as he described the crash, which happened as he approached his home on the lake. Until that point Knarr said he was feeling like a new man after heart-valve-replacement surgery in early June. His wife, daughter, her husband and their three children were on board. Knarr said police later asked him if he consumed alcohol before the crash. Knarr said he was "pissed" they kept asking him about the pre-screening test for alcohol. He said he wanted police to "find the freaking people who hit my boat and killed my granddaughter." "I said, 'Find them!'" he testified. At one point, County Judge John Hall asked Knarr if he wanted to take a break. "Let me get through this!," he replied. "I don't want to have to come back here. Please!" While being questioned by West attorney Cheryl Coleman , Knarr asked, "Do you have any idea what I was going through?" Coleman replied, "I'm one of the only people in this courtroom who does." Coleman's 6-year-old daughter, Caitlin, died in 1997. The child's heart stopped while Coleman was prosecuting a murder case for Albany County prosecutors. The trial continues Friday. Maday's testimony is expected to wrap up. EARLIER: West admits having cocaine on boat before Lake George crash Montpelier, Vt. Fearing a return to violent protests that roiled campuses in the 1970s, colleges and universities are re-examining how to protect free speech while keeping students and employees safe in a time of political polarization. Campus police are trying new tactics to try to keep events peaceful, while other schools have abruptly canceled controversial speakers over safety concerns, as the University of California, Berkeley, did with conservative writer Ann Coulter's appearance, originally scheduled for Thursday. In response to earlier rioting at Berkeley, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators last month put on daylong protest preparation and response training sessions at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the University of Maryland, attended by law enforcement from about 40 colleges and universities. Another training session will take place Thursday at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. "Our mission is basically to protect the university's mission, which is to have civil debate and present both sides of an issue and have things be done in a way that's civil," said the association's president, Randy Burba, police chief at Chapman. "It's a challenge to make that happen when there's really opposing sides and views, but that's really what we're supposed to do." Burba declined to offer specifics about the training, to avoid disclosing proprietary police tactics. But, he said, the sessions were a chance to remind campus police of best practices: to know and be engaged with the college community, do research on speakers, look at what's happened at other campuses, and meet with the leaders of protest groups ahead of time to talk about their plans and the college rules. At Vermont's Middlebury College last month, protesters shouted down guest speaker Charles Murray, a social scientist who critics say used pseudoscience to link intelligence to race in the 1994 book "The Bell Curve." Afterward, protesters surrounded Murray and professor Allison Stanger, with a protester pulling Stanger's hair, police said. The protesters also climbed onto the car carrying Stanger and Murray and rocked it. Stanger, who was treated for a neck injury and a concussion, said she feared for her life. Middlebury said last week that 70 people may be subject to discipline, and that more than 30 students so far had been punished, but officials did not elaborate. Stanger wrote an editorial about her experience, saying the country's "constitutional democracy will depend on whether Americans can relearn how to engage civilly with one another, something that is admittedly hard to do with a bullying president as a role model. But any other way forward would be antithetical to the very ideals of the university and of liberal democracy." Bertram Johnson, chairman of the political science department that co-sponsored the event, last week wrote in the college newspaper that it was a mistake for him to offer a co-sponsorship without wider consultation. [April 27, 2017] Founder and CEO of LinkSure Danian Chen Named in Fortune's 2017 List of Top 50 Most Influential Business Leaders in China SINGAPORE, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 19th, Fortune released its 2017 list of the Top 50 Most Influential Business Leaders in China. The founder and CEO of LinkSure, Mr. Danian Chen, is among this outstanding group. Sharing the spotlight with Mr. Chen, are renowned Chinese entrepreneurs from a wide range of sectors, including Mr. Zhengfei Ren, CEO of Huawei, Mr. Huateng Ma, chairman of Tencent, and Mr. Jianlin Wang, chairman of Wanda Group. Fortune commented that "Mr. Danian Chen's brainchild app product, WiFi Master Key, is now one of top 10 apps with the most downloads in China that is not affiliated with any of the China's tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively known as BAT). According to an official report by Tencent in August 2016, WiFi Master Key's daily new users has surpassed Chinese social media app WeChat and QQ, to become the most downloaded app in China. Mr. Danian Chen manages the company with a unique approach; he emphasizes on employee empowerment and discourages working overtime. In his opinion, doing the right thing is far more important than sheer effort." Prior to being named as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Business leaders in China, Mr. Danian Chen is also listed in Fortune's China "40 Under 40" 2016 list. The financial freedom which he gained from being a serial entrepreneur, and his early career- Shanda Group which he co-founded with his brother Mr. Tianqiao Chen- has inspired him to use his wealth to solve social issues and help more people. During his interview with Fortune, Mr. Danian Chen shared about his dream to bridge the digital divide. According to Mr. Chen, the digital divide between different regions of the world is ever expanding despite our more globalized world economy and the increased availability of Internet access today. In 2013, Mr. Danian Chen established LinkSure and launched WiFi Master Key, in a move to provide free, convenient and secure Internet service to users worldwide. As of June 2016, the app has 900 million users worldwide, with a MAU of 520 million users. Mr. Danian Chen hopes for WiFi Master Key to reach to every corner of the globe so that those who cannot afford Internet connection are able to access the Internet conveniently for free, thus gaining happiness and even meeting with life-changing opportunities via the Internet. When it comes to managing the company, Mr. Danian Chen advocates a "zen-like" approach, honed from his two decades of management experience. To him, Entrepreneurship shouldn't be about achieving success frenziedly. On the contrary, he believes that establishing a proper empowerment and reward framework that grants employees the liberty to progress through trial and error is of utmost importance for business management. "Employees should be the rightful owners operating the day-to-day business, entrusted with the powers and corresponding responsibilities to do their jobs," said Mr. Danian Chen. Media Contact: Lydia Chow [email protected] +65-6715-6081 Photo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/493890/Danian_Chen_Wifimaster.jpg [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Friendly Technologies Open an Office in China to Promote its IoT Management Solutions RAMAT-GAN, Israel, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendly Technologies, a leading provider of carrier-class device management software for IoT/M2M, Smart Home, and Triple Play broadband services, opened an office in Shenzhen, China to support its local customers and further penetrate the IoT and Smart Home markets. Friendly has already signed an agreement with an international Chinese company that will allow Friendly to provide its products to the company's customers. Friendly's CEO, Ilan Migdal, stated that, "IoT and the Smart Home are growing rapidly, and we believe that China represents a large, potential market for our products. We have decided to increase Friendly's efforts in the Chinese market and realize that a local office is essential to support our growth in this region and facilitate the sale of Friendly's products to Chinese companies. In addition, we believe that our growing presence in China will lead to cooperatin with Chinese IoT devices manufacturers, which will enable us to provide better solutions to the international IoT market." As part of its increased efforts in the Asia and Asia Pacific regions, Friendly will participate in the CommunicAsia exhibition in Singapore taking place at Marina Bay from May 23 to May 25. About Friendly Technologies Friendly Technologies is a leading provider of carrier-class device management software for IoT/M2M, Smart Home, and Triple Play services. With its best-of-breed approach, Friendly enables service providers to avoid device dependency and manage multiple types of devices on a single platform. Friendly provides support for standard protocols including TR-069, OMA-DM, LWM2M, MQTT and SNMP, in addition to non-standard protocols. Friendly's solutions allow service providers and their customers to control, monitor, and manage all device types including routers, STBs, RGs, mobile hotspots, Smart Home hubs, sensors and appliances, smartphones, dongles, IP phones, M2M devices, smart power and water metering devices, health care devices, and more. Friendly's platform enables customers to automatically connect and provision new devices, monitor QoE, configure and update firmware remotely, and streamline their support services, while its server and cloud-based solutions offer data insights to service providers. For more information, please contact: Ms. Danielle Migdal at [email protected]m or +972-3-753-9000, or visit: http://www.friendly-tech.com. SOURCE Friendly Technologies [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] University of Phoenix School of Advanced Studies Announces Doctoral Journey Scholarship Recipients University of Phoenix School of Advanced Studies awarded five full-tuition doctoral scholarships to deserving recipients looking to reach their advanced education goals. Through this new scholarship program, recipients have the opportunity to earn a doctoral degree in healthcare, business or education at University of Phoenix. "This is the first year we have offered this scholarship, and the caliber of the recipients cannot be overstated," said Hinrich Eylers, Ph.D., executive dean for the School of Advanced Studies at University of Phoenix. "The recipients of this year's Doctoral Journey Scholarship have all chosen to pursue doctoral degrees in education, and we are humbled to have the opportunity to help prepare these students to make a difference in the communities in which they live and work. In fact, a key criterion for the selection was the potential impact the recipient would have on their community as a doctoral scholar." The Doctoral Journey Scholarship recipients are: Rachel Browdy - A Missouri high school social studies teacher for the past decade, Browdy is passionate about education and inspiring young minds. She plans to pursue her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership/Curriculum and Instruction, and is interested in conducting research about student motivation in the classroom, best practices for retaining knowledge and tools to become a lifelong learner. Fontella Calhoun - Calhoun is an assistant principal at an elementary school in Virginia and is dedicated to inspiring others to take ownership of their learning experience. She has more than 15 years of experience in the education field, serving in a variety of roles from general education, special education and administration. She plans to pursue her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, and aspires to become a superintendent and work closely with school and district leaders to inspire change and influence policy decisions. Matthew Schumacher - Schumacher has served as the principal of a middle school in northern Arizona since 2015. He has held positions in the classroom and in administration since 2006, including as a history and government and economics teacher. He strongly believes local schools should be he centerpiece of their community, and, in pursuing his Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, he hopes to expand his knowledge and experiences to broaden the scope of his impact in his community. Priya Tahiliani - Tahiliani, who has spent the majority of her career in a classroom setting, currently works as the Executive Director of English Language Development Services in the Boston Public School system. In her role, she helps students receive required services and instructional strategies to position them for success in the classroom. It is her goal to work toward her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, and to leverage good teaching and learning practices to create welcoming, equitable educational experiences for all English Language Learners. Kimberly Jill Vogel - Vogel serves as an Instructional Technology Resource teacher in Virginia. Prior to this role, she spent 14 years teaching high school English. Her goal is to pursue her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership with a specialization in educational technology. She hopes to promote continued excellence in education and positively impact rural and urban areas in the state. http://www.phoenix.edu/programs/gainful-employment.html. For information about all University of Phoenix scholarship opportunities, including scholarship requirements, visit www.phoenix.edu/scholarships. About the School of Advanced Studies University of Phoenix School of Advanced Studies is home to doctoral programs at University of Phoenix and develops leaders who create new models that explain, predict and improve organizational performance in their fields. The practitioner degrees offered through the School of Advanced Studies at University of Phoenix are designed around the Scholar, Practitioner, Leader Model, incorporating lifelong learning (scholarship), social and workplace contribution (practice), and the ability to exert positive influence (leadership). More information can be found at phoenix.edu/colleges_divisions/doctoral.html. About University of Phoenix University of Phoenix is constantly innovating to help working adults move efficiently from education to careers in a rapidly changing world. Flexible schedules, relevant and engaging courses, and interactive learning can help students more effectively pursue career and personal aspirations while balancing their busy lives. As a subsidiary of Apollo Education Group, Inc., University of Phoenix serves a diverse student population, offering associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs from campuses and learning centers across the U.S. as well as online throughout the world. For more information, visit www.phoenix.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005345/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 26, 2017] UNDP, Chinese bike-sharing start-up ofo join forces to support innovative solutions to climate change challenges NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and ofo, a Beijing-based start-up company that has become the world's first and largest bike sharing platform, are joining forces to raise public awareness about climate change. The partnership will also provide financial support to innovative projects that address urban environmental challenges, expected to reach 100 million people, including school children, with campaign messages about the adverse effects of climate change and ways all of us can reduce CO2 emissions. UNDP and ofo will also establish a joint scholarship program to support environmental research projects and will provide small grants to start-ups offering green products and technologies. ofo, which currently has over 30 million people using its app to share bicycles in China Singapore and the US will donate its income on the 17th of each month to celebrate the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs - also known as the Global Goals - are an ambitious blueprint agreed upon by nearly 200 nations to eradicate poverty and inequality by 2030. UNDP, which is the world's largest development organisation, will advise ofo on an innovative initiative which will see ofo redistributing abandoned bikes to rural areas to improve access to education for children living in poverty. "Both UNDP and ofo are innovators when it comes to finding ways of reducing the emissions related to the burning of fossil fuels, and this is an innovative partnership which will make real strides towards protecting our precious environment," said Michael O'Neill, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director of External Relations. "We are very proud to be partnering with UNDP as we both work together towards achieving one of the key goals agreed by the world in 2015: the goal of a clean, sustainable safe environment and planet for all of us," said Chief Executive Officer of ofo, Dai Wei. UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in nearly 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. www.undp.org. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 26, 2017] Unity Denticare Joining BookDoc Platform NTUC Health's Unity Denticare bringing smile to the community through online collaboration with BookDoc KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Unity Denticare, one of the major dental groups in Singapore, is collaborating with BookDoc to allow the community to search and book its dental services online. BookDoc is a healthcare technology start-up with presence in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand, and welcomes Unity Denticare to its online Search & Book platform. Established in August 1971, Unity Denticare's mission is to moderate the cost of dental care. It seeks to be the dental care provider of choice in the community for their oral health and wellness needs. With some 50 dentists and 19 clinics including mobile dental clinics located island-wide, it aims to improve every patient's dental health through high quality, advanced technology and holistic care. With a team of experienced dentists and specialists, it provides a comprehensive and affordable range of general and preventive, restorative and aesthetic dental services. Unity Denticare is part of the social enterprise NTUC Health, which seeks to serve working families through an integrated suite of health and eldercare services. Head of Dental Services Mr Patrick Wong added that "Apart from our network of clinics islad-wide, our mobile dental clinics also serve nursing homes, senior activity centres and neighbourhoods at various locations. In addition, Unity Denticare actively reaches out to the community to promote the importance of oral hygiene. This partnership with BookDoc is a good complement to our efforts reach out to more. It enables users to search for a clinic closest to home, review the dentists' credentials and make an appointment conveniently through their mobile phones. From the start of May, you will be able to search & book our dentists on BookDoc." "We are delighted to play a role in the wonderful effort of NTUC Health Unity Denticare to make Singapore a better place, especially for the intermediate & long-term care sector. Our Search & Book platform serves not only the users who want to assess health services themselves, but also those who want to book for their loved ones. After which, the users could easily locate Unity Denticare clinics on the map, navigate or hail a ride even for their loved ones," said Dato' Chevy Beh, Founder & CEO of BookDoc. "BookDoc" app is downloadable for free on Apple App Store (for iOS) and Google Play Store (for Android). Users can now access a hassle-free integrated healthcare ecosystem supported by strategic partners from navigation (Google Maps & Waze), land transport (Grab & Uber), air transport (AirAsia), hotel accommodation (Agoda, Airbnb) and restaurants & attractions recommendation (TripAdvisor); as well as BookDoc Activ which rewards users for maintaining high level of physical activity. It recently welcomes a member of Dr Stanley Ho family as its latest strategic investor. About BookDoc BookDoc, with presence in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand, is an online platform that operates across the healthcare continuum connecting patients to healthcare professionals anytime and anywhere, while incentivising all to stay active. BookDoc has established an integrated online ecosystem for local and overseas health travellers. The ecosystem allows users to search and book healthcare professionals anytime and anywhere, and integrates seamlessly with navigation (Google Map, Waze), transport (Grab, Uber, AirAsia), accommodation (Agoda, Airbnb) and recommended restaurants & attractions (TripAdvisor) for a hassle-free and enjoyable experience to healthcare appointments. In addition, through BookDoc Activ, it rewards users for maintaining high level of activity by partnering major retailers and service providers that offer users discounts for achieving reward tiers based on activity level. The company is backed by a diverse group of investors from entrepreneurs to seasoned healthcare and insurance professionals, banker, regulators as well as ICT professionals. It has made records in achieving the highest pre-seed and seed valuation in Asia Technology Start-up history. It is available online at www.bookdoc.com, App Store and Google Play Store. For More Information Please Contact Name: Ms. Valerie Voon Tel: +6019-336 6758 Email: [email protected] Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170426/1835056-1 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 26, 2017] Cyberport Gears Up with 3-Year Strategic Plan to Drive Digital Tech as an Economic Driver for Hong Kong HONG KONG, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the cornerstone for sustainable development of a society, innovation and entrepreneurship are engines behind the growth of Hong Kong's economy. Cyberport has been playing a key role in fostering Hong Kong's digital economy over the past years and has achieved remarkable results. Riding on the solid momentum that Cyberport has built, the company today unveiled its new three-year strategic plan to groom digital entrepreneurs to help drive the transformation and value-creation of Hong Kong. Under the umbrella of the new three-year strategic plan, together with the strong support from the government and industry partners, Cyberport targets to: expand to a 1,200-member community strenghthen the investor network to include more than 100 active partners, and double the funds raised by start-ups to HK$2.8 billion "Cyberport has been fostering digital tech development over the years. What underpins our new strategic plan is our resolute belief in the potential of digital technology to accelerate Hong Kong's economic growth and ultimately improve our quality of life," said Dr Lee George Lam, Chairman of Cyberport. "I am pleased to be working closely with the dynamic team at Cyberport and help expand their network with investment and business leaders. I am confident that Cyberport will be able to seize new opportunities for collaboration through our ever-expanding network; build a complete ecosystem for entrepreneurs to thrive and succeed; and become a key driving force behind the digital transformation of the Hong Kong economy." Cyberport will enhance its focus on key clusters of digital technology, namely FinTech, eCommerce, IoT/Wearables, Big Data/AI. With a critical mass of close to 200 FinTech companies providing innovative solutions such as robo advisors, wealth management analytics, InsurTech, and algorithm trading, they have gained strong momentum in transforming the financial industry as well as recognition from numerous industry accolades. This exciting field, together with the other said clusters, are widely regarded as the building blocks of a "Smart City", a vision articulated in the HKSAR government's initiatives. Under the three-year plan, Cyberport will gear up its resources to inspire more youth to join the league; accelerate the growth of digital tech entrepreneurs; catalyse adoption of digital tech solutions among SMEs and corporates; as well as to attract international talents, investors and partners to help the start-ups go global. The announcement came along with the introduction of Lynk, a Cyberport incubatee, as the first investee of the Cyberport Macro Fund (CMF). This is an unprecedented initiative where Cyberport steps up its commitment to digital tech development by co-investing in start-ups with institutional investors to shore up the venture capital ecosystem in seed to series A funding, and pave the way to success for scalable digital startups in Hong Kong. "The CMF is a testament to our pledge to give digital start-ups that extra push they need to excel and go global. And more importantly, to maximise that impact by joining hands with industry partners - both old and new, local and overseas," explained Dr Lam. "Therefore, we would like to thank our co-investors for acknowledging the value of Cyberport's start-ups and join us in accelerating their growth into global business. We certainly look forward to more collaborations with individual and institutional investors in the near future through CMF and other initiatives." Lynk, a digital platform founded in 2013, connects users to the right experts for advice, insights and knowledge. With a growing base of 35,000 experts from 73 countries and strong client portfolio, Lynk is set to become a global brand and a super connector. Benefitting from a highly scalable business model and a conscious awareness of compliance issues, it stands out among early-stage start-ups and currently enjoys an international profile of investors hailing from Hong Kong, Mainland China, the United States, Southeast Asia and Africa. "I would like to thank Cyberport for their dedicated support of our entrepreneurial journey along the way," said Peggy Choi, Founder and CEO of Lynk. "Aside from being the first investee of the CMF, we have also received professional support through Cyberport Incubation Programme, which has helped accelerate our growth and push our business forward. With Cyberport now being a partner of our business, we look forward to achieving more and contributing to the digital economy." With headquarters in Hong Kong and offices in Singapore and Mumbai, Lynk has just concluded Series-A funding with US$4M. About Cyberport Cyberport is an innovative digital community with close to 900 community members. It is managed by Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited, which is wholly owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government. With the vision to become a main force in developing the digital tech industry as a key economic driver of Hong Kong, Cyberport is committed to nurturing youth, start-ups and entrepreneurs to grow in the digital industry by connecting them to strategic partners and investors, driving collaboration with local and international business partners to create new opportunities, and accelerating digital adoption amongst SME and corporates. With a committed team of professionals providing all rounded value added services to support our digital community and an array of state-of-the-art tech facilities, Cyberport is the flagship for Hong Kong's digital tech industry. For more information, please visit www.cyberport.hk. For press enquiries, please contact: The Hoffman Agency Jackie Lau Tel.: (852) 2231 8103 Email: [email protected] Lorraine Wong Tel.: (852) 2231 8107 Email: [email protected] Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited Elsa Lee Tel.: (852) 3166 3829 Email: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 26, 2017] Madhouse Inc. Achieves $423 Million in 2016 Revenue SHANGHAI, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Achieving a total revenue of $423 million (2.8 billion RMB) in 2016, Madhouse Inc. has acted as the pioneer in becoming the largest mobile advertising platform company globally. Founded on January 1, 2006, Madhouse is one of the first advertising platform companies focusing exclusively on mobile. After its success in the Chinese market, the company continued its strategic expansion to the international market in 2012. With a spectacular success in entering the Indian market, Madhouse has become the largest mobile advertising company in India. As the company's one-stop mobile advertising programmatic platform, PremiumMad, launched in 2014, Madhouse's advanced technology provides brand advertisers and premium mobile publishers with cutting-edge mobile advertising solutions at the same time driving programmatic forward in China. PremiumMad is the company's supply-side platform (SSP) offering premium inventories of native ads to brand advertisers. By integrating over 60 hero apps, the high quaity mobile SSP ensures ad inventory quality and enhances brand safety. For app marketers and e-commerce advertisers, PerforMad, the company's all-in-one ROI based optimization platform, is purposely built to maximize mobile investment and convert audience to quality users for advertisers. In 2017, Madhouse Inc. plans to enter the OTT TV advertising market to broaden its services and bring more robust solutions to advertisers. The company's founder and CEO, Joshua Maa, who is also the co-founder of MMA China, has been elected as Chair of the Mobile Advertising Standards & Measurement Guidelines Committee for five consecutive years. He has been working closely with partners throughout the industry to establish and promote mobile advertising standards and measurement guidelines. "We have witnessed the growth and evolutions of the mobile advertising industry in the past 11 years and we will always stay passionate and be committed to mobile advertising," Joshua says, "We will continue to lead the market and achieve more in the decade to come in China and globally." He also adds that Madhouse Inc. will continue to partner with advertisers, agencies, demand-side platforms, third party measurements, data companies, media and supply-side platforms to contribute to a more advanced ecosystem. About Madhouse Inc. Founded in 2006, Madhouse Inc. is now the largest independent mobile ad platform company worldwide. Focused exclusively on mobile programmatic, the company aims to optimize mobile marketing investment for the clients. It not only helps brand advertisers to engage target audience, build brand awareness, enhance purchase intention and increase customer loyalty in China, but also provides solutions for mobile app marketers to acquire quality users globally. Madhouse entered India in 2012. With the highest market share, it has become the largest mobile advertising company in the Indian market. It has more than 260 employees and six offices across China and India. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Amazon Celebrates World Book Day with Global Free Library Events in Twelve Countries Around the World Amazon's Canadian celebration of World Book Day brings hundreds of participants together to share a love of reading Events around the world garnered more than 17,200 book donations and brought more than 7,400 participants together to share a love of reading, globally Event in Toronto collected more than 500 book donations SEATTLE, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - Amazon hosted its first celebration of World Book Day with a Global Free Library event series in twelve countries, including Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Amazon invited communities around the world to celebrate their love of reading and books in honour of World Book Day, celebrated annually on April 23. World Book Day is a day dedicated to authors, illustrators and readers across the globe. Across twelve countries, several thousand people including employees, local community members and book publishers donated more than 17,200 books to bring the Global Free Library event series to life. The global events brought together more than 7,400 participants to celebrate reading, and included activities ranging from author readings and photo booths, to book-inspired latte art and temporary tattoos of Kindle Popular Highlights. In the spirit of WorldBook Day, readers that attended the celebrations were encouraged to leave a book they love and want to share and to discover and select a new book (or eBook) to bring home and read. The remaining books were donated to local charities. In Toronto, books were donated to Children's Book Bank. "Books are home to us at Amazon, our company started with books and they remain core to what we do," said Robin Mendelson, Director of Books & Media, Amazon. "The power of reading and the power that books have to transform lives and shape communities is as strong as ever. Around the world, readers visited our Global Free Library events and took part in the celebration of reading, sharing and discovering new books. We were so appreciative to receive the support of publishers, customers and our own employees to give back to local and global institutions that are vital to the promotion of literacy and literature. Amazon employees had such a great time joining families and our local communities around the world who took time out of their days to share in the love of reading." "It was a fantastic event and I was so pleased to be there chatting with people about the Book Bank and books," said Roxanne Deans, Directory of Inventory and Outreach, Children's Book Bank. "We are thrilled to have received so many great books from Amazon and Torontonians and can't wait to see what next World Book Day holds." Fun facts from Amazon's celebrations of World Book Day in Toronto: Over 250 attendees celebrated World Book Day at Amazon's Toronto event at Boxcar Social; event at Boxcar Social; More than 500 books were donated to Children's Book Bank by Amazon employees, publishers and community members; Three Canadian publishers donated books Scholastic, Simon & Schuster and Hachette. Highlights from the Global Free Library event series can be viewed here. About Amazon Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews. SOURCE Amazon.ca [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Genesys Announces Headline Speakers for Two CX17 Customer Experience Conferences SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Genesys (www.genesys.com), the global leader in omnichannel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions, will hold signature customer experience events in the U.S. and Europe on May 22-25 in Indianapolis and June 7-9 in Brussels. CX17 is the annual Genesys conference that gathers together the strongest ecosystem of solutions, customers, partners and technology pushing the boundaries and future of customer experience. Genesys is hosting a CX17 conference in each hemisphere this year to accommodate the global audience for its Customer Experience Platform. These events will focus on exploring the importance of providing the "human touch" in an increasingly digital world. With nearly 70 sessions in Indianapolis and nearly 30 in Brussels, attendees will also explore emerging innovation in cloud, chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), customer journey management, hyper-personalization, predictive analytics, virtual reality and more. Headline speakers at CX17 Indy include Genesys executives and customers presenting best practices in customer engagement across multiple industries, including insights from top executives from Cielo, Facebook, PayPal, Philips, and the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Breakout session panelists include speakers from Accor Hotels, Bosch Services Solutions, EMS, nib health funds limited, Rochester Regional Health System, Shaw Industries Group, TXU Energy, and UPC. Attendees at the closing night party will rock out to the music of the Gin Blossoms. The keynote speaker at CX17 Brussels to discuss "Technology vs. Humanity" is the renowned futurist and author Gerd Leonhard. Genesys customers such as Bank of Ireland, the British Columbia Liberal Party, and Conduent will discuss the importance of the human touch in engaging constituents in government as well as business. Genesys partner Dimension Data will present a breakout session on advanced integration of IoT and data analytics into smart customer journeys. Other speakers include business experts from Bain & Company as well as Frost & Sullivan. And since it's Belgium, a party in a brewery is de rigueur! "As our first customer conference since Genesys closed the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence, CX17 brings together the best of our Genesys G-Force with the Interactions events," said Tom Eggemeier, president of Genesys. "We're excited to introduce our customers, partners, and the industry to the expanded Genesys product portfolio that empowers organizations of all sizes and types, anywhere in the world, to connect with customers and employees across any channel, every day." There will be a special ceremony at CX17 Indy to announce the winning finalists in the 12th annual Genesys Customer Innovation Awards recognizing industry leaders in achieving exceptional customer experience and remarkable customer service innovation and transformation. Winners also will be honored on stage at CX17 Brussels. Registration for both CX17 events is now open. Follow the excitement at CX17 on social media using the hashtags #CX17INDY and #CX17BRUSSELS. About Genesys Genesys powers more than 25 billion of the world's best customer experiences each year. We put the customer at the center of everything we do and passionately believe that great customer engagement drives great business outcomes. More than 10,000 companies in over 100 countries trust the industry's #1 customer experience platform to orchestrate seamless omnichannel customer journeys and build lasting relationships. With a strong track record of innovation and a never-ending desire to be first, Genesys is the only company recognized by top industry analysts as a leader in both cloud and on-premise customer engagement solutions. Visit www.genesys.com. Connect with Genesys via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and the Genesys blog. Media Contacts Rachel Faulkner Sr. Manager, Public Relations Genesys [email protected] +1 317.715.8109 Lisa Hawes Sterling Communications for Genesys [email protected] +1 408.395.5500 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genesys-announces-headline-speakers-for-two-cx17-customer-experience-conferences-300446944.html SOURCE Genesys [April 27, 2017] Nahel Gandhi Joins Janeiro Digital as SVP and Managing Director Janeiro Digital, a digital business consultancy solving mission critical business objectives with creative technology solutions, today announced that Nahel Gandhi has joined the company as SVP and Managing Director. Nahel will be expanding Janeiro Digital's inventive and cutting-edge Internet of Things (IoT) practice to continue driving growth and industry specialty. Nahel is based in Chicago and reporting to CFO and COO Ed Davis. Prior to joining Janeiro Digital, Nahel was Global Director of IoT at CNH Industrial. In this role she was responsible for creating strategic direction in IoT for Agriculture, Construction, and commercial vehicle equipment. Nahel mapped the product evolution and structured a team, platform, and ROI for new product portfolios like enterprise mobility, e-commerce platforms and brand-centered experiences for B2B and B2C products. She was instrumental in shaping best-in-practice IoT direction for CNHi while adhering to industry standards and collaborating with industry experts. Prior to CNHi, Nahel held management roles at 21st Century Digital Arabia(du), DoubleClick, Google (News - Alert) and A.C. Nielsen. "As Janeiro continues to grow its Fortune 500 customer base, IoT is a critical piece of the strategic path for many of our clients. With an expert who has led that focus for a Fortune 100 company now on our team, our clients gain a clear advantage in achieving their objectives, especially in the industrial IoT space," said Jonathan Bingham, CEO, Janeiro Digital. Janeiro Digital has seen rapid growth in recent years while driving digital transformation for an increasing number f Fortune 500 companies. Through the innovative application of technology, Janeiro Digital is able to solve real business problems and meet the goals of their clients. "Nahel is a seasoned and well-respected leader in the IoT space and a welcome addition to our Managing Director team," said Ed Davis, COO/CFO, Janeiro Digital. "We couldn't be more excited as this is just the beginning of our 2017 investment to support and expand our growth." About Janeiro Digital Janeiro Digital is a digital business consultancy solving mission-critical business objectives with innovative technology solutions. Through a unique transformative approach, Janeiro Digital provides sustainable and diverse service offerings that drive the products, processes, and performance of its clients to meet their needs and better serve their customers. Janeiro Digital's approach, rooted in the scientific method, uses Rapid Alignment, Design, and Development (RADD) to ensure calibration with its clients' objectives at every stage. Janeiro Digital works with clients from a diverse set of industries, from the raw startup to the Fortune 500. The company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Boston, MA with three domestic offices and one international office. Learn more about Janeiro Digital at www.janeirodigital.com. For company updates, follow Janeiro Digital on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and read the company blog. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005900/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Blue Lake Rancheria Native American Reservation Microgrid Goes Live Blue Lake Rancheria, a century-old Native American reservation in Northern California, has launched its low-carbon community microgrid that is helping power government offices, economic enterprises, and critical Red Cross safety shelter-in-place facilities across 100 acres. In collaboration with Humboldt State University's Schatz Energy Research Center, Siemens (News - Alert), Idaho National Laboratory and additional partners, the microgrid uses decentralized energy resources and intelligent software to provide its residents and economic enterprises with reliable power without interruption. The microgrid includes a 500-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system designed and built by REC Solar and a 950 kWh Tesla battery storage system, all managed and controlled with Siemens Spectrum (News - Alert) Power Microgrid Management System (MGMS) software. Funded in part through a $5 million grant from the California Energy Commission's Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) program, the system allows the reservation to operate independently of the power grid in coordination with local utility Pacific Gas & Electric. This project incorporates the largest solar array in currently in operation in Humboldt County, California, is estimated to save the Tribe over $200,000 in annual energy costs, will reduce at least 150 tons of carbon per year and will grow Tribal clean energy jobs by 10 percent. "With the help of our state, academic, technology, federal, and utility partners, this microgrid project has fulfilled the Tribe's aggressive energy security, economic, and environmental goals," said Jana Ganion, the Tribe's Sustainability Director. "We have proven we can efficiently deploy the fiscally-responsible solar and storage sources of energy, create clean energy jobs, and transition away from fossil fuels at a brisk and feasible pace." "At its core, this microgrid is an example of motivated governments investing in distributed grid improvements and low-carbon energy in a novel and replicable way," said Arla Ramsey, Blue Lake Rancheria's Vice Chair. "Our partners have contributed their expertise and goodwill far above what we expected. This partnership approach has transformed our energy sector with significant employment and other economic co-benefits." "The Blue Lake Rancheria community is leading the way in their commitment to the environment," said Alan Russo, senior vice president of sales and marketing at REC Solar (News - Alert). "We enjoyed working alongside a customer wit shared values and a willingness to build such innovative energy solutions." "This project demonstrates how national laboratory assets can be leveraged as part of a diverse partnership to reduce risks and build resilient community microgrids," said Rob Hovsapian, Power & Energy Systems manager at Idaho National Laboratory. "The continuing trend toward decentralized energy is made feasible in large part by the introduction of intelligent software to manage and control a vast array of energy resources," said Pat Wilkinson, Vice President at Siemens Digital Grid. "With our intelligent microgrid management software, Blue Lake Rancheria is able to rely on a complex mix of generation and storage to work together to deliver efficient, reliable and cleaner power for the Tribe's government offices and other critical infrastructure." "The Blue Lake Rancheria has been a pioneer in bringing together a number of different energy technologies in one location through their microgrid," said David Rubin, PG&E's (News - Alert) Director of Service Analysis. "We have welcomed the opportunity to participate in this microgrid project because it showcases the use of multiple distributed energy resources while playing an important role in the community in the event of a natural disaster or another emergency." The software is able to accurately predict power needs and dynamically manage generation and distribution through integrated weather data, load forecasting, and load-shed scenarios. In grid-connected mode, the software will help the Tribe reduce peak loads and conduct other energy management optimization to help relieve pressures on the larger grid. In cases of emergency when the larger grid is down, the system will operate in islanded mode. In both scenarios, the software prioritizes the use of the cleanest and most financially beneficial forms of energy, in this case solar and battery storage, within a portfolio of on-site generation sources. For further information on the Blue Lake Rancheria microgrid, please visit http://news.usa.siemens.biz. Siemens Corporation is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG (News - Alert), a global powerhouse focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis. With approximately 351,000 employees in 190 countries, Siemens reported worldwide revenue of $88.1 billion in fiscal 2016. Siemens in the USA reported revenue of $23.7 billion, including $5.4 billion in exports, and employs approximately 50,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Blue Lake Rancheria Located in Humboldt County, California, the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe (www.bluelakerancheria-nsn.gov) is a federally recognized sovereign nation organized under an IRA Constitution. Established in 1908 within the aboriginal boundaries of the Wiyot as a refuge for homeless Indians, in 1958 the Tribe was unlawfully terminated under P.L. 85-671. In 1983, as a result of Tillie Hardwick v. United States, the Tribe was federally reinstated. Today the Tribe operates over thirty government programs and an array of economic enterprises to provide social services and public safety resources for its members and local, regional, state, and federal stakeholders. REC Solar REC Solar is a nationwide leader providing complete commercial, public sector and utility-scale solar solutions. Incorporating experience from more than 580 successful solar installations over 20 years, REC Solar tailors financing and technology solutions to immediately deliver bottom line savings. REC Solar makes solar simple, working seamlessly with customer operations to deliver clean energy for decades. For more information, visit RECSolar.com or call 844-REC-SOLAR (844-732-7652). View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005933/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] New WSO2 e-Book Examines Best Practices for Navigating the Digital Transformation Landscape Mountain View, CA (News - Alert), April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Digital businesses are reshaping the landscape of many industries with novel products, services, and business models. Whether starting from scratch or leading an established enterprise through digital transformation, these organizations recognize the need to adapt both their technology strategies and cultures in order to continually innovate and thrive. A new e-book from WSO2 reviews cultural factors, technology requirements, and proven strategies for driving an effective digital transformation initiative. The e-book is available at http://wso2.com/landing/free-e-book-navigating-the-digital-transformation-landscape. The e-book, "Navigating the Digital Transformation Landscape," incorporates best practices observed by the WSO2 team while supporting customers' digital business strategies. It sets the context by reviewing two major trends among digital businesses today. New digital-native businesses have emerged with digital products, services, and business models that are changing how we work and play. Uber as an alternative to taxis, StubHub for buying and selling tickets, SpotHero to find parking spaces, and Fitbit for monitoring activity are three examples. have emerged with digital products, services, and business models that are changing how we work and play. Uber as an alternative to taxis, StubHub for buying and selling tickets, SpotHero to find parking spaces, and Fitbit for monitoring activity are three examples. Established businesses are engaged in digital transformation, reinventing their business models and innovating offerings as the market landscape and technologies evolve. For instance, Netflix has moved from fulfilling video rentals by mail to delivering content online, to becoming a major funder of original content. Meanwhile, Starbucks provides a Mobile Order & Pay app that lets consumers place their coffee orders in advance and pick them up waiting in line. The e-book then examines the primary busness drivers of digital transformation initiatives. These include evolving business models where digital solutions increasingly replace physical offerings, enhancing the customer experience using analytics and social media to better understand customers, and optimizing operations by digitizing processes and enabling data-driven decision-making. The e-book also reviews seven key technology enablers-APIs, integration, security, artificial intelligence, analytics, mobile, and the Internet of Things (IoT)-and how they contribute to digital businesses. Next, it examines key approaches to creating a culture that fosters the innovation and agility required to build a digital business. These include democratizing IT strategy, prioritizing on focused solutions, and the need to open source internal applications and aligning IT closely with the business. WSO2 then outlines best practices being employed by customers, from startups to Global 1000 companies, to drive their digital transformation initiatives forward. These include: Creating a staged roadmap with clear milestones to deliver smaller-scale, focused solutions while gaining support for the broader digital transformation initiative. Cultivating the team to ensure that employees have the right skills and mindset to drive the transformation. Popularizing the proof-of-concept to demonstrate early success and build the confidence needed to foster change. Creating an internal open source culture that adopts the best aspects of open source organizations. Using small groups to bring big ideas to market, replacing their traditional, hierarchical enterprise IT structures. Engaging the enterprise's broader ecosystem in the initiative, from partners and suppliers to technology vendors and cloud service providers. The e-book concludes by explaining how WSO2 supports enterprises' digital transformation initiatives with software designed to meet today's demands for an agile approach to API management, integration, identity and access management, smart analytics, and IoT. About WSO2 WSO2 uniquely increases the agility of digital businesses and enterprises engaging in a digital transformation. It offers the only completely integrated enterprise platform that enables businesses to build, integrate, manage, secure and analyze their APIs, applications, and Web services-on-premises, in the cloud, on mobile devices, and across the Internet of Things. Leading enterprise customers worldwide rely on WSO2's award-winning 100% open source platform and its robust performance and governance for their mission-critical applications. Today, these businesses represent nearly every sector: health, financial, retail, logistics, manufacturing, travel, technology, telecom and more. Visit http://wso2.com to learn more, or check out the WSO2 community on the WSO2 Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. ### Shifali Erasmus Kinetic.PR, LLC for WSO2 [email protected] Mobile: 650-544-6424 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Demand for Cloud-Based Restaurant Technology Propels Point of Sale Market Leader Toast Inc. to Expand Headquarters Overlooking Fenway Park BOSTON, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform and one of the fastest-growing SaaS (News - Alert) companies in the U.S., today announced it will expand its Boston headquarters within Samuels & Associates' Landmark Center in The Fenway, while at the same time announcing recognition by BostInno as its 2017 "Tech Madness" winner; out of 150 companies, Toast was voted "the most valuable tech company in five years." On the heels of this win, Toast's expanded headquarters will significantly grow the company's footprint in order to accommodate its breakout growth. Toast is expected to hire 250 or more employees in 2017 as it grows into the new office space. "From our founding as a three-person team in a basement to our expansive growth in Landmark Center, we've remained unwavering in delivering the best customer service and restaurant POS system built for restaurant success. Clearly, this commitment has resonated with leading brands across all 50 states," said Chris Comparato, CEO of Toast. "Our achievements stem from having the best team in the industry, a world-class restaurant POS system, and an obsession with customer success. We are committed to doubling down on this vision in the years ahead, and look forward to expanding within Landmark Center to foster an environment of innovation, creativity and collaboration." Toast moved into Landmark Center in the summer of 2015, part of a nearly half-million square foot influx of office tenants drawn to the neighborhood's diverse workspaces, restaurants, shops, parks and transit accessibility. "Toast's success is a perfect example of what it means to grow in The Fenway," said Peter Sougarides, principal at Samuels & Associates, which owns and manages Landmark Center. "Companies here are at the center of it all, and when the neighborhood's creative, entrepreneurial spirit becomes part of their DNA, the growth potential is limitless." To learn more about Toast POS and career opportunities, see here: https://pos.toasttab.com/careers. About Toast, Inc. Toast is an all-in-one restaurant technology platform. Built specifically for restaurants, Toast offers a mobile, cloud-based point of sale (POS) system that incorporates key facets of the guest experience into one platform, connecting the POS system with integrated online ordering, gift card and loyalty programs, and labor and sales reporting. Since launching Toast in 2013, the company has grown to hundreds of employees and thousands of restaurants, ranging from fine dining to fast casual, from independent businesses to national chains. Learn more about Toast at www.toasttab.com or on their Facebook page. Media Contact for Toast: Kate Ottavio Kent, ICR for Toast [email protected] 203.682.8276 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] New Fiber Optic Probe Brings Endoscopic Diagnosis of Cancer Closer to the Clinic In an important step toward endoscopic diagnosis of cancer, researchers have developed a handheld fiber optic probe that can be used to perform multiple nonlinear imaging techniques without the need for tissue staining. The new multimodal imaging probe uses an ultrafast laser to create nonlinear optical effects in tissue that can reveal cancer and other diseases. Today, cancer is typically diagnosed by removing a bit of tissue with a biopsy and then sending that tissue to a specially trained pathologist who stains the tissue and uses a microscope to look for cancerous cells. The ability for doctors to skip the biopsy and use a multimodal imaging endoscope to diagnose cancer on the spot would save valuable time and could also allow surgeons to more easily differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissue during surgery. With the new probe, imaging techniques that previously required bulky table-top instruments can be performed with a handheld device measuring only 8 millimeters in diameter, about the same diameter as a ballpoint pen. If miniaturized further, the probe could easily be integrated into an endoscope for nonlinear multimodal imaging inside the body. "We hope that, one day, multimodal endoscopic imaging techniques could help doctors make quick decisions during surgery, without the need for taking biopsies, using staining treatments or performing complex histopathological procedures," said Jurgen Popp, from Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany and the paper's lead author. The researchers detail their new handheld probe in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research. It is the first miniaturized probe for multimodal biological imaging to incorporate a multicore imaging fiber, a type of optical fiber consisting of several thousand light-guiding elements. This special imaging fiber allowed the researchers to keep all moving parts and electric power outside of the probe head, making the probe easy and safe to use in the body. The researchers have tested the probe with many types of tissue samples, but because it is currently designed for forward view mode, the primary applications of the probe would likely include skin, brain or head and neck surgery. They are working on implementing a side view mode that could be used to investigate hollow organs and arteries such as the colon, bladder or aorta. A mini microscope "The new probe serves as a miniaturized microscope that uses near-infrared lasers to investigate tissue," said Popp. "Different components of biological tissue react differently to the excitation lasers, and their unique response gives us information about the molecular composition and morphology within the tissue." The handheld multimodal imaging probe can simultaneously acquire several types of images: coherent anti-stokes Raman scatterig, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited auto-fluorescence. These nonlinear imaging techniques have been shown to be useful for clinical diagnostics, including identifying cancerous cells, but it has been difficult to miniaturize the required instrumentation for use inside the body. The probe's reduced size comes from its use of gradient index, or GRIN, lenses to focus the laser light. Compared to traditional spherical lenses that use complicated shaped surfaces to focus light, GRIN lenses can be made very small because they focus light through continuous refractive index changes within the lens material. Popp's research team collaborated with scientists from Grintech Gmbh who designed GRIN lenses only 1.8 millimeters in diameter and helped incorporate the robust lens assembly into a small aluminum housing. Endoscopes designed for nonlinear imaging commonly use moving mirrors and electromechanical devices for point by point laser scanning in the probe head. Using the multicore imaging fiber allowed the researchers to further reduce the device's size by moving the laser scanning out of the probe head and away from the sample site. Because the fiber's thousands of light guiding elements, or cores, preserve the spatial relationship of the light between the two ends of the fiber, the scanning can be performed at the opposite end of the fiber, making an endoscopic approach much easier. "Compared to other endoscopic nonlinear imaging approaches, our fiber probe stands out due to its simplicity," said Popp. "Since no moving parts are incorporated in the probe head, possible misalignments in the optics are limited and the probe's overall lifetime is increased." Multimodal imaging of tissue The researchers demonstrated the unique capabilities of the multicore imaging fiber by moving one end of the probe across a sample and transferring the acquired images to the other end. "This is not a trivial task since the cores of the imaging fiber differ in size and shape, hindering efficient and homogeneous coupling of the excitation lasers," said Popp. "Furthermore, we had to deal with unwanted effects like different wavelengths interacting inside the fiber and core-to-core light coupling." They also demonstrated that the probe could acquire separate coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited autofluorescence images of healthy human skin tissue samples with a resolution of 2048 by 2048 pixels for a scanned area of 300 by 300 microns. This resolution and field of view is sufficient for identifying tumor borders, and the probe can be moved over the tissue surface to get an overview of the affected area. The researchers are working to use algorithms to improve the quality of the multimodal images, which appear pixelated because of the structure of the multicore imaging fiber. As a next step, they plan to test the probe in animal models and with patients in a clinical setting. Paper: A. Lukic, S. Dochow, H. Bae, G. Matz, I. Latka, B. Messerschmidt, M. Schmitt, J. Popp, "Endoscopic fiber probe for nonlinear spectroscopic imaging," Optica, Volume 4, Issue 5, 496-501, (2017). DOI: 10.1364/optica.4.000496 About Optica Optica is an open-access, online-only journal dedicated to the rapid dissemination of high-impact peer-reviewed research across the entire spectrum of optics and photonics. Published monthly by The Optical Society (OSA), Optica provides a forum for pioneering research to be swiftly accessed by the international community, whether that research is theoretical or experimental, fundamental or applied. Optica maintains a distinguished editorial board of more than 40 associate editors from around the world and is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Alex Gaeta, Columbia University, USA. For more information, visit Optica. About The Optical Society Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit www.osa.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005988/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Ontario Systems and Recondo Technology Partner to Increase, Accelerate and Optimize Payments to Healthcare Providers Ontario Systems, a leading software provider to the healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM), accounts receivable management (ARM (News - Alert)) and government (GOV) markets, has announced a new partnership with Recondo Technology to provide cloud-based revenue cycle solutions to its healthcare provider customers. Under the agreement, the exception-based segmentation of Ontario Systems (News - Alert) Artiva HC technology will be enhanced with Recondo's patented ReconBot web bot technology to help healthcare finance leaders benefit from automated claim status follow-up and its inherent increases in efficiency, accuracy and reimbursement outcomes. "Through intelligent segmentation of the provider's claim volume, we've seen 80 percent of claims managed by this process come to resolution with just a single automated claim status transaction," says Shawn Yates, Ontario Systems Director of Healthcare Product Management. "That's a huge labor savings, freeing healthcare providers to focus on more strategic revenue cycle opportunities than simply calling insurance companies, or checking their websites. By partnering with Recondo, our customers can focus their business office staffs' efforts on positive yielding activities for an organization versus repetitive non-productive touches." Recondo Technology focuses on radically transforming the healthcare revenue cycle process by empowering clients with innovative end-to-end cloud-based software and services thatstreamline workflow and create unprecedented efficiencies through automation. The company's technology "intelligently" requests information on every aspect of claims and remittance, using ReconBots to retrieve answers as soon as payers post them to their websites. Recondo's ClaimStatusPlus solution eliminates manual intervention on up to 70 percent of claims. "The average hospital processes tens of thousands of claims a month without knowing ahead of time which claims will go through smoothly and which will require further work," says Recondo CEO Jay Deady. "This partnership will ensure that Ontario Systems' client staff no longer need to spend their days logging onto individual payer websites or calling payers to see if claim status data has been posted yet. Automating the process effectively removes approved claims from the work queue, eliminating non-productive touches, and aligning the best resource for the remediation that is required so the entire process is significantly streamlined and enables a more productive staff to accelerate payments to their organization." "Our customers excel at deploying innovative solutions to healthcare's biggest and most common financial challenges," says Ontario Systems Senior Director of Business Development, Steve Scibetta. "That's why we continue to partner with market leaders like Recondo who enable us to enhance our technology in a way that brings new fuel to healthcare provider missions across the country." About Recondo Technology Recondo's cloud-based solutions deliver accelerated, accurate, and actionable financial clarity to all participants within the healthcare revenue cycle. Recondo empowers more than 900 hospitals with solutions that connect providers, payers and patients to ensure proper payments across the care continuum. The company's patented software and expertise streamline operations and allow providers to be paid more, faster and at a cheaper cost. Recondo brings efficiencies and cost savings to patient access through to payment processing-a continuum today where inaccuracy and inefficiencies currently cost U.S. healthcare a staggering $480 billion per year. Learn more at www.recondotech.com. About Ontario Systems Ontario Systems, LLC is a leading provider of revenue recovery software and solutions to the revenue cycle management (RCM), accounts receivable management (ARM), and government markets. Established in 1980 and headquartered in Muncie, Ind., Ontario Systems also has a location in Vancouver, Wash., and employees in 27 states. Ontario Systems offers a full portfolio of software, services and business process expertise, including product brands such as Artiva RM, Artiva HCx, Contact Savvy, and RevQ. Ontario Systems customers include five of the 15 largest hospital networks who actively manage over $40 billion in receivables collectively, as well as eight of the 10 largest ARM companies and more than one hundred state and municipal governments in the U.S. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006001/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Viptela CTO to Discuss Impact of SD-WAN on Carrier Ecosystem at NFV World Congress Viptela, the Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) company, announced today that SD-WAN expert and Viptela CTO Khalid Raza will participate on an expert panel at the upcoming NFV World Congress in San Jose, California. Viptela will also provide demonstrations in the NFV World Congress Expo, booth # 1. WHO: Khalid Raza, CTO and co-founder, Viptela, is a former Distinguished Engineer at Cisco and widely regarded as a visionary in the networking industry. In a career spanning more than 20 years, Khalid has played an instrumental role in architecting the network infrastructure for Fortune 100 companies and Global Tier-1 carriers. Other Panelists include: Gabriel Podolsky, Product Line Manager, Telco Systems Tony Sarathchandra, Director, Product Management of SDN Technology and Solutions, Juniper Networks Senior Representatives from NEC/Netcracker, SevOne and Nokia (News - Alert) Moderated by: Roy Chua, Partner, Co-Founder, SDxCentral and Partner, Wiretap Ventures WHAT: In this expert panel, "Transforming Enterprise Services" the speakers will explore the current evolution of carrier services to meet the digital and cloud migration needs of enterprises and the emerging role of NFV+SDN capabilities in service provider networks. Khalid Raza will discuss Viptela's experience rolling out SD-WAN with major carriers including SingTel (News - Alert) and Verizon. He will also explain the impact SD-WAN, NFV and SDN are having on carriers' ability to deliver new services, including: -- What SD-WAN offers customers and what composition/bundling is required with other WAN services -- How today's security paradigm can be improved -- What the path to mass deployment of virtual or universal CPE will be WHERE: NFV World Congress DoubleTree Hilton, San Jose, CA (News - Alert) WHEN: SD-WAN & BUSINESS FORUM - PANEL DEBATE - Transforming Enterprise Services Wed., May 3, 2017, 5:25 PM PDT https://www.layer123.com/nfv-agenda-day1/#Forum-4 HOW: To schedule a conversation with Khalid Raza, contact Marc Gendron at [email protected] or 781-237-0341. For more info or to register, visit: https://www.layer123.com/nfv-booknow About NFV World Congress 2017 NFV World Congress was founded in 2014 by a group of visionary and senior carrier leaders to form a center of gravity for the rapidly emerging NFV industry and provide a forum to accelerate innovation and support ecosystem growth. As new commercial applications and services are launched and deployed - such as SD-WAN - 2017 will see important advances in NFV+SDN+MANO. There is no let-up in the pace of innovation, with NFV now forming the cornerstone of telecom network and business transformation. NFV World Congress brings an undivided market focus to NFV+SDN+MANO and its future development, building the new Carrier Ecosystem for the future network. For more information, visit https://www.layer123.com/nfv. About Viptela Viptela provides Fabric technology that Enterprises and Service Providers use to deliver a superior user to application experience. The solution is a single platform that enables multiple critical use-cases: including SD-WAN, Cloud, Network-as-a-Service and Application user experiences. It is a cloud delivered, secure, scalable, open and simple to deploy platform that is in use at thousands of sites, and is the most deployed solution by Global Fortune-1000 enterprises. Major carriers including Verizon and Singtel are using the Viptela Fabric to deliver network-as-a-service offerings to businesses. The company has been named a Next Billion Dollar Startup by Forbes, 2016 Red Herring Global 100 Company and CRN Tech Innovator. Viptela is backed by Sequoia Capital (News - Alert), Redline Capital and Northgate Capital. For more information, visit: viptela.com or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @viptela. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006005/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] DigiCert CSO Jason Sabin Named a Two-Time Utah Genius LEHI, Utah, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DigiCert Chief Security Officer (CSO) Jason Sabin was recognized as a Utah Genius for the second time in his career at a formal event held in Salt Lake City. In its ninth year, the Utah Genius awards program annually recognizes the top 20 patentees and trademark registrars in the state. In the past year, the U.S. Patent & Trade Office has issued nine patents to Sabin, underpinning his work to help DigiCert advance authentication and encryption best practices for the enterprise and Internet of Things (IoT) security. "Jason's expertise has helped DigiCert lead the market with innovation that protects the integrity of our customer's technical operations," said DigiCert CEO John Merrill. "We are grateful for Jason's contributions to DigiCert and congratulate him on this well-deserved honor." Since joining DigiCert in February 2012, Sabin has worked closely with DigiCert's customers to develop innovative new products and features that simplify and optimize SaaS-based digital certificate deployment for stronger enterprise web and IoT security. Sabin also oversees security of DigiCert systems. Sabin's career of innovation has led to the filing of more than 60 patent applications that address improvements to cloud computing, identity, authentication and security. Today, his inventions are featured in products deployed globally by many Fortune 500 companies. Sabin's focus on cloud security spans more than a decade, including his previously having overseen Novell's Security Review Board and built the copany's first penetration testing teams. Sophisticated cyberattacks on valuable organizational and personal data are on the rise, especially with the increasing number of connected devices presented by the IoT. DigiCert's innovative PKI solutions enable large-scale SSL/TLS certificate deployment through flexible, scalable systems and expert consultation for companies looking to optimize their PKI infrastructure and secure their valuable digital investments. DigiCert solutions are used for automated certificate provisioning, data encryption, secure boot, patch management, machine-to-machine mutual authentication, user authentication, and data integrity to help prevent unauthorized intrusions and data manipulation. DigiCert's automated PKI management platform, CertCentral, delivers unique insights into an organization's certificate landscape and simplifies certificate management. DigiCert leads its industry with high-assurance digital certificates and intuitive management tools for organizations of all sizes. DigiCert is a trusted partner for leading organizations, including the Global 2000 and the majority of the U.S. Alexa Top 10. About DigiCert, Inc. DigiCert is a leading provider of scalable security solutions for a connected world. The most innovative companies, including the Global 2000, choose DigiCert for its expertise in identity and encryption for web servers and Internet of Things devices. DigiCert supports SSL/TLS and other digital certificates for PKI deployments at any scale through its certificate lifecycle management platform, CertCentral. The company has been recognized with dozens of awards for its enterprise-grade management platform, fast and knowledgeable customer support, and market-leading growth. For the latest DigiCert news and updates, visit digicert.com or follow @digicert. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/digicert-cso-jason-sabin-named-a-two-time-utah-genius-300447228.html SOURCE DigiCert, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] PROPHET IMPLEMENTS NETSUITE ONEWORLD TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL GROWTH LAS VEGAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SUITEWORLD 2017 -- Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit (GBU), the industry's leading provider of cloud financials / ERP, HR and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Prophet, a leading global consulting firm, has implemented NetSuite OneWorld for ERP and Professional Services Automation (PSA). Since going live on NetSuite OneWorld in October 2016, Prophet has gained a unified view of financial, resource management and project management processes that have streamlined operations across nine global offices operating in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland and Hong Kong, creating efficiencies across the entire organization. San Francisco, Calif.-based Prophet brings together thought leaders and top talent from across the globe to grow better brands and businesses. As demand for Prophet's consulting services skyrocketed, the combination of legacy software from acquisitions and manual processes used to manage the business was anything but seamless, which hindered efficiency gains and scalability for growth. Hundreds of internal employees and consultants based around the globe submitted time and expenses in different currencies and disparate systems. Project management was conducted manually through its intranet, and a decades-old Sage system was used to manage financial processes and required manual intervention to do everything from basic reporting to month-end close. Prophet needed a flexible infrastructure that could scale to accommodate its rapid growth. After a comprehensive evaluation of solutions that promised streamlined management of ERP and PSA processes, Prophet selected NetSuite OneWorld for its robust international functionality and scalability, coupled with automated, integrated resource and project mnagement capabilities. "Resource management is a key driver and strategic advantage for our business," said Jeani Vance, CIO of Prophet. "Other large-scale competitors couldn't meet all of our needs the way that NetSuite can." NetSuite OneWorld supports 190 currencies, 20 languages, automated tax calculation and reporting in more than 100 countries; customer transactions in more than 200 countries; and enables businesses to streamline their mission-critical business processes. In just six months since go-live, Prophet has realized efficiencies with the following features and benefits including: Streamlined financial consolidation and month-end close. NetSuite OneWorld's robust financial consolidation engine and multi-currency support eases month-end close across five different offices in the United States, as well as offices in London, Berlin, Zurich and Hong Kong. This includes support for transactions in the U.S. dollar, British Pound, Swiss Franc and Hong Kong dollar. NetSuite OneWorld not only provides Prophet control over month-end close, it has expedited the process by upwards of a week. Increased spend control. With integrated, automated expense and time reporting, expenses hit budget owners in real-time, ensuring streamlined approval and payment processes, and protection against freelance overspend and budgeting overages at month-end. Enhanced project management capabilities. Real-time reporting on key project metrics allows managers to see everything from progress to profitability that help streamline project management and empower leaders to make insight-driven decisions on resources used, client profitability and more. International scalability facilitates growth. Robust multi-language and multi-currency functionality in NetSuite OneWorld allows Prophet to quickly provision software for international offices, and accelerate its global strategy. A flexible and powerful development platform. NetSuite's SuiteCloud Development Platform provides flexibility for Prophet to tailor the system and integrate with other third-party solutions to meet its unique business needs and industry-specific requirements. Prophet has plans to extend the NetSuite implementation to include advanced forecasting capabilities. "Prophet's value proposition is to help our clients find better ways to grow," said Vance. "With NetSuite, we have a backend technology foundation that allows us to do just that." Jeani Vance is sharing Prophet's story at SuiteWorld 2017, the number one cloud ERP event of the year, this year being held in Las Vegas from April 24-27. Watch her and all SuiteWorld 2017 keynotes live here. About Prophet Prophet is a consultancy that helps clients find better ways to grow by focusing on three important areas: creating relevant brand and customer experiences, driving accelerated growth strategies and leveraging digital as a transformative force in their business. We operate differently than other consultancies, blending insight, strategy and creativity with an optimistic yet pragmatic approach. We have partnered with some of the world's most successful companies, including Electrolux, T-Mobile, UBS, Gatorade and GE. With nine global offices and more than 350 experts in marketing, innovation, digital and design, we are able to bring together the right people with the right experience to solve our clients' business challenges. Prophet.com About Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit pioneered the Cloud Computing revolution in 1998, establishing the world's first company dedicated to delivering business applications over the internet. Today, Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit provides a suite of cloud-based financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR and omnichannel commerce software that runs the business of companies in more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.netsuite.com. Follow Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit's Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates. About Oracle Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of cloud applications and platform services. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prophet-implements-netsuite-oneworld-to-accelerate-global-growth-300444799.html SOURCE Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] EQUITY ALERT: Rosen Law Firm Files Securities Class Action Lawsuit Against Ocwen Financial Corporation Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces it has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of Ocwen Financial Corporation securities (NYSE:OCN) from May 11, 2015 through April 19, 2017, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). The lawsuit seeks to recover damages for Ocwen investors under the federal securities laws. To join the Ocwen class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-1105.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. or Kevin Chan, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. NO CLASS HAS YET BEEN CERTIFIED IN THE ABOVE ACTION. UNTIL A CLASS IS CERTIFIED, YOU ARE NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL UNLESS YOU RETAIN ONE. YOU MAY ALSO REMAIN AN ABSENT CLASS MEMBER AND DO NOTHING AT THIS POINT. YOU MAY RETAIN COUNSEL OF YOUR CHOICE. According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or ailed to disclose that: (1) Ocwen engaged in significant and systemic misconduct in violation of federal consumer financial laws; and (2) as a result, defendants' statements about Ocwen's business, operations and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable bases at all relevant times. On April 20, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Ocwen for various violations of federal consumer financial laws that have harmed borrowers. On this news, shares of Ocwen fell $2.91 per share or over 53% to close at $2.49 per share on April 20, 2017, damaging investors. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than June 20, 2017. If you wish to join the litigation, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-1105.html or to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact Phillip Kim or Kevin Chan of Rosen Law Firm toll free at 866-767-3653 or via email at [email protected] or [email protected]. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn (News - Alert): https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm or on Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/rosen_firm. Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006129/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Santa Clara University's School of Engineering Welcomes New Dean to Mission Campus Santa Clara University is pleased to announce that Dr. Alfonso Ortega, the James R. Birle Professor of Energy Technology and the founding Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Programs at Villanova University, will be appointed Dean of Santa Clara's School of Engineering and John M. Sobrato Professor. Ortega, whose term will begin on Aug.1, 2017, will provide overall academic, administrative, and financial leadership for the School of Engineering. He will report directly to Dr. Dennis Jacobs, University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Ortega greatly expanded graduate education and research at Villanova University. Moreover, he is in the vanguard of researchers seeking to solve the increasingly complex problem of cooling electronics integral to daily life, such as in laptop computers, mobile devices, and data centers. Through 30 years of research contributions to the field, and his establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Energy Smart Electronic Systems at Villanova University, Ortega has forged deep relationships with the U.S. electronics industry and garnered significant support from Silicon Valley technology companies such as Cisco, HP, Intel, Facebook, and Microsoft (News - Alert). "Joining the community of Santa Clara University, the Jesuit university in Silicon Valley, is a dream come true," said Ortega. "The need for highly trained engineers and scientists in core STEM fields has never been greater in our country. Santa Clara is at the forefront of developing inspiring and ethical STEM leaders who will lead he next wave of innovation. I am so excited to be a part of that mission in the heart of Silicon Valley, the very epicenter of that innovation. The prospect of helping Santa Clara broaden and deepen its relationships within the Valley is an opportunity that I relish. I have deep Bay Area roots, both professional and personal, and have a great affection for the area." Among his many accolades, Ortega was named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was also the recipient of the inaugural Distinguished Service Award from Southern Arizona Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) for his contributions to the math and science development of Southern Arizona's underrepresented middle and high school students and their teachers. This award has since been named in his honor. "Santa Clara University will benefit greatly from Dr. Ortega's passion for engineering education, deep embrace of the School's Jesuit Catholic mission, and vast administrative experience," said Michael Engh, S.J, president of Santa Clara University. "He brings impressive credentials from his years serving as Program Director at the National Science Foundation and from his roles as Associate Dean of Engineering and Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Programs at Villanova University." Ortega will succeed Dr. Godfrey Mungal, who has served as Dean of the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University for the past 10 years. Ortega earned a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso, and master's and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He previously served as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona and at Villanova University, as well as serving as Program officer in the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation. About Santa Clara University Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master's and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master's universities, California's oldest operating higher education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005435/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Basilea shareholders approve all resolutions proposed by the Board of Directors at the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders Basel, Switzerland, April 27, 2017 - Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) reported that at today's Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders for the financial year 2016, shareholders approved all agenda items proposed by the Board of Directors. The shareholders approved the annual report, the financial statements, and consolidated financial statements for the business year 2016, and approved the release of the members of Basilea's Board of Directors and Management Committee. Shareholders also approved carrying forward the accumulated deficit, and re-elected PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, Basel as Statutory Auditors for the audit of the stand-alone and consolidated financial statements for the business year 2017. The shareholders elected Dr. Nicole Onetto as a new member of Basilea's Board of directors and re-elected Domenico Scala as Chairman and Prof. Daniel Lew, Dr. Martin Nicklasson, Dr. Thomas M. Rinderknecht, Steven D. Skolsky and Dr. Thomas Werner as members of the Board of Directors. The shareholders also re-elected Dr. Nicklasson, Mr. Skolsky and Dr. Werner as members of the Compensation Committee. Dr. Caroline Cron was re-elected as Independent Voting Rights Representative. The terms of all these individuals last until the end of the 2018 Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. "I am delighted that Nicole Onetto has been elected as a new member of the Board of Directors," said Domenico Scala, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "Her wealth of experience both operationally and strategically in developing and bringing innovative oncology drugs to patients will further strengthen the Board's oncology expertise." The shareholders also approved the increase of the authorized share capital. Finally, the shareholders approved the proposed maximum aggregate amount of the compensation for the Board of Directors for the period until the 2018 Ordinary General Meeting, the maximum aggregate amount of fixed compensation for the Management Committee for the period of July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, and the maximum aggregate amount of variable compensation for the Management Committee for the period from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. In a non-binding advisory vote, the shareholders also approved the aggregate amount of he Management Committee's variable compensation for the business year 2016. In his presentation to the shareholders at the meeting, Chief Executive Officer Ronald Scott highlighted the achievement of the key company goals set for 2016. He reported that the antifungal drug Cresemba (isavuconazole) was launched and is available to patients in key European markets. Additionally, Basilea concluded development and commercialization partnerships for Cresemba and Basilea's antibiotic Zevtera (ceftobiprole) covering more than forty countries. Moreover, Basilea entered into a contract in 2016 with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the clinical phase 3 development of ceftobiprole. He explained that the total contract amount could reach up to USD 100 million in non-dilutive funding. Mr. Scott said: "Our first achievements in 2017 include the agreement of Special Protocol Assessments with the US FDA for two ceftobiprole phase 3 studies. We are now preparing to initiate these studies in bloodstream and skin infections with the ultimate goal of gaining regulatory approval of ceftobiprole in the United States." In addition, he indicated that Basilea continues to focus on increasing the sales of Cresemba and Zevtera, entering into additional collaborations to make Cresemba and Zevtera available in further territories around the world, and advancing its oncology compounds. At the meeting, 31.5 percent of Basilea's share capital was represented. Currently, 60.5 percent of the total shares outstanding are registered in Basilea's share registry. About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a biopharmaceutical company developing products that address the medical problem of increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company uses the integrated research, development and commercial operations of its subsidiary Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. to discover, develop and commercialize innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com. Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD Head Corporate Communications & Investor Relations +41 61 606 1102 [email protected] [email protected] This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. Attachments: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/093ddf7c-6582-4834-b617-dee44f49a4a8 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] TapClicks Acquires Raven Tools in Move to Become the Industry Standard Reporting Platform for Marketers SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TapClicks, a leader in enterprise marketing reporting and data visualization, announced today that it has acquired Raven Tools. Raven is a veteran internet marketing platform located in Nashville, TN, and is a major player in the automated reporting space focused on digital marketing, SEO, SEM and social media. TapClicks and Raven will join forces to build a complete marketing data and visualization vertical that will serve marketing teams of all sizes. The acquisition of Raven has further propelled TapClicks into a world-class reporting platform. The two companies combined have the largest customer base for this particular field, producing tens of thousands of marketing reports each month for customers in over 70 countries. TapClicks has a strong North American presence with offices in San Jose, Boston, Nashville and Montreal, and has plans to grow its physical presence in globally. TapClicks Founder and CEO Babak Hedayati is most excited about what this acquisition means for their customers, saying: "Our customers win the most from this, because of how well each company's technology and experience complement each other. The new team will collaborate to preserve the core functionality of the tools while working together to innovate faster than ever before." Hedayati continues: "The goal is to become an unstoppable force of innovation and to make digital marketers more efficient and impactful through better insights and reporting." Existing customers of both companies can expect a smooth transition. TapClicks plans to keep the Raven brand and platform for small to medium-sized agencies and in-house marketing teams. It also intends to create an easy upgrde path for larger agencies and brands that need more data connections and sophisticated reporting features. Thanks to TapClicks' unprecedented number of data connections (more than any other company based on a recent independent study by Forrester Research), Raven customers can expect to gain new data connections for reporting, like call tracking and social ads. TapClicks customers will appreciate the addition of Raven's tools, like the proprietary Site Auditor, used for fixing and optimizing websites for search engines like Google. In addition to acquiring technology from Raven, TapClicks is also excited about keeping the entire Raven team. Like TapClicks, the talent, experience and character of the Raven team is what has made them so successful. Included with the team are co-founders Scott Holdren and Jon Henshaw. Scott will help oversee the technology transition, while Jon will be the product evangelist and manage all digital marketing for both brands. Colby West, President of TapClicks, says: "TapClicks and Raven are a perfect fit because of their technology and people." West goes on to say: "Both companies have a similar culture, and we share the same experience bootstrapping and growing our businesses." Jon Henshaw, Co-Founder of Raven, has a similar take, adding: "We've had a lot of interested buyers over the years, but we never found anyone we related to and felt we could grow the company with. Colby and Babak were the first buyers we talked to who had a shared vision about how we should run the company, treat customers and also position ourselves for exponential growth." Media Contact: Jon Henshaw Phone: 615-358-8481 Email: [email protected] Related Images image1.png image2.png image3.png image4.png Related Links TapClicks Raven Tools 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/tapclicks-acquires-raven-tools-in-move-to-become-the-industry-standard-reporting-platform-for-marketers-300447389.html SOURCE TapClicks [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Goodix's Live Finger Detection Wins Gold at 2017 Edison Awards Goodix (Shanghai Stock Exchange: 603160), the premier developer of human interface and biometric solutions for mobile devices, today announced that its Live Finger Detection fingerprint sensor won a Gold Edison Award in the Applied Technology category. The 2017 Edison Awards were held in New York on 20 April, celebrating 30 years of honoring excellence in new product, human-centered design and innovation. Since 1987, the Edison Awards have recognized some of the most innovative new products, services and business leaders in the world. The awards are named after Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) whose extraordinary new product and market development methods garnered him 1,093 U.S. patents and made him a household name across the world. Award winners represent "game changing" products and services, as well as excellence and leadership in innovation around four criteria: Concept, Value, Delivery, and Impact. An unbiased review by a network of 3,000 industry experts, business executives and academics provides a 3rd-party validation that delivers an affirmation of superior quality of innovations. Goodix's Live Finger Detection receiving a Gold Edison Award, one of the most prestigious accolades in the world, demonstrates the leading position of Goodix in the international integrated circuit (IC) design industry. Goodix's innovative technology responds to the growing trend for mobile payments, providing users with unmatched protection against fraud. While most fingerprint authentication technologies are not as reliable as claimed, Goodix's Live Finger Detection is the world's first integrated live fingerprint authentication solution, providing unmatched biometric security and live identity protection. Live Finger Detection captures the biometrics of the finger itself combined with heartbeat authentication. The two-factor process first scans to determine whether or not the fingerprint is "live." With these biometric capabilities, the sensor is able to detect and deny fake or cloned 2D and 3D fingerprints, enhancing the security and user experience. Besides mobile devices, the technology can also be used in wearable devices, intelligent homes, smart cars and smartcard products. Live Finger Detection has been named a CES (News - Alert) 2017 Best of Innovation Awards Winner in the Embedded Technologies Category. It has already been integrated into the flagship mobile phones of leading mobile brands. Goodix CTO Dr. Bo Pi said: "By focusing on people's desires while understanding their needs, Goodix strives to deliver disruptive technologies that make human interface technology in devices more secure and even easier to use and enjoy, enriching people's lives globally." Goodix prides itself on relentlessly innovating to create unique, integrated hardware and software solutions that deliver tangible benefits to users. Goodix aims to develop its own intellectual property rights. In the last five years, the company has increased its R&D spend at a 110% annual compound rate. This effort has been recognized by global leading mobile brands, fulfilling its mission to enrich people's lives through technology innovation. About Goodix: Goodix, a premier developer and provider of fingerprint and touchscreen solutions for mobile phones, tablets and wearables, currently holds a diversified portfolio of fingerprint authentication solutions that provides excellent flexibility to suit the varying preferences from consumers and partners such as Live Finger Detection , Invisible Fingerprint Sensor (IFS), Glass-covered and Coating button sensors. In addition, Goodix has been actively involved in assisting Alipay and China UnionPay with reviewing industry standards for fingerprint authentication. As an increasing number of top-tier handset manufacturers adopting fingerprints solutions from the company, Goodix will continue expanding its partner network to lead innovation in the biometrics authentication market. Goodix, Live Finger Detection and IFS are trademarks of Goodix in China and other countries. * Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006367/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Quest Management Inc. Corporate Update MADONA, Latvia, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quest Management Inc. (OTC-PINK:QSMG) has previously announced the signing of a Stock Purchase Agreement (the Agreement) between Quest Managements President, Mr. Dmitrij Ozolins and TN3 LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company, whereby TN3 agreed to acquire 46,045,000 shares of common stock owned by Mr. Ozolins, which represents all of the shares owned by Mr. Ozolins. The parties expected the change of control to be on or about April 15, 2017. The parties expect the change of control to take effect May 15, 2017. At the time of closing, Mr. Dan Martin, the CEO and controlling shareholder of TN3, will be appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Quest. Mr. Martin, thereafter, intends to cause TN3 to vend into Quest, TN3s assets, subsidiaries and divisions in equity swap transactions. Mr. Martin is an accomplished C-level executive with success driving results across a broad base of middle-market companies in direct sales, technology, distribution, product development, and others. He has been an entrepreneur, corporate officer, and consultant. Starting his career in the 1990s while obtaining a BSBA in Finance from John Carroll University, he was co-founder of an Internet company which over the next five years achieved a 4% national market share in its niche. Since then, he has been actively involved in mergers and acquisitions, and bringing new products and services to new markets globally. His primary expertise is understanding the needs of growing organizations, evaluating and defining the strateic objectives of a business, and communicating with stakeholders to successfully execute company objectives. TN3 has numerous diversified initiatives created specifically for development within an environment such as Quest. One initiative is in the Biotech sector, which includes Cancer treatment technology currently being commercialized in partnership with a top US hospital in the United States. The work includes patents achieved in the area of immunotherapy for brain tumor patients. This Biotech initiative also includes scientifically advanced anti-aging and other human focused technologies. These have significant market potential for sales and one patent filed, with multiple subsequent patents expected, and feature the participation of multiple, notable scientists. TN3 also has a rapidly expanding subsidiary that provides telemedicine (the ability of individuals to remotely access medical advice) to both English and Spanish speaking people living in the U.S. TN3 has other traditional business interests, including durable goods distribution, which will be discussed at a later time. Presently, agreements for the acquisition of these assets are being negotiated, and Quest will disclose them to the public in the near future, as the agreements are entered into. Quest and TN3 are confident that the change of control of Quest will lead to various acquisitions that will commence generating income within twelve (12) months and result in appreciable shareholder value. http://www.questmgmtinc.com Safe Harbor Statement: This news release contains "forward-looking statements", which are statements that are not purely historical and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, the development, costs and results of new business opportunities. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with new projects and development stage companies. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For Further Information Contact: Dmitrij Ozolins President/CEO Tel: (702) 907-8836 Email: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Canada and Alberta invest in infrastructure at Mount Royal University $5-million investment will create jobs, expand research and foster innovation CALGARY, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada values the role of post-secondary institutions as they help equip young Canadians with the education and training they need for future careers that will help them join a strong, healthy middle class. Today's federal-provincial investment of $5-million in Mount Royal University will do just that by fostering the training needed for the well-paying middle-class jobs of today and tomorrow. The funding was announced by the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, on behalf of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Canada's Innovation and Skills Plan aims to make this country a global centre for innovationone that creates jobs, drives growth across all industries and improves the lives of all Canadians. This investment exemplifies that vision in action. Mount Royal University will use the funding to upgrade the energy and ventilation systems in its main campus building, reducing energy use, cutting operating costs, and making a more comfortable space for teachers and students. The investment will also allow the university to renovate existing facilities to improve their environmental sustainability, as well as create the new Social Innovation Hub. This hub will provide working and learning space where businesses and organizations with a strong social purpose will come together to learn, to innovate and to collaborate on projects. Funding for Mount Royal University includes: $3 million from the Government of Canada; from the Government of $2 million from the Province of Alberta; and from the Province of Alberta; and $1 million from the university and other donors. $6 million . In total, universities and colleges throughout Alberta will receive over $500 million from the Government of Canada, the provincial government, the institutions themselves and private donors. Federal funding will be allocated through the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund, which will enhance and modernize research facilities on Canadian campuses and improve the environmental sustainability of these facilities. Quotes "This historic investment by the Government of Canada is a down payment on the government's vision to position Canada as a global centre for innovation. That means making Canada a world leader in turning ideas into solutions, science into technologies, skills into middle-class jobs and start-up companies into global successes." The Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence "These significant investments help Alberta students put their best foot forward by maximizing the number of new, modernized learning spaces, while also creating much needed jobs to spur economic growth." The Honourable Marlin Schmidt, Alberta Minister of Advanced Education "Mount Royal University is grateful to receive this generous funding. By upgrading our mechanical infrastructure, we can create energy efficiency and reduce our environmental footprint. Through our Social Innovation Hub, we can bring students, businesses and non-profit organizations together to create positive change in our community. This funding makes it all possible." David Docherty, PhD, President, Mount Royal University Quick facts The Government of Canada is providing more than $225 million for research infrastructure at institutions across Alberta. Mount Royal University has been awarded $3 million by the federal government for renovations and upgrades. is providing more than for research infrastructure at institutions across Alberta. University has been awarded by the federal government for renovations and upgrades. This investment supports Canada's Innovation and Skills Plan, which is designed to ensure our country is globally competitive in promoting research, translating ideas into new products and services, accelerating business growth and propelling entrepreneurs from the start-up phase to international success. Innovation and Skills Plan, which is designed to ensure our country is globally competitive in promoting research, translating ideas into new products and services, accelerating business growth and propelling entrepreneurs from the start-up phase to international success. The Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund supports the Government of Canada's climate change objectives by encouraging sustainable and green infrastructure projects. Associated links Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund website Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund backgrounder Innovation and Skills Plan Follow Minister Bains on Twitter: @MinisterISED SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Dyadic International to Announce First Quarter 2017 Financial Results and Host Conference Call on Thursday, May 11, 2017 JUPITER, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dyadic International, Inc. (Dyadic) (OTCQX:DYAI), a global biotechnology company focused on further improving and applying its proprietary C1 expression system to help speed up the development and production of biologic vaccines and drugs at flexible commercial scales, announced today that it will report its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 after the market close on Thursday, May 11, 2017 and that it will host a conference call that day at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss those results. In order to participate in the live session, please use the following dial-in numbers five to ten minutes prior to the start time: Calling from the United States or Canada: 888-663-2260 Calling from other countries: +913-312-0416 Confirmation Code: 8410672 A replay of the conference call will be available on Dyadics website (www.dyadic.com) within 24 hours after the live event. About Dyadic International, Inc. Dyadic International, Inc. is a global biotechnology company which is developing what it believes will be a potentially significant biopharmaceutical protein production system based on the fungus Myceliopthora thermophila, nicknamed C1. The C1 microorganism, which enables the development and large scale manufacture of low cost proteins, has the potential to be further developed into a safe and efficient expression system that may help speed up the development, production and performance of biologic vaccines and drugs at flexible commercial scales. Dyadc is using the C1 technology and other technologies to conduct research, development and commercial activities for the development and manufacturing of human and animal vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, biosimilars and/or biobetters, and other therapeutic proteins. Dyadic pursues research & development collaborations, licensing arrangements and other commercial opportunities with its partners and collaborators to leverage the value and benefits of these technologies in developing and manufacturing biopharmaceuticals which these technologies help produce. In particular, as the aging population grows in developed and undeveloped countries, Dyadic believes the C1 technology may help bring biologic drugs to market faster, in greater volumes, at lower cost, and with new properties to drug developers and manufacturers and, hopefully, improve access and cost to patients and the healthcare system, but most importantly saving lives. Please visit Dyadics website at www.dyadic.com for additional information, including details regarding Dyadics plans for its biopharmaceutical business. Dyadic trades on the OTCQX tier of the OTC marketplace. Investors can find real-time quotes, market information and financial reports for Dyadic in the Companys annual and quarterly reports which are filed with the OTC markets. Please visit the OTC markets website at www.otcmarkets.com/stock/DYAI/quote. Safe Harbor Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause Dyadics actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Investors are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and, except as required by law, Dyadic expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, any changes in expectations or any change in events. Factors that could cause results to differ materially include, but are not limited to: (1) general economic, political and market conditions; (2) our ability to carry out and implement our biopharmaceutical research and business plans and strategic initiatives; (3) Dyadics ability to retain and attract employees, consultants, directors and advisors; (4) our ability to implement and successfully carry out Dyadics and third parties research and development efforts; (5) our ability to obtain new license and research agreements; (6) our ability to maintain our existing access to, and/or expand access to third party contract research organizations in order to carry out our research projects for ourselves and third parties; (7) competitive pressures and reliance on key customers and collaborators; and; (8) other factors discussed in Dyadics publicly available filings, including information set forth under the caption Risk Factors in our December 31, 2016 Annual Report (with Amended Audit Report) filed with the OTC Markets on March 24, 2017. New risks and uncertainties arise from time to time, and it is impossible for us to predict these events or how they may affect us. Dyadic International, Inc. Thomas L. Dubinski Chief Financial Officer Phone: 561-743-8333 Email: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 27, 2017] Salesforce Announces Timing of its First Quarter Fiscal 2018 Results Conference Call SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world's #1 CRM company and Intelligent Customer Success Platform, today announced that its first quarter fiscal 2018 results will be released on Thursday, May 18, 2017, after the close of the market. The company will host a conference call at 2:00 p.m. (PT) / 5:00 p.m. (ET) to discuss its financial results with the investment community. A live web broadcast of the event will be available on the Salesforce Investor Relations website at www.salesforce.com/investor. A live dial-in is available domestically at 866-901-SFDCor 866-901-7332 and internationally at 706-902-1764, passcode 14740454. A replay will be available at (800) 585-8367 or (855) 859-2056 until midnight (ET) June 18, 2017. About Salesforce Salesforce, the world's #1 CRM company and Intelligent Customer Success Platform, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information about Salesforce, visit: www.salesforce.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/salesforce-announces-timing-of-its-first-quarter-fiscal-2018-results-conference-call-300446763.html SOURCE Salesforce [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Election results: Check out results from various races across the state Council approves rules to limit self-storage growth Future self-storage facilities in the city of Thousand Oaks will be excluded from prime commercial areas, according to a new ordinance adopted by the City Council this month. In a... Dealership does Distinguished thing SPECIAL TRIPChildren from Boys & Girls clubs in Camarillo, Simi Valley and Moorpark, and Oxnard and Port Hueneme attended Misty Copelands Oct. 18 appearance in the Distinguished Speaker Series at... Stagecoach Inn honors veterans The Stagecoach Inn Museum is honoring those who served with a Veterans Day exhibit featuring museum volunteers who have served in the military as well as family members who have... Those who use Comcast's Xfinity-branded residential-gateway broadband routers, which combine a cable modem with an Ethernet and wireless router, could find themselves becoming mules for the company's publicly available network. Comcast can turn on a second Wi-Fi signal in its customers' home routers that could be used by anyone with an Xfinity account even total strangers who happen to be driving by. The company has already activated this feature on hundreds of thousands of routers all around the United States. It intends to turn on millions of these hotspots in the coming months. MORE: 12 Things You Didn't Know Could be Hacked Comcast states on its website that the feature is not available to those subscribed to Comcast's Economy Internet package. A Comcast Internet technical-support representative told us after this story was first published that the Arris TG862G and Technicolor TC8305 models support the public Wi-Fi hotspot feature, while Cisco and SMC models do not as of yet. While the Cisco devices do have two antennas, they're only for dual-band Wi-Fi in the home, said the tech-support rep. The SMC models have only one antenna. If you use one of the affected models, you might want to turn the home hotspot feature off. While we don't expect there to be severe security risks with the second network being opened up, it is likely that more people using your hotspot could slow your overall Internet connection. Prevent that from happening by tuning off the home-hotspot feature. Make sure your Comcast username and password are handy, and follow these easy steps to turn off the second signal in your Comcast router. You can also check Comcast's website for a more comprehensive how-to (opens in new tab) in case you have a newer router. 1. Go to http://customer.comcast.com. 2. Log into your account. 3. Select Users & Preferences from the top navigation bar. 4. Click "Manage Xfinity WiFi" under the Service Address section. 5. Select "Disable Xfinity WiFi Home Hotspot" in the dialog box that pops up. If you don't see the option to enable or disable the home hotspot, the feature may not have been activated in your area, or your modem/router combination may not be compliant. 6. Save your changes. Follow Cherlynn Low at @CherlynnLow and on Google+. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide, on Facebook and on Google+. Saadiq Thompson will walk across the stage and proudly receive a diploma from Ruskin High School in Kansas City in a few weeks. But he's only spent a sliver of his student days there. By his account, Thompson has moved nine times among eight different schools since his freshman year. Kangaroo Fight Against Rape UMKC students 'break silence' on sexual assault KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Denim probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the crime of sexual assault, but today at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the fabric is the force behind rape awareness and prevention. "We're kind of breaking the silence. Kansas City School Food Fight Parents question food after illness at Center Middle School KANSAS CITY, Mo. - At Center Middle School things are getting back to normal a week after a nasty illness swept through the building. The illness sickened at least 50 students and teachers. The district believes it was a case of stomach flu. Meet The Golden Ghetto New Boss Dr. Kenny Southwick Named Interim Shawnee Mission School Superintendent The Shawnee Mission School District Board of Education unanimously voted Wednesday night to name Dr. Kenny Southwick as interim superintendent for Shawnee Mission schools. Jim Hinson, who has headed the district for the past four years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last week. His last day is June 30. KCMO Shooting Youngster Consequences Air Soft Fear In The Suburbs Hickman Mills facebook live threat raises questions for parents Authorities say parents need to have ongoing safety discussions about the good and the bad sides of the internet Lesson In Protest Against FB Threats Fort Osage High School parents, students protest after racial threat JACKSON COUNTY, Mo. - Parents and students protested outside of Fort Osage High School Wednesday morning after a racial threat was posted on social media. The threat targeted African-American students and brought up how the writer wanted to come to the school and shoot them. Show-Me Education Bright Side State budget fully funds Missouri's K-12 schools, though Greitens can say no Updated April 26 with more details from Tuesday night's actions - What once seemed a challenge became reality Tuesday: Missouri's K-12 schools will be fully funded under next year's budget, something only Gov. Eric Greitens can change. Our 2nd favoritemovie in the whole wide world features the hottie actress saying some pretty horrible stuff amid her tenure as a fake teacher. Accordingly, here are a few more links regarding local education or lack thereof . . . Take a look:And this is thefor right now . . . Gov. Sam Brownback kicked off the Kansas legislative session by drawing lines in the sand on taxes, spending and Medicaid expansion, and he has defended those positions with his veto pen. The question when lawmakers return Monday to Topeka is whether those vetoes will hold up. Why everyone is called to ministry: 4-27-17 In my last National Catholic Reporter column, I suggested the churches rethink the processes they have created to ordain people to be pastors. There are lots of reasons to reconsider ordination, including the current danger that pastors who don't know... A thoughtful insight into a wonderful idea inasmuch as the only leadership that matters is by way of example . . . And with respect to the Catholic belief that our top clerics can perform magic tricks beyond the skill set of the laity. Take a look: Distributing heroin part of Missouri man's religious beliefs, he claims in appeal A convicted heroin dealer in St. Louis lost an appeal based on his argument that prosecutors violated his right to religious freedom. He said that he had created a religious nonprofit to provide heroin to the "sick, lost, blind, lame, deaf and dead members of God's Kingdom," according to the appeals court ruling. Credit where it's due . . . This bit of reporting on a faith community movement is probably the only interesting thing in the newspaper this week: Three Greek language organizations hosted an informative Greek language workshop on Saturday evening, April 8th in the conference room of the Jay Suites, 6th floor, at 575 7th Avenue, New York City. A well-received number of New York residents were in attendance. The Federation of Hellenic American Educators and Cultural Associations of America, The Organization for the Dissemination of the Greek Language with the cooperation of the Blue Money Show and Hellenic Paideia of America, Inc. hosted the event where the timelessness and importance of the Greek language was discussed. The speakers included: Emeritus Professor Aristea Tolia, Univerity of the Peloponnese; Veloudia Papadopoulou, Theology professor at Athens University; civil engineer Costas Katsigiannis, vol. Gen. ESO Director; Catherine Chatzinikolaou, Administrative Officer of the Ministry of Education in the New York consulate; Nikos Papapostolou businessman, Vasiliki Filiotis President of Hellenic Paideia of America, Inc. and Adriana Filiotis founding member of Hellenic Paideia of America, Inc. Points of discussion were: The importance of languages and cultures of the world; Greek as the basis of languages; every language contains Greek words; the language spread Christianity; European culture and civilization, of which Greece is a part, are rooted in ancient Greece. Land of heroes, martyrs, poets, philosophers Greece is the land of heroes, martyrs, poets, philosophers; it is an eternal symbol of Western civilization; the entire Western world has turned to Greek in its quest for a cultural identity; Greek is important to the languages and cultures of the world. Greek recorded ancient philosophy and is the basis of languages; every language contains Greek words; the language spread Christianity. Tourism is a key pillar of growth for the Greek economy, with a large contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), creating new jobs. Greece has 20,000 historical monuments. The history in combination with unparalleled natural beauty ranks Greece first worldwide in number of tourists. President Vasiliki Filiotis stated that we support Modern Greek language studies. We must transmit to future generations, the knowledge, culture, traditions preserved and passed on to us. The Greek language survives today because it has offered the world a unique contribution. President Stella Kokolis of the Federation of Hellenic-American Educators & Cultural Associations of America and President Vasiliki Filiotis of The Hellenic Paideia of America Organization worked behind the scenes to make this event a success. For more information, email kstellasr@gmail.com and vfiliotis@aol.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 A series of productions from Russia, France, Belgium have started filming in Greece and continue all the way until the end of May, with the support of the National Tourist Organization of Greece (EOT), in accordance with its strategic communication planning. The plan is to promote Greece and especially the lesser known, but still beautiful places of the country, as a 365 days destination. More specifically: a) The Live-Planet from Russia will promote the Ionian islands of Corfu, Kefalonia and Zakinthos. b) The Belgium BBDM (Belges du Bout du Monde) on behalf of the RTBF will visit Athens, Agistri, Tyros, Leonidio, Monemvasia and Nafplio. In the meantime in April there is filming going on in: Athens, Euboea, Peloponnese, Thessaloniki and Chalkidiki by Russia24. Athens by the Silence, ca pousse! of France 5, to present the city break tourism of the capital of Greece. These activities were encouraged and promoted by EOT in order to improve the contact of the tourist agencies with what the Greek tourist product can offer and to promote specific characteristics of those lesser known places. 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 RENO, Nevada Shaji Mathew is a Reno doctor, a pediatrician, but his approach to wine doesnt reflect the old saying, the stereotypical pairing of doctor and grape. One of his passions is the wine of Greece, Reno Gazette-Journal reports. In fact, Mathew and his wife, Vijna, founded their Sierra Nevada Imports in 2013 to introduce people to wines from medium-size Greek producers. If you really dig deeper, you find hundreds of grapes, and young wine makers that learned proper classical wine making and brought it back to Greece. They want to show the world that Greece is a serious wine making country, Shaji Mathew said. Greece ranks among the worlds oldest wine making cultures, with its vinicultural origins dating back at least 5,000 years. For many people, the first thing that comes to mind about Greek wine is retsina (the resinated Greek wine) or that it tastes like paint thinner, Shaji Mathew said. The truth is, Greek wine is very diverse. Right now, Greece is in ferment. In 2015, Shaji Mathew took a wine trip to Greece, furiously tasting and taking notes, he said, across the mainland and the archipelago. The other day, the couple presented some of the fruits of this trip at an afternoon tasting in Reno. In the last couple of decades, Greek wine makers have experimented with grapes from beyond Greece. The tasting included an unfiltered blend of sauvignon blanc and assyrtiko, an acidic white varietal, from Papargyriou Winery in Corinthia, about 75 miles west of Athens. Read the full story at Reno Gazette-Journal. 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 European Investment Fund on Thursday signed four funding contracts with Alpha Bank and Piraeus Bank to channel 420 million euros to more than 2,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises in Greece. The signing of these contracts was made with the support of European Strategic Investments Fund, the central pylon of the Investment Plan for Europe, introduced by the European Commission (Juncker Plan). The Juncker Plan is expected to mobilize investments worth more than 3.0 billion euros in Greece and 183.5 billion euros in Europe. The contract signed on Thursday will allow the two banks to offer loans with significantly reduced collateral requirements in the framework of a European Commission COSME program. Banks will also support innovative enterprises in the framework of a European Commission initiative "InnovFin" supported by the "Horizon 2020" program. The signing ceremony was held during a conference on the funding tools available for the development of SMEs in Greece, organized by the European Commission and the Greek Economy and Development ministry. European Investment Fund managing director Luigi Gilibert said the contracts signed with Alpha Bank and Piraeus Bank confirmed once more EIF's will to support Greek enterprises. In less than a year, European Strategic Investments Fund will allow EIF to support a loan portfolio of more than 1.0 billion euros to Greek enterprises. Access to funding remains a significant problem for several companies and the four guarantees offered in the framework of COSME and InnovFin programs will create investment opportunities for Greek SMEs, he added. Recovery of Greek entrepreneurship and economy George Aronis, deputy CEO in Alpha Bank, said the agreements signed were a significant step towards the recovery of Greek entrepreneurship and economy, further strengthening the long-term and constructive cooperation between Alpha Bank and EIF. Elias Milis, managing director in Piraeus Bank, said the bank has set as top strategic goal to support Greek enterprises to help the restart and growth of Greek economy. Alexis Charitsis, Economy Alternate Minister, addressing the conference, said disbursement from an escrowaccount will begin in May and announced that a Entrepreneurship Fund II -currently underway- will fund enterprises with loans and guarantees. The Fund will have an initial capital of 400 million euros, with the aim to reach 1.0 billion euros through leverage. "We support SMEs" Charitsis said, adding that the small size of Greek enterprises could proved to be a significant advantage in today's international environment of focused products and services and specialized markets. He urged, however, SMEs to forge strong interconnections and synergies between them, creating cooperative, business groups and sectorial systems cable to produce scale economies to compete in international markets. "A close and organized interconnection of all activities from primary production until manufacturing and product distribution to markets is needed," Charitsis said. Constantinos Mihalos, president of the Central Union of Chambers and the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry, urged for support to healthy SMEs, currently facing difficulties in raising moving capital and to refinance their debts. Addressing the conference, Mihalos said absorption of available funds is low compared with the needs of Greek SMEs and called for a strengthening of an existing regulatory framework for the development of alternative funding sources through specific incentives for small and medium-sized investments. 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 CEO CHAT: Apex Clearings Capuzzi Says T+2 is Good Start, But T+1 Better Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted to reduce the clearing duration for securities trades from trade date plus 3 days (T+3) to T+2. While Wall Street cheered what it viewed as a long overdue reduction, one chief executive said an even shorter clearance cycle would better serve the markets. In an exclusive discussion with Traders Magazine, Apex Clearings Bill Capuzzi noted that more than ever before, Wall Street is a business where time equals money. So, the SECs recent decision to reduce the standard settlement time from three business days (T+3) to two (T+2) is a good first step in keeping pace with the modernization of the financial services industry. If youre an active institutional or non-active retail investor, youve probably felt the frustration of the current T+3 settlement timeframe before: you research a company, execute a trade, and then wait days before the trade actually shows up in your account, Capuzzi said. This type of delay is a relic of the past it has no place in 2017. Capuzzi said that todays technology eliminates the need for lag time before a trade is settled. And it goes without saying that todays investors expect instantaneous results. With trading platforms operating on micro-seconds, he added waiting two days for a trade to clear is like taking a picture with your phone and then printing it out to share with friends. But in moving away from the manual era, the SEC did not go far enough, Capuzzi continued. A one day settlement (T+1) makes more sense given the lightning speed that equity shares are traded today., From our work providing digital-based wealth management solutions, we understand and repeatedly hear from our customers that the keyword is efficiency, he said. Shortening the time between retail investors receiving funds and/or reinvesting proceeds from a trade would be an improvement on multiple levels. First, Capuzzi said a T+1 cycle would further minimize systemic credit and market risk. With the financial world trying to eliminate as much risk as they can, everyone should be pushing for a one day settlement. Second, a T+1 cycle would move the industry closer to aligning settlement times across international standards, he added. The globalization of financial services makes this point all the more relevant. Further, there is currently no barrier for equities: If options and futures transactions, which are inherently more complicated, can be settled in one day along with equities in most of Europe, then why should two days be needed in the U.S. to settle an equity trade? The benefits of adopting a T+1 settlement cycle primarily, creating a more stable financial system are in everyones best interests, Capuzzi told Traders Magazine. The SEC is heading in the right direction by reducing the settlement cycle, but could also be doing more to de-risk and make the U.S. equity markets more efficient. For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: FIS and The Clearing House Launch Real-Time Payment Service FIS and The Clearing House Payments Company announced the launch of a hosted Real-Time Payments Incubator service for early-adopter financial institutions in the United States. The service the first of its kind in the country is designed to accelerate the path to real-time payments for U.S. financial institutions by lowering their cost of entry for connecting to the TCH Real-Time Payments (RTP) platform. The service uses FIS Open Payment Framework technology, operating via the TCH Real-Time Payments platform, to clear and settle payments in real-time. Offered as a hosted service, the solution allows financial institutions to begin application and testing of real-time payments in a secure, verified environment without need for heavy, upfront investment. We hear regularly from our clients that they want to get to real-time payments as quickly as possible, but without all of the upfront costs and complexity, said Anthony Jabbour, chief operating officer, Banking & Payments, FIS. This breakthrough incubator service from FIS takes the hassle out of connecting to The Clearing House Real-Time Payments platform, enabling financial institutions to get to the future faster and begin realizing the benefits of real-time payments. For real-time payments to truly take off, banks of all sizes need to have easy, affordable access, said Russ Waterhouse, executive vice president, Product Development and Strategy, The Clearing House. Combining the power of The Clearing Houses Real-Time Payments platform with FIS leading edge technology and services, we are transforming the payments landscape in the U.S. and around the world. The Real-Time Payments Incubator service offers centralized processing of real-time payments along with robust administration, standard interfaces to bank applications, automated service level support, and continuous management of new releases and functionality. Clients can expand their use of real-time payments within the service, or seamlessly move their applications to an on-premises environment. For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: If you're like most people and want to land a lucrative job in the US, you better brush up on your science and consider a job in the medical field. A recent study revealed that medical professions make the highest-paying jobs in the US, with the Anesthesiologist at the very top of the list. According to Business Insider, the list is based off May 2016 salary and employment data. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates survey revealed that the profession of an Anesthesiologist is the highest-paying job in 17 US states. This includes California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington D.C. The second highest-paying job in the US is that of a Surgeon. It's the top-paying profession in states like Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and South Carolina. The profession of an Orthodontist comes next followed by General Pediatrician and Obstetrician and Gynecologist. Other medical professions that made it to the list of the highest-paying jobs in the US are that of a General Internist, Oral and maxillofacial surgeon and Podiatrist. Kansas gives the highest rate with an annual pay of $287,410 for the state's highest-paying job of an Anesthesiologist. Anesthesiologists in Washington D.C., meanwhile, get the lowest annual pay in the list of the highest-paying jobs in the US with $212,280. That's still way bigger than what a Retail salesperson in the US gets. According to Business Insider, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates also conducted a survey on millions of businesses in the US. At least 4,612,510 people in the US work as a Retail salesperson. It's far from being one of the highest-paying jobs in the US with an average annual pay of $26,340. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 It seems that Trump wants to extend the scope of his electronics travel ban to the UK as well. The controversial electronics ban, which was enforced by both the United States and the United Kingdom last March, involves the checking in of all electronic devices larger than a mobile phone because of "innovative threats in terrorism." Apparently, bombs and other explosives can now be hidden in these gadgets. But President Donald Trump isn't contented, according to the RT. Although no final decision has been made yet, he's contemplating on including the UK in the countries banned on taking electronic devices on aircraft cabins. Corresponding security chiefs in Britain are now being informed of the said move. A senior Whitehall source through The Sun UK told the Times that other European locations can be affected as well. The UK and other European aviation security are on alert as the law can be implemented in the near future. In a statement made by the US Department of Homeland Security, they said: "We will continue to evaluate the threat environment and make determinations based on that assessment but we have not made any decisions on expanding the current restrictions against large electronic devices in aircraft cabins from selected airports. The safety and security of the traveling public is our highest priority. We keep aviation security under constant review." In the US, 10 Middle Eastern airports are already affected by the electronics ban. They are airports located in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Qatar. For the UK, they've only restricted the gadget ban on flights from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Security experts are still wondering why Trump would want to extend the electronic flight ban to Europe. Some said it's because of the growing interest of terrorist groups in the aviation industry, while some think it's because of the growing number of Europeans joining these militant groups as well. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Airbnb launched its "experiences" earlier this April, which enables many travelers worldwide to buy personalized tours and activities by registered Airbnb service providers as an add-on or stand-alone feature once they book a property. The feature focuses on introducing a personalized and rooted level of tourism itinerary with a unique characteristic that makes vacations more memorable, and these five take the cake. Take something mainstream for a start. A hang glider flown 2,000 feet above the air could cost a fortune and enthusiasts would have to wait in line and pay exorbitant fees. A personalized experience from Dusty and Kathy, who provides this service in the San Bernardino National Forest, enthusiasts could cut down on costs and fly a hang glider. According to one reviewer, cited by Forbes, it was "one of the most unique ways to see LA." Being a craft brewer is also another amazing way to spend a vacation through Airbnb's Experience feature. In Los Angeles, Smog City Brewing offers the coolest experience yet, to become a brewer for a single day. Brewing is an amazing way to gain business knowledge while experiencing something unique, rewarding and amazingly refreshing. One amazing and possibly unforgettable Airbnb experience, which might not be streamlined and the experience is possibly offered only on occasion, is the "After Hemingway" experience. Writing at length for Cuba Journal, Mary Anne Bargen said of a three-day experience of bookstores and places that the legendary prose master Ernest Hemingway visited in his time in Cuba, including his own home. Wolf hiking in the Angeles National Forest for one night is an experience worth taking. Wolves rescued and trained by rangers would travel alongside Airbnb travelers who wish to experience a night of hiking, nature, stories, campfire and even smores. In Venice Beach, the Venice Beach's Center for Audio & Visual Expression or CAVE would have Airbnb experience travelers contribute to blank walls of art with the artists themselves. But this is not before they consume tacos and beer, the food of choice for any struggling and passionate artist. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 When traveling to the United Kingdom, its culinary scene may not be on top of your priorities, unlike its other European neighbors, France, Spain, and Italy. But still, the traditional English fare is still worth trying out, their food mostly representing England's rich history and culture. So the next time you're in town for a visit, go for a little food trip. English food is not bland and dull like others say, in fact, you might discover your next favorite dish! Here are some of the best foods you have to try in the UK: Beef Wellington. Insider Travel reported this British take on the traditional steak is something you must not miss in England. Commonly served in upscale restaurants, Beef Wellington is a fillet of steak covered in with pate and duxelles then wrapped in puff pastry. Crunchy on the outside, surprisingly juicy on the inside. Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. Haggis is actually a Scottish exotic dish that is usually made with sheep's insides such as liver, lungs, and heart, added with some condiments such as onions, oatmeal, spices and some stock, according to Hand Luggage Only. It's surprisingly delicious and the English loved it served with Neeps, and Tatties. Add in some whiskey and you have yourself a full, hearty meal! Shepherd's Pie. The English love meat-based pies, and this recipe is one of their classic favorites. The meat base is ground pork or beef topped with a heart mashed potato crust which is then baked to perfection. It's a British comfort food every traveler must try. Full English Breakfast. Well, of course, the famous British breakfast must be included on this list. A typical hangover cure, this breakfast is loaded up with carbs and all kinds of breakfast food. Sausages, eggs, hash browns, tomatoes, beans, toast, and black pudding all in one plate? Never has breakfast been this satisfying. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis, may be the most fascinating natural phenomenon to watch. Commonly found in the northern part of the world, many scientists and avid fans alike have devoted their time to taking pictures and capturing videos of this amazing natural phenomenon. Recently, the Alberta Aurora Chasers, a Facebook group dedicated to sharing pictures of the Northern Lights, have made an amazing discovery. One shared photo in British Columbia showed a distinct purple streak in the lights that hasn't been seen before, according to Travel and Leisure, and since they do not have any idea what to call it, they decided to name it Steve. Eric Donovan, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Canada, coordinated with the Facebook group and immediately researched about the new phenomenon. According to the Wired UK, he also sought help from the European Space Agency's SWARM mission to help understand all the components of Steve and how it came to be. In a statement made by Donovan at the recent SWARM meeting, he said: "In 1997, we had just one all-sky imager in North America to observe the aurora borealis from the ground. Back then, we would be lucky if we got one photograph a night of the aurora taken from the ground that coincides with an observation from a satellite. Now, we have many more all-sky imagers and satellite missions like Swarm, so we get more than 100 [observations] a night." Data from the SWARM mission will help researchers like Donovan understand the Steve feature because it's the ESA's "first constellation of Earth observation satellites designed to measure the magnetic signals from Earth." And as for the name Steve, it's apparently based on a popular children's movie called "Over the Hedge", where one of the characters looks at something he isn't sure of, so he called it Steve. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 European wine tour companies have started expanding their reach and have gone beyond the vineyards of Italy, Spain and France. Now, they are planning to extend their tours to the East to look for more quality wine and grape varieties. SmoothRed managing director Adam Stebbings said that Hungary has started to become more famous in its wine production which is why his company added the Hungarian Collection: Budapest to Tokaji in its tours. According to the SmoothRed website, the tour is a 5-day trip which includes places like Etyek, Tokaj and Eger. Clients would also experience a helicopter ride from Budapest to Tokaj. It costs 4,389 (about $5650) per person. Forbes reported that Grape Escapes also added Slovenia to its tour, even though it doesn't appear on the company's website. Marketing manager Jenna Jones said that clients are looking for more destinations to explore just as they explore different wines to drink. Podravje, Posavje and Primorska are some of the places that have the best vineyards in Slovenia. Clients can go in a group of four and avail the Slovenia wine tour at 575 (about $740) per person. The three-night tour includes B&B, airport transfers and two nights of exclusive tours to the vineyards. John Wurdeman, an owner of Pheasant's Tears winery, also hosts wine tours to Georgia. At 2,350 (about $3027) per person, guests can experience the seven-day trip to some of Georgia's finest wineries which include Sighnaghi and Saguramo. Regent Holidays also included a wine tour to Moldova two years ago. The country was once known as the winery of the Soviet Union and the trip would include visits to the capital Chisinau, Purcaru Winery and the Cricova Wine Cellars. The five-day trip starts at a rate of 750 (about $966) and comes flights from London, B&B accommodation, transfers and all tour-related expenses. If you're planning a wine tour in Europe, explore beyond the boundaries of the West and learn more about the wine culture of the East. There are more places waiting to be discovered. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 "Fifty Shades Freed" is the third movie based on E.L. James' novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" and will be released in February next year. Reports had it that Brad Pitt's ex-wife Angelina Jolie will appear as another woman that will cause conflict in Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan's romance. But his wife was reportedly against the "By The Sea" director's involvement in the film. According to Blasting News, Jolie is rumored to join the erotic film but Amelia Warner was not in favor of her husband working with her. The same were written about Dakota Johnson. Warner was reportedly insecure with the relationship between her husband and his co-star. The appearance of the mother of six in the third movie is yet to be confirmed. Warner's reaction is also not confirmed and must be taken with a grain of salt. It is understandable because being the wife of Dornan who plays Christian Grey have known the reviews and promotions of the films. Johnson and Dornan's sexy scenes were very realistic that the fans even believe that they have a real-life relationship. However, the duo has cleared all speculations saying that they are just close friends and Johnson was also a friend of Warner. "The Other Side" actress admitted that the three of them are good friends. Meanwhile, Jamie Dornan is currently filming for "Robin Hood: Origins" in Budapest, Hungary. He plays Will Scarlet, one of Hood's merry band of men. According to Celebeat, the "Siege of Jadotville" actor was spotted posing for photographs with a fan holding a shopping bag. "Fifty Shades" fans were quick to ask whether he shopped for his wife or for Dakota Johnson. Initially, Jamie Dornan was supposed to film in Croatia but there were changes in the location that the actor flew to Budapest. "Fifty Shades Freed" will be next year's Valentine's Day's biggest movie. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 One of the most beautiful countries in the world, Italy holds a special place in any visitor's hearts once they step foot in this historic and culturally-enriched country. Not just home to great food and wine, Italy is also home to lots of still-unspoiled destinations for nature travelers or tourists who want a fresh of pace. So if you're thinking of making a trip to Italy, consider visiting the village of Venzone. Recently, it bagged the honor of winning the most beautiful village in the 2017 Il Borgo dei Borghi competition, according to Lonely Planet. Venzone is located in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in the northeastern part of Italy and is home to just over two thousand residents. Despite suffering from a devastating earthquake in 1976, Venzone was rebuilt into the beautiful village as it is today, garnering this respectable recognition. The Cosmopolitan reported that Venzone was chosen among 19 other shortlisted villages. The decision was made through online voting and a panel of judges. One of the reasons Venzone was chosen according to one of the judges is because it represented "one of the most extraordinary examples of architectural and artistic post-earthquake recovery." Venzone is not just a scenic village, it's also declared a National Monument back in 1965. Even though most of the city center is destroyed during the 1976 earthquake, the residents painstakingly rebuilt their home which was finished in 1990. The village is famous for its distinct Venetian-Gothic architecture and medieval walls-- just walking in this village's streets feel like you're trapped in the 17th century. A fairly simple town bursting with culture and unique personality, no wonder it's voted as the most beautiful Italian village. The restoration of this quaint, old town is fascinating. You would have never thought it's only restored a few years ago. It's an apt place for nature travel, as it's also surrounded by a beautiful natural landscape. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Cox and Kings, the leading holidays and education travel group with operations in 22 countries, presents an excellent opportunity to treat yourself to the finest culinary experiences in Singapore with a new package- Singapore Delight with Sentosa. (TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - April 27th, 2017 Mumbai: Cox and Kings, the Night safari tour Panoramic city tour of Singapore Visit to the Gardens by the Bay Visit to Sentosa Theme Park Southeast Asia's first movie theme park- Universal Studios Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : HMHS 2017 ATM THE MOST SUCCESSFUL EVER Industry: Travel PR The highlights of the show for the group included the appointment of a new CEO, launch of a new luxury brand as well as the addition of a superb property in Port Sudan. (TRAVPR.COM) UAE - April 27th, 2017 - On the occasion of its 14th year participating at the Arabian Travel Market, Hospitality Management Holding reflects on what was a hugely successful week for the Group with a series of significant announcements. The highlights of the show for the group included the appointment of a new CEO, launch of a new luxury brand as well as the addition of a superb property in Port Sudan. Mr. Brett Schafer, Chief Executive Officer of Faisal Holding, stated, Mr ATM 2017 was notable for us as we enter a new phase of growth and expansion. We were delighted to welcome to our team Mr Aboudi Asali as the Chief Executive Officer of HMH. Following this key development, we successfully launched a new luxury 5-star brand Bahi Hotels & Resorts that is a fantastic addition to our impressive portfolio of existing brands serving varied market segments. Consolidating our presence in Sudan, where we have three well-established hotels in operation, we added EWA Port Sudan Hotel & Apartments that is expected to open by Q4 2017. Over the years HMH has established a solid reputation as a fully integrated hotel management company. Elaborating on the groups success, Mr Ferghal Purcell, COO of HMH, stressed, All brands under HMH are uniquely positioned to compete in an evolving business environment. We believe quality service and standards are more than ever critical to a brands success and thats the strength of our hotels. The typical customer staying at any hotel today is looking for a great value and an enhanced-stay experience and that is guaranteed at every hotel under our banner. About HMH Founded in 2003 in Dubai, HMH Hospitality Management Holding is a fully integrated hotel management company that prides itself for being one of the pioneers among local groups that are specialized in the dry segment. Being the largest operator in the sector within the region, HMH provides hotel owners and developers a broad spectrum of world-class management solutions with five distinct, yet complementary, hotel brands catering to varied market segments from luxury to budget. These include The Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels. HMHs strategic expansion in the Middle East and North Africa has been successful in unlocking a world of opportunities while creating value for its stakeholders, associates, staff members and customers. The existing portfolio is located in some of the most desirable destinations across the MENA region, with a pipeline of hotels under development to grow HMHs regional footprint even further. For more information about HMH please visit http://www.hmhhotelgroup.com or https://www.hmhhotelgroup.com/subscribenow For media contact: Hina Bakht Vice President MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction) Mob: +971 50 697 5146 Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com http://www.mpj-pr.com ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release : CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Hina Bakht Company: Marketing Pro-Junction Phone: +971506975146 Email: pressrelease@mpj-pr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS New Delhi Paytm said on Thursday it will invest Rs 10,000 crore over the next three years to ramp up its banking and financial services business. The company, which will soon offer payments bank services in the country, claims to have already pumped in over Rs 3,200 crore in the past two years for its operations. PTI New Delhi S Chand IPO oversubscribed 1.96 times The IPO of textbook publisher S Chand and Company was oversubscribed 1.96 times on the second day of the offer on Thursday. It received bids for 1,50,41,466 shares against the total issue size of 76,85,284 shares, NSE data showed. PTI Chandigarh DS Group forays into beverage market The Rs 7,700-crore DS Groups Pulse candy has extended the brand experience of Pulse in the beverage category by launching a mango drink. Shashank Surana, VP, DS Group, said, We have launched the mango drink after extensive research and considering the demand in the segment which is growing at 12%. TNS New Delhi Now, purchase digital gold online Paytm has partnered with MMTC-PAMP to launch Digital Gold that will allow customers to buy and sell gold through the electronic platform. Using their Paytm mobile wallets, consumers can purchase 24K 999.9 purity gold online and store it in MMTC-PAMPs secure vaults free of charge. PTI New Delhi OYO enters Nepal with hotel launch Online hotel aggregator OYO has entered Nepal in its second foray overseas with the launch of a hotel in Kathmandu. The company had earlier ventured in to Malaysia in January 2016. PTI Our Correspondent Zirakpur, April 27 Three unidentified bike-borne assailants shot dead a 35-year-old mobile shop owner in a busy market in Baltana here today. The owner of Jain Mobile Centre at Baltana, Ajay Jain, was on his way back home to Modern Enclave in Zirakpur after closing the shop when he was shot dead, police sources said. The incident occurred around 9.50 pm. One of the three assailants, who was wearing a helmet, fired two shots in the victim's head from close range. The assailants escaped from the spot after firing several rounds. Ajay was rushed to the GMCH, Sector 32, Chandigarh, where doctors declared him brought dead. The police said they received information about the incident around 11 pm. We are recording the statements of eyewitnesses. The assailants were aware of the timings of the victim and the crime was performed with planning, said a police official. The police said old enmity was believed to be the reason behind the shooting. The police said they were examining the CCTV footage. Faizan Mustafa GOING by the discussions on television channels it seems all Muslim women are getting instant triple divorce. But then facts are just opposite and speak for themselves. As per the 2011 Census, only 0.49 per cent Muslim women were divorcees and all of them have not been given triple divorce. Though fatwas are nothing more than opinions and do not have any legal sanctity yet they do give us some indication about the legal problems on which Muslims seek opinion of the clergy. To find out prevalence of triple divorce, this author collected data from Darul iftaa (institutions which issue fatwas). The data from ten states revealed that that in last one year 340,206 fatwas were sought. Of which only 6.50 per cent fatwas were asked about triple divorce. The Supreme Court had refused to ban Darul Qaza (Sharia courts) rejecting the plea of them being parallel judicial forum. The apex court had rightly termed them as mere arbitration councils. Data from 33 such councils collected by this author too reveals that these councils never grant triple divorce and divorce is permitted only through one pronouncement preceded by efforts of reconciliation through arbitration. Such institutions are mostly used by the Muslim women for either getting divorce or annulment or cancellation of marriage as getting settlements from such forums is speedier and cost-effective. Wrong impression Similarly, a wrong impression has been created that most Muslim women are getting triple divorces through phone, email and via sms. Even according to Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan's (BMAA) case study on triple divorce only one divorce out of 117 was given in this manner. As per BMMA's own findings, only 0.2 per cent got divorces on phone, just 0.6 per cent received divorce through email. Similarly, in another survey by BMMA, out of 521divorces, only one woman got triple divorce via SMS that is, only 0.19 per cent. Thus the problem is not as serious as is made out by the Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath governments. The current case in the apex court was originally about the denial of inheritance right to Hindu women under the 2005 amendment. This lady had won the case against her brothers in the high court but she lost in the Supreme Court. At the end of judgment, strangely the bench of Justice Dave and Justice Goel ordered that Muslim law is discriminatory and ordered on its own the filing of Public Interest Litigation.Thus the current PIL by Shayra Bano to get triple divorce declared as unconstitutional. The case has taken an interesting twist because her husband who had given her triple divorce has filed a case for the restitution of conjugal rights. It was she who had left the matrimonial home. As per the current law laid down by the apex court in 2002, Muslim divorce has to be for a reasonable cause and must be preceded by efforts of reconciliation through arbitration. The Supreme Court has also held that three pronouncements will be counted as only one revocable divorce. Thus instant triple divorce no more dissolves marriage, except in cases of divorce by mutual consent and divorce at the initiative of the wife or exercise of right to divorce by her where such a right has been delegated to her by the husband at the time of marriage. The position of All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPB) on this issue has been quite regressive, rigid and unyielding. It has been consistently asserting that though instant triple divorce is undesirable and sinful yet nevertheless valid. It had the audacity to assert in the Supreme Court that if triple divorce is not permitted, husbands may kill their wives and therefore triple divorce is in the interests of wives.What is the reason of this inflexible stand? Law making is indeed a private enterprise in Islam. Jurists intervene between God and State. Muslim Personal Law is based on the interpretations given by various jurists. Since earlier jurists with the exceptions of few did opine that instant triple divorce does dissolve marriage, due to doctrine of taqleed (imitation of earlier juristic view), ulema of Hanafi school (followers of Abu Hanifa) of the Sunni sect who dominate board feel constrained by the views of early leaders of this school. In this context, on 15-16 April, 2017, the unanimous decision of the AIMPLB therefore is a huge climbdown. The Board has softened its rigid stand and has issued detailed eight-step instructions on how divorce will henceforth take place among Indian Muslims. (See box) Thus the Board has fully incorporated the elaborate process of divorce given in the Quran and has also complied with the law laid down by the Supreme Court in the Shamimara case. The result of this historic decision is that instant triple divorce will no more be an option with a Muslim male. The Indian media which has very low level of trustworthiness did not report this decision in the right perspective. It criticised the board for not punishing the person who will still give instant triple divorce. Television anchors at the top of their voice criticised that mere social boycott will not suffice. The AIMPLB is, of course, an NGO with a huge following among Muslims. As many as 4.8 crore Muslims have given signed petitions endorsing the Board's position on Muslim Personal Law. These petitions have now been submitted to the Law Commission. Thus the Board's social boycott may work as deterrent on ground. Though this author is not in favour of the power of social boycott or ex-communication being given to either clergy or khap panchayats and opposes the apex court verdict on this issue. As law stands today, the Supreme Court did uphold such a power about Bohra Muslims in the Syedna Tahir Saifuddin case. Tankhiya or ex-communication among Sikhs too is widely practised. Even President Zail Singh was ex-communicated on the issue of Operation Blue Star. Only Parliament has the power to create new crimes and provide punishments for such crimes. Thus even the Supreme Court cannot puniish people for giving triple divorce but Parliament can certainly do so. Slow process of reform Personal law being religious law cannot be reformed in one go. We started the process of Hindu Law Reform in 1941, with the appointment of Hindu Law Reform Committee. After several compromises with the Hindu right, the Hindu Code Bill could be passed in 1955 with bifurcation into three separate Bills. A Hindu daughter could be made a coparcener with a right to inherit ancestral property only in 2005. The reform process is not yet over even after 76 years. Thus we must appreciate the AIMPLB in taking the first positive step in the direction of reforms. I see some light at the end of tunnel. The reform process will indeed be painfully slow. When reforms come from within, there will be greater acceptability of reforms. We must realise that if the people in the family and neighbours consider that divorce has taken place, mere declaration by the Supreme Court that it has not taken place would not drastically change the ground situation. Law is not a great agent of social control and we must accept its limitations in bringing about social change.Things which society considers illegal, law on its own cannot easily make them legal. Similarly, what society considers legal, law cannot make illegal. Poor implementation of dowry laws is a case in point. Moreover, at times the wife herself may believe that triple divorce has irrevocably dissolved her marriage. In the Masroor Ahmad case, the wife had filed the case of rape against the husband who continued to have sexual relations with her even after giving her triple divorce. Of course, the Delhi High Court held that since three pronouncements are to be counted as one, she continued to be his wife and thus there was no rape. It is disgusting to note that India still does not recognise marital rape as rape. AIMPLB has a major role to play in internal law reforms. If religious leaders, ulema and imams under the control of the Board proactively preach in their Friday sermons the correct way of divorce as per the latest resolution, triple divorce will die a natural death. Divorce should neither be too difficult nor too easy. In fact, if married life has become hell, there is no point in forcing incompatible partners to bear everyday torture. In number of cases of Hindu law, the Supreme Court had to use its extraordinary power of doing complete justice under Article 142 to permit divorce even prior to the end of the statutorily mandated period of separation. The eight-step code of conduct for talaq as given by AIMPLB Firstly, if there are difference between spouses, they will try to resolve them amicably by talking to each other in the spirit of forgiveness and accommodation. The resolution said that if there are shortcomings in one person, the other person should overlook them as there must be several good or plus points as well. Secondly, if above conversation does not give desired results, there may be temporary withdrawal of the company of the spouse while continuing to live in the same house. Thirdly, in case of failure of first two steps if differences continue to persist, parties should try sincere reconciliation within family or by appointing one arbitrator from each side. No stone stone should be left unturned in making parties agree to reconciliation. Fourthly, if arbitration does not yield positive results and there is no possibility of patch up and "irretrievable breakdown of marriage" has really taken place, only one divorce is to be pronounced by the husband. Fifthly, this single pronouncement is to be compulsorily followed by the waiting period of three months or if the wife is pregnant till the delivery of the child. Sixthly, if during this waiting period, parties change their mind and see value in living together, they need not do anything more and the divorce would automatically stand revoked. Seventhly, if no express or implied revocation of divorce takes place within the waiting period, divorce would become complete at the end of three months or extended period due to pregnancy. Finally, if after some time, parties again realise out of their free will that they want to yet again reunite, they need not do any intervening marriage (halala), just a fresh nikah with new terms and conditions and fresh meher (dower payment to wife) would suffice to revive their relationship. Data on divorce Darul Iftaa data from 10 states revealed that that in last one year 340,206 fatwas were sought. Of which only 6.50 per cent fatwas were asked about triple divorce. According to Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan's (BMAA) case study on triple divorce, only one divorce out of 117 was given in this manner. As per BMMA's findings, only 0.2 per cent got divorces on phone, just 0.6 per cent received divorce through email. In another survey, out of 521 divorces only one woman got triple divorce via SMS, that is only 0.19 per cent. The writer is Vice Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Harish Khare TOMORROW will be Donald Trumps 100th day in the White House. When on November 8 last year he got himself elected to the office of President of the United States, the rest of the world wondered how could have the Americans opted for this man; how could America the land of Harvard and Yale, Princeton and MIT, the New York Times, Washington Post, the New Yorker elect a man who is gratuitously boorish, determinedly anti-intellectual, and just a greedy businessman, with no record whatsoever of any public service? Well, democracies do sometimes produce false and flawed results. Donald Trump assumed charge on January 20th this year. Has he dismantled and destroyed the United States as his detractors feared; or, has he created the kind of global chaos that the world capitals had apprehended? Perhaps the first hundred days may be too short a period to allow any definitive conclusions, but it is feasible to believe that the fears of an American meltdown were vastly exaggerated. The curative power of democracy has had its impact. Though Donald Trump won the Presidency in November 2016 he did not win the popular vote. Those who did not vote for him thought they had a right to deny him the kind of honeymoon the Presidents are normally granted. The first hundred days have been full of confrontation and cock-ups. Washingtons in-crowd resents him, as it resents anyone who is seen as an outsider, just as it had scorned the Jimmy Carters and the Bill Clintons. On his part, the cantankerous and quarrelsome Trump is not the one to turn the other cheek. He has, in fact, not passed up any chance to throw a brick through his rivals glass window. Trump is an aberration. The Americans sense of disappointment can be traced to the simple fact that these last eight years the United States and the world had got used to a substantive, and at times searing, presidential rhetoric. Nobody has yet accused Trump of eloquence. A distinct sense of shoddiness emanates from the fact that unlike his predecessor, who was often suspected of being too professorial, Donald Trump has positioned himself as a street brawler. And, he has lived up the part, using Twitter as a knuckle-duster, throwing 140-letter punches at rivals at home and abroad. Authority in Washington, as per the American constitutional arrangements, is a divided proposition. Presidential effectiveness invariably depends on the White Houses ability to work with different groups, build up consensus, lead a coalition almost on every issue; despite his self-belief as a wonderful deal-maker, Trump has yet to demonstrate the skills and the attitudes needed to work with other institutional players in Washington. Consequently, the others keep snipping at his heels; and, he is happy to bark back. The last hundred days have seen unhappy departures from good presidential manners. This constant brawling and an itch for confrontation have necessarily deprived the President of an aura of respectability. Democracies look for a sense of moral authenticity and gravitas in their leaders; there is an implicit need to have confidence in their leaders and to believe that they are being led by an exemplary personality of virtuosity and moral lustre. Citizens need to respect their leaders. But Donald Trump refuses to climb on to the pedestal. Because he came to office tapping the resentments and frustrations of the American voters with the so-called elites and at the foreigners who had taken away jobs out of the United States, Trump feels he needs to keep his legions anger simmering. Unsurprisingly, his very first executive decisions were directed against the immigrants, at least the undocumented ones, but he found himself having to deal with judicial challenges. As if the sense of confrontation with the judicial branch was not enough, the President has thoughtlessly engaged the media in a hit-and-run campaign. All this has not helped the President garner any kind of respectability at home. The Americans remain unsure whether the President has satisfactorily insulated his office from his complicated and not-so-honourable business interests; they are definitely not amused that the Trump Family seems to be acquiring so much say in the day-to-day functioning of the presidency. The President remains unconcerned; perhaps his obduracy stems from the fact that he never had a political office before and therefore remains uneducated in the leaders obligation to appreciate and respect public sensibilities. Because Trump has put in place a new culture of disruptive disagreement in the domestic discourse, it is bound to have implications in the United States relationship with the world. A President who is not respected at home finds it difficult to earn applause abroad. The domestic combativeness means that President Trump cannot be relied upon to provide and articulate any kind of ideological or political global leadership, an obligation that the American Presidents since Franklin D Roosevelt have invariably discharged. Trump came to the Oval Office after accusing the external forces the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Europeans of being unfair to the United States and being a cause, direct or indirect, of American economic decline. He promised protectionism and isolationism. He promised to stay at home, refusing to play the global sheriff; he declared himself unenamoured of the so-called global architecture; his preference, he declared, would be for bilateral deals and duels. Much to the relief of the globalists on the east coast, he, as President, seems inclined to hew the conventional line. He has not stayed home. He has gone and dropped the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan; fired missiles at Syria because the Assad regime was being bad boys; and, this week sent his Vice-President to do a bit of macho-posturing against North Korea. The Chinese seem to have sorted Trump out. Demonstrating diplomatic dexterity, they have refused to be provoked but have expressed themselves strongly when it was felt necessary to do so; they have baffled him, practising simultaneously confrontation, cooperation and cooption. The Europeans are no longer alarmed by Trumps isolationism; he has found some merit in NATO. They realise that they have to put their own house in order and they are relieved that they do not have to deal with Trumps disruption of the European project. The Russians, on the other hand, are happy to take him for a ride, too. The American presidency remains undoubtedly the most powerful office in the world. The man who sits in the Oval Office can mug anyone of his happiness. The relief, if any, of these first hundred days is Trump has not been allowed to be reckless. Institutional constraints, liberal pieties and a vigorous media have combined to subject him to the rites of scrutiny and accountability. And, this should be a matter of enormous satisfaction to democratic voices and forces even beyond the United States. The attack on the Kupwara army camp has heralded the start of the killing season in Kashmir. It is not as if the situation was under control when snow made movement difficult. Subsequently, the 7 per cent polling in Srinagar, the postponement of the Anantnag bypoll and the turbulence in the streets are clear signs that the situation has hit an air pocket. And from available signs the turbulence is going to be a prolonged one if the Central Government continues to give simplistic and superficial responses and reasons for the unrest roiling Kashmir since Burhan Wani was gunned down nine months ago. In November, the Prime Minister touted demonetisation as the panacea for all national security ills such as drug trafficking, counterfeit currency, Maoist violence and unrest in Kashmir. The first two manifested themselves within days and the Maoist violence never abated. Rather than demonetisation, it was the onset of winter that provided a temporarily lull in Kashmir. When stone-throwing resumed, the Prime Minister told Parliament that this was an aberration: the money for the provocation came from a bank robbery in Srinagar! The embarrassingly poor polling in Kashmir that left eight dead demonstrated the pitfalls of facile reasoning. It was the same with surgical strikes. While the partisans cheered from the sidelines, the country was told that Pakistan had been taught a salutary lesson for the cowardly attack on an army camp. Now that the political ground is slipping and PDP MLAs are showing signs of unease with the governing arrangement, Mehbooba Mufti has outlined a three-month plan to bring the situation within manageable limits. She is hoping that a relative lull will create the atmosphere for talks. But she may well be talking to a blank wall. The Centre believes that the PMs Rs 80,000-crore package will bring around the emotionally lacerated populace. Instead of scoring points with their Hindutva supporters with simplistic jumlas, the PM needs to think of out-of-the-box responses. He can begin with encouraging civil society missions. Yashwant Sinha, who has travelled this road before and has volunteered for the job, may be a good start. Pradeep Sharma Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 27 In a swift move, the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government on Thursday appointed senior IPS officer BS Sandhu as states Director General of Police (DGP). The current incumbent KP Singh was appointed as DGP (Prisons). The appointment 1984-batch non-controversial IPS officer as the DGP is seen as an effort to mollify a section of the dissident ruling party MLAs and governments effort to put up a fresh face before the public. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Sources said by effecting changes in the top police brass, the state government wanted to send message to people and the party legislators that it would not shy away from large-scale reshuffle at the police and administrative in public interest. It has been a long-standing grouse of the dissident party MLAs that the officials at the state and district levels did not spare time to redress their grievances. The Khattar government had appointed KP Singh, a 1985-batch IPS officer and a year junior to Sandhu, as state police chief on April 13, 2016, apparently as fallout of the violence during the February Jat quota agitation, in place of Yashpal Singal. Talks of KP Singhs removal have been doing rounds for several weeks following registration of case against kin of a senior functionary of the BJP government recently. Meanwhile, the 1986-batch IPS PR Deo, on return from Central deputation will replace Sandhu, who was CMD of the Haryana Police Housing Corporation. The 1985-batch officers RP Singh, DGP (Rules), and K Selvraj, Commandant General (Home Guards) and Director (Civil Defence), will swap their places of posting. Our Correspondent Sonepat, April 27 Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today visited Jainpur Tikola village to pay his condolences to the bereaved family of ASI Naresh Kumar of the CRPF, who was killed in a Naxalite attack on Monday and was consigned to flames yesterday. Hooda, while talking to mediapersons, said the incident was barbaric and must be condemned. He asked the Centre to take appropriate action against such elements. Terrorism has become world-wide problem and a direct threat to world community, Hooda opined. He said all nations should join hands to eliminate organisations involved in terrorist activities. It is not the problem of one nation or one community, almost every country is facing it, he added. He also raised the issue of pelting of stones by Kashmiri youth on armed forces. He alleged that the BJP despite being in power in Jammu and Kashmir and at the Centre, it was not taking action. He sought all help for the bereaved family and said at least one member of the family must be given a government job. Congress MLAs Kuldeep Sharma, Jaiveer Singh Balmiki and Jaitirath Dahiya as well as other party leaders Surender Dahiya, Pradeep Sangwan and Manoj Ridhau were present on the occasion. Shimla, April 27 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first Rs 2,500-an-hour flight from Shimla as part of an UDAN scheme that makes air travel accessible to lower middle class families. It also plans to enhance connectivity with more airports in the country. Also read: Cleanliness tamasha ahead of PMs visit Cong eyes special package for state from Modi (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The first regional flight under the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2,196 metres above sea level and 22 km from here. During his day-long visit to the Queen of Hills, which saw mild showers in the morning, Modi underscored the thrust on keeping the air fares within the reach of the middle class. "My dream was to see a person who wears a 'hawai chappal' to fly on the 'hawai jahaz' or plane," he said in his almost 20-minute address in Hindi. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has put the fare at Rs 2,036. He said the UDAN scheme caters to the aspirations of the people of India, making flights cheaper than taxi fare. "The lives of the middle class are being transformed and their aspirations are increasing. Earlier, aviation was considered to be the domain of a select few. That has changed now," Modi said. The Prime Minister foresees tier-II and tier-III cities as "growth engines" with the country's aviation sector filled with opportunities. "If aviation connectivity in tier-II and tier-III cities is enhanced in these places, it will be beneficial," he said. "We had the opportunity to frame a civil aviation policy, which caters to the aspirations of the people of India. "The UDAN scheme is going to help the tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh," Modi said. Accompanied by Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha and J.P. Nadda, Modi simultaneously flagged off the inaugural UDAN flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video conferencing. The Shimla airport had been shut for scheduled flights since September 6, 2012, affecting tourists and business travellers. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight. The seating capacity of the airlines under the UDAN scheme will range from 19 to 78. Fifty per cent of the seats in every flight will have a fare cap of Rs 2,500 per hour. The airline companies chosen are Airline Allied Services (Alliance Air), SpiceJet, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha. The operations under the scheme are intended to provide air connectivity to unserved and remote routes, with airfare capped at Rs 2,500 for an hour's journey of around 500 km, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement. The scheme caps airfare for an hour-long journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter at Rs 2,500. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15 last year. On March 30, the central government awarded contracts to five companies to operate flights on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports. This was Modi's third visit to Himachal Pradesh and the first to the state capital since he became the Prime Minister in 2014. IANS Pratibha Chauhan Tribune News Service Shimla, April 27 Modi mania virtually gripped the Queen of Hills today as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has had a close association with Himachal, sought the cooperation of the people in his fight against corruption so as to provide the common man what had been denied to him in the last 70 years. Addressing a well-attended rally on The Ridge here, Modi said it was after a lapse of 20 years that he had had the privilege to address the people of Dev Bhoomi, which was now known as Veer Bhoomi, due to the sacrifices made by its valiant soldiers. He added that it was two decades back that as the national BJP general secretary and in-charge of Himachal, he had attended a rally addressed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Despite intermittent spells of rain, the weather cleared up when Modi arrived to address the rally. He said no doubt India was fast emerging as a power to reckon with on the global map, but he wanted to usher in a golden era where honesty is respected and the honest valued. Your Chief Minister is the only head of the state in India who spends the maximum time with lawyers, he said in an oblique reference to Virbhadra Singh, without naming him. He then asked the people if they understood who he was referring to, with the crowds responding with a thunderous applause and affirmative sloganeering against corruption. He exhorted people of Himachal to let the winds of change that had swept UP, Uttarakhand and Delhi to blow in Himachal. The youth and people of other parts of the country have joined me in this fight against corruption and here I seek your cooperation, he remarked. He said those who had looted the poor and the country would have to repay every penny and he would not rest till this would not happen. I urge the people of Himachal to join me in my fight against corruption and I guarantee that if you vote us to power here, you will see the difference, he said. He said many people were vehemently opposed to him because of demonetisation and he would require public support. He remarked that he had experienced poverty in his childhood. My dream is to provide to the poor what only the rich and the privileged have experienced so far. Hawai Chappal wala bhi hawai safar kar sake, yeh meri tamanna thi, he said. He added that there was immense potential for tourism in Himachal as this would not only help boost economy but also provide the much-needed employment. Modi said the PM Crop Insurance Scheme had been launched to protect the farmers against vagaries of nature. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have agreed to our demand to ensure that there is 5 per cent fresh orange concentrate in their drinks to benefit the growers of Nagpur and I promise a similar arrangement will be worked out for fruit growers of HP, he announced. He added that his regime had ensured that 800 generic medicines were made available to the common man and the cost of stents reduced from Rs 40,000 to a mere Rs 6,000. He said it was his endeavour to provide LPG gas to five crore homes in five years and within the last 11 months, a target of 1.50 crore had been achieved. After becoming the Prime Minister, I took up the long pending demand of one rank-one pension and ensured that Rs 15,500 crore is given in four instalments, he said. The PM Mudra Yojna had been launched to help the youth get soft loans and 3.50 crore persons had already benefited. Sidelights Strikes emotional chord In his 55-minute speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to strike an emotional chord with the people of the state. Attired in a peach kurta and sky blue cheque half jacket, he recalled his close association with the state. Maroon cap, kinnauri flowers Modi sat on the dais wearing the maroon cap, adorned with dry Kinnauri flowers and brightly woven Kinnauri muffler presented to him. Former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and Union Health Minister JP Nadda sat on either sides of the PM on the stage. Presented temple replica He was presented with a mini model of a typical hill architecture temple in wood. He was also presented with a mace with which he posed to the cheering crowds. Selfie time There was huge presence of decked up BJP Mahila Morcha workers who kept themselves busy taking selfies and dancing as they waited for the Prime Minister between intermittent spells of rain. Crowds go hysterical Each time Modi recalled his close association with Himachal Pradesh, the crowds went hysterical and cheered. The crowds were seen flashing cutouts of Modi and raising slogans in favour of the Prime Minister. Venue Choc-a-block Former Minister and sitting MLA Rajiv Bindal time and again requested the police officials on duty to not obstruct movement and allow people to enter the rally venue. The chairs at the venue were fully occupied and there were people not just around the Ridge but also on all the roads along the Ridge. Majid Jahangir Tribune News Service Srinagar, April 27 At least three Army men, including an officer, were killed in a militant attack on an Army base in frontier Kupwara district. A 70-year-old civilian was killed and three others received injuries near the army camp later, police said. The Army has not so far confirmed whether the security guards at the camp opened fire at the mob. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Two suspected fidayeen members stormed an Army base at Panzgam in Kupwara around 4.30 am and engaged troops in a fierce gunfight. Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said three soldiers, including an officer, were killed in the gunfight. Read: Civilian killed, 3 injured in firing near Kupwara attack site Escaped death twice, braveheart solider guns down 2 militants "Terrorist attacked the Army garrison in Panzgam and two terrorists were killed. Three soldiers, including an officer, were martyred in the gunfight," he said. The dead included 26-year-old Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment, defence ministry sources said. Reports said two of the injured soldiers were in critical condition. Army officials said the militants cut through the two-layered barbed wire fencing of the firing range of the camp, after which they lobbed hand grenades and fired indiscriminately. According to the officials, Panzgam is the rear administrative area for over nine Army units in Kupwara and spread over an area of 240,000 square metres. The camp is about 20 km from Kupwara and some 10 km from the LoC. The attackers were engaged by the Quick Reaction Team (QRT) and the intense gunfight lasted for 7-10 minutes, the officials said. At least three AK-47 assault rifles, nine magazines, 156 rounds of AK-47, one Chinese pistol, one pistol magazine, one UBGL and three grenades, three matrix sheets, two GPS, one smartphone and one radio set were recovered from the possession of the suicide attackers. The Army spokesman said two terrorists were killed in the attack and a third managed to escape. An intense search was on to trace him. The Army also launched a search operation to ascertain whether the militants had managed to sneak into the camp. This is the first fidayeen attack this year in Kashmir. (With IANS inputs) Arun Joshi tribune news service Thursday mornings fidayeen attack at an Army camp in Panzgam, Kupwara, in many ways was more terrifying than most terror attacks since July 1999 - the first suicide attack on Army camp in Kashmir. Never before had the locals gheraoed an Army camp to seek the bodies of the fidayeen. It seems an increase in the combatant role of the civilians, taking it to the next level from that of protests at encounter sites. Earlier, the crowds would raise slogans and hurl stones to enable the militants to escape alive from the encounter sites. That has happened so many times that now it is beyond the memorised statistics. This new phenomenon indicates new challenges thrown at the security forces, which are now being forced to shun restraint. Any civilian casualty in this kind of a situation spells double trouble for the Army. One, it suffers casualties, which in itself is a horrifying scenario. Two, dealing with the stone-hurling menacing crowds deters it from search operations besides bringing a bad name to it for targeting protesting civilians. Crowds on Thursday were seeking militants bodies to stall the investigations. Normally, the DNA tests are conducted to nail Pakistans involvement. The fidayeen in almost 100 per cent of the cases are foreigners, and mostly Pakistanis. Islamabad and its agents were behind this situation. What should be remembered is that the civilian killings put the Army on the back foot. Separatists and politicians like Farooq Abdullah then get a chance to abuse the Army and India. There is another spectrum. That is, the timing of the attack at a time when videos showing the new power of militants are in circulation, hailing their own will to fight unto the last in a bid to inspire others. Another aspect that comes to the fore is that despite being the victim of so many fidayeen attacks, the security forces have not adopted the safety requirements against such attacks. They should have been more alert this time when they knew that new batches of infiltrators were trying to sneak into the country from across the Line of Control. Kupwara is a border district. This adds to their vulnerabilities. Fresh security assessment needs to be made in the light of the new trend that has the potential to spread across the Valley beyond the confines of the Army camps and surroundings. Never before had the locals gheraoed an Army camp to seek the bodies of the fidayeen. It seems an increase in the combatant role of the civilians, taking it to the next level from that of protests at encounter sites. Vikas Sharma Tribune News Service Jammu, April 27 Attendants looking after patients admitted at the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) or other associated hospitals in Jammu are facing many hardships in arranging blood in these hospitals. Sources claimed that blood banks at the GMCH, Shri Maharaja Gulab Singh (SMGS) Hospital, Shalamar Road, and Government Gandhi Nagar Hospital are witnessing a decline in voluntary blood donors in the recent past due to various reasons. They added that one of the reasons was lack of initiatives on part of the hospital authorities to launch awareness campaigns at any level for informing people to donate blood. Secondly, the donors who are donating blood in the banks are getting meagre refreshment in return, sources said. They further said there were many NGOs which were conducting blood donation camps at regular junctures and providing refreshments too. The voluntary donors prefer donating blood to the NGOs instead of government hospitals. My wife has been admitted in the emergency ward at the GMCH since last week and in between that period I had to arrange blood for her twice. I first approached the blood bank at the GMCH where I was informed that AB+ blood was unavailable. Thereafter, I filled a form given by the GMCH blood bank and after taking samples, I went to Government Hospital, Gandhi Nagar, to get a bottle of blood. Such hardships are being faced by many people, said Dharmesh, a resident of Sangwal village. I had to repeat the same procedure for the second time too. I have no conveyance and public transport consumes a lot of time. It is imperative for the state government to improve the prevailing system and ensure adequate availability of blood for all patients in the hospitals where they are admitted, he added. Dr Vijay Sawhney, associate professor and head of the GMCH blood bank, Jammu, told The Tribune: Blood banks in the hospitals are getting a decent number of donors of different blood groups. When asked about the difficulties being faced by the people in arranging blood, Dr Sawhney said: It is difficult to arrange blood for everyone in the hospital but we are trying our level best to provide the same to the needy patients most of the times. In fact, we are organising many camps to create awareness for voluntary blood donation. In reply to another question regarding poor refreshment being given to voluntary blood donors, he said: Yes, the refreshment is not enough but we are authorised to provide this only. Srinagar, Apr 27 (IBNS): At least two militants and three army jawans, including an officer, were killed in an attack on army camp in Panzam village in North Kashmir's Kupwara district on Thursday morning, police said. According to reports, armed militants barged into the army garrison unit in Panzam early on Thursday and fired indiscriminately on forces, leaving three army soldiers dead, including an major. During retaliation, two militants were also killed. Further details awaited. (Reporting by Saleem Qadri) United Nations, April 27 India has strongly objected to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a UN General Assembly session here, asserting that it is a bilateral matter which should not be brought up at the UN forum. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Minister in Pakistans Permanent Mission to the UN Masood Anwar raised the Kashmir issue in his statement to the UN General Assembly Session of the Committee on Information on April 25. He said Pakistan appreciates the efforts by the UNs Department of Public Information in arranging coverage of events related to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. We would urge you to do the same for the people of Kashmir who continue to suffer under foreign occupation, Anwar said. As soon as these remarks were made, Minister in Indias Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad interrupted Anwars speech and strongly raised objections to the mention of Kashmir by the Pakistani delegate. It is a bilateral issue which should not be brought up here, Prasad told the Chair of the session. Pakistans Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, also present during the session, was heard prodding Anwar to carry on speaking, even as Prasad raised his objections with the sessions Chair. Later, before delivering Indias statement at the session, Prasad said the Kashmir issue was totally unrelated to the forum. Before I begin my statement, I would like to thank the Chair for its deft handling and not allowing the elaboration of a subject which is totally unrelated to this forum as was tried by a member state, Prasad said. The Committee on Information is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly established to deal with questions relating to public information. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the Department of Public Information and for providing it with guidance on policies, programmes and activities of the Department. PTI New Delhi, April 27 The Centre has released an amount of nearly Rs 19,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore development package for Jammu and Kashmir announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was disclosed at a high-level inter-ministerial meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh here today, Home Ministry officials said. Rajnath reviewed the progress of the implementation of the mega package and works of various development initiatives announced for Jammu and Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest lately. It was conveyed in the meeting that 25 per cent of funds from the total package, around Rs 19,000 crore, had been released so far and related works were going on, an official said. The meeting was attended by representatives from various Central ministries and departments, and the state government. The successful implementation of the package is key to assuage the feeling of alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. The state had witnessed violence during the April 9 byelection to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in which eight persons lost their lives. There have been protests by students in the Valley in the last fortnight against alleged police excesses. Students, including girls, were seen throwing stones at security personnel in these incidents. Massive protests erupted in Kashmir after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year which continued for nearly five months. More than 90 people lost their lives, while scores of security personnel and civilians were injured. The Rs 80,000-crore package was announced by the Prime Minister in November 2015. So far, Rs 17,000 crore had been released to the state government by the Centre. Around Rs 40,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore package has been earmarked for improving road infrastructure, including semi-ring roads in Jammu and Srinagar, and upgradation of important highways. An amount of Rs 7,854 crore has been earmarked for flood relief, reconstruction and flood management. A total of Rs 2,241 crore is meant for promoting tourism by developing new projects and tourist circuits, and setting up of 50 tourist villages. In addition, Rs 11,708 crore is for power, new and renewable energy. This includes augmentation of power infrastructure and distribution systems, solar power and small hydro projects. An amount of Rs 4,900 crore is for improving healthcare facilities in the state which includes creation of two AIIMS-like institutions in both major cities of the state, and support for creation of infrastructure in hospitals and primary health centres. PTI A string of celebrities like Rajinikanth, Asha Bhosle, Rishi Kapoor, Anupam Kher and Shatrughan Sinha have paid tributes to veteran movie actor-politician Vinod Khanna, who died in Mumbai on Thursday due to prolonged illness. He was hospitalised since over a month for bladder cancer. He was 70 and is survived by his wife, three sons and a daughter. Khanna was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in the first week of April after, reportedly suffering from severe dehydration. The actor was the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the Lok Sabha from Punjabs Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab. The B-town took to social media to share their grief: Rajinikanth: My dear friend Vinod Khanna...Will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family. Asha Bhosle: Very sad to hear about Vinod Khannaji. A decent man and a star till the very end. My condolences to his family. Rishi Kapoor: Will miss you Amar ( his character name from the film Amar Akbar Anthony). RIP...Remembering the good times with you, Vinod. Thank you for being my friend. Anupam Kher: Vinod Khanna ji had a magnetic charm and persona. Both on and off screen. He was kind, affectionate and helpful. Loved his panther like walk. Karan Johar: His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP Vinod Khanna...thoughts and prayers. Shatrughan Sinha: Vinod Khanna, truly Mere Apne, one of my most admired and loved personalities, the supremely handsome and talented superstar is no more. Right from films to politics, Vinod Khanna and I sailed together and he leaves behind an entire generation & more of fans, admirers Akshay Kumar: Sad to learn about the passing away of Vinod Khanna Sir, one of the most charismatic actors...truly end of an era. Condolences to the family Amjad Ali Khan: Deeply saddened to know about the passing away of Vinod Khanna one of the most charismatic actors of our times. Condolences to the family. IANS Majid Jahangir Tribune News Service Panzgam (Kupwara), April 27 A Captain and two soldiers were killed and five others injured when militants carried out a fidayeen attack on an Army camp in Kupwara district today. Two of the militants were gunned down while one managed to escape from a well-fortified Army garrison during the early morning gunfight. Later in the day, the Army allegedly fired at protesters seeking bodies of the militants, killing one and injuring three others. The spacious artillery garrison on a perch surrounded by huge mountains at Panzgam, close to the Line of Control (LoC), was stormed by militants from the rear side of the camp by cutting the barbed wire. After storming the base at the crack of dawn, the militants attempted to enter the living area of the camp. As they sneaked in, they started running towards the living area of the units in the garrison. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The alert sentry fired at them and ensured they do not enter the living area. Taking advantage of the darkness, the militants started moving inwards where the Quick Reaction Team (QRT) fired from all directions, forcing them to withdraw and run towards the exit of the garrison, said Col Saurabh Joshi, Commanding Officer of 312 Artillery, at a press briefing hours after the attack. They were pushed out effectively and two of them were killed, he said, adding that the operation ended within 35 minutes. Col Joshi said the third militant was injured. He left his weapons and is on the run. Several teams are looking for him in the adjacent village, he said. He said three AK-47 rifles, nine magazines, 47 AK rounds, 50 pistol ammunition, one UBGH, three UBGL grenades, three hand grenades, two radio sets and some food items were recovered from them. The slain were identified as Captain Ayush Yadav, 26, from Jajmau in Kanpur (UP), Subedar Bhoop Singh Gujjar, 46, from Dausa, Rajasthan, and Naik Bhoota Venkata Ramana, 38, from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Col Joshi said the militants seemed to be foreigners, though their identity was being established. This is the first fidayeen attack on an Army base in J&K after the Nagrota attack in November last year. As the combing operation at the garrison was on, a group of youth and women from neighbouring villages gathered around 500 metres from the Army camp and demanded the militants bodies. The situation worsened around 3.30 pm when the youth hurled stones at Army vehicles. The Army opened fire on the protesters, killing a 70-year-old man and injuring three others. The civilian killing sparked fresh tension in Kupwara as clashes were reported from various places. 70-yr-old killed as Army opens fire on protesters Ravi S Singh Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 27 Tibets spiritual leader the Dalai Lama today said China would desist from military confrontation with India considering the latters military and geographical might. While receiving Professor ML Sondhi Prize for International Politics-2016, the Dalia Lama ruled out Chinas mis-adventurism against India and said the neighbouring country was a totalitarian which has not much future. Its leaders are fighting how to retain power. On Chinas belligerence over his recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh, he said: India is not a small country; militarily it is gaining. When they (China) think of indulging in conflict with India, they will have also to think of the simmering unrest in Tibet, the spiritual leader said. He described the Chinese reaction as sad and unusual. He said India had a right on the environmental issues and ecology of Tibet. Hence, it should raise the issue of the Brahmaputra, which originates in Tibet, with Chinese authorities. Several reports say the Chinese regime has been tampering with the flow of the river by diverting its course. Prof Sondhi, a native of Punjab, was Bharatiya Jana Sangh MP from Delhi (1967-71). Earlier, he was in the India Foreign Service from which he resigned and joined Jawaharlal Nehru University to become Professor at International Affairs. The award was instituted by the Professor ML Sondhi Memorial Trust and the ML Sondshi Institute for Asia-Pacific Affairs in 2003. Former Union Minister Arun Shourie presented the award and addressed the gathering, besides former Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh and Madhur Santanam Sondhi. Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 27 The Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green signal to the Narendra Modi government to proceed with the appointment of Lokpal, saying there was no legal hurdle in appointing the countrys first anti-corruption watchdog without the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha being on the selection panel. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Terming the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, as an an eminently workable piece of legislation, a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said, There is no justification to keep the enforcement of the Act under suspension till the amendments, as proposed, are carried out. It means no nominee of the Opposition (read Congress) will be part of the Lokpal selection process. The bench didnt buy the Centres argument that it wasnt possible to appoint a Lokpal without the LoP being there on the selection panel. The Act requires LoP to be member of the selection panel but there is no designated Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha as the Congress does not have the numbers needed for it. Sub-section (2) of Section 4 makes it clear that the appointment of Chairperson or a Member of the Lokpal will not become invalid merely because of the reason of any vacancy in the Selection Committee. If, at present, the LoP is not available, surely, the Chairperson and the other two Members of the Selection Committee, namely, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India or his nominee may proceed to appoint an eminent jurist as a Member of the Selection Committee under Section 4(1)(e) of the Act, the bench said in its verdict on petitions seeking a direction to the government to appoint the Lokpal expeditiously. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the top court that Lokpal could not be appointed in the current scenario as amendments regarding definition of the Leader of Opposition in the Lokpal Act were pending in Parliament. Unless the proposed amendment making Leader of the Largest Opposition party as Leader of Opposition is passed by Parliament, the Lokpal cant be appointed, Rohatgi had contended. However, the top court said, Such attempts at achieving better results in the working of any statute is a perpetual and ongoing exercise dictated by the experiences gained on the working of the Act. Such attempts cannot halt the operation and execution of the law which the Executive in its wisdom has already given effect to and has brought into force by resorting to the provisions of Section 1(4) of the Act. The top court also rejected another petition which demanded that the Chief Justice of India should have primacy in the selection of an eminent jurist who is required to be a part of selection panel along with the Prime Minister, LoP, Lok Sabha Speaker and the CJI. Under the Act, the selection of the eminent jurist has to be done by other members of the selection panel. However, the bench said: It is not the mandate of the Constitution that in all matters concerning the appointment to various offices in different bodies, primacy must be accorded to the opinion of the Chief Justice or his nominee. The NDA government had on March 28 told the Supreme Court that it wasnt possible to go ahead with the appointment of Lokpal at present because of legal complications that made it difficult to institute the anti-corruption ombudsman. Rohatgi had told the top court that Lokpal could not be appointed in the current scenario as amendments regarding definition of the Leader of Opposition in the Lokpal Act were pending in Parliament. The Judiciary cant dictate the Legislature on this issue, he said. Petitioner Common Cause an NGO -- had accused the government of deliberately not appointing Lokpal despite the law having come into effect despite the Act mandating expeditious appointment of the anti-corruption watchdog. Enacted in December 2013, The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act aims to create a system of anti-corruption watchdog in India. The law came into force from January 16, 2014. It requires the Selection Committee to constitute a Search Committee to make nominations for appointments to the Lokpal. But the appointment process got stalled as search panel members, including jurist Fali Nariman, quit. It requires Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha to be member of the selection panel but there is no designated leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha as the Congress does not have the numbers required for it. The government introduced an amendment to the law to address the issue but the amendment bill also proposed many other changes on which there has been no political consensus. Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 27 The NDA government on Thursday came out in support of two students who have challenged WhatsApps new privacy policy before the Supreme Court. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a Constitution Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that the government was firm in protecting citizens constitutional right to freedom of choice and the law envisaged to protect data imprint was aimed at it. All of us have a freedom to choose. And it has to be a positive assertion, the ASG said. He, however, said if the petitioners contended that WhatsApp privacy policy violated their right to privacy then it would have to be referred to a larger Bench to determine if the Constitution recognised it as a fundamental right. The Bench said it would begin hearing arguments from May 15, even as the counsel representing WhatsApp and Facebook opposed it. As senior counsel Kapil Sibal representing WhatsApp asked the court to fix the hearing sometime in July, the Bench said it would consider it on the next date. WhatApps new privacy policy has come under challenge as it allows it to collect and share information about its users with Facebook and all its group companies for commercial advertising and marketing on its platform. Petitioners contended it violated their right to privacy. Sibal denied the petitioners claim and said there was no snooping. The petitioners have challenged last years Delhi High Court order that had asked TRAI to examine whether WhatsApp could be brought under a regulatory framework. Sibal said the agreement promised end-to-end encryption. He said users could choose not use the service if they were not comfortable with the agreement. It has to be a positive choice. What you are offering is a negative one, the Bench commented. Senior advocate KK Venugopal, representing Facebook, said the petition was not maintainable. On behalf of petitioners, senior advocate Harish Salve contested the intermediaries assertion that a PIL was not fit in this case. Constitution confers protection to all in respect of maintaining confidentiality of communication shared through a medium because such communications are private in nature, Salve said. Asking the court to frame constitutional questions for consideration, Salve sought to distinguish this case from the Aadhaar case, where right to privacy was being discussed as a fundamental right. Salve also wanted the court to settle the legal position as to whether right to privacy extends to just State and its agencies or even to private agencies and whether private companies with monopoly over certain trade are under a constitutional duty to protect privacy of individuals. United Nations, April 27 The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, the first Indian American to hold a cabinet rank, visited India's UN Mission on Thursday for a wide-ranging discussion with Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin. "We shared perspectives on how India-US can work together at the UN in line with our growing ties," Akbaruddin told IANS after the meeting. We had a great meeting w/ Indian Amb. Akbaruddin. We discussed India's economy, peacekeeping reform & the partnership b/w India & the US. pic.twitter.com/KdfGkWFVul Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) April 26, 2017 Haley described their meeting in a tweet as "great". "We discussed India's economy, peacekeeping reform and the partnership between India and the US." A US Mission statement added that they also discussed "India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth" and "the close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the UN." Permanent Representative to the UN has a cabinet rank in the US government and Haley has emerged as a powerful and outspoken voice on foreign policy in the US, even as she deviated from some of the early positions of President Donald Trump. However, the differences have virtually disappeared as Trump moved closer to her stances due to realpolitik and Congressional pressures. For example, Trump has embraced her hardline on Russia after chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Syria. A critic of how the UN works, Haley has been insistent on reforming it, especially the peacekeeping operations as a cut in US contributions to the world body looms. "I know for a fact that Nikki feels very, very strongly about taking on problems that really people steered away from," Trump said on Monday during a White House lunch for Permanent Representatives of members of the Security Council. Trump thanked Haley for her "outstanding leadership" and said she was doing a "fantastic job." It was not known if the Security Council reforms with a permanent seat for India, a priority for New Delhi, came up during the conversation with Akbaruddin. President Barack Obama has backed India's quest, but the Trump administration has not publicly endorsed it and Haley has only said that she was open to the idea. Asked about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here in March, she admitted candidly, "First of all, I'm in learning mode. And as I look at that, I know there is conversations of reform of Security Council." She then added: "I'm open to hearing anyone on what they have to say and looking at it and going further." With the US contributing 28.36 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, Washington is giving priority to reforming the operations. Historically, India has been the largest troop-contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations and 7,678 are serving now. India has also been advocating reforming the peacekeeping operations, especially how the mandates are set by the Security Council, often without consulting the troop-contributors. As Governor of South Carolina, Haley showed interest in India's economy and its potential and led a trade delegation in 2014 to India seeking investments and stronger commercial ties with her state. IANS New Delhi/Mumbai, April 27 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday condoled the demise of Vinod Khanna, saying he would be remembered as a popular actor and a dedicated leader. Will always remember Vinod Khanna as a popular actor, dedicated leader & a wonderful human. Pained by his demise. My condolences, he said in a tweet. Read more: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh took to Twitter to express condolence over Khannas demise, adding that he had carved a special place in the hearts of millions of Indians. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Shri Vinod Khanna had an illustrious career in films and politics. He carved a special place in the hearts of millions of Indians, Rajnath tweeted. With the demise of Vinod Khannaji the people of India have lost a fabulous actor and sensitive politician. May his soul rest in peace. Khanna, sitting BJP MP from Gurdaspur, has been famous for his personality and exemplary work in movies like Achaanak, Qurbani, and Amar Akbar Anthony. Union Defence and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley tweeted, Condolences on sad demise of veteran actor & BJP MP Shri #VinodKhanna ji, may God render peace to the departed soul & solace to his family. Shri #VinodKhanna ji was a great actor and a gentleman politician--will miss him. Congress president Sonia Gandhi also condoled the demise of the actor. Remembering him as a gifted actor, who dominated the silver screen with his outstanding persona, Sonia said Vinodji had a rare and profound influence over the masses by his simple and charismatic character. She also expressed solidarity with Khannas family and prayed for the departed soul. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari also mourned the loss of the actor-politician. I deeply mourn the demise of senior @BJP4India parliamentarian Vinod Khanna, a versatile film personality and a great human being, Gadkari tweeted. Union Minister of Textiles Smriti Irani tweeted, Heard about the sad demise of Vinod Khannaji. Kind, considerate, a legend in his own right. Had the honour of producing a series with him. B-town mourns death Bollywood celebrities have expressed their heartfelt grief and condolences at Khannas demise. Ace director Karan Johar took to Twitter to pay tribute to the legendary actor. He wrote, His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... Distributor of the Hindi dubbed version of SS Rajamouli's Baahubali 2, KJo even decided to cancel the premiere of the film as a mark of respect to the veteran actor. As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight..., posted the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil helmer. Sanjay Dutt, who is saddened by his demise said, I have watched Vinod ji as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He is and always will be family to the Dutts. May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshay, Rahul and Sakshi. Vinod Khanna's Amar Akbar Anthony co-star Rishi Kapoor tweeted in response to the veteran stars death. Remembering the good times with you, Vinod. Thank you for being my friend. Actor Rajinikanth condoled the death and described him as his dear friend. My dear friend Vinod Khanna... will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family, he tweeted. New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday greeted Bishop Philipose Mar Chrysostom on the latter's 100th birthday. "On the special occasion of his 100th birthday, warmest greetings to Metropolitan Emeritus, His Grace Dr. Philipose Mar Chrysostom," his tweet read. "Metropolitan Emeritus, His Grace Dr. Philipose Mar Chrysostom has devoted himself towards service. I pray for his long & healthy life," an ensuing tweet said. Bishop Philipose Mar Chrysostom is the longest serving Bishop in India. Image: twitter.com/narendramodi New Delhi, April 27 Embattled Sahara Chief Subrata Roy today appeared before the Supreme Court which extended his parole till June 19 with a warning that failure to pay Rs 1,500 crore, as promised, may again land him in jail. The apex court took note of the affidavit and a personal undertaking of Roy, who stood right behind his lawyer Kapil Sibal, that he will pay Rs 1,500 crore on or before June 15 and Rs 552.22 crore exactly a month thereafter and said, if the cheque is not encashed, the contemnor will straightaway go to jail. A Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra also asked Roy do you intend to pay the money? The Sahara chief stood up and said I am trying my best. On his short reply, the Bench, also comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and AK Sikri, once again said, We are warning you, if the cheques are not cleared and amount is not coming frequently, we will be compelled to send you to Tihar Jail straightaway from here. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) During the proceedings, Chennai-based Prakash Swamy, the holder of power of attorney of MG Capital Holdings LLC, New York, US, which had intended to purchase Saharas Hotel Plaza New York, was in for a shock of his life as the top court sent him to Tihar Jail for a month on the charge of contempt. Initially, Swamy, in his affidavit, had said the firm wanted to purchase the hotel. He was then asked by the court to deposit Rs 750 crore with the SEBI-Sahara Refund Account to show its bonafide in purchasing the hotel, valued at US$ 550 million. On April 17, Swamys lawyer conceded that Rs 750 crore was not deposited as there was difficulty to go with the transaction of purchasing the hotel. This led the court to direct the seizure of the passport of 64-year-old Swamy, a journalist by profession who was a correspondent at the United Nations, besides asking him to deposit Rs 10 crore as cost and appear personally today. The apex court, which directed the Sahara Chief to personally appear again on June 19, asked the Bombay High Courts Official Liquidator (OL) Vinod Sharma to prepare the terms and conditions for auctioning of the Sahara groups Aamby Valley properties and bring them before it for approval. PTI Nonika Singh One of the handsomest actors to have walked down the Bollywood hall of fame is no more. If Vinod Khannas last photograph showing his emaciated condition was any indication, he did appear to be battling a life-threatening disease. It was advanced bladder carcinoma that consumed the man who knew no fear. His passion for life manifested in many ways. From the material to the spiritual world, he experienced it all. A sanyasi, politician, style icon and a fine actor; the world knew him differently at different points. What bound his different avatars was the charisma that he exuded not just on screen, but in person too. Born in Peshawar on October 6, 1946, the Adonis-looking man was introduced by Sunil Dutt in Man Ka Meet. Though starting on a villainous footing, he made a mark in his very first break (a flop though), that was followed by 15 more assignments. Marriage to college sweetheart Gitanjali, two sons (Akshaye and Rahul grew up to be good-looking actors in their own right) and a career going great guns his heydays saw him star in superhits such as Qurbani, The Burning Train and Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki. Vinod Khanna was often tipped to dislodge matinee idol Amitabh Bachchan with whom he starred in Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqadar Ka Sikander. But just when he seemed to skyrocket to heights of success, he announced his retirement and moved to be with his guru Rajneesh (Osho) in the US. Some dubbed Khanna the monk who sold his Ferrari though his first car was a Beetle. But, once an actor, always an actor, and the break from tinsel town only proved to be a sabbatical of five years. His second innings did include significant films like Dayavan, Lekin and Chandni, but was not as rocking. Last seen in Shah Rukh Khans Dilwale, he never though lost that impactful winsome smile. A swashbuckling hero who knew how to wear his hats, glasses and carried off-beat colours with aplomb, he remained a darling of audiences. If the tryst with Osho cost him a split from first wife, he did find love again and married Kavita, from whom he has two children, a son and daughter. In 1997, the actor had metamorphosed into a politician. By his own admission when asked to contest from Gurdaspur, he did not know where it was. A four-time MP, he visited his constituency often enough and those close to him swear by his humility and innate goodness. His countless admirers can take comfort in his words, Everything around us, whether good or bad, is a manifestation of God. The man who embraced spirituality knew very well, You come alone, you leave alone. You have to travel your own path. Its been a fairly glorious one. B-Town biggies at cremation Actors Abhishek Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor and brother Randhir Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Jackie Shroff, Kabir Bedi, Danny, Gulzar, Subhash Ghai and Ramesh Sippy were among those who attended the funeral. Khanna's fans thronged the streets outside the Worli crematorium to catch last glimpse of the actor who died of cancer at a hospital in Mumbai on Thursday morning at the age of 70. Read more: (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Vinod Khanna, truly "Mere Apne", one of my most admired and loved personalities, the supremely handsome & talented superstar is no more..1>2 Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) April 27, 2017 Will miss you Amar. RIP. pic.twitter.com/WC0zt71R4J Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna ji had a magnetic charm & persona. Both on & off screen. He was kind, affectionate & helpful. Loved his panther like walk. pic.twitter.com/q01Hmqxbdp Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) April 27, 2017 Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 26 Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh today gave approval to set up a new government medical college with an intake capacity of 100 seats at SAS Nagar (Mohali) to address the critical shortage of medical specialists while giving a boost to medical education in the state. It will be more than four decades that the state will get a new government medical college. The last such college was Guru Gobind Singh Medical College, Faridkot which was opened in early 1970s. In a press release, Amarinder said this would be the first of the five new medical colleges that the Congress had promised in its poll manifesto, apart from upgrading infrastructure, facilities and manpower in the existing medical colleges. The CMs approval was announced by an official spokesperson after a meeting to review the functioning of medical and dental colleges in the state. The state government will soon forward a detailed proposal in this regard to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. The proposed 200-bedded hospital-cum-medical college would be established over an area of 20 acres at a cost of nearly Rs.190 crore, of which 60 per cent share would be contributed by the Union Government and the remaining 40 per cent by the state. The recurring expenditure for maintenance and upkeep of the upcoming medical college would be Rs.45 crore annually, which would be exclusively borne by the state government. With the establishment of the new college at Mohali, the total number of government colleges in the state will go up to four. London, April 26 A British Sikh barrister has received the prestigious Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Prince William for his services to the community at London's Buckingham Palace. Jasvir Singh, the founding chair of City Sikhs, received Officer of the Most Excellent OBE from Prince William, the second in line to the British throne who often steps in for Queen Elizabeth II at investiture ceremonies where such medals are officially conferred. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) "It was a humbling experience. I met many inspiring people, including scientists, artists, Paralympians, and various members of the Armed Forces and the Police, and found out about their remarkable achievements," Singh said in a statement after the ceremony last week. "I also spoke to Prince William and commended him for the work he and his brother, Prince Harry, are doing to help remove the stigma of mental health problems," he added. Other British Sikhs at the investiture ceremony included Brinder Singh Mahon, who received the OBE for services to education, and Detective Sergeant Sarbjit Kaur from Merseyside Police, who received an MBE for services to policing. The honours had been announced in the official UK government Gazette as part of the annual New Year's honours list. City Sikhs is among a number of Sikh organisations in Britain and claims a membership of 6,000 members. It says it is involved with several important projects, including the 'Grand Trunk Project' which is led by the 'Faiths Forum for London' and is looking to foster better relationships between communities of South Asian heritage in towns and cities throughout the country. The OBE is an award granted by the government of the UK and awarded, typically in person, by the current king or queen of the nation to individuals who have performed excellent work in arts, sciences, public services and charitable efforts. PTI Quetta, April 27 At least eight Iranian border guards were killed in firing by suspected outlaws near the Sistan- Balochistan border along Pakistans troubled Balochistan province, state-run IRIB news agency reported. The border guards were killed after clashes erupted near the town of Mirjaveh in the Iranian province of Sistan- Balochistan which has a border crossing with Balochistan. Four other border guards were also injured in the clashes, the news agency reported. The Sistan-Balochistan province is the largest Iranian province in the southeast of Iran and has its borders with Pakistans restive Balochistan province. Security forces are often attacked by armed bandits, drug dealers, and outlaws in the area. A commander of Irans Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by two terrorists in Sistan- Balochistan provinces border area with Pakistan last year. In July last year, four Iranian guards were killed in the border region with Pakistan. The Iranian media has claimed that the Jaish al-Adl militant group accused by Tehran of links to al Qaeda carries out regular attacks in Sistan and Balochistan. PTI Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 27 India will do a delicate diplomatic balancing act over the next few days as it plays host to the Presidents of Cyprus and Turkey in quick succession. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, who arrived in Mumbai on April 25, will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives here on Sunday and will hold delegation-level talks with Modi on Monday. Interestingly, Turkey does not recognise Cyprus and is also one of the main obstacles in the reunification of Cyprus. Cyprus has already expressed its support for Indias candidature to the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as well as for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. For India, the tricky part would be convincing Turkey to change its stance on Indias entry into the NSG. Turkey, much like China, has so far taken the position that the NSG first needs to come out with guidelines on how states that have not signed the Non- Proliferation Treaty can be admitted into the NSG. And that, interestingly, would apply to both India and Pakistan. The NSG issue is likely to come up for discussions when Erdogan meets Modi. Another issue that will figure prominently in the discussions between the two leaders will be on counterterrorism. Anastasiades will lead a 60-member strong delegation to India and several bilateral agreements are expected to be signed between India and Cyprus. During the visit, Cyprus will project itself as a gateway for Indian companies wanting to enter the European markets by setting their bases in the country. Erdogans visit here comes at a time when Turkey and much of Europe finds itself in a state of political instability. Erdogan himself faced a coup last year which he survived. During his visit here he will be accompanied by a huge business delegation consisting of 150 members. Paris/Frankfurt, April 27 French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macrons campaign team confirmed on Wednesday that his party had been the target of a series of attempts to steal email credentials since January but that they had failed to compromise any campaign data. Macrons party, known as En Marche! or Onwards, said it had been hit by at least five advanced phishing attacks that involved trying to trick a broad number of campaign staff members to click on professionally-looking fake web pages. The latest attacks were confirmed by security firm Trend Micro, whose researchers found links to a cyber espionage group it has dubbed Pawn Storm, the Macron team noted. Other experts link the group, also known as Fancy Bear or APT 28, to Russian military intelligence agency GRU. Russia has denied involvement in attacks on Macrons campaign. Macron, an independent centrist who has been critical of Russian foreign policy, faces far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Frances presidential runoff on May 7. Le Pen has taken loans from Russian banks and has called for closer ties with Moscow. Emmanuel Macron is the only candidate in the French presidential campaign to be targeted (in phishing attacks), his party said in a statement, adding this was no coincidence. In mid-February, an En Marche! official told a news conference the party was enduring hundreds if not thousands of attacks on its networks, databases and sites from locations inside Russia and asked the French government for assistance. The Macron campaign said on Wednesday it had carried out counter-offensive actions against the fake web sites, which were designed to trick campaign workers into divulging their user credentials. As a further precaution, it also said En Marche! does not use email to share confidential information. Attempted break-ins? Netherlands-based researcher Feike Hacquebord of Trend Micro said this week he had found evidence that Pawn Storm, which has been active since 2004, had targeted the Macron campaign with email phishing tricks and attempts to install malware on the campaign site in mid-March. (http://reut.rs/2oLgZHB) Hacquebord said some of the same digital fingerprints linked the Macron phishing attacks with those last year on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign. He also found evidence that Pawn Storm was using similar techniques in the past two months to target two foundations tied to Germanys ruling coalition parties (http://reut.rs/2pkPhEO) and to attack German Chancellor Angela Merkels party, the Christian Democratic Union, in April and May of last year. Security firm CrowdStrike has said the group may be associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. Other U.S.-based firms SecureWorks, FireEye and ThreatConnect have also said the group has ties to the Russian government. A report this month by Denmarks Center for Cyber Security detailed a string of phishing attacks against the Danish armed forces and the ministries of defence and foreign affairs during 2015 and 2016 which it blamed on APT 28, or Pawn Storm. The report, in Danish, can be found here. (https://goo.gl/FkJ6Lt) It is linked to the intelligence services or central elements in the Russian government, and it is a constant battle to keep them away, Foreign Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen of NATO member Denmark told newspaper Belingske on Sunday. Hacquebords Tokyo-based Trend Micro has consistently said conclusive proof of Russian involvement is hard given the difficulty of attributing cyber attacks. His Pawn Storm can be read here (https://goo.gl/nNP0CG). Asked about Trends findings that Macron was under cyber attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday: What (hacking) groups? From where? Why Russia? This slightly reminds me of accusations from Washington, which have been left hanging in mid-air until now and do not do their authors any credit. Reuters New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the first UDAN flight in Shimla on Thursday. "Looking forward to being in Shimla, where I will flag off the first UDAN flight under Regional Connectivity Scheme, on Shimla-Delhi sector," the Prime Minister tweeted on Thursday morning. "Inaugural UDAN flights on KadapaHyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors will also be flagged off," an ensuing tweet read. "UDAN makes air travel accessible to a wider range of citizens & enhances connectivity with many more airports across India," his tweet added. To make air travel accessible to citizens in regionally important cities, the Ministry launched Ude Deshka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) Regional Connectivity Scheme in October, 2016. The UDAN Scheme was developed through extensive consideration of various issues and consultations with stakeholders. This is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 15th June, 2016. The AAI followed a transparent bidding process by inviting interested bidders and airline operators to submit their Initial Proposals under the provisions of Regional Connectivity Scheme and subsequently inviting counter proposals against such Initial Proposals. The routes and networks are awarded to bidders who submitted valid proposals and quoted the lowest viability gap funding (VGF) from the government for such routes and networks. London, April 27 A 19-year-old Islamic State terrorist group inspired suspect on Thursday admitted to plotting attacks on the iconic Buckingham Palace and an Elton John concert on the anniversary of 9/11, among other potential London targets. Haroon Syed, who was in court, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey court in London to researching, planning and attempting to source materials for homemade explosive devices for use in the attacks. Syed, warned by the judge that a life sentence is likely to be handed down, will be sentenced in June after a probation and psychiatric report. The Londoner pleaded guilty to a plot running from April to September 2016 to get materials for a bomb to stage attacks. The Elton John concert researched by him fell on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US. He was arrested in September 2016 after he told an undercover officer of his desire to get bomb-making material and chatted online with undercover British agents. PTI London, April 27 Britain is committed to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union, British Prime Minister Theresa May told European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday, her spokesperson said. The PM had a constructive meeting this evening with President Juncker of the European Commission, the spokesperson said in a statement. Following the UKs letter of notification under Article 50 (that it is exiting the EU), she reiterated the UKs commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union. Reuters Western Star's newest Model 5700 paint scheme is based on colors and patterns the company used on show trucks in the 1970s. Photos: Jack Roberts Half a century looks pretty good on Western Star. The truck OEM, which company president Kelley Platt likes to tout as "the last of the custom truck builders," has hit the half-century mark and celebrated with a press event in Phoenix, Arizona, to unveil a host of equipment upgrades and present the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association a new Model 5700XE tractor to use in its efforts to promote both owner-operators and the trucking industry at large. A host of new trucks were on hand for test drives as well, sporting eye-catching new paint jobs that recreate the colors and patterns Western Star used for its show trucks back in the 1970s. At a press briefing, Platt reviewed Western Star's performance so far this year, as well as the state of the trucking industry overall, noting that the brand's parent company, Daimler Trucks North America, is seeing signs of market recovery nationwide that could lead to an uptick in freight volumes. Platt said she still expects Class 8 volume to be at or near 198,000 units this year, adding that Western Star built 7,323 trucks last year, putting the company at 3.8% market share. Platt said that given Daimler's market share numbers for the past few years, the vocational market is a natural space for Daimler to grow in an effort that favors Western Star's tough, vocational models. Based on those goals, Platt said she expects to see Western Star's market share grow to 8% by 2025. In other news, Western Star announced a host of new features and options for its model lineup, including: Detroit 23,000-pound front steer axle for 4800 and 4900 truck models, designed for applications that require a higher front axle weight rating like snow plow, dump and heavy haul. 5-Man Crew Cab option: The 4700, 4800, 4900, and 6900 truck models can now be specd with an aftermarket-installed 5-man crew cab option with either two or four doors. A new Western Star 5700 truck configuration for expeditor and RV applications in available in a day cab or sleeper. Another new features is RollTek Seats, which inflate side-impact airbags, tighten seat belts and compress air suspension seats to the lowest position to prevent serious injuries to the driver, in the unlikely event of a rollover. In addition, sealed frame rails for Western Star 4700, 4800, and 4900 truck models reduce corrosion on double channel and partial liner configurations. The new Western Star XD-25 is available with a Tier 3 Series 60 or Detroit DD13 engine. The company also unveiled a new, smaller, 25-ton, off-highway truck for construction, mining and quarry site hauling. The new XD-25 is available with a Tier 3 Series 60 or Detroit DD13 engine, and is powered by the Allison Off Road Series (ORS) transmission and planetary gear sets. Together, the engine and transmission combination results in more power for loaded applications and higher speeds when unloaded. Western Star president Kelley Platt presents OOIDA spokesman Jon Osborn the keys to "Snowflake," his new 5700EX touring truck. The XD-25 provides yet another extreme duty option for customers who tackle the toughest challenges, said Platt. These units are specifically designed to handle off-road jobs without compromising fuel economy and cycle time efficiency. Western Star also used its birthday event to present OOIDA with another new, Model 5700XE to showcase on its national Spirit of the American tour. Platt presented the keys to driver and OOIDA spokesman Jon Osborn, who will use the truck to visit shows, conferences and truck stops around the country to promote both OOIDA and the trucking industry. Osborn said the new truck, which replaces his blue Western Star model dubbed "Cookie Monster," will be named "Snowflake." Image: Google Maps Srinagar, Apr 27 (IBNS) : Separatist Kashmiri leader Asiya Andrabi was arrested in Srinagar late on Wednesday night, media reports said. Police arrested Andrabi from her residence in Srinagar's Soura area. Andrabi is the founder of Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM), a separatist organisation, and a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. She is the wife of Hizbul Mujahideen leader Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, who is now in jail. Her arrest followed the terror attack on a military garrison in Kupwara district in which three soldiers, including an officer were killed.. Image: twitter.com/AamAadmiParty New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS) : A day after the Aam Aadmi Party's latest poll drubbing in MCD elections, convener Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday called all lawmakers for a review of the situation, media reports said. In the elections for Delhi civic bodies, the AAP finished a distant second to the BJP, taking a crushing defeat on the turf it has been ruling since it came to power through a massive mandate two years ago. Party had also bit dust in the recently held Assembly elections in Punjab and Goa that shattered its dreams for expansion beyond Delhi. The consecutive poll debacles have led to resignations by a number of party leaders, the latest being Sanjay Singh, party's in-charge in Punjab. Earlier, Dilip Pandey had quit as Delhi in-charge. MCD polls results show a sharp drop in party's vote share-from 54 per cent to about 26 per cent- in just two years. Dehradun, Apr 27(IBNS) : The Uttarakhand High Court on Thursday issued notices to the Central Election Commission and the State Election Commission on a petition on EVM tampering, reports said. The High Court, which also issued notice against local BJP MLA Munna Singh Chauhan, asked the authorities to take the EVMs used in the last Assembly elections to judicial custody. The High Court's order came following a petition by the Congress that alleged that the voting machines used for polling in February last, had been tampered with. The High Court said the EVMs must not be used in any other election until further orders. Chauhan had defeated the Congress candidate, Navprabhat, over 6,000 votes in the elections held in February, last. New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS) : Holding back any introspection or refraining from blaming it on EVM tampering, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday reportedly said, the AAP lost the MCD polls because of the BJP victory in Uttar Pradesh elections and the "growing stature" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to media reports, Kejriwal made this observation at a meeting with all AAP lawmakers he had summoned to discuss the poll results. At the meeting, Kejriwal reportedly made the lawmakers to take an "oath of purity", urging them to not leave the party. "They may offer you a lot of money, even upto 10 crores," he said, "but if you take this, you will regret it, pay a heavy price all your life." At the end of his address he led the audience in an oath : " I pledge never to ditch this pure party or betray the (anti-corruption) movement." Kejriwal also reportedly said he is ready to meet every lawmaker individually. The Bharatiya Janata Party swept Delhis civic polls on Wednesday, bagging an unprecedented 181 of the 270 municipal wards. With AAP managing to win just 48 seats, and Congress trailing at the third position with 30 seats, the BJPs victory margin is the highest ever in Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls. The party had also bit dust in the recently held Assembly elections in Punjab and Goa that shattered its dreams for expansion beyond Delhi. After the elections to the Delhi civic body, in which AAP experienced a crushing defeat to finish a microscopic second to the BJP, the party has been hit by a number of resignations from some of the parties top leadership while a voice of criticism gets louder. lawmaker Alka Lamba told NDTV, "I take personal responsibility for the party's defeat in all three wards in my constituency and offer to resign from all party posts and as a lawmaker." Earlier, AAP's Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh had tendered his resignation, so did Delhi-in charge Dilip Pandey. Five months after joining the AAP, Poonam Jha Azad, wife of suspended BJP MP Kirti Jha Azad, switched over to the Congress on April 11. AAP MP Bhagwat Man slammed the party leadership, and said, not naming a Chief Ministerial candidate cost the party in Punjab elections. Contrary to what some top AAP leaders had alleged, Mann said there was no use in finding fault with the electronic voting machines (EVMs). Anthony Masons career in broadcast journalist has taken him around the world, covering momentous events in flash-point regions such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Russia. But that career began in Tulsa. My first job out of college in fact, my first job in journalism and in television was at KJRH, Mason said during a recent phone conversation. I even remember the first story I did, about a foreign student at Oral Roberts University who had crashed a gyrocopter into the Arkansas River. Mason, now a senior national correspondent with CBS News, as well as the co-host of the Saturday edition of CBS This Morning, will return to Tulsa on Monday as the keynote speaker at the 2017 Great Plains Journalism Awards. Mason will speak during the luncheon at which the awards, sponsored by the Tulsa Press Club and honoring outstanding examples of journalism from an eight-state area, will be presented. He will then take part in a question-and-answer session. Becoming a TV journalist was something of an after-thought for Mason, a New York City native who graduated from Georgetown University in 1980. Honestly, I had no goal once I got out of college, Mason said. I was puttering around my fathers apartment for a couple of weeks, and he finally said what was it I was planning to do with the rest of my life. I said I was thinking about writing a novel, and my father replied, Not in this house, youre not. But to my fathers credit, he pushed me in the right direction, he said. As a kid, I was always interested in newspapers and would make my own little papers by hand. And, as I got older, I dreamed up this imaginary TV network complete with made-up programs. Well, my dad remembered all that and sent me to Memphis, where a cousin of mine was an anchorman at a station there. The Memphis station was owned by the same company that owned Tulsas KJRH channel 2. They said that maybe they had a place for me somewhere, and they mentioned that their smallest market was in West Palm Beach, Florida, Mason said. About three weeks later, I got a call from them, saying they had found a place for me. And it was in Tulsa. Mason spent his first week in Tulsa observing, before being sent out on that gyroscope crash. When he returned to the station, Mason turned in a well-crafted minute-long report on the accident. Everyone was looking at me, asking, How did you know how to do this? Mason said. I said Ive been practicing to do this since I was about 9. Mason spent about 18 months with the Tulsa station, which he described as an education in every respect. Professionally, personally, culturally it was a crash course in just about everything for someone who had never been west of the Mississippi. Mason moved on to stations in Philadelphia and New York City before joining CBS News in 1986. His first assignment was the networks London bureau, from which he covered the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, the political upheaval in Pakistan that brought Benazir Bhutto to power, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He later became CBS Moscow correspondent in time to cover the demise of the Soviet Union. In 1998, he became the networks business correspondent, while at the same time doing stories about musicians and writers, including an award-winning series of interviews with American crime novelists. Its always a battle because once you do one thing and do it reasonably well, people want you to keep doing that one thing, Mason said. When I raised my hand to be the business guy, people thought I was nuts because I hadnt shown any interest in the subject before. But I thought there were things that werent being done that should have, ways of presenting this information that would explain it better to the public. And when I started doing music stories, he added, laughing, I got the same kind of looks youre the business guy, what are you doing talking with Bono or Springsteen? But that is the great thing about this job it allows my curiosity to take me wherever I wanted to go. While only 44 percent of the cargo moved on the Arkansas Waterway during the 10 years through 2016 was carried along the Oklahoma portion, the Sooner States cargo was valued at 61 percent of the total. Goods valued at more than $26 billion were either loaded or unloaded at Oklahoma docks during the 10-year period, the Oklahoma Department of Transportations Waterways Advisory Board was told at its April meeting. The two-state system handled products valued at $42.68 billion during the period. During the same period, 49.9 million tons of cargo were handled at Oklahoma wharves compared with 114.4 million tons for both states, according to the data prepared by Deidre Smith, manager of the departments waterways branch. In 2016, it was reversed with Oklahomas share of the total value of $4.7 billion at $1.99 billion or 42.5 percent with 5.9 million tons or 51.3 percent of the total tonnage of 11.54 million. Oklahomas 2016 cargo had the most value for the 10-year period. Of 12 commodity categories including miscellaneous chemical fertilizer was Oklahoma leader in both quantity at 16.97 million tons and value at $12.8 billion dollars over the 10 years. Chemical fertilizer was followed in value by petroleum products, iron or steel, soybeans, minerals or building materials, equipment or machinery, wheat, other food or farm products, other chemicals, coke and coal, miscellaneous and sand, gravel or rock. In tonnage, wheat was in second placed followed, in order, by soybeans, coke and coal, petroleum products, other food or farm products, minerals or building materials, sand, gravel or rock, other chemicals, miscellaneous and equipment or machinery. Chemical fertilizer was the leader in both value and quantity for 2016 in just 11 categories, as Smith had no miscellaneous listing. The remaining value categories in order were soybeans, iron or steel, wheat, equipment or machinery, coke and coal, minerals or building materials, other chemicals, food or farm products, petroleum products and sand, gravel or rock. For quantities the categories ranked: wheat, soybeans, iron or steel, coke and coal, food or farm products, minerals or building materials, sand gravel or rock, other chemicals, petroleum products and equipment or machinery. Over the 10 years, the peak years for some commodities were iron or steel in 2014 with about 800,000 tons; chemical fertilizer, 2016 with 250,000 tons; other chemicals, 2008 and 2016 nearly 140,000 tons each year; petroleum products, 2012, more than 700,000 tons; wheat. 2013, more than 120,000 tons; soybeans, 2016, nearly 900,000 tons, and equipment or machinery, 2011 and 2013 with more than 35,000 tons each. The board was told that the 2017 strategic work plan for navigation in Oklahoma by Tulsa District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers totaled $46.9 million for a variety of projects on the five locks and dams in the state. 918-581-8480 Kolkata/Hooghly, Apr 27 (IBNS): Death toll in the West Bengal jetty crash has risen to five as rescue operators on Thursday morning recovered two more bodies from Hooghly river, officials said. According to reports, bodies of a young male and a woman were recovered from yesterday's accident site in the morning. Earlier on Wednesday noon, a temporary jetty reportedly submerged in Hooghly river (Ganges), after being hit by a high tide, at Telenipara area under Bhadreswar Police Station limits in West Bengal's Hooghly district. Nearly 70 people, including women, children and seniors, were waiting for ferry on the jetty that time and over 60 of them fell into water after the bamboo-made jetty collapsed. Following the mishap, locals and police from nearby Telenipara police outpost had started rescue efforts and hours later, Kolkata Police's Disaster Management Group (DMG) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) joined the operation. Bodies of two men and a aged woman were recovered from the river on Wednesday afternoon while seven other were rescued alive and sent to a nearby hospital. Police officials said that two bodies have been recovered on Thursday morning, while around 20 people are still missing. "Deceased have been identified as Saba Qureshi, Manas Ghosh, Raja Choudhury and Sadique Mostafa, while identity of another dead woman has not been known so far," a senior police official told IBNS. "Rescue operation is still underway with full efforts in Hooghly river to find the missing," the official added. Hours after the crash, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced an ex-gratia of Rs. 2 lakh for the kin of those killed in the accident and a compensation of Rs. 25,000 for the injured. Meanwhile, based on an FIR, lodged by a local resident Krishna Prasad Singh, police on Wednesday night arrested four lessees of the jetty- Sukamal Chakraborty, Dipankar Banerjee, Sujit Ganguly and Subhas Pal. "We have booked four persons, who were responsible for the crashed jetty's maintenance works," an officer of Hooghly district police told IBNS. (Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Image: Facebook) Tulsa police and other agencies arrested 92 people, recovered 29 guns, seized pounds of methamphetamine and marijuana, and issued dozens of warrants during a recent five-day sweep to curb violent crime. The citywide operation targeted individuals with a history of violence or who were wanted on warrants involving violent crimes, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Although many of the offenders had gang affiliations, there was no emphasis on a particular group. It was mainly targeting violent individuals and trying to get guns off the street, Jordan said. The Oklahoma Attorney Generals Office awarded a $74,000 grant to assist TPD with combating violent crime and human trafficking. The law enforcement sweep began Saturday and concluded Wednesday. TPD Maj. Wendell Franklin, who coordinated the efforts, said officers disrupted their lives by changing their hours and working a significant amount of overtime to carry out the operation, which followed about two or three weeks of planning. The police work is getting harder and harder to do, and for these guys to go out and do what they did with what they did and the way that they did it, not having to use significant amounts of force, I applaud their efforts, Franklin said. The Safe Oklahoma Grant Program is designed to help law enforcement target violent crime by providing funds for equipment upgrades, technology and overtime, according to the state Attorney Generals Office. More than 50 officers and agents from several agencies including the FBI, the ATF and the District Attorneys Office took part. The cooperation of over 50 officers and agents working together to arrest dozens of people, confiscate nearly 30 guns and remove pounds of illegal drugs that dealers were looking to sell to men, women and children is nothing short of remarkable, Attorney General Mike Hunter said in a statement. In addition to the 92 arrests and 29 guns recovered, authorities served 16 search warrants and seized 3.92 pounds of marijuana and 4.8 pounds of meth. Noting the operations success, Jordan said its the first of many to be conducted in the coming months as part of his departments focus on intelligence-led policing. Well do this as long as it takes, he said. We dont have a set time to start or stop. Were going to start pretty soon, and were going to stop when we feel we have things a little more under control in our city. Muskogee County prosecutors charged a Fort Gibson man Thursday on allegations he recklessly handled the firearm that killed his girlfriend in December. Joseph Stuart Lane, 35, of Fort Gibson, is charged with first-degree manslaughter. On Dec. 14, Lane was placing a scoped rifle into a sports-utility vehicle while Jady Abbott, 34, was waiting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle, according to a probable cause affidavit. Lane allegedly failed to check if the firearm was loaded or if the safety was on. Abbott had asked Lane to retrieve the firearm from a residence on the 1400 block of East Benge Road in Fort Gibson while he was loading the vehicle with a Christmas tree and bags of clothes, according to the affidavit. Lane told investigators she wanted a new scope put on the gun for her son's Christmas present. Lane retrieved the gun from the residence. He allegedly told investigators the weapon "seemed heavy." He allegedly had his finger on the trigger while loading it, according to the affidavit. "Joseph Lane advised he did not check the weapon, and did not know the gun was loaded," Muskogee County Sheriff's Office Investigator Faye Banks states in the affidavit. Authorities found Abbott dead in her seat when they arrived. The gun was laying, pointed forward, in the cargo area of the vehicle, according to the affidavit. The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner classified the death a homicide. Abbott died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the medical examiner's report. As of Wednesday morning, Lane had not been booked into Muskogee County jail. Srinagar, Apr 27 (IBNS) A civilian was killed while several others were injured when security forces opened fire on protesters in north Kashmir's Kupwara town, police said on Thursday. According to reports, Mohammad Yousuf, a middle-aged man, was killed in the firing after violent mob attacked security vehicles in Panzgam village of Kupwara town. Earlier in the day armed militants attacked an army camp in Panzgam of Kupwara town resulting resulting in the death of three army men, including a Captain. While two militants died in the encounter following the attack, five soldiers were also wounded. The deceased were identified as 25-year-old Captain Ayush Yadav, 46-year-old Junior Commissioned Officer Bhoop Singh Gujjar Dusaa, and 38-year-old Naik Venkat Raman. Image of Captain Ayush Yadav killed in Kashmir attack. Revanchist forces are rising in Armenia, there are forces that do not want to come to terms with the outcome of the war. Armenia does not fully comply with the agreements of November 10, 2020, has not fully withdrawn its armed forces from Karabakh, has not opened the Zangezur corridor. This was stated by the head of state Ilham Aliyev, speaking on November 8 in Shusha. New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS): "Time is of the essence,a urged Lise Kingo, CEO and Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, to an audience of more than 300 local and global leaders from business, finance, civil society, Government and the UN, at the conclusion of the UN Global Compact two-day event, Making Global Goals Local Businesses a India, in New Delhi on Thursday. The closing of the meeting focused on the opportunities for driving transformational change and using breakthrough innovation to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first movers to align their businesses with the Global Goals will have a five-to-fifteen year advantage on this sustainable playing field, and the best minds from the world of sustainability are coming together with those at the forefront of innovation to generate disruptive technologies, said Kingo. We are seeing how new breakthrough technologies in a range of fields are enabling the type and scale of change needed to meet the Global Goals. The two-day event brought together local and global leaders to focus on how, through bold innovation, businesses can create solutions to address the challenges of sustainable development, advance responsible business practices and tap into new opportunities found within the SDGs. An objective of this event was to facilitate a multi-sectoral dialogue to contribute to the development of the UN Global Compacts new suite of Action Platforms, launched this year with partners from business, civil society, Government, academia and the UN. These Action Platforms seek to promote responsible business activities and fill emerging gaps in meeting the Global Goals. Participants representing all sectors actively engaged in breakout sessions to generate new ideas and shape these platforms going forward, for example on breakthrough innovation, impact reporting, humanitarian action and peace, sustainable finance, low-carbon development, inclusion, decent work and sustainable living. During the event, the Business and Sustainable Development Commission released its Better Business, Better World - India country report. Participants and speakers also advocated for a holistic approach to SDG leadership, empathizing both the opportunities and responsibilities presented by the SDG agenda. They discussed their companys efforts to align with the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, which ask businesses to meet fundamental responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Throughout the breakout sessions, do no harm practices and collective action initiatives were common topics, from corporate water stewardship, to anti-corruption, to financing education for girls. A Special Partner Session co-hosted by the UN Global Compact, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), World Resources Institute (WRI), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) present insights on the Science-Based Targets initiative, making the business case for companies in India to set science-based targets and helping them specify how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Looking to future and the next steps on the journey to 2030, Lise Kingo announced the launch of the search for the 2017 class of SDG Pioneers, seeking out individuals who are taking bold actions for the SDGs. She called on individuals to submit their story to the UN Global Compact by 26 May 2017. The event adjourned with a call to action to business leaders in India and all over the world to spread the global movement for responsible and sustainable business and to make the SDGs and 2030 Agenda a mainstream business agenda. Lets build our movement and keep the momentum, concluded Lise Kingo. Businesses working together with civil society and Governments can create a more peaceful, just and prosperous society, leaving no one behind. Making Global Goals Local Business India is part of the UN Global Compacts multi-year Making Global Goals Local Business campaign. Launched in 2016, the campaign aims to help companies see both their responsibilities and opportunities around the SDGs globally and on the ground through the 70+ Global Compact Local Networks. The next Foxtel Movies pop-up channel will feature 10 Alien and Predator movies over 4 days. The Alien vs Predator channel will be available on channel 400 to Foxtel Movies and Foxtel Platinum subscribers, from 6.00am on Friday, May 12 through to Monday, May 15. Alien (1979) In a remote region of the galaxy, the United States space tug Nostromo are awakened from their hypersleep chambers when Mother, the on-board computer, monitors a strange transmission. According to company law, the crew must investigate any signal indicating possible intelligent life. What begins as a routine search mission quickly escalates into a nightmare of unimaginable terror when the crew discovers and brings aboard an extra-terrestrial life form. Aliens (1986) Ripley is the only survivor from mankinds first encounter with the monstrous alien. Her account of the alien and the fate of her crew are received with scepticism, until the mysterious disappearance of colonists on LV-426 lead her to join a team of high-tech colonial marines sent in to investigate. Alien 3 (1992) Officer Ripley finds herself stranded on a remote planet inhabited by vicious ex-convicts armed with only their wits to fight the deadly alien creature. Alien Resurrection (1997) An unholy combination of human and alien genetics is discovered, made possible by an alliance between a renegade band of smugglers and a zealous cadre of scientists and officials. Ripley is back, and all is not what it seems. To combat the alien menace, Ripley must team up with the smugglers, including an enigmatic mechanic named Call, who may be the instrument of Ripleys resurrection or the weapon of her destruction. Prometheus (2012) A thrilling journey to the farthest corners of the universe sees a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race. Predator (1987) Major Dutch Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is the leader of a military rescue unit looking for allies captured by guerrillas in the Latin American jungle. But when Schaefer attempts to lead his unit out, with a captured guerrilla in tow, something horrifying and inexplicable begins to happen: one-by-one the men are killed by a mysterious adversary a predator from another world. Predator 2 (1990) This electrifying sequel unleashes the deadly predator in an urban jungle: Los Angeles. A police chief is tracking an alien who hunts humans for sport. Predators (2010) The film stars Oscar-winner Adrien Brody as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize theyve been brought together on an alien planet as prey. With the exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers human predators who are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien predators AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) Arnie took on the Predator in the jungle and Sigourney fought the Alien in outer space. Now two of the most blood-thirsty species in movie history engage in the ultimate battle in frozen Antarctica. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) After a horrifying Alien Crash landing near a small Colorado town, its an all-out battle to the death with no rules, no mercy and hundreds of innocent people caught in the crossfire. A #savekidsTV campaign has been launched in response to TV networks wanting to ditch their commitment to Childrens Television. Commercial Free to Air networks has been advocating to reduce their quota of 96 hours produced over three years, and 25 hours per year. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young launched the campaign today on behalf of the Australian Childrens Television Foundation and Screen Producers Australia. The childrens television industry needs your support if its going to survive in the modern, competitive media landscape. New players like Netflix and Stan have changed the way all of us, including young people, consume media and they cant be allowed to leave childrens TV behind, she said. At this time, its also disappointing to see the major Australian television channels try to get out of their obligations to make high quality childrens programs simply because they cant compete for ratings with the likes of MasterChef and Married at First Sight. From Bananas in Pyjamas to the legendary Round the Twist, high quality Australian made childrens television has always played an important role in shaping young hearts and minds in this country. Screen Producers Australia CEO Matthew Deaner said, Australia produces world-class childrens content that is loved by Australian children and their parents. We make great stories like Lockie Leonard, Mako Mermaids, Beat Bugs and Dance Academy, in part, because of a set obligations on commercial television broadcasters and well- funded public broadcasters. Removing these obligations on commercial broadcasters, together with any withdrawal of support from the public broadcasters, will mean Australian childrens content just wont get made. Australian children deserve access to high-quality Australian stories that are targeted to their different stages of development. The answer isnt devolution, its evolution. We cant leave the responsibilities to childrens programming to the public broadcasters. It takes a village to raise a child. We need to evolve the regulatory environment to reflect the current market and include obligations on SVOD services like Netflix and Amazon. The UK reduced childrens obligations on commercial broadcasters in 2003. That led to a 93 per cent decline in the industry. This month, the UK Government admitted it made a mistake and is re- introducing their obligations. The Australian Government doesnt have the same luxury to make a mistake now and fix it later because if the content quotas are removed, they cant be brought back because of our free trade agreement with the United States. We want Australian stories on Australian screens. We want Australian children dreaming Australian dreams. We cant sleepwalk into a nightmare situation where no Australian childrens content gets produced and our children dont see themselves reflected our screens. Its great Senator Hanson-Young and the Australian Greens are committed to strengthening childrens content in the Senate, I call on the Government to do the same. Nine today confirmed the return of Hi-5 to television in new episodes due in mid-May. Tonight on the Logie-winning The Living Room Dr. Chris is in Ho Chi Minh City, Baz sets a reno challenge and Miguel whips up Osso Bucco. Renovation With Barry Du Bois Renovation for Profit renovating guru Cherie Barber normally helps others renovate their properties to make a profit. But in a Living Room first, Barry has set Cherie a challenge to see whether she can stick to her own rules when it comes to renovating her own property. The house is filled with rotting carpet that smells of dog urine and the yard resembles a jungle. To pull off this whole house renovation on a tight budget is going to require all of Cheries skills and every cent she spends is coming straight out of her own pocket. This time it is personal. Travel With Chris Brown: Ho Chi Minh City Guide (Vietnam) Chris travels to Vietnams capital city Ho Chi Minh to discover the answer to one of lifes greatest mysteries how do you pronounce the name of that famous soup Pho. He is given a guidebook to follow and must negotiate his way around this vibrant city encountering amazing characters, unique foods and a sport that sees him literally beaten to the ground in his quest pho enlightenment. Food With Miguel Maestre: One Pot Osso Bucco Secondary cuts of meat are more affordable and just as delicious as prime cuts, but many Australians are not buying them because they simply do not know how to cook them. Miguel heads to his local butcher and cooks a delicious slow cooked Osso Bucco with polenta, which he then serves to customers with the intent to make secondary cuts, their first choice. 7:30pm Friday on TEN. | By Alex Likowski Although Maryland has one of the nations lowest poverty rates about 10 percent more than a third of Maryland families struggle just the meet lifes basic needs. In January, the United Way of Central Maryland released a report that delved into the complex issues and struggles facing these so-called ALICE families. The acronym stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. They earn too much to receive government assistance, but not enough to consistently meet needs like housing, health care and transportation. For example, the report says a family of four with two adults and two children would need to earn just over $60,000 a year to reach the upper end of the ALICE level. (l-r) Andrew Green, Franklyn Baker, Jay Perman, Joe Jones On Apr. 26, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay A. Perman, MD, joined two other community leaders to discuss the ALICE report and to share perspectives and ideas to improve the lives of ALICE families. Joining Perman were United Way of Central Maryland President and CEO Franklyn Baker, and Center for Urban Families founder and CEO Joe Jones. Moderator Andrew Green, Sun editorial page editor, asked Perman about the barriers facing low wage earners who seek better paying jobs. The barriers are considerable, Perman said. We want our neighbors in West Baltimore to have jobs and to that end weve established a street-level community engagement center in the Poppleton area (in the University of Maryland BioPark). Perman described some of the programs designed to assist community members, such as Workforce Wednesdays, where UMB human resource representatives help connect residents with open positions at the University and in other nearby agencies. Weve helped over the 18 or so months that weve been there more than 200 people, he said. Panelists agreed that the availability of higher paying jobs is only one part of a larger problem. The jobs that we want to make available to our neighbors -unfortunately those who we want to help the most in order to move up - they dont have the skills for them, Perman said. In my opinion the only way were going to overcome these barriers is to look at the long view and get the kids in our neighborhoods educated so that they qualify for the jobs that are better paying. Perman also addressed the role that health and environment play in the difficult lives of ALICE families, but in the end returned to one thing. In the final analysis, if we get the children in our community who have all the potential in the world educated, everything else will take care of itself. The Baltimore Suns write-up of last nights event, including a short video, can be seen here. Mondays paper also included a more detailed look at the ALICE report. Srinagar, Apr 27 (IBNS): Three Armymen including a 25-year-old captain, died on Thursday in a suicide attack by terrorists in an army camp at Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara as India mourned the martyrdom of its bravehearts in yet another deadly attack since Uri. Seven other soldiers were also wounded in the strike. As the day progressed, local people resorted to protest by throwing stones at security personnel as they demanded the bodies of the terrorists. The police had to open fire to disperse off the crowd. A 70-year-old civilian died in the police firing. The martyrs include Captain Ayush Yadav, 25, Junior Commissioned Officer Bhoop Singh Gujjar Dusaa, 46, and Naik Venkat Raman, 38 of the artillery brigade. In Kanpur home of the slain captain, there was mourning as the father of the soldier questioned how many would lay their lives like this. "He had last come for his sister's marriage in Feb. I used to tell him we will get him married soon," said the father of the martyred captain even as his mother was breaking down. "He would ask me not to worry as I would be concerned over he stone pelting in Kashmir," said Arun Kant Yadav speaking to media fighting his tears. The terrorists sneaked into the army camp on Thursday morning at 4:30 am. The gun battle existed for around four hours in which two terrorists were shot dead. Three AK-47 rifles were recovered from the dead terrorists' possession. According to reports, the army believe that another injured terrorist is on flee. According to reports, the terrorists crossed a double fence surrounding the camp, which is about 10 km away from the Line of Control. The terrorists entered that camp from the back. Last year in September, terrorists, believed to belong from Pakistan, had attacked an army camp in Uri leaving 19 soldiers dead. In January last year, a group of Pakistani terrorists had attacked an Air Force base in Pathankot killing six security personnel. (With additional reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri) | By Mary T. Phelan Among the thousands of people filling the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on April 22 to raise awareness about the importance of science were faculty members from the University of Maryland School of Social Work (SSW) and the University of Maryland School of Nursing (SON). Also attending were faculty and students from the University of Maryland schools of Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Medicine, who gathered at the Southern Management Corporation Campus Center to ride a bus organized by Campus Life Services. The March for Science grew out of concern for President Donald Trumps proposed budget cuts to funding for scientific research. Similar marches took place in more than 500 locations throughout the world. I am a scientist, educator, and researcher, said UMSON associate professor Yulan Liang, PhD. This was an important historical event I couldnt miss. She and associate professor Arpad Kelemen, PhD, are committee members of UMSONs Climate Change Task Force. Kelemen said he was inspired to attend by a strong call to action made by University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay A. Perman, MD, who wrote about the importance of the March for Science in a university-wide letter. I agreed with him 100 percent about how science, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and climate change research, et cetera, are being crushed by politicians and science itself needs defending these days, Kelemen said. Other participating faculty from the School of Nursing included assistant professors Pei-Ying Chuang, PhD, MSN, RN; Karen Wickersham, PhD, RN; Valerie E. Rogers, PhD, RN, CPNP; Shijun Zhu, PhD; and Veronica P.S. Njie-Carr, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC, FWACN. Faculty members from the University of Maryland School of Nursing participating in the March for Science in Washington, D.C., included, from left, Pei-Ying Huang, Karen Wickersham, Valerie E. Rogers, Yulan Liang, Arpad Kelemen, Shijun Zhu, and Veronica Njie-Carr. Richard P. Barth, PhD, MSW, and SSW dean, helped to organize faculty members from his school as well as social workers from several organizations around the country. Barth is a founding member and past president of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), an organization he described as one that is particularly focused on social progress through science. About a month before the march, Barth and AASWSW Executive Director Sarah Butts, MSW, organized a conference call with other social work organizations, including the Council for Social Work Education, the Consortium of Social Science Associations, the Group for the Advancement for Doctoral Education in Social Work, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Society for Social Work and Research. Given our central mission and my location being close to D.C., we agreed that the academy would take the lead, Barth said, noting the activity was organized as part of The Grand Challenges for Social Work, an initiative of the AASWSW. We created some banners and mocked up some poster graphics for people to download and away we went. Wearing orange and teal, the colors of the AASWSW, the groups heading to the march met at a predetermined spot - the Smithsonian Institution Building, also known as The Castle, on Independence Avenue. After waiting in a 2-hour line to get through a security checkpoint, eventually the group made it to the Washington Monument and began waiting to join the parade of marchers. The crowds were so thick that two hours and 40 minutes later, Barth and his group had not moved. We know it was a big crowd because we didnt budge, he said. It was a very exciting day. Barth and his wife, clinical professor Nancy Dickinson, MsSW, PhD, took the Metro in. Its a very serious topic but people were in good humor, he said of the crowded trains. I think it raised the nations attention to science, Barth said of the March for Science. I hope it made the president more aware of the cuts he may not even be aware of that were coming from some of the budget cutters on his staff. Barth said he saw people marching representing the Society for Research on Childhood Development and the American Psychiatric Association. When people hear about the March for Science, Barth said, they tend to think about physics, climate change, and medical science. We thought it was important to make people understand that our social relationships, our social progress also depends on science, which is at least as important to the future of the planet as virtually every kind of science, Barth said. What these marches signify is lots of different people, for lots of different reasons, caring about science, saying this is a common interest. This is a path to a better future. Science is not a liberal conspiracy. Its a necessity for the future of our planet. Other attendees from the School of Social Work included assistant professor Geetha Gopalan MSSW, MPSW, PhD, and associate professor Nalini Negi, PhD, MSW. | By Patricia Fanning As the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has begun encouraging entrepreneurship among students as well as faculty, the Presidents Symposium and White Paper Project completed a year-long exploration of how best to encourage innovation. A keynote presentation of the findings capped UMBs first Entrepreneurship & Innovation Expo, a day of workshops, exhibits, and panel discussions held April 3. The event was organized primarily by students who are members of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Network (EIN). (View a photo gallery.) Panelists were, left to right, Scott Thompson, PhD; Jenny Owens, ScD, MS; Sara Menso, MBA, MS; Rana Quraishi, PhD; and Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP. Speakers at the Expo from UMB included President Jay A. Perman, MD; Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, professor and dean of the School of Pharmacy (UMSOP), Rana Quraishi, PhD, director of new ventures, Jenny Owens, ScD, MS, director of academic and student affairs; Scott Thompson, PhD, professor and chair of physiology in the School of Medicine (UMSOM), and Sara Menso, MBA, MS, business analyst in the UMSOM Office of Student Affairs. Perman reviewed several initiatives growing out of state legislation passed last year to create the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State. It strengthens a preexisting partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and UMB. Were going to launch a student innovation center, where students, faculty and staff from the University and schools from across the University System of Maryland can come together to commercialize important research, Perman said. Perman complimented the four Presidents Fellows for the White Paper project, noting they are already innovators and entrepreneurs and saying, I am eager to hear how we at UMB can do an even better job of fostering an entrepreneurial ethos and letting our risk-takers and our innovators run with their ideas. (View video below.) The fellows are Chinonye Donna Egbulem of the School of Social Work and UMSOM; Anna Hung, PharmD, of the UMSOP; and Benjamin Portney and Camilo Vanegas of the Graduate School and UMSOM. Their report, "Exploring Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore," found that as a graduate and professional university, UMB is uniquely suited to create an interdisciplinary and interprofessional entrepreneurial ecosystem on campus and in West Baltimore. The paper reviewed challenges such as students being fettered by lab duties and assets such the Innovation Space at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library. UMB has an opportunity to integrate and align each facet of our burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem, the fellows said, concluding that the most crucial issue is to centralize UMBs effort. The report recommended the formation of a standing working group and urged that EIN continue to host the Expo, which it called the first steps toward centralization. This proposed yearly event is designed to showcase current UMB faculty and student entrepreneurship, and to have substantive collaborative dialogue, the report states. At the 2017 Expo, the spotlight was on pharmacists, for example, during Eddingtons remarks to fellow panelists and an audience that included representatives of the Maryland Department of Commerce. "Faculty and students at the School of Pharmacy have embraced a unique type of entrepreneurship -- what we are calling 'pharmapreneurship,'" she said. "In addition to increasing students' exposure to pharmapreneurship through the curriculum, we plan to create a dedicated space to support student pharmapreneurs as well as further define the concept such that it aligns with activities in which our faculty already participate. Eddington added that UMSOP is also determining how best to disseminate information about the School's pharmapreneurial endeavors to others across the University. As pharmapreneurs, our faculty and students are always searching for new opportunities to partner and collaborate. We want to share our experiences, but also bring in experts from other fields to provide guidance on these initiatives," she said. Thompson suggested students could inspire faculty to become more open to entrepreneurial activities. He has been the mentor to Adam Van Dyke, a research fellow at UMSOM who is chief executive officer of a start-up, Asulon Pharma. Quraishi spoke about teaching a new course, CIPP 980, on entrepreneurship in life sciences as well as her work guiding a group of UMB entrepreneurial fellows who are distinct from those assigned to the 2016-17 White Paper on the topic. She contends that exposure to entrepreneurship is critical to almost everybody because it broadens perspectives. Once you know the pathway to drug development, or device development, it equips you better in a job search or in other ways, she said. Called the Presidents Entrepreneurial Fellowship, the ongoing program places teams of students with UMB faculty members to help move their discoveries out of the lab and into the marketplace. Launched in 2016, it is overseen by the UMB Office of Research and Development. James Hughes, MBA, chief enterprise and economic development officer and vice president of UMB and director of UM Ventures Baltimore, presided at an earlier white paper event in which he was joined by Quraishi and by Darryl L. Carter, MD, a successful entrepreneur who brings an expertise in biologics to his role as UMB venture adviser. We need to accelerate the creation of an entrepreneurial culture here, Hughes said, outlining plans for the Center for Maryland Advanced Ventures (CMAV). The Strategic Partnership law calls for appropriation of $4 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1 to fund CMAV, which is being integrated into UM Ventures under the MPowering initiative. It can be, it will be, it needs to be transformational, said Hughes. One phase, the New Ventures Initiative, has opened in the historic Lion Brothers Building; another would be in connection with a future BioPark building. The center will house multiple resources including UMBs entrepreneurs in residence, some universityowned start-up companies; a Small Business Development Center, a UM Carey School of Law clinic offering legal assistance for intellectual property and business law, and I-Corps services to be coordinated by Owens. At both events, Owens described how I-Corps, a National Science Foundation Initiative offered at UMCP has helped in her personal life in launching Hosts for Humanity, a startup in the social entrepreneurship realm. Speaking of the new spirit at UMB, she said: Whether its doing co-curricular programs for students, new degree programs, or giving students, faculty and staff space to launch their own things, I think these are very exciting. Excitement has become a familiar emotion for two of the fellows. Vanegas is on the team whose startup, Nanobernetics, LLC, won the Lightbulb Moment Competition on Feb. 27 that Menso had organized for UMSOM students; Portney is on a team whose startup, AgamiLife Inc., was a finalist. And on April 20, at the BioHealth Capital Region Forum in Gathersburg, Md., Portney presented on behalf of AgamiLife as one of five finalists in the CrabTrap competition. Entrepreneurism is the sixth in a series of topics explored by the annual Presidents Symposium and White Paper Project. The Office of Interprofessional Student Learning & Service Initiatives welcomes applications for the 2017-18 fellows, who will study global literacy. In a suburb on the outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal Fatima and her two daughters Rana and Reem are preparing for a dinner party. Tonight, they will invite Portuguese friends into their home to taste home-cooked Syrian cuisine. They have five hours left to finish the myriad dishes on offer and the kitchen is a hive of activity. Twenty-eight-year-old Rana wraps small bundles of rice with cabbage leaves to make waraq anab (vine leaves), whilst 27-year-old Reem is shaping small hollow meat cases ready for kibbe. Fatima, the matriarch of the family, is chopping large handfuls of parsley and mint to get the right texture for another Syrian delicacy, the tangy salad tabboule. "You cant imagine the scenes." As they cook, Fatimas 21-year old son Rafat comes in to check on progress. Although he is not cooking today, Rafat is also a chef in his own right. Back in Damascus, before the war, he used to work at the family restaurant, Zayn. It was a kebab and chicken restaurant and I was the one who wrapped the sandwiches, cut the pickles, cucumbers and tomatoes, he explains. I had to be fast, as it was me who gave the customers their sandwiches. Those days seem like another lifetime to the family and reminiscing still hurts. In 2012, just a year into the conflict, they were forced to flee their home after clashes between Syrian and opposition forces. They took refuge in Yarmouk camp, waiting until it would be safe to return. But when Rafats father visited the family home, to check that it had not been destroyed, their world fell apart. His body was later found in a nearby building, along with 149 others. The bodies were left all over the neighbourhood, Rafat explains. They even found people in toilets of the mosque. You cant imagine the scenes. To this day, I still dont understand why they killed him. Fatima and her family are making new friends and reviving old passions in Portugal. Devastated by his death, Fatima and her four children decided to leave Syria. After two weeks sleeping on the streets, they eventually fled to Egypt, where they spent nine months surviving off food vouchers and donations from local charities. Fatima and her daughters did odd jobs sewing to supplement what little money they had. But, in 2013, political tensions resulted in a hardening of attitudes towards Syrians, some of whom suddenly found themselves targets. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, found Fatima and her family were eligible for resettlement. We knew so many people who were going illegally by sea to Germany, putting their lives in danger, she says. So many people were dying. I said to my children, this is our chance to go to Europe legally and start over. The Dabah family, who fled war in Syria in 2012, eat breakfast at their home in Lisbon, Portugal. UNHCR/Bruno Galan Ruiz As soon as they arrived in Portugal, the familys integration began, with the help of the Jesuit Refuge Service (JRS), an international Catholic organisation. Fatima was impressed by the support they received. When we came to the airport, people were there to welcome us. They took us to us to our new home, they went to work immediately on our papers and residency straight away. They put our kids immediately in the school. Those eleven months were great, the only thing was that the time wasnt enough for us to adapt and be financially independent. After 11 months, when financial support ended, Fatima worried about how she would support her family. Her son-in-law had a job as a tailor working for a local designer, and the family still received some help. But with seven mouths to feed, including Fatimas two grandchildren, the pressure was mounting. Then, Fatima got a call asking if she and her daughters would take part in new scheme, Pao a Pao (Bread, Bread), a refugee integration project set to launch in December 2016 at the Santa Clara market in Lisbon. The idea was that Syrian refugees would showcase their food at private dinners during the festive season. When we came to the airport, people were there to welcome us." Francisca Henriques, one of the four founders of Pao Pao, was amazed by the response. We were totally surprised because it was a huge success, she says. Initially, we opened for groups of more than 20 people, but we never had less than 100, it was crazy. One day we had 130 people. It was not only because people were curious about Middle East food it was because people wanted to help and they didnt know how. Encouraged by this success, the founders decided to open a permanent restaurant at the market. They launched a crowd funding campaign to raise funds for the renovation and, within one month, they hit their target of EUR 15,000. Mezze will open in May 2017 and employ 15 refugees. In between meals, the space will offer workshops, cultural exchanges and music. For Fatima and her children, Mezze will allow them to carry on the family tradition started by their father in Damascus. It will give this proud family the chance to be financially independent in a country they now consider home. Their delicious home cooked dishes will also give locals a taste of Syria. We found that the Portuguese really like our cooking, because it is full of flavours and spices, says Fatima, as she puts the finishing touches to her tabbouleh salad, ready for the guests arrival. It is the way we communicate now. We carry on cooking and they are learning. Yusra Mardini tells her story at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. David G McIntyre/Zuma Press UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, today announced the appointment of Syrian refugee and Olympic athlete Yusra Mardini as a Goodwill Ambassador. Since her selection for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Mardini has worked closely with UNHCR, highlighting with her own inspiring performances the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team and the wider global refugee crisis. She has become a powerful voice for the forcibly displaced across the world and a powerful example of their resilience and determination to rebuild lives and positively contribute to host communities. At the UN General Assembly in September 2016, Mardini advocated for the rights of refugees to have access to safe shelter, education, livelihoods and training opportunities. In January 2017 she represented UNHCR at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she was the youngest participant. Addressing high profile audiences she stressed that, with the average length of exile now standing at 17 years, refugees need hope for their future and the one of their children, and not just a life in limbo. With food for our stomachs, refugees can survive. But only if they are given food for the soul will they be able to thrive, she said. Over the past year Mardini has also advocated for the refugee cause during meetings with the Pope, President Obama as well as with royalty, influential business figures and other world leaders. There is no shame in being a refugee if we remember who we are. We are still the doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, students we were back at home. We are still the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. It was war and persecution that drove us from our homes in search of peace. That is refugee. That is who I am. That is who we all are, that growing population of people without a country. I am a refugee and Im proud to stand for peace, for decency and dignity for all those fleeing violence. Join me. Stand with us. Welcoming Yusra Mardinis appointment as UNHCRs Goodwill Ambassador, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said: Yusra is a deeply inspiring young woman. Through her powerful personal story, Yusra represents the hopes, the fears and the incredible potential of the more than ten million young refugees around the globe, he said. IOC President Thomas Bach said: The participation of Yusra and her fellow athletes of the Refugee Olympic Team at the Olympic Games Rio 2016 sent a message of hope to all refugees in the world. It demonstrated to a global public that refugees are our fellow human beings and are an enrichment to society. It is my hope that through her role as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Yusra will continue to inspire refugees, reminding us that anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit. Accepting her new role, Yusra said: I am thrilled to join the UNHCR family and eager to continue spreading the message that refugees are just normal people living through traumatic and devastating circumstances, who are capable of extraordinary things if only given a chance. The UN Refugee Agency does the most important and incredible work for refugees under extremely challenging circumstances, and I am proud to use my voice to support UNHCR. Yusra Mardini is not available for interview but detailed information is available here: www.unhcr.org/yusra-mardini Yusras story: When Yusras boat broke down between Turkey and the coast of Lesvos, on the last stretch of her long journey to escape war-torn Damascus, she and her sister jumped into the sea to pull the boat to safety. Swimming for hours, they risked their own lives to save those of the other 20 passengers onboard. Yusras courage and strong swimming skills were recognized by the International Olympic Committee and she became a team member of the first ever Refugee Olympic Team, competing at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Yusra studies full time in Germany and continues to train in the hope of competing at the next Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. About UNHCR: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. UNHCR safeguards the rights and well-being of refugees and stateless people. In more than six decades, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. UNHCR is on the front lines of the world's major humanitarian crises, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and countless other emergencies. For media enquiries please contact: Yusra Mardini answers questions during a press conference in Geneva following her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador. UNHCR/Susan Hopper GENEVA Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini, a Syrian who fled across the Mediterranean, was today appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and pledged to work harder to inspire refugees around the world. Mardini, 19, who competed in last summers games in Rio de Janeiro as a member of the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team, said she was honoured to work with UNHCR and would dedicate her voice to speak up for people who have been forced to flee their homes. I could not be more proud to be part of the UNHCR family and #TeamRefugees, Mardini told journalists at the Palais des Nations, the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations. I want to encourage all refugees to continue with education and not stop at one point in their lives. Syrian Swimmer Yusra Mardini appointed refugee ambassador Mardini, who has been granted asylum in Germany, is the youngest Goodwill Ambassador working with UNHCR. The teenager joins the likes of famed actress Cate Blanchett, celebrated author Khaled Hosseini and TV star Kristin Davis. She takes on her new role at a time when over 65 million people globally have been driven from their homes by war and persecution. Yusra is a deeply inspiring young woman." Her commitment to advocate for displaced people across the world was praised by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who met the athlete for the first time in Brazil during the 2016 Olympic Games. Yusra is a deeply inspiring young woman, said Grandi. Through her powerful personal story, Yusra represents the hopes, the fears and the incredible potential of the more than ten million young refugees around the globe. During her journey from Greece to Germany in 2015, Yusra (left) traveled through Hungary with other asylum-seekers. UNHCR/Lam Duc Hien Yusra Mardini, an 18-year-old swimmer who fled the war in Syria, looks anxiously at the Olympic pool as she readies herself for her last race. UNHCR/Benjamin Loyseau Yusra Mardini, an 18-year-old swimmer who fled the war in Syria, powers through the water in her last race of the 2016 Games. UNHCR/Gary Hershorn Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini interacts with students during a press event to promote sports at a primary school in Berlin Spandau. UNHCR/Daniel Etter Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini addresses world leaders at a high-level meeting on refugees which took place in New York in September 2016. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas During her dangerous journey to Europe, Yusra risked her life when she jumped into the Aegean Sea from a sinking boat with her 21-year-old sister Sara and helped push it and some 18 desperate passengers to safety. Her dedication to sport and her work for refugees has also been praised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who worked in partnership with UNHCR to form the Refugee Olympic Team. "The Olympic games bring all people together." It is my hope that through her role as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Yusra will continue to inspire refugees, reminding us that anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit, said IOC President Thomas Bach. While Mardini will work with young refugees and continue to be a powerful voice for forcibly displaced people across the world, she remains committed to swimming and says her goal is to compete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. We cannot forget the Olympic games bring all people together," she said. I'm really hoping that in the next Olympics there will be a refugee team. Syrian cobbler Diyaa shows off some of the shoes he makes at his workshop in Casablanca, Morocco. UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb CASABLANCA, Morocco Shoemaking is a craft handed down from father to son in Syria, and Diyaa and his family had been making footwear for decades when the war drove him from his home in the capital, Damascus. Forced to start over in exile as a refugee, he founded a workshop in a tiny street in Casablanca, Moroccos bustling coastal city, where he has settled with his wife and two children. He started from scratch, putting in long hours to make sandals, clogs and lace-up shoes. "At the beginning, I worked for 18 to 20 hours a day and lived 20 kilometres away from Casablanca, he says. Each day, I had a two-hour ride one way to get to work. "Little by little, things improved. Today, I employ four Moroccan workers." Gradually, Diyaas perseverance paid off and his determination to succeed won him loyal customers and more orders with the help of a grant from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, which allowed him to buy his first sewing machine. At the beginning, I worked alone. Then I received from UNHCR the first sewing machine as part of an income-generating activity for refugees. It was a real boost. Little by little, things improved. Today, I employ four Moroccan workers. Diyaa, 37, has chosen to employ Moroccans, whom he regards as "brothers". "Moroccans have always inspired confidence in me, he says. As an employer, I feel reassured working hand in hand with them. More than six years of fighting have displaced more than six million people inside Syria and driven over five million to flee abroad. Most have sought safety in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond, while Morocco hosts about 3,500 Syrian refugees. In recognition of his efforts as a refugee entrepreneur making a contribution to his host country, Diyaa was awarded a prize by the Moroccan Association for the Support and Promotion of Small Enterprises, known as AMAPPE for short, in January 2016. Diyaa has chosen to employ Moroccans, whom he regards as "brothers". UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb One of Diyaa's employees makes shoes. UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb One of the finished shoes at Diyaa's workshop. UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb Diyaa sits outside his shop in Casablanca, Morocco. UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb Diyaa's determination to succeed has won him loyal customers and more orders. UNHCR/Oussama Rhaleb Hesitant at first, he said while receiving the prize: I did not expect to be given awards. I came to Morocco with empty pockets. I had to start, not from zero, but from minus one hundred. He continued: This acknowledges my efforts and hard work against all odds. Thanks to my work, my family and I were able to progress and regain some objectivity in life. Whenever I had difficulties, I was telling myself to never let go, to go forward with my head up and to get up every time I fell down. At the end of the day, it is my familys welfare that kept me going. In its evaluation, AMAPPE noted that Diyaa not only employed young Moroccans from a poor neighbourhood, but also helped other Syrians to open a second shoe-making shop nearby. It is part of our vision in AMAPPE to generate collective projects because they have a high potential for sustainability, says Mohammed Anwar, AMAPPE entrepreneurship and cooperation adviser. There is no place like home. Diyaa really convinced us of his entrepreneurial spirit and this is a model which can be institutionalised in the future with other new beneficiaries. Diyaa and his wife, who came with him to Morocco from Syria, have two children a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl. Both go to a private Moroccan school in Casablanca. He decided not to go to Europe with his family because Moroccan people are very hospitable and welcome Syrians in their country with open arms. However, he would like to return to Syria when things improve. There is no place like home, he says, with a sigh. Previously, Diyaa had no car and, with a small income, could afford little. Today, he finds Morocco comfortable. He can provide for his family and rents an apartment closer to his work. In recent years, thousands of Syrian refugees have not only found safety, but also a breathing space in Morocco. People here do not consider us as refugees but as human beings, says Diyaa, from his market stall in Casablanca. I no longer feel like a foreigner, but I am happy among Moroccans. Mam Kolkata, Apr 27 (IBNS): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday accepted the challenge thrown by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah and claimed that she would capture Delhi. The WB CM was responding to Shah's attack on her during his visit to the eastern state. "I accept the challenge of those who challenge me. We'll capture Delhi," Banerjee told mediapersons. "They come from Delhi and spread lies. They are in a hurry (to capture power in Bengal)....They cannot handle Gujarat, but they are eyeing Bengal," the Chief Minister added. During his visit to Bengal, Shah had said: "No one can predict who is the next President of BJP but everyone knows who is the next President of Congress or TMC." Attacking Banerjee, Shah ahd said: "Politics of violence and appeasement by Mamata banerjee's TMC cannot stop the surge of BJP in West Bengal." New Delhi, Apr 27 (IBNS): OYO, a hotel network, announced its foray into Nepal, with the launch of its debut hotel in Kathmandu. OYO partners with hotels to standardize and transform their rooms enabling a better experience for guests. Launched in 2013, OYOs network has grown to 7000 hotels in 200 cities. Nepal is the second overseas market for OYO. Commenting on the launch, Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO OYO, said: OYO has been at the forefront of the small and budget hotels revolution in India. Building the category grounds-up, we have employed technology and operational acumen to deliver delight to our customers and unparalleled benefits to partners. Our network has witnessed robust growth to become the largest in India. After our successful overseas foray in Malaysia, we are now thrilled to offer OYOs hassle-free and standardized stay experience to travellers visiting Nepal. With a wide range of offerings from beautiful locales, adventure activities, temples and monasteries, to shopping-hubs and casinos - Nepal has emerged as a preferred destination for an impulsively planned getaway any time of the year. According to the Department of Immigration, of the 174,803 tourists that visited Nepal in 2016, the highest number of travellers were reported from India. A further boost to cross-border trade and tourism is expected with India and Bangladesh set to reopen the defunct trans-border rail routes which would extend links to Nepal and Bhutan. The travel and hospitality sector in India is witnessing a phenomenon of Impulse planning. Even as travel-planning cycle reduces further, the expectations from on-ground suppliers and agents of delivering a non-negotiable and predetermined experience have become stronger. Affordable and trusted stay-options remain one of the top concerns for most travellers. Commenting on this, Ritesh said, Today, 70 percent of Indians admit to unplanned spending - from relationships to shopping, instant gratification is the new norm. At the same time, they are increasingly looking at discerning or standardized experiences; even if the purchase decision was driven by impulse. With our promise of standardized and predictable stays across 7000 hotels in 200+ cities, OYO caters to the impulse-planning behavior displayed by millennial traveller. We are also engaging with various stakeholders to create partnerships that help us make new experiences accessible to tourists. Ritesh added, There are many examples of people who have become successful after partnering with OYO. From rooms taken on lease to having their own property, we have helped them grow at a fast pace and become successful entrepreneurs. We are excited with the opportunity to co-create another successful travel-and-hospitality ecosystem in Nepal. Image: Wikimedia Commons UC Davis has a vending machine in the campus that offers emergency contraception for its students. The machine dispenses condoms, morning-after pills, pregnancy tests, over-the-counter medication, and tampons. It is located at the school's Activities and Recreation Center, and it is called "Wellness to Go Machine." UC Davis follows other schools all over the country that provides emergency contraceptives for their students at the school's health center, LA Times reported. Claremont's Pomona College and Pennsylvania's Shippensburg University are other schools that sell morning-after pill through vending machines. It's undeniable that a growing number of students are sexually active, and this issue should be dealt with, according to senior student Parteek Signhm, who headed the initiative to install the machines. According to UC Davis officials Signh really exerted a great deal of effort just to have these vending machines installed. When he was still university senator, he worked with the health service office and school store for two years to make the initiative happen, CBS News reported. Signh though that students might be embarrassed to buy the contraceptive Plan B from other students, which is why he proposed the vending machine, which sells other hygienic products for women. Singh's vending machine project garnered a lot of positive feedback. Some students even walked up to him to thank him personally. Students from other schools contacted Singh asking him to help them get and install in their campuses vending machines that offers emergency contraceptives. Associated Students of UC Davis member Georgia Savage said the anonymity that the vending machine provides is very important to her. The judgement-free space that the machine provides saves students from embarrassment, she said. However, there are also other students who believe that having the vending machine promotes promiscuity sending the wrong message. Some students said the vending machine sends the wrong message. One student said it might encourage students to have unsafe sex complacent because they know there are vending machines that will save them the next day. Cornell University's student startup, Dimitri, is looking to make 3D printing more accessible for consumers. The eLab members behind Dimitri are Val Mack MPS'17, Khalil Hajji M.Eng '17, Mutahir Kazmi M.Eng '17, and Leo Jingyang Liu M.Arch '18. The idea started when Mack was first intrigued by the concept of 3D printing during her apprenticeship with a New York City watchmaker. She saw its value for individual consumers and wondered if it could offer consumers the ability to create things that they really need for themselves. Mack realized that with 3D printing, there should be a market for people who want customized products that fit them really well. The team has been a member of eLab since 2016, a business accelerator program at Cornell. Dimitri is working on software that would help 3D printing users improve products and make the 3D printers more reliable. The goal was to develop software to make 3D printing easier. The team wanted to learn more about other creative ways on how different industries use 3D printing. They spoke with students, faculty and experts in various industries including Food Ink, which is the first 3D-printing restaurant. Food Ink is based in London and has all furniture, food and utensils created from 3D printing technology. In December, during eLab's annual Pitch Night NYC at Wilmer Hale Building, NY, Dimitri pitched to a group of more than 50 alumni and prospective advisors. The feedback served as a good learning experience for the team as it taught them that their assumptions about the technology were wrong. It helped Dimitri turn their focus on using 3D printing to create customized consoles for shoes. Using imaging software to scan an individual's feet, they were able to generate a 3D model, which was used to design custom-fit insoles created by desktop 3D printers. The team will start with shoes to develop the perfect fit for each individual customer based on the unique shape. Knowing the limitations of 3D printing and determining areas where innovation is desperately needed, they are working on making 3D printing possible for average consumers, Cornell reported. On Wednesday, Ann Coulter said she was forced to cancel her speech at the UC Berkeley on Thursday. School administrators said they could not provide a safe venue and risk violent protests at the university. Coulter said it was a dark day for free speech in America. Coulter said despite the cancellation she might decide to turn up anyway. After the event organizers and sponsor withdrew their support, Coulter still vowed to speak on campus at the Sproul Plaza. The Berkeley campus has witnessed destructive protests in recent months. University officials asked to postpone the speech until next week but Coulter showed determination to speak on Thursday. The Young America's Foundation (YAF) and Berkeley College Republicans sued the university. The lawsuit claimed that the school administrators were trying to ban events that involved free speech. However, on Tuesday, YAF said they could no longer sponsor the talk. The Washington Post reported that YAF said they would no longer jeopardize the safety of its staff or students and blamed Berkeley for creating the hostile atmosphere. They said Berkeley failed to ensure protection of their conservative speakers. In response, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said they did not cancel the Coulter event and certainly has not prohibited or banned Coulter from speaking on campus. He added that Berkeley is committed to defending free speech but also protecting the students. The reason why she could not speak was because the university saw that the venue available was not safe, BBC reported. On Wednesday, Troy Warden, president of the campus Republicans, said the Berkeley College Republicans do not want to endanger people's lives and because of the university's unwillingness to do their job they were forced to cancel the event. Coulter also tweeted that she was sad about the cancellation. Capt. Alex Yao of the Berkley campus police force said they will maintain strong police presence on Thursday if Coulter does decide to show up. Berkeley police has also reached out to local and state police forces to inform them if they might be calling for assistance. Abu Dhabi, Apr 27 (IBNS): Etihad Airways hosted a special reception on Wednesday night at the Rosewood Abu Dhabi to mark the UAE launch of 'Runway to Runway', the airline's rewards programme specially designed to support the fashion community's international travel requirements. Celebrated Somali-American model, Halima Aden, flew in from the US as the airlines special guest for the evening. The gathering also included personalities from the fashion and lifestyle media, and regional social influencers. All guests were awarded top tier Gold Status founding membership with Runway to Runway and a complimentary spa treatment at Sense, A Rosewood Spa. The UAE event follows the highly successful global launch of Runway to Runway, which took place at an exclusive dinner at New York Fashion Week: The Shows on 8 February. Etihad Airways co-hosted the celebrity soiree with Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder of online luxury fashion retailer, Moda Operandi. On Tuesday, the University of Arizona's medical school announced that Tennessee cardiologist, Dr. Guy Reed, will be the new dean. Reed currently chairs the University of Tennessee's department of medicine. Reed is set to begin in July as of University of Arizona's College of Medicine in downtown Phoenix. He will be paid the annual compensation of $700,000. UA pays the Tucson medical school dean an identical amount, according to a university spokesman. AZ Central reported. Reed said he plans to build on what the Phoenix medical school has accomplished over the past decade. He added that there is a special feeling there in the students, faculty, staff and people from the community. He said there is passion, excitement and optimism that will allow him to build something special there. Dr. Edward Shortliffe opened the school in 20017 and was replaced by Dr. Stuart Flynn in 2008. Reed will be the third dean of the Phoenix medical school. Dr. Kenneth Ramos has served as interim dean for the past year and will transition into a new role when Reed assumes the position, said Dr. Leigh Neumayer, UA's interim senior vice president for health sciences. Neumayer said there were two finalists who were exceedingly qualified for the position, but Reed's background and experience was a huge factor. The other finalist was a professor at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, Dr. Brent Polk. Neumayer said Reed was able to double the size of University of Tennessee's department of medicine and was able to develop a clot-dissolving drug that is now being tested in clinical trials. The Colorado native completed medical school at Stanford University, had his internal medicine residency at Yale University, had his cardiovascular disease fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and his research fellowship in bio chemistry and molecular biology at Harvard Medical School. He then served as a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. Various school organizations and hundreds of students organize a protest dubbed as the "Rally for Hate-Free Princeton". On April 26, anyone could join the demonstration that takes place at Firestone Plaza, in front of the main library, at exactly 4 p.m. Hate speech is when freedom of expressions is used to attack a person or a group based on gender, race, religion, disability, or ethnic origin. Apparently, per Planet Princeton, the school received a series of hate speech flyers posted on its buildings last week. For the record, this incident has already happened to other universities too. The flyers contained racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant comments. Princeton University officials immediately ordered the removal of the flyers after they got various complaints. To better illustrate, some of the hate speech leaflets were posted to a door at Stanhope Hall. Others were found at the main entrance of the Center for Jewish Life, East Pyne Hall, and Murray-Dodge door. One witness informed authorities and said that a person wearing a ski mask and dark clothes taped the fliers. Surprisingly, the papers also showed a contact number and a website for a "white nationalist organization". The planners of the protest include Woodrow Wilson School Resisting Hate, Princeton Private Prison Divest, Intersecting Queer Identities, Young Democratic Socialists of Princeton, and Princeton Citizen scientists. The Black Graduate Caucus, Latino Graduate Student Association, Princeton Advocates for Justice, Center for Jewish Life, and the Graduate Religious Life Council also take part. On the other hand, a Princeton University Press release said that the school will host James A. Baker III, the 61st US Secretary of State and the White House Chief of Staff. He is set to talk about climate action and various conservative political principles. Entitled "A Conservative Approach To Climate Change", the seminar will happen on May 10 in McCosh Hall at 4:30 p.m. Baker graduated in this institution in 1952. Researchers at the American Chemical Society (ACS) found a way to make pain killers last longer. Recently, scientists have been studying the compounds called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for drug delivery. Obviously, the results were remarkable. According to Science Daily, active ingredients can be packed inside MOFs because they are porous. Some of them even have additional traits such as water solubility which makes them potential candidates for drug couriers. However, there are still few studies to show whether these MOFs could be used in oral formulations. Thus, J. Fraser Stoddart and his fellow scientists chose ibuprofen as a model drug to demonstrate the promising abilities of MOFs. Currently, people are depending on ibuprofen to treat headaches, back pains, and fevers. Sadly, patients need to take the drug every four to six hours for best results. Now, the experts are working on a way to make the pain killer be more effective. This study, published in the ACS journal "Molecular Pharmaceutics", may also result in the oral delivery of drugs previously taken intravenously. To illustrate, the scientists have placed "therapeutically relevant concentrations" of ibuprofen into "easily prepared", biocompatible MOFS with cyclodextrin and alkali metal cations. They later tested the mixture on mice and the findings were positive. The compounds have reached the blood stream quicker in about 10 to 20 minutes. It lasted twice as long as ibuprofen salts. Indeed, this study is very promising. On the other hand, Austin Daily Herald reported that Attorney General Lori Swanson wants Minnesota to drop unwanted pain killers and other medicines such as opioids. She said that roughly 80 percent of people who abuse the drug get it from family and friends. Moreover, Swanson believes that getting rid of "extra drugs" could save lives. As part of the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, over 90 law enforcement agencies across 114 locations will confiscate unwanted medications. Stanford alumni Yassamin Ansari and Erica Gaston have been announced as winners of the 2017 Gates Cambridge Scholarships. They will get the chance to have their graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in England. They are two of 55 people who were awarded scholarships during the international round of the competition and will represent the United States. They will be joining the 35 scholars chosen back in February as Gates Cambridge Scholars during the separate round for the U.S. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship focuses on helping intellectually outstanding postgraduate students with a capacity for leadership and a commitment to improving the lives of other people. Scholars are presented with exceptional opportunities and networks at Cambridge and beyond it. In a post on Stanford's official website, it was reported that Yassamin Ansari, 25, earned her bachelor's degree in international relations with honors in international security studies back in 2014. Currently, she wants to take up a master's degree in international relations and politics at the University of Cambridge, where she will be researching on climate change and international security. Ansari expressed her excitement on being part of the Gates community. She is also thrilled about the knowledge that she can learn from her "brilliant peers" as she continues to grow as an individual and future leader. Erica Gaston, 35, earned her bachelor's degree in international relations at Stanford in 2003. She specialized in international security. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. With the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, she will be pursuing a doctorate in politics and international studies. She wants to investigate whether the control mechanisms that external factors establish when working with local or hybrid security forces are effective in mitigating the risks and costs of implementing them. Last year, The Rhodes Trust announced that 32 students have been chosen to represent the United States as Rhodes Scholars for 2017. The scholarship will carry the expenses of the 32 chosen men and women for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford. Scientists from Durham University and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suggest that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and coronal jets are the same kinds. They only differ in size and manifestation but they both come from a similar triggering source. The remarkable findings were published in the journal "Nature" on April 26. Foremost, the CMEs and coronal jets are both solar activities with very different magnitudes. The former are blasts of charged particles that cause widespread alteration of communication that put astronauts at risks. The CMEs also produce the magnificent auroras visible on Earth's Polar Regions. On the other hand, per Space, coronal jets are smaller and often less energetic. Before, their origins were believed to be different from one another. However, scientists now claim that the triggering factor is the same, though, yet to be identified. The researchers made use of high-resolution observations of filaments from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the joint Japan Exploration Agency. These filaments were dark, snake-like formations suspended above the sun's surface. For one thing, CME eruptions have long been thought to be associated with filaments. Interestingly, the new research found that coronal jets have the same filament-like structures before an eruption too. As a matter of fact, Peter Wyper, a solar physicist at Durham University and the lead author of the study, said that their theoretical models reveal that coronal jets may be described as "mini CMEs". According to Science Daily, solar scientists can use computer models to better assess their understandings of the observations they see through space telescopes. These models can be utilized to perform tests that cannot be done in real life. For the record, the experts currently call this proposed mechanism of erupting filaments as the "breakout model". They have been using it to describe CMEs before, but the intriguing part is that they have adapted the model to coronal jets. Actually, they were able to reproduce the smaller eruptions in the computer simulations that match the SDO. Such simulations support the theory that CMEs and jets are caused in the same way. New York, Apr 27(Just Earth News): The United Nations on Wednesday commemorated the International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day recalling the devastating explosion of 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which spewed radioactive material to an area stretching 155,000 square kilometres across Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Underscoring the need to strengthen international cooperation to study, mitigate and minimize the consequences of the disaster, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in December last year in which it designated 26 April as the International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day. In the resolution, the Assembly recognized that three decades after the Chernobyl disaster, the still-persistent serious long-term consequences thereof, as well as the continuing related needs of the affected communities and territories. It also acknowledged the need for continuing international cooperation on Chernobyl under the auspices of the UN that can contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. About 8.4 million people across four countries were exposed to radiation, including some 600,000 liquidators, who were involved in fire-fighting and clean-up operations. Also, agricultural areas covering nearly 52,000 square kilometres were contaminated with Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, with 30-year and 28-year half-lives respectively. Nearly 404,000 people were resettled, but millions continued to live in an environment where continued residual exposure created a range of adverse effects. As any radioactive decay is on an exponential scale, it can take many decades and even centuries for the material to become inert fully. UN efforts to aid the recovery from the disaster started in 1990 when the global Organizations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for international cooperation to address and mitigate the consequences of the explosion. Since the disaster, UN programmes and agencies have, together with non-governmental organizations have launched more than 230 different research and assistance projects in the fields of health, nuclear safety, rehabilitation, environment, production of clean foods and information. Also on Wednesday, at the UN Headquarters in New York, the Permanent Mission of Belarus together with partners organized a roundtable discussion on identifying and mitigating the long-term consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster entitled Building the Case for Continued International Cooperation. UN Photo/IAEA Source: www.justearthnews.com Priscilla Glenn, left, and Mayowa Olawoyin on the right Two University of Texas at Arlington College of Science students have been named recipients of National Science Foundation funds to further their graduate education through the NSFs prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program for 2017. Priscilla Glenn, a senior biology major, and Mayowa Olawoyin, a second-year Ph.D. student in mathematics, are among the awardees. The program provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period, with a $34,000 annual stipend and a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the institution. This year, 2,000 awardees were selected from a pool of over 13,000 applicants. Awardees come from all 50 states and Washington D.C., as well as U.S. commonwealths and territories. The group of awardees is diverse, including 1,158 women, 498 individuals from underrepresented minority groups, 75 persons with disabilities, 26 military veterans and 726 undergraduate seniors. The awardees come from 449 baccalaureate institutions. Glenn will earn her bachelors degree in biology in May and plans to pursue a doctorate in horticulture at the University of California at Davis starting this fall. She started at UTA in fall 2013 and joined the lab of Jeff Demuth, associate professor of biology, the following spring. She has done extensive research in evolutionary genetics and genomics. I have known Priscilla for a little over three years and she has been simply amazing, Demuth said. She is among the top undergraduate students that I have ever interacted with at UTA or elsewhere. Priscilla impressed me from the first email inquiry about working in my lab. In the time since that initial contact, she has continued to impress not only me, but everyone with whom she interacts. The summer after her sophomore year, Glenn received an NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates fellowship at the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, where she looked at genes involved in the photosystem of C4 plants. C4 is the photosynthetic process in certain plants like maize. The C3 photosystem is typical of cereal grains like rice. Ultimately, our goal is to genetically modify C3 staple crops, such as rice, to use C4 photosynthesis and increase their photosynthetic efficiency, Glenn said. Turning rice, the worlds food staple, into a C4 plant like maize could have significant global benefits towards improving food security. Some scientists estimate that C4 rice could produce up to 50% more grainand be able to do it with less water and nutrients. At the end of her Danforth fellowship, Glenn received an award for best project and was selected to present her research at the NSF REU Symposium in Washington, D.C. in October 2015. Her mentor presented her project results at the 58th Annual Maize Genetics Conference in Jacksonville, Fla., in March 2016. Following her junior year, Glenn was selected for an REU fellowship at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. She studied the interaction between the pathogen Erwinia amylovora, potential insect vectors, and apple trees. Erwinia amylovora is a bacterial phytopathogen that causes fire blight disease in apples and other rosaceous plants. Research suggests that fire blight can be transmitted by insects but in-depth knowledge describing interactions between the pathogen and potential vectors is lacking, Glenn said. My primary goal was to design a project which would increase our understanding of the baseline interactions between a potential vector the fruit fly and the pathogen, Glenn said. Glenn is also a member of the UTA Honors College, is co-president at the University Catholic Center and is lead resident assistant at Vandergriff Hall. In addition, shes a standout member of the UTA track and field team, where she has competed in the pole vault since her freshman year. Olawoyin received a bachelors in mathematics with honors from UTA in May 2015 and entered graduate school the following fall. Her doctoral research is based in mathematical biology, which uses mathematics to describe the spread of infectious diseases and can be used to model vector-borne diseases. Her faculty advisor is Christopher Kribs, a UTA professor of mathematics who specializes in mathematical biology to research the spread of diseases such as Chagas and West Nile virus through the use of differential equations to model population and infection dynamics. Mayowa is an exceptional student, Kribs said. She completed research projects in two different fields while still an undergraduate at UTA, and the resulting reports have both been submitted for publication in journals. Last summer she completed a third project, on the spread of chikungunya virus along transportation networks in Ecuador, and has made a good start on modeling difference transmission routes for the Zika virus, her dissertation project, for which she obtained NSF support. I'm lucky to be working with her. Olawoyin is a fellow in the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Bridge to Doctorate program, which is funded by the NSF and aims to recruit, retain, and graduate higher numbers of under-represented minority STEM or science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals. She serves on the student chapters committee and is national chapter liaison for the UTA chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics and also serves as secretary for the UTA chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. She got her start in biological mathematics as an undergraduate, as part of UTAs Undergraduate Training in Theoretical and Ecological Research program. The two-year program includes mentoring, seminars, research, and specially designed interdisciplinary coursework. It brings biology and math students together to discover new ways that infections could be translated into a system of equations. As an undergraduate Olawoyin was a member of the UTA Honors College and was a McNair Scholar, a Gates Millennium Scholar and a Richard Greene Scholar. She served as president of the UTA chapter of AWM and as treasurer of the Lambda Chi Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a public service sorority. After receiving her bachelors in Mathematics in 2015, Olawoyin created the UTA Diversity Regional Enhancement in STEM Scholarship, which goes to an incoming UTA student from an area school district who is Hispanic or African-American and wants to pursue a degree in a STEM field. She contributes $1,000 a year to fund the scholarship. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, the National Diversity in STEM Conference in Long Beach, California and the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute, a summer research program at Arizona State University. Receiving this fellowship made me pause and think about how far I have come academically, Olawoyin said. It also made me think about the responsibility that I have to make outstanding research contributions to my field of study. About The University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington is a Carnegie Research-1 highest research activity institution. With a projected global enrollment of close to 57,000, UTA is one of the largest institutions in the state of Texas. Guided by its Strategic Plan 2020 Bold Solutions|Global Impact, UTA fosters interdisciplinary research and education within four broad themes: health and the human condition, sustainable urban communities, global environmental impact, and data-driven discovery. UTA was recently cited by U.S. News & World Report as having the second lowest average student debt among U.S. universities. U.S. News & World Report lists UTA as having the fifth highest undergraduate diversity index among national universities. The University is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is ranked as the top four-year college in Texas for veterans on Military Times 2017 Best for Vets list. UW Graduate Students Participate in International Competition UWs Imperial Barrel Award competition team works together interpreting drilled well information. From left are Kara Hoppes, Nathaniel Applegate, Sara Burrell, Matt Edgin and Mingliang Liu. (Nathaniel Applegate Photo) A team of five students from the University of Wyomings Department of Geology and Geophysics competed for the prestigious Imperial Barrel Award (IBA), a rigorous hydrocarbon exploration competition sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). This years Rocky Mountain Section competition included UW and nine other colleges and universities from nearby states. Each was given the following geophysical information from the Bristol Bay Basin in Alaska, just north of the Alaskan Peninsula: geophysical measurements from 17 drilled wells; seismic surveys; gravity surveys; and magnetic surveys. After receiving the data set in January, UW team members worked together for eight weeks to generate drill well sites they believed could produce hydrocarbons and should be further explored. The many tasks in their workflow were accomplished using state-of-the-art petroleum industry software and by combining elements from each team members geologic expertise and knowledge. Students must learn to interpret their data set using unfamiliar, complicated software with the same concepts and workflow as if employed in the petroleum industry. Their findings and recommendations were presented to a panel of industry professionals in Denver March 4. Presentations were limited to 25 minutes. Assistant Professor Brandon McElroy acted as the teams faculty adviser. The team also had limited access to several industry experts. The UW IBA team was quite diverse this year, consisting of: Nathaniel Applegate, geochemistry graduate student from Scottsbluff, Neb.; Sara Burrell, undergraduate student from Sheridan; Matt Edgin, geochemistry graduate student from Upper Arlington, Ohio; Kara Hoppes, sedimentology graduate student from Baldwin, Md.; and Mingliang Liu, geophysics graduate student from China. Competing in the IBA was a really great experience, says Applegate, the team leader. We were able to work with a real data set, use industry software and get a really good feel of what it is like working for industry and exploring for hydrocarbons. This was the 12th year of the IBA competition. Colleges and universities from 12 regions around the world compete with other regional winners at the annual AAPG convention. Since its inception, IBA competition has involved 61 countries, 455 universities and 3,862 students. UW Masters Degree Student Receives David L. Boren Fellowship Jeremy Goldsmith poses with Gambians considering migrating to Europe. He will use his David L. Boren Fellowship to study for the entire 2017-18 academic year in Senegal. (Jeremy Goldsmith Photo) Jeremy Goldsmith, a University of Wyoming masters degree candidate in international studies, and environment and natural resources, is the recipient of the David L. Boren Fellowship to continue his research overseas. As a UW Center for Global Studies (CGS) fellow, Goldsmith will use his National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Fellowship to study for the entire 2017-18 academic year in Senegal. He will have the opportunity to work with the International Organization for Migration regional office in Dakar, Senegal. Goldsmiths research as a CGS international research award recipient is titled Factors Impacting the Migratory Decision-Making of Gambians. He hopes to expand his research through a comparative study of Senegalese and Gambian migrant perspectives. By delving into the factors triggering Senegalese migration, while also comparing the motivating factors driving the relocation of Gambian migrants, a more robust illustration on what is leading both groups to migrate can be addressed, he says. The research draws attention to the ongoing out-migration crisis occurring in West Africa. Boren Fellowships, an initiative of the NSEP, provide unique funding opportunities for U.S. graduate students to study less commonly taught languages in world regions that are critical to U.S. interests. These regions are underrepresented in study abroad projects and include regions such as Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America and the Middle East. UWs CGS taps the potential of interdisciplinary, collaborative and international expertise at UW to invigorate faculty interactions, faculty-student international research, enrich teaching and to serve as a central clearinghouse for global academic expertise at UW. The CGS advances UW to the next level of excellence in internationally focused research in order to find solutions to complex global problems, says Director Jean Garrison. The center, with links to the social sciences, humanities and STEM fields, brings the world to Wyoming and Wyoming to the world. For more information about CGS, call Garrison at (307) 766-6119, email garrison@uwyo.edu, or visit www.uwyo.edu/globalcenter. The UW International Programs Office (IPO) coordinates and advises students interested in pursuing a scholarship or fellowship in the Boren Awards program. Shawn Bunning, IPOs project coordinator, is the Boren Award adviser and campus representative at UW. Jeremys fellowship to Senegal will allow him to build upon the considerable base he has already acquired in the Wolof language during his Peace Corps service in neighboring Gambia, he says. I look forward to the great things his improved Wolof fluency will allow him to contribute in both scholarship and service. For more information about the Boren Awards program, visit www.borenawards.org, or to set up an advising appointment, call the UW International Programs Office at (307) 766-3677. UW Solar Eclipse Expert to Visit Lander May 1 This is a photo of a total solar eclipse as observed from Africa by Tim Slater, Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming. (Tim Slater Photo) How far would you travel to see a total eclipse of the sun? Tim Slater, the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming, has traveled into deeply rural Africa to catch a glimpse of the disappearing sun. In May, hell travel across Wyoming to visit schools, public libraries and community centers to build awareness, generate excitement and help children, parents, teachers and community leaders to prepare for the upcoming total eclipse of the sun. Slater is scheduled to speak about the nature of eclipses in the Lander area, including a talk from 6-7:30 p.m. Monday, May 1, at the Central Wyoming College Lander Center. His trip is sponsored by the UW College of Education, the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium and local entities. In his lectures, he describes how to safely observe the Aug. 21 eclipse of the sun and uses scientific digital visualization simulations to explain why scientists from all over the world are coming to Wyoming to observe this once-in-a-lifetime event. His talk will be followed by a presentation by Suki Smaglik, coordinator of the Wind River Eclipse Education Team, who will describe the coordinated citizen science effort that is planned to occur during the eclipse -- including solar telescopes, radio astronomy, high-altitude balloon launches and live web streams through NASA. Those attending the event receive free eclipse-viewing glasses. Slater also will visit local schools. Tim Slater, Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming, will speak about the nature of eclipses in the Lander area Monday, May 1. (UW Photo) Visible from much of Wyoming and known as the Great North American Solar Eclipse, this rarely visible sky event occurs midday Aug. 21. For several hours, the moon will slowly cover and uncover the sun, causing skies to darken dramatically. In the middle of the event -- for just about two minutes -- the moon will completely block the sun, if you are standing in the right part of Wyoming, says Slater, an internationally recognized expert on the teaching of astronomy. Eclipses of the sun by the moon occur about twice each year. However, eclipses can only be observed from narrowly specific locations on Earth. The next grand total solar eclipse near Wyoming is actually in Denver, and does not occur until the year 2045. On the other hand, less dramatic lunar eclipses -- where the Earth blocks the suns light from reaching the moon -- are visible from many locations on Earth. This August, scientists and sky-watching enthusiasts from all over the world will make Wyoming their destination, resulting in full hotels, busy restaurants and overburdened highways across the state. However, as Slater points out, It might be difficult and time consuming for families to make their way to a prime viewing location, but it is totally worth the effort to briefly stand within the dark moons shadow once in your life. For more information, call Slater at (307) 314-9831 or email tslater@uwyo.edu. New York, Apr 27(Just Earth News): Speaking at the conclusion of a global meeting on importance of agriculture and agro-industries for sustainable and resilient food systems, the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Wednesday urged for greater partnerships to ensure that global development agenda brings prosperity to all. [We have] to go beyond past and current models, beyond individual areas of expertise, beyond separate locations and beyond institutional frontiers, said the ECOSOC President, Frederick Musiiwa Makamure Shava, at the close of the meeting held at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. In doing so, we can unleash the full potential of infrastructure development and sustainable industrialization, including agro-industries, to generate growth and employment while preserving planetary boundaries, he emphasized. Such partnerships, Shava underscored, would also be crucial to mitigate the challenges of climate change and natural disasters as well as to address the impact of increasing global population and migration on global food security. The three-day meeting discussed a wide range of topics, including the particular development context of developing countries and countries in special situation (including least developed and landlocked developing countries), holistic approaches and integrated approach to climate change and other challenges that agriculture confronts, public-private-partnerships of inclusive agro-industry development, and the role of public sector and donor organizations in mitigating financial risks in agriculture and agro-industry. The meeting in Victoria Falls follows an earlier meeting in Dakar, Senegal, that discussed the role of infrastructure development in promoting sustainable industrialization. These two events were organized to prepare for a special ECOSOC meeting on innovations in infrastructure development and promoting sustainable industrialization, convened by President Shava, at the UN Headquarters in New York on 31 May. The ECOSOC one of the six principal organs of the UN is responsible for coordinating the economic, social, and related work of UN agencies, functional and regional. Furthermore, the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the main platform dealing with sustainable development, meets every year under the auspices of the Council. Promoting sustainable and inclusive industrialization is the Goal 9 (SDG9) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UN Photo/Rick Bajornas Source: www.justearthnews.com UW Student Goes from Tiny Wyoming Town to Harvard Grad Studies UW student Dalyn Grindle, of Pavillion, takes measurements of human bones in a UW Department of Anthropology lab. Grindle has earned a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship to study at Harvard University this fall. (UW Photo) When Dalyn Grindle was deciding on a career, she was encouraged to go into a professional track, such as becoming a teacher or a nurse, because those are solid, always-in-demand employment opportunities for Wyoming students. But, she woke up one day and decided she wanted to be an archaeologist and see the world -- which, in a sense, was terrifying to her. Because no one I knew of -- family and friends -- had done something like that, Grindle says. But, people from Wyoming are a special breed, and it reflects in the way that we approach our work. That work ethic has led Grindle from the tiny Fremont County community of Pavillion (about 230 residents) to UW, where she graduated last December with a joint bachelors degree in anthropology, and environment and natural resources, with a minor in drawing. But, her story doesnt end there. The first-generation college student has earned a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to begin independent research, conducting a zooarchaeological study on reindeer domestication this fall at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Out of more than 250 applicants, Grindle, an honors student and McNair Scholar, was among 10 students accepted to Harvards anthropology Ph.D. program. The Graduate Research Fellowship is one of the nations most competitive awards for graduate studies. About 2,000 students received fellowships from among more than 13,000 applicants this year. It offers a three-year annual $34,000 stipend, as well as international research and professional development opportunities. Grindle received additional funding from Harvard University. I think success is the result of a whole lot of hard work, which sounds cliche, but I sincerely think that anyone can achieve anything if they put in the work for it, she says. I certainly wasnt handed anything once I came to UW; I sought out and took advantage of anything that I thought would be a good experience for me. And I think another kind of key for success is to allow yourself to dream big and to think that you can do it. The 2012 Wind River High School graduate, the daughter of Nora and David Grindle, is the first member of her family to receive a college degree. She received the Trustees Scholar Award to attend UW but really didnt know what she wanted to study. Luckily, for her, Grindle sort of stumbled upon UWs archaeology program. She says the departments professors are relatively well-rounded, and their work is important to the field. The department also allowed for several extracurricular opportunities, including employment with the UW Archaeological Repository, conducting research at archaeological field schools and conducting undergraduate research through the McNair Scholars Program. Dalyn Grindle interned at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History last summer. Here, she works with her mentor Torbin Smith, head of the museums anthropology department. (Smithsonian Institution Photo) I also sought out volunteer lab experience. These opportunities were good both because they are experience within my field for graduate school, and because they provided ways to learn hands on, which is something that I really value, Grindle says. Her interest in traveling also was honed during study-abroad programs in New Zealand, Australia, the Canary Islands (Spain) and Croatia, because she learned how to deal with challenging and new situations. Also, participating in UWs McNair Undergraduate Research Program was a major boost in her career choices. The program for first-generation college students encourages students to attend graduate school. McNair also was a super amazing opportunity that I was able to take advantage of at UW. Research experience as an undergraduate is invaluable for grad school, because it makes one more experienced and less of a greenhorn in the lab, she says. Its also great to pair with coursework, because it provides a space where the theories and practices that I was learning from books in class were applicable to a real-life, meaningful project. During her UW career, Grindle was selected from a highly competitive applicant pool for an internship at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History last summer. Her project involved indigenous uses of sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest. She also completed a McNair summer internship in 2015 led by UW Department of Anthropology professors James Ahern and Rick Weathermon. Grindle examined the stable isotopes and bone diagenesis of 15th century human remains from Baraceva Cave, Croatia. Thinking of where she came from and where her career is now headed, Grindle never thought in her wildest dreams that she would attend a prestigious Ivy League school, especially coming from a small Wyoming agricultural community. I think one of the biggest obstacles facing rural students is the general lack of anyone around them doing something like this, she says. But, Wyoming applicants are strong applicants because we are different from what Ivy League schools usually get, and diversity on university campuses is really important in order to generate thought. Her career goals are to become a professional archaeologist and research scientist studying the domestication of large-bodied ungulates such as horses, cattle and reindeer. And she would absolutely love working for a museum. The wealth and prestige of Harvard is really intimidating, but it is a cool feeling to know that I come from an everyday, hard-working Wyoming ranching and mining background, and Ill be rubbing elbows with people from a much different upbringing, Grindle says. It goes without saying that my parents are incredibly proud of me and that none of us expected something this big to happen, but, I cant thank my family enough; the support they showed has made my achievements possible. That they supported my pursuit of a field like archaeology rather than a more economically sound option is crazy, and I really appreciate them for it. Toronto, Apr 27 (IBNS): A Canadian man, Victor Omoruyi, charged in connection with a human smuggling ring, made his first court appearance Wednesday morning in a Grand Forks, North Dakota courthouse, media reports said. Omoruyi had allegedly told border officials he was going to Minot in North Dakota, United States of America, to visit friends and family, CBCNews reports said. But he was arrested when the border patrol saw the same vehicle, several hours later, occupied by several people leaving Minot. Omoruyi was the second person charged in connection with an organization that allegedly transported asylum seekers from the United States into Saskatchewan, That same night Omoruyi's wife, Michelle Omoruyi was arrested by RCMP, when she was driving in an isolated area with nine West Africans inside. A large amount of cash, from a house connected to Michelle, was also seized by RCMP. Michelle had been charged of human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act The nine West Africans, after been processed by Canada Border Services agents, were released, said the officials. So far none of the allegations had been proven in court. (Reporting by Asha Bajaj) With science and technology becoming a necessary component of our daily lives and careers, the next generation of schoolchildren will be able to explore and enjoy a fun day of learning at CSNs upcoming Science & Technology Expo. Held on the community colleges North Las Vegas campus each year, the expo partners CSN, the CSN Foundation and the Clark County School District (CCSD). This years expo will be held April 28. The expo promotes science, technology, engineering and mathematics or STEM programs that help prepare students for careers in these exciting and complicated fields. CSN and many community partners from the industry and academia offer this opportunity to spark students interest in scientific and technological professions. These children are part of the generation that could make astonishing discoveries about space and medicine, and will be expected to transform todays dreams into tomorrows technological realities. More than 2,500 students are expected to attend the free educational expo. Community members are also welcome. Passing along our excitement about the STEM fields is one of the most important thing we can do as educators, said Dr. Michael Spangler, dean of CSNs School of Advanced & Applied Technologies. These fields offer high-demand, high-wage careers that are vital to Nevadas economic well-being and our nations future. Koos Neefjes, climate change expert, former United Nations Development Programme policy advisor, and a consultant for development agencies and non-governmental organisations in Vietnam, provides some ideas and lessons for the countrys renewable ambitions. Vietnam needs to increase its electricity supply for socio-economic development. Remote communities and low-income households need power, and the government, Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), and local electricity companies are making efforts to achieve that. Industry needs uninterrupted power because blackouts or backup generators are very costly. Farmers need to pump water. Children need light to study at night. And everybody wants comfort, from a fan, TV, fridge, or air conditioner. In addition, Vietnam needs to take part in the international shift from internal combustion engines to electric transport which will happen over the coming 10-20 years, or sooner. How much more power will be needed is not easy to predict. The government issued a revision of the national Power Development Plan (PDP) in 2016, with reduced long-term power demand projections. Nevertheless, Vietnam would still increase electricity use faster than GDP growth, whereas other countries are aiming for faster GDP growth compared to power demand growth. On the other hand, the shift from petrol and diesel to electricity in transport was not considered in the revised PDP. With a contrast of the governments power development plans as the business-as-usual scenario, an Intelligent Energy Systems and Mekong Economics-authored study of alternative energy scenarios showed that over the period until 2050, Vietnam could transition to a future of 100 per cent renewable energy through energy efficiency measures and the rapid expansion of solar, wind, and biomass-based power. The renewable energy scenarios would be cheaper, cleaner, and would generate more jobs compared to business-as-usual which would still be dominated by coal power. In the transition period, the existing coal power plants would be operating and would gradually use increasing amounts of biomass. In 2016, several developed countries announced their intentions to phase out all coal power plants, though this will take time. In my country, the Netherlands, parliament voted in 2016 in favour of a complete phase-out of coal, which would mean closing five big plants three of which were opened in 2015! These plants are more efficient and less polluting than most coal-power plants in the world, but the international climate change agreements mean that rich countries must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially from coal power. Furthermore, these plants are making financial losses as wholesale power prices are low in Europe because of renewable power from wind and solar parks. The three coal power plants are potentially stranded assets and huge financial losses are likely to be incurred: building them may have been a costly mistake. In the state of Kentucky in the US there is a coal mining museum that is saving money with a solar photovoltaic (PV) system on its roof. Kentucky is still producing coal, but this case shows the future: coal is going to belong to history, and the history of coal power will be told using modern and clean energy. Like in the Netherlands or Kentucky, this transition will be gradual in Vietnam and it is strongly driven by costs, which are different for existing and new coal power plants. Most of Vietnams existing coal power plants produce cheap electricity for three reasons: they use low-efficiency technologies; they are partly written-off or fully beyond their economic timeline, so they produce power for the cost of coal, operation, and maintenance only; and they use Vietnamese coal at below world-market prices. But most new or newly-planned coal power plants use imported coal and they must use efficient technology, making them more expensive. The electricity from new coal power plants may cost 9 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) over their economic lifetime, and if they use the most efficient technologies and you add a tax on the greenhouse gas and other pollution that they will still produce, the production cost would increase to 10, 11, or 12 US cents/kWh. This is higher than the feed-in-tariff (FiT) that is currently being paid for wind power in Vietnam (7.8 US cents/kWh) and the newly-approved FiT for solar PV power (9.35 US cents/kWh). And if Vietnam develops renewable energy capacities, the costs of solar PV and wind power are expected to become as low as 3, 4, 5, or 6 US cents/kWh, which is already happening in countries such as Chile and India. Renewable energy is or will soon be cheaper than coal power not to mention its other advantages. Vietnams total power production must increase, and it must do so in the cheapest manner. But cheap means that we must count all costs, including costs of pollution to peoples health and livelihoods, as well as costs to future generations. The necessity to build more power plants offers opportunities to avoid mistakes such as those in the Netherlands. Smart choices must be made, including the following: - Put a stop to new coal power plant development. lIntroduce a carbon tax or fee on the use of coal, and use the revenue for investments in a smart electricity grid or renewable energy. A carbon fee and a Renewable Energy Development Fund are included in the Renewable Energy Development Strategy, which was approved by the prime minister in 2015. - Refurbish existing coal power plants to make them more efficient, as well as suited for absorbing biomass mixed into the coal. - Improve the conditions for private investment in renewable power. This means for example that regulations must be issued for solar PV farms, such as standard power purchase agreements, and net metering regulations for solar PV rooftop systems of households and businesses should be installed so they can reduce their power bills like the museum in Kentucky. - Invest in energy storage capacity, including pumped storage hydro-power lakes that are filled when there is excess solar or wind power and that generate power when there is a shortage. This is already in the national Power Development Plan. - Invest in smart grid infrastructure and equipment, to manage power demand and supply in a dynamic manner, and manage multiple sources of decentralised power production. Vietnam must aim for a clean and green future, with energy for all, modern and efficient industry, and electric transport. Young Vietnamese that I have spoken with almost unanimously agree with that vision, and it is also consistent with government policies. But practical choices made right now affect the long term, because power plants have an economic lifetime of 25 years and they may operate for even longer. Vietnam should lock in a green future with wind turbines and solar PV farms instead of becoming dependent on imported coal for decades. Domestic coal can be used for steel production and to keep feeding existing coal power plants as Vietnam increases renewable power capacity. Existing coal power plants should also be made ready to mix coal with wastes from agriculture or sustainably-produced biomass. Illustration photo 345 projects increased US$4.36 billion in capital, a year-on-year increase of 241.8%. Foreign investors spent US$1.35 billion contributing capital to and purchasing shares from local firms, up 106.8%. The total registered and additional capital in four months reached US$10.95 billion, up 40.5%. As of April 20, US$4.8 billion in FDI were disbursed, up 3.2%. The export value of the foreign-invested sector attained US$44.05 billion (including crude oil), up 16.1% and accounting for 71.82% of the total export value. The processing and manufacturing sector took the lead in attracting FDI with US$7.36 billion, accounting for 69.53%. The mining and retails sales sectors occupied the second and third positions with US$1.28 billion and US$546.68 million, making up 12% and 5.16%, respectively. Among 83 nations and territories investing in Viet Nam, the Republic of Korea was the largest investor with US$4.05 billion, accounting for 38.25%. It was followed by Japan and Singapore with US$1.85 billion and US$1.1 billion, respectively. The northern province of Bac Ninh led in attracting FDI with US$2.7 billion, making up 25.51%, followed by the southern provinces of Binh Duong and Kien Giang with US$1.53 billion and US$1.28 billion, respectively. GE was the EPC contractor together with its consortium partner CMC Engineering for the power plant and it successfully delivered the project on time and within budget. Located in the Manjung complex in the state of Perak, TNB Manjung 4 is Southeast Asia's first ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant and a critical part of Malaysia's energy diversification policy. Manjung 4 is the single largest unit in Southeast Asia and produces enough electricity to power nearly two million households. Manjung 4 was built in four years and commenced commercial operations on April 14, 2015. Using GEs ultra-supercritical combustion technology, the plant can generate electricity with lower emissions up to 10 per cent more efficiently than the global average of coal fired power plants. Each additional percentage point in efficiency reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 2 per cent, as well as lowering plant operating and overall lifecycle costs. During its operation, Manjung 4 has met or exceeded original performance commitments to deliver more value to TNB. In addition to its incredible efficiency, the plant has also achieved extremely high availability, particularly during the second year of operation. The plant has achieved 94.5 per cent availability in its first two years of operation, exceeding its target rate while allowing TNB to reliably deliver full base load to the grid. The energy demands of Southeast Asia are growing and coal remains a vital part of the energy mix. By bringing reliable, affordable, and efficient solutions to the Manjung 4 plant, we have proven that coal can continue to play an essential role in meeting the regions growing energy needs reliably and sustainably, said Andreas Lusch, president and CEO, GE Steam Power Systems. Manjung 4 represents the latest step in the evolution of coal-powered plants and demonstrates the potential for ultra-supercritical technology to lower emissions while responding to growing energy demands across Southeast Asia, Lusch added. Manjung 4 has sophisticated environmental control technology to significantly reduce SO2 and NOx emissions up to 70 per cent compared to other Manjung units. GEs Seawater Flue Gas Desulfurisation (FGD) system achieves more than 90 per cent SO2 removal, setting Manjung 4 at 200mg/Nm3, significantly below World Bank standards of 750 mg/Nm3. Acknowledging its world-class EPC capabilities that enable power producers such as TNB to deliver on both their power and environmental commitments within a very dynamic industry, GE Steam Power Systems received awards from Asian Power and International Project Management Association for this project. The Vietnamese power sector is making strides in a more sustainable direction, but it will need help from all businesses to truly go green Photo: Le Toan State-run Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) has just adopted a resolution on developing solar photovoltaic (PV) power, in an aim to generate more power for the countrys fast-approaching need. If this bold move manifests into action, EVN will be the first state-owned firm in Vietnam to develop renewable energy. From the past till now, EVN and the state-run giants PetroVietnam and Vinacomin have mainly produced power from coal, with some hydropower plants thrown in. But in the near future, EVN will develop two solar PV power projects, with one on the land of Tri An Hydropower Plant in the southern province of Dong Nai, and another on the water surface of Da Mi Hydropower Plant in the south-central province of Binh Thuan. In addition, EVN has worked with Ninh Thuan authorities on constructing a 200-megawatt (MW) solar PV plant on an area of 400 hectares in the south-central provinces Ninh Phuoc district, with an investment of about VND8 trillion ($363.64 million). This project is scheduled to commence construction next year and become operational in 2019. EVNs other solar PV power projects will be developed in localities with big solar potential, such as the Central Highlands, south-central, and southern regions. These projects will also be located in areas near EVNs existing electricity sources, on the water surface of EVNs hydroelectricity reservoirs, and also on the land of the firms hydropower plants. This is aimed at helping these projects reduce construction costs and conveniently connect with national power grids. In line with the development strategy of Vietnams power industry and Green Growth Strategy (GGS), passed by the prime minister in September 2012, EVNs upcoming renewable projects will be among many other privately-owned coal-fired and renewable power projects that the country is developing. All of which will supply more electricity to Vietnam, which is now suffering from energy shortages. Power mix Vietnams current reliance on fossil fuels cause great amounts of environmental pollution, but GGS shows how the future can become more sustainable, green, and clean. GGS proposes to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and reinforce renewable energy development. Under GGS, the government mandates that national energy security must be ensured with the development of assorted energy sources and that new renewable energy sources are encouraged for development. To support GGS, Vietnam adopted the Renewable Energy Development Strategy (REDS) in November 2015 and the revised Power Development Plan VII (PDP) (2011-2020, with a vision to 2030) in March 2016. These policies reduce the projected coal imports for power generation in 2030. REDS sets hydroelectricity and renewable energy targets for biomass, wind, and solar PV electricity production through 2020, 2030, and (tentatively) 2050. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) reported that Vietnams power consumption grew 11 per cent during the period during 2011-2014, and is expected to grow 9.1 per cent during 2016-2020. The US Trade and Development Agency cited EVN estimates that that around $123.8 billion will need to be channeled into national power system development over the next two decades. Spending would average $6.8 billion per year. In the 2013-2015 period, this amount averaged nearly $5 billion per year. Of this, 66.6 per cent was spent on power plants and the remaining 33.4 per cent on network development. In order to meet this big demand for power, the Vietnamese government has chosen to develop coal-fired power plants despite possible environmental risks, while also pursuing renewable energy development. In the revised PDP VII, coal remains the most important future power source by far and an ambitious programme of coal-based power development remains in place. The adjusted coal targets still require completion of nearly 100 coal-fired power units within several new and existing coal power plants between 2016 and 2030. These nearly 100 units are listed in Decision No.428/QD-TTg issued on March 18, 2016. Also under the plan, renewable energy would make up 6 per cent of total annual electricity production in 2030, including biomass and wind-based power, but coal-based power would be by far the dominant source with 56.4 per cent. Coal-fired power Currently, Vietnam has 19 coal-fired power plants. The government has announced plans to build another 14 plants of this type in the Mekong Delta by 2030, adding a total capacity of about 18 gigawatts (GW) to the southern power grid. On April 12, Japanese energy firm J-Power came to the central province of Quang Ngai to work with local authorities about its plan to build a coal-fired power plant in the provinces Dung Quat Economic Zone. Jahana Takashi, director of the International Development Business Department of J-Power Electricity, said the firm wants the local government to allow it to conduct a site survey and make a pre-feasibility study for the project. The project will include two stages. In the first stage, the project will have a total capacity of 2.4GW, going online in 2028. In the second stage, the plant will add 2GW of capacity, going online in 2030. Coal used for the plant will be imported from Australia, Russia, and Indonesia. It may also be locally sourced. This project has received a nod from the local authorities. Singapores Sembcorp Development also plans to construct a 1.2GW coal-fired plant under a 25-year build-operate-transfer model in this province. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), coal-based power will make up over half of Vietnams power mix by 2030. The main reasons for these plans are that Vietnam needs a large amount of power to support its economic growth; Vietnam has substantial coal reserves; and coal is seen as a cheap source of power. In addition, Vietnam lacks the public financial capital for expansion of its power supply, and international private financiers and equipment and construction companies remain interested in investing in coal-fired power plants in Vietnam. But all these reasons can be challenged, said a UNDP report on Vietnams power mix. According to UNDP, national energy security is deteriorating as increased fossil fuel imports are required to meet the rising energy demand. Vietnam is becoming a net importer of coal. By 2030, Vietnam targets a total electricity production capacity of 146.8GW, of which 75GW is forecast to be supplied by coal-fired plants, according to the UNDP report. Reducing the rate of growth in domestic energy use, combined with the expansion of domestic, renewable energy sources, will significantly reduce Vietnams dependency on international energy markets and thereby enhance national energy security. This is also an opportunity for Vietnam to adjust its future power development plans, which rely heavily on imported coal, said another UNDP report on Vietnams green growth and fossil fuel policies. Renewables According to MoIT, in parallel to the development of coal power, the government is calling on investors to invest more in renewable energy, such as wind power, solar power, and biomass power. Vietnam has great potential to develop these types of energy. Over the past few years, only 7MW of solar PV capacity has been installed in Vietnam, with around 2MW drawn from rooftop solar arrays, though dozens of foreign investors have come to Vietnam in search of investment into renewable energy projects. According to UNDP, the future of electricity supply in Vietnam can be strongly based on renewable energy. This would help limit the countrys growing dependency on energy imports, including coal imports. For example, recently in Ninh Thuan, Singapores Nexif Energy worked with authorities on several wind and solar power projects in the province. These projects have received the thumbs-up from the authorities. It is expected that the investor will officially submit their investment proposals to the province in the near future. Earlier this month, Singapores Sinenergy Holdings inked a memorandum of understanding with the government of Ninh Thuan for a 300MW solar power plant in combination with high-tech agricultural production in Ninh Phuoc district. The 832ha, VND7.92 trillion ($360 million) project will annually produce over 550 million kWh per year. It is expected that the project will commence construction in February 2018 and begin operation in July 2019. Also in Ninh Thuan, local company Thien Tan Group is co-operating with US firm Black & Veatch Group to make a feasibility study for implementing a $2 billion, 1GW solar power project. Also in this province, Canadian company CMX Renewable Energy planned to construct a 250ha, 150MW solar power plant worth $150 million. In the nearby province of Binh Thuan, US-based ACO Investment Group also expressed an interest in building a 50MW solar power farm. Vietnam has sufficient indigenous energy resources to meet all its energy needs, from natural gas, renewable energy, and investment in energy efficiency, Gavin Smith, director of the Clean Development Fund at Dragon Capital Management Limited, told VIR. The fund has invested in solar, small hydro, waste, and clean water projects. Vietnam has excellent onshore wind resources in Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan, abundant solar resources are available throughout southern Vietnam. The future of waste heat recovery from plants like cement, steel, and fertiliser plants could be very great, Smith said. According to the Ministry of Planning and Investments Foreign Investment Agency, currently Vietnam has about 110 foreign-invested electricity and gas projects, of which 16 are in the clean energy sector with total registered capital of $778 million. Of this, $577 million is for wind power, $137.38 million is for solar power, and the remaining is for biomass power. US renewable energy firms are responding to the latest moves from the Vietnamese government in the renewable energy sector. While the capital costs of wind, solar, and other renewable energy technologies continue to fall worldwide, Vietnam has yet to benefit from the lower prices and the necessary private investments called for in the revised Power Development Plan VII (PDP VII) for renewable energy. These renewable firms have been settling cautiously into Vietnam but looking to the international market for their operations, while keeping an eye on local market movements. US firms in Vietnam with a corporate policy of a zero carbon footprint have difficulty meeting those standards here. US companies, in co-operation with the governments of both Vietnam and the US, are promoting technology and know-how nevertheless. This is seen by such joint co-operation events as Energy/Smart Cities Ho Chi Minh City at Saigon Hi-Tech Park on April 20, and Meet the USA in the city on June 7, both in co-operation with the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham). At both events, renewable and energy-efficient technologies will be highlighted, showing what can be done with renewable energy farms and micro-grids for industrial parks, solar, and smart city technology. Last December, the newly-formed US Energy Industry Group in Vietnam and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) met in Hanoi to hear and discuss US technology and the Amcham-sponsored Made-in-Vietnam Energy Plan, which supports the greater use of clean technology in Vietnams 2016-2030 plans. Some American companies explained the latest technology and how they could benefit Vietnam in the sectors of solar, wind, energy efficiency, and waste-to-energy. US engineering know-how and technology are now active in local renewable and energy-efficient projects under private sector contracts. Capacity-building for Vietnam is taking place in the quality-control engineering of wind turbine construction and erection. So far 16 of 27 turbines have benefited from this in central coast and highlands projects. Over 35 community solar projects using US-engineered design, technology, and capacity-building have taken place in the Mekong Delta. US companies, architects, and engineers have worked together to construct and operate some of the worlds most energy-efficient buildings, some of which have reached the LEED Gold level. But risks are slowing much-needed private sector investments in renewable energy. The risks of being unable to finance the current power development plan are also high. The Made-in-Vietnam Energy Plan estimates that the PDP VIIs investment requirements average around $6.9 billion annually between 2015 and 2020, and rise to $11.4 billion annually between 2020 and 2030. For comparison, Electricity of Vietnams (EVN) annual capacity-building investment, as stated in its annual reports, was $2.3 billion in 2013 and $2.8 billion in 2014. This financing gap will need to be covered by private sector investment, from domestic and foreign sources. Only small, limited loans are now available from international financial institutions and donors, due to Vietnams economic status. But in Vietnam, the regulatory environment and policy decisions have not attracted growth to renewable energy. Total clean energy investment in 2014 in Vietnam was estimated at just $67 million, and has fallen sharply from $821 million in 2009 with the discouragement of new hydropower projects. Strategies need to be implemented to attract projects that are bankable and reduce the need for government guarantees. The use of renewable energy is also becoming increasingly important for many major multinational corporations. Increasingly, multinational companies are emphasising the importance of their global partners using clean energy to power their facilities and support their investments for this purpose. More and more companies are looking to continually reduce their carbon emissions per unit of output by promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy supplies. Producing standardised power purchase agreements (PPA) took over a year in wind and waste-to-energy, which is too long, and is part of the reason why Vietnam has not seen investments like the above. Private sector investors also point to the fact that PPAs issued by EVN which has no credit rating are considered risky by private banks and investors. The Vietnamese government is not in a position to give a government guarantee to EVN to offset risk. The private sector points to donor banks to provide such guarantees in a manner used in other countries. The renewable energy sector is new and has few experienced planners, engineers, and contractors creating a need for expensive foreign inputs until local capacities are established. The proposed feed-in tariff is not enough to offset risks and make commercially-feasible investments. Technical standards for connection between the national power grid and renewable energy projects have yet to be determined. Last weeks meeting between the Vietnam Business Forums Power and Energy Working Group and the World Bank was a step in the right direction. In the meeting, the World Bank announced that it would assist EVN in establishing its credit rating, and provide other support towards a financially viable power sector. The World Bank appointed a liaison to represent the private sector, and both parties agreed to regular meetings. This is what progress looks like for the renewable sector in Vietnam. To solve these capital issues, the needs of the market must be heard. Taiwanese trekker Liang Sheng-yueh (L), who was rescued after being stranded in the Himalayas for 47 days, talks with a nutritionist in a hospital in Kathmandu. (AFP/PRAKASH MATHEMA) Liu Chen-chun, 19, died just three days before the rescue team located the couple in northwest Nepal, but her boyfriend managed to survive despite running out of food. Liang Sheng-yueh, 21, is being treated in hospital in Kathmandu where he was airlifted after being rescued from the steep slope where the couple had been trapped for over a month. "He was sleeping when we found them," one of the rescuers Madhav Basnyat told AFP. "He woke up after he heard us. We were very surprised to find him alive. He said that the girl died three days earlier." Basnyat said that the two had followed a river downhill in the hope of finding a village but became stuck when they reached the edge of a waterfall and were unable to climb back up. "They had been trapped there for 47 days when we reached," he said. Speaking haltingly and in broken English as he sipped hot soup, Liang told AFP it had been "very cold" on the mountain, and difficult to sleep. Doctors treating Liang said that he had lost 30 kilos and maggots had infested his right leg. "When he was brought in he had maggots and was starved because he hadn't eaten," Sanjay Karki, his doctor said. The couple survived on potatoes and noodles until they ran out of food and had to keep going on water alone. Liang's father had travelled to Nepal after the couple went missing and chartered a helicopter to search for them. Spring is peak season in Nepal's snow-capped peaks, a popular hiking destination with around 150,000 trekkers visiting the Annapurna and Everest regions every year. European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker (R) and British Prime Minister Theresa May pose for a photograph outside 10 Downing Street in London. (Justin TALLIS/AFP) LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May hosted a "useful working dinner" with key EU Brexit negotiators on Wednesday (Apr 26), as the bloc hardens its position ahead of a summit to lay down its "red lines". May greeted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker outside 10 Downing Street ahead of their first face-to-face talks since she triggered the two-year process of withdrawing from the European Union. EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier also attended what Downing Street described afterwards as a "useful working dinner", joined by Britain's Brexit minister David Davis and finance minister Philip Hammond. The EU has toughened its strategy, making new demands over financial services, immigration and the bills Britain must settle before ending its 44-year-old membership in the bloc. Ahead of the meeting May's spokesman predicted the rights of EU citizens would be on the table, although Downing Street gave little detail of the dinner discussions. "The PM had a constructive meeting this evening with President Juncker of the European Commission. "Following the UK's letter of notification under Article 50, she reiterated the UK's commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union," a statement from the prime minister's office said. The EU's latest draft negotiating guidelines, agreed on Monday by Barnier and European diplomats, point to months of difficult talks ahead as Brussels seeks to ensure Britain does not get a better deal outside the bloc than inside. According to the document, seen by AFP, the other 27 EU countries will seek to hold Britain liable for the bloc's costs for at least a year after it leaves in 2019 - longer than was previously proposed. Britain will also be required to give EU citizens permanent residency after living there for five years, in a challenge for May's Conservative government, which has vowed to limit immigration. The guidelines recommend that Britain's dominant finance industry will not necessarily be covered by any future trade deal with the EU and that it must also stick to the bloc's rules if it wants easy access to EU markets. May has committed to pulling Britain out of Europe's single market to end free movement of EU citizens into Britain, but says she wants to form a new partnership with the bloc. Ahead of the dinner Davis said there would be "difficult issues to confront" in the negotiations, but the chief Brexiteer asserted that Britain "has a very good reason to feel optimistic". 'SIZE MATTERS' IN TRADE After starting the Article 50 process of leaving the EU last month, May is seeking to shore up her mandate for the Brexit talks in a snap election on Jun 8, with polls suggesting her Conservatives will return with an increased majority. In recent weeks, she has held talks with senior EU figures, including European Parliament President Antonio Tajani and European Council chief Donald Tusk, who visited Downing Street on Apr 6. But Poland's EU transport commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska warned in an interview with Germany's Die Welt newspaper that Britain "can't have everything in the end. They can't have their cake and eat it". And Ireland's EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan said Britain was no competition for the bloc when it came to securing trade deals. "It will be a long time before the UK gets a third country deal ahead of the EU. There's been clear evidence of that in recent times," he told reporters in Brussels. "Size matters when it comes to trade deals." The leaders of the other 27 EU nations will meet on Apr 29 to set down the bloc's red lines, though the talks will not begin until June. Customers at the Co.opmart supermarket buy pork that has clear origin and meets VietGap standards. - VNS Photo The price of live pigs has dropped to a record VND20,000-23,000 (US$0.87-$1.32) per kilo in recent days mostly because of oversupply, causing big losses for farmers. According to a Saigon Co.op spokesperson, from April 25 to May 2, Co.opmart supermarkets and the Co.op Food chain will cut pork prices by 10-20 per cent to promote sales. It has reduced sale prices, but has kept purchase prices unchanged to support farmers. After the discounts, a kilo of pork thigh or pork shoulder is now sold at around VND60,000 at Co.opmart and Co.op Food. The price is VND52,800 a kilo for pigs trotters; VN66,000 a kilo for pigtails and VND70,000 a kilo for minced pork; and VND48,000 a kilo for pork shank. Co.opmart and Co.op Food have also cut prices of pork-based prepared and ready-to-eat food. All the pork products have met food hygiene and safety regulations in addition to VietGap standards, and have clear label of origin. Nguyen Anh Duc, deputy general director of Saigon Co.op, said Co.opmart and Co.op Food had reduced pork prices to encourage consumption, while keeping buying prices unchanged to support farmers. Depending on the market in coming days, Saigon Co.op will continue to adjust prices in the spirit of support for farmers, he said. Big C Vietnam also cut prices by 8 per cent on all pork products since April 25. This is its third adjustment since March, raising the total discount rate by 20 per cent. Ho Quoc Nguyen, PR director for Central Group Vietnam, said pork sold at Big C was supplied by businesses under the citys price stabilisation programme. Input pork prices have not seen major fluctuations, but the retailer has updated market prices to adjust sales prices to ensure the best deal for consumers. At a meeting between Long An Province and Vissan Joint Stock Company on April 25, Dinh Thi Phuong Khanh, deputy director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said farmers in her province had been suffering from a continuous decline in pig prices since before Tet (Lunar New Year). The price has fallen from VN31,000-33,000 a kilo before Tet to VND 23,000-25,000 a kilo, while the production cost is VND37,000 for each kilo, resulting a total loss of about VND40-45 billion ($1.75 million 1.97 billion). The province has a total of 299,000 pigs, with 30,000-40,000 pigs needed to be sold each month, with 21,578 pigs bred following VietGap standards, she said. Nguyen Dang Phu, deputy general director of Vissan Co, Ltd, said that Vissan understood the difficulties faced by pig farmers due to the relentless fall in pig prices. But, because of regulations ensuring product quality, Vissan will only buy pigs that meet VietGap standards and that are bred under the Livestock Competitiveness and Food Safety Project, as well as pigs that are bred at farms participating in a city programme to trace their origin. Vissan currently sells 1,500 pigs every day from Vissan's own farm as well as from its associated farms. To help the livestock industry of Long An province, Vissan will buy an additional 200 pigs from this province each day. But the pigs must meet VietGap standards, he said. At a meeting in Ha Noi on April 24, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong called on large animal husbandry businesses to increase their purchase of pigs and keep them in frozen storage in order to help farmers reduce inventories and stop the downward price spiral. As scheduled, the ministry will meet with authorities, businesses and farmers in Dong Nai Province on April 27 and in HCM City on April 28 to discuss measures to boost consumption of the meat. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks about the administration's tax reform plan during The Hill's Newsmaker Series at the Newseum in Washington, DC on Apr 26, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Saul Loeb) However, the plan could face hurdles in Congress, including from some Republicans, as lawmakers are sharply divided over the prospect of fuelling already rising deficits. "This is going to be the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country," US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at a discussion about the proposal. Mnuchin will outline details of the tax plan at the White House later on Wednesday, but confirmed press reports that "the business tax is going to be 15 per cent." He said the administration hopes to push the reform through Congress as quickly as possible although he declined to set a deadline. Earlier this year he said the administration hoped to have tax reform completed before Congress went into its August recess, but that ambition fell by the wayside amid failed efforts to repeal the Obama-era healthcare plan. "We're working hard to get it done quickly," Mnuchin said. "This is part of his big impact for the first 100 days. We have fundamental agreement on what we're trying to do and the details of tax reform are still to be worked out." However, the tax plan's impact the deficit and debt will be key to the chances of winning support in Congress. Analysts have said cutting the top marginal corporate tax rate by 20 percentage points could add US$2 trillion or more to the deficit over a decade. The administration has said tax cuts will spur growth which will bring in tax revenues to make up the difference - a calculation known as "dynamic scoring" which the Trump administration supports. "The difference between 1.6 per cent, 1.8 per cent GDP and three percent is staggering," Mnuchin said, referring to the administration's goal for US economic growth. "It's trillions of dollars of revenues. It's tons of jobs." But economists say this growth effect is not supported by evidence from prior tax cut efforts. WISHFUL THINKING Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office who served in previous Republican administrations, said dynamic scoring is wishful thinking. "There has never been any single credible analysis of dynamic scoring that suggests that taxes pay for themselves," Holtz-Eakin told AFP. The tax cuts could be limited to a 10-year period, but Mnuchin said that would be less than ideal. "If we have them for 10 years, that is better than nothing," he said. "But we'd like to have permanency to it." Mnuchin said the lower corporate rate is aimed at helping small businesses, not the wealthy. "What this is not going to be is a loophole to let rich people who should be paying higher rates pay 15 per cent." Mnuchin also said the administration plans to simplify the process by which Americans declare their income and pay taxes. "For most Americans, we think they should be able to do their taxes on a large postcard," he said at the event, which was hosted by the newspaper The Hill. Meanwhile, the federal government could be forced to shutdown Friday night if lawmakers fail to approve new legislation to allow spending to continue in the absence of a complete budget. The head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia has called on the Khmer Rouge tribunal to include one of the regimes most iconic sites in its list of reparations. Youk Chhang, director of DC-Cam, said in a letter to Marie Guiraud, a lawyer at the tribunal, that the Anlong Veng Peace Center Project should be supported with reparations money. The project, located atop Dangrek Mountain, where one of the regimes most notorious leaders, Ta Mok, was based, was apparently excluded from the list of funded projects as it was a location for the perpetrators and no civil parties lived there, Chhang told VOA Khmer. DC-Cam has supported the Peace Center since 2015 with the aim of bridging the divide between former regime members and Cambodias youth through educational programs. I understand that you have made the decision not to include the Anlong Veng Peace Center in the list of proposed reparation projects in Case 002/02. As I stated in our email correspondence on 21 April 2017, I was not aware until now as to the exact reasons, Chhang said in the letter. Nothing can compensate what we have lost and therefore, all initiatives must be considered and supported at all cost, he told VOA Khmer in an interview. He also criticized the court for not consulting the 17 civil parties from the province before making the decision. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)s legacy must not only be justice and accountability, but also reconciliation. Reparation projects offer a way to extend the impact of the Court in innovative ways that not only benefit Civil Parties and Khmer Rouge Victims, but also bringing the society together, he said, using the formal name for the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Guiraud did not immediately respond to questions, however, in a letter responding to Chhang on April 25, the courts victim support section said the reasons for this decision were no civil parties reside in Anlong Veng, and there was not a sufficient link between the project and the scope of Case 002/02. It was also mentioned that another Peace Center had been already been proposed by another NGO. However, it added that the decision would be reconsidered. Morn Mao, 64, a civil party whos uncle was killed by the regime, said he supported the funding of the Peace Center. It is a site of former Khmer Rouge, but I never thought of taking revenge. I think the center can tell the next generation about the regime led by Khmer Rouge, he told VOA Khmer. Hov Teng, 62, another civil party, who lost 23 relatives under the regime, said he wanted to see more sites developed similar to the Peace Center across the country. I want the Khmer Rouge tribunal to acknowledge the center. Having the center is a good thing, he said. Hong Kimsuon, a lawyer for the civil parties, said the maintenance of such sites can remind the people with bloody hands about the suffering of Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge, and not to have a cruel heart. Farmers must increase organic vegetable production in order to meet local demand, agriculture officials said. Cambodia needs about a million tons of vegetables annually, whereas local supply only makes up about 44 percent of the demand, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization. Hean Vanhorn, a deputy director general at the agriculture ministry, said on Friday that government intervention was needed to boost production. We have to boost vegetable production ... when we have our own products that are quality vegetables, such as vegetables produced [organically], then imports will be stopped, he said. A recent study by the NGO ICCO showed that 95 percent of consumers were concerned about the safety of both domestic and imported produce. Min Sor, executive director of Life With Dignity, a lobby group, said Cambodian farmers are poorly educated on the issue of pesticide use, adding that access to markets was also a problem. Its difficult to transport their products to the market because they have to take a long route and their infrastructure is very remote from the market, he said. In its most recent budget, the government allocated some $46 million to bolster the agricultural sector, with about $20 million earmarked for rice and vegetable production by 2018. But Vanhorn said officials at the agriculture ministry faced difficulties in accessing the funds. It takes quite a while for us to obtain the money, he said, adding that Cambodia also lacks the facilities to monitor food safety. Reports of illness after consuming local produce are not uncommon. Kandal Krom is a small village in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng near Cambodias border with Thailand. Villagers here complain of a lack of clean water and electricity, despite the villages location close to Anlong Veng town. Phat Run, 65, a former Khmer Rouge member, says access to these vital resources will be a big issue at the forthcoming local election in June. She says she wants a new commune chief to be elected to dig wells since we dont have drinking water during the dry season, although she has yet to decide whether to vote for the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party or the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. Another former cadre, Bou Khorn, 61, said she has also yet to decide who to vote for, adding that if a new candidate could ensure a reliable electricity supply to the village, they would likely get her vote. Meanwhile, Uon Roeum, 60, said raising the cost of crops such as rice and cassava would go a long way towards gaining support among the locals in this farming-reliant area. I want the price of cassava to increase. I work very hard, but its cheap. Rice is cheap, so is cassava. I want a new commune chief to help, she said. Chorn Kimchhun, 29, the daughter of a former Khmer Rouge soldier, says she has already decided to vote for the incumbent, because he is not corrupt and helps the people. She said that many of the villagers are concerned about renewed conflict if there is political tensions during the election, while many had heard rumors of threats of war from Hun Sen. Um Meng, the deputy village chief, said neighboring villages faced similar problems of a lack of water and electricity, failures that have gone unexplained to locals. The idea of change, for those in former Khmer Rouge areas, is associated with conflict, says Am Samang, a former council member for the now defunct opposition Sam Rainsy Party. They are afraid that changing the prime minister will lead to war. They dont want to face war again. Most villagers I met are thinking like that, he said. The incumbent commune chief, Vong Pheak, declined to comment. Go and ask people; dont ask me about how people will vote. Im just standing as the candidate, he said. The CPP won seven out of nine council seats in Anlong Veng commune at the last election in 2012, taking more than 8,000 of the 11,500 seats nationwide. Teum Hoeurn, the CNRP candidate, said he expects the opposition to win at least three quarters of the seats at the next election. There has been no solution to the land conflicts for the people, he said. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. With the United Nations voicing deep concerns about the safety of over 400,000 people in the de facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces opened a corridor for thousands escaping from the city. VOA's Mahmoud Bali reports. The common stereotype has teens glued to their phones 24-7. But nearly 60 percent of teens in the U.S. have actually taken a break from social media - the bulk of them voluntarily, a new survey found. The poll, from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, surveyed teens aged 13 to 17 and found that most value the feeling of connection with friends and family that social media provides. A much smaller number associate it with negative emotions, such as being overwhelmed or needing to always show their best selves. The survey, released Thursday, found that teens' social media breaks are typically a week or longer, and that boys are more likely to take longer breaks. Teens were allowed to cite multiple reasons for their breaks. Nearly two-thirds of teens who took a break cited at least one voluntary reason. Amanda Lenhart, the lead researcher and an expert on young people and technology use, said she was surprised by this, as it counters the broader narrative that teens are "handcuffed" to their social media profiles. Today's teenagers might not recall a time before social media. MySpace was founded in 2003. Had it survived, it would be 14 years old today. Facebook is a year younger. Instagram launched in 2010. For an adult to understand what it might be like for someone who grew up with it to step back from social media, consider disconnecting from email - or your phone - for a couple of weeks. Among the teens who took voluntary breaks, 38 percent did so because social media was getting in the way of work or school. Nearly a quarter said they were tired of "the conflict and drama" and 20 percent said they were tired of having to keep up with what's going on. Nearly half of teens who took a break did so involuntarily. This included 38 percent who said their parents took away their phone or computer and 17 percent who said their phone was lost, broken or stolen. The involuntary break "is sort of its own challenge," Lenhart said. "They feel that they are missing out, detached from important social relationships (as well as) news and information." About 35 percent of teens surveyed said they have not taken a break, citing such worries as missing out and being disconnected from friends. Some said they need social media for school or extracurricular activities. "I like to see what my friends and family are up to," said Lukas Goodwin, 14, who uses Instagram and Snapchat every day. He said he took a break from Instagram "a few years ago" but not recently. Now, he says, "I wouldn't want to take a break from them." Among the survey's other findings: - Lower income teens were more likely to take social media breaks than their wealthier counterparts, and their breaks tended to last longer. The study points out that educators who use social media in the classroom need to understand that not every teen is online and connected all the time. - Boys were more likely to feel overloaded with information on social media, while girls were more likely to feel they always have to show the best version of themselves. - Teens who took breaks typically did so across the board, checking out of Facebook, Snapchat and all other services all at once. And they were no more or less likely to take breaks from social media based on the type of services they use. - Although they felt relief and were happy to be away from social media for a while, most teens said things went back to how they were before once they returned to social media. The AP-NORC poll was conducted online and by phone from Dec. 7 to 31. A sample of parents with teenage children was drawn from a probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Parents then gave permission for their children to be interviewed. The panel, AmeriSpeak, is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points. 2 First lady Melania Trump listens as her husband President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri his wife Juliana Awada in the Oval Office of the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump's tougher stance on immigration enforcement has led to an increase in non-criminal arrests, but not an unprecedented one. Trump's January 25 executive order Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States changed the rules governing immigration by opening the door to arrest immigrants whose only crime was being undocumented. In the last two years of his term, President Barack Obama had largely confined immigrant arrests to those who had committed a serious crime. From January to March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says it arrested 21,362 immigrants. Out of those, 5,441 were of non-criminals. In 2016, under the previous administration, 2,278 non-criminals were arrested. During the same months in 2015, that number was 2,342. But non-criminal arrests were dramatically higher in early 2014 when 7,483 immigrants, not convicted of a crime, were arrested. Later in November 2014, Obama changed his detention policies to shield non-criminals. trump Deportation numbers The ICE report also includes removal figures people who were arrested and deported to their home country. Between January and March of this year, ICE conducted 54,936 removals of individuals illegally in the country. Almost half of those deported were non-criminals. Sarah Rodriguez, an ICE spokeswoman, said over email that removal figures can fluctuate by month based on a number of factors, so a few months' removal statistics should not be used to determine any long-term trend. And TRAC, the Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, reports that U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issuances of NTAs (notice to appear) that initiate proceedings in Immigration Court prior to removal continues to be about the same. TRAC, which has been building a baseline using case-by-case records of both apprehensions and removals, cautions that delays in filing and recording make the numbers very preliminary and that many of the NTAs appearing during Trump's first three months were initiated during the Obama administration. But the TRAC data does show a sharp difference in whether people are detained or released while their cases are being tried. TRAC says only 25 percent of people arrested under the three-month Trump administration have been released; the rest remain detained. During the eight-year term of President Barack Obama, about 54 percent of those arrested were later released. ICE field offices Some ICE offices showed more activity than others. Atlanta, Chicago and Dulles showed, from Jan. 20 to March 13, the highest arrest numbers of immigrants without criminal convictions. ICE's Atlanta office arrested 697 undocumented immigrants without criminal records. In 2016, that number was 137. Other ICE offices doubled or tripled their arrests of criminal and non-criminal undocumented immigrants. Local authorities worried Increased arrests and the fear of additional arrests have some local officials worried because they fear that immigrants will stop reporting crimes. Drops in crime reports have been reported in the Washington D.C. area, Houston, and Los Angeles. We're hearing from many cities throughout the United States that right now folks, immigrants and Latinos, are less likely to report a crime if they are a victim or less likely to step up as witness if they witness a crime because of the fear of deportation," Jorge Elorza, mayor of Providence in the state of Rhode Island, said after a group of mayors had an hour-long meeting at the Department of Justice with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Rodriguez said ICE recognizes the importance of crime victims and witnesses coming forward, and the agency will work closely with state and local law enforcement to see that foreign nationals who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking crimes are informed about the availability of special visas to enable them to remain in the U.S. Public safety is top priority The mayors were all in agreement that their first priority is to maintain public safety, and they vowed to resist any suggestion of transferring local resources to enforce immigration laws. We certainly are going to resist any suggestion that we transfer those resources and to focus on (undocumented) folks that forgot to put a turning signal on or perhaps didn't fully stop at a stop sign, Elorza said. Local police do not have the resources or the time to act as federal immigration agents, mayors said. It erodes the trust that quite frankly cities like Austin have spent a lot of time and a lot of money, Steve Adler, Mayor of Austin, Texas, told reporters. Earlier this week a U.S. District judge in San Francisco put a temporary stay on a Trump executive order threatening to cut off federal funding to local governments that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities to detain illegal immigrants arrested in criminal cases, often for minor offenses. Trump has vowed to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. Arkansas will reach the end of an aggressive execution schedule Thursday as it prepares for a fourth lethal injection in a week after initially planning twice as many over an 11-day period. Kenneth Williams, 38, is set to die for killing a former deputy warden following an escape. Each of several stay requests has been rejected or overturned, and it will take a court order to prevent his execution at 7 p.m. Thursday. The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied all requests for stays of execution from Inmate Kenneth Williams, Judd Deere, a spokesman for Arkansas attorney general, said in an email after the justices ruled in a case Wednesday. Legal injection drug expires With one of its lethal injection drugs set to expire at the end of April, Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over the final two weeks of April. That would have been the most in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. If Williams is put to death in the Cummins Unit prison at Varner, the state would have carried out four since last Thursday, including a double execution Monday, the nations first since 2000. Courts issued stays for four of the inmates. Arkansas supply of midazolam, normally a surgical sedative, expires Sunday. The Arkansas Department of Correction has said it has no new source for the drug, though it has made similar remarks previously yet still found a new stash. State officials have declared the string of executions a success, using terms like closure for the victims families. The inmates have died within 20 minutes of their executions beginning, a contrast from midazolam-related executions in other states that took anywhere from 43 minutes to two hours. The inmates lawyers have said there are still flaws, and that there is no certainty that the inmates arent suffering while they die. In an emergency hearing by telephone, held after the first of Mondays executions, Jeff Rosenzweig, a lawyer for death row inmates, told a federal judge that Jack Jones Jr.s mouth moved several times when he should have been unconscious. Jones spiritual adviser described it as a sort of gurgling. An observer from the state attorney generals office said it was snoring; deep, deep sleep. One minute after the conference call ended, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker allowed the second execution, of Marcel Williams, to proceed. Based upon what the court has learned from the eyewitnesses in regard to the execution, the court finds no support for a claim and an allegation that the execution appeared to be torturous and inhumane, Baker said in a transcript of the hearing released Wednesday. Linked to four deaths Kenneth Williams was sentenced to death for killing Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop. He left the prison, where the execution chamber is located in another part of the facility, less than three weeks into a life prison term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. At the conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young womans family by turning to them after the sentence was announced and saying You thought I was going to die, didnt you? After jumping from the barrel, he sneaked along a tree line until reaching Borens house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Borens truck and then drove away to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. At the time of Borens death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction. On Wednesday, a top official with the European Union, which opposes capital punishment, urged Gov. Asa Hutchinson to cancel the Thursday execution. EU Ambassador to the U.S. David OSullivan said the letter was an urgent humanitarian appeal on Williams behalf. The EU recognizes the serious nature of the crimes involved, and wishes to express its sincere sympathies to the surviving families and friends of the victims, the letter said. However, the European Union does not believe that their loss will be mitigated by the death of Mr. Williams. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Thursday that the U.K. will probably join the United States in further military action against Syria if asked to do so, whether or not Parliament gets a vote on it. Johnson said it would be "very difficult to say no" if the U.S. sought British help for a military mission against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. British lawmakers in 2013 rejected a request by then-Prime Minister David Cameron to authorize U.K. airstrikes in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons. Britain is part of an international coalition targeting the Islamic State group in Syria, but has not taken military action against Assad. Asked if Parliament would be asked to approve any new military deployment ahead of time, Johnson said "I think it would be very difficult for us to say no. How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the government, for the prime minister." Parliament will be dissolved next week ahead of Britain's June 8 election, so lawmakers would not be able to vote on a request for military assistance before then. President Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile attack against a Syrian air base earlier this month in response to Assad's apparent use of a banned nerve agent against a rebel-controlled area. U.S. officials have said further attacks are likely if Assad uses chemical weapons again. Johnson's remarks appeared intended to signal to voters that the Conservative government is tough on security and defense. He contrasted the stance to that of opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a foreign-policy dove who wants Britain to give up its nuclear weapons. Writing in The Sun newspaper, Johnson called Corbyn "a mutton-headed old mugwump" with "no grasp of the need for this country to be strong in the world." Corbyn said he would not be "reduced to personal name-calling," and said the priority for Syria was finding a political solution to the conflict. "We approach this in a responsible, serious way I leave that kind of language to others," he said. 3 Demonstrators march marking the 31st anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Minsk, Belarus, April 26, 2017. About 400 people have marched in the capital of Belarus to mark the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster and protest the construction of a nuclear plant in Belarus. One of the key messages that came out of President Donald Trumps meeting with U.S. lawmakers on North Korea was a renewed emphasis on the need to use sanctions and diplomacy to try and pressure Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. And while the outlook for the resumption of talks remains bleak at best, analysts say, Chinas support in that effort is key. How far Beijing is prepared to go to tighten the screws and support that effort is a big question. Further energy cuts? Analysts in China say the government is already doing all it can to keep the North in check. China cut coal imports from North Korea earlier this year and has been tightening financial flows to the North. Lu Chao, a North Korea scholar at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in northeast China says all Chinese banks have stopped banking with their North Korean counterparts. China has imposed the harshest sanctions ever against North Korea, the effect of which may take some time to kick in, but they will be effective, Lu says. Over the past week, the price of gasoline has surged in North Korea and some suspect Beijing is behind the price hike. It is not clear what caused the spike. Some analysts say North Korea could be stockpiling gas for fear that imports could soon be banned. Others say that when tensions rise, the military gets priority. China is unlikely to take unilateral action when it comes to sanctions, analysts say. But, tighter energy restrictions, including bans on Pyongyangs import of gasoline and other energy could be coming soon if North Korea continues to violate United Nations resolutions. Such a move would have a big impact on North Koreas overall development of its nuclear weaponry, missile technology as well as its economy, says Cai Jian, director of the Center for Korea Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. It will also affect the livelihood of its people. So, we have to be cautious about these harsh sanctions, which should only be imposed as a last resort." No longer lips and teeth China has long been seen as one of North Koreas closest allies, ties that used to frequently be described as close as lips and teeth, but relations have taken a downturn since Kim Jong Un came to power. Six-party talks on ending North Koreas nuclear weapons program have been stalled since late 2007. And Kim Jong Un has shown little interest in returning to talks. Since taking over, he has carried out three nuclear tests and more than a dozen missile launches. Military analysts say another nuclear test could be held soon. Unlike his father, Kim Jong Un has not visited China. His uncle, Kim Song Thaek, who had close ties with Beijing and was an advocate of opening up the reclusive countrys economy, was executed in late 2013. Although Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last month described the U.S. and North Korea as two accelerating trains that are set for a head-on collision, as of Wednesday, there are no indications that a U.S. military strike against Pyongyang is imminent. President Donald Trump, however, has insisted he will no longer adhere to his predecessors policy of strategic patience toward North Korea. This suggests the administration is willing to consider the possibility of military action to prevent the North from developing a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland. Amid this U.S.-North Korea standoff, it remains unclear whether China would respond with force to U.S. military action against the reclusive regime. China unlikely to act Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS organization in Honolulu, said he doubts China would take action. The Chinese arent going to war over a very ungrateful friend, given that the North Koreans have insulted and undermined Chinese national interests over the last couple of years. But some analysts say as long as any U.S. attack against North Korea aligns with Chinas interests, Beijing will accept the U.S. action. Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, pointed out that the Chinese leadership has described Sino-North Korean relations several times as normal state-to-state relations, adding such a perception intimates that the 1961 alliance treaty, which guarantees Chinese military support for the North Korean regime, has become outmoded. US must consult China Any U.S. attack on North Korea, without Chinas consent, would, however, reinvigorate the treaty, spurring North Koreas last remaining major ally to safeguard the regime, Cheng added. It depends on how the U.S. strike is launched, said Yun Sun, a senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center. If the U.S. launches a pre-emptive strike against North Korea without any consultation with China, China will very likely react militarily to such a strike. A recent editorial in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the Global Times, suggests that if Washington conducts a pre-emptive strike against North Korean nuclear facilities, Beijing would not militarily intervene. The editorial set forth a red line, however, stating that if South Korean and U.S. troops cross the inter-Korean border and try to topple the Kim Jong Un regime, Beijing would get involved militarily. Scoop up the nukes Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst with the Rand Corp., stressed that the line of demarcation between surgical strikes and a full-scale war is far from precise. Bennett said if a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, Chinas deployment of its ground troops seems inevitable, but the country likely will focus on instituting a pro-China regime or seizing North Koreas missile and nuclear sites, rather than a war with U.S.-South Korea joint military forces. Look, a pre-emptive strike, if we hit one airfield, were not going to do the job that needs to be done, he said. He pointed out that other than the widely known nuclear facilities, North Korea is believed to have numerous fortified underground sites across the country. We have to hit dozens of targets, Bennett said. If we hit dozens of targets, its going to take days, if not weeks, of strikes that make a difference against North Korea. Thats a big war. On Tuesday, a U.S. submarine designed to carry 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles entered a South Korean port. The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group also is heading to the region and conducting naval exercises with Japan and South Korea. Also this week, the U.S. began moving part of the THAAD missile defense system to its deployment site 250 kilometers south of Seoul. VOAs Jenny Lee contributed to this report. A Burkina Faso court has postponed the start of the trial of ex-president Blaise Compaore and his former Cabinet. The accused are being tried for their alleged role in the violent crackdown on the 2014 uprising that ultimately ended Compaores nearly three decades in power. The much-anticipated trial of former president Blaise Compaore and almost his entire former Cabinet was supposed to start Thursday. But instead, it was adjourned before it even began. According to sources within the Ministry of Justice, there was a scheduling conflict. The Lawyers' Association of Burkina Faso is holding its annual reunion. So the lawyers were at their official banquet, and not at the trial. A few showed up but only to request the hearing be adjourned. This was granted by the courts president, Mathieu Ouedraogo. The former government is on trial for allegedly authorizing the use of force against protesters in late October 2014. The popular uprising would cost Compaore his presidency. According to the official toll, 24 people lost their lives during those two days but the case before the court concerns the death of seven demonstrators, shot dead allegedly by security forces. In all, 31 members of the former government are on trial. Compaore is being tried in his capacity as minister for defense, a post he also held at the time of his ouster. Much of Burkina Faso's civil society, which drove the uprising and has documented abuses that went on at the time, is turning its back on the proceedings. A prominent civil society figure present at the court Thursday made an impromptu statement immediately after the adjournment. Safiatou Lopez Zongo said that she held no hope at all that justice would be served. This is a spectacle, on behalf of people who are guiding this from behind their desks, though she declined to name exactly who those people might be. Proponents of the trial say it sends a clear signal clear that nobody can escape justice, but critics dismiss it as political score settling. According to Issaka Lingani, the editor in chief of L'Opinion, which is close to the former ruling party, the trial serves to clear up the remaining bits of the previous government. Justice, in his opinion, will never be served. NGO's have pointed accusing fingers at the military, especially the now-disbanded special presidential guard. They are allegedly responsible for the deaths and injuries that occurred in October 2014. But no military personnel are on trial today. Why? That question remains unanswered. The prosecutor was not available for an interview. As for Compaore, he remains in Ivory Coast where he fled after his ouster and has since taken citizenship. The trial is now expected to begin May 4. U.S. President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, took more than $500,000 from Turkey and tens of thousands of dollars from Russian interests after being warned in 2014, when he retired as an Army lieutenant general, not to accept payments from foreign governments, new documents show. "We have no evidence, zilch, that he obtained permission from the secretary of the Army and the secretary of state to accept any foreign government payments as required by law," Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Thursday as he released the documents about Flynn. Watch: Department of Defense Investigating Former National Security Adviser One document showed the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general's office had opened its own investigation into whether Flynn sought permission to accept the payments from the foreign governments. That investigation is separate from the congressional probe. These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, Cummings said. WATCH: Cummings on Mike Flynn White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the Defense Department probe of Flynn was "appropriate if they think there is wrongdoing." But Spicer said the Trump administration did not review Flynn's security clearance before he was named national security adviser, relying instead on a 2016 renewal of the clearance during the administration of Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, which occurred after Flynn's 2015 trip to Russia. Among other payments, Flynn was paid $45,000 in 2015 to attend the 10th anniversary of the Kremlin-controlled Russia Today television network, sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a gala dinner. Spicer said Trump "made the right decision at the right time and he continues to stand by it," regarding his firing of Flynn in February after just 24 days on the job. Trump ousted Flynn after it was learned he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Washington in the weeks before Trump assumed power. The retired three-star general was a vocal Trump political supporter during last year's presidential election campaign before Trump named him to the high-level White House job. Flynn's Russian connections are a key component of investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees and the top U.S. law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, into details of the U.S. intelligence community conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. election to boost Trump's chances of winning. Congressional requests denied Cummings said the White House had refused congressional requests to turn over its records related to Flynn's hiring at the White House, which could shed light on whether Trump and other officials knew of the Russian and Turkish payments to Flynn when he was named to the key security position. Earlier this week, Spicer said it had turned over Flynn-related documents to congressional investigators. But Cummings disputed that, saying, "I don't understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn after the president fired him. I don't get it." Cummings said Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House panel, had not followed up and insisted that the White House release more documents, nor had he called Flynn to testify. On Tuesday, however, Cummings and Chaffetz held a joint news conference in which they said Flynn might have broken the law by not disclosing the payments when he filed paperwork last year to renew his security clearance. "As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else and it appears as if he did take that money," Chaffetz said. Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama but was forced out because of his chaotic management style. Later, he started advising Trump on foreign affairs and national security. Fernando Villavicencio knows all too well the risks confronting journalists who expose information that others want to suppress. The Ecuadoran journalist convicted of defaming President Rafael Correa under the countrys harsh communications law has spent parts of the past few years in hiding rather than submit to prison. He already has paid nearly $50,000 in fines. He faces current charges, and a pretrial detention order, for allegedly disseminating private emails of Correa and another official. He and his family have faced long separations, as well as threats of physical harm. The government cannot afford to let my voice be free, he told VOA last month, speaking from an undisclosed location via a Skype audio connection. Last week, the 52-year-old author and founder of the FOCUS Ecuador news website applied for political asylum in Lima, Peru, fearing he would not get a fair trial in the current case. His website was suspended last month. This is basically a political persecution, his wife, Veronica Sarauz, told VOA in a phone interview this week. Villavicencios investigative reporting on government corruption has cost him his liberty. The fact that Villavicencio is seeking asylum is a clear reflection of Ecuadors systematic persecution of critics, Carlos Lauria, the Committee to Protect Journalists senior program coordinator for the Americas, said in a statement last week. CPJ encouraged Peru to grant the pending request and urged Ecuadoran authorities to drop all charges against Villavicencio immediately and allow him to return home without fear for his freedom to work as a journalist. Press freedom in Ecuador has been eroding, according to reports released this week by CPJ and another watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders. RWB scored Ecuador at 105 in declining order among 180 countries. Freedom House, a U.S. government-subsidized NGO that monitors human rights records, last year bluntly described Ecuadors media environment as not free. Its new report is due out Friday. Incessant persecution Since Correa took office in 2007, Ecuador has experienced practically a decade of incessant persecution of police, media, judicial and even economic," Villavicencio told VOA. Ecuadoran authorities did not respond to several VOA requests for comment on Villavicencios case. Soon after Correa became president, the U.S.-educated economist and former Ecuadoran finance minister labeled much of his countrys foreign debt as illegitimate. The OPEC country defaulted on its loans in 2008, setting the stage for later financial dependence on and oil deals with China. Correa also increased public spending, reducing poverty levels from 38 percent in 2006 to below 23 percent in 2014, according to the World Bank report. But, as the BBC noted in a profile, the socialist castigated independent media as his greatest enemy and an impediment to his reforms. Villavicencio first tangled with Correa in 2010 while serving as an aide to an opposition legislator, CPJ explained in a 2014 profile. The president, detained at a police hospital during a police revolt, summoned army troops who killed at least five people. Villavicencio and the lawmaker demanded investigating Correa for perpetrating crimes against humanity. No probe took place. But Correa filed a defamation suit that eventually yielded prison terms and fines for Correa, the lawmaker and a third man. Villavicencio was given 18 months and ordered to pay $47,000 USD. His wife, Sarauz, told VOA she raised $10,000 of the amount through crowdsourcing, then borrowed the rest from friends. We have a debt to finish, she added. Meanwhile, Villavicencio went on the run, hiding out with an Amazon tribe before shifting among a series of safe houses to elude authorities. And he wrote. Villavicencio, who once worked for the national oil firm EP Petroecuador, used his insider knowledge to investigate corruption and environmental degradation linked to the industry. That was the focus of Ecuador: Made in China, a 2013 book. In 2013, the country adopted a communications law that is one of the "most regressive that has been promulgated not only in Ecuador but in the Americas in the last decade," Lauria told VOA. As CPJ explained, Villavicencio then riled up authorities over an article he co-wrote criticizing the governments legal wrangling with the U.S.-based oil company Chevron. The writers were accused of illegally obtaining and disseminating government officials personal emails. Protective order Villavicencio traveled to Washington in 2014 to get a protective order from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ecuadors government said it would not recognize the measure. The latest of Villavicencios nine books The Oil Holiday, published in March contends that intermediaries in Venezuelas oil deals with China profit at the publics expense. Great wealth went to particular pockets, Villavicencio told VOA. His wife promotes the books, not just because of their content but also because royalties support the couple and their three children, ages 17, 12 and 5. But the publicity also has exacted a price. People have called our home and said if I dont shut up, they would attack our youngest kids, Sarauz said. The family and Villavicencios other supporters had hoped that Ecuadors April 2 presidential election might bring an end to what they call his persecution. Conservative candidate Guillermo Lasso had said publicly that, if elected, he would let Villavicencio live peacefully. But socialist candidate Lenin Moreno of Correas PAIS Alliance edged out Lasso, claiming 51 percent of the runoff vote to Lassos nearly 49 percent. Hes scheduled to take office May 24. Villavicencio, who had considered running for an assembly seat last fall, left Ecuador for Peru shortly after the election. He sees Ecuador headed down the same dangerous path as Venezuela, telling VOA his homeland struggles with corruption, debt and a lack of government transparency. Media have been closed, journalists have been persecuted. There is self-censorship of the media. We have had to migrate to the internet to publish research, he said. This week, Ecuadors government said it would fine seven news organizations for not reprinting an Argentine story that accused Lasso of tax evasion a charge he denied. The government later backed off imposing fines. Giselle Jacome contributed to this report. On a scaffold several stories high beneath the dome of a Cairo church, Ayman William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many informal neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capitals surging population, is building a new extension. And William, 41, who has painted murals in churches as far away as Kuwait and California, is happy to help. Service to the church God gave me talent and I must make use of it to serve him, said William, who was mostly self-taught and says he has drawn inspiration from the Bible during his 15 years in the profession, which he began learning after discovering an affinity for painting icons and murals with childhood friends. Dozens of characters leap out from the dome around him, Adam, Eve, Moses and Samson, as well as New Testament figures such as St. Mark, considered the founder of Egypts Coptic Church. Hes been working on it for nearly six months, and expects to finish in a few weeks. William has an assistant hoist his paintbrush, tools and palette to the upper levels of the scaffolding before he climbs up a giant ladder. For many of the images, he uses models dressed in period clothing to help him depict biblical scenes. I have to make studies using the Bible in each drawing in order to get the specific description, he said. Besides working for payment, I believe that what I am doing is a service to the church. Pope Francis will visit Egypt this weekend on a trip aimed at lifting the spirits of Christians in the Middle East, whose numbers have rapidly dwindled in recent decades because of war, displacement and emigration. A solemn Easter Egypts Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, marked a solemn Easter earlier this month, after suicide bombers attacked two churches in separate cities, killing dozens of worshippers on Palm Sunday. Last December a suicide bomber killed 30 people at Cairos Coptic Cathedral. An Islamic State affiliate claimed all three attacks, and militant attacks on Christians in the northern Sinai Peninsula earlier this year forced hundreds of people to flee to safer parts of the country. Nevertheless, Coptic church attendance remains high in the wake of the attacks. Many, like William, are determined to go about their lives despite the violence. Terrorism exists everywhere, he said. Not just in Egypt, but also in places like Iraq, Syria and even France. But the places I go to for work are good places, safe places. The European Union says it is taking legal action against Hungary over a new law that could force the closure of a foreign-owned university. The Central European University in Budapest was founded by American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros after the fall of Communism. Hungarys government wants to impose tough new conditions on its continued operations. The new law requires all foreign-owned universities in Hungary to have a campus in the country where they are certified. U.S.-certified CEU does not have a campus in the United States. Watch: EU Launches Legal Action Against Hungary The legislation has triggered street protests in the capital that have attracted 70,000 people. The European Commission said Wednesday the new law was incompatible with the freedom to provide services and the freedom of establishment, as well as the right of academic freedom, the right to education and the freedom to conduct a business as provided by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Commission has sent a letter of formal notice to Budapest. A letter of formal notice is a first step towards infringement procedure but there is a time for Hungarian authorities to react to the letter of formal notice and then following the reactions the Commission will decide on further steps, EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said Wednesday. Claire Gordon, head of the London School of Economics Teaching and Learning Center and an expert on the EU role in eastern Europe, says Brussels appears to have run out of patience with Hungary. For some years now Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, has been flying quite close to the democratic edge in his restrictions of the judiciary and the media. And its interesting that with this attempt to close down the Central European University, this seems to have been a step too far. Prime Minister Orban claims the university is "cheating" because it issues diplomas accepted in the United States and in Hungary, thereby giving it an unfair advantage over local institutions. During debate Wednesday at the European Parliament, he denied targeting the CEU. The university will continue its operations under all circumstances. This accusation is groundless, it has no basis in fact, he told EU lawmakers. One of Orbans fiercest critics, EU Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans warned the freedom gained at the fall of Communism is under threat, Protecting their freedom, however, is now a common European task and we will have to fight for that, he said during the EU Parliament debate. But there are doubts about whether Europe has the appetite to take on Hungary, says analyst Gordon. The big challenge for the European Union is the reluctance of heads of state and heads of government, which sit on the European Council, to take action, which seems to discriminate between members. Hungary has one month to respond to the formal EU notice. Protesters say they will stay on the streets until the universitys future is safe. When people from across the globe gather on May 3 to recognize World Press Freedom Day in Jakarta, Indonesia, the recipient of the top prize wont be there. He will be spending his 16th year in a secret prison in Eritrea. The awardee, Dawit Isaak, is an Eritrean-born Swedish journalist and author who worked at Setit, one of Eritreas now-defunct independent newspapers. He was arrested during a government crackdown in September 2001 that shut down newspapers and jailed journalists. Isaak has not been seen or heard from for at least a decade, despite repeated requests from his family and the Swedish government. I am happy that he is nominated for this award, but I also feel sad because it would be good if he received this award himself, said his daughter Betlehem Isaak, who will be accepting the prize on his behalf. His brother, Esayas Isaak, will accompany her to accept the award. He said that their aim is to make sure that Dawit Isaak is given the award himself sometime soon. Esayas says he and his niece worry about Dawit's condition. We are concerned that we are not aware of his whereabouts and his situation, he said, speaking to VOA Tigrigna Service. Isaak was selected unanimously by an international jury of media professionals to receive the 2017 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. The award is named for a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of his offices in 1986. The award includes a prize of $25,000. He [Isaak] represents determination, courage. He is also a figure of democracy and freedom of expression and I think he is really someone who has given his life for his values, universal values, that are freedom of expression and democracy, said Sylvie Coudray of UNESCO. Isaak and other arrested journalists have never been formally tried or charged. Eritrean President Isayas Afwerki has been asked about Isaaks status multiple times and has referred to him obliquely as an agent of foreign powers and the CIA. Never tried or released In a 2009 interview he claimed not to know where Isaak was being held, but said the journalist will never be tried or released. Despite the lack of information, friends and advocates hold out hope that Isaak remains alive. In 2016, Eritrean Foreign Affairs Minister Osman Saleh said he was still living, and a prisoner released about a year ago said he had seen Isaak during his 13 years in various Eritrean jails, although he added, "We didnt see much of him since 2007." Martin Schibbye, a Swedish journalist who was imprisoned in Ethiopia, was allowed to visit Eritrea with a press visa last year. He tried unsuccessfully to get information about Isaaks location and health. I think until we are presented with a body, we have to assume that he's alive, he said. There are examples of people who spend decades in prison, and when you're in prison and you know why you are there, that gives you a certain strength and energy to survive even the most terrible difficult conditions. Aaron Berhane, a former colleague of Isaak who now resides in Canada, said the award sends a message to the Eritrean government that Isaak and other imprisoned journalists will not be forgotten. It is a slap in the face to the regime in Eritrea because the regime thinks that it has stifled freedom of the press by imprisoning the journalists physically. But this is a reminder that their spirit and influence is spreading globally and for that I am extremely happy and proud, he told VOAs Tigrigna Service. A press freedom index released by Reporters Without Borders this week has called Pakistani media among the freest in Asia. Yet, the same index has listed the country as number 139 out of 180 countries for press freedom, far behind its war torn neighbor Afghanistan, which is at number 120. The reason, many Pakistani journalists explain, is that they have the freedom to report some issues, but others are considered red lines. Pakistan always had private print media, albeit with various levels of censorship during military dictatorships and the intermittent periods of elected governments. But the advent of private electronic media in early 2000s, ironically during the tenure of a military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, changed the landscape. Dozens of live 24/7 news channels started competing with each other for breaking stories and getting scoops. The country has witnessed a boost in transparency and accountability, especially in the field of governance. Officials often find themselves fielding tough questions from the media. Talk show hosts interrogate politicians on live TV every night. But the same journalists steer clear of issues that might offend either militant Islamists or the countrys powerful military. Threats and violence Pakistani media faces both threats, state actors and non-state actors, and they are equally ruthless, said Rana Jawwad, the news editor for Geo news, a popular TV channel. Journalists in Pakistan have been attacked and murdered with impunity, according to the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists. The government has often promised investigations into violence against journalists, but few culprits have been brought to court, let alone convicted. Watch: Fear of Militants, State Actors Hampers Press Freedom in Pakistan Government representatives were unavailable for comment for this report, despite repeated requests. Journalists living in the tribal areas in the countrys north, for example, face threats from the militants and the security forces fighting them. Many have fled the area or given up their profession. Similarly, journalists anywhere in the country are afraid to discuss issues that might offend the Islamists, like the persecution of certain minority groups or the controversial blasphemy laws. Reporting on a separatist insurgency in the restive Balochistan province is considered particularly sensitive. Human rights groups have published numerous reports accusing the countrys intelligence agencies of kidnapping, torturing, and killing Baloch nationalists. But the issue is almost non-existent in the otherwise vibrant media discourse. Foreign journalists are not allowed to travel to Balochistan without prior permission. The only sphere considered safe enough to raise such a sensitive issue was social media, but that impression was shattered when several bloggers who wrote progressive posts disappeared. That was a shock for all of us, and the way it had happened because of political expression, that was also very shocking. So the results were fear all around, said Shahzad Ahmed, country director for Bytes for All, Pakistan, a digital rights advocacy group. They eventually re-appeared after sustained protests, but most refused to name their captures. One of them, Waqas Goraya, shared his experiences at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. He believed he was detained because he ran a satirical Facebook page that was critical of the militarys role in politics and in Balochistan. In an interview with the BBC, he said he was detained by a government institution linked to the military and was tortured for pleasure. After their return, the bloggers were forced to leave the country with their families due to a campaign accusing them of blasphemy. The religiously charged accusation is considered a de-facto death sentence in Pakistan where it has led to mob deaths in the past. The bloggers and their families denied committing blasphemy and said the accusations were designed to keep them silent and to put pressure on them. Pakistans army has denied involvement in the incident. However, the episode had a chilling effect on social media discourse, according to Ahmed. Both individuals and organizations started self-censoring. He believed there was little space left for groups fighting for religious freedom or minority rights. Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, is about to become a solar farm. Ukraines Minister of Ecology Ostap Semerak said more than 50 investors from all over the world have applied to build the solar farm to generate electricity in the Exclusion Zone. Disaster The world's worst nuclear accident happened on April 26, 1986. Thirty-two people died and dozens of others suffered painful radiation burns. It took Swedish authorities reporting the fallout to prompt the Soviets to admit an accident had occurred. For years, it seemed that all the people who chose to stay in Chernobyl mourned, and tried to manage. The area was ignored for decades, first by the Soviet government and later by the Ukrainian government. Renewal Now, there are signs of activity, perhaps even renewal. "Today, almost a year after we have started the work, I can announce the first private investment project working in the Chernobyl zone to build a small solar energy plant," said Ostap Semerak, Ukraine's minister of ecology, in an exclusive interview with VOA. It's projected to be completed in May. In Photos: 31 Years Later, Chernobyl Disaster Remembered Semerak says the first private investment in the Chernobyl solar farm is about $1.1 million, enough to build a power plant with the capacity of 1.5 megawatts. The investor, a Ukrainian-German company, has already implemented similar projects in Belarus regions, which had suffered from the Chernobyl disaster. The appearance of the first, albeit small, power plant evidences that the project is alive and may be followed by powerful investors, who are more inert and less mobile, said Semerak. Domestic and foreign companies, small companies and energy giants are among those who have expressed interest in constructing the solar farm in the Exclusion Zone. When it is built out, the solar park is expected to produce half the power that was produced by Chernobyls nuclear plant after it went on line 40 years ago. "Cumulatively, those would be enough to produce 2.5 gigawatts of power, which would be 2,500 megawatts," said Semerak. "This is comparable to the output by two units of a nuclear power plant. This is about half the capacity which the Chernobyl power plant had before the disaster." The Chernobyl Zone has attracted investors because of its vast land resources and economic incentives, according to Semerak. The government recently lowered the cost of rent and streamlined renting procedures. Another powerful driver for investors is the availability of infrastructure the power grids, which serviced the Chernobyl power plant prior to the nuclear disaster. We want to change the perception of the Chernobyl Zone, the Exclusion Zone, from the zone of disasters to the area where changes are happening and the development is ongoing," Semerak said. "We want to gradually put this area to use. This report originated with VOA's Ukranian Service. To understand why it is so difficult to defend computers from even moderately capable hackers, consider the case of the security flaw officially known as CVE-2017-0199. The bug was unusually dangerous but of a common genre: it was in Microsoft software, could allow a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with little trace, and was fixed April 11 in Microsoft's regular monthly security update. But it had traveled a rocky, nine-month journey from discovery to resolution, which cyber security experts say is an unusually long time. Google's security researchers, for example, give vendors just 90 days' warning before publishing flaws they find. Microsoft Corp. declined to say how long it usually takes to patch a flaw. While Microsoft investigated, hackers found the flaw and manipulated the software to spy on unknown Russian speakers, possibly in Ukraine. And a group of thieves used it to bolster their efforts to steal from millions of online bank accounts in Australia and other countries. Those conclusions and other details emerged from interviews with researchers at cyber security firms who studied the events and analyzed versions of the attack code. Microsoft confirmed the sequence of events. The tale began last July, when Ryan Hanson, a 2010 Idaho State University graduate and consultant at boutique security firm Optiv Inc. in Boise, found a weakness in the way that Microsoft Word processes documents from another format. That allowed him to insert a link to a malicious program that would take control of a computer. Combining flaws Hanson spent some months combining his find with other flaws to make it more deadly, he said on Twitter. Then in October he told Microsoft. The company often pays a modest bounty of a few thousands dollars for the identification of security risks. Soon after that point six months ago, Microsoft could have fixed the problem, the company acknowledged. But it was not that simple. A quick change in the settings on Word by customers would do the trick, but if Microsoft notified customers about the bug and the recommended changes, it would also be telling hackers about how to break in. Alternatively, Microsoft could have created a patch that would be distributed as part of its monthly software updates. But the company did not patch immediately and instead dug deeper. It was not aware that anyone was using Hanson's method, and it wanted to be sure it had a comprehensive solution. "We performed an investigation to identify other potentially similar methods and ensure that our fix addresses more than just the issue reported," Microsoft said through a spokesman, who answered emailed questions on the condition of anonymity. "This was a complex investigation." Hanson declined interview requests. The saga shows that Microsoft's progress on security issues, as well as that of the software industry as a whole, remains uneven in an era when the stakes are growing dramatically. The United States has accused Russia of hacking political party emails to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, a charge Russia denies, while shadowy hacker groups opposed to the U.S. government have been publishing hacking tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. Attack begin It is unclear how the unknown hackers initially found Hanson's bug. It could have been through simultaneous discovery, a leak in the patching process, or even hacking against Optiv or Microsoft. In January, as Microsoft worked on a solution, the attacks began. The first known victims were sent emails enticing them to click on a link to documents in Russian about military issues in Russia and areas held by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, researchers said. Their computers were then infected with eavesdropping software made by Gamma Group, a private company that sells to agencies of many governments. The best guess of cyber security experts is that one of Gamma's customers was trying to get inside the computers of soldiers or political figures in Ukraine or Russia; either of those countries, or any of their neighbors or allies, could have been responsible. Such government espionage is routine. The initial attacks were carefully aimed at a small number of targets and so stayed below the radar. But in March, security researchers at FireEye Inc noticed that a notorious piece of financial hacking software known as Latenbot was being distributed using the same Microsoft bug. FireEye probed further, found the earlier Russian-language attacks, and warned Microsoft. The company, which confirmed it was first warned of active attacks in March, got on track for an April 11 patch. Then, what counts as disaster in the world of bug-fixers struck. Another security firm, McAfee, saw some attacks using the Microsoft Word flaw on April 6. After what it described as "quick but in-depth research," it established that the flaw had not been patched, contacted Microsoft, and then blogged about its discovery on April 7. The blog post contained enough detail that other hackers could mimic the attacks. Other software security professionals were aghast that McAfee did not wait, as Optiv and FireEye were doing, until the patch came out. McAfee Vice President Vincent Weafer blamed "a glitch in our communications with our partner Microsoft" for the timing. He did not elaborate. By April 9, a program to exploit the flaw was on sale on underground markets for criminal hackers, said FireEye researcher John Hultquist. The next day, attacks were mainstream. Someone used it to send documents booby-trapped with Dridex banking-fraud software to millions of computers in Australia. Finally, on the Tuesday, about six months after hearing from Hanson, Microsoft made the patch available. As always, some computer owners are lagging behind and have not installed it. Ben-Gurion University employees in Israel were hacked, after the patch, by attackers linked to Iran who took over their email accounts and sent infected documents to their contacts at technology companies and medical professionals, said Michael Gorelik, vice president of cyber security firm Morphisec. When Microsoft patched, it thanked Hanson, a FireEye researcher and its own staff. A six-month delay is bad but not unheard of, said Marten Mickos, chief executive of HackerOne, which coordinates patching efforts between researchers and vendors. "Normal fixing times are a matter of weeks," Mickos said. Privately-held Optiv said through a spokeswoman that it usually gives vendors 45 days to make fixes before publishing research when appropriate, and that it "materially followed" that practice in this case. Optiv is now comparing the details of what Hanson told Microsoft with what the spies and criminals used in the wild, trying to find out if the researcher's work was partly responsible for the worldwide hacking spree, the spokeswoman said. The spree included one or more people who created a hacking tool for what FireEye's Hultquist said is probably a national government - and then appearing to double-dip by also selling it to a criminal group. If the patching took time, others who learned of the flaw moved quickly. On the final weekend before the patch, the criminals could have sold it along to the Dridex hackers, or the original makers could have cashed in a third time, Hultquist said, effectively staging a last clearance sale before it lost peak effectiveness. It is unclear how many people were ultimately infected or how much money was stolen. Hong Kong authorities expanded their crackdown on the Chinese-controlled territory's opposition with a fresh round of arrests of pro-democracy activists on Thursday. Police detained up to nine activists for their apparent involvement in an anti-China protest last year, according to social media posts from two political parties, Demosisto and League of Social Democrats, whose members were among those arrested. The arrests come ahead of an expected visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping on July 1 for the 20th anniversary of the city's handover from Britain to China. On Wednesday, police arrested two pro-independence lawmakers who were disqualified in a dispute over their oaths. The pair, Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching of the Youngspiration party, were charged with unlawful assembly and attempted forcible entry relating to a scuffle in the legislature's chamber last November. Leung and Yau angered Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government when they used their swearing-in ceremony in October to stage an apparent protest by inserting anti-China insults into their oaths. Their attempts to enter the legislature during subsequent sessions to take their oaths properly descended into chaos when they were barred from the chamber while awaiting a court ruling, which later disqualified them from office. The two young activists were part of a new wave of lawmakers advocating greater separation from the mainland. They were newly elected to office last year amid a rising tide of anti-China sentiment in Hong Kong, where fears are rising that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semiautonomous city. Leung said the charges, which relate to events on November 2, were ridiculous. On that day, they scuffled with guards as they barged into the chamber, leaving the council session in disarray. We are still lawmakers at that time when we wanted to get into the chamber. Why is it unlawful? he said. The two said the charges were politically motivated. We are not afraid of this suppression and we will persist in our beliefs, Yau said. Other cases include: Indian authorities hope sweeping restrictions placed on social media in Indian Kashmir will help control widening street protests and growing violence in the region. But observers say the latest order will do little to stem growing alienation in the restive Himalayan region. Authorities have shut down 22 social media sites such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter for a month. The official order asking internet service providers to block the sites said they are being used by anti-national and subversive elements for vitiating peace and tranquility in the state. Kashmir has often faced restrictions on the internet, and even mobile phone services have been shut at times. But the latest clampdown is much wider in its scope and comes as social media begins to play a larger role in an increasingly volatile situation in Indias only Muslim-majority region. Viral videos In the past three weeks, graphic videos claiming to show abuses by security forces have gone viral. The one getting the most attention shows a young man strapped to the front of an army jeep and paraded around villages in the region. School and college students have emerged on the streets for the first time to join mobs throwing stones at security forces, and earlier this month, eight people were killed in a violence-marred parliamentary election. Officials say social media is not just being used to spread images, but also to rally crowds that attack security forces. A police officer in Kashmir, who did not want to be quoted, said the order will help check the spread of rumors. Adding to the anger However banning social media will do little to address the rising tide of anti-India sentiment, said Shujaat Bukhari, editor of the Rising Kashmir newspaper in Srinagar. If there is so much of anger, it actually adds to that anger, it does not help to recede (quell) that anger, he said. Pointing to the presence of students in street protests, he said, Every section of society has now got involved into that churning where people think that they dont have any allegiance to India, and they dont like the country. More than a decade of relative peace began deteriorating last summer in Kashmir after security forces killed local militant leader Burhan Wani. Analysts say this summer promises to be no different. Colleges and schools in Kashmir have been shut for more than a week as India tries to quell the near daily protests. On Thursday, three Indian soldiers died and five others were injured in a pre-dawn attack on an army camp by militants in Kashmirs Kupwara district. Two militants were also killed. Delhi takes a hard line Earlier this week, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, visited New Delhi and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to open dialogue to contain the deteriorating situation in the state. She told reporters he wanted to hold talks after the situation normalizes. Analysts say the Hindu nationalist federal government appears to be taking a hard line against the protesters. Bukhari said the problem in Kashmir is larger than a social media problem. It is a political problem, he said, and as long as you continue to remain in denial mode like this and do not do anything political, these measures will not get you anywhere. Ghana's finance minister says investors were optimistic in meetings with senior government officials who accompanied Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia to the World Bank spring meetings in Washington. In an interview with VOA, Ken Ofori-Atta said investors detected a new energy, and a sense of hope in a team that is focused on getting Ghana out of its current predicament. He also said that with a new government in place, the world is ready to see Ghana shine again in a much more stable West Africa. "We came in on a platform of change and real hope that we will revitalize the economy and create jobs and there would be growth," Ofori-Atta said. "But we met some pretty difficult challenges with regards to fiscal deficit close to 9 percent, lots of unemployment, growth of 3.4 percent, which was very low, and the discovery of some 7 billion Cedis [$1.3 billion] arrears that we all did not know about. Foreign exchange was low, and you also had the exchange rate in a pretty difficult situation. So we had to contend with all of that since we came [to power]." But opposition groups say the new administration should get to work rather than complain about the state of affairs. They contend that Ghanaians displayed confidence in them by rejecting the previous government for failing to improve the lives of its citizens. Ofori-Atta said that in just over 100 days, the government outlined its plans to jump-start the economy in a budget, which was presented to parliament. The aim, he said, is to create millions of jobs as the ruling party, led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, promised ahead of the December elections. "We decided to create a budget that is both leading to a fiscal consolidation in a real way and also not compromising growth," Ofori-Atta said. "So we brought down the deficit as a target from 8.7 percent to 6.5. We squeaked out a primary balance surplus. We're reducing our debt-to-GDP ratio from 72.5 to 70.9 percent, and then increase revenue by 34 percent. So, quite dramatic contraction in a sense. However, we also were clear that we needed to spur growth." One means to achieve their goals: abolishing some taxes. "One of the most dramatic things was to abolish about 14 taxes, which the senior minister [Yaw Osafo Marfo] termed to be nuisance taxes," Ofori-Atta said. "Taxes that were kind of suppressive and created a sense of cohesion by the state. As a center-right party, we have to revitalize the economy, we have to give stimulus, we have to encourage people to use their creative energies." Ofori-Atta also said abolishing the taxes will free Ghanaian businesses, and entrepreneurs will help to "bring Ghana back" into a working mode. Another measure the administration plans to implement is the revitalization of the rural economy. This, he said, includes establishing a factory in each of the country's districts, as well as sending $1 million to each constituency as a resource to support the policy of one district, one factory, which was promised by the president in the run-up to the polls. Critics, however, say the one district, one factory promise was overly ambitious. They contend that with the dramatic reduction of taxes, government revenue would be sharply reduced, thereby handicapping the ability of the administration to raise the necessary funds it needs to keep the promises to Ghanaians. They also say the reduction of taxes was just a ploy to score political points. But supporters of the ruling party reject the criticisms as unfounded. Iraqi militiamen, who drove Islamic State fighters from the ancient city of Hatra this week, found that IS had destroyed relics dating back more than 2,000 years. "The sculptures and engraved images are destroyed, but the walls and towers of the kingdom of Hatra remain standing," said Marwa Rashid, a spokeswoman for Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, a Shi'ite militia that is clearing IS from villages north of Mosul in northern Iraq. "There are many holes and scratches on the walls of the kingdom due to IS bullets," she said. PMF units took full control over the historic city, about 110 kilometers southwest of Mosul, after a three-week offensive. Its recapture was a part of a regional military operation known as Muhammad Prophet of God. Known historically as the ancient city where East meets West, Hatra is a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site and considered one of the archeological jewels of Iraq and capital of the first Arab kingdom. The large fortified site was founded in the 2nd or 3rd century B.C. and once was a thriving city under the influence of the Parthian Empire. Its high and thick walls, reinforced by towers, helped it withstand invasions by the Romans in the years 116 and 198. Its temples offer a unique blend of Hellenistic and Roman architecture with Eastern decorative features. The site stood undisturbed for decades until April 2015, when IS invaded it. Citing Hatra's "un-Islamic" nature, IS began destroying relics on the site. Sculptures smashed In a video released by IS after its occupation, IS fighters are seen smashing sculptures with sledgehammers and destroying images and artifacts on ancient walls with assault rifles. UNESCO, the cultural heritage arm of the United Nations, called the destruction a war crime and has urged political and religious leaders in the region to take note. "The destruction and looting of the remains of the capital of the first Arab kingdom is an immense loss for the Iraqi people and the world. Its liberation marks a positive turning point and paves the way for ensuring its protection and conservation," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said Thursday. PMF units said IS had planted land mines around the eastern gates of the site to deter their advances. Engineering teams will clear the site of any explosives before allowing Iraqi archeologists to assess the damage. "The kingdom of Hatra will be standing high, God willing," Rashid said. Since mid-2014, IS has destroyed dozens of historic sites in Iraq and Syria, including mosques, churches and Shi'ite religious halls known as hussainiyas. The group says shrines and statues are "false idols" that must be destroyed. Sermed Alwan, president of the Iraqi Mesopotamian Heritage Association, said the extent of the damage nationwide to ancient sites had yet to be determined. But the initial accounting of the damage in Hatra is heartbreaking, he said. "The loss of Hatra relics is huge for Iraq and for the international community," he said. Kenya and Ethiopia have used excessive force against Somali civilians amid efforts to halt cross-border attacks by al-Shabab, according to an internal report by aid agencies working in Somalia. The report, obtained by VOA's Somali Service, says Kenya has carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting pastoral communities in Somalia's Gedo region since June of 2015. It says Kenyan Wildlife Service personnel pressed into border patrol duty have targeted people with arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings. The report says Ethiopia deployed a paramilitary force along the border to push back pastoralists who had settled in a "grey zone" between Somalia and Ethiopia. It says the force, known as the Liyu Police, committed acts of sexual violence, including a practice called break and rape in which women's limbs are fractured. Kenya Defense Forces spokesman Colonel Jospeh Owuoth denied the accusations, saying Kenya attacks only al-Shabab targets. Ethiopian leaders in the region could not be reached, but the president of the region, Abdi Mohamud Omar, has previously denied all allegations concerning abuses by the Liyu Police. Eyewitness accounts But residents of the regions told VOA of incidents that seem to confirm the report's findings. Mohamud Nur Osman is a community leader in Likoley village, Gedo region. He says Kenyan warplanes recently struck several locations where it had rained and herders had gathered to let their animals graze. People have fled from drought-hit areas. They move to where it rains. They [Kenya] bomb where people have been converging, he said. He says one strike took place near his village seven days ago. People who are following the clouds have arrived there. They are civilians, not an army, and they were targeted. No one was killed, but animals died, including camels and goats," he says. Hassan Mohamed Mukhtar, who fled an area near the Somali-Ethiopian border, told VOA his younger sister, Ruqiya, was arrested and taken to Barey town in Ethiopia by the Liyu Police 15 months ago. They acted because her husband had once accepted $100 to help an al-Shabab operation, he says. Aid agencies collaborate The report was written within the past two weeks and its authenticity was confirmed to VOA's Somali service by three humanitarian aid workers working in Somalia. U.N. aid agencies and associated non-governmental organizations, "protection clusters," as they are called, periodically team up to write such reports. Both Kenya and Ethiopia have stationed troops in Somalia for years as part of an African Union mission mandated to fight al-Shabab. The mission, AMISOM, played a central role in ejecting al-Shabab from Somali cities. The new report says Kenya and Ethiopia have mobilized non-AMISOM troops to secure their borders. It was these steps that resulted in many actions which are outside of the AMISOM mandate and caused confusion with regards to accountability, it says. Ethiopia's Liyu Police were formed in 2007 to fight against the rebel group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, in the ethnic Somali region. Human rights groups have accused them of abuses against civilians in the region. In Kenya's case, airstrikes targeted water points with the rationale that those resources are used by al-Shabab militants. But the report says the distinction between military targets and civilians is skewed in the Somali context." The report also says Kenya has deployed members of its Wildlife Service along the border with Somalia to bolster security. But the report says Somali pastoralists who often move across the frontier, "were now subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, abductions and extrajudicial killings. Kenya denials KDF spokesman Colonel Jospeh Owuoth strongly denied the allegations. That is not correct, absolutely not true for several reasons, he said. When the KDF and AMSIOM conduct an airstrike it makes sure, almost excessively sure that they have no civilian components in that locations," he said. "We strictly target only the al-Shabab terrorists, at no time have we ever targeted a water point where there are civilians or a building or a location where we suspect there are civilians. There is a drought in Somalia and you find that most of the civilians go to where there are water holes. You find that that is a big community of animals and people. We cannot bring fire on such a location, he added. Owuoth also denied the Kenya Wildlife Service is responsible for violent acts against Somali pastoralists. KWS has never crossed into Somalia and has not operated on the border. That is not true at all," he said. The report by the Somalia protection cluster accused Al-Shabab of blockading towns and urban areas controlled by the AMISOM and Somali forces in the Bakool and Bay regions. It says the blockades prevents aid agencies from delivering humanitarian assistance to people in the drought-stricken region. The lack of movement from AS-controlled areas raises the question of whether AS will allow populations under their control or influence to leave and seek humanitarian assistance, the report says. Increased U.S. and European engagement in the Western Balkans will be critical to countering an increasingly assertive Russian in the region, Republican Arizona Senator John McCain told VOA Wednesday. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the comments shortly after returning from a tour of the region, which included a stop in Montenegro, whose U.S.-backed accession to NATO has been vigorously opposed by Russia. Some age-old, some new tensions in the region require our attention, and my concern is that as our attention has been diverted to Ukraine, the Middle East, to China ... and its very clear the Russians are trying to extend their malign influence in the region, he said. The attempt at a coup in Montenegro is a graphic example of that. A provocation for Russia Russia has described Montenegros NATO membership as a provocation, because of the countrys geographical proximity to Russia. The Kremlin has long seen the Balkans as inside its sphere of influence. Further evidence of Russian influence in campaigns in Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, McCain added, are a result of a lack of American and European leadership. We fought a conflict there. There was enormous loss of life, and we seemed to have walked away in recent years, he said. The European Reassurance Initiative, launched by the Obama White House in 2014, represents the kind of joint military-diplomatic strategy that McCain wants the U.S. to replicate throughout southeastern Europe. Under that program, which boosted the U.S. military presence in Poland and the Baltics, the U.S. plans to quadruple military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017. In the Baltics we are doing some very interesting and useful things, McCain said, referring to U.S.-NATO troop rotations, the stockpiling of military hardware and the formation of a rapid-reaction force designed to counter Russian military aggression, such as Moscows 2014 annexation of Crimea. And yet, to a large degree, we seem to be ignoring arguably the most volatile place in Europe. Macedonias importance He called the very dynamic and explosive situation in Macedonia just one example of where increased U.S. advocacy and mediation will be vital to de-escalating regional tensions. Its not in anybodys interest to the see the breakup of Macedonia. No one should ever, ever forget that two world wars were spawned at a bridge in Sarajevo, with the assassination of [Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria], he said. ...Im not predicting a world war or even conflict, but I am saying the tensions are rising and the situation is deteriorating. U.S. and Western allies, he said, should also stabilize the region via the soft-diplomacy of aid packages targeting increased employment, youth engagement and counterterror efforts. A balance in Serbia Despite increasing political power consolidation in nearby Hungary and Bulgaria, McCain said Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic's victory in this month's presidential election in Serbia, which has long-established ties to Russia, means the newly elected leader will need to strike a diplomatic balance. He [Vucic] knows the citizenry is much more pro-European than it is pro-Russian, and I dont think he wants to be perceived as being too closely aligned with Russia, McCain said. I found my conversations with him productive. Trump, Russia ties Asked about an executive branch investigation into ties between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia, McCain said, There will be more shoes to drop before this is over. On May 8, a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony regarding the issue from Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, and James Clapper, former director of national intelligence. That subcommittee will be headed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, one of McCains closest political allies. This report was produced in collaboration with VOAs Serbian Service. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Britons Thursday not to delude themselves that they would continue to enjoy EU rights after Brexit and insisted the bloc would only agree on future ties with London after they have nailed down a deal to leave. Striking a firm tone in a speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament before a weekend summit on Brexit, Merkel also said talks on Britains financial obligations to the EU would have to be addressed early on in the talks. A third state, and thats what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights ... as members of the European Union, Merkel, the EUs most influential leader, told lawmakers. I must say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions that would be wasted time, she said, to loud applause from lawmakers. Divorce comes first Arguing that the Brexit talks would only really get going after Britains June 8 parliamentary election, Merkel stressed several times that all 27 remaining EU members agreed that the divorce settlement must be sorted out first. We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily, she said. Merkel, a conservative who will seek a fourth term as German chancellor in an election September 24, said one priority would be to protect the interests of EU citizens living in Britain, including 100,000 Germans. She said she was ready to make a fair offer to Britons in Germany if it was reciprocal. EU ready for talks Merkel also said the talks would require a lot of effort in the next two years but expressed confidence that the EU side was ready. In terms of substance and organization, we are very well prepared, she said. At least 25,000 people were displaced after fighting in the town of Kodok, according to a spokesman for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, one day after the top United Nations official in South Sudan warned of a government offensive on the town. The fighting has caused a reduction in humanitarian services and a shortage of water for the displaced, Phillippe Carr told the Associated Press. Civilians are fleeing to the nearby South Sudanese town of Aburoc, Carr said. On Tuesday, there were reports of shelling in the town of Kodok. On Wednesday, the town was feared deserted with military helicopters sighted nearby. South Sudan's government troops were on an offensive in Kodok and the Upper Nile region, head of the U.N. mission in South Sudan, David Shearer, told members of the Security Council on Tuesday. He warned that 70,000 civilians could be displaced. "Virtually no part of the country is immune from conflict," Shearer told the 15-member body at the U.N. He added there "has been no concerted effort by any party to adhere to a cease-fire." The government offensive in Kodok appears to be one of the most significant so far this year, causing disarray among rebel leader Johnson Olony and his Shilluk forces. It is also expected to create a flow of civilians fleeing into neighboring Sudan. Shearer told a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Wednesday that "there are increasing numbers of people crossing into Sudan" from Kodok, and he thanked the Sudanese government for opening corridors from the north of South Sudan. The U.N. envoy said the number of people fleeing South Sudan reached about 60,000 per month in the first three months of the year. If that rate continues, Shearer said, before the end of 2017 "we'll have more than two million people who will be refugees." He said religious leaders in the "critical town" of Torit in Eastern Equatoria in the south told him recently that 75 percent of the town's population had fled to Uganda. On Wednesday, the chief monitor of the peace deal, former Botswanan President Festus Mogae, said South Sudan was experiencing "a crisis within a crisis." "Men, women and children are suffering and dying of starvation because the leadership at various levels is failing to prevent it," Mogae said. The International Committee of the Red Cross also evacuated its aid workers from Kodok, spokeswoman Alyona Synenko told AP. A spokesman for South Sudan's military was not available for comment. The attack on Kodok comes after a flurry of recent government offensives across South Sudan, and questions the legitimacy of an August 2015 peace deal signed by President Salva Kiir. Since the August peace deal was signed, the opposition has fragmented and the U.N. has noted the presence of ethnic cleansing and declared famine in two counties. Around 1 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan and more than 1.7 million people have fled the country. Somalia's ambassador to the U.S., Ahmed Isse Awad, says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has informed his embassy the agency will no longer arrest illegal Somali immigrants in their homes or at their workplaces. However, federal authorities have not confirmed that there has been any shift in policy. Awad said the agency reached the decision after his embassy expressed concern to immigration authorities regarding the recent arrests of 11 Somalis in Virginia, Minnesota and Georgia. Once we found out that 11 Somalis were arrested from their homes for removal, we thought the arrests looked [like] profiling and targeting Somalis. Then we submitted our concern to ICE and asked clarification, Awad told VOA's Somali service. Fortunately, they came back to us tell us that they would no longer arrest Somalis from their homes or at their workplaces. No response from ICE Authorities at ICE did not respond directly to questions about the claimed policy change for Somalis. However officials have previously said that ICE does not have specific exemptions in place for certain groups of people. The agency policy currently directs that anyone in violation of immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention and removal from the United States. Authorities say the agency's policy directs personnel to avoid conducting enforcement activists at sensitive places such as schools, places of worship and hospitals, unless they have prior approval from a supervisor. The U.S. government said almost 5,000 Somali nationals in the United States face deportation orders. As of April 1, 2017, there were 4,801 Somali nationals with final orders of removal, ICE spokesman Brendan Raedy said last week. As of that same date, 237 Somali nationals have been removed to Somalia in fiscal year 2017. Earlier rulings will stand One of those arrested at home, Awad said, was a Somali father whose four children and wife are all U.S. citizens. Awad said, He is not criminal, but a court ordered his removal in 2000. A 50-year-old Somali man who identified himself as second in command of Somalia's National Security Service was also among those arrested. He had previously been deported to Somalia in 1996. Awad said the decision does not mean a halt in the deportation of individuals whose removal cases have already been decided by an immigration judge. The U.S. law that ordered the enforcement of the removal of the individuals with aggravated criminal records is still in place, but I think what the ICE decision means is that they will not target Somalis and arrest them from their homes and workplaces. Awad said. They can continue their normal life. Requests for asylum denied Most of the Somalis facing final orders of removal are not in detention centers and are unlikely to be removed in the near term because their cases are making their way through the system. Since Somalia's embassy in Washington reopened in November 2015, the ambassador said, about 170 Somali immigrants who either ran afoul of U.S. law or had their asylum applications rejected have been deported to Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Most of those previously deported had applied for, but been denied, political asylum in the United States, he added. Another group of Somali applicants whose requests for asylum have been denied are now in detention centers or prisons, awaiting deportation. Fewer than 300 face return Fewer than 300 Somalis are scheduled to be moved out in the next couple of months, Awad told VOA, adding that his embassy was awaiting information from U.S. authorities on who the deportees were and when they would depart. ICE agents recently arrested 82 people from 26 nations during a five-day operation in and around the U.S. capital. According to a statement from ICE, 68 of those detained March 26-30 had previous criminal convictions for crimes including armed robbery, larceny and drug offenses. All but three were arrested in Virginia. U.S. immigration officials said eight of those arrested during that roundup had no known criminal records; they either had overstayed visitor visas or ignored final orders to leave the country. A different, dangerous country Some of the Somali nationals who have been sent back to their homeland have told VOA and media outlets in Somalia they found a different and dangerous country awaiting them in East Africa. Because Somalia lacked a strong central government for more than a quarter-century, many Western nations have refrained from forcibly returning Somali immigrants to their home country because of safety concerns. U.S. immigration policies have been tightened considerably under President Donald Trump, and such a clemency policy for Somali nationals is no longer being observed. Trump's travel order banned the issuance of visas to citizens of Somalia and five other countries. The order has been put on hold by two courts pending a review of its constitutionality. VOA's Jeff Seldin contributed to this report A suspected U.S. drone strike killed several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, one militant commander and intelligence sources said on Thursday, in a rare strike on Pakistani soil. If confirmed, the airstrike, which happened on Wednesday, would only be the second drone attack inside the nuclear-armed nation since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. Abdullah Wazirstani, spokesman for North Waziristan Taliban, a group linked to the Pakistani Taliban, said the strike killed three civilian "laborers" and seven militants from the Pakistani Taliban, which is also known as TTP. Malik Waheedullah, a local tribal leader, told Reuters he saw two missiles strike a mountain home which caught fire. "I drove away as fast as I could," he said. One Pakistani intelligence official and government source said they believed the strike to have been a U.S. drone attack. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. North Waziristan was a Taliban stronghold until 2014, when Pakistan's military launched a major offensive against the group and pushed many of its fighters across the border into Afghanistan. Sources from the TTP identified one of the dead militants as Abdur Rahman, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban. U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan have become rare over the past few years. In its last high-profile attack inside Pakistan, the United States last May killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Ten Iranian border guards were killed and three others were wounded Wednesday in a "terrorist attack" launched from inside Pakistan, Iranian state media said. The border guards were patrolling in Mirjaveh in Sistan-Baluchestan province, southeastern Iran. The militant group called Jaish-ul-Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility for the attack, the state media said. Sistan-Baluchestan province has long been plagued by unrest from both drug-smuggling gangs and separatist militants. The population of the province is predominantly Sunni Muslim; the majority of Iranians are Shi'ite. Eight Iranian border guards were killed in clashes with Sunni rebels in 2015. Two years earlier, Jaish-ul-Adl killed 14 border guards in an attack Paraguay's lower house of Congress on Wednesday rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed for presidential re-election, ending a monthlong political crisis that aroused violent protests. Under the measure, center-right President Horacio Cartes could have sought re-election in 2018. But last week, the former soft drink and tobacco mogul who took office in 2013 said he would not run regardless of whether the amendment was approved. Protesters set fire to Congress on March 31 after the Senate secretly voted in favor of the amendment. Police later stormed an opposition political party's headquarters and killed a protester. Re-election is a sensitive subject in Paraguay, a landlocked South American country where memories still abound of a brutal 35-year dictatorship that fell in 1989. The constitution has prohibited re-election since it was passed in 1992. "We have lost interest in continuing to push for this due to our candidate's decision," said Hugo Velazquez, a member of the lower house and member of Cartes' Colorado Party. The lower house's move was also a blow to former leftist President Fernando Lugo, whom lawmakers ousted in 2012. Several of his congressional allies had supported the proposed amendment in the hope he would run again in 2018. Investors favor Cartes' low-tax policies and credit him with spurring growth in Paraguay, the world's No. 4 soy exporter and long one of South America's poorest countries. But business groups had urged him not to seek another term, in order to avoid more riots. Scores of protesters, many wearing masks, broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonia's parliament late Thursday, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government. The protesters stormed parliament after the country's opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked lawmakers, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who television footage showed bleeding from the forehead. Television footage showed Zaev and other Social Democrat lawmakers surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting "traitors" and refusing to allow them to leave. Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's conservative party won elections, but without enough votes to form a government. Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonia's population is ethnic Albanian. Zaev has been seeking a mandate to form a government for months, after reaching an agreement with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, to form a coalition government. However, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate. The Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, as the Balkan nation's parliament is known, has been deadlocked for three weeks over electing a new speaker. Zaev had suggested earlier Thursday that one could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup. Zaev went ahead with the vote, and a majority in parliament elected Talat Xhaferi, a former defense minister and member of the Democratic Union for Integration. Police said about 10 officers were injured during the melee and that reinforcements have been sent to assist those inside the parliament building. DUI party spokesman Artan Grubi told Telma TV in a telephone interview that Zaev and three other lawmakers had been injured. "This is a sad day for Macedonia," Grubi said. The protesters who stormed parliament Thursday night were among a group of demonstrators who have been holding protest rallies nightly for the past two months in the streets of Skopje and other cities in the country over the political situation. Many are supporters of Gruevski. European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemned Thursday's violence, saying in a tweet that "Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course." Sweden's ambassador to Macedonia, Mats Staffansson, speaking on behalf of other European diplomats, reminded the country's politicians of the need for dialogue and said "it is the responsibility of the police of this country to make sure that this kind of violence does not happen." WATCH: Protesters storm Macedonian parliament South Africans gathered Thursday to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the country's first post-apartheid elections, but the annual Freedom Day celebrations were mixed with demonstrations calling for President Jacob Zuma to step down. Zuma addressed the main gathering of supporters in his home province of Kwazulu Natal. "This day must be the day on which we are happy to contribute more in building South Africa," he said. "Happy Freedom Day to you all." Speaking in Zulu, Zuma criticized opposition parties, without directly addressing the ongoing political crisis. But tensions were on display. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria. The protest was organized by the newly formed Freedom Movement. Speakers at the gathering in Pretoria described Zuma as a danger to the country's hard-earned freedom. They accused him of flouting the constitution, of corruption, and of making uninformed decisions that have hurt the economy. "The people shall govern," said speaker Ndileka Mandela, granddaughter of South Africa's father of freedom, Nelson Mandela. "That means that the people have the right to call the government to account. We are today calling our government to account." No-confidence vote ahead The protests come at a time when parliament is preparing to vote on a motion of no-confidence against Zuma. Opposition parties have approached the Constitutional Court to request the vote be a secret ballot. "Zuma is no longer fit to become the president of the republic and it is South Africans united saying, 'Enough is enough,'" said Democratic Alliance party leader Mmusi Maimane, who attended the protest. The ruling ANC, with its majority in parliament, has been able to defeat an impeachment attempt and several votes of no-confidence against Zuma since he took office in 2009. However, a secret ballot in the upcoming vote would be a first and could leave Zuma more vulnerable. Meanwhile, the crisis took a new twist Thursday as the country's priority crimes unit announced it had arrested a 23-year-old man who authorities say was planning a hit on 19 people, including cabinet ministers believed to have benefited from Zuma's alleged corrupt dealings. Zuma has weathered several corruption scandals in the past year. This latest bout of opposition to Zuma began last month when he fired a popular finance minister. Recently, many senior members of the ruling ANC and its alliance partners have openly called on Zuma step down. An anti-Zuma march in the capital earlier this month drew tens of thousands of demonstrators. No new date has been set for the no-confidence vote, as parliament awaits the Constitutional Court's ruling. News reports say President Donald Trump may be preparing to sign an executive order pulling the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump has called the pact that took effect in 1994 a disaster that has primarily benefited Mexico and cost the U.S. jobs. The reports say the order could come as early as this week, but may be no more than a threat used so the U.S. can renegotiate a better deal. A Canadian foreign ministry spokesman Wednesday said Canada was "ready to come to the table at any time." Earlier this week, Trump ordered a 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber imports. Many Mexican officials have called NAFTA a disappointment, saying it has brought slow economic growth despite increased investment in factories and industry. All 78 Russian personnel aboard a military reconnaissance ship that collided Thursday with a freighter near Turkey's Black Sea coast are safe, according to Turkish and Russian officials. Turkish shipping agent GAC said the Russian ship Liman collided in foggy conditions with the Youzarsif H, a livestock freighter displaying a flag from the West African nation of Togo. Russia's Defense Ministry said the Liman sank near Istanbul after it "sustained a hull breach due to a collision" with the freighter. Advisors to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim expressed "sadness" over the accident to Russian counterparts. Information about the condition of the Youzarsif H or its crew or cargo was not immediately available. The freighter is managed by Nejem Co. Marine Services, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data. Russian news agencies said none of that ship's crew members were hurt. The Liman is a former research ship that the Russian navy converted into a reconnaissance vessel. The Russian government has called on Israel and other countries to avoid any actions that may escalate tension in Syria, after Israel conducted airstrikes Thursday against an arms supply hub near Damascus International Airport. "All countries need to need to refrain from any kind of actions that lead to an increase in tension in this already restive region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. Peskov also said Syria's sovereignty should be respected. The arms hub is operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources said the strikes targeted weapons that were shipped from Iran on military and commercial cargo planes. Throughout the Syrian war, which began in March 2011, Israel has made it clear it would not allow shipments of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah units fighting in Syria. Israeli forces have on multiple occasions used airstrikes or other attacks to stop such moves, with the military often declining to confirm it was responsible for the strikes. Hezbollah and Israel fought each other in the 2006 Lebanon War. Hezbollah fighters have openly fought in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad since 2013. Tensions between Russia and the West over security in Europe, the Middle East and Asia have surfaced at an annual defense conference in Moscow. Major flashpoints include the situation in Syria and NATO expansion. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave a stark warning about the expanding threat of terrorism and conflict across the globe at the opening Wednesday of the two-day Moscow Conference on International Security. "The situation in the world is not becoming more stable or predictable, rather the opposite," he said. "In front of our eyes we see that tension on both global and regional levels is on the rise. Further erosion of international law is obvious, so are attempts to use force to promote personal interests, to strengthen own security at the expense of others' security, to contain by all means the process of a formation of a polycentric world order." Watch: Russia-West, Syria Tensions Exposed at Moscow Security Conference Middle East As if to underscore the point, Israeli missiles hit a suspected Iranian arms depot in Damascus just hours after Lavrov and Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman met on the sidelines of the security conference. Those airstrikes also symbolize the complicated nature of Russia's relationship with Israeli and Iran, says analyst Alexey Malashenko via Skype. "Russia is playing a very difficult game between Israel and Iran," he said. "It creates some problems. I think similar situation will continue. So, Russia will keep the normal relations with both countries." Russia says it wants a global alliance against terrorists and is fighting them in Syria just like a U.S.-led Western alliance has been doing. But Western and Arab states say Russia is defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and they accuse him of responsibility for a chemical attack on civilians this month that Moscow and Damascus blame on Syrian rebels. The Western alliance wants Assad out of power, but the Kremlin fears losing its ally in Damascus would mean losing regional influence. "Maybe the problem of Bashar al-Assad, his presidency, is most painful problem for Kremlin because indeed, it has to be replaced, and Putin and in Kremlin they understand it. That's no doubt," Malashenko said. "But, anyway, by whom it's possible to replace him, who will come instead of him? This is a problem." NATO Another problem, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, is the gradual expansion of the NATO Western military alliance into eastern Europe. "NATO is a military and political bloc and not a group of stamp collectors. It follows a course of projecting its power and bringing more and more states into its orbit," Shoigu said at the conference opening. "The recent decision to make Montenegro an alliance member is the latest proof of that. Podgorica's military potential is close to zero, but its geographic location allows [the alliance] to strengthen control over the Balkans." Montenegro's opposition held protests Tuesday against joining NATO. Many fear joining the Western alliance could upset relations with Russia, or even lead to a military clash. Also this week, U.S. fighter jets arrived in Estonia, and British typhoon jets went to Romania, as NATO reassures members concerned about Russian aggression. Trust is almost completely eroded between NATO and the Kremlin, says the Carnegie Moscow Center's Petr Topychkanov via Skype. "It all started from Yugoslavia in 1990s, but then Georgia war, NATO extension, missile defense programs United States and NATO and, of course, the most recent and the most important thing was the Crimea annexation by Russia." On East Asia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed North Korea's nuclear program. Russia agrees to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions, but only through the U.N. Security Council. 2 Carter, transgender man, 28, is a program officer at Rights For All, an association that advocates for the LGBT community. "Recently when those two lesbians came out as married, it was a big debate and people didn't understand," Carter said. "They wondered, 'Who are they? Who is who in the relationship?' We started to get harassed again, so we stopped going out in the street of Kigali, we were scared. The medias never made it easy but the outcome was amazing, the society that didn't understand who lesbians were got to actually know that they exist! in Kigali, Rwanda, April 21, 2017. (Photo: H. Elrasam/VOA) The Senate on Thursday confirmed Alex Acosta as secretary of labor, filling out President Donald Trump's Cabinet as he approaches his 100th day in office. The vote was 60-38. Once sworn as the nation's 27th secretary of labor, the son of Cuban immigrants will lead an a sprawling agency that enforces more than 180 federal laws covering about 10 million employers and 125 million workers. Acosta has been a federal prosecutor, a civil rights chief at the Justice Department and a member of the National Labor Relations Board. He wasn't Trump's first choice for the job. Former fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder withdrew from consideration last month, on the eve of his confirmation vote, after becoming a political headache for the new administration. Puzder acknowledged having hired a housekeeper not authorized to work in the U.S. and paying the related taxes years later after Trump nominated him and came under fire from Democrats for other issues related to his company and his private life. From the beginning, Acosta's was a quiet march to confirmation that stood out because it didn't attract the deep partisan battles faced by some of Trump's other nominees, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Justice Neil Gorsuch's nomination provoked such a fight that majority Senate Republicans used the "nuclear option" to remove the 60-vote filibuster barrier for Supreme Court picks. Muted response Democrats and most labor groups were mostly muted in their response to Acosta's nomination. At his confirmation hearing, Democratic Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts hammered Acosta for answers on a selection of issues important to labor and whether Acosta would cave to political pressure from Trump. Acosta refused to answer the policy questions until he was confirmed but vowed to be an independent and fair voice for workers. Tellingly, even as Acosta's nomination wound through the Senate, Democrats and their allies tried to move on to other, labor-related issues namely, a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour, which Trump opposes. Meanwhile, the Labor Department's landing page bears a glimpse of Acosta's policy priorities: "Buy American, Hire American." That's the title of Trump's executive order this week directing the secretaries of labor and other agencies to issue guidance within 60 days on policies that would "ensure that, to the extent permitted by law,'' federal aid "maximize the use of materials produced in the United States, including manufactured products; components of manufactured products; and materials such as steel, iron, aluminum, and cement.'' A Singaporean man has been sentenced to 40 months in a U.S. prison for his role in exporting thousands of radio frequency modules from the U.S. to Iran, at least 14 of which were later found in unexploded improvised explosive devices in Iraq. Lim Yong Nam, also known as Steven Lim, 43, pleaded guilty in December of illegally exporting the modules through Singapore to Iran. The U.S. Justice Department said Lim and his associates admitted knowing that the export of U.S.-origin goods to Iran was a violation of U.S. law. The radio frequency modules made by a Minnesota company have several commercial applications, including in wireless local area networks connecting printers and computers in office settings. In 2008 and 2009, coalition forces in Iraq recovered numerous modules made by the Minnesota firm that had been utilized as part of the remote detonation system for IEDs, which were the major source of American combat casualties in Iraq. Lim was extradited to the U.S. in 2016 from Indonesia, where he had been held since 2014 in connection with the U.S. request for extradition, the Justice Department said. A Somali pirate will be spending the rest of his life in a U.S. federal prison for attacking an American Navy ship in 2010. Mohamed Farah, 31, was sentenced Wednesday for piracy and other acts in connection with the armed attack on the USS Ashland in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Djibouti. Three other defendants already got life sentences, while two more were given 15- and 33-year prison terms. The pirates set out to hijack another ship, but were stopped by a British naval vessel. They then turned their sights on the Ashland, pelting the ship with small-arms fire. The Ashland returned fire, setting the pirates' small boat ablaze and forcing them into the sea. The Ashland was not damaged and no one on board was hurt. Thai prosecutors will ask police to issue an arrest warrant for an heir to the Red Bull fortune if he does not show up to face charges over an alleged hit-and-run that killed a police officer almost five years ago, officials said Thursday. Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya has been a no-show for meetings with prosecutors on several occasions, complaining through his attorney of unfair treatment or citing duties abroad. A recent Associated Press report revealed that he's been living lavishly, traveling to Formula One races, snowboarding in Japan and cruising in Venice. On Thursday, prosecutors rejected his latest request for a delay and said he must show up by 4 p.m. "The suspect must meet prosecutors as scheduled. If he does not, it would mean he has the intention of delaying and evading the case and we will proceed with requesting an arrest warrant from the court," Somnuek Siangkong, spokesman for the office of the Attorney General, said at a news conference. If he fails to show up, prosecutors said they will ask for the warrant to be issued Friday morning. Vorayuth is accused of fleeing the scene of a 2012 crash in his Ferrari after allegedly hitting a police officer on motorcycle patrol. Vorayuth has failed to show up when ordered to face criminal charges of speeding, hit-and-run, and deadly, reckless driving. Police say Vorayuth disputes the reckless driving charge, claiming the officer swerved in front of him. The speeding charge expired after a year. The more serious charge of hit-and-run, which police say carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, expires Sept. 3. The reckless driving charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail, expires in 10 years if left unchallenged. Rain didn't stop dozens of activists from gathering in Washington on a recent Friday to rally against childhood vaccines. They want President Trump to establish a committee to look into vaccine safety. VOA's Carol Pearson spoke to the activists and to some of the world's top doctors about vaccine safety. With U.S. President Donald Trump facing challenges overseas in Syria and North Korea, as well as growing tensions with Russia, the public face of his his administration remains largely unknown, with hundreds of top U.S. diplomatic positions still unfilled. So far, only two new U.S. ambassadors have been confirmed to Israel and the United Nations. More than three months into his presidency, Trump has nominated others for China, New Zealand, Japan, Congo and Senegal. He has not yet nominated anyone for 181 out of a total of 188 U.S. ambassadorships. In the first four months of his presidency, Barack Obama had nominated eight ambassadors (including country and ambassador designations such as the United Nations), George W. Bush had nominated three, Bill Clinton 15 and George H.W. Bush 14, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Presidential Transition. Tuesday, the nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to China, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, will appear in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his first nomination hearing. But as tensions on the Korean Peninsula rise, Trump has not yet nominated a U.S. ambassador to South Korea or an assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Ambassadors are normally political appointees and are traditionally replaced under each new administration. The Brookings Institution's Thomas Wright calls this level of unfilled senior positions unprecedented and worrisome. "If you take, for instance, the recent summit with President Xi Jinping of China, there were very few Asia experts appointed to senior positions," Wright said. "Those people normally would be crucial in guiding that summit along. And so this, I think, is having a damaging effect on an ongoing basis." Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner sought to quell concerns at a recent briefing. "I can assure everyone in this room and everyone in the United States and around the world that these are not vacancies, that there are senior State Department officials serving in acting capacities, but these folks are seasoned veterans of the Foreign Service and seasoned diplomats," Toner said when questioned by VOA. The acting spokesman and career diplomat said appointing new ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state always takes time under every new administration. But why is this administration having more problems filling top positions than previous ones? Retired U.S. Ambassador Ron Neumann told VOA it may have something to do with Trump's vetting team. "There is a very small group in the White House that is controlling a lot of things, and there are some tensions within that group," Neumann said. "But in addition to that, it [the group] is just small. So it's perfectly possible that a large part of the delay is simply that those making the decisions are totally overloaded." Neumann, now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, noted that when it comes to top foreign policy positions within the State Department, there may be other considerations. "I think there's an additional feature, which is that Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson wants to finish his review of how to restructure the State Department before he fills a lot of jobs, some of which might be eliminated. And there's a certain logic to that, but the price may be too high if it goes on too long," the former ambassador noted. In an unusual interview with The New York Times released Thursday, Tillerson's spokesman, R.C. Hammond, confirmed this, saying there was no sense nominating candidates for jobs that may eventually be cut. "The first step was to find out where the Titanic was, and then it was to map out where everything else is," Hammond told the newspaper. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the State Department's budget by close to 30 percent. Congressional leaders from both major political parties have said they will not approve such cuts. Political factors Wright says he believes there are also political factors behind the lack of nominations. "Particularly, some people around Trump are intent on vengeance against people who opposed him in the campaign. And so they've ruled out any Republicans who criticized or opposed Trump during the election," the Brookings Institution fellow said. "But they have virtually nobody who is qualified for senior Senate-confirmable positions, or very few people who actually supported him and so we have a bit of a standoff." Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass said the most "natural pool of talent on the Republican side" has been precluded from consideration because many signed open letters criticizing then-candidate Trump during the campaign. "And my own recommendation and I made this point publicly and privately is these individuals ought to receive the equivalent of a pardon. That the president, if he wants to succeed, needs to be able to a call upon the best and the brightest, the most talented Americans," Haass said. President Donald Trump says phone conversations Wednesday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau persuaded him not to imminently withdraw the United States from their countries' three-way trade pact. "They asked me to renegotiate. I will," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big shock to the system, we will renegotiate." Trump, sitting Thursday alongside Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, said, "I was going to terminate NAFTA as of two to three days from now." But, he added, "If I'm unable to make a fair deal ... for our workers and our companies, we will terminate NAFTA." He reiterated his long-standing assertion that the 1994 trade agreement has been "very good for Canada. It has been very good for Mexico. But it has been horrible for the United States." The U.S. president's softening tone on what is perceived as America's most crucial trade pact is being well-received. "I am relieved," said Notre Dame University professor of finance Jeffrey Bergstrand, who notes trade agreements "not only lower tariffs, but create stability in the global value chain." Trump has already withdrawn the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, although that deal had not been ratified by Congress. A Mexican government statement on Wednesday's phone call between Trump and Pena Nieto stated the leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining NAFTA and working with Canada to bring about successful negotiations. A Canadian foreign ministry spokesman said Ottawa is "ready to come to the table at any time." Trump targeted Canada this week for what he said was unfair trade practices and he ordered a new 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber imports, which could add to the cost of buying new houses in the United States. Trump's consent to keep the United States in NAFTA, at least for a while, "probably reflects increasing voices from the business community that these trade policies have been good," Professor Bergstrand at the Mendoza College of Business told VOA. Many Mexican officials have called NAFTA a disappointment, saying it has brought slow economic growth despite increased investment in factories and industry. President Donald Trump has no intention of releasing his tax returns to the public, says Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, asserting Americans have plenty of information about the president's financial matters. For decades, presidents have released their tax returns. But Trump has so far refused, saying that he would share the tax documents only after the Internal Revenue Service completes an audit of them. He's never disclosed proof of an audit and tax lawyers say there's nothing preventing him from releasing his returns if he's under one. Trump said before he launched his campaign that he'd release them if he ever ran for office. If I decide to run for office, I'll produce my tax returns, absolutely, he told an Irish television station in 2014. And I would love to do that. No intention Mnuchin appeared to close the door completely Wednesday. The president has no intention. The president has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information, he said, inaccurately characterizing the president's disclosures. The comment came as the secretary briefed reporters on the president's new proposal to overhaul taxes. Democrats have sought to use the tax debate to pressure Trump to release his returns, arguing the information is necessary to evaluate how Trump's tax proposals would affect his personal wealth and his business' bottom line. Mnuchin declined to comment on how Trump would benefit from his proposals. He and other administration officials left the room as reporters shouted questions about how the plan would affect the Trump family. Trump, a billionaire, owns a global real estate, marketing and property management company, which at the start of his presidency he placed in a trust that he can revoke at any time. His daughter and son-in-law, both White House advisers, are also holding onto significant business assets. And Trump's adult sons run his Trump Organization. Trump officials have offered varying explanations for why the president does not disclosure his returns. White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said in a television interview in January that the fact that he won the election without putting out the information shows that people didn't care about it. Trump's sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have made similar points in various interviews, though recent polling suggests otherwise. A waste of time There's evidence the president has been thinking about the issue in recent weeks. He asked his friend and Las Vegas business partner Phil Ruffin, a fellow billionaire, whether he should put out the returns, Ruffin said. I advised him not to, Ruffin said. It's a waste of time, and he'll spend years explaining them and never get to accomplishing any of his goals. Ruffin said he told the president that Democrats would hire armies of accountants to pore over the documents and make an issue out of any and everything. Even with Mnuchin's seemingly definitive answer, the issue of Trump's tax returns isn't likely to go away. Democrats have threatened to hold up his tax proposals until they see the returns. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, Democrat-Oregon, called Trump's tax plan unprincipled - and one that will result in cuts for the one percent, conflicts for the president, crippling debt for America and crumbs for the working people. Democrats also have been pushing for a vote on a bill that would require the president and all major-party nominees to publicly disclose their previous three years of tax returns to the Office of Government Ethics or the Federal Election Commission. On Wednesday, Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to Chairman Jason Chaffetz requesting that he allow a vote on the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. As Members of Congress, we have the ability and duty to legislate in order to promote government transparency, combat conflicts of interest, and ensure compliance with the Constitution, they wrote. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a Democrat, also slammed Trump's tax plan as a half-baked collection of ideas that add up to a huge giveaway to Donald Trump and his rich friends. If your last name is Trump, he added, this plan is great for your bottom line. Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin says the decision to challenge President Donald Trumps travel ban has its roots in World War II. While the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor painfully underscored the need to focus on national security, the decision to isolate Americans based on their ancestry still stands as a national embarrassment. One of the things that people remember from that time is the internment of Japanese Americans, German Americans and Italian Americans based upon national security issues, Chin said in a TV interview with VOAs Deewa Service. When [Trumps] order came out, it was actually the 75th anniversary of when president [Franklin D.] Roosevelt had issued his own executive order. Its not like every decision that was made then was a great one. In addition, about 20 percent of Hawaiis population is foreign-born, many of its students come from overseas, and tourism is the states No. 1 economic driver. The fact that when the executive order came out it had some discrimination against people based on their national origin, that immediately struck a chord with people in the state, said Chin, the son of Chinese immigrants. This kind of order goes against peoples civil rights. Thats a bad trend that we dont want to see lead to worse things in the future. I think that history teaches us that if you dont speak out the first time when you see injustice happening, the next time it becomes harder to speak up again. It becomes easier to rationalize or compromise or justify a decision the government is making. Trumps second order barred the issuance of new visas for 90 days to people from six countries: Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. Iraq, which had been on the list in the first travel order, was omitted because it agreed to stricter vetting. Like the first travel order, the second one barred refugee admissions for 120 days, but it did not ban Syrian refugees indefinitely, as the first one did. While highly unpopular overseas, the 90-day entry ban on citizens of the six countries is supported by roughly one-half of all Americans, according to polls, and is consistent with repeated promises made by the president during his election campaign. Homeland Security chief John Kelly maintained when the first order was issued in January that the ban is not aimed specifically at Muslims, saying that his agencys mission is to safeguard the American people, our homeland, our values." Chin has a reply. We understand that national security is absolutely critical. The current president just needs to do what the presidents before him did, just follow the Constitution." Precedents Chin pointed out that the decision to set up internment camps wasnt a sudden one. It started with little things that people would say, statements from the highest levels of government, things like, `You cant really trust the Japanese people because they come from a different culture than the American culture," said Chin. I think when we hear the highest levels of government making statements that are disenfranchising an entire class of people or minimizing them or somehow making them second rate from another class, thats just not what the United States is all about. I think thats why what were doing is so important, he said. After Trumps original ban was overturned by a judge in Washington state, the White House issued a new version aimed at clearing the legal system. Chin said there was a legal precedent that took down the revision. The Supreme Court, several years ago when it was looking at religious discrimination, decided the following: Basically, the courts are allowed to look behind the words that are on a document, even if they are neutral, to find if there is any discriminatory intent, said Chin. He pointed to a March 15 rally in Nashville in which Trump said on national television that the revision was basically a watered-down version of the original, and that if he had his way, he would go back to original. You couldnt ask for something more explicit, Chin said. VOAs Deewa Service contributed to this report. The Pentagon said two U.S. service members were killed and a third was wounded during a raid against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in eastern Afghanistan. A U.S. military statement said the U.S. troops were conducting an operation with Afghan security forces when they came under attack Wednesday evening. "The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice, said General John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, using an acronym for the Islamic State Khorasan Province group, the local chapter of IS. The governor of Nangarhar, Gulab Mangal, said the operation, in Achin district's Pekhay area, inflected "heavy casualties" on IS militants. "Around 40 of them were killed and seven arrested," he said. Earlier this month, a U.S. warplane dropped the largest bomb in America's arsenal on an IS bunker complex in Nangarhar. The strike was described as part of a campaign to destroy the Islamic State Khorasan Province group. Officials said at least 92 militants were killed in the blast. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Afghan and U.S. forces closely coordinated on the bombing. The United Nations says that it has documented a staggering 54 percent increase in Afghan conflict-related deaths of women and a 17 percent rise in child fatalities during the first quarter of 2017 compared to the same period last year. U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which released the data on Thursday for overall civilian casualties, said that it was extremely concerned over the increases in both child and civilian women casualties. The report documented a total of 715 civilian deaths since the start of the year, which included 88 women and 210 children. The hostilities injured or maimed 1,466 civilians, including 185 women and 525 children. With the so-called fighting season imminent, I appeal to all parties to take every measure possible to prevent unnecessary and unacceptable harm to Afghan civilians, said UNAMA chief, Tadamichi Yamamoto. UNAMA said children comprised 34 percent of all civilian casualties during the first quarter. These numbers represent the lives of 735 girls, boys and infants - 735 stories of death, maiming, physical pain, emotional trauma and grief, said Danielle Bell, UNAMAs Human Rights Director. She also called on Afghanistans warring sides to ensure protection of children in 2017, saying the increase in child casualties reflected their failure to take adequate precautions to protect civilians. UNAMA blamed ground fighting for being the leading cause of civilian casualties, accounting for 35 percent of all civilian casualties, followed by improvised explosive devices as well as suicide and complex attacks. The province of Kabul had the highest number of civilian casualties due to suicide and complex attacks in the the Kabul city, followed by Helmand, Kandahar, Nangarhar and Uruzgan, the report noted. It blamed Taliban-led anti-government elements for causing 62 percent of civilian casualties during the first quarter of 2017, showing a five percent increase compared to the same period last year. UNAMA attributed 21 percent of civilian casualties to Afghan government forces, a decrease of two percent compared to the same period in 2016. But it recorded a substantial increase in civilian casualties from aerial operations. The mission documented 148 civilian casualties (72 dead and 76 injured) from aerial operations, a disturbing increase compared to 29 civilian casualties (eight dead and 21 injured) in the first quarter of 2016, the report said. A spokesman for Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, when asked for comments on the UNAMA report, said the government agrees with its findings that insurgents through terrorist attacks are responsible for causing most of the civilian casualties. While the UNAMA report has documented a significant reduction in civilian casualties attributed to Afghan forces, the government is working on recommendation by the international mission to further improve the situation, spokesman Mujibur Rahman Rahimi told VOA. UNAMA began documenting civilian casualties in 2009 and has since recorded nearly 25,000 deaths of Afghan civilians. The U.N. human rights office says one of its independent experts will travel to Panama next month to investigate tax avoidance and evasion schemes like those revealed by the so-called "Panama Papers" leak. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, the office's expert on foreign debt and human rights, has been asked by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council to study Panama's efforts to improve financial transparency and reduce illicit financial flows. The U.N. Human Rights Council has asked Bohoslavsky to study the impact of such illicit transactions and report to the 47-member body next March. The Argentinian expert said Thursday that during the May 2-10 visit he also wants to consider how Panama's "impressive economic growth" has trickled down to citizens, and the possible negative effects of large infrastructure projects on human rights. A bipartisan panel of experts on Egypt-U.S. relations is urging Congress to rethink its annual $1.5 billion aid package to Cairo as the country fails to improve its human rights record. The experts argued Egypt, under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is a military-run state, with no respect for human rights and rampant with government-sponsored anti-Americanism. The scholars made their comments at a recent hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Michele Dunne, director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, began her remarks by mentioning recently leaked footage that appears to show Egyptian soldiers executing terror suspects in the Sinai Peninsula. Rising repression "Egypt does face a serious threat from terrorism, but the unprecedented human rights abuses and political repression practiced by the government since 2013 is fanning the flames rather than putting them out," Dunne said. "And the U.S., at this point, does not have a way to ensure that our assistance is not making the problem worse instead of better." She commended President Donald Trump's apparent reluctance to give Cairo whatever it wants as a positive sign. During President Sissi's recent visit to the U.S., he did not get a promise from the administration to keep aid coming without questioning conditions in the country, Dunne added. Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for human rights in Former President Barack Obama's administration, focused his testimony on the persistent crackdown and repression in Egypt. "Over the last two or three years, the primary priority of the Egyptian military and General Sissi has not been to fight terrorism or improve governance," Malinowski said. "It has been to make sure that what happened in 2011 -- the Tahrir Square uprising -- can never ever happen again in Egypt, and that the power of the military over the countrys politics and economics is not challenged. Malinowski said as a result, the military has concentrated on persecuting political opponents, peaceful protesters, and independent, nongovernmental organizations -- the very people in Egypt who despise jihadis. He criticized Egypt for its attacks on U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations and urged Trump to adopt an "America first human rights policy. Such a policy would call for the release of Egyptian-American political prisoners, such as recently freed aid worker Ayah Hijazi, Malinowski said. Hijazi and four other humanitarian workers were released after Trump spoke with Sissi on Hijazi's behalf. Creating more jihadis Elliot Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, urged Congress to link up to 25 percent of the annual $1.3 billion military assistance package to progress on human rights. Current law only links 15 percent of aid to the issue. Abrams said many of the big-ticket items Egypt is buying with the U.S. aid, such as fighter jets, are useless for battling terrorist threats such as the Islamic State. He also accused Egypt of creating more jihadis through its operations in the Sinai Peninsula. "If you take 60,000 political prisoners, people who have not committed acts of violence, beat them up, toss them into prisons, keep them in for years, incarcerate them with real jihadis; what comes out at the end of that process is more jihadis," Abrams said. He also argued that Egypt has lost the regional influence it had when the United States urged it to make peace with Israel in the late 1970s. The experts urged Congress to retain the Obama administration's plan to end the cash flow to Egypt. Senators of both parties in the committee seemed to agree with much of the testimony offered by the panel. At the end of the hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham, the committee chairman, said, "We need to reshape the relationship in a way that's sustainable. What I see is disheartening, and as to the taxpayer dollars we have, I think we're obligated to spend them wisely, consistent with our values." The Trump administration has proposed replacing military assistance grants with loans for all countries except Israel. And the State Department is seeking a 42 percent cut in economic aid to Egypt, from $143 million to $75 million, according to draft budget documents obtained by Foreign Policy magazine. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley ratcheted up her rhetoric against Russia on Thursday, saying more pressure needs to be put on Moscow to stop the war in Syria. "Many of you said we need to put pressure on the Syrian regime; that's actually not the case. We need to put pressure on Russia," Haley told her counterparts on the 15-nation Security Council. The council was holding its monthly meeting on the humanitarian situation in Syria, where U.N. aid chief Stephen O'Brien told them that at least six hospitals and three schools have been bombed there this month, and a "noose has tightened" around besieged eastern Ghouta, where some 400,000 people have been cut off from U.N. aid convoys since October 2016. "All eyes and all pressure now need to go to Russia, because they are the ones that could stop this if they wanted to," Haley said. The U.S. envoy said the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been emboldened by its continued protection from Moscow. "Because Russia continues to cover for the Syrian regime, Russia continues to allow them to keep humanitarian aid from the people that need it, Russia continues to cover for a leader that uses chemical weapons against his own people, Russia continues to veto and Assad continues to do these things, because they know Russia will continue to cover for him," Haley said. "I will continue to press the Security Council to act, to do something regardless if the Russians continue to veto it, because it is our voice that needs to be heard," she added. Russia has used its veto eight times in the 6-year-long conflict to protect the Assad regime from sanctions and other international action. Russian response "The ongoing criticism of the Syrian government and the emotional calls to the country guarantors, including Russia, don't help anything," Russia's acting ambassador Petr Illichev told council members. "We are carrying out our obligations in good faith; there are other important players who are not hurrying to meet us halfway." Russia, along with Iran and Turkey, led talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, that led to a cessation of hostilities in December that can be described as shaky at best. But the Russian envoy told council members that, "In Syria as a whole, the cessation of hostilities is holding." This despite a poison gas attack earlier this month and ongoing shelling, airstrikes and ground fighting in several parts of the country. Israeli airstrikes Earlier Thursday, the Russian government called on Israel and other countries to avoid any actions that may escalate tension in Syria, after Syrian officials accused Israel of conducting airstrikes against an arms supply hub near Damascus International Airport. "All countries need to refrain from any kind of actions that lead to an increase in tension in this already restive region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. Peskov also said Syria's sovereignty should be respected. The arms hub is operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources said the strikes targeted weapons that were shipped from Iran on military and commercial cargo planes. Throughout the Syrian war, which began in March 2011, Israel has made it clear it would not allow shipments of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah units fighting in Syria. Israeli forces have on multiple occasions used airstrikes or other attacks to stop such moves, with the military often declining to confirm it was responsible for the strikes. Hezbollah and Israel fought each other in the 2006 Lebanon War. Migrants who applied for asylum in the United States but then fled north, fearing they would be swept up in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, may have miscalculated in viewing Canada as a safe haven. That is because their time in the United States could count against them when they apply for asylum in Canada, according to a Reuters review of Canadian federal court rulings on asylum seekers and interviews with refugee lawyers. In 2016, 160 asylum cases came to the federal courts after being rejected by refugee tribunals. Of those, 33 had been rejected in part because the applicants had spent time in the United States, the Reuters review found. Lawyers said there could be many more such cases among the thousands of applicants who were rejected by the tribunals in the same period but did not appeal to the federal courts. The 2016 court rulings underscore the potentially precarious legal situation now facing many of the nearly 2,000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada since January. Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the United States, including people awaiting the outcome of U.S. asylum applications, according to Canadian and U.S. government officials and Reuters interviews with dozens of migrants. Trump's tough talk on illegal immigration, however, spurred them northward to Canada, whose government they viewed as more welcoming to migrants. There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea. But Canadian refugee tribunals are wary of "asylum-shopping" and look askance at people coming from one of the world's richest countries to file claims, the refugee lawyers said. "Abandoning a claim in the United States or coming to Canada after a negative decision in the United States, or failing to claim and remaining in the States for a long period of time those are all big negatives. Big, big negatives, said Toronto-based legal aid lawyer Anthony Navaneelan, who is representing applicants who came to Canada from the United States in recent months. The Canadian government has not given a precise figure on how many of the border crossers were asylum seekers in the United States. But it appears their fears may have been misplaced. Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that anyone in the United States illegally is subject to deportation, but there is no evidence that asylum seekers with pending cases are considered illegal under the new administration. 'Lack of seriousness' The asylum seekers will make their cases before Canada's refugee tribunals, which rejected 5,000 cases last year. The tribunals' decisions are not made public, so the reasons are not known. An Immigration and Refugee Board spokeswoman confirmed, however, that an applicants time in the United States can be a factor in a tribunals decision. Rejected applicants can appeal to Canada's federal courts, whose rulings are published. The federal courts upheld 19 of the 33 tribunal rejections they heard last year and recommended fresh tribunal hearings for the other 14 cases. The judges believed those claimants had a good explanation for having been in the United States first. The outcomes of the new tribunal hearings are not known. The federal court handles only a small portion of all applications rejected by the refugee tribunals. But overall, applicants who have spent time in the United States have a higher chance of being rejected, said multiple immigration lawyers, including two former refugee tribunal counsel, interviewed by Reuters. Last year, a federal judge upheld a refugee tribunal rejection of Sri Lankan man who had abandoned a pending U.S. claim. The tribunal said the man's decision demonstrated a lack of seriousness and was inconsistent with the expected behavior of someone who fears persecution in their own country. A Chadian applicant lost his 2016 appeal because he did not claim asylum at the first opportunity in the United States. The asylum-seekers who have crossed the U.S border since January are still going through the claim process and many have yet to go through tribunal hearings. Well-founded fear? Canadian officials want refugee applicants to behave the way they think people fleeing for their lives would behave, said lawyer and researcher Hilary Evans Cameron. Living undocumented in the United States for years or abandoning a pending claim, as many people among this latest refugee influx have done, are not seen as consistent with that fear, she said. Those with failed U.S. asylum claims must prove to Canadian tribunals that the U.S. courts were wrong in their assessment,that their circumstances have changed for the worse, or that they qualify in Canada, several lawyers said. Crucially, all applicants must show that the often years-old fears that led them to leave their home countries for the United States still exist. Canada grants asylum if applicants qualify under the United Nations' definition of someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution based on certain criteria, such as race, religion, nationality or political affiliation. A federal judge ruled in March that the deportation of a Honduran family, who had lived in the United States for more than three years, could go forward after immigration officials found the family no longer faced a risk in Honduras. "The longer theyve been away [from their country of origin], the more difficult it is to establish that theyre a refugee," said Winnipeg refugee lawyer Ken Zaifman. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will make his United Nations debut Friday, chairing a high-level Security Council session on the threat posed by North Korea's quest to build a nuclear bomb. No immediate council action is expected, but Tillerson is expected to push for other members to join the U.S. in ratcheting up the pressure on Pyongyang. The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia on Wednesday called it the start of a "last best way to see if we can get a peaceful resolution." The problem has become a lot more urgent, acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton told an audience in Washington, adding that the focus will be on economic sanctions. It's very necessary for the international community to come together and share information and go after some of these companies that are providing either products or equipment that contribute to the weapons program, she said. We are definitely looking at China and expecting them to really step up and do a lot more than they've done in the past. Trump administration officials have expressed hope in recent weeks that Beijing is willing to do more. Later Thursday, Tillerson said on Fox News that China had threatened sanctions if North Korea were to conduct another nuclear test. He said China is in communication with Pyongyang, and "they confirmed to us that they had requested the regime conduct no further nuclear test." He added that despite major ceremonies this week, there had been no nuclear or missile tests. The secretary of state, however, did not say when China made the threat and there was no immediate confirmation from Beijing, according to Reuters. Time may be running out Most recently, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific told lawmakers he is reasonably optimistic about China's efforts, although he cautioned that time may be running out. The crisis on the Korean Peninsula is real as the worst I've seen, Admiral Harry Harris told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, adding there is no doubt North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is intent on building the capacity to threaten the U.S. with nuclear weapons. The Security Council meeting will come two days after U.S. President Donald Trump gathered lawmakers for extraordinary classified briefings on the threat from Pyongyang and on his administration's plans to try to defuse the rising tensions. Meeting a critical opportunity Friday's meeting, which will include China's foreign minister as well as his counterparts from Japan and South Korea, will be a critical opportunity for the U.S. secretary of state to lay out Washington's game plan for countries that are on the front line of the North Korean nuclear threat. Tillerson's appearance before the Security Council is going to be, I imagine, a call for greater focus, greater urgency and greater strength by the Security Council, said David Pressman, former deputy U.N. ambassador from the United States and a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner in New York. He said it also would be a call to China to use its influence on North Korea to have it change course. Last year, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and 24 ballistic missile launches. Already this year it has carried out ballistic missile tests in February, March and April, and experts believe another nuclear test could be imminent. Strengthening sanctions On Monday, during a lunch meeting with Security Council ambassadors at the White House, Trump said the council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Since 2006, the Security Council has imposed five rounds of sanctions on the regime, in an effort to stop it from advancing its nuclear program. Pressman led the U.S. negotiations for the Obama administration on the last and most robust round of targeted sanctions, which the council unanimously approved last November. He says Beijing has demonstrated a willingness to respond strongly to Pyongyang's provocations, but so far, China's engagement has not yielded the necessary results. Is there more that China can do? There is, absolutely. Are they prepared to do it? I certainly hope so, Pressman said. Because should they not be willing to do so, then the options for diplomacy to resolve this situation are becoming increasingly limited, and that is obviously extremely concerning when you are dealing with nuclear weapons. Speaking earlier this week in Athens, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China is neither the focus of current conflicts nor the holder of the key to solving the Korean Peninsula issue, according to his ministry's website, and he called for a peaceful and rational voice on the matter. After reports that President Donald Trump was considering an executive order to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the White House said Wednesday that Trump agreed not to take such action after phone calls with the leaders of Canada and Mexico. Since launching his bid for president, Trump has repeatedly criticized the nations trade deals, especially NAFTA, saying the agreement signed in 1994 has been a disaster and allowed many U.S. jobs to shift to Mexico. President Trump agreed to not terminate NAFTA at this time, and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries, the White House said. The statement further said Trump is honored to work with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and that he believes the renegotiation process will make the three countries stronger. A Mexican government statement confirmed the phone call between Trump and Pena Nieto, saying the leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining NAFTA and working with Canada to bring about successful negotiations for the benefit of the three nations. Earlier Wednesday, a Canadian foreign ministry spokesman said Canada is ready to come to the table at any time. Trump targeted Canada this week for what he said was unfair trade practices, and ordered a new 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber exports. Many Mexican officials have called NAFTA a disappointment, saying it has brought slow economic growth despite increased investment in factories and industry. "At the beginning of my fishing career, all the world told me that the trade was for men," says Chrifa Nimri, "but now all my colleagues respect and call me captain." The 69-year-old Tunisian fisherwoman is one of a very small female minority in a very male-dominated profession commercial fishing. Around the world, the dangerous work of hauling in the catch at sea is overwhelmingly performed by men. But if you expand the definition of fishing to include processers and marketers of seafood, workers in small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and collectors of clams and other shellfish, women account for a substantial part of the global industry. No women on board Sara Skamser has worked in or around commercial fishing for nearly her entire adult life. In her early 20s, she arrived on the Oregon coast and collected her first paychecks salmon fishing and crabbing in local waters. Then Skamser asked for jobs on bigger boats home-ported in Newport -- better pay and bigger adventure and all. But, she recalls, none of those skippers would hire her. "No. They said no. She mimics them. 'Uh, I know you could do the job. Gosh, you're probably stronger than me. Uhhh, but I don't think my wife would like it.' Or, 'Uhhh. I would feel terrible if you got hurt on my boat.'" This was in the early 1980s. To this day in the Pacific Northwest, women hold fewer than 4 percent of the commercial fishery licenses issued by Oregon and Washington state. Elsewhere in the world, social norms helped to keep the gender disparity in place. For example, in Mexico, Peru, Senegal and Vietnam, which all have major marine fisheries, 4 percent or fewer of the workers on fishing boats are women. Changes on shore But pull back the lens a little bit and there's evidence of change. Skamser provided one of many oral histories that formed the basis of a research project on the role of women in the northwestern U.S. commercial fishing industry. Grad student Sarah Calhoun and Professor Flaxen Conway of Oregon State University along with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center researcher Suzanne Russell in Seattle analyzed the results, which were published in the journal Marine Policy. Conway, a sociologist, says they found women are playing a larger role on the regulatory and business side. "I think if you look at the scientists, you look at the processing, you look at the marketing. ... Once you broaden that out to fisheries in general, then I would absolutely say there are more women in science positions and management positions than there have been in my career, in my 27-year-long career." "We're seeing an increase on the business side more so than ever before," added social scientist Russell. "Women always worked the business side of things, but now with the complexity and all the reporting, trading and bycatch requirements, it's pretty intense." One of Conway's takeaways was that the traditional, behind-the-scenes role of a fisherman's wife has become an increasingly complex and critical job. "Whether it's regulation, safety, marketing, research, it's all caring for that fishing family business and making those products get to the table that we enjoy." An international look A separate research team cast a wider net examining women's contributions to the fishing industry in Mexico, Peru, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam. Sarah Harper of the University of British Columbia led that study, whose results appeared in the latest edition of the journal Coastal Management. "In terms of going out on fishing boats, I think it is still predominantly male-dominated. But certainly when we look at some of the small scale fisheries, the collection of shellfish and fish from shore, women are much more involved and definitely underestimated and undercounted in this area." Harper says subsistence fishing by women to feed their families is easily overlooked. So, she says, is who goes crabbing in Vietnam or fishing from boats in lagoons. When harvest by women is overlooked, Harper says that makes it harder for governments to accurately gauge the pressure on a seafood resource and sustainably manage a fishery. "When you're looking at managing fisheries and potentially trying to rebuild fisheries and implement conservation measures, you really need to know who is fishing and where. If there are fisheries that only men are focused on in certain regions and we're only focused on those, we're not getting the whole picture." Harper says she is encouraged to see United Nations bodies take an interest in gender equality in fisheries and be more gender-inclusive when making policy and management recommendations. Hooking new opportunities Sara Skamser is still involved in the industry, but not on a fishing vessel. She makes her voice heard on several local advisory boards, and founded a successful fishing net and gear company called Foulweather Trawl with her husband in Oregon. She also deals with some of the fishermen who wouldn't hire her decades ago. "Bottom line of all of that is that I invoice those people now and occasionally there's a large invoice. I just look at 'em. I give them the look. Like, 'Uh, huh. Probably should've hired me. You would've gotten that for free,'" she says with a chuckle. There are online forums dedicated to women in fishing and elevating their profile. One in particular on Facebook called "Chix Who Fish" celebrates victories such as getting a boot maker and a foul weather gear maker to add product lines tailored to the shapes of women's bodies. American chicks who fish have no use for gender-neutral titles by the way, according to Flaxen Conway. "They don't want to be called a woman fisherman. They just want to be called a fisherman." By Press Trust of India: Quetta, Apr 27 (PTI) At least eight Iranian border guards were killed in firing by suspected outlaws near the Sistan- Balochistan border along Pakistans troubled Balochistan province, state-run IRIB news agency reported. The border guards were killed after clashes erupted near the town of Mirjaveh in the Iranian province of Sistan- Balochistan which has a border crossing with Balochistan. advertisement Four other border guards were also injured in the clashes, the news agency reported. The Sistan-Balochistan province is the largest Iranian province in the southeast of Iran and has its borders with Pakistans restive Balochistan province. Security forces are often attacked by armed bandits, drug dealers, and outlaws in the area. A commander of Irans Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by two terrorists in Sistan- Balochistan provinces border area with Pakistan last year. In July last year, four Iranian guards were killed in the border region with Pakistan. The Iranian media has claimed that the Jaish al-Adl militant group ? accused by Tehran of links to al Qaeda ? carries out regular attacks in Sistan and Balochistan. PTI cor ARK --- ENDS --- Zimbabwes ruling Zanu PF says it is compiling a detailed report on the state of the party, currently ravaged by factionalism, which will soon be handed over to President Robert Mugabe for him to take action on officials fighting over the succession of the 93-year-old leader. Party spokesman, Simon Khaya Moyo, told Studio 7s Blessing Zulu that the president is expected to make his own decision over the contents of the report. President Robert Mugabe is the one who deployed our team to Mashonaland Central province to investigate fully circumstances that caused the province to pass a vote of no confidence in Kasukuwere. He added, We are now compiling the report and we will hand it over to the president. It is up to him to take it to the Politburo or not. The probe team is led by Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda. Some Zanu PF members are currently attempting to eject party political commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere, for allegedly being corrupt and attempting to unseat President Mugabe. Kasukuwere has dismissed these allegations as unfounded. A faction of the party calling itself Team Lacoste said to be led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is allegedly behind moves to force Kasukuwere to leave the party. The other faction is said to be a front for President Mugabes wife, Grace, who allegedly wants to succeed her husband. Both Mrs. Mugabe and Mnangagwa say they dont have any presidential ambitions. Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens. Borders and Coastguard Agency Takes Over Visa Waivers and Entry Visas to Gibraltar Government have announced that the Borders and Coastguard Agency will be taking over the issuance of Visa Waivers and administration of applications for Entry Visas to Gibraltar. The move will see the process of the aforementioned documents facilitated due to the Agencys Officers being present on duty at all of Gibraltars points of entry. Visa Waivers are currently being issued by the Civil Status and Registration Office, but as from Tuesday 2nd May this will be taken over by the Borders and Coastguard Agency. Similarly, applications made to the relevant UK authorities for Entry Visas for Gibraltar shall be administered by the Agency from the same date. Applications for Visa Waivers may be made by requiring third country nationals at the Agencys headquarters at 11 Winston Churchill Avenue during weekdays from 8.30am to 3.00pm. Applications on the relevant form will need to be accompanied by a recent ICAO compliant photograph and the applicants passport. Visa Waivers shall continue to be issued free of charge. Applications for Entry Visas must continue to be made to UK Visas and Immigration via the website visa4uk.fco.gov.uk who will process the application on behalf of the Borders and Coastguard Agency. CM Addresses the Propeller Club of Algeciras at a Private Lunch Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, addressed the Propeller Club of Algeciras at a private lunch on Tuesday. He was a special guest and spoke on the latest developments regarding Brexit and its implications for Gibraltar and the Campo Area. Mr Picardo told members of the Club that his Government was in favour of co-operation between the Port of Gibraltar and the Port of Algeciras for mutual benefit in the area. He emphasised how both ports were complementary to each other. The Chief Minister said good relations on both sides would bring economic benefits and more jobs. We have much in common and should work together on the elements that unite us. This is the only way to overcome our existing differences which should be overcome through dialogue. Mr Picardo thanked the Propeller Club for giving him the opportunity to acquaint himself with their concerns over the challenges Brexit presented to their economic and commercial activities. The Chief Minister urged those present to work towards making the Bay more competitive taking into account the best Port in the Mediterranean and the excellent Finance Centre in Gibraltar. He urged for railway expansion to make the Campo Area richer which, in turn, would benefit Gibraltar. The Chief Ministers Talk was followed by a lively Question and Answer session. Ava Duvernay. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME Ava DuVernay was feeling a little overwhelmed and underprepared walking into the annual Time 100 Gala on Tuesday. She was on the list of Times most influential people in the world and had been asked to give a toast to someone who had influenced her. She just had a little favor to ask some of her reporter friends in the room. I need you to write me a speech, she said, grabbing my hand. I have nothing. Over the course of watching Demi Lovato perform and catching up with old friends like John Legend and Sarah Paulson, though, she seemed to get inspired. And as she stepped up to the microphone to read her speech from her cell phone, she kept having to hold back tears. The person she wanted to pay tribute to was an unmarried registered nurse who worked the night shift for over 20 years in Compton, California. She was named Denise Amanda Sexton and was DuVernays aunt, and the person who not only gave DuVernay her love of movies, but taught her the power of representation. She worked at night so she could read books by day, and see films, and go to museums, and watch the news, and learn and grow, said DuVernay. And she did all of that, I realized, so that she could turn around and teach her nieces and nephews all that she had learned, all that she knew, all that she had drunk in, all that she had been influenced by. And to her little niece Ava, she passed on her love of movies. Theyd take the bus to the movie theater and back and talk about what theyd seen, which for a little girl is a big deal when someone just talks to you, said DuVernay. And Id learn from her and Id grow. And I understood deeply at that young age that as a black girl, as a black woman, movies affected the way I saw myself, and the way that I was seen by other people. And I came to understand the power of the image deeply, and I fell in love with it. It became clear something about DuVernays use of the past tense, something about the way that she seemed to dread reading the next paragraph that Denise is no longer here. She ascended to another realm, triggered by cancer, something else that she always studied, DuVernay said. That was over a decade now and shes with me every day, especially in a room like this where she Im sorry she needed a minute, where she would be in awe of everybody here, just like I am. Then she asked a room of some of the most powerful people in the world to raise a glass to my ultimate influencer, my aunt, Denise Amanda Sexton of Compton, California, and to your Denise, whoever your Denise is. See the full video below, and try not to weep. Sibling relationships in sitcoms are invariably studies in contrast, two or more characters conceived as a reaction to one another. Black-ishs sibling pairings are no different. Zoey is the effortlessly cool older sister and tastemaker, while Junior is the straitlaced nerd-culture omnivore. Jack is goofy and fun-loving, while Diane is all crafty business. Dre loves the ladies, while Rhonda loves other ladies. Sister, Sister introduces Rashida Jones as Santamonica, Rainbows other sibling and the one designed to be her polar opposite. Rainbows brother Johan (Daveed Diggs) is also Rainbows opposite in a sense, as the family neer-do-well who gets by on his sisters generosity instead of finding a real job. Santamonica at least shares Bows work ethic, if you assume emptying a Champagne flute in another womans face can be considered work. Shes now the breakout star of Rich Wives, a Bravo-style, kitty-can-scratch reality soap, following her lucrative divorce after three months of marriage to a pro athlete. Santamonica is not just different from Rainbow; shes different in a way designed to drive Rainbow insane. When Santamonica shows up to report on the latest chapter of her life, the contrast between the sisters is immediately obvious. The only thing she and Rainbow have in common is a ridiculous name, Dre says. (At least Rainbows is only two syllables and easy to abbreviate, so she got off much easier than her sister.) At first, it seems like the Rainbow-and-Santamonica plot will unfold like a broader version of Value, the Atlanta episode that explored the judgments and misconceptions underlying a friendship between two black women on very different paths. Sister, Sister is that, sort of, just by virtue of the show Black-ish is. Rainbows anxiety about African-American media representation is well-documented, so its hard to imagine that the white gaze doesnt factor in to her discomfort with Santamonicas new public persona. Rainbow says shes frustrated with her sisters lifelong refusal to apply herself to intellectual and practical concerns. But theres also some implicit frustration for Rainbow with the image of black women her sister is broadcasting to the world. Nevertheless, the script by Anya Adams is more of a meditation on Rainbow and Santas inability to relate to each others lives than a commentary on reality TVs depictions of black women. Bow voices her concerns to Dre, who, in a rare moment of mature insight, suggests Rainbow spend more time trying to get to know who Santamonica actually is instead of trying to turn her into someone else. So Bow makes an earnest effort only to find out that with Santa, what you see on Instagram is what you get, give or take a filter. Johan and Alicia, the trios mother, have convinced themselves that Santamonicas shtick is some kind of sophisticated meta-commentary. But Bow sees firsthand that Santas selfie-sticking, hashtagging celebutante lifestyle isnt an act or a piece of elaborate performance art. When Bow shows Santa a feature about her work in a medical trade publication, Santa cant stop talking about how big Bows boobs look in the head shot. Alicia, played by the great Anna Deavere Smith, smacks Rainbow down when Bow tries to suggest her more traditional accomplishments made her the favorite child. Alicia says she loves her children because of who they are, not what they do. To that end, Sister, Sister goes further than to say Santamonica has a right to forge her own path. Alicia talks about how generous with and attentive to her family Santa is, even surpassing Bow in some ways. Its not the biting satire Black-ish excels at, but the subtlety is refreshing. Casting Jones as Santa is such a stroke of genius, it could make up for any good will Black-ish might have lost with the introduction of Rich Youngsta. In addition to being a wonderful comedic actress, Jones bears a striking resemblance to Tracee Ellis Ross. When I first heard about Joness appearance, I thought, Oh, that might be cute, but not until I saw Ross and Jones perched in the same frame did the impact of them playing sisters truly land. Along with Diggs, the three actors could easily pass for real-life siblings. Santamonica is a fun departure for Jones, who usually plays characters closer to Rainbow. In fact, if you take Bow, make her younger and flightier, then plop her in the Midwest, shes pretty close to Ann Perkins, Joness character from Parks and Recreation. Santa is also a challenging role, since part of the fun of Sister, Sister is trying to figure out exactly what her deal is. Is she just cray-cray, or is she cray-cray like a fox? The audience has to unravel the mystery of Santamonica at the same pace as her sister, and Jones infuses the character with just the right amount of ambiguity. Sister, Sister feels a bit lopsided, with two thin subplots that feel like too-familiar riffs on Johnson family drama. And without Ruby or Pop Pop in the episode, the characters most likely to drop a killer one-liner cant do what they do best. (In fairness, Deon Cole gets a great line about how a deer killed his father.) But the episode is a worthy endeavor if only because it welcomes a wonderful new member to the Black-ish ensemble. Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke. Photo: Jamie McCarthy/2014 Getty Images The song Blurred Lines has long since faded into memory as one of those ubiquitous songs of summers past, but Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams are still caught up in a copyright legal battle with Marvin Gayes estate. After losing a 2015 court case that found in favor of Marvin Gayes heirs, which argued that Blurred Lines was too similar to Gayes Got to Give It Up, Thicke and Pharrell appealed. The two pop stars even got over 200 other musicians to sign an amicus brief in their favor. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the latest filing from the duos legal team is arguing against the legal merits of a groove to the Ninth Circuit. [T]he two songs in this case are not the same, and the district court should have granted summary judgment, the brief states. The lawyers argue that since the music Gaye copyrighted was the sheet music, and not the sound recording, the two songs should be compared only on the basis of what is expressed in the written form, devoid of any musical expressions that occurred in the recording. A groove or feeling cannot be copyrighted, and inspiration is not copying, the legal team wrote. Thicke and Williams are hoping to have the lower-court verdict overturned, or to receive a new trial. Every version of Fargo the film and now three seasons of TV has shared a common theme of what V.M. Varga (David Thewlis) calls the inescapable reality. As he tells Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and Sy Feltz (Michael Stuhlbarg), American films have led people to believe that plans can be changed and that one can dig oneself out of a hole. In the world of Fargo, this isnt true. Oh, you can keep digging, but the hole only gets bigger. The title of this weeks episode The Principle of Restricted Choice refers to a theory in Nikki Swangos (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) beloved game of Bridge, but it could also refer to life on Fargo. We open with Gloria (Carrie Coon) investigating the death of her stepfather Ennis. She goes back to the case books she found below his floor, revealing a stack of sci-fi pulp novels like Toronto Cain: Psychic Ranger and The Plague Monkeys, written by an author named Thaddeus Mobley. She finds newspaper clippings about him, and quickly discerns that Mobley and Ennis were one and the same. So not only was Ennis killed in a case of mistaken identity, but it was a name he chose for himself. Why? Who was Thaddeus Mobley? On her way back to the Eden Valley Police Station to meet the new chief, Gloria has issues with her cell phone, and flawed technology feels like itll be a recurring motif this season. In a later scene, well meet her new boss, Sheriff Moe Dammik (Shea Wigham), whos startled that they dont even have computers in the office, and makes it clear hes the new boss in town. While Gloria is investigating her stepfathers past, Emmit and Sy need to find out more about V.M. Varga. Their attorney, Irv Blumkin, is startled to discover that they borrowed $1 million from a man whose first name they dont even know. Emmits suggestion that Irv just friend this cocksucker on Facebook and reel him in is indicative of how little these people grasp about the severity of their situation. Perhaps its because theyre too distracted by Emmits brother, Ray (Ewan McGregor). Emmit is feeling guilty about the stamp controversy, but Sy advises him that Ray needs to be cut out of his life. Sy thinks that Ray is just a user, someone who will always ask for something more. As he says, He doesnt want the stamp, pal. He wants your life. In possibly my favorite scene so far, we see the depths of Irv Blumkins research abilities as he types V.M. Varga into the Google search bar and then has to be instructed to hit enter. He then clicks on a link and a download, infecting his whole office with a virus that shuts down their computers. Theyll have to call the I.T. kid that Shirley knows. While Blumkin tries to fix his desktop, Varga leads a massive big rig into a parking lot owned by Stussy. Whats in the truck? Should Sy and Emmit take a look or maintain plausible deniability? Whatever is in there, Varga and his people are wasting no time getting their claws into the Parking Lot King of Minnesota. Meanwhile, Emmit reads about the Ennis murder in the St. Cloud Herald and seems oddly unsurprised. If a man named Bob Tallerico had his eyes and mouth glued shut in the town next door, Id be a little startled. Speaking of Ennis, Gloria is still trying to investigate his murder, which leads her to the gas station where Maurice stole a page of the phone book. In a scene that feels a bit reminiscent of this beauty from the movie, the shop owner wonders if a person can make meth from frozen juice concentrate and makes it clear he was watching the Gophers game. He also thinks Maurice was Russian, but hes not sure why. At the same time, Ray learns that his non-Russian parolees death has been ruled accidental. Maybe theyll get away with it. Ray goes to Nikkis apartment to tell her the good news, but shes a little uncertain, slapping him twice because theres something wrong with his chi. Hes feeling guilt and remorse; shes already planning their next Bridge tournament. The callous way Nikki moves on from murder is a bit distressing, making it feel like she could easily turn on Ray when the situation demands it. Shes more interested in getting the stamp back, and in coining a phrase that could be the subtitle of the show: unfathomable pinheadery. Theyre going to fix Rays chi by getting that damn stamp. Stussy acts as a distraction, meeting with his brother outside the house while Nikki goes in to retrieve it. Theres a beautiful setup shot as the brothers sit to talk, perfectly symmetrical with benches and bushes with Christmas lights on either side, reflecting the twins and the theme of duality that so often returns to the show. Ray and Emmit actually have a good conversation, and Ray seems sincere about wanting to bury the hatchet. He even goes in for a hug. That hatchet will have some blood on it, however. When Nikki gets upstairs, she sees that the stamp is gone, replaced by a painting of a jackass. She takes it as a personal insult, writing, Whos the Ass Now? on it in menstrual blood and leaving her used tampon in the desk drawer. Any bridge-building Ray wanted to do outside has now been destroyed, and Sy makes that clear in a meeting at the Fontanelle Restaurant and Lodge. You and Emmit will never speak again, he tells Ray, before throwing some money at him and crashing into his car in the parking lot. In the most Fargo moment of the episode, he hits another car on the way out. This show is drenched in collateral damage. Sy will soon be reminded that he has way more to worry about than Ray Stussy when Varga and his cronies show up at the Stussy offices with dollies of boxes. Theyre moving in. Thewlis gets an amazing scene in which he speaks about liking Minnesota because its so perfectly, sublimely bland, and then makes it clear that he was behind the death of Irv Blumkin, thrown off a parking garage by Yuri (Goran Bogdan) and Meemo (Andy Yu). He suggests Stussy buy new lots and maybe build a stadium. Theyre trapped. Its their new reality. Other Notes Remember the first scene in last weeks season premiere? The man who claimed not to be the murderous Yuri Gurka? The Russian who helped Irv Blumkin fly is named Yuri Gurka. The title refers to a theory in Bridge that playing a particular card decreases the probability of a player having any equivalent card. It fits perfectly for this episode as characters like Nikki, Sy, and Vargas are playing cards on their opponents. The Christmas lights should have given it away, but you can also see on the Maurice LeFays death report that this season so far takes place in early December 2010. This weeks music cues: Sho Z-Pod Duba by DakhaBrakha as the big rig that possibly contains slave girls is driven in; Kalinka by Ural Cossacks Choir after Irv gets tossed, which is perfectly edited into the scene; The Christmas Song by Bing Crosby at the Fontanelle; American Wedding by Gogol Bordello over the end. Catch the reference to Stan Grossman when Emmit and Sy talk about the lot? Hes the attorney for Wade Gustafson in the Coen film, as played by Larry Brandenburg. You can see him in this scene. Is the name of the restaurant, Fontanelle, a reference to this scene from Raising Arizona? I choose to believe it is. After a huge loss at MCD civic polls, Aam Aadmi Party is likely to appoint Labour Minister Gopal Rai as the new convener of its Delhi unit. By Press Trust of India: A day after the Aam Aadmi Party suffered a humiliating defeat in the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) polls, the party is likely to appoint Labour Minister Gopal Rai as the new convener of its Delhi unit. The decision was taken at a meeting of Delhi AAP MLAs called by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at his official residence to review the result of civic bodies' polls. advertisement However, the formal announcement will made after the meeting of party's Political Affairs Committee (PAC), AAP's highest decision-making body. KEJRIWAL ASK MLAs TO FIND REASONS BEHIND POLL DEBACLE On Wednesday, AAP's Delhi convener Dilip Pandey had resigned from the post, taking responsibility for the party's drubbing in the municipal polls. "Labour Minister Gopal Rai has been appointed as the new convener of Delhi AAP. A formal decision will be announced after the PAC meeting," an AAP functionary said. In the meeting, Kejriwal also asked MLAs to go back to people and introspect the reasons behind the poll debacle. The newly-elected 48 councillors also met the chief minister at his residence. MAJOR DIVIDE IN AAM AADMI PARTY Talking to reporters after the meeting, AAP legislator Vishesh Ravi said, "In the meeting, it was decided that MLAs would go back to the people and try to find out what had led to the communication gap between the legislators and them". Ravi, an MLA from Karol Bagh, said that in the meeting with Kejriwal, the EVM manipulation issue was also discussed. "The AAP will soon decide its future course of action on this issue. At present, related evidence (pertaining to EVM manipulation) is being gathered," Ravi said. Another AAP MLA Nitin Tyagi said that in the meeting, it was discussed that MLAs should introspect on what went wrong in the MCD elections. Asked about who would be the party's next Delhi convener, Tyagi also said Rai may be appointed to the post. "We need to work at the ground level in our constituencies and also introspect on what went wrong in MCD polls. I think there has been a communication gap between the MLAs and the people. We could not convince the people about the the good work done by the Delhi government. "I think people also forgot how the BJP in the MCD had failed for the last 10 years," Tyagi, the MLA from Laxmi Nagar, said. Another AAP lawmaker, who did not wish to be named, said that Kejriwal had asked all party legislators not to be upset with the MCD poll results, and go back to the people. Also Read: advertisement Swear to God that you will never betray this pavitra party: Kejriwal's oath to new AAP councillors AAP's Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh quits post WATCH VIDEO: MCD result fallout: Gopal Rai to be Aam Aadmi Party Delhi convenor --- ENDS --- Urs Fischer, age 8, Cat, 1981. Photo: Courtesy of the artist/Mats Nordm ProjectArt, an organization that holds after-school art classes for young people at public libraries in low-income neighborhoods in New York City, Detroit, and Miami, is hosting a benefit auction at Red Bull Arts New York on April 28. The theme is My Kid Could Do That, and accompanying the auction will be an exhibition of artworks by famous contemporary artists before they were famous actually, from when they were kids. So you can come see the early work of the art stars of today including Sanford Biggers, Katherine Bradford, Cecily Brown, Will Cotton, Olafur Eliasson, Urs Fischer, Terence Koh, Tom Sachs, Laurie Simmons, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kiki Valdes, Wendy White, Dustin Yellin when their parents were the only ones who thought they were geniuses (and they had to like what they did) and their gallery representation was Grandmas fridge. If you cant participate in the auction, you can also come by Saturday and judge your childs creative output against that of people who actually make their living doing this stuff today. Urs Fischer I remember I was very happy when I made this cat. When I stuck it in the oven to bake the clay, its head began to tilt and I kind of liked that. Urs Fischer (top image) Terence Koh Terence Koh, age 16 or 17, Untitled. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and ProjectArt Sanford Biggers Sanford Biggers, age 16, Grandfathers Hands, 1986. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and ProjectArt When I was in high school, my grandfather passed away. I made this painting with him in mind though it isnt really a portrait. It was inspired more by his presence, and his life in Texas, which was a fascinating contrast compared to my life growing up in Los Angeles. Sanford Biggers Daniel Arsham Daniel Arsham, ages 8-10, Untitled, 1980s. Photo: Courtesy of B.A. Van Sise These works were made in the late 1980s. I was 810 years old. Most of the drawings in my archive are black and white as I am color-blind. Blue is one of the colors that I do see well and the gradient study is interesting in this context. Daniel Arsham Tom Sachs Tom Sachs, age 10. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and ProjectArt Not much has changed in the past 40 years since I made this drawing. Tom Sachs Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija, age 7, untitled (silver mr. Spock). Photo: Courtesy of the artist and ProjectArt Katherine Bradford Katherine Bradford, age 8, Two Elephants, 1950. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and ProjectArt Done with crayons on cheap paper, this drawing of two elephants represents my ongoing obsession with mother-child images and with being a non-conformist animal artist. Most kids would draw the elephant side view with four feet on the ground and a long trunk hanging down. I dont think I ever saw two elephants do this circus trick but it certainly makes them more human and less wild. Other artistic points to consider are that I colored within the lines but not too carefully and that I used a wonderful magenta red crayon as outline. It would be years before I could get two figures to balance properly on one leg but here is proof that I was off to a bad start. Katherine Bradford When Leslie Jones stopped by The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon challenged the Saturday Night Live star to a game of Truth or Lie. The only catch was that Jones would have to try to trick Dr. Phil, a daytime talk-show host who has heard more than his share of wild, possibly fictional, tales. Perhaps it is Dr. Phils professional experience that made it possible for him to maintain calm after Jones slam-dunks the storys punch line, while Fallon, as he is wont to do, walked offstage laughing. Before Shots Fired aired on Fox, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where the producers screened the pilot along with The Fire This Time to gin up enthusiasm. The decision to show a famously discerning audience the first and then the sixth installment of a ten-part series seemed odd at the time, but its easier to understand after watching this episode why the producers would want viewers to see it as quickly as possible. I now have a better understanding of the methodical-to-a-fault storytelling approach, but part of me wishes Id been able to leapfrog the past four episodes just like the Sundance audience got to do. The Fire This Time finds Gate Station erupting into violence after weeks of rising tensions over the sometimes complementary, sometimes competitive investigations into the deaths of Joey Campbell and Jesse Carr. Whether they take place in a small, unknown town like Ferguson or a familiar global city like Los Angeles, which is coming up on the 25th anniversary of its own uprising against anti-black police violence, riots make any place look hostile and alien. Once the civil unrest begins and a heavily militarized police force descends on Gate Station, its clear theres an emotional impact that would have gotten lost had the show not introduced the community, its denizens, and its unique dynamics before turning the town into a domestic war zone. That said, the decision to depict Gate Station before, during, and after the riot leaves Shots Fired with the unenviable position of dramatizing the exact moments when the communitys frustration coalesces. The Fire This Time has trouble with that part, because its uprising doesnt feel attached to anything in particular. Almost invariably, riots are incited by some kind of event, either the initial act of police violence or the announcement of a verdict that fails to provide the community a sense of closure. The deaths of Joey and Jesse happened weeks ago and no one has been charged, much less tried and acquitted, so nothing actually happens to set off this dangerous demonstration. The episode begins with Pastor Janae leading a rally, where she pitches the same idea to the agitated crowd that she mentioned to Governor Eamons. Janae sees riots as a cleansing fire, a disruption so alarming it forces the powers that be to examine the emotions that gave rise to it. She encourages the crowd to emulate Baltimore and Ferguson, actually going so far as to use the word riot, but couching the language in elaborate metaphors. In doing so, the episode suggests that Janae uncorked something she cant contain. Soon, masked looters are firebombing the local soul food restaurant for no apparent reason or it feels like no apparent reason because the episode never identifies a tipping point for the riot other than Pastor Janaes speech. Ideally, the dramatization of a riot would help the audience understand how the communitys relatable anger turns into irrational violence, and this doesnt quite hit the mark. What the episode does instead is use the theme of confrontation throughout. While the events leading up to the riot are unclear, the riot scenes are interspersed with conversations, big and small, that illustrate how everyone involved is incredibly stressed and looking for an outlet. Alicia Carr pops up at the sheriffs station, which is celebrating Breelands 20th anniversary on the force. Everyones so distracted with the party, they barely notice when Jesses mom slips in and confronts Officer Beck directly. Seems like the kind of conversation someone should intervene in, but instead, Alicia pleads with Beck to describe the final moments of her sons life. Preston and Ashe start applying pressure in their investigations, newly convinced by Durkins suicide that theres a major cover-up at work. Preston goes after Governor Eamons, betting shell shake the trees herself if he tells her the volunteer deputy program she used to woo wealthy donors resulted in a young mans untimely death. Like Pastor Janae, Prestons bold play has unintended consequences. Sarah is furious, especially after Preston reveals he found out about the governors program by snooping on her laptop during one of their horizontal networking sessions. And when Eamons leans on Sheriff Platt to get his department under control and cooperate fully with the DOJ investigation, Platt makes a show of good faith by placing Beck on suspension until the matter is resolved. Meanwhile, Ashe goes after Arlen Cox, who admits his service as an auxiliary deputy but insists he was out of town when Joey was killed. Thats about the extent of Ashes involvement in Gate Station, since she has to return to D.C. for a custody hearing. Ashe and her ongoing baby-daddy drama has been my least favorite subplot in Shots Fired, but by delving further into it, the show gives Sanaa Lathan her opportunity to shine. Many of the early reviews of this show (again, reviews based on this episode and the pilot) singled out Lathans performance as a highlight. While I think Lathan has been solid, the bad-cop routine hasnt played to her strengths. Now, Ashe is fighting for custody of her daughter, going so far as to seduce Kais father and blackmail him with proof of the affair. Lathan plays the desperation beautifully, and her performance fuels the shocking moment when Ashe reveals that what seemed like a genuine moment of vulnerability was actually a premeditated gambit. Speaking of gambits, as risky as it is for Shots Fired to have Ashe spend nearly an entire episode outside Gate Station, it pays off for another one of the shows superfluous subplots. The simmering romance between Preston and Ashe hasnt worked prior to this episode because the writers banged the drum rather than letting the dynamic develop at its own pace. Here, the audience gets to see Preston and Ashe, who have been forced to spend a lot of time together, being forced to separate during an emotionally fraught time. Neither says anything directly, but its obvious they miss each other. Their reunion is bound to be intense, especially once Ashe sees whats happened to Gate Station. Since graduating from Baylor University as a University Scholar in 2004, artist Jen Dunlap has lived in New York for about 10 years, then Los Angeles with some five cross-country trips and several Waco visits in that time. When it came to titling the show that opens Thursday at Art Center of Waco, Dunlap decided to adapt the title of one of her solo LA shows, going from Self Chases Shadow to Self Chases Home. Its been a quest to find your home, the place where you feel grounded, where you feel at ease, she said. Los Angeles is that now for the Houston native, more so than New York City, but Waco has a partial claim as well, thanks to her years at Baylor and her grandmother Betty Dunlap, a Waco resident who died last August. Wacos been a pretty substantial home for me, she said. Dunlaps show encompasses about 20 abstract landscape paintings, photographs and digital video pieces, a reflection of her wide-ranging artist output and interests. While a University Scholar leaning toward art, she found her classes in sculpture, ceramics and photography equally compelling. She turned to performance art for her senior project Art Is For Eating, baking cake sculptures to go with her food paintings, then, with the help of several costumed, dancing friends, fed cake to visitors in the gallery. Different media can better express what youre trying to say, she explained. I also want to try and have fun with it. Diversity played a part to in trying to survive as a freelance artist in New York City and Los Angeles and Dunlap broadened her reach to encompass production design and digital video, with such clients as Hollywoods Mike Nichols and Ethan Hawke, UnderArmour, Dell, CollegeHumor, USA Today and fashion designer Derek Lam. She also has done artist residencies in Mexico City and Vermont. Many of the works in Self Chases Home come from travels she made after the wear and tear of a decade in New York City was starting to get to her. She responded to a tug of nature by traveling cross-country to visit such places as the Everglades, Yellowstone National Park, Malibu, Marfa, Red Rock Canyon and more. Photographs she took on those trips served as reference points for her abstract paintings, with her memories of those places heightened by an expanded color palette, much in the style of Fauvist painters. It amplified what I remember, an expansive abstract of my memory, she said. There are a lot of robust colors I use. It brings out the energy that you see when youre there. Dunlap is in Waco this week and will talk about her work in a reception opening the show Thursday night. After that, theres more travel and art ahead for a self thats still chasing home. Im going to Orlando, Florida, for a production design project . . . and then have a few video pieces to finish in the desert before it gets too hot, she said. By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Apr 27 (PTI) The two AIADMK factions today failed to break the ice over commencement of merger talks, with the rebel group firm on removal of party chief VK Sasikala and her deputy TTV Dhinakaran, besides a CBI probe into J Jayalalithaas death. Though the faction led by Chief Minister EK Palaniswami said the doors were open for talks, the O Pannerselvam camp made it clear that the preconditions set by it would have to be met first. "We are ready. We have told them the preconditions. Talks wont happen unless they meet them. Thats the fact," Panneerselvam aide and former Minister K Pandiarajan told reporters here. Pandiarajans comments came hours after leaders of the Palaniswami camp said they were ready for talks and the "doors are open." "As mentioned earlier, the doors are open.. if they come for talks we are ready (to hold discussions)", Finance Minister D Jayakumar said, noting that both sides had constituted committees to discuss the matter. The two groups have been expressing their willingness to sit across the table and discuss the proposed merger since they set up their respective 7-member committees for the purpose last week. However, talks have not got off the ground so far. The Palaniswami camp had revolted against the party leadership on April 18 and resolved to keep away Sasikala and her family from the AIADMK. Dhinakaran, the AIADMK (Amma) deputy general secretary, who was deputising for his aunt Sasikala, was later arrested for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to secure the two leaves symbol of the undivided party prior to the RK Nagar assembly byelection. The April 12 election was subsequently countermanded over use of money to lure voters. Hopes of an early start of the talks had received a boost yesterday when the banners of Sasikala at the AIADMK headquarters were pulled down, apparently yielding to a demand of the rival camp. The development was welcomed by the Panneerselvam group, with senior leader KP Munusamy calling it a positive step. "The pulling down of banners (featuring) Sasikala, whom we want to be removed from the party, is the first step in the implementation of that demand. We express our happiness over that," he had said. However, the AIADMK (Amma) faction later maintained that the banners were removed in line with a decision taken earlier. The Panneerselvam camp has stood firm on its demand for the government recommending a CBI probe into the "mysterious" death of late chief minister Jayalalithaa, besides ejecting Sasikala, Dhinakaran and their family members from AIADMK before the talks could begin. advertisement Though Pandiarajan today did not explicitly say what the preconditions were, he said his senior colleague Munusamy had already expounded those. Meanwhile, cooperation minister Sellur K Raju said his party has been left "without father and mother", and that peoples aspiration for unity between the two factions was being reflected upon by their leaders. He said the work for "keenly anticipated" merger talks was on. "AIADMK is a movement without father and mother. Our Amma (mother-Jayalalithaa) is no more. "People and supporters want the party built by Amma through hard work to be united. This aspiration is reflected among the leaders of both factions," he said. He exuded confidence that the AIADMK government will not only complete its current term in office but also retain power after the 2021 Assembly polls. Asked whether the faction will now tear down posters of Sasikala, serving jail term in a disproportionate assets case, from the partys district offices also, Raju said a panel had been formed to go into the matter. PTI SA VS TVS SK --- ENDS --- Waco-based Out on a Limb Dance Company marks its 10th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion will do what it and founder and dancer L. Brooke Schlecte do best: dance. Schlecte and her troupe of Rachel Johnson, Katie Griffith, Sarah Newton and Erika Record will perform at the heart of Stimuli: An Evening to Indulge Your Senses, assisted by other supporting art forms and held May 6 at Downtown 301 at 301 S. Second St. in Waco. The evening will feature a three-course dinner by Corey McEntire of Milo Biscuit Company, wine pairings by David Mayfield of Waco Wine Shoppe, a photography installation by Nicole Riggs and performances on two stages, one for live music and the other for dance. I wanted to make this as chock-full with as many artists as I could collaborate with in town, said Schlecte, the companys artistic director. In addition to Out on a Limbs performances of Broken: A Family Affair, Washed Ashore, The End of Me Then You and a work specially created for the occasion, Schlectes childrens and pre-professional groups DotBuds will perform. Sam Henderson will do a spoken-word performance with music and more from Jonathan Pinto, Brett and Emily Mills, Waco Strings, Lauren and Nick Bueno, Lagan Percussion, Olivia Frise, Joe Griffith and John Osburn. A full evening of dance and art mirrors, in some sense, the growth of what Schlecte started more than a decade ago when she and fellow dancers were looking to create new work and perform across the state. Schlectes work with Out on a Limb expanded in 2012 to include the organization of the two-day {254} Dance-Fest, a regular feature of the annual Waco Cultural Arts Festival with participation from companies across the state and a few beyond.The Waco company played a role in the establishment of the Texas Dance Festival Alliance, which communicates and promotes dance festivals across the state. Schlecte also expanded into dance education for children and non-professionals with the creation of DotBuds and DotVines, a development that she didnt anticipate a decade ago, but which has taken off since its start. Out on a Limb has performed at such Waco occasions as the recent Wild Torch fundraiser and the {254} Dance-Fest, plus out-of-town events such as the Austin Dance Festival earlier this month. Schlecte and company dancers have led Dance Jams and dance workshops at various community gatherings such as the Downtown Waco Farmers Market. The DotBuds and DotVines also have performed in public. Such events represent Out on a Limbs mission to spread modern dance to the greater community, and Schlecte notes that Stimuli and the anniversary it celebrates find the company looking to expand its educational outreach to schools and other places that cant support dance programs on their own. Speaking at a programme in Alipurduar on Thursday, Mamata shot back at Shah's claim of 'Ebar Bangla' (Bengal this time) by saying that they were not being able to control Delhi and Gujarat, but dreaming of Bengal. By Romita Datta: The war of words between BJP national president Amit Shah and Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has escalated further. Speaking at a programme in Alipurduar on Thursday, Mamata shot back at Shah's claim of "Ebar Bangla" (Bengal this time) by saying that they are not being able to control Delhi and Gujarat and they are dreaming of Bengal. advertisement As Amit Shah's wrapped up his three-day Bengal visit, he attacked Mamata saying that under the Trinamool Congress' rule, West Bengal had become the "most poverty-stricken state" in the country. While Mamata is not in the state headquarters Nabanna, she has deputed her trusted lieutenants to meet the media and counter the allegations being heaped on her party and the government. On her part, Banerjee is leaving no stone unturned to warn BJP that any attempt to disturb the state would be disastrous. "Jo humse taakraega, woh chur-chur ho jayega," she said. She is even converting all the administrative programmes into political rallies, devoting major part of her address in BJP bashing and giving rebuttals to Amit Shah. On Wednesday after Amit Shah visited Mamata Banerjee's constituency Bhowanipore, Trinamool Congress took out a procession shouting, "Modi hataao, desh banchao." TMC COUNTERS ALL ALLEGATIONS LEVELLED BY BJP West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra was also asked to issue a press release negating all the allegations Shah had made earlier in the day. The press release countered all the points Shah had raised to show that the last six years of Trinamool Congress government had left the people disillusioned. According to Shah, West Bengal's share in GDP growth was 25 per cent during Independence, but it had come down to 4 per cent at present. Mitra rebutted, saying that the GDP had doubled from 4.61 lakh crore to 9.20 lakh crore. Shah's other claims on agriculture, industry and power were rubbished. Shah has finished his three-day tour of Bengal and left the state. But the BJP supporters, who got a wind on their sail on the occasion of Shah's visit, were once again feeling forsaken. They are scared of the aftermath, in fact, the people hosting Shah had publicly demanded protection from Trinamool Congress party men. The Trinamool Congress' procession, winding through Chief minister's constituency, also ensured that there was no space for alternative politics. Also read | Opposition should stop bayanbaazi, BJP will get a huge mandate in 2019: Amit Shah to India Today advertisement Also read | Don't sermonise us over development: Mamata's scathing rebuttal after Amit Shah's challenge Also read | Didi vs Modi: Mamata's fact-check for BJP president ALSO WATCH VIDEO --- ENDS --- Two of Chip Gaines former partners in Magnolia Realty claim that the star of HGTVs wildly popular Fixer Upper show defrauded them by withholding information about his impending fame and forcing them to accept cheap buyouts to leave him sole owner of the company and Magnolia name. In a suit filed Thursday in Wacos 170th State District Court, Waco attorneys John L. Lewis and Richard L. Clark say they are seeking more than $1 million. The suit names as defendants Chip Gaines; Magnolia Realty; Scripps Networks, the company that owns HGTV; and High Noon Productions, the company that produces Fixer Upper. Attorney Jordan Mayfield, a Waco attorney who is representing Chip Gaines with attorney Robert Little, said the claims are meritless. We just received a copy of the petition and havent had a chance to study it in detail, Mayfield said. But we are generally aware of the story that Mr. Lewis and Mr. Clark are telling. We are confident that these claims will be found to be meritless, and it is disappointing to see people try to take advantage of the hard work and success of Chip and Joanna Gaines. The lawsuit asserts claims of conspiracy liability, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud by nondisclosure and statutory fraud, and accuses Gaines essentially of insider trading, or having knowledge and withholding information from his partners that affected the financial well-being of the business. In summary, at a time when only the defendants knew that Fixer Upper had been fast-tracked for a one-hour premiere on HGTV and was on the verge of radically changing their lives and business enterprises, Chip Gaines conspired to eliminate his business partners notwithstanding their longstanding friendship in order to ensure that he alone would profit from Magnolia Realtys association with Fixer Upper, according to the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Lewis and Clark by Waco attorney David Tekell. With this insider information in hand, Chip Gaines convinced plaintiffs to sell their membership interests in Magnolia Realty quickly to him before a public announcement that Fixer Upper was picked up by HGTV, the suit contends. Lewis and Gaines met in 1999 when Gaines was referred to Lewis for legal work by a Baylor University business professor. During the next few years, Lewis performed legal services for free for Gaines, who reciprocated by providing free repairs to Lewis home. They became friends, and their families became friends, the lawsuit states. They frequently ate lunch together and went on hunting trips. In 2006, they talked about the possibility of going into business together, discussing a venture that would provide property management services. That idea evolved into plans to form a real estate brokerage firm, and the pair brought in Clark, a friend of Lewis who also was a licensed real estate broker. After the trio started Magnolia Realty Co., Gaines and Clark also became friends, the suit states. The company never really took off and employed just one real estate agent. However, after that the Gaineses built the Magnolia name into an empire using Fixer Upper as a national catalyst, and Magnolia Realty is now a major real estate company, operating in Waco, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Temple, Belton and Killeen, with an army of over 93 real estate agents, the suit contends. Consolidating the business The lawsuit claims that Gaines and officials from Scripps and High Noon decided to fast-track the Fixer Upper show and sought to consolidate the Gaineses ownership of Magnolia-related businesses. After the meeting, Gaines contacted Lewis and Clark about buying out their two-thirds ownership interest in Magnolia Realty. On April 26, 2013, when Chip Gaines initiated the buyout discussion with John Lewis, Chip Gaines knew that Magnolia Realty was about to receive nationwide advertising through HGTVs airing of Fixer Upper, the suit alleges. Two days later, Gaines sent an email to Lewis that said, Id be scared to see how this would work if it (Magnolia Realty) was worth something. . . . The only thing I have to have is Magnolia when the dust clears. Doug Eastland, a Magnolia Realty employee, wrote to Clark on May 1, 2013, that the transfer of ownership had to be completed by May 6, 2013, the suit contends. Gaines paid Clark and Lewis $2,500 each for their collective share of the business, and two days later, Gaines publicly announced that his show was picked up to be broadcast across the nation on HGTV, according to the lawsuit. In an email, Gaines said the decision to air Fixer Upper had been made three weeks earlier, Lewis and Clark claim in the lawsuit. The suit alleges that the Gaineses had plans to build the Magnolia name into an empire, along the same lines as the Olsen twins, Martha Stewart and the Kardashians. While Chip fully intended to monetize the Magnolia Realty name, the thought of sharing with his business partners any benefits that flowed from Fixer Upper was apparently repulsive to him, the suit states. As has become clear, Chip regarded his business partners longstanding friends as an impediment because they owned two-thirds of Magnolia Realty. Simply put, Chip wanted the entire pie for himself. Sharing the Magnolia name with anyone else was unacceptable. As the negotiations for the buyout proceeded, Clark balked at the plan, and Gaines said if they refused to sell their interests to him, he would start a competing real estate company and take Eastland, their only employee, with him, the suit claims. Later, Gaines texted Lewis, You better tell Rick to be careful. I dont come from the nerdy prep school hes from. And when people talk to me that way they get their asses kicked. And if hes not ready to do that he better shut his mouth. Im not the toughest guy there is, but I can assure you that would not end well for Rick, according to the lawsuit. Tekell also represented the owner of a downtown vacant lot adjacent to the Gaineses Magnolia Market at the Silos who sued Chip Gaines last year after Gaines blocked off access to an alley between their properties. The owner was charging people to park on his lot, and the Gaineses didnt want their customers thinking they were charging people to park, Little said at the time. That suit has since been resolved, and the Gaineses have since bought that land from the owner. The lawsuit is in the process of being dismissed, Tekell said. In an exclusive interview with India Today, BJP president Amit Shah said his party would retain power with a bigger mandate in 2019 Lok Sabha election. By India Today Web Desk: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah is one man who seems to be on an unending mission. After heading the party to tremendous victory in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election and Delhi MCD polls, the BJP president has already set his eyes on the 2019 Lok Sabha election. In an exclusive interview to India Today, Amit Shah appeared confident of BJP's win the 2019 general elections and slammed the Opposition for trying to stall Modi government's development agenda. advertisement "We are working together with Modiji who is working tirelessly for the people of country. The Opposition should also start working instead of doing bayanbaazi. The BJP will return to power with a bigger mandate in 2019," Amit Shah said. The BJP chief also slammed Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal for making baseless charge about Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) rigging in recent Assembly elections. "It is easy to make baseless allegations but very hard to perform on the ground. Our party cadres have worked tirelessly on the grass root level to get the results that we have seen in the recent past," he said. "The BJP is working on an expansion mode and we believe that we can win," the BJP chief added. HERE'S WHAT AMIT SHAH SAID: ON TRIPLE TALAQ: The BJP has already clarified that it wants to stop women from the sufferings associated with triple talaq. I believe women should get their deserved rights. The situation in Kashmir is certainly a matter of concern and the government is working on a strategy to tackle it. We cannot share the strategy on camera. Security forces are working very well. It is not the right time to analyse alliance with Mehbooba Mufti and PDP. If people are attacking the forces, we have to fight it out. Diplomatic channels are working to address the issue. ON COW VIGILANTISM: Amit Shah asserted that action being taken against cow vigilantes and said that the party is against any hooliganism in the name of 'gauraksha'. There are all kinds of elements in the party, but they are not the face of the party. We have taken the issue very seriously. No one will be allowed to take the law into their hands. ON SUKMA NAXAL ATTACK: The attack on the CRPF men showed that Naxals are now frustrated with action against them. Our forces are fighting a double-edged war and we assure that the sacrifice of our brave soldiers will not go in vain. We have to win the faith of people in Naxal infested regions and the government is working towards it. advertisement ON SARADHA SCAM: The CBI didn't take action on directions of the Modi government. The central agency is doing what the Supreme Court and Calcutta High Court asked it to do. Trinamool Congress leaders were caught on camera receiving money. How can they deny that? Saradha scam has been in news for the past two and half years but no action was taken against culprits. The BJP is here to highlight corruption. Being the CM of West Bengal and TMC chief, tt was Mamata Bannerjee's responsibility to curb corruption. WATCH: Exclusive - Opposition should stop 'bayanbaazi' and start working, says Amit Shah ALSO READ: Let Kejriwal, Congress explain how they won earlier elections with same EVMs: Amit Shah Day after Sukma, BJP chief Amit Shah begins Mission Bengal from Naxalbari MCD election result 2017: BJP's win is a vote in favour of Modi, says Amit Shah --- ENDS --- A pretrial status conference for one of the 155 bikers indicted in a deadly May 2015 shootout turned contentious Wednesday as attorneys argued how evidence from a federal investigation of the Bandidos biker group might affect Twin Peaks prosecutions in McLennan County. Houston attorney Casie Gotro sparred with McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna and his top assistant, Michael Jarrett, on Wednesday morning during a hearing in the case of Christopher Jacob Carrizal, a Bandido from Dallas. At one point, Jarrett asked 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother to instruct Gotro not to put her hand in my face, to which Gotro huffed and said, Oh, come on. Gotro, who replaced Carrizals initial lawyer last month, said she has spent at least 250 hours reviewing the massive amount of evidence that prosecutors have turned over to defense attorneys, including videos, photographs, police records and cellphone records. Reyna filed a letter he received in late March from U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin informing him that federal authorities prosecuting top national Bandidos officers in San Antonio have information that relates to Twin Peaks cases but said they will not share it with McLennan County prosecutors until after the federal trial. That development has already delayed the trials of a few bikers in Waco, but Gotro said Wednesday that Carrizal will be ready to go to trial by July, adding she doesnt think any evidence federal authorities have relates to her client. Still, Gotro charged that Reyna did not follow proper legal channels in his attempt to try to get federal authorities to show their evidence under what is known as Brady vs. Maryland, case law that requires prosecutors to turn over all evidence favorable to defendants. Reyna agreed at one point to file a joint motion with Gotro in San Antonio to request the evidence again. Reyna told Strother he is trying to get federal lawmakers to intervene on his behalf with Durbin. Later, Gotro said she would file motions in San Antonio to try to get evidence released through a judges order. Jarrett asked Gotro if Carrizal is willing to sign an affidavit that he would never appeal any potential conviction on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel if he goes to trial without the benefit of seeing the federal evidence and some of it later turns out to be exculpatory. We are sitting on a ticking time bomb here, Jarrett said. We dont want to have to be trying these cases twice if they get overturned on appeal. Strother, who postponed Carrizals initial May 22 trial date after Gotro signed onto the case, has questioned whether the Twin Peaks cases can proceed until federal authorities reveal what evidence they have that relates to Twin Peaks. He raised the question again Wednesday. Federal officials obviously have information of some type, the judge said. What Im trying to figure out is can any of us proceed without knowing what that is? . . . We are dealing with a black hole. There is no light emanating from it, and nobody knows what is there. Reyna said he had a meeting set with the FBI and federal prosecutors in San Antonio to discuss the evidence, but he said they canceled the meeting. Strother scheduled another status conference for Carrizal for May 19, two days after the two-year anniversary of the bloody incident in which nine bikers were killed and dozens were injured. PRAGUE Ron Paseka had applied to go on the Vietnam Veterans Honor Flight last June. The Prague man who served in the U.S. Navy from 1965 to 1968 didnt get to go. I was fifth on the waiting list, Paseka said. So, I thought I had a pretty good chance of going this time. Indeed, Paseka will be among the 650 Vietnam veterans who will fly from Omaha May 1 to Washington, D.C. on Patriotic Productions Vietnam Veterans Flight 2017: the Final Mission. The veterans will spend the day visiting the Vietnam Wall, Lincoln Memorial, Korea Memorial, Arlington Cemetery and the Changing of the Guard, World War II Memorial and Iwo Jima Memorial. Paseka is looking forward to the trip. He said he has been in Washington, D.C. before, but he is sure it will be different this time. Meeting with my fellow veterans and seeing the memorial, he said is what he is looking forward to about the Honor Flight. Paseka spent one year in Vietnam. During that time, he was on a river boat helping to deliver supplies to troops in the Army and Marines. His first year in the service was spent in central California. My last tour was spent on the U.S.S. Tolvana, he recalled. That assignment on the Navy oiler came after his year in Vietnam. Paseka wont be the only Navy man on the May 1 Honor Flight. Kent Kotera of Brainard said he cannot believe how much time has passed since he served in the Navy. Right now, it almost feels like a dream, it was so long ago, Kotera said. During his active service from 1969 to 1971, Kotera served as a petty officer third class engineman on the U.S.S. Schofield DEG-3 and flagship for the U.S.S. Ticonderoga. But he got his start in the Navy a year earlier, just weeks after graduating high school in 1968. It was a join or be drafted situation for the young Kotera. I was third on the list to be drafted, he said. The vice commander of the Dwight American Legion Post 110 in Dwight said he decided to apply for this years Honor Flight after hearing good comments from those that attended last years flight. Considering this year will be the last, there was a sense of urgency to finally go. I thought it would be good to go and give my respects to and honor the veterans, he said. Im sure itll be a somber-type setting. Richard Potter of Valparaiso will also get to experience the Honor Flight, after wishing he went the first time. Its something Id never do on my own, Potter said. The Army man who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970 will complete a mission of his own during his first visit to the Vietnam Wall. I had a couple guys in my platoon that didnt make it and a neighbor that is on the wall. I want to find them on the wall, he said. The Honor Flight will be Don Fujans first trip to the nations capital too. I flew over, but havent been there, the Prague man said. Fujan said he doesnt have any expectations for the trip, but is looking forward to seeing the sights. It will be interesting, he added, to see places like Arlington Cemetery and the changes of the guard. Fujan joined the U.S. Army in 1969 and served through 1972. He spent one year in Vietnam. He thought about applying for the trip last year. But by the time he heard about it, the flights were already full. He got his application in early this year. I think its kind of a neat deal, he said. Arnold Eivins of Ceresco is excited to be among his comrades. I thought it would be interesting to go with those guys again that I traveled with over 50 years ago, said Eivins of the reason he applied. Eivins served in the U.S. Airforce from 1969 to 1970. Gayle Martinson of Wahoo is getting a little nervous, anticipating the upcoming flight. But hell finally get to see the sites in Washington, D.C., after intending to go for the past several years. Its a good chance to see everything I wanted to see in one day, said the veteran Army man that served in Vietnam with the 43rd Signal Battalion from 1967 to 1968. Other area Vietnam veterans attending the May 1 honor flight include Richard McKinley, Jr., Ceresco; Edward Booth, Malmo; Gary Dudek, Donald Kobza and Larry Martin, all of Valparaiso; and Russell Ahlers and David Kastl of Wahoo. BJP leader Anurag Thakur has claimed that the BJP will win 60 of 68 seats in Himachal Pradesh Assembly. Interestingly, the BJP has aimed at securing 50 seats in the Assembly poll slated later this year. By Brijesh Pandey: Doing last minute check of the bandobast at the PM rally in Ridge area in Shimla, BJP MP Anurag Thakur looked extremely thrilled at the response from the crowd. Calling the visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Shimla a historic occasion, Anurag Thakur said that going by the response he had seen in last 24 hours, he was confident that by the time Himachal Pradesh went to poll in six months, the BJP would better its aim of winning 50 seats. The BJP will win around 60 seats, Anurag Thakur said. advertisement WHAT ANURAG THAKUR SAID: THINGS TO KNOW Hailing PM Narendra Modi as the most popular leader of India, Anurag Thakur said that in the last three years the NDA government has given so much to Himachal Pradesh what no other central government could provide in the last 60 years. Listing the gains for Himachal Pradesh, Anurag Thakur said national Highway, several four-lane projects, rail project, and institution like AIIMS, IIM and now today a flight dedicated to Shimla reflect the vision of the Prime Minister. All these things clearly show his attachment to the state and also his development agenda, Anurag Thakur said. Talking about the association of Narendra Modi with Himachal Pradesh, Thakur said the Prime Minister knows every nook and corner of this state as he was in charge of this place for a long time. Reacting to allegation levelled by the Congress that PM Modi has given nothing to Himachal Pradesh in three years, Anurag Thakur said that the Congress is right in a way that Modi government gave everything to Himachal but the local government failed to implement it. "AIIMS has been given three years back. IIM has been given three years back. But, all that could not be implemented on the ground. If the state government does not give land or NoC (no-objection certificate) what will Modi government do," Anurag Thakur asked. Hitting at Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Anurag Thakur said that if a state headed by a person, who is busy handling his own cases and doing "pooja path" then what can you expect from this government. Anurag Thakur also said people are openly speaking against the CM. "There was a bus accident here but despite hailing from this part of state he did not visit any grieving family," Thakur said. "Clean drinking water is a major issue. If a government fails to provide clean drinking water then what can you expect from this government," the BJP leader said. ALSO READ | PM Narendra Modi flags off UDAN flight from Shimla, anyone can now fly at Rs 2,500 ALSO WATCH | ED seizes Delhi farmhouse worth Rs 29 crore belonging to Himachal CM Virbhadra Singh's family --- ENDS --- By Austin Hancock Albuquerque, NM The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History is taking on an ambitious project, the restoration of not one, but two Cold War Jet Fighters. Having found previous success on a 2015 campaign to restore their B-29, the Nuclear Museum hopes to fundraise enough to restore their F-105D Thunderchief and A-7 Corsair II. An affiliate of the Smithsonian, and also a non-profit organization, the Nuclear Museum seems a worthy recipient of support for said project. As one can imagine, the New Mexico desert is a harsh environment for any kind of museum artifact, even fighter aircraft. According to the projects Indiegogo page the jets have both experienced the ravages of the Southwestern weather, and we would like to ask for your support in paying for the surface preparation and painting of the exteriors of the two aircraft. A simple coat of paint goes a long way to preserving these pieces of history, especially from such a danger as corrosion. This restoration effort is part of the Nuclear Museums Operation Preservation. The operation is headstrong to repaint and refurbish the iconic aircraft in the National Museum of Nuclear Science & Historys nine-acre outdoor exhibit area, Heritage Park. To re-surface both the F-105 and A-7, the cost will be $45,000. This may seem rather pricey, but there is a good reason. The reason why the primer and paint for this project are so expensive is the paint must last a long time. In the Southwest region of the United States, normal paint or even MilSpec paint is only good for 3-5 years. The NAPA premium automotive primer and finish we will use is guaranteed for 15-20 years. In addition, we must choose a paint and a color that is approved by the United States Air Force and other museum entities. The F-105D Thunderchief will be the first aircraft to get a fresh coat. The F-105 was used as an attack aircraft in the Vietnam War, and was well-known for its ability to carry a wide array of armament. The museums F-105D Thunderchief, serial number 61-0107 was produced in 1962 by Republic Aviation, Farmingdale, NY, and was sent to the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) in Germany to provide NATO nuclear retaliation capability during the depths of the Cold War. The A-7 Corsair II will be the next to see a re-paint. the museums A-7 Corsair II, Bureau Number 154-407, the only aircraft in the museums collection to have ever flown in combat missions. This Navy carrier fighter-bomber was built in 1968, and in its first eight years in service, the aircraft saw numerous cruises including several Vietnam deployments. Within this timeframe, it had 3,338 flight hours and 731 carrier launches and landings. Both jet warbirds are staples in the history of military aviation, and their story deserves to live on. A fresh lick of paint will do just that. To support the Nuclear Museums effort, visit their Indiegogo page. To learn more about the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, visit their website: www.nuclearmuseum.org Ahead of the release of Baahubali: The Conclusion, National Award-winning production designer Sabu Cyril, in an exclusive interview with India Today, talks about Baahubali and the challenges faced by his team while filming. By Srivatsan: When Baahubali: The Beginning won international acclaim for its scale and grandness, little did people know that it was Sabu Cyril's unparalleled works. From the lay of the land to the kingdom of Mahishmati, around 15,000 sketches were designed to make Baahubali possible. As the world awaits the release of the much-anticipated Baahubali: The Conclusion, Sabu Cyril, in an exclusive chat with India Today.in, reminisces his Baahubali journey. advertisement You have won several awards for production design. As an art director, how do you judge your work? By the visual impact it has on the audience, or? I've worked as an art director before, but I'm the production designer in Baahubali. Since it's a huge film, every day was a challenge for us. I had about 2-3 art directors working under me. To answer your question, I cannot judge my work, nor can the director. Given the budget and time constraints, it depends on how much we achieved at par with Hollywood standards. At what point does a production designer comes into play? My work starts once when the subject is finalised. We need narration from the director or writer so that it would be easy for us to plan accordingly. At the time of discussion, we address the WH questions and determine the overall mood of the film- it's texture and the design. After visualising the film entirely, we bring in art-directors, who would physically transform what's there on paper. Also, nothing is available in the market, so we have to personally create everything from the scratch. I've handled art direction in this film too. Do you think art directors are underrated in India especially at a time when CGI is taking the centre stage? Not at all. I think CGI has made our works even easier. For instance, an art-director can erect a set for 35-40 ft. But for grandeur films, the CGI enhances the overall tone of the film. That said, CGI is again based on our designs. If you take Jungle Book, barring the protagonist, the rest all are CGI. But that isn't the case of Baahubali. Be it the scenes that revolve around the waterfalls or the escape of Shivudu from the snowslide, as an audience, we were fascinated by the breathtaking visuals. But after watching the final cut, did you spot any glaring mistake in the film? Not a glaring mistake. But we thought we could have done even better. As creative persons, we have to be constantly improvising ourselves. There may be some mistakes here and there. I don't know (laughs). Even after so much planning, some days, we might not get the right output. As far as retakes are concerned, the war sequence in Baahubali: The Beginning was very challenging. Any particular sequence in Baahubali 2 which required you to convince/persuade SS Rajamouli? advertisement It's Rajamouli's vision any day. My job is to make sure that his vision comes true. So there's no question of me convincing the director. We've already pre-planned as to how to go about it. Ultimately, it's the director's call. Having said that, Rajamouli loves to involve himself in almost every department. In terms of work, who should be more patient? Production designer or the director? Production designer directly deals with the director, while an art director's job is to make sure everything is perfect on the sets. But a director is dealing with numerous departments. Even during the post-production stage, the director has to sit with every department. So, at the end of the day, it's the director. Shooting a film for 6 months, or a year, is understandable. But keeping everyone together for five years is something remarkable. Rajamouli has handled the pressure quite well. You have often collaborated with filmmakers who make films of epic scale and proportions. After Baahubali 2, I learn that you've started your next project Sanghamithra, another historical film. Have you ever been apprehensive of the fact that your designs would become recursive? Yes. I should be very conscious with my designs. First of all, I didn't want to go for a period film after Baahubali. But somehow, Sangamithra fell into my lap. Because I'm doing the film, I keep telling my team to be even more cautious with the sketches, as it shouldn't resemble Baahubali. advertisement You've worked in several industries. Why is that the South industry is a little wary of the concept of a storyboard? Storyboard is something that gives you a holistic picture of a film. It's very important for films like Baahubali, which has its own complexities. I was the production designer for Endhiran, in which, we introduced animatronics, a technology that visualises the scene before we actually shoot it. We have used animatronics in Baahubali as well. It gives you a sense of what actually happens in the scene. I don't see the significance of using a storyboard for smaller films. You're an art director yourself and have assistants working under you. Be it Mahishmati or Kunthala, how do you approve their designs? Because you might have a different perspective... As far as designs are concerned, everything is pre-planned. But if an assistant comes up with a brilliant idea, then I'll talk to the director, who would eventually think about it. advertisement ( The writer tweets as @LoneWolf_7126 ) ALSO READ: Baahubali 2- SS Rajamouli's film earns Rs 19 crore in US even before release ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 first review is out ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 scene leaked online? Producer Shobu Yarlagadda rubbishes rumours ALSO WATCH: Everything you wanted to know about India's most expensive film, Baahubali --- ENDS --- Former Billabong boss and convicted fraudster Matthew Perrin is challenging the conviction and eight-year sentence he was handed, arguing the jury at his trial was not properly directed. Perrin has been in jail since January for forging a number of signatures, including that of his then-wife Nicole Bricknell, in order to scam $13.5 million from the Commonwealth Bank. He appeared via video link at the Brisbane Court of Appeal on Thursday. Perrin's barrister Michael Copley, QC, argued the jury at Perrin's District Court trial was not properly directed about whether he was criminally responsible for fraud if they found he had authority or honest belief of his ability to sign his ex-wife's name. When Vicki Campbell walked into the Telstra store, she just wanted a cheaper phone plan. The $30 a month she was paying was unaffordable on her disability pension. Telstra sold her a new smartphone, a tablet, and a two-year contract for $90 a month. She told the sales representative she was "computer illiterate" and did not know how to use a tablet. No problem, said the representative she would add a help-line service to the contract for an extra monthly fee of about $15. Ms Campbell, 59, is one of many vulnerable Victorians who are being treated badly by the big phone companies, a new report released today says. Suddenly we've a budget that will do something. Until now, Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull have had both hands tied behind their backs. They know that our bursting cities need infrastructure: railways, roads and power stations. But they know that if they borrow big to build that infrastructure they'll weigh down their budget deficit which, in the view of one private sector commentator, won't move into surplus until Wyatt Roy gets the pension. Roy was until last year the youngest-ever member of Parliament. If they restrain the deficit they can't build what we need, no matter how worthwhile, and if they do build what we need they can't restrain the budget. London: A giant rabbit almost a metre long has died on a United Airlines flight from London, weeks after the airline faced a global backlash over its treatment of a passenger who was dragged from his seat. The 10-month old rabbit named Simon, who was tipped to become one of the world's largest rabbits, was travelling to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago from Britain after a celebrity owner bought him. He was healthy before the flight, the rabbit's breeder said. "Simon had a vet's check-up three hours before the flight and was fit as a fiddle," breeder Annette Edwards told The Sun newspaper. "All the four militants were killed in bomb explosion and the operation was 'successful'," said DIG Khurshed. By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Four bodies of suspected militants were found after police stormed their hideout this evening wrapping up their two-day Operation "Eagle Hunt" at Shibganj upazila under Chapainawabganj district. Khurshed Hossain, Deputy Inspector General of police of Rajshahi range, told media after end of the drive around 6:45pm this evening. "All the four militants were killed in bomb explosion and the operation was 'successful'," said DIG Khurshed. advertisement He said one of the dead was identified as Rafiqul Islam alias Abu, adding that identities of the three others were yet to be ascertained. He also said that a woman and a minor girl were rescued from the militant's den with serious splinter injuries and were undergoing treatment at Chapainawabganj Sadar Hospital. According to the hospital sources, the woman is identified as Sumaya, 21, wife of Abul Kalam Azad of Kansat, and the child as Sabita, 4, daughter of Abul Kalam Azad. Law enforcement agencies, including Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), local police and a SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team resumed its second day of operations at Shibnagar Trimohoni 'militant den' this morning. A SWAT team of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) under Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) started the operation around 6:45pm on Wednesday. Suspecting it a 'militant den', a team of the local police and members of Counter Terrorism Unit encircled the house of one Saidur Rahman alias Jentu Biswas. "Immediately after seeing the presence of the law enforcers, militants opened fire at them and the security agencies retaliated," said the deputy commissioner of Counter Terrorism Unit Mohibul Islam. Before the operations, the law enforcers through loud speakers asked the inmates and insiders of the house to surrender. But, they did not respond to the call, forcing the law enforcers to go for the assault.. (With inputs from govt news agency BSS) Also read: Bangladesh security forces raid 'militant den', encounter underway --- ENDS --- The government has refused to guarantee new export restrictions on gas will cut domestic prices by half. Announcing his dramatic gas market intervention on Thursday, which followed largely fruitless meetings with east-coast gas companies, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said domestic wholesale prices should be as much as halved. Mr Turnbull said the current quote for wholesale gas, at $20 a gigajoule, was much higher than that paid by Australia's main customers including Japan and "should be around half that or less" as a result of new powers to restrict exports to guarantee domestic supply. But he later said households should not expect gas bills to be cut by half, and clarified that his aim was to bring domestic prices back to export parity. Labor has denounced the move for a super-sized homeland security ministry, calling the Turnbull government's consideration of the idea "deeply concerning" and a "power grab" by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said the mooted reorganisation of Australian intelligence, border security and law enforcement had been "proposed and killed off by the Liberal Party before", and was unnecessary because agencies already worked together effectively. There are two models that have been mentioned in association with the proposal: the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, which merged 22 federal agencies; and Britain's Home Office, a smaller co-ordinating body. Mr Dutton, who last month laid out the case for the US-style change, is understood to be the chief cabinet backer of amalgamation. A new department would be built out of his Department of Immigration and Border Protection, stripping responsibilities from George Brandis' Attorney-General's Department. Evin Cosby, the youngest of Bill Cosby's five children, posted a passionate defense of her father on his official Facebook page Wednesday, assailing his "public persecution," and denouncing the "cruelty" of the media and his accusers who have branded him a "'rapist' without ever knowing the truth". "When people are so quick to cast hate and make accusations of horrific violence against my dad, they are callous in their carelessness about the harm they are causing to others," she wrote. "Instead of going through the criminal justice system, these stories never got investigated and just got repeated. They have been accepted as the truth." Bill Cosby, 79, tweeted links to his daughter's statement on his Twitter account. Bill Cosby and Evin Cosby attends the launch of the pb&Caviar store on August 7, 2008 in New York City. Credit:Getty Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby and his legal team defending him on criminal sexual assault charges in Pennsylvania, confirmed to USA TODAY that Evin Cosby's post is legitimate but declined to answer questions about why she is speaking out now. Jury selection is scheduled to begin next month for Cosby's June trial on charges he drugged and molested Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee, at his home in suburban Philadelphia in 2004. He has denied the charges, saying the encounter was consensual. The name Anna Wintour conjures an image of the archetypal editrix, poised on the front row, bob perfectly intact, Prada-clad, with bug-eyed sunglasses shielding any flicker of emotion. Beneath the glossy veneer, though, Wintour - who has been editor-in-chief of US Vogue for 29 years - is, almost unarguably, the most powerful person in fashion. In fact, in the latest issue of The Business of Fashion's print magazine, she is hailed as "President Wintour". In a new interview with the publication - a must-read for fashion industry insiders - Wintour has spoken candidly for the first time about Trump, Theresa May and being at the vanguard of change. Anna Wintour attends the Jean Paul Gaultier show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Credit:Getty Images "We decided that we wanted this issue to focus on everything that's happening in the US as we reached the end of the first 100 days of what might be the most controversial presidency in living memory," says BoF founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Imran Amed, who interviewed Wintour at her office in One World Trade Centre. "So after we decided that, the question came of who could speak authoritatively across a number of issues about the US and we couldn't think of anyone more fitting than Anna Wintour." In the run-up to last November's election, US Vogue took the unprecedented move of officially endorsing a presidential candidate, offering Hillary Clinton their backing. Wintour has long been a prominent supporter of the Democrats and was even rumoured to have been in the running for an ambassadorial role at one stage. Is there a dumber recruitment knockback than "you're too senior for the job"? Everyone knows that's corporate-speak for "you're too old and we don't know how to manage you". Or "our organisation is too stupid to harness the skills of older workers". Do you patronise older workers by saying they are 'too qualified'? Credit:Peter Braig I thought about workplace age discrimination after reading a Fairfax Media opinion piece this week. The author, Charmaine Weeks, wrote about her job-seeking frustrations. Recruiters told the 62-year-old that she was "too senior" or "would be bored in the role". I've heard similar comments too many times before from older workers who are keen to start the next stage of their career and cannot get past recruitment consultants in the job-application process. Workers who are experienced, energetic, loyal and skilled and invest extra effort in their job. On Tuesday, Thai police said Wuttisan Wongtalay, a 20-year-old man, had live-streamed himself killing his 11-month-old daughter in two videos before he took his own life. It took Facebook almost 24 hours to take down the gruesome videos, by which time they had been viewed 370,000 times between them. Hours later, three men in Sweden were jailed for broadcasting the rape of a woman on Facebook Live. Only last week, footage of a man murdering a 74-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio, was posted on the network, followed by a live broadcast of the killer, Steve Stephens, boasting about his exploits. If you were designing a technology purpose-built for attention-seeking monsters, it would probably look something like social media. Wongtalay's wife, Chiranut Trairat, said she did not blame Facebook, but the world's biggest social network is rapidly discovering that the ability to instantly share, broadcast and publicise yourself to the planet has a dark side. "This is an appalling incident and our hearts go out to the family of the victim," a spokesman said. "There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed." Last week, after publicity around the Cleveland murder, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said: "We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to help prevent tragedies like this from happening again," before moving swiftly on to other distractions: virtual reality and mind reading. The state forking out $1.5 million will help Bayswater council double its money and save 'Carter's Lot', but activists say many other vital urban wetlands are exposed to developers because of an archaic classification system. Despite vocal disagreement from some of Perth's most prominent scientists who rated its ecological significance highly, 'Carter's' wetland management category was as low as they go. A protester makes his point. Environmental organisations, local MP Lisa Baker and Bayswater councillors joined the community in a nine-month campaign against a large housing subdivision planned for the site. They carried out protests outside Parliament and Ministerial offices, fundraisers, petitions and letter-writing drives, convinced development would not only devastate Carter's but also lay waste to the millions in state and local government funds spent on restoring the adjacent Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary. The State Government has knocked back plans from the WA Planning Commission to widen Guildford Road, but residents remain cautious the move could lead to 'policy paralysis'. The proposal was widely criticised by local residents and businesses, with Maylands Vet, Rifos cafe and restaurant Amore Mio all negatively impacted by the planned extension. Guildford Road is the subject of plans from the WA Planning Commission for it to be widened. Credit:Elli Petersen-Pik Residents would also lose land, property value, their driveways and front yards, and the Bayswater Council refused to support the proposal due to the Western Australian Planning Commission's inability to disclose what would happen to the buildings affected by the proposed extension. Minister for Planning Rita Saffioti said the Labor Government would honour its election commitment not to proceed with the plans, but they needed to wait until the WAPC completed its formal recommendation before they could call time on the proposal. West Australian Premier Mark McGowan says he doesn't believe former treasurer Mike Nahan's claim he was misinformed about lead contamination at the new Perth children's hospital. A WA Building Commission report released on Monday revealed the likely sources included a now-disconnected "dead leg" section of pipe attached to the ring main for the QEII Medical Centre precinct, which includes Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. WA's new Premier Mark McGowan says he wants all the information out there. Credit:Trevor Collens That contradicts claims by the former Liberal government that the problem was restricted to the new children's hospital site. Mike Nahan, who as treasurer fielded many questions about the overdue project, said he was told in September that a "pipe buried under the road" could be the source. Bangkok: South-east Asian nations and China are edging closer to an agreement that aims to lessen tensions over the flashpoint waters of the South China Sea. Regional leaders meeting in Manila starting on Friday will exclude references to China's militarisation of seven artificial islands in the disputed waters, according to the draft of a statement to be released by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. China has built runways, hangars and placed radars and surface-to-air missiles on seven islands in defiance of the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which last year issued a statement emphasising the importance of "non-militarisation and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities, including land reclamation." China claims almost the entire South China Sea, where about $US5 trillion of trade passes each year, while parts are also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and Vietnam. Bangladesh PM put emphasis over the ban on the direct cargo plying to the UK from Bangladesh causing heavy loss to Bangladeshi private sector. By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Former Britian Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed firm optimism that the bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Bangladesh would continue to grow. Cameron said this in a meeting with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her residence in Gana Bhaban in Dhaka on Thursday morning. PM's press secretary Ihsanul Karim talking to the media said the two leaders discussed trade and commerce of the two friendly countries. Karim also added that the former British PM appreciated the way Bangladesh has developed including the advancement of socio-economic circumstances under the Sheikh Hasina-led government. advertisement Cameron gave importance to the bilateral friendly relationship in terms of the UK's investment in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina mentioned the principles of her party as well as her government's policy which has led the country's development. Hasina in the meeting with Cameron said, "If 100 new economic zones are set up as planned, a good number of employment opportunities will be created in Bangladesh." Bangladesh PM put emphasis over the ban on the direct cargo plying to the UK from Bangladesh causing heavy loss to Bangladeshi private sector. Cameron, however, said that he was hopeful that the issue would be resolved soon. Karim added that in the meeting, Rohingaya issue was also discussed. Hasina mentioned that over four lakhs Rohingayas were living in Bangladesh and wanted a solution foe their return to Myanmar. Prime Minister's Advisor Gowher Rizvi and British High Commissioner in Dhaka Alison Blake were present during the meeting. Also read: Former British PM David Cameron to reach Dhaka on two-day visit on April 26 Also read: Bangladesh security forces raid 'militant den', encounter underway --- ENDS --- Delhi: "Liar" and "hogwash" are some of the words being exchanged in a bitter spat that between the sister of a woman dubbed "the heaviest woman in the world" and the doctors at a Mumbai hospital who have been treating her for weight loss. Egyptian Eman Ahmed Abd el-Aty, 36, made global headlines for weighing 500 kilograms before she was admitted to Saifee Hospital in Mumbai on February 11, with her sister Shaimaa Selim by her side. The famous bariatric surgeon leading the team, Dr Muffazal Lakdawala, told Selim recently that she could take her sister home given that, after treatment including bariatric surgery, her weight had fallen to around 172 kilos even lower than the 300 kilos which the hospital had set as a target. "They told me they would remotely monitor her condition under an Egyptian doctor but she could go home as no further treatment was required," Selim told Fairfax Media. Amman: A massive blast near Damascus International Airport early on Thursday was caused by an Israeli air strike on warehouses and fuel tanks operated by a Syrian government ally. Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking from the United States, where he has been meeting US officials, told Israeli Army Radio: "I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah in Iran. Naturally, I don't want to elaborate on this." Image taken from video purporting to show the moment an explosion rocked Damascus on Thursday. Credit:Screenshot/GMC/ "The Prime Minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act." An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment. Syrian state TV said Syrian military positions were hit by the Israeli missiles. London: Western-backed Iraqi forces are capturing some Islamic State fighters as they fight to liberate Mosul and Raqqa but the vast majority of foreign fighters are "fighting to the death", the US-led coalition for the fight against IS said. Colonel John Dorrian, the spokesperson for the global coalition against IS said just 1000 remain in Mosul, Iraq while between 3000-4000 are still fighting in Raqqa. Colonel Dorrian said the Iraqis had "taken control" of some foreign fighters captured in Mosul but declined to specify how many or from which countries. He also declined to say how many overall IS fighters had been captured. He said that by the end of the military campaign to liberate Mosul "every single ISIS fighter that's left in Mosul is either going to be killed or going to be surrender", but said captures were rare. By Press Trust of India: Beijing, Apr 27 (PTI) The New Development Bank, jointly founded by the BRICS countries, and the Brazilian Development Bank have decided to give a loan of USD 300 million to develop the South American countrys renewable energy sector. The loan agreement was signed by Xian Zhu, vice president and chief operations officer of the NDB and Marcelo Siqueira, legal director of Brazilian Development Bank. advertisement K V Kamath, the president of the NDB, was among those present on the occasion. The loan has been sanctioned to facilitate sustainable development of energy infrastructure of Brazil through investments in at least five renewable energy and associated transmission projects. A part of the loan has also been earmarked for the purpose of on-lending by BNDES to projects by way of debentures, a statement by the NDB said. This would assist BNDES in its efforts to develop an alternative financing source for renewable energy projects and facilitate in further development of secondary market for infrastructure financial instruments. It is estimated that the loan will enable investments that will add around 600 MW to the Brazilian power generation capacity. "Todays signing is another milestone in the history of the Bank. In collaboration with our member countries and development partners, the NDB is supporting clean energy projects. These projects fill critical infrastructure gaps and contribute to sustainable development. This partnership with BNDES will also, I believe, support Brazils sustainable development," Kamath said. Jointly founded by the BRICS - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - and headquartered in Shanghai, NDB was formally opened in July last year. The Bank supports the efforts of other financial institutions and establish a network of global, regional and local partnerships with multilateral and national development banks as well as other institutions and market players, the statement said. PTI KJV UZM AKJ UZM --- ENDS --- Left with no power for nearly 7 hours, citizens are seeing red claiming that they were left in the lurch thanks to a govt that's busy squabbling amongst themselves. By Akshita Nandagopal: It was a sleepless and sweltering Wednesday night for most Chennaiites courtesy a citywide blackout. Left with no power for nearly 7 hours, citizens are seeing red claiming that they were left in the lurch thanks to a govt that's busy squabbling amongst themselves. "We were left with no power for so many hours in this heat and not one official received our calls. We got no communication about the outage or for that matter even when power would return," complains Harish, a north Chennai resident. advertisement In fact the power supply is so erratic in the heart of Chennai that even offices suffered as their generators ran dry. "For the last one week, power has been erratic and we've been struggling to cope. We're worried about how bad May is going to be especially considering the heat and our perishables' stock has already been hit," says Punit, who runs a grocery shop in Anna Salai. The blackout comes a day after the supply of 1000 megawatts was stopped by the NTPC to Vallur power station due to non-payment of dues and many are now connecting the dots. The government is facing a massive backlash with speculation rife that the citizens are suffering because the government failed to pay dues of up to Rs 1156 crore. But, state power minister Thangamani has laughed off these claims saying that it was merely a faulty cable that led to the power outage. "There's no issue whatsoever. There's a power surplus in the state, so residents need not worry about further blackouts," assures Thangamani. The DMK, however, has latched onto the issue to once again highlight the lack of governance in the state. "There is no governance whatsoever. We're all suffering in Chennai, but the government is busy in their own power games. The secretariat today lies empty because the govt is busy in their own party matters. How long can we go on like this," asks TKS Elangovan of the DMK. And the issue has triggered quite a bit of anger among city folk as well who are putting the onus on the government, much like the DMK. The last thing the AIADMK needs is another question mark on their governance. But, going by the frequent power outages, it's going to be a long sweltering summer for Chennaiites. Also read: Amidst AIADMK's political tug-of-war, here is why DMK may be the biggest gainer --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: Pune, Apr 26 (PTI) Union minister Nitin Gadkari today said the BJP-led government is not responsible for farmer suicides in Maharashtra and accused the previous Congress-NCP administration of creating "dead assets" by building dams without constructing canals to facilitate the flow of water. "The Congress-NCP government in the state had built dams but did not construct canals. By constructing these dams, they created dead assets worth Rs 80,000 crore. advertisement "They question us (the BJP) as to what we have done. You have created dead assets and they are not benefiting farmers, so you (the Congress and the NCP) should answer why farmers did not get water (from these dams)," he said. "We are not responsible for farmer suicides. Those who were in power for 30 years, they just exploited the poor, Dalits and never thought of farmers and due to this the present situation (agrarian crisis) has arisen." Gadkari was speaking at the state executive meet of the BJP in adjoining Pimpri-Chinchwad township. Till over 50 per cent farmland comes under irrigation, suicide by farmers will not stop, the transport minister said. "The government is taking steps to bring maximum agriculture area under irrigation," the BJP leader maintained. "When we came to power, the agriculture growth rate (in Maharashtra) was in minus. However, due to the efforts of the Devendra Fadnavis government, the growth rate is 12.5 per cent now. However, we are not satisfied with this growth rate. Only when the growth rate surpasses 20 per cent that farmer suicides will come down," Gadkari said. Talking about people with criminal background joining the BJP, the former party president said such elements change later. "Even if a person with criminal background joins the party, he becomes virtuous." He said the BJP admits people with their shortcomings. After accepting them, its the partys responsibility to reduce their vices and turn them into good workers. "The responsibility of old party workers has increased. Accept the new people who are coming into the party." Gadkari said unless people from other parties join the saffron outfit, it will not able to broaden its base and become a big organisation. "The BJPs vote share will increase only when the vote share of the Congress and the NCP comes down. Competent people will always rise in the party," he said. Results of the Delhi civic body polls and just held Assembly elections, including those in Uttar Pradesh, reflect the peoples faith in the BJP and its leadership, he said. advertisement He asked the party workers not to allow power to go into their heads. "People are seeing their future in the BJP. People from all walks of life think if there is a party which can fulfil their dreams, it is the BJP." PTI SPK RSY GVS --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) Describing terrorism as a "sophisticated weapon" from which no country is immune, Cyprus today advocated close cooperation between India and the European Union for tackling the root cause of this global menace. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, who is on a five- day visit to India, said the "long-standing" ties between India and Cyprus is "reciprocal and of mutually beneficial". advertisement "Tomorrow agreements will be signed in the areas of merchant shipping, agriculture, aviation, education and culture to widen our cooperation," he said. "The major challenges in the area of security that Europe faces is the same which India does. Whether it is London, Stockholm, St Petersburg or Mumbai, all face the threat today. Terrorism is a sophisticated weapon from which no country is immune," the president said. In his keynote address at the India Trilateral Forum 12 here, he asserted that security and economic sectors were two areas in which the two countries can work in a more focused manner to do a "great deal in our strategic partnership". "In Mumbai, I paid my respect to the victims of the 2008 terror attack. And, I say, the threat of terrorism calls for strengthening ties. Cyprus stands with India and is a supporter for the comprehensive convention against terrorism. "We need a united response against terrorism. So we participated in the Global Coalition To Counter ISIS. We also provided ways and means to counter terror organisations by giving military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces and actively exchanging information and intelligence with partners," he said. Anastasiades said this at the event co-hosted by think- tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), German Marshal Fund of the US and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden. "Indias engagement with its neighbours and its valuable contribution to regional peace and stability signifies its crucial role in the region and by extension, the world. "In places like Afghanistan, India and the EU can forge closer cooperation for the benefit of the people and for peace and stability in the region. Where possible, India and the EU must join forces to tackle the root causes of terrorism," he said. Anastasiades said terrorism and political instability go hand in hand and lie at the heart of challenges that both the EU and India face. "In our region, in Syria, Iraq and Libya political instability has allowed radical organisations such as the ISIS to fill in the vacuum in absence of political leadership. The result has been chaos and an unprecedented flow of migration," he said, adding India faces significant migration from Afghanistan and has been affected by terrorism. advertisement "The EU-India Joint Declaration on the fight against terrorism is an important step in fighting the menace," he said. On Cyprus internal issues, the President said India has been a "long-standing, reliable ally in our efforts to reunify Cyprus and its people through a comprehensive settlement, in a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation, with a single sovereignty, a single international personality and a single citizenship, in line with UN Security Council Resolutions and EU law". "Cypruss struggle continues today in a different form, and India continues to stand firmly and unequivocally by the Government of Cyprus in its efforts to safeguard the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus following the 1974 illegal invasion and subsequent occupation by Turkey," he said. "While we remain firmly committed to the ongoing negotiating effort, we look to friends and allies such as India to convey the message to Turkey that the status quo is unacceptable, and that it needs to engage constructively, and actively in the efforts underway," the Cypriot president said. advertisement Anastasiades emphasised both the countries could engage strongly in the economic sector also. "Cyprus is proud to be a special envoy of India within the EU, a bridge - if you like - between India and the EU. "Cypruss position is that it is high time to work towards advancing the EU-India negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement, which will open new avenues of cooperation in the economic sector. I believe that there is now a new momentum in this regard and we must ensure that the process moves forward he said. "A Free Trade Agreement, besides the obvious trade and economic benefits that would accrue, will provide the space for EU Member States to maximise their bilateral engagement with India, in all possible sectors of economic activity," Anastasiades added. Make in India, Clean India, Digital India, Smart Cities, and other significant initiatives, like the International Solar Alliance, these Indian initiatives are significantly reinforced when India and the EU Member States work closely, he asserted. The president said Cyprus is eager to be part of this new and dynamic EU-India partnership and to contribute actively for mutual interest, particularly in areas where Cyprus has expertise, including energy, renewable energy, hydrocarbons, shipping, education and tourism. advertisement "Cyprus very much looks forward to the next EU-India Summit, which will take place in New Delhi in October," he said, adding, the EU-India trade volumes are "solid and convincing proof that India-EU relationship has grown beyond its infancy and it must be taken to full maturity". Anastasiades also invoked Mahatma Gandhi in his speech, saying, he is an inspiration to the world and the Cyprus with whom he maintained a strong personal relationship. Earlier, briefing reporters on his visit, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said the Cypriot President will meet his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee tomorrow. He will also present Mukherjee with Grand Collar of Order of Makarios III, the highest ranked order of Cyprus to foreign heads of state and governments. He will also meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow and hold a delegation-level talks, apart from meeting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. "We understand that the two sides in Cyprus have been talking to each other. India hopes that a just and lasting solution will be found to the Cyprus problem in accordance with the UNSC resolutions and the European Acquis. We support a peaceful dialogue between the parties concerned," she said, when asked about the situation in Cyprus. On the mediation prospect, she said, "Two leaders (our PM and the President of Cyprus) will meet and discuss issues that they decide upon. I would not like to prejudge or speculate. However our position on the Cyprus issue is very clear and well known. I dont need to reiterate it." "India and Cyprus share time-tested ties. On many global issues, both countries share similar views. India has extended unwavering support to the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, of Cyprus. "Cyprus supports Indias views on crucial issues such as the UN Security Council reforms and the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Ghanashyam said. PTI KND PR NSD --- ENDS --- WSU Business School Graduate Pursuing Cyber Dream Job April 27, 2017 OGDEN, Utah When Tarl Langham steps foot on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University this August, forgive him if it feels like a dream. Five years ago, Langham couldnt have imagined attending college, let alone pursuing his masters degree. A lot has changed for the Syracuse, Utah, resident since he enrolled as a nontraditional student at Weber State University in the fall of 2013. Growing up poor in Layton, Utah, Langham said he knew what he wanted to do since he was 8 years old. I loved to fix things, and I loved to work with my hands, Langham said. I decided it was either going to be car work or computers After serving a church mission to South Korea, Langham spent 12 years working as a master mechanic. By age 35, he found himself a divorced father of three, working a job that was no longer fulfilling. When he started at WSU, Langham planned to study network administration, but an advisor and professor in the John B. Goddard School of Business & Economics encouraged him to consider a major in Information Systems & Technology (IS&T), which would combine his computer knowledge with business acumen. That decision led him to a networking course taught by IS&T associate professor Randy Boyle. The first day in Dr. Boyles class got me so excited about IS&T possibilities, Langham said. He put the whole picture together for me. He blew it out of the water. Look at all the brand new technologies that were coming and what you can do. I couldnt stop smiling the entire time. He was so inspiring. In his classes, Boyle introduces students to the future. In technology, the hottest jobs right now, didnt exist 10 years ago, Boyle said. The hottest jobs in 10 years, currently do not exist. Its the nature of such a rapidly changing field. During that same course, Boyle planted the seed for Langhams future: earning a Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) from Carnegie Mellon. According to Boyle, graduates of Carnegie Mellons MISM program have an average starting salary of $135,000 and are in high demand from Fortune 100 tech companies and startups. About a third of its graduates go into consulting. By the summer of 2016, just as Langham had set his sights on being admitted to CMUs MISM program, he got unexpected news that nearly derailed his education at Weber State. Langham had planned to take summer 2016 off, after attending year-round for the previous three years. Thats when he received word that he had missed a funding deadline, and the Pell Grants and student loans hed been surviving on, were gone. He feared hed have to drop out of school. Panicked, Langham contacted associate provost Eric Amsel and explained his predicament. Amsel contacted financial aid, and by 9 a.m. the next morning, Langham received word that he qualified for the universitys Dream Weber, which pays tuition and fees for students whose annual household income is $40,000 or less. All he had to do was register for summer session classes. It was such a relief. I just broke down. I literally broke down, Langham said. By fall 2016, Langham was ready to renew his quest for admission to Carnegie Mellon, when he encountered a self-inflicted hurdle. Professor Boyle recommended Langham attend CMUs fall visitation session as a way of increasing Langhams chances of being admitted. Boyle even paid for Langhams plane ticket. It was a stressful time. I was taking eight courses that semester, working on a 4.0, Langham said. I had the CMU application and the GMAT [Graduate Management Admission Test]. Everything was coalescing. Amidst all that, he booked a flight to Pennsylvania. The only problem, his flight was to Philadelphia, not Pittsburgh. Langham didnt realize his mistake until he was waiting to board his connecting flight in Denver International Airport. Thats when panic just set in. You have no time to move things around, Langham said. By the time he landed in Philadelphia, Langhams brother and several WSU professors were scrambling to find a way to get him 300 miles west to Pittsburgh. Rental car companies wouldnt accept payment with his pre-paid debit card. They required payment with a credit card, which Langham didnt have. Several other attempts to find transportation to Pittsburgh failed. After two days spent in a Philadelphia hotel room, Langham returned to Utah dejected. I felt very defeated at the time, Langham said. I felt like I had let so many people down. I felt like I had disappointed Dr. Boyle. I sent him an email to apologize. Despite the setback, Langham didnt dwell on the lost opportunity. Im not a quitter. There is something inside me that whenever I come up with a failure, I use that as a motivator to do better, Langham said. I do that in all my classes and on tests. I take it personally, and I say, Im not going to let that happen again. If I fail at something, it motivates me. According to Boyle, thats one of the Tarls critical traits that will make him a success. Setbacks dont faze him. He sees them as opportunities to try harder. Boyle tells students that college is all about hard work. Its something he has instilled in his students who have been accepted to Carnegie Mellons MISM program. Boyle estimates that more than 30 students hes taught have been admitted to CMU, including two Goddard graduates last year and another three students this year, including Langham. Tarl is successful because he has the trifecta of technical skills, business acumen and social skills, Boyle said. Langham submitted his application to CMUs graduate program in January. He got a response in March, informing him he had been accepted. After a lot of jumping up and down, it started out with raw intimidation. Am I good enough? Do I belong here? Langham recalled. Both Amsel and Boyle assured him he belonged there. Boyle said that in addition to elation, he also had a sense of relief, because he knew how much Langham wanted to get into CMU. The primary mission of education is to create a fundamental change in another person, Boyle said. Its why he teaches. I like helping students who are sincerely struggling to make their lives better. When I identify a student like that, I try to go the extra mile. Langham said he hopes his experience will serve as an example to his three children. As he prepares to walk across the stage and receive his WSU diploma later this month, Langham reflected on his first days at Weber State, including a poster that said Worthy of Your Dreams. At the time I had very low hopes of being able to complete college, Langham said. I cant tell you how much I appreciate the caring that I feel from faculty and administration. Its just amazing. There are challenges along the way, and I know life will kick you really hard, but its not something that will stop a person who has the willpower to do it. I was given the ability to think that my dreams will actually come true. Weber State gives you the path to stop aiming low. Where is the sky for you? Lets shoot for that. That has come true immensely for me. There is no end to the sky. It just goes straight up. Wow, it just keeps going up. Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. For high-resolution photos, visit the following links: wsuucomm.smugmug.com/Press-Release-Photos/2017-photos/April-2017/i-rFS6DZ3/A wsuucomm.smugmug.com/Press-Release-Photos/2017-photos/April-2017/i-ZGWZ2JG/A wsuucomm.smugmug.com/Press-Release-Photos/2017-photos/April-2017/i-kF9GK8j/A WSU Unites to Make a Difference in Ogden April 26, 2017 OGDEN, Utah Weber State University students, faculty and staff will join the community in sprucing up their surroundings for the fifth annual WSU Makes a Difference in Ogden Day, May 4 from 8 a.m.-noon. Individuals will meet at the Stewart Bell Plaza and will leave from there to volunteer at either the WSU Discovery Loop trail (east of Stewart Stadium on Skyline Drive) or the Ogden City Dog Park (2450 A Ave). The Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) has hosted this event in conjunction with Ogden Citys Make a Difference Day for the past four years. In 2016, WSU volunteers donated 142 hours of service. "The university is part of a greater community, and this is a chance for us to feel connected and to give back," said Teresa Martinez, CCEL program coordinator. This event serves our broader community in combining our efforts to improve our city. We look forward to having our amazing Weber State family assist with this day and hope they feel a sense of connection to their community. Those who choose to work on the Discovery Loop Trail will clear invasive weeds, fill in holes, pick up trash and remove overgrown plants that are blocking the path. This project will involve moderate hiking to get to the trail. Service at the Ogden City Dog Park will include raking up old mulch and spreading new mulch. This project is accessible to those who are unable or choose not to hike. Make a Difference Day is truly the one day of the year where anyone in the community can come and participate in making our community a better place to live and work, said Jay Lowder, Ogden City Public Services director. It is a way to give of yourself to enrich the community we live in, and to contribute to the quality of life we all enjoy. The universitys benefit-eligible employees can take advantage of WSUs Service Leave policy to perform up to eight hours of voluntary community service each year at this event. To RSVP, visit weber.edu/ccel/difference.html. Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. In our information-saturated and social-mediated world, we are all subject to some filtering of the news we receive. Its a challenge to get the full picture of things happening, especially complex world events. Think back to the information landscape in the critical years leading up to and during World War II. How did calamitous events happening across oceans filter back to US citizens then, in particular those in small and rural communities? How did the representation of that news shape their attitudes? History Unfolded is a nationwide project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, that is excavating the evidence for what was possible for Americans to have known about the Holocaust as it was happening and how Americans responded. Much of that evidence lies in libraries, large and small, across the country. Libraries of any size can help the Holocaust Museum find out what Americans could have known about the Nazi threat from reading their local newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s. Citizen history how it works Anyone who wants to participate in the project can look in archives of local newspapers for news and opinion about 31 different Holocaust-era events that took place in the United States and Europe, and submit articles they find to a national database. The project name suggests the careful unfolding of brittle, aging newsprint to find gems of bygone journalism. More likely, the historic news record is on microfilm or in digital format. While many of the articles submitted are found using national online aggregators (Google Historic Newspaper Archive, ProQuest, newspapers.com), the project is keenly interested in the more deeply buried views into what each community knewwhether its general town news or information shared within an ethnic, religious or language community. Elissa Frankle, Museum Experience and Education Specialist at USHMM, says, We love seeing college papers, papers from the Black Press, and papers that aren't in English. This unique citizen history approach was conceived by David Klevan, the museums Education Outreach Specialist, who was inspired by citizen science projects. He wanted to go beyond simply crowdsourcing data and create more of a rewarding learning experience. We want the data, but we want people to contribute to the history, have a fun learning experience and be part of something bigger than themselves. Libraries the perfect partners When a group of these history detectives get together, its called a research sprint. One of the best places to hold a research sprint is the local library because they have the resources and they are accustomed to inviting the community in for learning events. Discovery in groups is more potent than working alone when participants share what theyre finding, celebrate success together and reinforce the sense of contributing something meaningful to their community. In addition to revealing a vivid piece of community history, its an opportunity for the library to raise awareness of news collections in general and familiarize users with how to do research with microfilm or online. It may also draw attention to other collections in the library, such as a collection of books on the Holocaust or life in the 1930s and 1940s. Research sprints are an excellent teaching tool for kids. With the element of serendipity that comes with perusing newspapers, they get to see history in the context of what else was going on at the time. Realizing that news that is momentous in historical perspective may have been below-the-fold and minimized in its original context opens ripe opportunities to extrapolate to modern times and current world events. Klevan had initially targeted high school students for school History Unfolded projects, but says, Were now finding enormous interest from middle schools and universities as well. USHMM wants to help you host your own research sprint. They've created a Guide to Hosting a History Unfolded Research Sprint, which provides step-by-step recommendations for planning and hosting a sprint event. From finding community partners, deciding what to research, promoting the sprint and gathering materials to producing the actual event, the History Unfolded team is available to support your success they even offer email contact to help answer your questions. There are plenty of other supporting resources available on the site, including: Help Center to get anyone started researching How to read old newspapers Resources for Educators with guides, lesson plans and student packets (available by creating a free account) Is there more to discover? Yes, especially if youre in a smaller, non-urban location. Frankle assures us, We know there are many more articles that could be found in those smaller communities that are not available online. we'd love to see what people outside urban centers are finding. The major cities may seem fully covered, but opportunity is there as well to dig for sources other than the readily accessible major newspapers. There is a particular need of help from participants researching locally in Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Even for events that look well-researched, the project welcomes more letters to the editor, editorials and cartoons, because these sources reveal more about how members of local communities actually felt at the time. As an example, the event Anti-Jewish Riots Convulse German Reich, which has 585 articles, still has gaps to be filled. Frankle says, We still need articles from Hawaii, Nevada, and Tennessee, as well as anything from papers outside of mainstream circulation and any opinion pieces, since most of those [585] articles are news articles. You and your library can play a key role in bringing history to light. The Holocaust Museum truly views this as a community-based effort and welcomes feedback and ideas for the project as it evolves over time. Since libraries house many of the collections being used for the project, you may have new insights about how the museum can best engage your audiences and make use of your newspaper and microfilm collections. Its a wonderful collaboration between libraries and museums. The citizen research is supporting the development of an exhibition on Americans and the Holocaust, opening in spring 2018, which will have images of articles and interactives that are fed by the History Unfolded database. So, get started on a research sprint. Partner with schools or your local history museum. Engage your community to unfold their local history, heighten awareness of a fraught information environment and feel the pride of joining a national effort. If you stage a research sprint, please let us know: info@webjunction.org Images provided courtesy of History Unfolded. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Submit Two senior rebel sources in the Damascus area, citing monitors in the eastern outskirts of the capital, said five strikes hit an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militias. By Reuters: Israel struck an arms supply hub operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah near Damascus airport on Thursday, Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources said, targeting weapons sent from Iran via commercial and military cargo planes. Video carried on Lebanese TV and shared on social media showed the pre-dawn airstrikes caused a fire around the airport east of the Syrian capital, suggesting fuel sources or weapons containing explosives were hit. advertisement Syrian state media said Israeli missiles hit a military position southwest of the airport, but did not mention arms or fuel. It said "Israeli aggression" had caused explosions and some material losses, but did not expand on the damage. Israel does not usually comment on action it takes in Syria. But Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking to Army Radio from the United States, appeared to confirm involvement. "The incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah," he said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had "said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicates an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act", he added. An Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We can't comment on such reports." Two senior rebel sources in the Damascus area, citing monitors in the eastern outskirts of the capital, said five strikes hit an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militias. Lebanon's al-Manar television, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, said early indications were that the strikes hit warehouses and fuel tanks. It said there no casualties. RUSSIA AND IRAN BACK ASSAD Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is backed in his six-year-old civil war by Russia, Iran and regional Shi'ite militias. These include Hezbollah, a close ally of Tehran and enemy of Israel, which describes the group as the biggest threat it faces on its borders. The two fought a month-long war in 2006. Syrian military defectors familiar with the airport say it plays a major role as a conduit for arms from Tehran. Alongside military planes, there are a number of commercial cargo aircraft that fly from Iran to resupply arms to Hezbollah and other groups. The flights go directly from Iran to Syria, passing through Iraqi airspace. As well as weapons, hundreds of Shi'ite militia fighters from Iraq and Iran have been flown to Damascus international airport. Intelligence sources put their numbers at 10,000 to 20,000 and say they play a significant role in military campaigns launched by the Syrian army. Israel has largely kept out the war in Syria, but officials have consistently referred to two red lines that have prompted a military response in the past: any supply of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, and the establishment of "launch sites" for attacks on Israel from the Golan Heights region. advertisement Speaking in Moscow on Wednesday, where he was attending a security conference, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman reiterated that Israel "will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border". During his visit, Lieberman held talks with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as part of efforts by Israel to coordinate with Moscow on actions in Syria and avoid the risk of confrontation. A statement from the Defence Ministry said Lieberman had expressed concern to the Russian ministers over "Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon". A Western diplomat said the airstrikes sent a clear political message to Iran, effectively saying it could no longer use Iraqi and Syrian airspace to resupply proxies with impunity. Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Washington on Wednesday, Katz, the intelligence minister, said he was seeking an understanding with the Trump administration that Iran not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria. advertisement Israeli officials estimate that Iran commands around 25,000 fighters in Syria, including members of its own Revolutionary Guard, Shi'ite militants from Iraq and recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Israel has also said that Hezbollah has built up an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets, many of which would be capable of striking anywhere within Israel's territory. The last conflict between the two left 1,300 people dead and uprooted more than a million Lebanese and 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis. Also Read: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces still possess several tonnes of chemical weapons: Israel India-Israel bilateral relationship 'winning partnership', best yet to come: Envoy --- ENDS --- By Adam Morton Apr. 25, 2017 | 08:24 PM | PADUCAH, KY The Paducah Board of Commissioners on Tuesday decided to postpone a vote to rezone property at 4231 Pecan Drive, where a developer is planning to build a nursing facility.Mayor Brandi Harless said the delay will allow city officials to explore some possible ways to alleviate flooding concerns while still going ahead with the project."The main reason for the delay is that I've come across in the last 24 hours honestly, some ideas on how we might could protect the citizens while also having the development take place." Harless said, adding that she would talk to the developers of the property before specific ideas could be discussed.Harless called a meeting Monday evening at Heartland Worship Center to meet with residents of the affected neighborhood to hear their concerns about potential flooding in the area that might be exacerbated by the proposed 100 bed facility."What you see is your city government in its truest form. There are citizens that have some really deep concerns about the water issue." said Commissioner Richard Abraham. Abraham said he wanted it to be clear that the discussion was not a knock against the facility, but it was about making sure that the citizens know the city is not rushing to a decision.Site owner Chris Burnett spoke during the meeting, saying retention ponds might be a good option to deal with excess runoff."We certainly do not want to cause an issue in that area, but we feel like there can be retention ponds," Burnett said. Burnett said he has worked hard with the assisted living group and the realtors on the project.The proposed rezoning would change the property from R1 (low density residential), to R4 (high density residential), which would allow the 77,300 square foot facility to be built there. The change request is coming from CDB Service Finance, LLC.Earlier in April, the planning commission held a public hearing with residents and the developer, where it was recommended that the zoning change pass. It then went before the city commission for a first reading. Some residents voiced concerns about flooding at that meeting. The final vote was to take place the following week, but was delayed to allow more time to consider the issue and listen to concerns from the public.Commissioners are set to vote on the measure at their May 9 meeting. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 25, 2017 | 08:26 PM | EDDYVILLE, KY An autopsy was performed Wednesday on the body of an inmate who died at Kentucky State Penitentiary.Kentucky State Police say the Kentucky Medical Examiners Office in Madisonville found that the only signs of trauma to 39-year-old Marcus J. Penman appear to have been self-inflicted.Blood tests results are still pending, and an official determination of cause of death will be made when those tests are completed.On Tuesday afternoon, Penman was in restrictive custody when he reportedly began harming himself and prison staff attempted to intervene. An ambulance was called to the scene, but Penman was pronounced dead at the scene by the Lyon County Deputy Coroner.Original Story:An investigation has begun into the death of an inmate at Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. According to Kentucky State Police, dispatch received a call from the penitentiary on Tuesday around 2:30 pm for an inmate not breathing. Lyon County Ambulance Service responded, and upon their arrival, they requested the coroner be notified. Lyon County Deputy Coroner Sheena Snow arrived at the penitentiary a short time later, along with a KSP Trooper. Deputy Snow pronounced the inmate, 39-year-old Marcus J. Penman, originally of Hopkinsville, dead at the scene. The Kentucky Department of Corrections says Penman was being housed in the restrictive custody unit because he had been fighting. Officials say he began harming himself and staff attempted to prevent the behavior. Kentucky State Police continue to investigate. The girl, who is a Class 10 student studying in a private school, was kidnapped, raped and then thrown out of a moving car. By Ashutosh Mishra: The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has issued a notice to the education department after the parents of a rape victim alleged that the school insisted that the girl would be promoted to Class 11 only if she didn't attend classes. DCW has asked for a report within 5 days. The girl, who is a Class 10 student studying in a private school, was kidnapped, raped and then thrown out of a moving car. According to the parents, school administration had voiced their fear that if the girl came to school it would spoil school's image. advertisement They also alleged that the school asked them give an undertaking that it will not be held responsible if any untoward incident occurs with the girl in future in its premises. That's not all. The parents also accused that the principal has forbidden their daughter's friends from sitting next to her. The DCW chief Swati Maliwal said, " This is a very serious matter. The girl is being punished for no fault of hers and it is a very embarrassing and unacceptable matter in today's world." Also read: Delhi: Girl, 15, kidnapped, raped and sold for Rs 70,000 --- ENDS --- By Paul Schaumburg, Graves County Schools Apr. 26, 2017 | 08:07 PM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY The Graves County Education Association and the Graves County Education Support Professionals Association presented Graves County Schools Superintendent Kim Dublin with the 2016-2017 Outstanding Superintendent Award at the April business meeting of the Graves County Board of Education.Dr. Craig Carter, Kentucky Education Association UniServ director, thanked Dublin for always listening to concerns, and asking for evidence to support employee concerns. Dr. Carter and GCESPA president Matthew Powell recognized her for making students her top priority in all that she does.Carter said that he has witnessed Dublin in action, ensuring that employees fulfill their job descriptions, as the Graves County Board of Education has approved. An effective superintendent realizes that a district is not about the superintendent, Carter said. Instead, an effective superintendent realizes it is about the students and working with all stakeholders. Carter noted that Dublin is indeed an instructional leader.He concluded, "She knows that the most important job of the Graves County School District is to make sure students are learning and achieving at high levels." By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 27, 2017 | 06:07 AM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY A Graves County man faces charges after he allegedly chopped down a power pole. According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, employees with West Kentucky Rural Electric received a call of a power outage Monday in the 1700 block of Slaughter Road. When they arrived at the scene, the linemen found a power pole lying on the ground. The resident of the home, 40-year-old Jared Hayes, told workers he chopped the pole down with an ax. The linemen called police, who came and arrested Hayes Tuesday on charges of attempted theft by unlawful taking and criminal mischief. Hayes allegedly told police he was going to take the transformer off the pole and sell it back to West Kentucky RECC. The linemen told police the pole was still active and hot and could have killed Hayes instantly. He was lodged in the Graves County Jail. The incumbent and a Paducah attorney win their way to the bench Loading... It must have seemed like a brilliant coup to cast Richard Wilson, best known for his incarnation of many curmudgeons, as the grumpy retiring headmaster in Alan Bennett's first play Forty Years On. After all, the imperious John Gielgud played the role at its premiere in 1968, lending his old-school grandeur to Bennett's new style satire of a minor English public school on the South Downs, staging a pageant which looks back on England's glorious past. But Gielgud was 64 and in good health. Wilson is 80 and recovering from a heart attack last August. You can admire his chutzpah for going on, and he can still deliver a withering put down with the best of them - "I am all in favour of free expression as long as it is kept under control." But for the most part, he is reading his lines off the book and off various bits of paper, and he is occasionally unsteady on his feet. As an audience member, his sheer frailty and slowness worried me. It is not a performance so much as a feat of endurance and I wonder if this central uncertainty has had an effect on the rest of the cast too. For whatever reason, line after line and joke after joke lands flat as a pancake as the performers struggle to make a play that is already unwieldy spring into life. Alan Cox, playing the Headmaster's more liberal successor, and Jenny Galloway as Matron occasionally breathe vitality into proceedings, but the humour is often laboured and badly timed. Some of the fault for this must lie with director Daniel Evans, normally so reliable. As if in compensation, he has lavished music (courtesy of music director Tom Brady) and a 52-strong local community chorus of boys on proceedings. They are terrific, performing Naomi Said's slick and subtle choreography with synchronised aplomb. Lez Brotherston's set is a wonder too, putting a working organ at the centre of an oak-panelled surround with leaded glass conjuring the school hall. Underneath all the frantic activity, the lineaments of Bennett's play lie buried. Only it isn't really a drama as such, more a series of revue sketches, an interesting mix of nostalgia for a Britain that once was and despair at the country it is becoming. It is, like all Bennett's work, more tough-minded and more left-wing than it at first appears. At the time it opened, its skits on TE Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Ottoline Morrell and the like, and its questioning of the comfy assumptions of post-war Britain must have seemed radical and refreshing. Now the characters Bennett holds up to the light are as lost as 18th century history - their significance and beliefs a mystery to a young audience today. This opens up fascinating questions about contemporary Britain's relationship with its history which a more confident, less cluttered production might have exposed and explored. Certainly, right at the close, when a set of screened images bring the timeline bang up to date, there's a hint of what attracted Evans to the play in the first place. In the scene that closes the first act, too, where Wilson, in shadow, reads the story of the gilded youth who went off to die in the First World War, there's a hint of vision that might have been. But for the most part, this is the dampest of squibs, and a disappointing start to Evans' tenure as artistic director at Chichester. Forty Years On runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until 30 May. By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Apr 27 (PTI) The US today said that there are early indications that China is doing a better job than before on enforcing UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea. But at the same time it noted that it was too early to arrive at any conclusion on this issue. advertisement "You have seen some early indications of China doing a better job enforcing existing UN sanctions on North Korea. You can see in the Chinese press and in other areas that China is really making a clear effort to communicate to North Korea that its behaviour, its provocative behaviour, the nuclear tests, missile tests cant be tolerated," a senior official with the Trump administration said. "So I think you have seen two things an acknowledgement of the threat to China, but I think you have also seen a willingness for China to take this problem on in new ways. We ought to suspend judgment until we see how this develops in the coming days, months, so forth," the official said in response to a question. But he also noted that North Koreas behaviour also poses a threat to Chinese interests and security. "What is different about how China is viewing the problem in North Korea today is that China is viewing that problem as a threat not only to US interests and security, or South Korea and/or Japanese interests and security, but also a threat to Chinese interests and security.And so I think that is a big shift in and of itself," the official said. China on February 18 imposed a halt on coal imports from North Korea until the end of 2017, hardening its stance after a new missile test by Pyongyang, in accordance with new sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council. The State Department said China has taken some steps against North Korea, but it needs to take more such steps. Chinas influence on North Korea is probably more than that of any other country and Beijing needs to exercise that influence on Pyongyang, said State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner. The US, however, dismissed Chinas concerns on the US deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) missile in South Korea. "THAAD is a defensive system and it is being deployed, frankly, out of concern over South Koreas vulnerability to North Koreas continued aggressive behaviour. Thats all it is," Toner said. advertisement The US and South Korea argue that the THAAD is aimed at countering missile threat from North Korea. But China says most of the THAAD systems can monitor best part of its territory. PTI LKJ UZM --- ENDS --- On the basis of a lookout notice (LOC) and in coordination with the authorities at Delhi Airport, the ED managed to arrest Pandit Saurabh, as soon as he arrived from Dubai. By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has made its second arrest in Rs 240 crore IndusInd Bank loan fraud case. On Thursday afternoon, the agency arrested one Pandit Saurabh, Director of Sky Light Ltd, located in Hong Kong, under section 19 of PMLA, 2002. On the basis of a lookout notice (LOC) and in coordination with the authorities at Delhi Airport, the ED managed to arrest Saurabh, as soon as he arrived from Dubai. advertisement Saurabh is one of the co-accused and main beneficiary in this scam. Earlier, the ED arrested Anil Chokhra, ex-Director of Kanika Gems under the money laundering act for outward foreign remittances using forged import documents. Since last two years, the agency has been probing this case where three companies i.e. Yogeshwar Diamonds, Kanika Gems and Shree Charbhuja Diamonds had remitted crores of bank loan amount to Hong Kong and Dubai based companies, in the guise of import advances using forged bill of entries. During the investigation, it was found that outward remittances of about USD $ 12,49,965 was done as import advance and around USD $ 14,18,338 was remitted by Saurabh. In the process, he had submitted forged bill of entry to the account of Sky Light Ltd, Hong Kong. After detaining Saurabh at Delhi airport, he was interrogated by the ED officials, in which he stated that Sky Light, Hong Kong was owned by him and the proceeds of crime (PoC) of both transactions were parked in Hong Kong bank accounts. On Friday, Saurabh would be produced before the special PMLA court in Mumbai to seek further custody for investigation. As of now, the main accused of this scam Vijay Kothari and Sanjay Tiwari are at large outside India and Sanjay Jain (owner of Hindmata theatre in Mumbai) who used to aid these accused in making forgery bills of entries is also under ED's radar. Also read: Pune: 5 arrested for assaulting Enforcement Directorate officer Also read: Rs 6000 crore fake import remittance scam: ED issues lookout notice against mastermind Vijay Kothari --- ENDS --- Shaimaa Selim, sister of Eman Ahmed has decided to take her to Abu Dhabi for further treatment. By Mustafa Shaikh: The crisis situation between Saifee Hospital's doctor and Eman Ahmed's sister may end soon, but not on a good note. Shaimaa Selim, sister of Eman, who weighed more than 500-kg when she landed in Mumbai, reached out to Burjeel Hospital in Abu Dhabi for Eman's further treatment. A team from VPS Healthcare which runs Burjeel Hospital visited Saifee Hospital on Wednesday to see Eman's reports. Selim told India Today that she is considering to take Eman to Abu Dhabi for further treatment because 12 doctors, from team treating Eman, have resigned after her video criticising Dr Muffazzal Lakdawala, went viral. advertisement "Twelve doctors have submitted their resignation in Saifee Hospital and none of the doctors have come to see her since last two days. Only nurses are coming to check on her. That's why I searched for another place to continue treatment of my sister," Selim said to India Today. Selim had shot a video saying that her sister is very sick and she is not getting good treatment in Saifee Hospital in Mumbai where she was admitted to undergo bariatric surgery. In the video, Shaimaa has accused Dr Muffazal Lakdawala of 'telling lies' about her sister's weight loss surgery. Eman's mother Thanaa's video went viral in Egypt where she had alleged that Dr Lakdawala was partying while Eman was ill. She also showed photos of Eman and Dr Lakdawala to prove her point. Saifee Hospital has confirmed that Eman's treatment will continue at Abu Dhabi. At present, she weighs (as on 23/9/16) 176.6 kg. Eman Ahmed will be travel to Abu Dhabi in a passenger plane on a business class ticket. The crisis started a fortnight ago when Dr Lakdawala informed Selim that Eman will be discharged. Eman's sister alleged that she was told that she will not be informed about the date when Saifee Hospital is planning to discharged her. This led to a panic situation Selim making a video where she made allegations against Saifee Hospital and Dr Lakdawala. Dr Lakdawala and Saifee Hospital have maintained that they have treated Eman to best of their knowledge, but also said that they can't treat all of Eman's diseases. "Our excellence is in bariatric and obesity. We have done our job and she is being discharged because she has shown miraculous recovery," said Dr Huzefa Shehabi, COO of Saifee Hospital. Eman is stable and all parameters are under control, doctors say. She will continue to need neurological rehabilitation and physiotherapy. Eman is an inspiration to millions of critical and obese patients world over that someone as serious as her can get better with expert medical care and advances in medical science. advertisement ALSO READ 'Eman Ahmed's weight loss was a lie,' says world's heaviest woman's sister Eman Ahmed, world's heaviest woman, suffers from rare gene disorder which has no cure --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: Nainital, Apr 27 (PTI) The Uttarakhand High Court today directed the judicial magistrate of Vikasnagar in Dehradun district to seal and seize the EVMs used for the constituency during assembly polls. The direction was issued on the plea of a Congress candidate alleging tampering and manipulation of the EVMs. The court also issued notices to the Election Commission of India, the state election commission, the chief secretary and the BJP candidate who won the poll from the seat. advertisement It has been alleged in the petition filed by former cabinet minister Navprabhat that there has been tampering and manipulation with the EVMs at Vikasnagar. Navprabhat was defeated in the elections by Pradesh BJP Spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan. The Election Commission has maintained that EVMs cannot be tampered with.PTI CORR ALM DV --- ENDS --- Government has extended the last date for filing service tax return to April 30. As per norms, the returns have to be filed online on www.aces.gov.in. By Press Trust of India: The Centre has extended the last date for filing service tax return by five days to April 30, in a relief to lakhs of service providers. "The CBEC hereby extends the date for submission of form ST-3 for the period from October 1 to March 31, 2017, from April 25 to April 30, 2017," the apex policy making body of the indirect tax department said in an office order. advertisement Every registered service tax assessee has to file service tax return in form ST-3 on a half-yearly basis before the due date to avoid penalty. For filing returns for the period April-September, the due date is October 25, while for October-March it is April 25. The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said that the due date is being extended as the assessees faced "intermittent difficulties" in accessing the ACES (Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax)website on April 25. This, CBEC said, is "circumstances of a special nature" for which the last date for filing is being extended. As per norms, the returns have to be filed online on www.aces.gov.in. While return is filed half-yearly, the service tax collected by the assessee has to be deposited with the government on a monthly or quarterly basis. Tax experts voiced concern over whether the GSTN portal would be able to take the load of all the tax payers which would include not only service providers, but also traders and manufacturers. GOVT ASKS EXISTING EXCISE TO SHIFT TO GSTN The government is asking existing excise, service tax and VAT assessees to shift to the GST Network (GSTN) portal for payment of tax and filing returns. GST, which will unify 10 local taxes, is expected to kick in from July 1. Nangia and Co Director-Indirect Taxation Rajat Mohan said return filing under GST regime would necessitate much more data in terms of invoices, debit notes and credit notes that would be matched online. "After witnessing this extension of due date for filing service tax return, my concern is the government system might not be fully geared up for such large pool of tax payers and in terms of data requirement in returns," Mohan said. Also Read: Only 34% service taxpayers move to GSTN, CBEC ups outreach Service tax rate to rise from 15 per cent to 18 per cent under GST, says Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Red River Colleges impact on the growth and vitality of the Exchange District is about to become even bigger. Details of the construction of a major new addition to the colleges Exchange District Campus, called the Innovation Centre, were unveiled today. Funding for the $90-million-plus building to be built on the north side of Elgin Avenue, immediately north of the Roblin Centre, has been lined up and the project is a go. Jim Carr, the Winnipeg MP and federal minister of natural resources, announced about $40 million of federal funding for the project in a press conference today. This historic investment is a down payment on the governments vision to position Canada as a global centre for innovation, Carr said. That means making Canada a world leader in turning ideas into solutions, science into technologies, skills into middle-class jobs and startup companies into global successes. The province is to play a role in helping RRC source the remaining $54.8 million through a loan guarantee, which will help enable the college to secure a better interest rate on project financing. RRC president Paul Vogt has previously said the college will embark on a capital campaign to raise the balance of the funding. Rendering of proposed Red River College expansion. (Supplied) It is not clear when construction will begin, but the college has already packaged the land for the development site on Elgin Avenue west of Princess Street. BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Elgin Avenue, just north of RRC's Princess Street campus, will be the site for the college's $90-milllion-plus Innovation Centre. RRC officials had indicated that the expectation is construction will be underway within the next year. The new development may bring as many as 1,200 new students to the downtown in addition to the more than 2,000 already there. The openings of RRCs Roblin Centre in 2004 and the Paterson GlobalFoods Centre in 2013 have arguably had the greatest impacts on the increased economic development activity of the historic Exchange District. This development will come on the heels of the $67-million, 100,000-square-foot Skilled Trades and Technology Centre at the colleges Notre Dame campus, which is scheduled to be opened and fully commissioned by the fall of 2018. Funding for the $90-million-plus building to be built on the north side of Elgin Avenue, immediately north of the Roblin Centre, has been lined up and the project is a go. (Supplied) The new building will house programs that will bring students, faculty and the private sector together around entrepreneurial development and the commercialization of startups. RRC currently has a program called the Ace Project that has recently expanded in collaboration with the North Forge Technology Partnership into space on McDermot Street in an area called Innovation Alley that enables intense collaborations between students and startup entrepreneurs. In a previous interview regarding RRCs involvement in the Ace Project, Vogt said, What we are trying to say is that this approach to education is the future of the college. The actual program content (that will be delivered at the Innovation Centre) will be similar to this on a larger scale. The approach to teaching and partnerships is the key element here. martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca Location of expansion relative to existing buildings (Supplied) Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. All property owners at the intersection of Portage and Main are now in support of reopening the corner to pedestrians. Mayor Brian Bowman told council Wednesday he recently received a letter of support from the Bank of Montreal. However, there is still no indication when the reopening will take place. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Discussions are continuing between the city and property owners who support reopening Portage and Main to foot traffic. A spokesman for Bowmans office said while the intersections property owners Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, Harvard Development, Artis REIT and the Richardsons are in favour of the reopening, discussions between city hall and property owners are ongoing. Reopening the intersection was one of Bowmans commitments when he was running for mayor job in 2014. He renewed the promise a year ago, when he said he wanted it opened in time for the start of the Canada Summer Games in July 2017. As the start of those events approaches, the chances of a summer opening appear remote. Opening the citys iconic intersection is a controversial subject. Opponents say removing the barriers invites a disaster that will delay traffic and pose a serious risk to pedestrians. Many people mistakenly believe traffic concerns were the only reason that prompted the placement of barriers in 1979. In fact, the barriers went up as part of a deal with the original developer that constructed Winnipeg Square, the underground mall. Supporters argue the barriers need to be removed to allow pedestrian connection to the different areas of the heart of the city the downtown, The Forks and the east and west exchange districts. Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Files Pedestrians using the crosswalks above ground doesnt necessarily preclude high volumes of pedestrians underground says one advocate for removal of the barricades at Portage and Main. They say the removal will encourage street-level development in the surrounding area as more pedestrians move through the area. The property owners are finalizing their own plans to co-ordinate with the intersection re-opening but want to see a plan from the city on how it will renovate the underground concourse. Winnipeg CAO, Doug McNeil, said a complete report on the reopening, including cost and impact, will be brought to council later this year. Meanwhile, a consultants report looking into traffic impacts remains a secret document. While the report was completed in the fall, McNeil refuses to make it public. aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/04/2017 (2023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Chief Justice of the Manitoba Court of Queens Bench has opened the door to the possibility Justice Vic Toews duties may be re-examined if a probe into his conduct advances significantly. In a statement Wednesday triggered by a Free Press editorial, Glenn Joyal said he will be carefully following the deliberations of the Canadian Judicial Council, which is investigating Toews past conduct. On Monday, the CJC said it is looking into a complaint against Toews arising from a damning report from the federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner that stated the former federal cabinet minister violated the Conflict of Interest Act when he provided consulting services to two Manitoba First Nations shortly after leaving federal office. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chief Justice Glenn Joyal That same day, Joyal announced Toews would remain as a sitting judge while the judicial council process unfolded. When the Free Press raised concerns in its editorial that Joyal was in a precarious situation on the matter because he was appointed to the provincial court in 1998 when Toews was provincial justice minister and later became a federal judge when Toews was Manitobas senior federal cabinet minister the chief justice responded. The editorial unfairly impugns my integrity and is not worthy of further comment in respect of the alleged conflict of interest, he said. That said, there should be no doubt that any ultimate determinations as to Justice Toews judicial future will be made by Chief Justices who are members of the Canadian Judicial Council from outside of Manitoba. The editorial said Joyals response to Toews predicament is at odds with his action in the case of former Queens Bench Justice Lori Douglas, who was the subject of a CJC investigation in 2010 after nude photos of her were published online. She was asked to step down from her role as a sitting judge by Joyals predecessor. Joyal further reduced her duties pending the outcome of the judicial councils proceedings. On Wednesday, Joyal said: If clarification is needed, it should be understood that if the complaint before the Canadian Judicial Council proceeds to further stages in the CJC disciplinary process as occurred in the Douglas case, Justice Toews duties, pending a final determination by the CJC, will be re-examined. This is precisely what happened in the course of the Douglas case. Joyal said it would be premature to prevent Toews from hearing cases at this early stage of the CJC complaint. He noted the jurisdiction, the fairness of the ethics commissioners processes and her conclusions will be challenged. Toews lawyer, Robert Tapper, has lamented there is nothing the judge can do about ethics commissioner Mary Dawsons report. There is no appeal process because there is no legal process. (Toews is) no longer a Parliamentarian. He cant raise it in the house, Tapper told the Free Press Saturday. Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said all judges must avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Given that when Mr. Toews was a provincial cabinet minister he appointed Chief Justice Joyal as a provincial court judge and when he was a federal cabinet minister Mr. Toews could also have easily had some say behind closed doors in the appointment of Chief Justice Joyal to the Court of Queens Bench, and given that the position of judge is a secure position that lasts until retirement unless you commit serious wrongdoing, in my opinion Chief Justice Joyal has an appearance of a conflict of interest (and) should not be making decisions concerning Judge Toews in this situation. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Winnipeg city council voted unanimously Wednesday to change the name of Mayor Brian Bowmans planned lobbyist registry to voluntary lobbyist registry. The name change lets people know any lobbyists trying to persuade council wont have to register, said Elmwood-East Kildonan Coun. Jason Schreyer who introduced the amendment calling for the name change. Many people will assume that we brought in a lobbyist registry that is compulsory, but it is not, Schreyer said. Transparency is the issue, he said. Lets call this what it is, for transparency as well as plain English. The mayors plan to create a lobbyist registry is a step toward shaking off city hall scandals and allegations of the past few years, but it met with some resistance from not-for-profit groups and city councillors for a variety of reasons. Charities say theyre all for transparency but leery of the administrative burden a registry could create and how it may have a chilling effect on community engagement, said Christina Maes-Nino, who was speaking on behalf of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. We support the creation of a lobbyist registry because we know its intention is to bring transparency, Maes-Nino said. She asked that charities, which are already accountable to their boards and the Canada Revenue Agency, be excluded from the registry. We already have a lot of accountability mechanisms in place, she said. The registry would add another layer of reporting work for charities already strapped for cash, Maes-Nino said. Do we report this or that? When and how? Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski), who initially backed the lobbyist registry, said Wednesday he changed his mind. With existing regulations and an ethics watchdog already in place, theres no need for a lobbyist registry the city will have to pay to implement, he said. This is all covered off in many pieces of legislation which can be dealt with by an integrity commissioner, said Eadie, who voted in favour of renaming it the voluntary lobbyist registry but against the registry itself. He was the only councillor opposed to it. Coun. Janice Lukes (South Winnipeg) voted in favour of the registry but complained about how it was presented to council and the lack of time and consultation that went into it. The mayor did no outreach on this important issue, Lukes said. There was no public consultation on fundamental changes at city hall This has to change. Bowman announced on the afternoon before Good Friday he would bring a plan for a lobbyist registry to his executive policy committee (EPC) the following Wednesday and then to council the week after. The EPC unanimously approved the proposal at its April 19 meeting without comment or debate. This is being dropped from on high, Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt said at Wednesdays council meeting. He compared the mayors office to a dictatorship. Wyatt accused Bowman of having a Donald Trump style of doing business, and that rather than focusing on real issues such as the state of roads, the lobbyist registry was introduced as a distraction to make it look like things are happening when things arent happening. Wyatt ended up voting for the voluntary lobbyist registry. Bowman said theres room for improvement to the proposed registry, including changing its name to show its not compulsory for lobbyists to register. If changing the title makes it more open and transparent, I support efforts to do so, he said. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. As the man accused of killing 15-year-old Tina Fontaine prepares for his upcoming second-degree murder trial, television stations have requested permission to broadcast the high-profile case. Citing security and privacy concerns, Crown attorneys are formally objecting to the request despite previous public pledges from Manitobas chief judges to expand the use of cameras in courtrooms under established court policies. Raymond Cormier, 55, is set to go to trial in the Court of Queens Bench next year. The jury trial is slated to run from the end of January to the beginning of March in a case that garnered international attention after Tinas death in August 2014. The 15-year-olds body was found wrapped in a duvet cover in the Red River about a week after she went missing. For more than a year before the Winnipeg Police Service arrested and charged Cormier, the mystery surrounding Tinas tragic death transformed the teen into a posthumous symbol of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, prompting renewed calls for an independent national inquiry, which the federal government has now launched. Its in front of that backdrop of widespread interest in the case that local TV networks are asking the court to allow their cameras to record and broadcast Cormiers trial. No criminal trial has ever been broadcast in Manitoba. A motion filed last week on behalf of CTV, CBC, Global and APTN asks for electronic public access to the trial so live and recorded portions of it can be broadcast on television, radio and digital platforms. There is a public interest in public access to the courts generally and to this trial in particular, the request states, citing a high degree of national interest in the case as well as the open-court principle promoting transparency in the administration of justice. Many people, including those in remote communities, would not have the ability to attend court and would not have any access to the proceedings without electronic access through digital platforms or satellite broadcasts on television and radio, it says. The networks argue their request doesnt pose risks to security, privacy or the administration of justice, but the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys disagrees. In an objection to the TV stations request, the Crown attorneys bargaining group argues allowing Cormiers trial to be broadcast would be potentially harmful to lawyers prosecuting the case. It is asking a judge to reject the request outright, or if cameras and microphones are allowed in, to restrict media outlets from broadcasting the images and voices of Crown attorneys. Crown counsel have particular privacy and security concerns associated with the performance of their jobs, the objection says in part. It is just and fair that participants, including Crown counsel, not become public figures through no choice of their own. In the court document, the association said threats to lawyers in Manitoba in general and Crown prosecutors in particular create an ongoing and growing concern. The public dissemination of personal information about Crown counsel is potentially harmful to such Crown counsel, as well as their families, and subjects them to unwarranted public attention, said the objection signed by the associations lawyer, Tony Marques. Media lawyer Bob Sokalski is representing the TV stations. He declined to comment while the matter is before the court. It will be decided at a hearing before Court of Queens Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal later this spring. The TV stations have also requested permission to broadcast that hearing. Cameras have been allowed into Manitoba courtrooms in only a handful of cases and only for certain types of court proceedings. Manitoba Justice policy dictates only judges and lawyers can be shown on camera and doesnt allow any witness testimony to be recorded. Of the six court proceedings broadcast in Manitoba so far, most have been for verdicts and sentencings. Cameras were most recently welcomed into court to broadcast a provincial court judges verdict into the case of a Winnipeg mother who was ultimately convicted of hiding the bodies of six babies in a storage unit. With no objections from Crown or defence lawyers in that case, a CTV camera was allowed to film provincial court Judge Murray Thompson reading his decision, but not broadcast video of the accused or others. The cameras will be allowed back for Andrea Giesbrechts sentencing in July. katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Tory backbencher Steven Fletcher has tabled legislation that would impose sweeping conflict-of-interest rules on MLAs and their families. The current rules, which date back to 1987, are too limited and ineffective and apply only to an MLAs activities within Manitoba and while in office, Fletcher said. The rules need to cover the many ways provincial members and their closest family members could profit from their decisions and their knowledge, he said. The current legislation for conflict of interest is woefully inadequate and must be changed to relate to the realities of the 21st century, Fletcher told the legislature earlier this week, adding his private members bill is based on legislation brought forward by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Assiniboia MLA Steven Fletcher at the Manitoba legislature. It covers assets owned by an MLA or a member of their immediate family, including stocks, bonds and real estate in Canada. In the last 15 years, the world has changed dramatically, from tax-free savings accounts to public policy, Fletcher said. This bill will ensure that no MLA or immediate family can benefit financially. As an example, Fletcher said, in 1987 no one envisioned a family member could profit from the policy decision an MLA makes on legalized marijuana, and his bill would fill that pothole. Fletcher acknowledged he may have problems getting the bill passed. To get the bill to the table, he had to reach out to the opposition, getting Liberal Jon Gerrard to second it. Fletcher said he believes the bill should be non-partisan. Any questions about why he cant get caucus support should go to the premier, Fletcher said. Premier Brian Pallisters staff said he was not available to discuss the issue Wednesday. Gerrard said strengthening the legislation is long overdue. Fletchers proposed rules would extend any financial holdings and business arrangements beyond Manitoba to anywhere in Canada and would place limits on former MLAs doing business with the government for a year after leaving office. Fletcher regularly tilts at windmills, tabling private members bills on issues as diverse as organ donations, the awarding of Queens counsel designations, the insurance industry and legal profession and statutory holidays. Fletchers rules would apply to an MLAs spouse and dependent children and cover a wide range of investments, partnerships and involvement in organizations and companies. MLAs would have to disclose their own investments, including retirement plans, insurance policies and remuneration or employment for family members. Fletchers proposed bill is online at http://wfp.to/E9I. nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Apr 27 (PTI) Gulf Air today said it has partnered with VFS Global to facilitate visa issuance for passengers flying to Bahrain. The partnership with the visa service provider will support Gulf Airs efforts to promote the Arab country to a broad spectrum of travellers, the flag carrier of Bahrain said. "We are partnering with VFS Global to provide a much needed service to our passengers that will support our national carriers efforts to promote the Kingdom to a broad spectrum of travellers. advertisement "Soon, Gulf Air passengers will be able to easily obtain short-term visit visas to Bahrain via our website gulfair.com, allowing them to come to Bahrain and experience all that our Kingdom has to offer in terms of tourism, business opportunities and more," Gulf Air Chief Commercial Officer Ahmed Janahi said. PTI SM RSY --- ENDS --- Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/04/2017 (2023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Kevin OLearys decision to leave the federal Conservative party leadership race has to qualify as one of the least surprising developments in Canadian political history. OLeary was never a serious candidate, so his exit from the Tory leadership is hardly a serious story. OLeary did not seem prepared to put in the long hours of spade work necessary to win the support of Conservative party members. The fact he did not travel as much, or attend as many debates, as his rivals surely did not create the impression he was up for the relentless scheduled and workload of the leader of the official opposition. Kevin O'Leary addresses a news conference in Toronto, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, after it was announced that he had quit the leadership race and thrown his support behind candidate Maxime Bernier. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette However, OLearys naivete about the amount of work needed to win and thrive as a political leader was not the biggest burden he represented for the Conservative party. The greatest threat he posed was he had worked his entire life to cultivate an image of a businessman who was completely unconcerned about anything other than his own net worth. In fact, I found it to be increasingly impossible to look at OLeary the leadership candidate and separate him from OLeary the bombastic reality television personality, whom Canadians have come to know so very well as a really mean-spirited fellow. Ill admit it, I was a pretty big Dragons Den fan back in the day. My two kids loved the show as well. The prospect of watching OLeary eviscerate some hapless entrepreneur was like catnip to dad and the kids. We loved watching some of the entrepreneurs land investments, but the star of the show was the ruthless OLeary and his I-only-care-about-money sensibility. And yet, OLearys act eventually wore thin, as did the whole Dragons Den mystique. Week after week, OLeary (and, after he left the show, a string of OLeary-lite wannabes) harangued and abused would-be inventors and business owners. My interest completely evaporated during an episode where OLeary went toe-to-toe with another Dragon over who had the best contacts in low-wage China to manufacture some useless gizmo dirt cheap. The moment was absurd for a number of reasons, not least of which is that taxpayers support the production of Dragons Den through the lavish appropriations provided by the federal government to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The promotion of ruthless capitalism and furthering the exploitation of foreign slave-wage economies is probably tucked somewhere into the public broadcasters federal mandate, Im just not sure where. OLearys Dragons Den character, when you get right down to it, represented everything we do not want in a political leader. Lets face it, bragging about having the best contacts in offshore sweatshops may make for compelling reality television, but its hardly something any serious politician would stake out as a winning policy. There were other factors that no doubt prompted OLearys departure. There was the fact he could not speak French, a point he acknowledged would limit his appeal in Quebec and thus limit his partys chances at winning an election. But there was also the fact he does not welcome more scrutiny of his business career. Those early exposes that appeared after he became a leadership candidate revealed him to be a man who made a fortune by convincing rich people to buy his bad ideas. No need to delve deeper into that file. OLearys departure leaves 13 yes, a bakers dozen other candidates in the race to take the Tory helm. They include former MPs Pierre Lemieux (ON), Andrew Saxton (B.C.) and Chris Alexander; current MPs Deepak Obhrai (AB), Erin OToole (ON), Lisa Raitt (ON), Andrew Scheer (SK), Brad Trost (SK), Kellie Leitch (ON), Michael Chong (ON), Steven Blaney (PQ), and Maxime Bernier (PQ); and B.C. venture capitalist Rick Peterson. Good on the federal Tories for drawing such a large crowd. It bodes well for the future of the party that rank-and-file members will have so many options from which to choose. However, a stacked field like this also creates the opportunity for party members to make the wrong decision, particularly if they get too caught up in some perverse anyone-but-X scenarios. Ask the Liberal Party circa 2006 about what happens (Stephane Dion) when you spend too much trying to prevent someone from winning, rather than just supporting your candidate of choice. OLeary made a point of throwing his support to Bernier who, it seems, has run the best leadership campaign so far. He has amassed more money and endorsements and thus appears to be emphasis on appears the front runner. That is, in and of itself, a rather scary proposition. Even with OLeary out of the race, there is a very real chance that moderates such as Chong, OToole, Scheer and Raitt, among others, will get drowned out by the looney rantings of some of the other candidates. Those others include Bernier, whose libertarianism is quite likely to shatter the base of Conservative support and stop it from growing into the big tent needed to win a federal election. And, of course, Leitch, a physician-turned-politician who has stolen more than her fair share of headlines by indulging in a prolonged xenophobic wet dream that features a horrendously offensive values tests for anyone seeking to immigrate to Canada. Given the number of candidates that will likely be on the first ballot at the Tory leadership convention, OLeary should be thanked for leaving the race, and thus removing one of the biggest distractions for Conservative party members. His gruff charisma and gift of the gab could have made him a viable candidate even though he really hasnt done anything to contribute to the common good or shown that he cares about anyone other than himself. In pulling out, OLeary clearly understood that his life would be much more hectic, stress filled and complicated if he became a politician. As a reality television star, he has the best of all possible worlds at his disposal. He can work whenever he wants, do as much or as little as he wants, and is beholden to no one. As a politician, he would have been shackled to a pursuit of a greater good. Thats not very fun or profitable. dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitoba is still bargaining with Ottawa and theres no date yet for signing a health accord with the federal government, Premier Brian Pallister said Thursday. He still thinks Ottawas approach to an unsustainable health-care system is dangerous and reckless, Pallister told an estimates hearing. Nevertheless, Pallister told NDP health-care critic Matt Wiebe that Ottawas threats are off the table. Manitoba is the lone holdout to signing an accord. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Premier Brian Pallister There is no threat of reducing our mental health funding, said Pallister. The answer was the same for what Pallister portrayed as a threat to withdraw $60 million for the Factory of the Future research centre if Pallister didnt sign, he said. Once that threat was gone, Immediately, we resumed our outreach to the government, Pallister told Wiebe. He continues to try to get the best possible additional funding on indigenous health-care needs he can before signing, Pallister said. After Wednesdays overt antipathy between Pallister and NDP finance critic James Allum, Thursdays exchanges were far more civil and even-tempered. In response to Wiebe, Pallister said there wont be a dedicated stroke unit introduced this year but there will be in the future. Wiebe asked repeatedly how many personal care home beds will be built during the four years of Pallisters mandate. We know the first year is zero, so put that on the record, the New Democrat said. He got responses the premiers attacking spending promises of the former NDP government but not an answer. Pallister read from a long list of smaller capital projects the Conservatives have carried out in the health-care system; like those in education, basic repairs predominated. I see a lot of roofs that werent repaired for a very long time its kind of symbolic, said Pallister. Interim NDP leader Flor Marcelino was very interested in the travel costs of David McLaughlin an Ottawa-based consultant who had been the Conservatives election campaign manager, then was hired to advise on climate change policy, and, as of Monday, will be Pallisters interim director of communications and stakeholder relations. She specially wanted to know if the government purchased carbon offsets for McLaughlins frequent trips between Ottawa and Winnipeg as its environmental consultant. No, thats not policy, said Pallister. Compared with the former NDP government, Our travel budget is 11 per cent lower, the premier said. In the first year of any government, That is quite an accomplishment. nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. In his victory speech on Sunday night, Emmanuel Macron, the next president of France, said: I want to become the president of the patriots in the face of the threat from the nationalists. The distinction would be lost on most Trump supporters in the United States and on the Little Englanders who voted for Brexit in Britain, but its absolutely clear to the French, and indeed to most Europeans. In the United States, patriot usually means nationalist, with flags flaunted and slogans chanted. America first says Trump, and the crowd replies USA all the way! You cant imagine a British election rally doing that the United Kingdom is too close to mainland Europe, where that sort of thing ended very badly but the English nationalism behind Brexit was painfully obvious. For some in both countries its actually white nationalism, but even the non-racists who voted for Trump or Brexit draw the line at the border or the waters edge. Theres us, and on the far side them. Thibault Camus / The Associated Press Files French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron waves before addressing his supporters at his election-day headquarters in Paris on April 23. In contrast, the French men and women who voted for Macron understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism very well. They will have to vote for Macron again in the run-off election on May 7, when his opponent will be the neo-fascist candidate, Marine Le Pen, but in that round they will be joined by almost all the people who voted for other presidential candidates in the first round. She is a nationalist; they are patriots. In Europe, nationalism is linked in the collective memory with the catastrophe of the last centurys great wars, and the racism that is often associated with it triggers images of Nazi extermination camps. Not all Europeans are immune to that kind of nationalism, or political phenomena such as Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Beppe Grillo in Italy could not exist, but they remain a minority almost everywhere. That was not obvious four months ago. After the Brexit vote last June and Trumps election in November, Europes ultra-nationalists were convinced their moment had finally come and many observers feared they were right. Brexit seemed like the first step toward the break-up of the European Union, and from the Netherlands to Austria it felt as though the fascists were at the door. Not so. Wilderss party gained only a few seats in last months Dutch election and remains very much a minority taste. Marine Le Pen is no closer to the French presidency than her openly fascist father was 15 years ago: the National Front vote never breaks through the 25 per cent ceiling. And the hard-right, anti-immigrant, anti-EU Alternative for Germany party has lost its leader and one-third of its popular support in the past month. Some of this is simply disillusionment. Significant numbers of Europeans were initially tempted to back local populist parties by the sheer flamboyance of Trumps U.S. electoral campaign. After all, Europeans also worry about immigration and terrorism and unemployment, and his rude and crude rhetoric seemed to validate the similar language of their own populist leaders. But the reality of the dysfunctional Trump White House has turned off most of those recent European converts to populist politics. By and large, the hard-right parties of Europe are back where they were before The Donald burst upon the scene, with almost no chance of gaining real political power. It was a false alarm. The populist wave that seemed to be sweeping through Western politics turns out to be merely a storm in the much smaller teacup known as the Anglosphere. Its only known this way to Europeans, who use the word, often tinged with contempt, to describe the deregulated economies and market-obsessed politics of the post-Reagan United States and post-Thatcher United Kingdom. (Australia occasionally gets an honourable mention, too.) For a quarter of a century, the politics of the Anglosphere has been consistently subservient to the market even when purportedly left-wing leaders such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were in power. The result, as you would expect, has been somewhat higher economic growth rates, and a rapidly widening gulf between the incomes of the rich and the rest. The rest of the West has not been immune to this political fashion, but it has been far less prominent in the countries of the European Union (and even in deviant anglophone countries such as Canada and New Zealand). Now the disparity in incomes between the one per cent and the 99 per cent has grown so great in the heartlands of the Anglosphere that the political chickens are coming home to roost. The response in both the United States and the United Kingdom is not real populism, which for all its faults does at least try to shrink income inequalities. It is standard right-wing politics in a populist style, using nationalism to distract the victims from the fact that these governments actually serve the rich. Move along, please. Theres nothing new to see here. Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/04/2017 (2022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. When there is talk about suicide, most people envision a young person struggling with mental health. While that may be the No. 1 cause of death for people under the age of 20, those most likely to die by suicide are middle-aged men. This is the mid-life crisis no one seems to want to talk about, and the silence on this as a public-health issue is deafening. The statistics are chilling. Men account for three out of every four suicides, with seven men dying by suicide every day in Canada. The risk for gay and bisexual men is higher. And the risk of suicide completion goes up for men as they age. Death by suicide is highest for men in the age group between 40 and 59. As well, in the past five years, suicide rates for men who have served in the military are also an area of concern. According to the federal government, there has been an increase in suicide in the past five years particularly among young men serving within the Army command (as opposed to other units) and having worked in the combat arms occupations. This group was more likely to have been exposed to psychological trauma, especially related to the combat operations in Afghanistan. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION / GREG SOUTHAM / EDMONTON JOURNAL Depression in men is far more likely to be deadly, partly because of the strong stigma men attach to professional care of any kind. The difficulty in getting a complete picture on suicide-completion rates for military men is that the Armed Forces dont include men who killed themselves after theyve left military service. According to a Globe and Mail report, 158 men died in combat in Afghanistan, but another 54 killed themselves upon their return to civilian life. Suicide completion is a complicated area of study. Studies indicate women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to die from their attempts, largely because they use far more lethal methods. As a result, understanding the factors that lead to a failed suicide attempt is difficult, because men are less likely to survive. What is known is that loneliness and isolation play an important role in mens contemplation of suicide. In fact, married men have a lower rate of suicide completion than those who are unmarried. As well, societal and gender roles on what is considered culturally acceptable for men may also play a role. Men are expected to man up and hold their feelings inside. Men have been socialized to not ask for help. The stigma around mental-health issues also remains. Sure, there are many high-profile individuals who have attempted to break the silence around depression and suicide, but those role models are overwhelmingly young and/or female. Who is speaking to the divorced father of two who, at 55, is struggling to find meaning in his life? In 1973, suicide was decriminalized in Canada and became instead the focus of public-health policy. However, jurisdictional battles between provinces and the federal government have hampered progress on a national suicide-prevention policy. Because health is considered a provincial responsibility, suicide-prevention discussions became a constitutional concern. This is further exacerbated by the reluctance of the Canadian military to address the growing problem of men who complete suicide after leaving service. Veterans Affairs is now setting up a system to collect statistical data on suicide among veterans from outside agencies, but an overview is not expected until later this year. Meanwhile, the federal government released a progress report in December 2016 on suicide prevention, with clear objectives aimed at reducing the incidence of suicide and the stigma surrounding mental-health issues. The Liberals are expected to launch a national suicide prevention service that will offer a 24/7 distress line across Canada to provide toll-free, confidential support to individuals using phone, text and chat. However, the strategies lack a gender analysis that understands the special needs men may have. While they do speak to the cultural and racial aspects of suicide completion (with indigenous youth at a higher risk of attempting or completing suicide), they do little to address the needs of men who may not respond well to traditional talk therapy and who may not reach out for assistance. Some important steps the provincial and federal governments should consider include providing a national registry for hospitals to track self-harming behaviour, including drug and alcohol abuse. As well, limiting access to lethal means, including access to weapons and the adoption of smaller packaging for prescription and over-the-counter medication, has also been shown to help deter suicide, according to research from Manitoba Population Mental Health Research Group. Mid-life crises for men should involve such stereotypical behaviours as considering buying a shiny red convertible or investing in a new wardrobe or hair plugs. It should not mean death by suicide. A governmental gender-based approach to preventing suicide completion for men is desperately needed. Shannon Sampert is the former perspectives and politics editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. She is currently the editor-in-chief and director of EvidenceNetwork.ca at the University of Winnipeg. Her views are her own. Winona Health President/CEO, Rachelle Schultz, Ed.D., recently spoke at a National Press Club briefing in Washington, DC, about community healthcare and the challenges facing rural America. During the briefing, Schultz, who chairs the American Hospital Associations (AHA) Section for Rural Hospitals, shared that if tens of millions more people were to be added to the uninsured rolls, hospitals would face even more budget pressure and possibly lose ground in their efforts to promote community health. From 2013 to 2016, Winona Health saw a 33 percent decline in uninsured patients and visits to the hospital Emergency Department fell. She noted that if Winonans were to lose coverage, these improvements in health and costs could be lost. Without coverage, people delay seeking care until their health needs become emergencies, Schultz said. If people put off seeking care until they need emergency care, it would not only drive up the cost of health care for everyone, but, even more important, it would put individuals in a more difficult situation health-wise and could have a more devastating effect on families. AHA Chairman, Gene Woods, noted that it was essential for members of congress to hear Winona Healths story and to understand the potential impact on communities and rural hospitals if millions of Americans lost health insurance. The AHA is the national organization that represents and serves all types of hospitals, health care networks, and their patients and communities. Its mission is to advance the health of individuals and communities. The AHA leads, represents and serves hospitals, health systems and other related organizations that are accountable to the community and committed to health improvement. Every day, five children die from child abuse. But the students in Winona State University social work professor Ruth Charles child welfare class want the community to know this statistic does not have to exist. It doesnt have to happen, Charles said. The students in Charles upper level class organized a child abuse awareness walk Wednesday afternoon down Huff Street to the Winona Police Station and down Fourth and Main streets on their way back to campus. As the walk kicked off, the marchers held their signs toward the street to give their audience the best view of their statistics. Students Hayley Matson and Natalie Anderson, both juniors, were marching in the walk to support a friend. Anderson said she believes most do not understand that child abuse happens, and Matson said she believes by educating the community, more children can be saved from risky situations. Kids shouldnt be living in fear of having a crappy childhood, Matson said. Sophomore Kaitlyn Androli and first-year student Cayla Lindsey, both child advocacy studies students, were at the event to support the cause. They were marching with sophomore Kylie Webb, who was at the event supporting a member of her sorority. Webb said she believes not enough people understand child abuse can happen in Winona. A lot of it goes unnoticed in a small community, Webb said. By organizing the event, Emily Fourniea, a student in Charles class, said she and her classmates are also engaging with what they learn in the classroom and applying it to a community setting. Their main goal, Fourniea said, is to stop the cycle of abuse. (For an abused child), it will carry through their life, Fourniea said. Charles said the walk promotes education about child abuse which, she added, has statistically proven to be an effective way to combat the abuse. Charles said by educating the public about child abuse and the options available to those who have experienced it, the number of abuse cases goes down. Education is prevention, Charles said. Kovecsi spoke to the crowd of mostly students about government involvement in preventing child abuse. Unfortunately for prevention efforts, Kovecsi said, most of the money received locally goes to helping families directly, instead of funding prevention and education. Kovecsi stressed the importance of events like the students walk that can support education and prevention. As a future professional who plans to work with children dealing with abuse, Fourniea said she knows it is happening all over. She said people should understand it could be happening at a neighbors home, or they could know someone who has dealt with it. As for her career, Fourniea said she hopes to do somewhat of the same thing as the prevention aspect of the walk: working with college students who have experienced the abuses in their childhood. Experiences like the walk, Fourniea said, will benefit her. So we know the signs, and were able to step up and stop it early in the future, Fourniea said. Thats going to be our goal. LA CRESCENT, Minn. Pine Creek Dairys 130-year legacy has been secured. While Wisconsin farmers scramble to find a buyer for their milk after the recent pullout by Grassland Dairy, dairy farms in Minnesota affected by the change have found a new buyer in Agropur Inc., which has agreed to add their milk to its production lines. According to The Associated Press, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture announced Grassland would buy the farmers milk and sell it to Agropur, a Canadian dairy company with a U.S. division located in St. Paul. It was a huge sigh of relief, not only for our farm, but for everyone affected, said Labecca Schott, daughter of Pine Creek owner Richard Johnson. It can be really hard to explain to people who dont understand just how much of a lifestyle farming is. Pine Creek Dairy, which milks about 120 cows and produces 10,000 pounds of milk each day, was left flatfooted earlier this month when its buyer, Grassland Dairy, announced it would was no longer interested in the farms product, citing a change in Canadian pricing. The farm was given until the end of April to find a new buyer. Johnsons grandfather settled near La Crescent in 1887, and his father took over the farm in 1935. Johnson has been in the dairy business since 1979 and spent the past several years working on a plan to have his son Paul take over the farm some day. That plan looked bleak as family members called dairy companies looking for a new buyer for its milk. They attended meetings for the farmers who were affected, and more than 100 companies were contacted, Schott said, before the farm got its reprieve earlier this week. To have all that hang in the balance was a scary situation, she said. There were a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of phone calls. Rita Young, who sits on the Minnesota Board of the Midwest Dairy Association and milks 1,000 cows with her husband, Maurice, their three sons and 15 other employees on a farm near Plainview, Minn., said having Agropur step up was a huge relief. Earlier this month, her farm was working with Dairy Farmers of America to buy their milk, but the price being offered wasnt as high. Young said she hopes things will get back to normal, but she also knew other farms are still struggling. Im just hoping others find a solution for where their milk should go, she said. According to The Associated Press, about 15 Wisconsin farms affected by the Grassland decision were considering offers Tuesday. Even if all those deals go through, more than 20 other farms face a Monday deadline to find a buyer. Trempealeau County Extension agriculture agent Steve Okonek said he wasnt aware of any farms in his county that were affected but knew of several farms in Jackson County that were. Dairy industry experts say most plants are already full or beyond capacity and just cant add any more milk. It is a real tough situation, he said. We just have a lot of milk in the system and prices are depressed. Economists predict a strengthening of milk prices by the middle of the summer, Okonek said, and data indicates milk production might be slowing. The worry is that unless something changes, farmers will exit the industry, causing even more problems, such as dumping cows, land and equipment on the market, causing a crisis similar to what happened in the 1980s. It is a scenario being discussed, he said. I dont know if it will happen. To have (so much) hang in the balance was a scary situation. There were a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of phone calls. Labecca Schott, daughter of Pine Creek owner Richard Johnson The woman was gangraped by seven men on the pretext of providing job. By India Today Web Desk: The Gurgaon Police has arrested four men in connection with gangraping a 26-year-old woman in the city. According to reports, the woman was gangraped by seven men on the pretext of providing job. The accused who was known to the woman, called her to IMT Manesar and then gangraped her along with his six other friends. advertisement The girl later filed a complaint based on which the Gurgaon Police registered a case and arrested the accused. The other three accused are still absconding. ALSO READ: 40 people do nothing but watch 15-yr-old's gangrape, live on Facebook: Welcome to 2017 --- ENDS --- We are all necessarily prisoners of our own place and time, and thus, I was in my youth necessarily a fan of The Handmaids Tale. I read it; I discussed it very earnestly with like-minded friends; I copied author Margaret Atwoods muted style and dystopian preoccupations in my own, less competent fiction. But that youth has fled, alas; it has been two decades since I last picked up my copy of the book. However, a new television show has been made out of the book, and is attracting rave reviews, less for its acting, script or stunning visuals than for its unexpectedly timely message. Nonsense. Whatever future we should fear Donald Trump will usher in, it will bear precious little resemblance to Atwoods Gilead. But people keep saying the TV adaptation of The Handmaids Tale is unexpectedly timely in this age. Perhaps I had forgotten some Trumpian intimations from the text. So I reread the book. After completing a rereading, I am interested to see the series. But I am, if anything, even more stunned that anyone thinks it is particularly timely in the era of Trump. It is as though someone had read Brave New World, gone to modern Pyongyang, and shouted: You see! This is just what Huxley was warning about! Um, not really. My quarrel is not with the politics of The Handmaids Tale, nor with its realism. Expecting plausibility from dystopian fiction is like expecting haute cuisine from a highway service area. Of the dystopian fiction Ive read, only 1984 comes even remotely close to feeling real, and thats because Orwell was working from two vivid contemporaneous examples, from which he lifted freely. Fictional dystopia is sort of the photonegative of the movies produced by actual totalitarian regimes. Masses of people wearing identical creepy clothes, forming into precise lines, chanting the same things. Yes, in regimes like North Korea and Hitlers Germany, those mass rallies occurred. The men marched and the girls danced in eerily infinite lines. But afterward, most of them went home to the banal, the ordinary, and the familiar altered by political fear and economic shortages, but not wholly transformed into something unrecognizably inhuman. In interviews since its publication, Atwood has emphasized that all the details in the book were based on things that really happened in the world (or at least, are recounted in tales; the handmaids of the book, concubines given to elite men of Gileads theocracy in order to bear them the children their barren wives could not, is based on the story of Rachel and Jacob in the Book of Genesis). One sees the historical referents when reading, and yet the entire effect is completely unrealistic, because shes drawn details from too many oppressive regimes and collaged them. Dystopian regimes in real life have common features, yes, but they are not actually interchangeable; indeed, they are surprisingly specific. Reading accounts of those actual regimes, Im always surprised at how culturally embedded they remained, even as they proclaimed that they were enacting a new world order in which everything would be different. People still got married and settled into family domesticity under communist regimes that were supposed to be sweeping away all the vestiges of private lives in favor of creating new Soviet man or his many cousins; people in theocratic states still had considerable variance in the level of religious observance; theoretically internationalist ideologies fell back on nationalist sentiment to motivate the masses. All of which is to say: The Taliban certainly existed, but it could not exist in America, because it would have no popular base from which to launch its attacks, no historic practice of burka wearing to ratify bringing them back. Nor could such a movement gain power here along the lines that Atwood outlines. Ive seen her praised for actually thinking through the mechanism by which her fictional state might emerge, and kudos for the effort, but we must also acknowledge that, as written, it doesnt really make all that much sense. The inciting event is a lightly fictionalized version of the Reichstag fire, but a careful student of history would note that a decade after the Reichstag fire, most of German society still looked pretty much like it had in 1925. No, Im not excusing Nazi atrocities in any way shape or form, nor discounting the sweeping changes that Hitler did make. But they didnt gut-renovate the economy, wipe out all religions that competed with the state, and completely reorganize society in the space of a few years; they left much of the economy and the culture alone. For structural reasons she needs her handmaid to remember the world before as an adult, and yet still be young enough to be fertile Atwood needs changes that are both unrealistically sweeping and ludicrously fast. She is not illustrating how Trump will transform America. America hasnt had a unified theocratic tradition since the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the descendants of those Puritans are now pouring their fervent moralism into buying Priuses and complaining about Trump. The closest modern equivalent, the statewide hegemony of the Latter-day Saints in Utah, doesnt look very much like The Handmaids Tale and hasnt the faintest prayer of co-opting the rest of the nations fractured religious traditionalists, many of whom do not even consider the Mormons to be Christian. And even if some movement did, somehow, gather a Mormon-like critical mass, Trump is hardly likely to be its avatar; our most religious red state was also the one where Trump had the greatest trouble. Critics seem to have failed to notice that Trump has been unable to usher in even the far more limited changes he promised, such as dramatically restricting immigration, reshaping NATO and bringing foreign governments to heel. He hasnt got control of Congress, or the courts, and has nothing like the mass movements behind him that brought other dystopian governments to power, whether fascist, communist or theocratic. Meanwhile, the culture is moving the other way. Women are gaining more economic power relative to men; the nation is becoming less religious. The Handmaids Tale is becoming less plausible a future with each passing year, no matter how hard feminists insist that there is only a brief and slippery slope between overturning Roe v. Wade and forcing women into state-sanctioned breeding programs. There is nothing wrong with enjoying implausibilities on a screen or page. But there is something very wrong with hysterically declaring that those things are reality. That risks confusion so we will not notice the real dystopia rising or the rest of the world will be too tired of our cries to hear any warnings we shout. On the surface, Nixon's early months offered few clues to the foreign policy strides that would register in history or to the dark scheming that would destroy his presidency. He visited Europe for eight days in his first full month, three years before his groundbreaking visit to China. In March, he ordered a secret and sustained bombing campaign on Cambodia its eventual revelation further drove opposition to the Vietnam War. Baraboo defense attorney Leonie Dolch has seen too many of her clients hauled off to jail after being arrested for minor offenses in Sauk County. For example, a person who is caught allegedly driving with a revoked drivers license may never ultimately be sentenced to jail, but they would often be taken into the jail and have to wait to see a judge to be released on bond, said Dolch, a public defender. Research shows that people charged with minor crimes who dont have extensive criminal records are at a low risk of re-offending. And locking them up can have negative consequences. Jailing a low-risk offender not only creates an additional burden on taxpayers, but it can have a lasting impact on that persons life. Justice researchers have found that time behind bars with more seasoned criminals can make a person more likely to re-offend, and create hardships. Many people lose their jobs while in jail, or at least lose income for the time they were in jail rather than working, Dolch said. Many people are responsible for the care and well-being of others, whether it be children, disabled or elderly family members, and pets. Dolch and other members of a Sauk County justice panel hope a new tool being used by law enforcement officers countywide will help keep low risk offenders out of jail. In mid-March, at the request of the Sauk County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, local law enforcement agencies began using a version of whats known as the Hawaiian proxy. Its a scoring system officers use to determine the likelihood that a person will re-offend or not show up for future court dates. The system was developed and first-used in Hawaii, and local officials say it has shown positive results. Officers plug a persons age, number of prior arrests, and the age at which they were first arrested into a scoring system. The overall score is then used to determine whether that person should be taken to jail, or released and given a future court date. As in the past, officers still have discretion to incarcerate someone. And jail remains a requirement for certain offenses, such as domestic incidents, battery, sexual assault, and other violent crimes. But in cases in which jail is not a requirement, the scoring system gives officers some evidence-based criteria on which to make a decision. Its a way for us to make sure were making a good decision thats based on research, said Sauk Prairie Police Chief Jerry Strunz, who also serves on the justice panel. I think its something youre going to see expand. The Sauk Prairie Police Department began using the proxy system in August, Strunz said, adding that his officers have become comfortable with it. Now that the program is being used countywide, he said there is more consistency with how accused offenders are treated. The new program is one of several created by the countys Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, which consists of representatives from justice-related fields and other stakeholder organizations. The panel is tasked with finding research-driven strategies to improve the fairness, effectiveness and efficiency of the countys justice system. Sauk County District Attorney Kevin Calkins, who chairs the council, said anecdotally the proxy system seems to be working, with fewer people being arrested and held for bail hearings. We will need a bigger sample than the little over a month we have using the proxy, and we will have to collect the numbers from before to compare with to determine if that is what is truly happening, he said. In the south-central and southwestern regions of Wisconsin, the percentage of deer testing positive for chronic wasting disease surpassed 10 percent for the second straight year. Meanwhile, the number of deer testing positive for CWD reached a record high in the Badger State. If youre wondering why the state Department of Natural Resources didnt announce such alarming results, well, the DNR doesnt seem to be in the business of keeping hunters fully informed these days. As Patrick Durkin pointed out in an April 17 report for the Wisconsin State Journal, the DNR news release said CWD samples nearly doubled in 2016 thank you hunters! We agree with Durkin that hunters should be commended for submitting 6,095 deer for chronic wasting disease tests during 2016s hunting seasons. Clearly, there is interest among hunters in gathering evidence of CWD. That number 6,095 is nearly double the record-low 3,138 deer hunters provided in 2015. But the DNRs news release is woefully short on perspective. The 2016 sampling effort ranks fourth from the bottom of 15 annual assessments done since 2001. The news release also mentioned 447 deer tested CWD-positive in 2016. But a raw number is useless without context: Is it a high number? A low number? Whats the percentage difference from the last time a measurement was taken? What the DNR did not say, but Durkin did, is that 447 is a record high. Its 90 deer, or 25 percent more, than the previous high, 357 in 2013, even though the DNR tested 567 fewer deer than the 6,662 tested in 2013. The DNR notes that most sick deer came from Wisconsins southern farmland zone. But CWD rates again set records across that zone, which covers much of south-central to southwestern Wisconsin. Of 3,730 deer that hunters submitted for testing there, 442 12 percent were infected. Thats two straight years the zones infection rate hit double digits. In 2015, 296 of its 2,162 samples had CWD, or 13.7 percent. When Scott Walker was elected governor in November 2010, partly on the promise of improving Wisconsins deer hunting, the southern farmlands infection rate was 3 percent. Meaning that the CWD rate in that area has quadrupled during Walkers administration. If youre a deer hunter, dont you want the DNR to keep you informed as to whether the deer you harvest can be eaten? Under DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp, that has not been the case. Stepp wont let her staff testify in the Capitol about CWD, and her communications office wont publicly discuss CWDs impact on Wisconsins deer herd and its hunting heritage. We believe the DNR, as a state agency, should be serving all of Wisconsins residents, and that certainly includes the thousands who put on blaze orange every November and head out in pursuit of that trophy buck. We believe the states deer hunters deserve better service than theyve been receiving from the DNR, that the agencys activities should be transparent. Maintaining public trust is about keeping Wisconsinites informed. As to whether, this fall, you can eat the results of your successful hunt? Cross your fingers and hope your venison doesnt come with a side of CWD. Columbus Community Hospital volunteers and leadership joined over 1,000 others from healthcare organizations across the state at the Wisconsin Hospital Associations Advocacy Day in Madison April 19 at the Monona Terrace. The day included keynote speaker Amy Walter, the national editor of The Cook Political Report; a legislative panel including State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), State Sen. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse), State Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), and State Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha); an address by Gov. Scott Walker; and the opportunity to visit with legislators at the Capitol. According to Eric Borgerding, WHA president/CEO, since 2008 almost 10,000 people have attended Advocacy Day and 6,500 of them have visited the Capitol to speak to their legislators about the issues. The Volunteers of CCH were represented at the event by 17 members of their organization. Advocacy Day provides our volunteers with the knowledge they need to stay in tune with legislation regarding health care. By taking the initiative to learn about the issues, our volunteers remain strong advocates protecting our local hospital, patients and communities, said Patti Walker, CCH volunteer coordinator. In 2016, the Volunteers of CCH donated nearly 10,000 hours to CCH and over $22,000 in equipment and scholarships. For more information regarding the Volunteers of Columbus Community Hospital, call 920-623-1280. The city of Mauston bid farewell to one longtime employee and welcomed another during its common council meeting April 25 at city hall. Mauston honored John Nicksic, who has retired after nearly four decades in the citys public works department, and swore in Brian Raabe, the newest addition the Mauston Police Department. Mayor Brian McGuire presented a special retirement plaque to Nicksic and read a proclamation honoring Nicksic for his dedication to the city. Nicksic began a long career at the public works department on Sept. 15, 1977 and has spent the past 31 years as Maustons wastewater operator. Nicksic was named the Operator of the Year by the Wisconsin Wastewater Operators Association in 2012. In the proclamation McGuire said Nicksic has been vital to the citys sanitation services. His duties also included maintaining the treatment plant, managing 12 lift stations, acting as the weather service observer and completing Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports. Considering Nicksics duties, the mayors proclamation was tongue-in-cheek at times. Whereas, over a span of three decades he has daily and dependably dealt with more crap and stink from the city of Mauston than any of us care to assume, which over the course of 30-plus years is estimated to be 6.4 billion gallons worth McGuire said. Whereas, he provides a smooth transition for the public works crew by leaving meticulous notes and up-to-date reports, not to mention a little levity by greasing every handle in the public works break room after his last day of work. McGuire said Nicksic is free to focus on retirement and put his energies into polishing and riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, camping, drinking Dogfish Head beer, growing out his ponytail and enjoying life to the fullest. Nicksic laughed and smiled proudly as McGuire presented him with the plaque. He was also congratulated by Public Works Director Rob Nelson. Despite nearly 40 years of service to the city, Nicksic said its gone by fast. You couldnt hold out another six months to make it to 40? McGuire joked. Mauston PD welcomes Raabe With Chief of Police Mike Zilisch by his side, Raabe was officially sworn in as Maustons newest police officer. City Administrator Nathan Thiel administered the oath of office as Raabe was welcomed to the force. Raabes family and friends were also present to support and congratulate him. Raabe is the departments first officer hired under Zilisch who became chief in January of 2016. Raabe thanked the city for its support and said hes looking forward to serving the people of Mauston. I grew up in the area and Im glad to be coming back to the area where I grew up, Raabe said. I hope I can do the city proud. Looking ahead, Zilisch has high hopes for his newest officer. Hes been nothing but fantastic already in his first week with us, Zilisch said. Were excited to have him here. We really think hell do great things for us. Raabe was scheduled to begin field training with officers on April 26. Street work update The city decided to omit a portion of sidewalk from its 2017 street repair project. The short section of Prairie Street between Pine Street and the Mauston Industrial Leasing building was removed from the list. City officials also approved bids for minor street work such as crack filling and chip sealing. In addition, Mauston approved a purchase for a new plow truck for just over $57,000. Honored for tree growth Nelson said the public works department received a Growth Award from Tree City USA for its work in fostering tree care across the city. The city hired Seth Westberg as its forester last spring, which helped Mauston earn the distinction. Nelson said Westberg has done a great job in managing the citys tree system. Also on April 25, the council welcomed Jim Allaby and Katie Steinke as members. Steinke and Allaby were both elected April 4 and replace Leslie Householder and Floyd Babcock as aldermen. Both decided to step down. Before the end of the meeting, McGuire said the 85-year-old Babcock has endured some health problems recently. He is doing fine and is home from the hospital, McGuire said. Just keep him in your thoughts and if you know Floyd Im sure he would appreciate a phone call or visit. What started out as a hobby growing cacao has turned into a way of life for Ben VanEgtern and his business partner Adam Potter. They run Puna Chocolate Company, featuring products made from cacao they grow in Hawaii. We made chocolate for ourselves, friends and family, VanEgtern said. Named for the region where they grow cacao trees on Hawaiis Big Island, Puna Chocolate Company planted its first cacao orchard in 2013 and now offers its chocolate online and sells their products at farmers markets in Illinois, and at chocolate shows and festivals in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Denver and Burlington, Wisconsin. VanEgtern grew up on a dairy farm and was active in the FFA before he graduated from Waupun High School in 2001. After high school VanEgtern served in the U.S. Navy for four years, stationed in San Diego, with stopovers in Hawaii. After the navy, he got a job with JT Packard, which occasionally sent him back to Hawaii. I kept falling in love with it more and more, VanEgtern said. Eventually VanEgtern found property on the Big Island. He said Hawaii features a diverse range of climate groups and zones, and the Big Island has tropical, arid, temperate and polar climates. It is the most northern place where you can grow cacao before you get out of the tropical zone, VanEgtern said. Puna Chocolate Company focuses its mission on producing chocolate and leading tropical conservation. VanEgtern said the original intention when purchasing the land was to keep it as virgin rainforest. He said cacao pods must be harvested when they are ripe. Once you pick it, that is how it stays, VanEgtern said. The pods are carefully opened and the beans removed. The beans are fermented, dried and roasted. Then the beans are ground with cane sugar and flavors before being tempered and poured into bars. The better the fermentation, the better the chocolate, VanEgtern said. VanEgtern said they brainstorm different flavor profiles to try seasonally, with a spring seasonal bar that uses maple syrup from Wisconsin. Other bars use macadamia nuts, cashews and coconuts grown in Hawaii. Last year was our first year doing retail, VanEgtern said. He opted to further his education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He began studying environmental engineering, but switched to tropical plants and soil sciences. Puna Chocolate Company also offers services to help others plant cacao orchards. A lot of people who own property dont know what to do with it, VanEgtern said. VanEgtern visited his alma mater, Waupun High School, during National Agriculture Week, and spoke to students about his life since graduation, from his military service, an internship in Uganda working with graduate students on pest management for the coffee plant, earning his degree in agriculture and his business. Puna Chocolate Company now owns more than 60 acres and works to propagate the best cacao trees. They do their processing in Hawaii and in Chicago. The work employs three people full time -- with help from family. VanEgtern said their chocolate can get to market as fast as two weeks after harvesting. A video done by the Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway a local non-profit group has people talking about the Sauk City Railroad Bridge again. The video, taken by a skilled boater, depicts the now-defunct bridge from the water, said Timm Zumm, president of the organization. It provides a 360 degree view of pier two of the bridge, which shows shifting that has occurred. The intent of the video was to educate and inform people of safety along the river, Zumm said. Part of our mission is to protect and preserve the lower Wisconsin River, as well as creating awareness and providing education about how to use the river safely. The area by the bridge trestle can be a challenge, Zumm said. The bridge has been a hot topic as of late due to its condition. Pier two of the bridge has failed and needs to be removed before the two bridge spans it supports collapse into the Wisconsin River, according to inspectors. Inspectors found the pier had shifted approximately two-feet last Labor Day after flooding in September, 2016. After divers checked the condition of the pier in November, 2016,it was discovered to have moved about two feet. Pier four and the spans attached to it were demolished previously due to soil erosion around the pier. The bridge is more than 100 years old and hasnt been used since about 2002. There are plans to remove it; the issue is funding, said Wisconsin Department of Transportations Chief of Railroads and Harbors Dave Simon. He said he is unaware if the bridge has shifted more than the two feet that was already discovered. The last time it was measured was back in November when Westbrook did the evaluation, Simon said of the Wisconsin River Rail Transit Commissions consultant, Westbrook Associated Engineers. Transit Commission chair Alan Sweeney said the Commission is trying to make the public as safe as we can. Notices and warnings have been placed by the bridge to keep people from going on it. Sweeney said the commission is trying to expedite different solutions, since funding for the bridges removal has been hard to come by. All these solutions involve money and trying to get the bridge removed, he said. Sweeney said they have applied for a Wisconsin Rail Preservation grant but havent yet heard back. They are also looking into possible cost-sharing measures with the Department of Transportation. Sweeney said they are taking the situation as it comes. We are in the process of putting the funding pieces together the outcome is the removal of the bridge. Zumm said he is unsure of whether or not the bridge has shifted any more, but said Its definitely no place to mess around. Members of Adams-Columbia Electric Cooperative will hold its 30th annual meeting on May 16. The meeting will be held in the new Fine Arts Center at Adams-Friendship High School in Adams. Doors will open for registration at 5:15 p.m.; the business meeting will start promptly at 6 p.m. At the business meeting, members will elect directors in two districts, plus one at-large directors seat. Reports on cooperative business from the past year will be presented. Members will be asked to consider a slate of proposed changes to the cooperatives bylaws. The bylaws were last updated in 2013. Absentee ballots are available upon request for members unable to attend the meeting. Contact Linda Mohns at 800-831-8629, ext. 220. If requesting a ballot by mail, please allow ample time for mail delivery. For faster registration at the annual meeting, Adams-Columbia members are encouraged to bring the mailing label from a recent issue of Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News magazine. ACEC members seeking more annual meeting information can go member publications, or to the cooperatives website at www.acecwi.com. By Press Trust of India: Bhopal, Apr 27 (PTI) Out on bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur today alleged she was "falsely implicated in the case to endorse the bogey of saffron terrorism, a term coined by erstwhile Home Minister P Chidambaram." Sadhvi (44), who was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on Tuesday, was released from judicial custody after the bail formalities were completed in the afternoon. advertisement She is currently undergoing treatment at Khushilal Ayurvedic Hospital here for cancer. The high court granted bail to Sadhvi holding that prima facie no case was made out against her. The high court had asked her to furnish cash surety of Rs five lakh and surrender her passport to the NIA. It had also directed her not to tamper with the evidence and to report to the NIA court as and when required. Addressing a press conference at the hospital, Sadhvi alleged the Mumbai ATS, which probed the case earlier, had "illegally detained" her and that she was subjected to "severe torture." "This was certainly a conspiracy hatched by the Congress-led UPA government, which resulted into my nine-year ordeal. It (the conspiracy) was (meant) to endorse the bogey of saffron terrorism, a term coined by P Chidambaram (former home minister). I am innocent," Sadhvi told reporters. She said the "script of saffron terrorism" was written by the then Congress government. "Go through the entire script of the so-called saffron terrorism. Entire story was cooked up by the Congress which implicated us," she alleged. In reply to a question, Sadhvi said, "I was the victim of the Congress conspiracy. I dont think the current government believes in such conspiracies... However, my case is decided by court." On the investigation conducted by the ATS and then by NIA, she said, "I dont think any investigating agency is straightforward. The National Investigation Agency is also the same." Sadhvi alleged that she was detained by the Mumbai ATS on October 10, 2008 and was taken to Mumbai from Surat. "The Mumbai ATS illegally detained me for 13 days. I underwent severe torture during this period," she alleged. Sadhvi said she was physically fit before she was "tortured" by the Mumbai ATS. "I was physically fit. I am a sanyasi. Now, I am dependent (on others) due to the torture inflicted on me by the Mumbai ATS. I am 100 per cent innocent," she told journalists while her supporters shouted slogans of "Bharat Mata Ki Jai." advertisement Sadhvi said she would continue to stay in the hospital due to her medical condition. She said she would leave the hospital only after consulting her doctors. Six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in Malegaon town in Nashik district on September 29, 2008. Sadhvi was arrested in October 2008 and charged with plotting the blast with a co-accused Prasad Purohit, a former lieutenant colonel. According to the prosecution, the blast was carried out as part of a plan by the Hindu right wing organisation Abhinav Bharat. Nine other accused in the case are still behind bars. PTI ADU MAS NSK RAX --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) India and Cyprus today identified areas of work in the agricultural sector to be rolled out in the current fiscal as per the bilateral pact signed already between the two nations. The work plan was finalised and inked in a meeting between Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Cyprus Agriculture Minister Nicos Kouyialis here, an official statement said. advertisement As per the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the two countries have decided to work in joint research projects, conduct training/exchange programmes for scientists and experts working in specific agri-fields. They have also decided to exchange germplasms and technology, promote private sector participation and hold joint workshops and conferences. During the meeting, Singh said that New Delhi has laid great focus on furthering relationships with like-minded countries, not only to improve trade and investment prospects but also to share the knowledge earned over the years. PTI LUX BAL --- 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. China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited. OGE Energy Corp., together with its subsidiaries, operates as an energy and energy services provider that offers physical delivery and related services for electricity, natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids in the United States. The company generates, transmits, distributes, and sells electric energy. It provides retail electric service to approximately 879,000 customers, which covers a service area of approximately 30,000 square miles in Oklahoma and western Arkansas; and owns and operates coal-fired, natural gas-fired, wind-powered, and solar-powered generating assets. As of December 31, 2021, the company owned and operated interconnected electric generation, transmission, and distribution systems, including 16 generating stations with an aggregate capability of 7,207 megawatts; and transmission systems comprising 54 substations and 5,122 structure miles of lines in Oklahoma, and 7 substations and 277 structure miles of lines in Arkansas. Its distribution systems included 350 substations; 29,494 structure miles of overhead lines; 3,365 miles of underground conduit; and 11,125 miles of underground conductors in Oklahoma, as well as 29 substations, 2,795 structure miles of overhead lines, 349 miles of underground conduit, and 662 miles of underground conductors in Arkansas. The company was founded in 1902 and is based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA provides dialysis care and related dialysis care services in Germany, North America, and internationally. It offers dialysis treatment and related laboratory and diagnostic services through a network of outpatient dialysis clinics; materials, training, and patient support services comprising clinical monitoring, follow-up assistance, and arranging for delivery of the supplies to the patient's residence; and dialysis services under contract to hospitals in the United States for the hospitalized end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients and for patients suffering from acute kidney failure. The company also develops, manufactures, and distributes dialysis products, including polysulfone dialyzers, hemodialysis machines, peritoneal dialysis cyclers, peritoneal dialysis solutions, hemodialysis concentrates, solutions and granulates, bloodlines, renal pharmaceuticals, and systems for water treatment; and non-dialysis products, such as acute cardiopulmonary and apheresis products. In addition, it develops, acquires, and in-licenses renal pharmaceuticals; offers renal medications and supplies to patients at homes or to dialysis clinics; and provides vascular, cardiovascular, endovascular specialty, vascular care ambulatory surgery center, and physician nephrology and cardiology services. The company sells its products to dialysis clinics, hospitals, and specialized treatment clinics directly, as well as through local sales forces, independent distributors, dealers, and sales agents. As of February 23, 2022, it operated 4,171 outpatient dialysis clinics in approximately 150 countries. Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Bad Homburg, Germany. First Horizon Corporation operates as the bank holding company for First Horizon Bank that provides various financial services. The company operates through three segments: Regional Banking, Specialty Banking, and Corporate. It offers general banking services for consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments. The company also underwrites bank-eligible securities and other fixed-income securities eligible for underwriting by financial subsidiaries; sells loans and derivatives; and offers advisory services. In addition, it offers various services, such as mortgage banking; title insurance and loan-closing; brokerage; correspondent banking; nationwide check clearing and remittance processing; trust, fiduciary, and agency; equipment finance; and investment and financial advisory services. Further, the company sells mutual fund and retail insurance products; and credit cards. It operates approximately 500 banking offices in 22 states under the First Horizon Bank brand; and 400 banking centers in 12 states under the FHN Financial brand in the United States. The company was formerly known as First Horizon National Corporation and changed its name to First Horizon Corporation in November 2020. First Horizon Corporation was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. 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. By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) India and Cyprus today said the recent revision of tax agreement between them will strengthen their economic ties and boost investment flows. Cyprus is the eighth largest country for India in terms of FDI inflows, having pumped in over USD 9 billion between 2000 and 2016. The bilateral trade is at about USD 110 million. advertisement "I understand that the pending issue of revision of the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) has been resolved and the long-pending request of notified jurisdiction area has been accommodated," Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said at the India-Cyprus business session. This will pave the way for Cyprus to invest more in India, not just in portfolio investment, but in key segments like manufacturing and other sectors, he said. India had blacklisted Cyprus in 2013 for not sharing tax information earlier. Following the tax treaty last November, the capital gains tax will be applicable on sale of shares on investments made after April 1, 2017 bringing Cyprus at par with Mauritius in terms of tax treatment. This has provided big relief to the investors and Indian companies which have raised capital from Cyprus investors. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades was also optimistic that the recently-signed DTAA will help cement economic ties, especially in the investment field. He pitched Cyprus as one of the fastest-growing European nations that provides investment opportunities in various sectors. "I would encourage foreign investors, including Indian investors, to invest in projects in Cyprus, which the Presidency can promote through its fast track mechanism for receiving the relevant licenses within short and specific timeframes," he said. To promote investment and bolster ties, both the countries will sign a number of bilateral agreements during the presidents 5-day trip, which ends on April 29. "A number of bilateral agreements and Memoranda of Understanding will be signed in the fields of Merchant Shipping, Air Services, Agricultural Co-operation, education and culture. I believe that these areas of co-operation are some of those that have the potential to significantly boost our economic and commercial exchanges," he said. A Protocol on Air Services Agreement to be signed can pave the way for establishing direct connectivity between the two countries; thus increasing the so far very modest number of tourism exchanges if one considers the potential that this sector holds, he said. Meghwal talked of tourism and film production as possible avenues for joint exploration of investment opportunities. advertisement Besides, he said, setting of the International Solar Alliance could be mutually beneficial. Seeking investments in India, Meghwal said rating agencies post demonetisation have predicted that Indias GDP could cross double digits by 2020. "India has undertaken many reforms and we are planning to introduce GST from July 1...will go down in history as the year of economic reforms," he said. PTI DP CS SA --- ENDS --- The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Premier Plan MMAI Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Illinois Inc., Aetna Better Health of Indiana Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Tennessee Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Insurance Company of New York, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Insurance Company of Connecticut, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Ex Pat LLC, Aetna International LLC, Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L., CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Cabot Holdings Inc., CVS Cabot Holdings Inc. Coram Clinical Trials Inc. 99.72%/Aetna Inc. .28%, CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Applications LLC, CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Health Ventures Fund GP LLC, CVS Health Ventures Fund LP, CVS Health Ventures Management LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Management Support LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS Pharmacy Overseas Online LLC, CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS Shaw Holdings Inc., CVS Shaw Holdings Inc. Coram Clinical Trials Inc. 99.72%/Aetna Inc. .28%, CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Austin LLC, CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Los Angeles LLC, CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Philadelphia LLC, CVS-SHC Renal Holdings LLC, Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc. CVS Pharmacy Inc. 75%/Aetna Life Insurance Company 25%, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., Credentials Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California LLC, Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., First Choice of the Midwest LLC, First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Main Street Pharmacy L.L.C., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arkansas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Colorado LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services of Texas Association, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky LLC, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services LLC, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare LLC, Omnicare LLC Aetna Inc 0.28%/CVS Cabot Holdings Inc. 49.86%/CVS Shaw Holdings Inc. 49.86%, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare LLC, Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC. Read More Williams-Sonoma, Inc. operates as an omni-channel specialty retailer of various products for home. It offers cooking, dining, and entertaining products, such as cookware, tools, electrics, cutlery, tabletop and bar, outdoor, furniture, and a library of cookbooks under the Williams Sonoma Home brand, as well as home furnishings and decorative accessories under the Williams Sonoma lifestyle brand; and furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs, table essentials, and decorative accessories under the Pottery Barn brand. The company also provides home decor products under the West Elm brand; kids accessories under the Pottery Barn Kids brand; and an organic bedding to multi-purpose furniture under the Pottery Barn Teen brand. In addition, it offers made-to-order lighting, hardware, furniture, and home decors inspired by history under the Rejuvenation brand; and women's and men's accessories, travel, entertaining and bar, home decor, and seasonal items under the Mark and Graham brand, as well as operates a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and decor industry. The company markets its products through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs, and retail stores. It operates 544 stores comprising 502 stores in 41states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; 20 stores in Canada; 19 stores in Australia; 3 stores in the United Kingdom; and 139 franchised stores, as well as e-commerce websites in various countries in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, and India. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. provides cybersecurity solutions worldwide. The company offers firewall appliances and software; Panorama, a security management solution for the control of firewall appliances and software deployed on a customer's network, as well as their instances in public or private cloud environments, as a virtual or a physical appliance; and virtual system upgrades, which are available as extensions to the virtual system capacity that ships with physical appliances. It also provides subscription services covering the areas of threat prevention, malware and persistent threat, URL filtering, laptop and mobile device protection, and firewall; and DNS security, Internet of Things security, SaaS security API, and SaaS security inline, as well as threat intelligence, and data loss prevention. In addition, the company offers cloud security, secure access, security operations, and threat intelligence and cyber security consulting; professional services, including architecture design and planning, implementation, configuration, and firewall migration; education services, such as certifications, as well as online and in-classroom training; and support services. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. sells its products and services through its channel partners, as well as directly to medium to large enterprises, service providers, and government entities operating in various industries, including education, energy, financial services, government entities, healthcare, Internet and media, manufacturing, public sector, and telecommunications. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Devon Energy Corporation is an independent oil and gas company headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The company was incorporated in 1971 by John Nichols and his son J. Larry Nichols and later went public in August 2000. The company has since grown to be included in the S&P 500 and is one of the first energy companies to introduce resolutions requiring the company to monitor its impact on global warming. One time a major player in the global oil market, Devon has since sold off its offshore holdings in an effort to focus on US production and its transition to a lower-carbon future. Devon Energy merged with WPX in early 2021 in an all-stock merger of equals. The new company is primarily engaged in the exploration, development, and production of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in the US midwest. The company operates more than 5,100 wells in Oklahomas Delaware Basis, Eagle Ford Group, and the two locations in the Rocky Mountains. As of late 2022, the company laid claim to 1.625 million barrels of reserves including 44% petroleum, 27% natural gas liquids, and 29% natural gas. Daily production was running in the range of 300,000 BPD in petroleum liquids, 125,000 BPD in natural gas liquids, and 920 million cubic feet of natural gas. Rick Muncrief, formally CEO of WPX, is now the head of Devon Energy. Mr. Muncrief comes to the table with more than 40 years of experience including 27 years with one of the US Big Three Oil Companies. WPX Energy (Williams Production and Exploration) brought properties in the Williston and Permian Basins to the combined company. Its proven reserves were roughly 527 million barrels of oil and equivalents. The company also owns and operates a midstream network of pipelines and storage facilities it uses to market and deliver its products. Devon Energy Corporation has pledged to reduce its GHG impact to net zero by 2050. This will be done by a variety of methods that include improving efficiency and leakage, a reduction in flaring, and the electrification of its operations. Near-term goals include a 50% reduction in GHG by 2030 including a 65% reduction in methane release and a 100% reduction in flaring. The company is also focused on reducing its environmental impact by relying on recycled water wherever possible and plans to reduce freshwater usage by 90% in the most active areas. Total greenhouse gas emissions have been in decline since 2018 and fell 17% between 2018 and 2020 alone. Another Lucknow siege in March saw the encounter of ISIS Khorasan terror suspect. Ghar Wapsi programme follows such operations. By Shashank Shekhar: The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh has started a 'ghar wapsi' program to deradicalise those youths who are inspired by the ideology of terror outfit. The move by the security agency came after a joint sweeping operation was carried out in which four suspected terrorists belonging to the ISIS Khorasan module spanning five states were arrested who were allegedly plotting a major strike. advertisement Six other suspects were taken into custody for interrogation. They were not arrested due to lack of concrete evidence. According to IG, ATS, Aseem Arun, around 12 people across the state will be deradecalised under this program. The program was named Ghar-Wapsi (home coming) to convert radicalised youths into nationalist. UP A BREEDING GROUND FOR ISIS? Mail Today in March broke the story about how India's most populous state, UP, is turning into a breeding ground for Islamic State. About 15-20 youths are being deradicalised by the ATS, while over 100 sympathisers are under surveillance of several security agencies. The reasons behind this surge in numbers are high Muslim population, unemployment and a rash of communal violence in the state. THE PLAN OF ACTION According to a senior police officer, cops will deradecalise with the help of family, friends and religious leaders. Even, government will assist them in education, professional training and in getting jobs. He added that parents of candidate have been convinced that their wards need to undergo the program by being shown videos and audio evidences. "During the process, time to time senior police officers have been meeting candidates and to counsel them if needed," the officer said. "Surprise checks are being done to see if they are at home. The entire meeting and counseling process is kept a secret and candidates' identities are not disclosed," said the officer. "It is only after a year of counseling, that meeting and consultations are stopped and arrangements for their employment are made. However, despite this long procedure, it is not certain if candidates are completely deradecalised and thus we keep a watch on them," he said. According to senior ATS officers, these efforts started long back. Cops say most of the indoctrinated youths were unemployed and gave in to ideologies of the terror outfit. In the recent crackdown, evidences of self-indoctrination through the internet were discovered. According to the official, the arrested youths were not directly working for any group, but were self-motivated, self guided and self-radicalised. The ATS also came to know that some known terror suspects in western Uttar Pradesh had become active and were hiring new members. The police and intelligence agencies are keeping a close watch on cyberspace and communication through WhatsApp, Viber and other chat rooms to keep abreast of attempts to indoctrinate the youth. advertisement According to a senior official, these self-radicalised suspects have become the biggest worry for agencies as it is difficult to track them. Various programmes are being undertaken by the central and state governments to deal with the problem. Top sources say youths in UP are instigated by showing doctored videos of violence and riots in the state. "Videos of Babri Masjid demolition, Muzaffarnagar riots and other sensitive religious issues are being used to propagate terrorism in the name of religion," said an officer. Uttar Pradesh in past few years has witnessed sporadic incidents of communal violence, which were also used by political parties for polarisation ahead of the state elections. Also watch: Also Read Karma is a pig: Wild boars maul 3 ISIS militants gearing up to execute locals Exclusive: ISIS terrorists trying to sneak in through sea route, Mumbai on alert 3 ISIS suspects arrested: All you need to know about how police of 6 states busted terror module --- ENDS --- A warden beat a little kid left, right and centre, killing a 11-year-old boy. His limbs had to be amputated after he suffered the wrath of the caretaker. By India Today Web Desk: A boy's limbs had to be amputated after a warden of a school beat him black and blue in Malaysia. Brutally thrashed by the assistant warden of a school in in Kota Tinggi district of Johor in Malaysia, the boy died, eventually. The boy's mother Felda Wani Ahmad affirmed that her son was beaten several times with a water hose during various incidents in the month of March. Her son was beaten by an assistant warden at the Islamic 'Tahfiz' boarding school he attended in Malaysia. advertisement THE DEMISE The incident drew the family's attention when the young lad repeatedly requested his mother to take him back home and remove him from the school. "On March 31, I came to visit my son and decided to bring him home here in Johor Baru as he was looking very weak and worried," RT quoted. The school boy was suffering from fever initially and had blood clots all over his legs on being beaten several times. The blood clots then led to amputation of both his legs on Friday at the Sultan Ismail Hospital. This, in turn, led to the young boy falling into coma. Later his right arm was supposed to be amputated on Wednesday. This operation was cancelled, considering the critical situation of the child. Soon after the boy passed away on Wednesday, as confirmed by his father. INVESTIGATIONS ARE BEING CARRIED OUT "The hospital will carry out further investigation to find out if the boy is suffering from another illness which contributed to his condition," according to an RT report. The police said that the medical reports are awaited for further investigation to take place. "We will investigate the matter by calling the warden assistant in for questioning." Though, the suspect was detained at his house on Saturday. SCHOOL AUTHORITIES Gabungan Persatuan Institusi Tahfiz Al-Quran Kebangsaan's (Pinta) president Mohd Zahid Mahmood Al-Hafiz said he had visited the 'Tahfiz' school and reported about the incident to New Straits Times. "We have viewed the footage and found the student was only hit on one of the legs. At this point, we believe there is probably a high chance that other factors could have led to the boy's deteriorating condition. "It is not right to label all religious schools to be abusive towards their students," New Straits Times quoted Mahmood. --- ENDS --- 12 W&M students receive Fulbright grants Stand-out Scholars: Hayley Hahn '17, Kyra Bell '17 and Katie Freund '17 are among the 12 W&M students to receive Fulbright U.S. Student grants to study and work abroad during the 2017-18 academic year. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Stand-out Scholars: Eight of the Fulbright recipients participated in a panel discussion on Friday, April 21, in Swem Library, speaking to a room full of W&M students and Fulbright hopefuls about their application experience. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Stand-out Scholars: Ellie Dassler '17, Sophia Farion '17 and Victoria Johnson '17 will work as English teaching assistants in different countries during their Fulbright year. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption Editor's Note: Since this story was published, Aaron Bayles '17 also received an academic Fulbright scholarship to study chemistry in Spain, bringing the total number of awardees up to 13. Twelve W&M students will jet off to international locations from Mexico to Taiwan for the 2017-18 academic year as recipients of prestigious Fulbright scholarships. Jessica Armstrong 17, Melissa Guidry 17, Hayley Hahn 17, Michael Kopreski 17 and Ph.D. student Mallory Moran each received academic awards to conduct individually designed research projects while abroad, and Kyra Bell 17, Ellie Dassler 17, Ebimene Doubeni 17, Sophia Farion 17, Katie Freund 17, Victoria Johnson 17 and Meredith Wolf 17 received grants to participate in the English Teaching Assistant program. Funded by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student scholarship is the largest U.S. exchange program offering recent college graduates and young professionals the opportunity to pursue international graduate study. The program awards 1,900 grants annually and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide. Students have the option of applying for an academic grant or a grant to work as an ETA. W&M students have consistently performed well in the program, with nine students awarded grants last year and an all-time W&M record of 15 students offered scholarships for the 2013-14 academic year. This years recipients will be spread out in 10 different countries, from Ukraine and Switzerland to Canada. During her year abroad, Armstrong, a chemistry major, will be returning to the University of Cologne in Germany for a second time (she studied there prior to her senior year) to investigate catalysts for use in a system that can simultaneously produce hydrogen gas as a fuel and decontaminate wastewater containing formaldehyde impurities. My experience with Fulbright will be an important steppingstone to my career goal of a professorship at a research university, said Armstrong. This experience will grant me a degree of independence that will help me to further clarify my own motivations and specific scientific interests in preparation for a career as a professor. Freund, a double major in economics and Hispanic studies, will be working as a teaching assistant in English classrooms in Mexico during her Fulbright year. While in Mexico, she hopes to also tutor in the local community, organize neighborhood dinners that promote exchanges about local culture and cuisine, and explore options for her own long-term career goals. I know that I love Spanish, Latin America, education and economic development, but I am still looking for ways to combine all of those passions into a career, said Freund. I think that my time in Mexico will definitely make me more comfortable with Spanish and with living and working within communities that are different from my own. I hope that it will also give me ideas for how to start getting involved in other organizations where I can use my skills to make a difference. Fulbright grants include round-trip airfare to the host country and funding to cover room, board and other incidentals. Seniors, graduate and professional students, and recent alumni who are interested in applying for a Fulbright Scholarship for the 2018-19 academic year should contact campus Fulbright Program Advisor Lisa Grimes in the Charles Center. The campus deadline to apply is Sept. 6, 2017. 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 By Press Trust of India: London, Apr 27 (PTI) Drinking three or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day may reduce the risk of prostate cancer by more than 50 per cent, a new Italian study claims. The study sheds light on the role of coffee prepared the Italian way, and specifically caffeine, in relation to prostate cancer. Italians prepare their coffee rigorously, under high pressure, with very high water temperature and without filters. advertisement About 7,000 men who participated in the study were observed for four years on average. "By analysing their coffee consumption habits and comparing them with prostate cancer cases occurring over time, we saw a net reduction of risk, 53 per cent, in those who drank more than three cups a day," said George Pounis, researcher at IRCCS Neuromed - Mediterranean Neurological Institute in Italy. The researchers confirmed the results by testing the action of coffee extracts on prostate cancer cells in laboratory studies. They tested both caffeinated and decaffeinated varieties. Only caffeinated coffee extracts significantly reduced cancer cell proliferation and metastasization. This effect was not observed with decaf, researchers wrote in the study published in the International Journal of Cancer. "The observations on cancer cells allow us to say that the beneficial effect observed among the 7,000 participants is most likely due to caffeine, rather than to the many other substances contained in coffee," said Maria Benedetta Donati, head of the Laboratory of Translational Medicine in Italy. "We should keep in mind that the study is conducted on a central Italian population. They prepare coffee rigorously, the Italian way: high pressure, very high water temperature and with no filters," said Licia Iacoviello, head of the Molecular and Nutritional Epidemiology Laboratory at IRCCS Neuromed. "This method, different from those followed in other areas of the world, could lead to a higher concentration of bioactive substances," said Iacoviello. PTI SAR SAR --- ENDS --- Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Industry reacts to South African court ruling 27 April 2017 Share A ruling by South Africa's High Court setting aside the country's nuclear procurement plans is centred on procedural issues and makes no determinations on the argument for nuclear energy, the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (Niasa) said today. Niasa managing director Knox Msebenzi said the organisation had "noted" yesterday's judgement by the Western Cape High Court that two ministerial determinations central to the country's plans to procure 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity were unlawful and unconstitutional. The challenges were brought by Earthlife Africa and the Southern African Faith Communities' Environmental Institute (SAFCEI). "As an industry we respect the court's judgement. We look to the Department of Energy for guidance on the matter and will take their lead on the next course of action," Msebenzi said. "As a principal statement, we have always maintained that transparency, fair trade and following correct procedures are critical foundations necessary to implementing a successful new build program. Our members who include all vendor countries have signed a declaration to respect the law of South Africa and committed [themselves] to a fair and transparent process." He said it was "critical to note" that the court's determination and judgement was not on the "argument for nuclear" but on the procedures that had been followed. "The reality is that nuclear technology is not new to the country; therefore we have a solid foundation to base the new proposed new build program," he said. "It is also not a case of 'either or' when comparing or reviewing the Integrated Resource and Energy Plans of government, but about nuclear being afforded its rightful place within the energy mix and future of the country." This, he said, would guarantee the baseload power needed for industrialisation and climate change commitments. The High Court judgement also ruled that intergovernmental nuclear cooperation agreements between South Africa and Russia, South Korea and the USA were unlawful and unconstitutional, and must be set aside. Msebenzi said the country still needed a "platform for exchange of best practice" with international counterparts with nuclear programs. South Africa's Integrated Resource Plan for 2010-2030 calls for construction of 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity - supplying 23% of the country's electricity - with the first reactor to come on line by 2023. The first ministerial determination overturned by the High Court noted the requirement for this capacity and tasked the Department of Energy with its procurement. The second identified utility Eskom, rather than the Department of Energy, as the procurer of the plants. Tina Joemat-Petterson, then energy minister, told the South African parliament last September the request for proposals - marking the start of the procurement process - would be issued that month. However, this did not take place and no request has yet been issued. Late last year Eskom issued a request for information to companies interested in participating in the program, but the High Court has now ruled that the request for information must now be set aside. Parliamentary engagement Energy Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, who replaced Joemat-Petterson in a cabinet reshuffle on 31 March, has directed the Department of Energy to study the High Court judgement. The department yesterday said Kubayi will engage with "all other relevant parties" and will "pronounce on the matter in due course". It said South Africa had signed intergovernmental agreements with China, France, Russia, South Korea and the USA. "The Department reiterates that the South African government has not entered into any deal or signed any contract for the procurement of nuclear power," it said. "The minister will engage parliament on this matter going forward." The High Court also ordered the government to pay the legal costs incurred by the two applicants. SAFCEI founder and patron Geoff Davies said the group was "very pleased" with the result. "However, it may only provide a short-lived reprieve," he said. Earthlife Africa Johannesburg's Makoma Lekalakala welcomed the court ruling as a victory for "justice and the rule of law", but said "organisations and citizens" were planning to launch an "even bigger campaign soon to ensure this judgement is only the start of people holding the government to account on its energy deals." Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics IAEA considers safety of ageing research reactors 27 April 2017 Share A group of experts has made recommendations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the sustainable and safe operation of research reactors. "Ageing management and effective utilisation are major challenges for operators of research reactors," the IAEA said. The IAEA's Technical Working Group on Research Reactors (TWGRR) recently held its annual meeting at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. The TWGRR comprises 20 technical experts, regulars and senior managers from countries with operating research reactors. The aim of the working group is to promote the efficient use of research reactors, critical and sub-critical assemblies, or facilities of a similar nature, and to look at the projected needs for research reactors on a global and regional basis. The group meets once a year to provide advice and recommendations to the IAEA on how to assist countries in optimising the operation of research reactors. Amgad Shokr, head of the IAEA's Research Reactor Safety Section, said: "Maintaining a high level of safety is essential to ensure effective utilisation of research reactors to maximise their benefits to the society. Member states continue to improve the safety of their research reactors but challenges remain, particularly in relation to regulatory effectiveness and ageing of facilities. Rigorous application of the IAEA safety standards will help address these issues." "Around half of the operating research reactors are over 40 years old, therefore modernisation of these facilities is an issue of central concern to ensure they can continue to perform in a safe and efficient manner," said Sean O'Kelly, associate lab director of the Advanced Test Reactor Complex at the Idaho National Laboratory and chairman of the TWGRR. The work of the IAEA's Research Reactor Section ranges from the use of research reactors to infrastructure issues, their operation and maintenance, as well as to the fuel cycle. It helps ensure that research reactors are used as optimally as possible and, for this purpose, provides capacity-building training on the reactors' use for applications in industry, medicine, agriculture and academia. The section also helps build coalitions and networks to support the implementation of larger international projects. "The IAEA is committed to support those countries that don't have research reactors to gain access to them or to build a domestic one," said Andrea Borio di Tigliole, head of the agency's Research Reactor Section. The IAEA said it has launched several initiatives to support capacity building of future experts from member states without a research reactor. These include: the International Centre based on Research Reactor scheme, with currently designated centres in Russia and France; the Internet Reactor Laboratory program; and several hands-on training schools conducted at research reactors. There are 250 operational research reactors in 55 countries worldwide, according to the IAEA. Research reactors are not used to generate power, but are used to produce neutrons to support research, education and training. They are also used in the production of radioisotopes for medicine and industry. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Although the following countries may not usually be given a lot of screen time in the world's most prominent media outlets, it doesn't mean they are not worth mentioning. Below are some interesting facts about 10 countries who deserve more attention than they generally receive. 10. Djibouti A camal crossing salt flats in Djibouti. Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, a region located in the continent's northeast quadrant. It is bordered by the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Djibouti is a tiny country of just under 9,000 square miles, a fact that certainly contributes to the low profile that it generally experiences across the world. Although it was colonized by France, it has been independent since 1977. It has a population of under one million people who largely practice the Muslim faith. The country does, however, practice freedom of religion. 9. Kiribati A tropical beach in Kiribati. Tourism is a growing industry for the island nation. Kiribati, pronounced Kir-a-bass, was previously named the Gilbert Islands. It is an island country, tucked away in the central Pacific Ocean. It has a population of about 102,500 people according to 2010 census. It is only 313 square miles. Kiribati comprises of 33 atolls and reef islands and a raised coral island. The nation was colonized by the United Kingdom and subsequently attained its independence in 1979. Although it is often cited as one of the poorest countries in the Pacific Nation, tourism is an important component of the country's economy. However, Kiribati's remote location and the difficulty of accessing it are challenges faced by the tourism industry. 8. Benin Canoes on Lake Nokoue, Benin. Benin is a small country in the west of Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the East and Burkina Faso to the north. The country was colonized by the French nationalists before it attained its independence in 1960. From 1972 to 1990, Benin existed as the People's Republic of Benin. The Republic as it stands today was formed in 1991. Only 0.4% of Beinin is covered by water. The country has a population of 10,008,749 as per the 2013 census report, with Port Novo as its capital. Although the country is seldom spoken about, the mentions it does receive are generally for its poor economic structures and poverty levels. However, Benin also enjoys a strong culture of oral storytelling and is renowned for its tasty traditional dishes. 7. Liechtenstein Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is a small country in Europe, bordered Switzerland and Austria. Its small size of only 61 miles squared is undoubtedly a reason why this country is rarely talked about. With a population of 37,340 people, the country has one of the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the whole world despite its small size. The religion in this country is mostly Roman Catholic, and it has a monarchy form of government. It used to be a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Liechtenstein is predominately German-speaking. 6. Brunei A mosque in Brunei. Brunei is another country which is less spoken of. The nation is located in southeast Asia, surrounded by the country of Malaysia as well as the South China Sea. The country's capital is at Bandar Seri Begawan. The country has a population of around 417,200. The country was part of the British Protectorate and it only attained its independence in 1988. The tiny stature of the country as well as economic constrains keep it relatively obscured from the rest of the world. 5. Andorra Skiing is a popular activity in Andorra. Andorra is another tiny state that is squeezed into Europe, this time between Spain and France in the Pyrenees Mountains. The capital city of Andorra is Andorra La Vella and Catalan is the main spoken language. Like most countries on this list, it has a small land area (only 180 square miles). and a mixture of different ethnic group sum up the total population to about 85,470. The country enjoys a booming tourism economy with tourism accounting for almost 80% of the total economy. The country is not a member of the EU yet. However, it continues to enjoy some of its privileges such as the currency. 4. Comoros A beach in Comoros. The Comoros are tiny group of islands which are strategically located to the east of the African Continent, in the Indian Ocean. The country is closest to the countries of Madagascar and Mozambique. The capital city is known as Moroni. The country is roughly 2,034km2 with an estimated population of around 798,000. The set of islands in the country are ruled by a president although one of the island is considered an oversea territory of France. Islam is the main religion in Comoros. Despite its miniature status as compared to other countries, those who visit it consider it a hidden gem. 3. Dominicia A waterfall in Dominica. Dominica can often be confused with the Dominican Republic. However, Dominica is a sovereign island which is located southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its small area makes Dominica among the less recognized countries in the world. The 2016 Census showed that the country has an estimated population of 72,324. It was originally inhabited by the Kalinago but was later colonized by the French before attaining independence in 1978. The government structure consists of a president and a prime minister. The currency is the East Caribbean Dollar. It has one of the lowest per capita GDP in the World. 2. Tuvalu The flag of Tuvalu. Tuvalu was formerly a British colony. Located in South Pacific, Tuvalu is an independent island nation. The Island is very small with a population of around 9,876 per the 2013 census. Tuvalu is also one of the smallest countries in the world in terms of land area. The size and location of the country often keep it hidden out of the line of vision of other countries in the world. The rising sea level and climatic changes can cause the island to sink in the coming years, according to scientific research. 1. Niue The beautiful landscape of Niue. Niue is a small island located 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand. It has a population of close to 1,400. The country is not a member of the United Nations, although since 1994 the organization has recognized its status as equivalent to independent for the purposes of international law. However, residents of Niue are citizens of New Zealand and much of its governance is done through New Zealand as well. It thrives on fishing and tourism. An island is a portion of dry land that is surrounded by water which can either be a lake, a river or an ocean. While most islands are considered territories of one country, several other islands are shared by more than one country. Examples Of Shared Islands New Guinea New Guinea Island is shared between Papua New Guinea in the east and Indonesia in the west. It has been referred to by various names including Papua that was derived from Malay. The island is located to the north of Australia. It comes second after Greenland as the largest island in the world, covering a portion of about 303,381 square miles. New Guinea Island is divided across the north line into two equal halves. The Island is occupied with the current population at approximately eleven million people. The island is also known for its volcanic records and higher rainfall levels with its peak point at about 16023 feet. Cyprus Cyprus Island, which is the third largest Island, is found in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea. It is shared in four sections with the Republic of Cyprus taking 60% of the southern portion of the Island, the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus occupying 37% of the northern portion of the Island, the United Nation Green Line coming in between the two and occupies about 4%. The two sections of Akrotiri and Dhekelia under the British sovereignty are located on the southern coast of the Island forming about 2.8% of the Island. Cyprus has natural vegetation which includes broad-leaved trees and conifers. The Island covers a total area of 3,572 square miles. Adam's Bridge Adam's Bridge, also referred to as Rama's Bridge, lies off the Southern coast of Tamil Nadu, India, and the north-western coast of Sri Lanka. Two theories exist that try to explain the origin of this Island. One is that it was as a result of the separation of Sri Lanka from India and the other describing it as a result of growth in the organic bodies and rising of the land. The bridge is 50km long with the sea level measuring between one to ten meters deep. There is a challenge with navigation as the waters are not deep hence big ships cannot travel. It was reportedly passable on foot in the 15th century until the channel was deepened by a storm. The island was completely above the sea level until cyclone of 1480. Who Controls The Shared Islands Most countries are ruled by different governments. However, the control of shared Islands is a responsibility of more than one country. The countries are responsible for the welfare of the islands since the islands are considered shared territories. Other islands shared by more than one international border includes Usedom which is shared by Germany and Poland but under different governments, Market Island shared equally between Finland and Sweden, Koiluoto Island also shared equally between Russia and Finland, Borneo shared among three continents which are Indonesia Malaysia and Brunei. A more comprehensive list is provided below. The Central European Free Trade Agreement is a trade deal made by European countries that are non-EU member states. The free trade area encompasses seven nations that together cover a combined area of 97,463 square miles. There are six official languages in the region, but English is recognized as the regions working language. The free trade area is home to over 21.9 million people, translating to a population density of 224.8 persons per square mile. The bloc has a robust economy, with a Gross Domestic Product of $400 billion, and a GDP per capita of $14,102. Members States The current members of CEFTA are as follows: Serbia Macedonia Albania Moldova Montenegro Bosnia and Herzegovina Kosovo (indirectly, represented by the UNIAMK) Several former CETA member states (Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Poland) relinquished their membership after joining the European Union. History The Central European Free Trade Agreement was signed on December 21st, 1992 in the city of Krakow by Europes Visegrad countries; the Czech Republic and Slovakia (then known as Czechoslovakia), Poland, and Hungary. These former Soviet countries saw the establishment of a free-trade area as a starting point in their quest to integrate into Western Europes economic and political organizations. However, it was not until July 1994 that the agreement was enforced. The agreement went through a series of amendments in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to be in line with prevailing global political and economic conditions of the time. By 2004 all the four original members of the agreement had joined the European Union, and in so doing, had relinquished their respective memberships. Membership The CEFTA meeting of 2005, held in Zagreb, made several amendments to the original criteria used to grant membership. According to this meeting, a country qualifies as a member if it is either a member of the World Trade Organization or has shown commitment to respect the Organizations regulations. The country should have other free trade agreements with CEFTA member-states and be part of at least one European Union Association Agreement. In 2006, all the founding member-states had relinquished their memberships, and so a meeting was held to discuss the way forward. This meeting resulted in the decision to include other Balkan countries in the trade deal. The inclusion of Kosovo as a member state of the trade agreement has brought much controversy since the nation gained independence in 2008 and even spurred conflict between other member states. Bosnia and Serbia were particularly adamant not to recognize Kosovo, which then saw Pristina imposing trade blockades against Serbia, with war erupting in border posts in 2011. As a remedy, Kosovo is represented by the UNIAMK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo), in all official meetings among member states. Here's a timeline of all the terror attacks that took place on the Indian army, CRPF and other forces in Jammu and Kashmir since the 'fidayeen' attack of 1999. By India Today Web Desk: In a pre-dawn fidayeen attack at an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara, three armymen, including a Captain, were martyred. Two terrorists were also killed in the attack on the Army base located close to the Line of Control (LoC). Searches were going on inside the camp to ascertain whether or not the militants managed to sneak into the camp. advertisement Here's a timeline of all the terror attacks that took place on the Indian Army, CRPF and other forces in Jammu and Kashmir since the 'fidayeen' attack of 1999. March 29, 2017: Militants opened fired at a police station in south Kashmir's Kulgam district. Nobody was hurt in the attack. November 29, 2016: Terrorists entered the premises of 166 army unit stationed at Nagrota-based 16 Corps headquarters on the outskirts of Jammu city, killing 7 soldiers including 2 officers. November 24, 2016: Militants attacked Kralgund police station in Handwara tehsil of Kupwara. October 6, 2016: Attempt to storm a Rashtriya Rifles camp was foiled when security men gunned down three militants after an exchange of fire in the Langate area of Handwara in North Kashmir. October 2, 2016: The heavily-armed terrorists attacked a Rashtriya Rifles army camp. At least two terrorists and a soldier were killed, and one soldier was injured. September 18, 2016: Seventeen soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Uri area of Baramulla district. Fidayeen militants stormed an Army camp in Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) around 4 am. Four militants were killed in the encounter. June 25, 2016: Eight CRPF personnel were killed and 20 others injured when militants attacked their convoy at Frestbal near Pampore in Srinagar on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway. February 21, 2016: Three army commandos, including two Captains and a militant, were killed in a fierce gunfight with a group of terrorists holed up inside a government building on the outskirts of Srinagar, raising the toll to seven in the encounter that began a day earlier. January 1-2 , 2016: a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists struck at an Air Force base in Pathankot three security personnel were killed along with six attackers. December 7, 2015: Six CRPF personnel injured when militants opened firing on their convoy near Green Tunnel at Samthan in Bijbehara in South Kashmir's Anantnag District. November 25, 2015: Three JeM militants and a generator operator of MES was killed when a group of militants attacked an Army camp near LoC at Tanghdar in North Kashmir's Kupwara District. advertisement November 18, 2015: A Colonel with the Army's elite Para Commando unit was killed in an encounter with militants in the forests of Kupwara. August 5, 2015: Two Border Security Force jawans and a militant were killed and eight others injured when militants attacked a convoy of the border guarding force on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Udhampur district. May 31, 2015: Army foils attack on its Brigade headquarters in Tanghdar sector of Kupwara District by killing four members of six heavily armed militants. March 21, 2015: Two terrorists were killed during a fidayeen attack at the Army camp on Jammu-Pathankot National Highway in Samba District. Three persons including one civilian, a Major and an Army jawan were also injured during the attack. March 20, 2015: A fidayeen squad of militants in Army fatigues stormed a Police Station in Kathua District killing seven persons, including three SF personnel, two civilian and two militants while 12 persons, including eight CRPF personnel, three Policemen and a civilian were also injured in the incident. December 5, 2014: A group of heavily armed militants stormed into an Army's 31 Field Regiment Ordinance Camp located at Mohra in Uri Sector of Baramulla District near the LoC.One Lieutenant Colonel and seven soldiers of the Army, one ASI and two constables of Jammu and Kashmir Police were killed. Six militants were also killed in the operation. advertisement November 27, 2014: 10 persons, including four civilians, three Army soldiers and three militants were killed in a day-long encounter at border village of Kathaar in Arnia sector, close to the International Border, of Jammu District. June 24, 2013: Eight soldiers killed in attack on military convoy at Hyderpora, Srinagar. March 31, 2013: Attack on CRPF camp in Srinagar kills five. October 5, 2006: Terrorists attack at Budshah Chowk, in heart of Srinagar, killing five JKP personnel, two CRPF soldiers and one civilian. July 22, 2003: A three-member team storms an army camp killing eight security force personnel, including a Brigadier, and injuring 12 others in Akhnoor. May 14, 2002: 36 persons are killed and 48 others injured in a fidayeen attack on an army cantonment in Kaluchak, Jammu.Most of the killed were family members. November 3, 1999: Ten army personnel killed in fidayeen attack on 15 Corps Headquarters at Srinagar's Badami Bagh. Also Read: Kupwara: 3 soldiers martyred, 2 terrorists killed in fidayeen attack on Army camp near LoC advertisement Sukma attack: Here's how Naxal violence is the biggest killer of our security forces Also Watch: Jammu and Kashmir: 3 army men, 2 terrorists killed in fidayeen attack on Army camp --- ENDS --- Crimea, formerly known as the Tauric Peninsula, is a peninsula in Eastern Europe surrounded by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connect the peninsula to Kherson on mainland Ukraine, with the Strait of Kerch separating it from Kuban, Russia. However, it is linked to the Russian region by the Crimea Bridge. Crimea covers an area of approximately 27,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of the US state of Massachusetts. The peninsula has been a subject of dispute between Ukraine and Russia, with the dispute popularly referred to as the Crimean Question or the Crimean Problem. Although Russia administers Crimea, most international governments consider the peninsula a Ukrainian territory. Contents: Location And Geography Map showing the Crimean Peninsula. The current political standoff between Ukraine and Russia over Crimea has its origin in the peninsulas history and location, with the two nations having interconnected historical backgrounds. Crimea is a peninsula in Eastern Europe located on the Black Seas northern coast and the Sea of Azovs western coast. It comprises the main peninsula and a smaller peninsula known as the Kerch Peninsula. Crimea is connected to Kherson (Ukrainian region) on the south by the 5-7 kilometers wide Isthmus of Perekop and separated from Russias Taman Peninsula on the east by the Kerch Peninsula. However, the Russian-constructed Crimea Bridge links Crimea to the Russian region of Kuban. The Crimean Bridge. Image credit: Rosavtodor.ru via Wikimedia Commons The border between mainland Ukraine and Crimea Peninsula comprises shallow lagoons commonly known as Rotten Sea or Sivash. These large systems of lagoon stretch along the Sea of Azovs western shores and are separated from the sea by a thin strip of land known as the Arabat Split. The peninsula is also linked to Henichesk Raion, Ukraine, by a bridge over the Henichesk and Chonhar Straits. Landscape of the Crimean Peninsula. Crimea Peninsula is divided geographically into three zones; mountains, steppe, and the southern coast. The Crimea Mountains are located approximately 8-12 kilometers from the southern coast. The main range, called Cape Fiolent, rises to 600-1,545 meters from the Black Sea floor and begins at the peninsulas southwestern point. This cape is of volcanic origin and one of the most striking landmarks on the peninsula. Crimea has 257 rivers, including Salhyr, Alma, Kacha, and Belbek. The peninsula also has numerous salt pans and salty lakes, with Lake Sasyk as the largest of them. Other lakes include Koyashskoya, Bakalskoye, Aqtas, and Donuzlav. Origin Of The Dispute In 1783, the Russian Empire annexed Crimea, then controlled by the Crimea Khanate, following a successful Russo-Turkish War. The following year (1784), the Taurid Oblast was established over most parts of the Peninsula following Catherine the Greats decree. However, Paul I abolished the oblast in 1796 and divided the region into two administrative subdivisions known as uyedzs. Between 1853 and 1856, the Crimean War was fought on the peninsula, with the Russians losing to an alliance of the UK, Ottoman Empire, France, and Sardinia. Detail of Franz Roubaud's panoramic painting Siege of Sevastopol (1904). Valentin Ramirez, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Crimeas political situation got even more complex after the 1917 Russian Revolution. After the revolution, the Russian Civil War ensued, during which Crimea was controlled by different powers, first by the White Army, then by the Red Army in 1920. In 1921, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic made Crimean its autonomous republic. During World War II, the Romanian troops and Nazi Germany invaded the peninsula and occupied the area until 1944, with the Nazis killing over 30,000 Crimean Jews. In 1946, the Crimean Autonomous Republic was downgraded to an oblast, with about 230,000 Crimean Tatars deported for collaborating with the Nazis, an action considered genocide by Ukraine and a few other countries. On February 19, 1954, the USSRs Supreme Soviet transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian USSR, citing close relations between the two regions. However, Russians and other historians questioned the legitimacy of the transfer has, with the Supreme Soviet of Russia declaring the transfer illegal in May 1992. Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine regained its independence, formalizing it with a referendum in December of the same year. The peninsula became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea with Ukraine. According to Ukrainian laws, the autonomous republic can independently decide on certain matters as per the Constitution of Ukraine. However, the Regional Supreme Council insisted the peninsula was a democratic republic exercising its sovereignty and powers. Political Status Of Crimea Flag of the Republic of Crimea. Currently, Crimea is a disputed territory between Ukraine and Russia, with both countries considering the peninsula as their respective republics. Ukraine claims the region as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, while Russia claims it as the Republic of Crimea. When Ukraine reestablished itself as an independent state, Crimea renamed itself to the Republic of Crimea. Although Ukraine did not initially oppose the name, it did not accept the peninsulas claim of being a state. In 1992, Russia declared the 1954 Crimea transfer illegal, a move that Ukraine condemned. Official coat of arms of the Republic of Crimea. According to the May 1992 Crimean Constitution, the Republic of Crimea is a democratic state which exercises its full sovereignty. However, the Ukrainian Parliament declared this constitution null and void. In 1995, Crimean passed another constitution, but the Ukrainian Parliament rejected most of its parts, including citizenship and name Republic. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian constitution declares the peninsula the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and its inseparable territory. Throughout the 1990s, Ukraine frustrated Crimeas autonomy, including replacing elected presidents with people of their choice. Referendum And Outcome Russian flag among the houses in Sevastopol in the Crimea Peninsula. After the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014, which resulted in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia began plans to repossess Crimea. Military forces, believed to be Russians, took control of Crimea and Sevastopol immediately after the revolution. A referendum to determine whether Crimea should join Russia was conducted on March 16, 2014, with 97% of the voters choosing to join Russia. However, those loyal to Ukraine boycotted the referendum, with Ukrainian and Western governments terming the exercise as illegal. The UN General Assembly also adopted the resolution declaring the referendum invalid and illegal. However, Putin and the Republic of Crimea signed accession, annexing Crimea and Sevastopol into Russia. Crimea became a Russian republic, while Sevastopol became a federal city in Russia. Stances Russia, alongside a few other countries, considers the 2014 referendum and treaty of accession legitimate. Russia also insists the Republic of Crimea was an independent state before the referendum. The claim is also based on the fact that the local population had the right to self-determine their destiny and did so through a referendum. However, the claim on Crimea has attracted international sanctions, including being barred from attending the G8 Summit. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government, alongside the international community, does not recognize the treaty of accession nor Crimeas sovereignty before the pact with Russia. Countries that have condemned the referendum and subsequent treaty include the US, Canada, and the European Union. Ukraine argues that Crimea should not have held a referendum with an option of joining Russia since the area was already under Russian forces. The police has asked 30 students of JNU involving Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya to join the probe. By Tanseem Haider: The Delhi Police Special Cell has asked 30 students of Jawaharlal Nehru University to join the probe in the sedition case of last year. The students have been given three days time - April 27,28,29 and have been asked to be present at Admin block, JNU from 12 noon afterwards. The police has asked 30 students involving Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya to join the probe. advertisement The Patiala House Court in August last year had granted bail to JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and two other students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya in a case of sedition. The Delhi High Court in September last year extended the interim relief to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who have been charged with sedition Investigating officers have been told to complete the recording of statements within 3 days. In January, a final report/draft chargesheet was prepared and given to the commissioner of police. Officers had then said the CP will give a go ahead to file the chargesheet. Since it is a case of sedition, a prior approval of LG's office is required. The draft report said that there was enough evidence to prosecute Umar Khalid and Anirban for sedition. And identified nine "outsiders" who raised anti-India slogans. A copy of the notice given by the Delhi Police has been sent earlier. Addressed to the JNU Vice-Chancellor, it has asked the students to be present in the administrative block for deposition. Also read: #IndiaRankings2017: IISc Bangalore is No 1 institute, JNU second best university Also read: JNU faculty and admin are at it again, this time over feeding of stray dogs --- ENDS --- Just One Week Until Local Elections Residents Urged to Use Their Vote This article is old - Published: Thursday, Apr 27th, 2017 In exactly a week voters such as yourself across the county borough will go to the polls to have their say on the new line-up of Wrexham Council. From 7am on Thursday 4th May voters across Wrexham will decide which councillors which represent them and their local area for the next five years. In Wrexham 52 councillors will be elected to represent 47 wards. Candidates may represent a political party or they may be independent but all successful candidates will be elected by their local community. There are 155 candidates standing across Wrexham, with 12 current councillors not seeking reelection meaning the seats are up for grabs for new councillors! With just a week to go the message from Wrexhams Returning Officer is to use your vote on May 4th. Dr Helen Paterson, Returning Officer, said: You will soon have the opportunity to vote for who you think is the best candidate to represent your community on the council for the next 5 years. Who you vote for is entirely between you and the ballot paper but if you are eligible to take part in these elections I would encourage you use your vote so your council is truly representative of the wishes of your community. In Wrexham, as in other parts of the UK, turnout is low and I would like to see this pattern change this year so on May 4 please take the time to vote. The Council delivers important services such as education, bin collections and social care so it is important you have your say on who your council representative is by using your right to vote. The last council election in 2012 saw on average just 34.5% of those on the electorate going out and voting. The electorate does not even equate to the number of people who live in Wrexham just those who are registered to vote. Figures across the 47 wards varied, however the average turnout for Wrexham was so low it means around 65% of those registered did not vote. Unsure who your local candidates are? Wrexham.com have sent letters to all 155 candidates standing in Wrexham and invited them to fill in a bio about themselves and the chance to take part in an online question and answer session. You can find out who your candidates are and if they have filled in our online Q&A here! By Nolan Pinto: The feud in the state BJP intensified today after Leader of the Opposition in the Council KS Eshwarappa (KSE) held a convention purportedly to 'save' the party. This was done in direct defiance to state president BS Yeddyurappa (BSY) who had warned against any such anti-party activities. More than 24 disgruntled leaders also took part in the convention that was held at the Palace Grounds. advertisement Eshwarappa spoke about how all the workers were thrilled when BSY was made the state president but are allegedly upset today with his 'dictatorial' and 'unilateral' style of functioning. To them the same BSY, who had all through his career opposed caste based politics, is now following just that. "All the members who were a part of KJP have been given prominent positions in the state BJP rather than those who have been loyal for decades," KSE tells India Today. He further blamed BSY for not following the instructions given by BJP national president Amit Shah during a meeting that was held in Delhi, where he set up a four-member team to revise the list of office bearers that had been prepared unilaterally by BSY and also to douse dissidence in the party by February 10. KSE has now threatened the state leadership that if no action is taken by May 10, then he will be forced to hold a major convention on May 20 to decide their future course of action. However, he still stands by what was decided by the state and national leadership that BSY will lead the party in the 2018 state election and will also be its chief ministerial candidate. He does not accept the fact that there is in-fighting in the party but rather it's a fight to save the party ideals. The convention was not without its fair share of drama. While senior leaders were addressing those who had gathered, a supporter of BSY stormed towards the dais accusing the leaders present of insulting BSY. Shiva, a local BJP worker was thrashed by members of his own party when he objected to MLC Bhanuprakash calling BSY 'unfit.' He was then pushed and thrown out of the venue clearly showing the fissures in the party. BJP'S MISSION 150 DOUBTFUL? Bengaluru city BJP MLAs later hurriedly addressed a press conference and lambasted KSE for organising the convention against party rules. They claimed that he was damaging the party's name in the state prior to the 2018 polls. "We are here to fight the Congress and JD(S)," says BJP MLA Dr CN Ashwathnarayan, instead KSE is fighting within the party and might affect the morale of the cadres. He has further called for KSE's expulsion from the party since this 'nonsense cannot be tolerated anymore.' advertisement Stating that KSE had no permission to organise such a convention, BJP MLA YA Narayana Swamy says that he had ample opportunities to bring all this up in the core committee meetings but he never did it. As of now, the Yeddy faction leaders say that the high command is closely monitoring the situation and will take appropriate action. Also read: BJP will beat mission-50 to win 60 seats in Himachal Pradesh: Anurag Thakur Also read: Opposition should stop bayanbaazi and start working, BJP will get a huge mandate in 2019: Amit Shah to India Today --- ENDS --- This statement was written in 2002 during the May 5 presidential run-off election between National Front (FN) candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen and France's then-president Jacques Chirac. The WSWS opposed the campaign mounted by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens and others in support of the right-wing Chirac. Instead, the WSWS called for a boycott of the elections as the essential preparation for the mobilization of the working class against whoever won. It is critical to review the experience of the 2002 elections in connection to the current election in France, which pits ex-banker and Socialist Party (PS) Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron against the neo-fascist FN candidate Marine Le Pen. (See, "No to Macron and Le Pen! For an active boycott of the French election!") WSWS, April 27, 2017 *** The International Committee of the Fourth International calls upon French workers, youth and intellectuals to boycott the May 5 presidential runoff election that pits the neo-fascist National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen against Frances right-wing President Jacques Chirac. Le Pens electoral breakthrough in the first round of voting has laid bare the deep-going crisis of Frances Fifth Republic. A political order that produces a choice between two such candidates has lost all credibility. The working class must reject this undemocratic charade and prepare to mobilize its independent strength against whichever of these two reactionaries wins. Why is a boycott the necessary and correct political response for the French working class to the May 5 runoff? It will deny legitimacy to the electoral fraud and provide a means for translating mass discontent into effective political action. A review of the voting in the first round makes it clear that broad sections of French voters have been effectively disenfranchised in the runoff. One third of the total eligible voters stayed home out of disgust for all the candidates, while nearly 40 percent of those who voted chose parties describing themselves as part of the left. Among these voters, 11 percent cast ballots for parties identified with revolutionary socialist politics. Yet the electorate is left to decide between two extreme right-wing candidates, who together received the support of less than a quarter of those eligible to vote. Hundreds of thousands of French workers and youth have taken to the streets to express their opposition to the anti-immigrant and anti-working class policies of Le Pens National Front, as well as their hatred of the system of social inequality and political corruption that spawned this reactionary political movement. Many hundreds of thousands more will march on May Day in Paris. This international day of working class unity should be utilized to launch a genuine campaign of class opposition against the two candidates of bourgeois reaction through a boycott of the polls. This is not a question of mere abstention, but of workers beginning to move as an independent force against those elementsfascist and Gaullist alikethat are attempting to scapegoat immigrants and the most oppressed layers of society. The campaign mounted by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens and other sections of the French left in support of Chirac in the second round is deserving only of contempt. A vote for Chirac in no way advances the struggle against Le Pen, but will only intensify the political disorientation that handed the neo-fascists their success at the polls in the first place. The first round of the election saw the largest abstention rate since 1958, clearly revealing the alienation of broad masses of the population from the two partiesGaullist and Socialistthat have dominated political life for decades. These parties of the ruling elite have become virtually indistinguishable in their policies and increasingly incapable of responding to, or even apprehending the mood of the masses. In the absence of any independent alternative from the parties that have historically drawn their votes from the working class, the National Front was able to wage a right-wing populist campaign, appealing to the little man against the monolithic political establishment. As a result, Le Pen garnered his support not merely from his traditional strongholds in the south of France, but from working class areas in the north that have traditionally provided the base of support for the Stalinist CP, which saw its vote collapse from 2.6 million in 1995 to just 960,000. The dangers posed by the growth of support for a neo-fascist party in France must not be underestimated. In assessing the significance of Le Pens vote, however, it is critical to grasp that the election results reveal a crisis of confidence in the bourgeois political setup as a whole. Forty percent of those voting have rejected the parties of the government, double the total in 1988 and 1995, noted Le Monde. If one adds the abstentions, three in every five registered voters have rejected the candidates capable of leading a government today. This figure alone means that over and above the failure of the left, the success of the extreme right and the weakness of the right, there is a fundamental and disturbing rejection which is being expressed. The political parties and public figures calling for a vote for Chirac in the name of a referendum against Le Pen or a plebiscite for democracy are attempting to revive popular confidence in a political system that broad sections of the French people are rejecting. For his part, Le Pen has welcomed the closing of ranks between the Socialists and the Gaullists as substantiating his reactionary demagogy. Chirac has wrapped himself in the tricolor, declaring that his victory is necessary to save the honor of France. It is fitting that such a dubious goal should be identified with the election of a man whose name is synonymous with corruption and graft. The incumbent president has refused to debate Le Pen. Faced with intolerance and hatred, no debate is possible, Chirac declared at his first campaign rally since the April 21 vote. Just as I did not accept any alliance in the past with the National Front ... I will not accept a debate with its leader in the future. Le Pen has no difficulty exposing this hypocrisy. He has revealed that Chirac solicited just such an alliance in 1988, shortly after the National Front leader made his infamous remark about the Nazi gas chambers being a detail of history. As a result of this deal, the National Front leader urged his voters to cast their second-round ballots for the Gaullist RPR. Chirac has additional reasons to avoid a debate with Le Pen. He, like the rest of the French right, has his eyes focused on parliamentary elections set for June. His principal concern is not defeating Le Pen, but unifying the parties of the right to obtain a parliamentary majority. To that end, he has established a new political front, the Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP), to ensure an alliance of the right and center right. Chirac has no principled political differences with Le Pen. He is taking care to leave the door open for collaboration with the neo-fascists in the future. The entire electoral setup has turned into a political stranglehold over the masses, offering no means for working people to express their social discontent. The so-called left partiesSocialist and Communistbear the greatest responsibility for this state of affairs. Offering themselves as the best administrators of the capitalist state and capitalist economy, they have presided over the destruction of social services, the privatization of industry and attacks on democratic rights. The sickening display of political cowardice by the Socialist Party prime minister and presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, who announced his resignation within hours of his partys electoral debacle, exemplified the bankruptcy of the official left. Jospins prostration before Le Pen defined him as the political heir to French Radical Party leader Edouard Daladier, who resigned after a fascist riot in February 1934 and later paved the way for the fascist takeover in May-June 1940. A boycott is necessary to begin the political clarification of the working class and counter the disorientation created by the treachery of the Socialist and Communist parties. Workers, students and intellectuals who are smoldering in anger over the results of the election must not be left in isolation, or even worse, corralled into helping elect a government committed to attacking the working class. An active policy is required, including the organization of meetings promoting a boycott, demonstrations and political strikes. Those who claim that a vote for Chirac is the only means to defeat the National Front merely betray their own paralysis and pessimism. A political establishment that casts such a figure as the champion of democracy only exposes its own decrepitude. A Chirac presidency, with a rightist majority in parliament, is clearly the result preferred by the most influential sections of the French bourgeoisie. Such a government will carry out much of the political agenda advanced by the National Front, whose anti-immigrant, law-and-order electoral slogans were echoed to a large degree by the Gaullists in the election campaign. A substantial section of the electorate, some 11 percent, cast votes for organizations that call themselves Trotskyist and claim to advance a revolutionary policy. These parties and their candidatesArlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvriere, Olivier Besancenot of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, and Daniel Gluckstein of the Parti des Travailleursnow have a responsibility to take up the demand and actively campaign for a boycott. The initial response of Laguiller, however, has been entirely passive. In her most recent statement, she said she would not call for abstention in the second round of the presidential election. She added she would urge workers not to vote for Le Pen, while refusing to join the coalition backing a vote for Chirac. This is an evasion, not a policy to fight the right wing. It leaves workers unclear as to what they should do next. Laguillers formula leaves it to the individual voter to decide, and implicitly encourages a vote for Chirac. An active policy, in the form of an organized boycott, is needed to unite the working class and open a new road of struggle that will contribute to the construction of a genuinely independent, mass socialist movement. The French working class cannot find a way out of the political crisis by basing itself on a French national program. The alternative offered by the Socialist and Communist partiesa bureaucratized welfare state without welfarerepresents no alternative at all. Against the national chauvinism, xenophobia and protectionism promoted by Le Penand echoed by large sections of the so-called leftthe working class must advance its own internationalist program to unite the struggles of workers throughout Europe in defense of living standards and democratic rights. The alternative for workers to the Single European Market of the transnational corporations is the struggle for a United Socialist States of Europe. Police arrested Asiya Andrabi from her house in Srinagar under the Public Safety Act. By India Today Web Desk: Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi was today taken into custody by Jammu and Kashmir police in Srinagar. She was arrested from her house under the Public Safety Act. Andrabi is said to the main separatist leader behind inciting women in the Valley to pelt stones at security forces. The chief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat outfit was arrested in October last year too as unrest in the Valley spiralled after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter with security forces. advertisement During her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh earlier this week, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti pushed for talks with the separatists. However, sources said the Centre is in no mood to engage with Pakistan-backed separatists. The government believes that talks with separatists would yield no result as all such attempts have failed in the past. Infact, the government has directed the authorities to go all out and stop foreign funding of these groups. ALSO READ: Kashmir unrest: Centre in no mood to talk with separatists, to go after top terror commanders How Jammu and Kashmir police removed 90 per cent of 300 WhatsApp groups that guided stone pelters What is the Vajpayee doctrine on Kashmir that Mehbooba Mufti wants PM Narendra Modi to follow? --- ENDS --- This statement was written in 2002 during the May 5 presidential run-off election between National Front (FN) candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen and France's then-president Jacques Chirac. The WSWS opposed the campaign mounted by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens and others in support of the right-wing Chirac. Instead, the WSWS called for a boycott of the elections as the essential preparation for the mobilization of the working class against whoever won. It is critical to review the experience of the 2002 elections in connection to the current election in France, which pits ex-banker and Socialist Party (PS) Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron against the neo-fascist FN candidate Marine Le Pen. (See, "No to Macron and Le Pen! For an active boycott of the French election!") WSWS, April 27, 2017 *** For the leaders, members and political supporters of Lutte Ouvriere (LO), the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR), and the Parti des Travailleurs (PT), the 2002 French presidential election poses a great political responsibility. More than three million people have given your candidates an unprecedented vote in the first round. But the first round also saw a breakthrough by the National Front, with the fascist candidate Le Pen finishing second and facing President Chirac in the May 5 runoff. The millions who voted for your candidates look to you to speak clearly and forcefully about the political crisis. The question is posed, and must be answered: where do your organizations stand on the May 5 vote? How shall French workers and youth carry forward a struggle to defend their social interests and defeat the fascist danger? The World Socialist Web Site urges every organization seeking to defend the working class to campaign actively for a boycott of the May 5 presidential vote. No political support to either Le Pen or Chirac! Mobilize French working people and youth against this false and anti-democratic choice. Despite the well-known historical and political differences between your three parties and the International Committee of the Fourth International, which we do not seek to conceal, we feel it is essential to propose this campaign and explain the political basis for it. Why a boycott? Because it is necessary to deny any legitimacy to this fraudulent election; because it is necessary to establish an independent political line for the working class; because an active and aggressive boycott would create the best conditions for the political struggles that will arise in the aftermath of the elections. A boycott, called for and campaigned for aggressively by your three parties, would have a far different character than individual abstention. It would serve to politically educate the masses, and especially the young people who have been set into motion by the shock of Le Pens success in the first round. These new forces must learn important political lessons. They must learn to see through the lies of the whole bourgeois political establishmentthe governmental right and governmental left, as well as the mediawho claim that a vote for Chirac represents the defense of democracy, the salvation of Frances honor, the creation of an anti-fascist front, and so on. The working class cannot rely on the corrupt and reactionary French bourgeoisie to defend democratic rights or oppose fascism. Chiracs own campaign, which adopted wholesale the law-and-order rhetoric of Le Pen, is a clear demonstration of this fact. Some may argue that boycotting the May 5 vote will strengthen Le Pen and his fascist movement. We reject such claims entirely. Politics is not arithmetic, and opposition to Le Pen does not require support for Chirac. On the contrary, it is the official campaign for Chirac, uniting the governmental right and governmental left, which reinforces Le Pens entirely false and demagogic claim that he alone gives voice to popular opposition to the political establishment. A widespread campaign of boycott and opposition to May 5, spearheaded by the socialist left and mobilizing workers and youth against both Le Pen and Chirac, would puncture Le Pens false pretenses and demonstrate to the broad masses that there is a progressive social force which challenges the existing social and political order. We must state frankly that to this point the position of the representatives of the LO and the LCR amounts to tacit acceptance of a vote for Chirac. The LO is not calling on workers to abstain in the second round, says LO presidential candidate Laguiller. An LCR Political Bureau statement declares: The LCR campaigns for Le Pen to have the smallest possible vote on Sunday, May 5. We understand those voters who vote for Chirac to oppose Le Pen, but we do not think that Chirac can be the rampart against a new rise of the extreme right. In the course of the campaign in the first round, your parties aggressively denounced the right-wing character of the Chirac presidency, and portrayed Chiraccorrectlyas the personification of corrupt bourgeois reaction. How can you now suggest that a vote for Chirac is either permissible, understandable or defensible? Should your past statements and warnings be taken seriously? The language of the LCR statement suggests that the arguments for a vote for Chirac in the second round are somehow unanswerable, or that to come out openly for boycotting the choice of Chirac and Le Pen will not be understood by the masses. This grossly underestimates the political possibilities in the current situation. Who is responsible for Le Pens success? Without minimizing the danger of the National Front, the vote for Le Pen does not represent mass support for a fascist program in France, still less the emergence of a mass fascist movement on the model of Mussolini or Hitler. Even among Le Pens own voters, only a small fraction actually supports his social program and the establishment of a right-wing authoritarian regime. Should Le Pen, against expectation, win the presidential vote, he would not be able to subjugate the French people to a totalitarian dictatorship. In the campaign for Chirac by the media and the political establishment, there is an element of grotesque exaggeration of the immediate threat posed by Le Pen, the purpose of which is to terrorize the working class into supporting a policy of class collaboration. In order to fight Le Pen, we must correctly diagnose the cause of the political disease he personifies. The cause of this malaise is the closing off of any socialist alternative to capitalist politics. Le Pen has profited politically and ideologically from the abandonment of the working class and its interests by the parties that claimed to represent it. As Jospin admitted in his campaign, his party may call itself Socialist, but his program is not socialist. The Socialist Party seeks to administer, on behalf of the capitalists, a welfare state that no longer provides welfare, but on the contrary, continuously reduces the standard of living and social conditions of the workers. The Jospin government took responsibility for imposing all the sacrifices in jobs and social programs required as a condition of the establishment of the European monetary system and the launching of the euro. As for the Communist Party, it was for many decades the principal pillar of French capitalism within the working class. In the most recent period, this Stalinist organization has had the main responsibility for introducing the poison of anti-immigrant chauvinism into the working class. Communist Party leader and presidential candidate Robert Hue first came to prominence 20 years ago as the mayor of a Paris suburb who whipped up hatred and fear of immigrant workers. In this he paved the way for Le Pen in the working-class suburbs and the former Communist Party strongholds of the north. Le Pen has gained in strength largely because of the right-wing policies pursued by so-called left parties over the last 20 years. This has created the mood of alienation and discouragement exploited by the National Front. Yet the solution to the fascist challengeaccording to these same bankrupt social democratic politiciansis a further move to the right and the embrace of Chirac on May 5. It is natural for Jospin, Hollande, Chevenement, etc. to call for a vote for Chirac. For them it requires no major reorientation, because they share the same political framework. They have worked closely with Chirac through five years of cohabitation, supporting not only a reactionary domestic policy, but also the involvement of France in a series of imperialist military interventions from Bosnia and Kosovo to Afghanistan. The claim by Jospin & Co. that a divided left caused Le Pens victory is an argument, not merely against the presidential campaigns of the LO, LCR and PT, but against the existence of any political organizations of the working class independent of the bourgeoisie. Its logic is the liquidation of all political tendencies claiming to be socialist into a broad current where the political line is set by the most right-wing forcessomething like the Democratic Party in the United States, whose end result has been to put George W. Bush in the White House. We reject with contempt the self-serving claims of Jospin and the Socialist Partyand his apologists like Daniel Cohn-Benditthat the socialist left is to blame for Le Pens breakthrough. The fact that a sizeable proportion of workers voted for their bitterest enemy is of great concern to all genuine socialists. But the responsibility for this dangerous development lies with those who have systematically betrayed the working class over many decades. The international dimension The election campaign in the first round largely ignored the international dimensions of the crisis facing the working class. But there is no question that Le Pen and Megret profited by presenting themselves as opponents of Brussels, blaming the growth of unemployment and the decay in working class living standards on European integration and the introduction of the euro, and by scapegoating immigrant workers. The working class must provide a forward-looking rather than a backward-looking alternative to capitalist globalization. It must counter chauvinist and anti-immigrant demagogy with a program based on socialist internationalism. Capitalist globalization means a Europe without borders only for the corporate bosses, while the workers remain straitjacketed within national boundaries. We reject the reactionary utopia of returning to a French national projectunviable even under Mitterrand 20 years agoand fight for a socialist United States of Europe, with complete freedom for workers of every race and nationality to travel, work and live where they wish. The essence of socialism is internationalism. The struggle to defend the interests of French workers and youth is inseparable from the struggle against imperialismand not only of the American variety, but French, British, German, and Japanese. The greatest crime of the Socialist Party-led coalition was its support for French imperialism in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and most recently Afghanistan. Jospin thus placed himself on the same side of the barricades as Le Pen, the former Algerian paratrooper and torturer. Those who call for a vote for Chirac in the name of defending democracy within France turn their backs on these crucial international questions. To vote for Chirac is to take political responsibility for a government already committed to participating in an American war on Iraq, an imperialist intervention that could destabilize the entire Middle East and lead to a more general inter-imperialist war. The lessons of history If it is legitimate for the left to call for a vote for the reactionary Chirac in the name of defending democracy, then it is legitimate to vote for the program of his government, once it takes office, and even to join his government as a legislator or cabinet minister. Such opportunist politics has a long and tragic history in the French workers movement, going back to the notorious Alexandre Millerrand, the first socialist politician to join a bourgeois government a century ago. Millerrand also claimed to be motivated by the need to defend democracy, against the ultra-right threat of the anti-Dreyfusards. The government that he joined ultimately engaged in bloody massacres of striking workers. The same claims were made for the formation of the Popular Front in France in 1936, an alliance of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the bourgeois Radical Socialists. The Popular Front government, brought to power through the support of the working class, worked assiduously to diffuse the revolutionary movement that erupted in a massive general strike and to save French capitalism. Once its job of restraining, betraying and demoralizing the working class was completed, it turned over power to the right wing, setting the stage for the collapse of 1940 and the establishment of the pro-fascist Vichy regime. In some quarters there have been cynical and false attempts to justify a vote for Chirac by citing the example of Leon Trotskys struggle against the ultra-left policies of the Stalinist third period, particularly in Germany in the years of Hitlers rise to power. Trotsky opposed the policy then pursued by the Stalinist leadership of the German Communist Party of identifying social democracy with fascism and rejecting any alliance of the working class organizations to defeat the Nazi menace. Trotskys campaign for a fighting united front of the working class, however, had nothing in common with the subsequent rightward turn of the Stalinists to the Popular Front, which subordinated the working class to the bourgeois parties in the name of defending democracy. It is this policy, which destroyed the Spanish Revolution and led to disaster in France, Chile and dozens of other countries, that is being revived in the campaign for Chirac. It would be wrong to mechanically identify France in 2002 with Germany in 1932, or Le Pen with Hitler. Whatever the ideological and political similarities between the National Front and the Nazis, Le Pens movement is at this point far weaker. Its gains are not the result of a massive radicalization of ruined sections of the petty bourgeoisie, under the impact of a global collapse of capitalism. Rather they stem largely from the disorientation in the working class produced by the protracted decay and bankruptcy of its old parties. Nonetheless, the historical parallel does contain lessons. Those who argue for a vote for Chirac to stop Le Pen follow in the footsteps of the German Social Democrats, who in 1932, in the German presidential elections, supported the reactionary militarist Hindenburg in order to stop Hitler. In January 1933, it was Hindenburg, as president, who called Hitler to power as the Chancellor of Germany. Throughout the German catastrophe, social democracy remained prostrate before the bourgeois parties and the bourgeois state, opposing any effort to mobilize the working class independently against fascism. Chirac has no principled political differences with Le Pen. In the future, should he find it politically expedient, he could very well call on Le Pen to bolster or even join his government in order to strengthen his hand against the working class. The central historical issue is the necessity for the working class to adopt an independent political standpoint and develop its independent strength, on every political issue, including the burning question of the struggle against fascism. In the final analysis, it is only the independent political strength of the working classnot the institutions and parties of the bourgeois statethat can defend democratic rights. The road forward today An aggressive campaign for a boycott of the second round will be the best preparation for the working class to mount a struggle against whichever candidate wins the presidency. Those who call for a vote for Chirac act as though politics begins and ends on May 5, ignoring the implications of the pro-Chirac campaign even for the parliamentary elections the following month, let alone the class and social battles which must inevitably develop in the aftermath of the voting. Let us recall what happened the last time Jacques Chirac was elected president of France. Within six months of his entry into Elysee Palace, France was convulsed by the most powerful wave of strikes and student protests since May-June 1968. The struggles of November-December 1995, provoked by the Juppe governments attack on pensions and other social benefits, staggered the French bourgeoisie, undermined the Juppe government, and created the conditions for the defeat of the Gaullists and the election of a Socialist-led governmentto the complete surprise of Jospin himself and other leaders of the official left. With that history in mind, the current campaign for a 100 percent vote for Chirac represents an attempt to straitjacket the French working class politically in advance of struggles that must assume dimensions far beyond those of 1995. The result of a massive vote for Chirac would be to greatly enhance his political authority, as a quasi-Bonapartist figure. He would use this authority ruthlessly against the interests of the working class. There are many signs that leaders of the Socialist Party and the other organizations of the governmental left are fully conscious of this purpose. Thus they urge an end to the mass demonstrations against Le Pen, concerned that the protests might create more difficult conditions for pursuing the right-wing program of privatization, destruction of working conditions, and cutting jobs and wages in the post-election period. The great lesson of the last quarter century is the necessity to combat the reactionary political influence of the old, outlived, fossilized organizations that once spoke for the working class. These organizations are today little more than empty shells, held together by bureaucratic self-interest and state subsidies. In Jospins own political trajectory can be seen the pernicious consequences of decades of adaptation to these old organizations. He provides a textbook example of one who sought to utilize the political principles and historical stature of Leon Trotsky as a cover for opportunism. He has ended his political career with an ignominious resignation, literally abandoning political responsibility at the point where grave dangers confront the French working class. French politicsand world politicsare at a historic turning point. Everything depends, as Trotsky explained long ago, on the subjective factor, i.e., revolutionary leadership and the political consciousness of the working class. Given a leadership not mesmerized by bourgeois public opinion, confident in the working class and its political strength, the debacle of Jospin and the Socialist Party will open the way for the development of a mass independent political movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program. The real sentiments of millions of workers and youth found only a pale reflection in the votes cast for the LO, the LCR and the PT on April 21. It is necessary to speak bluntly to the members and supporters of these parties: based on the statements and actions of your leaders, your organizations have to date demonstrated no understanding of the critical responsibility now placed upon them. You are called on to give a clear lead in the current crisis. This means concretely taking up the call for a boycott of the May 5 presidential vote. The World Socialist Web Site urges all socialists in France to raise this demand and fight for it. Anzac Day celebrations on April 25 were used by the Australian political and media establishment to reaffirm its commitment to US-led wars and military preparations around the world, and to try to drown out widespread anti-war sentiment among working people. The annual public holiday, which marks the first day of the disastrous 1915 landing of Australian, New Zealand, French and British troops at Gallipoli cove in Turkey, has been at the centre of a four-year government-funded celebration of the centenary of World War I, aimed at saturating the population with militarist propaganda. Liberal-National Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull underscored the connection between this campaign and the current war drive of Australian and American imperialism, spending Monday in Iraq, and participating in Anzac Day celebrations on Tuesday in Afghanistan. In a Facebook post, Turnbull likened current soldiers to those sent to the two world wars of the last century, declaring: On behalf of all Australians, thank you, to all those at home and abroad today, as your ancestors did before you, in our uniform, under our flag, put their lives on the line to keep us free. Turnbull gave an open-ended commitment of Australias continuing participation in the 15-year neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan and the new US wars in Syria and Iraq, aimed at securing US hegemony over Central Asia and the Middle East. There is no doubt that in both theatres, there is going to need to be a long-term commitment, he stated on Tuesday. Turnbull foreshadowed additional Australian troop deployments. Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, who took part in Anzac Day ceremonies in Papua New Guinea, likewise tied the militarist celebration to current wars. He asserted: We are more confident of our place in the world and our ability to speak for our interests. Yet in an age when so many old loyalties and certainties are fading, the power of the Anzac legend has not grown old. On the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Radio National, Shorten restated Labors support for the bellicose US stance against North Korea, which has included threats of preemptive military strikes that could trigger a broader conflict. The Korean Peninsula is one of a series of flashpoints in the Asia-Pacific and internationally stoked by a dramatic expansion of US militarism. Some TV commentators on Anzac Day obliquely pointed to the dangers of world war, referring to eerie parallels with the situation 100 years ago. In line with this focus, serving Australian troops were prominently featured in Anzac Day marches across the country. The events with the highest attendances were those near military bases and training facilities, including Perth in Western Australia, Townsville in Queensland and Darwin in the Northern Territory. In Darwin, US marines participated in the march and were hailed by various speakers. They are among 1,250 American troops stationed nearby, under an annual rotation established in 2011 by the Gillard Labor government, as part of the US-led preparations for conflict with China. As in previous years, numbers of school children were mobilised throughout the country. Attendances overall, however, were substantially down on past years. An estimated 30,000 watched the march in Melbourne, compared to 45,000 last year. Fewer than 20,000 attended the main march in Sydney, down from over 30,000 two years ago. Some 5,000 took part in Adelaide, compared with 20,000 in 2015. The fall in attendances reflects the growing disconnect between the nationalistic celebration of the centenary of World War I, and the sentiments of ordinary people who are becoming increasingly alarmed by international developments. To fund a barrage of television programs, books, events and new monuments glorifying militarism, the federal government allocated over $330 million to the centenary campaign, while state governments contributed $130 million and corporations $90 million. The combined figure of over half a billion dollars is more than that being spent on war commemorations by all the other former WWI combatants combined. The aim of this campaignto promote patriotism and suppress social antagonismswas underscored by the witch-hunt of ABC commentator Yassmin Abdel-Magied for a Facebook post which featured the Anzac refrain, Lest we forget, in a reference to Australias persecution of refugees, the war in Syria and the oppression of the Palestinians. Senior government and Labor ministers denounced Abdel-Magied, with some calling for the public broadcaster to sack her. The official centenary celebrations are also aimed at burying any mention of the mass opposition to World War I that developed in Australia, as in other countries. The year 1917 saw the highest number of Australian casualties in the war. Two battles at Bullecourt in France claimed 10,000 Australian casualties in less than two months between April and May. Over 22,000 were killed and tens of thousands wounded during 1917. The losses were a product of the stalemate of trench warfare, in which allied and German commanders sent thousands of soldiers to their deaths to gain metres of ground. The catastrophic losses, following on from massive casualties at Gallipoli in 1915 and the Western Front in 1916, intensified opposition to the war. In October 1916, a plebiscite called by Prime Minister Billy Hughes to sanction military conscription, after a fall in voluntary enlistment of more than 60 percent, was defeated. Anti-war marches and protests were held in the lead-up to the vote, with 100,000 attending a Sydney protest in August 1916, comprising one-sixth of the citys population. By 1917 there was a growing movement of the working class, culminating in a six-week strike by over 100,000 workers in New South Wales and Victoria, beginning in August. Government authorities viciously witch-hunted members of the anti-war Industrial Workers of the World and other socialists, while presenting the unrest as a product of foreign agitators. A second conscription referendum was defeated in December 1917. This upheaval was part of a global movement of the working class against the war and the social deprivation that it produced, finding its high point in two revolutions in Russia, resulting in the seizure of power by the working class in October 1917. WSWS reporters spoke to workers on Tuesday about the glorification of militarism and the dangers of a new war. Sajeev, a software engineer originally from Malaysia attended the Sydney march out of curiosity. I think America is the big problem, he said. All the disputes with China or North Korea or even Russia are along their borders. The main reason North Korea is trying to get nuclear weapons is to deter powers like the US from coming and doing whatever they want. But that just raises the stakes and the potential for a really unstable authoritarian government like North Korea to be pushed to the brink of a mistake. It just takes one incident and its something you cant reverse. One bomb is enough to wipe out many people. There are so many reasons people are sent to war but a lot of them is because of influence and power. The wars in the Middle East are about energy resources and control of important areas. Asked if he had noticed a broader glorification of war, Sajeev said: Yes, especially in the past few years. During the Iraq war, there was a bit more protests than now. I dont think thats because most people are pro-war. But there is a more nationalism now because of fear-mongering in the media. As economic conditions get worse, people try to find a scapegoat. Interviewed in southwestern Sydney, Faheem, who is originally from Pakistan, said: Theres an extreme danger of war. Everybody would die. Its going to be a nuclear war, not like war used to be, where the people fought with swords or guns. Referring to Washingtons use of the largest bomb since World War II this month in Afghanistan, Faheen commented: The dropping of the bomb on the border of Pakistan is very bad, theres a big population there. A normal person like me, he doesnt want to go to war. In Pakistan, they spend three times more on the military than on other services. People are starving and theyre spending on the military. Paul, a retiree, attended the march in Melbourne. You can see clouds of war building, he said. Its like it was in the past, more stupidity. People have forgotten what war is about. Instead of treading the road of peace, they just want to go out and thump each other. When Donald Trump was voted in, my son, who is 21, was quite upset because it was going to be a bad thing. It only takes one bad move. I think behind the drive to war is greed. Either we try for peace or drop the biggest bomb, like in Afghanistan. Is that a wise path or are they repeating history? NHS Fightback, a campaign initiated by the Socialist Equality Party, held a successful meeting in Bournemouth last Sunday. A number of health workers attended, including several employed by the Bournemouth Intermediate Care Service (BICS) who have recently received redundancy notices. World Socialist Web Site reporter and National Health Service (NHS) worker Ajanta Silva explained that the meeting was being held against the backdrop of a rapidly worsening global political and social crisis. The dangerous and relentless military actions by the Trump administration in the United States have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Silva said of the snap general election in Britain and the presidential election in France, Whatever their outcome, the working class will have to pay the price for the crisis created by the ruling elites. The issues of war and austerity are profoundly connected to the crisis in the health service, Silva explained. This is expressed in the tens of billions of pounds in cuts to the NHS and the unprecedented closures of vital services being imposed nationally. The cuts being imposed by the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group are bound up with privatisation, the latest example of which was the opening of a new private unit in Bournemouth Hospital. The massive NHS deficit in Dorset, as elsewhere in Britain, was largely the result of the austerity policies that the Labour government of Gordon Brown imposed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008. These were continued by the Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition that followed and now the Theresa May Conservative administration. The NHS debt and funding crisis has, in turn, been used to demand further cuts, restructuring and privatisation. The responsibility for this lies with the trade unions, which have sabotaged every struggle of the working class for decades, including capitulating to the governments attacks on pensions in 2011 and isolating the junior doctors struggle last year. This record of betrayal, Silva stated, gave rise to the plight now facing 13 Bournemouth Intermediate Care Service (BICS) workers. Management is attempting to prevent them from making a public appeal in defence of their jobs, demanding confidentiality and threatened that non-compliance could put redundancy payments at risk: These threats are used to prevent any opposition developing to the trade unions efforts to isolate the BICS workers. They are telling the BICS workers to keep quiet and dutifully work within the framework of managements nine-step redundancy process. Nine steps to losing your job. Silva explained that the decision of May to call a snap election was a devastating indictment of Labour. This is a party in which a large number of its right-wing MPs want to lose the election, in order to hasten the departure of its leader Jeremy Corbyn. Some Labour MPs have resigned and others are calling openly for support for the Liberal Democrats! Corbyn is talking about fighting back against the Tory onslaught and the deepening offensive by the super-rich against working people. But frankly, that fight can only be successfully waged if it begins with a broadside against the majority of Labour MPs, the Labour Party apparatus and its councillors. No one should believe that this party, which spent the past two years seeking to get rid of Corbyn, will now go into battle with him against the Tories and the ruling class. In reality, Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell have capitulated on every occasion to their opponents. Silva explained that pseudo-left groups such as the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party have played a politically criminal role in boosting Corbyns standing among workers and young people, portraying his election as proof that a fight was underway for the soul of the Labour Party. This deception was opposed from the outset by the Socialist Equality Party. Silva quoted from its very first statement on Corbyns 2015 victory: No one can seriously propose that this partywhich, in its politics and organisation and the social composition of its apparatus, is Tory in all but namecan be transformed into an instrument of working class struggle. The British Labour Party did not begin with Blair. It is a bourgeois party of more than a centurys standing and a tried and tested instrument of British imperialism and its state machine. Whether led by Clement Attlee, James Callaghan or Jeremy Corbyn, its essence remains unaltered. Silva closed his remarks by appealing to the audience, You have come to this meeting because you are dissatisfied with what is happening. You want to do something about it. You have read our material. You know we are calling for the formation of independent action committees to oppose the closure of hospitals and other health facilities. We say the right to free, high quality and universal health care means the fight for socialism. The interests of patients and the vital jobs of doctors, nurses and other health workers must be placed before the insatiable profit drive of the financial and corporate elite. This is the perspective we are putting forward. But the most important question is for the working class, for you, to fight for this perspective. Working people have to break from the Labour Party and the unions. For decades, they have betrayed one struggle after another. How much longer does this have to go on? Without a break from the unions and Labour Party there will be nothing left of public services, of the welfare state. In the discussion period, the BICS workers explained that although they had been called to a meeting with the CEO of Dorset Health Care University NHS Trust on April 13, it did not seem to resolve the redundancy issue. One explained that the CEO did not even appear to understand what sort of work BICS do in the community and what people in Bournemouth were going to lose. Another said she had written to her MP and he had not bothered replying. A Bournemouth hospital worker expressed concerns about the ongoing erosion of services and was shocked to hear the details Silva presented about the planned cuts to health care in Dorset. A pensioner expressed his frustration at the onslaught on the NHS and other austerity attacks. He thanked the SEP and NHS FightBack for holding the meeting. One young man said afterwards, I think the meeting was good and informative. We need more support to defend the NHS. They should look after vulnerable people like us. It is disgusting how the NHS is being treated. It is not fair for the staff. I suffer from fits and on one occasion I was on the floor for three days. Luckily, my neighbours found me and called the police. These things happen because of the health cuts. It is appalling that 13 health workers are going to lose their jobs in Bournemouth Intermediate Care. I do support the fight to defend their jobs and services. The author also recommends: Oppose health care cuts, redundancies and privatisation of the National Health Service [11 April 2017] Last week, a team with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights together with personnel from the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) discovered scores of mass graves in Kasai Province, a south central region of the Congo currently wracked by bloody conflict between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and Kamuina Nsapu, a local tribal militia. According to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 17 mass graves were discovered in early April in Kasai, which had been the location of recent clashes between the militia and FARDC. These discoveries follow the unearthing of several mass graves found in March. Speaking to the media, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said, The discovery of yet more mass graves and the reports of continued violations and abuses highlight the horror that has been unfolding in the Kasai [Province] over the last nine months. The UN High Commission has declared that the human rights violations could be referred to the International Criminal Court for further investigation. Should there be no effective national investigation, I will not hesitate to urge the international community to support an investigation by an international mechanism, including the International Criminal Court, the High Commissioner said. The conflict has resulted in a mass internal displacement in the Kasai Province, with millions fleeing the region for Angola and other areas of the Congo. Thousands have been tortured, killed and injured, and incidents of rape of women and children on the part of the FARDC have been reported. In a report by the BBC, a visibly traumatized local villager recounted the horror: They killed people and raped women. Then, the next day we saw a general. He said Come out of your house; were not going to kill any more. He told us to bury the peopleeven members of my family, even people I knew. Another resident of Kananga told the BBC of indiscriminate killings carried out by the FARDC. When the shooting began, my children ran and hid in a neighbors house. But the government soldiers got into that housethree people were killed and one of my children was injured. Another Kananga resident told of the extortion carried out by government forces: Soldiers are coming into neighborhoods and harassing people for money. If you dont have money, they threaten to kill you. Kamuina Nsapu, the militia named after its slain leader, is made up largely of the Luba tribe, the main tribal grouping in the Kasai Province. The militia claims to have the power of voodoo, and its leaders claim that they can be protected from death by wearing specific leaves from the heavily forested Kasai region. Underscoring the militias rise is the overwhelming perception within the population of Kasai that the Congos president, Joseph Kabila, is illegitimate; in the election of 2011, Kabila claimed to win the province, a stronghold of the late opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi. There were reports of impossibly high voter turnout and vote rigging, and intimidation at polling stations throughout the country. MONUSCO, the UN force charged with peacekeeping and protecting civilians in the Congo, is in reality a force which seeks to maintain the exploitation of the countrys vast economic resources. MONUSCO has little popular support after incidents in which the so-called peacekeeping force has taken the sidelines during massacres of civilians, such as occurred in Goma in eastern Congo during the M23 rebellion in 2012. The Kasai Province is rich in diamonds, and is among the worlds leading sources of the precious gems, making clear the capitalist interests that underlay the conflict. The armed conflict embroiling the Kasai Province traces back to last August when government forces killed the leader of Kamuina Nsapu after the government refused to give official recognition to the tribal leader, and appointed cronies instead, which has been widely perceived in the province as an insult. Beginning in July, Kabila deployed government forces into the Kasai Province to neutralize the group. Since Kabilas refusal to step down and hold elections last December, there has been a sharp increase in lawlessness and the rise of armed conflict across the country. With a subsequent sharp decline in support for Kabila the government is desperate to maintain the legitimacy of its rule. The armed insurgency inflaming Kasai is just one of several bloody conflicts currently wracking the country, mostly located in the eastern region of the country, where several foreign rebel groups use the Congo as a rear base for operations, such as M23, a rebel militia of former Rwandan Hutu rebels involved in that countrys genocide in the 1990s, and a Ugandan militia opposed to the government of Yoweri Museveni in Kampala, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). The ongoing simmering conflicts hark back to the Congo War of 19962006, which involved the armed forces of eleven African nations and resulted in the deaths of millions. At stake in the Congo War werelaims to Congos rich and vast mineral wealth, which include gold, diamonds, and cobalt, as well as other rare-earth minerals used in the manufacture of electronics for the world market, such as mobile phones and laptop computers. Similar stakes overshadow the conflict in the Congo todaythe scramble to plunder economic resources, and Western capitalist interests attempting to influence the outcome. There are clear indications that the Kabila government has fallen out of favor with Washington. The former military commander has been in power for more than 16 years, and refused to step down in December 2016 when his term ended as mandated by the Congolese constitution. In response, the US and European Union laid economic sanctions against Kabila and several top officials in his cabinet last year, sharply condemning Kabilas refusal to leave office and accusing him of undermining democracy. The appeals on the part of the US and EU to democracy are a cynical fraud, given Washington and Europes history of covert warfare in the country, their complicity in the assassination of its first elected president, Patrice Lumumba, and their support for the brutal Mobutu dictatorship. What Washington would like to see in Kinshasa is a government more subservient to its economic interests. Last November, US congressional members wrote to then President Obama asking for expanded economic sanctions against the Kabila regime, citing evidence that significant funds have been diverted from RDCs treasury to enrich members of the ruling elite, and asking the administration to freeze Congolese officials assets, and to order investigations of the Kabila government. Figuring into Washingtons objectives in sanctioning government officials is the palpable fear that the Congos vast economic resources and its profits will not benefit American corporations and banks. Weighing heavily on Washington is the fear of Chinas economic influence in the Congo. China in recent years has increased its investment in the Congo and across the African continent, an encroachment the US elite regard as intolerable. In 2013, Chinese construction firm Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group secured a contract with the Congolese government to construct an electrical power plant in Mbuji Mayi, the capital city of Kasai province. The 4.6 megawatt electrical power generation facility is used in the production of the regions diamonds. Also, China secured a deal with the government to invest $100 million in Mbuji Mayis infrastructure. Washington is actively working to neutralize the roadblock to its domination of African economies represented by Beijing, and has sharply increased its military presence across the continent in response. Coinciding with the expanded US military presence on the continent is increasing unrest among the African population who in the coming period will become ever more deeply opposed to the capitalist policies of the ruling class. The expansion of military operations across Africa makes clear the US ruling class is prepared to violently crush any such opposition to its dominance. That the Congo, with trillions of dollars in natural resources under the control of a few elites, is also home to the most impoverished mass of people on earth is a devastating indictment of the capitalist system. While the Congolese elite enrich themselves, it is at the expense of the Congolese masses, of which more than half live on $2 a day or less. The current wars waged by Washington and the European powers for control over markets and resources across the entire globe increasingly resemble the conflicts brought on by the crisis of capitalism which beset the world powers in the last century, leading to two devastating world wars. The acute crisis of capitalism gripping the world today makes a mockery of the claims made by US officialdom of a new era of peace, prosperity and democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The period since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been marked by unending and ever-expanding war conducted by the US on the rest of the world for domination and conquest. The publisher and editors of the Fiji Times, one of Fijis two main daily newspapers, as well as a letter writer, were last month charged with seditiona crime that carries a maximum punishment of seven years imprisonment. The case will go to court in Suva on May 9. Publisher Hank Arts, editor Fred Wesley, and Anare Ravula, editor of the Times iTaukei (Fijian)-language weekly, Nai Lalakai, were originally charged in August 2016 with inciting communal antagonism by publishing an anti-Muslim letter last April. The charges were laid under the Crimes Decree, passed by the military government in 2009, which prohibits any communication deemed likely to incite dislike, hatred or antagonism of any community. The xenophobic letter was published without endorsement in the letters section of Nai Lalakai. It accused Muslims, who it described as not indigenous to Fiji, of invading foreign lands, where they killed, raped and abused their women and children. It further alleged that Muslims had gone to the extent of having a part in the running of the country. The writer, Josaia Waqabaca, was jailed after the 2000 military coup for his role in a plot to kidnap the then-armed forces commander, now Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. The four accused pleaded not guilty to the incitement charge in October and were released on bail. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions last month suddenly amended the charge to one of sedition. There has been no official explanation for the change. Sedition is the more explicitly political charge, involving a purported crime against the state. On March 30 police executed a search warrant on the newspapers Suva premises. Officers of the Major Crime Unit sought, and were given, copies of the employment contracts of staff under investigation. Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Pacific Beats program on March 24, Arts described the sedition charge as hard to believe. In a normal environment, he said, any complaint over a letter would be dealt with by the Press Council. Arts said the paper will contest the charge. He indicated that neither he nor Wesley read or speak Fijian, and were not made aware of the letters contents before it was printed. For the six years he had been in charge, Arts added, the Times and its sister publication had stuck within the rules and was ready to apologise and correct if it got something wrong. The politically-motivated charge is bound up with deep-seated conflicts within the Fijian ruling elite. Bainimarama, who seized power in a 2006 coup, postures as a national unifier, but his regime is oriented to sections of the Fijian capitalist class and pro-business members of the chiefly elite. His military junta adopted measures aimed at eliminating barriers to investment and private profit. The ethnic Fijian nationalist wing of the ruling elite, seeking to maintain political and economic privileges for the traditional chiefs, is bitterly opposed to aspects of Bainimaramas rule. Led by the opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) they are known for chauvinism toward the countrys ethnic Indian minority. Some, evidently including the letter writer Waqabaca, have seized on the fact that Bainimaramas Attorney General and Finance Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum is a Muslim, in order to accuse Muslims of running the country. The government in turn is simply exploiting the anti-Muslim comments to undermine its political opponents. In August 2015, 70 nationalists accused of separatist activities were charged with sedition. Five, including SODELPA parliamentarian Mosese Bulitavoare, were accused after allegedly spraying anti-government graffiti in various locations. Bainimarama ominously warned of severe punishment, including many years in jail, for anyone attempting to overthrow the government. He called on people to report illegal activity and vowed to crush any insurrections. In a sign of deepening antagonisms, former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, a one-time chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs, was last year named leader of SODELPA. Rabuka, a former army major general, led two military coups in 1987 before becoming prime minister in 1992. Last September, six leading Fijian opposition figures including Rabuka were arrested for criticising the current regimes 2013 constitution at a political forum. The use of sedition charges underlines the thoroughly undemocratic nature of the Fijian regime, despite the fig-leaf of an election in September 2014, which was won by Bainimaramas Fiji First Party. The election took place under conditions of strict press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties. The ongoing anti-democratic measures, including suppression of the media, are ultimately directed against the working class and rural poor, and aimed at intimidating and silencing any opposition. The Fiji Times has previously fallen foul of the authorities. In 2013, it was fined $US170,000 for contempt of court and editor Wesley received a two-year suspended sentence for publishing an article that called into question the independence of Fijis post-coup judiciary. In 2009, Bainimarama abrogated the constitution and state censors entered newsrooms to decide what could and could not be published. Bainimarama justified the censorship by saying: They can print whatever they want. But irresponsible journalism is not going to be tolerated. Many journalists protested the regimes diktats, often leaving blank spaces and marking where their articles were due to appear with a note: This story could not be published due to government restrictions. The Media Industry Development Decree 2010 imposed further draconian restrictions on the print media, television and radio broadcasts, and the Internet. It also limited foreign investors from owning more than 10 percent of any media outleta measure aimed at the Fiji Times, then 90 percent owned by Murdochs Australia-based News Limited. The Fiji Times stance against the regime dovetailed with Australian and New Zealand strategic and business interests in the region. Australias then foreign minister, Stephen Smith, warned the junta that its arbitrary move sends a very bad signal so far as future investment in Fiji is concerned. The two local imperialist powers were not concerned for the democratic rights of the Fijian people, but opposed the junta because they feared the spread of political instability in the South Pacific and the growing influence of rival powers, particularly China. During an official visit to New Zealand last October, Bainimarama announced he would rescind an eight-year ban on selected New Zealand journalists regarded as critical of his government. As part of a diplomatic offensive to repair relations with Wellington, Bainimarama said the journalists were now welcome in Fiji to witness the progress we have made. Bainimarama claimed the institutions of state are functioning properly and we are strengthening [them] to ensure they are truly independent and free from personal and political influence. In fact the authoritarian Fijian state remains dominated by the military. The author also recommends: New Zealand moves to restore relations with Fijian regime [4 November 2016] Fijian military junta suppresses media [12 July 2010] The poisoning of the city of Flint continues three long years after the decision was made by politicians and financial speculators to switch city residents to Flint River water. On April 25, 2014 Mayor Dayne Walling and emergency manager Darnell Earley closed the valve on the Detroit water system, calling it a return to our roots. As the world now knows, the corrosive Flint River water leached lead from the antiquated piping system into the homes of residents. Lead is the most deadly neurotoxin known to man. Because next to nothing has yet been done to fix the citys infrastructure, even after the switch back to Detroit water, there is no safe water supply for thousands of residents. As of now, only $187 million has been earmarked by the state and federal government combined to fix the pipes, far below the actual amount needed according to many estimates. A lawsuit brought against the state was settled in late March, outlining an entirely inadequate program of replacing 18,000 lead service lines in the city by the end of 2020just 6,000 each year. In February, the state government declared that Flints water was drinkable and that it would end subsidizing the costs of water for residents. It also announced that the provision of bottled water would end in June based on the Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) evaluation of Flints water. The federal agency, which was complicit in covering up for the lead in Flints water and which silenced a leading investigator for speaking out about the lead in Flints water, has determined that the citys water has fallen below the 15 parts per billion (ppb) action level set in the EPAs Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). It is well known that the LCR levels are out of date and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has determined that there is no safe level of exposure to lead. In addition, Virginia Techs Dr. Marc Edwards, who led the team that exposed the lies of state water authorities that Flint water was safe to drink, are still warning residents that the water is unsafe without filters. Beginning in March, city residents started to be billed for water that is still unsafe. There is widespread, justifiable mistrust of the government regarding the water to this day. The World Socialist Web Site spoke to Gladyes Williamson, a retired General Motors autoworker and outspoken champion of Flint residents. In the last three years, I have watched and gotten sicker. I have a jug of water, which was the second one I pulled from my tap in 2014 after the city switched to the Flint River. The water ate that old jug out. I went down to the basement and found that the bottom was completely eaten out. Its difficult, stated Gladyes. On any given day you can come to my house and I have six cases of water stacked in my kitchen. And now they are saying they are going to cut people off the bottled water in June. Its just outrageous. When they talk about cutting off bottled water, they are trying to force us to drink this water with a filter. I wont be doing that. Im not going to use it. I will never drink the Flint water again. I dont care how many filters you pour this water through. The minute they start digging out more the pipes, they are going to stir this water and sediments back up into the water system and its going to come even more into peoples sinks. Referencing the 12 people who died from Legionnaires disease as a result of the switch in water source, Gladyes stated, Its already 70 degrees here today, by July, August you want to talk about bacteria? You watch the spike in bacteria, airborne, peoples lungs, pneumonia. Look at the cases coming in. Gladyess concerns were echoed in a report by the online Brigemagazine that reported the number of pneumonia-related deaths doubled in Genesee County, where Flint is located, during the years the city was using the Flint River for drinking water. While the official count is that 12 people died, Genesee County Health and Human Services said that 87 people died of pneumonia in 2015 and 90 in 2014. This was a dramatic increase from 53 deaths in 2013. Legionnaires is a respiratory disease caused by the Legionella bacteria. Medical experts told Bridge there is no way to know how many cases were Legionnaires disease because county and state officials did not order testing on those patients. Florissa [a friend who lives in Flint] needs to go into her house and get her family pictures, but she cannot even go into the house because its so bad with airborne bacteria. Its a rare strain of bacteria that Florissa is affected by and it is very deadly. Thats how bad this water is. Her home has been declared an environmental zoning area. Its not considered residential anymore. Its been rezoned. They didnt even put up the information. Look it up. The way they have it now no home should be in Flint. My home is now worth nothing. Where would I go with a $25,000 income. Im not going into a gutter. Its not enough to move. Ive jumped out of the class action lawsuit and retained my own attorney. I took the appraisal for $22,000 on my home to my attorney. I added it onto my lawsuit. What does the governor owe me? He owes me my home. He owes me my lungs. He owes me my dogs health. My dog is sick. My dog is on two heart pills. Theyve destroyed my life. Flint was the birthplace, nearly 100 years ago, of General Motors, and the source of billions of dollars of corporate profits over generations. Dubbed Vehicle City, it was also the birthplace of the United Auto Workers in the famous sit-down strikes of 193637. By 1960 it boasted the high per capita income in the US. Over the last 35 years the city has been devastated by plant closures, aided and abetted by the UAW. GM has reduced employment in the city from 80,000 to 5,500. It has shut down and flattened the sit-down plant Chevy in the Hole as well as Buick City, which alone once employed 28,000 workers. Exacting huge tax cuts and polluting the Flint River with impunity, GM has left its birthplace in ruins. While GMwhich was bailed out in 2009handed over tens of billions to wealthy investors in the form of dividend payments and stock buybacks. Meanwhile Flint city officials said they did not have $80 to $100 a day to treat the water supply with phosphates that would have coated the pipes and prevented the escape of lead and copper into the water supply. GM pulled out of Flint and left us out to dry, said Gladyes. What theyve done to Flintbetween bad government and an aging pipe system that got flushed with the Flint Rivertheyve eradicated who knows how many generations. Will we ever know how bad it really is? I watched this for three years. What have we gained? Lansing, the city of Flint, the United Way, the Red Cross, the Mott Foundationfoundations have sprung up here in Flint and they have gotten rich. Theyve gotten all kinds of money. In 2014, Gladyes, along with Lee Ann Walter, Melissa Mays and Tony Palladeno, Jr. challenged the Flint Emergency Manger, the mayor at that time, Democratic Dayne Wallingand state and local officials on the toxic nature of the water. After Walling went on television to tell Flint citizens to drink the water, Gladyes said she decided to back Karen Weaver, a local psychologist, who decided to challenge Wallings bid for re-election. Im not surprised there are three recalls against Weaver, stated Gladyes now thoroughly disgusted with Weaver. Are you surprised? I will not entertain this any more. I believed in her. I stood over at the elementary school and told people dont vote for Walling, he was the yes-man. Mayor Weaver can give Gilchrist [consultant Aonie Gilcreast] $140,000 in retroactive pay without putting it through city council. She went around the council and took it out of water fundswater funds! Now Im sitting here with a copper water service line that will never get replaced. But she can dole out money to a volunteer that helped her get into office and cradled her. What has Weaver done? She has cost the taxpayers of Flint with a garbage company that was under indictment, Rizzo. Woodrow Stanley [the former mayor of Flint who was later hired by Rizzo] got $100,000 in consultant fees from Rizzo. Weaver was in on that. She stood right behind Rizzo, knowing they were under federal indictment and there was all kinds of shady things going on. In three years Ive learned a lot. The event at the church where six people were arrested was a setup. Weaver decided to have a town hall meeting, which is supposed to be for all religions, races, gender identification at a church. That venue was a setup. And look at the rally today. I didnt see anybody from the House of Prayer [where the town hall meeting and arrests took place] there. Shes been in office for two years and things are not any better. They are all for capitalism. Thats their god, plain and simple. What goes on in [the state government in] Lansing also goes on right here in Flint and goes on in Washington. Its capitalism. Its got a foothold on America; well, its got a foothold on the world. People dont see that. The politicians are lobbyists for capitalism. The use of race to divide the working class Gladyes was especially angry about the recent report by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, which charged that the cause of the water crisis in Flint was racism. I hate the use of the race card, stated Gladyes emphatically. If they can divide the working class, they can win. Snyder brought the Civil Rights Commission in here. They wore suits, got travel expenses, but what did Flint get? Nothing, only more division. Listen, white and black water faucets went out (of use) in the 1960s. When they say this is about color, no it isnt. Those who say that are not looking, theyre blinking, theyre not seeing. This is not about color, its about harnessing and dividing a group a people. When you make them fight each other, then capitalism can just move right along and keep taking, taking and taking. Gladyes noted that Clinton and Sanders promoted race during the Democratic primaries when they came to Flint to debate in 2016. At one point, Gladyes said, she was a supporter of Sanders who claimed to be a socialist. At the same time, many people in Flint believed in Obama because he was African American and they thought he would come to the aid of the people suffering from toxic poisons. In three years, Ive seen a lot and learned a lot. Weve watched Clinton come in here, we watched Bernie Sanders come in here, weve watched the president [Obama] come in here, weve watched [US Congressman] Dan Kildee come and go, weve watched Sheldon Neely, our state representative, come and go and what have they done? That would be nothing. Above all, Ive been able to see what true socialism is, especially after listening to the historical lectures about the Russian Revolution on the WSWS. The Democratic or Republican partiesnone of themare going to save us. Im not buying it. They may have people fooled, but they havent got this girl fooled. Members and supporters of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) visited Chavakachcheri, a small town, about 25 kilometres from Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, as a part of the campaign by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to demand the freedom of the Maruti Suzuki workers in India. Thirteen autoworkers have been condemned to life imprisonment on bogus murder charges. The Indian and state of Haryana governments, along with the corporations, are using the witch hunt to reassure foreign investors that they will crush worker opposition to low-wages, precarious contract labour and brutal exploitation. Distributing copies of ICFI statements, the campaigners discussed the international significance of the case with workers and small traders in the town. The area suffered severely during the communal war carried out by successive Colombo governments against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Workers and small traders in the town expressed their support for ICFI campaign and denounced the frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers. They discussed their oppressive conditions, saying that they were similar to what autoworkers face at the Japanese-owned assembly plant in Manesar. Niruban, a railway worker, is a temporary employee like many of the Maruti Suzuki workers. I have no permanent appointment in the railway although I have been working there for two years. Because of the coming local government elections there might be a chance to get hired full-time but it is not sure. I support the campaign of your party and oppose the life sentences imposed on these poor workers by an Indian court without any evidence. They should be released. I support your campaign for the release of the Maruti Suzuki workers, because we all are workers, Ceylon Transport Board (CTB) employee Uthayakumar said. All governments support the employers to suppress the workers. The people of Tamil Nadu [in southern India] raised their voices for us when we were suffering during the war. Similarly we have to give voice for their [Maruti Suzuki workers] release. He also criticised the Tamil bourgeois parties collaborating with New Delhi, which supported former President Mahinda Rajapakses war on the LTTE. The Indian government has suppressed the struggles in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The war ended with the co-operation of India with heavy human losses. The Tamil parties still work with India. Just like Maruti Suzuki there are about 25 people working temporary here at the CTB. Every year they are fired and re-hired. By doing so, management keeps them as new workers continuously and they dont get the benefits the permanent workers have. Ruben, a photo framing worker, asked the campaigner why the SEP is fighting to release Maruti Suzuki workers in India while there are so many local issues. There are many problems here. People are fighting for the release of their lands from military occupation, relatives of disappeared persons are protesting and the unemployed graduates are campaigning for jobs. Dont you fight for these? Why are you conducting a struggle for the Maruti Suzuki workers' problems, he asked. The SEP members explained the unique record of the SEP in fighting for the democratic rights of Tamil people, particularly against the nearly three-decade communalist war, which was based on the partys socialist program and fight to unify Sinhala and Tamil workers. They pointed out that the frame-up of Maruti Suzuki workers was not an isolated Indian event but the most extreme example of the class war being conducted against workers throughout the world. In Sri Lanka, they explained, workers are being subjected to repressive measures by employers and governments. Under such conditions, the only way to fight these attacks is to mobilise the industrial and independent political strength of the working class internationally. Ruben expressed his agreement, We have not had regular jobs here since the end of the war. In the guise of self-employment, the banks are giving loans. All people are debtors. This is the result of the war. Madhan, a vegetable vendor, explained how Sri Lankan authorities work in the same manner as their Indian counterparts in trampling basic democratic rights. I want the Indian workers to be released. Just like in India, the courts here are punishing people for what they think. Police autocratically arrest people. It is scary to intervene in any public issue, he said. Commenting on the Tamil bourgeois parties, he added, The leaders we voted for do not care for us after they come to power. Im talking about the Tamil National Alliance [TNA]. If we go to their offices for any purpose, they ask us to come with letters. Then they postpone it for tomorrow. The TNA is united with the government. He pointed to conditions of Tamil people in the north and east. Many people [who lost their houses during the war] have not been provided houses eight years after the end of the war. The military will not withdraw from peoples private lands that they are occupying. During the final battle, my brother was killed by the military shell attack. He had three children. I have to maintain three families on the small income earned through this vegetable business. Madhan immediately compared his situation with the suffering of the families of the imprisoned Maruti Suzuki. It is sad and similar. Who is taking care of their families who are experiencing great difficulties? They say India is becoming a major power but there are problems like poverty, water and the farmers are struggling. The Indian government has no solution for that. Selvarasa, another vegetable vender, added, Those workers must be released. Everywhere there are problems. We voted for the TNA but they favour their own people. My son studied and worked in the harbour but they suspected that he was a supporter of the LTTE and fired him. Hari, a shop worker, said the media had not publicised the case of the Maruti Suzuki workers. This means workers in India are being treated as slaves. I studied up to advanced level [university entrance] but I could not find a suitable job. How do we get a job when graduates do not have a job? I support your campaign. S. Ketheeswaran, a shopkeeper, added, The democratic rights of Indian workers must be protected. Likewise, the rights of workers and people here should be protected. The struggle for land, the struggle for disappeared persons and the struggle to release political prisoners should be addressed. Child labour is high in this war-affected area. Some of the poverty-stricken children are employed for one vadai [a small fried dough snack], one tea and 200 or 300 rupees [US $1.33 or $2] per day. Another shop keeper joined the discussion and said he had not heard about the persecuted Indian workers: I learned about this frame-up through your leaflet. I cannot understand why the media are covering up this problem. As you said all the parties in India, in particular the BJP [the ruling Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party], Congress and Dravidian parties are silent about this. I condemn it. The result of the first round of the French elections has generally been welcomed by the political establishment and the official media in Britain as the best outcome. Under conditions in which it was clear Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front would get through to the second round on May 7, it was widely hoped that Emmanuel Macron (En Marche!) would be her contender. As a former Rothschild banker, committed to neo-liberalism, austerity and smashing up workers rights, Britains ruling elite and its media mouthpieces welcome Macron as one of their own. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May gave her implicit endorsement when she met Macron in London in February. George Freeman, chairman of Mays policy unit and a close friend of Macron, has described the front-runner as the French John F. Kennedy. Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne tweeted, Congratulations to my friend @EmmanuelMacron. Proof you can win from the centre. At last, the chance for the leadership that France needs. Even though Le Pens policiesespecially as regards the European Union and anti-immigrant xenophobiaare closer to the ruling Conservative government, the NFs right populism and the possibility of her provoking a backlash among workers is regarded as too risky by London. In addition, Le Pen is seen as pro-Russian and someone that could weaken NATOs war mongering against Moscow. While the Conservative government is committed to a hard Brexit, it hopes to position itself as the foremost ally of the United States within Europe in the drive against Russia. Following the result, the Financial Times editorialised, Europe has breathed a collective sigh of relief... The French electorate is now faced with a stark choice: between preserving the liberal world order and Frances place in it, or voting to tear it upas Ms Le Pen would have her compatriots do. Overwhelmingly, however, the French elections are viewed through the narrow national prism of their potential use value for negotiations concerning Britains exit from the EU and their impact on the snap general election called by May for June 8. And here, a Macron victory in France just one month before the UK goes to the polls is seen as a mixed blessing. Prior to last Junes referendum on EU membership in the UK, Macron had said a Leave vote would mean the UK becoming a trading post and arbitration place at Europes border. He subsequently described Brexit as a crime and has argued for a very firm message and timetable on its consequences. In the interests of the EU, we cant leave any margin of ambiguity or let too much time go by, he said. Youre either in or youre out. Macron ran as the most pro-EU of all the candidates in France, and has said he is committed to reviving the Franco-German engine. His victory in the first stage has been welcomed enthusiastically in Berlin, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker broke with protocol to congratulate Macron and endorse him in the second round. His alliance with Berlin is regarded as worrying by the British ruling elite. Macron has described the French-German axis as the core of the [EU] reactor and the pre-requisite for any progress. He has pledged to restore the credibility of France in the eyes of Germany by undertaking far-reaching labour and welfare reforms and has spoken in favour of a multi-speed Europe. Making overtures to Berlin nevertheless come with a price tag. Macron has described the euro as a sort of weak Deutschmark, called for Germany to grant Paris greater monetary and fiscal laxity and has voiced support for a Europe of sovereignty. For some, such as Francois Godement writing for the European Council on Foreign Relations, A victory by Macron would be a giant step forward for the deepening of the European core and in fact a direct challenge to German leaders to make good on the federalist and integrative aspirations that they sometimes exhibit. Calculating that Macron will need allies in standing up to Germany, sections of the media speculate he will prove more amenable to British demands. Writing in the Times, Oliver Wright noted that Macrons chief policy adviser, Jean Pisani-Ferry, was the lead author of a report proposing a continental partnership between the EU and the UK. The report proposed that London be allowed to take back control of labour mobility while continuing to participate in most aspects of the single marketa policy in line with Mays preferred option. Others have expressed hope that Macrons hardline stance on Brexit is purely for domestic consumption and that, if he defeats Le Pen convincingly, he will take a softer line. James Blitz, Financial Times, reasoned that this was possible given, France wants to retain close diplomatic and security ties with the British and Mr Macron is unlikely to want to change this. Even so, his election could make matters tougher for the UK. Sky News argued a Macron victory would mean the EU could afford to be more generous to UK demands as thered be less need for the EU to be seen to be hard on Britain to deter others from leaving the club too. Matthew Elliott, from the Legatum Institute think tank allied to the private-investment firm, and a pro-Brexit campaigner, opined that a Macron victory will create greater political stability, making the Brexit negotiations less complex. But for the hard line Conservative Telegraph newspaper, Macron is bad for Brexit and Theresa May as his opposition to granting a tailor-made approach to the UK, is an explicit rejection of Mrs Mays idea that Britain should leave the EU, but remain a key part of Europe. The Tory Spectato r magazine asked, The best argument thus far adduced for Macron is that he is not Marine Le Pen, but is this enough? Writing before the conclusion of the first round, Jonathan Miller complained that Macrons superficial moderation conceals an impossible project. His manifesto resembles a box of chocolates from one of those upscale confiseries on the Rue Jacob: full of soft centres. Pledges to fix the education and health system and support the police went hand in glove with promises to hand out billions in new benefits and tax cuts to the young, the old and everyone in between. How he would pay for it is unclear. The right-wing media are especially concerned that Macron will be unable to enforce his agenda under conditions of widespread political alienation and deep hostility to the ruling elite. They anticipate that, even if he wins the second round, he will receive nothing like the 82 percent mandate secured by Jacques Chirac in the 2002 run-off against Le Pens father, Jean-Marie. Several forecast that he will perform poorly in Junes legislative elections, making him a lame duck president. It is a measure of the right-wing character of the upper middle class, liberal cheer leaders for the EU that they are the biggest champions of Macron. Writing in the Guardian before the election, Martin Kettle argued that a Macron victory would be much the best outcome among the available choices, not just for France but for the EU. And that means, though Theresa May will be loth to admit it, a Macron win would ultimately be good for Britain too. While A Macron presidency is unlikely to be robust and strong. Many of his reforms will be opposed, Kettle wrote, but his victory would be a harbinger for the importance of future-focused centrist politics, economic and social reform, and international cooperation. Kettle expressed his frustration that there is a large Macron-shaped hole in the centre of British party politics, which Labour and the Liberal Democrats, under their current leadership, were unable to fill. But somehow, some time, someone will have to fill it. Writing in the Independent, former Labour MP Denis MacShane, complained President Trumps statement to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that he would prefer to start on a US-EU free trade deal, meant all claims that a Brexit Britain would get preferential treatment in Washington have been deleted Now, if May could temper her language and Labour find words on Europe which make sense, there was a chance that the Conservative leader, having won the general election, could forge a defence and security relationship with Macron and put Britain back into play as a European power. Nearly three years ago, the World Socialist Web Site published a Perspective that posed the question Are you ready for nuclear war? At that time, the United States government was accusing the Kremlin, without any evidence, of shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. As a result of these provocations, tensions between the United States and Russia rose to heights unseen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Tensions globally are even greater today. By directing the naval strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and the USS Michigan nuclear submarine to the Sea of Japan, the Trump administration has escalated the already acute confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. Through these actions, Washington is provoking a conflict that could draw in nuclear-armed China and Russia, both of which have borders with North Korea. Such a war threatens the nearly 76 million people who live in North and South Korea. It also has a high potential of involving the 127 million people who live in Japan, which would be in the direct line of fire of any war with North Korea. What goes unmentioned by government officials of the US and its alliesmuch less the corporate mediaare these millions of people who are likely to die in a war between the US and North Korea, particularly if nuclear weapons are used. The devastation of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula would not be a regional affair, but a direct threat to the entire ecosystem of Earth. As part of our continuing discussion with scientists and experts on the threats posed by nuclear war, the World Socialist Web Site spoke with climate scientist Michael Mills, who has studied the climatic effects of nuclear detonations for nearly a decade. As part of his work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and on the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling team, he has looked at how nuclear weapons can create firestorms, turning whole cities and their inhabitants into nothing more than ash, soot and debris. * * * Bryan Dyne: What would happen to a city in a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea? Michael Mills: Our work is based on the idea that if a nuclear bomb exploded over a large modern city, the explosion would cause fires that would ignite over the entire area, eventually becoming what is known as a firestorm. This means that the fires have become so hot that the city itself becomes fuel for the fire, which releases much more energy than the nuclear weapon itself. This is what happened during the incendiary bombings of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Essentially, if a city is ignited on this scale, the fires produce millions of tons of black smoke, also called soot, from the burning buildings and other materials. Heat from the fires causes the soot-filled air to rise, and the soot absorbs sunlight, further heating the air so that it rises into the stratosphere, 10 to 30 miles above Earths surface. These particles are so high that they dont get rained out, since there is no weather in the stratosphere. So it can take decades for the soot to settle back down to the surface. The main effect from all this soot being trapped in the stratosphere is that it continuously absorbs sunlight. In our models, which are based off of the detonation of 100 small nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan, global temperatures become the coldest theyve been in the past 1,000 years. In a big exchange between major powers, you basically get ice age temperatures. The second problem is that heating up the stratosphere destroys up to 50 percent the ozone layer by producing changes in the chemical reaction rates that produce ozone. While this happens today in Antarctica, that is a seasonal effect that occurs in the Antarctic spring and early summer. The loss of ozone from stratospheric heating is constant and worldwide. As a result, crops and ecosystems face not only freezing temperatures, but also intense ultraviolet light from the Sun as a result of a diminished ozone layer. This research is not something that Ive ever been funded to study. Ive been able to pursue this in my spare time because I work on models of atmospheric chemistry and climate and it seemed like a very important issue to me. I usually work on the climatic effects of particles from volcanoes, which are liquid droplets that tend to scatter light rather than absorbing it. They have a similar cooling effect in that after a volcanic eruption, these droplets are ejected into the stratosphere and reflect sunlight away from Earth. But the black absorbing smoke particles are much more effective at the same thing. They have a bigger effect on the Suns radiation than the volcanic particles. BD: Whats the significance of using a model of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? MM: The initial motivation for our recent studies is that we wanted to revisit the nuclear war studies that were done in the 1980s, using the vastly more sophisticated climate models that had been developed since. So Alan Robock looked at impacts of a war between the US and Russia using a NASA climate model. But we also wanted to look at the increasing number of new nuclear powers and their expanding arsenals. The India-Pakistan scenario served to show that even relatively small nuclear weapons can have a global effect. In 2007, when I was working on this with Brian Toon, each country had only about 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons each, the smallest nuclear weapons in existence. Even an exchange with these weapons, which are much smaller than those used by the US, Russia, Britain or France, can still cause global planetary environmental damage from the smoke thats released. Brian Toon was trying to get the people in the military interested in paying attention to this issue. The United States has a current arsenal of about 1,700 nuclear weapons. Its difficult to justify having so many because even if you used them and no enemy retaliated, you would suffer from the global effects. BD: In that vein, is there such a thing as a limited nuclear war? MM: We obviously had a limited nuclear war in World War II when the US used its entire stockpile of nuclear weapons, which was two. Given the number of weapons that now exist, however, once you start using them you quickly reach a point where you are producing so much damage to millions of people. And then there are the smoke effects, which damage the whole planet. I think people in charge of making military decisions need to be well aware that the idea of a limited nuclear war is a very dangerous concept. BD: Could you go a bit more into the science of how the cities are turned into smoke? MM: The firestorm was something that the Allies intentionally devised in World War II in raids against Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, with many, many incendiary bombs designed to ignite fires close to one another. When you have fires all over a city, they tend to join together and intensify, creating temperatures so hot that even asphalt and concrete become fuel. Thats where the black smoke comes from. As we saw with Hiroshima, when you detonate a nuclear weapon in the air above a city, it has the same effect of igniting fires all over the city. The heat from the fires then acts like a thunderstorm, lifting air up very quickly. This means that air has to come in from below to replace it. So from all directions, air gets sucked in, adding more oxygen to the fire. Moreover, the air is so fast that it carries with it debris, animals and even people. To quote from the book Fire and Ice by David Fisher: On July 27, 1943 nearly a thousand British bombers dropped over two thousand tons of bombs on Hamburg, most of them incendiaries, turning that city into a burning, melting quagmire of horror. The temperature reached one thousand degrees in the center of town, igniting the world's first firestorm. The superheated air rose so fast it sucked in outside air in the form of hurricane-strength winds, which force-fed the fire still further and blew helpless people like leaves into the burning center of destruction where they actually melted into pools of burning fat. On the outskirts of the storm other people were stuck in molten asphalt, suffocating and igniting. More than 40,000 people died that night. In the early spring of 1945 the American Twentieth Air Force topped the RAF's record by burning Tokyo, starting a conflagration that totaled sixteen square miles of intensely populated city, killing more than 80,000 people. BD: Are the fires something that can be started by radioactive fallout or is it just the initial explosion of the bomb? MM: There are two kinds of ways of dropping a nuclear bomb over a city: there is an airburst, where it explodes high, and there is a ground burst, when it explodes when it hits the ground. Airbursts are most effective at creating firestorms, igniting cities. And its much more widespread damage than a ground burst. Ground bursts are what create fallout, which is when it sends up material from the ground that is radioactive, which can spread in the wind. There would be more fallout from a ground burst, and more fire from an airburst. BD: What would the world look like after a nuclear exchange between the US and China? MM: In that case, you're talking about two powers with very large stockpiles of nuclear weapons. You could get a tremendous amount of smoke if you started dropping bombs in cities across the US and China. Thats the sort of thing that Alan Robock modeled in a US/Russia war. Its what we call a true nuclear winter, in the sense that in some places in the interior of continents, for example in Ukraine, the temperatures remain below freezing all year long, so you can't grow crops at all under those conditions. Similar things happen in the center of the US and China. On all continents, basically. You have global average temperatures that get basically as cold, for a year or so, as what we had in the last ice age. BD: What would happen after the first year? MM: When we modeled an India/Pakistan war in 2014, we found that when you include interactive components in your model, such as the effects of the full ocean, expanding sea ice, that the changes to climate are more prolonged. This is largely thanks to the oceans ability to store lots of heat. Although global temperatures cool more slowly when one considers the ocean, the lower temperatures are more prolonged. After 24 years of our simulation, temperatures were still below normal, whereas in other studies that didnt include the full impact of the oceans, they showed that the temperatures had recovered in ten years. And this is a small nuclear war. Its really hard to say how much destruction something like this would cause, how many species would be wiped out and if ours would be among them or not. What Ive studied shows that even a small event could cascade. Weve seen food shortages in the past few decades that have been intensified by societal reactions. There was a global rice crisis in 2008 after India and Vietnam stopped exporting rice, for example, leading to a severe shortage in the Philippines and food riots in Haiti. Certainly food shortages have been tied to uprisings in the Arab Spring. So all sorts of things could happen that are destabilizing. But with a large war, its somewhat unknowable, but also so horrific it doesnt matter exactly how damaging it is. Five months ahead of the September general election, New Zealands National Party government and the countrys opposition parties are all promoting policies to slash immigrant numbers. On April 19, the government announced a policy to prevent migrants from obtaining a Skilled Migrant Visa if they earn below New Zealands median annual income of $49,000. The change means thousands of low-paid migrant workers may struggle to obtain a visa. They will find it harder to obtain permanent residency, because their work will no longer count as skilled. The change follows cuts to visa numbers announced last October. The skilled migrant category was tightened and the right of migrants to bring parents to New Zealand was removed. The anti-immigrant measures are part of the shift in ruling circles throughout the world toward more extreme forms of nationalism, aimed at dividing the working class by scapegoating foreigners for the worsening economic and social crisis. The Trump administration in the United States is leading the way with its America first rhetoric and vicious attacks on Muslims and Mexican immigrants. The announcement in New Zealand came a day after the Australian government unveiled restrictions on immigration, including tougher English language tests and a requirement that migrants show allegiance to Australia and unspecified Australian values. This lays the basis for the interrogation and surveillance of migrants and increased discrimination on the grounds of nationality, religion or politics. In both countries, the entire political establishment is clamouring for greater attacks on the rights of immigrants. New Zealands opposition Labour Party denounced the National government from the right for only tinkering with immigration settings. Labour Party leader Andrew Little described the current policy as open slather, telling the media he wanted immigration cut by tens of thousands. The government has not given any estimate of how many migrants would be barred under its proposed changes. For the 12 months to February, net migration was 71,333. Little told TV3 he wanted this slashed by as many as 50,000 people. Littles statement was supported by Labours new deputy leader Jacinda Ardern, who has appeared at anti-Trump rallies and is falsely portrayed as a progressive figure. Little told the New Zealand Herald it was too easy [for employers] to get somebody from overseas and keep locals out of work. He said Auckland, the countrys largest city, where a third of the population was born overseas, was absolutely packed You see it in the congestion. You see it in not enough housing. You see it in overcrowded schools. In fact, the social crisis is the result of the pro-business agenda pursued by successive governments, including the 19992008 Labour government. Every wing of the political establishment supports cutbacks to the funding of basic services and has encouraged property speculation, pushing up the cost of housing. Recent years have seen thousands of redundancies in the public service, local councils and state-owned companies like Solid Energy and New Zealand Post, with no opposition from Labour and the trade union bureaucracy. Labour has joined the overtly anti-Asian New Zealand First Party in blaming migrants for the social inequality produced by nearly a decade of austerity. At a recent meeting of the senior citizens group Grey Power in Upper Hutt, NZ First leader Winston Peters declared: Ninety-one thousand young New Zealanders not in training, not in education, not employed. Why should they compete with someone from Shanghai? Labour and New Zealand First have sought to whip up xenophobia against migrants from China, India and the Pacific region. Like Trump, NZ First has also demonised Muslim immigrants as potential terrorists. The Labour Party hopes to form a coalition government with NZ First and the Green Party, which wants a similarly drastic cut to immigration. In an interview posted on the web site the Spinoff on March 31, Greens co-leader Metiria Turei said her party would not welcome a visit by Trump, calling him a misogynist and racist. However, the Greens have no principled opposition to racism and xenophobia. In the same interview Turei and fellow co-leader James Shaw declared they were happy to collaborate in government with NZ First. Turei noted that Peters had racist views but added: I really like him hes given me really good political advice in the past I admire his tenacity, his staying put. For a Maori man in New Zealand politics, hes been there for a really long time. The trade union bureaucracy has likewise scapegoated foreigners for poor wages and unemployment. A statement by the Council of Trade Unions feigned sympathy for exploited migrant workers but praised the governments policy announcement and said there was a need [for immigration] to be reined in to better protect New Zealand workers and those looking for work. This nationalist outlook is reflected on the Daily Blog, which is funded by several trade unions. In a vicious anti-Chinese article on March 28, editor Martyn Bradbury declared: The last bloody thing we need is MORE Chinese tourism bringing more hungry speculators into a country crippled by a lack of infrastructure investment and housing crisis. Echoing NZ First, Bradbury accused the government of being wedded and compromised personally to wealthy Chinese interests National have sold our economy to China and our mass surveillance to America. These ludicrous and racist denunciations are intended to divide workers along ethnic and national lines and subordinate them to parties of big business and the pro-capitalist unions. These same organisations have spent decades enforcing redundancies and wage cuts in the name of making New Zealand businesses internationally competitive. Labour and its allies are stoking anti-Chinese sentiment in order to pressure the government to further strengthen its support for US war preparations against China. The National Party maintains a close military and intelligence alliance with the US, and supports Washingtons military build-up in Asia, but has been reluctant to openly denounce China. Labour and NZ First have both called for more military spending to improve interoperability with US forces. Workers can only defend their interests if they reject the efforts of the political elite and the unions to divide workers based on race and nationality. A campaign must be waged to defend immigrants: workers should be allowed to live in whatever country they choose, with full citizenship rights. This is an essential part of the fight to unite the working class internationally against the capitalist system, which is the source of poverty, inequality and war. The author also recommends: New Zealand government refuses to condemn Trumps anti-immigrant bans [7 February 2017] Report reveals rampant exploitation of migrant workers [30 December 2016] Mana Party supports Labours anti-Chinese campaign [5 August 2015] New Zealand First attacks Pacific Island immigrants [11 July 2015] Addressing a large group of RSS functionaries and volunteers in Agra, UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya said that in the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP will win all 13 parliamentary seats in the Braj region. By Siraj Qureshi: Having won the 2017 UP Assembly elections with an overwhelming majority, the BJP has now set its focus on the 2019 general elections, with its leaders already entering the electoral mode in their political meetings. Addressing a large group of RSS functionaries and volunteers in Agra, UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya said that in the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP will win all 13 parliamentary seats in the Braj region. The way to victory in 2019 will go through the Braj region. He said that the UP victory ensured the stupendous victory in Delhi MCD elections. advertisement Answering a question, Maurya said that some people are deliberately trying to create a wedge between the organization and the government, but it was his effort that such people do not succeed in any way. The government's image has to remain intact, but the organization should not be allowed to go weak. HERE IS HOW MAURYA PLANS TO WIN 13 PARLIAMENTARY SEATS He said that the 35-day-old Yogi government in UP is ensuring that PM Modi's public welfare schemes should reach each and every person in the state and the organization will have to assist the government in this monumental task. He said that the government is from the organization, but the organization is not from the government and no harm should come upon the organization's reputation. Talking about Agra's development, Maurya said that the Akhilesh Yadav government had claimed to make Agra and international city, but that claim never took off the ground. Now, the BJP will prove that it does what it says. The Yogi government will work on the principle of 'Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas' and there will be no partiality in the state. He said that Agra is known globally because of the Taj Mahal and this district will be developed as a model district, with other districts being developed on its lines. Maurya said that the basic infrastructure will be the primary focus of the Yogi government and that includes the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' which is a national movement in which the Prime Minister himself held a broom and cleaned the streets, giving a message of cleanliness to the country. He said that the schemes for the welfare of the poor will be made more efficient and the officials will be asked to upload their survey reports with photographs on the government website. Talking about recent incidents in Agra where there were clashes between the police and Hindu activists, Maurya said that the police uniform bodes a sense of security among the people and there should be no injustice done by someone wearing this uniform. He said that the complainants should be treated nicely and with respect at the police stations and the government will ensure that this happens very soon. He advised the government officers to each adopt a school and pay attention to the upgradation of education facilities in that school, while ensuring that the quality of education also undergoes an upgrade. Maurya declared that all the previous works done by the Akhilesh Yadav government will be inquired into. He said that the farmers will get better prices of their produce under the Yogi government and their loans are also being waived off. The SP government's industrial policy is being entirely changed. All poor Muslim girls will be married off by the government in 'Samoohik Vivahs' and will be given 20 thousand each on that occasion. He said that to prevent illegal mining, a task force was being setup. Commenting on the former UP CM, Maurya said that Akhilesh should now take some rest as the state was in good hands and was working better than in his rule. Also read: Yogi Raj: UP ministers conduct surprise checks, Keshav Prasad Maurya finds PWD office in disarray 'I am the sahyogi and our dear Chief Minister Adityanathji is the Yogi' --- ENDS --- The Parti de l'egalite socialiste, the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), calls on workers and youth to boycott the second round of the French presidential election. The PES rejects the claim that workers must support ex-Rothschild banker and Socialist Party (PS) Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron against the neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen. The arguments put forward to try to blackmail the French people into voting for Macron are a combination of sophistries and lies. First we are told that a Macron vote is a vote for democracy against the threat of dictatorship. But France was placed under a state of emergency by the PS government of which Macron was a part. Democratic rights were suspended, and behind the backs of the French people President Francois Hollande, acting on his own say-so, re-introduced a policy of extra-judicial killing. Next we are told that Macrons opposition to Le Pens nationalism is the only way to hold the European Union (EU) together and keep France and Europe from falling back into nationalism and war. But it is Macron, the EU supporter, who is proposing a return of the military draft and backing the imperialist war drive led by Washington and Berlin against Syria, Russia and North Korea. Finally, we are reminded that the neo-fascists are bitter enemies of the working class. This is true. But Macron was part of the PS government that sought to inscribe in the French Constitution the principle of deprivation of nationality, the legal basis for the deportation of Jews to the death camps during the Occupation. He is pledged to make tens of billions of euros in social cuts and use the PS regressive labor law to tear up social rights won by workers over generations of struggle in the course of the 20th century. Marine Le Pen is a vicious reactionary, appealing to anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. Her National Front (FN) descends from the Nazi-collaborationist regime that ruled France during World War II. The critical issue, however, is the development of opposition in the working class to both Macron and Le Pen from the left. Otherwise, Le Pen will be free to use her populist and protectionist demagogy to continue posturing as the Joan of Arc of French working people. The purpose of an active boycott of the election is to prepare the working class for struggle, regardless of which reactionary candidate wins the second round. The active boycott call is made not from the standpoint of parliamentary calculations, but the dynamic of the class struggle. With the elimination of the Socialist Party (PS) and The Republicans (LR) candidates in the first round, France is passing through a historic collapse of the two-party system that ruled the country for 50 years. The fact that Macron and Le Pen have emerged in the second round shows that a bitter confrontation is being prepared between the incoming president and the working class, amid explosive social anger over unemployment, austerity and growing economic inequality. The PES call for an active boycott has nothing in common with political passivity or indifference. It entails a campaign of public meetings to oppose both reactionary candidates, calls for demonstrations and the encouragement of political strikes and struggles by workers. It is a means for the working class to break the straitjacket imposed on it by the elections and gather strength for a decisive struggle against the capitalist class, which is set on a course of dictatorship and war both in France and internationally. The response to this crisis of Jean-Luc Melenchons Unsubmissive France movement (UF, formerly the Left Front) offers no way forward. Melenchon won nearly 20 percent of the vote amid a surge of anti-war sentiment after the April 7 US bombing of Syria. He carried Marseille, Toulouse, Lille and the working class suburbs of northern Paris. Now, the former PS minister is proposing to poll UFs 440,000 Internet members, offering them the choice of backing a Macron vote, a blank vote or abstention. This is a cowardly evasion of political responsibility, effectively subordinating Melenchons 7 million voters to the PS yet again by offering them the choice between backing Macron or the dead end of a symbolic, one-time gesture carried out alone in the voting booth. The PES is aware that among Melenchons voters there are countless workers, youth and students who hate everything Le Pen stands for, despise Macron, and instinctively sense there is something ugly and horrible about the choice they are being given. They are looking for a way forward. It is critical that, unlike in 2002the last time that the FN advanced to the second round and faced conservative candidate Jacques Chiracthey not be railroaded by the PS and its political allies into the blind alley of a vote for the FNs bourgeois opponent. The working class is making enormous political experiences regarding the bitter costs of opportunism and the rejection of revolutionary principles. The PS and its allies proved not to be socialist organizations, but tools of finance capital and enemies of the workers, whom they oppressed for decades. The PES insists that, on this centenary of the October Revolution, the only way forward is for the working class in France and internationally to renew its ties to the struggles of the Bolshevik Party and the Russian working class in 1917. Macron and Le Pen are forms of the same disease: the capitalist system, which is rotting on its feet. An active boycott of the election will prepare the way for a struggle by the working class against war, austerity and dictatorship. This means a fight to break the stranglehold of the capitalists over the economy through the nationalization of the corporations and banks under the democratic control of the working class, and the victory of socialism in France, Europe and internationally. The PES appeals to workers and youth who are opposed to the dead end of the French presidential election to fight for a boycott of the election in the working class, support the PES, study its program and join the struggle to build it as the political vanguard of the working class in France. The Trump administration is proposing the largest tax cut for the wealthy in American history. The plan outlined on Wednesday would transfer trillions of dollars from future tax collections into the pockets of the super-rich. Its purpose is twofold: to enrich the financial aristocracy and force the destruction of programs such as Social Security and Medicare by depriving the federal government of the revenue needed to fund them. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, chairman of Trumps National Economic Council, issued a one-page statement of principles at a White House press conference Wednesday afternoon, where they gave only a few highlights and took a handful of questions, which they largely avoided answering. The entire exercise seemed rushed. Press accounts suggest that the tax plan was thrown together in haste in response to mounting criticism from Wall Street, particularly in the wake of the abortive attempt to repeal Obamacare, that the administration was failing to live up to its commitments to carry out a major transfer of wealth from working people to the multi-millionaires. That said, the press conference Wednesday did give a glimpse of the naked personal greed that is a major driving force of American capitalist politics. Mnuchin and Cohn could scarcely control their excitement over what Cohn called a once in a generation opportunity to transform the tax code. The two former Goldman Sachs bankers, each worth more than half a billion dollars, spelled out the main features of a plan that will add to their own immense wealth. Among the main measures that will benefit those in the highest income brackets are: * Abolishing the estate tax, so that the wealthy can pass on their fortunes intact * Abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), established in response to widespread tax evasion by the wealthy * Cutting the tax rate for business profits taken as personal income (so-called pass-through income) from 39.6 percent to 15 percent * Cutting the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent * Ending the capital gains tax surcharge of 3.8 percent for Obamacare Many of these measures will benefit President Trump personally, particularly the abolition of the AMT. According to Trumps leaked 2005 partial tax return, he paid $38 million in income tax that year, rather than $5 million, because of the AMT. He also takes much of his real estate investment income in the form of pass throughs, for which the rate would be cut by more than half. Abolishing the estate tax, which currently applies only to fortunes of $5 million or more, would allow Trump to pass on his billions to his five children without them paying a penny. The same applies to Cohn (net worth $610 million) and Mnuchin (net worth $500 million). The tax bonanza for corporate America is even greater than that for wealthy individuals. The biggest single proposed cut is the reduction in the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, at an estimated cost of $2.4 trillion over the next ten years. In 2018 alone this action would cut the tax bill for corporations from $340 billion to $125 billion, a direct injection of $215 billion onto their bottom line. The bulk of those funds would be returned to wealthy shareholders via stock buybacks and dividends. Added to that is the proposed change in the taxation of US-based global corporations through the establishment of a territorial tax system, in which only income earned by the corporation within the United States would be subject to corporate income tax. Given the ability of corporations to manipulate the flow of income, there will be a renewed incentive to record income in overseas tax havens rather than in the US, and thus escape taxation altogether. This would be coupled with a one-time incentive for corporations to repatriate profits being held in offshore accounts. The rate at which these profits are taxed could be set as low as 5 percent, a huge boondoggle for a handful of corporations, including Apple and General Electric, which are holding trillions of dollars overseas. The business tax cuts are expected to win support from many congressional Democrats, who will verbally oppose the reduction to a 15 percent rate for corporate income, but trumpet a cut to 18 or 20 percent as an acceptable compromise forced on Trump by their supposedly determined resistance. The Obama administration had previously proposed a reduction in the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, and 25 percent for manufacturersa windfall of only $100 billion a yearwhile Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer is the co-author of a bipartisan plan to incentivize the repatriation of overseas profits through a tax holiday for the corporations involved. Ahead of Wednesdays announcement, Schumer struck a pose of opposition, declaring on the Senate floor, Thats not tax reform Thats just a tax giveaway to the very, very wealthy that will explode the deficit. The last phrase is the key. Opposition from Democrats, and some Republicans, will focus on the fiscal impact of the tax cuts. To the extent that tax cuts are enactedand they are virtually certain to pass in some formthere will be bipartisan demands that the cost of the handout to the wealthy be paid for through cuts in spending. These cuts will not be made in the gargantuan Pentagon budget, which will be increased, but rather in so-called entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the most expensive domestic social programs. This perspective was spelled out by the Washington Post in an editorial published on the eve of the tax plans release, bemoaning the effect of the tax cuts on the federal deficit without mentioning the issue of economic inequality and the plundering of the country for the benefit of the super-rich. The editorial concluded, For eight years, Republicans mercilessly attacked President Barack Obama for doing too little to cut federal deficits. Will they really turn around now and approve a budget-busting tax cut? The tax plan outlined Wednesday includes a number of provisions that will affect middle-income taxpayers, both positively and negatively. The net result cannot be seriously calculated because so many details remain undetermined. Cohn said the White House is proposing to double the standard income tax deduction to $24,000 for a married couple. This would be offset by the elimination of the tax deduction for employer-paid health insurance and for payment of state and local taxes. Lower income workers would gain nothing from the increased standard deduction, since they generally pay little or nothing in income taxes and are far more affected by payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, which would be unchanged under the Trump plan. Cohn and Mnuchin described the tax plan outlined Wednesday as an opening bid, preparatory to lengthy negotiations between the White House and Congress. There are two possible legislative tracksa bipartisan deal, which would require the support of at least eight Senate Democrats to overcome any filibuster, or passage under a procedure known as reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority but limits the duration of the tax cuts to a ten-year period. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a matter of great concern to India. By Press Trust of India: India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the External Affairs Ministry said today. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India as the former Indian Navy officer has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year on charges of espionage. advertisement "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our High Commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request on providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response," Baglay said. Also read: Hope for Kulbhushan Jadhav: India to ask for defence lawyer in Pakistan India still to receive copy of Kulbhushan Jadhav judgment from Pak Also watch: India demands consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav --- ENDS --- TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- Wednesday, the Florida House of Representatives passed "House Bill 81," a bill designed to tear down the liquor wall. Some call it the "Whiskey and Wheaties bill," and it's been sent to Governor Scott for a final decision. WTXL spoke with a local business owner who has been trying to protest this bill for weeks. One of his biggest concerns if this "Whiskey and Wheaties" bill becomes a law is that shops like his could close. Currently, Florida law states that liquor sales must take place in a either a stand alone or side-store separated by a wall. This is why some grocery stores have a liquor store outside the main store. If the "Whiskey and Wheaties" bill becomes a law, it would allow customers to buy whiskey and other spirits at the same place they buy their breakfast Wheaties and everyday groceries. Allowing big box stores to sell liquor means that local stores could see a decrease in customers. For some companies, that could be fatal. "We invest a lot of money in these businesses," says Manish Patel, the owner of Market Liquor. "We thought that the law we have will not let anybody to come and hurt us this way. So it's really going to put me out of business once they start doing it. I'm not going to be able to compete." Patel continued to tell WTXL that he put in a lot much money and has taken out numerous loans to pay for his storefronts and employees. If he had to close his stores, he would have to file bankruptcy, something no one wants to think about. Adding liquor to big box stores could make it easier for people to steal bottles of alcohol. Michael Doolan, a Market Liquor employee, asked, "You don't think there will be somebody that will snag a bottle and take it to the bathroom in a Walmart, chug part of it, and leave the rest of it there?" It doesn't just stop at the store closures and thievery. There is a fear that by putting liquor and spirits on the shelves of grocery stores, kids will become more enticed to try it at a younger age. Patel brought up a good point. He told WTXL that he wouldn't bring his young children to a liquor store, so what would make a big box store any different? If this bill becomes a law, it would go into effect at the beginning of July. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Tallahassee Police honored several fallen officers Thursday morning. Dozens gathered at police headquarters to remember those who died in the line of duty.The service honored officers Warren Gay, Ruby Rouden, Ernest Kearn Ponce de Leon, Daniel Green, and Michael Saunders. Wreath and flowers were placed by family members on a memorial plaque. Those who took part say it's important to never forget the sacrifices these men and women made for our community. Earlier this week law enforcement agencies from across Florida came together for the annual law enforcement officer memorial march and ceremony. VALDOSTA, Ga. (WTXL) - The Valdosta Police Department is investigating a shooting in the 400 block of North Troup Street that injured two. They said that on Wednesday, around 3:30 a.m., officers with the Valdosta Police Department responded to the 700 block of Lausanne Drive in reference to a report that someone had been shot by an unknown person. When they arrived on scene, they were able to find the victim. Police officers gave the victim first aid until paramedics arrived. The victim was then transported by Emergency Medical Services to a local hospital for treatment. The victim is listed in good condition. An investigation revealed that 4 different people were in a car, including the victim, when the car was shot at by unknown suspects in another car. When the victim was shot, the other three occupants ran away from the car, leaving the victim behind. Based on evidence found, the incident was determined to have happened in the 400 block of N. Troup Street. The victim told police that they did not personally know the three people they were riding with in the car during the incident. VPD said that a second victim went to the hospital almost 24 hours later after the shooting was reported with a minor gunshot wounds, but never notified police beforehand. The second victim was also unable to provide information regarding the identity of the shooter. This victim was also listed in good condition. Detectives are still attempting to identify the shooter in this case as well as the additional two subjects that fled during the original incident. The Army was forced to open fire on these stone-pelting civilians, who were demanding that the bodies of the 2 terrorists killed in the fidayeen attack on the Army camp in Kupwara district in the early hours today be returned to their families. By Shuja-ul-Haq , Ashraf Wani: A civilian was killed and over 10 others injured in firing by security forces in Panzgam sector of Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. The Army was forced to open fire on these stone-pelting civilians, who were demanding that the bodies of the 2 terrorists killed in the fidayeen attack on the Army camp in Kupwara district in the early hours today be returned. advertisement In the terror attack, 3 security personnel were also martyred. The encounter between terrorists and the security forces last for about four hours. COMBING OPERATIONS LAUNCHED Security forces launched a combing operation in and around the Army camp in Panzgam sector. According to reports, at about 5.15 am, terrorists opened indiscriminate firing at the main gate of the camp while trying to force their way into the Army installation. Following the terror attack, the Army has stepped up vigil along the border areas to thwart any possible infiltration attempt. MEHBOOBA MUFTI PAYS TRIBUTE TO MARTYRS Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti paid tribute to the martyrs of the Kupwara terror attack. She also expressed anguish over the death of a civilian, who was killed in Army firing. Mufti said, "An unending cycle of violence has been unleashed on our society that is devouring it. This violence is pushing Kashmir towards darkness." She appealed to the people to come forward in bringing this cycle of violence to an end and help the government in its efforts to restore normalcy and peace in the Valley. Also read | Kupwara: 3 soldiers martyred, 2 terrorists killed in fidayeen attack on Army camp WATCH VIDEO --- ENDS --- Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife budget director Nate Pamplin told media this week the need for a fairly significant capital invest Submit An Obituary Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death. Go to form A leopard strayed into a house in Sohna area of Gurugram in Haryana. The leopard running around in panic was caught on cam. By India Today Web Desk: A leopard was spotted by some locals this morning near the Sohna-Palwal road in Haryana's Gurugram. Terrified to see the big cat, they informed the police about the leopard's presence. This is not the first time a leopard has strayed into the residential areas in Gurugram. But unlike the last time a leopard managed to sneak into Gurugram's Mandwar village, the residents did not lock themselves up. Last November, at least 1,5001 residents of Mandwar village and people from the nearby villages had beaten a leopard to death. advertisement Manish Sehgal, a Gurugram cop, told PTI, "The leopard was spotted in the Sohna residential area at around 11 AM but it has not hurt anyone." In last year's incident, the leopard had attacked some stray animals and was hiding under a bed. The wildlife officials were accused of being irresponsible and inefficient since they could not capture the leopard. This morning, however, officials from the Gurugram Wildlife Department, managed to capture the leopard after a three-hour-long chase and they used tranquilisers to do so. || #FYI || Gurgaon villagers beat leopard to death: How the forest department failed to save the animal's life || || Also read : Another leopard found dead in Gurugram, suspicion falls on farmers || || Also read: Villagers blame forest officials for leopard's death near Gurgaon || --- ENDS --- 7 Up is a lemon-lime flavored soft drink. In the 1970s, its manufacturers launched an advertising campaign under the Un-Cola slogan. Basically, they said, people who have had enough of the Coca-Cola flavor and have reached the conclusion that the popular drink is bad for their health can choose 7 Up instead. The slogan was seen as a brilliant idea. Nevertheless, it eventually disappeared, because peopleeven those who are thirsty for changewont settle for knowing what is bad for them. They want to know what is good for them. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The longer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, the more politicians try to market themselves as un-Bibi. The last one to grab the opportunity was former Minister Gideon Saar. During the comeback celebration he organized for himself, he made sure to repeat every mantra that attracts applause at Likud Central Committee gatherings. Apart from that, he didnt say a thing. (Eventually, it turned out that the whole comeback was a bluff too: Saar kept attending Likud members events all along, together with his wife, journalist Geula Even-Saar. The only difference is that now he is starting to collect donations for himself.) Yair Lapid (R), the most talented person in the un-Bibi league, is building his image as an improved Netanyahu (Photos: Ohad Zwigenberg, Gil Yohanan) The same applies to the other candidates seeking to inherit Netanyahus throne. They have nothing to offer apart from the fact that their name isnt Netanyahu and that their spouse isnt a child psychologist in the public service system. They have nothing to offer in the fields of security, social affairs, economy, culture and peace. They have personal criticismeither explicit or implicitagainst Netanyahu, but they have no criticism against his policy. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is the most talented person in the un-Bibi league. He has chosen, in his own words, not to serve as an oppositionbut to serve as an alternative. In other words, he has chosen to minimize his partys battle against the government, a battle which would have painted him in leftist colors, and build his image as an improved Netanyahu. As recent polls show, there is some marketing logic in Lapids decision. A significant part of the Israeli public is fed up with Netanyahus ongoing presence in its life and is willing, at least according to the polls, to say that it would vote for a different candidate. This part of the public, however, has no real criticism against the governments moves and policy. Like in the old military joke, the good news is that we are going to change our underwear; the bad news is that we are going to change it with each other. There is something outrageous, cynical and cowardly in this situation. There are much more difficult and complex dilemmas waiting in the horizon than the issue of Netanyahus next hair color . Im not only referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The country is changing before our eyes: It is changing in its level of tolerance toward minorities, toward freedom of press, toward the Jewish religions place in legislation and in the national list of priorities. The growing income inequality is threatening our internal solidarity, the myth of a supportive society. The government is failing to provide answers to these questions. It uses some of them to incite Israelis against each other. Netanyahu is providing Israelis with an illusion of a nonexistent status quo. Life cant be frozen. Reality changes every day on the Jewish side of the West Bankin the settlementsand on its Palestinian side. It changes in Gaza, it changes in the Middle East and it changes within Israeli society. The crisis will arrive, whether during Netanyahus era or later. What are his successors offering that he isnt? Why go to the effort of replacing one leader with another if theyre all made of the same stuff? Arab clerics attacked the historic appointment of Attorney Han Khatib, a Muslim woman, to the position of qadia judge dealing with Islamic family law in Sharia Court. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The decision was announced Tuesday by the Committee for the Appointment of Qadis, headed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi). Detractors of the decision urged Minister Shaked not to "intervene in Islamic matters," arguing that "Islam does not allow a woman to be qadi." Committee for the Appointment of Qadis casting their vote Khatib is a resident of the Arab city of Tamra in the Lower Galilee. If sworn in, she will be the first Israeli woman to serve in this post. She holds an MA in Law and specialized in family law and Sharia law. She is also a certified mediator. Deputy Head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Sheikh Kamal Khatibunrelated to the new quadiattacked the decision by saying: "I smell a political deal here in the Sharia Court system. I am not a mufti, but the opinion in Islamic Sharia law is that a woman cannot be appointed as qadi, for very convincing reasons. "I wonder who the people were on the appointment committee, since some of them have nothing to do with the religion of Islam and have no right to interfere in our religious affairs, and whose connection to Islamic law is like my connection with space science." While adding that he did not personally know the newly-appointed qadi, he said that he respected any person who contributes to society. Attorney Han Khatib "The committee members have to respect themselves and the others. They want to appear as supporting the advancement of women, but that's not the truth. The Israeli side wants to show that it respects Islam, but the truth is that those who support the end of the muezzin's call do not respect Islam, and neither do those who desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque." The Sheikh then went on to accuse Minister Shaked and Minister Miri Regev of "supported a proposal to fine anyone who calls out 'Allah Akbar' at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, so how can she now claim to respect Islam?" The Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement, on the other hand, announced its support for the appointment, and wished the new qadi success in her new position. Sheikh Kamal Khatib MK Issawi Frej (Meretz), a member of the committee that appointed Khatib, defended the decision. "The committee included the head of the Sharia Court, Qadi Abd al-Hakim Samara, Qadi and Attorney Iyad Zahalka, and other legal experts who accompanied the committee during the appointment process and examined all the steps in the most professional manner possible," Frej said. "I personally heard all the opinions that supported the appointment of the first woman to the role of qadi, and I also heard its opponents. However, Muslim countries like Jordan, Indonesia and Egypt have already allowed the appointment of women to the role of qadi." He added that he was convinced "that this is a historic step, and that our religion can be proud of it. I believe and am convinced that a woman should hold a position within society and that she must be supported. We need to respect the opinions of others as well as majority decisions." A series of explosions rocked the Syrian capital at about 3:20 Thursday morning. Arab media is quoting the Russian news site Sputnik, which reported that five Israeli attacks were identified in the area of Damascus International Airport. By Press Trust of India: phone numbers New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) An overwhelming majority of those undergoing treatment at public hospitals do not furnish valid mobile phone numbers, upsetting the governments efforts to seek their opinion to improve services. According to data compiled under the Mera Aspataal (My Hospital) initiative of the Health Ministry, only 30 per cent of the total 1,02,12,062 patients, who had visited hospitals run by the central and 11 state governments between September last and April this year, provided valid phone numbers. advertisement And of those who provided a valid mobile phone number, only 11 per cent or 3,87,738 responded to queries about their experience of services in hospital. The initiative, which aims at empowering patients by seeking their views on quality of experience in a public healthcare facility, was launched in August last. It has been implemented in 11 states, including Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, besides central government hospitals. "The objective of the initiative is to help hospital authorities assess the quality of their services on various parameters, like staff behaviour and cleanliness, on the basis of the feedback given by patients," a Health Ministry official said. "However, if the patients themselves do not cooperate and avoid giving feedback or do not give correct phone numbers, the very basic objective behind the programme is defeated," the official said. Staff behaviour has been identified as the "most important reason" for dissatisfaction among patients, with 37 per cent or 24,785 of the 67,081 dissatisfied patients attributing the reason. Besides, 14 per cent of them cited the cost of treatment as the reason for dissatisfaction, while 10 per cent found the lack of cleanliness a major issue. The Mera Aspataal initiative was launched by Health Minister J P Nadda. While launching the programme, he had said that patient satisfaction is the ultimate test for assessing quality of services, provided by a healthcare facility. The Information and Communication Technology-based Patient Satisfaction System for implementation in public and empanelled private hospitals, is envisaged to empower the patient by seeking their views on quality of experience in a government institution. PTI PLB SMN --- ENDS --- The Israel Air Force reportedly attacked an Iranian arms depot near the Damascus International Airport early Thursday morning, according to the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar television station. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter According to various reports, a series of explosions at fuel tanks and warehouses near the airport rocked eastern Damascus at around 3:20am. Regular supplies of weapons from Tehran are sent by commercial and military cargo planes through the arms supply hub, which is operated by Hezbollah, Reuters cited a regional intelligence source as saying. Fire at the attacked sites X The depot handles a significant amount of weapons that Tehran, a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, sends regularly by air, the source said, without giving further details. The source said the arms depot gets a major part of the weapons supplied to an array of Iranian backed militias, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in some of the toughest fronts against Syrian rebels. The source said the arms depot gets a major part of the weapons supplied to an array of Iranian backed militias, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in some of the toughest fronts against Syrian rebels. Videos and pictures were uploaded to social media showing the fire in the area. According to al-Manar, initial indications were that the blast had caused only material damage and not deaths. Reports of the explosions also came from opposition sources within the country, as well as from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the civil war in the country using sources on the ground. Officials on both sides of the Syrian conflictamong opposition forces and among forces fighting alongside President Bashar Assadattributed the attack to Israel. Russian news site Sputnik also reported that Israel was behind the attack of five targets. According to Ynet's military commentator Ron Ben-Yishai, it is likely the attack targeted a shipment from Iran of game-changing weapons meant for Hezbollah. Israel's Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said such a strikw would be in line with Israeli policy but stopped short of taking responsibility for it. Katz wouldn't comment directly on the strike Thursday morning but said "it absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement." Israel has repeatedly warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah from Syria, which along with Iran supports the militant group. Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets on Israel in the 2006 war. While Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war, it has carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected weapon convoys it believed were destined for Hezbollah. At least three Indian soldiers and two suspected rebels were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday after militants stormed a military camp close to the heavily militarized Line of Control dividing the disputed Himalayan region between India and Pakistan, officials said. The militants used guns and grenades to target soldiers northwest of Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, said army spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia. The attack in Panzgam area came after a group of at least three militants hurled grenades and fired automatic weapons at the sentry of the highly guarded army camp, a police officer said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. Two militants were killed in an ensuing gunfight while another was believed to have escaped, the officer said. He said that three soldiers, including an army officer, also were killed and five soldiers wounded in the attack. The injured soldiers were airlifted to the Indian army's main base in Srinagar for specialized treatment. The Knesset voted on Wednesday to push back the launch of the new Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) to May 15, instead of at the end of April. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The vote passed with 35 MKs supporting the decision versus 28 MKs against it. The Knesset plenum, Wednesday (Photo:Amit Shabi) The opposition came out against the delay, with the IPBC workers themselves decrying that it would be "a waste of NIS 17 million and all the creative content intended for Memorial Day and Independence Day." "Delaying the launch by two weeks is a dirty tactic aimed to delay a mass layoff until the day after the elections for the head of the Histadrut Labor Federation," said member of the opposition MK Shelly Yachimovich (Zionist Union). The police have filed in recent weeks indictments against 15 Palestinian youths between the ages of 15-17 for stoning vehicles on a road near Gush Etzion. The youths have reportedly used to throw rocks at moving vehicles after returning from school. Several Israeli citizens were wounded by these acts. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has informed the IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) that it plans to immediately cease all funding for the electricity Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The announcement comes against a background of an escalating power struggle between PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas in Gaza, led by Yahya Sanwar Mahmoud Abbas (R) abd Yahya Sanwar (Photo: AFP) Moreover, the decision was made in light of US President Donald Trump's upcoming visit to the region next month, and reports that he is expected to kick-start a new US-led peace initiative. Israel supplies the Gaza Strip with electricity through 10 power lines that produce 125 megawatts, about 30% of the electricity required in Gaza. The cost of electricity consumption in Gaza is estimated at NIS 40 million (around $11 million) a montha sum which Israel deducts from the Palestinian Authority taxes. If the PA refuses to cover Gazas electricity bill, payments can also be made through the international community or private entities. Khalil al-Haya Responding to the latest announcement by Abbas, Hamas Deputy Leader Khalil al-Haya warned that his new apparent attempt to break the movement would fail. "Gaza is an explosive barrel and Abu Mazen (Abbas) will not be able to exert additional pressure on it because it will explode in his face and in all directions." Al-Haya added that "increasing pressure on Gaza will have the opposite effect, and we will not yield to Abu Mazen's pressure. He will fail." Mohammad Abed, a lawyer from Bi'ina in northern Israel who was convicted in January for passing messages between security prisoners in Israel and Hamas, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Abed was also sentenced to one year suspended sentence and a NIS 50 thousand fine. IDF tanks destroyed a Hamas position in southern Gaza on Thursday morning after shots were fired just minutes earlier at IDF engineering force while carrying out routine security-related activities near the Gaza border fence. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter There were no immediate reports of injuries of damage. Israel-Gaza border (Photo: Yoav Zitun) After returning fire, the IDF launched an investigation into the origins of the gunshots and the IDF Spokespersons Unit issued a statement saying The attack was carried out in response to an earlier attack on an IDF force that was engaged in routine security work near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip. Hamas position hit by IDF tanks The incident comes shortly after The Palestinian Authority (PA) informed the IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) that it plans to immediately cease all funding for the electricity Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip. US President Donald Trump is officially set to visit Israel for the first time since entering the White House on May 22 and will stay in the country for one night. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter A delegation of 25 American officials were scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday to lay the groundwork ahead of next month's brief visit. The delegation is supposed to attend a first meeting at the Foreign Ministry to coordinate the details of the visit, after which they will hold meetings at the President's Residence and the Prime Minister's Office. President Trump (Photo: AP) Delegation members will also tour and examine several locations which could be included in the presidents itinerary upon his arrival. The Trump administration reported Wednesday that the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will also be accompanying the president on his visit. Since taking on her new role, Haley has managed to earn the trust of many Israel supporters and build a reputation as one of Israels staunchest advocates on the international stage through a series of public speeches and declarations admonishing the UN for its bias treatment against the country. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: Avi Ohayon/GPO) Also joining President Trump on his visit, during which he is expected to lay out plans for a new peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians, will be the new US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Friedman is scheduled to arrive on May 15 and will submit his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin a month later. Nikki Haley (Photo: AP) Almost immediately after his arrival in Israel, Friedman will begin arranging plans for his boss in the White House who is likely to visit a week or two later. An official date has not yet been decided. Friedmans nomination was the subject of some controversy in light of past statement in which he declared his support for Israeli construction in the West Bank and described the left-wing US group, J Street as being "worse than kapos" a reference to Jews who helped the Nazis imprison other Jews during the Holocaust. He had also accused Obama of "anti-Semitism." Friedman with Vice President Pence (Photo: Reuters) His nomination was approved in the Senate by a vote of 52-46 with only two Democratic senators approving his inauguration. Im very proud to say that my nomination represents the first time in American history that the US ambassador to Israel was nominated by the President as early as the first day of his presidency,he said at his swearing-in ceremony . This fact, he added, spoke volumes about how highly the Trump-Pence administration prioritizes our unbreakable bond with the State of Israel. Hundreds of Haifa Chemicals workers congregated at the Azrieli Junction in Tel Aviv Thursday afternoon, blocking the main interchange and bringing traffic to a complete standstill. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The workers are protesting the lack of a solution being put forth to prevent the laying off of about 1,500 company workers following a court order to close Haifa's ammonia tank amid concerns that poison contained within it constituted a serious threat to the residents in the area. Photo: Michal Shor Photo: Rachel Zuriel In a meeting held between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Environmental Protection Ze'ev Elkin and Minister of the Economy Eli Cohen, Netanyahu requested to delay the closure of the ammonia tank by several weeks. The request was also addressed to several legal authorities who participated in the meeting, among them the Deputy Attorney General Erez Kaminitz, is an effort to find a way to prevent the mass layoff. (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) An Arab lawyer from Bi'ina in northern Israel, who was convicted in January for transferring messages between security prisoners in Israel and members of Hamas, was sentenced Thursday to seven and a half years in prison. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The lawyer, Mohammad Abed, also received to one year suspended sentence and a NIS 50,000 fine, and the state has confiscated more than NIS 1 million from his home and bank account. Mohammad Abed (Photo: Mohamed Shinawi) Haifa District Court Judge Avraham Elyakim who ruled on Abed's sentence stated that the information passed by the lawyer was "a ticking time bomb," adding that Abed "stood in the center of a communication circle between Khaled Mashal in Qatar and Saleh al-Arouri in Turkey, who aimed, as leaders of Hamas, to severely harm the state of Israel. "He had no qualms about being a communications link between those two schemers." Abed, who usually represented security prisoners and detainees, worked in cooperation with a lawyer from Nablus, a member of Hamas, and in some of the cases with Mahmoud Ragheb, a lawyer from Gaza. Khaled Mashal (Photo: AFP) In addition, he maintained contact with Firas Fidi, a Hamas terrorist who carried out several terror attacks in Israel, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002, released in the Shalit deal and exiled to Gaza. Abed was sentenced for crimes he carried out during the year 2012-2014, which were outlined in his indictment in 2014, and included the passing of messages intended "to coordinate protests and solidarity between the leaders of Hamas and prisoners, to multiply hunger strikes and boycott courthouses with the target of expressing solidarity with specific prisoners." The indictment went on to state that Abed intended to "create changes in various decisions by the Israel Prison Service that relate to prisoner's rights and the separations of prisoners." Saleh al-Arouri Abed was convicted of meeting with several different prisoners on 18 different occasions, passing messages entirely unrelated to legal counsel from them to Hamas, and vice versa. Turning to Abed after the sentencing, Judge Elyakim expressed his inability to understand what made the lawyer "undermine the security of his country, where his family, wife and children live." The judge noted that Abed carried out the crime for money, but never expressed any objection to Hamas' ideology. "The defendant knew well that the information he passed on had the potential of being a ticking 'time bomb,'" said the judge's in his verdict. "Each of the 18 reports I analyzed for the verdict either harmed national security, or had the potential to do so." (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) While Rahul Gandhi is meeting party leaders to strengthen Congress from within, Sonia Gandhi is meeting opposition leaders to chart out a common strategy to attack NDA government. Congress is working on two pronged strategy to counter the BJP. (File Photo) By Supriya Bhardwaj: While Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi is meeting his party leaders to strengthen the organisation from within, President Sonia Gandhi is meeting opposition leaders to chart out a 'Common Minimum Strategy' to attack NDA government. The who's who from Opposition parties have held a series of meetings with Sonia Gandhi to come up with a common campaign strategy, common agenda and common Presidential candidate. advertisement "We met Sonia Gandhi with an intention to come up with common agenda of opposition party and a common Presidential candidate," said CPI MP D Raja. "To protect the people and counter the RSS/BJP. Even the coming bypolls in UP and other states should also see a common candidate," said another senior leader from JDU. So far NCP head Sharad Pawar, JDU chief and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, left leaders Sitaram Yechury, D Raja, JDU leader Sharad Yadav have met Sonia Gandhi. Meanwhile, the opposition parties are planning to reach out to BJD also. The issues that opposition has zeroed in on are cow vigilantes, Kashmir and farmer issues. --- ENDS --- A special report by the World Bank published on Wednesday found that the Palestinian Authority's (PA) financial situation is worrying, saying that it should cut costs and salaries and adding that the energy crisis might lead to an economic disaster. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Written after members of the World Bank visited the Palestinian-controlled territories, the report concludes that external financial aid is insufficient to alleviate the PA's economic problems, claiming that significant budget changes must be done by the PA itself. (Photo: Avi Rocakh) The report is set to be presented at the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee in Brussels on May 4 during a meeting between policy leaders deciding on financial aid for the Palestinian economic development. "The Palestinian economy cannot create jobs and income," said Marina Wes, World Bank's Country Director for West Bank and Gaza. According to her, "30% of Palestinians are unemployed and more than half of Palestinian youths are without occupation. "Gaza is facing an economic disaster. There is need for concentrated efforts by all sides to bring forth a real change, to push economic growth and to moderate hope and chance for the Palestinians, especially the youth." The report states that the PA has a funding gap of $800 million, and therefore it should reduce its expenditure on salaries and pensions and increase revenues from the local tax system. There is also a need to take action to improve the investment climate and competitiveness and help new companies enter the market. The report also refers to the energy crisis in the PA. According to the economists, the inability to answer the need for electricity could lead to a human and economic disaster. Therefore, investments by the private sector in the energy sector are required, but the investments will not be realized unless the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government create an enabling environment. "Gaza is facing power outages in cycles of 8 hours. During peak hours, Gaza residents have only 4 hours of electricity during the day, and this situation has become the norm and leaves the residents of Gaza without electricity for most of the day. The planned power cuts harm vital services and create a humanitarian crisis for the two million residents of Gaza," Wes said. The PA should carry out reforms to ensure that payment commitments to power suppliers are implemented, in order to encourage private investments in the energy sector. This is especially important in the Gaza Strip in order to allow for the construction of a high-voltage line from Israel that will provide a solution to the energy crisis. Russia has denounced what it called "aggression" against Syria in the wake of an apparent Israeli missile attack on a Syrian military installation near Damascus International Airport. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not directly blame Israel for the Thursday morning explosion, but cited Syrian media as saying Israel was responsible. She says "Moscow condemns acts of aggression against Syria" and calls on everyone to "act within the framework of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria." Israel appears to be striking at military convoys and installations in Syria at a quickening pace, maintaining it has the right to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group that fights alongside Syrian government forces. Dozens of Haredim in Beit Shemesh clashed with police officers overnight Wednesday who arrived to make an arrest of a suspect in the city. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Haredim attacking police officers in Beit Shemesh (: live) X In a video of the disturbances that was obtained by Ynet, the residents can be seen gathering around the police officers, fighting them and blocking the road. In addition, the residents hurled slurs at the policemen and for many minutes called them "Nazis." (Photo: Breslov Live) The police said that the residents of the area attacked the policemen and the cruisers, and in addition to person they had initially intended to arrest that, an ultra-Orthodox demonstrator was also detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. This is the second attack on police officers this week in Beit Shemesh. Two ultra-Orthodox residents attacked police officers who went undercover as soldiers as part of an operation to arrest assailants of soldiers in the city. (Photo: Breslov Live) The policemen walked in the street disguised as Military Police soldiers. A short while later, residents gathered around them and shouted abuse at them, and two of them even physically assaulted them. At this point, undercover policemen who were dressed in Haredi garb jumped the two assailants and arrested them. In addition, on the same day, a police cruiser was attacked in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem. When the police arrived, the ultra-Orthodox began to gather in the area, throw stones and objects at the patrol car and even called the police "Nazis." There were no casualties and no damage was done. (Translated and edited by N. Elias) A Lebanese citizen who had infiltrated Israel was caught on Thursday evening in the central bus station in Kiryat Shmona, which is about 10 kilometers from the border. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter During the evening, citizens spotted a man who looked suspicious to them in the area of the central bus station in the northern city. They called the police, who approached and questioned the man. The Lebanese-Israeli border (File) From their questioning, the police learnt that he was a man who infiltrated Israel from Lebanese territory. The police brigade commander was called to the scene and the man was transferred to the security forces for questioning. The IDF confirmed that a civilian with a Lebanese identity card had been found in Kiryat Shmona, and that the incident was under investigation. Broadband serves as a bridge between Nebraska and the world. Connecting to high-speed internet is vital for all Nebraskans. Our families, students, communities, and businesses all rely on it every day to share, send, and use information. Access to broadband is especially important for Nebraskas agricultural sector. In our 21st-century world, livestock producers have the ability to monitor their livestock with connected devices, enabling them to maintain healthy herds. To supply the world with our states great agricultural products, all of our ranchers and farmers must have the ability to access the most up-to-date news on weather and commodity markets to make critical decisions such as knowing when to sell crops and when to place them in storage. Additionally, by extending the reach of broadband networks, more of Nebraskas small businesses will be able to reach customers online, enhancing their marketing opportunities. Broadband isnt only a boon for Nebraska businesses, however. Increasing the availability of broadband will strengthen our communities. It allows for more access to the goods Nebraskans need and products that can make our lives better, some of which may not always be available locally. In other cases, it can even save lives by allowing those who live far from the nearest medical center to connect remotely with health care providers for routine check-ups or specialist visits. I believe the federal government has a responsibility to work with states and private industry to facilitate infrastructure development. Investments in infrastructure help our economy grow and our communities prosper. Broadband is a significant part of infrastructure and we have to work through the remaining challenges standing in the way of access to this important service. One of these challenges is cost. Building broadband infrastructure is expensive. Finding companies willing to invest in providing rural internet access is difficult. Too often, this problem creates unfortunate obstacles for Nebraskans looking to buy reasonably-priced broadband services. Its time for that to change. In that vein, I joined Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota in leading a bipartisan group of senators in addressing a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In it, we asked the agency to continue working to advance broadband deployment in rural areas of the country where these services are still very expensive. The FCC has had some success working on this problem in the past, but the agency must do more to ensure families can buy more affordable high-speed broadband regardless of where they live. Lowering the cost of internet infrastructure will allow our state to be a stronger competitor in the world market. Nebraskans will be able to expand their businesses if they have the latest technology and the most current information available. Increased broadband access helps build stronger communities by creating a network that can connect families in the blink of an eye. Increased access means that deployed Nebraska military personnel can email and video chat back home while theyre away. Parents can stay in touch with students who go away to college. Grandparents can see and hear from their grandkids more often. When more Nebraskans have access to broadband, their loved ones feel a little bit closer. No matter the distance, families can stay in touch. Building the accessible broadband networks of tomorrow requires common-sense reform today. By working together to create sound public policy, we can achieve the goal of making affordable high-speed Internet available to everyone in our state. All Americans deserve an opportunity to compete and succeed in the digital world. I will continue to work in a bipartisan way to make that a reality. Thank you for participating the democratic process. I look forward to visiting with you again next week. About 18 years ago, I was worried. My co-worker, Brian Ruckle, had been the reporter who covered courts, law enforcement and local government. And he was suddenly moving to China, of all places. It was determined that I would switch from my role as regional feature writer to cover Ruckles beat. Ruckle, this is a nightmare, I lamented to the genius/pack rat as he gathered up his piles of books for the big move. I have no idea what Im doing. I dont know anything. How am I supposed to do what you do? As Ruckle wrestled with a pile of documents hed been hoarding for years, he suddenly just stopped and looked at me, realizing that I was actually panic-stricken. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil . . . and scribbled on it a short list of names. Ruckle slid the paper in my direction, turning it so I could properly see the classified information he had written . . . the secrets to his success in the newspaper world. Just start with him, Ruckle said, tapping his pencil on the first name. Stick with him, listen to him. Hell explain everything you need to know, hell tell you what you need to know. The rest of it, well it will fall into place. It was like I was a Jedi in Star Wars and Ruckle was pointing me toward Yoda. You will be fine, just talk to him, Ruckle said, giving me a reassuring wink right before a landslide of paper nearly buried him. I quickly looked at the name of the person who would guide me through the next chapter of my career. The persons name, at the top of Ruckles list? Don Klug. The next day, Ruckle and I went to the office of Chief of Police Klug. As Ruckle said good-bye to Don, I could see the great fondness he had for this law enforcement officer as well as deep respect. As I said hello to Don, he said hed always be available to answer questions and all I needed to do was call 363-2640. Dont forget that number, Ruckle said, chuckling. I certainly havent. Over the course of nearly two decades, Ive dialed that number thousands of times . . . and by the time I hung up on each occasion, Chief Klug had explained everything I needed to know so the correct facts would be relayed to the public. Ruckle was right. You can trust him, just make sure he never has a reason not to trust you, Ruckle warned. Over the course of time, Chief Klug and I carved out a relationship in which he would tell me things I couldnt disclose, just for background information so as to better understand situations . . . and I promised to not say a word until he gave me the green light. I vowed to never give Chief Klug a reason not to trust me. I respected him too much. And I still do. Ruckle was right. Hes a very straight forward guy, Ruckle said. Hell tell you everything you need to know . . . but be honest if you dont understand something. Ask him questions . . . hed rather have you ask to be correct than have you screw things up. Oh, I asked questions. Millions upon millions over the years. Im sure I wore Chief Klug to the breaking point sometimes, but he never let on that this was the case. He patiently explained serious situations until he probably never wanted to talk again. I so appreciated it. Ruckle was right. But dont be afraid to joke with him, Ruckle said. Hes a really nice guy. Youll get to be friends. We did become friends, I think. Once the seriousness of topics was put to rest, wed joke, laugh and sometimes talk about our families and the other side of the world in which crime/public protection wasnt an issue. And there were times when I could see the sincere care he had about accident/incident victims, their families; how protective he was of his officers; I saw the concern he had for his community in his departments effort to keep us safe. Ruckle was right. Whatever you do, remember hes one of the most important people to helping you with this job, Ruckle said, as he prepared to leave York in his car filled with newspaper clippings. Thats why hes on the top of the list. And Ruckle was so right. There is no way I could have properly done my job over the years if it hadnt been for the wisdom and professionalism of Don Klug. Last week, I posted a link on Facebook to the story I wrote about Dons retirement announcement. It pained me to do so . . . hes the only police chief Ive ever worked with. A few minutes later, I heard a ding on my computer, indicating that someone had left a comment. It was Ruckle. He congratulated The Chief on his retirement and wrote, A good and faithful public servant. Don Klug spent 41 years of his life working in law enforcement. He was honest, professional and real. And it is time to congratulate him on his retirement. Ruckle is right. YORK On Tuesday morning, the York County Commissioners indicated they will be contracting with Contryman Associates to assist with the budget formulation process this year . . . and its going to cost more than theyve grown accustomed to in the past. After the county board members haggled over paying the county treasurer and deputy county clerk extra money for assisting in the process, the two county employees backed out, saying they didnt want to be part of the argument and will no longer be participating in the budget work. At that point, the county board decided they needed to look elsewhere for help. They reached out to several accounting firms in the area, garnering mostly no interest. Contryman, which already conducts the countys annual audit, was the only company that expressed willingness for the project . . . and it was determined that there would be no conflict of interest for the company to assist with the budget and later conduct the audit. On Tuesday, it was determined that it will cost the county a minimum of $6,500 for Contrymans assistance. That figure could slightly increase if the county board needs additional help, to a maximum of $9,000. If the work would have been hired in-house, the suggested ballpark figure was in the $2,000 ballpark. We got a formal offer from Contryman, said Commissioner Bill Bamesberger. Seeing how we no longer have a budget committee and we as a board cant do it adequately and efficiently, we will need to farm it out. So we need to ask them to prepare the budget for one year. Isnt this something we can do as a board? asked Commissioner Kurt Bulgrin, indicating that outside help might not be needed. Bamesberger said he didnt feel that would be the case. Bulgrin acknowledged that he has been on the budget committee in the past (as it fluctuates between board members), but that its been a few years. I understand that the clerk and treasurer offices will still have to supply numbers, which is part of their jobs, but to do the actual budget . . . I dont think we can do it sufficiently, Bamesberger said. This could be used as a learning experience this year, and possibly then next year, we as a board will do it, said Commissioner Randy Obermier. It was questioned whether the county could sign off on a one-year contract, as Contryman only offered a contract spanning three years. They decided to counter-offer and ask for a one-year agreement. I do like the idea of in the future having the entire county board on the budget committee, Bulgrin said. And having a public hearing every time wed meet? asked Commissioner Jack Sikes, referring to the fact the budget committee meets often, aside from county board meetings. Well, yes, wed have to, Bulgrin said, noting that a quorum would require publicly announced meetings, which werent required in the past with budget committee meetings because only two commissioners would be present. And I would encourage all of us to attend the upcoming budget workshop being offered by NACO (the Nebraska Association of County Officials) this year, Bulgrin added. YORK A public hearing slated for an entire day has been set by the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) regarding the application filed by TransCanada seeking an approved route for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. And that statewide hearing will be held here in York in the very near future. Susan Dunavan, a York County landowner who has been fighting the pipeline for years, encouraged the county commissioners to attend the hearing. She addressed the board when they met in regular session. I ask you to listen to the landowners, not the people paid to be there, Dunavan told the board members. Listen to the landowners who have legitimate concerns about this pipeline and the preservation of their land and water. This state, here, this is the epicenter of this whole project. This is really big. It is really important. If anyone of you could attend the hearing, that would be really nice. Hundreds of people are expected to attend the hearing, which will be held at the Holthus Convention Center. Doors will open at 8 a.m., on Wednesday, May 3. Testimony will start at 9 a.m., with a scheduled ending at 7 p.m. that night. But, as Dunavan noted, past public hearings regarding the pipeline have lasted well into the night and early morning hours of the next day, due to the sheer volume of people wanting to testify. Public comment will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Persons speaking at the public meeting will have three to five minutes to speak. In an earlier announcement, PSC spokesperson Deb Collins explained that the Major Oil Pipeline Siting Act affords the PSC the right to hold a public meeting for the purpose of receiving input from the public at a location close to the proposed route. York would certainly qualify for that stipulation as the proposed pipeline route crosses the county. All public comment made during this hearing will become part of the public record. The PSC, in accordance with the siting act, will consider a number of issues related to the pipeline application, including protection of property rights, aesthetic values, economic interests, protection of natural resources and compliance with state law. In addition to this public meeting in York, the PSC will hold a public hearing regarding the application the week of Aug. 7-11 at the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln. This public hearing will contain both an evidentiary portion and a public comment portion. Information on the KXL application can be found on the PSC website. By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) The National Green Tribunal today issued notice to spiritual figure Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on a contempt plea against him for blaming the Centre and the panel for damaging Yamuna floodplains by allowing his NGOs cultural extravaganza held there. "Notice to the respondent," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said while seeking his reply before May 9, the next date of hearing. advertisement However, Art of Living (AOL) spokesperson and legal adviser Kedar Desai said "No such order has been passed. It is factually incorrect to report that any notice has been issued. The matter has been simply adjourned to May 9." Desais stand was contradicted by petitioners counsel Rahul Choudhary who said the bench has issued notice to the AOL founder and sought his reply by May 9. During the hearing, the bench also pulled up petitioner Manoj Misra over his plea, asking him "how this has come in the press before coming to us." "You give the petition to the media before you even file it in the Registry, it is not fair on your part. We expect you to be more responsible," the bench observed. Advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing for Misra, however, refuted this and told the tribunal that they had not given anything to the mediapersons. Misra has sought action against Ravi Shankar alleging that his remarks on social media had interfered with free and fair dispensation of justice. AOLs World Cultural Festival was held on the Yamuna floodplains from March 11-13, 2016, to celebrate 35 years of its service. In a statement published on the AOLs website, Ravi Shankar had blamed the government and the NGT for permitting AOL to hold the function and said his foundation had obtained all necessary permissions, including from the green panel, and the event could have been stopped in the beginning itself if the river was so "fragile and pure". In a Facebook post, Ravi Shankar had said, "If, at all, any fine has to be levied, it should be levied on the Central and state governments and the NGT itself, for giving the permission. If the Yamuna was so fragile and pure, they should have stopped the World Culture Festival". In the plea filed through advocates Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, Misra had said the AOL heads statements "denigrated the dignity and status of this tribunal, which was an interference in the fair dispensation of justice". He had asked NGT to take appropriate action against Ravi Shankar for making the statements which "on the face of it, scandalises/tends to scandalise and interferes/tends to interfere with the free and fair dispensation of justice by the apex green tribunal." advertisement The NGT had earlier termed as "shocking" the charge levelled by Ravi Shankar and the AOL against the government and the green panel for the damage to the Yamuna floodplains, saying they had "no sense of responsibility". An expert committee had told the NGT that a whopping Rs 42.02 crore would be required to restore the floodplains which was ravaged due to the cultural extravaganza last year. The expert panel had suggested that there would be two components of rehabilitation plan -- physical and biological, which would cost Rs 28.73 crore and Rs l3.29 crore respectively, besides additional ancillary expenses. The AOL had alleged that the findings of the panel were "biased" and made allegations against Prof C R Babu, a member of the expert panel which had quantified the damage to the floodplains. "The Art of Living is a responsible and environment- sensitive NGO. We have never caused any damage to the environment but have in fact worked for preserving and reviving it through various environment-related projects over the years," it had said. PTI PKS RKS ARC --- ENDS --- advertisement Berkeley: American conservative social and political commentator Ann Coulter has said that she was forced to cancel her speaking event today at the University of California, Berkeley amid concerns of violence, calling it "a dark day for free speech in America." Police and university officials said they were still preparing for possible violence and protests whether Coulter comes to campus or not. In an email to The Associated Press, Coulter said that despite the event's cancellation she might decide to turn up anyway. "I have my flights, so I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment," Coulter said in an emailed message when asked if she was still coming to Berkeley. Officials at UC Berkeley said last week they feared more violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited "very specific intelligence" of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum. Efforts by the university to cancel or delay the event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech. Chancellor Nicholas B Dirks sent a letter to the campus yesterday saying the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students. "This is a university, not a battlefield," Dirks said in the letter. "The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to Free Speech the other to the safety of our campus community." Berkeley's reputation as one of the country's most liberal universities, in one of America's most liberal cities, has made it a flashpoint for the nation's political divisions in the era of Donald Trump. Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists. Similar violent clashes also erupted at the same site, a public park, on March 4. In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans. The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that had helped book Coulter's campus speaking events, both pulled their support Tuesday citing fears of violence. They blamed the university for failing to ensure protection of conservative speakers. "Berkeley College Republicans do not want to endanger people's lives so because of the university's unwillingness to do their job we are forced to cancel the event," Troy Warden, president of the campus Republicans, said yesterday. Coulter echoed the blame on Twitter: "I'm very sad about Berkeley's cancellation, but my sadness is greater than that. It's a dark day for free speech in America." Police and university officials said they remained concerned by online chatter and intelligence that groups on the extreme ends of the political spectrum were ready to incite violence. Capt Alex Yao of the Berkley campus police force said police presence will be strong today. "You will see a high number of highly visible law enforcement. We're going to have a very, very low tolerance for any violence," he told a news conference. He said Berkeley police had reached out to local and state police forces "to let them know we might be calling for assistance." Washington: Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi met with leaders of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jain communities in the US and discussed increasing incidents of hate crimes against the minority communities in the country. The discussion among other things, also included an overview of Krishnamoorthi's strong objections to the CNN programme Believer's wrongful portrayal of Hinduism, his continuing efforts on immigration issues, and his ongoing work to address the national increase in hate crimes. Over the course of the discussion, the coummunity leaders shared personal stories of the challenges they faced from the growing national climate of hostility and increasing fears around hate-motivated violence, a media release said. "Hindu and Muslim-Americans reported (to me) incidents of people talking to them poorly. We have to take note of it and talk about it in a group and hope people feel secure. But it can't be solved overnight," the 43 year-old lawmaker said. Krishnamoorthi, the first time Democratic lawmaker, visited the BAPS Mandir where he was felicitated for his election to Congress. He met with leaders to further discuss the concerns of the community. The Indian-American Congressman has also been meeting with members of the Muslim-American community and recently visited Islamic Foundation in Villa Park and Muslim Society. "I'm glad I've been able to meet with so many members of our community to discuss the challenges we face," he said. "In Congress, I work every day to support our communities on such issues as immigration and religious freedom while fighting to combat the surge in hate crimes and broader hostility which has struck members of our community across the country, and sewn fear in many others," he added. Following the February shooting of two Indian men in Kansas, Krishnamoorthi formally called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use the full powers of his office to combat the national surge in hate crime. He also called for the committee to hold hearings on the issue through both a formal letter and a speech on the House floor. More recently, he authored and is circulating a congressional letter calling upon Secretary John Kelly of the Department of Homeland Security to use the resources of his department to address the increase in hate crimes against religious minorities in the country. "In each of these meetings, I was inspired by the love of country demonstrated by the leaders I spoke to, but also by their deeply-rooted commitments to their religions," Krishnamoorthi said. "Part of the greatness of our country is that it does not force us to abandon our faiths, it welcomes them into the American mosaic with us." "We will continue to take heart in the knowledge that this country belongs to all of us and we will work together against those forces that would challenge that national promise," Krishnamoorthi said. By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Adding background) New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) The Supreme Court today extended till June 19 the parole of Sahara chief Subrata Roy with a warning that failure to meet the deadline of June 15 for payment of Rs 1,500 crore would land him in prison once again. Roy, who in compliance with the last order appeared before the court, was told by the apex court that he has to frequently make the payments as per the roadmap approved by the court or face further imprisonment. advertisement The Sahara chief gave an undertaking to a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that he would deposit Rs 1,500 crore by June 15 and another payment of Rs 552.22 crore by July 15 in the SEBI-Sahara account and filed an affidavit. The apex court warned Roy that he may be sent to jail again if the amount is not paid. In a related development, the bench, which also comprised Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, ordered the arrest of Chennai-based Prakash Swamy, who failed to deposit Rs 10 crore as per the last order. He will serve one month-jail for contempt of court. Swamy had filed an affidavit on behalf a foreign firm expressing his intent to buy Saharas New York-based hotel. He had failed to comply with the apex courts direction to show his bonafide by depositing the amount in court to establish his intention to buy the property. The bench also allowed the Sahara group to make electronic payment through RTGS in the Sebi-Sahara account on or before June 15. The apex court directed Roy to remain personally present on June 19, the next date of hearing. It asked the Official Liquidator of Bombay High Court to prepare terms and conditions for auctioning the Aamby Valley property for its approval on June 19. Irked over non-submission of money, the Supreme Court had on April 17 decided to sell Rs 34,000 crore worth properties of the Sahara Group at the Aamby Valley and had sought Roys presence before it. Making its mind clear, the bench had said the court may rethink about varying the interim order of bail and consider sending the contemnor (Roy and others) to custody. It had also cautioned Roy from playing with the courts order and said non-compliance of its order would invite the wrath of the law. The court had agreed to the amicus curiaes suggestion that Official Liquidator (OL) of the Bombay High Court be directed to conduct the sale. Taking serious note of Roys parole extension, it had said he should have been taken into custody after conducting last rites of his mother and "indulgence" was granted for repayment of money in the SEBI-Sahara account. advertisement The bench had also taken strong note of the affidavit of Prakash Swamy, power of attorney holder of MG Capital Holdings LLC, New York, USA, that there was difficulty to go with the transaction of purchasing Saharas Hotel Plaza. It had taken note of the fact that the company did not deposit Rs 750 crore with the SEBI Sahara Refund Account to show its bonafide in purchasing the Hotel Plaza, valued at USD 550 million. It had directed Swamy to deposit Rs 10 crore within ten days, failing which non-bailable arrest warrant would be issued against him. The apex court had on April 6 warned the Group that if it failed to deposit Rs 5092.6 crore in SEBI-Sahara refund account by April 17 in pursuance of its order, it will be "compelled" to auction its property at the Aamby Valley. The court had on November 28 last year asked Roy to deposit Rs 600 crore more by February 6 in the refund account to remain out of jail and warned that failure to do so would result in his return to prison. advertisement It had on May 6, 2016 granted a four-week parole to Roy to attend the funeral of his mother. His parole has been extended by the court ever since. Roy was sent to Tihar jail on March 4, 2014. Besides Roy, two other directors -- Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary -- were also arrested for failure of two group companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL) -- to comply with the courts August 31, 2012 order to return Rs 24,000 crore to their investors. Director Vandana Bhargava was not taken into custody. PTI RKS SJK UK MNL ABA AG ARC --- ENDS --- Uber has said that it wants to launch a system of flying cars to move people around cities, with a goal of putting demonstration projects in place by 2020. The ridesharing giant announced a series of partnerships to manufacture "vertical takeoff and landing" (VTOL) vehicles and put networks in place, a system dubbed Uber Elevate. The partner cities working with Uber are Dubai and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolis in Texas. "The goal of these partnerships is to develop a new on-demand VTOL network to enable customers in the future to push a button and get a high-speed flight in and around cities," Uber said in a statement. The announcement came at a summit held in the Dallas area with partners in the project. "What started as a simple question `why can`t I push a button and get a ride?` has turned, for Uber, into a passionate pursuit of the pinnacle of urban mobility -- the reduction of congestion and pollution from transportation, giving people their time back, freeing up real estate dedicated to parking and providing access to mobility in all corners of a city," said Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden. "Urban aviation is a natural next step for Uber in this pursuit, which is why we are working to make push a button, get a flight a reality." Uber`s goal is to have the first demonstration network in place in Dubai for the 2020 World Expo in that city, and another pilot in Dallas the same year ahead of "full-scale operations" in the Texas region by 2023. The announcement came a day after Silicon Valley "flying car" startup Kitty Hawk, reportedly backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, released a video of its airborne prototype and announced plans for deliveries of a "personal flying machine" this year.Uber`s plans appear more ambitious, and include partnerships with US-based Bell Helicopter, Brazilian manufacturer Embraer and Slovenia`s Pipistrel to produce flying machines for short distance urban operations. "Uber`s Elevate network is an exciting opportunity for Bell Helicopter to help transform how cities move people and products in the future," Bell president and chief executive Mitch Snyder said in a statement. Embraer CEO Paulo Cesar de Souza e Silva praised the "unique opportunity to complement the air transport knowledge of a visionary and revolutionary ground transport company." The Uber plan also includes partnerships for "vertiports" for the flyers to take off and land, along with changing stations for the transporters, which are expected to be mainly electric-powered. Uber`s agreement with Dubai Roads and Transport Authority calls for a joint study into pricing models, people movement and determining where routes should be created in the city. "The partnership will result in everything from hover and forward flight tests to actual flight operations in the Dubai area," according to a joint statement. Uber has grown into the world`s largest venture-backed startup, with a valuation estimated at some $68 billion despite ongoing obstacles with regulators and taxi operators. In addition to ridesharing in some 80 countries, Uber is also testing self-driving cars in three US metro areas. Uber`s growth so far has not been dented by a series of embarrassing disclosures about a culture of sexism, cut-throat workplace tactics and covert use of law enforcement-evading software. Aurangabad: A court here has issued a non-bailable warrant against filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma and producer Ronnie Screwvala in connection with a copyright violation case of 2009. Siddiqui Mushtaq Muhsin in his petition claimed that the film Agyaat, directed by Varma and produced by Screwvala and released in August 2009, was based on a story written by him. Judicial Magistrate K K Kurandale issued the non-bailable warrant after Muhsin's lawyer Pradeep Walujkar pointed out that Varma had not responded to the summonses that were served on him since last two years. The court posted the matter for hearing on May 31. "Varma had been making offbeat films and as such I wrote a story and sent it to him through post but received no reply. "In 2009 when the film 'Agyaat' was released, I was shocked to see that it was based on my story," the petition mentions. Muhsin, a resident of Nutan colony of the city, further said, "I had registered the story with the Film Writers Association and the records can be verified." New Delhi: The government has prepared a hit list" of high-value targets of Naxal fighters following the brutal killing of 25 CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district a few days ago, a media report said on Thursday. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had termed the Monday's attack as direct challenge to the government and vowed to hunt down the attackers. Bastar divisional commander Raghu, Jagargunda area head Papa Rao and PLGA battalion commander Hidma, who is said to be behind the latest attack, are among those in the hit list, the Times of India reported. Citing government sources, TOI reported that the CRPF and other forces have been asked to demoralise the Naxalites by targeting their leaders. Around 200-250 Naxal leaders keep travelling to Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra for planning attacks on security forces, it said citing sources. According to the report, some 4,000 armed Naxalite cadres operate in the Bastar belt alone, and they are aided by a 10,000-12000-strong 'jan militia'. "A large number of Naxalites have been arrested since last year, but senior leaders (of the insurgents) who plan ambushes on security forces have been eluding the forces for a long time. " Home Minister Rajnath Singh has already told the forces to go on an all-out offensive and break the Maoists' dominance in Bastar region, for which the government is ready to provide any number of extra companies (of security forces) and modern technology... It is important to pick these 250 leaders, and important members in the jan militia using robust intelligence," TOI quoted an unnamed official as saying. New Delhi: CRPF personnel deployed for long stints in the Naxal hotbed of Sukma in Chhattisgarh are showing signs of fatigue, according to officials. Home Ministry officials, who visited Chhattisgarh after the massacre of 25 CRPF men by Naxals, have found that the majority of 45,000 paramilitary personnel undertaking the high-risk anti-Naxal operations in Bastar region have been posted there for over three years. "Fatigue has been noticed in jawans as many of them have been posted in Sukma for last five years even though normally they should be there for three years," an official said, adding that there is decline in motivation due to their long deployment in the area. Being posted continuously in Bastar is very stressful and the jawans prefer to join counter-insurgency operations elsewhere including in Kashmir, even though they face militant attacks and stone pelting mobs regularly there. This year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far while the CRPF has lost 38 personnel in Chhattisgarh, the official said. Anti-Naxal operations take a toll on security personnel as they face guerrilla warfare in hot and humid conditions and treacherous terrain. The Home Ministry officials indicated that the 100-strong CRPF personnel, who were attacked by the Naxals on Monday, seemed to have not been sufficiently vigilant leading to such high casualties. The central government has been trying to boost the morale of the forces by providing them necessary infrastructure and logistics for anti-Naxal operations, they said. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. 42 bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet-protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Around 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen have been deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016, three times the number of police personnel who lost their lives. New Delhi: After his party's humiliating defeat in the Municipal Corporation Elections in Delhi, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal faces another crucial test in May when a decision in a case related to a row over 'office of profit' is likely to come. According to a ToI report, the Election Commission is likely to clear its stand next month on a petition seeking disqualification of 21 AAP MLAs for having allegedly violated a law that prevents them from holding an office of profit. AAP, which is currently in power in Delhi, will continue to have a majority even if the EC recommends disqualification of its 21 lawmakers. In case of an adverse ruling by the poll panel, AAP is likely to move court against it. But in all likelihood, the disqualification of nearly one-third of AAP MLAs would be a big setback for Arvind Kejriwal particularly at a time when his popularity has sharply declined. The report also quoted sources as saying that poll panel would have conveyed its response to the President by now if it had not been distracted by the controversy about EVMs. The poll watchdog had recently invited AAP and other EVM-sceptics to come and show how can the EVM machines be hacked. An EC task force is busy preparing for the challenge and will discuss the modalities with representatives of political parties at a meeting shortly. New Delhi: A day after ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) faced a defeat in the MCD polls, party's Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh resigned from his post on Thursday. Singh confirmed his decision to resign on his official Twitter account. The senior AAP leader said, I have sent my resignation to AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal. Th Delhiites rejected the AAP barely after two years of its meteoric rise in the 2015 Assembly polls when it had clinched an unprecedented 67 of the Assembly 70 seats. Singh's announced the decision after Dilip Pandey on Wednesday resigned from the post of AAP Delhi Convenor. With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweeping the Delhi municipal polls, opposition Aam AAP and Congress leaders offered to quit on moral grounds while also blaming the electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in the polls for their debacle. AAP won just 48 wards out of the 272 spread across the three municipal corporations South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). Riding on a Modi wave and defeating anti-incumbency, the BJP won 181 seats. Congress could win just 30 seats. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal refrained from raising the EVM tampering issue, unlike other AAP leaders and promised all cooperation to the civic bodies for the betterment of the national capital. New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party registered a fabulous victory in the Delhi civic polls on Wednesday, giving a humiliating defeat to Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The AAP, which emerged as a major political force in Delhi's politics in 2014, managed to win only 48 out of 270 seats up for grabs, making it clear that the party's popularity has dipped over the years. According to the Delhi State Election Commission, the BJP swept the municipal polls winning 181 seats, while the Congress was restricted to just 30. Unable to concede defeat, the AAP leaders continued to blame EVM tampering for their party's electoral debacle. Appearing on Zee Media, a panel of experts deliberated on the reasons that led to the debacle of the AAP. Watch: The BJP won 64 of 103 wards in North Delhi Municipal Corporation, 70 of 104 in South Delhi Municipal Corporation and 47 of 63 in East Delhi Municipal Corporation. Barring Food and Supplies Minister Imran Hussain, four of the AAP ministers, including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, conceded ground in their own constituencies to the BJP. New Delhi: A Delhi Police special cell has asked 31 students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to join probe in the sedition case involving Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. The students have been given three days - from April 27 to April 29 - to appear before it.The special cell also asked the students of the university to be present at admin block 12 p.m. Afterwards. The Patiala House Court in August last year granted regular bail to JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and two other students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya in a case of sedition. The Delhi High Court in September last year extended the interim relief to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who have been charged with sedition. The court directed to JNU that interim relief to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya will continue till September 29.Both had sought directions against the decision of Appellate Authority of JNU with regard to rustication and fines imposed on them, in relation with the February 9 event. Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Kanhaiya Kumar are being prosecuted by the Delhi Police for allegedly raising anti-India slogans on the JNU campus at a meeting organised on February 9 last year in memory of perpetrator of the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, Afzal Guru. New Delhi: A suspected burglar has died after the police shot at him, and then donated blood to save his life. The Delhi police spotted Nitin, alias Sonu (24), and Salman when they were allegely attempting a burglary in the Prashant Vihar area of Rohini early yesterday. The police said Sonu opened fire at the police party and in retaliation, the police fired at him. Salman managed to flee, but Sonu fell when he was hit by five bullets. He had bullet injuries on his leg, lower back and arms. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life. But Sonu died last night, DCP (Rohini) Rishi Pal said. Doctors at the hospital said that he required four units of blood, which were provided by the four policemen, including the SHO of Prashant Vihar SS Rathee and constable Ashok, who took part in the shootout. Pal said that the policemen told him that while firing at the suspect was a part of their duty, donating blood was a "humanitarian duty". Amid rising tensions with North Korea, US as a part of test of weapon system, launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile from California. In this image taken with a slow shutter speed and provided by the U.S. Air Force, an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test early Wednesday, April 26, 201, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The targ By AP: An unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from California in a test of the weapon system that is part of the US nuclear force. The missile blasted off from a silo at 12:03 am early yesterday from Vandenberg Air Force Base and delivered a single re-entry vehicle to a target approximately 4,200 miles (6,759 kilometres) away at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the Air Force Global Strike Command said. advertisement The launch command was issued via an air launch control system aboard a Navy E-6 Mercury jet. "Tonight's launch was an important demonstration of our nation's nuclear deterrent capability," Col John Moss, commander of Vandenberg's 30th Space Wing, said in a statement. "Test launches like this one are vital to validating the effectiveness and readiness of our operational nuclear systems, so it is critical that they are successful." WRONG TIMING? Operational tests of Minuteman 3 missiles are conducted regularly but the timing of yesterday's launch amid US tensions with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs drew criticism from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which has advocated against nuclear weapons for more than 30 years. "When it comes to missile testing, the US is operating with a clear double standard: It views its own tests as justified and useful, while it views the tests of North Korea as threatening and destabilising," David Krieger, president of the organisation, said in a statement on its website Monday. "What is needed is diplomacy rather than military provocations. Threats, whether in the form of tweets, nuclear-capable aircraft carrier groups, or nuclear-capable missile launches, only increase the dangers to us all," he said. President Donald Trump has in recent weeks ordered an aircraft carrier and other Navy vessels into the region in a show of force to deter North Korea, which on Tuesday conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills. Yesterday, the White House hosted all 100 senators for a classified briefing on North Korea by Trump's secretary of state, defence secretary, top general and national intelligence director. The briefing team was to meet later with House members in the Capitol. The most recent previous Minuteman 3 launch was in early February. Also Read North Korean media threatens Pyongyang will 'wipe out' US from Earth's surface US tells North Korea to cease 'destabilising actions' --- ENDS --- Shimla: Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his day-long visit to the "Queen of Hills" will launch the central government`s subsidised air regional connectivity scheme UDAN, or "Ude Desh ka Har Nagarik", building efficient regional air connectivity, from Shimla`s airport at Jubbarhatti on Thursday. A regular flight, which will operate five days in a week from Wednesday, will depart at 6.10 a.m. from Delhi and will arrive here at 7.25 a.m. On the same day, it will depart at 7.45 a.m. from Shimla and will return to Delhi at 8.45 a.m. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the first UDAN flight under RCS on Shimla-Delhi sector on April 27, 2017. Simultaneously, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will also flag off the inaugural UDAN flights on Kadapa Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors, said a release from the government. "Airfare for a 1-hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500," the PMO said. Members of the tourism industry are elated as they are hopeful that high-end tourists, especially foreigners and business travellers, will return to the state capital and its nearby destinations with the plying of regular flights after a long break. Kingfisher was the only airline that operated regular flights between Delhi and Shimla till September 6, 2012. Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corp (HPTDC) General Manager Vijay Sharma said regular plying of flights would give a big boost to the tourism industry. The annual tourist arrival in Himachal Pradesh crossed 1.8 crore (18 million) in 2016. The tourism sector contributes approximately seven per cent of the State Gross Domestic Product. According to Economic Survey report of 2016-17, a total of 2,604 hotels having bed capacity of 70,869 are registered with the state tourism department. State Commissioner of Tourism and Civil Aviation Dinesh Malhotra said all the 10 tickets, each costing Rs 1,920, for the inaugural flight to Delhi from Shimla have been sold out at the HPTDC office at Shimla`s Scandal Point. With IANS Inputs New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off Shimla-New Delhi flight, the maiden flight under government's regional connectivity scheme under which the fares of flights will be capped at Rs 2500 per seat per hour. Accompanied by Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha and J.P. Nadda, Modi simultaneously flagged off the inaugural UDAN flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video conferencing. "I want to see poor people fly," Modi said, addressing a gathering here. "If the middle class of our country gets a chance they would change the image as well as the destination of the nation. The lives of the middle class will transform and their aspirations are increasing," he said, adding the scheme is going to help tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh and other places where it would be launched soon. 'UDAN' is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism, the PMO said in a tweet. "To make air travel accessible to citizens in regionally important areas, the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik' RCS (regional connectivity scheme) was launched in October, 2016," it added. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15, 2016. "Airfare for a 1-hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500," the PMO said. "This with proportionate pricing for routes of different stage lengths and flight duration," it said. According to an official statement, 24 airports in the western region, 17 in northern region, 11 in southern region, 12 in east and 6 in north-eastern parts of the country are proposed to be connected under this scheme. Under this programme, the government intends to connect 45 unserved and under-served airports. Five airlines were awarded 128 routes under the scheme last month after a bidding process. The selected airline operator would have to provide 50 per cent of the flight capacity with a cap of Rs 2500 per hour on fixed wing aircraft and a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 13 on helicopters with the same price cap. Under 'UDAN', the operators would be extended viability gap funding. The amount is estimated to be around Rs 205 crore per annum for the operators chosen in the first round of bidding. With Agencies Inputs New Delhi: An endangered vaquita porpoise was found dead in the Gulf of Mexico, the country`s environmental protection authority said Wednesday, bringing to four the number of dead vaquitas found in 2017. There are only 30 remaining vaquitas (Phocoena sinus), scientists warned in February. The rare mammals, the world`s smallest porpoise, live exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists warn that they face extinction by 2022. The remains of the vaquita were found Tuesday, 24 kilometers (15 miles) north of the town of San Felipe, in the state of Baja California on the Barra del Primer Estero beach, the statement read. The remains of the young vaquita, which measured 115 centimeters (45 inches) long, was in such an advanced state of decomposition that experts were unable to determine its sex. However, they did see cuts and lacerations indicating that the animal had possibly been trapped in a net, "which we can suppose was the cause of its death." Authorities say the vaquitas have been dying for years in gillnets that are meant to illegally catch another endangered species, a large fish called the totoaba. Smugglers ship the dried swim bladder of the totoaba to China, where it fetches tens of thousands of dollars and is eaten in soup. President Enrique Pena Nieto deployed the navy in 2015 to stop illegal fishing, increased the vaquita protection area and imposed a two-year ban on gillnets. Drones joined the effort last year. In a bid to save the vaquitas, the Mexican government announced plans on April 4 to place some of them in a temporary refuge. The environment ministry said the "ambitious emergency plan" would be carried out with help from international conservation groups. However, the plan is controversial as some conservationists say the vaquita is not an animal that can thrive in captivity. (Withn Agency inputs) Shimla: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked the people of Himachal Pradesh to vote for change like in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Delhi. "Now times have changed. UP and Uttarakhand`s fresh air is now coming towards Himachal Pradesh. Even the fresh air from Delhi is coming here," he said at a public rally here. Without naming Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who is facing corruption cases, the Prime Minister said: "He`s the only Chief Minister in the country who is spending much of his time with advocates." "Himachal is looking for an honest era," he said, indirectly appealing to the people to vote out the present Congress government in the coming elections slated in November. Going nostalgic in his 40-minute address in Hindi, Modi recalled his association with Shimla. He said the fruit growers of this state would be immensely benefited with the government asking the multinational beverage companies to mix fruit juice in the soft drinks. "Our sole aim is farmer welfare. Our government has brought the most comprehensive Fasal Bima Yojana for farmers." He recalled his early days spent on The Mall in Shimla and at the Indian Coffee House with his journalist friends. Delhi: After suffering a humiliating defeat in the MCD polls, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party seems to have comes to terms with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'growing stature'. At a meeting of lawmakers on Thursday, AAP is reported to have discussed that the 'spillover effect' of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. "After the BJP's UP victory, combined with AAP's loss in Punjab and Goa, PM Modi's emboldened persona and stature was hard to beat, even for Arvind Kejriwal," an AAP lawmaker was quoted as saying by NDTV. At the same time, Kejriwal asked the MLAs to go back to people and introspect the reasons behind the poll debacle. The newly-elected 48 councillors also met the CM minister at his residence. Talking to reporters after the meeting, AAP legislator Vishesh Ravi said, "In the meeting, it was decided that MLAs will go back to people and try to find out where has been a communication gap between the legislators and them". Ravi, the MLA from Karol Bagh, said that in the meeting with Kejriwal, the EVM manipulation issue also came up for discussion. "The AAP will soon decide its future course of action on this issue. At present, related evidence (pertaining to EVM manipulation) is being gathered," Ravi said, as per PTI. Another AAP MLA Nitin Tyagi said that in the meeting, it was discussed that MLAs should introspect on what went wrong in the MCD elections. "We need to work at the ground level in our constituencies and also introspect on what went wrong in MCD polls. I think there has been a communication gap between MLAs and people. We could not convince the people about the good work done by the Delhi government. "I think people also forgot how the BJP in the MCD had failed for the last 10 years," Tyagi, the MLA from Laxmi Nagar, said. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has called for a museum in India to display Britain's role in reducing the country to one of the "poorest, illiterate and diseased places on Earth" and to educate large sections of both Indians and British about the extent of imperial crimes against humanity. In an article for Al Jazeera, Tharoor mentioned that he has written a letter to the Indian government to propose that one of India's most renowned heritage buildings, the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, be converted into a museum that displays the truth of the British Raj - a museum, in other words, to colonial atrocities. Tharoor added that a museum would serve as a reminder of what was done to India by the British, who conquered one of the richest countries in the world (27 percent of global gross domestic product in 1700) and reduced it to, after over two centuries of looting and exploitation, one of the poorest, most diseased and most illiterate countries on Earth by the time they left in 1947. The author of 16 books further noted that there was not a single museum, either in India or in Britain, which says anything about the colonial experience, the destruction of India's textile industry and the depopulation of the great weaving centres of Bengal, the systematic collapse of shipbuilding, or the extinction of India's fabled "wootz" steel. Nor is there any memorial to the massacres of the Raj, from Delhi in 1857 to Amritsar in 1919, the deaths of 35 million Indians in totally unnecessary famines caused by British policy, or the `divide and rule` policy that culminated in the horrors of Partition in 1947 when the British made their shambolic and tragic Brexit from the subcontinent. The lack of such a museum is striking. The Congress leader further wrote: Many apologists for British rule have argued that there were several benefits to India from it; the most common example cited is the Indian Railways, portrayed as a generous British endowment to knit the country together and transport its teeming millions. But in reality, the railways were conceived, designed and intended only to enhance British control of the country and reap further economic benefits for the British. Their construction was a big colonial scam, through which British shareholders made an absurdly high return on capital, paid for by the hapless Indian taxpayer. He also mentioned about the many less tangible legacies of British colonialism that continue to affect Indians. Tharoor concluded by writing: An enduring reminder is needed, both for Indian schoolchildren to educate themselves and for British tourists to visit for their own enlightenment. As I say to young Indians: if you don't know where you have come from, how will you appreciate where you are going? New Delhi: External Affairs Ministry said on Thursday that India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that the well being and state of Jadhav's health was a "matter of great concern" to India as the former Indian Navy officer has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year on charges of espionage. "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well-being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. We have asked Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our High Commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request on providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response," Baglay said, as per PTI. Yesterday, India had handed over to Pakistan an appeal by the mother of retired Indian Navy officer, sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. The appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given to Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua by Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale, who also handed over a petition by Jadhav's mother seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Bambawale, who met Janjua, also made a fresh request for consular access to Jadhav, the external affairs ministry had said in a press release in New Delhi. This was the 16th request for access. However, Pakistani media had reported that Janjua had turned down Bambawale's demand saying, "access under (bilateral) agreement is meant for prisoners and not for spies." Pakistan has earlier rejected India's request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. The external affairs ministry had also said yesterday that the Indian envoy had also "handed over an appeal by the mother to the Court of Appeal, on behalf of Jadhav, who continues to be in detention in Pakistan on concocted charges." In the petition, Jadhav's mother has made a request for the intervention of the Pakistani government for his release and expressed the desire to meet him, it had said. As per the appeal system in Pakistan, a death row convict has to move an appellate court within 40 days of the pronouncement of the verdict. "Pakistan was also requested to facilitate visas for the mother and father of Jadhav. They wish to travel to Pakistan to meet him and also to personally file the petition and the appeal. They have applied for necessary visa with the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi," the ministry had added. It was the second time that Bambawale had met Janjua in connection with the naval officer's case. On April 14, Bambawale had met with the Pakistan foreign secretary and expressed India's concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told the media that after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authentic copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: The results of Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2017, JEE Main 2017 will be released on Thursday. Also Read: JEE Main 2017 Results declared The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will upload the results on the official website jeemain.nic.in and cbseresults.nic.in The CBSE on April 18 released the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2017 scanned images of OMR answer sheets of the candidates with their recorded responses and answer keys. How to check JEE Main 2017 results: -Visit the official website -Click on the link JEE Main 2017 Results - Enter application number, date of birth and name - Click on submit - Your results will be displayed on the screen. Take a print out and save for future reference. The JEE scores form the basis of admission into NITs, IIITs, other centrally funded technical Institutions. Candidates who clear the JEE Main examination are eligible to sit for the JEE advanced for admission in IITs. Manipur: This picture is going massively viral on internet and winning hearts of social media users! Reportedly, some Manipuri girls had gone on a study tour to Loktak Lake in Manipur. During the journey, the bus they were travelling in got stuck in mud. Now, what girls did was simply amazing! The girls pulled bus up and the picture capturing the act broke the internet. Here is the PIC:- On April 28, 437 jawans from the northeast will join the ranks of Delhi Police. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made this promise at the closing function of Manipur Sangai Festival in Imphal. By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has fulfilled a promise made to the youth of northeastern states. On April 28, 437 jawans from the northeast will join the ranks of Delhi Police. On November 30, 2014, PM Narendra Modi had said he wished that youth from the northeast be recruited in the Delhi Police. Modi had made the promise at the closing function of Manipur Sangai Festival in Imphal. advertisement He had said the world should know how youth from northeast could police the national capital. MOVE TO CONVEY MESSAGE OF INTEGRATION OF NORTHEAST He had sought to convey a message of integration and mainstreaming of the northeastern states. The promise would be fulfilled after about two-and-a-half years. This was informed by former BJP MP Tarun Vijay in a tweet. Calling it a historic move, Tarun Vijay said it was a visionary step by PM Narendra Modi. He attributed the information to Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju. The Delhi Police is administered by the Home Ministry and Kiren Rijiju himself hails from the Northeast (Arunachal Pradesh). Historic move -vision of @narendramodi -Delhi police to induct 437 Jawans from Northeast to its ranks tomarrow-thanks @KirenRijiju announced- Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 27, 2017 Besides integration, the recruitment of Northeastern jawans in Delhi Police will also boost the confidence of the people staying in the national capital. It will help in checking crimes against northeastern students and youths. During his Imphal visit, PM Narendra Modi had also referred to a proposal which he had made as the then chief minister of Gujarat - that 200 women police personnel from each of the Northeastern states should be deployed in the state for two years. He said such steps would boost national integration. Also read | As BJP's footprint increases in northeast, Congress huddles to counter saffron surge in 8 hill states Also read | Delhi Police files FIR after Hizb-ul-Mujahideen letter threatens to target anti-terror activist --- ENDS --- United Nations: US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, the first Indian-American to hold a cabinet rank, visited India`s UN Mission on Thursday for a wide-ranging discussion with Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin. "We shared perspectives on how India-US can work together at the UN in line with our growing ties," Akbaruddin told IANS after the meeting. Haley described their meeting in a tweet as "great". "We discussed India`s economy, peacekeeping reform and the partnership between India and the US." A US Mission statement added that they also discussed "India`s economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth" and "the close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the UN." Permanent Representative to the UN has a cabinet rank in the US government and Haley has emerged as a powerful and outspoken voice on foreign policy in the US, even as she deviated from some of the early positions of President Donald Trump. However, the differences have virtually disappeared as Trump moved closer to her stances due to realpolitik and Congressional pressures. For example, Trump has embraced her hardline on Russia after chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Syria. A critic of how the UN works, Haley has been insistent on reforming it, especially the peacekeeping operations as a cut in US contributions to the world body looms. "I know for a fact that Nikki feels very, very strongly about taking on problems that really people steered away from," Trump said on Monday during a White House lunch for Permanent Representatives of members of the Security Council. Trump thanked Haley for her "outstanding leadership" and said she was doing a "fantastic job." It was not known if the Security Council reforms with a permanent seat for India -- a priority for New Delhi -- came up during the conversation with Akbaruddin. President Barack Obama has backed India`s quest, but the Trump administration has not publicly endorsed it and Haley has only said that she was open to the idea. Asked about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here in March, she admitted candidly, "First of all, I`m in learning mode. And as I look at that, I know there is conversations of reform of Security Council." She then added: "I`m open to hearing anyone on what they have to say and looking at it and going further." With the US contributing 28.36 percent of the peacekeeping budget, Washington is giving priority to reforming the operations. Historically, India has been the largest troop contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations and 7,678 are serving now. India has also been advocating reforming the peacekeeping operations, especially how the mandates are set by the Security Council, often without consulting the troop-contributors. As Governor of South Carolina, Haley showed interest in India`s economy and its potential and led a trade delegation in 2014 to India seeking investments and stronger commercial ties with her state. New Delhi: Ahead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan`s visit to India this month-end, a senior Turkish official has said that his country does not have any objection to India becoming a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "I don`t think Turkey has any objection to India joining the group," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to President Erdogan, said in response to a question by IANS at a meeting on "India and Turkey`s Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. Setting aside all speculation about Turkey`s support for India`s NSG membership bid, Cevuk said: "We feel that we also are interested in nuclear cooperation with India and all other peaceful countries that seek peaceful use of nuclear technology. So, I don`t think Turkey at all has any objection to India`s membership." Turkey had earlier conveyed its position that it would favour a consensus on the issue. During his visit to India in November last year, Turkish Minister for Development Lutfi Elvan said that India needed to work on its NSG membership bid "to convince the other countries". "We are ready to join the consensus if it is reached," Elvan was quoted as saying. China had blocked India`s membership bid at the NSG plenary in Seoul in June last year on the ground that for a country to become a member of the 48-nation bloc, it should be signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Turkey had earlier supported India`s membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). At Wednesday`s meeting, Cevik said that Turkey would seek to build its relationship with India during Erdogan`s visit that starts on April 30. "We are prepared to help you in building up your economy," he said. He said that Turkey was hosting the bulk of refugees fleeing from Syria while other European nations were not taking in these refugees. Stating that the world was opposing Erdogan because he supported the oppressed, he said: "This is where we need India`s help. Our new presidential system will speed up the process of democracy." Erdogan earlier this month won a referendum that gave him more executive powers as President. Speaking on the occasion, Kerem Alkin, Professor at Istanbul Medipol University`s Faculty of business and Managerial Sciences, said that Turkey wanted India to share its experience in power generation. "There may be negotiations on energy supply during President Erdogan`s visit," Alkin said. "We can work together on global energy demand, especially renewable energy." He also said that Turkey and India could work together on education and food programmes in West Asia and Africa. Transportation, communication, logistics, tourism, retail and financial services are other areas flagged by Alkin where opportunities for cooperation between the two countries lay. Lahore: Pakistan has told India that a re- investigation of the Mumbai attack case was "not possible" as the trial was at an advanced stage and demanded "concrete" evidence against Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of 26/11 assault. In reply to India's demand to re-investigate the 2008 case and put on trial Jamaat-ud Dawah chief Saeed, "Pakistan said the case has already been at an advanced stage," a senior interior ministry official, who is privy to the correspondence between the two countries over the matter, told PTI today. "All proceedings (in the case) have been finalised except recording of 24 Indian witnesses' statements. At this stage, re-investigation is not possible. If India wants conclusion of the case, it should send its witnesses to Pakistan to record their statements," the official said. Saeed, who carries a bounty of USD 10 million on his head for his role in terror activities announced by the US, and his four aides are under house arrest in Lahore since January 30 under Pakistan's anti-terrorism law. The JUD chief was put under house arrest previously after the terror attack in Mumbai in which 166 people were killed by 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba men, but he was freed by a court in 2009 due to a lack of evidence against him. On putting him on trial in that case, Pakistan has sought "concrete" evidence from India. "India had only mentioned in its dossier that Ajmal Kasab (the lone gunman captured alive) had once met Hafiz Saeed. Thousands of people meet him (Saeed). That doesn't prove anything. Pakistan is willing to try Saeed in the 26/11 case provided India gives us solid evidence against him in this regard," the official quoted Pakistan government's response. He said Pakistan has also made it clear to India that the Mumbai attack case may not reach its logical conclusion without India's cooperation. "India must send its 24 witnesses to Pakistan to testify in the case for its conclusion," he said. The trial in the Mumbai attack case has been pending for the past seven years. India has urged Pakistan to complete the trial at the earliest. It has said that enough evidence has been shared with Pakistan to prosecute the accused. But no proceeding in the case has been held on Wednesdays - the day fixed for hearing in the case - recently at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi by an anti-terrorism court. The trial court has already completed recording of the statements of all witnesses here and their cross examination and other relevant record has also been presented before it. Another mastermind of the attack, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum face charges of abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the attack. Lakhvi was freed two years ago after he secured bail in the case. He lives at an undisclosed location since then. The other six suspects are in Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi. Of the 10 LeT men who unleashed terror in Mumbai on November 26 in 2008, only Kasab was captured alive and later executed after a court found him guilty and handed down the death sentence. Islamabad: The decision to provide consular access to alleged India 'spy' Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been awarded death sentence in Pakistan, will be taken on merit, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media that Jadhav was prosecuted as per Pakistani law and his statements helped in intercepting a terrorist network in the country. "We already have evidence in the Jadhav case," Geo TV quoted Zakaria as saying. Jadhav, whose family stays in Mumbai and who was reportedly arrested in Balochistan, has been charged with espionage and waging war against Pakistan. India says he was abducted from Tehran, Iran. The Foreign Office spokesman said former Tehreek-e-Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan in a recent confession video "has disclosed the presence of Research and Analysis Wing's (RAW) presence" in Pakistan. Urging the international community to take notice of Ehsan's confessional video, Zakaria told the media that the former TTP spokesman's "statement exposed the real face of India". He claimed that Ehsan's confession about TTP commander Khalid Khorasani's treatment in India is a proof that the TTP is assisted by RAW. He said that Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies were "involved in sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan". New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks on May 1 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will arrive here on April 30 on a two-day state visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. At a media briefing here, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that Modi will hold delegation-level talks with Erdogan after the visiting dignitary is given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the morning of May 1. President Pranab Mukherjee will also host a dinner banquet in honour of the Turkish President. Erdogan is visiting India after he won a referendum in his country earlier this month which gave him more executive powers as President. Ghanashyam said that, during the visit, Erdogan will be accompanied by some cabinet ministers, senior officials and a 150-member business delegation that will take part in a a meeting of the India-Turkey Business Forum. Stating that bilateral trade between India and Turkey stood at $6.4 billion, she said: "India's main export products to Turkey are textiles and fabrics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastic products, machinery and automotives." She said that there was scope for cooperation in other areas such as construction, infrastructure development, renewable energy, tourism and film shooting. A number of Indian companies have established their presence in Turkey through production facilities or project participation. "Both India and Turkey have been battling terrorism for long and understand the need for acting against this global menace," Ghanashyam stated. She said that following the talks between Modi and Erdogan on May 1, some agreements that are currently being finalised, are expected to be signed. Erdogan last visited India in 2008 when he was the Prime Minister of his country. President Mukherjee visited Turkey in 2013. Modi also met Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, in 2015. New Delhi: Information on sexual harassment cases should be provided to victims within 48 hours under the Right to Information Act as it pertains to their "life and liberty", the Central Information Commission has held. The RTI Act mandates a public authority to furnish information sought by applicants within 48 hours, and not 30 days, if the matter pertains to their life and liberty. "Information sought by the appellant/complainant of sexual harassment relating to inquiry report etc has to be classified as information related to life and liberty, because both of these rights are threatened by sexual harassment," Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu has held. He was hearing a plea filed by a woman who was allegedly subjected to sexual harassment at her workplace -- the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research -- by a scientist. Through her RTI application filed last year, the woman had sought to know about the status of a fact-finding committee constituted in connection with her case and its findings among other details. The information was denied to her saying the inquiry was going on and citing a provision of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Acharyulu said as per the sexual harassment prevention law, the information pertaining to sexual harassment at the workplace shall not be subject to the provisions of the Right to Information Act, except to the extent that it should not be disclosed to the public, press and media in any manner. This is done in order to secure privacy, security and dignity of the complainant, he noted in a recent order. "If a third person wants to know the detailed information about sexual harassment, this provision could be used to deny it. But it cannot be denied to the complainant," Acharyulu said. The Information Commissioner said it was a "deliberate" misreading of the provision of the law to harass the complainant and deny her the right to information about action taken on her own complaint. He noted that merely because the process of investigation or prosecution of offenders is continuing, the bar stipulated under Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act cannot be invoked. "It is impossible to imagine that giving a copy of preliminary report of inquiry will impede further proceedings, investigation or inquiry," he said. Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act exempts disclosure of such information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders. "The respondent authority did not raise this point and did nothing to explain to the commission about possible reasons as to how the disclosure would be impeding apprehension or prosecution of the accused," he said. The commissioner said that "threat to dignity of women at the workplace" is nothing less than a threat to her life and liberty in view of the seriousness of mental or physical harassment she undergoes. "The public authority should have provided a copy of the inquiry report considering this as concerning life and liberty of the appellant within 10 days as per Section 13 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, if not in 48 hours, or at least in 30 days as prescribed under section 7(1) of RTI Act," he said. Acharyulu said the complainant was deprived of her right to information which was guaranteed to her under two laws i.E. the Right to Information Act and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. "The commission accordingly directs Vinod Kumar, CPIO, to show cause why maximum penalty should not be imposed upon him for obstructing the information to the complainant, before May 20, 2017," he noted. New Delhi: At least three soldiers, including a captain, lost their lives after terrorists attacked an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. Two terrorists were also killed in the attack on the Army base located close to the Line of Control (LoC).Meanwhile, reports state that two more terrorists are still holed up and attempts are being made to smoke them out. This is not the first time terrorists have gunned down the Central Reserve Paramilitary Force (CRPF) personnel after invading and attacking their camp. Here`s a timeline of the major strikes at the Indian Army camps in the recent years:-January 2, 2016The Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force was attacked by a group of heavily armed terrorists on January 2, 2016. Four terrorists were killed by the security forces, and the Indian Armed forces lost three brave men including NSG`s Lt Col Niranjan, who attained martyrdom when a bomb exploded while he was inspecting a terrorist`s body. The terrorists belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group.-September 18, 2016In one of the bloodiest attacks on the Indian Armed forces, 19 soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Uri area of Baramulla. Four fidayeen militants stormed an Army camp at Uri in Baramulla District near the LoC on September 18, 2016. The high number of casualties in the Uri terror attack was due to the fact that a large number of soldiers, of the Dogra Regiment, had been stationed at the camp in tents and other temporary structures as there was a changeover of guards. Some of these tents caught fire during the attack, and the fire spread to other parts of the barracks. While the four terrorists were neutralised immediately, India also conducted a surgical strike in retaliation on September 29, 2016, against militant launch pads across the LoC in Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir. Nearly 20-50 militants were neutralised as per the Indian Army. The militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed is suspected of being involved in the planning and execution of the attack in Uri. -November 29, 2016: Seven soldiers, including two Majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in the Nagrota area of Jammu and Kashmir, triggering a fierce gun battle that raged for more than 12 hours. -December 5, 2014: Heavily armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters of the Army in North Kashmir`s Uri town, killing 17 jawans and injuring 19 other personnel in the terror strike. Six militants were also killed in the operation. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken a serious note of the "large number of complaints" about "corrupt practices" of Railway officials and directed strictest possible action against those found guilty. According to PTI, the PM has asked the Railways to work towards a unified single telephone number for all grievances and queries, including helpline in the case of an accident. PM Modi made the comments while reviewing the progress of vital infrastructure projects in the railway, road and power sectors, spread over several states. Chairing a meeting of Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI), an ICT-based multi-modal platform, he reviewed the progress towards handling and resolution of grievances related to Railways. "Noting that a large number of complaints were related to corrupt practices of officials, he directed strictest possible action against Railway officials found guilty of corruption," a PMO statement said on Wednesday. The Prime Minister has been asserting that his government is determined to eliminate corruption. The projects reviewed are spread over Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland. These included the Mumbai Metro, the Tirupati-Chennai Highway, long-pending road projects in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Manipur, and important power transmission lines in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East. Reviewing the implementation of Swachhta Action Plans, PM Modi said that events such as Swachhta fortnights should be converted into movements towards permanent solutions. The Prime Minister also urged all Secretaries of the Government of India, and all Chief Secretaries of states, to come up with concrete plans and objectives for transformative change, to be achieved by the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022. With PTI inputs Lucknow: A private school in Meerut city of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday allegedly issued a diktat to its students to sport 'Yogi-style' hair cut, raising the hackles of shocked parents who protested. The worked up parents alleged that Rishabh Academy School in Sadar area had warned students they will not be allowed to attend school till they got the buzz hair cut, akin to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's. The school denied the charge. As the news spread, dozens of angry parents reached the school and protested. Finally, the police mediated and pacified the irate parents before getting children entry to the school premises. The students also accused school management of banning consumption of non-vegetarian food during recess. The management, however, denied the allegations and said its Secretary Ranjeet Jain had merely asked students to be properly dressed and sport a "decent" hair cut while attending school. "The idea is to ensure that children lead a disciplined school life. As for the ban on non-vegetarian food, that has been the case always. It is unfortunate that a communal colour is being given to a trivial issue," a school management official said. Bhopal: In her first press conference after her release from jail on bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur alleged that she was subjected to extreme torture by the Mumbai ATS to make her agree to her role in 'saffron terror'. I was in jail for the last nine years and I got no chance to express my views. My arrest in 2008 was a part of a larger conspiracy hatched by the Congress in 2008... I have fought back from the black sea of conspiracy, Pragya said. She also slammed P CChidambaram for claiming the existence of 'saffron terror' in the country. Nine years of injustice... it is clear that it was a conspiracy by the Congress and it is certain the current government will not do any conspiracy (against her) and will try to ensure justice, she said. When reporters suggested that the Modi government may have played a role in securing her release, her lawyer intervened and said, It was the Supreme Court that dropped MOCOCA charges against her (Sadhvi Pragya) on April 12, 2015. There is no need to bring the government into this. Making serious allegations against then members of the Mumbai ATS, Sadhvi Pragya claimed that she was illegally arrested by the ATS from Surat on October 10, 2008 and taken to Mumbai. They kept me in illegal detention and tortured me for 13 days, she alleged. Khanvilkar, Parambir Singh, (late) Hemant Karkare - all men - tortured me. Never before or after Independence, a woman has been tortured like I have was, Sadhvi Pragya said. I was physically fit before my arrest and now I am disabled because of the torture at the hands of Mumbai ATS. Even my lungs were damaged and i was put on ventliator for five days, she said. Sadhvi Pragya added that she was 'broken' physically by the ATS but they could not break her mentally, as she is a sanyasi. Only because of my mental strength I am here before you otherwise the Congress had planned to finish me off, she said. As a Sadhvi, I forgive those who did wrong to me unintentionally but I will never forgive those who did it intentionally, she said. Pragya walked out the jail after the Bombay High Court, yesterday, granted bail to her, holding that prima facie no case was made out against her. Malegaon blasts: Bombay High Court grants bail to Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Purohit to stay in jail The court, however, rejected the bail plea of co-accused Prasad Purohit, a former Army lieutenant colonel, saying the charges against him are of "serious and grave" nature. Six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon town of Nashik district on September 29, 2008. Sadhvi Pragya, 44 , was arrested in October that year and Purohit, 44 , the next month and both were charged with plotting the blasts as part of what the prosecution said a plan by Hindu right wing group Abhinav Bharat. They are in jail since their arrests. Nine others were also arrested and are behind bars. The court also asked Pragya to furnish a cash surety of Rs five lakh and surrender her passport to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). It also directed her not to tamper with the evidence and to report to the NIA court as and when required. Sadhvi Pragya, who is suffering from cancer, is currently undergoing treatment at a Madhya Pradesh hospital, while Purohit is lodged in Taloja jail in Maharashtra. The NIA, which took over the probe from the ATS, had given a clean chit to Sadhvi Pragya and told the High Court that it had no objection if she was released on bail. It is not a routine for a rhinoceros to join a social media platform for self-promotion. But, the last of his species, northern white rhino Sudan has debuted on dating app Tinder at the age of 43 to look for his mate. By India Today Web Desk: It looks like a Hollywood script of Terminator series where attempts are being made to save Homo sapiens from extinction. However, different from reel life, it is the human beings which have pushed a rhinoceros to join a social networking app in search for his mate. The last surviving male northern white rhinoceros has just joined the dating app Tinder in search for a partner. His name is Sudan. advertisement His Tinder profile reads: the fate of my species literally depends on me. NORTHERN WHITE RHINOCEROS White rhinoceros is the largest extant species of rhinoceros. White rhinoceros has two sub-species - southern and northern. While southern white rhino's population is estimated to be at around 20,000, just three northern white rhinoceros are alive - two female and one male. All three northern white rhinoceroses live in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Nairobi. The last male northern white rhino is 43-year-old Sudan. The attempts at natural breeding have failed with two surviving females - 15-year-old Fatu and 25-year-old Najin. Northern white rhinoceros Sudan. (Photo: Reuters file) While veterinary doctors are thinking of carrying out in-vitro fertilisation to save the species from total extinction, Sudan joined dating app Tinder. HOW THE CAMPAIGN BEGAN The northern white rhinoceroses face extinction on account of mass hunting for years by poachers, who kill the animal for their horns. According to some reports, horns of white rhinos are sold for USD 50,000 a kilo. This makes the white rhino's horns costlier than precious metal like gold or drugs like cocaine. With only three known white rhinos living in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Nairobi, the authorities decided to look for a match across the globe. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy teamed up with dating app Tinder and launched 'The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World' campaign. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy website page for Sudan reads, "The goal of this campaign is to raise the USD 9 million needed to protect the northern white rhino from extinction." Sudan lives in Ol Pejeta Observancy of Nairobi with two female northern white rhinoceroses. (Photo: Reuters file) It further says, "The funds raised will go towards ongoing research into Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ART) by a consortium of institutions. Once perfected, this technology, in particular in vitro fertilization (IVF), will aid to achieve successful pregnancies to gradually build up a viable herd of northern white rhinos." SUDAN ON TINDER On the social media app Tinder, Sudan's profile reads, "I don't mean to be too forward, but the fate of my species literally depends on me. The profile further says, "I perform well under pressure. I like to eat grass and chill in the mud. No problems. 6-ft-tall and 5,000 pounds if it matters." advertisement Sudan's profile can be seen in 190 countries, where Tinder has its presence and over 40 different languages. His profile has been put on Tinder as part of the 10-year programme of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy to recover the nearly extinct species. --- ENDS --- New Delhi: Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi has been arrested in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar, reports said on Thursday. According to ANI, Andrabi, who is the head of Dukhtran-e-Millat - an Islamist separatist organization was arrested for her alleged anti-India activities last night. Dukhtran-e-Millat is known for issuing diktats periodically to the residents of Kashmir Valley on things it considers un-Islamic. Andrabi is also a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. She has often been criticised for giving provocative statements against the Government of India. A large number of militants recently arrested by the security forces have reportedly confessed to have been influenced by her provocative speeches. Andrabi's inflammatory speech videos are also routinely shown at terror training camps across the Line of Control. Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader, who is now in jail. It was not immediately clear under what provisions Andrabi has been booked, but there were reports earlier that Centre was mulling slapping of UAPA on her. Srinagar: Guerrillas believed to be foreigners sneaked into an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday and killed three soldiers in an audacious pre-dawn attack that left two militants dead, officials said. Seven other soldiers were injured in the fighting that erupted after the insurgents at 4.30 a.m. cut through the two-layered barbed wire of the firing range at the Panzgam army camp in Kupwara district, some 120 km north of Srinagar. Taking advantage of the surprise element, the attackers hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately, causing the casualties. Two of the soldiers in hospital were said to be in critical condition. The army retaliated, killing two militants. A third reportedly escaped, triggering a massive search operation. In no time, crowds gathered outside the army camp shouting slogans and resorted to heavy stone throwing, the officials said. The army opened fire killing a 70-year-old civilian. "The mob resorted to heavy stone throwing demanding the bodies of the slain militants," an officer said. "The fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the LoC (Line of Control)", which divides Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan, Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. According to officials, the identify of the terrorists was being ascertained. The dead soldiers included Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment. Panzgam is the rear administrative area for over nine army units in Kupwara district and is spread over an area of 240,000 sq metres. The camp is about 20 km from Kupwara town and some 10 km from the LoC. The attackers were engaged by a Quick Reaction Team (QRT). Army sources said the attackers wearing black Pathan suits and combat jackets were foreigners, but their nationality has not been established yet. They had no backpacks with them, said army officials, indicating that it was not a case of fresh infiltration, and the terrorists had been on the Indian side for a while. Three AK-47 assault rifles, nine magazines, 156 rounds of AK-47, a Chinese pistol, a pistol magazine, three grenades, three matrix sheets, two GPS devices, a smartphone and a radio set were recovered from the suicide attackers. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley condoled the deaths.A "My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the three martyred soldiers. Prayers for speedy recovery of the injured. The indomitable courage of our forces in safeguarding the country is exemplary. Salute to martyrs for their supreme sacrifice," Jaitley tweeted. New Delhi: The central government has now decided to raise a 1000-women strong special battalion with the Jammu and Kashmir Police Force, which will primarily deal with incidents like stone pelting in the Kashmir Valley. The policewomen will be part of the five India Reserved Battalions (IRBs), which the central government has already sanctioned. As many as 1,40,000 youths in Jammu and Kashmir have applied for 5,000 posts in the five IRBs to be raised in the state. The process of recruitment in the five IRBs has started and authorities have received around 1,40,000 applications, 40 percent of which are from the Kashmir valley. The women battalion will primarily deal with incidents like stone pelting in the Kashmir valley and other law and order duties, a Home Ministry official said. The response to the police battalions so far has been very encouraging as there are nearly 30 applicants against one post, the official said. The issue was discussed today at a high-level meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Rs 80,000-crore development package announced for Jammu and Kashmir by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015. The IRBs are being raised with an aim to provide jobs to the local youths and 60 per cent of vacancies in the new battalions will be filled from the border districts of the state. The cost of raising each battalion is around Rs 61 crore and 75 per cent of it will be provided by the central government. Personnel of India Reserve Battalions (IRBs) are normally deployed in their respective states but they can be deployed in other states too if there is a requirement. At present, there are 144 India Reserve Battalions in various states. In addition, four IRBs each are being raised in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, 12 in Maoist-hit states besides the five battalions in Jammu and Kashmir. with PTI inputs Kupwara: Hours after militants attacked an Army camp in Kupwara district of north Kashmir, killing three soldiers, including a captain, a mob on Thursday hurled stones and bricks at Army personnel near the site of the terror attack. The stone-pelting began a few kilometers away from the Army camp at Panzgam in Kupwara where the terror attack took place at 4:00 am. The protesters were trying to disturb the movement of the Army convoy by pelting stones at the security forces. Three Army personnel, including an officer, were killed by the assailants. The two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed militants were killed in the retaliatory action in Kupwara. The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces and in the run-up to the Srinagar by-polls on April 9. On Wednesday, students boycotted classes in Pulwama, Bandipora, Shopian, Kulgam, Ganderbal and Chadoora towns and took to the streets, engaging security forces in fierce stone pelting clashes. The People`s Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state had yesterday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. Nashik: Farmers in Sinnar and Igatpuri talukas here who have parted with their lands for the proposed Mumbai-Nagpur 702-km Sumruddhi Expressway project, will be compensated adequately, according to Nashik Collector B Radhakrishna. Currently, measurement survey work is underway in 10 districts falling under the project. Farmers and locals of Sinnar, Shahapur taluka in Thane and some other districts in Maharashtra have been holding protests against the project. Last week a group of farmers in Shivade village in Sinnar had held a protest against the measurement exercise. "The government will take care of the farmers affected by project and they will get proper compensation for their land. They would be provide with alternative land," he told reporters here last evening. Yesterday, a large number of farmers and locals had gathered at Shahapur in Thane to stage a rasta-roko over the project. New Delhi: Bollywood's legendary actor and politician Vinod Khanna breathed his last on April 27, 2017, at 11.20 am in Mumbai. The entire nation woke up to this terrible news and social media has been fluttering with the condolence posts. Not just the film fraternity and fans but politicians too have extended their condolences to the family in this hour of grief. President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter and wrote: Heartfelt condolences on. the passing away of Shri Vinod Khanna, a highly talented and acclaimed actor & MP # PresidentMukherjee President of India (@RashtrapatiBhvn) April 27, 2017 Will always remember Vinod Khanna as a popular actor, dedicated leader & a wonderful human. Pained by his demise. My condolences. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 27, 2017 Congress President Sonia Gandhi too condoled the demise of Bollywood star and MP Vinod Khanna. PTI quoted her as saying, Vinodji had a rare and profound influence over the masses with his simple and charismatic character," she said, adding he dominated the silver screen with his outstanding persona. She expressed solidarity with Khanna's family and prayed for the departed soul. New Delhi: Veteran actor cum politician Vinod Khanna left this world for a heavenly abode at Mumbai this morning. An ocean of fans took over several social media platforms to express their sadness and grief. IANS quoted Sanjay Dutt extended his condolences to the Khanna family. He said in a statement: "It is saddening to hear of the demise of Vinod Khanna ji. I have watched him as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He was and always will be family to the Dutts." Khanna is survived by his former wife Geetanjali and their sons Akshaye and Rahul, who are now actors, and his present wife Kavita, son Sakshi and daughter Shraddha. Sanjay Dutt has worked with Vinod Khanna in films "Khoon Ka Karz" and "Kshatriya". Dutt added, "May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshaye, Rahul and Sakshi." Khanna was hospitalised for over a month for suspected cancer. He was 70 and is survived by his wife, three sons and a daughter. Khanna was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in the first week on April after reportedly suffering from severe dehydration. The actor was the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the Lok Sabha from Punjab's Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab. (With IANS inputs) New Delhi: The legendary Bollywood star Vinod Khanna breathed his last on Thursday morning around 11.20 am, leaving his family, friends and an ocean of fan following in gloom. Khanna was battling advanced bladder carcinoma (bladder cancer) reportedly and after his prolonged illness succumbed to the disease. Vinod Khanna was not only a veteran actor but also a great leader. He was an active politician and a sitting BJP MP from Gurdaspur. Condolence messages poured all over social media from politicians to film fraternity. The classic actor started his career in Sunil Dutt's 'Man Ka Meet' which released in 1968. He went to act in several films as a villain but it was 'Hum Tum Aur Woh' in 1971 and 'Mere Apne' in the same year which won him accolades and prominence. Khanna featured in several blockbuster films and had an illustrious film career in the early 70s and 80s before he took a break and sought solace under his spiritual guru Rajneesh Osho. Khanna looked up to his guru Osho and was reportedly one of his favourite disciples. This was somewhere in 1975 when his craze had just begun. But in the early 1980s, when Khanna had become a huge Bollywood star, he decided to denounce his career, showbizall the limelight and surrender his soul to his guru. Shocking everyone, Khanna left the industry to be with Osho. He went to the US, at Rajneeshpuramperforming the duties of a true disciple for about five long years. However, he returned to the world of showbiz after a hiatus of five long years and was back with a bang! Khanna broke a million hearts and got married to Geetanjali in 1971. He has two sons from that marriageRahul and Akshaye Khannaboth are in the film business. But the couple got divorced eventually. In 1990, Khanna announced his marriage with Kavita with whom he has two kidsson Sakshi and daughter Shraddha. His family has been supportive of him in all these years and was by his side during tough times. Vinod Khanna was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Center in Girgaon for a few weeks before succumbing to cancer, reportedly. His wife Kavita and kids were by his side during his last moments. Vinod Khanna's last rites were performed at Worli today evening. His family and friends from film fraternity including Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Danny Denzongpa and many others were seen. Khanna is survived by wife Kavita and children Rahul Khanna, Akshay Khanna, Sakshi Khanna and daughter Shraddha. Vinod Khanna was a BJP MP and several political leaders including PM Narendra Modi, President Pranab Mukherjee, Amit Shah and Congress President Sonia Gandhi mourned his death. There can never be another man as dashing as legendary superstar Vinod Khanna. The tall, handsome and intrepid actor had a powerful presence on-screen which not only made women weak at knees but set a high standard for men to look up to. In the year 1946, October 6, the star was born in Peshawar to Kamla and Kishanchand Khanna, in a Punjabi household. Khanna, completed his schooling from St. Mary's School, Mumbai and transferred to St. Xavier's High School, Delhi. He was also a proud alumnus of Delhi Public School, Mathura Road. After his family shifted base to Mumbai in 1960, he went to Barnes School in Deolali, near Nashik. It was there he first felt the love for cinema. At the boarding school, Khanna watched 'Solva Saal' and 'Mughal-e-Azam' and knew movie business is where he wants to be. Later, he graduated with a commerce degree from Sydenham College, Mumbai. Once decided, Vinod Khanna took the big plunge and made a smashing debut in Sunil Dutt's 'Man Ka Meet' (1968). The film was directed by Adhurti Subba Rao, and in a negative role, Khanna outshone the lead actor. Before making it big in mainstream films, he tried his hands in supporting or villainous roles. It was in 'Hum Tum Aur Woh' (1971) opposite Bharati Vishnuvardhan where he featured as the main lead hero. Later he starred in 'Mere Apne' directed by Gulzar. In 1973, his performance in 'Achanak' was critically acclaimed. SEE: A timeline of Vinod Khanna's inspiring life Some of his best works include Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Gaddaar, Jail Yatra, Imitihaan, Inkaar, Kuchhe Dhaage, Amar Akbar Anthony, Rajput, Qurbani, Kudrat, Dayavan, Kaarnama,Suryaa: An Awakening and Jurm. However, when Khanna was the rising superstar in early 80s, he decided to quit the stardom and head for a spiritual life instead. Vinod Khanna followed his spiritual guru Osho Rajneesh and denounced everything. But after 5 years returned to his first love--films, giving two major hits 'Insaaf' and 'Satyamev Jayate'. He has several awards and honours to his name such as the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award for Haath Ki Safai, Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award, Kalakar Awards Lifetime Achievement, Stardust Awards Role Model for the Year, Zee Cine Award for Lifetime Achievement The veteran also had the opportunity of entering politics and was a sitting MP from Gurdaspur before leaving this world for a heavenly abode. Vinod Khanna got married to Geetanjali in 1971 and has two sons Rahul and Akshaye Khanna. Later he separated from his wife. In 1990, he got married to Kavita and they have a son, Sakshi and a daughter, Shraddha. Khanna was reportedly suffering from cancer and breathed his last on April 27, 2017. Vinod Khanna's demise has created a void which can never be filled again. May his soul rest in peace! New Delhi: The committee on allowances headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa is likely to recommend a maximum hike of 178 percent in house rent allowance by retaining HRA rate for Class X, Y and Z cities and towns at 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent of basic pay respectively. The committee's proposal on allowances will benefit over 47 lakh central government employees and 53 lakh pensioners. The allowances form a sizeable amount of the salary drawn by a government employee. As per media reports, the committee on allowances will submit its final report on Thursday (April 27), when the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley returns to the country after his visit to US and Russia. The government had earlier said that the decision on allowances will be taken after the committee on allowances submits its report. The committee on allowances headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa that was set up to review the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission is understood to have finalised its report. People familiar with the matter said the committee has also finalised its views on the pay commission recommendation of reducing the house rent allowance (HRA) to 24 percent of basic pay as against the 30 percent of basic pay employees were drawing under the Sixth Pay Commission. The committee was also asked to examine the 7th Pay Commission recommendation for abolition of 53 allowances out of a total of 196 and subsuming another 36 into larger existing ones. The 7th Pay Commission headed by AK Mathur had earlier proposed the rate of House Rent Allowance (HRA) at 24 percent, 16 percent and 8 percent of the Basic Pay for Class X, Y and Z cities respectively. The Commission had also recommended that the rate of HRA will be revised to 27 percent, 18 percent and 9 percent when DA crosses 50 percent, and further revised to 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent when DA crosses 100 percent. The existing rates of HRA for Class X, Y and Z cities and towns are 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent of Basic pay (pay in the pay band plus grade pay). Population of City DA above Present Proposed 50% 100% Above 50 lakh (Class X) 30% 24% 27% 30% 5 lakh to 50 lakh (Class Y) 20% 16% 18% 20% Below 5 lakh (Class Z) 10% 8% 9% 10% Option 1 If the committee retains the exiting HRA rates (as per 6th Pay Commission) then the HRA component of central government employees will increase ranging between 157 percent and 178 percent. Take, for instance, a central government employee at the very bottom of the pay scale under 6th Pay Commission was till now entitled to an HRA of Rs 2,100 on basic pay of Rs 7,000 (basic pay that includes pay of pay band + grade pay) in a Class X city. It is to be noted that government, while implementing the 7th Pay Commission in June last year had made it clear that till the final outcome of allowances committee is being placed, the employees would be getting the allowances as per 6th Pay Commission. Now, as per 7th Pay Commission, the new entry level pay at this level is Rs 18,000 per month against which the new HRA for a Class X city would be Rs 5,400 per month, that is around 157 percent more than the existing level. Existing Basic Pay (6th CPC) HRA (6th CPC) Proposed Entry Pay as per 7th CPC Proposed HRA as per 7th CPC Class X Class Y Class Z Class X Class Y Class Z 7000 2100 1400 700 18000 5400 3600 1800 13500 4050 2700 1350 35400 10620 7080 3540 21000 6300 4200 2100 56100 16830 11220 5610 46100 13830 9220 4610 118500 35550 23700 11850 90000 27000 18000 9000 250000 75000 50000 25000 Similarly, at the highest level of the pay scale, the Cabinet Secretary and officers of the same rank have a basic pay of Rs 90,000, which means they are entitled to current HRA of Rs 27,000 in Class X towns. After the revised pay scale, the new basic pay is Rs 2.5 lakh, for which the HRA would be Rs 75,000, meaning a hike of around 178 percent. Option II If the Committee accepts the bare recommendations of A K Mathur-led 7th Pay Commission then the HRA component of central government employees will increase ranging between 106 percent and 122 percent. Take, for instance, a central government employee at the very bottom of the pay scale, where the basic pay (pay of pay band + grade pay) is now Rs 7,000, would currently be entitled to an HRA of Rs 2,100 in a Class X city. As per 7th Pay Commission, the new entry level pay at this level is Rs 18,000 per month against which the new HRA for a Class X city would be Rs 4,320 per month, that is 106 percent more than the existing level. Existing Basic Pay (6th CPC) HRA (6th CPC) Proposed Entry Pay as per 7th CPC Proposed HRA as per 7th CPC Class X Class Y Class Z Class X Class Y Class Z 7000 2100 1400 700 18000 4320 2880 1440 13500 4050 2700 1350 35400 8496 5664 2832 21000 6300 4200 2100 56100 13464 8976 4488 46100 13830 9220 4610 118500 28440 18960 9480 90000 27000 18000 9000 250000 60000 40000 20000 Similarly, at the highest level of the pay scale, the Cabinet Secretary and officers of the same rank have a basic pay of Rs 90,000, which means they are entitled to current HRA of Rs 27,000 in Class X towns. After the revised pay scale, the new basic pay is Rs 2.5 lakh, for which the HRA would be Rs 60,000, meaning a hike of 122 percent. By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Apr 27 (PTI) Leading hotel network OYO today announced its foray into Nepal, where it launched a property in capital Kathmandu. "After our successful overseas foray in Malaysia, we are now thrilled to offer OYOs hassle-free and standardised stay experience to travellers visiting Nepal," OYO Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal said in a release here. advertisement Founded in 2013, OYO is today Indias largest hotel network operating 7,000 properties and 70,000 rooms in more than 200 Indian cities, including in major metros, regional hubs, top leisure destinations as well as pilgrimage towns. In January 2017, OYO launched Townhouse - a managed hotel-brand designed to function as social hot spots to cater to city dwellers and a new generation of guests. Nepal is the second overseas market for OYO, after its successful venture into Malaysia in January 2016, where it has now grown to 200 hotels. PTI SM RSY RDS --- ENDS --- Patna: The Bihar Cabinet on Thursday increased the dearness allowance (DA) of state government employees, pensioners and family pensioners by four per cent. They would now get a total DA of 136 per cent instead of the existing 132 per cent, cabinet secretariat department Principal Secretary Brajesh Mehrotra said. The DA would be given to the employees with effect from January 1 this year, Mehrotra told reporters here in a post cabinet briefing. This would be applicable to those employees and pensioners who are getting revised pay scale according to the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations, the Principal Secretary said. The revision of DA would have an additional burden of Rs 561.30 crore on the state exchequer annually, he said. For a minuscule number of employees, pensioners and family pensioners who are getting salary or pension as per Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations, the cabinet increased their DA by 11 per cent, he said. The Cabinet also enhanced the corpus of Bihar Contingency Fund from Rs 350 crore to Rs 6403.42 crore for the period ending March 2018, Mehrotra said. The decision to enhance the contingency fund has been taken in anticipation of giving relief to people affected by natural calamities and meeting other unexpected expenditure, he said. Mumbai: The Reserve Bank will soon put into circulation new Rs 10 coins that have been minted to commemorate 125th year of National Archives of India. The central bank will also put into circulation new Rs 5 coins to celebrate 150th anniversary of Allahabad High Court. On the design of new Rs 10 coin, the RBI said that on the reverse of the coin, there will be an image of National Archives Building in the centre with inscription '125 YEARS' below the image. It will also bear logo of 125th anniversary celebration. The year 1891 and 2016 in English shall be written on the upper and lower periphery of the coin respectively. The year 1916 and 2016 in international numerals shall be written respectively on left and right top of the image. The RBI said the existing coins in this denomination shall also continue to be legal tender. On the design of new Rs 5 coin, the RBI said the coin's face will bear an image depicting centre facade of Allahabad High Court Building emerging from the book. The year 1866-2016 in English numerals shall be written at the bottom of the image, the RBI said in a release. New Delhi: Aiming to venture into the market in Nepal, budget-hotels network OYO announced the launch of its debut hotel in Kathmandu, following its successful venture into Malaysia in January 2016, where it has now grown to 200 hotels. OYO partners with hotels to standardise and transform their rooms enabling a better experience for guests. It pioneered the use of technology in budget-hotel category to make property operation and management more seamless. Launched in 2013, OYO`s network has grown to 7000 hotels in 200 cities. "OYO has been at the forefront of the small and budget hotels revolution in India. Building the category grounds-up, we have employed technology and operational acumen to deliver delight to our customers and unparalleled benefits to partners. Our network has witnessed robust growth to become the largest in India. After our successful overseas foray in Malaysia, we are now thrilled to offer OYO`s hassle-free and standardised stay experience to travellers visiting Nepal," said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO - OYO. According to the Department of Immigration, of the 174,803 tourists that visited Nepal in 2016, the highest number of travellers were reported from India. A further boost to cross-border trade and tourism is expected with India and Bangladesh set to reopen the defunct trans-border rail routes which would extend links to Nepal and Bhutan. The travel and hospitality sector in India is witnessing a phenomenon of impulse planning. Even as travel-planning cycle reduces further, the expectations from on-ground suppliers and agents of delivering a non-negotiable and predetermined experience have become stronger. Affordable and trusted stay-options remain one of the top concerns for most travellers. With OYO in Nepal, Indian travellers will find it easier to extend their impulse-planning behaviour while planning a holiday. Nepal is also one of the few countries that offers visa-on-arrival to Indians. "Today, 70 percent of Indians admit to unplanned spending - from relationships to shopping, instant gratification is the new norm. At the same time, they are increasingly looking at discerning or standardised experiences; even if the purchase decision was driven by impulse. With our promise of standardided and predictable stays across 7000 hotels in over 200 cities, OYO caters to the impulse-planning behavior displayed by millennial traveler," said Agarwal. OYO is an urban innovator that is tackling the lack of equilibrium between demand and supply of quality living space. Using technology and talent to fix this socio-economic problem, it has transformed over 70,000 hotel rooms in India and Malaysia. Further, it invests in skilling and training the staff of its partner-hotels to deliver better service.This performance-driven approach has, in turn, enabled better revenues and profits for partners, and delightful service and experience for guests. The company has generated new employment opportunities and nurtured micro entrepreneurs.OYO`s hotel-booking app is among the fastest in the world, enabling guests to search and book a room in less than five seconds with just three taps. The company also recently launched OYO Captains, to provide personalised on-ground local assistance to guests. New Delhi: A strange, yet mysterious aurora has been discovered recently thanks to a group of citizen scientists chasing the northern lights and social media. This strange ribbon of purple light named 'Steve' was so first observed by citizen scientists in Canada and eventually verified by the European Space Agency (ESA). Astronomer Eric Donovan of the University of Calgary came across something he hadn't seen before while looking at photos on the Facebook group of the Alberta Aurora Chasers. The group called this strange purple streak of light in the night sky captured in their photographs a proton arc, but Donovan knew it had to be something else because proton auroras aren't visible. However, nobody knew what it actually was so they decided to put a name to this mystery feature, which they called it Steve. While the Aurora Chasers combed through their photos and kept an eye out for the next appearances of Steve, Prof Donovan and colleagues turned to data from the ESA's Swarm magnetic field mission and his network of all-sky cameras. Soon he was able to match a ground sighting of Steve to an overpass of one of the three Swarm satellites, says a release from the ESA. As the satellite flew straight though Steve, data from the electric field instrument showed very clear changes. The temperature 300 km above Earths surface jumped by 3000C and the data revealed a 25 km-wide ribbon of gas flowing westwards at about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s either side of the ribbon, Prof Donovan told ESA. It turns out that Steve is actually remarkably common, but we hadnt noticed it before. Its thanks to ground-based observations, satellites, todays explosion of access to data and an army of citizen scientists joining forces to document it, Prof Donovan said. Swarm allows us to measure it and Im sure will continue to help resolve some unanswered questions, he added. Speaking at the recent Swarm science meeting in Canada, Prof Donovan explained how this new finding couldnt have happened 20 years ago when he started to study the aurora. Chennai: AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran was on Thursday afternoon brought here by the Delhi Police, two days after he was arrested by them in connection with an alleged bribery case. A Delhi police team probing the Election Commission (EC) bribery case brought Dhinakaran and his friend Mallikarjuna by flight from the national capital and they arrived a little after 1 pm. Dhinakaran's supporters Pugazhenthi and Nanchil Sambath were at the airport when Dhinakaran arrived. The police had secured warrants from a Delhi court to search the Chennai residences of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting the duo along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK (Amma)faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. Chandraseka had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, police had said. Police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any EC official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by jailed AIADMK chief VK Sasikala, had earlier faced a revolt by some of the Ministers, even as efforts are on for the merger of the rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. Amroha: Amid the raging debate over 'triple talaq', a Muslim woman from Uttar Pradesh's Amroha district, who claims to be a victim of the age-old practice, has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityantah in the hope of getting some help. The Muslim woman complained that Arif Ali, who she married in June 2014, gave her triple talaq through speed post. The woman claimed her in-laws and husband used to harass her for dowry and in 2015 sent her back to her paternal house. The alleged triple talaq victim said her husband was having an affair with another woman. Triple talaq, 'nikah halala' and polygamy violate Muslim women's right to equality and dignity and are not protected by the right to profess, practise and propagate religion under Article 25(1) of the Constitution, the Centre has told the Supreme Court. 'Nikah halala' is a practice intended to curb incidence of divorce under which a man cannot remarry his former wife without her having to go through the process of marrying someone else, consummating it, getting divorced, observing the separation period called 'Iddat' and then coming back to him again. Several Muslim women have challenged the practice of 'triple talaq' in which the husband, quite often, pronounces talaq thrice in one go, sometimes over phone or text message. PM Modi and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath have advocated for the rights of Muslim women and called for the abolition of the triple talaq and nikah halala. Kolkata: BJP national president Amit Shah on Thursday urged the party`s West Bengal leaders to reach out to the masses and fight for their rights as according to him the people were now favourably disposed towards their party. "The party president has suggested us to reach out to the common people. He (Amit Shah) instructed us to be with the people in their struggle and fight for their rights," said BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha after attending the closed door state core committee meeting. Shah had said the people had become "disillusioned" with the state`s ruling Trinamool Congress, while the opposition Congress and CPI-M have "significantly lost" their political relevance. He instructed the Bharatiya Janata Party activists to take advantage of the situation and bring more people into the party`s fold, said Sinha. "People of West Bengal are disillusioned about the Trinamool Congress. The Congress and CPI-M are nowhere in the picture. In this situation, the party president has instructed the state leadership to bring people under the umbrella of the party and make them understand that development in Bengal is impossible without the BJP." "We will follow his instruction in both letter and spirit and organise more booth level integration programmes in the near future," he said. By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Apr 27 (PTI) Leading hotel network OYO today announced its foray into Nepal, where it launched a property in capital Kathmandu. "After our successful overseas foray in Malaysia, we are now thrilled to offer OYOs hassle-free and standardised stay experience to travellers visiting Nepal," OYO Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal said in a release here. advertisement Founded in 2013, OYO is today Indias largest hotel network operating 7,000 properties and 70,000 rooms in more than 200 Indian cities, including in major metros, regional hubs, top leisure destinations as well as pilgrimage towns. In January 2017, OYO launched Townhouse - a managed hotel-brand designed to function as social hot spots to cater to city dwellers and a new generation of guests. Nepal is the second overseas market for OYO, after its successful venture into Malaysia in January 2016, where it has now grown to 200 hotels. PTI SM RSY --- ENDS --- Kabul: An Afghan strongman is giving sanctuary to Taliban fighters and their families who had sought haven across the border in Pakistan, building on a radical strategy to reduce Islamabad`s perceived influence on the insurgency. Kandahar`s powerful police chief Abdul Raziq last December called for a "safe zone" for Taliban militants, a contentious plan centred on Afghanistan`s long-standing accusation that the insurgency is fuelled by Pakistan`s support in cross-border sanctuaries. Since then, around two dozen insurgents have sought sanctuary in the southern province -- from senior commanders to low-level fighters -- with Raziq`s trusted aide, Sultan Mohammed, instrumental in getting them to leave Pakistan, security sources say. Three of them spoke to AFP by telephone from secret locations in Kandahar. All say they have been granted de facto amnesty, and some given housing and cash handouts in exchange for not returning to the battlefield. "Sultan Mohammed told me: `Come back to your country, your homeland without fear. I guarantee no one will touch you`," 37-year-old Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former member of the Taliban`s economic commission, told AFP. "He came to the border in his car to receive my family," said Rauf, who defected earlier this year from Quetta in southwest Pakistan with his three wives and children. Other Taliban figures who the sources claim sought refuge in Kandahar include senior commanders Malim Paida, Mohammadullah Khan and an insurgent leader known as Doctor Khalil -- a longtime fugitive who escaped in a mass jailbreak in Afghanistan`s second largest city in 2011. While extracting a handful of cross-border militants is unlikely to significantly de-escalate the conflict, the effort underscores a new push by officials to shift what they see as the insurgency`s centre of gravity from Pakistan to Afghanistan. But sheltering or ceding ground to insurgents with blood on their hands is a risky and controversial gambit. The Taliban last week orchestrated one of the deadliest attacks on an Afghan military base since 2001, killing at least 144 people in an assault that has caused widespread anger and left security forces facing disarray. As the stubborn insurgency expands, Mohammed likens his effort to poking "small holes in a large dam", intent on a piecemeal collapse of the structure. "The return of these Taliban figures will pave the way for others to come back," he told AFP.Minutes after Khalil crossed the border through the Pakistani town of Chaman this year, he says the Taliban began hunting for him. "They would have killed me for abandoning the movement," he said. Fatigued by war, from Quetta he reached out to Mohammed, who offered him sanctuary with the stipulation that he return with his family -- seemingly a surety against him turning rogue. Once in Afghanistan, he said Mohammed offered him accommodation, food, and a one-time payment of roughly $200. Now he is helping Mohammed gather phone numbers of other Pakistan-based Taliban members willing to relocate. "Many are tired of war and want to return, but are afraid of Pakistani intelligence on that side and of being arrested and tortured on this side," Khalil told AFP. Like Raziq, Mohammed is a police commander well-known for brutality but also credited for taming Kandahar districts that were once a hornet`s nest of insurgents. Taliban sources speaking to AFP inside Pakistan dismissed his efforts as an "enemy trap". Islamabad denies supporting the militants, saying it uses Taliban sanctuaries as a "lever" to pressure the group into talks with Kabul. But prominent Taliban figures have accused Pakistan`s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of manipulating the group. Insurgent sources claim former Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour was trying to branch away from the ISI, forging ties with Iran, Russia and Arab world, before he was killed in a US drone strike while exiting Iran.Afghanistan`s National Security Council has refused to comment on the Kandahar strategy, saying only that the Taliban are allowed to relocate to Afghanistan under state protection. A top security official told AFP last year that the government`s goal "is to bring the Taliban from Pakistan to Afghanistan". But the renegades interviewed by AFP say they are practically living in hiding as they fear revenge attacks. Some have questioned the strategy`s usefulness. "There aren`t one, two, or three hundred Taliban," said Kabul-based researcher Rahmatullah Amiri. "There are thousands and not everyone is in Pakistan. How will this plan make an impact?" Mohammed said disarming and reintegrating even a few is worth the effort. Whenever his walkie-talkie crackles with the voice of an insurgent, hurling profanities, threats and demanding that he return their seized weapons, he said he relays one key message: "Don`t fight another`s war. Come home." London: British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the other 27 EU countries of lining up to oppose Britain over Brexit after Germany`s Angela Merkel said the UK should have no "illusions" over the exit process. "A third-party state will not have the same rights or even superior rights to a member state," the German chancellor told parliament two days before a key summit in Brussels. "This may sound self-evident, but I have to say this clearly because some in Britain seem to have illusions on this point," she said. "That would be a waste of time." Later in the day, May accused the 27 other EU member states of lining up against Britain. "Our opponents are already seeking to disrupt those negotiations -- at the same time as 27 other European countries line up to oppose us," May told a campaign rally in Leeds, northern England. "That approach can only mean one thing -- uncertainty and instability, bringing grave risk to our growing economy with higher taxes, fewer jobs, more waste and more debt." The British leader is currently campaigning after calling a snap election on June 8, hoping to shore up her mandate ahead of two years of gruelling negotiations. The leaders of the other 27 EU nations have stressed a united stance as they plan to meet Saturday to set down the bloc`s "red lines" -- although the talks will not begin until June, after Britain`s election. "The negotiations will be very demanding, without a doubt," said Merkel, the leader of the biggest EU economy.The EU has toughened its strategy, making new demands over financial services, immigration and the bills Britain must settle before ending its 44-year-old membership of the bloc. Britain could be required to give EU citizens permanent residency after living there for five years, in a challenge for May`s Conservative government, which has vowed to limit immigration. The EU`s latest draft negotiating guidelines, agreed on Monday, seek to ensure Britain does not get a better deal outside the bloc than inside. According to the document seen by AFP, the other EU countries will seek to hold Britain liable for the bloc`s costs for at least a year after it leaves in 2019 -- longer than was previously proposed. Merkel said that talks from the very start must include Britain`s financial obligations, including after Brexit. She said these issues must be resolved first in a "satisfactory" way before negotiations turn to Britain`s future relations with the bloc -- a sequence Merkel called "irreversible". "Without progress on the many open questions regarding the exit, including the financial questions, it doesn`t make sense to hold parallel talks on the details of a future relationship," she said.May, after starting the Article 50 process of leaving the EU last month, is seeking to shore up her mandate for the Brexit talks in a snap election on June 8. Polls suggest her Conservatives will return with an increased majority. A new survey, by YouGov for The Times newspaper, meanwhile for the first time signalled more people now believe the Brexit vote was a mistake, by a 45-43 percent margin. May hosted a working dinner on Wednesday with key EU Brexit negotiators, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. EU ministers met in Luxembourg on Thursday to prepare the ground work for Saturday`s meeting. "It seems that at the moment we are completely united on everything," said Maltese Vice Premier Louis Grech, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU. "Naturally we have to protect the EU`s interests." He said a prime objective was "to ensure that we will conduct the negotiations in a spirit of unity and trust between the 27". May has committed to pulling Britain out of Europe`s single market to end free movement of EU citizens into Britain. Earlier this week, a German senior finance official rejected this demand, in an interview with AFP. "What won`t work is having access to the internal market without freedom of movement" for EU citizens, said Jens Spahn, state secretary at the finance ministry. "Or access for UK financial institutions to the European financial market if at the same time there is rampant deregulation in London. "You can have either one thing, or the other. These things must be clarified." Phnom Penh: Cambodian leader Hun Sen called on the United States Thursday to stop forcibly deporting convicts with Cambodian heritage to the Southeast Asian nation, saying they should revise a policy that splits up families. More than 500 felons have been sent to Cambodia through a repatriation deal, though many were raised in the US and arrive in the country having never visited and unable to speak the language. "America is very smart...they keep only good people while they deport prisoners out of their country back to us," said Hun Sen, the strongman premier who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades. "I hope the father of human rights which is America...will accept the proposal to amend the agreement to offer convicted Cambodians a chance to stay in the US with their families," he added. The Prime Minister`s comments come after Cambodia`s foreign ministry said earlier this week it wanted to renegotiate the 15-year-old agreement allowing both nations to deport criminals with ties to the other country. The foreign ministry spokesman said the deal had been "criticised by both Cambodians here and Cambodian communities in the US" as a form of "double punishment" for those who are deported against their will. A spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh told AFP they had been informed of Cambodia`s desire to amend the agreement. Hun Sen routinely hurls insults at the United States and jumps on any opportunity to point out hypocrisy in American foreign policy. Washington secretly bombed Cambodia during the Indochina wars but went on to be a major donor as the country emerged from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge genocide, pouring billions in aid into the country. It also took in tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Yet relations between the two nations have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, a period that has seen Cambodia grow closer to regional superpower Beijing. China has lavished the poverty-stricken country with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans over the past few decades. Unlike aid from the US, Beijing`s support comes without pressure to address rights abuses or strengthen the country`s fragile democracy. Washington: The US on Thursday said that there are early indications that China is doing a better job than before on enforcing UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea. But at the same time it noted that it was too early to arrive at any conclusion on this issue. "You have seen some early indications of China doing a better job enforcing existing UN sanctions on North Korea. You can see in the Chinese press and in other areas that China is really making a clear effort to communicate to North Korea that its behaviour, its provocative behaviour, the nuclear tests, missile tests can't be tolerated," a senior official with the Trump administration said. "So I think you have seen two things an acknowledgement of the threat to China, but I think you have also seen a willingness for China to take this problem on in new ways. We ought to suspend judgment until we see how this develops in the coming days, months, so forth," the official said in response to a question. But he also noted that North Korea's behaviour also poses a threat to Chinese interests and security. "What is different about how China is viewing the problem in North Korea today is that China is viewing that problem as a threat not only to US interests and security, or South Korea and/or Japanese interests and security, but also a threat to Chinese interests and security.?And so I think that is a big shift in and of itself," the official said. China on February 18 imposed a halt on coal imports from North Korea until the end of 2017, hardening its stance after a new missile test by Pyongyang, in accordance with new sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council. The State Department said China has taken some steps against North Korea, but it needs to take more such steps. China's influence on North Korea is probably more than that of any other country and Beijing needs to exercise that influence on Pyongyang, said State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner. The US, however, dismissed China's concerns on the US deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) missile in South Korea. "THAAD is a defensive system and it is being deployed, frankly, out of concern over South Korea's vulnerability to North Korea's continued aggressive behaviour. That's all it is," Toner said. The US and South Korea argue that the THAAD is aimed at countering missile threat from North Korea. But China says most of the THAAD systems can monitor best part of its territory. Amman/Beirut: Israel struck an arms supply hub operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah near Damascus airport on Thursday, Syrian rebel and regional sources said, targeting weapons regularly sent from Iran via commercial and military cargo planes. Video carried on Lebanese TV and shared on social media sites showed the pre-dawn airstrikes caused a fire around the airport east of Damascus, suggesting fuel sources or weapons containing explosives were hit. Israel does not usually comment on any action it takes in Syria or the wider region. But Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking to Army Radio from the United States, appeared to confirm Israel`s involvement. "The incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel`s policy to act to prevent Iran`s smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah," he said. "The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act." An Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We can`t comment on such reports." Two senior rebel sources operating in the Damascus area cited their monitors in the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital as saying five strikes had hit an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militias. Lebanon`s al-Manar television, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, said early indications were that the strikes hit warehouses and fuel tanks and had caused only material damage and no human casualties. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is backed in his six-year-old civil war by Russia, Iran and regional Shi`ite militias including Hezbollah, a close ally of Tehran and enemy of Israel. Syrian military defectors familiar with the airport say it plays a major role as a conduit for arms from Tehran. Alongside military planes, there are a number of commercial cargo aircraft that fly regularly from Iran to refurbish arms supplies quickly to Hezbollah and other groups. The flights go directly from Iran to Syria, passing over Iraqi airspace. "The Assad regime uses civil aviation to transport weapons and ammunition and get fighters from Iran," said Wael Alwan, a senior official in the Failaq al Rahman rebel group that operates from a stronghold on the outskirts of Damascus. Alongside weapons, hundreds of Shi`ite militia fighters from Iraq and Iran are also flown into Syria from Damascus international airport. Intelligence sources put their numbers at from 10,000 to 20,000 and say they play a significant role in military campaigns launched by the Syrian army. Israel has largely kept out the war in Syria, but officials have consistently referred to two red lines that have prompted a military response in the past: any supply of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah or the establishment of "launch sites" for attacks on Israel from the Golan Heights region. Speaking in Moscow on Wednesday, where he was attending a security conference, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman reiterated that Israel "will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border". During his visit, Lieberman held talks with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as part of efforts by Israel to coordinate with Moscow on actions in Syria and avoid the risk of confrontation. A statement from the Defence Ministry said Lieberman had expressed concern to the Russian ministers over "Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon". A Western diplomat said the airstrikes sent a strong political message to Iran, effectively saying it could no longer use Iraqi and Syrian airspace to resupply its proxies in Syria with impunity. Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Washington on Wednesday, Katz, the intelligence minister, said he was seeking an understanding with the Trump administration that Iran not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria. Israeli officials have estimated that Iran commands around 25,000 fighters in Syria, including members of its own Revolutionary Guard, Shi`ite militants from Iraq and recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington: The Pentagon inspector general has launched an investigation into whether Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump`s former national security adviser, accepted money from foreign entities without the required approval, according to a letter released by House Democrats on Thursday. The new probe compounds the legal problems Flynn faces for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state-run Russia Today (RT) television network and a firm owned by a Turkish businessman after the former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) director retired as an Army lieutenant general in 2014. Senior lawmakers said this week that Flynn likely broke the law by failing to request and receive permission to accept $45,000 to speak at a 2015 RT gala dinner at which he sat with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn also figures in congressional probes into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that U.S. intelligence agencies say was aimed at swaying the vote in favor of Trump, the Republican candidate, over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Russia denies the allegation. The Defense Department inspector general is investigating whether Flynn "failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving any emolument from a foreign government," according to an April 11 letter released by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. If substantiated, such a failure would violate military regulations that apply a constitutional prohibition to current and retired officers against accepting "emoluments" from foreign powers, the letter said. An attorney for Flynn, who has offered to testify before Congress in return for a grant of immunity from prosecution, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement on Tuesday, Flynn`s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said Flynn briefed DIA "extensively" before and after his RT appearance. Representative Elijah Cummings, the panel`s top Democrat, released other Defense Department documents on Thursday showing that DIA found no evidence that Flynn sought permission to accept foreign funds despite a 2014 warning against taking such payments. One document, a redacted version of a letter that DIA sent to the committee on April 7, said the agency had not found "any records referring or relating to LTG (Lieutenant General) Flynns receipt of money from a foreign source." "DIA did not locate any records of LTG Flynn seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source, the letter continued. Cummings also released an October 2014 letter from DIA to Flynn outlining ethics restrictions that applied to him on retirement from the U.S. Army, including a prohibition on accepting payments from foreign sources without permission. "We have no evidence, not a shred, that he (Flynn) disclosed his payments ... from RT, the Kremlin-backed propaganda outlet, and we have no evidence, zilch, that he obtained permission from the secretary of the Army and the secretary of state to accept any foreign government payments as required by law," Cummings told reporters. Separately, the committee`s Republican chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz, asked the acting Army secretary for a "final determination" as to whether Flynn violated the law by accepting foreign payments, according to a letter released by his office on Thursday. In addition to looking into the Russia Today funds, the House committee is scrutinizing Flynn`s work last year as a foreign agent hired to promote Turkish government views by a Netherlands-based company owned by a Turkish businessman. The company paid Flynn`s now-defunct firm, the Flynn Intel Group, a total of $530,000 beginning in August, when he was the Trump campaign`s top foreign policy adviser. Flynn only registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department in March, weeks after he resigned as Trump`s national security adviser following his failure to disclose contacts with Sergei Kislyak, Russia`s ambassador to the United States, before Trump took office. Manila: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday there was no point protesting Chinese artificial island building in disputed areas of the South China Sea because it could not be stopped. Duterte made the comments on the eve of him hosting a two-day Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, and he confirmed he would not use the event to pressure China on its expansionism in the strategically vital waters. "It cannot be an issue anymore. It`s already there. What would be the purpose also of discussing it if you cannot do anything," Duterte told reporters. China has been turning reefs and shoals in areas of the sea claimed by the Philippines and other nations into artificial islands, and installing military facilities there. The United States has criticised the construction work, warning against militarisation in the waterway where $5 trillion in annual trade passes. China`s reclamation has also rattled other claimants, which include ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Duterte`s predecessor, Benigno Aquino, had challenged China by asking a UN-backed tribunal to outlaw Beijing`s sweeping claims to the sea and its reclamation work. The tribunal last year ruled largely in the Philippines` favour. However Duterte, who came to office shortly before the ruling was issued, adopted a pragmatic approach to dealing with China in a bid to win billions of dollars worth of trade and aid. Duterte, who has also sought to loosen the Philippines` long-standing alliance with the United States, on Thursday blamed the superpower for failing to stop China`s reclamation activities. "Who can stop that? Us? It`s only America. But how come they allowed that to happen," Duterte said, adding the United States could have used its Navy to stop the reclamation work years ago. Duterte said he would not raise the ruling during this week`s ASEAN summit. "I will skip the arbitral ruling. It is not an issue here in the ASEAN," he said. "It`s only between China and the Philippines so I will skip that." Duterte said he preferred to discuss a code of conduct on the South China Sea. Philippine diplomats have said a "framework" code of conduct might be completed by June. Duterte expressed optimism a code of conduct would ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the waters. "The code of conduct at sea is another story. It must be taken up," Duterte said referring to the ASEAN summit. Analysts have cautioned that China has been delaying negotiations on a code since it was proposed 15 years ago, and used that time to build its artificial islands and take control of other contested features. Islamabad: At least seven militants were on Thursday killed in missile strikes by a US pilotless aircraft in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of North Waziristan. The US drones fired two missiles to pound two hideouts of the militants in Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal area located along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Xinhua news agency reported. Both the hideouts were completely destroyed in the attack that took place at about 2 p.m. (local time). Those killed included a commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and his six accomplices, who were holding a meeting in one of the targeted hideouts. Thursday's drone strike is second of its kind in Pakistan since the beginning of this year. On March 2, at least two suspected militants were killed in a similar attack in the neighbouring tribal area of Kurram agency. On putting Hafiz Saeed on trial in the Mumbai 26/11 attack case, Pakistan has sought "concrete" evidence from India. By India Today Web Desk: Demanding "concrete" evidence against Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Pakistan has rejected India's demand for a re-investigation of the case. India said it was a matter of concern that even after eight years of the strike, the terrorists continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay demanded an immediate action against the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack. LATEST UPDATES: In reply to India's demand to re-investigate the 2008 case and put on trial Jamaat-ud Dawah chief Saeed, "Pakistan said the case has already been at an advanced stage," a senior interior ministry official, who is privy to the correspondence between the two countries over the matter, told PTI today. "All proceedings (in the case) have been finalised except recording of 24 Indian witnesses statements. At this stage, re-investigation is not possible. If India wants conclusion of the case, it should send its witnesses to Pakistan to record their statements," the official said. Saeed, who carries a bounty of USD 10 million on his head for his role in terror activities announced by the US, and his four aides are under house arrest in Lahore since January 30 under Pakistan's anti-terrorism law. The JUD chief was put under house arrest previously after the terror attack in Mumbai in which 166 people were killed by 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) men, but he was freed by a court in 2009 due to a lack of evidence against him. In Delhi, the ministry of external affairs spokesperson said it is the Pakistan government's responsibility to bring to book the perpetrators and all those involved in conspiring, executing and mounting the 26/11 attack in which 166 people were killed. "It is a matter of concern that well after eight years of the attack, the perpetrators continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan and have not been brought to book," he said. On putting Saeed on trial in that case, Pakistan has sought "concrete" evidence from India. "India had only mentioned in its dossier that Ajmal Kasab (the lone gunman captured alive) had once met Hafiz Saeed. Thousands of people meet him (Saeed). That doesn't prove anything. Pakistan is willing to try Saeed in the 26/11 case provided India gives us solid evidence against him in this regard," the official quoted Pakistan government's response. The trial in the Mumbai attack case has been pending for the past seven years. India has urged Pakistan to complete the trial at the earliest. It has said that enough evidence has been shared with Pakistan to prosecute the accused. Of the 10 LeT men who unleashed terror in Mumbai on November 26 in 2008, only Kasab was captured alive and later executed after a court found him guilty and handed down the death sentence. advertisement Also read | Decade after 26/11, Musharraf's revelation: Hafiz Saeed not behind Mumbai attacks Hafiz Saeed's brother-in-law Makki gets charge of head of JuD Also read | Hafiz Saeed challenges house arrest in Lahore High Court ALSO WATCH VIDEO --- ENDS --- YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Turkeys government cancelled the visit of German lawmaker of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Bernd Fabritius to the country, Deutsche Welle reports. In November 2016 PACE authorized Bernd Fabritius to depart for Turkey to examine the countrys commitment to the principles of the legal state. Fabritius had already planned a number of meetings, including with the Justice Minister and President of the Constitutional Court of Turkey. However, after the PACE decision to degrade Turkeys status to under monitoring, official Ankara cancelled the lawmakers visit. I accept this step with pain and urge the Turkish government to refrain from its decision on cancelling the visit, he said. PACE degraded Turkeys status to under monitoring.113 delegates of various countries of PACE voted in favor of the decision, 45 voted against and 12 abstained.The monitoring status for Turkey was removed in 2004. The PACE decision mentions for continuing cooperation with Turkey it is necessary that the country fulfils the proposals. PACE rapporteurs Marianne Mikko and Ingebjrg Godskesen strictly criticized Turkeys decisions in the state of emergency conditions, which has been extended for three times already after the attempted coup. They mentioned it damages the democratic institutions of Turkey. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. US President Donald Trump has just taken the office, and he needs to be given a chance to improve relations with Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Yahoo! News, TASS reported. Hes (Trump) just starting. Just give him a chance, she said in response to a question why the Russia-US relations had not been improved under Trumps Presidency. Zakharova said the problem may be related with the former US administrations policy led by Barack Obama. We did nothing to deteriorate our relations. We are highly interested in developing relations with the United States at various spheres, she said. Maria Zakharova agreed with US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons words who said that the bilateral relations of Moscow and Washington are at the lowest level during his recent visit in Moscow. I do agree with this. We have repeatedly announced that improving the relations is in accordance with the interests of our peoples, she said. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The wife of an Azerbaijani diplomat has been caught shoplifting in New York, USA. A security guard at Marshalls on the Grand Concourse in Fordham caught Mehriban Jabrayilova trying to leave the store with $188.88 worth of items in a bag stuffed into the bottom of the baby stroller Tuesday, New York Daily News reported. Jabrayilova, 29, told cops called to the store she is married to First Secretary of the Azerbaijani Embassy Farid Jabrayilov, 32, and has diplomatic immunity. US law enforcement agencies can however revoke diplomatic immunity, however this is typically done in case of serious felonies. Mehriban Jabrayilov could not be reached for comment. This did not happen, her husband told the Daily News. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. During the Government session on April 27, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan asked President of the State Revenue Committee Vardan Harutyuanyan about the problems of fairs economic entities who held protests, reports Armenpress. Harutyunyan said during the examinations the SRC didnt impose fines on any economic entity. Starting from November the economic entities were regularly informed that they need to clarify the documents, provision of cash checks. During this period we have recorded a positive dynamics, the economic entities understood that this is not directed against the SMEs, rather it is directed towards the major business turnover, the SRC President said, adding that a working group has been formed together with the economic entities, business representatives will submit proposals within several days. PM Karapetyan urged the SRC to clearly continue the works. Our ideology is the following: the SMEs burden must not increase, and at the same time, the documentation must be clear. We need to clearly work with them, the PM said. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. A Mass was held in Genevas St. Hakob Church on April 24 dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims, followed by a wreath laying ceremony at a memorial in the Church yard. The foreign ministry told ARMENPRESS Armenias Envoy to Switzerland Hasmik Tolmajyan delivered a speech at the event, who mentioned Switzerlands National Councils and Genevas Grand Councils official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and stressed the importance of international condemnation of the genocide for the prevention of this crime against humanity. Tolmajyan mentioned that the reborn Armenia, as well as the participation of thousands of Armenians in hundreds of cities worldwide and foreigners in commemorative events of the Armenian Genocide prove the correctness of Anatole Frances prophetic words back in 1916, when he said Armenia is dying, but Armenia will be reborn again..People who dont want to die, wont die. Armenian Genocide commemoration events were held in other Swiss cities as well. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The first round of talks over the Common Aviation Area between the European Union and Armenia launched in Yerevan, reports Armenpress. Armenias negotiating group is led by Head of General Department of Civil Aviation Sergey Avetisyan, while that of the EU is chaired by Deputy Head of the European Commissions Aviation Agreements Unit Klaus Geil. At a press conference before the launch of talks, Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Piotr Switalski said by the Common Aviation Area with the EU Armenia will become an integral part of the common regulation field. By applying the European standards and procedures, Armenia will become an integral member of the greater family. Armenia will be able to use wider communication opportunities with the world. For the country, that, unfortunately, still has closed borders, such connectivity with the world has a great significance, the EU Ambassador said. Piotr Switalski said the agreement will bring major benefits to Armenias citizens and consumers. I want the flight connections between the Europe and Armenia to be much more as a result of this agreement. Of course, it is very difficult to force the commercial companies, since they decide their flight routes based on concrete business calculations, however, I must state that this agreement will enable them to positively consider the opportunities to operate flights to Armenia. As a result of emerging competition, the prices of air tickets will decrease, and Armenian citizens will be able to travel more to Europe and other places throughout the world. We hope this agreement will bring many positive benefits to the development of Armenia's tourism and business environment since more tourists will arrive in Armenia from Europe thanks to a wider connectivity. I consider Armenia as one of the most beautiful corners of Europe which is not fully discovered yet, Switalski said. In his turn Sergey Avetisyan said one of the preconditions of Open Sky policy launched in 2013 is that Armenia must create a complete legal framework field with the partner states. This agreement is important for a number of reasons. By this we, in fact, liberalize and regulate our ties with all EU member states. We are obliged to install the European standards in Armenia which will establish a more predictable legal field. This in its turn will provide preconditions for aviation companies to prepare long-term programs. I hope the agreement will be signed soon, Sergey Avetisyan said. EU chief negotiator Klaus Geil said they are very happy for the launch of talks on creation of common aviation area with Armenia. This process has long been prepared. The European Commission gave a mandate to launch talks over signing this agreement with Armenia. We have similar agreements with a number of partner states. We see significant benefits from this, the connectivity increases which is very important for Europe. This is also important for our partner states since markets, flight routes, people operating in the field are increasing, and we realize that the transportations volume is significantly increasing, we see new faces entering the market and creating a serious competition. We realize that as a result of this process the prices of air tickets decrease for consumers, he said. He expressed confidence that the agreement will be beneficial for Armenia and the European Union. In addition to opening the market and eliminating the barriers, it also will include Armenia in the European regulation family. We will set united rules for the common aviation area. We are full of hope that we will finalize the agreement as soon as possible. This is our firm commitment. We are looking forward to the launch of talks, Klaus Geil said. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Marine Papyan, Grant Program Coordinator of the EU delegation in Armenia, has been detained in suspicion of embezzling grants provided by the EU delegation. The arrest comes amid an ongoing criminal case investigated by the general department of investigations of the Investigative Committee (IC), Sona Truzyan, spokesperson of the IC told ARMENPRESS. The Investigative Committee released a statement, saying: The preliminary investigation of the ongoing criminal case on embezzlement of EU grants continues in the general department of investigations of the Investigative Committee. Based on evidence gathered during the investigation, Grant Program Coordinator of the EU delegation to Armenia Marine Papyan has been detained in suspicion of embezzling grant money provided by the EU delegation with initial agreement with a group of individuals. Earlier it was reported that as result of investigations of the criminal case and analysys of all evidence, 13 people Tigran Sukiasyan, Gevorg Ghazaryan, Rubina Ter Martirosyan, Armen Bareghamyan, Anahit Avagyan, Sergey Balasanyan, Dina Manukyan, Karen Stepanyan, Tereza Dilanyan, Alexander Poghosyan, as well as Hrayr Gyonjyan, Garik Chilingaryan and Gegham Petrosyan - are under investigation for embezzlement, assisting embezzlement and forgery of documents of EU delegation grant money. Hrayr Gyonjyan, Garik Chilingaryan and Gegham Petrosyan are currently wanted. Notice Suspect is innocent until proven guilty by the Court of Law. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan has never refused from its terrorist policy and now also continues acting the same way, Davit Babayan spokesperson of the President of Artsakh Republic, told Armenpress, commenting on the recent activeness of the Azerbaijani side in the frontline as a result of which the Armenian side suffered losses. Azerbaijan continues its terrorist policy as always did. Now we see that they are conducting military exercises with Turkey, and they started to hold the so-called PR campaign of these exercises on the days of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. This is another form of information, political terrorism. During these days they have advertised their military exercises they are going to conduct in May and complete on the eve of triple holiday of May victories. We are carefully following these developments, the army is brought to the highest level of preparedness, he said. Davit Babayan emphasized that Azerbaijans and Turkeys such policy must be in the spotlight of international community and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. He recalled that in 2016 Turkey and Azerbaijan again hold joint military exercises after which Azerbaijan launched the April four-day way also provoked by Turkey. According to Babayan, by such steps Turkey puts in a bad situation the remaining NATO member states since NATO has repeatedly stated that it opposes any conflicts solution by the use of force and supports exclusively the peaceful settlement. He said Turkey puts in a difficult situation the US, as a NATO leader country and one of the Co-Chair countries of the Minsk Group. International community must give a respective assessment on such policy. In general, if assessments were addressed on time, respective steps were taken, perhaps, the situation would be different today, he said, adding that Azerbaijan, realizing a very weak or no reaction from the international community on its terrorist actions, continues the same policy. Davit Babayan once again stated that the international community must very strongly react to Azerbaijans and Turkeys every step that can pose a threat for the regional peace and stability. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The 11th session of the Tax Policy and Administration Advisory Committee of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) was held in Armenia, reports Armenpress. At the request of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), Armenias Finance Ministry hosted via skype the specialists and partners dealing with tax affairs from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan delivered welcoming remarks at the session by attaching importance to regularly organizing such as they make it possible to settle issues existing in the EAEU space. It is natural that numerous issues subject to settlement will emerge in the EAEU space as a newly formed international economic organization, and such platforms and meetings enable to quickly record, discuss and settle the existing problems, the Minister said. Tigran Davtyan Director of the EEC Financial Policy Department, informed that the session is being held twice a year at different EAEU member states. A number of key issues were discussed at the session. The representatives of all member states participated in the session, only the representative from Belarus was taking part via skype. The agenda was quite interesting. Productive discussions were held. During the years of the EAEU activity we have reached the point that we manage to eliminate the disagreements between the member states thanks to such meetings, Davtyan said. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Edward Militonyan, president of Armenias Union of Writers, has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Childrens Literature. The Award is bestowed every two years on April 2 the birthday of Andersen. This project of the international awards is carried out by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Ruzan Tonoyan, president of IBBY Armenia office, told a press conference 77 countries are members of the structure, each having its own national committee. Armenia is a member of IBBY since 2012 and for the first time an Armenian writer has been nominated for the award. We presented Edward Militonyans candidacy and 33 writers from representatives of 77 countries passed to the competitive stage, including Edward Militonyan. The winner will be chosen from this 33, who will be given the Andersen Award next year, Tonoyan said. The candidate must meet certain reqirements to be eligible for nomination. The writer must be the author of at least 10 books with various translations available, the candidate must be the laureate of other awards and be a creative and active writer. Edward Militonyan, president of Armenias Union of Writers, said nominating a candidate from Armenia for such a prestigious award is an important achievement for the country. Its not important who has been presented, or that I have been included. The important thing is that for the first time the name Armenia is heard among various big countries. Armenia, as a literary country, we must be able to present to the world, make it recognizable. We must show that serious literature is published in Armenia, he said. Militonyan said Armenia has little experience in the process of participating in international awards. According to him, it is necessary to support publishing of literary materials and their dissemination in various countries. The possibilities which we are using, I believe, are still little, in order to be able to decently spread our works in the international arena. Good translations must be carried out, which isnt easy. Unique approach is required for translating childrens literature, one must find the equivalent while translating. In this context the work of translators gets difficult, and there is still lot to do, Militonyan said. The IBBY was founded in Zurich in 1953. The The Hans Christian Andersen Award will be held in 2018 during the annual IBBY conference in Istanbul. Senior commander for the Pakistani Taliban Ehsanullah Ehsan has alleged that India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) provided extensive help to the militant group. By Reuters: Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies gave funds and other assistance to Pakistani Taliban militants to fight Islamabad, the group's former spokesman, who surrendered last week, has alleged in a video released by Pakistan's military today. Afghanistan strongly refuted the claim, while the Ministry of External Affairs has said it was not yet able to comment on the video. Both Kabul and New Delhi have accused Pakistan of masterminding terror attacks on their soil. advertisement Liaquat Ali, better known by his nom de guerre, Ehsanullah Ehsan, was a senior commander for the Pakistani Taliban, and later for a Taliban breakaway faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. Ehsan led both groups' media campaigns, becoming a household name as the Islamist militants claimed responsibility for mass bombings and attacks that wrought chaos on Pakistan. WHAT EHSANULLAH EHSAN SAID In his first appearance since it was announced last week he had surrendered, Ehsan alleged India's intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan's NDS provided extensive help to the Pakistani Taliban or TTP. Ehsan said "relations with NDS and RAW grew" after Pakistan's military launched a major military campaign against the Taliban in their strongholds in North Waziristan in 2014, forcing the militants to flee across the border to Afghanistan. "They supported (TTP), extending financial assistance and they also gave targets, and for each attack (TTP) charged a price," Ehsan said in the video, which shows him wearing a traditional shalwar kamiz outfit with a Pashtun flat cap. Media have not been able to obtain access to Ehsan or verify his claims. The Pakistani Taliban could not be reached for comment. REACTIONS ON THE VIDEO A senior Afghanistan security official dismissed Ehsan's comments as spin by Pakistan, which is accused of providing safe havens to the Afghan Taliban militants who are looking to topple the west-backed government in Kabul. "Pakistan has always been pushing this narrative of being victim of terrorism while the fact it sponsors and supports terrorist activities in Afghanistan and India," the Afghan security official said. "Now Pakistan is under enormous pressure from the international community to crack down on extremists and it is trying to evade responsibility by playing victim once again." New Delhi has waged a diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan after Islamabad allegedly helped militants attack an army base in Jammu and Kashmir last year. The United States has also been pressuring Islamabad to tackle the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, a group which Washington considers a terrorist organisation and which is aligned with the Afghan Taliban. Ehsan said another way Afghanistan's NDS agency helped the Pakistani Taliban was by providing militants with identity cards to ease their movement inside Aghanistan. "Their movement used to take place with the blessing of NDS and Afghan forces," Ehsan said during the 6-minute video. advertisement Also Read: Pakistan denies India's request for consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav for 16th time 23 Indian fishermen apprehended off Gujarat coast by Pakistan Also Watch: India demands consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav --- ENDS --- YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Her Royal Highness Princess of Jordan Dina Mired, as a mother of a child who overcome cancer, has encouraged the mothers of children who are being treated in the Yolyan Hematology Center of Armenia. During her April 27 visit to the Hematology Center, the Princess opened up about her story. When my son was diagnosed in 1997, Jordan didnt have good methods for cancer treatment and we were forced to seek treatment abroad. It was difficult for me, even though I was a Princess. After my sons recovery, I joined the struggle against cancer, trying to help that all children have equal opportunities for cancer treatment. Me and many others worked very hard from zero. And today our cancer center is one of the few regional licensed centers which saves thousands of lives, Dina Mired said. According to the Princess, by using her social status she now wants to help mothers and fathers also. She is convinced Armenias and Jordans cooperation in cancer treatment will continue. The most important purpose of my visit was seeing new achievements of cancer treatment in Armenia. I am impressed with the Hematology Center. But it needs some new technologies and treatment methods. And the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) is the best structure which can share experience and skills, the Princess said and mentioned that the UICC, where she is the president, is comprised from around 1000 organizations of 150 countries, the main mission of which is mutual help and exchange of experience. According to her, there are numerous wonderful programs currently. UICCs new initiative is called City Cancer Challenge. And in the event of any problem of cancer, the entire city comes together to fight against it. And I believe Armenia will be a wonderful candidate for this. It will really bring rapid progress. We are also a small country and our resources are few. It is easier to be compared to a similar country, than for instance with a European or any other developed country, she said. The Medical University today has initiated joining this union, which enables to share international experience and introduce technologies. I am very happy that the Princess herself leads the Union. She encouraged the patients of the center. As a mother of a child who has overcome cancer, she said they will experience emotional difficulties. She expressed her conviction that everyone will definitely get treated, since such centers exist in Armenia. The Princess expressed her readiness to assist the Hematology Centers international accreditation, YSMU Rector Armen Muradyan said, expressing hope cooperation with the structure will have wide circles. At the invitation of the Yerevan State Medical University, Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Mired of Jordan arrived in Armenia to participate in the April 28 Cancer Survivor Congress. The Congress is organized by the Yerevan State Medical University and the Armenian Association of Hematology and Oncology. The Princess of Jordan was recently elected as president of the Union of International Cancer Control. She is as well the President of Harvard University Global Task Force for Expanded Access to Cancer Control and Care in the Developing World. The Princess began her visits to Armenias medical institutions from an early morning visit to the Muratsan Hospital Complex. The Princess reviewed the institutions chemotherapy clinic and the possibilities and equipment of other units. She talked to the patients and the medical personnel. Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Mired also visited the Yolyan Hematology Center where she toured the units of the institution. The Princess also participated in a tree-planting in Heratsi High School, as well as the ceremony of donating a modern laser device to the Izmirlyan Medical Centers Department of Urology. The Princess will deliver a report on Cancer is not contagious, love is contagious during the April 28 Congress. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Armen Papikyan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia, received on April 27 the newly-appointed Ambassador of Ecuador to Armenia Julio Cesar Prado Espinosa (residence in Moscow) who handed over the copies of his credentials. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of MFA Armenia, the Deputy Foreign Minister congratulated the Ambassador and expressed hope, that with the appointment of a new Ambassador a new page in the relations of our countries will be opened. Deputy Minister Papikyan found it symbolic, that the second Ambassador of Ecuador to Armenia is being accredited in the year of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Ecuador. Deputy Foreign Minister and the Ambassador of Ecuador shared the view, that despite of the geographic distance, Armenia and Ecuador have all the prerequisites for developing an effective cooperation in different areas. In the course of the meeting, the sides touched upon the perspectives of cooperation in the framework of international organisations, as well as in trade, economic, cultural and educational spheres. They highlighted the importance of expanding the legal framework. This article originally ran as the cover story of the April 2017 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the digital edition. Last year, Rob Reimer was on an airplane flipping through the in-flight magazine. He came across an article about the Neon Boneyard in Las Vegasa museum that has all the classic Vegas strip signs displayed. Its so retro, uninhibited, in your face, and it just clicked: Boneyard. Of course, I went to visit the motherland when I was in Vegas for the AVN Novelty Expo in January. It was over-the-top fantastic: Fuck you, look at me now. Exactly how I envisioned it to be. (Above, Reimer at the expo in 2017.) The epiphany for the name led to Channel 1 Releasings Boneyard Toys, which Chi Chi LaRue calls Rascals dirty little brother I love the edginess! Reimer previously worked with the company as its marketing manager, and returned as its CMO last year. I had been chatting with my former employer Channel 1 Releasing about eventually doing something with them, and the timing was just right. Im a huge rock-n-roll fan and musician, I play drums, so I always had a thing for that style: skulls, tattoos, leather, chains. So I thought, Why not incorporate that into the branding of the new line? Reimer stresses that he didnt want to do a gay-specific brand, instead offering something that appeals to every guy (or girl) no matter their preference, and the guys at Channel 1 agreed. And skulls are so popular now, so it kind of just came together. They started off with a standard silicone cock ring in five sizesbut branded them with metric system sizing instead of the imperial system. We wanted to do something different our customers in Europe, Australia and Canada are really appreciating that we are not only acknowledging them, but thinking about them in the actual design of the product. They are sold individually or in a five-ring pack. Everything came together so quickly, and the reception has been outstanding. Better than I ever imagined it to be. Anyone can sell a cock ringthere are so many out therebut I think the branding of a product is what really makes something stand out from the thousands of other options available. People really have had a genuinely positive reaction to our packaging, and the tagline Bone for Life, which is this funny line that came out of nowhere. But people really love it. The line has grown to feature a collection of dildos and plugs (most in black), ball and cock straps and more. And this year, the Skwert won the 2017 AVN Novelty Expo O Award for Outstanding Accessory. The patented anytime-anywhere douche has a five-hole silicone nozzle and features two different threaded adapters that fit most water/beverage bottles. The kit also comes with a hose adapter, so it can be used with a shower hose nozzle. Lots of guysand girlshave been in that predicament when traveling or visiting a friend when an unexpected situation pops us, and you forgot to bring your douche/enema kit. So you try and find the closest thing that resembles a douche, and lots of us have tried the old water bottle trick. Well, that works to a point, but you cant really get that deep clean you really need before anal sex, Reimer says. So I talked to [CEO and co-founder] Rob Novinger about it and he loved the concept, so he helped source the factories and researched the different thread types around the world. That actually was the most difficult part because there are so many different thread types. So we found the two most common, and then we had to figure out how to use these with a silicone nozzle. So we worked with the factory and came up with a plastic rib lock neck that you can interchange with the silicone nozzle, and it works perfectly it also saves space, and you also dont have a huge douche bulb in your suitcase in case TSA does an unexpected bag check. Reimer notes they will be doing different things with the product, possibly expanding the line and introducing new features. There are so many possibilities, we are really excited. Sales so far have been through the roof the common theme I hear from customers at trade shows is, We want something different. Skwert is very different. It hasnt been done before, and it serves a functional purpose that makes life easier for the user. Reimer says that the most successful products provide a solution to an everyday problem that people are experiencing around the world. So when coming up with new concept for a product, rather than just coming up with, say, a better butt plug, I think its best to think of a problem and come up with a solution to that problem. Thats exactly how I approached Skwert, and people are relating to it. The newest items in the Boneyard family are the silicone cock and ball straps. As far as we know, we are first to market with this concept. We knew we wanted to do some kind of snap ring, and most of them are leather or neoprene, which are greatbut we wanted to do something different. Rob Novinger actually came up with the idea and said, Why cant we do this with silicone? It was a no-brainer. The hard part was finding the correct snaps that were durable enough to stay in place without pulling through when you were unsnapping them. So that took a while to find the perfect snap. They showed the prototypes to the experts at Mr S in San Francisco, who suggested using black snaps instead of silver to give an updated, modern look. Especially with the yellow and red, we think its a home run. The silicone also has no sharp edges or seams, and it has the perfect amount of stretch that makes them extremely comfortable. Obviously, the silicone makes for a much more durable and hygienic product versus neoprene and leather. As for branding, Reimer says that a lot of other male-specific lines have their own mascots, whether its a pig, dog or an ox, which they all market brilliantly. Obviously, we werent going to use one of those, and I had never seen the skull as the brand mascot, so we went with that. They supply headers for stores that want to create their own Boneyard section, but other stores merchandise by categoryso especially with the Skwert, we are encouraging stores to have a few water bottles with the nozzle attached at the point of sale, which really clicks when the consumer sees it. And it will be clicking across the globe. C1R attended the ARExpo road show in October and exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. We decided to sign an exclusive with LonBrook, who is more of a boutique distributor, which for a new brand like Boneyard, I think, is essential. Ive known [founder] Michael Bassett for years when he was with CalVista and I was with Perfect Fit. Ive made about five trips to Adultex and their road shows, and it was a great learning experience. I think that for a new brand, you can get lost in the shuffle a little bit with the big boys. So with LonBrook, we really are able to work together much more closely and develop and grow both of our brands together. He is an expert in the Australian market and has so much valuable knowledge about the industry, its really a perfect marriage for both of us. LOS ANGELESScrewbox.com celebrates summer and Americana with the release of the sites two most recent scenes. Gratitude to the American way of life and the recognition on how blessed we are to live in a country like thisthats our theme this week on screwbox.com, said owner/Creative Director Jakodema. What better way to showcase our appreciation than to present two All-American Girls like Arya Fae, a free-spirited soul rocking a hula hoop in her red, white, and blue bikini whom captivates her audience, and Sydney Cole as a vintage 1950s pinup girl with her blue jean shorts and flannel shirt, mixed with her undeniable sexiness. These girls would send any man or woman into a trance and represent what it is to be an All-American Girl. Arya Fae appears in her first boy/girl scene for Screwbox.com, along with porn veteran Mick Blue. Hula Girl opens with a scene thats American as apple pieArya looks stunning in her stars and stripes bikini and red heels and works her hula hoop magic to funky country music. After her hula hooping, she does a strip tease and gets ready for a workout of the anal kind. Hula Girl has already scored a perfect 5 out 5 stars, just like Aryas previous girl/girl movie Colors. The scene and trailer can be viewed exclusively at Screwbox.com. Carrying on with the Americana theme is Trailer Girl with Sydney Cole. Sydney makes her Screwbox premiere in a scintillating solo thats retro chic. Sydneys look is total vintage from her victory rolls updo to her flannel shirt to her red stilettos. Ready for action, she uses an antique white truck as a prop and enjoys herself, while classic rock n roll music plays. Watch the scene and trailer for Trailer Girl at Screwbox.com. BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's attorney general said on Thursday it would seek the arrest of an heir to the Red Bull fortune after he failed to meet prosecutors over an alleged hit-and-run that killed a police officer five years ago. The case has raised questions about whether the Thai justice system favors the rich and famous, allowing them to break the law with impunity. Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya missed prosecutor orders to report to court on Thursday, the eighth time he has missed a summons since legal proceedings against him began in 2016. Vorayuth was charged with speeding, hit-and-run and reckless driving that caused the death of the policemen in 2012. "He sent a letter requesting to move the appointment but he can't do this again," said Suthi Kittisuppaporn, director general of the attorney general's Department of Southern Bangkok Criminal Litigation. The Office of the Attorney General said in a televised statement it would seek an arrest warrant for Vorayuth. "If we wait until the end of the business day and he doesn't show up we will consider this deliberate evasion," Somnuek Siangkong, spokesman for the office, told reporters. "We will then ask police to seek an arrest warrant from the court." Attempts by Reuters to reach a lawyer for Vorayuth went unanswered. Vorayuth is a grandson of the late Chaleo Yoovidhya, creator of the Kratin Daeng, or red bull, energy drink. Chaleo, 88, was listed as the third richest person in Thailand at the time of his death in 2012, with an estimated net worth of US$5 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His grandson, Vorayuth, who has spent much of the past five years abroad, including in London and Singapore, according to social media posts, has previously cited work commitments abroad as reasons for not showing up in court. Reuters was unable to confirm Vorayuth's whereabouts. Some media reported he was in Britain. In 2012, Vorayuth allegedly crashed his Ferrari into a policeman on a motorcycle in Bangkok's upscale Thonglor neighborhood. He is accused of fleeing the scene, dragging the officer's body for several dozen meters with his car as he did so. Vorayuth's speeding charge expired a year after the accident. The charge of hit-and-run carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and expires in September while the reckless driving charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years of jail and expires in 10 years, if left unchallenged. (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Juarawee Kittisilpa and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Michael Perry and Robert Birsel) STEM UC Irvine Races to Launch Space-Bound Rocket The University of California, Irvine (UCI) kicked off its Moonshot Initiative earlier this week, taking another step toward becoming the first college to send a liquid-fueled rocket into space. The university received a $1 million gift from Base 11, a nonprofit STEM workforce development and entrepreneur accelerator, to fund the initiative. Community college students (pictured) last summer spent eight weeks at UCI's engineering school learning to design and build drones. Image: UCI News. Last summer, five community college students from across the country spent two months building an unmanned aircraft system, or drone, and then testing it for flight at UCI, as part of the UCI Base 11 Autonomous Systems Engineering Academy, according to a UCI statement. The Moonshot Initiative is the latest effort from the partners. With the Base 11 donation, UCI will renovate an existing area of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering that will serve as a rocketry lab for students to design, build and test rocket prototypes between 15 and 50 feet long, the statement said. The university will also open a mobile operations center and assembly trailer that can transport rockets to test sites and will allow students to make repairs off-site as needed. The rocket will be built from a prefab prototype that UCI students will modify to travel 25,000 feet high and then further refine to reach 50,000 feet. The ultimate goal is to construct a rocket within two years that breaches outer space, surpassing the Karman line at about 328,000 feet, the statement said. Additionally, Base 11 has funded a year-round academic-year internship program for low-resource community college students from around Southern California to attend UCI on the weekend. Participating students will gain exposure to university-level engineering concepts. As part of the partnership, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering will lead a pilot of Base 11s STEM Entrepreneurship Program that will involve the Institute for Design & Manufacturing Innovation. To learn more, visit the Base 11 site. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram New York, April 24, 2017Authorities in the Maldives should swiftly identify and bring to justice those responsible for the murder of blogger Yameen Rasheed, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Rasheed died after he was found with multiple stab wounds in the stairway of his apartment building yesterday, according to media reports. Rasheed was transported to Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, where he died while receiving treatment, according to Raajje TV. He had 16 stab wounds to his chest, neck, and throat, the independent broadcaster reported. Rasheed, 29, was known for his satirical political commentary on his blog, The Daily Panic, and on Twitter. Before his death, he had complained on social media that police had not acted in response to death threats he said he had received. Maldivian authorities should spare no effort to identify and prosecute Yameen Rasheeds killers, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said from Washington, D.C. The Maldives must not become a country where bloggers can be murdered with impunity. The Maldives Police Service said today in a statement it was investigating the murder. In an April 23 statement, President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom condemned the crime and sent condolences to Rasheeds family. Rasheed led the Find Moyameeha campaign after his friend and Minivan News reporter Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla was abducted in 2014. Minivan News later changed its name to the Maldives Independent. Rilwan is still missing. Rasheed previously told The New York Times that radical groups in the Maldives targeted bloggers like him and Rilwan because they questioned the way Islam was practiced in the country. He also told the newspaper that almost all of the people behind the Find Moyameeha campaign had received death threats. Rasheeds last tweet, published April 21, was a red balloon emoji. Nearly 100 people gathered on a beach in Male today to release red balloons in his memory, according to Raajje TV. [Rasheed was] tireless in his efforts to advocate for freedom of expression and stood up impartially for the rights of all, Mariyath Mohamed, his friend and former journalist at the Maldives Independent, told CPJ. Words of satire and honesty were the only weapons he ever wielded. EDITORS NOTE: Paragraphs five and six of this text have been updated to correct the name of the Find Moyameeha campaign. By Shiv Pujan Jha: In a move which many would equate to the ambitious project of Akhilesh Yadav's boundary walls around cemetaries the Yogi government is contemplating a proposal to set up boundary walls around places of worship. A proposal regarding the same is presently being analysed, and a decision is likely to be arrived at soon. When posed with this question Shreekant Sharma, a minister in yogi Cabinet, indicated that the government has decided to increase the connectivity of all the religiuos places in the state by connecting them with four lane roads and increasing facilitiies around them. He indicated that ensuring security and providing facilities to the tourists coming from different parts of the country is of prime importance to the government. He indicated that the authorities have been advised to ensure all possible comfort to the tourists and pilgrims thronging to the various places. advertisement The minister also indicated that recently the government has already set up a task force to take action against, and prevent all kinds of encroachment or illegal occupation by the land mafia. It has been learnt through sources that Yogi Adityanath had received proposals from various stakeholders recently regarding construction of boundary walls around places of worship. The same is being analysed, and highly placed sources indicated that the proposal may soon see the light of the day. --- ENDS --- By Yuki Takahashi, KYODO NEWS - Apr 26, 2017 - 14:50 | Arts, All More and more museums in Japan are looking to abandon their no-photos policy amid the spread of smartphones and calls for them to conform to global practices. While many famous museums overseas allow visitors to take photos, museums in Japan have long banned photography due partly to concerns about copyrights and safety. However, some museum operators in the country have moved to ease regulations, encouraging people to share their photos on social media platforms to attract more visitors. The National Art Center in Tokyo has allowed visitors to take photos in some parts of the facility since about two years ago, looking for "an advertising effect from visitors going on social media," said Yusuke Minami, former deputy director at the museum. In fact, the exhibition of renowned contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama being held at the museum is filled with people taking selfies and photos of displayed works. To allow photography, however, the museum had to ensure copyright protections and maintain safety of its visitors. It also had to make sure that people taking pictures do not bother other visitors with camera flashes or by crowding in front of exhibits. To protect copyrights, the museum obtained approval from artists themselves or those who inherited copyrights after the death of the creator. It also decided to allow use only of smartphones for taking pictures, prohibiting other cameras. The museum prohibits flash photography, and the use of selfie sticks and tripod stands, to ensure quality experiences for visitors and avoid damaging paintings with intense light emitted by flashes. Still, there have been cases in which photographers have damaged artworks. According to U.S. reports, a visitor at Kusama's exhibition held in Washington in February accidentally destroyed one of her artworks valued at an estimated $800,000. Minami said that if artworks are damaged by photographers, the cost would likely be covered by insurance. "It would be easier to entirely ban photography, but people can now download photos so easily on the Internet," he said, explaining why the National Art Center has opted to ease regulations. The Yamatane Museum of Art in Tokyo has also allowed photography in parts of the facility since last autumn. "As the museum isn't that spacious, we only allow visitors to take pictures of certain artworks considering the safety of people," said Director Taeko Yamazaki. Followers of the museum's twitter account have surged, exceeding 100,000 people last fall, though it is unclear whether it is because of the abolition of the no-photos policy. Author Kyoko Nakano, who has written many books about art, welcomes the move and hopes that more museums in Japan will follow suit amid young Japanese people's tendency to turn away from artworks. "I think the move will encourage younger generations, who use social media, to visit museums more often," said Nakano. FILE PHOTO: Two men chat beside a logo of Alibaba (China) Technology Co. Ltd at its headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province May 17, 2010. REUTERS/Steven Shi/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) has plans to provide credit services in Brazil, Jack Ma, the company's executive chairman, was quoted as saying in Wednesday's edition of O Estado de S. Paulo. In China, the e-commerce firm developed a credit line to finance purchases on its website. "We want to invest in e-commerce, logistics and inclusive financing," the newspaper quoted Ma as saying. The executive did not give details on what type of credit operations Alibaba would consider launching in Brazil, O Estado said. "Alibaba has business-to-business and business-to-consumer operations in Brazil," Ma said, according to O Estado. Alibaba started operations in Brazil in 2014 but has faced hurdles over logistics and the monitoring of product authenticity on its website, O Estado reported. "We did very well in the last few years. But now we have some issues and our team is working on them," Ma said, according to O Estado. Representatives for Alibaba were not immediately available to comment on Ma's remarks, which were made at the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday. Ma, who advises UNCTAD, the U.N.'s trade and development agency, on small business and young entrepreneurs, spoke at a conference on e-commerce development. (Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) Larry Page, CEO and Co-founder of Alphabet, participates in a conversation with Fortune editor Alan Murray at the 2015 Fortune Global Forum in San Francisco, California November 2, 2015. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage By Julia Love (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) Chief Executive Larry Page said on Thursday that the holding corporate structure for search unit Google and a host of new businesses has succeeded in creating more transparency for investors. As the two-year anniversary of Alphabet's corporate restructuring approaches, Page wrote in a letter to investors that the model has empowered entrepreneurs outside its core search business. "The new structure has helped entrepreneurs build and run companies with the autonomy and speed they need," he wrote in the letter published ahead of the Mountain View, California-based company's earnings on Thursday. Page took Silicon Valley by surprise in August 2015 with the creation of a new company, Alphabet, to house Google and new ventures ranging from self-driving cars to health technology, which would be broken off into separate companies. The structure was intended to give investors greater visibility into the search unit's performance and give leaders of the new businesses more autonomy. Wall Street has cheered the new structure, but it has had mixed results. The self-driving car group has graduated into a new company, dubbed Waymo, but a host of Alphabet executives have departed, including the leaders of smart home technology company Nest and Google Ventures. Since the restructuring, executives have learned a great deal about how to best launch the new companies, Page wrote, citing the spin-off of Waymo in December. "In general we are taking a patient approach to investing our capital," he said. "We're not going to invest if we don't see great opportunities and we feel like our track record for picking some important efforts long before others is pretty good." (Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Richard Chang) PM Modi, who addressed a Parivartan rally at Shimla's historic Ridge today, wants to see a common man wearing a chappal on ground to ride a plane. By Manjeet Sehgal: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flagged off the first UDAN flight under the regional connectivity scheme on Shimla-Delhi route. He flagged off a low-cost subsidised service also on two other routes. Addressing a Parivartan rally at Shimla's historic ridge later, he said, "I have lived in poverty and hardly required to study its definition. I am well aware of the pangs of penury". advertisement WHOM WILL UDAN SCHEME HELP "I want to see a common man wearing a chappal on the ground to ride a plane. UDAN is for people who want to travel long distances at cheaper prices. To fly under UDAN, one will be required to spend Rs 6 per km. This will be cheaper than the taxis," Modi said . Associating with the poor, Modi said that having been born in a poor family, he was aware about their problems. The Prime Minister also said that the fuelwood smoke was killing dozens of rural women, who lacked resources to buy LPG stove and gas cylinders. Modi said that he would continue to work for the common people. He said that besides providing clean fuel (LPG) to the poor, his government was also working hard to provide affordable health services to the common man. "There were 700 generic medicines and the price of each medicine was Rs 300. Now the same medicines are available at Rs 30. Similarly, other medical equipment costing over Rs 1.5 lakh has now been made available at Rs 24,000 through Janaushdhi Kendras," Modi said. Modi also reminded the people about the demonitisation drive and how it benefitted the people. MODI ATTACKS OPPOSITION PARTIES Sounding the poll bugle for assembly election due in Himachal in November, Modi attacked the ruling Congress government and said that the cool breeze which started from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and now from New Delhi had reached the hill state and that he now wanted the people here to vote for an honest government. "The chief minister is not spending time with the common people but with lawyers. Should not we change a government like this," Modi asked. Going down memory lane, Modi publicly acknowledged how Shimla's journalists paid his coffee bills when he visited the city as the state's BJP in-charge till 2002. BJP held this Parivartan rally with an eye on the upcoming assembly election. Shimla's scheduled air connectivity project had been in the pipeline since 2012. By introducing two UDAN flights between Shimla and New Delhi, the Modi government has tried to connect with the common people, businessmen and the travel industry, which suffered a lot during the last four years. advertisement Also read | PM Modi flags off UDAN flight from Shimla, anyone can now fly at Rs 2,500 With hawai chappal on hawai jahaz: How Modi's UDAN scheme will make air travel a reality for many --- ENDS --- FILE PHOTO: Used Duracell batteries are seen in an office in Kiev April 17, 2012. REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - Duracell, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N), on Thursday filed a lawsuit accusing a Missouri wholesaler of illegally selling gray market versions of its copper-top alkaline batteries. According to a complaint filed in federal court in Chicago, JRS Ventures Inc is importing and selling batteries made in China that were intended for sale only to Duracell's original equipment manufacturers, to be packaged with products such as appliances and remote controls. Duracell, which long used the tagline "no regular battery looks like it or lasts like it," said JRS's batteries do look like its own but come in packaging that does not mention Duracell's 10-year guarantee or how to obtain customer service. Chicago-based Duracell said it learned of the alleged infringement in March, and said that JRS refused its demand to stop selling the infringing batteries. Purchasers of the infringing batteries "are likely to be confused and indeed disappointed," Duracell said. "Further, such sales of infringing products cause great damage to Duracell and greatly damage the goodwill in Duracell's valuable trademarks." JRS, based in the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, had no immediate comment when reached by phone and did not immediately respond to a separate email seeking comment. Duracell is seeking a halt to JRS's alleged infringement, plus unspecified punitive and triple damages. Berkshire, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, acquired Duracell from Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) in February 2016. The case is Duracell U.S. Operations Inc v JRS Ventures Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 17-03166. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler) GABORONE, April 26 (Reuters) - Botswana's government on Wednesday granted First Quantum Minerals Ltd and African Energy a tax holiday to build the 450 megawatt (MW) Sese coal power plant in a bid to encourage private sector investment in the sector. Despite being endowed with an estimated 212 billion tonnes of coal resource, Botswana's coal-to-power industry remains largely untapped. Australian-listed coal and energy junior, African Energy, said Botswana's government had granted the joint venture firms a five-year tax break from its first year of commercial operation and a preferential 15 percent company tax rate thereafter. Botswana's normal corporate tax rate stands at 22 percent. The tax break requires the approval of the Parliament. The Sese project, which includes a coal mine as well as the 450 MW power plant in eastern Botswana, will supply power to neighbouring countries such as Zambia. The project is managed by majority shareholder in the joint venture, Canada's First Quantum, which holds the majority stake. Under the terms of the joint venture, First Quantum will supply about half of the power from the project to its Zambia copper mine operations with the rest supplied to other users. First Quantum owns 80 percent of the operator of Kansanshi, Africa's largest copper mine in northwestern Zambia. (Writing by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by James Macharia) By Anannya Pramanick and Shubhankar Chakravorty (Reuters) - Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO) sued Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (CLF.N), saying the U.S. iron ore miner had breached terms of a loan agreement when it filed for creditor protection for its Canadian operations. Cliffs in January stopped production at its Bloom Lake mine in Quebec, where costs exceeded expectations, and started restructuring the Canadian operations after years of weak iron ore prices. Cliffs' shares fell as much as 7.2 percent in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The move to file for creditor protection in Canada accelerated Cliffs' payment obligations, Scotiabank said in a lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court in Ohio on March 16. Scotiabank is claiming damages of about $52.6 million. In response to the bank's notices, Cliffs denied that it was obligated to repay the debt immediately, Scotiabank said in the lawsuit. Andrew Chornenky, a spokesman for the bank told Reuters he would not comment on matters "that are before the courts." Cliffs was not immediately available for comment. The court's decision will determine whether Cliffs has to immediately pay back the loan made for equipment used in Bloom Lake. "If a bankruptcy filing is an event of default under the terms of the contract, then they will be asked to pay," CRT Capital Group analyst Amer Tiwana said. "If it's not, then they can continue to pay the monthly or quarterly payments they have to." Cliffs had about $3 billion in debt outstanding as of Dec. 31 and $290.9 million in cash and cash equivalents. Cliff shares were at their lowest in more than a decade. They had lost more than three-quarters of their value in the 12 months through Wednesday. (Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Joyjeet Das) The exterior of a Schlumberger Corporation building is pictured in West Houston January 16, 2015. REUTERS/Richard Carson QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador has given oil services company Schlumberger NV (SLB.N) $150 million in central bank notes that can be used to pay taxes, President Rafael Correa said late on Monday, part of efforts to pay down a $1.1 billion debt with the company. The smallest member of OPEC has built up debts for oilfield services that Schlumberger has described as causing "considerable financial stress." Correa told reporters that Schlumberger had been given Central Bank Notes, known by the Spanish acronym TBC. "Schlumberger is being paid ... we have already given them $150 million in TBC, I believe," Correa said in the city of Guayaquil. "There has been a somewhat inflexible position on the part of the company, but that debt will be paid," he said, without providing details. Schlumberger said on Friday that production constraints imposed on its Ecuador project had impacted its latest quarter results as it struggles to collect on unpaid bills from state-owned oil firm Petroamazonas. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional comment. Ecuador's economy has struggled since the 2014 collapse of oil prices and a devastating earthquake last year that killed 670 people and cost an estimated $3 billion. (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia, writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Bernard Orr) FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the HSBC logo at the bank's new China headquarters in the Pudong district of Shanghai September 29, 2010. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo By James Pomfret, Lawrence White and Sumeet Chatterjee DONGGUAN, China/LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - In the digital age, footfall in bricks-and-mortar outlets is an incomplete measure of business activity, but HSBC's (HSBA.L) sparsely attended branches in the Pearl River Delta suggest it's not all plain sailing for the bank's expansion in mainland China. HSBC, the world's sixth-largest bank by assets, announced in 2015 that it would hire 4,000 new staff and invest billions to make the Pearl River Delta (PRD) its gateway to China, a retail and corporate banking push that bet on a tech boom, infrastructure spending and a growing middle class. It is, as Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver reminded shareholders in Hong Kong on Monday, a key plank of the bank's global strategy to improve profits by focusing on markets with stronger economic growth. PRD already generates more than 10 percent of China's GDP and over a quarter of its exports. On the ground, HSBC still has a mountain to climb. In a rundown mall in Houjie, a factory town in the urban sprawl of Dongguan, the HSBC branch stands out with its bright posters, colorful pamphlets for credit cards and smiling receptionist, but only a handful of customers an hour crossed the threshold during a Reuters visit last week. At the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) branch in nearby Changan, dozens rolled up in a similar period. At a branch in a leafy district of Shenzhen, again HSBC was far quieter than rivals China Merchants Bank and China Construction Bank . Some customers, like Way Zhi, a 28-year-old who helps run a family trading business, welcome the peace -- you don't have to "waste a few hours each time" like in local banks, he said -- but it is a reminder that HSBC has some way to go to scale up. Large local rivals in the PRD, most state-backed, each have more than 1,000 branches to HSBC's 114 including Guangdong, and they don't have the headache of the tough compliance rules that HSBC has to follow to safeguard its international business. Story continues It's a headache the bank has to pass on to prospective customers. A factory owner who gave his surname as Luo said he opened an HSBC account last year to facilitate his business making wooden floorboards and panels for clients in Hong Kong, where HSBC was founded in 1865. Luo, who spoke to Reuters as he was leaving the Houjie branch, represents the kind of affluent Chinese customer with business in Hong Kong that the bank is keen to snag. But opening a bank account was "quite a lot of trouble", he said, and took nearly two weeks. HSBC's customer-checking procedures have got tighter in recent years after it was hit with billions of dollars in fines in the U.S. for lapses in anti-money laundering controls. A HSBC staff member at the branch, who declined to be named, confirmed that customer background checks can take longer than at local banks that have no or negligible U.S. business at risk and are not subject to global regulatory scrutiny. MAKING PROGRESS HSBC says it is pleased with its progress in China. At the start of April it had 150,000 credit cards in circulation, having begun to issue them in December, mostly after digital applications. It has also launched online trading and banking over social media platform WeChat. "We do not intend to compete on a traditional basis in PRD. Absolute branch numbers and footfall will not be our measure," said Kevin Martin, HSBC's Asia Pacific head of retail banking and wealth management. But that's a game its big rivals are also playing; ICBC, for example, has offered WeChat banking since 2013. Since HSBC announced its strategy in June 2015, China's slowing growth and a stock market crash have prompted a rethink on the pace of expansion. CEO Gulliver said last year it would take on the 4,000 new regional hires over five years, not three, as initially planned. "Quite rightly, management felt at that time they didn't want to achieve the strategy by taking on more risk," Sam Laidlaw, an independent board member at HSBC, told Reuters. Investors remain broadly positive. "It's not an overnight thing, and of course everyone wants it to be faster. The (China) strategy should be pursued but it is only one of many strategies for HSBC," said Hugh Young, Singapore-based fund manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, HSBC's 6th-largest shareholder. And what figures the bank has disclosed for 2016 are encouraging, albeit from a low base; it said in its annual report that its number of retail banking and wealth management clients and its mortgage loan book in the area had both increased by 51 percent during the year. But it also has some battles with red tape to win. The lender is still waiting for approval for its securities business venture with a state-owned fund in the PRD, more than a year after it announced the partnership. And some say the bank remains something of an outsider. At the Ling Jia Property Agency, a few meters from HSBC's Houjie branch, realtor Yi Linfeng said most of his customers use ICBC for mortgages. None, he says, have ever used HSBC. "I think they mostly have foreign customers from Taiwan and Hong Kong." (Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Will Waterman) The spongy and comfortable Hawai Chappals mark the identity of an average Indian, PM Modi thinks and it is not entirely wrong. By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the first UDAN flight today under the regional connectivity scheme on Shimla-Delhi sector. Under the UDAN scheme, the fares of flights have been capped at Rs 2,500 per seat per hour. During his speech, PM Modi said, "I want to see people who wear Hawai chappal (flip flops) in a hawai jahaz (airplane)." advertisement PM Modi's elocution becomes appreciable because it often comes with insights. He knows the connection between an average Indian and Hawai chappals, and at the risk of being accused of playing up stereotypes and indirectly or rather directly saying that those who wear Hawai chappals are not well off financially, PM Modi did say he wants to see those who wear Hawai chappals traveling by air. In a multicultural nation with western influences banging right into our heads, people belonging to a particular diaspora somehow shift from their own roots. But certain things remain unchanged, and one among those are flip flops or 'Hawai chappals'. Of course, now there are patterns on it as opposed to the white-blue normal, but Indians, especially the middle class, wear branded footwear and Hawai chappals with equal ease. ORIGIN OF HAWAI CHAPPALS Flip flops is believed to have been used by ancient Egyptians, and that dates back to 1,500 BC but the modern flip flops descended from the Japanese style of footwear that trended after World War II. In India, flip flops acquired their name after Bata launched a brand named 'Hawai'. These chappals are popularly referred to as Hawai chappals ever since. Although they create a carefree image for an individual, perception of Hawai chappal has changed over the years from being too casual to being too cool and stylish. People from both urban and rural areas are using Hawai chappals. For Indians and Pakistanis, Hawai chappals are ideal in all the situations, be it stepping out to pick up grocery to dropping in at a friend's place. In the west, however, flip flops are often used at the beaches. Had there been no dress code at workplaces, Indians would have happily worn Hawai Chappals to offices as well. CHAPPAL NOSTALGIA Biggest manufacturers of Hawai Chappals in India were Bata and Paragon. We are not sure whether you still use these, but we are certain you'd have in the past or would have seen elders in the family using these. advertisement Bata's Hawai brand of flip flops was sold to a Brazilian Company in 2008. Hawai chappal brands have a turnover of over Rs 2,16,90,000 in India still, statistics say. WHY ARE FLIP FLOPS SO POPULAR? These flip flops have a spongy, comfortable sole. Indians, often tagged lazy, found chappals hassle free as one can easily slip into them and take them off. Hawai chappals gives you space to breathe and are very light and portable. And the best part? A quick rinse is all that is required to make them look brand new. --- ENDS --- By Kirsti Knolle VIENNA (Reuters) - Airbus was plunged deeper into legal wrangling over past business dealings on Wednesday when Vienna prosecutors announced a fraud investigation into its chief executive in connection with a $2 billion fighter order over a decade ago. Airbus called the accusations against CEO Tom Enders "completely unsubstantiated" after Reuters exclusively revealed the investigation, which came to light in correspondence seen by the news agency and confirmed by Vienna prosecutors. For the second time in two months, Airbus seemed taken aback by the latest developments in a longstanding row over the Eurofighter deal, which has spawned numerous investigations that now coincide with separate probes in other countries of its passenger jet sales. In February, Vienna prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium after the defense ministry said it believed they had misled Austria about the price, deliverability and equipment of the 2003 deal. That investigation now involves 16 individuals including Enders, according to a list seen by Reuters. "Upon our inquiry after initial media reports, the Vienna prosecutor this afternoon informed us for the first time that all individuals, who have been mentioned by the Republic of Austria in its statement of alleged facts, ... are under investigation," an Airbus spokesman said by email. "This list of individuals includes, among others, Tom Enders. As we have repeatedly stated, we consider the accusations as completely unsubstantiated." Enders and Airbus, which was called European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Company (EADS) at the time the fighter jet order was agreed, have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Enders, a 58-year-old German, was head of EADS's defense division when the contract was signed. He took responsibility for combat aircraft a few months later. The Eurofighter consortium, which comprises BAE Systems, Italy's Leonardo and Airbus, has also denied any wrongdoing. Airbus shares fell as much as 1.1 percent after Reuters reported the probe into Enders, before closing unchanged. COMPLIANCE DRIVE Airbus has warned of financial implications as it carries out a clean-up of its files under a compliance drive ordered by Enders, which last year exposed discrepancies over jetliner sales that Airbus reported to UK and French authorities. Prosecutors in both countries are carrying out investigations into suspected fraud, bribery and corruption. Enders has pledged to push ahead with the compliance effort. While it recognizes problems with past applications for export aid in its passenger jet business, Airbus has pushed back strongly against allegations of wrongdoing in Austria, which it believes are wrapped up in domestic political maneuvers. Austrian and German prosecutors have separately been investigating for years whether officials received bribes aimed at ensuring they chose Eurofighter jets over rival offers from Saab and Lockheed Martin. Allegations surfaced almost immediately after the purchase was agreed that money was pocketed by politicians, civil servants and others via brokers for so-called offset deals accompanying the transaction. These deals, common in large arms purchases, are designed to provide work for local businesses in countries placing orders. Austria's defense ministry has alleged Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium illegally charged nearly 10 percent of the purchase price of 1.96 billion euros for these side deals. (Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan and Tim Hepher; Editing by Francois Murphy, Keith Weir and Mark Potter) unnamed (1) The state of Nevada is taking a new approach to tackling the rising price of prescription drugs with a new bill. The bill, introduced in March by state Senator Yvanna Cancela, has already faced opposition from lobbyists and nonprofit patient groups that disagree with the bill's approach to reining in prescription drug spending. Nevada is one of 23 states with proposed legislation to take on the rising cost of prescription drugs. But unlike others that focus on drug prices in a general sense, Cancela's bill focuses on two specific groups of drugs that are used to treat diabetes: insulin and biguanides. It's the latest milestone in government actions at the local, state, and national levels that attempt to change the way we spend money on prescription drugs. Why Nevada is targeting drugs to treat diabetes with its legislation Diabetes is a group of conditions in which the body can't properly regulate blood sugar that affects roughly 30 million people in the US. And for many people living with diabetes including the 1.25 million people in the US who have Type-1 diabetes injecting insulin is part of the daily routine. insulin prices humalog novolog V2 Insulin, a hormone that healthy bodies produce, has been used to treat diabetes for almost a century, though it's gone through some modifications. In the past few years, the list price of insulin has increased routinely. The list price of the most commonly used insulins have increased roughly 300% over the last decade. Technically, there's no "generic" insulin, though a cheaper version of a long-acting insulin did come on the market in 2016. There are cheaper medications for biguanides, such as metformin, which are used to treat Type-2 diabetes. Story continues Before becoming a state senator, Cancela worked as a director for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, which represents about 60,000 workers. The union pays for its members health insurance through a self-funded trust, which Cancela told Business Insider gave the organization a lot of access to details about how its health funds were being spent. One of the drugs she noticed was becoming a problem for members was insulin. There are roughly 281,000 adults living in Nevada, or 12% of the total population, that have one of the two types of diabetes, with another 39% in the prediabetes stage, in which blood glucose levels are elevated but not to the point of type-2 diabetes. Because diabetes is one of the biggest medical problems in Nevada, Cancela said, it made for a perfect starting point to introduce legislation. Here's what the bill wants to do The Nevada bill, known as SB265, takes four main approaches to confronting the drugmakers that make insulin and biguanides to treat diabetes. The bill sets up a price control, which could effectively cap insulin price increases at the rate of inflation. It does this by requiring drugmakers to refund people (patients or health plans) the difference if the drug's list price increases at a faster rate than inflation, as measured by the medical consumer price index. The bill wants to register pharmaceutical sales representatives and have them supply certain details about the conversations they have with healthcare providers. It's modeled after an ordinance in Chicago that requires representatives to get a special license. Chicago's ordinance goes into effect in July. It requires drugmakers to disclose how they set their drug prices, as well as provide information about how much is spent on marketing and research. Nonprofits will have to disclose when they get funding from drug companies. A March report published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that eight in ten patient advocacy groups had received some level of drug industry funding. Some of the organizations included in the report did not disclose donor information. No shortage of pushback Like most legislation that tries to rein in prescription drug spending, SB265 is facing its fair share of pushback and criticism. Cancela said there's been around 70 lobbyists who have come in for the session to oppose the bill, which is more than double the number present for Nevada's 2015 session, according to The Nevada Independent. There's also been a number of patient groups that have spoken out as well, including those representing people with lupus and epilepsy. "Proposed legislation in the Nevada State Senate unfairly targets people with diabetes, would be a major windfall for health insurance companies, and leaves patients wondering whos next," Lupus of Nevada said in a Facebook post. "Were specifically worried that Nevadans with Lupus could be singled out." insulin Nine pharmaceutical companies submitted letters in opposition to the bill, as well as pharma's lobbying group PhRMA and biotech's lobbying group BIO. Many brought up their opposition to disclosing more information about how they set their prices. A letter from Novo Nordisk a company that manufactures insulin and other diabetes medications argued that the bill doesn't take into account the rebates drug companies pay out to middlemen. That issue was raised in a number of the letters opposing the bill. "This proposal would impose significant new, complex and punitive requirements on drug manufacturers when manufacturers already provide competitive discounts to payers and represent only a single component of the enormously complex US drug pricing and distribution system," the company said in the letter. "This complexity, which the proposed legislation fails to address, has resulted in confusion around what patients pay for medicines." To be sure, there's more to the story than just the list price a manufacturer sets. Along the way, there are as many as five companies that have a stake in the price of a medication. But there's a lack of transparency about the portion each player gets. To counter that, some drug companies have started disclosing their net prices, or the amount it actually receives in return for the drug after factoring in any rebates or discounts paid out to middlemen. Sanofi noted in its opposition letter that its net price for Lantus, a long-acting form of insulin, fell over five years. Sanofi said in a statement to Business Insider: "Sanofi believes this legislation will fail to achieve its intended purpose and may actually restrict patients access to important medications. As a company founded on and committed to science and improving health, we understand that affordability and access to our products is critical for patients and society, and we are committed to working with all stakeholders to ensure patients have affordable access to the treatments they need in a system that is sustainable and continues to promote ongoing investments in science and innovation." Others, like Ken Thorpe, the chairman of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (a group that partners with a number of healthcare companies and patient organizations) and a health policy professor at Emory University, criticized the idea that the bill is a way to help those living with diabetes. He argued in a piece in the Nevada Appeal that the price caps won't keep people from getting diabetes. "If they're really trying to get the cost of healthcare to grow at a slower rate, this is not the way," he told the Appeal. Instead, he said, there should be more of a focus on preventing diabetes. Cancela said that's something she's working on as well, calling SB265 "one piece of the puzzle." She has another piece of legislation that would promote urban agriculture to increase access to healthy foods in low income communities. What happens next The bill is still with the Health and Human Services committee, meaning it needs to clear the Assembly and Senate before it makes its way to the governor. But of course, drug price bills have failed in the past. In November 2016, Californians voted against a proposition that would've capped prescription drug prices at what the Department of Veterans Affairs pays for them. Cancela understands that it's not going to be an easy ride. "We're trying to do something that's never been done before," Cancela said. NOW WATCH: Scott Galloway on the biggest thing in tech in 2017: Amazon could eliminate the existence of brands with voice technology More From Business Insider A logo of Peugeot car is seen during International Motor Show in Riga, Latvia, April 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker PSA Group (PEUP.PA) said its first-quarter revenue rose 4.9 percent, as the first results of a new product offensive helped to overcome negative currency effects. Revenue advanced to 13.63 billion euros (11.62 billion) from 13 billion a year earlier, the maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars said on Wednesday. At its core automotive division, revenue rose a more modest 2.5 percent to 9.02 billion euros. PSA, which agreed last month to buy European rival Opel from General Motors (GM.N), said two existing joint vehicle programmes would lift its second-half revenue. The Paris-based carmaker has rebounded from near-bankruptcy and government-backed bailout in 2014 to a 6 percent automotive operating margin last year on the strength of cost-cutting, a pared-down lineup and determined efforts to lift prices. "We can see the beginning of the success of our product launches with its first effects on the top line," Chief Financial Officer Jean-Baptiste de Chatillon said on a conference call with analysts. However, Chatillon cautioned that "it will take some time" to fix PSA's problems in China, where deliveries plunged 16 percent last year and another 46 percent in the first quarter - compared with a 4.2 percent increase in global sales volume. The group said earlier this month it will need deeper cuts and more SUVs to turn the sales slump around. Sales through PSA's Chinese joint ventures are not consolidated in group revenue. New models, including the Peugeot 3008 mini-SUV and Citroen C3 hatchback, helped to lift the so-called "product mix" as customers opted for plusher versions, delivering a 3.7 percent boost to quarterly revenue. That was offset by a negative 1 percent currency impact, primarily from the weaker British pound. But pricing contributed a more modest 0.4 percent uplift to revenue, the company said. The French carmaker also lifted its full-year market outlook to a 1 percent expansion in Europe and 2 percent in Latin America, having previously forecast flat demand in both regions. (Reporting by Laurence Frost, Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Louise Heavens) The Desi Girl is back, and we can't stop looking. By India Today Web Desk: The latest trailer for Hollywood movie, Baywatch, might have given us a fair glimpse at Priyanka Chopra, but one can never quite get enough of the Desi girl, right? Since the time she's set foot in India, Priyanka has barely been out of the picture. You'd expect a star who juggles between two worlds to take some time off and rest, but not when this star loves to be up and about at all times. From interacting with fans to hosting homecoming parties, Priyanka has been here, there everywhere--but not without looking her stylish best of course. advertisement It's been less than a week since the Mary Kom star has returned from the United States, yet, everyday blesses us with a new, gorgeous, Priyanka Chopra look to swoon over. Also Read: Priyanka Chopra's attire is depicting her current state of mind perfectly Dressed in a white, sensual Paule Ka outfit for Baywatch's press conference, Piggy Chops was every bit a stunner with her statement earrings and towering heels in place. The backless, wrap dress donned by the actress did full justice to her toned back and shoulders. Add to that a pair of round sunnies and a collared neckline and voila! you're good to go. Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah Priyanka's second look swayed on the indo-ethnic side. Dressed in a pastel-hued pair of crop top and flared pants, the Rohit Gandhi & Rahul Khanna outfit looked even better with the sequinned jacket. Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah However different the two outfits were, there was one thing common between them--Priyanka's signature middle-parting hair. All in all, it's great to have Priyanka back and to have her stylist Ami Patel conjure magic with each appearance she makes. --- ENDS --- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) walks down the West Wing colonnade with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque By Ayesha Rascoe and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he pulled back from the brink of killing the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico after requests from their leaders and expressed optimism about winning better U.S. terms in a renegotiated deal. Trump, during a White House appearance with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, said terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact he has long condemned as unfair to the United States, "would be a pretty big shock to the system," though he was planning to do so within two or three days. Hours after White House officials disclosed on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers had been considering an executive order to withdraw from NAFTA, he said he received telephone calls from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "They asked me to renegotiate. I will," Trump said. "And I think we'll be successful in the renegotiation, which frankly would be good because it would be simpler" than killing NAFTA. Trudeau said he had warned Trump of the disruption that pulling out of NAFTA would cause. Mexico's foreign minister said a good outcome for all three countries was possible under a new accord. News of the possible U.S. pullout from NAFTA rattled financial markets on Wednesday. Relative calm returned on Thursday after Trump's comments, and the Mexican peso strengthened 0.86 percent against the U.S. dollar while the Canadian dollar was flat versus the greenback. Mexico, Canada and the United States form one of the world's biggest trading blocs, and trade disruptions among them could adversely affect agricultural, automotive, energy and other sectors in all three countries. NAFTA erased most trade and tariff barriers between the neighbors, but Trump and other critics have blamed it for deep U.S. job cuts. Trump campaigned for president last year on a pledge to pull out of NAFTA if he could not renegotiate better terms. The United States went from running a small goods trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63-billion deficit in 2016. On Thursday he said NAFTA had been "horrible" for the United States but very good for Canada and Mexico. Story continues "If I'm unable to make a fair deal ... for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we're going to give renegotiation a good strong show," Trump said. 'GET TO WORK' Trudeau, speaking at a news conference in Saskatchewan, said he had urged Trump not to withdraw from the trade pact and warned that doing so "would cause a lot of short- and medium-term pain." "That's not something that either one of us would want, so we agreed that we could sit down and get to work on looking at ways to improve NAFTA," Trudeau said. Canada sends 75 percent of all its exports to the United States. On Tuesday, Trump said he did not fear a trade war with Canada, a day after his administration moved to impose tariffs on Canadian lumber. In Mexico City, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Pena Nieto had called Trump on Wednesday and spoke with him for about 20 minutes in a conversation focused exclusively on the looming talks over NAFTA's "renegotiation and modernization." Trump has accused Mexico of luring away American factories and jobs with cheap labor and other advantages enabled by NAFTA. During the presidential campaign he accused Mexico of sending rapists and criminals into the United States, and as president plans a U.S.-Mexico border wall. "I believe that all the conditions to reach a good negotiation exist, that will suit Mexico ... and that is also good for the region, for both Canada and the United States," Videgaray told local broadcaster Televisa. Trump's scorn toward multinational trade deals, part of his nationalist political message, appeals to Americans who feel such pacts have cost Americans jobs. He has said businesses that choose to move plants outside the country would pay a price. Trump made pulling out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, one of his first major acts after becoming president in January. Several agriculture lobby groups in Washington were told U.S Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, confirmed by the Senate on Monday, met with Trump on Wednesday evening to dissuade him from withdrawing from NAFTA. American Soybean Association President Ron Moore said, "When you're talking about $3 billion in soybean exports a year, any threats to withdraw from agreements and walk away from markets makes farmers extremely nervous." Formal NAFTA talks likely will not get started until August. The U.S. Trade Representative's office must first send Congress a notice that starts a 90-day consultation period preceding any negotiations. A USTR spokeswoman said the notice would not be sent until the Senate confirms Trump's nominee for trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Mohammad Zargham in Washington, Veronica Gomez and David Alire Garcia in Mexico City, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, and P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Tom Brown) Donald Trump Mauricio Macri Argentina White House meeting president President Donald Trump commented briefly on Thursday about the turmoil enveloping Venezuela. During a meeting at the White House with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Trump was asked about the decision by the government of President Nicolas Maduro to withdraw Venezuela from the Organization of American States in response to the bloc's pressure the South American country. "Venezuela is a mess. Venezuela is a mess," he said, according to a pool report. "We will see what happens," he added, according to news agency EFE. The Trump administration has given limited attention to Venezuela during his first three months in office. Trump's Treasury department did impose new sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, designating him a drug trafficker and accusing him of "a significant role in international narcotics trafficking." However, the depth of accusations leveled against El Aissami suggested it was not solely the Trump's administration doing. Opposition supporters bang a metal barricade during a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela April 24, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins "This clearly had its genesis a long while ago in the Obama administration," Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, told Foreign Policy at the time. (In the days before leaving office, Obama extended limited economic sanctions he had imposed on Venezuela.) "Those sanctions were going to be imposed when Obama was in power, but State Department told them to hold back because they wanted to see if they could establish a dialogue" between Maduro's government and the political opposition, Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, told Business Insider at the time, echoing a point a former Obama administration official made to Fox News. Story continues Trump's deployment of sanctions in mid-February could be considered "the opening salvo of the Trump administration in dealing with Latin America's deepest crisis," Michael Shifter, president of the Washington, DC-based policy group Inter-American Dialogue, told The New York Times. Donald Trump Mike Pence Marco Rubio Leopoldo Lopez Lilian Tintori Venezuela White House Oval Office Just a few days after they were issued, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence met in the Oval Office with Lilian Tintori, the wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, one of the many political prisoners the Venezuelan opposition has called on Maduro to release. Throughout April, Venezuela has been riven by chaotic protests triggered by the country's supreme court's attempt to strip the legislature of much of its power. Citizens angered by chronic shortages, rampant violence, and a withering economy have clashed with security forces and government supports in the streets around the country. Thus far, nearly 30 people have been killed, pro- and anti-government alike. The extent of the violence has stirred memories of the a wave of protests that washed over the country in spring 2014, leaving more than 40 people dead. While Venezuela's opposition leadership was measured in its response to Trump's election, the US president's moves on Venezuela have been satisfactory for at least one opposition leader there. "In all of Trump's conversations with leaders in Latin America, the topic of Venezuela comes up and it's raised by him," Julio Borges, the speaker of the opposition-controlled legislature, told The Washington Times this month. "This top-of-mind concern Trump has about Venezuela is very valuable for us." NOW WATCH: Ivanka Trump defends her father's relationship with women during a panel with Angela Merkel More From Business Insider Donald Trump Xi Jinping Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis have all toured Asia less than 100 days into President Donald Trump's administration, but experts still say the US lacks any clear, coherent Asia strategy. All 100 US Senators were invited to a briefing on North Korea at the White House on Wednesday, with a similar briefing in the works for the 453 members of the House. Earlier this month, the topic of North Korea reportedly dominated the conversation between China's President Xi Jinping and Trump. But despite repeated threats of military force and attempts to force China's hand against North Korea, the US hasn't defined a clear strategy on North Korea, or anywhere in Asia. A recent article in the Washington Post quoted high-level Japanese officials as urging the White House to not only clear up a short-term North Korea policy, but also a long-term policy for dealing with China, whose land grabs in the South China Sea originally drew ire from Trump and have long troubled their neighbors in the region. "The Chinese are very happy this is off the radar for the moment," Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Business Insider of the South China Sea. "My view is there does need to be regional strategy and North Korea needs to be a part of that," said Glaser, who noted that there is also an upside to the Trump administration's apparently singular focus on North Korea. "When you approach China, it is a good idea to have a set of priorities. If you throw five different issues at them and you dont make clear which is your priority, youre less likely to get any response," said Glaser. "Weve seen in the past when US comes at China with clear priority, especially when sanctions seem imminent, China gets more motivated to act." Story continues But while the Trump administration may be winning the battle on coercing China to act against North Korea, they may be losing the larger war for influence in the Pacific. South China Sea Despite Trump's broad ambitions to reconfigure US-Asia relations, Glaser says she hasn't heard of any policy reviews from the administration. Requests from Pacific Command to the Pentagon about various freedom of navigation operations (or FONOPs) in the South China Sea "have not gone anywhere," according to Glaser. The US uses FONOPs where US Navy ships sale next to China's land claims to assert their presence, reassure US allies, and poke holes in the narrative that China is all powerful in the region. "Some say [the requests are] sitting at Mattis desk, some people say National Security Council," said Glaser. Either way, even within the military, Trump's broad Asia strategy remains a mystery. Meanwhile, faith in the US among its Pacific allies has visibly faded. Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, a historically stalwart US ally, recently signaled just how far the balance of power has shifted. Scarborough shoal map south china sea philippines manilla subic bay We cannot stop China from doing this thing," Duterte said of China's island-building in the South China Sea, where the Philippines territory has been threatened despite them winning a case against China's land grab at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. "The Americans cannot even stop them from doing so." What do you want me to do? Declare war against China? I cant, we will all lose our military and policemen tomorrow. We are a destroyed nation. We cannot even assert a single sentence of the provision that we signed, Duterte said, according to the Manilla Times. So while Trump has shown he's ready to flex with a powerful armada off Korea's coast "We need to be able to deal with more than one issue at a time," said Glaser. NOW WATCH: Here's what $1 billion worth of cocaine looks like More From Business Insider trump Despite President Donald Trump saying the US should step back from Libya, Republican Sen. Bob Corker and Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin on Tuesday called for US engagement in the North African country. "The United States must be engaged," Cardin said. "When we don't have representative governments it creates a void, and that void is filled by ISIS, as we've seen in northern Africa, and it's filled by Russia, which we're seeing Russia's engagement now in Libya." On April 20, Trump said that the US has no role in Libya beyond combating ISIS. "I think the United States has right now enough roles," he said. In summer 2016, Moscow engaged with Libya for the first time since former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi was killed in 2011. When Gaddhafi was ousted, Russia lost billions of dollars in arms contracts with Libya, which were 12% of the Kremlin's arms exports in 2010. They also had hundreds of millions of dollars invested in oil and gas exploration in the country. Three governments are currently vying for power in Libya, along with several insurgent groups, such as ISIS. Moscow supports the faction led by military commander Khalifa Haftar, while the US and NATO back the Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Fayez al-Sarraj. Muammar Gaddafi Reports emerged in March that Russia had sent special forces to an Egyptian air base on the border of Libya, which US officials and diplomats perceived as Moscow's attempt to support Haftar's control of oil ports that were then under threat from another armed faction. Reports also emerged last month that Russia had private-security forces operating in a region held by Haftar. "[Russia is] trying to do in Libya what they've been doing in Syria?" Sen. Lindsay Graham asked Africa Command chief and Marine Corps Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser during a Senate Armed Services Committee in March. "Yes," Waldhauser said. "That's a good way to characterize it." Story continues A fighter of Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government aims his weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Ghiza Bahriya district in Sirte, Libya October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Hani Amara A Kremlin insider recently said Russia is trying to position itself as a conflict mediator and contain ISIS, other terrorist groups, and the ambitions of the west. In 2004, former President George Bush made a deal with Gaddhafi to lift economic sanctions on Libya, allowing American oil companies back into the oil-rich nation. Eni, an Italian oil company, also went back into Libya. But by 2009, this new relationship began to sour. Oil prices fell dramatically, and Gaddhafi threatened to nationalize the oil companies. By 2011, the Libyan leader was gone with the help of US and NATO air strikes. The US role in the Libyan revolution was spearheaded by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who joked of Gaddhafi, "We came, we saw, he died!" It was at this time that then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's attitude toward the US changed. He saw the move as "a case study in Western intervention: Stir up protests, give them rhetorical support and diplomatic cover, and, if that doesnt work, send in the fighter jets." The bottom line here is Libya, which the United States wants to snap up as soon as possible, Andrea Cucco, editor-in-chief of the Italian Difesa Online news portal, recently told pro-Russian news agency Sputnik, saying sources in Libya believed the US wanted to "carve up" the oil-rich North African country. The US, she said, "can barely stand the role Russia is playing in ending the crisis in Libya." NOW WATCH: Here's how many refugees from banned countries have entered the US under Trump More From Business Insider Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng (R), Chen Dong wave before the launch of Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft, in Jiuquan, China, October 17, 2016. The US space industry is prodding the US government into refreshing its outdated laws on commercial activity beyond earth: scare it with talk of Chinese galactic domination. At a Senate hearing on the space industry today, companies that build rockets and space habitats and manufacture electronic goods in space spoke about a standard laundry list of complaints, from regulatory burdens to fears of subsidized competitors. But their message was wrapped in patriotic concerns about Chinas growing capacity for space action. These companies are eager for the US government to allow and invest in commercial activities in orbit and around the moon. Many think the laws governing action in space, and particularly the UN Space Treaty, need refreshing for an age when private companies are close to matching the space capacity of sovereign nations. The last major change was a law on asteroid mining passed in 2015. Robert Bigelow, a real-estate mogul who now operates an eponymous company dedicated to creating space habitats and building facilities on the moon, warned the Senate hearing that without a global legal framework, the US could be left behind. China is very pre-disposed to ownership, whether its creating the islands in South China Sea, properties in massive quantities that theyve purchased in South America or Africa, whether you open a [foreign subsidiary in China] and can only own 49% of it, he said. China could exercise an effort to start to lay claim to certain lunar territories. I dont think its a joke, I dont think its something to be cavalier about. Such an ownership consequence would have an amazing impact on the image of China vis-a-vis the United States and the rest of the world, if they should own large amounts of territory on that body, if we stood back and we were not prepared. Chris Rush, whose company Made in Space is developing a competitive fiber optic cable alternative manufactured in micro-gravity, told the lawmakers that the US needs to maintain its current advantages in space manufacturing. Story continues The Obama administration had declined to partner with the European Space Agency on a potential moon village, but now China is in talks with the ESA about working together on the program. China also plans to land two lunar probes in the next year. The Trump administration has yet to outline the details of its space strategy, but many commercial operators hope to see a focus on lunar activity. So far, the Trump administration hasnt offered a definitive course, but has delivered boldnot to say unrealistictalk about speeding up plans for everything from a Moon mission to a trip to Mars. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: Annual Event Connects Global Leaders of the World's Most Innovative Companies 27 April 2017 - YPO, the world's premier network of chief executives, today announced the launch of Innovation Week across Africa. Through a series of more than 50 events around the world, the second annual YPO Innovation Week will connect 24,000 YPO members in more than 130 countries through a series of events focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. In four regions throughout Africa, including Ghana, Tanzania, Johannesburg and Durban, YPO will bring together the world's most dynamic innovators for a chance to connect, challenge conventional thinking and gain actionable, applicable insight. YPO Innovation Week is the world's largest and most impactful global innovation initiative, and throughout Africa, the world's most innovative companies will share their inspiration and insights with African leaders. YPO Innovation Week in Africa Africa is a leading innovator in technology, pioneering mobile technology to increase financial access to medical care, and e-learning platforms providing access to quality education. Africa is also sparking innovations in cybersecurity, ecological sustainability, communications and more. In recognition of how innovation can be employed to overcome many of the continent's challenges, improve lifestyles and grow the economy, YPO Africa is hosting a variety of events with industry leaders, agents of change, technologists and start-up visionaries from a cross-section of African industries, open to YPO members only. "YPO's global network of young chief executives are interested in, and actively involved with, innovative solutions that can positively impact their businesses," noted YPO Innovation Week Africa Chair and co-CEO of Integ8IT Rob Sussman. "The valuable insight, key connections and respected expertise provided during YPO Innovation Week will leave African leaders inspired, with the tools to infuse innovation in their companies and communities." Leading Innovation - Accra, Ghana; 11-13 May 2017 The first YPO Innovation Week event in Ghana will offer a creative journey by the "Team from Nowhere," a leader in building innovative cultures. This three-day event will be led by CEO, Dr. Nick Udall, former Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership, Andy Kitt, a Group Director of Nowhere, and Janet Goldblatt, of Nowhere Africa and YPO Pan Africa Chapter. The Making of an Innovator - Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; 11 May 2017 Tanzania will host an impressive line-up of innovators who will discuss the importance of disruption and innovation for business success, as well as reveal what it takes to be a true innovator. Event speakers include: Albany James, Marketing Manager at EasyBuyAfrica.com, a hassle free online retailer Forbes 30under30 list 2016, Edwin Bruno, CEO of Smart Codes, a digital services agency Rose Funja, MD of Agrinfo, linking smallholders to finance Sameer Hirji, Executive Director of Selcom Tanzania, a fintech innovator Xavier Helgesen, CEO of Off-Grid Electric, providing affordable, pre-paid solar energy Dr. Gordon Carver, Silverleaf Academy, innovating in education Award-winner Lilian Makoi, Founder of Jamii Arica Health, micro-health insurance Live to Innovate - Johannesburg, South Africa; 11 May 2017 David Garrison, Chief Navigator of Garrison Growth, adviser to CEOs and former mobile technology pioneer, will discuss Authentically Curious Leadership. David points out that today's workforce is the best educated ever, yet ideas about management are largely based on concepts created for industrial factories in the late 1800s. This session explores what it means to be authentically curious as a leader to leverage members of the organization and get them as involved in success as shareholders and the CEO. The Story Behind Hirsch's Success - Durban, South Africa; 10 May 2017 Hirsch's is a household name in South Africa and is a true entrepreneurial success story and family business. Since its inception in 1979, it has grown into a chain of mega appliance and home furnishing stores in KZN, Cape Town and Gauteng. Having reached the R1 billion milestone in 2012, five years later, Hirsch's anticipate achieving R2 billion in turnover by the end of 2017. Founders Allan and Margaret Hirsch and son, MD and YPO member Richard Hirsch, will share their story. For more information, on the larger, international events visit the YPO Innovation Week website. ### ABOUT YPO The premier leadership organization of chief executives in the world. YPO is the global platform for chief executives to engage, learn and grow. YPO members harness the knowledge, influence and trust of the world's most influential and innovative business leaders to inspire business, personal, family and community impact. Today, YPO empowers more than 24,000 members in more than 130 countries, diversified among industries and types of businesses. Altogether, YPO member-run companies employ more than 15 million people and generate USD6 trillion in annual revenues. Leadership. Learning. Lifelong. For more information, visit YPO.org. Contact: YPO Linda Fisk Office: +1.972.629.7305 (United States) Mobile: +1 972 207 4298 press@ypo.org Note: While the events are member-only, the media is invited to contact YPO to arrange post-event interviews. English Estonian Baltika Groups first quarter resulted in net loss in the amount of 590 thousand euros. The result of last year first quarter was net loss of 493 thousand euros. Groups 2017 first quarter revenue increased by 2% compared to the same period last year and was 10,575 thousand euros. Retail revenue was 8,524 thousand euros, increasing 1% compared to same period last year, the highest retail sales growth with 4% was in Estonia. Wholesale and franchise revenue in first quarter was 1,845 thousand euros, increase of 3%. Growth in sales revenue was supported by higher sales volumes to Peek & Cloppenburg department stores chain and entrance to new franchise market in Serbia: on 8th of March Baltikas brands representing store Monton AndMore was opened in Novi Sad, Serbia. At the end of first quarter there were 33 Baltikas brands representing franchise stores, forming 26% of total stores portfolio. Baltika Groups e-store Andmorefashion.com sales revenue increased 38% and was 349 thousand euros. In total orders were placed from 31 countries. Countries with the largest sales are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Finland. The best-selling brands in e-store were Monton and Ivo Nikkolo. The companys gross profit margin in the first quarter was 48.8%, which is 1.8 percentage points lower than the 50.6% margin in the same period last year. Retail gross profit margin was mainly impacted by winter products over-supply in Baltics retail markets and thus higher mark-downs which in addition competed with the full prize new season products sales. In addition the first quarter gross profit margin was impacted by changing sales campaign beginning to March (in previous year sales campaign started in April). The first quarter gross profit was 5,250 thousand euros, decreasing 1% i.e. 61 thousand euros compared to last year. Due to increased Baltics retail market sales area the distribution expense in the first quarter increased 1%, at the same time general expense decreased 2%. The distribution and general expense ratio to revenue in the quarter was 53.2% i.e. within year the costs ratio to revenue has decreased by 0.8 percentage points. One of the companys objectives for 2017 was the revenue growth in all of the sales channels, which in first quarter was met. At the same time the increase of retail revenue came partly from deeper mark-downs, which decreased gross profit and thus the company ended the first quarter with 97 thousand euros bigger net loss than in previous year. Highlights of the period until the date of release of this quarterly report On 7 th of March 2017 Monton, Mosaic, Ivo Nikkolo, Baltman and Bastion presented their 2017 spring-summer collection in Hansaplant gardening centre. Fashion show was also broadcasted via Baltikas e-store Andmorefashion.com. of March 2017 Monton, Mosaic, Ivo Nikkolo, Baltman and Bastion presented their 2017 spring-summer collection in Hansaplant gardening centre. Fashion show was also broadcasted via Baltikas e-store Andmorefashion.com. On 8 th of March 2017 first Baltikas fashion brands representing store in Serbia was opened in Novi Sad in cooperation with Serbian franchise partner Victoria Elegans d.o.o. of March 2017 first Baltikas fashion brands representing store in Serbia was opened in Novi Sad in cooperation with Serbian franchise partner Victoria Elegans d.o.o. On 17 th of March 2017 Monton, who is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, presented within the Tallinn Fashion Week a special collection inspired by the magic of opposites, of which the majority of items are handmade. of March 2017 Monton, who is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, presented within the Tallinn Fashion Week a special collection inspired by the magic of opposites, of which the majority of items are handmade. On 22 nd of March 2017 the Supervisory Board decided to propose to the Annual General Meeting of shareholders, to issue new convertible bonds with bondholder option in the total amount of 4.5 million euros. The proposal is to issue 900 convertible bonds with the issuance price of 5,000 euros. Bonds shall be subscribed during the time period starting from 14 July and ending 16 August 2017. Bonds carry an annual interest rate of 6.0% and will give its owner the right to subscribe 15,625 shares of the AS Baltika with the subscription price of 0.32 euros. The aim of the bond issuance is to refinance the bonds issued in 2014. of March 2017 the Supervisory Board decided to propose to the Annual General Meeting of shareholders, to issue new convertible bonds with bondholder option in the total amount of 4.5 million euros. The proposal is to issue 900 convertible bonds with the issuance price of 5,000 euros. Bonds shall be subscribed during the time period starting from 14 July and ending 16 August 2017. Bonds carry an annual interest rate of 6.0% and will give its owner the right to subscribe 15,625 shares of the AS Baltika with the subscription price of 0.32 euros. The aim of the bond issuance is to refinance the bonds issued in 2014. At the end of March Monton store with new concept was opened in Tallinn Viru Keskus shopping centre. As at the end of the quarter Group had 128 stores among which 95 stores belong to Baltikas own retail network. Consolidated statement of financial position 31 Mar 2017 31 Dec 2016 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 605 419 Trade and other receivables 2,424 1,956 Inventories 11,090 11,096 Total current assets 14,119 13,471 Non-current assets Deferred income tax asset 228 228 Other non-current assets 522 522 Property, plant and equipment 2,901 3,022 Intangible assets 1,633 1,676 Total non-current assets 5,284 5,448 TOTAL ASSETS 19,403 18,919 EQUITY AND LIABILITIES Current liabilities Borrowings 7,896 5,835 Trade and other payables 6,155 6,923 Total current liabilities 14,051 12,758 Non-current liabilities Borrowings 977 1,196 Total non-current liabilities 977 1,196 TOTAL LIABILITIES 15,028 13,954 EQUITY Share capital at par value 8,159 8,159 Share premium 496 496 Reserves 1,182 1,182 Retained earnings -4,872 -5,049 Net profit (loss) for the period -590 177 TOTAL EQUITY 4,375 4,965 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND EQUITY 19,403 18,919 Consolidated statement of profit and loss 1 Q 2017 1 Q 2016 Revenue 10,757 10,505 Cost of goods sold -5,507 -5,194 Gross profit 5,250 5,311 Distribution costs -5,059 -5,001 Administrative and general expenses -659 -669 Other operating income (expenses) -2 -25 Operating loss -470 -384 Finance costs -120 -109 Loss before income tax -590 -493 Income tax expense 0 0 Net loss for the period -590 -493 Basic earnings per share from net profit (loss) for the period, EUR -0.01 -0.01 Diluted earnings per share from net profit (loss) for the period, EUR -0.01 -0.01 Maigi Parnik-Pernik Member of the Management Board maigi.parnik@baltikagroup.com By Press Trust of India: Chandigarh, Apr 27 (PTI) Several Punjab leaders including Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, former CM Parkash Singh Badal, state BJP chief Vijay Sampla, today expressed grief over the demise of actor-politician Vinod Khanna. Khanna, the veteran Bollywood star and Gurdaspur BJP MP, died of cancer at a Mumbai hospital this morning. In his condolence message, the Chief Minister recalled the contribution of Khanna in the overall development of Punjabs border areas, especially the Gurdaspur district. advertisement "In the death of Vinod Khanna, Indian polity has been deprived of a fine politician and a great human being, as well as a powerful actor. The void left by him will be hard to fill," Amarinder said. Extending his heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved family, the Chief Minister said he prayed to the Almighty to give them courage to bear this tragic loss and to grant peace to the departed soul. Shiromani Akali Dal patron and former CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son and the SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal expressed shock at the demise of the Gurdaspur MP. "Vinod Khanna ji will be always remembered for the stellar role played by him in constructing bridges on the Beas and Ravi rivers. This was a real boon for the people of Gurdaspur and neighbouring areas", the former CM said. Sukhbir said in the death of Vinod Khanna, he had lost an elder associate who was always positive in his outlook and had a zeal for serving the people as well as his mother state Punjab. He said Khannas death had left a void in Gurdaspur constituency which would be difficult to fill. Union minister and Punjab BJP chief Vijay Sampla while extending his heartfelt condolences said Khannas death was a big loss to the party. Sampla said, "Vinod Khanna was not only a actor par excellence but he was also a mass leader who was sensitive towards the poor and needy." "Khanna was a dedicated leader who worked hard for the party. His death is an irreparable loss to the BJP and his contributions to the party and society will always be remembered. I pray that his departed soul may rest in peace," he said. Meanwhile, because of the death of BJP MP Vinod Khanna, Punjab BJPs state executive which was scheduled for April 30, has been postponed, The state Secretary BJP Punjab, Vineet Joshi, said now the state executive is rescheduled to be held on May 14 at Ludhiana. Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Kanwar Pal Singh has also expressed grief over the demise of Khanna. advertisement Punjab Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu termed the death of Vinod Khanna as a colossal loss not only for Punjab but for the entire nation. In a statement here today, the Minister said Vinod Khanna was like his elder brother from whom he imbibed the clean and honest political values. He further said that Khanna was in himself an institution of films and was a source of pride for Punjabis. He also said that Khanna was one of those rare gems who made it big in political arena also and served as Lok Sabha MP four times. Aam Aadmi Party state convener, Gurpreet Singh Waraich Ghuggi said, "Vinod Khanna was one of the finest actors of his time and a generous politician but above all he was gentle soul. Indian cinema will always miss a superstar who was known for his own style of acting. As a politician, he served the people of Gurdaspur with his humbleness." PTI CHS RCJ --- ENDS --- English Lithuanian Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-04-27 15:36 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Listed hereinafter are the resolutions of the Annual General Meeting of AB "K2 LT" (the Company) shareholders, which took place on April 26th, 2017: Approval of the annual financial statements of AB "K2 LT" for the year 2016 and presentation of the annual report of AB K2 LT for the year 2016 Discussed and unanimously approved the annual financial statements of AB "K2 LT" for the year 2016 audited by Moore Stephens Vilnius, UAB. 2. Approval of the Board report of AB "K2 LT" for the year 2016 Discussed and unanimously approved the report of the Board of AB "K2 LT" for the year 2016. 3. Distribution of the profit of AB "K2 LT" of 2016 Discussed and unanimously approved the distribution of AB "K2 LT" profit of the year 2016 according the draft of profit distribution presented for the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Distribute and pay out the dividends to the shareholders in the amount of 1.8 EUR for one share of AB "K2 LT" for the financial year of 2016 (the total amount for the dividends is EUR 501 889). 4. Approving the decision of the Board of the Company to refinance the existing loans of the Company, increase of the Company's total debt level for credit institutions, and the mortgage of the assets of the Company. Decided to approve the decision of the Board to refinance the Companys current loans and/or increase the general debt amount of the Company to the credit institutions up to EUR 1 500 000, given that there is a need for additional floating assets. If the Board of the Company decides to refinance existing loans in a different credit institution than the one currently crediting the Company, it was decided to approve the decision of the Board of the Company to pledge and mortgage all the assets of the Company, including the assets, which are pledged and mortgaged under existing credit agreement, to the new credit institution(s) granting the loan(s). In case the loan is refinanced by the current credit institution (AB DNB bank), it was decided to approve the decision of the Board of the Company to amend the existing mortgage documents. In order to secure the obligations of the Company, the Company's assets can be pledged and / or mortgaged by the maximal pledge/mortgage agreement. Latvian English During the period from January 1, 2016 till December 31, 2016, VIA SMS Group has closed the reporting period with a net turnover of EUR 16 545 403 and increase of it of 22% in comparison with the same period in 2015. The largest net turnover growth is reached in Spain, where the net turnover has increased more than four times, however the net turnover in Sweden has increased by 38% and in Czech Republic - by 29% comparing to December 31 of 2015. In 2016 VIA SMS Group has reached EBITDA of EUR 2 993 324, ensuring the net profit of EUR 1 109 449. The net loan portfolio of VIA SMS Group as per December 31, 2016 is EUR 14 669 170, which is 39% more than net loan portfolio as per December 31, 2015. The largest net portfolio increase was reached in Spain, where net loan portfolio has increased more than three times, in Sweden - more than two times and in Latvia - by 35%. VIA SMS Group Ltd. Since the 2009 VIA SMS Group core activity has been providing consumer lending services for private individuals. The company has been operating under several brands - VIA SMS, SAVA.card, VIAKREDIT, VIA CONTO - and is offering consumer loans with a maturity term up to 12 months in Latvia, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Spain. VIA SMS Group has more than 750 000 registered clients and total amount of issued loans has reached 74.4 million EUR within a year 2016. VIA SMS Group company ViaSpar operating in Sweden was authorised to attract deposits up to SEK 50 000 in Swedish market. At the end of 2016 VIA SMS Group launched new company - VIAINVEST that is peer-to-peer lending platform offering private individuals and legal entities to invest in loans originated by VIA SMS Group companies. Janis Urtans Chief Financial Officer Phone: +371 67212412 E-mail: janis.urtans@viasmsgroup.com Fort Lauderdale, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anago Cleaning Systems (Anago), an industry-leading commercial cleaning franchise with more than 35 Master Franchises and over 1,400 Unit Franchisees throughout the U.S. and internationally, is pleased to welcome its newest Master Franchise in Southwest Florida. The franchise will cover the greater Fort Meyers, Sarasota and Naples areas. Anago of Southwest Florida is owned by Marly Rubinsztain, who appointed her son Ilan Rubinsztain as Regional Director. Marly and Ilan will run Anago of Southwest Florida as a family-owned business. We are so excited to expand our services to the Southwest region of Florida, said Adam Povlitz, President of Anago Cleaning Systems. Ilan and his family are strong additions to our Master Franchise team and will continue to help us grow the Anago brand. Mr. Rubinsztain is a former business owner and longtime entrepreneur from Brazil. As a father of three, Ilan and his wife decided moving to Florida was the best way to sharpen his business acumen and create a legacy for his family. Anagos franchise system will provide him with the opportunity to own his own franchising company, create generational wealth for his children, and share a work/life balance with his family. To explore Master franchise opportunities with Anago, contact Judy Walker, Vice President of Marketing, at 800-213-5857 or judy@anagocleaning.com or visit www.AnagoMasters.com. About Anago Cleaning Systems Anago Cleaning Systems is a commercial cleaning franchise system supporting over 35 Master Franchises and over 1,400 Unit Franchisees in the U.S. and internationally. After years of refining procedures and creating duplicable systems created in his large commercial cleaning service, David Povlitz founded Anago in 1989 to help other entrepreneurs open their cleaning businesses. Today, its program sets the standard worldwide in commercial cleaning. Anago was ranked the 10th fastest-growing franchise in 2013 and in the top 100 on the Franchise 500 by Entrepreneur Magazine in Additionally, Anago was ranked the #1 Janitorial Franchise by FranchiseRankings.com in 2016 and ranked by Franchise Business Review as one of the best franchises in franchisee satisfaction for 10 consecutive years. Inc. Magazine has also listed Anago as one of the top privately-held companies in the U.S. For further information, visit its website at www.AnagoMasters.com. ### Oslo, 27 April 2017: Photocure ASA (OSE: PHO), held its annual general meeting on 27 April 2017 at 17:00 hours (CET). All proposals were resolved as presented in the notice convening the general meeting dated 5 April 2016, as further set out in the minutes from the general meeting attached hereto. For further information, please contact: Photocure CFO Erik Dahl Tel: +47 450 55 000, Email: ed@photocure.no About Photocure ASA Photocure, headquartered in Oslo Norway, is a specialty pharmaceutical company and world leader in photodynamic technology. As a commercial stage company focused on the urology market, Photocure's proprietary technology provides improved detection and management of bladder cancer. Our aim is to provide solutions which can improve health outcomes for patients worldwide. Photocure is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE: PHO). Information about Photocure is available at www.photocure.com. Hi Sambhav,While the most realistic CATs available are the 6 from GMAC, retaking a CAT that you've already taken is NOT a realistic way to assess your skills - since you will likely see some 'repeat' questions that you have already faced. Unfortunately, seeing even a couple of repeats can 'throw off' the Scoring Algorithm and impact your pacing, energy levels, fatigue, etc. (meaning that they would likely all appear to be better than they actually are). Thankfully, the CATs from Kaplan, and Veritas are all 'close enough' to the real thing that they will provide you with a relatively realistic score assessment (assuming that you correctly take the CAT in a realistic fashion) - so you can use any NEW CATs from any of those sources next.It's important to remember that each CAT is really a 'measuring device' - when used correctly, it will give you a realistic score and help define your strengths and weaknesses, but it will NOT help you to fix any of those weaknesses. To raise your scores, you have to learn the necessary Tactics and put in the proper practice and repetitions. The CAT will show you whether your studies are helping you to improve or not. As such, you really shouldn't take more than 1 FULL CAT per week.About 2 weeks ago, you posted about your recent GMAT attempt (and how you ran out of time on the Quant section and didn't answer the last 2 questions). Since your retest is coming up relatively soon, you will want to be really efficient with this next phase of your studies - but you didn't provide much information about your prior studies or plans, so it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:Studies:1) How did you Score on each of your Official GMATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?2) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?3) What study materials have you used so far?4) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?Goals:5) What is your overall goal score?6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesnt provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,Rich_________________ getmba wrote: Theater Critic : The play La Finestrina , now at Central Theater, was written in Italy in the eighteenth century. The director claims that this production is as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theater. Although the actor who plays Harlequin the clown gives a performance very reminiscent of the twentieth-century American comedian Groucho Marx, Marxs comic style was very much within the comic acting tradition that had begun in sixteenth-century Italy. The considerations given best serve as part of an argument that (A) modern audiences would find it hard to tolerate certain characteristics of a historically accurate performance of an eighteenth-century play (B) Groucho Marx once performed the part of the character Harlequin in La Finestrina (C) in the United States the training of actors in the twentieth century is based on principles that do not differ radically from those that underlay the training of actors in eighteenth-century Italy (D) the performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in La Finestrina does not serve as evidence against the directors claim (E) the director of La Finestrina must have advised the actor who plays Harlequin to model his performance on comic performances of Groucho Marx Solution Passage Analysis Gist of the passage The play La Finestrina was originally written in the 18th century in Italy A theater critic talks about a director who has produced a theatrical presentation of the same play and it is now playing in Central Theater. This director claims that he has kept his theatrical production of the play as similar to the written version as it is possible to, when one is adapting a written play to modern-theater production The play has a character called Harlequin, the clown. The theater critic comments that the actor who enacts the role of Harlequin gives a performance that reminds one of the 20th century American comedian, Groucho Marx. Though Marx was a 20th century actor, his comic style was very much in keeping with the comic acting style that had begun in the 16th century. We can infer here that the actor who played Harlequin in the modern production actually used a comic style that had begun in the 16th century and was also used by Groucho in the 20th century. Question stem analysis The considerations given best serve as part of an argument that Answer Choice Analysis A Understand the choice Analyze in the context of the passage and the question stem B Understand the choice Analyze in the context of the passage and the question stem C Understand the choice Analyze in the context of the passage and the question stem D Understand the choice Analyze in the context of the passage and the question stem E Understand the choice Analyze in the context of the passage and the question stem Theater Critic: The play La Finestrina, now at Central Theater,A theater critic says that the play La Finestrina, which is currently playing at Central Theater,was written in Italy in the eighteenth century.Was originally written in the 18th century in Italy.The director claims that this productionThe director of the play La Finestrina says that his theatrical productionis as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theater.Is as similar to the original written play as is possible to produce a written play in the modern theater.Although the actor who plays Harlequin the clownIn spite of the fact that, the actor who plays the role of Harlequin, the clowngives a performance very reminiscent of the twentieth-century American comedian Groucho Marx,gives a performance that reminds one of the performance of the twentieth-century American comedian Groucho Marx,Marxs comic style was very much within the comic acting tradition that had begun in sixteenth-century Italy.Marx himself displayed a comic style that was in keeping with the comic acting style that had begun in 16th century Italy.The information given in the passage acts as the strongest logical support to which of the following options?The option talks about the reaction of the modern audiences viewing the modern production of a play written in the 18th century. It says that the audience would not find it easy to bear certain characteristics of the older century play.The passage talks about director's claim that in his theater production of the play he had adhered to the original play as much as was possible to when adapting a written play to a theater. Does the passage imply that the modern play was an absolutely accurate performance of an 18th-century play? No.The critic commented that the performance of an actor in the theatrical production reminded one of another comedian of the 20th century who had followed a 16th-century comic acting style. But does the critic talk at all about the reaction of the audience? No.Therefore, no comment can be made about the tolerance level of the audience.Hence this is not the correct answer.As per this option, Groucho Marx had earlier played the role of the character Harlequin in La FinestrinaThe passage only talks about the comic acting style of Groucho Marx who acted in the 20th century. He followed a style of comic acting that had begun in the 16th century. And the passage tells us that the actor who played the role of harlequin in the theater production of the play La Finestrina performed in such a way that he reminded one of Marx. But whether Marx had ever played that same part earlier or not cannot be concluded. Here we can infer that the style of the two actors might have been quite similar, but we cannot comment the same about the role played by the two.Hence this is not the correct option.This choice states that in the 20th century the actors in the U.S. were trained on the basis of principles that were not much different from the principles that lay behind the training of actors in 18th century Italy.The option means that actors in 18th century Italy and actors in the 20th century U.S. were both trained along the lines of similar principles of acting. The passage talks about Groucho, one comedian, who followed the comic style of acting that had begun in the 16th century. Whether he was trained or not, do we know? No. Was the comic acting style that had begun in the 16th century still followed in the 18th century or the 20th century? We dont really know except for Marx. One case cannot be representative of the general.Hence, this is not the correct option.The performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in the theater production La Finestrina, does not contradict the claim made by the director of the play.The critic commented that the performance of the actor who played Harlequin in the theatrical production reminded one of another comedian of the 20th century who had followed a 16th-century comic acting style. The director too claims to have adhered to the original 18th-century production as much as was possible. We, therefore, know that both the director and the actor followed the styles of an earlier period, and we can thus infer that some of the period and the prevalent style may have been common to both.Thus, we can say that the actors performance was not going against what the director had claimed. Rather it was in keeping with the claim.Hence, this is the correct option.The director of the play La Finestrina must have told the actor who played the part of harlequin to follow the comic style Groucho Marx.The director of the play wanted to keep his production as similar as possible to the original earlier version. He may have advised his actors to follow a certain school of acting or he may not. He may have told his actor playing Harlequin to follow Marx or he may not. Can we say this for sure? No. Marx might have been that actors role model and so he followed Marxwe dont really know.Hence, this is not the right answer choice._________________ - A shocking incident resulted in a suspect smearing himself with faeces - The suspect was accused of robbery and was on trail - The court believes he smeared himself with faeces to avoid trail There was drama at the Ashaiman Circuit court iin Ghana as a man who had been accused of stealing smeared himself in his own feces in order to avoid being tried. READ ALSO: Governor Wike, wife spotted shopping at a local market in Port Harcourt (photos) 19-year-old Rashid Agbo, who is being held on robbery charges, held proceedings for over two hours before the situation was rectified. It was believed he pulled this stunt in order to appear as if he was deranged. Mr Gabriel Mate-Teye, who was the presiding judge on the issue was so disgusted by the act that he suspended proceedings until further notice. Agbo is alleged to have robbed one Mr. Stephen Kodjo Ofori, a production reporter at Tema Steel Works, of a Nokia, Samsung and M-horse smartphones worth GhC 70, GhC130 and Ghc 300 respectively. The prosecutor, ASP D. Otchere, said the suspect and his accomplice, Michael Agbavi who is at large, on 17th April 2017, at about 20 hours GMT, allegedly attacked the complainant on his way home with his girlfriend. He said the complainant spotted the accused person a day after the incident and with the help of his brothers arrested and handed him over to the police. READ ALSO: Man posts photos of her girlfriend in bed with another man on Facebook The court remanded Agbo into police custody and adjourned the case to the 4th of May 2017 to allow the police intensify its investigation to arrest other alleged accomplice. Meanwhile, an old woman in Nigeria has pleaded with the government to demolish her home in Ogun state. Watch the Legit.ng video below to see how shaken this old woman was on hearing her home would be pulled down: Source: Legit.ng - A Nigerian lady has cried out after her boyfriend allegedly brutalized her for confronting him - The young lady expressed that he shot her three times and beat her up after locking her inside his house - She claimed it has been ten days since she reported him to the police but the police have refused to arrest him and bring him to justice. A beautiful Nigerian lady has cried out after the Lagos state police failed to arrest her boyfriend who allegedly beat her up and shot at her three times. Legit.ng gathered that the lady had reported the terrible incident at Ajiwe police station in Ajah area of Lagos state. She was later referred to Ogombo police station also in Ajah. READ ALSO: 37-year-old mother has given birth to 38 children since age 13 (photos) She explained that her boyfriend, Olumide Adeyemi Adewusi, had assaulted her after they had an argument. She said he had locked her inside his house and assaulted her. Beautiful lady cries out for justice after her boyfriend allegedly brutalized her The lady who was simply identified as, Slimgyalnat, on her Instagram page claimed Adewusi shot her three times. Slimgyalnat further added that it has been ten days since she reported her boyfriend to the police but he is yet to face justice and the police have refused to arrest him. READ ALSO: Uber driver who robbed a young lady visiting Nigeria gets arrested Read story below: Nigerians speak on how convicted looters should be punished Source: Legit.ng By India Today Web Desk: In an embarrassing gaffe for the Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker, a press release condoling Vinod Khanna's death on Thursday, named Rajesh Khanna in its opening line instead. The mistake was pointed out on Twitter by journalist Man Aman Chhina, who shared a screenshot of the press release saying, "Punjab PR department copy pastes press release of Rajesh Khanna for Vinod Khanna. Changes heading but forgets to change text." Image shared by journalist Man Aman Chhina on Twitter. advertisement Chhina's assumption that it was a copy-paste job could be legit, considering Rajesh Khanna was a Member of Parliament as well. Veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who was suffering from cancer, passed away on Thursday morning at Mumbai's HN Reliance Hospital. The 70-year-old was hospitalised due to "severe dehydration" on March 31. After a photo of the actor looking a frail shadow of his former self went viral, it sparked rumours of a cancer scare, and it was being said that he is suffering from bladder cancer. The actor is survived by wife Kavita Khanna and his four children, Rahul Khanna, Akshaye Khanna, Sakshi Khanna and Shraddha Khanna. Read: Vinod Khanna-Sanjay Dutt's emotional father-son story will make you teary-eyed RIP Vinod Khanna: Remembering the actor with these 10 photos Read: Vinod Khanna's death prompts Karan Johar to cancel Baahubali 2 premiere --- ENDS --- - A Nigerian pastor identified as Akolade Arowolo has pleaded for mercy - The pastor killed his banker wife three years ago and was given a death sentence Akolade Arowolo, a Nigerian pastor, who murdered Titilayo, his wife, sought pardon under the Lagos state Prerogative on Mercy conferred on the governor. Arowolo along with seventy three other inmates of the Kirikiri Maximum prisons asked the governor to pardon them on claims that they are reformed. An Ikeja high court sentenced Arowolo to death three years ago after he was found guilty of his wifes murder on June 24, 2011. The prisoner pleaded saying he needs another chance to amend his ways. Akolade Arowolo, the Nigerian pastor who killed his wife. READ ALSO: Beautiful lady cries out for justice after her boyfriend allegedly brutalized her (photos) The committee on Prerogative on Mercy said the state will not fail to carry out its prerogative on prisoners who are reformed. Arowolo was part of the seventy four prisoners called by the committee. The committee, set up by the governor to review the application of the inmates, was led by Professor Oyelowo Oyewo. The committee made a visit to the prisons to have first-hand information about the inmates and to know those who are eligible for mercy and pardon. READ ALSO: Man posts photos of her girlfriend in bed with another man on Facebook Arowolo delivered a remark on behalf of the other inmates, he pleaded for mercy while laying emohasis on the fact that they have all learned from their mistakes. Oyelowo in turn said the governor will act on the committees recommendations based on the rulesand guidelines set by the law. Check out more pictures of the pastor and his wife before her demise: 1. Late Titilayo Arowolo 2. The inmate READ ALSO: Tragedy! 4 young men drown inside a well in Jos 3. Arowolo being surrounded by police 4. The pastor being whisked away by prison warders Watch the Legit.ng video below to see what the family members of the woman killed by stray bullet want: Source: Legit.ng - A man identified as Ahmad Al Shamri has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia - The young man in his 20s was said to have been arrested in 2014 - He uploaded a video where he renounced Islam and Prophet Mohammed Ahmad Al Shamri, a man in his 20s, has been sentenced to death by Saudi Arabia for uploading a video where he renounced Islam and Prophet Mohammed. Saudi authorities arrested the young man in 2014 and he was charged with atheism and blasphemy. The video he uploaded had men and women dancing. Shamri comes from the town of Hafar al-Batin; he said he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he was being tried. His legal team said he was technically insane. READ ALSO: Man who killed his wife begs Governor Ambode for mercy (photos) The stringent laws in the kingdom do not give the citizens the liberty to do some things. Turning ones back on Islam can make one get punished by spending time in prison. Amazingly, people from the country supported the punishment given to the man. An unnamed person shared his thoughts about the sentence. If you're a lowkey atheist that's fine. But once you talk in public and criticize God or religion, then you shall be punished. However, another person had a harsh comment , "I wish there could be live streaming when you cut his head off." This sentence has again put Saudi Arabias human rights track record under the spotlight. In 2015, about 153 people were executed for drug trafficking and murder. READ ALSO: Suspect SHOCKINGLY smears himself with faeces to avoid prosecution in court Amnesty International, a human rights group said the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia two years ago turned out to be the highest for two decades. The Islamic legal code in Saudi Arabia is strict and does not support armed robbery, rape, murder and drug trafficking. These crimes are punishable by death. Watch the Legit.ng video below to see what this newly converted man has to say, he used to be a Bishop's driver. He has found a new pact with Islam: Source: Legit.ng - First Lady Aishat Buhari has congratulated the Uduehi family who welcomed five baby girls in Abuja - This is coming after the unemployed couple received gifts from prominent people in the country The wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, has congratulated the Uduehi family who welcomed quintuplets in Abuja. Mrs Buhari was represented by the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the president, Hajo Sani, who expressed the first ladys joy and gratitude for the safe delivery of the beautiful girls. Sani said: "Mrs. Buhari has a special passion for improving the lives of women and children through her Future Assured Programme. First Lady Aisha Buhari presents gifts to parents of quintuplets in Abuja READ ALSO: 37-year-old mother has given birth to 38 children since age 13 (photos) Gift items from the Aisha Buhari were also presented to the babies and their parents by Sani. The SSA to the president was received by the Chief Medical Director of National Hospita, Jaf Momoh. A photo with the hospital staff and the quintuplets READ ALSO: Unemployed father of quintuplets names babies in Abuja (photos) Momoh who thanked the first lady, expressed that the little girls are doing well. The quintuplets and the SSA to the president Legit.ng had earlier reported that the couple who recently got married and welcomed their girls 8 months after their marriage, have been receiving gifts from some prominent Nigerians. The governor of Edo state, Godwin Obaseki, had given the family the sum of N1m and also taken care of their hospital bills. Also, the Head Of Service (HOS) of the federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, promised to give the unemployed father a job and a new home to accommodate his family. Children in tears as government marks their houses for demolition Source: Legit.ng - It has emerged that Eman Ab El Atys situation has worsened following her surgery - Her sister, Shaimaa Selim claims the surgery has left her sister mute and immobile - Selim also claims the doctors at Saifee hospital lied about Ab El Aty's weight loss - The doctors have, however, denied the allegations. Who is telling the truth? Legit.ng recently reported that Eman Ab El Aty, worlds heaviest woman according to Guinness Book of World Records, had undergone a major weight loss surgery in Mumbai, India. The medics at Saifee hospital (in Mumbai) reported that El Aty had lost half of her body weight, which originally totaled to about 500kg. And now, the womans sister claims the doctors lied about her siblings state of health following the delicate operation. Shaiman Selim claims the medics at Saifee hospital lied about how much weight her sister had lost after the surgery. She also sensationally claims that the doctors left her sister in a much worse condition than they found her, as she can no longer talk or move. READ ALSO: Man, 21, with rare genetic condition has body of 160-year-old pensioner Abd El Aty had not left her home for two decades until she arrived in India on February 11 for weight-loss surgery. May God forgive them for what they have done, she says. According to Selim, her sister Ab El Aty is still very sick, as opposed to what the doctors said. The doctors, she asserts, were only interested in showing off and spreading propaganda and did not necessarily care about her sisters health. Since she is not able to talk, she is connected to this feeding tube. She doesn't talk at all. Also, she is not able to move and she looks bluish. No improvement. My problem is that the hospital is not equipped for such a case. These people care about show and propaganda only, and to appear on mass media. They do not care about the patient, the seemingly bitter Selim laments. READ ALSO: Private Secondary Schools in Ibadan The medics at Saifee hospital have, however, come out to defend themselves by denying Selims wild allegations. Shaimaa Selim, you killed humanity with one swell blow. May only God help you when you realise what you have done. I will continue to treat and pray for Eman, says Dr Muffazal Lakdawala, who reportedly led the operation. It is not yet clear whether or not Selim or the hospital will take any action regarding the allegations. READ ALSO: World's heaviest woman sits up for 1st time after losing half her weight Watch the video why you should NEVER skip breakfast: Source: Legit.ng The staging of the traditional Ram Lila in Ayodhya will make a comeback, whereas Mathura will again conduct Ras Lila and Bhajan Sandhya programmes on Yogi Adityanath's directive. By Press Trust of India: Stopped abruptly several years ago, the traditional Ram Lila will return to the Ayodhya stage during Dussehra celebrations this year on the directions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Raslila in Mathura and Bhajan sandhya programme will also be conducted in Chitrakoot. During a presentation by the religious endowment department in Lucknow on Wednesday, the chief minister told officials that the traditional Ram Lila, which was stopped in Ayodhya, should be resumed, an official said today. advertisement E-PUJA TO E-DONATION Ram Lila is a dramatic enactment of the life of Lord Rama based on the epic Ramayana. The staging of the traditional Ram Lila in Ayodhya was stopped several years ago, the official said. Similarly, the staging of Raslila, a folk art depicting the life of Lord Krishna in the form of dance drama in Mathura, and bhajan sandhya (devotional songs) programme in Chitrakoot should also be started and carried out in a proper manner, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stressed. Adityanath also asked officials to ensure starting of e-puja and e-donation in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, an online application system for Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and Sindhu Yatra and e-district portal website in 15 days. He asked officials of the department to ensure laying of four-lane approach roads to famous temples. The chief minister has set a deadline of June 2018 for completion of the Rs 14.77 crore bhajan sandhya venue in Ayodhya and an early completion of the Rs 13.75 crore bhajan sandhya and parikrama venue at Chitrakoot. Officials have been directed to develop Braj Chaurasi Kosi Parikrama and provide public amenities along the route. Also read: Yogi Adityanath orders for better utilities at religious places in Uttar Pradesh Also read: Massive reshuffle in Uttar Pradesh; 138 IAS, IPS officers transferred by Yogi Adityanath Also read: Yogi Raj: UP ministers conduct surprise checks, Keshav Prasad Maurya finds PWD office in disarray --- ENDS --- 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 In its chargesheet, CBI said the lawmakers had indulged in "criminal conspiracy" with the promoter of the Rose Valley group. By Indrajit Kundu: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named two Trinamool Congress MPs Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal in a supplementary chargesheet in its ongoing investigation into the Rs 17,000 crore Rose Valley chitfund scam. Apart from sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, the two arrested Trinamool Congress MPs have also been booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act by the CBI. advertisement In its chargesheet, the central agency has stated that the lawmakers had indulged in "criminal conspiracy" with the promoter of the Rose Valley group and "abused their official position" as MPs and "participated & aided the illegal fund collection business" of the company. "They allegedly promoted the illegal business of the company by writing letters to the regulators favouring the company and also by sharing the dais with accused directors in various functions for canvassing about the schemes. In lieu of which they received alleged huge financial benefits in cash as well as in kind," the CBI stated in an official statement. Both Bandyopadhyay and Pal were arrested by the central agency earlier this year and are currently in CBI custody in Bhubaneswar where the case has been registered. In fact, party chief Mamata Banerjee had met both the MPs at a hospital in the Odisha capital this month where they have been admitted due to illness. During her visit, Banerjee had alleged that the her party men had been put behind bars as part of a political vendetta by the BJP-led central government. Also read: Rose Valley chit fund scam: Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal claims innocence --- ENDS --- The Silicon Valley luxury electric carmaker is counting on Grohmann Engineerings automation and engineering expertise to help it ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018, according to Reuters. At the time of the purchase, it described Klaus Grohmann and the company he founded as a world leader in highly automated manufacturing. Tesla planned to keep Grohmann on, and Grohmann wanted to stay, but the clash with Musk over how to treat existing clients resulted in his departure, the source said. Grohmann disagreed with Musks demands to focus management attention on Tesla projects to the detriment of Grohmann Engineerings legacy clients, which included Teslas direct German-based rivals Daimler and BMW, two sources familiar with the matter said. Reached by phone, Klaus Grohmann declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving, citing confidentiality clauses. I definitely did not depart because I had lost interest in working, Grohmann said, without elaborating. A Tesla spokesman, asked about Grohmanns departure, praised him for building an incredible company and said: Part of Mr Grohmanns decision to work with Tesla was to prepare for his retirement and leave the company in capable hands for the future. Given the change in focus to Tesla projects, we mutually decided that it was the right time for the next generation of management to lead. Two sources familiar with the matter said Teslas plans to ramp up production with the help of the company now renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation remain on track. The management layer below Klaus Grohmann is continuing his work, they told Reuters. But they said parts of the workforce felt insecure about becoming so dependent on one client after the founders departure. Last year, Tesla had said: Under the continued leadership of Mr Grohmann, several critical elements of Teslas automated manufacturing systems will be designed and produced in Pruem, to help make our factories the most advanced in the world. Our factories are so important that we believe they will ultimately deserve an order of magnitude more attention in engineering than what they produce. At very high production volumes, the factory becomes more of a product than the product itself, Tesla said at the time. Tesla started out as a client of Grohmann Engineering, a small unlisted company based in Pruem, near the Luxembourg border, that helped companies design highly automated factories, a source familiar with the company told Reuters. As pressure grew to increase production volumes at Tesla, Musk decided to buy Grohmann Engineering and make Pruem a base for Tesla Advanced Automation. As well as BMW and Daimler, Grohmann counted the auto parts maker Bosch [ROBG.UL], chip maker Intel, and pharmaceutical firms Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N) and Roche (ROG.S) among its clients. Negotiations have started with some of the clients about how to compensate them for lack of resources devoted to their projects, one of the sources said. The German labor union IG Metall has demanded that Teslas management formalize multi-year job guarantees and increase salaries as a way to provide assurance amid management turmoil. See also: Tesla is making a big expansion to its Supercharger network. 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 ... By Hemender Sharma: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, a key accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, who was granted bail on Tuesday by the Bombay High Court today alleged that she had suffered for almost nine years in jail because the Congress-led UPA conspired against her and added that there was no such thing as saffron terror. "There is no such thing as saffron terror. I was tortured by the Mumbai ATS to such an extent that one of my lungs got damaged. And the ones who tortured me were men. This I think must not have happened to any women in independent India," Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur told media after completing the bail formalities in the hospital premises. advertisement She will continue to stay in the Khushi Lal Ayurvedic hospital in Bhopal even though she got bail. She then said, " I'm not medically fit, but now I'm free and now I'm free to avail best medical facilities. I'm a sadhvi, I was once very fit, but was tortured to such an extent that I have become crippled. I forgive those who unknowingly tried to harm me." Elaboration upon the conviction of two men of her clan in the Ajmer blast, she said, "They have been convicted by a lower court and conviction by a court does not mean they are terrorists. There are so many conspiracies at work. The final judgment will come from god. I salute all the martyrs who have given their lives for the country." Six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon town of Nashik district on September 29, 2008. Also read: 2008 Malegaon blast: Sadhvi Pragya Thakur gets bail, Lt Col Purohit stays in jail Malegaon blast case: Lt Col Purohit infiltrated into ISI, SIMI camps, says his lawyer WATCH THE VIDEO: --- ENDS --- Pope Francis is making final preparations for a trip to Egypt. His visit begins on Friday. It comes just weeks after deadly attacks against the countrys Coptic Christian minority. This will be the second time a leader of the Roman Catholic Church has traveled to Egypt, the most populous Arab country. Pope John Paul II visited Cairo in 2000. Earlier this month, two terror attacks targeted Coptic churches in Alexandria, Egypts second largest city, and the northern city of Tanta. More than 40 people were killed and more than 100 others were injured. The attackers exploded bombs as they stood among people gathered for prayers at religious services. The bombings took place on the Christian observance of Palm Sunday. They were the latest in a series of attacks against Egyptian Christians. Recently, Islamic militants carried out an attack on Christians in El Arish, a town in the northern Sinai Peninsula. The violence caused some Christian families to leave the area. Pope to meet with other religious leaders Egyptian editor and publisher Hisham Kassem spoke to VOA about Pope Francis visit. He said the trip was planned before the recent suicide bombings. Kassem noted that it takes place at a time when Christians are facing the brunt of terror attacks and their security in the country is in jeopardy. Pope Francis is expected to meet with Egypts President, Abdel Fattah al Sisi. The pope will also meet with religious leaders, including the head of Egypts Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II. Francis and Tawadros will then meet with Egypts Grand Imam, Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, at al Azhar University. The Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, is also expected to attend the gathering. A papal spokesman told Italian media that Pope Francis would not be using an armored vehicle because of concerns that it would keep him from meeting the Egyptian people. A spokesman for the Catholic part of Egypts main Coptic Orthodox church discussed the visit with local media. He said Egyptian Christians were expecting a message of peace and solidarity [as well as] a message of hope. Egypt has the largest Christian population of any Arab country. About 10 percent of Egypts 90 million people are said to be Christian. Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA that the papal visit will be good for Christians and the government. He said it will show the world that Egypt is stable. He said this would help the countrys travel industry. The effect of the attacks on Coptic Christians has been to increase distrust. Both the president and Prime Minister Sherif Ismail have accused other countries in the area of involvement in the attacks. However, they would not name those countries. Arab media reported that the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings at the Coptic churches. Egyptian government media said terrorists in the Sinai have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood group and the Palestinian group Hamas. They have stated that both groups have support from several countries in the area. Im Mario Ritter. Ed Yeranian reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story brunt n. the main force or effect jeopardy n. a situation in which someone is in danger solidarity n. a feeling of unity between people with the same interests stable adj. not likely to change too much armored adj. equipped or protected with flat pieces of metal By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) Embattled Sahara Chief Subrata Roy today appeared before the Supreme Court which extended his parole till June 19 with a warning that failure to pay Rs 1500 crore, as promised, may again land him in jail. The apex court took note of the affidavit and a personal undertaking of Roy, who stood right behind his lawyer Kapil Sibal, that he will pay Rs 1,500 crore on or before June 15 and Rs 552.22 crore exactly a month thereafter and said, "if the cheque is not encashed, the contemnor will straightaway go to jail". advertisement A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra also asked Roy "do you intend to pay the money?" The Sahara Chief stood up and said "I am trying my best". On his short reply, the bench, also comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, once again said, "we are warning you, if the cheques are not cleared and amount is not coming frequently, we will be compelled to send you to Tihar Jail straightaway from here". During the proceedings, Chennai-based Prakash Swamy, the holder of power of attorney of MG Capital Holdings LLC, New York, USA which had intended to purchase Saharas Hotel Plaza New York, was in for a shock of his life as the top court sent him to Tihar Jail for a month on the charge of contempt. Initially, Swamy, in his affidavit, had said the firm wanted to purchase the hotel. He was then asked by the court to deposit Rs 750 crore with the SEBI-Sahara Refund Account to show its bonafide in purchasing the hotel, valued at USD 550 million. On April 17, Swamys lawyer conceded that Rs 750 crore was not deposited as there was "difficulty to go with the transaction" of purchasing the hotel. This led the court to direct the seizure of the passport of 64-year-old Swamy, a journalist by profession who was a correspondent at the United Nations, besides asking him to deposit Rs 10 crore as cost and appear personally today. The apex court, which directed the Sahara Chief to personally appear again on June 19, asked the Bombay High Courts Official Liquidator (OL) Vinod Sharma to prepare the terms and conditions for auctioning of the Sahara groups Aamby Valley properties and bring them before it for approval. The OL, at the outset, submitted the valuation report of the Aamby Valley properties and said it was valued at about Rs 37,392 crore. The bench asked Sharma to prepare the terms of the proposed action besides the reserve price and indicated that the auctioning would begin if Roy failed to pay Rs 1,500 crore on or before June 15. advertisement When Sibal, representing the Sahara Chief, said he may be allowed to electronically transfer Rs 1,500 crore in the SEBI Sahara Refund Account before June, the plea was allowed. The court then directed market regulator SEBI to return the cheque in question back to Roy if the amount was paid in the account through electronic means like RTGS. The bench noted in its order that Rs 11,169 crore towards principal was due on the Sahara Chief and around Rs 12,000 crore has already been paid. Earlier, the court was irked over non-submission of money and had decided to sell off Rs 34,000 crore worth of properties of the Sahara Group at the Aamby Valley. The court had sought Roys presence for today indicating that it could consider sending him back to jail. It had said that interim orders granting reliefs, including parole to Roy, "shall remain in force till April 27, as on that day, this court may rethink of varying the interim order of bail and think of sending the contemnor (Roy and others) to custody." advertisement It had agreed to amicus curiae Shekhar Naphades suggestion that the OL be directed to conduct the sale and had asked Roy and SEBI to provide necessary details of Aamby Valley properties to the OL. The apex court had on April 6 warned the Group that if it failed to deposit Rs 5092.6 crore in SEBI-Sahara refund account by April 17 in pursuance of its order, it will be "compelled" to auction its property at the Aamby Valley. The court had on November 28 last year asked Roy to deposit Rs 600 crore more by February 6 in the refund account to remain out of jail and warned that failure to do so would result in his return to prison. It had on May 6, 2016 granted a four-week parole to Roy to attend the funeral of his mother. His parole has been extended by the court ever since. Roy was sent to Tihar jail on March 4, 2014. Besides Roy, two other directors -- Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary -- were arrested for failure of the groups two companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL) -- to comply with the courts August 31, 2012 order to return Rs 24,000 crore to their investors. Director Vandana Bhargava was not taken into custody. PTI SJK ABA MNL RKS ARC --- ENDS --- advertisement The second BlackBerry-branded phone with Android software and a physical keyboard is almost here. TCLs Blackberry KeyOne will be available in the US and Canada starting May 31st and priced at $549 (if you pay full price rather than buying from a wirlelss carrier at a discount). Preorders open May 18th. While the BlackBerry Priv had an unusual design that made it look like a typical touchscreen phone until you slid out the keyboard from behind the display while in portrait mode, the KeyOne has a more traditional BlackBerry-style design with a QWERTY keyboard below a 4.5 inch display. The phone has a 1600 x 1050 pixel screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. In addition to typing on the physical keyboard you can swipe your fingers across the touch sensitive keys to use it as a touchpad or for gesture-based typing. They keys are also backlit to help you type in the dark. Theres also a fingerprint sensor built into the spacebar key. A 12MP camera is on the back of the phone and theres an 8MP wide angle camera on the front. The phone has a microSD card reader, a USB Type-C port, and NFC support and features a touchscreen display. It features a 3,505 mAh battery and Qualcomm Quick Charge support, and the KeyOne will ship with Android 7.1 Nougat software, as well as BlackBerry communications and secorutiy software. Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Bogdanov arrived in Tripoli on Tuesday and was welcomed by members of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). He told reporters that his visit to the country is a continuation of the matters that were discussed during Prime Minister-designate Fayez Serrajs visit to Moscow and to develop mechanism to implement what was agreed upon during the said visit. After consultations between Bogdanov and Serraj, the visiting Russian official reiterated that Moscow will honor its promise for the return of cooperative relations between the two countries. Russia has been criticized by the Western countries for its close cooperation with Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (LNA) which is loyal to the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR). Haftar has visited the country on several occasions. Serraj hopes that Russia will use its international status to help lift the arms embargo on Libya. There have been allegations that Moscow has been supplying arms to the LNA but that was denied by both Haftar and Russia. He also called on the Russian authorities to help end the armed conflict in the southern part of the country. The LNA and forces from Misrata have been clashing in the area for the past weeks. At the beginning of the week, an agreement was reached in Italy, between State Council president Abdulrahman Sewehli and HoR president Ageela Saleh to stop the bleeding as well as (ensure) the return of displaced persons with the hope to pave a way for a peaceful solution of their differences. The welcomed agreement in several quarters was downplayed by Saleh as he told Libya Channel TV that my meeting with Sewehli was in his capacity as a Libyan citizen. His remarks are understood to be a private agreement between two Libyan citizens and not as authorities of the institutions that they lead. Saleh is calling for the amendment of the LPA. NHS organisations are obliged by law to report people it fears at risk of becoming terrorists under the Prevent strategy - part of the UK government's counterterrorism plan aimed at stopping people becoming terrorists. But new data collected by The BMJ has uncovered low levels of referrals to Prevent since the duty took hold, suggesting that it is having little impact in the NHS. Figures obtained by freedom of information requests from 59 acute trusts in England found just 75 referrals to the programme between 2015-16. A further 74 trusts replied, but withheld information on referrals; some because the actual number of referrals was so small, others on security grounds. Mental health trusts in England recorded a much higher level of referrals: 23 of these trusts (40%) were willing to provide data, showing a total of 254 referrals. This higher number is not surprising given that psychiatric patients are more likely to discuss such issues with their doctor. The data also shows how many NHS staff have been left ill-prepared to deal with the Prevent programme. The BMJ asked trusts whether staff receive training, and responses from 134 acute trusts (81%) and 57 mental health trusts (95%) reveal a mixed picture. For example, at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, south west London, just 4.5% have been trained, but at Barts Health NHS Trust, east London, 94% staff have undergone the Home Office-approved training. A recent report by the US Open Society Justice Initiative warns of the threat the duty poses to the doctor-patient relationship and calls for its repeal in both the health and education sectors. However, the GMC's updated confidentiality guidance makes it clear that in certain circumstances such as assisting in the prevention, detection or prosecution of serious crime, doctors would be "justified in disclosing information about patients in the public interest." Other criticisms of Prevent is the lack of transparency about patients who have been referred and that the training offered to doctors and healthcare staff is limited. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has also questioned the "variable quality of the evidence" underpinning the Prevent strategy and has called for it to be published in full. In an exclusive interview, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, the national lead for counterterrorism policing, tells The BMJ that the involvement of the NHS in Prevent is "massively important, more important than it's ever been." Rowley claims that out of 13 attacks which the security services say they have foiled since 2013, "a disproportionate number of them do have mental health issues." He would not specify a number. But he stresses that any suggestion mental illness causes terrorism is "complete nonsense" - and is adamant that collaboration between the NHS and the police is about safeguarding vulnerable people, not surveillance to identify criminals. Rowley admits there needs to be more transparency around the strategy to win over sceptical clinicians - and acknowledges that research is racing to catch up with the change in terrorist tactics from networks to inciting lone attacks. However, he points to two ongoing projects that aim to improve understanding of connections between mental health and vulnerability to radicalisation, and identify how specialist mental health teams should work with the police to reduce risk to the public and keep vulnerable people out of the criminal justice system. "This is new and dynamic and we are going to have to learn together," he concludes. Recently, researchers reported that patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at an increased risk of experiencing complications when hospitalized. The team has now found that potentially preventable hospital acquired complications (HACs) are linked with an elevated risk of early deathmore so in patients with CKD than in those with normal kidney function. The findings appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). Although studies have shown that the presence of CKD is linked with a greater risk of potentially preventable HACs, the consequences of these complications were not unclear. To investigate, a team led by Scott Klarenbach MD, MSc and Babak Bohlouli, PhD candidate (University of Alberta) examined information on all adults hospitalized from April 2003 to March 2008 in Alberta, Canada. Of 536,549 patients who were hospitalized, 8.5% had CKD, and 9.8% of patients with CKD had at least 1 potentially preventable HAC. Among the major findings: In CKD patients with potentially preventable HACs, 17.7% of patients died while hospitalized and 6.8% died within 90 days after discharge. CKD patients with potentially preventable HACs were 4.7- and 1.1-times more likely to die while hospitalized or within 90 days of discharge, respectively, than those without HACs, after adjustments. Compared with patients without CKD or potentially preventable HACs, patients with CKD and no HACs, patients without CKD and with potentially preventable HACs, and patients with CKD and potentially preventable HACs were 2.2, 5.3, and 9.6- times more likely to die while hospitalized, respectively. Length of hospital stay and readmission rates within 90 days of discharge were elevated in patients who experienced potentially preventable HACs. "Patients with potentially preventable hospital acquired complications are at higher risk of adverse clinical outcomeslonger hospital stay, mortality in the hospital and after discharge, and readmission. The magnitude of this association is larger in patients with CKD compared with those without," said Bohlouli. The findings indicate that better prevention efforts are needed to reduce HACs, especially in patients with CKD. In an accompanying editorial, Eric Young, MD (VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and University of Michigan Medical School) noted that the study should encourage more research into HACs in patients with kidney disease. "The study should prompt nephrologists who care for hospitalized patients to review their current practices," he wrote. "It is possible that the study findings could prompt insurers to introduce specific programs designed to create incentives for hospitals and providers to adopt practices that reduce the risk of complications in patients with chronic kidney disease specifically," he added. More information: "Adverse Outcomes Associated with Preventable Complications in Hospitalized Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease," Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (2017). Journal information: Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology "Adverse Outcomes Associated with Preventable Complications in Hospitalized Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease,"(2017). DOI: 10.2215/CJN.09410916 Supportive social media messages from online friends decreased the state anxiety of students with high test anxiety by 21 percent, University of Illinois computer science graduate student Robert Deloatch found in a new study. The paper, which is being published in the proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, was co-written by computer science professors Brian P. Bailey, Alex Kirlik and Craig Zilles. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer Reading supportive comments, "likes" and private messages from social media friends prior to taking a test may help college students who have high levels of test-anxiety significantly reduce their nervousness and improve their scores, a new study suggests. Undergraduate students with high levels of test anxiety who sought social support from their online friends and read the messages prior to a simulated exam reduced their anxiety levels by 21 percent, researchers at the University of Illinois found. These students, and peers who performed a seven-minute expressive-writing exercise, were able to perform as well on a set of computer programming exercises as students who had low levels of test anxiety, said lead author Robert Deloatch, a graduate student in computer science at the university. Up to 41 percent of students are estimated to suffer from test anxiety, which is a combination of physiological and emotional responses that occur while preparing for and taking tests. Test anxiety is associated with lower test scores and grade-point averages, as well as poorer performance on memory and problem-solving tasks. Test anxiety can be particularly acute when students face exams involving open-ended problems, such as those commonly used on computer science exams that require students to write and run code, the researchers wrote. When students' test anxiety is reduced, their test scores, GPAs and task performance improve accordingly, researchers have found. Students with high test anxiety strongly fear negative evaluation, have lower self-esteem and tend to experience increased numbers of distracting and irrelevant thoughts in testing situations, according to the study. For the simulated exam in the current study, students had to solve two programming problems by writing and running code. Most of the participants were computer science majors or computer engineering students who passed a pretest that ensured they had basic programming knowledge. The researchers measured participants' levels of test anxiety using the Cognitive Test Anxiety scale, which assesses the cognitive problems associated with test-taking such as task-irrelevant thinking and attention lapses. Participants also completed two other questionnaires that measured their levels of state anxiety - or "state-of-the-moment" unease - and their trait anxiety, which is anxiety that is considered to be a longstanding characteristic or personality trait. The day before the experiment, students in the social support group posted messages on their personal social media pages requesting encouragement - in the form of likes, comments or private messages - about an upcoming computer programming challenge they planned to participate in. For seven minutes immediately prior to taking the simulated test, students in the social support group read the responses associated with their online request, while students in the expressive-writing group wrote about their thoughts and feelings, and students in the control group crammed for the exam by reading information on computer programming data structures and answering questions about the text. Prior to taking the exam, participants completed a questionnaire to assess their levels of state anxiety. Students were then given 40 minutes to solve two programming problems that had many viable solutions. "We found that only the students who received supportive messages from their Facebook network showed a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in their performance on our simulated exam," Deloatch said. While prior researchers have found expressive writing to be helpful to some students with test anxiety, Deloatch and his co-authors were surprised to find that the expressive-writing exercise increased the pretest jitters of low test-anxious students by 61 percent, instead. "We hypothesized that might have occurred because focusing on their anxiety as they wrote caused their apprehensiveness to increase rather than decrease," Deloatch said. Using social support to alleviate state-of-the-moment anxiety may have implications beyond education, such as helping job applicants quell their nervousness prior to interviews with potential employers, Deloatch said. While the students who sought social support online felt that reading the supportive messages was helpful, "all of them were uncomfortable with soliciting support from their online friends, perceiving such posts as 'attention seeking' and 'out of place,'" Deloatch said. "As the majority of the participants in our study were computer science students, the competitive environment of the curriculum may have led to concerns about how others would perceive them. They may have felt that such statuses could harm their relations in group project settings." The study is being published in the Proceedings of CHI 2017, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held May 6-11 in Denver. Physical activity can reduce the weight-gaining effects of the genetic variant that carries the greatest risk of obesity. Credit: Ludo Rouchy, Flickr, CC BY Physical activity can reduce the weight-gaining effects of the genetic variant that carries the greatest risk of obesity, report Mariaelisa Graff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Tuomas Kilpelainen of University of Copenhagen and colleagues April 27th, 2017 in PLOS Genetics. With people consuming more calories and being less physically active, the world has witnessed an obesity epidemic, but not everyone is gaining weight. Previous studies suggest that a person's susceptibility to becoming obese can be reduced by physical activity. To see how physical activity and genetic variants related to obesity interact to affect weight gain, Graff and colleagues performed genome-wide interaction meta-analyses using more than 200,000 individuals. They categorized individuals as active or inactive, screened them for about 2.5 million genetic variants and correlated that data with physical indicators of obesity, including body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio. The study finds that physical activity can reduce the weight-gaining effects of the strongest known genetic risk factor for obesity, the FTO gene, by about 30%. Accounting for physical activity also enabled the researchers to identify 11 novel genetic variants linked to obesity, suggesting that physical activity and other relevant environmental factors should be considered when looking for novel genes. The meta-analyses confirm previous findings that physical activity reduces the effect of the FTO gene, but the underlying cause of this interaction is still unknown. The scientists suspect that physical activity may affect other genes related to obesity, but to identify these smaller effects, researchers will require larger groups of subjects and highly precise measurements. From a practical standpoint, the findings suggest that physical activity is still vital, even when obesity appears to be predetermined in one's genes, and could be most beneficial for those who have the hardest time keeping weight off. Mariaelisa Graff adds: "Moreover, our study revealed 11 completely new obesity genes, suggesting that in future studies, accounting for physical activity and other important lifestyle factors could boost the search new obesity genes. A weakness of our study was that the participants self-reported their physical activity habits rather than being surveyed objectively. To identify more genes whose effects are either dampened or amplified by physical activity, we need to carry out larger studies with more accurate measurement of physical levels." More information: Graff M, Scott RA, Justice AE, Young KL, Feitosa MF, Barata L, et al. (2017) Genome-wide physical activity interactions in adiposity - A meta-analysis of 200,452 adults. PLoS Genet 13(4): e1006528. Journal information: PLoS Genetics Graff M, Scott RA, Justice AE, Young KL, Feitosa MF, Barata L, et al. (2017) Genome-wide physical activity interactions in adiposity - A meta-analysis of 200,452 adults.13(4): e1006528. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006528 Helensville and Hamilton were two of the meth lab hot spots identified in the first geographic study of clandestine meth lab distribution in New Zealand. Strong regional trends were identified in the research from the University of Auckland. Researchers Dr Daniel Exeter and Dr David Newcombe from the University's School of Population Health say that by mapping the location suburbs of laboratory seizures and performing cluster analyses of the data from NZ Police between 2004 and 2009, they were able to identify five hot spots of clandestine laboratory activity. "There were more methamphetamine laboratories seized than expected in the north of the North Island, with clusters located in central Auckland, west Auckland, Hamilton, and the Far North," says Dr Exeter. The research findings were published this week in the journal Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice in the first New Zealand study to investigate the geographical distribution of meth labs in New Zealand and explore potential socioeconomic and ecological predictors. The aims of the study were firstly to determine there were places in NZ where there were more clandestine meth labs than we'd expect. "If we did find any so-called hot spots, we were interested in what socioeconomic characteristics in those places might help explain their presence." Dr Exeter says, "We found a strong regional variation in the presence of clandestine meth labs in New Zealand. "The upper half of the North Island, particularly in parts of Auckland, was consistently identified as having a high concentration of clandestine laboratories, even after adjusting for population size." Four socioeconomic factors did have a mild influence on the distribution of clandestine laboratories. The research, using 2006 Census data, found areas with a younger median age, lower median income, higher levels of socioeconomic deprivation and rural land use type were at greater risk for harbouring clandestine laboratories. "But none of the factors were able to explain the presence of all five of our initial clusters," says Dr Exeter. "The persistence of the Helensville and Hamilton clusters (after adjusting for these four socioeconomic factors), suggests there are other unknown factors influencing the geography of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories in the North Island," he says. The research, which looked at data from 2004 and 2009 and a recent update of that data from the New Zealand Police for the 2010-2015 period, showed there were 561 clandestine meth lab seizures reported between 2010 and 2015. The annual count of seizures reduced from 130 in 2010 to 68 during 2015, and the majority of seizures (57 per cent) between 2010 and 2015 occurred at residential localities. Only nine per cent of labs were found in the South Island between 2010 and 2015. But the majority (69 per cent) were located in the upper North Island. "This figure included seizures in commercial properties (such as factories) with residential facilities located within that property," says Dr Exeter. "This was consistent with the findings from 2004-2009. "Areas identified as 'hot spots' of clandestine meth lab activity represent an opportunity to target prevention and treatment resources, including community-level interventions and educational campaigns," says Dr Newcombe. "If community awareness of the harms associated with meth labs is an influential factor in clandestine meth lab presence, then educational campaigns may be effective at changing community attitudes towards methamphetamine use and manufacture," he says. "This research also demonstrates the utility of geographic techniques in displaying health and crime data. Future law enforcement and public health intervention efforts would benefit from incorporating GIS into their surveillance and data management infrastructure," says Dr Newcombe. "For instance, a national clandestine methamphetamine laboratory registry accessible to the public may be beneficial to potential home owners and renters who want to ensure their families are protected from exposure to methamphetamine contaminated properties," he says. Further research was needed to understand the scope of the threat. More information: A. V. Howell et al. The Geography of Methamphetamine Manufacture in New Zealand Between 2004 and 2009, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice (2017). A. V. Howell et al. The Geography of Methamphetamine Manufacture in New Zealand Between 2004 and 2009,(2017). DOI: 10.1093/police/pax013 HCV rates per 100,000 in Massachusetts census tracts, 2002-2013 are shown. Credit: Thomas J. Stopka, T.J., Goulart, M.A., Meyers, D.J., Hutcheson, M., Barton, K., Onofrey, S., Church, D., Donahue, A., and Chui, K.K.H. Identifying and characterizing hepatitis C virus hotspots in Massachusetts: a spatial epidemiological approach. BMC Infectious Diseases. Published online April 20, 107. DOI: 10.1186/s12879-017-2400-2 An innovative analysis combining geographic information systems (GIS), spatial epidemiology, and statistical modeling identified three hotspot clusters of hepatitis C infection rates in Massachusetts. The study, published in BMC Infectious Disease, found that areas around Boston, New Bedford, and Springfield had the most significant clusters of hepatitis C infection based on rates per 100,000 people. Hepatitis C (HCV) hotspot clusters based on the number of reported cases were also identified. As expected, these included some of the most populated areas in Massachusetts: the Greater Boston area, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, but also in the smaller cities of Lawrence, Holyoke and Fitchburg. In these areas, results of density analyses indicate that there were between 477 to 1,070 hepatitis C cases per square mile. "We are in the middle of a syndemic," said public health epidemiologist Tom Stopka, Ph.D., M.H.S., lead study author. "The opioid epidemic is intertwined with the hepatitis C epidemic. These two operate symbiotically and create a larger burden on society and our healthcare system. The areas with higher rates of infection can also become areas of risk for higher hepatitis C transmission. Our study identifies and characterizes locations in Massachusetts where prevention and treatment interventions for hepatitis C might have the biggest effect in reducing the burden of disease." "The use of spatial epidemiological approaches to identify and characterize HCV clusters can help identify where to make best use of the limited funding available for education, prevention, testing, and treatment in order to have the greatest impact and return on that investment," he continued. Stopka is an assistant professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. He focuses on spatial epidemiology, infectious disease, and health disparities, particularly with respect to substance use and misuse. By combining more than 84,000 cases of individuals with past or present hepatitis C infection reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health between 2002 to 2013 with sociodemographic data from 1,464 Massachusetts census tracts, and then conducting statistical analyses, the research team was able to determine which areas in Massachusetts had both the highest number of cases (counts) and the highest rates (taking into account population density), and characterize factors associated with HIV hotspots. The count and rate information was used to calculate and visualize geographic clusters, resulting in maps that reflected hotspots of infection. The use of GIS and spatial epidemiological analysis of public health surveillance data, which allow policy makers to better understand the geographic distribution of infectious diseases and factors associated with disease clustering, has been limited, particularly for hepatitis C. An estimated 3.2 million Americans have hepatitis C, which can result in severe long-term health problems and sometimes death. It is associated with injection drug use, can be transmitted by blood-to-blood contact with contaminated syringes, and can take decades to appear, and the cost of treatment is in the tens of thousands dollars per patient. Public health officials are concerned about long-standing and initially-silent hepatitis C infections in baby boomers, but infections are rising fastest among young adults in the United States, mirroring trends seen in heroin injection, opioid-related overdoses, and infectious endocarditis. In Massachusetts, there was a 137 percent increase in hepatitis C cases among 15 to 29 year olds between 2002 and 2013. However, little was known about the geographic clustering patterns of hepatitis C infections, which limited efforts to better understand disease transmission and develop targeted responses. Stopka notes that the data analyzed in the study captured where an individual resided when hepatitis C was reported, and not when it was transmitted. Because of this, hotspots can include reported cases where hepatitis C infections originated years earlier and in different locations, and may not fully reflect current infection patterns. Nevertheless, the current reporting systems offer the best available option to better understand the geospatial distribution of HCV. The geospatial approach used in the study may also provide insights for other disease risks, in particular HIV infections, which previous studies have shown tend to overlap with hepatitis C hotspots. The current HCV epidemic may forecast future HIV and HCV co-infection outbreaks. Combined geospatial and statistical analyses can help identify regions of risk, improve understanding of transmission patterns, reveal demographic and socioeconomic associations, and inform public health policy decisions, write the authors. More information: Thomas J. Stopka et al, Identifying and characterizing hepatitis C virus hotspots in Massachusetts: a spatial epidemiological approach, BMC Infectious Diseases (2017). Thomas J. Stopka et al, Identifying and characterizing hepatitis C virus hotspots in Massachusetts: a spatial epidemiological approach,(2017). DOI: 10.1186/s12879-017-2400-2 By Press Trust of India: Kolkata, Apr 26 (PTI) Flaying the alleged absence of internal democracy in the Congress, BJP president Amit Shah today said that such a political party can never do good for the nation. "In the BJP, the election for the party president is held every three years. Anyone can tell who will come after me. But in the Congress, Sonia Gandhi is the president. Everybody knows who will be the next," Shah told a meeting of the citys intellectuals. advertisement Any party which does not have the internal democracy cannot do any good to the country, he said adding on the other hand, only a party which has the internal democracy can bring about permanent changes to the country. Shah took pride in the fact that from Jan Sangh to BJP, the ideology of the party has remained the same and has never changed. "It was Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Vande Mataram". He said it has become rare now to find a party which goes runs on its ideology. "Only the BJP has that. Not the Congress nor the CPI-M". PTI SUS DC MD RAX --- ENDS --- Transmission electron microscope image of negative-stained, Fortaleza-strain Zika virus (red), isolated from a microcephaly case in Brazil. The virus is associated with cellular membranes in the center. Credit: NIAID Spring has sprung and in many parts of the country, so have the mosquitoes. In light of the current Zika epidemic, experts at the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine tell you what you need to be aware of this mosquito season. Zika virus is most commonly transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and also can be transmitted sexually. It can cause fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. One of the major concerns is the link between the virus and neurological illnesses babies born to mothers infected with Zika virus have been to be at an increased risk of congenital birth defects, including a condition called microcephaly in which the baby's head is smaller than expected, often due to abnormal brain development. "There are serious concerns about the possibility of Zika virus infection returning to Texas during the summer months," said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics. "One important reason is that Zika virus transmission occurred in Brownsville and possibly elsewhere in South Texas during the 2016-2017 winter. In addition, it has been an unusually warm and mild winter and early spring. Together, these factors raise the concern that the Aedes aegypti mosquito numbers could be high in Texas urban areas such as Houston, Corpus Christi, Galveston and San Antonio." Outside of Texas, South Florida also is a high-risk area due to transmission of the virus there in 2016, Hotez noted. Other areas of concern are the Gulf Coast states between Texas and Florida, including Louisiana, Mississippi, George and Alabama, where Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are in abundance, in addition to areas around Tucson, Ariz., and select pockets in Southern California. "Overwhelmingly, the major concern should be for women of reproductive age living in these areas who are pregnant or might be pregnant. Women living in these areas should have a conversation with their obstetrician about the best protective measures for this spring and summer. In addition, we do not know yet the impact of Zika virus on the nervous system of infants and young children, so parents may also want to speak with their pediatricians about their concerns," Hotez said. Because there has been evidence of sexual transmission of the virus, women who are concerned about their pregnancy status should have a discussion with their obstetricians about mosquito protection measures. Currently, there is no vaccine available for Zika virus, so the best way to prevent becoming infected is by avoiding mosquito bites. This can be done by reducing exposure through maximizing time indoors, wearing appropriate mosquito repellant products such as DEET products and wearing clothes that minimize skin exposure. If you think you have Zika, it's important to seek medical care and Zika virus diagnostic testing. Be sure to notify your primary care provider and, if you are pregnant, your obstetrician. For those traveling this spring and summer, be sure to consult the CDC's resources on at-risk travel areas (zika/geo/index.html" target="_blank">www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/index.html). If you have travel concerns, especially if you are pregnant or might be pregnant, or if your spouse is traveling to an affected area, consult a travel physician and your obstetrician. Revenue from music streaming in South Africa has increased by 334.2% over the past year, IFPI said in its latest report. Total South African streaming revenues increased from $1,877,000 (R25 million) in 2015 to $8,150,000 (R107 million) in 2016, IFPI told MyBroadband. This includes revenues from subscription and ad-supported streaming services, as well as video streams. In South Africa, although the physical market remains important, there are already over 250,000 paying subscribers on streaming services and we expect the market to grow, said Sipho Dlamini, the managing director of Universal Music South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Biggest streaming music service in South Africa Apple Music is the largest streaming service in South Africa, said the MD of Warner Music South Africa, Tracy Fraser. Google Play and Deezer are also leading players, she said. According to Fraser, there is still a lot of room for growth in digital music as smartphone penetration increases in South Africa. Streaming is becoming very big for us, but its still in its infancy, said Fraser. Digital growth is helping enable us to expand our roster, signing artists such as ASH, Dr Bone, Josh Kempen, and Locnville, who reflect the diversity of the music scene in South Africa today. Now read: Streaming music helped industry post record growth Music revenue from the sale of physical media in South Africa declined by almost 29% between 2015 and 2016, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told MyBroadband. In 2016, record companies in South Africa earned $17.5 million (R230 million), down from $24.6 million (R324 million) the year before. Digital sales in the past year amounted to $14.7 million (R193 million), up from $13.1 million (R172 million) in 2015. Streaming revenues in South Africa saw a 334.2% increase, from $1.877 million (R25 million) to $8.15 million (R107 million) year-on-year. This helped offset declines in sales of physical media, as well as song and album downloads. CDs still on top According to IFPIs data, physical revenues made up 52% of the South African market in 2015, while digital accounted for 28%. This changed in 2016, with physical sales decreasing to 39% of the market, while digital revenues including downloads and streaming made up 33%. The South African market has been dominated for many years by physical sales, but they are declining rapidly, said Tracy Fraser, managing director of Warner Music South Africa. Digital is growing exponentially and there is still a lot of growth to come as smartphone penetration increases in South Africa, she said. Streaming is becoming very big for us, but its still in its infancy. Apple Music is the largest streaming service in South Africa, with Google Play and Deezer close behind, said Fraser. This article first appeared on MyBroadband and is republished with permission. Now read: The massive rise of streaming music in South Africa The name of former prosecutor Zekeriya Oz, who was discharged on charges of being a member of the Gulen movementwhich is led by US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulenand has fled Turkey, has been included in the indictment of the case into the murder of Istanbul Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The indictment stated that Oz had telephonic conversations with Muharrem Demirkale, commander of the gendarmerie intelligence that was surveilling Dinks murderer Ogun Samast, a day before and a day after the murder, according to Milliyet daily of Turkey. Also, Zekeriya Oz had been at the scene at the time of the murder, and kept track of how the murder was taking place. Muharrem Demirkale is under arrest. Hrant Dink, the founder and chief editor of Agos Armenian bilingual weekly of Istanbul, was gunned down on January 19, 2007 in front of then office of Agos. In 2011, the perpetrator, Ogun Samast, was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and ten months for the murder. After long court proceedings and appeals, however, a new probe was ultimately launched in this murder case, and regarding numerous former and serving senior Turkish officials complicity in this assassination. An event marking the Armenian Genocide 102nd anniversary was held at the US State of Massachusetts State House. The commemoration included speakers. Welcoming remarks were delivered by Massachusetts Speaker of the House Robert A. Deleo. He thanked all those who had done tremendous work for the Armenian community in the state of Massachusetts. He also mentioned the release of the film The Promise to signify how far the Armenian community has come since surviving the genocide. We must ensure that the human spirit outshines inhumanity, said Deleo. The keynote address was delivered by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. Healey stressed that the Armenian Genocide was of the darkest periods in our history. As Attorney General, I also know the importance of calling out crimes for what they are and holding perpetrators accountable, said Healey. Its why its so shameful for anyone or any country to refuse to recognize the Armenian Genocide. She added that denial must fuel all advocates of human rights and those fighting for justice to continue and pursue their struggle. Massachusetts governors proclamation has declared April 24, 2017 as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. YEREVAN. Azerbaijan refuses the agenda put forward by the OSCE Minsk Group (), whereas Armenia does not accept solely an Azerbaijani agenda [in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks]. The approach of the Armenian side is justified, since the Armenian side is moving in line with the agenda of the three Minsk Group Co-Chairs [Russia, US, and France]. Despite the information on this meeting, the situation is at an impasse. If the planned ministerial meeting is held, the ministers will speak about some matters and part without consequences, since there are no foundations for serious, precise arrangements. Russian political analyst and columnist Stanislav Tarasov told the aforesaid to 168 Zham (Hour) newspaper of Armenia, as he reflected on the possible results of the trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of Armenia, Russia, and Azerbaijan, and which will be held Friday in Moscow. In his view, the FMs will drink brandy, play backgammon, speak something, discuss the weather, but nothing more. Oxford Professor Neil MacFarlane, who studies the South Caucasus, also does not pin great hopes on this ministerial meeting two days ahead, albeit, in his words, the meeting was long planned and awaited by all co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, wrote 168 Zham. Karabakh FM: Azerbaijan has become more aggressive, brazen with Turkeys support Armenia Security Council chief briefs Poland Senate vice-speaker on regional developments Azerbaijan fires at Armenia positions Newspaper: Armenia law enforcement agencies operative intelligence teams to enter several officials houses US midterm elections virtually over, counting of votes underway US State Department: Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs agreed to continue meetings, direct dialogue Global South needs $2 trillion year to fight climate crisis The Telegraph: Rishi Sunak to announce major natural gas deal with US after COP27 summit U.S. officials secretly ask major banks to continue doing business with some Russian firms 19fortyfive: Is America tired of the war in Ukraine? EU replaces pipeline Russian gas with imported Russian LNG Kommersant: China split the 'unity' of the West Expert estimates level of Azerbaijan's information attack on Armenia in September, comparing it to 44-day war UK wants to work more with the U.S. on gas supplies Donald Trump votes in Florida midterm elections EU admits: It is impossible to set a ceiling on gas prices that will not affect contracts or security of supply Most valuable metal of year is named Mehr: Nikolai Patrushev arrives in Tehran Turkish TV company confesses that Ankara and Israel were arming Azerbaijan against Armenia Who is Baku threatening? Armenia's former deputy defense minister decodes Aliyev's statements Army Commander-in-Chief: Even those who claim to be superpowers do not dare to attack Iran Iran and Russia to build joint pipeline India to continue buying Russian oil Businessman Zhong Shanshan becomes richest man in China Armenia and Poland emphasize OSCE role in promoting stability in South Caucasus Banks are searched in Germany in case of money laundering by Russian businessman Armenian President reacts to Aliyev's speech at League of Arab States summit Armenia increases trade with EEU member states by $1.2 bln Cavusoglu: Sweden and Finland have not yet fulfilled all Turkey's conditions Oldest member of Rothschild dynasty die in Britain Armenian National Security Council head and Polish Secretary of State discuss regional security issues Stepantsminda-Lars highway faces restrictions Kyiv realizes if China starts supplying ammunition to Russian troops it will be terrible State Department: U.S. remains committed to supporting peace in South Caucasus region Iran condemns thousand protesters and calls for retaliation against rest Delegation from Israel visits Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide Media: London is close to agreement with Washington on LNG supplies Aliyev in fact confirms fact of Azerbaijani aggression against sovereign territory of Armenia Toivo Klaar: Important meeting held in Washington between Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs Aliyev switches from threatening Armenia to insulting foreign leaders Karabakh ombudsman: Todays occupation does not change status of Shushi Envoy briefs Kazakhstan human rights commissioner on consequences of Azerbaijan aggression against Armenia Dollar, euro continue to rise in Armenia U.S. Ambassador to UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield arrives in Kiev EU partners welcome justice sector reforms in Armenia Armenia government to have academic city project development working group Rybar: Publication of Iranian film about 'skeletons' of Aliyev family is blow to positions of Aliyev family Zelenskyy to attend G20 leaders' summit Voting for midterm elections to Congress begins in U.S. 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 Constitutional Court of Georgia revokes ban on pornography 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 Newspaper: There were serious problems in organizing Global Armenian Summit 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 Aditya Rao, Vinod Krishnan and Mahesh Raghvan created a beautiful Carnatic version of Ed Sheeran's Shape of You and it's what you will listen on loop today. By India Today Web Desk: If there is one song that caught everyone's attention in 2017, it is the legendary Ed Sheeran's "Shape of you". With its catchy lyrics and peppy beats, the song has the ability to make anyone dance the moment it starts. With thousands of covers and dance videos, the song caught worldwide attention and is a major hit everyone. advertisement But, in a stream of covers, there are three musicians who are rising above others because of their originality and out-of-the-box fusion skills. Aditya Rao, Vinod Krishnan and Mahesh Raghvan revamped Shape of you with some Carnatic vocals and it's every music lover's dream. While Aditya Rao and Vinod Krishnan are on vocals, Mahesh Raghvan takes the lead for the Carnatic musical solo in the video. The USP of Mahesh's musical capabilities is that even though he played classical music, he did not use any instrument to play it apart from his iPad. The fusion is a mix of pop and classical music blended with some super awesome electronic music. --- ENDS --- Blogger Alexander Lapshin was treated unfairly. Azerbaijan did not depict the case in the right manner, PACE delegate Bernd Fabritius said while presenting his report on Interpol's Red Notices at the spring session of the Assembly. Contrary to the depiction by the Azerbaijani authorities, which had been taken up by the media, including the BBC, a Red Notice against Mr Lapshin had not been applied for because of a journey many years ago to Nagorno-Karabakh. Mr Lapshin was subject to applications because of other journeys, Fabritius said. In December 2016, Israeli Russian blogger Alexander Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk. The reason was his being on the international wanted persons list, due to a search which Azerbaijan had declared. Baku accuses him of visiting Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) without its consent. And on February 7 of the current year, Belarus extradited the blogger to the Azerbaijani capital city of Baku, where he was taken into custody. Actress Shilpa Shetty and her husband Raj Kundra were booked in a criminal case with the Thane police station for allegedly duping a textile firm owner of Rs 24 lakh. By Press Trust of India: The Maharashtra police on Thursday lodged a criminal case against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and her husband Raj Kundra with the Thane police station for allegedly duping a textile firm owner of Rs 24 lakh. "An FIR has been registered in Bhiwandi police station against Shetty and Kundra under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC," Deputy Commissioner of Police Manoj Patil told PTI. advertisement The case was filed on a complaint of a textile unit owner in Bhiwandi, who alleged that the couple collected the amount on his behalf but did not pay him, another police official said. "Big Deals, a company in which Shetty and Kundra are directors, collected money from customers for sale of bedsheets on behalf of Malotia Textiles through TV ads, but did not (allegedly) pay Malotia Textiles the proceeds", the official said. Also read | Ah Google, the masala in our Shilpa Shetty-Animal Farm khichdi Also read | Gujarat: Sadhvi Jayshree held for cheating, Rs 1.26 crore, 2.4 kg gold and liquor bottles seized --- ENDS --- The Colorado State Legislature unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, thedenverchannel.com reported. The resolution states: We express support for efforts toward constructive and durable relations between the country of Armenia, the homeland for the Armenian people, and its neighbors, based upon acknowledgment of the facts and ongoing consequences of the Armenian genocide, and a fair, just, and comprehensive international resolution of this crime against humanity. Our Colorado Advocacy Day was a great success! We appreciate the Centennial State's legislators' support of the Armenian American community, as manifested in their unanimous approval of the annual Armenian Genocide resolution, and the time they took to learn about current issues impacting the Armenian homeland, as well as US-Armenia relations, Armenian National Committee Western Region said in a statement. Armenians of Colorado began with a group of 15 Armenian members around 1980. At least 125 families are involved in the organization today. Noida's Srishti Kaur beat 25 contestants from around the world to take home the crown. By India Today Web Desk: The year 2017 has brought life-changing news for Srishti Kaur. On Tuesday, Srishti, a resident of Noida, was crowned Miss Teen Universe 2017. She won the annual beauty pageant after beating 25 contestants from around the world. Annual event, Miss Teen Universe, was held at Managua, the capital Nicaragua, US, this year. Other finalists who made it to the Top 3 were Mexico's Ary Trava and Canada's Samantha Pierre. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Miss Teen Universe Siguatepeque advertisement Srishti also won an award for the best national costume, which featured a beautiful ensemble of India's national bird, the peacock. According to the Hindustan Times, Srishti is a former student of Lotus Valley International in Noida, and is currently studying at London School of Fashion. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Srishti Kaur Srishti had also bagged the title of Miss Teen Tiara International earlier this year. Miss Teen Universe is a beauty pageant for girls aged between 15 and 19 that was started six years ago by Miss Universe pageant organisers. --- ENDS --- The European Union Delegation in Armenia has informed the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) about potential irregularities in relation to projects in Armenia funded by the European Union, the press-service of the Delegation informed Armenian News NEWS.am. ''OLAF investigated and informed the Armenian authorities, which, at the formers recommendation, have been conducting their own investigation. One member of staff of the European Union Delegation in Armenia has been detained in connection with this ongoing investigation. The European Union is fully committed to combatting corruption and organised crime and will continue to support a full, effective and transparent investigation of any suspected irregularities. The Delegation of the European Union in Armenia recalls that the presumption of innocence applies,'' the statement reads. As reported earlier, an employee of the EU Delegation to Armenia was detained Wednesday in capital city Yerevan.The EU delegations coordinator for grant programs is suspected of theft. A criminal case is launched on charges of theft from the grant funds allocated by the EU Delegation to Armenia, and 10 persons were indicted and some were wanted along the lines of this criminal case. YEREVAN. - There is one obstacle to the fast, peaceful and just settlement of the Karabakh conflict, which is the unconstructive stance of Azerbaijan. The spokesman for the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), Eduard Sharmazanov, who is also the Deputy Speaker of the country's National Assembly (NA), told the aforementioned to journalists after the RPA Executive Body session on Thursday. Referring to the trilateral meeting scheduled for Friday, he noted: ''We have repeatedly mentioned that we positively assess the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group towards the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but we have also repeatedly noted that there is one obstacle to the fast, peaceful and just settlement of the Karabakh conflict, that being the unconstructive stance of Azerbaijan.'' According to Sharmazanov, the agreements reached in Vienna and St. Petersburg should be implemented. ''If they are not, and face obstacles or are partially implememted, this will be exclusively through the fault of Azerbaijan,'' Sharmazanov said, adding that the position of the Armenian side on this issue remains unaltered and precise. Theres no shortage of articles and television shows that showcase the dishes that chefs love to cook at their restaurants. But what do they love to eat at the end of their exhausting 16-hour days? Or on their days off? In this series, we ask Milwaukee-area chefs to share their favorite dishes both from area restaurants and for eating at home. In this edition, we talked with Chef Thi Cao of Buckleys. Cao will be among eight featured chefs at the upcoming third annual Moveable Feast event at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Thi Cao was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, but by the time he was 3 months old, hed traveled with his family from a refugee camp in Thailand to the U.S., where they received sponsorship from a family in Madison, Wisconsin. As a child, Cao says that when he wasnt watching cartoons he was watching cooking shows. And he grew up under the influence of TV personalities like the Frugal Gourmet and Paul Prudhomme. After earning a degree in IT from UW-Milwaukee, he spent time in the financial sector before following his passion and attending culinary school. Cao has worked at a variety of restaurants in Milwaukee and abroad, including Coquette Cafe, Osteria del Mondo and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Cao says that, due to his schedule, he does most of his dining out during lunch. "The days of wolfing down a burger or a big meal before my typical long shift are behind me," he says. "I appreciate food that is more nourishing, light and, of course, tastes great." Three options at Pho Cali "Proudly, I come here almost once a week. I rotate between pho dac biet, bun rieu, and bun bo hue. It just really depends on my mood that day and how hungry I am, or if I need a little spice in my life. Pho is so well-known these days, and I am so happy that its becoming somewhat mainstream. But there is so much more to Vietnamese food! Bun rieu and bun bo hue are both regional dishes that are great in flavor and have a spicier characteristics. That said, pho is king. And its all about the broth. And no, you do not have to doctor it up if it's done right. Pho Cali does it right." Mango Tango at FreshFin Poke "This is my new favorite place to get something light and tasty before work. You can taste the freshness in their ingredients and I cannot believe the generous portion size in all their bowls ... tons of salmon and tuna with a delicious array of vegetables. Currently my favorite is the Mango Tango but I would like to start customizing my own bowl soon. I love sushi, and this way of eating raw fish and vegetables in a bowl really satisfies me without weighing me down before a long night in the kitchen." Huaraches at El Comedor "Their tortillas are pressed and fried fresh for every order. Everything on their menu is great and where I go for authentic Mexican cuisine. You know the menu and flavor is authentic and delicious when you see the people of that region enjoying the food. I like their tacos but I love their special huaraches with lengua [tongue]. It is Mexican home cooking and you can taste it." Ultimate comfort food "Recently my mom came back from Vietnam and made chao vit for me. In China it is called congee and basically it is rice porridge with roasted duck. It's so simple to make; however, the depth of flavor and the feeling you get after eating it will satisfy your soul. If the popular Pho is classified as a burger, then chao is Vietnamese version of the chicken noodle soup. It is a dish that will transport any Vietnamese person back to their childhood. Its great to have when you are sick or when you're living in Wisconsin in the middle of April and its still 34 degrees outside." Tiny, milled pieces of a titanium oxide mineral called rutile -- top left, bottom right -- face off within a high resolution microscope enhanced with the ability to measure minuscule forces called van der Waals forces. Credit: Xin Zhang/PNNL Like two magnets being pulled toward each other, tiny crystals twist, align and slam into each other, but due to an altogether different force. For the first time, researchers have measured the force that draws them together and visualized how they swivel and align. Called van der Waals forces, the attraction provides insights into how crystals self-assemble, an activity that occurs in a wide range of cases in nature, from rocks to shells to bones. "It's provocative in the sense that from these kinds of measurements one can build a model of 3-D assembly, with particles attaching to each other in select ways like Lego bricks," said chemist Kevin Rosso of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Crystals are most everywhere in nature, and this work will help us take advantage of these forces when we design new materials." Fusion force Crystals form supporting structures in a variety of natural and synthetic materials. Larger crystals can build up from smaller ones. Although generally shaped like cubes, crystals have several different sides, some of which match well with each other and others that don't. When matching sides are oriented properly, crystals can fuse seamlessly, growing larger and larger. But what makes crystals get close enough to fuse in the first place, and can they self-align? Many types of forces have been hinted at through the years, but the tools to narrow down the correct ones have not existed. Now, Rosso and teams at PNNL, EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at PNNL, and the University of Pittsburgh developed a new approach by combining an environmental transmission electron microscope, called an ETEM, with nanocrystal force probes that allows scientists to watch crystals interact in a life-like situation. PNNL post-doctoral chemist Xin Zhang and EMSL user Yang He, a Ph.D. student from the University of Pittsburgh, used resources within EMSL to examine how titanium oxide crystals couple. To understand their experiment, imagine holding two magnets and moving them toward each other. When they're so close that the attractive force overcomes the effort you're using to hold them apart, they will jump together. The PNNL team did this, but on a much smaller scale and with a force that isn't magnetism. One small jump The team needed to use very tiny crystals that wouldn't overwhelm the weak forces they expected to see. They attached titanium oxide crystals a hundred to a thousand times thinner than a human hair (depending on the hair) to either side of an instrument that measures force. The team then moved the crystals toward each other, twisted at several different angles between them, until the two snapped together. The team also pulled the crystals apart and measured how much force that took as well. These measurements allowed the researchers to characterize the force in detail. There are several different kinds of forces that work for objects of this size, and with additional analyses the team concluded forces called van der Waals were the ones at work causing self-alignment. And a twist In addition, they wanted to put a face to a name, in a manner of speaking, of a theoretical prediction of van der Waals forces made in the 1970s. The theory allowed scientists to calculate the torque between crystals that are being twisted relative to each other (imagine twisting a baguette to pull a piece of bread off) based on the angle between them. So the team also measured the force between two crystals held at a constant distance apart but twisted in opposite directions from each other. Co-author computational physicist Maria Sushko compared the data to predictions the theory made and showed that the theory held up. "This is the first measure and proof that the force depends on how the crystals are rotated relative to each other, what we call rotationally dependent," said Rosso. "If they are rotationally dependent, this implies that this force will contribute to aligning free crystals that bump together in a liquid environment, for example, increasing the rate of successful sticking." In addition, proving the connection means it will be easier to determine such attractive forces for crystals made of different materials, such as calcium carbonate found in seashells. Scientists will be able to determine these forces by plugging in numbers to an equation rather than re-doing all of the experiments. The study is published in Science. More information: "Direction-specific van der Waals attraction between rutile TiO2 nanocrystals", Science science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi 1126/science.aah6902 Journal information: Science Chhattisgarh has been a hotbed of naxal violence for over a decade. The government has failed to find an effective way out to tackle what was described by a former Prime Minister as the single biggest threat to internal security of India. By Prabhash K Dutta: In 2006, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had described the naxal insurgency as the biggest internal security threat for the country. Eleven years later, Monday's attack on CRPF jawans in Sukma underlines that the situation has not changed for better, particularly in Chhattisgarh. 24 CRPF jawans lost their lives. Chhattisgarh has seen some of the bloodiest Maoist attacks in the past decade. The Dantewada attack on CRPF camp in April 2010 remains the biggest attack. 72 CRPF and one police jawan were killed. advertisement Some of the deadliest Maoist attacks in Chhattisgarh include: Attack in Bijapur in May 2010 when eight CRPF jawans were killed when Maoists blew up a bullet-proof vehicle. In June 2010, 26 CRPF jawans were killed when naxals ambushed the paramilitary forces. In May 2013, 25 top leaders of the Congress were killed by the naxals in Darbha valley of Chhattisgarh. Again in February 2014, naxals killed six policemen in Dantewada district. The naxal insurgents followed this attack with another one in March 2014, when 15 security personnel were killed in Sukma. In April 2015, seven policemen were killed again in Sukma. In March this year, Naxals killed 12 CRPF jawans at Sukma before launching a fresh attack on the paramilitary forces on April 24 in the same district. The question arises why do naxals succeed attack after attack in Chhattisgarh's insurgency hotbed? Bomb recovered from the spot of naxal attack in Sukma. (Photo: @ANI_news) LOCAL SUPPORT FOR NAXALS The local tribal groups live on the margins of development in Chhattisgarh. The government schemes have failed to bring substantial changes in their lives. The basic civic amenities of health, education and sanitation have not reached hundreds of the tribal villages. The tribal people have genuine grievances and naxal groups exploit this situation to their advantage with their propaganda. The naxals do enjoy local support, which may, at times, be coercive as the villagers are threatened with dire consequences if they informed the security forces about the activities of the insurgents. Picture for representation. Local support for the naxals makes it difficult for the security forces to get accurate information about the insurgents. However, the naxals get information about the presence and movement of the forces through villagers, some of whom are also employed in government. SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OF TOPOGRAPHY About 44 per cent of Chhattisgarh is covered under forest of the Eastern Highlands - the hills and plateaus. This makes the topography very difficult for patrolling by the security forces. Tribal village are settled in between the forests and hills. Naxals have established their bases on the margins of the villages and also deep in the forests. advertisement Naxals launch their operations in the nearby areas and flee into the forests. Naxals are very well aware of the topography of the forest land and the hills. The security forces are struggle to keep pace with the naxals as they lack accurate knowledge of the terrain. Ammunitions were recovered from Sukma earlier in March. (Photo: @ANI_news) SUPPLY OF WEAPONS Naxals have sophisticated weapons. These weapons are either smuggled or snatched from the armed forces including police during targeted raids by the naxal groups. Procurement of arms by the naxals is done in many ways. They collect small old guns from the local population They snatch and loot arms from local police outposts They bribe security forces sell their firearms They make, according to some reports, arms in their own small manufacturing units. They collaborate with other insurgent groups to keep supply of arms going. They smuggle arms and ammunitions through the porous international borders with Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh. They get arms, according to some reports, from countries like China and Pakistan where some groups are sympathetic to the naxals with and without the support of the establishment. USE OF TRIBALS AS HUMAN SHIELD In several cases, the security forces get timely intelligence inputs about an impending naxal plan or attack, but neutralising the insurgents becomes difficult for the personnel as they bump into the human shield. advertisement Naxals put up children and women as human shield against an advancing team of security forces. Even in the case of the latest Sukma attack, the security forces had advance knowledge of naxal presence in the area. But, as some reports suggest, the naxals had again put up human shield in the form of local tribal people. ABSENCE OF QUALITY ROADS This has been an old demand of the CRPF, deployed in Chhattisagarh to fight naxal insurgents. Even the Chhattisgarh government has repeatedly said that laying down good roads is in prime focus for it in the fight against naxals. As per the Chhattisgarh government, there are primary roads under-construction in Sukma for improving connectivity with the neighbouring areas. Work is on for faster road connectivity between Jagargunda and Dornapal in Sukma's, with Bijapur in the west and with Dantewada's Kirandul in the north. The Monday's attack happened on the southern side of Sukma, where roads are under-construction. Ammunition recovered from Naxal areas of Sukma. (Photo: @ANI_news)(Photo: @ANI_news) On the other hand, the naxals have increased their attacks on the under-construction roads to disrupt the activity. As per the government records, more than 10 incidents of gunfire and nearly 20 incidents of IED explosions have occurred in the areas where roads are being constructed in the naxal-infested regions of Chhattisgarh. advertisement EXTORTION AS REVENUE MODEL Much against the wishes and claims of the central government, the naxals are understood to have been least affected by demonetisation. The naxal economy largely runs on extortion irrespective of the currency in vogue. They get revenue from extortion both in cash and kind. This makes them work according to their plans. According to the Chhattisgarh police, the naxals made about Rs 2,000 crore in 2009 as their revenue through extortion. In 2010, the then Home Secretary GK Pillai estimated naxals' annual income at Rs 1,400 crore while the Intelligence Bureau's estimates put a roughly similar figure at Rs 1,500. The naxal revenue comes from 'levy' (read extortion) is collected from Contractors who win the bid for development works in areas dominated by insurgents Individuals Forest produce contractors Mining companies Transporters Large- and small-scale industries in the regions Growing poppy or ganja Illegal mining: A total of 1,61,040 mines were found in naxal dominated areas spread across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha in 2010. Dacoity and robbery After naxal attack on CRPF jawan on April 24 in Sukma. (Photo: @ANI_news) LINKS WITH INTERNATIONAL OUTFITS According the Ministry of Home Affairs' reply in the Lok Sabha recently, the naxals have links with Maoist groups operating in Philippines, Turkey and Europe. MoS Home Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha that the CPI(Maoist) is "a member of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia." In a written reply, Rijiju said "The so-called 'People's War' being waged by the CPI(Maoist) against the Indian state has also drawn support from several Maoist fringe organisations located in Germany, France, Turkey, Italy etc." Inputs indicate that some senior cadres of the Communist Party of Philippines imparted training to the cadres of CPI (Maoist) in 2005 and 2011, the MHA reply said. Now, the Modi government is understood to have asked the security forces to draw a detailed plan to decisively tackle the naxal threat in the country particularly Chhattisgarh. ALSO READ | Naxal attack on CRPF jawans in Sukma: All you need to know From Dantewada 2010 to Sukma 2017: How the Naxal attack narrative has not changed in 7 years After Sukma attack, CRPF gets new director general to fight Naxal menace ALSO WATCH | Sukma attack: Meet the IAF bravehearts who flew the mortal remains of the CRPF jawans --- ENDS --- This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive past the planet on April 26, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute NASA's Cassini spacecraft is back in contact with Earth after its successful first-ever dive through the narrow gap between the planet Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017. The spacecraft is in the process of beaming back science and engineering data collected during its passage, via NASA's Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California's Mojave Desert. The DSN acquired Cassini's signal at 11:56 p.m. PDT on April 26, 2017 (2:56 a.m. EDT on April 27) and data began flowing at 12:01 a.m. PDT (3:01 a.m. EDT) on April 27. "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. As it dove through the gap, Cassini came within about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops (where the air pressure is 1 barcomparable to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level) and within about 200 miles (300 kilometers) of the innermost visible edge of the rings. While mission managers were confident Cassini would pass through the gap successfully, they took extra precautions with this first dive, as the region had never been explored. "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape." This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive past the planet on April 26, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute The gap between the rings and the top of Saturn's atmosphere is about 1,500 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide. The best models for the region suggested that if there were ring particles in the area where Cassini crossed the ring plane, they would be tiny, on the scale of smoke particles. The spacecraft zipped through this region at speeds of about 77,000 mph (124,000 kph) relative to the planet, so small particles hitting a sensitive area could potentially have disabled the spacecraft. As a protective measure, the spacecraft used its large, dish-shaped high-gain antenna (13 feet or 4 meters across) as a shield, orienting it in the direction of oncoming ring particles. This meant that the spacecraft was out of contact with Earth during the ring-plane crossing, which took place at 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT) on April 26. Cassini was programmed to collect science data while close to the planet and turn toward Earth to make contact about 20 hours after the crossing. Cassini's next dive through the gap is scheduled for May 2. This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive past the planet on April 26, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. Following its last close flyby of the large moon Titan on April 21 PDT (April 22 EDT), Cassini began what mission planners are calling its "Grand Finale." During this final chapter, Cassini loops Saturn approximately once per week, making a total of 22 dives between the rings and the planet. Data from this first dive will help engineers understand if and how they will need to protect the spacecraft on its future ring-plane crossings. The spacecraft is on a trajectory that will eventually plunge into Saturn's atmosphereand end Cassini's missionon Sept. 15, 2017. A composite image of the Western hemisphere of the Earth. Credit: NASA A team of researchers has discovered that many Canadian lakes can provide new insights into ancient oceans, and their findings could advance research about greenhouse gas emissions, harmful algal blooms, and early life forms. Scientists from the University of Waterloo led the team of microbiologists, geochemists, and freshwater specialists in a surprising finding that lakes of the Boreal Shield may be similar to oceans of the Archean Eon, a period more than 2.5 billion years ago when microbial life thrived in a world without oxygen. This finding is important because there are millions of Boreal Shield lakes in Canada that likely share key properties with the Archean oceans. Until now, scientists have relied on only four so-called analogue lakesones with similar primordial conditionsmost of which are found in remote or ecologically sensitive locations. "With so many lakes to study, this discovery changes how we approach this field of research," said co-author Jackson Tsuji, a doctoral student in the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science. "It's exciting that these lakes, which are basically in our backyard, hold information that could have implications for global climate, past and present, and water management." Published in Scientific Reports, the findings have the potential to transform how scientists carry out research about Earth's earliest life forms, which originated in oxygen-free oceans thought to be low in sulphur and high in iron. Many Boreal Shield lakes, also low in sulphur and high in iron, develop oxygen-free layers each summer. Although these layers mix in the spring and fall, they re-establish quickly. "We used to think finding a suitable Archean ocean analogue meant that you had to find a lake that didn't mix. For example, current analogues are hundreds of metres deep and completely stratified," said Josh Neufeld, a professor in the Department of Biology. "An important discovery here was how robust this oxygen-free community is, despite the mixing." Researchers can use these lakes as living laboratories to study how microbes of the past might have functioned. The microbes detected in the sampled lakes are thought to metabolize iron compounds with the help of sunlight, which may help researchers understand how to predict and control harmful algal blooms because iron plays a key role in algal bloom formation. In addition, the unique and previously unknown microbial communities, specifically methane-consuming microbes at the bottom of these lakes, have broad implications for greenhouse gas emissions. The study compared aspects of the four current Archean-ocean analogues to two Boreal Shield lakes using water chemistry, microbial community profiles, and stable isotope patterns. The researchers' unique application of the latest biological and isotopic tools shows that similar biological processes to existing analogues are not only present, but active in the water, reoccurring every year. "This groundbreaking discovery was possible because we had the flexibility to pursue some unexpected results with a multi-disciplinary team using state-of-the-art tools and techniques," said Sherry Schiff, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Boreal Shield lakes are widespread across the Boreal Shield, the largest of the Canadian ecozones, which extends across more than 20 per cent of Canada's land mass. Similar lakes are found in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. An entrance to the archaeological site of Vindija Cave, Croatia. Credit: MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology/ J. Krause Researchers have developed a new method to retrieve hominin DNA from cave sedimentseven in the absence of skeletal remains. While there are numerous prehistoric sites in Europe and Asia that contain tools and other human-made artefacts, skeletal remains of ancient humans are scarce. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have therefore looked into new ways to get hold of ancient human DNA. From sediment samples collected at seven archaeological sites, the researchers "fished out" tiny DNA fragments that had once belonged to a variety of mammals, including our extinct human relatives. They retrieved DNA from Neandertals in cave sediments of four archaeological sites, also in layers where no hominin skeletal remains have been discovered. In addition, they found Denisovan DNA in sediments from Denisova Cave in Russia. These new developments now enable researchers to uncover the genetic affiliations of the former inhabitants of many archaeological sites which do not yield human remains. By looking into the genetic composition of our extinct relatives, the Neandertals, and their cousins from Asia, the Denisovans, researchers can shed light on our own evolutionary history. However, fossils of ancient humans are rare, and they are not always available or suitable for genetic analyses. "We know that several components of sediments can bind DNA", says Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "We therefore decided to investigate whether hominin DNA may survive in sediments at archaeological sites known to have been occupied by ancient hominins." To this aim Meyer and his team collaborated with a large network of researchers excavating at seven archaeological sites in Belgium, Croatia, France, Russia and Spain. Overall, they collected sediment samples covering a time span from 14,000 to over 550,000 years ago. Using tiny amounts of material the researchers recovered and analyzed fragments of mitochondrial DNA - genetic material from the mitochondria, the "energy factories" of the cell - and identified them as belonging to twelve different mammalian families that include extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear and the cave hyena. Excavations at the site of El Sidron, Spain. Credit: El Sidron research team The researchers then looked specifically for ancient hominin DNA in the samples. "From the preliminary results, we suspected that in most of our samples, DNA from other mammals was too abundant to detect small traces of human DNA", says Viviane Slon, Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and first author of the study. "We then switched strategies and started targeting specifically DNA fragments of human origin." Nine samples from four archaeological sites contained enough ancient hominin DNA for further analyses: Eight sediment samples contained Neandertal mitochondrial DNA from either one or multiple individuals, while one sample contained Denisovan DNA. Most of these samples originated from archaeological layers or sites where no Neandertal bones or teeth were previously found. A new tool for archaeology "By retrieving hominin DNA from sediments, we can detect the presence of hominin groups at sites and in areas where this cannot be achieved with other methods", says Svante Paabo, director of the Evolutionary Genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and co-author of the study. "This shows that DNA analyses of sediments are a very useful archaeological procedure, which may become routine in the future". A sediment sample is prepared for DNA extraction. Credit: MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology/ S. Tupke Even sediment samples that were stored at room temperature for years still yielded DNA. Analyses of these and of freshly-excavated sediment samples recovered from archaeological sites where no human remains are found will shed light on these sites' former occupants and our joint genetic history. The study is published in the journal Science. More information: Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from Pleistocene sediments, Science; 27 April, 2017. science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ 1126/science.aam9695 Journal information: Science A newly developed handheld fiber optic probe can perform multiple microscopy techniques without the need for tissue staining. The compact probe represents an important step toward endoscopic cancer diagnosis. Credit: Jurgen Popp, Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology Jena and Institute of Physical Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena In an important step toward endoscopic diagnosis of cancer, researchers have developed a handheld fiber optic probe that can be used to perform multiple nonlinear imaging techniques without the need for tissue staining. The new multimodal imaging probe uses an ultrafast laser to create nonlinear optical effects in tissue that can reveal cancer and other diseases. Today, cancer is typically diagnosed by removing a bit of tissue with a biopsy and then sending that tissue to a specially trained pathologist who stains the tissue and uses a microscope to look for cancerous cells. The ability for doctors to skip the biopsy and use a multimodal imaging endoscope to diagnose cancer on the spot would save valuable time and could also allow surgeons to more easily differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissue during surgery. With the new probe, imaging techniques that previously required bulky table-top instruments can be performed with a handheld device measuring only 8 millimeters in diameter, about the same diameter as a ballpoint pen. If miniaturized further, the probe could easily be integrated into an endoscope for nonlinear multimodal imaging inside the body. "We hope that, one day, multimodal endoscopic imaging techniques could help doctors make quick decisions during surgery, without the need for taking biopsies, using staining treatments or performing complex histopathological procedures," said Jurgen Popp, from Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany and the paper's lead author. The researchers detail their new handheld probe in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research. It is the first miniaturized probe for multimodal biological imaging to incorporate a multicore imaging fiber, a type of optical fiber consisting of several thousand light-guiding elements. This special imaging fiber allowed the researchers to keep all moving parts and electric power outside of the probe head, making the probe easy and safe to use in the body. The researchers have tested the probe with many types of tissue samples, but because it is currently designed for forward view mode, the primary applications of the probe would likely include skin, brain or head and neck surgery. They are working on implementing a side view mode that could be used to investigate hollow organs and arteries such as the colon, bladder or aorta. A mini microscope "The new probe serves as a miniaturized microscope that uses near-infrared lasers to investigate tissue," said Popp. "Different components of biological tissue react differently to the excitation lasers, and their unique response gives us information about the molecular composition and morphology within the tissue." The handheld multimodal imaging probe can simultaneously acquire several types of images: coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited auto-fluorescence. These nonlinear imaging techniques have been shown to be useful for clinical diagnostics, including identifying cancerous cells, but it has been difficult to miniaturize the required instrumentation for use inside the body. The probe's reduced size comes from its use of gradient index, or GRIN, lenses to focus the laser light. Compared to traditional spherical lenses that use complicated shaped surfaces to focus light, GRIN lenses can be made very small because they focus light through continuous refractive index changes within the lens material. Popp's research team collaborated with scientists from Grintech Gmbh who designed GRIN lenses only 1.8 millimeters in diameter and helped incorporate the robust lens assembly into a small aluminum housing. Endoscopes designed for nonlinear imaging commonly use moving mirrors and electromechanical devices for point by point laser scanning in the probe head. Using the multicore imaging fiber allowed the researchers to further reduce the device's size by moving the laser scanning out of the probe head and away from the sample site. Because the fiber's thousands of light guiding elements, or cores, preserve the spatial relationship of the light between the two ends of the fiber, the scanning can be performed at the opposite end of the fiber, making an endoscopic approach much easier. "Compared to other endoscopic nonlinear imaging approaches, our fiber probe stands out due to its simplicity," said Popp. "Since no moving parts are incorporated in the probe head, possible misalignments in the optics are limited and the probe's overall lifetime is increased." Multimodal imaging of tissue The researchers demonstrated the unique capabilities of the multicore imaging fiber by moving one end of the probe across a sample and transferring the acquired images to the other end. "This is not a trivial task since the cores of the imaging fiber differ in size and shape, hindering efficient and homogeneous coupling of the excitation lasers," said Popp. "Furthermore, we had to deal with unwanted effects like different wavelengths interacting inside the fiber and core-to-core light coupling." They also demonstrated that the probe could acquire separate coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited autofluorescence images of healthy human skin tissue samples with a resolution of 2048 by 2048 pixels for a scanned area of 300 by 300 microns. This resolution and field of view is sufficient for identifying tumor borders, and the probe can be moved over the tissue surface to get an overview of the affected area. The researchers are working to use algorithms to improve the quality of the multimodal images, which appear pixelated because of the structure of the multicore imaging fiber. As a next step, they plan to test the probe in animal models and with patients in a clinical setting. More information: A. Lukic, S. Dochow, H. Bae, G. Matz, I. Latka, B. Messerschmidt, M. Schmitt, J. Popp, "Endoscopic fiber probe for nonlinear spectroscopic imaging," Optica, Volume 4, Issue 5, 496-501, (2017). DOI: 10.1364/optica.4.000496 Journal information: Optica Vanua Levu Island. Credit: Shutterstock Two remote off-grid villages on the tiny Fijian island of Vanua Levu in the South Pacific are looking forward to their first reliable source of refrigeration thanks to, rather ironically, their local hot spring. The plan for this pilot project is to pipe the Waikatakata Hot Spring at Vusasivo, which is coming out of the ground at 70C, into an absorption chilling facility at Natewa Bay. This centralised cold storage facility will then be available for villagers to preserve their goods. "So, for example, if they slaughter a cow or catch some fish they can freeze and store them there," says Professor Regenauer-Lieb, Head of UNSW Petroleum Engineering. "This will be an important facility for the villages where people still regularly die from food poisoning." The geothermal freezer facility plans to service the traditional landowners of Vusasivo Village and adjoining Natewa Village in coordination with the Nambu Conservation Trust of Natewa. Although the villages have basic infrastructure, including a post office, church and small clinic, they are off-grid and find it difficult to keep food fresh. They also have sewerage installations and no morgue or clean water, which all significantly enhance the risk of food poisoning and disease. A cold storage facility will enable villagers to preserve their goods and reduce the risk of food poisoning. Credit: Shutterstock Having dedicated much of his professional life to researching geothermal energy, Regenauer-Lieb believes that deriving energy from natural hot springs represents a state-of-the-art and reliable renewable approach to cooling in villages and urban areas. He says the geothermally driven absorption chiller technology is based on traditional electrically driven vapour compression chillers, but uses heat-driven absorption or adsorption and evaporation for refrigeration and freezing instead. The project, which is part of the long-running Geothermal Cities initiative set up by Regenauer-Lieb in 2008 with the CSIRO and other universities, is being funded and championed by the University of the South Pacific in collaboration with UNSW. Regenauer-Lieb says the technology is already proven and is technically identical to the Chena Hot Spring in Alaska, which provides year-round ice for an ice museum and sculpture gallery. "The original idea came about when I was invited to scout geothermal potential for a gold-mining operation on the island," he says. "But when I got there I decided I wanted to do something much more lasting and beneficial for the people of Fiji." Hot water spring, Vanua Levu Island, Fiji. Credit: Shutterstock Much of Regenauer-Lieb's previous research has explored the much more difficult, risky and expensive non-volcanic geothermal energy opportunities that require deep-well drilling in places such as Perth and the Cooper Basin. He says that with geothermal energy so close to the surface, the islands of Fiji (which are in the Pacific Ring of Fire) are a perfect low-risk, high-benefit place to install this type of technology. In addition, he says the remoteness of the village and the fact it is off-grid provides a marvellous opportunity to train people in the philosophy of geothermal energy, which is about embracing heat as a commodity that can be used again and again for a wide variety of applications. "If I simply go there, for example, to build a geothermal power station, I can guarantee that what happens is a repeat of the mistakes made in current developed nations," he says. "Rather than using an energy-efficient centralised air conditioner and cool store, the natural tendency is to individually purchase an electricity-hungry reverse-cycle air conditioner or refrigerator. This will in turn drive up electricity consumption and the size and investment needed for a geothermal power plant. "In a remote setting, the financial and technical hurdle of properly maintaining the individual air conditioners and refrigerators may lead to early break down and we're back at square one. Waikatakata Hot Spring at Vusasivo. "In terms of re-educating the community to embrace heat as a commodity, what we have in Fiji is a welcome blank slate where we can introduce the attractive concept of cascading heat usage. "This ability to refrigerate their food is just the start; the long-term aim is to integrate multiple uses of naturally available geothermal heat for electric power, cooling solutions and providing fresh water and other direct heat uses to local communities." The project team has enough funding to undertake the reconnaissance work on the hot springs but still needs to raise the capital to build the cooling facility. The next stage is running the Clean Power for the South Pacific Conference 2017 in Fiji to seek investment or sponsorship from the geothermal community as well as the World Bank, which has identified Fiji as a possible target for promoting geothermal energy in the South Pacific. Although geothermal energy is not quite as well-known as its sustainable-energy cousins wind and solar power Regenauer-Lieb says it's the only one with realistic hopes of providing sustainable base-load energy for the future energy mix, particularly in volcanic regions like Fiji. "The long-term aim for Vanua Levu is to power the entire island by geothermal energy," he says. Credit: Shutterstock "In the town of Savusavu, for example, there is a 98C hot spring, with an estimated 160C at 500m depth. This energy source may be sufficient to power the local grid and replace its industrial diesel generators. "With deeper drilling, geothermal energy could power the entire island and neighbouring islands as well. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that Fiji could be entirely run on electricity won from geothermal energy in the future." A European green crab found at Dungeness Spit, Sequim, this month. Credit: Allen Pleus/Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife A new population of invasive European green crab has been found at Dungeness Spit, near Sequim, Washington, rekindling concern over the potential for damage to local marine life and shorelines. Staff and volunteers from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge, captured a total of 13 European green crab over the past two weeks as part of the UW-based Washington Sea Grant Crab Team early detection program. These numbers indicate that the invasive crabs are more abundant at Dungeness Spit than at the two other known locations in Washington's inland waters. The first discovery of this globally damaging invasive crab in Washington's Salish Sea was made by Crab Team volunteers last August on San Juan Island, followed quickly by a detection at the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, near Mt. Vernon. In both cases, rapid-response trapping and removal by a joint-agency team showed that the crabs were present, but still very rare in those locations. "This is a very different situation," said Crab Team program coordinator Emily Grason. "In Padilla Bay, the crabs we found were too far apart to find and mate with each other, but at Dungeness Spit, multiple crabs are being found at the same site, over successive days of trapping. This indicates a situation where the population could grow very quickly, if we don't intervene." Lorenz Sollmann, foreground, of U.S. Fish and WIldlife Service, places traps for European green crab. Credit: Allen Pleus/Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Experts immediately responded to the initial detection with a rapid-response trapping effort and are currently working on a plan with local stakeholders for ongoing response and removal efforts for the area. "Directly addressing the threat of green crab requires both early detection and rapid response, with the goal of finding isolated populations when they are still rare and reducing or eliminating them," said Allen Pleus, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's aquatic invasive species unit lead. European green crab is one of the most globally successful invasive species, and established populations are problems in Australia, South Africa and the east coast of the U.S. In places where the crab has become abundant, it has been blamed for damaging shellfish harvests and decimating sea grass beds. Research on the west coast has indicated that native organisms such as shore crabs, young Dungeness crabs and shellfish could be harmed by invasive green crab. The nearest known population of green crab to Washington state is just across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of Victoria, British Columbia, in Sooke Inlet. The sites at Dungeness Spit are part of the Washington Sea Grant Crab Team's rapidly expanding early detection network, which currently numbers 36 sites, maintained by volunteers, tribes and agencies. Concerned citizens can help by keeping a lookout for European green crab when visiting salt marshes and pocket estuaries. For information on how to recognize the crab and likely places to look, visit the Crab Team website: wsg.washington.edu/crabteam. Anyone who thinks they have found a green crab should leave the crab in place and email photographs to the Crab Team at crabteam@uw.edu. Synthesis of radiolabelling precursors and non-radioactive standards. Credit: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) ANSTO researchers have led the development of a new method for producing PET radiotracers. The discovery utilises the transition metal rhenium to promote fluorine-18 radiolabelling under aqueous, low temperature conditions. The method circumvents the need for dry conditions, and purification steps, which saves time and gives PET radiotracers in very high yields. Fluorine-18, the most commonly used radioisotope in PET imaging, must be attached to vectors in order to diagnose disease. The best example is where fluorine-18 is attached to glucose in order to make [18F]FDG for cancer imaging. This new method has the potential to improve production of PET radiotracers like FDG, but also facilitate development of new radiotracers by allowing previously challenging vectors to be radiolabelled in high yields under mild conditions. Because a radiotracer decays, radio-synthesis needs to be performed quickly, efficiently and in high yield, so there is enough radiotracer to scan all patients at a PET medical centre. "Improving methods for incorporation of fluorine-18 has been a longstanding challenge for the radiotracer community. This research is the first example of a rhenium promoted radio-fluorination, an unprecedented, exciting discovery in the radiochemistry field," said senior author Dr Benjamin Fraser, Radiotracer Method and Organic Chemistry Task leader at ANSTO. Fraser explained that a rhenium complex was selected because of its potential for development as a dual modality PET/optical imaging agent. PET allows diagnosis of tumour location and then optical luminescence guides surgical removal of the tumour. "The choice of rhenium proved fortuitous for the incorporation of F-18 and was good example of 'chance favouring the prepared mind' as the result was not predicted but very significant. It's also important that the reaction can be done in water, as this simplifies subsequent formulation of the radiotracer in saline for injection into a patient in a clinical setting," said Fraser. The study involved the use of microfluidic technologies that had several advantages for the investigation. Dr Giancarlo Pascali, co-senior investigator on the project who is based at the Camperdown cyclotron facility, supervised the radiochemistry work under microfluidic radiolabelling conditions. "Microfluidic technologies allowed us to optimise all the reaction parameters very quickly, such as temperature, time, solvent and additives. We can optimise a given radiolabelling reaction in only three days, which under normal conditions would take one month to complete. Another benefit of microfluidics is that we work with only very small amounts of radioactivity," said Fraser. Fraser points out that at this stage the radiotracer has not been tested for use with PET. "The next step is working on conjugating the tracer to new biological vectors, but also applying the new rhenium method to established radiotracers. We can then also investigate its potential use as a dual modality probe." More information: Mitchell A. Klenner et al. A Fluorine-18 Radiolabeling Method Enabled by Rhenium(I) Complexation Circumvents the Requirement of Anhydrous Conditions, Chemistry - A European Journal (2017). DOI: 10.1002/chem.201700440 Journal information: Chemistry A European Journal On April 27 at 04:50 UTC (12:50 a.m. EDT), NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Tropical Cyclone Frances. Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team Tropical Storm Frances has formed in the Beagle Gulf, east of the Timor Sea near Darwin, Australia, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured a clear image of the storm. On April 27 at 04:50 UTC (12:50 a.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Frances. Frances appeared somewhat elongated. At 04:47 UTC (12:47 a.m. EDT), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered temperature data on Frances by viewing the storm in infrared light. The image showed thunderstorms with very cold cloud top temperatures near minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit / minus 53 degrees Celsius over the Tiwi Islands, Darwin and Garig Gunak Bariu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. Storms with cloud top temperatures have been found to produce heavy rain. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology or ABM has posted a warning from Kuri Bay to Wyndham, not including Wyndham. In addition, ABM noted that tides between Kalumburu and Wyndham are likely to rise above normal high tide mark with very rough seas and flooding of low-lying coastal areas. At 9:45 a.m. EST/U.S. or 11:15 p.m. ACST local time on Thursday April 27, Frances had maximum sustained winds near 53 mph /85 kilometers per hour with higher wind gusts. Frances was centered near 11.0 degrees south latitude and 128.3 degrees east longitude, about 146 miles/235 kilometers west of Pirlangimpi and 410 kilometers north northeast of Kalumburu. Frances was moving to the west-southwest at ~12 mph/19 kilometers per hour. On April 27 at 04:47 UTC (12:47 a.m. EDT), the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured this infrared image of Tropical Cyclone Frances. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen ABM said "Tropical Cyclone Frances is expected to intensify as it moves southwest through the Timor Sea tonight, possibly developing into a Category 2 system early on Friday, [April 28]. The cyclone is expected to remain over water as it heads towards the Indian Ocean, however If it takes a more southerly track peripheral gales may affect the north Kimberley coast later on Friday." The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that as Frances tracks to the west vertical wind shear is forecast to increase and the storm may dissipate in three days by April 30. For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.bom.gov.au/. KP Gill talking exclusively to India Today said that it would be wrong to single out anyone for what has happened in Sukma, adding that it was a collective responsibility. By Anand Patel: Credited with wiping off Khalistan terrorism from Punjab, former DGP KPS Gill who also served as Security Advisor to Chhattisgarh gin 2006, spoke exclusively to India Today after the Sukma attack. Gill was tasked with getting rid of the Naxal menace in the state by the then Raman Singh-led government but Gill quit the job midway and accused Raman Singh government of not doing enough.KPS Gill spoke exclusively with India Today on the Sukma attack on CRPF jawans which resulted in martyrdom of 25 jawans. advertisement Former DGP speaking to India Today said, "I had submitted proposals to the Chhattisgarh government when I was there. In my one year stint in the state, a lot was discussed but nothing was implemented on ground." He added that it will be wrong to single out anyone for what has happened in Sukma. "It is a collective responsibility and needs involvement of all parties." The CRPF men killed last week by Naxals were guarding a crucial road project. Gill said that the failure in governance resulted in such an incident. "This under construction road on highway in Jagargonda is strategically very important. The sad part, Gill added, was that the road was under construction even when he was an advisor there in 2006 and it was still not complete. He also questioned why the SOP was not put in practice. "This battalion was 90 km away from the HQ. In such a difficult terrain, you can't afford to keep forces at such a distance," he said. Gill said that mere appointment of a full-time DG is not enough for the issues. "The officers should have experience of leading forces in such situations." He added that talks about the resource crunch, lack of anti-mine vehicles for the security forces were just rubbish. He further added, "Talks that Maoists are better equipped is also rubbish. They are a bunch of untrained men in thickly forested areas." The former DGP trashed the idea of deployment of Army/Air Force for anti-naxal operations and said that it was not a solution. "Better co-ordination between the state police and central agencies is required," he said. "A special force to tackle the Naxals should be raised, the SPOs there should be best utilised," Gill insisted. Also read: Sukma attack: Why Naxals succeed attack after attack in Chhattisgarh Also read: Sukma attack: Opposition corners Centre over intellegence lapse --- ENDS --- The United States agreed at the Paris talks to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025, compared to 2005 levels Signs are mounting that US President Donald Trump's administration may stay in the landmark Paris climate change accord of 2015, under pressure from big business and public support for the agreement. But experts say the final decision, expected next month, is anything but certain, and staying at the table could come with significant caveats, like a weakening of US commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. "Given the unpredictability of decision-making by this administration, I am very reluctant to predict," said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. "But there does seem to be a growing convergence around a strategy of staying in the Paris Agreement but lowering the US target." The latest word on the administration's stance came from Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who said Tuesday he would not advise Trump to abandon the deal but rather renegotiate it. That statement aligned Perry, the former governor of Texas, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who formerly headed ExxonMobil and has spoken in favor of honoring the US commitment to the Paris deal, struck in 2015 and signed by more than 190 countries. Trump's daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushnerwho both serve as his advisorsare also said to be in favor of the deal. On Wednesday, 13 major international businesses ranging from energy to pharmaceuticals to retail urged Trump to adhere to the Paris accord. "US business interests are best served by a stable and practical framework facilitating an effective and balanced global response," said the letter signed by BP, Walmart, Google and others. US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he would not advise President Trump to abandon the Paris climate deal, but to "renegotiate it" "We believe the Paris Agreement provides such a framework." Speaking at a TED conference Wednesday, former vice president turned environmental activist Al Gore said there is a "better than a 50-50 chance" Trump will honor the Paris deal. "I certainly hope so, because that agreement sent a powerful message... and has already begun to accelerate the sustainability revolution." Amending targets? But some in Trump's inner circle, including advisor Steve Bannon, want Trump to keep his campaign promise to "cancel" the deal. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt is also said to be pushing for a US exit, according to Andrew Light, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, a global research organization. "He is worried that if the US stays in Paris, that would become the basis for some kind of legal objection to his work now, to do things like dismantle the Clean Power Plan and regulations (former president Barack) Obama put in place on transportation and electricity sectors," Light told AFP. "I don't think the US staying in Paris interferes at all with what Pruitt wants to do with regard to domestic regulations," he added. "But if the US stays in Paris there is a very high likelihood they will also announce they intend to change the US target." Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is said to be pushing for an exit from the Paris climate change accords The United States agreed at the Paris talks to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025, compared to 2005 levels. Under the agreement, signatories undertake to limit global warming to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two degrees Celsius) over pre-industrial levels, and to strive for 1.5 C. Countries submitted voluntary, non-binding carbon-cutting goals towards this goal. Light, a former US State Department climate official, said any US weakening of its target would violate the spirit of the accord. "But given that there is no strong compliance regime it is not really clear, to me at least, what other countries could do to try to keep the US from going through with some kind of revision," he said. The White House has said a decision will be announced before the G7 summit in Italy on May 26 and 27. "It is unclear, really, what they are going to do," said Frank Maisano, co-founder of the strategic communications practice at Bracewell, an international law firm based in Houston. "I think the sentiment is currently that they should stay in and for very good reasons, because we never had much success when we just pushed it to the sidetake our toys and go home," he told AFP. 2017 AFP Credit: NASA Your candles, crayons, and pedicures have something in common with a revolutionary aerospace engineering project from NASA and Stanford University. The paraffin wax used in familiar, everyday products and pampering is also what fuels the Peregrine hybrid rocket motor. Fire requires oxygen, and the combustion needed to provide propulsion for a rocket requires both a fuel and an oxidizer to burn. The "hybrid" part of Peregrine's name refers to the different states of the two components the motor uses: a solid fuel (the wax), and a liquid oxidizer (nitrous oxide, which happens to be the stuff of laughing gas, too). On March 15, 2017, Peregrine successfully passed its final ground test, at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The project started when researchers at Stanford discovered that paraffin fuel burns three times faster than conventional fuels, and therefore can provide more thrust and higher performance than existing hybrid rockets. They approached Ames for assistance in measuring the burn rate at larger scales and to contribute to the maturation of the technology. Ames does not normally develop rockets; that is the expertise of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. But Ames scientists have expertise in understanding, testing and modeling the way gasses, liquids and flames interact and flow around different shapes in different circumstances fields involving fluid dynamics and aerosciences. Ames' researchers were intrigued by the challenge of reducing costs and improving reliability by developing a hybrid rocket motor that runs on paraffin fuel. Because the technology was in its infancy, it was a perfect fit for the center's focus on launching innovations in their early stages. The Peregrine rockets hybrid motor roars to life as the relatively clean-burning and safe paraffin fuel ignites. Peregrines final ground test took place at NASAs Ames Research Center on March 15, 2017. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center Paraffin offers several interesting advantages over traditional rocket fuels. In addition to being non-toxic which helps make its manufacture and transport cheaper and safer it can be part of an efficient, stable combustion system that provides higher thrust in a compact motor. The paraffin-based fuel also works under challenging environmental conditions, like the very low temperatures found on the surface of Mars. The Mars Ascent Vehicle, currently under development by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aims to use the paraffin technology to return a sample from the surface of the planet to an orbiting spacecraft. This technology could also be used on Earth for boosters and sounding rockets with research applications. The Peregrine hybrid rocket is also a simpler system, in that it has roughly half the number of components of a liquid rocket motor, and is less explosive than its counterparts using all-solid or liquid propulsion. This is because, with Peregrine's solid fuel and liquid oxidizer stored separately in the engine, they are unlikely to mix inadvertently and react. Provided by NASA Defecation duration is surprisingly similar throughout the mammal world. Credit: www.shutterstock.com The ancient Chinese practiced copromancy, the diagnosis of health based on the shape, size and texture of feces. So did the Egyptians, the Greeks and nearly every ancient culture. Even today, your doctor may ask when you last had a bowel movement and to describe it in exquisite detail. Sure, it's uncomfortable to talk about. But that's where science comes in, because what we don't like to discuss can still cause harm. Irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, gastrointestinal infections and other poop-related ailments cost Americans billions of dollars annually. But trying to stem these problems was not our main motivation for trying to figure out some of the physics of defecation. It was something else, much more sinister. From personal observation, into the lab When parenthood hits, it hits hard. One of us is a working dad who survived by learning a new set of skills, one of which was fecal analysis. Years of diaper changes and then potty training turned me from a poo-analysis novice to a wizened connoisseur. My life passes by in a series of images: hard feces pellets like peas to long feces like a smooth snake to a puddle of brown water. Unlike the ancients, we didn't believe that we could predict the future from children's stool. But we did think it was worth trying to understand where all these shapes come from. Having a laboratory to answer questions about the everyday world is one of the distinct pleasures of being a scientist. Raw footage of an elephant at the Atlanta Zoo. As fluid dynamicists, we joined forces with colorectal surgeon Daniel Chu, and two stalwart undergraduates, Candice Kaminski and Morgan LaMarca, who filmed defecation and hand-picked feces from 34 mammalian species at Zoo Atlanta in order to measure their density and viscosity. We learned that most elephants and other herbivores create "floaters" while most tigers and other carnivores create "sinkers." Inadvertently, we also ranked feces from most to least smelly, starting with tiger and rhino and going all the way to panda. The zoo's variety of animals provided us with a range of fecal sizes and shapes that served as independent pieces of evidence to validate our mathematical model of the duration of defecation. We also placed the feces in a device called a "rheometer," a precision blender that can measure the properties of liquid-like and solid-like materials such as chocolate and shampoo. Our lab shares two rheometers with Georgia Tech physicist Alberto Fernandez-Nieves. We have since categorized the rheometers as the "clean rheometer" and the "David Hu rheometer" which has seen its fair share of frog saliva, mucus and feces. The secret to the speed What else did we learn? Bigger animals have longer feces. And bigger animals also defecate at higher speed. For instance, an elephant defecates at a speed of six centimeters per second, nearly six times as fast as a dog. The speed of defecation for humans is in between: two centimeters per second. Together, this meant that defecation duration is constant across many animal species around 12 seconds (plus or minus 7 seconds) even though the volume varies greatly. Assuming a bell curve distribution, 66 percent of animals take between 5 and 19 seconds to defecate. It's a surprisingly small range, given that elephant feces have a volume of 20 liters, nearly a thousand times more than a dog's, at 10 milliliters. How can big animals defecate at such high speed? The relationship between body mass M and defecation time. Symbols represent experimental measurements; dashed line represents best fit to the data; solid line represents the theoretical prediction. Credit: Yang et al, DOI: 10.1039/C6SM02795D, CC BY-ND The answer, we found, was in the properties of an ultra-thin layer of mucus lining the walls of the large intestine. The mucus layer is as thin as human hair, so thin that we could measure it only by weighing feces as the mucus evaporated. Despite being thin, the mucus is very slippery, more than 100 times less viscous than feces. During defecation, feces moves like a solid plug. Therefore, in ideal conditions, the combined length and diameter of feces is simply determined by the shape of one's rectum and large intestine. One of the big findings of our study was that feces extend halfway up the length of the colon from the rectum. A unified theory of pooping Putting the length of feces together with the properties of mucus, we now have a cohesive physics story for how defecation happens. Bigger animals have longer feces, but also thicker mucus, enabling them to achieve high speeds with the same pressure. Without this mucus layer, defecation might not be possible. Alterations in mucus can contribute to several ailments, including chronic constipation and even infections by bacteria such as C. difficile in the gastrointestinal tract. Beyond simply following our scientific curiosity, our measurements of feces have also had some practical applications. Our defecation data helped us design an adult diaper for astronauts. Astronauts want to stay in space suits for seven days, but are limited by their diapers. Taking advantage of the viscosity of feces, we designed a diaper that segregates the feces away from direct contact with skin. It was a semifinalist in the NASA Space Poop Challenge earlier this year. It just shows that physics and mathematics can be used everywhere, even in your toilet bowl. More information: Patricia J Yang et al. Hydrodynamics of defecation, Soft Matter (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C6SM02795D Journal information: Soft Matter A forest worker cuts down a spruce attacked by woodworm in Bialowieza forest The EU warned Poland on Thursday it may take legal action to stop logging in a UNESCO World Heritage forest, risking a new clash with Warsaw's right-wing government. Brussels gave Poland one month rather than the usual two to address its concerns about the ancient Bialowieza forest or face being summoned by the EU's top court. "One month was considered the right time considering the urgency of the situation," European Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio told reporters. He said Poland's reply to requests to stop large-scale logging in the forest was "not satisfactory" amid concerns it could cause irreparable biodiversity loss. The Bialowieza forest includes some of Europe's last primeval woodland and has been granted protected status by the UN heritage organisation. The threat comes with Brussels and Warsaw already at loggerheads over changes to Poland's constitutional court which the EU has warned could merit sanctions as a "systemic threat" to the rule of law. Since the populist PiS administration came to power in Warsaw in October 2015, it has come into conflict with Brussels on several fronts. The EU launched both the logging inquirybased on a complaint by environmentalistsand the rule of law investigation last year. If the logging case goes before the European Court of Justice, Poland could face fines. But if found at fault on the rule of law Poland could face the far more serious prospect of seeing its EU voting rights suspended. The Bialowieza forest straddles Poland's eastern border with Belarus and is home to unique plant and animal life, including a herd of some 800 European bison, the continent's largest mammal. The vast woodland includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain ten thousand years ago. The Polish government began logging in May last year, saying it was clearing dead trees to prevent damage caused by the spruce bark beetle, and insisting the policy was entirely legal. 2017 AFP The 2002 Biscuit Fire in the Klamath region reburned the area of the 1987 Silver Fire. Shrubs and hardwood trees are evident in the new growth Credit: Photo by Thomas Link The ability of some Western conifer forests to recover after severe fire may become increasingly limited as the climate continues to warm, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and Harvard Forest found in a new study published today in Global Change Biology. Although most of these cone-bearing evergreen trees are well adapted to fire, the study examines whether two likely facets of climate changehotter, drier conditions and larger, more frequent and severe wildfirescould potentially transform landscapes from forested to shrub-dominated systems. As part of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists examined conifer forests in the richly diverse Klamath region of northern California and southwestern Oregon. The Klamath region is a botanical hotspot, home to 29 species of conifers and a suite of plant species that exist nowhere else on earth. The researchers sampled sites that burned severely in wildfires between 1987 and 2008. They found that, after fire, hardwood trees and shrubs quickly established by either re-sprouting from surviving root systems or growing rapidly from seeds that persisted in the soil. These plants dominated the vegetation for at least the first few decades after fire. Most conifers, on the other hand, were slow to compete, relying on establishment of new seedlings borne by trees in less severely burned patches or from outside the fire perimeter. As a result, conifers had only a few years to establish before the regenerating hardwoods and shrubs grew dense enough to suppress them. "If they miss that window there's much less chance of successful establishment and their growth will be slower," says study author Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, a forest ecologist at SCBI and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. In fact, the study found that the longer the interval between the fire and the conifer's establishment, the slower the tree's growth. "The Klamath ecosystem is an important transition zone separating the shrubs of the California chaparral from the Pacific Northwest's temperate rainforest," says Jonathan Thompson, a Senior Ecologist at Harvard Forest and co-author on the study. "Our work suggests climate change will push the chaparral north at the expense of the Klamath's existing conifer forests." Because most conifers depend on seed dispersal from surviving trees, larger patches of high-severity fire could put a growing portion of the landscape at risk of poor post-fire conifer regeneration. The study suggests this trend could be even more pronounced because under drier conditions more abundant seed sources are needed to support conifer seedlings at densities sufficient for forest recovery. In addition, previous research by Thompson and others suggests the young, shrub-dominated vegetation that develops after severe fire tends to burn more severely in subsequent fires than older conifer forests, meaning that once severe fire converts a conifer forest to a shrub-dominated system, the non-forested vegetation could be perpetuated almost indefinitely through a cycle of repeated burning. "We see climate change affecting the system from two directions," says Thompson. "First, it is slowing conifer growth, keeping them low to the ground and more vulnerable to future fires for a longer period of time. Second, climate change is making fire more frequent. This phenomenon, which researchers call the 'interval squeeze,' threatens to transform this and other arid, fire-prone forests worldwide." Still, portions of the landscape may be relatively resilient. For example, conifers were able to regenerate in wetter sites, even amid relatively large high-severity patches with few surviving trees. "The Klamath region has supported conifers for thousands of years," says Thompson. "Some patches will surely survive no matter what climate throws at them." The researchers hope these findings could help provide information needed to prioritize management efforts. "Our study helps to identify the places that are at greatest risk of forest loss, where managers could either target management to promote post-fire forest recovery, or accept that we're going to see some degree of landscape transformation in the coming decades and learn to meet ecological objectives under the new climate and disturbance regimes," says Alan Tepley, a forest ecologist with SCBI and the study's lead author. These findings could also be applied in a broader context to other forest ecosystems. "There are concerns for much of the western U.S. and other similar landscapes that under climate change, forests may be less likely to regenerate," says Anderson-Teixeira. "And that can then reduce forest cover on the landscape and result in big losses of carbon storage." According to Anderson-Teixeira, the fate of the Klamath region depends in part on societal carbon emissions, where increased emissions lead to more warming, which ultimately could result in more forest loss. Investigators are probing the reasons behind an unusually high number of humpback whale deaths since 2016 off the US Atlantic Coast Investigators are probing an unusually high number of humpback whale deaths since 2016 off the US Atlantic Coast, where many appear to have been killed by colliding with boats, officials said Thursday. A total of 41 humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) have died in the waters off Maine to North Carolina, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Twenty-six died last year, far higher than the average annual number of humpback whales for the areajust 14. So far this year, 15 have already washed up dead. "The increased numbers of mortalities have triggered the declaration of an unusual mortality event, or UME, for humpback whales along the Atlantic Coast," said Mendy Garron, stranding coordinator at the NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region. A UME is issued whenever a stranding is "unexpected, involves a significant dieoff of any marine mammal population, and demands immediate response," she told reporters. Animal autopsiesknown as necropsieshave been performed on 20 whales. Ten of the marine mammals showed acute signs of blunt force trauma or large propeller cuts from colliding with ships or boats, suggesting this was the likely cause of death. The other 10 had no such obvious signs, and researchers are continuing tests to find out what other factors could have contributed to their demise. Cause unknown "Whales tested to date have had no evidence of infectious disease," said Garron. Researchers stressed they have yet to uncover the cause of the unusual spike in deaths. "The answer is really unknown," said Greg Silber, coordinator of recovery activities for large whales with the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources. There is no known spike in vessel traffic in the area, but humpback whales move around in search of prey, which could bring them closer to shore, he added. Humpback whales grow to between 48 and 62 feet (15-19 meters), weigh 40 tons, and are known for their haunting songs that travel great distances underwater. Most humpback whales are no longer considered an endangered species, after that designation was lifted in 2016 due to a rebounding population. There are more than 10,000 humpback whales in the North Atlantic Ocean. But there are 14 distinct populations of the whales, five of which are still endangered, including those in the Arabian Sea, Cape Verde Islands, northwestern Africa, the Western North Pacific and Central America. An international moratorium on hunting them was established in 1982 and remains in place. Unusual die-offs of humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean were also reported in 2003, 2005 and 2006, NOAA said. The cause of those deaths were undetermined. 2017 AFP Several politicians have lost their lives before or during elections. Some were murdered in a gruesome manner while others died of unknown causes. It is not new to hear that a candidate running for political office was murdered. Nigerians are used to hearing such news and all they can do is just shake their heads and move on. Among those who have lost their lives before or during elections are potential governorship candidates. They had the intention of being state governors but did not live to see it come to pass. Legit.ng brings you a list of six potential gubernatorial candidates who lost their lives before they had the opportunity of being governors. READ ALSO: Jonathan was afraid Buhari would kill him - Obasanjo 1. Isiaka Adeleke Adeleke died of heart attack 0on Sunday, April 23 Adeleke, the first civilian governor of Osun state died of heart attack and was rushed to Bikets Hospital where he passed away on Sunday, April 23. The death of the two time senator representing Osun West has been trailed with controversies. Some are insinuating it was a political assassination. His son, Tunji in a Snapchat outburst claimed his dad was not sick before he died and that he was killed because of his ambition to become the next governor of his state. However, report has it that the doctor at the hospital, Alfred Aderibigbe, injected him with overdose of painkillers, which led to his death. 2. Abubakar Audu Audu's sudden death was trailed by controversy Death came knocking in Kogi state as they were heading to the polls to elect a governor. Audu, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress surprising died on November 22, 2015, few hours before he would have been announced as the winner of the election. He suddenly took ill shortly after casting his vote and returned home. Shortly after, report surfaced that he was dead. Several reasons were adduced to explain his untimely death. Some said he was a victim of food poisoning as he was said to vomit blood before dying. Others said he died of cardiac arrest after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the election inconclusive. READ ALSO: Jega replies Jonathan's statement that 2015 election was flawed 3. Otunba Dipo Dina Suspected assassins shot and killed him on January 25, 2010 Popularly called DD-Direct, the AC governorship candidate in 2007 was shot and killed by suspected assassins on January 25, 2010. The administrator, philantropist and a community leader from Ijebu Ode was killed around Covenant University, Ota, Ogun state. He contested in the 2007 governorship election but was defeated by the Gbenga Daniel of the Peoples Democratic Party who was going for second term in office. 4. Funsho Williams Williams dream of becoming the governor of Lagos state was shattered by unknown assailants This time, death came for the Lagos PDP governorship aspirant, Engineer Funsho Williams. The state was preparing for the 2007 election and Williams popularity had grown. He was obviously the peoples favourite. Unfortunately, his dream of becoming the governor of Lagos state was shattered by unknown assailants. They invaded his home in Dolphin Estate, Ikoyi, on July 27, 2006. Autopsy later revealed he was strangled to death. The police are yet to identify his killers, about 11 years after. 5. Dr. Ayo Daramola Daramola was murdered in his house in Ijan Ekiti The former World Bank consultant and PDP governorship aspirant in Ekiti state was murdered on August 14 2006. He was to represent the party in the 2007 gubernatorial election in the state but was his dreams were shattered. He was murdered in his house in Ijan Ekiti three weeks after the death of Funsho Williams. The police is said to still be investigating the murder. READ ALSO: This was why you were defeated in 2015 - US replies Goodluck Jonathan 6. Dele Arojo The PDP gubernatorial aspirant became one of the victims of political assassinations in the country. He was killed by unknown assailants in Lagos on November 25, 2002. It was looking as though he would be the next Lagos state governor but sadly he was murdered before he could actualize his dream. The Legit.ng video below shows Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state showing how men should treat their wives. Source: Legit.ng - The PDP calls on President Buhari to allow Vice President Osinbajo continue as acting president pending his full recovery from his undisclosed illness - Makarfi disagrees with the APC position that Buhari can work from his official residence - The PDP chieftain says he is praying for the president to recover from his illness The People Democratic Party (PDP) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to hand over power to Vice President Yemi Osibanjo pending his full recovery from his undisclosed illness. The chairman of the caretaker committee of the PDP, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, made the call on Thursday, April 27, in an interview with the Nation newspaper. Reacting to a statement credited to Lai Mohammed that the president would be working from his official residence, after failing to attend the weekly FEC meeting for three consecutive weeks, Makarfi said if President Buhari is not fit enough to remain in office, its better to tell the Nigerian people and allow the Vice President to continue as acting president and return to work after full recovery. READ ALSO: Jega replies Jonathan's statement that 2015 election was flawed He said It cannot be okay and it can never be okay. My take is that if the President is not fully fit to stay in office, it is better that he tell Nigerians, so that the Vice President will continue to be Acting President, exercising the powers of acting president. Then you run away from this kind of situation when we allow time for the President to fully recover and assume his mantle of leadership. Me as PDP person, as a human being, I will never wish any human being ill-will even if I disagree with you politically. So it does not matter that it is APC that is the person that is sick. May prayer is that he is fit to serve his term. As a politician, I equally want him to finish his term. So when some people begin to insinuate things, of what interest would it be to PDP should the President be unable to finish his term. We dont wish him ill will, we want him to be well, we want him to be fit enough to be on seat when in 2019 we go for election and defeat the APC . READ ALSO: This was why you were defeated in 2015 - US replies Goodluck Jonathan For a number of reasons, the PDP wishes the President well, for stability of this country, political stability and the fact that we want to defeat a sitting President. We dont want any confusion politically in this country. It is not good for anybody and as a human being; I never wish anybody ill will irrespective of political differences. Meanwhile, a coalition of 40 Civil Society groups under the auspices of Change the Change Coalition (CCC) has threatened to stage mass protests if President Muhammadu Buhari failed to attend the next Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting. Legit.ng reports that the national coordinator of the CCC, Mazi Ikechukwu Bismarck Oji, on Thursday, April 27, said they would mobilise Nigerians to Aso Rock for protest to compel Buhari to officially transmit power to Osinbajo, if he, once again, excuses himself from the next FEC meeting. The national coordinator of the CCC, Mazi Ikechukwu Bismarck Oji, on Thursday, April 27, said they would mobilise Nigerians to Aso Rock for protest to compel Buhari to officially transmit power to Osinbajo, if he, once again, excuses himself from the next FEC meeting. The group cautioned the All Progressives Congress (APC) regime against trying to re-enact the late President Umaru Yar Adua era when a cabal ruled the country while YarAdua was on life support machine. In the video below, Legit.ng asks Nigerians and Biafra enthusiasts if Nnamdi Kanus his release will help ensure the actualization of Biafra? Source: Legit.ng Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Real estate agent Rachel Staton-Purdy holds her class picture from Samuel Clemens after a recent house showing in the Sherman Park neighborhood. Staton-Purdy, who lives in the area, believes strong parenting is the key to a stronger black community in Milwaukee. She has a daughter and a son whom she cares for when she is not working. Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Real estate agent Rachel Staton-Purdy holds her class picture from Samuel Clemens after a recent house showing in the Sherman Park neighborhood. Staton-Purdy, who lives in the area, believes strong parenting is the key to a stronger black community in Milwaukee. She has a daughter and a son whom she cares for when she is not working. Rachel Staton-Purdy vividly remembers the status and prestige living in Sherman Park held for African-Americans in the 1970s. (People) looked at you like you were a different class of (black) people, she said of the diverse north side neighborhood. Sherman Park once had a vibrant middle class, thanks to the city's strong manufacturing base. The area was once all homeowners, and all the homes were so pretty, Rachel said. You never saw a vacant or a boarded up home. Rachel was in my third-grade class at Samuel Clemens Elementary School in 1978. Clemens is in the Lincoln Creek neighborhood, just west of Sherman Park, where Rachel now lives. Today, some of the buildings in Sherman Park are in need of repair. And last August the neighborhood made national news when three days of rioting occurred after a Milwaukee police officer fatally shot a black man after a traffic stop. Rachel lives just four blocks away from where the unrest occurred. She bought gas at the BP station that was looted and burned to the ground. She bought hair care products from the Jet Beauty supply store that was set on fire. Her family frequently visited the park itself, which was shut down for weeks following the riot. Rachel, a widow with six children, was in Minnesota visiting her sister-in-law when the rioting occurred. Her teenage daughter was sitting on a friend's porch when she saw some young men throw a Molotov cocktail into a car to set it on fire. Rachel rushed home. When she arrived, the first thing she did was comfort her children. She worried most about her only son, Nathaniel, who at 12 is the youngest. She knows young black men growing up without fathers in Milwaukee face huge challenges. Many people have prejudged black boys as more violent, disruptive and dangerous than white kids of the same age. That includes police officers, according to a 2014 study published in an American Psychological Association journal. Those stereotypes keep Rachel up at night, worrying about Nathaniel's safety. *** Rachel Staton-Purdy, 47 Address then: 4245 N. 40th St. Today: 2600 block of N. 46th St. Education: Bachelors degree, University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff Job: Real estate agent at Homestead Realty, Inc. Family: Widowed, six children Rachel's father, Louis Staton, was 19 when he moved to Milwaukee from Stevens, Ark., looking for work. Rachels mother graduated from high school in Detroit and moved to Milwaukee to live with an aunt when she was 17. When the two met, they hit it off instantly. After a year of dating, Louis called Grace's parents and asked if he could marry her. When they bought their house, the Statons were the first black family to move into the 4200 block of N. 40th St. "When we first moved in, our house was egged," she said. "We were the first black family in an all-white neighborhood, and they didn't like that too much." Her father just cleaned up the mess, Rachel said. He cared about his home and wasn't going to let racism push him out. Louis Staton was a welder at the Ladish Co. in Cudahy. Grace Staton worked in banking for most of her career, including as a supervisor at Bank One. My parents always wanted the best for us, said Rachel, the middle child between two brothers. "They worked very hard to provide for us and to show us the way. Rachel graduated from Rufus King High School in 1987. Two years later, she married one of her King classmates. Both went to the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a historically black college. When the couple moved back to Milwaukee after graduation, Rachel earned an accounting degree and got a job in banking. The couple, who had three children, divorced in 2001. Three years later, Rachel remarried and moved to Sherman Park. Some people tried to talk the family out of living there, saying the area was on the decline. I didnt really feel that way, Rachel said. Sure there were pockets that were struggling, but my block is really strong. We are all homeowners and we look out for each other." Her husband, Londell Purdy, paid for some online real estate courses, and the two of them took a leap of faith into a new career. The couple started working for Homestead Realty at N. 84th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. The company sells homes all over Milwaukee, including the Sherman Park and Lincoln Creek areas. There is a pleasure thats hard to describe when you get someone into their own home, she said. No two stories are ever alike. *** Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Real estate agent Rachel Staton-Purdy shows a home in the 2800 block of N. 69th St. to Terry Qualls of Milwaukee. When she shows houses in the area, she tells buyers the area is still a gem. Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Real estate agent Rachel Staton-Purdy shows a home in the 2800 block of N. 69th St. to Terry Qualls of Milwaukee. When she shows houses in the area, she tells buyers the area is still a gem. In November 2015, Rachels husband died from complications due to a staph infection, leaving her with six children: three from her first marriage, two from her second and Londells daughter from a previous relationship. She worries most about Nathaniel. He was a straight A student before his father died, but his grades have slipped. Finding a strong male role model to fill that void has been difficult. "I know that hes angry that his dad was taken away from him and that hes hurting, Rachel said. But I tell him all the time, and I tell all of my children, that they are a reflection of me and their father. Many of those involved in the Sherman Park riots, she believes, felt similar anger. Many of them did not have positive, strong role models in their lives. Rachel often contrasts the images of Sherman Park burning with the Sherman Park she remembers growing up. When she shows houses in the area, she constantly talks to buyers about how the area is still a gem. But gems need to be polished. Sherman Park is not lost," she said. "Im committed to bringing it back to what it used to be. I owe that to my children. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no reason for the government to keep the implementation of the Lokpal Act pending. By Anusha Soni: The Supreme Court today said that the Lokpal bill is a "workable piece of legislation" and there is no justification to keep its implementation pending. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no justification to hold the Act in abeyance, and said there was no reason to delay the appointment of Lokpal. Prashant Bhushan-led NGO Common Cause had filed a petition in the Supreme Court on the pending appointment of Lokpal. advertisement Senior advocate Shanti Bhushan, appearing for NGO, argued that even though the Lokpal Bill was passed by Parliament in 2013 and came into effect in 2014, Lokpal has not been appointed by the government deliberately. Earlier, the Supreme Court had pulled up the Centre for not appointing the Lokpal expeditiously. NO LEADER OF OPPOSITION Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the Supreme Court that in the current scenario, Lokpal cannot be appointed as there was no clear Leader of Opposition. After the Narendra Modi government was elected to power in 2014, no party has the required 10 per cent of the House strength (545 seats) to qualify as the 'Leader of Opposition'. The Congress has 45 members in Lok Sabha. The law mandates that the Leader of Opposition is part of the selection process of Lokpal. The selection panel for Lokpal also comprises the Prime Minister, the Lok Sabha speaker, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) or a sitting Supreme Court judge nominated by the CJI, and an eminent jurist nominated by the President on the basis of recommendations made by the other members of the panel. ALSO READ: NDA government does not want Lokpal: Congress Prime Minister has no respect for institutions like Lokayukta: Digvijaya Lokpal appointment: Supreme Court pulls up Centre, says can't allow Lokpal to become redundant --- ENDS --- Cambodian leader Hun Sen called on the United States Thursday to stop forcibly deporting convicts with Cambodian heritage to the Southeast Asian nation, saying they should revise a policy that splits up families. More than 500 felons have been sent to Cambodia through a repatriation deal, though many were raised in the US and arrive in the country having never visited and unable to speak the language. "America is very smart...they keep only good people while they deport prisoners out of their country back to us," said Hun Sen, the strongman premier who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades. "I hope the father of human rights which is America...will accept the proposal to amend the agreement to offer convicted Cambodians a chance to stay in the US with their families," he added. The prime minister's comments come after Cambodia's foreign ministry said earlier this week it wanted to renegotiate the 15-year-old agreement allowing both nations to deport criminals with ties to the other country. The foreign ministry spokesman said the deal had been "criticised by both Cambodians here and Cambodian communities in the US" as a form of "double punishment" for those who are deported against their will. A spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh told AFP they had been informed of Cambodia's desire to amend the agreement. Hun Sen routinely hurls insults at the United States and jumps on any opportunity to point out hypocrisy in American foreign policy. Washington secretly bombed Cambodia during the Indochina wars but went on to be a major donor as the country emerged from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge genocide, pouring billions in aid into the country. It also took in tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Yet relations between the two nations have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, a period that has seen Cambodia grow closer to regional superpower Beijing. China has lavished the poverty-stricken country with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans over the past few decades. Unlike aid from the US, Beijing's support comes without pressure to address rights abuses or strengthen the country's fragile democracy. By Robin Emmott VALETTA (Reuters) - Estonia's defence minister said on Thursday that Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to NATO. Russia and Belarus aim to hold joint war games in September that some North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013. Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other NATO governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the so-called Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna cited plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and gear there, possibly to set up a military outpost in its closest ally. "For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told Reuters in an interview in Malta. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analysing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises," he said before a meeting of EU defence ministers. Russias Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the subject. Moscow denies any plans to threaten NATO and says it is the U.S.-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. "We see what they are doing on the other side of the EU-NATO border. Troops may remain there after Zapad," Tsahkna said, saying that Tallinn had shared its concerns with Baltic and NATO allies. He put the number of potential troops in the thousands. Such a move could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia just as the U.S.-led NATO alliance stations multinational battalions in the Baltic region in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. "QUESTION OF TRUST" The scale of this year's Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of NATO's most pressing concerns, as diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill. Previous large-scale exercises in 2013 employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats said. Russia, bridling at NATO's expansion eastwards into its old Soviet sphere of influence, says its exercises are a response to NATO's 4,000-strong new deterrent force in the Baltics and Poland that will begin to rotate through the region from June. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January the scenario for the Zapad 2017 exercises would "take into account the situation linked to increased NATO activity along the borders of the Union state," Russian media cited, in a reference to the union of Russia and Belarus. The exercises, to be held simultaneously on military training grounds in Russia and Belarus, aim to focus on joint planning, command tactics and joint troop formations, he said. "In the future we plan to strengthen the practical nature of such exercises, taking into account the emerging foreign policy realities," Shoigu added, in an apparent reference to the expansion of NATO, which is soon to include Montenegro. The U.S. Army's top European commander has called on Russia to open its exercises to observers to calm Baltic concerns. Asked about Moscow's possible motives for leaving troops in Belarus, Tsahkna said it was likely about President Vladimir Putin's image as a strong leader at home, as well as cementing ties with Belarus, which was alarmed by the Crimea annexation. "Russia has presidential elections next year and Putin needs to show strength to the Russian people," Tsahkna said. "It's also a question of trust with Belarus." The West has sought to improve ties with Belarus over the past two years, lifting some sanctions in an overture to the country's President Alexander Lukashenko, the man the West calls Europe's "last dictator." But Belarus remains Russia's ally and a member of Putin's Eurasian trade bloc. Belarus Defence Minister Andrei Ravkov has echoed Russia's position that NATO is a threat, also accusing Ukraine of raising tensions by aligning itself with the West. (Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Toby Chopra) Indonesia admits it cannot stop Islamist fighters or arms from crossing its border with the Philippines, renewing regional security fears. Indonesias Directorate General of Immigration has admitted that its checkpoints are not effective in preventing local militants from crossing into the southern Philippine territories of the Abu Sayyaf Group, some factions of which are pledged to the Islamic State. The disclosure is likely to underscore concerns that insurgent groups in the southern Philippines, where some observers have suggested ISIS could build a new caliphate, are able to bolster their ranks with foreign fighters. An Indonesian passport was found by Philippine counter-terrorism forces in the countrys volatile south, the Jakarta Post reports, prompting the directorates admission. In an interview with the Post Tuesday, directorate spokesperson Agung Sampurno said that Indonesias two check points at Miangas and Marore Island could not sufficiently screen seaborne militants, who have for years used traditional sea routes to move between the two archipelago nations. They also smuggle weapons via these hubs, he said. There is nothing new about foreign fighters entering Mindanao: the primary target of the Philippine governments pyrrhic victory at Mamasapano, which left 44 troops dead in 2015, was a Malaysian bomb-maker. Neither is it unusual for Abu Sayyaf Group, which frequently kidnaps Indonesian fishermen for ransom, to cross in the other direction. However, Agungs comments come amid fears that the Islamic State will increase its footprint in Southeast Asia as it loses ground in the middle east. There is concern that ISIS may well seek to declare a caliphate, an Islamic caliphate, in the southern Philippines, Australias foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop said last month. This article was originally published on TIME.com Everyone loves thinking of North Korea as crazy. It threatens to consume the United States in nuclear fire on a semi-weekly basis, its leader brutally executes his own generals and had his brother murdered, and it wastes huge amount of money on nuclear weapons while sticking to a failed economic model. Tales of North Korean lunacy are never far from the front pages. The problem is its not just the media that delights in depicting Pyongyang and Kim Jong Un, as irrational U.S. policymakers indulge in the same behavior. In April, U.S. Congressman Bradley Burne (R-Ala.) said I dont believe the leadership in North Korea is rational. How do you deal with someone that is irrational? He echoed prior remarks by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley who said, We are not dealing with a rational person, since, she claimed, Kim is a person who has not had rational acts, who is not thinking clearly. As a guide for understanding North Korea, this analysis is just plain wrong. As a guide for crafting policy toward Pyongyang, it may be catastrophic. North Koreas system might look bizarre to us from the outside, but the Kims are the ultimate political survivors, hard-edged rationalists whose actions have always had a clear purpose: keeping the family in power. Seeing them as madmen is not only wrong, but also dangerous; any successful policy should be based on understanding the logic of the opposite side, not on discarding it as irrational Seeing the Kim family as lunatics with nukes makes them more threatening, and raises the risk of war, but it can also promote unrealistic expectations of compromise if only the North comes to its senses. Back in the 1980s the Kim family was laughed at even inside the Eastern Bloc as an embodiment of Stalinist irrationality. They were mocked for clinging to their outdated personality cult and failed economics and it was suggested that they should follow the dynamic leaders of Eastern Europe, like the reformist communist leader Karoly Grosz of Hungary. Today, these leaders are in the waste bin of history overthrown, disgraced, and forgotten while the Kim family still enjoys not only power, but the luxury that goes with it and remains in full control of their country. Story continues To be sure, the last 25 years havent been easy. The Kim regime has had to survive massive famine that afflicted the public, the loss of every international ally bar an increasingly reluctant China, and confrontation with the worlds only superpower. But the fact that the Kims have managed this feat should be treated as a sign of their rational and ruthless commitment. Today, Kim Jong Un is in control, and he has the same long-term task as his father and grandfather: to ensure the survival of the regime under the control of himself and his eventual familial successor. There are three major threats to that obstacles which, judging by Kims policies, he has not only identified but is methodically working to neutralize. The first threat is foreign attack, something that clearly keeps Kim, like his father, up at night. This might seem paranoid. But its not paranoia when they really are out to get you. Look at the fate of Saddam Hussein, or the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan, once frequently bracketed together with Pyongyang by U.S. officials. But its the sorry fate of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi that taught the Kim family its firmest lesson. In 2003, the Libyan strongman agreed to surrender his nuclear weapons development program in exchange for generous economic benefits promised by the West the first time such a deal had been publicly struck by a state formerly hostile to the United States. But when revolution broke out in Libya in 2011, it was the NATO no-fly zone that doomed Qaddafis regime. That story ended with Qaddafis violated body strung across a car bonnet. A decade ago U.S. diplomats and journalists, then full of enthusiasm about Libyan nuclear disarmament deal, used to say that North Korean leaders should learn the lessons of Libya. And theres no doubt that they have, even if theyve drawn very different conclusions. Kim Jong Un sees the nuclear program as purely defensive. Conquering the South would be nice in theory, but this task is completely beyond his reach, both due to the U.S. commitment to protecting South Korea and Seouls own huge advantage in economic and technological power. He knows that any unprovoked North Korean attack against South Korea or the United States will end badly, perhaps in his death, and he is certainly not suicidal. However, he also presumes that no great power would risk attacking a nuclear state or sticking a hand into its internal strife especially if it has delivery systems and a second-strike capability. And so North Korean leaders are determined to stick to their nuclear development, and see nuclear weapons as the major guarantee of their security. There is no form of pressure that can convince them to budge on this, no promise that will seduce them into compliance; they believe that without nuclear weapons they are as good as dead. Thats a disaster for the region, but a perfectly logical choice by the Kim family. While North Koreas nuclear program is defensive, it still makes sense to remind the world about its existence and use what President Richard Nixon once described as madman strategy, that is, to appear to ones opponents to be irrational, volatile, and willing to disregard costs. Thats why North Korean propaganda uses such fiercely colorful language. When North Korean TV promises to make Seoul into a sea of fire, or threatens to nuke Canberra, or shows Kim Jong Un in front of a map of the United States with cities marked as targets of nuclear strikes, they are delivering the same message: we are here, we are volatile, and will stop at nothing if our opponents do something threatening. Without their own nuclear weapons, the Kims would fear a direct U.S. attack but they also fear American, or Chinese, interference into an internal Korean uprising. They saw what happened in Libya when foreign powers introduced a no-fly zone and ensured the insurgents victory. They remember that back in 1956 China, together with Russia, supported a failed conspiracy aimed at removing Kim Il Sung, the current supreme leaders grandfather, from power. Kims other ostensibly irrational policies should also be seen as defensive in nature. Nuclear weapons, after all, are not sufficient to protect the regime. They may prevent international aggression, for example, but they dont remove the considerable danger of a domestic military coup. Kim Jong Un is young, and has good reasons to suspect that his generals harbor ill feelings about him, given his embarrassingly young age and inexperience. (He was made successor a mere year before his fathers sudden death, being a complete unknown at the time.) Kim is also no doubt aware that coups in non-democratic regimes are fairly common, and fairly successful; according to a recent study, 227 of the 457 coups worldwide between 1950-2010 succeeded. Two of those successful coups took place in the country Pyongyang watches most: South Korea. Kim seems to believe that the most reliable coup-prevention technique is terror. His rule has been marked by the unprecedented purges in the military and police. Prominent generals have been disappearing one after another, and some top commanders, including a chief of the general staff, as well as a minister of defense, have been executed. The recent assassination of Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Ils half-brother, also fits the pattern of this selective terror. Kim Jong Un is determined to destroy anybody who could become a focus of elite discontent. Kim Jong Nam, outspoken and living behind Kim Jong Uns control, constituted a threat. As a Kim, Kim Jong Nam was likely to become a figurehead of some conspiracy, since he embodied some of the familys perceived legitimacy and magical aura in the eyes of many North Koreans. It did not help that he was protected by China a country Kim Jong Un does not trust and sees as a potential sponsor of the elite discontent. The point is that Kim isnt overseeing an irrational reign of terror. There are no signs the average North Korean now faces increasing chances of being arrested for a political crime. The number of political prisoners remains exceptionally high, but it has not changed much under Kim Jong Un and it is significantly lower than it once was in the days of his grandfather. Remarkably, the purges target only military and security commanders people with guns while the top managers of the economy so far have remained safe. In other words, Kim Jong Un has unleashed terror targeting the group which might have both reasons and means to replace him. It might be excessive, and it is definitely brutal, but there is nothing irrational about this especially given that in the case of a successful coup Kim Jong Un himself would be first up against the wall. But it might not be the generals that bring Kim down. The third threat is a popular uprising. North Koreas biggest single problem is its stagnant economy. In the 1940s North Korea was the most advanced industrial area in East Asia outside Japan, but decades of mismanagement have made it into a basket case. The per capita income gap between North and South Koreas is larger than between any two other countries which share a land border; the ratio is somewhere between 1:14 and 1:40. The gap between East and West Germany, in contrast, was between 1:2 and 1:3. This huge gap creates a great political obstacle for any attempt at sweeping Chinese-style economic reforms. Chinas regime has been lucky, since it does not face a large and prosperous capitalist twin in the region that is also democratic; Taiwan is too small to pose any threat of subversion. In North Korea, the attempt at emulating Chinas reforms and openness policy is likely to make the populace, currently isolated at least somewhat from the outside world, acutely aware of South Koreas unbelievable affluence, and less fearful of the authorities. Common people are likely to blame the Kim family for decades of gross economic mismanagement and start dreaming about a speedy unification with South Korea led by Seoul as a way to solve all their problems overnight. As a result, in North Korea any attempted transition to capitalism is likely not to bring a Chinese-style economic boom, but rather provoke an East German-style political collapse, followed by the absorption of the state by the victorious South (and the complete marginalization of the current elite at best, if they even survive). The late Kim Jong Il, the present rulers father, was well aware of this threat and studiously avoided reforms even though the old Stalinist system was collapsing, yet the countrys market economy began to grow nonetheless. By the end of his rule the private businesses technically illegal but usually tolerated were estimated to produce between 25 percent and 40 percent of the countrys GDP. Kim Jong Un, perhaps fearing that in the long run a spontaneous capitalism from below will undermine his rule, has taken a different tack. From 2012 to 2014, he began to introduce incremental policies that look remarkably like what China did in the early 1980s. Agriculture has been largely switched to the family-based system, with farmers being allowed to keep most of the harvest after in-kind tax (no more than 35 percent) has been paid. Industrial managers have been given greater entrepreneurial freedom, including the right to buy and sell at market prices, and to hire and fire personnel. Private entrepreneurs and black market operators, some of whom have amassed fortunes counted in hundreds of thousands and even millions of the U.S. dollars, are no longer harassed, but encouraged to invest, often in cooperation with state agencies. This policy has led to the economic revival: While there are some disagreements, most experts believe that North Koreas annual GDP growth in recent years has been around 3 percent or even higher. The era of famine is over, and living standards are growing fast across the entire country not just in Pyongyang, as some claim. The private money is fueling a construction boom, while shops and restaurants are crowded with the new rich and traffic, once barely visible in the capital, is now sometimes a real problem. But these market-oriented reforms have not been accompanied by political liberalization. In culture and ideology, the nationalized Stalinism reigns supreme, and the country has by far the worlds highest rate of incarceration for political crimes some 80,000 political prisoners among a population of just 25 million. Kim Jong Un assumes that some combination of economic growth with harsh surveillance will keep his population docile. This might be an ultimately false assumption, but its a reasonable one; after all, nearly all founders of East Asias developmental dictatorships from Deng Xiaoping and Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan to Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore died in their beds, admired by many of their compatriots. Will Kim Jong Uns policy, rational if sometimes brutal, eventually succeed in keeping the regime stable in the long run? Most of his policies are inherently risky; the nuclear arms race can provoke U.S. preemptive strikes, the harsh treatment of generals might make them more, not less, inclined to start a conspiracy, and the economic reforms can unleash social forces beyond Kims control. But risky is not irrational. So far these policies have worked and, given the situation North Korean leaders find themselves in, any alternative would be even riskier. These polices might even work, which would mean the world will have to live with the Kim family regime for a long time to come. The clan has always known how to survive, and they might keep doing so. What does it mean for the rest of us? Firstly, it is time to realize that theres no quick solution at hand. North Koreas denuclearization is impossible, but it is possible to manage the nuclear program and put some cap on its further development, provided the Kim family still feels it has the deterrent value it needs. (Of course, North Koreans will expect generous concessions for any freeze, and might not stick to it even then). The outside world can and should encourage the positive changes, such as economic growth, which are happening now in North Korea. Above all, they should seek to expand the sources of information available to the North Korean public. The most hopeful future for North Korea is one of change pushed from below, by a people aware of life outside their countrys borders, regardless of whether that comes because the regime feels the need to make popular concessions to survive, or through outright overthrow of the Kim regime. The Kim family might be rational, but so are the North Koreans themselves. Photo Credit: AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS FILE PHOTO: Shoppers walk out from a Seven & I Holdings 7-Eleven convenience store in Tokyo, Japan, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo Japans growing labor shortage threatens the nations ubiquitous convenience stores, whose business model relies on an army of part-timers packing bento lunch boxes, manning cash registers and delivering goods 24/7. The big three combini operators 7-Eleven, FamilyMart and Lawson, which have expanded through Japans long slump, are scrambling to ease the pressure on franchisees by offering a mix of financial aid and labor-saving automation. But their earnings outlook is the bleakest in years. Lawson Inc (2651.T) projects its first drop in profit in 15 years this fiscal year, and 7-Eleven Japan, part of Seven & i Holdings (3382.T), forecasts a meager 0.2 percent increase. Japan has around 55,000 convenience stores nationwide roughly one for every 2,300 people and each store needs around 20 part-timers to run it. Some shop owners struggling to fill shifts find themselves working some nights as well as during the day. The labor situation is starting to get health-hazardous, said one store owner who asked not to be identified. Restaurant chain Royal Host (8179.T) and McDonalds Japan (2702.T) have begun moving away from 24-hour operations, but so far convenience chains arent reducing hours or cutting store numbers. Indeed, all three of the major chains plan to expand. They fear that if they cut back they will lose market share and dent a reputation for catering to customers needs at any time. We are part of the social infrastructure, said Koji Takayanagi, president of FamilyMart UNY Holdings, (8028.T). We have a mission we must fulfill. DWINDLING POOL As Japans population shrinks, its workforce has declined to 77.2 million in 2015 from a peak of 87.2 million in 1995. By 2065, its expected to drop to just 45.2 million. Story continues The decline has hit labor-intensive sectors such as delivery services, restaurant chains and retailers especially hard. The worker crunch started last year, said a Lawson franchisee in Tokyo. Foreigners, many of them university students, are taking up some of the slack, but he predicts the shortages will continue indefinitely. Part-time wages, meanwhile, have increased, and some convenience stores have to pay more overtime to fill shifts. Labor costs are rising precipitously, Ryuichi Isaka, president of Seven & i Holdings, told a recent earnings briefing. To ease the burden on store owners, who bear payroll costs, 7-Eleven said it would, for the first time, cut royalty fees it charges franchisees a measure that will cost the company around 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion) a year. We want to turn this into an opportunity to boost store owners management drive, and attract new owners, Isaka said. SAVING THE DAY? The industry hopes technology can overcome the shortfall. 7-Eleven, with 19,423 stores and 390,000 part-timers in Japan, is bringing labor-saving dishwashers to all stores this year, while Lawson is issuing tablet computers to help store management, and installing automatic change counting machines. The industry also plans to introduce RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags that can track individual items from warehouse to store hoping this may usher in an era of low-cost distribution networks and unmanned cash registers. With the government pledging to help roll out the technology by 2025, 7-Eleven estimates RFID tags, which it will trial around August, could save 8 billion yen ($73 million) annually in labor costs. The increased investment in technology is partly to blame for Lawsons forecast profit decline. Rather than simply focusing on increasing profits, we are critically looking at what shape Lawson should take, said company president Sadanobu Takemasu. By making the necessary investments we will reap the rewards. The labor-intensive business model is not just in the stores. It extends to a vast network of third-party suppliers and truck crews making deliveries around the clock. The convenience store industry was built when there were plentiful workers, says Takayuki Suzuki, analyst at Primo Research Japan. But now it must rationally look again at its excessive and unnecessary services. By Sam Nussey and Ritsuko Shimizu | TOKYO -For graphic on Japans ageing population click: tmsnrt.rs/29VjmUo (Reporting by Sam Nussey and Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Ian Geoghegan) The post Labor shortage a stress test for Japans 24/7 convenience stores appeared first on UNTV News. South Sudanese government forces on Wednesday launched an offensive on a town in the north, displacing civilians who may be headed toward the border with Sudan, the UN envoy said. Some 50,000 people in Kodok in Upper Nile state, many of whom fled fighting six weeks ago in the town of Wau Shilluk, were at risk from the violence, said David Shearer, who also heads the UN mission in South Sudan. "The conflict has widened rather than contracted over the past few weeks," Shearer told a news conference. "As we speak, there is an ongoing operation by the SPLA (the government's Sudan People's Liberation Army) on the western side of the Nile... toward the town of Kodok. They are on the edge of Kodok," he said. Civilians were fleeing Kodok and "possibly headed to the Sudanese border," he added. The attack was the latest in an upsurge in fighting in South Sudan since the beginning of the year that has driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes. Shearer said that 60,000 people per month had been forced to flee across the border in the first three months of the year. The UN Security Council on Tuesday discussed the worsening conflict in South Sudan, but members were divided on the way forward to rein in the warring sides. The United States, backed by France and Britain, said an arms embargo and sanctions could put pressure on the parties to return to political talks, but China and Russia disagreed. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and more than 3.5 million people displaced. In February, South Sudan and the United Nations formally declared a famine in parts of northern Unity State affecting 100,000 people, a disaster that UN officials said was "man-made" and could have been averted. Renowned ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov received his Latvian passport on Thursday, decades after defecting to the United States from the Baltic state while it was occupied by the Soviet Union. "When the invitation arrived from the Latvian government to take honorary citizenship, I thought what an experience it would be to return to my childhood, no longer as an outsider, but as someone who belonged," the 69-year-old said at a ceremony in the capital Riga. The ballet legend spoke in Latvian, which he said he had not used for more than 50 years, hours after lawmakers voted 84 to zero in favour of handing him citizenship. Born in Riga, Baryshnikov defected to the United States in 1974 and took American citizenship after rising to become one of the most famous ballet dancers in the world. The former star of Russia's Kirov Ballet and later American Ballet Theatre has also acted, appearing on the hit TV series "Sex and the City". In recent years he has renewed ties with his homeland, premiering shows he devised with Latvian theatre director Alvis Hermanis before taking them to Broadway. After a Latvian politician approached him about the possibility of citizenship, Baryshnikov wrote an application letter saying: "Riga still serves as a place where I find artistic inspiration." "If accepted as a citizen I will uphold that honour with conscientiousness and pride," he added. Under normal rules, Baryshnikov would have had to undergo a naturalisation process but the parliament has power to grant citizenship in cases of special merit. As Latvia and the US are both NATO member states, dual citizenship is allowed under Latvian law. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: LoScalzo/Pool via CNP/MediaPunch/IPX via AP, KCNA/via Reuters, AP) WASHINGTON President Trump is stepping up diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea, and military preparations are underway in the event that such action is necessary, a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday. What youve seen is a really integrated effort to prioritize diplomatic and informational aspects of national power, but also what you will see soon is using the economic dimension of national power, as well as the military preparations that are underway, said the official, who requested anonymity. But Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said after a closed-door North Korea briefing for senators on the White House grounds that preemptive strike options were not presented to those who attended. The briefing showed the thoroughness and the detail and the preparation and the work thats going into making our military appropriately postured in the event that there is some unexpected development by North Korea, and our diplomatic effort, Coons told reporters. There was not specific conversation about seeking congressional authorization for new sanctions or the use of force or imminently needing any such authorization, Coons said. His comments came as senators emerged from a briefing by top Trump national security aides in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Vice President Mike Pence spoke first, then Trump, then national security adviser H.R. McMaster, before the actual briefing, which was run by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After making a presentation, the briefers took questions from the chairpersons and ranking members of major committees, participants said. They later went to Congress for a briefing open to all of the members of the House of Representatives. The presidents approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners, Coats, Mattis, Tillerson and Dunford said in a joint statement. We are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on the DPRK (North Korea) in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue. Story continues Almost concurrent with the session for senators, the anonymous senior official came to the White House briefing room to mount a defense of Trumps handling of national security in his first 100 days in office, including a broad review of his approach to North Korea. Asked to flesh out what the military preparations were, and whether they would include a visible show of force to North Korea, the official declined. I dont think were going to describe those in any detail, he said. The United States has deployed missile defenses to South Korea and naval military assets to the Sea of Japan, and it is known to have used electronic intrusions to disrupt North Korean plans. The Trump administration is vigilant about watching for another North Korean nuclear test, ballistic missile test or intercontinental ballistic missile test and is prepared to respond to any of those provocations, the official said. Coons told reporters in the White House driveway: I do think there was an appropriate and thoughtful focus on how we would react if North Korea took a more aggressive posture. He noted the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group to the region and the presence in the region of a ship outfitted for the possibility of a Tomahawk [missile] strike if that were to happen. And he said Trump has worked to put us in a posture where we would be able to respond if there were an unexpected abrupt change in North Koreas posture. On the economic front, the anonymous official pointed to a recent military parade in North Korea to highlight the need to tighten the vise on the secretive Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. If you just look at the images right? of the big parade there recently and look at the complexity of that equipment, the official said, those components, even the tires right? are not made in North Korea. So its clear that all of us have a lot more to do to isolate the regime from its access to the kind of materials and technologies and components it needs to advance its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. A Republican senator who attended the briefing for lawmakers told Yahoo News that he emerged with renewed confidence that the Trump administration would impose sanctions on Chinese entities, individuals and corporations that flout sanctions imposed by the United States and United Nations. North Korea is down to a handful of friends, said the senator, who underlined that the administration is required by law to impose economic retribution against any known violator of the sanctions or release a waiver explaining why. Asked about the prospects for military action, the senator said he felt confident that the United States has prepared for potential actions by North Korea, but he played down the prospects of imminent military action, saying: I dont think that there is a red line near. Read more from Yahoo News: By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) The Supreme Court today said it was not averse to talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana to resolve Satluj-Yamuna Link canal issue but dignity of the court and the verdict should be "considered and respected". The apex courts remark came after a bench of Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy was informed by Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar that the Prime Minister has met Punjab Chief Minister Amrinder Singh and his Haryana counterpart Manohar Lal Khattar on the issue on April 20 and there were points and counter-points from both the parties. advertisement Maintaining that another round of meeting was also held on the contentious issue between Modi and the two Chief Ministers on the sidelines of a recent Niti Aayog meet with the Council of Chief Ministers, the SG said if some time was given, then a solution could be explored. "We have no issues if the matter is settled but there is a decree of this court and it should be taken into account during the talks," the bench said. It said the "dignity of this court and dignity of decree needs to be respected. We dont wish to say anything further on the talks". Justice Ghose, who is to superannuate on May 27, when the apex court will be on summer vacation, expressed regret for not being able to deliver the judgement due to paucity of time. "When we started to hear the matter we were eager to deliver the verdict and settle the issue but due to deferment and adjournment, it could not be done," Justice Ghose, who headed the bench, said. Senior advocate R S Suri, appearing for Punjab, said the Prime Minister met the two chief ministers and certain facts have come up which need to be ascertained. Terming it as an emotive issue for both the parties, he said some time needs to be given as talks on it were yet to be considered as over. Senior advocate Shyam Divan appearing for Haryana said that no fruitful result has come out of the meeting and the possibility of any amicable settlement also looks very remote. "The matter has been pending before the bench since November last. There are already two decrees of the court and we are anxiously waiting for these to be executed by the plaintiff (Punjab)," he said, adding that the matter must be heard and decided. To this, the bench said, "since holidays are coming and during this period if the matter is settled through talks then it is okay or we will proceed considering nothing fruitful has come out". advertisement It said there were two issues before the court -- what is the effect of reference on the ground and what will be the impact if the decree of this court is not executed. The apex court told the counsel for Haryana that it understood the anxiety of the state but he should also understand the situation at the ground-level on other side. Divan said they have confidence in the court and that is why they are before it. The apex court then posted the matter for further hearing on July 11. It had on April 12 said the court does not want to "shut the door" to an amicable settlement of SYL canal dispute as the Centre has expressed keenness to find a solution, saying it had convened a high-level meeting of Punjab and Haryana. The Centre had told the apex court that a meeting has been called at the highest level and it was very keen to find a solution. While giving the Centre a chance to explore possibilities of an out-of-court settlement to the water dispute between the two neighbouring states, the top court made it clear that it would proceed with the hearing, if the bid failed. advertisement Earlier, the Centre had made it clear that it was not taking any sides in the dispute between the northern riparian states which also included Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Union territory of Delhi. In a stern message to Punjab, the apex court had on March 2 said its verdict allowing construction of the SYL canal in Haryana and Punjab has to be implemented. A five-judge bench, while answering the Presidential Reference on November 11, 2016, had held that the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, 2004 was unconstitutional as it negated the effect of apex court judgements of 2002 and 2004. The court had favoured the construction of SYL canal. Punjab had contended that the apex court order was not binding as it was given under its advisory jurisdiction and the Punjab law still stands. It had said that the verdict, holding Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, 2004 as unconstitutional, did not render the law invalid, as the apex court had only given an opinion on the Presidential Reference. The apex court had on November 30 last year directed status quo on SYL canal and appointed Union Home Secretary, Chief Secretary of Punjab and Punjab DGP as court receivers of the lands, works, property and portions of the canal. advertisement The court had also thwarted Punjabs attempt to wriggle out of SYL water sharing pact, saying it cannot "unilaterally" terminate it or legislate to "nullify" the verdict of the highest court. The controversial 1981 water-sharing agreement came into being after Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966. For effective allocation of water, the SYL canal link was conceptualised and both the states were required to construct their portions within their territories. Haryana constructed the portion of SYL canal in its territory. However, Punjab, after the initial phase, stopped the work, leading to spate of litigations. In 2004, the Congress government in the state came out with the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act with an intention to terminate the 1981 agreement and all other pacts relating to sharing of waters of rivers Ravi and Beas. The apex court had first decreed the suit of Haryana in 2002 asking Punjab to honour its commitments with regard to water sharing in the case. Punjab had challenged the verdict by filing an original suit that was rejected in 2004 by the Supreme Court which asked the Centre to take over the remaining infrastructural work of the SYL canal project. PTI MNL ABA SJK RKS ARC --- ENDS --- By Phil Stewart and Yara Bayoumy WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis greeted Saudi Arabia's foreign minister at the Pentagon last month, the first thing he did was joke about the time "the Iranians tried to murder you." Mattis' reference to a foiled 2011 plot, denied by Iran, was a telling sign of how much more aligned President Donald Trump's administration is with Gulf allies about what they perceive to be the Iranian threat, a shift that seems to be setting the stage for greater U.S. involvement in Yemen, in particular. After long seeking to distance itself from Yemen's brutal civil war, the United States under Trump now appears increasingly to see the conflict through the Gulf's prism of Iranian meddling, even as Washington prioritises a parallel fight against al Qaeda. Detailed discussions are under way within the Trump administration that would offer greater aid to Gulf allies fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. Officials say that could included expanded sharing of U.S. intelligence. In Saudi Arabia last week, Mattis compared Tehran's backing for the Houthis to its support for Shi'ite ally Lebanese Hezbollah, a view long espoused by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states who see links between the two groups. "Everywhere you look, if there is trouble in the region, you find Iran," Mattis told reporters in Riyadh. Iran rejects Saudi accusations that it is giving financial and military support to the Houthis in the struggle for Yemen. Cooperation between the United States and the Gulf is already on the rise in the fight against America's top priority there: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. officials see that broader civil war as an obstacle to a sustained military campaign against the militants, as well as a threat to the Bab al-Mandab strait, a strategic waterway. IRAN MUSCLES INTO YEMEN For many U.S. and Gulf observers, the role of Iran is clear in the increasing sophistication of Houthi forces. The United States launched cruise missiles at Houthi targets last year after a U.S. warship came under fire off Yemen, and a remote-controlled boat laden with explosives rammed a Saudi frigate on Jan. 30, the first known strike by a "drone" vessel. "These weapons didn't exist ... before the war. There was no explosive boat that existed in the Yemeni inventory," Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan told Reuters in an interview. Donegan, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, also said ballistic missiles fired into Saudi Arabia had several times the range of missiles the Yemenis had before the conflict. "When you have a non-nation-state with nation-state-like weapons that can reach into the maritime (area), it has my attention," Donegan said. A senior UAE official also compared the Houthis to Hezbollah, and said growing Iranian support had helped shield them from pressure to enter political talks. "We are seeing UAVs, anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, as well as land and sea mines," the official told Reuters. Mattis has publicly backed a political solution to the conflict. But U.S. officials have also acknowledged that Saudi-led coalition military pressure could help create the conditions for that negotiated solution. Still, the Yemeni government and the Gulf-led coalition have been preparing for a possible assault on Hodeidah port, the entry point for nearly 80 percent of Yemen's food imports, because they say the Houthis use it to smuggle weapons and ammunition. The Yemeni government has proposed to the United Nations that it monitor Hodeidah. Trump administration officials have not ruled out U.S. assistance should the coalition move ahead, but U.S. officials said Washington is not considering strikes on Houthi targets or deploying ground forces. Eric Pelofsky, who helped craft Yemen policy for Obama, warned an assault risks tipping Yemen into a terrible famine and has proposed that coalition forces perhaps instead strengthen their offensive near Kitaf to increase pressure on the Houthis. AQAP FIGHT The United States has carried out more air strikes this year in Yemen than in all of 2016, in a clear sign of growing U.S. concern and focus on AQAP and deepening involvement in Yemen. Largely unseen, however, is the partnership with the United Arab Emirates that is helping guide that increased activity. UAE-backed forces have captured al Qaeda operatives, and while a January raid in Yemen was Trump's first and so far only one since he took office, UAE-trained local Yemeni forces have carried out more than 250 raids in and around Aden, a senior coalition military commander told Reuters. The port of Mukallah was similarly retaken last year with 10,000 troops, largely Yemenis trained by the coalition. "We are encouraged by U.S. support and the change from a drone policy to greater engagement. We can't really defeat and dislodge al Qaeda with a drone policy," the senior UAE official said. Intelligence gleaned from UAE-backed operations has been shared with the United States, which is rebuilding its knowledge about the group since the war forced the pullout of its personnel in 2015. "In terms of the U.S. supporting us or the coalition supporting the U.S., its really mutual," the senior coalition military commander said, adding that the coalition has strong human intelligence, complemented by Washington's strong intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities. Still, U.S. officials acknowledge there is a lot they don't know. Even the presumption about AQAP's size, seen in the low thousands, is a very low-confidence estimate. Beyond things like increasing intelligence sharing, U.S. officials are moving closer to approving a sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia blocked under Obama. A recent meeting between Trump and Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was dubbed a turning point in relations which had been frosty under Barack Obama, but some cautioned against too cosy a relationship. Anne Patterson, former deputy assistant secretary of state for near east affairs under Obama, and who advocated selling the munitions, said the United States should also help Riyadh improve its targeting. But some have expressed caution. "It makes the U.S. complicit again in Saudi actions that are causing great suffering over which we have insufficient control," said Tom Malinowski, the state department's top human rights official during the Obama administration. (Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Editing by James Dalgleish) This year, National Small Business Week takes place from April 30 through May 6. And there are tons of different events, contests and other celebrations scheduled throughout the week. The U.S. Small Business Administration hosts many of the events. But other businesses and communities throughout the country also celebrate with their own contests, luncheons, promotions and more. National Small Business Week 2017 Events The list below includes events from the SBA and more. You can see if theres anything of interest in your local area or online. Were also going to add to the list throughout the week. So keep checking back for even more Small Business Week opportunities. Sunday, April 30 Lets Put Our Cities on the Map Workshop From Google and NectarSpot Marketing and Design Company, this workshop will focus on how businesses can use online tools, like those from Google, to make their offerings more visible to local consumers online. The event takes place from 1 PM to 4:30 PM CT in Naperville, Ill. Monday, May 1 NSBW Awards Luncheon In Washington, DC, the SBA kicks off National Small Business Week with an awards luncheon on Monday from 11:30 AM to 2 PM ET. SBA Administrator Linda McMahon will announce the National Small Business Person of the year, along with other awards. From Birth to Legacy: Creating a Business with Lasting Impact Taking place from 8:30 AM to noon PT, this free workshop takes place at Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif. and features multiple sessions all focused on building a business that sticks around for the long haul. The city also hosts a number of other events at City Hall through the rest of the day. Tuesday, May 2 Facebook Live with SBA Administrator Linda McMahon For those who are more interested in online events, SBA Administrator Linda McMahon and Facebooks VP and Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan will chat on Facebook Live on May 2 from 11:30 AM to noon ET. The conversation will center around how to build a successful business. And you can even submit your own questions for consideration. Oakland Retailers and Restaurants In Oakland, Calif., this event focuses on highlighting the citys shopping and dining scene. It will also include information about current trends, best practices and opportunities for those local businesses. Legal Issues for Businesses Another event put on by the City of Oakland, this event takes place at City Hall and shares some information about the legal issues that impact all different types of small businesses. Grow Your Business Online Workshop In Nashua, N.H., the Neighborhood Merchant Alliance and Donation Network puts on this event aimed at helping small businesses use SEO, online advertising and other tools to help them gain visibility. NSBW Twitter Chat Hosted by Score SCORE, SBAs resource partner and NSBW fiscal agent, will host a NSBW Twitter Chat on Tuesday, May 2nd from 12:30-1:30 pm ET. SCOREs handle is @SCOREMentors ?and the chat hashtag is #SmallBusinessWeek. Additional information and chat questions will be provided next week. The U.S. Economic Outlook and Its Impact on Small Businesses Hosted by SCORE, this webinar features Visa Economist Jay Hawkins and a discussion about the current state of the U.S. economy and how it can impact small businesses going forward. You can register for the event online. And it starts at 2 PM ET. SBA and GBYO Partner for Webinar Weve partnered with the US Small Business Administration to host a free webinar session on Wednesday, May 3rd, hosted by Anastasia Kudrez, speaker for Googles Get Your Business Online program. Wednesday, May 3 National Small Business Week Road Tour Kick-Off This year, the National Small Business Week road tour makes its first stop on May 3 in Indianapolis, Ind. SBA Administrator Linda McMahon will be on site to honor local businesses. And the event will take place from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM ET. Oakland Makers & Artists Day This networking event takes place at Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif. and features opportunities for artists and makers to share ideas, resources and more. The event is free and features several different sessions all aimed at helping artists and creative business owners thrive. 5 Fabulous Habits of Local Business Champions This informative webinar from SCORE focuses on the habits that can help local business owners gain success. It takes place for about an hour starting at 2 PM ET. And you can register for the free event online. Grow Your Business Online Another webinar from SCORE, this event offers tips about connecting with customers online. Starting at 4 PM ET, the webinar features by Anastasia Kudrez, Speaker at Googles Get Your Business Online. Thursday, May 4 National Small Business Week Road Tour Stop Then, the National Small Business Week road tour will make its next stop on May 4 in Arlington, Texas. SBA Administrator Linda McMahon will visit with local business owners from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM CT. And you can also watch the event live on SBAs website or Facebook page. Join the #WorkspacesChat Twitter Chat Sponsored by CORT Join a discussion on strategies for setting up your office with limited funds in this Twitter chat starting at 1:00 p.m. central time. The chat will also offer an opportunity to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of co-working sites. Oakland Small Business Taskforce Town Hall This free town hall event features a panel of business experts and taskforce members in Oakland, Calif. Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the area can attend the event to share thoughts and start conversations about issues that impact businesses in the area. See Also: How to List Your Small Business on Bing Places for Business How to Write Your Email Content in 15 Minutes or Less Hosted by Bria Sullivan, Webinar Content Developer at Constant Contact, and Dave Charest, Senior Manager of Content & Social Media Marketing at Constant Contact, this is another free webinar from SCORE. The live webinar starts at 3:30 PM ET and takes place for about an hour. Find the Hidden Money in America There are tons of hidden opportunities for entrepreneurs. This free webinar from SCORE, sponsored by Chase, features some tips for finding those seemingly hidden opportunities to make money and grow your business. The webinar starts at 5 PM ET. Friday, May 5 National Small Business Week Final Road Tour Stop Finally, the National Small Business Week road tour will make its final stop on May 5 in Fresno, Calif. SBA Administrator Linda McMahon will meet with local business owners who will share their stories with event attendees. And you can also watch the event live on SBAs website and Facebook page. Pathways to Capital Workshop For businesses in Oakland, Calif. that want to learn more about different ways to access capital, this free event at Oakland City Hall may be of interest. From 9 AM to 2 PM, the event features financing workshops and panels all about how businesses can access capital. Saturday, May 6 Shop, Dine, Visit Oakland! In Oakland, Calif., the city wraps up Small Business Week by encouraging residents and visitors to stop by many of the local businesses throughout the city for sales, promotions and other specials. Theres also a wine festival and other events taking place throughout the city during the day. Events Running All Week UPS Store Pitch Off Contest Small business owners and startups can enter the UPS Stores Pitch Off contest from April 18 through May 31 by uploading a 90-second video describing their business or idea on the UPS Stores website. Then family and friends will have the chance to vote on the video entries throughout May. New Small Business Lessons Available on the Primer App There are a host of new Primer lessons tailored for small businesses authored by small business experts (you may recognize a name or two!). The lessons will be available within the app next week. Re:Work Announces Upcoming Blog Series Re:Work is announcing an upcoming month-long blog series focused on small businesses. Well bring you stories and tips for thinking about culture, hiring, and compensation, specifically in a small business setting. Please share suggestions and proven people practices on how to #makeworkbetter. Google Small Biz Will be Sharing Social Media Content Well be sharing content on our channels all week long, so make sure youre following us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn so you have the most up to date information to share with your networks. Did we miss a National Small Business Week 2016 event? Let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing sbtips@gmail.com. Get the latest headlines from Small Business Trends. Follow us on Google News. As a small business owner, its easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operations of your business. And while the things that go on behind the scenes certainly matter, you cant focus on them at the expense of your relationships with customers. Small Businesses Are Built on Relationships When people think about small businesses, a certain image is conjured up in their minds. They picture a quaint storefront on a main street in a small town. They see friendly storeowners who know customers by their first names and interact with them as they walk in. They picture handshakes, smiles, and promises that are always honored. See, small businesses are all about interpersonal relations. They thrive on connections and conversations. But somewhere along the way, companies moved away from the heart of small business. With so many different forces and distractions competing for attention, small businesses have started spending less time focusing on relationships and more time dealing with important administrative tasks and responsibilities. The problem with this shift in small business management is that nothing is more important than customer relationships. While payroll, accounting, digital marketing, website analytics, paid media, hiring, and training matter, they cant take away from the focus on customer relationships. As soon as relationships erode, the business follows closely behind. Do yourself a favor and conduct a quick analysis on your small business. Are you so wrapped up in the day-to-day tasks and managerial responsibilities that youre no longer fostering healthy relationships with new and existing customers? If this is the case, you arent alone. Its an epidemic in the business world and youll find thousands of other business owners in the same boat. However, at some point, you have to make the conscious decision to get out of the boat and return to what made you successful: relationships. 4 Ways to Strengthen Customer Relationships You cant snap your fingers and wish your way into stronger customer relationships. What you need is a customer relations strategy that targets particular weaknesses in your business and builds on the strengths that you already have. And while every business will have different needs and action steps, the following tips should provide you with a solid footing on which you can build for the future. 1. Use CRM Software Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term used to describe the handy tools small businesses utilize to streamline the management and nurturing of customer relationships. Its usually a cloud-based system that stores information about your clients, potential clients and contacts in one central safe place that everyone in your team can access and update wherever they are, small business expert Nadia Finer says. A CRM can also help you grow your business and keep customers happy by keeping track of interactions and tasks, and giving you a clear view of your sales pipeline. What Finer is really getting at is this: CRM makes it easier to manage customer relationships when you dont have the time to manually handle every task. As a general principle, most businesses extract 70-80 percent of their profits from 20-30 percent of their customers. One way to maximize the value of your CRM system is to use the built-in analytics tools to keep track of who your most valuable customers are. As marketing manager Christopher Meloni explains it, This sort of tracking, with the help of your CRM software, will in-turn enable you to allocate your resources in such a manner that those 20-30% of your customers get the best customer service, always. This is called target-based allocation, and it can prove wonders for you and your business organization. CRM can also be used to help you handle customer complaints in a swift manner. By delivering fast responses, you can deal with problems as they arise (instead of letting them fester). Other valuable uses depending on the CRM system you use include the ability to analyze customer buying patterns, send out automatic updates, and keep track of who customers are and how theyre likely to respond in certain situations. 2. Invest in Business Intelligence Are you currently invested in business intelligence? This is the fastest developing trend in small business and you have to make it a priority if you stand any chance of acquiring and maintaining a base of loyal customers that continue to come back time after time. Business intelligence for small business helps to gather data about your customers behavior and structure it in a clear form so that it can be analyzed fast and easy, explains Heiko Troster of datapine. With insights about your customers behavior you can make effective business decisions. Data is the ammunition of your communicative efforts. When you understand who your customers are and what they want, you can effectively forecast needs and satisfy their desires. You still have to strategically act on the information you have, but at least business intelligence tools can provide you with valuable data that youd otherwise miss out on. 3. Gather More Information on Customers Customers want to be known as more than an invoice number or receipt. They want to be seen as individuals with personal lives, needs, and sensitivities. When you have advanced CRM and business intelligence tools in place, you can tactfully gather more information on your customers and gain a fuller picture of who they are and what their needs are. This will benefit you in the long run by allowing you to interact with customers on an individual basis. 4. Reshape Your Social Media Strategy What does your current social media strategy look like? If you havent made a conscious effort over the years to make your social media presence about your followers, then your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles are probably self-serving. All of the content you post is about your brand and you arent adding any real value to your customers. Sound familiar? If the goal is to strengthen customer relationships, youll need to reshape your social media strategy and make it less about you and more about them. Make it an avenue for two-way conversations to take place. Unlike a one-way conversation where a company typically dominates the narrative and doesnt really acknowledge or interact with visitors/followers , a two-way conversation directly connects brands and consumers, says Carolyn Edgecomb of IMPACT. A two-conversation is a dialogue, where brands speak and listen to their audience, responding directly to their wants and needs. See Also: Boost Loyalty with Perks for Repeat Customer The classic rule of thumb is that 80 percent of your social media posts should add value to your brand without directly promoting your products and services. Try your best to meet this goal. Make More Time for Customers Forging strong relationships with customers takes effort. But thanks to the technologies you now have available to you such as CRM systems, business intelligence tools, and social media it doesnt have to require a ton of time. Nows the time to create a game plan for success. How are you going to handle the many needs of your company without compromising on the customer relationship front? Itll take some trial and error, but you can find a solution. Environment April 27, 2017 Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy The hard right U.S. administration of Donald Trump has widened the terrain of struggle over climate change and, indeed, the entire array of environmental issues facing the ecology of North America and the working class movement. Climate change deniers, big oil executives, and finance capitalists now occupy pivotal positions in an array of state agencies and apparatuses directly impacting these portfolios. Some of the first decisions of the new administration have been to expand pipeline development (of both the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL), further open spaces for fossil fuel extraction, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency. Alongside the continued expansion of the tar sands in Canada, the North American energy superpowers are being pushed further down the path of extreme energy extraction in the pursuit of fossil fuels (something already encouraged by the preceding Obama and Harper governments). It will be impossible to meet present climate change targets to contain the global warming (and crucial tipping points for the earths biosphere) in this context. Indeed, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA announced in February that average global temperature was 1.76 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th century average, and the second warmest winter on record (after last years). NOAA also announced that global carbon emissions reached an all-time high, and measures of CO2 at the Mauna Loa Baseline Atmospheric Observatory in Hawaii is now pushing toward 410 ppm. The damage to the Great Lakes cleanup, wilderness protection and endangered species, control of pollutant discharges, and much else from the EPA cuts is not yet clear but potentially of enormous consequence. In Canada, the Trudeau government immediately shifted the discourse on climate change as an issue that needed to be directly confronted from the acknowledge but ignore policy of the Harper regime. But the policy practice with respect to climate change is more notable for its continuities with the Harper period than its break. The administrative processes with the National Energy Board, First Nations consultations on pipelines, and environmental assessments largely carry on as they were. They remain vehicles for negotiating and smoothing-out pipeline expansions and further tar sands development. The last year of struggles over Site C, Lines 3 and 9, Kinder Morgan, and Petronas LNG are evidence enough of this. As with so much else (Canadas foreign policy on Syria and the Ukraine, Bill C-51, industrial subsidies, trade agreements), the Trudeau government proceeds from the same neoliberal guidebook as Harper. The war on the planet is a direct consequence of the Trump and Trudeau governments efforts to restore capitalist accumulation in the face of continued stagnation. As the 100th day of the Trump Administration is reached, a continent-wide set of demonstrations in the hundreds, under the banner of the Peoples Climate Movement, is being held on April 29 (Peoples Climate March in Toronto). This mobilization builds upon the Womens March, the fight against Islamophobia, the protests against anti-black policing, and the continent-wide Fight for $15 campaign. The platform of demands for social and economic justice, indigenous sovereignty, green jobs, renewable energy support and immigrant rights, reflect the resistance that has been growing against the array of neoliberal governments. It is of vital importance that ecological activists, unionists, community groups, and socialists, come out, to build and widen the resistance to the authoritarian neoliberalism that continues to gain ground, and now threatens to undermine even the tepid steps taken so far to address climate change. What still needs to be registered is the fundamental antagonism between containing climate change (and restoring the earths ecology), and capitalism. It is remarkable, given the urgency of the ecological crisis and after so much scientific evidence and debate, that a critique of capitalism and for the most part, even the word does not figure in the main build-up to the demonstrations. The main North American environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOS) made their peace with capitalism and markets in the 1990s, and they are yet to reverse course, whatever the ecological chaos that surrounds us. But there is no market-centred ecology, or green work, or localist green capitalism, or environmental justice, able to overcome the class relations and forms of production of capitalism. Endless accumulation, the commodification of everything, permanent war, continual ecological damage: this is the inner core of capitalism and the agenda now, each in their own way, of the Trump and Trudeau governments. To this end, we recall here several of the key manifestoes of the ecosocialist movement of the last period as this movement finds a central place in the remaking of the global working class and socialist movements. 18 Theses on Ecosocialism I want the vast majority the only majority, that is: everyone to be able to speak, read, listen, blossom and grow. Ive never understood struggle as anything other than a way to end harshness. I took this path because I believe that it will lead us all to this permanent sweetness. Im fighting for this general, growing, inexhaustible goodness. Pablo Neruda, I Confess I Have Lived , 1974. I. What is Ecosocialism? 1. A concrete and radical alternative. Ecosocialism is not a utopia with which reality should comply. It is the reasoned human answer to the double impasse in which humanity is now locked because of the modes of production and consumption of our times which are exhausting human beings and the environment. This calls for radical thinking and political action, in the sense that we must go to the root causes. We are thus fighting the two driving forces of the current system: capitalism and productivism. Capitalism imposes the commodification of everything for new sources of profit. It is therefore responsible for widening the gap in social inequality and for the ongoing globalization, liberal and destructive of liberty. Social and environmental dumping prevail, with the relocation of pollution and damage to ecosystems. Productivism (seeking ever greater production) depletes natural resources and disrupts the climate. The consumerist ideology is its corollary. It raises material accumulation to the rank of a law, with big publicity stunts to generate needs which can never be satisfied. We point at the real culprits of that system: the global financial oligarchy, governments subjected to multinational lobbies without democratic control, ideologists of free and undistorted competition, green capitalism and free trade. On the other side, ecosocialism is an alternative to overcome the crisis and pose human interest as a priority: sharing wealth without delay, founding a new economy based on real needs and the moderation of consumption, preserving the climate, the ecosystem and its biodiversity. 2. A paradigm of general interest. In reality, human beings are an integral part of the ecosystem in which they live, even before they have started thinking about it. The two cannot be separated. There is only one global ecosystem compatible with human life. Therefore, we are all alike in our dependence on the ecosystem. This truth applies to everyone, despite all our differences. There is thus a human interest which is linked to that of all the other species: the protection of the ecosystem that makes human life possible. How can we identify it other than by free collective deliberation? And how can it be free if some dominate others, if revealed truths are imposed first? The environmentalist paradigm calls for democracy, social equality, secularism and feminism. These are the essential conditions for public debate to take place without oligarchic, dogmatic or patriarchal intrusion. Finally, in the discussion to determine the general human interest, it is for each of us to say not what is good for him or herself, but what is good for all. This establishes the universality of human rights, citizenship as a duty and the Republic as a necessity. Such is the reasoned link that unites political ecology and the universal social Republic. It is this global political theory that we call ecosocialism. It is about humanism and about a socialist and concrete universalism. 3. A new political synthesis of the Left. Ecosocialism is a new political project unifying a necessarily anti-capitalist ecology and a socialism freed from the logic of productivism (that is the false need to produce and consume ever more). It allows the junction of the main currents of the Left into a new political paradigm. We need this as an alternative project of society to capitalism. It draws a perspective in the struggle for a society of emancipation and progress in which the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of man by man will be wiped out. Our ecosocialist project takes into account human needs and the limitations of our planet. It gives new thinking to the social utility of production, the way in which we consume, our real needs, the purpose of what we produce and how we produce it. 4. The renewal of socialism. Socialism has always sought the emancipation of the human being. This implies the sharing of wealth, the democratization of power and global education of every person. This remains our programme. But we now know that emancipation can not be achieved through endless growth: the ecosystem that makes human life possible does not allow for it. This observation requires us to define a new model of progress which breaks with the capitalist system. The system of production and exchange needs to be reassessed, but also the contents of production and consumption patterns. Therefore this approach involves the whole social and political organization. It forces us to think in a new way of what human progress really means in the context of the preservation of the ecosystem. Accordingly, we propose a new set of liberating strategies for the future of humanity. II. The Way Out of Ideological Impasses 5. The lie of green capitalism, and the risk of apolitical environmentalism. Our ecology is social. It continues the historical battles of the Left. We reject the deception of a vision of ecology which would make it compatible with liberal economics. We denounce green capitalism, which under the guise of sustainable development provides a new space to the search for maximum profits, feeds imperialist dynamics and short-term visions. We reject conservationist positions that simply put the blame on individuals, thus refraining from highlighting the major responsibility of unbridled productivism. Such positions turn away from the fight against capitalist modes of production and consumption and refuse to acknowledge that they exploit the most vulnerable and plunder developing countries. We reject that kind of drawing-room ecology cut off from the working classes, devoid of a serious critical approach of the global economy and of a social vision, and therefore also devoid of environmental efficiency. Our ecology addresses environmental issues by systematically linking them with criticism of the economic system and social struggles, and by involving all citizens. 6. The social democratic impasse. We reject the social democratic doctrine according to which any redistribution of wealth should depend on a prior boost of the GDP and on increased overall material consumption. This is double nonsense. On the one hand, it maintains the power of financial capital and assumes that the distribution of wealth is based on the benefits of growth. It does not tackle the accumulation already acquired. But we know that wealth is there, and we dont need to wait to redistribute it. What is at stake is the hoarding of this wealth by capitalistic plundering. On the other hand, the social democratic doctrine is based on a model of infinite growth which is suicidal for human civilization. GDP is a measurement which does not reflect good living. It is of course imperative that every human being have access to basic commodities. Of course, stimulating activities of general interest is also essential. However, boosting blind economic growth is not the answer to social emergencies. It is even less bearable or desirable from the point of view of preserving the ecosystem, the natural resources and the climate. Therefore we hope neither for the resumption of growth, nor for the beneficial effects of austerity. We believe in neither. III. Setting Up a New Political Economy Serving Human Progress 7. Putting the economy at the service of the peoples needs. Ecosocialism wants to put the economic and productive systems at the service of human needs. In this it opposes the supply-side policies advocated by liberals. We reject this productivist logic which consists in producing everything and anything under any condition simply in order to sell on the market by massive spending on advertizing. It is obvious that with such an objective, and in order to raise profits, the system is selling us products programmed to break down or become obsolete sooner and sooner. How much longer must we put up with our civilizations ever-rising pile of waste? How can we turn a blind eye to the fact that much of this waste is exported to the countries of the South to the detriment of their peoples health and their environment? On the contrary, our collective decisions must instead be guided by the satisfaction of our real needs. This is the meaning of ecological planning. It reverses the logic by being based on real needs, on our duty to preserve the ecosystem and the right of all to live in a healthy environment. It makes the productive system compatible with those requirements. 8. Breaking with traditional thought patterns. Ecosocialism challenges the dictatorship of vested interests and of the private ownership of the means of production. It questions the relationship to work. We advocate social ownership of the means of production and alternative proposals for social economy in terms of self-management and cooperatives. We uphold fiscal sovereignty and nationalization as tools of public policy, particularly in the fields of banking and credit. Indexation of human progress, de-globalization and social and ecological protectionism, basic income guarantee, socialized salaries, and maximum allowed income are among the many perspectives we have in mind to get off the beaten tracks and to avoid the trap of lending support to the system. We must also go further in drastically reducing working time, by working less and working better, with work for all, and by setting full employment as our goal while reassessing the finality of work. There is no point in working longer than necessary to produce what we need. The time thus freed could be usefully allocated to activities now considered as unproductive, which are nevertheless essential to good living. 9. Producing differently. The complete overhaul of our system of production is based on what we call the 4 Rs: relocalization of activity, ecological re-industrialization, restructuring of industrial facilities and redistribution of work. Many needs remain unsatisfied: in a restructured industry, in personal services, in agroecology, in farming aimed at food sovereignty and health for all, in research and the green sectors working at reducing our dependence on non-renewable resources (such as green building, energy efficiency, thermal renovation of housing, renewable energies). With rising unemployment and the social crisis, the need to create or preserve jobs is too often put forward against the imperative of environmental protection. It is absurd. Here is one of the economic and social costs of liberal laissez-faire policies. On the contrary, relocation and ecological transition would allow to preserve, transform or create many jobs, both local and sustainable, in all countries. 10. Setting up the green rule as our political compass. The green rule is our central indicator of economic management. It replaces the golden rule of austerity policies and of structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. It aims at ensuring our responsibility to humanity and its ecosystem by phasing out the ecological debt. It combines the need to reduce the consumption of certain material commodities and the necessary boosting of other activities, their resulting ecological footprint being systematically taken into account. The damage already done by the emission of greenhouse gases and the loss of biodiversity must be made good. In addition, pushing back every year the ecological debt day will be adopted as a means of evaluating public policies. This is the date when an amount of renewable resources equal to what the planet is able to regenerate has been used on a worldwide scale, and when the amount of waste it is able to digest has been reached. Our goal is to push it back to December 31, that is to say, to neutralize our ecological footprint. This implies drastically reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and also phasing out nuclear energy, which produces unmanageable radioactive waste and carries unacceptable risks to humans as well as to the ecosystem. IV. Building the Ecosocialist Revolution 11. Our struggles have to converge. Our goal of a civilization break requires that the largest number of people be implied in political action. It is a question of gathering and acting together, and not simply of being in the right among those holding similar views, or worse still, of setting the ones against the others. We stand alongside the workers and those left out by the system who are fighting for alternative social and environmental projects. Ecological restructuring cannot be achieved without them, much less against them. Our opponents in this radical change of course of society are not the researchers or the workers of industry, but the banks, the multinational corporations and the shareholders who are steering all production patterns according to their private interests and not according to the general interest. 12. Struggling and resisting to reinvent. The ecosocialist revolution combines programme proposals and a presence in social and environmental struggles, alongside all those who continue to resist. The citizens involved in this project play a part in the development of practical experiments and alternatives: local distribution networks, associations for the maintenance of small-scale peasant agriculture, support for out-of-town food crop farming, actions against the urbanization of farmland, transition town networks, takeover of companies by employees, local exchange systems, responsible saving and complementary currencies, collective housing and carpooling. They are active in actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, such as actions against advertizing or requisitions of empty housing. Elected representatives of the people for the ecosocialist project are committed to a consistent approach between what they say and what they do. For example they revitalize the left by taking steps to ban advertizing, to bring utilities back into public management, to overtax wasteful consumption, or to extend free access to public services. 13. Implementing environmental planning. Environmental planning requires the taking into account of the long term as well as public leadership, all placed under the control of citizens, workers and consumers. The problem is not industry, research or the technology in themselves, but the lack of choice and control by citizens. A citizens revolution is needed to conquer this capacity of control. Such is the explosive mixture of revolutionary utopianism and technical expertise to which we aspire. The Ecological Plan gives us the possibility of charting a new course toward another mode of development, by questioning our needs and reorienting production, exchanges and consumption along our social and ecological values. The research sector must be reorganized around general interests and real needs, and invent new forms of participation, for example through citizens conventions. Government schools must work at raising the general level of knowledge and skills for all ages through professional and general education in order to support this change of course and pave the way for the emergence of new activities. Conferences of popular participation must be set up to redefine the criteria of social and environmental usefulness and the working links between the various levels of policy-making, from the European Union to local authorities. Environmental planning promotes the continuing involvement of staff in corporate governance, in line with the growing convergence of social and environmental struggles. 14. Without a Constituent Assembly, Equality and a Social Republic remain impossible! We affirm the need for a high level of common culture through the public school system, including environmental education. How else can we achieve individual and collective emancipation, which alone can pave the way to consent for a social contract shared by all? The ecosocialist project reaffirms the role of the state, the community and public services, who are essential in planning the civilization break, build a liberating society and ensure equal access to fundamental rights for everyone, everywhere. These must be redrafted by means of a constituent assembly. It will have to renew the institutions from top to bottom, and set up the democratic ways and means which will ensure a permanent involvement of the citizens and the peoples sovereignty in all areas. For the revolutionary task is huge. Indeed we support the establishment of a system of care for town and country which runs counter to urban sprawl, the concentration of populations in huge cities and organized competition between territories. We advocate a new form of urbanism that brings together those functions essential to good living (public services of health and education, housing, work, culture and leisure, biodiversity, and peasant farming). We refuse the commodification of living things, and GMOs, as well as of common assets such as water, energy and knowledge, and the privatization of public services. These must come under public management by rethinking the working relationship between the state, the guarantor of republican equality, local authorities and the action of citizens, trade unions, associations and users. 15. Fighting the cultural battle. The ecosocialist project leads its ideological struggle through popular education. It wants to decolonize the imagination. It denounces the programming of a docile individual-consumer, submitted to the opinions of so-called experts and to the requirements of productivism which make us yearn for harmful and useless products, made at the other end of the world in shameful working conditions and under inadequate or nonexistent environmental legislation. It fights the armed wing of productivism: advertizing, with its attendant commercialization of the body and sexism, fashion and the media, relayed by credit institutions which condition us and subject us to a permanent incitement to buy and waste. This ideological battle is also a battle of words. We reject the politics of the oxymoron and neoliberal newspeak: the price of labour which becomes a cost, social security contributions re-classified as burdens, police forces renamed law enforcement, video surveillance masquerading as video protection or nuclear energy disguised as clean and carbon-free. 16. Blasting away the obstacles of liberal treaties. On a global scale, we denounce the agreements pushed forward by the World Trade Organization: free trade agreements and economic partnership agreements which contribute to the depletion of natural resources, the exploitation of the peoples of the South and social dumping in the developed countries. Because the European Union is the first economic zone in the world, its evolution influences the whole planet. Its neoliberal policies are guarded by the existing treaties and austerity plans. Established under the leadership of economic and financial lobbies, these all aim at the disappearance of public services, the extension of private commercial interests and free trade. This is a source of waste due to mercantile competition and the destruction of public services and common wealth, all for the benefit of private interests. Liberal and austerity policies in Europe also make it impossible to control and steer production and exchanges toward objectives of human progress. Under these conditions, we maintain that an ecosocialist policy in Europe requires disobedience to neoliberal Europe and its directives. To achieve this it is necessary to build another balance of power between citizens, financial power and the anti-democratic institutions of the European Union. While the European Union may be considered a relevant scale for wide-range environmental and social policies, their implementation will only be made possible by the construction of another Europe, under the democratic control of the people. 17. Carrying out an international and universal struggle. There is only one ecosystem compatible with human life. Therefore we have to take this into account in all areas. Decisions taken on one side on the planet have repercussions everywhere else. The ecosocialist project implies the recognition of the responsibility of the countries of the North, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (aka Troika), toward the peoples of the South. The ecosocialist project denounces organized competition rather than cooperation, productivism and its nefarious effects on global climate, the plundering of natural resources, the race for arable land, as well as the austerity measures imposed by the Troika. It also implies the recognition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the creation of an international tribunal for crimes against the environment. Ecosocialism requires us to contribute to the debate linking policies for development and social progress with environmental protection. To this end, we support and take our inspiration from alternative policies or events abroad: citizens revolutions, the Arab Spring, the refusal of the debt and of media monopolies in Argentina, the Constituent Assembly in Iceland and Venezuela, the Yasuni-ITT Initiative to leave oil underground in Ecuador, etc. The knowledge, experience and methods learned in those situations must converge. The ecosocialist project must be supported by a global forum that will make it the goal of the citizens revolution for our time. 18. A citizens revolution to lead the way for ecosocialism. Given the scale of our objective, setting a new course away from the capitalist model of productivism cannot come from a simple electoral changeover or from decisions dictated from above. It implies a radical overhaul of institutions, including elections with proportional representation, gender parity and an end to one person holding many offices, which will allow people to be adequately represented in their diversity. What is at stake is bringing the oligarchy to heel and ensuring popular sovereignty through real democracy under all circumstances. This requires that the ecosocialist parliamentary majorities combine their efforts with popular movements involved in all domains of life in society. This reclaiming of political and civic initiatives by every person, in order to determine where the general interest lies, everywhere and on every issue, is what we call the citizens revolution. It is a revolution, because it intends to change the forms of ownership, the institutional system and the hierarchy of legal, social and environmental standards which organize both society and the economy. And it is a citizens revolution, because it intends to empower every person, not in the interest of a particular social category but for the good of all humans, and because it provides institutional forms for itself and submits to universal suffrage within the framework of political pluralism. We refuse to accept that despair and anger turn into hatred. We want neither an enlightened avant-garde, nor a green dictatorship, nor ethnocentric insularity; we support the democratic path of the citizens revolution. People are not the problem, they are the solution. The worst damage that could be wrought by the current crisis would be that humanity proved unable to open itself up to a new future. Ecosocialism can be that new future. Let it blossom! This document is available in other languages at melenchon.fr/18-theses-pour-lecosocialisme. The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration: The 2nd Ecosocialist Manifesto The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model. Evo Morales, September 2007. Humanitys Choice Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism. We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. It wastefully creates unnecessary products, squandering the environments limited resources and returning to it only toxins and pollutants. Under capitalism, the only measure of success is how much more is sold every day, every week, every year involving the creation of vast quantities of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature, commodities that cannot be produced without spreading disease, destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil like sewers for the disposal of industrial waste. Capitalisms need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets. Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects such as rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in permafrost and beneath the ocean that would make catastrophic climate change inevitable. Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human, animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of every society. The impact of the ecological crisis is felt most severely by those whose lives have already been ravaged by imperialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and indigenous peoples everywhere are especially vulnerable. Environmental destruction and climate change constitute an act of aggression by the rich against the poor. Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into the systems DNA and cannot be reformed away. Profit-oriented production only considers a short-term horizon in its investment decisions, and cannot take into account the long-term health and stability of the environment. Infinite economic expansion is incompatible with finite and fragile ecosystems, but the capitalist economic system cannot tolerate limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits that might be imposed in the name of sustainable development. Thus the inherently unstable capitalist system cannot regulate its own activity, much less overcome the crises caused by its chaotic and parasitical growth, because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die! If capitalism remains the dominant social order, the best we can expect is unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of social crises and the spread of the most barbaric forms of class rule, as the imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the global south for continued control of the worlds diminishing resources. At worst, human life may not survive. Capitalist Strategies for Change There is no lack of proposed strategies for contending with ecological ruin, including the crisis of global warming looming as a result of the reckless increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The great majority of these strategies share one common feature: they are devised by and on behalf of the dominant global system, capitalism. It is no surprise that the dominant global system which is responsible for the ecological crisis also sets the terms of the debate about this crisis, for capital commands the means of production of knowledge, as much as that of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Accordingly, its politicians, bureaucrats, economists and professors send forth an endless stream of proposals, all variations on the theme that the worlds ecological damage can be repaired without disruption of market mechanisms and of the system of accumulation that commands the world economy. But a person cannot serve two masters the integrity of the earth and the profitability of capitalism. One must be abandoned, and history leaves little question about the allegiances of the vast majority of policy-makers. There is every reason, therefore, to radically doubt the capacity of established measures to check the slide to ecological catastrophe. And indeed, beyond a cosmetic veneer, the reforms over the past thirty-five years have been a monstrous failure. Isolated improvements do of course occur, but they are inevitably overwhelmed and swept away by the ruthless expansion of the system and the chaotic character of its production. One example demonstrates the failure: in the first four years of the 21st Century, global carbon emissions were nearly three times as great per annum as those of the decade of the 1990s, despite the appearance of the Kyoto Protocols in 1997. Kyoto employs two devices: the Cap and Trade system of trading pollution credits to achieve certain reductions in emissions, and projects in the global south the so-called Clean Development Mechanisms to offset emissions in the highly industrialized nations. These instruments all rely upon market mechanisms, which means, first of all, that atmospheric carbon dioxide becomes a commodity under the control of the same interests that created global warming. Polluters are not compelled to reduce their carbon emissions, but allowed to use their power over money to control the carbon market for their own ends, which include the devastating exploration for yet more carbon-based fuels. Nor is there a limit to the amount of emission credits which can be issued by compliant governments. Since verification and evaluation of results are impossible, the Kyoto regime is not only incapable of controlling emissions, it also provides ample opportunities for evasion and fraud of all kinds. As even the Wall Street Journal put it in March, 2007, emissions trading would make money for some very large corporations, but dont believe for a minute that this charade would do much about global warming. The Bali climate meetings in 2007 opened the way for even greater abuses in the period ahead. Bali avoided any mention of the goals for drastic carbon reduction put forth by the best climate science (90% by 2050); it abandoned the peoples of the global south to the mercy of capital by giving jurisdiction over the process to the World Bank; and made offsetting of carbon pollution even easier. In order to affirm and sustain our human future, a revolutionary transformation is needed, where all particular struggles take part in a greater struggle against capital itself. This larger struggle cannot remain merely negative and anti-capitalist. It must announce and build a different kind of society, and this is ecosocialism. The Ecosocialist Alternative The ecosocialist movement aims to stop and to reverse the disastrous process of global warming in particular and of capitalist ecocide in general, and to construct a radical and practical alternative to the capitalist system. Ecosocialism is grounded in a transformed economy founded on the non-monetary values of social justice and ecological balance. It criticizes both capitalist market ecology and productivist socialism, which ignored the earths equilibrium and limits. It redefines the path and goal of socialism within an ecological and democratic framework. Ecosocialism involves a revolutionary social transformation, which will imply the limitation of growth and the transformation of needs by a profound shift away from quantitative and toward qualitative economic criteria, an emphasis on use-value instead of exchange-value. These aims require both democratic decision-making in the economic sphere, enabling society to collectively define its goals of investment and production, and the collectivization of the means of production. Only collective decision-making and ownership of production can offer the longer-term perspective that is necessary for the balance and sustainability of our social and natural systems. The rejection of productivism and the shift away from quantitative and toward qualitative economic criteria involve rethinking the nature and goals of production and economic activity in general. Essential creative, non-productive and reproductive human activities, such as householding, child-rearing, care, child and adult education, and the arts, will be key values in an ecosocialist economy. Clean air and water and fertile soil, as well as universal access to chemical-free food and renewable, non-polluting energy sources, are basic human and natural rights defended by ecosocialism. Far from being despotic, collective policy-making on the local, regional, national and international levels amounts to societys exercise of communal freedom and responsibility. This freedom of decision constitutes a liberation from the alienating economic laws of the growth-oriented capitalist system. To avoid global warming and other dangers threatening human and ecological survival, entire sectors of industry and agriculture must be suppressed, reduced, or restructured and others must be developed, while providing full employment for all. Such a radical transformation is impossible without collective control of the means of production and democratic planning of production and exchange. Democratic decisions on investment and technological development must replace control by capitalist enterprises, investors and banks, in order to serve the long-term horizon of societys and natures common good. The most oppressed elements of human society, the poor and indigenous peoples, must take full part in the ecosocialist revolution, in order to revitalize ecologically sustainable traditions and give voice to those whom the capitalist system cannot hear. Because the peoples of the global south and the poor in general are the first victims of capitalist destruction, their struggles and demands will help define the contours of the ecologically and economically sustainable society in creation. Similarly, gender equality is integral to ecosocialism, and womens movements have been among the most active and vocal opponents of capitalist oppression. Other potential agents of ecosocialist revolutionary change exist in all societies. Such a process cannot begin without a revolutionary transformation of social and political structures based on the active support, by the majority of the population, of an ecosocialist program. The struggle of labour workers, farmers, the landless and the unemployed for social justice is inseparable from the struggle for environmental justice. Capitalism, socially and ecologically exploitative and polluting, is the enemy of nature and of labour alike. Ecosocialism proposes radical transformations in: the energy system, by replacing carbon-based fuels and biofuels with clean sources of power under community control: wind, geothermal, wave, and above all, solar power. the transportation system, by drastically reducing the use of private trucks and cars, replacing them with free and efficient public transportation; present patterns of production, consumption, and building, which are based on waste, inbuilt obsolescence, competition and pollution, by producing only sustainable and recyclable goods and developing green architecture; food production and distribution, by defending local food sovereignty as far as this is possible, eliminating polluting industrial agribusinesses, creating sustainable agro-ecosystems and working actively to renew soil fertility. To theorize and to work toward realizing the goal of green socialism does not mean that we should not also fight for concrete and urgent reforms right now. Without any illusions about clean capitalism, we must work to impose on the powers that be governments, corporations, international institutions some elementary but essential immediate changes: drastic and enforceable reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, development of clean energy sources, provision of an extensive free public transportation system, progressive replacement of trucks by trains, creation of pollution clean-up programs, elimination of nuclear energy, and war spending. These and similar demands are at the heart of the agenda of the Global Justice movement and the World Social Forums, which have promoted, since Seattle in 1999, the convergence of social and environmental movements in a common struggle against the capitalist system. Environmental devastation will not be stopped in conference rooms and treaty negotiations: only mass action can make a difference. Urban and rural workers, peoples of the global south and indigenous peoples everywhere are at the forefront of this struggle against environmental and social injustice, fighting exploitative and polluting multinationals, poisonous and disenfranchising agribusinesses, invasive genetically modified seeds, biofuels that only aggravate the current food crisis. We must further these social-environmental movements and build solidarity between anticapitalist ecological mobilizations in the North and the South. This Ecosocialist Declaration is a call to action. The entrenched ruling classes are powerful, yet the capitalist system reveals itself every day more financially and ideologically bankrupt, unable to overcome the economic, ecological, social, food and other crises it engenders. And the forces of radical opposition are alive and vital. On all levels, local, regional and international, we are fighting to create an alternative system based in social and ecological justice. The 1st Ecosocialist Manifesto Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy (Sept 2001) The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade, disintegrative warfare that spread like gangrene across great swathes of the planet viz., central Africa, the Middle East, Northwestern South America and reverberate throughout the nations. In our view, the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces. The former broadly stems from rampant industrialization that overwhelms the earths capacity to buffer and contain ecological destabilization. The latter stems from the form of imperialism known as globalization, with its disintegrative effects on societies that stand in its path. Moreover, these underlying forces are essentially different aspects of the same drive, which must be identified as the central dynamic that moves the whole: the expansion of the world capitalist system. We reject all euphemisms or propagandistic softening of the brutality of this regime: all greenwashing of its ecological costs, all mystification of the human costs under the names of democracy and human rights. We insist instead upon looking at capital from the standpoint of what it has really done. Acting on nature and its ecological balance, the regime, with its imperative to constantly expand profitability, exposes ecosystems to destabilizing pollutants, fragments habitats that have evolved over aeons to allow the flourishing of organisms, squanders resources, and reduces the sensuous vitality of nature to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital. From the side of humanity, with its requirements for self-determination, community, and a meaningful existence, capital reduces the majority of the worlds people to a mere reservoir of labor power while discarding much of the remainder as useless nuisances. It has invaded and undermined the integrity of communities through its global mass culture of consumerism and depoliticization. It has expanded disparities in wealth and power to levels unprecedented in human history. It has worked hand in glove with a network of corrupt and subservient client states whose local elites carry out the work of repression while sparing the center of its opprobrium. And it has set going a network of transtatal organizations under the overall supervision of the Western powers and the superpower United States, to undermine the autonomy of the periphery and bind it into indebtedness while maintaining a huge military apparatus to enforce compliance to the capitalist center. We believe that the present capitalist system cannot regulate, much less overcome, the crises it has set going. It cannot solve the ecological crisis because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die! And it cannot solve the crisis posed by terror and other forms of violent rebellion because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire, which would impose unacceptable limits on growth and the whole way of life sustained by empire. Its only remaining option is to resort to brutal force, thereby increasing alienation and sowing the seed of further terrorism and further counter-terrorism, evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism. In sum, the capitalist world system is historically bankrupt. It has become an empire unable to adapt, whose very gigantism exposes its underlying weakness. It is, in the language of ecology, profoundly unsustainable, and must be changed fundamentally, nay, replaced, if there is to be a future worth living. Thus the stark choice once posed by Rosa Luxemburg returns: Socialism or Barbarism!, where the face of the latter now reflects the imprint of the intervening century and assumes the countenance of eco-catastrophe, terror counterterror, and their fascist degeneration. But why socialism, why revive this word seemingly consigned to the rubbish-heap of history by the failings of its twentieth century interpretations? For this reason only: that however beaten down and unrealized, the notion of socialism still stands for the supersession of capital. If capital is to be overcome, a task now given the urgency of the survival of civilization itself, the outcome will perforce be socialist, for that is the term which signifies the breakthrough into a post-capitalist society. If we say that capital is radically unsustainable and breaks down into the barbarism outlined above, then we are also saying that we need to build a socialism capable of overcoming the crises capital has set going. And if socialisms past have failed to do so, then it is our obligation, if we choose against submitting to a barbarous end, to struggle for one that succeeds. And just as barbarism has changed in a manner reflective of the century since Luxemburg enunciated her fateful alternative, so too, must the name, and the reality, of a socialism become adequate for this time. It is for these reasons that we choose to name our interpretation of socialism as an ecosocialism, and dedicate ourselves to its realization. Why Ecosocialism? We see ecosocialism not as the denial but as the realization of the first-epoch socialisms of the twentieth century, in the context of the ecological crisis. Like them, it builds on the insight that capital is objectified past labor, and grounds itself in the free development of all producers, or to use another way of saying this, an undoing of the separation of the producers from the means of production. We understand that this goal was not able to be implemented by first-epoch socialism, for reasons too complex to take up here, except to summarize as various effects of underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing capitalist powers. This conjuncture had numerous deleterious effects on existing socialisms, chiefly, the denial of internal democracy along with an emulation of capitalist productivism, and led eventually to the collapse of these societies and the ruin of their natural environments. Ecosocialism retains the emancipatory goals of first-epoch socialism, and rejects both the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy and the productivist structures of the bureaucratic variations of socialism. It insists, rather, upon redefining both the path and the goal of socialist production in an ecological framework. It does so specifically in respect to the limits on growth essential for the sustainability of society. These are embraced, not however, in the sense of imposing scarcity, hardship and repression. The goal, rather, is a transformation of needs, and a profound shift toward the qualitative dimension and away from the quantitative. From the standpoint of commodity production, this translates into a valorization of use-values over exchange-values a project of far-reaching significance grounded in immediate economic activity. The generalization of ecological production under socialist conditions can provide the ground for the overcoming of the present crises. A society of freely associated producers does not stop at its own democratization. It must, rather, insist on the freeing of all beings as its ground and goal. It overcomes thereby the imperialist impulse both subjectively and objectively. In realizing such a goal, it struggles to overcome all forms of domination, including, especially, those of gender and race. And it surpasses the conditions leading to fundamentalist distortions and their terrorist manifestations. In sum, a world society is posited in a degree of ecological harmony with nature unthinkable under present conditions. A practical outcome of these tendencies would be expressed, for example, in a withering away of the dependency upon fossil fuels integral to industrial capitalism. And this in turn can provide the material point of release of the lands subjugated by oil imperialism, while enabling the containment of global warming, along with other afflictions of the ecological crisis. No one can read these prescriptions without thinking, first, of how many practical and theoretical questions they raise, and second and more dishearteningly, of how remote they are from the present configuration of the world, both as this is anchored in institutions and as it is registered in consciousness. We need not elaborate these points, which should be instantly recognizable to all. But we would insist that they be taken in their proper perspective. Our project is neither to lay out every step of this way nor to yield to the adversary because of the preponderance of power he holds. It is, rather, to develop the logic of a sufficient and necessary transformation of the current order, and to begin developing the intermediate steps towards this goal. We do so in order to think more deeply into these possibilities, and at the same moment, begin the work of drawing together with all those of like mind. If there is any merit in these arguments, then it must be the case that similar thoughts, and practices to realize these thoughts, will be coordinatively germinating at innumerable points around the world. Ecosocialism will be international, and universal, or it will be nothing. The crises of our time can and must be seen as revolutionary opportunities, which it is our obligation to affirm and bring into existence. Councillors for the Old Town adopt new opening hours for pubs, night clubs and restaurants. Font size: A - | A + Bars, pubs and restaurants are to have new opening hours. Councillors for the Old Town finally adopted new rules on April 21, after more than a year of discussions. The changes will be valid from May 15. Between now and then, all owners of bars, pubs, restaurants and similar outlets will have to report what kind of services they provide and their opening hours will be based on this information. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The adopted regulation is a compromise between ventures vying for late opening hours and residents of the Old Town complaining about the noise and mess caused by late-night visitors. Read also: Read also: Councillors to again discuss opening hours of restaurants in the Old Town in March Read more Nobody is 100 percent satisfied, said Radoslav Stevcik, mayor of the Old Town, for the private TV station Markiza. The important thing is that we are satisfied as a whole, that the night life in the Old Town is not coming to an end and that there will be no blanket closing hour at 22:00. New opening hours Based on the new regulation, restaurants, cafes, and patisseries will be able to be open from 7:00 until midnight during all seven days of the week. Night bars, clubs and discos will be able to be open from 10:00 until 1:00 in the morning from Sunday until Wednesday and during the remaining days of the week, they can open until 4:00 in the morning. Customers will be able to enjoy their time in bars, pubs and wineries from Sunday until Wednesday from 7:00 until midnight. During the remaining days of the week they will be able to stay open one hour longer until 1:00 in the morning. Ventures selling refreshments via windows will be able to stay open until 2:00 am while shops will be able to be open all day through for the whole week.. Opening for terraces in the historical centre, including Suche Myto, is to end at midnight, while those outside the historical centre must close at 22:00. Jozef Galis from the Association of Operators of Cafes is glad that the Old Town council has adopted the new regulation. Various ventures have been fined for the last two years and we believe that this was an unjust situation, Galis told the Sme daily, adding that they do not consider the new rules as ideal. They originally wanted night clubs and discos to be able to open until 4:00 in the morning during working days. Karol Hederling, living in the Old Town, is not satisfied either. The Old Town will not remove the culture of alcoholism and vandalism, Hederling said as cited by Sme. A novelty resulting from the new regulation is that those ventures violating the ordered opening hours will be published in a table of shame. Protection of the public order The conflict around the opening hours of pubs, restaurants and other such ventures in the city centre arose due to the violation of the silent hours which residents of this borough complained about. Thus councillors for the Old Town also adopted a resolution on the protection of public order on April 21. This will supplement the first regulation about opening hours and should protect the Old Town residents from noise and mess from neighbouring businesses. The recent scandal surrounding the parliamentary office opening and checking the post of MPs has opened the issue of postal privacy which also concerns emails or text messages guaranteed by the Constitution and Slovak law. Font size: A - | A + Leader of the opposition OLaNO party, Igor Matovic, complains that the parliament leadership is violating postal privacy. Employees at its filing office received the order to open all letters to MPs that do not have a sender, or whose sender is a member of the public. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Letters that contain vulgarisms or have vilifying contents are not even to be registered or given to the addressee; instead, they are shredded after three months. According to Matovic, this is a violation of the Constitution and the law, although Speaker of Parliament, Andrej Danko, of the coalition party SNS denies this. Similar cases can also occur in more common jobs which involve letters, emails, or text messages. What can employers check, and what rights do they have? Letters, emails and text messages. The Constitution itself details that the state guarantees protection of privacy of the post and of messages conveyed in Article 22. It promises protection for not only letters but also emails or other forms of communication. Read also: Read also: Parliament's Office makes concession, it will not open letters Read more The Constitution stipulates that nobody can violate postal privacy or privacy of other written matters and records, whether they are preserved privately, or sent by post, or in any other form. It also guarantees the privacy of messages conveyed by telephone, telegraph, or other similar facility. Post, illustrative stock photo (Source: Sme - Jozef Jakubco) The Criminal Code cites postal privacy too, which stipulates a three years sentence for violations of this code. An even stricter sentence of four to 10 years can be handed down for those who would cause considerable damage through this violation, or who have a special motive for doing so. At work, it must be differentiated In communication that functions through post, through work email, or phone, the principles are similar. Even though an employee is currently present at work, and gets a letter, or an email in his/her name, this need not be work communication. Therefore employees are also obliged to observe the right to privacy. However, at work, private and work communication can be distinguished. The latter usually does not contain a specific name, only the name of the company or institution for which it is meant. Read also: Read also: Dankos office opens MPs letters Read more In the case of social networks like Facebook, communication is strictly private when it comes to a private account to which postal privacy also applies, especially to private posts. It would be different, though, if an employee communicates through a company account. Minors are a special case: parents can check their post without any risk. Employer must ask for approval Many companies want to protect themselves, especially from leaks of sensitive information so they insist on checking computers or emails. It is possible under the law, according to a lawyer specialising in this but employees have to sign in advance that they had been instructed on the internal rules and agree with them. If an employer checks correspondance without the knowledge of the employee, it is definitely illegal, lawyer Daniela Gregusova said. Firms can ask for approval not just for reading employees post and emails but also to check the volume of data transferred or for recording phone calls. If anyone has any suspicion of the violation of their rights and their post being opened, for example, they can report this to the police. Slovak President Andrej Kiska spoke to the media after meeting his Austrian counterpart Alexander Van der Bellen. Font size: A - | A + Slovak President Andrej Kiska spoke to the media after meeting his Austrian counterpart Alexander Van der Bellen on April 26. Kiska also added, as cited by the SITA newswire, that it is first necessary to clarify and define what exactly the EU core and multi-speed EU mean. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Then we have to sit down and see what it brings to whom and how it would make the EU even better, the Slovak president said, and expressed his firm belief that there is no problem that the EU cannot resolve if it remains united. On the other hand, Van der Bellen on his first official visit to Slovakia said he is against the creation of a multi-speed EU because, the one who is ahead does not hear the one who is behind him but if you are walking next to me, we can communicate and exchange our opinions, he said. He added that there are already different speeds in the EU now but these differences should not deepen further. If the EU divides, however, into a specific core and an outer circle, like Slovakia, Austria wants to belong to the core, the newly elected Austrian president summed up. Kiska and Van der Bellen at Devin, close to the Freedom Gate monument, April 26. (Source: TASR) Regarding migration and the position of Slovakia on this issue, President Kiska emphasised that developed and successful countries, such as Slovakia, have a moral obligation to help those who escape from war and violence. The country should also show solidarity with countries facing the migration crisis, such as Greece or Italy. We cannot on the one hand ask the EU to help us to get to the level of, for example, Austria, and on the other hand, if some EU country asks us for help and solidarity, to adopt a reluctant position and seek some alternative solution, Kiska noted, according to SITA. Austrian President Van der Bellen comes for first official visit to Slovakia (Source: Sme - Jozef Jakubco) A veiled woman is not automatically a bad person for Van der Bellen, he explained, adding that everyone has the right to freely express and this also applies to clothes. He admitted being no fan of veils but stressed that he respected them. Mutual knowledge to deepen There is only one controversial issue between Slovakia and Austria, according to Van der Bellen, and that is nuclear energy, which all Austrians, allegedly, do not consider technology of the future. Both presidents positively evaluated the bilateral relations of their countries. Trade turnover represents about 6 billion a year, according to the Slovak president. There are more than 2,000 Austrian companies in Slovakia employing about 40,000 people. On the other hand, Slovakia is quite an untapped country for Austrian people, even though Bratislava and Vienna lie so close, Andrej Kiska opined, as quoted by the TASR newswire; and the new Austrian president agrees. We shall develop our mutual relations even more in tourism and culture, so that Slovaks and Austrians get to know each other better, the Slovak president said. They should address the new forms of tax evasions. Font size: A - | A + To fight tax fraud, eliminate fraud over mineral oils or murky practices accompanying the merger of trading companies is the aim of the new action plan for the years 2017 and 2018, which the government approved at its April 26 session. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The document is authored by the Finance, Justice and Interior Ministries. It contains 21 new measures that respond to the application of practical needs, with the aim to eliminate new forms of tax frauds, the TASR newswire reported. One of the measures seeks to prevent murky practices when liquidating trading companies. This should be achieved by the registration of incomes via electronic cash registers with online connection to the Financial Administration, the reinforcement of institutes in securing the properly, the online monitoring of goods transportation, and the ability to return non-risk parts of excessive refunds to taxpayers before the start of tax control. The action plan also contains proposals to set up the United Analytic Centre, internal indexation of tax subjects in accordance to their reliability and cancellation of business licences due to repeated violation of the law on accounting, TASR reported. The government will also try to eliminate evasion of excise tax from mineral oil and increase the responsibility of tax subjects for correct data stated in tax returns, statements and reports. Part of the action plan is also the introduction of a summary report, prolongation of the period for storing tax documents in electronic and paper form to 10 years, and also prolongation of the period to launch tax proceedings to 10 years, TASR wrote. The government also wants to extend the possibility of protecting the interests of the state in tax fields and introduce a duty for courts and state administration bodies to verify the data stated in respective registers. The action plan also proposes extending the powers of the Criminal Office of the Financial Administration, introducing the possibility to use an agent, strengthening the personal responsibility of partners of trading companies, and authorising the Financial Administration to enter the accreditation procedure in construction. Moreover, it wants to establish a new institution to administer the property seized in the criminal, tax and other administrative proceedings, TASR reported. Both the head of the Parliament's Office Daniel Guspan and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak stand behind the Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko, denying that it was he who decided on the questionable order. Font size: A - | A + On April 26, Guspan announced that he has removed two points from a directive making it possible for the Parliament Office to open letters sent to individual MPs that lack the sender's address or were sent by a private individual. He also scrapped a provision allowing letters containing vulgar speech to be archived and later shredded, instead of forwarding them to the addressee. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Even though point No. 5 was meant as a bona fide way to help MPs with post containing vulgar content, carrying out this action will be suspended until the next parliamentary gremium, the head of the Parliament's Office said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. All post with offensive content has already been distributed to individual MPs," said Guspan, adding that the gremium should also decide on the fate of post that nobody wants to collect. I reject any accusations that the Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko (SNS) decided on this measure or that he's been interfering with MPs' correspondence, given that it isn't within the powers of the parliamentary chair to adopt decisions for the Parliament Office. Guspan also denied that MPs' letters had been read by Parliament Office staff. Minister steps in Interior Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer) does not think that the order is typical for Danko, and he told media he doubted it was the speaker who worded the decision on manipulating the delivered post. Thus, Kalinak also does not think that Andrej Danko should leave his office. This is not his style of acting, Kalinak said, adding that the decision seems rather to be some individual initiative of a clerk which happens, sometimes. The minister does not think either, that there was intention to harm the opposiiton, as the envelopes of both the coalition and the opposition were opened. Kalinak also explained, as cited by the SITA newswire, that the directive itself from the Interior Ministry was adopted after courts and other institutions were confronted with delivered post containing dangerous waste with traces of radioactive elements, and not just washing powder or sugar. Labour Minister Jan Richter opined that the case was a failure to communicate the measure properly, rather than anything else. Opposition OLaNO-NOVA leader Igor Matovic on April 25 showed reporters an order issued by Guspan dated April 7, 2017, which contains the cited instructions for front desk employees. According to Matovic, Guspan took this course of action on the direct orders of Danko, instructing his and his subordinates at Parliament's front desk to open letters addressed to lawmakers if they are being sent by individuals anonymously or under a full name. If any profanities or offensive content are found in a letter, they are ordered not to deliver the correspondence to the lawmaker, but to archive it for three months and then shred it instead. It had happened also earlier Moreover, Matovic claims that Parliament Office staff used to open letters sent to individual MPs even before Guspan issued the directive on April 7 on opening post addressed to lawmakers sent by private individuals and on withholding post if profanities are found. He said that he was told this by a senior staff member of Parliament's front desk. The same person allegedly confirmed that the seized post was then forwarded to Guspan. Read also: Read also: Dankos office opens MPs letters Read more We were at the front desk on Tuesday, and we saw a box containing 20 letters, including one postcard, Matovic explained. We found only seven letters today. When I asked [a member of staff] where the others had gone, she told me that they had been handed over to Mr. Guspan. So, despite claims by the parliamentary chair's [Andrej Danko's] spokesperson that it's at the disposal of only a single staff member with appropriate clearance the seized post was taken away by her superior, who claimed that he would take it to Mr. Guspan. When Matovic asked why all the seized post wasn't presented to Guspan, he was allegedly told that only letters received before April 7 were given to him, while post suspended after that date remained in the box. While at the front desk, Matovic also forcefully took possession of a seized postcard sent to him in early February. Parliamentary security head Milan Marko, who took the post from the box to Guspan, allegedly explained his course of action by stating that he has been working in security for 38 years. I believe that this is the problem. He's brought [former communist secret service] StB practices into the 21st century," said Matovic. Not just opposition Apart from the opposition MPs, the Culture Minister and Smer vice-chair Marek Madaric also commented on the recent case, saying that any provisions that are unconstitutional should be removed from Parliament Office head Daniel Guspan's order concerning how to handle letters sent to MPs in Parliament. Madaric considers it nonsense to have clerks opening letters addressed to a specific person, reading their content and, based on their own judgement, deciding how to process them. I believe that the clerks who are doing this should come to their senses and, of course, any provisions that fly in the face of the Constitution should be done away with immediately, said the minister. Matovic believes that the main culprit for the situation is Danko as Guspan's direct superior. So, if Danko doesn't resign by noon on April 28, the opposition will initiate an extraordinary parliamentary session with a no-confidence motion in him, he added, as cited by TASR. OLaNO-NOVA also intends to file a criminal complaint over the violation of the privacy of correspondence. It also expects the General Prosecutor's Office to take action. Also another opposition party, SaS, has called on Andrej Danko to assume responsibility for the censorship. It will hold an inquiry into the matter and ask parliamentary leaders and the Parliament Office for more information. Can a status on a social network change someones life? Yes, if you write humorous stories about a fictive German ambassador. Font size: A - | A + Syrian-born dentist Assaf Alassaf, who had to flee his home country due to conflicts with the ruling regime, started writing his funny anecdotes back in 2013. What began as a joke later developed into a series of postings transformed, with the help of German translator Sandra Hetzl, into a book titled Abu Jurgen. Mein Leben mit dem Deutschen Botschafter (Abu Jurgen. My Life with the German Ambassador), which unintentionally earned him a ticket to Germany where he now lives. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The book is currently available in German and it is being translated into French and English. The Slovak Spectator spoke to Alassaf who was a guest at this years [fjuzn] festival. The Slovak Spectator (TSS): What was the impulse for you to start writing? Assaf Alassaf (AA): Its linked to my childhood. I read a lot of books. Even though my parents are not highly-educated, they encouraged us to read and be educated. I started writing some 10-12 years ago. I enjoyed it, so I continued this journey. TSS: Was it a hobby in the beginning? AA: Its been just a hobby till now. I still work as a dentist, but I publish some articles from time to time. TSS: Since 2013 you have been publishing anecdotes on Facebook. Why did you choose this channel? What is the strength of social networks? AA: Facebook came to Syria in 2005 or 2006, but it was forbidden by the government until 2011 when the revolution started. It was like an alternative platform for people to say what they wanted without control. Its your window to the world. TSS: Why did you start writing posts about a fictive German ambassador? AA: There was no plan, I wanted to create one to three posts. I enjoyed writing something completely fictional, with humour. The stories are not about not getting a visa, but about making a funny story, sending some messages between the lines, political or cultural. TSS: What inspired you to create the character of Abu Jurgen? A: Do you know what Abu Jurgen means? Its father of Jurgen, its a nickname. You dont use it in western culture, but in the Arab world its a joke. Now I can analyse this character, but when I wrote it, I didnt think about it. It was a mix of corrupted Syrian officer, some actors from Arabic movies, with touches of anti-Orientalism. TSS: What was the turning point that turned the posts into a novel? AA: When I met the German translator from Arabic [Sandra Hetzl ed. note] who told me about her project to translate new Arabic writing from social media into other languages. We then talked about the translation and chose the posts that we put in the book. We decided not to include some posts because they were very local and there was no chance to translate it. There was also the question whether we would include postings about other topics, but then we said no. We made the book about one topic, the visa. TSS: You now live in Germany. What surprised you when you first arrived there? AA: Every time you leave your country theres something new. I wasnt surprised by the quality of life, as for me its something natural. There is something you need to watch, like the relationship between the people and our community. People are similar in general, but theres different culture everywhere. They behave due to their culture. TSS: Are you trying to get rid of the prejudices and stereotypes people have about Arabs and Muslims? Do they change their opinion after meeting you? AA: Most of the people I have met are open-minded; they are not surprised. But sometimes they are. For example, my friend was surprised that I know a lot about cinema and movies. But why? You should not be surprised that Im Syrian and know a lot about movies. TSS: Your wife and children are still in Lebanon. Is there any progress in the process to have them join you? AA: No. I have permission to stay in Germany and I have the right and privilege to bring them to Germany. But the problem is in the German Embassy in Beirut because there are many people requesting appointments. That makes the procedures very hard and you have to wait for one year, sometimes a year and a half, to get an appointment. Now we are waiting for it. TSS: Is this your first time in Slovakia? What kind of impression do you have? AA: Yes. I like the city. Yesterday I walked through the Old Town. You cannot imagine how similar it is to the old city of Damascus. Its the same, especially these narrow streets, the nature of the buildings. I feel like Im at home. TSS: You are currently working on another novel. What will it be about? AA: Actually, Im working on two books. One will be about memories, about the dictatorship 30 years ago, the other about the last five-six years. Both about my experience with the revolutions. Another one will be about my experience as a refugee. TSS: Is it important to write about these experiences to change the climate in the society? AA: If you write something with this goal, it has little chance at success. But if you write something real, you can do it. The readers are clever, they can feel whether you are real or not. I will write it just to express myself, to talk about my experience. By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) India and Cyprus today expressed confidence that the recent revision in tax agreement between the two will provide a boost to investment flows. "I understand that the pending issue of revision of the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) has been resolved and the long-pending request of notified jurisdiction area has been accommodated," Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said at the India-Cyprus business session organised by industry chambers here. advertisement This will pave the way for Cyprus to invest more in India, not just in portfolio investment, but in key segments like manufacturing and other sectors, he said. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades was also optimistic that the recently-signed DTAA will help further cement economic ties, especially in the investment field. The president pitched Cyprus as one of the fastest- growing European nations that provides investment opportunities in various sectors. To promote investment and bolster ties, both the countries will sign a number of bilateral agreements during the presidents 5-day trip, which ends on April 29. Cyprus is the eighth largest country in terms of FDI inflow into India and the bilateral trade read USD 110 million. Meghwal talked of tourism and film production as possible avenues for joint exploration of investment opportunities. Besides, he said, setting of the International Solar Alliance could be mutually beneficial. Seeking investments in India, Meghwal said rating agencies post demonetisation have predicted that Indias GDP could cross double digits by 2020. "India has undertaken many reforms and we are planning to introduce GST from July 1... 2017 will go down in history as the year of economic reforms," he said. PTI DP CS ARD --- ENDS --- The famous Cirque du Soleil is in Bratislava celebrating the 15th year of its show Varekai: Tales of the Forest. Font size: A - | A + Cirque du Soleil is in Bratislava with its show Varekai: Tales of the Forest, the story of a unique world lying in a forest at the foot of a volcano. A lonely man descends from the sky to the forest shadow, to a magic world full of unknown creatures on the verge of reality and absurdity where miracles happen. Varekai is a word of Romanic origin meaning anywhere. The author and director of this piece is Dominic Champagne, who thus expresses a tribute to nomads as the founders of the ancient circus art. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The special circus, artistic Cirque du Soleil, offers a fusion of gymnastics, spectacular costumes, impressive story and live music without ever using animals. It usually gives a performance only once in a city or town, and only returns to the country after a break of at least 18 months. The famous circus usually surprises Slovakia with a novelty, but Varekai is celebrating its 15th birthday in Bratislava; its premiere was in Montreal in 2002. Since then, it has been presented in 13 venues of 23 countries, and a total of 10 million visitors have seen it. Recently, the ensemble gave their 5,000th performance. Varekai is accompanied by live band, whose drummer, Paul J. Bannerman, has been with the troupe since the very beginning of the show, i.e. for the fifteen years, and he has participated in all 5,000 performances. Cirque du Soleil has developed gradually, starting in 1984 as a group of 20 street artists into a huge organisation residing in Quebec and including almost 4,000 emplyoees, including 1,300-plus artists from more than 50 countries worldwide. Varekai will be presented in the Slovak capital seven times between April 27 and 30, with performances in the afternoons and evenings. A video shows how the stage for Varekai was built. Some want to send a clear message that the controversial fence is not welcome, others think the city coffers could have benefited. Font size: A - | A + In a protracted dispute, Bratislava city councillors again did not approve the lease of plots on Hviezdoslavovo Square in downtown Bratislava around which the security fence surrounding the building of the US Embassy stands. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Despite this decision, it is not very probable the fence will be removed quickly as, according to the Vienna Declaration, adjacent plots belong to the security zone of the embassy, regardless of the ownership. Bratislava councillors refused the lease of approximately 1,300 square metres of city land outside the embassy building by their vote on April 26. We clearly showed the Americans we are against the fence on our nicest square in Bratislava, councillor Martin Borgula said after the vote, as cited by the Pravda daily. Borgula, who believes that the embassy's security could be ensured even in the absence of a fence, has called for a meeting with the US Embassy with the aim of finding a compromise. On the other hand, deputy mayor of Bratislava, Iveta Plsekova, weighed in by saying that the council was supposed to decide on a land lease, not the fence as such. A decision concerning the fence should be made by the Old Town [borough] Construction Office ... What we were supposed to do was to decide on leasing the land on which the US Embassy is effectively operating, she said, adding that the city could have received a lot of money for renting the plot under the fence. History of the fence The area has been used by the embassy since 2005 as a security zone and is enclosed by a security fence, steel posts, barrier flower containers and a retractable car barrier. Councillors had already voted down the proposal on two other occasions two months ago and in September 2016. City Hall was seeking to lease the land to the embassy until August 15, 2019 at a cost of 481,000 annually. The embassy had a two-year option on renewing the lease contract and was supposed to pay one euro per square metre per day. However, if the embassy could have produced a valid construction permit for a new building, this would have slashed the sum all the way down to 3 euro cents per square metre per day. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a security zone is part of an embassy regardless of its ownership, the City Hall explained, as quoted by the TASR newswire. A land lease contract would provide a legal arrangement vis-a-vis the use of the security zone until the time that the embassy relocates. City coffers could have at least benefited from extra funding until that time, the City Hall added. Meanwhile, the embassy told TASR in February that it has made progress in its plans to relocate from Hviezdoslav Square and that it has found a suitable site for this purpose. The new facility is supposed to meet all security requirements and to blend in with its surroundings. The state body explained its inactivity with the argument that the difference between property and income established did not exceed the 1,500-multiple of the minimum wage for 2016, spokesman of the Bratislava Regional Prosecutors Office said. Font size: A - | A + For now, the court will not look into the origin of property belonging to the businessman Ladislav Basternak, as the Bratislava I District Prosecutors Office found, after studying the due documents, that the legal conditions for filing the proposal have not been fulfilled, spokesman of the Prosecutors Office, Michal Surek, told the SITA newswire. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement According to the law on origin of property, the difference between the stated income and the real assets should exceed the 1,500-multiple of minimum wage for the due year, i.e. 2016. The Prosecutors Office returned the file to the financial police. Read also: Read also: Basternak files complaint concerning his charge Read more The motion was filed at the end of last year to the Distirct Prosecutors Office by the Interior Ministry, the Police Presidium and the National Criminal Agency (NAKA). The Prosecutors Office asked Basternak, suspected of tax skulduggery and also known for contacts with top officials of the ruling Smer party, to bring evidence within 30 days about how he acquired the property specified in the file, and the value of this property. The businessman delivered his explanation with supplements to the Prosecutors Office on January 19. The office then asked the financial police to scrutinise his claims, and they received the answer by January 21. Then, after having studied the materials, the office decided in the matter. Police were dealing with seven cases involving Basternak, of which some have been decided upon in the meantime, while others are still open, SITA wrote on April 27. Read also: A police raid in his office on April 27 was followed by official charges of extremism. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled When MP of the Kotleba-LSNS party Stanislav Mizik commented on the list of personalities awarded by Slovak President Andrej Kiska on a social network on January 10, he commented on their Jewish origin, among other things. Mizik also wrote that Kiska was insane or willingly degraded the Slovak awards. He also commented negatively on the award for Michal Kascak, who is the organiser of the pervert festival Pohoda. Daniela Silanova, he wrote, is a fanatic of gispy habits. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Now, Mizik has been charged with extremist crimes, police informed on their social network, specifying that he is charged with the misdemeanour of producing extremist materials along with defamation of nation, race, and belief. Also, the police informed that there was a raid in his office on April 27, while adding that more information would follow. As Mizik has his office in the parliamentary building, two police cars stood in the premises of the Bratislava Castle on that day, the SITA newswire wrote. The LSNS MP entered the complex but fled, avoiding journalists. The charge in connection with comments on the presidents awards was confirmed also by the prosecutors office. The police started to act ex officio, while citizens motions were also registered at the prosecutors office. Both the Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko and Justice Minister Lucia Zitnanska slammed Miziks public comments. Not everyone has to agree with the awards and laureates, but screening them based on their origin, as the MP of Kotlebas party did on the internet, is far beyond the limits we can accept as a society, Zitnanska said, as quoted by SITA. Mizik has also problems in connection with his statements in parliament for which he was already fined 1,000. Slovakia keeps the lead position for the number of manufactured cars per citizen. Font size: A - | A + Last year 1,043,237 cars were made in Slovakia, almost 5,000 more than in 2015. This April, the ten-millionth car was made in Slovakia, the Automotive Industry Association of the Slovak Republic (AIA) announced. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The car industry in Slovakia is experiencing an increasing trend in production, officials of the association stated. The industry maintained its position from 2015 last year, when the number of manufactured cars exceeded one million cars for the first time. A similar result is expected again this year. With its 192 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Slovakia is the global leader in the number of manufactured cars per citizen. Purchasing power is still strong in Slovakia, people are interested in cars, said Juraj Sinay, the president of the AIA, as quoted by the TASR newswire. The registration of new cars in the first quarter of this year grew by almost 14 percent year-on-year, he added. Read also: Read also: Slovak cars dominate in Algeria Read more Among the strategical aims of the association is the support of an increased share in applied research and development. They also consider it necessary to support the development of subcontractors and the digitalisation of production and logistics, according to Sinay. The car industry is battling with the lack of a qualified labour force. Attention should be aimed towards the development of young people's technical skills and the implementation of law regarding expert education and preparation, the AIA said. The officials of the association think, that the school-reform document, Learning Slovakia (Uciace sa Slovensko) does not reflect practical needs in the field of high-school specialised education. Read also: Read also: Slovak AeroMobil starts taking pre-orders for its flying car Read more We suggest withdrawing this document and initiating a real analysis of schooling, said vice-president of the AIA Julius Hron, for TASR. Based on this analysis new school reform could be introduced, because education as it stands is only maintaining the current situation, he added. "We want to focus mainly on economic cooperation without intervening in the internal issues of our countries, the Slovak PM said after meeting his Belarus counterpart. Font size: A - | A + Belarus may be a fantastic bridge to the Eurasian market, while Slovakia may be a bridge for Belarus to Europe, is the opinion that emerged from the meeting of PM Robert Fico with Belarus PM Andrei Kobyakov, during his visit to Slovakia. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Slovakia is supporting the cancellation of sanctions against this country in favour of an Eastern partnership; mutual trade exchange to the value of 160 million is low, according to Fico, who added that Slovakia and Belarus are mentally, culturally and linguistically close. He described cooperation in the pharmaceutical field as excellent but noted that cooperation in the fields of nuclear energy and waste processing is also ongoing. A perspective on cooperation in agriculture, mainly in animal farming may also be taken. On Wednesday a memorandum concerning the defence industry was signed, said Fico as quoted by the SITA newswire, adding that Slovak and Belarus companies (MSM and BelOMO) oriented towards this field have an interest in building a company in Slovakia concerned with optical machines. Neither Belarus or Slovakia are big countries that can influence global affairs. Thats why we want to focus mainly on economic cooperation without intervening in the internal issues of our two countries, Fico said, as SITA informed. Belarus could specifically benefit from Slovakia's membership of the EU, Eurozone and Schengen. Belarus, as part of the Eurasia zone between Minsk and Moscow where there are no customs or tax barriers, could pave the way for Slovakia into the Eurasian market, according to Fico. Read also: Read also: President: Slovakia wants to stay at the core of the EU Read more Belarus considers Slovakia a strategic partner and is interested in cooperation, Kobyakov said. He pointed to the representation of Belarus in Agrokomplex in Nitra where they introduced agricultural products such as tractors. He thinks that his country may also use the experience of the car industry. Kobyakov confirmed that the main fields of cooperation should be pharmaceutical, agricultural (mainly information about cattle breeding), energy and waste processing and he would be glad to add the chemical industry to the list. Both PMs also signed a cooperation agreement in the field of science and technology. In addition, the Slovak office of standards, metrology and testing signed a memorandum concerning cooperation with the Belarus state committee for metrology. Small protest Activists Alena Krempaska and Peter Weisenbacher from the Human rights institute protested with two of their colleagues in front of the Government Office where Fico met Kobyakov. They asked Fico to talk not only about the economy with the Belarus PM but also about human rights and democracy in his country. More than month ago, the last dictator in Europe, Alexander Lukashenko, used violence to end protests against his regime. Citizens and activists protested against the non-social laws of the regime and they advocated gradual democratisation, Krempaska said for SITA. The police beat them and more than a hundred were arrested, she added, saying that this is the regime Slovakia will cooperate with. The status of Slovak nationals living in the UK is among the priorities of Slovakia in Brexit talks. Font size: A - | A + The foreign affairs ministers of the 27 member countries of the EU have agreed on a joint approach to the guidelines for the Brexit talks and this agreement suits Slovakia's interests well, said Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak, after a special meeting of the EU General Affairs Council in Luxembourg on April 27, which was devoted to Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement "The member countries came to an agreement fairly quickly and all that Slovakia regards as important has been included," Lajcak said following the meeting, as quoted by the TASR newswire. "Most importantly, this includes the interests of our citizens and also the need for the UK to observe its financial commitments towards the EU." Slovakia has two priorities vis-a-vis Brexit - maintaining the current status of Slovak nationals living in the UK and ensuring that the UK delivers on its financial commitments before the end of the present programme period; that is, by the end of 2020, said Lajcak. Admittedly, the status of Slovak citizens and entrepreneurs in the UK is likely to worsen somewhat, but the EU is committed to minimising the changes, he added. The unity of the EU27 was the overriding principle in the talks on Thursday. "We all pledged our support to chief negotiator Michel Barnier and I'd like this spirit of unity to last during the Brexit negotiations," said Lajcak. Even if a possible deal on collaboration between the EU and the UK is hammered out, mutual relations will never match those seen before the Brexit, he noted. The guidelines await approval at an extraordinary summit of the EU27 heads of state or government this Saturday. On May 22 the foreign affairs ministers are expected to meet again and give the go ahead for the concrete negotiating principles, TASR wrote. Honeywell, a global technology and manufacturing leader, unveiled its new home and building technology (HBT) solutions for the Middle East region at a key industry event held in Kuwait. The Honeywell Home and Building Technologies Symposium saw over 250 representatives from government ministries, end-users, consultants and partners discuss the key issues of building efficiency, safety and productivity across the Middle East. Honeywell HBT is a global business with more than 44,000 employees worldwide. It is a leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) and creates products, software and technologies found in more than 150 million homes and 10 million buildings worldwide. The company helps homeowners stay connected and in control of their comfort, security and energy use. Commercial building owners and occupants use these technologies to ensure their facilities are safe, energy efficient, sustainable and productive. Honeywell said its advanced metering hardware and software solutions help electricity, gas and water providers supply customers and communities more efficiently. The event was part of a regional roadshow where Honeywell hosted industry experts to discuss its connected offering as well as in-market specific factors such as regulations and regional country visions. These factors significantly impact the deployment of technologies that help to solve real business challenges and make the regions buildings more green, safe and productive. George Bou Mitri, the president of Honeywell Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, said: "Kuwait has been making steady progress towards reaching its economic diversification and sustainability goals." "With the announcement of the new Kuwait Vision 2035 earlier this year, a renewed focus has come about to realise a more green, safe and productive future for the country, and building efficiency is at the heart of this transformation," he stated. The roadshow took place in line with the new Kuwait Vision 2035 unveiled at the start of 2017 outlining environment as a key pillar of focus in its economic development plan to transform the country. Given that priority, Honeywell showcased its latest offerings and end-to-end developments in building automation and energy efficiency, security, connected homes, life safety solutions, and the IoT. "Honeywell has proudly been in the Middle East for more than 60 years, and the roadshow provided us with the opportunity to highlight how our cutting-edge building automation, energy efficiency and life safety portfolio addressed the latest market needs and meets new, stricter safety regulations as introduced by regional governments," said Tony Nasr, business leader, Honeywell Security and Fire for Middle East, Turkey & Africa. Stopping in Kuwait after visiting Oman and Dubai, the roadshow will next head to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE this year. Honeywell will also meet end users, consultants, partners and distributors across the region and demonstrate its capabilities for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), enterprise and industrial infrastructure environments. Honeywell technology is currently in use across a number of landmarks and high-profile projects in the Middle East, including at high-end hotels, iconic commercial buildings, major airports, universities, stadiums, and shopping malls.-TradeArabia News Service The UAE has been ranked 21st globally for foreign direct investments (FDI), a report said, highlighting that FDI inflows reached reaching $11 billion in 2014 and 2015, while greenfield investments nearly tripled to 129 projects. The United Arab Emirates has also pledged to continue to advance its technological readiness and deepen its commitment to innovation, said the A T Kearney FDI Confidence Index, noting that the countrys investor-oriented reforms include instituting updated bankruptcy and investment laws, simplifying the process for obtaining construction permits, reducing the time required to obtain an electricity connection, and introducing compensation for power outages. The IMF forecasts Emirati economic growth will strengthen to 2.5 percent this year and 3.1 percent in 2018. The stronger forecasted growth is in part a function of the reforms pursued by the government to spur foreign investment and diversify the economy away from oil. The governments recent efforts show signs of gaining significant traction. In the World Banks Doing Business 2017, the United Arab Emirates is highlighted as one of the top 10 economies that made the greatest improvements in business relations. Rudolph Lohmeyer, vice president of A T Kearney's Global Business Policy Council said: Investors clearly consider the UAE to be one of the strongest, most diversified economies in the region and value its position as a regional and global gateway. The UAE's ranking this year is a function of many factors, including excellence in governance, demonstrated resilience, world-class infrastructure and a deep, unwavering commitment to innovation." Three-fourths of companies plan to increase their foreign direct investment in the next three years, according to the 2017 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index from global strategy and management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. This is an increase from last years results, despite expectations that geopolitical events and rising anti-globalization could have put a damper on FDI worldwide. This years edition of the Index, entitled Glass Half Full, finds that while global business executives are increasingly concerned about the negative effects of politics and geopolitics, they are nevertheless more bullish on the global economy and FDI prospects. For the third year in a row, global business executives see an increase in geopolitical tensions as the greatest risk in the external environment. Investors concerns about geopolitics and rising protectionism are in fact likely driving some of their motivation to increase FDI. In an environment of slowing global trade growth and increasing barriers to trade, FDI may offer a localization strategy for investors in key markets. Investors told us that they are optimistic about the future of the global economy, global uncertainties notwithstanding, and see many quality opportunities for FDI worldwide, said Paul A Laudicina, founder of the FDI Confidence Index and chairman of A T Kearneys Global Business Policy Council. For the first time since the Global Financial Crisis, we saw a rise in the number of emerging markets on the Index. This could be an inflection point after years of increasing dominance by developed markets on the FDI Confidence Index. The United States again tops the FDI Confidence Index, holding its first-place position for the fifth year in a row. Investors are also more bullish on the US economic outlook than any other economy on the Index. Germany rises to the second position in the FDI Confidence Index, followed by China in third place. The UK and Canada round out the top five spots. Despite some continued economic volatility due to low global commodity prices, the Middle East and Africa make a comeback on the Index after a two-year absence. South Africa rounds out the Index in the 25th spot. This could signal a desire by global investors to diversify the location of the FDI after several years of an increasing flight to safety. TradeArabia News Service Weakening economic conditions, tapering off in demand for oil and gas, and an increase in real estate supply has led to increased pressure on the Bahrain real estate industry, according to leading real estate consultancy Cluttons. The result is a market defined by increased incentives, adjustments and service quality from landlords and developers as they fight to remain competitive in the market, said Cluttons in its latest Bahrain Spring 2017 Property Market Outlook report. A positive outcome of these conditions is a Golden Age for occupiers in Bahrain, with historically-low prices, a strong selection of exceptionally well-managed facilities and a developer approach that is inherently focused on market-suitable properties, it stated. According to Cluttons, the relative stability of residential rents across the kingdoms key expat-dominated submarkets appears to have ended following a largely flat 2016. This year has marked a change in conditions, with rents retreating across the board during the three months to the end of March. In real terms, this equates to a monthly fall of roughly BD80 ($210.67). Apartments (-8.3 per cent) experienced a sharper rate of rent corrections than villas (-6.9 per cent). However, both segments of the residential rental market experienced the fastest rate of decline since 2009 during the first quarter. Faisal Durrani, the head of research for Cluttons said: "Weaker economic conditions alone are not to blame for the correction now under way in the rental market in Bahrain. There has been a surge in the number of new residential developments being sold in the market, most of which are being acquired by Bahraini, or other Gulf investors." "A significant amount of this stock is filtering through to the rental market which is pushing supply ahead of demand albeit with a significant upside for renters and occupiers," remarked Durrani. In the sales market, the Cluttons report pointed out that the extent of this burgeoning supply surge was reflected by the fact that over 4,100 units are slated for completion in the upper end of the market within the next two years. By 2020, over 7,100 units are expected to be added to the existing residential supply. The knock-on impact on sales prices from the sudden boost to supply appears yet to materialise, with residential values holding steady and remaining unchanged for six consecutive quarters, it stated. At the end of Q1 2017, average residential capital values stood at BD948 per sq m, with apartments on Reef Island (BD1,233 per sq m) and villas on Amwaj Islands (BD1,275 per sq m) remaining the most expensive in the kingdom. Harry Goodson-Wickes, the head of Cluttons Bahrain & Saudi Arabia, said: "A lack of easy access to debt financing may deter purchasing appetite. Paradoxically, high volumes of unsold stock will also contribute to capital value volatility." "For now, the difficulty around controlling supply lies in the hands of developers who are promoting favourable payment plans. Those developers who continue to succeed in these difficult market conditions have focused on stock that meets specific market needs, and have a strong track-record of development in the Kingdom and across the Gulf," he stated. The Outlook forecasts that a correction in residential values is highly likely, particularly if the sales supply pipeline continues to expand unchecked at current rates. Goodson-Wickes said: "For the rental market, we forecast rents to continue dipping back, with average rental rates likely to end the year 10 per cent to 12 per cent down on 2016 as the economic pressures both within Bahrain and around the region remain in place." "We are however somewhat optimistic that 2018 will see a return to stability, should government infrastructure spending drive up overall economic activity levels in the way we expect," he noted. Last year, he stated, proved another stable one for Bahrains office and retail property markets with no movement in headline rents reported across the kingdoms key retail submarkets in Q1 of 2017. In the office market, rents have slipped in some locations to the most attractive levels on record, he noted. "Our agency team has worked with several landlords who have now broken rank to lower rates and drive occupancy levels in the office market, revealed Goodson-Wickes. "In addition to lowering rents, we are working with them to focus on incentives and high-quality property management services to create more favourable leasing terms in a difficult market this includes free parking, for example," he noted. Durrani said Cluttons' concern for the outlook of the office market remains with the proposed value-added-tax (VAT) introduction across the GCC, and the potential increase in operating costs for international occupiers who are already grappling with a strong US dollar. "An extra five per cent charge on top of rents and general operating costs may well suppress activity for longer. This does not however currently sit in our central scenario and we are optimistic for a heeded approach to allow the market some time to gain footing, with signs of stabilisation, or even a recovery in 2018," he added. New schemes in the retail sector such as The Avenues, which is being developed at a cost of BD45 million and is planned to open later this year; in addition to the regions largest Ikea store, scheduled to open in mid-2018, underscore the confidence being placed in the sector by occupiers as Bahrain continues to strengthen its retail offering, said Cluttons in its report. This has been achieved by drawing on appetite from weekend tourist traffic from Saudi Arabia, while also catering to domestic appetite for a more sophisticated retail offering, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Central New Delhi's Teen Murti Marg will be renamed after Israeli city Haifa ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Jewish-majority nation in July. By India Today Web Desk: Central New Delhi's Teen Murti Marg will be renamed after Israeli city Haifa ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Jewish-majority nation, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) said today. Modi is expected to visit Israel in July, the first by an Indian Prime Minister. Major defence deals, including the procurement of an air defence system for the Indian Navy, are likely to be sealed during the visit. advertisement The much-awaited deal for Barak-8 air defence missile systems for the navy and procurement of Spike anti-tank missiles for the Indian Army are also expected to be firmed up during Modi's visit to Tel Aviv. In February, India had cleared a Rs 17,000-crore deal for jointly developing with Israel a medium-range surface-to-air missile (MR-SAM) for the Army. Modi's visit coincides with the establishment of 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Also read | After Gurugram, will Shimla become Shyamala? Also read | PM Modi flags off UDAN flight from Shimla, anyone can now fly at Rs 2,500 --- ENDS --- Mohamed Alabbar, founder and chairman of Dubai-based Emaar Properties, shared the success story of Emaar with over 80 students at the prestigious Harvard Business School in Boston. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Sid Yog selected Emaar as the subject of a case study titled "Emaar: The Center of Tomorrow, Today" for his second-year elective MBA course 'Investing in Emerging Markets'. The case study on Emaar was conducted by Yog and research associates Esel Cekin and Marc Homsy, following an intensive review of the companys operations and detailed interviews with the senior management. The case evaluates how Emaar addressed the challenges of the global financial crisis and the tough measures that Alabbar put in place to steer the company to become the only real estate developer in Dubai to have continuous positive returns during the global financial crisis. It also recognises the transformational impact that Emaar has had on the physical landscape of Dubai. During his visit to the Harvard Business School campus, Alabbar presented Emaars growth story. In less than two decades of operation, Emaar has become the leading player in the Middle Easts property development industry and has delivered highly sought-after residential communities, iconic shopping malls and hotel developments. Alabbar said: Our founding vision was to shape the future through our pioneering model of integrated master-planned communities. Today, we have defined the future of cities through our world-class developments that not only deliver a sense of belonging to residents but also catalyse local economies. We have always focused on long-term value creation for our stakeholders and we consistently deliver on our promise. Alabbar shared his strategic outlook for the company and highlighted its digital transformation. This is the era of digital transformation for Emaar. Across all aspects of our operations we are leveraging the potential of digital technologies to enhance efficiency, productivity and customer service standards. Todays era is defined by how agile, flexible and responsive we are not only to the demands of customers but also to a shifting market landscape. Alabbar also presented e25, a new start-up initiative that he has launched within Emaar. e25 is a team of 25 under 25 year olds that will bring a new engine of ideas and innovations to the company and shape its future leaders. - TradeArabia News Service Bahrains Labour Fund Tamkeen has announced that 60 teams, out of 110, have qualified to continue on to the Business Planning phase of the Mashroo3i competition, a youth business plan scheme. The qualification follows the successful completion of an Orientation Training Program, said a statement. Mashroo3i, organized by Tamkeen, is a national platform for Bahraini youth aimed at promoting entrepreneurial values and supporting them in transforming their business ideas and dreams into feasible business plans. The competition targets youth aged between 18 to 30 years who are passionate about entrepreneurship in order to cultivate and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs and support the overall growth of the kingdoms economy. Mashroo3i aims to prepare the next generation and help them become successful entrepreneurs. We are proud of the caliber of teams involved in this years edition and are closely monitoring their progress as they creatively convert their ideas into businesses, said manager of youth schemes at Tamkeen, Mohammed Ahmadi. This is the fourth edition of the competition and we are happy with the response received so far from the teams. All participating teams, which totals up to 110 teams, have successfully completed the Orientation Training phase; out of which 60 teams were shortlisted to continue on to the Business Planning Phase of the competition. The teams were shortlisted based on set guidelines including evaluation of business ideas and individuals characteristics, he added. TradeArabia News Service Netherlands-based Damen Shipyards Group has announced the successful completion of sea trials of the Multi-role Aviation Training Vessel (MATV) MV Sycamore. The sea trials included testing of all on-board military systems. Following final vessel handover, MV Sycamore will perform diverse training and support duties for the Royal Australian Navy, said a statement from the company. In addition to the more traditional elements of sea trials such as manoeuvring and speed tests, the MV Sycamore was put through her paces with an extensive testing programme of all on-board military systems, it said. This included testing of the air traffic radar, flight deck lighting and firefighting, flight deck communication systems and helicopter traverse installation procedures. The results of the sea trials were successful. All systems and processes of the vessel were accepted by representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, it added. Roland Briene, sales director Asia Pacific, Damen, said: We are proud to hear that the MV Sycamore has passed her first tests with flying colours. Based on our companys successful and proven OPV series, the MATV is a very versatile ship, he said. The chief role of the vessel will be to provide a training platform for all possible helicopter-related operations, such as helicopter deck landings and take off, helicopter (in-flight) refuelling operations and air traffic control. However, Damens versatile MATV design will enable the Royal Australian Navy to accomplish numerous other secondary tasks also. To this end, the MV Sycamore will be able to undertake torpedo and mine recovery operations, navigation training, dive support, officer sea familiarisation, target towing and consort duties as well as unmanned aerial vehicle support. Furthermore, the 94-m-long vessel has a large storage capacity, which gives her the potential to be mobilised in humanitarian relief operations. The coming weeks will see the MV Sycamore being prepared for her maiden voyage to her home port of Sydney, Australia, where she is expected to arrive at the end of May, it said. Briene added: We are making headway towards our ambitions of building further vessels for the Australian Navy, having recently submitted out tender for the SEA 1180 Program. It is our intention to work in close concert with local industry for the project, building not only the required vessels, but a sustainable shipbuilding industry for Australia with strong export potential, he concluded. TradeArabia News Service Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), a globally recognised aerospace company headquartered in Dubai, has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire 100 per cent of the AWAS group of companies, a global leader in aircraft leasing. The acquisition is from funds managed by Terra Firma Capital Partners and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Operating for more than 30 years, AWAS is one of the worlds leading aircraft leasing companies, with a fleet of 263 owned, managed and committed narrow and wide-body aircraft, including a pipeline of 23 new aircraft on order to be delivered before the end of 2018. AWAS currently provides customized aviation solutions to over 85 airline customers in over 45 countries, said a statement. The combined company will have an owned, managed and committed fleet of 394 aircraft with a total value of over $14 billion. It will serve over 110 airline customers in over 55 countries from offices in Dubai, Ireland, Singapore and the US. DAE managing director Khalifa H AlDaboos said: This acquisition of AWAS is strategically compelling and propels DAE into a top 10 aircraft leasing platform. Our leasing business has been growing at a rapid clip and this acquisition will more than double the current size of our business, providing the necessary scale for DAE to best serve its customers. DAE chief executive officer Firoz Tarapore said: Over three decades AWAS has built a respected brand, a highly experienced workforce, and a world-class platform with all key capabilities in-house. We are delighted to be able to acquire this platform, and to combine it with our capabilities to offer our global customers an even wider range of aviation solutions. In addition, this combination results in a well-diversified portfolio with the ability to generate strong risk-adjusted returns. The transaction will be financed by DAEs internal resources and committed debt financing. The transaction is subject to required regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2017, said the statement. - TradeArabia News Service UAEs Telecommunications Regularity Authority (TRA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dubai Police General HQ to enhance cooperation in fields of information security, and work together to resolve related issues. The agreement was signed by Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA general director and Major General Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri, commander-in-chief of Dubai Police. This agreement includes 13 key subjects, including cooperation and joint action between the two sides in a number of areas related to information security, coordination mechanism for exchanging information and cooperation in resolving issues related to information security crimes within the common areas between the two parties. Also, coordination in the field of spectrum and wireless devices, coordination in the case of harmful interference or trans boundary signals, support by the Dubai Police General HQ in the field of inspection and judicial control, facilitation of TRA functions at border crossings of the country when needed, exchange of expertise in telecommunications and in emergencies and crises. Al Mansoori said: "We express our deep appreciation for the pivotal role played by the Dubai Police General HQ in establishing stability and security in the country. Information security, protecting virtual borders, websites and the infrastructure of the telecommunications sector is one of the main tasks of mutual interest between the two parties. This reflects the wise leadership's directions in providing decent living conditions for all residents to ensure the continued use of smart and electronic services around the clock in all circumstances and situations, including emergencies. This agreement strengthens Dubai and the UAEs position as one of the safest countries in the region and the world. Which enhances the trust in the investment sector and entrepreneurs to start their business from the UAE, he added. Major General Abdullah Khalifa praised the cooperation with TRA and its great role-play in serving the country and society. He pointed out that the agreement is in the interest of enhancing the security and safety of the society especially in the aspects of electronic and intelligent information security in addition to coordinating the joint work between the two sides in this context. TradeArabia News Service Bahrains Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) will begin the migration of 10 government websites as a trial of Cloud Computing - developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The trial phase is intended to complete the process of full migration during one year. This came about following the signing agreement with the technology investment firm C5 Capital. The websites comprise the Ministry of Justice & Islamic Affairs; Ministry of Health; Central Bank of Bahrain; National Oil & Gas Authority; Survey & Land Registration Bureau; Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning; Ministry of Transportations & Telecommunication; Public Prosecution; Capital Governorate and the Northern Area Municipality. iGA chief executive Mohamed Ali AlQaed said that implementing this project comes to enhance authority efforts of keeping pace with the latest international advancements in the IT sector and provide it to government institutions by offering solutions and alternatives for a unified archiving of big data as well as hosting the government websites via AWS cloud computing platform. He also indicated that such initiative will contribute in employing government direction to save costs and operation flexibility in public entities by specifying a single cloud computing that gathers websites of every entity and ministry in the country at the same time enabling the public entities to benefit from the single cloud with higher speed, less time, minimal costs and maximum protection. AlQaed also stressed that such migration will open wide doors for Bahrains entities and ministries to enhance and increase its production on the short and long runs. The migration process will redirect the exerted efforts, by entities, to strategic projects and plans as it will save time and efforts. Entities and ministries will focus on designing their work by simplifying efforts of ensuring security and maintenance of their websites which requires logistic services round-the-clock. Migration will assist its work performance and the delivery of high-quality services by relying on the available national competences. The Information & eGovernment Authority, in collaboration with C5 Capital, will work on starting the migration process of the 10 websites to the cloud platform as a pilot stage by assigning a working team to carry-out such task under the direct supervision of the authority. Furthermore, completing all the preparations in the first phase while ensuring the maintenance of all data and information during the transporting process. C5 Capital is a technology investment firm that supports innovation and is a specialist in cyber security, data analytics and cloud computing. During last year, the company announced the launch of the technology programme Cloud 10 that is developed to speed technology businesses; operating with AWS services. TradeArabia News Service Huawei, a leading global ICT solutions provider, today announced the launch of OpenLab Dubai, the companys first, to serve customers and partners in the Middle East. Huawei plans to add seven new OpenLabs across the world in 2017, and in the next three years will invest $200 million and appoint nearly 1,000 people globally, bringing the total number of OpenLabs to 20 by the year 2019, the company said. OpenLab Dubai is committed to providing innovative solutions for IoT, cloud computing, large data, intelligent analysis, eLTE, converged communications and other new technologies to build public safety, smart city, oil and gas solutions, and has attracted YITU, Zenith, Walkbase, 7G , IOmniscient, Nedap, Richfit and more than 20 other partners. With the "Platform + Ecosystem, accelerate the Middle East digital transformation of the industry", OpenLab Dubai brings together partners and customers from around the world to discuss the importance of collaboration in the development of a local digital ecosystem. At the launch ceremony, Fan Siyong, president of public sector, Huawei, said: The digital transformation is causing disruption across every industry. Huawei has established OpenLabs across the world with the theme "platform + ecosystem", and is committed to working with global multi-specialty and industry partners to build customer-centric, innovative industry solutions to promote digital transformation and promote ecosystem development through the creation of an 'open, flexible and safe platform that fully supports the ecosystem. Huawei is committed to helping governments and enterprises in the Middle East to rely on new ICT technology and applications to maintain steady growth, achieve excellence and enhance the competitiveness of the ICT industry in the region. Huaweis OpenLab Dubai was built based on local market demands, talents, and technologies, and will focus on cooperation between enterprises, services, partners and customers in Middle East. "The special climate, resources, culture and industry in the Middle East pose different challenges compared to other regions," said Xijiang Lin, director of Middle East Solution Development Center, Huawei EBG. OpenLab Dubai will aggregate the world's best resources to meet local digital transformation needs, and continuously enhance the ICT platform capabilities and development of local ecosystems. OpenLab Dubai is focused on building capabilities to easily apply technical solutions in the actual network environment; developing competitive, commercially viable and industry-oriented solutions; empowering innovation capabilities, rapid response to market demand; achieving industrial chain value aggregation and a customer/partner/vendor win-win-win situation. OpenLab Dubai has been jointly launched with more than 30 solutions and over 20 partners in Public Safety, Smart city and Digital Oil & Gas. It gives customers a hands-on experience in these areas. Public safety sector: Based on Huaweis strong infrastructure of wireless network, eLTE-LiTRA, cloud computing, large data technology integration, Dubai OpenLab is working with YITU, Zenith and other partners, for face and license plate recognition, population density analysis, public opinion analysis solutions, working towards creating a harmonious and safe social environment Smart City: Huawei combines low-power, wide-coverage NB-IoT / eLTE-IoT, Smart Gateway, cloud computing and large data, working with Honeywell, Nedap, Johnson Controls, and other partners. Huawei is also working with Esri in data management to jointly build intelligent parking, intelligent buildings, smart meters, intelligent lights and many other smart solutions. Oil and Gas: Huawei will combine 4G wireless broadband network eLTE with Honeywell and Emerson's various oilfield sensing devices to provide digital field-wide connection solutions to solve real-time communication problems in oil fields, help oilfield visualization production, improve oil recovery and reduce security risks. As part of Huawei's commitment to innovation, OpenLab Dubai will be connected to Huawei's global OpenLab network, to promote new business models, market demand and technical solutions for the exchange. Russell Hammad, CEO , Zenith; Mohamed Hassan, wireless business development manager, Honeywell; Alaa ElShimy, managing director and vice president, Huawei Enterprise Business Middle East; Xijiang Lin, director of Middle East Solution Development Center, Huawei EBG; and Dr Adel Bolbol Fernandez, SE & Data Analytics SME, Esri signed strategic cooperation agreements to mark the opening of the Huawei OpenLab Dubai. At the opening ceremony, Esri, Zenith, Honeywell shared their solutions in public safety, smart city and oil and gas sectors, and their involvement with Huaweis OpenLab Dubai aiming for a successful digital transformation trend. At the opening, Huawei also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Zenith, eSri, NeA and Smart IOT to establish long-term partnerships aimed at providing customers with industry-leading solutions. TradeArabia News Service Alstom and Airbus have announced the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement in the field of cybersecurity. The agreement was signed by Marc Fontaine, digital transformation officer at Airbus and Pascal Clere, senior vice president of Alstom's Digital Mobility division, at the Airbus site of Toulouse-Blagnac. The increase in cyberattacks and the expansion of the Internet of Things and Big Data require new measures to protect transport systems. In response to this challenge, this cooperation will support the emergence of a new risk management model adapted to the evolution of the transport industry. In particular, the programme will focus on the co-development of new analysis services concerning the vulnerability of transport systems, new shared core protection technologies and the definition of a new generation of operational security centres adapted to the industrial sector. Alstom will offer its customers products that comply with the latest legislation and governmental specifications, and will be able to propose audits of their customers existing solutions to increase protection levels. "We are proud to cooperate with Airbus, the world leader in aviation, on this programme, which will provide operators with innovative and efficient cybersecurity solutions for safer transport. This cooperation is fully in line with our ambition to be the precursor of the field of railway cybersecurity," said Clere. TradeArabia News Service Saudi Arabias King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has issued a royal decree to restore financial allowances for civil servants and military personnel that had been cut under austerity measures, media reports said. The royal order returns all allowances, financial benefits, and bonuses to civil servants and military staff, the Arab News report said, citing the decree. In September, Saudi Arabia cut ministers salaries by 20 per cent and scaled back financial perks for public sector employees in one of the most drastic measures to save money at a time of low oil prices, it added. In the series of royal decrees issued on Saturday night, King Salman also ordered holding of final examinations for all phases of public and university education before the start of Ramadan, Saudi Gazette said in its report. King Salman also announced Cabinet reshuffles and key appointments of emirs and deputy emirs in several provinces as well as other senior positions. Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman was named the Kingdoms new minister of state for energy affairs. Awad Al-Awad has been appointed minister of culture and information, replacing Adel Al-Turaifi. Minister of Communications Muhammad Al-Suwail has been relieved and Muhammad Al-Sawaha was appointed as new minister. Prince Khalid Bin Salman has been appointed Saudi Arabias Ambassador to the US in place of Prince Abdullah Bin Faisal Al-Saud. Minister of Civil Service Khaled Al-Araj was removed from his post and Essam Bin Saeed will be in charge of the ministry, according to the report. Eng Ibrahim Abdulrahman Al-Muamar was appointed as governor of the General Authority for Investment; Mohammed Abdulmalik Al Al-Shiekh was named president of the General Authority for Sports; Awad bin Saleh bin Abdullah Al-Awad was appointed chairman of board of directors of the General Authority for Culture; and Ali bin Abdulrahman Alhazmi was appointed governor of Saline Water Conversion Corporation. Al Ghandi Auto, a leading General Motors dealership selling Chevrolet and GMC vehicles in Dubai and the North Emirates, signed an agreement with the Dubai Camel Racing Club (Dubai CRC) for the sale of 112 Chevrolet vehicles. The sale includes 109 Trailblazers and three Tahoes. Ali Saeed Bin Saroud, executive manager, Dubai Camel Racing Club, said: We have chosen Al Ghandi Auto from a line of other auto dealers in Dubai because of the great commitment and flexibility shown in their sales proposition. We were looking for the ideal vehicles that mixed luxury and practicality, and were happy with the decision to choose Al Ghandi Auto as a valued partner in this deal. Mark Jenkins, CEO, Al Ghandi Auto, said: I am delighted to hand over the keys of 112 brand new Chevrolet vehicles to the Dubai Camel Racing Club. This deal proves once again the strong positioning of Al Ghandi Auto in the local market and the commitment of its fleet unit to finalize remarkable deals, despite the global market conditions. The new Chevrolet vehicles will be used as prizes at the annual Dubai Camel Racing Festival, organized by the Dubai Camel Racing Club. The Festival, which marks the end of the Al Marmoum racing season, is a high-profile event, which attracts more than 12,000 camels from the GCC countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE, offers a staggering Dh90 million ($24.5 million) in prizes that is inclusive of 300 luxury cars and cash prizes totalling more than Dh30 million. TradeArabia News Service By Santosh Chaubey: The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has refuted Pakistan's claim of India and Afghanistan funding the group and its various factions to perpetrate terror against it. According to a report, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khurasani said that the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was using a former TTP spokesperson to further its propaganda. Khurasani said that Pakistan was using a prisoner to drumbeat its agenda. advertisement The ISI had released a video yesterday showing the confession of former TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan, in which he claimed that he surrendered after finding that India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) were funding the TTP for terror activities in Pakistan. The TTP has called the confessional video a bunch of lies that suits the Pakistani establishment. Ehsan and many other disgruntled TTP commanders had split from the TTP and formed a splinter faction Jamaat-ur-Ahrar (JuA) in September 2014, headed by Maulana Qasim Khorasani. Ehsan has also claimed that the JuA chief underwent treatment in India after he was injured in a terror attack in Afghanistan. JAMAAT-UR-AHRAR Ehsan, who became the spokesperson of the breakaway faction, had claimed that the JuA would work independently and had no connections with the TTP headed by Mullah Fazlullah. According to Ehsan, the stated goal of the JuA was to implement Sharia globally, whose campaign had been initiated from Pakistan. Since its formation, the JuA had claimed responsibility for many deadly terror attacks in Pakistan, including the Easter Sunday bombing in Lahore in 2016 that killed over 70. Earlier, on April 17, the ISI had announced the unconditional surrender of JuA spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan. The Pakistani media had then claimed that it was the most high-profile surrender by a senior Taliban commander in Pakistan in years. ALSO READ: Pakistan releases Taliban ex-spokesman's video alleging India's role in terror funding India wants Kulbhushan Jadhav's health certificate from Pakistan ALSO WATCH: India demands consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav --- ENDS --- GE Power, a unit of General Electric, has signed its largest ever services deal with Algerian utility Sonelgaz that will lead to digital industrial transformation of Sonelgazs plants and one that will create hundreds of jobs. The landmark deal includes long-term operations and maintenance (O&M) services for 10 Sonelgaz plants throughout the country that generate 11 GW of power, technology upgrades that will enhance energy efficiency to deliver more than 420 MW of additional power, and the introduction of GEs digital solutions. Together, these capabilities will strengthen the operational efficiency and productivity of the plants. They will also help save up to $2 billion in gas that can be made available for sale in international markets. The Algerian government and Sonelgaz have a clear vision for the future of the countrys power sector, Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Power said. The emphasis on building industrial capacity and the focus on the digital transformation of power plant assets are long-term investments in the future of the country. GE is honoured to strengthen our collaboration with Sonelgaz and help create a vibrant local ecosystem for the power sector that will help meet the needs of people and various industries across Algeria. The agreement was signed by president and CEO of Sonelgaz SPE, Sabri Lezhari; and president and CEO of GE Northwest Africa, Touffik Fredj, in the presence of the Prime Minister of Algeria, Abdelmalek Sellal and other dignitaries. The signing ceremony took place at the GE Algeria Turbines (GEAT) plant in Ain Yagout, a joint venture created in 2014 by GE and Sonelgaz, which will manufacture gas turbines and steam turbines for Sonelgazs power generation needs. Speaking at the occasion, Minister of Energy, Noureddine Boutarfa said, The governments top priority is to strengthen power generation in the country through a highly efficient, sustainable, and productive infrastructure. The new GEAT facility, which manufactures high-end equipment for the power sector, and the development of the Maintenance Des Equipements Industriels (MEI) shop to manufacture spare parts are a strong value-add to the economy as they will boost our exports, enhance the efficiency of our power plants and create new jobs for Algerian youth. Further, the digital transformation of the power plants will enable us to optimize the use of our natural resources, and in turn, create added value for the economy. GEs expertise in digital industrial technologies will contribute to enhancing the efficiency of the power sector, as well as the skills of Algerian professionals through knowledge sharing and hands-on training. The agreement, which also highlights GEs Fleet360 total plant solutions capabilities, includes the second largest Industrial Internet software deal to date for GE Power. Sonelgaz has selected GEs Asset Performance Management and Operations Optimization software applications to monitor and analyze data drawn from thousands of sensors throughout its power plants. The software leverages advanced data analytics to predict and eliminate unplanned downtime, and improve power plant productivity. GEs software is built on Predix, a data platform purpose-designed for the scale and complexity of industrial data. Algeria is focused on building a diversified economy and strengthening the operational efficiency of its power sector and natural gas generation and distribution assets, said Mustapha Guitouni, president and CEO of Sonelgaz. The opening of GEAT and the digital industrial transformation of our plants are significant steps forward in achieving our economic vision of industrial diversification, boosting productivity, and maximizing asset utilization. GEs advanced suite of digital technologies will help transform our power plants, build local talent, and strengthen the culture of localization. Furthermore, GE will work with Algerian Engineering Services Companys (Algesco) engineers to repair its 9FA gas turbine technology locally and help create a local centre of excellence for turbine repairs. First established in 1993, Algesco is a joint venture of GE with Sonatrach and Sonelgaz. GE will also train Sonelgaz field engineers and operators on industry best practices to strengthen their expertise and competitiveness, which will potentially enable Sonelgaz to collaborate with GE on future O&M projects in Africa. The new agreement will also drive the development of a local supply chain with MEI, an affiliate of Sonelgaz, to manufacture spare parts for GEs turbines in Algeria. GE will qualify MEI to manufacture spare parts as early as 2017, and it will become a part of its international supply chain. TradeArabia News Service The increased transparency of Saudi Aramco after the public offer will attract higher foreign capital and further boost market confidence in Saudi Arabia, says a new report. The report by Al Rajhi Capital, a leading financial services provider in the kingdom, looks at Saudi Aramco to see if the IPO of state-owned companies could lead to efficiency gains. The study finds that following listing on the exchange, state-owned companies generally witness an improvement in productivity. We also note that the Board has deep expertise with diverse backgrounds and industries, it said. The listing of state-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco, the worlds largest producer, is at the centre of the governments diversification plan, Al Rajhi Capital noted. Aramco has total reserves of ~311bn BOE (including 261bn barrels of oil). According to the OPEC monthly report, Saudi Arabia produced ~9.99 million barrels per day (MMbb/d) in March, accounting for more than 10 per cent of the global supply. While the valuation of Saudi Aramco is still under study, some media reports indicate that the valuation could be significantly higher than Exxons enterprise value ($390 billion) and Petrochina ($291 billion). By selling ~5 per cent stake (likely by mid-2018), Saudi Aramco IPO could be the largest IPO ever (currently Alibaba holds that honour with an issue size of $21.8 billion). The proceeds from the IPO will be used to invest in other sectors, in order to diversify the Kingdoms sources of income away from oil. The government is looking to list the worlds largest oil producer in at least two exchanges, including the Tadawul. TradeArabia News Service Falcon Aviation, the UAEs leading business aviation services, charter and aircraft management company, is bolstering its service offering at its new Dubai South VIP Terminal at Al Maktoum International (DWC), with the inauguration of a new VIP Heliport. The Heliport will be run and managed by Falcon Aviation personnel and will be available to all operators, corporates and private individuals arriving with their business jets at the Dubai South VIP Terminal. Demand is expected especially from customers arriving from all over the GCC, India and the Far East. The new helipad, situated adjacent to the VIP Terminal, has space for three large executive helicopters. It will be open for use on an as required basis with just two hours notice. Falcon initially envisages demand for five movements a day and will have two helicopters available for charter, complementing its established fixed wing and helicopter business at Al Bateen Executive Airport, Abu Dhabi. The Heliport, the first in the region, will facilitate quick and convenient helicopter charters between Dubai and Abu Dhabi in just 30 minutes. Other significant time savings on popular destinations include: Dubai South to Ras Al Khaimah - 45 minutes; Dubai South - Diba, 45 minutes; Dubai South- Fujairah 40 minutes and to Qasr Al Sarab Resort - 1 hour, 15 minutes. We are very pleased with our progress as we realise our strategic three part plan to bolster our footprint in Dubai and the UAE, said Falcon Aviations chief pilot onshore - VVIP Operations and Accountable manager of Atlantis Helipad Captain George Prentzas. Our goal is to build important infrastructure in the region, not just for our own operations, but to support others as they expand too. We are very proud to be opening up this important facility that will take clients directly to their destination of choice, said Captain Raman Oberoi, Falcon Aviations COO. We will have a dedicated team to support the heliport activity, to help with flight planning and pre booking slots. "We opened our luxurious FBO last December coinciding with MEBAA, and now we are opening the new Falcon Heliport for VIP customers and corporates. Our 20,000 sqm MRO hangar facility is underway and will be completed by end of 2018," he said. Falcon Aviation will offer dedicated maintenance support for Gulfstream, Embraer and Bombardier aircraft accredited by the GCAA, FAA and EASA. It will also offer 24/7 AOG support and aircraft parking. - TradeArabia News Service SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka and a member of the oneworld airline alliance, has announced plans to boost services to some of its most valued global markets. SriLankan Airlines has reinforced its existing services to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent and China, while targeting fresh destinations in Australasia, according to plans revealed at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) in Dubai today. With increasing demand being experienced from countries of the GCC, SriLankan Airlines will boost capacity on the Dubai-Colombo route by making it an all-widebody service served by the airline's Airbus A330-300 aircraft. The airline will also look to add further frequencies on the route by this winter, the airline said. SriLankan Airlines chief commercial officer Siva Ramachandran said: SriLankan Airlines has been strategically expanding its reach in the region, thereby offering our passengers an enhanced travel experience and an extensive range of destinations. As the national carrier of Sri Lanka, whilst sourcing tourists from new markets, we also offer our passengers seamless connectivity across our global route network. The airline will continue to explore potential expansion opportunities in the Gulf region in order to facilitate more travellers. SriLankan is also adding three new destinations in India, which is one of the airline's key focus destinations for transit and tourist traffic. With the addition of flights to Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam, the airline will now fly over 120 flights per week to 12 Indian cities, making it the largest foreign airline to fly to India. The airline will also look to add frequencies to its daily flights to Mumbai and New Delhi, come July. SriLankan Airlines also intends to widen its international reach by launching a foray into Australasia, with flights planned to Melbourne this winter. Initially, four flights a week are planned between Colombo and Melbourne, as the airline anticipates to serve leisure and VFR travellers between the two countries, as well as carrying connecting passengers from the Middle East and the Subcontinent. With tourist demand on the increase from the Far East, SriLankan also plans to beef up its services to the Asia-Pacific region. The airline, which currently flies to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Kunming in China, with a total of 15 weekly flights, will now fly daily to Guangzhou from July. The airline will also further enhance its connectivity to Hong Kong. In addition to the three weekly services operated currently via Bangkok, the airline will introduce non-stop services to Hong Kong with two more additional frequencies. The airline will also introduce three additional terminators between Colombo and Bangkok in its triple daily services to the Thai capital. SriLankan Airlines today flies an all-Airbus fleet, which includes the sophisticated A330-300 and A320neo aircraft connecting to 100 destinations in 47 countries (including codeshare operations). TradeArabia News Service Royal Caribbean Arabia, the regional headquarters of the world-renowned cruise brand, has honoured travel agents for their dedication and excellence in the industry in a selection of awards that were announced today at Arabian Travel Market 2017. The annual awards, which is in its 11th year, celebrates outstanding travel companies working in conjunction with the cruise brand across the GCC, Levant and Egypt. This years awards includes categories such as Sales Excellence which recognises achievement, and the Ambassador Awards for those who have given extraordinary support to the overall brand. In addition, the Royal Caribbean Innovative Marketing Award celebrates a single agency that has gone above and beyond in its marketing efforts to help promote Royal Caribbean as the luxury cruise line favoured by leisure vacationers and corporates in the region. Each and every year Royal Caribbean Arabia honours outstanding travel companies across the GCC and Levant region, a marriage of two parts that makes Royal Caribbean the sustained success and globally respected brand that it is today. Our consistent growth would surely not have been possible without the valuable support of our regional trade partners and I would like to personally thank each and every one of them for their outstanding efforts. Mohamed Saeed, general manager Middle East, Royal Caribbean Arabia. The winners for the awards are as follows: Ambassadors: Al Kaatib Travel Agency Cruise Center Transworld Travel Sales Excellence: Al Tayyar Travel Group Darwish Travel Company Explore the Wonders Farhat International Tours Imagine Cruising (in partnership with DNATA Travel) Jumbo Travel Kurban Travel Innovative Marketing House of Travel With a total of 24 innovative ships, travelling to 272 destinations across the globe on six continents, Royal Caribbean International offers travellers an alternative way to see the world. From island hopping through Greece to discovering the blend of history and modern architecture around the Arabian Gulf, Royal Caribbean International offers the chance to visit multiple destinations on innovative, luxurious ships known for their first-at-sea features. - TradeArabia News Service Hilton has signed a management agreement with Khamas Group of Investments and Bethahab Group to open a hotel under the Curio Collection by Hilton brand in Dubai. The 252-room hotel will be located in Business Bay, a fast growing district in the Emirate. Curio Collection by Hilton offer one-of-a-kind discoveries without redefining the independent spirit of a property. With its Arabesque design concept borrowing influences from the regions rich heritage, the hotel will have its own unique character and personality, appealing to curious travelers seeking authentic Middle Eastern experiences. Curio Collection allows owners to develop unique concepts for upper upscale hotels and plug them into our Hilton system. said Carlos Khneisser, vice president, development, Middle East and North Africa, Hilton. Business Bay is home to a number of developments designed to increase Dubais ability to provide stand out experiential attractions as part of Dubais Tourism Vision 2020. So we see the location as ideally suited to working with an owner who is committed to designing and developing an equally distinctive hospitality experience. The hotel will be located on the Dubai Water Canal, a 3.2 km waterway that winds through the city and connects to the Arabian Gulf. It will be near a 12 km circular waterfront promenade which will include 16 parks, five marinas, floating retail and dining outlets on the water and a yacht club when complete. The property will also offer easy access to Sheikh Zayed Road and major attractions such as the Dubai Opera, the Dubai Mall, the Dubai Fountains and the Burj Khalifa. Bader Mohamed Yousuf Bukhamas, owner of Khamas Group of Investments, and Juma Obaid Mohammad Alsayegh Ahli, chairman of Bethahab Group, said: We are delighted to partner with Hilton to open a Curio property in Dubais Business Bay. Once open in the thriving Business Bay area, the property will offer guests the spirit of an independent hotel with unique architecture and interior design, while offering the services and consistency of Hilton. The upper upscale hotel will feature four dining outlets including a lobby lounge, an outdoor lounge offering shisha and an all-day dining restaurant with stunning views of downtown Dubai, business bay and the Dubai canal. All guests will have access to spa, salon and fitness facilities along with an outdoor pool. The hotel will also offer a business centre, five meeting rooms and two boardrooms. Business Bay offers a picturesque waterfront promenade with floating retail outlets, making it an ideal area for travelers seeking authentic experiences, said Mark Nogal, global head, Curio Collection by Hilton. This Business Bay hotel, with its prime location and distinctive design, will be a perfect fit for the Curio Collection and a great addition to our growing portfolio of Curio properties in the Middle East. This latest property adds to the Curio brands growing portfolio in the Middle East which will see The Rosemont Hotel & Residences, Curio Collection by Hilton open in Dubai in 2018. The regions debut property, AlRayyan Hotel Doha, Curio Collection by Hilton opened in Qatar in 2016. The hotel will be located at Al Abraj Street, Business Bay, Dubai. - TradeArabia News Service This year's Arabian Travel Market (ATM) proved to be the most successful for Hospitality Management Holding (HMH) as it witnessed the appointment of a new CEO, launch of a new luxury brand as well as the addition of a superb property in Port Sudan. Marking its 14th year of participation at the Arabian Travel Market, Brett Schafer, chief executive officer of Faisal Holding, said: ATM 2017 was notable for us as we enter a new phase of growth and expansion. We were delighted to welcome to our team Aboudi Asali as the chief executive officer of HMH. Following this key development, we successfully launched a new luxury five-star brand Bahi Hotels & Resorts which is a fantastic addition to our impressive portfolio of existing brands serving. Consolidating our presence in Sudan, where we have three well-established hotels in operation, we added EWA Port Sudan Hotel & Apartments that is expected to open by Q4 2017. Over the years HMH has established a solid reputation as a fully integrated hotel management company. Elaborating on the groups success, Ferghal Purcell, COO of HMH, said: All brands under HMH are uniquely positioned to compete in an evolving business environment. We believe quality service and standards are more than ever critical to a brands success and thats the strength of our hotels. The typical customer staying at any hotel today is looking for a great value and an enhanced-stay experience and that is guaranteed at every hotel under our banner. - TradeArabia News Service Peter Navarro President Donald Trump's reversal on labeling China as a currency manipulator, as well as an overall softer stance toward a country he routinely lambasted on the campaign trail, have raised new questions about the role of a top member of his Cabinet. Peter Navarro, the head of the newly formed White House National Trade Council and a top economic adviser to Trump, was believed to be quite possibly the most influential member of the West Wing when it came to matters of international trade, particularly involving the Chinese. An outspoken China hawk, the ex-professor authored books such as "Death by China" and "Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World." He advocated for a much more aggressive stance against the Asian superpower. He believed, much as Trump expressed along the campaign trail, that China was responsible for a glut of manufacturing jobs exiting the US, pointing to China's manipulating of its currency as a top reason for why that was such. In the White House, Navarro was set to be Trump's right-hand man in alliance with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative nominee Robert Lighthizer. Together, advocates believed they would wage a major economic battle against China. Navarro already believes that China is engaged in an economic war against the US. But Trump's recent comments sent a shockwave to watchers of the Trump-China relationship and made them wonder if Navarro's influence has been limited. And the comments made it appear as if Navarro's influence was being limited. "What is left for him to do?" one top Republican operative on matters of trade told Business Insider of Navarro. The operative said it's becoming clear that head of the National Economic Council and ex-Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn is exerting increasing influence in the trade policy realm. The operative suggested that while Trump's comments will be viewed as a "betrayal" to his trade supporters, the move against labeling China as a currency manipulator makes sense as trade, he said, is the "only" negotiating tool Trump has it his disposal regarding China and North Korea. Story continues A White House official disputed that Navarro and the council he was tasked with leading are being stifled. "Peter has always been and continues to be an integral part of the president's trade team, which is dedicated to fulfilling the president's promise to the American people that he would no longer allow this country to be taken advantage of by unfair trade deals," the official told Business Insider. "Peter and the NTC particularly focus on identifying the unique problems that have created an uneven playing field for American companies doing business around the world." The appearance of Navarro's profile becoming more limited comes at a time when an apparent power struggle is playing out in the White House. The "Goldman Sachs" wing of New York businesspeople Cohn, senior adviser Jared Kushner, assistant Ivanka Trump, and Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell has sparred with the more populist, nationalist wing headed by chief strategist Steve Bannon. Navarro's views on trade fit in more with the Bannon wing, which has seemingly lost some of the power it held at the start of the Trump presidency. According to a recent story in Vanity Fair, Navarro was brought into the Trump orbit by Kushner, who contacted the professor after browsing Amazon for a book that seemed to match Trump's views on China. Trump has commissioned Kushner to find someone to speak with on China, and Kushner stumbled upon "Death by China." In announcing Navarro's hiring, Trump said in a statement that he "read one of Peter's books on America's trade problems years ago and was impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of his research." "He has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class," Trump's statement said. "He will fulfill an essential role in my administration as a trade adviser." Lee Branstetter, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who served on President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 through 2012 who is opposed to many of the trade proposals championed by both Trump and Navarro, said Navarro hasn't appeared to have had much say in trade policy thus far. "It certainly does seem to be the case that Peter Navarro is not going to have the kind of impact on trade policy that we might have expected based on the campaign rhetoric, or even what Peter himself might have expected when he accepted this position to head this new council within the White House," Branstetter said. But Branstetter said this could stem from how little power Navarro's council has among the many White House agencies. "Lots of administrations start lots of little councils inside the White House to address various constituencies, and many of them are quite small and quite under resourced," he said. "And in the interagency game of jockeying for power and influence, these little councils can also be at a grave disadvantage, relative to the big agencies and the more established consultative councils within the White House, like a National Security Council or a National Economic Council." "I worked for a White House that was very different from the Trump White House, but this phenomenon of lots of little councils that weren't necessarily doing a whole heck of a lot was certainly a feature of the Obama administration and probably in all administrations that we see today," he continued. "It's easy to set something up in order to trumpet its importance, to signal to a key constituency, but it doesn't really do much beyond that." When Navarro's position was first announced, the council's responsibilities were detailed as advising the president on trade negotiations, coordinating with other agencies, and assisting unemployed workers. The council was also designed to lead Trump's "Buy America, Hire America" program, aimed at boosting jobs in infrastructure and defense sectors. And just days after Trump's surprising comments on Chinese currency manipulation, he signed his "Buy American, Hire American" executive order, setting in motion one of Navarro's largest responsibilities. The adviser quickly made TV appearances to talk up aspects of the order, and the White House pushed out a Navarro statement praising the order. But with a number of Trump's promised trade initiatives being slow to get off the ground leaving some to fear they may not be happening Navarro's influence is increasingly under question. Lori Wallach, head of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a group generally in favor of the trade reforms proposed by Trump, told Business Insider that Navarro is attempting to help implement the Trump trade agenda with a number of less protectionist members of the Cabinet seemingly in opposition. And as Lighthizer has still not been confirmed meaning that, additionally, most of the top political positions in the US trade representative's office are still yet to be filled she said Navarro has been forced to go at it without much help. "You've got the one person in the saddle who doesn't have structurally, [the staff,] or experience wise, the chops, to get into a huge Washington policy war," she said. "As a result, first there is the fight over the ideology, and then the second issue is not having the hands on deck to do the implementation." "While a bunch of this initial skirmish was occurring, it was Peter Navarro, who is obviously a very bright and committed guy, but is the one guy who is not cabinet level ... so he doesn't even have the capacity to be in most of those meetings," she added. "He is someone who is the least sort of political Machiavellian in the sense that he's never played in this setting." This post has been updated to include comment from the White House. NOW WATCH: A Yale history professor explains how governments can use disasters and tragedies to control society More From Business Insider * Two key Libya oilfields restart, sources tell Reuters * US gasoline off 3 pct to the lowest seasonally since 2009 * OPEC sec-gen's comments point to an extension of global cut * Global oil stocks up from 5-year average, IEA * U.S. crude output up 10 pct since mid-2016 (Updates throughout, adds quote, updates prices) By Julia Simon NEW YORK, April 27 (Reuters) - Crude prices were slightly lower after a volatile session on Thursday, as the restart of two key Libyan oilfields and concerns about lackluster gasoline demand fed concern over whether major oil producers can alleviate the glut of global inventories. Libya's Sharara and El Feel oilfields, which can produce nearly 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), returned to production after protests blocking pipelines ended. U.S. gasoline futures led the energy complex lower in choppy trading, at one point hitting its lowest level seasonally in eight years after data on Wednesday showed inventories rose by the most in nearly three months. Brent crude settled down 14 cents a barrel at $51.68. U.S. light crude was down 37 cents to $49.25 a barrel. Gasoline is kind of keeping crude from going up very much," said James Williams, president of energy consultant WTRG Economics in London, Arkansas. U.S. gasoline tumbled almost 2 percent to $1.559 a gallon. "Gasoline is leading the way lower with ample stocks, lower demand compared to last year, and an increase in gas(oline) stocks on the east coast," said Anthony Headrick of CHS Hedging. For the last four weeks gas demand is down 1.8 percent from last year. Global crude oil inventories have remained high, in part because of increased production from the United States. At 9.27 million bpd it is at its highest since August 2015, according to government data. Amid concerns about the persistent global oil glut the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are in talks to extend a six-month deal to cut 1.8 million bpd into the second half of the year. Story continues OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said although the oil oversupply was declining, stocks needed to fall further, in comments that pointed to an extension in cuts. Barkindo did not comment directly on whether the cut would be extended, but he said efforts were under way led by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who is OPEC president in 2017, to get a consensus before ministers meet in Vienna on May 25. The International Energy Agency said in its latest monthly market report that oil stocks in industrialised countries stood at around 3.06 billion barrels at the end of February, some 336 million barrels above the five-year average. (Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Chizu Nomiyama) Terrorists attack Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara near Line of Control (LoC). Combing operations currently underway inside the camp. By Manjeet Negi: Three armymen, including a Captain, have been martyred in a pre-dawn fidayeen attack at an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara. Two terrorists have also been killed in the attack on the Army base located close to the Line of Control (LoC). Firing has stopped and security forces have launched combing operation in and around the Army camp in Panzigan advertisement Seven jawans, who were injured in the attack, have been airlifted to Srinagar for better treatment. The deceased officer has been identified as Captain Ayush Yadav. Captain Ayush Yadav, who was martyred in Kupwara army base attack. According to reports, at about 5:15 am terrorists opened indiscriminate firing at the main gate of the camp while trying to force their way into the Army installation. Gunner Rishi Kumar of Field Artillery Regiment was on sentry duty when the fire fight started. He saw the terrorists approaching and waited for them to come within a close range. He then engaged them and was hit on his head but was saved by a bullet proof patka. However, the whiplash of the impact caused him to fall down. He immediately recovered and fired back to kill two terrorists. Running out of ammunition, he moved out of his bunker and tried to pick the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third. The third terrorist fired and injured him, thus managing to escape. The soldier is from Ara, Bihar and has 8 years of service. In September last year, 19 soldiers were killed when terrorists attacked an Army brigade headquarters in Uri. Four heavily armed Pakistani terrorists were gunned down following a six hour long operation. Most of the soldiers killed were from the 10 Dogra and 6 Bihar regiments. ISI PUSHING IN TERRORISTS TO FOMENT MORE TROUBLE IN KASHMIR The Army has strengthened vigil in the Valley to plug the infiltration of terrorists attempting to cross the Line of Control following inputs that there would be concerted attempts by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to push more militants to foment more trouble in region which is already witnessing turbulent situation. According to earlier intelligence reports, there have been repeated orders from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir-based terror commanders to their subordinates to target army camps, mobile communication towers in the state. The authorities have restricted mobile, internet services in the state and the militants have been asked to 'take revenge' for it. advertisement The Jammu and Kashmir 'durbar' returns to Srinagar from Jammu on April 28 and there have been alerts that terrorist may try and disturb the 'durbar' movement process. ALSO READ | J-K: Army jawan killed by own rifle in accidental firing in Poonch's Mendhar area J-K: Clashes erupt between students, security forces in Pulwama over police checkpost, many injured J-K: Fresh challenge for security forces as LeT plans to use social media to incite violence Also watch: Kupwara terror attack: 25-year-old Captain Ayush Yadav gunned down in his sleep --- ENDS --- A robotic arm changes the tyre of a Tesla car at the world's biggest industrial fair, "Hannover Fair", in Hanover, Germany April 24, 2017. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer By Edward Taylor PRUEM, Germany (Reuters) - Luxury electric carmaker Tesla (TSLA.O) offered pay rises and job guarantees to defuse labor tensions at a key German supplier, whose founder and chief executive left the company late last month, German labor officials said on Wednesday. Klaus Grohmann, former head of Grohmann Engineering, a maker of automated manufacturing systems, has left the company, Tesla and German trade union IG Metall said on Wednesday. Grohmann Engineering has helped Tesla rivals Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE) build production facilities for electric car batteries. Tesla agreed to buy the company in November and it is key to the Silicon Valley carmaker's bid to succeed in the mass market by massively ramping up output. Since the takeover, Tesla has given job guarantees and pay rises to the firm's 700 employees in the small town of Pruem close to the Belgian border, under threat of strike action organized by IG Metall, the powerful labor union which dominates Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE). The union said job guarantees and the offer of employee stock options have significantly reduced the prospect of a strike. Still, IG Metall is demanding a collective wage bargaining contract and improved pay. The union has complained that pay at Grohmann is 25 to 30 percent below an industry-wide collective agreement for the metalworker electric industry. The head of Grohmann's works council, Uwe Herzig, said Tesla had offered another 1,000 euro ($1,089) one-off payment after Easter, on top of job guarantees, pay rises and stock options. In March Tesla offered employees a pay raise of 150 euros a month. This was followed up just before Easter with an offer of 10,000 euros in stock options for four years, and a pledge to guarantee jobs for five years, Herzig said. Herzig said Klaus Grohmann, under whose leadership Tesla had planned to run the business, retired at the end of last month. "In November we were told that everything would remain the same, and then on March 31 we were surprised to hear that he will retire," Herzig told a news conference, adding Klaus Grohmann had not been seen at the company since then. Story continues Herzig said the founder's departure had been sudden and he had not had a chance to speak with Tesla Grohmann's new management, despite efforts to reach out. Tesla confirmed Klaus Grohmann's departure on Wednesday. "Part of Mr. Grohmann's decision to work with Tesla was to prepare for his retirement and leave the company in capable hands for the future," a Tesla spokesperson said on Wednesday. "Given the change in focus to Tesla projects, we mutually decided that it was the right time for the next generation of management to lead." A Klaus Grohmann listed in the German telephone directory as living close to Pruem was not immediately reachable by phone. Tesla has pledged to create an additional 1,000 jobs at Grohmann, which it has renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation, as it seeks to increase output to half a million vehicles next year from around 80,000 in 2016. The union wants to see Tesla's management adopt pay agreements and negotiating tactics more in line with what other workers in the metalworking industry are getting. Herzig said Tesla's acquisition of Grohmann made many workers leery that the company would now stop doing work for other customers, making it too dependent on Tesla's fortunes. "We want additional guarantees given in more formal ways as an additional assurance to the workforce some parts of which need reassuring given the recent changes," Herzig told Reuters. Christian Schmitz, head of IG Metall's Trier branch, said concessions made by Tesla to guarantee jobs were encouraging but they were not the collective wage and job guarantees customary among German unionized workforces. Guarantees to individual workers are easier to rescind than collective wage deals that are binding for an entire workforce, Schmitz said.($1 = 0.9185 euro) (Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting and writing by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Mark Potter, Chris Reese and David Gregorio) OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - A court in Burkina Faso on Thursday postponed the trial of former leader Blaise Compaore and his cabinet for their alleged role in killing protesters during an uprising in October 2014 that overthrew his government. The unrest saw crowds of hundreds of thousands marched in the capital Ouagadougou against Compaore's attempt to prolong his 27-year rule, driving him into exile in Ivory Coast where he remains. "After concertation, we agreed to meet on May 4 at 9:00 a.m.," said the high court's president Mathieu Ouedraogo. The decision followed a request from a lawyer for the defence. At least 25 ministers from Compaore's former cabinet turned up at court on Thursday, shaking hands and talking amicably as a large crowd looked on from the benches. Compaore and the ministers face assassination charges for allegedly authorising the use of force that killed at least 24 protesters. Since the insurrection, Burkina Faso has completed a rocky transition period during which a close ally of Compaore sought to seize power in a thwarted coup before holding peaceful elections that brought Roch Marc Kabore to power in 2015. (Reporting by Nadoun Coulibaly; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Richard Lough) FILE PHOTO: Estonias Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna speaks during the official ceremony welcoming the deployment of a multi-national NATO battalion in Tapa, Estonia, April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo Thomson Reuters VALETTA (Reuters) - Estonia's defense minister said on Thursday that Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to NATO. Russia and Belarus aim to hold joint war games in September that some North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013. Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other NATO governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the so-called Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna cited plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and gear there, possibly to set up a military outpost in its closest ally. "For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told Reuters in an interview in Malta. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analyzing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises," he said before a meeting of EU defense ministers. Russias Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the subject. Russia Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters Moscow denies any plans to threaten NATO and says it is the U.S.-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. "We see what they are doing on the other side of the EU-NATO border. Troops may remain there after Zapad," Tsahkna said, saying that Tallinn had shared its concerns with Baltic and NATO allies. He put the number of potential troops in the thousands. Such a move could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia just as the U.S.-led NATO alliance stations multinational battalions in the Baltic region in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. Story continues 'Question of trust' The scale of this year's Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of NATO's most pressing concerns, as diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill. Previous large-scale exercises in 2013 employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats said. U.S. soldiers attend welcoming ceremony for U.S.-led NATO troops at polygon near Orzysz, Poland, April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel Thomson Reuters Russia, bridling at NATO's expansion eastwards into its old Soviet sphere of influence, says its exercises are a response to NATO's 4,000-strong new deterrent force in the Baltics and Poland that will begin to rotate through the region from June. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January the scenario for the Zapad 2017 exercises would "take into account the situation linked to increased NATO activity along the borders of the Union state," Russian media cited, in a reference to the union of Russia and Belarus. The exercises, to be held simultaneously on military training grounds in Russia and Belarus, aim to focus on joint planning, command tactics and joint troop formations, he said. "In the future we plan to strengthen the practical nature of such exercises, taking into account the emerging foreign policy realities," Shoigu added, in an apparent reference to the expansion of NATO, which is soon to include Montenegro. The U.S. Army's top European commander has called on Russia to open its exercises to observers to calm Baltic concerns. Russia's President Vladimir Putin arrives to chair a meeting of the Pobeda (Victory) Organising Committee, with a focus on developing humanitarian cooperation at the government and public level with other countries, in order to promote objective information on Russias history and present, including its role in the victory over Nazism, at the Kremlin in Moscow on April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander Nemenov/Pool Thomson Reuters Asked about Moscow's possible motives for leaving troops in Belarus, Tsahkna said it was likely about President Vladimir Putin's image as a strong leader at home, as well as cementing ties with Belarus, which was alarmed by the Crimea annexation. "Russia has presidential elections next year and Putin needs to show strength to the Russian people," Tsahkna said. "It's also a question of trust with Belarus." The West has sought to improve ties with Belarus over the past two years, lifting some sanctions in an overture to the country's President Alexander Lukashenko, the man the West calls Europe's "last dictator." But Belarus remains Russia's ally and a member of Putin's Eurasian trade bloc. Belarus Defence Minister Andrei Ravkov has echoed Russia's position that NATO is a threat, also accusing Ukraine of raising tensions by aligning itself with the West. (By Robin Emmott; additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; editing by Toby Chopra) NOW WATCH: Former CIA director: 'The Russians feign sincerity better than anyone I lost faith in their willingness to do the right thing' See Also: By Philip Pullella ROME (Reuters) - The ousted Grand Master of the Knights of Malta Catholic charity will attend a meeting that could elect his successor, the group said on Wednesday, in a direct defiance of Pope Francis' order for him to stay away. A spokesperson for the Knights said Matthew Festing, who resigned on Jan. 24, had informed the group that he would come to the meeting this Saturday at its headquarters in Rome. It was not clear if he would stand for re-election, as some of his supporters have urged him to. On April 15, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the Vatican's deputy secretary of state, who the pope named "special delegate" to the ancient chivalric group, ordered Festing not to travel to Rome for the election. "Your presence would re-open wounds, only recently healed, and would prevent the event taking place in an atmosphere of peace and regained harmony," Becciu said in a letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters from a Vatican source. Becciu said in the letter the pope "shared" his decision and asked Festing to stay away as "an act of obedience". Festing tendered his resignation to the pope after a month-long, highly public spat with the Vatican over the group's sovereignty. The turmoil began in December when Festing, a Briton, fired Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, the German-born Grand Chancellor of the aristocratic order. Festing and conservative U.S. Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the group's chaplain and a frequent critic of the pope, had accused Boeselager of violating Church rules by turning a blind eye to the use of condoms in aid projects in the developing world when he was in a previous post. Festing, who defiantly ordered members not to cooperate with a papal investigation of events surrounding Boeselager's dismissal, lost his battle with the Vatican and became the first Grand Master in centuries to resign instead of ruling for life. The Vatican concluded the condom issue was just an excuse by Festing and Burke to wield more power in the 970-year-old organisation and Boselager was reinstated. The Knights of Malta counts some 13,000 members, 80,000 volunteers and about 25,000 paid employees, mostly medical staff who run charities and development projects around the world. The all-male top leaders are not clerics but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. The Vatican wants this weekend's vote to elect an interim leader to run the group for a year while its constitution is changed. But the group could also decide to elect a new Grand Master. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By India Today Web Desk: Earlier there were reports that The Kapil Sharma Show is all set to be replaced by Sunil Grover's new show. But according to a fresh reports, it will be Salman Khan not Sunil Grover, who will be seen on weekends in place of Kapil. The channel is reportedly planning to revive its trusted show Dus Ka Dum that raked in TRPs throughout its run. advertisement Also read: Sunil Grover has this to say about The Kapil Sharma Show's falling TRPs "10 Ka Dum is very close to Salman as he made his TV debut with this show. It was the first show he hosted before Bigg Boss and he likes it. Earlier, the makers felt that he was under an exclusive contract with Colors for Bigg Boss, but that is not so. Now, Sony is going all out to get him back," a source told DNA. Sony TV is also considering to air Dus Ka Dum in place of The Kapil Sharma Show, according to the Mumbai tabloid. According to a source, the channel is in talks with Salman for around 1.5 months now. Initially, the channel was thinking of airing Dus Ka Dum in 8-9 slot, but after TKSS' falling TRPs, Dus Ka Dum might get the 9-10pm slot. Currently, the ratings of The Kapil Sharma Show have touched its record low of 3.9 million impressions, according to BARC India. --- ENDS --- A French court has refused to extradite the former Kosovan Prime Minister to Serbia to face trial for alleged war crimes. Ramush Haradinaj had been arrested when he arrived in France in January this year, on the basis of an international warrant issued by Serbia in 2004. He was released with immediate effect once the court in Colmar, eastern France, had made its decision. From the steps of the court, Haradinaj said: I have wasted four months during this judicial process. It should have been easier and faster. Of course this judicial decision allows me to pursue my duties, but I still lost four months. the charges Serbia alleges that Haradinaj is guilty of war crimes dating back to his role as a guerilla commander during the 1998-99 Kosovo war. He has already been tried and acquitted, twice, of war crimes by the United National International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Serbias reaction Serbia has responded angrily to the news, withdrawing its ambassador to France for consultation, and pledging to lodge a protest note. It had previously said that it would abolish its extradition treaty with France if Haradinaj were not handed over. Speaking at a press conference, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic said: The Republic of Serbia, the government of the Republic of Serbia, believes that the decision is shameful, scandalous, unlawful, absolutely unjust and, above all, political. He said that the highest moral and legal principles were at stake, rather than politics. #Serbia delegation left the PACE session in Strasbourg to protest against the release of Ramus #Haradinaj https://t.co/6zL68EHDFg Adelina Marini (@AdelinaMarini) April 27, 2017 Festivites in Kosovo In Pristina, Kosovans have taken to the streets to celebrate. The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo said that the detention had been completely unnecessary and was Serbias open attempt to destabilize Kosovo. Kosovan Prime Minister What Hashim Thaci, said: This is good news for Kosovo. Justice had won. Serbia was just speculating. This is a capitulation of Serbia. Serbia committed war crimes in Kosovo, and ethnic cleansing. They committed genocide of the citizens of Kosovo. Once again, it has been confirmed that the Kosovo Liberation Army was not guilty of anything, and this is just a confirmation of Kosovos justified fight. A short film titled The Last Minute is being shared widely on social media platforms for various reasons, the twists in the less than 3-minute movie being the most important one. By India Today Web Desk: A seat in a public transport is dear to all and that dearness may trump humanity. From two youngsters declaring that the Delhi Metro is for Hindustanis, assuming that an aged man who requested one of them to rise was a Muslim and hence a Pakistani, to the common sight of pregnant women, physically challenged and elderly people not offered a seat, many who use public transport choose to be unkind. advertisement And this could be considered stereotyping as well, for there are many kind human beings who, despite having a hard day at work, offer their seats to those who need it more than them. A Malayalam short film directed by Mani Dhamodharan is being shared widely on social media and is being discussed for various reasons. The short film titled "The Last Minute" shows a Muslim woman, pregnant, entering a bus and men seated in the bus not offering her a seat. The three-minute short film deploys the stereotype we spoke about in the beginning but comes with a twist as it shows a physically challenged man offering his seat to the woman. The pregnant woman takes the seat, and the man who helped her stands near the door. After staring at the man who offered her a seat for a while, the woman pushes him out of the running bus. Yes! WATCH THE SHORT FILM HERE, AND WATCH IT TILL THE END Shocked to see why the woman pushed the man who helped her out? The director could be accused of playing up stereotypes of a Muslim being portrayed as a terrorist and there are many people on social media who are say that this movie will instill doubts about pregnant women in public spaces, but we'd like to assume that the director wanted to stress on the importance of being kind and if that was his motive, he's succeeded. Peace out! --- ENDS --- Calling the Clock with Nick Petrangelo Sponsored by KO Watches April 27 2017 PokerNews Staff Beginning as a cutting-edge brand active in design, manufacturing and distribution of quality-finish watches from young Mexican entrepreneurs, KNOCK OUT -KO- Watches works to distinguish itself with its quality and clean design, allowing people to use time they have as they wish and without interruption. With our sponsor, KNOCK OUT -KO- Watches in mind, we're now going to "Call the Clock" on Nick Petrangelo. PokerNews Sasha Salinger called the clock on Nick Petrangelo, giving him two minutes to answer as many questions as he can. Bowling or golfing? Golfing. Scuba diving or sky diving? Sky diving. Have you been? No. But you want to? I dont like the idea of scuba diving or being underwater. Claustrophobic? Easy answer. Do you believe in aliens? Very small percentage. Next place on your travel bucket list? Uh, bucket list? I dont really have a travel - or actually, I want to go to Sweden. I havent been there yet before, like Stockholm or something like that, Sweden, Norway, Finland, never been. Like to go. Scandinavia, yeah? Yeah [nods]. Go in the summer. Blondes, brunettes or redheads? Brunette. Yeah. Whats that guys name who just walked in front of the camera? I have no idea. Me either. Who would be the best roommate in poker? Hm, best roommate in poker? Ive roomed with Jon Jaffe. Hes not so bad. Ill go with him. Who would be the worst? I dont know if I can answer that one. I dont know, I havent lived with many people I mean, imagining? I dont have an answer for that one, sorry. I have like several, but I wont say anything. Last one: Do you have any tattoos or piercings? No, I dont actually. When the clocks stops, time comes to life. Get your hands on a Knock Out -KO- watch right here. Sharelines Two minutes with Nick Petrangelo sponsored by @kowatches: Do you believe in aliens? The ancient humans who came across the mastodon carcass in present-day Southern California quickly went to work on its remains. They pounded the bones open with heavy stone hammers and anvils, gathering raw material for new tools and harvesting the animals nutrient-rich marrow. The remains of the mastodon show all the typical signs of scavenging by paleolithic North Americans, except for one major detail: Scientists have dated it to be 130,700 years old or roughly 115,000 years before the generally accepted date that humans are thought to have settled the continent. If verified and corroborated by other scientists, the discovery described in the journal Nature could radically rewrite the timeline of when humans first arrived in the Americas. This is the first time theres been a demonstrated archaeological site with all the bells and whistles, said Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University who was not involved with the study, noting the combination of several lines of evidence at the site. This makes it absolutely first-water importance. This is up there with one of the discoveries of the century, I would say. Without the benefit of actual human remains, however, the dramatic departure from the accepted timeline may not convince all scientists in the field. My reaction has been skeptical, said John McNabb, a paleolithic archeologist at the University of Southampton in England who was not involved in the study. The date that theyre quoting is so fantastically older than anything thats quoted for the earliest occupation of the Americas, up to now. Its a really big ask. The fragmented mastodon remains were first discovered in late 1992 by study co-author Richard Cerutti of the San Diego Natural History Museum during routine paleontological monitoring work at a California Department of Transportation freeway expansion project in southern San Diego. Out of the ancient stream deposits came the remains of a camel, horse and other mammals including the bones, tusks and teeth of a mastodon, a distant and long-gone relative of elephants. The mastodon fossils looked very different from the other bones nearby. The animals limb bones, molars and tusks had been smashed into many pieces. That struck the researchers as odd, because leg bones are strong and thick and should have been preserved over the eons especially since more fragile ribs and vertebrae had survived in much better shape. It was a really intriguing site, said study co-author Tom Demere, a vertebrate paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum, pointing to the patterns that defied an explanation by natural causes. The ends of some bones had been torn off a sign that humans may have been trying to reach the bone marrow. The mastodon bones also bore the spiral fracture patterns that are typical of breaks that happen when the bone is still fresh, rather than the straight ones that tend to mark older bone broken much longer after death. (The wolf and horse bones in nearby sediment layers did not exhibit the same patterns.) That strange, selective destruction is a sign that humans were there, targeting the thick bones and tusks that could be shaped into new tools, the study authors said. On top of that, the bones were not arranged in the way that usually happens when an animal dies from natural causes. Instead, the bones had been grouped into two clusters and near each bunch of bones lay two or three large stone cobbles. If humans broke those mastodon bones, they probably did it using the large cobbles, the scientists said. The stones are massive one weighed in at a hefty 32.5 pounds and could be used as either hammers or anvils. These stones stood out at the site, particularly because the area is full of fine, silty sediment, not large rocks. The gentle river currents that brought the silt would not have been able to drag large rocks to the area so perhaps someone brought them there. In addition, the researchers were able to piece together stone shards that appeared to have flecked off from that repeated pounding. I just couldnt believe this was happening, but the evidence is right there in front of you, said lead author Steve Holen, director of research at the Center for American Paleolithic Research in South Dakota. The patterns of breakage were eerily familiar to those hed seen at the sites hed studied in the Great Plains. The evidence is so strong that you cant just walk away from it and say, I dont believe it, Im not going to deal with this.' To make sure, the researchers even did experiments using elephant bones, smashing them with large stones to see whether the damage patterns to stones and bones matched the patterns they saw at the mastodon site. They soon realized that the Cerutti mastodon did not just mark a paleontological site, but an archaeological one. To see how old the bones were, study co-author James Paces of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver subjected the specimens to radiometric techniques, analyzing the decay rate of uranium in and around the bones to determine their age. The result: 130,700 years old, give or take 9,400 years. Were confident that we have a very good idea of when this animal died and when bones were incorporated in the surrounding sediment, Paces said. The commonly held theory of humans arrival in North America is that they came 14,500 years or so ago via a land bridge that was only intermittently open. Recently, some scientists have begun to argue that humans may have entered well before that, around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago though who they may have been and whether they could have established a lasting population remains up for debate. This new find, however, pushes back the record of human species far beyond scientists expectations. If people were in California 130,000 years ago, its possible that they made it over the land bridge just before the last interglacial period, when a warmer, wetter climate would have flooded their passageway. Its also possible that they took to the sea in boats, crossing the brief stretch of open water between Asia and North America and then making their way down the Pacific coastline. But were these humans the ancestors of anatomically modern humans or were they perhaps another species, such as Homo erectus or Neanderthals? Its impossible to say for now, given that there are no human remains at the site. If they were of another species, it could reshape the way we think about the abilities and history of our long-gone close cousins, said study coauthor Richard Fullagar, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. The implications are massive in terms of human migrations, Fullagar said. WASHINGTON As Donald Trump approaches the 100-day marker of his first year in office, he has defined himself not as the Dealmaker in Chief but as The Backdown President. What a deliciously strange irony that until Monday night he set the stage for a government shutdown over, of all things, his campaign centerpiece The Wall. Strange because Trump, who now calls the faux deadline ridiculous, promised so much by his 100th day. Delicious because everything Trump does is scrumptious, especially eating chocolate cake while launching real missiles. And it was always clear to perennial observers of Washingtons sausage factory that the new presidents ambitions exceeded the pace and will of the nations political class. Todays Republican Party may control the executive and legislative branches, but its members are hardly trilling in harmony, thanks to the too-rare interference of mental clarity. The wall may have bestirred the passions of Trumps base recently represented at the White House by that classy trio, Sarah Palin, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, who managed a convincing imitation of cowpokes at the Ritz by mugging beneath a portrait of former first lady Hillary Clinton but its construction wasnt exactly a national mandate. The only person to place this fantasy in proper perspective was former Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose succinctness was an elixir for the babble-weary. Clenching his teeth, he said, Were not going to pay for that (expletive) wall. Next thing you know, Trump was asking Congress to include billions of dollars for the wall in an omnibus bill, which must be passed by Friday to keep the government running. He wanted $1.5 billion for this fiscal year, which runs until September, and another $2.6 billion in 2018. Democrats said no way, and some Republicans also balked. After all, the whole premise of the big, beautiful wall, later amended to, perhaps, fencing in certain areas, was that Mexico would pay for it. So familiar was Trumps wall trope that during rallies, hed bait crowds with Whos going to pay for it? Mexico! This was fun for the crowds, but also rather absurd, some of us noted, repeatedly. The disconnect between the witty and the witless was that Trump fans took him seriously, not literally, while the media silly gooses took him literally but not seriously as many have mentioned. This is a clever observation, but its ludicrous to suggest that reporters shouldnt take literally a presidents or candidates words. Certainly other nations and leaders do. Trump himself, however, seems to take his own words neither literally or seriously, as his backtrack record suggests. On Monday, he walked back his demand that wall funding be included in the bill, saying that he was open to delaying funding until September. No doubt, his White House aides reminded the president that un-funding the government doesnt usually work out well for the majority party. During Jimmy Carters presidency, the government was shut down five times for brief periods, mostly over abortion-related issues. Ronald Reagan, who sauntered in and enjoyed credit for the release of the Iran hostages, was the right cowboy at the right time. In more recent memory, the 2013 shutdown, orchestrated by tea party Republicans and instigated by Sen. Ted Cruz, resulted in at least some midterm losses for the party. Notably, Republicans lost the governors seat in Virginia, where a sizable number of federal employees live. Two years later, with a promise to drain the swamp and build a wall between the U.S. and its southern neighbor, Trump oozed down his escalator to capture the imaginations of both the unemployed and the corporate expats who failed them. Endowed with the panache of Howard Stern and the moral vigor of a man who boasts about grabbing women by their nethers, he convinced fewer people than voted for his opponent that he was the right clown for the right rodeo. To each his own, I suppose. As for the wall, Trumps campaign trope was repackaged awkwardly in a Sunday tweet as Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form. Hardly a rallying cry, but at least were spared another partisan war for now. Americans, meanwhile, have learned three lessons: The best things happen when The Backdown President retreats; we, and not Mexico, will be the ones footing the bill for the wall, if ever it is built; and Trump, in just under 100 days, managed to bring the government close to crisis on a promise that was always a con. Parkers columns, including those not published in the Journal, can be read at abqjournal.com/opinion look for the syndicated columnist link. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group; e-mail to kathleenparker@washpost.com. A salute is owed to Kirtland Air Force Base for the long overdue honor it bestowed on the bases namesake, military aviation pioneer Col. Roy Carrington Kirtland. In a brief ceremony April 21, the visitors center just outside the bases Truman Gate was renamed the Col. Roy C. Kirtland Heritage Visitor Center. The bases commander, Col. Eric Froehlich, said the renaming and unveiling of historical photos at the center is a way to show the public how proud the base is of its aviation heritage. He also said the dedication of the center marks the culmination of a yearlong celebration of the bases 75th anniversary. The visitors center, just southeast of Gibson and Truman SE, is open to the public and doesnt require base access. Kirtland was an Army brat who learned to fly one of the Wright brothers early airplanes known as a Wright Model B Flyer. He was among a handful of early fliers who were instrumental in adapting airplanes for military use and who laid the groundwork for what would eventually become todays U.S. Air Force. Although he retired from the military in 1938, Kirtland was reactivated at age 66 as an aviation facility inspector as the nation mobilized for World War II. It was brief: After serving less than three weeks, Kirtland died of a heart attack at Moffett Field, Calif., May 2, 1941. Less than a year later, on Feb. 25, 1942 at the urging of Kirtlands old friend, Gen. Henry Hap Arnold Albuquerque Army Air Base was renamed Kirtland Army Air Field. The air field was named Kirtland Air Force Base in 1948. Its doubtful Kirtland ever stepped foot on his namesake base. But the renaming of the bases visitors center in honor of Kirtland seems a fitting bookend to the bases 75th anniversary. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal A Santa Fe judge has been asked to take up the question of how much information the Roman Catholic Church can conceal in clerical sex abuse cases. Attorneys representing seven New Mexico men who allege they were sexually abused as boys by a Las Vegas priest asked a judge on Friday to reject a proposed order that would allow the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to seal a wide variety of records filed in the lawsuit. In their response, attorneys for the alleged victims called the proposed order overbroad, complex and limiting and a near complete gag order unnecessary for ensuring a fair trial. Even cases involving sensitive trade secrets are not typically accompanied by such restrictive protective orders as the one sought by the archdiocese, the response said. The archdioceses attorneys earlier this month asked state District Judge Sarah Singleton of Santa Fe to impose a confidentiality and protective order that would bar attorneys in the case from disclosing records the archdiocese deems confidential. The proposed order is virtually identical to one handed down in 2014 by 2nd Judicial District Judge Alan Malott of Albuquerque that bars public disclosure of a wide variety of records, including priests personnel files, depositions and many of the motions filed in more than 50 lawsuits filed by Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall. Cammie Nichols, an Albuquerque attorney representing the seven alleged victims, said the proposed order would interfere with her ability to investigate on behalf of her clients. I dont think that level of secrecy is necessary to have a fair trial, Nichols said. Its much too limiting in allowing attorneys to do part of their job, which is investigation. Nichols also contends the proposed order limits the free speech rights of her clients. Over a period of decades, dozens of New Mexico priests have been publicly outed as sexual abusers of children, the response said. This issue, while now widely known to the public at large, remains of clear public importance because it is centered in the special protections deserved by the children of New Mexico, it said. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in a written statement Friday that the proposed order is intended to protect the identities of all parties, including alleged victims. The CPO helps assure that the interests of all parties are protected in a fair and impartial manner as the adjudication of these claims are made based upon evidence admitted in the courtroom, the statement said. The Archdiocese believes that the 2nd Judicial District 2014 CPO has not prevented or hindered plaintiffs in those cases from conducting pre-trial discovery nor has compliance with the CPO proven to be onerous or unfair to the parties in those cases. Nichols said that existing law protects the identities of sexual abuse victims. Her clients identities could be protected by redacting names from records without a judges order, she said. Robert Warburton and Sara Sanchez, Albuquerque attorneys representing the archdiocese, filed a motion April 6 asking Singleton to impose the confidentiality and protective order in the Santa Fe lawsuit. The attorneys contend that the confidentiality order is needed to ensure an impartial trial based on evidence presented in the courtroom, as opposed to pretrial publicity fueled by selective leaking of information. Attorneys for the alleged victims responded that whether or not the order is approved, the jury pool will undoubtedly have been exposed to the devastating stories of priest abuse pervasive in this state, this country, and worldwide. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe vets and performs background checks for all clergy and lay people who work with children, the archdiocese said in its written statement. It also has a safe environment coordinator and an independent board to ensure child safety policies are followed, it said. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe continues to be vigilant regarding sexual misconduct and stands firm on its zero tolerance policy, the statement said. We pray for all who have been victims of the sad reality of sexual abuse. The Santa Fe lawsuit alleges that Monsignor Hubert Lomme, former-pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Las Vegas, sexually abused seven pre-teen boys at the church from 1958 to 1964. Lomme died in 1986 at age 79. The suit was filed in December on behalf of unidentified men ages 62 to 66. Six of the men live in San Miguel County and one in Socorro County. It is the first clerical abuse lawsuit filed in district court in Santa Fe since 2013, and the first filed by Nichols and other attorneys with Rothstein Donatelli LLC of Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Parts of New Mexicos central budget office were temporarily transformed this week into FBI headquarters. No, it wasnt a federal takeover of state facilities, but rather filming of a TV miniseries called Waco, based on the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff. A state Film Office spokesman said filming at the historic Bataan Memorial Building in downtown Santa Fe took place on Monday, after several days of preparation. The building was constructed in 1900 and served as the state Capitol for more than 60 years. Scheduled to in air in 2018, Waco will tell the story of the 51-day standoff between federal authorities and David Koreshs religious sect. Actors working on the show reportedly include John Leguizamo, Taylor Kitsch and Michael Shannon. State law allows the motion picture industry to have free access to state buildings, though security and personnel fees are sometimes required. Film crews also have to clean up after themselves. Meanwhile, its unclear whether any state budget officials might have landed cameo appearances. VETO SUIT: One of the attorneys representing the New Mexico Legislature in its court challenge against Gov. Susana Martinezs budget vetoes has asked to withdraw from the case at the request of a state agency. In his motion filed this week with the state Supreme Court, Thomas Hnasko, a Santa Fe attorney, said other attorneys at his firm have defended state employees and entities on behalf of the state Risk Management Division, which made the request. He said that could create a perceived conflict of interest, because the agency is part of the Martinez administration. Hnasko is one of two contract attorneys who filed the court challenge last week on behalf of the Legislative Council, a group of leading legislators. The lawmakers claim the governor overstepped her constitutional authority by vetoing all funding roughly $779 million for legislative branch agencies and colleges and universities from a budget bill passed during this years 60-day legislative session. If the Supreme Court approves the motion, the other attorney, Michael Browde of Albuquerque, would at least temporarily act as the Legislatures sole counsel. Dan Boyd: dboyd@abqjournal.com WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said he has told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he will not pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement at this time, but could still withdraw if he concludes a renegotiated pact is not a fair deal for all. Trump tweeted early Thursday that he has agreed to remain a partner in the much-discussed trade agreement in calls he received from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The White House released a statement late Wednesday saying only that Trump had assured the two leaders in phone conversations that the U.S. would not withdraw from NAFTA at this time. In his Twitter post, Trump called Americas relationships with the two hemispheric neighbors very good and said the prospects of a renegotiated deal are very possible. But he also said that his consent to remaining in NAFTA for now is subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Speaking to reporters Thursday before a White House meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Trump that hed been planning to terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now, but had been persuaded to reconsider, which he acknowledged would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system. Trump added, Now, if Im unable to make a fair deal, if Im unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But were going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. He later said renegotiation was starting today. The statement came hours after administration officials said Trump was considering a draft executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the deal though administration officials cautioned it was just one of a number of options being discussed by the president and his staff. Some saw the threat as posturing by Trump to gain leverage over Mexico and Canada as he tries to negotiate changes to the deal. Trump railed against the decades-old trade deal during his campaign, describing it as a disaster. Senior White House officials had spent recent days discussing steps that could be taken to start the process of renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA before the end of Trumps first 100 days in office, according to a person familiar with the presidents thinking. But the person, along with an administration official, said a number of options remained on the table, and stressed discussions are ongoing about the best way to proceed. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the order, which was first reported by Politico. The president has made addressing the problems of NAFTA a priority throughout the campaign, and once the president makes a decision about how he wants to address that, well let you know, he said. The administration appeared divided Wednesday over how and when to proceed, as officials balanced a newfound cautiousness with the desire to rack up accomplishments before Trumps 100th day on the job. Some were gunning for Trump to sign a draft order this week, while others were weighing complications surrounding withdrawing from or renegotiating the deal without Congress fully on board. The debate played out in the media Wednesday as some outlets quoted officials insisting the signing was imminent, while other officials dismissed the reports as just a rumor. My practice is to comment on things weve actually done or are doing as opposed to commenting on rumors, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at an unrelated White House briefing Wednesday evening. Trump could withdraw from NAFTA but he would have to give six months notice. And it is unclear what would happen next. The law Congress passed to enact the trade pact might remain in place, forcing Trump to wrangle with lawmakers and raising questions about the presidents authority to raise tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. The moves came days after the administration announced it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada. Trump has also been railing against changes in Canadian milk product pricing that he says are hurting the American dairy industry. Trump told The Associated Press in an interview last week that he planned to either renegotiate or terminate NAFTA, which he and other critics blame for wiping out U.S. manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico to take advantage of low-wage labor. I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States, trading agreement for the United States. It hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico, he said. Another senior White House official declined to comment on rumors of specific actions. But that official said NAFTA has been a top priority for the president since Day One and said the administration has been working on it since taking office. That person also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administrations thinking. The Trump administration last month submitted a vague set of guidelines to Congress for renegotiating NAFTA, disappointing those who were expecting Trump to demand a major overhaul. __ Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report. Several leaders and party cadre reached Warangal today to celebrate Telangana Rashtra Samithi's (TRS) 16th foundation day. By Ashish Pandey: Marking the Telangana Rastra Samithi's (TRS) 16th foundation day, several leaders and party cadre reached Warangal today to participate in the celebratory rally. But, the massive public meeting saw several leaders flouting the Central Motor Vehicle Rules by driving tractors on national highway. Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas, Panchayat Raj Minister Jupally Krishna Rao among other MLAs of TRS were found violating Telangana Roads and Buildings Department rules in bid to celebrate the foundation day. advertisement As per the Motor Vehicle Act, tractors are supposed to have limited tillers in specific sizes, and are to be used only for farming or transporting goods. As per state government rule, tractors are not allowed on the outer ring road of Hyderabad. However, Jupally Krishna Rao led a massive tractor rally from Mahbubnagar and drove on the outer ring road. Health Minister C. Laxma Reddy along with MP AP Jitender Reddy, Mahbubnagar MLA A Venkateswar Reddy, and other leaders also led a rally of several hundred tractors. Meanwhile few pictures of TRS workers drinking atop these tractors are going viral on social media, which is another breach of rules pertaining to consumption of alcohol in moving vehicles. Also read: Telangana: With eye on election, TRS chief to address Foundation Day rally in Warangal Also read: NITI Aayog meet: Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao bats for doubling farmers' income Also read: Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao elected as TRS chief for 8th time --- ENDS --- PHOENIX Arizona schools cant require students to have a note from a parent to use and possess sunscreen under legislation signed by Gov. Doug Ducey. The bill signed Wednesday bars schools, childrens camps and child care facilities from limiting use of federally approved sunscreen. Republican Rep. Heather Carter of the Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek sponsored the legislation. Shes pushed bills limiting sun and UV-ray exposure for children to help cut the number of skin cancer cases. Carter also sponsored legislation that passed the House this year banning the use of indoor tanning beds by anyone under the age of 18. That measure never got a Senate hearing. She points to medical research that shows that using tanning beds can lead to skin cancer. PRESCOTT, Ariz. Arizona search and rescue teams say theyve located a lost hiker on a mountain near Sedona. The Daily Courier reports (http://bit.ly/2pm3HT7 ) it took Yavapai County Search and Rescue team members four hours to find the 26-year-old female hiker on Sunday. YCSO spokesman Dwight DEvelyn says the woman had hiked to a remote area northwest of Devils Bridge when she realized she became lost. He says the hiker called for help. A Department of Public Safety helicopter was used to find the woman and take her off the mountain. ___ Information from: The Daily Courier, http://www.dcourier.com CARLSBAD, N.M. The father of a 3-year-old girl who suffered severe burns after he set a backyard bonfire at a New Mexico home has been acquitted of child abuse. The Current-Argus reports (http://bit.ly/2qauRMy) jurors found 39-year-old Jimmy Olguin of Artesia not guilty on Wednesday. Olguins daughter suffered second- and third-degree burns on about 17 percent of her body after her clothing caught fire in March. Olguin told investigators he started a bonfire in the backyard of his parents home and poured gasoline on the flames to keep it going. He says his daughter got caught in the fire and he was eventually able to put out the flames. He later took her to a hospital. Olguins attorney, Ken Wilson, argued that his client wasnt negligent in caring for the child. ___ Information from: Carlsbad Current-Argus, http://www.currentargus.com/ MITCHELL, S.D. (AP) A South Dakota man is suing Coca-Cola after allegedly finding a mouse in a can of soda. The Daily Republic (http://bit.ly/2qiyJdQ ) reports that Duane Putzier says he became ill, missed 60 hours of work and accumulated $1,000 in medical bills after finding the mouse on June 7. Coca-Cola Co. attorneys argue the mouse would have been more decomposed if it really had been in the can for six weeks, the amount of time between bottling and consumption. Attorney Brian Johnson calls the claim an attack on the Atlanta-based company's brand. Putzier is seeking $2,026, plus any general damages proven at trial, with interest. 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. NEW YORK Star Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard was scratched from his start Thursday against the Atlanta Braves because of what manager Terry Colins said was minor discomfort in his biceps. Matt Harvey was moved up a day and took the mound on five days rest his scheduled turn before Tuesdays rainout. Harvey also pitched on short notice last Friday in place of Jacob deGrom, who missed a start with a stiff neck. Collins said Syndergaard was expected to be available against Washington this weekend and likely will not go on the disabled list. Collins cautioned any decision will be made after Syndergaard was evaluated by doctors. Syndergaard pitched through a bone spur in his right elbow through a large part of last season and was slowed by a blister on the middle finger of his right hand early this season. He felt strong enough to pitch Thursday, adding that his biceps became irritated a few days ago and he took anti-inflammatory medication. Syndergaard is 1-1 with a 1.73 ERA and 30 strikeouts in 26 innings Woke up the next day feeling good as new, he said. Played catch yesterday, felt great and it kind of stiffens up when it gets cold. I couldnt really lift my arm above my shoulder at that point. Right now its just a precautionary thing that were dealing with. Collins says it made sense to be prudent. Due to whats happened the last couple of days with him after hes cooled down, we cannot take a chance on him, he said. Especially when youre talking about anything that runs into the shoulder to where he changes his delivery.. BEIRUT Syrias military said Israel struck a military installation southwest of Damascus International Airport before dawn Thursday, setting off a series of explosions and raising tensions further between the two neighbors. Apparently seeking to interrupt weapons transfers to the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, Israel has struck inside Syria with increasing frequency in recent weeks, making the war-torn country a proxy theater for Israels wider war with Iran. The increasing tempo of attacks risks inflaming a highly combustible situation drawing in Israel, Syria and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, a staunch ally of President Bashar Assads government with thousands of fighters in Syria. Israels military said later Thursday that its Patriot Missile Defense system intercepted an incoming projectile from Syria over the Golan Heights. An Israeli defense official said the Patriot hit a drone, and the military is checking if it was a Russian aircraft that entered the Israeli side by mistake or if it was Syrian. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with protocol. Both the Syrian government and Hezbollah, however, are mired in the countrys 6-year-old civil war and are unlikely to carry out any retaliation that may ignite a bigger conflagration with Israel. Iran and Hezbollah are overstretched, and its not clear they can afford to gamble with a direct showdown with Israel now, said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Iran knows no matter how powerful theyve become, they cant be fighting on two fronts at the same time. Israeli Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz would not comment directly on the incident but said any similar strike would be in line with established policy to interrupt weapons transfers. It absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement, Katz told Israels Army Radio. Just before the apparent Israeli missile strike, at least three cargo jets from Iran probably landed at the Damascus airport, said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for the flight-tracking website FlightRadar24. They include an Il-76 flown by the Iranian cargo company Pouya Air that was last tracked over Iraq headed towards Damascus, he said. Its unknown what they were carrying. Passenger flights and civilian cargo jets continue flying into Damascus, although theres suspicion that some commercial flights serve as cover for weapons transfers from Iran. The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank that has criticized the nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers, has said Pouya Air is the latest name for a long-sanctioned airline. It also has accused Pouya Air of funneling arms from Iran into Yemens capital of Sanaa to supply Shiite rebels there. Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the foundation, said he tracked a fourth cargo flight from Iran to Syria on Wednesday night, an Airbus A300 operated by Mahan Air, which is suspected of ties to Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. He also called one of the cargo flights, a Qeshm Fars Air Boeing 747, especially suspicious because the airline stopped operating in 2013, only to resume flights to Damascus three weeks ago. We dont know for sure, but lets say that we can fairly safely assume that the weaponry and fighters reach Damascus through these daily flights, Ottolenghi told The Associated Press. The explosions near Damascus reverberated across the capital, seat of Assads power. Syrias state-run SANA news agency said Israel had fired several missiles from inside the occupied Golan Heights, 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Damascus, striking a military installation southwest of the airport that serves both military and civilian flights. It reported damage but no casualties. The buildings shook from the force of the blast, said a media activist who goes by Salam al-Ghoutawi of the Ghouta Media Center in the opposition-held northeastern suburbs, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the airport. He said he heard the roar of jets in the distance. Explosions were silhouetted against the night sky in a video published by the center. Debris was seen flying out as the explosions illuminated a sizeable cloud nearby. Hezbollahs al-Manar media station reported a blast at fuel tanks and a warehouse next to the airport, which is 25 kilometers (16 miles) east of central Damascus. The Syrian military said in a statement the attack sought to raise the morale of terrorist groups the government maintains are fighting Assads forces. It made no mention of whether it would respond. Israel is widely believed to have carried out airstrikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles as well as on Hezbollah positions. It rarely comments on such operations. Last month, Syria fired missiles at Israeli jets after they struck targets in Syria, in a rare military exchange between the two adversaries. Hezbollah is an avowed enemy of Israel, and the two sides fought a monthlong war in 2006. Tensions between them along the Lebanon-Israel border have risen in recent weeks, with each side warning of a much more serious confrontation. Some Israeli officials have also recently been threatening grave damage to the Lebanese civilian infrastructure in case of a new conflict with Hezbollah, apparently in hopes the country can somehow rein in the militia. Yahya, the analyst, said Israel is increasingly worried about the potential arsenal that Hezbollahs could acquire and the weapons already available in Syria. Most likely they see a window of opportunity where their intervention can degrade Hezbollahs military power, she said. The conflict in Syria, which pits Assad and his regional allies against local and foreign opposition forces, has killed more than 400,000 people since it began in 2011. The civil war is further complicated by militant factions such as al-Qaidas affiliate in Syria and the even more powerful Islamic State group, which in 2014 seized a large chunk of territory but lately has been losing ground in the face of a campaign by a U.S.-led international coalition. Russia, another key Assad ally, denounced what it called an act of aggression against Syria. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not directly blame Israel for Thursdays explosion, but she cited Syrian media as saying Israel was responsible. In other developments, at least 19 people were killed in air raids across rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest. Some appeared to target ambulances and medical centers. The Civil Defense, a search-and-rescue organization, said four medical staff were killed in an attack on a university hospital in the town of Deir Sharqi, and four paramedics or ambulance operators died in an airstrike on an ambulance services in another town, Maarzita. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 civilians, including nine children, were killed around the province. The Civil Defense reported the same overall death toll. The activists believe Russia or the Syrian government launched the raids. U.S. jets also are known to strike in Idlib province, targeting al-Qaida-linked fighters. ___ Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Albert Aji in Damascus contributed. As the White House touts President Donald Trumps accomplishments during his first 100 days in office this week, New Mexicos Democratic senators are focusing on the presidents broken promises and what they describe as misplaced priorities. Sen. Tom Udall led a Capitol Hill press conference this morning in which he and other Democrats criticized the Republican president for a variety of failed commitments. I reached out the White House today for a response, but have not received a response yet. Heres a story I wrote earlier this week that has White House officials touting some of their accomplishments. Trumps hundredth day in office is Saturday. Hes planning a rally in Pennsylvania and choosing to skip the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. As a candidate for president, Donald Trumps promised over and over again that he would drain the swamp in Washington, Udall said at the news conference. He promised to return Washington to the people, and to rid it of lobbyists and special interests. It was literally Trumps rallying cry. It is stunning how quickly he broke that promise, Udall continued. And its deeply disturbing how many times he has violated it in his first 100 days. His cabinet is the wealthiest in modern history. It is stocked with lobbyists and special interest representatives. He has rolled back President Obamas ethics standards and yet has broken his own weaker rules repeatedly. He claims to have no ties to Russia even as the FBI says it is investigating him for his connections, Udall added. He promised open, honest government. Yet he berates the media, and he has refused to continue President Obamas policy of publishing the White House visitor logs. On that note, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., this week introduced legislation that would force the Trump administration to disclose all visitors to the White House and those they met with. Udall introduced related, but even more expansive, legislation a month ago. The Udall bill would require disclosure of visitors to the White House or any other location where President Trump regularly conducts official business, including his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and various other Trump properties frequented by the president. The American people have a right to information about who has access to the president, Udall said today. But President Trump doesnt want them to know. Meanwhile, Heinrich is the ranking Democrat on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, and the Democrats on that committee today released two reports taking aim at Trumps actions related to working families and rural areas. You can read those reports here. The reports say the Trump administration rolled back a regulation that made it more difficult for companies that violate labor law to get government contracts. The regulations helped better protect the estimated 28 million workers that are employed at the 24,000 businesses that have federal contracts. It also criticizes Trumps attempt to rescind the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a Republican alternative, which so far has stalled in Congress. The negative effects of TrumpCare would have disproportionately fallen on rural communities, many of which already have limited access to health care services, the report says. Rural Americans are more likely to receive coverage from both individual insurance markets and Medicaid. If the Republican bill passed, 2.9 million rural Americans could have lost coverage by 2020. Albuquerque developer Argus Investment Realty turned over the keys this week to Lovelace Medical Group for its new clinic at Independence Square, but there could be more tenants looking to locate at the site at Jefferson and Osuna. Scott Throckmorton, owner and president of Argus, said his leasing team envisions a multi-building development at the Square. The team is courting prospective tenants for an 8,000-square pad fronting Jefferson and another retail strip ranging from 2,000- to 4,500 square feet, which is designed for businesses needing drive-thru lanes. Weve got a whole lot of different businesses looking at that frontage, said Throckmorton, adding the arrival of Lovelace has generated a whole bunch of interest. He said the number of patient visits to the clinic each day, not to mention employees and vendors, is a strong attraction for a retail tenant. The Independence Square facility positions the medical group for growth, with 100 exam rooms and space to accommodate up to 40 providers, according to a Lovelace spokeswoman. The providers and nearly 100 staff members who previously practiced at the Northside clinic at 6100 Pan American NE have moved to the new digs, including the Diabetes and Metabolism Care Clinic, endocrinology, family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics and podiatry. Lovelace has expansion rights at the Square, said Throckmorton, whose company has a strong focus on developing medical real estate. Argus has the capacity to build another structure that could encompass 24,000 square feet next to the newly opened Lovelace clinic. Were here to help them in any way we can, Throckmorton said of the anchor tenant that has leased 43,000 square feet. With total build-out in the $30 million range, ease of access to the Square was pivotal to the project, said the developer, citing road widening on Jefferson between San Antonio and Osuna as well as installation of a center-turn lane with signals. The developer spent $700,000 for curbs, gutters, sidewalks and road striping. Its very modern signal light equipment with cameras, said Throckmorton. The infrastructure improvements will be transferred to the city. The U.S. Attorneys Office on Thursday honored 111 law enforcement officers, agents and investigators for their outstanding work on dozens of cases that led to the convictions of murderers, sexual predators, drug dealers, fraudsters, and other criminals during an awards ceremony in Albuquerque. In addition, 15 individuals and policymakers were recognized for exceptional contributions to public safety initiatives addressing the opioid epidemic, youth prevention and education programs, officer safety, and national security. The ceremony was held at the Vincent E. Griego Council Chambers of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Government Center. This ceremony is a way to express our appreciation to the officers and agents on the front lines of justice, as well as the private citizens and policymakers who work tirelessly to make New Mexico stronger, safer, and more just, Acting U.S. Attorney James D. Tierney said in a news release. Former U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez also was honored during the ceremony for his service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico from May 2014 to March 2017. The individuals recognized included: County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins, Dr. William Wiese, City Councilor Diane Gibson, Dr. Joanna Katzman, Dr. Snehal R. Bhatt, Chief Medical Investigator Kurt Nolte, Medical Investigator Hannah Kastenbaum and Forensic Pathologist Karen Cline-Parhamovich of the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, Executive Director Jennifer Weiss-Burke and Prevention Specialist Lou Duran of Healing Addiction in Our Community, Brittany Haggard, Chairperson of Generation Rx. WASHINGTON Investigations intensified into President Donald Trumps ousted national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on Thursday as the Pentagon watchdog joined lawmakers in probing payments he accepted from foreign sources including a Russian state-sponsored TV network. At the same time, documents released by the top Democrat on a House oversight committee showed Flynn was warned by authorities after he retired from the military in 2014 not to take foreign government-sourced money without advance approval from the Pentagon. Flynn, a former Army lieutenant general and Defense Intelligence Agency chief, later accepted tens of thousands of dollars for his work on behalf of foreign interests, including RT, the state-supported Russian television network, and a Turkish-owned company linked to Turkeys government. The Pentagons acting inspector generals office confirmed Thursday he has launched an inquiry into whether those payments qualify as coming from foreign governments and whether Flynn properly informed military authorities about them. The White House defended its hiring of Flynn and attempted to shift blame for any problems with his vetting onto the Obama administration, which handled the reissuance of his security clearance in January 2016. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who released the documents, said during a news conference that Flynn had been clearly informed he needed to get permission to receive foreign payments and theres no evidence he did so. The Pentagons warning to General Flynn was bold, italicized and could not have been clearer, Cummings said. In a key 2014 document, Flynn was told by a Defense Intelligence Agency official that the U.S. Constitutions emoluments provision prohibits any monetary payments or gifts from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained. The Oct. 8, 2014, letter which was sent to Flynn at his request explained that such advance approval would need to come from the relevant service secretary. Earlier this week, Cummings and Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House committee, said that they had found no evidence Flynn asked the Army for permission to receive foreign payments or informed the military he had accepted them. Army spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said the Army had no records that Flynn requested that permission. One episode in question involves a trip he took to Moscow in 2015 for RTs anniversary celebration. He was paid at least $33,750 to attend the gala at which he was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. General Flynns attorney says he discussed his trip to Moscow with DIA, but we have no evidence, not a shred, that he disclosed his payments, Cummings said Thursday. In a statement, Flynns attorney Robert Kelner said the Defense Department was fully aware of the trip, citing his previous statements that his client briefed DIA officials before and after the RT trip. Kelner also pointed to a letter, released in redacted form by Cummings, that notes that Flynn provided a thumb drive to the agency containing documents detailing the RT event, including that Leading Authorities, a speakers bureau that handled Flynns paid speeches, was handling the event for him. Kelners statement did not address other payments Flynn received from foreign sources. Flynn has previously disclosed he got between $50,000 and $100,000 as part of his personal stake in $530,000 that his company, Flynn Intel Group, received for consulting work last year for a Turkish businessman. Last month Flynns firm filed as a foreign agent with the Justice Department for its consulting work and acknowledged the work may have benefited the government of Turkey. Flynns client, Inovo BV, is owned by a businessman who is also a member of a committee overseen by Turkeys finance ministry. In comments to the AP, Utah Republican Chaffetz, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said that Flynn had an obligation to seek approval to take money from a foreign government. We found no evidence that he did that. Chaffetzs office released a letter he sent on Thursday to the Army, asking the services acting secretary to make a final determination as to whether Flynn violated federal law by accepting the payments, and if so, to start the process of recovering that money. Chaffetz also asked the Army to say why it hasnt yet made a determination as to the legality of Flynns payments from RT given that they have been widely reported for at least two years. He also wants the Army to disclose any other investigations its launched since 2010 into similar legal violations. The committees inquiry is one of several congressional investigations into Flynns contacts with foreign officials. Trump fired Flynn in February for failing to inform senior administration officials about his contacts with Russian officials contacts that are being examined as part of the wider inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. On Thursday, 18 House Democrats on the oversight committee signed a letter calling on Chaffetz to do more to pressure the White House to release documents regarding Flynn. There is obviously a paper trail that the White House does not want our committee to follow, the Democrats wrote in the letter. On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer rebuffed criticism from Cummings that the White House was covering up. Asked about Trump administration vetting, Spicer appeared to shift blame onto the Obama administration, which had fired Flynn as head of the DIA. Why would you re-run a background check on someone who is the head of the Department of Defense Intelligence Agency that had and did maintain a high-level security clearance? Spicer asked. He noted that Flynns security clearance was renewed during the Obama administration with all of the information thats being discussed that occurred in 2015. The White House recently told the committee that documents the lawmakers sought would not be turned over because they contained classified information or were not relevant to the committees investigation. ___ Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Jill Colvin and Jeff Horwitz contributed to this report. By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Updating with Trumps fresh quotes) From Lalit K Jha Washington, Apr 27 (PTI) US President Donald Trump told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he would not pull out of the NAFTA treaty for now, but will swiftly begin renegotiating the trilateral deal with them, a White House statement said. Trump spoke with both President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada over phone and decided not to terminate North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the White House said. advertisement NAFTA is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico and the US to create a trilateral trade bloc in North America. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honour to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," Trump said according to a readout of the call issued by the White House. "Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said. Trump said he was about to terminate the NAFTA but changed his mind after talking to leaders from Canada and Mexico who urged him to consider renegotiating it. "I was going to terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now," Trump told reporters at a brief media appearance with the Argentinian counterpart Mauricio Marci. "The president of Mexico, with whom I have a very good relationship, called me, and also the Prime Minister of Canada, with whom I have a very good relationship. I like both of these gentlemen very much. They called me and said, rather than terminating NAFTA, could you please renegotiate?," he said, giving an insight into the decision making process. "I respect their countries very much. The relationship is very special. And I said, I will hold on the termination; lets see if we can make it a fair deal. Because NAFTA has been a horrible deal for the US. Its been very good for Canada, its been very good for Mexico, but its been horrible for the US," Trump said. The announcement comes amid reports that the US is planning to withdraw itself from the trilateral trade bloc. "They asked me to renegotiate -- I will. I think well be successful in the renegotiation, which, frankly, would be good because it would be simpler. "We have to make a deal thats fair for the US. They understand that. So I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big shock to the system, we will renegotiate," Trump said and warned that he would terminate the deal if he does not get a fair deal. advertisement "Now, if Im unable to make a fair deal, if Im unable to make a fair deal for the US, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But were going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot," Trump added. A draft executive order was in the final stages of review and could be unveiled within a week or two, two White House officials were quoted by Politico news website. The New York Times recently quoted an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump is likely to sign an executive action that would begin the process of withdrawing the US from NAFTA. "The White House wants Congress to approve those negotiations under legislation that would allow expedited approval of the reworked agreement, but talks between administration officials and congressional Republicans have moved slowly. The order would give Trump a credible alternative," the daily reported. advertisement During his entire presidential campaign, Trump has been very critical of NAFTA, which came into force in 1994. PTI LKJ UZM AKJ CPS --- ENDS --- FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has announced that he has drafted up a proposal to get rid of Title II Net Neutrality in its current form, and will be revealing the full text for public review on Thursday. Pai called the current rules heavy handed, saying that they stifle innovation and competition among broadband providers, and said that his proposal will call for a return to the light touch way of regulating telecoms and related providers that was the norm up until the introduction of Net Neutrality. After the full text is revealed, the entire FCC will get to vote on them on May 18th. Should the proposal get past that point, it will be opened up for public comment before the FCC takes a final vote on any modifications and, presumably, enacts the new laws. Pai and other FCC bigwigs in the current administration had expressed a distaste for the Obama eras policies and former Commissioner Tom Wheelers way of doing things, with Net Neutrality being a particularly often-scorned target. The FCC met up with telecoms, internet companies, cable providers, and other such figures in the past few weeks to discuss how to approach the problems that they saw with the current Net Neutrality rules. Pais revelation makes it clear that their favored approach is to get rid of the rules entirely, and likely replace them with something much more favorable for providers. Pai has yet to reveal exactly how the FCC and other government bodies would approach the regulation of telecoms and related entities if Net Neutrality were to be repealed, and has proposed things like voluntary compliance with set rules in the past. In his speech on the new proposal, Pai said that the current rules were at least partially responsible for a dip in investments in the broadband world shortly after they were enacted, among other things. Pai has caught some flack for his strong stance against Net Neutrality, but has also garnered much support for it. The same can be said of the Republican party at large, especially since the introduction of the Trump administration and the new Presidents hand-picked Cabinet, which included Pai. There was news late last year that Google was to launch a local server in Cuba under the Google Global Cache (GGC) brand, and now the new Google server officially went live in the country. This is a notable turn of events considering the former diplomatic isolation of Cuba, a Western hemisphere country where Internet connectivity is still extremely low, and it also signifies the more open approach that is developing between Cuba and the United States. Internet data has previously been transferred to Cuba through international pipelines via Venezuela. However, Googles arrival in Cuba means that residents of the country will now be able to access Internet services in a significantly quicker manner. While the launch of Googles new server marks an important milestone for both the Alphabet-owned company and Cuba, industry experts say that the future development of Internet in Cuba will likely still be a slow affair. Likewise, while the server is in place and has gone live, its reportedly experiencing some early issues and Cubans still arent getting connected to it automatically, BuzzFeed News reports. Although some Google products were previously available in the country in an unofficial capacity, 2014 saw the rollout of Google Analytics, the Google Play Store, and Chrome. With the launch of Googles server in Cuba, the Mountain View-based tech giant became the first Internet company to host content in the island country. In March 2016, Google launched a bid to provide free high-speed Internet in Cuba, then followed up on that initiative with a deal it signed in December with Cubas state telecom company ETECSA to help establish the Google Global Cache for Cuba. At the same time, Google said that people in Cuba who already had Internet access could expect better service and less latency because of the local storage. However, this did not refer to those who do not already have access to the Internet, which is why the company launched a pilot program that connected 2,000 Cuban homes to the Internet, though it remains to be seen whether the majority of households in the country will be able to pay for the service once the trial period comes to an end. Google Classroom users can now create their own classes as Google has just announced that theyre starting to roll out the new feature for anyone that uses the service. While it wont be available to everyone right away as it may take a little bit of time before it visually appears for everybody, those who use Classroom actively and were looking forward to this capability are urged to check out whether or not its possible for them to already give things a go. Google says that the ability to create your own classes has been in a pilot status for the last few weeks or so with a select number of both teachers and students to get a feel for how things worked and see what if any changes needed to be made to improve the overall experience. Now that its had some fair testing Google is ready to make it available to everyone. Google initially announced the classroom creation feature back when they announced that they would be opening Classroom up to personal Google account users, which was in the middle of last month and plenty of time for Google to allow a smaller group of users to dip a toe in the waters. As part of the pilot testing there are already a handful of classes that have been created by both educators and students alike. Google highlights a few of them including one that teaches students about Graphic Design, another which was used as a means for sharing ideas and resources for a Girl Scouts Robotics Club, and one more which focuses on a club called GameDev Society that was created by a Brazilian university student. These examples paint a pretty nice picture of how Classroom can be used even if the groups that are being created arent necessarily an actual class. That being said, with some of the pilot testers using Classroom in new and innovative ways after Google put out the new feature, and then highlighting those uses, it opens the door for more users to hop on board and perhaps check out how Classroom can be worked into their lives as well. Google Photos looks as though it is being readied to take better advantage of the already-available object and person detection that it offers. In particular, it seems as though Google is going to push face recognition as a much more prominent and usable feature in the future. The details on this are still a little sketchy, and are based off a teardown of the latest version of the Google Photos app by Android Police. The sum of the information is that Google is going to place a much stronger emphasis on Google Photos use of face recognition. This is for you (the Google Photos account holder) and people you know. The latter is of particular relevance as the information seems to suggest there will be an ability to share images (presumably) with people who have been detected in those images. Which brings us to the you part. According to the details, Google Photos will first start to ask users to select an image which identifies them as them. Once selected, it appears Google will also ask users if they want to make that face publicly available. And this is presumably where the share feature will kick in. As not only will the feature effectively allow other people to identify you in images that they have taken, but it will also be the backbone of the share function. If you select to share an image with those in the image, then providing they have also given permission to be identified, Google Photos will know who to share the image(s) with. Which is different to how Google Photos currently identifies people in images, locally. Of course, not everyone will want to be identified and not everyone will want to share images they have with other people of themselves, or even of, those other people. So it also does seem clear that Google will be making all of the mentioned features optional. If you do not want to use them (or some of them), then you will be able to opt in or out depending on your level of comfort. As always though, there are no details on when the feature which actually go live, as at the moment, it is just the behind the scenes aspects that have been spotted. Not the actual features. Which does also lend to the notion that they are subject to change before being made available, as well as the reality that they might not become available at all. For reference, this is the currently available version (updated yesterday) of Google Photos. The latest update for the Google TalkBack accessibility app for blind and otherwise vision-impaired people started rolling out on the Google Play Store on Wednesday, boasting a number of new features and improvements meant to ennoble the overall user experience of Googles service. The highlight of the apps build version 5.2 is the so-called Speech Verbosity setting meant to modify spoken feedback that users receive from the app. The option located in the main Settings menu of the app allows you to choose how much feedback do you want the app to speak to you, which should speed up browsing for certain users that dont require a lot of assistance when browsing content on their Android device. Other notable features of the latest Google TalkBack build include new earcons, spoken character counts for password fields in Chrome, and spoken feedback thats triggered by screen magnification. The Chrome-specific feature only works on devices running Chrome 56 or later versions of Googles mobile Internet browser, the Mountain View-based company revealed. The latest software update for the Google TalkBack service also ships with a completely new accessibility service called Select to Speak. Like its name suggests, this functionality provides users with the option of selecting any text by tapping it and having the service read their selection aloud. While convenient, the feature isnt enabled by default and instead needs to be activated manually. To do that, open the Settings app on your Android device, navigate to the Accessibility section and tap the Select to Speak option on the following screen. Finally, the changelog detailing the 5.2 update for the Google TalkBack app also mentions numerous fixes and improvements but doesnt clarify on the matter, meaning the developers are likely referring to minor bugs and performance issues that were now fixed in the latest build of the app. Given how the new update started rolling out on the Google Play Store almost 24 hours ago, it should soon be available for download in all parts of the world, if it isnt already. The Alphabet-owned company is expected to introduce more features to its Android accessibility service later this year and more details on the matter will likely be available soon. Samsung Electronics has decided that it will retain its current corporate structure after an intensive review has been made regarding the optimal corporate structure for the South Korean electronics giant. The comprehensive review of the matter, which was performed by a group of external advisors, revealed several issues that may negatively affect the company if it becomes a holding firm. Heeding the advice of the comprehensive review, the board of directors decided that the transition to a holding company, as being suggested by a portion of its shareholders, is not worth the risks involved. The first major issue that could affect Samsung, according to the review, is related to the red tape inherent in the transition of a company to become a holding firm, as Samsung is required to divest of its equity stakes during the transition. This process requires the participation not only of the board of directors but also the stockholders of the affected companies, which would be a lengthy process, the company said. The second concern is related to the impact of the transition on Samsung Electronics stock price, as financial affiliates of Samsung are required to divest its stake in the electronics company. Selling a substantial amount of shares by these financial affiliates may negatively impact the share price of Samsung Electronics, as opportunistic traders may decide to buy Samsung shares at a substantially lower price due to the surplus of stocks for sale. Last is related to the perceived uncertainty of the current legal environment in South Korea, as certain laws related to holding firms are under review at this point. The calls made for the transition of Samsung Electronics to become a holding company intensified in the wake of scandals rocking the electronics giant, which included the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco and the corruption charges involving the heir apparent of the company Jay Y. Lee. Some analysts believed that a transition to a holding company structure would help improve Samsungs valuation through increased transparency and streamline the companys complicated corporate structure. As the company moves forward retaining its corporate status quo, it will rely on its comprehensive portfolio of products to keep its business competitive, Samsung said on Thursday. Verizon Wireless started pushing out the April Android Security Update to all models of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge on its network, the largest mobile service provider in the United States announced on Thursday. The update for the Galaxy S7 ships with the firmware version G930VVRU4BQA4, while Verizons customers using the Galaxy S7 Edge will receive the build G935VVRU4BQA4, the New Jersey-based company revealed. The new software update sports fixes for dozens of vulnerabilities of the Android operating system, in addition to remedying a number of security-related issues that are specific to the proprietary software running on Verizons variants of the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge. Outside of making the devices more secure, the new update doesnt boast any kind of end-user features as its changelog doesnt even mention any bug fixes or performance improvements that users tend to expect from minor software updates. Regardless, consumers are encouraged to install the new software as soon as possible in order to make sure their Android devices are as safe as they can be. The new software package for the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge is being rolled out in stages as an over-the-air (OTA) update, meaning all users who are eligible to receive the latest Android security patch may have to wait a few days until the software is available on their device. Both members of Samsungs 2016 flagship lineup periodically scan for updates on their own and will serve users with a push notification prompting them to install the April Android Security Update as soon as one is available, though anyone is always free to try searching for the patch manually by launching the Settings app on their device, accessing the About phone section, and tapping the Download software updates option. The new patch for the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge that Verizon is now pushing out wont update the actual version of Android running on the handsets, both of which are still powered by Android 7.0 Nougat. An update on upcoming software for Samsungs 2016 smartphones is expected to follow later this year. While some presumed that Xiaomi would unveil the third-generation Mi Band 3 today, the company took many consumers by surprise and instead introduced a smartwatch made by WeLoop that was funded through the crowdfunding platform running on the Mi Home app. Dubbed the WeLoop Hey S3, the wearable will be sold on the Chinese market as an affordable alternative to the Apple Watch. The new wearable was created as a companion to active, sporty individuals, as indicated by its main features. The product arrives with a square 1.28-inch always-on touchscreen display with a resolution of 176 by 176 pixels and Cornings Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The WeLoop Hey S3 weighs only 38 grams and is 46.21 x 35.66 x 11.15mm in size, the Chinese company revealed. Its main watchface can be customized with various themes and displays time, date, temperature as well as battery status. With the help of an accelerometer, electronic compass, and gyroscope, as well as a built-in heart sensor, the watch can count steps, track travel distance, and heart rate, in addition to providing training analysis. The product will be offered with a range of colorful silicone straps. Similar to XiaomisAmazfit smartwatch introduced by its sub-brand Huami, the WeLoop Hey S3 does not run Android Wear out of the box, but a proprietary operating system. The embedded Bluetooth 4.2-enabled adapter allows the new smartwatch to connect to a smartphone and relay notifications for calls, texts, and social media apps. Owners of the WeLoop Hey S3 will also be able to use the watch to answer calls or control music, WeLoop revealed, adding that the product is waterproof and can survive being immersed in up to 50 meters of water. Perhaps the most notable fact about the watch it that according to WeLoop its supposed to support up to 30 days of normal use on a single charge, but it remains to be seen whether this claim will hold true in real-life usage. Just like most other products launched through Xiaomis crowdfunding platform, the WeLoop Hey S3 will be priced quite affordably as the product will ship with a price tag of approximately $78 (539 yuan). More details about the device will likely follow in the coming weeks once it hits the market. Tamil Nadu political parties like the DMK, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Congress and CPM have claimed that BJP is trying to gain foot hold in Tamil Nadu by taking advantage of the internal strife of AIADMK. TTV Dinakaran has been arrested by the Delhi Police on charges of trying to bribe Election Commission officials. (File Photo) By Pramod Madhav: The arrest of TTV Dinakaran under charges of trying to bribe Election Commission officials to obtain AIADMK's two leaves symbol has raised questions whether the BJP is working to destabilise Tamil Nadu politics. Opposition parties like the DMK, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), Congress and CPM have claimed the BJP is using Dinakaran as a pawn to rake chaos in Tamil Nadu corridors of power. advertisement "It is the BJP's doing, as they are trying to take control of AIADMK and gain a footprint in Tamil Nadu", said G Ramakrishnan, state president of CPM. WHY DINAKARAN'S ARREST WAS IMPORTANT The arrest of TTV Dinakaran definitely changed the course of Tamil Nadu politics and paved way for the rebellious O Panneerselvam to merge with Sasikala faction. The only possibility for this to happen was the absence of TTV Dinakaran in Chennai who was appointed as Deputy General Secretary of AIADMK by VK Sasikala before her imprisonment at Bengaluru's Parapanna Agrahara jail. Reports about Panneerselvam getting support from the BJP has been doing the rounds ever since the former CM's sudden revolt against Sasikala days after Jayalalithaa's death. According to sources, the only incriminating evidence against Dinakaran is an audio clip of a conversation between middle man Sukesh Chandra and a hawala agent. DINAKARAN - OPS'S BHISMA PITAMAH Dinakaran, is an experienced politician and was once considered as the 'Bhishma Pitamah' for O Panneerselvam. He was the one who brought Panneerselvam into limelight. Dinakaran proved his mettle by holding the party together even after his aunt's imprisonment and conducted a successful campaign at RK Nagar. Word is that his canvassing was so comprehensice that he would have easily won the constituency had the Election Commission not cancelled the election. However, the Election Commission cancelled the RK Nagar elections, saying it has preliminary incriminating documents that money was distributed for votes. The fact is that, the Income Tax department claimed that a set of documents were recovered at minister Vijayabhaskar's house which carried names of Chief Minister Edapadi K Palanisami, Electricity Minister Thangamani, Finance Minister Jayakumar and Municipal and Corporations Ministers SP Velumani and also that Rs 89 crore were given to them. None of these men were questioned except for Vijayabhaskar. Dinakaran even then claimed that he'll face the issue legally and left for Bangalore to meet Sasikala, within that fortnight, the other ministers held a meeting and announced that they are ready for a merger with the OPS camp. DELHI POLICE USED AS PAWN? advertisement Last week, Delhi Police announced that it has arrested one Sukesh Chandra who was the middleman in Dinakaran's deal with some Election Commission officials to buy AIADMK's two leaves symbol. Interestingly, Sukesh claimed that he never knew who Dinakaran was. " I have been made a scapegoat, they are implicating me for the past things," Sukesh said as he was taken to the court. Delhi Police summoned TTV Dinakaran after naming him as a 'suspected accused'. Subsequently, he was brought to Delhi and arrested after two days of interrogation. EVIDENCE AGAINST DINAKARAN The incriminating evidence of an audio clip between TTV and Sukesh Chandra seems to be hypothetical. A court source claimed that Delhi Police only have an audio clip of a conversation between Sukesh Chandra and a Hawala agent. "Now as another move they are going to take him on a 'vacation' to Chennai, Bangalore and Kochi. Imagine this, the accused says that he's innocent and yet they are taking him on a trip to find out the money trail. Can it get anymore crazier," laughed a former police official who requested anonymity. So the big question is why Delhi Police is indulging in such an investigation? Is it trying to fight corruption or is it being used by someone as a muscle force? advertisement WATCH: Dinakaran arrest: From Mannargudi to Poes Garden to prison ALSO READ: AIADMK symbol row: Dinakaran taken to Chennai for further investigation TTV Dinakaran confesses to meeting middleman in EC bribery case, assumed he was high court judge For AIADMK's Dinakaran, is it the end of road or just another master plan? --- ENDS --- The Delhi Police team probing bribery case against Dinakaran will shortly reach Tamil Nadu to probe his illegal money trail from Chennai to New Delhi. By India Today Web Desk: A day after Sasikala's nephew and AIADMK leader TTV Dinakaran was remanded to five-day police custody, a team of the Delhi crime branch has now taken him and his aide Mallikarjuna to Chennai for further questioning. The cops are also expected to probe the money trail and lines of communication between Dinakaran and middleman Sukesh Chandrasekhar. Dinakaran is accused of bribing Sukesh with a whopping Rs 60 crore to win the Election Commission's favour for the AIADMK's 'two leaves' symbol. advertisement Meanwhile, the police have also secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residences of Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna. Apart from these two, the alleged middleman Sukesh will also be interrogated in the case of AIADMK symbol bribery. #WATCH: TTV Dinakaran being taken to Chennai by Delhi Crime Branch officials for probe in AIADMK symbol case, says- "I'll talk to you later" pic.twitter.com/5JleKYkgiv&; ANI (@ANI_news) April 27, 2017 WHO IS SUKESH CHANDER? Dinakaran was allegedly told by Sukesh Chander, the mediator, that the AIADMK party symbol - which was frozen by the Election Commission last month ahead of the RK Nagar bypoll - would go to the Dinakaran-Sasikala camp if he was paid Rs 50 crore. PLAN OF ACTION The police aims to gather details of the money trail used to siphon money from Chennai to Delhi and phone conversations among the three accused. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. With inputs from PTI Also read: Dinakaran sent to 5-day police custody in AIADMK's 'two leaves' symbol bribery case Also read: TTV Dinakaran confesses to meeting middleman in EC bribery case, assumed he was high court judge Also read: AIADMK merger done deal? OPS party chief, EPS to continue as CM; camps wait for Dinakaran's arrest --- ENDS --- advertisement YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Lydian is pleased to announce the formation of an Independent Advisory Panel comprising Armenian and international environmental and social performance experts. The role of the seven member Panel is to monitor the Amulsar project, located in the Republic of Armenia, to ensure it fulfils its commitment to operate to best international sustainable mining practices. The Panel will be Chaired by internationally-respected responsible mining and conflict resolution expert Dr John Harker. As Armenpress was informed from the official website of Lydian Armenia, the Panel members will convene regularly to monitor progress and to provide objective and authoritative advice on a range of sustainable development issues including environmental management; social management and public health; water management; biodiversity; waste and cyanide management; socio-economic development; governance; and human rights. The Panel will have direct access to the Companys Chief Executive and will be empowered to: Critically appraise the social, environmental and human rights impacts of the Amulsar project and Lydians plans and programmes to manage these impacts; Scrutinise and provide advice on means to strengthen the Companys stakeholder engagement activities; and Monitor and report on the implementation of international best practice standards. The Panel will interact directly with stakeholders of the Amulsar mine and will produce an annual public report on its activities. All members will be serving on the Panel in a personal capacity. The Panel make-up is as follows: Dr. John Harker (Chair) is a leading international expert on responsible mining and multi-stakeholder processes. Dr. Harker was most recently President and Vice Chancellor of Cape Breton University in Canada. In 1999/2000 he was asked by the Government of Canada to review whether the presence and conduct of the countrys then largest oil company was exacerbating the Sudanese civil war. He previously worked for the International Labour Organisation and advised President Nelson Mandela on the creation of a National Development Agency in South Africa. In 2007-8, he chaired an Independent Review Panel of experts at Cerrejon in Colombia, South Americas largest coal mining operation. Dr. Hayk Akarmazyan is an Armenian environmental expert. He has a PhD in Environmental Chemistry and he is currently an Associate Professor at the National Polytechnic University of Armenia, where he lectures on environmental management and environmental economics. Dr. Haroutune Armenian is an internationally respected public health expert. He is a Professor in Residence of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also President Emeritus and former President of the American University of Armenia (AUA). Jon Hobbs is a leading international environmental professional. He recently served as WWFs (World Wide Fund for Nature) International Director on Extractives having previously served in a similar role with the United Kingdoms Department for International Development. He is also former Chair of the OECD's Environmental Professionals Network (Environet) and the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development. He has contributed to the development of numerous international initiatives around responsible mining. Alisa Savadyan is an Armenian social and environmental impact specialist, and environmental lawyer. She provides advice on rural development, water management and waste management projects financed by the World Bank, USAID, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Elisa Tonda is a leading environmental expert who has worked in the private sector and has served for 15 years in various agencies within the United Nations. She is also a Board Member of the International Cyanide Management Institute (ICMI) which oversees the implementation of the International Cyanide Management Code. Luc Zandvliet is a socio-economic expert, with particular expertise in advising mining companies on stakeholder engagement, grievance management and prevention, and social investment strategies. He is co-author of the leading book for social performance practitioners Getting it Right Making Corporate-Community Relations Work. Dr John Harker, Chairman of the Panel commented: Our Panel is comprised of independent minded people fully able to look at complex situations and fashion clear advice. With it, the responsible progress which mining can offer, and Armenia needs, can be embraced with confidence. We are looking forward to the challenge. Howard Stevenson, Chief Executive of Lydian International commented: Lydian is committed to developing and operating the Amulsar mine in accordance with internationally respected best practice standards. We have been leading exponents of Armenias adoption of the EITI, we are committed to good international industry practices in all aspects of our operations, and will be implementing the International Cyanide Management Code. The establishment of an Independent Advisory Panel to objectively exercise oversight of our performance is a voluntary initiative that we committed to as part of our Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. We look forward to a positive and constructive relationship with the Panel, as we work together to maximise benefits for all project stakeholders. kW FWD It could just be the OPC Line body kit, like the ones that are available for the regular Insignia and the Astra . Why go to all the trouble of testing a RHD car in Germany wearing full camo?Opel hasn't made a great performance car in a long time, and we don't think that's about to change with the steroid-induced Insignia. But the thought of a big car with over 300 horsepower is appealing, and it reminds us of the era when the Mondeo ST220 and Vectra OPC roamed the streets.But first, let's examine what we see here. It's a RHD car on German license plates, and it has the Holden lion logo hiding under a black wrap. The reason? Well, the Australians have already done the work of installing and testing a gasoline-fed V6 engine under the hood, while all the European models have four-banger turbos.We already have the specs for that mill, which produces 230(313 PS) and 370 Nm of torque from its 3.6 liters of displacement. All-wheel-drive and a 9-speed automatic will come standard when the new Commodore is launched.In theory, that's the engine they'll use for the Insignia OPC/VXR as well. By comparison, the old performance model had a twin-turbo 2.8-liter V6 (shared with Saab) that produced 325 PS and 434 Nm of torque.Despite speculation, the Australian company has ruled out a twin-turbo V6 engine for the new Commodore , saying that it simply wouldn't fit. But maybe that's a trap, as Admiral Ackbar would say. I mean, isn't this Insignia visibly bigger than the last one?There are such engines in the GM inventory, like the one powertrain in the Cadillac ATS-V. Unfortunately, the Delta and E2XX platforms would produce infertile babies, since one is RWD and the other-oriented. But at least we know Peugeot's acquisition isn't throwing a spanner in the OPC works. A total of 1,009 persons have been detained in 72 provinces, accused of acting as secret clerics within the state security corps. By Indo-Asian News Service: Turkish police detained over 1,000 persons in a massive operation aimed at arresting 3,224 alleged supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government accuses of organising the attempted coup in July 2016. According to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu on Wednesday, a total of 1,009 persons have been detained in 72 provinces, accused of acting as secret clerics within the state security corps. advertisement About 8,500 police officers are taking part in the operation across the country with the support of agents from the Turkish intelligence services, Efe news reported. The wanted list includes the names of 3,224 people, according to Turkish press. In Istanbul alone, 2,000 police officers are looking for 390 suspects, with 172 arrested so far. Ankara prosecutor's office considers the detained to be Fethullah Terror Organization (FETO) agents working within the security apparatuses, using the acronym created by the authorities to refer to Gulen's network of sympathizers. Turkish authorities accuse Gulen of creating a parallel state by placing his followers in posts within the administration, the judiciary, the armed forces and the police. Gulen was until 2013 a close ally of the Turkish government, which allowed access of his followers into public administration. Although purges against alleged members of the network began before the failed coup in July 2016, the arrests and dismissals of officials, judges, prosecutors, teachers, military and police accused of supporting Gulen have accelerated.Also Read Turkey coup attempt: Over 250 killed, 3000 rebel soldiers detained Turkey coup 'conspirator' has network in India: Turkish Ambassador --- ENDS --- VW might say that electric cars will become viable soon, but it's making the transition to sustainable mobility with compressed natural gas ( CNG ).A key part of making this engine as clean as possible is bringing the catalytic converter quickly up to operating temperature. The lambda prove has an electric heating system, thus making it functional within ten seconds of a cold start even if exhaust gas and exhaust system still contain certain amounts of condensation."Due to its chemical composition, natural gas as a fuel already reduces CO2 emissions if it comes from fossil sources. If, however, it is produced in a sustainable way, for instance as biomethane from agricultural waste, then looked at from well-to-wheel it facilitates a form of mobility that produces appreciably less CO2. We use the term e-gas to describe synthetically produced CNG that is made out of water and CO2 from renewable power generation's excess current. e-gas is ideal for making renewable power usable for the transport sector and for storing it. It is in practical terms a partner in the switch to renewable forms of energy," says Dr Wolfgang Demmelbauer-Ebner, Head of Volkswagen Petrol Engine Development.Now that we got the boring stuff out of the way, let's see what sort of compromise you'll be making. The architecture is, of course, the same as the 1.0 TSI, a 3-cylinder motor with a small turbo. But you do need different internals to cope with the specific lubrication needs of CNG engines.Still, at least it's not down on power, as 90 PS is nearly identical to the regular TSI. The compact 1.0 TGI is a new engine specification for the small car class in the Volkswagen Group. That could mean it's going in the Polo, but we've heard the South American Gol or Up! will use it first. I like the Black Knight scene in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight is getting beat in a sword fight by King Arthur and losing one limb after the other. He wont admit he might be in over his head, instead he tells King Arthur, Tis but a flesh wound. When he has nothing left but a body, he claims, All right, well call it a draw. Pretty funny in a movie scene, but that stubborn independent mentality isnt as funny in a cockpitand when you lose in flight, it clearly isnt a draw. Like the Black Knight, there is a hesitancy among aviators to declare an emergency. It is something you occasionally see in aviation magazines where the author describes how he or she pulled off some miraculous feat without any help and, of course, without declaring an emergency. It is part of our aviation culture that declaring an emergency is something to be avoided at all costs. Revealing Our Weaknesses Maybe it is believed to be a sign of inferior piloting skills, or the fear of retribution from the FAA, or just not wanting anyone to question our decision making ability. Whatever the case, it seems we would rather lose all our limbs than admit we need some help. Instead of a weakness, knowing when to bring others to assist, is a sign of a mature pilot. No one would argue that the best pilots have the judgment to know when and how to bring resources to bear at a critical time of flight. During check rides, I occasionally bring pilots to a point where the situation may extend beyond their abilities or knowledge. Many are hesitant, no matter how dire the situation, to declare it. It is always a point of discussion at the end of the flight, either to be reinforced or emphasized as an error. Just like anything else, it has to be trained until it is second nature. Why do I find it so important? Declaring an emergency is like having another pilot in the cockpit; it lessens the workload. Why waste brain cells and time on making the unnecessary radio calls, checking pubs, or flying protracted procedures. When you declare an emergency, you get the priority handling needed to cope with that situation. The controller will clear the airspace around you, and give you as much assistance as possible to get the aircraft down safe. Practice What You Preach Now for full disclosureeven though I have lectured on the importance of declaring an emergency for years, I cant say I always practiced what I preached. During one flight, I found myself in un-forecast icing conditions. The ice was slowly accumulating, but I didnt declare an emergency. In my coolest, calmest pilot voice, I told the controller I would like a lower altitude when he got a chance because I was starting to pick up ice. Fortunately, the controller knew the situation could turn bad real quick. He told me to descend immediately to an altitude 2000 feet lower and advise status of icing. I look back and know I was guilty of what I often chastised others for. I should have declared an emergency. If the controller hadnt given me priority handling, the situation could have gotten worse, maybe even unrecoverable. One of the roadblocks to declaring an emergency may be confusion as to what constitutes one. The Pilot/Controller Glossary is vague. The bottom line is that anytime a pilot seriously doubts his position or ability to safely fly the aircraft as planned, an emergency should be declared. To me, this means if the weather is beyond what was forecast or your equipments abilityor isnt functioning as advertisedlet the controllers know. Dont let the situation get to the point where you are working at your limits or the aircrafts capabilities. Unless you are in a training environment with controlled conditions, every flight should be well within your skills, and uneventful. The ATC Perspective If you talk with air traffic controllers, they would rather you declare an emergency before the situation becomes unmanageable and harder for them to work to a successful conclusion. In certain instances, controllers may declare an emergency on their own initiative. Witness stories when the author describes how the controller abbreviates a procedure or talks them into position. Even if the pilot doesnt declare an emergency, or thinks they are handling it on their own, they may be receiving the priority handling they need. It is important to remember that most controllers are not pilots and their knowledge of your operating environment, and certainly your ability, is largely an unknown. The Air Traffic Controllers Handbook advises the controllers to treat any situation that they think is an emergency, or has the potential to be, as an emergency. It is the controllers option to declare an event an emergency. In these cases the pilot may have to provide written explanation to the FAA. This shouldnt be feared. First, it isnt that often that a written report is requested, and second, when it is they will not face a violation if their actions are in the interest of safety (FAR Section 91.3(c)). If I worked for the FAA, and a pilot didnt declare an emergency in an emergency situation, my first question would be why not. Talk about poor judgment. As pilots, we like to be in total control of the aircraft and the situation. That is not a bad traitit is what often makes a great pilot. Declaring an emergency isnt losing that control, it is being decisive and staying ahead of the aircraft and the situation. Arguably, some of the accidents discussed in this magazine may have changed if pilots were willing to admit when circumstances were escalating beyond their control. Jason Smith is a military instructor pilot and flight examiner. He also holds ATP and CFII ratings and is a FAASTeam member. This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of IFR Refresher magazine. Read More from IFR Refresher, and learn how you can receive a FREE BOOK! 27 April 2017 14:46 (UTC+04:00) By Julie Essiam and Joy Phumaphi As African women leading influential and impact-driven organizations the Ecobank Foundation and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) we are passionate about building a prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable African economy. But achieving that goal requires accelerating progress toward eradicating the diseases that continue to deplete our communities of their most valuable resource: healthy people. One such disease is malaria. To be sure, Africa has lately made significant progress in combating malaria. From 2010 to 2015, as part of the global Millennium Development Goals, the continent reduced the malaria incidence rate (the number of new infections) by 21% and malaria deaths by 31%. But malaria remains a serious threat to the wellbeing of millions of Africans. In 2015, an estimated 212 million people contracted malaria worldwide, with 47% of cases concentrated in just six African countries. An estimated 429,000 people mostly children under five years of age died from malaria that year, with 92% of those deaths occurring in Africa and 40% occurring in just two countries, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There is, therefore, an urgent need to accelerate progress and end malaria for good. This is both a moral and economic imperative. Preventable illnesses and deaths limit the ability of communities to contribute to Africas much-needed economic transformation. In many African countries, malaria reduces GDP growth by one percentage point per year. The effort to end malaria can therefore not be separated from the effort to ensure prosperity across Africa. The Copenhagen Consensus think tank estimates that every dollar invested in ending malaria yields $36 in economic returns. To reap these benefits, African countries must increase domestic-resource mobilization substantially. Africas private sector, in particular, has a crucial role to play in developing innovative solutions that address malarias growing resistance to existing drugs, as well as mosquitoes growing resistance to insecticides. Moreover, the private sector can help to address inefficiencies in supply-chain management and logistics, thereby facilitating distribution of insecticides and long-lasting insecticidal nets. Of course, even with private-sector investment, progress toward eradicating malaria in Africa will be uneven, not least because different countries are at different points on the path. Senegal where the share of malaria-related outpatient visits fell from 36% in 2001 to just 3.3% last year is now on trackto achieve so-called pre-elimination by 2020. Meanwhile, other African countries such as Angola and Somalia are struggling to make any progress at all, as indicated in the ALMA scorecard for accountability and action. No single African country can reliably eliminate malaria so long as the disease remains rampant among its neighbors. Malaria does not, after all, respect borders. That is why it is vital for African governments to work together, using every tool at their disposal, to achieve comprehensive malaria control, pre-elimination, and, ultimately, elimination. ALMA a coalition of 49 African heads of state and government working to eliminate malaria by 2030 aims to advance precisely such cooperation, by focusing on accountability and action at the national, regional, and global levels. ALMA provides management tools, such as the scorecard for accountability and action, that help to track progress, identify obstacles and bottlenecks, and advance solutions. These tools are versatile and adaptable throughout the continent. Where needed, ALMA has provided support to address challenges directly with countries, in cooperation with partners, or through results-based management structures. The Ecobank Foundation is also doing its part: its investment of both cash and in-kind services and training have enhanced the impact of the Global Fund partnership in Africa. By helping to strengthen the financial-management capabilities of grant recipients in Nigeria, Senegal, and South Sudan, the foundation is unlocking funding for health programs in those countries and is now expanding its support to Chad and Zambia. And there is more. Through its digital financial platform, the Ecobank Foundation is leveraging its presence to bring in new funding for the fight against malaria. And it is raising awareness as well, among its own staff and other stakeholders, of how to support malaria prevention, including through mosquito nets and a clean environment. The goal of eradicating malaria in our lifetime may sound ambitious, but it is achievable. Together, Africas governments and private sector can produce the investment and action needed to stop the disease for good and ensure greater prosperity across the continent. Copyright: Project Syndicate: Uniting Against Malaria --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 12:22 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Azerbaijan is still negotiating its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will complete a report on Azerbaijan's readiness to start implementing the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation in early July, the agency said. The report will be ready before the next meeting of the working group within the framework of Azerbaijan's accession to the WTO. The WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation entered into force on February 22, 2017. The government of Azerbaijan asked for support from UNECE and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in order to assess the country's readiness to start implementing the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation. The issue was at the center of discussions at an opening seminar organized jointly by UNECE and UNCTAD, the Ministry of Economy and GIZ from March 29-30, the message said. Consequently, the seminar recommended that the assessment present a categorization of the 36 measures contained in the WTO. They will be divided into three categories: Measures that are ready; Measures that need further work, but can be implemented by Azerbaijan alone; and Measures for which more time and international assistance would be needed. Azerbaijan holds a status as observer country at the WTO since 1997. The Azerbaijani working group under the WTO secretariat was established on July 16, 1997. The country has begun negotiations with the WTO member countries in 2004. Azerbaijan has accomplished negotiations and signed protocols with Turkey, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and is at the stage of signing the protocol with China and Moldova. The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the worlds trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The set of non-discriminatory trading rules embedded in the WTO agreements has the characteristics of a global public good, and the WTO, as the main institutional framework for the conduct of trade relations, directly contributes to development and to the fight against world poverty. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 14:33 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Israfilbayova More than 26,700 people got new jobs in the first quarter 2017, said Salim Muslimov, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Azerbaijan. Muslimov, addressing a meeting with representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan [AmCham], noted that more than 40,000 jobs were created during the period. He went on to say that a bill on "On unemployment insurance" was submitted to the Milli Majlis [Parliament] and added that he attaches particular importance to the cooperation of the Ministry with AmCham. In accordance with the draft law, the insurance premium will be equal to 1 percent of the amount of the insured's salary, of which half will be paid by the employer and the other half by the employee. This is the lowest figure in the world, as in some countries the contribution is up to 3-5 percent of wages. The amount of payments will be differentiated depending on the length of service and time spent without work. If the insured's work experience is more than 10 years, the payment will be equal to 65 percent of the salary that he received during the last 12 months, if the experience is less than 3 years, the insurance payment will be minimal. Within the framework of the principle of separation of social responsibility in the sphere of employment put forward by the President, active measures to secure employment were continued on the basis of the vacancies of state companies. The labor contract was extended with 17,900 employees, while 23,000 employees concluded new labor contract with the employer in the first quarter of 2017. Taking into account the vacancies presented outside of this framework, in the first quarter of 2017, 26,700 people were provided with work. 1.226 people were involved in trainings and additional education courses, the minister stated. The Minister also informed the participants about the reforms in the sphere of pensions, changes in the Law on labor pensions, their nature and goals, work carried out in the field of social partnership and so on. Unemployment rate in Azerbaijan is 5 percent, while the poverty level equals to 5.3 percent. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 16:30 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The Azerbaijani economy grew by 3.5 times over the past 10-12 years, said Ali Ahmadov, Azerbaijans Deputy Prime Minister. He made the remarks at a meeting of the Commission on Regulation and Coordination of Labor Relations with representatives of construction sector in Baku on April 27. The Commission headed by Ali Ahmadov was created in March 2017. Over this period, pensions and salaries increased by approximately threefold in Azerbaijan, and 1.5 million jobs were created at the initiative of the head of state, he noted. Last year alone, 90,000 new jobs were created in the country. Azerbaijan became an example for other countries in the field of poverty reduction as a result of targeted policy, the poverty level decreased from 49 to five percent in the country. The deputy prime minister stressed that the work is underway to further reduce unemployment. Currently, the unemployment rate is less than six percent in Azerbaijan, while a serious development is also observed in other areas, added Ahmadov. He said that this economic growth created a solid basis for fulfillment of obligations facing the government. Construction sector in Azerbaijan is the second after the oil sector in terms of the largest amount of investments, stressed Ahmadov. He said that 11.4 billion manats ($6.7 billion) out of 15 billion manats ($8.82 billion) of investments, invested in the countrys economy in 2016 falls to the share of the construction sector. More than 3.9 billion manats ($2.29 billion) out of these 11.4 billion manats were invested in fixed assets, he said, adding that thanks to these funds 13,000 apartments with a total area of 1.67 million square meters were built. The deputy prime minister noted that the construction sector also plays a significant role in the labor market. A total of 343,000 people work in the construction sector, accounting for seven percent of countrys working population, according to the statistics, he said, adding that the construction sector is developing and strengthening yearly. In the near future, Azerbaijan will prepare a project to prevent illegal employment in the construction sector, Ahmadov told reporters on the sidelines of the event. Currently, the majority of people working without labor contracts are engaged in the construction sector, according to him. Illegal employment allows workers to shirk from fulfilling a number of obligations - paying taxes, social contributions. I believe that our today's meeting with the leaders of a number of construction companies will yield positive results. We expect that all employees working in this sphere will officially formalize their employment relations," he said. Today, the share of the construction sector in Azerbaijans GDP amounts to about 10 percent. The government plans to achieve a GDP growth by 249 million manats ($ 141.2 million) until 2020, through the implementation of measures envisaged in the Strategic Road Map for the development of housing provision at a reasonable price. The Road Map comprises short-term (until 2020), medium-term (until 2025) and long-term measures (post 2025) to be implemented in the sphere. Some 900 million manats ($493.09 million) are planned to be spent for the implementation of the measures. Under the Road Map, some 10,000 new jobs will be created in the construction sector of the country. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 18:47 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Israfilbayova Azerbaijans Economy Ministry issued 15 investment incentive documents worth 86.5 million manats to entrepreneurs and has provided 15 entrepreneurs with documents on payment of export promotion in the amount of 704,900 manats. The documents were presented to the entrepreneurs within the framework of the conference dedicated to the Day of Entrepreneurs, on April 26. Representatives of state bodies, international organizations, representatives of chambers of foreign states, as well as entrepreneurs from various sectors of the economy attending the event noted the importance of measures aimed at developing entrepreneurship in the country. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on additional measures to encourage investment on January 18, 2016. The decree was signed to expand investment activities, improve business environment, increase industrial production, as well as create a mechanism and normative legal acts related to encouragement of investments, in accordance with the action plan for realization of the 2015-2020 State Program for Development of Industry in Azerbaijan. Under the investment incentives document, half of the revenue of an individual entrepreneur, profits of legal entity are exempted from income tax for seven years. Import of equipment for the implementation of the projects is also exempt of VAT and customs duties. Businessmen in Azerbaijan became eligible to get a document of the investment incentives following the approval of amendments proposed to the Tax Code of the country. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 14:19 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova The 9th International Mstislav Rostropovich Festival is underway in Baku. The festival is co-organized by Azerbaijan's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Mstislav Rostropovich Foundation and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation in accordance with the Azerbaijani President's executive order on celebration of the 90th anniversary of the world-renowned cellist. Each day of the festival presents music lovers the unforgettable concerts featuring the best international soloists and orchestras, which have arrived in Baku. Acclaimed musicians and ensembles from Russia, Austria, and Germany, including the Saint Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by of Yuri Temirkanov, Staatskapelle Dresden Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Vienna Berlin as well as Rainer Honeck, Omer Meir Wellber, Keith Armstrong and others please spectators with fascinating performances. In an interview with Day.Az, Rainer Honeck, conductor of "Vienna - Berlin" Chamber Orchestra spoke about his first impressions of the capital. The maestro loved the city and he's going to come here again, but as a tourist. Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki said that he really liked how Baku unites the old and the new. Omer Meir Wellber, conductor of Staatskapelle Dresden Orchestra, for his part, said that he has many friends from Azerbaijan, and his music teacher was Baku resident. "We had time to walk around the city and I even bought CDs with Azerbaijani music. I love Baku, and I really want to come here again," added the maestro. The City of Winds made a great impression on musicians. Photo credits: Matthias Creutziger --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 18:09 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan hosts 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 is underway in Gakh city. The event brought together 300 young psychologists and 20 academics from 33 countries. The congress, which is held under the motto Humanity today, is dedicated to the psychological consequences of wars and terrorist attacks, problems of intercultural relations, crisis of refugees and internally displaced persons. In their speech, Chief Executive of Gakh Region Musa Shekiliyev, Chief of Staff of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Azad Jafarli, Head of "ASAN Volunteers" Bakhtiyar Islamov and Chairman of "Gnc Psixoloqlar" Public Assotiation Orkhan Orujzadeh stressed the importance of the congress to discuss various issues of cooperation between prospective young professionals from different countries, as well as solve various problems through the prism of modern requirements and realities. The congress will last until April 30. The media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az. EFPSA, the European Federation of Psychology Students Associations was established in 1987, at the first International Congress of Psychology Students in Portugal and now consists of 32 Psychology student associations. 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. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 13:41 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov A group of MPs of the Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) has adopted an appeal on the Khojaly genocide in connection with the 25th anniversary of the massacre, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Lithuania stated on April 27. They named the occupation of Azerbaijans Khojaly city and brutal murder of hundreds of civilians as one of the worst crimes against humanity, and expressed condolences to the Azerbaijani nation in connection with the massacre. Khojaly, the second largest town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, came under intense fire by Armenia from the towns of Khankendi and Askeran already occupied by the Armenian armed forces in 1992. As many as 613 civilians mostly women and children were killed in the massacre, and a total of 1,000 people were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, 25 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, and the fate of 150 of them remains unknown. The document regards the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as one of the most tragic conflicts of the twentieth century that affected the destiny of millions of Azerbaijanis and recalls that 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories was occupied by the Armenian armed forces. The members of the Lithuanian Seimas noted with regret that requirements of four resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council demanding immediate withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan hadnt been implemented. The document reiterated that Lithuania has always supported Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and called for withdrawal of the occupying forces from Azerbaijans occupied territories within the resolutions of the international organizations. Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims to Azerbaijan. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan, but they have not been enforced to this day. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Sanchez, who is scheduled for an initial court appearance in the case next week, faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison if convicted. By Reuters: An Uber driver accused by prosecutors of having sexually assaulted a female passenger after she sought a ride home from a gathering in the upscale seaside city of Newport Beach, California, was charged with rape on Wednesday. Angel Sanchez, 36, was arrested a day after the March 30 attack, which took place on a street near the woman's home in Santa Ana, California. The victim in the case was not identified by authorities. advertisement Sanchez, who is scheduled for an initial court appearance in the case next week, faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison if convicted. "Nobody should go through what this rider reported to police. We worked with law enforcement on the investigation and will continue to work with authorities," an Uber spokesman said. Sanchez has been banned from driving for Uber. Prosecutors say the woman had been attending a company gathering in Newport Beach and her colleagues requested an Uber ride to take her home. They added Sanchez drove the victim to Santa Ana before sexually assaulting her. Following the attack, the woman ran from Sanchez' minivan and immediately called 911, prosecutors said. Also Read: Uber driver molests woman in Kolkata, threatened to rape her Yet another Uber driver molests a female passenger. This time, in Mumbai Also Watch: 28-year-old Irish woman found dead in Goa beach, suspect detained --- ENDS --- 27 April 2017 16:39 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The OSCE monitoring held at the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia passed without incidents, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported on April 27. The monitoring was held in Azerbaijans Qazakh district under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative. On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was held by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Simon Tiller and Mikhail Olaru. On the Armenian side, the monitoring was carried out by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Gennady Petrica and Martin Schuster. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 17:00 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict holds a geopolitical risk for the South Caucasus region, because from time to time there are escalations, and violence never stops, Italian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Giampaolo Cutillo told Trend on April 27. He said that this region is crucial as it connects Europe to Asia and North to South, noting that preserving peace in the South Caucasus means preserving better development for it. This is important not only for the two countries [Azerbaijan and Armenia], but for all of us, said Cutillo. I wish the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will happen soon. It probably will take time, but it must be done. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with 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. While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years. 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 27 April 2017 18:07 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia will meet with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova informed during a briefing on April 27. Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the ministers of the three countries will hold a meeting in Moscow, dedicated to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, on April 28. At certain stage, the ministers will be joined by co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and personal representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, Zakharova said at the briefing. She added that it is expected to clarify the parties' positions on the problematic aspects and determine further steps in the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The negotiation process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution has stagnated since June 2016 due to the refusal of Yerevan to continue serious talks. Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz According to the available information, Armenia plans to hold an international conference titled "Modern aspects of rehabilitation in medicine" in Yerevan and in the occupied Azerbaijani territories on Sept. 13-15. Experts from Russia, the Czech Republic, Tajikistan, Germany, Uzbekistan and Georgia were invited to the conference, Hajiyev said. Armenias main aim is not to discuss modern aspects of rehabilitation, but to carry out another political provocation, said Hajiyev. By this, Armenia once again tries to promote the illegal regime [in the occupied Azerbaijani territories] and turn the invited conference participants into a tool of its political propaganda. Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry has urged foreign nationals to refrain from illegal visits to the occupied Azerbaijani territories which imply violation of Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws. Hajiyev reminded that illegal visits to the occupied lands entail legal liability. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 09:56 (UTC+04:00) By Trend President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev sent a congratulatory letter to King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander. On my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I wholeheartedly congratulate you and your people on the occasion of the public holiday of the Netherlands King's Day, said President Aliyev in his letter. On this joyful day, I am pleased to extend my most sincere congratulations to you as you celebrate your 50th anniversary, and I wish you good health, happiness, success in your work, and the friendly people of the Netherlands lasting peace and prosperity, Ilham Aliyev said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 10:40 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijan`s First Deputy Minister of Defense, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Colonel General Najmeddin Sadikov has taken part in the 4th Adriatic Sea Defense & Aerospace Exhibition, which took place in Split, Croatia. The purpose of this event, sponsored and conducted by the Croatian Ministry of Defense, is the convergence of defense industry specialists and manufacturers with the leaders, executors and defense industry policymakers to discuss procurement of modern defense technologies. The exhibition is attended by up to 70 foreign delegations and over 500 local and foreign companies. The exhibition opening ceremony was attended by the President, Deputy Prime MinisterMinister of Defense of Croatia. During the visit, Colonel General Sadikov viewed the exhibition and held bilateral meetings. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 10:53 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Russia has delivered another batch of ammunition and modern military equipment for various purposes to Azerbaijan on April 26. The defense ministry reported that the equipment and ammunition were delivered in accordance with an agreement on military-technical cooperation signed between Azerbaijan and Russia. The new military products, delivered by ships from Russia and accepted with the participation of experts, will be transferred to the appropriate military units. The acceptance of purchased new sets of ammunition and military equipment into the armament of the military units of Azerbaijan Armed Forces, as well as their full readiness for combat use will be ensured in the shortest possible time, the ministry said. Training of military personnel , who will operate and use new weapons and military equipment is conducted by Russian instructors. Furthermore, a phased modernization of the used weapons and equipment is carried out with the use of the latest technology. The Azerbaijani Army, which today is considered the most modern army in the Caucasus, consists of Air Force and Air Defense Forces, the Navy, and the Land Forces. The skills and combat readiness of the Azerbaijani army are growing year by year, as the countrys Armed Forces regularly conduct military exercises. The Azerbaijani army is supplied with modern weapons and technical equipment for maintaining a high level of combat capability. The army building process is of particular importance for Azerbaijan, as twenty percent of the country's territory is under Armenian occupation and the country is in a state of war with Armenia. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 11:37 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has met with Florence Mangin, the Director of the Department of Continental Europe at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development. The two hailed the current status of relations, and emphasized that the reciprocal visits of the presidents of both countries gave further impetus to the bilateral cooperation, Azertac reported. Azerbaijan and France enjoy high level political dialogue, said Florence Mangin. She stressed that the visit of President Ilham Aliyev to France in March of this year was very productive. She also noted that French companies remain interested to work in various spheres of the economy, especially, in the fields of agriculture, energy and transport in Azerbaijan. Citing the successful cooperation in energy field between the two countries, Mammadyarov said that there are favorable opportunities in other areas for French companies as well. The FM put an emphasis on works related to TAP project, as well as North-South and East-West corridors and prospects of these projects. Mangin further informed that two French banks are interested to participate in financing of abovementioned projects. Mammadyarov touched upon the current status of negotiation process on the draft strategic partnership agreement between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the European Union. The French diplomat stated that her country supports the enhancement of the relations between Azerbaijan and EU and the signing of this agreement soon. The Minister also highlighted the negotiation process on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and stated the importance of applying the principles of territorial integrity, sovereignty, independence and inviolability of borders of states within the internationally recognized borders in a holistic manner in respect of protracted conflicts. He added that changing the recognized borders of states by use of force is unacceptable and this is contrary to the norms and principles of international law. The FM reiterated that the current status-quo is unacceptable and unsustainable as was repeatedly declared at the level of heads of state of OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries. Further, the political consultations have been held between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan and France. The meeting was joined by Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov and Florence Mangin. Khalafov praised political relations between the two countries and stressed the role of the reciprocal visits in further development of political dialogue. He also hailed reciprocal visits of the heads of the states of both countries and political dialogue, adding there are great potential for development of cooperation. He provided an insight into the large-scale economic reforms carried out in Azerbaijan, progress achieved in the country in the field of diversifying the economy. The Deputy FM invited the French companies to participate in the projects implemented in Azerbaijan. He also highlighted cultural and humanitarian relations between the two countries. Mangin, in turn, praised relations between the two countries, adding reciprocal visits of the presidents of both countries give a significant contribution to the development of bilateral cooperation. Khalafov said France as the co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group has a great role in solving the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The conflict is a great obstacle to the regional development. The Deputy FM touched upon current state of Azerbaijani-EU relations and stressed the importance of sustainability and long-lasting of these ties. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 11:50 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with Luc Devigne, the director for Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia and OSCE of the European External Action Service. The sides discussed the current state and prospects of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union, as well as exchanged views on the negotiation process on Azerbaijan-EU partnership agreement. Mammadyarov recalled a visit of President Ilham Aliyev to Brussels, and said that the meetings and the statements made within the visit provided solid ground for further development of the Azerbaijan-EU cooperation. In turn, Devigne expressed his satisfaction on productive meetings held in Baku on Draft Agreement. Talking about the way forward, he said that the parties via meetings and video conferences will continue discussions. He also stressed that there are wide range of opportunities for enhancing cooperation in the field of trade and transport between EU and Azerbaijan. The new agreement between EU and Azerbaijan 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. Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Mammadyarov stressed the importance of a holistic approach with respect to the resolution of protracted conflicts based on the principles of respecting to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states within internationally recognized borders, as it is enshrined in the Global Strategy of EU. 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 regions. - Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 11:19 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov A group of 54 Azerbaijani military servicemen returned from Afghanistan to Baku on April 27 in accordance with the rotation plan. The group has been serving in Afghanistan within the NATO-led non-combat "Resolute Support" mission. In general, the peacekeeping contingent of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has been serving under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan since November 20, 2002. Currently, 90 servicemen, 2 medical officers and 2 sappers of Azerbaijani Armed Forces are participating in the mission in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan, as a reliable partner of NATO and friend of brotherly Afghanistan, is committed to continue its significant contribution to the Resolute Support Mission by providing troops, multi-modal transit, training and financial assistance. The country has several times made substantial donations to the Afghan National Army (ANA) Trust Fund. Moreover, Azerbaijan supports Afghanistan on its path of reforms towards integrating into regional and global economy. Furthermore, Azerbaijan allowed the NATO planes carrying non-combat loads for a mission in Afghanistan to fly through Azerbaijan's airspace and to use the country's airports. About 40 percent of all cargo destined for the NATO mission in Afghanistan pass through Baku. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) Kalpit Veerval, hailing from Udaipur in Rajasthan, has become the first candidate to score a perfect 100 per cent score in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Main, results of which were announced today. Out of the over 11.8 lakh students who appeared for the examination for admission to various IITs and engineering colleges, around 2.2 lakhs have qualified for the second and final round -- the JEE (Advanced). advertisement The second and third ranks were bagged by Vasu Jain and Ananye Agarwal from Delhi respectively. Vrunda Nandkumar Rathi came first among girls with a score of 321. Her overall rank was 71. Boys have outshined girls in bagging the top thousand ranks. There were 932 boys in the top 1,000 list. Similarly, 4,534 of the top 5,000 rank holders were boys. The second and third positions among girls were bagged by Poorva Garg (Score:319, Overall rank: 96) and Narayana Jeevana Reddy (Score: 318, Overall rank: 102). The exam is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for admission to various government-approved engineering colleges, including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs). Kalpit, who has scored 360 out of 360 in the JEE-Main, had earlier topped the Indian Junior Science Olympiad and the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE). "I was confident of cracking the exam but had never expected to score a perfect 100 per cent. Proper planning and dedicated study of five hours every day helped me a lot," Veerwal told PTI over phone from Udaipur. His father Pushkar Lal Veerwal is a nurse at Udaipurs Maharana Bhupal Government Hospital and his mother Pushpa Veerwal is a government school teacher. His elder brother is a medical student at the AIIMS. Over 11.8 lakh students had appeared for the exam at 1,781 centres in 113 cities across the country. The cut-off for the JEE-Advanced has been set at 81 marks. The examination was held on April 2 (offline) and April 8 and 9 (online). PTI GJS SMN SMN --- ENDS --- 27 April 2017 15:02 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Today, Azerbaijan is an area bringing together such notions as large-scale reforms, energy projects of regional importance, stability, multiculturalism and high social welfare, said Fuad Alasgarov, the head of Department on Work with Law Enforcement Agencies at the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration. Alasgarov, speaking at the conference titled Standard of Anti-Corruption Management Systems in Baku on April 27, added that enhancing transparency in state administration, development of e-services and fighting corruption are priority areas of Azerbaijans state policy. He stressed that there is a strong political will in Azerbaijan for the successful fight against corruption. A national strategy and action plans on fighting against corruption were adopted in accordance with the orders of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, new strategic views and tasks in this area were defined, Alasgarov noted. The institutional and legislative reforms, which are being carried out in accordance with this strategy, e-government infrastructure, close cooperation with civil society, principles of public participation and extensive awareness-raising measures are some of the achievements of the anti-corruption policy in Azerbaijan, he said. Alasgarov said today one can say with full confidence that Azerbaijan has all the mechanisms to fight corruption and the process is being developed. He noted that the positive dynamics in fighting corruption was reflected in international anti-corruption ratings as well. Special importance is attached to cooperation with specialized international organizations within the long-term strategy, which is being implemented for fighting the corruption, Alasgarov said. Standardization, Metrology and Patents Committee Chairman Ramiz Hasanov, addressing the event, said that Azerbaijan has contributed to the promotion of the principle of open government. Chairman of the State Agency for Public Services and Social Innovations Inam Karimov, in his turn, noted that for more than five years the "ASAN Service" centers act as successful formulas in fighting against corruption. He stressed that the main principle of "ASAN Service" is that the citizen is always right. Karimov added that "ASAN Service " model is recognized worldwide as Azerbaijani brand. Currently, there are several countries where ASAN model is being applied, he said. The establishment of "ASAN Xidmet" services has helped to reduce extra expenses and loss of time for many citizens, upgrade the level of professionalism, ensure a larger use of electronic services and increase transparency and strengthen the fight against corruption. Chief of Anti-Corruption Department under the Prosecutor-General Kamran Aliyev, in turn, said that very important steps have been undertaken in the fight against corruption in Azerbaijan. One of the main philosophies in the fight against corruption is the unity of precautionary measures and measures to prosecute crime, he said. Aliyev said that as a result of this successful anti-corruption policy, Azerbaijan is closely cooperating with a number of important international organizations, and reports of these organizations demonstrate that the figures improve from year to year. The conference was attended by government officials, foreign experts, representatives of civil society and a number of state bodies. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 15:17 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Baku hosts a working meeting of experts on cybersecurity in accordance with the plan of bilateral cooperation for 2017, signed between the Defense Ministries of Azerbaijan and France. The experts noted the importance of strengthening cybersecurity measures in the nation's critical infrastructure, such as government, communications and financial services, transport as well as in other areas, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported on April 27. The experts identified as important areas the issues of cybersecurity, online security and reliability of networks. The defense ministry noted that the working meeting of specialists will last until April 28. On the same day, a working meeting of the specialists on chemical, biological and radiological defense took place in the Military Academy of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. The meeting was held in accordance with the plan of bilateral cooperation for 2017 between the Defense Ministries of Azerbaijan and Russia. During the meeting, the specialists discussed the experience gained by the military structures of both states in the sphere of chemical, biological and radiological defense, and noted the importance of conducting scientific meetings in this field. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 17:42 (UTC+04:00) By Gulgiz Muradova Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia took another step forward this week in bolstering the energy cooperation, which can play a significant role in the economies of the two energy-rich nations. Talks on the partnership in the energy sector, cooperation within oil cut deal and investment opportunities dominated the talks held in Baku within a visit of a delegation led by Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Khalid Abdulaziz Al-Falih. President Ilham Aliyev, who received Al-Falih on April 26 stressed that Azerbaijan is interested in expanding relations with Saudi Arabia in various areas. Praising the high level of political ties, the President underlined the necessity of taking this opportunity to develop the economic cooperation and increase the bilateral trade and mutual export. Stressing the significance of developing energy resources and cooperation in oil and gas refining and petrochemistry, President Aliyev highlighted Azerbaijan`s accomplishments in this area. The head of state expressed his confidence that the Saudi Arabian minister`s visit will give new dynamics to the development of energy cooperation between the two countries. Expressing the Saudi people`s respect for President Aliyev and the government of Azerbaijan, Al-Falih said relations between the two countries and peoples have deep and ancient roots, pointing out centuries-long cultural cooperation. He said this cooperation has been further expanded under the leadership of President Aliyev. The minister said Saudi Arabia always supports Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity, adding that the two counties have built strong cooperation and have always supported each other over the past years. The two are fairly old partners in the Middle East and bilateral relations mainly focused on political cooperation. Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia promote comprehensive brotherhood based on the mutual respect and sincere friendship. Saudi Arabia is one of the first countries that recognized Azerbaijans independence and provided active humanitarian assistance to refugees and IDPs. Saudi Arabia very much appreciates Azerbaijans contribution to the agreement to reduce oil production, which was reached in December 2016 in Vienna, said Al-Falih at a meeting with Energy Minister Natig Aliyev. Al-Falih said that Azerbaijan is one of the countries that have fulfilled their obligations on oil output cut better than others. The minister emphasized that Azerbaijan reduced oil production to a greater extent than it undertook. We have common values; Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia are very pragmatic with regard to oil production in the long term. We want stability not only for producers, but also for oil consumers, added the minister. The participation of Azerbaijan in joint oil production cuts is defined at 35,000 barrels per day. Prior to the landmark deal, the volume of production in the country was at the level of 37.72 million tons of oil, while daily output stood at 829,100 barrels. Saudi Arabia and a number of other Middle Eastern crude producers reached an initial agreement last week to continue output cuts beyond their June expiry, while Venezuela and Algeria backed an extension on Wednesday. Azerbaijan also supports prolonging the supply curbs, Al-Falih said after meeting with Aliyev. Were totally aligned. We think we need to bring global inventories to where the five-year average should be. The Saudi minister also offered the Azerbaijani side to jointly invest in third countries, showing eagerness to expand the areas of interaction. The offer was well perceived by Natig Aliyev, who stressed that Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia have great potential. Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR can participate in the projects in Saudi Arabia, while in its turn Saudi Arabias Saudi ARAMCO can take part in the projects in Azerbaijan, Aliyev said. "We will continue to discuss the possibility of cooperation between SOCAR and ARAMCO in the projects in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia, as well as the possibility of joint activity in Turkey," Aliyev said. Aliyev stressed that Azerbaijan has big plans for the development of production in the petrochemical industry, in particular polypropylene. In this regard, Aliyev called Saudi Arabia for participating in the petrochemical projects. SOCAR GPC, a gas processing and petrochemical complex of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, will be commissioned in Garadagh, 15 km south of Baku in January-March 2022. The cost of the GPC project is approximately $4 billion. The two countries also eager to cooperate in the non-oil sector in a bid to diversify their energy dependent economies. Al-Falih, talking to Azertac, said that Saudi Arabia seeks to exchange experience with Azerbaijan regarding the implementation of its economic diversification project designed up to 2030. Both countries can benefit from the exchange of experience. Saudi Arabia is ready to invest in Azerbaijan's non-oil sector. We will encourage such giant companies as "Saab" and "Maaden" to invest in Azerbaijan, he said. The minister added that export of Azerbaijans agricultural products to Saudi Arabia will be one of the next steps in this direction. We are also interested in studying Azerbaijan's experience in aluminum. For this purpose, holding of mutual visits and meetings is very important. We have many companies, individuals, funds that are looking for safe high growth economies to invest. I certainly see Azerbaijan in that category. We will encourage them to come and to be part of this industrial and economic diversification story, he concluded. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 17:25 (UTC+04:00) By Trend There is strong and consistent support from the Italian government for the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project, said Giampaolo Cutillo, Italys ambassador to Azerbaijan. There were some legal problems with the SGC, but it has been cleared by the Italian court, the envoy told Trend. As far as I know, work [on the SGC] remains on schedule and there is very complex work, which needs to be done on the ground, Cutillo said. On April 20, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court in Italy revoked the order that earlier stopped the work to remove olive trees from the route of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe. Lisa Givert, head of communications at TAP AG, said, Following todays positive decision of Italian Lazio Regional Administrative Court, TAP continues to collaborate with all the authorities involved in the process to resume its activities on the ground as soon as possible, in order to remain on schedule. Once works can safely resume, the remaining olive trees could be removed and replanted in a matter of days, added Givert. TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries. TAP will connect to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italys south. TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers). Its highest point will be 1,800 meters in Albanias mountains, with lowest point at 820 meters beneath the sea. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 19 April 2017 11:30 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who is on an official visit to Astana, and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev held talks on April 18. The two leaders discussed issues of international politics, regional cooperation, bilateral cooperation, including cultural, humanitarian and social spheres. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan came out with unified positions on key issues of the global agenda, said Berdimuhamedov following the talks. Berdimuhamedov, speaking at the talks in the extended composition of the delegations, stressed that the content of the Turkmen-Kazakh relations is conditioned by full mutual understanding, both in views on the priorities and prospects of the bilateral partnership, and on the tendency of regional and international development. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have a common vision for preserving and maintaining universal peace and stability, countering the threats of international terrorism, extremism, and on the peaceful settlement of the situation in Afghanistan. The president also noted the necessity of creating effective political and diplomatic mechanisms involving international organizations, especially the UN, to normalize the situation in Afghanistan. He added that Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are ready to render the necessary assistance to the world community to rapidly normalize the situation in Afghanistan and restore the countrys economy and social sphere. Besides, Berdimuhamedov expressed hope that the Convention on the status of the Caspian Sea will be signed at the next summit of the Caspian states. The Turkmen leader noted that cooperation in transportation plays a key role in the successful economic development of the two countries, saying that creation of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway is one of the results of this cooperation. This railway will bring the economic and trade cooperation between Central Asian countries and neighboring regions to a qualitatively new level, and give a strong momentum to interregional relations in the long term, he said. Nazarbayev, in turn, made a point of developing certain aspects of bilateral cooperation, including in the transit-transport and energy spheres, placing greater focus on the availability of great prospects in other areas. Today we are finalizing the most important agreement on strategic partnership between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Relations go to a new stage of progress thanks to this agreement. We solve all questions of borders between our countries. These will be the only two countries without any border problems, the Kazakh leader said. Following the results of the talks in the expanded format, the leaders of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have made a statement for the media. Nazarbayev pointed up that the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation chaired by the countries Deputy Prime Ministers would play a special role in fulfilling the key tasks of bilateral cooperation. The president stressed that during the talks the parties paid attention to the issues of improving the contractual and legal framework, participation of enterprises in large infrastructure projects of the two countries, as well as issues of transit and transport cooperation. Later, the agreement on strategic cooperation between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was signed. In addition, Berdimuhamedov and Nazarbayev signed a joint statement and an agreement on conducting demarcation work on the Turkmen-Kazakh state border. The two countries also signed agreement on demarcation of the Kazakh-Turkmen state border; agreement on the Kazakh-Turkmen Intergovernmental Commission; agreement on mutual protection of classified information; program of cooperation between the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan and the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan for 2017-2018; agreement between the Finance Ministry of Kazakhstan and the Finance Ministry of Turkmenistan on cooperation in countering the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and terrorism financing; agreement on establishing twinning relations between Astana and Ashgabat; agreement on cooperation between "Atameken", National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Turkmenistan. Diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan were established on October 5, 1992. The legal framework of bilateral cooperation includes more than 70 documents. The trade turnover between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for the end of 2015 amounted to $319.7 million, while in January-August of 2016 it was $177.1 million. Plant products, metal goods, natural calcium phosphate, timber and its products, rolled metal products, as well as flour, confectionary and flour products are major export items of Kazakhstan. In its turn, Turkmenistan exports to Kazakhstan gas, oil and petroleum products, motor vehicles, fresh and refrigerated tomatoes, engines and power plants. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 24 April 2017 17:58 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Iran and Kyrgyzstan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on intensifying political and economic cooperation. The nine-article document was signed by Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Ali Larijani and his Kyrgyz counterpart Chynybai Tursunbekov in Tehran on April 24, the state-run IRINN television reported. Under the MoU, the two sides agreed to expand cooperation in various fields including the legislative process, development and research, sharing rules, commission and regulatory activities, administrative infrastructure, electronic Parliament, data exchange technology, and exchanging experiences on green parliament. The two countries decided to encourage inter-parliamentary relations through creating parliamentary friendship groups and organizing regular exchanges by holding mutual visits. The MoU also obliges the sides to cooperate on promotion of trade and economic relations and creation of necessary conditions for the adoption of relevant legislation in this area. The sides also discussed the ways to facilitate trade cooperation and provide the possibility of Tehran-Bishkek direct flight, which will help flourish the commercial and touristic activities between the two countries. Larijani and Tursunbekov also agreed to give support in fight against extremism and terrorism in the region. A parliamentary delegation of Kyrgyzstan headed by Chynybai Tursunbekov arrived in Tehran on April 23. He is scheduled to meet with senior Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi and head of Irans Chamber of Commerce and Industry Gholam Hossein Shafei. The Kyrgyz speakers visit follows Zarifs recent trip to Kyrgyzstan as part of a regional tour that took him earlier to Turkmenistan and Georgia. Foreign trade turnover between Kyrgyzstan and Iran for the first 9 months of 2016 amounted to $11 million. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 09:58 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Turkish Armed Forces delivered retaliatory artillery strikes on positions of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) terrorist group in Northern Syria, Turkeys General Staff said in a message. PYD earlier inflicted mortar strikes from the territory of Syria on two military posts in the Turkish province of Hatay. Turkish army suffered no losses in the bombardment. Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has claimed over 500,000 lives. Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The IS, YPG and PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 12:00 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev had a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who is on an official visit in Tashkent, on April 26, the Uzbek national news agency UzA reported. The sides hailed the dynamic development of the Uzbekistan-Turkey relations in line with the agreements reached at the bilateral summit talks, held in Samarkand on November 17-18, 2016. Special attention was paid to the expansion of mutually beneficial economic and investment cooperation, practical implementation of projects on modernization of tourism infrastructure in Uzbekistan with the participation of leading Turkish companies, and other issues. Cavusoglu thanked the Uzbek side for support to the Turkish companies projects in Uzbekistan and stressed the readiness for further development of full-scale bilateral cooperation. The Turkish minister also held talks with his Uzbek counterpart Abdulaziz Kamilov. The ministers discussed the state and prospects for the development of bilateral relations in the political, trade-economic, investment, military-technical, cultural-humanitarian and other spheres. Following the talks, the ministers signed a program of cooperation between the foreign ministries for 2017-2018 and spoke at a joint news conference. Addressing a briefing in Tashkent, Cavusoglu said that Presidents of Uzbekistan and Turkey, Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan plan to hold talks, which will give a new momentum to the bilateral relations, by late 2017. Cavusoglu noted that the Turkey-Uzbekistan relations should be based on good neighborliness, mutual respect and equality. He added that both countries would organize meetings as part of their joint economic council between May 24 and May 26 that would also see the attendance of Turkey's economy minister. Kamilov, in his turn, underlined that both sides explored options to improve relations in key areas, including trade, tourism and health. Turkey became the first country to recognize Uzbekistans independence on 16 December 1991. The diplomatic relations were established between two countries on 4 March 1992. More than 90 bilateral agreements and protocols were signed to form the legal basis of relations and numerous mutual high-level visits were carried out. Uzbekistan occupies an important place in terms of regional peace and stability with its population of nearly 30 million, geostrategic position, deep-rooted history, rich cultural values and economic potential. Turkey attaches great importance to the improvement of cooperation with brotherly Uzbekistan in all fields and maintains its willingness to further relations strengthened by the close bonds between Turkish and Uzbek people. There are currently 700 companies in Uzbekistan with Turkish capital, 100 of which are representation offices. They carry out activities in the sectors of textile, commitment, food, hotel management, building materials, plastic, medication, and service. There are 114 companies in Turkey with Uzbek capital. In February, Turkey and Uzbekistan signed cooperation agreement to boost economic relation at the Turkey-Uzbekistan . --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 16:15 (UTC+04:00) By Trend A Russian warship crashed with a cargo vessel in the Black Sea, 18 miles north of the town of Kilyos, located in the Istanbul Province, the Turkish media reported Apr. 27. Reportedly, rescuers of Coast Guard Command of the Turkish Armed Forces were sent to the site. Forty-five Russian servicemen were rescued and 15 people are missing. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 27 April 2017 16:38 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, held meeting on the sidelines of the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security. The sides discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues including the ongoing crisis in Syria during the meeting, Mehr news agency reported on April 27. The two ministers underlined the necessity of establishing sustainable security and peace in Syria as soon as possible. They also stressed importance of maintaining Syrias national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Dehqan and Shoigu also discussed the ways to bolster the implementation of the ceasefire which has been in place across Syria since last December, stressing that ground should be prepared for easier aid deliveries to violence-stricken Syrians. The Iranian minister also took part in a trilateral meeting with Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Shoigu and Fahd Jassem al-Freij. The three ministers called for closer trilateral cooperation in the battle against terrorism, emphasizing the need to keep up the fight until the eradication of violence and terror threats. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flagged off the first flight under the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme. By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flagged off the first Rs 2,500-an-hour flight from Shimla as part of the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme that makes air travel accessible to lower middle class families. The regional flight on the Shimla-Delhi sector was flagged off from Jubbarhatti, which is 22 km from Shimla. During his day-long visit to Shimla, Modi underscored the thrust on keeping the air fares within the reach of the middle class. advertisement WHO WILL THE UDAN SCHEME HELP "My dream was to see a person who wears a 'hawai chappal' to fly on the 'hawai jahaz' or plane," he said during his address. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has capped the fare at Rs 2,036. The Prime Minister foresees tier-II and tier-III cities as "growth engines" with the country's aviation sector filled with opportunities. "If aviation connectivity in tier-II and tier-III cities is enhanced in these places, it will be beneficial," he said. "The UDAN scheme is going to help the tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh," Prime Minister Narendra Modi added. ABOUT THE SCHEME Simultaneous flights were launched on Kadapa Hyderabad and the Nanded-Hyderabad sectors by PM Modi through video-conferencing. Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju among others were present at the inaugural ceremony. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight. The airline companies chosen are Airline Allied Services (Alliance Air), SpiceJet, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha. According to an official statement, 24 airports in the western region, 17 in northern region, 11 in southern region, 12 in east and 6 in north-eastern parts of the country are proposed to be connected under this scheme. As many as five airlines were awarded 128 routes under the scheme last month after a bidding process. The selected airline operator would have to provide 50 per cent of the flight capacity with a cap of Rs 2500 per hour on fixed wing aircraft and a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 13 on helicopters with the same price cap. The Shimla airport had been shut for scheduled flights since September 6, 2012, affecting tourists and business travellers. With inputs from IANS Watch video: PM Modi's big crackdown on VVIP culture, shuns red beacon Also read: PM Modi flags off UDAN flight from Shimla, anyone can now fly at Rs 2,500 Also read: Udan scheme: Now you can fly to these 43 cities, see the full list here --- ENDS --- advertisement 27 April 2017 17:58 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva The Islamic Republic of Iran, in a bid to regain its lost positions in the world energy market, uses all possible tools and relies much on new model of oil contracts. The new contracts designed by Ministry of Petroleum and known as Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), became the main tool to improve energy sector and increase the attractiveness of oil projects for foreign investors. Iran expects to sign its first oil deal under the new IPC model in the near future, a senior Iranian official said on April 27, Reuters reported. "We expect that very soon, hopefully within a month we will have the first one to be signed," Deputy Oil Minister Rokneddin Javadi told a conference in Paris. In January, Iran said 29 companies from more than a dozen countries were allowed to bid for oil and gas projects under the IPC, which Tehran hopes will boost production after years of sanctions. But the IPC model has been delayed several times due to opposition from hardline rivals of President Hassan Rouhani. Besides, the investors have some doubts due to the position of Trumps administration towards Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump has long been known as a main critic of Irans policy and nuclear deal. The IPC model ends a buy-back system dating back more than 20 years under which Iran did not allow foreign firms to book reserves or take equity stakes in Iranian companies. Oil majors have said they would only go back to Iran if it makes major changes to the buy-back contracts, which companies such as France's Total or Italy's Eni have said made them no money or even incurred losses. The IPC has more flexible terms that take into account oil price fluctuations and investment risks. Earlier, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangane said that in the coming years, on the basis of IPC, it is expected to attract foreign investments in the amount of $20-30 billion. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Pravda No. 32, April 27 (14), 1917. Published according to the text in Pravda. N. N. Pokrovsky, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the present Vice-Chairman of the Central War Industries Committee, has become a member of the Board of the Russian Bank for Foreign Commerce. Count V. N. Kokovtsov, the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, has also become a member of the Board. These happy tidings were brought to us by last nights papers. A minister today, a banker tomorrow; a banker today, a minister tomorrow. It is war to the endboth today and tomorrow. This state of affairs prevails not only in Russia, but in every other country where Capital rules. A handful of bankers, who have the whole world in their grip, are making a fortune out of the war. But Pokrovsky and Kokovtsov, we may be told, were ministers during the old regime, and we are now living in a regenerated Russia. We will answer with a question: In how many banks do the present ministers, Guchkov, Tereshchenko, and Konovalovhave an interest (in the capacity of directors, shareholders, or actual owners)? Our comrades, the bank employees (who, by the way, should organise a union of their own as soon as possible), would do well to gather material on this subject and publish it in the labour press. Source: Marxist Interner Archive Vinod Khanna represented Gurdaspur constituency in the Lok Sabha. He won the seat four times losing out only in 2009. Late Lok Sabha MP Vinod Khanna with a delegation from his constituency Gurdaspur in 2014. (Photo: @VinodKhanna) By India Today Web Desk: The demise of actor-politician Vinod Khanna has left behind a rare trend of sober politics and unflinching commitment towards the electorate. Having achieved immense success in Hindi films and created a parallel appeal in the age of angry young man Amitabh Bachchan of 1970s, Vinod Khanna first ventured into spiritualism from films and later into politics. advertisement Vinod Khanna joined the BJP in 1997, when national politics was passing through uncertainty and the LK Advani-Atal Bihari Vajpayee combination was attempting to establish the party on firm ground. One year later, Vinod Khanna contested the Lok Sabha elections from Gurdaspur in Punjab and went to the Lower House as people's representative.Vinod Khanna represented Gurdaspur since 1998. He lost once in 2009. But, Vinod Khanna regained his seat in 2014-general elections. A huge crowd puller in the BJP and a popular figure among the voters, Vinod Khanna travelled across the country campaigning for the BJP in various elections. Vinod Khanna was inducted into the cabinet as Union Minister for Culture and Tourism by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in July 2002. Vajpayee was so impressed with Vinod Khanna that only six months later, he was moved to the more important Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) as Minister of State. Vinod Khanna is credited with bringing BJP MP from Mathura Hema Malini into politics. ALSO READ | Vinod Khanna passes away at 70, Amitabh Bachchan abandons interview to visit hospital RIP Vinod Khanna: Shraddha Kapoor to Rishi Kapoor, Bollywood mourns actor's death ALSO WATCH | Karan Johar, shocked by Vinod Khanna's death, cancels Baahubali 2 premiere --- ENDS --- The monk-turned-politician Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered for better public facilities including approach roads, toilets, rest houses at major religious tourist spots in Uttar Pradesh. By Indo-Asian News Service: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered for better public facilities including approach roads, toilets, rest houses, places to sit and drinking water, an official said today. Adityanath stressed on restarting the traditional and world famous Ram Leela that was enacted in Ayodhya for several decades but was abruptly ended some years back. Similarly, Bhajan Sandhya program at Chitrakoot and Raas Leela at Mathura should also be run in the best possible manner, the Chief Minister said at a meeting late on Wednesday evening. advertisement He has also asked officials of the Religious Affairs Department to ensure that approach roads to all Hindu religious places be constructed along with boundary walls to ensure their safety. DEADLINE: JUNE 2018 Setting a deadline of June 2018 for completion of the Rs 14.77 crore Bhajan Sandhya venue in Ayodhya, Yogi said it should be ensured that such places were well maintained and construction was done according to the best quality standards. He also asked the timeline of June 2018 to be met for the Rs 13.75 crore Bhajan Sandhya and Parikrama venue at Chitrakoot. OTHER PROJECTS The monk-turned-politician, aside from showing interest in the above mentioned projects, has also called for construction of four-lane roads, public utility facilities like toilets, rest houses, places to sit and drinking water at major religious tourist spots in the state. Adityanath also called for restoration and beautification of ponds at these religious sites and immediate development of public facilities at the Brij Chaurasi Kosi Parikrama route. Instructions have also been issued, an official told IANS, to start e-pooja and e-donation facilities at the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Orders have also been issued for launching of a portal for online applications for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and the Sindhu pilgrimage undertaken by the Sindhi community. Also Read: Massive reshuffle in Uttar Pradesh; 138 IAS, IPS officers transferred by Yogi Adityanath Yogi Adityanath government sets up anti-land mafia task force in Uttar Pradesh WATCH VIDEO | Mega bureaucratic reshuffle: Yogi Adityanath government transfers 41 IAS officers --- ENDS --- Funding will support new projects that will use Canadian innovations in space April 27, 2017 Saint-Hubert, Quebec Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada Canadas space sector develops new technologies that have the potential to advance scientific discovery and improve the lives of Canadians. This is why Budget 2017 proposes to provide $80.9 million over five years, starting in 201718, to the Canadian Space Agency. These investments will be used to develop emerging technologies, will create more well-paying jobs, will support scientific breakthroughs and will make Canada a world-leading centre for innovation. The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, was joined by the Honourable Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport and the first Canadian in space, to celebrate the proposed funding at the Canadian Space Agencys headquarters outside Montreal. The funding will support new projects that will demonstrate and utilize Canadian innovations in space: A radar instrument that will be developed for a future orbiter mission to Mars. This instrument would be used to study the surface and subsurface of the red planet. It could contribute to developing a high-resolution map of the surface of Mars and could help identify water resources at shallow depths, which would provide critical geological information for the landing site of future spacecraft to Mars. A demonstration of the applications of quantum technology in space involving the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. This project will position Canada as a leader in quantum encryption, which uses highly advanced computing technology to create virtually unbreakable security codes. This technology could lead to more secure communications, safer and more reliable government services, and greater protection of Canadians privacy. In addition to the increased funding it announced in the budget, the Government of Canada recently announced the renewal of the Space Advisory Board. The board will engage with Canadians to develop a new vision for Canadas space sector and define key elements of a strategy that will be launched this summer. The advisory boards input will inform the strategy, which will focus on using space to drive broader economic growth and innovation, while inspiring the next generation of space scientists. April 27, 2017 Longueuil, Quebec The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) plans to award 13 grants of about $200,000 to post-secondary institutions as part of a challenge to design, build, launch and operate their own satellites. This initiative will help equip young Canadians with the skills and experience needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The CSA s Canadian CubeSat Project will support proposals representing each province and territory. The winning teams, composed of professors and students, will take part in a real space mission by designing and building a miniature satellite called a CubeSat. This unique, hands-on experience will enable students to acquire expertise in a wide variety of areasranging from science, to engineering, to communicating their work with the publicand give them the opportunity to develop invaluable skills to transition into the workforce in the global innovation economy. Once tested and ready for space, the CubeSats will be launched and deployed from the International Space Station. The teams will then operate their satellites and conduct science according to the objectives of their missions, which could last up to 12 months. Modified On Apr 27, 2017 08:26 PM By Raunak for Honda CR-V It gets Hondas new hybrid powertrain, which made its debut with the ninth-generation Accord facelift (on sale in India). Honda has made the world premiere of the India-bound fifth-generation CR-V's hybrid version at the 2017 Auto Shanghai. The new CR-V made its global debut in America last October. Honda has confirmed that the CR-V Hybrid will go on sale in China later this year. Though no affirmation from Honda has come as of now, it is reportedly a global model. Also, the Honda CR-V, for the first time, gets an electrified powertrain. The CR-V Hybrid looks identical to its regular version, except for the Hybrid badge on the front fenders. Honda has not revealed its specs as of now, but confirms that it is powered by Hondas Sport Hybrid i-MMD (Intelligent Multi-Mode Drive) two-motor hybrid system. This powertrain made its debut with the ninth-generation Accord Hybrid facelift, which is also available in India. The petrol-electric powertrain (2.0-litre Atkinson cycle engine coupled with two electric motors) in the Accord puts out 215PS of max power and returns a certified fuel efficiency of 23.1kmpl. Will it be offered in India? Though we get the current Honda Accord Hybrid in the country, the CR-V Hybrid is unlikely to make its debut in the country. However, the regular CR-V is India bound, and it is expected to make its debut here at the 2018 Indian Auto Expo. It will be locally assembled in the country like the outgoing version. Nissan, on the other hand, has confirmed the launch of the X-Trail (a CR-V rival) hybrid in India. But it will be imported as CBU (completely build units) and is expected to be relatively pricey. The Honda Accord also has the same story, being a CBU import from Thailand. If Honda ever decides to launch the CR-V Hybrid here, it will be no different than the rest two mentioned here. Also, there will be a huge price difference between the regular and the hybrid version like what had happened between with the Civic and its hybrid version in India unless it is locally manufactured like the Toyota Camry Hybrid. India is likely to get the diesel powered seven-seater CR-V, read about it here: Meet The New Honda CR-V With Seven Seats And A Diesel Mill Read More on : CR-V Modified On Aug 29, 2017 08:29 PM By Raunak Compact sedan, Compact SUV for India under development. Sales operations to begin towards the end of 2019. (In Picture: Kia Picanto GT Line) Putting rest to all the speculations, Kia Motors Corporation, has officially announced that it will enter the Indian market in 2019. The South Korean automaker has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to build a new manufacturing plant in Anantapur district. Highlights Kia Motors will invest US$1.1 billion (approximately over Rs 7,000 Crore) for setting up its manufacturing facility in AP Construction of its Anantapur-based facility to commence at the end of 2017 and is expected to begin production in the second half of 2019 Footprint of the new facility: 23 million sq feet (2.16 sq km/536 acres) Kia will initially come up with a compact sedan and a compact SUV If all goes right, sales of its cars will begin towards the end of 2019 The manufacturing facility will produce up to 3,00,000 units annually Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) is the parent company of Kia Motors Corporation, both are leading South Korean automakers Background Kia Motors was founded in 1944 and is the oldest automaker of Korea. It produced its first small car in 1974. It is not a sub-brand of Hyundai like Lexus is to Toyota or Acura is to Honda. In fact, Hyundai is the parent company of Kia, like Tata is to Land Rover and Jaguar. Hyundai won majority shares of Kia in an auction in 1998, when the latter was declared bankrupt in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Ford was also keen to buy Kia, but eventually, Hyundai won the auction. This was the same time when Daewoo, which used to sell the Matiz and Cielo/Nexia in India, was sold to General Motors. Kia flourished under the reign of Hyundai and is currently South Koreas second largest automaker after the latter. Both the companies are knocking out really aggressive looking and well-packaged products of late. Former Audi man, Peter Schreyer, who joined Kia almost a decade ago as a chief design officer is partly responsible for this. To put things into perspective, the new Hyundai Tucson was designed by Peter Schreyer. Like the current trend in the auto space, Hyundai and Kia share a lot of components, platforms and powertrain options and both manufacturers will continue to do so with their Indian operations as well. Products (In Picture: Kia Picanto GT Line) In its official release, Kia highlighted that it will come with a compact sedan and a compact SUV made for the Indian market. The former is expected to be related to the Grand i10-based compact sedan, the Xcent. Expect similar powertrain options as well. Further, the Grand i10 shares its platform with Kias entry level hatch, the Picanto. So the Picanto could be offered in the country as well since its platform has already been localised with the Grand i10. (In Picture: Hyundai Carlino Concept) Speaking of the compact SUV, it remains to be seen whether the new product will fall in the sub-4m category or will go up against the Renault Duster and the Hyundai Creta. In international markets, Kia offers the Soul SUV, on which the Creta is based, with near identical pricing. Hence, we believe that it will be a sub-4m SUV likely to be based on the Hyundai Carlino concept showcased at the Auto Expo 2016. Hyundai is also coming up with a sub-4m SUV based on the same concept and you can read more about it here. (In Picture: Hyundai Carlino Concept) (In Picture: Kia Rio) Besides these two products, expect Kia to bring the Optima (Toyota Camry/ Honda Accord rival), Soul, Sportage (Hyundai Tucson rival) and Rio (Maruti Suzuki Baleno/Hyundai Elite i20 rival) among others at a later date. Stay tuned to CarDekho for more updates on Kia Motors (In Picture: Kia Sportage) Also Read: Modified On May 03, 2017 04:31 PM By akas for Maserati Quattroporte Italian luxury automaker, Maserati celebrated the delivery of 100,000 cars at the 2017 Shanghai Auto Show. The 100,000th car was a 2017 Quattroporte GranSport manufactured at the Avv. Giovanni Agnelli Plant in Italy. The Quattroporte GranSport was delivered to a Chinese owner at the Shanghai Auto Show. The car was officially unveiled at a press conference by Reid Bigland, head of Maserati. The special Quattroporte features a white exterior and tan-coloured interiors. It has 21-inch Titano rims, and the brake callipers are finished in red. According to the automaker, the colour combination of the special Quattroporte represents the brand's legendary heritage of elegance and passion for performance. It has a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol engine under the hood which produces 355PS of power and 500 Nm of torque between 1,750 and 4,500 rpm. It can reach from a standstill to 100 kmph in 5.5 seconds and has a top speed of 270 kmph. It also has an 8.4-inch touchscreen in the centre console with a rotary knob and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems features. Maserati delivered 42,100 cars worldwide in 2016 and China is the Quattroporte's largest market in the world. Maserati has been in China for over 12 years, and in 2016, 12,000 Maseratis were sold there, which is 120 times more than the 100 units sold in 2004. Currently, the Maserati India lineup includes the Quattroporte, Ghibli and the GranTurismo/GranCabrio. Maserati will also soon introduce its first-ever SUV, the Levante in India. Also read: Maserati Levante Revealed Ahead of 2016 Geneva Motor Show Showcase Read More on : Maserati Quattroporte Published On Apr 27, 2017 04:58 PM By Khan Mohd. for Tata Safari Storme Gets the order under the newly formed GS800 category of vehicles, will be supplied in phases Tata Motors has bagged an order of 3192 units of its Safari Storme 4x4 for the prestigious Indian Armed Forces. Under the newly formed GS800 (General Service 800) category, the butch SUV will be supplied to the forces in phases. It will be replacing the age-old Maruti Gypsy in the 4x4 light-weight class. Earlier, the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) had floated an RFP (Request For Proposals) for the procurement of the vehicles adhering to its three-point criteria hard roofs, air conditioning and minimum payload capacity of 800kgs. Ticking all the three boxes, the Tata Safari Storme emerged as the clear winner, but not before it was tested in extreme conditions for a period of 15 months. Expectedly, the Safari Storme 4x4 version being sent to the security forces will be different from the stock one and will feature upgraded drivetrain and a modified suspension. Earlier in July, 2015, the carmaker signed the contract for the Tata High Mobility Vehicle 6x6 in the 10-tonne category, replacing Tatra. The company has been supplying vehicles to the Indian Army and Paramilitary forces since 1958, and so far, has shipped 1,50,000 units. Under its Defence Solutions, it offers a wide range of vehicles belonging to light, medium and heavy category including logistics, tactical, armoured and specialist low maintenance vehicles. Tata Motors has been exporting its rugged defence vehicles to the SAARC, ASEAN and African regions as well. It also supplies these machines to the UN for peacekeeping missions. Read More on : Safari Storme price FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Soyia Ellison, soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org ATLANTA More than 70 activists, peacemakers, and community leaders from 31 countries will come together May 8-9 for the Carter Centers annual Human Rights Defenders Forum to discuss strategies for protecting human rights in the wake of rising authoritarianism. Freedom from Fear: Securing Rights in Challenging Times will shine a spotlight on some of the obstacles human rights defenders are facing as governments in many countries clamp down on public debate and activism. The forum also will showcase the experiences of the courageous women and men on the front lines of this fight. The forum includes two media opportunities: On Monday, May 8, at 6:20 p.m., former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will engage in a conversation about important human rights issues. No press Q&A is planned, but media are welcome to cover their remarks. On Tuesday, May 9, from 3:50 to 5 p.m., President Carter will head a discussion on the forums conclusions. This will include a press Q&A. Participants in this years forum include: Hafsat Abiola , founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, is the daughter of Moshood Abiola, who was elected president of Nigeria in 1993 but died in detention before taking office under suspicious circumstances. Working with the government in Ogun State, she pioneered the use of cash grants to ensure access to care for poor pregnant women and helped develop special programs to address high youth unemployment. , founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, is the daughter of Moshood Abiola, who was elected president of Nigeria in 1993 but died in detention before taking office under suspicious circumstances. Working with the government in Ogun State, she pioneered the use of cash grants to ensure access to care for poor pregnant women and helped develop special programs to address high youth unemployment. Maryam Al-Khawaja , a special advisor on human rights in Bahrain for a number of nongovernmental organizations, played an instrumental role in the democratic protests that took place in Bahrains Pearl Roundabout in February 2011. Her father is currently in prison for his human rights work, and she is living in exile. , a special advisor on human rights in Bahrain for a number of nongovernmental organizations, played an instrumental role in the democratic protests that took place in Bahrains Pearl Roundabout in February 2011. Her father is currently in prison for his human rights work, and she is living in exile. Rubina Bhatti , a founding member of Taangh Wasaib Organization in Pakistan, works to help train womens groups to report on violence against women, support victims with counseling and legal aid, and initiate income-generation programs for women. , a founding member of Taangh Wasaib Organization in Pakistan, works to help train womens groups to report on violence against women, support victims with counseling and legal aid, and initiate income-generation programs for women. Maina Kiai , a Kenyan lawyer and human rights activist, just ended his time as the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. , a Kenyan lawyer and human rights activist, just ended his time as the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. Musa Mahmodi , executive director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, has investigated human rights violation cases including torture, war crimes and disappearance cases and developed an initiative to help protect human rights defenders. , executive director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, has investigated human rights violation cases including torture, war crimes and disappearance cases and developed an initiative to help protect human rights defenders. Abeer Pamuk , regional officer with SOS Childrens Villages, is a member of the SOS communications teams in both Syrian and regional offices and has used her platform to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees. , regional officer with SOS Childrens Villages, is a member of the SOS communications teams in both Syrian and regional offices and has used her platform to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees. Olga Zakharova, founder and director of Russias Freedom Files, is a human rights and environmental activist who has assisted persecuted human rights defenders in several countries and worked with various international organizations to develop a stronger response to attacks on freedom of expression. Media interested in attending the Monday night or Tuesday afternoon events, or in interviewing any of the human rights defenders, should contact Soyia Ellison at soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org by Thursday, May 4. An official media photo ID will be required for admittance. Forum Agenda *All daytime sessions will be webcast live on cartercenter.org.* Monday, May 8 1:30 - 2:45 p.m. Welcome and opening remarks by President Carter and the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association 3:20 - 4:45 p.m. The New Normal: Mainstreaming Intolerance and Repression 6:20 - 7 p.m. Conversation between President Carter and Senator Sanders Tuesday, May 9 10 - 11:15 a.m. Building New Alliances to Address Root Causes, plus remarks by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom and Andrew Gilmour, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights 11:40 a.m. - 12:40 p.m. Building New Alliances, continued 2 - 3:15 p.m. From Fear to Solidarity and Hope: Need for New Alliances 3:50 - 5 p.m. Conclusions and Recommendations, featuring Q&A with President Carter Note: Schedule subject to change. ### "Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope." A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide. Photo: Contributed Two Canadian border agents are among five people arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling. RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency say the agents worked out of Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Authorities allege the pair facilitated the importation of more than 30 kilograms of cocaine between January last year and April this year. They also seized cocaine shipped from Colombia and Jamaica to Toronto. Charged with offences including breach of trust, conspiracy, and importing a narcotic are CBSA agents Patrick Ruddy, 37, of Toronto, and Brano Andrews, 41, of Barrie, Ont. Facing similar charges are Roberto Leyva, 32, of Niagara Falls, Ont., and Keith Hamid, 41, and Rennie Escoffery, 57, both of Brampton, Ont. "Allegations of improper or illegal behaviour by CBSA employees are taken very seriously," Goran Vragovic, CBSA regional director general, said in a statement. "These allegations in no way reflect upon the true professionalism, dedication and integrity displayed each and every day by our CBSA staff." Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. produces and distributes specialty plant nutrients, iodine and its derivatives, lithium and its derivatives, potassium chloride and sulfate, industrial chemicals, and other products and services. The company offers specialty plant nutrients, including potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, sodium potassium nitrate, specialty blends, and other specialty fertilizers. It also provides iodine and its derivatives for use in medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial applications comprising x-ray contrast media, polarizing films for LCD and LED, antiseptics, biocides and disinfectants, pharmaceutical synthesis, electronics, pigments, and dye components. In addition, the company offers lithium carbonates for various applications that include electrochemical materials for batteries, frits for the ceramic and enamel industries, heat-resistant glass, air conditioning chemicals, continuous casting powder for steel extrusion, primary aluminum smelting process, pharmaceuticals, and lithium derivatives, as well as ingredient in manufacturing of gunpowder. Further, it supplies lithium hydroxide for the lubricating greases industry, as well as cathodes for batteries. Additionally, it offers potassium chloride and potassium sulfate for various crops, including corn, rice, sugar, soybean, and wheat; industrial chemicals, including sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, potassium chloride, and solar salts; and other fertilizers and blends. The company operates in Chile, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North America, Asia, and internationally. Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. was incorporated in 1968 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile. As bad as ISIS? Why we let Saudi Arabia get away with murder There is a spectre haunting the Middle East and the rest of the world. A state fomenting violence in neighbouring lands. A state putting to death those who call for openness and democracy. A state which discriminates against women, gay people, Christians and various other minorities. There are reports that 50 people are imminently to be executed by this despotic regime. The behaviour of this state is coming under increasing scrutiny in the West. Something must be done, declare an increasing number of commentators. But what course to take? We could apply sanctions, squeezing this state's ability to do business. We could form a coalition to demand change. We could threaten air strikes, or even troops on the ground. Or we could sell vast quantities of arms to this state and give it a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Well, we surely haven't taken the last option have we? I'm afraid so. Because the state in question here isn't the vile Islamic State which is now terrorising large swathes of Syria and Iraq. It isn't Iran, where hundreds of executions still take place every year. It isn't Egypt or Qatar or UAE or any of the other autocratic regimes which also systematically abuse human rights. It's our old friend and ally Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, which avoided any military reprisals, despite 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 being Saudi. A country where leading figures say it is, "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." Saudi Arabia, which is currently bombing and starving the people of Yemen precipitating a vast humanitarian disaster. Saudi Arabia which, according to one country expert, is protecting, "sexually warped, slave-owning princes." Saudi Arabia, which sentences poets to death, which, according to MSF, bombs clinics, which hands out lashes to those who dare to express themselves. The horror. The horror. The Heart of Darkness. Since Saudi Arabia was formed with British and American acquiescence in the aftermath of the First World War, it has been deemed to be in our 'interests' to maintain a cordial relationship with the Saudis. All the while it has been an incubator for the strictly puritanical Salafi form of Sunni Islam that is the driving ideology of extremism. Wahhabism has flourished in Saudi Arabia, a kind of Restorationist movement which not only imposes overbearingly conservative Islamic codes on people who live in the Kingdom, but also inspires the grotesque violence that now drives the Islamic State forward. In that time, we have essentially turned a blind eye to the many and various outrages that take place within Saudi Arabia. It would be naive to suggest that this is just because of the amount of oil the Saudis provide (around 25 per cent of the world's supplies) but it would be equally naive to suggest oil doesn't play a role. The Saudis have flexed their muscles before cutting oil supply to the West in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, which contributed to the three-day week being imposed in the UK. Our oil-thirsty Western societies need the supply to keep flowing so we are willing to overlook crimes that would be unthinkable among other allies. There is also the security factor. For while all manner of human rights abuses take place within Saudi borders, it has been a reliable partner for the US-led war on terror. In fact, going back through recent history the Saudis have provided a base for American operations in the first Gulf War as well as being a counterbalance to the region's other dominant power Shia-dominated Iran. For too long, our reliance on oil and our acceptance of the relative stability of the Saudis' iron fist has helped to guarantee not only acceptance but celebration of this gruesome dictatorship. As over 150 have been executed in the Kingdom this year, we have heard barely a peep from our own governments. Indeed, when pressed on the crucifixion charge handed to a 17-year-old Saudi dissident, David Cameron squirmed, but made it clear that he hadn't intervened personally to attempt to stop it. But Cameron is merely carrying on the obsequious kowtowing of his predecessors. In 2006 Tony Blair's government cancelled Serious Fraud Office investigation into allegations of bribery relating to a huge arms deal, done when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. From Prince Charles to John Kerry, British and American officials have been pictured deep in conversation with senior Saudis, but the human rights abuses never seem to end. But maybe, just maybe, the tide is beginning to turn. Sweden's Foreign Minister was one of the most senior politicians to put her head above the parapet. Margot Wallstrom criticised Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women and its punishment of the blogger Raif Badawi. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has done similarly. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has also spoken out. In the House of Lords during the debate on bombing ISIS, Welby who has serious credibility from his time in reconciliation as well as the oil trade said, "There must be a global theological and ideological component, not just one in this country, to what we are doing... And it must include challenging Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose own promotion of a particular brand of Islamic theology has provided a source from which ISIL have drawn a false legitimisation." The Spectator has reported on how significant Welby's remarks are in the case of a long-held silence from leading figures describing it as a "bold statement from a member of the British establishment." Change may also be coming to the Kingdom itself. Breathless reports of internal schisms and impending implosion of Saudi Arabia have been reported in the blogosphere for the past few months. But this may come to nothing. What is certain is that the starting gun has been sounded. It's time for us in the West to call out the abhorrent abuses of power committed by our allies, the Saudis. Sure, there'll be threats and backlash, such as the Saudis' attempt to sue critical Twitter users. But what is done in the dark will be brought into the light. It's time for the West to be on the right side of history. Can this gathering of Christian and Muslim leaders find a way to peace? A major gathering of Christians and Muslims at Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University has heard passionate appeals for understanding and unity from delegates. Pope Francis is due to address the International Conference on Peace tomorrow. Church leaders gathered in advance for a 'day of dialogue'. Among the speakers was the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev Dr Olaf Fykse Tveit, who said Christians and Muslims represent around half the world's population. 'So as we are here, we are not talking about only ourselves,' he said. 'We are talking about humanity in many ways. We should address these questions from a basic theological perspective. What does it mean to believe today in one God that created the one humanity?' He also emphasised that, because we are accountable to God, we have to see how that leads to an accountability to every human being. 'This is our mutual accountability to one another, to every human being, whatever belief or non-belief we have,' he said. 'I think this is a very important reflection, working jointly toward equal citizenship. It is not only a political or a legal principle; it is also a principle that expresses our deepest faith in one God creating the one humanity.' The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, who has resolutely opposed violence and extremism in the Muslim world, said: 'Citizenship and peaceful co-existence are the greatest challenges that have to be focused on and built upon to counter fanaticism, terrorism and baseless theological claims and conceptualisations.' He added: 'Citizenship is the major guarantee for achieving absolute equality in rights and duties.' Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, stressed the need for 'a proactive leadership a leadership that looks beyond the problem and tries to address the future'. He asked: 'Where would we like to be in five years, 10 years, the next generation? Let us address the whole world together instead of just speaking to ourselves.' The Church leaders were speaking ahead of the International Conference on Peace is organised by Al Azhar University. More than 400 religious leaders gathered for the conference itself, at which Tveit said: 'Violence in the name of religion cannot be done without violating the values of religion. Violence in the name of God towards those who are created in the image of God becomes violence against God. We are from the beginning to the end accountable to God.' Dean of Salisbury June Osborne to be next Bishop of Llandaff Dean of Salisbury June Osborne, who was the first woman to be appointed to a senior post in the Church of England, is to be the new Bishop of Llandaff in the Church in Wales. Osborne, who has been at Salisbury for 13 years, will be the second woman bishop in the Church in Wales. Joanna Penberthy became Bishop of St David's earlier this year. She was appointed after a difficult process where the electors failed to agree over a new bishop. Dean of St Albans Jeffrey John accused the Church in Wales of homophobia when he received more than half the votes but not enough to be elected. Osborne is of exceptionally high calibre. She was among the favourites to be a bishop in the Church of England and many in the Church had hoped she would become Bishop of Oxford. In the end that post went to Dr Steven Croft, creating a vacancy in Sheffield. That in itself led to a controversy when the chosen candidate, traditionalist Philip North, withdrew after being criticised over his stance on women priests. Llandaff, a diocese which has long been in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, serves most of Cardiff, the South Wales Valleys and the Vale of Glamorgan. Her appointment will be confirmed on July 14 at a meeting of the Sacred Synod of Church in Wales Bishops in Brecon Cathedral, and she will be consecrated in Brecon on July 15. Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, John Davies, said: 'In June Osborne, both the Church in Wales and the Diocese of Llandaff will find themselves to be richly blessed. June's track record admirably demonstrates her passion for Christian ministry modelled on the Gospel imperatives of love, justice, inclusivity and openness. 'All of these are qualities which I and my fellow bishops warmly support and welcome. She is known as a leader with clear vision, a pastoral heart and a strategic mind, all of which commend the Church to the wider community. In this way and through her teaching, her preaching and her leadership, she reveals herself to be someone who I am confident will provide for the Diocese of Llandaff excellence in leadership and oversight. 'I look forward, with keen anticipation, to her arrival amongst us and to her contributions to the work of the Bench of Bishops.' Osborne said, 'It is a very great privilege to be nominated as Bishop of Llandaff, an ancient post with many noble predecessors. It will be something of a homecoming for the family, particularly because my husband is from Cardiff and it is a place we know and love. 'Leading a diocese that is so diverse, in an area that is both historic and beautiful, will be challenging but I have an enormous appetite for the task and am deeply honoured to have the opportunity to join a diocesan team which is strong and imaginative. These are turbulent times across the world and the need for faith, and for the confident, distinctive leadership of the Church has never been more important. 'I will, of course, be sad to say goodbye to Salisbury. It has been my home, both spiritually and as a family, for over two decades. I have been surrounded by wonderful colleagues, staff and volunteers, who have made my job a joyful undertaking. It has been a great pleasure to witness how the Cathedral has developed and flourished over the years and to have shared our wonderful Magna Carta 800 celebrations. I am immensely proud of what has been achieved here and wish all at the cathedral and its diocese well in the years to come.' Exclusive: Rowan Williams wades into Holocaust denial controversy Rowan Williams has written a powerful letter to Vice Chancellor of Manchester University over the institution's ongoing refusal to remove books by the convicted Holocaust denier David Irving from open display in its main library. Dr Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says the issue needs 'urgent attention' and warns that the current arrangement of Irving's work 'could be experienced as threatening by Jewish members of the University'. The intervention by Dr Williams comes amid a growing row over the unmarked presence of Irving material in Manchester University's John Rylands library, and a wider argument about antisemitism at British universities. In February, Christian Today revealed that Churchill College, Cambridge removed Irving's books from 'open access' after a complaint from an eminent Jewish historian, Irene Lancaster. Lancaster, who was Manchester University's first Teaching Fellow in Jewish history, has repeatedly requested in recent weeks that the university follows suit. Now Williams, who is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, has written to Dame Nancy Rothwell, Manchester University's President and Vice Chancellor. The letter appeals to Manchester University's long and distinguished tradition of Jewish studies. Williams writes: 'I ... have concerns over the shelving of works like those of Irving alongside routine historical texts. Given that his work has been declared by experts like my colleague Sir Richard Evans to be undeserving of the name of history and to be characterised by deliberate falsification of material, it is not a question of alternative interpretations of history or of expressions of simple opinion, but of a very specific genre of literature, quite distinct from history. 'Of course students should be allowed to read it for approved academic purposes, but there is, it seems to me, a strong case for shelving or labelling it independently to clarify its nature. And not doing so could be open to the challenge that its presence without such clarification could be experienced as threatening by Jewish members of the University, in the sense spelled out in official definitions of anti-semitism and listed on the website, "The Law of Anti-Semitism". 'At a time when there is, nationally and internationally, a measureable rise in the expression of extremist views I believe that this question needs urgent attention.' In a statement to Christian Today last month, a spokesperson for Manchester University said: 'It is true that David Irving's books are available from the University Library...The University's position is that it is important that students should be able to read Irving when they write their essays about Holocaust denial. Their availability...shows that our students are discerning persons.' The response followed appeals from the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, Graham Stringer, who has also written to Dame Nancy. Lancaster, who has engaged in extensive research on the Holocaust and has worked with the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem, described Manchester University's position as 'a disgrace'. She pointed out that 'Irving is seductive to students and immature minds'. This week, Christian Today reported that Irving had praised Manchester University's 'suitably frosty reply' to Lancaster, whom he repeatedly described on his website as 'the Jewess'. The developments come after the Minister for Higher Education, Jo Johnson, urged institutions to tackle 'intimidation and violence' against Jewish students. In February, Johnson wrote to the chief executives of the representative bodies for higher education institutions, reminding them of their responsibility to ensure students do not suffer 'discrimination, harassment or victimisation'. That same month, Rowan Williams wrote to Johnson expressing concern about the presence of Holocaust-denying material on open display at university libraries. In his letter, Williams suggested that the government should hold a position on the subject, and pointed to the 'Prevent' legislation as being a possible tool for tackling the issue. Williams said that Holocaust-denying material should be labelled and available on request and not indiscriminately, and compared it to jihadi material. In a statement this afternoon, Manchester University said that the books will remain on display, but that it is 'investigating ways to re-catalogue' them. 'In reaching the decision to keep these books on display, The University of Manchester has consulted both within our own Centre for Jewish Studies, and with the majority of the UK's research libraries: many of which also adopt the same approach. We are investigating ways to re-catalogue the books but they will remain available to staff and students who have access to our library service,' the statement said. 'The University is committed to allowing our students to have access to challenging and controversial works on many different subjects in order to pursue their studies. This is in line with the established International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom. 'This approach in no way compromises the University's fundamental rejection of discrimination which is at the heart of how we seek to educate students and pursue our research activities.' 'He gives wisdom to the wise': 11 Bible verses about leadership The UK discovered last week that it would soon be facing another general election to determine the political future of the country. France too is facing a general election for its next president, and US President Donald Trump is about to celebrate his first 100 days in office. Christians often implore each other to 'pray for our leaders', but what is good leadership? The Bible doesn't feature democracies or political elections, but it has plenty of leaders: Pharoahs, Kings and Emperors to name a few. Scripture has much wisdom and warning for such figures. Here are eleven Bible verses about leadership. 1. He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning (Daniel 2:21). 2. They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval. With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction (Hosea 8:4). 3. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it (Luke 10:24). 4. Counsel and sound judgment are mine; I have insight, I have power. By me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just; by me princes govern, and noblesall who rule on earth (Proverbs 8:14-16). 5. So the Lord said to Moses, 'Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand on him' (Numbers 27:18). 6. Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place' (John 18:36). 7. Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith...Have confidence in yourleaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you (Hebrews 13:7,17). 8. Honest scales and balances belong to the Lord; all the weights in the bag are of his making Kings detest wrongdoing, for a throne is established through righteousness. Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks what is right (Proverbs 16:11-13). 9. The officials of Zoan are nothing but fools; the wise counselors of Pharaoh give senseless advice. How can you say to Pharaoh, 'I am one of the wise men, a disciple of the ancient kings' Where are your wise men now? Let them show you and make known what the Lord Almighty has planned against Egypt (Isaiah 19:10-12) 10. Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed (Isaiah 49:23). 11. When the 10 heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, 'You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 'Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:41-45). How Russia is increasingly violating minority religious rights while its Orthodox Church increases its power For the first time, Russia has been officially included among the worst countries in the world for religious freedom because of its ongoing crackdown against religious minorities, foreign missionaries and evangelists and last week's ban on Jehovah's Witnesses. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which monitors religious freedom violators for the State Department, listed Russia among six new top-tier 'countries of particular concern' in its latest annual report, released yesterday. The former Soviet state is the only country where repression of religious freedom has intensified and expanded since USCIRF began monitoring it, according to officials. Yet at the same time, Russia's Orthodox Church is consolidating its power and pursuing close ties with the country's authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin. The new closeness between Church and state comes some 26 years after the end of the Soviet-era repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has around 165 million members worldwide. President Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, share similar authoritarian positions on human rights as well as issues relating to foreign policy, family values and more. Last year, Putin drew international protests after introducing legislation which imposes harsh restrictions on religious groups. Known as the 'Yarovaya Law,' the measure included new police and counterterrorism measures that critics said directly echo the sweeping powers wielded by the KGB. Within the law were tight restrictions on religious groups, especially smaller denominations. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia's dominant denomination, the Orthodox Church, has flourished. Earlier this year, the Orthodox Church was steeped in controversy over its bid to take control of St Petersburg's landmark church, St Isaac's Cathedral, which was a museum. The row seemed a symbolic demonstration of the Church's increasing dominance. A law passed in 1997 officially named the Orthodox Church alongside Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, as the country's four 'traditional' faiths. After Orthodoxy, Muslims make up the second-largest religious group in Russia, and state funds have been used to help build mosques across the country. Other major Christian denominations such as the Catholic Church have also traditionally been allowed to operate openly and largely without restrictions, though the Vatican and Russian Orthodox leaders have clashed in the past, including over ownership of ancient Church property. But Protestants, for example, and other groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, have long been viewed with hostility from state officials and religious authorities, and last week's ban of the latter by the country's Supreme Court is just the latest example of the crack-down against non-Orthodox religious groups. The Yarovaya Law was ostensibly about security, and among its most controversial provisions, it increased security agencies' access to private communications, requiring telecom companies to store all telephone conversations, text messages, videos, and picture messages for six months and make this data available to authorities. But beneath the bigger headlines, the new law also required religious people to acquire official permits through a registered religious group. Further, it banned prayer meetings from taking place anywhere except buildings that are deemed officially religious, effectively ruling out house group style gatherings. Members of religious groups were also reportedly barred from emailing invitations to people interested in services, with those who violate the rules potentially expelled from Russia. The law doubtless contributed to Russia being included in the USCIRF list, and, as the Russian Orthodox Church tightens its grip alongside Putin, the country shows no signs of reversing its crackdown on religious minorities. In this square where heretics were sentenced to death by fire, the Bible is read out loud to mark the Reformation Two hundred people met in Spain in a public reading of the Bible to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The reading took place in Plaza Mayor in Madrid, where during the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, heretics and apostates were tried and condemned before being burned to death outside the city walls. Spain's Bible Society organised the reading with Evangelical Council of Madrid. The city sponsored the event. Last Sunday, the 200 evangelicals read from a version of the Bible translated by Protestant monks Reina and Valera, exiled by the Inquisition. Men and women took turns to read the different chapters of St John's Gospel. There were five public trials in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid from 1621; of 162 people accused, 29 were sentenced to death by fire. Many more were hanged or clubbed to death. The Spanish Bible Society was formally established in 1836 by Jorge Barrow, but Bible Society missionaries had been working in the country for several decades before that. This year is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the castle chapel in the German town of Wittenberg and is being celebrated with events around the world. IRS agents visit Texas office of TV evangelist Benny Hinn The offices of televangelist Benny Hinn have been visited by agents from the US Inland Revenue Service and the Postal Service. Hinn, known for his faith healing 'miracle crusades', is not at the Grapevine offices in Texas and understood to be in France, according to Warren Throckmorton's Patheos blog. His website lists his next event as a 'miracle healing and impartation' service in Ukraine. NBC 5 reporter Alice Barr tweeted: BREAKING:US Postal Service inspectors and IRS on scene at @Benny_Hinn ministries in Grapevine. Waiting for info about investigation. @NBCDFW pic.twitter.com/Ygim6LplK8 Alice Barr (@AliceBarrNBC5) April 26, 2017 She also tweeted that Hinn declined to comment. No comment from @Benny_Hinn ministries. He's not here now. Senate Finance Committee investigated him in 2007, found no wrongdoing @NBCDFW pic.twitter.com/rM3ANIuO8C Alice Barr (@AliceBarrNBC5) April 26, 2017 NBC 5 reported they saw a federal agents walking in and out of the offices with boxes. 'It looked like a big raid people everywhere, police people everywhere out there, and just rushing in,' said John Ebert, who works in a neighbouring office and was talking to the broadcaster. Hinn was among a number of televangelists investigated by the Senate Finance Committee in 2007 and subsequently cleared. It's official: Christians don't respond to persecution with violence Christians around the world respond to persecution with largely non-violent 'survival strategies' that require a lot of 'creativity, determination and courage,' according to a new report. The University of Notre Dame's report, In Response to Persecution, says that Christians tend to choose 'a creative pragmatism dominated by short-term efforts to provide security, build strength through social ties'. The report states: 'Christians' responses to this persecution fall into three broad categories: first, strategies of survival, through which they aim to preserve the life and basic activities of their communities; second, strategies of association, through which they build ties with others that strengthen their resilience in the face of persecution; and third, strategies of confrontation, through which they openly challenge the persecution levied against them or live out their faith such that they accept the possibility of martyrdom as a mode of witness. These responses are not mutually exclusive.' The 'creative strategies' include 'going underground' and 'flight' from oppressive regimes, though some Christians choose to accommodate those regimes. Alliances with other actors include those with other Christians, non-Christian religious groups and secular figures, the report says. 'Strategies of confrontation' are the least common response. 'They serve to bear witness to the faith, expose and end injustice, mobilize others to oppose injustice, and replace it with religious freedom.' Meanwhile, 'Christian responses to persecution are almost always nonviolent and, with very few exceptions, do not involve acts of terrorism.' As World Watch Monitor reported earlier this month, the persecution of Christians is often 'still not taken seriously'. Separately, the Canadian MP Candice Bergen wrote on her Facebook page: 'More Christians die and suffer for their faith than any other religious group in the world. The elite, including liberal media, not only ignore this fact but most often are the ones who treat Christians with mocking, stereotyping and disdain. It's a rare sight to ever see Hollywood portray a Christian in a positive manner, much less talk about the plight of Christians in places like the Middle East.' Pope Francis: Lust for power is 'like drinking gin on an empty stomach' It was only a matter of time for one of the most high profile figures in the world, a great communicator and a man whose embrace of new technology has helped him reach many outside of the traditional boundaries of his ancient institution. Yes, Pope Francis has done a TED Talk. The TED phenomenon, which has been growing ever wider for the last decade or so, sees experts in a certain field present their ideas in short-format videos which can then be easily shared across social media. As part of a TED event called 'The Future You' the Pontiff addressed the audience on a variety of themes. Among them was plenty of the simple and profound wisdom we've become used to from the former Cardinal Bergoglio. Talking about the need for 'equality and social inclusion' as science and technology advances, the Pope appealed for solidarity among individuals, peoples and countries. He stressed the profound Christian insight that relationships are vital, that humans deeply affect each other's lives and that no person is an island. Drawing on his interactions with migrants and the sick and elderly, the Pope spoke plainly and said, 'we all need each other.' Amen to that! Channelling the Good Samaritan, he talked about Christian hope and light overcoming darkness. Yet, the most prescient part of his talk was about power. Having identified and highlighted so many of the problems in the world, the Pope warned politicians about the dangers of power. 'The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly,' he said. It was almost as if he'd been watching the beginning stages of the UK general election. 'If you don't, your power will ruin you and you will ruin the other,' he continued. The Pope wasn't finished, though. He went on to draw on his heritage, 'There is a saying in Argentina: "Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach". You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you.' The Pope's rebuke to power-hungry politicians is nothing that hasn't been said before in Catholic Social Teaching but it does point a way forward to us in the midst of a deeply divisive election campaign in the UK and the continued acrimony of the last presidential campaign in the US. 'Through humility and concrete love, on the other hand, power...becomes a service, a force for good,' said the Pope before receiving a standing ovation for his address. Here, the Pope is recognising one of the central insights of political life. If you want something to change, then you're going to need to have power. Christians can be nervous about this. Power is often seen as a dirty word, or even something evil, too worldly. Yet this is a misunderstanding of power. Power comes in two kinds power with people and power over people. Christians will rightly oppose the politician who wants to achieve power over others. But we mustn't be scared of taking power alongside others, for the common good. The Pope's example is a good one. The Good Samaritan was only able to look after the injured man because he had the means to do something about it. In that situation he used his power to assist someone else. Power itself is not the problem. Where the power lies is the problem. As the theologian Luke Bretherton has written, 'States concentrate power in hands of bureaucrats, while markets concentrate power in the hand of plutocrats, while both concentrate resources in the hands of technocrats, thereby de-skilling us and stripping us of the agency through which we can solve our own problems.' The answer is not simple. But it lies not in eschewing power, but in acquiring it, sharing it and using it well. Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said: 'It has to be recognised that society is made up of competing centres of power, and that the separate existence of contending vitalities, and not only human sinfulness, make the elimination of power impossible. What has to be aimed at is such a distribution and balance of power that a measure of justice may be achieved.' So what now, as we face deep political division and the prospect of people grasping for power? 'The future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognise the other as "you" and themselves as part of an "us", says the Pope. That's a good place to start on the journey to getting power in its right place. More calls for Welsh church to make Jeffrey John a bishop The clergy of another Anglican cathedral have thrown their weight behind calls for a senior gay cleric to be made a bishop in Wales. Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, was barred from being appointed Bishop of Llandaff despite winning more than half of the vote in the electoral body and unanimous backing from local churchgoers. Dr John is in a long-term gay relationship with another Anglican priest and in a strongly worded open letter on Sunday claimed his sexuality was the sole reason why he was blocked. 'The only arguments adduced against my appointment in particular by two of the bishops - were directly related to my homosexuality and/or civil partnership namely that my appointment would bring unwelcome and unsettling publicity to the diocese, and that it might create difficulties for the future Archbishop in relation to the Anglican Communion,' he wrote in a letter to the senior Welsh bishop John Davies. The Chapter of Ely Cathedral has now added its 'unanimous support' to the growing calls for the Welsh bishops to reconsider Dr John. It comes after the Chapter of St Albans Cathedral, without the knowledge of their Dean Dr John, branded his treatment 'wholly wrong'. Their statement read: 'The fact that it appears Jeffrey's sexuality and civil partnership have been used against him in the selection process is wholly wrong and it is only right that the bishops in Wales review the process before making an appointment.' Changing Attitude Cymru, a Welsh LGBT Christian charity, has also added its voice to calls for a review after Dr John said he was told bishops were 'just too exhausted' to deal with the problems they believed his appointment would cause. 'We would be alarmed if fears about adverse publicity and reactions from other parts of the Anglican communion, in relation to questions of sexuality, have persuaded the bishops to discount his candidacy,' the pressure group said on Tuesday. 'This would be particularly unfortunate, considering that the bishops gave no indication, when calling for names to be submitted during the consultation period, that candidates already considered by the Electoral College would not be included in the bishops' new shortlist.' The statement added: 'We are saddened that reports of alleged homophobia in the present process of the election and appointment of the next Bishop of Llandaff, is harming the progress that has been made in bringing about changing attitudes towards LGBT+ people in the Church in Wales.' The mounting pressure was sparked after Dr John told Bishop Davies in his open letter: 'To ride roughshod of the very clearly expressed, unanimous view of a diocese in this way is extraordinary, unprecedented and foolish,' he wrote 'You decided, arbitrarily, to ignore the submissions that you had asked for, and to declare that those who were discussed at the Electoral College were now, in fact, no longer to be considered. This is a clear and ludicrous breach of process, and a further insult to the people of the diocese, and very many others who took the trouble to contribute their view. 'I trust there will now be an open and honest examination of this process in the light of day, and that you will not attempt to appoint a bishop for Llandaff until it is complete.' The 'forgotten' war in Yemen and how the West is fuelling it There's a war. Thousands are dead. Millions at risk of hunger. Allegations of atrocities committed by rebels and coalition forces. But this isn't Syria, Iraq or South Sudan. In fact, you may not even be aware there's a conflict going on there. It's Yemen. Among the seemingly never-ending bad headlines coming out of the Middle East, it may not be a surprise that a brutal and spiralling conflict is passing unnoticed. But Yemen is a tragedy that should demand more of our attention. According to Oxfam, 21 million Yemenis an astonishing 84 per cent of the population urgently need humanitarian aid. The current crisis in the small state in the Arabian Peninsula began in 2011 (although its roots go back much further). Yemen was one of a number of Gulf countries that saw uprisings as part of the Arab Spring. But unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, where the regimes came tumbling down, Gulf States such as Bahrain and Yemen endured the uprisings rumbling on without resolution. Rebel forces known as the Houthis (after their founding leader) come from the North of Yemen. They are from a branch of Shia Islam which is a minority faith in Yemen and the wider Middle East. The Houthis battled the Yemeni government from 2004 to 2010, and then when wider protest broke out as part of the Arab Spring in 2011 the Houthis joined those. Since then the country has effectively been in a state of civil war. But this has intensified over the last year to the point that Oxfam is now describing the situation as, "among the worst humanitarian crises in the world." The latest round of violence saw a church in Aden set on fire. Opposing the Shia rebels is President Hadi and his forces he is a Sunni and has the backing of surrounding Sunni states led by the military might of Saudi Arabia. And this is why we should be taking a special interest. Because despite its authoritarian government, horrendous human rights record, links to terrorist organisations and treatment of women and other minorities, Saudi Arabia is our ally and largest trading partner in the Middle East. Middle East Eye reports on the drastic human consequences of this war. It describes the aftermath of a cluster bomb attack, "The children were aged between eight and 13. They were losing blood fast and were immediately rushed to the state-run Republican hospital, where Yehyia Al Hadi, an orthopaedic doctor, said the three children were in a critical condition and might not survive." The dreadful news from Yemen of the awful consequences of this war are finally beginning to seep into western consciousness. Newsnight has run two harrowing but vital films in recent weeks which are essential viewing to get an idea of just how bad things are right now. The Guardian has condemned Saudi Arabia's actions in arming and acting with President Hadi in the brutal assaults on Houthi-held territory. A bombing campaign now beyond its sixth month is wreaking devastation in large parts of Yemen and leaving the resulting anarchic conditions ripe for exploitation by Al Qaeda and even ISIS. That Western-backed military action seems to be aiding the spread of those two groups is not the only grim irony here. In the week that the world finally begins to pay attention to the awful situation, here in the UK we are selling weapons to repressive regimes from the Middle East and beyond. The DSEI arms fair takes place biannually in London and is one of the largest such events in the world. Christian groups have been among those protesting against this giant festival of torture equipment, weaponry and ammunition. This shameful event brings into focus our complicity in what's happening in Yemen and other conflicts around the world. Astonishingly, flags in London were flown at half-mast when the authoritarian ruler of Saudi Arabia died last year. His country regularly beheads people. The US is even more of a 'friend' to the draconian regime. This is the reality of war: we may not be directly involved but we facilitate it, through our silence, through our arms sales and through our acceptance of vile regimes in the name of realpolitik. Of course there are two sides to every story. And at least two sides to every war. It would be foolish to think of the Houthis as innocent freedom fighters. There is evidence of their side carrying out human rights abuses. They may well be supported by the Iranian regime which itself is implacably opposed to Saudi dominance of the region and has its own dreadful human rights record. But it's the Saudis who are our allies and friends. It is they (and the other authoritarian Sunni states such as Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain) who are being given intelligence support by the US military. Oxfam says, "Before the conflict escalated in March 2015, Yemen was already wracked with poverty and insecurity and struggling in a transition to a better future. More than 10 million people were already going hungry every day." In other words, this is a vast crisis. Oxfam has acknowledged the 55 million of UK aid that has been given to help ease the situation but questions why we are still supplying the Saudis with arms: "Between January and March this year, the UK approved two orders for bombs or missiles for Saudi Arabia, valued at 17.19m... Since then, the Ministry of Defence has told Parliament that the UK has continued to supply 'precision guided weapons' to Saudi Arabia under its existing arrangements... The government has also confirmed that the UK is continuing its support and maintenance for UK-supplied equipment, with MoD military and civilian personnel, as well as BAE Systems personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia to support the Royal Saudi Air Force." This epic crisis in Yemen has deep ethnic, religious and economic roots. There are no 'good guys.' But this conflict must be highlighted. Our role in its escalation cannot be ignored. The lives of millions of people are being damaged by the war with little hope of resolution. It's time the crisis in Yemen was no longer a 'forgotten war.' It's time this made the headlines. It's time for an immediate end to the bombing and a start to talks. The 'world's worst humanitarian crisis' is not Syria or Iraq. Why do we barely hear about it? There are so many terrible things happening, just in the Middle East, that it's easy to tune out. The ongoing carnage in Syria, persecution of Christians in Egypt, the seemingly never-ending cycle of violence in Israel-Palestine, on and on it goes. But there is another crisis that desperately needs our attention. The people there need us not to turn away. A rumbling civil war with numerous violent flashpoints has tipped over into a full-scale humanitarian crisis, with hunger stalking millions of people. The place is a small country, adjacent to Saudi Arabia, that few of us will ever have visited Yemen. The current war there has been going on since 2011. I first wrote about it for Christian Today 18 months ago having been alerted to the horrific scenes by dogged and determined journalists following a story which was far from the headlines. In the intervening period, Yemen has begun to seep into the public consciousness, but compared to the blanket media coverage given to Syria, it has received precious little attention. This has to change. The country is starving to death not because of natural conditions, but because of the war that has prevented food and medicines from reaching those who need them most. As part of an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee we learned that: 'Almost 19 million people in Yemen 70 per cent of the population are now in need of humanitarian assistance, including 10.3 million people who are in acute need. Malnutrition is widespread and water scarce.' These are astonishing statistics. Ten million people are in acute need of food. That's as many people as live in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, District of Columbia, Vermont and Wyoming put together. It's twice the population of Scotland. Civilians have been killed, there are reports of human rights abuses on both sides and the prospects for any end to the fighting look slim. Why is this happening? Like in any civil war, there are competing narratives on either side. The fundamentals are fairly straightforward, though. The internationally recognised government of Yemen, headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, is fighting a group of rebels, known as the Houthis. Yemen is a majority Sunni country and the Houthis are Shia. The extent to which the Houthis are supported by Iran is debated, though there is clearly backing from the region's Shia powerhouse. What isn't up for debate is the coalition of forces which has assembled behind the deposed leader. The military might of the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia heads a coalition of Arab countries that is attacking the Houthis. Behind the war machine of the Saudis, as ever, is support from the USA and the UK. The situation is changing rapidly and there are other factors in play such as the increased opportunity the chaos has given to Al Qaida affiliated groups in the vacuum. IRIN news now reports that things in Yemen could be about to go from bad to catastrophic. The port of Hodeida is under Houthi control. With around 70 per cent of the country's food and supplies coming through there, it's impossible to overstate its importance. 'It would be catastrophic, and the impact would be felt immediately,' said Caroline Anning of Save the Children. 'Hodeida is one of seven provinces already on the brink of famine, and an attack could trigger it.' Despite the vast numbers of people teetering on the brink of starvation, Yemen has barely made an impression on electoral politics in the UK or US. British Aid agencies are fighting to get attention for the crisis, though. Christian NGO Tearfund has described Yemen as the 'world's worst humanitarian crisis'. Meanwhile, Oxfam says: 'Fighters in the Yemen war and their international backers are wilfully pushing the country to the brink of famine.' There appears to be little appetite for a quick resolution. The urgency of the humanitarian situation seems to be having little effect on pushing the crisis up the media or diplomatic agenda. Oxfam is calling for action from the UN. 'In order to save the lives of millions of starving people, Oxfam is urging the United Nations Secretary General to pressure all parties to the conflict to resume peace talks, to reach a negotiated peace agreement and improve the economic situation in the country,' it says. As for further practical solutions, 'All land, sea and air routes to Yemen [must] remain open and for attacks targeting military objects related to supply routes and infrastructure to not disproportionately affect civilians in accordance with International Humanitarian Law.' US megachurch restores Southern Baptist commitment after it suspended financial support following Russell Moore's Trump attacks A US megachurch that said it would suspend its $1 million annual contributions to the Southern Baptist Convention after criticism of Donald Trump by Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore has said it will now restore its financial support. Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas said in February it would set aside or 'escrow' the money usually sent to the Cooperative Program, which funds the work of the Southern Baptist Convention. The move came in response to 'various significant positions taken by the leadership of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)'. Russell Moore, president of the ERLC, was accused of 'disrespectfulness' to Trump supporters during the US election campaign, by Prestonwood's pastor Jack Graham. Moore had repeatedly voiced his opposition to Trump's candidacy, calling the Trump phenomenon 'reality TV moral sewage'. 'After a time of prayerful evaluation, Prestonwood is renewing our commitment to Southern Baptist missions by giving to the Cooperative Program without designation,' Prestonwood executive pastor Mike Buster told Baptist Press. 'For more than 40 years, Prestonwood has been a steadfast supporter of the Cooperative Program and its mission to advance the Gospel through this vital giving program. We are grateful for the Southern Baptist Convention and our longtime ministry partnership and look forward to fulfilling the Great Commission together in the days ahead,' he said. 'I am so delighted to hear of this news,' SBC Executive Committee president Frank Page said following the church statement. 'In an earlier conversation with Dr Graham, he promised that Prestonwood would be back in to CP sooner than later, and he is a man of his word.' In March, Moore gave a conciliatory statement 'seeking unity in the Southern Baptist Convention'. He said: 'I love and respect Jack Graham and Prestonwood Baptist Church. This is a faithful church with gifted leaders and a long history of vibrant ministry working and witnessing for Christ.' Tweeting in response, Graham called Moore's statement 'gracious and unifying'. Graham is a member of President Trump's Evangelical Executive Advisory Board. In written comments on April 26, Moore said: 'Prestonwood Baptist Church is a faithful, vibrant, missions-minded congregation. I'm grateful to God to partner with them as we seek to reach our world for Jesus Christ.' What happened when someone chained a cross to Gay Street? It started with a mysterious act of apparent malice, but it turned into an expression of grace. According to Manhattan resident Micah Latter, Good Friday this year saw the arrival on her street of a huge wooden cross, chained to a lamppost. No-one knew where it had come from, or who had put it there, and more bizarrely still in the days that followed it kept moving around being fixed to various posts and fences. The name of this particular part of New York? Gay Street. At first Latter was perplexed and upset. As a committed Christian herself, she got the distinct impression that the instrument used to torture and crucify Jesus was being misappropriated to spread hatred (even though the street was actually named in 1833, when 'gay' meant something very different). She told website Popsugar: 'As a Christian, the cross is a sign of love, peace, and hope and it was clear the mysterious owner of the cross was not sharing those same values.' Then, Latter had an idea. She rallied friends from the neighbourhood, grabbed an eclectic range of paints and some champagne, and embarked on a very creative response to the unheralded and unexplained actions of the unknown cross-mover. In an impromptu act that was part-street party, part-craft session, Latter and her neighbours (and some intrigued passers-by), repainted the cross in the colours of the rainbow, partly to demonstrate inclusivity to the LGBT community, and partly as a demonstration that the cross is fundamentally about grace, not exclusion. Why Are We Standing By While Yemen Burns? It's a difficult thing to look into the eyes of a starving child. There's something so incredibly bleak about the kind of images that to many of us in the West were unimaginable until the arrival of modern technology. Michael Buerk's reporting from the Ethiopian famine in 1984 was the first exposure many of us had to the horrific consequences of prolonged starvation on a mass of people. In the case of Ethiopia, as with many examples of chronic food shortage, the problem wasn't just 'natural' the crops didn't simply fail because of nature. Instead, Ethiopia was a country suffering under years of Dictatorship specifically that of the Derg, the Stalinist regime which used hunger as a weapon. When we are presented with images of starvation, it is incumbent on us to ask, not only what the natural causes might be, but where the political impetus is coming from. Finally, five years after some brave journalists began reporting hunger in Yemen, the conflict has become newsworthy in the West. The Times carried a harrowing picture of the suffering going on in the small Arab nation on its front page last month. Now we know, we need to ask why this suffering is being perpetrated and, more challengingly, if we in the US and UK are partly responsible. If a natural disaster is tragic, then a politically and militarily enforced humanitarian disaster is obscene. The principalities and powers are conspiring to leave Yemen's innocent children short of food, medicine and worst of all, hope. Evangelical NGO Tearfund says the situation in Yemen is so dire that it should be ranked alongside the devastating crisis in Iraq and Syria. "The statistics speak for themselves" says an article on Tearfund's website, "over 21 million people urgently need humanitarian assistance that's 83% of the population, higher than for Syria (74%). Over 14 million lack safe regular access to food rising to 19 million for water and sanitation." These are astonishing figures. To put them in context, look at the United States. If an equivalent percentage of US citizens were under threat of starvation, it would equal 284 million Americans. Make no mistake, this is a calamity. The UN, which is also now categorising Yemen as one of the three most serious situations in the world along with Iraq and Syria has detailed the devastating consequences of the violence in Yemen. The UN also says, "Those engaged in the conflict are not meeting their basic responsibilities, under international law, to respect, protect, and meet basic needs of the civilian population." Oxfam has camapigned for an end to hostilities and has described Yemen as being "on the bring of catastrophe". This is the heart of the problem. Neither side in what is both a civil war within Yemen, and a proxy war within the wider Middle East, seems to be respecting human rights. Worse still, one of the sides is backed by the West. Essentially, the conflict is between forces loyal to two men who claim to be the rightful president. In the worlds of Iona Craig, a journalist who has done more than most to draw attention to Yemen's crisis, "Saudi Arabia waded into what began as a domestic political power struggle between the country's incumbent president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and his predecessor of 33 years' standing, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The marginalised, predominantly Shia Houthi militiamen, viewed as an Iranian proxy by the Sunni kingdom [Saudi Arabia], joined forces with Saleh's loyalists in the military to seize swathes of territory over the past 18 months." Since then, both sides have been accused of various human rights abuses. But, disgracefully, Britain and the US continue to support the Saudi-led coalition. In an excoriating piece, Peter Oborne highlights the British complicity in Saudi's war: "In the face of a mountain of evidence that crimes have been committed, Britain repeatedly insisted that the Saudis have not breached international humanitarian law. Britain has advisers in the heart of the Saudi command centre which sets targets for the bombers. We provide Saudi with crucial diplomatic cover, for instance blocking Dutch calls for a very badly needed independent inquiry into war crimes by all sides. Throughout the war we have supplied arms to the Saudis. This is almost certainly illegal." Funerals, hospitals and other civilian targets have been hit during the war. The Obama administration also offers support. The New York Times reported that, in the wake of the Saudi bombing of an MSF hospital, "the Pentagon has given steady support to the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, with targeting intelligence and fuel for the Saudi planes involved in the air campaign." The reason we're given? Well, as Prime Minister Theresa May insisted in the House of Commons, "Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is an important relationship. It's a particularly important relationship in relation to the security of this country and counter-terrorism." What craven nonsense. May suggests that keeping British people safe comes at the expense of Yemeni lives. Well, not in my name. Our reprehensible genuflection before the Saudis is one of the deepest stains on modern British and American foreign policy. No 'pragmatist' talk about our oil dependency or the (very real) need to keep our citizens safe from terrorists will persuade me otherwise. What makes it even harder to swallow Western support for Saudi Arabia is its treatment of Christians. Open Doors describes the level of persecution of the 1.2 million believers in Saudi as "severe" and says anyone who converts from Islam is in danger of losing their life. As we gather to remember our brave servicepeople who have given so much over many generations to keep the West safe from fascism, we should gather with a sense of deep disquiet that our governments aren't merely standing by on the other side we seem to be deepening and intensifying one of the world's most deadly conflicts. Shame on us. Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy How to Do It Iain Murray Peter Anderson/Getty Images In the seemingly endless debate about how to put Americans back to work, one solution dare not speak its name: deregulation. Yet if implemented correctly, it would provide an almost cost-free stimulus of a trillion dollars or more. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), the regulatory burden on our economy is a staggering $1.75 trillion annually. The Obama administration is apparently in denial over that figure: Cass Sunstein, who heads up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, calls it an urban myth, though the methodology by which it is derived is widely accepted. My colleague Wayne Crews has surveyed the growth of the regulatory state every year since 1996 in his annual report, Ten Thousand Commandments. In that time, he has seen the number of pages in the Federal Register grow from 67,000 to 81,405. Each page (apart from the bizarre blank ones) contains a rule that imposes costs on businesses while creating more jobs for bureaucrats. Small businesses suffer disproportionately from these rules because their owners have to deal with compliance themselves (they usually give up and hire someone else to handle it when they reach about 30 employees). The costs of complying with regulations average $10,585 per employee, the SBA saysenough to throw a small firm of 20 employees with $200,000 in profits into just-breaking-even territory. No wonder small businesses, the engine of the U.S. economy, have stalled in hiring. Chamber of Commerce surveys show that over 60 percent of small businesses have no plans to hire in the next year, and the firms cite greater regulation or the threat of it as a major reason for their reluctance. In short, bureaucracy helps explain why businesses are making profits but not jobs. Substantially reducing the regulatory burden would go some way toward getting them to hire again. There are many ways to do this. For starters, Congress should appoint an annual bipartisan commission to comb through existing rules and identify those that need repeal. The commission would conduct its own analyses of the costs and benefits of regulations, as federal agencies figures are notoriously suspect and far from independent. Congress would then vote on the entire repeal package, which would prevent legislators from trading their votes for the preservation of their preferred rules. Further, Congress should add a five-year sunset provision to all new regulations. If it later decides that rules are worth keeping, it can vote to extend them for another five years. Congress should also revitalize the concept of enterprise zones, areas where businesses are exempted from some regulations to allow them to establish themselves at reduced cost. Enterprise zones proved an effective way of getting local economies moving in the 1980s and 1990s. Another useful tool would be a new small-business license for all start-ups and microbusinessesfirms with five or fewer employeesexempting them from new regulations for a five-year period. The federal government might consider, too, devolving many regulatory duties to the states, letting the nations basic constitutional units discover the effectiveness of rules through trial, error, and interstate competition. Two British policies invite imitation in the United States. Congress could experiment with regulatory budgeting, a system currently being introduced in the United Kingdom, by approving a proposal of Democratic senator Mark Warners: for every new rule introduced, an old one of equivalent cost would have to be repealed. Congress could also implement an American version of Britains new Red Tape Challenge, which enables citizens to air grievances about particular regulations. This could be done either in conjunction with the bipartisan commission or, as in the U.K., by a team of business leaders that reports back to the legislature. All these ideas would provide significant regulatory relief. First, however, Congress should take responsibility for regulations, instead of surrendering rule-making to unaccountable government agencies, as David Schoenbrod explains in the following article. Reining in the Rules David Schoenbrod The economic consequences of regulating business are huge. Regulatory costs raise prices, depress incomes, and encourage companies to locate in friendlier climes, harming our economy and hampering recovery. Unfortunately, the perennial cry to reduce regulatory drag has yielded few results at the federal level. Congress rarely responds to such pleas because voters usually regard regulation one-sidedly, believing that it simply reduces risks without imposing burdens. Only when voters think as consumers and clearly see the advantages of easing regulations does Congress act. Recall the late 1970s and early 1980s, when airlines, interstate bus companies, and other businesses previously treated as public utilities were successfully deregulated. In those instances, the public rightly understood that heavily price-controlled air travel and an unchallenged Ma Bell hurt their economic interests while enriching monopolistic companies. More often, however, a divided Congress digs in against efforts to lighten regulations, with the pro-regulation faction arguing, usually successfully, for protections that the American people want. Regulatory drag can be reduced only as part of a reform that credibly promises to ease burdens and protect the public. Such reform is possible, but it needs to start by changing how Congress approaches regulation: lawmakers must assume responsibility for rule-making. Though Congress is to blame for the excessive regulation of business, that isnt because it makes too many rules itself. Rather, as government has grown more complex over the last century, Congress has deferred to unaccountable federal agencies the tricky work of writing the rules that put its regulatory schemes into effect, and those agencies have tended to go much further than Congress would have. The result is regulatory overreach, bureaucratic intransigence, and wastewhich legislators can then blame on the agencies. This pass-the-buck-and-point-the-finger arrangement enables lawmakers to take credit for the promised benefits of new regulatory schemes but to evade responsibility for the actual costs and problems that result. Legislators thus feel free to enact more and more regulatory statutes. The Office of Management and Budget has estimated that since 1980, federal regulators have written more than 130,000 rules, an ever-thickening tangle that Americans and American firms must reckon with. Not so long ago, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer explained in an influential law review article how a return to congressional accountability might work: Congress would pass a statute that prevented any new regulations from going into effect until the legislature confirmed them in a vote. Breyers idea has found congressional champions in Representative Geoff Davis and Senator Rand Paul, both Kentucky Republicans, who have sponsored a bill that would compel Congress to approve or disapprove agency regulations. The bill would apply only to major regulations, defined as those that the Office of Management and Budget determines to have an annual impact of $100 million or more. Over the summer, House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that the lower chamber would take up the bill; a vote could come as early as November. The Davis-Paul bill has some Democratic sponsors, but many Democrats oppose it. Republicans have given Democrats an excuse to dislike the bill by naming it the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act; the title and some of the accompanying rhetoric make the bill sound like just another plan to ease burdens on business while increasing risks for the public. That may be why the Senate has shown little interest in REINS so far. But the bill may have an easier time after the 2012 election, if Republicans make gains then. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, meanwhile, is putting together a regulatory-reform bill of its own. To try to explain why elected lawmakers should not be accountable for agency-made laws, the bills opponents point out that legislators arent as knowledgeable as agency experts. But as the New Deals sage of administrative law, James Landisalready confronting the problem of congressional abdication of responsibilityput it seven decades ago, It is possible by a simple device to have the administrative [agency] as the technical agent in the initiation of rules of conduct, yet at the same time to have the legislative share in the responsibility for their adoption (emphasis added). Others object that Congress would be swayed by campaign contributions from the industries that it regulates. In fact, big money counts for more in the administrative process than in Congress. Still others worry that filibusters would be commonbut the Davis-Paul bill, which limits debate to two hours in each house, wouldnt allow that. Opponents of congressional accountability for regulations make a final argument: Congress, they say, simply lacks the time to vote on major regulations. But its worth noting that during the 111th Congress, even as federal agencies promulgated 130 major regulations, Congress enacted more than 80 laws naming post offices and the like. REINS would shift representatives time from striking poses to taking responsibility for the most important laws that bind and protect their constituents. If Congress really believes that the time required for review is too great, it could raise the criterion for a regulation to count as major over the $100 million threshold, rather than abdicate responsibility entirely. The more honorable course would be to spend more days voting in Washington and less time campaigning for reelection. Actually doing the job ought to be a prerequisite for fighting to keep the job. Establishing democratic accountability would encourage Congress to reject regulations that impose burdens disproportionate to their benefits. Reducing regulatory drag would therefore bring significant benefits to our economy over time. It would also be the right thing to do. In a representative democracy, the way to find out which regulations citizens want is for elected representatives to vote on themnot for unelected officials to write them as the representatives hide. Wait: let me get this straight. Its legally binding for two underlings in the civil rights divisions of the Departments of Education and Justice to send out a Dear Colleague letter declaring that, as these bureaucrats interpret Title IX of Congresss Education Amendments of 1972, colleges and universities cant get any federal funding if they dont make special accommodations for transgendered students, however defined; but it is not legal for the president of the United States, pursuant to the Constitutions injunction that he ensure that the laws be faithfully executed, to deny some federal funding to cities that declare themselves sanctuaries from federal immigration laws, and that accordingly forbid their officials from cooperating with federal authorities in implementing them, as Congress has demanded? Such is the implication of federal Judge William Orricks ruling in California this week that it is unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to attach conditions to federal funding to such sanctuary localities. After all, the president was merely enforcing compliance with the law of the land in a much more straightforward manner than the two functionaries who threatened to withhold federal funding if colleges failed to satisfy every whim of transgendered students. To be sure, defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, churlishly flouting Americas long tradition of gracious acceptance of electoral results and the seamless transfer of power from one administration to the next, called on her supporters to resist, insist, persist, enlist in her opposition to Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress. And few have heeded her call as substantively as leftish federal judges, who all seem to imagine themselves as even more heroic defenders of blue-state orthodoxy than Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer himself. But the Resistance, as the anti-Trump left styles itself, is sailing into very dangerous waters, where earlier negationist movements have foundered. Do these pro-illegal-immigrationists really want to follow the nullification movement of the 1830s, when South Carolina toyed with the idea that it could reject a tariff passed by Congress, because it weighed so heavily on that states economy? Nullification advocates, led by John C. Calhoun, who had resigned the vice-presidency so as more effectively to oppose the tariff from the Senate, appealed to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions written, respectively, by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The Kentucky Resolution described the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts as being void and of no force in that state, though the state legislature didnt dare use Jeffersons original language that its resolution constituted a nullification of the acts. Madisons Virginia Resolution was merely hortatory, and he was aghast to hear Jefferson declare explicitly that he was willing to have the two states secede from the Union in response to the acts of John Adamss Federalist-dominated Congress. But of course Calhoun and other Southerners caught the separatist implication of Jeffersons Kentucky Resolution and claimed that their nullification had the sanction of the Founding Fathers. President Andrew Jackson caught their drift and rightly predicted that the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question, which a generation later ignited the Civil War. Constitution-architect Madisons vision of how federalism would work imagined that state judges and municipal magistrates would enforce state laws and local ordinances, but judges at all levels, state as well as federal, would be bound to enforce federal lawswhich makes Judge Orrick look particularly unmoored in the Constitution. So serious an infraction did Congress consider the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s that it passed a law authorizing military force to compel the two balky states to abide by its tariff. The states found a face-saving way to back down, and the crisis subsided but never vanished. Its hard not to think of the officials of San Francisco and of Santa Clara County, or New York City Mayor de Blasio, without recalling this shameful and dangerous episode in U.S. history. Its also hard not to recall Alabama Governor George Wallaces refusal to accept the Supreme Courts 1954 school-desegregation ruling and allow black students to register in his state university. In the end, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and sent Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to stand at their head, forcing Wallace to step aside and stop blocking the university doorway, so that black students could enter. Is that how San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee or Mayor de Blasio or other leaders of sanctuary cities really want their resistance to the law of the landand immigration law is a federal responsibilityto end? If so, they are playing with fire. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Critics of President Trump have long suggested that his tax-reform plan would heavily benefit the rich. And indeed, the program that the Trump administration just unveiled does cut personal income-tax rates for everyone, including the top rate, which would drop to 35 percent from 39.6 percent. Trumps plan would also slash the rate on business income that gets reported on individual tax returns to just 15 percent. Currently, that income is subject to tax rates as high as 39.6 percent. But to help pay for these cuts, Trumps plan imposes an expensive penalty on the wealthy. It would eliminate a set of deductions including, crucially, the deduction for state and local taxes, which currently generates as much as $100 billion a year in savings, largely for high-income taxpayers. Dont expect to hear Trumps critics in Congress praise the planmany of them represent high-tax states whose wealthy residents largely benefit from the deduction. Eliminating it will only increase their tax pain and put further pressure on states like New York and California to reduce taxes. The state and local deduction has long been a target of reformers because it complicates the tax code and represents a huge subsidy for upper-income earners in certain states, at the expense of everyone else. A Tax Foundation report recently estimated that 88 percent of the deductions benefit goes to taxpayers with $100,000 or more in income. The deduction also disproportionately benefits taxpayers in just six statesNew York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, and Pennsylvania. They rack up half the savings from the deduction. Critics have argued for years that a better approach would eliminate such special treatment for individuals while lowering tax rates across the boardas Trump is proposing. The last serious attempt to end state and local deductibility as part of a simplified, fairer tax code was the tax reform battle of 1986. That effort failed in part because of furious opposition from high-tax states, especially New York, California, and New Jersey. Since Democrats controlled the House of Representatives back then, and each of those states votes were crucial to tax reform, the deduction was sacrificed in pursuit of a deal that cut both corporate and personal income-tax rates. But reformers have never taken their eye off the target. A 2005 report for President George W. Bush urged repealing the deduction; the Simpson-Bowles tax commission empaneled by President Obama similarly urged eliminating virtually all deductions, including the one for state and local taxes. Though Trump is himself a New Yorker and would presumably pay higher state taxes under his own proposal, eliminating the deduction is attractive to the administration because it helps make the numbers work. To avoid a potential filibuster, any proposed tax cuts must not be projected to increase the nations budget deficit beyond 10 years. By penciling out the state and local deduction, the administration can claim a savings of more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years, which would help pay for other parts of its tax-reform program. That would enable Trump to construct a tax package that Republicans alone might get through Congress, though it would need the votes of GOP representatives in states like New York and Californiaagainst the interests of some of their own constituents. Trump could also hope to win votes from Democrats in states like Indiana, Washington, and Tennessee, where taxpayers dont benefit substantially from the deduction. He may need to make his pitch directly to voters there, while also pressuring local Democrats to get behind the plan. The message would be simple: the current arrangement amounts to lower-taxed stateslike yourssubsidizing higher-taxed states through the federal tax code. For wealthy individuals in high-tax states, the pain would be significant, perhaps prompting many of them to reconsider their residency. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut already have outmigration problems, with wealthy residents fleeing to lower-tax jurisdictions. Last year, New Jerseys richest resident, hedge-fund manager David Tepper, decamped to zero-income-tax Florida. Some reports suggested that Tepper paid an astounding $200 million in state taxes alone. Imagine not being able to deduct that sum from your federal tax bill! Earlier this month, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, anticipating that Trump might target the deduction, released an analysis estimating that the proposal would cost New York taxpayers an additional $17 billion a year. That would increase the impact of state and local taxes in New Yorkwhere the tax bite is already the nations second-highestby between 20 percent and 44 percent per taxpayer, the governor said. A separate analysis by New York Citys Independent Budget Office estimates that Gotham residents alone could see their tax bill rise by $8 billion. Most of that would come from wealthy taxpayers. E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center estimates that for many middle-income taxpayers, the federal cuts Trump proposes would offset the pain of higher state taxes. But further up the scale, the balance shifts the other way, especially for the very rich: those married households that file their taxes jointly and earn more than $2 million a year. Trumps tax plan has scrambled the narrative for his opponents. For years, they have characterized virtually any tax cut as a gift to the rich. By proposing to end the deductibility of state and local taxes within a broader tax-reduction plan, Trump has both given to and taken away from the rich, in pursuit of lower taxes for others. Its hard to tell what effect this would have on his own income without seeing his tax returns. On the other hand, maybe Trump plans to relocate from New York to Florida when hes finished in Washington. After all, he already owns a little vacation home there. Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images The charity sector governance model is a jewel beyond price and should be the envy of other sectors, the leader of a major new inquiry into charities told Civil Society Medias Trustee Exchange conference this morning. Julia Unwin, former chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and chair of the Civil Society Futures inquiry, told the conference that the model of trusteeship is one of the most precious things that the charity sector has. We should not do down charity governance, she said. There are problems with governance of course there are; there are problems in every sector but the model of trusteeship has enabled us to navigate some extremely tricky waters. The ability to create a diverse board driven by the values and passions of the organisation but not having a financial stake. The ability of that board to be genuinely independent. These things are a jewel beyond price. Other sectors would give their eye teeth for the quality of governance that the charity sector has. Civil society shouldnt always be civil Unwin also spoke about the need for charities to fight their corner. She said that her commission would make recommendations for civil society to change itself, rather than relying on government or regulators to make the running. She said charities needed to take back control of their own destiny. Civil Society shouldnt always be civil, she said. We were born out of anger. We are fighting for all the things that really matter to us. We convene when things are difficult. And she warned against charities becoming too focused on growth for its own sake. Im not sure growth is right for everybody, she said. It might be right for the sector, and it might be right for some of you. But weve seen in other sectors in 2008 that growth for its own sake has all sorts of downside. She said the sector must be prepared to transform, however. If you do what youve always done, youll get what youve always got, she said. In a sector which feels undervalued and marginalised, thats not a good thing. Diversity vital Unwin also spoke about the necessity of real diversity on trustee boards. The best trustee bodies are hugely diverse, she said. That doesnt just mean women and people from BME groups. That is tremendously important, but its not the only thing. True diversity comes from a 360 degree protection. It means people who read different newspapers and went to different schools. It means people who talk with different voices and see things differently. Protect your reputation Unwin also called for charities to do more to protect their reputation, but not to do so at the expense of collaboration with others. Your biggest asset is your reputation and your name, she said. How you are regarded is a huge asset. But reputation must be protected in a new, more fluid way. People often say they want partnership, but when it comes down to it, they see themselves as the protectors of their name, and the shutters come down. Civil Society Media hosts a number of governance training courses throughout the year. For more information, and to book, click here Before the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, made headlines, residents suspected something was wrong. A new Pew Research Center study using proprietary Google search data shows people in the city searched the web for information related to the water supply before their government and the local media recognized there was a problem. The study shows how real-time mining of digital data may improve public health response times and media coverage during a crisis. Flint, which is 70 miles north of Detroit, had tainted water for at least 18 months after state-appointed financial managers decided to save money by switching the citys water supply from Detroit-area water to the Flint River in spring 2014. The plan was to use this system until a pipeline from Lake Huron could be completed. However, system managers failed to treat the river water with an anti-corrosive agent, exposing the citys residents to harmful contaminants and lead. Water quality has improved since Flint returned to the Detroit system, The Associated Press reported. But residents still are advised to use filters until a project to replace compromised pipes into individual homes is completed. To look into the public health crisis, Pew received special access to Google search data more nuanced than is publicly available. With anonymized data, researchers identified more than 2,700 different search phrases associated with contaminated drinking water that range from specific (such as Flint water EPA, to more general (such as why is my water brown). The data covers a period from January 5, 2014, through July 2, 2016. The searches serve as a proxy for public interest during the developing crisis, Pew suggests. As conversations around the crisis developed, search terms evolved. By studying how they changed over time, we might get a sense of how people consume major news events. We chose the Flint water crisis as a case study because it had impact at the personal, community, and political levels, Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew Research Center, said in a statement. She added that data can shed light on the publics response to news and events. Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project Here are five major takeaways from the study: Residents searched for information about the water before the crisis unfolded. Researchers found that Flint residents began searching for information about their water more frequently in mid-July 2014. By August, searches in the city and the state reached their second-highest peak within the period being studied. This all occurred four weeks ahead of the first boil advisory issued in Flint, on August 16. Meanwhile, during these four weeks, local news outlets maintained the same amount of coverage they had been giving the issue since the beginning of 2014: one or two stories per week. This suggests that information may have spread among local residents, largely before the news industry or local governments had turned increased attention to the issue, according to Pew. People searched for information when news broke. Out of 24 moments of intense search activity seen during the period of the study, most happened when major events took place. For example, when the city issued a lead warning on September 25 and a public health emergency on October 1, searches around public health rose enormously. Additionally, data shows that media coverage followed suit. This suggests that public search interest follows major events and increased news coverage. One weakness of the study is that it uses weekly data, meaning researchers are unable to tell if spikes in searches occurred in the beginning of the week, the end of the week, or on a particular day. Pew used weekly data because it deemed it more useful than daily searches, which provided less granularity. Media coverage and events didnt always lead to heightened search activity. While most of the heavy search periods occurred when there was a major development and a lot of news coverage, some events didnt cause an increase in searches. For instance, Flint issued another warning about the tap water (on January 2), and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder approved $2 million in infrastructure improvements (on February 3). Although news outlets published more stories during this period, there was no rise in search activity. One possible explanation for the lack of heightened search activity during these instances is that, aside from the funding announcement, many of these events were incremental changes to existing storylines rather than major developments, according to Pew. Searches reflect how interest evolved. In the beginning, searches were about facts around the crisis. People looked up phrases such as Flint water crisis articles and Flint water update between May and August 2014. Then, in 2015, people began searching terms related to how the water crisis would affect their health, such as lead water absorb skin and public health-related terms like water pollution causes. In 2016, when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder activated the National Guard and President Obama announced $5 million in aid, people began looking into political aspects. Twitter activity mirrored national search activity. The number of tweets around the crisis was low until 2016. During the week of January 17, 2016 (when Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint), there was an enormous increase in tweets about Flint. The number of posts on the platform went from about 140,000 to more than 400,000. We condensed the study, but you can see the full report here. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Justin Ray is an audience editor at the Los Angeles Times. Follow him on Twitter @jray05. John Riley, who graduated from Syracuse University in 1961 and is now a university trustee, and his wife, Diane, donated a major gift the school to establish a dual degree program in business administration and engineering. (Photo credit: Alexanders Fine Portrait Design of Houston, Texas, Syracuse University website) SYRACUSE, N.Y. Syracuse University will use a major gift to establish a new, dual degree program that allows students to earn a dual degree in business administration and engineering. Under the program, students can pursue a masters degree in business administration (MBA) from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and a bachelors degree from the College of Engineering and Computer Science in just five years, according to a news release posted Wednesday on the university website. John Riley, a Syracuse native who graduated from Syracuse University in 1961 and who now serves as a university trustee, and his wife, Diane, provided the funding. The couple endowed the H. John and Diane M. Riley Dual Engineering/MBA program. The university didnt disclose the amount of the donation. Besides his service as a trustee, Riley has also been a member of the boards student-affairs committee and led and served on the board of large corporations, Syracuse said Along the way, Riley has kept a watchful eye for ways the university can empower students and fill needs in the marketplace. Diane and I put careful thought into our charitable gifts, Riley said in the release. The same is true of our support of the engineering/MBA program, which provides an interdisciplinary education that we believe will distinguish graduates in the marketplace. I would say there are few engineering graduates who spend their career doing only design. Perhaps they manage projects, help with business development or start their own firm. Whatever the case, having technical skills and business training will prepare them to make an immediate impact on any organization. We are happy to support this program and look forward to learning of its graduates success for years to come. About the Rileys After graduating from Syracuse University in 1961, John Riley took a position in the manufacturing training program at General Electric (GE). He would move to Iowa and Ohio before the program brought him back home to Central New York, Syracuse said. Though he and Diane grew up 10 blocks from one another, they began dating just before John graduated from Syracuse. They were married in 1963 after he returned to Syracuse with GE. Riley eventually left GE for a position with Crouse-Hinds, a Syracusebased electrical-products manufacturer and eventually had to move to Charlottesville, Virginia in the late 1970s. When Cooper Industries, a maker of oil-field products, tools, and hardware, bought Crouse-Hinds in 1982, John Riley became head of Coopers newly acquired electrical business, requiring a move to Houston, Texas, per the release. By 1992, Riley had become president and COO of Cooper Industries and was named CEO and chairman of the board in 1996. At the time of his retirement in 2006, the company employed more than 25,000 people at 100 locations around the world. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram A reporter learns how to dodge terrorist threats to get the story By Rukmini Callimachi The convoy of cars flying al-Qaedas black flag swept across northern Mali in 2012. Within weeks, it felt like a curtain had been drawn. Table of Contents Attacks on the Press book cover Over scratchy phone lines, I dialed and re-dialed the numbers of city officials, which usually rang unanswered. When someone occasionally picked up, they couldnt hear me. By the time the amputations began, many were too afraid to speak. I had been the West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press for less than a year when al-Qaeda seized and began to govern the largest slice of territory they had ever held. The sweep of desert under their control, which the terror networks North African branch held with the help of two allied groups, spanned the size of Afghanistan. It should have been a riveting story, except that I couldnt cover it: The branch of al-Qaeda that had seized the territory had bankrolled its rise to prominence by kidnapping foreigners for ransom. Soon after the group planted their black flag in the fabled desert outpost of Timbuktu, a Swiss woman who had refused to evacuate was abducted from her home. For the next 10 months, I watched from more than a thousand miles away in neighboring Senegal as reports surfaced of women being flogged for refusing to wear the black veil. I did my best to describe how they destroyed the centuries-old mausoleums of Timbuktu, spending an afternoon trying, and failing, to confirm anything beyond the most basic details. Are you sure they used a sledgehammer? I yelled into the phone one afternoon. Or was it a pickaxe? Mostly, I threw up my hands. A Timbuktu resident walks past a room where he and other residents say Al-Qaeda held European hostages at Malis Ministry of Finance regional audit department. (AP/Rukmini Callimachi) If Im honest with myself, I failed to cover the story both because it was too hard and because it was less exciting: Instead of being out in the field, I was stuck in my office, forced to report on a speakerphone. I was schooled not by another journalist, but by a report put out by a human rights group. Beginning in the summer of 2012, Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka traveled to Bamako, the capital of Mali. She spent her days at the central bus station, waiting for the buses making the journey from Timbuktu, carrying fleeing residents who had witnessed the groups brutal rule. Her report was full of the details I longed to cover: How the terror group had banned music in all its forms, going so far as to outlaw cell phone jingles. She described how one young man frantically tried to hit the answer button on his phone when someone called him and the ringer played Malian music, within earshot of the jihadists. He was beaten until he bled, her report said. It was a watershed moment for me. Huge swaths of the world are now off limits to reporters. Much of Syria and Iraq, where the militant group Islamic State has built its caliphate, are no-go zones both because of the regular dangers of war and because reporters are now targets. So is much of Libya, where until recently Islamic State ran its most important province. The area where we can operate in Afghanistan has progressively shrunk. And despite Western-backed or funded military interventions, most of Somalia, much of northern Nigeria, chunks of Niger, Chad and Algeria remain areas of extreme risk for journalists. And yet what happens inside those no-go areas has become more important than ever. For the past three and a half years, I have been approaching the edges of territories held by terror groups, inching as close as I can to the line of control, metaphorically peeking over the sandbags. In Mali, I also eventually headed to the bus stop to await the fleet of GDF buses making the days-long journey from the heart of territory controlled by al-Qaeda. I, too, spoke to the passengers as they exited the bus, the women visibly relieved to no longer have to wear the suffocating veil. And I got better at using the telephone in my office, learning to use the redial function. I kept a notepad next to my landline and tallied each call I made, telling myself I wouldnt give up until I had dialed the same number at least 20 times. The interviews would sometimes last less than a minute before the line went dead, forcing me to redial yet again. I begged each person I called to introduce me to someone else, so that each call became part of a daisy chain of interviews. It was difficult, often tedious work, but it paid off in the first weeks of 2013, when France scrambled fighter jets over northern Mali, beginning a military intervention to flush out the jihadists. I reached the city of Timbuktu days after it had been freed, part of a wave of reporters who cascaded into town, filling every available hotel room. I was not the first to reach the fabled city, but I was the last journalist to leave, staying for more than a month, until the manager of my hotel informed me that I would need to start paying a 5,000 francs (around US$10) fee each day to pay the cook. There are no other guests, so hes coming just for you, the manager reasoned. Because I had spent so much time on bad phone lines covering the occupied city, I already knew it intimately before ever stepping foot on its sand-enveloped lanes. I headed to the branch of the Banque Malienne de Solidarite (BMA bank), which had acted as the headquarters of the Islamic police. I knew the jihadists had turned the citys once-chic boutique hotel into the seat of their Shariah court, and headed there next. Residents pointed me to the garage where Abou Zeid, one of the top commanders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, responsible for kidnapping numerous Western hostages, had waited for a mechanic to fix his Toyota SUV, to the tax building where his men had typed out their set of edicts, and to the other municipal offices and private villas that had served as the infrastructure of their occupying government. In each building, I found and collected dozens of pages left behind by al-Qaedas men. Those documents, totaling more than 5,000 pages of internal correspondence and ideological treatises, have formed the core of my understanding of al-Qaeda, and helped orient my insight into its offshoot, the Islamic State. It was another way to peer over the sandbags, this time through the peephole of what they wrote to each other and about themselves. I finally left Timbuktu in March 2013, and during the next two years, my focus shifted almost entirely to the Islamic State group. I struggled at first to find the metaphorical bus stop, where I could interview the passengers leaving the territory under their control. I finally found it on the first of four trips to Iraq in 2015, in the tent cities that had sprung up on the edges of the northern town of Dohuk. It was there that the Yazidi minority, whose women had been targeted for enslavement by Islamic State, found refuge. I filled my days going tent to tent, speaking to dozens of women held by the terror group. They related the horrors of their captivity the rapes that had by then already been reported by numerous news organizations, including my own. For me, those interviews were the most intimate of windows into the state of mind of the men claiming to be acting in the name of God. The women and girls described how their abusers used scripture to justify acts of sexual violence. They told me that the fighters described their rape as ibada, the Arabic word for worship, and they described how the men holding them prayed before the rape, then took a shower and then prayed again, bookending the abuse in an act of religious devotion. I was in Iraq on November 13, 2015, when my editor called me and asked me to rush to Paris. I arrived the next day and it took me an hour and a half to drive the normally 40-minute distance between Charles de Gaulle Airport and my hotel, as we were forced onto side streets to avoid the barricades erected by the security forces hunting the surviving attackers, who killed 130 at the Stade de France, cafes and the Bataclan theater. As their names were revealed, I joined the flocks of reporters going from street to street, knocking on the doors of former neighbors, a frustrating and mostly futile exercise. It was then that I found the next peephole in the form of interrogation documents and court records, traveling by train to Brussels to pick up the first folder. France has sent more fighters to Syria than any other Western country and dozens have been arrested upon their return. In transcripts of hours-long interrogations conducted by Frances Direction Generale de la Securite Interieure, the countrys domestic intelligence unit, I was able to glimpse the outlines of a branch of the Islamic State dedicated to exporting terror abroad. In mid-2016, a source handed me a USB stick containing more than 100,000 pages of investigative documents, and I have been combing through them, using them as the spine of stories on how Islamic State mounted the machinery of terror in Europe. More recently, I have begun to collect similar interrogation records from Asia, showing the groups global reach. I am never happier than when I am in the field, and I cannot help but read with longing the accounts of reporters who covered conflict years ago, when journalists were still considered off-bounds. It was only 20 years ago that Osama bin Laden welcomed an American TV crew inside a hut on a cold mountaintop in Afghanistan. I wonder if those opportunities will ever come again for Western reporters. Until then, Ill keep on working as close as I can to the edges. Rukmini Callimachi is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist who covers the militant groups Islamic State and Al-Qaeda for The New York Times. Royal Caribbean has announced itinerary details for its 2018-2019 Australia summer cruise season, which will see the line returning to Australia with three large ships. Bookings for the 2018-2019 summer season open on May 16, according to a press release. The Ovation of the Seas will return for her third and longest season yet based Down Under. The Radiance of the Seas will offer Royal Caribbeans first departure from Melbourne, as well as three cruises departing from Auckland. Meanwhile, the Explorer of the Seas returns for her fourth season. The sister ship, the Voyager of the Seas, will not return to Australia, instead remaining in Singapore and China for a year-round season. Melbourne as a new turnaround-port for the Radiance was an easy choice for us to make. Victorians are known for their love of great food so our culinary ship is the perfect fit. And in Auckland, our style of cruising is continuously growing in popularity so were thrilled to offer cruises from our Kiwi neighbours doorstep, commented Adam Armstrong, managing director, Royal Caribbean Australia and New Zealand. "After six seasons pioneering big-ship cruising in Australia and carrying more than 300,000 guests, we will say farewell to the Voyager, as she will instead sail from Singapore and Asia year-round, Armstrong added. This deployment change makes possible the early return of the Ovation to her summer home in Sydney, where she will operate her longest ever Australia season. Our most popular local cruise ship, the Ovation, is the flagship for modern Australian cruising, delivering a whole new way to holiday, known as SuperCruising, Armstrong continued. The 2018-2019 season will kick off with the arrival of the Radiance to Sydney on Oct. 6, 2018. The Explorer will return Down Under on Oct. 27 2018, and the Ovation on Nov. 2, 2018. Together, the three ships will offer 61 sailings, ranging from three to 23-nights, sailing to nine different countries including Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, French Polynesia, Malaysia, New Caledonia, Singapore, the U.S.and Vanuatu. The Ovation and the Radiance will primarily offer guests a range of Australia and New Zealand itineraries to ports in the North and South Island as well as Hobart. The Ovation will sail exclusively from Sydney, while the Radiance will offer one new sailing from Melbourne and three from Auckland, as well as voyages from Sydney. The Ovation will also offer one unique New Zealand and South Pacific hybrid sailing as well as eight- and nine-night South Pacific voyages to New Caledonia and Vanuatu, a 14-night Singapore to Sydney sailing via Perth, Adelaide and Hobart, a five-night Tasmania cruise and a 14-night Sydney to Singapore voyage with calls to Brisbane, Darwin and Malaysia. The Radiance will also sail a range of shorter voyages targeted at first time cruises, including a three-night sampler cruise to nowhere, a new four-night cruise to Melbourne and a five-night Tasmania sailing. Guests can also cruise on eight, 10 or 12-night South Pacific sailings and two 18-night Hawaii repositioning sailings at the start and end of her season. Australias second largest ship, the Explorer, will continue her focus on South Pacific voyages, with a range of eight to 14-night sailings. She will also offer a new six-night Tasmania sailing with calls to Newcastle, Wollongong and Hobart, as well as an eight-night Queensland sailing and two epic repositioning voyages between Seattle and Sydney, with calls to Hawaii, Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. We expect that local demand for our innovative and ground breaking ships will see a fourth Royal Caribbean ship return to Australian shores in 2019-2020. Our determination to remain the number one cruise line in this region is undiminished, Armstrong added. Carnival Corporation has released artist renderings of its second cruise terminal at the Port of Barcelona which will be Europes newest passenger cruise terminal when it opens in 2018. The terminal is designed to accommodate Carnivals new class of next-generation green cruise ships that will be fully operated by LNG. As part of an agreement signed in July 2015, Carnival said it will construct and operate the new 12,500-square-meter terminal. The company is investing more than 30 million euros in the state-of-the-art terminal, which paired with its existing terminal at the port represents its largest combined terminal investment in Europe. Designed by Catalan architectural firm Battle I Roig, the terminal will reflect todays modern architectural style with straight lines and a minimalist concept that will create a contemporary and comfortable guest environment, according to a prepared statement. Our goal is to make travel for our guests as convenient, pleasant and easy as possible, and this new terminal is designed to meet and exceed guest expectations, said Giora Israel, senior vice president of global port and destination development. This terminal marks the culmination of years of partnership, said Sixte Cambra, president of the Port of Barcelona Port Authority. Since the beginning of our relationship, Carnival Corporation has shown strong success in our port and city, and 10 years after the opening of the first terminal, this has materialized in a new facility for their cruise brands. Carnival has been a loyal partner, bringing passengers of different nationalities and generating a strong financial impact to our local economy. Construction on the project officially began in July 2016. The new terminal, on the ports Adossat wharf, will increase Carnivals passenger capacity at the port, which is used by eight of the companys 10 brands as both a destination and home port. Carnival said it is expecting to accommodate over one million passengers at the port once its second cruise terminal is open in 2018. Eight of its brands AIDA, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, Princess, Seabourn and P&O Cruises (UK) visit Barcelona throughout the year. Beginning April 2018, the terminal facilities will host inaugural sailings of the new Carnival Horizon, as well as the AIDAperla. She is one of the world's first cruise ships to feature dual-fuel engines, which, depending on availability at the port, can also be operated with virtually zero-emission LNG. Carnivals deployment of LNG-fueled ships to the port supports the pioneering Air Quality Improvement Plan proposed by the Port of Barcelona in November 2016 to effectively reduce emissions from port activities. In total, Carnival has agreements in place to build seven fully LNG-powered cruise ships across four of its 10 global cruise brands in coming years. The construction of a second cruise terminal will also secure employment for up to 150 people through local contractor companies Vopi 4 S.A., Elecnor S.A., Project Facilities Management SL and their subcontractors as well as gangway manufacturer Adelte S.A. and the existing team of local architect and engineering firms Battle I Roig, Static Engineering and PGI Engineering. More than half of cruise passengers visiting the Port of Barcelona begin and end their journey there, which is a major economic benefit for Catalonia and the city. According to a study from the University of Barcelona, passengers who begin or end their cruise vacation in Barcelona on average spend 2.6 days in the city before or after their trip and spend around 202 euros per day. According to Carnival, a 2016 study showed that cruise activity at the Port of Barcelona generates an annual turnover of 875 million euros in Barcelona, contributing 457 million euros to the GDP of Barcelona. The study also showed that cruise activity at the port generates 7,518 jobs and has other positive effects on the local economy such as the increase of activity at Aeroport del Prat. The companys positive economic impact will increase when the new terminal is launched in 2018. Carnival Corporation operates five additional ports, including Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic; Puerta Maya in Cozumel; Grand Turk Cruise Center in Turks and Caicos Islands; Mahogany Bay in Roatan; and Long Beach. The company also operates two private island destinations in the Caribbean, Princess Cays and Half Moon Cay. In total, Carnival ships visit over 725 ports of call around the world. What does it mean to truly belong? A seemingly straightforward question but one with many possible answers, often deeply personal. Dal hopes to help share, discover and showcase new perspectives on that question next year with the launch of an initiative called the Year of Belonging, one of several signature programs that will shape the universitys 200th-anniversary celebrations. Built around a series of forums, workshops, volunteer opportunities and a legacy lecture series, the year-long program aims to expand and elevate conversations around diversity and inclusiveness at Dal and beyond by engaging the campus, alumni and the broader community in a year of discussion and action. This is one of the most important conversations of our time, one the whole world is having, says Catherine Bagnell Styles, Dals assistant vice-president of Communication and Marketing and Dal 200th planning chair. The 200th offers us a chance to really elevate that discussion in a way that we believe will resonate with our community. Well hear and learn from some very compelling and inspiring voices. The initiative will build on Dals commitment to fostering a culture grounded in diversity and inclusiveness as laid out in the universitys Strategic Direction and its new Diversity and Inclusiveness Strategy. From public forums to days of action A series of public Belong Forums, held throughout the year, will kickstart discussions by bringing internationally respected thinkers to campus to share their unique global perspectives. There will be a piece of that thats about not just leaving things hanging. Well try to connect those peoples thoughts to whats happening locally here, says Law Professor Kim Brooks, one of the authors of the 2015 Belong report and a member of the cross-campus committee working on the Year of Belonging. To that end, a one- to two-day symposium will bring together students, academics and community leaders to collaborate on putting some of those ideas into action locally and building a more inclusive, diverse and engaged community in the process. The symposium, to be organized and facilitated by Student Affairs in conjunction with the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) and Human Rights and Equity Services (HRES), will serve as a professional development opportunity for students, staff and faculty aimed at improving intercultural fluency, Indigenous cultural awareness and equity, diversity and inclusion competency. Panels and workshops featuring guest speakers will help participants build the knowledge, self-awareness and skills needed to work and study in a diverse post-secondary setting. Students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends will also be encouraged to give back to the community during one of several days of action by volunteering with a local or regional community group or organization. Partner organizations are still being determined. "Our programming aims to engage students, staff, and faculty in shared learning of our historically underrepresented identities, the effects of systemic marginalization, and strategies for removing the barriers that promote exclusion, says Jill Malolepszy, associate director of career and leadership development at Dal, a member of the Year of Belonging committee and one of the organizers of the symposium and volunteer activity. The days of action include intentional community building activities for our all to participate in with the aim of strengthening a sense of belonging for all members of the Dalhousie community, she notes. Leaving a legacy Toward the end of 2018, Dal will launch the Viola Desmond Legacy Lecture Series a four-year series celebrating diversity and inclusiveness. The first lecture will be hosted and organized by Dals Black Faculty & Staff Caucus (BFSC), while it is hoped that Dals Indigenous community will host 2019s event. Other groups are being considered for the following two years. Each lecture will feature a high-profile speaker from the chosen communities. The series takes its name from Desmond, a Black Nova Scotian businesswoman who fought systemic racism in the province during the mid-20th century after she herself was arrested for disobeying a segregationist policy at a movie theatre in New Glasgow in 1946. (Desmond was recently selected as the face of Canadas new $10 bill.) A lot of people at Dalhousie, regardless of their background, can relate to her story about wanting to feel included and belonging, says Michelle Patrick, co-chair of BFSC and program manager of PLANS, a Dal-based group that promotes leadership in health professions for African Nova Scotians. This lecture is that pinnacle legacy piece at the end of the year that will ensure the spirit of the year lives on into the future. Specific speakers and events related to The Year of Belonging will be announced closer to 2018. With three weeks to go untilthe Dynamic Spectrum Alliances Fifth Annual Global Summit, which is this year returning to Africa, co-host ICASA, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, has published draft regulations on the use of TV White Space (TVWS) in the region. The draft regulations, which are open for public consultation until 19 May 2017, highlight the progress South Africa is making in enabling affordable Internet through dynamic spectrum access. These draft regulations which the DSA fully welcomes - and technologies will be discussed at the DSA Global Summit, taking place in Cape Town between 9 to 11 May 2017, where a whole host of leading industry figures and regulators from around the world have been announced to speak, including the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In the past, exclusive licenses for specific frequency bands and specific purposes dominated spectrum allocation policy and regulations, said Pakamile Kayakethu Pongwana, CEO of ICASA. While these models are good for monetizing the spectrum and for coordination between multiple services and operators to avoid interference, they often result in underutilization of spectrum. In the last decade, however, governments and regulators around the world have embraced the concept of spectrum commons as another way to bring citizens innovation on new wireless technologies. The event will open on 9 May with a full day regulator workshop on spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum access. Alongside ICASA, other regulators in attendance will include Korea Radio Promotion Association (RAPA), Agencia Nacional del Espectro (ANE), the Ministry of Communications for Argentina and Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes (ANATEL). Day one of the Global Summit will be opened with keynote addresses from Kalpak Gude, President of the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, and ICASA CEO, Pakamile Kayalethu Pongwana, followed by panel sessions on spectrum sharing and enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) through dynamic access technologies. The latter panel will feature Dr. F. Mekuria, Chief Research Scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) South Africa, where he leads research on dynamic spectrum access. His perspective on how to connect underserved populations in emerging economies will add another dimension to the panel, which also includes Facebook, University of Strathclyde, and VistaLifeSciences Inc. A panel session on closing the digital divide will address financial challenges associated with large-scale network deployments, with speakers including: Mr. Alexander Hadden, Director, Structured Finance & Insurance, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC); Mr. Chikioke Egejuru, Investment Analysis, International Finance Corporation; Mr. Lumko Mtimde, CEO, the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA) and will be moderated by Mr. Frank McCosker, General Manager, Affordable Access & Smart Financing, Microsoft Corporation. Other confirmed speakers on day one include Ira Keltz, Deputy Chief of Policy and Rules Division, Office of Engineering and Technology, US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who will join the panel on Wi-Fi for the 5G World. On the final day of the Summit, Ira will start with a keynote address, before joining the Regulator Leadership Summit later in the day. ICASA CEO Pongwana will return to speak on day two of the Summit to speak on a panel titled Creating Opportunities for Deployment, which will be moderated by Emeritus Executive Director of the DSA, Prof. H Sama Nwana. The panel will bring together policy makers to discuss challenges and solutions to establishing regulatory frameworks for enabling investment in infrastructure something that is crucial to bridging the digital divide in South Africa, and around the world. Other speakers confirmed on the agenda include representatives from: Facebook, Adaptrum Inc., C3 Limited, the Communications Authority of Kenya, Aruba (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company) and New American Foundation. Platinum sponsors of this years event include Microsoft and Nominet. Gold sponsors include Adaptrum Inc. and MBC, while MedyaCity is a Silver sponsor. To secure your place at the Dynamic Spectrum Alliances Fifth Annual Global Summit in Cape Town, South Africa (9-11 May 2017), visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dynamic-spectrum-alliance-2017-global-summit-tickets-28614617090. To view the full Summit agenda, visit: http://dynamicspectrumalliance.org/global-summit/agenda/. These were the movements in some of the most widley-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields: Selling pressure on longer-dated government bonds abated on Wednesday in a light day for economic data and amid talk that Monday's sharp rally was more the result of short-covering than of investors coming back to the market. Filling the void, investors were focused on the White House's release of its tax cut proposals. The Trump Administration's top economic adviser presented plans to lower the top rate of personal income tax and to slash the rate of corporate taxation from 35.0% to 15.0%. However, the proposal was exceedingly light when it came to where the funding for such measures would come from, raising the possibility that it might not be 'budget neutral', meaning that any reductions would have to expire in a decade's time. Linked to the above, the White House also scrapped plans for a so-called Border Adjustment Tax - which might be in breach of WTO rules - opting instead for a so-called territorial tax system which is more benign for US corporates. Regarding the tax cut plans' neutrality, or not, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said: "The goal is to make it permanent but there are a lot of levers there. If we have them for 10 years that is better than nothing." Worth noting, Mnuchin's words were met with quick opposition from the Republican chair if the House Ways and Means subcommitee on tax policy, who said on CNBC he did want to see "temporary" measures. The question of the rate at which overseas earnings would be taxed for those companies wishing to repatriate funds from abroad - which is expected to be one of the main sources of funding for the tax cut plans - was also left unanswered. Acting as a backdrop, investors were waiting on policy decisions the next from the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank. Economists were optimistic that some form of tax relief would pass Congress in 2017, despite the lack of detail in the White House's proposals announced overnight. As guiding principles, in a one page document the White House said it wanted to grow the economy and create millons of jobs, simplify the tax code, provide tax relief for families - especially middle income ones - and lower the tax burden on firms. More specifically, the top individual income tax rate will fall from 39.6% to 35.0% and the corporate tax rate from 35.0% to 15.0%. However, when it comes to funding the tax cuts, the White House's proposal states that a one-time tax will be levied on trillions of dollars held overseas. Nothing else. Trump's plan also includes a shift towards a so-called 'territorial system' of taxing overseas income, which means that US companies will pay taxes at the same rate that they would pay overseas. Despite that lack of detail, Michael Levy at Berenberg Capital Markets is optimistic regarding Capitol Hill's ability to deliver tax cuts before the end of the year. Levy told clients, "despite President Trump's erratic approach to policymaking, the positive news is the differences between the Administration and Congress will be debated and reconciled, which should facilitate progress on tax legislation. Accordingly, we maintain our view that tax legislation will be enacted later in 2017 and maintain our forecast of significantly stronger economic growth, with momentum building in 2018." Perhaps most significantly, Levy believes that even if the eventual package of tax cuts is 'deficit neutral' at least in the early years following approval it will entail some "old-fashioned up-front fiscal stimulus involving higher deficit spending". Nonetheless, given the lack of details regarding the 'costing' of the proposals, the possibility exists that it will not be deficit neutral, meaning that they would expir after a decade. Indeed, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said: "The goal is to make it permanent but there are a lot of levers there. If we have them for 10 years that is better than nothing." Worth noting, Mnuchin's words were met with quick opposition from the Republican chair if the House Ways and Means subcommitee on tax policy, who said on CNBC he did want to see "temporary" measures. As well, Levy is of the opinion that Trump's plans are "way too aggressive and way too costly in terms of US treasury tax receipts, but clearly are points of negotiation." On a more critical note, Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, points out how US corporations are already paying historically low tax. US companies' tax bills represented just 7.5% of pre-tax profit and 3.4% of sales in 2016, Mould said referencing Federal Reserve data. In any case, Mould thinks Wall Street may have gotten ahead of itself because Congress may not approve the tax cuts in their original form. Lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% would boost US corporates' aggregate post-tax profits by 13% or roughly $225bn, while the S&P 500 had already risen 11% since Trump's election, Mould said. US President Donald Trump has ruled out the departure of the country from the North American Free Trade Agreement , despite previously pledging to withdraw from the deal. The White House announced on Wednesday that following talks with Mexico and Canada, the US would now seek a renegotiation of the trade deal, which Trump has claimed benefits the other two states more than American trade. The Republican spoke with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in what were described as pleasant and productive conversations. "President Trump agreed not to terminate Nafta at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said in the statement. The Republican spoke with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Trump's relationship with Mexico in particular has been fraught after claims from the former reality television star that the US is going to build a wall on the border between the two countries, as well as introducing new trade tariffs on Mexican imports. The Mexican peso and Canadian dollar both gained following the announcement. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in an accompanying statement. "It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." Markets slipped at the start of the session after the White House's tax cut proposals released overnight underwhelmed analysts, with investors also playing it safe ahead of the European Central Bank's policy meeting later in the day. As of 08:39 GMT the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by 0.39% to 387.23, with Germany's Dax off by 0.26% to 12,439.96 and the Cac-40 losing 0.26% to 5,274.80. "A negative opening call comes after US bourses closed lower, disappointed with an underwhelming Trump tax announcement, and Asian stocks had a lacklustre session overnight as a consequence. Nice ideas, but far from a done deal, merely adding to investor frustration about the lack of progress on all those election pledges that helped fuel risk appetite and markets to recent highs," said Mike Van Dulken, Head of Research at Accendo Markets. Overnight, the White House's top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, unveiled the broad contours of the US administration's plans to reduce taxes and streamline the tax code. Michael Levy at Berenberg Capital Markets said the tax reductions Trump was aiming for were "way too aggressive". Nevertheless, Levy does expect a package of tax reform to be passed this year and believes it will inevitably include a degree of fiscal stimulus for the economy. Against that backdrop, the key event on Thursday is the European Central Bank's policy announcement at 12:45 GMT, followed by chief Mario Draghi's press conference at 13:30 GMT. Investors are watching for any hint that the Governing Council might tweak its message following the results of the first round of voting in the French elections, which have led to a reduction in the perceived risk that the single currency block might break-up. The above will coincide with the release of data on US durable goods orders and foreign trade in goods for March, alongside weekly initial unemployment claims data all at 13:30 GMT. GfK's consumer confidence gauge for Germany shot higher from a reading of 9.8 points in April to 10.2 for May. A preliminary estimate for German CPI in April is scheduled for release at 13:00 GMT. Spain's harmonised CPI unexpectedly rose at a 2.6% year-on-year clip in April, up from 2.3% in the month before. German chemicals-maker BASF reported better than expected operating profits, telling shareholders it now believes the top end of its 2017 forecast range for profits, for a rise of up to 10%, is now within reach. Shares in Deutsche Bank are lower despite the lender having more than doubled its first quarter net profits to 575m. Airbus reaffirmed its financial targets for the year despite a 52% slump in first quarter profits. London stocks edged lower in early trade on Thursday as US President Donald Trump's tax announcement failed to get investors' pulses racing. At 0840 BST, the FTSE 100 was down 0.6% to 7,247.11. As widely expected, the announcement included plans to cut corporate tax to 15% from 35% and reduce the top individual tax rate to 35% from 39.6%. Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell said: "Somewhat inevitably Donald Trumps tax plan didnt contain all that investors were looking for last night, leading the markets to pull back from their recent highs after the bell. "Alongside cutting corporate tax rates to 15%, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn revealed that the USAs 7 tax brackets would be reduced to 3, while the alternative minimum tax would be slashed and nearly all of the current tax deductions eliminated. "Yet when pressed for more information, specifically if these reforms would be revenue neutral, the pair came up short, producing some Trumped up rhetoric about how it would pay for itself through growth, reduction of deductions and closing loopholes and that the administration had a once in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big." In corporate news, AstraZeneca was on the back foot after it posted a drop in first-quarter sales, while WPP also declined after it said sales slowed in the first quarter due to major account losses. Weir Group fell despite saying full-year profits are likely to be in line with current market expectations, as its stock went ex-dividend. Engineer Meggitt was weaker as it said lower US demand for defence products had contributed to a small drop in first-quarter organic revenue growth. Aerospace and defence group Cobham slipped despite saying that first-quarter trading was in line with the board's expectations, following a string of profit warnings. Schroders lost ground even as the fund manager reported a 5% jump in assets under management and administration for the first quarter. Howden Joinery was in the red after the company said first half profits would be hit by currency movements and extra operating costs as it reported a 3.9% rise in UK revenues for the 16 weeks to April 15. Lloyds Banking Group bucked the trend, rallying after it reported that profits doubled in the first three months of the year. Healthcare provider Mediclinic International was a high riser on news that Adu Dhabi has waived 20% of the co-payment for health insurance card holders. Housebuilder Persimmon was in the black after it said current forward sales revenue, including legal completions taken to date, was up 11% to 2. 56 bn, adding that it was confident on future prospects. Meanwhile, Taylor Wimpey nudged a touch higher as it set aside 130m for a leasehold scandal. FTSE 250 commercial laundry group Berendsen rose as it said first-quarter trading was in line with management expectations, and announced the retirement of its chief financial officer. Prudential, St James's Place and Aviva were initiated at 'outperform' at Credit Suisse, while Legal & General was rated a new 'underperform'. ITV, Rolls-Royce, Antofagasta, Relx, Fresnillo, Informa, Elementis, William Hill, National Express, Senior and UBM all retreated as their stock went ex-dividend. Market Movers FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,247.11 -0.57% FTSE 250 (MCX) 19,597.57 -0.41% techMARK (TASX) 3,470.71 -0.54% FTSE 100 - Risers Mediclinic International (MDC) 813.50p 11.29% Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 69.55p 3.17% Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 200.90p 1.21% Persimmon (PSN) 2,311.00p 1.09% Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 255.30p 1.03% Kingfisher (KGF) 328.50p 0.52% Croda International (CRDA) 3,815.00p 0.47% Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,780.00p 0.44% St James's Place (STJ) 1,133.00p 0.18% Barratt Developments (BDEV) 582.50p 0.17% FTSE 100 - Fallers Legal & General Group (LGEN) 247.60p -5.17% ITV (ITV) 211.30p -3.69% Informa (INF) 639.50p -2.22% Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 810.50p -1.88% Glencore (GLEN) 303.65p -1.86% WPP (WPP) 1,697.00p -1.45% Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,643.00p -1.38% AstraZeneca (AZN) 4,625.00p -1.31% BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,195.50p -1.28% Relx plc (REL) 1,576.00p -1.25% FTSE 250 - Risers Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 495.60p 3.44% Berendsen (BRSN) 846.50p 2.98% AO World (AO.) 139.30p 2.43% Ibstock (IBST) 224.00p 1.59% Acacia Mining (ACA) 396.10p 1.30% Jupiter Fund Management (JUP) 476.60p 1.19% Countryside Properties (CSP) 272.90p 0.96% Smith (DS) (SMDS) 439.20p 0.80% NMC Health (NMC) 1,928.00p 0.78% Polymetal International (POLY) 1,037.00p 0.78% FTSE 250 - Fallers JRP Group (JRP) 0.00p -100.00% William Hill (WMH) 291.40p -3.19% Elementis (ELM) 307.00p -3.19% Fidessa Group (FDSA) 2,538.00p -2.80% UBM (UBM) 715.50p -2.65% National Express Group (NEX) 352.10p -2.63% Weir Group (WEIR) 2,031.00p -2.50% Greggs (GRG) 1,067.00p -2.11% Savills (SVS) 911.50p -1.94% IWG (IWG) 319.80p -1.78% FTSE 250 commercial laundry group Berendsen said first-quarter trading was in line with management expectations, as it announced the retirement of its chief financial officer. In a trading update for 1 January to the end of March, the company said underlying revenue, at constant exchange rates and before acquisitions, was up 3% from the prior year as solid underlying revenue growth in Continental Europe more than offset an expected decline in each of the UK textile businesses. Meanwhile, reported revenue, including the impact of foreign exchange and acquisitions, rose by more than 10%. Berendsen said it continues to implement its excellence strategy, with progress in the UK on track. "We are confident that the actions being taken will enable us to progressively capture the sizeable opportunity for margin improvement in the UK. Common processes and controls continue to be installed across the group; these are giving greater operational visibility and strengthening our ability to share best practice within our Business Lines." The group's outlook for 2017 is unchanged and it expressed confidence over its medium-term growth prospects. Also on Thursday, Berendsen announced the retirement of chief financial officer Kevin Quinn. He will stay on as a member of the board and as CFO until a successor has been found. As it approaches its year end, recycled packaging specialist DS Smith reported strong volume growth and good progress with integrating five acquisitions in the period. The good volume growth in the year to 30 April follows the organic growth of 2.9% generated during the first half of 2017. Business continued to perform in line with management expectations, the FTSE 250 group confirmed, enabling it to meet all of its medium-term financial targets of volume growth, return on sale, return on cash employed, cash conversion and leverage. Performance of recently acquired businesses -- including Creo in the UK, Deku-Pack in Denmark, Portugal's P&I Display and Gopaca, and Parish Manufacturing in the US -- was said to be "progressing well". Chief executive Miles Roberts said: "We are pleased with the performance in the year, despite challenging economic conditions and have seen DS Smith grow again, both organically and through acquisitions." Broker Numis said that after raising its 2017 forecasts for adjusted operating profit to 446.3m and adjusted earnings per share to 32p, it was leaving its estimates unchanged. "However, we note the potential for a firmer pricing environment to provide a tailwind to profits in due course." Shares in Harvey Nash are up more than 5% as its full-year pre-tax profit slipped to 8.5m, from 9.1m, albeit in an overall strong performance that saw higher revenue with an improved final dividend. The global recruitment and professional services group had delivered strong performances despite the challenging economic backdrop in some of its markets, not least the UK. Chief executive Albert Ellis also said the results were underpinned by stronger than expected cash generation and an increased dividend. Revenue for the 12 months was 784.3m, up from 676.5m. Final dividend was 2.525p a share, from 2.36p. Net cash from operating activities was 15.1m, up from 13.0m. "During the year, we took several initiatives to streamline the business and we have a clear strategy to grow the business both organically and by acquisition," said Ellis. "Our vision is to be Europe's market leading technology and digital talent provider with challenger businesses in the US and Asia." He added that Harvey Nash was confident of driving profitable growth in the year to January 2018, whilst remaining flexible in response to changes in market conditions. "The current financial year has started well, with performance marginally ahead of expectations." At 15:00 BST, shares in Harvey Nash were up 5.24% to 72.25p each. Healthcare provider Mediclinic International said that it will monitor the changes on its Middle East business after Abu Dhabi waived 20% of the co-payment for Thiqa health insurance card holders. On Wednesday, Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan waived 20% co-payment for holders of a Thiqa medical insurance card, when receiving treatment at the private healthcare facilities in Abu Dhabi, with immediate effect. This will mean that United Arab Emirates (UAE) residents holding the the insurance card will be completely covered when visiting a private healthcare facility in Abu Dhabi. The Thiqa card, which was was established in 2007 to offer health insurance for UAE nationals, is provided by number of partners with national health insurance company Daman for the UAE government. The 20% co-payment was brought in last June and was waived for three care centres in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain in January, while regulatory Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) introduced a 20% co-payment for Thiqa patients using private healthcare facilities on 1 July. FTSE 100 comapany Mediclinic said that they are awaiting to receive details of the changes from HAAD and will continue to monitor the regulatory environment and the extent to which these changes will affect the Middle East operating platform. Vodafone and its Belgium-based partner Proximus announced on Thursday that they had agreed to renew their strategic partnership for Belgium and Luxembourg for a further five years, building on a successful long-term relationship that began in 2003. The FTSE 100 firm said the agreement would enable both companies to offer joint products and services across their networks to provide the optimum experience for their consumer and enterprise customers. Under the agreement, which commenced on 1 April, multinational companies in Belgium and Luxembourg that have global agreements with Vodafone and Proximus would continue to benefit from international managed mobile services and have access to a wide range of Vodafone Global Enterprise services. Those include Vodafone Spend Analytics, which provides visibility and control of a company's telecommunications spend, and Enterprise Managed Mobility, which enables employees to securely use smartphones and tablets. Vodafone said it and and Proximus remained preferred partners for roaming traffic on each other's footprint. Mobile customers of Proximus would continue to benefit from mobile voice and data roaming, including high-speed data on Vodafone's 4G networks. Vodafone customers visiting Belgium and Luxembourg would also enjoy voice and data roaming, including high-speed data on the 4G network of Proximus and its affiliate Tango in Luxembourg. Vodafone and Proximus would continue their joint mobile device procurement and device promotion initiatives, strengthening the leading position of Proximus in the Belgian device market. Within the framework of the partnership, the two companies said they would also explore further specific areas such as mobile data monetisation, connected cars and mobility solutions in cooperation with Proximus' equity partner Be-Mobile. We look forward to continuing our excellent collaboration with Vodafone, said Proximus CEO Dominique Leroy. Being the partner of a global player allows us to offer our residential and professional customers the best of both worlds: a local quality partner and global advantages such as the best value proposition for smartphones and accessories. Within this partnership, Proximus and Vodafone will also explore some specific areas like connected cars and mobility solutions. Vodafone Partner Markets chief executive Diego Massidda said his company had built a strong relationship with Proximus, dating back to 2003, and he was delighted to announce the next stage in their mutual co-operation. Customers of Vodafone and Proximus will continue to benefit from an excellent range of consumer and enterprise products and services across our networks for many years to come. European leaders must "get on" with securing an ambitious trade deal between the UK and EU that will secure jobs and boost living standards after Brexit, the head of Britain's biggest business group says today. Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), will call on policymakers to focus on the "real prize" of a trade deal worth hundreds of billions of pounds every year that will "dwarf" any potential divorce settlement. - Telegraph The Trump administration unveiled what it called the biggest tax cuts in history on Wednesday, in a move that will simplify the US tax system, slash taxes for businesses large and small including his own eliminate inheritance taxes and set the president on a collision course with Congress over the likely $2tn-plus cost of the proposal. Critics immediately called it basically a huge tax cut for the rich. - Guardian The Trump administration has given its strongest indication yet that Britain is sliding back in the queue to strike a free-trade agreement with America, with the US commerce secretary suggesting that a deal is a low priority. The upcoming general election and the UKs need to negotiate a post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU were among several complications that made a deal with the US a low priority, Wilbur Ross said. - The Times The White House has announced that the United States will not unilaterally withdraw from Nafta, the landmark free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, after multiple reports that Donald Trump was planning to pull out of the deal. In a readout of calls between Trump, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, the White House said: President Trump agreed not to terminate Nafta at this time. - Guardian Britains shops are slashing workers as they try to cut costs in the face of rising prices and falling sales. The number of jobs in the industry fell by 2.2pc in the first quarter of the year compared with the same period of 2016. - Telegraph Deutsche Bank has warned that up to 4,000 UK jobs could be moved to Frankfurt and other locations in the European Union as a result of Brexit. Germanys biggest bank employs 9,000 staff across the UK, including 7,000 in the City, and has called for clarity about how transactions worth billions of euros will be dealt with after the UK leaves the EU. - Guardian At least seven international banks based in London have taken the decision to open offices in Frankfurt to beat trading restrictions in the wake of Brexit, the German city said yesterday. A further 20 banks were in advanced talks on relocating some staff, Frankfurt officials said, while reports cited US giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS as all being understood to be considering a relocation of London staff. - The Times The pharmaceutical industry has issued an unprecedented warning that the worlds biggest drug companies will abandon Britain unless the NHS receives an extra 20 billion a year. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) says that increased rationing of treatments is a sign that the NHS is falling out of the top tier of world health systems, and that patients and companies will suffer as a result. - The Times Plain cigarette cartons featuring large, graphic health warnings could persuade 300,000 people in the UK to quit smoking if the measure has the effect it had in Australia, scientists say. Standardised cigarette packaging will be compulsory in the UK from 20 May. A new review from the independent health research organisation Cochrane on the impact of plain packaging around the world has found that it does affect the behaviour of smokers. - Guardian Britains car plants are running at the fastest speed in 17 years, with 170,691 new vehicles rolling off the production line in March. Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed this was 7.3pc up on the same month last year, and takes first quarter production to 471,695, again the highest level since 2000 and up 7.6pc on the same period in 2016. - Telegraph BEER-SHEVA, Israel...April 27, 2017 - If a pregnant mother has a family history of premature birth, she is at risk for a preterm birth of her baby, according to a new study by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Soroka University Medical Center. Preterm birth occurs when a baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy and is the leading cause of infant hospitalization, according the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2015, preterm birth affected one of every 10 infants born in the United States. The study, published in the American Journal of Perinatology, followed 2,300 mothers and daughters over 22 years (1991 to 2013), and found that the risk of preterm delivery was significantly higher among the 34 percent of women whose mothers had given birth early for any of her pregnancies. The risk remained significant even after adjusting for the race and age of the woman giving birth. Additionally, the researchers also found that even if a mother's aunt or sister had premature births, her risk of delivering prematurely was also 30 percent higher than normal. "The results of the study show that the medical history of a pregnant woman's mother and aunts should also be taken into account when considering the risk of pregnancy complications such as premature birth," says Prof. Eyal Sheiner, M.D., Ph.D., vice dean of the BGU Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS), member of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and a physician at Soroka. "Women who are at risk can benefit from close monitoring and early detection of genetic markers." The research team also included Dr. Yoni Sherf of Soroka; FOHS Prof. Natalia Bilenko, Prof. Ilana Shoham-Vardi and Ruslan Sergienko of the BGU Department of Public Health; and Jaime Klein, a student in BGU's Medical School for International Health. "Exposure to events, situations and/or substances in one generation can affect the growth and development of the next generation," the researchers note. ### About American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. As Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) looks ahead to turning 50 in 2020, AABGU imagines a future that goes beyond the walls of academia. It is a future where BGU invents a new world and inspires a vision for a stronger Israel and its next generation of leaders. Together with supporters, AABGU will help the University foster excellence in teaching, research and outreach to the communities of the Negev for the next 50 years and beyond. Visit vision.aabgu.org to learn more. AABGU, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org. The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) has named Fatima Sheikh, MD, CMD, MPH, Medical Director at FutureCare in Maryland and Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the 2017 AGS Clinician of the Year. In her work across post-acute and long-term care, Dr. Sheikh is recognized not only as a skilled physician serving the needs of particularly frail older adults in the Baltimore area but also as a dedicated mentor for a diverse and growing interprofessional team. Dr. Sheikh will be honored at the AGS 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting (May 18-20 in San Antonio, Texas). "Geriatrics expertise is complex and multifaceted, and that's especially true when working with frail older adults like those cared for by Dr. Sheikh," notes AGS President Ellen Flaherty, PhD, APRN, AGSF. "Dr. Sheikh and the healthcare professionals fortunate enough to learn from her are setting a new standard for what it means to provide high-quality, person-centered care." With a professional interest in improving long-term care for residents of skilled nursing facilities, Dr. Sheikh has championed several programs at FutureCare for managing multiple chronic conditions and transitions to and from the hospital--both critical components of long-term care for older adults. In 2012, for example, Dr. Sheikh played a key role to establish the Johns Hopkins Community Partnership Skilled Nursing Facility Collaborative, one of five Johns Hopkins University community health projects funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center. And as these programs enhance the broader setting for geriatrics expertise, Dr. Sheikh has remained equally committed to high-quality care as a clinician and a mentor. Dr. Sheikh is recognized for her skill in conducting Advance Care Planning--an innovative service for documenting care preferences and one only recently recognized for Medicare beneficiaries. She continues to work with colleagues and fellows from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on the nuances of geriatrics care, particularly when it comes to navigating cultural competency for diverse older adults and their families. "The most exciting experience for me in taking care of older adults is listening to their life stories," notes Dr. Sheikh. "And the most rewarding experience is when I can help make their end-of-life as comfortable and peaceful as possible." Dr. Sheikh has been a member of the AGS since 2011, when she first began her fellowship in geriatrics. She is board-certified in internal and geriatric medicine, and continues to balance her clinical career in geriatrics with research on health system innovation and improvements to care quality. The AGS Clinician of the Year Award recognizes exceptional health professionals who deliver outstanding care to older adults and who model the importance of geriatrics for our country's growing older adult population. It is one of several honors conferred by the AGS at its Annual Scientific Meeting--held this year in San Antonio, Texas., May 18-20. The 2017 award recipients include more than 15 healthcare leaders representing the depth and breadth of disciplines championing care for older adults. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org. ### About the American Geriatrics Society Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org. About the AGS Clinician of the Year Award The AGS Clinician of the Year Award was established to recognize the contributions of practitioners to quality health care for older people and the importance of the geriatrics clinician in our healthcare delivery system. Through awardees' efforts, scientific advances are integrated into the practice of geriatrics, resulting in improved well-being and quality of life for older adults. About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. More than 2,500 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene May 18-20, 2017 (pre-conference program on May 17), at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org. University of Bonn researchers are exploring 'evolving epileptic brain networks' to gain a better understanding of brain activity in epilepsy patients and the roles played by different regions of the brain WASHINGTON, D.C., April, 27, 2017 -- Epilepsy is a complex neurological disorder that afflicts approximately 50 million people worldwide. Although this disease has been known to exist for centuries, the exact mechanism of its cardinal symptom, the epileptic seizure, remains poorly understood. In fact, roughly 25 percent of epileptic seizures can't be controlled by any of the therapies available today. Recent advances have led to a conceptualization of epilepsy as a "network disease" exhibiting connections within the brain. This large-scale epileptic network comprises various areas of the brain involved in normal brain activity during both seizure-free intervals and those involved in so-called pathophysiological activities such as seizures. Little is known, however, about which specific areas of the brain contribute to a patient's epileptic network or the roles these different areas play. As a group of researchers in Germany now reports this week in Chaos, from AIP Publishing, one way to get closer to the complex wiring of the human brain is by merging concepts from a timed-based synchronization theory and space-based network theory to construct functional brain networks. Until now, the "seizure-generating area" of the brain -- in which the earliest signs of seizure activity can be observed -- was considered the most important of these regions. This finding was based on very limited data and it was unclear whether its importance changes with time. With this new analytical approach, Professor Klaus Lehnertz, head of the Neurophysics Group in the Department of Epileptology at the University of Bonn, and his group explored the temporal and spatial variability of the importance of the brain's different regions. "New developments in network theory are providing powerful tools to construct so-called 'functional networks' from observations of brain activities such as the electroencephalogram (EEG), and helping to identify the important nodes and links within such networks," Lehnertz said. By associating network nodes with individually sampled brain regions, Lehnertz's group can define a link between a pair of nodes by assessing the degree of synchrony between neuronal signals from all pairs of nodes; the higher the degree, the stronger the link. "Applying these analysis concepts to multichannel long-term EEG recordings from 17 epilepsy patients with high temporal resolution allowed us to derive a sequence of functional brain networks spanning several days in duration," said Christian Geier, a doctoral student working with Lehnertz. "For each network, we assess various aspects of the importance of individual brain regions with different centrality indices that were developed earlier for the social sciences. Then, we explore how the importance of network nodes fluctuates over time." The group's work is particularly significant because they showed for the first time how the importance of individual nodes within functional brain networks fluctuates on timescales spanning tens of seconds up to days. They further showed that these fluctuations can be largely attributed to the normal, daily rhythms of a patient, yet only minimally attributed to phenomena directly related to the disease. Perhaps their most intriguing finding is that in general, according to Geier, there isn't a constant importance hierarchy between brain regions. "Rather, they take turns in importance on various time scales," Geier said. "And, depending on which aspect of importance is assessed, the seizure-generating area isn't -- as commonly believed -- the most important node within a large-scale epileptic network." The understandings gained from this research are part of the necessary foundation for developing treatments related to the causes and symptoms of epilepsy. "When different brain regions assume the highest importance within a functional brain network is the key to improving both prediction and control of epileptic seizures," Lehnertz said. "In the long run, this improved understanding may enable the development of better treatment options for patients suffering from epilepsy. And understanding the importance of the nodes and links of functional brain networks may also be relevant for other neurological diseases." ### The article, "Long-term viability of importance of brain regions in evolving epileptic brain networks," is authored by Christian Geier and Klaus Lehnertz. The article appeared in Chaos April 25, 2017 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4979796) and can be accessed at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4979796. ABOUT THE JOURNAL Chaos is devoted to increasing the understanding of nonlinear phenomena in all disciplines and describing their manifestations in a manner comprehensible to researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines. See http://chaos.aip.org. Boston, MA-- A new study led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital has found that a single measurement of plasma glycated CD59 (GCD59), a novel biomarker for diabetes, at weeks 24-28 of gestation identified, with high sensitivity and specificity, women who failed the glucose challenge test as well as women with gestational diabetes. Plasma levels of GCD59 were also associated with the probability of delivering a large-for-gestational-age newborn. These findings are published in Diabetes Care. Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that occurs during a woman's pregnancy, increasing the mother's risk of delivering a large-for-gestational-age baby, which can lead to pre-term birth, fetal injury, perinatal mortality and cesarean delivery. Gestational diabetes is also a risk factor for preeclampsia and gestational hypertension. Since treatment of gestational diabetes can lessen the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, practice guidelines recommend screening all non-diabetic, pregnant women for the disease. The current standard of care to both screen and diagnose gestational diabetes predominantly involves a two-step approach. The first step, known as the glucose challenge test, includes administration of a sugary drink followed by a blood sugar measurement one hour later. Women who fail this screening are then sent for a longer test, called the oral glucose tolerance test, which requires fasting overnight, drinking a more concentrated sugar solution and undergoing baseline and hourly blood draws for three hours. These glucose tests, or variations thereof, are currently the only methods used to screen pregnant women for or diagnose gestational diabetes. They are time consuming, cumbersome, uncomfortable for mothers and have poor reported reproducibility. The research team's primary goal was to assess the accuracy of the diabetes biomarker, GCD59, in predicting the results of the standard of care glucose challenge test used to screen for gestational diabetes. The team conducted a case-control study of 1,000 pregnant women who were receiving standard prenatal care at BWH: 500 women who had a normal glucose challenge test (control subjects) and 500 women who failed the glucose challenge test and required a subsequent oral glucose tolerance test (case patients). Researchers found that, when compared with the control subjects, the median plasma GCD59 value was 8.5-fold higher in the patients who failed the glucose challenge test and 10-fold higher in the subset of these patients who met diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes in the subsequent oral glucose tolerance test. "This is the first study to demonstrate that a single measurement of plasma GCD59 can be used as a simplified method to identify women who are at risk for failing the glucose challenge test and are at higher risk for developing gestational diabetes," says Jose Halperin, MD, a physician and researcher, Director of the Hematology Laboratory for Translational Research at BWH and senior author of the publication. The researchers also found that higher plasma GCD59 levels at gestational week 24-28 were associated with higher prevalence of large-for-gestational-age newborns, with the higher the level, the higher the risk (4 percent higher risk for patients in the lowest quartile of GCD59 plasma levels, and 14 percent in the highest quartile). Out of the 58 large-for-gestational-age babies born to mothers that failed the glucose challenge test in this study, 80 percent were born to mothers who did not meet oral glucose tolerance test criteria for gestational diabetes, but had median plasma GCD59 levels 7-fold higher than control women with a normal glucose challenge test. These findings are consistent with other studies showing that women who fail the glucose challenge test, but do not meet criteria for gestational diabetes, are still at a higher risk of abnormal pregnancy outcomes, including delivering large for gestational age babies. Currently there are no practice guidelines for the management of women who fall between normal and abnormal glucose tolerance levels, and, therefore, their management is the same as that for women with a normal glucose challenge test results. "These results suggest that a single measurement of plasma GCD59 during weeks 24-28 may also help stratify the risk for delivering larger infants among women with gestational glucose intolerance." says Halperin. "Our studies opened an avenue for larger multicenter studies to further assess the clinical utility of plasma GCD59 for screening and diagnosis of gestational diabetes among the general population of the United States. If our results are confirmed, we're hopeful that the GCD59 test could be available in clinical practices within the next few years." ### Jose Halperin and Michael Chorev have a financial interest in Mellitus, LLC, which is developing diagnostic tools for diabetes, including the test described in this research under a license agreement from Harvard University. This project was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants DK-095429, DK-62994, DK-089206, DK-101442, DK-107407, and HL-111771. It was also funded by the Harvard University Accelerator Fund, now known as the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator at Harvard University and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Paper cited: Halperin et al. "Plasma Glycated CD59, a Novel Biomarker for Detection of Pregnancy-Induced Glucose Intolerance." Diabetes Care DOI: 10.2337/dc16-2598. Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 793-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare. BWH has more than 4.2 million annual patient visits and nearly 46,000 inpatient stays, is the largest birthing center in Massachusetts and employs nearly 16,000 people. The Brigham's medical preeminence dates back to 1832, and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in patient care, quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, and its dedication to research, innovation, community engagement and educating and training the next generation of health care professionals. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Brigham Research Institute (BRI), BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, more than 3,000 researchers, including physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty supported by nearly $666 million in funding. For the last 25 years, BWH ranked second in research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) among independent hospitals. BWH is also home to major landmark epidemiologic population studies, including the Nurses' and Physicians' Health Studies and the Women's Health Initiative as well as the TIMI Study Group, one of the premier cardiovascular clinical trials groups. For more information, resources and to follow us on social media, please visit BWH's online newsroom. A team of researchers from Australia and the UK have developed a new theoretical framework to identify computations that occupy the 'quantum frontier' -- the boundary at which problems become impossible for today's computers and can only be solved by a quantum computer. Importantly, they demonstrate that these computations can be performed with near-term, intermediate, quantum computers. "Until recently it has been difficult to say definitively when quantum computers can outperform classical computers," said Professor Michael Bremner, Chief Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology and founding member of the UTS Centre for Quantum Software and Information (UTS:QSI). "The big challenge for quantum complexity theorists over the last decade has been to find stronger evidence for the existence of the quantum frontier, and then to identify where it lives. We're now getting a sense of this, and beginning to understand the resources required to cross the frontier to solve problems that today's computers can't." The team has identified quantum computations that require the least known physical resources required to go beyond the capabilities of classical computers, significant because of the technological challenges associated with scaling up quantum computers. Prof Bremner said that the result also indicates that full fault-tolerance may not be required to outperform classical computers. "To date, it has been widely accepted that error correction would be a necessary component of future quantum computers, but no one has yet been able to achieve this at a meaningful scale," said Bremner. "Our work shows that while some level of error mitigation is needed to cross the quantum frontier, we may be able to outperform classical computers without the added design complexity of full fault tolerance," he said. Dr Ashley Montanaro of the University of Bristol collaborated with Bremner to develop the framework. "We started out with the goal of defining the minimum resources required to build a post-classical quantum computer, but then found that our model could be classically simulated with a small amount of noise, or physical imperfection," said Montanaro. "The hope among scientists had always been that if the amount of noise in a quantum system was small enough then it would still be superior to a classical computer, however we have now shown that this probably isn't the case, at least for this particular class of computations," he said. "We then realised that it is possible to use a classical encoding on a quantum circuit to overcome 'noise' in a much simpler way to mitigate these errors. The effectiveness of this approach was surprising. What it suggests is that we could use such structures to develop new quantum algorithms in a way that can directly avoid certain types of errors." "This is a result that could lead to useful 'intermediate' quantum computers in the medium term, while we continue to pursue the goal of a full-scale universal quantum computer." ### The paper detailing this research was selected for an editorial in the inaugural issue of Quantum journal, a new initiative in open-source, community-run academic publishing. UTS:QSI authors have been featured prominently in the journal's first edition. The work is supported with funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence and Future Fellowship programs. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and especially in the western United States, that smoke is usually from wildfires. From 1980 to 2015, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado accounted for approximately 40 percent of the burned area in the lower 48 states. Though local impacts of smoke can be extreme, the smoke produced from these fires impacts air quality in every region in the U.S. For how common wildfires are in our region, we do not know nearly enough about the composition of the smoke, how much it matters for our air quality, what happens when smoke and clouds interact, and whether that's important for understanding weather. With a $3.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Atmospheric Chemistry program, Colorado State University is one of five universities working to gather a more comprehensive data set aimed at understanding how wildfire smoke changes chemically with time. The other universities involved are University of Wyoming, University of Montana, University of Washington, and University of Colorado Boulder. The frequency and intensity of western wildfires is increasing, and is expected to increase more with climate change. And as other anthropogenic sources of air pollutants, like emissions from cars, decrease, understanding how wildfires interact with environmental elements becomes more important. Assistant Professor Emily Fischer in the Department of Atmospheric Science is lead investigator for the CSU team. She is joined by five other co-investigators on the project: Jeffrey Collett, Sonia Kreidenweis, Delphine Farmer, Paul DeMott and Amy Sullivan. The areas of knowledge represented by these faculty include trace gas chemistry, cloud and precipitation chemistry, aerosol-cloud interactions, and instrument development. The data collection portion of the study will take place in summer 2018, when the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research's C-130 aircraft will be used to collect data within smoke plumes. "We'll fly as close to active fires as can be safely done and follow the plumes downwind," Fischer said. Part of the challenge will be to identify the right conditions to fly. They will need to know when the smoke will be high enough in the atmosphere to safely fly through it, and when smoke and clouds might be interacting. Associate Professor Russ Schumacher will be assisting with the project by forecasting for the group so they can accurately assess when flight conditions are ripe. Firefighting efforts and airspace regulations will also be taken into consideration. Very few samples of western U.S. wildfire smoke exist - at least not with the level of chemical specificity this study will capture. The payload on the C-130 will be maxed out with the instrumentation it's set to carry. Once the data is collected, it will be distributed to the researchers involved in the study, who will then look at a number of factors, like nitrogen composition, optical properties of smoke particles, and the changes smoke and clouds cause in each other. "There have been many field campaigns that have opportunistically measured wildfire smoke, but none completely devoted to it at this scale for western wildfires," said Fischer. While Fischer's scientific contribution will be to understand how secondary products in smoke are formed, other researchers and universities will rely on their own areas of expertise to analyze the data accordingly. The Environmental Protection Agency may utilize the measurements to develop and test their air quality models. The research expertise being leveraged from organizations outside of CSU is testament to the breadth of the campaign. "I really enjoy team building, and pulling together various areas of expertise ... to do something really special, "Fischer said. "Pulling together a team like this is so much bigger than what I could do alone." ### RICHLAND, Wash. -- Like two magnets being pulled toward each other, tiny crystals twist, align and slam into each other, but due to an altogether different force. For the first time, researchers have measured the force that draws them together and visualized how they swivel and align. Called van der Waals forces, the attraction provides insights into how crystals self-assemble, an activity that occurs in a wide range of cases in nature, from rocks to shells to bones. "It's provocative in the sense that from these kinds of measurements one can build a model of 3-D assembly, with particles attaching to each other in select ways like Lego bricks," said chemist Kevin Rosso of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Crystals are most everywhere in nature, and this work will help us take advantage of these forces when we design new materials." Fusion force Crystals form supporting structures in a variety of natural and synthetic materials. Larger crystals can build up from smaller ones. Although generally shaped like cubes, crystals have several different sides, some of which match well with each other and others that don't. When matching sides are oriented properly, crystals can fuse seamlessly, growing larger and larger. But what makes crystals get close enough to fuse in the first place, and can they self-align? Many types of forces have been hinted at through the years, but the tools to narrow down the correct ones have not existed. Now, Rosso and teams at PNNL, EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at PNNL, and the University of Pittsburgh developed a new approach by combining an environmental transmission electron microscope, called an ETEM, with nanocrystal force probes that allows scientists to watch crystals interact in a life-like situation. PNNL post-doctoral chemist Xin Zhang and EMSL user Yang He, a Ph.D. student from the University of Pittsburgh, used resources within EMSL to examine how titanium oxide crystals couple. To understand their experiment, imagine holding two magnets and moving them toward each other. When they're so close that the attractive force overcomes the effort you're using to hold them apart, they will jump together. The PNNL team did this, but on a much smaller scale and with a force that isn't magnetism. One small jump The team needed to use very tiny crystals that wouldn't overwhelm the weak forces they expected to see. They attached titanium oxide crystals a hundred to a thousand times thinner than a human hair (depending on the hair) to either side of an instrument that measures force. The team then moved the crystals toward each other, twisted at several different angles between them, until the two snapped together. The team also pulled the crystals apart and measured how much force that took as well. These measurements allowed the researchers to characterize the force in detail. There are several different kinds of forces that work for objects of this size, and with additional analyses the team concluded forces called van der Waals were the ones at work causing self-alignment. And a twist In addition, they wanted to put a face to a name, in a manner of speaking, of a theoretical prediction of van der Waals forces made in the 1970s. The theory allowed scientists to calculate the torque between crystals that are being twisted relative to each other (imagine twisting a baguette to pull a piece of bread off) based on the angle between them. So the team also measured the force between two crystals held at a constant distance apart but twisted in opposite directions from each other. Co-author computational physicist Maria Sushko compared the data to predictions the theory made and showed that the theory held up. "This is the first measure and proof that the force depends on how the crystals are rotated relative to each other, what we call rotationally dependent," said Rosso. "If they are rotationally dependent, this implies that this force will contribute to aligning free crystals that bump together in a liquid environment, for example, increasing the rate of successful sticking." In addition, proving the connection means it will be easier to determine such attractive forces for crystals made of different materials, such as calcium carbonate found in seashells. Scientists will be able to determine these forces by plugging in numbers to an equation rather than re-doing all of the experiments. ### This work was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science and PNNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. The experimental work was done at EMSL, one of a handful of DOE Office of Science User Facilities equipped with the technology and scientific expertise to conduct this research. Reference: Xin Zhang, Yang He, Maria L. Sushko, Jia Liu, Langli Luo, James J. De Yoreo, Scott X. Mao, Chongmin Wang, Kevin M. Rosso. Direction-specific van der Waals attraction between rutile TiO2 nanocrystals, Science April 28, 2017, doi: 10.1126/science.aah6902. (http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aah6902) EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. Located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., EMSL offers an open, collaborative environment for scientific discovery to researchers around the world. Its integrated computational and experimental resources enable researchers to realize important scientific insights and create new technologies. Follow EMSL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an annual budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. As the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. The ability of some Western conifer forests to recover after severe fire may become increasingly limited as the climate continues to warm, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and Harvard Forest found in a new study published today in Global Change Biology. Although most of these cone-bearing evergreen trees are well adapted to fire, the study examines whether two likely facets of climate change -- hotter, drier conditions and larger, more frequent and severe wildfires -- could potentially transform landscapes from forested to shrub-dominated systems. As part of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists examined conifer forests in the richly diverse Klamath region of northern California and southwestern Oregon. The Klamath region is a botanical hotspot, home to 29 species of conifers and a suite of plant species that exist nowhere else on earth. The researchers sampled sites that burned severely in wildfires between 1987 and 2008. They found that, after fire, hardwood trees and shrubs quickly established by either re-sprouting from surviving root systems or growing rapidly from seeds that persisted in the soil. These plants dominated the vegetation for at least the first few decades after fire. Most conifers, on the other hand, were slow to compete, relying on establishment of new seedlings borne by trees in less severely burned patches or from outside the fire perimeter. As a result, conifers had only a few years to establish before the regenerating hardwoods and shrubs grew dense enough to suppress them. "If they miss that window there's much less chance of successful establishment and their growth will be slower," says study author Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, a forest ecologist at SCBI and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. In fact, the study found that the longer the interval between the fire and the conifer's establishment, the slower the tree's growth. "The Klamath ecosystem is an important transition zone separating the shrubs of the California chaparral from the Pacific Northwest's temperate rainforest," says Jonathan Thompson, a Senior Ecologist at Harvard Forest and co-author on the study. "Our work suggests climate change will push the chaparral north at the expense of the Klamath's existing conifer forests." Because most conifers depend on seed dispersal from surviving trees, larger patches of high-severity fire could put a growing portion of the landscape at risk of poor post-fire conifer regeneration. The study suggests this trend could be even more pronounced because under drier conditions more abundant seed sources are needed to support conifer seedlings at densities sufficient for forest recovery. In addition, previous research by Thompson and others suggests the young, shrub-dominated vegetation that develops after severe fire tends to burn more severely in subsequent fires than older conifer forests, meaning that once severe fire converts a conifer forest to a shrub-dominated system, the non-forested vegetation could be perpetuated almost indefinitely through a cycle of repeated burning. "We see climate change affecting the system from two directions," says Thompson. "First, it is slowing conifer growth, keeping them low to the ground and more vulnerable to future fires for a longer period of time. Second, climate change is making fire more frequent. This phenomenon, which researchers call the 'interval squeeze,' threatens to transform this and other arid, fire-prone forests worldwide." Still, portions of the landscape may be relatively resilient. For example, conifers were able to regenerate in wetter sites, even amid relatively large high-severity patches with few surviving trees. "The Klamath region has supported conifers for thousands of years," says Thompson. "Some patches will surely survive no matter what climate throws at them." The researchers hope these findings could help provide information needed to prioritize management efforts. "Our study helps to identify the places that are at greatest risk of forest loss, where managers could either target management to promote post-fire forest recovery, or accept that we're going to see some degree of landscape transformation in the coming decades and learn to meet ecological objectives under the new climate and disturbance regimes," says Alan Tepley, a forest ecologist with SCBI and the study's lead author. These findings could also be applied in a broader context to other forest ecosystems. "There are concerns for much of the western U.S. and other similar landscapes that under climate change, forests may be less likely to regenerate," says Anderson-Teixeira. "And that can then reduce forest cover on the landscape and result in big losses of carbon storage." According to Anderson-Teixeira, the fate of the Klamath region depends in part on societal carbon emissions, where increased emissions lead to more warming, which ultimately could result in more forest loss. ### An additional author on this paper is Howard Epstein from the University of Virginia. The study is part of a large collaborative effort that includes the US Forest Service and Portland State University. The Harvard Forest, founded in 1907 and located in Petersham, Mass., is Harvard University's outdoor laboratory and classroom for ecology and conservation, and a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site funded by the National Science Foundation. Its 4,000 acre property is one of the oldest and most intensively studied research forests in the U.S. In addition to studying New England landscapes, research scientists at the Forest study ecosystems around the U.S. and the globe. More information can be found at http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/. SCBI plays a leading role in the Smithsonian's global efforts to save species from extinction and train future generations of conservationists. SCBI spearheads research programs at its headquarters in Front Royal, Va., the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and at field research stations and training sites worldwide. SCBI scientists tackle some of today's most complex conservation challenges by applying and sharing what they learn about animal behavior and reproduction, ecology, genetics, migration and conservation sustainability. For interviews with a Harvard Forest scientist or contacts for SCBI scientists, contact Clarisse Hart, hart3@fas.harvard.edu; 978-756-6157. Patients at risk of developing bowel cancer can significantly benefit from a follow-up colonoscopy, finds research published today in Lancet Oncology. Currently, everyone in the UK over the age of 60 is invited to be screened for bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer. It is a major cause of illness and death in developed countries. Small growths in the bowel, called polyps or adenomas, can develop into cancer over a long period of time. However, removing these precancerous growths can drastically reduce the risk of developing bowel cancer. The new research, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), shows that most patients who have had treatment to remove growths in their bowel and are classed as being at 'intermediate risk' can benefit substantially from a follow-up or 'surveillance' colonoscopy. However, a proportion of this group of patients are at low risk compared with the general population and are unlikely to benefit significantly from colonoscopy surveillance. The researchers suggest the findings could lead to changes in the way patients are screened and followed-up, and even reduce costs for healthcare services. Professor Wendy Atkin, from the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London and chief investigator on the study, said: "The findings could influence national and international guidelines for the screening and surveillance of bowel cancer and could lead to cost savings for the NHS by reducing unnecessary procedures." Those patients who have one-to-two large adenomas (1 cm or larger) or three-to-four small adenomas are classed as being at 'intermediate risk' and are recommended to have a follow-up colonoscopy three years after their adenomas are removed. Most patients offered this surveillance are at intermediate risk In the latest study, researchers from Imperial College London looked at the incidence of bowel cancer and the effectiveness of follow-up colonoscopies in reducing incidence in people found to have intermediate-risk adenomas. The study was commissioned on behalf of the UK National Screening Committee to help inform its current bowel cancer screening programme for the NHS. Professor Atkin, said: "Colonoscopies carry a small risk of complications for patients, and are demanding on NHS resources, with around 20 per cent of colonoscopies in the UK performed for surveillance. It is therefore important to assess whether all people classed as being at intermediate risk need to undergo follow-up colonoscopy." Researchers looked at data for more than 250,000 patients and identified approximately 12,000 people who were diagnosed with intermediate-risk adenomas across 17 UK hospitals. These patients were monitored over an eight year period, and the incidence of bowel cancer was compared in those who had a follow-up colonoscopy with those who had not. They identified a subgroup of patients within the intermediate-risk group, with large adenomas (2 cm or larger), advanced pathology in the adenomas, or polyps in the upper half of the large bowel who were at a higher risk of developing bowel cancer. These 'higher-risk' patients appeared to benefit substantially from at least one follow-up colonoscopy. In addition, intermediate-risk patients who fell into the 'lower-risk' subgroup were found to have a smaller chance of developing bowel cancer than that of the general population. For this group of patients, the researchers suggest that follow-up colonoscopies may not be warranted at all if the initial colonoscopy is of high quality. According to the researchers, the findings will help to shape current and future guidelines on bowel cancer screening both in the UK and internationally. If the changes are adopted, they could lead to cost savings for the NHS and reallocating of resources to focus on those most at risk. "The quality of colonoscopy has improved in recent years and it is important we identify those people who would benefit from a follow-up colonoscopy," said Professor Atkin. "This research showed that there is a subgroup that definitely benefits but there is also a subgroup that possibly don't require a follow-up colonoscopy. "The results of this study provide robust evidence which will be important for informing future surveillance guidelines for how we monitor people in the intermediate-risk group, and will help minimise the costs and risks associated with the unnecessary colonoscopies that are currently performed." ### Adenoma surveillance and colorectal cancer incidence: a retrospective, multicentre, cohort study by Atkin, W. et al, is published in the journal Lancet Oncology. Please link to: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(17)30187-0/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr Women who used marijuana while pregnant were almost three times more likely to have an infant with low birth weight LONDON, ON - In a new study, researchers in London, Ontario found that women who used marijuana while pregnant were almost three times more likely to have an infant with low birth weight than women who did not use marijuana. The study analyzed data from perinatal and neonatal databases at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and is the first large-scale study in Canada to show this association between marijuana use among pregnant women and low birth weight infants. It was conducted by researchers at Lawson Health Research Institute, Western University and Brescia University College. Maternal amphetamine use, chronic hypertension and smoking were identified as other top risk factors for low birth weight. The study also examined predictors of preterm birth, which included previously diagnosed diabetes, maternal narcotic use and insulin-controlled gestational diabetes. "Low birth weight and preterm birth are serious public health problems. Both are associated with a higher risk of infant mortality," says principal investigator Dr. Jamie Seabrook, a Lawson associate scientist; and professor at Brescia University College, an affiliate of Western University, and Western University's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. Low birth weight can lead to respiratory problems and asthma, and poor cognitive development during childhood. It also increases an infant's risk of developing type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease later in life. Preterm birth can cause childhood neurologic disability, as well as long-term medical consequences including respiratory, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular diseases and decreased immunity. The research team investigated many potential factors that could be linked to birth outcomes, including demographics, prenatal factors and medical risks. The objective of the study was to determine the relationship between socioeconomic status and adverse birth outcomes, particularly low birth weight and preterm birth, in Southwestern Ontario. However, they found that socioeconomic status had little influence on birth outcomes. "There is a widely-held view that socioeconomic status is highly associated with low birth weight and preterm birth. However, there have been few population-based studies investigating this relationship in Canada. Most of this research has come from other developed countries, particularly the United States," says Dr. Seabrook, who is also a Faculty Associate at Western's Human Environments Analysis Laboratory. "It's possible that Canada's universal health care system provides a larger safety net for these mothers and their children." Live births between February 2009 and February 2014 at LHSC were included in the study. Infants with a birth weight of less than 2500 grams were classified as low birth weight. Preterm birth was defined as a live birth at a gestational age of less than 37 weeks. The rates of low birth weight and preterm birth found in the study were 6.4 per cent and 9.7 per cent, respectively. The study notes that these rates are comparable to those reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information in 2010-11, which found that 6.6 per cent of infants in Canada had low birth weight and 8.1 per cent were preterm births. Median neighbourhood income was used as an indicator of socioeconomic status. Postal codes of the mothers were entered into a Geographic Information System and mapped to determine the location of home neighbourhoods, defined by boundaries of census dissemination areas. Dr. Seabrook adds that while the database used in the study included a large population-based sample, it is possible there may be incomplete or inaccurate data since it was obtained from chart records. For example, information on individual household income and length of time at an address was not available. ### Along with Dr. Seabrook, the research team included Dr. Jason Gilliland, scientist at Children's Health Research Institute (a program of Lawson), professor of Geography, Paediatrics and Health Sciences, and director of the Human Environments Analysis Laboratory at Western University; Dr. Barbra de Vrijer, associate scientist at Children's Health Research Institute, consultant in LHSC's Obstetrics & Gynaecology department and associate professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry; Dr. Debbie Penava, associate scientist at Children's Health Research Institute, consultant in LHSC's Obstetrics & Gynaecology department and associate professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry; Dr. Paula Dworatzek, Chair and Associate Professor, School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at Brescia University College; and Emily Campbell, MScFN, RD, who was a graduate student at Brescia University College at the time of the study. "Socioeconomic status and adverse birth outcomes: A population-based Canadian sample" was published in the Journal of Biosocial Science. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: Jessica Bonin Communications & External Relations Lawson Health Research Institute 519-685-8500 ext. 75616 Jessica.bonin@lawsonresearch.com LAWSON HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE As the research institute of London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph's Health Care London, and working in partnership with Western University, Lawson Health Research Institute is committed to furthering scientific knowledge to advance health care around the world. Follow Lawson News online: Website: https://www.lawsonresearch.ca/news-events Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lawsonhealthresearchinstitute Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/lawsonresearch WESTERN UNIVERSITY Western University delivers an academic experience second to none. Since 1878, The Western Experience has combined academic excellence with life-long opportunities for intellectual, social and cultural growth in order to better serve our communities. Our research excellence expands knowledge and drives discovery with real-world application. Western attracts individuals with a broad worldview, seeking to study, influence and lead in the international community. SCHULICH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE & DENTISTRY The Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University is one of Canada's preeminent medical and dental schools. Established in 1881, it was one of the founding schools of Western University and is known for being the birthplace of family medicine in Canada. For more than 130 years, the School has demonstrated a commitment to academic excellence and a passion for scientific discovery. Follow Western Media Relations online: Website: http://communications.uwo.ca/media/ RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MediaWesternU Twitter: https://twitter.com/mediawesternu BRESCIA Brescia University College, Canada's women's university college, is affiliated with Western University. The 1,500 women registered as either full- or part-time students at Brescia study a wide variety of subjects in the Schools of Behavioural & Social Sciences, Food & Nutritional Sciences, Humanities and Leadership & Social Change in an empowering, compassionate, student-centred and invigorating environment. Degrees are granted by Western. The Catholic University College welcomes students from all backgrounds and values diversity. For more current and archived news, a listing of faculty experts, and photos please visit our Online Media Room, at http://media.bresciauc.ca/ New Rochelle, NY, April 27, 2017 -- A systematic review of the published literature on yoga practice and common menstrual disorders found that all of the studies evaluated reported a beneficial effect and reduced symptoms. The impact of a range of yoga interventions on menstrual distress associated with physical and psychological symptoms for premenstrual women are described in an article published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers . The article is available free on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website until May 26, 2017. Jennifer Oates, PhD, King's College London, U.K., assessed the evidence from 15 published studies on the effects of yoga practice on problems such as amenorrhea, oligomenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, premenstrual syndrome, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Enhanced mood, reduced pain, increased wellbeing, and a heightened relaxation response were among the improved outcomes reported by women who participated in a yoga intervention, as reported in the article entitled "The Effect of Yoga on Menstrual Disorders: A Systematic Review." "While the heterogeneity of the studies presented the authors with limitations, patients can take solace that the studies uniformly found value regardless of the intensity and type of yoga intervention," comments The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine Editor-in-Chief John Weeks, johnweeks-integrator.com, Seattle, WA. ### About the Journal The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed journal published online with open access options and in print. Led by John Weeks (johnweeks-integrator.com), the Co-founder and past Executive Director of the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health, the Journal provides observational, clinical, and scientific reports and commentary intended to help healthcare professionals, delivery organization leaders, and scientists evaluate and integrate therapies into patient care protocols and research strategies. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website. About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Alternative and Complementary Therapies, Medical Acupuncture, and Journal of Medicinal Food. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website. Delivering bad news in a caring way -- and coping with a patient's reaction -- is a key skill for doctors. Intuitive technology is helping medical students learn the best approaches. ANN ARBOR, Mich. - For medical student Katie Goldrath, the first time delivering difficult health news came when she had to tell a young woman named Robin and her mom, Delmy, that Robin had leukemia. As she broke the news, Goldrath was conscious of not only her words but also her body language: Was she leaning in, looking the patient in the eye and expressing empathy? The conversation, though, was just for practice. Robin and Delmy were virtual humans on a computer screen -- lifelike beings that are intelligent and conversational and have the capacity to interact using a wide range of communication behaviors shared in typical face-to-face dialogue. Such intuitive interactions could help aspiring doctors better prepare for difficult and emotionally charged encounters with patients and hospital colleagues, according to a study recently published by researchers from Medical Cyberworlds Inc. and the University of Michigan in the international journal Patient Education and Counseling. "Communication is the most important part of the doctor-patient relationship," says lead author Frederick Kron, M.D., adjunct research faculty in the department of family medicine at the U-M Medical School and founder of Medical Cyberworlds, the company that developed the virtual reality program. "We found that virtual human simulation was an engaging and effective tool to teach medical students advanced communication skills and, very importantly, that skills in the simulation transferred into a more realistic clinical situation." Research shows that poor clinician communication skills may contribute to lower levels of patient satisfaction, poorer health outcomes, and higher risk of complaints and malpractice claims. Poor communication is consistently among the most frequently identified root causes for sentinel events in hospital settings -- events that can lead to preventable patient harm or even death. "Finding an effective way to assess and teach advanced health care communication skills has been a long-standing challenge," says co-author and U-M family medicine professor Michael Fetters, M.D. "Medical learners have a great need for practical, innovative methods to help them master the complexities of health care communication and develop excellent communication skills -- both verbal and nonverbal. Ours is the first-ever research showing that it can be done effectively with virtual reality." Researchers addressed this challenge using revolutionary virtual human technology called MPathic-VR. This Medical Cyberworlds application allows learners to talk with emotive, computer-based virtual humans who can see, hear and react to them in real time. The virtual humans use a full range of behaviors expected between two people talking together. The system assesses learners' body language, facial expressions and communication strategies, then uses this information to produce real-time responses from the virtual human and provide personalized suggestions based on the learners' strengths or weaknesses. Learners also see their interactions with the virtual human on video, then get the chance to apply what they've learned. The carefully designed structure of the learning experience, including the repeat interactions, improved the students' communication skills, the findings suggest. The study was conducted among 421 students at three U.S. medical schools. Half the group used virtual reality, half used more traditional computer-based learning. Goldrath, now in her fourth year of medical school at Michigan, says she benefited from the opportunity to practice scenarios in virtual reality, and the video feedback helped her understand how others might perceive her role and reactions. "Many times, patients don't initially absorb a doctor's explanations because of shock, denial, fear or other emotions," she says. "Factors like whether the doctor was standing over you or leaning in to comfort you, or whether he or she read from a piece of paper or looked you in the eye, leave a lasting impact on the patient. These actions represent to the patient what kind of support system the provider will be to him or her during these difficult times." Current teaching methods typically include small groups of learners and focus on role-playing with each other or with simulated patients. But this method, the study's authors note, is very resource intensive, and different trainers may lead to discrepancies between groups. Improving outcomes As part of the study, students also practiced their interprofessional communication to learn the importance of effective dialogue on health care teams. In that scenario, learners had to manage an interaction with a virtual oncology nurse who was angry that the student inadvertently omitted her from a family meeting with a patient she was caring for. The virtual human communication system underscores the value of clear dialogue between and across health care teams in providing safe, effective patient care, the authors say. "Health care has long needed innovative learning methods to better engage students in constructing knowledge and produce better learning outcomes," says research collaborator Tim Guetterman, Ph.D., of U-M Family Medicine. "We are hopeful that, through our work, we have taken a significant step in that direction." Disclosures: Frederick Kron serves as president and Michael Fetters has stock options in Medical Cyberworlds Inc., the entity receiving grant funds for this project. ### Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe's winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period. The cores provide insights into how the region's climate has changed over time. The researchers' results, published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, could help reveal how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales. The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Romanian Ministry of Education, involved scientists from the University of South Florida (USF), University of Belfast, University of Bremen and Stockholm University, among other institutions. Researchers from the Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and USF's School of Geosciences gathered their evidence in the world's most-explored ice cave and oldest cave glacier, hidden deep in the heart of Transylvania in central Romania. With its towering ice formations and large underground ice deposit, Scarisoara Ice Cave is among the most important scientific sites in Europe. Scientist Bogdan Onac of USF and his colleague Aurel Persoiu, working with a team of researchers in Scarisoara Ice Cave, sampled the ancient ice there to reconstruct winter climate conditions during the Holocene period. Over the last 10,000 years, snow and rain dripped into the depths of Scarisoara, where they froze into thin layers of ice containing chemical evidence of past winter temperature changes. Until now, scientists lacked long-term reconstructions of winter climate conditions. That knowledge gap hampered a full understanding of past climate dynamics, Onac said. "Most of the paleoclimate records from this region are plant-based, and track only the warm part of the year -- the growing season," says Candace Major, program director in NSF's Directorate for Geosciences, which funded the research. "That misses half the story. The spectacular ice cave at Scarisoara fills a crucial piece of the puzzle of past climate change in recording what happens during winter." Reconstructions of Earth's climate record have relied largely on summer conditions, charting fluctuations through vegetation-based samples, such as tree ring width, pollen and organisms that thrive in the warmer growing season. Absent, however, were important data from winters, Onac said. Located in the Apuseni Mountains, the region surrounding the Scarisoara Ice Cave receives precipitation from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and is an ideal location to study shifts in the courses storms follow across East and Central Europe, the scientists say. Radiocarbon dating of minute leaf and wood fragments preserved in the cave's ice indicates that its glacier is at least 10,500 years old, making it the oldest cave glacier in the world and one of the oldest glaciers on Earth outside the polar regions. From samples of the ice, the researchers were able to chart the details of winter conditions growing warmer and wetter over time in Eastern and Central Europe. Temperatures reached a maximum during the mid-Holocene some 7,000 to 5,000 years ago and decreased afterward toward the Little Ice Age, 150 years ago. A major shift in atmospheric dynamics occurred during the mid-Holocene, when winter storm tracks switched and produced wetter and colder conditions in northwestern Europe, and the expansion of a Mediterranean-type climate toward southeastern Europe. "Our reconstruction provides one of the very few winter climate reconstructions, filling in numerous gaps in our knowledge of past climate variability," Onac said. Warming winter temperatures led to rapid environmental changes that allowed the northward expansion of Neolithic farmers toward mainland Europe, and the rapid population of the continent. "Our data allow us to reconstruct the interplay between Atlantic and Mediterranean sources of moisture," Onac said. "We can also draw conclusions about past atmospheric circulation patterns, with implications for future climate changes. Our research offers a long-term context to better understand these changes." The results from the study tell scientists how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales. The scientists are continuing their cave study, working to extend the record back 13,000 years or more. ### Rice University scientists have learned to spy on cells with a divide-and-conquer strategy to label proteins. Graduate student Emily Thomas, synthetic biologist Jonathan Silberg and their colleagues built upon established techniques that attach bio-orthogonal (noninterfering), artificial amino acids to transfer RNA (tRNA), which are used by ribosomes to synthesize proteins. Because the amino acids are "noncanonical," they are effective tags that help researchers identify proteins being synthesized in a cell. The Rice lab's breakthrough was the discovery of a tRNA synthetase that only adds the amino acid to the tRNA when it binds a chemical. When prompted, the tRNA synthetase charges a tRNA with the bio-orthogonal amino acid, which is then used by ribosomes to insert the tag into proteins made in the cell. The study appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Synthetic Biology. These bio-orthogonal tags give researchers a snapshot of total protein synthesis in the cell. "Instead of physically separating a cell from a mixture to find the proteins being made, we can use this engineered switch to put what amounts to a fishhook on every protein in a specific cell," Silberg said. "This approach will allow us to increase spatial and temporal control over the tagging of proteins synthesized in a given cell." Since many proteins appear and disappear during the development of an organism or the spread of a disease, the technique could be helpful to identify cellular changes that underlie disease. Thomas characterized her technique as a "protein spy." "It spies on what proteins are being made inside the cell," she said. "Current technologies just spy on everything, but I want to be more specific. I want more control over when I turn my spy on or off, so I can track only the cells I'm interested in." The researchers used an azidonorleucine (Anl) amino acid to tag proteins in Escherichia coli bacteria cells. Thomas' engineered switch is controlled like a computer program's AND gate. The switch only charges tRNA with Anl efficiently when the switch is synthesized and a chemical is present in the cell to flip the switch. Silberg said the technique will provide new control over protein transcription and tagging to researchers. "In human biology, a lot of the control comes at the DNA level, but over the past 20 years it's become apparent that a lot of control comes at the protein level as well," he said. "We have fewer genes in our genome than people originally expected because there's this other layer of complexity in the proteome, the collection of proteins expressed by the genome. "Proteins are the business side of the cell," he said. "They provide structure and do a lot of the signaling within a cell. They give rise to a lot of the complexity we observe. In the future, our technique could help people understand the details of a disease by providing snapshots of proteins synthesized in specific cells at different times during development and allowing comparisons of healthy and diseased cells. "The prospect of doing this in humans is the genetic technology equivalent of going to Mars right now," Silberg said. "It's far out." ### Co-authors of the paper are Rice alumnus Naresh Pandey, graduate student Sarah Knudsen and Zachary Ball, an associate professor of chemistry. Silberg is an associate professor of biosciences. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the John S. Dunn Collaborative Research Award, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Keck Center of the Gulf Coast Consortia, the Houston Area Molecular Biophysics Program and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssynbio.7b00100 This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2017/04/27/protein-spy-gains-new-abilities/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews Related materials: The Silberg Research Group: http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~joff/ Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,879 undergraduates and 2,861 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview. Two papers published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, debate gene editing and the health of future generations. Stage and screen actress Kiruna Stamell, who has a rare form of dwarfism, proposes that gene editing does not represent an improvement in healthcare; while Dr Christopher Gyngell, a research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, argues that provided it is well regulated, gene editing could greatly improve the health of our descendants. Stamell writes that if gene editing is used simply to 'disappear' certain conditions and thus certain types of people, we must look at the ethics and impact of this more broadly and redefine what it means to be 'healthy' on a micro and macro level. She believes that gene editing has far-reaching complications that affect more than individual health. She says: "Gene editing, if only available to certain groups, will drive social inequality further as those who can't afford it are left behind or discriminated against for having been born, when the opportunity was there for them to never have existed at all." Stamell asks: "Will those people be left unsupported by a society that prefers to weed them out rather than allow them access and a share of its wealth and benefits?" She voices concern for future generations as variation is edited out. "Small differences begin to be perceived as greater ones and society's ability to adapt and accommodate differences will shrink" she says. She concludes that a community of people who have forgotten how to adapt and embrace diversity can't be healthy for anyone. Gyngell discusses the difficult and complex questions raised about disability, diversity and risks to human health. How to distinguish healthy forms of human diversity from disease and disability is, he writes, a subject of intense debate in philosophy but we should not let conceptual uncertainty be a barrier to the development of gene editing. The use of gene editing in research, he writes, will greatly increase our knowledge of development and could lead to novel treatments for disease. He says: "Using gene editing to study early development could lead to a greater understanding of the causes of infertility and to better treatment options." Gyngell goes onto describe how gene editing will be able to correct the mutations associated with fatal genetic disorders such as Tay Sachs disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The incidence of these conditions can be reduced by using genetic selection techniques but, according to Gyngell, we may have reasons to prefer gene editing. He says: "Selection prevents disease by changing who comes into existence, whereas gene editing ensures those who come into existence have the best shot of living a full life." Gyngell concludes that a case-by-case system of regulation for gene editing could work to both reduce rates of fatal genetic disease and avoid risking traits that may represent valuable types of diversity. ### Gene editing and the health of future generations (DOI:10.1177/0141076817705616) by Christopher Gyngell and Why gene editing isn't the answer (DOI: 10.1177/0141076817706278) by Kiruna Stamell will be published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine at 00:05 hrs (UK time) on Thursday 27 April 2017. The links for the papers when published will be: Gyngell: https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076817705616 Stamell: https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076817706278 For further information or a copy of the papers please contact: Rosalind Dewar Media Office, Royal Society of Medicine DL: +44 (0) 1580 764713 M: +44 (0) 7785 182732 E: media@rsm.ac.uk The JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and is published by SAGE. It has full editorial independence from the RSM. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi. Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company's continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. http://www.sagepublishing.com In the quest to solve solar energy conversion as well as environmental remediation issues, photocatalysis using sunlight have been attracting tremendous attention. Various semiconductors with large band gaps have been proven to be effective under UV light, e.g., TiO2. However, UV light accounts for only ~4% while visible light occupies ~43% of total sunlight. From the perspective of both chemistry and practical applications, it is undoubtedly important to develop visible-light-responsive photocatalytic materials. Over the past several years, coinage metal (Au, Ag and Cu) nanoparticles (NPs) photosensitization over semiconductors with a large band gap has emerged as a promising strategy for developing visible-light responsive photocatalytic materials. In this review, mechanisms of metal-induced photocatalysis (MIP) were first summarized, e.g., hot-electron transfer (see in the Figure 1). Subsequently, the progress towards MIP applications in photocatalytic and PEC water splitting, photoreduction of CO2 and activation of inert molecules such as CH4, N2 were reviewed. Generally, visible-light activity or enhancement was achieved after the introduction of these metal NPs. Nevertheless, for most present metal induced photocatalytic water-splitting under visible light, the obtained apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) was relatively low (i.e. <1%). So, developing efficient metal semiconductor composite (MSC) materials is still highly needed in this field. To highlight this point, the authors summarized important works in promoting the efficiency of MIP from perspective of achieving broadband or effective light-harvesting, enhancing charge-carrier separation, decoration with cocatalyst etc. On the other hand, it is undoubted that particle-size effect was important even crucial in MIP systems. Particular attention was paid on this issue and selected works were reviewed though consensus has not been reached yet. Some researchers claimed that larger metal NPs were favorable for its strong SPR intensity leading to high electron transfer efficiency, while some others pointed out that smaller ones were better because of more efficient charge separation could be achieved. Compromise viewpoint also existed, i.e., both small and large metal NPs were important. So, more effort is needed on this issue. Exploring light absorption of metal NPs in photocatalysis represents a class of novel and promising approaches in exploring efficient visible-light responsive photocatalysts. However, to achieve this goal, there are still many challenges to be addressed. At the end of this review, the authors briefly discussed the challenges and possible development directions of MIP. It includes deeper understanding the mechanism behind MIP, further improve the efficiency, rational design and precise control of plasmonic metal etc. For detailed information, please refer to the article "Metal nanoparticles induced photocatalysis", https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwx019. ### This research received funding from the National Basic Research Program of China and the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China. See the article: Lequan Liu, Xinnan Zhang, Lufeng Yang, Liteng Ren, Defa Wang and Jinhua Ye Metal nanoparticles induced photocatalysis Natl Sci Rev (February 2017). DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwx019 https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwx019 The National Science Review is the first comprehensive scholarly journal released in English in China that is aimed at linking the country's rapidly advancing community of scientists with the global frontiers of science and technology. The journal also aims to shine a worldwide spotlight on scientific research advances across China. WASHINGTON -- In an important step toward endoscopic diagnosis of cancer, researchers have developed a handheld fiber optic probe that can be used to perform multiple nonlinear imaging techniques without the need for tissue staining. The new multimodal imaging probe uses an ultrafast laser to create nonlinear optical effects in tissue that can reveal cancer and other diseases. Today, cancer is typically diagnosed by removing a bit of tissue with a biopsy and then sending that tissue to a specially trained pathologist who stains the tissue and uses a microscope to look for cancerous cells. The ability for doctors to skip the biopsy and use a multimodal imaging endoscope to diagnose cancer on the spot would save valuable time and could also allow surgeons to more easily differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissue during surgery. With the new probe, imaging techniques that previously required bulky table-top instruments can be performed with a handheld device measuring only 8 millimeters in diameter, about the same diameter as a ballpoint pen. If miniaturized further, the probe could easily be integrated into an endoscope for nonlinear multimodal imaging inside the body. "We hope that, one day, multimodal endoscopic imaging techniques could help doctors make quick decisions during surgery, without the need for taking biopsies, using staining treatments or performing complex histopathological procedures," said Jurgen Popp, from Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany and the paper's lead author. The researchers detail their new handheld probe in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research. It is the first miniaturized probe for multimodal biological imaging to incorporate a multicore imaging fiber, a type of optical fiber consisting of several thousand light-guiding elements. This special imaging fiber allowed the researchers to keep all moving parts and electric power outside of the probe head, making the probe easy and safe to use in the body. The researchers have tested the probe with many types of tissue samples, but because it is currently designed for forward view mode, the primary applications of the probe would likely include skin, brain or head and neck surgery. They are working on implementing a side view mode that could be used to investigate hollow organs and arteries such as the colon, bladder or aorta. A mini microscope "The new probe serves as a miniaturized microscope that uses near-infrared lasers to investigate tissue," said Popp. "Different components of biological tissue react differently to the excitation lasers, and their unique response gives us information about the molecular composition and morphology within the tissue." The handheld multimodal imaging probe can simultaneously acquire several types of images: coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited auto-fluorescence. These nonlinear imaging techniques have been shown to be useful for clinical diagnostics, including identifying cancerous cells, but it has been difficult to miniaturize the required instrumentation for use inside the body. The probe's reduced size comes from its use of gradient index, or GRIN, lenses to focus the laser light. Compared to traditional spherical lenses that use complicated shaped surfaces to focus light, GRIN lenses can be made very small because they focus light through continuous refractive index changes within the lens material. Popp's research team collaborated with scientists from Grintech Gmbh who designed GRIN lenses only 1.8 millimeters in diameter and helped incorporate the robust lens assembly into a small aluminum housing. Endoscopes designed for nonlinear imaging commonly use moving mirrors and electromechanical devices for point by point laser scanning in the probe head. Using the multicore imaging fiber allowed the researchers to further reduce the device's size by moving the laser scanning out of the probe head and away from the sample site. Because the fiber's thousands of light guiding elements, or cores, preserve the spatial relationship of the light between the two ends of the fiber, the scanning can be performed at the opposite end of the fiber, making an endoscopic approach much easier. "Compared to other endoscopic nonlinear imaging approaches, our fiber probe stands out due to its simplicity," said Popp. "Since no moving parts are incorporated in the probe head, possible misalignments in the optics are limited and the probe's overall lifetime is increased." Multimodal imaging of tissue The researchers demonstrated the unique capabilities of the multicore imaging fiber by moving one end of the probe across a sample and transferring the acquired images to the other end. "This is not a trivial task since the cores of the imaging fiber differ in size and shape, hindering efficient and homogeneous coupling of the excitation lasers," said Popp. "Furthermore, we had to deal with unwanted effects like different wavelengths interacting inside the fiber and core-to-core light coupling." They also demonstrated that the probe could acquire separate coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering, second harmonic generation and two-photon excited autofluorescence images of healthy human skin tissue samples with a resolution of 2048 by 2048 pixels for a scanned area of 300 by 300 microns. This resolution and field of view is sufficient for identifying tumor borders, and the probe can be moved over the tissue surface to get an overview of the affected area. The researchers are working to use algorithms to improve the quality of the multimodal images, which appear pixelated because of the structure of the multicore imaging fiber. As a next step, they plan to test the probe in animal models and with patients in a clinical setting. ### Paper: A. Lukic, S. Dochow, H. Bae, G. Matz, I. Latka, B. Messerschmidt, M. Schmitt, J. Popp, "Endoscopic fiber probe for nonlinear spectroscopic imaging," Optica, Volume 4, Issue 5, 496-501, (2017). DOI: 10.1364/optica.4.000496 About Optica Optica is an open-access, online-only journal dedicated to the rapid dissemination of high-impact peer-reviewed research across the entire spectrum of optics and photonics. Published monthly by The Optical Society (OSA), Optica provides a forum for pioneering research to be swiftly accessed by the international community, whether that research is theoretical or experimental, fundamental or applied. Optica maintains a distinguished editorial board of more than 40 associate editors from around the world and is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Alex Gaeta, Columbia University, USA. For more information, visit Optica. About The Optical Society Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit osa.org. Media Contacts: Rebecca B. Andersen The Optical Society randersen@osa.org +1 202.416.1443 Joshua Miller The Optical Society jmiller@osa.org +1 202.416.1435 https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/home.cfm; http://www.grintech.de/; https://doi.org/10.1364/optica.4.000496; https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/home.cfm; www.osa.org BOSTON (April 27, 2017)--An innovative analysis combining geographic information systems (GIS), spatial epidemiology, and statistical modeling identified three hotspot clusters of hepatitis C infection rates in Massachusetts. The study, published in BMC Infectious Disease, found that areas around Boston, New Bedford, and Springfield had the most significant clusters of hepatitis C infection based on rates per 100,000 people. Hepatitis C (HCV) hotspot clusters based on the number of reported cases were also identified. As expected, these included some of the most populated areas in Massachusetts: the Greater Boston area, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, but also in the smaller cities of Lawrence, Holyoke and Fitchburg. In these areas, results of density analyses indicate that there were between 477 to 1,070 hepatitis C cases per square mile. "We are in the middle of a syndemic," said public health epidemiologist Tom Stopka, Ph.D., M.H.S., lead study author. "The opioid epidemic is intertwined with the hepatitis C epidemic. These two operate symbiotically and create a larger burden on society and our healthcare system. The areas with higher rates of infection can also become areas of risk for higher hepatitis C transmission. Our study identifies and characterizes locations in Massachusetts where prevention and treatment interventions for hepatitis C might have the biggest effect in reducing the burden of disease." "The use of spatial epidemiological approaches to identify and characterize HCV clusters can help identify where to make best use of the limited funding available for education, prevention, testing, and treatment in order to have the greatest impact and return on that investment," he continued. Stopka is an assistant professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. He focuses on spatial epidemiology, infectious disease, and health disparities, particularly with respect to substance use and misuse. By combining more than 84,000 cases of individuals with past or present hepatitis C infection reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health between 2002 to 2013 with sociodemographic data from 1,464 Massachusetts census tracts, and then conducting statistical analyses, the research team was able to determine which areas in Massachusetts had both the highest number of cases (counts) and the highest rates (taking into account population density), and characterize factors associated with HIV hotspots. The count and rate information was used to calculate and visualize geographic clusters, resulting in maps that reflected hotspots of infection. The use of GIS and spatial epidemiological analysis of public health surveillance data, which allow policy makers to better understand the geographic distribution of infectious diseases and factors associated with disease clustering, has been limited, particularly for hepatitis C. An estimated 3.2 million Americans have hepatitis C, which can result in severe long-term health problems and sometimes death. It is associated with injection drug use, can be transmitted by blood-to-blood contact with contaminated syringes, and can take decades to appear, and the cost of treatment is in the tens of thousands dollars per patient. Public health officials are concerned about long-standing and initially-silent hepatitis C infections in baby boomers, but infections are rising fastest among young adults in the United States, mirroring trends seen in heroin injection, opioid-related overdoses, and infectious endocarditis. In Massachusetts, there was a 137 percent increase in hepatitis C cases among 15 to 29 year olds between 2002 and 2013. However, little was known about the geographic clustering patterns of hepatitis C infections, which limited efforts to better understand disease transmission and develop targeted responses. Stopka notes that the data analyzed in the study captured where an individual resided when hepatitis C was reported, and not when it was transmitted. Because of this, hotspots can include reported cases where hepatitis C infections originated years earlier and in different locations, and may not fully reflect current infection patterns. Nevertheless, the current reporting systems offer the best available option to better understand the geospatial distribution of HCV. The geospatial approach used in the study may also provide insights for other disease risks, in particular HIV infections, which previous studies have shown tend to overlap with hepatitis C hotspots. The current HCV epidemic may forecast future HIV and HCV co-infection outbreaks. Combined geospatial and statistical analyses can help identify regions of risk, improve understanding of transmission patterns, reveal demographic and socioeconomic associations, and inform public health policy decisions, write the authors. ### Additional authors on this study are Michael Goulart, M.P.H, epidemiologist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, David Meyers, M.P.H, doctoral candidate at Brown University, Marga Hutcheson, M.A., a GIS analyst in the department of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine at the time the study was conducted, Kerri Barton, M.P.H., epidemiologist with the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Shauna Onofrey, M.P.H., epidemiologist with the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Daniel Church, M.P.H., Viral Hepatitis Coordinator for the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Ashley Donahue, M.P.H., project coordinator and research assistant who was with the Tufts University School of Medicine at the time of the study. This study was supported by awards from the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown Center for AIDS Research, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (AI042853), and the Tufts Institute for Innovation. About Tufts University School of Medicine Tufts University School of Medicine is an international leader in innovative medical education. Ranked among the top in the nation, the School of Medicine is affiliated with six major teaching hospitals and more than 30 health care facilities. Tufts University School of Medicine emphasizes rigorous fundamentals in a dynamic learning environment to educate physicians, scientists, and public health professionals to become leaders in their fields; contribute to the advancement of the sciences basic to medicine through discovery, research, scholarship, and communication, and join with our partner institutions to provide the best care to individuals and communities. Thomas J. Stopka, T.J., Goulart, M.A., Meyers, D.J., Hutcheson, M., Barton, K., Onofrey, S., Church, D., Donahue, A., and Chui, K.K.H. Identifying and characterizing hepatitis C virus hotspots in Massachusetts: a spatial epidemiological approach. BMC Infectious Diseases. Published online April 20, 107. DOI: 10.1186/s12879-017-2400-2 Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet's red soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil--the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are the findings of a study published in Scientific Reports on April 27, 2017. The study was authored by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and funded by NASA. The research is all the more important since Congress passed a bill, signed by President Donald Trump in March 2017, directing NASA to send a manned mission on Mars in 2033. "The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave. They will be pioneers. And I would be honored to be their brick maker," said Yu Qiao, a professor of structural engineering at UC San Diego and the study's lead author. Proposals to use Martian soil to build habitats for manned missions on the planet are not new. But this is the first that shows astronauts would need minimal resources to do so. Previous plans included nuclear-powered brick kilns or using complex chemistry to turn organic compounds found on Mars into binding polymers. In fact, the UC San Diego engineers were initially trying to cut down on the amount of polymers required to shape Martian soil into bricks, and accidently discovered that none was needed. To make bricks out of Mars soil simulant, without additives and without heating or baking the material, two steps were key. One was to enclose the simulant in a flexible container, in this case a rubber tube. The other was to compact the simulant at a high enough pressure. The amount of pressure needed for a small sample is roughly the equivalent of someone dropping 10-lb hammer from a height of one meter, Qiao said. The process produces small round soil pallets that are about an inch tall and can then be cut into brick shapes. The engineers believe that the iron oxide, which gives Martian soil its signature reddish hue, acts as a binding agent. They investigated the simulant's structure with various scanning tools and found that the tiny iron particles coat the simulant's bigger rocky basalt particles. The iron particles have clean, flat facets that easily bind to one another under pressure. Researchers also investigated the bricks' strengths and found that even without rebar, they are stronger than steel-reinforced concrete. Researchers said their method may be compatible with additive manufacturing. To build up a structure, astronauts could lay down a layer of soil, compact it, then lay down an additional layer and compact that, and so on. The logical next step for the research would be to increase the size of the bricks. ### Much of what scientists know about human memory comes from studies involving relatively simple acts of recollection--remembering lists of words or associations between names and faces. However, they know very little about the brain networks that support memories for complex events, like when we remember the plot of a book or movie or what we experienced, thought and felt during a childhood birthday party. A multi-university study led by a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, aims to vastly deepen understanding by developing a computer model of how the brain forms, stores and retrieves complex memories. The goal is that the model will have human-like abilities to remember, understand and learn from events. The project--recently awarded a $7.5 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Defense--could lead to an evolutionary leap in the development of artificial intelligence. It could also open new avenues for understanding Alzheimer's disease, dementia and other memory disorders. "Our brains have a remarkable capability to remember past events and to use our memories to make inferences in the present and predictions about the future," said Charan Ranganath, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Psychology and the Center for Neuroscience who is the project's principal investigator. "For instance, if you go out to eat at a formal restaurant, before you even walk in, you can guess the sequence of events that will unfold (seating, taking your order, appetizers... etc.), and the roles that people will play (host, waiter, bus-person, chef, etc.). People can learn this kind of knowledge about particular kinds of events--which we call 'event schemas'--after only a few experiences." While scientists have identified areas of the brain involved in memory, they know very little about the brain networks involved in creating those schemas, which help us sort events into categories, learn and anticipate what might happen next. Joining Ranganath in tackling this huge problem are researchers Ken Norman and Uri Hasson of Princeton University, Samuel Gershman of Jeffrey Zacks of Washington University in St. Louis, and Orrin Devinsky of New York University's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. Each investigator brings a different kind of expertise needed to map and create a computer model of the brain's memory networks. Ranganath said every prong of the study will break new ground for research methods in the field. For instance, the team will develop new tools to help to decode brain activity in real time as a person recalls a past event. "One of the key ideas in our project is that people intuitively understand and remember events in terms of relationships," Ranganath said. "Our modeling approach is intended to capture this human-like approach by extracting knowledge about roles and relationships from specific events." The Harvard and Princeton teams will develop the computer model, and the UC Davis, Washington University, and Princeton scientists will run functional magnetic resonance imaging studies to test and refine the model. The UC Davis team will also analyze recordings of electrical brain activity collected from patients at NYU who have electrodes implanted in the brain as part of a medical evaluation for epilepsy surgery. Ranganath, an expert on the neural mechanisms of human memory, will focus on the interactions between the hippocampus and cortex in retrieving and consolidating memories for real-life events. Implications for Improving Memory Ranganath's initial studies already have some practical implications for how memory can be improved in the real world. "In our studies, we have people take a tour of the UC Davis California Raptor Center, and after the tour, we use pictures from a wearable camera to test people on what they learned during the tour," he said. "Our initial results show that using cameras in this way can significantly improve one's memory. With this project, we will be able to investigate what is happening in the brain as people recall events from the raptor tour." People sometimes think of memories like files on a computer, but that's not the way human memory works, Ranganath said. Instead of simply storing data, the human brain consolidates memories of experiences and perceptions to learn, make inferences, and modify and update knowledge. Ranganath's team predicts that, when an event is recollected, the memory can be modified and updated. "That dynamic aspect of memory is a little different than computer storage, where a file can be processed without saving anything to memory." While the field of artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, computers and smart devices do best when they are trained to do specific tasks, like recognizing a face, he said. "It's much harder to train a computer to learn information that can be used to support a wide range of inferences and predictions. If you have tried to use Siri or voice commands on an Android phone, you'll soon see that there is a lot that gets lost in translation." The computer model envisioned in this project would be more like Star Wars droid R2D2--able to analyze, infer and learn from events. The Department of Defense is excited about this because it could be used for national security purposes. For instance, such a model could be used to analyze video footage for signs of terrorist activity. But the technology could have much wider applications. "Really, if you think about it, a machine that is capable of learning schemas to understand events would have an endless range of applications," Ranganath said. ### Irvine, Calif., April 27, 2017 -- A University of California, Irvine study on the impact of environmental changes on malaria in sub-Saharan Africa has been awarded up to $9.6 million over seven years from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health. The funding establishes UCI as one of the International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research, which will engage in projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Guiyun Yan, professor of public health, leads the UCI project. "Knowledge gained from this ICEMR will be important to malaria control, not only for the two countries studied - Ethiopia and Kenya - but also for other regions of Africa," Yan said. He added that the overarching goal of UCI's ICEMR is to assess the effect of human-induced environmental modifications - such as dam construction, irrigation and shifting agricultural practices - on the epidemiology and transmission of malaria. Because of food insufficiencies, major investments have been made in water resource development in highly populated Kenya and Ethiopia. An international partnership To address the major knowledge gaps and challenges in malaria control and elimination in the face of drastic environmental changes in sub-Saharan Africa, the UCI ICEMR is establishing a consortium with researchers from the U.S., Australia, Kenya and Ethiopia to explore scientific questions important to global anti-malaria efforts, especially in Greater Horn of Africa countries. The ICEMR has three projects, each with multiple specific objectives. One will gauge the impact of environmental modifications related to water resource development on malaria epidemiology at the molecular, individual, field and population levels. A second will examine the ramifications of environmental changes on vector ecology and transmission, the outcomes of which will inform innovative integrated vector control approaches. The third aim is to determine the effect of environmental modifications on malaria pathogenesis and immunity. The malaria challenge Despite significant progress in reducing malaria incidence and mortality, the World Health Organization estimates that 212 million new cases of malaria and 429,000 malaria deaths occurred in 2015, mostly in Africa. Although numerous potential vaccines to prevent malaria are in the works, none have been approved for widespread use. Effective malaria treatments are available, but some have severe side effects, may be difficult to procure in remote regions, and are losing their efficacy in places where malaria-causing parasites have developed resistance. Mosquito control, which relies largely on bed nets and insecticides, is still a front-line defense where malaria is endemic, but changes in mosquito behavior and insecticide resistance are increasing concerns. ### For more about the ICEMR network, see https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/excellence-malaria-research. The UCI funding comes under grant 1U19AI129326-01. About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu. Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists. CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Reading supportive comments, "likes" and private messages from social media friends prior to taking a test may help college students who have high levels of test-anxiety significantly reduce their nervousness and improve their scores, a new study suggests. Undergraduate students with high levels of test anxiety who sought social support from their online friends and read the messages prior to a simulated exam reduced their anxiety levels by 21 percent, researchers at the University of Illinois found. These students, and peers who performed a seven-minute expressive-writing exercise, were able to perform as well on a set of computer programming exercises as students who had low levels of test anxiety, said lead author Robert Deloatch, a graduate student in computer science at the university. Up to 41 percent of students are estimated to suffer from test anxiety, which is a combination of physiological and emotional responses that occur while preparing for and taking tests. Test anxiety is associated with lower test scores and grade-point averages, as well as poorer performance on memory and problem-solving tasks. Test anxiety can be particularly acute when students face exams involving open-ended problems, such as those commonly used on computer science exams that require students to write and run code, the researchers wrote. When students' test anxiety is reduced, their test scores, GPAs and task performance improve accordingly, researchers have found. Students with high test anxiety strongly fear negative evaluation, have lower self-esteem and tend to experience increased numbers of distracting and irrelevant thoughts in testing situations, according to the study. For the simulated exam in the current study, students had to solve two programming problems by writing and running code. Most of the participants were computer science majors or computer engineering students who passed a pretest that ensured they had basic programming knowledge. The researchers measured participants' levels of test anxiety using the Cognitive Test Anxiety scale, which assesses the cognitive problems associated with test-taking such as task-irrelevant thinking and attention lapses. Participants also completed two other questionnaires that measured their levels of state anxiety - or "state-of-the-moment" unease - and their trait anxiety, which is anxiety that is considered to be a longstanding characteristic or personality trait. The day before the experiment, students in the social support group posted messages on their personal social media pages requesting encouragement - in the form of likes, comments or private messages - about an upcoming computer programming challenge they planned to participate in. For seven minutes immediately prior to taking the simulated test, students in the social support group read the responses associated with their online request, while students in the expressive-writing group wrote about their thoughts and feelings, and students in the control group crammed for the exam by reading information on computer programming data structures and answering questions about the text. Prior to taking the exam, participants completed a questionnaire to assess their levels of state anxiety. Students were then given 40 minutes to solve two programming problems that had many viable solutions. "We found that only the students who received supportive messages from their Facebook network showed a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in their performance on our simulated exam," Deloatch said. While prior researchers have found expressive writing to be helpful to some students with test anxiety, Deloatch and his co-authors were surprised to find that the expressive-writing exercise increased the pretest jitters of low test-anxious students by 61 percent, instead. "We hypothesized that might have occurred because focusing on their anxiety as they wrote caused their apprehensiveness to increase rather than decrease," Deloatch said. Using social support to alleviate state-of-the-moment anxiety may have implications beyond education, such as helping job applicants quell their nervousness prior to interviews with potential employers, Deloatch said. While the students who sought social support online felt that reading the supportive messages was helpful, "all of them were uncomfortable with soliciting support from their online friends, perceiving such posts as 'attention seeking' and 'out of place,'" Deloatch said. "As the majority of the participants in our study were computer science students, the competitive environment of the curriculum may have led to concerns about how others would perceive them. They may have felt that such statuses could harm their relations in group project settings." ### U. of I. computer science professors Brian P. Bailey, Alex Kirlik and Craig Zilles were co-authors on the paper. The study is being published in the Proceedings of CHI 2017, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held May 6-11 in Denver. University of Illinois at Chicago researchers are conducting a study to determine whether binge drinking is related to cardiovascular disease in young adults who are not predisposed to the condition. "Binge drinking or heavy episodic alcohol use is one of the most serious public health problems confronting American colleges," said Mariann Piano, professor and head of biobehavioral science in the College of Nursing. Piano and Shane Phillips, professor and associate head of physical therapy in the College of Applied Health Sciences, serve as co-investigators on a two-year grant funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the National Institutes of Health. "More alarming is the pervasiveness and regularity of binge drinking episodes: one in five students report three or more binge drinking episodes in the prior two weeks," she said. One hundred and fifty young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 will be divided equally into three categories: binge drinkers, defined as individuals consuming more than four to five drinks in a two-hour period; moderate alcohol users -- for men, drinking no more than seven drinks in a week and not drinking daily, and for women, drinking no more than four drinks in the same time period; and abstainers, who rarely drink if at all. Participants will be further categorized into the three groups based on their answers to a questionnaire and whether or not they have a blood biomarker called phosphatidylethanol, or PEth, which was previously discovered by Piano and Phillips and is found to be significantly higher in binge drinkers compared to moderate alcohol consumers. Participants will undergo an ultrasound examination, as well as provide tissue samples, so the researchers can accurately evaluate their blood pressure in the aorta. Participants will also perform several exercises to provide Piano and Phillips clues as to how exertion may lead to higher than normal blood pressure. This, Phillips said, could be an early indicator that binge drinkers may be susceptible to cardiovascular disease. The researchers will also measure participants' arterial stiffness and pulse wave velocity -- the rate at which the arterial pulse spreads throughout the circulatory system, a reflection of vascular aging. "If the pulse wave velocity rises, it could be an indicator of an early risk for cardiovascular disease," she said. Young adults today are health conscious about food and exercise, but not about drinking alcohol, Piano said. "There's data to suggest that if you have bad drinking habits, they don't just stop in college," Piano said. "These kids are continuing to binge drink in their mid-20s and they haven't stopped. Binge drinking is the new arteriosclerotic behavior among today's youth." The new $420,000 federal grant to fund the study follows previous studies conducted by Phillips and Piano, where they observed physically active binge drinkers whose blood pressure and cholesterol were normal yet they had changes to their blood vessels and cells within their cardiovascular system. But they didn't know why. The new grant will help answer that question. "We're not against drinking, but it's teaching young people to be healthy consumers of alcohol," Piano said. "We want them to live to be healthy and happy." ### Research led by University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust reveals 'transformative outcomes' for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia "We are proud to be part of this study. Our long term follow up of previously treated patients shows maintained efficacy without toxicity. This study is the first report of long term follow-up of selective BTK inhibitors in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia - and it is excellent news for patients." - Professor Martin Dyer, University of Leicester Scientists have described new results of a blood cancer study as 'outstanding' in tackling previously untreatable forms of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). The advance led by a team from the University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, within the Hope Clinical Trials Facility, focused on treating patients with CLL. It follows on from a world-first clinical trial of a new drug to treat particular blood cancers. Results of that international clinical trial, led by Dr Harriet Walter and Professor Martin Dyer were published in the journal Blood in November 2015 and looked at the efficacy of a new inhibitor, ONO/GS-4059, in the treatment of CLL and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma patients, refractory or resistant to current chemotherapies. ONO/GS-4059 targets BTK, a protein essential for the survival and proliferation of the tumour cells. The study opened in January 2012 and 90 patients were enrolled in different centres in the UK and in France, with 28 coming from Leicester. Patients with CLL showed the best response and most of them were still on the study after 3 years, and remarkably without notable toxicities. In the new paper, the researchers are reporting for the long-term follow-up results. Their work, published in the journal Blood, was funded by the Ernest and Helen Scott Haematological Research Institute, ONO Pharmaceuticals, Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the Cancer Research UK Leicester Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. Local charity Hope Against Cancer fund the Clinical Trials Facility based at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. Professor Martin Dyer is Professor of Haemato-Oncology in the Department of Cancer Studies at the University of Leicester and Honorary Consultant Physician in the Department of Haematology at Leicester Royal Infirmary. He said: "This current paper describes the long term follow up and shows that in patients with CLL the remissions are durable and associated with no new toxicities. Furthermore, in collaboration with Sistemas Genomicos, a company in Valencia, we have shown that mutations associated with aggressive disease respond well to treatment with ONO/GS-4059. "Our long term follow up shows maintained efficacy without toxicity. This study is the first report of long term follow-up of a selective BTK inhibitor - and it is excellent news for patients. "The results we are presenting are based on an international clinical study involving the UK, France, Japan and US - and led by Leicester. This was a Phase 1 clinical study which means the researchers are in the early stages of testing the drug's effectiveness. "We are now doing studies of ONO/GS-4059 in combination with other precision medicines to assess whether these results can be enhanced in patients with CLL and other B cell malignancies." Local cancer research charity, Hope Against Cancer, has been funding some of Professor Dyer's work. Chief Executive of the charity, Nigel Rose said: "Professor Dyer is a long-standing collaborator and recipient of Hope's funding. We are delighted that this is being put to such extremely important use in meeting our charity's mission of improving the lives of cancer patients locally." ### Our bodies are constantly under siege by foreign invaders; viruses, bacteria and parasites that want to infiltrate our cells. A new study in the journal eLife sheds light on how germ cells - sperm and egg - protect themselves from these attackers so that they can pass accurate genetic information to the next generation. Researchers from the University of Rochester Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics examined the role of piRNA in safeguarding the integrity of the genetic information in germ cells. It's known that piRNA -- a type of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that's found most readily in the testes and ovaries -- shields germ cells by silencing the genetic sequences of viral intruders. It's also known that defects or mutations in piRNA lead to infertility in humans and other animals. What's not known is how piRNAs are generated in the first place. A team led by Xin Li, Ph.D., assistant professor in the departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Urology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, analyzed rooster testes to find out. Chickens acquire and harbor a wide variety of viruses. When a virus infects a host, like a chicken, it does everything it can to survive. One method of survival is inserting its genetic material into the chicken's genome. Over generations, the inserted virus accumulates mutations and eventually becomes harmless to the animal, but it's still a part of the chicken's genetic material. Li's team focused on avian leukosis virus, which commonly infects and can lead to cancer in domestic chickens. Through molecular and genetic analysis, they discovered that chickens turn these old, existing viruses into piRNA-producing machines. When faced with a new avian leucosis virus (there are many different viruses in the family), the old viruses pump out piRNAs that defend the germ cells, ensuring the passage of intact genetic material to the next round of offspring. "Our study shows how a host can turn a virus into a weapon to fight future viruses," says Li, whose work is partially funded by a National Institute of Health grant designed to support the early careers of new scientists. "Better understanding piRNA may help us target more viruses, both in chickens and in people." In the United States, 8 billion domestic chickens are consumed each year, and more knowledge of how these birds defend themselves against viral infections could increase the productivity of the poultry industry around the world. Because other viruses trapped in the chicken's genetic code are related to similar viruses in humans, future discoveries in this area could help guide research benefiting human health, too. ### The University of Rochester Medical Center is home to approximately 3,000 individuals who conduct research on everything from cancer and heart disease to Parkinson's, pandemic influenza and autism. Spread across many centers, institutes and labs, our scientists have developed therapies that have improved human health locally, in the region and across the globe. To learn more, visit http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/research. Leave campaigners were not only victorious in the June 2016 Brexit vote but also in the battle of the twittersphere, a new study in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations reports. In the first study of its kind, researchers from the University of Surrey examined 18,000 tweets posted by the three main campaign groups, Stronger In, Vote Leave and Leave.EU in the 5 months preceding the 2016 Brexit vote. Researchers discovered that the Leave campaign (Vote Leave and Leave.EU) continually outperformed their rival in disseminating their online messaging and as presenting themselves as agenda setters compared to the official Remain campaign (Stronger In) which delivered a sporadic, inflexible online strategy. Researchers discovered, Stronger In was marginally more likely to make negative comments about its opponents (19.5% of tweets to Vote Leave's 18.6% and Leave.EU's 13.7%), despite devoting a relatively high volume of its content to positive arguments (27.3% to 16.1% for Vote Leave and 16.5% for Leave.EU). This confused approach is further reinforced when examining the language used in tweets. The most commonly used word used in Stronger In's campaign was 'leaving', well in excess of its use by either Leave group. Similarly the term 'Brexit' was mentioned more by Stronger In than the official Leave campaign (Vote Leave). This highlights the extent to which the campaign was fought on Leave's terms, rather than building a different set of references to frame the debate. The examination of Twitter also revealed that Stronger In was disadvantaged by David Cameron's decision to try and avoid becoming the central figure of the campaign. While the official Remain campaign rarely mentioned him, both Leave campaigns made much of his words and actions, calling into question his competence and ability and reminding non-Tory voters that a Leave vote would also hurt his government. The Leave groups were able to capitalise on an established social media network of anti-EU campaigners helping to publicise its messages to a wider audience, which undoubtedly disadvantaged Stronger In. During the Brexit campaign, both Leave groups attracted substantially more Twitter followers than the official Remain campaing. For example, on polling day Leave.EU had nearly 50,000 more Twitter followers than Stronger In, while Vote Leave had 20,000 more. Although the Leave campaign had a significant advantage in being able to mobilise an already extensive social media network, Stronger In's failure to build as extensive an online following showcases the shortcomings in attracting new followers and successfully spreading its message on Twitter. Differences in the approach to Twitter were also identified between the two official campaigning groups (Stronger In and Vote Leave) and the unofficial Leave.EU. The latter was free to range much more freely over the political terrain, as evidenced by its much wider range of key words and its disconnection from the landmark events of the campaign. Neither during the TV debates or the final weeks did Leave.EU try to ramp up its volume of tweeting, instead focusing on maintaining a more consistent stream of information to its very large audience. Lead author of the paper, Dr Simon Usherwood from the University of Surrey, said: "The outcome of the Brexit vote on 22nd June 2016 would not have been as shocking had more attention been paid to what was happening on Twitter. Twitter exposed the flaws of Stronger In's campaign, particularly the inability to gain popular interest in its ideas about the benefits of remaining in the EU. This undoubtedly strengthened the Leave campaign, which had a set of clear messages that drew on the long-standing Eurosceptic mobilisation in the country. "With campaigning online now becoming the norm for political parties, it is important they learn from the failings of Stronger In and develop comprehensive social media strategies in the future. With the upcoming General Election on 8 June, it will be interesting to see how Twitter will be used by each of the political parties and what that might mean to the result." ### Patryk Babiracki, an associate professor in the Department of History at The University of Texas at Arlington, was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Babiracki joined the College of Liberal Arts in 2009 and his work focuses on the history of the International Trade Fair in Pozna?, a key city in Western Poland, during the Cold War. The fellowship, based at the Berlin Center for Cold War, will extend over 18 months beginning in September 2017, to be preceded by four months of German language training also sponsored by the Humboldt Foundation. Babiracki plans to develop a monograph dedicated to the history of the International Trade Fair in Pozna? during the Cold War. The fair was one of only a few sites behind the Iron Curtain where people from around the globe met regularly to advertise their industrial and consumer products, to sign contracts for import and export of various goods, and to fight the Cold War. "This past year, I benefitted from a UTA Research Enhancement Program grant to carry out some archival research in U.S., British, Polish, French and Russian archives," Babiracki said. "The Humboldt fellowship will help me to understand the role that the East- and West-German governments and institutions played in the shaping the dynamics of the fair and of the Cold War." Specifically, the study examines the Pozna? fair between 1945 and 1989 as a battleground in the war of conflicting ideologies, cultures and socioeconomic systems, fought by government officials, businessmen, designers and spies. It aims to understand the impact of the annual international interactions at the fair on the largely isolated world behind the Iron Curtain and on the outcomes of the Cold War. "The challenge of this kind of research is the sometimes complicated logistics of tracking down documents in archives across the world coupled with the sensitivity of the archival material that concerns such recent past," Babiracki said. "But the rewards of discovering newly declassified documents from East European archives and being able to shape a conversation on issues that concern our past and our present can be also tremendously rewarding." According to Babiracki, the Cold War brings together several issues that are fascinating, challenging and also helpful to understanding our times. One such question focuses on how states worked to resolve international tensions across cultural boundaries and conflicting interests. Another issue central to the Cold War and contemporary concerns is the role played by modern culture and mass media in international power struggles. "Being part of an R-1 Research University, I could not be more delighted that Dr. Babiracki was awarded the Humboldt Fellowship to enrich his already extensive research on the Cold War," said Elisabeth Cawthon, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts. "We are confident that his inquiries in Germany will contribute positively to the Department of History when he returns to campus." ### Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The Foundation maintains a network of well over 27,000 Humboldtians from all disciplines in more than 140 countries worldwide - including 54 Nobel Prize winners. Babiracki has received a number of previous fellowships for his research: Volkswagen Foundation / Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellowship, Zentrum fur Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam Title VIII Research Scholarship, the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. Junior Research Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 2012-13 Jozef Tischner Visiting Research Fellowship, Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM), Vienna, July-December, 2010 (accepted August-December) About The University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington is a Carnegie Research-1 "highest research activity" institution. With a projected global enrollment of close to 57,000 in AY 2016-17, UTA is the largest institution in The University of Texas System. Guided by its Strategic Plan Bold Solutions | Global Impact, UTA fosters interdisciplinary research within four broad themes: health and the human condition, sustainable urban communities, global environmental impact, and data-driven discovery. UTA was recently cited by U.S. News & World Report as having the second lowest average student debt among U.S. universities. U.S. News & World Report also ranks UTA fifth in the nation for undergraduate diversity. The University is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is ranked as the top four-year college in Texas for veterans on Military Times' 2017 Best for Vets list. Girls start believing they aren't good at math, science and even computers at a young age -- but providing fun STEM activities at school and home may spark interest and inspire confidence. A study from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) finds that, when exposed to a computer-programming activity, 6-year-old girls expressed greater interest in technology and more positive attitudes about their own skills and abilities than girls who didn't try the activity. The results suggest both a need and an opportunity for teaching computer science, in particular, in early elementary school, said Allison Master, a research scientist at I-LABS and the study's lead author. Introducing concepts and skills when girls are young can boost their confidence and prompt interest in a field in which women today are underrepresented. "As a society, we have these built-in beliefs that are pushing boys toward certain activities more than girls. So our thought was, if you give equal experiences to boys and girls, what happens?" Master said. "We found that if you give them access to same opportunities, then girls and boys have the same response -- equal interest and confidence." The study, published online in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, involved 96 6-year-olds, evenly divided among boys and girls, who were randomly assigned one of three groups. In the first group, each child programmed a robot, then answered survey questions; in the second group, each played a storytelling card game, then answered the same questions, while those in the third group only answered the questions. The survey was designed to collect kids' opinions of technology activities, like the robot, and their beliefs about whether girls or boys are better at computer programming and robotics. Programming, the researchers explained to the children, is "when you tell a computer or a robot or a phone what to do." For the robot activity, children chose an animal-like robot. They first followed step-by-step instructions on a smartphone to "tell" it to move forward, backward, right or left, then chose the instructions themselves, effectively programming the phone to control the movements of the robots. The study found that after completing the robot activity, the boys and girls showed equal interest in technology and their own feelings of self-efficacy, or confidence in their own abilities. But when compared to the "control group" of children who played the card game or only answered the survey without playing a game, the difference was striking: The designed activity with the robot reduced the gender gap in technology interest by 42 percent, and the gap in self-efficacy by 80 percent. In other words, girls who programmed the robot were much more likely to express interest in programming and confidence in their own abilities to perform technology-related tasks than the girls who didn't work with the robot. Co-author and I-LABS co-director Andrew Meltzoff said, "Experience in programming the robot movement was something that both boys and girls thought was fun. But the most important finding is that we brought the girls' interest and motivation in STEM up to the level of the boys. This was a big impact for a brief, well-designed intervention. How long will it last? That's an important question for future scientific experiments." The findings suggest that incorporating more programming activities in the classroom or at home may ignite and sustain girls' interest, Master said. Summer camps, after-school programs and other partner- or group-oriented activities present natural opportunities. "The important thing is to make activities accessible to all children in a fun way that also helps them build skills," she said. The study's robot activity did not, however, appear to change the children's stereotypes about whether boys or girls are better at programming and robotics. While the girls who programmed the robot indicated greater confidence in their own abilities, that confidence did not alter their stereotypes, picked up from the culture, about girls and boys in general. The authors pointed to the potential of other experiences, such as meeting or seeing a woman programming a robot or working in a STEM field, for shifting these more deeply-held stereotypes. "Stereotypes get built up in our heads from many different sources and experiences, but perhaps if we give girls more experience doing these kinds of activities, that will give them more resources to resist those stereotypes," Master said. "They might be able to say, 'I can still be good at this and enjoy it, despite the cultural stereotypes.'" The researchers hope to test this in future studies. ### Researchers on the study also included Sapna Cheryan, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, along with Adriana Moscatelli of Play Works Studio in Seattle. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, contact Allison Master at almaster@uw.edu. A team of researchers has discovered that many Canadian lakes can provide new insights into ancient oceans, and their findings could advance research about greenhouse gas emissions, harmful algal blooms, and early life forms. Scientists from the University of Waterloo led the team of microbiologists, geochemists, and freshwater specialists in a surprising finding that lakes of the Boreal Shield may be similar to oceans of the Archean Eon, a period more than 2.5 billion years ago when microbial life thrived in a world without oxygen. This finding is important because there are millions of Boreal Shield lakes in Canada that likely share key properties with the Archean oceans. Until now, scientists have relied on only four so-called analogue lakes--ones with similar primordial conditions--most of which are found in remote or ecologically sensitive locations. "With so many lakes to study, this discovery changes how we approach this field of research," said co-author Jackson Tsuji, a doctoral student in the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science. "It's exciting that these lakes, which are basically in our backyard, hold information that could have implications for global climate, past and present, and water management." Published in Scientific Reports, the findings have the potential to transform how scientists carry out research about Earth's earliest life forms, which originated in oxygen-free oceans thought to be low in sulphur and high in iron. Many Boreal Shield lakes, also low in sulphur and high in iron, develop oxygen-free layers each summer. Although these layers mix in the spring and fall, they re-establish quickly. "We used to think finding a suitable Archean ocean analogue meant that you had to find a lake that didn't mix. For example, current analogues are hundreds of metres deep and completely stratified," said Josh Neufeld, a professor in the Department of Biology. "An important discovery here was how robust this oxygen-free community is, despite the mixing." Researchers can use these lakes as living laboratories to study how microbes of the past might have functioned. The microbes detected in the sampled lakes are thought to metabolize iron compounds with the help of sunlight, which may help researchers understand how to predict and control harmful algal blooms because iron plays a key role in algal bloom formation. In addition, the unique and previously unknown microbial communities, specifically methane-consuming microbes at the bottom of these lakes, have broad implications for greenhouse gas emissions. The study compared aspects of the four current Archean-ocean analogues to two Boreal Shield lakes using water chemistry, microbial community profiles, and stable isotope patterns. The researchers' unique application of the latest biological and isotopic tools shows that similar biological processes to existing analogues are not only present, but active in the water, reoccurring every year. "This groundbreaking discovery was possible because we had the flexibility to pursue some unexpected results with a multi-disciplinary team using state-of-the-art tools and techniques," said Sherry Schiff, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Boreal Shield lakes are widespread across the Boreal Shield, the largest of the Canadian ecozones, which extends across more than 20 per cent of Canada's land mass. Similar lakes are found in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. ### The study's other authors are Lingling Wu and Richard Elgood, from Waterloo's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jason Venkiteswaran of Wilfrid Laurier University, Lewis Molot of York University, and Michael Paterson of the IISD-Experimental Lakes Area. Neufeld, Schiff, and Wu are members of Waterloo's Water Institute. An international project led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed a new augmented reality (AR) tool for the ESA. In the future, it is envisaged that astronauts will be able to use this tool to perform maintenance tasks and real-time equipment monitoring in the demanding conditions of space. The first practical tests carried out at ESA's European Astronaut Centre produced excellent results. The two-year EdcAR project (Engineering data in cross platform AR) led by VTT developed a solution to the challenges involved in maintenance and the provision of work instructions, which have been an issue for more than a decade. Since maintenance and other work tasks in space are critical, they must be carried out without errors and at the right time. Preparing for these requires in-depth practising, which involves coordinating the activities of various experts. Since astronauts' time is extremely valuable, their tasks and maintenance instructions must be unambiguous. Proceeding step by step, making the invisible visible The EdcAR project developed a new AR system intended to improve the performance of manual tasks in the frame of the Space Industry. The system is expected to reduce mistakes, speed up the tasks and improve the clarity of the instruction by the use of AR technology. The major benefit is the real-time location of the point requiring maintenance. This information is transmitted to the astronaut's AR glasses explicitly and at the right time by using text, graphics, video, sound etc. The system displays detailed visual instructions on the astronauts' AR glasses, guiding them step by step to perform the necessary procedures in the right order, such as "now press this button", "then turn the lever (B)". The new system also makes the invisible visible by enabling the visualization of telemetry data from equipment and other systems on board the space station, such as fault diagnostics, the latest maintenance data, life cycle, radiation, pressure or temperature - both in space and on the ground. All of this information can be displayed on the AR glasses. "The AR system that we developed runs on the Microsoft HoloLens platform. It supports the astronauts' work in a completely new way by displaying key telemetry data through an IoT (Internet-of-Things) interface," explains Project Manager Kaj Helin of VTT. "This is very impressive! We are exploring possibilities for an EdcAR follow on," says David Martinez Oliveira, Technical Officer, ESA. The first practical tests of the new AR systems have been performed in the ISS-Columbus training mock-up located in the ESA's on-ground European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. The test team included an experienced astronaut. ### The AR system can be applied in a number of sectors, such as the aviation industry, machine building, ships, mining machines and power plants. The two-year project was funded by ESA. The project partners are VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Thales Alenia Space, Italy and France, and ICCS (Institute of Communications and Computer Systems), Greece. Media material: Video: The EdcAR project: An augmented reality demonstration in the ISS's Columbus research laboratory. https://youtu.be/djUdsQ5pY0s (filmed by: Jaakko Karjalainen, VTT) Further information: Kaj Helin, Principal Scientist and Project Manager of ESA-EdcAR +358 40 847 9351, kaj.helin@vtt.fi Further information on VTT: Milka Lahnalammi-Vesivalo Communications Manager +358 40 5457 828 milka.lahnalammi-vesivalo@vtt.fi http://www.vtt.fi VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is the leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries. We use our research and knowledge to provide expert services for our domestic and international customers and partners, and for both private and public sectors. We use 4,000,000 hours of brainpower a year to develop new technological solutions. VTT in social media: Twitter @VTTFinland, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Periscope. A SIMPLE eye test could help solve the biggest global cause of irreversible blindness, glaucoma. In clinical trials, the pioneering diagnostic -- developed by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the Western Eye Hospital -- allowed doctors to see individual nerve cell death in the back of the eye. Glaucoma affects 60 million people in the world, with 1 in 10 suffering total sight loss in both eyes. Early detection means doctors can start treatments before sight loss begins. The test also has potential for early diagnosis of other degenerative neurological conditions, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. Results of first clinical trials with glaucoma patients are published today (28/04/17) in the journal BRAIN. Professor Francesca Cordeiro at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, who led the research, said: "Detecting glaucoma early is vital as symptoms are not always obvious. Although detection has been improving, most patients have lost a third of vision by the time they are diagnosed. Now, for the first time, we have been able to show individual cell death and detect the earliest signs of glaucoma. While we cannot cure the disease, our test means treatment can start before symptoms begin. In the future, the test could also be used to diagnose other neurodegenerative diseases." Loss of sight in patients with glaucoma is caused by the death of cells in the retina at the back of the eye. This cell death is called apoptosis. As with other neurodegenerative conditions, more and more nerve cells are lost as the disease progresses. Professor Philip Bloom, Chief Investigator at Western Eye Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, added: "Treatment is much more successful when it is begun in early stages of the disease, when sight loss is minimal. Our developments mean we could diagnose patients 10 years earlier than was previously possible." The technique developed is called DARC, which stands for detection of apoptosing retinal cells. It uses a specially developed fluorescent marker which attaches to cell proteins when injected into patients. Sick cells appear as white fluorescent spots during eye examination. UCL Business, the commercialisation company of UCL, holds the patents for the technology. The examination uses equipment used during routine hospital eye examinations. Researchers hope that eventually it may be possible for opticians to do the tests, enabling even earlier detection of the disease. The research is funded by Wellcome Trust. Bethan Hughes, from Wellcome's Innovation team said: "This innovation has the potential to transform lives for those who suffer loss of sight through glaucoma, and offers hope of a breakthrough in early diagnosis of other neurodegenerative diseases. Loss of sight as you age is an incredibly difficult disability, impacting quality of life and independence." Initial clinical trials were carried out on a small number of glaucoma patients and compared with tests on healthy people. The initial clinical trials established the safety of the test for patients. Further studies will now be carried out to into DARC and how it can be used not only to diagnose and treat glaucoma patients but also for other neurodegenerative conditions. ### Link to paper: The following link will go live at the time the embargo lifts: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/brain/awx088 For embargoed copies of the BRAIN paper and for media enquiries please contact Maggie Stratton: m.stratton@wellcome.ac.uk +44 (0)20 7611 8609/ +44 (0)787 211 2656 For further information about DARC technology please contact Emma Alam: e.alam@uclb.com +44 (0)207 679 9000/ +44 (0)7896 058667 About UCL Business UCL Business PLC (UCLB) is a leading technology transfer company that supports and commercialises research and innovations arising from UCL, one of the UK's top research-led universities. UCLB has a successful track record and a strong reputation for identifying and protecting promising new technologies and innovations from UCL academics. UCLB has a strong track record in commercialising medical technologies and provides technology transfer services to UCL's associated hospitals; University College London Hospitals, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the Royal Free London Hospital. It invests directly in development projects to maximise the potential of the research and manages the commercialisation process of technologies from laboratory to market. For further information, please visit: http://www.uclb.com Twitter: @UCL_Business About UCL (University College London) UCL was founded in 1826. We were the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to open up university education to those previously excluded from it, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by performance in a range of international rankings and tables. UCL currently has over 38,000 students from 150 countries and over 12,000 staff. Our annual income is more than 1 billion. http://www.ucl.ac.uk | Follow us on Twitter @uclnews | Watch our YouTube channel YouTube.com/UCLTV About Imperial Hospitals NHS Trust/Western Eye Hospital Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the largest hospital Trust's in England, providing acute and specialist healthcare for a population of nearly two million people. The Trust has five hospitals - Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea, St Mary's and The Western Eye -- as well as community services. The Western Eye Hospital is a specialist eye hospital in West London with a 24/7 accident and emergency department. The hospital's facilities also include outpatients, inpatients, day case and inpatient surgery. The equipment used in the study was funded by a grant from Imperial Health Charity. Imperial Health Charity (formerly Imperial College Healthcare Charity) raises funds for five London hospitals within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust: Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea, St Mary's and Western Eye hospitals. It has awarded more than 12million to 300 healthcare projects to date, and in the autumn of 2015 committed a further 20million to the hospitals of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust over the next three years for a series of major projects. About Wellcome Wellcome exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive. We're a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. We support scientists and researchers, take on big problems, fuel imaginations and spark debate. ERIE Pa. As farmers across Pennsylvania return to the fields to plant crops this spring, representatives from the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau (PFB) and the Pennsylvania Departments of Agriculture, State Police and Transportation are promoting safe driving on rural roads as part of Rural Roads Safety Week April 16-22. Erie County farmer Mark Troyer said, The purpose of Rural Roads Safety Week is to alert drivers that large, slow-moving farm vehicles and equipment are once again traveling on rural roads across the state. Be alert Were urging motorists to use caution when approaching farm vehicles and be patient if they are delayed, he said. Troyer plants and harvests 400 acres of potatoes near Waterford and also grows green beans, corn and other grains. Farm Bureau notes that while its timely to remind motorists to be cautious now that spring planting is underway, practicing safe driving habits on rural roads is important all year long. Erie County Farm Bureau President Nick Mobilia said drivers need to keep their guard up by reducing speeds and being more aware of other motorists to prevent accidents. Crash data According to PennDOTs 2016 crash data, there were 89 crashes, including 72 injuries and one fatality that involved farm equipment on rural roads in Pennsylvania and an additional 11 crashes involving farm equipment, with eight injuries and no fatalities in urban areas. In contrast, PennDOT data indicates there were 53,883 crashes on rural roads statewide last year, with 31,750 injuries and 758 fatalities from those crashes. Bill Petit, District Executive of PennDOT District 1, said last year there was a decrease in the number of crashes in rural areas, as well as in the number of injuries and fatalities associated with those crashes. Slow moving Farmers are legally allowed to operate farm equipment on Pennsylvania roads and they must display the Slow Moving Vehicle (SMV) Emblem, which is an orange colored triangle with a red border, on the rear of all vehicles or equipment that consistently travel at speeds of 25 mph or less. Major Edward Hoke, director of the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Patrol, urges drivers to slow down and limit distractions when behind the wheel. A brochure with background information and tips for motorists and farmers as part of Rural Roads Safety Week is available at pfb.com. Farmers have been urged to tell MPs, candidates and MEPs how a neonicotinoid ban would affect their farm. The National Farmers' Union (NFU) has said a blanket ban would have devastating consequences on outdoor crops, and the effect this would have on farming businesses. The call comes in response to European Commission proposals to widen current neonicotinoid restrictions to ban all uses on field-grown crops, extending its current restrictions to include non-flowering crops. The call also comes as the NFU's application for an emergency authorisation for neonicotinoid use is poised for refusal by UK Government officials. But the farming union has remained defiant, and is now calling on the Commission to reconsider its proposal to enable time for discussion with member states and the industry. It has written to the European Commission outlining its concerns and the consequences such a ban would have on farmers. 'Devastating' Proponents of a neonicotinoid ban say there is scientific consensus that bees are hamed by neonicotinoids NFU Vice President Guy Smith said a blanket ban of neonicotinoids on outdoor crops would be 'devastating' for farms across the country. The numbers of pests are rising across the country and dealing with these pressures is costly. Growing crops without these seed treatments could become very difficult. Neonicotinoid seed treatments form an incredibly important part of the integrated pest management approach which farmers adopt. I know it would make implementing this approach more difficult for farmers without these seed treatments. Nowhere else in the world are farmers under threat from losing neonicotinoid insecticides as they produce food under the threat from insects. By denying UK farmers these key crop production tools, our competitors who have access to these products are being gifted a market. Were encouraging farmers and growers to speak to their MP, prospective parliamentary candidates and MEP to describe the impact a blanket ban would have on their farm. If politicians are made aware of the consequences of a ban, they may be persuaded to vote against one. The NFU said the proposals would not only impact major crops such as cereals, but also sugar beet and vegetables as 'there are no effective alternatives to neonicotinoid seed treatments.' Bee health Proponents of a neonicotinoid ban say there is scientific consensus that bees are exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides in fields and suffer harm from the doses they receive. For example, Stirling University researchers have said bees exposed to neonicotinoids fail to learn how to buzz properly and in turn they fail to release the pollen from some flowers, such as those of crops like tomatoes and potatoes. Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg said a neonicotinoid ban is good news for the environment but even if the pesticides are banned 'similar chemicals will still be permitted.' "The EU must apply the same strict standards to all pesticides and support the transition to ecological methods of pest control." Plans which would have forced millions of businesses and self-employed people to file multiple tax returns each year have been shelved by the Government. The policy, known as Making Tax Digital has been dropped from the Finance Bill. The decision means that the scheme, which would have affected large businesses from 2018 and small businesses from 2019, will be delayed by at least a year. It also raises the possibility that it could be scrapped altogether. Worst-hit by the change would be the self-employed with turnovers of more than 85,000, who from April 2018 would have had to file at least five returns per tax year in addition to regular VAT returns. In what has been described as a 'complex' scheme, farming unions have said the plans would require access to digital infrastructure that is not available in many rural areas, as 5% of the population does not have adequate access to broadband many of those people are farmers. 'Welcomed' decision Farmers' Union of Wales (FUW) President Glyn Roberts said the farming community have welcomed the decision. We very much welcome that this scheme has been dropped from the Finance Bill and urge the Government to not just delay its implementation but to scrap it completely. Across the country millions of individuals and businesses are benefiting from the convenience and simplicity of digital services and whilst this move would have brought benefits to some, there is a real concern that those in rural Wales, who have no access to internet, would be at a severe disadvantage. Whilst this proposal to bring business tax into the digital age is admirable, many people who live in rural areas are still waiting for the digital age to come to them. Those without a connection cannot diversify their businesses, that they cannot support children with homework as many need to do and that they cannot connect readily with Government programmes for advice and support payments as they are mandated to do. Government talks about future proofing our economy in light of Brexit and investment in broadband should therefore be a top priority for the Welsh administration, given the wider economic benefits it will bring to our rural communities. Five things for farmers to watch out for in Autumn Statement Summary Company Announcement Date: April 26, 2017 FDA Publish Date: February 09, 2018 Product Type: Food & Beverages Spices, Flavors & Salts Food & Beverage Safety Reason for Announcement: Recall Reason Description Listeria Company Name: Local Bounty Brand Name: Brand Name(s) Farming Fish Product Description: Product Description Organic Basil Pesto Company Announcement Our Local Bounty of Rogue River, Oregon is recalling 312 (8.5oz) containers of the Farming Fish brand Organic Basil Pesto with Watercress, because it has the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. The Basil Pesto with Watercress, UPC 7 23175 33586 8, was distributed in retail stores in Oregon. The affected product was packaged in 8.5 oz. plastic deli containers and has the enjoy or freeze by dates of 4/30/2017. As an additional precaution, we are also recalling product with the enjoy or freeze by dates of 5/6/2017, 5/13/2017, and 5/20/2017. The recall was the result of a routine sampling program. Consumers who have purchased affected products should not consume the product and are urged to return it to the place of purchase for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact the company at 541-582-0415. The Farming Fish apologizes for any inconvenience experienced by our valued consumers and retail customers and will refund not only this date code but ANY product in an 8.5oz plastic deli container to bring full peace of mind to all customers. The pesto will be packaged in a glass container moving forward. We take the safety of our products very seriously, states Olivia Hittner, Co-owner of The Farming Fish. Immediately after being notified of the potential health concern, we took action to identify the products implicated in the recall and we discontinued shipment of all affected product. We are working quickly with distributors and retailers to remove the product from shelves and eliminate any risk to consumers. Company Contact Information Consumers: The Farming Fish (541) 582-0415 This article is archived and available in its entirety for free for registered members only. Please login or register to read more. L`Artisan Parfumeur's newest fragrance, Histoire d'Orangers, comes out in June 2017. Perfumer Marie Salamagne of Firmenich, passionate about dancing and painting and always in search of lively emotions, tried to capture her memories of the journey through the valley of Souss in Morocco, between Tazenaght and Taroudant; the journey that allegedly left a huge influence on her and after which she came back a different person. Sunset over the valley and Taroudant, with its exceptional hues and intensified light, and the contrast between the heat of Morocco and the shade of orange tree foliage is presented in the composition of Histoire d'Orangers. Its top notes of neroli bigarade and white tea lean into the heart of Helvetolide musk and orange blossom absolute. Ambrox molecule and tonka bean absolute are in the drydown. Top notes: neroli, white tea Heart: orange blossom, hevletolide Base: ambrox, tonka The fragrance is available as a 100 ml Eau de Parfum at the price of 122. Thank you to GEB reader Adino for letting us know that Street View has recently come to Guatemala. Street View coverage, Guatemala. View in Google Maps. View in New Google Earth (requires Google Chrome or Android app). View in Google Maps. View in New Google Earth (requires Google Chrome or Android app). View in Google Maps. View in New Google Earth (requires Google Chrome or Android app) We were not able to find any Mayan pyramids captured in Street View other than glimpses of them through the trees, but there are user submitted photos available. The Street View camera also took a boat ride on Lake Atitlan. Fitch takes rating action on Italian insurers on sovereign downgrade On April 26 Fitch Ratings has affirmed Assicurazioni GENERALI Spa's (GENERALI) and core subsidiaries' Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) Ratings at 'A-', following the recent downgrade of Italy's IDR. Moreover, Societa Reale Mutua di Assicurazioni's (Reale Mutua) and its core Spanish subsidiary Reale Seguros Generales' (Reale Seguros) IFS ratings were affirmed at 'BBB+'. Fitch has downgraded SACE S.p.A.'s (SACE) Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB+'. The Outlooks are Stable. A full list of rating actions is at the end of this commentary. Fitch's press release reads: KEY RATING DRIVERS The rating actions follow Fitch's recent downgrade of Italy's Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency IDRs to 'BBB' from 'BBB+', with Stable Outlook. GENERALI's ratings are heavily influenced by the concentrated exposure to Italian sovereign debt (EUR66 billion at end-2016, 2.7x consolidated shareholders' funds), which is reflected in the sovereign constraint on GENERALI's ratings at 'A-'. This is two notches higher than the sovereign rating of Italy (BBB/Stable), in recognition of GENERALI's resilient capital position and strong geographical diversification (with around 60% of operating profit from outside Italy), including significant operations in France and Germany with strong market positions. Reale Mutua's ratings are also influenced by its concentrated exposure to Italian sovereign debt, and this is reflected in our view of the company's asset concentration risk. To match domestic liabilities, Reale Mutua held EUR4.9 billion of Italian sovereign bonds or around 2x consolidated shareholders' funds at end-June 2016. This is reflected in the sovereign constraint on Reale Mutua's ratings at 'BBB+', one notch above the sovereign rating, in recognition of Reale Mutua's strong credit profile and international diversification (with 25% of net premiums from Spain). The concentrated asset exposure in Italy also heavily influences SACE's ratings, and this is reflected in our view of its asset concentration risk and the sovereign constraint on SACE's ratings at 'BBB+'. This is one notch higher than Italy's sovereign rating, in recognition of SACE's strong credit profile and diversification by geography. At end-2015, SACE held EUR1.5 billion (25% of total invested assets) of domestic sovereign bonds and EUR3.6 billion (60% of total invested assets) of cash balances with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, SACE's parent company, and some Italian banks. The ratings of Unipol Gruppo Finanziario (Unipol: Long-Term IDR BBB-/Stable), UnipolSai (Unipol's primary insurance subsidiary: IFS BBB/Stable) and SIAT Societa Italiana Assicurazioni e Riassicurazioni p.A (IFS BBB/Stable) are not affected by the Italian sovereign downgrade. The IFS ratings of UnipolSai and SIAT are at the same level as Italy's IDR, and their concentrated exposure to Italian government debt is already factored into their ratings. Unipol's Long-Term IDR is below Italy's Long-Term IDR and is not constrained by the sovereign. RATING SENSITIVITIES GENERALI GENERALI's ratings could be downgraded if the group's Prism FBM score falls below 'Strong' for a sustained period or financial leverage ratio rises to more than 35%. GENERALI's ratings will also be downgraded if Italy's sovereign rating is downgraded. An upgrade of GENERALI's ratings is unlikely in the near future given the sovereign constraint at two notches above the sovereign rating, the maximum level possible according to our methodology. Reale Mutua Reale Mutua's ratings could be downgraded if the group's combined ratio deteriorates to above 105% or if the Prism FBM score falls below 'Very Strong'. Reale Mutua's ratings will also be downgraded if Italy's sovereign rating is downgraded. An upgrade of Reale Mutua's ratings is unlikely in the near future given the sovereign constraint already at one notch above the sovereign rating. SACE Deterioration in the credit quality of SACE's investments could lead to a downgrade of SACE, as could a significant weakening in SACE's capitalisation. SACE's ratings will be downgraded if Italy's sovereign rating is downgraded. Should Italy's rating be downgraded to 'BBB-' or lower, it is likely that Fitch would reconsider its approach of rating SACE one notch above the sovereign and would equalise its rating with the sovereign. An upgrade of SACE's ratings is unlikely in the near future given the sovereign constraint already at one notch above the sovereign rating. FULL LIST OF RATING ACTIONS GENERALI Assicurazioni GENERALI SpA: IDR affirmed at 'A-'; IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlooks Stable GENERALI Iard: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Vie: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Deutschland Holding AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Deutschland Pensionskasse AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Cosmos Versicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Cosmos LebensversicherungsAG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable AachenMuenchener Lebensversicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Lebensversicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable AachenMuenchener Versicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Versicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Central Krankenversicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Espana, S.A. de Seguros Y Reaseguros: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI Versicherung AG (Austria): IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Envivas Krankenversicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Advocard Rechtsschutzversicherung AG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable Dialog LebensversicherungsAG: IFS affirmed at 'A-'; Outlook Stable GENERALI (Schweiz) Holding AG: IDR affirmed at 'BBB'; Outlook Stable GENERALI's debt ratings are as follows: Assicurazioni GENERALI SpA Senior unsecured debt affirmed at 'A-' EUR1bn 4.125% subordinated affirmed at 'BBB+' Other subordinated debt affirmed at 'BBB' GENERALI Finance BV (guaranteed by Assicurazioni GENERALI SpA) Subordinated debt affirmed at 'BBB' Reale Mutua Societa Reale Mutua di Assicurazioni: IFS affirmed at 'BBB+'; Outlook Stable Reale Seguros Generales: IFS affirmed at 'BBB+'; Outlook Stable SACE Long-Term Foreign-Currency IDR downgraded to 'BBB+' from 'A-'; Outlook Stable Long-Term Local-Currency IDR downgraded to 'BBB+' from 'A-'; Outlook Stable Short-Term IDR affirmed at 'F2' Perpetual subordinated notes downgraded to 'BBB-' from 'BBB' Author: Daniela GHETU on 27.04.2017 Archive Comment this article 0 comments Atention! "Comment" and "E-mail" are mandatory Name: If you are logged on and you do not fill in your name, will be used the name that you used when you registered If you are not logged on, your name will appear preceded by '(Anonymous)'. For authentication, click here If you are logged on and you do not fill in your name, will be used the name that you used when you registered E-mail: Comment: < 10.000 car. Fill in the code from the image: US-led air strikes have been taking on the war against Islamic State (IS) terrorists, but this time for a change its the wild boars. At least 3 IS terrorists were killed after they were attacked by a stampeding herd of wild boars in Iraq. The incident took place on Sunday where 3 IS terrorists were killed following an altercation with the wild boars in southern Kirkuk. The terrorists had failed to set an ambush in northern Iraq. According to local media reports, the terrorists were planning to attack the local tribesmen in the area who had also formed anti-terrorist groups in Hawija district. Moreover, around 6-8 IS terrorists are supposed to hiding in the area near the river Zaghitoun. Whats could possibly have been the reason for the wild boars to attack the IS terrorists is the movement of militants that would have disturbed the wild boars. Source : NewsX New Delhi : Pakistan has once again reportedly turned down consular access to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court. Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale met Pakistans Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and made a fresh request for consular access to Jadhav, the external affairs ministry said in press release in New Delhi. This was the 16th request for access. However, Pakistani media reported that Janjua turned down Bambawales demand saying, access under (bilateral) agreement is meant for prisoners and not for spies. Pakistan has rejected Indias request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. Pakistan Army had also previously ruled out granting India consular access to Jadhav, who was sentenced to death for espionage and subversive activities. Pakistan Army had also previously ruled out granting India consular access to Jadhav, who was sentenced to death for espionage and subversive activities. At the same time, India today handed over to Pakistan an appeal by the mother of retired Indian Navy officer, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Janjua was also given by Bambawale a petition by Jadhavs mother seeking the Pakistan governments intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. It is the second time that Bambawale has met Janjua in connection with the naval officers case. As per the appeal system in Pakistan, a death row convict has to move an appellate court within 40 days of the pronouncement of the verdict. Pakistan was also requested to facilitate visas for the mother and father of Jadhav. They wish to travel to Pakistan to meet him and also to personally file the petition and the appeal. They have applied for necessary visa with the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, the ministry added, as per PTI. On April 14, Bambawale had met with the Pakistan foreign secretary and expressed Indias concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told the media that after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authentic copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the pre-meditated murder was carried out. Source : Zee News Dhaka : Thousands of supporters of a hardline Bangladeshi Islamist group staged protests yesterday calling for the removal or destruction of a controversial statue at the nations highest court. The statue of lady justice has ruffled feathers in the Muslim-majority nation, with hardliners in recent weeks protesting against what they say is a Greek god unbefitting of Bangladesh. Protesters want the statue of the blindfolded woman holding scales said to represent justice destroyed and replaced with a Quran, despite Bangladeshs secular Constitution. Supporters of the Islami Andolan Bangladesh (IAB) gathered after Friday prayers outside the countrys national mosque Baitul Mukarram, in central Dhaka, chanting and wielding placards with slogans such as demolish the statue on the court premises. Local police chief Rafiqul Islam said: Nearly 10,000 protesters attended the rally. Security has been beefed up in the area. IAB spokesman Atiqur Rahman said the group also wanted the removal of the countrys chief justice because of his procrastination in removing the statue. Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a meeting of top Islamic seminary teachers that she, too, disliked the statue, boosting the hardliners stance. Secular rights groups accused her of kowtowing to the Islamists in preparation for an early general election. Court officials have defended the statue as a symbol of justice. Conservative Bangladesh has experienced increasing tensions between hardliners and secularists in recent years, suffering a spate of killings of atheist bloggers, religious minorities and foreigners. Source : Straits Times Thunder fans who were looking for some good news following their playoff ouster got it today from Russell Westbrook, writes Royce Young of ESPN.com. After conducting his exit interview, the MVP candidate expressed a desire to remain in Oklahoma City, even though he didnt specifically address a new extension. Thats something, like I said, I havent thought about anything, obviously, Westbrook said. Everybody knows that I like Oklahoma City and I love being here and I love everybody here. But I havent even thought about that. Obviously, Oklahoma City is a place that I want to be. Westbrook signed a three-year extension last summer, but it includes a player option that could put him back on the free agent market by July of 2018. The new collective bargaining agreement gives him a chance to sign another extension that would make him the leagues highest-paid player and could total as much as $220MM over five seasons. The Thunder are expected to make the extension offer, Young notes, adding that it would cause panic in the organization if Westbrook doesnt accept it. However, given the loyalty he displayed last summer in the wake of Kevin Durants departure, there is confidence that he will remain in OKC. Westbrook said his primary concern is fatherhood, with his first child due in May, and he is in no rush to address his contract. First quarter revenues were $1.3 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year period. Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: WYN) today announced results for the three months ended March 31, 2017. FIRST QUARTER 2017 OPERATING RESULTS First quarter revenues were $1.3 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year period. Net income for the first quarter of 2017 was $141 million compared with $96 million for the first quarter of 2016. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) were $1.33 compared with $0.84 for the prior year period. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2017, which excludes charges and gains in 2017 and charges in 2016 as detailed in Table 7 of this press release, was $120 million compared with $127 millionfor the first quarter of 2016, primarily reflecting a higher provision for loan losses and benefits in the prior-year period related to business interruption claims that were absent in the first quarter of 2017. Adjusted diluted EPS was $1.14 compared with $1.12 per share in the prior year period, reflecting the benefit of the Company's share repurchase program. First quarter EBITDA was $266 million, compared with $267 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes charges in both 2017 and 2016 as detailed in Table 8 of this press release, was $278 million, compared with $291 million in the prior year period, primarily reflecting a higher provision for loan losses and benefits in the prior-year period related to business interruption claims that were absent in the first quarter of 2017. "Our first quarter results were right in line with our expectations," said Stephen P. Holmes, chairman and CEO. "We're excited by the progress we're making in connecting our customers and brands through Wyndham Rewards to enhance customer acquisition, experience and retention. We expect this to result in stronger growth and greater long-term value for our shareholders this year and for years to come. "In addition, we are pleased to welcome Mike Brown as the new CEO and president of our vacation ownership business," continued Mr. Holmes. "Mike is a 25-year hospitality industry veteran and brings an ideal combination of strategic vision, operational expertise, and industry knowledge to the role. I am confident that Mike is the right leader to take Wyndham Vacation Ownership to the next level." For the three months ended March 31, 2017, net cash provided by operating activities was $238 million, compared with $261 million in the prior year period. The decrease primarily reflects changes in the timing of inventory purchases. Free cash flow was $203 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, compared with $218 million for the same period in 2016, primarily reflecting the changes in net cash provided by operating activities. The Company defines free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. FIRST QUARTER 2017 BUSINESS UNIT RESULTS Hotel Group Revenues were $298 million in the first quarter of 2017, compared with $295 million in the first quarter of 2016. EBITDA was $85 million in the first quarter compared with $84 million in the prior-year quarter, growing 2% on a currency-neutral basis. Results reflect higher franchise fees and growth in the Wyndham Rewards credit card program, partially offset by lower occupancy at the Company's owned hotel in Puerto Rico due to consumer concerns about the Zika virus. First quarter domestic same-store RevPAR increased 1.7% compared with the first quarter of 2016. In constant currency, total system-wide same-store RevPAR increased 2.2%. As of March 31, 2017, the Company's hotel system consisted of approximately 8,100 properties and 699,800 rooms, a 3.0% net room increase compared with the first quarter of 2016. The development pipeline increased to 1,130 hotels and approximately 143,100 rooms, of which 59% were international and 68% were new construction. Destination Network Revenues were $391 million in the first quarter of 2017, compared with $385 million in the first quarter of 2016, an increase of 2%. In constant currency and excluding acquisitions, revenues increased 1%. Vacation rental revenues were $184 million compared with $183 million in the prior year quarter. In constant currency and excluding acquisitions, vacation rental revenues increased 1%, reflecting a 2.8% increase in transaction volume partially offset by a 2.0% decline in the average net price per rental. Transaction volume benefited from capacity increases across the Company's U.K.-based cottages and parks brands and Denmark-based Novasol brand, partially offset by the impact from the timing of the Easter holiday. Average net price per rental declined due to the mix impact of growth in the Company's more modestly priced brands and the timing of the Easter holiday. Exchange revenues were $183 million compared with $182 million in the prior year quarter. In constant currency, exchange revenue per member increased 0.8% and the average number of members declined 0.6%. EBITDA was $102 million in the first quarter of 2017, including $2 million from acquisitions. This compares with first quarter 2016 EBITDA of $81 million or adjusted EBITDA of $105 million. 2016 adjusted EBITDA excluded a $24 million loss related to a currency devaluation. First quarter year-over-year EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA comparisons reflect the absence of a benefit of $3 million from business disruption claims received in the first quarter of 2016, as well as the unfavorable impact of the timing of the Easter holiday. Vacation Ownership Revenues were $648 million in the first quarter of 2017, compared with $641 million in the first quarter of 2016. Gross VOI sales increased 3% in the first quarter of 2017. Volume per guest (VPG) was up 4.9%, reflecting both a higher average close rate and transaction size. Tour flow declined 1.7% due to the closure of sales offices as part of a restructuring in the second half of last year. EBITDA was $118 million in the first quarter of 2017 compared with $136 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $124 million in the first quarter of 2017. First quarter year-over-year EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA results reflect higher gross VOI sales offset by a higher provision for loan losses and the absence of a $6 million benefit from business interruption insurance claims received in the first quarter of 2016. OTHER ITEMS The Company repurchased 1.9 million shares of common stock for $150 million during the first quarter of 2017 at an average price of $80.93. From April 1 through April 25, 2017, the Company repurchased an additional 0.4 million shares for $36 million. Net interest expense in the first quarter of 2017 was $31 million, flat compared with the first quarter of 2016. Depreciation and amortization in the first quarter of 2017 was $63 million, compared with $62 million in the first quarter of 2016. Balance Sheet Information as of March 31, 2017: Cash and cash equivalents of $222 million, compared with $185 million at December 31, 2016 Vacation ownership contract receivables, net of $2.8 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2016 Vacation ownership and other inventory of $1.4 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2016 Securitized vacation ownership debt of $2.1 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2016 Long-term debt of $3.6 billion, compared with $3.4 billion at December 31, 2016. The remaining borrowing capacity on the revolving credit facility, net of commercial paper borrowings, was $1.3 billion as of March 31, 2017, compared with $1.1 billion at December 31, 2016. OUTLOOK The Company provides the following guidance for the full year 2017: Reiterates revenues of approximately $5.80 billion to $5.95 billion Updates adjusted net income to approximately $631 million to $652 million from $637 million to $658 million, reflecting higher interest expense from a new long-term debt issuance in the first quarter 2017 that replaced lower cost borrowings Reiterates adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.41 billion to $1.44 billion Updates adjusted diluted EPS to approximately $5.98 to $6.18 based on a diluted share count of 105.5 million from $5.90 to $6.10based on a diluted share count of 108 million In determining adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS, the Company excludes certain items which are otherwise included in determining the comparable GAAP financial measures. A description of the adjustments that have been applicable for the reported periods in determining adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS are reflected in Tables 7 and 8 of this press release. The Company is providing an outlook for net income, EBITDA and EPS only on a non-GAAP basis because the Company is unable to predict with reasonable certainty the totality or ultimate outcome or occurrence of these adjustments or other potential adjustments that may arise in the future during the outlook period, which can be dependent on future events that may not be reliably predicted. See Table 10 for certain non-GAAP information concerning the outlook period. ABOUT WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE: WYN) is one of the largest global hospitality companies, providing travelers with access to a collection of trusted hospitality brands in hotels, vacation ownership, and unique accommodations including vacation exchange, holiday parks, and managed home rentals. With a collective inventory of nearly 130,000 places to stay across more than 110 countries on six continents, Wyndham Worldwide and its 38,000 associates welcomes people to experience travel the way they want. This is enhanced by Wyndham Rewards, the Company's re-imagined guest loyalty program across its businesses, which is making it simpler for members to earn more rewards and redeem their points faster. Wyndham Worldwide Corporation Earnings Release Schedules Quarter One - March 31, 2017 Table of Contents Table No. Consolidated Statements of Income (Unaudited) 1 Operating Results of Reportable Segments 2 Operating Statistics 3 Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows and Reconciliation of Free Cash Flows (Unaudited) 4 Revenue Detail by Reportable Segment 5 Brand System Details 6 Non-GAAP Reconciliation of Adjusted Net Income and EPS 7 Non-GAAP Reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA by Reportable Segment 8 Non-GAAP Reconciliation of Gross VOI Sales 9 Non-GAAP Reconciliation of 2017 Outlook 10 Non-GAAP Reconciliation - Constant Currency, Currency Neutral and Acquisitions 11 Schedule of Debt 12 Table 1 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (In millions, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Net revenues Service and membership fees $ 636 $ 634 Vacation ownership interest sales 351 342 Franchise fees 141 138 Consumer financing 111 107 Other 80 82 Net revenues 1,319 1,303 Expenses Operating 601 613 Cost of vacation ownership interests 36 37 Consumer financing interest 18 18 Marketing and reservation 195 192 General and administrative 193 186 Asset impairments 5 - Restructuring 7 - Depreciation and amortization 63 62 Total expenses 1,118 1,108 Operating income 201 195 Other (income)/expense, net (2) (10) Interest expense 33 33 Early extinguishment of debt - 11 Interest income (2) (2) Income before income taxes 172 163 Provision for income taxes 31 67 Net income $ 141 $ 96 Earnings per share Basic $ 1.34 $ 0.85 Diluted 1.33 0.84 Weighted average shares outstanding Basic 105 113 Diluted 106 114 Table 2 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation OPERATING RESULTS OF REPORTABLE SEGMENTS (In millions) In addition to other measures, management evaluates the operating results of each of its reportable segments based upon net revenues and "EBITDA", which is defined as net income before depreciation and amortization, interest expense (excluding consumer financing interest), early extinguishment of debt, interest income (excluding consumer financing revenues) and income taxes, each of which is presented on the Company's Consolidated Statements of Income. The Company also uses adjusted EBITDA as a financial measure of its operating performance. The Company believes that EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are useful measures of assessing performance of the Company and for the Company's segments which, when considered with GAAP measures, give a more complete understanding of its operating performance and assist our investors in evaluating our ongoing operating performance for the current reporting period and, where provided, over different reporting periods, by adjusting for certain items which may be recurring or nonrecurring and which in our view do not necessarily reflect ongoing operating performance. We also internally use these measures to assess our operating performance, both in absolute terms and in comparison to other companies, and in evaluating or making selected compensation decisions. These supplemental disclosures are in addition to GAAP reported measures. The Company's presentation of EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similarly-titled measures used by other companies. The following tables summarize net revenues and EBITDA for the Company's reportable segments, as well as reconcile net income to EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Net Revenues EBITDA Net Revenues EBITDA Hotel Group $ 298 $ 85 $ 295 $ 84 Destination Network 391 102 385 81 Vacation Ownership 648 118 641 136 Total Reportable Segments 1,337 305 1,321 301 Corporate and Other (a) (18) (39) (18) (34) Total Company $ 1,319 $ 266 $ 1,303 $ 267 Reconciliation of net income to EBITDA Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Net income $ 141 $ 96 Provision for income taxes 31 67 Depreciation and amortization 63 62 Interest expense 33 33 Early extinguishment of debt - 11 Interest income (2) (2) EBITDA $ 266 $ 267 (a) Includes the elimination of transactions between segments. The following tables summarize net revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the Company's reportable segments for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (for a description of adjustments and reconciliation by segment, see Table 8): Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Adjusted Adjusted Net Revenues EBITDA Net Revenues EBITDA Hotel Group $ 298 $ 85 $ 295 $ 84 Destination Network 391 102 385 105 Vacation Ownership 648 124 641 136 Total Reportable Segments 1,337 311 1,321 325 Corporate and Other (a) (18) (33) (18) (34) Total Company $ 1,319 $ 278 $ 1,303 $ 291 Table 3 (1 of 2) Wyndham Worldwide Corporation OPERATING STATISTICS The following operating statistics are the drivers of our revenues and therefore provide an enhanced understanding of our businesses: Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Hotel Group(a) Number of Rooms 2017 699,800 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 679,100 683,300 689,800 697,600 N/A 2015 667,400 668,500 671,900 678,000 N/A 2014 646,900 650,200 655,300 660,800 N/A RevPAR 2017 $ 31.73 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 31.59 $ 39.10 $ 43.04 $ 32.92 $ 36.67 2015 $ 32.84 $ 39.82 $ 43.34 $ 32.98 $ 37.26 2014 $ 32.30 $ 40.11 $ 43.71 $ 34.06 $ 37.57 Destination Network Average Number of Members (in 000s) 2017 3,817 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 3,841 3,857 3,868 3,843 3,852 2015 3,822 3,831 3,835 3,836 3,831 2014 3,727 3,748 3,777 3,808 3,765 Exchange Revenue Per Member 2017 $ 192.01 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 189.78 $ 164.61 $ 164.39 $ 151.19 $ 167.48 2015 $ 194.06 $ 167.81 $ 163.38 $ 152.00 $ 169.29 2014 $ 200.78 $ 179.17 $ 171.77 $ 157.24 $ 177.12 Vacation Rental Transactions (in 000s) (a) (b) 2017 538 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 500 409 508 350 1,767 2015 459 390 462 319 1,630 2014 429 376 455 293 1,552 Average Net Price Per Vacation Rental(a) (b) 2017 $ 343.07 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 366.08 $ 492.83 $ 599.59 $ 430.14 $ 475.24 2015 $ 361.20 $ 513.14 $ 642.00 $ 452.19 $ 494.92 2014 $ 410.04 $ 577.13 $ 727.40 $ 492.25 $ 558.95 Vacation Ownership (a) Gross Vacation Ownership Interest (VOI) Sales (in 000s) (c) 2017 $ 439,000 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 428,000 $ 518,000 $ 564,000 $ 502,000 $ 2,012,000 2015 $ 390,000 $ 502,000 $ 565,000 $ 507,000 $ 1,965,000 2014 $ 410,000 $ 496,000 $ 513,000 $ 470,000 $ 1,889,000 Tours (in 000s) 2017 176 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 179 213 230 197 819 2015 168 206 227 200 801 2014 170 208 225 191 794 Volume Per Guest (VPG) 2017 $ 2,354 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 2,244 $ 2,328 $ 2,320 $ 2,399 $ 2,324 2015 $ 2,177 $ 2,353 $ 2,354 $ 2,390 $ 2,326 2014 $ 2,272 $ 2,280 $ 2,158 $ 2,336 $ 2,257 Note: Full year amounts may not add across due to rounding. (a) Includes the impact of acquisitions/dispositions from the acquisition/disposition dates forward. Therefore, the operating statistics are not presented on a comparable basis. (b) The destination network operating statistics excluding our U.K.-based camping business sold in Q4 2014 are as follows: Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Vacation Rental Transactions (in 000s) 2014 429 367 431 292 1,518 Average Net Price Per Vacation Rental 2014 $ 410.02 $ 578.02 $ 700.56 $ 492.64 $ 548.93 (c) Includes Gross VOI sales under the Company's Wyndham Asset Affiliate Model (WAAM) Just-in-Time. (See Table 9 for a reconciliation of Gross VOI sales to vacation ownership interest sales). ADDITIONAL DATA Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Hotel Group Number of Properties 2017 8,080 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 7,830 7,880 7,930 8,040 N/A 2015 7,670 7,700 7,760 7,810 N/A 2014 7,500 7,540 7,590 7,650 N/A Vacation Ownership Provision for Loan Losses (in 000s) (*) 2017 $ 85,000 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 63,000 $ 90,000 $ 104,000 $ 86,000 $ 342,000 2015 $ 46,000 $ 60,000 $ 78,000 $ 64,000 $ 248,000 2014 $ 60,000 $ 70,000 $ 70,000 $ 60,000 $ 260,000 Note: Full year amounts may not add across due to rounding. (*) Represents provision for estimated losses on vacation ownership contract receivables originated during the period, which is recorded as a contra revenue to vacation ownership interest sales on the Consolidated Statements of Income. Table 3 (2 of 2) Wyndham Worldwide Corporation OPERATING STATISTICS GLOSSARY OF TERMS Hotel Group Number of Rooms: Represents the number of rooms at hotel group properties at the end of the period which are either (i) under franchise and/or management agreements, or company owned and (ii) properties under affiliation agreements for which the Company receives a fee for reservation and/or other services provided. Average Occupancy Rate: Represents the percentage of available rooms occupied during the period. Average Daily Rate (ADR): Represents the average rate charged for renting a lodging room for one day. RevPAR: Represents revenue per available room and is calculated by multiplying average occupancy rate by ADR. Comparable RevPAR represents RevPAR of hotels which are included in both periods. Destination Network Average Number of Members: Represents members in our vacation exchange programs who paid annual membership dues as of the end of the period or who are within the allowed grace period. For additional fees, such participants are entitled to exchange intervals for intervals at other properties affiliated with the Company's vacation exchange business. In addition, certain participants may exchange intervals for other leisure-related services and products. Exchange Revenue Per Member: Represents total annualized revenues generated from fees associated with memberships, exchange transactions, member-related rentals and other servicing for the period divided by the average number of vacation exchange members during the period. Vacation Rental Transactions: Represents the number of transactions that are generated in connection with customers booking their vacation rental stays through one of our vacation brands. One rental transaction is recorded for each standard one-week rental. Average Net Price Per Vacation Rental: Represents the net rental price generated from renting vacation properties to customers and other related rental servicing fees divided by the number of vacation rental transactions. Vacation Ownership Gross Vacation Ownership Interest Sales: Represents sales of vacation ownership interest (VOIs), including WAAM sales, before the net effect of percentage-of-completion accounting and loan loss provisions. We believe gross VOI sales provide an enhanced understanding of the performance of our vacation ownership business because it directly measures the sales volume of this business during a given reporting period. See Table 9 for a reconciliation of Gross VOI sales to vacation ownership interest sales. Tours: Represents the number of tours taken by guests in our efforts to sell VOIs. Volume per Guest (VPG): Represents Gross VOI sales (excluding tele-sales upgrades, which are non-tour upgrade sales) divided by the number of tours. The Company has excluded non-tour upgrade sales in the calculation of VPG because non-tour upgrade sales are generated by a different marketing channel. See Table 9 for a detail of tele-sales upgrades for 2014-2017. General Constant Currency: Represents a comparison eliminating the effects of foreign exchange rate fluctuations between periods (foreign currency translation). Currency-Neutral: Represents a comparison eliminating the effects of foreign exchange rate fluctuations between periods (foreign currency translation) and the impact caused by any foreign exchange related activities (i.e., hedges, balance sheet remeasurements and/or adjustments). Table 4 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS AND RECONCILIATION OF FREE CASH FLOWS (In millions) (Unaudited) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Net cash provided by operating activities $ 238 $ 261 Net cash used in investing activities (79) (90) Net cash used in financing activities (124) (27) Effect of changes in exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents 2 3 Net increase in cash and cash equivalents $ 37 $ 147 Free Cash Flow: We define free cash flow to be net cash provided by operating activities less property and equipment additions which we also refer to as capital expenditures. We believe free cash flow to be a useful operating performance measure to evaluate the ability of our operations to generate cash for uses other than capital expenditures and, after debt service and other obligations, our ability to grow our business through acquisitions, development advances and equity investments, as well as our ability to return cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. A limitation of using free cash flow versus the GAAP measures of net cash provided by operating activities, net cash used in investing activities and net cash used in financing activities as a means for evaluating Wyndham Worldwide is that free cash flow does not represent the total cash movement for the period as detailed in the consolidated statement of cash flows. The following table provides more details on the GAAP financial measure that is most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measure and the related reconciliation between these financial measures: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Net cash provided by operating activities $ 238 $ 261 Less: Property and equipment additions (35) (43) Free cash flow $ 203 $ 218 Table 5 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation REVENUE DETAIL BY REPORTABLE SEGMENT (In millions) 2017 2016 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Year Hotel Group Royalties and Franchise Fees $ 79 N/A N/A N/A N/A $ 74 $ 94 $ 105 $ 94 $ 367 Marketing, Reservation and Wyndham Rewards Revenues (a) 83 N/A N/A N/A N/A 83 103 125 92 405 Hotel Management Reimbursable Revenues (b) 66 N/A N/A N/A N/A 67 71 67 65 271 Intersegment Trademark Fees 13 N/A N/A N/A N/A 13 15 16 14 56 Owned Hotel Revenues 23 N/A N/A N/A N/A 27 19 17 17 81 Ancillary Revenues (c) 34 N/A N/A N/A N/A 31 32 34 34 129 Total Hotel Group 298 N/A N/A N/A N/A 295 334 364 316 1,309 Destination Network Exchange Revenues 183 N/A N/A N/A N/A 182 159 159 145 645 Rental Revenues 184 N/A N/A N/A N/A 183 202 304 151 840 Ancillary Revenues (d) 24 N/A N/A N/A N/A 20 23 23 21 86 Total Destination Network 391 N/A N/A N/A N/A 385 384 486 317 1,571 Vacation Ownership Vacation Ownership Interest Sales 351 N/A N/A N/A N/A 342 409 441 415 1,606 Consumer Financing 111 N/A N/A N/A N/A 107 108 112 113 440 Property Management Fees and Reimbursable Revenues 175 N/A N/A N/A N/A 164 161 168 168 660 WAAM Fee-for-Service Commissions 2 N/A N/A N/A N/A 17 16 13 - 46 Ancillary Revenues (e) 9 N/A N/A N/A N/A 11 11 10 9 42 Total Vacation Ownership 648 N/A N/A N/A N/A 641 705 744 705 2,794 Total Reportable Segments $ 1,337 N/A N/A N/A N/A $ 1,321 $ 1,423 $ 1,594 $ 1,338 $ 5,674 2015 2014 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Year Hotel Group Royalties and Franchise Fees $ 74 $ 96 $ 103 $ 87 $ 361 $ 68 $ 88 $ 100 $ 83 $ 339 Marketing, Reservation and Wyndham Rewards Revenues (a) 96 108 112 92 407 76 101 117 91 385 Hotel Management Reimbursable Revenues (b) 61 71 73 68 273 37 39 39 39 154 Intersegment Trademark Fees 12 15 16 15 57 9 11 11 10 41 Owned Hotel Revenues 25 20 16 19 79 24 20 18 20 81 Ancillary Revenues (c) 24 24 37 33 120 23 24 30 24 101 Total Hotel Group 292 334 357 314 1,297 237 283 315 267 1,101 Destination Network Exchange Revenues 185 161 157 146 649 187 168 162 150 667 Rental Revenues 166 200 296 144 807 176 217 331 144 868 Ancillary Revenues (d) 18 22 23 20 82 16 17 19 17 69 Total Destination Network 369 383 476 310 1,538 379 402 512 311 1,604 Vacation Ownership Vacation Ownership Interest Sales 336 417 448 403 1,604 303 382 415 385 1,485 Consumer Financing 104 105 108 109 427 105 106 108 108 427 Property Management Fees and Reimbursable Revenues 153 149 159 155 615 143 145 150 142 581 WAAM Fee-for-Service Commissions 12 19 23 28 83 33 30 18 16 98 Ancillary Revenues (e) 12 9 12 11 43 9 10 13 17 47 Total Vacation Ownership 617 699 750 706 2,772 593 673 704 668 2,638 Total Reportable Segments $ 1,278 $ 1,416 $ 1,583 $ 1,330 $ 5,607 $ 1,209 $ 1,358 $ 1,531 $ 1,246 $ 5,343 Note: Full year amounts may not add across due to rounding. (a) Marketing and reservation revenues represent fees the Company receives from franchised and managed hotels that are to be expended for marketing purposes or the operation of a centralized, brand-specific reservation system. These fees are typically based on a percentage of the gross room revenues of each hotel. Wyndham Rewards revenues represent fees the Company receives relating to its loyalty program. (b) Primarily represents payroll costs in the hotel management business that the Company pays on behalf of property owners and for which it is reimbursed by the property owners. During 2014, reimbursable revenues of $2 million in each of Q1, Q2 and Q3 and $1 million in Q4 were charged to the Company's vacation ownership business and were eliminated in consolidation. (c) Primarily includes additional services provided to franchisees and managed properties and fees related to our co-branded credit card program. (d) Primarily includes fees generated from programs with affiliated resorts and homeowners. (e) Primarily includes revenues associated with bonus points/credits that are provided as purchase incentives on VOI sales and fees generated from other non-core operations. Table 6 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation BRAND SYSTEM DETAILS As of and For the Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Brand Number of Properties Number of Rooms Average Occupancy Rate Average Daily Rate (ADR) Average Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) Hotel Group Super 8 2,839 179,268 52.7% $44.35 $23.39 Days Inn 1,786 142,872 45.2% $65.14 $29.44 Ramada 862 120,647 50.0% $69.58 $34.82 Wyndham Hotels and Resorts 254 55,694 53.1% $101.23 $53.75 Howard Johnson 367 42,318 45.8% $57.08 $26.12 Baymont 437 34,519 46.1% $66.85 $30.79 Travelodge 406 29,725 43.4% $66.41 $28.85 Microtel Inns & Suites by Wyndham 336 24,226 52.1% $65.65 $34.21 Knights Inn 370 22,589 41.5% $48.78 $20.25 TRYP by Wyndham 115 16,223 58.0% $73.59 $42.67 Wingate by Wyndham 153 14,073 57.1% $85.49 $48.79 Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham 108 10,633 61.6% $82.74 $50.98 Dolce 21 4,747 46.8% $154.48 $72.36 Dazzler 12 1,525 63.4% $91.84 $58.25 Esplendor 10 698 66.1% $92.14 $60.90 Total Hotel Group 8,076 699,757 49.5% $64.04 $31.73 Vacation Ownership Wyndham Vacation Ownership resorts 221 24,859 N/A N/A N/A Total Wyndham Worldwide 8,297 724,616 As of and For the Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Brand Number of Properties Number of Rooms Average Occupancy Rate Average Daily Rate (ADR) Average Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) Hotel Group Super 8 2,665 170,454 51.5% $45.73 $23.54 Days Inn 1,791 143,212 44.3% $63.81 $28.28 Ramada 837 117,409 49.0% $73.76 $36.12 Wyndham Hotels and Resorts 228 49,952 54.7% $103.78 $56.73 Howard Johnson 381 41,555 44.1% $59.74 $26.33 Baymont 416 33,070 44.9% $66.07 $29.66 Travelodge 406 29,760 45.3% $63.18 $28.63 Microtel Inns & Suites by Wyndham 333 24,045 51.1% $63.64 $32.52 Knights Inn 381 23,258 41.5% $48.76 $20.22 TRYP by Wyndham 120 17,274 54.8% $72.93 $39.97 Wingate by Wyndham 149 13,610 56.3% $86.52 $48.70 Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham 105 10,466 62.3% $82.76 $51.57 Dolce 22 5,080 45.5% $152.13 $69.17 Total Hotel Group 7,834 679,145 48.6% $64.93 $31.59 Vacation Ownership Wyndham Vacation Ownership resorts 216 24,442 N/A N/A N/A Total Wyndham Worldwide 8,050 703,587 Note: A glossary of terms is included in Table 3 (2 of 2); RevPAR may not recalculate by multiplying average occupancy rate by ADR due to rounding. Table 7 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION OF ADJUSTED NET INCOME AND EPS (In millions, except per share data) Location on Consolidated Statements of Income Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding 106 114 Diluted EPS $ 1.33 $ 0.84 Net income $ 141 $ 96 Adjustments: Restructuring costs (a) Restructuring 7 - Asset impairments (b) Asset impairments 5 - Venezuela currency devaluation (c) Operating - 24 Early extinguishment of debt (d) Early extinguishment of debt - 11 Total adjustments before tax 12 35 Income tax (benefit)/expense (e) (f) Provision for income taxes (33) (4) Total adjustments after tax (21) 31 Adjustments - EPS impact $ (0.19) $ 0.27 Adjusted Net income $ 120 $ 127 Adjusted diluted EPS $ 1.14 $ 1.12 Note: Amounts may not add due to rounding. (a) Relates to expenses associated with restructuring initiatives at the Company's corporate operations which focused on rationalizing its sourcing function and outsourcing certain information technology functions as well at its Hotel Group segment which primarily focused on realigning its brand operations. (b) Represents a non-cash impairment charge related to the write-down of assets resulting from the decision to abandon a new product initiative at the Company's vacation ownership business. (c) Represents the impact from the devaluation of the exchange rate of Venezuela at the Company's destination network business. (d) Represents costs incurred in connection with the Company's early repurchase of its 6.0% senior unsecured notes. (e) The amount for 2017 relates to (i) the tax effect of the adjustments and (ii) a tax benefit on foreign currency losses recognized from an internal restructuring. (f) The amount for 2016 relates to the tax effect of the adjustments. There was no tax benefit associated with the $24 million Venezuela currency devaluation adjustment. The above tables reconcile certain non-GAAP financial measures. The presentation of these adjustments is intended to permit the comparison of particular adjustments as they appear in the income statement in order to assist investors' understanding of the overall impact of such adjustments. In addition to GAAP financial measures, the Company provides adjusted net income and adjusted EPS financial measures to assist our investors in evaluating our ongoing operating performance for the current reporting period and, where provided, over different reporting periods, by adjusting for certain items which may be recurring or non-recurring and which in our view do not necessarily reflect ongoing performance. We also internally use these measures to assess our operating performance, both absolutely and in comparison to other companies, and in evaluating or making selected compensation decisions. These supplemental disclosures are in addition to GAAP reported measures. This non-GAAP reconciliation table should not be considered a substitute for, nor superior to, financial results and measures determined or calculated in accordance with GAAP. Table 8 (1 of 3) Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION OF ADJUSTED EBITDA BY REPORTABLE SEGMENT (In millions) Restructuring Asset Adjusted EBITDA Costs(b) Impairments (c) EBITDA Three months ended March 31, 2017 Hotel Group $ 85 $ 1 $ - $ 85 Destination Network 102 - - 102 Vacation Ownership 118 - 5 124 Total Reportable Segments 305 1 5 311 Corporate and Other (a) (39) 6 - (33) Total Company $ 266 $ 7 $ 5 $ 278 Note: Amounts may not add across due to rounding. (a) Includes the elimination of transactions between segments. (b) Relates to expenses associated with restructuring initiatives at the Company's corporate operations which focused on rationalizing its sourcing function and outsourcing certain information technology functions as well at its Hotel Group segment which primarily focused on realigning its brand operations. (c) Represents a non-cash impairment charge related to the write-down of assets resulting from the decision to abandon a new product initiative. Table 8 (2 of 3) Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION OF ADJUSTED EBITDA BY REPORTABLE SEGMENT (In millions) Venezuela Executive Bargain Currency Acquisition Legacy Restructuring Contract Departure Purchase Adjusted EBITDA Devaluation(b) Costs(c) Costs(d) Costs(e) Termination(f) Costs (g) Gain (h) EBITDA Three months ended March 31, 2016 Hotel Group $ 84 $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ 84 Destination Network 81 24 - - - - - - 105 Vacation Ownership 136 - - - - - - - 136 Total Reportable Segments 301 24 - - - - - - 325 Corporate and Other (a) (34) - - - - - - - (34) Total Company $ 267 $ 24 $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ 291 Three months ended June 30, 2016 Hotel Group $ 101 $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ 101 Destination Network 85 - 1 - - - - 85 Vacation Ownership 187 - - - - - - - 187 Total Reportable Segments 373 - 1 - - - - - 373 Corporate and Other (a) (33) - - - - - - - (33) Total Company $ 340 $ - $ 1 $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ 340 Three months ended September 30, 2016 Hotel Group $ 107 $ - $ - $ - $ 3 $ 7 $ - $ - $ 117 Destination Network 138 - - - 4 - - - 142 Vacation Ownership 189 - - - 6 - - - 195 Total Reportable Segments 434 - - - 13 7 - - 454 Corporate and Other (a) (32) - (1) 1 - - - (31) Total Company $ 402 $ - $ - $ (1) $ 14 $ 7 $ - $ - $ 423 Three months ended December 31, 2016 Hotel Group $ 99 $ - $ 1 $ - $ (1) $ - $ - $ - $ 99 Destination Network 53 - 1 - - - - (2) 52 Vacation Ownership 182 - - 2 - 6 - 191 Total Reportable Segments 334 - 2 - 1 - 6 (2) 342 Corporate and Other (a) (12) - - (11) - - - - (24) Total Company $ 322 $ - $ 2 $ (11) $ 1 $ - $ 6 $ (2) $ 318 Twelve months ended December 31, 2016 Hotel Group $ 391 $ - $ 1 $ - $ 2 $ 7 $ - $ - $ 401 Destination Network 356 24 1 - 5 - - (2) 385 Vacation Ownership 694 - - - 8 - 6 - 708 Total Reportable Segments 1,441 24 2 - 15 7 6 (2) 1,494 Corporate and Other (a) (110) - - (11) - - - - (121) Total Company $ 1,331 $ 24 $ 2 $ (11) $ 15 $ 7 $ 6 $ (2) $ 1,373 Note: Amounts may not add across due to rounding. The sum of the quarters may not add down due to rounding. (a) Includes the elimination of transactions between segments. (b) Represents the impact from the devaluation of the exchange rate of Venezuela. (c) Represents costs related to acquisitions. (d) Relates to a benefit from adjustments to certain contingent liabilities from the Company's separation from Cendant. (e) Relates to costs incurred due to enhancing organizational efficiency and rationalizing existing facilities across the Company. (f) Relates to additional costs associated with the termination of a management contract. (g) Represents costs associated with the departure of the chief executive officer at the Company's vacation ownership business. (h) Represents a gain from a bargain purchase on an acquisition of a vacation rentals business. Table 8 (3 of 3) Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION OF ADJUSTED EBITDA BY REPORTABLE SEGMENT SHARED-BASED COMPENSATION EXPENSE (In millions) The following tables provide detail regarding share-based compensation expense which is included within adjusted EBITDA: 2017 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Adjusted EBITDA $ 278 N/A N/A N/A N/A Share-based compensation expense (*) 14 N/A N/A N/A N/A Adjusted EBITDA excluding share-based compensation expense $ 292 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2016 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Adjusted EBITDA $ 291 $ 340 $ 423 $ 318 $ 1,373 Share-based compensation expense (*) 13 20 14 13 61 Adjusted EBITDA excluding share-based compensation expense $ 304 $ 360 $ 437 $ 331 $ 1,434 Note: Full year amounts may not add across due to rounding. (*) Excludes share-based compensation expenses for which there was no impact on adjusted EBITDA. Such costs amounted to $1 million during Q1 2017. During 2016, such costs amounted to $1 million during Q1, Q2 and Q3, and $4 million during Q4 and $7 million for the full year. The Company believes providing adjusted EBITDA with the additional exclusion of share-based compensation expense assists our investors and management by providing an additional financial measure to evaluate ongoing operations by excluding the variations among companies in timing, amount and reporting of share-based compensation expense, which may differ significantly among companies. Table 9 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION OF GROSS VOI SALES (In millions) GROSS VOI SALES We believe gross vacation ownership sales provide an enhanced understanding of the performance of our vacation ownership business because it directly measures the sales volume of this business during a given reporting period. The following table provides a reconciliation of Gross VOI sales (see Table 3) to vacation ownership interest sales (see Table 5): Year 2017 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year Gross VOI sales $ 439 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A Less: Sales under WAAM Fee-for-Service (3) N/A N/A N/A N/A Gross VOI sales, net of WAAM Fee-for-Service sales 436 N/A N/A N/A N/A Less: Loan loss provision (85) N/A N/A N/A N/A Vacation ownership interest sales $ 351 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 Gross VOI sales $ 428 $ 518 $ 564 $ 502 $ 2,012 Less: Sales under WAAM Fee-for-Service (23) (20) (20) (1) (64) Gross VOI sales, net of WAAM Fee-for-Service sales 405 498 544 501 1,948 Less: Loan loss provision (63) (90) (104) (86) (342) Vacation ownership interest sales $ 342 $ 409 $ 441 $ 415 $ 1,606 2015 Gross VOI sales $ 390 $ 502 $ 565 $ 507 $ 1,965 Less: Sales under WAAM Fee-for-Service (21) (26) (37) (42) (126) Gross VOI sales, net of WAAM Fee-for-Service sales 369 477 528 464 1,838 Less: Loan loss provision (46) (60) (78) (64) (248) Less: Impact of percentage-of-completion accounting 13 - (2) 2 13 Vacation ownership interest sales $ 336 $ 417 $ 448 $ 403 $ 1,604 2014 Gross VOI sales $ 410 $ 496 $ 513 $ 470 $ 1,889 Less: Sales under WAAM Fee-for-Service (44) (40) (27) (21) (132) Gross VOI sales, net of WAAM Fee-for-Service sales 366 456 486 449 1,757 Less: Loan loss provision (60) (70) (70) (60) (260) Less: Impact of percentage-of-completion accounting (3) (4) (1) (4) (12) Vacation ownership interest sales $ 303 $ 382 $ 415 $ 385 $ 1,485 _____________ Note: Amounts may not add due to rounding. The following includes primarily tele-sales upgrades and other non-tour revenues, which are excluded from Gross VOI sales in the Company's VPG calculation (see Table 3): Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Full Year 2017 $ 25 $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A $ N/A 2016 $ 25 $ 22 $ 31 $ 30 $ 108 2015 $ 24 $ 17 $ 32 $ 27 $ 100 2014 $ 25 $ 21 $ 27 $ 24 $ 97 Table 10 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation 2017 OUTLOOK - NON-GAAP (In millions, except per share data) Outlook (a) Outlook (a) As Adjusted As Adjusted (Non-GAAP) (Non-GAAP) Low High Net revenues $ 5,800 $ 5,950 Adjusted EBITDA $ 1,410 $ 1,440 Depreciation and amortization (268) (263) Interest expense, net (146) (142) Adjusted income before taxes 995 1,028 Income taxes (364) (376) Adjusted net income $ 631 $ 652 Adjusted diluted earnings per share $ 5.98 $ 6.18 Diluted shares 105.5 105.5 In determining adjusted EBIDTA, adjusted Net Income and adjusted EPS, the Company excludes certain items which are otherwise included in determining the comparable GAAP financial measures. A description of the adjustments which have been applicable in determining adjusted EBITDA, adjusted Net Income and adjusted EPS is included in Tables 7 and 8. The Company is providing outlook on a non-GAAP basis because the Company is unable to predict with reasonable certainty the totality or ultimate outcome or occurrence of potential adjustments for the forward-looking period, which can be dependent on future events that may not be reliably predicted, such as acquisitions, legacy expenses, restructuring events, asset impairments, contract terminations, currency devaluations, or early extinguishment of debt instruments. Based on past reported results, where one or more of these items have been applicable, such excluded special items could be material, individually or in the aggregate, to the reported results. See Tables 7 and 8 for historical adjustments. (a) Outlook represents Company's approximate projection of performance for the outlook period. Projections may not total because the Company does not expect the actual results of all items to be at the precise amount simultaneously. Table 11 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation NON-GAAP RECONCILIATION - CONSTANT CURRENCY, CURRENCY NEUTRAL AND ACQUISITIONS (In millions, except per share data) The Company reports certain current year period financial measures on a constant currency and currency-neutral basis and excluding the impact of acquisitions. The Company believes providing certain financial measures on a constant currency and currency-neutral basis as well as excluding the impact of acquisitions assists management and investors in better understanding underlying results and trends by excluding the impact of period over period changes in foreign exchange rates and changes resulting from acquisitions. Constant currency results assume foreign results are translated from foreign currencies to the U.S. dollar at exchange rates consistent with those in the comparable period. Currency Neutral results (i) assume foreign results are translated from foreign currencies to the U.S. dollar at exchange rates consistent with those in the comparable period and (ii) eliminating foreign exchange related activities such as foreign exchange hedges, balance sheet remeasurements, currency devaluations and/or other adjustments. Acquisition results are defined as the incremental period over period changes in the Company's results directly attributable to acquisitions. Revenues in Constant Currency and Excluding Acquisitions: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change Destination Network revenue as reported $ 391 $ 385 2% Adjustments: Foreign currency - constant currency 9 - * Incremental revenues from acquisitions (13) - * Total Destination Network revenues in constant currency and excluding acquisitions $ 387 $ 385 1% Rental revenue as reported $ 184 $ 183 1% Adjustments: Foreign currency - constant currency 9 - * Incremental revenues from acquisitions (9) - * Total Rental revenues in constant currency and excluding acquisitions $ 184 $ 183 1% Currency-neutral Adjusted EBITDA: Three months ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change Hotel Group EBITDA (a) $ 85 $ 84 1% Adjustments: Foreign currency - currency-neutral 1 - * Hotel Group Currency-neutral EBITDA $ 86 $ 84 2% Destination Network Adjusted EBITDA (a) $ 102 $ 105 -3% Adjustments: Incremental EBITDA from acquisitions (2) - * Destination Network Adjusted EBITDA $ 100 $ 105 -5% excluding acquisitions * Not meaningful. (a) See Table 8 for a reconciliation of EBITDA to Adjusted EBITDA and Table 2 for a reconciliation of Net Income to EBITDA. Table 12 Wyndham Worldwide Corporation SCHEDULE OF DEBT (In millions) March 31, December 31, March 31, 2017 2016 2016 Securitized vacation ownership debt: (a) Term notes $ 1,902 $ 1,857 $ 2,005 Bank conduit facility (b) 236 284 121 Total securitized vacation ownership debt (c) 2,138 2,141 2,126 Less: Current portion of securitized vacation ownership debt 191 195 207 Long-term securitized vacation ownership debt $ 1,947 $ 1,946 $ 1,919 Debt: Revolving credit facility (due July 2020) (d) $ 8 $ 14 $ 10 Commercial paper (e) 221 427 343 Term loan (due March 2021) 324 323 323 $300 million 2.95% senior unsecured notes (due March 2017) (f) - 300 299 $14 million 5.75% senior unsecured notes (due February 2018) (g) 14 14 14 $450 million 2.50% senior unsecured notes (due March 2018) (g) 449 449 448 $40 million 7.375% senior unsecured notes (due March 2020) 40 40 40 $250 million 5.625% senior unsecured notes (due March 2021) 248 248 247 $650 million 4.25% senior unsecured notes (due March 2022) 648 648 648 $400 million 3.90% senior unsecured notes (due March 2023) 406 407 408 $300 million 4.15% senior unsecured notes (due April 2024) 297 - - $350 million 5.10% senior unsecured notes (due October 2025) 339 338 337 $400 million 4.50% senior unsecured notes (due April 2027) 396 - - Capital leases 141 143 158 Other 44 20 31 Total long-term debt 3,575 3,371 3,306 Less: Current portion of long-term debt 40 34 45 Long-term debt $ 3,535 $ 3,337 $ 3,261 Daily Hotel Industry News Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest hotel news and trends. Rendering of the Mixt Chatuchak Dusit International has signed a hotel management agreement with Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd. to operate the first ever hotel in the heart of Bangkok's world-famous Chatuchak Market. Forming part of Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd's new mixed-use development, Mixt Chatuchak, the new hotel will comprise approximately 250 rooms and is strategically located a short walk from both the MRT (Mo Chit Station) and BTS (Chatuchak Station) mass transit rail systems, which provide easy access to all of Bangkok's main attractions. Don Mueang International Airport, which serves key domestic and regional destinations, is only 30 minutes' drive away. Chatuchak Market, also known locally as Jatujak or JJ, is located in the north of the city next to Chatuchak Park, one of Bangkok's largest green spaces, and near Or Tor Kor, recently named one of the world's best fresh markets by CNN. Comprising over 8,000 stalls selling everything from clothes and furniture, to art, ceramics, plants, souvenirs, drinks, food and even pets, JJ is one of Bangkok's top tourist destinations, attracting more than 400,000 shoppers every weekend. It is estimated that six out of every 10 tourists in Bangkok will visit the market during their vacation. Bang Sue Grand Station, which will replace the Bangkok Railway Station at Hua Lamphong as the terminus for all long-distance rail services from Bangkok, is also currently under construction next to JJ Market and is scheduled to open in 2019. The new station will be surrounded by several new commercial, business and residential projects. "JJ Market is a true Bangkok icon and we are delighted to have this opportunity to become part of its vibrant fabric," said Ms Suphajee Suthumpun, Group Chief Executive Officer of Dusit International. "With several exciting developments set to open near the market within the next few years, the area will only become even more appealing, and our new hotel will be perfectly positioned to meet the needs of the young, sophisticated travellers who visit the area seeking a distinctive localized experience." Ms Nontaya Apitanotai, the majority owner and Authorized Director of Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd., said, "Mixt Chatuchak is the only building located directly within JJ Market, making the mixed-use project and Dusit's new hotel a unique proposition for guests who will benefit from the large array of shops and services within our building as well as on their doorstep. Our companies share a complementary vision to impress the world with Thai hospitality, and by drawing on the energy, culture and vibrancy of the iconic JJ Market, we are confident this synergy will be a huge success." With 29 properties currently in operation across four brands in eight countries, Dusit International is in a significant growth phase which will see the number of Dusit properties reach 70 within the next three to four years across Southeast Asia, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the GCC region, Europe, and more key markets. Continuing the company's series of firsts, Dusit International recently became the first hotel operator in Thailand to to accept WeChat Pay, which allows Chinese guests to pay their hotel bills via the mobile e-payment platform initially at Dusit's owned properties in Thailand, and soon its other properties around the world. His statement begins,Although the faces of runners are apparently different within the circus (Presidential election), all of them are extremely devoted to the fundamentalist and terrorist regime of Iran, and they approve all the crimes and atrocities committed by this regime during the past 38 years. Fooladvand highlighted the massacre of 1988, writing, The executions of the 90s, especially the massacre of 1988 in which 30 thousand political prisoners were executed by Khomeinis order, are the brutal crimes committed by the regimes authorities, including Ebrahim Raisi, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi, Karoubi, Rouhani, and Khamenei. By looking closely at the face of these criminals, we conclude that there is no difference among the principlists and the reformists factions, the National Freedom Movement, and those opportunists called the Council of Nationalist-Religious Activists, since all of them are devoted to the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist. These factions officially pledge their support for the regime, because they only struggle for power and plunder. They will commit all sorts of crime in order to fulfill their objectives. He stated, According to Khameneis speech and the remarks made by his representative, Ahmad Alamolhoda in Mashhad, it is clear that no real elections take place in Iran and Khamenei has decided to repress the people. Therefore, the regime resorted to the mercenary, Ebrahim Raisi, in order to fuel fear in the society. Alamolhoda said, If 90% of the people select a person whom Khamenei opposes, then the views of those 90% are not counted. Additionally, Khamenei said, The soft overthrow means the waging of war against God and this act is a capital crime. The resistance of Mujahedins all these years, was referred to by the political prisoner, along with their role as the main opponents of the regime. The criminal Khamenei is well aware that the PMOI/MEK will never topple, since they resisted in Camp Ashraf for 14 years against the most brutal acts of the regime with the support of its international appeasers. The appeasers finally lost and a new era began. The PMOI/MEK immigrated to Albania in order to join Maryam Rajavi and her litigation movement for the massacre of 30 thousand political prisoners. This movement has spread in Iran and all over the world to overthrow the regime. Supreme Leader of Iran was addressed by Fooladvand, who said, Fighting with you and your sinister regime is an honor and duty for us to eternally overthrow the anti-human regime and we will not stop doing so because our salvation, our people, and our compatriots will topple your regime. Abolghasem Fooladvand concluded by addressing the Iranian people, Like many of my compatriots, I also support the invitation to boycott the sham elections in Iran while I shout, Down with the principals of Velayat-e-Faqih! No to the trickster (Hassan Rouhani)! No to the executioner (Ebrahim Raisi)! My vote is to overthrow the regime. Carnival Corporation Unveils Artistic Renderings for Second Cruise Terminal at Port of Barcelona Company is investing over 30 million euros to construct and operate its second cruise terminal at Europe's largest cruise port Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK) today released artist renderings of its second cruise terminal at the Port of Barcelona which will be Europe's newest passenger cruise terminal when it opens in 2018. The terminal is designed to accommodate Carnival Corporation's new class of "next-generation" green cruise ships that will be fully operated by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), the world's cleanest burning fossil fuel. As part of an agreement signed in July 2015, Carnival Corporation will construct and operate the new 12,500 square meter terminal. The company is investing more than 30 million euros in the state-of-the-art terminal, which paired with its existing terminal at the port represents its largest combined terminal investment in Europe. Designed by Catalan architecture firm Battle I Roig, the plans for the company's upcoming cruise terminal reflect today's modern architectural style with straight lines and a minimalist concept that will create a contemporary and comfortable guest environment. "Our goal is to make travel for our guests as convenient, pleasant and easy as possible, and this new terminal is designed to meet and exceed guest expectations," said Giora Israel, senior vice president of global port and destination development for Carnival Corporation. "The local architecture firm has done great work in designing a beautiful facility that will make Europe's largest cruise port even better." ''This terminal marks the culmination of years of partnership," said Sixte Cambra, president of the Port of Barcelona Port Authority. "Since the beginning of our relationship, Carnival Corporation has shown strong success in our port and city, and 10 years after the opening of the first terminal, this has materialized in a new facility for their cruise brands. Carnival Corporation has been a loyal partner to the Port of Barcelona, bringing passengers of different nationalities and generating a strong financial impact to our local economy." Construction on the project officially began in July 2016, and once complete it will enhance the embarkation and disembarkation process for cruise guests visiting Catalonia and its surrounding areas on one of Carnival Corporation's ships. Advertisement The new terminal, on the port's Adossat wharf, will increase Carnival Corporation's passenger capacity at the port, which is used by eight of the company's 10 global cruise line brands as both a destination and home port. Carnival Corporation is expecting to accommodate over one million passengers at the Port of Barcelona once its second cruise terminal is open in 2018. Eight brands from Carnival Corporation AIDA Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn and P&O Cruises (UK) visit Barcelona throughout the year. Carnival Corporation guests who visit Catalonia can take advantage of a variety of excursions, such as strolling the Girona historic quarter or visiting the multi-peaked rocky range of Montserrat and its Benedictine abbey, and exploring attractions within Barcelona, such as touring Gaudi's famed Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Beginning April 2018, the terminal facilities will host inaugural sailings of Carnival Horizon, Carnival Cruise Line's newest ship, which includes attractions such as SkyRide, IMAX Theatre and Water Works, as well as Aida Cruises' newest ship AIDAperla featuring attractions such as the Beach Club under a UV-permeable dome and an above-water skywalk. AIDAperla is one of the world's first cruise ships to feature dual-fuel engines, which, depending on availability at the port, can also be operated with virtually zero-emission liquefied natural gas (LNG). Carnival Corporation's deployment of LNG-fueled ships to the port supports the pioneering Air Quality Improvement Plan proposed by the Port of Barcelona in November 2016 to effectively reduce emissions from port activities. In total, Carnival Corporation now has agreements in place to build seven fully LNG-powered cruise ships across four of its 10 global cruise brands in coming years. The construction of Carnival Corporation's second cruise terminal at the Port of Barcelona will secure employment for up to 150 people through its work with local contractor companies Vopi 4 S.A., Elecnor S.A., Project Facilities Management SL and their subcontractors as well as gangway manufacturer Adelte S.A. and the existing team of local architect and engineering firms Battle I Roig, Static Engineering and PGI Engineering. The Port of Barcelona was recognized as the best global turnaround port by Cruise Insight a distinction it has received several times in recent years. More than half of cruise passengers visiting the Port of Barcelona begin and end their journey there, which is a major economic benefit for Catalonia and the city. According to a study from the University of Barcelona, passengers who begin or end their cruise vacation in Barcelona on average spend 2.6 days in the city before or after their trip and spend around 202 euros per day. According to than actualized study for 2016, cruise activity at the Port of Barcelona generates an annual turnover of 875 million eurosin Barcelona, contributing 457 million euros to the GDP of Barcelona. The study also shows that cruise activity at the port generates 7,518 jobs and has other positive effects on the local economy such as the increase of activity at Aeroport del Prat. The company's positive economic impact will increase when Carnival Corporation's new terminal is launched in 2018. Carnival Corporation operates five additional global ports, including Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic; Puerta Maya in Cozumel, Mexico; Grand Turk Cruise Center in Turks and Caicos Islands; Mahogany Bay in Roatan, Honduras; and Long Beach in California. Carnival Corporation also operates two private island destinations in the Caribbean, Princess Cays and Half Moon Cay. In total, Carnival Corporation cruise ships visit over 725 ports of call around the world. eZee Hospitality Solutions Get GST Ready For India As the Indian government rolls out the held up GST bill, the hospitality industry buckles up for new regulations and tax reforms, making way towards a better economy. Earlier this month, India became one of the 160 countries in the world to have implemented Goods and Service Tax bill. Effective from 1st of July, the single indirect tax will subsume almost all the current indirect taxes in India. With a 4-tier tax structure under dual-GST model, Indian hospitality industry will incorporate a GST of 18% giving a neutral to marginally positive impact on the sector. Just as the hospitality professionals get ready for GST, eZee Technosys, the global hospitality solutions provider has transformed it's solutions into GST ready hotel software, including cloud PMS, on-premise PMS and restaurant POS system, apt for all types of hotels and restaurants. One tax, one notion has been prevalent since a long time, and Im sure that it will eradicate the cascading effect of taxes for good. eZees ready to help hoteliers take over the hospitality industry with GST compliant solutions, comments eZees co-founder Vipul Kapoor. With 18% tax rate, the GST is going to result into a reduction of 3.5-7 percent tax in states with high luxury tax and rack rate-dependent luxury tax. Whereas, in the food and beverage industry, the impact is going to be nominally positive with approximately 0.5-2.5 percent reduction in tax rates. Always keen on walking hand in hand with advancing technology, economy and their demands, eZee hospitality solutions are ready to accommodate all the requirements of GST, right from accurate tax levying, apt tariff applications and precise reporting along with simplifying daily restaurant and hotel operations. We had developed our solutions as GST-friendly for our users in Malaysia when it was employed in the country. And we plan to do the same for our Indian users, aiding them in administering their properties with contemporary GST ready hospitality software, says Mehul Fanawala, Director of Global Sales at eZee. The passing of GST bill has surely brought around a hype in the hospitality industry. Regardless of the impact being marginal, the application of GSTs norms in hotel technology is a must. And eZees GST compliant hotel and restaurant solutions will help a hotelier do that effortlessly by performing exact tax calculations, ensuring that the reports generated get tallied, making it easy for businesses evaluation, says the CTO, Harshdeep Khatri. Following an outstanding response to eZees GST compliant integrated hospitality solutions in Malaysia, eZee aims to equip as many hoteliers and restaurateurs with cutting edge technology. Explore the extensive impact analysis of GST on Indian hospitality industry here. About eZee Technosys Established in Surat, eZee Technosys is one of the few complete hospitality IT solutions providers in the world. eZee provides software that cover hotel management, booking management, online room distribution, restaurant management, guest feedback and hotel mobile apps. eZee offers on-premise along with cloud based solutions as well as mobile applications. Founded in 2005, the company today serves more than 6000 clients in more than 140 countries across the globe. Visit eZees corporate website for more. GLASSDOOR REVEALS NEW LOOK AND FEEL Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 04-27-2017 11:11 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes New logo, updated brand identity and refreshed website designed to complement Glassdoors authentic and empowering job search experienceGlassdoor, one of the worlds largest and fastest growing job sites, today unveiled its new corporate branding and logo along with fresh new website and mobile apps. As part of Glassdoors global brand refresh, people will notice a more modern experience designed to empower them to find a job that fits their life.Glassdoor is now the second largest job site in the U.S.1 and welcomes more than 41 million people2each month from around the globe to the companys website and mobile applications. Glassdoors new look was developed by the companys internal creative team, in conjunction with creative studio Nelson Cash, to better demonstrate Glassdoors overall mission and make it even easier for job seekers, employees and employers to understand what Glassdoor is uniquely positioned to achieve: To help people everywhere find a job and company they love and... 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. 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You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile Hands Up Incentives Offers North American Companies Inspiring Meetings, Team Building Retreats, and Incentive Trips Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 04-27-2017 1:47 am Currently 2.5/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 2.5 from 4 votes Hands Up Incentives, an award-winning division of luxury volunteer tourism provider Hands Up Holidays, now offers American and Canadian companies unique opportunities to combine business travel with ways to give back to local communities around the world. Hands Up Incentives provides international meeting planning services, corporate team-building retreats, and incentive trips for companies' top performers, all while blending them with fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR) objectives, relaxation, and adventure. The company offers team-building itineraries in over 30 destination countries on five continents, including Belize, China, Kenya, New Zealand, and Bali. The bespoke trips engage employees in volunteer activities ranging from updating medical clinics and school classrooms to building disabled-access bathrooms in private homes."For companies to attract top talent today, they need to offer more than good salaries and benefits. I believe employees are looking to be... 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 Todays mobile technology is helping employees make better use of their time while giving them access to rich features that were previously unavailable. Its no longer just about on-the-go access to email and phone calls; a plethora of business-related apps and cloud resources are already available via personal mobile devices and more are coming. As the emerging mobile workforce continues to rise (42.5 percent globally by 2022), human resource departments are realizing the benefits of mileage automation software and how it can positively impact their business bottom line when it comes to accurately reimbursing their employees. As more employees are expected to do their jobs out in the field such as sales representatives making client visits, delivery drivers across a number of industries, or employees who simply work remotely on a regular basis the need for solutions that specifically address their needs is pressing. In fact, a recent TechValidate survey found that mobile workers who use mileage reimbursement technology were able to complete administrative tasks sooner (49 percent) and visit a greater number of customers (38 percent). Lets take a deeper look at how companies can take back the time, money, and resources that have historically been lost to outdated manual reimbursement processes. Increased Efficiency Mobile employees have a unique set of demands placed on th... Accounting, payroll & HR and payments are at the heart of any business. By integrating this golden triangle of business processes and systems, organizations can reduce manual administration and free up time to spend on more value-adding activities. With integrated solutions, businesses can achieve higher levels of automation across their businesses, become more productive and efficient, and gain better visibility into their performance. Here are a few benefits companies can achieve by implementing integrated business solutions. 1. Reduce Redundant Data Capture An integrated solution that brings payment, payroll and accounting functionality together eliminates the need to recapture or manually import payroll data into the accounting system each month, and then reconcile financial data with bank statements. That can save hours of work each month for the accounting and payroll teams, while also ensuring that the business always has up-to-date payroll information reflected in its financial systems. 2. Better Visibility into Business Performance If companies have completely up-to-date payroll, HR and payments data flowing automatically to their accounting systems, theyll have access to the reports and information they need for better planning, forecasting and budgeting. Theyll have insight into cash flow, human resource capacity and utilization, and business growth they can use to optimize performance and pla... In his open letter he writes: In recent years I have written numerous letters to government leaders including the head of the judiciary, the countrys public prosecutor, Mahabad city court and even the Intelligence Minister himself, all in an attempt to follow up on my case through legal means. However, they all have remained unanswered for a few months till my family followed up on this matter. And we realized none of my letters to international organizations were never sent and my letters were apparently lost by Mr. Sigarouie. I had even received a letter recently from the judiciary, and that, too, was lost by Mr. Sigarouie. If he had sent my letters according to the law, I would have been able to take effective steps. This is a shame for the authorities that a low-level official has ridiculed them and is preventing justice. Despite a request filed by prison clinic physicians, Nazaris transfer to a hospital has not been approved by authorities. It is worth noting that Nazari was arrested in 1994 on charges of collaboration with Kurdistan opposition parties and sentenced to life in jail through a vague judicial process. Nazari had prior to this been placed under torture to confess to false charges. California won its first major battle over `sanctuary cities' by WaPo California has launched a war on President Trump's attempt to clamp down on sanctuary cities. California is in a war with Trump on `sanctuary cities.' It just won its first major battle washingtonpost.com April 26, 2017 California has launched a war on President Trump's attempt to clamp down on sanctuary cities. And it just got a major weapon to fight with: On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco agreed with two California municipalities that Trump's attempt to cut them off from federal funding for not complying with deportation requests is unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick agreed with the counties of San Francisco and Santa Clara, both of which sued the Trump administration for trying to prevent them from getting more than $1 billion in federal grants, that those grants can't legally be withheld. The court action is likely to continue. But this is an unqualified early victory for California and sanctuary cities across the nation that have said they'll refuse to comply with some of the Trump administration's deportation requests. This includes some of the nation's largest cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The president doesn't have much leverage to force these cities and states to hand over its illegal immigrants. Attempting to withhold money and hoping the cities caved was pretty much it. And a federal court just ruled that method unconstitutional. Constitutional scholars like Ilya Somin at George Mason University have long argued that the Trump administration would lose a legal battle like this. You can't cut off funding for sanctuary cities willy-nilly, he says, because the Supreme Court has ruled you can't slap conditions on federal grants without explicitly telling states about the conditions. In his ruling, Orrick of the Northern California District Court court agreed: The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds. It would take an act of Congress to go back and insert a clause declaring these unrelated law enforcement, health-care and poverty grants deliverable only if jurisdictions hand over their illegal immigrants for deportation when the government asks for them. (Congress getting involved in all this is impossible to imagine, but it's much, much, much slower than Trump just issuing an executive order to strip these cities of funding.) The court ruling couldn't come at a better time for California, which is in the middle of flipping a giant middle finger to Trump. California state lawmakers are steaming through a bill that would make the state the first sanctuary state for illegal immigrants. It's quite possibly the highest-profile act of defiance to Trump's nascent presidency, and Trump may not be able to stop them. The legislation would prevent local and state law enforcement agencies from helping the federal government deport undocumented immigrants. The state Senate passed it earlier this month, and the state Assembly is expected to pass it next month, though Gov. Jerry Brown (D) hasn't said whether he'll sign it. And the California legislature has a private law firm headed by former U.S. attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. on hold should the legal battle stretch to the state. In its repeated attacks on States, the Administration appears to forget that our system is one of 'dual sovereignty between the States and the Federal Government,' " read a letter from the Covington & Burling law firm sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on April 6. Under that framework, the California Legislature, like all State legislatures, is not subject to federal direction or commandeering. The legal fight is probably far from over, because the Trump administration could appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals. This could even go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which tilts slightly in Trump's ideological favor. (It's worth noting that the Trump administration is also fighting a legal battle on another high-profile executive order limiting travel from six predominately Muslim countries.) We are in the early throes of a war between Trump and liberal cities and states. And California can declare a victory in the first big battle. A wonderful interview featuring one of many breakthrough stories on how medical cannabis is helping children deal with crippling seizures. 18:1 PURE CANNABIS OIL EXTRACT | High CBDMother of Cyprus Speaks Out on Using Cannabis to Treat Epilepsy[ 10:00 minute audio interview below. ]Dennis Bernstein, host and producer of Flashpoints on KPFA, hit the road and headed to Mendocino in Emerald Triangle. Now we have this wonderful interview, featuring one of many breakthrough stories on how medical cannabis is helping children deal with crippling seizures.Gillian works for CannaCraft, "a community oriented brand that provides medical cannabis products manufactured in Sonoma County."Cyprus, at 18-months, had her first seizure. After 5-years, she had bigger seizures. At 7-years-old, Cyprus used cannabis oil for the first time. Rather than waking up crying and screaming, she woke up laughing and thirsty.At 9-years-old, she had her first grand mal seizure. The doctors did not want to take her off the drug that is not working. The neurologist, even though Cyprus was on one seizure drug, they wanted to keep layering her with a cocktail of more pharmaceutical seizure drugs.Cyprus's family was unwilling to continue placing her on that deadly pharmaceutical treadmill."We said we were going to stop the Keppra, that wasn't working, and changing her personality into a violent child."Keppra side effects by likelihood and severityThere are 30 seizure drugs, and 27 have a possible side effect of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS). SJS causes your skin to blister and peel off. It affects your mucus membranes, too. Blisters also form inside your body, making it hard to eat, swallow, even pee.A friend working for Care By Design brought 18-1 (ratio of CBD to THC) medical cannabis oil and "this particular product has changed our whole life."Cyprus has gone nine months without a seizure. She was having a cluster of seizures every four to six months, and Cyrus would have to miss a week of school.Doctors had said that maybe Cyprus would never read. Now Cyprus is reading, writing, and acting in plays.CannaCraftMedical Cannabis Provider Care By Design Facilities RaidedFlashpoints is an award winning front-line investigative news magazine, that focuses on human, civil and workers right, issues of war and peace, Global Warming, racism and poverty, etc. In separate lots, they follow on the 10m sale of the Corbett-assembled Parnell Place hotel site last year to the Dalata Hotel Group. Listed this week with joint agents Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE are Copley Court, a mix of purpose-built student accommodation and offices, earning 1.22m pa; along with Leeside Apartmets, with 149 bedrooms across 78 units, and currently earning 676,000 pa, with scope to grow that after refurbishments and relettings. The largest offer is Copley Court, guided at 15.5m plus, which has 37 student accommodation apartments, 60 parking spaces and 4,000 sq m of commercial/offices, of which 2,480 sq m is let to UCC/CITs Centre for Architectural Studies: it yields 260,000 pa, or circa 20% of Copley Courts income. The Centre for Architectural Studies is expected to relocate in the next year or so to a new-build currently under construction on Douglas Street/Evergreen Road, by the Nano Nagle Centre, and theres a current planning application to extend and almost double Copley Courts student accommodation numbers from a current 37 units to 70, within the existing linked buildings. Copley Court is just off Anglesea Street, by the new District Court building under construction with BAM, and is also close to the School of Music, St Johns College and the College of Commerce, as well as the South Infirmary hospital complex. And, it adjoins the former 1.3 acre South Terrace Brooks Haughton site, now owned by Dairygold and where planning is in place for a 240,000 sq ft office development. Trinity Quarter is among the sites which have been considered by UCC for its new 100m Business School (see separate story p17.) Guided separately at 7.75 million is the Corbett-developed Leeside Apartments, on Bachelors Quay near North Main Street and facing the North Mall, near several UCC properties, including the UCC Distillery Centre, the Tyndall Institute, and the Mercy Hospital site. Described as a multi-family investment, Leeside Apartments, spans five blocks with 78 apartments, which are let to a mix private tenants and to students. It is currently 87% occupied, with an income of 676,000, and sections of the block need refurbishing, and asset management, which could increase the rental income. This property was previously put on the market in autumn 2010, guiding 10m. It has 78 apartments, in a mix of one, two, three and four bedroomed units, with 32 car spaces. The two properties are offered in separate lots, by private treaty via CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield. Closer to UCCs main campus, a new student accommodation building is now under construction on the Western Road, at the former Muskerry Filling Station for Ziggurat, while the Square Deal building nearby has also recently been purchased by a UK entity with student accommodation also envisaged. Other student apartment development are in the wings west of the UCC campus, around Victoria Cross and Carrigrohane Straight Road. Noting both strong office and accommodation demand focused on Cork city centre, CBREs Willie Norse says the economics for this asset class are working really well at present. Cushman & Wakefield director Peter OFlynn adds that considering the current expansion plans for UCC, and CIT in Cork, and the continued development of new offices, the existing demands on accommodation will only increase. Both these assets are well placed to take advantage of this. D etails: Cushman & Wakefield 021-4275454, CBRE 01-6185500 Burma Controversial Bridge Opened to Public Under the Name of Gen Aung San The signboard of Gen Aung San Bridge (Belu Island) is fixed to the bridge. / Min Min New / Facebook RANGOON The controversial bridge across the Salween River linking Moulmein and Chaungzon townships in Mon State was put into service on Thursday, under the contested name Gen Aung San Bridge (Belu Island). Mon State Chief Minister Dr. Aye Zan confirmed the opening of the bridge to the public. A total of 129 vehicles from Chaungzon crossed the bridge and 50 from Moulmein so far, Dr. Aye Zan told reporters on Thursday afternoon at a municipal guesthouse in Naypyidaw. I was not at the bridge as I had a meeting [in Naypyidaw] this morning, but I will attend the official opening ceremony of the bridge. The Union government will set a date for it, the minister added. Mon locals have opposed naming the bridge after Burmas independence hero Gen Aung San, preferring names like Chaungzon Bridge or Yarmanya, which means Mon State in the ethnic Mon language spoken in the region. We heard that they [the government] put the signboard up at around 4:30 a.m. I saw them still fixing the signboard after 6 a.m. But, I didnt see an inauguration ceremony, U Naing Aung Mon, spokesperson for the committee demanding a name change, told The Irrawaddy. The committee was formed with local community elders, women leaders, monks, youth leaders and human rights and political activists who oppose the name approved by the Lower House in March. The committee is preparing to submit a petition to the President, State Counselor, the Parliament and ethnic affairs ministry and has so far garnered over 120,000 signatures. As they have put up the signboard, we can do nothing now. We view this as a violation of ethnic rights. We will continue fighting against this, said U Nai Aung Mon. He added that by putting up the signboard in spite of opposition from thousands of locals, lawmakers from the National League for Democracy (NLD) have breached the provisions of a law adopted in February 2015 to protect ethnic rights. Provision 3(c) in Chapter 2 of the law states that languages, literature, arts, culture, customs, national identity, and historical heritage of ethnicities shall be preserved and promoted. On April 24, the committee also issued an open letter, saying that the naming of the bridge would disrupt unity, friendship and support between ethnicities. The letter also demands that the bridge be named according to the wishes of the locals. Amid the controversy over the naming of the bridge, former chief minister of Mon State U Min Min Oo resigned from his post in late February, and Dr. Aye Zan has replaced him. The chief minister defended the name choice for the bridge, saying it was intended to remind people of democracy and federalism, which Gen Aung San promised in Panglong Agreement. This [promise] could not be materialized after the general was assassinated. Therefore, we still see instability in our country, even today. So, we named the bridge after Gen Aung San to remember this pledge, said Dr. Aye Zan. We ethnicities could not celebrate our national identity in our townships and regions under successive governments [in the past]. And we cant accept that the democratic government has done this, despite our objections, Mi Sandi, an engineer from Moulmein, told The Irrawaddy. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko Burma Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Rejects National-level Political Dialogue in Arakan State The first 21st Century Panglong Conference. / The Irrawaddy RANGOON State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has again rejected the Arakan Liberation Partys (ALP) request to hold an ethnic-based national-level political dialogue in Arakan State, saying it is a sensitive region. Daw Saw Mra Razar Lin, member of the ALP central executive committee, told The Irrawaddy that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is disregarding their request. When we say we are ready [for political dialogue], it falls on deaf ears. What Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said is not acceptable to Arakanese people, said Daw Saw Mra Razar Lin. The national-level political dialogue is a mandatory step of the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), where regional stakeholders discuss suggestions at large-scale public consultations, the results of which are shared by representatives at the Union Peace Conference or 21st Century Panglong. In February, the ALPwhich is one of eight NCA signatoriesproposed holding ethnic-based national-level political dialogue in Arakan State, but Burmas de facto leader turned down the request, saying the ALP was not yet ready. The ALP has made necessary preparations and has submitted letters three times to request approval to hold the dialogue. But the government has not replied, and at the Joint Implementation Coordination Meeting (JICM) on Monday in Naypyidaw, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi again declined the request, citing sensitive issues involving the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State. We think we can hold political dialogue in any of the 17 townships that are not sensitive areas. We wonder what she is talking about. There are many places where we could hold political dialogue, said Daw Saw Mra Razar Lin. Leaders of other NCA signatory groups backed the ALPs request at the JICM meeting, but Daw Aung San Suu Kyi focused the meeting on the second 21st Century Panglong Conference, which is slated for May 24. We ethnic groups are honest and unwilling to offend people. We have suffered throughout the course of history. If we continue to be unwilling to offend, and if we do as the government says, I doubt we will ever see a federal Union, said Daw Saw Mra Razar Lin. Vice Chairman U Khaing Pyi Soe of the Arakan National Party (ANP) said his party would summon a central executive committee meeting during the first week of May to determine whether or not to attend the second Panglong. As national-level political dialogue has not been held in Arakan State, local ethnic parties have nothing to discuss at the Panglong Conference, he said. The national-level political dialogue in Arakan State is to be supervised by the Arakan State government, ALP and ANP, and although the two parties have selected members to organize the dialogues and informed the state government, it has not replied, said U Khaing Pyay Soe. The Arakan State government has not replied. The ANP and ALP are ready. I think it is the government that is not yet ready, he said. Of eight ethnic armed groups that have signed the NCA with the previous government, six have already held national-level political dialogues in their respective regions. Besides the ALP, the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA-South) has not held ethnic-based national-level political dialogue, as the government has not allowed them to hold it in their proposed towns of Taunggyi or Panglong. However, the Shan State government organized helter-skelter region-based political dialogue in Shan State on April 23 in Taunggyi. Attendees were only informed on April 21 and have criticized the government for giving limited time for preparation. Melissa G. Dalton, senior fellow and deputy director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Hijab Shah, research associate with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Joe Federici, research intern with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote an article together for The Hill. In it, they say, Upholding the JCPOA should be a priority. However, the United States should amplify its focus on Irans destabilizing activities and capability development in a holistic strategy. Members of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Irans conventional army, the Artesh, are currently fighting to preserve President Bashar al Assad and his regime in Syria. It is estimated that Iran has between 106,000 108,000 additional soldiers in Syria, including members of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Syrian National Defense Force. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has asserted that the White House wants to get the Iranian influence out of Syria, no steps have been taken. In addition to its involvement in Syria, Iran continues to extend its power in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, prompting concerns among Israel and Arab Gulf countries. Cyber infrastructure remains vulnerable to Irans infiltration, challenging economic, energy, and security operations in the region. The presence of the U.S. military in the Gulf may deter large-scale incursions by Iran, but it failed to stem provocations carried out by the IRGC Navy. Dalton, Shah, and Federici ask the question, Given Irans influence in Syria and its increasingly hostile relations with the Middle East as a whole, how should the Trump administration proceed? Their answer, in part, is, In Syria, focusing solely on counterterrorism against the Islamic State and al-Qaida will have limits. Instead, the United States should adopt a holistic strategy that includes diplomacy, economic pressure, as well as military tools to address the drivers of the conflict. They says that Iran is prepared to fight in Syria longer than the United States is, therefore,to mitigate Iran having a greater role in Syrias future, the United States take several steps outlined below: First, through diplomatic channels, it should make clear that IRGC-backed groups in Syria must return to their home countries; their long-term presence in Syria once the fighting stops could serve as a beachhead for attacks against Israel and other U.S regional partners. Second, it should use economic sanctions in combination with European allies to increase pressure on IRGC affiliates. Finally, it should interdict the arms flow to IRGC-backed groups operating in Syria. They say that the United States must be careful with military operations where U.S. forces are present, or our own forces will be put at risk. Direct action against IRGC groups may be better suited for Yemen and other areas of the region, than Syria or Iraq. Regionally, they continue, the Trump administration should minimize the space that the IRGC can exploit in the Middle East by building regional partner security force capacity and encouraging Arab partner countries vulnerable to Iranian penetration to improve their governance for Shia populations. Moreover, the United States should expose Iranian-backed groups, front companies, and global financial activities to delegitimize and discourage Iranian coercive interference. Working with regional partners, the United States should amplify information operations exploiting popular sentiment in the region that bristles at Iranian interference. This could help reduce local support for Iran, potentially debunking exaggerated Iranian claims and deterring further destabilizing action. However, pressure by itself will not change Irans behavior. Incentives should also be considered to convince Iran. The group from the International Security Program suggests, Diplomacy, multilateral engagement, and Track II efforts will be crucial in determining potential incentives. The most effective incentives will be those that align with Iranian objectives. These may include Iranian membership in multinational organizations, economic opportunities in Asia and Europe, and even revisiting the ban on conventional weapons trading with Iran when sanctions expire in 2020. Incentives should be linked to changes that Iran makes first. If the Trump administration can properly leverage U.S. power, it can interact with Iran in a constructive manner. Dalton, Shah, and Federici write, By simultaneously pressuring and incentivizing Iran, the United States can more effectively secure its interests and those of its allies and partners in Syria and the broader Middle East. Burma International Community Calls on Govt to Cooperate with UN Fact-finding Mission UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the 34th session of the Human Rights Council at UN in Geneva, Switzerland, in Feb. 2017. / Denis Balibouse / Reuters RANGOON International organizations called on overseas governments to engage Burma in allowing unfettered access to a UN fact-finding mission into human rights abuses by authorities in Arakan, Kachin, and Shan states in an open letter released Thursday. The letter, signed by 23 organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Fortify Rights among others, argued that sustained international engagement would be needed to ensure the team of UN experts was granted full access by the Burmese government. Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights, told The Irrawaddy that accepting the mission was the responsible thing for the government to do and that it was good for Myanmar, for victims and survivors, and for the authorities. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolutionadopted at its 34th session in Geneva, Switzerland in Marchprovides a mandate to establish the facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and security forces, but has been consistently rejected by the Burmese government. The fact-finding mission is in the interests of the government of Myanmar [Burma], the letter read, arguing it would demonstrate the governments willingness to uphold the rule of law, work collaboratively with the international community to help establish the facts, identify perpetrators, and deter future crimes by all parties to the conflict. UN Special Rapporteur to Burma Yanghee Lee reported numerous allegations of human rights abuses committed by Burmese authorities to the UNHRC in March and recommended a UN Commission of Inquirya more thorough UN-mandated investigation into human rights abuses than the adopted fact-finding mission. Yanghee Lee drew particular attention to allegations of arson, torture, extrajudicial killings, and widespread sexual violence against the minority Muslim Rohingya population in northern Arakan State during Burma Army clearance operations begun in response to insurgent attacks on police border guard posts on Oct. 9 of last year. I encourage the Myanmar government to cooperate with the fact-finding mission as far as possible and for the fact-finding mission to seek such cooperation in the spirit of constructive engagement and open dialogue, the UN expert told the Irrawaddy earlier this month. Both Burmas de facto leader State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Burmas military commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing have rejected the team of experts, who are expected to be appointed by UNHRC president Mr. Joaquin Alexander Maza Martelli soon. In her State of the Union address last month Daw Aung Suu Kyi said she did not accept a fact-finding mission into Arakan State. It does not mean we disrespect the UN, she added, it is just that it does not correspond with our countrys [situation]. On the occasion of the 72nd Anniversary of Armed Forces Day last month, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing reiterated that the Rohingya population did not belong to Burma, but were interlopers from Bangladeshand that any international political intervention on the pretext of assisting refugees from this community would threaten Burmas sovereignty. Matthew Smith called government claims that the UN mission would inflame tension between ethnic groups in northern Arakan State a shameless political ploy to avoid scrutiny. Among international players, the EU has a special role to play, having drafted the resolution that mandated the mission, but Asean states and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation need to step up in advocating investigations of Burmas human rights violation, Smith said. He noted that ground-level push back and obstructions from the military were likely but that if the government denies the experts access to the country, it will raise international alarm bells and only intensify the pressure. This is a critical moment for Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government and military leadership, the human rights expert said. Any failure to cooperate with this mission could signal more atrocities and impunity. Independent analyst on Burma David Mathieson welcomed the fact-finding mission, particularly its broad scope that would also cover the north of Burma, but noted that it was unlikely to unearth anything new in northern Arakan State. After two UN reports [by the UNOHCHR and Yanghee Lee] and so much media coverage, what will the fact-finding mission find out that we dont already know? he asked. Burma Locals Insist Three Men Killed in Shan State Clash Were Civilians A member of TNLA on security watch at an ethnic Taang village in Kyaukme Township. / Lawi Weng / The Irrawaddy Sources in northern Shan States Kyaukme Township have said that three men killed by the Burma Army were not members of the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), as they had been accused, and were in fact local villagers. The casualties included Win Kyaing, 39 years old, San Win, 37 years old, and Aike Lon, 33 years old. Locals said they often worked as drivers in the township. Win Kyaing was ethnic Bamar, from Shwebo Township in Sagaing Division. Both San Win and Aike Lon were ethnic Shan from Kyaukme Township. Locals have accused the Burma Army Light Infantry Battalion 502, under the control of Military Operation Command 1 and based in Kyaukmes Mann San village, of killing the three men on April 9, following fighting in the area between the Burma Army and the TNLA. Kyaukme is located within a conflict area, where clashes are known to break out between the TNLA and the Burma Army, or with the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South. Locals told The Irrawaddy that when armed groups ask for help, civilians cannot refuse. The TNLAs Brig-Gen Tar Phone Kyaw told The Irrawaddy that the three victims were in fact civilians, but that TNLA troops had asked them to drive trucks to transport their soldiers. Fighting then began while they were en route to their destination, he explained, during which members of the Burma Army killed the drivers. Burial of the Victims Sai Htun Nyan, a Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) lawmaker in Kyaukme town, told The Irrawaddy that once the fighting had ceased, Burma Army soldiers asked locals to bury three members of the TNLA killed in the clash. When we went to bury the three bodies, we found that those victims were villagers, not members of the TNLA, he said. We asked the Burmese army to let us bring back those three bodies to our town, but they did not let us. They just told us to bury them. We did not know what to do, and buried the bodies there, adding that, many people here are afraid to talk about it. However, Sai Htun Nyan said he did not know why the three deceased men were wearing uniforms from the TNLA when they were brought for burial. The Irrawaddy witnessed video footage reportedly taken just before the burial, showing the three victims bodiesall of whom had head wounds and wore camouflage shirts bearing the TNLA logo, but longyis typically worn by civilians. However, despite the head wounds, there appeared to be no blood visible on the clothes. Family members and friends of the victims came to the burial. U Thein Tun, who owns the tea factory where Win Kyaing worked, helped make merit on behalf of his deceased worker, said Sai Htun Nyan. The Irrawaddy attempted to talk to U Thein Tun, who he said that the police were investigating Win Kyaings death, but did not want to comment further, fearing his own security and safety. Police Response SNLD lawmaker Sai Htun Nyan said that he informed the police about the three mens deaths, but that he was not able to initiate a new case looking into the incident, because he could not transport the bodies to the hospital in Kyaukme town so that autopsies could be performed. The Irrawaddy asked police Col U Win Khaing, stationed in Kyaukme town, about a potential investigation, but he said that the deaths had occurred in a warzone where even the police are not safe. Their death was in a conflict area. It was in the jungle. There is no security for our police thereno one dares to go there, Col U Win Khaing admitted. No one even came to file charges at our police station. It is hard to know whether they were civilians or not, as their death was in a fighting zone. It is hard to even investigate it. But, we heard that they were Palaung, he said, using another term for the ethnic Taanga reference to the TNLA armed group. U Hla Kyaw, a Kyaukme resident who was a neighbor of the late San Win, said that the 37-year-old had often stayed at his agricultural plot outside of the town, but that he would return to his house in Kyaukme to visit his wife. San Win had a child, he said, adding that as an ethnic Shan man, he could not have been a member of the TNLA. Burma Rangoon Lawmakers Demand Action from Officials over Lost Billions in Business Dealings Rangoon Parliament / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy RANGOON Rangoon Parliaments bill and public accounts committees on Wednesday urged the regional government to take action against officials responsible for billion kyat losses in state-private joint ventures under the previous government. Parliamentarians discussed joint venture projects that favored certain companies by offering reduced leases on government land and other mismanagement following the committees reviews of the 2015-16 fiscal year report submitted to Parliament by Daw Khin Hla Than of the Auditor Generals Office for Rangoon Division. According to the auditor generals 2015-16 fiscal year report, the divisional government lost 13 billion kyats in leasing commercial space to construction companies and suffered a whopping 58 billion kyats loss from long-term reduced rent leasing of public lands and parks. Leader of the bill committee U Tint Lwin pointed out that the construction ministry had mismanaged 40 million kyats of loans and neglected to provide a detailed report of projects with the military-owned Myanmar Economic Corporation. The government should investigate the mismanagement as it dented the treasury, he said. He also suggested the regional government review the long-term profit sharing projects that were established by ex-Rangoon chief minister U Myint Swe, which gave private companies very favorable leases. Some projects were allocated by the Yangon City Committee Development (YCDC) without approval from the regional cabinet, he said. Lawmaker for Kyauktada Township Daw Kyi Pyar said: We understand that the new government cannot terminate contracts which were signed by the previous government, but to fill gaps in the country, the government can negotiate new terms and conditions of joint venture projects with private companies. Lawmakers criticized the fact that the majority of public land leasing and profit-sharing projects were given to Burmas notorious tycoons and cronies, calling instead for transparent processes. Lawmaker U Kyaw Zeya of Dagon constituency suggested that the government consult experts and introduce new rules and regulations for the concerned companies. Hlaing Township lawmaker Daw Khaing Mar Htay said: I am shocked that joint venture partners were leased land very cheaply. Burma YBS Review Proposal Approved, Following Heated Parliamentary Debate Rangoon divisional MP from Insein Township U Wai Phyo Han talks to reporters after a parliamentary session on Thursday. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy RANGOON In Thursdays parliamentary session, 117 regional lawmakers approved the review proposal of Rangoons new public transit system, the Yangon Bus Service (YBS), after a heated debate by 26 legislators two days earlier. Public frustration with a lack of legal action against bus drivers for reports of aggressive driving, assault of passengers, and general unreliability led to MPs receiving large numbers of letters from angry citizens, said U Kyaw Kyaw Tun of Hlaing Township, noting that there was no other avenue set up by the government through which such complaints could be addressed. Lawmakers said they brought the proposal forward to ask government on how they would address YBS bus drivers misconduct, which has been described as a continuation of the problems with the old bus system, known as Ma Hta Tha. Despite the debate session on the issue ending on Tuesday, the approval of the proposal was delayed, as several cabinet members, including Rangoon Division Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein, were conspicuously absent from the session. Members of parliament mocked the chief ministers original sloganYBS for the publicand began saying YBS for public disappointment. On behalf of the Rangoon cabinet, the divisional minister for electricity, industry and transportation Daw Nilar Kyawwho is also the chairwoman of the Yangon Region Transport Authority (YRTA)explained the governments plan for YBS. I dont accept the terminology of MP U Kyaw Zeya, she said, noting the slogan about public disappointment. [It] has negative implications and determinations will be made by the public in time. MP from Insein Township U Wai Phyo Han stated a reminder that the legislature has the right to guide government in the right direction if it is heading the wrong way, and that arguments should not be regarded as fighting against ones own government. Daw Nilar Kyaw explained that the YRTA has handled over 6,500 cases of reported legal violations by drivers since the YBS system was installed in Rangoon. She said that the cases involved overcharging of passengers, physical assaults, aggressive driving, making undesignated stops, and incompletion of routes. The YRTA has formed 10 mobile teams that regularly patrol the YBS bus gates to check whether the bus lines follow the rules and regulations of the YRTA. The government has already ordered that YBS buses be equipped with a GPS tracking system, and that CCTV be installed at more than 150 traffic lights. Daw Ni Lar Kyaw said these operations are expected to begin in May. Officials will then monitor the buses from a traffic control center located in Peoples Park. The YRTA has prohibited drivers and bus attendants and conductors found guilty of violations of working in the public transportation system. There has also been talk of working with the Union government to revoke licenses when necessary, and cabinet members are drafting an all-inclusive transport law for the commercial capital. The divisional government plans to give vocational training to both bus drivers as well as conductors. The YRTA is also looking to hire more female drivers within the YBS, but did not elaborate on the number of employees or the timeframe in which this might occur. Minister Daw Nilar Kyaw did not say whether there would be a changeup among the YRTAs 16 members, most of whom are government officials. It will be really hard to succeed [with the YBS project] unless the regional government replaces YRTA committee members with suitable experts, said U Wai Phyo Han. Specials Women and War: A Karen Leaders Account Naw Zipporah Sein attends an ethnic armed groups meeting in Panghsang, headquarters of the United Wa State Army, on the China-Burma border. / Supplied MAE SARIANG, Thailand Longstanding Karen National Union (KNU) leader Naw Zipporah Sein, 62, begins to cry, as she recalls the fate of her old classmate at the hands of the Burma Army in Mon Township, Nyaung Lin Bin District, in May 1975. They stripped her and kept her in the heat for days, she says. She was pregnant. They raped her and took out her eyes one by one. Then they finally killed her. Burmese military troops had shot the womans husband, a KNU soldier, in a gunfight before dragging the 20-year-old schoolteacher into the middle of Mee Ya Tar Village in the KNUs Brigade 3 territory, witnesses told Naw Zipporah Sein. My eldest and youngest sisters boyfriends died in battle. My boyfriend also fell in battle when I was 19, she says. Naw Zipporah Sein was born in Karen State, where a 60-year-long conflict between the Burma Army and ethnic groups fighting for independence has left hundreds of thousands dead or displaced, with many Karen fleeing to neighboring Thailand. Memories of war are painfully fresh for the former KNU vice chairperson. If men die in battle, it is over. If they dont die, they win. For them, it sounds simple, but for women, the suffering remains like a wound. It is traumatic. Their fear of war is like a clear picture that doesnt fade away easily, she tremors, reclining on her wooden chair. Struggling to hold the strength of the memories, she stops and takes a sip of water. Women worry whether their children will die or their husbands will be killed. They always live in fear. It takes time to heal those traumas, she says. Naw Zipporah Sein served the KNU as a schoolteacher, womens rights activist, general secretary, and vice chairperson. She failed in her bid for the groups leadership in its recent election due to an internal power struggle. She takes a cautious approach to Burmas peace process, an attempt at national reconciliation between ethnic armed groups and the Burmese government begun in 2011 during President Thein Seins government. Because of this approach, Burmese peace negotiators and some observers brand her as a hardliner, which she finds surprising, as her experience has molded her into an advocate for peace. Lamenting on what war means for women, she says, We are the ones who suffered. When I was only two years old, our family began moving from place to place for our safety. My mother gave birth while fleeing the warthats how long I have experienced the suffering of war, since I was a child. While husbands fight, she reflects, mothers take care of the children, and worry. They have a hard time, she says. I have been dreaming of peace since my childhood, searching for the peace we lost. In her experience, men approach the path to peace differently from women; her own approach is careful and exhaustive, she says, ensuring the safety of civiliansespecially women. Men think superficially because they dont suffer like women do, she says. Women think with more detail. When they fight, men kill each other, but the fighting stops when they strike a deal. When they reach a deal at the top level they think war is over. Remembering the sexual abuse women have endured during conflicts, and incidents when they are forced to porterand while doing so, sometimes killed and rapeshe concludes that war is worse for women. The prevalence of sexual abuse against women in Burma has been fueled by decades-long civil wars. In 2002, a report titled License to Rape, released by Shan Womens Action Network (SWAN) and Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) attracted international attention to the issue. It highlighted 173 incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence involving more than 600 girls and women committed by the Burma Army in Shan State between 1996 and 2001. Men only know how to wage war, she says. They fight and stop fighting depending on their wants, but they dont understand how women suffer. But women are not necessarily passive: the leader has witnessed incidents where women serve as village heads, as men feared being tortured by Burma Army troops. Men or not, the troops would often still intimidate, torture, and kill the village heads, she adds. Tatmadaw representatives for the peace process see her as a hardliner because her past strongly influences her negotiations, she judges. The ceasefire does not only mean stopping the fighting. There should be safety for civilians, including women, which is why we pointed out that Burma Army troops should move away from villages, she says. Civilians have witnessed their houses burned down by the troops, and their belongingness looted. While serving as general secretary and vice chairperson in the KNU, Naw Zipporah Sein met with Burmese government peace negotiators several times in Naypyidaw, Rangoon, and Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Before joining the KNUs top leadership, she was the chairperson of the Karen Womens Organisation (KWO). People in Karen State have been displaced by war for more than two decades. There are more than 120,000 refugees living on Thai-Burma border, the majority ethnic Karen. The KNU signed a bilateral ceasefire with the former Burmese government in 2012 and the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) in 2015. However, the Burma Army did not withdraw their troops from the KNUs controlled territories. As Burmas longest running ethnic armed organization (EAO), the KNU has been fighting for autonomy and self-determination against the Burmese government since 1949a year after Burma declared independence from the United Kingdom. It is one of the bigger EAOs, and one of the eight that signed the NCA. In the peace process, the Burma Armys withdrawal and repositioning should be prioritized, says Naw Zipporah Sein, also emphasizing a need for the military to earn trust from civilians. Most displaced people dare not return to their villages after experiencing brutal treatment from Tatmadaw troops. Women are particularly vulnerable, despite the Burma Army ensuring their safety. Bad memories still linger, says Naw Zipporah Sein. The Burma Army and our leaders should think about the safety of women. It is inadequate, she says, that the wagers of warthe Burma Army and the KNU leadershipnow say they understand each other. They might say they love each other now, she says. They militaries might reconcile, but it is important that they show evidence they care for the safety of civilians. Physics Professor, Students Build Instruments to Study Cosmic Dust Associate Professor of Physics Thushara Perera and his students Simon Liu 17 (left) and Ronan Dorsey 18 work with the computer-controlled milling machine. Many of the components used in the spectrometer project were milled or constructed at Illinois Wesleyan. April 27, 2017 When Fiona Breyer 17 and Lunjun (Simon) Liu 17 were teenagers looking at the night sky from their homes on two different continents, astrophysics seemed so exotic and exciting. So the students were a bit nonplussed when their in-the-trenches experiences in astrophysics began not by looking up, but by drilling down learning to use a milling machine, lathe, drill press and other important but rather unsexy pieces of equipment in the machine shops in the basement of the Center for Natural Science (CNS). The two are among a half-dozen students contributing to a project led by Associate Professor of Physics Thushara Perera to design instrumentation that will help scientists learn more about cosmic dust. Once regarded as a nuisance by astronomers because it absorbs the visible light from objects, cosmic dust is now recognized for the role it plays in the evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems. Though not yet fully understood, cosmic dust is also thought to have an integral role in the chemical activity giving rise to complex molecules, some of which may be the precursors of amino acids, the building blocks of life. Over his dozen-plus years in the field, Perera realized there is no one facility in the world dedicated solely to the study of cosmic dust candidates, or man-made items mimicking the dusts chemical and physical properties. At large research facilities, an apparatus is rigged together for testing such candidates and then taken apart for other uses, said Perera, leading to systematic errors. Associate Professor of Physics Thushara Perera and Ronan Dorsey 18 make the connections between the cryostat and the vacuum system. Perera reasoned that a dedicated system for studying cosmic dust one that utilized the principles of observational cosmology would greatly reduce such errors. The whole goal of observational cosmology is to reduce systematic errors when you are looking at the sky, he added. So our system is built from a different perspective. The National Science Foundation recognized the novelty of this approach and awarded Perera a grant for the project. At the projects center is a spectrometer. Its basic function is to take in light, break it into its spectral components, send those components through cosmic dust samples, record the amount of light transmitted through each sample as a function of wavelength, and display the data through a computer program. One specific instrument Perera and his students are building is a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS), which makes use of an innovative concept put forth by Dale Fixsen, a research scientist with NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. I exchanged about three emails with Fixsen and we did the rest, Perera said. When they are finished, Perera and his students will have constructed the worlds smallest FTS. Whats most unique about the IWU project is the design the compact FTS is coupled to a cryostat. Essentially a very cold refrigerator (indeed, Perera and his students refer to it as the fridge), the cryostat can cool samples to a temperature of 4 Kelvin, or 452 degrees Fahrenheit. The fridge can be used to match the temperatures of actual astronomical dust clouds (10-50 Kelvin). The structure that holds the fridge, along with the pumping/vacuum station, were mostly built and installed by Illinois Wesleyan physics students. So were most of the thermometers, associated cables and electronics, as well as special insulation within the fridge, which also includes a bolometer, or millimeter-wavelength light detector. This sensitive instrument measures radiant energy. Major Contributions While Perera led the way in devising the spectrometer from working out the mathematical formula to writing the source code to cut the metal for the ellipsoidal mirrors inside the spectrometer his students made major contributions. Showing these components to a visitor, the professor ticks off some of the many advances made by past and current students: Kyle OShea 16 took Pereras CAD designs for the FTS and machined most of the necessary parts to high precision using IWUs milling machine. He also implemented a system to control the FTSs moving mirror, and used IWUs 3D printers to make several items, including an adapter for the vacuum enclosure of the FTS. OShea is now a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Michigan State University, where hes working on new technology for 3D printing. Hansheng (Jason) Chen 17 designed a robust optical window for the cryostat, so that a wide spectral range of light can pass into the fridge without compromising the vacuum within. After completing the design for the window which was fabricated at the University of Illinois Chen made changes and machined additional parts to help install the optical window. This fall, he will enter a graduate program in theoretical astrophysics at the University of California, Davis. Huy Do 16 now completing his 3:2 dual degree in electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis was an early contributor to the project. Dos work on the bolometer electronics and filter wheel mechanics built a foundation for the progress that has been made on the instrument thus far. Jason Chen 17 prepares to install an optical window he designed into the cryostat. As the lead student on the spectrometer project this past year, Lunjun Liu played a major role in developing and testing a unique filter wheel housed in the fridge. This wheel holds and switches dust samples, allowing researchers to study up to eight different samples in one cooldown. Liu machined shafts, pulleys and dozens of other mechanical parts in the CNS machine shop, but his first challenge was to learn basic skills and safety protocols needed to work with the tools. I had no experience in any kind of building before coming to IWU, said Liu, a native of Wuhan, China. I was not expecting that would be something that would be necessary for an astrophysicist. But as Liu was building the part, testing it, refining it, and testing it again in a seemingly endless process, he began to understand how important those routine tasks would be to the final outcome. Liu believes his in the trenches experience in the IWU lab has given him an important advantage. Last summer he was selected for Caltechs competitive Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Because he was familiar with cryostats, detectors and electronics from his work at Illinois Wesleyan, Liu entered the Caltech lab confident of his abilities. At Caltech I observed other students not fully understanding the inner workings of the equipment, because they are not building things step by step, without understanding every concept of every device, said Liu, who is returning to Caltech for a year to assist with deployment of one of his projects there before entering graduate school in astronomy at the University of Illinois. I was able to provide my point of view to fine-tune a device, for example, to provide a better outcome. Getting it Right A physics student displays an ellipsoidal mirror, which is installed inside the spectrometer. At temperatures this cold, so much can go wrong, said Ronan Dorsey 18, who joined Pereras lab group in May 2016 and worked through the summer, spending much of that time machining parts for a light pipe within the cryostat that carries light from the outside to the dust samples inside the fridge. The machining can seem menial, Dorsey admitted, but its so important to take your time and just do it slow so you get it right. Or, at least, as much as you can before you test it. And then you go back to the machine shop when you figure out you did it wrong. Breyers introduction to the FTS project was equally unglamorous. When she joined the project in her sophomore year, she said her tasks involved screwing parts that had already been machined onto the body, or applying oil to keep the machining functioning smoothly. I had no idea what I was doing at first, she acknowledged with a laugh. It takes a while to really understand the project. Soon, however, Perera tasked Breyer with logging the fridges temperature and detector data with LabVIEW, a graphical language used for data acquisition and instrument control. In the summer of 2015, Breyer worked in Pereras lab to collect data as the spectrometer was being calibrated. My program would take data points every minute for something like 15 hours, store it and then wed review it the next morning, she said. According to Perera, Breyer also played a large role in structuring and organizing the inside of the cryostat. Breyer believes this lab research experience helped her secure a spot for a nationally competitive National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates internship in 2016. Going into the summer research experience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I felt so much more confident about my abilities, Breyer noted. Dr. Perera has always believed in me, even when I didnt believe in myself, and hes made me feel confident in my abilities to do lab work, to be a physicist, and to be successful, she added. Sharing with the World Simon Liu 17 played a major role in developing and testing this unique filter wheel that holds up to eight different cosmic dust samples. The chance to work alongside a faculty member, building a device from the ground up in hopes of learning more about the origins of planetary systems, is not lost on the students. Spending four or five hours a day for a whole summer with Dr. Perera, working one-on-one on this project, is not something I would find at a big university, Dorsey observed. Working directly with a physicist of Dr. Pereras caliber has been the most rewarding thing about this entire project. Dorsey has become the go-to guy in day-to-day operations the past several months as Perera and his group have conducted three cooldowns in order to improve the bolometers performance. After a successful cooldown of the cryostat in February, the next step is to test and troubleshoot the entire system. Construction is scheduled for completion this summer, when the National Science Foundation grants funding cycle comes to a close. Perera said that to his knowledge, there has been no other successful operation of a detector of this kind using a dry cooling mechanism that employs gas pulses, rather than liquid helium, to cool. The only other FTS Perera knows of thats remotely similar to the one at Illinois Wesleyan is housed in the lab of a colleague at the University of Michigan. Despite the daily challenges and troubleshooting necessary to get a new instrument of such complexity up and running, Perera anticipates the satisfaction of soon being able to share the IWU groups work with the world. First up is an academic paper on the projects instrumentation, projected for later this year. And he looks forward to the day soon, he hopes when the device is fully functioning in its purpose to aid astronomers and astrophysicists in the quest to better understand the nature of cosmic dust. There is still much we dont know about dust-obscured environments, said Perera. But knowing about the properties of the dust tells us how that dust was created, and thats a piece of information about how a planetary system evolved or how a new planetary system was made. Perera noted the field of astronomy is currently preoccupied with asking the question of how life came to be, with the role of cosmic dust explored within that question. I can understand that, because as a child in Sri Lanka, my interest in science was born, in part, that way as well, he recalled. Looking at the stars, and wondering if there was someone looking back from another planet. Perera and his students continue asking those questions and pursuing answers, but stand proud of what they believe their work will add to the growing body of knowledge for all those who still seek. RELATED STORY: Read how an IWU chemistry student replicated cosmic dust in the lab Students Stage "Hungry Games" to Fight Hunger Students in the "Perspectives in Global Health" course organized "The Hungry Games" fundraiser on the Quad. April 27, 2017 BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Students in a global health course have raised more than $1,000 to support the building of fish ponds for communities in need. In Perspectives in Global Health, a course taught by Associate Professor of Health and Environmental Studies Laurine Brown, students debate various health issues in regions across the world and propose possible solutions. Near the end of the semester, students select an organization to support and build an educational and fundraising campaign around it, according to Brown. The class chose to partner with World Vision, an organization that works with impoverished communities in nearly 100 different countries. According to World Vision, one in nine people is chronically hungry worldwide. Hunger and poor nutrition often lead to premature death and impaired growth and development. Through the funds raised by IWU students, World Vision will purchase the digging and stocking of three fish ponds for communities in need. Fish, as a source of food that grows rapidly and is high in protein, can greatly improve life in malnourished communities. It can also be sold for income. Nicole Bukowski 19, a member of the class, said that the fish pond program offers an innovative way of tackling hunger. This program not only helps hunger but its stimulates the economy, said Bukowski. This campaign is different from anything weve done in past years. The students called their campaign Casting Away Hunger: Helping Families One Pond at a Time. They utilized social media, raffles, donation tables, and a special event they called The Hungry Games to raise funds. Through campaigning, class member Victoria Drake 18 realized students are able to make a big difference. We can do a lot of good with a small amount of money, said Drake. It just takes a little bit of effort. I think the biggest takeaway Ive had from the class, is just being aware of a problem and then really putting in the effort to make a difference rather than just watching it happen. Its pretty rewarding. By Vi Kakares 20 Reddit 1 Email 37 Shares By H Patricia Hynes | ( Portside ) | If we are not united in peace, we cannot save the planet. Thich Nhat Hanh War and Warming: Can We Save the Planet Without Taking on the Pentagon? Looking out to my audience of young climate change activists and older peace activists gathered for a talk and discussion on war and warming, I see in the generational difference what many peace activists perceive. Peace, war, militarism, and nuclear weapons are an agenda of another eraan earlier era, while progressive political energy today is galvanized by climate change. (One climate activist explained that in his lifetime, no nuclear weapons had been used while climate change had worsened.) Thus, our movements largely work in silos, despite the actuality that war and fossil fuels have been fatally co-dependent since the Second World War. Oil is indispensable for war and militarism. Think of it as the lifeblood coursing through our foreign policy, a policy based on maintaining superpower status and confronting those whom we perceive as challenging us. The 1980 Carter Doctrine, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf, formalized the toxic nexus between access to oil and war. Since the late 1970s, the United States has spent $8 trillion protecting oil cargoes in the Persian Gulf through ongoing naval patrols. (1) Today the United States, China, Britain, France, the Netherlands and others trade arms for oil, directly and indirectly, with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela. Keeping oil and gas supply sealanes in the South China Sea open, in the face of Chinas expansionism there, is a factor in the US pivot to Asia. This foreign policy pivot has involved engaging Australia and Southeast Asian allies in military training exercises, opening new and previously closed bases to the US military, and sales of new weapons systems. (2) Further, the Obama administration prioritized a military triangular alliance with Japan, pressuring them to abandon their peace constitution, and South Korea, where the US has a military foothold on the Asian continent, for countering North Korea and the rising power of China. (3) This ratcheting up of military dominance is reliant on oil, the lifeline of weaponry, military exercises and war. War for oil has come home. Militarized North Dakota police attacked non-violent water protectors protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline with rubber bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades, and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures. One medic treating injuries described it as a low grade war. (4) A thumbnail sketch of recent US spending confirms the axiom that war culture is a defining feature of US politics. In 2016, as in previous years, an estimated $1 trillion was allocated to military defense, militarized national security, veterans, and debt from recent wars. In that same year a few billion dollarscrumbs from the masters tablewere allocated to research and development for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. (5) Between 2010-2015, the federal government invested $56 billion in clean energy internationally, while it recently committed to $1 trillion for modernizing nuclear weapons, their infrastructure and their delivery systems by 2030. (6) Whats clear from US spending priorities is that access to oil and military dominance has governed US policy in the world. Add to this a thin-skinned bully as president surrounding himself with generals and we will likely get into deeper displays of male dominance. Foreign policy advisor to both Presidents Bush, Philip Zelikow, put it bluntly. With President Trumps ambient prickliness, we could end up picking a fight with three quarters of the world. (7) The immense policy and spending inequality between military and renewable energy (one that mirrors our societys massive economic inequality) retards sustainable energy research and development and accelerates the perilously trending climate change. Militarism: An Engine of Climate Change In 1940 the United States military consumed one percent of the countrys total fossil fuel energy usage; by the end of the World War II the militarys share rose to 29 percent. Militarism is the most oil-intensive activity on the planet, growing more so with faster, bigger, more fuel guzzling planes, tanks, and naval vessels. At the outset of the Iraq War in March 2003, the Army estimated it would need more than 40 million gallons of gasoline for three weeks of combat, exceeding the total quantity used by all Allied forces in the four years of World War 1. (8) The frequency and prevalence of US armed conflict since World War II is another factor in the combustible mix of war and warming. One count has documented 153 instances of US armed forces engaged in conflict abroad from 1945 through 2004, a number consistent with other estimates. (9) This count, though, does not include covert military missions in which US Special Operations Forces (larger in number than the active-duty militaries of many countries) operate in 135 countries. Nor do the 153 military conflicts since 1945 include US occupation forces stationed abroad since World War II, military participation in mutual security organizations such as NATO, military base agreements for the estimated 1000 US military bases across the planet, and routine oil-intensive military training exercises around the globe. In 2003, the Carter Doctrine was implemented with shock and awe, in what was the most intensive and profligate use of fossil fuel the world has ever witnessed. The projected full costs of the Iraq War (estimated $3 trillion) could have covered all global investments in renewable energy needed between now and 2030 to reverse global warming trends. Between 2003 and 2007, the Iraq war generated more carbon dioxide equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions each year of the war than 139 of the worlds countries release annually. Re-building Iraqi (and Syrian and Yemeni) schools, homes, businesses, bridges, roads, and hospitals pulverized by the war will require millions of tons of cement, the most fossil fuel intensive of all manufacturing industries. (10) After an unprecedented investigation into military use of fossil fuels, the scholar Barry Sanders calculates that the US military consumes as much as one million barrels of oil per day and contributes 5 percent of current global warming emissions. Few whole countries use more oil than Pentagon. (11) Yet, this comparison understates the extreme military impact on climate change. Military fuel is more polluting because of the fuel type used for aviation. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from jet fuel are larger possibly triple per gallon than those from diesel and oil. Further, aircraft exhaust has unique polluting effects that result in greater warming effect by per unit of fuel used. (12) Nor does this calculation include the fossil fuels used by civilian weapons makers. Their greenhouse gas emissions comprise both those from manufacturing and testing weapons and also the intensive cleanup of hazardous waste produced by them. Nearly 900 of the US Environmental Protection Agencys approximately 1,300 Superfund sites are abandoned military bases/facilities or manufacturing and testing sites that produced conventional weapons and other military related products and services, according to the 2008-2009 Annual Report of the Presidents Cancer Panel. Climate Change in a Militarizing World Climate change is inevitably an issue of peace because the Pentagon is the single largest contributor of climate change emissions in the world. And as the Pentagon goes, so go the military budgets of other major powers. We are not your enemy, a Chinese strategist told journalist John Pilger, but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay. (13) According to some security analysts, talk of fighting terrorism fills the media but is secondary in the talk of US and NATO generals, admirals and defense ministers. Many politicians of West and NATO believe that war between Great Powers (Russia and/or China) is not only possible but may break out at any time. Therefore, bigger spending in all involved countries on high-tech weapons, deploying more forces, and more military joint exercises will exacerbate climate change emissions and heighten the potential for nuclear war, risking another kind of climate changenuclear winter. (14) Others point to the elevation of generals by President-elect Trump to positions historically held by civilians in order to maintain civilian control of the military, namely Department of Defense, National Security Advisor and Department of Homeland Security. They are enablers and accelerants to military action, warns retired Colonel William Astore. [t]he future of U.S. foreign policy seems increasingly clear: more violent interventionism against what these men see as the existential threat of radical Islam Both [the United States and radical Islam] embrace their own exceptionalism, both see themselves as righteous warriors, both represent ways of thinking steeped in patriarchy and saturated with violence, and both are remarkably resistant to any thought of compromise. (15) Growing global militarization portends greater military build up in Russia, China, NATO and the Middle East and greater climate change emissions. The United States expends 37 percent of the global military budget and its military is estimated to contribute 5 percent of climate change emissions. Can we not, then, assume that the rest of worlds military spending, weapons manufacturing, military exercises, and conflict combine to bring military-related fossil fuel emissions to near 15 percent of global climate change pollution? Intensifying military tensions will drive it higher and could vitiate country commitments to the Paris climate agreement. Climate Change, Water Shortage and Conflict: Syria Climate change is necessarily an issue of peace given the potential conflicts over the remaining oil as we near peak oil and given diminishing potable water supply and arable land. The UN panel that analyses climate science, the IPPC, concludes: Water and its availability and quality will be the main pressure on and [critical] issue for societies and the environment under climate change. Within little more than a decade, nearly one-half of the worlds people will be living in areas of high water shortage. (16) The worst Syrian drought on record, from 2006 to 2011, caused agriculture to collapse; food prices to rise, thus aggravating poverty; and drove more 1.5 million farm workers and families to cities for survival. Simultaneously hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees from the US-led war in their country fled to Syrian cities. The extreme and rapid swelling in urban population from war and climate change-related water scarcity, combined with the lack of support from the Assad government for basic needs and services, added fuel to the fire of civil conflict and the current war in Syria. The Syrian scholar Suzanne Saleeby notes that escalating pressures on urban areas due to internal migration, increasing food insecurity, and resultant high rates of unemployment have spurred many Syrians to make their political grievances publicly known in popular uprisings (17) While it is evident from history that the source of violence in societies suffering scarce resources is fundamentally inequality, injustice, poor economic and resource management, and lack of democracy, the stress of climate change on the Syrian society is neither isolated nor temporary; and it is worsening. The entire Middle East inexorably faces a hotter, drier climate from climate change that will further stress water resources, agriculture, food prices and existing conflicts. Thus, the seeds of future conflicts in authoritarian and unequal societies may also include scarce water resources as farmers and thirsty people, opportunistic politicians and powerful corporations contend for that diminishing resource. Conclusion War mirrors the culture of a country. US militarismfrom its training, tactics, and logistics to its reasons for going to war and its weapons of waris distinctly shaped by core elements of American identity. These determining cultural forces are, according to military historian Victor Hanson: manifest destiny; frontier mentality; rugged individualism; unfettered market capitalism; and what he calls a muscular independence (power projection in Pentagonspeak). (18) These eminently masculinist qualities converge to generate bigger, better and more destructive war technology. And they have delivered up a bullying, white nationalist, law-breaking billionaire and sexual predator as president. The US habit and competence for war, with its origins in the past annihilation of Native Americans, may be our societys nemesis unless we do critical soul-searching about our cultural and personal values and actively engage in transforming them. Let us remember and honor the plentitude of activist, non-violent movements in our society that have profoundly challenged the dominant patriarchal profile of our culture described by Hanson. These are the feminist violence against women and equal rights for women movement; the civil rights, immigrant and indigenous rights movements; the anti-war and peace movements; Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock water protectors; progressive media, peace and justice studies; progressive labor and health workers; the coop, sustainable agriculture, and Transition Town movements; and the pervasive climate change activism and victories against fracking and oil pipelines. The challenge is how to build voice, social cohesion and public influence for our shared values of a sense of human community, our core connection as humans with nature, our empathy with the exploited and our thirst for equality and justice for all. In these times of overt authoritarian and corporate control, our hope for turning the tide will come from local, community-based campaigns and actions. These comprise anti-fracking ordinances, town by town; the fight for $15 minimum wage city by city; churches and cities providing sanctuary for undocumented workers; children suing their government for their right to clean energy and a livable future; campaigns against all forms of violence against girls and women; using community media to promote equal rights for all; and electing people to local and regional office who champion these issues and campaigns. Working together, we must turn the tide on these destructive forces and seek enduring peace on earth and enduring peace with earth. This piece originated in talks given to 350.org CT and Promoting Enduring Peace, New Haven; Womens International League for Peace and Justice, Boston branch; and the Womens Pentagon Action 2016 Forum. Sources 1. http://www.princeton.edu/oeme/articles/US-miiltary-cost-of-Persian-Gulf-force-projection.pdf 2. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34694-in-pivot-to-asia-us-military-reinforces-its-foothold-in-the-pacific 3. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38716-cops-of-the-pacific-the-us-military-s-role-in-asia-in-the-age-of-trump 4. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22112016/dakota-access-protesters-injury-police-concussion-grenades-firehoses 5.https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/03/f20/FY%202016%20Renewable%20Webinar%20%20Presentation.pdf 6. Obama Rolls Out Clean Energy Plans. North American Windpower. Volume 13, Number 11, December 2016. p.12. 7. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/todayspaper/quotation-of-the-day.html?_r=0 8. Barry Sanders (2009) The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. Oakland, CA: AK Press. 9. Dependence.pdf 10.http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2008/03/A%20Climate%20of%20War%20FINAL%20(March%2017%202008).pdf 11. The Green Zone. 12. George Monbiot (2006). Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning. Cited in The Green Zone, p.72 13. http://www.alternet.org/world/will-trump-start-war-china 14. https://mondediplo.com/2016/09/02war. 15. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176224/ 16. http://www.oecd.org/environment/indicators-modelling-outlooks/40200582.pdf ) 17. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1 http://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-contributed-to-war-in-syria/a-18330669. 18. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/military-technology-and-american-culture Pat Hynes, a retired environmental engineer and professor of environmental health, directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts http://traprock.org. Via Portside Related video added by Juan Cole: Noam Chomsky: Noam Chomsky: Climate Change & Nuclear Proliferation Pose the Worst Threat Ever Faced by Humans Reddit Email 233 Shares Jessica Northey | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | Marine Le Pens declaration that colonialism was a positive thing is not only a denial of Frances painful history, but an example of the fascism that we now face in Europe. When we see or hear evil we have a moral imperative to call it out. Otherwise evil seeps into our narrative, our media, our politics and our lives. The words uttered by Marine Le Pen Frances presidential candidate on the eve of one of the most important elections in Europe insisting that colonialism was a positive thing, are so fundamentally wrong. To then further precise that in Algeria in particular it was beneficial is an incitement to hatred, a blatant lie and the worst form of fascism that we now face in Europe. The actual denial of Frances painful history in Algeria goes even beyond the amnesia of British colonialism. For young French people who are denied the truth about their past, actively lied to, this is a crime. And it is particularly so for the descendants of the Algerians in France, including for the pied noir families, who were all victim to this cruel and barbaric regime which ran for 132 years until 1962. In the May 1945 uprisings following the Second World War, when Algerians who had fought to liberate Europe demanded their basic human rights, the colonial government brutally massacred 15,000 Algerians. 104 Europeans lost their lives. Wiping out entire villages, throwing people out of airplanes in a campaign of fear and brutal repression, the French violence was a turning point in the Algerian struggle for civil rights and justice. Between 1954 and 1962 over one million Algerians were killed during the war of liberation. The extent of cruelty defies belief. Whether reading Alistair Hornes seminal A savage war of peace on the sheer barbarism, Henri Allegs The Question on the institutional torture centres (he saw the internal workings from painfully close up) or listening to the stories of the descendants who saw their parents brutally murdered, disappeared, tortured at the hands of no other than the likes of Jean Marie Le Pen. Like his daughter, Le Pen was a French Presidential candidate, and is a man known to have committed torture in Algeria. Colonial Algeria was a crime against humanity from its bloody initial conquest to its brutal end. It is a crime which Algerians astonishingly have somehow been able to overcome. When the French left in 1962 there was one university in the country one in which you would not find Algerians. Today there are 48 vibrant institutions, full of students with whom I have had many interesting debates in recent years. In the almost impossible conditions of continued French terrorist actions at the end of the independence struggle, which saw the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), a right wing French paramilitary organisation, destroying any infrastructure they could get their hands on, including burning down the national library, Algeria rebuilt a nation. The liberation movement rebuilt the Algerian identity, re-designed an education system and rediscovered their proud and beautiful culture. Listening to this injustice and Le Pens degrading comments will make life more difficult for young French Algerians in particular. It will hurt French people in Algeria and Algerians in France. It will break the bonds of friendship which still span the Mediterranean between the shores of Marseille and the coast of Algiers. Marine Le Pen is playing a dangerous, deceitful and immoral game. And it is one which will ultimately hurt France and French citizens far more than it will damage Algeria. Algerians know their history, and despite all the pain and bloodshed, can be proud of it. As my Professor Olivier Roy once told me, there is no way we can compete: Algerians have a deep understanding of French and European culture, of the Middle East, of African identity. They can adopt multiple identities, build on multiple allegiances and access a multitude of information sources. This century will be theirs if they can manage a peaceful and democratic progression which includes all of Algerian citizens in a real reflection about the future of the country. The equivalent unfortunately cannot be said in the context of the French presidential election, tarnished with corruption, racism and lies Jessica Northey is a Research Associate with the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at the University of Coventry. She gained her PhD from the European University Institute in Italy and is a country expert with the Bertelsmann Foundation. Jessica has recently published Associations and Democracy in Algeria (2017) with Democratization and her upcoming book Civil Society in Algeria: activism, identity and the democratic process will be published with I.B.Tauris. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Via OpenDemocracy.net) Related video added by Juan Cole: French Presidential Candidate wants to Make Colonization Great Again VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - April 27, 2017) - Corvus Gold Inc. ("Corvus" or the "Company") - (TSX:KOR)(OTCQX:CORVF) announces the initial results from testing the Atmospheric Alkaline Oxidation ("AAO") method of oxidizing sulfide mineralization for low cost cyanide gold extraction (Figure 1). Initial results of the AAO method for oxidizing sulfide material resulted in overall gold recoveries of approximately 93% from milled material in the Sierra Blanca tuff (largest host unit), which is comparable to oxidized milled material recoveries in the current production plan. Results for the remaining three units are pending. Estimated additional operational cost to the mill material for the AAO process would raise the mill cutoff grade to approximately 0.65 g/t. The current North Bullfrog model has several areas below the current designed pit bottom that could be mined at above the projected sulfide mill cutoff grade. Further test work is on going for both mill material as well as heap leach testing of lower grade material using the AAO process. The AAO process has been extensively tested at the Hycroft project in northern Nevada where a pilot scale demonstration plant has been operated as well as test heap leach pads confirming the effectiveness of the processing technique. The AAO process has been included in the recent feasibility study done for the Hycroft project for commercial application. Jeff Pontius, President and CEO of Corvus said, "The encouraging results from the application of the AAO process to North Bullfrog sulfide material could be a bonus to the project which already hosts a large oxide resource. In addition to the higher-grade, millable sulfide material, Corvus is conducting heap leach applications of AAO similar to the test work conducted at the Hycroft Mine which if positive, could amplify its impact on the project. The current oxide deposit in our PEA study is underlain by an extensive sulfide zone that if amenable to this new low-cost method of extraction could change the way we approach exploration and expansion of the North Bullfrog project and district." AAO Sulfide Oxidation Process Test work The test work conducted by Hazen Research, Inc. on North Bullfrog sulfide material is testing the four rock types which host nearly all of the known sulfide mineralization on the project (Table 1). The current test results are from the Sierra Blanca unit, which hosts about 50% of the currently known sulfide mineralization on the North Bullfrog property. The test work conducted standard flotation concentration of the sulfide material which produced a high-quality concentrate that averaged 92% gold in just 12% of the original materials (9:1 concentration ratio) for the Sierra Blanca rock unit. That concentrate was then mixed with a sodium carbonate reagent (Soda Ash) in a reaction tank with oxygen introduced for a period of 72 hours at which point there was no sulfide sulfur remaining in the concentrate. That material was then leached using cyanide in a process similar to that which is proposed for North Bullfrog mill facility. As a control, an unoxidized (no AAO treatment) concentrate sample was cyanide leached which recovered only 12% of the gold. Results for the remaining three units are pending. The key additional cost elements in adding the AAO process to the existing North Bullfrog mill flow sheet are: a flotation circuit, a fine grinding circuit, AAO reaction tankage; and an oxygen system. These added costs and reagents are currently projected to increase the mill cutoff grade for sulfide material to approximately 0.65 g/t Au. Corvus has identified a number of potential cost saving opportunities for the system that will also be explored in the coming months. The current North Bullfrog project has a number of areas that host sulfide mineralization of sufficient grade to be processed using the AAO system, as well as a local source for soda ash, which is a key reagent. Corvus will report additional results for the other host units and heap leach tests as data becomes available. Table 1 North Bullfrog Mill Concentrate AAO Testing Sample Unit Gold Recovery to Concentrate Concentration Ratio (ore to concentrate) Post AAO CN Gold Recovery (from con) Overall Gold Recovery (from ore tonne) Sierra Blanca 94% 9:1 99% 93% Pioneer Tuff 94% 14:1 Pending Pending Rhyolite 89% 14:1 Pending Pending Dacite 88% 5:1 Pending Pending Corvus Gold is also conducting column leach tests patterned after those used at the Hycroft project that were scaled up to two, successful 5,000 t test pads. These column tests use the highly reactive sodium carbonate material as an additive to the leach material in place of the standard lime addition. If the heap leach test work is successful, it would lower the cut-off grade required and expand the potential material that could be economically processed. About the North Bullfrog Project, Nevada Corvus controls 100% of its North Bullfrog Project, which covers approximately 72 km in southern Nevada. The property package is made up of a number of private mineral leases of patented federal mining claims and 865 federal unpatented mining claims. The project has excellent infrastructure, being adjacent to a major highway and power corridor as well as a large water right. The North Bullfrog project includes numerous prospective gold targets at various stages of exploration with four having NI 43-101 mineral resources (Sierra Blanca, Jolly Jane, Mayflower and YellowJacket). The project contains a measured mineral resource of 3.86 Mt at an average grade of 2.55 g/t gold and 19.70 g/t silver, containing 316.5k ounces of gold and 2,445k ounces of silver, an indicated mineral resource of 1.81 Mt at an average grade of 1.53 g/t gold, and 10.20 g/t silver, containing 89.1k ounces of gold and 593.6k ounces of silver and an inferred resource of 1.48 Mt at an average grade of 0.83 g/t gold and 4.26 g/t silver, containing 39.5k ounces of gold and 202.7k ounces of silver for oxide mill processing. The mineral resource for the mill process was defined by Whittle optimization using all cost and recovery data and a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.52 g/t gold. In addition, the project contains a measured mineral resource of 0.3 Mt at an average grade of 0.25 g/t gold and 2.76 g/t silver, containing 2.4k ounces of gold and 26.6k ounces of silver, an indicated mineral resource of 22.86 Mt at an average grade of 0.30 g/t gold and 0.43 g/t silver, containing 220.5k ounces of gold and 316.1k ounces of silver and an inferred mineral resource of 176.3 Mt at an average grade of 0.19 g/t gold and 0.67 g/t silver, containing 1,077.4k ounces of gold and 3,799.2k ounces of silver for oxide, heap leach processing. The mineral resource for heap leach processing was defined by Whittle optimization using all cost and recovery data and a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.15 g/t. Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance Jeffrey A. Pontius (CPG 11044), a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), has supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Pontius is not independent of Corvus, as he is the CEO & President and holds common shares and incentive stock options. Carl E. Brechtel, (Nevada PE 008744 and Registered Member 353000 of SME), a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, has coordinated execution of the work outlined in this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Brechtel is not independent of Corvus, as he is the COO and holds common shares and incentive stock options. The work program at North Bullfrog was designed and supervised by Mark Reischman, Corvus Gold's Nevada Exploration Manager, who is responsible for all aspects of the work, including the quality control/quality assurance program. On-site personnel at the project log and track all samples prior to sealing and shipping. Quality control is monitored by the insertion of blind certified standard reference materials and blanks into each sample shipment. All resource sample shipments are sealed and shipped to ALS Chemex in Reno, Nevada, for preparation and then on to ALS Chemex in Reno, Nevada, or Vancouver, B.C., for assaying. ALS Chemex's quality system complies with the requirements for the International Standards ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 17025:1999. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material and replicate samples. Finally, representative blind duplicate samples are forwarded to ALS Chemex and an ISO compliant third party laboratory for additional quality control. For additional information on the North Bullfrog project, including information relating to exploration, data verification and the mineral resource estimates, see "Technical Report and Preliminary Economic Assessment for Combined Mill and Heap Leach Processing at the North Bullfrog Project, Bullfrog Mining District, NYE County, Nevada" dated June 16, 2015 as amended and restated May 18, 2016 which is available under Corvus' SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. About Corvus Gold Inc. Corvus Gold Inc. is a North American gold exploration and development company, focused on its near-term gold-silver mining project at the North Bullfrog and Motherlode Districts in Nevada. In addition, the Company controls a number of royalties on other North American exploration properties representing a spectrum of gold, silver and copper projects. Corvus is committed to building shareholder value through new discoveries and the expansion of its projects to maximize share price leverage in a recovering gold and silver market. During his campaign, Trump had called it the worst deal ever negotiated and promised to tear it up if he made it to the White House. Trump supporters and others who opposed the nuclear are left wondering. In an article for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Lee Smith asks, Was the president just bluffing? Did he plan all along to leave the deal in place and take his chances that Iran wouldnt go nuclear on his watch? Rumors in Washington say that Trumps administration is split into rival camps over Iranian policy. The administration has launched a larger, more comprehensive review of Iran policy. An administration official claims, it is one of the major projects that the government is now embarked on, involving hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Numerous federal agencies are involved, including law enforcement and the intelligence community, as well as the State Department and various embassies around the world. Joining them is the Treasury Department, Justice, and the Pentagon. The process itself is being managed by National Security Council staff. The question remains, whether or not Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal? David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, said last week, Iran is either violating the deal, its inconsistent with the deal, or its just pushing the envelope. Critics of the deal, who want stronger action taken quicker, see certifying that Iran is in compliance as a delay. Smith writes, It does not signal, the Trump official told me, that this White House has concluded the JCPOA serves American interests. Rather, certification is a placeholder during the review process. It is buying time for the administration to muster its resources while it plans how to move forward on Iran. The Iranians might also see it as an opportunityto get their act together lest they have to be reminded they are no longer dealing with President Obama. In the last several weeks, the Trump White House has put several counties on notice. A strong message to North Korea was delivered by Vice President Mike Pence, who warned that the era of strategic patience is over. According to Smith, Iran cooperates with North Korea on nuclear and ballistic missile technology. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had strong words for Irans ally in Syria, Russia. He said that Russia was either incompetent in failing to stop Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons or complicit. In a stunning move, Trump ordered a missile strike on the Syrian airfield that Assad used to launch the sarin attack that killed at least 85 people. Trump seems unconcerned over upsetting Tehran. The Obama administration looked to Iran as a potential partner in regional stability, to counterbalance to Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not the Trump team, who view Iran as a problem, and the nuclear program as part of that problem. We have to look at Iran in a very comprehensive way in terms of the threat it poses in all areas of the region and the world, Rex Tillerson said last week. Much of the Iran policy review will rely on resources such as the Treasury, who might possibly designate companies affiliated with Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps, freezing assets and making it hard for other countries to do business with the designated firms. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said, Under the Obama administration, the White House prevented Treasury from designating IRGC entities. With the new administration, the pipeline is full and robust. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies provided Treasury with a database of 800 IRGC companies yet to be designated. Smith concludes, Tehran has no doubt gotten the message. Whether that matters to a regime held together for nearly 40 years only by its anti-American animus is another question entirely. VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - Eldorado Gold Corporation, ("Eldorado" or "the Company") today reported the Company's financial and operational results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. First Quarter Financial and Operational Highlights Profit of $3.8 million ( $0.01 per share) , compared to a loss of $2.5 million or $0.00 per share in the first quarter of 2016. Adjusted net earnings of $8.0 million ( $0.01 per share) compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ( $0.00 per share) in the first quarter 2016. , compared to a loss of or per share in the first quarter of 2016. compared to an adjusted net loss of ( per share) in the first quarter 2016. Gold production of 75,172 ounces , compared to 79,892 ounces from continuing operations. , compared to 79,892 ounces from continuing operations. Gold revenues of $90.5 million on sales of 74,068 ounces of gold at an average realized gold price of $1,222 per ounce. on sales of 74,068 ounces of gold at an All-in sustaining cash costs averaged $791 per ounce; considerably lower than 2017 guidance of all-in sustaining costs of $845-875 per ounce. averaged considerably lower than 2017 guidance of all-in sustaining costs of per ounce. Cash operating costs averaged $466 per ounce; lower than 2017 guidance of $484-535 per ounce. lower than 2017 guidance of per ounce. Total liquidity of approximately $1.1 billion , including $873.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits, and $250 million in undrawn lines of credit at quarter end. , including in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits, and in undrawn lines of credit at quarter end. Olympias Phase II began commissioning in the first quarter 2017 . began in the . Announced receipt of multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced for beyond 2017 at Olympias Phase II. for gold concentrate produced for beyond 2017 at Olympias Phase II. Construction at Skouries continued on track for anticipated 2019 start-up. on track for anticipated 2019 start-up. George Burns set to take on role of President & Chief Executive Officer on April 28, 2017 . "We have had a very successful first quarter of the year, with progress made at all of our development projects," said Paul Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Commissioning is underway at Olympias Phase II in Greece and we remain on track for declaring commercial production in the third quarter of this year. At Skouries, work continued during the quarter and we are still aiming for production in 2019. Both Tocantinzinho and Certej are progressing with engineering optimizations. As I leave my current role, I am confident that the incoming President & CEO, George Burns, and the Eldorado team are well positioned to continue to grow our company in a manner that provides significant additional value for shareholders." Throughout this press release we use cash operating cost per ounce, total cash costs per ounce, all-in sustaining cost per ounce, gross profit from gold mining operations, adjusted net earnings and cash flow from operating activities before changes in non-cash working capital as additional measures of Company performance. These are non IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these non IFRS measures. All dollar amounts in US$, unless stated otherwise. Financial Results ($ millions except as noted) Continuing Operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 2016 Kisladag Ounces produced 52,644 52,376 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 446 536 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 464 552 Sustaining capex 5.1 7.0 Efemcukuru Ounces produced 22,528 27,516 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 515 478 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 531 500 Sustaining capex 3.8 4.8 Olympias Ounces produced (1) 0 2,774 Sustaining capex 0 n/a Subtotal: Continuing Operations Ounces produced 75,172 79,892 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 466 519 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 483 536 Sustaining capex 8.9 11.8 (1) Includes production from tailings retreatment in 2016. Review of Quarterly Financial Results Profit attributable to shareholders of the Company was $3.8 million, or $0.01 per share, compared to a loss of $2.5 million, or $0.00 per share in 2016. Adjusted net earnings were $8.0 million ($0.01 per share) as compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ($0.00 per share) for the first quarter of 2016. The main difference between profit and adjusted earnings in the first quarter of 2017 was a $3.0 million adjustment related to closing cash / working capital recorded on finalization of the sale of the Company's Chinese assets (see the MD&A for a reconciliation of profit to adjusted earnings). Gold sales of 74,068 ounces from continuing operations were consistent year over year, while gross profit from continuing gold mining operations increased $4.9 million due to higher gold prices and lower cash operating costs. General and administrative expenses increased $2.1 million year over year due to reorganization costs in Vancouver and Turkey. Exploration expense increased $3.2 million including $0.9 million related to development of an exploration drift at Stratoni. Mine standby costs of $1.0 million were recorded in the first quarter 2017 related to Vila Nova and Perama Hill (2016: $9.6 million mainly related to the temporary suspension of the Skouries development from January to May 2016). The effective tax rate of 80% was higher than an expected rate of 20%-30% due to withholding tax accruals in Turkey, foreign exchange effects on the local tax basis in Greece, and unrecognized losses in Canada and Greece. The relative impact of these factors was approximately equal. First Quarter Review and 2017 Outlook TURKEY Kisladag Kisladag reported gold production of 52,644 ounces for the quarter, in-line with production in the prior year. There was a reduction in ore tonnes to the leach pad year over year as low grade run-of-mine ore is no longer being placed on the pad. Average treated head grade and tonnes mined were higher year over year as the mine accessed higher grade ore at the bottom of the current cut back. Cash operating costs of $446 per ounce improved over 2016 due to higher average treated head grade, and reduced operating costs realized in labour and major consumables through operational improvements. Sustaining capital expenditures of $5.1 million were lower year over year due to reduced project work. Efemcukuru Gold production of 22,528 ounces for the quarter was slightly lower than 2016 due to the lower average treated head grade and slightly lower tonnes milled. Cash operating costs of $515 per ounce were higher year on year due to lower grade. Capital expenditures of $3.8 million included underground development, mine equipment overhauls, and process and waste rock/tailings facilities construction projects. GREECE Stratoni Concentrate production for the first quarter was significantly higher year on year due to higher ore tonnes processed and higher zinc head grade. The mine and plant operated largely as planned in comparison to 2016 when operations were disrupted by a suspension of activities, with only two scheduled production days lost due to adverse winter weather conditions in January. Development of the hangingwall exploration drift progressed according to plan and diamond drilling commenced from the first drill station. Extension of the main footwall access ramp below +117m level to open up future production areas commenced in earnest in January. Olympias Development of Olympias Phase II made significant progress during the quarter. The majority of installation work in the process plant, including piping and cabling, was completed and commissioning work commenced in late March. Ore mining and processing began in April. Commercial production is expected by the beginning of the third quarter. Capital spending for the first quarter at Olympias was $37.1 million, with the majority deployed for continued underground development and rehabilitation in the Olympias underground, construction of the Phase II plant, and construction works in the Kokkinolakas tailings management facility. During the quarter, the Company also announced that it had received multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced beyond 2017. This is primarily due to the treatment of higher grade material resulting in better grades in concentrate produced. Under the new sales terms, gold payability rates have increased from 58% up to a maximum of 71%, which is expected to result in an increase of approximately 15,000 ounces of payable gold production per year. Annual Phase II production is now estimated to be approximately 85,000 ounces of gold (from 72,000 ounces per year previously) plus approximately 55,000 ounces of gold equivalent production. Skouries Work was restricted in the first quarter due to adverse winter weather. Earthworks, building erection and site clearing all progressed as weather allowed during the quarter. Targeted work included tailings thickener foundations and stockpile dome embankments. Engineering continued for the integrated waste management facility and the filter plant. Equipment selection for the main pressure filters for the filter plant was completed during the quarter. Total capital expenditure for the quarter was $14.0 million. Perama Hill The project remains on care and maintenance pending receipt of the Environmental Impact Study permit. BRAZIL Tocantinzinho Installation licenses for the site, road and power line were under review by the Para State government during the first quarter. Basic engineering was nearly completed for the process plant. Detailed infrastructure engineering was ongoing and is expected to be completed during the second quarter. The installation license was received post quarter end, however the tailings and solution ponds permits remain outstanding and are expected later this year. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. ROMANIA Certej Optimization studies continued during the quarter on the metallurgical process, water and waste management and site infrastructure to support the ongoing permitting activities. These optimizations are required for the oxidative process and the optimizations of waste and tailings material generated. Permitting for offsite infrastructure continued with work progressing on main power line, water tanks and mine access roads and water supply pipelines. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. Exploration Review Exploration activities during the quarter included reconnaissance-stage programs, drillhole targeting and drilling programs at our projects in Greece, Turkey, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. A total of 13,600 metres of exploration drilling was completed. In Greece, the Company completed the drill-testing of the Fisoka porphyry prospect, and initiated drilling at the Tsikara porphyry prospect near Skouries. The underground resource drilling program at Mavres Petres commenced late in the quarter, targeting previously untested down-dip and along-strike projections of the orebody. In Romania, drilling was conducted on the Certej North and Bolcana licenses, targeting the Bolcana porphyry system and related epithermal prospects on its periphery. In Brazil, drilling programs tested both the Vulture and Parnamirim target areas within the Borborema project area in Pernambuco state. Regional geochemical sampling continued over the large Borborema project area, while at the Nazareno project, work focused on infill soil sampling, mapping, and geophysical surveys to refine targets for drilling during the second half of the year. 2017 Outlook In 2017 Eldorado expects to produce 365,000-400,000 ounces of gold, including pre-commercial ounces from Olympias Phase II. Cash costs are forecasted at $485-535 per ounce, with all-in sustaining cash costs expected to range from $845-875 per ounce. The Company's balance sheet remains one of the strongest in its peer group, with approximately $874 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits and $250 million in undrawn credit lines. Sustaining capital for gold mining operations in 2017 is estimated to be approximately $70 million. Planned expenditures for mining development total $345 million. Exploration expenditures in 2017 are budgeted at $35 million (65% expensed and 35% capitalized), with a balanced focus on resource delineation and brownfield drilling at existing operations, advancing early-stage projects, and project generation. Depreciation, depletion and amortization expense is expected to be approximately $335 per ounce of gold sold. General and administrative expense is expected to be approximately $45 million. Corporate In December 2016, the Company announced that Paul Wright, Eldorado's current President and Chief Executive Officer, will retire from this role after the Annual General Meeting on April 27, 2017. Mr. Wright will be succeeded by Mr. George Burns, who will also join Eldorado's Board of Directors. Mr. Wright will continue as a member of Eldorado's Board of Directors, taking on the position of Vice-Chairman. Mr. Ross Cory did not stand for re-election as a Director at the Company's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Mr. Cory served on the Board for over 13 years and the Company would like to thank him for his many years of service and dedication. Conference Call A conference call to discuss the details of the Company's 2017 First Quarter Results will be held by senior management on April 28, 2017 at 8:30 AM PT (11:30 AM ET). The call will be webcast and can be accessed at Eldorado Gold's website: www.eldoradogold.com Conference Call Details Replay (available until May 12, 2017) Date: Friday April 28, 2017 Toronto: 416 849 0833 Time: 8:30 am PT (11:30 am ET) Toll Free: 855 859 2056 Dial in: 647 427 7450 Pass code: 9264 4727 Toll free: 888 231 8191 Gold Production Highlights (in US$) First Quarter 2017 First Quarter 2016 Full Year 2016 2017 Outlook5 Gold Production Ounces Sold 74,068 133,467 483,461 n/a Ounces Produced1 75,172 140,989 486,025 365,000 to 400,000 Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)2,4 466 603 579 485 to 535 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 483 658 621 n/a Realized Price ($/oz - sold) 1,222 1,198 1,253 n/a Kisladag Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 52,783 52,679 211,284 n/a Ounces Produced 52,644 52,376 211,161 230,000 to 245,000 Tonnes to Pad 3,227,406 4,046,896 16,565,254 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 1.13 0.73 0.80 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 446 536 474 500 to 550 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 464 552 488 n/a Efemcukuru Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 21,285 22,304 99,744 n/a Ounces Produced 22,528 27,516 98,364 95,000 to 105,000 Tonnes Milled 115,794 116,487 476,528 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 6.77 7.96 7.4 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 515 478 514 525 to 575 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 531 500 530 n/a Tanjianshan Mine, China Ounces Sold - 14,053 49,266 n/a Ounces Produced - 14,053 49,266 n/a Tonnes Milled - 268,615 869,964 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 1.84 1.90 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - 852 819 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - 1,083 970 n/a Jinfeng Mine, China Ounces Sold - 26,096 66,902 n/a Ounces Produced - 25,935 68,195 n/a Tonnes Milled - 305,484 766,697 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.26 3.32 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 726 705 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 807 791 n/a White Mountain Mine, China Ounces Sold - 18,335 56,265 n/a Ounces Produced - 18,335 56,265 n/a Tonnes Milled - 206,090 717,145 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.25 2.78 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 582 731 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 620 773 n/a Olympias, Greece Ounces Sold - - - n/a Ounces Produced1 - 2,774 2,774 40,000 to 50,000 Tonnes Milled - 87,350 87,350 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 2.47 2.47 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - - - n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - - - n/a 1. Ounces produced include production from tailings retreatment at Olympias. 2. Cost figures calculated in accordance with the Gold Institute Standard. 3. Cash operating costs, plus royalties and the cost of off-site administration. 4. Cash operating costs and total cash costs are non-IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these. 5. Outlook assumes the following metal prices: Gold $1,150 per ounce; Silver $20 per ounce. About Eldorado Gold Eldorado is a leading low cost gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a low cost strategy, a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO). BRISBANE, Australia, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Orocobre Limited (ORE:ASX, ORL:TSX) (Orocobre or the Company) is pleased to provide an update from its joint venture (JV) partner Advantage Lithium Corp. (TSXV:AAL) (Advantage Lithium) that Phase One drilling will commence early next week at its flagship lithium property, located in the Cauchari Salar of Jujuy province in NW Argentina. Phase one will be a five hole program and Phase two drilling is planned for later in 2017, comprising a further 12 holes and leading to a scoping study by early 2018. Advantage Lithium is increasing its interest in the project from the current 50% to 75% through the expenditure of US$5m or by completing a Feasibility Study. Orocobre holds the remaining interest. The Cauchari project lies approximately 20 kilometres south of Orocobre's producing Olaroz Lithium facility. Highlights Phase One drilling: a five hole rotary drill program scheduled to begin during the week commencing 1 May, 2017 Phase Two drilling: A follow-up, twelve hole diamond drill program to commence later in 2017 Drilling will focus on potential extensions of the existing inferred resource at Cauchari and exploration where no previous drilling has been conducted. A large exploration target1 has been defined with a range of 125 to 1,855 million cubic metres of brine at between 260 and 600mg/l lithium and 2,500 to 5,350mg/l potassium for the lower and upper ranges1 respectively; this represents an in-situ range of contained product of between 0.25 to 5.6mt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 0.9 to 19 mt of potash (KCl). Commenting on the update, Managing Director Richard Seville stated, "We are extremely pleased with this progress update from our JV partner Advantage Lithium and their commitment to fast-tracking exploration and development works at Cauchari." Notes: 1. An exploration target is not a mineral resource. The potential quantity and grade of the exploration target is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource in the volume where the Exploration Target is outlined. It is uncertain if further exploration drilling will result in the determination of a Mineral Resource in this volume. About Orocobre Limited Orocobre Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange (ASX:ORE) (TSX:ORL), and is building a substantial Argentinian-based industrial chemicals and minerals company through the construction and operation of its portfolio of lithium, potash and boron projects and facilities in the Puna region of northern Argentina. The Company has built, in partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation and JEMSE, the first large-scale, greenfield brine based lithium project in approximately 20 years at the Salar de Olaroz with planned production of 17,500 tonnes per annum of low-cost lithium carbonate. The Olaroz Lithium Facility has a low environmental footprint because of the following aspects of the process: The process is designed to have a high processing recovery of lithium. With its low unit costs, the process will result in low cut-off grades, which will maximise resource recovery. The process route is designed with a zero liquid discharge design. All waste products are stored in permanent impoundments (the lined evaporation ponds). At the end of the project life the ponds will be capped and returned to a similar profile following soil placement and planting of original vegetation types. Brine is extracted from wells with minimum impact on freshwater resources outside the salar. Because the lithium is in sedimentary aquifers with relatively low permeability, drawdowns are limited to the salar itself. This is different from halite hosted deposits such as Salar de Atacama , Salar de Hombre Muerto and Salar de Rincon where the halite bodies have very high near surface permeability and the drawdown cones can impact on water resources around the Salar affecting the local environment. , Salar de Hombre Muerto and where the halite bodies have very high near surface permeability and the drawdown cones can impact on water resources around the Salar affecting the local environment. Energy used to concentrate the lithium in the brine is solar energy. The carbon footprint is lower than other processes. The technology developed has a very low maximum fresh water consumption of <20 l/s, which is low by industry standards. This fresh water is produced by reverse osmosis from non-potable brackish water. Sales de Jujuy S.A. is also committed to the ten principles of the sustainable development framework as developed by The International Council on Mining and Metals. The company has an active and well-funded "Shared Value" program aimed at the long term development of the local people. The Company continues to follow the community and shared value policy to successfully work with suppliers and the employment bureau to focus on the hiring of local people from the communities of Olaroz, Huancar, Puesto Sey, Pastos Chicos, Catua, Susques, Jama, El Toro, Coranzuli, San Juan and Abrapampa. The project implementation is through EPCM (Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management) with a high proportion of local involvement through construction and supply contracts and local employment. The community and shared value policy continues to be a key success factor, training local people under the supervision of high quality experienced professionals. The Company also wholly-owns Borax Argentina, an important regional borate producer. For further information, please visit www.orocobre.com Competent Person's and Qualified Person's Statement The technical information in this announcement has been prepared by Murray Brooker of Hydrominex Geoscience. Murray Brooker is a geologist and hydrogeologist and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. Murray has sufficient relevant experience to qualify as a competent person as defined in the 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. He is also a "Qualified Person" as defined by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101. Murray Brooker consents to the inclusion in this announcement of this information in the form and context in which it appears. Additional information relating to the Company's Cauchari project is available in the existing technical report entitled "Technical Report Cauchari Project, Argentina" dated April 30, 2010, which was prepared by John Houston. DENVER & VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp. (NYSE MKT:XPL; TSX:SLR) ("Solitario") and Zazu Metals Corporation (TSXV:ZAZ) ("Zazu") are pleased to announce that they have entered into a definitive arrangement agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") pursuant to which Solitario has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Zazu (the "Zazu Shares") by way of a statutory plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") under the Canada Business Corporations Act. Highlights of the Combined Company Creation of a leading zinc focused explorer and developer during a time of encouraging supply and demand fundamentals Significant joint venture interests in two large, high-grade zinc development projects with world-class partners: Solitarios Bongara project in Northern Peru is a high-grade development asset held jointly with Compania Minera Milpo ("Milpo"), one of the largest zinc producers in Peru Zazus Lik project represents a large-tonnage, high-grade and potentially open-pittable development project in Alaska in partnership with Teck Resources Limited ("Teck") Additional portfolio of high quality exploration properties and royalties in the Americas Well-financed, with approximately US$16.5 million in cash and cash equivalents Experienced management team with a track-record of creating value for shareholders by moving assets through feasibility and permitting Enhanced capital markets profile and trading liquidity in combination with strong shareholder support Chris Herald, Chief Executive Officer of Solitario, stated: We are very pleased to announce this exciting opportunity that will create value for both Solitario and Zazu shareholders. Since the sale of the Mt. Hamilton project in 2015, Solitario has remained extremely disciplined in its evaluation of growth initiatives while preserving a robust balance sheet and tight capital structure. We are confident that we have both the technical and financial capabilities to significantly increase the value of Zazus Lik project by moving the asset through feasibility and permitting. We look forward to working with Zazus world-class joint venture partner Teck to pursue a development path beneficial to all parties. Gil Atzmon, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zazu, stated: This combination represents a unique opportunity to create a leading zinc development company with two high quality assets in the Americas. Zazu shareholders will benefit from increased diversification and access to capital, while importantly maintaining a focus on high-grade resources. We see significant potential in Solitarios asset base and believe the combined company will be well positioned to take advantage of increased interest in zinc. Particulars of the Transaction Under the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, holders of Zazu Shares ("Zazu Shareholders") will receive, on closing, 0.3572 of a common share of Solitario (the "Exchange Ratio") in exchange for each Zazu Share held. Based on the trailing 20-day volume weighted average price ("VWAP20") of Solitario on the NYSE MKT as of the close on April 26, 2017, the Exchange Ratio implies an offer price of C$0.41 per Zazu Share1, representing a premium of 41% over the VWAP20 of Zazu on the TSX Venture Exchange as of the same date. Following the completion of the Arrangement, former Zazu Shareholders are expected to hold approximately 34% of the issued and outstanding shares of the combined company. The Arrangement will be carried out by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement and will require the approval of at least 66 2/3 percent of the votes cast by Zazu Shareholders at a special meeting expected to take place in June 2017 (the "Zazu Meeting"). Zazu directors, officers and certain significant shareholders representing a total of approximately 47% of the issued and outstanding Zazu Shares have entered into voting and support agreements with Solitario agreeing to vote in favour of the Arrangement. The board of directors of Zazu has unanimously approved the Arrangement and will recommend that Zazu Shareholders vote in favour of the Arrangement. Full details of the Arrangement will be included in a management information circular of Zazu describing the matters to be considered at the Zazu Meeting, which is expected to be mailed to the Zazu Shareholders in May 2017 and made available on SEDAR under Zazus issuer profile at www.sedar.com. The Arrangement will also require the approval of a majority of the votes cast by holders ("Solitario Shareholders") of issued and outstanding common shares of Solitario ("Solitario Shares") at a meeting of Solitario Shareholders expected to take place in June 2017 (the "Solitario Meeting"). Solitario directors, officers and certain significant shareholders representing approximately 7% of the issued and outstanding Solitario Shares have entered into voting and support agreements with Solitario agreeing to vote in favour of the Arrangement. The board of directors of Solitario has unanimously approved the Arrangement and will recommend that Solitario Shareholders vote in favour of the Arrangement. Full details of the Arrangement will be included in a definitive proxy statement of Solitario describing the matters to be considered at the Solitario Meeting, which is expected to be mailed to the Solitario Shareholders in May 2017. Solitarios proxy statement, when it becomes available, and any other documents filed by Solitario with the SEC, may be obtained free of charge at the SECs website at www.sec.gov. The proxy statement will also be made available on SEDAR under Solitarios issuer profile at www.sedar.com. The Arrangement Agreement includes customary provisions, including with respect to non-solicitation, a right granted to Solitario to match superior proposals and fiduciary-out provisions, as well as representations, covenants and conditions which are customary for transactions of this nature. In addition, Zazu and Solitario have each agreed to pay a termination fee in the amount of US$0.75 million to the other party upon the occurrence of certain termination events. The Arrangement is subject to applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of certain other closing conditions. Upon completion of the Arrangement, Zazu will be entitled to nominate two directors to be appointed to the board of directors of Solitario. Convertible Debenture Financing Concurrent with the signing of the Arrangement Agreement, Solitario will provide Zazu interim debt financing through a secured convertible debenture issued by Zazu in the principal amount of US$1.5 million (the "Debenture"). The Debenture is secured by way of a general security and pledge agreement and bears interest at a rate of 5% per annum. If the Arrangement Agreement is terminated prior to the effective date of the Arrangement, all principal amounts outstanding and any interest payable thereon will become payable two years following the issuance of the Debenture. In certain circumstances, the Debenture is convertible at the option of Solitario into Zazu Shares at a price of US$0.22 per Zazu Share. Completion of the convertible debenture financing is not contingent on completion of the Arrangement. Advisors and Legal Counsel Maxit Capital LP is acting as financial advisor to Solitario. Additionally, Mackie Research Capital Corp. ("Mackie") has provided an oral opinion to the board of directors of Solitario that, based upon and subject to certain assumptions, limitations and qualifications in the opinion, the consideration being offered by Solitario in respect of the Arrangement is fair, from a financial point of view, to Solitario and the Solitario Shareholders. Solitario expects to receive a written opinion from Mackie prior to the mailing of the proxy statement to Solitario Shareholders. Solitarios Canadian legal counsel is Fogler, Rubinoff LLP, and its US legal counsel is Polsinelli PC. Haywood Securities is acting as financial advisor to Zazu. Additionally, Evans & Evans Inc. ("Evans & Evans") has provided an oral opinion to the board of directors of Zazu that, based upon and subject to certain assumptions, limitations and qualifications in the opinion, the consideration being offered by Solitario in respect of the Arrangement is fair, from a financial point of view, to Zazu and the Zazu Shareholders. Zazu expects to receive a written opinion from Evans & Evans prior to the mailing of the management information circular to Zazu Shareholders. McCullough OConnor Irwin LLP is acting as legal counsel to Zazu. About Solitario Solitario is an exploration and royalty company traded on the NYSE MKT ("XPL") and on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("SLR"). The company has three exploration properties in Peru, and one royalty in each of Peru, Brazil, the United States and Mexico. Solitarios core asset is a 39% interest in the advanced, high-grade, Bongara zinc project located in northern Peru. The project has a significant mineral resource and SRK Consulting has been retained to complete a preliminary economic assessment on the project by mid-2017. Solitario is fully carried to production by its joint venture partner Milpo, one of the largest zinc producers in Peru. Solitario also holds an 85% interest in the Chambara exploration project in Peru (Milpo holds the remaining 15%) and a 9.5% equity interest in Vendetta Mining. Solitario is well financed and has approximately US$16.5 million in cash and cash equivalents. Additional information about Solitario is available online at www.solitarioxr.com MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - April 27, 2017) - Sama Graphite Inc. (TSX VENTURE:SRG) ("SRG" or the "Company") today announced the results of a ProGraphite GmbH ("PG") technical investigation on the Company's 100%-owned Lola Graphite deposit in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa. Laboratory work and analysis conducted by PG on the Lola Graphite concentrate returned excellent results indicating that graphite from the Lola deposit is suitable for a very wide range of graphite applications, including the important traditional markets like refractories, crucibles, friction products, carbon brushes and sealing. Additionally, the combination of very favorable ash composition, high crystallinity, high oxidation resistance and excellent purification behavior makes the graphite very valuable for demanding new tech applications, including energy applications and particularly with regard to spherical graphite for Lithium Ion Batteries. ProGraphite Main Observations: The high proportion of large flakes of the concentrate is remarkable. Only very few flake graphite deposits have such a high flake yield. This is a major advantage for the Lola deposit, as the large flakes trade at significantly higher prices. The concentrate was screened to get particle size distribution information with very favorable results: very coarse material, 2/3 of the graphite is large flake (+80 mesh), and 1/3 is "jumbo" flake material (+50 mesh). Compared to -100 mesh graphite of the same carbon grade, the market price for +50 mesh material is more than double, which makes the Lola deposit much more valuable. Main elemental impurities are Si, Al and Fe, which is typical for flake graphite. Impurities known to cause trouble in various applications, such like S or heavy metals are naturally on very low levels in the Lola graphite concentrate. Key advantages of Lola graphite are the favorable ash composition and the comparably low efforts required to attain high carbon grades. The graphite is of very high crystallinity, which means that the graphite crystals are almost perfect, making this graphite suitable for highly demanding applications like Lithium Ion batteries or synthetic diamonds. Purification tests verified that the graphite could easily be upgraded with standard processes to levels above 99.5%; with most elements, already under the limits for battery application. The purification performed was "mild" compared to the "harsh" purification usually applied for Lithium-Ion battery grade, thereby attesting again to the likelihood that the material will be very suitable for such an application. The volatiles are low, oxidation resistance is very high and the specific surface area is in the normal range. The graphite from the Lola deposit has a high bulk density (>700 g/l), typical Chinese graphite has bulk densities of 450-550 g/l for +80 mesh. ProGraphite performed the investigation on a concentrate sample produced by Activation Laboratory (Actlab) in Ontario. Actlab produced a first flash flotation concentrate from the typical surface graphite rich material. No attempt to further purify the concentrate was made at Actlab. This was intentional as the Corporation wanted ProGraphite to investigate the most suitable purification processes to be applied to the flash concentrate in determining and targeting various markets and end uses. SRG is continuing to work in close collaboration with PG and Actlab to refine metallurgical processing for developing the most optimal flowsheet. About ProGraphite ProGraphite GmbH is specialized in natural graphite and other carbon products. Based on more than 20 years of professional experience and passion for graphite and carbon, ProGraphite offers expert consultancy for most aspects of natural graphite projects. Furthermore ProGraphite offers a wide range of specialized lab services and extended geological and mineralogical services for graphite and other minerals. ProGraphite is also involved in trading of carbon products. The company is located in Germany. For additional information on ProGraphite: www.pro-graphite.com." About Sama Graphite Inc. (SRG) SRG is a Canadian-based company focused on developing the Lola Graphite deposit, located in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa. SRG is committed to operate in a socially, environmentally and ethically responsible manner. For additional information, please visit SRG's website at www.srggraphite.com. MELBOURNE, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - OceanaGold Corporation (TSX/ASX: OGC) (the "Company") is pleased to release its financial and operational results for the quarter ended 31 March 2017. Details of the consolidated financial statements and the Management Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") are available on the Company's website at www.oceanagold.com Key Highlights Record quarterly consolidated gold production of 147,956 ounces of gold. Consolidated All-In Sustaining Costs of $521 per ounce on sales of 114,022 ounces of gold (excluding Haile) and 4,148 tonnes of copper. per ounce on sales of 114,022 ounces of gold (excluding Haile) and 4,148 tonnes of copper. Revenue of $161.8 million and record quarterly EBITDA of $101.7 million . and record quarterly EBITDA of . Net profit after tax of $36.0 million after recognising an impairment charge of $17.7 million on the mining assets held in El Salvador . Quarterly net profit before impairment was $53.7 million . after recognising an impairment charge of on the mining assets held in . Quarterly net profit before impairment was . Strong balance sheet with immediate liquidity of $85.8 million including $70.6 million in cash. including in cash. Successfully transitioned the Haile Gold Mine from the Commissioning team to the Operations team. Didipio was the recipient of top award for "Best Workplace", second place for "Environmental Excellence" and third place for "Best Community Program" at the Global CSR Summit Awards held in Malaysia . Mick Wilkes, President and CEO said, "I am pleased to announce another strong quarter of financial and operational performance for OceanaGold. We achieved record quarterly gold production on the back of record production at Didipio and the commencement of production at our newest asset Haile. I am also pleased to report that we have handed over operational control and responsibility of the Haile Gold Mine to the Operations team as we move closer to commercial production." "We continue to advance the Haile Optimisation Study, which is on track for completion by mid-year, while driving our extensive exploration program across our asset portfolio." He added, "With our strong balance sheet, high quality assets, with significant organic growth opportunities and industry leading margins, we are well positioned to further deliver on our objective to enhance further value for our stakeholders." Table 1 Production and Cost Results Summary Didipio Waihi Macraes Haile (2) Consolidated First Quarter 2017 Results Q1 2017 Q4 2016 Gold Produced ounces 62,748 25,860 38,550 20,798 147,956 102,428 Copper Produced tonnes 5,955 - - - 5,955 3,765 Gold Sales ounces 51,467 26,757 35,798 12,203 126,225 (3) 105,658 Copper Sales tonnes 4,148 - - - 4,148 4,960 Cash Costs (1) $ per ounce (193) 517 864 - 306 372 All-In Sustaining Costs (1) $ per ounce (105) 841 1,182 - 521 639 Notes: 1: In this first quarter 2017 MD&A, all revenue and costs reported do not include the Haile operations as these have been capitalised as commercial production is yet to be declared. 2: Haile gold mine commenced selling gold in February 2017. Revenue from the sale of gold is treated as pre-production income. 3. Consolidated first quarter 2017 gold sales include gold sales from Haile. Table 2 Consolidated Financial Summary* $'000 Q1 Mar 31 2017 Q4 Dec 31 2016 Q1 Mar 31 2016 Revenue 161,800 147,432 161,051 Cost of sales, excluding depreciation and amortisation (56,834) (63,406) (71,889) General & administration legal settlement - (8,000) - General & administration other (8,950) (10,203) (12,368) Foreign currency exchange gain/(loss) (221) (547) 725 Gain on sale of available-for-sale assets 5,314 - - Other income/(expense) 562 1,614 355 Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) (excluding gain/(loss) on undesignated hedges and impairment charge) 101,671 66,890 77,874 Depreciation and amortisation (36,403) (28,807) (33,769) Net interest expense and finance costs (4,557) (2,112) (2,189) Earnings before income tax and gain/(loss) on undesignated hedges and impairment charge 60,711 35,971 41,916 Tax (expense) / benefit on earnings (1,318) (4,318) (5,206) Earnings/(loss) after income tax and before gain/(loss) on undesignated hedges and impairment charge 59,393 31,653 36,710 Impairment charge (17,654) - - Gain/(loss) on fair value of undesignated hedges (7,874) 15,343 (18,304) Tax (expense)/benefit on gain/loss on undesignated hedges 2,205 (4,296) 5,125 Share of profit/(loss) from equity accounted associates (65) (126) - Net Profit 36,005 42,574 23,531 Basic earnings per share $0.06 $0.07 $0.04 CASH FLOWS Cash flows from Operating Activities 52,343 79,765 31,673 Cash flows used in Investing Activities (65,910) (120,698) (103,740) Cash flows from / (used in) Financing Activities 10,545 26,116 2,033 Note: *: In this first quarter 2017 MD&A, all revenue and costs reported do not include the Haile operations as these have been capitalised as commercial production is yet to be declared. On a consolidated basis, during the first quarter of 2017 the Company achieved a quarterly production record 147,956 ounces of gold driven by strong production from Didipio and commencement of production from the Haile Gold Mine. The Company also produced 5,955 tonnes of copper representing a 58% quarter-on quarter increase. On a consolidated basis, and excluding Haile gold sales, the Company recorded an AISC of $521 per ounce on sales of 114,022 ounces of gold and 4,148 tonnes of copper while consolidated cash costs were $306 per ounce sold. In the first quarter, the Company achieved revenue of $161.8 million, which was 10% higher than in the previous quarter due to a significant increase in gold sales. The quarter-on-quarter increase was partly offset by lower copper sales. The Company achieved record quarterly EBITDA of $101.7 million, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, primarily driven by stronger revenue, lower operating and general and administrative ("G&A") costs. The Company achieved a net profit, before impairment, of $53.7 million, which was 26% higher than in the previous quarter. The Company recognised an impairment charge of $17.7 million on the mining assets held in El Salvador. The net profit after impairment was $36.0 million. Cash flows from operating activities for the first quarter were lower compared to the previous quarter mainly due to an increase in working capital at Didipio from a build-up of concentrate inventories and a provisional income tax payment of $7.0 million made by the Waihi Gold Mine. At the end of the first quarter of 2017, the Company had immediate available liquidity of $85.8 million which included a cash balance of $70.6 million, excluding $90.2 million in marketable securities from strategic investments. During the quarter, the Company drew down $12.0 million from its revolving credit facility and repaid $3.6 million of finance lease repayments. At the end of the quarter, total debt stood at $332.8 million. In March 2017, the Didipio Mine received the top award for "Best Workplace Practices", second place award for Environmental Excellence and third place award for Best Community Program at the annual Global CSR Summit Awards in Malaysia, which recognises corporate social responsibility excellence across multiple industries. In addition, during the quarter, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources ("DENR") selected the Didipio Mine for Best Practices in Mineral Processing and the Philippines' entry to the First ASEAN Mineral Awards, to be held in Myanmar in late 2017. First Quarter 2017 Results Webcast The Company will host a conference call / webcast to discuss the results at 7:30 am on 28 April 2017 (Melbourne, Australia time) / 5:30 pm on 27 April 2017 (Toronto, Canada time). Webcast Participants To register, please copy and paste the link below into your browser: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1395283&s=1&k=59F2A5A5B4B914E41849E55CE67CFBC9 Teleconference Participants (required for those who wish to ask questions) Local (toll free) dial in numbers are: Australia: 1 800 076 068 New Zealand: 0 800 453 421 Canada & North America: 1 888 390 0546 All other countries (toll): + 1 416 764 8688 Playback of Webcast If you are unable to attend the call, a recording will be available for viewing on the Company's website About OceanaGold OceanaGold Corporation is a mid-tier, high-margin, multinational gold producer with assets located in the Philippines, New Zealand and the United States. The Company's assets encompass its flagship operation, the Didipio Gold-Copper Mine located on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. On the North Island of New Zealand, the Company operates the high-grade Waihi Gold Mine while on the South Island of New Zealand, the Company operates the largest gold mine in the country at the Macraes Goldfield which is made up of a series of open pit mines and the Frasers underground mine. In the United States, the Company is currently commissioning the Haile Gold Mine, a top-tier asset located in South Carolina along the Carolina Terrane. The Company expects the Haile Gold Mine to commence commercial production in the second quarter of 2017. OceanaGold also has a significant pipeline of organic growth and exploration opportunities in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Australasia regions. OceanaGold has operated sustainably over the past 27 years with a proven track record for environmental management and community and social engagement. The Company has a strong social license to operate and works collaboratively with its valued stakeholders to identify and invest in social programs that are designed to build capacity and not dependency. In 2017, the Company expects to produce 550,000 to 610,000 ounces of gold and 15,000 to 17,000 tonnes of copper with sector leading All-In Sustaining Costs that range from $600 to $650 per ounce sold. Vancouver, Canada April 27, 2017 - Nexus Gold Corp. (Nexus or the Company) (TSX-V: NXS, OTC: NXXGF, FSE: N6E) is pleased to announce that it has received a new work permit for its Bouboulou Gold concession located in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The new permit is for an initial term of three years, and can be renewed twice for a total term of nine years. The new permit puts Nexus in a favourable position with respect to our developmental timeline at Bouboulou and Burkina Faso in general. With numerous complex mineralized zones, this ensures that the property can be effectively explored, developed and advanced in all areas, said President and CEO, Peter Berdusco. The new permit now gives us the opportunity to timeline the development of the Bouboulou project to its full potential. In combination with our Niangouela project, this is an important advancement for the company and brings us a step closer to becoming a significant exploration and development company in West Africa, continued Mr. Berdusco. About the Bouboulou Gold Concession The Bouboulou exploration permit covers an area of 38.8 -sq km approximately 75 kilometres north-west of the capital Ouagadougou and is accessible by paved road. The Bouboulou permit is located on the Boromo-Goren greenstone belt and is bisected by the Sabce shear zone. This regional north-east trending structure hosts numerous artisanal workings along its 120- kilometre length and hosts the Bissa Hills deposit presently being mined by Norgold. Three 5km anomalous gold trends exist on the property along with numerous artisanal zones (orpaillages). Gold mineralization was first identified at Bouboulou by Boliden in 1997 where a regional Rotary Air Blast (RAB) drilling program outlined a broad north-east trending gold anomaly measuring 13km by 2km over what is now the Bouboulou permit. The concession was then explored by Riverstone Resources and Roxgold Inc. Highlights of these surface exploration programs include surface rock sampling and trenching that returned gold grades from 1.09 to 19.16 g/t. Four zones of gold mineralization have been identified on the property, termed Koala, Rawema, Bouboulou 2 and Pelgtanga. Roxgold later completed reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling (DD) to test the four mineralized zones. Historical drilling highlights from each of the four zones: Hole azimuth dip depth (m) From To (metres) (g/t Au) Zone BBL-11-RC-006 120 -67 115 70 110 40 1.548 Bouboulou 2 includes 70 90 20 2.255 and 100 110 10 1.422 BBL-11-RC-013 300 -50 109 74 109 35 2.209 Rawema includes 74 86 12 5.455 BBL-11-RC-020 270 -55 103 40 50 10 2.844 Koala includes 42 44 2 12.450 BBL-11-RC-027 120 -45 120 90 114 24 1.36 Bouboulou 2 BBL-11-RC-042 320 -55 114 52 54 2 3.80 Pelgtanga Hole azimuth dip depth (m) From To (metres) (g/t Au) Zone BBL-11-DD-002 315 -45 127 42 44 2 5.43 Rawema BBL-11-DD-003 135 -45 142 56 58 2 5.33 Bouboulou2 78 82 4 12.53 BBL-11-DD-005 300 -50 179 74 80 6 4.62 Rawema includes 77.7 78 0.3 81.32 BBL-11-DD-008 320 -45 198 125 127 2 2.55 Koala *The above reported data are drill intercept lengths and not true widths Bouboulou Trend Analysis The Company has compiled historical data including airborne geophysics, Rotary Air Blast (RAB) drilling, geochemical sampling, reverse circulation drilling, diamond drilling and the location of orpaillages (zones of artisanal gold mining). The compiled data reviewed consists of over 7000 assays collected between 2011 and 2012. This data displays three strong coincidental geochemical and geophysical anomalous gold trends. These trends extend from the four drill-identified mineralized zones, namely Rawema, Pelgtanga, Bouboulou 2 and Koala. Each of the three trends extends in length for 5000 meters (5KM). They are identified by numerous orpaillages and geochemical samples of greater than 1 gram per tonne gold. All three of the Bouboulou trends identified are defined by similar coincidental anomalies. Each trend has substantial artisanal workings either directly on them or along the trend. About the Company Nexus Gold Corp. is a Vancouver-based gold exploration and development company operating in some of the worlds premier mining districts. The Company is currently concentrating its efforts on two gold projects located in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The Bouboulou gold concession is a 38-sq km advanced exploration target where previous drilling has confirmed multiple zones of gold mineralization. The Niangouela gold concession is a 178-sq km project featuring high grade gold occurring in and around a primary quartz vein 1km in length and associated shear zone. For more information on these projects, please visit the Company website at www.nexusgoldcorp.com. By Yi Whan-woo Over 30 delegates leading groups of North Korean defectors worldwide met in Brussels, Tuesday (local time), denouncing the Kim Jong-un regime's repressive rule, its dire human rights and development of weapons of mass destruction. This was the first general meeting among North Korean defectors scattered around the globe, including South Korea and other Asian countries as well as the United States and Europe. In its "Brussels Statement" adopted in the capital of Belgium and the European Union (EU), the participants claimed that the Kim regime should be held responsible for "all types of inhumane acts" committed in its reclusive state. They said the repressive regime should comply with the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's call for investigations concerning the persecution of those who were caught in failed attempts to escape North Korea, the operation of political prison camps and the exploitation of North Korean workers abroad. US, China thwart nuke test; it's South Korea's turn The fear of an "April Crisis" on the Korean Peninsula appears to be passing without the worst part of it materializing. Now it is time to contemplate an end game on the source of it _ North Korea _ about having it freeze its nuclear and missile programs first and renounce them later. U.S. President Donald Trump had the world's strongest military assemble a formidable show of force around Korea _ a battle ground led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson together with the nuclear-powered guided missile submarine USS Michigan, which is capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Equally impressive is the coordination of the leaders of the two big powers. Trump called Chinese leader Xi Jinping again to enlist his support in translating the U.S. new North Korean policy of "maximum pressure" into action. Although it can't be ruled out that the North may stage a last-minute crazy act toward the end of the month, it is important to retrace what has worked on the North and draw up the next steps to take to end Pyongyang's playing with fire. First, credit is due for Trump. He instinctively understood the art of dealing with a despot _ from a position of strength. Then, the U.S. President also employed a clever tactic of driving a wedge between the "lips and teeth" relationship between China and its client state, the North. Xi also has risen to China's new role as global power _ disciplining the rogue state by overcoming the pull of their traditional ties. Now, it appears not possible to go back to their cozy relationship and they shouldn't. Now, Trump and Xi should base their cooperative success to chart out the future of Korea after Pyongyang is defanged through a freeze on its asymmetric weapons programs, though it should be given the chance to become a normal state, if it can. Also important is South Korea's role or the absence thereof so far. Although it has been put on the sidelines due to the lack of an elected head of state, its new leader who will be elected in the May 9 election should be entitled to a key say in Korea's future. He should demand it as top priority of his presidency. After all, it's South Koreans' inalienable right to determine their fate because they are party to be most affected by whatever happens on the peninsula. From its painful nation-building experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. knows how costly it is for an outside power to intervene in the fate of other people. So should China. It is never too soon to prepare for an eventuality _ a lasting firm peace on the peninsula. LifeStyle The best LifeStyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel LifeStyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Deb Hutton and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand. Get Foxtel 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. by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 27, 2017 Acting Federal Trade Commission head Maureen Ohlhausen praised the news that the centerpiece of the net neutrality rules could soon be reversed, arguing that the move would mark "an important step toward restoring the FTCs ability to protect broadband subscribers from unfair and deceptive practices, including violations of their privacy." Ohlhausen's statement came in response to the news that Ajit Pai, head of the Federal Communications Commission, wants to repeal the agency's 2015 decision to classify broadband as a utility service. The FCC took that step two years ago in order to impose some common-carrier rules on providers -- including prohibitions on blocking content and on paid fast lanes. Earlier in the decade, the FCC passed a set of open Internet rules that also blocked carriers from blocking or degrading content, but a federal appeals court threw out those regulations; the court reasoned that the FCC couldn't ban ISPs from blocking content without first reclassifying broadband as a utility. advertisement advertisement After the FCC declared broadband access to be a utility service, the agency passed regulations requiring carriers to protect consumers' privacy. Among other terms, the regulations prohibited broadband providers from drawing on consumers' Web-surfing data without their opt-in consent. Congress recently repealed those rules under the Congressional Review Act -- a 1996 measure that allows federal lawmakers to vacate recent agency decisions. When Congress uses that vehicle to scrap rules, the agency that issued them is prohibited from replacing the rules with substantially similar ones. Ohlhausen now obviously hopes that if the FCC declares that broadband isn't a utility, the FTC will be able to police carriers' practices. "I look forward to working with Chairman Pai and other stakeholders to return to broadband subscribers the consumer protections they deserve," Ohlhausen stated. But there is a problem with Ohlhausen's stance: The FTC may not be able to police broadband providers' privacy practices even if Pai's proposal is accepted. That's because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently limited the FTC's power to police some types of companies, including telephone providers. That ruling came in a dispute between the FTC and AT&T over its prior throttling policies. The FTC alleged that AT&T misled consumers by selling them unlimited data, only to throttle them after they exceeded a monthly cap of 3GB-5GB. AT&T argued that the case should be dismissed because a federal statute says the FTC lacks authority over common carriers. The FTC countered that mobile broadband wasn't a common carrier service between 2011 and 2014 -- which is when AT&T allegedly duped its customers. The 9th Circuit sided with AT&T. The judges suggested in their ruling that AT&T's longstanding role in providing telephone service exempted the company from FTC jurisdiction for all purposes -- even though mobile broadband wasn't considered a common carrier service when AT&T allegedly misled people. The FTC has asked the 9th Circuit to reconsider that ruling; the FCC, consumer groups and lawmakers are backing the request. For now, however, that ruling gives broadband providers powerful ammunition to argue that they're immune from FTC authority. Ohlhausen's views apparently aren't shared by fellow Commissioner Terrell McSweeny. She said last week that repealing the net neutrality rules would be "an even bigger disaster for consumers, innovators and entrepreneurs in the long run than the repeal of the broadband privacy rules." The downtrend in international scrap prices and subdued export demand were cited as major factors likely to lead to further price drops. However, most customers in both Northern and Southern Europe need to restock, which was expected to support price rises, sources said. In the coming weeks, a lot of them will have to buy, one trader in Northern Europe said. One source in Southern Europe expected the market to be steady in May, however. It will all depend on Algeria, an Italian producer source said. The absence of business with Algeria has weighed on Italian exporters, as the country a key destination for EU long steel exports has so far neither issued import licences nor announced 2017 quotas for rebar and wire rod. As a result, EU long steel producers mainly focused on sales within the union, although some Spanish sources said that the reason for this was good domestic demand. Some European steelmakers declared in mid-April their plans to increase prices for finished long steel products from May production. But the market has not seen prices rising yet, amid subdued demand on the export side as well as scrap price dynamics. Domestic deal prices for rebar dropped by an average of 7.50 ($8.18) per tonne in Northern Europe and by 15 ($16) per tonne in Southern Europe over the past month. Export offer prices remained broadly steady but trading activity was almost non-existent. Billet As demand for finished steel remained limited, Metal Bulletin has heard of Europe-origin billet being exported, in particular to North Africa. Prices for Spain-origin semi-finished products were heard around 400 ($436) per tonne cfr Morocco, sources said. Those who can sell rebar outside Algeria, sell it; others adjust by offering other assorted products, one trader said. Both the major Spanish steel mills have been exporting billet, according to market participants, while Italian steelmakers have not been heard exporting any billet recently. Scrap Italys prices for domestic ferrous scrap dipped by 5 ($5) per tonne this month. In Germany, steel mills settled their monthly contracts for ferrous scrap purchases at largely unchanged prices in April, while export prices for Northern Europe-origin scrap have been mostly declining in the second half of the month. Metal Bulletins daily index for Northern Europe-origin HMS 1&2 (80:20) steel scrap exported to Turkey closed at $261 per tonne cfr on April 26, after increasing to $271 per tonne cfr on April 18 from $261.66 on March 31. On Wednesday April 26, the Luxembourg-based steelmaker announced the purchase of a controlling stake in Belgian wire producer Bekaerts Sumare tyre cord plant in Brazils south-eastern Sao Paulo state. This deal followed Februarys acquisition of Votorantims units in the cities of Barra Mansa and Resende, as well as Votorantims 50% stake in rebar producer Sitrel, a joint venture with Brazil-based Grendene, by ArcelorMittals Brazilian subsidiary. Under the new agreement, ArcelorMittal will own a 55.50% stake in the Sumare unit, with the other 44.50% remaining with Bekaert. The Sumare facility produces steel cord and bead wire goods, which are used in the manufacture of car and truck tyres. Even though the [Brazilian] car sector has registered declines in activity, the tyre market has not been affected because tyres have to be renewed, Jefferson de Paula, ceo of ArcelorMittals Long Carbon Central & South Americas operations, told Metal Bulletin on April 26. We see a [good] future for the automotive industry. The deal with Bekaert is in line with ArcelorMittals strategy to raise production of high-added-value steel goods, de Paula said. The partnership will also allow the company to increase productivity and reduce costs through its potential synergies, he added. The Sumare tyre cord plant will now be fully fed by wire rod produced by ArcelorMittal, if our products meet the specifications required by the clients, according to de Paula. ArcelorMittal already has similar partnerships with Bekaert at two other plants in Brazil Itauna and Vespasiano, both in Minas Gerais state. The Sumare, Itauna and Vespasiano units have a combined output capacity of 100,000 tpy of tyre cord products. Of this total, around 60-70% is aimed at meeting Brazilian demand, while the remaining volume is designed to be exported to Latin American countries, de Paula said. Long steel market Earlier this week, the Brazilian steel institute, Aco Brasil, reduced its forecast for steel sales in 2017, due to the weak performance of the countrys economy. Brazils economic recovery is taking longer than expected, according to the institute. De Paula said that ArcelorMittal started the year more optimistic about the domestic construction sector, but the firm now views the sectors performance with much pessimism. At the beginning of the year, we thought that [the construction sector] would improve, but now we believe it will stay flat, he added. The Brazilian economic fundamentals are improving, but the real economy has yet to get better. The benefits of new construction work take from six to twelve months to reach the steel industry in terms of demand, according to de Paula. A rebound [in long steel consumption in Brazil is expected] only next year, he said. Metal Bulletins monthly assessment for domestic rebar prices in Brazil was stable in April compared with the previous month, at 3,250-3,410 Reais ($1,028-1,078) per tonne delivered. Meanwhile, export prices for Latin America-origin long steel products were all unchanged during April, due to the lack of trading activity. Metal Bulletins weekly price assessments for rebar and wire rod exports in the region were both $440-450 per tonne fob on April 21. The following companies are subsidiares of Brinker International: BI INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LLC, BI MEXICO HOLDING CORPORATION, BIPC GLOBAL PAYROLL COMPANY LLC, BIPC INVESTMENTS LLC, BIPC MANAGEMENT LLC, BRINKER AIRPORTS LLC, BRINKER ALABAMA INC., BRINKER ARKANSAS INC., BRINKER ASIA INC., BRINKER BRAZIL LLC, BRINKER CANADIAN HOLDING CO. ULC, BRINKER CANADIAN RESTAURANT CO. ULC, BRINKER CB LP, BRINKER CB MANAGEMENT LLC, BRINKER FHC B.V., BRINKER FLORIDA INC., BRINKER FREEHOLD INC., BRINKER GEORGIA INC., BRINKER INTERNATIONAL PAYROLL COMPANY L.P., BRINKER LOUISIANA INC., BRINKER MICHIGAN INC., BRINKER MISSISSIPPI INC., BRINKER MISSOURI INC., BRINKER NEVADA INC., BRINKER NEW JERSEY INC., BRINKER NORTH CAROLINA INC., BRINKER OF BALTIMORE COUNTY INC., BRINKER OF CARROLL COUNTY INC., BRINKER OF CECIL COUNTY INC., BRINKER OKLAHOMA INC., BRINKER OPCO LLC, BRINKER PENN TRUST, BRINKER PROPCO FLORIDA INC., BRINKER PROPERTY CORPORATION, BRINKER PURCHASING INC., BRINKER RESTAURANT CORPORATION, BRINKER RHODE ISLAND INC., BRINKER SERVICES CORPORATION, BRINKER SOUTH CAROLINA INC., BRINKER TEXAS INC., BRINKER VIRGINIA INC., CHILIS BEVERAGE COMPANY INC., CHILIS INC. a Delaware corporation, CHILIS INC. a Tennessee corporation, CHILIS INTERNATIONAL BASES B.V., CHILIS OF BEL AIR INC., CHILIS OF KANSAS INC., CHILIS OF MARYLAND INC., CHILIS OF WEST VIRGINIA INC., Grady's Inc., MAGGIANO'S OF ANNAPOLIS INC., MAGGIANO'S OF HOWARD COUNTY INC., MAGGIANO'S OF KANSAS INC., MAGGIANOS BEVERAGE COMPANY, MAGGIANOS HOLDING CORPORATION, MAGGIANOS INC., MAGGIANOS OF TYSONS INC., MAGGIANOS PROPERTY CORPORATION, MAGGIANOS TEXAS INC., PEPPER DINING HOLDING CORP., PEPPER DINING Inc., and PEPPER DINING VERMONT INC.. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Better Financial Services GmbH, Better Payment Germany GmbH, Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., Chapel Funding, China Recovery Fund LLC, Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Cartera de lnmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Impact Investment Fund I. LP., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Limited, DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Jersey) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios lnteractivos Agrupacicm de lnteres Econemico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB Print GmbH, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services (Jersey) Limited, DB Services Americas. Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB US Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a. r.l., DB Value S.a.r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita SA., DB lmmobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG i.L., DB lo LP, DBAH Capital. LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management 18 Ltd., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a. r.l., DBX Advisers LLC, DEBEKO lmmobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK AS., DI Deutsche lmmobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Shanghai Private Equity Fund Management Limited, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anenima lnstitucien Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico. S.A., Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank Polska Spelka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Societe per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank. Sociedad Anenima Espanola, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur lmmobilien-Leasing mit beschrenkter Haftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.El r.l., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche India Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a. r.|., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities SA. de C.V.. Casla de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Services (Cl) Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. SA., Deutsche lmmobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsches lnstitut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.l., Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, European Value Added I (Alternate GP.) LLP, Fiduciaria Sant Andrea S.r.l., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., German American Capital Corporation, Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer LandstraBe GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Miesbaden LuisenstraBe/Kirchgasse GbR, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF l Manager S.a.r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul lnkasso GmbH, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo lll Initial GP Limited, MEF I Manager. S. a r.|., MIT Holdings Inc., Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgagelT Inc., MortgagelT Securities Corp., OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentIe", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, PADUS Grundstcks-VermietungsgeseIlschaft mbH, PB Factoring GmbH, PB Spezial-lnvestmentaktiengesellschatt mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Plantation Bay. Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank lmmobilien GmbH, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, RREEF, RREEF America LLC., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisers Private Limited, RREEF Management LLC., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables. LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermielungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sharps SP l LLC, Stelvio lmmobiliare S.r.l., Suddeutsche Vermeigensvewvaitung Gesellschaft mit beschrenkter Haftung, TELO Beleiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Umited, VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., lmmobilienfonds BuroCenter Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, lmmobilienfonds Wohn- und Gescheftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, and norisbank GmbH. Read More The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets railroad freight car equipment in North America, Europe, and South America. It operates through three segments: Manufacturing; Wheels, Repair & Parts; and Leasing & Services. The Manufacturing segment offers conventional railcars, such as covered hopper cars, boxcars, center partition cars, and bulkhead flat cars; tank cars; double-stack intermodal railcars; auto-max and multi-max products for the transportation of light vehicles; pressurized tank cars, non-pressurized tank cars, flat cars, coil cars, gondolas, sliding wall cars, and automobile transporter cars; and marine vessels. The Wheels, Repair & Parts segment provides wheel services, including reconditioning of wheels and axles, new axle machining and finishing, and downsizing; operates a railcar repair, refurbishment, and maintenance network; and reconditions and manufactures railcar cushioning units, couplers, yokes, side frames, bolsters, and various other parts, as well as produces roofs, doors, and associated parts for boxcars. The Leasing & Services segment offers operating leases and 'per diem' leases for a fleet of approximately 8,800 railcars; and management services comprising railcar maintenance management, railcar accounting services, fleet management and logistics, administration, and railcar remarketing. This segment owns or provides management services to a fleet of approximately 444,000 railcars for railroads, shippers, carriers, institutional investors, and other leasing and transportation companies. The company serves railroads, leasing companies, financial institutions, shippers, carriers, and transportation companies. The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in Lake Oswego, Oregon. AstraZeneca PLC, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of prescription medicines. Its marketed products include Calquence, Enhertu, Faslodex, Imfinzi, Iressa, Koselugo, Lumoxiti, Lynparza, Orpathys, Tagrisso, and Zoladex for oncology; Brilinta/Brilique, Bydureon/Byetta, BCise, Byetta, Crestor, Evrenzo, Farxiga/Forxiga, Komboglyze/Kombiglyze XR, Lokelma, Onglyza, Qtern, and Xigduo/Xigduo XR for cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism diseases; Bevespi Aerosphere, Breztri Aerosphere, Daliresp/Daxas, Duaklir Genuair, Fasenra, Pulmicort, Saphnelo, Symbicort, and Tudorza/Eklira/Bretaris for respiratory and immunology; and Andexxa/Ondexxya, Kanuma, Soliris, Strensiq, and Ultomiris for rare diseases. The company's marketed products also comprise Synagis for respiratory syncytial virus; Fluenz Tetra/FluMist Quadrivalent for Influenza; Seroquel IR/Seroquel XR for schizophrenia bipolar disease; Nexium, and Losec/Prilosec for gastroenterology; and Vaxzevria and Evusheld for covid-19. The company serves primary care and specialty care physicians through distributors and local representative offices in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. It has a collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to research, develop, and commercialize small molecule medicines for obesity; Neurimmune AG to develop and commercialize NI006; Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop eplontersen, a liver-targeted antisense therapy in Phase III development for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; Proteros Biostructures GmbH to jointly discover novel small molecules for the treatment of hematological cancers; Sierra Oncology, Inc. to develop and commercialize AZD5153. The company was formerly known as Zeneca Group PLC and changed its name to AstraZeneca PLC in April 1999. AstraZeneca PLC was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom. Adjoa Pee 27.04.2017 LISTEN Veteran Ghanaian actress Adjoa Pieterson, popularly called Adjoa Pee, promises to unite Ghanaian actors and provide them with good welfare as she seeks to be voted as Ghana Actors Guild's (GAG) welfare officer. The GAG which is tagged as the umbrella body for Ghanaian actors will be holding its long-awaited general elections come Saturday, April 28 to elect new members several months after its president, Reverend Eddie Coffie, died and other officers travelled and left their posts vacant. Among other actors who are contesting in Saturday polls include veteran actor Abeiku Sagoe and Van Vicker who are competing for president and vice president positions respectively. Adjoa Pee who is known for her commitment to supporting and going to the aide of aged actors and ailing veteran actors is calling on her colleagues to vote for her to be the next welfare officer of the guild. She told NEWS-ONE that if she is voted, she would bring a lot of positive changes to that department of the actors' guild and also support the general consensus to unite the country's actors. My love for the welfare of actors and actress is one of the reasons I am currently producing and hosting a TV programme called Naked where we discuss issues bordering on welfare of the Ghanaian. People can also attest to the welfare support I rendered to a number of our colleagues during their times of need, she revealed. Kindly vote for me. A vote for me means a perfect well-being of our people. I am the lone ranger, very neutral without any camp, a unifier with integrity and accountability. Vote for Adjoa Pieterson aka Adjoa Pee, the No.1 on the ballot paper as welfare officer, she added. Adjoa Pieterson is well-known by Ghanaians as Adjoa Pee, a name she adopted when she joined the Osofo Dadzie Group 31 years ago. She is often described as a talented actress with infectious beauty. She is a product of Tema Parents Association School and a professional caterer with professional catering certificates from Takoradi Polytechnic, Achimota Business College and The Page Catering Institute, Tema. As a drama and theatre enthusiast, she attended GTV Radio & TV Training School and has since been part of a lot of productions. By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected] ) Celestine Donkor 27.04.2017 LISTEN Celestine Donkor will on May 1 host the sixth edition of her annual gospel concert dubbed 'Celestial Praiz' at the Perez Dome in Accra. Celestial Praiz is an annual gospel musical concert which brings together the most exciting and chart-topping hit makers of the year on one stage. The concert is anticipated to draw hordes of people who will not only have the opportunity to enjoy a night of anointed musical praise, worship and thanksgiving with Celestine Donkor; they will also be entertained by other renowned award-winning gospel artistes. This years edition will witness live performances from celebrated Nigerian gospel act Steve Crown and Mkhululi Bhekeke of Joyous Celebrations in South Africa. The two international gospel artistes will perform alongside Ghanaian gospel artistes such as Minister OJ, Ceccy Twum, Eugene Zuta, Celestine Donkor and a host of others. They will mount the stage one after the other to thrill patrons of the event with soul-inspiring and spirit-filled songs of praise. Celestial Praiz promises to be one that will be spoken about for a very long time to come. According to the organisers, the aim of Celestial Praiz which was instituted in 2011 is to bring Christians from all walks of life and from different denominations together to worship and praise the Almighty God. By George Clifford Owusu Dakar (AFP) - A desert warfare specialist, Chad's Hissene Habre seized power in 1982 and quickly embraced the role of ruthless dictator, with brutal atrocities the hallmark of his eight-year reign of terror. Often dressed in combat fatigues that complemented his "desert fighter" nickname, Habre fled to Senegal after he was ousted by current Chadian President Idriss Deby in 1990. Habre will now serve the rest of his life behind bars after judges in Dakar Thursday upheld his sentence for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture, quashing the appeal attempt by his court-appointed lawyers, though a rape conviction was overturned. Habre was first sentenced by the Extraordinary African Chambers in May last year, setting a global precedent for the first time a country had prosecuted a former leader of another nation for rights abuses. The legal body created by Senegal and the African Union further ordered him in July to pay compensation to each victim who suffered rape, arbitrary detention and imprisonment during his rule, as well as to their relatives, a decision also upheld on Thursday. Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer who has worked closely with Habre's victims to secure the conviction, said the final verdict would "go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," all of whom have waited a quarter century for justice. Kadhafi critic The 74-year-old's rule was marked by fierce crackdowns on dissent, including alleged torture and executions of opponents, earning him comparisons to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Investigators found that more than 40,000 people were killed during his rule. The son of a farmer, Habre was born in Faya-Largeau, northern Chad, and grew up among nomads in the Djourab desert. His intelligence landed him a job as a local official before he left for Paris in 1963 to study law and attend Sciences-Po, the prestigious political science school. One of his influences at the time was Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Habre joined the Chad National Liberation Front a year after returning home in 1971 and became its leader, before breaking away to form another rebel group, the Northern Armed Forces (FAN). He made headlines in 1974 when he kidnapped a French ethnologist who was held for three years before France agreed to terms for her release. A staunch nationalist, Habre then served as prime minister in the government of president Felix Malloum and as defence minister under his sometime ally Goukouni Weddeye who later became president. Unlike Weddeye, Habre was an outspoken opponent of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and the relationship did not last. Habre broke from his Tripoli-backed ally just months after the formation of Weddeye's 1979 government, triggering violence in Chad's capital, N'Djamena. He fled the city for eastern Chad in 1980, but returned to fight his way to power in 1982. Two decades in Dakar During his rule, opponents -- real or imagined -- were arrested, tortured and often executed by the dreaded Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), Chad's secret police. Habre's reign ended as dramatically as it had begun when Deby, formerly a loyal general, led a rebel force that drove him from power and into exile in Senegal. Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre lived freely in Dakar for two decades before his arrest The former dictator lived freely for more than 20 years in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children, swapping his military garb for billowing white robes and a cap. Habre was considered a discreet, generous neighbour and a pious Muslim who helped finance the construction of several mosques. The AU mandated Senegal to try Habre in July 2006, but then president Abdoulaye Wade delayed the process for years despite an agreement to create a special court for the trial. Belgium also sought Habre's arrest over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity after three Belgian nationals of Chadian origin filed a suit in 2000 for mass murder, arbitrary arrest and torture during his regime. Brussels issued an arrest warrant for him in September 2005, and he was arrested in Senegal shortly after, but the African country said its courts did not have the jurisdiction to rule on a Belgian extradition request. Habre was arrested again in Dakar on June 30, 2013, and the AU decided his trial should take place there, a world first. Now a convicted war criminal Habre will serve his sentence in Senegal or another African Union country. burs-jom/boc In Nigeria at the moment, there's a word, or more appropriately buzzword that resonates everywhere: It is a word that even children in nursery school may be familiar with given every usual reference to it at the slightest opportunity. Indeed, there is hardly any news item from Nigeria these days that does not make mention of it. CORRUPTION! If it is not about how Muhammadu Buhari's administration is prosecuting some corrupt people by charging them to court, it is about monies the government is seemingly recovering or has traced and recovered as was observed with the 13 billion naira stashed in a residential flat in Ikoyi, Lagos. At times it could even be the tale, as we are ever so often regaled with as well, of corruption fighting back! That is a familiar line from both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information, a.k.a spokesman for the Federal government. Of course, people fight to protect their interest. Far worrisome on Nigeria's corruption fight is that even an ignoble man who had looted the public treasury and uses it to fund his bogus lifestyle would not give it up without a fight or scheme to destroy his accusers. This complicated gambit is definitely not strange in most developing economies with long history of sleaze in governance but Nigerian citizens seem exceptional in strategies to discourage corruption fight. Emphatically, in Nigeria, long before now, any credible polity watcher would have noticed how promoters of corruption in government fight back with distortion of facts and attack those that exposed them with unimaginable impunity. Even recently, there is no better example of a victim of corruption fight back narrative for me than what happened to Abdulrasheed Maina, the former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, PRTT, whom recovered trillions of naira, yet was forced out of office under largely politically motivated circumstances. When Maina was appointed to head the presidential task team on pension reform some years ago, few people gave him any chance of succeeding as it was not the first time Nigerians would be seeing someone lead an intervention transformation task team in the country. But the young intelligent Maina had a clear idea what needed to be done to reform Nigeria's rotten pension scheme that was hampered by decade long corruption involving powerful figures with a hold on the system. He went about his work quietly and before long was able to recover humongous sums of money for the federal government, money running into trillions of naira. But just when you asked for more, the story changed. The hunter suddenly became the hunted as the very people who had for decades been making a kill from pension money, feeding fat on the sweat and blood of fellow citizens thereafter smiling home with tens of billions of naira, turned the heat on him, alleging that he was corrupt. They came up with stories that Maina had embezzled 195 billion naira from the trillions he had recovered, and soon the narrative changed from the issue of the monies recovered by the Borno State born reformer to what is allegedly missing. The Nigerian Senate of the then 7th Assembly decided to investigate the allegations and soon set up a panel to probe him. After Maina's preliminary appearance before the Senate Committee, he claimed that he was not given fair hearing as he was only allowed to provide a yes or no response to issues that demanded explanations. Most likely Maina might have perceived a premeditated verdict, thus opted for a legal battle. However, the police later declared him wanted over his failure to honour further invitations of the Senate Committee. Fortunately, for him, the court quashed the warrant issued by the police with even a perpetual injunction restraining the police from arresting him on related issues. This is just the background to what was later discovered as clear ruse to destroy Maina's reputation. On record, a man who was being praised to high heavens by many for reforming Nigeria's pension system was now suddenly being accused by some, including the Senate Committee, of shortchanging the system. Following the senate inquiry, the EFCC hurled their net at him. Determined to save his name, Maina filed a 1.5 billion naira suit against the National Assembly and police claiming abuse of his fundamental human rights. The unfortunate part of the drama is that the same EFCC under its former leadership which also participated in the entire Maina Led Biometric Exercise that was being queried, later succumbed to pressure from the 7th Senate to declare Maina guilty as charged. Before long, Maina was attacked but he escaped death by the whiskers. The devious act happened at his residence but he was a lucky victim of failed assassination of near death as widely reported in the media. Fearing for his life, it was also reported that Maina travelled out of Nigeria. By every sound logic, it is afterall, a living being that has a chance to defend himself. However, like any assumed innocent man, the accusation of embezzling money is worrisome and it is wise to clear your name of any wrongdoing, particularly when you know, like Maina does, that the allegations against you are contrived and false, cooked up by people with an agenda to protect their crooked interest. This is easily buttressed by quick recall that one of the senior members of the panel that probed the Maina led PRTT had since confessed to insincerity on National Television. Unfortunately, it is now almost four years that these series of events unfolded, culminating in Maina losing his job as the then President Goodluck Jonathan administration later replaced him with Olabisi Jaji following pressure from the same 7th Senate. Indeed, it is shocking that even the then Head of Service cowed in and sanctioned Maina for failing to report to work a day after he was shot or was proposed to have been killed, an incident which was duly captured in the media. At times like this, it is best to put an unfortunate past behind and focus on the dream of a collective prosperous future especially when the present led Buhari administration of Nigeria, as obvious, is firmly committed to addressing corruption headlong. However, what the country needs is to bring on board its best hands to collaborate with existing government efforts for successful and rapid tackle of fraud monster. Good that Maina has not been proved to be corrupt, he was simply a victim of a system possessed of cabals bent on destroying him. He was, as his short stint as pension fund recovery boss shows, a vastly experienced reformer and goal getter who changed the pension system in Nigeria and ended up recovering trillions of naira for his country. Indeed, Maina it was who introduced the Smart Card Biometric system of payment for pensioners that revolutionized the sector. Before him, pensioners used to travel long distances from their communities and respective states to come to Abuja to collect their monthly pension payments only to be forced to queue in line to collect their entitlement due to the sheer number of people that had come for the same purpose. Such reports of beneficiaries queuing and even dying in the process of waiting to collect their entitlements were common. Nevertheless, under Maina's direction and with the Smart Card instituted, no one needed to queue again to collect his money. Certainly with gross elimination of almost a hundred thousand ghost pensioners, Maina sanitized the Pension system, saved Nigeria billions of naira but put his life at great risk as evinced in his unfortunate encounter. Candidly and succinctly put, for a country like Nigeria to grow it needs men of courage with traits of patriotism like that exhibited by Maina. No doubt, Maina has demonstrated capacity and he still remains very qualified to continue helping recover more of Nigeria's stolen wealth. The fact that the major allegation of embezzlement against him has been dismissed is sufficient proof that corruption was fighting back at him. Nevertheless, if there exist any other allegation on Maina, it could just be another distraction promoted by those opposed to his work. Indeed, such should not be permitted to be a strong reason for the government not to engage and tap from his knowledge in detecting and exposing fraud. It is very obvious but sad that the pension thieves that Maina tried to stub out would not like this view and even few reasonable people may disagree with me on Maina. However, I believe that in this era of economic recession, the Nigerian majority would recognize the absurdity of ignoring stolen trillions of naira from our National Treasury in the hands of few criminals whilst focusing on uncertain allegations against Maina is of no quality reasoning. More so, there is nothing abnormal with putting on hold or temporarily ignoring the seeming bogus existing accusations against Maina until he completes this vital national task of gross common good. Infact, I believe this approach of avoiding unnecessary distractions is just about applying wisdom to stop those that wish to frustrate the Buhari's Anti-corruption fight especially on Pension reform. FELICIA OKOH, Ph.D Lecturer, University of Lagos, Nigeria Cairo (AFP) - When Pope Francis visits Egypt's Al-Azhar this week, he will find support for his message of peace in the venerable Islamic authority praised as a bulwark against extremism. But his visit comes as Al-Azhar, which runs one of the world's oldest universities, is under fire from critics within Egypt who say the Sunni Muslim institution has itself become part the problem. Al-Azhar had been at the centre of a messy collision between politics and theology since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi began campaigning for religious reforms, with profound implications for Islamic doctrine. A former army chief who overthrew his Islamist predecessor in 2013, Sisi believes that Islamist extremists have not been properly challenged on theological grounds. "He thinks that extremist ideas have thoroughly infiltrated Muslim societies and they are latent" but could set off "a tidal wave of devastation," said a member of a foreign delegation that met Sisi. Al-Azhar and its Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb have warily endorsed Sisi's call for reforms. Worshippers sit, pray and read from the Koran inside the 10th century historic al-Azhar mosque in the Egyptian capital Cairo's Islamic quarter Dating back almost 1,000 years, the prestigious institution runs a university and schools across the country, and thousands of international students from as far as China come to study religion and return home as clerics. The clergy of the traditional Sunni bastion loathes the theology of jihadists inspired by the puritan Salafism dominant in Saudi Arabia. Resisting interference Privately, however, many of Al-Azhar's clergy and professors resent the former army officer's attempt to reshape Islamic thought. The manner in which he pushed for the reforms further scandalised some clerics, especially when he suggested that he would complain about them to God if his call went unheeded. "By God, I will contest you before God on the Day of Judgement," Sisi told the clerics in a 2015 speech outlining the need for religious reforms. "The religious establishment - not all of it but most of it - is pretty resistant to the idea of somebody from outside interfering or stipulating how religion and religious discourse should function," said H.A. Hellyer, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. In a meeting with another foreign delegation, "Tayeb openly scoffed at the idea for religious reform that Sisi has promoted," a delegation member told AFP, saying "the problem is unemployment and inequality." The leader of Egypt's Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria delivers a speech during a conference titled ''Freedom and citizenship'' hosted by Al-Azhar, one of the leading Sunni Muslim authorities based in Cairo, on February 28, 2017 Members of both delegations requested anonymity because they were discussing comments made in private. Sisi's calls for reforms emboldened secular and modernist critics of Al-Azhar as well as clerics seeking influence with the president. One such cleric, endowments minister Mokhtar Gomaa who runs the country's mosques, decided to impose a written Friday prayer sermon on all preachers to weed out extremist rhetoric, which Sisi had demanded. Al-Azhar mutinied, forcing Gomaa to back down, and Sisi distanced himself from the attempt. "Whenever I see the Imam, I say your excellency the Imam, you're torturing me," Sisi said in a speech attended by Tayeb after the controversy. "He says to me: 'Do you love me or what?' I say: 'Your excellency the Imam, I love you.'" 'Under attack' Secular and reformist critics of Al-Azhar also felt encouraged by Sisi. One, Islam el-Behairy, went so far as to attack canonical Sunni books as inspirations for extremism. Behairy and other critics pointed to classical manuals of Islamic jurisprudence taught at Al-Azhar that contained antiquated rulings on slavery, women and non-Muslims that may be jarring to a modern reader. The institution's professors say their students understand that those texts were written in a different age and not all their content applies in a modern context. After an uproar by Al-Azhar, Behairy ended up serving a prison sentence for "insulting religion". "Many of my colleagues and students feel we are under attack, starting with Behairy," said one professor at Al-Azhar, referring to criticism of the institution. The tensions mounted when Sisi demanded in January that the clerics look into amending divorce procedures to invalidate the Islamic practice of verbal divorces. Al-Azhar's top body, the Council of Senior Scholars, flatly refused. "It was a consensus vote," a cleric who sits on the council told AFP. Following three Islamic State group suicide bombings of churches that killed dozens of Coptic Christians in December and April, the pressure doubled on Al-Azhar. Critics lambasted Al-Azhar and Tayeb in talk shows and newspapers for failing to counter the extremists and not reforming its university and high school curriculums. Mohamed Abu Hamed, a lawmaker, introduced a bill to reform the institution, which the constitution empowers as Egypt's authority on "Islamic affairs." The bill includes term limits for the Grand Imam, who currently can serve as long as he wants. "We found that the curriculum of Al-Azhar and its institutions contains many ideas that lead to violence or even incite violence," Abu Hamed told AFP. Al-Azhar rejects the accusations, pointing out the conferences it has organised to counter extremism and a monitoring group it set up to challenge their ideology. "The criminals who commit these crimes do not include a single suicide bomber who studied even for a single day in Al-Azhar," Tayeb's deputy Abbas Shoman said a newspaper interview. Dakar (AFP) - Chad's former president Hissene Habre will learn Thursday if his lawyers' appeal against sentences for war crimes, crimes against humanity and rape have been successful, following his landmark conviction by a special court last year. The Extraordinary African Chambers, a body created by Senegal and the African Union (AU), sentenced Habre last May to life behind bars, an unprecedented ruling seen as a blow to the impunity long enjoyed by repressive rulers on the continent. In July, the court further ruled that Habre should give up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) to each victim of abuses committed during his 1982-1990 rule, as well as to their relatives. The appeal will began at 1000 GMT in Dakar, and as of Wednesday it was unclear whether Habre himself would appear. The former desert warrior refuses to recognise the court's authority, so the appeal was mounted on his behalf by his court-appointed lawyers. Habre's conviction brought closure for relatives of up to 40,000 people killed and many more kidnapped, raped or tortured during his time as president. Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer who has worked closely with Habre's victims to secure the conviction, said he would be "astonished and devastated if the conviction were overturned". "It doesn't seem possible given the weight of the evidence and the fairness of the procedure," he said in an interview with AFP, describing Habre's charge sheet as "among the most well-documented crimes in Africa". If his conviction is upheld, Habre will serve his sentence in Senegal or in another AU country. The trial set a global precedent as the first time a country had prosecuted the former leader of another nation for rights abuses, and was seen as a landmark example of African rights abuses being tried on the continent. One of Habre's lawyers, who asked not to be named, said he was "confident" of his team's chances, lashing out at what he termed "Western sponsors" of the trial. Souleymane Guengueng, who heads a Habre victims' association, said he was "not at all worried," adding that if justice was done "the life sentence of Hissene Habre will be upheld." Habre fled to Senegal after his 1990 ouster by Chad's current President Idriss Deby, and for more than 20 years lived freely in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children. Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation North America (GPSF) maiden health trip to Tarkwa, Ghana The GPSF on 25TH March 2017 made their maiden trip to Tarkwa Municipal Hospital in Ghana. The team comprised of three medical professionals: Dr Theodora Fynn (Pulmonary Disease Specialist), Dr Francis Amoo (Internal medicine) and Ms. Josephine Thompson a nurse. The team served in Tarkwa for two weeks. The team also presented prescription medications donated by Americares USA worth $220,000 to the Hospital to be given to patients free of charge. The team on average saw 40-50 patients a day. The team met an incredible medical staff giving their best while working under trying circumstances. The challenges of the hospital are lack of physicians and also breakdown of medical equipment. The GPSF is currently in dialogue with a local Telecommunications Company to provide internet access to the hospital which will facilitate telemedicine options especially in the area of radiology. The organization has also engaged the services of a US based company to help provide customized solutions to help increase the lifespan, and performance of medical equipment, drastically reducing costs and reliance on external services. Health outreach trips to Tarkwa will be held four times a year. The next group will be at the Tarkwa Municipal Hospital for two weeks in July, 2017. The GPSF, in line with its mission, will continue to partner with Ghana Health Services to facilitate quality healthcare delivery in Ghana. The Chairman and Founder of Friends of John Dramani Mahama (North America) took time off his busy schedule to meet with members of the group in Canada during the Easter weekend. The purpose of the meeting was to have first-hand interaction with the members and to encourage them to hold onto their faith they have in the NDC and to assure them that NDC is coming back to power in 2020. The Chairman of the group, Dr. Lawrence Appiah explained to the members that the original name of the group covered only issues in USA but the name changed to cover all members and issues in North America, which includes Canada and Mexico. Mr. Simon Adzaku, an elder of NDC-North America, took the opportunity to explain to members that we have maintained the name even though President Mahama is no more the President. He said President Mahama was our friend during his Presidency and he will continue to remain our Friend even in opposition. He explained further that President Mahama didnt become our Friend because he was the President. He is our Friend because of who he is. Mr. Adraku went on to say that Friends of John Dramani Mahama (North America) is not one of those ad-hoc/whattsap groups that dies after elections. This group has come to stay for a very long time. Miss Josephine Gbediame, also talked about the need for unity in the party for victory 2020. She said that unity must start from NDC in Canada and USA. She was happy to see how this group is working to bring unity amongst the NDC members in the USA and she pledged to do same in Canada. Miss Mavis Tekpeki, the Treasurer of NDC-Toronto, on her part thanked Chairman Lawrence for visiting the group in Canada and acknowledged the importance of the role the group is playing amongst the NDC fraternity. She was full of praise for the formation of Friends of John Dramani Mahama (North America) and added that the visit has once again brought together the members of NDC-Toronto. She also pledged to work hard for NDC victory in 2020. Messrs. Kwame Agyemang and Obed Adore, both Founders of NDC-North America, told members to work hard to get NDC in both Canada and USA back on their feet. They said right now they have NDC Toronto, Montreal and Alberta so there is the need to mobilize and energize these branches so they can play active roles in election 2020. They advised the various Chairmen to embark on a nationwide drive to recruit more members into the NDC family. In concluding, Chairman Lawrence advised the members to be united and be relevant to the growth of the party. He further explained that just being a branch chairman does not make you relevant to the party. You must be seen to be playing a role that will enhance the growth and unity of party under your chairmanship He added. Dr. Lawrence told the Chairman of NDC-Toronto, Nana Akwasi Bawuah, to work with other Chairmen in Canada to be relevant to the party especially if the NPP administration decides to implement ROPAL. Some Executive members of Friends of John Dramani Mahama (North America) intend to visit the members in Mexico later during this year to preach the good news about the NDC. The Dynamic Youth Movement of Ghana, is calling on Government to stop the insensitivity towards the Coalition of Bonded Unemployed Nurses. The Group wants to bring to the notice of all Ghanaians, that it stands in firm solidarity with the frustrated Nurses. The Group calls on the Minister of Health, Honorable Kwaku Agyemeng Manu to come out with a clear cut panacea not later than fourteen working days, otherwise the group will embark on series of demonstrations until the nurses are employed. Below is the Full Statement. STATEMENT BY THE DYNAMIC YOUTH MOVEMENT OF GHANA (DYMOG) ON GOVERNMENT FAILURE TO EMPLOY OVER 4000 BONDED NURSES THEME: GOVERNMENT MUST STOP THE INSENSITIVITY AND EMPLOY THE OVER 4000 NURSES NOW! The Leadership and entire membership of DYMOG is deeply aggrieved by the uncaring posture of Government towards the over 4000 unemployed Nurses. These Professionals, were promised by the NPP in the run up to the 2016 General Elections that when elected, all Nurses who have graduated but unemployed, since 2012 will be employed. Going by credible information available to DYMOG, these Nurses have all been Bonded and fully licensed by the Nursing and Midwifery Commission (NMC). So clearly absolutely nothing stops Government from employing these Nurses to earn a livelihood. As a movement that is much interested in the welfare of the Ghanaian Youth, we deeply empathize with these Nurses who are wallowing in the valleys of despair. DYMOG has decided to give the unemployed Nurses our unflinching support in this struggle. We shall pursue this injustice, until Government employs them. Fellow Ghanaians, DYMOG disagrees completely with the reasons cited by Health Minister, Honorable Agyemang Manu that account for Governments unwillingness to employ these highly poised Professionals, who are ready to serve their Nation. The massive infrastructure drive in the health Sector pursued by the erstwhile John Mahama administration cannot account for these nurses being unemployed. Health infrastructure is essential in improving the quality of health delivery in our Nation. By this Statement, DYMOG calls on the Coalition of Unemployed Nurses and their families to remain calm. They have our unflinching support and DYMOG will not rest until they are employed Secondly, we call on the Ministry of Health to come out with a clearly defined solution within fourteen (14) working days from now. Failure to do this means Government is highly uncaring and we will demonstrate incessantly until these nurses are employed. Lastly, DYMOG calls on Civil Society and the entire Citizenry to add their voice to this struggle. Thank You. Issued: Wednesday, 26th April, 2017 Signed: Edward Tuttor (Convener) Mobile: 0243402814 E-mail: [email protected] Daniel Blaise Annan Junior (Director, Operations) Mobile: 0245514943 E-mail: [email protected] 27.04.2017 LISTEN During the last sixty years as the colonial rulers pulled up stakes in Africa and headed home, a number of independent, sovereign nations emerged in their wake. The birth of these nation-states was always an occasion for joyful and wild celebrations as the people were convinced that independence would lead to a better and brighter future. But subsequent events in many of these countries have left the people completely disillusioned and deathly afraid of what might lie ahead. No sooner had the excitement of the independence revelries worn off than the people's dreams of a brighter future evaporated and turned into a nightmare. Countries like South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Somalia, to name the most extreme cases, have known little or no peace since independence. Congo, a.k.a. DRC, gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and quickly descended into bloody chaos. Its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was savagely murdered after barely a year in office, triggering a civil war that prompted the first ever deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Africa. The U.N. has had a military presence in Congo at various times ever since as a new bloody upheaval would pop up every now and then. The initial instability in Congo was widely blamed on the treachery of the departing colonial power, but let us not forget that the Congolese have been running their own affairs for more than half a century now and the script has barely changed. Then there is South Sudan which, after years of bitter conflict, finally wrested control of its own destiny from Sudan in 2011. Less than two years later, however, a power struggle between the country's president and vice president driven primarily by ethnic rivalry plunged the world's newest nation into a genocidal civil war that has so far claimed thousands of lives and uprooted millions more from their homes. Like the DRC, South Sudan now hosts a U.N. peacekeeping force that is struggling to keep the peace. In the Central African Republic or CAR, a succession of brutal military dictatorships culminated in a civil war in the former French colony in 2013 pitting, strangely enough, Christians against Muslims as opposed to tribe against tribe, which is typically the pattern in Africa. And after more than a year of a vicious slaughterfest, a fragile peace prevailed with the help of U.N. peacekeepers. Perhaps Somalia has the dubious distinction of fighting the longest-running civil war on the continent, the situation there further complicated by the injection into the mix Islamic fundamentalism sponsored by al-Qaeda and ISIS. African Union troops backed by the U.N. have been trying to pacify the country for many years with limited success. Somalia hasn't had a government worthy of the name for more than two decades and is now a metaphor for anarchy. These countries represent the most egregious examples of African countries whose independence has been a total disaster for their citizens. They define the term "failed state" perfectly well. In these countries, not only are lives and limbs constantly at risk, but the perennial conflicts and their attendant instability have robbed the people of much-needed social and economic benefits. The populations live in abject misery, starvation, poverty, and disease their constant companions. It is a picture of utter human despair and degradation, a tragedy of unfathomable proportions. In a nutshell, what is happening in many of these countries is a crime against humanity. Can anyone look at those harrowing images especially from South Sudan and Somalia and honestly conclude otherwise? What can the international community do save the people of these failed states who are being starved, raped, brutalized and killed? It is no mystery who the villains are in these African horror shows: the corrupt, blood-thirsty tyrants and warlords who masquerade as national leaders. Eliminating them and making sure they never return would be the answer to the problem. But how can such a goal be accomplished short of landing an invasion force for which, unfortunately, there seems to be neither the political will nor the appetite at the U.N? Arms embargoes and other forms of sanctions have always proved futile because there are countries that have no qualms violating the sanctions for their own selfish reasons. This is a big conundrum. But let us hope that the world's creative minds will come up with a solution before it is too late. Meanwhile, millions will continue to suffer and die needlessly in Africa at the hands of their own rulers. It is a very steep price to pay for independence for these poor, innocent people. Kwadwo Kyei I cant think far has become a known expression of dismay to many Ghanaians and so let me borrow this word I cant think far, and it is going to cost us a great deal as a country in the near future. In the late 90s when you see our water bodies in this country it looks very nice and that was a source of drinking water to many people before the emergence of sachets water. The Chinese are the foreign nationals who are destroying our water bodies with the help of our political leaders, chiefs and other so called businessmen in the country. Most of us have not travel to any country before since we were born but have had the opportunity to watch documentary on television and china has the cleanest water body on planet earth, so why will they come into our country and destroy ours, our leaders should put politics aside and deal with this menace. If not then very soon we will start importing drinking water. Miners are required to operate at least 100meters away from a major river or water body but that direction has not been obeyed. Galamsey has become a national menace which this current government with the support of the media cabal is trying to fight but to what extend will this fight last. It is only sycophants that will betray their cronies. The truth is that Akufo Addo during his campaign to be elected into the high office of the land promise to legalize galamsey inductively, he was against Mahamas agenda to stop the act. These same operators voted the NPP into power because of his deceitful politics, the media cabals actually failed to help fight the menace during the erstwhile Mahama administration. The question one can ask is how many media houses projected the developmental projects of the then administration. The media was focus on the misdeeds of government appointees even though it is good, they failed to report on the good works of the government. There is a news report that government has heightened the fight against illegal miners in the country by summoning mining companies that are still engaged in the act after the expiration of the 12 day ultimatum. I hear also that the minister of that sector John Peter Amewu has asked operators who are still mining to report to the ministry voluntarily for actions to be taken against them. This minister is also begging the illegal miners to stop destroying our water bodies; one will then ask what happen to this countrys security agencies that are paid to protect our land from being taken by foreign nationals. Should we say that the ministry has lost the battle already? These questions will be answered later. Now this is how the fight against galamsey becomes a wide goose chase because nobody will report at the ministry to face punishment and so the fight will not yield any positive results. 27.04.2017 LISTEN The issue of vigilante violence and the virtual passivity of the police hit the media headlines in July 2015, or thereabouts, during the Talensi by-election which was fiercely contested between the then-ruling Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Akufo-Addo-led then-main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). But what was quite bizarre but interesting, nevertheless, was the public statement that the extant Interior Minister, Mr. Mark Woyongo, made that seemed to heartily celebrate vigilante violence. Made aware of violent clashes between the NDC-sponsored Azorka Boys and the NPP-affiliated Bolga-Bull-Dogs, Mr. Woyongo riposted that the logical response to violence was with violence. In other words, rather than have state-salaried personnel of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) take charge and ensure the prevalence of public peace, it was perfectly within the bounds of legality for the Azorka Boys and the Bolga-Bull- Dogs to sort out matters for themselves. Now that the political tables have turned in favor of the New Patriotic Party, the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress are pretending as if the unsavory institutionalization of militia vigilantism just became a national political reality with the 2016 electoral victory of the New Patriotic Party. In reality, vigilantism, as we presently know it, is the veritable invention of the Jerry John Rawlings junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), the ideological antecedent of the Chairman Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress. In the Talensi hostilities of 2015, it was the NDC-sponsored Azorka Boys that was widely reported by the media to have sparked the onslaught of violence, sicced on supporters and sympathizers of the NPP by the hard-nosed and vindictive likes of Messrs. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, Kofi Portuphy, Kofi Adams and Koku Anyidoho who had stormed the Talensi township ahead of the by-election which was won by the National Democratic Congress. In the Delta Force incident, in which some members of the Kumasi-based NPP-affiliated militia group stormed the premises of the Kumasi Circuit Court and forcibly released some 13 of their colleagues who had been denied self-recognizance bail, once again, like Talensi, the police were virtually absent, thus tacitly giving the Delta Force members good reason to believe that it was right for them to literally take the law into their own hands. As of this writing, the Asante Regional Police Commander, Mr. Ken Yeboah, was reported to have profusely apologized for the abjectly poor handling of the incident by his uniformed men and women. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Yeboah reportedly further stated that he and his staff had woefully miscalculated by assuming the Delta Force operatives to be more disciplined than they have demonstrated themselves to be (See Delta Force Attack: We Did a Poor Job MyNewsGhana.com/ Ghanaweb.com 4/8/17). There is absolutely no excuse here, whatsoever, as barely a couple of weeks before, some members of the Delta Force had mounted a fierce and rude challenge against President Akufo-Addo, by reportedly storming his office and assaulting the newly appointed Asante Regional Security Coordinator, on the scandalously boorish grounds that Mr. Adjei, a non-ethnic Asante, did not belong in the region. It was in the judicial pursuit of justice for both Mr. Adjei and his alleged Delta Force assailants that resulted in the alleged criminal violation of the authority and institutional legitimacy and integrity of the Kumasi Circuit Court. During his 2016 electioneering campaign, then-Candidate Akufo-Addo solemnly called on the police brass to inculcate a spirit of professionalism and impartiality in the conduct of the duties of all members of the Ghana Police Service. We hope that both the President and the leaders and commanders of the GPS are working studiously to restore the image, credibility and integrity of our peace officers. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yesterday named 212 persons to occupy the chief executive positions of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDCEs) across the country. They are to be approved by the members of the assemblies. The appointments were done in accordance with Article 243 (1) of the Constitution, which states, There shall be a District Chief Executive for every District who shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of not less than two-thirds majority of members of the Assembly present and voting at the meeting. The MMDCEs' appointments come weeks after the president had nominated the chief executives for the Accra, Tamale, Kumasi and Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assemblies and were unanimously approved by the assembly members. Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Hajia Alima Mahama, who announced the names at a press briefing in Accra yesterday, said the president, in exercising his responsibilities under Article 243(1), carried out extensive consultations at the district, regional and national levels. She said the appointed MMDCEs are capable men and women with expertise, experience and temperament to head the assemblies and inspire a new era of rapid development in the country. It is expected that those who were shortlisted and vetted by the Presidents Committee had high expectations that they would be appointed to serve the nation as Chief Executives of the Assemblies and be the chief representatives of the central government in their districts. But, it is obvious that only one person can serve in that capacity in every Assembly, Madam Hajia Mahama said. She expressed the presidents appreciation to all persons who showed keen interest in the exercise. Agitations However, there have been agitations in some parts of the country over the announcement. Some irate supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Bawku West Constituency of the Upper East Region Tuesday evening reportedly vandalized their party office and some departmental offices in the Zebilla District over the appointment of Victoria Ayamba as the District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area. At Elubo in the Jomoro Constituency of the Western Region, some youth were also on the heels of the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, claiming that he deceived them after promising to ensure that their preferred candidate would be nominated. Call For Solidarity Hajia Mahama called for calm and asked party supporters to throw their weight behind the appointed MMDCEs to address the challenges that confront the nation. It is the wish of the president that those who were not named will appreciate that there are other positions they may be called upon to serve in the interest of the nation. This is time for solidarity and focus on overcoming the great challenges that confront our nation so we can build together the prosperous, thriving Ghana we all desire, she underscored. Electing MMDCEs The minister said government would begin the process of amending the Constitution and putting in place the necessary measures to ensure the direct election of MMDCEs. It is the expectation of the president that this will be the last time MMDCEs will be appointed in this manner. The time has come for the expansion of local democracy to provide for their direction by the people of their districts. This was the pledge of the NPP manifesto, she said. Hajia Mahama said the president, henceforth, would have no hand in their appointments, stating that the power would be reserved for the people. By Cephas Larbi [email protected] President Nana Akufo-Addo interacting with some school children after inaugurating the ICT facility. Pix by Gifty Ama Lawson President Akufo-Addo yesterday cut the tape to commission the Akyem Wenchi Educational Circuit Community Information Centre, at Soabre, in the Eastern Region. The project is named Prof and Mrs SKB Asante Information and Communication Centre (ICT). Addressing the chiefs and people of the area, the president could not hide his abhorrence for illegal mining popularly known as galamsey. He said he had heard some Ghanaians who are neck deep in the illegal mining threatening to kick his government out of power at the next polls, if he and his team continue to pursue galamseyers. Unfazed I understand the galamseyers say if I want to go by the dictates of the law, they will vote against me and my party the NPP at the next elections, he said in Twi with same translated into English. But Nana Akufo-Addo, who is barely four months in office, said, What is important to me is to do what God has asked me to come and do, which involves programmes and policies that will lead Ghana on the path of development. That is more important to me than election matters. His reason was, Our forefathers bequeathed these lands to us; if we can't put them to good use, it's better we leave them in the state we came to find them but not to destroy them. That is what has led to this war against galamsey. Contrary to claims that he and his government were trying to stop mining in its entirety, President Akufo-Addo emphasized, I have not said I'm against mining because mining did not start in Ghana today; it started from the days of our forefathers. What I have said is that I am against those who are going to mine our resources illegally illegal mining, that is what I'm against because it is affecting us as a people. He noted, Today, Kyebi, Birim, Densu are all in a sorry state and almost destroyed because of the activities and operations of these illegal miners. He therefore stated emphatically, We can't continue to go on like this. Mining along the water bodies cannot continue if we want to preserve the nature in our system. President Akufo-Addo could not help but thank Prof and Mrs SKB Asante for the kind gesture shown the chiefs and people of the area. On his part, Prof SKB Asante extolled the virtues of Nana Akufo-Addo, touting him as one of the best presidents the country has ever had in its history. He was more than confident the president would lead Ghana to the path of development. Responding to an appeal by the Oseawuohene, Daasebre Asumadu Appiah II, for government to help fix the deplorable roads in the area, President Akufo-Addo assured of his government's commitment to fix the road networks in the country. He also promised to assist the communities have access to potable drinking water. By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent At Savelugu in the Northern Region, angry supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) vandalized party billboards and structures in the municipality over the nomination of Hajia Ayishetu as the municipal chief executive. Party supporters, numbering over 200, took to the streets of Savelugu demonstrating their displeasure about the president's nomination. The aggrieved supporters threatened to burn the party office but some executives intervened and begged them to rescind the decision. They gathered lorry tyres, billboards, party paraphernalia and other materials and burned them in the middle of the streets. The incident caused heavy traffic jam in the municipality for hours; not even the presence of the police could stop the irate supporters. Some of them, who spoke to DAILY GUIDE, said they did not support the nomination of Hajia Ayishetu because they do not know her as a party member. According to them, she never participated in any campaign activity of the party and that people who fought so hard for the party had been sidelined. They claimed that the nominee had never voted in the Savelugu Constituency and so they did not see her commitment to the NPP. H.E. Nana Addo will have his share of the pain we are going through come 2020, should he maintain this nominee, one of them threatened. In a related development, party supporters in the Sagnarigu District also took to the streets burning lorry tyres and other party properties over the nomination of Mariama Iddrisu as the DCE. They threatened that they would not accept the nomination and that they would make sure that she does not get the needed confirmation. FROM Eric Kombat, Savelugu Bizerte (Tunisia) (AFP) - Dimming the lights on their patrol boat, Tunisian coastguards stand in silence scanning the sea for speedboats on clandestine missions to and from Italy. Smuggling gangs are using high-performance vessels to ferry people, drugs and cigarettes across the Strait of Sicily, a distance of just 95 miles (150 kilometres). Commander Mohamed Naceur Saadani says their use of speedboats is a "new and dangerous" phenomenon. Standing on the bridge of a patrol boat capable of 40 knots (about 70 kilometres, 45 miles per hour), he monitors a bank of glowing radar screens. Patrolling Tunisia's northern coast during a 24-hour operation, the crew are on particularly high alert at night, as the smugglers prefer to operate under cover of darkness. Migrants seeking a better future have long used Tunisia as a launchpad for bids to reach Europe. But amid the turmoil that followed Tunisia's 2011 revolution that unseated strongman president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, smugglers have strengthened links between the North African country and Italy, Saadani said. Tunisian coastguards patrol the waters off the northern town of Bizerte on March 30, 2017 While the northbound traffic consists mostly of clandestine migrants and cheap cigarettes, Tunisian authorities say they are dealing with a growing influx of drugs coming in the opposite direction. In mid-March, Tunisia seized an "unprecedented" haul of more than 30 kilos (65 pounds) of pure cocaine worth around $6.4 million (six million euros). That shows that "a major international network is behind the operation", says Mohamed Walid Ben Ali, a coastguard at La Goulette port on the edge of Tunis. National Guard spokesman Khalifa Chibani says Tunisia is mainly a transit point and the drugs are destined for neighbouring countries, particularly Libya. 'Faster boats than ours' Saadani says traffickers had not previously been able to get drugs into Tunisia thanks to navy operations, but that if they succeeded once they would likely ramp up their operations. Tunisian coastguards lift an inflatable dinghy during an anti-smuggling patrol off the country's northern coast on March 30, 2017 He warns that the same smuggling routes could also be used for trafficking arms through Tunisian waters. Chibani says the smugglers' high-performance speedboats pose an additional challenge for the coastguard. "Tunisians living illegally in Italy organise these operations with Italian smugglers and use speedboats -- mostly stolen -- which are very advanced and faster than ours," Chibani says. Smugglers who reach the Tunisian shore can load a boat with clandestine migrants and cheap cigarettes and set off again in as little as 15 minutes, he adds. Chibani says that in late 2016 and early 2017, the coastguard spotted five speedboats from Italy, but they managed to escape. The smugglers' high-tech equipment could be also used for "terrorist operations," he says. "That represents a danger not just for Tunisia but also for Europe." 'Tunisia is a target' A series of jihadist attacks in Tunisia in 2015 and 2016 left dozens dead. The country has been in a state of emergency since November 2015, when a suicide bombing in Tunis claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed 12 presidential guards. A member of the Tunisian coastguard scans the sea off the country's northern coast during an anti-smuggling patrol on March 30, 2017 Tunisia also shares a long border with war-torn Libya, where the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011 left a country in chaos. Many of the armed groups that have profited from the unrest rely on smuggling for much of their income. Chibani wants other countries to support Tunisia in its efforts to tackle smuggling networks. He says the current level of international cooperation "does not correspond to the degree of threat that exists in the Mediterranean". Tunisia's coast needs an electronic surveillance system similar to one being installed on the country's land border with Libya -- as well as "speedboats as good as the ones the traffickers have," Chibani says. For Saadani, "Tunisia is a target". "We need to be prepared for every kind of threat," he says. Hotjobs Africa, a Human Resource (HR) company, has donated a number of items to the Paediatric Surgical Ward of the Tema General Hospital. The items included oxygen flow meter with connecting tubes, digital thermometer, disinfectants, toiletries, electrical extension board, kettle and Learner Support Materials (LSM). In addition, the company painted the entire Paediatric surgical ward which has 15 beds. Presenting the items last Saturday after a major painting exercise, David Opaye, member of management of Hotjobs Africa, said the donation of the items forms part of the company's corporate social responsibility. Mr. Opaye further disclosed that it also marks the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the company. A nurse at the ward, who received the items on behalf of the hospital, Olive Amankwah, thanked the donors for coming to their aid. She appealed to other institutions to learn from the shining example of Hotjobs Africa by supporting essential institutions. Speaking to BUSINESS GUIDE, David Opaye averred that the company, which is under the leadership of its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Emmanuel Mefful, has undergone tremendous transformation and restructuring. He averred that the company would offer quality services in line with contemporary business needs. Mr Opaye mentioned that his outfit would offer Labour Outsourcing and Payroll Management, Recruitment & Placement, Corporate Training and Development, Expatriate Management, Staff Bussing and Domestic Solution to meet the needs of their clients. By Solomon Ofori Patrick Appiah (in smock), Love Oduro, Solomon Adu Atefoe and the branch manager of adb at Nungua Love Oduro, an 80-year-old retired educationist at the weekend, won the first of MoneyGram's six Suzuki Altos as part of a grand promotion to celebrate Ghana's 60th independence anniversary at Nungua, Accra. The promotion is open to customers, who receive GH1,000 or more in transactions from February 28, 2017 to 30th June, 2017. Mrs Oduro expressed appreciation to MoneyGram and ADB for the prize. Regional Manager for Anglophone West Africa for MoneyGram, Patrick Appiah, in a remark, said MoneyGram was committed to providing quality services to its numerous customers. He said the increased competition in the money transfer space made it necessary to adjust their strategies to stay relevant in business. Our pricing is competitive and it cannot be that we are expensive. Over the years, we have grown from strength to strength, and I do not think we should have been here if we had been that expensive, he stated. Head of e-Business and cards at ADB, Solomon Adu Atefoe, said his outfit has joined forces with MoneyGram to reduce turnaround time at the bank and attract more users of MoneyGram. He called on Ghanaians to take advantage of MoneyGram to access remittances from their relations in the diaspora. A business desk report The leadership of the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD) has expressed disappointment in government over the release of nominees for the position of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs). We are much disappointed in President Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party for neglecting our members in the appointment of persons to become MMDCEs in government national president, Mr. Clifford Owusu Ansah lamented. Out of the two hundred and seven positions, only a member has been nominated to serve in government despite promises to increase persons with disability quota in government, he told mynewsgh.com We are also much worried particularly that of Mr. Kwaku Twumasi Ntim who is a strong NPP member and showed interest in the Ejisu race was never considered. He was denied despite his competence and skills. He indicated It would be recalled that President Akufo-Addo released names of nominees to become Chief Executives in the various districts and municipalities sparking some agitations from party members in some areas. NPP youth in the Obuasi West Constituency in the Ashanti Region have threatened to demonstrate against the nominee, Elijah Adansi Bona for the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) post. According to the youth, the nominee is not a native of the area but happens to be a brother in-law of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Obuasi West, Kwaku Kwarteng Agyeman. The youth say their MP has influenced the processes to favour his brother in-law and therefore want President Akufo-Addo to have a second look into the nominees appointment. Tension is also said to be brewing from Ahafo Ano South Constituency capital Mankranso over the appointment of the constituency chairman Joseph Agyemang Dapaah as DCE. Some constituency executives in the party are unhappy but the appointments threaten to protest against decisions. They are also pointing figures at the Ashanti Region chairman, Bernard Antwi Bosiako, their MP and national executives of party of imposing the nominee on them despite petitions accusing the chairman of selling the partys properties in the constituency. 27.04.2017 LISTEN The Director of Academic Affairs at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, has said the 10-year ban imposed on three current Members of Parliament (MP) and a former lawmaker will not be a perpetual dent on the image of Ghana. A confidential letter written to the Speaker of Parliament by the UK government through the UK High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Jon Benjamin, said the four MPs violated UK visa regulations on different occasions by either providing false information for their visa applications or facilitating the visas of some relatives who overstayed their approved time in the UK. There is the perception that the revelation will dent the countrys image with its international partners, but speaking to Class News, Dr Antwi-Danso said once the necessary measures are taken to forestall future occurrences, Ghanas image will be restored. He, however, added that it would make visa acquisition for future holders of diplomatic passports more difficult. Some persons have wrongly used or abused the privileges that go with diplomatic passports, but I wouldnt go further to say that its a racketeering kind of thing in parliament. But implications are there in the sense that future holders of diplomatic passports or service passports would be subjected to strict scrutiny, he stated. The international relations expert added that in most parts of the world, images are images. This is one image we are portraying out there. It doesnt tell of what image Ghana has, so once we have this image and we are able to correct it [that is it]. The British have their own problem, that is Tony Blair using someones 10-year-old Masters thesis to cause war in Iraq. It is the most disgraceful thing but that didnt kill Britain, so you will try to show a better image the next time. So this is a bad image but it doesnt mean that this is the image of Ghana. The first deputy Speaker of Parliament Joe Osei Owusu has sternly criticized the UK High Commissioner to Ghanas modus operandi, describing it as bereft of decency and propriety. The comment comes in the wake of Jon Benjamins visa fraud expose involving three siting lawmakers and a former one in Ghanas parliament. The suspects are Richard Acheampong, NDC MP for Bia East in the Western region (NDC), Joseph Benhazin Dahah, NPP MP for Ntotroso in the Bono Ahafo region, Johnson Kwaku Adu, NPP MP for Ahafo Ano South West in the Ashanti region and George Boakye, former MP for Asunafo South in the Bono Ahafo region. The four, according to the High Commission, have used their diplomatic passports to secure visas for persons who travelled to the UK and never returned. In a letter dated January 20, 2017 to the Speaker of Parliament Mike Oquaye Mr Benjamin said: The British High Commission considers the actions [of the MPs] completely unacceptable. In some cases these behaviours may arguably be criminal in nature. But commenting on the development Wednesday on Starr Chat, Mr Osei Owusu who is also the chairman of the Appointments Committee of parliament said: I think that that High Commissioner in so many instances has acted in a way that in my view transcends the bounds of decency and propriety. According to him, the High commissioners letter to parliament was unnecessary as these are personal travel arrangements. I believe strongly that if any of them took the matter up to appeal, some of those things may be overturned. Addis Ababa (AFP) - The United States issued a warning Thursday to its citizens about travelling to a popular tourist region in Ethiopia after a string of grenade attacks targeting hotels and homes. The US embassy in Addis Ababa said there had been four grenade blasts this month in Gondar, a city in the north known for its ancient castles. A popular stop on Ethiopia's tourist circuit, Gondar was also the scene of anti-government protests last year that led to the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency. "The embassy recommends US citizens carefully consider whether travel to Gondar is necessary at this time," the embassy said in a statement. A spokesman for Ethiopia's government had no immediate comment. While Ethiopia has enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years and falling poverty rates, protests erupted in 2015 by communities disenchanted with the government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Human rights groups say hundreds of people were killed and thousands arrested when security forces cracked down on the demonstrations. The unrest erupted in the central Oromo region near the capital and then spread to Amhara in the north, including Gondar. State-run Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported this month that Ethiopia's human rights commission had submitted a report to parliament saying 669 people were killed in last year's protests, along with 63 security officers. The unrest led parliament to declare a six-month state of emergency in October 2016, which was extended for another four months in March. 27.04.2017 LISTEN There seems to be serious lobbying for the position of National Youth Organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) with indications that the current National Youth Organiser, Sammi Awuku is set to give up the post. Sources close to the party indicate that Mr. Awuku is set to contest for the position of National Organiser of the party, a post currently being occupied by John Boadu who may be seeking to be confirmed as General Secretary of the party. But before Sammie Awuku could finally announce his retirement from the youth front, his seat is up for grabs, by relatively big-names in the patriots youth brigade, much to the chagrin of party rules, jumped into the succession race. Lots of candidates, lots of interest and lots of energy are being showcased on social media to garner support. Even before the National Executive Committee could come up with election timetable, there is seeming mad rush to succeed and replace Awuku. Dominic Kwesi Eduah, Nana Poku Frefre, Kwame Baffoe, Nana Boakye, Sampson K. Nimako, Kamal Deen, and several loyalists are shopping around to replace Awuku as the partys next National Youth Organizer. Dominic Eduah, Electrical Engineer, and one of the two deputies to Awuku, and his assigns are said to be seeking to protect Mr. Awukus interests through a friendly succession. One of the outspoken members in the party who has been at the fore front, Kwame Baffoe, known in his party activism as Abronye DC has abandoned his position as the Brong-Ahafo Regional Youth Organizer of party and relocated to Accra where he has been vociferous on radio stations. Nana Boakye, tenderly referred to as Nana B, the Deputy Director of National Service Scheme, who recently stirred controversy after he was rated substandard by multimedia group is also said to be in serious contention for the position. Sampson K. Nimako, an environmentalist is said to be testing the waters seeking the opinion of delegates on whether he should contest for the position. That decision could come as early as next week. Lurking in the shadows is David Asante, convenor of Let My Vote Count Alliance and a former aspirant who abdicated his ambition midway into the election that elected Awuku. Reports suggest that he is keen to plot his return to political eminence after failing to secure the trust of the party hierarchy to head its communication outfit. Kamal Deen, the incumbent National Nasara Coordinator is also said to be harbouring ambitions to win the nod as the partys National Youth Organiser. Nana Poku Frefre, a libertarian, entrepreneur, youth activist, and founder of the NPP Loyal Men, appear to be comfortably leading on the side-lines within the grassroots. Frefres candidature is problematic to other lobbyists, though he is classified an underdog. So, rather than focusing on courting support of prospective delegates, aficionados of other aspirants are busily shopping for the best ways to destroy the candidacy of Nana Poku but still he appears to be one of the fancied candidates for the position. Awuku had thrashed four patriotic opponents in the primary to become the National Youth Organizer with his famous Boys Abre tag. Sammie Awuku is stepping up for the National Organizer slot after helping to secure victory for the party. The Police in Techiman have been accused of festering a culture of bribery with allegations rife that the police are openly extorting money from suspects for bail. They have been allegations that the police in Techiman have been on the rampage raiding all kinds of businesses especially those owned by the youth and thereafter demand huge amounts of money for bail depending on the severity of the accusation. According to sources in Techiman, one such case involves an officer of the Wenchi Division of the Police from which the Techiman Police was carved. The sources allege that the officer, one Sergeant S.K. Wotordzor Saviour formerly with Wenchi Division as Divisional Crime Officer allegedly supervised the sale of Four Hundred and Forty-one (441) motorbikes left in his custody as exhibits and squandered the proceeds. The Wenchi Division had taken custody of the 441 motorbikes when one Meto Emile, the General Manager of STE Evame Srl Motors, a Togo-based company with branches in Ghana had complained to the Wenchi Divisional Command over discrepancies in the records of its agent Jacob Adongo. At the end of the audit conducted by Sergeant S.K. Wotordzor in the presence of Jacob Adongo, the accuseds agent; Jeff Agbeko the companys accountant and Kwadwo Agyei, the man with Power of Attorney, had certified that in all 441 motorbikes were identified and same locked under key and the keys left under the care of Techiman Division for further investigations. But Sergeant S.K Wotordzor is alleged to have superintended over the sale of the motorbikes under the Divisions custody without the consent of Kwadwo Adjei the one who is clothed with power of attorney to pursue the case on behalf of (Meto Emile) the complainant, and contrary to the advice by the Attorney Generals Office. A Senior State Attorney at the Attorney Generals Office in Brong-Ahafo Region in a letter dated 28 October, 2015 advised the Wenchi Division to Charge the suspect (Jacob Adongo) with the offense of conspiracy to commit crime which is fraudulent breach of trust contrary to section 128 of the criminal offences Act 1960, Act 29 and forward copies of same to this office to enable prosecution; the advice was signed by Theophilus Appoh, Senior State Attorney and copied the Deputy Commissioner of Police Sunyani . Investigations by mynewsgh.com revealed that the police may have actually sold 420 of the total of 441 motorbikes leaving twenty-one (21) bikes and spare parts with the Techiman Division, but has since refused to release the 21 bikes to the holder of Power of Attorney, Kwadwo Agyei. Not a written request by Kwadwo Agyei would let the police release the remaining bikes which have been in their custody since 2015. A further check by this paper at the Attorney General Office in Accra shows that there was never a case such as this brought to its attention. K Wotordzor in a telephone conversation with mynesgh.com denied the sale of the bikes. He said the case was reassigned. However, mynewsgh.com can report authoritatively that the facts of the case presented to the Attorney Generals Office in Brong-Ahafo strongly indicate that the 441 bikes may have been sold under the supervision of Wotordzor. As if their highly unethical and ruthlessness was not embarrassing enough to the Police Service, the Techiman Police and their head, Superintendent Emmanuel Twumasi Ankrah looked on helplessly while a suspected drug dealer hopped from radio station to another indicting the police in the location for aiding crime. Speaking in a radio interview on a radio station in Techiman, the suspect claimed that he and his group had been taking good care of Supt. Twumasi Ankrah and his men. He alleged paying the police a sum of Five Thousand Eight Hundred Cedis GHC5,800 monthly. The suspect reportedly stated that the Techiman Police was only capable of arresting those who did not know how to pay their ways out. To the chagrin of Ghanaians, Supt. Emmanuel Twumasi Ankrah of Techiman Divisional Command corroborated the claim by the suspect when he told the press that the police cannot go after the suspect merely because of what he alleges to be doing on Radio. The Techiman Police cant go looking for him because he sat on radio to boast of something, he said in a telephone conversation on radio. Some residents of Techiman are of the view that the reaction of the police capo gives credence to what the suspected drug dealer claimed in the radio interview. A legal Practitioner from Techiman, who spoke to mynewsgh.com on condition of anonymity, said the spate of extortion, oppression, injustice and inhuman tendencies by the Techiman Police requires urgent attention of the Inspector General of Police. GAJ - The Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation of North America (GPSF) celebrated its 15th year anniversary with a Conference and Fundraising Dinner-Dance at the Renaissance Concourse Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia on the weekend of April 21. The theme of the occasion was: New and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health and Security: Role of African Diaspora. GPSF was established in 2002 to support the mission of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons (GCPS) which was established by an Act of Parliament in 2002 to provide quality postgraduate training in Medicine in Ghana. GPSF also serves as an advocacy group to influence health policy and educate the general public about numerous health care issues in Ghana and Africa. The foundation supports many non-profit health initiatives in Ghana by Ghanaian and other health professionals in North America. The President of the GPSF, Dr. Leticia Otchere-Darko during her opening remarks expressed her gratitude to the Second Lady of Ghana, Mrs. Samira Bawumia for graciously accommodating their invitation to participate in their event at a short notice. She also thanked the members present for traveling from far and near to attend this years event. Dr. Otchere-Darko emphasized that this years theme seeks to shine some light on the critical role that the African Diaspora can play, such as the GPSFs Diaspora Medical Corps Mission to Tarkwa, Ghana in helping to prevent and also control the effects of raging epidemics that have devastated different regions of the continent. She underscored the increasing vulnerability of the world to the threats of transnational infectious disease outbreaks and to global health and security. She expressed the hope that by the end of the conference, members would become keenly aware of the role they can play to stem the tide against these global threats. The Second Lady of the Republic of Ghana, Mrs. Samira Bawumia was the Guest of Honor. In her keynote address on the topic: Practice in Africa: How to Make a Difference in Healthcare in the Motherland, she encouraged the medical personnel to visit Ghana often and provide their services to the various medical institutions, especially, the three Northern regions, since they are the most deprived. She also touched on the evolution of innovative services such as Telehealth, where doctors can utilize technology to render services to patients without having to physically travel to see them. Mrs. Bawumia who had earlier visited with Medshare, an Atlanta based NGO that delivers surplus medical supplies and equipment to communities around the world, spoke highly of the sustainable ways in which Medshare supports communities around the world. She congratulated the GPSF for all the services they continue to provide and thanked them for inviting her to speak with them. The two-day conference was not only a celebration of the GPSFs achievements over the past 15 years. It was methodically structured to include lectures that covered wide ranging topics such as Social intervention programs in Ghana by various Physician owned NGOs; Water Sanitation in Ghana; Preparing for Disease Outbreaks such as Ebola; Improving Financial Health; Scientific Writing; Eradicating Malaria; Global Health and Security; Emerging Infectious Diseases; Cervical Cancer Prevention, Sustainable Tuberculosis Treatment Programs, among others. The Speakers at the event were drawn from the diverse experts among the membership of the GPSF and other health practitioners from the United States, Ghana and Nigeria. Among the notable speakers at the event were Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, a Founding President of the GPSF and Founder and President of FOCOS Hospital in Ghana. Other invited guests included Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, Director General, Ghana Health Services, Professor Jacob Plange-Rhule, Rector of the Ghana College of Phisicians and Surgeons, Dr. Frank Ankobea, Vice President, Ghana Medical Association, Professor Aaron Lawson, CEO, University of Ghana Medical Center, Dr. Ken Sagoe, Consultant, Ministry of Health. The event culminated with a Special Fundraising Dinner-Dance. The members of the GPSF defied the oft-assumed notion that medical doctors are all work and no play. With the help of Satirist Clifford Owusu, the Doctors laughed and danced into the wee hours of the night at the end of the purpose-driven occasion. 27.04.2017 LISTEN Despite the increased number of concerns for government to restructure the tax exemption directive for importers, Deputy Finance Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng has stressed that his outfit will not revert the decision of implementing the move. According to him, the reversal will only bring back the numerous illegal acts at the ports. Importers and exporters called on government to review the directive as it remains unfavorable to them. The directive which was issued by the GRA stated that all applicants who qualify for exemptions from import duties and taxes must make prior payments and after, make a claim for refund of the amounts paid. Some tax analysts have also described the move as unlawful . They argue that the decision is unfair to importers who are entitled to tax exemption and must be rectified. But Mr. Kwarteng explains to Citi Business News the ministry will not scrap the law. We are all witnesses to the tax cuts. We know they were not comfortable with the development but we have had to do it because we believe in that deeply. We have not sought to change anything especially those contained in agreement. We have a responsibility to manage this the exemption in a way. What we are saying is simple; if you have exemptions, we will not touch it. he said. He adds that a lot of illegalities have been blocked since the commencement of the tax exemption law. If the exemptions were illegitimate then by law we are required to stop that and since we started this administrative measure there have been many irregularities that have been stopped. This simple pay and get refund plan has stopped many irregularities. So the objective is not to upset you or hurt your business, the objective is to weed out the bad guys. he stated. By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana The management of Ghana National Service Scheme (NSS) has organized a maidenstakeholder's conference on postings to the private sector or non-subvented organizations. The conference was held under theme Improving Private Sector Participation in National Service The event which brought together regional directors of the scheme and anumber of representatives from private and public institutions was held at the MPlaza Hotel located at the Airport Residential Area, Accra on Wednesday. The Ag. Executive Director of NSS, Mustapha Ussif explained that the stakeholders conference was part of efforts by management to re-position itself to deliver effectively on its mandate to state and clients. Mr. Ussif mentioned that it was also a platform to engage the stakeholders from the private sector in an effort to identify common grounds that works well for the scheme and their partners alike. Currently with the government's priority to support the private sector, there is the need to further increase the support by way of deployment to the private sector through a systematic collaboration, having in mind that the private sector is the engine of growth of any economy, he stated. He further mentioned that although the NSS has in recent times come under public criticism, he believed that this maidenstakeholder's conference was a starting point to source relevant information for strengthening the scheme in the future. Mr. Usif said the scheme currently deploys graduates from 117 accredited tertiary and professional training institutions on a one year mandatory national service. Ms. Emma Hammond, Director for Deployments and Ernest Obuobi, Director in charge of Internally Generated Funds (IGF) took turns to brief participants on various roles of the scheme regarding their schedules. According to the Head of Deployment, the scheme accepts applications for specialized staff but advised that such applications be submitted on time and must provide in-depth information regarding the request. Mr. Adjei-Manu Kingsley, of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and who was a participant at the conference lauded the NSS for the forum which he believed will go a long way to unearth ideas which will help industry players. By Solomon Ofori There is an apparent mad rush by the youth for scratch cards in order to process the necessary documents to be recruited into the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF). Hundreds of them since the announcement was made earlier this week, have always queued at sales points for several hours waiting for their turn to be served but some middlemen have taken undue advantage of the situation to buy the scratch cards in bulk and are now in turn selling them to prospective candidates at throat cutting prices. The military command announced that each scratch card for the online registration is supposed to sell for Hundred Ghana Cedis but it was observed that this directive had been defied in some instances due to the mad rush. Unemployed males and females seeking to be recruited besieged the numerous regional post offices in the country to buy scratch cards above advertised price. Mynewsgh.com spoke to some stranded applicants lined up at the Adum Post Office to buy their cards and some were quoted as saying when you go to the counter the post office officials tell you that scratch cards are finished but if you go to the internet cafes you get one at Ghc150.00 Reporters checks at designated post offices revealed the scratch cards are being hoarded and deliberately sold out to prospective recruits by through middlemen who are operators of various internet cafes. Many of the desperate youth our reporters spoke to urged the military to step in and save the face of the recruitment exercise left in the hands of corrupt postal agents and their conspirators who are cafe operators. They were also left wondering if the Armed Forces can absorb the teeming youth especially at the time government is facing economic hardships. Despite governments commitment to make education free in the country, the Aputuogya Junior High School (JHS) in the Bosomtwe District of the Ashanti Region is in deplorable state requiring urgent attention from the central government. Authorities of the school say several letters have been written to inform the district Education Directorate and the Member of Parliament (MP) in the constituency, Yaw Adu-Twum but no step has been taken to remedy the situation ever since. Mynewsgh.com visited the school and took pictures of the dilapidated classroom block showing naked electrical cables and half-roofed which is on the verge of collapse posing danger to the lives of both students and teachers. The students explained to this reporter how their classrooms get flooded each time it rains adding their voices to calls for support through the Assembly man of the area. Kwame Agyei. The Assemblyman revealed to have had several discussions with the MP who doubles as the deputy Education Minister yielding no positive result. The authorities of the school made a passionate appeal to the Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah who is a past student of the school to come to their aid. Representatives from leading civil society organizations, professional associations, governments, African Union (AU), academia, and key media leaders in West Africa are scheduled to participate in a two-day consultation on the Malabo Protocol in Dakar from 2-3 May, 2017. The Malabo Protocol or the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights was adopted by AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in June 2014. The Protocol extends the jurisdiction of the yet to be established African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR) to try crimes under international law and transnational crimes, meaning that, if and when the new court becomes operational, the international criminal law section of the court will serve as an African regional criminal court, operating in a manner akin to the International Criminal Court (ICC) but within a narrowly defined geographical scope, and over an expanded list of crimes. The two-day consultation, which is on the theme Understanding the Malabo Protocol: The potential, the pitfalls and the way forward, is organized by Amnesty International, IHRDA, RADDHO, and TrustAfrica. According to the organizers, the two-day consultation will build upon previous civil society activities organized by Amnesty International and TrustAfrica in different parts of the continent, including TrustAfricas convening of victims access to justice before the existing African Court in March 2016 and Amnesty Internationals consultation on the Malabo Protocol in Southern Africa in Johannesburg in November 2016. The consultation comes against the backdrop of several developments on the international justice front in Africa, including the ICC withdrawal strategy adopted by the AU Assembly at its January 2017 AU Summit, the growing political momentum for operationalization of the new court, revocation of withdrawal from the ICC by South Africa and Gambia, and an ongoing consultation by Zambia to decide whether to withdraw from the ICC or retain its membership of the court. Although there appears to be agreement among international justice experts that the ACJHR is welcome especially as it could also provide justice for victims of international crimes on the continent and deal with impunity, concerns also remain about implications arising from the proposal to expand the jurisdiction of the court. Amnesty International has also pointed out a key concern being the immunity from prosecution before the Court granted to serving Head of State or Government, or other senior state officials under the Malabo Protocol. In addition, Amnesty International has identified other areas of concern, including the expanded jurisdiction of the court, whether the court could have the resources needed to efficiently deliver on its mandate, that are yet to receive public attention and debate. With a jurisdiction covering three areas of international law, it is questionable whether the new court, as envisaged under the Malabo Protocol, will have the capacity to effectively and efficiently deliver on its mandate. It is also unclear whether the AU will have the requisite resources to operationalize and sustain such a court. According to Amnesty International, the Malabo Protocol may also have a deleterious effect on the human rights jurisdiction of the court, including possibly negative new implications on future ratifications of the statute of the current African Court on Human and Peoples Rights. Amnesty International also expressed concern about potential restriction of the court to NGOs in Africa. Under the Malabo Protocol and previous amendments, AU member states have also introduced amendments that could restrict the ability of NGOs in Africa from accessing the court. Dakar (AFP) - A special court in Dakar on Thursday upheld a life sentence on appeal for Chad's former president Hissene Habre for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but acquitted him of rape. The Extraordinary African Chambers, a body created by Senegal and the African Union (AU), sentenced Habre last May to life behind bars, an unprecedented ruling seen as a blow to the impunity long enjoyed by repressive rulers on the continent. The president of the appeal court Wafi Ougadeye said he confirmed the life sentence -- an irrevocable verdict -- but quashed the rape ruling. The former desert warrior has refused to recognise the court's authority, so the appeal was mounted on his behalf by his court-appointed lawyers. Habre was absent from proceedings on Thursday. In July, the court further ruled that Habre should give up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) to each victim of abuses committed during his 1982-1990 rule, as well as to their relatives, a decision on which the court will also rule on Thursday. 'Finally at peace' Habre's conviction brought closure for relatives of up to 40,000 people killed and many more kidnapped, raped or tortured during his time as president. Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer who has worked closely with Habre's victims to secure the conviction, said the ruling was "a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalise their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end." "Today will go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," he added in a statement. Habre, who is already in custody, will serve his sentence in Senegal or in another AU country. The trial set a global precedent as the first time a country had prosecuted the former leader of another nation for rights abuses, and was seen as a landmark example of African rights abuses being tried on the continent. Souleymane Guengueng, who founded a Habre victims' association after suffering in one of the ex-leader's notorious prisons, said in a statement he was "finally at peace". "I hope that all the dictators in Africa take notice - no one is above the law!" he said. Habre fled to Senegal after his 1990 ouster by Chad's current President Idriss Deby, and for more than 20 years lived freely in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children. Mr. David Prah 27.04.2017 LISTEN The leadership of the New Patriotic Party in the Eastern Region has put measures in place to ensure 100% approval of all Municipal and District Chief Executives nominated by the President H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to the various Assemblies in the Eastern Region and to a larger extent the whole of Ghana. Local Governance Act of 2016, Act 936 mandates persons nominated by the president as MMDCEs to secure a two-third majority vote of assembly members present and voting in order for them to be considered approved as MDCEs. The regional executive interacting with the media in the Eastern Regional capital Koforidua, following the nomination of some 212 MDCE nominees said, the party has put measures in place to ensure that they will work hard for a 100% approval of all the nominees. Mr. David Prah, the Eastern Regional Communication's Director of New Patriotic Party who spoke used the opportunity to appeal to all party faithfuls aggrieved over the appointment of some persons to exercise restraints in how they register their displeasure. He said that even before the names were made public, the party started putting measures in place to ensure that disapproval will not happen. Hinting on what the party leadership had been doing, Mr. Prah said they had extensively engaged with all aspirants who put their name forward to be considered to talk to their supporters not to do anything untoward. "We had an extensive engagement with all aspirants and I am sure they will support the work to see to it that the approval of the nominees becomes apparent without hitches" he said. Corroborating what the chairman of the select committee for the appointment Mr. Peter McManu has been saying, he added that the party did a very wide consultation of stakeholders including especially traditional leaders, assembly members and party executives and he trusts the names put forward by the president are the obvious choices of the people. Gold? Yellow, glittering precious gold? This yellow slave Will knit and break religions, bless th'accursed, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves, And give them title, knee and approbation William Shakespeare: Timon of Athens. Act IV Sc III When gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent. - Publilius Syrus REVEREND DR. ASANTE ANTWI and Lieutenant General (rtd) J.B. Danquah chose different professions. Whilst the former used the cross to save sinners, the latter swore by the sword to protect and defend Ghana, even at his peril. Both have retired from their respective professions, but are not retarded; both come from Akyem Moseaso. More importantly, both are concerned that they cannot say with pride: Akyenkwaa nana a onom Birim (proud sons of Akyem who drink from Birim.) In August, 2015, these two sons of Akyem Moseaso, together with Kingsley Dwomo, CEO of Capital View Hotel in Koforidua, led some residents of the town to demonstrate against environmental degradation and indiscriminate mining in the area. As reported in the 'Daily Guide' of August 14, 2015, The angry demonstrators who were clad in red arm, head and neck bands, held placards with inscriptions like 'President Mahama, save our lands and rivers'; 'Do not think about only your stomachs'; 'Think about the youth'. The former CDS accused Kakoase Extraction Ventures of using illegal mining methods to extract gold from their concessions and polluting water bodies in the process. The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Okyenhene, Nana Amoatia Ofori Panin and other chiefs had spoken to warn Ghanaians of the menace of 'galamsey'. Civil organisations like the media, 'StopGalamseyNow, IMANI Ghana, the Centre for Democratic Development, the Ghana Anti Corruption Coalition, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) and others have all put their shoulders to the wheel and have condemned the menace of pollution. The Christian Council of Ghana, churches, including the Catholic Church, the Church of Pentecost, the Evangelical Church of Ghana have all joined in the crusade against 'galamsey'. The Chief Justice, Mrs. Georgina Theodora Wood has designated 14 courts in Accra, Sekondi, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Koforidua, Sunyani and Bolgatanga to deal with all mining offences. The Chief Justice notes: . We are prepared to lend our support to this renewed fight against illegal mining to stamp out the menace and thereby protect the country's natural resources particularly our water bodies, for the current and future generations. Honourable Peter Amewu's position is not enviable. His is the herculean task of untying the Gordian knot'galamsey' (gather am and sell). In him is the trust to protect our water bodies. What happens at the Minerals Commission? On November, 10, 2016, three days after the Presidential elections, the Commission registered Exton Cubic Group Limited and wrote: We refer to your letter dated October 26, 2016 for a mining lease covering a land area of (at Kyekyewere, Kyirayaso, Mpasaso) in the Ashanti Region and wish to inform you that the Commission will recommend to the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources to grant you the lease subject to the payment of the following fees (GH 1389.00 processing fee and ) What about the Terra Pangaea Resources Management Limited registered on 14th December, 2016 to undertake exploration work to prove viability of areas for small scale miners at Abura Dunkwa? The Minister's broom is sweeping the Minerals Commission clean of lazy workers, sleepers, drunkards and corrupt elements at their workplace. Water? The World Health Organisations has warned: The amount of fresh water on earth is under constant pressure. Water quality can be compromised by the presence of infectious agents, toxic chemicals and radiological hazards. We can live without gold, but we cannot survive without water, and as Mc Kinley warns: Mining is an industry whose primary and first victim is water. Water? Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mainer' wrote: Water, water, everywhere. And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere Nor any drop to drink. In 1828, William Heath drew a cartoon in which a woman dropped her tea cup in horror upon discovering the monstrous contents of a magnified drop of water from River Thames, revealing the impurity of London drinking water, and Londoners called water from Thames 'Monster Soup'; Michael Faraday wrote in the 'Times': The smell was very bad and common to the whole of the water, it was the same as that which comes from the gully holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real server. Unsurprisingly, the first cholera epidemic which left 6,536 dead, hit London in 1831 and Charles Dickens called the Thames a deadly sewer. In attacking Puebla Viejo mining concern in Haiti, the farmers complained about the failure of their coffee plants since mining operations began, and falling rain had a peculiar stench. 10,000 people died of cholera in Haiti between 2010 and 2014. El Salvador may be the first country to prohibit mining of all forms after the law makers had voted overwhelmingly for it. Mining was destroying the county's rivers. In May, 2016 activists from communities affected by metal mining in Peru, El Salvador, Colombia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico and the Dominican Republic of Congo, Mexico and Dominion Republic converged in Haiti and participated in Kale Je Noun Pou Defann Lavi Non (Open Your Eyes Wide To Defend Our Lives). Nana Dwomoh Sarpong, the founder and President of Friends of River and Water Bodies may have realised that his efforts are yielding fruits. His crusade, Water is life earned him the best environmental NGO in 1997 and 1999, and special mention by the Otumfuo, Osei Tutu II, Asantehene in 2005. Who does not get haunted? The President, Nana Akufo Addo says his government has no problem with anyone, including the Chinese, over mining, but we are not targeting any person or group, but what we want is for our laws to work Is it not alarming that Ghana will face possible scarcity of potable water in the near future with Densu, Birim, Volta Lake which fed various treatment plants with raw water being overly polluted, the Kibi and Daboase Water Plants being threatened. How lovely it was to cup your palm and drink from streams! During a press conference by Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners (GNASSM) at Kumasi early this month, tears flowed uncontrollably from some members claiming a ban on their activities would have catastrophic consequences on them and the country. Crocodile tears? To those who have invested in gold mining, sorry. Godwin Armah, the Secretary stresses: We should be allowed to work, provide job opportunities for the people and also support the economy. Some members have threatened to dump the NPP in 2020 if they got flushed out. An argument ad hominem an argument based on emotion rather than factual reason or logic; it is a fallacy. A government 'afeared'? A big NPP man in Bantama shuns this braggadocio, and says he would be happy to see NPP lose, and 'galamsey' exeunted, rather than the reverse. Do we have to pull down our houses because the walls contain gold? Do we have to damage our farms in exchange for gold? The Portuguese who were the first colonialists to arrive in Ghana in 1472 saw an abundance of gold, and named the area they stayed, El Mina (the Mine), and our country 'Gold Coast'. It rained gold; even dog chains were made of gold; goldsmiths were in abundance; and our grandparents stored wealth (agudee) for us. They did not pollute our rivers with toxic chemicals like mercury, cyanide, or sulfuric acid. Our existence had never been threatened before as it is threatened now. Your top horse is to wager on H2O (hydrogen oxidewater) rather than Au (aurumgold). Africanus Owusu-Ansah [email protected] President Nana Akufo-Addo on Tuesday inaugurated a 19-member newly constituted governing board to steer the affairs of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC). But that was not without concerns about the prevalence rate and dwindling levels of support for the fight against the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in the country. Even though he said Ghana as a country has achieved a steady and gradual decline in the prevalence rate of HIV from 3.6 percent in 2003 to 1.6 percent in 2015, he, however, mentioned that whereas the general population enjoys a low prevalence, there are sub-populations that have recorded very high levels. Concern For instance, he revealed that among female sex workers the prevalence is seven percent and for men who have sex with men, the prevalence is 17.5 percent. These undoubtedly points to the need for us as a people to extend HIV prevention interventions to all segments of our population to ensure that no one is left behind, he emphasized. He, thus, expressed concern about the dwindling financial support for HIV/AIDS for which reason he said a national HIV/AIDS fund would be established to mobilise resources, especially from the private sector to provide reliable and adequate funding to the national response to the fight against HIV/AIDS. President Nana Akufo-Addo said gone were the days when to be infected with HIV was synonymous to be issued a death warrant and the term killer-disease was used to describe AIDS. Based on the advances in the frontiers of science and the immense efforts to address the epidemic, however, he explained that it is now common knowledge that being HIV/AIDS positive is not a death sentence. For him, it was, therefore, refreshing that today being infested with the virus does not mean progressing to AIDS, a feat he attributed to the availability and easy accessibility to anti-retroviral drugs. Instead, the president said, Now people living with HIV can live healthy, long and productive lives. He mentioned that the commission was implementing the National Strategic Plan 2016-2020 which is in alignment with the global United Nations Joint Programme on AIDS, UNAIDS aspirational targets which require that by the year 2020, 90 percent of all people infected with HIV will know their HIV status, whilst 90 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV infection will receive sustained anti-retroviral therapy and 90 percent of people receiving anti-retroviral drugs therapy will be virally suppressed. These targets, he indicated, are aimed at eliminating HIV/AIDS by 2030 in line with the third Sustainable Millennium Development Goal which talks of health and well-being for all at every stage of life. The mandate of the commission which was established in 2000 as a supra-ministerial and multi-sectoral body which is under the chairmanship of the president is to provide support, guidance and leadership for the national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He was, therefore, confident that the diverse backgrounds and experiences of members of the governing board would enable them to deliver on the mandate of the commission. Given the opportunity, Dr Mubarak Osei-Kwasi, a member of the board on behalf of his colleagues, thanked the government and people of Ghana for the opportunity given them to serve. He, thus, pledged their commitment to live up to the mandate to help reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country. Members The members of the governing board are the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu; Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba; Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Hajia Alima Mahama; Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Mokowaa Blay Adu-Gyamfi; Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare; Executive Director of the National Population Council, Dr Leticia A. Appiah, and the Government Statistician, Baah Wadieh. Others are President of the Ghana HIV and AIDS Network (GHANET), Victor Attah Ntumi; President of the Network of Associations of Persons Living with HIV (NAP+), Emmanuel Beluzebr Suurkure; New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for the Atwima Kwanwoma, Dr Kojo Appiah-Kubi; National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for the Wa Central, Dr Abdul-Rashid Pelpuo; a representative of Christian Groups, Rev Father Lazarus Anondee; a representative of Muslim Councils & Ahmadiyya Mission, Dr Mubarak Osei-Kwasi, and a representative of the National House of Chiefs, Kuoro Richard Babini Kanton. The rest are a representative of Ghana Employers Association, Victoria Hajar, a representative of a labour organisation, Theresa Nadia Abugah, and two presidential appointees, Lucy B. Ofori Ayeh and Dr Daniel Oduro-Mensah. By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent The Teachers and Educational Workers Union- TEWU has called on government to lift the embargo placed on appointment of non-teaching staff to allow more recruitments into educational institutions Contained in a statement release yesterday among other concerns, The General Secretary of Teacher and Educational Workers Union, Augustine Karbo called on government to respond to their concerns with the needed urgency because the issues have dragged on for too long and it is hurting members of the union He indicated that the press conference, the very first since the NPP government took over power is meant to give the government the opportunity and space to deal with the issues without the need for any industrial action to force the hand of government to do the right thing According to him, due to the embargo placed on the appointment of non-teaching staff by the previous government, over 10000 members who left the service, retired or died have not been replaced This placed an extra burden on non-teaching staff at post to fill these void. Read Full Press Statement PRESS RELEASE The Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) of TUC GH at it Nationals Executives Council Meeting held at the Unions Guest House in Accra-Lapaz from Tuesday 25th April, 2017 observed the following issues affecting the membership of the union (Non-Teaching Staff) in the Ghana Education Service. Universities, College of Education Service, Ghana Library Authority, Museums and other quizzer institutions and would therefore draw the attention of Ghana Education Service Councils, Public Universities, Technical Universities Management to urgently address them before the current academic years (2016-2017) ends: the Union should not be blamed for consequences thereafter Embargos on Non-Teaching Staff Recruitment A large number of non-teaching/non-academic staffs have retired died or vacated post. This is over burdening the staff who are compelled to perform the functions that should have been done by more hands We urge Government to lift the embargo on employment to enable the management of GES, Universities, Colleges of Education, Museums, Ghana Library Authority and other quizzer institutions to fill the vacancies Non-payment of critical support premium Since the introduction of the critical support premium of the staff of the Ghana Education Service, eleven (11) out of the twenty two (22) categories of the non-teaching personnel have been denied payment and even some of the eleven (11) categories who were benefiting from this are no more receiving We therefore call on Government to urgently fix it to cover the entire twenty two categories of non-teaching staff Conditions of Service We are aware that the conditions of service of the non-teaching staff of Ghana Education Service, non-academic staff of the universities and the colleges of Education, the Museums and other quizzer institutions have expired. We therefore call on the GES Council, National Council for Tertiary Education and other councils and managements to expedite action in getting them finalized and signed as early as practicable Teachers Performing Non-Teaching Staff Duties There is a common knowledge that some schools do not have adequate teachers, meanwhile professional teachers continue to desert their core duties as teachers to perform duties that are the preserve of the non-teaching staff This situation leaves some of the non-teaching staff redundant at their work places and therefore causing financial loss to the State We therefore call on GES Council and the Management to ensure that teachers found in this situation are moved back to the classroom to perform their rightful duties as teachers and engage more non-teaching personnel for the Service Harmonisation of Salary Structure We have noticed with great concern that there are salary disparities in the GES and the college of Education. We therefore call on the councils and managements of GES and Colleges of Education to as a matter of urgency take steps to harmonize these disparities by ensuring fair and equal pay for all workers. For example accountants, administrative officers, and supply officers with same qualification of HND are differently placed ie accountants, administrative officers are placed on level 14 while their counterparts Supply Officers are placed on level 13 on the Single Spine Salary Structure. Also, the Non-Academic Staff of the colleges of Education with first degrees are differently placed as compared to their counterparts in the teaching field an so as the second degree holders Besease (C/R), April 27, GNA - Two hours of torrential rain accompanied by strong winds on Tuesday, flooded some communities in the Assin South and North Districts of the Central Region. The affected communities were Besease, Mempeasem, Pop-site, Domeabra, Nsuakyire and Kwataa. At Assin Besease and Ando, river "Okye" the biggest river in the area overflew its boundaries and blocked the main Yamoransa-Kumasi highway. This impeded traffic flow and created heavy vehicular and human congestion making it difficult for people from either sides of the river to cross. At Assin Kwataa, a Mitsubishi Pajero which was driving towards Assin Fosu but parked along the street due to poor visibility was mangled by a broken tree that crashed into it. A resident, Mrs. Ernestina Boateng in an interview with the Ghana News Agency said the water had destroyed all her electronic appliances and other properties running into thousands of Ghana cedis and blamed the flooding on indiscriminate disposal of waste and chocked gutters. The GNA observed that many of the affected houses were those built in flood prone areas and on water ways. Several people were seen collecting buckets of water from their rooms whilst others counted their loses from the debris. Mr. Enock Baidoo, a victim called on the district assembly to stop issuing building permits to prospective developers on waterways to end the perennial flooding in area and urged them to demolish all unauthorized structures in water-ways. He asked the government to maintain the sanitation day which is held on the first Saturday of every month. GNA By Isaac Arkoh, GNA Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's opposition lined up Thursday behind a single candidate, veteran political leader Raila Odinga, strengthening their challenge to the government in August's polls. Former prime minister Odinga, 72, was named presidential candidate by senior leaders of the National Super Alliance (NASA) at a large rally in the capital Nairobi. Odinga will, for the second consecutive time, challenge President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat of the 2013 election which he lost in the first round. However, this time five of the country's main opposition leaders have united, something they always failed to do in the past. Musalia Mudavadi, a former vice president who struck out on his own in 2013, said that this time he and others had "sacrificed personal ambitions" to present a united front to challenge Kenyatta and his dominant Jubilee Party on August 8. Rival dynasties Tens of thousands of supporters waited for most of the day in Nairobi's downtown Uhuru Park in order to witness the declaration of Odinga as their presidential candidate. In a repeat of the main 2013 opposition ticket, Kalonzo Musyoka, another former vice president, was named Odinga's running-mate. Other senior positions were divided among Mudavadi, Moses Wetangula and Issac Ruto. The five men stood together on stage in matching white shirts and hats, dancing in loose coordination to celebrate the announcement. "All NASA partner are equal, and one plays the role of the first among equals," Mudavadi told the cheering crowd. Veteran political leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga (R), stands with Kenya's former deputy Prime Minister Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi, as he addresses supporters after he was named Kenya's opposition presidential candidate for elections in August, at a large rally in the capital Nairobi on April 27, 2017. Kenya's five main opposition leaders hope their unprecedented alliance will be enough to defeat the ruling Jubilee Party on August 8. Musyoka insisted the alliance would hold. "We will work with Raila to move this country forward as a team, that is why we have remained together this far," he said. "This is a great honour and I accept it," said Odinga who will be making his fourth attempt to become Kenya's president after failing in 1997, 2007 and 2013. A dispute over the result of the 2007 election led to two months of politically motivated tribal violence. The violence left over 1,100 people dead and only ended under immense international pressure that saw Odinga named prime minister in a power-sharing government with his opponent President Mwai Kibaki. Odinga again claimed fraud in 2013 but his challenge went to the courts, not the streets, and was dismissed. Kenyatta is hoping to win a second and final four year term alongside his deputy William Ruto. Both men were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of crimes against humanity for masterminding the post-election violence of 2007/08 but their cases were subsequently dropped. Kenyatta and Odinga are from bitterly competing political dynasties in Kenya: their fathers Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga were rivals in the independence era and the decades that followed. Odinga, like his father, has always coveted but never achieved the country's top job, while Kenyatta followed in his father's footsteps when he became Kenya's fourth president in 2013. The rivalry reflects tribal divisions in Kenya with Odinga's Luos commonly complaining that Kenyatta's Kikuyu community has monopolised power for its own gain. About 7,000 Ghanaians living illegally in the United States of America are being processed for deportation, US Ambassador to Ghana, Robert P Jackson has told local media. In fact about 7,000 of them are currently at different stages of the deportation process. And we are not apologetic about that, Mr Jackson said in the Brong Ahafo Region on Thursday, 27 April. Shortly after Mr Donald Trump won the American election on Wednesday, 9 November 2016, Mr Jackson told Class91.3FM's Atiewin Mbillah-Lawson in an interview at the time, at the American Embassy in Accra that Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the US must be concerned because the new administration will ask them to depart. One thing that I do think that Ghanaians need to be aware of is, I think the president-elect, as I mentioned, is likely to be more rigid about illegal immigration. We have a lot of Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the U.S. and I think that they need to be concerned about whether they would be allowed to remain illegally. My guess is they will be given some options but the president will be serious about asking those who've violated their visa status to depart, Mr Jackson said. Atiewin Mbillah-Lawson: So that means we would be expecting more Ghanaians to be potentially deported into the country from the U.S.? Ambassador Jackson: I think that's already underway in the Obama administration. I think it's likely to accelerate under a Trump administration, but apart from that I do not expect major changes in our policy and whatever government emerges here after the elections on December 7 will have a friend in the U.S. and I'm confident will be a friend of the U.S. Mr Jackson also said the Trump administration would not paint every African country with the same brush. Ghana's economy is growing, Nigeria's is shrinking. We have a very different relationship with Ghana. Ghana is more supportive of free trade and shares a long history of peaceful existence which Nigeria does not have, so I think we need to be cautious, he added. Just a week to the declaration of the US election results, the U.S. deported 108 Africans, 54 of them being Ghanaians. There were some 50 Liberians among the deportees as well. They refused to disembark from the plane that transported them to Accra describing as inhumane the treatment meted out to them by U.S. authorities. They claimed the U.S. officials were being hypocritical in their deportation as they were not treated with dignity while on board the plane en route to Accra. Some of them, who spoke to Atiewin Mbillah-Lawson in an interview at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra said although their deportation had nothing to do with criminal issues, they were handcuffed and treated as criminals by the U.S. authorities in Louisiana and even while on board the plane. According to them, when they reached the airport, the authorities attempted to take off the handcuffs to create the impression that they were treated with respect, an act they thought was hypocritical. One of the deportees said: They (U.S. authorities) handcuffed us, they handcuffed us before we boarded the plane. That is why we say we are not getting down unless they allow us to get down with the handcuffs for everybody to see how they have been treating us. That is why we said no, we are not getting down They called some immigration officers (at the airport) to come and talk to us but we said no we want to come down with the handcuffs on and so they said we should come down. They handcuffed us in the United States. My waist, hands and my legs were all cuffed. Both legs [were cuffed], so you cannot even walk, you cannot eat, you cannot do anything. Another deportee narrated: We have been handcuffed from Monday to today, a lot of people here (Kotoka Airport) today saw it. If you think I am lying, you can ask the people around. If you want to urinate you struggle in the handcuff before passing urine. Another disgruntled deportee indicated: We all left Ghana to America to go and better our future, so we passed through Brazil to Colombia and some of us even died on the way Now the people handcuffed us, they only gave us bread and water from morning till evening, so when we came here (Kotoka) a lot of the people were fighting them that: 'You cannot deport us empty-handed; we need money to go home [with].' -Classfmonline 27.04.2017 LISTEN Late Former Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for the Sunyani Municipal Assembly in the Brong Ahafo Region, Hon. Akwasi Oppong Ababio, popularly known as Adwumawura will be laid to rest on Saturday, 29th April at St. Joseph Roman Catholic School Park, Abesim. The 62-year-old Politician passed away on Sunday, January 21, 2017atthe Sunyani Regional Hospital, around 9:00pm after complaining of not physically fit. The late Former Sunyani MCE survived by a wife and four children, three girls and a boy. The late Mr. Ababio contested the Sunyani East Constituency parliamentary seat on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 20016 general elections, but lost to the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate, Akwasi Ameyaw-Cheremeh. He was the former Deputy regional secretary of the NDC and later became Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for the Sunyani Municipal Assembly from 2009-2016. Late Hon. Akwasi Oppong Ababio held a Post Graduate Certificate in Human Resource and Strategic Management from the Graduate Institute. He was an Agriculturalist and hails from Abesim in the Sunyani East Constituency. The Late Former Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) Funeral rites will be attended by Politicians like leading members of opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), namely Former President, Mahama, Johnson Asiedu Nketia better no as General Mosquito, General Secretary, National and Regional Executives, and some leading members of ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to sympathize with family and friends, his (late Ababio) untimely and painful demise. Brother of the late MCE, Apostle K. Osei Anane, confirmed to Metro 90.5FM Sunyani based radio that all the funeral activities will take place at Abesim St. Joseph Roman Catholic School Park and R.C School Park with the following funeral arrangements; There will be no Wake Keeping,he stated. Laying in State: Saturday 29th April, 2017 at St. Joseph Roman Catholic School Park, Abesim. Burial: Saturday 29th April, 2017 at Wamfia Royal Cemetery around 10am. Final Funeral Rites: Saturday 29th April, 2017 from 12:00pm to 6:00pm. Thanksgiving Service: Sunday 30th April, 2017 at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, Abesim. Family gathering: 1st May 2017 at family house at 9:00am. Background Late Hon. Akwasi Oppong Ababio was in his private residence in the evening when he suddenly started complaining of not physically fit, and immediately rushed to the Sunyani Regional Hospital before his death. The government of Ghana is committed to creating a conducive atmosphere for businesses to thrive, with the private sector as the driver of economic growth and development. said Ghanas Minister for Business Development during a Ministerial visit to Horizons Offices Ghana. He added that the Government had introduced measures to stabilize the local currency and reduce significantly, the cost of borrowing. Such measures include tax cuts such as the abolishment of the 5 % VAT on Real Estate sales, re-introduction of 3% flat VAT rate for traders and the abolition of the 17.5% VAT on domestic airline tickets. Horizons offices is one successful Ghana-Kenya business establishment in Accra and we can assure the management of governments support for smooth operations and expansion. I entreat the Kenya Trade Expo Ghana to do more to encourage Kenyan businesses into the country. He continued. He was speaking to a select number of business people gathered at the picturesque deck of Horizons Offices, to witness a succesful Ghana -Kenya business partnership. Horizons Offices Ghana is located in the 8th floor of the iconic One-Airport Square in Accra. It is a business venture between Kenyan Investor Mr. Ian Kabiru and Ghanas Technology Guru Mr. Herman Chinnery-Hesse. The Minister was received by the Acting Chair of the Kenyan Community in Ghana Mr. Albert Ngumba, who revealed that Kenyans had ventured into several areas of business in Ghana. He expressed gratitude for support received from Ghana Government, citing a recent meeting of the Kenyan community executives, with the Foreign Affairs Minister. The Country Manager for Horizons Offices made a statement on behalf of his Directors and continued to take guests on a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities. On the visit, guests got to stop-in on of the client offices including those of the renowned Nii-Ardey Clegg. After the tour, Co-Founder of the Kenya Trade Expo gave a brief on the Kenya Trade Expo in Ghana, which was founded to foster such Ghana-Kenya partnerships. She urged the business community and corporate bodies to take advantage of the platform created by the Kenya Trade Expo Ghana, to enhance trade between Kenya and Ghana. It is our belief that when Private Sector acts in tandem with political will, we will be able to break the barriers hindering Intra-Africa trade. she said. She thanked the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre for having supported the Maiden Kenya Expo and having agreed to partner a second time around. Mr. Carl Nelson, the Chief Operating Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre urged all the Ghana-Kenya businesses, to register with the GIPC. This would allow them take advantage of the GIPCs extensive network and business services. He reiterated the GIPCs support for the Kenya Trade Expo and thanked the Founders for their dedication to enhancing trade between Kenya and Ghana. The Kenya Trade Expo Ghana 2017 will be held from the 1st to the 4th November. Abuja (AFP) - Nigerian officials on Thursday sought to allay fears about the health of President Muhammadu Buhari after his absence from the last two cabinet meetings. Buhari's spokesman Garba Shehu said there was "no need for apprehension" that he had missed the meetings but he was only following medical advice. "As eager as he is to be up and about, the president's doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago," Shehu said in an emailed statement. "Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation," he said, adding that Buhari was still in charge, despite his lack of public appearances. The president, who has spent most of his time at his private residence, talked regularly with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and received daily briefings on government activities, he said. Buhari's aides repeatedly insisted the 74-year-old was "hale and hearty" throughout his time in London, where he spent nearly two months before returning to Nigeria in early March. After arriving in Abuja, the former military ruler contradicted those assertions by saying he "couldn't recall being so sick" and revealing he had had blood transfusions and other tests. Shehu's references to a "long period of treatment", convalescence and recuperation indicates a more serious condition than stated, although exactly what has not been specified. The presidency said in January that Buhari's trip to London was for "routine medical check-ups" during a short holiday. He was said to have been treated for a persistent inner ear infection during a previous trip last June. Buhari dismissed claims during the 2015 presidential election that he was seriously ill with prostate cancer, saying it was an opposition smear designed to show him unfit to be head of state. The health of Nigeria's president has been a sensitive issue since the death in office in 2010 of Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, which saw months of political turmoil. Dakar (AFP) - Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina has fought for close to two decades to deliver justice for the victims of former president Hissene Habre, who terrorised his people for eight years, leaving tens of thousands dead. Moudeina represented the victims during Habre's trial by a special court created by Senegal and the African Union. AFP asked her if Thursday's verdict upholding Habre's life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity represented a turning point for African justice, and what its implications were for the increasingly unpopular International Criminal Court. What will be the impact of the verdict? There will be a significant impact. You cannot imagine the joy this has brought today. We have spent 17 years in search of justice, and we were stuck in a kind of tunnel. Now we are out of the tunnel and stepping into the light. We are delivering a very strong message to dictators, to all human rights abusers. I believe everyone will pay attention. The fight against impunity has now begun in earnest, which is a turning point for Africa. Today, any African can allow himself to believe he could take on the most prolific offenders in court. Could the special tribunal become a model for Africa? Definitely. It would suffice for the African Union, which took on the task of setting up this jurisdiction, to do it again for other cases, but with improvements. This is a huge start. There were certainly errors that we will rectify in order to establish a very good jurisdiction. The way we organised witnesses and the victims was very badly organised. Chad is very far away and many were not able to come here. Is it a real alternative to the International Criminal Court (ICC)? For sure. The ICC has a complementary role that works alongside national jurisdictions. If today we have demonstrated that Africa is capable of judging Africans, we will no longer need to turn to the ICC, because we will have shown our capacity to judge our own. It was the Chadian victims of Habre who brought the case. At the beginning, there was just seven of us. Today, we have more than 4,385 in our camp. Two other associations have just over 3,000 victims and it is the victims who have done the work, not the West. They aren't from the West. Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's opposition lined up Thursday behind a single candidate, veteran political leader Raila Odinga, in an unprecedented step to strengthen their challenge to the government in August's polls. Former prime minister Odinga, 72, was named presidential candidate by senior leaders of the National Super Alliance (NASA) at a large rally in the capital Nairobi. Odinga will, for the second consecutive time, challenge President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat of a 2013 election that he lost in the first round. However, this time five of the country's main opposition leaders have united, something they always failed to do previously. Musalia Mudavadi, a former vice president who struck out on his own in 2013, said that this time he and others had "sacrificed personal ambitions" to present a united front to challenge Kenyatta and his dominant Jubilee Party on August 8. Kenyatta countered by accusing the opposition of wanting to create a prime minister's job not provided for in the constitution. They were doing this instead of "finding a job for millions of Kenyans who need one," said a statement from the presidency. Tens of thousands of opposition supporters waited most of the day in Nairobi's downtown Uhuru Park to witness the declaration of Odinga as their presidential candidate. Supporters of veteran political leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga, attends a rally where Odinga was named as the presidential candidate for the National Super Alliance party, during a rally in the capital Nairobi on April 27, 2017 In a repeat of the main opposition ticket of four years ago, Kalonzo Musyoka, another former vice president, was named Odinga's running-mate. Other senior positions were divided among Mudavadi, Moses Wetangula and Issac Ruto. The five men stood together on stage in matching white shirts and hats, dancing in loose coordination to celebrate the announcement. "All NASA partners are equal, and one plays the role of the first among equals," Mudavadi told the cheering crowd. Musyoka insisted the alliance would hold. "We will work with Raila to move this country forward as a team, that is why we have remained together this far," he said. Rival dynasties "This is a great honour and I accept it," said Odinga who will be making his fourth attempt to become Kenya's president after failing in 1997, 2007 and, again, four years ago. A dispute over the result of the 2007 election led to two months of politically motivated tribal violence. Former prime minister Raila Odinga (right) and ex-deputy premier Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi greet supporters during an opposition rally in Nairobi, on April 27, 2017 The violence left over 1,100 people dead and only ended under immense international pressure that saw Odinga named prime minister in a power-sharing government with his opponent President Mwai Kibaki. Odinga again claimed fraud in 2013 but his challenge went to the courts, not the streets, and was dismissed. Kenyatta is hoping to win a second and final four year term alongside his deputy William Ruto. Both men were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of crimes against humanity for masterminding the post-election violence of 2007/08 but their cases were subsequently dropped. Kenyatta and Odinga are from bitterly competing political dynasties in Kenya: their fathers Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga were rivals in the independence era and the decades that followed. Odinga, like his father, has always coveted but never achieved the country's top job, while Kenyatta followed in his father's footsteps when he became the country's fourth president in 2013. The rivalry reflects tribal divisions in Kenya with Odinga's Luos commonly complaining that Kenyatta's Kikuyu community has monopolised power for its own gain. Abrem Berase (C/R), April 27, GNA - Safe Water Network (SWN), an international non-governmental organisation, has constructed two water stations at Abeyee and Berase in the Edina - Eguafo - Abrem (KEEA) Municipality of the Central Region. The total population of the two communities (Abeye and Berase) with an average household size of four is about 7,000 and farming and trading is their main economic activity. The water stations which forms part of the SWN's 'H2OME Water' Enterprise model Programme, was made possible with support from the Group Nduom (GN), The Waterloo and The Stone Family Foundations. Each water station has an office, to be managed by a 12-member Water and Sanitation Management committee (WSMC) from each beneficiary community. The WSMC members would be responsible for the maintenance and day to day running of the stations and ensure that people residing in the two communities and its adjoining ones have constant supply of potable water. The various stations also have facilities to carry out home connections for interested households. At separate ceremonies to inaugurate the water stations and its water management committees, Mr Charles Nimako, the Country Director of Safe Water Network, said his organisation has implemented over 60 'H2OME Water' Enterprises in over 95 communities in Ghana. He said 25 new enterprises would be launched before the end of the year. He said SWN aims at extending the programme to provide sustainable safe water to 500 communities in Ghana. Mr Alex Damptey, KEEA Environmental Health and Safety Officer, commended SWN and its partners for complementing government's efforts at improving potable water supply in rural areas. He called on the chiefs to support Government in the fight against galamsey to protect water bodies. Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, President of Group Nduom, implored the community especially the women to take ownership of the facility and ensure its sustainability. Nana Brakwa, the Ankobeahen of Abrem Berase, enumerated how the 'H2OME Water' Enterprise has been of immense help to the people as they hitherto relied on borehole and hand dug wells which often dried up in the harmattan season. GNA By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA Tolon (N/R), April 27, GNA - Over 3,000 inhabitants of Tolon and Nanton in the Northern Region have benefited from a two-day GCB Bank's eye screening exercise. The GCB Bank Limited in partnership with the Third Eyecare and Vision Centre, a firm of eye specialists, organized the free eye screening for the inhabitants of the two towns and their surrounding communities to correct eye defects. Mr Robert Akati Adamu, head of GCB Bank's support services department, who announced this in Tolon, on Wednesday during the last day of the eye screening exercise, said GCB was spending about GH220,000.00 on the eye care project in the Northern Region. He said the eye screening programme included eye examination, provision of drugs and spectacles on site and the education of residents on preventable blindness, which is being carried out by ten optometrists and 50 community health volunteers. He said the project fell under GCB's new Social Intervention Campaign: 'Stirring Passion' where the bank reaches out to communities through volunteer staff who work for the improvement of healthcare delivery. Mr Adamu said the Bank carried our similar exercises in 2016 where 3,000 people in Accra and Takoradi were beneficiaries and that the aim of the Bank is to reach out to more than 12,000 people in the next four years. He said the 'Stirring Passion' programme was the theme for the Bank's Corporate Social Responsibility, and was targeted at the needy in the community. Mr Adamu said GCB Bank was giving true meaning to its corporate social responsibility effort and philanthropy work hence the move to communities like Nanton and Tolon where the Bank has no branches. As part of the eye care programme, the Bank on Tuesday, April 25, presented Auto-refractor equipment worth GH20,000.00 to the management of the Tamale Central Hospital to facilitate the diagnosis of eye defects. Mr Adamu expressed hope that with the arrival of the Auto-refractor equipment, people would no longer travel long distances for eye care services. Dr Kwame Oben-Nyarko, Managing Director of Third Eyecare and Vision Centre, described the exercise as a success and that majority of all those screened were given free drugs and lenses. He said it is important for every one especially those 40 years and above living with hypertensive conditions to check their eyes every six months to correct any defects to avoid blindness. GNA By Caesar Abagali, GNA Bolgatanga, April 27, GNA - Media practitioners in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions have been urged to use their skills and platforms to encourage duty bearers on education to improve on the quality of education in the country. The Northern Network for Education Development (NNED) made the appeal at a day's forum it jointly organised with the Global Partnership for Education Grant (GPEG) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It was to involve the media to support in diverse ways to improve on quality education in these three regions of Ghana, where development in education was slow. The Project Manager of NNED Mr Joachim Faara said involving the media in the discussions to promote quality education in the three regions was in the right direction because the media represented the voiceless people in the community. Mr Faara said governments over the years had demonstrated commitment to promote free compulsory universal primary education in the country with adequate flow of donor funds through NGOs. According to him, governments, Non - Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the GPEG had in diverse ways effectively supported education delivery in the regions of the north and said in spite of these efforts, there were low learning outcomes among pupils, hence the poor performance of pupils in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in these regions. He added that NNED as a Civil Society Organisation (CSOs) sought to harmonise and harness the collective efforts of all people in educational development to advocate accessible and inclusive quality education for every child in these three regions of Ghana. The Coordinator for NNED, Gaskin Dasah in a presentation said NNED aims at ensuring that all children of school going age had access to quality education in these areas. According to him NNED undertook evidence-based advocacy to achieve its aims, and explained that this was done through partnerships, and harnessing skills and experience from its members. The NNED Coordinator mentioned that his outfit had contributed to advocate the need for a base grant for the capitation grant and mobilised inputs of CSOs and NGOs on the 2015 draft education bill. Presenting the findings of GPEG assessment and baseline report and briefing the participants on Promoting Transparency and accountability in Education (PTAE), Mr Dasah indicated that the project was to be implemented in 25 districts in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions. GNA By Rebecca Kajelo, GNA Accra, April 27, GNA - The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights has fixed May 8th to 24th for the 45th Ordinary Session to examine about 80 applications and four requests for advisory opinion, at Arusha, the United Republic of Tanzania. Justice Sylvain Ore, President of the African Court explained that as at April 25, 2017, the court had received 138 applications and finalised 32 cases. It is composed of eleven Judges, nationals of Member States of the African Union elected in their individual capacity. The African Court is a continental court established by African countries to ensure the protection of human and peoples' rights in Africa. It complements and reinforces the functions of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. The African Court President therefore affirmed its jurisdiction to deal with all cases and all disputes submitted to it concerning interpretation and application of the African Charter. The jurisdiction covers, the Protocol and any other relevant human rights instrument ratified by the States concerned and also has the power to render an advisory opinion on any legal matter relating to the Charter or any other relevant human rights instruments, provided that the subject of the opinion is not related to a matter being examined by the Commission. Justice Ore said in accordance to the Protocol (Article 5) and the Rules (Rule 33), the African Court may receive complaints and/or applications submitted to it either by the ACHPR or State parties to the Protocol or African Inter-Governmental Organisations. 'Non-Governmental Organisations with observer status before the ACHPR and individuals from States which have made a Declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the African Court can also institute cases directly before the Court,' he said. He said: 'African Court is neither a Court for the States nor a Court of the Judges, but rather a Court for all African citizens desirous to see an Africa which adopts zero tolerance to human rights violations. 'It is under this one condition that the African Court would have any sense and be able to make its mark in our common struggle to build a more worthy, more humane and more prosperous Africa'. Justice OrA said for the African Court to grow in legitimacy and authority; 'It has to have the means to accomplish its mission, means both human and material'. He noted that the continental legal body also seeks to promote amicable settlement in cases pending before it in accordance with the provisions of the Charter; and to interpret a judgment it had rendered. The African Court also has jurisdiction to review its own judgment in the light of new evidence in conformity with its rules. Justice Ore explained that the procedure before the African Court shall consist of written, and if necessary, oral proceedings. 'The written procedure shall consist of the communication to the African Court, the parties, as well as the African Commission, as appropriate, of applications, statements of the case, defences and observations and of replies if any, as well as all papers and documents in support, or of certified copies thereof. 'The oral proceedings shall consist of a hearing by the African Court of representatives of parties, witnesses, experts, or such other persons as the Court may decide to hear,' he said. He said every party to a case shall be entitled to be represented or to be assisted by legal counsel and/or by any other person of the party's choice. On Cooperation of the States; Justice Ore explained that the States Parties to a case have the obligation to cooperate so as to ensure that all notices, communications or summons addressed to persons residing in their territory or falling under their jurisdiction were duly executed. 'The same rule shall apply to any proceeding that the African Court decides to conduct or order in the territory of a State Party to a case. When the performance of any of the measures referred to in the preceding paragraphs requires the cooperation of any other State, the African Court President shall request the government concerned to provide the requisite assistance,' he said. The African Court is made up of eleven judges, nationals of Member States of the African Union elected in their individual capacity. The President and Vice President are elected for a term of two years and are eligible to be re-elected for another final term of two years. The Court meets four times a year in Ordinary Sessions and may hold Extra-Ordinary Sessions. GNA By Francis Ameyibor, GNA Accra, April 27, GNA - MTN Ghana Foundation, the corporate social investment arm of MTN Ghana has come out with Episodes 1 - 12 of its flagship project, MTN Heroes of Change III. The project seeks to unearth and celebrate individuals or groups making extraordinary contributions in the community. It identifies, supports and honours the diverse contributions that these heroes and heroines are playing in the development of society. Essentially, the project provides an opportunity for selfless people to be publicly recognised and rewarded for their efforts. The ultimate Hero of Change will receive GH100,000 to support his/her community project, with winners for the various categories also receiving recognition and financial prizes. The others will receive consolation prizes. The Foundation focuses on three cores areas: Health - dedication to the enhancement of human health in Ghana; Economic Empowerment - commitment to capacity building and economic empowerment in Ghana, and Education - helping to improve literacy and/or increase access to education in Ghana. According to the Corporate Services Executive of MTN, Mrs Cynthia Lumor: 'We launched the Heroes of Change project to celebrate ordinary people impacting society in an extra ordinary manner. We are looking forward to projecting their stories and to reward them for their selfless services.' The criteria for selection was based on the following: the nomination for recognition in education is required to engage in an educational project aimed at improving literacy and enabling members of the community to become agents of social change. That for health is required to be devoted to awareness creation and advocacy for the eradication of any identifiable health issue. On economic empowerment, the nominee is required to be engaged in a project aimed at building the capacity of members of a community in order for them to become economically self-sufficient whilst enhancing their livelihood. Each season has 13 episodes. The final 10 nominees out of a starting line-up of 2,400 are Joseph Asakibeem, Dr Michael Adusei-Nsowah, Genevieve Basigha, Ibrahim Bafara Alhassan, Nana Professor Osei Darkwa III, Joana Mansah Deegbe and John Amankrah Essel. The others are Reverend Father Moses Asaah, Rev Monsignor Alex Bobby Benson and James Jack Dawson. The Episode 1 Nominee is Joseph Asakibeem, Episode 2 Nominee: Rev Bobby Benson Episode 3 Nominee: Dr Michael Adusei-Nsowah, and Episode 4 Nominee: Rev Fr Moses Asaah. The Episode 5 Nominee: Joana Deegbe, Episode 6, Nominee: Nana Prof Osei Darkwa III, Episode 7, Nominee: John Amankrah Essel and Episode 8 Nominee: James Jack Dawson The Episode 9 Nominee: Genevieve Basigha, Episode 10 Nominee: Ibrahim Bafara Alhassan, Episode 11 Recap: five stories (Joseph Asakibeem/ Rev Bobby Benson/ Joana Deegbe/ Jack Dawson/ Dr Michael Edusei-Nsowah) and Episode 12 Recap: 5 stories (Ibrahim Bafara Alhassan/ Genevieve Basigha/ Rev Father Moses Asaah/ Nana Prof Osei Darkwa III/ Amankrah Essel). MTN Heroes of Change S3. (Broadcast Schedule) is as follows: GTV- Saturday 5:30pm -6:00pm; TV3- Sunday 6:30pm to 7:00 pm; JOY PRIME- Sunday 5:00 pm -5:30pm and GH ONE TV- Sunday 7:00pm- 7:30pm MTN HOC Season 3 Nominee List Joseph Asakibeem (short code name 'JOSEPH') is based in Sirigu in the Upper East Region and provides medical aid to children born with varying deformities. He also educates the community about the true state of these children while encouraging them to desist from killing them as they are falsely perceived as 'spirit children'. His project is supported by Afrikids UK through Afrikids Ghana. Dr Michael Adusei-Nsowah (short code name 'MICHAEL') through his rural eye health project, has helped numerous people with varying eye problems. While the project started with a loan, it is largely self-funded. Dr Adusei-Nsowah travels to health facilities in Asonomaso in the Ashanti Region to give medical help to people who require eye treatment. Beneficiaries pay a token of GH5.00 for consultation services. Genevieve Basingha (short code name 'GENEVIEVE') despite being deaf and dumb, has set up a school in Obuasi in the Ashanti Region, which caters for children suffering from her condition. The project is sustained through her pocket as well as the GH70 fee paid per term by parents of the children. Ibrahim Bafara Alhassan (short code name 'IBRAHIM') operating from Wa in the Upper West Region, has helped eradicate poverty through his Vision Farms poultry project. By distributing birds to interested individuals who rear and resell them, the project has grown from just 10 birds to a movement spreading across 11 districts. The project is self-funded. Nana Prof Osei Kofi Darkwa (short code name 'NANA') is the chief of Patriensa and President of the Ghana Technology University College. He has established a five- year developmental programme to transform his community. He has constructed a road, which has significantly cut the time farmers commute from their farms to the market. The facility has helped them avoid long dangerous treks from farm to market and the issue of produce going bad. His project is self-funded and donations from friends. Joana Mansah Deegbe (short code name 'JOANA') a lawyer and educationist, has set up a community library in Shiashie in the Greater Accra Region, to enable children improve their reading and literacy skills. She funds the project through donations from friends and family as well as the church. John Amankrah Essel (short code name 'JOHN') has set up set up schools within the Breman Asikuma of the Central Region in very remote communities to give the children in its environs the required education. More than 300 children have benefited from his project, which is funded through his personal income as well as a small token paid by the parents of the students. Rev Fr. Moses Asaah Awinnongya (short code name 'MOSES') through his NGO- Regentropfen Education Foundation, is taking care of orphans and other needy children within Namoo in the Upper East Region by providing shelter and food. He has set up a scholarship fund, which helps brilliant but needy children through school, built a library and built a university in the village of Namoo with a hostel facility near completion. He funds the project through donations from individuals in Germany and Stiftung Regentropfen. Rev Monsignor Alex Bobby Benson (short code name 'BOBBY') has through funding from the Catholic Church, friends and other individuals been able to cater for the needs of marginalised HIV and AIDS persons. His 'Matthew 25' house has provided spiritual, emotional and financial support to individuals affected by HIV and AIDS. Jack James Dawson (short code name 'JACK') operating in the Atitekpo in the Volta Region, has set up the APPLE Foundation, which seeks to rescue children from trafficking. APPLE stands for Association of People for Practical Life Education. Mr Dawson is a graphic designer and social worker who uses his personal income and donations to run his project. MTN Heroes of Change was first launched in July 2013 and Dr Abrokwa-Yenkyera, a plastic surgeon and Founder of Grafts Foundation, emerged the ultimate winner for the maiden edition of MTN Heroes of Change in 2014. Madam Paulina Opei, Founder of the Save Our Lives Orphanage, emerged the Hero of Change for Season II. Rev Albert Ocran, Motivational Speaker; Dr Doris Dartey, Communications Consultant; Mr Mohammed Awal, Publisher, and Mr Sidney Casely-Hayford, Economist constitute the independent selection of winners' panel of judges. MTN Heroes of Change has bagged a number of awards, including the 2016 IPR Best Community Relations Programme of the Year and the CSR Programme of the Year 2015 by the Head of State Awards (HoSA) Scheme. The Foundation is expected to win some more in the coming years. The various interventions the Foundation has provided include hospital blocks, school buildings, libraries, ICT centres, scholarships and training programmes are some of the ways MTN Ghana Foundation is making healthcare, education accessible and enhancing economic empowerment. Established in November 2007, the Foundation is impacting millions of lives in our communities. GNA 27.04.2017 LISTEN Kumasi, April 27, GNA - The military has appealed to the government to take urgent steps to rehabilitate some abandoned residential facilities at the Fourth Battalion Infantry (4BN) Brigade complex in Kumasi. The facilities, built in 1997 to house the soldiers, had over the past decade been rendered uninhabitable due to serious structural defects. Lieutenant Colonel Augustine Arhin, the 4BN Commander, said these could accommodate about 70 families. Speaking during a visit to the place by the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah, he said the development had created enormous discomfort for the officers and needed to be tackled. The Minister was there as part of his tour of security installations in the region to learn at first hand the challenges and how to resolve these to enable the security agencies to operate efficiently. Accompanied by Mrs. Elizabeth Agyemang, the Deputy Regional Minister, and Brigadier-General Cosmos Alhassan, General Officer Commanding the Central Command, he had earlier inspected the Central Command Headquarters project, which is set to be completed next year. It would replace the current structure, which predates World War II. Lt. Col. Arhin pledged the loyalty of the military, its total commitment defend the nation and assist in providing vital social services to improve the living conditions of the people. Mr. Osei-Mensah saluted the military for the high sense of discipline and professionalism that had won international admiration. He said the nation was proud of the enviable niche the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) had carved for itself and urged it to continue with the good job. Brigadier-General Alhassan applauded moves by the government to enhance the operational efficiency of the GAF. The Regional Minister also interacted with officers of the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana National Fire Service. He assured them of the government's determination to ensure that they were adequately equipped to perform. Their conditions of service would also be improved, he added. GNA By Stephen Asante, GNA 27.04.2017 LISTEN Accra, April 27, GNA - Euroget De-|Invest s.a. (EDI) of Egypt, an Investment project finance and management company, has promised to complete and finalised the construction and equipping of nine hospitals by the close of the year and 2018. The state of the art fully functional 1,310 bed hospitals include a 500- bed military hospital in Kumasi for the Ministry of Defence and eight hospitals for the Ministry of Health, which includes regional hospitals in Wa and Kumasi. There are also six district hospitals at Salaga, Twifo Praso, Madina (Now at Atomic/Kwabenya), Konongo, Nsawkaw and Tepa. Dr Said Deraz, Chairman and CEO for Euroget Group told the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Thursday that the projects to be completed this year comprise the Wa Regional Hospital, and the Nsawkaw, Tepa, Madina and Konongo District hospitals. He said the 250- bed capacity Kumasi Military Hospital, the Kumasi Regional Hospital and the Salaga District Hospital would be completed in 2018. Dr Deraz 'We shall deliver to the people of Ghana the best health and quality.' He debunked media reports that his company had delayed the project and dared those with evidence to come forward and provide the evidence. He said the journalists behind the yellow journalism were destroying the credibility of Ghana as a stable country with the political environment that had attracted a lot of investments. Dr Deraz said apart from the Euroget project, he had invested in a Gold Coast Refinery Ltd in Accra, the biggest in West Africa and the second largest in Africa. He said he would also bring in a concessionary facility of 940 million dollars for the government to decide where to invest the money. In another development Mr Prince Armah, the Country Manager of Euroget Group said the company, which started operations since 2007, prospecting for infrastructure projects, specifically hospitals, went through the time consuming regulatory processes. In a press statement he said after the various Ministries, Cabinet and Parliamentary approvals granted to the company in 2008, commercial and supplier credit agreements were signed. The Value for Money audit on the contract was conducted by Crown Agents of UK and successfully concluded in 2010. Consequently, the Turnkey EPC Turnkey contract for the nine hospitals amounting to $ 519.00 million was finalised in 2010. The company offered a supplier credit facility arranged on concessional terms, providing sufficient financial savings for Ghana and certainty of payments to the sub-contractors and suppliers. Various pre-conditions to the effectiveness of the supplier's credit agreement and commercial contract have been strenuously pursued. 'The pre-conditions include; the acceptable guarantee of payments by the |Ministry of Finance in accordance with the agreement, which was obtained in February 2012 and first legal opening has done in February, 2014 signifying full effectiveness of supplier credit facility. 'Other pre-conditions for commercial contracts with the Ministries of Health and Defence included the release of lands and grant of access to sites for the hospitals, which were obtained on various dates, the last release being in 2014, and grant of final Tax Exemption by Parliament in End of December 2016. The execution of the hospitals project scheduled in two phases and effectively commenced at different dates during 2014, are at various stages of completion,' the statement said. GNA 27.04.2017 LISTEN Accra, April 27, GNA - Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Dr Benjamin Agordzo, Director, Transformation of Ghana Police Service has called for constitutional reforms in the appointment of future Inspector General of Police (IGP) to make their positions independent from political control. CSP Agordzo said the reforms should allow the IGP to be appointed for a fixed term with approval of Parliament to exercise independent control over the Police as well as make the police loyal to the citizenry instead of political parties. Speaking at a forum in Accra on post-election reflections on the country's 2016 elections, CSP Agordzo explained that the reforms should also provide grounds for which the IGP could be removed. 'This would give the IGP the status of a superior court Judge whose removal from office cannot be based on the whims and caprices of the appointing authority', he added. He said such constitutional arrangements should also ensure that the Minister of Interior could only give directives to IGP in writing on matters of policy, but not as to how the IGP should do his or her work. This means IGPs could be fired on definite grounds if they were unable to perform their duties. The Police Officer was of the view that such arrangements would embolden the IGP and the Police service to take decisive actions against politically motivated infractions without having to wait on the President to speak out. CSP Agordzo said the 2016 elections were successful because of the collective efforts of all stakeholders who played their roles in an effective and efficient manner. He noted that the National Election Security Task Force did not receive any kind of funding from government except the provision made for ration for personnel, which affected the training of personnel and logistics. He explained that the Police could not prosecute electoral offenders swiftly because it could not have done that without the consent of the Attorney General under Section 42 of 1992 PNDCL 284, and urged all to work towards amending the section to allow for prosecution of offenders. CSP Agordzo expressed worry about post-election violence of assault on political opponents and appointees, seizure of public property such as toilets, waterfalls which downgraded the country in the eyes of international community. He said the political vigilante groups became a threat to national security after the 2016 elections, describing it as a hydra-headed social problem that required a national discussion. CSP Agordzo said the vigilante groups acted in full belief that they had the full support of the party and called for national discussions on the effect of political vigilantes on the fortunes of the country. Dr Franklin Oduro, Deputy Director of Centre for Democratic Development, stated the need to disband all political party-afflicted vigilante groups to ensure national peace and security. He called for a more credible way to deal with the canker of militant party-affiliated vigilantism with proactive de-politicisation of state control of the police and other security agencies. Dr Oduro admonished the need to strengthen the Administrator-General through effective regulation to manage the country's asset. This he explained would help protect the country's asset register, its enforcement and a law regarding the disposal of state property to the benefit of the citizenry. GNA By Kodjo Adams, Racheal Dwamena, GNA Touchpoint Magna Carta (TPMC), a Reputations Management, Event and Media Consultancy, has reiterated their support for people living with kidney diseases. The company organized the second edition of a 12.6km health walk aimed at creating awareness about kidney-related diseases, while raising funds for the Kidney Care Project. Dubbed The Hunt, the walk up the Aburi Hills was complemented by aerobics. Participants were also sensitized on how to prevent kidney diseases. TPMC pledged to support the Kidney Care Project with GHC13, 000, which is an equivalent of the average number of steps taken at the walk. Clarence Amoatey, General Manager of TPMC, said the high cost of the treatment and the terminal nature of kidney diseases, make it a socio economic problem that needs urgent attention. Less than 10% of the thousands of people living with kidney diseases in Ghana are able to access quality treatment because of the high cost involved, he said. A session of dialysis is estimated to cost GHC260 and each patient is required to undergo an average of three sessions per week. There is therefore the need to reach out to the numerous Ghanaians living with or at risk of developing kidney diseases. Last year the TPMC Team raised GHC10, 000 at the first edition of the health walk. The funds were used to offset the cost of a total of 53 dialysis sessions for five of the Kidney Care Projects beneficiaries at the Renal and Dialysis Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. Joyce Effah, Founder of the Kidney Care Project, advised the participants to live a healthy lifestyle in order to prevent kidney-related diseases. Touchpoint Magna Carta is an indigenous Ghanaian communications agency specialized in providing Events, Media and Reputation Management services. They are affiliated to Magna Carta, an exclusive African affiliate of the Global Ketchum Group, which has more than 100 offices around the globe. This years edition of The Hunt health walk was supported by Betway and Decathlon. We have that lovely French national anthem running through our mind. The tune is La Marseillaise. Its a catchy one. In fact, musically speaking, its one of our favourites around the world. Admittedly the US is also up there. Theres nothing quite as rousing as a melismatic vocal of Star Spangled Banner. But its the French one thats on our mind today. Theres been a fair amount of coverage of the French second round elections. Marine Le Pen versus Emmanuel Macron. Admittedly, I dont really care which one wins. Either way its going to be some interesting times for the EU. But today I was thoroughly impressed by the antics of Le Pen. Emmanuel Macron was meeting with a select set of union officials to discuss issues around the closure of a Whirlpool washing machine factory. The factory is leaving France and heading over to Poland. As youd expect, that means French people losing their jobs. And that never pleases the French. Heck, it never pleases anyone. While Macron was tucked away up in a special meeting, Le Pen decided to crash the party. Not Macrons meeting though. No. Le Pen headed to the picket line at the Whirlpool factory to talk to the workers who were soon to be unemployed. They loved it. They loved her. How young is too young? It was the perfect political ambush. Macron eventually had to hit the picket line too. They didnt like him. He actually even said to them that hed ensure they could all still buy Whirlpool washing machines. Seriously. He said that. They responded with the fact that none of them can afford Whirlpool washing machines. What a rookie. And therein lies the challenge Macron faces. Hes just 39 years old. Hell turn 40 in December. Hes very young. Too young perhaps? Im not going to say that age should be a factorbut maybe it should be when it comes to running a country. His actions today show that Macron is still a rookie. And is that the kind of person French voters want to run the show? While Macron might end up as President, he wouldnt be the only youngster running a major country. By political standards Canadas Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is also virtually an infant. Trudeau has the face of a 22 year old, but hes actually 45. Still, thats incredibly young to be running a country. Albeit he seems to be doing an OK job. And lets be honest, when has a leader of a country ever been more than just OK? Australias youngest Prime Minister was Chris Watson. Who? Well to be honest I had no idea who he was. But apparently at age 37 he became Australias third Prime Minister. He lasted four months. Stanley Bruce was the same age as Macron, 39 when he took office. He did a bit better, lasting six years as PM from 19231929. Then we jump up to Robert Menzies who was 44 when he became PM. A 30-something President, Prime Minister or even Dictator is actually quite rare in the world we live in. Macron is one to watch. He might be good for France, or he might suck. But hes not the only under-40 year old you need to watch out for. The most mental 30-something in the world Theres a guy that lives in a faraway land called North Korea whos way more interesting than Macron. And this young fella, who the locals call Supreme Leader, just might set off the Third World War. After seeing the shenanigans of France the report that came next was a little more worrying. The leading pictures were of a submarine being pushed into the port of Busan by a couple of tugboats. Busan, by the way, is in South Korea. This submarine was the USS Michigan. Its heading to South Korea because North Korea is apparently an itchy finger away from dropping a nuclear bomb on Seoul. And it just so happens the maniac thats the supreme leader of North Korea is the 33-year-old Kim Jong Un. Although Swiss records apparently say hes 32 years old. Either way hes apparently rushing North Korean scientists to reduce the size of their nuclear bombs to fit in the head of a long-range missile. No one really knows if theyre close to this or not. No one even really knows if theyve even got long-range missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead. No one knows, because North Korea is secretive and tightly controlled. What we do know is that if North Korea attacks, North Korea will come off second best. We know this because of weaponry like the USS Michigan. This is one of the US most fearsome subs. So its not docking in Busan for kicks and giggles. Apparently its packing a squad of Navy SEALS right now. And we also know its packing around 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. The other thing we know is that these Tomahawks work. They work really well. Someone wins when war breaks out La Marseillaise aside, we think were starting to hear Star Spangled Banner playing in our head now. The Tomahawk missile is a long range, all-weather land attack missile. Its the go-to-guy when the US wants to bomb the daylights out of someone. And at a cool US$1.8 million apiece, they aint cheap, either. That single sub, the USS Michigan, is packing US$277.2 million worth of Tomahawk missiles. If it empties its load then the Navy will need to spend another US$277.2 million spent to fill er back up. Theres only one benefactor if that happens. Raytheon Company [NYSE:RTN]. Raytheon makes the Tomahawk missile. Raytheon also makes other missile systems. Systems like the Mk 57 Mod3 Seasparrow. Or the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile. Or the Phalanx CIWS. We list those because those are the missile systems onboard the USS Carl Vinson. The Carl Vinson is a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that can also hold around 90 fixed wing aircraft. That means strike fighter jets. The Carl Vinson also happens to be rolling up into South Korea, ready for war. While we dont condone war, you have to look at all this and think Raytheon must be making some serious money. And they are. Last year they made US$24 billion in revenue and a US$2.2 billion net profit. The US already unloaded a bombardment of Tomahawks on Syria this year. And theyll probably do the same to North Korea. Looks like 2017 could be another good year for Raytheon. War is no good. War is bad. War is not what the world needs right now. War will kill innocent people, as it always does. It will result in nothing positive for the human race And its very likely war will result in some shaky stock markets. But not every stock loses if war takes hold. Companies like Raytheon dont lose out in these situations. They flourish. That doesnt make the company evil. It doesnt make investors in the company evil either. It simply means that, if youre looking for a way to hedge your investments again the possibility of war, then a company like Raytheon is a smart way of going about it. Regards, Sam PS: One final thing. Raytheon might be a good hedge against war. But we think heres another hedge that could be ever better. This could be the best hedge against war, financial crisis, and political instability in it the best hedge against crisis we think weve ever seen. And it could even make investors more money than theyve ever dreamed about. Ill tell you more about it tomorrow, so make sure to keep an eye out in your inbox. MATTOON -- For the sixth year in a row the Center for Digital Education named Lake Land College as one of the top 10 colleges to achieve a first-rate student learning environment. The college is one of a handful of mid-sized colleges recognized nationally in the annual Digital Community Colleges Survey conducted by Center for Digital Education, based in Sacramento, Calif. According to a press release by the Center for Digital Education, the survey analyzes how community colleges use digital technologies to improve services to students, faculty, staff and the community at large. Overall, this is the eighth time Lake Land College has been recognized for the outstanding use of technology on campus. Awards were given in 2007, 2008 and then six years in a row beginning in 2011. Lake Land College strives to be at the forefront of emerging technologies in order to provide the best educational opportunities and learning environment for our students, faculty and staff, said Lee Spaniol, director of information systems and services at Lake Land College. The college makes every effort to make information as accessible as possible, and our hard work and dedication to that has paid off. This years survey indicates community colleges are continuing to improve efforts at creating cost-effective platforms and Open Education Resources, mobile environments, real-time resources, telepresence robots and more to create robust online and mobile environments for their students, said Dr. Kecia Ray, executive director for the Center for Digital Education. Congratulations to this years survey winners. The Center for Digital Education is operated by e.Republic Inc., the parent company of Government Technology magazine. To learn more about the technological advances at Lake Land College, visit: lakelandcollege.edu. Deputies arrest Daniel Oneal at Ridgewood Drive home View Photos Sonora, CA A home surveillance system is being credited with nabbing a thief before he was able to take off with any loot from a Sonora area residence. A Ridgewood Drive resident was out of town when he got a motion detection alert for his home. It linked him to a live picture of his house where a masked burglar was checking for any open door or window and eventually breaking into an attached garage. He called the Tuolumne County Sheriffs Department immediately to report the crime. When deputies arrived at the home they found 24-year-old Daniel Oneal of Antioch behind the wheel of a 1999 blue Ford F250 in the driveway. Deputies ordered Oneal to get out of the truck and he complied. A records check revealed that the truck was recently stolen out of Antioch. A search of Oneal and the truck turned up a heroin smoking pipe, a mask, a BB gun and nine sets of different car keys. Sgt. Deborah Moss indicates, He may have used those to steal other cars or he may have stolen them. It is unknown at this point why he had those on him. She adds that no items were taken from the garage. Oneal was arrested for burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle, burglary tools and drug paraphernalia. Education in Nigeria has always been a source of debate. The Ministry of Education controls everything connected with education in Nigeria. Nevertheless, local authorities are responsible for implementing the state standard of education in their state schools and public education facilities. Private secondary schools in the country also fall into the control of the State Authorities. Ibadan, capital of Oyo State is one of the most populous cities in the country. More than 3 million people live here and that means there are hundreds of thousands of pupils. If you are a parent or future pupil of a secondary school in Ibadan, then you may want to take a look at the Top 10 best private secondary schools in the city. Secondary Education in Nigeria Every student in Nigeria dedicates six years of his/her life to secondary school. It means three years in Junior Secondary School and three years in Senior Secondary School. A lot of students in Nigeria take the GCE O`Levels Exam at the end of Senior Secondary School Class 2 as it helps them to prepare for the Senior Secondary Class 3 Examination. When a student completes the curriculum in secondary school, he or she must take the WASSCE. By the end of the Junior Secondary School, a student has to take the Basic Education Certificate Examination. After the BECE, successful students enter the senior secondary school. Any SSS curriculum provides six core subjects with 2 or three optional subjects Core Subjects: Economics; English; Mathematics; One elective subject from: Biology; Chemistry; Physics Integrated Science; One elective subject from: English Literature; History; Geography; Social Studies; Vocational Subjects: Fine Arts; Technical Drawing; Commerce; Food and Nutrition. Students can also enroll in a technical college after completing the BECE. It also requires three years of education. Such student will receive a trade/craftsmanship certificate by the end of the study. Private Secondary Education in Nigeria READ ALSO: Online Courses in Nigeria When a student enters a secondary education facility, he/she is required to provide the National Common Entrance Examination Certificate. Fees and Tuition in Government schools are very low and may not exceed $100 plus approximately $200 annually for books. Private Secondary schools in Nigeria have a tendency to be quite expensive. Some students might have to pay about $1000-3000 per annum. Still, these schools usually provide better education programs, environment, and equipment than the Government secondary schools. Moreover, teachers often receive a better salary in these schools. Private schools might also an applicant to take an additional entrance examination. Top 10 Best Private Secondary Schools in Ibadan Lifeforte International School This school is located at the Lifeforte Boulevard, Awaton GRA of Ibadan. Their website is www.lifeforte.org. The school was created in 1990. They consider themselves a Private Christian Institution which coexists with the vision of the Pastor Olubi, the founder of the school. It provides world-class secondary education. The International School of Ibadan It`s situated at the Barth Road of the University of Ibadan. Their website is www.isi.ui.edu.ng. The International School of Ibadan was created as a coeducational institution of the University of Ibadan in 1963. It was one of the first private secondary schools in the history of Nigeria. The Vale College You can find this institution at 23a of Adetokunbo Ademola Road, Iyaganku GRA of Ibadan. Their website is www.thevalecollegeibadan.com. It`s one of the best private secondary schools in Ibadan. George And Duke International College The objective of the George and Duke's institution is to educate future leaders. The college has professional and qualified teachers to support their goals in providing international standard education. They provide Technology, Arts and Business subjects to support the future goals of students. Students also enjoy access to a professional library as well as wide learning resources. Rubies International College It`s situated at Felele Straight End of Express Link in Ibadan. Their website is www.rubiesintcollege.org. The college was founded in September 2007. The founders of the college are Pastor Esther Olufunmilayo Amure and Pastor Moses Aderogba Amure from the Redeemed Christian Church of God. It`s a Christian Private School. Therefore, their goal is to create moral and ethical citizens. Christ Ambassadors International College The address of the Christ Ambassadors International College is Alaafin Avenue, Oluyole Estate of Ring Road in Ibadan. Their website is www.christambassadorscollege.com. It was founded in September 1998. The founding chairman of the school was Dr. Yele Bademosi. The school merges the Nigerian National Curriculum with the British National Curriculum. Lead City International School This school is situated at 3, Baale Osuntokun Road in Ibadan. Their official website is www.leadcityinternational.com. Students of this school are encouraged to take responsibility for their life, learning, and behavior. They are given opportunities to learn required skills so they can investigate and research their topic of study using the internet and library resources. The school also provides comfortable boarding facilities. Marella International School It`s one of the best private secondary schools owned by the Marella International Group. The group of the schools was founded by Mrs. M.L.Adebisi, the Proprietress in 1979. A lot of ex-students of the Marella International School live and study abroad in various universities. One of the prominent students of the school, Miss Simi Orunwariye even graduated from Harvard. Ascending College The college is situated at 120, Liberty Road in Ibadan. The website of the college is www.ascendingcollege.com.ng. It`s a college owned by the Ascending Group, which is fully accredited by Oyo State. It also has internationally recognized certificates. The College provides training on Information and Communications Technology. Their main goal is to serve as an effective link between Nigeria and foreign institutions of study. Dynamic College Dynamic College is a private secondary school located in Ibadan. It is fully accredited by the Oyo State government. It provides one of the best secondary education in the State. The curriculum of the program is based on Nigerian and International standards. Which school do you prefer? Think wisely as it may affect your future! READ ALSO: Private secondary schools in Lagos Source: Legit.ng - Fayose was in court to show solidarity to Nnamdi Kanu who is on trial - Deji Adeyanju, another Nigerian from a different region joined pro-Biafra supporters for a protest on Monday, April 24 - For more reports on the activities of the Biafra movement, please visit: https://www.legit.ng/tag/biafra-news.html Ekiti state Governor Ayo Fayose has stormed the Federal High Court Abuja to show support for pro-Biafra agitator Nnamdi Kanu. According to Lere Olayinka, Fayose's aide on new media, the governor is presently seated inside Federal High Court 4 as the leader of the secessionist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) appears before Justice Nyako. READ ALSO: Protest hits Abuja court in preparation of Nnamdi Kanu's trial Fayose is at Federal High Court 4 to show support for Nnamdi Kanu, the Biafra agitator who is trial before Justice Nyako This is the first time that Fayose is openly showing support for the movement for the break away of the the Southeast from the Nigerian union as desired by pro-Biafra supporters. The governor's action comes just hours after Deji Adeyanju, a Peoples Democratic Party apologist from central Nigeria but with southwestern origins was arrested by police after staging a pro-Biafra protest. Fayose and Nnamdi Kanu holding hands in court READ ALSO: Recovered Ikoyi $43.4million: Ayo Oke indicts Babagana Monguno Legit.ng recalls that Adeyanju, a popular critic of President Muhammadu Buhari's government, was released after about 6 hours in police detention on Monday, April 24. Fayose and Nnamdi Kanu embracing in court on Tuesday, April 25 The Nigeria police had only just released Adeyanju who was arrested on Friday, April 21 for staging a protest against the secret trial of Nnamdi Kanu on Thursday, April 20. Meanwhile, Nnamdi was eventually granted bail by Justice Binta Nyarko on health grounds. The IPOB leader is expected to provide three sureties one of who must be a serving senator, a jewish religious leader and highly respected person and must own a land in anywhere in Abuja Watch this Legit.ng TV video of pro-Biafra protesters outside the Federal High court Abuja today April 25 as Kanu's trial continues Source: Legit.ng What is Nigerian traditional art? Human beings express their experience and values through various forms of art and cultural activities. The art and culture of Nigeria embody the vivid image of the Nigerian way of life combined with the magnificent history of the past. One of the major aspects of Nigerian art and culture lies in the fact that they draw their inspiration from the traditional folk heritage of the region. Traditional Nigerian art works and origin Nigerian culture is demonstrated through art, dance, literature, folklore, and music. The Nok Culture, which settled near the Benue River and believed to be one of the earliest reminiscence of the ancient human settlement in Nigeria is said to inspire the growth of cultural activities in Nigeria. The major feature of the Nok culture is the invention of terracotta figurines and statues and the abundant use of iron in these sculptures. During the 10th century, the bronze work of Igbo Ukwu and the terracottas and metal art works of Ile Ife Bronze decorated with ivory and precious stones became the talk of the town and subsequently gained popularity in other parts of Western Africa. Examples of Nigerian traditional art A comprehensive analysis of the Nigerian art and culture gives you a glimpse of the prevalent stone carvings, potteries, different forms of glass work and wood carvings. Bronze works in Igbo- Ukwu, which can be found in Enugu, towers above the ancient works of Nigerian art. The Igbo-Ukwu bronzes with their intricate designs, are well known as Ife works. Famous places such as Benin and Awka are considered to be the center of woodcarving. Woodcarvers have been thriving throughout the south of Nigeria from time immemorial. They create figures for temples and representations of the spiritual image of earth, sea, sky, water, fire and thunder. Excavation of ceramics received a great push with relentless effort of Dr. Ladi Kwali, who promoted his works through the European countries and widely enhanced the art of pottery making in Nigeria. The main centers of pottery in Nigeria are: Okigwe in Imo State and Suleja situated in Niger State. Another prominent craft work in Nigeria is cloth weaving. The popular cloth weaving centers in Nigeria are: Abia State, Oyo State and Okene in Kogi State. List of Nigerian traditional art Sculpture Archaeologists in Nigeria have found a tradition of sculpture making that dates back to at least 500 B.C. Statues and statuettes of ceramics, bronze, terracotta and brass were found in Nigeria. Bronze casting is a traditional art found mostly in the southwestern area of the country. Nigerian bronze work is often used to depict striking realistic statues and masks. Masks READ ALSO: Kamuku national park Large wooden masks are part of the animist faith of the Yoruba people, which pre-dates Christianity in the country. Masks are often painted, and believers wear them at funerals and other ceremonies to soothe the spirits. During the Yoruba festival of Gelede, which is celebrated by the female elders, they use large, elaborately carved masks that depict lifelike women's faces and fighting animals. Textiles The Yorubas use a shrub to create indigo-colored batik-dyed cloth. In Ife, Osogbo, Abeokuta and Ibadan, women traditionally do the dying, while in the north, the craft is practiced almost exclusively by men. Weavers all over the country produce a bright fabric with lace designs. Oyo state is known for its fine loom cloths while cloth from Abia state uses a broadloom technique. Pottery Pottery art is a long standing tradition in Nigeria. Pottery was popular from 100 B.C. It was found on the archaeological site of Iwo Eleru, and artifacts of terracotta dating from A.D. 800 were found at Ile Ife. Today Suleja, Abuja and Ilorin are considered important centers of traditional pottery, although the craft is practiced throughout the country. A lot of them are large vessels with intricate carvings. Potters in Nigeria are often female, and it is common practice for the techniques to be handed down through families. Other Arts Carved ivory is used for jewelry and small decorative items, as well as for figures placed at altars in honor of ancestors. Woodcarvers create decorative practical implements such as household utensils, but also figurines, shrines, decorative panels and doors for the home. The most famous woodcarving comes from Oyo, Benin, Awka and Osogbo. Woven grass is used to make baskets, fans, hats and small tables, while cane weaving creates larger household furniture such as tables and chairs. Glass and coral beads are created by craftsmen who usually inherit the profession. The beads are often applied to small charms, such as the ibeji doll, a symbol of good luck. Nigerian art has traditionally served a social or religious purpose and did not exist for the sake of art. For example, dance was used to teach or to fulfill some ritualistic goal. The sculptures were used in blessings, in healing rituals or to prevent bad luck. Due to the increasing modernization, however, Nigerian art is becoming less oriented to those particular purposes. To a large extent, Nigerians have abandoned these arts because they no longer served the usual purposes. For example, the elaborate tombstones once widely produced by the Ibibio are becoming increasingly rare as Western-style cemeteries are replacing traditional burial grounds. Fortunately, the government has recognized this decline in Nigerian art. In an attempt to promote Nigerian nationalism through art, it has launched some programs, such as the All Nigeria Festival of Arts, to revitalize the Nigerian art world. A lot of rich Nigerians who want to return their roots, as well as Western tourists and collectors who want to get experience in African art, are willing to spend money on Nigerian art. This has led to a slight revival of the art industry. That is why the Nigerian government is encouraging arts in every part of the country to retain and promote the culture and traditions of Nigeria. READ ALSO: Dunamis church: 10 reasons why it is so popular Source: Legit.ng Do you know that maize farming is very profitable in Nigeria? Here, we provide all the information you need to get started. Read and start making money today! With each new day, agriculture in Nigeria becomes more developed and advanced. Maize is one of the world's most popular crops and at the same time one of the most profitable in Nigeria. This versatile crop can be cooked, canned, used for making flour, butter, popcorn, and cereal. Maize production in Nigeria Purchasing of land The first thing you need is a business plan. An important aspect of your plan should be the purchase of land for maize farming. The price of the land depends on the location and region. Maize is best grown in rich loamy or sandy-loamy soils. Also, you should avoid waterlogged area. Farm soil value is influenced by the following factors: 1. the nature of soil; 2. proximity to settlements: 3. proximity to roads; 4. availability of irrigation. Sun, fertilizing and watering Note that if you want to have a good maize crop, the land should be sunlit for at least 12 hours a day. It will better if the land you purchased for maize farming was previously used for growing cucurbits or legumes. Don't forget to prepare the soil for sowing. It is necessary to plow the soil to a depth of approximately 35 cm. After ploughing, the land requires some fertilizer mixed with ash and sand. READ ALSO: Irrigation farming in Nigeria During the initial period of growth, maize does not require much watering. However, at the beginning of cultivation, you need to pay special attention to irrigation. Maize varieties and their cultivation There are some basic types of maize and each of them have different properties: - White; - Yellow; - Late season seeds (110 to 120 days); - Early season seeds (90 to 100 days); - Extra-early season seeds (80 to 90 days). Each of these types varies in its unique characteristics: - taste; - grain size; - the color of grain; - ripening. If you plan to harvest maize for the subsequent production of flour, cereals or its usage in animal husbandry, it is necessary to pay attention to the varieties that can be stored for long periods. Maize planting season in Nigeria It is more sensible to start maize farming preparations in Nigeria in February so you can start cultivating maize in March. The maize season approximately starts on the 15th of March and ends on the 15th of May. Important while planting! Best ratio and layout: 75cm x 50cm, 2 seeds per spot. Secrets of maize farming in Nigeria Secret 1: If you grow maize in order to sell boiled or canned final product, it is important to collect the crop before it begins to harden. Overripe maize can be sold to farmers as animal feed or can be processed into cereals or flour. Secret 2: You should know that maize does not get enough fertilizing. It is crucial to always monitor the condition of the leaves. - Nitrogen shortage - yellow and withered leaves; - Phosphates shortage redness on leaves; - Potassium starvation suspension of growth, burns on leaves, the grain sizes will be mixed (small and large). Secret 3: The most delicious stage of maize grain processing is called 'milk stage'. You need to count 20-25 days from the end of the flowering period of the plant. During this period the grain will be the juiciest. How profitable is maize farming in Nigeria? Maize farming in Nigeria is profitable only when you turn out great volumes of crop. To start this kind of business you will not only need land. For cultivation of extensive areas, you will also need to buy special equipment. As a required minimum multicultivator and maize seeding machine. If you are growing maize on small areas, it makes sense to take the equipment on lease for a period which is necessary for land cultivation or harvest collecting. Another option is hiring workers with their own equipment. In this case, you will save money not only on the equipment but also on wages because workers payment is based on the amount of cultivated land and not on the number of working hours. Maize sale Obviously, you need to think about the the process of harvest before creating your business plan. The choice of maize varieties depends on the distribution channels, its cultivation, and harvesting. If you have a small plot of land, it is better to grow sweet corn, which can be sold in the summer. The same sweet corn can be processed and sold in cans. If you are involved in growing the tougher varieties, it is better for the maize to be ground into flour or cereals. The advantage of maize farming is that you are able to create various marketing plans. You can always sell it to the last grain. It can also be purchased by the farmers for cattle feeding. You might also want to consider harvesting both dry and green maize leaves for feeding or bedding of animals. Calculations of costs For 10 hectares (25 acres) field, your budget must be not less than N300.000. An estimate of the expenses will come to about N4 million. This includes expenses for land, irrigation, fertilizers, seeds, harvest transportation, labour payment, and storage). In general, one hectare can be used for growing 60 thousand of plants. From each of them, you can take 1-2 cobs. Per one hectare of land, it is possible to take 80-90 thousand of cobs. For seven hours one worker can easily gather and put in bags approximately 2.500 cobs. Per one hectare of farmland, you can yield from 2.000 to 4.000 kilos of maize. Experts say that the profitability of such business is about 450%. This is one of the highest rates when it comes to Nigerian agriculture. So, if you want to earn money, you may consider maize farming business as a good option. READ ALSO: History of agriculture in Nigeria before independence Source: Legit.ng - Bola Tinubu revealed that he would have emerged as Buhari's running mate but for Saraki, El-rufai - The APC chieftain said they were opposed to a Muslim-Muslim ticket - He said He submitted Osinbajo's name and backed down so as not to cause problem Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who is the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has revealed that Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Senate president, Bukola Saraki, worked against his emergence as vice president. There was speculation that the former Lagos governor would be Muhammadu Buharis running mate until Professor Yemi Osinbajo was finally nominated for this position. READ ALSO: Nigerians in Indonesia report tales of horror This revelation was contained in a book titled Against the Run of Play, written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi, The Punch reports. Tinubu noted that members of the Peoples Democratic Party who defected to the APC ahead of the 2015 elections argued that Christians from the north would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim candidacy and this could jeopardise the partys victory. The APC chieftain revealed that El-Rufai had also put forth the name of Pastor Tunde Bakare of Latter Rain to be Buharis running mate. What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) did behind my back was wrong. We always do things as a group. By the time they joined, we were already too far ahead in our processes but we accommodated them. We agreed to take their state structures and subsume them into the part and they all had their opportunity to nominate the candidates of their choices for different political offices. But they went behind to instigate Buhari and some other people in the party against me on the pretext of religion. That was not right. They were canvassing arguments that the Christians in the North would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Nasir el-Rufai was also selling the same argument within the CPC (the defunct Congress for Progressive Change) because at that point, he still wanted to have Pastor Bakare brought in as Buharis running mate. He revealed that some governors and senators who had defected from the PDP to APC asked him if he going to be Buharis running mate on the eve of the primary election but said he evaded the question. I told them that it was better to resolve such issue after the primaries, but they wanted to make it a condition for supporting Buhari, which, for me, was very wrong. I told them I could not insist on this as a condition for my support for Buhari. I felt that was not right to hold Buhari hostage in this manner. I believe the support that we gave was fundamental to Buhari clinching the party nomination. Without that support, a different outcome would have been most likely. READ ALSO: Senator Girei blasts Goodluck Jonathan Tinubu revealed that Buhari asked him to submit three names for the position of vice president but he tendered only the name of Osinbajo. I backed down because I did not want to be depicted as causing a problem. I backed away from the position in order to offer Buhari a name I once raised with him in 2011: that of Professor Yemi Osibanjo. Source: Legit.ng Embarras Volunteer Conservation Day set CHARLESTON -- The Embarras Volunteer Stewards will hold a Conservation Day at 9 a.m. Saturday at Embarras Ridges for garlic mustard pull. Take Illinois Route 130 south from Charleston to Daileyville Road (CR 1470 North). Follow the road about one mile through the gate to the parking area on the right. All are welcome, and no prior experience is necessary. Sturdy footwear and gloves are recommended. Tools are provided, but extra loppers and shovels are welcome. Visit www.embarrasstewards.org for more information. Updates are posted on the group's website. To receive email notifications, contact thorsenhutton@gmail.com. Board game day scheduled at library CHARLESTON -- Celebrate International Tabletop Day with an afternoon of board games from 1-4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Charleston Carnegie Public Library. This is an event for young and old alike. Dont have much experience with games outside of Monopoly or Scrabble? Library staff will be on hand to teach and make recommendations. Attendees are welcome to bring their own favorite games to share. This event is free, however attendees are encouraged to bring a package of individually wrapped snacks or meals for the Charleston school districts weekend meal program serving low-income students. For more information, contact wilesps@gmail.com. Deadline approaching for English summer camp CHARLESTON -- Eastern Illinois Universitys annual English Studies Summer Camp for High School Students will be held this year from July 23-29. This program allows students to customize their program of study, selecting two sessions from a range of offerings in creative writing, literature, professional/academic writing, media studies, and more. Students grow academically and socially as they prepare for college and are mentored by expert faculty who share their passion for reading and writing. Students receive individual attention through small class sizes and gain skills in analyzing and crafting texts and expressing their ideas both verbally and through writing. The camp offers two levels of tuition (for residential campers and commuting campers) and various scholarships. The application deadline is Monday. For information concerning the English Studies Summer Camp, contact camp director Melissa Ames at mames@eiu.edu, visit the camp website at www.eiu.edu/english/camp.php, or call the EIU Department of English at 217-581-2428. - Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has spoken on the continued absence of president at the weeky Federal Executive Council ((FEC) meeting - El-Rufai said it is not compulsory for President Muhammadu Buhari to preside over the FEC meeting - He stated this on Wednesday, April 26 whie briefing journalists Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has said it is not compulsory for President Muhammadu Buhari to preside over the FEC meeting. The governor briefed newsmen after the second meeting between the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NWC) and the 24 governors, which was held on Wednesday, April 26 at the party's national headquarters. El-Rufai said it is not compulsory for Buhari to preside at FEC meeting READ ALSO: Senator Girei blasts Goodluck Jonathan His words: That is why our constitution makes provision for a vice president. Mr President is 70 something years old. And it is usual at that age, as I have said, to have one medical challenge or the other. Our prayer is that the president gets better and well. But the reason why he has the vice president is precisely for this reason. It may not be because he has any medical challenge that he didnt attend FEC meeting. He may have other pressing matters to attend to. I have not chaired every State Executive Council meeting even when Im in Kaduna because the deputy governor is there. We are not worried yet. We have no concern to be worried. But we ask Nigerians to join all of us in praying for the presidents improved health. It has improved in the last few weeks, since he came back. And we will continue to pray for the improvement of his health. There have been concerns over President Buhari's health President Buhari has missed the last two FEC meetings held at the Presidential Villa, raising concerns about his health. Minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, however told journalists at the State House yesterday, that the president was working from home. READ ALSO: Please register, let us remove Buhari and his APC - PDP begs Nigerians Watch this Legit.ng's video below where Nigerians speak about Buhari's two years in power. Source: Legit.ng - The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) last night met at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja - It was a closed-door meeting, held at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa - The meeting was presided over by the chairman of the forum, Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) last night held a closed-door meeting at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock, Abuja. The governors met ahead of todays meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC), to be presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Among the governors in attendance were those of Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Kwara, Kogi, Borno, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Imo, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Ondo, Bauchi, Sokoto, Plateau, Niger, Edo, Kebbi. File photo of Nigerian governors in a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari READ ALSO: Buhari is chasing after ghosts - Reno Omokri Legit.ng gathered that the governors of Rivers, Ogun and Lagos states were represented by their deputies. According to Daily Trust, the meeting was still ongoing as at 9:40pm last night. Earlier in the day, the governors under the platform of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), held a meeting at the party's headquarters in Abuja. Nigerian governors led by Zamfara governor, Abdulaziz Yari (right) has always kept in touch with President Buhari (left) At the meeting, the APC governors stated that it is not complusory for President Muhammadu Buhari to attend FEC meetings. President Buhari has missed the last two FEC meetings held at the Presidential Villa, raising concerns about his health. READ ALSO: Osinbajo inaugurates 22-member National Council on MSMEs Minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, however told journalists at the State House yesterday, that the president was working from home. Source: Legit.ng - Aliyu says Jonathan should have chosen not to run for another term in the 2015 general elections - The ex-Niger governor says the ex-president should have allowed a younger candidate to run - Aliyu agrees with Jonathan that the US may have indeed worked against him in the elections but admits that there is no concrete proof A former governor of Niger state Babangida Aliyu has blamed ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for being the architect of his own misfortune in the 2015 elections. The Cable reports that Aliyu told Segun Adeniyi, a renowned journalist, in his new book Against the Run of Play that Jonathan was not clever enough to let go off a second term bid. READ ALSO: How El-Rufai, Saraki worked against my emergence as VP - Tinubu According to the former chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, if Jonathan had allowed the PDP to field a certain younger candidate from the north, the party would still have been in power today. Babangida Aliyu said Jonathan should have let a younger candidate from the north run. He said: If Jonathan had been clever enough to say he would not run and had stuck with the PDP zoning formula by supporting a young northern candidate, I am most certain Buhari would have shelved his ambition to contest in 2015, knowing there was no way he would win. Aliyu however hinted at an agreement with Jonathan on the involvement of the United States of America in the outcome of the general elections that ousted the former commander-in-chief. According to Aliyu, he and 11 other governors from the northern region of the country were invited to the United States to know if they were willing to remove Jonathan from office. READ ALSO: Senator Girei blasts Goodluck Jonathan He said: I have no proof of course, but I think the idea was to ascertain what the disposition of the north would be to the idea of another term for President Jonathan. That was my reading of the situation. I believe it was all about the 2015 election for which the Americans had resolved not to support Jonathan. They just wanted to size us up for the level of commitment to regime change. Jonathan says his removal was orchestrated by ex-US president Barack Obama and others. Legit.ng recalls that in the same book, Jonathan accused former US President Barack Obama of orchestrating his defeat in the 2015 presidential election. Among other things, Jonathan accused Obama of turning world leaders against him and sending warships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the election to intimidate him. Watch this Legit.ng TV video of a Nigerian man on the street has stated who said categorically that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan was never a bad choice for Nigeria. Source: Legit.ng - Top actress Uche Elendu has spoken about her struggles with endometriosis - She shared her experience while celebrating her baby daughter at 1 - According to her, baby Osinachi is a miracle Nollywood actress Uche Elendu has revealed how she struggled with endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition in which tissue that normally grows inside the uterus grows outside it. READ ALSO: Top actors show their real selves at Nigerian Entertainment Conference In a long read on her Instagram on Wednesday, April 26, Uche shared her story while celebrating her daughter Osinachi turning one. Elendu in an emotional post wrote how her daughter came by way of a miracle. Actress Uche Elendu and her daughters Once upon a time, 1-year ago my life was lit up with a light so bright and my story changed to the glory of the Almighty God Osinachi is your name because u r truly from God. My miracle baby, a child that defied all medical results and was conceived, a child that beat Endometriosis and saved her mother from daily torture of pain and painkillers. This is my Testimony: I suffered endo for 7 years and I went through the most painful years of my life, taking Voltaren for pain every day of my life, traveling all around the world seeking medical treatment. Hmmmmn.. READ ALSO: Nigerian Comedian Woli Arole gushes about his boo My gynecologist in south Africa said to me Uche, endometriosis has no cure, theres no guarantee that it wont grow back after this surgery. Actress Uche Elendu and Osinachi Imagine a doctor saying this to u in the recovery room of a just concluded surgery. Oh God, I was shattered, and true to her word, 1 month after I got back to Nigeria it started again and I went back to my misery. The pain of knowing u cant conceive again, the pain of taking different sorts of medicine both herbal and orthodox to dry up the growth, the pain of going through excruciating pain in your stomach every day. Hmmmn.. I was all alone in this or so I thought until my father called me one day and said Nneoma have u laid this problem before God? READ ALSO: Davido announces the date of his second daughter's delivery And then I remembered I AM NOT ALONE, I went on my knees and cried and prayed and fasted and called upon the king of kings and the Lord of lords. I wont forget to appreciate my daddy @bishopisaacidahosa who stood by me in prayers. It was as if my world was upside down. My daughter kept saying to me mummy when am I gonna have a sister? Actress Uche Elendu's daughter Osinachi All my classmates have sisters, and this I always presented to God.. My best friend @benedictjohnson1 introduced me to Kedi and I started it, I also traveled to the US for another surgery. Hmm on my arrival at the hospital in the US, I paid my bills and was scheduled for surgery, my vitals and other tests were carried out. I went home and came back the next day to be operated on only for the doctor to call me into his office and say to me, Uche when was your last period and I said last week and he said ok sorry we have to do a confirmation test on you and I said to confirm what ?and he is like Ill See u in 30mins. READ ALSO: Bobrisky fires back at Toyin Lawani Then I went to give my blood sample and waited to be called in. I went into that office again and the doctor said to me Uche this is a rare case. My heart raced I was scared of what he wanted to say, and then he said: you are 10 weeks PREGNANT!!! Actress Uche Elendu's daughter Osinachi OMG, how??? when?? where??all I could say was JESUS!!! but Ive been seeing my regular periods and the Lord spoke to me and said I am that I am.. I do what I say I will do, for your sake I have broken protocols, I make impossibilities possible!!!hehe hehe. I dialed my dads number immediately and told him the news and he said to me The God I serve has never let me down. The doctor facilitated my refund and I was registered for antenatal instead of laparoscopic excision!!!!! To be continued #part2 #mytestimony #miraclebaby #1-100yrs #childofsignsandwonders. READ ALSO: Oba of Lagos publicly humiliates the Ooni of Ife Uche Elendu and her husband, Walter Ogochukwu Igweanyiba, got married in the city of Owerri, Imo state capital seven years ago and already have an eight-year-old daughter. Congratulations to Uche. Watch your favorite Nigerian celebrities share their thoughts on whistle blowing below: Source: Legit.ng The world faces the prospect of more tension with China over trade, security and human rights after Xi Jinping awarded himself another five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party and called for self-reliance in technology, a stronger military and protection of core interests abroad. At a party congress, Xi gave no sign of plans to change the "zero-COVID strategy that has frustrated Chinas public and disrupted business and trade. He called for faster military development and announced no change in policies that strain relations with Washington and Asian neighbors. Xi is tightening control at home and trying to use Chinas economic heft to increase its influence abroad. - The United States government has denied been involved in the defeat of Goodluck Jonathan - The US said the defeat in 2015 was the will of the Nigerian people and not external influence - The statement released emphasized that the US advocated a free, fair and transparent election In a new book titled: 'Against the Run of Play' former president, Goodluck Jonathan said foreign powers helped President Muhammadu Buhari emerge victorious in the 2015 general election. Legit.ng gathered that Jonathan blamed his loss in the election on former United States president, Barack Obama, ex-British prime minister, David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande who he said aided President Muhammadu Buharis victory. However, the United States government has denied playing any role in his defeat at the 2015 presidential polls. Goodluck Jonathan with Attahiru Jega when the going was good READ ALSO: Jonathan's chief physician implicated in N258.9m scam According to The Punch, the US government issued the denial along with a statement by the US embassy spokesman, Russel Brooks, on Wednesday, April 26. The US advocated a free, fair and transparent election. The election outcome was an expression of the will of the Nigerian people, the statement said in part. Meanwhile, in the same book, Goodluck Jonathan said he was disappointed in former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Attahiru Jega, over the handling of the 2015 general elections. Legit.ng gathered that the ex-president said: I was disappointed by Jega because I still cannot understand what was propelling him to act the way he did in the weeks preceding the election. Yet, is the US right? Did Jonathan lose because he was a bad president? Watch what Nigerians are saying: Source: Legit.ng - The governor of Sokoto state and former Speaker of the House of Representatives has revealed how he was harassed by a former first lady of Nigeria - Aminu Tambuwal said Patience Jonathan accused him of working with many others to bring down her husbands government - Tambuwal also said the former first lady accused him of nursing an agenda against the federal government and Jonathan Details have emerged how the former first lady of Nigeria Patience Jonathan accused the governor of Sokoto and then Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal of working against her husband's administration. In his new book titled, Against the Run Play, author and Thisday editor Olusegun Adeniyi said the former first lady slammed Tambuwal for militating against the efforts to reinstate the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan for a second term. In chapter two - The seeds of Rebellion - of his book, Adeniyi recalled how Tambuwal was harassed by Patience in April 2012. READ ALSO: Why you were defeated in 2015 - US replies Goodluck Jonathan Adeniyi said: "The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal was at the wheel of driving himself to a friend's house on an April night in 2012 when his mobile phone rang." He said the woman on the other end of the line from the caller identity was very well known to him so he had no hesitation picking the call. "But the greetings were not warm, an indication that all was not well," the former speaker said. He said before Tambuwal could ask questions on what was amiss, the woman had handed over the phone to another female - Patience Jonathan. "On the line this time was an unmistakable voice," he said. READ ALSO: JUST IN: Governors storm Aso Rock for crucial meeting Adeniyi noted that Patience went on to rant over attempts by Tambuwal to bring down the Goodluck Jonathan's administration. But the greetings were not warm, an indication that all was not well The former first lady had reportedly said: "You this Hausa boy... you want to bring down the government of my husband; you want to disgrace him out of power? Una no fit! God no go allow you." Adeniyi also added that the then first lady ranted for about five minutes on the phone. She accused Tambuwal of nursing an agenda against the federal government and Jonathan. He also said that Tambuwal maintained his cool by not saying a word to the first lady. READ ALSO: Read Nigerian CSOs interpretation of Nnamdi Kanu's bail conditions "Asked whether he said anything in reply while the vituperation lasted, Tambuwal said, 'What do you want me to say to the wife of the President? I just kept quiet and allowed her to vent her anger on me.'" Tambuwal also added that, "After a while she paused and I asked, 'Are you done MA? Thank you very much' and I dropped the call." Legit.ng had reported how the former president accused the former United States President Barack Obama, former British Prime Minister David Cameron and the French President Francois Hollande of contributing to his loss at the 2015 poll. Jonathan said the trio aided President Muhammadu Buhari to win the presidential seat for the 2015 general election. Watch this Legit.ng video of Nigerians reacting to the whistle-blowing policy below: Source: Legit.ng CHARLESTON -- Eastern Illinois University professors and students headed to Springfield on Thursday to send a message about the impact dwindling state funding has had on higher education. This has been a message that has been repeated among those in higher education in state for years now, and John Blitz of the EIU-UPI faculty union said that is the point. "It is a long-term fight," said Blitz, a chemistry professor. "Anything we can do to move the needle is something worth doing because doing nothing does not seem to be an option." On a couple of buses, those from Eastern joined people from other universities like Southern Illinois University and Governor State University to organize a "teach out," where the classroom is moved to the Illinois Capitol with one subject: higher education funding. According to Billy Hung, EIU-UPI media coordinator, EIU students Sean Brown, Kyann Adams, Zachery Morlock, Shelby Hummel and Jo Stauder spoke on the impact a lack of state appropriations has had on higher education and them. Blitz said keeping the message at the forefront is important. "Do I think this is going to break the log jam? No, I really don't," Blitz noted. "But hopefully we will get some attention and make sure we let people know what is happening in higher ed." Blitz's sentiments were echoed by others about to head off to Springfield. Hung said the public still needs to be educated on the problems facing higher education largely stemming from the lack of state support long before the budget impasse. "They know that the schools have not been getting money, but what they don't know it that has been a long-term problem even when we had money," Hung said, based on conversations he has had with people. Carol Jean Dudley, an EIU English professor, said this was the time to do the teach out, even though it is almost the end of the academic semester. "The representatives and senators are there right now, so now is the time to have to go," she said. Despite the decline in state funding support, rallies and demonstrations have seen significant fervor in the past two years ever since the start of the budget impasse. State lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner are still working on compromises in order to get a full budget on the books. - Governor Fayose says the fundraising for Nnamdi Kanu will be coordinated by Ike Ekweremadu - The account will be opened in Kanu's name and will belong to only him - Fayose wants more people, particularly lawyers to join in the movement to help Kanu out of detention - For more reports on Nnamdi Kanu and his bail, please visit: https://www.legit.ng/tag/1420-biafra.html Ekiti state governor Ayo Fayose has moved to raise funds for leader of Indigenous People of Biafra Nnamdi Kanu. Nigerian Tribune reports that Fayose is working in conjunction with deputy senate president Ike Ekweremadu on the plans to raise funds for Kanus family. Fayose said on Wednesday, April 26 that he is taking his support for Kanu beyond showing solidarity in court to making plans for provisions for Kanus well-being and that of his family members. Fayose says he wants to support Nnamdi Kanu beyond appearing in court for him like he did in this photo The account, he reveals, would be in Kanus name and will belong to him. He said: Im trying to work with other well-meaning Nigerians to raise funds for Kanu so that he can fund his lawyers and meet his immediate family needs. We are going to ensure that the injustice meted out to him does not destroy him. He has parents, wife and children to take care of. I appeal to Nigerians to support this just cause. He added: As many as lawyers willing to fight the oppression should join the struggle for liberation from the oppression. Fayose said Ekwemeradu will among those that see to the fundraising committee. We are just driving the cause. As soon as we receive his account details we will be made available. The money will be used for him and others in incarceration with him. We believe in coexistence of Nigeria. People have the right to agitate for independence. Even in traditional institution people agitate for autonomy. When people agitate and they cannot get it, they drop the idea. It is not for you to silence them. That is oppression. Agitation is legitimate. Legit.ng recalls that former aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode expressed his delight at the new alliance between Yorubas and Igbos over the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu. He said the alliance means that the south is coming together. Watch this Legit.ng TV video of pro-Biafra agitator Nnamdi Kanu after he was granted bail by a federal high court in Abuja on Tuesday, April 25 Source: Legit.ng - Goodluck Jonathan said the 2015 election was flawed and blamed Professor Attahiru Jega for it - The former INEC chairman replied through his assistant that it was fair - He said he was not not influenced by anyone in decision making Professor Attahiru Jega has responded to Goodluck Jonathans statement that the 2015 general election was flawed due to the different votes recorded in the election. Jonathan made this claim in Against the Run of Play, a book by ThisDay Editorial Board Chairman Olusegun Adeniyi. READ ALSO: Nigerian governors hold crucial meeting at Aso Rock Jonathan had said that he was disappointed in Professor Jega who was the then chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the way the election went. He said the margin between the presidential election and National Assembly results in Kano State showed everything was not right with the election. Prof Mohammed Kuna who is the special assistant to Jega spoke on his behalf insisting there was nothing wrong with the Kano election. There is nothing particularly special about the Kano result; it is a general trend as many votes were more interested in the presidential election than in other elections. That was what happened across the country and you can go and do the tabulation. READ ALSO: How Jonathan ignored two promises he made because of power - Obasanjo With the card reader, it is no longer possible to return results that are higher than the accredited voters. If you analyse the results nationally, you will discover the same trend. A source also close to Jega said the former president but have been ill-advised as the former INEC chairman would not have been arm-twisted to do what was wrong. Legit.ng learnt that Jonathan also insisted that it was right for his administration to have postponed the election based on security reasons. When the military and security chiefs demanded for more time to deal with the insurgency, the reasons were genuine. As at February 2015, it would have been very difficult to vote in Gombe, Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. But the moment all the arms and ammunition that had been ordered finally arrived, the military was able to use them to degrade the capacity of Boko Haram. Although the former president faulted the results of the 2015 presidential election, he said he conceded defeat to avoid bloodshed. Go and check the results from Kano. The Presidential election and that of National Assembly happened on the same day and same time. The National Assembly result reflected that about 800,000 people voted but that of the presidential reflected a vote of about 1.8 million. I had reports of what happened but I decided that for such to be accepted, it meant that those who called themselves my supporters must have colluded. I was betrayed by the very people I relied on to win the election. In 2011 when Buhari did not campaign anywhere and could not have won the election, there was a spontaneous violent reaction that led to the death of several innocent people, including Youth Corps members. I asked myself: what would happen in a situation in which there was already internal and international conspiracy in his favour? I could not bear the thought of anybody dying, so I told myself I had only one option and that was to concede," Jonathan said. Source: Legit.ng Legit.ng gathered that a former governor of Kogi state has taken a 14th wife. According to blogger Stella Dimorkokorkus (SDKBlog), former Governor Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, of Kogi state, has just gotten married to a 20-year-old Cameroonian lady. Alhaji Idris who has reportedly been married over 13 times, (the most recent only happening in 2012) got married about two weeks ago. Over 70 years old, Alhaji Ibro of the popular Ibro hotels, was said to have married the lady identified as Aisha Amal, without inviting any of his friends. Former Governor Alhaji Ibrahim Idris READ ALSO: Miracle as Jesus Christ was allegedly spotted in the sky of Colombia (photos) The lady is reportedly the daughter of a cattle rearer who is based in Kano state. According to the SDKBlog, he sent the lady he married in 2012 away, and has also divorced most of the other women he had previously married. Someone who spoke to SDKBlog on conditions of anonymity said: ''Several of his wives left on similar situation.The former first lady Hajia Zainab was herself not an exception,The only woman who stayed longest and bore him 6 children was also abandoned after his tenure as a governor.She had to move to a smaller apartment in the suburb of Abuja built by one of her sons before she later passed out." READ ALSO: Beautiful lady cries out for justice after her boyfriend allegedly brutalized her (photos) See a picture of him with his new wife below: Alhaji Idris poses with his new wife Congrats to the couple! Meanwhile, see what Nigerians think about marrying someone older or younger than them: Source: Legit.ng CHARLESTON -- Charges accusing a woman of taking part in a theft at a Charleston residence were dismissed because the property owner reportedly wouldn't cooperate with the prosecution. Kenesha P. Davis, 26, whose most recent address on record is in Culbert, Ind., formerly of Charleston, was charged with theft and obstructing justice, both felony offenses. The charges accused her of helping others enter the residence on July 12, 2014, then lying to police about what she knew about the incident two days later. Coles County Assistant State's Attorney Tom Bucher said the lack of cooperation from the alleged victim led to decision to have the case dismissed. Bucher said it took time to locate the woman because she now lives in the Chicago area. Once contacted, she refused to return to Coles County to testify or otherwise cooperate, he said. Circuit Judge Brien O'Brien dismissed the case at Bucher's request. Assistant Public Defender Jesse Danley represented Davis. The charges against Davis alleged that she helped Jerry M. Davis and another, unidentified person enter the residence to steal a TV and video game equipment. Davis, 25, whose most recent address on record is on Cambridge in Charleston, pleaded guilty to drug offenses and a theft charge last year and received probation and other supervision. In other cases in court recently, guilty pleas were entered by: Ronald Vanness Sr., 60, no address on record, to a charge of aggravated driving under the influence in connection with a traffic stop in southern Coles County on Jan. 26 of last year. The charge was a felony because Vanness has prior DUI convictions, and he was placed on probation for two years. The charge was amended to allege two prior convictions instead of three. Before the change, prison time would have required with a conviction. Probation terms included three months in jail starting May 12 with more jail time stayed, meaning Vanness won't have to serve it if he follows requirements. He was also ordered to be evaluated for alcohol treatment and to pay just more than $3,100 in fines and court fees. O'Brien accepted a plea agreement that Bucher and defense attorney Doug Lawyles recommended. Blake A. Bolen, 20, for whom records list an address of 208 N. 22nd St., Mattoon, to a methamphetamine possession charge alleging he had the drug on Sept. 12. Bolen was placed on probation for two years with terms including a substance abuse treatment evaluation, about $1,600 in fines and fees and stayed jail time. He was also unsuccessfully discharged from supervision sentences he received for earlier battery and drug possession convictions. Circuit Judge Jonathan Braden accepted a plea agreement that Assistant State's Attorney Joy Wolf and Public Defender Anthony Ortega recommended. Douglas L. Hatten, 52, whose address on record is 1012 N. 11th St., Mattoon, to a charge of possession of a controlled substance alleging he had a prescription painkiller on Nov. 14. A methamphetamine possession charge was dismissed and Hatten was placed on probation for two years. Terms included a substance abuse treatment evaluation, about $575 in fines and stayed jail time. O'Brien accepted a plea agreement that Bucher and Danley recommended. Eric F. Patridge, 48, for whom records list an address of 14216 Cooks Mills Road, Humboldt, to a domestic battery charge alleging he hit a woman on March 26, 2016. The charges was a felony because of a prior conviction and Patridge was placed on probation for two years. A charge alleging that he spat on a police officer was dismissed. Probation terms included a substance abuse treatment evaluation and about $1,100 in fines. O'Brien accepted a plea agreement that Scales and Danley recommended. - Senator Dino Melaye has advised President Muhammadu Buhari on what to do regarding the Paris Club Refund to states - The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district, advised the president to stop the allocation of 2nd tranche of the refund to states who owe salaries - He singled out his home state - Kogi, where he said the funds have been misused Senator Dino Melaye has advised President Muhammadu Buhari on what to do regarding the Paris Club Refund to states. The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district, advised the president to stop the allocation of 2nd tranche of the refund to states who owe salaries. Legit.ng observed that the senator singled out his home state - Kogi, where he said the funds have been misused by the state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello. READ ALSO: EFCC cautions Omokri over anti-Buhari comments Senator Dino Melaye singed out the Kogi state governor for mismanaging the Paris Club refund to states The senator went on to say the governor is owing 15 months worker's salary. Senator Melaye made the comment today, Thursday, April 27 while contributing to the motion adopted by the Senate on the upcoming Workers Day celebration on May 1. He also spoke on the need for improvement in the welfare of Nigerian workers, insisting that workers should be given their entitlements. Senator Melaye has been having a running battle with Governor Bello, after both men fell out publicly over the governor's style of governance. READ ALSO: Jonathan was afraid Buhari would kill him - Obasanjo The senator who survived an assasination attempt on his life recently in his home state, accused the governor of been behind the attempts to eliminate him. Source: Legit.ng You may have heard of products like guava juice, coconut water, and tamarind juice but have you heard of sugarcane juice? A Nigerian entrepreneur based in New York City, Ganiu Ladejobi, has created a new and healthy drink which is 100% raw sugarcane juice. Ladejobi, with his partners Peterson Lochard and Mackenzie Bien-Aime both of Haitian backgrounds, claim that this juice is a better alternative for the health-conscious than coconut juice. The trio described the juice as "Sweet juice from farm fresh sugarcane stalks." Pictured are Peterson Lochard (left), Mackenzie Bien-Aime (middle), Ganiu Ladejobi (right) Sugarcane juice is growing in popularity, as these entrepreneurs are rushing to be at the front of the billion-dollar healthy beverage market. READ ALSO: Nigerian man from Enugu, Onuebuchi, killed by police in Indonesia for smuggling banned content This unique juice is cold pressed from carefully selected farm-fresh sugarcane stalks and prepared with no added sugar. Ladejobi started the company named Sugarcane Island after he returned from a trip to Nigeria. He missed the taste of cold pressed sugarcane juice free from additives, preservatives, or added sugar. According to many nutritionists and physicians, sugarcane juice is extremely nourishing and rich in antioxidants That was how he spotted an opportunity to offer a healthy beverage he enjoyed in Nigeria. READ ALSO: Jega replies Jonathan's statement that 2015 election was flawed In an interview with Black Enterprise, Ladejobi said that sugarcane juice is more versatile than coconut water He believes that this new product will be the next popular beverage in the United States. Legit.ng tells the story of a lady with an unusual profession. She is a vulcaniser from Ilorin, Kwara state, Nigeria. Source: Legit.ng Nigerias leading retail bank, Diamond Bank Plc has won the Excellence in Financial Inclusion award at the prestigious Lafferty award for its Diamond Yello Mobile Banking solution. Diamond Yello is a mobile based banking account developed in collaboration with telecommunication giant, MTN, to offer full-fledged financial services to over 63 million subscribers. The innovative solution, which is primarily targeted at the un(der)banked customers, boasts of a number of unique features such as: compatibility with any phone type, a strong and vast agent network of over 30,000 nationwide, ability to carry out full banking transactions without airtime or data amongst others. The Lafferty Global awards showcase innovative services and products in retail banking, cards and payments and merchant services, with a diverse range of winners from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The awards was presented in Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2017 as part of the International Retail Banking Council and the International Cards and Payments Council. According to the Chief spokesperson of the Bank, Chioma Afe, "This award is a strong testament of Diamond Banks pursuit of quality customer service delivery using digital technology. Another financial inclusion product offered by Diamond Bank to cater to the mass market is BETA - a safe and simple savings and transactional proposition delivered via a low-cost service infrastructure that provides maximum convenience to customers using a multi-channel platform including mobile devices, debit cards amongst others. [Sponsored] Source: Legit.ng - Ex-Senate president David Mark blames former president Goodluck Jonathan for losing the 2015 presidential elections - He said he told Jonathan of the conspiracy against him in the north before he lost the 2015 presidential elections - Mark said some people were deceived the president by painting false scenarios for him Former Senate President David Mark has blamed ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for his failure to win the 2015 general elections. Senator Mark said that he had hinted to Jonathan about the conspiracy against him in the north before he lost the 2015 presidential elections. David Mark READ ALSO: Jonathan was drawn into PDP crisis by David Mark and Gusau - Makarfi The Punch reports that Mark said this in a book titled Against the Run of Play where he wondered how an incumbent president could lose such an election in Nigeria. The book was written by the Chairman of ThisDay's editorial board Olusegun Adeniyi who also interviewed Mark. According to Mark, he saw the defeat coming and had pointed out the unrealistic voting projections made by the party about the north to the former president. He also pointed out the conspiracy against him but Jonathan did not take him seriously. He said:I saw it and at different times, I pointed out to him and the party that the projections being made by some people around the president about what the voting pattern in the north would were wrong. READ ALSO: PDP crisis: David Mark speaks on defection to APC I could see the conspiracy and the gang-up building up in the north against the aspiration of Jonathan but my voice was drowned out by those who took it for granted that a sitting president, and one from PDP, could not lose. Some people were deceiving the president with the kind of false scenarios they were painting for him. Jonathan lost because he did not listen to Mark's advices. ''The VP could see the conspiracy but I dont know how much influence he had on the campaign. Why Jonathan couldnt see it until it was too late is what I find difficult to understand." Legit.ng recalls that Professor Attahiru Jega responded to Goodluck Jonathans statement that the 2015 general election was flawed due to the different votes recorded in the election. Jonathan made this claim in the same book Against the Run of Play by Adeniyi. Watch this Legit.ng TV video of a Nigerian on the street saying categorically that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan was never a bad choice for Nigeria. Source: Legit.ng We learned two important things on Tuesday in relation to the ongoing investigation into Russian attempts to meddle with the 2016 election: 1. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is in a LOT of trouble. 2. The Trump White House declined to provide the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with documents related to Flynn's application for a security clearance to work at the White House. Both of those things came to light following a classified meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and press briefing held by Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah and ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland. That briefing also produced this amazing quote from Chaffetz regarding Flynn: "I see no data to support the notion that Gen. Flynn complied with the law." The Flynn stuff is relatively straightforward. He reportedly gave a paid speech to RT-TV in Russia without asking the Pentagon's permission or flagging the State Department. (No elected official has made a charge that Flynn actually broke the law; Flynn has offered to testify before the Intelligence Committee but only with the promise of immunity.) RT is widely regarded as a propaganda arm of the Russian government. What's far more confusing to me is why the White House doesn't appear to be cooperating with the committee's investigation into Flynn. Wrote CNN's Tom LoBianco and Manu Raju: "White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short outlined in a letter to the House oversight committee how it would not complete the request from the panel, referring some requests to the Department of Defense, saying the office doesn't have custody of some of the other documents or simply stating 'we are unable to accommodate' others." The letter says one reason is that "many, if not all, documents relating to" Flynn's contacts with foreign nationals after January 20, 2017 "are likely to contain classified and/or confidential information." The White House further insisted that it couldn't produce documents it didn't have access to. Flynn, through a lawyer, said that he fully briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency both before and after the trip. The White House insisted late Tuesday that they are withholding no documents. They say they as well as the Department of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and the FBI received a form letter from the Oversight Committee asking for documents related to his security clearance. They did not possess that information due to the fact that Flynn's clearance ran through DOD and had been approved in 2016. The DOD, White House officials say, turned over that information. But, this is the White House we're talking about. And an investigation into the possibility that its former national security adviser took a payment from the Russian government -- in addition to misleading everyone up to the vice president about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Are you telling me that given those circumstances that the White House can't get access to Flynn's security clearance application? Donald Trump is the commander in chief! He runs the government! This is a pattern with the Trump White House. Instead of welcoming these investigations as a chance to clear up questions regarding the attempted Russian efforts to influence the election and his campaign, Trump and his senior staff seem to stonewall at every turn. Trump regularly decries the alleged Russian ties to his campaign as "fake news," but the best way to prove that there is no "there" there is to fully and totally cooperate with the investigation. And yet, time and again, the Trump team refuses to do just that. CNN's Liz Landers, Gloria Borger and Brian Rokus contributed to this report. - A coalition of 40 civil society groups threaten to mobilise Nigerians to Aso Rock for protest to compel Buhari to officially transmit power to Osinbajo - The national coordinator of the groups, Mazi Ikechukwu, cautions the APC regime against trying to re-enact the late President Umaru Yar Adua era when a cabal ruled the country while YarAdua was on life support machine - The groups say instead of staying away from work, Buhari should officially transmit power to Osinbajo, so as to be free to travel abroad for more medical attention A coalition of 40 Civil Society groups under the auspices of Change the Change Coalition (CCC) has threatened to stage mass protests if President Muhammadu Buhari failed to attend the next Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting. The national coordinator of the CCC, Mazi Ikechukwu Bismarck Oji, on Thursday, April 27, said they would mobilise Nigerians to Aso Rock for protest to compel Buhari to officially transmit power to Osinbajo, if he, once again, excuses himself from the next FEC meeting. READ ALSO: How El-Rufai, Saraki worked against my emergence as VP - Tinubu The group cautioned the All Progressives Congress (APC) regime against trying to re-enact the late President Umaru Yar Adua era when a cabal ruled the country while YarAdua was on life support machine. It asked how Nigerians could be certain that a group of cabals had not smuggled Buhari back to London to continue his treatment. Instead of staying away from work, Buhari should officially transmit power to Osinbajo, so as to be free to travel abroad for more medical attention, it said. The CCC has threatened to stage mass protests if President Muhammadu Buhari failed to attend the next FEC meeting. The group said: What we have before us is another YarAdua scenario the President has been absent from at least two FEC meetings consecutively. Firstly, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, told us the President was attending to more important matters and delegated the Vice President to chair the meeting. What could be more important than chairing the weekly FEC meeting, more so when his attendance would have allayed fears about his health status? Secondly, Lai Mohammed told us the President would be working from home. That is an insult on the intelligence of Nigerians and another episode in the theatre of the bizarre which this administration has turned governance into. The President is Nigerias Number one worker and should show examples. He should work and be seen to be working hard. READ ALSO: Jonathan lost 2015 election because he was not clever Babangida Aliyu In fact, if by next week, he is absent from the FEC meeting, the CCC shall mobilize patriotic and concerned Nigerians to Aso Rock to demand that Buhari transmits power to his Vice, Yemi Osinbajo, so as to take proper care of his health. "Or how are we sure that the cabal has not smuggled him back to London, to continue his treatment as he stated on his return from his 50-day medical vacation?" Meanwhile, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says he never said that President Muhammadu Buhari is to work from home henceforth. Legit.ng learnt that in a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday, the minister said the reporting in a section of the media of his post- Federal Executive Council (FEC) briefing that the President is to work from home henceforth is erroneous. In the statement signed by his Special Adviser, Segun Adeyemi, the minister said the President only decided to work from home today, not that he has decided to work from home henceforth. He said the headlines in a section of the media, Buhari to now work from home Lai Mohammed, is a misrepresentation of his statement at the briefing. Did Jonathan lose because he was a bad president? Watch what Nigerians are saying on Legit.ng TV. Source: Legit.ng - The presidency has said that President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised to take things slowly - Garba Shehu, presidential spokesperson said, the president's absence at the last Federal Executive Council meeting was a last minute decision - Shehu called for calm, saying that if there was anything wrong with President Buhari, the cabinet and the general public would have been alerted in advance The Presidency has revealed that doctors to President Muhammadu Buhari have advised he takes things slowly due to his health. In a series of tweets today, April 27, the special adviser to the president on media and publicity Garba Shehu said speculations in some section of the media over the president's health is uncalled for. He said the absence of President Buhari at the last Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, April 26, was a last minute decision. READ ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: Friend exposes dirty secrets about Stephanie Otobo in Canada - Why Apostle Suleman 'paid' her (video) Shehu further called for calm, saying that if there was anything wrong with President Buhari, the cabinet and the general public would have been alerted in advance. As eager as he is to be up and about, the Presidents doctors have advised on his taking things slowly as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago," Shehu said. The presidential spokesperson also noted that the President Buhari had intimated Nigerians of the state of his health upon his return London. READ ALSO: 6 things that would have happened if Oba of Lagos snubbed Ooni of Ife in the olden days(No 4 is very very SCARY) "Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation, as the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, intimated in his press briefing after the FEC meeting on Wednesday," Garba said. He said: "Despite his absence from the public, Nigerians should be rest assured that President Buhari has not abdicated his role as C-in-C of Nigeria." READ ALSO: BREAKING: House of Reps warn presidency, says EFCC chairman MUST be approved by the Senate The presidency also said President Buhari receives daily briefings on the activities of government, and confers regularly with the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Garba Shehu said speculations in some section of the media over the president's health is uncalled for. "God is the giver of life and health. We are grateful that He has seen our President through the worst period of his convalescence in London. We are thankful that the President has passed a number of benchmarks already. We pray that God continues to see him through this period of recuperation," the presidency said. Meanwhile, a civil society group, Change the Change Coalition on Thursday, April 27, threatened mass protest if the president fails to attend the next FEC meeting. The group said it would mobilize Nigerians to compel President Buhari to officially transmit power to the vice president. The CSO said instead of staying away from work, President Buhari should feel free to travel abroad for medical attention if the need be. Watch this Legit.ng video of Nigerian calling for mass burial of leaders in Nigeria below: Source: Legit.ng - Oba Akiolu of Lagos has finally reacted to the allegations that he snubbed the Ooni of Ife at a function in Lagos - He said each tribe has their own peculiar way of greetings and that the Oba of Lagos was basically trying to revive the culture and tradition of ancient Lagos with his greetings - He said Yoruba has a very rich culture. There is no quarrel between the Oba of Lagos and Ooni of Ife His Royal Majesty Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the Oba of Lagos says he did not in any way snubbed the Ooni of Ife, His Royal Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi at a public function in Lagos as being painted in the media. READ ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: Friend exposes dirty secrets about Stephanie Otobo in Canada - Why Apostle Suleman 'paid' her (video) Legit.ng learnt that this was according to Chief Lateef Aderibigbe Ajose, Opeluwa Onido of Lagos, one of the white cap chiefs. He said each tribe has their own peculiar way of greetings and that the Oba of Lagos was basically trying to revive the culture and tradition of ancient Lagos with his greetings He argued that Oba Akiolu did not ignore Ooni of Ife. According to him, the response of Akiolu to Oonis greetings was the standard response and the culturally acclaimed way of greeting by a Lagos monarch, Nigerian Tribune reports. He said each tribe has their own peculiar way of greetings and that the Oba of Lagos was basically trying to revive the culture and tradition of ancient Lagos with his greetings. The sign by Oba Akiolu signifies, inu mi, inu e, the culture of greeting in Lagos. if Oba Akiolu wanted to ignore, he would have turned his face away from Ooni, he said. READ ALSO: Magu's confirmation: House of Reps urge Buhari to go to court He said: There is no misunderstanding between both highly revered Monarchs in Yoruba Land. According to him, the relationship between both Yoruba kings is peaceful and mutual. Oba Akiolu was well represented at the coronation of Ooni of Ife, which attested to the fact that he does not disregard the office of Ooni Adeyeye. He said Yoruba has a very rich culture. There is no quarrel between the Oba of Lagos and Ooni of Ife Going further, Chief Ajose said Oba Akiolu waited till this time to react after meeting with other chiefs. There is no sentiment in the culture of Lagos. As we met it that is the way we are doing it. Kabiesi Oba Akiolu is trying to bring back the old pattern, the old culture we have left behind. I did not snub Ooni of Ife What happened that day was wrongly speculated by the social media to disrupt peace and order and misinterpret Oba Akiolus action We just want to appeal to the social media to stop spreading wrong information. They should try and understand the reason behind every action carried out most especially by traditional rulers Yoruba has a very rich culture. There is no quarrel between the Oba of Lagos and Ooni of Ife, he said. Watch the inside story of Ile Ife crises in this Legit.ng video. Source: Legit.ng It's no secret that much of the world associates youth with beauty. Consumers yearn for baby soft skin free of wrinkles, redness and blemishes. The anti-aging industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar enterprise and doesn't show signs of stopping. Its easy for manufacturers to determine the why" when considering marketing an anti-aging product. Anti-aging claims can draw consumers to a product and give it an edge over the competition. But when it comes to marketing anti-aging products in the United States, what matters is how." How will the product intend to delay youth? Will it moisturize the skin to provide a more youthful appearance? Or will it increase the production of collagen in the body to plump the skin? These are factors the U.S. FDA considers when deciding whether to classify a product as a cosmetic or as a drug. FDA defines a "cosmetic" as a product intended for "cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness or altering the appearance." FDA defines a "drug" as a product intended to "affect the structure or any function of the body," even if the effect is related to appearance. Cosmetic claims should be limited to superficial changes in appearance rather than structural or functional changes. Therefore, cosmetics that claim to have medicinal or drug-like benefits (termed "cosmeceuticals" by the cosmetic industry) must comply with FDA drug regulations. As an example, a makeup primer that covers wrinkles would be regulated as a cosmetic. A serum that claims to remove or diminish the size of wrinkles could be regulated as a drug. Moreover, anti-aging products are often formulated with ultraviolet (UV) filters to provide protection from UVA and UVB rays and skin damage. FDA regulates all sunscreens as drugs, specifying which filters may be marketed as active ingredients in such products. Products containing UV filters that are not recognized by FDA are illegal and may not be marketed. Each year, FDA issues numerous warning letters to companies for marketing products as cosmetics that FDA classifies as drugs. In April 2016, FDA issued a warning letter to Crescent Health Center for claiming its Ageless Derma Stem Cell and Peptide Anti-Wrinkle Cream enhanced the production of elastin and collagen in the skin as well as reduces muscle contraction (among other claims). In July 2016, FDA issued a warning letter to Ageless Aesthetics for claiming its White Balance Click Intense Brightening Serum improved melanin dispersion as well as targets and prevents age spots and all other pigmentation concerns (among other claims). Even prominent firms such as Lancome are not immune. Lancome received a warning letter in 2012 for claims that its products "re-bundle collagen," "stimulate cell regeneration" and "stimulate the production of youth proteins." Companies that export to the United States face an additional hurdle in the form of the FDA inspector at port. FDA uses import alerts to advise port officers of products and companies that should be inspected and/or detained based on previous or potential violations. One such import alert identifies "skin care products labeled as anti-aging creams" and names other prominent firms such as Estee Lauder, Clarins, Chanel and more. Why does it matter whether a product is classified as a cosmetic or a drug? FDA requirements for cosmetics greatly differ from those for drugs. Cosmetic products may be marketed without FDA approval if the manufacturer has affirmed the safety of the ingredients and appropriate claims are made. Cosmetic facilities are not required to register with FDA, and cosmetic products do not have to be listed. The mandatory labeling requirements for cosmetics are relatively simple when compared to drugs. On the opposite end of the spectrum are drugs. In most cases, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs may only be marketed in one of two ways: through a New Drug Application (NDA) or an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) approved by FDA, or through the labyrinth of OTC drug monographs published by the agency. The OTC monographs identify active ingredients and describe the intended uses for which FDA has found them to be Generally Recognized As Safe and Effective (GRASE). Products that conform to a monograph require no further clearance. Many products that consumers think of as cosmetic are, in fact, drugs regulated under monographs: acne creams, sunscreens, antiperspirants and corn removers, to name a few. However, because FDA has not established a monograph for anti-aging or anti-wrinkle products, any product that makes anti-aging claims would be subject to the NDA or ANDA requirement. FDA further requires companies to register with the agency and "list" each drug product that they market in the United States. The labeling statements for drugs are complicated, including a mandatory Drug Facts Chart. These are but a few of FDA's extensive requirements for drug products. It's prudent for cosmetic manufacturers to determine whether anti-aging claims cause their products to be regulated as drugs before marketing them in the United States. While the benefits of having an anti-aging cosmetic on a product line may be tempting, the costs of marketing it incorrectly can grossly outweigh the benefits. Drugs marketed as cosmetics without FDA approval are subject to detention and import refusal, both of which may be costly to a company in terms of expense and reputation. Anna Benevente ([email protected]) is a senior regulatory specialist at Registrar Corp, an FDA consulting firm that helps companies comply with FDA regulation. She has been assisting companies with U.S. FDA regulations since 2009 and has researched over 370 products to determine whether they meet the FDA requirements for compliance. Police officers and firefighters from across Western Connecticut trained on water rescue in real-world conditions Wednesday in Bridgeport. The U.S. Coast Guard hosts the trainings four times per year in Connecticut to help first responders who are called to water rescues respond quickly and hopefully avoid tragedy. The departments met at Captains Cove in Bridgeport, boarded rescue boats, headed into the Long Island Sound and rehearsed a simulated emergency scenario an active shooter on a Connecticut ferry with passengers jumping off the boat to escape. In situations like that where you have a lot of people entering the water, its important that you have a large, combined rescue effort, Lt. Matt Richards, of the US Coast Guard, said. The Coast Guard conducts rescue-response simulations throughout the year to keep the skills of police and fire department personnel up to date so they can be ready to save when not if an emergency happens. If theyre going to be the first ones on scene a lot of times, were trying to educate them on first search patterns. Theyll get on scene, determined drift and see which way the currents are pushing the person and then they go into a search pattern, BMC Kevin Wyman, of the U.S. Coast Guard, said. And while the water emergencies theyll face might never be as extreme as the one they rehearsed, Coast Guard leaders said that as temperatures climb and more people head out onto the water, the rescue skills theyre practicing will be put to the test. We want to make sure we have the same terminology and the same goals and we have the same procedures as we conduct search and rescue, Lt. Richards said. Refineries have gone dark. Gas rations have been slashed for hundreds of thousands of state workers. Construction materials are nearly impossible to find. But Cuba's hotels and restaurants are packed, major U.S. airlines are adding flights and government stores are full of frozen American chicken and U.S.-made candy. So far, Cuba is weathering the storm as Venezuela's economy craters and protesters fill its streets to denounce Cuba's greatest socialist ally. A much-feared return to Cuba's post-Soviet Special Period'' of food shortages and blackouts has yet to materialize as energy conservation and a boom in tourism and overseas remittances cushion the blow of a roughly 50 percent cut in Venezuelan oil aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Interminable bus lines and long hunts for products like milk, paint and cement seem manageable by comparison with the hunger and hardship of the early 1990s that followed the drastic loss of Soviet bloc aid and subsidies that had propped up Cuba's economy for decades. The boom set off by the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S. in 2015 shows no signs of slacking: About 285,000 American tourists visited in 2016, up 76 percent from 2015, and the Cuban government says U.S. visitors increased 125 percent in January. The number of visitors from all countries topped a record 4 million last year and appears on track to top that in 2017. So far we aren't living in the Special Period again and I don't think we will be,'' said Ramon Santana, a 52-year-old bicycle taxi driver. Before, we depended on a single country but now we're trading with many. Before, the Soviet Union fell and everyone thought we would die. But we didn't die. We're still here.'' Still, Cubans are nervously watching Venezuela for signs of a deeper cut in oil shipments, which are paid for with the services of Cuban state doctors on missions'' in poor Venezuelan neighborhoods. So far, the Cuban government has funneled nearly all the cuts into the state sector, cutting air conditioning and summer work hours at government offices and, most recently, eliminating the supply of higher-octane special'' gasoline for state employees. The special gas is entirely imported while regular is maintained through the small but steady domestic oil production on Cuba's north-central coast, which touches the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. Owners of modern, fuel-injected cars buy special if they can afford it to prevent the lower-octane fuel from damaging their engines. High-ranking Cuban public officials often get both government cars and a monthly gasoline ration; their pay of $30 to $40 a month makes it impossible otherwise to afford gas that costs more than $4 a gallon. As in virtually every aspect of the Cuban economy, special gas cards provided to state employees to buy the fuel fed a thriving black market. Throughout the day, state officials can be seen filling the tanks of their government car, then popping the pump nozzle into a used 2-liter soft drink bottle and filling it with gas to be sold at a discount to other drivers. Starting April 1, state gas stations were instructed to stop selling special gas to card-holders, a move that sent state employees to regular pumps, forced business people and diplomats to buy special gas with cash and set off shortage fears and panic buying that created several days of hours-long lines. Many gas stations around the capital appear to have permanently stopped selling even regular gasoline, their pumps blocked off by orange traffic cones. The column of black smoke from one of Cuba's main refineries, the Nico Lopez facility overlooking Havana Bay, has disappeared without explanation, leaving the skies clearer but residents worried about Cuba's future energy supplies. The replacement of oil money with tourism dollars has accelerated both the decline of Cuba's ailing state-run businesses and the growth of its small private sector. Whereas oil money went entirely to the Communist state, much of the tourism is going to private enterprise - taxi drivers, private restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts that provide higher value service to tourists trying to avoid the high prices and poor service at state-run eateries and hotels. Those who work in the private sector have, in one way or another, seen improvement in their quality of life,'' said Omar Everleny Perez, a Cuban economist and expert on the private sector. The state worker on a salary hasn't seen that.'' There's also a geographic disparity, with rural areas and towns that don't draw tourists seeing deeper, more protracted shortages. In Cuba, there's a widespread sense that deeper cuts in Venezuelan oil would push the entire country over the edge into intolerable economic problems. A near-constant refrain is that Cubans can tolerate deep deprivation, but would not stand for a repeat of the Special Period. On Aug. 5, 1994, at the depth of post-Soviet crisis, Havana residents clashed with police around the Malecon seaside promenade in civil unrest that only subsided after Fidel Castro rushed to the scene and called for the protests to end. Fidel's brother and successor, President Raul Castro, has announced that he will step down from the presidency in February 2018. His most likely successor appears to be his first vice-president, 56-year-old Communist Party official Miguel Diaz-Canel, but the government has said nothing about the handover process. Cubans are highly skeptical that a new leader without the credibility conferred by the Castros' founding role in the Cuban revolution will be able to guide an increasingly well-informed and worldly population through a new period of profound economic hardship. If Venezuela falls, if Venezuela changes and they don't send Cuba any more oil, it's going to be like it was, in 1991, '92, '93. It's going to be hard,'' said Li Nelson Florentino Abreu, an 80-year-old retired electrical engineer. And Cubans aren't sheep. They aren't going to put up with everything. Cubans today, they know how to defend their rights.'' There are new questions about an internal investigation at Dallas County Schools. NBC 5 Investigates has learned a former FBI agent hired by DCS to look into financial mismanagement has given his report to the new DCS interim superintendent, but she's not saying what's in that report. On Thursday morning DCS interim Superintendent Leatha Mullins will appear at a committee hearing in the Texas House of Representatives trying to convince lawmakers to allow the embattled school bus agency to continue operating. Mullins is touting a new audit that said DCS should have the cash to survive financially, but NBC 5 Investigates has learned there's another report she's not shared with lawmakers or even her own board. That report is from the Denshaw Group an investigative agency DCS hired to look into whether financial crimes contributed to the DCS budget mess. Mullins confirmed she has the latest Denshaw report in her hands, but several DCS board members who spoke to NBC 5 said they have not been given a copy yet. And the report has not been provided to lawmakers considering whether the agency should be allowed to continue. The question is whether the report found any evidence that fraud contributed to the agency's problems. After a DCS board meeting Tuesday night, NBC 5 Investigates asked Mullins if the report gave her a better sense of whether criminal activity was involved. Mullins replied, "No, I don't. There was some assumptions he was making, but he did not provide me with the documentation. Once I get that I will be able to comment more." Wednesday, Mullins sent NBC 5 a statement, saying, "We can't release the report because it's a rough draft. And offers opinions without evidence or facts." Mullins was just recently promoted to lead DCS and was not in charge when the agency was losing millions of dollars. NBC 5 also contacted Denshaw Group investigator Dennis Brady directly. He said based on advice from the company's attorney, "we feel it is inappropriate to discuss our involvement in this or any other investigative matter..." Denshaw's preliminary report last month found no evidence of crimes but said Brady had more work to do. A hearing on the fate of DCS is scheduled for Thursday morning at the state capitol, where the House Education Committee is considering a bill from Rep. Cindy Burkett (R-Sunnyvale) that threatens to shut down DCS unless the agency can convince more local school districts to use DCS for busing and other services. In the Senate, a bill authored by Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas) proposes removing the DCS board and phasing out the agency over 18 months. That bill has already been approved in a Senate committee and is headed for a vote on the Senate floor. But without a release of the DCS internal investigation, lawmakers deciding the fate of DCS and the public will not be able to consider that report's conclusions. Ontario Power Generation [OPG] plans to fill a predicted supply gap in the 2030s with new nuclear capacity and the utility is collaborating with Saskatchewan on the potential for a Pan-Canadian fleet of Small Modular Reactors, Nicolle Butcher, OPGs Vice President of Strategy and Acquisitions, said. OPG, the provinces largest power generator, replaced coal-fired generation with renewable energy, backstopped by gas-fired capacity and life extensions of 6.6 GW of large-scale nuclear capacity. The utility plans to close its 3.1 GW Pickering plant in 2024 and new carbon-free power capacity will be needed to ensure Ontario meets its objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 37% below 1990 levels by 2030 and by 80% by 2050. OPG forecasts a gap in its power generation portfolio in the 2030s and it intends to fill this gap with nuclear power, Butcher told the International SMR and Advanced Reactor Summit 2017 on March 30. A number of advanced nuclear reactor developers are targeting the Canadian market, where the risk-informed regulatory framework is considered more supportive for licensing new designs than in the U.S. and where numerous remote communities and industrial facilities represent captive electricity consumers. Ontario and New Brunswick are the only Canadian provinces to operate large-scale nuclear power plants but several Canadian provinces are seen as potential markets for either grid-size SMRs or Very Small Modular Reactors (VSMRs). In October 2016, Ontario Power Generation started a US$9.6 billion refurbishment project at its 3.5 GW Darlington nuclear plant to extend the lifespan by 30 years. Bruce Power has also begun a US$10 billion life-extension project for its 6.3 GW nuclear plant northwest of Toronto. The utility plans to close its 3 GW Pickering nuclear plant in 2024, so it needs new carbon-free power to ensure Ontario meets its 2030 goal to cut carbon emissions by 37% below 1990 levels, and its even more ambitious 2050 goal of being 80% below 1990 levels. Saskatchewan is a key global uranium producer and is seen as a potential market for grid-size SMR deployment. OPG and Saskatchewans main power utility Saskpower are examining the potential to have the same reactor design and whether it fits into the system, Butcher said. We would prefer not to have a unique reactor in our province as a single unit, we would like to have a fleet across the country, she said. Canadas own new SMR company, Terrestrial Energy Inc. (TEI), has a new small modular Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design that is ideal for this future, that is, a nuclear reactor that: is cheaper than coal and can last for decades longer is a 400 MWt (190 MWe) modular design, one able to be adapted to needs for both on and off-grid heat and power is small and modular enough to allow simple construction in under 4 years, and trucking of modules to the site operates at normal pressures, removing those safety issues, and at higher temperatures, providing more energy for the same amount of fuel it does not require water for cooling and has the type of passive safety systems that make it walk-away safe can load-follow rapidly to buffer the intermittency of renewables generates less waste that is also more easily managed Terrestrial Energys reactor uses the natural convection of the molten salt to remove the heat to the vessel walls passively where its containment silo simply adsorbs the heat decay and conducts it away this is passive cooling at its simplest. SOURCES -Nuclear Energy Insider, Forbes James Conca Chinas first domestically built aircraft carrier slipped into the sea for the first time on Wednesday. The carrier will have more testing and fitting of equipment before trials in the water. This is Chinas second aircraft carrier. The ship is due to go into service in 2020 when it will join existing carrier, the Soviet-era Liaoning, bought secondhand from Ukraine and then refurbished. It is a conventionally powered ski jump carrier with a displacement of around 50,000 tonnes. It is likely to be powered by oil-fired boilers and steam turbines. The second Chinese-designed aircraft carrier, known as Type 002, is to be an entirely different design than Types 001 (Liaoning) and 001A. It will be more like a US aircraft carrier rather than a Russian one. The construction of the first Type 002 class aircraft carrier started in February 2016. In March 2017, a Chinese navy official said that steam-powered catapults will be installed on Type 002 class carriers. The Type 002 is expected to launch in 2021 and will be operational around 2024. The Type 003 class aircraft carriers will likely adopt the electromagnetic aircraft launch system. Chinas first domestically built aircraft carrier on Sunday at the Dalian port in northeastern China. Credit The Yomiuri Shimbun, via Associated Press Maya Stern is a former special-ops helicopter pilot, now a suburban flight instructor and mother, who was forced out of the military when the whistle-blower posted a video online of her ordering an airstrike that killed a number of unarmed Iraqi civilians. As is the wont in such books, death follows her home, and the story opens with the murder of her husband, scion of a wealthy Establishment family, by masked gunmen. (It turns out her older sister was also a murder victim, killed before the book begins, when Maya was still in combat.) Left a single mother with a small child and some residual PTSD, Maya installs a nanny cam in her den, and the next thing you know, her dead husband shows up, alive and on video. The twists begin there and dont stop until all the murders add up, company fraud is exposed, the rot at the heart of a twisted family is revealed and the rug is entirely pulled out from under the reader. Its a good thing, because the effort required to pick your jaw up off the floor masks the thinness of the characters, who function more as plot devices than fully realized people. Granted, thrillers arent generally considered a genre that prioritizes multidimensional protagonists. But as Elizabeth Brundage proves in the literary mystery ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR (Knopf, $26.95), it doesnt need to be that way. Indeed, as much as anything, this is a character sketch: of a marriage, a sociopath, a family destroyed by the economy, the things we do for love all finely drawn within the confined environment of a creaking old farmhouse on a homestead in a town far, far away. The better to scare you with, my dear. The story begins, once again, with a death a gruesome one, involving an ax in a young mothers head then cycles backward in time to how it happened, playing peekaboo with the motivations and history of its cast: the grieving widower, a professor at a local college; his lovely wife, a.k.a. the victim; their young daughter; and the three damaged brothers who once lived in their home and act as their babysitters and renovation team, and whose parents committed suicide. All of the above are sympathetic and suspicious in equal measure, a result of Brundages ability to peel away the onionskin layers of emotion that define any relationship. As the clues accumulate and the killer is revealed, the truth becomes both horrifying and inevitable. In the end, justice is done and redemption found, though not as one might expect, which makes the book all the more satisfying. Sometimes, as the cliche goes, we are our own worst enemies. And sometimes we work with them, as Will Rhodes discovers in THE TRAVELERS (Crown,$27). Rhodes is the hero of this book, Chris Pavones third thriller, though hero may be a bit of a stretch. Pavones great skill is in rendering believable people in impossible and occasionally absurd situations, and The Travelers is no exception. Indeed, it may involve his most far-fetched premise yet. Travel writers of the National Geographic-meets-Departures kind populate the book, with Will as the exemplar. He is the employee of a magazine called (surprise) Travelers: a man with a big expense account, a small salary, a mysterious boss who keeps disappearing into a hidden back room, and a disgruntled wife who was also a Travelers writer until she left her job for other opportunities, as yet unspecified. On a junket to French wine country Will meets a gorgeous Australian, and though he refrains from breaking his wedding vows, when he encounters her again on a trip to Argentina he gives in to temptation, an act that has some unexpected repercussions. Needless to say, no ones job is quite what readers might assume. Simply consider the fact that Travelers is a magazine where communications are delivered by hand, by couriers, in sealed envelopes, as opposed to email or mobile phone. And it seems to suffer not at all from the current economic malaise affecting its competitors, and for that matter old media in general. Its enough to make anyone raise an eyebrow. Republicans and Democrats have railed against the accounting acrobatics that American multinationals exploit to avoid paying taxes on foreign earnings. They buy or merge with foreign companies to establish headquarters outside the United States a practice known as inversion or relocate their patents and copyrights to places with low tax rates, like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. The arrangement not only deprives the United States of revenue but also increases the tax burden on American businesses that cannot or will not move their profits overseas. The current system has perpetuated a lot of waste and nonsense, said Alan D. Viard, a tax expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a former senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The nominal corporate rate is 35 percent, roughly 10 points above the average rate in most developed European nations. That differential encourages tax avoidance, Mr. Viard said. Apple, for example, has kept earnings abroad and borrowed money from its own foreign subsidiaries to pay dividends and make new investments. Because the interest paid on loans is also deductible, Apple ends up reaping a second tax benefit. These bizarre short-term loans are just silliness, Mr. Viard said. Whatever the rate is, it should be collected when the money is earned, regardless of whether it is repatriated, he said, adding, Companies should be free to keep the money where they want and use it however they want. In the past, policy makers tried to persuade companies to bring home profits by dangling a carrot: a voluntary, one-time tax holiday for companies that brought overseas profits back to invest in the United States. Yet the promised investment boom from a 2005 initiative never materialized, and the tax holiday turned into more of a permanent vacation. Companies did ship some money home about $299 billion but nearly all of it was used to increase shareholder dividends or buy back stock. Connecticuts Department of Children and Families has asked the states highest criminal law enforcement agency to investigate whether employees at Choate Rosemary Hall failed to report multiple allegations of sexual abuse to the authorities, which they are required to do by law. Choate, an elite boarding school in Wallingford, Conn., released a report this month that documented decades of sexual abuse at the school, in which teachers took advantage of students. In the mid-1990s, a faculty member used a students discipline problems to pressure her to have sex with him, the report said. One woman said she had been preyed upon by two teachers while she was a student. In Connecticut, educators have been legally obligated to report suspicions of abuse since 1967. But Choate did not report any episodes to the Department of Children and Families until 2010, the report said, after a parent became involved in a complaint. The number of reports and the age of the incidents make this collaboration more challenging than usual, said Gary Kleeblatt, a spokesman for the Department of Children and Families, which on Wednesday asked the Office of the Chief States Attorney to scrutinize Choates actions. Reporting abuse in a timely manner is critically important to protect the safety and well-being of children, and we take any failure to follow the law very seriously. The level of spending in the proposed budget is most likely a low estimate for how much the city will ultimately spend on its operations over the next fiscal year. For example, at this time last year, Mr. de Blasio proposed an $82.2 billion executive budget for the 2017 fiscal year; the city now estimates that it will spend $85.5 billion by the end of the fiscal year. The mayor took some precautions for the future: The plan for the 2018 fiscal year calls for preserving $1 billion in reserves from previous budgets; efforts to find savings through measures like reducing overtime and using office space more efficiently; and a hiring freeze on some administrative positions (with no estimate of how much a freeze would save). Yet for the most part, the budget largely did not incorporate major shifts anticipating what could be substantial cuts in federal aid in the coming months or years. Mr. de Blasio said that because the Trump administration was erratic and unpredictable, and had so far been frustrated in achieving some of its most prominent goals, there was no point in guessing at the outcome. A White House plan or strategy doesnt change our strategy and our approach, Mr. de Blasio said. Were going to stay true to our strategic vision. Well deal with whatever comes out of Washington, but were not going to wait. He added: We could be facing very severe cuts; we could be facing very limited cuts. We came to a strategic assumption, and we think its the right one, that if you have no idea where something is going, and no one else does, its dangerous to start making decisions based on that reality. BERKELEY, Calif. The University of California, Berkeley, and the community around it have been symbols of free speech for more than 50 years. We still celebrate the legacy of Mario Savio and others who fought in the 1960s to ensure that the First Amendment be honored on campus. But today Berkeley is facing extraordinary challenges to living up to this legacy. The campus has become a magnet for groups who seek to use the site of the birth of the Free Speech Movement as a staging ground for violence and disruption. The now-canceled campus speech by the conservative author Ann Coulter is a dramatic case in point. The Berkeley College Republicans invited Ms. Coulter without consulting with the university about the date of the event. This meant we at the school were unable to identify a place and time that could satisfy the extensive but necessary security requirements. As a compromise, the college identified other dates and times for the event during a forthcoming reading week or early in the fall semester during which secure venues would be available. Meanwhile, we were receiving mounting threats of violence around the event. People describing themselves as anarchists and anti-fascists openly threatened to prevent Ms. Coulters talk by any means necessary. Right-wing groups threatened to appear on campus armed to ensure the opposite they declared the event would be held by any means necessary. Without uttering a word to students at the University of California, Berkeley, Ann Coulter on Wednesday made herself the latest cause celebre in the rapidly escalating effort by conservatives to fight liberals on what was once the lefts moral high ground over free speech on campus. Ms. Coulter, the acid-penned conservative writer, canceled a planned appearance on Thursday after the political organizations that invited her rescinded their support over fears of violence. Its a sad day for free speech, she said. But across the country, conservatives like her are eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations like the one in Berkeley, emboldened by a backlash over what many Americans see as excessive political correctness, a president who has gleefully taken up their fight, and liberals they accuse of trying to censor any idea they disagree with. The situation adds up to a striking reversal in the culture wars, with the left now often demanding that offensive content be excised from public discourse and those who promote it boycotted and shunned. Women do not have to register for the United States draft. And no American has been pressed into involuntary service since the last draft, during the Vietnam War. However, the viral spread of a 10-month-old New York Times story has potentially given millions of internet users misleading impressions to the contrary. Following the web traffic and social media commentary around the article illustrates how a hot-button cultural issue can be taken out of context and amplified by hyperpartisan bubbles, inflaming passions and spreading misinformation. On June 14, 2016, The Times published a story online with the headline, Senate Votes to Require Women to Register for the Draft. The story reported on the approval of a budget amendment by the Senate. The final version of the bill, which President Barack Obama signed six months later, in December, did not include the provision. WASHINGTON Ivanka Trump, juggling dual roles of White House adviser and daughter of the president, said in an interview aired on Wednesday that the United States might need to admit more refugees from Syria, a pointed public departure from one of her fathers bedrock populist positions. Ms. Trumps comments, which seemed to question the basis for President Trumps two executive orders that tried to bar migrants from Syria and other predominantly Muslim nations, set off a minor scramble in the West Wing. Advisers grappled with a political problem unique to Mr. Trumps family-business White House: how to manage an officially empowered daughter who is prone to challenging elements of the presidents conservative agenda. I think there is a global humanitarian crisis thats happening, and we have to come together and we have to solve it, Ms. Trump told NBC when asked about the refugee crisis in Syria, which has created a nativist backlash in European countries. Asked whether that would include admitting Syrian refugees to the United States, she replied: That has to be part of the discussion. But thats not going to be enough in and of itself. The review will focus on K-12 policy, Mr. Goad said. It will be overseen by a regulatory task force headed by Robert Eitel, who was hired from the for-profit sector to serve as a senior counselor to Ms. DeVos. Mr. Eitel is a vocal critic of regulations in higher-education and K-12 policy, and his hiring was controversial. A New York Times investigation found that before he took his post in the Education Department, Mr. Eitel spent 18 months as a top lawyer for a company facing multiple government investigations, including one that ended with a settlement of more than $30 million over deceptive student lending. Mr. Trumps order was lauded by the Center for Education Reform, which advocates school-choice policies. In a statement, its founder, Jeanne Allen, said that conducting the review was part and parcel of ensuring that education innovation, and opportunity, are able to take root throughout our various education sectors. The process will also allow the public to learn just how much oversight occurs as a result of bureaucracy, not law, and pave the way for all schools to focus on outcomes, not compliance, Ms. Allen said. But other observers said the order stands to have little impact on large-scale reforms already underway, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act, and bedrock laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which governs the education of special education students. And the Common Core standards, which neither Ms. DeVos nor Mr. Trump supports, were adopted by states at their own volition. The bottom line is that the law is still the law, and an executive order cant override that, said Kelly McManus, interim director of legislative affairs at the Education Trust, a Washington think tank. Ms. McManus said the organization is also concerned about the Education Departments watchdog role being diminished. WASHINGTON As President Trumps top economic advisers faced a barrage of questions on Wednesday about the tax plan they had just unfurled, there was one that they struggled most to answer: how to keep the massive tax cuts they proposed from ballooning the federal deficit. The White House insists that economic growth will cover the cost, which could be as high as $7 trillion over a decade. But the question will dog Republicans and could fracture their party as they face the prospect of endorsing a plan that many economists and budget analysts warn will increase the deficit. After years of fiscal hawkishness, conservatives now face a moment of truth about whether they truly believe Americas economy is drowning in debt. Some skeptics are already ringing alarm bells, fearing that Republicans will sign on to what critics see as a dangerous plan composed by a president who called himself the King of Debt. It seems the administration is using economic growth like magic beans: the cheap solution to all our problems, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that advocates fiscal restraint. But there is no golden goose at the top of the tax-cut beanstalk, just mountains of debt. BOGOTA, Colombia Venezuela said Wednesday that it would pull out of the Organization of American States, which has long been critical of President Nicolas Maduros unyielding accumulation of power at the expense of the countrys democratic institutions. The move increases Venezuelas isolation while its government is struggling to put down mass street protests demanding new elections. And it shows that the country which, through anticapitalist rhetoric and oil largess, once aimed to challenge the United States as a power in Latin America is becoming something of a pariah in its own region. On Wednesday evening, Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Mr. Maduro had instructed her to break ties with the organization because of what she described as intrusive, arbitrary, illegal, deviant and crude actions. She added, A faction of governments from the region had eyes on our sovereignty and tried to intervene and lecture our country, but this, fortunately, will not happen. The O.A.S., whose charter promotes democracy among member organizations in the Western Hemisphere, has become the principal body through which Venezuelas neighbors have exerted pressure as concerns mount regarding the countrys stability. Twitter on Wednesday briefly suspended the account of a Chinese-born billionaire who was using the social media service to publicize allegations of corruption against top Communist Party officials. The billionaire, Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, had in recent days added tens of thousands of followers to his account, @KwokMiles, where he posted screenshots of documents that he said suggested corruption at the highest levels of the Chinese government. China, where Twitter has a minimal presence and is blocked by the authorities, considers Mr. Guo to be a criminal. A Chinese official said last week that Interpol, the global police organization, had issued a global request for his arrest. Image Guo Wengui, an outspoken Chinese-born billionaire whom China views as a criminal, has alarmed Beijing with his public denunciations. Credit... Andrew Testa for The New York Times Nicholas Pacilio, a spokesman for Twitter, declined to comment. Mr. Guos account was apparently suspended for about four hours before it was restored after inquiries from members of the news media. Twitter normally suspends accounts if they are deemed to be sending out spam, if they appear to have been hacked or compromised or if they engage in abusive behavior, according to the companys website. WASHINGTON President Trump summoned all 100 members of the Senate for a briefing by his war cabinet on the mounting tensions with North Korea. An American submarine loaded with Tomahawk missiles surfaced in a port in South Korea. Gas stations in the North shut down amid rumors that the government was stockpiling fuel. Americans could be forgiven for thinking that war is about to break out. But it is not. The drumbeat of bellicose threats and military muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the danger of a clash between the United States and North Korea, senior Trump administration officials and experts who have followed the Korean crisis for decades said. While Mr. Trump regards the rogue government in the North as his most pressing international problem, he told the senators he was pursuing a strategy that relied heavily on using Chinas economic leverage to curb its neighbors provocative behavior. Recent American military moves like deploying the submarine Michigan and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the waters off the Korean Peninsula were aimed less at preparing for a pre-emptive strike, officials said, than at discouraging the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from conducting further nuclear or ballistic missile tests. In confronting the reckless North Korean regime, its critical that were guided by a strong sense of resolve, both privately and publicly, both diplomatically and militarily, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the Pentagons top commander in the Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. OTTAWA Kevin OLeary, a political novice who used the attention he garnered from appearing on reality television shows to become a contender to lead Canadas Conservative Party, unexpectedly pulled out of the race on Wednesday. During a sometimes chaotic news conference, Mr. OLeary said he was confident that he would have won the partys leadership vote. But he said that his failure to attract enough support in Quebec undermined his ability to lead the Conservatives to victory over the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a general election. I was singularly unsuccessful there for whatever reason, Mr. OLeary said of his efforts in Quebec, a province where French is widely spoken. He was criticized for his weak French, and he did not enter the race until January, after the first French-language debate. Its not good enough to win the leadership if you cant win the majority mandate. The effect of Mr. OLearys withdrawal, which occurred hours before the final debate, is difficult to forecast. He has thrown his support to Maxime Bernier, who is quite far to the right for a member of Parliament from Quebec. Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Bernier called Mr. OLeary a loser who had been spending his time vacationing in Florida, filming in L.A. and shilling on a home shopping channel trying to sell his line of OLeary wine to American buyers. MOSCOW The Russian government moved on Wednesday to defang efforts to stage antigovernment rallies this weekend by blacklisting the coordinator, Open Russia, an organization founded by the Kremlin critic Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky. Although the main organization is based in Britain, Russias prosecutor general labeled it undesirable, effectively making it illegal for the body to operate inside Russia. It cited the protest efforts as the main reason. Two other groups linked to Mr. Khodorkovsky were included in the ban. One, the Institute of Modern Russia, is run from the United States by Mr. Khodorkovskys son, Pavel, and the other, Open Russia Civic Movement, has headquarters in Britain. Their activities are aimed at inspiring protests and destabilizing the internal political situation, which threatens the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state, the prosecutor general said in a statement. The artist Korakrit Arunanondchai was talking a mile a minute recently about with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, his video-and-sculpture show at Clearing, a gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I put all of myself, physically and emotionally, into this, said the amped-up Mr. Arunanondchai, 30, whose friends call him Krit. His dark hair pulled back, he was seated on a couch in a back room at Clearing, explaining how he surfs among different media and combines them. Instead of the video being the final product, I think of a film more as a sculpture, said Mr. Arunanondchai, who will appear in a live performance on May 7. The show features a 23-minute film accompanied by two separate installations, one a grotesque fantasy landscape with lights and fountains shells are embedded in the floor and one a more demure display of his grandmothers possessions. Everything has to be real, Mr. Sultan said. I dont have reproductions of anything. These are edited excerpts from our conversation. What attracts you to these objects? I like things that are handmade. I found this guy in England who makes pancheons, old-fashioned bread bowls. Hes probably the only guy in the world that makes these things and he makes them for me when I need them. Do you use them? Oh, yeah. I dont make bread, but I use them as bowls wonderful. There are very few people who can do that kind of stuff. Growing up in Asheville, N.C., I was surrounded by potters, people who made jewelry, and glass blowers although Ive never gotten into glass. Have these collections made their way into your own work? Probably not. I have used some of the pots that I collected in my paintings as vases, especially in the late 80s and 90s, when I was doing the big flower paintings. I used vases that people gave me or that Id gotten in St.-Tropez. But not any more than that. What do you keep in Sag Harbor? I have one room thats full of weapons. I decided I wanted to bring my grandfathers shotgun from the 20s. A guy gave me this very nice L .C. Smith side-by-side shotgun and another guy gave me a pump-action 16-gauge shotgun and we shoot skeet now. I found a beautiful ax at one of the antique stores; it turns out its called a hewing ax and it was meant for skinning logs to make log cabins. Then someone gave me a beautiful African hat made of buttons because I did button paintings. Ive got arrows from the Maori and the Yanomami and Apaches, and straw hats from when I was in China. I have a print by Winslow Homer of a ship at sea in a storm. MARGARET THATCHER A Life and Legacy By David Cannadine 162 pp. Oxford University, $14.95. Image So much has been said about Margaret Thatcher that the only thing left to do is to say less. Cannadines life of the strident and indomitable prime minister is quick as a sprint and a joy to read. Initially prepared as an entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Cannadines Thatcher appears here in a stand-alone volume of 162 lively pages. In them the author, a prolific biographer and historian, synthesizes decades of scholarship on the most significant figure in British politics since Winston Churchill. Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy necessarily forgoes detailed chronology for broad strokes. There was the middlebrow upbringing in a provincial English town; the unlikely rise to prime minister (As in Grantham, Margaret was again living over the shop); war with the cabinet and the trade unions; solidarity with the United States; conservatism; femininity; glamour; strength; and a brusque and commanding style that put Britains patriarchy in its place. Thatchers hectoring manner also meant an idle retirement: There was no possibility of another high-level job, because she had offended too many people and was rightly regarded as an impossible colleague. Cannadine persuasively concludes that Thatcher rivaled Churchill in stature but not achievement. Her convictions and force of personality gave rise to their own movement (Thatcherism), yet her signal foreign policy success was an anachronistic colonial adventure in the Falklands. She helped win the Cold War but was emphatically on the wrong side of history in favoring apartheid South Africa and opposing German reunification. Domestically, Thatcher presided over years of unemployment and economic policies that coddled the rich. Yet, like Ronald Reagan, she fundamentally reoriented her countrys politics. Ferocious and bold, Thatcher is a case study as much in willpower as sharpness of tooth. (Want to get this briefing by email? Heres the sign-up.) Good morning. Heres what you need to know: Trumps tax plan and you. We look at the seven most important changes in President Trumps tax proposal, which our White House reporters describe as less of a plan than a wish list. It would sharply reduce income tax rates for individuals and businesses, but how it would be financed is unclear, and deficit hawks are worried. We break down what the plan would cost, and our chief economics correspondent looks at who wins including the president himself and who loses. 1. Its been a whirlwind week in Washington, as the administration rolls out initiatives ahead of President Trumps 100-day mark. On the tax plan: It was remarkably short on details (all ponies and no manure, one expert said). Economists say it would vastly expand the countrys budget deficit and national debt and offer the greatest benefits to the wealthiest Americans. President Trump may not be terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta, but that doesnt mean the deal is safe. After telephone calls with President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada in late April, Mr. Trump said he would start the process of renegotiating Nafta, a treaty that he had scorned during his presidential campaign, calling it the single worst trade deal ever signed by the United States. Whatever his criticisms, Nafta has had a major impact on the American economy in the decades since it was signed, and any renegotiation would affect certain industries. BEIJING New Balance has won a rare legal victory in China in an intellectual property dispute: A court has ordered five shoe manufacturers and sellers to pay the state $250,000 for using the American shoemakers signature slanting N logo. In previous years, the company has battled legions of counterfeit manufacturers, taken on a rogue supplier who exported its shoes at a deep discount and, most recently, struggled in court to win the use of its Chinese name. In a preliminary decision, the Suzhou Intermediate Peoples Court on Monday fined the five companies for breaching an injunction issued in September prohibiting them from selling shoes with the logo, according to a report in China Intellectual Property Magazine. The $250,000 in fines will go to the state. The court will issue its final judgment at the end of May, at which time New Balance could get damages. Amy Dow, New Balances senior global corporate communications manager, confirmed the penalty, saying the brand used by all five was called New Boom. United said that passengers who have boarded flights should never have to give up their seats, except for safety or security problems. The airline also said that it would no longer ask law enforcement officers to remove passengers from its planes over booking issues and that all crew members traveling to other flight assignments would be booked into seats at least an hour before departure, two changes it had announced previously. United said it would also create a new automated check-in process that gives customers a chance to express their willingness to relinquish their seats in exchange for compensation. And starting on Friday, United will increase the maximum sum offered to passengers who voluntarily give up their seats to $10,000 from the $1,350 cap that most airlines use. In raising the cap, United is following the lead of Delta Air Lines, which announced on April 14 that its supervisors could offer up to $9,950 in compensation to passengers who voluntarily gave up their seats. Industry officials said that compensation offers would still start at a few hundred dollars, and that payments close to the new caps were likely to be rare. Security officers dragged Dr. Dao off a United plane in Chicago to make room for an airline employee trying to get to work in another city. The episode has been a public relations disaster, pushing United to undertake a broad examination of how it treats customers. Our goal is to reduce incidents of involuntary denial of boarding to as close to zero as possible and become a more customer-focused airline, the airline said in the report. The lone Burmese restaurant in New York City opened in March in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, bringing the rings and chain links of the Burmese alphabet to a street otherwise inscribed in English, Russian and Chinese. Among its neighbors are a Sicilian billiard-table dealer, an Albanian butcher and a Universal Enlightenment Temple. Bensonhurst has the boroughs highest concentration of foreign-born residents, which might explain why the chef Aye Myint, known as Oscar, named his restaurant Together. He wanted it to be a gathering of different people, his elder daughter said. Burmese cooking shares ingredients with Thailands, but it also draws from the Chinese province of Yunnan to the northeast, rejoicing in vegetables pickled to a deep, abiding sourness, and from India to the northwest, embracing seeds and pulses and favoring mild, turmeric-stained curries that radiate warmth without alarming the heart. The food makes allies of opposing flavors and textures, which retain their individual contours while contributing to a greater whole. A partial ingredient list for laphet thoke, a dish commonly categorized as a salad (such are the limitations of the English language), includes mulchy fermented tea leaves with enough caffeine to twang the nerves like a harp, set against strips of fresh, crunchy cabbage; garlic in translucent teardrops and disks of green chile, flaunting their perilous seeds; a briny spoor of dried shrimp and fish sauce; tomatoes in skinny slurs, for just a squeeze of juice, and bright lashings of lime; and pops of sesame seeds and roasted peanuts, buttery wholes and halves alongside crunchier, roughly broken shards. No, it was not an April Fools trick, and it most definitely was not a joke. Contrary to the suspicions of some readers, our focus on Lambrusco was absolutely, joyously serious. Welcome back to Wine School, where we trust primary-source material rather than accept popular notions. For us, the primary sources are the bottles themselves, and for Lambrusco, which has spent years on the list of reviled wines, the proof was in the drinking. You know how Wine School works. Each month, we focus on a particular genre of wine. I suggest three examples, which you drink at home in a relaxed setting with family, friends and food. Then we discuss the wines. My selection of Lambrusco met with no small amount of skepticism from those whose impression of the wine was formed years ago, when sweet, mass-produced Lambruscos were the best-selling wines in the country. As with so many wine drinkers, these skeptics havent kept up with the news. Its America first, you better believe it, President Trump said, standing over a tool cabinet at the Snap-On Tools headquarters in Kenosha, Wis., where he signed his Buy American, Hire American executive order this month to favor American companies for federal contracts. And with that, Mr. Trump staked claim to an issue that has become a pet cause for a group that, generally speaking, would just as soon wear a Power Rangers helmet as a Make America Great Again hat: the urban beards-and-selvage-jeans set who transformed the Made in U.S.A. clothing label into a mens wear status symbol over the past decade. In any other year, having the president as an ally might be considered a coup. With this president? Well, for brands that have staked their identity on Made in U.S.A. chic, it is complicated. Politics has become extremely contentious and polarizing in this country, and we dont want our brand caught in the political crossfire, said Jacob Hurwitz, a founder of American Trench, a maker of fashion-forward outerwear and hosiery in Philadelphia that prominently displays the motto Always American-Made on its website. To be honest, we cant afford it. Ms. Hood read Master Speed by Frost. Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away. Her daughter, Annabelle, read Dickinsons Hope Is the Thing With Feathers. That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all After the ceremony, Mr. Ruhlman took Ms. Hood by the hand and they traveled their first path together as husband and wife, making their way through the city streets, past construction workers and honking horns on their way to the reception at Barbuto, a restaurant several blocks away. Following behind were their guests, including Ms. Hoods mother, Gloria Hood; her son, Sam; and Annabelle. Mr. Ruhlman was trailed by his mother, Carole Ruhlman; and son, James. Mr. Ruhlman said of Ms. Hood: I get the sense that from the moment I was born, I started knowing her. There is the platonic notion of love in which Plato postulated that one soul is separated from the other at birth and they each spend the rest of their lives searching for the other half. Well, if thats true, he said, then Ive finally found the soul Ive been searching for. Other states, including Georgia and Texas, where Mr. Blinder and Mr. Fernandez have covered executions, respectively, similarly veil information about capital punishment. In Georgia, for example, a law classifies identifying information about the execution team as a confidential state secret. Its a real challenge when youre trying to cover the execution and you dont have a road map for how exactly the execution might proceed, he added. Of course, the states attempts to shield certain information regarding executions were not the only complicating factors. Reporting on executions is inherently challenging, given the intensely emotional atmosphere and the extreme public scrutiny. Those involved from state officials to the family members of both the victim and the inmate are often hesitant to speak with the press. And emotions, understandably, run high. A lot of complex issues emerge over the course of these stories, Mr. Blinder said, and many of them get at some of the most fundamental questions that we face as a society like whether the state should be putting people to death, and, if so, how. But there are other questions, too, Mr. Blinder said lingering questions about an inmates guilt, or about the fairness and thoroughness of the legal system. All these substantive debates are swirling around when it comes to executions, he said. And suddenly they all come home to roost. Through it all, Mr. Blinder adheres to one rule: Do not blindly accept the states account of the execution. Thats one of the most important parts of reporting on these stories, he said. We wait to hear from the media witnesses who observed the execution to tell us if they saw anything abnormal, or improper, or to relay if anything had gone wrong with the execution. Girl Scouts from Troop 6000 on an outing this month. The troop was created in February at a Queens hotel where homeless families have been placed. Credit... Sam Hodgson for The New York Times _________ Every year since 2010 we have invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists, and, so far, over 25,000 have. As a new presidential administration finds its footing here in the United States and as fighting spills across borders and international institutions abroad teachers and students alike may feel that keeping up with the news is more important than ever. We hope our 10-week contest can make that easy. But we also hope students will realize that reading The Times is fun. As youll see in the guidelines below, literally anything published on NYTimes.com in 2017 is fair game. We dont care if you choose a piece about North Korea or naked mole rats, far-right politics, food, fashion or flying cars; we just care what you have to say about why you chose it. Interested? Post any questions you might have in the comments and well answer you there, and watch our webinar on summer and independent reading to learn more. The stretcher carrying the 19-year-old woman was hurried into the emergency department of Banner University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz. Her breath moved in and out erratically. Her jaw was clenched shut, and she held her arms stiffly at her side. The night before, the girl called her mother and told her she was vomiting and had a terrible pain in her stomach. Her mother, who lived in Texas, asked if she needed to go to the emergency room. The girl thought not, so the mother offered to make a doctors appointment for her the next day. But when her mother called her in the morning, to let her know the time of the appointment, she got no answer. Worried, she called her older daughter, also a student at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and asked her to check on the younger. The sister found her in her dorm bathroom, unconscious and covered in vomit. The water was still running in the sink, and an electric toothbrush buzzed nearby, suggesting a sudden, unexpected collapse. The young woman had no medical problems, her sister told the emergency team. But she had gone to the E.R. three months earlier taken by friends who noticed that she seemed confused. At that visit, she had an M.R.I. of her brain and some blood tests. The tests were unremarkable except for a minor abnormality in the test of her liver function. (She saw a doctor for that a few weeks later who didnt pursue it when her levels normalized.) She got better with time and some IV fluids and was sent home later that night. Though testing showed no alcohol or drugs in her system, some of the doctors wondered if shed taken something synthetic marijuana or LSD, perhaps that wouldnt show up. Unresponsive In the E.R., the comatose young woman reacted to pain, but nothing else. She remained rigid, from her jaw to her feet, which suggested a terrible brain injury. But a CT scan of her brain looked normal. The blood tests were likewise unremarkable, save for the same minor abnormality in her liver-function test. Her heart was racing, and her breathing was ragged and irregular enough that the E.R. doctors put her on a ventilator, a machine that breathed for her, to make sure she got enough oxygen. She was sent to the intensive-care unit and given broad-spectrum antibiotics and an antiviral, in case whatever she had was caused by an infection. The territory couldnt be more delicate, but Nise: The Heart of Madness, a mesmerizing drama from Brazil, navigates it skillfully to create a portrait of a real-life doctor who found an alternative to some of the more cruel trends in psychiatric treatment in the middle of the last century. Gloria Pires stars as Dr. Nise da Silveira (1905-1999), who as the film opens is taking up a post at a psychiatric hospital near Rio de Janeiro in 1944. She settles into a seat in a lecture hall where the benefits of lobotomies via thin spike are being extolled, then witnesses a cruel demonstration of another favorite technique, electroshock therapy. I dont believe in healing through violence, she tells colleagues, but, especially since she is a woman, they are dismissive. They assign her to what they think is busywork. She transforms the insult into opportunity, creating a unit in which patients who had been written off are given a chance to express themselves through painting and other art forms. The results are startling. Between the twin 287-foot-high pylons is a pier table the crossbar in a giant H. It is strong enough that a 20-foot length of bridge deck could be cantilevered from it, like a rigid diving board, and remain hanging in air until secured to the pylons by a pair of cables. This asymmetrical load on one side of the pylons placed stress on the structure. To correct the imbalance, the next deck section and cables were installed on the opposite side of the pylons. The structure was in equilibrium again. Back and forth, the deck grew. Then, an inherent imbalance had to be corrected, since the main span is 624 feet long, while the back span, on the other side of the pylons, is only 377 feet long. To compensate, a 4,000-ton counterweight of concrete and steel plates was added under the shorter section. In contrast with the existing bridge, comprising 22 trusses with joints every 160 feet or so, the new K Bridge as officials call it in order not to have to pronounce Kosciuszko has an uninterrupted 1,001-foot span. There are no joints for water and salts to get into, Mr. Gillman said, promising far fewer maintenance headaches in decades to come. Until the second span is completed, the replacement bridge will carry six lanes of traffic, three in each direction. In the final configuration, it will carry five lanes of Queens-bound traffic. The four-lane Brooklyn-bound span will also have a pedestrian and bicycle path, affording a sweeping panorama of Manhattan from 1 World Trade Center to 432 Park Avenue. On April 18, the bridge looked almost ready to open, except for the oddly dissonant color of the five outermost cables, which are coated in a high-density polyethylene that looks orange, although it is officially described as burnt umber. The woman shot dead in the basement of her suburban Connecticut home had struggled with an intruder, her husband told the police just before Christmas in 2015. But over time, the story fell apart as investigators began to rely on a silent witness a Fitbit exercise tracker that recorded the womans last movements and may be the key to solving her murder. The case that began at the house of Richard and Connie Dabate in Ellington, a town of about 15,000 people north of Hartford, and unfolded over the last year highlights the latest example of how exercise devices have become increasingly part of investigators tool kits. Fastened to the body, the exercise devices have a unique proximity as witnesses. They transmit heartbeats, sleep schedules, locations and distances, documenting their hosts life events, from innocent mishaps to criminal encounters. A Fitbit factored into a Pennsylvania sexual assault case in 2015 and a personal injury case in Canada in 2014. A Garmin Vivosmart GPS recorded a young womans struggle with an attacker in a Seattle park in March. The devices are incorporated alongside the more conventional use of searches of sniffer dogs and gunshot residue tests, both of which came up inconclusive in the Dabate case. On a recent overcast afternoon, the line to enter Made Nice, a new 31-seat fast-casual restaurant, snaked onto the sidewalk and down West 28th Street. After all, Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, of the lauded restaurants Eleven Madison Park and NoMad, were attached. Inside the space, with its high ceilings, a Shepard Fairey mural and an open kitchen, some customers excitedly pored over paper menus and trawled for tables, while those lucky enough to be seated were tucking into their quinoa tabbouleh with falafel and pickled beets or khao salad with steak, crispy rice and roasted broccoli. The upbeat background music a mix of hip-hop, 90s hits and current tunes added to the festive vibe. SHIVANI VORA IN THE SEATS Ehtesham Malik, 27, who lives in Harlem; Yuchen Lu, 24, and Chunli Liang, 25, who live in Jersey City; and Julia Park, 20, who lives on the West Side. All are actuary interns for a major insurance company. ON THE PLATES Mr. Malik chose the salmon rosti, which is a frisee salad with smoked salmon, a soft-boiled egg, dill-caper relish, potato croutons, cucumbers, radishes and pickled onions dressed in a buttermilk vinaigrette ($15). To drink, he ordered the Dr. Greens, a house-made soda with apples, mint and celery ($3.50). Ms. Park and Ms. Liang both ate the chicken rice, a combination of braised chicken thighs, basmati rice, Parmesan, tomatoes, scallions, rosemary and lemon ($14). Ms. Lu went with the curried cauliflower, which also had tofu, couscous, coconut, lemongrass, almonds and grapes ($11). For dessert, she ordered the milk and honey soft-serve ice cream with honey brittle, oat shortbread and buckwheat honey ($6). BETHPAGE, N.Y. Firefighter William N. Tolley moved to the sounds of a rumble: the roar of his tower ladder rig and the growls of death metal, twin passions born in his teenage years and forged into night-and-day careers. Outside his funeral at St. Martin of Tours Church here on Thursday, several thousand firefighters listened to more somber resonances: to the whine of bagpipes, the rattle of snare drums and the thrashing of helicopters in formation. And to the silence, when the death of a fastidious fire partner and a father to 8-year-old Isabella was felt by row after row of men and women in blue. He was a hard-core rocker and also a firefighter with a baby seat in the back of his minivan, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in his eulogy, quoting a friends description of Firefighter Tolley, who died on duty with the New York City Fire Department. Talk about range. He was a member of three firefighting companies and a death metal band. His passions drove him to trade in the plastic mask and oxygen tank of his childhood, becoming a 42-year-old with a real-life candy-red rig who drummed at sold-out shows. At the time Kathleen Durst vanished in 1982, Ms. Berman served as a shield between Mr. Durst and tabloid reporters eager to discover what had happened. Ms. Obst testified that Ms. Berman had revealed to her that she had tried to get the police off Bobs back by making a phone call to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, posing as Mr. Dursts wife, who was a student there. The phone call, prosecutors contend, was designed to make the authorities believe that Mrs. Durst was still alive after she left the couples home, 50 miles north of Manhattan. Over the years, Ms. Obst said, she had forgotten the conversation. But The Jinx, a documentary in which she appeared, brought it all back. Still, she did not immediately go to the police. I was afraid of the defendant, Ms. Obst told the court. He kills witnesses. Ultimately, Ms. Obst did contact John Lewin, the deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who is leading the prosecution of Mr. Durst, out of a desire to do the right thing, she said, and to do the right thing by Susan. Ms. Obst was one of a string of witnesses called over three days by the prosecution in what are known as conditional hearings, in which testimony is taken from witnesses age 65 or older who could die or be killed before a trial, which, in this case, is likely to take place sometime next year. Ms. Obst was the second mystery witness to appear in the hearings her name was not publicly revealed until she took the stand. Thousands of firefighters gathered near St. Martin of Tours church in Bethpage, N.Y., on Long Island, on Thursday for the funeral of a New York City firefighter, William N. Tolley. Mr. Tolley, 42, died after falling from the roof of a five-story building in Ridgewood, Queens, a week ago. The Fire Department and federal officials are investigating the cause of the accident, a process that could take months. But experienced fire officials and equipment experts said the accident highlighted the dangers of working high above the street. Not long ago, Dr. Zhang was contacted by a local television news channel to talk about National Infertility Awareness Week. He realized that he didnt know anything about the campaign, and neither, he believed, did many of his colleagues. What possible significance could it have if some of the top practitioners in the field were doing nothing substantial in regard to it? Dr. Zhang decided he wanted to make the effort mean something, that it should be, as he put it, like Restaurant Week, when New York diners are offered reduced prices, in part to attract those who might not otherwise be able to afford the experience. As impetuously as one might choose to have chicken shawarma for lunch rather than a patty melt, Dr. Zhang decided he would hold a lottery to give away 30 in vitro fertilization cycles at no cost, amounting to roughly $1 million worth of treatment. Women age 43 and under would be eligible, and although drugs, which can be thousands of dollars a cycle, would not be included in the windfall, it was possible, after all, that a pharmaceutical company, in all of its largess, might want to participate with an offer of free medication. Couples would merely have to submit some basic information to New Hope via email by May 1. One applicant quickly wrote in that she would love to win Dr. Zhangs lottery because she and her husband had been trying to conceive for eight years, and were now desperate. Lotteries prey on the desperate, of course, and for this reason a similar scheme proposed in Britain several years ago was greeted with a certain horror by ethicists. More recently, some fertility clinics in the United States have employed another sort of gambling model, asking couples to pay more than usual for treatment up front, with the promise that if they did not bear a child, their money would be returned. In the case of Dr. Zhangs lottery, winners must agree to forfeit their anonymity, because their good fortune is to be announced next week via Facebook Live, as if they had won a chance for free makeovers at Sephora. What of the couples already haunted by infertility, the men and women who might have depleted their finances after two or three failed cycles of treatment, whose hearts are now soaring with new hope? What happens when they lose? Dr. Zhangs position remains that his gambit will ultimately lead to more discussion of infertility generally and reveal how vast the community of couples struggling with the issue really is. In a sense, what he is doing merely caricatures the Las Vegas-style medical culture we already live with, especially in New York, where often the best doctors dont take insurance they need not bother making themselves, in effect, available only to the well-off. Last week, prosecutors in Massachusetts agreed to throw out more than 20,000 drug convictions dating back to 2003 because a single crime lab chemist, Annie Dookhan, admitted in 2012 that she had doctored or completely made up drug test results for years. It was the biggest dismissal of its kind in American history. And it should have happened years earlier. Instead, prosecutors dragged their feet like sullen children avoiding homework, making one excuse after another for why they shouldnt have to do the right thing and dismiss convictions based on obviously tainted evidence. As a soon-to-be ex-president, Harry Truman was not lacking in lucrative offers from the private sector. Several corporations had allegedly offered him more than $100,000 to sit on corporate boards or to serve in symbolic positions when he left office. But Mr. Truman, whose reported income in 1954 was just $13,564.74 about $120,000 today steadfastly refused. Explaining his decision, he later wrote, I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency. Only by signing a contract with Life magazine for a goodly sum to write his memoirs was the former president able to exit from his financial difficulties. Fast forward to 2017. This week it was announced that former President Barack Obama, whose net worth upon leaving office has been estimated at $12 million or more, agreed to give a speech for $400,000 about seven times the median income of American families and precisely the amount of his annual salary as president at a conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street firm. A shortage of money can hardly explain Mr. Obamas decision; according to press reports, he and Michelle Obama recently signed book contracts that may be worth as much as $60 million. In accepting the fee, Mr. Obama joins a recent tradition of presidents monetizing their time in office by earning lucrative sums from speeches, corporate directorships, foreign corporations and other private interests. This tradition began with Gerald Ford, who accepted membership on corporate boards of companies such as 20th Century Fox and American Express after leaving office. Capitalizing on the presidency escalated decisively when Ronald Reagan accepted $2 million for a pair of speeches at Japans Fujisankei Communications Group. (In todays dollars, about twice that amount.) And it reached its current-day apex with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who earned a combined $139 million from such undertakings, including $35 million from speeches to financial services, real estate and insurance companies. Mr. Obamas decision to accept the fee from Cantor Fitzgerald embodies an enormous attitudinal shift in the past six decades. When the financially strapped Mr. Truman turned down generous offers, he declined without hesitation, believing that it would violate his own sense of dignity as well as the dignity of the presidency. But no such normative constraints obtain in a society where the disruptive entrepreneur is the cultural hero, the public servant is held in low esteem, and inequality has risen to its highest levels since the 1920s. What was unbecoming in 1953 is now considered appropriate. As much as President Trump has fantasized a glowing future for the fading coal industry, it is the miners of the past and their widows who urgently need help right now from Washington as their retirement health plan collapses. Legislation is being considered in Congress to help 22,500 retired union miners who have received notices that their health care benefits will be cut off on Monday unless new funding is approved. A few short-term fixes have been passed by Congress in recent years. But the miners, many with black lung and other diseases from years of labor down below, deserve a long-term solution for a more secure future. Once firmly financed in the heyday of the industry, the health plan has hit the same hard times as Big Coal, with numerous companies going bankrupt and shedding their responsibility to pay into the fund. The industry has receded in the face of cheaper, cleaner natural gas, while there are fewer career miners contributing to the unions share of the funding. Anxious miners have been buttonholing lawmakers, noting that President Trump, their nonstop champion in his election campaign, has made a show of loosening environmental regulations to help mining companies regain profits. Yet he has been publicly silent on the miners health care problem. Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said he has talked with Mr. Trump privately and has been assured that the president supports a permanent solution for the miners. Tell them Im doing everything I can, Mr. Trump was quoted by the senator. It would be easy to see this as the normal trial-and-error of young people starting out careers, but actually the factory jobs carried dangerous risks. Serious injuries and disabilities were nearly double among those who took the factory jobs, rising to 7 percent from about 4 percent. This risk rose with every month they stayed. The people we interviewed told us about exposure to chemical fumes and repetitive stress injuries. Why were people lining up for hazardous jobs? Partly it was because they did not appreciate the risks, or how hard the work was, until they started. Others anticipated the risks but used factory work as a safety net when times were tough. The people who stayed longer had few alternatives. We have to be careful about generalizing from five businesses in one country, but this study has still shaped our views of factory work. Industrialization is not a quick fix. The first defense of industry probably still holds: Over time, a booming sector tends to improve labor conditions and bid up wages as more businesses compete for workers. But the path there isnt smooth. In the short run workers seem to share few of the benefits but a heavy burden of the risks a burden borne by the desperate and the uninformed. We did not test solutions, but history and our experiences give us ideas. One unexpected lesson is that companies need better middle management. The factory owners and investors told us that high turnover was their biggest concern and that finding good managers to reduce it was their biggest headache. We had the same impression of managers, especially when our study seemed to bring more organization to the hiring process than the companies had seen before. Collecting the names of all applicants, doing a basic screening, briefing people on the job and wages these were all new to most of the managers we met. History tells us to expect management practices and working conditions to improve over time. High employee turnover was certainly costly in the United States and Europe a century ago. In 1913, the Ford Motor Company recorded turnover rates of over 300 percent. Pay was poor and the work hard, and workers left in droves. Many of the modern management strategies we think are about factory efficiency started as attempts to lower this turnover. Eventually they helped make these companies better workplaces. Better human resource management is not the sexiest economic development strategy, but it is definitely an effective one. A second possible solution is social welfare systems and safety nets. With those, desperate people are not forced to risk their health at poorly managed factories. An aspect of our study put this idea to the test. We offered some applicants who did not get the factory job a business start-up package of training and cash. Those people expanded their agricultural or market selling, raised their earnings by a third and did not feel the need to resort to factory jobs. Like other poor countries, Ethiopia is experimenting with various social insurance schemes. That should continue. In the two decades since Indonesia ousted its last dictator, the country has evolved into a democracy based on tolerance and a moderate interpretation of Islam, an encouraging trend in a world where authoritarianism and religious extremism are on the rise. But the election of a new governor of Jakarta, the capital city, last week has raised concerns about whether the worlds most populous Muslim-majority nation may be backsliding. Making sure this doesnt happen is in the interests not just of Indonesians, but of democracies everywhere. After a bitterly contested race that was widely viewed as a test of religious and ethnic tolerance, the governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, conceded to Anies Baswedan, a former education minister. Mr. Basuki is a Christian of Chinese descent in a nation where 190 million of 250 million people are Muslims and the rest are a mix of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. Mr. Basuki provided an opening to his political enemies when he lightheartedly cited a verse in the Quran in September that warns Muslims against taking Christians and Jews as friends. He told voters that given Indonesias transition to democracy in the late 1990s, it would be acceptable for Muslims to cast ballots for Christians. Mr. Basuki was put on trial for blasphemy, but one day after the election, prosecutors decided to drop the charges reinforcing the widespread belief that the whole case was politically motivated. But the damage had been done. The world keenly watched the first-round vote for president in France last Sunday because of the rise of Marine Le Pen, who wants to take the country out of the European Union and shut immigrants out of France. But she came in second to a centrist, Emmanuel Macron, who positioned himself as anti-Le Pen and anti-system. He attributes the nations woes not to outsiders European officials and immigrants but on Frances own sclerotic and unsustainable welfare state. The next French revolution now seems unlikely to be a populist uprising. Polls predict Mr. Macron will easily beat Ms. Le Pen in the May runoff, and if he does, his government would work to strengthen the European Union rather than hold a vote on whether to leave. It would invest more in integrating immigrants into French society, rather than banish them. Most strikingly, Mr. Macron would work to slim down one of the worlds fattest welfare states, rather than build it up as Ms. Le Pen would do. Of course France has attempted welfare state reform before, without success. The latest effort came last year, when Mr. Macron was a minister in the Socialist government, and wrote the Macron laws, opening regulated industries to competition. Those plans set off mass protests, and were watered down, but Mr. Macron says there is a big difference now: Earlier governments were not elected with a mandate to downsize the welfare state, while his could be. Clearly the case for change has grown more urgent. The strong state goes back centuries in France, and its absurdities have been the butt of jokes for almost as long. Georges Clemenceau, who served twice as prime minister between 1906 and 1920, cracked that his country was very fertile: You plant bureaucrats and taxes grow. Over the last decade state spending has grown even more, to 57 percent of gross domestic product, up from 51 percent. To the Editor: Re Trumps Plan Brings Moment of Truth for G.O.P. Deficit Hawks (front page, April 27): The miracle elixir of dramatically cutting taxes while increasing tax revenues through its promised rejuvenating effect on the economy is being peddled yet again. This tonic has been marketed with many different labels over the decades, including supply-side economics, the Laffer curve and Reaganomics. The latest concoction presented by President Trump is being touted as dynamic scoring of tax revenue. Well, it didnt work as advertised under Presidents Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, and most recently had unfortunate side effects, including a lethargic economy and a ballooning state deficit, when tried in Kansas by its Tea Party governor. It received its iconic truth-in-advertising label from George H. W. Bush more than three decades ago when he ridiculed it as voodoo economics. RUSS WEISS PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J. To the Editor: My wife and I traveled to Las Vegas last weekend, and both of us were struck by the enormous gold tower with the bold letters TRUMP at the top. With the news of President Trumps tax reform plan, I couldnt help but wonder how it would benefit the Trump Organization. The comprehensive package of income and property tax cuts that stalled in the Legislature last week touched off some fireworks Thursday when Speaker Jim Scheer of Norfolk announced he'll return the bill to the legislative agenda next week. Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha protested that Scheer was ignoring his own requirement that the sponsor of a bill be able to demonstrate that he or she has the 33 votes required to break a filibuster before a bill that has been trapped by its opponents could be rescheduled for more time-consuming debate. That bill (LB461) does not have 33 votes, Krist declared, despite "this propaganda" to the contrary disseminated by Gov. Pete Ricketts and Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, chairman of the Revenue Committee and sponsor of the legislation. "I don't care if it's the governor's top priority," Krist told the Legislature. "The gloves are off now." Later, during an interview, Smith said that "I have demonstrated (to the Speaker) the votes I believe I have. "This is too important to Nebraska not to go to cloture and not to have a full conversation," he said. Cloture is the motion required to end debate and proceed to a vote. "We not only have too large of a tax burden, but we don't have a plan to take the state forward," Smith said. "This bill targets business growth and job creation in the state." Scheer, interviewed before he left for his home in Norfolk at the beginning of a four-day legislative break, said that "Sen. Smith never implied that he had 33 votes for the bill, but he assured me he has 33 votes for cloture." So, the Speaker said, he has scheduled a second round of debate on the bill for Tuesday afternoon with three hours remaining on the time clock before a cloture motion would be in order. Last week, an attempt to return the bill from its first-stage floor consideration to the Revenue Committee failed on a 15-29 vote. That vote count exposed danger for the proposal, since the showing of support by 29 senators fell four votes short of the 33 senators that ultimately will be required to invoke cloture and end the filibuster. Scheer said he recognizes that some senators may vote for cloture but not for the bill, a pattern that has emerged in earlier legislative showdowns. And, the Speaker said, "I know things can change, because people have a tendency to tell whoever they're talking to what they want to hear. "I'll be very, very surprised if it's not close" when the cloture vote is taken late Tuesday afternoon, Scheer said. Smith said any decision to block the bill from further consideration would have "denied the citizens and businesses of the state their day." Looking ahead, Smith said guiding a controversial bill through what will be a legislative minefield will be a challenge "with one roadblock after another." "It is fluid," he said. "You have to manage it. You pick them up and you lose them" as senators move toward a cloture motion. The governor has "reached out and talked to senators," Smith said. "But I'm not carrying water for the governor," he said. "I'm carrying water for the businesses and taxpayers of this state." Those restrictions have forced clinics across the country to close their doors, curbing access to facility-based procedures, especially for lower-income women. Even where women have access to providers, they often face multiple barriers to care, including weekslong waits for an appointment, crowds of protesters at clinics and a price up to $600. Since 2011, when the first of those restrictions were enacted, researchers have documented a sharp increase in the number of Google searches for self-induced abortion. Alarmed by the trends, some have warned of a return to the era before Roe v. Wade, when women were forced to risk their lives with coat hangers. And indeed, in September 2015, a woman in Tennessee was charged with attempted murder for using a hanger to try to abort her 24-week-old fetus. The reality, however, is that increasingly, self-induced abortion in the United States means using pills procured through the mail, much as it is in many other countries. Women on Web, a Netherlands-based nonprofit collective that pioneered the practice of putting the pills directly into womens hands, has provided abortion medications to more than 50,000 women in 130 countries. While Women on Web focuses on serving women in countries where abortion is legally restricted, Safe2Choose, a social enterprise formed in 2015, sends nearly half of its shipments to countries where abortion has long been legal and widely available. Its the convenience and the privacy, said a Safe2Choose executive who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. You dont have to pay hundreds of dollars. Though the groups do not mail pills to the United States neither organization is willing to risk a legal backlash that could harm operations elsewhere the Safe2Choose website receives tens of thousands of monthly visitors from the United States alone, the executive said. First they watch the video, then they read the testimonials. They seem to want to understand how it works and to assess whether were reliable. The fact is, women in the U.S. are already doing this, and the reproductive health community needs to catch up, Ms. Wells said. We started Plan C because we believe its time for bold action. We have to make sure women have the information they need, that they know their rights for example, that they are not obligated to report to the police or providers that they have taken abortion pills; that the drugs cant be detected in their blood; and that knowing that a woman has used the pills has no bearing on follow-up care, which is the same as for a natural miscarriage. The risks of self-induced abortion today are primarily legal. Weve discovered 40 different kinds of laws that are potentially implicated when someone ends their own pregnancy, said Jill E. Adams, chief strategist of the Self-Induced Abortion Legal Team, a nonprofit consortium formed in 2015 to support advocates who legally share information on self-induced abortion and to halt its criminalization. So far, she said, the S.I.A. team has identified 18 arrests related to self-induced abortion around the country, but Im afraid thats just what made the news. I suspect the true number is significantly higher. Ordinarily, a case granted in mid-January is heard in April, with a decision by the time the term ends in late June. But Trinity Lutheran wasnt scheduled last April. Nor was it scheduled when the new term opened in October, nor the rest of last fall, nor the opening months of 2017. The only plausible explanation for this highly unusual delay is that without Justice Scalia, the court was divided 4 to 4. A tie vote affirms the lower courts ruling, which is hardly what the justices who voted to hear this case had in mind. Finally, in February, the court chose April 19 as the argument date. The reason probably had nothing to do with guesswork over whether Judge Neil Gorsuch would be confirmed in time to participate in the April arguments. Rather, because the court hears no arguments after April, failing to schedule the case this month would have pushed it off for still another term. An oddity would have become an embarrassment. That brings us to April 13 of this year, when Missouris new governor, Eric Greitens, a Republican who succeeded Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, announced that he disagreed with the existing policy and would henceforth make grants for playgrounds available to church-related schools that qualified. With the argument looming, the Supreme Court directed both sides to explain how the states change of position affected the case. Both sides replied with letters that resisted any suggestion that the case was moot. The policy might change back someday, the Missouri attorney general told the justices. The church, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent Christian-right advocacy organization, might well have declared victory, but instead argued for keeping the case alive. It agreed with the state that the change might not be permanent and also suggested seemingly against its own interests that the Missouri Supreme Court might view the new policy as a violation of the states Constitution. During last weeks argument in Justice Gorsuchs first week on the bench the justices paid scant attention to the procedural issue. The churchs lawyer, David A. Cortman, was nearly out of time before Justice Stephen G. Breyer addressed it by asking him, Why isnt the case moot? The justice seemed unpersuaded by the lawyers answer that the policy might change again if the political winds change. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that while the case might not be technically moot, the court wouldnt have considered it an appropriate case to review if it had arrived in the posture it has since acquired. As experienced court watchers know, oral argument is only the tip of the decisional iceberg. The fact that the justices didnt debate mootness in public doesnt mean they are not debating it in private. Clearly, some members of the court have spent the past year clinging to this case as the best vehicle at hand for advancing the conservatives project of lowering the barrier between church and state, and they wont want to give it up now. Just as clearly, others are not on board, and they may see the late-breaking development as the only chance to slow down a fast-moving train. Last Thursday, the day after the argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. traveled to Lancaster, Pa., to speak at the annual Third Circuit Judicial Conference, the Mid-Atlantic federal circuit where he served as a federal appeals court judge before being named to the Supreme Court. Justices who speak at these conferences, as they do regularly, generally avoid making news, and Justice Alito, perhaps feeling uninhibited among friends, may not have realized he was making any. But as reported by Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal, he did. Having eight was unusual and awkward, Justice Alito said, according to The Journal article. That probably required having a lot more discussion of some things and more compromise and maybe narrower opinions than we would have issued otherwise, but as of this Monday, we were back to an odd number. Thats a bold statement that hardly needs translation, but heres mine anyway: Weve got our mojo back. Consensus? That was so 2016. And the Roberts court in 2017? Now it begins. To the Editor: Re The L.G.B.T. Trump Fallacy (editorial, April 17): While President Trumps record so far may be murky, he has made pro-L.G.B.T. policy a matter of record. He has called sustained funding of H.I.V./AIDS programs highest priorities in his budget. He intends to preserve an executive order maintaining L.G.B.T. nondiscrimination in federal contracting. And he has preserved a State Department job tasked with advocating global L.G.B.T. human rights at a time when gay men are being rounded up, tortured and executed in Chechnya. His United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, issued a statement on the matter, declaring that the Trump administration is against all forms of discrimination, including against people based on sexual orientation. Your editorial closes by saying for the foreseeable future, the federal courts are likely to be the only avenue of progress. That may be true, but the last three times the Supreme Court issued landmark rulings in support of L.G.B.T. equality, it was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who wrote the opinions. Everybody knows that Trump wants a can-do record when he hits Day 100 on Saturday. To get there, he appeared to be adopting the garb of Somewhat Normal Republican (SNORE). The House leaders were working out an agreement with conservatives on health care, tossing people with pre-existing ailments over the rail. The administration seemed ready to make a deal with Democrats to keep the government running. And his new tax plan is almost identical to the approach his recent Republican predecessors have taken, which is basically to cut the heck out of revenue and to hell with the deficit. The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth, said Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The idea that huge tax cuts will gin up the economy so much that everything will balance out is a beloved fairy tale. It can be found in the same book as The Beauty Starves the Beast, which tells the saga of a handsome prince who cut down a thicket of taxes, and was saved from a witchs curse when Congress arrived with matching cuts in spending. The president was not around for the news conference in which his plan was revealed, in the form of a super-short press release. (The description of how the administration wants to help families with child care costs was, in total, providing tax relief.) For a man who loves drama, Trumps domestic role lately has been super undramatic. While the senators were getting off their buses, Trump went before the cameras to announce that hes directed the secretary of education to investigate whether there are too many federal regulations of public schools. We can already guess where this one is going, so there wasnt a lot of suspense the high point of the event was his introduction of the new governor of Alabama, who had arrived at her office through the time-honored method of waiting for her superior to get driven out of office in a sex scandal. Its a bit ironic that Trump makes such a show of directing his cabinet members to do things when the administration hasnt gotten around to nominating their top staff. Do you think Mnuchin would have had a longer tax description to hand out if he had an assistant secretary for tax policy? When President Xi Jinping of China took power almost five years ago, he quickly gained control of the commanding heights of the Chinese party-state, taking charge of the military, foreign policy, domestic security and a fearsome anticorruption commission. In centralizing decision making in his office, Mr. Xi also grabbed hold of something his two immediate predecessors never did during their lengthy stays in office: He placed himself in charge of economic policy. Mr. Xis authoritarian instincts have served him well politically. Chinese leaders from Mao Zedong onward have always had rivals among senior leaders. As he looks ahead to securing a second five-year term at the Communist Party Congress in the fall, Mr. Xi appears to have none. With this enormous power, Mr. Xi has pushed through once-in-a-generation changes in military structure and personnel, built a new national security council, pressed Chinas claims in the South China Sea and overseen the largest antigraft campaign since the 1949 Communist Revolution. On todays episode: How are voters faring 100 days in? We check back in with past Daily guests: David Green, the head of Hobby Lobby, the family-owned craft store chain that took a fight over conservative values all the way to the Supreme Court, and the author of the book Giving It All Away ... And Getting It All Back Again. Mitch Jacques, a doctor in coal country whose patients hate Obamacare but may need it most. Mark Napier, a sheriff on the Mexican border, where illegal immigration is part of the landscape. Background reading: Circling back to Trump voters, 100 days in. Trump wants it known: Grading 100 days is ridiculous (but his were the best). 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. William Rhodes wanted to buy a single-family house in Fairfield County, Conn., not far from where he grew up in Darien. I wanted to do some fixing, said Mr. Rhodes, who is known to his friends as Tip. I didnt want it to be move-in-ready and immaculate. He and his girlfriend, Victoria Walsh, had been renting in Darien, which was far too expensive. There, a $700,000 house was on the low end of the market and that was a knock-down, start-from-scratch kind of place, he said. His budget was up to $400,000. Norwalk was a realistic choice. Mr. Rhodes, 32, a University of Connecticut graduate who is now a financial products salesman in Shelton, Conn., studied listings for a few years. Early last fall, having saved diligently, he visited a three-bedroom house new to the market, not far from Norwalk Harbor. Sifting through teaspoons of clay and sand scraped from the floors of caves, German researchers have managed to isolate ancient human DNA without turning up a single bone. Their new technique, described in a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, promises to open new avenues of research into human prehistory and was met with excitement by geneticists and archaeologists. Its a bit like discovering that you can extract gold dust from the air, said Adam Siepel, a population geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. An absolutely amazing and exciting paper, added David Reich, a genetics professor at Harvard who focuses on ancient DNA. Horses sacrificed by fierce nomads living in Central Asia more than 2,000 years ago have provided new insights into how people tamed the wild animals and bred them to their needs. The Scythians roamed over a vast swath of this region, from Siberia to the Black Sea, for about 800 years beginning about the ninth century B.C. They were known for their equestrian battle skills, including the ability to shoot arrows while riding, and for the brutal treatment of those they defeated. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, wrote that the Scythians blinded their slaves, and the warriors drank the blood of the first enemy they killed in battle. In a study published Thursday by the journal Science, an international team of researchers deployed the latest genetic tools with 13 stallions that were buried in a mound in what is now Kazakhstan, well-preserved in the permafrost. (The Scythians appear to have only sacrificed male horses.) The decoded DNA not only provides insights into the ancient horses, but also suggests the Scythians were more than warriors. Remember when it seemed as though Ajit Pai, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was seeking the tech industrys input on changes to the so-called net neutrality rules? Perhaps he did not listen very carefully to what they had to say. On Wednesday, Mr. Pai outlined a plan to loosen the governments oversight of high-speed internet providers. The heart of that oversight has been the concept of net neutrality. Support for the principle spurred, among other F.C.C. actions, the classification of broadband as a common carrier service like telephones, which are subject to strong government oversight. The Legislature spent more than eight hours Wednesday debating the state budget into the evening, turning away one amendment that would have restored money to a Department of Roads fund and failing to reach a compromise on funding for Title X women's health services. Speaker Jim Scheer told senators as 9 p.m. approached they'd had ample opportunity to try to discuss the bill (LB327), but the debate had not been fruitful for development of good legislation. "I'm hoping in the future that we will take our duties seriously," he said. "This is the main-line budget. ... I know a great many of you were dismayed that we didn't get an opportunity to actually discuss this bill." The Legislature should have spent the eight hours talking about the depth and details of the budget that the Appropriations Committee put together over more than three months, he said. "This is the most-important bill we will have in front of us this year," he said. He stopped debate with a 42-6 cloture vote, then senators voted 36-1 to advance the bill. Lawmakers on either side of the Title X funding issue will be expected to get together before the bill comes back for further debate to reach a compromise, he said. "That doesn't mean that everything in the bill is going to be agreeable to everyone," he said. Early in the afternoon, some senators expressed concern that wording in the bill regarding funding for Title X women's health services offered at community clinics could result in 15,000 to 30,000 fewer people having access to family planning and women's health services. Some Appropriations Committee members said the wording change came late in their deliberations and they didn't fully understand the effect it would have on the funding of clinics. "This proposal never had a hearing," said Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus. "It's a policy change in the budget. And the budget is supposed to be a funding mechanism, not a policy mechanism." Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers said it plainly was an attempt to stop funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. The issue surfaces periodically, Schumacher said. And this time it surfaced in the budget, rather than through a bill. Another time it surfaced was in 2006, when then-Sen. Mike Foley filed an amendment to the budget that would have changed a traditional bid process, and as a result limited funding to Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics that offer abortion referrals and information. The Legislature didn't adopt the amendment in 2006, in part because some senators were upset that Foley wasn't more honest about his reasons for trying to change how state dollars were distributed, according to news reports. Lincoln Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks said she has two amendments to file on the bill that would ensure that all the clinics that have been funded in the past will be funded again, and that the Department of Health and Human Services could not withhold some or all of the $1.3 million in funding for reimbursement for women's health services. By evening, she said, senators were beginning to hear from their constituents that the clinics and the services they offer are important to women and to men in their districts. Earlier in the day, an amendment that would have restored $15 million of $30 million that the Appropriations Committee proposed taking from the Highway Cash Fund failed on a 20-27 vote. Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson, who introduced the amendment, said motor fuel tax receipts should not be diverted to purposes other than highways and infrastructure. It sets a precedent and slows road construction, he said. The Appropriations Committee also learned mid-afternoon that the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board had lowered projected tax collections for this year and for the 2017-19 budget years by a total of $55 million. Appropriations Committee Chairman John Stinner said that will cause another hurdle for the committee to have to come up with that much more money to balance the budget. My surfing instructor, Johnny Linares, was sizing up my form as one might look at an underwhelming used car on the dealer lot. O.K., he said. Its not bad. But you have to push up faster and get on your feet. Get on your feet, my friend! I was in a slick wet suit, facedown on an old stone bench near the Playa Makaha, a rocky beach close to the Parque del Amor in the Miraflores district of Perus capital, Lima. Mr. Linares, who has been surfing for 27 of his 40 years, had succeeded in wearing me out before we had even entered the water. Push up with the arms, he barked. Right foot on the board! Now stand all the way up! Well, he said, seeming less than encouraged, I think well just see how it goes in the water. My lesson was not only an education, but also a respite from the intense urbanism of Lima, a city of 8.7 million people one of the largest in the Americas. This ciudad de los reyes, or city of kings, as its sometimes called, traces its history to long before Pizarro arrived to conquer the Incas. Today, its truly an international city, with a wealth of sights, tastes and activities that connect the present with its ancient past (all on a relatively inexpensive budget, of course). I also met people like Mr. Linares, who, while perhaps unable to mold me into the next Duke Kahanamoku, did his best, demonstrating both a kindness and a doggedness of spirit that I repeatedly encountered elsewhere in the city. My transfer from the Lima international airport, which I arranged with my hotel, went smoothly. Pumas Casa, which I booked through Booking.com for $35 per night, or about 115 Peruvian soles, offered a pickup service for $17. (As with all of its reservations, the site acted as a facilitator. Expect to pay in dollars or local currency when you arrive.) I was landing close to midnight and didnt want to worry about transport, and Im glad I had arranged the pickup the onslaught of taxi drivers pushing their services can be overwhelming. The Republican plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something quite different is heading for a House vote Thursday, after an embarrassing false start in March. The bill, the American Health Care Act, has changed considerably since it was first introduced. Heres a refresher course to our coverage of whats inside it. Click the links for fuller stories on each subject. A set of proposed changes has won over most members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, which opposed the original G.O.P. bill. The compromise would allow states to waive three big Obamacare rules. The laws essential health benefits provision was devised to keep insurance to a minimum standard and make it useful for people who need it. If theyre going to offer a tax credit for people who are buying insurance, well, what is insurance? said Mark Pauly, a professor of health care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, noting that you might end up with the government paying for plans that covered aromatherapy but not hospital care. You have to specify whats included. Obamacares community rating provision helps protect people with pre-existing conditions from being charged more than healthy customers. Technically, the deal would still prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with a history of illness. But without community rating, health plans would be free to charge those patients as much as they wanted. Obamacares age rating rule lowers premiums for older Americans, who tend to use more health care services though it raises prices for younger customers. By discouraging older people from buying insurance, the plan would lower the average sticker price of care. But that doesnt mean prices would get lower for everyone. States that pursue waivers of these three rules would be required to set up special programs for high-cost patients. States have tried high-risk pools before, with mixed results. Carl Zimmer, a science writer, explained the new study in The Times. We caught up with him via email. Q. How big is this? A. If it turned out to be true, it would be a very big deal, pushing back human occupation in the Americas over 100,000 years. But thats a very, very big if, based on my interviews with other experts. Q. You reported that theres quite a bit of skepticism. What should we make of that? A. This is part of the scientific process. Scientists develop a hypothesis to explain evidence and test it, and then its up to other researchers to challenge its premises and find ways to test it for themselves. This particular case reveals how the standards of proof can go up when the stakes go up. If people want to make a big claim, other scientists are going to expect a lot of evidence to back it up. Experts I spoke to thought that evidence fell short in this case. Q. What would life in California have been like 130,000 years ago? A. It would be pretty nice. The weather would be comfortable, and there would be lots of grass and trees. The area was home to many big animals, including camels, giant ground sloths and dire wolves (sort of like the ones in Game of Thrones). Q. Suppose its right, could modern Californians be related? A. Its very hard to see how any humans in California 130,000 years ago could be the ancestors of any living humans. But there were a number of other lineages of humans, such as Neanderthals, that existed in that age. Theyd be more likely candidates. More than a half-century after a violent, dramatic criminal case in central Florida earned national attention, the State Senate passed a resolution Thursday apologizing to the families of four black men who were victims of racial hatred and gross injustices during the era of state-sanctioned segregation in the American South. The so-called Groveland Four Charles Greenlee, Ernest Thomas, Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd were accused of raping a white woman in 1949 near the city of Groveland in Lake County, Fla. One was killed within days. Three were beaten in custody and convicted. Of those, one was shot dead on his way to a retrial. They are all dead now. The resolution, which earlier passed the Florida House, extended a heartfelt apology for their mistreatment and wrongful convictions, and urged Gov. Rick Scott to grant them full pardons. Were very hopeful that the governor and his cabinet will appreciate the message thats being sent, said Gary Farmer, a Democrat in the Senate who sponsored the bill along with Bobby DuBose, a Democrat in the House. Its bipartisan, and theres really no question about these mens innocence. Mr. Williams was executed at 11:05 p.m. after the United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal from his lawyers, who sought to block the execution on the grounds that their client was intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty. Prison officials said that he requested holy communion as his last meal. Image Mr. Williams was executed on Thursday night. Credit... Arkansas Department of Correction, via Associated Press The death chamber in nearby Varner is Arkansass ultimate clearinghouse for capital cases, the site of all of the states executions in the modern era of the American death penalty. The area is one of the countrys sparsely populated death chamber locales, places of peculiar notoriety whose very names can be statewide shorthand for capital punishment and hard prison time: Angola, La.; Parchman, Miss.; Raiford, Fla. But it is exceptionally rare for any such place to hold an execution for a crime committed in the area. And no case connected to Arkansass recent spate of executions, when the state intended to put eight inmates to death over less than two weeks, was more locally resonant than the one that involved Mr. Boren, a former Internal Revenue Service worker who had been an assistant warden at the Cummins Unit, the prison where Mr. Williams awaited his execution. Mr. Borens nickname was Pee-Wee, and Mr. Williams murdered him after escaping from the prison. I personally know part of the Boren family, and, of course, naturally we empathize with them, said Charles R. Knight, the mayor of nearby Grady, where the city limits end just a few miles from prison watchtowers. But we empathize for all of the families involved, and being Christian, we also empathize with the inmates as well. From my standpoint, I look at it as, this is the law, this is what the law has allotted and this is what we do. WASHINGTON As a Friday night deadline approaches to prevent a government shutdown, one hot-button spending issue is a down payment to build a wall on the southern border, one of President Trumps signature national security goals. Mr. Trump appeared to soften his demand late on Monday, saying he would settle for additional funds for border security. But then on Tuesday, he insisted again, The walls going to get built, folks. In the run-up to this divisive debate, John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, has escalated his rhetoric about threats facing the United States. The risk is as threatening today as it was that September morning almost 16 years ago, Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, said in a speech last week at George Washington University. Mr. Kelly suggested that undocumented immigrants may not be the only threat coming across the border with Mexico, pointing to the possibility of terrorists using the same smuggling routes to infiltrate the United States. President Trump campaigned on a promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. But the president hit a major roadblock on Friday after members of his own party revolted and pulled his proposed health care legislation. Heres how it played out: On Thursday, President Trump gave Congress an ultimatum to hold a vote on the floor. But by Friday, Paul Ryan told him he didnt have the votes to repeal the bill. The Republicans who said No to Trump fell into several camps. There was the hardline conservative Freedom Caucus,which wanted a complete repeal of Obamacare. One of its members, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, had tweeted earlier that he had never faced a worse bill than the ACHA.. Moderate Republicans in the so-called Tuesday Group worried that Trumps measure removed benefits their constituents depend on, like more subsidies for seniors. By days end, there was no shortage of fingerpointing. Ryan looked inward. President Trump told the New York Times that it was the Democrats fault, not Paul Ryans or even his own. But the New York Times is also reporting that Paul Ryan had to talk Trump off the ledge from naming and shaming the Freedom Caucus for sinking the bill. Whoevers to blame, Obamas signature domestic achievement will remain in place for now. The April 11 letter from the inspector general did not specify what payment from a foreign government was at issue. But Mr. Flynn is known to have been paid more than $45,000 by RT, the Kremlin-financed news network, to give a speech in Moscow in December 2015. More than two months after Mr. Flynn was fired as national security adviser, his links to Moscow continue to bedevil the Trump administration, which itself has been dogged by reports of ties between Russian officials and the presidents associates. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees and the F.B.I. are investigating allegations that Mr. Trumps associates colluded with Russia before and after last years presidential election. Mr. Flynn, an unconventional and often contentious former three-star Army general, is at the center of the inquiries. Apart from the paid speech in Moscow a trip during which he was photographed dining at the elbow of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia there are questions about conversations he had last year with the Russian ambassador to the United States. He was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about those conversations. It is not clear whether Mr. Flynn is cooperating with any of the investigations. But last month, he offered to sit down with congressional investigators in exchange for immunity, a deal that lawmakers say was declined, at least for now. The White House has so far declined requests from both congressional Republicans and Democrats to provide the House Oversight Committee with internal documents related to Mr. Flynn. The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Mr. Trump was really making fools of the members of Congress of his own party by asking them to support a health bill that is unpopular with the public. If they vote on it, the minute they cast that vote, they put doo-doo on their shoe, she said. Republican leaders in both chambers plan to pass the stopgap measure to give lawmakers another week to work out a spending package to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The longer-term spending deal is expected to provide more funding for the military and for border security, although Mr. Trump backed off his demand that lawmakers provide money for the wall he wants to build along the border with Mexico. Mr. Ryan brushed off the threat from Democrats. I would be shocked that they would want to see a government shutdown, he said. But Mr. Trump was not so dismissive. He unleashed a torrent of Twitter posts on Thursday accusing Democrats of wanting to shut down the government. The posts accused Democrats of putting the needs of health insurance companies, Puerto Rico and undocumented immigrants over the military, visitors to national parks and coal miners claims that Democrats called absurd. The latest House plan to repeal and replace the health law would include an amendment drafted by Representative Tom MacArthur, Republican of New Jersey and a leader of a centrist bloc of lawmakers called the Tuesday Group. Mr. MacArthurs amendment would allow states to opt out of certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including one that requires insurers to provide a minimum set of health benefits and another that prohibits insurers from charging higher premiums based on a persons health status. WASHINGTON The stampede of diners who once rushed through the State Departments vast cafeteria has ebbed, with diplomats who previously grabbed quick bites between meetings now lingering over Korean barbecue and checking their phones for some kind of news. Many have little to do until the Trump administration starts filling the nearly 200 jobs at the department that require Senate confirmation, and their agendas look increasingly as though they will remain empty. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has done almost nothing to select leaders for the White Houses consideration, and nominations for assistant secretaries and others who largely run the State Department are unlikely to be made for months. In an unusual interview, R. C. Hammond, Mr. Tillersons spokesman, said the secretary intended to embark within days on a listening tour of the building and then a restructuring of the departments operations. Only after those are underway will he begin to name his wider leadership team. With a Senate confirmation process that takes months, that means the department will remain largely leaderless until well into 2018. And no other department in the federal government is as dependent on political appointees, or as paralyzed when the appointment process freezes. Lincoln police said a Lancaster County inmate who died early Thursday was medically cleared for jail hours before his death. Terry Flournoy, 54, apparently died of natural causes, the department said in a news release. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday. Police arrested Flournoy Wednesday at 5:24 p.m. near 14th and N streets, Officer Katie Flood said in the release. Flournoy had an outstanding warrant for misdemeanor trespassing, and the officer took him to jail. During the intake process, jail staff expressed concern over Flournoys high blood pressure, she said. An ambulance took him to a local hospital to assess whether he was fit to be booked at the jail, Flood said. Hospital staff released him at 7:36 p.m., she said. An officer then took Flournoy back to jail and jailers booked him. At 1:53 a.m., police and emergency responders were summoned to the jail after receiving a report of an inmate in medical distress, the release said. Flournoy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:10 a.m. Chief Jeff Bliemeister said jail staff acted quickly and the inmate had a "complex medical history." State law requires a grand jury investigation any time a person dies in custody or while being arrested. WASHINGTON The Trump administrations losing streak in courts around the nation has in large part been a product of precedents established by conservative judges in the Obama era. It turns out that legal principles meant to curb executive overreach are indifferent to the presidents party. Republican officials had great success under President Barack Obama in persuading judges to block or complicate his efforts to expand health care, shield immigrants from deportation and protect transgender students. Now Democratic officials are using the principles established in those cases to frustrate President Trumps efforts to limit travel from predominantly Muslim countries and to punish so-called sanctuary cities. Both sides have shown remarkable dexterity in their understanding of the law, abruptly switching positions on issues like whether states have standing to sue, whether individual federal judges may issue nationwide injunctions and whether a federal threat to withhold funds can amount to a constitutional violation. Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law, said Democratic officials should strive for more consistency, even if only as a matter of self-interest. Whatever California can do to resist immigration law, Professor Blackman said, Texas can do to resist environmental laws. WASHINGTON Two American service members were killed and a third was wounded Wednesday night in an operation in the same part of Afghanistan where the military dropped its most powerful conventional weapon two weeks ago, the Pentagon said. The soldiers were taking part in a lengthy raid that was supported by airstrikes from American warplanes and that was targeting the Islamic State in Nangarhar Province, said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. A number of Islamic State fighters have been engaging in a long-running battle with Afghanistan security forces in the Achin district. Achin is where the Pentagon deployed on April 13 what is nicknamed the mother of all bombs, aimed at Islamic State fighters who were hiding in caves and a tunnel complex. The Defense Department deemed the operation successful, but fighting has continued there and the Afghanistan military, supported by the Defense Department, has yet to clear the area of remaining Islamic State fighters. Defense Department officials were waiting until immediate family was notified before releasing the names of the two soldiers killed. Officials said that a third soldier was wounded when they came under attack during the raid. DAKAR, Senegal A court in Senegal on Thursday upheld the war crimes conviction of Hissene Habre, the former leader of a murderous government in Chad, keeping in place a life sentence and establishing a trust fund for the scores of victims who fought for years to bring him to justice. It took an hour for the court to read a summary of its more than 200-page ruling on an appeal from Mr. Habre, who did not appear in court. He has dismissed the entire case against him as sham justice by a court that he contends has no jurisdiction over the case. Habres life sentence is a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalize their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end, said Reed Brody, a lawyer who has doggedly pursued the case since 1999 on behalf of victims. A special court created to hear Mr. Habres case in Senegal, where he has been living in exile, convicted him last May of crimes against humanity and torture. The panel of judges on Thursday threw out a sex crimes charge. Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, spends weeks at a time in Geneva, and he was holed up in a hotel there for so long last year that critics called him the president of the Hotel Intercontinental. Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria, traveled to Britain and stayed there for weeks this year to receive medical treatment. His absence from his country was never fully explained. While campaigning for office, Ghanas new president, Nana Akufo-Addo, like many candidates in the region, traveled to Europe and America to build up international support for his campaign. One of the legislators cited in Mr. Benjamins complaint, Richard Acheampong, is accused of securing a visa for a woman he said was his wife, saying she was to accompany him for a two-week vacation in Britain. The High Commission said the woman was still in Britain. Mr. Acheampong has not offered information to help authorities track her, according to British officials. The letter also asserts that another member of Parliament, Joseph Benhazin Dahah, initially applied for visas for a wife and niece, but when the application for his niece was denied, he applied to the Republic of Ireland from another country, changing the name of his wife and claiming the person he originally identified as his niece was his daughter. A third member of Parliament, Johnson Kwaku Adu, traveled to Britain last July with his wife and 16-year-old daughter for what was supposed to be a two-week vacation. He returned to Ghana after just two days, but his wife and daughter are apparently still in Britain. The High Commission has accused him of facilitating the transport of a minor who cannot be traced. Eduardo Bravo, past chairman of the Mexican Entrepreneur Association, said he was relieved by the way the issue had been resolved on Wednesday but warned that there was still a rough road ahead, describing the White Houses behavior as very schizophrenic. Really, you have to maintain hope and keep working to maintain the relationship, he said. Theres a lot of work to do. In interviews with politicians, analysts, economists, business leaders and former diplomats, a general sentiment had emerged throughout the day on Wednesday that Mr. Trumps threat to withdraw from the treaty using an executive order was mostly a piece of political theater aimed as much at his voting base as at Mexico and Canada and not something to get terribly worked up about. Some speculated that the news of the order was a controlled leak intended to gauge the reaction of the other Nafta parties and put them on the defensive. The generous analysis would be that hes playing brinkmanship and trying to up the ante, said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican diplomat to the United States. This is a way to sort of rattle the scabbard and say that hes got a saber in it and say, If you dont agree to my demands, then Im going to end up pressing the nuclear button. Still, the news came as a surprise to many who had been watching the process closely. After months of tough talk by Mr. Trump, his administration had appeared to be on track to begin negotiations over Nafta as soon as this summer. Administration officials circulated a draft of a letter in March that laid out goals in a negotiation, an obligatory step in the process. The letter suggested a far more modest approach than Mr. Trump had threatened, leaving much of Nafta intact. TIJUANA, Mexico It was not the first time Robert L. Brownell Jr. had seen a dead vaquita, the rare and endangered porpoise that was lying on the stainless-steel necropsy table inside the Tijuana Zoo on Monday. But it might well be one of the last. Mr. Brownell, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had in effect discovered the porpoise, finding the first full, dead specimen in 1966. The worlds smallest member of the cetacean grouping, which includes whales and dolphins, the vaquita was the most recent cetacean to be recognized by modern science. Now it may well become the latest to go extinct. A high-level, bilateral panel of Mexican and American scientists met this week and is expected to announce that it believes efforts to save the animal have, essentially, failed. That announcement would mean that the only hope for the vaquitas recovery would be to capture the surviving animals, if any can be found. Some of the scientists involved think the surviving vaquitas now number as few as two or three, and the latest two vaquitas found dead could even be the last ones though it could take years to confirm that. The vaquita has been described, by some of the few people who have seen one of the elusive porpoises alive, as the smiley-faced sea panda because of the dark outlines around its mouth and the black circles around its eyes. Its plight has drawn in celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Leonardo DiCaprio, and spurred cooperation among scientists and environmentalists, north and south of the border, in and out of government. The contrast was on sharp display when Ms. Haley chaperoned the 14 members of the Security Council on a visit to the White House on Monday. Neither Mr. Tillerson nor any of his aides were present, with a spokesman explaining that his schedule did not enable him to participate. Mr. Tillerson has skipped meetings with world leaders at the White House too, though he continues to spend considerable time with President Trump. His defenders say that Mr. Tillerson is confident of the presidents support and that Mr. Tillerson does not believe he needs to appear in front of reporters or TV cameras to confirm his place as the nations chief diplomat. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process. Any notion that theres some kind of competition between Haley and Tillerson is laughable, said James J. Carafano, a Heritage Foundation fellow and a member of the Trump transition team. Shes filling a role and is comfortable in that role, and I dont think Tillerson feels threatened by that. Ms. Haley has by no means replaced Mr. Tillerson as the administrations preferred voice on foreign affairs, according to a top White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Indeed, some in the White House see her as seeking a bit too much attention as the administration formulates its foreign policy, the official said, noting that it is not seen as a problem that needs an immediate solution. The White House is riven by feuds, with various cabinet members vying for prominence, and while Mr. Trump has a business-centric reverence for Mr. Tillerson, he is said to like Ms. Haley. There was a hint of that tension on Monday during the White House lunch for the Security Council diplomats. Now, does everybody like Nikki? the president asked his lunch guests. Because if you dont, otherwise, she can easily be replaced. BEIJING He has a lakeside villa valued at more than $3 million, two Mercedes sedans in the garage and a butler who fluffs his pillows and shines his shoes. But Liu Xiyu, a real estate executive in Beijing, still lacks the convenience he says he most wants in life: an American green card. Fed up with Chinas rampant air pollution and the rigid school system his children endure, Mr. Liu pledged $500,000 to a California housing development last year in hopes of obtaining a special visa for investors, known as EB-5, which would allow his family to spend more time in the United States. Now, President Trumps vow to tighten immigration policies and new scrutiny after a series of fraud and abuse scandals have spurred thousands of Chinese applicants like Mr. Liu to seek a visa before more stringent requirements can be put in place. For about 25 million people in South Korea who live within 50 miles of the North Korean border including residents of Seoul, the capital it has long been a sobering reality that they are the most vulnerable to attack by the government in Pyongyang, with which South Korea has technically been at war for decades. That perennial threat has intensified in recent weeks, with the Trump administration warning that it would consider all options, including military strikes, to thwart North Koreas nuclear ambitions. North Korea, meanwhile, has conducted missile tests and huge live-fire artillery drills, and analysts say it is prepared to conduct its sixth test of a nuclear weapon. For some residents like Hyun Jae-gyun, one of the teachers who brought the children to the war memorial that has led to a rising sense of foreboding and an urge to prepare. Teachers are aware that this is an issue, and we should prepare our kids, he said. But many more people in Seoul seemed to respond with complete nonchalance. I am not worried, said Chun Ho-pil, 30, a construction manager who was on his way from work in the Jongno neighborhood of the capital. I am too busy working and too busy going about my life to worry. Mr. Chun, his face dwarfed by round, black-frame glasses, shrugged and said he had not stockpiled bottled water or canned food in his home, or purchased a gas mask. Nor did he know the location of the nearest shelter in case of a bombing. Many officials in Caraga responsible for monitoring the mines own businesses that benefit from the industry, like barge companies or bars in mining towns, said Danilo Adorador, a Caraga journalist. Theres a clear conflict of interest there, he said. Clavers mayor, Eddie P. Gokiangkee, is among the industrys critics. He said he was 200 percent sure that bribery and corruption had undermined enforcement of environmental laws. I know this from observation, he said. Its very, very clear: The sea is red, the rivers are red. It shouldnt be that way if they are regulating it. He said that he welcomed the tax revenue and supported responsible mining, but that he did not want Claver left with a ravaged environment once the nickel was gone. Ronald S. Recidoro, vice president of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, an industry lobbying group, said that any environmental infractions by mining companies had been very minor and do not warrant a closure or suspension. He also accused Ms. Lopez of not being forthcoming about how companies were selected for shutdowns or suspensions. Though Mr. Duterte is best known for his bloody antidrug campaign, he calls himself a progressive and has spoken out against abuses by the logging industry as well as the mining companies. But activists say he has a mixed record on the environment. He signed the Paris agreement to address climate change only in March, after initially saying that he would not because it would interfere with development. He also recently approved new coal-fired power plants. In Claver, even some of those who benefit directly from the mines support Ms. Lopezs actions. A truck driver, Demetrius Orong, 27, said that if the mines closed, they would find other work. We were fine before the mines came, he said, and well be fine after they leave. A 21-year-old West Point man who sexually assaulted a woman passed out in an upstairs bedroom at a Cinco de Mayo house party in Lincoln last year got two to four years in prison for it Wednesday. Misael Lopez Ramirez told police what happened that night was consensual. But a Lancaster County jury in March found him guilty of first-degree sexual assault. At a North Bottoms house party, friends noticed the 20-year-old woman looking like she might pass out, then helped her to a bedroom to sleep it off. About a half-hour later, someone saw Ramirez lying down in the room, too. When the woman came downstairs about a half-hour later, she had red marks on her neck and didn't know what had happened but had flashes of memories: her pants and underwear at her ankles; the face of a Hispanic man above her. What happened, she said, she didn't want to happen. Ramirez told police that he went up to check on her and they ended up making out. He denied they'd had sex, but later acknowledged he tried after the officer mentioned the used condom in the trash. At sentencing, Ramirez said he wanted to apologize to the victim for what he did. "I am deeply sorry for it and regret it," he said, adding that all people make mistakes and he would take his back if he could. Omaha defense attorney Guy Weinstein argued for probation, saying Ramirez had no previous criminal history and had taken responsibility for his actions, admitting under police questioning that it was wrong to take advantage of the woman while she was intoxicated. Weinstein said a plea agreement never was an option in this case because of Ramirez's status as a Dreamer, meaning he was brought to the U.S. illegally as a child. He said U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement put a hold on him as a result of the case. Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Chris Turner said Ramirez has taken responsibility and that's a positive thing, but his victim still had to go through a trial. District Judge Susan Strong said she in no way wanted to diminish the harm that Ramirez caused to the victim, but by all accounts Ramirez had been a law-abiding college student before this. And she didn't want to turn him into a lifetime criminal. But prison time was necessary, Strong said. Ramirez will have to register as a sex offender and be subject to lifetime community supervision. Weinstein said it's likely Ramirez will be deported to Mexico, a country he's never really known, when he's done serving his sentence. BERLIN Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned Britain on Thursday not to harbor illusions that it can negotiate a deal on future relations with the European Union while simultaneously negotiating its departure from the bloc. Future relations can be negotiated only after the terms of the exit have been agreed upon, Ms. Merkel told Germanys Parliament on Thursday. I have the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions on this score, she said. That would be a waste of time. Ms. Merkel was not more specific, but as a leader known for choosing her words carefully, her warning about the high costs of leaving Europe could be interpreted as a subtle message for voters in France, Britain and Germany itself. PARIS A French court on Thursday turned down a Serbian request to extradite Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla commander and prime minister of Kosovo who was arrested in France early this year. The prosecutor at the court in Colmar, in eastern France, said in a statement that Mr. Haradinaj had been released. The statement did not provide reasons for the ruling. It was unclear whether Serbia, which had issued the warrant for Mr. Haradinaj that led to his arrest, would appeal the decision. Parties to the case have five days to do so. Mr. Haradinaj was acquitted by a United Nations war crimes tribunal in 2008 and again in 2012 of charges that he had tortured and killed Serbs during Kosovos war for independence in the late 1990s, when he was a commander of the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army. BERLIN A German Army lieutenant appears to have taken advantage of his countrys chaotic system of processing migrants in 2015 to pose as a Syrian asylum seeker with the intention of carrying out an attack, the authorities said on Thursday. Prosecutors said the soldier, whose name was not released, was a 28-year-old German from the city of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, who was stationed with the army at the Illkirch base in France, near the German border. He is suspected of planning a violent attack, weapons violations and fraud, prosecutors in Frankfurt said. They were not aware of any specific targets, said Nadja Niesen, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors. The man first caught the attention of Austrian authorities in January, when he stashed a loaded pistol in a cleaning shaft in a restroom at Vienna International Airport. He was detained on Feb. 3 when he returned for the weapon, prosecutors said. STRASBOURG, France Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader trying to become president of France, already has a day job as a lawmaker in the European Parliament, a position she regards with open contempt. She misses votes, mocks the process and cheers for the demise of the European Union. Even so, Ms. Le Pen is willing to accept a salary of 101,808 euros (about $110,000), a generous per diem and an annual staff and office budget in excess of 340,000. In February, the Parliament halved her compensation after fraud investigators concluded that she had wrongly diverted money to pay for National Front party activities in France. The scandal, which has not fazed Ms. Le Pens supporters in France, is another example of how Europes right-wing parties happily provoke populist fury by attacking the European Union yet also happily pocket government salaries and other benefits. For some far-right politicians, a perch in the European Parliament can mean a lucrative sinecure, easy news media exposure and immunity from criminal prosecution at home. We are in a totally schizophrenic situation, said Franck Proust, the leader of Frances center-right Republicans in the Parliament. Europe should not have to finance people who instead of working spend their time destroying their source of funding. ISTANBUL A Russian naval ship sank off Turkeys Black Sea coast on Thursday after colliding with a merchant vessel, the Turkish coast guard and the Russian military have confirmed. All 78 Russian crew members were rescued, the Turkish coast guard said. The ship, a Russian reconnaissance vessel called the Liman, sank shortly before 3 p.m., after hitting a private livestock vessel amid heavy fog about 17 miles from the coast north of the Bosporus, according to the Gulf Agency Company, a major shipping agency. The livestock carrier, the Youzarsif H, which was flying the Togolese flag, survived intact and took part in the rescue, picking up 15 Russian sailors. The Liman was not traceable on boat-tracking websites, but the Youzarsif H could be seen circling at low speed on Thursday afternoon in the area where the Russian vessel sank. The Youzarsif H was on its way to Jordan, having set off from Romania on Wednesday night. After heading south through the Black Sea for several hours, it suddenly slowed and circled several times at around midday on Thursday, seemingly after it had collided with the Liman. LONDON A 27-year-old man carrying knives was arrested Thursday afternoon near Parliament by the London police, who charged him with planning a terrorist attack. No one was hurt, but the episode immediately rekindled anxieties about the terrorist attack outside Parliament on March 22, when a 52-year-old British man, Khalid Masood, drove a vehicle into a group of pedestrians, killing four, and stabbed a police officer to death. The area around Parliament was cordoned off once again on Thursday as armed police officers descended on the scene in a grim routine that has become too familiar in major European cities in recent years. The Metropolitan Police, as the police in London are known, said the man was arrested around 2:22 p.m. after he was stopped and searched in a procedure similar to stop-and-frisk operations in the United States. JERUSALEM The Palestinian Authority informed Israel on Thursday that it would no longer pay for the electricity that Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip, in an extraordinary push by the authority to reassert some control after years of rule in Gaza by the militant group Hamas. The schism between the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank and led by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which seized full control of Gaza in 2007, has left Palestinians deeply divided and has hurt efforts to reach a peace deal with Israel. Palestinian analysts speculated that Mr. Abbas was trying to flex his muscles before an expected meeting with President Trump in the White House, possibly in early May. Hamas officials denounced the move, describing it as a dangerous escalation. It is a clear aggression, Hazim Kassim, a Hamas spokesman, said of the Palestinian Authoritys decision. Abbas aims to blow up the situation in Gaza. The two million residents of Gaza already suffer from acute power shortages, with electricity rationed to about four hours a day. With its own power station out of commission, Gaza is dependent on the electricity lines from Israel, and a smaller, less reliable supply from Egypt. Pope Francis departed from his prepared remarks at a special prayer service honoring Christian martyrs in Rome last weekend to tell the story of a Muslim man who watched Islamist terrorists cut the throat of his Christian wife because she refused to discard her crucifix. He, Muslim, had this cross of pain that he bore without rancor, the pope said, his voice filled with emotion. He sought refuge in the love of his wife, graced by martyrdom. That anecdote balancing the brutal murder of a Christian by Islamist militants with a Muslims love for his wife serves as a preview of the popes message when he visits Egypt on Friday. Francis is expected to highlight the plight of Christians amid recent violence in Egypt, while continuing his mission to reach out to Muslims. Even for a politically savvy pope, that is a delicate balancing act, on top of obvious security concerns in a country recently attacked by the Islamic State. Palm Sunday bombings of two Christian churches killed more than 40 people, nearly killed the head of the Coptic Church and prompted President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to declare a three-month state of emergency. JERUSALEM Syrian and rebel officials blamed Israel for several explosions Thursday morning at warehouses near the Damascus airport that the Israeli news media said were housing weapons bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel, which has carried out attacks on precision missiles and other forms of advanced weaponry in the past, did not directly confirm or deny the attack, in keeping with its policy. But Yisrael Katz, the Israeli intelligence minister, seemed to acknowledge his countrys involvement, saying the attack was consistent with Israels policy of not allowing Hezbollah to obtain such weaponry. I can confirm that the incident in Syria completely conforms to Israels policy, to act so as to prevent the smuggling of advanced weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon by Iran, he told Army Radio. She was home Friday evening when her phone rang. Michaella Kumke didn't recognize the number, but she knew friends and strangers had been out there all week searching on her behalf, so she took the call. I was hoping it was news about Jake, and it was news about Jake, just not the original Jake. Jake was her bicycle, her ride to work and back, but it was more than that. It had become her friend, and her peace. The Food Bank employee and all-around volunteer (Habitat for Humanity, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Community Crops) relied on her 5-year-old Kona to give her some time to herself, after she had given so much of her time to others. Kumke sold her car and made payments on the bike, taking it home in January 2014. She called it Jake, because that was its model name, and her godson's. But it was stolen early last week from a downtown church while Kumke was at a meeting of the Habitat for Humanity board of directors. She announced its disappearance on Facebook, and her posts were shared more than 500 times. The newspaper wrote about it, and Nick Bock read about it. I bike quite a bit, too, he said. I have a different version of the Kona Jake in my own garage. The story is an awesome one. And Michaella is an amazing person. Bock is a co-owner of Five Nines Technology Group, and every month his information technology company donates to someone or something in need. A charity, or a struggling family. Our employees suggest stuff and bring things up and we spend the money, he said. We like doing it because it supports the community. Five Nines also donates to the Food Bank of Lincoln, so some of its employees knew Kumke. Bock hadnt met her but he recognized her name. And it didn't take long for him to come up with a plan, and to get the go-ahead from the company committee that approves donations. Im just like, 'Geez, this is perfect. This is exactly what we have this money for.' Bock called Monkey Wrench Cycles, which had sold the old Jake to Kumke: We'll buy her a new Jake, he said, if you sell it at cost. The bike shop was happy to help one of its favorites. She's great, said Monkey Wrench co-owner Eric Peterson. We're lucky to have her as a customer. Then Bock called Kumke. They wanted to do something for me, she said. I think I was crying before I could formulate any words. But when she could talk, she thanked him. She told him that she and her wife, Ariana Kennedy, could save the money for a replacement Jake if her bike wasn't recovered. She told him she had a spare bike to ride in the meantime. She suggested he give the money to charity instead. And he was very sweet. He understood why I'd ask that. He said, 'Im not going to make you take this gift, but Id politely suggest you do.' He also told her the bike was already ordered. A done deal. The extra-small 2017 Jake would be here in the next week or two. Kumke accepted Five Nine's offer. She plans to take the money she and Kennedy would have spent on a new bike and donate it to a charity. Still, for the woman known for giving to others, it was tough to be on the receiving end. She doesn't necessarily need the help, she said, but she appreciates the caring. In the past week, she's had friends offering to start fundraisers, strangers trying to give her money. She learned her brother in North Carolina who lost his wife to a brain tumor and his brother-in-law were plotting to help replace Jake. It's all very humbling, she said. And it made her think of Anne Frank, and her philosophy about humanity. I always believe there's more good than bad in the world, she said. And I know it's hard to believe that, but this sort of helps. Simplify tax brackets +$1.5 trillion The plan moves from seven tax brackets for individuals to three 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent and lowers the top rate. The plan moves from seven tax brackets for individuals to three 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent and lowers the top rate. Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax +$0.4 trillion The Alternative Minimum Tax limits the deductions wealthy people can take. The Alternative Minimum Tax limits the deductions wealthy people can take. Double the standard deduction +$1.5 trillion The standard deduction currently allows individuals to deduct $6,350 and married couples to deduct $12,700 from their taxable income. The new plan would double that. The standard deduction currently allows individuals to deduct $6,350 and married couples to deduct $12,700 from their taxable income. The new plan would double that. Repeal the inheritance tax +$0.2 trillion Taxes are currently levied on estates worth more than $5.5 million when the estate is passed from a deceased person to his or her heirs. Taxes are currently levied on estates worth more than $5.5 million when the estate is passed from a deceased person to his or her heirs. Reduce the corporate tax rate +$3.7 trillion Mr. Trumps plan cuts the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that this would directly reduce revenue by $2.2 trillion. The deficit could increase a further $1.5 trillion because the change would encourage individuals to use creative accounting to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rate, it says. Mr. Trumps plan cuts the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that this would directly reduce revenue by $2.2 trillion. The deficit could increase a further $1.5 trillion because the change would encourage individuals to use creative accounting to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rate, it says. Repeal the tax on investment income +$0.2 trillion This plan would eliminate a 3.8 percent tax on investment income that helps fund the Affordable Care Act. This plan would eliminate a 3.8 percent tax on investment income that helps fund the Affordable Care Act. Expand child care benefits Unknown The Trump administration is considering increasing tax credits for child care. Saturday 5) 10 A.M. Museum Mile Avoid Roppongi after dark when its rowdy clubs fill with inebriated expats, and instead visit the neighborhood when the sun shines on its cultural institutions. Start at the National Art Center, one of the largest exhibition halls in Asia. Beyond the curving glass-and-steel facade, find world-class collections, including the current Yayoi Kusama show (through May 22; admission varies). Then walk to 21_21 Design Sight, a bunkerlike museum with underground galleries that was created by the designer Issey Miyake and the architect Tadao Ando. Exhibitions delve into how design informs everyday life (admission, 1,100 yen). 6) 1 P.M. Sushi Dreams Dinners at Tokyos top sushi bars typically end with bills printed with an immodest number of zeros, but you can fulfill your sushi dreams for a fraction of the price by eating at midday. Reserve a spot at Sushi Rin, a hushed second-story space in Kagurazaka with about a dozen seats around a blond-wood bar. At lunchtime, the omakase meal (4,000 yen) features fewer courses but the same craftsmanship and top-notch products, from a spoonful of salty roe atop vinegared rice to a parade of nigiri including red snapper, silvery kohada fish and rich tuna belly brushed with soy sauce. Equally memorable is the artful presentation on beautiful plates beside crimson cut-glass sake sets. 7) 3:30 P.M. Style Guide Browse Tokyos retail options at two shopping complexes on opposite ends of the style spectrum. Start in Kagurazaka at La Kagu, a former book warehouse that reopened in 2014 as a shop, cafe and bookstore reached via snaking timber-and-steel staircases designed by Kengo Kuma. The airy two-story space stocks fashions and housewares, from tailored silk trousers and teak Danish bar carts to tiny wooden hand-carved creamers. Then head west to Koenjis Kitakore building, a riotous, ramshackle warren of closet-size shops overflowing with customized clothing and labels you wont find anywhere else. Looking for a lace-trimmed 80s-era Mickey Mouse sweatshirt? Or a purple motorcycle jacket with sparkly studs, mirrors and a gorilla hologram? This is the spot. Exploring the offerings at the Kitakore building, a riotous, ramshackle warren of closet-size shops. Credit Andrew Faulk for The New York Times 8) 6 P.M. Nakano Brew Take the train one stop east to Nakano, a neighborhood favored by otaku (young pop-culture fanatics), to find a pair of drinking spots worth obsessing over. Hidden amid the manga stores and costume shops in a labyrinthine subculture shopping complex is Bar Zingaro, a cafe that fuses Norwegian exports midcentury Scandinavian furnishings, Fuglen coffee with the colorful art of Takashi Murakami. Tucked down a nearby alley, Nakano Beer Kobo is a tiny bar that feels like a treehouse with particleboard walls and lofts that you can climb into with plates of fried chicken thighs and mugs of cold beer brewed on site. 9) 9 P.M. Photo Shoot Karaoke is the cliched Japanese entertainment experience, but the Snapchat era calls for a new activity: purikura. These sophisticated photo booths let you pose with friends, decorate the images with scribbles and stamps, and mutate your features bigger eyes, different hair to mimic a Disney character. For the widest selection, go to Purikura Shop Noa, a basement-level spot in Harajuku with booths for creating personalized only-in-Japan souvenirs. 10) 10:30 P.M. Ebisu Exploration For dinner, join local residents swarming the Ebisu Yokocho, a covered passageway crammed with food stalls that roar to life after dark. Grab the first seats you see theyre a commodity and prepare to feast on okonomiyaki (savory pancakes) or kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers, like lotus root or shishito peppers). Then head to Bar Tram, a polished cocktail bar that mixes absinthe into libations like the frothy, flaming Blanche Neige (GVine gin, vermouth, apple syrup and lemon; 1,300 yen). End the night at Bar Track, a low-key music bar where D.J.s spin a range of music, including Miles Davis and Prince B-sides on vinyl, while bartenders mix whiskey highballs. Lincoln will soon be home to two Big Ten universities. On Thursday, Purdue University announced the acquisition of the private for-profit Kaplan University, and with it, the Lincoln campus at 1821 K St. The 15 Kaplan campuses across seven states will be rolled into Purdue's land-grant university system as a new online-focused university for adult and nontraditional students, according to a news release. "None of us knows how fast or in what direction online higher education will evolve, but we know its role will grow, and we intend that Purdue be positioned to be a leader as that happens," Purdue President Mitch Daniels said in a statement. "A careful analysis made it clear that we are very ill-equipped to build the necessary capabilities ourselves, and that the smart course would be to acquire them if we could," he added. "We were able to find exactly what we were looking for." Along with its main campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue also operates two regional campuses and three joint campuses with Indiana University. The Kaplan campuses, their 32,000 students and 3,000 employees will now be part of the Purdue system as a new, as-of-yet unnamed entity led by Betty Vandenbosch, Kaplan's current president. The new university will not receive state appropriations, relying instead on tuition revenue and donations. The transition from Kaplan to Purdue is expected to take several months, as Purdue is seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Education as well as accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission. On the other side of those reviews and the name change, the roughly 275 students at Kaplan's Lincoln campus won't notice much change, according to Kaplan spokesman Stephen White. Kaplan employs about 50 faculty and staff in Lincoln. "There are no plans to change the programs or degrees," he said. "Like (Kaplan), the new university will continue to look for programs that are best suited to meet the needs of its students and the communities it serves." White added the new university aims to create more access to higher education for adult learners, "especially the millions of Americans who have some college experience but no college credential." Part of Kaplan will remain privately operated, according to a news release. A subsidiary of Kaplan Inc. will provide human resources, facilities management and other administrative functions through a transition and operations support agreement. Alcohol sales in Whiteclay are headed for a historic halt. Lawyers for the state played a trump card against the village's four embattled beer stores Thursday, a dramatic turn that effectively forces them to close this weekend with no promise of reopening. The store owners' attorney, Andrew Snyder of Scottsbluff, said he advised them not to sell any alcohol after their licenses expire at midnight Sunday. "That's about all I can tell them right now," he said. It was a complete reversal of fortune following a judge's decision hours earlier that the stores should be allowed to stay open. The Nebraska Attorney General's Office quickly challenged the judge's ruling, citing a section of law that puts decisions by lower courts on hold for up to six months whenever a state agency appeals to the Nebraska Supreme Court or Court of Appeals. That allowed the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission to revert to last week's unprecedented decision to deny renewal of the beer stores' licenses. "It's definitely a roller-coaster ride," said John Maisch, a former Oklahoma liquor regulator and documentarian who has fought to end Whiteclay beer sales. Millions of cans of beer and malt liquor are sold each year in the tiny, unincorporated village in northwest Nebraska, home to about eight permanent residents. Much of that beer ends up on the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol is banned. Now, for the first time in decades, that river will run dry. The sudden change of fortune appeared to leave the beer stores out of options leading into the long weekend. Most courts and state government offices are closed Friday in observance of Arbor Day, and Snyder said the soonest he could respond to the appeal is Monday. The state's appeal superseded Lancaster County District Court Judge Andrew Jacobsen's decision from earlier Thursday morning, in which he ruled that the Liquor Commission overstepped its legal authority by denying the stores' liquor licenses. Snyder had asked Jacobsen to simply delay the commission's unanimous April 19 decision and allow the beer stores to stay in business while a full appeal could be considered. The judge went a step further, calling the commission's action "void on its face" and ordering regulators to let the beer stores automatically renew their liquor licenses. That ruling was immediately hailed by the stores, while activists responded with fury. Frank LaMere of Winnebago, who has fought against Whiteclay beer sales for almost two decades, accused the judge of throwing "grease on the fire." Hours later, the state's appeal doused Whiteclay in cold water. Activists were reluctant to celebrate the twist, for fear that the stores could somehow stay open. Maisch said their priority is to make sure help is available to people in Whiteclay as soon as it's necessary. "If the stores close this Monday, there's going to be somebody who was sleeping under a tree or behind a building in Whiteclay, and they're going to go to a beer store to get beer because their mind tells them they need beer ... and they're not going to have it," Maisch said. Even if Jacobsen's ruling is temporarily blocked, lawyers for the state must still respond to his legal reasoning in their appeal. His order didn't offer a sweeping endorsement of Whiteclay beer sales. Instead, the judge took issue with the Liquor Commission's legal grounds for refusing to renew the licenses of Arrowhead Inn, State Line Liquor, D&S Pioneer Service and Jumping Eagle Inn. The three liquor commissioners cited a lengthy list of concerns about Whiteclay including its connection to rampant alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome on Pine Ridge but their decision was based on what they called a lack of adequate law enforcement in the village itself. Jacobsen said that standard may only be applied to new licenses, not existing ones. He cited a 1996 case in which the Nebraska Supreme Court sided with the Grand Island Latin Club after its license renewal was denied by the Liquor Commission. In that case, the Supreme Court said renewal of a license is a constitutionally protected interest that can only be denied if license holders themselves are caught breaking the law. Asked Thursday if he agreed with Jacobsen's order, Gov. Pete Ricketts declined to weigh in. "Everybody is entitled to their due process, and this is part of that process," he said. Ricketts and Liquor Commission officials have denied repeated claims by Snyder that the actions taken against the beer stores are politically motivated. The stores also face allegations from the Attorney General's Office that they sold alcohol to bootleggers and violated other state liquor laws. A hearing on those citations is expected to take place in coming months. Separately Thursday, Ricketts signed into law a measure forming a task force to examine public health issues in Whiteclay. The task force plans to hold its first meeting May 19-20. State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, who is expected to be named the group's co-chairwoman, said its members hope to make an immediate visual difference in Whiteclay through steps such as adding public restrooms and fixing up old buildings. In the longer term, the task force will work with public health experts and economic development officials on setting broader goals for the area. "The sky's the limit," Pansing Brooks said. "We're trying to think outside the box, and trying to bring some hope and healing to Whiteclay." Assumption Cathedral, Yaroslavl, Russia (Image by akk_rus) Details DMCA This common-sense maxim has never been more relevant than in our worsening relationship with Russia today. Over the last few years American policy has seemed to move inexorably toward a new cold war against a nuclear-armed Russia that is Christian and no longer communist, but is still seen as an imperial power threatening democracy around the world. For our own sake, it's urgent that we try to see our behavior from a Russian perspective, however much we dislike the authoritarian capitalism that replaced communism in the former Soviet Union. So let's turn down the patriotic din of mainstream media and politicians urging a confrontation with Russia. Let's take the time to reflect on how we got from celebrating the end of Cold War I with the collapse of the Soviet Union 26 years ago, to a looming Cold War II with a renewed threat of nuclear war. The map below provides much of the answer. (Image by commons) Details DMCA Dark areas indicate NATO territorial expansion from 1990 to 2009. 'R' is Russia and 'U' is Ukraine. When NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) began in 1949, its main purpose was collective security against the Soviet Union (USSR). As a counterweight to NATO the Soviet Union in 1955 joined with seven Eastern European communist republics (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania) to form the Warsaw Pact. On the 1990 map above, the space between NATO and Russia was taken up by two tiers of republics: the Warsaw Pact nations on the west and the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova on the east. These eastern republics were (with Russia) part of the Soviet Union (USSR). When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, a space half the size of Europe yawned between Russia and NATO. It contained newly independent former members of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR, all of whom had to reorient themselves in relation to Western Europe and the Russian colossus to the east. As we can see from the 2009 map, NATO did not go away once the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact made its original purpose obsolete. Instead, it expanded to include the former Warsaw Pact countries as well as a part of the Soviet Union--the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). By including the Baltic States, NATO brought the military umbrella of the United States right up to the Russian border. Imagine the U.S. reaction if the Warsaw Pact had continued to exist and Mexico and Cuba joined it. The purpose of NATO in its current expanded version is controversial, with some critics (like Donald Trump until a week ago) arguing that it is no longer needed and is a drain on the U.S. budget. But, as Karl-Heinz Kamp, Research Director at the NATO Defense College in Rome, explains, the United States still derives major benefits from the alliance: "Through NATO, the US guarantees its influence in today's Europe -- a continent which is stable, prosperous (despite the Euro crisis), benign and, above all, politically likeminded. . . [Moreover] Europe remains a logistical hub for global US military operations." The ongoing Ukraine crisis which has done so much to poison US-Russia relations must be seen in the context of the rapid march of NATO to the border of Russia. On Nov. 21, 2013 the Ukrainian government, under pressure from Russia, announced that it would not sign a trade and political association agreement with the European Union that would have drawn Ukraine more closely into the orbit of Western Europe. This decision brought 100,000 protestors into Maidan, the central square of the Ukrainian capital Kiev. These demonstrators received open political support from the Obama administration. In December of 2013 Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, accompanied by US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, visited the demonstrators in Maidan Square and handed out cookies. On Feb. 6 a transcript of a telephone call between Nuland and Pyatt was released on YouTube (probably by Russian intelligence).The two Americans can be heard discussing which opposition politicians would be good for a new government. They agree that the best choice would be Arseniy Yatseniuk ("Yats is the guy"). On Feb. 22, 2014, escalating unrest and violent clashes between protestors and police caused democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych to flee to Russia. The Ukrainian parliament, in an unconstitutional vote, stripped Yanukovych of his presidency and voted in Yatseniuk as prime minister. Russia's response to these developments was twofold. First, in March of 2014 the majority Russian population of Crimea voted to join Russia, and Russia then annexed it. The main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Crimea had been part of Russia from 1783 to 1954 when Soviet leader Khrushchev attached it to the Ukraine (which, like Russia, was part of the Soviet Union). From a historical perspective, the 2013 annexation was not a radical change for Crimea. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Dr. Victoria Tuzlokova is the Head of Professional Development and Research Unit at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. Tuzlokova focused in her Keynote Address on helping students reach the skills and achievements required for them in the 21st Century. The audience hall at the Rotana in Salalah was filled with lifelong educators from nearly ten different institutions in the Dhofar region of Oman. Tuzlokova began her address by asking the audience at the Rotana how many participants on this date had been born in the 21st Century. No one in the room raised his or her hand. Next, Tuzlokova reminded her audience to recall what it was like when there were no computers, no cell phones, and little modern technology in the classroom, i.e. back in the 20th Century. First of all, she continued, twentieth century knowledge was targeted at acquiring the "what" or "whats" of this world. In contrast, Tuzlokova noted that 21st Century knowledge is not only about the " whats" but equally focused on the "whys" and "hows" of our work-world and universe. The abilities required nowadays in the workplace and life by the main stakeholders include: (1) Locate, assess, and represent new information as quickly--and as well-- as possible. (2) Smoothly--and fairly quickly-- communicate to our collaborators [team members] and others what has been discovered or acquired [or which information still needs to be acquired and how this is to be undertaken]. (3) Become adaptable, creative, & innovative in a system while constantly keeping our eyes on the big picture. (4) Think and learn for oneself, but doing this more often by using external help. Knowledge and skills of these types require us working with important related technologies, which are accelerating our information and creating new-but-ubiquitous learning and workspaces at an ever-increasing pace. Such skills and attainments in knowledge management provide the high wage and high skill workor jobs of our present and future. Because of this, there is already a huge gap between wages at one end of the wage spectrum and the rest of our workers at the other end of the spectrum. Most of all, 21st Century Knowledge is seldom produced by one person, but it is usually created by groups or networks of groups. This is why the abilities to communicate and to interact with other groups [and in different media or mediums] is so important. We all need to be able to share or give-and-take with others. As well, we need to focus on both the theoretical and practical evidences before us. For this new way of focusing, a new mindset is required. Here is our context and the student profile to it here in Oman. Currently, (A) there is a lack of continuity between schools and colleges or training centers at all levels. (B) there is a lack engagement and curiosity at most levels and across disciplines as well. (C) there is often a lack of positive attitudes towards learning. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). i hate ann coulter! (Image by cdrummbks) Details DMCA UC Berkeley's successful attempt to shut down an appearance by Ann Coulter this week is just the latest example of college campuses - and liberals as a whole - attempting to stifle free speech by acting as society's morality police. As an antiwar activist, I am typically lumped-in with other so-called leftists, so when progressives act in an oppressive, hateful, racist, fear-mongering, violent or unappealing manner, it reflects poorly on the cause in which I associate. I have been privately challenging some of my colleagues to reflect on their apparently hypocritical behavior, but doing so publicly, in this forum, is risky. And in trying to make sense of this ironic phenomenon, more questions than answers arise. Questions: -Why is the so-called left trying to shut down debates instead of trying to win them? Is it because the left is basing its arguments on imagery and emotion rather than fact? -Were the students at Berkeley aware that Ann Coulter was one of the few people speaking out against the Trump administration's bombing of Syria in response to the alleged chemical gas attack? Did they know she said the photos shown to Trump that made him act were probably "faked"? Were the students afraid Coulter would talk about this in public? -How can liberals claim to celebrate diversity when they don't allow diversity of thought or speech? Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Progressive Content Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing. To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here. Reprinted from dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com At a time of growing tensions between nuclear powers--Russia and NATO in Europe, and the U.S., North Korea and China in Asia--Washington has quietly upgraded its nuclear weapons arsenal to create, according to three leading American scientists, "exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike." Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the American Federation of Scientists, Matthew McKinzie of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and physicist and ballistic missile expert Theodore Postol, conclude that "Under the veil of an otherwise-legitimate warhead life-extension program," the U.S. military has vastly expanded the "killing power" of its warheads such that it can "now destroy all of Russia's ICBM silos." The upgrade--part of the Obama administration's $1 trillion modernization of America's nuclear forces--allows Washington to destroy Russia's land-based nuclear weapons, while still retaining 80 percent of the U.S.'s warheads in reserve. If Russia chose to retaliate, it would be reduced to ash. Any discussion of nuclear war encounters several major problems. First, it is difficult to imagine or to grasp what it would mean in real life. We have only had one conflict involving nuclear weapons--the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945--and the memory of those events has faded over the years. In any case, the two bombs that flattened the Japanese cities bear little resemblance to the killing power of modern nuclear weapons. The Hiroshima bomb exploded with a force of 15 kilotons. The Nagasaki bomb was slightly more powerful at about 18 kt. Between them, they killed over 215,000 people. In contrast, the most common nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal today, the W76, has an explosive power of 100 kt. The next most common, the W88, packs a 475-kt punch. Another problem is that most of the public thinks nuclear war is impossible because both sides would be destroyed. This is the idea behind the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, aptly named "MAD." But MAD is not a U.S. military doctrine. A "first strike" attack has always been central to U.S. military planning, until recently, however, there was no guarantee that such an attack would so cripple an opponent that it would be unable--or unwilling, given the consequences of total annihilation-- to retaliate. The strategy behind a first strike--sometimes called a "counter force" attack--is not to destroy an opponent's population centers, but to eliminate the other sides' nuclear weapons, or at least most of them. Anti-missile systems would then intercept a weakened retaliatory strike. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). When Donald Trump, with exacting calculation based on an understanding of the Big Lie as the keystone of effective propaganda, began his election campaign by declaring that "Mexicans are criminals...they are rapists," he was openly courting the racist, fascist element of US society, dormant and nearly forgotten for many years, with a Lie so outrageously false that it would have seemed absurd, to the ignorant and gullible ("I love the poorly educated!" who it must be true for who would tell such a huge lie? That is the psychopathology of political propaganda, as Trump learned it reading Hitler's speeches, as reported by his ex-wife (Trump said in an interview:" I don't have the book (he had just said a Jew gave it to him) and if I did, I didn't read it." Sanctuary cities and counties He did have the book, The New Order, a collection of Hitler's most effective propaganda speeches. When Trump began his campaign claiming undocumented Mexicans were vicious criminals, and then visited a border city praising himself for his courage since border cities are the most dangerous, he was 180 degrees wrong. Here, in brief, are the facts I uncovered using the Bureau of Prisons and neighborhoodscout.com data: 1. The crime rate for undocumented immigrants is 50% lower than for US natives 2. Most incarcerated undocumented immigrants, the vast majority, over 90%, are in for non-violent crimes, primarily lack of documentation and secondly drug possession (and sometimes sales). The murder rate for undocumented immigrants, in 2013, was 99.9% lower than US citizens, as the FBI reported 14,138 murders and the Bureau of Prisons reported unauthorized immigrants had committed 8 murders. The border cities in Texas are 2/3 less violent than the inland cities, and the largest border city in the US, San Diego, with a high proportion of undocumented immigrants (roughly 10% of the city) is, year after year, the safest big city in the nation. Los Angeles, which has the largest population New York and neighboring cities have slightly more) of any single city, more than a million, has seen its murder rate drop from 34 per 100K in 1980, when there were far fewer undocumented immigrants (now about one in six residents) to 6.3 per 100K, a drop of about 75%. Today, there are more undocumented immigrants in LA than ever. So the Big Lie was to call the most law-abiding and peaceful population in the nation "criminals and rapists." Each year, US citizens murder about 14,000 of each other while the undocumented murder around 10. Few of the 14,000 are noted but each murder, less than 1 a month in a nation with over 1000 murders a month, is headline news. Thus the media promotes the Big Lie in its own way. Goebbels 18th principle of propaganda is to displace anger (at global oligarchs like Trump whose workforce is 95% offshore in slave labor nations, earning as little as $60 a month in Bangladesh garment factory/firetraps) and focus it on a defenseless population like the Jews (.06% of the German population) or in the US, those denied legal protection. Displace anger onto targets of hate. The issue, as Hitler made clear, is not the truth, but to win, to successfully redirect resentment at deteriorating standards of living onto those who cannot protect themselves. And it worked. El Paso is the largest border city in Texas; it has 1/3 the violent crime of inland cities: "- Major cities across the state of Texas have seen an increase in homicides, while El Paso merely experienced minor fluctuations. El Paso saw a minor increase with 18 homicides in 2016, compared to 16 in the year prior." Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). For travelers looking for in-the-know street cred, the Balkan Peninsula is the place to be. And, Tirana, Albanias capital, is a great place to start your journey across this corner of Southeastern Europe. Easily explored on foot, the city is a dynamic tangle of streets crowded with art galleries, museums, cafes, restaurants, chic locals. Skanderbeg Square is Tiranas main orientation point. It and the namesake statue are dedicated to the national hero Gjergj Kastrioti, a military commander who led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Take a moment to gaze at the Mosque Ethem Bey (across from the statue), City Hall, and Kulla e Sahatit, the clock tower. Climb it for impressive views over the big square. Take a tour in the Muzei Historik Kombetar or National Historical Museum, the largest museum in the country, with a terrific mosaic adorning the facade entitled Albania that shows Albanians victorious from Illyrian times to WWII. The excellent collection (almost entirely signed in English) takes you chronologically from the ancient times to post-communist era. It holds many of the countrys archaeological treasures, a replica of Skanderbegs massive sword and an interesting exhibition of icons by Onufri, the greatest Albanian artist of 16th century. This Contemporary Art Museum is located in a underground bunker built on the outskirts of Tirana. The structure was once meant to accommodate the former Communist dictator Enver Hoxha and the elite class in case of war. Today, BunkArt, hosts exhibitions that combine the modern history of Albania with pieces of contemporary art. The BunkArt 2 is another recently opened museum dedicated to the victims of Communism. It is located in a bunker, built in the centre of Tirana between 1981 and 1986, used to shelter interior ministry staff in the event of a nuclear attack. The Galeria Kombetare e Arteve, or National Art Gallery, traces the history of Albanian painting from the early 19th century to the present day, this space hosts temporary exhibitions. After the visit, take some time to admire the Cloud Pavilion out the gallery designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. Behind the museum youll find the 6m-high walls of the Fortress of Justinian, the last remnants of a Byzantine-era castle, and the 19th century Ura e Tabakeve, Tanners Bridge, a well preserved Ottoman stone bridge. Take a break from art in Bllokuthe Blockwhich is the most famous neighborhood in Tirana. During the Communist era, the district was reserved for the political elite. Today it is a vibrant neighborhood with trendy bars, cafes, restaurant and nightclubs. One must-stop spot is the Colonial Cafe. Stop here for a menu full of innovative cocktails and nice place where to drink good and cocktails. Just on the border of Blloku, Komiteti, is a must if you are in Tirana. This cafe-museum is the perfect place to taste one of 25 varieties of craft raki, the local fruit-based liquor. Francesca is a journalist and blogger based in Florence, Italy, with a love of travel and an addiction to the Balkan countries. Behind the Build // Preparing for Black Sage with Kyle Jameson and Carson Storch Hosting a Fest event is akin to throwing a huge party for all of your good friends. But that's often the easy partits building the course that is the real challenge. After a winter of unprecedented snow in Oregon, Kyle Jameson and Carson Storch have been working non-stop on the build for Black Sage Fest. With Kyles experience building Cruz Fest and Carsons connections in Oregon, these boys have created the perfect venue, putting an insane amount of blood, sweat, and beers into making the entire event come to fruition.Once the build is done, its time for the party.Follow the Fest SeriesIG: @festseries Follow 10 Barrel BrewingIG: @10barrelbrewingTwitter: @10BarrelBrewing Follow Reece Wallace as he travels to New Zealand to escape the Canadian winter and ride some of the best trails in the world. Reece enjoyed all of which Queenstown had to offer, as well as ending his trip with competing at Crankworx RotoruaReece also had some time to play around at Skyline Mountain Bike Park on his Glory. Nothing like getting sendy on 'Huck Yah'!Gorge Road is fun too 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 PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 18:32:02 A.M. Best Upgrades Issuer Credit Rating of Vietnam National Reinsurance Corporation A.M. Best Wesley Chia, +65 6589 8400, ext. 213 Associate Financial Analyst wesley.chia@ambest.com or Chi-Yeung Lok, +65 6589 8400, ext. 211 Associate Director, Analytics chi-yeung.lok@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 A.M. Best has upgraded the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating (Long-Term ICR) to bbb+ from bbb and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of B++ (Good) of Vietnam National Reinsurance Corporation (VINARE) (Vietnam). The outlook of the Long-Term ICR has been revised to stable from positive, while the FSR outlook remains stable. The rating upgrade reflects VINAREs consistent operating performance, strong risk-adjusted capitalization and good business profile in Vietnams non-life reinsurance market. VINARE has maintained good operating performance throughout the past few years from underwriting and investment activities. The company achieved a five-year average combined ratio of approximately 89% from 2012 to 2016, lower than many direct insurers in Vietnam. Tighter underwriting in its fire business helped improve its combined ratio in 2016. VINAREs risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), is supported by its low net and gross underwriting leverage. The companys investment portfolio is very conservative, with a majority of its assets invested in cash and deposits. In terms of business profile, VINARE continues to receive support from its shareholders, namely the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd (Swiss Re) and other direct insurers in Vietnam who are also its cedants. SCIC supports the company by providing access to some insurance business from the Vietnamese government. Swiss Re, VINAREs second-largest shareholder, provides the company with technical support, modeling capabilities and access to international businesses. By having its cedants as shareholders, VINARE also benefits from a steady stream of profitable domestic business. An offsetting rating factor is the companys low earnings retention. This could impede capital growth relative to its cedants, which are experiencing capital increases from organic growth and foreign investment. In addition, Vietnam continues to attract international and regional reinsurance capacity. While the company is well-positioned at its current rating level, negative rating actions may arise from material deterioration in operating performance or risk-adjusted capitalization. Ratings are communicated to rated entities prior to publication. Unless stated otherwise, the ratings were not amended subsequent to that communication. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Bests 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. Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Bests Credit Ratings. A.M. Best is the worlds 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/201704270062 PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 13:00:14 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 403 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for American Manganese Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - American Manganese Inc. (TSX Venture:AMY). has issued a press release with the following headline:American Manganese Inc. Commences Next Phase of Testing Amidst Growing Interest from Industry PlayersTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on American Manganese Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/American Manganese Inc.Source: American Manganese Inc. (TSX Venture: AMY, OTC Pink: AMYZF, FWB: 2AM, WKN: A0YJSR, ISIN: CA02735A1057)Date: April 27, 2017Time: 7:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of American Manganese Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) The 'Global and Chinese Butacide Industry, 2011-2021 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Butacide industry with a focus on the Chinese market. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 20:46:26 Press Information Research Trades Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045 Kusum Saonerkar Digital Marketing Executive +91 7507349866 email http://www.researchtrades.com/ # 434 Words Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045Digital Marketing Executive+91 7507349866 The 'Global and Chinese Butacide Industry, 2011-2021 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Butacide industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Butacide manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.Firstly , the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2011-2016 market shares for each company.Get Sample Copy@ http://www.researchtrades.com/request-sample/1018739 Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of Butacide industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/export. The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report then estimates 2016-2021 market development trends of Butacide industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. In the end, the report makes some important proposals for a new project of Butacide Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2011-2021 global and Chinese Butacide industry covering all important parameters.Request discount for this report@ http://www.researchtrades.com/discount/1018739 Table of Contents:Chapter One Introduction of Butacide Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Butacide1.2 Development of Butacide Industry1.3 Status of Butacide IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Butacide2.1 Development of Butacide Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Butacide Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Butacide Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.1.4 Contact Information3.2 Company B3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Product Information3.2.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.2.4 Contact Information3.3 Company C3.2.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Product Information3.3.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.3.4 Contact Information3.4 Company D3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Product Information3.4.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.4.4 Contact InformationGet Entire TOC@ http://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-and-chinese-butacide-industry-2016-market-research-report About Us:Research Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the clients specific requirement. Our database consists of a large collection of high-quality reports obtained using a customer-centric approach, thus providing valuable research insights. Preschool teacher and The Voice star Hannah Huston got a proclamation from the governors office, as did the Royals Alex Gordon, civil engineers, turkey hunters, the Nebraska Farm Bureau, rodeo enthusiasts and school choice supporters. The Nebraska State Education Association -- the union that represents 28,000 of the states teachers and is celebrating its 150th anniversary -- did not. And NSEA officials are mad. In a letter to Ricketts, NSEA President Nancy Fulton called Ricketts denial of a proclamation mean-spirited and indefensible and a slap in the face to its members and hundreds of thousands of former members who spent their careers teaching Nebraska children. For generations, the issuance of a gubernatorial proclamation has been a ceremonial, apolitical function of the office that you hold at this moment, Fulton wrote. As a 34-year public school teacher I am offended by your clear and complete lack of respect and appreciation for the thousands of public school employees and their advocacy organization -- the NSEA. The governors office said Ricketts deeply values the work of Nebraska teachers but has re-evaluated how it issues proclamations relating to education. All future proclamations will be issued with a focus on teacher innovation and/or student achievement, according to a statement in response to the NSEA's letter and a news release. Ricketts statement said his office will look for ways to honor the work of teachers who achieve improved student outcomes. And the statement took aim at the NSEAs opposition to LB651, which would require schools test students reading ability in kindergarten through third grade and require students who dont read at grade-level by third grade to repeat that year. The bill faced substantial opposition during a committee hearing, but Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, who introduced it, filed a motion Tuesday to bring it out of committee for debate by the full Legislature. The governors office offers proclamations to honor organizations or individuals. The state website says the governor will review all requests and grant or decline the requests without comment. In her letter, Fulton said the NSEA followed all the procedures outlined by Ricketts office when it applied in February and made it clear they were amenable to edits. She said the denial clarifies Ricketts lack of respect for and understanding of public schools' role as one of the countrys foundational institutions. The proclamation scuffle comes during a legislative session marked by several education debates, including a battle between school choice and public school advocates over bills that would allow charter schools and vouchers. The school choice bills didnt advance out of committee, but Ricketts supports school choice. Fultons letter includes a list of 47 proclamations Ricketts office has issued for a wide range of organizations and individuals, and marking important anniversaries of several organizations. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 13:00:21 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 398 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for CIBT Education Group Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - CIBT Education Group Inc. (TSX:MBA). has issued a press release with the following headline:CIBT Provides Update One Month after Acquisition of KGIC Inc. AssetsTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on CIBT Education Group Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/CIBT Education Group Inc.Source: CIBT Education Group Inc. (TSX: MBA, OTCQX: MBAIF, ISIN: CA17163Y1025)Date: April 27, 2017Time: 7:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of CIBT Education Group Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Energy Intelligence Solution Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025 Research Report By Future Market Insights Energy Intelligence Solution Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 07:00:11 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 # 559 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 Energy intelligence solutions provide an intelligent way to deal with energy crisis. Energy intelligence solutions includes tools and services which collect and analyse the energy data. Energy intelligence solutions can be considered as advanced form of energy management solutions. As compared to energy management software, it provide two fold benefits; first it is not only a visualization tool for meter data but also provides intelligence to reduce energy waste. Second, it offers advanced domain knowledge to utilize collected energy data for energy management. Energy intelligence solutions provides support for open standards, measure and verify results, insights and analysis of recorded data, accessibility and portability, control and automation, an integrated platform. Energy intelligence solutions finds applications in food & beverages industry, automotive industry, metal manufacturing industry, oil & gas industry, petrochemicals, electronics & telecommunication industry and utilities etc.Global Energy Intelligence Solution Market SegmentationGlobal energy intelligence solution market is segmented on the basis of service type, deployment model and end-user. On the basis of service type, global energy intelligence solution market is segmented into system integration service, consulting services, support & maintenance service. Energy intelligence solutions are segmented into two ways by which it can be deployed on-premise deployment and cloud based deployment. Energy intelligence solution provide assistance for energy saving along different industry verticals. Various end-users of energy intelligence solutions are residential buildings, offices & commercial areas, manufacturing units and others.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-757 Global Energy Intelligence Solution Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global energy intelligence solution market is divided into seven geographical regions North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Middle East & Africa. The global energy intelligence solution market is expected to reflect a double-digit CAGR over the forecast period. At present, North America is dominating the market followed by Western Europe. Among all the regions, APEJ is expected to create huge market opportunity for major players operating in the energy intelligence solution market during the forecast period. Latin America and Middle East & Africa regions are reflecting comparatively slow growth during forecast period.Global Energy Intelligence Solution Market: DriversIncreasing energy consumption and rising need for advanced energy management solutions for residential, commercial and industrial areas are the prominent factors responsible for evolution of energy intelligence solutions. Organizations around the world are focusing on significantly reducing their energy consumption bills through efficient utilization of energy. Energy intensive applications such as power & energy, industrial manufacturing and telecommunication need to control their CO2 emissions in order to comply with existing legislations and standards. Energy intelligence solutions not only provide competitive advantage to business but also extends its responsibility towards sustainable economic development. Aforementioned are some of the factors that are expected to drive the global energy intelligence solution market growth in near future.On other hand, long period on return of investment, lack of knowledge and difficulties in handling technical issues related to energy intelligence solutions limits its full-fledged market growth.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-757 Tremendous opportunities lies in developing standardized foundation for deploying and leveraging energy intelligence solutions.Global Energy Intelligence Solution Market: Key PlayersThe energy intelligence solution market is highly competitive and diversified market, characterised by active presence of many big players. EnerNOC, Inc., Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, and GridPoint, Inc are some of the major players in global energy intelligence solution market. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 22:01:35 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 399 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Flexible Solutions International Inc--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Victoria, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Flexible Solutions International Inc (NYSE MKT:FSI). has issued a press release with the following headline:FSI Announces a Decrease in First Quarter RevenueTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Flexible Solutions International Inc, or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Flexible Solutions International IncSource: Flexible Solutions International Inc (NYSE MKT: FSI, FWB: FXT, ISIN: US33938T1043, WKN: 541522)Date: April 27, 2017Time: 4:00 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Flexible Solutions International Inc and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Environmental Chambers are environmental testing devices used for various types of testing such as prototype evaluation, research & development testing, production testing, accelerated stress testing, reliability testing, failure analysis, and any other application where environmental simulation is needed. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 20:07:27 Press Information Research Trades Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045 SkypeID: researchtradescon Web: http://www.researchtrades.com Sushant Gijare Digital Media Executive +91 7507349866 email http://www.researchtrades.com # 522 Words Flat No.10, Wing C,S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1,Baner, Pune-411045SkypeID: researchtradesconWeb: http://www.researchtrades.comDigital Media Executive+91 7507349866 Environmental Chambers are environmental testing devices used for various types of testing such as prototype evaluation, research & development testing, production testing, accelerated stress testing, reliability testing, failure analysis, and any other application where environmental simulation is needed. Get Sample Copy of Global Environmental Test Chambers MarketScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Environmental Test Chambers 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 coversESPEC,Thermotron,Binder CSZ ,Memmert ACS TPS CTS CME Envsin Votsch Industrietechnik Weiss Technik UK Russells Technical Products Climats Scientific Climate Systems Fentron KlimasimulationCaron Hastest SolutionsBuy a Copy of Global Environmental Test Chambers Market for single user price of $ 3480 @ http://www.researchtrades.com/checkout/1091400 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, coversTemperature & Humidity Chamber, Benchtop, Thermal Shock, Walk-in Chambers, Specialty ChambersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoAutomotive, Electronics, Food & Beverages, Pharmaceutical, OthersView Complete ReportThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the Global Environmental Test Chambers Market.Chapter 1, to describe Environmental Test Chambers Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyse the top manufacturers of Environmental Test Chambers, with sales, revenue, and price of Environmental Test Chambers, 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 Environmental Test Chambers, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyse the key regions, 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, Environmental Test Chambers market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Environmental Test Chambers sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceChapter 1, to describe Environmental Test Chambers Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;About UsResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the clients specific requirement. Our database consists of a large collection of high-quality reports obtained using a customer-centric approach, thus providing valuable research insights. The research encompasses information gathered and examined by subject-matter experts, laying down growth opportunities and developmental strategies for enterprises. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 11:18:02 Hobsons Research Reveals the Views of International Students on Brexit, Trump, and the Importance of Welcoming Campaigns For further information, infographics or the full report please contact Lodestone Communications for Hobsons Harry Padfield 07896140920 harry.padfield@lodestonecommunications.com A unique survey of more than 62,000 prospective international students, 27,955 of whom were considering studying in the UK, recommends that UK universities must continue to build on the success of campaigns that promote the UK as a welcoming destination for international students. The Welcoming the World: Maintaining the [..] report by Hobsons, the student recruitment and retention solutions company, launched today (27 April 2017). The report argues that while strategic challenges for UK higher education remain following the vote to leave the EU last year, efforts by universities and campaign groups to promote the UK as a welcoming destination for international students are having a positive effect. The fifth annual International Student Survey (ISS http://www.internationalstudentsurvey.com/2017/) by Hobsons the largest of its kind surveyed students from 196 countries who plan to study abroad. Maintaining the UKs status as a top global study destination UK institutions must continue to demonstrate the economic and social value of international student recruitment by successfully adopting a strategic, welcoming approach. This years research found that 68.5% of respondents said the decision to leave the European Union had made no difference in their decision to study in the UK. 12.7% said they were less interested in studying in the UK as a result of the EU referendum, while 11.3% said it made them more interested in studying in the UK. While the results of this years ISS present a more optimistic picture of the impact of Brexit on UK higher education, the sector must still overcome challenges in order to reassure international students that the UK remains a welcoming place: The degree to which a place feels welcoming is one of the most important factors influencing prospective students choice of a university town or city, with 31% citing it as the most important consideration. Being a welcoming place is ranked above quality of teaching, which 25% choose as their most important consideration. 84% of respondents said that campaigns like #WeAreInternational and #LondonIsOpen positively persuaded them that the UK is welcoming. Furthermore, the UK higher education sector must learn from and react to the impact that President Donald Trump is having on the US higher education sector. Early indications suggest that Trumps proposed travel ban on the nationals of six countries had a negative impact on international student perceptions of the US. However, this potential benefit for the UK will only be realised if the sector can project a strong, positive, and welcoming message to international students. 22% of prospective international students reported that they were reconsidering their decision to study in the US. 59% of these students said that the UK is now comparatively more attractive compared to the US as a destination for international students. Jeremy Cooper, Managing Director of Hobsons EMEA, said: While the results of this years ISS present a more optimistic picture, UK universities must continue to build on the success of campaigns that show international students are accepted and appreciated in the UK. Campaigns like #WeAreInternational and #LondonIsOpen are having a positive effect in helping international students perceive the UK to be welcoming. We believe that more can be done by universities, and by all of us with an interest in UK higher education. By adopting the recommendations from this report from those on social media to those on responding to rankings universities can achieve success and maintain the UKs global leadership in higher education. Teaching quality and the Teaching Excellence Framework Findings from this years ISS show that there are many factors besides rankings that influence international student perceptions of quality. The research suggests that measures of student satisfaction and teaching quality can have equal or greater influence than institutional or subject rankings. 69% strongly agreed that a university having highly qualified teaching staff was an important indicator, while 22% somewhat agreed, making this the strongest single indicator. The second strongest indicator was high graduate employment rates, with 52% strongly agreeing and 29% somewhat agreeing. When asked to say whether they would be more likely to attend a university with a high ranking, or one with excellent teaching quality, 80% suggested that they would choose a university with excellent teaching quality. Given the extent to which the perception of these factors are within the control of universities compared to rankings, this could be encouraging news for universities that perform less well in the league tables. Hobsons findings suggest that there is much that lower-ranked institutions can do to increase their appeal to international students. To download the full report visit http://www.internationalstudentsurvey.com/2017/ or follow Hobsons @HobsonsEMEA #HobsonsInsights and #ISS2017 Note to Editors: 1. Hobsons helps students identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans, match to best-fit educational opportunities, and finish what they start. Through our solutions, we enable thousands of educational institutions to improve post-secondary and career planning, admissions and enrolment management, student success and advising for millions of students around the globe. 2. The International Student Survey 2017 was conducted by Hobsons in January and February 2017. Respondents to the survey answered a total of 79 questions, generating a combined total of more than 5 million data points. This report focuses on the responses of 27,955 prospective international students who identified that they were considering studying in the UK. 3. Hobsons partnered with 65 universities from around the world to survey their prospective student database. The survey sampled 62,366 prospective international students globally, with 196 nationalities represented. 4. The size of the data set along with the number and quality of the responses has enabled very robust student segmentation and insight into the influences of international students decision-making processes, how they engage with universities, and what they expect from universities in the lead up to making their final decision. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201704270056 Hobsons research reveals views of international students on Brexit, Trump, and welcoming campaigns PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 05:56:44 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 # 683 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 Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery is performed to treat disease occurring in various parts of brain, spinal cord or skull base through a small opening. Diseased area may require repair, removal and in the worst cases replacement which is being done through neurosurgery. Neurosurgical device used for the visualization purpose inside the human brain or spinal cord is known as Endoscope which is kind of a small microscope inserted through minimal invasion. Endoscope helps in magnifying critical anatomical structure and assist the surgeon in the treatment. Endoscopic neurosurgery requires minimal incision thus it is also known as Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery. Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery avoids complication post-surgery, leads to faster recovery, minimal scarring/pain and high accuracy. Recent advancement in endoscope design produced endoscopes that are compact, more efficient with improved resolution and better illumination than the earlier devices.Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices Market: Drivers & RestraintsMinimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market is probably the last speciality to move to minimally invasive because of the complexity involved in the surgery however due to continuous advancement in medical technology for the treatment of neurological disorders have raised the demand of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices. Rise in the ageing population leading to increase in the incidence of neurological disorders are some major factors driving the growth of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market. More awareness amongst the surgeons is helping the market to dwell in developed countries however the market of developed countries are more or less saturated and have a limited growth opportunity as compared to developing countries especially Asia Pacific countries where due to large population the market growth can be significant in the upcoming years. Lack of skilled professionals in the developing countries and poor or unstable reimbursement regulations are hampering the growth of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices in developing countries.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-956 Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices Market: SegmentationMinimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market is classified on the basis of product type, surgery type and geography.Based on product type, the global Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market is segmented into the following:Fiber optic cablesMiniature video cameras (Endoscopes)Special surgical instrumentsExternal video monitorsBased on surgery type, the global Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market is segmented into the following:Intracranial SurgeryEndonasal NeurosurgerySpinal SurgeryMinimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices Market: OverviewMinimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices is a growing market due to various benefits offered like less recovery time, shortened hospital stay, greater accuracy, less pain and muscle sparring which is making minimally invasive neurosurgery a preferred option for the medical practitioners and surgeons. Proliferation of joint ventures and cross utilization of technology in minimally invasive surgical devices market is a plus for different market players as they dont have to invest much on the research and development of different types of products. Introduction of robotic devices to perform the surgery is an alternative for better outcomes and increased accuracy.Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. North America is the leading region in Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market due to the high volumes of surgical procedures being performed. Also, the availability of established healthcare infrastructure, high contribution of healthcare to economy, patient compliance are the reasons for the high demand in North America. Europe has the second largest Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market due to vast technological advancement in terms of healthcare sector. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a good rate as compared to NA and Europe as there is ample market opportunity in countries like India and China.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-956 Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in global Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Devices market are Karl Storz GmbH & Co. KG, Olympus Corporation, Conmed Corporation, Richard Wolf GmbH, Boston Scientific Inc., Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corporation, Aesculap Division, Smith & Nephew Plc, Medtronic and NICO Corp. to name a few. Overhead Cranes is a type of crane found in industrial environments. An overhead crane consists of parallel runways with a traveling bridge spanning the gap. Research Trades PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 20:06:19 Press Information Research Trades Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045 SkypeID: researchtradescon Web: http://www.researchtrades.com Sushant Gijare Digital Media Executive Call us: +91 7507349866 email http://www.http://www.researchtrades.com # 525 Words Flat No.10, Wing C,S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1,Baner, Pune-411045SkypeID: researchtradesconWeb: http://www.researchtrades.comDigital Media ExecutiveCall us: +91 7507349866 Research Trades adds a new report package Global Overhead Cranes Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast To 2022Overhead Cranes is a type of crane found in industrial environments. An overhead crane consists of parallel runways with a traveling bridge spanning the gap. A hoist, the lifting component of a crane, travels along the bridge. If the bridge is rigidly supported on two or more legs running on a fixed rail at ground level, the crane is called a gantry crane (USA, ASME B30 series) or a goliath crane (UK, BS 466)..Get Sample Copy of Global Overhead Cranes MarketScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Overhead Cranes 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 coversKonecranes Terex KITO GROUP ABUS GH Crane & Components Gorbel Eilbeck Cranes ZPMC JinruiWeihua Henan MineBuy a Copy of Global Overhead Cranes Market for single user price of $ 3480 @ http://www.researchtrades.com/checkout/1091410 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, coversSingle-girder overhead cranes,Double-girder overhead cranesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoFactory & Plant ,Production Line, Warehouse, OthersView Complete Report @ http://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-overhead-cranes-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022 There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Overhead Cranes market.Chapter 1, to describe Overhead Cranes Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Overhead Cranes, with sales, revenue, and price of Overhead Cranes, in 2016 and 2017Chapter 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 Overhead Cranes, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, 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, Overhead Cranes market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Overhead Cranes sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceAbout UsResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.Our services aim at offering ethical reports at an economical rate to enable the customers growth and thus develop a healthy relationship with the clientele. In addition, our goal is to offer impeccable data solutions and continuous support to business organizations. Poultry Feed Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025 Research Report By Future Market Insights Poultry Feed Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 06:52:05 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 # 686 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 Poultry feed market is a part of vast animal feed market and makes an important part of it as poultry is invariably consumed in most parts of the world. The concept of animal feed has been there in the market for several years especially in the developed markets. However, with the advent of globalization and rise in the standard of living of consumers, companies are expanding in the emerging markets of the world with improved products and wide range of options for each animal group. Poultry meat is the highest among others such as pork, beef and fish meat. Therefore, vast opportunity lies in the poultry feed segment.Poultry Feed Market: Drivers & RestraintsRising per capita income and widespread poultry diseases are the major driving factors of the poultry feed market globally. In addition, growth of domestic and international quick service restaurants in developing countries and demand for quality meat products by consumers has significantly contributed to the rising demand of poultry feed those regions. In 2014, Asia Pacific was the largest market in terms of poultry feed demand and revenue and would continue to dominate the market for several factors. The market growth is attributed to the higher standard of living among consumers coupled with shift towards away-from-home-eating. Manufacturers are closely working with the factory farmers to direct them towards higher yield of poultry thereby increasing their return on investment (ROI). For instance, Cargill Inc. were engaged closely with Malaysia based TD Poultry to deliver best poultry solution. As a result, TD Poultry could achieve remarkable results in broilers with 1.63 feed conversion rates. Also, 2.35 kg body weight was achieved in 35 days, down from previous 40 days.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-716 Poultry Feed Market: SegmentationThe various type of poultry feed additives available in the market consists of antibiotics, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, feed enzymes and feed acidifiers. Feed acidifiers are the largest among all other poultry additive segment across the world. The regional segmentation includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is the largest market followed by North America. On the basis of type, the poultry feed market can be segmented as broilers, layers, turkey and others. The consumption of meat varies from region to region, for instance, in North America, broilers is the most preferred meat category and antibiotics falls under the largest category under the feed additives segment.Poultry Feed Market: Market OverviewPoultry feed is required to increase the feed conversion ratio by improving gut micro flora thereby enhancing animals health. It also maintains animal health by preventing diseases among them. The manufacturers are concentrating more on the developing markets to tap the under penetrated feed market in countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Lebanon and Turkey. These markets offer greater opportunities to increase revenue and sales with higher per capita expenditure on quality food. Moreover, it is a proven fact that with rise in per capita income, people tend to consume more meat and meat products. Therefore the poultry feed market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR through the forecast period (2015-2020).Poultry Feed Market: Recent DevelopmentPlayers such as Novus International, Inc. and Kemin group continue to deliver new products for poultry farmers. In November 2012, Novus International, Inc. launched AVIMATRIX- a feed solution for optimized broiler performance by acting over gut environment through targeted and controlled release of compounds in the broilers gut. There is an increasing demand of solution oriented customized products from the poultry farmers in the emerging markets. In May 2013, a South African firm AgriProtein Technologies bagged the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) for developing a commercial method to develop animal feed through maggots.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-716 Poultry Feed Market: Key PlayersKey global players of the poultry feed market include Alltech Inc., ADM (Archer Daniels Midland Company), ABF Plc (Associated British Food), BASF (Badishce Anilin und Soda Fabrik), Charoen Popkhand Foods, Cargill Inc., Evonik Industries AG, CHR.Hansen Holdings A/S, Novus International Inc, Nutreco NV, Royal DSM N.V., DLG Group and InVivo NSA. Activists are preparing for a "triage" situation in Whiteclay if beer sales there suddenly stop this weekend. Whiteclay's four embattled beer stores are set to close Sunday, unless a Lincoln judge allows them to remain in business while they appeal last week's decision by state regulators to deny renewal of their liquor licenses. Judge Andrew Jacobsen said Wednesday he'd consider the stores' request to stay open, but did not immediately issue a ruling. Activists said they want to address any "immediate needs" that might arise including withdrawal symptoms should the stores close and parch a decades-old source of alcohol for residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. "What do we do when Monday morning arrives and it's a dry Whiteclay?" said John Maisch, a former liquor regulator from Oklahoma who produced a documentary on Whiteclay beer sales. "That's really been our effort and our focus." They plan to provide food and water, and direct people to counseling and other services as needed. Maisch said exact details were still being arranged. "We're envisioning sort of a triage kind of setup," he said. "We have been preparing for this day for literally the last two or three years." Meanwhile, a state task force that will examine long-term public health issues in Whiteclay isn't wasting time before beginning its own work. Leaders of the group are already planning their first meeting in the northwest Nebraska village. "We'll talk about the path ahead for Whiteclay," said state Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, who is expected to lead the task force with fellow Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln. Members plan to gather in Whiteclay on May 19-20 with local residents and representatives of the Indian Health Service and Pine Ridge's resident Oglala Sioux Tribe. State lawmakers from South Dakota have also been invited. The discussion will be broad-ranging, including such topics as alcohol treatment and economic development, Brewer said. Also on the agenda: a cleanup of the streets of Whiteclay, possibly including volunteers from Pine Ridge. Brewer said the task force hopes to harness the "good energy" that followed last week's decision by the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. That order kicked off a whirlwind seven days for issues surrounding Whiteclay and Pine Ridge. On Monday, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council declared a public safety state of emergency and issued a vote of no confidence in Police Chief Harry Martinez, who then resigned. The tribe has had eight police chiefs since 2008 and seen its force dwindle from about 100 officers to 30, according to KOTA-TV in Rapid City, S.D. And Wednesday, a lawyer for the Whiteclay beer stores told the judge in Lincoln that closing them, even temporarily, would do their owners irreparable harm. The stores are Arrowhead Inn, State Line Liquor, D&S Pioneer and Jumping Eagle Inn. "They're going to lose business. They're going to lose money. They're going to lose profits," attorney Andrew Snyder of Scottsbluff told Jacobsen in a Lancaster County district courtroom. Synder argued past decisions in similar cases before the Nebraska Supreme Court mean the stores have a strong chance at victory. Likelihood an appeal will succeed is one factor judges weigh when considering whether to put an earlier decision on hold. Milissa Johnson-Wiles, an assistant state attorney general who is representing the liquor commission, disagreed, saying the Whiteclay case involves intricate issues that make an outcome too difficult to predict. She called the commission decision "long overdue." She also waved off Synder's characterization of potential harm to the beer stores, should they close only to reopen a short time later. "That is not irreparable injury," she said. Jacobsen said his decision on the temporary status of the licenses could come as soon as Thursday. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025 report to their offering. Refractive Surgery Devices Market Growth PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 06:03:14 Press Information Fututre Market Insights 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 # 403 Words Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States3479183531Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Refractive Surgery is the process of correcting or improving your vision affected by refractive error such as Myopia, Hyperopia, and Astigmatism. The most common procedure for correcting the refractive error is LASIK.Myopia is the most common refractive error in the global population. This indication varies across populations of different regions and ethnicities. It is estimated that 1.45 billion people had myopia in 2010 and it is predicted this number will continue to increase as the worlds population grows. The prevalence of myopia is most common among young adults in South- East Asian countries which is around 80-90% of the population completing high school.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Drivers and RestraintsAdvancement in Refractive Surgery treatment have provided patient with a number of option to reduce and eliminate their dependency on glasses and contact lenses and take corrective measures for refractive errors. With the rapid increase in procedure volumes since last few years, there is an increase adaptation of laser devices for refractive surgery in healthcare facilities. The technological improvements in LASIK surgery in last few years is acting as a key driver for ophthalmic laser market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-780 Low patient awareness of procedures safety, a limited pool of qualified refractive surgeons, unpredictable regulations are acting as a barrier for this market.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: SegmentationGlobal vascular market is further segmented into following types:Ophthalmic LasersEximer LasersFemtosecond LasersYAG LasersMicrokeratomeRefractive Surgery Devices Market: OverviewWith the increase in patient population suffering from refractive errors and an increased awareness in the treatment options, the global market for refractive surgery devices is expected to witness and healthy growth in the forecast years (2015-2025)Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-780 Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Region- wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global vascular stents market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa.North America represent the largest market in ophthalmic lasers followed by Europe. In Asia Pacific, China dominates the refractive surgery devices market.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in global refractive surgery devices market are Abbott Medical Optics, Inc., Carl Zeiss AG, Alcon, Inc., Bausch & Lomb Incorporated, Nidek Co., Ltd., Ziemer Ophthalmic Systems AG, SCHWIND eye-tech-solutions GmbH & Co. KG, Lumenis Ltd. and Ellex Medical Lasers Limited. Steel is one of the most common engineering materials in the world. It is a fundamental resource used in a variety of industries. Sandwich structure is an optimum design for transferring bending loads and it can lighten the weight of structure. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 20:10:29 Press Information Research Trades Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045 Sushant Gijare Digital Media Executive +91 7507349866 email http://www.researchtrades.com # 496 Words Flat No.10, Wing C,S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1,Baner, Pune-411045Digital Media Executive+91 7507349866 Steel is one of the most common engineering materials in the world. It is a fundamental resource used in a variety of industries. Sandwich structure is an optimum design for transferring bending loads and it can lighten the weight of structure.Get Sample Copy of Global Steel Sandwich Panels MarketScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Steel Sandwich Panels 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 coversKingspan, Metecno, Isopan, Arcelor Mittal, Fischer Profil, Omnis exteriors,Silex,Isomec,Italpannelli,Marcegaglia,Alubel,Ruukki,Balex,Hoesch,Areco,Paroc GroupMasterpanelBuy a Copy of Global Steel Sandwich Panels Market for single user price of $ 3480 @ http://www.researchtrades.com/checkout/1081108 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, coversEPS Sandwich Panels, PU Sandwich Panels, Glass Wool Sandwich Panels, PF Sandwich PanelsMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoBuilding Wall, Building Roof, Cold StorageView Complete Report @ http://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-steel-sandwich-panels-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022 There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Steel Sandwich Panels market.Chapter 1, to describe Steel Sandwich Panels Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyse the top manufacturers of Steel Sandwich Panels, with sales, revenue, and price of Steel Sandwich Panels, 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 Steel Sandwich Panels, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, 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, Steel Sandwich Panels market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Steel Sandwich Panels sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceAbout UsResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.Our services aim at offering ethical reports at an economical rate to enable the customers growth and thus develop a healthy relationship with the clientele. In addition, our goal is to offer impeccable data solutions and continuous support to business organizations. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-27 23:10:10 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 393 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Vangold Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Colimbia (FSCWire) - Vangold Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:VAN). has issued a press release with the following headline:Vangold Completes Acquisition of Historic El Pinguico Mine, Guanajuato, MexicoTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Vangold Resources Ltd., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Vangold Resources Ltd.Source: Vangold Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: VAN, OTC Bulletin Board: VNGRF)Date: April 27, 2017Time: 5:10 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Vangold Resources Ltd. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) 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: SCOR via Globenewswire Disclaimer: If you have any questions regarding information in this press release please contact the company added in the press release. Please do not contact pr-inside. We will not be able to assist you. PR-inside disclaims the content included in this release. 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. Lincoln native Sydney Johnson has received a place on a Fulbright Summer Institute to study at Queens University Belfast on one of the most prestigious and selective summer scholarship programs operating worldwide. The US-UK Fulbright Commission is the only bi-lateral, transatlantic scholarship program, offering awards and summer programs for study or research in any field, at any accredited US or UK university. As a participant, Johnson has been selected from a strong applicant pool to experience the UK on a 4 week summer program studying conflict transformation. Students taking the programme will examine the theories and practices of conflict transformation from within local and global perspectives that will include case studies of Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia and South America, as well as evaluate how religion impacts upon peace-building. California-based surety bond firm now makes available its surety bond services to residents of the Evergreen State. Contact Greg Rynerson, Surety Bond Authority, Inc. ***@suretyauthority.com Greg Rynerson, Surety Bond Authority, Inc. End -- Surety Bond Authority, Inc., a California-based surety bond company, is now making its surety bonds and surety bond consulting services available to the State of Washington.The company provides a direct list of accessible and unique Washington surety bonds through its website offering visitors with an informative experience on the type of surety bond specific to their needs, from Agricultural Product Dealer Bonds to Wholesale Fish Dealer Performance Bonds."We are cognizant and committed to the specific needs of our clients particularly when it comes to selecting surety bonds for their current needs," said Greg Rynerson, CEO, and Founder of Surety Bond Authority. "As we expand our reach in Washington, we endeavor to provide clients with services that make it easy for them to get bonded at the most affordable price."Currently, many states are updating surety bond forms and increasing bond amounts. In construction projects, a surety bond guarantees that its holder will perform the task completely to the specifics in the bond. In court, surety bonds help protect participants in legal matters against fraudulent activities or use of finances.Surety bonds are also required for businesses that are highly regulated by the State such as motor vehicle dealers, notary public, mortgage brokers, and even hearing aid specialists. These bonds are required as part of the licensing requirements established by the State. If a business cannot post a bond, the state would not grant them a license.According to Rynerson, there is a growing necessity of surety bonds in various transactions in the market. Getting the right bond may become the first step in conducting any business legally and successfully.As an experienced surety bond provider backed by more than 20 years of managing clients at state and federal levels, Surety Bond Authority will not only be able to help clients get the bonds they need but also assist them in getting qualified if they are not quite there yet.Surety bonds for general contractors, government agencies, regulation departments, state and federal courts, and businesses in Washington can now be acquired with Surety Bond Authority.As a reputable partner for all surety bond needs, Surety Bond Authority, Inc. provides clients a high-level of surety bonds and surety bond consulting services at affordable prices. The company is now rapidly expanding its services across the country. For more information about Surety Bond Authority, visit its official website at www.suretybondauthority.com Greg A. Rynerson, CEO5850 Canoga Ave. #400, Woodland Hills, CA800-333-7800greg@suretyauthority.com The highlights of the show for the group included the appointment of a new CEO, launch of a new luxury brand as well as the addition of a superb property in Port Sudan. Media Contact Hina Bakht ***@mpj-pr.com +971506975146 Hina Bakht+971506975146 End -- On the occasion of its 14th year participating at the Arabian Travel Market, Hospitality Management Holding reflects on what was a hugely successful week for the Group with a series of significant announcements.The highlights of the show for the group included the appointment of a new CEO, launch of a new luxury brand as well as the addition of a superb property in Port Sudan.Mr. Brett Schafer, Chief Executive Officer of Faisal Holding, stated, "Mr ATM 2017 was notable for us as we enter a new phase of growth and expansion. We were delighted to welcome to our team Mr Aboudi Asali as the Chief Executive Officer of HMH. Following this key development, we successfully launched a new luxury 5-star brand 'Bahi Hotels & Resorts' that is a fantastic addition to our impressive portfolio of existing brands serving varied market segments. Consolidating our presence in Sudan, where we have three well-established hotels in operation, we added EWA Port Sudan Hotel & Apartments that is expected to open by Q4 2017."Over the years HMH has established a solid reputation as a fully integrated hotel management company. Elaborating on the group's success, Mr Ferghal Purcell, COO of HMH, stressed, "All brands under HMH are uniquely positioned to compete in an evolving business environment. We believe quality service and standards are more than ever critical to a brand's success and that's the strength of our hotels. The typical customer staying at any hotel today is looking for a great value and an enhanced-stay experience and that is guaranteed at every hotel under our banner."About HMHFounded in 2003 in Dubai, HMH Hospitality Management Holding is a fully integrated hotel management company that prides itself for being one of the pioneers among local groups that are specialized in the dry segment. Being the largest operator in the sector within the region, HMH provides hotel owners and developers a broad spectrum of world-class management solutions with five distinct, yet complementary, hotel brands catering to varied market segments from luxury to budget. These include The Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels.HMH's strategic expansion in the Middle East and North Africa has been successful in unlocking a world of opportunities while creating value for its stakeholders, associates, staff members and customers. The existing portfolio is located in some of the most desirable destinations across the MENA region, with a pipeline of hotels under development to grow HMH's regional footprint even further.For more information about HMH please visit http://www.hmhhotelgroup.com or https://www.hmhhotelgroup.com/ subscribenow For media contact:Hina BakhtVice PresidentMPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)Mob: +971 50 697 5146Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.comhttp://www.mpj-pr.com Increasing their portfolio of accredited Business & IT e-Learning courses with an innovative and cost effective learning solution for those looking to study the latest Malaysian Legislation 'New Companies Act 2016'. End -- Online training provider, Good e-Learning have recently released their latest course 'New Companies Act 2016'. The course is no available on Good e-Learning's website.The New Companies Act came into force in Malaysia on the 31of January 2017.The purpose of this online course is for students to explore and understand the new legal requirements surrounding Directors, Secretaries, Auditors, Shares, Capital and financial reporting.The New Companies Act 2016 course has been created in conjunction with leading experts in Malaysian law to provide students with everything they need to have a good understanding of the new legislation.By taking this course, students will gain a detailed understanding of the new developments in the conduct of meetings and will be provided with an insight into new corporate rescue mechanisms, administrative matters and compliance requirements.As with all Good e-Learning's courses, 'New Companies Act 2016' offers in-depth visual learning, audio and video narratives, quizzes and practice exams to provide the best learning experience possible.This course comes with 3 months' access, certificate of completion and 24 hour, 7 day a week tutor support.Good e-Learning courses run entirely over the web, giving students the flexibility to study when it suits them at home, at work or on the move.The Companies Act was first implemented in 1965 and served as regulation and law for Malaysian business for 51 years.In 2003, as businesses moved into a new era, a reform imitative lead by SSM was performed. This reform created a comprehensive review of the 1965 Act over a four-year period. The Reform Initiative was extensive, touching many sections and components of the Act. It sought to repeal the Companies Act 1965, which contained rules and regulations that needed revision and fresh updates.The efforts centre on modernizing, to enable Malaysia to attract greater foreign direct investment into the country, thus allowing for greater ease of doing business and improved corporate governance initiatives.Contact: Jamie Scott020 3824 2849Good e-LearningFloor, Portland House, Bressenden Place,LondonSW1E 5BH Mark Spain Real Estate honored today by the Atlanta Business Chronicle with the Pacesetter Award. This award annually honors Atlanta's top fastest-growing privately held companies with a track record for taking their business to the next level. By: Mark Spain Real Estate 2017 Atlanta Business Chronicle Pacesetter Award winner Mark Spain Real Estate Contact TC McClenning, @RealtorPR Top Cat Creative Services ***@topcatcreative.com TC McClenning, @RealtorPRTop Cat Creative Services End -- Mark Spain received this award in 2015 when he led the top-selling Keller Williams sales team in the Southeast. At the start of 2016, Spain formed his own independent brokerage and has not lost a step with innovation, marketing and growth. Mark Spain Real Estate has expanded to 125 team members, opened a second office in Athens, Ga., just opened its third office earlier this month, this time with a location south of Atlanta in Stockbridge and averaged 5.2 homes sold per day in 2016. Two additional officesone west of and the other east of Atlantaare slated to open later this year.This 2017 Pacesetter Award is the first for the Alpharetta-based, independent real estate brokerage. It comes on the heels of being named a 2017 Top 150 Workplace byin March."We feel as if we haven't missed a step since going independent and most of that is because of all the advance prep work and ongoing dedication of our team to an unparalleled client experience and being experts in the Atlanta and Athens real estate markets," said Chairman and CEO Mark Spain.Mark Spain Real Estate achieved 1,842 home sales in 2016 for total gross sales of $443 million. This was over 600 homes more than the team's total closings in 2015. Gross sales also increased a whopping $160 million, year-over-year. For homes listed for sale by the brokerage, the average time from hitting the market to under contract was just 30 days."It is particularly rewarding to be receiving the Pacesetter Award after just our first year of becoming an independent brokerage," commented John Makarewicz, company president. "Atlanta is a competitive field, not just in real estate, but in most business fields, so being on this top 100 list is an honor we don't take lightly. We owe part of this to the excellent training systems we have in place that every agent joining us experiences. The rest we owe to our amazing clients and customers, past and present."In 2016, Mark Spain surpassed $3 billion in collective gross sales for his career while heading his namesake brokerage. In addition, his name became the No. 1 most reviewed Realtor on Zillow in the entire United States. Mark Spain Real Estate was also named to the Inc. 5000 in late 2016, a list considered to be the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. Companies such as Microsoft, Domino's Pizza, Pandora, LinkedIn, Yelp and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on Inc. 5000.Mark Spain is the only metro Atlanta real estate agent to be endorsed by Barbara Corcoran, the real estate mogul frequently seen on ABC'sVisit YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zHlADsoO15Y ) to see the 30-second testimonial.Mark Spain Real Estate's headquarters are located in Alpharetta, Ga., at 12600 Deerfield Parkway Suite 450. For more information about the company or the active Atlanta and Athens real estate markets, call 770-886-9000 or visit markspain.com. The Mark Spain Real Estate app is also available as a free download at app.markspain.com Bilfinger SE has commissioned Apleona GVA with advisory services for the relocation of its corporate headquarters to the Triwo Commercial Park in Mannheim. In the summer of 2018, Bilfinger will be moving with about 220 employees into the new 4,600 square meter office complex at Oskar-Meixner-Strae 1. As part of [] Even the word deterrence sounds musty. A Cold War construct, deterrence was a complicated theory and then a collection of evolving policies that kept the U.S. and the Soviet Union from a nuclear Armageddon. It was largely mothballed during the post-Cold War era. But that was then. With a new set of threats playing out across the globe in North Korea, Syria, the Baltic States, the South China Sea, and beyond the Trump administration could benefit by relearning and reapplying the lessons of deterrence to this turbulent new era. Why does deterrence matter? First, because the American power to deter is critical to maintaining U.S. alliances, the Trump administration's problem isn't deterring other countries from attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons. Few would doubt the U.S. willingness or ability to obliterate any nation that launched a nuclear strike against it. But, as the Obama administration rediscovered when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine, the U.S. does have a growing problem in deterring adversaries from using conventional weapons or even little green men to attack weak regional states. That's destabilizing. The second reason why deterrence matters is that security threats to the U.S. and its allies are increasing. The wars of the last quarter century, especially since 9/11, have come at great cost to the U.S. The U.S. has wrestled with protracted wars in the Balkans, the collapse of Somalia, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and a growing crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions, but none of these threats were existential. Not yet. None threatened the survival of the American people, or large-scale destruction on U.S. territory. And, for the most part, none directly threatened key U.S. allies. The threats emerging over the next quarter century are likely to be much more consequential. The threats emerging over the next quarter century are likely to be much more consequential. China, Russia, and North Korea are rapidly modernizing their nuclear arsenals and upgrading their delivery systems. Moscow and Beijing are also vastly improving their conventional military capabilities, shifting the balance of power and introducing new uncertainties. Chemical and biological weapons are easier to get than ever, the threat from cyber attacks seems limitless, and international terrorism is not going away any time soon. How can the U.S. deter these threats? First, it must understand that there is no such thing as blanket deterrence. Rather, one must deter a specific adversary from taking a specific action. Deterrence means anticipating an adversary's intentions, and influencing them. The U.S. cannot, for example, deter Russia. It could, however, plan to deter President Vladimir Putin from seizing Estonia in a lightning strike. Two years ago, RAND experts warned that such a scenario was quite possible. NATO and the U.S. have since taken steps to instill doubt in Russian leaders' minds that such an attack could succeed. Similarly, the U.S. can deter North Korea from initiating a nuclear attack on the Republic of Korea or Japan, or initiating a large-scale conventional attack on the Republic of Korea. In both instances, the U.S. and its allies offer credible responses that would be both overwhelming and devastating. Yet, we don't think it is possible to deter North Korea from its pursuit of nuclear weapons it is doing so out of a survival instinct or its regular provocations of the south, which have brought it international attention and rewards over the decades. An end to the North Korean nuclear program would require a negotiated outcome that would likely necessitate that China be a guarantor for the regime. A holistic approach to these threats should include ramping up U.S. government capabilities to anticipate emerging threats, including events that are unlikely to happen but would be devastating if they did. The U.S. will never succeed at predicting the future, but it can foresee multiple possibilities and take appropriate action. Civilian and military planners should also develop specific policies and capabilities to deter those major threats that they can foresee. They should emphasize conventional means of deterrence more than nuclear means America's threats need to be credible and prepare to deter across multiple domains, including space and cyberspace. And they should tailor deterrent capabilities and messages to influence different potential adversaries. What deters Vladimir Putin might not disturb Kim Jong Un. Finally, some threats will not be anticipated or deterred: pandemics, natural disasters, or sneak attacks, for example. Boosting national resilience could help the U.S. bounce back faster and stronger from any disasters or attacks that do occur. Disruption may be inevitable, but more anticipation, deterrence and resilience can help. Andrew Hoehn is senior vice president for research and analysis and Sonni Efron is managing editor, Strategic Rethink Series, at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Both are authors of the book, Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity. This commentary originally appeared on Fortune on April 26, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. For Release Thursday April 27, 2017 A new RAND report identifies the likely concerns of North Korean elites about their possible fates under various unification scenarios and recommends actions that the Republic of Korea (ROK), also known as South Korea, could take now to help North Korean elites feel more positive about, or at least less resistant to, unification. While Korean unification is a major issue in South Korea, North Korean propaganda suggests that an ROK-led unification would be a disaster for North Korean elites, using this fear to bind elites closer to the regime and make them more hostile and resistant to ideas of unification. Without changing those views of North Korean elites it is difficult to imagine how peaceful unification could be achieved, the report finds. There are five conditions that would likely help North Korean elites feel that unification could be good for them, said Bruce Bennett, author of the report and a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. These include ensuring their individual safety and security, maintaining their positions, maintaining their wealth, ensuring their familys safety and privileges, and being able to do something meaningful for their country. The report does not predict unification but notes that conditions for unification could develop at any time, warranting preparation. It proposes unification policies in each of these areas that the South Korean government should consider with urgency. It would take time (perhaps years) for the North Korean elites to believe the sincerity of these policies. If the South Korean government were to wait until just before or after unification to announce such policies, many North Korean elites would not believe them. The report notes that South Korea could address the unification issue by planning to continue the role of many elites in the combined Korean government and/or the combined Korean economy. Given the limitations of the South Korean legal system (only 50,000 prison spaces and a judiciary sized for the expected number of convicted South Korean criminals), South Korea would potentially need to consider extending amnesty to perhaps millions of North Koreans who have engaged in giving or taking bribes and other lesser crimes defined by South Korean law. South Korea could also be assembling funds to support the costs of unification to clarify to North Koreans the reality of South Korean planning, consistent with the vision for unification put forward by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Bennett said. South Korea would need to communicate these efforts to North Korea. It is impossible to determine how Korean unification might actually occur. While peaceful transition would clearly be the most desired option, unification could also occur as the result of conflict or a North Korean government collapse. Across these scenarios, a favorable outcome to unification would depend on convincing Northern elites that unification would be something they could live with, and not something unacceptably bad, the report concluded. The report, Preparing North Korean Elites for Unification, was sponsored by the Korea Foundation and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD). NSRD conducts research and analysis on defense and national security topics for the U.S. and allied defense, foreign policy, homeland security, and intelligence communities and foundations and other non-governmental organizations that support defense and national security analysis. In the first report it has published in over a year, Venezuelas Conatel has revealed that the countrys pay-TV subscribers have fallen below the five-million mark. According to the official figures , pay-TV accesses accounted for 4.96 million by September 2016, 55,000 less than at the beginning of the year. This contrasts with a subscriber boom experienced during 2015, when the industry gained half a million new subs However, pay-TV penetration remains among the highest in Latin America, with 66.4% of Venezuelan homes subscribing to a cable or satellite service by the end of Q3 2016.Direct-to-home (DTH) operators continue to lead the market, owning almost seven in ten pay-TV clients, as cable infrastructure is limited to the big cities. No specific figures regarding operators have been revealed, but no big changes are expected in a market dominated by AT&Ts DirecTV, Telefonicas Movistar TV and public telco Cantv.During the first half of 2016, the industry underwent a pricing crisis that put Venezuelans access to telecoms at risk and drove the Government to freeze service rates through law After more than three months in detention, Ramush Haradinaj is free to go home. The 48-year-old former Kosovar prime minister and onetime Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander was arrested in France on January 4 after an Interpol notice based on a Serbian warrant alleging war crimes. Now a court in Colmar, in northeastern France, has rejected Belgrade's extradition request on the grounds that Serbian officials failed to provide sufficient evidence of Haradinaj's culpability. "I am, as of this moment, a free man, and I hope I will be able to return to Kosovo today," Haradinaj told reporters outside the courthouse. A number of international voices had weighed in to call for Haradinaj's release ahead of the decision. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel (Democrat, New York) was among the first to react to Haradinaj's detention in early January, calling it "unacceptable that Serbia is abusing Interpol to target" Haradinaj. Engel added: "This isn't about the rule of law or justice. International tribunals have acquitted Mr. Haradinaj twice. This action only foments tensions and increases the likelihood of future conflict." Worrying Indictments During a recent visit to Kosovo, Croatian ex-President Stipe Mesic expressed hope that Haradinaj would be freed. Mesic -- who met with members of Haradinaj's party, the Alliance For The Future Of Kosovo (AAK), during that trip -- added that Croatians were closely following the Haradinaj case. With the experience of prominent Bosnians foremost in their minds, others are worried they may be the next to find themselves named in secret indictments issued by Serbian authorities. Former Bosnian Presidency member Ejup Ganic was arrested at Heathrow Airport in March 2010 while on an official trip, and it took him almost four months to convince U.K. authorities that a trial in Serbia could be compromised by political aims. A year later, retired Bosnian Army General Jovo Divjak was detained in Vienna, on the basis of a Serbian warrant, before an extradition request was dismissed. For Haradinaj, the French case marks the second time he has been detained, following brief custody at the hands of Slovenian police in 2015. So what's the purpose of such warrants, which are routinely dismissed by European courts? Shifting Responsibility? Justifying Failure? In 2003, Serbia passed a law giving its state prosecutors and courts jurisdiction over any war crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, now divided among seven independent states. That legislation was controversial, as it was tantamount to a Serbian declaration that Belgrade regarded itself as the region's policeman. Meanwhile, the warrants appeared designed to impress the Serbian public -- by seeking to shift responsibility to others for wartime atrocities, on one hand, and by attempting to justify Serbia's failure to achieve its territorial goals in the wars of the 1990s by highlighting the perceived criminality of those it was fighting in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, on the other. But the Serbian secret warrants, so far, do not appear to be targeting actual war criminals. The policy could therefore expose Belgrade to charges of hypocrisy. For more than a year now, Serbia has had no chief war-crimes prosecutor; it also has a dubious record when it comes to dealing with its own war criminals. Serbia spent years protecting two of its most-wanted war-crime suspects, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, from international justice. (Karadzic was finally extradited in 2008 and convicted of genocide and nine more of the 11 charges he was facing. Mladic was apprehended by Serbian forces in 2011 and currently faces charges in The Hague including genocide and crimes against humanity, in addition to ordering snipers to target civilians in Sarajevo.) Crimes committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo have also gone largely unpunished. The Belgrade-based Fund for Humanitarian Law has issued a dossier with the names of 110 individuals suspected of destroying evidence of crimes perpetrated during the Kosovo War. The concealment of the bodies of slain Albanians is said to have been a major part of this purportedly state-sanctioned operation. The Fund for Humanitarian Law alleges that the plan to destroy evidence of crimes was hatched by the Serbian government as early as March 1999, and involved both the Yugoslav police and army. The study concludes with an expression of regret that no one has ever been held accountable in Serbian courts for this destruction of evidence. Regional Problem Critics call it part of a general pattern of failing to hold public figures in Serbia to account for their roles in alleged atrocities -- or worse, elevating those same suspected war criminals to political or other positions of prominence. A case in point is Goran Radosavljevic Guri, a former commander of the Serbian special-forces unit known as the Gendarmerie and currently a member of the executive committee of the governing Serbian Progressive Party. His alleged role in the killing of the Bytyqi brothers -- three Albanian-Americans who fought in Kosovo before they were killed execution-style -- has never been investigated. Nikola Sainovic, convicted by The Hague tribunal of war crimes against Albanian civilians, was immediately appointed to the main board of the Socialist Party of Serbia upon his release from detention in 2015. "The problem," Vesna Rakic-Vodinelic, a law professor at Belgrade's UNION University, told RFE/RL, "is that this society as a whole, and above all its government bodies, have almost never, with very few exceptions, shown any readiness to face up to the darkest parts of our recent history, such as confronting the guilt of high-ranking members of the police and armed forces for war crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, including war crimes in Kosovo and their concealment." While it might be tempting to view all this as a Serbian failure -- given its central role in three Balkan conflicts, in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo -- it's also a regional problem. After serving two-thirds of his 15-year sentence in a Croatian prison for war crimes, Fikret Abdic was welcomed back to his Bosnian hometown as a hero. He was elected mayor of Velika Kladusa in October 2016. Likewise, Croatia's Branimir Glavas was twice reelected to parliament during a trial in Zagreb that resulted in his conviction for war crimes against Serbian civilians in his hometown of Osijek during the 1991-95 war. After serving five years of his sentence, Glavas also got a hero's welcome on his return to Osijek. "We condemn all war crimes," professor Rakic-Vodinelic said, invoking the words of Croatian journalist Viktor Ivancic to capture a widely held attitude in many parts of the former Yugoslavia toward war crimes, "but we celebrate our boys who committed them." The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL SKOPJE -- About 200 protesters have stormed into Macedonia's parliament building and beaten leading lawmakers after an alliance of Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties approved a new speaker of parliament. RFE/RL's correspondents inside the parliament on April 27 saw protesters severely beat and bloody the face of Social Democratic Union leader Zoran Zaev, the head of a newly formed coalition that was asserting its right to govern by electing the new parliament speaker. Three lawmakers from ethnic Albanian parties were also injured. With clashes occurring both inside and outside the building between police and protesters, in all 77 people were injured, including 22 police officers, the authorities said Police said lawmaker Ziadin Sela, leader of the Albanian Alliance, was the most seriously injured and was taken to the emergency room of a Skopje clinic. Zaev's party accused rival conservatives from the VMRO-DPMNE party of inciting the violence and causing "hatred and division" among Macedonians. A spokesman for the party of the newly elected speaker called the outbreak of violence "a sad day for Macedonia." Police outside the building fired stun grenades in an effort to disperse protesters and clear the way for the evacuation of lawmakers. The demonstrators who stormed the building, some of them masked, threw chairs and pushed over camera tripods as they pounded legislators with their fists. They appeared to be mostly from the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party that stands to lose its hold on parliament and the government with the emergence of the new governing coalition. They had jumped over barriers with little resistance from outnumbered police at the start of their assault on parliament after news of the election of ethnic Albanian lawmaker Talat Xhaferi, of the Democratic Union for Integration, as parliamentary speaker. U.S. and European leaders called for an end to the violence and for supporters of the VMRO-DPMNE to accept the result of the political process that led to the emergence of a new governing coalition. "The acts of violence in the parliament are wholly unacceptable," EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini said. "Democracy must run its course." The U.S. Embassy in Macedonia said the assault "is not consistent with democracy and is not an acceptable way to resolve differences." It indicated the United States was ready to recognize and work with the new speaker "to support democracy and to advance the interests of Macedonia." RFE/RL correspondents report that the demonstrators damaged doors, stole the mobile phones and cameras of journalists, and advanced into a press room where Zaev and members of his coalition were conducting a press conference following Xhaferi's election as parliament speaker. Blood could be seen streaming down Zaev's face as scuffles broke out between his supporters and VMRO-DPMNE supporters who stormed the building. RFE/RL correspondents inside the parliament also came under attack along with other journalists there. "The European Union is convinced that political dialogue in the institutions is the only way forward," Mogherini and EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said in a joint statement. "We urge all political actors to honor the constitution of the country and act in the spirit of democratic principles, decency, and common sense." The U.S. Embassy said the new speaker was elected legitimately despite months-long efforts by the VMRO-DPMNE to prevent that from occurring. "A majority of MPs elected Talat Xhaferi as speaker of parliament during a regular, continued session of parliament witnessed by members of the public and press," the embassy said in a statement. Albanias Foreign Ministry said it was monitoring the "escalation" of violence in its neighbor, which it said was "unacceptable." Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov -- a VMRO-DPMNE leader -- summoned leaders from all parties for a meeting on April 28 and called for calm in an address on national television. "I am calling for tensions to be calmed and for nonviolence," he said. "Lawmakers are primarily responsible for restoring the situation in accordance to the constitution and laws, which were violated today." For a decade until last year, Macedonia was ruled by the VMRO-DPMNE and its leader, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Demonstrators have taken to the streets of Skopje repeatedly during the past two months to protest against the emerging new governing coalition, saying the inclusion of ethnic Albanian parties is a threat to the country's national unity. About a quarter of Macedonias population of 2.1 million people are of Albanian descent. The VMRO-DPMNE -- which won elections in December but failed to build a majority coalition -- has for months successfully blocked Zaev from installing the new coalition he formed with ethnic Albanians based on a pledge to make Albanian the country's official second language. Ivanov refused to give Zaev a mandate to form a new government, and the VMRO-DPMNE has employed obstruction tactics to keep the new coalition from asserting governance in parliament. After the vote to make Xhaferi Macedonia's first ethnic Albanian speaker, VMRO-DPMNE lawmakers continued to object, challenging the legality of the vote, which they said was not carried out properly because the parliamentary session had formally ended. With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters Nebraskas Hunters Helping the Hungry (HHH) program continues to grow, as 2016 saw a 23 percent increase in the number of deer donated. Established in 2012 by the Nebraska Legislature, HHH is a program that provides ground venison to Nebraskans in need. It allows hunters to donate whole field-dressed deer at participating meat processors, food pantries and other charitable organizations. In 2016, a record 528 hunters participated, and Nebraskans received more than 28,000 pounds of venison. The full report of HHH for 2016 is available at OutdoorNebraska.org/HHH. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission accepts cash donations to pay contracted processors and operate the program. A tax-deductible donation to support the program can be made at http://shopoutdoornebraska.ne.gov, or when purchasing hunting permits. Learn more about the program at OutdoorNebraska.org/HHH or contact the program coordinator, Teresa Lombard, at 402 471-5430 or teresa.lombard@nebraska.gov. Russia's main domestic security agency says that it arrested 12 people in the Kaliningrad region for suspected involvement with an Islamic extremist group. Earlier on April 26, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest of two suspected supporters of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group who it said were planning a "high-profile" terror attack in Russia's Far East. The FSB alleged that the 12 detainees in Kaliningrad were involved with a group called Islamic Jihad-Jamaat Mujahedin and were of Central Asian descent. It said they may have been involved in militant recruiting activities. The alleged leader of the cell was placed on a wanted list for extremist crimes by Uzbekistan, the FSB said, adding that it planned to deport the detainees shortly to their home countries for prosecution on terrorism charges. Human rights groups say suspects face potential abuse and torture when they are sent from Russia to Uzbekistan. Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, has strong military importance as Russia's westernmost territory and home to its Baltic Fleet. It was at least the third time this month that Russia accused people with roots in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia of being involved in terrorist activity within its borders. Russian authorities say a bombing that killed 16 people on a St. Petersburg subway train on April 3 was carried out by an ethnic Uzbek, Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen who was among the dead. They have arrested 10 people originally from Central Asia in connection with that attack. The security agency said one of the two suspected IS supporters who were arrested on April 26 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a city on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, was from a Central Asian state that it did not name. The other suspect in Sakhalin is a citizen of Russia, it said. The FSB said a search of the two suspects' residence in Sakhalin turned up a homemade explosive device containing shrapnel, IS propaganda, and mobile phones with instructions for making bombs. The agency said the two men were planning to carry out a "high-profile" terror attack targeting a crowded public place. An FSB video of the suspects broadcast on Russian state television showed the two men handcuffed and lying face down on the floor. IS claimed responsibility for an attack on an FSB office last week that killed two people in the city of Khabarovsk, also in Russia's Far East. However, authorities denied that attack had any link to the militant group and said the assailant, a 17-year-old ethnic Russian who was shot dead, had ties to neo-Nazis. Sakhalin Island, where the FSB said it foiled an impending IS attack, is known for its rich oil and gas fields, which have drawn billions of dollars of investment from Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Shell, and others major energy companies. With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, TASS, and Interfax Russia's top prosecutor has blacklisted a nongovernmental organization set up by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a move that puts the group in potential legal jeopardy just days before planned street protests. An April 26 statement from the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office declared Open Russia to be an "undesirable organization" and said that it was registered in the United Kingdom. The prosecutor's office also attached the "undesirable" label to the Open Russia Civic Movement, which it said was also registered in Britain, and to the U.S.-based Institute for Modern Russia, which is run by Khodorkovsky's son, Pavel. Open Russia responded quickly to the announcement, saying that the movement in Russia was "purely a Russian organization" and therefore cannot be deemed an "undesirable organization" under Russian law. "The decision only concerns foreign legal bodies. The Russian Open Russia movement exists separately and will continue to operate," a statement on Khodorkovsky's website quoted him as telling Russian channel Dozhd (Rain) TV. Later on April 26, Russian news agency RBC quoted Prosecutor-General's Office spokesman Aleksandr Kurennoi as saying that the "undesirable" designation for Open Russia "concerns only the [groups] based in Britain." But there was no official clarification from the Prosecutor-General's Office, whose statement accused all three organizations conducting antigovernment activity inside Russia. "The organizations listed have undertaken special programs and projects on the territory of the Russian Federation with the goal of discrediting the results of recent elections, declaring them to be illegitimate," the statement said. "Their activities are aimed at inspiring protest actions and destabilizing the domestic political situation, presenting a threat to the constitutional foundation of the Russian Federation and the security of the state," it said. The human rights group Amnesty International said that by labeling Open Russia "undesirable," the authorities were laying the groundwork to completely ban the nongovernmental group from Russia. The relevant legislation, signed in 2015 by President Vladimir Putin, gives prosecutors the power to declare foreign-registered organizations as "undesirable" and shut them down if they are deemed to be a threat to Russia's national interests. 'Foreign Agent' Law That measure followed up a related law from 2012 requiring nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from foreign sources and engage in political activity within Russia to declare themselves as "foreign agents." The 2012 legislation, known as the "foreign agent" law, also allows the closure of such nongovernmental organizations if the Justice Ministry deems that their activity is harmful to Russia's national interests. Both measures were loudly criticized by Western governments, and by many of the Russian nongovernment groups that rely wholly or in part on financing from foreign public and private sources. The blacklisting of Open Russia came just three days before an April 29 street protest the group has been planning -- an effort aimed, in part, at building momentum on nationwide demonstrations spearheaded in March by anticorruption crusader and opposition politician Aleksei Navalny. Those anticorruption demonstrations -- the largest street protests in Russia since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 -- appear to have rattled the Kremlin. Amnesty International condemned the Russian prosecutor's designation of Open Russia on April 26, saying the move was "just the latest in a long-standing crackdown on civil society." "These aren't the first organizations banned in Russia as 'undesirable,' but it's the first time the authorities ban a civil-society group that was founded by Russians and operates only in Russia," said Sergei Nikitin, the director of Amnesty International Russia. "Open Russia has done a lot to support victims of human rights violations in Russia and denounced Russia's deplorable human rights record, and now itself has fallen victim to the system," Nikitin said. 'Family Of Gangsters' Nikitin concluded that the Russian authorities intend to ban Open Russia in order to put an end to its human rights activities, its support for independent political candidates, and its media work. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest businessman, built up Russia's largest oil company before he was thrown in prison on charges his supporters say were trumped up, and the company's assets were stripped away by the Russian state. Following his release from a Russian prison in 2013, Khodorkovsky became an exile in the United Kingdom -- where he has gradually been building up Open Russia's profile and positioning it as a leading opposition force in Russia. In a series of posts to Twitter on April 26, Khodorkovsky mocked the Russian prosecutor's announcement and said he was proud of the designation. "Was there ever any doubt?" he wrote in another post that accused Russian authorities of being criminals. "A family of gangsters covering for other gangsters." With reporting by Current Time TV, RBK, and Dozhd Kias interest in entering India with a local manufacturing facility has been in the news for quite some time now. Hyundais sister brand has acknowledged earlier that it is exploring several new markets and India is one of them. Today is the day, when Kia confirmed that they are entering India, with their plant to be located in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Kia Motors, a subsidiary of Hyundai Motors, signed an Memorundum of Understanding with the state of Andhra Pradesh earlier today. As per the MoU, Kia will be setting up their manufacturing plant in the state, and investing $1.1 billion (or INR 7,055 crore). Kia Indias product plans are unclear as of now. Construction of this new Kia plant will commence by the end of this year. The plant will be located in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh and will be spread over an are of 536 acres. The plant is expected to be ready to roll out first car in 2019. Once functioning at full capacity, the new Kia India plant will be able to produce 3 lakh cars annually. Apart from providing cars to the Indian market, Kia will also be exporting the made in India cars. Strategically located near the Hyundai India plant in Chennai, it is also reported that Hyundai India could use the facility to produce their own cars. Hyundai India is using their plant at full capacity, and will soon be needing additional capacity in order to sustain growth. The distance between Hyundai plant and the proposed Kia plant is less than 400 kms, making transportation of materials in between the plants a relatively easier task. The new Kia plant would be aiming to benefit from Hyundais existing vendor network. Also read Kia Niro hybrid crossover unveiled Kia Motor aims to produce cars with about 40% localization levels. It is not clear as to which Kia cars would be launched first, but a premium SUV in the range of 15 lakh is what we are expecting to come out of the Kia factory first. Kia Telluride Concept Photos There's a lot to be learned from the winds in a Chilean desert-everything from surviving tornadoes on Earth to planning travel to Mars, with surviving climate change in between. And it took West Virginia University geologist Kathleen Benison to find it. In 2007, Benison discovered an anomaly in saline lakes in the Chilean Andes and her subsequent work disproved the conventional wisdom that gravel was too big to be affected significantly by wind. Her work can help explain historic weather patterns on Earth and even help prepare for a trip to Mars, which is whipped by whirlwinds. With changing environments due to global warming, conditions are becoming more extreme due to higher energy in the atmosphere. Deserts are expected to become drier and windier, and stronger and bigger dust devils (such as the Chilean gravel devils) may form. Much of the world's human population lives in and near deserts, so these changes could impact them. In addition, tornadoes seem to be getting more frequent and impacting a larger region with global warming. Even though gravel devils form on sunny days and tornadoes are spawn from thunderstorms, they have similar rotation, and both can be quite destructive. Understanding the gravel devils can help develop better plans, such as with building materials and designs, to limit destruction by tornadoes. A new paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine describes the discovery and biological profiling of an exciting new anti-malarial clinical drug candidate, MMV390048, effective against resistant strains of the malaria parasite, and across the entire parasite lifecycle, with the potential to cure and protect in a single dose. The research was conducted by the University of Cape Town (UCT)'s Drug Discovery and Development Centre, H3D, and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), in collaboration with a team of international researchers. The paper is the first full disclosure of data demonstrating the antimalarial promise of MMV390048 (also known as MMV048), a compound discovered by an international team led by Professor Kelly Chibale at UCT and MMV. "The ability of MMV048 to block all life cycle stages of the malaria parasite, offer protection against infection as well as potentially block transmission of the parasite from person to person suggests that this compound could contribute to the eradication of malaria, a disease that claims the lives of several hundred thousand people every year," said Professor Chibale, Founder and Director of H3D, founding Director of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Drug Discovery Research Unit at UCT, and senior author of the paper. In 2014, MMV048 became the first new antimalarial medicine to enter phase I human studies in Africa. Today, preparations are being made to begin phase IIa human trials on this promising compound as a single-dose cure. "This compound has enormous potential," said Dr David Reddy, MMV's CEO. "In addition to the exciting characteristics noted, it has the potential to be administered as a single dose, which could revolutionize the treatment of malaria. At MMV, we look forward to continuing our work in partnership with Professor Chibale and colleagues at UCT to pursue the development of this and future next-generation antimalarials." The project has benefited from sustained funding from MMV, the South African Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and Strategic Health Innovation Partnerships (SHIP) unit of the SAMRC. MMV's support has also been critical in helping H3D build and reinforce their scientific networks of drug discoverers and understand the compound's role in blocking the transmission of the malaria parasite. Despite the positive impact of medication, indoor spraying with insecticides and the use of insecticide bed-nets, around 429,000 people died from malaria in 2015, mostly in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation's World Malaria Report. The paper said resistance to treatment regimens still posed a threat and highlighted the importance of developing treatments containing new chemical classes with different modes of action. With about three times the energy capacity by weight of today's lithium-ion batteries, lithium-air batteries could one day enable electric cars to drive farther on a single charge. But the technology has several holdups, including losing energy as it stores and releases its charge. If researchers could better understand the basic reactions that occur as the battery charges and discharges, the battery's performance could be improved. One reaction that hasn't been fully explained is how oxygen blows bubbles inside a lithium-air battery when it discharges. The bubbles expand the battery and create wear and tear that can cause it to fail. A new paper in Nature Nanotechnology provides the first step-by-step explanation of how lithium-air batteries form bubbles. The research was aided by a first-of-a-kind video that shows bubbles inflating and later deflating inside a nanobattery. Researchers had previously only seen the bubbles, but not how they were created. "If we fully understand the bubble formation process, we could build better lithium-air batteries that create fewer bubbles," noted the paper's corresponding author, Chongmin Wang, of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "The result could be more compact and stable batteries that hold onto their charge longer." Wang works out of EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science user facility located at PNNL. His co-authors include other PNNL staff and a researcher from Tianjin Polytechnic University in China. The team's unique video may be a silent black-and-white film, but it provides plenty of action. Popping out from the battery's flat surface is a grey bubble that grows bigger and bigger. Later, the bubble deflates, the top turning inside of itself until only a scrunched-up shell is left behind. The popcorn-worthy flick was captured with an in-situ environmental transmission electron microscope at EMSL. Wang and his colleagues built their tiny battery inside the microscope's column. This enabled them to watch as the battery charged and discharged inside. Video evidence led the team to propose that as the battery discharges, a sphere of lithium superoxide jets out from the battery's positive electrode and becomes coated with lithium oxide. The sphere's superoxide interior then goes through a chemical reaction that forms lithium peroxide and oxygen. Oxygen gas is also released and inflates the bubble. When the battery charges, lithium peroxide decomposes, and leaves the former bubble to look like a deflated balloon. This finding was the focus of a Nature News & Views column written by researchers at Korea's Hanyang University, who describe the research as "a solid foundation for future Li?O2 battery designs and optimization." Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2yEH5mISw8 This research was supported by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Big leaps in technology require big leaps in design - entirely new approaches that can take full advantage of everything the technology has to offer. That's the thinking behind a new initiative at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. To make sure experimenters can get the most out of a major X-ray laser upgrade that will produce beams that are 10,000 times brighter and pulses up to a million times per second, the lab has created a new position -- head of experimental design at the Linac Coherent Light Source -- and hired an X-ray scientist to fill it. Paul Fuoss (pronounced "foos") will look at LCLS and the LCLS-II upgrade from a fresh perspective and work with scientists and engineers across the lab to design instruments, user-friendly control systems and experimental flows that take full advantage of this technological leap. Although the upgrade won't be finished until the early 2020s, there's really no time to lose, said LCLS Director Mike Dunne. "We're on the verge of a transformation of our science capabilities that is simply unattainable today. When you take these big leaps you have to fundamentally rethink how you approach the science and the design of experiments," Dunne said. "You can't just do it the way you did before but a bit better. You have to approach it from a completely new thought process: What is the scientific knowledge you're trying to get out, and what is the scientific data that might illuminate that new understanding, and how does that translate back into how you obtain that data, and how does that influence how you design the facility?" Taming Complexity to Make Science More Productive advertisement For Fuoss, the broader goal is to increase productivity and improve the experiences of scientists at X-ray light sources everywhere. "Experiments have gotten a lot more complex over the past 20 years, not just at LCLS but at synchrotron light sources, too," he said. "We've gone from controlling experiments with a single computer and detecting a single pixel of data at a time to using multiple computers and detecting more like a million pixels at once. Our ability to integrate different tools and computers and visualize the data has often not kept up with the technology. And at LCLS, that complexity is going to increase dramatically in a few years when the LCLS-II upgrade becomes operational." One way to make working with LCLS more streamlined and intuitive is to incorporate user-friendly features into the instruments that come on board as part of LCLS-II. "A lot of that will be working with the scientists and engineers who are designing those instruments to get the building blocks for user compatibility in there," Fuoss said. "It's not part of the core training of scientists and engineers, so we expect we will need to reach out to people who have that expertise and get them to help us." Another way, he said, is to create tools that let scientists visualize their data as it's being collected, so they can understand what is going on in real time. advertisement "There are a lot of different pieces that need to be coordinated," Fuoss said. "All of them are currently being done, but we need to bring a unified focus and make sure there are no unnecessary barriers. Ultimately, you want to integrate this kind of thing into everyone's day-to-day development activities." X-Rays, Inventions and Human Interfaces Fuoss has deep roots at SLAC. Originally from South Dakota, where he grew up on a ranch, he earned a degree in physics at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and came to Stanford University in 1975 for graduate school. He wound up doing his graduate research at SLAC, using X-rays from what later became the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) to investigate materials. After earning a PhD, Fuoss went on to do research at Bell Laboratories, AT&T Laboratories and Argonne National Laboratory. He's been an active user of SSRL and other light sources and has developed a number of new techniques for exploring materials with X-rays, many of which are now standard at light sources around the world; in 2015 he received SLAC's Farrel W. Lytle Award for this work. Fuoss also played a role in designing LCLS. In the mid-1990s, while a researcher at AT&T Laboratories, Fuoss took a six-year detour into the world of human interface design and human factors research -- the study of how people interact with technology, from airplane cockpits to your office copier. Back then, he focused on making telecommunications systems and web interfaces more user friendly. This experience can also be applied to LCLS experimental design. "Paul has an incredible background," Dunne said. "He brings that deep understanding of the nature of X-ray science, an understanding of all the instruments and the technical pieces, and then an understanding of what we're trying to achieve scientifically." Getting the Most out of Beam Time Unlike synchrotron light sources, which may have dozens of X-ray beamlines and many experiments going on simultaneously, the current version of LCLS has just one powerful beam, a billion times brighter than any available before, whose pulses arrive up to 120 times per second. In theory this limits the facility to doing one experiment at a time. But in the seven years since it opened, scientists and engineers have come up with a number of ways to get around that limitation, such as splitting the beam so it can be delivered to two or more experiments at once. At the same time, they reduced the down time between experiments by scheduling similar experiments back to back, so they don't have to change out equipment as often. These and other measures increased the number of experiments run per year by 72 percent from 2014 to 2016, and LCLS recently passed the milestone of hosting more than 1,000 users per year. LCLS-II will add a second X-ray laser beam, further increasing the facility's capacity. By continuing to find ways to squeeze in more experiments while making the way people interact with LCLS more straightforward, Fuoss said, "We can improve productivity and allow the scientific users to have a more hands-on role in the actual data collection. That will both reduce the load on the LCLS staff and lead to a better experience for the scientists who are coming here to use it." New genes are more likely to appear on the stage of evolution in full-fledged form rather than gradually take shape through successive stages of "proto genes" that become more and more refined over generations. This is the surprising upshot from research led by Benjamin Wilson and Joanna Masel at the University of Arizona, published as an Advance Online Publication by the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on April 24. Evolutionary biologists have long pored over the question of where new genes come from, which poses something of a chicken-and-egg problem. Conventional wisdom has it that new genes -- DNA sequences that code for a protein molecule -- evolve from existing genes through duplication and divergence. This happens when DNA copying mechanisms accidentally leave behind an extra copy of a particular gene. Naturally occurring mutations subsequently introduce changes that alter the DNA sequence such that the new gene assumes a function previously not found in the organism's lineage. Previous studies by other researchers suggested that new genes also emerge from non-coding DNA sequences, via primitive "proto-genes" that become refined over generations, resulting in an "adult," fully functional gene. Masel and her team found the opposite to be more likely, based on the fact that non-coding DNA sequences are likely to give rise to highly ordered proteins. Proteins, which consist of amino acids chained together into so-called polypeptides, tend to fold into three-dimensional structures that range from simple to mindbogglingly complicated. And while "ordered" may sound like a good thing, Masel is quick to point out that a healthy dose of disorder is key to success when it comes to evolution coming up with new genes that serve as blueprints for new proteins. For the study, the researchers compiled data on full-genome DNA sequences downloaded from yeast and mouse databases. "We take all the known mouse genes and yeast genes and query them against everything that's ever been sequenced and see what they're related to," explains Masel, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute, "and based on that, we assign each gene an age that tells us when it was born." In the next step, the team used statistical analyses to create a model revealing the average degree of order that would be present in each gene's product. advertisement "We found that the youngest genes are the least ordered of all, which is what you would expect to get if you birthed a gene," Masel says. The key to a protein that can contribute a useful function for its organism while not harming it is a healthy mix between regions that are soluble because they consist of hydrophilic, or "water-loving," amino acids and stretches that are insoluble because of their hydrophobic, or "water-repelling," amino acids. If a protein consists of too many water-loving amino acids, it will remain largely unfolded, floating around inside the cell as an unorganized chain incapable of performing biological tasks. If too much of its length is water-repelling, the amino acids will clump together, rendering the protein unusable, and even dangerous, because when such misfolded proteins bump into each other, they tend to stick to each other and accumulate. "Now think about the most highly ordered proteins we know -- amyloids," Masel says, referring to the infamous piles of proteins found in the brain of Alzheimer's patients. "Because of this, the first order of business for any prospective gene is: 'Do no harm. Do not misfold.'" This has profound implications for the evolution of new genes from non-coding DNA sequences. Because such sequences are likely to give rise to highly ordered proteins, they are likely to be deleterious to the organism. In this scenario, any prospective new gene must start out as some kind of "super gene," in contrast to a "proto gene." Rather than making its debut in the gene pool as an unrefined gene that still bears many similarities to the non-coding DNA sequences it came from, the protein it encodes must start with a higher-than average degree of disorder to prove itself before evolution would allow it becoming a permanent member of the gene pool. advertisement "Instead of gradually working up to having more hydrophilic regions, young genes work their way down from being more hydrophilic and disordered, to more hydrophobic regions," Masel says. "In other words, when it comes to structural disorder, a polypeptide has the highest chance of being born if it is 'extra gene-like,' rather than 'sort of gene-like.'" The probability that a gene could arise from a random, non-coding sequence -- also known as "junk DNA," on the other hand, used to be considered negligible, based on the premise that in the vast majority of cases, a random sequence does more harm than good. This may not be so, argues a second paper in the same issue by Rafik Neme, one of the co-authors of the study discussed here. Neme, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, found the first experimental evidence that non-coding, "silent" stretches of DNA are anything but that. "Until now, nobody knew whether a randomly sequence could immediately have any effect that would result in a function, or whether function was slowly acquired over time," Neme says. "It's similar to the idea of having a monkey typewriting at random, and expecting it to produce meaningful work." Neme's experiments show that many sequences exhibit relevant activities immediately, some good and some bad. This, in turn, suggests a discrete transition between non-genes and genes and would favor certain kind of sequences and functions over others. Based on their findings, Neme and Masel point out, the pool from which genes are born might be more conducive to birthing new genes than one might expect. "In our scenario, a gene precursor would be a transcript that happened to be translated into a protein sometimes but has no function," she says. "These things come up in evolution all the time, and mutation will quickly destroy it unless that polypeptide provides the organism with some advantage. There either is an advantage that natural selection can act on, or there isn't, so we don't think the would-be genes stick around for very long." This in turn suggests that gene birth is a sudden transition, rather than a gradual process involving many intermediate steps. Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet's red soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil -- the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are the findings of a study published in Scientific Reports on April 27, 2017. The study was authored by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and funded by NASA. The research is all the more important since Congress passed a bill, signed by President Donald Trump in March 2017, directing NASA to send a manned mission on Mars in 2033. "The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave. They will be pioneers. And I would be honored to be their brick maker," said Yu Qiao, a professor of structural engineering at UC San Diego and the study's lead author. Proposals to use Martian soil to build habitats for manned missions on the planet are not new. But this is the first that shows astronauts would need minimal resources to do so. Previous plans included nuclear-powered brick kilns or using complex chemistry to turn organic compounds found on Mars into binding polymers. In fact, the UC San Diego engineers were initially trying to cut down on the amount of polymers required to shape Martian soil into bricks, and accidently discovered that none was needed. To make bricks out of Mars soil simulant, without additives and without heating or baking the material, two steps were key. One was to enclose the simulant in a flexible container, in this case a rubber tube. The other was to compact the simulant at a high enough pressure. The amount of pressure needed for a small sample is roughly the equivalent of someone dropping 10-lb hammer from a height of one meter, Qiao said. The process produces small round soil pallets that are about an inch tall and can then be cut into brick shapes. The engineers believe that the iron oxide, which gives Martian soil its signature reddish hue, acts as a binding agent. They investigated the simulant's structure with various scanning tools and found that the tiny iron particles coat the simulant's bigger rocky basalt particles. The iron particles have clean, flat facets that easily bind to one another under pressure. Researchers also investigated the bricks' strengths and found that even without rebar, they are stronger than steel-reinforced concrete. Researchers said their method may be compatible with additive manufacturing. To build up a structure, astronauts could lay down a layer of soil, compact it, then lay down an additional layer and compact that, and so on. The logical next step for the research would be to increase the size of the bricks. Two new species of African mole-rat have been discovered by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), together with colleagues in Tanzania and at the University of Pretoria. The species, formally described as Fukomys hanangensis and Fukomys livingstoni, were found around Mount Hanang and at Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, both in Tanzania. The latter is named after Dr David Livingstone, as Ujiji is the site of the famous meeting in 1871 when Henry Morton Stanley found the explorer, who many thought to be dead, and uttered the famous words "Dr Livingstone, I presume?." The research was published in the journal PeerJ. African mole-rats are subterranean rodents that occur throughout sub-Saharan Africa. They have been widely studied because of the variation in their social and reproductive behaviours. More recently the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) has also emerged as a model species for the study of healthy aging, longevity and cancer resistance. advertisement Dr Chris Faulkes, from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and lead author of the paper, said: "We would like to find out more about the social behaviour of these new species -- our initial studies indicate that they are cooperative breeders like others in their genus." "A clear understanding of African mole-rats' biodiversity and evolutionary relationships has become increasingly important, not least because there are many species in the family, but also because there are a number of genetically unique, distinctive populations that are limited in their distribution -- two of which we now formally name and describe fully in our paper." Most of the species in this group of mole-rats (Fukomys) are to the West of the Great African Rift Valley, while these are to the East, out of their normal range. The researchers were therefore keen to characterise these populations and understand how and when they might have got to their current locations, as part of their wider studies on mole-rat biodiversity. The results revealed two distinct evolutionary lineages that constitute previously unnamed species. Detailed genetic analysis suggests that geological and volcanic activity isolated these populations subsequent to their earlier dispersal in to this part of East Africa. The broader scope of the research highlights how genetic data can be used to cross reference the timings of major geological events, and vice versa. Dr Faulkes added: "Our research argues that the biodiversity hotspots in this part of Africa can be understood in terms of landscape evolution in the form of tectonic activity [Rift Valley formation], climatic fluctuations and subsequent expansion and contraction of forest and savannah habitats." Dear Amy: My boyfriend left for a student exchange program in France for six months, there are still more than two months left. The thing is, after he left I had a breakdown; school was too much, and him being away wasn't helping. I texted him things I deeply regret. I questioned his love many times. I feel like he still loves me, but it's not the same as before. I have been trying for almost a month to be positive. I'm trying not to doubt him and to be there for him. I even asked him if there was something I could change that would make him happier, but nothing seems to work. Sometimes I feel like I am doing too much and am too intense, but I fear losing him. I tried talking about our plans for the future but he told me he doesn't like to plan this far ahead because he doesn't even know what he wants to do after his studies. The other day, I told him how many days were left before he came back and he became angry. He told me he didn't like it that I was keeping track. I just took back control over my life and losing him would put me back where I started. I don't know how to act or what to do anymore. -- Distressed Boyfriend Dear Distressed: Long distance is never easy, and on top of that you've gone through something traumatic. I'm very sorry. An important reminder here: It is much harder to be left than it is to leave. Your job right now is to keep putting yourself back together, and that means cutting yourself (and your boyfriend) some slack. Your insecurity is affecting your relationship. Even at a distance, he feels crowded. Please, give your relationship some space to breathe. It will be good for both of you. If you don't push so hard, you will actually feel more in control. Your main focus right now should be on getting better, not on altering yourself to make up for things you did when you weren't well. Remember that mental well-being is a process, so try not to let setbacks derail you, and try not to jump to conclusions about your relationship right now. It is scary to think that your relationship might have changed, but ultimately this experience will teach you about yourself. Living in a foreign country can be a liberating experience, but it can also be very isolating, especially when someone you care about is having a difficult time. If you stop demanding attention, you may receive it more readily. I hope you're connecting with people closer to home. Family, friends, or a support group may be able to give you perspective on this. Definitely check in with your school's counselor. Dear Amy: Tonight my husband and I were out to dinner with his sister and her husband. My husband ran into a friend, and introduced his sister and her husband. A few minutes later he introduced me as his ex-wife. Amy, he and I have been married for 23 years, and for both of us this is a second marriage. He indicated it was a joke, but I don't understand the humor. I am still upset about it and he doesn't think he should apologize to me. So, crazy as this is, I am reaching out for an opinion. Should I have laughed or been upset? -- Still Burning in Boston Dear Burning: Ouch. One of the perks to being a person is that you're allowed to have feelings. In this case, your irritation seems appropriate to the occasion. For the record, I'd be pretty mad, too. And embarrassed, for him. Unfortunately, another irritating aspect of humanity is you can't always get people to see your side. Try to discuss this one more time; maybe throw in a joke of your own like, "if you ever do that again, I really WILL be your ex-wife." See how he takes your hilarity. Then, you need to let it go. At least now if this ever comes up again, your husband will know how you feel about this particular brand of domestic comedy. Dear Amy: "Heartsick" described how a family friend literally bullied her and her husband into having a honeymoon night at a cheap hotel, instead of at home. How come so many couples turn over their lives to others when they get married? -- Wondering Dear Wondering: Getting married is stressful, and couples are vulnerable to being controlled through money, or simply through someone else being more forceful during a time when couples are very concerned about being polite. An innovative analysis combining geographic information systems (GIS), spatial epidemiology, and statistical modeling identified three hotspot clusters of hepatitis C infection rates in Massachusetts. The study, published in BMC Infectious Disease, found that areas around Boston, New Bedford, and Springfield had the most significant clusters of hepatitis C infection based on rates per 100,000 people. Hepatitis C (HCV) hotspot clusters based on the number of reported cases were also identified. As expected, these included some of the most populated areas in Massachusetts: the Greater Boston area, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, but also in the smaller cities of Lawrence, Holyoke and Fitchburg. In these areas, results of density analyses indicate that there were between 477 to 1,070 hepatitis C cases per square mile. "We are in the middle of a syndemic," said public health epidemiologist Tom Stopka, Ph.D., M.H.S., lead study author. "The opioid epidemic is intertwined with the hepatitis C epidemic. These two operate symbiotically and create a larger burden on society and our healthcare system. The areas with higher rates of infection can also become areas of risk for higher hepatitis C transmission. Our study identifies and characterizes locations in Massachusetts where prevention and treatment interventions for hepatitis C might have the biggest effect in reducing the burden of disease." "The use of spatial epidemiological approaches to identify and characterize HCV clusters can help identify where to make best use of the limited funding available for education, prevention, testing, and treatment in order to have the greatest impact and return on that investment," he continued. Stopka is an assistant professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. He focuses on spatial epidemiology, infectious disease, and health disparities, particularly with respect to substance use and misuse. By combining more than 84,000 cases of individuals with past or present hepatitis C infection reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health between 2002 to 2013 with sociodemographic data from 1,464 Massachusetts census tracts, and then conducting statistical analyses, the research team was able to determine which areas in Massachusetts had both the highest number of cases (counts) and the highest rates (taking into account population density), and characterize factors associated with HIV hotspots. The count and rate information was used to calculate and visualize geographic clusters, resulting in maps that reflected hotspots of infection. The use of GIS and spatial epidemiological analysis of public health surveillance data, which allow policy makers to better understand the geographic distribution of infectious diseases and factors associated with disease clustering, has been limited, particularly for hepatitis C. An estimated 3.2 million Americans have hepatitis C, which can result in severe long-term health problems and sometimes death. It is associated with injection drug use, can be transmitted by blood-to-blood contact with contaminated syringes, and can take decades to appear, and the cost of treatment is in the tens of thousands dollars per patient. Public health officials are concerned about long-standing and initially-silent hepatitis C infections in baby boomers, but infections are rising fastest among young adults in the United States, mirroring trends seen in heroin injection, opioid-related overdoses, and infectious endocarditis. In Massachusetts, there was a 137 percent increase in hepatitis C cases among 15 to 29 year olds between 2002 and 2013. However, little was known about the geographic clustering patterns of hepatitis C infections, which limited efforts to better understand disease transmission and develop targeted responses. Stopka notes that the data analyzed in the study captured where an individual resided when hepatitis C was reported, and not when it was transmitted. Because of this, hotspots can include reported cases where hepatitis C infections originated years earlier and in different locations, and may not fully reflect current infection patterns. Nevertheless, the current reporting systems offer the best available option to better understand the geospatial distribution of HCV. The geospatial approach used in the study may also provide insights for other disease risks, in particular HIV infections, which previous studies have shown tend to overlap with hepatitis C hotspots. The current HCV epidemic may forecast future HIV and HCV co-infection outbreaks. Combined geospatial and statistical analyses can help identify regions of risk, improve understanding of transmission patterns, reveal demographic and socioeconomic associations, and inform public health policy decisions, write the authors. Girls start believing they aren't good at math, science and even computers at a young age -- but providing fun STEM activities at school and home may spark interest and inspire confidence. A study from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) finds that, when exposed to a computer-programming activity, 6-year-old girls expressed greater interest in technology and more positive attitudes about their own skills and abilities than girls who didn't try the activity. The results suggest both a need and an opportunity for teaching computer science, in particular, in early elementary school, said Allison Master, a research scientist at I-LABS and the study's lead author. Introducing concepts and skills when girls are young can boost their confidence and prompt interest in a field in which women today are underrepresented. "As a society, we have these built-in beliefs that are pushing boys toward certain activities more than girls. So our thought was, if you give equal experiences to boys and girls, what happens?" Master said. "We found that if you give them access to same opportunities, then girls and boys have the same response -- equal interest and confidence." The study, published online in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, involved 96 6-year-olds, evenly divided among boys and girls, who were randomly assigned one of three groups. In the first group, each child programmed a robot, then answered survey questions; in the second group, each played a storytelling card game, then answered the same questions, while those in the third group only answered the questions. The survey was designed to collect kids' opinions of technology activities, like the robot, and their beliefs about whether girls or boys are better at computer programming and robotics. Programming, the researchers explained to the children, is "when you tell a computer or a robot or a phone what to do." For the robot activity, children chose an animal-like robot. They first followed step-by-step instructions on a smartphone to "tell" it to move forward, backward, right or left, then chose the instructions themselves, effectively programming the phone to control the movements of the robots. The study found that after completing the robot activity, the boys and girls showed equal interest in technology and their own feelings of self-efficacy, or confidence in their own abilities. advertisement But when compared to the "control group" of children who played the card game or only answered the survey without playing a game, the difference was striking: The designed activity with the robot reduced the gender gap in technology interest by 42 percent, and the gap in self-efficacy by 80 percent. In other words, girls who programmed the robot were much more likely to express interest in programming and confidence in their own abilities to perform technology-related tasks than the girls who didn't work with the robot. Co-author and I-LABS co-director Andrew Meltzoff said, "Experience in programming the robot movement was something that both boys and girls thought was fun. But the most important finding is that we brought the girls' interest and motivation in STEM up to the level of the boys. This was a big impact for a brief, well-designed intervention. How long will it last? That's an important question for future scientific experiments." The findings suggest that incorporating more programming activities in the classroom or at home may ignite and sustain girls' interest, Master said. Summer camps, after-school programs and other partner- or group-oriented activities present natural opportunities. "The important thing is to make activities accessible to all children in a fun way that also helps them build skills," she said. The study's robot activity did not, however, appear to change the children's stereotypes about whether boys or girls are better at programming and robotics. While the girls who programmed the robot indicated greater confidence in their own abilities, that confidence did not alter their stereotypes, picked up from the culture, about girls and boys in general. The authors pointed to the potential of other experiences, such as meeting or seeing a woman programming a robot or working in a STEM field, for shifting these more deeply-held stereotypes. "Stereotypes get built up in our heads from many different sources and experiences, but perhaps if we give girls more experience doing these kinds of activities, that will give them more resources to resist those stereotypes," Master said. "They might be able to say, 'I can still be good at this and enjoy it, despite the cultural stereotypes.'" The researchers hope to test this in future studies. Cheap Flights to Cartagena Cartagena Airport (CTG) has all the advantages of a small international airport. It serves multiple countries with more than half of the flights to Cartagena coming from the United States. The airport is just a few miles from the historic city center and is close to many of Colombia's sandy beaches, so you can start exploring the area soon after you land. Rafael Nunez Airport Both of Columbia's major airlines, Avianca and Aero Republica, fly in and out of Rafael Nunez as do American Airlines, Mexicana and Copa Airlines. The airport's air-conditioned terminal serves 3.5 million passengers annually on flights to Cartagena. The terminal's main hall contains check-in counters, restaurants and duty-free shops. There are no jetways to the aircraft from the departure gates, but it's a short walk, and assistance is available for those who need it. Transportation to the city of Cartagena is available by bus or taxi for only a few dollars and can take anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes depending on traffic. Buses will take you to a terminal on the east side of Cartagena, but a taxi will drive you all the way to your hotel. Attractions in Cartagena Cartagena welcomes visitors with a number of historic attractions, restaurants and vibrant nightlife. Horse-drawn carriages can be hired at the Plaza de Los Coches where you can take in local street vendors and the atmosphere of Cartagena's famous historic district. El Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a 14th-century military fort, is another popular destination full of underground tunnels and high stone lookouts. Beaches abound in Cartagena, each with a different atmosphere from the traveler-heavy Bocagrande to the more secluded Castillogrande. Those with an appetite for more Caribbean sunshine may venture to nearby Colombian beach resorts on the Rosario Islands. Most travelers to Cartagena stay in accommodations near the historic district, which is valued for its atmosphere and its extraordinary beauty. Within this walled inner city, you can find lodgings that are mid-range or upscale. Less expensive inns can be found outside the walls. Cartagena Travel Tips Restaurant fare in Cartagena is justly famous for its fresh, Caribbean seafood. As with hotels, upscale and fine dining can be had inside the walled historic district. Asian fusion cuisine, traditional Colombian food and international restaurants can be expensive, but many of them also have live Cuban music. The average cost of dinner for two in the historic district is about $80 to $100. Music and dancing can be found everywhere in Cartagena. Other cultural events include the annual Cartagena International Film Festival, which takes place a week before Easter; the Fiesta de Nuestra Senora de la Candelaria, which includes a parade of horses at the end of January; and the four-day Fiesta de la Independencia, which is celebrated at the beginning of November. Cartagena is warm, sunny and humid all year with temperatures that are consistently between 75 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The rainy season spans from June to November with most thunderstorms happening in September. Talking to Erich Mueller, a public school teacher and engineering consultant with Splunk partner LC Systems, data analytics is a hot topic in public schools around the world. In Switzerland, apprentices learn about topics such as software programming, system staging, software deployment, database and directory service administration, backup and restore, etc. So why introduce Splunk at public schools? Much like the rest of us, students need to learn how to use tools that help make log data more accessible and usable from all of these sources. With this in mind, Erich started a class a couple of years ago at Berufsschule BBB Baden in Switzerland called Big Data and Data Analytics. Why is @Splunk partner LC Systems teaching big data in public schools? @splunk4good #morethanapartner Tweet this The class began in 2015 with 16 students; in 2016 enrollment grew to 20. Students learn a lot about how to use Splunk, including how to plan a data analytics infrastructure; how to create basic use cases; and how to use Splunk to realize those use cases. During the six-month intensive class one day per week, three courses per day students begin with a Splunk training supported by LC Systems, a Splunk Business Partner that supports projects and customers across Europe in industries such insurance, financial services and manufacturing. Following the introductory session, students can work at their own speed with lab exercises prepared specifically for this course, leveraging use cases in Splunk. To complete the class, students are required to define Splunk use cases, write a statement of work, and provide screenshots of their work. Successful completion earns students a certificate of completion for Big Data & Data Analytics Level 1. Its exciting to learn data analytics topics with a software which is great in the usability and performance to organize unstructured data Expanding our reach This course is just one example of literally hundreds of schools around the world that are now teaching Splunk. And this isnt just because Splunk is an interesting product its because data is growing, jobs are in demand, and Splunk is becoming an essential tool for the workforce of tomorrow. Its also because our community of passionate Splunkers see the value in building these skills and teaching young people. With this in mind, the Splunk Pledge is being applied in ways we never could have imagined. Community colleges and workforce development programs, veterans organizations, and job training programs for opportunity youth are all recognizing that Splunk is not only a valuable tool and skillset, but a skill that can lead to well paid jobs and employment opportunities. Splunk customers have requested that these programs prepare interns and employees, and universities are incorporating Splunk as an essential component of courses in data analytics, engineering, and even business and marketing. Were filling the pipe aggressively, yet demand still dramatically outstrips supply. Get involved As we enter a new era of explosive growth here at Splunk, we need to think creatively about how we can grow our skills, support our communities, and grow our business all at once. The Splunk Pledge can help support important causes championed by employees, customers and partners. It can also help us get Splunk into the hands of students, researchers, and job-seekers. And it gives us more than 65,000 hours of paid time per year to volunteer for causes important to us. How can you help? Pledge your time to community. How do you want to give back? Teaching a class? Volunteering at your childrens school? Responding to a disaster? Let us know how you want to spend your time whether employee, customer, or partner. Spread the word about the Splunk Pledge. It is our $100 million our commitment to research, education and community service. Share your stories! We want to hear your stories of how you are giving back, and how we can help. ---------------------------------------------------- Thanks! Corey Marshall In early 2017 the French GIGN (Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) ordered 68 customized (for commando operations) CZ 807 assault rifles form Czech company (Ceska Zbrojovka). The primary change here is that the CZ-806 BREN 2 is adapted to use 7.62x39mm ammunition. The reason behind this purchase comes from French police experience fighting armed Islamic terrorist since 2015. It turned out that the standard 9mm and 5.56x45 NATO ammunition GIGN (and most anti-terror units) used was often not up to the job when the Islamic terrorists were wearing body armor. The 9mm round has good stopping power but lacks penetration while the 5.56 x 45 NATO has better penetration capabilities but its stopping power is lower. To overcome this problem the French started to look for an existing rifle rounds that can provide both capabilities. The 7.62 x 51 NATO round was considered at first but was rejected because weapons chambered in this caliber proved to be too heavy and cumbersome to operate in rooms and other conditions typical for anti-terrorist operations. Moreover thanks to enormous kinetic energy this round can cause significant collateral damage because it can penetrate walls easily and hit innocent civilians or hostages. Thats way 7.62x39mm was chosen. This round has greater kinetic energy and stopping power than 5,45x45mm and can still be used in many compact weapons. The CZ-807 weighs about 3.15 kg (6 pounds) and is the latest variant of basic CZ 806 weapon used by Czech armed forces. Its design is very modular and easy to handle. That is the receiver/barrel assembly can easily be changed so the weapon can fire different rounds or more accurately because of a longer barrel. The French have requested variant with a short 228mm (9 inch) barrel that could be fitted with a silencer. Despite the very short barrel, the gun retains good accuracy and effectiveness over distances of up to 400 meters. More terrorists are using body armor and this is forcing antiterrorist units to adapt. The CZ 807 carbine has been also proposed to the French Commandos des operations speciales who currently operate frequently in Africa where 7.62x39mm ammunition is very common. -- Przemysaw Juraszek Parliamentary elections take place on May 4 th and the bad news is that most Algerians expect them to be rigged, as usual, and not lead to any change. Thus the greatest concern of the government is getting enough people to participate. The 2012 elections saw only 44 percent of voters turn out and voter participation appears set to decline still further. Meanwhile the number of young Algerians participating in anti-government protests continues to rise. The government has been pretending to reform the political system but that is widely seen as another sad failure. In 2016 parliament passed much needed changes to the constitution. But reformers were not impressed because as long as power is monopolized by a few families (which were prominent in the 1960s rebellion against France) new laws will not change anything and in this case they did not. Thats because some of the new reforms were implemented in the past but then cancelled when it suited the corrupt and dictatorial ruling families. Unless the government introduces and enforces honest voting and then obeys the law, there can be no real reform. This is a common pattern worldwide and especially in the Middle East. Everyone knows that corruption and bad government are the main cause of stagnant economies and general unrest but not enough of those in charge are willing to give up enough power to fix the problem. In part this is because of the well-founded (in history) fear that another group of corrupt officials will resume the practice of rigging elections. The government, mindful of what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when rising unemployment and falling oil prices led to widespread unrest and eventually an Islamic terrorist uprising, is making a major effort to cushion the population from the impact of the current (and apparently long-term) decline in oil prices. There is also talk of doing something about the corruption, but not much action. The problem, for most Algerians, is that the government says the right things but does not follow up. This delays an explosive popular reaction and reminds Algerians that they have been tolerating this corrupt and ruthless ruling class since the 1960s. Then again students of Algerian history note that this form of government was common in what is now Algeria for thousands of years and played a role in giving the French an excuse to take over in the 19th century and run Algeria as a colony for over a century before leaving (involuntarily) in the early 1960s. Despite all the talk about a new beginning the post-colonial Algerian leaders promptly went old school and there it remains. The main reason Europe pays attention is because the return to the old school governing methods also meant the return of North African based criminal groups that found new ways to prey on Europe. And so it came to pass the Algeria found it could resume extorting cash and other favors from European states. That sort of thing has not been seen since the 19th century (the Barbary Pirates and Saracen Corsairs) and before that flourished for nearly a thousand years. Old customs are difficult to change. Terrified Terrorists Adapt The few Islamic terrorists still operating in Algeria no longer terrorize like they used to. Thats why more people are coming forward with information on current or past Islamic terrorist activity. This has made it impossible for organized Islamic terrorist activity to develop. ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) has tried, and so far failed. The largest Islamic terror group in the region is still AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) but this organization tries to confine its Algerian activities to fund raising (via smuggling of drugs, people and anything else that pays well). The government knows this because the heavy counter-terrorism presence on the southern borders encounters smugglers far more often than Islamic terrorists and when the captured smugglers are questioned a lot of them turn out to have AQIM business, not terrorism, connections. AQIM still maintains a presence in Algeria so it can step in and try to play a leading role if there is another popular uprising against the corrupt and inefficient government. While many of the hundred or so Islamic terrorists killed in Algeria each year are with AQIM they seem to understand why they are there and why the risk is worth it. If an Islamic terrorists wants a safe hideout, Algeria is not the place to go. Another indicator of AQIM strategy is that most of the bunkers and Islamic terrorist supporters now found in the countryside are the result of tips from locals who feel safe enough to mention what they know. Because of this the security forces are clearing out the remaining areas where the few Islamic terrorists are still active. This is mainly Boumerdes, Bouira, Tizi Ouzou and Jijel provinces east of the capital as well as the far south where border areas with Mali, Niger and Libya are very active with smugglers and a far smaller number of Islamic terrorists. To the south the Islamic terror groups in Mali have responded to all this 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 which is hostile to everyone who is not ISIL and will attack or recruit from the JNIM members AQIM, 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. April 25, 2017: On May 8th Algeria will host another meeting of nations neighboring Libya. This is not just for the neighbors but also for the major factions inside Libya. Algeria is seen as the major reason why the main factions in Libya are still talking to each other. Algeria has not provided any material support to any faction and provides a convenient and safe place to hold the frequent meetings between faction officials and diplomats from the UN and neighboring countries. Algeria has provided similar assistance for Mali. April 23, 2017: In the southwest (Adrar Province, 1.420 kilometers from the capital) soldiers found an arms cache with six AK-47s, three heavy machine-guns and over 2,30o rounds of rifle ammo. April 19, 2017: In Constantine province (400 kilometers from the capital) police received information on two Islamic terrorists planning an attack in the city. The two were cornered and one of them died by detonating his suicide vest. The other suspect was captured and questioned. This area has been the center of ISIL efforts in Algeria since 2015 but the group has suffered heavy losses in that time and been unable to expand. Police have received a lot of tips from the public, which played a major role in detecting and dismantling an ISIL recruiting operation earlier this month. Another problem for ISIL is a lack of effective leadership. For example a month ago police here caught up with and killed Abu Hammam, the leaders of the Algerian branch of ISIL. Another ISIL member was with Hammam and also died in a brief gun battle. Hammam was believed directly responsible for planning or even carrying out the ISIL attacks in this area over the last two years. The pistol Hammam carried when he was killed was later identified as the same one used in the murder of a policeman in late 2016. April 14, 2017: In the east (Skikda province 500 kilometers from the capital) army patrols found five bombs and four improvised mortars. April 12, 2017: In the east (between Bordj Bou Arreridj province 200 kilometers east of the capital to Skikda province 300 kilometers further east) army patrols found 16 bunkers containing twelve bombs, seven crude landmines, food and equipment. The presence of explosives indicates these bunkers were for Islamic terrorists rather than smugglers. April 3, 2017: Algeria and Tunisia both issued strong denials that they had supported Iranian foreign policy. Iran spread a false rumor to that effect, first inside Iran and then to nearby countries. Most Arab countries see Iran as a threat, not an ally. After a man in South Africa passed away, his family struggled to feed the greyhounds he had used for hunting - all 64 of them. Since the family had no reliable income, the situation grew quickly desperate. The dogs were being fed cooked cabbage and were slowly wasting away. IFAW By the time Greyhound Rescue South Africa was called for help, earlier this month, some of the dogs had already died. The family started to cooperate with rescuers, who collaborated with Community Led Animal Welfare (CLAW), a partner of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), to take a first group of 11 surrendered greyhounds to the CLAW sanctuary for help. "In South Africa greyhounds are used for hunting and poaching," Sheena Dale, an IFAW project manager at CLAW, told The Dodo. Even though there are laws against using dogs for hunting, they are rarely enforced, and it harms not only the dogs but also populations of South Africa's wildlife, like foxes and porcupines. IFAW "Looking at the scars covering their bodies, in particular 'Whip Girl,' it is believed they had been beaten off their prey more than once," Dale said. The dogs suffered from sores and malnutrition. Some had tumors and some had eye problems. One dog had to be rushed to the veterinary hospital to have her eye removed. Because the dogs were terribly thin, a handyman who lives on CLAW's property made sure that the starving dogs got small meals all evening during their first night at the shelter, to help them slowly expand their shrunken stomachs. One dog, so weak and tired, lay down in the food bowl as he was eating. Dodo Shows Soulmates Growling Little Kitten Becomes Her Mom's Best Friend IFAW And it was also important for the animals to rest. "We piled all the kennels high with soft blankets and, very quickly, each kennel had a long snout and even longer legs poking out of their entrances," Taren Welthagen, director of CLAW, wrote. IFAW IFAW In the next few days the family agreed to surrender five more dogs, and rescuers set to work finding foster homes and permanent homes for the 16 dogs. IFAW IFAW Just a few weeks later, 11 dogs have already grown healthy enough to be placed in foster or permanent homes. Remaining dogs who need homes include Gary, Prince, Whip Girl, Scaredy Girl and a black and white dog who doesn't have a name yet. IFAW "Many of the fosterers are falling in love and we get regular updates that they will be keeping their greyhound permanently," Dale said. "There is still a great deal of interest surrounding the greyhounds and they should all find loving, caring homes." IFAW IFAW Preservation Racine Inc., a local volunteer-based organization committed to local preservation efforts, celebrates National Preservation Month with the Century Buildings Award Program on Monday, May 1, in the Great Hall of the DeKoven Center, 600 21st St. The event begins at 6 p.m. with a reception honoring the building owners. The awards program will follow at 7 p.m. This Place Matters is the theme of National Preservation Month. It is meant to encourage people to celebrate the places that are meaningful to them and to their communities, and inspire a dialogue about the importance of place and preservation in all our lives. Since the programs inception in 1988, Preservation Racine has recognized 378 buildings in the City of Racine and Racine County that are at least 100 years old and have been well cared for and maintained by their owners. We celebrate the role of history in our lives and proudly recognize the people who preserve our shared heritage through their careful attention to Racines historic properties. Countless places throughout our communities have played significant roles in shaping our country. This celebration enables us to shine a spotlight on some of those properties while embracing our past. Preservation Racine is pleased to announce and is grateful that Real Racine, the organization that oversees tourism promotion and development in Racine County, will again sponsor this years program with their generous contribution. This year Century Building Certificates will be presented to the owners of 11 historic buildings. Each has been carefully chosen, researched and photographed. Three of this years honored buildings are on North Kane Street in the Kane Street Historic District of Burlington, one in Mount Pleasant with the remainder in the city of Racine. The recipients are: 224 N. Kane St., Burlington is a Queen Anne style house built in 1903. The current owners are Kevin Rook and Kimberly McGuinness-Rook. 301 N. Kane St., Burlington is a cross-gabled Craftsman style American bungalow built in 1916. The current owner is Susan Guttschow. 125 N. Kane St., Burlington was built in 1869 in the Italianate style. The current owner is Justin Widiker. 1303 Main St., Racine is a classic Queen Anne style two-story frame house built in 1880. The current owners are Matthew D. and Kelsey L. Stegner. 2609 Washington Ave., Racine is a Craftsman style Searss kit home built in 1915. The present owners are Jerry and Madeline Frankenberger. 1732-1734 Park Ave., Racine is a cross-gabled Queen Anne style built c. 1907. The current owners are Alan and Carol Wallace. 1736 Park Ave., Racine is a two-story frame house in the Dutch Colonial Revival style built in 1911. The current owners are the Rev. Glen and Beverly Halbe. 346 S. Newman Road, Mount Pleasant was built in the Italianate style in 1868. Tom and Nancy Nicholson are the current owners. 216 17th St., Racine was built in the Mediterranean style about 1900. Dan and Sylvia Cunegin are the present owners. 613-619 Wisconsin Ave., Racine is a commercial structure with a Classic Revival style front c 1901. Robert Venn is the present owner. 1449 Geneva St., Racine is an Italianate style building completed by 1913 the present owners are the Faith Church of God Congregation. Upcoming events For more information on Preservation Racine and how you can become involved visit www.preservationracine.org. Join us at our next membership meeting which will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, June 5, at Snap-on corporate headquarters in Kenosha. Join us as we learn about the history and visit the museum of this important southeastern Wisconsin manufacturer. Gary Stokes is used to seeing animals in dried seafood shops in Hong Kong - fins from dead sharks, dead sea cucumbers, dead starfish. As a conservationist, it all upsets him, but he feels particularly distressed when he sees sacks of dried seahorses. Seahorses being sold at a dry seafood store in Hong Kong | Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global "The traditional Chinese medicine shops are full of sacks and sacks and sacks of pretty much everything from the oceans, but seahorses are certainly a part of it," Stokes, the Southeast Asia director of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, told The Dodo. "When you go [scuba] diving, you can see one seahorse, and the photographer goes crazy. But here, you see them in clear plastic bags, with a couple of hundred in each bag. You're kind of numb because of the death around you." Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global In mainland China, Stokes once visited an entire shop that just sold seahorses - and nothing else. Stokes estimated that there were hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of dead seahorses in that one store. "They're tiny," Stokes said. "So imagine filling up a grocery shopping bag - how many would you get in there? And if you imagine a shop that's maybe 8 meters by 8 meters [26 feet by 26 feet], and they're just stacked up on all of the shelves, the volume is just mind-blowing." Dodo Shows Odd Couples Kitten Isn't Sure About His Pittie Brother At First Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global Stokes has good reason to be concerned. There are more than 40 seahorse species, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists many as either "threatened" or "endangered." Some species don't have enough data on them for scientists to even assess their conservation status. Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global Despite the seahorse's vulnerable position, people are taking millions of them out of the ocean each year to use in traditional medicine, sell in the aquarium trade or even use as ornaments or tourist souvenirs. Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global It's not just a few million being lost - it's tens of millions, according to Amanda Vincent, a marine biologist and director of Project Seahorse. "There are no official global figures on [seahorse] fisheries, but from our fieldwork, we think in just 21 countries that we've been able to assess ... about 37 million a year are being removed from the wild," Vincent told The Dodo. "That number may turn out to be conservative." Tyler Stiem/Project Seahorse What's even more astounding is that most seahorse species are actually protected through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which puts limitations on the trading and selling of these animals. Yet these nominal bans don't seem to be doing much, Stokes said. A case display of prohibited items, which includes seahorses, at the Hong Kong Airport | Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global "They're prohibited, so how come we have sacks and sacks and sack of them just in the shops here [in Hong Kong]?" Stokes said. A case display of prohibited items, which includes seahorses, at the Hong Kong Airport | Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global To make things worse, the captured individuals aren't the only ones affected, Vincent explained. When people take seahorses out of the wild, their families are disrupted as well. "Many fishes do come out in vast numbers from the oceans, and, in some cases, the wild populations can tolerate that," Vincent said. "Seahorses, however, have a very elaborate form of parental care and a very structured social system." Kiki Vleeschouwers/Project Seahorse One of the most interesting characteristics about seahorses is that the males carry the babies. "The female transfers eggs to the male's pouch, and ... the eggs are fertilized," Vincent said. "Then they [the males] go through an elaborate pregnancy, providing food and nutrition and thermal control. And eventually the male goes into labor and pumps and thrusts and shoves them all out again." A pregnant male seahorse | Shutterstock Seahorses are not only good dads, they're also good partners. "Males and females in most species have permanent pair bonds, where they come together every day for prolonged periods," Vincent said. "As soon as the male gives birth, the female is ready with more eggs, and off they go mating." Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd Global But it's not just traditional medicine and the aquarium trade that's wreaking havoc on seahorse families. Seahorses are also inadvertently caught with certain fishing techniques, like seine and trawl fishing, according to Vincent. "The vast majority of seahorses are caught in nonselective fishing gear, like trawls and seines," Vincent said. "So banning export doesn't mean they stay in the wild. We're trying to deal with the fisheries removals ... because there's not much gain from conservation if you catch them still, but let them dry on the beach without selling them." Alison Stocks/Project Seahorse Despite the challenge, Vincent remains optimistic. She hopes that more people will learn to protect seahorses - and the oceans themselves. "Seahorses are in trouble ... and I hope they can be good storytellers for all the small, obscure species that nobody pays much attention to at all," Vincent said. "I think what we all need to do is to feel a responsibility for the ocean and to engage with the ocean and talk about it a lot. It can be difficult because most people think of the ocean as a swimming pool of water, but in fact it's full of the most extraordinary life, and seahorses are part of what's wonderful." Shutterstock Racines Spiral Space Yoga Gallery is a creative place where healing arts come together with visual arts to offer experiences for the mind and body. The space, which opened in January at 2050 Wisconsin Ave., on the DeKoven Center grounds, offers a variety of yoga (including aerial yoga), massage and meditation opportunities, as well as an art gallery. And, on Saturday, April 29, all are invited to come see what it is all about during the weekends Get Behind the Arts Studio Tour. Visitors to the gallery that day can view a multimedia exhibition of Interwoven Portraits, created by Spiral Space collaborators Jessika Mikol and Elizabeth Emer, as well as sculpture by Katrina Sustachek. They will also have opportunities to lounge in aerial yoga hammocks, listen to music performed by music therapist Lisa Friedrich, meditate in an aromatherapy tent and just enjoy the overall ambiance (www.facebook.com/pg/SpiralSpaceYogaGallery). And it is one of many such creative opportunities offered through the GBTA Studio Tour, which takes place Saturday, April 29, in Racine and Sunday, April 30, in Kenosha. The two-day, self-guided tour offers a behind-the-scenes look at the private workspaces of visual and performing artists, and this years event will feature the work of more than 100 artists, in more than 60 studios at 27 locations throughout the region. Tour hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, and a $5 suggested donation buys admission to all tour stops (no charge for children and students), as well as a GBTA souvenir button (this years is designed by artist Chet Griffith). Fab Lab to Hip-Hop Other tour highlights include Gateway Technical Colleges industrial design Fab Lab at the iMET Center in Sturtevant, where John Zehren will walk visitors through the process of printing 3-dimensional objects. This is a great opportunity for people to check out what happens at the lab and to see how they can get more involved, said Jessica Zalewski, a GBTA organizer and local artist. It is a little bit off the beaten path, but it is well worth the trip. Kenosha locations include the events first dance studio, Avenue A Arts, where Ajay Singh Bedi will offer a street art workshop from noon to 3:30 p.m., and will teach open level hip-hop classes from 4 to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. Also on the Kenosha tour are the home studios of artists Marilyn Propp and David Jones, co-founders of the Center for Collaborative Research, a nonprofit print media center which will open in the Kenosha Creative Space this fall, according to Maureen Fritchen, GBTA event chairperson. Propp is a painter who also makes relief prints with handmade paper, as well as constructions of found metal and wood. And Jones is currently working with digital programs to create a synthesis of handwork, traditional print media and digital technology. They will also offer tours of their extensive print collection, Fritchen said. Preview Party Friday In its seventh year, Get Behind the Arts is a full weekend of creativity that begins with a free Preview Party from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, April 28. The party serves as an entertaining introduction to the Studio Tour and this years preview will be held at 314 Sixth St. a historic, commercial space that once housed Racines YMCA and later the Red Cross Drug Co. Preview Party-goers will be treated to short performances by musicians, poets and dancers, as well as an art exhibition and demonstrations. They will also have the opportunity to meet some of the artists whose studios will be featured on the weekend tour, and to try their hands at silkscreening a T-shirt, throwing a pot on a potters wheel and making paper. Fridays event will also feature a mini taste of Racine, offering foods provided by eight local restaurants, as well as a cash bar with brews by the Benjamin Beer Co. The party is also a good time to purchase GBTA admission buttons and to pick up free tour map/brochures. Maps and buttons will also be available at all participating studios on tour days. GBTA Studio Tours are organized by a collective of Racine and Kenosha artists and supporters of the arts. Formed in 2010, through the efforts of the Wisconsin Arts Board, the organization strives to promote local talent, broaden art audiences and educate the public about the regions creative sector. Support for GBTA 2017 is provided by Real Racine, the Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, the Kenosha Community Foundation and the Racine Art Museum. For more information, go to www.getbehindthearts.org or www.facebook.com/getbehindthearts. RACINE After the votes were cast and the recommendation announced, the nearly 20 construction workers sitting in the City Council chambers broke into applause. Going against the recommendation of city staff, Racines Public Works and Services Committee unanimously voted Tuesday to find Cornerstone Pavers of Caledonia qualified to bid on city projects. Public Works Commissioner Mark Yehlen had recommended finding Cornerstone unqualified not based on the quality of the companys work, which includes significant work on Kinzie Avenue, but because Cornerstone regularly misses completion deadlines. As his employees left the chambers after the vote, Project Manager Chris Cape smiled ear-to-ear, shaking the hand of each and every worker. Cape had pleaded with the committee to find his company qualified, as there were no issues with the quality of his work, and he said the delays were caused by weather and miscommunication. Many of the problems were the result of failing to accept reality and make appropriate adjustments, Cape said. Four weeks ago, Yehlen detailed to the committee the problems the city has had with Cornerstone missing deadlines in the past decade. In 2016, Cornerstone finished two projects a combined 30 days late and, in 2015, the company was a total of 101 days behind schedule on two similar projects. Cornerstone has been late on their projects, which has impacted the driving public and the abutting property owners, Yehlen said. Even with evidence that Yehlen presented, the committee wasnt prepared to deny city work to a local company. While 6th District Alderman Sandy Weidner understood the frustration the delays can cause residents who live near the projects, she didnt think that should disqualify Cornerstone. These are folks that are trying to make a living, she said. When I signed up to be an alderman, I never signed up to make the determination on whether someones going to be able to work or not. Tom Peterson, a citizen who had come to the meeting to discuss a separate issue, weighed in passionately about Cornerstones work on Kinzie Avenue in the past two years. His family owns property on the street, and he said he was impressed by Cornerstones work on a difficult street. Im glad they were taking their time to get it right, Peterson said. Now, were going to have this road for the next 50 years. When people, the driving public, are inconvenienced for one season, remember that the road is going to last us for the next 50 years. The committee was sold by Capes reasoning and Petersons input, as well as arguments from 12th District Alderman Henry Perez, and voted 4-0 to find Cornerstone qualified to bid. That recommendation still needs to be affirmed next week by the entire City Council. RACINE A Racine woman has been charged after her boyfriend allegedly hit her son in the face with a belt. Ariel Heath, 24, of the 400 block of Three Mile Road, is facing a felony charge of failure to act to prevent bodily harm to a child. According to the criminal complaint: On Tuesday, police were dispatched to North Park Elementary School, 4748 Elizabeth St., for a report of child abuse. A teacher had reported that one of her students had been hit in the face with a belt before school. The child stated that he was hit in the face with a belt because his mothers boyfriend, Robert Gaston, had told him to get up for school. When he didnt listen, Gaston reportedly struck him three times in the face and back with a belt in the presence of his mother. Officers then spoke with a family member who confirmed the boy was hit in his mothers presence. Police also responded to the daycare center that Heaths other children attend. Upon arrival, an officer received a call from Heath who said nothing had happened before school. When officers mentioned the noticeable welt mark on her sons face, she confirmed that Gaston spanked her son but said her son must have run and accidentally been hit in the face. Officers asked when Gaston would be home that night, and Heath said he would not be, then later said he would be home from work at 11:30 p.m. After learning where Gaston worked, police learned he had not been at his place of employment for three weeks. Heath was taken into custody. Heaths next appearance is a preliminary hearing at 8:30 a.m. May 11 at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. DEARBORN, MICH.Ford Motor Co.s net income fell 35 per cent to $1.6 billion (U.S.) ($2.2 billion Cdn.) in the first quarter as it was hit by costly recalls, lower sales and rising prices for steel and other materials. The Dearborn-based automaker had warned investors and analysts to expect weaker results in the first quarter. Ford earned a record pre-tax profit in the first quarter of 2016. Ford chief financial officer Bob Shanks said the company remains on track for a pre-tax profit of $9 billion for the full year. Thats down from $10.4 billion in 2016. Without one-time items, including a gain from the closure of a planned plant in Mexico, Ford earned 39 cents per share, beating forecasts. Wall Street expected earnings of 35 cents per share, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Ford announced two North American product recalls in March that cost the company $295 million. The company recalled more than 230,000 vehicles because of the risk of engine fires and 210,000 vehicles for defective door latches. Those actions were in addition to a recall last fall of 2.4 million vehicles to fix door latches which cost Ford $600 million. Fords sales dropped slightly in the first quarter to 1.7 million vehicles. Fords North American market share dropped as it sold fewer vehicles to rental fleets, but it said U.S. sales to individual buyers were up. Sales also fell in China. Shanks said Chinese customers rushed to buy vehicles at the end of 2016, before a tax incentive expired, so the market suffered in the first quarter. North America powered Fords profits. The company earned a pre-tax profit of $2 billion in the region, down 45 per cent from a year ago. Revenue rose slightly as the company sold a higher mix of high-profit trucks and SUVs. Ford said the average price customers paid for a vehicle was up $1,971 in the U.S. in the first quarter, compared to an industry average increase of $506. Ford eked out smaller profits in Europe and Asia but lost money in South America, the Middle East and Africa. Fords revenue climbed 4 per cent to $39 billion in the first quarter. Its automotive revenue was $35.2 billion, beating analysts forecast of $34.2 billion. Ford shares gained 2.1 per cent to $11.84 in pre-market trading. SHARE: Nearly two years before a fatal ORNGE helicopter crash during a night flight in northern Ontario, the agencys safety manager told supervisors night-vision goggles should be given to pilots, a court was told Wednesday. The case for night-vision goggles is strong and simple and revolves around safety, said ORNGEs former safety manager Andrew Eaton, reading into the court record excerpts of a briefing note he sent to his supervisors in 2011. Why would we fly around in the night unable to see details, upcoming weather and intentionally blind when we could simply put down a set of goggles and have 20/20 sight in near total darkness? Eaton was the sole witness to testify Wednesday at a labour trial against ORNGE, which is defending itself against federal health and safety charges under the Canada Labour Code. The agency was slapped with the charges three years ago in the crash of an ORNGE Sikorsky S76 helicopter in Moosonee, Ont., on May 31, 2013 that killed captain Don Filliter, co-pilot Jacques Dupuy, and paramedics Dustin Dagenais and Chris Snowball. Among the charges being pursued by the Crown are that ORNGE allowed the crew to fly without adequate training and failed to provide adequate supervision of daily fight activities at Moosonee. Eaton, a former helicopter pilot in the Canadian Air Force, testified that ORNGE management was initially receptive to his idea to look into the viability of providing night-vision goggles to crew members, even though it was not a Transport Canada requirement. Eaton said he was given the go-ahead to look into the possibility of retrofitting ORNGEs newer, more powerful AgustaWestland 139 helicopters for night-vision capabilities, but it soon became clear that changes would be cost prohibitive. Eaton said he didnt remember any discussion of making the agencys older fleet of Sikorsky helicopters the same model that crashed in Moosonee equipped for night vision. The difference between flying with goggles and flying without goggles is literally the difference between flying night and day, said Eaton, who left his job as safety manager for ORNGE about five months before the crash, citing what he considered the agencys lack of understanding of the proper role of a safety officer, and constant stress. A 2016 Transportation Safety Board report on the crash noted that the Moosonee crew were faced with flying in total darkness with no ambient light whatsoever and would have been forced to fly by instruments. Although both pilots were qualified according to the regulations, they lacked the necessary night- and instrument-flying proficiency to safely complete the flight, the report said. Eaton testified that while he believed Filliter had a respectable 128 hours of experience flying with night-vision goggles, he did not have enough experience flying without them and was not proficient in flying by instruments alone. Defence lawyer Fredrick Schumann suggested to Eaton that there were inherent risks related to the flights ORNGE helicopters perform and that if we really wanted to be perfectly safe, wed stay on the ground. Eaton agreed. Many of Schumanns questions focused on the level of responsibility captains hold when operating out of a flight base. He suggested that pilots are best positioned to notice when something isnt right and that they are expected to inform the operator so that the problem can be fixed, a sentiment Eaton agreed with. Schumann noted that the captain is the one who decides whether to head out when an emergency call comes in, not a flight operator, such as ORNGE. If a captain thinks he cant do a flight safely, then hes expected to turn down the call, he said. Its his obligation to turn it down, responded Eaton. An operator trusts and expects the captain to do just that. The operator isnt sending captains on any particular flight, is it?, Schumann asked. No, Eaton responded. The trial continues Thursday in a Brampton court. Correction May 1, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Fredrick Schumanns surname in one instance. SHARE: LONGUEUIL, QUE.Money earmarked for space development in this years federal budget will go to two projects that could have lasting impacts on Earth and beyond, the federal government announced Thursday. One of them involves a radar instrument that would be used to study the surface and subsurface of Mars. The other looks at the applications of quantum technology in space and will be overseen by the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. That project involves quantum encryption, which uses highly advanced computing technology to create virtually unbreakable security codes. In announcing how the $80.9 million would be spent over five years, Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains told staff at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters near Montreal that space innovation is a smart investment for Canada. In addition to two new Canadian astronauts to be introduced in the coming months, Bains said a recently convened space advisory board is expected to report back this summer with a long-term plan for the sector, which employs about 10,000 people. We want to have a thoughtful, insightful, long-term plan when it comes to space, Bains told reporters. Read more: Cassini spacecraft ventures in between Saturn and its rings for grand finale Canada looks to double astronaut corps through gruelling recruitment process The radar instrument, identified as a necessary tool by Canadas space partners, would be developed for a future orbiter mission to the red planet and would help in developing a high-resolution map of the surface as well as identifying water resources at shallow depths. That geological data could provide invaluable information for future long-term space missions to Mars, but the tool could also have Earth applications. Gilles Leclerc, director general of space exploration at the space agency, said the instrument is different from contributions such as an X-ray spectrometer on the Curiosity rover and a meteorological station on the Phoenix spacecraft that were both part of Mars-bound missions This time, it would be different for us because wed be mapping the surface from orbit, Leclerc said. Leclerc said discussions are ongoing with NASA to have an instrument ready for a launch by 2022 or 2024. Bains said the quantum investment should help solidify Canadas standing in the field. Canada is considered a world leader in quantum, and this area has incredible potential for growth and job creation for years to come, he said, adding there are earthly spinoffs too. It could eventually provide Canada with more secure communications in many sectors banking, transportation and information technology. In the 2016 budget, $379 million was set aside to secure Canadas partnership in the International Space Station until 2024 and another $30 million for a four-year partnership on a project with the European Space Agency. Joining Bains at CSA headquarters was Transport Minister Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in orbit and a former CSA president who returned to headquarters for the first time in an official capacity since quitting to pursue politics in 2006. SHARE: VANCOUVERThe mother of a missing Ecuadorian man studying in Vancouver has issued an emotional plea for information that could help find her son. Lupe Carrera travelled to Vancouver from Ecuador and spoke at a news conference at the University of British Columbia. Louis Gonick was last seen on the evening of April 16, getting out a cab in Stanley Park, near the Lions Gate Bridge. The 21-year-old was studying on a scholarship at UBC, and friends reported him missing the next day. RCMP Staff Sgt. Annie Linteau says there is no evidence of foul play, but that his phone, bank and social media accounts have been inactive since he disappeared. Speaking in Spanish, Carrera said her son is the greatest gift and his family and friends are waiting for his return. Linteau said the search for Gonick is continuing and anyone who may have seen him before 7:30 p.m. on April 16 is urged to call police. There has been an extensive search of the area in and around Stanley Park, as well as some of the water area around the Lions Gate Bridge. Certainly we are looking for any information that would give the family some much needed answers. Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAThe federal science minister says universities arent doing the heavy lifting to appoint more female research chairs, so she wants to force their hands. On her way to give a speech Wednesday to university presidents in Montreal, Kirsty Duncan was handed the latest statistics on the number of men and women among applicants for new Canada Research Chair positions. Theyre dismal, Duncan said in an interview with The Canadian Press. There were two times more men nominated than women. The Canada Research Chairs program was implemented 17 years ago to create 2,000 research positions at universities across the country to push for excellence in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences. Canada spends $265 million a year on the program. As of December 2016, women held 30 per cent of the 1,612 filled positions. The bar isnt moving and that cant continue, Duncan said, noting that she even ad-libbed part of her speech because of it: I let them know I was very disappointed with the results. In 2006, the Canada Research Chairs Program settled a complaint with the Canada Human Rights Commission brought by eight women who complained about discrimination in the awarding of the positions. In 2009, universities set targets to try and increase the number of research chairs who are women, visible minorities, indigenous people and people with disabilities. In 2012, universities had to start reporting their progress on these targets annually. Duncan said if the voluntary program isnt working, she is open to forcing the issue but would not say how that would work. Last fall she required new equity reporting and planning reports to be submitted with new applications for the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program, after she discovered only one of the 28 chairs was female. That program focuses on science and technology research. University of Regina president Vianne Timmons said university administrators are very aware of the diversity issue and that it is a problem across university programs, not just the Canada Research Chairs. She said the presidents had already met to discuss the problem Wednesday before Duncans speech. Its a real challenge, she said. I hope the minister will recognize she doesnt have to force the issue. Timmons said part of the challenge is that women, for a number of reasons, are not applying for these roles in the same numbers as men. One of the answers is that university leaders, both men and women, have to be more assertive in recruiting women and other underrepresented groups. Ive been pretty aggressive in shoulder-tapping women and encouraging them to apply, she said. Last fall, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran and University of New Brunswick professor Wendy Robbins made a submission to the Fundamental Science Review panel set up by Duncan, in which they recommended a number of improvements to the equity program. That included denying grants to universities who failed to meet the equity targets. Since there are no penalties for not meeting the targets, there is no incentive for universities to do anything, they argued. Robbins was one of the eight professors who brought the initial human rights complaint in 2006. Attaran filed a new complaint last year arguing there is evidence of systemic discrimination in the program, including against himself. His chair position was not renewed in 2015. That case is still pending, though the Tri-Agency Institutional Programs Secretariat which administers the program, denies all of Attarans allegations. Duncan said Canada lags behind other nations when it comes to women in science; only 36 per cent of PhDs in science in Canada are earned by women, compared with 49 per cent in the U.K. and 46 per cent in the United States. In 1987, just 20 per cent of the people working in science, technology, engineering and math fields were female, a number that has grown to just 22 per cent today. SHARE: OTTAWAThe Senates ethics committee is on the cusp of deciding how Sen. Don Meredith should be punished for his sexual affair with a teenage girl, after weeks of deliberation on how to respond to the scandal. Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, the committee chair, said Thursday that the aim is to table their highly anticipated report on Meredith in the upper chamber by the end of next week. While the committee can recommend sanctions for the sex scandal, any move to punish or expel Meredith will go to a vote on the Senate floor. Were coming to the final end of the process, Andreychuk said after a three-hour meeting with the ethics committee on Parliament Hill. We will meet again on Tuesday morning and we hope that we can conclude next week, she said. The Star first reported on Merediths relationship with a teenage girl in 2015, prompting an investigation into his behaviour by the Senates ethics officer. There was a police probe that concluded without laying charges, and Meredith is also being investigated for separate allegations of workplace harassment. In March, the ethics officer published a report that found Meredith had used his job as a senator to lure the girl who has only been identified as Ms. M into a sexual relationship. She was between 16 to 18 years old during the affair. Sen. Don Meredith says he ?deeply? regrets his sexual relationship with a teenager and, in this video published on March 16, asks for forgiveness. Meredith says he is weighing his options after a scathing ethics report was released the previous week. The legal age of consent in Canada is 16, but goes up to 18 when there is a relationship of authority, trust or dependency, according to the Criminal Code. In the wake of the report, senators and MPs of all stripes have called for Meredith to give up his seat in the red chamber. The Pentecostal pastor from Richmond Hill was appointed to the Senate by Stephen Harper in 2010. Although he addressed the ethics committee at a closed-door meeting in early April, Meredith has been away from his Senate duties because of stress-related illness, according to his lawyer, Bill Trudell. Trudell did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Earlier in the day, the Senates ethics committee met for the fifth time since the report condemning Meredith was released. Asked why its taking so long to reach a decision, Andreychuk said they want to be prompt but also must be fair to everyone involved. The ethics code is very clear with how we go through the process. We want to be fair. We want to weigh all of the interests: the institution, the senators, the public and Sen. Meredith, she said. Sen. Serge Joyal, the committees deputy chair, added that their decision could set a precedent, given that the ethics code theyre working under only was only adopted in 2014. The report is very serious. The precedents it raises are equally serious, so by consequence the committee wants to give all possible consideration to these implications, Joyal said in French. According to the Senates ethics code, the committee can recommend a range of sanctions, including suspending Meredith or limiting his duties. Andreychuk said Thursday that the committee can recommend other sanctions that arent named in the code, but wouldnt say whether they were considering trying to expel Meredith from the Senate. With files from Kevin Donovan SHARE: The Ontario Ministry of Labour has determined that the air quality in the TTC subway system is not likely to endanger employees. The ruling comes after the publication this week of a study that found elevated pollution levels on Torontos transit system. In a statement released Thursday, the TTC said that the ministry was called in to investigate after four employees instigated work refusals over concerns about air quality. The employees three subway operators and a maintenance worker wanted to be permitted to wear protective masks. The ministrys ruling confirmed that the TTC met all of its legal and due diligence obligations, said the TTCs statement, which added that the air quality in the subway system is safe and personal protective equipment related to air quality is not required. The release quoted TTC CEO Andy Byford as saying it was most regrettable that in certain media articles the air quality on the subway was compared to that of Beijing, one of the planets most polluted cities. Doing so, frankly, has caused harm to the TTCs reputation and unnecessary alarm for some TTC employees, Byford said. The comparison to Beijing was made by Greg Evans, a University of Toronto engineering professor who co-authored the study. Earlier this week he was quoted by several media outlets, including the Star, as saying the level of fine particulate matter found in the subway was comparable to a typical day in the Chinese city, known for high levels of pollution. The study, which was led by Health Canada and published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, discovered the mean concentration of a fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 on the subway system was 95 micrograms per cubic metre, or 10 times the levels outside. The researchers didnt measure the possible health effects of the pollution, which they said was high in iron and was likely generated by friction between the steel subway wheels and tracks. PM2.5 is not considered a health hazard for most people, but experts say it can cause illness in vulnerable groups such as the elderly and those with certain health conditions. In a letter to the TTC on Thursday, Health Canada reiterated that the study results were not intended to measure the health hazards of the subway system. The health agency said that researchers have conducted air quality studies of other subway systems around the world, including New York and London, and pollution levels on the TTC are consistent with levels observed elsewhere. Despite the ministrys determination, leaders of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 were not convinced that the subway air is safe for employees who can spend more than eight hours a day underground. Theres no level of acceptability for fine particulates, said Kevin Morton, secretary-treasurer of Local 113, which represents more than 10,000 transit workers. Theyre bad for you. Morton argued that workers who want to should be allowed to wear masks, and warned there could potentially be job action if theyre not permitted. Why is the TTC afraid to give their employees the option of wearing a mask? he asked. The TTC has not conducted its own major air quality study of the subway since 1995, but plans to perform one this year. The transit agency says that since the last study it has taken several steps to improve underground air quality. SHARE: The student was sickly and slovenly. But colds and coughs are common in high schools. And hes a teenage boy, stresses Meghan Wood, director of Royal Elite International Academy, a private high school in Niagara-on-the-Lake that caters primarily to foreign students. Sometimes teenage boys can be dishevelled. That had nothing to do with it anyway. This teenage student, however, has been diagnosed with an active case of tuberculosis. He is in quarantine. The 18-year-old from China, according to sources at the academy, appeared ill as far back as September. He only sought medical attention in February, by which point he was coughing up blood. Subsequently, the Niagara Region public health department was called in. Forty-nine students and staff are either getting skin tests or because some have already returned home at end of term letters urging them to get tested in their home country. (For accuracy purposes, a wait period of at least eight weeks is required between last contact with the active TB patient and administration of the test.) At least eight students and four teachers have tested positive so far, the Star has been told, although Dr. Mustafa Hirji, associate medical officer for Niagara Region, would not confirm results, maintaining that to do so would violate health privacy rights. To be clear: a positive tuberculin skin test does not mean a person has contagious (active) or even latent TB. The next step is undergoing chest X-rays, which was being done this week. A PPD (purified protein derivative) test determines only if someone has developed an immune response to the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. It means the TB bacterium is living inside you, explains Hirji. Some 95 per cent of people with latent TB will never develop the disease. They are not infectious and cant spread it to others. All of which should be comforting news to those whove been in contact with Teenage Boy X fellow students, teachers, his billeting family and especially those now undergoing further examination. This is Canada, where tuberculosis is scarcely a concern anymore and routine vaccination was discontinued in the seventies. It is no longer administered except in persistently high-risk aboriginal communities. In 1867, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in this country. But globally China, Africa, Third World countries TB remains a serious health problem, ranking as second leading cause of death from an infectious disease behind only AIDS. Its estimated that one-third of the worlds population has latent TB infection, with an estimated 8 to 10 million developing active TB disease annually. Hirji makes it clear theres no evidence of an epidemic afoot at the academy and no reason to panic, pointing out that the Niagara Region sees an average of seven active TB cases per year. There has been exposure from one person. This doesnt mean other people have contracted TB. But the academy, which has a student population of about 120 and moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake only last fall, has a disproportionately large number of foreign students. Thats the attraction for families from afar who send their kids at a cost of about $40,000 for a high school education, according to one teacher to essentially buy their childs entrance into Canadian post-secondary institutions. Most of the foreign students are from China, but some have come from Nigeria, Mexico, Ukraine and other parts of Europe. Some faculty are dismayed by the schools failure to take prompt action even after teachers brought the teenagers chronic sickliness to their attention. The boy is over 18, Wood points out. Hes responsible for his own health. We couldnt force him to go to a doctor. A teacher who attended a staff meeting with school authorities in November the main topic of discussion was how to reduce stress for students, as many had noticed that kids were in a high state of anxiety about their academic performance recalls that the health of Teenage Boy X was raised as well. Were teachers, were not health and safety people. Our job is to teach the curriculum. But a few teachers mentioned that this student had a bad cough and it wasnt going away. Nothing was done. This particular staffer tested positive this week. A chest X-ray came back clear, but the teacher will still have to take antibiotics for the next nine months. Im just sick about it. Im beside myself, she told the Star. I was in tears at the doctors office. I feel like this puts my entire life on hold. The Star is not identifying the teachers who spoke for this column because they fear for their jobs. It was apparent to all that the kid diagnosed with TB was ill, another teacher told the Star in an email. Staff repeatedly expressed their concern about this kid, who was dirty, coughing and very obviously unhealthy. Wood insists the school took every appropriate action after the diagnosis. In an email sent to staff and faculty this week, Wood just returned from maternity leave so not at the school when worries about the boy first surfaced laid out steps the school is taking. These include covering expenses for the testing process and any antibiotics and treatment required not covered by OHIP; distributing surgical masks for those who wish on exam days; making alternative arrangements for high-risk students who have tested positive (they wont be allowed back until their chest X-ray results are confirmed); even paying mileage for those who have to drive to a clinic for the X-rays. Perhaps most crucially, and belatedly, the school will screen newly arriving students from overseas as it apparently isnt included in their immigration medical exam, Wood says in the email. We are also looking at a new rule that all kids who have been sick longer than 1 week must go to the doctor, regardless of whether they think they are seriously sick or not. Citizenship and Immigration Canada screens individuals applying for permanent residency and certain individuals applying for temporary residency but only for active cases of tuberculosis or those whove been treated for tuberculosis in the past. A study released in 2015 showed that the majority of active tuberculosis cases was found in people arriving in Canada from six countries China, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam, with 157 prospective immigrants (between 2002 and 2011) having active TB and screened out. Over the decade-long study, 22,391 immigrants were referred by immigration officials to provincial health authorities for post-immigration surveillance, but only 13,387 followed the order. Within two years of obtaining their permanent status, 102 of them developed active TB. By comparison, active TB was found in 334 newcomers out of all those who had not been referred for surveillance and 66 cases involved those who were referred but did not report. The upshot: only 1 in 40 cases was actually detected through post-immigration surveillance, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the post-immigration referral process, the study said. Infectious disease experts called for Ottawa to improve its immigration health screening system. In attempting to alleviate fears, Wood urged staff to avoid unnecessary panic/hysteria, and that admonishing tone didnt go over well either. As one of the aforementioned teachers told the Star via email: The public health nurse who tested me was completely shocked I had a positive result. She said public health didnt expect any Canadian-born people to test positive. Now there are four. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. SHARE: RACINE Salmon Unlimited of Wisconsin was at it again Wednesday afternoon, this time helping to stock the Root River with Chinook salmon. The local organization helped stock the river with roughly 31,000 Chinooks inside two pens. Volunteers plan to feed the fingerlings three times a day for the next 14 days. The organization hopes this will improve the survival rate of the salmon. If the water is too warm or has a high oxygen level, organizers will have to release the Chinooks early. Employees for the Department of Natural Resources also weighed and measured several of the Chinooks. The DNR plans to return to Root River to monitor how much the salmon grow during the time in the pen. Toronto council voted Thursday to call for a federal ban on the import of shark fins, as applause rang out from the council chamber where late Toronto filmmaker Rob Stewarts family sat watching. Councillors voted 38-4 for a motion by Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam to support a federal bill introduced earlier this month by Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald, which seeks to create a law prohibiting the importation of shark fins to Canada. Shark finning in Canadian waters has been illegal since 1994, but the sale and importation of shark fins is not. The practice involves cutting the fins off living sharks and then throwing the animals back into the ocean. Unable to swim, the sharks sink to the bottom of the ocean where they are eaten alive or die of suffocation. Stewarts father Brian, joined at city hall Thursday by Robs mother Sandy and sister Alexandra, said the biggest city in the country passing this motion sends the right message to Ottawa. Robs passion was to create a world where were an army with nature. This is his legacy, he said. Robs belief was he had to show people the beauty of the ocean. He had to show them that this is worth fighting for and worth saving, and in his case, worth dying for. Were thrilled, and we knew Rob wouldve been thrilled as well, Sandy added. Read more: U.S. coast guard continues search for missing Sharkwater filmmaker Council bans sale consumption of shark fin Sharkfin ban resurfaces as Toronto council backers seek new narrower rule Stewart died while diving off the coast of Islamorada, Fla. in January. The 37-year-old was filming a sequel to his 2006 documentary Sharkwater, which aimed to draw attention to the practice of finning sharks for soup and its impact on the oceans ecosystem. Since Robs first film Sharkwater, over a billion sharks have been killed, Brian said. If we allow sharks to disappear from our oceans, were taking the key ingredient thats been around for 450 million years. That balance would be gone. (If) the balance is gone, the oceans will die. If the oceans die, mankind goes with it, so this is not just about saving sharks. Wong-Tams motion, seconded by Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, also asked the premier to consider a provincial ban on the sale of shark fins should the federal bill fail. In 2011, Toronto council voted to ban the possession, sale and consumption of shark fin by the same 38-4 margin. My heart has all the warm butterflies inside, Rob Stewart said following the vote. I couldnt feel better. An Ontario Superior Court judge later overturned the ban, calling it highly intrusive and ruling the city overstepped its powers because the bylaw banned consumption by Torontonians in their own homes. Chinese-Canadian merchants and restaurateurs had protested the ban, arguing shark fin soup was a delicacy in Chinese restaurants, and the ban would cause them to lose significant business. But Wong-Tam said shark finning is a quickly fading Chinese cultural practice. Its not cultural in any way, and if it was to be categorized as cultural, I can tell you theres certain things that we would do culturally that we dont do anymore, she said. We no longer bind womens feet in Chinese culture. We also dont have multiple wives and that is not part of what Chinese culture is today. Wong-Tam noted that 17 Canadian municipalities have already banned sale of shark fin and related products, including London, Newmarket, Oakville, Brantford and Pickering. De Baeremaeker said an estimated 280 million sharks have been killed in the last four years since Torontos ban was overturned. This slaughter, happening in every ocean on this planet is happening because we, Canadians and others around the world, eat shark-fin soup, said De Baeremaeker, arguing it has no nutritional value, doesnt taste good and is overpriced. This slaughter can stop if we simply stop eating shark-fin soup. Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who also joined the Stewart family Thursday morning, said Canada is responsible for two per cent of shark fin consumption around the world. Its no different from the ivory trade. Its as cruel as it is wasteful, Erskine-Smith said. He noted this was the third attempt to ban the import of shark fins at the federal level, following his own efforts and those of NDP MP Fin Donnelly which were both defeated. Erskine-Smith said he was confident MacDonalds bill would be successful because of its support among all three major parties this time. It is a non-partisan issue, he said. SHARE: Stein Wang has a resume that cannot be overlooked. Part irony and part political statement against employers hesitance to interview and hire candidates with Asian names, the OCAD University industrial design graduate has created a resume that confronts hiring managers biases against jobseekers with non-Anglicized names. To be able to read Wangs curriculum vitae, viewers must stretch their eyes outward with their hands in order to be able to recognize the letters in a font that he developed that can only be properly viewed through what he calls the slanty eyes that most Asians have. People cast others based on stereotypes and biases. Employers look past you by your name and dont really see who you are, said Wang, 27, referring to recent Canadian studies that found recruiters are less likely to offer job interviews to applicants with Asian names. Now, they have to make an effort to see who I am. The mock resume created by Wang, whose Chinese name is Zhenyu, is his graduation assignment and part of Canadas arts and design universitys annual Graduate Exhibition that will showcase the talents of its more than 900 graduating students. This years show runs from May 3 to 7 across the three buildings on its downtown campus. Admission is free. Many of the pieces in the exhibit showcase the cultural diversity and experiences of the graduating class. Increasingly, from the public sector to large corporations, leaders are turning to artists and designers to explore the human interface of their products and services and solve problems, said Sara Diamond, OCADs president and vice-chancellor. Im so proud to show Toronto the accomplishments of this group of talented creative thinkers who have grown and flourished with the support of the universitys faculty and academic staff, experts in their respective fields. Wang, who came to Canada from China in 2009, said he was initially interested in exploring transnational parenting and intergenerational child care for his final project, given his personal experience as someone born in New York and raised by his grandparents in China before moving to Canada. However, the potential delays in getting consent from young subjects drove him to focus on employment barriers faced by adult immigrants. Then he came across the media reports on academic studies about how job candidates with Asian names had much lower interview callback rates than others with Anglo names. With the idea of creating a resume as his centrepiece conceived, Wang happened to read a story about how an Asian man in Australia had his passport photo rejected because facial recognition software insisted his eyes were closed and it didnt meet the criteria. To develop the font (for the resume), I put tape on my eyes and stared at things. There was a lot of eye-stretching, Wang said with a chuckle. I made different fonts and tested them on my friends, three Chinese and one Caucasian. Its a lot of trial and error. The OCAD show also includes multimedia exhibits such as the imagery by grad student Mariam Magsi that focuses on women in burkas, the full-cover veil worn by some Muslim women. Magsi, who grew up in Pakistan with a mother who loved photography, said she was fascinated by women wearing the burka. I love travel photography. The scene that I couldnt get out of mind was a family of women in burkas walking on an unpaved road, carrying grocery bags in hand. What drew me to them was the rhinestones on their shoes and embroideries on their burkas. Thats the way they expressed themselves, she recalled. Here in Canada, we have so much hatred against the people who wear identity markers like burkas and hijabs. During her research, not only did Magsi discover from her family that her own maternal great grandmother was a burqa-wearing matriarch, but she travelled to Pakistan, Morocco, Dubai and across Canada to photograph and interview women in burkas. The result was her photography collection called Purdah, which means to veil, to wear enveloping clothing in Persian and Urdu. Photography has the power for social change and it can shift perceptions, said the Karachi native, 31, adding that she hopes the storytelling and images can inspire viewers to question their own assumptions and biases against women in burkas. Grad student Thomas Haskell, a European creole born and raised in Trinidad, said the Carnival is big part of his life and he was shocked when he first came to Toronto in 2008 and his white friends would not take part in the Caribana because it is a black festival. It struck me because its not about black culture but Trinidadian culture. Its made up of Africans, Indians, Chinese, Europeans. Everyone just comes together to celebrate in a beautiful way, said Haskell, 28. To enlighten his Canadian audience, he created the Mas-Queer-Raid collection of sculptures that are inspired by the folklore of the annual carnival showing his multi-faceted heritage. The piece he is showing at is called Colonalisa, which features the crowns and Columbus ships that symbolize colonialism and the trailing blood and sugarcane that represent the history of slavery and plantation. The Caribbean identity is always a process in making, said Haskell. There is always the entanglement and criss-crossing of history. SHARE: Free money can be a hard sell. People in need will surely take it in. People of means, however, may not like the idea of giving it out not at their expense. Thursdays budget will formalize an ambitious pilot program for 4,000 eligible volunteers to be guaranteed an annual income of $17,000 by the government over three years. If you qualify, the money flows whether or not you work, which works in your favour in good times and bad, for better or for worse. If you dont know what to make of the guaranteed giveaway, youre not alone. The concept has confounded social policy analysts, politicians, economists and ideologues of the left and right for decades. Its a bold idea, but not overly original. In the early 1970s, Manitoba briefly experimented with a minimum income before giving up on the idea for lack of interest and support. But our world has changed, and Ontarios economy along with it. The go-go growth of four decades ago was not an ideal incubator for an idealistic income support program. Critics might have said, back then (if not now): Get a job. People on the right or left might well have argued whether a guaranteed income could discourage people from working hard or looking hard. All these years later, we know that economic progress can also be precarious for employment. Today its possible to get a job, but harder to keep a job, because jobs for life turned out to be short-lived. Even the most energetic full-time multi-tasker of part-time jobs can only fantasize about a forever factory job in a manufacturing heartland that has rapidly de-industrialized. Pick your poison: globalization, automation, artificial intelligence or information technology. You dont have to be a rocket scientist to know that jobs for rocket scientists and the rest of us (and our children) arent what they once were. Against that backdrop, the guaranteed minimum payout has been rebranded a basic income. And updated to take account of income levels and, increasingly, uneven incomes which is to say, incomes that come and go over the years. It is still minimal $17,000 a year wont buy you a life of easy survivability, let alone affordability. It is 75 per cent of Ontarios low-income measure (a quasi-poverty line) of about $22,653 calculated as half the median income in the province. But it has the incalculable advantage of clarity, efficiency and humanity. It is an alternative to the dehumanizing bureaucracy of welfare, with all its necessary checks and unnecessary balances. Not just for the poor, nor the working poor, not even the well-off working class of the past. Consider the middle class of today and tomorrow, watching their paycheques go up and down as work comes and goes from one year to the next, wondering if theyll qualify for unemployment benefits, and marvelling at the workplace benefits their parents counted on for prescription and dental bills. Thats why the current economic context counts for so much in any consideration of a basic income. Weighing the costs and benefits, its also worth waiting for the facts to come in from this three-year trial before prejudging human behaviour and economic outcomes. The only certainty is that it is far from a sure thing. The Liberal government deserves credit for launching an experiment that could easily fail, just as its previous proposals to streamline an outdated welfare system quickly lost momentum. In the same week that Premier Kathleen Wynne unveiled her basic income experiment, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called for a provincial pharmacare program, trying to put the Liberals on the spot. Both proposals could prove life-saving, but they are distinctly different. A basic income pilot is more abstract and hence harder for voters to imagine benefiting them. Universal pharmacare is easy to understand because it offers tangible benefits up front (saving money and lives through bulk-buying and a single-payer system). First promised in last years budget, the basic income plan is a centrepiece of Thursdays budget and will form a major plank in next years Liberal election platform. As Wynne argued this week, it goes to the core of what governments can do amid economic and employment volatility but the same argument applies to pharmacare, which (like the basic income) attracts support from both left and right. Free money for some versus free drugs for all? A good government would give us both. Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn Read more about: SHARE: Torontos crumbling social housing stock will not receive any new money for desperately needed capital repairs as part of this years provincial budget. The budget lays out the early details of a plan to leverage government-owned land to encourage the development of more affordable housing units, but no new money towards affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs. Toronto Community Housing Corp. is facing a $2.6 billion repair bill and plans to close 400 more homes next year, bringing to 1,000 the number of properties expected to close by 2018. The province, as part of last years budget, pledged $2 billion for affordable housing and housing supports, over three years. The complete absence of money for TCHC is a kick in the gut to the city of Toronto and the residents of Toronto Community Housing, Councillor Joe Cressy, who sits on the board for the social housing provider, told the Stars Jennifer Pagliaro. Mayor John Tory, who previously called it a grave mistake for the province to ignore Torontos funding needs, said in a statement: The provincial government appears to have missed an opportunity to partner in the historic investments made by the federal government in much needed future transit expansion and repairs to our vital social housing. Tory's housing advocate Councillor Ana Bailao, said she was disappointed by the budget. New affordable housing will not replace the social housing units that we have in Toronto, said Bailao, in a statement. Every single corner of this city has urgent social housing repair needs. Its concerning that there's no mention at all about this . . . It would have been an important signal to have in there. As part of Thursdays announcement, the province laid out the early details of a new plan to leverage between $70 million and $100 million worth of provincial land to build up to 2,000 affordable housing units, by selling off surplus land at below market value to encourage and facilitate future development. That plan will complement an existing plan to create community hubs, which will also use land assets to advance community use of public properties, provided a solid business case can be made for its use, in that respect. David Waters, president of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Ontario Region, welcomed the decision by the province to leverage land to speed up development, particularly in increasingly unaffordable urban markets. Right now, more than ever, its good to see the province using all the tools at its disposal to build affordable housing, said Waters in a statement. The province will be working with cities, the federal government, people from the housing sector and other interested stakeholders to firm up the plans this spring. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the 2017 provincial budget doesnt even come close to undoing the damage the Liberal government has caused over the last 14 years. Premier Kathleen Wynne, said Horwath, was choosing to look away from the needs of people across the province, particularly when it came to health care, rising hydro costs and social housing. Under the Wynne Liberals, housing costs have skyrocketed, while subsidized housing stock has been allowed to crumble, been shuttered and sold off, said Horwath. In Toronto, as part of previous budget commitments and as part of the Climate Change Action Plan, the city will receive $130 million for energy retrofits for social housing and more than $340 million, also over three years, in rent supports and other services to prevent homelessness. The city is also receiving about $130 million through the Investment in Affordable Housing program, used to provide supports to keep people in their homes, like rent supplements. The province has also committed $200 million, to be spent over three years, to help 6,000 families and people across Ontario get access to housing assistance programs, including counselling, assistance with medication and life skills training, and to support the construction of 1,500 new supportive housing units. Survivors of domestic violence will be provided with $30 million to be spent over the next three years, to support up to 3,000 people, through a portable housing benefit. About $90 million has also been placed into the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiatives (CHPI) fund, which is distributed to municipalities for homelessness prevention initiatives, including rent supplements. Any funding tied to affordable housing and homelessness prevention is being carefully watched in the buildup to the forthcoming National Housing Strategy. In March, the federal government promised $11.2 billion for affordable housing initiatives and programs, to be spent over 11 years. Roughly $3 billion of that total was to be spent in the next five years, with $20 million for this year. Housing advocates, in March, called the federal commitment a strong step forward in easing what is widely recognized as a countrywide crisis. The $11.2 billion is on top of baseline funding for expiring social housing agreements. That operating agreement funding is expected to be maintained up to 2028. In early April, Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, announced the creation of a $5 billion national housing fund, designed to keep Canadas most vulnerable housed, including people living with mental health issues, struggling with addictions, seniors, and veterans. That fund also includes targeted money for Indigenous communities, on and off reserve. With files from Jennifer Pagliaro Clarification-April 28, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to David Waters as the president of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada. SHARE: Provocative conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos said Wednesday that he plans to occupy the public plaza at the heart of the University of California at Berkeley and will host a week of free-speech rallies there this fall to protest the universitys recent handling of controversial speakers, including himself and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Yiannopoulos blamed Berkeley for forcing Coulter to scrap an appearance she was planning for Thursday at the university, and he criticized the public university for how it handled his visit to campus on Feb. 1, which also was cancelled after his presence sparked massive, violent protests. He also blamed liberals for the fears of violence arising from his and Coulters planned speeches at Berkeley: Its happening because the left knows its losing. Its losing the political battle and losing the free speech battle. And like a dog being kicked to death, it is lashing out. His plans for a Free Speech Week comes as activists from the far-right and far-left continue to flock to Berkeley to stage violent confrontations with each other during demonstrations on campus and in the city. It also suggests that such clashes might not ebb anytime soon; protesters said Wednesday they plan to be on Berkeleys campus Thursday even if Coulter isnt, and Yiannopoulos expects to draw a massive crowd when hes there. Read more: Police prepare for violence in wake of Ann Coulters cancelled UC Berkeley speech Ann Coulter supporters file civil rights lawsuit against UC Berkeley Violent protests force cancellation of speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley Ill bring an army if I have to. I have the money to do it, he said in a telephone interview about his planned week of rallies. And if the university refuses to actively help us in planning it or tries to block us, we will make it even longer, a month-long rally, not just one week. Yiannopoulos described in detail his plans for the week of protest, which he has tentatively scheduled for September. He said he plans to hold the rallies on Sproul Plaza, the same site university officials had warned Coulter to avoid because of the wide range of security concerns there. Sproul Plaza is the site of the 1960s Free Speech Movement protests and lies at the heart of campus, completely open and difficult for police to secure if violence breaks out, officials say. Each day of the planned protest week will be devoted to attacking one liberal group that he believes is suppressing the free speech of conservatives, Yiannopoulos said. One day will focus on feminists, another on Black Lives Matter. The final day likely will centre on his beliefs about how political correctness involving the treatment of Muslims and Islam is not just threatening free speech but poses a threat to Americans in general. A self-described troll, Yiannopoulos has drawn criticism for his provocative statements. A former Breitbart writer, the subjects of his articles appear to seek reaction from liberals especially: that feminism makes women ugly, that he would prefer it if teenagers self-harmed rather than discuss transgender issues on Tumblr, and that women would be happy only if society were to un-invent the birth control pill and the washing machine. In February, just days after his appearance at Berkeley caused riots, videos surfaced showing Yiannopoulos making controversial comments about pedophilia and consent. Yiannopoulos was forced to resign from Breitbart, lost a book deal with Simon & Schuster, and his invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference was rescinded. Yiannopoulos has said that the videos were selectively edited to make it appear as if he was defending child abuse, and that their release was part of a co-ordinated effort to discredit me. On Wednesday, he said he plans to invite a colourful range of characters to speak at his Free Speech Week at Berkeley, including conservative thinkers, porn stars, drag queens, fashion designers and comedians. He said he plans to install a permanent security team at Sproul Plaza along with a lectern and microphone, and create a tent city of continuous protest against the administration. Yiannopoulos said he plans to hire his own security for his coming appearance at Berkeley to ensure it does not get cancelled again. He said he now has a hired security guard with him at all times. When he travels to speaking events, his security detail often includes as many as four guards, including former Navy SEALs. For Berkeley, he said, Ill bring a whole truckload of Blackwater contractors if thats what it takes to occupy Sproul Plaza. He said he also is creating a new free speech award named after Mario Savio, the much-praised student leader of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. Yiannopoulos said he plans to give Coulter the inaugural award. Daniel Savio, the son of the student leader, told the Guardian on Wednesday that he saw Yiannopoulos award in his fathers name as some kind of sick joke. The son pointed out that while his father supported free speech, there should be limits to speech that threaten others who are vulnerable, such as the way Yiannopoulos has singled out specific transgender students in the past and mocked and harassed them. Is freedom of speech such an important principle that we can afford to uphold it even when it means sacrificing the safety of some other folks? Savios son said. SHARE: WASHINGTONThe U.S. navy flotilla sailing toward the Korean Peninsula to deter Kim Jong Uns regime lacks a key capability: It cant shoot down ballistic missiles. The USS Carl Vinson and the aircraft carriers accompanying destroyers and cruiser are expected to arrive in waters near the peninsula this week, carrying a full complement of weaponry, including scores of Tomahawk cruise and anti-ship missiles, radar-jamming aircraft and non-stealthy Super Hornet jets built by Boeing Co. That firepower brings a lot to any fight, but the Navys lack of ballistic missile defence capability on the scene means the Trump administrations high-profile show of force has a significant gap as it warns North Korea against another missile test and pressures it to back down from its nuclear program. Read more: Trump admin briefs senators on North Korea options, with world on high alert North Korea performs military drills as U.S. pushes diplomacy U.S. warship, heading to North Korea, trains with Japan One carrier by itself is not a game changer, said Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at Stratfor, a company that does geopolitical analysis. Although the Vinson-led group is getting a lot of attention, its not going to do terribly much by itself, he said. Tensions on the peninsula have ratcheted up as President Donald Trump and Kim face off over North Koreas continuing development of its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile program. Trump vowed in January that he wouldnt let North Korea develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the U.S., and he said this month that the U.S. was sending an armada to the region. North Korea, in turn, called the Vinsons deployment intimidation and blackmail and promised it would react to a total war with an all-out war. This week the regime in Pyongyang conducted a live-fire artillery exercise east of the capital, while the USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying 154 Tomahawks, arrived at the South Korean port of Busan. In a highly unusual move, the Navy publicly announced the visit. But North Korea, which marked the 85th anniversary of its army during the week, didnt conduct another nuclear test. Accompanying the Vinson, which is en route from the Philippine Sea south of Japan, are the destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy, and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain. They arent equipped with the version of the Aegis surveillance system made by Lockheed Martin Corp. that can track long-range ballistic missiles or Raytheon Co.s SM-3 interceptors that are capable of bringing down medium and longer-range ballistic missiles. Nor are the modern Japanese Navy destroyers JS Samidare and JS Ashigara that joined the Vinson group for exercises equipped for missile defence detection or intercepts, a Japanese Navy spokesman confirmed. And the three South Korean Sejong the Great-class destroyers currently in operation dont have ballistic missile defence capability, Tom Callender, a naval forces analyst with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said in an interview. Risk to Seoul While the Obama administration began the process of deploying Thaad, a high-altitude missile defence system, to the South Korean mainland, the hardware isnt fully operational yet either. That leaves Seoul just 56 kilometres south of the demilitarized zone and the rest of the country more vulnerable to attack. Asked about the Vinson carrier group, Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesperson, said via email that we dont discuss specific capabilities of weapons systems. He added that no single capability defends against all threats. Rather it is the employment of integrated, multi-layered land and sea-based systems that provide missile defence for the U.S. and allies. If the Trump administration wants to buttress its threats at the risk of escalating the crisis it could deploy toward Korea some or all of the six Navy vessels capable of defending against ballistic missiles that are now based at Yokosuka, on the eastern side of Japan. Just moving those ships toward the Korean Peninsula would signal to the world U.S. action to stop a missile test is more imminent and would be seen as an urgent threat by Pyongyang. Navy Admiral Harry Harris, the head of U.S. forces in Korea and the Pacific, cited those ships capabilities Wednesday in response to questions about whether the Vinson is capable of deterring ballistic missile launches. We have ballistic missile ships in the Sea of Japan, in the East Sea, that are capable of defending against ballistic missile attacks, Navy Admiral Harry Harris, the head of U.S. forces in Korea and the Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee. He added that the carrier group is well-equipped to defend itself against attack with its own escort warships, saying, If it flies, it will die, if its flying against the Carl Vinson strike group. The six vessels in Japan are the cruiser USS Shiloh and the destroyers USS Stethem, Barry, Benfold, Curtis Wilbur and John S. McCain. A seventh, the Fitzgerald, is currently at sea conducting a maritime exercise in waters west of Japan, the Navy said in a statement. Sea of Japan Those U.S. ships would be in a good position to engage medium-range ballistic missiles going into the Sea of Japan, which is where the previous North Korean test shots have gone, said Bryan Clark, a naval analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, who previously served as a special assistant to the chief of naval operations. That presence off of Japan means that when the Vinson gets there, it will not need to bring additional BMD capability, Clark added, referring to ballistic missile defence. The cruisers and destroyers bring a significant capability to the region, Lt.-Cmdr. William Knight, spokesperson for the Navy Pacific Fleet, said in an email. Yet even if Aegis-equipped vessels are stationed near Korea and Japan, in the case of a North Korean ICBM test they wouldnt be able to shoot it down immediately after launch, said David Wright, a missile defence analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. There is a misconception that if it was close enough, a U.S. navy BMD vessel could shoot a missile down during boost phase, Wright said. But it doesnt have that capability. During boost phase, the missile is an accelerating target, and Aegis doesnt have the manoeuvreability to home in on such a target. Boost Phase Similarly, it would not be able to shoot down shorter-range missiles, like the Musudan, during boost phase, he said. You might be able to shoot it down after boost phase, but by that time North Korea would be able to get information about the most critical part of the trajectory, so that strategy is unlikely to slow the regimes missile development process, he said. The Carl Vinson and its four strike squadrons of aircraft plus escort vessels with more than 300 Tomahawk and air-defence missiles provide an impressive non-nuclear strategic deterrent, the Heritage Foundations Callender said. The Vinsons aircraft include the latest Super Hornets and Growler electronic jamming aircraft. Tomahawks are highly capable of striking surface targets such as air defence systems, but they arent designed for missile defence or penetrating deeply buried facilities, bunkers or caves. The current Tactical Tomahawk version is capable of loitering over an area and being redirected against new targets, such as wheeled or tracked missile launchers and mobile artillery. Stealthy Bombers If the U.S. were to conduct a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, the Vinsons role would be to enable missions by stealthy B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters, Clark said. The Vinson fleet would need to use its radar-jamming capabilities and Tomahawks to degrade North Koreas existing air-defence system before conducting strikes against North Korean nuclear or missile facilities, Clark said. Strafor recently completed an assessment of North Koreas nuclear challenge and plausible U.S. responses that concluded the regime has more than 1,000 missiles of various ranges and destructive power that could strike from across North Korea. But their military utility is limited by the relatively small number of launchers, which would have to be reloaded for successive launches and vulnerable to U.S. and South Korean strikes. Read more about: SHARE: VARNER, ARK. Arkansas prepared to execute its fourth inmate in eight days Thursday night, wrapping up an accelerated schedule of lethal injections that was set to beat the expiration date of one of the drugs. Kenneth Williams, 38, was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Thursday, but the state was awaiting word from the U.S. Supreme Court on Williams' last appeals before moving forward. His death warrant expires at midnight. Court filings Thursday afternoon followed two threads: that Arkansas executions this week were so flawed that there is little doubt Williams will suffer as he dies, and that he has an intellectual disability that would make him ineligible for execution. So far, courts have ruled against him, with both the Arkansas Supreme Court and a federal appeals court rejecting Williams' requests for stays. His appeals were pending at the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal judge turned back a last-minute request to stop the execution. A spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson says the state will not proceed with the execution until the high court weighs in. Read more: Two men executed in Arkansas on same gurney, hours apart Arkansas carries out first execution in nearly 12 years despite legal challenges Arkansas becomes the first U.S. state in 17 years to execute two people in the same day on Monday, as death row inmates Jack Jones and Marcel Williams are given the lethal injection. If Williams dies, it would be Arkansas' fourth execution in eight days after not conducting one since 2005. Two of the men died in a double execution Monday, the nation's first since 2000. State officials have said the three executions already conducted of Ledell Lee, Jack Jones Jr. and Marcel Williams didn't go awry. And their lawyers told the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday that while tests showed Kenneth Williams might have "low average" intelligence, he didn't co-operate fully with the doctors testing him. They also said Williams' previous lawyers "unequivocally abandoned" a similar claim because testing showed he wasn't intellectually disabled. The 8th Circuit judges agreed and refused to stop the execution. Williams' lawyers say he has sickle cell trait, lupus and brain damage, and that the combined maladies could subject him to an exceptionally painful execution in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Arkansas' "one size fits all" execution protocol could leave him in pain after a paralytic agent renders him unable to move, they say. "After the state injects Mr. Williams with vecuronium bromide ... most or all of the manifestations of his extreme pain and suffering will not be discernible to witnesses," they wrote to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which rejected his request to stop the execution. Also Thursday, Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project asked to file a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Williams' request, arguing that his claims of intellectual disability have not been fully explored. The attorney general's office described Williams' appeal as "procedural gamesmanship" to put off the execution. Under Hutchinson's initial plan, Arkansas would have put eight men to death in an 11-day period the nation's fastest pace since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. Courts issued stays for four of the inmates. In one court filing, Williams' lawyers pointed to Monday's execution of Jones, during which his mouth moved after he should have been unconscious, they argued. Jones' spiritual adviser called it "a sort of gurgling" while an observer from the state attorney general's office said it was "snoring; deep, deep sleep." A federal judge dismissed a challenge to the night's second execution, saying Jones' execution did not appear to be "torturous and inhumane" in violation of constitutional standards. The inmate's lawyers also cited problems with Monday's second execution, during which Marcel Williams' head tilted back slightly as he breathed deeply and, three minutes after his execution started, his head turned slightly to the left. One witness said it appeared the inmate arched his back. Another said his breathing included "jerky motions." An Associated Press reporter in the room noted four quick breaths at one point. Wendy Kelley, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, said in an affidavit Thursday that she saw none of that activity. Kenneth Williams was sentenced to death for killing former deputy warden Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop in 1999. He left the prison less than three weeks into a life term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. After jumping from the barrel of kitchen scraps, he sneaked along a tree line until he reached Boren's house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren's truck, then drove to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver, Michael Greenwood. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. Greenwood's family wrote to Hutchinson asking him to delay Williams' execution so it could ask the Arkansas Parole Board to recommend clemency for the inmate. In a last-minute court filing, Williams' attorneys said he should receive a stay because the Greenwood family was not notified of his clemency hearing last month, but a federal judge rejected that request Thursday night. "When he took my father from us, Mr. Williams caused us all a great deal of pain," wrote Kayla Greenwood, who was 5 when her father died. "We still miss him and we still hurt. That does not mean that asking you (to) spare Mr. Williams is not the right thing to do. It is." Hutchinson said in a statement that while he appreciated Greenwood's "genuine spirit of forgiveness and compassion," he had to consider viewpoints from other victims' families, including Boren's. "Kenneth Williams murdered multiple people, and actions have consequences," the governor said. At the time of Boren's death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction. SHARE: For the first time since 2011, Canadian businesses pulled their money out of tax havens, ending a five-year run when more than $120 billion was stashed in the 10 most popular low-tax or no-tax countries. The newly released Statistics Canada numbers provide the most concrete evidence yet that the Panama Papers may have had a chilling effect on the use of tax havens to minimize corporate taxes. This could be a sign that global efforts to curb corporate profit shifting to tax havens may be paying off, said Dennis Howlett, executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, a group that lobbies for the closure of loopholes that encourage the use of offshore tax havens. According to the governments official foreign direct investment statistics, Canadian businesses reduced their holdings in the top 10 tax havens from $272.4 billion in 2015 to $261 billion at the end of last year, bringing home $11.4 billion. This reversal could be due to a number of different factors, including reforms in Ireland that make it harder to exploit that country to avoid taxes, Howlett said. But investment reductions in Luxembourg and Bermuda point to a wider trend. We know that public attention to this has affected calculation of risk, so companies are being more cautious now because of the potential for a public relations backlash, Howlett said. Allan Lanthier, a retired senior partner at Ernst & Young and former chair of the Canadian Tax Foundation, cautions against reading too much into the numbers, as the majority of the reduction in foreign holdings in 2016 can be attributed to the fact that the Canadian dollar rose against the U.S. dollar, the currency in which most international investments are made. The cumulative amount of Canadian investment in these countries is significant, but the amounts appear to have been fairly stable for the last couple of years, Lanthier said. And theres been no substantive Canadian legislative change to address corporate tax base erosion that would account for a change in the behaviour of Canadian multinationals. After the U.S. and U.K. the most popular destinations for Canadian foreign investment are Barbados, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, all of which have very low or no taxes. Its still shocking that the top destinations for Canadian foreign direct investment abroad are tax havens, said Toby Sanger, an economist with the public sector union CUPE who has been tracking the foreign investment numbers for the last five years. Sanger said that the billions that flow into tax havens are robbing government of money needed for public services. Theres less economic activity happening in Canada as well, he added. The numbers made public this week capture only a fraction of tax haven use. For example, Howlett said, the official figures dont reflect the secret money. Roughly two thirds of the problem is corporate abuse of tax havens, most of which is done legally, he said. And one third of the problem is wealthy individuals, most of which is done illegally. The Panama Papers investigation, based on a massive leak of tax haven records, revealed the kind of illicit activities that go on behind the closed doors of law offices and banks in tax havens like Panama, Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands. Other than massive tax fraud, the international collaboration of more than 100 news organizations, including the Star, exposed how tax havens have facilitated the payment of bribes to obtain foreign contracts, provided cover for shady deals in African diamond mining, allowed corrupt politicians to hide their pilfered wealth and arms dealers to circumvent trade embargoes. Partners in the journalistic collaboration have received more than a dozen international media honours for their work. The International Consortium of Investigative journalists, which coordinated the Panama Papers investigation, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize earlier this month. Just before the release of the Panama Papers, tax havens had been on a roll. 2015 was a bumper year for Canadian investment in tax havens, with more than $40 billion transferred offshore during those 12 months alone. But 2016 stopped those offshore flows, and even reversed them slightly. Its a dip for this year. If the trend continues, I would say that public attention on this is making a difference, said Howlett. But because of treaties Canada signed with these tax havens, its unlikely that any of the $11.4 billion that came home was subject to tax. Canadas Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs), which were created to encourage tax havens to lift their veils of financial secrecy and share investment information with Canadian tax authorities, have facilitated the use of tax havens by creating a conduit for corporations and individuals to move money back and forth tax-free. Since 2011, when the first TIEAs came into force, Canadian investment in tax havens more than doubled. Even during 2016s reversal, $6.1 billion still went to Barbados, where major Canadian corporations like Barrick Gold, Petro-Canada and Gildan have offshore subsidiaries. Tax treaties actually facilitate money being sent to Barbados and other islands and brought back to Canada tax free, Howlett said. Those agreements dont have a net benefit to Canada and need to be renegotiated. SHARE: ELLINGTON, CONN.Police in Connecticut have cited Fitbit records in an arrest warrant for a 40-year-old man charged with killing his wife in 2015. Richard Dabate faces murder, tampering with evidence and making a false statement charges in the fatal shooting of 39-year-old Connie Dabate on Dec. 23, 2015. Authorities say the 40-year-old Dabate told them a masked man had entered their home, shot his wife and tied him up before he burned the intruder with a torch. But the New York Daily News reports Connecticut State Police wrote in an arrest warrant that Connie Dabates Fitbit was logging steps after the time Richard Dabate told them she was killed. Dabates bail was set at $1 million last week. His lawyer told the Hartford Courant that his client maintains his innocence. SHARE: BEIRUTSyrias military said Israel struck a military installation southwest of Damascus International Airport before dawn Thursday, setting off a series of explosions and raising tensions further between the two neighbours. Apparently seeking to interrupt weapons transfers to the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, Israel has struck inside Syria with increasing frequency in recent weeks, making the war-torn country a proxy theatre for Israels wider war with Iran. The increasing tempo of attacks risks inflaming a highly combustible situation drawing in Israel, Syria and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, a staunch ally of President Bashar Assads government with thousands of fighters in Syria. Israels military said later Thursday that its Patriot Missile Defence system intercepted an incoming projectile from Syria over the Golan Heights. Read more: Turkey gave 20 minutes notice before airstrikes in Syria, U.S. officials say German army officer disguised himself as a refugee to carry out terrorist attack, investigators say An Israeli defence official said the Patriot hit a drone, and the military is checking if it was a Russian aircraft that entered the Israeli side by mistake or if it was Syrian. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with protocol. Both the Syrian government and Hezbollah, however, are mired in the countrys six-year-old civil war and are unlikely to carry out any retaliation that may ignite a bigger conflagration with Israel. Iran and Hezbollah are overstretched, and its not clear they can afford to gamble with a direct showdown with Israel now, said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Iran knows no matter how powerful theyve become, they cant be fighting on two fronts at the same time. Israeli Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz would not comment directly on the incident but said any similar strike would be in line with established policy to interrupt weapons transfers. It absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement, Katz told Israels Army Radio. Just before the apparent Israeli missile strike, at least three cargo jets from Iran probably landed at the Damascus airport, said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for the flight-tracking website FlightRadar24. They include an Il-76 flown by the Iranian cargo company Pouya Air that was last tracked over Iraq headed toward Damascus, he said. Its unknown what they were carrying. Passenger flights and civilian cargo jets continue flying into Damascus, although theres suspicion that some commercial flights serve as cover for weapons transfers from Iran. The Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a right-leaning think-tank that has criticized the nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers, has said Pouya Air is the latest name for a long-sanctioned airline. It also has accused Pouya Air of funneling arms from Iran into Yemens capital of Sanaa to supply Shiite rebels there. Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the foundation, said he tracked a fourth cargo flight from Iran to Syria on Wednesday night, an Airbus A300 operated by Mahan Air, which is suspected of ties to Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. He also called one of the cargo flights, a Qeshm Fars Air Boeing 747, especially suspicious because the airline stopped operating in 2013, only to resume flights to Damascus three weeks ago. We dont know for sure, but lets say that we can fairly safely assume that the weaponry and fighters reach Damascus through these daily flights, Ottolenghi told The Associated Press. The explosions near Damascus reverberated across the capital, seat of Assads power. Syrias state-run SANA news agency said Israel had fired several missiles from inside the occupied Golan Heights, 60 kilometres south of Damascus, striking a military installation southwest of the airport that serves both military and civilian flights. It reported damage but no casualties. The buildings shook from the force of the blast, said a media activist who goes by Salam al-Ghoutawi of the Ghouta Media Center in the opposition-held northeastern suburbs, about 15 kilometres from the airport. He said he heard the roar of jets in the distance. Explosions were silhouetted against the night sky in a video published by the centre. Debris was seen flying out as the explosions illuminated a sizable cloud nearby. Hezbollahs al-Manar media station reported a blast at fuel tanks and a warehouse next to the airport, which is 25 kilometres east of central Damascus. The Syrian military said in a statement the attack sought to raise the morale of terrorist groups the government maintains are fighting Assads forces. It made no mention of whether it would respond. Israel is widely believed to have carried out airstrikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles as well as on Hezbollah positions. It rarely comments on such operations. Last month, Syria fired missiles at Israeli jets after they struck targets in Syria, in a rare military exchange between the two adversaries. Hezbollah is an avowed enemy of Israel, and the two sides fought a month-long war in 2006. Tensions between them along the Lebanon-Israel border have risen in recent weeks, with each side warning of a much more serious confrontation. Some Israeli officials have also recently been threatening grave damage to the Lebanese civilian infrastructure in case of a new conflict with Hezbollah, apparently in hopes the country can somehow rein in the militia. Yahya, the analyst, said Israel is increasingly worried about the potential arsenal that Hezbollahs could acquire and the weapons already available in Syria. Most likely they see a window of opportunity where their intervention can degrade Hezbollahs military power, she said. The conflict in Syria, which pits Assad and his regional allies against local and foreign opposition forces, has killed more than 400,000 people since it began in 2011. The civil war is further complicated by militant factions such as al-Qaedas affiliate in Syria and the even more powerful Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which in 2014 seized a large chunk of territory but lately has been losing ground in the face of a campaign by a U.S.-led international coalition. Russia, another key Assad ally, denounced what it called an act of aggression against Syria. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not directly blame Israel for Thursdays explosion, but she cited Syrian media as saying Israel was responsible. In other developments, at least 19 people were killed in air raids across rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest. Some appeared to target ambulances and medical centres. The Civil Defence, a search-and-rescue organization, said four medical staff were killed in an attack on a university hospital in the town of Deir Sharqi, and four paramedics or ambulance operators died in an airstrike on an ambulance services in another town, Maarzita. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 civilians, including nine children, were killed around the province. The Civil Defence reported the same overall death toll. The activists believe Russia or the Syrian government launched the raids. U.S. jets also are known to strike in Idlib province, targeting al-Qaeda-linked fighters. Read more about: SHARE: There was a time when Donald Trump first as a candidate and then as president could rile Mexico without really trying. His threats to build a border wall and make Mexicans pay for it would ignite firestorms of patriotic fury and resentment. His promises to deport millions of people in the country illegally would send politicians to draft contingency plans. His vows to re-engineer the North American Free Trade Agreement and bring Mexico to heel would shake the foundations of the state. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump But on Wednesday, the suggestion from the White House that Trump was finalizing an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from NAFTA revealed a different, more experienced Mexico, one that was learning to live with what it considers Trumps bluster and stagecraft and not inclined to publicly react too quickly. It seems like hes sitting at a poker table bluffing rather than making serious decisions, said Sen. Armando Rios Piter, a Mexican legislator. In front of a bluffer, you always have to maintain a firm and dignified position. Mexican officials did not comment publicly until after Trump issued a statement, late on Wednesday night, that he was not seeking to withdraw from NAFTA, but instead to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. Trump said on Thursday that he had agreed to pleas by President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada that he not pull out of the treaty immediately. He had also come under pressure from congressional Republicans and business leaders alarmed by the possibility that Trump would move hastily toward a withdrawal. Pena Nieto also issued a brief statement of his own, saying that the presidents spoke about the shared objective to modernize the trade agreement. The days vicissitudes left many Mexicans with a bit of whiplash the Mexican peso took a nosedive but also with a mild sense of satisfaction that they were finally learning to read the U.S. president. Eduardo Bravo, past chairman of the Mexican Entrepreneur Association, said he felt relieved by the way the issue was resolved on Wednesday, but warned that there was still a rough road ahead, describing the White House behaviour as very schizophrenic. Really, you have to maintain hope and keep working to maintain the relationship, he said. Theres a lot of work to do. In interviews with politicians, analysts, economists, business leaders and former diplomats, a general sentiment had emerged throughout the day on Wednesday that Trumps threat to withdraw from the treaty using an executive order would mostly be a piece of political theatre aimed as much at his voting base as at Mexico and Canada, and not something to get terribly worked up about. Some speculated that the news of the order was a controlled leak intended to gauge the reaction of the other NAFTA parties and put them on the defensive. The generous analysis would be that hes playing brinkmanship and trying to up the ante, said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican diplomat to the United States. This is a way to sort of rattle the scabbard and say that hes got a sabre in it and say, If you dont agree to my demands then Im going to end up pressing the nuclear button. Still, the news came as a surprise to many who had been watching the process closely. After months of tough talk by Trump, his administration had appeared to be on track to begin negotiations over NAFTA as soon as this summer. Administration officials circulated the draft of a letter in March that laid out its goals in a negotiation, an obligatory step in the process. The letter seemed to suggest a far more modest approach than Trump had threatened, leaving much of NAFTA intact. Before talks on negotiations can begin, the Trump administration would still need to consult with several congressional committees and formally notify Congress of its intention to renegotiate the treaty. In recent weeks, Trump administration officials had expressed frustration with the pace of that process, which has been slowed in part by delays in the confirmation of the administrations U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. During the day Wednesday, administration officials said the proposed executive order would trigger a different process for a withdrawal, with a six-month countdown. But it would not pre-empt the administration from continuing to pursue negotiations, leaving many observers in Mexico to interpret the threat of an order as a transparent, prenegotiation strategy. Antonio Garza, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, called Trumps possible executive order hardball, adding, Its probably not the way to deal with a counterparty that is both a longtime trading partner and critical to so many security, immigration and counterterrorism initiatives. Some speculated that Trump may have been trying to look tough to appeal to his voting base, particularly considering his mixed record in achieving his goals as the 100-day mark of his term approaches. Clearly, in Mexico, this should be seen as a type of tantrum of a spoiled child who did not get the presents he expected for his birthday, for the 100 days, said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico in Mexico City. The Pena Nieto administration has publicly adopted a tough stance on NAFTA, declaring its readiness to update the treaty but expressing its willingness to walk away from the table and from the trade agreement altogether. Pena Nieto has in recent weeks sent proxies, including his foreign minister and his ambassador to Washington, to reaffirm those positions. Mexicans have felt emboldened by the support they have received from prominent members of the U.S. business community and elected officials including Republicans on Capitol Hill who have increasingly voiced their backing of NAFTA and of the U.S. alliance with Mexico. At the same time, mindful of Trumps hard-line threats and unpredictability, Mexico has been exploring new trade deals with other countries and modernizing old ones. In congressional testimony in Mexico City on Tuesday, Luis Videgaray, Mexicos foreign minister, reaffirmed the Pena Nieto administrations position. We are not going to accept any type of renegotiation, he said. We prefer, in any event, to abandon the treaty than have a bad negotiation of the treaty, and in this we have been clear publicly and with the government of the United States. Sarukhan said the Mexican government once faced Trump like a reindeer caught in the headlights in the middle of the woods, but had since adopted a more mature position, carefully picking its battles and issuing surgical, precision-delivered statements on the relationship and playing the grown-up. This stance, he said, was on display Wednesday. Read more about: SHARE: U.S. President Donald Trump summoned all 100 members of the Senate for a briefing by his war Cabinet on the mounting tensions with North Korea. A U.S. submarine loaded with Tomahawk missiles surfaced in a port in South Korea. Gas stations in the North shut down amid rumors that the government was stockpiling fuel. The world could be forgiven for thinking that war is about to break out. But it is not. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump The drumbeat of bellicose threats and military muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the danger of a clash between the United States and North Korea, senior Trump administration officials and experts who have followed the Korean crisis for decades said. While Trump regards the rogue government in the North as his most pressing international problem, he told the senators he was pursuing a strategy that relied heavily on using Chinas economic leverage to curb its neighbors provocative behavior. Recent U.S. military moves like deploying the submarine Michigan and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the waters off the Korean Peninsula were aimed less at preparing for a pre-emptive strike, officials said, than at discouraging the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, from conducting further nuclear or ballistic missile tests. In confronting the reckless North Korean regime, its critical that were guided by a strong sense of resolve, both privately and publicly, both diplomatically and militarily, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the Pentagons top commander in the Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, he said, not to his knees. There are other signs that the tensions fall short of war. Kim continues to appear in public, most recently at a pig farm last weekend. South Koreans are not flooding supermarkets to stock up on food. There is no talk of evacuating cities and no sign the United States is deploying additional forces to South Korea. Nor is the U.S. Embassy in Seoul advising diplomats families to leave the country. All those things happened in the spring of 1994, when President Bill Clinton was considering a pre-emptive strike on a North Korean reactor to prevent the North from extracting plutonium that it could use to make a bomb. That is the closest the United States has come to a military clash with North Korea since the end of fighting in the Korean War in 1953. The reality is not as tense as the rhetoric on both sides would lead you to believe, said Joel S. Wit, an expert on North Korea at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. None of this is to say there is no risk of miscalculation that could escalate into hostilities. Trumps penchant for provocative statements introduced an element of unpredictability to a relationship in which the uncertainty has historically been on the North Korean side. How Kim reacts is the major variable in a complicated equation. North Korea is also steadily adding to its nuclear arsenal and edging closer to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile, tipped with a warhead, that could hit the United States. Intelligence estimates vary on how quickly that could happen, but some say within three years, a timetable that would put a successful test within Trumps term in office. No previous president has ever been in that situation, said Victor D. Cha, director of the Asian studies program at Georgetown University, who advised the administration of George W. Bush on North Korea. I dont think were going to war, but were in a different phase. Cha said he viewed the briefing for senators as part of an effort by the White House to signal the seriousness of North Korea to a U.S. public that regards it as a distant, complicated issue. But others criticized the president for being theatrical, with some saying he was using the senators as a prop to burnish his 100-day record. There was very little, if anything, new, said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is still unclear what our strategy and policy is. Even some Republican senators complained afterward that they had learned little and wondered why they needed to pile into buses for the trip from Capitol Hill to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, where they were seated in an auditorium. Im not sure I would have done it, said Republican Sen. Bob Corker the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He said he was not sure why the briefing had been timed for this week and begged off further comment, adding, All I can say is, it was fine. White House officials said that they had been responding to a request from Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and that Trump had proposed moving the site of the briefing. He spoke to the senators for less than three minutes, mainly promoting his efforts to persuade President Xi Jinping of China to put more economic pressure on North Korea. Trump then turned the briefing over to Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson; Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. Analysts said it was too early to assess Trumps claim that the Chinese were finally cooperating with the United States. Previous presidents believed they had made headway with Beijing, only to have Chinas actions fall short of expectations. The reports of closed gas stations in North Korea were intriguing, analysts said, because they suggested that the North was bracing for a suspension of fuel shipments from China. The Chinese have yet to take such a step, although they have curtailed purchases of North Korean coal. In a separate briefing for reporters, the White House said Trump had decided on a strategy that would include diplomacy to persuade China to keep up pressure on its neighbor, as well as military preparations. A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to discuss the nature of the military preparations or the timetable for seeing a change in North Koreas behavior. He also said the administration was considering returning North Korea to the governments list of state sponsors of terrorism. On Thursday morning, the National Security Council will hold a principals committee meeting to weigh economic and military options. Harris told lawmakers that North Koreas recent setbacks in its missile launches would not slow the countrys efforts to achieve its nuclear goals. With every test, Kim Jong Un moves closer to his stated goal of a pre-emptive nuclear strike capability against American cities, and hes not afraid to fail in public, he told the House Armed Services Committee in a hearing on security challenges in the region. Harris welcomed Chinas role in influencing the North but also singled it out for criticism. While recent actions by Beijing are encouraging and welcome, the fact remains that China is as responsible for where North Korea is today as North Korea itself, he said. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONDonald Trumps administration had hinted Wednesday afternoon that he was about to sign an order that would begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump announced Wednesday night, though, that he would not be doing so. What happened? Trump offered a remarkable explanation on Thursday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called him, he said, and asked him not to proceed. And he likes them, he said, so he agreed. I was going to terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now. The president of Mexico, who I have a very, very good relationship, called me. And also the prime minister of Canada, who I have a very good relationship, and I like both of these gentlemen very much, they called me, he said at the White House. And they said, Rather than terminating NAFTA could you please negotiate. I like them very much, I respect their countries very much, the relationship is very special. And I said I will hold on the termination, lets see if we can make it a fair deal. The extraordinary story offers a measure of vindication for Trudeaus studiously nonconfrontational approach to Trump. It suggests, again, the primacy of personal relationships in the impulsive decision-making of a president who has little policy knowledge or fixed political principles. It may not have been the whole truth. The Washington Post quoted an anonymous senior administration official as saying that Trump had already decided against signing the withdrawal order before the phone calls. The complete list of all 212 false things Donald Trump has said as president But Trump has regularly changed his mind because someone explained something to him. After claiming for more than a year that China had the power to solve the conundrum of North Korea, he abandoned that view after Chinese President Xi Jinping spent 10 minutes explaining the situation. Trumps account was essentially corroborated by Trudeau. We had a good conversation last night. He expressed that, yes, he was very much thinking about cancelling. I highlighted quite frankly that whether or not there was a better deal to come, there was an awful lot of jobs, an awful lot of industries right now that have been developed under the NAFTA context, Trudeau said Thursday during a visit to Gray, Sask. A disruption like cancelling NAFTA, even if it theoretically, eventually might lead to better outcomes, (but) would cause a lot of short- and medium-term pain for an awful lot of families, he said. The conversation was their second about trade this week alone. Trump, long silent about trade with Canada, has ratcheted up tensions over the last 10 days, lambasting Canadian dairy and lumber policies and claiming Canada has generally taken advantage of the U.S. on trade. On Monday, his administration announced a new 20 per cent tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, a decision that was widely expected for months. Trudeau refused to rule out retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. moves, but he said both he and Trump prefer to keep relations positive and co-operative. In April, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Theres a broad range of options and paths available to us that were looking at but it is certainly my preference that we be able to sit down and discuss in a firm but responsible and polite way the different ways we can move forward, Trudeau said. Trumps order would not have immediately terminated NAFTA. Instead, it would have initiated a six-month notice period after which the U.S. could have withdrawn or not withdrawn. The move may have increased the pressure on Canada and Mexico. But it may have been even harder on the U.S., and Trump would have faced intense opposition from business groups and high-profile Republicans in Congress. One senator, Nebraskas Ben Sasse, had called the idea disastrously bad. Trumps late-Wednesday statement said he would not withdraw at this time. He went further on Thursday, saying that withdrawal would be a pretty big shock to the system and that were going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. If Im unable to make a fair deal, if Im unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA, he said. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTON The senior U.S. navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific said Thursday that the crisis with North Korea is at the worst point hes ever seen, but he declined to compare the situation to the Cuban missile crisis decades ago. Its real, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific Command, said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Harris said he has no doubt that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un intends to fulfil his pursuit of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States. The admiral acknowledged theres uncertainty within U.S. intelligence agencies over how far along North Koreas nuclear and missile programs are. But Harris said its not a matter of if but when. There is no doubt in my mind, Harris said. The Trump administration has declared that all options, including a targeted military strike, are on the table to block North Korea from carrying out threats against the United States and its allies in the region. But a pre-emptive attack isnt likely, U.S. officials have said, and the administration is pursuing a strategy of putting pressure on Pyongyang with assistance from China, North Koreas main trading partner and the countrys economic lifeline. Harris said North Koreas pursuit of an atomic arsenal and the long-range missiles to deliver nuclear weapons comes at the expense of the North Korean people, who are isolated and forced to live with a lifeless economy. In confronting the North Korean threat, it is critical that the U.S. be guided by a strong sense of resolve both publicly and privately in order to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not his knees, Harris said. Despite the depravity, Harris said its a hollow hope to think that North Koreans will rise up and topple Kim Jong Un. Harris said Kim Jong Un is revered and considered a god king by many North Koreans. In a show of military might, the U.S. has sent a massive amount of American weaponry to the region. A strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is in striking range of North Korea. A U.S. missile defence system, the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system, is being installed in South Korea. Harris said he has adequate forces to fight tonight against North Korea if that were to become necessary. But the admiral said he lacks all the attack submarines he needs and has no capable defence against the thousands of artillery pieces North Korea could launch at South Korea. There are about 28,500 U.S. military personnel serving in South Korea. Read more about: SHARE: Many years ago, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that the world needs more Canada. We heard it again from former American president Barack Obama in 2016, and even more recently from UN special rapporteurs who were visiting the nations capital earlier this month. But when it comes to disseminating good ideas, Canada could and should be more vocal, especially with regards to the protection and promotion of minority rights. On the one hand, Canada already has its hands full in working to rectify its dismal human rights record towards First Nations and indigenous communities. But recent case law illustrates a forward-thinking approach on other contentious issues that should serve as an example for the rest of the world. Considering that we have just marked the 35th anniversary of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, now is a good time as any to review exactly why Canadians have something valuable to share and where there is room for improvement. For example, during a conference hosted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which Canada is a member state, our organization led a workshop titled the Battle of Competing Rights. Several symbolic Canadian court cases were highlighted during the discussion with policy-makers, government officials, and human rights representatives. These cases include one in which a young Sikh student successfully challenged rules preventing him from wearing a kirpan to school; another in which a Jewish man was finally permitted to build a religious structure on the balcony of his condo; and a third case which involved a Muslim woman wearing a face veil while appearing in court. In that last case, known as R. vs. N.S., the Supreme Court of Canada provided a ruling that attempted to balance the rights of an accused to a fair trial and his accusers religious freedoms. A key principal emerging from the ruling was that Canadians should not be expected to park religious beliefs at the courtroom door or, it was implied, at the door of any institution. Everywhere in the world, nations are, it seems, wrestling with this question, said Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin in a public lecture last year. How do we deal with the other, with the person who is different in a majoritarian society? Canadas future, said the chief justice, depends on recognizing the need to reject exclusion and favour cultural inclusion. Consider the European Commissions recent ruling that employers can now force their staff to remove their head scarves at work; its no small wonder that Canada sounds like Disneyland to minority groups there this is a place where everyone can freely contribute to the countrys success without having to compromise their personal values or beliefs. The federal governments announcement last week that public service applications will be scrubbed of information revealing a persons race and ethnicity is another noteworthy step. The hope is that such a measure will help reduce proven bias that tends to keep certain groups from accessing the same employment opportunities as everyone else, despite Canadas Employment Equity Act. If you dont have people represented in the institutions, how will they feel included? Decision making cannot be left to mono-ethnic, mono-linguistic, or mono-religious groups, said Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, UN special rapporteur on minority issues, during her Ottawa visit. Young people must see themselves in all state structures. If you dont see a single policeman from your background, for example, how will you trust the institution? The lack of diversity throughout all levels of our public institutions, as well as in the private sector, begs the need for more concrete action. Even Silicon Valley often described as a progressive-haven is struggling, according to an article in this months Atlantic. Companies there are trying all sorts of initiatives, including linking management bonuses to increasing diversity. The need to address representation gaps are pressing, not only because it makes good business sense, as a new Canadian research study titled The Diversity Divident confirms, but that it reinforces the strength of our social fabric. If Canada is to be a global champion of inclusion it must both spotlight its successes and push harder to address systemic weaknesses by exploring all possible fixes and crafting made-in-Canada solutions. Amira Elghawaby is communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM). Follow her on Twitter @AmiraElghawaby SHARE: A profound glimpse into Canadas justice system arose this month in an obscure set of circumstances. An eminent provincial court judge revealed stark, shocking facts about those charged with crimes, when his successful application to the Ontario Court of Appeal was disclosed to the public. Justice David Paciocco summed up the criminally accused in five words: Often sick, always in need. Put another way, Canada has unwittingly criminalized mental illness. Those of us who work in the field take this fact for granted, too easily forgetting that criminalizing the unwell is an urgent societal injustice. Paciocco wrote that his six years on the Ontario Court of Justice in Ottawa exposed him to a world of poverty, homelessness and mental illness. These comments could be made about any courtroom across Canada. Back when Justin Trudeaus father was prime minister, the provinces began deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill. Premised on the idea that individuals with mental illnesses would be better served in the community, larger institutions started to close. Unfortunately, unintended consequences arose, including a shortage of supportive housing units, and difficulties in accessing community treatment for individuals in need. Thats when police became front-line triage workers for the mentally ill. Instead of diagnosis and treatment, police did what they were trained to do: investigate, arrest and charge people with criminal offences. Those previously institutionalized in mental hospitals became institutionalized in jails. A smattering of specialized mental health courts emerged over the past 20 years, but they address a tiny fraction of the million-plus charges laid annually in Canada. For decades now, the often sick, always in need have invariably wound up in jails. From arrest to prosecution, conviction, sentencing, use of segregation, all stages of our criminal justice system are now consistently overrepresented by people who are suffering from psychosis, mania, mood disorders, depression, alcoholism and addiction, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders. Statistics typically catch only the tip of the iceberg, depending on researchers limited ability to access the inmate population, but existing data is concerning. While police have made very important investments in mental health strategies, people with mental health issues still experience disproportionate contact with police and higher levels of arrest. The Office of the Correctional Investigator has noted that about 25 per cent of male federal inmates have an identified mental health need. The number is much higher for women more than 50 per cent. The numbers are even worse for youth. In one Ontario study, 80 per cent of youth in detention met the criteria for at least one mental disorder as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Those suffering from mental health issues who are swallowed up by the criminal justice system do not fare well. The use of segregation or other standard isolation practices are the clearest examples of a system whose practices rooted in punishment and control can exacerbate the challenges facing people with mental health issues. Individuals leaving the system leave with unmanaged or worsened mental health issues, which can contribute to recidivism. What can be done? The justice system is not the ideal place to diagnose and treat the unwell. While there is no panacea, the better way is to ensure people get help when they need it, before they are at risk of homelessness, unemployment, or conflict with law. This would mean: Investing in widespread and accessible mental health supports in communities. Targeting the social determinants of health, such as poverty, employment, and homelessness. Prioritizing a system that effectively screens individuals for mental health issues and diverts them, pre- and post-charge, from the courts. Fostering a corrections system that does not punish symptoms of mental health and ensures that released individuals have a plan in place to support their housing, employment, addiction, and treatment needs in the community. A preventative approach must also be accompanied by coordination and communication across systems. The multitude of existing strategies and initiatives would benefit from an overarching criminal justice mental health framework that would drive a co-ordinated response across police, courts, corrections, and the community. Pacioccos poignant words offer a rare opportunity to affirm what we all suspect: our constitutional principles of fundamental justice are folly for the vast majority of those charged and prosecuted in Canada. The most vulnerable of the presumed innocent are being punished for their disability the very thing that deserves our help, not a criminal charge and incarceration. Michael Bryant is a former Attorney General of Ontario who now defends the unwell in criminal courts. Graham Brown is policy analyst at John Howard Society of Ontario. SHARE: Its fitting that the laneway tucked between Yonge and Victoria Sts. just north of Adelaide St. E. is called Ching Lane. Sam Ching was a trailblazer the first Chinese immigrant to have his business Sam Ching & Co. Chinese laundry at 9 Adelaide St. E. recorded in the Toronto City Directory, an annual official listing of residents, their occupations, businesses and addresses. That was in 1878. This laneway acknowledgement though it didnt come until 2012 is significant. It is located near Chings original address and not far from what would be Torontos first Chinatown. The laneway sign is a reminder of the contributions made by early Chinese immigrants to the city, and the racist attitudes and policies they had to contend with, from special business and head taxes to outright immigration bans. Chings hand laundry a common way to make a living for early Chinese immigrants who faced barriers of language and discrimination was located inSt. Johns Ward the area bordered by College St., Queen St. E., University Ave. and Yonge St. Known as The Ward, it was home to waves of immigrants and refugees from vastly different countries and it became notorious as an overcrowded slum. There was no specific Chinatown in Chings day but by 1915, there was a clearly defined Chinese community on and around York St., according to Toronto author Arlene Chan, who wrote The Chinese in Toronto from 1878, From Outside to Inside the Circle. By 1921 that community had grown to more than 2,000 and had settled around Dundas St. W. and along Elizabeth St. (which then ran south to Queen St. W.) west of Terauley St. (now Bay St.) and east of Spadina Ave. This became the epicentre of historic Chinatown, and for decades it was a bustling community with a plethora of restaurants, laundries and small grocery, dry goods and tea importing stores. It offered Chinese residents familiar foods and language, comfort and support in a society that was not particularly welcoming. Storekeepers and laundry workers often lived on site in cramped conditions. Laundries, especially in the early years, had a small storefront reception, while behind a partition, kettles, washtubs, scrubbing boards and irons awaited. The absence of family life and the priority to save money led to living conditions that reflected little concern for personal health and well-being, Chan writes. But while Torontos early Chinatown was crowded and unsanitary, these conditions were equally true of other city neighbourhoods, Chan notes. Canada had invited in almost 16,000 Chinese labourers between 1880 and 1885 to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. But once the railway was built, the federal government decided it needed to restrict and regulate Chinese immigration, so it passed the 1885 Chinese Immigrant Act, levying a head tax of $50 on any Chinese person coming to Canada (increased to $100 in 1900 for further discouragement, and $500 in 1903). In an 1886 speech to Parliament, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald admitted the racism behind the tax: I do not think that it would be to the advantage of Canada or any other country occupied by Aryans for members of the Mongolian race to become permanent inhabitants of the country. However, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia it was largely because of the trans-Canada railway that the Chinese spread out and developed communities across the nation, including Toronto. It wasnt easy. They had to put up with the press of the day and politicians who promoted negativity towards Chinese immigrants and used terms like yellow peril. News stories depicted Chinese men as diseased, drug-addicted, indolent, morally bankrupt, unclean and unlawful, says Chan. A 1907 Globe editorial entitled, Asiatic Peril to National Life contended that Asian immigrants were not good citizenry material and accepting them would lead to national decay. A Toronto Star editorial in 1908 referred to comments made by (future prime minister) Mackenzie King, who was heading a Royal Commission in B.C., following anti-Chinese riots and referred to the seductive vices of Orientalism, meaning gambling and opium dens. (Before 1908, opium use was legal in Canada.) The Star surmised this bears very directly and suggestively on the desirability or otherwise of Chinese immigration. In other words, there was a belief among the power brokers of the day that Chinese immigrants could corrupt the morals of Canadians with gambling and drug abuse and they would not easily assimilate. When Chinese immigrants were charged in crimes, newspaper coverage invariably mentioned their race and often included racist epithets of the day. A 1927 a front page Star story reported, 11-year-old girl slain and four men injured by a maniac Chinaman It turned out that the accused man, Fong Yong, had previously been in an insane asylum in Ontario and had been released. Racism also coloured business problems faced by Chinese immigrants. The Laundry Association of Toronto, composed of white business owners, was upset by the competition posed by Chinese laundries which offered cheap rates and quick turnaround. Toronto City Archives notes on its website that in 1902, the association asked council to levy a license fee: It wanted to stop Chinese newcomers from starting more laundries. By this time, close to 100 Chinese laundries were operating in the city. At first the citys property committee approved a license fee of $50, no matter the size of the business. This unduly hurt the smaller Chinese-run outfits. But Torontos first African-Canadian politician, Alderman William Hubbard, didnt think that was fair, and got the fee reduced to $5 to $20, depending on the laundry size. Restaurants, which also had relatively low start-up costs, had been the other primary occupation for Chinese immigrants, ever since Sing Tom opened Torontos first Chinese cafe at 371-2 Queen St. W. in 1901, opposite Torontos city hall (now the Old City Hall). But again, racism reared its head. To run the restaurants, low-cost part-time help was needed. By 1910 there were more than 1,000 Chinese in Toronto but the majority were men, because of the Head Tax. Most men wanted full-time work, but white women were willing to work part-time in Chinese restaurants. However, this revived fears of opium corruption and white slavery even if not backed up with any stated facts. As author Chan puts it, contact between Chinese men and white women was discouraged: The fear was that Chinese were an amoral and evil influence on innocent girls and women . . . In 1908, Torontos city solicitor advised the Board of Police Commissioners to refuse licences to Chinese restaurateurs who employed white women. Chinese restaurant owners protested and the policy was rarely enforced. Then, in 1914, the province of Ontario passed a law (similar to those enacted around the same time in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia) forbidding Chinese businesses from hiring white women. Not surprisingly, Chinese restaurant owners protested vigorously and in essence, won the day. The law stayed on the books but was rarely enforced. But in 1928, the issue came up again. It may have had something to do with the ongoing increase in Chinese restaurants (from 32 in 1917 to 202 by 1923). Again, Chinese businessmen objected, calling it a national insult. Also, contributing to the raw feelings was the fact the federal governments Exclusion Act was in place. The 1923 Act banned all Chinese immigration (with exceptions, like diplomats) and forced all Chinese, even those born in Canada, to get identity cards (it would stand until 1947). An August 25, 1928, front page Star story quoted one unnamed Chinese spokesperson as saying the law against hiring white women was unfair and unequal. We pay the same taxes and are as good citizens as anyone else in the city, so why should we be treated thus? The Chinese consul-general Dr. Chow Kwok-Shien, stationed in Ottawa, objected about the unfairness of the law to the Toronto mayor and Ontario attorney-general. Again, the furor died down and the situation went back to the law being on the books but not enforced. Most people who went to Chinatown cafes which specialized in Chinese, not Canadian, dishes werent thinking about the colour of their servers skin they just wanted good affordable food. Chan says in her book that many visiting vaudeville actors in the 1920s loved going to Chinatown restaurants. Actor Edward G. Robinson apparently swore that 12 1/2 (Elizabeth St.) was the best place to eat in the 1920s. The actor, who performed on stage at Sheas Hippodrome Theatre, was referring to two restaurants Hung Fah Low and Jung Wah, which shared that address. Over the years, certain dishes made for western tastes chop suey (meaning mixed bits), chow mein (fried noodles) and egg foo young became as popular in Toronto Chinatown restaurants as they were in cities elsewhere. Of course, during Prohibition, Chinatown restaurants like others across Toronto were sometimes raided by police. In 1918 police arrested Youk You, owner of a restaurant at 12 Elizabeth St., for selling Chinese whisky in teapots for 25 cents. And sometimes, Chinatown proprietors were the victims of crime. On Nov. 18, 1919, the Star reported that a mob of 400 men and boys descended upon Hop War Lows cafe at 31 Elizabeth St., stole $300 in cash and then ran on, smashing store windows. Police restored order but no arrests were made. By 1921, Toronto had the third-largest Chinatown in Canada with 2,019 Chinese men and 115 Chinese women, according to Statistics Canada. Cantonese opera fans were thrilled when the Chinese United Dramatic Society built a huge hall in the 1930s with 250 seats for popular music performances. But the Depression which rolled across Canada from 1929 to 1939 took its toll. By the early 1940s many Chinatown restaurants had folded or had fallen into disrepair. Chinese laundries had given way to larger-scale enterprises, home appliances and laundromats. Urban change was afoot. City funding to redevelop The Ward and build a new City Hall and Civic Square at Terauley St. (Bay St.) and Queen St. W. was approved in 1947 the same year that Chinese Canadians were granted the right to vote federally. The Canadian government repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act at the end of the Second World War because it contravened the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. This meant those Chinese who were Canadian citizens could apply to sponsor family members only 2,055 of 34,627 people. Full liberalization of immigration policy didnt come until 1967. The plan for the new City Hall meant expropriation and destruction of most of the buildings in Chinatown. By 1958, two-thirds of Chinatown was destroyed. Today a few buildings on Dundas St. W., Elizabeth St. and Hagerman St. survive. The opening of Torontos new City Hall in 1965 did not end the talk of expropriating the remaining buildings on Elizabeth St. But this time the Chinese community fought back and in 1967 a Save Chinatown Committee was established. It was a coalition headed by restaurateur Jean Lumb. Their passionate plea to city council in 1969 to save what was left of Chinatown one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city was successful. Other demolition proposals in 1970 and 1975 were also quashed. Lumb received the Order of Canada in 1976 for her efforts. Some of the businesses relocated to the Spadina Ave. and Dundas St. W. area, now called west Chinatown. Its one of five Chinatown hubs in the Greater Toronto Area, according to the Toronto Chinatown Business Improvement Area website. The other four are at Broadview Ave. and Gerrard St. in the east-end, Markham-Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Mississauga. Share your story suggestions at OnceUponACity@thestar.ca . To search more about this story or your story go to thestar.com/archives . To purchase or browse more photos go to starstore.ca/collections/once-upon-a-city , or visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/TorontoStarArchives or on Twitter: @StarHistoricPix SHARE: Donald Trump arrived at the White House with some big ambitions, but most of the items on his agenda are still a work in progress. From overhauling health care and enacting tax reform to renegotiating NAFTA and getting tough on China, many of President Trump's most prominent campaign-trail promises have failed to materialize within his first 100 days in office. Of a set of 10 pieces of legislation he pledged to submit to Congress in a speech last October, he has not yet produced one. In other arenas, Trump has delivered. He withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, upped immigration enforcement and began to take steps to roll back regulations. The White House in recent days has walked a tight rope in the importance of the first 100 days. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the president called the marker an "artificial barrier." In the same interview, he claimed to have done more than any other president in the time period. His administration sent out a PR blast on Tuesday touting Trump's "100 days of historic accomplishments." "If you look at the tangible accomplishments, there are not many, at least through the eyes of Wall Street," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. "From an intangible, I think the intangibles are still positive. There is a new tone in Washington." "In terms of his first 100 days, in terms of broader economic policy, you'd have to give him credit for rolling back some red tape," said Dan Mitchell, an economist at the Cato Institute. "But in the grand scheme of things, I suspect that won't be valued as high." TheStreet asked a handful of analysts, economists and investors to weigh in on the Trump administration's first 100 days and give them a grade. "Probably a B for their willingness but a C+ for their execution," Ablin said. Michael Mussio, president at wealth management firm FBB Capital Partners concurred. "B -- I think the communication is part of that," he said. So did Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. ""I would give him a B for benefit of the doubt," he said. Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said it's a question of expectations. "If you set the expectations quite high, then you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot, and you will disappoint voters, and you will disappoint markets, and that's really what we've seen," he said. "The campaign promises led people to believe that this might be an A-grade student, when in fact that we have an administration in general that's not experienced in policymaking. And therefore, the results are more realist and more in line what an average student would do without much experience." "If you're talking about the impact on banking, their grade would have to be 0, because nothing's changed," said Dick Bove, financial sector analyst at Rafferty Capital. "I'd probably have to give it an eight or a nine on the investment front," said Trip Miller, managing partner at Memphis-based hedge fund Gullane Capital Partners, citing the market rally. "How much of an impact they really had on the markets going up because of anything they've gotten done from presidential actions I think is minimal." "Incomplete, I haven't seen the final paper yet," said Michael Greenwald, partner at accounting and consulting firm Friedman LLP. With Trump's first 100 days arriving on Saturday, TheStreet put together its own report card: Editors' pick: Originally published April 28. Brazil is considering joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as soon as next month, officials told Reuters. The OECD promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. The move is indicative of Brazilian President Michel Temer seeking approval from Latin American's largest economy. Temer's plan to join the Paris-based think tank is his latest effort to strengthen ties with Western developed nations after previous Brazilian governments prioritized relations with developing countries, the report said. The decision to allow Brazil into the organization hinges on a review of the entry requirements, Reuters noted. An initial result of the review is expected for May 15. (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 hereto listen to his latest Trading Strategies roundtable with them and read their advice for stocks, bonds, forex and gold.) Samsung (SSNLF) stock closed at a new record Thursday after it reported a solid first quarter and conceded to a push by activist investor Elliott Management to boost returns by cancelling some of the shares it holds in its treasury. The electronics giant said that first quarter revenue came in at 50.55 trillion Korean won ($44 billion), and increase of around 1.5% year on year, while operating profit rose nearly 50% to 9.90 trillion won. Samsung also said it will cancel more than 40 trillion won of shares held in its treasury as its strong balance sheet and improved cash position means that it no longer sees any need to hold them. The move marks a partial victory for activist investor Elliott Management, who has been pushing for the cancellation alongside a broad range of reforms. Shares of Samsung closed nearly 5% higher Thursday, at 1,719,000 won each, a new peak for Asia's most valuable company. However, Elliott's victory is not complete as Samsung also said Thursday that it will not be converting itself into a holding company, which was a key pillar of the activist's proposed reforms for the company. Samsung said that a holding company structure would not help it to strengthen its competitiveness and that it could complicate its operations in the longer term. A strong first quarter performance provides what is no doubt a welcome distraction for shareholders who, in recent months, have seen Samsung rocked by a number of high profile indictments in the boardroom. In March Jay Y. Lee, vice chairman of the executive board, and company president Choong-Ki Chang, were both charged by authorities in South Korea over allegations of embezzlement. Multiple other executives were also charged. The move followed investigations related to an influence peddling scandal that brought down South Korea's President Park Geun-hye. President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico Wednesday he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact which he railed against as a candidate and as recently as last week declared was harmful to US workers. In a description of Trump's phone calls to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Enrique Pena Nieto, the White House said Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries." "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a written statement that accompanied the readout of his phone calls. "It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." The White House said the phone conversations were "pleasant and productive." As he approaches his 100th day in office, Trump and his advisers are hurriedly working to check off promises made during the campaign, one of which was to renegotiate or withdraw from NAFTA. Trump has already removed the US from another massive trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was negotiated under President Barack Obama. Trump's decision to remain in NAFTA came the same day a senior administration official revealed the White House was considering an executive order to withdraw from the trade accord. During his run for office last year, Trump made his disdain for NAFTA a central component of a populist message designed to engender support among working class Americans. He consistently cast the agreement -- which was negotiated by President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's presidential opponent Hillary Clinton -- as a raw deal for the middle class. His approach has not softened since taking office, though some of his advisers have warned of grave economic consequences that could accompany withdrawing from the trade deal. Last week, Trump derided NAFTA during remarks in Wisconsin meant to highlight American manufacturing. "It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all," Trump said. By affirming his intention to reopen the agreement with Trudeau and Pena Nieto, Trump is able to fulfill a 100-day pledge to "announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA." But the announcement offers less populist punch than withdrawing from the agreement outright, a move that could cause major disruptions to the economies in Canada, the US, and Mexico. Upon news earlier Wednesday that the Trump administration was considering a withdrawal from the agreement, some Republicans urged caution. "Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, in a statement. "Yes, there are places where our agreements could be modernized but here's the bottom line: trade lowers prices for American consumers and it expands markets for American goods. Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise." And Sen. John McCain on Wednesday urged Trump not to pull the US from NAFTA. "It will devastate the economy in my state," McCain said. "I hope he doesn't do that." Nonpartisan congressional research found in 2015 that NAFTA isn't responsible for an exodus of jobs south of the border, nor for a big jobs boom in the US. Researchers concluded the deal has had a minor impact on the US economy. Still, about 14 million US jobs depend on trade with Mexico and Canada, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. CNN's Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report. BP (BP) - Get Free Report said on Thursday that it is selling its 50% stake in the Shanghai SECCO Petroleum Company to Gaoqiao Petroleum Co., a 100% subsidiary of China Petroleum (SNP) - Get Free Report , BP's joint venture partner. The sale is for a total consideration of $1.68 billion. "This decision aligns our petrochemicals business in China with our global focus on areas where BP has leading proprietary technologies and competitive advantage. China is a key region for our chemicals business and BP will continue to look for opportunities to build on our position in the country," BP Global Petrochemicals COO Rita Griffin said in a statement announcing the sale. BP stock is lower slightly in pre-market trading this morning. (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.) Alphabet's (GOOGL) - Get Free Report Google today became the first foreign Internet firm to host content within Cuba, Buzzfeed reports. The Cuban server launched by Google in the country is part of its GGC nodes, its global network of caching servers. The servers store popular content, including YouTube videos, on a local server vs. having to travel via a submarine cable currently connecting Cuba to the Internet through Venezuela. "I think this will be very noticeable for Cubans," said Doug Madory director of Internet analysis at Dyn, a global internet monitoring company. "The internet in Cuba will still be a painfully slow process. This is just another somewhat rare step forward. For Google services, which will be hosted in country, it will be a milestone." Shares of Alphabet opened lower on Thursday. (Alphabet is a core holding in Jim Cramer's charitable trust Action Alerts PLUS. See all of his holding with a free trial here.) (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 hereto listen to his latest Trading Strategies roundtable with them and read their advice for stocks, bonds, forex and gold.) Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said today that a one-on-one phone conversation with President Trump could take place again, Reuters reports. "We have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the U.S. government," Tsai told Reuters. "We don't exclude the opportunity to call President Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the U.S. government's consideration of regional affairs." Tsai made a congratulatory phone call to Trump in December after he secured the presidency. It was the first time that a leader of Taiwan and an incumbent or incoming U.S. president held a direct conversation in nearly four decades. The call angered Beijing because it fears contact between Taiwan and U.S. government leaders could disrupt its "one China" policy, which claims Taiwan is a part of China. (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 hereto listen to his latest Trading Strategies roundtable with them and read their advice for stocks, bonds, forex and gold.) Israel bombed an arms depot near the Damascus airport in Syria Thursday, Reuters reported, in a raid targeting weapons allegedly sent by Iran in commercial and military cargo ships. "The incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah," Israel Intelligence Minister said Thursday. However, Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the bombing with an Israeli spokeswoman saying "we can't comment on such reports." Russia criticized the strike and said that Syria's sovereignty should be respected. BP (BP) - Get Free Report has discovered 200 million barrels of oil in a hidden reserve located in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to its advanced imaging of geological formations, the Houston Chronicle reports. The oil reserve is located about 150 miles from New Orleans and is potentially worth $2 billion in recoverable oil. The reserve was located using BP's new supercomputer and mathematical algorithm that interprets seismic data, which oil firms utilize to map points below the earth. Shares of BP were lower during the final hour of trading on Thursday. (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 hereto listen to his latest Trading Strategies roundtable with them and read their advice for stocks, bonds, forex and gold.) Its time to finish the job. That was the message in a report in Sundays Journal Times from Matt Montemurro, president and chief executive officer of Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce, regarding the completion of the Interstate 94 north-south project. The message was directed at Gov. Scott Walker and the state Legislature. We couldnt agree more. Having watched Amazon.com set up shop alongside I-94 in Kenosha, we can picture the announcements, in the coming months and years, of businesses ready to relocate to the DeBack Farms Business Park, under development on Highway K near I-94 in Caledonia. We have watched the number of new businesses relocating to Kenosha, where the Interstate has been rebuilt and expanded, and we believe Racine is poised to undergo the same kind of economic boom, Montemurro said. Beyond our obvious interest in growing Racine Countys economy, theres the importance of I-94 to the Badger State as a whole. If its coming into Wisconsin on 18 wheels, more than likely its coming up I-94, whether it heads west by the Milwaukee County Zoo or continues north through the Marquette Interchange. Gov. Walker was noncommittal on the north-south project when he was in Racine County recently for a bill signing, saying: For us, we want it to keep moving forward. If we can put more resources in this budget, that would certainly be a priority for us. On Monday, the governor said he didnt think an increase in vehicle-related taxes or fees was necessary to address the transportation budget deficit, that the states road to-do list could be handled through the general fund. Im not proposing nor do I think were going to have a gas tax or vehicle registration fee as a part of this budget, he told reporters. Walker said he had no interest in higher vehicle registration fees and he knew of no one in the Legislature who was talking about it. But Republican Sen. Alberta Darling, Republican co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, said Monday that fees were definitely under consideration. I say everything is on the table, she said. Exactly right, Sen. Darling. All options should be on the table. We have an outdated highway funding formula based in part on gasoline consumption, which does not account for highly fuel-efficient cars or cars which run, in whole or in part, on electricity. It may require some unpleasant choices, choices that members of the state Republican Party which includes the governor and a majority in both houses of the Legislature wont like, since it may involve raising taxes or fees, or both. It may require a willingness to introduce toll roads, as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has proposed, something that some of us in Wisconsin tend to see as an Illinois thing. But it will require action, and action now. I-94 is too important, too vital to Wisconsins economy to be put on the back burner. Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. The company offers routing products, such as ACX series universal access routers to deploy high-bandwidth services; MX series Ethernet routers that function as a universal edge platform; PTX series packet transport routers; wide-area network SDN controllers; and session smart routers. It also provides switching products, including EX series Ethernet switches to address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments; QFX series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches; and juniper access points, which provide Wi-Fi access and performance. In addition, the company offers security products comprising SRX series services gateways for the data center; Branch SRX family provides an integrated and next-generation firewall; virtual firewall that delivers various features of physical firewalls; and advanced malware protection, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP. Further, it offers Junos OS, a network operating system; Contrail networking, which provides an open-source and standards-based platform for SDN; Mist AI-driven Wired, Wireless, and WAN assurance solutions to set and measure key metrics; Mist AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, which identifies the root cause of issues; Juniper Paragon Automation, a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications; and Juniper Apstra to automate the network lifecycle in a single system. Additionally, the company provides software-as-a-service, technical support, maintenance, and professional services, as well as education and training programs. It sells its products through direct sales, distributors, value-added resellers, and original equipment manufacturers to end-users in the cloud, service provider, and enterprise markets. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The MIT Enterprise Forum (MITEF) for the Pan Arab Region will announcing the winners of the 10th MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition in a final award ceremony to be held at the Bahrain International Circuit on April 27. The competition is held in partnership with Community Jameel, a social enterprise organisation that operates a wide range of initiatives which promote and contribute towards positive societal change and economic sustainability; Zain Group, a leading telecommunications innovator in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa; and Tamkeen, an organisation tasked with developing Bahrain's private sector and positioning it as the key driver of economic development. The 74 semi-finalists from 11 Arab countries will undergo another round of training to present their work over a three-day period from April 25 till April 27 to a jury that brings together some of the Arab world's key investors and businessmen. This year's edition, which is of special importance as it celebrates the competition's 10th anniversary, registered years of success and excellence while serving generations of young Arabs and their creative entrepreneurial ideas. Hala Fadel, chair of the board of MITEF Pan Arab, stressed on technology and innovation as drivers of entrepreneurship in the region, saying: "For our 10th anniversary, we want to gather the best entrepreneurs from the region, for them to learn from each other and from the global ecosystem. We insist on technology and innovation as the main drivers going forward for entrepreneurship in the region, and we think we are best positioned to lead this new trend." Fady Jameel, president of Community Jameel International, commented on the anticipated event: "The final award ceremony of this grand competition is just around the corner. The number of participants this year exceeded all expectations and we are absolutely delighted to be part of this exciting event, yet again, for the tenth year. Together we can truly give birth to an outstanding generation of young entrepreneurs." Commenting on Zain's support of the competition, Zain Group CEO-Operations, Scott Gegenheimer, said: "We are delighted to partner other esteemed organisations in the holding of this event in Bahrain, supporting the kingdom's 2030 Economic Vision, which is based on sustainability, fairness and competitiveness. Zain recognises that technology, innovation and youth are key drivers for entrepreneurship across the region and our collaboration with MIT Enterprise Forum reflects Zain's strategic vision of supporting young aspiring entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams." Chief Executive of Tamkeen, Dr Ebrahim Mohammed Janahi emphasised the importance of this competition and said: "This year, Tamkeen chose to be a strategic partner for this prestigious competition. This is at the heart of our goals as a firm, to offer our support to all entrepreneurial initiatives in all vital sectors. We are proud to host this regional competition for the first time in Bahrain stemming from our belief that such competitions inspire entrepreneurs to challenge themselves enabling them to develop and present their ideas in a competitive environment." The 74 teams from 11 Arab countries competing in the semi-finals are distributed as follows: Egypt (20), Lebanon (11), Saudi Arabia (9), United Arab Emirates (9), Jordan (7), Tunisia (5), Morocco (5), Bahrain (3), Sudan (2), Libya (2) and Algeria (1). All the qualified teams participated in special trainings and preparatory activities that were held in Egypt, Jordan and the UAE. The cash prizes, which exceed $160,000, will be distributed among three finalists who will be selected in each of the three tracks: Startups, Social Entrepreneurship and Ideas. The winners will also benefit from advanced training sessions, personal mentorship and guidance not to mention a great deal of media coverage and excellent networking opportunities. - TradeArabia News Service Swissotel, part of AccorHotels, world-leading travel & lifestyle group, today announced that it has entered into a franchise agreement with Bahrains International Investment Bank (IIB) and Al Shiddi International for the development of a new 218-room urban resort in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Situated next to Bosnian Parliament, within the expansive mixed-use Sarajevo City Center project, consisting of a shopping mall and office tower with 30,000 daily visitors, Swissotel Sarajevo will enjoy a commanding downtown commercial and residential location, as a new landmark for Sarajevo, close to top attractions and Sarajevo International Airport. The project, scheduled to open in early 2018, is being developed and operated by Al Shiddi International from Riyadh, one of the prominent investment companies in Saudi Arabia with an extensive portfolio of investments locally and globally featuring financial services, real estate, agriculture, manufacturing, industrial and retail. As a co-investor, IIB is proud of its association with Al Shiddi Group and Accor Hotels, and to see the development this very positive project, said a statement. This is an exciting new addition for the Swissotel brand and a perfect complement to our companys growing portfolio of city and resort destinations throughout Europe, said Duncan ORourke, COO Luxury Brands Europe for AccorHotels. In keeping with Swissotels brand promise of promoting quality in life, the resort will offer a very inspiring atmosphere which will be bolstered with local attributes authentic to the locale. To be pairing an unbelievable urban resort product with the growing organic paradise that Bosnian is becoming known for is nothing short of magic. We are extremely pleased to be partnering with AccorHotels on this new Swissotel resort project and look forward to working with them to create a truly world-class property, said Sulaiman Al Shiddi for Al Shiddi International. Bosnia is a thriving holiday discovery destination popular with travelers from all over the world who are looking for the ultimate mix of relaxation, adventure and cultural flair; Swissotel will deliver against this and more. Furthermore, National Geographic has published special addition Western Balkan: Land of Discovery with Bosnia prominently featured as its centerpiece. This agreement is a significant milestone in Sarajevo and will further strengthen the prospects for both business travel and the emerging tourism sector in Bosnia, added Subhi Benkhadra, CEO of International Investment Bank. Interiors are designed by Scott Brownrigg Associates, a leading UK hotel design firm with extensive experience in high end hotel development across Europe, the hotel will offer scenic all-glass views of the downtown and mountains with stunning guestrooms featuring spacious bedrooms. Completing the guest experience will be a private executive club, three exquisite dining outlets, the brands signature Purovel Spa & Sport, and 500 sq m (5,300 sq ft) of indoor meeting space with function areas. Surrounded by EU member Croatia, Bosnia is a country with a population of four million. It is one of the leading European new discovery vacation hotspots featuring an annual 20 per cent increase in tourist arrivals for the past five years. It has recently added several direct flights to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries as it hosts the world-famous Sarajevo Film Festival. Bosnia is renowned for its beautiful natural parks, pristine forest, Ottoman architectural treasures, extended waterfalls and rapids, an Unesco Mostar Bridge site, and distinctive coffee culture. TradeArabia News Service Mike and Jesse are adding interesting stuff to the blog in our spare time, so pardon the miscellany and lack of any organization. If you need to email about something (not hood ornaments) that isn't relevant to the comment section, e mail me at jbohjkl@yahoo.com, which will be responded to pretty fast on weekdays Images used IAW Title 17 U.S. Code 107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 This is under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license.See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode Bahrain's new real estate regulatory law, once endorsed and promulgated, would help stabilise the real estate sector and regulate the professions affiliated with it, said Deputy Premier Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa. Inaugurating the 3G exhibtions at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre, Shaikh Khalid urged members of parliament to pass the law. We rely on the wisdom of MPs to quickly endorse the draft legislation and pass it to the Shura Council," stated the Deputy Premier. Shaikh Khalid stressed the economic, social and regulatory importance of the law and future potential. The exhibitions are organised by Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE). He paid tribute to His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa for patronising the annual Gulf Construction Expo, Gulf Interiors and Gulf Property Show (together known as 3Gs), which he said reflects his keenness on supporting the real estate sectors and other subsidiaries. It is a good omen that the opening of the 3Gs coincides with the beginning of the parliamentary deliberations on the draft law, said Shaikh Khalid. He expressed the hope that the new law, once endorsed and promulgated, would help stabilise the real estate sector and regulate the professions affiliated with it. The bill which features more than 100 key articles was referred by the government to the legislative authority in May last year two years after the law 28 of 2014 on real estate development was passed, stated the Deputy Premier. Shaikh Khalid commended the 3Gs organisers, hailing the role of the private sector in boosting the specialised exhibition industry which turned Bahrain, along with its tourism potential, into an attractive regional and international destination. "The partnership between the public and private sectors has paid off, yielding fruitful dividends whose windfall boosts development and consolidate citizens welfare," he stated. The Deputy Premier welcomed the GCC, Arab and foreign exhibitors from 25 states, describing the 3Gs as a prime platform to showcase their innovative products and projects under the same roof to thousands of visitors. The three-in-one event, he said, represent a key opportunity to showcase the potential of local and GCC markets in the construction, interior designs and properties sectors, which may pave the way to launching joint Made in the Gulf Projects. HCE chairman Anwar M Abdulrahman paid tribute to HRH the Premier for patronising the exhibitions, thanking the Deputy Premier who inaugurated the 2017 edition on behalf of the Premier. He expressed delight at the Premiers auspices which, he said, reflects his keenness on supporting the private sector as it contributes to development and boost national economy. HCE managing director Jubran Abdulrahman paying tribute to the Premiers patronage and said that the acknowledged reputation of the exhibition attracted a growing number of exhibitors and visitors year on year. The 3Gs concept will provide an ideal marketing platform and an opportunity to communicate, interact and seal rewarding transactions in the sectors of construction, interior designs and properties, he added. The 3G exhibitions conclude tomorrow (April 27).-TradeArabia News Service New and innovative products and services for the building and construction sector and a number of interesting real estate projects are drawing crowds to the 3G exhibitions which opened in Bahrain today. Collectively known as the 3Gs, the exhibitions comprise the Gulf Construction Expo, the Gulf Interiors exhibition and the record-breaking Gulf Property Show. The 3Gs are being held under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain, and will run concurrently at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre until Thursday (April 27). Shaikh Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, inaugurated the region's high-profile event in the presence of senior government officials and other big players of the construction, real estate and interiors industry, taking part in the three-day event. After the inauguration, Shaikh Khalid toured the exhibition stands and appreciated the innovative products on display this year. The northern Gulf's biggest exhibitions showcasing the very best in construction, interiors and real estate has now expanded to include an evening festival, said the event organisers Hilal Conferences & Exhibitions (HCE) of Bahrain. As many as 140 local, regional and international exhibitors are taking part at the events, with the Gulf Property Show this year crossing a record 2,000 sq m for the very first time since its launch in 2013. This year, the trade shows will also feature an outdoor music and food festival in the evening as an added attraction for visitors and families, according to HCE. The three exhibitions are considered a valuable springboard into the multi-billion-dollar construction, interiors and real estate markets of the Northern Gulf, where the emphasis is on showcasing the latest products, services, technologies and projects available in the region. "We have already witnessed a 10 per cent increase in the number of visitors on the first day of the show, compared to last years figures, remarked Jubran Abdulrahman, managing director of Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE), the shows organiser. The Gulf Property Show, where property worth billions of dollars are being showcased, has seen a 20 per cent growth and we anticipate several deals to be signed by the close of the show, he added. Abdulrahman said this year's edition successfully continues the one-stop-shop concept. "Our aim is to promote the GCCs capacity across the construction, interiors and real estate sectors and support the economic vision of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, who continues to extend his patronage to our events," he stated. According to him, this year's edition of the shows has seen a real growth of participants from Bahrain and across the GCC looking to offer individuals and companies with a Made in the GCC option. The 3Gs will also feature a raft of special offers and deals from exhibitors, he added. HCE exhibitions director Ahmed Suleiman said: "Our exhibitors are aware that the shows represent a very good opportunity to sell their products and are looking to entice deal making at the shows with attractive offers." Gulf Construction Expo, Gulf Interiors and Gulf Property Show are open between 10 am and 9 pm till April 27 at the BIECC. Entrance is free.-TradeArabia News Service Bahrains leading real estate development company Manara said it has received an overwhelming response for two of its residential projects - Wadi Al Riffa and Hasabi - launched at the Gulf Property Show in Manama. Both projects - Hasabi, a sea view project, and Wadi Al Riffa, an affordably-priced property have been designed specifically to meet the demands of modern Bahraini families, and built as per the highest quality and environmental standards, it stated. As a strategic sponsor, Manara, will be playing a key role at Gulf Property Show, the boutique showcase for the real estate and property development sectors in the Northern Gulf. Dr Hasan Al Bastaki, the companys managing director, emphasized Manara's approach to continuously understand and fulfill the market needs in its residential projects that are aimed for young modern families. Moreover, the company ensures alignment with modern design and construction standards to ensure social and economical sustainability as a motto to its developments, he stated. According to him, the first project, Hasabi was designed in line with the most recent aesthetic and construction design standards. "Manara was keen on ensuring the highest design, construction as well as environmental quality standards in the projects presented at the exhibition in accordance with the requirements sought by Bahraini families," he noted. The multi-purpose Hasabi project boasts three- and four-bedroom residential units with sea views and each with a private jetty, in addition to commercial developments for sea-view restaurants and coffee shops to serve the needs of residents, in addition to beach facilities and residential buildings three and four floors high. As for Wadi Al Riffa, the project set at affordable rates, will consist of 130 attached villas with varying sizes over land areas of 180 sq m and a total building space of 235 sq m, and some villas constructed on a larger land area. "Wadi Al Riffa units are expected to launch its units for sale immediately after completion of the necessary permit approvals and other related formalities," explained Al Bastaki. "The expected timeline for civil works from start to completion is likely to take up to 24 months," he stated. These units have been designed to fulfill the requirements of modern Bahraini families who are beneficiaries of the social housing program 'Mazaya' offered by the Ministry of Housing in co-ordination with Al Eskan Bank," he added. Manara said it was amongst the first to respond to the governments encouragement to public and private sector partnerships towards the end of 2013. Al Salam Bank Bahrain, the parent company, has become an approved partner to provide suitable financing to its beneficiaries following a similar agreement with Eskan Bank, he added. Lauding the expo, Dr Al Bastaki said the company was backing the Gulf Property Show for the fifth consecutive year as a strategic sponsor. This comes as part of Manaras commitment to supporting all the activities that contribute to growing kingdoms real estate sector notwithstanding the recent government efforts that come through directives from the leadership to speed up the provision of residential opportunities for young families, he stated. "The great interest witnessed at the Manara stand exemplifies the trust of its customers in the quality of its projects and the support of its real estate development initiatives," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Militants launched 47 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. In Mariupol direction, militants used120mm mortars, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers and small arms to shell Ukrainian positions near the village of Shyrokyne. Ukrainian marines came grenade launcher and heavy machine gun fire outside Vodiane (16km north-west of Donetsk). In Donetsk direction, terrorists fired at Ukrainian strongholds in Troyitske, using 120mm and 82 mm mortars, antitank grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. Ukrainian servicemen in Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk) came under 82mm mortar, grenade launcher and heavy machine gun fire. In Luhansk direction, Russian-backed militants used 120mm artillery systems and antitank grenade launchers to shell Ukrainian positions near Novooleksandrivka (65km west of Luhansk). ish One soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was killed and six servicepersons were wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine over the past day. Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at a press briefing on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. "As a result of combat actions over the last day, one Ukrainian soldier was killed, six were wounded, he said. iy President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko had a meeting with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in the course of the working visit to the Republic of Belarus. The Presidents discussed a wide range of issues on bilateral cooperation, the press service of the Head of State reported. Petro Poroshenko noted that Ukraine and Belarus reached pretty good results in economic cooperation. Dynamics of growth of mutual trade turnover in 2016 demonstrates dramatic improvement of the economic situation in Ukraine. And dynamics of the first two months of this year is even more promising, the President said at the joint press conference. The Head of State noted that in the course of the meeting, the parties noted unique opportunities emerged from decentralization. Our Belarusian partners feel that for the first time in many years our territorial communities will have opportunities to purchase utility machinery, trolleybuses, other equipment that will make the streets of our cities cleaner and the life of their residents better, he added. The parties agreed to cooperate in humanitarian sphere. Several working groups will carry out sessions on sectoral cooperation. The parties agreed to interact in the sphere of energy security, maintain and increase the share of Belarusian presence in the oil market of Ukraine. ish Ukraine has entered the Top 5 ranking of the world's largest mustard producers, the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) reports, referring to the data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In particular, the world's largest exporters of mustard include Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Germany and India. The major importers of mustard are Germany, the United States, France, Nepal and Poland. Ukraine's mustard exports increased from 16.3 thousand tonnes in 2013 to 35.4 thousand tonnes in 2016. The record-breaking volume of mustard exports was recorded in 2015, totaling 45.3 thousand tonnes. In general, mustard seeds are annually collected in Canada (200 thousand tonnes), Nepal (150 thousand tonnes), Russia (90 thousand tonnes), Ukraine (40 thousand tonnes), Myanmar (40 thousand tonnes). mk Kyiv authorities expect that around 20,000 tourists will arrive to the city for the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, according to Anton Taranenko, the head of Kyiv City State Administration's tourism department. 20,000 tourists are expected [to arrive] for the song contest. About 15-18 thousand will be foreign tourists, and about 7-8 thousand more - domestic tourists," Taranenko said. As to the sale of tickets for the Eurovision, Taranenko said that over 30,000 tickets had been already purchased, of which a half was acquired by foreigners. According to him, in general, 30 thousand tourists, along with Ukrainian tourists, will visit the city of Kyiv on May 1-15. iy A new safe confinement at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant will be put into operation in November 2017. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said this in the course of events held to commemorate the Chornobyl disaster, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. "I would like to express gratitude to our international partners. With their support, a new safe confinement has already covered the old sarcophagus. The process of lifting the arch to its original position above the fourth power unit was completed in November 2016. We plan to put the confinement into operation in November of 2017," Poroshenko said. The President stressed that after putting into operation "this guarantees a minimum of 100 years of safe use, and it will protect us, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren." ish The European Union has launched a project to support police reform in Ukraine, which is designed to improve the cooperation of the police with local communities in 20 towns in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv regions. Interior Minister of Ukraine Arsen Avakov stated this at a press conference on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. The EU is launching a project Support to police reform in Ukraine worth EUR 6 million. The successful implementation of the project will ensure not only the efficient police work, but will also increase the level of public trust. We intend to start this work in three regions: Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv. Im interested in pilot projects to be most successful. We are taking systemic steps, and these issues are of principle for us, Avakov said. iy 04/26/2017 By Katharine Webster The recent history of Lowell is intertwined with the history of refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Bhutan. Yet much of the history of Southeast Asians in Lowell where they came from, why they came and the ways they created a new life here is at risk of being lost, says English Prof. Sue Kim. Their stories can provide students, scholars and the community with a better understanding of the human toll of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide, as well as the difficulties and triumphs involved in making a permanent home in a new country while still maintaining key aspects of their own culture, she says. Invaluable cultural heritage materials are in danger of being damaged, lost or thrown out, Kim says. We also want to document the stories of the elders, who are dying every day. Many of them dont want to talk about their pasts because its too traumatic. But community members are worried that their children and grandchildren wont know what they went through. Now, thanks to a $239,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the university libraries and the Center for Asian American Studies will set up a digital archive to preserve much of that history. A digital archive is sustainable and easily shareable with students, scholars and the community, Kim says. A $28,000 Creative Economy Fund grant from the UMass president's office will help make the archive publicly accessible, especially to students, through lessons, teacher trainings, community workshops and an updated exhibit at the Lowell National Historical Park. The Southeast Asian Digital Archive will include about 63,000 images of newspapers, documents, books and posters and nearly 620 hours of audio and audiovisual recordings, many of them donated by eight organizations, including the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, the Angkor Dance Troupe and the Southeast Asian Water Festival. Photo by Higgins and Ross Photo by Higgins and Ross The hair-cutting ceremony at the wedding of UML Asian Studies lecturer George Chigas and Cambodian refugee Sovann-Thida Loeung, the first marriage between a non-Cambodian and a Cambodian in Lowell. Some materials will be new, while some are already in the libraries collections but arent catalogued, digitized, organized or searchable. The archive will also incorporate the existing Indochinese Refugee Foundation Archives at the universitys Center for Lowell History. The archives include documents from the foundation, which helped resettle a massive influx of mostly Cambodian refugees starting in the mid-1970s. Lowell now has the second-largest population of Cambodian-Americans in the country. What distinguishes a library is the collections it has that no one else has, says Mehmed Ali, the libraries assistant director for digital initiatives and a co-investigator on the NEH grant. For UMass Lowell, thats the Indochinese Refugee Foundation collection and now the Southeast Asian Digital Archive. Its part of celebrating our legacy as a university and a city. The grant grew out of discussions with Southeast Asian community and organization leaders, who will be heavily involved in deciding what to preserve as part of the Southeast Asian Digital Archive advisory board. We will be led by the community and their concerns and needs, Kim says. Most of the grant will go toward hiring a full-time archivist for two years to set up the digital infrastructure for the collection, so that it is searchable and can grow. Money is also needed for translation of key documents. Photo by Higgins and Ross Photo by Higgins and Ross Cambodian refugee children at the former Sacred Heart school building on Moore Street in Lowell. Kim, who is co-director of the Center for Asian American Studies with Assoc. Prof. Ivy Ho, is the primary investigator on the grant. Other major co-investigators include digital librarian Tony Sampas, Asst. Prof. of Education Phitsamay Uy and George Chigas, senior lecturer in World Languages and Cultures. UMass Amherst librarian Laura Quilter will also provide training and consultation on copyright issues. Faculty and librarians will also involve university and local high school students as interns, researchers and assistant archivists, Kim says. They will collect oral histories, scan images and add metadata so that the archives are searchable, do primary research and help catalog the materials. Cement factory likely to be delayed due to govt apathy Construction of the Hongshi Shivam Cement factory, a Nepal-China joint venture, is likely to be delayed as the government has been slow to build a road leading to the limestone quarry. Fire at Tiger Brewery, property worth Rs 50m gutted A fire broke out at manufacturing plant of Tiger Brewery Pvt Ltd's plant in Mainhiya of Rupandehi district on Thursday. At the Orbic school in the Romanian town of Buhusi, many of the students come from disadvantaged homes where they don't receive educational support. One teacher is helping give these children the care and attention they need to succeed in school and in life. BUHUSI, Romania, 26 April 2017 "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "Miss!" say the children in unison, looking at their teacher who is also a mentor and sometimes even a parental figure for the 14 students in the preparatory class of Orbic school, in the town of Buhusi, Romania. Hearing these words, the womans face lights up, revealing both pride and kindness. "As long as I am at school, I am their mother, especially because many children cant enjoy their parents presence at home, as they are at work, abroad. Children know that whenever they feel like it, we can hug," says Alina Manaila, their teacher. Mrs. Manaila left her hometown of Bacau five years ago to be with her husband in Buhusi, and has since built a life teaching pupils and day by day, helping to shape their future. Today, the classroom is abuzz because they have a special visitor: UNICEF Romania National Ambassador Andrei Tiberiu Maria, known more commonly by his stage name, Smiley. He is one of the most popular and appreciated pop artists in Romania. Smiley joins the students in their class activities, including an exercise that involves drawing a potato with a cotton swab. The children gather around and look on in amusement. "What do we do if Smiley is not doing so well in drawing?" asks the teacher. "We help him!" answer the children. A massive explosion in Syria early Thursday hit near the Damascus International Airport, resulting in a fire and questions about its cause. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria, said the blast did not happen at the airport itself, but could be heard within the city of Damascus 25 kilometers away. Lebanon's pro-Hezbollah al-Manar television said the explosion was the result of airstrikes by Israeli warplanes, while Syrian state media said Israeli missiles hit the site. Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz did not say Israel was responsible, but said "it absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement." Throughout the Syrian war, which began in March 2011, Israel has made it clear it would not allow shipments of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah units fighting in Syria. Israeli forces have on multiple occasions used airstrikes or other attacks to stop such moves, with the military often declining to confirm it was responsible for the strikes. Hezbollah and Israel fought each other in the 2006 Lebanon War. Hezbollah fighters have openly fought in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad since 2013. Indias plans to invest in a strategic port in Sri Lanka as a counterbalance to Chinas massive infrastructure investments in the Indian Ocean island country got a push Wednesday as Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited New Delhi. Chinas development of the key Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, which is a gateway to crucial shipping lanes, has raised concerns in New Delhi about Beijings widening naval influence in its neighborhood. In New Delhi, India and Sri Lanka signed a memorandum of understanding on economic cooperation and expressed commitment to its implementation. Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Gopal Baglay, tweeted that it signaled deepening economic collaboration. The specific deal to develop the World War II oil storage facility in the eastern port of Trincomalee, South Asias deepest natural harbor, is expected to be signed next month when Modi visits Colombo. Although Indias planned investment in energy infrastructure in Trincomalee will be far more modest compared to Beijings ambitious Hambantota project, analysts say it will enable New Delhi to secure a foothold and ensure that no other country uses the harbor for military purposes. While Colombo has assured India that Hambantota will be used only for commercial activity, its potential use as a naval base worries New Delhi. Those worries have intensified since a Chinese submarine docked briefly in Colombo port in 2014. India has long fretted about Chinas expanding foothold in the Indian Ocean region through infrastructure projects in countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We find that India is now getting more and more strategically encircled by economic infrastructure projects, according to Vijay Sakhuja, Director of the National Maritime Foundation in New Delhi. Besides Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, he points to Chinas building of Gwadar port in Pakistan. Warning that these projects, built to facilitate trade, also have a strategic element, he says, We should not be surprised by frequent PLA [Peoples Liberation Army] navy presence in the Indian Ocean, particularly in Gwadar, which will cause some discomfort to the naval planners in New Delhi. For Sri Lanka, Indias planned investment in the energy project in Trincomalee will help counterbalance the massive infrastructure deals signed with China by the former government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had leaned heavily toward Beijing. The spin off of that [project] is balancing what is perceived as predominant Chinese influence as far as the economy is concerned, said Paikiasothy Saravanumuttu at the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. The new government is trying to move away from the heavy dependance on Beijing for foreign investment. During a recent visit to Tokyo, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe sought Japanese investment for the Colombo and Trincomalee ports. A low-cost and widely available drug could save the lives of 1 in 3 mothers who would otherwise bleed to death after childbirth, according to a new study. Severe bleeding, known as postpartum hemorrhage, or PPH, is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide, killing more than 100,000 women every year. Even for mothers who survive, it is a painful and traumatic experience. The world's poorest countries, especially in Africa and India, are the worst hit. Drug from 1960s But there is new hope. In the 1960s, Japanese researchers developed a drug called tranexamic acid, which works by stopping blood clots from breaking down. But they could not persuade doctors to try the drug for treating PPH. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has done just that, in a trial involving 20,000 women in 21 countries, mainly in Africa and Asia. The results show tranexamic acid reduces the risk of bleeding to death by almost a third, with no side effects for either mothers or babies. Dr. Nike Bello, a consultant obstetrician and gynecologist in Nigeria, said that "if a drug can prevent hysterectomies, a drug can prevent death, a drug can minimize the amount of blood we need, then that is a good thing, all over the world." Refinements needed But there are challenges to getting the drug where it is needed. First, the doctors must know about its effectiveness, said professor Ian Roberts of the London tropical medicine school, who led the latest research. "We want everyone to hear about the results," he said. "But then there are the nitty-gritty issues. Is the treatment available in the hospital? Do doctors and midwives know how to use it? It is heat stable, so it does not have to be kept in the fridge. It is relatively inexpensive it is about a dollar. And no child should grow up without a mother for lack of a treatment that costs a dollar." In the trial, tranexamic acid was given via a drip. Researchers say the next step is to find an easier way to administer the drug so it can be used in clinics and rural settings across the world. What is the controversy surrounding North Korea? Washington and Pyongyang have moved closer to the brink of conflict over the growing nuclear threat on the Korean Peninsula. Since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January 2016, neither Washington nor Pyongyang seem willing to make any conciliatory gestures. Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. rallied international support for increased sanctions against the North Korean government. Pyongyang responded by accelerating nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Earlier this month at a massive military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea showed off what appeared to be new forms of ballistic missile technology, which it hopes will soon be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States. President Donald Trump has further increased pressure by emphasizing possible military strikes to prevent North Korea from developing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland. What is the United States doing to address escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula? Trump and U.S. officials have repeatedly said all options remain "on the table" to deal with further North Korean provocations. Trump said the Security Council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. "North Korea is a big world problem, and it's a problem we have to finally solve," Trump said recently. "People have put blindfolds on for decades, and now it's time to solve the problem." The comments came after Trump made his latest round of separate telephone calls to the leaders of Japan, China and Germany to discuss concerns about North Korea. Which countries are involved? Trump has had discussions with the leaders of Japan, China and Germany about the threat posed by North Korea. A phone call this week between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was meant to increase pressure on Pyongyang not to engage in further provocative actions, but was not prompted by any significant change in the situation, according to officials in Tokyo. Abe also said he and Trump agreed that a larger role in dealing with Pyongyang should be played by China. Trump subsequently spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping about North Korea. In their conversation Sunday, the Chinese president said he hopes all sides avoid doing anything to worsen the tense situation on the Korean peninsula, according to the Xinhua news agency. In addition, the U.S. and China are launching four rounds of talks, as Trump heads to China later this year in a visit aimed at strengthening cooperation to reduce tensions in the Korean Peninsula. What is being done to address the nuclear problem in North Korea? The United Nations slapped economic sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and is now considering tougher measures, including a global ban on Air Koryo, the country's state-run airline, to punish North Korea for its continuing weapons tests. During his visit to the North Korean border earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence announced that Washington's strategy of so-called "strategic patience" is over with the North. The U.S. and its allies for decades have tried variations of that strategy without much success. North Korea's authoritarian leaders have continued to conduct nuclear and missile tests, seeing the programs as crucial to their survival. This week, Pence said the U.S. is not interested in talks or minor concessions from the North, and all options, including a military strike, are on the table. That is a change in tone for Trump, who during the presidential campaign said he was open to talking with North Korea, and would even invite Kim Jong Un, the country's young leader, to the U.S. for negotiations. What is the desired endgame? The Trump administration has repeatedly expressed its displeasure with what it calls North Korea's "belligerence" and "provocations" in the region and vowed to defend U.S. ally South Korea. Coordinating efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and addressing the threat posed by North Korea's missile and nuclear programs are chief among U.S. interests in this confrontation. The administration has described its policy toward North Korea as one of "maximum pressure and engagement." The policy heavily emphasizes the use of economic pressure from China in an effort to bring the country's nuclear program to an end, though the administration has released few other details. How would North Korea respond to a U.S. strike on its nuclear program? While North Korea doesn't possess the capability to prevent a U.S. strike on its nuclear program, it could easily retaliate and inflict significant damage on nearby nations, according to a recent report from Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. Upon engagement, North Korea's immediate reaction would most likely be to start barraging Seoul with artillery fire, the report said, resulting in at least a partial destruction of the city. North Korea's artillery capabilities are limited, though, by technical failures and practical issues. About a quarter of its shells and rockets failed to detonate on target in past artillery skirmishes with South Korea, and poorly trained artillery crews wouldn't be able to keep up the rate of fire needed to perform a successful barrage campaign, the report added. The North also possesses more than 1,000 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Seoul and targets much further away, including U.S. military positions in Japan. The most significant threat from the North's ballistic capabilities comes from its ability to fasten nuclear warheads on the missiles. A single nuclear strike on the South would likely result in massive casualties and destruction. An African Union tribunal in Senegal has rejected the appeal of former-Chadian president Hissene Habre, who was convicted last year of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Malian Supreme Court Judge Ougadeye Wafi delivered the verdict on the appeal Thursday. Former Chadian president Hissene Habres conviction for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture stands. The court overturned his conviction for rape. Habre will serve his sentence: life in prison. He has been ordered to pay $135 million in reparations to over 7,000 victims and relatives of victims. A few of the 100 victims who testified during the trial were present in the court Thursday. Souleymane Guengueng suffered two years of imprisonment and torture during the Habre regime. He founded a victims association in Chad and began gathering testimony of other survivors soon after Habre was toppled in a coup in 1990 and fled to Senegal. Guengueng says he feels satisfaction and victory. But he says now we have to make sure the reparations are paid. This is what I am expecting and only then will I be completely satisfied. Habre was not in the court Thursday. He has refused to recognize the courts authority, and his lawyers did not take part in the trial. The court-appointed defense said it was not surprised by the outcome of the appeal. Habres court-appointed attorney, Mounir Balal, says the judgment was to be expected. My team and I made it a point to focus on the rape charges, and they were dropped. For the rest, nothing changes. Habre ruled Chad for eight years during which rights groups estimate he was responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people before he was deposed in 1990. Thursdays verdict marked the end to a more than two-decade campaign by Habres victims to bring him to justice. The Extraordinary African Chambers was created within the Senegalese justice system to try Habre in 2013. It was funded by the international community. The trial began in July 2015. Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina is lead counsel for the victims. She says the verdict today sends a strong message to all African dictators. It is possible for little people to bring big fish to justice. Watch out, she says, you will no longer remain unpunished. This was a trial of firsts the first time an African leader was tried on African soil by an African court. For some, the Habre trial could represent a new model for justice as the International Criminal Court faces resistance from some African countries. Reed Brody is an American lawyer who has worked with Habres victims since 1999. He says, this is about multiplying the pathways that lead to justice. What is important is to give victims hope and to show them that justice can be made on the African continent. Earlier this week, Habre victims traveled to Banjul to meet victims of alleged abuses under Gambias former president, Yahya Jammeh, who fled to Equatorial Guinea in January after a regional standoff over the disputed election. Clement Abaifouta is the president of the Chadian Victims Association. He says the [Habre] ruling is the outcome of 26 years of hard work. Now we are available to help others. We are going to offer our experience to Gambia so they too can find justice. Habre will serve his sentence in Senegal or another country in the African Union. Second Anniversary of Gorkha Earthquake: Govt for building back better Nepal Emphasising on the Build Back Better (BBB) recovery, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) on Wednesday shed lights on recovery and reconstruction works in the last two years to mark the second anniversary of the Gorkha Earthquake. Turkish authorities say they have arrested more than 1,000 people and suspended 9,100 policemen in an accelerated crackdown on alleged supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen. The government blames the exiled cleric for orchestrating last year's failed military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Officials said Wednesday 1,009 "secret imams" who infiltrated the police and other state-run agencies were arrested. More than 9,100 police personnel suspected of being Gulen backers were suspended. "In Turkey, there was an attempted coup with a goal of toppling the government and destroying the state," Erdogan told the Reuters News Agency. "We are trying to cleanse members of FETO inside the armed forces, inside the judiciary, and inside the police," he said using the government's acronym for the Gulen group. Turkey has arrested or fired more than 160,000 alleged coup organizers and participants since last July. Gulen, who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, denies playing any part in the coup. The State Department has balked at Turkey's demand for his extradition, citing a lack of concrete evidence. The latest arrests come a little more than a week after Turkish voters narrowly approved a referendum to expand Erdogan's presidential powers and weaken parliament a move the opposition says could destroy Turkish democracy and secular traditions. Supporters say it will bring stability to Turkey after years of political uncertainty that came with power-sharing coalition governments. This month saw hundreds of Ugandan shop owners march in Kampala against Chinese traders. Local merchants and some city officials want foreigners barred from petty commerce. The government has promised to address the long standing tensions. Inexpensive Chinese goods are common in the markets of downtown Kampala, where locals operate small businesses selling the imported merchandise. But it has also become increasingly common for Chinese in Uganda to set up shops selling the same items, only cheaper. Local shop owner Everest Kayondo, the Kampala Capital City Traders Association chairman, says it is time the government barred foreigners from petty trade. If your manufacturer who has been selling to you establishes a shop in your home country and is doing both retail and wholesale, you will be ruled out of business. Number two, China is also having a policy of giving tax rebates to their nationals. Once they export, the Chinese will be entitled to a tax rebate, which will make their goods a lot cheaper than their Ugandan counterparts, Kayondo said. Uganda has seen sporadic protests on this issue since 2009. Some Chinese have since been deported for working in the country illegally. But local traders say that is not enough. Last week, they took to Kampala streets blowing whistles and carrying placards with slogans like Leave our markets. Government officials were able to talk the traders out of holding a three-day strike. There is no law in Uganda prohibiting foreigners with work permits from engaging in petty trade. But Ugandan traders complain about foreigners, especially Chinese nationals, who they say come into the country claiming to be large-scale investors, but set up small businesses without proper registration. Within or outside the law? VOA spoke to Chinas ambassador to Uganda, Zheng Zhu Qiang, who insisted the traders are not breaking any laws. Chinese businessmen are within the legal bordering and no one violates the law, but there is phenomenon because someone is not happy. I think we should resolve this issue by law. And another thing is that, as far as I know, if you import tiles from China, there is tax. It is groundless to say that Chinese traders do not pay tax, Zheng said. Uganda State Minister for Investment and Privatization at the Ministry of Finance, Evelyn Anite, says the ministry is looking into the issue. It is not anywhere in our policy that we want foreigners to come and trade in the country. We want these foreigners to come and invest in our country as investors. And that is why we are working on our investment policy. And when we license an investor we do not want them to end [up] downtown. And for us to even give you an investment license, we want to see that you are having a bank guarantee from a reputable bank in your country or from Uganda of not less than $250,000. According to Ministry of Trade statistics, China is Ugandas second largest source of imports, after India, and second largest source of foreign direct investment, a total of $9.8 billion since 1993 according to the Uganda Investment Authority. Most of this money has been through loans for construction of major infrastructure projects such as the hydropower dams and the Entebbe express highway. Venezuelan security forces fired scores of tear gas volleys and turned water cannons on rock-throwing protesters on a bridge in Caracas on Wednesday as the death toll from this month's anti-government unrest hit at least 29. A 20-year-old male demonstrator died in those latest clashes in the capital after being hit by a gas canister, said officials of the eastern Chacaco district. Government authorities also announced two new fatalities from clashes earlier this week: a 22-year-old who received various gunshot wounds at a protest in Valencia city, and a 28-year-old government supporter shot in the stomach in Tachira state. The wave of protests since early April against socialist President Nicolas Maduro have sparked Venezuela's worst violence since 2014. Demonstrators want elections to end the socialists' two-decade rule, but the South American nation's brutal economic crisis is also fueling anger. "I want everything to end: the hunger, the murders, the corruption, all the ills we are suffering. We have to stay in the street until there is change. We are the majority," said student Ricardo Ropero, 20, at a march in Caracas. Red-shirted supporters of Maduro, the 54-year-old former bus driver who succeeded Hugo Chavez in 2013, also rallied on the streets of the capital, punching their fists in the air and denouncing opposition "terrorists." Maduro says his foes are seeking a violent coup, with U.S. connivance, like a short-lived 2002 putsch against Chavez. Battle on bridge Amid another day of nationwide opposition rallies, the worst trouble in Caracas on Wednesday occurred when National Guard troops and police blocked off a highway where several thousand demonstrators were marching downtown. On a bridge in east Caracas, they fired dozens of tear gas canisters, which masked youths picked up to hurl back at them or into a nearby trash-strewn river. Traffic once again ground to a standstill as the zone resounded to the familiar sounds of the near-daily clashes. When water cannons were turned on the marchers, they fell back and skirmishes spread to surrounding streets through the afternoon. Opposition leaders accuse Maduro of seizing dictatorial powers and unleashing repression on peaceful protesters, but the opposition's ranks do include groups of youths who hunt for trouble, hurling Molotov cocktails or burning property. As well as wanting a general election, Maduro's opponents are demanding the release of jailed activists, humanitarian aid to help offset shortages of food and medicine, and autonomy for the opposition-led legislature. More than 1,500 people have been arrested during the protests this month, with 800 still detained, according to rights group Penal Forum. Maduro narrowly won election in 2013 against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, but the economic crisis has battered his public approval ratings since then. The latest data from pollster Datanalisis, cited by a client, showed Maduro's popularity edged up a couple of points to 24.1 percent in March, possibly due to the impact of subsidized food distribution bags known as CLAPs. He has called for local state elections, postponed from 2016, to be held soon, but has shown no sign of supporting an early presidential election. The opposition now has majority support and the ruling Socialists would likely lose any vote. Zambia's opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema has been behind bars for two weeks. He will remain there as a judge in Magistrate's Court said Wednesday he did not have the power to rule on a defense motion to drop the charge of treason. Zambia does not allow bail for treason cases. The spokesman for Hichilema's UPND party, Charles Kakoma, told VOA Wednesday the defense has filed another application to dispute the treason charge before another magistrate court. Those proceedings were adjourned until Thursday. Amnesty International has criticized the case as political persecution through prosecution and called for Hichilema's immediate release. We also can see that the state is struggling to formulate the treason charge, given the continued changes in the structure of the treason charges, said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International's Regional Director for Southern Africa. So I am not calling for the president to intervene in any kind of thing. I am just calling for charges to be dropped because there are no bases to sustain the charges. Interference of president's motorcade In the charge sheet before the court Wednesday, the prosecution said the treason charge stems from an incident on April 8 in which Hichilema's motorcade failed to give way to the president's. The prosecution accuses Hichilema and five members of his staff of collaborating with 60 others in obstructing President Edgar Lungu's motorcade in a way that could cause harm or death to the president. Hichilema's United Party for National Development has rejected the charge. This is the second time the opposition leader has been arrested since disputed elections in August. Hichilema refused to recognize Lungu as the winner. His detention this month has caused political tensions to climb again. Several incidents of public buildings being set alight have been reported. A matter for the courts Some have called for Lungu to release Hichilema, but presidential spokesman Amos Chanda told VOA's Daybreak Africa Wednesday that is a matter for the courts. The position of the president remains the same, Chanda said. That he respects the due process of the law and that his intervention in any court matter is only possible once the due process of the law is complete. If convicted on treason charges, Hichilema faces a minimum jail term of 15 years. The maximum sentence is the death penalty. Support us - Help us upgrade our services! Maintaining our website and our free apps does require, however, considerable time and resources. We're aiming to achieve uninterrupted service wherever an earthquake or volcano eruption unfolds, and your donations can make it happen! Every donation will be highly appreciated. Improved multilanguage support Tsunami alerts Faster responsiveness Design upgrade Detailed quake stats Additional seismic data sources Download and Upgrade the Volcanoes & Earthquakes app to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online: Android | IOS to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online: We truly love working to bring you the latest volcano and earthquake data from around the world.We need financing to increase hard- and software capacity as well as support our editor team.If you find the information useful and would like to support our team in integrating further features, write great content, and in upgrading our soft- and hardware, please PayPal or Online credit card payment )., these features have been added recently: TECHNOLOGY Bono joins investors backing D.C. tech firm EverFi, the D.C.-based technology company behind online courses in subjects such as alcohol safety and sexual assault prevention, said Wednesday it has taken in $190 million and added U2 frontman Bono to its list of investors. Chief executive Tom Davidson said he plans to use the massive lump of cash to take on more problems, such as opioid abuse. Were really trying to prove that you can build something that does incredibly meaningful work in schools but also be a really great software business, Davidson said. The bulk of the new money came from the Rise Fund, a project of Silicon Valley venture fund TPG Growth that invests in private companies seeking to accomplish broader social mission. The fund has attracted the participation of Richard Branson and Laurene Powell Jobs alongside Bono and others. Investors have poured $251 million into EverFi. The firms courses reach an audience of about 16 million via a few thousand large organizations that pay annual fees of up to $1 million or more. Aaron Gregg Internet Twitter gains users, but revenue declines Twitter showed signs of new life in the first quarter, reporting that average monthly active users rose 6 percent from last year to 328 million. The number of daily users has been rising at a faster pace each quarter for the past year, Twitter said, helped this year by new and resurrected users following more news and political accounts, especially in the United States. Chief executive Jack Dorsey defied investor expectations by reviving user growth. Now he has to do the same for revenue, as Twitter posted its first quarterly decline since going public in 2013. In the past year, Twitter sold its Fabric developer services business to Google, shut down its Tellapart ad tech offering and cut some planned products. Those reductions helped focus the business but will make it harder for revenue to recover, chief operating officer Anthony Noto said on a call with investors. Right now . . . we dont see an improvement in our growth rate for revenue, he said. First-quarter earnings came in at 11 cents a share, well ahead of the 1 cent analysts estimated. Twitter reported first-quarter revenue of $548 million. Bloomberg Also in Business Boeing topped expectations for first-quarter profit, but the aerospace giants sales fell short of forecasts. Boeing said Wednesday that it earned $1.45 billion in the first quarter. Excluding non-repeating gains, the profit came to $2.01 per share. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was $1.91 per share. Revenue was $20.98 billion. Analysts expected $21.44 billion. Boeing blamed the disappointing sales number on delayed deliveries of commercial and defense aircraft. Revenue from sales of military planes plunged 28 percent, to $2.64 billion. Boeing shares fell about 1 percent in Wednesday trading. The Ivanka Trump brand clothing manufacturer said it accepts responsibility for Ivanka Trump clothing that was relabeled as the work of a different designer. G-III Apparel Group said it was removing the mislabeled items sold at discount retailer Stein Mart. It said the relabeling to the Adrienne Vittadini brand occurred without the knowledge or consent of the Ivanka Trump organization, but did not say how the error occurred. Stein Mart said it was working with G-III to resolve the issue. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment. Nordstrom is getting dragged through the mud on social media for selling a pair of dirty-looking jeans for $425. The department stores website says the jeans have a caked-on muddy coating to embody rugged, Americana workwear. Social media users criticized Nordstrom, saying the high-priced jeans mocked blue-collar workers. On Facebook, Mike Rowe, who hosted the show Dirty Jobs, called the jeans a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic. From news reports Coming today 8:30 a.m.: Commerce Department releases durable goods for March. 10 a.m.: Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates. 10 a.m.: National Association of Realtors releases pending home sales index for March. Earnings: Amazon Alphabet, American Airlines, Ford, Microsoft, Southwest, Starbucks, UPS. President Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that the United States would not be pulling out of the North American Free Trade Agreement at this time, opening the door to future negotiations on the same day that Trump was considering signaling a strong intent to withdraw as a potential way of bringing the parties to the dealmaking table. But Trump said NAFTAs three-nation partnership could still hang in the balance if the talks do not produce a fair deal for all. If we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good deal very possible! Trump wrote in a tweet posted early Thursday. Trump spoke with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late Wednesday afternoon after reports circulated during the day that the president was contemplating withdrawing from NAFTA. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries, the White House said in a statement late Wednesday. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) News that Trump was weighing withdrawing from NAFTA drew sharp criticism from several Republican leaders, including Sen. Jeff Flake (R) and Sen. John McCain (R). McCain tweeted that Trump shouldnt abandon this vital trade agreement. Earlier, three people familiar with the matter said Trump is seriously considering signing a document within days that would signal his intent to withdraw the United States from the agreement within six months. If signed, the letter would begin a formal process that could see the United States exit the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico, ratcheting up tensions among neighboring nations. Signing the document does not require Trump to withdraw from NAFTA after six months, but it is a required step if he plans to eventually do so. The White House is expected to soon take a separate step by signing a letter to Congress that would notify lawmakers of the administrations intention to renegotiate NAFTA. By taking both steps, the White House would give itself more flexibility to choose a different outcome in several months. Any move by Trump on NAFTA would not come as a surprise. The president made criticism of NAFTA one of the main topics of his campaign last year, calling the pact a disaster for our country and saying it had to be totally gotten rid of. But the NAFTA issue did seem to lose some urgency after the first few weeks of Trumps presidency as his administration focused on other topics. Some people were hopeful that just like he revised his views on NATO, hed revise his views on this, said Hoyt Bleakley, associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan. But clearly he hasnt. In recent days Trump also has taken a harder line with Canada, blasting a recent change in the dairy pricing policy there that mostly dealt with a cheese-making product called ultrafiltered milk. In Wisconsin last week, Trump called Canadas dairy pricing scheme another typical one-sided deal against the U.S. Canada disputed that. And the Commerce Department said Monday that it would begin charging a tariff on the import of softwood lumber from Canada into the United States, alleging Canada was improperly subsidizing its domestic timber firms. But there was no panic over the fate of NAFTA in the Calgary offices of the Canadian Cattlemens Association, whose members sell and buy plenty of beef cattle across the border. This is his typical way of doing things saying completely unreasonable things as a negotiating posture, said John Masswohl, the trade groups director of government and international relations. Masswohl said he watched how Trump handled issues at the Carrier plant in Indiana and with Fords plans to build car models in Mexico. He sees similar rhetoric in Trumps approach to NAFTA. Ive got to believe this is a negotiating position, Masswohl said, because the trade pact might need tweaking, but it has been good for both countries. Separately, the Trump administration Wednesday made another move on trade that seemed aimed at China, launching an investigation into the effect of aluminum imports on U.S. national security interests. A similar probe, known as a Section 232 investigation, was announced for foreign-made steel last week. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Wednesday that Trump would be signing a directive today urging the inquiry. Ross said aluminum was a national security interest because the metal in its high-purity form is used in military planes such as the F-35 and F-18, plus armor plating for military vehicles and combat vessels. Just one U.S. smelter makes high-purity aluminum, producing enough for peacetime military needs but not enough if the country enters into conflicts, he said. Its very dangerous from a defense point of view to have only one supplier of an absolutely critical element, Ross said. Only two U.S. smelters are fully operational today, with eight others having curtailed operations or closed since 2015. Imported aluminum accounted for 55 percent of the U.S. market last year, the largest market share ever and a steep increase over recent years, Ross said. The largest importers of aluminum into the United States are China followed by Russia, United Arab Emirates and Canada, Ross said. Aluminum imports from China, in particular, have been a focus of the U.S. government for months. Late last year, a bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators asked for a national security review of Chinese aluminum giant Zhongwang International Group Ltd.s proposed $2.3 billion purchase of U.S. aluminum products maker Aleris, alleging the deal would damage the U.S. defense industry. In January, days before leaving office, President Barack Obama launched a World Trade Organization complaint about Chinese aluminum subsidies that, the United States claimed, gave Chinese companies an unfair advantage. And last month, U.S. producers of aluminum foil including the kind used to wrap kitchen leftovers filed an anti-dumping complaint against China, claiming the United States was being flooded with unfair, cheap imports. Foil prices have declined significantly in recent years due to widespread and significant underselling of U.S. producers prices, according to the complaint. A couple of weeks later, Trumps Commerce Department announced that it was investigating those and other unfair trade claims. Andrew White is enormous. Not in stature hes tall and slender but in expressiveness. For example, his wardrobe at Blues Alley on Wednesday night comprised a salmon-colored jacket, red pants, a splashy red-and-yellow shirt and a white tie, with two gold medals hanging around his neck along with his saxophone. And his music was even louder and more intense than his fashion. D.C.s White performs at Blues Alley every April (i.e., Jazz Appreciation Month), although this year carries extra weight: the multi-instrumentalist turns 75 this summer. Age has done nothing to dim his persona. Even his introduction was ostentatious: My name is Andrew Nathaniel White III, he boomed, and I am the most voluminously productive self-industrialized musician in history! (Its probably true: White boasts a catalogue of 2,900 self-produced documents.) It matched his playing on alto and tenor saxophones, both with the same signatures: huge, bellowing tone that drifted freely in and out of tune; embrace of coarseness and sometimes overblowing; and widely-spaced vibrato that sounds like no one else. Yes, it was noisy. White and drummer Nasar Abadey were so loud that they often obscured veteran Washington pianist Wade Beach and bassist Steve Novosel: It was several minutes before one could tell that Superfly Blues was indeed a twelve-bar blues. There was more room for the rhythm section and even a rippling piano solo on the ballad Theme for Ernie. The slow song also gave White a chance to show how versatile his power playing could be: on his own solo, he somehow injected pathos into the tune without showing the merest glimpse of subtlety. (Ironically, White would later betray subtlety with the alto sax-piano duet Anna Maes Chicken, a tune which itself was not subtle.) Most of the time White made this work, perhaps through the (obviously immense) force of his will. The zeal of his takes on From Shanghai to Bangkok and Girl of the Night crossed over into humor intentionally so, with the saxophonist swaying his hips to the burlesque rhythms, and Afro Blue recalled the modal maelstroms of Whites hero, John Coltrane, who made the best known recording of the song. Not quite as successful was Say! When Are You Coming Back? on which Whites volume simply clashed with the softness of the band (including brushes from the otherwise-thunderous Abadey). Power and passion, in short, were Whites modus operandi. He transformed them into musicality, and had a great time doing it as he let the audience know at the close of the first set. Weve got another set, totally different music, he announced. Were gonna have a ball. PM Dahal clarifies local units withdrawal decision to Gathabandan Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Thursday held a meeting with leaders of Sanghiya Gathabandan in the wake of latters dissatisfaction over governments announcement to not increase the number of local units immediately. From left, Ksenia Rappoport, Elizaveta Boyarskaya and Irina Tychinina in Maly Drama Theatres Three Sisters, at the Kennedy Center through Sunday. (Kennedy Center) The Three Sisters at the Kennedy Centers Eisenhower Theater this week is exactly what you imagine a major Russian staging of Anton Chekhovs classic would be: stately, emotional and powered by three spectacularly passionate actresses. These are the sisters who idle unhappily in a small town, flirt with (and in one case marry) the wrong man and dream madly of someday moving back to their beloved cosmopolitan Moscow. In Lev Dodins blunt, mesmerizing production from the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, the rare kisses are rapt, swift-changing mini-dramas. When Elizaveta Boyarskayas Irina, the youngest sister, prays for Moscow, the spin she puts on the citys name is a surprisingly complicated yelp of hope and ache. Washington is more than primed for this substantial Chekhov (and to judge by the voices in the aisles and lobby during Wednesdays packed opening, the local Russian population is coming out in force). Faithful productions and ultra-loose adaptations have surged here in recent seasons, and this Three Sisters concludes a pop-up spring semester narrowed on this single play. Studio Theatre just wrapped up its own Three Sisters, which was performed exactly in tandem with Aaron Posners modern reply on another stage upstairs, No Sisters. Dodins production, performed in Russian with projected surtitles, is deceptively chatty. It plays out against the facade of a wooden house that the occupants apparently cant stand. Otherwise, why would they spend practically all their time hanging out on the front steps leading down into the audience? Dodin displays a genius for clustering characters into intimate groups. Repeatedly, the sisters young Irina, the glamorous middle sister Masha and the old-before-her-time Olga huddle on the steps, often surrounded by family, a few soldiers stationed in the town and assorted hangers-on. The steps are a handy place for the confidences and philosophizing that have always been Chekhovs particularly modern brand of writing. Dodins show acknowledges Chekhovs absurdist streaks, but the black comedy that often seems so attractive to American interpreters instead feeds the characters sincere cosmic bafflement and bottomless well of suffering. The characters here are practically in a void: There is scarcely any furniture (a dining-room table that everyone jumps away from when they notice they number an unlucky 13), and there are practically no props (among them a samovar stuffed with flowers). Characters often languish in the window frames of Alexander Borovskys house-frame set, overhearing conversations and adding their own sarcastic groans or maybe sneaking a discreet embrace when they think they cant be seen. From left, Oleg Ryazanzev, Igor Chernevich, Elizaveta Boyarskaya and Ksenia Rappoport in Three Sisters. (Kennedy Center) Dodin cooks this slowly, letting the misery of this doomed upper middle class (which frets a lot about a future they seem to know will soon change radically) marinate for a rich three-plus hours that you wouldnt want rushed. The acting is sumptuous, whether these sturdy-voiced actors are biting off words in anger or letting fly with romantic, melancholy speeches. You can tell that Ksenia Rappoports Masha has the makings of a Moscow superstar. She has a dashing manner that suits Mashas often epic self-dramatization and, like all three of the central characters, displays a keen mind that you hate to see rattling around with so little to do. Boyarskaya volcanically conveys Irinas youthful, glowing spirit and her rapid disillusionment with work and love, while Irina Tychinina is consistently moving as Olga, a shattered woman who already knows she has no shot at happiness. You want to praise the shows intimacy as characters connect and repel at close quarters. At the same time, Dodin is completely at ease letting Igor Chernevich, as Mashas vibrant but married suitor, Vershinin, spout his views directly to the audience. Hes not the only one: Anyones likely to look into the distance and pontificate, yet the tone never feels detached. Nor do the routine entrances and exits through the Eisenhowers aisles and the casual acting on the floor in front of the stage ever feel gimmicky. The comic balance between Andrey, the sisters feckless brother, and his domineering wife, Natasha, is exactly opposite of Jackson Gays recent Studio production. For Dodin, its Alexander Bikovskys Andrey whos the clown, while Ekaterina Kleopinas selfish anger as Natasha is a flare-up, not a monstrous truth. Definitive Chekhov is a futile quest: The writing makes more allowances than demands, which is why we see so many angular takes on his plays. Audiences catching this Three Sisters may rate it as a touchstone, though. As the dreaded house threatens to swallow everyone up, the show feels sharp, distilled and its animated by a cast rippling with presence and giving us a rare chance to listen to a deep spectrum of discontent in Chekhovs Russian tongue. Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov. Directed by Lev Dodin. Designed by Alexander Borovsky; lights, Damir Ismagilov. With Sergey Vlasov, Oleg Ryazanzev, Stanislav Nikolsky, Sergey Kuryshev, Artur Kozin, Evgeny Serzin, Alexander Koshkarev, Natalia Sokolova, Elena Solomonova and Sergey Ivanov. About 3 hours and 10 minutes. Through Sunday at the Kennedy Center. Tickets $29-$69. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org. Last year, 73 million U.S. tourists traveled abroad, a record number, federal data show. Europe and the Caribbean remain popular destinations, but there was a notable uptick in the number of Americans traveling to Asia and Oceania in the South Pacific, compared with a year earlier. But what if you want to hit more than one continent in a single trip? For those who can afford to spend six figures per person, there are companies that specialize in group tours that crisscross the globe via private jet. They also throw in gourmet meals, pit stops at luxury hotels and spas, and in-flight lectures from experts. Just reading the tour descriptions is its own form of escape. Here are some itineraries to contemplate while youre riding the Metro. A reveler dressed up as a devil runs holding a torch with firecrackers while taking part in a 'Correfoc' or 'Fire-runs' during the Sant Antoni neighborhood celebrations in Barcelona. (David Ramos/Getty Images) Sea. Sky. Safari. This trip, offered by TCS World Travel, a 26-year-old company that specializes in private-jet tours, starts on a SeaDream Yacht Club vessel before switching to aircraft. Fifty-two guests will stop at Mediterranean ports, then fly to Africa. It sets sail May 5 and returns May 24. Cost: $107,000 per person for double occupancy. Days 1-2: Barcelona Day 3: Roses and Costa Brava, Spain Day 4: Sete and Carcassonne, France Day 5: Cassis and Provence, France Day 6: Portofino, Italy Day 7: Monte Carlo, Monaco Day 8: Cannes, France Days 9-11: Kigali and Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda Days 12-14: Okavango Delta or Kalahari Desert, Botswana Days 15-16: Cape Town, South Africa Days 17-18: Marrakesh, Morocco Days 19-20: London An aerial View of Bora Bora. (Michel Renaudeau/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images) Around the World by Private Jet: The Tropics to the Arctic Abercrombie & Kent, a global luxury travel firm that has been around since 1962, prides itself on offering travelers unique experiences. On this 26-day adventure that departs May 1, 50 guests will get to enjoy a cocktail atop a dormant volcano, attend a private exhibition of the Naadam Games in Mongolia and enjoy an open-air bazaar reserved exclusively for you. Cost: $129,000 per person for double occupancy. Day 1: Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Days 2-4: Colombia Day 5: Easter Island Days 6-9: French Polynesia Day 10: Solomon Islands Days 11-13:Philippines Days 14-16: Mongolia Days 17-19: Uzbekistan Days 20-22: Russia Days 23-26: Iceland La Koutoubia in Marrakech, Morocco. (Christopher Lee/Getty Images) Around the World Smithsonian Journeys, founded in 1970, is the cultural travel program of the Smithsonian Institution. Once a year, it sends travelers on a Boeing 757 for a 24-day tour of legendary sites up close. This years outing takes off Sept. 27. Cost: from $79,950 per person. Day 1: Orlando Days 2-4: Cuzco and Machu Picchu or north coast of Peru Days 5-6: Easter Island Days 7-8: Apia, Samoa Days 9-10: Great Barrier Reef or Daintree, Australia Days 11-13: Angkor or Phnom Penh, Cambodia Days 14-15: Taj Mahal in Agra, India Days 16-18: Serengeti Plain or Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Days 19-20: Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan Days 21-22: Marrakesh, Morocco Days 23-24: Orlando Bill Gates, billionaire and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in 2015. Gates occupies the top spot on the 2017 Forbes list of the worlds richest people. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg) When reporter Alex Cuadros was covering Latin America for Bloomberg, his mission was to track a powerful and elusive species: the billionaire. It was 2012, and Bloomberg was about to launch its Billionaires Index as a direct challenge to the long-running Worlds Billionaires list run by rival Forbes. Bloomberg reporters across the globe were charged with discovering the answer to some rather intimate questions: Who were the wealthiest people on the planet, and what, precisely, were they worth? As it turns out, billionaires are a motley bunch when it comes to talking about their fortunes. Some decline to cooperate, and some instruct underlings to confirm basic details. Some, in all honesty or in hopes of being left alone, tell reporters theyre not actually worth all that much. And then there are those like oil-and-mining magnate Eike Batista , who back then was valued at $30 billion but felt he was worth much more. He sent Cuadros proof of his assets the $42 million yacht, the three jets worth $84 million and then called the reporter personally to talk up the value of a gold mine, and to warn Cuadros that he was going to look very foolish. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett plays with a western band at the Justin Brands stage, during the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha in 2007. Buffett is the second richest man in the world, according to the Forbes 2017 list. (Nati Harnik/Associated Press) The biggest reason for a billionaire to tell us that were too low is ego, says Cuadros, who wrote a book called Brazillionaires about his time tracking the wealthy. The self-made billionaires are all people who are empire builders. ... Theyre on a quest for continual expansion, so that number matters to them. That number matters to them and to us. Over the past few decades, as concern over global wealth inequality has grown, so has the number of lists ranking the wealthy, which the public consumes avidly. We want to know whos No. 1 (Bill Gates, still), how the richest person in China made all that money, and whether Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim is still bleeding billions. These fortunes are cause for admiration, loathing and, most of all, fascination especially now, when weve elected a billionaire president who is himself consumed by his Number. I think theres something about America having embraced entrepreneurism and hard-knocks stories and success in general that serves as the bedrock for why this started, says Luisa Kroll, a global wealth editor for Forbes, which has defined the modern-day rich list. When the late Malcolm Forbes started his magazines list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982, it was thick with old-money names like Hunt, Rockefeller and du Pont. Forbes came from money, and his attitude toward wealth was admiring and uncomplicated: His list was a celebration of capitalism. Staff members took a year to compile it, combing through Securities and Exchange Commission filings, oil well records, wills, trusts and deeds. Some of the wealthy cooperated, while others called the magazine cheap and low-class and threatened to sue. Back then, according to the wealth-chronicling book All the Money in the World, the poorest on Forbess list had to have at least $75 million. (By 2006, only billionaires were making the cut.) Shortly after that debut, Malcolm Forbes was surprised to discover that his own father, B.C. Forbes, whod founded the magazine, had published a short-lived rich list back in 1918. Subsequent reporting by Forbes magazine found that rich lists in America date at least as far back as 1845. The names on one New York City rich list included showman P.T. Barnum and some guy with the old-timey occupation of tallow chandler (a.k.a. candle maker). Were always nosy about how much money other people have, says Andrew Leckey, president of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. We wonder: How could anybody have that much more money than I do? Oprah Winfrey attends the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2015. She was the 660th richest person in the world, according to Forbes 2017 ranking. (Jason Merritt) In 1987, Forbes magazine expanded beyond the United StatesU.S. with a list of the worlds richest. Since then, the field of tracking, scrutinizing and ranking the wealthiest has gotten more crowded. Luigino Canal, a journalist who has worked on the rich list for Swiss business magazine Bilan since the lists inception in 2000, says hes seen more magazines around the world add rich lists because they sell so well. The readers are not just those who work in finance, but also the rest of us voyeurs. Depending on the year, you can find print or online lists for the United Kingdom, the Middle East, China, Germany, Canada, Australia, Israel and Zimbabwe, among others, not to mention for smaller regions like Los Angeles and the Midlands area of England. The cottage industry of wealth-ranking lists turns out to be as marked by ambition, insularity and one-upmanship as the lives of the billionaires it chronicles. The biggest rivalry is between Forbes and Bloomberg. For years, Forbes released its list of the worlds billionaires annually, and then, in 2012, Bloomberg unveiled a ranking that updated every day. The new lists creator was Matthew Miller, whod worked on the Forbes list before leaving to co-found a financial research firm called Wealth-X (which itself does rich lists), and then joining Bloomberg. Within days, Forbes announced an effort to update the valuations of some of its billionaires every five minutes. Billionaire-list makers squabble over everything from methodology to transparency to exhaustiveness and even matters of national pride. As reporter Robert Frank has chronicled, Forbes and Bloomberg have battled over whether Ikea tycoon Ingvar Kamprad is worth $42 billion or less than $1 billion, depending on whether special entities should count toward his wealth. A Shanghai-based research firm called Hurun Report has battled with Forbes and Wealth-X over whether China or the United States has more billionaires. Bloomberg has boasted about uncovering billionaires Forbes never even knew existed. Weve uncovered 400 hidden billionaires ... and thats just in five years, says Rob LaFranco, the global editor of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and another Forbes alum. Bloomberg recently expanded its daily rankings to the worlds 500 richest. One problem with estimating wealth is that some information is elusive indeed, the wealthy themselves may not know what theyre worth. Private companies are hard to value; debt is often hidden from reporters. The journalists who put together rich lists study documents; they talk to private bankers, luxury real estate brokers, art dealers, ex-employees and ex-wives. When billionaires claim theyre worth oh-so-much-more, the journalists request bank statements and, astonishingly, sometimes get them. Its easy to understand why a billionaire might not want to be on anyones list. You make yourself a target of every charity and every political candidate, billionaire Marc Nathanson told the Los Angeles Business Journal a few years ago. Canal says its particularly difficult in Switzerland, where internationals head to be forgotten. But the funny thing is, once they make it onto a list, Switzerlands ultrarich are hooked, he says. To be left off the next year would mean they lost money. And for every billionaire whod rather be forgotten, theres another who sees public estimates of his fortune as integral to his business, his persona and, perhaps, his self-worth. I have heard stories about billionaires who compare where they rank on the list, says Kroll, of Forbes. Well have billionaires call up and say, Why did my net worth go down 100 million today? I mean, theyre on top of it. Take our president, whose advocacy on behalf of his own Number is legendary. In 2015, Forbes said he was worth less than half the $10 billion Trump insisted he was, and that the developer had been inflating his value since 1982. The editor who ran the list in its early years said that his rule of thumb each year was to take Trumps estimate and immediately divide it by three and refine it from there. In response, Trump would send the magazine statements of worth directly contradicted by SEC filings and sworn statements, Forbes reported, and lambaste the magazines stinginess in interviews. In 2015, he admitted to Forbes that hed stretched the facts in the past. It was good for financing, Trump said, before proceeding to argue that Forbes was undervaluing him again for real this time. Donald Trump, center, signals to those waiting in line at a casting call for his television show, The Apprentice, in 2004 in New York. Trump has quibbled with Forbes editors in the past over his spot in the magazines annual ranking of the worlds wealthiest. He was 544th on the 2017 list. (Frank Franklin II/Associated Press) Egos aside, the Number is about more than status, power and celebrity. Wealth lists can tell us about geopolitics, about war, about bribery, about changes in the retail industry, about monopolistic pressures, political influence, philanthropic influence and the concentration of wealth. (There are as many ways to measure inequality as there are to measure wealth all of them stunning. Oxfam International has found that eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.) There are now 2,043 billionaires around the globe, up 13 percent from last year, according to Forbes data. Forbes says between 2016 and 2017, 76 new billionaires were added from China alone. Cuadros says he began finding billionaires everywhere once he considered the objects he came across in daily life: A billionaire owned the yogurt he ate, and another owned the malls he passed on his way to work. Invisible forces wielded by billionaires shape all of our lives. Cuadros says that while reporting on wealth he experienced a profound disconnect: visiting beachfront penthouses and then taking a bus to his modest apartment. But rather than causing envy, he says, his work pierced a powerful mystique. If the idea of being unfathomably wealthy ever held any appeal, reporting on perennially dissatisfied empire builders cured him of it. Not long after Eike Batista warned Cuadros about looking foolish, his empire began to disintegrate. Bloomberg soon ran a story on Batista headlined: How Brazils Richest Man Lost $34.5 Billion. Its almost a cliche, but it didnt seem that that money brought anyone happiness, and that when you get used to this level of luxury ... you cant go back, Cuadros says. Your baseline becomes the private jet and the super yacht and so on. So I take economy class, and its really no big deal. Libby Copeland is a former Washington Post staff writer. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Sisters Eleanor Niermann, left, and Claire Niermann, owners of Niermann Weeks, grew up in the shop started by their father, and oversee operations. Niermann Weeks designs and manufactures furniture and lighting from its workshop and warehouse in Millersville, Md. The work is done by hand by artisans in house. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post) The chandelier will someday be a gleaming arrangement of delicate glass tubing and warm, patina-ed metal. It will retail for several thousand dollars. For now, though, its just a few sketches and a pile of paper-wrapped drinking straws from Chipotle. Claire and Eleanor Niermann, the daughters of the founder of the luxury lighting and furniture brand Niermann Weeks, are building a prototype for their newest light fixture. Its based on a 1960s Swedish pendant, only instead of a silk fringe dripping from the brass base, as in the inspiration piece, the sisters will use narrow glass tubing. Or, for now, straws. Claire recalls how the cashier at the burrito joint gave her the stink eye as she grabbed a handful of them on her way out the door. Theyre the exact same size, she says, holding up the plastic alongside the pricier glass. So why waste the material? This is how the elegant, high-end pieces that will grace Manhattan penthouses and McLean mansions are made not in impersonal overseas factories, but by humans, in an unassuming strip-mall-turned-office-park off Interstate 97 in Millersville, Md., near Annapolis. There, the Niermann sisters, along with the companys president, Justin Binnix (whom they call their unofficial brother), oversee an operation of 22 people that combines a sales force catering to elite designers with a paint-splattered workshop they liken to art camp. It is as far from Ikea as you can get. Top designers often cite the ability to customize pieces as a reason Niermann Weeks has long been their go-to. Since each one is handcrafted, a designer can tweak its proportions or finishes to fit a clients space. Or even create something from scratch. When a client of Vienna, Va.-based Hillary Summerbell wanted to use an acrylic tabletop she had found in her travels, the designer was able to work with Niermann Weeks to create a table base for it. No one else would be able to do that, she says. Its nice to say to a client, I can figure that out! Thom Chaney specializes in faux finishing. One of his projects entails making shiny brass pulls look as if they have acquired the luster of years of wear in an elegant French chateau. They are for a chest of drawers that will retail for just under $15,000. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post) What makes that kind of customization and attention to detail possible is the network of craftspeople who create the bones of the pieces the company sells mostly to designers (thats to the trade in design-world parlance) at its New York showroom and at other design showrooms, including the Washington Design Center downtown. Rob Link is Niermanns metal guy. A Maryland native, Link, 47, started working with Niermann 30 years ago and now forges table bases and chandeliers and bed frames in his own shop. Local woodworkers turn out tables and cabinets, and upholsterers stitch seats for chairs and benches. Once the freshly created items arrive at the Millersville facility, a team of about 13 production workers might plaster, leaf, glaze or paint them, wash them with acid, and adorn them with hand-cut crystals or tiny mirrored tiles, until they resemble timeworn antiques that might have been discovered under a moldering tapestry at a Parisian flea market. Even the more transitional furnishings and light fixtures, such as those in the companys recent collaboration with designer Amanda Nisbet, are transformed with burnished finishes. Its a very collaborative process, Claire Niermann says. Were in a constant conversation with each other. Eleanor, 46, and Claire, 43, arent formally trained in design. Eleanor studied French and history, and Claire spent her early career overseeing operations and opening stores for Starbucks. But they learned the trade from their father, Joe Niermann, a former insurance actuary whose passion for restoring antiques led him to found the company in Memphis in 1978. Niermann and metalsmith Mike Weeks created a single reproduction of a 19th-century chandelier and began selling it to designers. Eleanor and Claires mother, Eleanor McKay, who was an archivist by training and worked at the Library of Congress, became the companys chief executive. The family moved the business to Annapolis in 1984, seeking a better climate and proximity to Eleanors parents in Bowie, Md., and opened the Millersville facility several years later. Today, the annual sales of the company, which is private, reach into the multimillions. (The Niermanns didnt want to be more specific, citing competitive reasons.) Growing up, it was always: You could help Dad or you could do your homework, Claire Niermann recalls. She and Eleanor would sand, clean his paintbrushes and use a hair dryer to dry layers of paint as their father created faux-marble finishes, sometimes using a feather to mimic the fine veining of natural stone. It turns out that child labor isnt child labor if its your own kid, she says. Dad checked. Joe Niermann and McKay bought out Weeks in 1992; he retired in 2013, and she finally stepped away from the company in 2015. But Joe still contributes ideas, often in the form of objects hes found at antiques sales that he thinks might inspire new designs. Near the design area where Claire is tinkering with her straws is a haphazard assortment of his discoveries: an inlaid Chinese screen sits akimbo, and a pair of marble obelisks sit next to an ornate candlestick. Eleanor points to it and says, Mom calls that Dads antique compost pile. Associate designer Alfred Delacuadra works with cast resin to create intricate designs on mirrors and other furniture. (Andre Chung/for The Washington Post) On a recent Friday, past the front office and design area, the workshop is alive with activity, though the meticulous work unfolds slowly. Painter Thom Chaney perches on a stool, working on the hardware for a Danish commode, a chest of drawers with a chalky blue finish. The trick is to make the shiny brass pulls look as if they have acquired the luster of years of wear in an elegant French chateau. He dabs on a layer of thin brownish glaze. The entire commode, which itself requires multiple layers of glaze and paint, will take him about a week to finish. It will retail for just under $15,000. Former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had a custom version of this cabinet created for the bedroom of their home in Chappaqua, N.Y. It had a double-sided television that would lift out at the touch of a button. The Niermanns believe in letting their employees learn on the job, much as they did at their fathers knee. Before he came to Niermann Weeks, Chaney worked at a local Giant supermarket. Like many of the 22 workers at the Millersville facility, he lacked formal training. Link, the metalsmith, was a plumbers assistant. Chaney is now our most talented painter, Eleanor Niermann says. Its just about helping people find their natural skills. The familial nature of the business extends beyond the owners. Chaneys wife, Jennifer Chaney, is across the cavernous room, painting a gold bobeche, a piece that sits on the base of chandelier candles. Next to her, her sister, Sandi Kennedy, is carefully applying sizing a gluelike substance to a chandelier to which she will later attach delicate silver-colored leafing. They arent the only siblings at the company; floor managers Danny Jackson and Ike Cromwell are half-brothers. Nearby, there is a beading station, where glittering crystals of varying sizes await in labeled dishes. Hands will string them together, using delicate wire, to form the strands that adorn the companys signature chandeliers. Beyond that, theres the mirror and glass area. Niermann Weeks makes its mirrors the old-fashioned way, taking sheets of glass and affixing more silver-tone leafing to one side. The mirror is then treated to create a timeworn look. This area belongs to Byung Lee, who is known as Mr. Lee to everyone. Lee cuts the mirrored sheets into small tiles, which are then painstakingly attached to tables and chandeliers he recently used no fewer than 600 of them on a massive version of the companys light-reflecting Monaco chandelier. Our things are not just made in the U.S., theyre made in Maryland by our neighbors and our friends, Eleanor Niermann says. And thats increasingly important to customers who want the cachet of locally sourced goods, says Warrenton, Va.-based designer Barry Dixon. In his 24-year career, he cant recall a project where he didnt use a Niermann Weeks product. I love supporting local businesses, he says. I do that whenever possible. Sourcing and shipping a chandelier from Europe can also be expensive and the timing unpredictable. It would have to clear customs, then get on a truck, and who knows how long it could take, Dixon says. Or I could just go 20 miles up the road. Emily Heil is a Washington Post staff writer. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Last falls glut of 20th-anniversary television specials on the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey felt like a race to the bottom: Which program would most grotesquely exploit the 1996 killing of a 6-year-old girl? The competition was stiff. From the title alone, the new Netflix documentary Casting JonBenet sounds like the last thing we need. In fact, it might be the only thing we need to move past a case that has generated so much fevered speculation. Australian filmmaker Kitty Green traveled to Ramseys home town, Boulder, Colo., not to reinvestigate the crime but to get a sense of how residents felt about it. To do that, she posted a casting call for local actors to play the central figures in the case, including the tiny beauty pageant contestant herself, her parents, her brother and the police chief. While the documentary includes some dramatizations, the movie consists mostly of interviews with the actors, who discuss the murder and who they think was responsible while also sharing intimate details about their lives. Getting to know these people reveals a lot. One woman, trying out for the part of JonBenets mother, Patsy, is herself a mother approaching 40, so shes highly offended at the theory that Patsy might have lost her mind simply because she had a big birthday looming. For a different actress, that theorys a no-brainer. In short, Casting JonBenet isnt a documentary about a murder, but about how people come to wildly different conclusions based on the same information. Its also about how easily we judge other people whether we have the full story or not and how much our present views are shaped by our pasts. Occasionally the movie cuts away from interviews to reenact historical events. Shot with a gray-blue palette, these scenes are more austere, and feature very little dialogue. During these moments, the tragedy comes into focus. In one scene, a hearse moves down a street. In another, police officers approach the Ramseys house the morning after the killing. The interviews with prospective actors, by contrast, can be disarmingly funny. One performer, who moonlights as a sex educator, gives a brief tutorial on how to use different types of whips. At another point, a professional Santa Claus tells the camera that Patsy was probably a royal bitch of a mother. The evidence was compromised, one actor laments, in an effort to sound like an expert. Others parse the psychology of the ransom note found at the scene. Just when the movies talking heads start to grow tiresome, theres a subtle shift in the film. The question-and-answer sessions are suddenly shot, like the reenactments, with that same grave palette, and the stories become more tragic. One man, trying out for the part of JonBenets father, opens up about his recent cancer diagnosis; another talks about the ethics of working on this kind of project. His friends warned him, he says, against getting involved with anything associated with the case, but he thought something positive might come from his participation. His instincts were correct. The final moments of the movie are a gorgeously choreographed scene involving many of the actors weve gotten to know, set to a hauntingly spare piano score by Nathan Larson. The participants act out the many different theories (though not the actual killing, thankfully). Watching so much agony on a set made to look like the Ramsey home, were reminded of the very real tragedy at the heart of a story that was reduced to tabloid fodder. Casting JonBenet has no forensic experts or archival footage. It doesnt get us any closer to the truth. But it might just get at something more profound: The idea that we should just acknowledge what this is an awful, heartbreaking mystery and let it go. Casting JonBenet, 80 minutes, will begin streaming Friday on Netflix. Former NPR radio host Diane Rehm with her fiance, retired Lutheran minister John Hagedorn. The couple will marry in October. (Courtesy of Diane Rehm) Diane Rehm had plenty of things she wanted to do after retiring last year write, travel, launch a new podcast. Getting married was definitely not on the list. So guess what? She just got engaged. Honey, Im 80 years old, for Gods sake! says the former NPR star with a delighted smile. Im shocked. But very, very happy. Rehm will marry John Hagedorn, a 77-year-old retired Lutheran minister, on Oct. 14 at Washington National Cathedral. Hes so caring, so attentive, so warm, she says. Not only just to me, but to all of our friends and neighbors. The two met 28 years ago at a wedding for the daughter of a mutual friend. Both were married to others at the time, so it was a pleasant exchange but all but forgotten until Rehm received a letter from Hagedorn last summer. He reintroduced himself and praised her latest book, On My Own, a memoir about her life as a widow (Rehms husband of 54 years, John, died in 2014). Hagedorn, now a widower, wrote that the book had really moved him. [Diane Rehms next act: Using her famed voice to fight for the good death] If youre ever in Florida, please let me know, he said. Id love to see you and take you for a cup of coffee. As it turned out, Rehm was doing a book-reading in Orlando for 1,500 fans. She emailed him with an invitation to the event, and Hagedorn drove more than three hours to attend, standing in line for two hours for a chance to speak with her. Then the two shared what well call a moment. We have a photograph taken, I sign his book, she says. Hes about to walk away and he turns around and looks at me. I turned around and looked at him. And something happened. It seems Hagedorn had been carrying a torch since they first met. Diane has lived in the back of my heart and soul since we first met 28 years ago, he said in an email. When the opportunity to meet again arose last June, I leapt at the chance. When our eyes met at the end of the meet-and-greet I said, What just happened to my life? An old-fashioned courtship ensued. Hagedorn asked if he could visit her in Washington, where they toured museums and restaurants. She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek when he headed home, but that was it. I wasnt there yet, she explains. She, in turn, visited him in Lake Worth, Fla. (Her first question: Do you have a separate guest room?) They met each others children and were vetted by friends, all of whom approved of the match. Rehms best friend, Trish Vradenburg, who died earlier this month, joked that they were the 80-year-old Barbie and Ken. Hagedorn started proposing on their third date, and Rehm answered: No! Way too early! She finally accepted two weeks ago. Instead of a conventional engagement ring, Hagedorn is refitting his grandfathers antique topaz ring, a cherished family heirloom, for her. The couple will have a commuter marriage: Shes keeping her home in Washington, and he will keep his house in Florida. At the end of Dianes last book she wrote that at her age, there would probably never be another significant meaningful person in her life, said Hagedorn. But, Never say never! I am blessed. Yoga is not all about flawless handstands, sweaty selfies and perfect crow poses at sunset, despite what your Instagram feed may suggest. The ugly truth is that it takes hard work, time and patience, not to mention strength and flexibility. Jessamyn Stanley, a yoga fan turned social media fitness star, is breathing proof of it. Stanleys first book, a part-memoir, part-yoga-guide titled Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body, breaks down 50 basic poses to encourage beginners of all shapes and sizes not just the willowy, Lululemon-clad swans that flood your social-media feeds to get on the mat and start practicing. The 29-year-old Durham, N.C., native, who is popular with her followers for shattering yoga stereotypes and spreading a message of self-love and self-care, swung through Washington on her national book tour to discuss her practice, her outlook and her latest work. She also offered some practical advice for both beginners and seasoned practitioners. You might feel awkward during your first class. Thats normal. Stanley distinctly remembers her experience with Bikram yoga when she was 16 because it was hotter than, as she calls it, Satans sauna and it was so difficult she had to leave halfway through the class. It would be another handful of years before she would return to the mat. Jessamyn Stanley, a 29-year-old Durham, N.C., native, began practicing yoga after leaving grad school in 2011. (Christine Hewitt ) Her advice to first-timers? Its important to remember that you dont have to keep in line with everyone else, that it doesnt matter if youre practicing a pose in a way that looks completely different than the person next to you. No one big, small, short, tall is expected to be the best or even at [a] beginner level on their first day, she said in an interview. Try not to pay attention to how other people perceive you and value how you feel above all else. If you can say, Im just going to appreciate this experience for what it is, youve already succeeded. Embrace your self and your selfie. Stanley started posting cellphone pictures back in 2013 as way to easily track her alignment, log her progress and engage with the online yoga community. Now she has more than 290,000 followers on Instagram. When I started taking photos, I would do it because I felt really strong and powerful in the moment and in the posture. Then, I would look back at the photo and think, Oh my god, my belly is so big! My arms are so jiggly! Stanley recalled. Over time, however, she began to realize she was her own worst critic. I began asking myself, You felt so powerful before, what changed? Nothing, she said. Addressing that conflict and allowing myself that freedom was monumental. Learning to be comfortable, or even just accepting, of your body is transformational. If you say, My body isnt owned by anybody else. I need to love my body for what it is, it can make all the difference. Words only have negative power if you let them. The word fat has come to be associated in modern society with stupid, ugly and unworthy like its the ultimate insult when really its just another word for large, Stanley said. She is an advocate of reclaiming the word and its meaning. If you can take away the weapon they are trying to use against you, you can reclaim your power, your privilege and step into your strength. Stanley's first book, Every Body Yoga, was recently released by Workman Publishing. (Workman Publishing) Ask How do I feel? rather than How do I look? I used to obsess over what other people thought of me until I started digging deeper and discovering about how I truly felt, Stanley explained. And that started bleeding into other parts of life, like getting dressed in the morning. You start asking yourself, How does this make me feel? rather than, Is this something other people think I should be wearing? Be wary of the Instagram effect. Ive noticed there are a lot of fake people in the yoga world, Stanley said. Shes over the Photoshopped pictures of asanas on the beach captioned with Gandhi quotes. Its all very, Look at me, look how perfect I am and I am not really in to all of that, Stanley said, adding, All I am trying to do is live my yoga. Feeling bored or stifled by your practice? Switch it up. Try a new teacher or studio, or experiment with a different style of yoga. In a big city like Washington, you can find a different studio literally around the corner, Stanley says. Also, remember to praise yourself for the little things, like the fact that you showed up to class and got on your mat. Motivational music is key. I love listening to hip-hop while I practice, because I like to have a hard beat that I can lean into, especially when the practice is very physically demanding, Stanley says. Kendrick Lamars Good Kid, M.A.A.D City is the album I would pair with my book because he also tells a story about whats it like to be living your life, . . . making bad decisions and eventually getting to a place of self-discovery. (You can listen to Jessamyns yoga playlists on Spotify here and here). You can start your practice today really. When Stanley decided to give yoga a chance, all she had was a mat and a few improvised props (for example, an old scarf doubled as a yoga strap). Even her first cellphone photos uploaded to her now-famous Instagram account were taken with a self-made tripod of large chapter books. With research, patience and persistence, her yoga practice blossomed. You dont have to buy anything or change your life, Stanley says. You can start practicing today, in this moment, one pose at a time. Jessamyn will be at Willow Street Yoga in Silver Spring, Md., on June 2. (The Washington Post) When Barack and Michelle Obama left the White House, they both spoke longingly of a break from life in the public eye. But following a months-long vacation, they have started to tap into the lucrative paid-speaking circuit that has enriched so many other former presidents and first ladies with the potential to quickly net millions of dollars. On Thursday, both made their first appearances as speakers-for-hire. Hi, everybody, its good to get out of the house, said Michelle Obama, visibly relaxed, as she sat for a wide-ranging but free of partisan politics question-and-answer session before the American Institute of Architectures annual conference. Her husband, meanwhile, joined historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in New York for a closed-door address to employees of the A&E cable network. It was not divulged how much they were paid for these first appearances. But the former president will collect $400,000 for a September speech to a health-care conference sponsored by investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, Fox Business reported this week. As newly minted high-dollar speakers, the Obamas follow a well-worn path from the White House but one that poses risks to a personal and political brand rooted in their middle-class backgrounds. Aides to the Obamas would not comment on how much they are charging for other private speaking engagements, but they defended the speaking schedule and pointed out that the presidents first public meeting was a conversation with college students in Chicago earlier this week. President Obama will deliver speeches from time to time. Some of those speeches will be paid, some will be unpaid, and regardless of venue or sponsor, President Obama will be true to his values, his vision and his record, his senior adviser, Eric Schultz, said in a statement issued after the Cantor Fitzgerald speech drew a wave of criticism including a New York Post headline that dubbed Obama Wall Streets new fat cat. Schultz argued that Obamas appearance at the health-care conference made sense: As a president who successfully passed health insurance reform, its an issue of great importance to him. As for a six-figure check signed by an investment bank, Id just point out that in 2008, Barack Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history and still went on to successfully pass and implement the toughest reforms on Wall Street since FDR. [Whats on Michelle Obamas mind? Meet the speechwriter who puts it into words.] Other former first couples have been challenged on their paid speeches, which began in earnest when former president Gerald R. Ford hit the lecture circuit: He needed to make a living somehow, he said. Former president Ronald Reagan was roundly criticized when he followed suit, taking heat for accepting $2 million for two speeches in Japan. He was seen as a gung-ho patriotic American, and then the first thing he does is go speak to another country that was, in a sense, an economic rival, said Lance Strate, a professor of communication at Fordham University. They are entitled to make money, and nobody really bats an eyelash over the book deals they might get. But theres something about speaking fees because it involves personal presence. As a former president, youre still representing the country. Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said that as private citizens [the Obamas] are pretty much free to give speeches in their personal capacity, but at a potential cost to their popularity and future political influence. His old boss did it, too. According to Robert Drapers book Dead Certain, Bush said the lecture circuit would replenish the ol coffers. He was reportedly paid between $100,000 and $175,000 for each appearance. Bill and Hillary Clinton similarly came under heavy criticism for their private speeches, which earned them more than $25 million for delivering 104 speeches over 15 months, and became an issue in her presidential campaigns. Its not a question of whether its legal, Painter said. Its a question of whether someone in a political environment can make an argument that it was unethical. [In Chicago, Obama tells young leaders that special interests dominate the debates in Washington] Though neither of the Obamas seem to want to run for political office in the future, their calculations are complicated by the tenuous state of the Democratic Party, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. In a party that doesnt really have especially captivating personalities right now, he remains a figurehead, Zelizer said. If he goes down the road of speaking for a lot of money, that has the potential to hurt the party. Obama seems to be attempting a balance between community-minded appearances and lucrative ones. His first paid event followed a public one Monday at the University of Chicago on civic engagement typical, his spokesman said, of the topics he wants to discuss in the future. He wants to get together with young people and other community leaders who are front of mind to him and get ideas from them on how to create solutions for their communities and also partnering with other organizations that are making it a priority to bring resources to communities in need, said his press secretary, Kevin Lewis. Up next: a speech next month in Boston, where he will receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, and trips to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy for the Global Food Innovation Summit. [Michelle Obama is quietly planning her next act] As for Michelle Obama, she will speak next month at the Partnership for a Healthier America, which supported her White House anti-obesity initiatives, and join MTV for a College Signing Day encouraging high school students to pursue higher education. Both Obamas are represented on the speaking circuit by the Harry Walker Agency, which also reps Richard B. Cheney, Al Gore and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan. Strate said Michelle Obamas first appearance seemed like a shrewd choice. Architecture is not terribly controversial. It is something that has both a practical and an artistic element to it, he said. Onstage in Orlando, the former first lady said she chose the AIA gathering in part because of her early-career work in economic development for the city of Chicago. I got to know how important architects are in the lifeblood and beauty of any city, particularly a city like Chicago. . . . So [this] seemed like a good place to get started, she said. Its like coming almost full circle for me. She spoke with authority about her experience as a lawyer and executive topics she often seemed reluctant to address in her husbands administration. She also seemed to be keeping up with the political news, making indirect comments, in a discussion of the challenges facing cities, that seemed to address President Trumps proposal for overhauling the nations tax code. We have to invest, she said, which means we have to pay taxes. In another oblique reference, she shared a story about her emotional final day at the White House. Her daughters were in tears as they said goodbye to the staff, and she felt herself choke up, too but she resolved to keep her emotions hidden before the Inauguration Day cameras. I didnt want to have tears in my eyes because people would swear I was crying because of the new president, she said, as the crowd laughed. (Laura Perez Granel For The Washington Post) On the last Sunday in November, I found myself strolling around the peaceful fishing village of Urk, one of the most charming and isolated corners of the Netherlands. My presence here at the northern notch of the Dutch Bible Belt 50 minutes and a world away from Amsterdam originated in the most incongruous of places: Twitter. Due to my self-aggrandizing tendency to brand my own writings with #urk, a sobriquet derived from my last name, I began to build an audience on this former isle in the Flevoland province. Some locals even started to reach out to me through the social media platform with amused curiosity. I wanted to explore the nuances of this conservative settlement which largely preserves its old-time virtues by dint of its remoteness and get a taste of the Holland of yesteryear. And I wondered if, by virtue of my name and my openness, I could be accepted as an honorary Urker. I tweeted about Urk and followed denizens and businesses alike to invite some rapport with those in the village. But as I embarked upon this newfangled travel experiment, I wondered: Would I be Urked upon arrival, or would the locals be irked? Enter Anneke van Urk, a 56-year-old who was the most enthusiastic Urker in my correspondence. She became a sort of Dutch guru, fairy godmother and cultural concierge. Through her, I learned that the world is more welcoming than you might think. And that social media, despite its bad rap for being impersonal, can be a great way to make personal connections in faraway places. After I booked my trip, Anneke invited me to the house she has shared for 37 years with her husband, Bert, for her familys Sunday huddle. Be prepared, she warned. It will be busy. A tranquil scene from Urks West Haven: Thirty-five percent of the people in the town work as fishermen. (Ross Kenneth Urken/For The Washington Post) The day of my visit, her friend Kees de Visser, a local doctor who grew up on Urk, was kind enough to fetch me at the Lelystad train station and take me on a walking tour of the city. Filled with stout, orange-roofed houses, Urk is dominated by Dutch Reformed congregations. There are 19 churches for its 20,000 residents; Sunday is dedicated to worship and family, with only a couple of pubs open for business. As de Visser (yes, his last name translates as the Fisherman) and I walked around the wharf, which was lousy with personal sailboats and small fishing vessels, we saw some denizens dressed in all black. The most religious of locals typically go to church at 10 a.m. Sundays and head home for tea, followed by a meal and a siesta to pass the time until a second round of church at 4 p.m. If the men in the family work as fishermen, as 35 percent of Urkers do, theyll head out to sea at midnight and return Friday evening. We walked toward the waterfront where nonreligious bikers and speed walkers, the local joke goes, worship at the the Church of the Seagull and saw the Ommelebommelestien, a stone sticking out of the water off the coast in the IJsselmeer, the lake where, legend has it, mothers-to-be can row out with a midwife and pay two cents for a son or one cent for a daughter. The rich folk tradition in Urk stems from its long history. In 966, the first writings about Urk appeared when Holy Roman Emperor Otto I referred to Urch, an island in the Zuiderzee. But Urks island existence ended last century: In 1939, the government finished the Afsluitdijk, the causeway that closed the gap between the North Sea and the Zuiderzee. The Zuiderzee became the IJsselmeer, with salt water turning to fresh, and connected Urk to Noordoostpolder and the rest of the Netherlands. The government expected Urkers to move and end the fishing trade, but the locals are a stubborn bunch. They sailed through the sluice of the Afsluitdijk and continued fishing on the North Sea, where they still fish today. With fishermen, processors, auctions and exporters, Urk has one of the largest seafood economies in Europe. The freshness of the seafood will spoil you, and in this off-the-beaten-path locale, you wont be elbow-to-elbow with Americans and Britons. For those looking to experience the excitement of one of the largest fish markets in Europe, its essential to see the fast-paced fishmonger auctions. Afterward, visitors can savor the moment with some freshly baked scholfilletje, fillet of plaice. (Its a flatfish similar to trout.) The watery tradition that I observed is soon to become famous for a different reason: Christopher Nolans Dunkirk, coming out in July, was filmed in Urk and on the IJsselmeer last July. Urks beauty, its calm waters, and Dutch subsidies attracted location scouts, and so even Hollywood is putting this lesser-traveled place on the map. In fact, Ben van Urk, Annekes 35-year-old son, is an extra in the movie. De Visser and I continued our constitutional, past the 1786 Kerkje aan de Zee (Church on the Sea), rebuilt from the remains of a church constructed around 1600 that was later swallowed by the sea, and the Vissersmonument, a statue and surrounding memorial plaques dedicated to the fishermen lost at sea. I was struck by the pleasantness and quietude of Sunday on Urk, the inhabitants greeting each other in their meanderings and the homey chimney smoke piping through the village. Wandering the small connections between the main streets, we slithered through the old village with its jumble of lanes, glops (alleys) and ginkies (passageways). Most streets in the old village do have names, but they are hardly used. The Urkers prefer the name wijk (quarters), of which the old village is divided into eight. Visitors can take an official Ginkiestocht, for five euros a pop, to tour the fairy-tale streets and the harbor, while the Old Hall museum pays tribute to the thousand-year history of Urk with its fishcentric economy, and its unique dialect and manner of dress. The van Urk family catches up on the weeks happenings at their Sunday gathering. (Ross Kenneth Urken/For The Washington Post) In late afternoon, we arrived at Annekes abode, a capacious gingerbread-house-style structure. She greeted me, this stranger from the wilds of the Internet, as an old friend with a hug, chocolates and a pot of tea. Soon thereafter, just as she warned, we entered into a full-on party. Her husband, five of her kids and their partners, and four of her grandchildren all gathered for a Sunday meal a plankert of meats and cheeses, delicious baked salmon, warm smoked salmon, a vegetable medley and a dessert mousse of Speculoos paste and a pear poached in port wine with cinnamon. As each person entered, I was greeted with an Euj, the guttural and familiar Urker alternative to pleased to meet you. On Urk, one does not shake hands, except with a stranger. I tried to ingratiate myself with them further by noting that besides the Urk present in my last name, Im such an Urker that even my initials (R.K.U.) are an anagram of Urk. I am of Russian Jewish extraction, I explained, and Urken is an exceedingly uncommon name in the United States such that basically the few dozen folks with the last name are related to me. Given the rarity of our name, the existence of Urk has a certain mystical allure. There has been something of a rite of passage for men on my fathers side of the family in visiting Urk. Well, at least my uncle and father passed through Urk separately in the 1970s on trips to Amsterdam. But they barely scratched the surface. I desired a more authentic immersion than my relatives and thanks to social media, I got it. This year, I have a particular interest in going to the Azores and Jersey, the island in the English Channel. Im just now getting set to start my Twitter campaign. Urken is a writer based in New York. His website is rosskenneth urken.com; find him on Twitter at #urk. More from Travel: Around the world in 20 days: How to visit seven countries in one 21,623-mile adventure This isnt Darwins Galapagos: The wildlife-rich islands are more tourist-friendly than you think Still finding kicks on Route 66 Govt trying to disintegrate country: Oli CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli has said the election is being used as a cover to divide the Tarai and Hilly regions of the country. Now that the dust has almost settled from United Airlines infamous passenger-expulsion incident, travelers are left with several important and largely unanswered questions about how this kerfuffle will change air travel if it does at all. In case you missed it, United has been under fire for calling law enforcement to have a passenger, David Dao, forcibly removed from a flight from Chicago to Louisville earlier this month. The ejection, captured on video and widely shared on social media, caused an uproar and triggered a round of airline industry self-examination and self-flagellation that has continued. But was the Dao case a watershed moment comparable to the series of passenger-stranding incidents in 2007? Those highly publicized events led to new rules that prohibit airlines operating domestic flights from permitting an aircraft to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours without deplaning passengers. The initial changes seemed positive. United, which may have violated its own contract by removing Dao, apologized repeatedly and quickly changed an internal policy to make it more difficult to bump a passenger to accommodate a crew member. American updated its customer contract, promising it wouldnt involuntarily remove a revenue passenger who has already boarded to make room for another passenger. And Delta Air Lines said it increased the maximum it could offer passengers when a flight is overbooked from $1,350 to $9,950. [United and man dragged from flight reach amicable settlement] The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has announced plans for an oversight hearing in the coming weeks to learn more about consumer issues related to air travel. Consumer advocates will watch that meeting closely to get a sense of whether more regulation is on the horizon, or the hearing is just for show. Legislation is already in the works, too. One potential congressional bill, called the Customers Not Cargo Act of 2017, which has not yet been introduced, would revise regulations relating to oversold flights to prohibit the forcible removal of passengers. Specifically, it would require the Transportation Department, which regulates airlines, to establish standards for resolving oversales once an aircraft has been boarded through the provision of escalating incentives to passengers to encourage voluntary re-booking. It would also require an air carrier, to the extent practicable, to resolve issues related to overselling a flight before boarding. Given the amount of public attention on this issue, the Cargo Act may get some legislative traction now, or more likely, when the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill comes before Congress later this year. Would the proposed passenger bills language really solve the overbooking problem? Unlikely, to hear experts talk about it. Overbooking is common, says David Corsun, who directs the University of Denvers school of hospitality management. Its an effort to maximize revenue from a perishable inventory, like an airline seat. Since people often no-show, overbooking occurs to avoid idle inventory and a lost revenue opportunity. Corsun, who says he has been bumped from flights, says the system almost always works, ensuring that every plane flies full. Incidents like the Dao expulsion are extremely rare, meaning that overbooking, for the most part, is a sound industry practice. And why fix something if it isnt broken? Theres no easy answer here, he says. The truth about overbooking is its going to become more prominent, says Janet Bednarek, an aviation historian at the University of Dayton. In todays world, the airlines are only going to make money when theyre running at 80 percent capacity or above. [After the United incident, passengers should know their rights. If bumped, ask for cash.] Indeed, overbooking is such an accepted practice that even the federal government has given it an apparent stamp of approval. Theres a body of federal regulation that determines how much compensation an airline pays someone who is denied boarding. Airlines report their overbooking numbers to the government every month, which publishes the numbers online. Overbooking, overall, has worked well, says Hani Mahmassani, head of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University, who is quick to note, however, that the Dao episode was unacceptable. It even benefits some air travelers, who wouldnt mind leaving a couple of hours later to collect a meaningful bonus. After numerous conversations with air travelers following the expulsion incident, its clear that while passengers are unhappy with the airline practice of overselling seats, a much bigger problem looms. It seems like there are so many aspects of flying today that are accepted as fact by too many airline passengers, says Tricia Kalinowski, a retired grocery store manager and frequent air traveler from Blaine, Minn. That includes not only overbooking but a corporate culture that allows a passenger to be dragged off a flight. Stories about customers being treated rudely are so common these days, they barely raise an eyebrow for consumer advocates or resonate with the flying public. No wonder, then, that the airline industry remains one of the worst-rated businesses in America, when it comes to customer service. Airlines need to continue to pay attention to their overall customer experience, says Peter Vlitas, a senior vice president of airline relations at Travel Leaders Group, a travel agency network. They can take meaningful steps now to do that, he adds. For example, when it comes to oversales, that might mean scaling back the percentage of oversold seats or increasing compensation for passengers voluntarily taking alternate flights. If nothing else, the Dao story put the spotlight on the systemic abuses that airlines unload on their paying passengers and the extent to which that attitude has been normalized. Undoing that is beyond the scope of a single bill. It will take a concerted passenger rights movement, more public outrage and a penitent airline industry to pull that off. And so far, that hasnt happened. Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org. Students in the nations only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering D.C. private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide. The study, released Thursday by the Education Departments research division, follows several other recent studies of state-funded vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio that suggested negative effects on student achievement. Critics are seizing on this data as they try to counter Trumps push to direct public dollars to private schools. Vouchers, deeply controversial among supporters of public education, are direct government subsidies parents can use as scholarships for private schools. These payments can cover all or part of the annual tuition bills, depending on the school. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long argued that vouchers help poor children escape from failing public schools. But Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said that DeVos should heed the departments Institute of Education Sciences. Given the new findings, Murray said, its time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country. DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nations capital that includes a robust public charter school sector. When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools, she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents overwhelmingly support the voucher program and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.s most vulnerable students. The D.C. program serves about 1,100 students, giving them up to $8,452 to attend a private elementary or middle school and up to $12,679 for high school. Participating private schools must be accredited by 2021 but otherwise face few requirements beyond showing that they are in good financial standing and demonstrating compliance with health and safety laws. D.C. students who used vouchers had significantly lower math scores a year after joining the program, on average, than students who applied for a voucher through a citywide lottery but did not receive one. For voucher students in kindergarten through fifth grade, reading scores were also significantly lower. For older voucher students, there was no significant difference in reading scores. For voucher recipients coming from a low-performing public school the population that the voucher program primarily aims to reach attending a private school had no effect on achievement. But for voucher recipients coming from higher-performing public schools, the negative effect was particularly large. The analysis reviewed data for more than 1,700 students who participated in the lotteries from 2012 to 2014. [Quality controls lacking for D.C. private schools accepting vouchers] Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard, said the D.C. study adds to an emerging pattern of research showing declines in student achievement among voucher recipients, a departure from an earlier wave of research often on smaller, privately funded scholarship programs that skewed more positive. I think we need to be asking the question: Why is this happening and what should we make of it and should we care? West said. He said weaker scores among voucher recipients may be a result of the fact that public school performance is improving, particularly in the District, where math and reading scores at traditional public and public charter schools have increased quickly over the past decade. Kevin Chavous, a national voucher advocate who lobbied for the program as a member of the D.C. Council in 2004, said he wasnt surprised by the findings because the study examined student performance after only one year in private school. These are kids that come from some of the most challenged backgrounds, and theyre just getting adjusted. Its no question that the longer theyre in our schools, the better they do, Chavous said. We have to look at the ultimate judge of the quality of the program, and thats the graduation rate and the college-going rate. Chavous said the voucher program gave disempowered parents something they lack in many other parts of their lives: control. Thats a landmark thing in urban America, he said. Over the past two decades, a pile of contradictory studies including on programs in Charlotte, Milwaukee and New York have painted a muddy picture of how funneling public funds toward private-school tuition affects student achievement. In some cases, students receiving private-school tuition assistance modestly outperformed similar students who stayed in public schools; in other cases, including the first federal analysis of the Districts program in 2010, there was no difference. Its not a picture you should hang a policy on, said Martin Carnoy, a Stanford professor of education who has studied vouchers. The administrations focus on choice is diverting attention from ways to really improve schooling, he said. I think thats the harm in all of this. School-choice advocates argue that test scores offer a limited picture of performance and that graduation and college-enrollment rates mean far more for long-term success. Several studies have shown that voucher recipients tend to do better on these measures, including in the District, where the 2010 federal analysis showed that 91 percent of students who used a voucher to attend a private school graduated on time, compared with 70 percent of those without vouchers. The 2010 analysis also showed that parents of students who were offered vouchers, but not the students themselves, felt more confident in the safety of their schools. The new evaluation echoes that finding. The new evaluation also found that the program had no effect on parents school satisfaction. [DeVos praises this voucher-like program. Heres what it means for school reform.] Congress created the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004 with the support of key local leaders, including then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams. Advocates of the program spent the past eight years fighting for its survival under President Barack Obama, who opposed vouchers. Now they are hopeful that the White Houses staunch support for choice, coupled with Republican majorities in Congress, will enable the program to grow. Already, Trump has freed up millions of dollars in carry-over funding from previous years that officials say will allow the program to nearly triple the number of students it serves from about 1,100 this year to 3,000 in the next school year. More than 6,000 students, most of them African American or Latino, have used D.C. vouchers since the programs inception. Voucher critics often argue that sending taxpayer dollars to private schools drains public schools, which serve the vast majority of children, of necessary resources. In her statement Thursday, DeVos said that the D.C. voucher program had clearly not damaged progress in the citys public schools. But the D.C. voucher program is singular. Rather than diverting funds from the Districts public schools, it has brought them additional revenue. To make the program politically palatable in a city dominated by Democrats, Congress has appropriated millions of dollars a year for the citys traditional public schools and its growing set of public charter schools. A pregnant 32-year-old woman walking along a well-traveled street in Montgomery County on Wednesday afternoon was dragged into woods by a stranger who raped her, stole $17 from her purse and fled, according to police allegations filed in court Thursday. Antonio Devon Kamara, 33, whose address is unconfirmed, faces charges of first-degree rape, first-degree assault and robbery, arrest records show. He was apprehended near the scene after the woman, in a torn and muddy dress, flagged a passerby, who called police, the court filings show. The reported incident happened about 2:30 p.m. in the 13800 block of Castle Boulevard in Silver Spring, where the woman was walking on a sidewalk. When officers arrived, they talked to the woman, who said she had been walking and on her cellphone with a friend when the man identified by police as Kamara walked up to her from behind, court filings show. He tried to talk to her and she ignored him, the police account states, before Kamara allegedly grabbed her, took the phone and pushed her into a nearby wooded area. She fell and fought with her attacker, who sexually assaulted her and told her to be quiet or he would kill her, according to court documents and police. Kamara also is accused of stealing $17 before running from the woods, police said. The victim described her attacker to police, and an officer who was in the area approached a suspect who ran before being caught, officials said. The woman identified the suspect as the man who had sexually assaulted her, police said. Kamara is jailed and being held without bond. Virginia gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart speaks during a gun-rights rally in Richmond. (Bob Brown/AP) RICHMOND Corey Stewart, the Republican running for Virginia governor as a defender of Confederate flags and monuments, got into a Twitter fight this week with - among others - musician John Legend, crime novelist Laura Lippman and David Simon, creator of the HBO series The Wire. Along the way, Stewart added fuel to the Internet sparring by seeming to defend an apparent anti-Semite. Stewart kicked off the fracas on Monday, when he criticized the removal of The Battle of Liberty Place monument in New Orleans, which honored members of the Crescent City White League who died trying to overthrow the citys government after the Civil War. It was the first of four statues linked to the Confederacy that are set to be torn down in New Orleans. Stewarts comments prompted blowback from musician John Legend and many of his 9.2 million Twitter followers. Among those who chimed in was Lippman, who was born in Atlanta and raised in Baltimore. Darlin Im a Southerner and happy to explain why those monuments are [messed] up, Lippman wrote. Someone tweeting as Fashy Frog shot back to Lippman: Are you a Jew? Eventually Lippmans husband, Wire creator Simon, jumped in with: Are you a s---head? Sounds like it. And thats where Stewart popped up again in the thread with this: Just like a liberal: no argument, so attack the man. A Twitter exchange involving Virginia gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart. (Via Twitter) In an interview Thursday, Stewart said he was not defending Fashy Frog, but himself and that he was not supporting anti-Semitism. We dont even know who that is, he said, referring to Fashy Frog, whose Twitter handle incorporates an image of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon appropriated by some members of the alt-right movement. [All that Confederate stuff leads to endorsement switch in Va. governors race] Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, is in a three-way primary for the GOP gubernatorial nomination with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and state Sen. Frank Wagner (Virginia Beach). Trailing Gillespie in fundraising and endorsements, Stewart has sought to draw attention to his bid by defying political correctness as Donald Trump did in his unconventional campaign for president. Stewart, who was chairman for Trumps Virginia campaign until his ouster toward the end, has made the preservation of Virginias Civil War monuments his rallying cry. He has held rallies against the Charlottesville City Councils decision to remove a Robert E. Lee monument, embraced the Confederate flag at multiple events and attended an Old South Ball in an outfit approximating a Confederate dress uniform. [Trumps mini me struggles to get traction in Virginia] [Did a Republican running for Va. governor really dress up like a Confederate gent?] In the Twitter war that raged Monday and Tuesday, many critics of Stewart noted that his defense of Southern heritage was disingenuous, given his roots as a native of Minnesota. Congratulations! tweeted broadcast journalist Soledad OBrien. Do tell, when did you move to the great state of Virginia, sir? Stewart was back at it on Thursday, tweeting We must protect Virginia heritage from #HistoricalVandalism. After facing eviction for a year, the nearly 50 families in a Northern Virginia mobile home park plagued by raw sewage appear poised to stay in their homes with new sewer and water systems and a new landlord. But, in line with the uncertainty that has surrounded the East End Mobile Home Park in Manassas since last April, a private investors pending deal to buy the property 36 miles southwest of Washington could be scuttled amid threats of a federal lawsuit from residents pushing for him agree to a host of demands. Ive never seen a land deal where the tenants tell me all the conditions where Im able to buy, and that makes it very difficult, said James Turner, who owns several mobile home parks in the Washington area and took the first steps to purchase East End earlier this month. Turner said he approached the parks current owner, the Helen Loretta Clarke Trust, after reading a Washington Post article about the mostly Latino immigrant residents up-and-down struggle to remain in their mobile homes one of the few places they can afford to live in the region. On Thursday, he visited East End and learned from city officials that it would take as much as $1.5 million to fix the infrastructure, including the sewer and water lines an estimate he said could affect how much he is willing to pay for the 6.8-acre property. An attorney for the Clarke trust confirmed the pending deal. The bid would need to be approved by the City of Manassas, which had agreed to buy the land for $1.86 million as a way fix what officials considered a public health hazard that has also eaten into the growing citys wastewater treatment capacity. Patrick J. Small, the citys director of economic development, said officials are willing to cancel that agreement if Turner can prove he has the money to buy the land and make the repairs. The city will require Turner to submit a plan for the repairs that Manassas engineers consider to be reasonable, doable and achievable, and a financial guarantee in the amount needed for those fixes that, should Turner back out of the purchase, the city could then use to make them, Small said. If those three things can happen, the City Council would consider that a viable alternative, Small said about Turners bid. But the discussions have been hampered by threats of a federal lawsuit if Turner doesnt agree to 14 conditions put forth by the residents. Such action would seek damages against the Clarke trust and the city for allowing the sewer problems to fester for several years, an attorney for the residents said. Among other things, the tenants want lot fees at or below $600 per month for at least five years, a guarantee that the parks crumbling roads would be fixed and plowed after snowstorms, and a new playground area. The residents, who have withheld about $150,000 in lot fees from the Clarke trust in an General District court action scheduled for a June hearing, also demand that Turner use that money for mobile home repairs or as rent credit for seven months should a judge determine it should be paid to the park. And, they want Turner to agree to help them try to buy East End themselves after five years if they choose to do so. These are nonnegotiable demands, said Victor M. Glasberg, a civil rights attorney in Alexandria, who recently began representing the residents. The paramount interest is living there under hygienic and reasonable circumstances. Glasberg said that Catholics for Housing, a nonprofit group in nearby Dumfries that had also been preparing to buy East End, had already agreed to the demands an effort being orchestrated by a board member of the group. But Karen DeVito, the agencys director, said nothing has been formally approved. I didnt know there were demands being made, DeVito said. Turner said some of the tenants requests are either not within his legal rights or economically feasible. He added that the possibility of being pulled into a federal lawsuit makes him wary. I dont want to step into past history, he said, about the tenants grievances. Im trying to deal in good faith. Nearly four months after a former congressman from Charlottesville shocked the political establishment by jumping into the race for governor of Virginia, state Democrats are locked in a contest that they didnt want but that the whole country is watching. On Saturday, the two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination meet in their first debate ahead of the June 13 primary. Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who spent years laying the groundwork for this run, will square off in Fairfax against challenger Tom Perriello, who has taken the mantle of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others looking to reinvent the Democratic brand. Early polls show the two candidates running about even a measure of the force with which Perriello has disrupted Northams plans. Yet most Virginians dont know much about either man and have yet to make up their minds, which makes Saturdays debate a crucial chance to define the race. Perriello has capitalized on national Democrats anxiety about reclaiming relevance and defying President Trump. He has drawn most of his money from outside Virginia, including a massive stake from billionaire George Soros, and picked up endorsements from the leaders of the wing that believes the party must be more populist and progressive notably Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). [Dark money vs. corporate cash: Va. Democratic rivals clash over funding] My guess is that there is an audience for this message right now there certainly is one nationally, said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political analyst. Its the argument that the system is rigged . . . that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders articulated during the [presidential] campaign. Perriello has embraced that. This has cast an unflattering light on what had seemed to be Northams strengths his calm demeanor, his record of working in the Republican-controlled legislature, even his rural Virginia drawl. But Northam boasts some advantages. He has the support of every Democrat in the General Assembly and of Democratic Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, who will help roust voters for the primary, which is likely to see low turnout. And despite Perriellos rapid fundraising he pulled in a field-leading $2.2 million between January and March Northam has more cash on hand (over $3 million) and has already begun TV advertising. The two candidates are strikingly similar in their policy positions, so for Democratic primary voters, the deciding factors may be style and background. Northam, 57, is a pediatric neurologist from the Eastern Shore town of Onancock. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and, as an Army major, treated wounded soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. He won election to the state Senate in 2007 and was reelected in 2011, then won the statewide election to become lieutenant governor in 2013. Northam sometimes takes heat for confessing that he voted for George W. Bush for president twice and because state Republicans tried to woo him to switch parties in 2009 in a bid to gain control of the Senate. But Northam developed a staunch record on Democratic issues, especially health care. He led efforts to pass a smoking ban in Virginia restaurants and skewered Republican efforts to require women to get a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining an abortion. Perriello, 42, grew up outside Charlottesville and got his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale. He won election to Congress in 2008, representing the conservative 5th District. During his single term, he won stature within the party for supporting the Affordable Care Act despite his conservative constituency. But Perriello also has drawn fire from liberals for advocating an amendment to the ACA that would have prevented federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and for winning an A rating from the NRA by, in part, resisting an assault weapons ban. Perriello has since apologized for the abortion vote and now refers to the NRA as a nut-job extremist organization. After he lost his congressional seat, partly because of his support for Obamacare, Perriello had prominent roles at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. His friendship with Obama led to appointments in the State Department, including a diplomatic posting in Africa. Perriello has used his youth and his social media savvy to stir up Democrats who felt shocked by Hillary Clintons defeat last year. His populist message, perhaps the most strident of any Virginia Democrat since Henry Howell in the 1970s, has packed town hall meetings. But Perriello is no Sanders-like rabble-rouser. He reads his crowds, he absorbs information quickly, and he formulates cogent arguments heavy on anti-Trump defiance. Northam is actually more likely to shout to a crowd, but he struggles to seem natural in front of a large group. His demeanor is better suited to small interactions the bedside manner of a country doctor, or the chumminess of a legislator who might be able to broker a deal with the other side. Its this difference of approach that highlights the choice Democrats will have to weigh in Saturdays debate, and plays out most strikingly in how the two candidates talk about the economy. Virginia has low unemployment 3.8 percent but is pockmarked by wildly uneven prosperity. Coal towns in Southwest and urban housing projects in Norfolk or Richmond suffer deep poverty, while the vast Northern Virginia suburbs are among the wealthiest places in the country. Even those, though, have seen a loss of high-paying jobs and are threatened by an overdependence on government-related industries. Both candidates emphasize the issue. But Perriello is more likely to use the language of working-class angst, while Northam talks of economic opportunity. It is clear that Perriello has embraced what I would call the populist position, whereas Northam has adopted a sort of more conventional Democratic stance, where he is progressive on social issues but sort of mainstream on economic matters, Holsworth said. For instance, Perriello has proposed free community college. Northam has also proposed two years of free community college but would then have recipients spend two years working in community service. Both candidates support a $15-an-hour minimum wage, but Perriello has also called for universal pre-K and eight weeks of guaranteed leave for workers at two-thirds pay to care for a new child or a sick family member. Northams take is more cautious: efforts to expand early education and a tax credit to enable employers to afford eight weeks of paid leave. Perriellos approach may be what voters want to hear, Holsworth said, but Northams is more pragmatic. Perriello is not going to beat Northam on the grounds of what he can do with the General Assembly, and one would think . . . some of the populist economic positions hes taken are likely to be more symbolic than real, Holsworth said. Another area of sharp difference involves two oil and natural gas pipelines being planned in rural parts of Virginia. Perriello is against them, period. Northam wont disavow the pipelines which his patron, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), has touted as a big source of jobs but says they must be subjected to strict environmental review. Thats about as far apart as they get on any issue, which has delighted a Republican opposition that sees the Democratic primary tacking farther and farther to the left. Its just different shades of gray, said political analyst Geoffrey Skelley of the Universtity of Virginia Center for Politics, who then corrected himself: Or different shades of blue, there you go. Republicans have a June 13 primary battle of their own among former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, Prince William County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart and Virginia Beach state Sen. Frank Wagner. The winners will square off in November. Northam and Perriello will debate Saturday at 6 p.m. at Lanier Middle School in Fairfax. Reps. Gerald E. Connolly and A. Donald McEachin on Thursday endorsed a state senator from Loudoun County for the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. Barbara Comstock. State Sen. Jennifer T. Wexton is one of four Democrats who want to unseat Comstock (R) in a 2018 midterm contest that could be among the nations most competitive. Democrats are targeting the Northern Virginia district and others like it that voted for Hillary Clinton but are held by Republican members of Congress. The early endorsements for Wexton come two days after Dorothy McAuliffe, the wife of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and a close friend of the Clintons, said she is seriously considering running for the seat. If the states first lady decides to run, Virginia Democrats could find themselves in an awkward position, having to choose between a popular state senator and the wife of a powerhouse fundraiser with a national network. [Dorothy McAuliffe, wife of Va. governor, tests the waters for a congressional run] Earlier this week, six state senators, including four with constituents in the 10th Congressional District Sens. Janet D. Howell, Dave W. Marsden, Jeremy S. McPike and J. Chapman Chap Petersen endorsed Wexton. Following the announcement of her candidacy, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the 10th District race to its toss-up list. Analysts considered the race up a toss-up leaning Republican last year, and Comstock won a second term by six points despite sharing a ballot with Donald Trump, who lost the district by 10 points. Wexton, a former prosecutor, has served in the legislature since 2004. She has an excellent track record of introducing and passing legislation that matters to people, Connolly (D) said in a statement. Jennifer does her homework, works across the aisle, she gets things done, and she shows up. She is the sort of legislator we need in Congress. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Emilys List, which backs women who support abortion rights, recruited Wexton, but neither group is taking a public position on the primary. McEachin (D), a DCCC regional vice chair responsible for fundraising and other tasks in states from Virginia to Florida, encouraged her to run with a letter quoting Thomas Paine from The Crisis. These are the times that try mens souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman, he wrote. You and I are not sunshine patriots. Your country needs you. The time has come for all hands on deck. Two other Democrats have filed the paperwork to raise money: Lindsey Davis Stover, a former Obama administration official, and Dan Helmer, an Army veteran and Rhodes scholar. Kimberly Adams, past president of the Fairfax County teachers union, has also said she will run for the nomination. President-elect Donald Trump is joined at Trump Tower by UKIPs Nigel Farage, third from right, and Brexit allies, from left, Gerry Gunster, Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Raheem Kassam, Breitbart London editor in chief. Kassam says he is overseeing Breitbarts efforts to grow across Europe and into Canada and Australia. (Andy Wigmore) Nigel Farage raised a sudsy toast. The British government had just formally triggered its Brexit from the European Union and Farage, the right-wing politician who had long championed it, hoisted a pint of beer, looked into the camera, and thanked the Americans he credited with helping make it happen. Well done, Bannon. Well done, Breitbart youve helped with this hugely, Farage said in a video toast tweeted last month to his 781,000 followers, thanking Stephen K. Bannon and Breitbart News, which Bannon ran before he left to become President Trumps adviser. Breitbart, which has risen in prominence with Trumps election and the surprise Brexit vote, has become a disruptive force far beyond the U.S. borders. The anti- establishment resentment that fueled Trumps campaign is surfacing again overseas in elections in France and Germany, and Breitbart hopes to tap into the anti-elite, anti-immigration rage to build its global brand. Breitbarts top U.S. editor, Alexander Marlow, described expansion plans around the time of Trumps election five months ago, with hopes to establish bureaus in France and Germany, opening what Bannon has called new fronts in our current cultural and political war. Vivien Hoch is a conservative blogger in France who is inspired by Trump and is a huge supporter of Breitbart coming to France. (Kevin Sullivan/The Washington Post) Since then, no new bureaus have opened, and Breitbart so far has not replicated its U.S. success in any substantial way across the Atlantic, beyond Britain. But even its harshest detractors see a potentially significant European market for Breitbarts brand of crusading coverage of a handful of key issues, including immigration, Islam, terrorism, crime and globalization. Breitbart is part of a broad offensive against the progressive liberal order. They attack womens rights, LGBT equality, immigration, said Joe Mulhall of Hope Not Hate, a London-based research and advocacy group that fights racism and fascism. The pillars of European liberal democracy are shaking, and Breitbart is right in the center of it, he said. Founded in 2007 by right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart, the site averaged more than 15 million unique visitors in the first three months of this year, down from a high of almost 23 million during the 2016 elections, according to ComScore. Bannon, who took over in 2012 after the founders death, grew the site into a relentless warrior for nationalism, constantly warning against mass immigration, especially by Muslims. Critics have called the site xenophobic, racist and sexist, citing headlines such as Europes rape epidemic: Western women will be sacrificed at the altar of mass migration and Feminists need to know Islam kills women. While Bannon has officially severed financial and editorial ties with Breitbart, European critics said they suspect he is still an informal adviser, which Breitbart denies. On Tuesday, the committee that oversees news media access to the U.S. Congress declined to accredit Breitbart, saying that it was not fully convinced that Bannon was no longer involved. Steve is not advising us. He just isnt, said Chad Wilkinson, a Breitbart spokesman. Attempts to reach Bannon were unsuccessful. One-fifth of Breitbarts 15 million monthly readers are already from outside the United States, according to SimilarWeb, an analytics firm. It already has a London bureau, a reporter in Rome and several in Jerusalem. The world is getting smaller, and our fates are tied together, said Raheem Kassam, 30, editor in chief of Breitbart London, who said in an interview that he is overseeing the organizations efforts to grow across Europe and into Canada and Australia. Kassam said it was nonsense to call Breitbart racist or sexist; he said it simply reports truths ignored by mainstream news media. Kassam, the British-born son of Indian immigrants, was raised Muslim but said he became disillusioned with Islam, especially when Muslim college classmates in London cheered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Well-known in Britain for his sharp-tongued conservatism as a blogger in his 20s, Kassam said some Breitbart headlines are playful and represent slightly more of a tabloid fashion than an American market is used to. Some questioned whether continental Europe was ready for Breitbarts loud-and-proud journalistic style. Critics said that Breitbart seems to be having trouble finding local journalists and that its screaming-headline style so familiar to the British might not appeal as much in France and Germany. Breitbart cannot succeed in France if they do only excessive or outrageous news; we are not that kind of people, said Frederic Paillet of Reputation Squad, a digital consulting firm in Paris. But if they do it properly, they will succeed because there is demand. There is also resistance: A French spokeswoman for Sleeping Giants, an anonymous online movement with Twitter accounts in 14 nations, said her group, which operates in individual countries without any centralized leadership, has persuaded nearly 2,000 organizations worldwide not to advertise with Breitbart. Kassam said Sleeping Giants has not damaged Breitbarts finances. News reports have said Breitbart is substantially funded by the family of American billionaire Robert Mercer, a Trump ally and major donor. [The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built] Kassam said it was total nonsense that Breitbart has had trouble with its expansion plans. Could it have been faster? Sure, he said. But its going to be great. Asked about critics who say his expansion plans are all talk, he said, Theyre idiots. Success in Britain Kassam said Bannon first pitched him on Breitbart at a 2013 dinner at Browns Hotel in London. I think that Europe is going to become a political tinderbox over the next few years, Bannon said, according to Kassam. He said Bannon believed Britain was facing many of the same issues he saw in the United States, including anti-immigration backlash and working-class anger at elites. The London bureau opened in 2014, and wrote favorably and nonstop about Farage and his U.K. Independence Party, a far-right, anti-immigration, anti-European Union party that was an important driver of the Brexit effort. If Nigel was giving a speech, wed be there with a camera, Kassam said. Breitbarts British audience grew and Kassams London staff expanded to about 10 journalists. When Brexit passed unexpectedly in June, Breitbarts coverage was widely credited with being a small but significant factor. To critics like Hope Not Hate, that proved that Breitbart is more political than journalistic. They noted that Kassam took time out from his Breitbart job to be Farages spokesman and briefly ran for the UKIP leadership job last year. It distorts and fabricates news to deliberately incite anger in its supporters and fear in others, Hope Not Hate said in a recent report, Breitbart: A rightwing plot to shape Europes future. Farage, in a London interview, said Breitbarts expansion into London was as political as it was commercial. He said Breitbart speaks for people who have basically felt ignored in the political process. He has known Bannon for several years. Ive heard this bloody rubbish about Bannon, that hes white supremacist and an anti-Semite. Ive never, ever seen or heard anything in that direction from him, Farage said. Kassam, he said, was a credible voice on Islam, in part because he was raised Muslim. There are some opinions that get published on Breitbart that obviously go a lot further than I would, Farage said. But is this a fair and reasonable debate to be having, given that extremist Muslim atrocities are becoming part of daily life in Europe? Yes. Possibilities in France Vivien Hoch arrived for lunch at a Paris restaurant wearing a dark-blue suit, white shirt and a fireball-red tie worn just a bit too long. I love Trumps style and charisma, said Hoch, 30, a conservative blogger whose name surfaced in local media as a potential Breitbart writer in France. He met with Kassam at a meeting of French conservative activists in January but said Kassam was just feeling us out a little bit. Hoch said Breitbart would have a significant market in France, because it had the financial backing and connections to influence politics and create buzz. Tapping his lapel, he added, Breitbart comes to France like an American general wearing two medals: Brexit and Trump. Hoch said U.S. news organizations HuffPost and BuzzFeed cover France with French-language sites that offer generally left-leaning coverage. There no reason that Breitbart couldnt do that on the other side, said Hoch, who bought a red Make America Great Again cap on Amazon and wears it as a lighthearted provocation to left-leaning French friends. French right-wing populism is rising, most visibly in the campaign of Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and her anti-immigration, anti-European Union rhetoric. Le Pen won more than 21 percent in Frances first-round of voting on Sunday, second only to centrist Emmanuel Macron with about 24 percent. They face a May 7 runoff for the presidency. [Le Pen claims victory alongside Macron for French presidential runoff, with E.U. future at stake] Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a niece of Marine Le Pen and a key figure in the National Front, also said Breitbart could succeed in France if it were less tabloidy. In France, were interested in reading more intellectual articles, Marechal-Le Pen, 27, said in an interview at her French Parliament office. But Marechal-Le Pen said she believed French voters were rejecting the traditional press, and the majority of the French population would support Breitbart, especially the Forgotten France who suffer from the effects of globalization. Breitbart has been covering Marine Le Pens candidacy enthusiastically, but Kassam said that doesnt mean the site endorses Le Pen. Were not shy of saying it when we do it. Were just not doing it, he said. But thats not how it feels to Marechal-Le Pen. I am aware that Breitbart is supporting the National Front; Im very flattered, although its not very influential in France, she said. Reaction in Germany In Germany, Breitbarts expansion plans have also stirred anger and fear ahead of national elections in September in which Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking a fourth term. Advertising executive Gerald Hensel started a campaign late last year called #NoMoneyForTheRight, to inform companies that their ads were appearing on Breitbart and other right-wing websites. Hensel said in a phone interview that he was bombarded by angry messages, calls to his employer demanding that he be fired and death threats. Within two weeks, he resigned as a digital strategy director with Scholz & Friends, a German advertising agency. Hensel said Breitbart might have trouble setting up a bureau in Germany because Germans since World War II have been vigilant about the kind of extremism he believes Breitbart represents. He and others point to Breitbarts coverage of a New Years Eve incident in Dortmund, Germany, in which Breitbart reported that a mob of more than 1,000 men chanted Allahu Akhbar, launched fireworks at police, and set fire to a historic church. Some elements of the story were correct: There was a large gathering, including many immigrants. A number of people were chanting Allahu akbar, a phrase sometimes used in anger by radicals but also common in prayer and celebrations. Netting over scaffolding on the roof of the church briefly caught fire, but it was unclear whether fireworks had deliberately been fired at the church, which was not damaged. Police said one Syrian migrant threw a single firework that landed at a police officers feet. German police, politicians and media said Breitbart inflated a relatively minor incident to create the false impression that Muslim immigrants had staged a large-scale attack on police and burned a Christian church. We shook our heads in disbelief when we saw how this operation was politicized, a spokesman for the Dortmund police said. Critics said Breitbart was attempting to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment ahead of the September election, in which Merkels immigration policies have been criticized by the anti-Muslim Alternative for Germany party. Kassam defended Breitbarts reporting on his website, accusing the mainstream media of dishonest criticism because it clearly damages their broader goal of fostering a mass migration, multiculturalist mindset. Merkels government has proposed a law, soon to be debated in Parliament, that would impose large fines on social-media firms like Facebook if they fail to immediately take down fake news. Sullivan reported from London and Paris. McAuley reported from Paris. Karla Adam in London, Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin and Cleophee Demoustier in Paris contributed to this report. Govts election moves irk UML As the date for first phase of local level elections nears, the main opposition CPN-UML has started hardening its position, opposing the revised contents of the constitution amendment proposal and budget presentation between the polls. Cecilia Alvear, who fought for Latino inclusion in newsrooms and reached unprecedented heights for a Hispanic woman in journalism in a decades-long career with NBC News, died April 21 at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 77. The cause was complications from breast cancer, said her longtime partner, George Lewis. Ms. Alvear, a past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, was born in Ecuador, on the Galapagos island of San Cristobal, on Nov. 5, 1939. She came to the United States in 1965 and worked in a congressmans office until getting a job as a TV news production assistant in 1971. At the time, roles for women in journalism were few and roles for Latinos were even fewer. As she moved through various jobs in local television in Los Angeles, she was often the only member of either group working in news production. In 1982, NBC News tapped her to run its Mexico City bureau. From there she covered wars and revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and she produced several interviews with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. I met Cecilia in 1982 when she was sent, as an NBC producer at the height of the Cold War, to run the war coverage of NBC in Latin America, Anne-Marie OConnor, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, told the paper. At the time it was rare to even meet a female producer, much less an Ecuadorian-born Latina who spoke English with an accent. Cecilia broke the mold. Ms. Alvear never graduated from college, but she completed a prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1989. She remained with NBC until her retirement in 2007. In 1994 while on assignment in Mexico, she learned she had breast cancer for the first time. She was free and clear of the disease until it returned 18 years later. Besides Lewis, survivors include four sisters and two half-brothers. Associated Press House Republican leaders scrambled unsuccessfully Thursday evening to muster enough votes to bring a health-care bill to the floor this week, after the latest changes intensified resistance among some moderates and key industry players. The compromise that moderate Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) forged with the conservative House Freedom Caucus brought the party closer to unwinding the 2010 Affordable Care Act, giving it more support than it had when it abruptly pulled the measure last month from a planned floor vote. But shortly after 10 p.m., leaders determined that they still lacked enough backing to pass it. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters that were still educating members on the latest draft. MacArthurs amendment would allow states to opt out of two of the laws central provisions: requiring coverage for essential health benefits such as maternity and preventive care; and barring insurers from charging people with certain preexisting medical conditions more than others in their general insurance pool. The changes run directly counter to what President Trump pledged during last years campaign and since his election, and many lawmakers from swing districts remain hesitant to endorse them. Both Affordable Care Act provisions enjoy significant public support, and the amendment does nothing to alter the roughly $880 billion in Medicaid cuts outlined in the GOPs American Health Care Act. Outside of the Freedom Caucus, Republicans who had opposed the American Health Care Act grappled with the revised text. Most were still opposed or undecided on Thursday. Were taking a trillion bucks out and saying, Good luck, states, said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), whose district covers Reno and most of rural Nevada. That may provide money to do tax reform, but what you leave in my state is that when the legislature meets, its got about a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar shortfall. [How the House GOP plan compares to the Affordable Care Act] House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) had told reporters earlier in the day that he thought the latest proposal could win over moderates because it does not eliminate essential benefits altogether. Instead, states would be allowed to seek a waiver to define their own essential benefits, and if the federal government did not respond within 60 days to a request, the states changes could automatically go into effect. Id argue that this is a bill a moderate would be more likely to support, Ryan said. Some people were concerned about [essential health benefits]. Theyre now in the federal law, and a state would have to file a waiver. If anything, this puts more federal protections in. However, there was little evidence that MacArthurs proposal had brought any of his fellow moderates on board. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who came around to yes when Republicans were preparing to bring the American Health Care Act to the floor last month, told a scrum of reporters that the latest amendment had thrown up red flags for him on issues such as preexisting conditions. At this stage, Im not seeing much that I like, Diaz-Balart said. Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), who wrote in Mike Pence for president as his suburban district broke against Trump, announced he would oppose the bill. It threatens to send premiums skyrocketing for people with preexisting conditions, he said in a statement. Since House leaders need 216 votes to pass a bill, and every House Democrat currently opposes their legislation, Republicans can afford to lose only 22 lawmakers. Were going to go when we have the votes, Ryan emphasized, but thats the decision well make when we have it. Before the Affordable Care Act became law, consumers who lost employer-based coverage bought plans on the individual market under a provision of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. That law meant they could get coverage even if they had had prior medical issues, but they could be charged much more than other consumers. Many were charged four to five times the standard rate, if not more, said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Its really kind of deterrent pricing. As GOP leaders worked to win over undecided members this week, many powerful interest groups representing the elderly, disabled, physicians, hospitals and those with chronic diseases such as cancer lobbied the same lawmakers to reject the bill. Rick Pollack, the president and chief executive of the American Hospital Association, said in a statement that the MacArthur amendment would dramatically worsen the bill and that it continues to put health coverage in jeopardy for many Americans. And James L. Madara, chief executive of the American Medical Association, wrote in a letter to House leaders that health-status underwriting could effectively make coverage completely unaffordable to people with preexisting conditions. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, which last week issued a statement criticizing the MacArthur proposal, urged its members to call their representatives to vote against the new version. [The new health-care bill may just be an exercise in blame-shifting] But Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a close ally of the president, said he was advising undecided moderates that any vote they cast or do not cast would be attacked by Democrats. In a couple of cases, Ive said, Trust me, in a year and a half, youll see ads on TV attacking you on something, he said. As a candidate and president-elect, Trump had repeatedly advocated preserving the Affordable Care Acts protections for those with preexisting conditions. I want to keep preexisting conditions, he said during a CNN-Telemundo debate in February 2016. Its a modern age, and I think we have to have it. And in a Nov. 13 interview with 60 Minutes, he called the provision one of the strongest assets of the health-care law. On Thursday, however, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration backed the latest version of the bill. He added that Trump is in no rush to get a health-care vote before his 100-day mark on Saturday. He wants a vote when they have 216 votes, Spicer said. Paul Kane, Philip Bump and Amber Phillips contributed to this report. Norman T. Hatch, a Marine Corps cinematographer who produced some of the most intimate and harrowing glimpses of war seen on film and whose dramatic footage of the Battle of Tarawa during World War II won an Academy Award, died April 22 at a nursing home in Alexandria, Va. He was 96. The cause could not immediately be determined, said his son, N. Thomas Hatch Jr. Using a hand-cranked 16mm camera, Mr. Hatch and his crews in the Marine Corps newly formed Photographic Services Branch captured several fierce battles in the Pacific Theater as they happened. The resulting film revealed the heroism and horror of battle in sometimes raw and unsettling ways. In November 1943, Mr. Hatch single-handedly filmed much of the 76-hour battle for the island of Tarawa, one of the first major Allied victories in the Pacific Theater of World War II. He took shelter in bomb craters, then joined his fellow Marines as they advanced toward Japanese enemy lines. When other Marines asked why he was so close to the action, I would say, sure Ive got to be here, Mr. Hatch told United Press International in 2005. Ive got to be here just as much as youre here. Ive got to document what youre doing. Norman Hatch near the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in 2013. (Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) Japanese forces were heavily entrenched on Tarawa, a strategic island about one-third the size of New Yorks Central Park. Mr. Hatch filmed the fighting in black-and-white and in color, often standing exposed to rifle fire, grenades and bursting artillery shells. Why I didnt get hit, I dont know, he told UPI. I was probably within about 30, 40 feet of the enemy in one shot. In the foreground of one scene, he showed Marines firing at fleeing Japanese soldiers perhaps the only time in the Pacific Theater when troops from both sides could be seen in the same frame of film. More than 1,000 Marines were killed on Tarawa, but images of the dead were considered shocking and even unpatriotic at the time. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want to release the footage of dead Marines floating in the waters off Tarawa, but he became convinced that people would give more support to the countrys war effort if they could see its grisly toll. Mr. Hatchs film was edited at a Hollywood studio and made into a 20-minute documentary, With the Marines at Tarawa, complete with narration of the sound effects. It was widely shown at theaters throughout the country and received the 1945 Academy Award for best short documentary. Instead of going to Hollywood to accept the Oscar, Mr. Hatch went onshore with the first wave of Marines reaching the island of Iwo Jima in February 1945. The Battle of Iwo Jima was not just a turning point in the war, but it provided one of the countrys most indelible battlefield images, as Marines raised the U.S. flag on the islands Mount Suribachi. Mr. Hatch did not film the flag-raising himself, but he sent two members of his crew, who were joined by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. Norman Hatch in 2013. (Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) A small flag had been raised earlier, but a Marine officer wanted to plant a larger flag that could be seen over a wider distance. It was this second flag-raising that was captured by Rosenthal and by a Marine cameraman under Mr. Hatchs command. When a dispute arose over whether the second flag-raising had been staged, Mr. Hatch was summoned to the Pentagon to help resolve the matter. He confirmed the authenticity of Rosenthals memorable photograph with footage shot by Bill Genaust, who was killed days later on Iwo Jima. Mr. Hatch later helped edit film that was released as the documentary To the Shores of Iwo Jima, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Once you put the camera up to your eye, you are in another world, Mr. Hatch said in 2005, when asked about working under fire. You are not part of the battlefield when you do that because you are concentrating on what you are doing. Norman Thomas Hatch was born March 2, 1921, in Boston and grew up in Gloucester, Mass. He joined the Marine Corps in 1939 because I needed a job, he later said. Long interested in photography, he eventually joined the Marines photographic unit and was sent for training with the documentary filmmakers of the March of Time newsreels. After his discharge in 1946, he sold photographic equipment for a few years before joining the Defense Department as a civilian employee in the early 1950s. He worked in the Pentagons audiovisual department and became an adviser to the secretary of defense and a consultant to the White House press office and Congress. He retired in 1980 and later ran a photo agency, Photo Press International, for more than 20 years. He served in the Marine Reserve for many years, reaching the rank of major. A book about Mr. Hatch and his film unit, War Shots, by military historian Charles Jones, was published in 2011. Survivors include his wife of 74 years, the former Lois Rousseau of Alexandria; and two children, N. Thomas Hatch Jr. and Colby Hatch, both of Alexandria. In later years, Mr. Hatch often spoke about the Marine Corps, the battles he witnessed and the importance of having the media document the nation at war, even if it was uncomfortable for the military. They should be there no matter what, he said in 2005. If you dont let the public know what youre doing then they wont support you later on. The Academy Award for With the Marines at Tarawaresides at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. When asked about the Oscar, Mr. Hatch said, I didnt win it. The Marine Corps won it. Local leaders turn to social media to woo electorate Moving away from the conventional methods, party leaders and activists in towns and villages are found to be immersed in social networking sites to widen their vote base in the lead up to the local level elections. HUNGARY E.U. opens legal action over Soros university The European Union opened a legal case against Hungary on Wednesday over a threat to close a Budapest university founded by the liberal U.S. financier George Soros. The E.U.s executive arm sent Budapest a formal notice saying that a new Hungarian law on higher education violated academic freedom and democratic values. It gave the government a month to respond. Prime Minister Viktor Orban responded shortly afterward, rejecting accusations that Budapest was threatening the Central European University and dismissing the Hungarian-born Soros as a financial speculator. The CEU case is the latest of Orbans policies that have left Brussels and many E.U. states exasperated by what they see as his authoritarian tendencies. Budapest has said that the legal changes were needed to prevent foreign universities from issuing dubious diplomas. Honour guard soldiers lay flowers at the Chernobyl victims' memorial in Minsk on April 26, 2017. (Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images) Orban has often criticized the E.U. and repeatedly clashed with nongovernmental organizations sponsored by Soros, who promotes a liberal and internationalist worldview that the nationalist-minded Hungarian leader dislikes. Reuters PERSIAN GULF U.S., Iranian vessels in tense naval encounter A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer fired a warning flare toward an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps vessel coming near it in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. official said Wednesday, the latest tense naval encounter between the two sides. The incident occurred Monday as the vessel attempted to draw closer to the USS Mahan even as the destroyer tried to turn away, said Lt. Ian McConnaughey, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The Mahan made several attempts to contact the Iranian vessel, McConnaughey said in a statement. The Iranian vessel came within 1,100 yards of the Mahan, he said. The vessel later turned and sailed away. The United States and Iran routinely have tense encounters in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes. Iran views the U.S. presence as a provocation, and its Revolutionary Guard Corps shadows U.S. Navy ships in the gulf, occasionally firing missiles or rockets nearby. Since Irans nuclear deal with world powers in 2015, the hard-line Guard has stepped up its encounters with the Americans. The Navy recorded 35 instances of unsafe and/or unprofessional interactions with Iranian forces in 2016, compared with 23 in 2015. Associated Press IRAQ State-allied force says it seized ancient site Iraqi paramilitary forces said Wednesday that they have captured Hatra, a 2,000-year-old site near the northern city of Mosul, where U.S.-backed forces have been battling the Islamic State militant group for months. The media arm of the state-sanctioned force, made up mainly of Shiite militias, broadcast images of the site Wednesday. It was unclear whether the forces had secured it. A spokesman for the paramilitary forces told state TV that they captured the UNESCO World Heritage site and were two miles from a town with the same name. Iraqi forces often claim to have driven the Islamic State from areas that are still far from secure or that quickly fall back into the groups hands. Hatra is believed to have been built in the 2nd or 3rd century B.C. by the Seleucid Empire. Islamic State militants destroyed it along with other major historical sites in and around Mosul after seizing much of northern Iraq in summer 2014. The group believes antiquities promote idolatry. Associated Press 3 troops killed in eastern Ukraine: Authorities said three Ukrainian troops were killed and four were wounded in eastern Ukraine in an apparent flare-up of fighting with Russian-backed separatists. It appeared to be the worst loss of lives in weeks. In the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, a separatist commander told local media that one of his fighters was killed and two wounded in shelling by Ukrainian troops. Hong Kong arrests 2 disqualified lawmakers: Hong Kong police arrested two pro-independence lawmakers who were disqualified in a dispute over their oaths. It was the latest round of legal action against activists involved in the Chinese territorys pro-democracy movement. Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were arrested and questioned for hours before being released on bail. The two inserted insults against China into their oaths during their swearing-in in October, angering authorities. From news services MIDDLE EAST Israel strikes airport in Syria, intercepts target An apparent Israeli missile attack on a Syrian military installation near Damascus International Airport shook the capital on Thursday morning and raised tensions between the two hostile neighbors. After nightfall, the Israeli military used its Patriot missile defense system to intercept an incoming projectile from Syria above the Golan Heights. The military did not elaborate on what it described as a target, but Israeli media said a drone that had infiltrated from Syria was knocked out. The target of the predawn explosions near Damascus was not known. Lately, Israel has appeared to be striking at military convoys and installations in Syria at a quickening pace, maintaining that it has the right to prevent authorities there from transferring weapons across the border to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. Hezbollah is a staunch ally of the Syrian government and an avowed enemy of Israel. Israel is widely thought to have carried out airstrikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria and on Hezbollah positions. In other developments Thursday, at least 19 people were killed in air raids in the northwestern rebel-held Idlib province. Some of the raids appeared to target ambulances and medical centers. Associated Press Israel: Abbas to stop funding Gaza electricity Israel said the Palestinian self-rule government in the West Bank informed it Thursday that it will stop paying for the electricity that Israel sells to the Gaza Strip as tensions between the territorys Islamist militant Hamas rulers and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas intensify. Abbas has threatened to exert financial pressure on Hamas to cede control of Gaza, a territory it seized from him in 2007 in bloody street battles. Reconciliation attempts since then between the rival governments have failed. Hamas official Ismail Radwan condemned the move by Abbas. Its illogical that Gaza is besieged and deprived of electricity, water and basic needs for the sake of political prices, he said. Gaza has suffered through increasing hardship since the Hamas takeover, which triggered a border blockade by Israel and Egypt. Gazans have endured massive power cuts. COGAT, a branch of the Israeli military, says it was notified by the Abbas government that electricity payments will stop immediately. Associated Press BRITAIN Police: Man with knives held near Parliament Police carrying out a counterterrorism operation Thursday swooped in on a man they said was carrying knives in a bag near Britains Parliament and arrested him on suspicion of planning terrorist acts. The Metropolitan Police said the 27-year-old suspect was stopped and detained as part of an ongoing operation by the forces counterterrorism unit. The incident unfolded just yards from where an attacker killed four people with a vehicle and a knife last month. Police said that knives were recovered during the operation Thursday and that there was no immediate known threat to the public. The man was arrested yards from the gates to the prime ministers residence. Theresa May was not there at the time. Associated Press Protesters storm Macedonia parliament: Scores of protesters, many wearing masks, broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonias parliament, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of an ethnic Albanian as speaker. Macedonia has been without a government since December, when conservatives won elections but without enough votes to form a government. Coalition talks broke down over demands by ethnic Albanians that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonias population is ethnic Albanian. Russian police raid offices of anti-Putin group: Police searched the Moscow offices of a pro-democracy movement founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky that has scheduled protests against President Vladimir Putin for Saturday. Open Russia wants to use the event to pressure Putin against running next year for a fourth presidential term. Khodorkovsky spent 10 years in prison on what were widely described as politicized charges before he was pardoned in December 2013 and left Russia. From news services Afghan refugee families wait to be registered at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees repatriation center on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan, as they prepare to return to their home country after fleeing civil war and Taliban rule. (Abdul Majeed/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Stephen J. Hadley, chairman of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, was U.S. national security adviser from 2005 to 2008. Andrew Wilder is the institutes vice president of Asia programs, and Scott Worden is director of Afghanistan and Central Asia programs. The U.S. bombing of an Islamic State stronghold in eastern Afghanistan last month, and last weeks news of two service members killed in an anti-Islamic State operation, are needed reminders of why we still have troops in Afghanistan. In mountains near those that once hid Osama bin Laden, a terrorist group that seeks to attack the United States is again seeking sanctuary. The devastating attack on an Afghan army base in Mazar-e-Sharif that killed more than 140 soldiers is a grim reminder of the challenges confronting the Trump administration as it completes its Afghanistan strategy review. How can the United States eliminate international terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan while the Afghan government is fighting a war of attrition in which the Taliban has gained the upper hand? During a U.S. Institute of Peace visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan last month, we met with senior officials and civil society and business leaders. Based on those discussions, we believe the solution lies in Afghan and regional politics, not just on the battlefield. The United States should shift its strategy to prioritize reaching a political settlement based on the Afghan constitution among all Afghan groups, including the Taliban. In doing so, the Trump administration can move from a policy of avoiding failure to one of achieving success. The right strategy should include four main components. First, the United States should use its existing counterterrorism capability to destroy all Islamic State and al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan. It must also enhance its support for the Afghan security forces so that they can deny the Taliban strategic battlefield successes. More Afghan special forces, greater close-air support capability and better intelligence capacity are needed to maintain control of Afghanistans major population centers and transport arteries. An Afghanistan that can clearly survive without a peace settlement is more likely to achieve one. Second, such military assistance must be part of a political strategy to address the drivers of conflict that have allowed the Taliban to make steady territorial gains. A modest increase in military support will not stabilize Afghanistan if the Afghan government does not take tough measures to reduce the cancer of corruption. It must win greater public support by building the economy in a way that creates jobs, and conduct credible elections that will provide greater legitimacy for the government and strengthen its position in a future peace process. The United States and Afghanistan should make mutual commitments to support these efforts. Third, the United States should make clear that a successful outcome will not require military defeat of the Taliban. The goal instead should be an Afghan-led and -owned peace process that produces a political settlement among all elements of Afghan society, including the Taliban. The settlement should protect the human rights of all Afghans as enshrined in the constitution and guarantee that Afghan territory will never be used to support international terrorism. This requires that the Afghans, Afghanistans neighbors, and the United States and its international partners agree on a framework for an inclusive peace process. As part of this process, the United States, in close coordination with the Afghan government, should consider direct talks with the Taliban. Finally, the United States should work to rebuild a regional consensus for a stable Afghanistan. The Trump administration should revitalize an international contact group to align all relevant outside powers. The key message for Russia, China and Iran is that we want a political settlement. Our forces are there only as long as requested by the Afghan government. Once the country is stable, free of terrorist groups and able to prevent their return, we can discuss a timetable for the reduction and gradual withdrawal of our military presence. Pakistan should be a strategic ally of the United States. But Pakistan hosts the Afghan Taliban leadership and provides material support. The United States should address Pakistans legitimate strategic concerns about threats emanating from Afghan territory, the burden of hosting Afghan refugees and the need for better relations with India. In return, Pakistan must take measures to constrain the Taliban, starting with withdrawing support and halting the Talibans freedom of movement within Pakistan. If no progress is made, the United States and its allies should take tough action targeted against those involved in supporting Taliban and transnational terrorist groups. This strategy would be a cost-effective investment. Prior U.S. spending levels of $120 billion per year have been reduced to $20 billion to $25 billion. This is a small sum compared with the estimated $1 trillion-to-$2 trillion loss from another 9/11-scale terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland. A stable Afghanistan continues to be a top U.S. national security priority. In this region of the world, the current Afghan government is a rare and willing ally at the epicenter of the fight against the Islamic State and international terrorism. Its collapse would again create a haven for terrorist organizations that would threaten the United States and could destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. The long-term goal of a prosperous Afghanistan is worthy of U.S. and international support. But that outcome is largely in the hands of the Afghans themselves. The immediate U.S. objective should be to end terrorist threats to the United States and our friends and allies emanating from Afghanistan, help Afghanistan stabilize itself and the region, and help initiate a process aimed at achieving a lasting political settlement of the conflict. Its time to redefine success in Afghanistan from winning the war to winning the peace. ONE OF the most curious aspects of President Trumps foreign policy has been his absence of a clearly articulated view much less a strategy on Afghanistan, where 8,400 U.S. troops are still helping fight a war. Before and during his campaign, Mr. Trump hardly spoke about what has become the United States longest conflict, except to denounce Pakistan for its role in supporting the Taliban and to deride U.S. attempts at nation-building in one of the worlds least developed countries. This month, the president authorized the dropping of the worlds biggest nonnuclear bomb in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan even though he had yet to decide whether and how the United States would remain engaged in the country. Now the administration appears to be moving toward filling this glaring gap. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Kabul this week, following a trip by national security adviser H.R. McMaster; a policy review is said to be near completion. A recommendation is pending from the U.S. commander in the theater, Gen. John W. Nicholson, to send 3,000 or more additional U.S. troops to the country in an attempt to break the momentum of the Taliban, which has been slowly taking ground from the Afghan government and inflicting unsustainable casualties on its security forces. Mr. Trump should approve the increase along with other military measures that could turn the tide. But he should also drop his resistance to U.S. programs to bolster the Afghan economy and political system and to fight corruption. Without them, the war will never be won. The military problems plaguing the government of President Ashraf Ghani were tragically exemplified last week when a Taliban attack on an army base killed more than 160 soldiers many of them raw recruits. The skillful operation by militants disguised as soldiers was attributed by some U.S. officials to the Haqqani network, which continues to find safe harbor in Pakistan. Meanwhile, administration officials say Russia and Iran have begun supplying weapons to other Taliban factions in a clear attempt to undermine the U.S. and NATO forces backing the Ghani government. At least 6,700 of the more than 300,000 Afghan security forces were reportedly killed last year as the Taliban gained territory across the country. That was partly because many Afghan units remain poorly trained, but also because they lack adequate air support in battle, due to tight restrictions on U.S. operations imposed by President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump should address both problems by dispatching additional U.S. trainers and Special Operations forces and by allowing American planes and drones to operate with the same freedom against the enemy that they have in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Mr. Trump should back a parallel effort to bolster Mr. Ghanis government, which has been hamstrung by political infighting and continued corruption. Reading inspectors generals reports about how billions in U.S. and other international development aid have been squandered, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the West should abandon Afghan nation-building. Yet progress has been made the countrys gross domestic product has doubled , and education levels, including for women, have risen sharply. Sustaining that development, even if it is slow and painful, is as important as turning back the Taliban. Ive no doubt she thinks she is qualified. Politics is not really all that different from advertising, right? You promote handbags; you promote nice causes. Women entrepreneurs, friendship between nations, edgy earrings whatever. These are all part of a lifestyle that everybody wants, and its a lifestyle that Ivanka Trump has been selling, for profit, for most of her life. But when Trump appeared on a stage in Berlin this week, purportedly to discuss women in the workforce, she did not seem qualified. On the contrary, she provided a shocking reminder of the damage that the Trump lifestyle brand will do (and has already done) not just to Americas image but to Americas reputation as a serious country, even to Americas reputation as a democracy. Why was she there at all? The other panelists the Canadian foreign minister, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised no eyebrows because their official functions explain themselves. But Trump was there as first daughter, a notion that the moderator of the panel another impressive woman, the editor of a business magazine at one point asked her to explain. The German audience is not that familiar with the concept, she said. Who are you representing, your father as president of the United States, the American people or your business? Trump has enough media training to know what to deny. Certainly not the latter, she said quickly (only to contradict herself, a few moments later, by saying, as she is no doubt accustomed, Speaking as an entrepreneur . . .). But the question never got a real answer. As everyone in the room knew perfectly well, Trump was not on the panel because she is an entrepreneur, or because she represents the American people or even because she speaks for her father, which is far from clear. She was on the panel because Merkel, ever the pragmatist, realizes President Trump is not interested in history, ideas, policy or any of the other things that have long tied the United States to Germany. To maintain its deep political and economic relationship with this American administration, Germany therefore needs to be solicitous of Trumps daughter. There are sinister precedents here. Daughters have long been used cynically to humanize thuggish men. The presidents strategically meaningless but politically useful bombing raid on Syria was justified on the grounds that Ivanka Trump had seen pictures of dying children and prevailed upon his softened heart, as in a fairy tale, to do something. Sarah Kendzior has laid out the remarkable similarities between Trump and Gulnara Karimova, the Uzbek dictators daughter, a cosmopolitan socialite who married into a powerful business family before making her mark as a fashion designer. Like Trump, Karimova also masks brutal practices under the pretext of a soft feminism and styles herself an ideal modern woman. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) But the real problem with Trump is not what she and her husband, Jared Kushner, contribute to the presidents image, but what their presence says about the culture of this White House. One of the things that distinguishes rule-of-law democracies from personalized dictatorships is their reliance on procedures, not individual whims, and on officials experienced people, subject to public scrutiny and ethics laws not the unsackable relatives of the leader. That distinction is now fading. No ordinary public official would be allowed to dine with the leader of China, as Trump did, on the same day that China granted valuable trademarks to her company. No civil servant would be able to profit from the jewelry she advertises by wearing it on public occasions. Only in kleptocracies are sons-in-law with broad international business interests allowed to make foreign policy. Yes, sure, the Clintons did it and look how that turned out. First lady Hillary Clintons attempt to craft a health-care policy ended in fiasco largely because her mixed roles created hostility. Even though she acquired genuine legitimacy by being elected senator and serving as secretary of state, that hostility remained. The suspicion of nepotism haunted her throughout her career, and it probably cost her the presidency. For all I know, Trump might really care about the lives of working women, though she has never demonstrated much interest in how they are treated at the factories that produce her products in China (so much for America first). But it makes no difference. When she plays with the role of public official as if she were trying on a new hat, she demeans the public servants who take their jobs seriously, who acquire them through expertise and competition, who work for salaries and obey ethics laws. The presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House, particularly in a White House that has failed to nominate hundreds of senior officials, is a glaring symbol of democratic decline, and around the world it is already recognized as such. Read more from Anne Applebaums archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook. NEWS OF the death of a 28-year-old man shot in Southeast Washington as he sat in his car near his sons school at 10:50 the morning of March 1 was easy to miss. One of six shot on same street has died was the headline on the 84-word news brief about the death of Andrew McPhatter. That is how routine gun violence is in impoverished neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. That should not be acceptable to any of us. A subsequent heartbreaking story about Mr. McPhatters son brings that home. The devastating impact of violence on children was detailed by The Posts John Woodrow Cox as he chronicled the shooting death of Mr. McPhatter through the eyes of his second-grade son, Tyshaun. For children living in high-crime communities such as Congress Heights, wrote Mr. Cox, the unrelenting threat of violence shapes almost every aspect of their lives: the streets they walk down, the parks they visit, the pictures they draw, the nightmares they have, the number of parents they come home to. Imagine being a 7-year-old so schooled to the sound of gunfire that you know to dive when told to get down. Imagine being a parent or grandparent who cant allow your child to play outside. Imagine being a teacher at a school where almost every one of your 700 students, aged 3 to 9 years, has witnessed violence or its aftermath. Some of these children, said Eagle Academy Public Charter School teacher Dawne Wilson, have been through more in their young lives than Ive been through in my adult life. Tyshauns mother wanted her sons story told so that people in places far safer, though maybe just a few miles away, would understand his world. Any suggestion of a simple solution is foolish, but even a 7-year-old knows that part of the answer must include doing something about the too-easy availability of guns. Whoever invented guns needs to stop, said Tyshaun. That Tyshauns school understands the trauma suffered by this young boy and the urgency of giving him help underscores how important it is to give schools the resources they need to provide proper support. No arrest has been made in Mr. McPhatters death, and police believe the shooting was part of some sort of neighborhood feud. It is likely there are those in the community who have information that could help police identify who is responsible. They should come forward. Police and government must assess what more they can do to help poor minority communities trapped in poverty and crime. No one, especially children living in the capital of a country that prides itself as being the worlds leader, should have to live with the constant threat that they or someone they love or know will die or be injured in a shooting. David Cole is national legal director of the ACLU, which has sought to join Santa Clara County and San Franciscos lawsuits against the Trump administration. States rights have long been a rallying cry for conservatives. The Trump administration cited its respect for the states in rescinding Obama administration guidance treating discrimination against transgender students as sex discrimination. Attorney General Jeff Sessions invoked the same principle in questioning federal consent decrees designed to ensure constitutional policing in cities such as Chicago and Baltimore. And when the Supreme Court relied on states rights to gut the Voting Rights Act, then-Sen. Sessions applauded the decision, calling it good news . . . for the South. In earlier periods, states rights arguments were advanced to resist desegregation and federal legislation protecting workers and consumers. But the Trump administration doesnt consistently respect the states, and nowhere is that more true than in its attack on sanctuary cities, in which it claims that states and cities choosing not to help enforce federal immigration law should be denied federal funding. On Tuesday, a federal court in San Francisco invoked the very federalist principles that President Trump and Sessions celebrate to rule unconstitutional Trumps executive order denying funding to sanctuary cities, one of the signature initiatives of Trumps first 100 days. The nationwide injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick, ruled that Trump violated the rights of state and local governments to make decisions about the deployment of their own resources. The Constitution, the court ruled, mandates that state and local governments be left to make their own judgments about what best serves the safety of their people. Like lawsuits by the states of Washington and Hawaii challenging Trumps anti-Muslim travel ban, the case demonstrates the value of our federalist system when one party controls the levers of federal power. [This failure may doom Trumps presidency before it really begins] The decision arises out of two cases filed by Santa Clara County, Calif., and San Francisco. Both juridictions determined some time ago that they would decline to enforce federal immigration law, because doing the federal governments work would directly undermine their ability to maintain public safety. If undocumented immigrants fear that they may be deported any time they approach the authorities, they will be unlikely to come forward as witnesses to crime and unlikely to go to public hospitals for immunizations and other necessary care. For these reasons, many cities have elected not to enforce federal immigration law. Cities and states have the right to so choose because the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which preserves state authority, bars the federal government from compelling states to enforce or administer federal laws. The Supreme Court has explained that states must have the ability to make autonomous decisions about deploying their resources, so the federal government cannot commandeer their cooperation in carrying out a federal program. Thats a principle conservatives have long championed. But now that they control Congress and the White House, they are less eager to honor its dictates, especially when they protect progressive cities. Trumps executive order instructed the attorney general to ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions are ineligible for federal funds. San Francisco and Santa Clara County each receive more than $1 billion in federal funds, for all sorts of educational, health, infrastructure and law-enforcement programs having nothing to do with immigration. All of that funding could be at risk if they were declared sanctuary jurisdictions. Trump described the order as a weapon, and Sessions said in a news conference that violating the executive order could result in withholding grants, termination of grants and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants. The threats worked in some places. The mayor of Miami-Dade promptly reversed his citys policy against enforcing federal immigration law except in limited circumstances . But other cities have stood firm. [We asked you to describe President Trumps first 100 days. Heres what you said.] In the California litigation, Trumps lawyers barely defended his actions, and instead did all they could to distance themselves from Trump and Sessionss threats. They argued that the order actually had no legal effect whatsoever, but was merely an exercise of the bully pulpit and a directive to enforce existing law. The order should be upheld, they argued, because it was meaningless. As the district court put it, the Justice Department attempts to read out all of [the provisions] unconstitutional directives to render it an ominous, misleading, and ultimately toothless threat. The court rejected that invitation as essentially asking it to rewrite the order, something beyond the courts power to do. Instead, the court did what it does have the power to do: It declared the order unconstitutional, primarily because it intrudes on the 10th Amendment rights of state and local governments by conditioning such large amounts of federal funds on carrying out immigration law. In essence, it demanded that Sessions and Trump practice what they preach. Ironically, the most powerful precedent for this holding was the Supreme Courts 2012 decision invalidating the Affordable Care Acts requirement that states expand Medicaid coverage as a condition of federal funding. Federalism and federal courts were both designed as integral elements of our system of checks and balances. Never are they more important than when one party controls the presidency and Congress. The framers hoped that states would resist unwarranted federal encroachments and that federal judges, given independence through life tenure, would uphold constitutional principle against executive overreach. Thus far, to Trumps dismay, the system seems to be working just as the framers intended. President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, walk to Marine One at the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. March 17, 2017 President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, walk to Marine One at the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post In the outpouring of commentary on President Trumps first 100 days in office, his greatest single achievement is almost never mentioned, which is itself a sign of what a major triumph it is: We are not talking much about whether Russia colluded with Trumps campaign to help elect him. Our distraction was not inevitable. Recall that just a little over a month ago, FBI Director James B. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that the bureau was investigating possible cooperation between Trumps team and Russias hacking and disinformation campaign to undercut Hillary Clinton. As the New York Times wrote, Comeys testimony created a treacherous political moment for Mr. Trump. Yet the president slipped by. In mid-February, the administration should have come under sustained inquiry when Michael Flynn, Trumps first national security adviser, was forced to resign because he misled White House officials about the nature of his contacts with Russias ambassador to the United States. Flynn, who had led the Republican National Convention in Lock her up! chants against Clinton, turned out to have received $65,000 from companies linked to Russia and $600,000 to lobby for the Turkish government, even as he was advising Trump. And, as Politico reported this week, the man who paid Flynn to work for Turkey had business ties to Russia. The episode raised a slew of questions, not the least being what Vice President Pence, whom we presume was vetting administration appointees, knew about Flynns activities. As for Trump, he believes in extreme vetting for immigrants, but apparently not for members of his administration. Unless, of course, he was fully aware of what Flynn was up to. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) The Flynn story is obviously heating up again, but lets pause to ponder how Trumps genius at evasion, diversion and prevarication helped him to keep the Russia story at bay. It should disturb us more than it seemingly has that the 100th day of Trumps presidency on April 29 will also mark the beginning of the ninth week since Trump sent out his March 4 tweet-to-end-all-tweets charging that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. There was no evidence then for that accusation and is none now, because the evidence doesnt exist. Thoughtful souls, conservatives as well as liberals, saw something terribly off about Trump swinging so wildly and with such indifference to verifiable fact. This is what happens when the White House prioritizes winning the daily news cycle above all else, wrote Jim Geraghty in National Review. This is the natural result of an amazingly shortsighted approach to governing. I couldnt agree more, but guess what? Trumps gambit worked. First, Trumps lieutenants got Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, involved in a Keystone Kops routine at the White House in which Nunes kind of, sort of suggested he had information giving support to Trumps claim, which he didnt. Nunes eventually had to recuse himself from the committees investigation of Russian interference, but the whole episode may have fatally wounded and certainly delayed its inquiry. And there is this core Trump principle: A lie is as good as the truth as long as you can get your base to believe it. And sure enough, the new Post-ABC News poll conducted last week found that 52 percent of Republicans believe that the Obama administration intentionally spied on Trump and members of his campaign during the 2016 election campaign. This should keep Trump going for a while. Fortunately, as John Adams taught us, facts are stubborn things, and the Russia story cannot be suppressed forever. Indeed, there was progress on Tuesday when in a display of bipartisanship that is truly astounding at this moment Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) of the House Oversight Committee jointly asserted that Flynn may have violated the law by not fully disclosing his Russian business dealings when seeking a security clearance. At least as significant, both also expressed alarm at the White Houses refusal to turn over any documents on Flynns hiring and firing. There may be limits to Trumps cagey sorcery. But its still pretty impressive. Given the substantive emptiness of Trumps presidency so far, his greatest achievement is that he is still standing there, making pronouncements as if he means them and moving noisily but without any clear plan from one thing to the next. Every day he can postpone his reckoning with Russia is a victory. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Read more from E.J. Dionnes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Missing Taiwanese couple found, 1 dead A Taiwanese couple has been found 49 days after they went missing in northern Dhading. Rush Limbaugh and listeners of his conservative radio show were not happy with reports this week that President Trump was, as Limbaugh put it, caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion in the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico. Tim from Detroit called in to say hes worried Trump will kick this can down the road like any other politician. Ray from Chattanooga, Tenn., wished he could tell Trump: Be the man we elected you to be. And John from Polk City, Fla., added: Number one, build the wall. Every time he spoke: Build a wall. Im afraid hes starting to dip his foot into the swamp. And, boy, I just dont want to see that happen. In his bumpy first three months in office, Trump has reversed himself on campaign promises now seen as impractical or unnecessary, from repealing and replacing Obamacare in a single day to labeling China as a currency manipulator. But Trumps promise to build an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall paid for by Mexico was special. It was his most vivid campaign promise, and its proposed height grew with every obstacle thrown in Trumps way, from naysayers saying it wasnt possible to the Mexican government saying it wouldnt foot the bill. The most popular chant at campaign rallies became Build that wall! (The Washington Post) Failing to quickly follow through on a wall carries real political risks for Trump, whose success is due in large part to his embrace of hard-line positions on immigration. There is also peril for fellow Republicans who have been split for years on how the United States should reform its immigration system in not taking the idea of the wall seriously enough. [Flashback: Build that wall takes on a life of its own at Trump rallies] Mark Krikorian, the longtime executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates reduced immigration, said that he has never considered a border wall a top priority. But now that the wall has taken on a life of its own, Krikorian said that Trump and Republicans have to make some sort of progress in securing a chunk of the border with a wall or heavy-duty fence or else blow the opportunity to show Americans the party is ready to take action to crack down on illegal immigration. Following through on wall construction is one of the ways that the political class can win back trust on this topic, Krikorian said. Its a tangible thing. You can take pictures of it and imagine it in your head. He added: Even if the border wall did no good at all to control immigration, it would be important to build . . . Even if it did nothing, even if it was completely ineffective, its important politically. To Trump, the wall is a concrete symbol of his commitment to cracking down on illegal immigration. To many lawmakers, its a fantastical joke that they have to carefully navigate. Since Trump took office, many lawmakers have been trying to steer him toward more practical solutions for the border involving fencing, increased border patrols and technology. They argue that constructing a wall would cost tens of billions, still wouldnt solve many of the countrys border problems and could create whole new challenges as well. I think were all recognizing that his message is one that he wants a secure border. I think at one point that he may have very well thought that that was the best way to do it, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). Even at the White House, aides have been shifting their messaging to the broad topic of border security, with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus using the phrase six times on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday while only saying the word wall twice. The next day, Trump softened his demand to include wall funding in a must-pass spending bill a comment widely viewed as caving to pressure from the same lawmakers that Trump once bragged he could outsmart. [Trump scrambles to show progress as the 100-day mark approaches] Trump began talking about a southern border structure even before he launched his campaign, bragging that he was the king of building walls. In his announcement speech in June 2015, Trump promised: I will build a great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. He continued that messaging this week, telling the Associated Press that the walls getting built, okay? White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated the point during a Tuesday briefing There will be a wall built, he said but dodged questions about when and how. But with an estimated price tag as high as $21.6 billion, lawmakers have been slow to lend their support. On the wall and a host of other issues, they often emphasize Trumps lack of experience in politics in explaining why he is altering his positions. Some of the things that were said during the campaign, I think he now knows simply arent the way things ought to be, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Newsmax TV earlier this month following Trumps change of heart on whether NATO was obsolete. Hes learning the job. While Trump has long been clear about wanting a physical wall on the border, other Republicans have put their own spins on one of his most controversial campaign promises. What I hope he means is that we should be talking about establishing operational control . . . Im not saying necessarily walls, said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a centrist who at times has been openly critical of Trump. Meanwhile, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a Trump ally, took the president at his word: Its a physical wall. Theres no ifs, ands or buts about that. Others have been left guessing. Im not an interpreter youve got to ask them what they mean. I mean, thats their initiative, obviously. I take it hes taking about border security in general, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). For Trump, and for many of the voters who helped propel him to victory, there should be no misunderstanding. The walls going to get built, folks. In case anybody has any questions, the wall is going to get built, Trump told reporters during the signing of an executive order related to agriculture Tuesday. I watch these shows, and the pundits in the morning, they dont know what theyre talking about. The wall gets built, 100 percent. President Trump will take a major step Friday to expand oil and gas drilling off U.S. shores, directing the Interior Department to lift restrictions that President Barack Obama imposed in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. But local political considerations and the global energy market are likely to influence future exploration far more than an executive order in Washington. Several industry officials and experts predict that oil and gas firms will bid on areas the administration plans to open to drilling, including those off the East Coast. But the targeted Arctic areas are much less attractive to investors right now, and even potential drilling in the Atlantic could be complicated by long-standing resistance from coastal communities. Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Obama energy and environment adviser, said that while the Trump administration can rescind the former presidents efforts to end exploration in the two regions, that process would be complex and involve at least two years of revamping the governments long-term drilling plans. The question then is, does anybody show up, and does anybody want these [leases]? Bordoff said. It depends quite a bit on what the oil market looks like in two years. If it looks anything like it does today, with low oil prices and most industry growth taking place onshore, Trumps new policy might have little practical effect. National Ocean Industries Association President Randall Luthi, who headed the Minerals Management Service under President George W. Bush, said what matters most is that there has been just a complete change of attitude toward offshore development since Trump took office. The hope with the executive order is that once the economics fall into place, the federal and regulatory regime will be right for increased leasing off the Outer Continental Shelf, Luthi said. [Obama administration moves to slam the door shut on Arctic drilling] Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has made clear he wants to boost drilling in federal waters to generate more royalties. While this money goes directly to the U.S. treasury, Zinke suggested in a speech Tuesday that the royalties should be spent on a maintenance backlog within the national parks system. Thursday night, he pledged that environmental protections would not be compromised as the administration looks for opportunities to develop energy offshore. He said current restrictions would probably stay in place for two years. Were going to give local communities a voice, he said. At the same time, he said, it is better to produce energy here, under reasonable regulation, than have it produced overseas with no regulations. But opposition remains intense among politicians of both parties in the Southeast. According to the advocacy group Oceana, 90 percent of coastal municipalities from Cape May, N.J., to Cape Canaveral, Fla., have formally opposed drilling or seismic testing off their coasts. Prominent South Carolina Republicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, have come out against drilling there. Its not the environmentalists and the dolphin huggers, said Jacqueline Savitz, Oceanas senior vice president for oceans. Its the business community. What youve got is a different fight now. In Beaufort, S.C., Mayor Billy Keyserling said he is ready to again fight the prospect of offshore drilling just as he did during the Obama administration because of concerns over environmental threats, the potential impact on tourism and concern that more local jobs could be destroyed than created. We will fight it harder than we did in the past, Keyserling said. We all feel very, very strongly. In other states, elected officials remain split on the issue. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) backs drilling in federal waters off his states coast only if the state gets a share of the royalty revenue, which would require a change in current law. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) has introduced legislation calling for a lease sale off Virginia Beach within the next year, along with two additional lease sales off Virginias coast during each subsequent five-year period.These lease sales would be exempt from review under the National Environmental Policy Act until 2022, according to the bill, which would accelerate the process. Despite the drilling restrictions Obama put in place for Alaskas Arctic, activity continues there. The Italian oil giant Eni wants to reach reserves in a federal area of the Beaufort Sea off Alaska by doing directional drilling from an artificial island it is using in state waters. Hilcorp has taken over a project formerly owned by BP. And Shell, after deciding to drop further exploration plans, gave its offshore acreage to the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native entity. [How Trump is rolling back Obamas legacy] Christy Goldfuss, who headed the White House Council on Environmental Quality at the end of Obamas second term, said that the executive order he issued in December specifically allowed exploration in 2.8 million acres in the near-shore Beaufort Sea where commercial interest is greatest. The idea that people are breaking down the administrations door to get access to the Arctic is just false, said Goldfuss, who now serves as vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Several industry officials said that even with a change in leasing policy, additional regulatory changes would be needed to make drilling in the Arctic more economically viable. Just last July, the Interior Department finalized stricter rules for exploratory drilling there. Luthi said that the rules add another two or three layers of difficulty to drilling and that he was fairly optimistic the new administration would look at revising them as part of its broader regulatory overhaul effort. Yet the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling is urging Congress to preserve them. Arctic drilling rule. We believe that these exploratory drilling regulations are necessary to prevent or reduce the severity or duration of a catastrophic oil spill in the Arctic Ocean, the commission wrote to lawmakers last month. Still, broader energy trends are likely to shape the future more than any regulatory decision. If the last 10 to 15 years teaches us anything at all, its that we should be humble about our ability to forecast oil prices, said Bob McNally, a former Bush administration energy official and president of the Rapidan Group consulting firm. Over the past decade, he noted, those prices have fluctuated between $26 and $140 a barrel. They now hover around $50, but should that start to creep up, interest in offshore exploration and drilling could rise, too.McNally pointed to the recent five-year oil market forecast from the International Energy Agency, which found that demand is expected to grow strongly through 2022 and that the need for more production capacity becomes apparent by the end of the decade, even if supply appears plentiful today. At $100 a barrel, the economics and the politics change, McNally said. Youd see more industry interest and political calls for offshore development. No matter what the future brings, the current administration is lifting restrictions that the industry sees as unnecessary and unwise. Trump is concluding that what Obama put in place was unreasonable, McNally said. Policy should set reasonable standards and let market forces and technology and geology in the case of oil and gas dictate what activity takes place. Steven Mufson contributed to this report. Myadi police training starts in Sindhupalchok Forty-two-year-old Mina Giri, a mother of two, is happy to be selected as a Myadi police (temporary police) for the upcoming local level elections in Chautara of Sindupalchok district. The aftermath of a suicide blast at St. Georges church that killed at least 29 people on Palm Sunday in the northern Egyptian city of Tanta. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters) On a table in Paula Youssefs apartment sits a framed collage of worshipers killed in Egypts latest church bombings, all people he knew. They included his best friend, Bishoy. Youssef, too, almost died in the blast nearly three weeks ago during Palm Sunday services that was claimed by Egypts Islamic State affiliate. So like many Christians in this sprawling northern city, Youssef thought Pope Francis would cancel a scheduled trip to Egypt. But despite concerns about his safety, the pontiff is set to arrive in Egypt on Friday for a two-day visit that will include meetings with senior political and religious leaders as well as Mass on Saturday. Its really touching that Pope Francis has decided to come after all that has happened, said Youssef, who was at St. Georges church when a suicide bomber detonated explosives, killing at least 29 people on April 9. Christians protest outside the Church of the Virgin Mary, where a state funeral was held Dec. 12, 2016, for victims of a suicide bombing at Cairos Coptic cathedral complex. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images) Francis arrives at a tumultuous time for Egypts minority Christians, marked by fear and uncertainty of the future. Over the past five months, they have been targeted in several church bombings, drive-by shootings and assassinations carried out by Islamic State militants determined to sow religious divisions and destabilize Egypt. [In post-Arab Spring Egypt, Muslim attacks on Christians are rising] On one hand, the popes visit is an effort to show unity with the Middle Easts embattled Christian community, which has been persecuted by religious extremists in Syria, Iraq and Libya. But the visit, observers say, is also designed to forge stronger ties between Egypts Muslims and Christians, especially their leaders. For decades, Christians have faced discrimination and sporadic abuse at the hands of successive governments. The message will be one of solidarity, both within the Christian community, but as importantly, across Muslim and Christian communities, said Art Kirby, the country director for Catholic Relief Services. In light of the recent bombings, the Christian community in Egypt feels increasingly vulnerable. However, many first responders to the attacks, and indeed some of the victims themselves, were Muslim. Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypts population of 95 million. The vast majority are Orthodox Coptic Christians; Catholics make up less than 1 percent. That Francis is visiting a country with such a small number of Catholics is incredibly significant in showing the need for all people of faith to come together and engage in dialogue and cooperation, Kirby said. In a video message this week posted online, Francis said he would like his visit to be a witness of my affection, comfort and encouragement for all the Christians of the Middle East and a message of friendship and respect for Egyptians and the region. His visit, he added, was also a message of brotherhood and reconciliation with the Muslim world. Our world is torn by blind violence, a violence that has also struck the heart of your beloved land, Francis said. Our world needs peace, love and mercy. Since his ascension to the papacy in 2013, Francis has visited several countries gripped by turmoil and potential security threats, including the Central African Republic, where fighting between Muslims and Christians has left thousands of people dead in recent years, and Kenya, where al-Shabab militants have staged attacks. In December, the Islamic State asserted responsibility for a bombing at the main Coptic Cathedral complex in Cairo, killing more than two dozen worshipers, most of them women and children. In February, hundreds of Christians fled the Sinai Peninsula following assassinations by Islamic State militants, who in a video vowed more attacks on Christians. Hours after the attack in Tanta, another suicide bombing at the entrance of St. Marks Cathedral in Alexandria killed at least 18 people. They included several Muslim police officers who stopped the bomber from entering the church. The head of Egypts Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, was presiding over Palm Sunday Mass but was unharmed. After these attacks, Egypts President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi declared a three-month state of emergency. Yet last week, the Islamic State once again asserted responsibility for an attack on security forces at a Sinai desert checkpoint near St. Catherines Monastery, one of the worlds oldest, killing a police officer and injuring three others. Despite the threats, the pope has refused to use an armored car when he rides through the streets of Cairo, the Vatican said last week, because he thinks that would prevent him from engaging with the people who come out to greet him. But the recent attacks raise questions about Egypts ability to adequately protect the pope. Soldiers and police officers have secured many of the churches around the nation, and yet suicide bombers managed to target the churches in Alexandria and Tanta. [After Egypt church bombings, Israel closes southern border with Sinai] Christians largely supported Sissi in the hopes that he would protect them and favored a government crackdown on Islamists. But the continuing attacks have triggered anger and disillusionment among many toward the government. They are not serious or committed in trying to protect churches and Christian institutions in Egypt, said Fakry Naguib, whose wife and two daughters were among the victims of a church bombing in Alexandria in 2011 that killed at least 23 people. Francis is scheduled to meet with Sissi and Tawadros, as well as the countrys bishops and other Christian clergy. He will also pay a visit to Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al Azhar, a 1,000-year-old mosque and university respected by Sunni Muslims, who are the majority in Egypt. Relations soured between the Roman Catholic Church and Muslim clerics in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI denounced the church bombing in Alexandria and urged Egypts leaders to do more to protect Christians. Francis has tried to improve ties since becoming pope, and last year he welcomed Tayeb to the Vatican. The visit itself, while hugely symbolic, will not bring peace or bridge divides overnight, Kirby said. It will be up to Christian and Muslim communities themselves to sustain the momentum the visit will provide. Across Egypt, religious leaders, government officials and civil society actors will need to lead by example themselves, both in words and actions. On Saturday, Francis will celebrate Mass and deliver prayers for Christians and Muslims killed in the recent militant attacks. For some of the victims friends and family members, the visit mirrors their own feelings. Even as they are repeatedly targeted, even as they desperately want better protection under Sissi, they have remained resolute. They say they are determined not to allow the extremists to shatter their country or its image. His visit is a message of strength and resilience, said Joseph Malak, a lawyer representing the victims of the Alexandria bombings this month and in 2011. Despite all the attacks, he still decided to visit. It shows that Egypt is still a safe country. Heba Mahfouz contributed to this report. Read more: Mourners hold funerals for Palm Sunday bombing victims in Egypt Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Iranian President Hassan Rouhani waves to media as he arrives at the Interior Ministry in Tehran earlier this month to register his candidacy for the May 19 presidential elections. (Vahid Salemi/AP) Irans short, intense presidential campaign kicks off Friday with the first televised debate featuring six candidates in a race widely seen as a referendum on whether Iranians feel they have benefited from the nuclear deal that took effect last year. The May 19 vote will see the moderate incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, facing off against conservative and reformist challengers, including a hard-line cleric with backing from the countrys religious establishment. Irans influential Guardian Council, a body of senior clerics and jurists appointed by the supreme leader, vets the candidates each election. This year, Rouhanis approved challengers include the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; a conservative former culture minister, Mostafa Mirsalim; Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, a moderate; and former vice president Mostafa Hashemitaba, a reformist. Also on the list, which was whittled down from the 1,600 or so who initially registered, is Ebrahim Raisi, a confidant of Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the man now viewed as Rouhanis main rival. When the Guardian Council weighed in last week, it disqualified former president and populist firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [Iran bars Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running for president] A supporter hands out pictures of cleric Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative presidential candidate backed by Irans religious establishment, at a campaign rally in Tehran on April 26. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP) Raisi, a cleric with a bloody past as one of several judges who oversaw mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, has been mentioned as a possible successor to Khamenei. The supreme leader dictates Irans military and foreign policy, but whoever wins the presidency could nevertheless ultimately determine the tone of Tehrans engagement with the world and with a more confrontational Trump administration. The race was expected to be a cakewalk for Rouhani, who oversaw the negotiations that lifted many sanctions against Iran in exchange for constraints on its nuclear program. Most Iranian presidents have coasted to second terms. But the moderate leader is facing head winds in the wake of the deal he championed, and many Iranians say their living standards have not improved as they expected. Rouhanis opponents have attacked him over the sluggish economy, blasting his strategy of opening up to the West in the hopes of attracting more investment. According to the International Monetary Fund, Irans real gross domestic product grew by 7.4 percent over the past year but the growth was mainly due to oil exports. Unemployment runs over 12 percent. In an authoritarian country such as Iran, which hinders the work of independent journalists and pollsters, political predictions are notoriously inaccurate. Dark-horse candidates have emerged at the last minute to sweep to victory. And there is always the issue of how much it actually matters who is president. The only thing you can say with decent certainty is that the day after the elections, Ayatollah Khamenei will still be the most powerful man in the country, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst for the Carnegie Endowment. All six candidates on Friday will participate in the first of three debates, focusing on social issues. That exchange will be followed by debates on politics and the economy. The nuclear deal will probably be raised in all three, and that could hurt Rouhani, 68. [Historic deal reached with Iran to limit nuclear program] Rouhani is suffering in part from his own success, said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group. Expectations skyrocketed after the deal. But if you ask the average citizen the Ronald Reagan question Is your life better than it was yesterday? youre going to get no. Thats his potential vulnerability. In a jab at Rouhanis Achilles heel, Raisi has vowed that, if elected, he will fight poverty, corruption and unemployment. One in four Iranians under the age of 25 is jobless. Raisi, 56, does not come by populism naturally. He is known to older Iranians as one of four judges on the Death Commission, a tribunal that oversaw the executions of 30,000 people in 1988, most of them members of the opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK. He wears a black turban, signifying in Shiite Islam that he is a descendant of the prophet Muhammad. He rose quickly through the ranks and was the attorney general until last year. He is considered a protege of Khamenei, who appointed him to head the Astan Quds Razavi, the largest and wealthiest charity foundation in charge of Irans holiest shrine, in the city of Mashhad. Raisi routinely visits poor neighborhoods and villages to distribute sugar and flour, giving him a constituency among working-class Iranians. If he wins the election, it will increase the likelihood that he will succeed Khamenei, who is 77 and is said to have been treated for prostate cancer. If he loses, his viability diminishes. As a creature of the religious and judicial establishment, Raisi has advantages that could propel him to victory if moderates and reformists stay home to register their disappointment in Rouhani. He doesnt have to be very popular to win, said Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst with the Rand Corp. Hes the regimes preferred candidate, especially the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In a close election, that could make the difference. Unlike Rouhani, who in 2013 had popular support and not the elite support, Raisi has elite support, said Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It might be willing to cheat to make him president. The election of Raisi could heighten the risk of confrontation between Tehran and Washington. On Wednesday, the cleric said on a television talk show that the United States will back off sanctions only if it fears Iran. Today, Americans are afraid of the word Iran, he said, adding: The solution is not backing down. We must force them to retreat. The Trump administration has signaled its willingness to reconsider the nuclear deal and impose stricter sanctions to contain Iran if it continues to conduct ballistic missile tests and expand its influence in the region. Rouhanis reelection could undermine international support for that strategy. If you have an Iranian president who retains confidence among key partners in Europe and Asia, that will necessarily make the Trump administrations agenda of getting tough more difficult, said Suzanne Maloney, a Middle East analyst at the Brookings Institution. If you have someone with a notorious background like Raisi, there will be a different kind of engagement across the board. Cunningham reported from Istanbul. Read more: Trumps first 100 days: Trump aides turn up the heat on Iran The historic nuclear deal with Iran: How it works Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news An Army helicopter crew member mans a gun on the rear gate as it departs Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan on April 24. (Jonathan Ernst/Associated Press) Two U.S. service members were killed during operations against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Thursday, the latest sign of the security challenges the Trump administration faces in Americas longest and most costly war. Military officials said the deaths occurred during a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on Wednesday evening in Nangahar province, where a small but virulent Islamic State cell poses a threat to Afghan and U.S. coalition forces. A third service member was wounded in the same operation, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said in a statement. The Pentagon on Friday identified Sgt. Joshua P. Rodgers, 22, and Sgt. Cameron H. Thomas, 23, as the Army Rangers killed. The soldiers were members of 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite Army force that specializes in raid operations. The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice, said Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, referring to the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province. The incident took place in Nangahars Achin district near a site where the U.S. military unleashed a massive 22,000-pound bomb this month, a sign of the scale of the ongoing conflict nearly 16 years after U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan. The recent fighting in Achin, including the first-ever use of the GBU-43 bomb and Wednesdays incident, which killed two Americans, illustrates the danger posed by just one of multiple militant groups in a conflict that U.S. officials have described as a stalemate. [Pentagon identifies U.S. Special Forces soldier killed fighting the Islamic State in Afghanistan] A Taliban resurgence across Afghanistan has meant that the government in Kabul controls only slightly more than half the countrys territory, according to a U.S. government watchdog, and that the United States has been forced to return forces to areas pacified at great cost under President Barack Obamas 2009-2011 troop surge. At the same time, local forces are struggling to contain an array of militant groups along the countrys border with Pakistan, including the Islamic State. Faced with those challenges, the Trump administration is reevaluating its strategy for Afghanistan and considering sending additional U.S. troops to support local forces. Nicholson has called for thousands of extra service members to help train and support the Afghan military. According to Navy Lt. Chris Donlon, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Wednesdays incident happened close to Achin and near where U.S. aircraft dropped the GBU-43 munition two weeks ago. That bomb targeted a sprawling Islamic State tunnel complex, and although Afghan officials said between 36 and 100 Islamic State fighters were killed in the strike, the U.S. military has not announced what exactly the bomb accomplished. An Afghan military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss current operations, confirmed that there had been a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in a village near Achin district Wednesday but was not aware of any casualties. He said it had been a long day of fighting. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State, mainly composed of militants pulled from other groups, has emerged as an increasing counterterrorism focus for the United States in Afghanistan. [Some in Afghanistan question U.S. choice to use 22,000-pound bomb against ISIS] Although military officials say the group is far smaller than it was at its height in 2015, an estimated 600 to 800 militants, located mainly in remote mountainous areas, have proven to be a deadly adversary. Fighting has been fierce as U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces, backed by hundreds of airstrikes, have sought to advance against militant strongholds in recent months. The deaths mark the third time this year that a member of the U.S. military has died in combat in Afghanistan. On April 8, Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Md., was killed by small-arms fire, also in Nangahar. They come just days after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan to assess the security situation and advance deliberations about the Trump administrations approach to a war that has largely been overshadowed by events in Iraq and Syria Dan Lamothe in Washington and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report. Read more: While the U.S. wasnt looking, Russia and Iran began carving out a bigger role in Afghanistan The Islamic State has tunnels everywhere. Its making ISIS much harder to defeat. Afghan government disappoints many, but some cling to hope A Russian naval intelligence ship sank Thursday after colliding with a merchant freighter in foggy conditions on the Black Sea near Istanbul, the Turkish coast guard said. All 78 crew members on the Russian vessel were rescued. The crew of the freighter Youzarsif H, a Togo-flagged ship traveling from Romania to Jordan with a cargo of 8,800 sheep, was unharmed, and the ship suffered slight damage to its bow, according to local media reports. In Moscow, Russias Defense Ministry issued a statement confirming that the vessel, the Liman, went down after the collision tore a hole in the hull below the waterline. [Russian jets keep crashing, and it may be an aircraft carriers fault] Russian officials did not immediately provide any information about the Limans mission. The Russian state-run Sputnik news agency reported in 2016 that the Liman had been deployed in the Black Sea to monitor the Sea Breeze naval exercises involving Ukraine and several NATO countries, including the United States. Russian officials had complained that the exercises were a provocation. Members of the Turkish coast guard help Russian sailors. (Turkish Armed Forces General Staff Press Office/European Pressphoto Agency) Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to express sadness, Turkeys semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported. Russia and Turkey have developed increasingly warm ties over the past year, putting aside bitter differences over the war in Syria to cooperate on brokering a political solution to the conflict. The relationship reached a low point in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that Ankara said had crossed the Syrian border and entered Turkish airspace. [Russia and Turkey, joined by Iran, announce intention to halt war in Syria] The collision Thursday occurred about 20 miles northwest of the Bosporus, one of the worlds busiest waterways, which connects the Black Sea to the shipping lanes leading to the Mediterranean. At the time of the accident, the Bosporus was closed because of poor visibility, the Reuters news agency reported, citing the shipping agency GAC. The Liman had also previously been deployed for three months to the Mediterranean near Syria, where Russia is in the second year of an intervention backing President Bashar al-Assad against a wide array of rebel groups, including Islamist fighters and others with U.S. backing. Ship spotters in the Bosporus photographed the ship traversing the strait near Istanbul under heavy snow in January. A member of the Turkish coast guard, left, helps a Russian sailor. (Turkish Armed Forces General Staff Press Office/European Pressphoto Agency) It is not clear whether the ship was headed toward Syria on Thursday. The Liman was built as a hydrographic survey vessel in the Gdansk shipyards in Poland in 1970 and was converted for military service in 1989, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. The ship is outfitted to capture electronic-signals intelligence using an array of Soviet and Russian-made sensors for which the ship was retrofitted. Roth reported from Moscow. Read more: Russia sends warships toward Syria via the English Channel and with them, a message How Russias lone aircraft carrier will change the fight in Syria Opinion: Erdogan, Putin and the strongman ties that bind Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Turkish cross-border attacks against Kurdish militia positions in Syria and Iraq continued for a second day Wednesday, following dozens of airstrikes on Tuesday that left at least 70 people, including both Kurdish fighters and civilians, dead. The attacks were met with protests from both Washington and Moscow, as well as the Syrian government. One of the main targets of the strikes was the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), which constitutes the backbone of so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which serves as the main proxy ground force in the US intervention against ISIS in Syria. The US State Department said Tuesday that it was deeply concerned about the airstrikes, which it charged were launched without proper coordination and had led to the unfortunate loss of life of our partner forces. A spokesman for the US-dominated anti-ISIS coalition told a Pentagon teleconference Wednesday that Turkey had provided less than an hours warning before bombs fell on Iraq and Syria. Thats not enough time and this was notification, certainly, not coordination as you would expect from a partner and an ally in the fight against ISIS, US Air Force Col. John Dorrian said. The spokesman added that the hours notice combined with the vague character of the Turkish warning made it impossible to ensure safety of our forces on the ground. US troops were reportedly deployed within six miles of the areas targeted. The unilateral military intervention by Turkey, Washingtons NATO ally, targeting forces armed and trained by the Pentagon, has further escalated the multi-sided conflict provoked by the six-year-old US-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria. It further threatens to turn it into a region-wide and even global conflict. Tensions had already escalated sharply in the wake of the US launching cruise missiles against a Syrian government airbase on April 7, on the pretext of retaliating to a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on the Syrian government. Russia, which has also sought ties with the YPG and sent military advisors into the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria, denounced the Turkish bombings, issuing a statement warning that in a situation where the war on terror in Iraq and Syria is far from over, such actions clearly do not contribute to the consolidation of anti-terrorist efforts. In reality, the bombings only underscore the fact that, in the name of the war on terror, Washington, Turkey and Russia are all intervening in Syria to further their own, opposing interests. Washington has sought since 2011 to effect regime change in Syria in order to impose a more pliant puppet regime in Damascus to further its drive for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. Russia has sent forces to back the government of President Bashar al-Assad, its principal ally in the Middle East, against the Al Qaeda-linked militias supported by Washington and its regional allies, including Turkey. For its part, Ankara has sought to further its own regional ambitions and, most crucially, to prevent the consolidation of an autonomous Kurdish region along its southern border. Turkish officials have rejected the US protests over the attacks. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday that his government had given both the US and Russia notice two hours before launching the airstrikes. Speaking to reporters in Uzbekistan, Cavusoglu also claimed that Turkey had discussed its planned attacks over the last few weeks with Washington. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan bluntly defended the actions, saying that Turkey would continue its attacks in both Iraq and Syria until the last terrorist is eliminated and that it would drain the swamp. The Erdogan government claims that its military actions are aimed against the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), a Kurdish guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long fight for an independent Kurdish state inside Turkey and has been outlawed by Ankara. The Turkish authorities consider the Syrian YPG a branch of the PKK. The Turkish airstrikes in Iraq were supposedly aimed against the PKK, which has had a presence in the Sinjar region near the Syrian border since it intervened there in 2014, backed by US air power, to drive out ISIS. Ankara has allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), controlled by the Barzani clan, against the PKK. Tuesdays air strikes, however, killed at least six members of the KRGs peshmerga forces, something that Ankara said it regretted. The attacks may serve to deepen hostility among Iraqi Kurds to the Barzanis close ties to Turkey. Wednesday also saw clashes on the Syrian-Turkish border between the YPG and Turkish troops as well exchanges of artillery fire across the border, with the Turkish military targeting both the YPG and Syrian government forces, allegedly in retaliation for attacks against Turkey. Clashes were also reported in northern Aleppo between the YPG and Turkish-backed militias, which are dominated by the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, whose forces in Idlib province have joined the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate. Meanwhile, the Syrian Kurdish forces have called on the US-led coalition to establish a no-fly zone over northern Syria, a measure that would entail a qualitative escalation of the US military intervention, intensifying the threat of a military confrontation with Russia, whose warplanes operate in Syrian airspace. The mother of Tennessee teen Elizabeth Thomas was indicted on child abuse charges in January 2016, more than a year before her daughter was allegedly abducted by her teacher, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. On May 12, Kimberly Thomas, 48, will appear in a Tennessee courthouse for a review of her upcoming criminal trial, court officials confirm. Thomas was indicted on four counts of misdemeanor child abuse and neglect and one felony count of abuse for a child under the age of eight, the documents state. She allegedly abused five of her 10 children, including Elizabeth. Records show the alleged abuse began in November 2014 and went on for about a year. In late 2015, Thomas and her husband Anthony separated, and he took sole custody of the children. In 2015, Thomas was ordered to stay away from her children and is still barred from having any contact with them. For more on Elizabeth Thomas disappearance and recovery, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this weeks issue, on newsstands Friday. According to the allegations, Thomas once hit Elizabeths head against a washing machine and threw her down the basements steps, locking her inside. When asked if the alleged abuse played a role in Elizabeths abduction, the teens older sister, Kat Bozeman, previously told PEOPLE, Absolutely, 100 percent that affected her. The documents also allege that Thomas beat her children until they bled and threw a chair at one of her daughters. Another daughter was allegedly rendered unconscious after allegedly being struck with a wooden board. Another child was allegedly struck in the head after injecting herself with her brothers EpiPen. WATCH: Sister of Missing Tennessee Teen Reacts as Shes Found Safely Says They Were Found in a Commune 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. Maury County Public Defender Kendall Stivers, who is defending Thomas in the case, could not be reached for comment. His client has entered a not guilty plea to all of the charges against her. Story continues Elizabeths father, 49-year-old Anthony Thomas, filed for divorce from Kimberly Thomas on Monday, PEOPLE confirms. The divorce filing cites irreconcilable differences and inappropriate marital conduct, Maury County Chancery Court records show. Anthony Thomas divorce lawyer, Cory Ricci, was not immediately available to comment on the filing. It is unclear if Kimberly Thomas has retained counsel for the civil filing. Abused Children Incredibly Vulnerable, Says Expert Tad Cummins, the 50-year-old teacher who is accused of abducting Elizabeth, faces state and federal charges connected to the girls disappearance. Cummins remains in the custody of federal authorities, awaiting extradition from California to Tennessee. A federal judge on Monday ordered Cummins remain jailed and be transferred back to Tennessee as soon as possible. Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, Executive Director of the American Professional Society of the Abuse of Child, tells PEOPLE, When you have parents who arent parenting their child correctly, whether theyre abusive or not, when parents dont adequately prepare their kids to navigate this crazy period of life called adolescence, theyre incredibly vulnerable. She adds that when a child seeks stability and instead finds a predator, we end up with tragedy. This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com Police say an Ohio man with a history of mental illness is accused of kidnapping a female neighbor this week and hiding her in a shallow pit beneath his backyard shed. According to police in Blanchester, Ohio, 45-year-old Dennis Dunn allegedly abducted the neighbor sometime before 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, when her mother reported her missing from their home. The woman was discovered hours later after her mother called police again to say she heard crying from a neighbors shed. In a news release, Blanchester police said the woman was found in a pit dug into the earthen floor of the shed. The pit was about three-and-a-half feet deep and two feet wide and it had been apparently covered by wood and heavy objects, police said in the release. The woman was removed and hospitalized, though she showed no physical trauma, according to police. She was later released, according to a local report. Dunn was taken into custody about 8 a.m. Wednesday and charged with kidnapping, police said. Records show he remains in the county jail, and police said he will appear for the first time in court on Thursday morning. It is unclear if he has an attorney. The backyard shed where police allege Dennis Dunn kept a neighbor he had abducted. Dunns arrest caps off a series of sometimes volatile interactions with both police and the neighbor he allegedly abducted, whom he has known for some time, according to authorities: In October, the woman reported harassing phone calls and text messages from Dunn but declined to participate in any prosecution, police said. Dunn also called police five times over two days in early April claiming he could hear voices and that people had broken into or were attempting to break into his home, where he lived alone. But officers found no one else inside. 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. Dunn was involuntarily admitted to the local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation following one such call, when police returned to his home because neighbors said he was in his yard with a gun. Story continues He was subsequently disarmed without injury in that incident, police said. However, he was released from the hospital within 24 hours. Chief Blasts States Mental Health Care In an unusually public step for law enforcement, the Blanchester police chief tied Dunns alleged actions to what he called a failure of Ohios mental health care system. It would appear to me that Mr. Dunn is in need of some sort of psychiatric treatment, Chief Scott Reinbolt said in a news release earlier in April, following Dunns repeated police calls but before the alleged abduction. Over the past several decades the State of Ohio has closed most of [its] inpatient mental health facilities, leaving few beds available for individuals who need inpatient care, Reinbolt said. Unfortunately, I am convinced that doing so has left individuals like Mr. Dunn without the care and treatment they need and deserve. Following Dunns arrest Wednesday, the chief added in a second news release, I was heartbroken when Dunns elderly father showed up at the scene this morning to apologize to us for having to deal with this son. I am angry at a state government that places dangerous, mentally ill people into our neighborhoods. Referring to the victim, Reinbolt said he was aghast at the threat this situation poses to other people like her in the world. This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com By Steven Shapiro Recent U.S. airstrikes against Syria were ridiculous, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. In a blunt, at times contentious, interview with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric, Zakharova called the strikes unacceptable and said they violated international law and made no military or political sense. They brought the situation nowhere, she said. She went on to say that the goal of the West to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad is not a way out, it is a dead end. When pressed on whether Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks that led to the U.S. military action, she said, Our decisions should be based on real evidence, detailing Russias desire to have independent investigators determine blame. She pointed to U.S. claims in 2003 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which later turned out to be false. That was the worst thing that happened to the Security Council, to the United States, to the Middle East region, Zakharova said. The wide-ranging, exclusive conversation began with Zakharova objecting to Courics characterization of the Russian government as a regime. I think if a president is elected by the people of his country, its not about being a regime, its about being a democracy, she said. Zakharova said that relations between the U.S. and Russia began to deteriorate during the Obama administration, in part because of what she called fake news reports about her country that were disseminated during those years. What Im facing today is, the main role of the media is to separate people (in order) to divide the world into separate parts. I think its dangerous. She dismissed claims from American and European intelligence officials that, in actuality, Russia is disseminating fake news to achieve its geopolitical goals. I just want any example of Russia spreading fake news, just show me one example, she said. I can present you tons, dozens, billions of examples of Western media spreading false news about Russia, she told Couric. Story continues She rejected the conclusion of U.S. intelligence assessments that Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She also brushed aside the notion that Russia supports Marine Le Pen in the French election. We do not support candidates for foreign elections. Its not our business at all. Regarding North Korea, Zakharova said Russia does not support that nations testing of nuclear weapons despite vetoing a U.N. Security Council statement to condemn the tests, put forth by the U.S. and reportedly backed by 14 other nations, including China. There is a mechanism, six-party talks, and the question is not for Russia. The question should go to the United States (as to) why they have rejected this mechanism of improving the situation in the Korean Peninsula. Zakharova was less forthcoming when it came to discussing recent reports that the Chechnyan government is arresting and torturing gay men. She would only say that Russia is holding an investigation into the matter. Human rights groups say at least three men have died in these alleged incarcerations. And as for the future of former NSA contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden, who has been living in exile in Moscow, Zakharova said the duration of his stay in her nation is up to him. Hes just a human being. Hes a person, and he has his own will to decide where he will stay. Nicolas Cage has broken his ankle on the set of heist movie #211 in Bulgaria, a source confirms to Variety. Its currently unclear how the accident happened, but he was transferred to a hospital near the set before heading back to Los Angeles for treatment. Hes still in L.A., with hopes to return to set in about two weeks. Millennium Films and Nu Image, the production companies behind the film, have not yet announced how Cages absence will affect production. York Shackleton directs the movie that stars Cage as a police officer, following his efforts to stop a bank robbery. 211 is police code for robbery in progress. Jonathan Yunger and Jeffrey Greenstein serve as producers of #211, with Yariv Lerner, Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, and Scott Karp on board as executive producers. Along with Cage, the cast also includes Amanda Cerny, Sophie Skelton, and Michael Rainey Jr. Cage has kept busy in recent years, which is typical for the Oscar-winner. His other films in the works include The Humanity Bureau, Vengeance: A Love Story, and Mom and Dad. He was most recently seen in USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, Snowden, and Dog Eat Dog. The news of Cages injury was first reported by Deadline. NA divisional HQs in all 7 provinces: Khand Defence Minister Bal Krishna Khand has said that Nepal Army will set up divisional headquarters in all seven provinces. Portugal. The Man earns its first No. 1 on a Billboard airplay chart, as "Feel It Still" rises 2-1 on the Adult Alternative Songs airplay ranking (dated May 6). Rising to No. 1 in its sixth week, "Feel" completes the quickest progression to the chart's peak since Kings of Leon's "Waste a Moment" needed only four frames to top the tally dated Oct. 22, 2016. "Feel" marks the fastest flight to No. 1 for an act's first Adult Alternative Songs No. 1 since Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait," which reached No. 1 in its third week (Sept. 8, 2012). Additionally, Portugal. The Man earns its first top 10 on both the Alternative Songs and Rock Airplay charts, as "Feel" pushes 12-10 and 14-8, respectively, with 5.6 million audience impressions (up 21 percent) on the latter list, according to Nielsen Music. Previously, the group had charted as high as No. 25 on Adult Alternative Songs with "People Say" in 2011. On Alternative Songs, it had risen to a No. 15 best with "Purple Yellow Red and Blue" in 2013. The band, which hails from Wasilla, Alaska (29 miles northeast of Anchorage; Sarah Palin served as mayor from 1996 to 2002), released its first album, Waiter: "You Vultures!," in 2006. The act's eighth studio album, Woodstock, is due June 16. Its predecessor, 2013's Evil Friends, debuted and peaked at No. 9 on the Alternative Albums chart with 12,000 in first-week sales. Deir Sharqi (Syrie) (AFP) - Air strikes on two hospitals in rebel-held northwestern Syria on Thursday left 10 people dead including two babies in incubators, a monitor said. They were among 19 people killed as a result of strikes across rebel-held Idlib province on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. An AFP correspondent in the village of Deir Sharqi, where one of the hospitals was hit, saw extensive damage and wards buried in rubble. It was the third time in less than a week that medical facilities in the province, controlled by rebels and jihadist groups, had been hit in air strikes. "Apparently Russian aircraft... carried out four successive raids at dawn on a hospital on the outskirts" of Deir Sharqi, it said. "Six civilians in the emergency department were killed, including two babies in incubators, after the destruction of the facility's oxygen generator" which was keeping them alive, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The AFP correspondent saw at least one destroyed incubator, rooms and corridors filled with rubble, and dusty or damaged beds and equipment. In one room, a wall had collapsed on a medicine shelf and in another, medical supplies were strewn across the room. Later in the day, four medical staff from a dispensary in Maarzita, in southern Idlib province, were also killed in what were likely Russian strikes, the Observatory said. A further nine people including five children were killed in strikes on various other areas of Idlib province on Thursday, it said. On Saturday, an air raid on another hospital in Idlib had wounded five people, the Observatory said, but it could not say whether the raid was Syrian or Russian. Another hospital was hit Tuesday in northwestern Idlib, putting it out of service, Abdel Rahman said. The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used. Idlib is regularly bombed by the air forces of Syria and its Russian ally. More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. By Megan Johnson. Photos by: Getty Images. They say it's not easy being green, but some American cities sure make it look like it is. The marketing lead generators at ListShack have compiled data that determines the top 10 greenest cities in the United States, and it's safe to say there are some surprising results. In the spirit of Earth Day on April 22, here's a breakdown of America's most environmentally friendly cities according to ListShack. While five out of ten of the greenest cities are located in the Northeast, the number-one spot went to the hipster haven of Austin, Texas, and its surrounding area of Round Rock. With a population of 2,000,860, Austin scored the top slot by a landslide thanks to its 5.113 LEED buildings per every 1000 residents. Its title can also be attributed to the .097 miles of bike lanes per every 10,000 residents, demonstrating that commuters are ditching their cars in favor of pedaling their way to work and thereby shrinking their carbon footprint. There's also .16 farmer's markets for every 10,000 residents, .94 electric car plug-ins for every 10,000 people, and .145 percent of the city area is parkland. Coming second is Portland, Oregon, and its surrounding areas, while the Washington, D.C./Arlington/Alexandria, Virginia, area snags the number-three spot. Rounding out the top five is Greater Boston, which includes neighboring Cambridge, the high-end suburban enclave of Newton, and its surrounding areas; and the cumulative area of San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, California. The rest include New York/Newark/Jersey City all the way into Pennsylvania; followed by Hartford/West Hartford/East Hartford, Connecticut; then Providence/Warwick, Rhode Island; San Francisco/Oakland/Hayward; and finally Cincinnati, Ohio, and its neighboring areas in Kentucky and Indiana. Coming in with honorable mentions are Seattle; Tucson, Arizona; San Diego; and others. The rankings were determined through an evaluation of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) that have a population of over 1 million people. The U.S. Census Bureau describes an MSA as an area [that] contains a core urban area of 50,000 or more population. This explains why the statistics of many of the cities included incorporate outlying counties that are socially and economically integrated with the urban core. Story continues Each city was analyzed based on five factors, or "green" data points: The number of LEED certified buildings per each 1,000 residents, the percentage of the city's land area that is parkland, the number of miles of bike lanes per 10,000 residents, the number of farmers' markets per 10,000 residents, and the number of electric car plug-ins per 10,000 residents. Population also played a role when determining the rankings; everything was brought to scale by looking at the factors per either 1,000 residents or 10,000 residents so the largest MSAs wouldn't win just based on their size. More: 10 of the Most Beautiful Streets in the World This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest. More from Architectural Digest: 10 Incredible Ski Resorts The Worlds Best Oceanfront Hotels The 10 Best New Luxury Cruises See What's Inside Donald Trump's Former Superyacht This Could Be the Most Luxurious Superyacht Yet Tour the Worlds Most Luxurious Submarine Superyacht Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said that the US personnel were killed overnight in the Nangarhar province, on the border with Pakistan. Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump confirmed to The Independent that the soldiers were killed while fighting Isis-Khorosan, the local affiliate of the terror group. This is the "same general area" - southern Nangarhar province - where the massive ordnance air blast, dubbed the "mother of all bombs" (MOAB) was dropped earlier this month, Mr Stump said. Read more US 'mother of all bombs' kills 36 Isis fighters, Afghan officials say The 22,000lb MOAB was used to target caves and tunnels used by Isis fighters and killed anywhere from 36 to 100 members of the group, however further details have not been confirmed. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis recently visited Afghanistan to discuss Donald Trump's strategy in the war and conduct an assessment. The US has had a continuous military presence in the country since 2001, making it the longest US war. While the focus of the US effort has been to support Afghan forces fighting the Taliban, the estimated 600 to 800 members of Isis affiliate, Isis-Khorosan, have proven to be a large problem. This is the third incident in which US soldiers have died while fighting in Afghanistan this year. More follows.... For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. Most lists of top retirement destinations focus on medium to large cities. For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender baby boomers, as well as many others who seek out diverse populations with thriving arts and culture scenes, larger cities usually have the most to offer. Larger cities also provide more options for medical care and senior support services. However, if you prefer the more relaxed pace of small town living, but still hope to find an inclusive and welcoming community with a fun, artsy ambiance, you're in luck. Here are five small, affordable, LGBT-friendly towns with big personalities that are worth your consideration as retirement destinations. [See: 10 Places to Retire on a Social Security Budget.] Bisbee, Arizona. During its copper mining heyday in the early 1900s, Bisbee was the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco. Today this town of 5,575 in the southeast corner of Arizona has transformed into a vibrant, quirky town with interesting shops, a thriving arts and music scene and remarkably well preserved 1900-era architecture. There are dozens of unique local restaurant choices and western-style saloons. Real estate prices and the overall cost of living are well below national averages, and temperatures are moderate year-round. When you need to venture to a larger city, Tucson is 80 miles to the northwest. Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Eureka Springs is a resort spa town nestled in the scenic Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas. Its charming Victorian architecture, twisting streets and easy going, laissez-faire attitude has attracted a diverse community of 2,350. The town offers "diversity weekends" four times a year as well as being home to numerous gay-owned businesses. Nearby Fayetteville offers many of the cultural perks of a college town, but the nearest large city is Tulsa, 150 miles to the west. [See: 10 Tips for Finding a Great Place to Retire.] Saugatuck/Douglas, Michigan. The adjacent towns of Saugatuck and Douglas, on the shore of Lake Michigan, have a combined year-round population of about 2,000. But these towns can swell to three times that size during the summer season. Saugatuck's Oval Beach has been named one of the top 25 beaches in the world by Conde Nast and the nearby sand dunes are visually stunning. Between the two towns, there are over 140 LGBT-owned or friendly shops, galleries, restaurants and lodging options. While Saugatuck and Douglas thrive during the summer months, winters are cold and annual snowfall is over six feet. Median house prices are approximately $300,000, which makes this area a more expensive choice. When you need a big city, Grand Rapids is just 40 miles away. Story continues Yellow Springs, Ohio. This small, woody town of 3,500 about 20 miles east of Dayton earned its reputation as a liberal oasis during the hippie movement of the 1960s. Today, its small downtown is lined with shops, galleries and a tiny long-standing art film theater, many of which sport rainbow flags and decals. Homes are inexpensive, the cost of living is low and there's plenty of hiking to enjoy in nearby Glen Helen and John Bryan State Park. When you need big city amenities, Dayton is nearby and Columbus and Cincinnati are both about an hour away. Yellow Springs experiences typical Ohio winters with below-freezing temperatures and an average annual snowfall of over two feet. [See: The Top Travel Destinations for Retirees.] Moab, Utah. Moab is a small, isolated town in eastern Utah, situated between the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, both renowned for their stunning natural beauty. The area thrives on outdoor adventure and is popular with mountain bikers, hikers and whitewater rafters. Downtown Moab offers an interesting array of restaurants, galleries and shops. The town began to establish its reputation as an LGBT-welcoming place several years ago when over 500 of its 5,000 residents turned out to participate in Moab's Pride parade and festival. Now, the town stages annual events such as A Day in the Park, the Visibility March and Gay Adventure Week. House prices and the cost of living are close to the national averages. Since Moab is situated in an arid high desert region, it experiences chilly winters and warm summers with light annual precipitation and snowfall. The nearest large city, Salt Lake City, is over 230 miles away. For this list, only cities with a population under 25,000 were considered. These five cities were selected after evaluating a wide range of factors including the cost of living, median house price, state tax burden, available art and cultural amenities and the size of the LGBT community. These cities represent a variety of personalities, geographical areas and climates. Dave Hughes is the founder of Retire Fabulously. Roughing it is what camping is all about, but for those looking to embrace the great outdoors without bug spraying, tent pitching or food prep, a more luxurious experience in nature might just be the perfect way to unplug in the wild. After all, you can climbing mountains, fish and all the other things you'd usually do on a camp trip without having to worry about set up of a tent and other things that often go wrong. "Glamping," or upscale camping, enables you to commune with nature without sacrificing comfort or convenience. With luxurious washrooms, gourmet meals and furnished lodgings apppointed with extras such as wood-burning stoves and king-size beds, glampsites are redefining and elevating the camping experience. Check out these five new glamping destinations for a high-style summer getaway in nature. [See: America's 6 Top Adventure Resorts.] Lake Powell, Utah and Arizona For hardcore campers craving plenty of physical activity, outfitter Epic Private Journeys might just offer the perfect balance of adventure, relaxation and traditional camping elements. Take a quick boat ride from Wahweap Marina's base in Arizona to Lake Powell, a beautiful canyon destination. At Lake Powell, you can hike, fish and sail, visit slot canyons, private islands and coves. Canvas tents are prepared in advance for guests, and gourmet meals are included. Aside from your campsite, the rest of the rugged and beautiful terrain is yours to explore like a true camper, minus the pain of pitching a tent or making meals. Glacier National Park, Montana Known as the "Crown of the Continent," Glacier National Park covers 1,583 square miles of wilderness, where streams abound with glaciers carved into the mountain peaks, stretching up to the Canadian border. With over 700 miles of trails to hike, you're likely going to need some quality rest. Just 7 miles from Glacier National Park, outfitter Glacier Under Canvas offers a luxurious experience for guests, with canvas tents that are fully furnished and feature high ceilings. Community campfires and activities are also available. Plus, you can get as rough as you like in nature while hiking, fishing, horseback riding or white-water rafting. Story continues [See: 10 Best Trips for Adventure Junkies.] Central Florida Are you a lover of all things vintage and nature? A glamping getaway to Silver Bullet Retreats, in central Florida, might just be perfect for you. Here, you can stay in a vintage airstream. After picking a campsite, an Airstream equipped with central air, TV, Internet and furnishings, among other amenities, is delivered to guests. Glamp in your own mini-home and barbecue, boat, kayak swim, fish and trek without the stress of setting up your home base. Gotland Island, Sweden While it's easy to pay a hefty price to experience Sweden, you don't have to spend a fortune to commune with the area's natural surroundings. Gotland Glamping sites, which features stylish, huge and uniquely decorated bell tents near top attractions starting at $45. Relax in nearby hammocks or play the guitar around the fire after a long day of exploration. What's more, aside from discovering the great outdoors, you can soak in the best of Sweden without busting your budget. [See: America's 6 Top Adventure Resorts.] Taveuni Island, Fiji Fiji has long been a dream vacation destination, and for good reason. But the area's dramatic natural scenery escapes most visitors who stay in luxury hotels. For an experience in the wild, consider glamping at Oceanfront Tent Retreat, which positions guests between a coral reef and a rainforest on Taveuni Island. Set beneath vesi trees, the tents have a deck featuring ocean views. Plus, a separate toilet, twin hand basins, a sunken bath and an outdoor private shower are just a few creature comforts you can count on. Sleep on a king-size bed, wake up to freshly brewed coffee and enjoy housekeeping service twice daily. Kacey Mya is a travel and lifestyle blogger for The Drifter Collective, an eclectic lifestyle blog that expresses various forms of style through the influence of culture and the world around us. Kacey graduated with a degree in Communications while working for a lifestyle magazine. She has been able to fully embrace herself with the knowledge of nature, the power of exploring other locations and cultures, all while portraying her love for the world around her through her visually pleasing, culturally embracing and inspiring posts. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Health care costs have affected businesses' bottom line for years. According to a report by the Society of Human Resource Management, health care represents up to 7.67 percent of employers' budgets, which means employers are spending an average of $8,669 annually on each employee. Workplace wellness programs were initially implemented as a plausible method for curbing these costs and have evolved to address a broader range of issues, including employee well-being, productivity and morale. The newly released 2017 Humana Wellness Trends Report uncovers the five trends that currently have the most impact on employees -- both inside and outside the workplace. Specifically, workers are getting older, more fatigued and increasingly worried about their finances while they rely on mindfulness and emerging technology to help them achieve their desired health. [See: HIPAA: Protecting Your Health Information.] Older workforce leads to health, caregiving burdens. The U.S. workforce is getting older and retiring later due to the stress of financial burdens, caring for older loved ones and increasing health care costs. About 14.5 percent of the U.S. population was ages 65 years or older in 2014, and that number will rise to 21.7 percent by 2040. The stress that comes with caregiving and providing financial support has been linked with lower productivity, higher stress and poor health for the caregivers. Employers can make wellness programs more inclusive, use targeted and personalized communications about existing benefits, consider flexible scheduling and refine manager training. Financial stress affects productivity. Americans identify money as their top stressor, which can reduce employee productivity and contribute to absenteeism, presenteeism and poor health. Research states 37 percent of full-time employees deal with financial issues while working, affecting businesses' bottom lines in the long run. Ask your employees about the topics they are interested in to narrow down helpful subject matters for financial wellness programs. These include debt management, tax returns, estate planning, retirement and home ownership. Additionally, companies should offer employees the opportunity to improve their financial well-being -- while still preserving their privacy -- through financial education. Story continues [See: 8 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life.] Workers benefit from mindfulness techniques. Research has found a mindful approach may help ease the "effects of stress, anxiety and other negative emotions." A number of organizations have adopted mindfulness techniques to boost productivity and improve mental health among their employees. Organizations can offer their employees classes in mindfulness, encourage an environment where employees take digital detoxes and create a more relaxing work environment. Poor sleep leading to errors, low morale. Among workers age 30 and older, 74 percent say lack of sleep affects their work performance. Additionally, poor sleep can cause workers to struggle with processing and remembering information, become prone to errors and accidents, and experience lower morale. Look into wellness apps that connect to wearable devices and offer incentives for reaching sleep goals. In addition, bring more natural light into the workplace and teach employees about sleep hygiene. [See: Trouble Sleeping? Ask Yourself Why.] The "connected experience 2.0" revolutionizing wellness strategies. The "Internet of things," referring to everyday devices connecting to the internet and transmitting data with interconnected systems, is an emerging concept continually linked to health and wellness. This connected experience is beginning to amplify beyond wearable fitness trackers. As wellness programs begin to integrate these devices and employers gain access to the data, employers will gain insight into what's driving organizational health costs and how to resolve them. Nate Kvamme, Vice President of Wellness Solutions, is responsible for Humana's large portfolio of innovative well-being strategies that improve health and increase productivity. Under Kvamme's leadership, Humana helps consumers achieve life-long well-being by making it easy for them to achieve their best health. Kvamme has more than 15 years of experience in healthcare and consumer products, both in international and domestic markets. Chloe Bridgewater is only 7 years old but she's already getting paid to test products for a computer company. Her new side hustle comes only a few months after she wrote a letter asking "Google boss" Sundar Pichai for a future job in tech. SEE ALSO: This 7-year-old is not giving up after Google CEO's sweet rejection letter Since her adorably honest and earnest letter went viral, Chloe and her family in Hereford, England, have gotten a lot of attention. "It's been absolutely bonkers," her mom, Julie Bridgewater, said in a video call Thursday. Chloe's letter got even more attention when Pichai responded with a signed letter and encouraged Chloe to stay interested in coding, computers, robots, and math. So now Chloe and her 6-year-old sister, Hollie, are keeping up with the latest innovations in tech at Kano, a computer kit company. Over the Easter holiday, the family took the three-hour trip into London to check out company headquarters. Kano had reached out to Chloe via her Twitter naturally after hearing about her Google letter. Just this week it was announced that the young sisters are the newest board members for Kano's product innovation board, which means they'll be testing out new products and giving the company feedback before they go to market. Already the girls were sent a kid computer kit to build and play with. "She's having fun experimenting on her own," Julie said. Computer testing is now all in the family. Image: kano The sisters will have to work out sharing computer time, since their mom said fights are already brewing over who gets to play with the device. "Hollie's a bit miffed on Chloe getting all the attention," Julie said, but it helps that both girls are both included with computer kit testing, so they both feel involved and excited. Meanwhile their parents, Julie and Andy, are still overwhelmed by the attention stemming from Chloe's letter. Story continues "We both have our moments when we say, 'Crikey, this is really happening,'" Julie said. Back in class this week the girls haven't missed any school during all this a teacher played Kano's promo video of the girls playing and Andy talking about his daughters' relationship to technology and computers. "The teachers are really proud of her," Julie said about Chloe. And because of the success of her Google letter, her friends have taken inspiration and are writing their own, too. All this for a 7-year-old, who at this rate, as her mom noted with a chuckle, is poised to have an "amazing CV by the time shes 10." WATCH: This NYU student went undercover as a worker in a Chinese iPhone factory It was a birthday present a boy of any age would appreciate. So what if Bill Grun was turning 97? For most of those years, he dreamed of being a fireman. On Monday, he got to ride in a firetruck. Read: 99-Year-old Secretary Celebrates Her 80th Day on the Job - and Has No Plans to Retire Staff at his Pennsylvania retirement home secretly informed the Doylestown Fire Company No. 1 that Grun had wanted to be a firefighter all his life. So could some of the station crew driver over in a big rig and take Grun for a ride? Of course they could, came the reply. Sporting a tie and a green cardigan, Gurn hauled himself into the behemoth Ladder 79 and got a ride for his lifetime, as the fire companys website put it. Read: 90-Year-Old Burlesque Dancer Shocks 'America's Got Talent' With a Strip Tease Complete with Nipple Tassels Still sharp as a tack, Grun teaches Sunday school and drives a stick shift Model T Ford, the departments post said. He told stories of his days as a school teacher, and after his ride was over, he jogged across a parking lot. Yes, jogged, the post said. Happy birthday Bill, and many more. Youre one of us now, the message read. Watch: Cops Arrest 99-Year-Old Woman to Cross It Off Her Bucket List Related Articles: Nepal-China consultative meet today The 11th NepalChina Consultative Meeting at the Foreign Secretary level will take place in Kathmandu on Thursday. By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - With the prospect looming of a Middle East peace initiative by a new U.S. administration more sympathetic to Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to turn the screw on the Hamas group that has kept Gaza out of his control for a decade. Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) on Thursday told Israel it would no longer pay for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, a move that could lead to a complete power shutdown in the territory, whose 2 million people already endure blackouts for much of the day. Israel does not engage directly with Hamas, regarding the Islamist group as a terrorist organization. The PA declined to say why it had taken the step, but had already put pressure on Hamas by withholding the Israeli fuel that until two weeks ago powered Gaza's only generating plant, and slashing the salaries of the civil servants who are one of the mainstays of Gaza's struggling economy. Medical workers say health services are on the verge of breakdown, while shopkeepers say they are struggling. Hamas official Ismail Rudwan reacted with fury, warning of "an explosion in the face of the Zionist occupation" and saying that anyone who had "collaborated with the occupation" would have cause for regret, whether from the PA or not. "We will not pay a political price for this crime," he said. Ostensibly, the reasons for the withholding of fuel and the salary cuts were non-payment of bills, and shortage of foreign donor funds. But regaining a measure of control over Gaza could empower Abbas politically as Israel and the Palestinians await a widely expected push by U.S. President Donald Trump for a revival of peace efforts that stalled in 2014. Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah, based in the West Bank, made no secret of the PA's political motives on Wednesday, saying at an event in Ramallah that the lifting of the salary cut depended on Hamas moving towards reconciliation. "I think there is a golden and historic chance to regain the unity of our people," he said. "Hamas should relinquish control of Gaza." CIVIL WAR Abbas's Fatah movement, which controls the PA, fought a brief civil war with Hamas in Gaza in 2007, which led to Hamas seizing full control of the territory a year after winning parliamentary elections there. Several attempts at reconciliation, most recently in 2014, have failed to produce a power-sharing government for the West Bank and Gaza, and analysts say Abbas is now trying to force the issue. Health officials say the Gaza Strip's 13 hospitals and 54 medical centers are running short of funds and fuel for emergency generators. They say some 620 kidney patients in need of dialysis three times a week and newborns are at particular risk from blackouts, with generators at all the medical facilities using a total of some 2,000 liters of fuel per hour. "All health services could stop within the coming few days," said Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman of the Gaza health ministry, calling on humanitarian organizations to offer more help. The PA has also slashed the salaries of its 60,000 civil servants in Gaza - but not the West Bank - by 30 percent, offering no explanation other than a lack of foreign aid money. The civil servants' pay is one of the few sources of steady income that trickle through the Gaza economy, and supports tens of thousands of extended families. Store owners complain of the weakest sales in years. "After God, the country (Gaza) depends on the salaries of the employees," said Fahd Abu Sultan, 28, a shoe salesman. Economists said the wage cuts would also shrink the tax revenue collected by Hamas - which it in turn uses to pay the 40,000 employees it has hired in Gaza since 2007. Hamdallah said Hamas should accept an Abbas initiative to form a true unity government immediately and then go to presidential and parliamentary elections, which have not been held for more than a decade. "Let whoever wins rule," he said. THORN IN ABBAS'S SIDE Hamas has been a thorn in Abbas's side for his entire 12 years in office, but the 82-year-old appears to have been stung into fresh action by Trump's election. In suggesting that he will try to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, he has struck a much warmer tone than his predecessor towards Israel and its settlement building in occupied Palestinian territory, and thrown into doubt Washington's commitment to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Within weeks of Trump's election, Abbas took steps to shore up his authority in the West Bank by tightening his control of Fatah. But his biggest weakness remains the fact that Gaza is controlled by a movement shunned as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, as well as Israel. Hamas has, since its founding in 1987, advocated the destruction of Israel, seeking all of historic Palestine as its land, even if some of its leaders have indicated in recent years that they would accept a more limited Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in 1967 in return for a long-term truce. Political analyst Hani al-Masri wrote in a recent paper that Gaza's status "allows Israel and regional and international parties to continue to question the legitimacy of (Abbas's) leadership and his representation of all the Palestinians". "President Abbas realizes that President Trump will ask him to be humble in his demands because 'you are weak and Gaza is under Hamas control and you have troubles inside Fatah'," he wrote. "Therefore, Abu Mazen (Abbas) wants to go to Washington after it has received his message about the strong and decisive steps he has taken." (Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Jeffrey Heller i Jerusalem; Editing by Kevin Liffey) Photo credit: Honda From Road & Track Here's a question to occupy an evening at the cruise-in or the garage or the campground: Which car deserves the title of "first American muscle car"? Was it the 1949 Olsmobile Rocket 88, which also inspired the first rock-n'-roll song? The Chrysler 300? The Impala SS? Or was it the infamous 1964 Pontiac GTO, the first car to break the General Motors policy preventing big-bore V-8s in mid-size sedans? You can make a very solid argument for any of the above, not to mention several other legitimate contenders like the "Max Wedge" Dodge Dart. Well, I don't claim to know what the first American muscle car was, but I can absolutely tell you what the last one currently for sale is. It's the 2017 Honda Accord Coupe EX-L V6 with the six-speed manual transmission. Save your angry letters and Facebook comments until the end, particularly if you don't know how to spell each and every one of the words you're planning to use, because I'm going to convince you beyond the shadow of a doubt on this topic. Let's get the easy stuff out of the way. The original Pontiac GTO formula calls for the unnecessary insertion of a big-bore engine into a plain-Jane family car. Right away this excludes the Mustang, Camaro, and Challenger, the holy trinity of modern "muscle cars", because all three of these vehicles have traditionally been specialty cars, not family cars. The last time any of these cars was even distantly related to a mid-size family car was probably when the Fox Mustang shared a platform with the Fairmont/Granada/LTD thirty years ago. The Dodge Charger plays in the "large-car" space now, as does the outgoing Chevy SS that shares the bones of the Camaro. Even if you want to argue that the Charger is a family car and that therefore the Challenger should be included in the muscle car category, however, I'm going to shoot that down by stating that we are discussing American muscle cars. The Challenger Hellcat might be all-American in conception, design, and even engineering, but the engine comes from Mexico and the assembly is done in Ontario. At best, it's a North American muscle car. Story continues Photo credit: Honda When we consider the true high-volume family cars out there and their overpowered variants, we come up with a pretty short list. There's the Accord V6, the Camry V6, the Altima V6, and the Ford Fusion Sport. Everybody else uses a small-bore turbocharged four-cylinder engine for their upmarket models. You might get some decent acceleration numbers that way, but strictly speaking something like a Malibu Turbo is the descendant of the high-revving small-block Chevelles. Imagine, for a moment, that you are back in the year 1964, driving to your local Pontiac dealer to order a GTO. On the way there, you get into a car crash and you spend the next fifty-three years in a coma, only to wake up and go muscle car shopping again. You know exactly what you want: a two-door sedan (yes, youngsters, that's a thing, and it's a more legitimate term than "four-door coupe") with a four-on-the-floor and the biggest engine you can get. That is a muscle car. As painful as it may be to do so, therefore, I'm going to disqualify the Fusion Sport because it has four doors, all-wheel-drive, and a mandatory automatic transmission. Conceptually, the fast Ford is far closer to "budget Audi S4" than "modern Torino Cobra Jet." That leaves us with three American-made contenders. Two of them are only available as four-door automatics, which of course is also antithetical to the original GTO formula of two doors and four-on-the-floor transmission. And that is how we get to the rather insane idea that the last American muscle car is, in fact, a Honda Accord. But the numbers and the driving experience help restore some sanity to the assertion. In EX-L V6 6MT trim, the Accord Coupe features the mighty J35Y3 V6. Dyno testing of a brand-new unit by the folks at Temple of VTEC suggests that its rated output of 270hp is conservative by thirty ponies or so. It's common for owners to break into the thirteens in the quarter-mile and trap well over 100mph, numbers that would have been perfectly respectable in the muscle car heyday of the late Sixties. My own 2014 Accord Coupe gets to 120mph about as quickly as my 1995 Porsche 993 under similar conditions, although the Porsche launches harder and it also steams away pretty quickly after 130 or so. Photo credit: Honda After forty-eight thousand miles with my V6 6MT coupe, I can tell you that it has many other characteristics of a traditional muscle car. It's not exactly a stellar handler, although around most road courses it can dispatch Miatas and the like just on the strength of the motorthat is, until the brakes utterly vanish, which usually occurs around Lap Five. Thanks to its FWD layout, the Accord is severely traction-limited and can spin the wheels on the roll in second gear. It will "chirp third" with reckless abandon; that was once considered to be the sign of an authentic muscle car. Much of the interior is disturbingly cheap and fragile; I believe the same thing was true of every Plymouth Road Runner that ever left the line. It's easy to service and it will probably run forever, two characteristics that were common to most pre-smogged muscle cars. It is big enough for four adults but you'd never force anybody to sit in the back seat unless they were beholden to you by ties of blood or debt. I spent part of my youth in the back seat of a 403-powered Cutlass Supreme that was pretty much the same way. Most critically, however, the V6 Accord is the very definition of a "sleeper". Nobody can ever believe that it's going to drop them from a light the way it does. In a freeway "40 roll" the V6 is wickedly effective at breaking the hearts of stock Evolution and STI owners. Let's not even talk about GTIs and other "hot hatches;" they are easy meat for the big-but-light Honda even if they get a jump in it. Late last year, I found out that my personal car can also keep pace with a Focus RS in those situations. In places where Accords are thick on the ground, such as Southern California and central Ohio, the big-bore coupes are absolutely invisible to the police. Photo credit: Honda In addition to the above virtues, the six-cylinder Accord is dirt-cheap, with transaction prices in the $28,000 range. It averages 31mpg on the freeway and 26mpg in commuting use, even with a heavy throttle foot. Insurance is not a problem. There are performance parts aplenty. With a "J-pipe" and a quick tune, it's easy to add another thirty horsepower to the dyno chart, at which point you have nearly the power-to-weight ratio of a BMW M2. In the end, it's that combination of affordability, space, anonymity, and reliability that makes the Accord V6 Coupe the true successor to that 1964 GTO. Honda is a Japanese company, but the Accord is an American car. Much of it was designed and engineered in the United States. It's assembled in Marysville, Ohio by people who earn a living wage, in a community where kids still play out in the streets and hang out at the pizza places in the summer evenings. There will be another Accord, starting next year. Maybe even another Accord Coupe. There's no guarantee, however, that there will be anything in the showroom that resembles today's big-hearted, stick-shifted maximum wedge. If you want to experience the last American muscle car on your own terms, now's the time to start shopping. You can say that it's a dawn of a new turbo-powered era of efficiency, or you can say that it's 1968 all over again. But either way, it's closing time. Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week. You Might Also Like The American Civil Liberties Union is condemning the threats that forced Ann Coulter to cancel her speech at the University of California, Berkeley. The unacceptable threats of violence that have led to the hecklers veto of Ann Coulters speech at Berkeley are inconsistent with free speech principles that protect us all from government overreach, David Cole, the ACLUs national legal director, said in a statement Wednesday after Coulter canceled her appearance, which had been scheduled for Thursday. Hateful speech has consequences, particularly for people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and others who have been historically marginalized, Cole continued. But if the government gets to decide which speech counts as hate speech, the powers that be may later feel free to censor any speech they dont like. He added: For the future of our democracy, we must protect bigoted speech from government censorship. On college campuses, that means that the best way to combat hateful speech is through counter-speech, vigorous and creative protest, and debate, not threats of violence or censorship. On Twitter, Coulter appeared to mock the timing of the ACLUs statement. Way to step in when we needed you, ACLU! https://t.co/437GRNH2zd Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 27, 2017 Way to step in when we needed you, ACLU! she tweeted. Last week, university and police officials said they feared Coulters appearance would spark violence on campus, citing very specific intelligence of threats against the conservative firebrand. In February, violent protests forced the cancellation of a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative provocateur who, like Coulter, was invited to speak by a group of Berkeley Republicans. The event was called off after protesters clashed with police, lit fires and smashed windows outside the student union, forcing a temporary lockdown. Story continues In response, President Trump threatened to defund the school. If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view NO FEDERAL FUNDS? the president tweeted. If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017 Earlier this month, a pro-Trump rally was marred by violence as far-right supporters of the president clashed with protesters. On Wednesday, UC-Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks said the school has to balance protecting free speech with protecting the safety of students. This is a university, not a battlefield, Dirks wrote in a letter to students and faculty. The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to free speech, the other to the safety of our campus community. In an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity, Coulter said her cancellation is emblematic of a broader issue. Whats going on with Berkeley, it shows how radical the universities are generally, Coulter said. Yes, they want to destroy and squelch conservative speech, but there is a separate issue with the universities. When you have Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Maher when they are all saying, Get over yourselves, Berkeley, we have a First Amendment people have fought and died for the right to free speech. The college Republicans are a student group. I am not a homeless person wandering into the square. But I would be allowed to speak then too. [Universities] are really outside the mainstream. Coulter told the Associated Press that while she would not be speaking at Berkeley, she might make an unscheduled appearance on campus. Im going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country, Coulter said in an email. I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment. Read more from Yahoo News: Foxs Jesse Watters sparks controversy with suggestive Ivanka Trump remark Tucker Carlson and Caitlyn Jenner debate Trump and transgender rights Ivanka booed at W20 summit after calling father a champion for women Obama makes first public remarks since leaving office Trump approaches 100 days with lowest job approval rating in more than 70 years An Afghan strongman is giving sanctuary to Taliban fighters and their families who had sought haven across the border in Pakistan, building on a radical strategy to reduce Islamabad's perceived influence on the insurgency. Kandahar's powerful police chief Abdul Raziq last December called for a "safe zone" for Taliban militants, a contentious plan centred on Afghanistan's long-standing accusation that the insurgency is fuelled by Pakistan's support in cross-border sanctuaries. Since then, around two dozen insurgents have sought sanctuary in the southern province - from senior commanders to low-level fighters -- with Raziq's trusted aide, Sultan Mohammed, instrumental in getting them to leave Pakistan, security sources say. Three of them spoke to AFP by telephone from secret locations in Kandahar. All say they have been granted de facto amnesty, and some given housing and cash handouts in exchange for not returning to the battlefield. "Sultan Mohammed told me: 'Come back to your country, your homeland without fear. I guarantee no one will touch you'," 37-year-old Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former member of the Taliban's economic commission, told AFP. "He came to the border in his car to receive my family," said Rauf, who defected earlier this year from Quetta in southwest Pakistan with his three wives and children. Other Taliban figures who the sources claim sought refuge in Kandahar include senior commanders Malim Paida, Mohammadullah Khan and an insurgent leader known as Doctor Khalil -- a longtime fugitive who escaped in a mass jailbreak in Afghanistan's second largest city in 2011. While extracting a handful of cross-border militants is unlikely to significantly de-escalate the conflict, the effort underscores a new push by officials to shift what they see as the insurgency's centre of gravity from Pakistan to Afghanistan. But sheltering or ceding ground to insurgents with blood on their hands is a risky and controversial gambit. Story continues The Taliban last week orchestrated one of the deadliest attacks on an Afghan military base since 2001, killing at least 144 people in an assault that has caused widespread anger and left security forces facing disarray. As the stubborn insurgency expands, Mohammed likens his effort to poking "small holes in a large dam", intent on a piecemeal collapse of the structure. "The return of these Taliban figures will pave the way for others to come back," he told AFP. - 'Tired of war' - Minutes after Khalil crossed the border through the Pakistani town of Chaman this year, he says the Taliban began hunting for him. "They would have killed me for abandoning the movement," he said. Fatigued by war, from Quetta he reached out to Mohammed, who offered him sanctuary with the stipulation that he return with his family -- seemingly a surety against him turning rogue. Once in Afghanistan, he said Mohammed offered him accommodation, food, and a one-time payment of roughly $200. Now he is helping Mohammed gather phone numbers of other Pakistan-based Taliban members willing to relocate. "Many are tired of war and want to return, but are afraid of Pakistani intelligence on that side and of being arrested and tortured on this side," Khalil told AFP. Like Raziq, Mohammed is a police commander well-known for brutality but also credited for taming Kandahar districts that were once a hornet's nest of insurgents. Taliban sources speaking to AFP inside Pakistan dismissed his efforts as an "enemy trap". Islamabad denies supporting the militants, saying it uses Taliban sanctuaries as a "lever" to pressure the group into talks with Kabul. But prominent Taliban figures have accused Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of manipulating the group. Insurgent sources claim former Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour was trying to branch away from the ISI, forging ties with Iran, Russia and Arab world, before he was killed in a US drone strike while exiting Iran. - 'Come home' - Afghanistan's National Security Council has refused to comment on the Kandahar strategy, saying only that the Taliban are allowed to relocate to Afghanistan under state protection. A top security official told AFP last year that the government's goal "is to bring the Taliban from Pakistan to Afghanistan". But the renegades interviewed by AFP say they are practically living in hiding as they fear revenge attacks. Some have questioned the strategy's usefulness. "There aren't one, two, or three hundred Taliban," said Kabul-based researcher Rahmatullah Amiri. "There are thousands and not everyone is in Pakistan. How will this plan make an impact?" Mohammed said disarming and reintegrating even a few is worth the effort. Whenever his walkie talkie crackles with the voice of an insurgent, hurling profanities, threats and demanding that he return their seized weapons, he said he relays one key message: "Don't fight another's war. Come home." str-bur-sjd-ac/st/hg By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - East African states and South Africa believe that allowing South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar to return to the war-torn country would not "necessarily be positive at this stage," said United Nations envoy David Shearer on Wednesday. Machar, who fled to Democratic Republic of Congo in August after fierce fighting in South Sudan, is being held in South Africa to prevent him from stirring up trouble, diplomatic and political sources told Reuters in December. Shearer, who heads a U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, confirmed that was the case. "The feeling very much within the region is that his role, in terms of bringing him back, wouldn't necessarily be positive at this stage, so that's the decision of regional governments and South Africa," Shearer told reporters in New York. South Sudan descended into civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir fired Machar as his deputy, unleashing a conflict that has spawned armed factions often following ethnic lines. Shearer said Festus Mogae, the former Botswana president who heads the international mediation and monitoring body JMEC in South Sudan, and U.N. envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, had both visited Machar. "What's the most important thing -- and I have made this point to everybody including President Kiir -- is that the constituency he represents must be part of any peace process and any process that moves forward," Shearer said. The United Nations has warned of a possible genocide as millions have fled their homes, the oil-producing economy is in a tail-spin, crop harvests are devastated because of the worst drought in years and millions face famine. The United States slammed Kiir on Tuesday for the African state's "man-made" famine and ongoing conflict, urging him to fulfill a month-old pledge of a unilateral truce by ordering his troops back to their barracks. U.N. sanctions monitors reported to the Security Council last month that South Sudan's government is mainly to blame for famine in parts of the country, yet Kiir is still boosting his forces using millions of dollars from oil sales. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Sandra Maler) Alabama law enforcement officials are concerned that using social media to demonstrate violence will soon become a trend after 49-year-old James M. Jeffrey shot himself live on Facebook, Tuesday. The suicide is the latest in a series of deaths showcased live on the social networking site. Prior to the suicide, the Baldwin County Sheriffs Office received a call from a woman who said her friend may harm himself. On their way to the scene, deputies received calls about people informing they watched a man shoot himself on Facebook livestream, USA Today reported. After arriving at the scene, deputies found Jeffrey dead. An autopsy has been planned and the Facebook video has been taken as evidence at the scene, AL.com reported. The suicide video garnered over 1,000 views and was shared several times before being taken down by Facebook after two hours, according to the USA Today report. "This was a first for us," Anthony Lowery, assistant chief deputy with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office said according to USA Today. "I hope this isn't a trend starting. It's one thing to commit suicide. It's another thing to victimize other people." This is not the first time a person committed suicide on Facebook live. Earlier this month, 24-year-old Arjun Bhardwaj jumped to death from an upscale hotel in Indias financial capital Mumbai after livestreaming suicide tutorial. On Easter Sunday, an Ohio man shot dead a 74-year-old man and uploaded the video on Facebook. On Tuesday, a man in Bangkok killed his 11-month-old daughter in a live video on the social networking site before committing suicide. According to reports, the murder-suicide video stayed on Facebook for about 24 hours before being pulled down. After the Ohio incident, Facebook said it is reviewing its reporting flows to be sure people can report videos and other material that violates our standards as easily and quickly as possible. In addition to improving our reporting flows, we are constantly exploring ways that new technologies can help us make sure Facebook is a safe environment, Facebook stated. Related Articles An Alabama man live-streamed his suicide on Facebook, drawing concern from law enforcement officials who are worried that using the social media platform to showcase violence is becoming a trend. James M. Jeffrey, 49, of Robertsdale, Ala. reportedly shot himself in the head with a rifle Tuesday while streaming the scene on Facebook Live, Al.com reported. Anthony Lowery, assistant chief deputy with the Baldwin County Sheriffs Office, said the video had more than 1,000 views and had been shared a several times before it was removed from Facebook after two hours, according to USA Today. This was a first for us, Lowery told USA Today. I hope this isnt a trend starting. Its one thing to commit suicide. Its another thing to victimize other people. The incident follows a string of violence on the social media giant over the past week. On Easter Sunday, an Ohio man fatally shot a 74-year-old man and posted the video on Facebook. On Tuesday, a man in Thailand hung his 11-month-old daughter while streaming on Facebook Live before killing himself. The latter reportedly stayed on the site for roughly 24 hours before it was taken down, according to reports. Facebook last month announced plans to integrate real-time suicide prevention tools into Facebook Live in addition to live-chat support from organizations such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Crisis Text Line. We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a keynote speech last week. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment following this latest incident. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Julia Love (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc Chief Executive Larry Page said on Thursday that the holding corporate structure for search unit Google and a host of new businesses has succeeded in creating more transparency for investors. As the two-year anniversary of Alphabet's corporate restructuring approaches, Page wrote in a letter to investors that the model has empowered entrepreneurs outside its core search business. "The new structure has helped entrepreneurs build and run companies with the autonomy and speed they need," he wrote in the letter published ahead of the Mountain View, California-based company's earnings on Thursday. Page took Silicon Valley by surprise in August 2015 with the creation of a new company, Alphabet, to house Google and new ventures ranging from self-driving cars to health technology, which would be broken off into separate companies. The structure was intended to give investors greater visibility into the search unit's performance and give leaders of the new businesses more autonomy. Wall Street has cheered the new structure, but it has had mixed results. The self-driving car group has graduated into a new company, dubbed Waymo, but a host of Alphabet executives have departed, including the leaders of smart home technology company Nest and Google Ventures. Since the restructuring, executives have learned a great deal about how to best launch the new companies, Page wrote, citing the spin-off of Waymo in December. "In general we are taking a patient approach to investing our capital," he said. "We're not going to invest if we don't see great opportunities and we feel like our track record for picking some important efforts long before others is pretty good." (Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Richard Chang) WASHINGTON - Tom MacArthur says he isnt hiding. The South Jersey congressman who has thrust himself into the center of the charged national debate on repealing the Affordable Care Act will hold a town hall meeting May 10 in largely Democratic Willingboro, he announced Thursday morning. Throughout my time in Congress, being accessible to my constituents has always been a top priority, MacArthur said in a statement. This is the second open public forum Ive held in the past year in Willingboro, where I barely got 10 percent of the vote. I am looking forward to visiting Willingboro again to discuss the issues of critical importance to the community. MacArthur, a second-term Republican, became a top target for Democrats and liberal critics after he supported the GOPs plan to repeal and replace Obamacare last month. But now, he has a national spotlight on him. This week he secured a deal with House conservatives that revived the chambers flagging effort to roll back the health law. While conservatives see the law as a vast federal overreach that has driven up costs, it is increasingly popular for its consumer protections, and has expanded access to health insurance in New Jersey and across the country. MacArthur is on the front lines politically. He represents a swing district that supported Barack Obama twice, but tilted to President Trump last year. Democrats have put him on their list of top targets in elections next year. In Willingboro, he'll be visiting a Burlington County town where 62 percent of the voters are registered Democrats and only 19 percent are Republicans, according to his office. Some Republicans, including several in the Philadelphia area, have avoided town hall meetings as voters and protesters on the left have used them to vent their anger at the Trump administration. This will be MacArthurs second town hall, after one in March. You can follow Tamari on Twitter or email him at jtamari@phillynews.com. Story continues Most Popular on Philly.com By Hilary Russ NEW YORK (Reuters) - Traveling through the nation's busiest transit hub, New York's Pennsylvania Station, will become even more cumbersome as Amtrak takes some tracks out of service for repairs after recent derailments disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of commuters in recent weeks. The construction will create further headaches for passengers, but Wick Moorman, Chief Executive Officer of the national passenger rail company, said in a call with reporters on Thursday that replacing some of the infrastructure is "critical." "We all clearly understand there has been a sense of frustration," Moorman said. "It is our goal to cause the least amount of disruption." The bulk of work should be finished by the end of summer 2017, but some weekend work is likely to stretch as late as June 2018. New York, with its crowded station and decaying, century-old rail tunnels underneath the Hudson River, is a chokepoint on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which runs from Washington to Boston and is the operator's only profitable section. Congressional delegations from New York and New Jersey, along with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, have called for more and faster federal funding for the region's rail infrastructure. U.S. Senator Corey Booker, a Democrat representing New Jersey, last week said the area is "teetering every single day on the brink of truly a traffic Armageddon." In his March budget proposal, U.S. President Donald Trump called for terminating federal support for Amtrak's long distance train services to focus on "better managing its State-supported and Northeast Corridor train services." Moorman said on Thursday that he does not anticipate any "substantial reduction in funding" at the end of the federal budgeting process for next year. Amtrak has not been "adequately funded" for a "fairly long period of time," he said. Story continues He said officials are still determining how much the expedited repair program will cost, but the number will be in the "tens of millions of dollars" and should become clear "within the next few days" after meetings with NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) officials. Whatever the final price tag, Amtrak will pay for it by reallocating other funding in this year's budget that was supposed to pay for technology upgrades, Moorman said. Amtrak owns and operates the station and leases tracks and space to NJ Transit and LIRR. Work will begin in the most complex part of the station on its western side. In that area, routes are sorted for trains entering from the Hudson River tunnels and LIRR's West Side Yard. Amtrak is also asking Thomas Prendergast, the former CEO of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority who retired this year, to review passenger concourse level problems, crowding, and to make recommendations. The railroad will also create a new task force to review safety and security processes and a mobile response team for overcrowding situations, Moorman said. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Daniel Bases and Diane Craft) Anil Giri is a reporter covering diplomacy, international relations and national politics for The Kathmandu Post. Giri has been working as a journalist for a decade-and-a-half, contributing to numerous national and international media outlets. By Sophie Hirsh. Photo by: Getty Images. When you're running around town and really have to use the restroom, it's always a moment of relief when a kind employee lets you use the store's facilities. Amy Schumer experienced that moment last week when Sagine Lazarre, an employee at Mattress Firmthe mattress chain that purchased Sleepy'sin the Six Corners district of Chicago let the actress and comedian use the store's restroom while she was out jogging. There must have been fancy soap in there or something, because after using the restroom, the actress promptly dropped $2,000 on the spot to buy Lazarre a new mattress, WGN-TV News reports. A local news outlet interviewed Lazarre in her apartment about the experiencewhile the new mattress was being delivered. She explained that she had no idea who the woman who came in desperate for a bathroom was at first. "She comes out of the bathroom, and she asks me which one of these mattresses were my favorite," Lazarre said. "So then I told her...the Alcove by Beauty Rest. And she told me she wanted to buy it for me...I was so shocked!" Lazarre joked that she thought the whole thing may have been a setup. But Schumer mentioned she was an actress and comedian when she was checking out, so Lazarre took note of the name on the credit card. "After she left, I googled her name, and it popped up everywhere in Googlethe lady that was right there talking to me. That was Amy Schumer. It was amazing. Unbelievable." WGN-TV adds that Lazarre and her daughter had just moved into a new apartment in the Chicago suburb of Woodridge, so the gift came at a perfect time. The only question is: Did Lazarre collect a commission as well? More: How to Make a Bed Like an Interior Designer This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest. More from Architectural Digest: 126 Stunning Celebrity Homes Ellen DeGeneres' Amazing California Estate Inside Jennifer Aniston's Gorgeous Beverly Hills Home Story continues Sarah Jessica Parker's Epic West Village Townhouse Inside Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian's California Dream Homes Nate Berkus Shares New Daughter/New Home Appearing on a panel with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, First Daughter Ivanka Trump claimed her father treats her no differently than her brothers. As a daughter I can speak on a very personal level, knowing that he encouraged me and enabled me to thrive, Ms Trump said. The first daughter was responding to questions from panel moderator Miriam Meckel, editor-in-chief of Wirtschaftswoche, about her fathers public comments regarding women. Mr Trumps past statements including calling some women bimbos and fat pigs stoked controversy throughout his campaign. Read more Ivanka Trump booed and hissed after mentioning father Donald His daughter attempted to excuse these comments for her international audience on Tuesday. I think the thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades when he was in the private sector are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man, Ms Trump said. Ms Trump, who advises her father on issues concerning women in the workforce, is in Germany this week on the invitation of Ms Merkel. The German chancellor invited her to participate in the Women20 Summit after a visit to the White House last month. Appearing on the panel with the first daughter on Tuesday, Ms Merkel looked somewhat uncomfortable as Ms Trump praised her fathers record with women. Mr Trump and the German leader had several awkward exchanges during her visit to the White House, including a moment in which he appeared to refuse to shake her hand. Mr Trump has previously accused Ms Merkel of ruining Germany. Ms Merkel and Ms Trump spoke at the Inspiring Women: Scaling up Womens Entrepreneurship panel alongside Chrystia Freeland, Canadas minister of foreign affairs; Christine Lagarde, managing director of IMF; and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, among others. By Lisa Fernandez BERKELEY, Calif. (Reuters) - Conservative commentator Ann Coulter said she had scrapped plans to speak on Thursday at the University of California at Berkeley in defiance of campus officials, who had barred her original engagement this week out of concerns about inciting violent protests. Coulter, one America's best-known and most polarizing pundits on the political right, cast blame on conservative student organizers who withdrew their invitation following their dispute with university officials. "There will be no speech," Coulter wrote in an email to Reuters on Wednesday. "I looked over my shoulder and my allies had joined the other team. "I have no sponsor, no lawyer, no court order," she said. "I can't vindicate constitutional rights on my own." Coulter is the second right-wing speaker whose Berkeley appearance was scrubbed over security concerns. In February protesters started fires, broke windows and clashed with police, forcing Milo Yiannopoulos, then a senior editor for the conservative Breitbart News website, to call off his appearance. Coulter said she might still visit Berkeley, long a bastion of liberal student activism, to meet with supporters on Thursday, the day she was originally slated to speak, but would not deliver an address on campus. Social media feeds of militant left-wing and right-wing activists remained abuzz with vows to proceed with the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations that had been expected to accompany a Coulter appearance. Campus officials said they were continuing to brace for unrest they see as likely on Thursday. "Many of the individuals and organizations which planned to protest Ann Coulter's appearance or support it still intend to come to campus," UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said. He said the Berkeley College Republicans erred by inviting Coulter without notifying campus officials in advance, as is required of all student groups, and failing to submit to a "security assessment" to determine a suitable time and place for the event. He denied that Coulter was unwelcome because of her political positions. University officials last week rejected the original Coulter date on grounds they lacked a safe campus venue to host her speech on that day, citing the violence by left-wing protesters over Yiannopoulos' scheduled appearance. The university later proposed that Coulter's speech be moved to next Tuesday. Coulter said she could not make it then and accused the school of trying to limit her audience by choosing a date that fell in a study week ahead of final exams. After insisting she would go through with her speech on Thursday, with or without university approval, Coulter changed her mind as support from student organizers collapsed. College Republicans spokesman Naweed Tahmas accused university officials of "refusing to ensure the safety of all students" and thus infringing on free-speech rights, as claimed in a lawsuit that sponsors of the event filed in federal court on Tuesday. (This version of the story corrects spelling of name Naweed Tahmas in final paragraph) (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney) Moving on from an ex can be tough, especially if you were the one let go. But according to a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience, the secret to feeling better is simple: Just do something, anything, that you think will help-because it probably will. Psychologists from the University of Colorado Boulder recruited 40 volunteers who had been broken up with in the past six months and asked them each to bring two photos to a brain-imaging lab: one of their ex, and one of a platonic friend. Everyone was given a functional MRI while being shown one photo after the other. Between photos, researchers applied heat applied to everyones arm with a temperature-controlled device to stimulate mild-to-moderate pain. Throughout the scan, they were asked to rate how they felt on a scale of 1 to 5. Similar brain regions were activated when people felt the painful heat and saw photos of their exes-validating the idea of emotional pain. Its real, the study authors say, and has a measurable effect on chemicals in the brain. Then, the people in the study were given a nasal spray. Half were told it was a powerful analgesic effective in reducing emotional pain, while the other half were told the truth-that it was a simple saline spray. In subsequent MRI scans, those who thought theyd inhaled a pain-relief spray reported less physical and emotional pain during the experiments. Their brains also responded differently when shown photos of their exes: Activity increased sharply in brain regions involved in controlling emotion, and decreased in areas associated with rejection. Brain activity also increased in a region called the periaqueductal gray, or PAG, which helps control painkilling and mood-boosting neurochemicals like opioids and dopamine. The authors say this is the first study to measure a placebo drugs impact on emotional pain from romantic rejection, and it suggests that positive expectations may be enough to influence areas of the brain normally triggered by feel-good chemicals. Story continues People may be able to use the power of expectation to their advantage, they add. Beliefs and expectations matter, in the sense that they influence our brain function and physiology as well as our feelings and decisions, says co-author Tor Wager, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Boulder. In other words, if people believe that a certain remedy will help mend their broken heart, theres a good chance it will. It might open your mind to noticing more positive aspects of your experience and give you a more optimistic outlook, he says. Thats important, because breakups can be some of the most emotionally negative experiences a person endures. This type of social pain has even been associated with a 20-fold higher risk of developing depression in the coming year, the study notes. Steven Meyers, professor and associate chair at Roosevelt University, says one important feature of the study was that the participants had all been dumped-meaning they werent just grieving the loss of their partner, but also a loss of control over their relationship. Helplessness is one of the main feelings that worsen anxiety and depression, says Meyers, who was not involved in the research. The placebo nasal-spray treatments likely helped the participants feel they were taking steps to feel better, he adds. A powerful antidote to worry or sadness is to take charge in your life in some way. Meyers suggests a few ways to take charge of your emotions after heartbreak. Friends and family can be a source of support and distraction, he says, and seeking out connections can help you avoid isolation. He also recommends keeping a journal for several days. Writing out feelings and thoughts allows people to purge distress from their system, and has been shown to be a powerful intervention, he says. Finally, challenge negative thoughts with reason and evidence, Meyers says. People can become more upset when they magnify their situation by thinking something like, Im going to be alone forever, he says. Although it can be hard to do, writing out reasons why these thoughts may or may not be true can put things in perspective. Being intentional about these actions makes them even more effective, says Meyers. And if this new research holds true, simply trusting that theyll work will make them more powerful, too. This article was originally published on TIME.com Apple is all about getting Gen Z away from the food court and Starbucks counter and plugged into its stores. SEE ALSO: Apple launches global in-store education program In an interview with CBS earlier this week, Angela Ahrendts, the senior vice president of retail, explained how she wants young Apple fans to say, "Meet me at Apple," instead of hanging out elsewhere, sipping on unicorn frappaccinos. "A lot of the big online guys have said theyre opening stores. Amazons investing in stores. Googles investing in stores. ... Starbucks figured it out, you know? Being a gathering place. Meet me at Starbucks, Ahrendts said. Ive told the teams, Ill know weve done a really, really great job if the next generation, if Gen Z says, 'Meet me at Apple. Did you see whats going on at Apple today? To get those young consumers, the redesigned stores are starting to serve as more than just a computer shop, but a gathering place. In San Francisco, the "Genius Bar" has become the "Genius Grove," lined with plants and designed with open meeting spaces (with access to chargers) to become more of a hangout spot. Angela Ahrendts is the the senior vice president of retail and online stores at Apple. She's all about making the stores a hangout spot. Image: Leon Neal/Getty Images That's the direction Apple is going with its stores. "This is the largest product that Apple produces," Ahrendts told CBS. "So if you think of it, the hardware, which is the architecture of the store. The software is what happens in the store..." One of those software upgrades at 500 stores around the world is the newly announced "Today at Apple" educational program. That means free workshops, classes and even performances. Basically, Apple wants you to spend all your free time at its stores, no matter if you are Gen Z, Y or X. WATCH: iPhone 8 rumors include a 'Smart Connector' for AR headset Petroleum-linked companies were in retreat Thursday on lower oil prices while global stocks were mixed following a deluge of earnings reports. In the US, weakness in oil-linked shares kept gains in the Dow and S&P 500 to a minimum, although the Nasdaq jumped to a fresh record ahead of a trove of earnings reports from Amazon and other leading technology companies coming after the close. "It's just important we're holding on to the gains we made on Monday and Tuesday when stocks were real strong," said Bill Lynch, director of investment for Hinsdale Associates. European equities retreated after the European Central Bank held its key interest rates unchanged at historic lows and its massive bond-buying program intact, as expected, at its regular policy meeting. After notching up gains earlier in the week, investors were currently taking profit, traders said. "The euro and equity markets have had a strong week so far, thanks mainly to a market-friendly outcome of the French first round presidential election at the weekend," said Forex.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada. Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare said investors also were digesting outlines of President Donald Trump's tax cut proposal and plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as economic data and earnings. "Thus far, the stock market seems to be taking it in stride," O'Hare said. But US oil prices slumped 65 cents to $48.97 a barrel. Analysts cited the restart of a major Libyan oil field as a drag on petroleum prices, along with data showing increased output in the United States. Commerzbank predicted the market dynamics will become "increasingly tough" for OPEC as US producers ramp in investment, it said in a note. Petroleum producers BP and Royal Dutch Shell and oil services company Schlumberger all lost more than one percent. Earlier in Asia, Tokyo stocks fell 0.2 percent after a four-day rally, with dealers unmoved by the Bank of Japan's decision to lower its inflation target and stand pat on its monetary easing program. Story continues But Hong Kong climbed 0.5 percent for a sixth-straight gain, while Sydney added 0.2 percent and Shanghai ended 0.4 percent higher. - Key figures at 2030 GMT - New York - Dow: UP less than 0.1 percent at 20,981.33 (close) New York - S&P 500: UP 0.1 percent at 2,388.77 (close) New York - Nasdaq: UP 0.4 percent at 6,048.94 (close) London - FTSE 100: DOWN 0.7 percent at 7,237.17 (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 0.2 percent at 12,443.79 (close) Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 0.3 percent at 5,271.70 (close) EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.4 percent at 3,563.29 (close) Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.2 percent at 19,251.87 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 0.5 percent at 24,698.48 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 3,152.19 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0878 from $1.0905 Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2911 from $1.2849 Dollar/yen: UP at 111.16 yen from 111.00 yen Oil - Brent North Sea: DOWN 38 cents at $51.44 per barrel Oil - West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 65 cents at $48.97 per barrel burs-jmb/hs By Anna Mehler Paperny and Rod Nickel TORONTO/WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Migrants who applied for asylum in the United States but then fled north, fearing they would be swept up in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, may have miscalculated in viewing Canada as a safe haven. That is because their time in the United States could count against them when they apply for asylum in Canada, according to a Reuters review of Canadian federal court rulings on asylum seekers and interviews with refugee lawyers. In 2016, 160 asylum cases came to the federal courts after being rejected by refugee tribunals. Of those, 33 had been rejected in part because the applicants had spent time in the United States, the Reuters review found. Lawyers said there could be many more such cases among the thousands of applicants who were rejected by the tribunals in the same period but did not appeal to the federal courts. The 2016 court rulings underscore the potentially precarious legal situation now facing many of the nearly 2,000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada since January. Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the United States, including people awaiting the outcome of U.S. asylum applications, according to Canadian and U.S. government officials and Reuters interviews with dozens of migrants. Trump's tough talk on illegal immigration, however, spurred them northward to Canada, whose government they viewed as more welcoming to migrants. There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea. But Canadian refugee tribunals are wary of "asylum-shopping" and look askance at people coming from one of the world's richest countries to file claims, the refugee lawyers said. (For graphic on asylum process see http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ) "Abandoning a claim in the United States or coming to Canada after a negative decision in the United States, or failing to claim and remaining in the States for a long period of time - those are all big negatives. Big, big negatives, said Toronto-based legal aid lawyer Anthony Navaneelan, who is representing applicants who came to Canada from the United States in recent months. Story continues The Canadian government has not given a precise figure on how many of the border crossers were asylum seekers in the United States. But it appears their fears may have been misplaced. Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that anyone in the United States illegally is subject to deportation, but there is no evidence that asylum seekers with pending cases are considered illegal under the new administration. "LACK OF SERIOUSNESS" The asylum seekers will make their cases before Canada's refugee tribunals, which rejected 5,000 cases last year. The tribunals' decisions are not made public, so the reasons are not known. An Immigration and Refugee Board spokeswoman confirmed, however, that an applicants time in the United States can be a factor in a tribunals decision. Rejected applicants can appeal to Canada's federal courts, whose rulings are published. The federal courts upheld 19 of the 33 tribunal rejections they heard last year and recommended fresh tribunal hearings for the other 14 cases. The judges believed those claimants had a good explanation for having been in the United States first. The outcomes of the new tribunal hearings are not known. The federal court handles only a small portion of all applications rejected by the refugee tribunals. But overall, applicants who have spent time in the United States have a higher chance of being rejected, said multiple immigration lawyers, including two former refugee tribunal counsel, interviewed by Reuters. Last year, a federal judge upheld a refugee tribunal rejection of Sri Lankan man who had abandoned a pending U.S. claim. The tribunal said the man's decision demonstrated a lack of seriousness and was inconsistent with the expected behavior of someone who fears persecution in their own country. A Chadian applicant lost his 2016 appeal because he did not claim asylum at the first opportunity in the United States. The asylum-seekers who have crossed the U.S border since January are still going through the claim process and many have yet to go through tribunal hearings. WELL-FOUNDED FEAR? Canadian officials want refugee applicants to behave the way they think people fleeing for their lives would behave, said lawyer and researcher Hilary Evans Cameron. Living undocumented in the United States for years or abandoning a pending claim, as many people among this latest refugee influx have done, are not seen as consistent with that fear, she said. Those with failed U.S. asylum claims must prove to Canadian tribunals that the U.S. courts were wrong in their assessment, that their circumstances have changed for the worse, or that they qualify in Canada, several lawyers said. Crucially, all applicants must show that the often years-old fears that led them to leave their home countries for the United States still exist. Canada grants asylum if applicants qualify under the United Nations' definition of someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution based on certain criteria, such as race, religion, nationality or political affiliation. A federal judge ruled in March that the deportation of a Honduran family, who had lived in the United States for more than three years, could go forward after immigration officials found the family no longer faced a risk in Honduras. "The longer theyve been away (from their country of origin), the more difficult it is to establish that theyre a refugee," said Winnipeg refugee lawyer Ken Zaifman. Graphic on asylum process http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ (Additional reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington; Editing by Amran Abocar and Ross Colvin) Australia will enforce export restrictions on major gas producers, the prime minister said Thursday, to shore up domestic supply as a growing energy crisis sees power prices rise and blackouts more common. The country is expected to surpass Qatar as the world's largest liquid natural gas producer by 2020 -- with Japan, China and South Korea key buyers. But booming export demands have left it short of local supplies. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said exporters were dipping into domestic reserves to fulfil foreign contracts and intervention was needed to curtail "dramatically higher prices" paid in Australia. "It is ridiculous for us to be on the edge of becoming the largest LNG exporter in the world and not have to have enough gas for our businesses, for our households, for industries, great industries like this here in Australia," he said at a manufacturing plant in Queensland. The move -- which from July 1 will allow the government to put export controls on producers to ensure they put more into the domestic market than they take out -- was a "temporary measure" until Australia could unlock more reserves, he added. Turnbull accused state governments, who in some instances have banned gas production on environmental grounds, of "putting the energy sector and manufacturing at risk". "We should be able to export plenty of gas and have plenty of gas available for our domestic market. We should be able to do both and we need to get more production." Major Australian gas producer Santos said it would collaborate with the government. "As an Australian company, Santos has been a long term supplier of natural gas at affordable rates in support of the domestic market on the Australian Securities Exchange," it said in a statement. "Moving forward Santos will supply more gas into the Australian domestic market than it purchases for its share of LNG exports." Despite being one of the world's biggest coal and gas producers, political debate over energy supply has raged since South Australia suffered a statewide blackout in September and record-high temperatures in recent months put pressure on the national energy grid. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced last week an industry-wide investigation into Australia's gas market, fearing that soaring prices would put Australian firms out of business. The inquiry will examine how gas suppliers will make more gas available to Australian industry and other domestic gas users, and the effect this has on overall market dynamics," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said. There's no shortage of guidance around the dangers of smoking cigarettes -- but this latest finding could prompt further scrutiny of the practice. A University of Bristol study, published in Scientific Reports, found that if a girl's maternal grandmother smoked while pregnant, she gave her granddaughter a 67 percent higher chance of showing signs associated with autism, such as poor social communication and repetitive behaviors. She also gave all her grandchildren a 53 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The research is a piece of a larger study on how maternal and paternal grandmother's pregnancy smoking affects their grandchildren. Scientists examined data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children for the study, also called the Children of the 90s, which kept up with 14,000 children in the United Kingdom by enrolling pregnant women in 1991 and 1992. The autistic traits analysis involved more than 7,000 participants. Only 177 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, too few to allow analysis by grandsons and granddaughters separately. But how does a phenomenon like this happen, exactly? It seems that cigarette smoke could affect a baby girl's developing eggs in the womb, resulting in side effects when it comes to having children of her own. "In terms of mechanisms, there are two broad possibilities," one of the study authors, professor Marcus Pembrey from the University of Bristol, said in a statement. "There is DNA damage that is transmitted to the grandchildren or there is some adaptive response to the smoking that leaves the grandchild more vulnerable to ASD. We have no explanation for the sex difference, although we have previously found that grand-maternal smoking is associated with different growth patterns in grandsons and granddaughters." Researchers say that now more research must be done to determine what the molecular changes could be in addition to other possible associations. They also say a multitude of factors like genetic variation are thought to impact autism spectrum disorder development. Story continues The study did have its limitations, including that it depended on how correct parents' reports were on their own parents and that the results relate most to white grandparents in Britain. The study wasn't supposed to look at autism in the first place. In the U.S., 1 in 68 children has autism spectrum disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 10 Ways to Live Healthier and Save Money Doing It 11 Ways Rural Life Is Hazardous to Your Health David Oliver is Associate Editor, Social Media at U.S. News & World Report. Follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, or send him an email at doliver@usnews.com. Nepali man nabbed from Indian forest Indian forest officers on Wednesday arrested a Nepali man for his alleged involvement in cutting bamboo trees at a forest in India. Senator Bernie Sanders has said it is likely he would have beaten Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but that it doesnt matter now that Mr Trump is president. He was speaking on Showtimes The Circus when he was asked about populism in the US and how Mr Trump had tapped into it to win. What I recognised was pain. All over this country people are hurting and they are hurting very badly. Trump understood that, by the way, and that's why he said, 'The whole system sucks. I'm going to blow it up, Mr Sanders said. Read more The difference between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in two charts Mr Sanders has been an outspoken critic of the president's policy on the environment, healthcare, the economy, and a host of other issues. Mr Sanders campaign run garnered millions of supporters however he ultimately lost the Democratic Partys nomination to Hillary Clinton. Some felt he stayed in the race too long and did not work hard enough to bring his supporters over to Ms Clinton once he lost for the sake of the party winning against Mr Trump. The Hill reported that a recent Harvard-Harris survey that showed 57 per cent of registered voters viewed Mr Sanders favorably compared to other political figures in the US, but the poll did not ask whether they would have voted for him for president. Mr Sanders went on a Democratic party unity tour with party chairman Tom Perez in an effort to galvanise grassroots efforts to oppose Mr Trumps policies despite making claims that he wants the establishment to change. Mr Sanders said the party will have to open its door to independents in order to succeed, adding and I want to see it succeed. Im an Independent, he said, adding that there are likely more fall into that category rather than Republicans and Democrats. At a rally with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Mr Sanders said,we need a Democratic Party which is not the party of the liberal elite but a party of the working class of this country. Story continues However, he did not address why he ran as a Democratic presidential candidate instead of campaigning as an Independent. Mr Sanders has not ruled out a possible presidential bid in 2020. There is no area where Trump is more wrong than on climate change Bill proposes switch to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050 Bernie Sanders told the crowd: This is not a red or a blue issue. There is no excuse for failure. This is the biggest test facing human civilization and we have to respond and win this battle. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images As protesters prepare for nationwide demonstrations against Donald Trumps environmental agenda, Bernie Sanders on Thursday backed legislation that would phase out the use of fossil fuels in the US by 2050. Mr President, start listening to the people and the scientists, not the greed of the fossil fuel industry, Sanders said at a rally on Capitol Hill, where he was flanked by environmental advocates and two of his Democratic colleagues, Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who authored the bill, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts. As you all know, the Vermont senator and former presidential candidate told the crowd, Donald Trump is wrong about a lot of things. But there is no area where he is more wrong than on the issue of climate change. Sanders added: No, Mr President, climate change is not a hoax. Climate change is real. At the event, held just outside the US Capitol, Sanders, Merkley and Markey unveiled legislation which seeks to completely phase out the use of fossil fuels through a transition to 100% clean and renewable energy by the middle of this century. But the bill, called the 100 by 50 Act, is unlikely to be considered by a Republican-controlled Congress, where many GOP lawmakers are still unwilling to acknowledge the science behind global warming and contribution of human activity. The partisan nature of the debate was not lost on the audience, as one attendee interrupted the proceedings to ask: Where are the Republicans? Were going to have to recruit those colleagues across the aisle, said Merkley, who ranks among the Senates most progressive voices. This is not a red or a blue issue, he said. There is no excuse for failure. This is the biggest test facing human civilization and we have to respond and win this battle. Demonstrators are set to gather in Washington for the Peoples Climate March on Saturday, which will also mark the 100th day of the Trump administration. Similar marches are expected in major cities across the US, as part of a broader effort to oppose Trumps efforts to roll back the climate initiatives put in place by Barack Obama. Story continues The president has signaled his intentions to tear up the landmark Paris climate agreement, forged by more than 195 nations in late 2015, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28% over a decade. Trumps top aides, who are split on whether or not the US should remain part of the Paris accord, were scheduled to meet on Thursday afternoon to discuss the deals future. Trumps chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, is a vocal proponent of pulling out immediately. Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Paris agreement, and has already taken steps through executive action to begin the process of overturning Obama-era environmental regulations. Among them was a directive to the EPA to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, one of Obamas signature climate policies to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. Trump also signed an executive order that aims to unravel the Obama rule designed to protect American waterways from pollution, and proposed in his budget draconian cuts to the EPA. At the rally, Markey said Trumps actions were precisely why hundreds of thousands of people felt compelled to take to the streets. Donald Trump [is] still saying that hes going to issue a new executive order allowing for more oil drilling on the public lands of the United States of America, he said, drawing jeers for the president from the crowd. That is just completely and totally unacceptable. Vancouver (AFP) - British inventor Richard Browning lifted off from the shore of Vancouver Harbor on Thursday in a personal flight suit that inspired references to comic superhero 'Iron Man.' Using thrusters attached to his arms and back, Browning flew in a circle and hovered a short distance from the ground, captivating attendees at a prestigious TED Conference. The personal flight suit is capable of propeling wearers much higher and faster, according to its creators. "The hypothesis was that the human mind and body, if properly augmented, could achieve some pretty cool stuff," the extreme athlete and engineer said at the gathering a short time earlier. Browning told of experimenting with various numbers and arrays of essentially miniature jet engines on his limbs. Along the way, he said, there were more than a few crashes to the ground. "The whole journey was about trying and failing, and learning from that," Browning said. The first reasonably stable, six-second flight with the gear inspired his team to press on. His startup, Gravity, formally debuted about a month ago with an early-version suit called Daedalus. A 55-second video clip of the suit in action has logged more than a million views since being posted on YouTube about three weeks ago. Browning said he is already getting interest from investors and some in the British military who told him they had given up on the flight feature of an 'Iron Man' suit until seeing his human-propulsion gear. "I don't think anyone is going to be going down to Wal-Mart with it or taking anybody to school for quite a while, but the team at Gravity is moving it along," Browning said. He dreams of a flight suit that one day will allow its wearer to launch from a beach, soar along the coast and then perhaps hop into a helicopter in the air to continue their journey. Browning has already seen the early-version flight suit compared to 'Iron Man' armor worn by Marvel Comics character Tony Stark, but stressed that his goal is firmly rooted in the real world. He also described the project as part of a personal journey, inspired by an engineer father with a love for flying machines, but who died when he was just a teenager. Senator Ted Cruz has proposed a novel idea to fund President Donald Trumps wall around the US-Mexico border: Use the $14 billion that US prosecutors are seeking from Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Today I introduced the EL CHAPO Act, which reserves billions in forfeited assets to pay for border security, Mr Cruz tweeted. Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe. A spokesperson for Mr Cruzs office confirmed the bill was introduced to Congress. Read more Officials hint that Trump's wall could lead to government shutdown Guzman was extradited from Mexico to the US in January, on charges of operating a multi-billion dollar, multi-national criminal drug enterprise. Prosecutors regularly seize the assets of drug dealers and traffickers, though it is unclear how they arrived at the $14 billion sum. Mr Cruzs bill comes as the White House struggles to secure funding for the border wall. Mr Trump has previously said construction of the wall would start within months of his inauguration. Sources have confirmed to multiple outlets, however, that funding for the border wall will not be included in the congressional spending bill scheduled for a vote on Friday. Democrats and even some Republicans have signalled that they will not pass a funding bill that contains provisions for border wall construction. A failure to pass the spending bill by Friday would result in a government-wide shutdown. Even Mr Trump has seemed to distance himself from immediate for construction, saying on Tuesday he has plenty of time to get the wall built. Attendees at a White House reception for conservative media the night before said Mr Trump had suggested seeking funding for the wall in September, when Congress will likely need to pass another spending bill. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters the White House is still in discussions with House and Senate leadership on border wall funding, but insisted that the presidents priorities had not changed. Story continues Theres a lot of things that have to happen You have to start doing some planning and things, Mr Spicer told reporters. So we will have take some first steps now and continue seeking funding through [fiscal year 18] and other budgets. Mr Cruzs proposal would not soothe opponents moral concerns about the wall, and likely would not pay for the entire project. (Experts put the cost at somewhere between $15 billion and $25 billion.) But it would fulfil two of Mr Trumps most controversial campaign promises: building the wall, and making Mexico pay for it. By Marissa G. Muller. Photo by: Getty Images. Your Instagram feed isnt the only thing being clogged by Californias Super Bloom. According to a report by the National Park Service, invasive species are thriving and suffocating the local ecosystems because of the very same conditions that led to the bloom. A new super bloom has begun to dominate many hillsides throughout the Santa Monica Mountains: invasive plants, it reads. Its an ongoing problem that this years heavy rains have only exacerbated. One of the biggest culprits is black mustard, which, despite its name, is the yellow flower that is often captured in photos of the Super Bloom, specifically on the trails of Zuma and Trancas Canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains. Another is carnation spurge, which the National Park Service describes as a toxic relative of the holiday favorite poinsettia plant. There are over 300 non-native species in the Santa Monica Mountains, but a core group of them are what we consider the evil 25, explains Joey Algiers, restoration ecologist for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in the NPS dispatch. Native plants are the foundation of an ecosystem that supports a diversity of wildlife, all the way up to mountain lions. Besides that, the spring crop of weeds will soon dry out and become a fire hazard, creating a large load of fine fuels that are dry longer, ignite quickly, and spread flames faster than native shrubs. This isnt the first report that highlights the dark side of Californias Super Bloom. Earlier this month, word spread that the precious flowers brought to life during this time were being trampled on at the expense of selfies. Most people were very cognizant of not trampling, said Dustin McLain, natural resource manager with Riverside County Regional Park and Open-Space District. There were a good portion who were trying to do the right thing but just didnt. This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest. Story continues More from Architectural Digest: 10 Hotels With Unbelievably High-End Amenities 10 Incredible Ski Resorts The Worlds Best Oceanfront Hotels Inside Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian's California Dream Homes Inside Jennifer Aniston's Gorgeous Beverly Hills Home Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady's Incredible L.A. Mansion IMVEPI, Uganda (AP) -- Eighty-year-old Alfred Wani walks across the wooden bridge over the Kaya River, the border between South Sudan and Uganda, clinging to his Bibles and family photo album, with his wife, three goats and 27 relatives in tow. Missing are a few sons (off fighting) and his cattle (stolen). Alfred is one of more than 800,000 South Sudanese who have fled to Uganda since July. The civil war in South Sudan has killed tens of thousands and driven out more than 1.5 million people in the past three years, creating the world's largest refugee crisis. The Bidi Bidi refugee camp in Uganda is now the biggest in the world, but Alfred is not going there. It's full. Imvepi is his destination, where the Ugandan government will issue him with a 50-square-meter (60-square-yard) plot of land and hope for a better life. But that will take a week, two more camps and three more truck and bus rides with his clan and their salvaged belongings. Alfred walks two hours by foot to the first U.N. processing center for South Sudan refugees in the small Ugandan village of Busia. There, Alfred, a blind man named Ringo with two canes and countless others spend the night before being transferred by minibus to the Kuluba transit camp, 45 minutes down the road. It's set up to accommodate and dispatch more than 1,000 refugees a day. Michael Lowe, Alfred's 28-year-old son, directs the women of their family to carry their belongings into the white tent they will share with Ringo and his wife, Charly Kenisha, for the next 48 hours. During that time, a well-oiled routine will take them through the hands of charities like the International Rescue Committee and Medical Teams International, who will do medical exams and vaccinations. Alfred sits in a prized wooden chair carried from South Sudan while the grandchildren play. He opens his photo album. "These are my sons." He points at a fading color image showing five of his eight sons. Six are still fighting in South Sudan. "And this is my favorite photo . me and my bicycle." Story continues Alfred, a farmer, shares a few regrets: "If I was young again, I would raise more cattle, and build a good house in concrete, and also pay for my kids' school. I didn't go to school and neither did my children." In the morning, all the family's belongings are repacked and reloaded onto a truck for transport to Imvepi. More than 1,500 people will be transported in buses adorned with the word "Friends" on the side. Sixty kilometers (36 miles) and two hours later, the convoy arrives at Imvepi, which is growing at a rate of over 2,000 refugees each day. Already a bustling town has emerged at the entrance to the processing camp, with locals offering vegetables, fish, clothing and cellphone credit at highly inflated prices. In the morning, Alfred wakes up in pain. The night has been difficult, with no sleep and a bout of diarrhea. He spends the morning at the clinic, which makes it too late for his clan to move today. They will spend one more night in tent 7A. The clan includes eight heads of families, some orphans and several widows from the war or disease: A representative sample of South Sudan's rural society, squeezed into a tent. As the line of trucks starts to fill up the next morning with goods and 500 people for the final leg of their journey, the clan sits amid their belongings under the broiling sun. More than 50 people in each pickup truck are driven the 15 kilometers (9 miles) to their plots of land on newly cleared dirt roads. Peeking through the cover of the truck, Alfred can see the white tents that have mushroomed across the land, smell the smoke of their kitchen fires and hear the laughter of children. Soon he will be able to once again sit in his wooden chair, his trademark cowboy hat on his head, and call it home. The next day, from his chair under an acacia tree, Alfred shouts his commands as his sons set up a tent. The sons cut branches from surrounding trees to build the frame of Alfred's dwelling. As the women and children settle in, Alfred and his wife, Kassa, reminisce. "We met at home 70 years ago. No, 60! And this is my only wife," Alfred says. Alfred and Kassa have to move inside the unfinished tent with the others when a fierce storm moves in. They all cling to each other, 10 people on 5 square meters (54 square feet) of dirt floor. Alfred whispers: "Are we going to get a solid house and not a tent?" Tens of thousands of the refugees already have built the type of brick homes that Alfred now desires to replace the mud hut in South Sudan he was forced to abandon. The couple does not hold out hope of returning home to South Sudan. "I saw the killing, I saw burning houses, I saw the dead with their throats slashed," Alfred says, clutching his cowboy hat tightly. "I cannot go back and see it again." For many years, Andrea Rotondo's parents took care of each other. Her father, who had used a wheelchair since 1987 because of bad knees from his military service, organized the household. For a while, he covered up the fact that his wife was slipping into dementia. But once he suffered a serious health crisis that landed him in the hospital and in rehab for months, Rotondo and her two siblings realized that their parents could no longer take care of themselves. From her home in New York, Rotondo undertook a task familiar to many baby boomers: organizing the care of aging parents in another city. "Life changed instantly for them, and we had to adapt quickly," Rotondo says. "It would have been better if we'd slowly had to get them accustomed to help." [See: 10 Money Tips for Family Caregivers.] She started by contacting a senior center in her parents' Boston suburb, seeking referrals to services in the community. From those, she did interviews, checked references and choose an agency to provide home health care aides. She engaged a geriatric care manager from another agency to oversee medical issues and make spot visits. "If you're worried about mom or dad, you need to get someone in the balance who can give you some objective feedback," says Emily Saltz, CEO of LifeCare Advocates, a geriatric care agency in Massachusetts. "That burden is emotionally more difficult when kids live at a distance." In addition to arranging her parents' care, Rotondo took over running their household, from paying bills to having groceries delivered to coordinating medical care. That required her to get access to bank accounts and medical information, not available to children without their parents' consent. "Once you're able to be on bank accounts and once you're able to talk to doctors, a lot of things fall into place," Rotondo says. The geriatric care manager, who was a nurse, took her father to doctor's appointments and helped manage his complex medical needs. Her mother's medical needs were simpler, and she could often just be accompanied by an aide who tape-recorded the appointment so Rotondo could listen later. Story continues Technology can provide some help when coordinating long-distance care. Not only can you buy aging parents medical alert buttons, you can install motion detectors that tell you whether your parent is moving around the house. Geoff Gross is the CEO of Medical Guardian, which has expanded its services beyond medical alerts to a Family Guardian system that allows family members to monitor parents' activities via motion sensors and apps. The company continues to develop tools that will help older people stay home longer. "My goal is to give our caregivers more visibility and insight into the activity in the home," Gross says. "It's a very basic start of what I think is going to be a more involved process. ... A lot of it comes down to peace of mind: knowing that they're up, that they're eating, that they come and go." [Read: Can You Be Paid to Care for Mom and Dad?] Rotondo mounted a small computer in her parents' home, where she could broadcast daily messages, post family photos and show the date, schedule and name of that day's caregiver for her forgetful mother. She could also listen in, though she didn't do that often after the first few months. The caregiving journey lasted about two years; her mother and father died within two months of each other in 2012. "It's going to be hard. It's not going to be easy to care for a parent from a distance," Rotondo says. "Things won't be perfect, and that's OK. ... You just have to accept it and not beat yourself up." Here are eight tips for taking care of aging parents when you don't live close. Organize legal and financial issues. This is best discussed long before your parents need help. You should request access to bank accounts and health information, plus health care surrogate and end-of-life documents, trusts, wills and other documents may be needed. "It's uncomfortable to have these discussions with parents," Rotondo says. Automate what you can. When you take over handling a parent's affairs, you're essentially managing a second household. You may need to set up online or automatic bill-paying services, auto-renewal of newspaper subscriptions, automatic prescription refills, grocery delivery -- whatever is needed to keep the home running from day to day. Find the help you need. Start with senior centers, your parents' friends and neighbors and agencies in the community. One you get referrals, interview the managers of the companies you're considering and then check references. You can hire caregivers directly, but that means it's up to you to provide a replacement if someone calls in sick. "We lucked out and, in fact, the caregivers became friends with my parents," Rotondo says. Consider a geriatric care manager. If you don't know your parents' town, a geriatric care manager can help you find the health services you need and assist with managing medical care. Unlike online referral services, geriatric care managers don't receive referral fees from the providers they recommend. You can find managers in your town through the Aging Life Care Association. Use technology in a smart way. Rotondo set up a computer in the home so the caregivers could put their logs online rather than on paper, and she could read them immediately. But motion sensors alone are unlikely to give you all the information you need to help aging parents who may not be forthcoming about all their problems. "I think these all have a role to play, but I think it's important to long-distance caregivers not to fall into a trap of thinking this is a solution," Saltz says. Visit as often as you can and encourage others to visit. Even if your parents are having all their needs met by others, they still want to see you. Plus, seeing your parents gives you a more accurate sense of how well your plan is working and what else they might need. Children who live closer but aren't skilled at caregiving or organizing can provide great joy by visiting and bringing the grandchildren. Parents' friends, other family, clergy and your old friends who live in town can also drop by. [Read: Taking Care of Your Aging Parents? It's Going to Cost You.] Agree among siblings who will do what. A geriatric care manager can often help mediate disputes among siblings as well as provide a more accurate picture of caregiving. What you don't want is for one sibling to set up a system only to have a second sibling sweep in and change it. Agree among yourselves who will take which responsibilities. Let caregivers know what's expected. Be explicit with caregivers about when and how you want to be contacted. If the toilet overflows, do you want them to call you or a plumber? Can they help your parents order takeout or do you want them to cook? Is there a specific menu plan, or is it up to them? Leave lists of providers, family members and others to call for specific issues. Teresa Mears writes about personal finance, real estate and retirement for U.S. News and other publications. She was previously the real estate blogger for MSN Money and worked as the Home & Design editor for The Miami Herald. During her journalism career, she worked on coverage of immigration, religion, national and international news and local news, serving on the staffs of The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times. She has also been a contributor for The New York Times and The Boston Globe, among other publications. She publishes Living on the Cheap and Miami on the Cheap. Follow her on Twitter @TeresaMears. Cassini shot the gap and lived to tell the tale. The Saturn-exploring spacecraft managed to successfully fly through the 1,500 mile gap between Saturn and its rings and survive seemingly unscathed. New photos beamed home after it completed that daredevil maneuver show the planet's atmosphere from a closer distance than ever before. At its nearest point, Cassini flew about 1,900 miles above Saturn's clouds, which are mainly comprised of hydrogen and helium. SEE ALSO: Cassini's stellar Saturn maneuvers get the adorable celebration they deserve While the unprocessed images still look pretty rough, they show details of Saturn's atmosphere that aren't usually on display. Image: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SSCI "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," Cassini project manager Earl Maize said in a statement. NASA was confident that Cassini would move into its new orbit without much of a problem, but it was still a risky maneuver. No spacecraft has ever explored this part of Saturn before, and Cassini was moving at about 77,000 miles per hour as it shot between the large planet and its rings. If even a relatively small particle had dinged the craft during its dive, it could have destroyed the spacecraft. Image: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SSCI Cassini which has been studying Saturn and its dozens of moons on humanity's behalf for 13 years is nearing the end of its mission. But it's not quite finished with its daredevil-like feats. The spacecraft is expected to dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings a total of 22 times, with the next drop happening on May 2. The mission will come to an end on September 15 when Cassini makes a planned plunge into Saturn's atmosphere, burning up in the process. WATCH: Watch clouds move above Saturn's largest moon in new NASA video Olis follies His words and actions have been unfair to some groups of Nepalis, including the Christians Barcelona (AFP) - For years, Spaniards watched angrily as corruption-hit politicians appeared to benefit from a get-out-of-jail-free card, but the mood is cautiously changing as the once-powerful find themselves behind bars. Such was public resentment at the perceived impunity of those with connections that two relatively new parties -- the far-left Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos -- rose with meteoric speed on pledges to fight corruption. But a series of recent prison sentences, arrests and resignations have some cautiously optimistic. "I wouldn't say that impunity has stopped, but you get the feeling that they're having a bad time and that the cost of corruption is increasing," says Sergio Salgado, spokesman for the XNET corruption whistleblower group. - 'As you sow...' - On Tuesday, the son of Catalonia's once hugely influential former regional president Jordi Pujol, who has been under investigation for alleged money laundering for three years, was suddenly jailed on suspicion he hid 30 million euros ($32.6 million) abroad while the probe was ongoing. A day earlier, Esperanza Aguirre, an ex-president of the Madrid region and historic figure of the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP), resigned from all her public positions after her former right-hand man Ignacio Gonzalez was jailed pending a probe into embezzlement of public money. Earlier this month, the president of the southeastern region of Murcia was forced to resign as he too was being probed for alleged corruption. And while not accused of anything, even Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been called to testify as a witness in a major graft trial involving former members of his PP. "There is sometimes a feeling of impunity, but that's not the case," says Ignacio Gonzalez Vega, spokesman for the Judges for Democracy professional association. Fernando Vallespin, politics professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, adds the judicial process may be slow but "ends up being effective." Story continues Or as Rajoy himself told journalists on an official trip to Uruguay: "As you sow, so shall you reap, as is happening," refusing to comment much more on individual cases, many of which involve PP members. - Corruption 'every day' - Still, Jesus Lizcano, head of Transparency International Spain, says there is still "a sensation of alarm." In the group's last annual corruption perceptions index last year, Spain scored its worst ever ranking. "Every day we wake up to corruption scandals and there is weariness and outrage," he says. But for him, this doesn't mean that there is more corruption, "but rather that judges and the police are doing their job well." He adds that the impunity that may have marked Spain's lavish pre-economic crisis years "no longer exists." For Salgado, this old feeling of impunity has made those allegedly engaged in corrupt practices "so sloppy and they've left so much evidence that it's turned into their great weak spot." His XNET group brought to light a major scandal involving Rodrigo Rato, Spain's former superstar economy minister and ex-chief of the International Monetary Fund, who along with others was accused of misusing funds when he ran two Spanish banks. Salgado recalls that during XNET's investigation into the case, they found many documents signed by the banks' executives that proved their wrongdoing. "We thought, 'it's impossible that they've left this evidence'." But it wasn't. And in February, Rato was handed a jail sentence of four years and six months and others were also found guilty. Around the same time, King Felipe VI's brother-in-law Inaki Urdangarin was sentenced to over six years in jail for syphoning off millions in a case that shamed the royals. For the moment, both Rato and Urdangarin have been set free pending their appeals. But for Salgado, this is still having an effect on others who may be tempted to follow suit. "When you see that the prime minister is called to testify or you see that Rato, who was an untouchable god... becomes a bad public persona, you're more careful," he says. It's difficult to think of a recent TV series that has prompted as fervent a discussion of mental health and suicide as much as Netflix's 13 Reasons Why. The show's been taken to task for its graphic and detailed depiction of suicide, and labelled as "dangerous content" by Australian mental health organisation Headspace. SEE ALSO: '13 Reasons Why' star thinks show should be mandatory school viewing Now, New Zealand's Classification Office has decided to give 13 Reasons Why a new, unique rating: RP18. That limits the series to viewers over the age of 18, unless supervised by a parent or guardian. RP18 is a variation from the authority's usual classifications of RP16, which limits viewing by those under the age of 16 unless with an adult, and R16, which makes it completely illegal for those under 16 to view. For classification authorities, applying the appropriate rating is a delicate balance between the show's artistic merit and its very real danger to vulnerable people, particularly teenagers. "We have considered whether an RP16 or R16 could be an appropriate classification, but these classifications would not address the harm caused to sixteen and seventeen year olds (who are at statistically greater risk of suicide)," the Classification Office wrote on their website. The authority noted the show has significant merit in addressing "issues that are highly relevant to young people, including suicide, sexual violence, bullying, and slut-shaming," and "presents a good opportunity to raise awareness around youth mental health issues." They say, however, that it fails to promote "positive examples of appropriate responses to rape disclosures," and that it "does not follow international guidelines for responsible representations of suicide. "Hannah's suicide is presented fatalistically. Her death is represented at times as not only a logical, but an unavoidable outcome of the events that follow," the post added. Story continues "Suicide should not be presented to anyone as being the result of clear headed thinking. Suicide is preventable, and most people who experience suicidal thoughts are not thinking rationally and therefore cannot make logical decisions." Deputy Chief Censor Jared Mullen told Radio New Zealand he's aware that some teenagers would find some of the scenes uncomfortable to watch alongside their parents, but assured the station it isn't necessary for them to watch the show side-by-side. "All that's really essential is that [parents] know their kids are watching it, that they watch it at the same time or ahead of their kids ... and most importantly, they talk to their children about the themes in the show," he told the station. While it's difficult to see if the classification will have any impact, for New Zealand viewers, there will be additional warnings on top of Netflix's content warning as a result of the decision. But if we know young people, determined kids will likely find a way to stream the series regardless of the decision. That is, if they haven't seen it already. If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. For international resources, this list is a good place to start. WATCH: Break free from social media with this minimal phone NextShark Young An, 42, was allegedly attacked by her husband, Chae Kyong An,53, in her home on Oct. 16 after they spoke about their ongoing divorce and finances. Chae allegedly punched Young multiple times before binding her eyes, hands and body with duct tape. Before Young was driven into woods near Lacey to be buried, she managed to contact 911 and send a notification to her emergency contacts using her Apple Watch. Photo credit: Getty From Popular Mechanics The European Space Agency (ESA) and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) have begun discussions regarding a potential collaboration on a lunar human outpost and related technologies. CNSA led a series of talks with ESA, and secretary general for China's space agency, Tian Yulong, discussed the potential for a lunar base on Chinese state media, according to theIndependent. Pal Hvistendahl, a spokesman for ESA, confirmed the discussion. "The Chinese have a very ambitious moon program already in place," Hvistendahl said. "Space has changed since the space race of the '60s. We recognize that to explore space for peaceful purposes, we do international cooperation." Since Yang Liwei's manned mission in 2003, China's space program has grown rapidly. CNSA began working with ESA less than a year later when the two launched the Double Star satellite, "dedicated to investigating global physical processes in Earth's magnetic environment and its response to solar disturbances." A potential "Moon Village," as ESA Director General Jan Woerner likes to call it, could have any number of uses, from serving as a jumping-off point for a manned mission to Mars, to sample collection, to space tourism. ESA has already begun to develop 3D printing methods that could use lunar soil to manufacture various items, potentially reducing the cost of launching materials to space. One group unlikely to collaborate on the project is the United States. All researchers from NASA are banned from working with any Chinese state employees on issues related to space, thanks to an act of Congress in 2011. No one from NASA may " develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China." The legislation is also the reason Chinese astronauts do not visit the International Space Station, and in 2013 it became illegal for any Chinese national to step foot into a NASA building without a special waiver. However, with CSNA growing rapidly in its space exploration capabilities, it might be time for the U.S. to rethink its policy. Story continues Source: The Independent You Might Also Like Photo credit: Getty Images From Popular Mechanics China launched its first domestically produced aircraft carrier today. Amid great fanfare, streamers, and a champagne bottle broken across the bow, six tugboats tugged the enormous ship out of drydock and into the waters off the coast of Dalian. Built by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, the carrier is the largest warship ever built by China. It is rumored (but not confirmed) to be named Shandong. China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was built during the waning days of the Cold War as an aircraft carrier for the Soviet Union. The demise of the Soviet Union in a quarter-century ago left the unfinished hull in the hands of Ukraine, which sold it to a businessperson who claimed he was going to build a casino on it. He didn't. The boat somehow ended up in the hands of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which began a 13-year effort to put it into service. Liaoning was commissioned in September 2012. It is widely considered to be a training carrier meant not for combat but for training future naval aviators and ship crews. Photo credit: Getty Images The new carrier, tentatively known as Type 002, is dimensionally similar to Liaoning. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies , the carrier is approximately the same size, although it might be up to 30 feet longer than its predecessor. The two ships are expected to weigh roughly the same, between 65,000 to 70,000 tons fully loaded. Type 001A is conventionally powered, with steam turbines propelling the ship to estimated top speed of 32 knots. The carrier has a 14-degree ski ramp on the bow of the ship to help planes get airborne. However, ski ramp forces aircraft to take off lighter than they could on a ship equipped with aircraft launch catapults, and cannot launch turboprop aircraft such as the E-2D Greyhound airborne early warning aircraft. This results in aircraft with a shorter range, fewer weapons, and they must be directed by controllers on a nearby, short-range helicopter. Future carriers are expected to be equipped with steam or electromagnetic launch catapults. Story continues Photo credit: Getty Images Liaoning can carry an estimated 18 to 24 J-15 fighters and 17 helicopters of various types to carry out airborne early warning , utility, and anti-submarine warfare duties. CSIS estimates the new carrier can embark perhaps eight more aircraft of various types. The ship will still need two or three years of fitting out and tests before it is ready to be commissioned into the PLAN. ('You Might Also Like',) BEIJING (Reuters) - Young members of China's Uighur Muslim minority should "love the motherland" and learn Mandarin to help fight a perception they are "terrorists", Uighur members of the ruling Communist Party said in state media on Thursday. Sporadic violence, from knife attacks to riots to car bombs, have hit China's far western region of Xinjiang in recent years. Most incidents are carried out by Uighurs, a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority who call the region home. The government has responded with displays of military might, including regular "anti-terror" police rallies in various cities, most recently in the regional capital of Urumqi on Tuesday. Four senior Uighur officials, writing in a front-page article in the official Xinjiang Daily newspaper, asked young people to reflect on why Uighurs are labeled "terrorists". "A small group of devils create violence and terror in order to split the motherland and destroy ethnic unity," they said. "Because of this, we regularly face round-upon-round of safety checks, sometimes we finding it hard to stay in hotels or to rent housing." Young Uighurs should reflect on how the party had created a "harmonious, prosperous, happy and safe" life for minorities in Xinjiang, they said, adding that a failure to grasp the nation's common language of Mandarin was a "disgrace". "Siblings, the great motherland has granted us a blessed, heavenly life, how can we follow those devils to abandon our motherland?" they said. Rights groups say restrictions on the culture and religion of Uighurs, combined with policies encouraging the Han minority to live and work in the region, foster tension that bubbles over into violence. Beijing denies any repression and blames attacks on groups spreading "splittism" and "religious extremism" in the region. Officials have also launched a propaganda campaign, asking people to "warmly love the party, motherland, and the big family of the Chinese people" and "oppose splittism, extremism and violence". Such campaigns are common, but in the current effort, an unusually large number of Uighur officials have come forward to ask fellow Uighurs to do more to support counterterrorism and to weed out "two-faced" people. The new party secretary of the region, Chen Quanguo, has also beefed up already expansive security, increasing identification checks and expanding a network of police posts. (Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Robert Birsel) BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it was resolutely opposed to any country selling arms to Taiwan. Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun made the comment at a monthly news briefing in Beijing when asked on the possible sale of F-35 fighter jets from the United States to Taiwan. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said earlier on Thursday that Taiwan may need to buy the F-35s, the most advanced stealth jet the United States has. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Philip Wen; Editing by Bill Tarrant) By Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Didi Chuxing, China's top ride-hailing firm, is set to become the country's second-most valuable privately owned company, with a valuation of more than $50 billion, through a fund raising round of up to $6 billion, sources said on Thursday. The valuation represents a jump from Didi's $34 billion price tag in August, when it agreed to acquire Uber Technology Inc's China business, and also puts it closer to the U.S. firm's $68 billion. It also propels Didi well above Xiaomi Inc, which held the title of China's most valuable startup after a 2014 funding round valued the smartphone maker at $46 billion. Ant Financial, China's most valuable private internet finance firm and an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is valued upwards of $60 billion. The funding round has drawn investors including Japan's Softbank Group Corp, private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications, two people familiar with the matter said. They declined to be identified because they are not authorised to speak publicly. Didi Chuxing and Softbank declined to comment, while Silver Lake, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The people said that part of the latest capital investment in Didi would be used for international expansion. Didi has sealed several overseas partnerships, focusing on intelligent driving, such as making use of artificial intelligence, as well as similar ride-hailing services. The firm is ramping up overseas activity as regulatory changes are set to take a toll on their local service. Draft rules released in October would slash the number of eligible drivers and double fares for users in major cities, the company has said. Since Uber exited the Chinese market last year following a drawn-out rivalry with Didi, the Chinese firm has sought to expand in Latin America, leading a $100 million investment in Brazilian ride-hailing service 99 in January. Last month it officially opened a lab researching artificial intelligence-related driving technologies in Silicon Valley in the United States. The company has previously entered a range of strategic agreements with U.S. tech firms including Lyft, TripAdvisor Inc and Udacity. (Reporting by Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell; writing by Kim Miyoung; editing by Stephen Coates and Neil Fullick) One last leap of faith UML should agree to a larger political compromise to make elections possible Since at least the turbulent 1960s, student activists have a history of promoting change , both in U.S. society and overseas. Protests on college campuses have been common, but high school students also push for change and advocate for causes. In addition to leading social change, student activism can earn high schoolers scholarships for college. [Explore resources and tips on finding college scholarships.] Here are several scholarships that benefit high school students supporting causes. Some awards are limited to students in specific geographic areas. Cyberbullying has become a huge problem among internet users, but many students are fighting it. The Delete Cyberbullying Scholarship offers a $1,000 scholarship to high school students -- as well as college and graduate students -- who demonstrate their commitment to stopping cyberbullying. Applica nt s must submit a 500-word essay that either addresses why it's important to stop cyberbullying or how they have been affected by cyberbullying. Applications are due by June 3 with winners notified by the end of July. But bullying isn't limited to the internet. The Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover Foundation provides $1,000 anti-bullying scholarships to high school seniors who demonstrate efforts to combat bullying in their schools. The foundation and award are named for an 11-year-old Massachusetts student who killed himself after becoming the target of repeated bullying. The scholarship was not active in 2016 , but future scholarships will be offered through the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, beginning in 2018. Monitor the Community Foundation's website for updated application information. [Learn to target scholarship opportunities for student activists, volunteers.] For students advocating on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, the Chely Wright LIKEME Scholarship provides $500 scholarships to selected high school seniors who advoca te for LGBT issues, including teen bullying and anti-suicide projects. The award is named for a country music performer and gay rights activist. Story continues Recipients are selected based on their leadership and community service, financial need, essay, academics and future goals. Applications are due by May 31. Charlotte Pride, an organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, offers Charlotte Pride Scholarships up to $2,000 over a four-year period to high school seniors as well as college students from 16 counties in North and South Carolina who demonstrate service to or a desire to serve the LGBT community. Applicants can be LGBT students or s traight a ll ie s. The scholarship committee will also consider applicants' GPA and test scores. The deadline to apply is May 15. Conservative-minded students may want to pursue the GE-Reagan Foundation Scholarship . Recipients receive $10,000 awards, renewable for up to four years. The scholarship is open to high school seniors, who must display leadership, integrity and drive as well as support citizenship. According to the scholarship site, applicants should also support the former President Ronald Reagan's ideals of "personal accountability, tolerance and a belief in the human potential." The 2017 application cycle is closed, but check the website for announcements for 2018 applications. [Read advice on paying for college.] The Barbara Wiedner and Dorothy Vandercook Memorial Scholarship Foundation gives Peace Scholarships annually to high school seniors as well as college freshmen who show involvement in activities promoting nuclear disarmament, social justice and peace and conflict resolution. Applicants must show evidence of their leadership in activities or organizations in these areas. They must also submit an autobiography detailing their past commitments and future plans along with at least two letters of recommendation from non family members. Winners receive up to $500. Applications are due by March 1 each year. The Mariah Daye McCarthy Scholarship Foundation is dedicated to preventing underage drinking and offers the Mariah's Challenge Scholarship Program to high school seniors in Butte, Montana, who demonstrate the foundation's ideals and agree to forgo underage drinking and intoxicated driving. The scholarship is named after a 14-year-old killed in 2007 during an accident involving an underage drunk driver. This year's award cycle closed March 31, but check back for announcements on next year's applications. Another organization rewarding students for alcohol as well as drug abstinence is the East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church, which presents a $500 Teen Total Abstinence Scholarship to a high school senior who is a church member within the organization's boundaries. Applicants must submit an essay about their dedication to staying drug- and alcohol-free. Applications for the 2018-2019 school year will be available this November. Arthur Murray, a graduate of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, is managing editor of the GoodCall.com newsroom. The organization provides access to information, data, technology and tools, including a scholarship engine, to help visitors make important decisions. On Thursday, April 27th, Congressman Elijah Cummings announced that he is releasing three documents related to Congress' investigation of General Michael Flynn, President Trump's short lived National Security Advisor. Cummings said the documents show that Flynn was warned by the Defense Department that he could not accept payments from foreign sources without permission, and that Flynn subsequently did not seek permission before accepting payments for a trip to Russia. Paris (AFP) - Controversial director Roman Polanski -- who is still wanted in the United States for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl -- will premiere his new film at the Cannes film festival next month, the organisers said Thursday. "From a True Story" -- which stars Polanski's French wife Emmanuelle Seigner and former Bond actress Eva Green -- will be shown in Cannes outside the main competition. The maker of "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby" was forced to withdraw from the "French Oscars" -- the Cesars -- earlier this year after protests by feminists. Polanski has been on the run for almost four decades for having unlawful sex with the teenager at film star Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles in 1977. Polanski, 83, failed to negotiate a return to the US this month. However, his victim Samantha Geimer -- who wants the case dropped so she can get on with her life -- lashed out Tuesday at prosecutors, claiming they were using the case to further their careers rather than resolve it. "Celebrity cases should not be misused by those like yourselves for some limelight and career advancement," Geimer wrote in a scathing letter to Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey and his deputy Michele Hanisee, who are handling Polanski's case. The Franco-Polish director has been engaged in a decades-long cat-and-mouse game with US officials seeking his extradition, before a global audience split between continuing outrage and forgiveness for his acts. Polanski admitted statutory rape after a number of more serious charges were dropped, and spent an initial 42 days in jail before being released. But in 1978, convinced a judge was going to scrap his plea deal and send him to prison for decades, he fled to France and has been on the run ever since. "From a True Story" centres on a female writer who is plagued by an obsessive admirer. Cannes festival organisers also announced that Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's drama "The Square" has been added to competition for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or. Chinese director Li Ruijun, best known for "Fly with the Crane" is another late entry into the sidebar competition Un Certain Regard with "Walking Past the Future" alongside Argentinian film "La Cordillera" by Santiago Mitre. The Cannes film festival runs from May 17 to 28. Lagos (AFP) - A video clip apparently showing the traditional ruler of Lagos snubbing the spiritual leader of the Yoruba people has caused controversy in Nigeria. In the footage, the 73-year-old Oba (king) of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, appears to rebuff the greetings of the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, at a public event in the city Tuesday. The ooni, 42, then went quietly to his seat without incident but what appeared to be the oba's dismissive attitude sparked protests online -- and speculation as to what was behind it. The Ooni of Ife is the most powerful and influential monarch among the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria, who are the country's second biggest ethnic group after the Hausa-Fulani. Historically, the ooni or any king in Yorubaland was revered and considered "the sovereign, second in rank to the gods". "We want to assume that Oba Akinolu did not realise it was the ooni that greeted him," Yinka Odumakin, of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group Afenifere, told AFP. "Otherwise, we would regard what happened as a sacrilege and an abomination to Yoruba culture. "It's a taboo that any Yoruba oba would disrespect the ooni in that manner. It's not acceptable and is utterly condemnable." The powers of the Yoruba kings and other traditional rulers were reduced under British colonial rule and their role is now largely ceremonial. But they are regarded as custodians of culture and still wield influence on their people in local matters. Ogunwusi, from one of the ruling houses in the Ife kingdom, was installed as the 51st ooni in December 2015, succeeding Okunade Sijuade, who ruled for 35 years until his death. Before that he made millions as an entrepreneur in real estate and marketing. Moses Olafare, the ooni's spokesman at his palace in Ile-Ife, said the monarch "has no issues with the Oba of Lagos". "He is not involved in any rivalry or supremacy contest with any oba in Yorubaland," he added. Story continues "His mission since he was crowned has been to bring about peace, unity and progress to Yorubaland. He remains very focused and undeterred in this task. "He has visited Oba Akinolu twice since he became king but for reasons best known to him, Oba Akinolu has not deemed it fit to replicate the visit." No-one at the oba's palace was immediately available to comment. By Diadie Ba DAKAR (Reuters) - A special tribunal upheld the life sentence for Chad's former President Hissene Habre for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the final decision of a landmark case, a judge presiding over the court in Senegal said on Thursday. Habre, 74, an ally of the West during the Cold War, was sentenced last year to life in prison for rape and ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule. His lawyers had appealed the decision, saying the sentence was too severe. The appeal court's final verdict marks the end of a 17-year battle by victims and rights groups to bring the former leader to justice. About a dozen victims present in courtroom in Dakar jumped up and cried, "We won!" when judge Wafi Ougadeye announced the verdict. "Our patience has paid off. Never again will a dictator... be permitted to do horrible things and escape justice," said Clement Abaifouta, one of the Chadian victims. The trial was conducted by the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC), a tribunal created in 2013 by Senegal and the African Union for human rights crimes committed during Habre's rule. Habre fled to Senegal after being ousted in a 1990 coup. The EAC appeals chamber on Thursday acquitted Habre of rape but affirmed his conviction for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. Habre's lawyer Francois Serres said the trial was politically motivated. "Africa cannot be proud of this trial. It was unfair from beginning to end," he said. So far, the court has only tried Habre and the case marks a milestone for African justice. It is the first time in modern history that one country's domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges. "Today will go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," said Reed Brody, an American lawyer who has worked with Habre's victims since 1999. (Reporting by Diadie Ba; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Richard Lough and Pritha Sarkar) Oppn parties to stand against amendment bill A alliance of nine opposition parties including the CPN-UML has decided to stand against the constitution amendment bill tabled by the government. Zagreb (AFP) - Croatia was rocked by the surprise sacking of three ministers from its coalition government Thursday, with the country's prime minister saying he is ready for new elections if necessary. The Balkan state's politics are notoriously shaky, with two general elections in the past 18 months, but Premier Andrej Plenkovic dismissed the ministers for justice, interior, and energy and environment after they refused to support his finance minister. The split stems from huge troubles engulfing retail giant Agrokor, the country's largest employer, which is saddled with six billion dollars of debt. The credibility of Plenkovic's Finance Minister Zdravko Maric, whom the opposition want fired, has come under scrutiny as he was formerly a top manager at Agrokor. The failure of the three ministers, all from a junior coalition partner, to support Maric prompted Plenkovic to sack them, endangering his fledgling government. "New elections are not realistic, but if they take place I'm ready," the prime minister told reporters. Only one minister remains in the government from the junior ruling party "Most" (meaning "Bridge" in Croatian). Most's leader and parliamentary speaker Bozo Petrov accused the prime minister of "toppling the government". Plenkovic, who heads the conservative HDZ party, came to power after an early general election in September. The previous barely-functioning coalition government, also involving HDZ and Most, collapsed last June over a conflict of interest scandal after just five months in power. The HDZ has 58 deputies in the 151-seat assembly but Plenkovic told reporters he enjoyed the support of a parliamentary majority, hinting that he could reshuffle the ruling coalition without Most. But political analyst Ivan Rimac said the move was a "very serious blow" as Plenkovic had given up "three very good ministers". By Igor Ilic ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic fired three cabinet ministers from his junior coalition partner on Thursday in a row that will force him to patch together a new majority or call an early election. Plenkovic ordered the dismissal of the ministers from the centre-right Most (Bridge) party after they failed to support Finance Minister Zdravko Maric in his handling of a corporate crisis. A previous coalition between the two parties fell apart last year after just six months, triggering a snap election as recently as September. A second one could hold up government reforms aimed at improving the business climate and boosting growth prospects in one of the European Union's weakest economies. Plenkovic, from the conservative HDZ party, said he had sacked the Most ministers because they had damaged confidence among members of the cabinet. "The HDZ will ensure there is a parliamentary majority to continue the work of the government. We will make sure political stability remains," he told a news conference. "You will see soon who will support the HDZ-led parliamentary majority." However, after meeting his party leadership, he also said the HDZ was ready for fresh snap polls if it proved impossible in the coming days to form a new majority. The HDZ has 58 seats in the 151-member parliament, so needs another 18 for a majority, but might be able to team up with a scattering of smaller parties. "Plenkovic has either already secured support in parliament from someone else and will maybe even seek to form a minority government, or otherwise we face snap polls again," said political analyst Davor Gjenero. The opposition, led by the Social Democrats, had demanded the finance minister step down due to what it called a lack of credibility in his handling of a financial crisis at Croatia's biggest private firm, Agrokor. [AGROK.UL] The government rejected the opposition's demand at a cabinet session on Thursday, but the Most ministers - in charge of internal affairs, the judiciary and energy and environment policy - dissented. Most rejected the sackings as unconstitutional and said it may appeal to the country's top court. Its ministers will remain in place until replacements are appointed. "Plenkovic wants to remove three successful ministers who are getting results and keep a minister who objectively cannot remain in his position," the Most leader and speaker of parliament, Bozo Petrov, told reporters. Croatia is set to hold municipal elections in late May which, according to some analysts, may also be a reason for fresh tensions between HDZ and Most. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka on Thursday called on his powerful finance minister Andrej Babis to explain his past use of tax-free bonds and other business activities, as an escalating row rattles the government before elections. Billionaire Babis is the leader of the centrist ANO junior coalition party, which now holds a commanding lead over Sobotka's Social Democrats in opinion polls. Sobotka stopped short of calling for Babis's dismissal but speculation has risen that he may try to sack him before elections in October, which could trigger the government's collapse. On Thursday, Sobotka said he wanted Babis to explain the use of the bonds and answer other questions over his business by the end of April, and that he would then decide how to proceed. Asked later at a news conference whether the government could go on in the current atmosphere, Babis declined to comment, saying only that it has worked well so far. Sobotka and Babis took power together in 2014 after a decade-long period in which a string of governments collapsed early and have governed relatively smoothly together. But they have clashed over taxes, spending and police reform. Babis, who controlled vast business conglomerate Agrofert before shifting assets to a trust fund this year, has fought off accusations of conflicts of interest since joining the cabinet. The latest attacks come over his past use of bonds allowed under law but which companies could reduce their tax base by issuing. The bond holders -- often the firms' owner -- paid no tax on interest received. Tax analysts have said some companies used the bonds as a way to pay out tax-free profits to owners. Babis has denied wrongdoing and said he would answer lawmakers' questions by Friday. Earlier on Twitter he posted a photo of him standing next to a stack of cardboard boxes in his office saying "he was ready" if Sobotka aimed to fire him. (Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Catherine Evans) Prague (AFP) - Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka on Thursday demanded that his billionaire Finance Minister Andrej Babis, a leading candidate in October elections, explain past business activities amid media speculation he could be axed. "I'm worried by the way the finance minister has reacted to doubts raised in connection with his business dealings," Social Democrats (CSSD) leader Sobotka told reporters in Prague. "I'm waiting for his explanation by the end of April, then I'll take my decision," Sobotka said. Ranked by Forbes as the Czech Republic's second most wealthy citizen, Babis ran the sprawling Agrofert conglomerate before putting his assets into a trust earlier this year to ward off conflict of interest allegations. Sobotka said Thursday he asked Babis, who also runs the centrist ANO political party, to clarify his past use of tax-free bonds in connection with Agrofert operations. Babis who has flatly denied any wrong-doing is riding high in opinion polls, with ANO scoring 33.5 percent support compared to just 16 percent for Sobotka's CSSD in a survey conducted by the CVVM polsters this month. Babis insisted that Sobotka's move was part of the "political battle" ahead of the October 20-21 general election and dismissed any allegations against him as "lies or half-truths". According to Prague-based political analyst Jiri Pehe, while Sobotka's request is in part an early campaign move, "there are many activities that have gone unexplained concerning Andrej Babis". Having taken office in 2014, Sobotka's leftist CSSD has shared power in a three member coalition government with Babis's centrist ANO and the smaller centre-right KDU-CSL Christian Democratic parties. The fresh conflict could trigger its collapse, but Pehe said that an early election was unlikely to be called during the summer, pointing instead to the possibility of a minority caretaker government until the October ballot. Michael Flynns former top deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told Yahoo News on Thursday he would have ordered an immediate investigation of his one-time boss had he been informed that the ex-DIA chief had accepted more than $45,000 from an arm of the Russian government for a talk in Moscow in December 2015. I would have considered this an intelligence issue taking money from an existential adversary of the United States, said Douglas Wise, who served as deputy director of the DIA from the summer of 2014 until last year. I would have made it an issue with the Office of General Counsel, the office of security and the office of counterintelligence absolutely. Flynns failure to disclose his payments from RT, the Russian government-funded TV network that U.S. officials say serves as a propaganda arm for President Vladimir Putins administration, erupted as an issue earlier in the day Thursday when it was revealed that the Department of Defenses top watchdog is investigating whether Flynn, President Trumps former national security adviser, violated federal ethics rules by failing to report and receive prior approval to accept the RT fees. But Wise, a career CIA officer who was detailed to the DIA as its deputy director during the last few months of Flynns tenure there in 2014, said a Pentagon probe would have begun two years earlier had he known about such payments. While Flynn did inform DIA debriefers that he was flying to Moscow for RTs 10th anniversary an event at which he spoke and sat next to Putin at a black-tie dinner Wise said he had no idea that Flynn was actually compensated for it. Nobody would have imagined that Flynn would have taken money for the trip, Wise said. I would never have thought that in a million years. When he learned last year that Flynn had actually been paid by RT, I was apoplectic, Wise said. Given RTs role as a propaganda arm for Putin, it was stunning, he added. Story continues But Flynns lawyer, Robert Kelner, released a statement Thursday disputing that Flynn had misled the DIA about the trip. He said in a statement that an April 7, 2012, letter from the DIA to a congressional committee confirms in a still-redacted portion that General Flynn provided information and documents on a thumb drive to the Department of Defense concerning the RT speaking event in Moscow, including documents reflecting that he was using a speakers bureau for the event. General Flynn provided two briefings to the Department one before and one after the event. The Department was fully aware of the trip, Kelners statement continued. We urge DIA and the Committee to release the full, unredacted letter, along with the documents that General Flynn provided to DIA during the briefings and details concerning the in-person briefings provided by General Flynn to DIA. Donald Trump and Michael Flynn at a campaign event last September. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images) The disclosure by Defense Department Acting Inspector General Glenn Fine, in a letter to Congress, is the first indication that Flynns Russia ties are now being investigated by a federal agency. It is also prompting mounting charges from congressional Democrats that the White House is stonewalling inquiries into Flynn in order to deflect attention from questions about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. These guys are playing games, said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking minority member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, about the White Houses refusal this week to turn over requested documents about Flynn, including a copy of the security clearance form he filled out when joining the White House staff. Other documents released by Cummings on Thursday include a letter from a DIA lawyer warning Flynn in October 2014 after he was fired as the agencys director that he was prohibited from receiving payments from foreign sources without advance permission. The letter from the lawyer, whose name is redacted, seems clear-cut. It advises Flynn of multiple ethics rules that would continue to govern his postmilitary conduct, including a ban on all retired military personnel from receiving foreign governments emoluments defined as any consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria or salary without receiving prior consent from Congress and their previous service secretary. Accordingly, if you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance, the letter reads. It later states: You are respectfully reminded that you are responsible for ensuring compliance with these post-government restrictions, noting that these statutes carry criminal sanctions. But another new DIA letter released by Cummings on Thursday states that the agency could locate no documents showing that Flynn sought advance permission or approval for the receipt of money from RT. We have no evidence, not a shred, that he disclosed his payments, Cummings said at a news conference about Flynns payments from RT. Questions about Flynns 2015 appearance in Moscow first arose last July during an interview at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, when Yahoo News pressed him on who paid for his trip to attend the 10th anniversary celebration of RT. I didnt take any money from Russia, if thats what youre asking me, Flynn said at first. Then, when asked who did him pay him, Flynn replied: My speakers bureau ask them. Documents released last month show that Flynn was paid $45,386 for the trip, routed through RTs London office, with 25 percent of that going to Leading Authorities, his speakers bureau. But Cummings and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the House oversight committees chairman, said this week that Flynn failed to disclose the payments from RT on a form he filled out to renew his security clearance in early 2016 just months before he joined the Trump campaign as chief foreign policy adviser. That failure has now apparently led to the Pentagon investigation. This office has initiated an investigation to determine whether Lieutenant General (LTG) Flynn, U.S. Army (Retired) failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving any emolument from a foreign government, Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general, wrote in a letter to Chaffetz dated April 11 and released Thursday. Fines letter cites some of the same ethics restrictions that Flynn was warned about by the DIA lawyer in 2014. Flynn was fired as Trumps national security adviser in February. He was ousted after the White House acknowledged that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on Dec. 29, 2016, falsely denying that the two of them had discussed the possibility that the incoming Trump administration might lift sanctions on Russia once it took office. Flynn also later retroactively filed a notice with the Justice Department that he had received more than $500,000 last year from a Dutch company with links to the Turkish government another issue that could be examined as part of the Pentagon inquiry. Read more from Yahoo News: Update (2:50 p.m. ET): With comments from Kelner and Wise. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ten Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives said on Thursday they want Congress to vote on a formal authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Taliban. The group introduced an authorization, known as an AUMF, that would last three years and replace authorizations passed in 2001 and 2002 that have been used by both Republican and Democratic presidents for military action against the groups. Some members of Congress have contended for years that those measures, approved in 2001 to retaliate against al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 attacks and in 2002 to pave the way for the Iraq War, were outmoded. Those arguments intensified when President Donald Trump ordered air strikes against an airfield in Syria this month, although Republicans, who control Congress, and many Democrats said they did not feel that a single action like that required formal approval by Congress. But a small, mostly Democratic, group of lawmakers has argued for years that Congress should stop abdicating its responsibility to consider an AUMF that would govern U.S. military action, whether against Islamist militant groups or the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "As deployments to Iraq and Syria increase, and with complicating factors like the recent cruise missile strike against the Assad regime in response to the use of chemical weapons, Congress cannot stand on the sidelines any longer and must debate and vote on any new war," said Representative Adam Schiff, who introduced the bill with nine co-sponsors. The measure would authorize Trump to deploy combat ground troops against the three groups anywhere in the world, but also includes a mechanism to allow a motion to repeal or modify the authorization. It also would put in place new requirements for administration reports to Congress and the public on how force was being used. Without Republican co-sponsors, the measure stands little chance of passage, but if it picks up support, it could help pave the way for future legislation. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish) Could Edvard Munch's "The Scream" have been inspired by a rare cloud formation? Scientists at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting this month in Vienna think so. A new hypothesis holds that Munch may have been inspired to paint the masterpiece by "mother-of-pearl clouds" (also called nacreous clouds). These unusual, nearly iridescent, clouds are best seen in wintertime at sunrise or sunset, when they are lit from below. "We know from observations dated to the late 19th century that nacreous clouds did appear over Oslo during the time period," Helene Muri, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Oslo, told Live Science in an email. "And from Munch's journal entries, it seemed like a physical event, a natural phenomenon, he was describing." [5 Times Science Inspired Art] Nature in art? The famous 1893 painting depicts a black-clad figure wailing against a swirling red sky. Munch wrote in his diary that the imagery was inspired by a sunset walk with friends in Norway, when, feeling tired and sick, he paused and watched the sky turn blood-red. "I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream," Munch wrote, according to The Art Institute of Chicago. "I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood." Munch's admission of nature's role in the painting has spawned theories about what caused the vermillion sky that evening. One popular hypothesis is that the sunset was especially brilliant due to reflective particulate matter from the enormous 1883 Mount Krakatoa eruption that spread across the planet and caused five years of global cooling. A new explanation In 2014, though, a "spectacular" mother-of-pearl cloud formation lit up the evening sky in Oslo. Meteorologist Svein Fikke from Lrenskog, Norway, was struck by the wavy, colorful clouds and how much they resembled Munch's tumultuous depiction of the sky. Story continues Nacreous clouds may have inspired the sky in "The Scream." Audun Saltvik/Shutterstock "The fact that these clouds are only visible for a limited time before sunrise and after sunset, that they quite suddenly light up the dark evening sky and their wavy structures support the hypothesis," Muri said. Nacreous clouds form high in the stratosphere, between about 9 and 16 miles (15 and 25 kilometers) above Earth, Muri said. They require a specific confluence of circumstances: exceptionally cold temperatures, moisture uplift and timing. "Polar wintertime, when the stratosphere gets really cold, is when you are most likely to see these clouds," Muri said. They also often appear on the leeward side of mountains, where the topography pushes moist air up into the stratosphere, she said. "'The Scream' is an iconic piece of art, and it is fun to speculate as to what Munch wanted to portray," Muri said. "We don't know the answer, of course, but the striking resemblance to nacreous clouds is certainly there." Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations By Mica Rosenberg and Dan Levine NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Even if President Donald Trump wins an appeal of a court ruling blocking his executive order on sanctuary cities, arguments made by the government in the case could permanently harm its efforts to cut off wide swaths of federal funding to targeted cities, some legal experts say. Trump's original order, issued on Jan. 25, stated that cities and counties shielding illegal immigrants and refusing to cooperate with immigration officials would lose federal funding except for that "deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes." U.S. Justice Department attorneys defending the order in a San Francisco court presented a far narrower view of its reach, however, arguing before U.S. District Judge William Orrick III earlier this month that the only funds the government intended to withhold were certain grants tied to law enforcement programs. MORE FROM REUTERS: * COMMENTARY: Why Trump should mend ties with Russia http://reut.rs/2qiISqU * COMMENTARY: Russia investigation teeters, but Trumps strategy of stonewalling does not http://reut.rs/2oxuHll That argument did not convince the judge on Tuesday, who noted in issuing a preliminary injunction that the text of the executive order threatened withdrawal of a much wider range of federal funds than the government attorneys asserted in court. [nL1N1HX23B] "Disavowing the plain language of the executive order itself" was a potentially dangerous course for the Justice Department, said Edward Waters, a Washington lawyer who specializes in federal grants. The government's strategy could restrict its ability to cut off funds going forward, some legal experts said, since the Justice Department now has said the order applies to a narrow range of funding. Trump has promised to broadly "defund" sanctuary cities, saying they "breed crime." SEE YOU IN COURT The government could appeal the preliminary injunction to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the losing side at the appellate level could then appeal to the Supreme Court. Story continues One procedural case the federal government could make on appeal involves the timing of the challenge, some legal scholars suggested, but such an argument would have limitations. Since no federal funds actually have been withheld to date, the government could say there has been no harm and therefore the case is not yet "ripe" for litigation, said Brian Galle, an expert on government finance at Georgetown Law. To have standing to bring a case, San Francisco and Santa Clara County would have to have suffered actual harm, which could be difficult to establish in this case since they have so far lost no federal funding. [nL1N1FL1GW] The two municipalities successfully argued in the district court hearing that they had already been harmed by uncertainty and chaos in their budget planning but that might not convince an appellate court. "In the very short run it's quite possible that the administration could win a reversal of this ruling" on appeal because of these procedural reasons, Galle said. He predicted, however, the administration would be unable to successfully defend itself if it then began withholding funds without Congress authorizing such action. The Justice Department declined to discuss its appeals strategy. Tuesday's ruling left leeway for the administration to deny some kinds of funding to sanctuary cities, noting the government can "use lawful means to enforce existing conditions of federal grants." A small amount of federal law enforcement money is tied to a statute requiring local jurisdictions to share information with federal immigration officials. Programs making such grants include the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, Community Oriented Policing Services, and the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. In San Francisco, such funding is a small fraction of federal monies that go to the city, said City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Tuesday's ruling was the latest legal blow to the Trump administration, which has had two previous executive orders stayed by the courts. In February, a Washington court blocked a Trump order temporarily banning all refugees and travelers from seven mostly Muslim nations. A subsequent order replaced that one, removing Iraq from the ban and creating more exemptions. Parts of that ban were also blocked, this time by judges in Maryland and Hawaii.[nL2N1GS0XF] Those cases are pending appeal. After Tuesday's district court ruling, a spokesman for the Department of Justice said that it "will follow the law with respect to regulation of sanctuary jurisdictions." But the president made clear on Twitter Wednesday that he doesn't consider the battle over: "See you in the Supreme Court!" he tweeted. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Trott) PM Dahal calls all-party meeting for Friday Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has called an all-party meeting for Friday to discuss the issues of local level elections and constitution amendment. A grand jury has indicted two doctors and a third person in an alleged scheme to perform genital mutilation on two girls from Minnesota at a Detroit-area clinic. The indictment filed Wednesday replaces criminal complaints that led to the arrest of the three in recent weeks. Doctors Jumana Nagarwala and Fakhruddin Attar, and Attar's wife, Farida, are charged with female genital mutilation and conspiracy. President Donald Trumps decision to meet secretly with two former Colombian presidents this month at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida without having met first with current President Juan Manuel Santos raised some serious questions. Is Trump holding aid to Colombia hostage to get Santos to renegotiate a deal with armed groups, or trying to force Santos to restart the aerial spraying of coca fields? Does Trump have a plan at all? The two former Colombian leaders who met with Trump on April 14 Alvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana Arango have been outspoken in their criticism of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The agreement was rejected in a nationwide plebiscite on October 2, 2016, and after some changes, was approved in November by the Colombian Congress. The agreement was not resubmitted to Colombian voters, ensuring that it would remain at the center of an intense domestic debate, with Uribe criticizing it for leading to an increase in coca production, granting FARC kingpins and their aides impunity, and replacing the Constitution. If left unchecked, the enormous spike in coca planting over the last two years could sink the Santos government. The acreage under coca cultivation rose 18 percent in 2016 and 42 percent in 2015. It is at the highest level since at least 1994. Uribe accused the Santos government of having abandoned spraying to please the terrorist FARC, as well as reducing manual eradication. Its no secret we have more coca now, Juan Carlos Pinzon, the Colombian ambassador to the United States, told Foreign Policy. How to solve the problem is the biggest we have right now. Human trafficking and extortion by armed groups also remain problems. We need the capabilities, the strengths, and the modernization of our armed forces, Pinzon said, to confront these new realities. Colombian authorities are working with their U.S. counterparts to reverse the trend. Last month, William Brownfield, the State Departments assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement, met with his counterparts to work on a joint plan to reduce coca growing. Story continues A failure to shut down the newly empowered drug traffickers would be disastrous. Out of that money, said Pinzon, comes all the terrible diseases of Colombia: corruption, crime, violence, terrorism, everything bad that has happened to the country. A White House attention deficit or a budget cut from the U.S. Congress could lead to political change in Colombia. In that case, Critics of Santos well connected and influential on Capitol Hill would argue that the flaws in the peace agreement helped to derail Colombias most important bilateral relationship. They would also say, and are already saying, that the agreement led to a reemergence of powerful drug traffickers a threat that Colombians, and the U.S. government, thought had been defeated. Pinzon candidly acknowledged that the agreement remained controversial. Usually an agreement like this wont satisfy everyone or make them happy many people would prefer to see a stricter or more stronger agreement, he said, while others would prefer to see a less restrictive agreement. But in the end, this is what we have. But Pinzon, who previously served as minister of defense and chief of staff under Santos and who also has been tipped in the Colombian press as a future presidential candidate, also signaled that the government is open to changes. Elements of the agreement will be tested for a long time. Nothing in politics or policy is permanent, he said. You test, you try, you have good intentions, and you see how it works. But if its not working, things will evolve over time, and well see how we can do better. Trumps views on the Colombian peace agreement arent known. But his meetings with Uribe and Pastrana may mean that Trump believes Santos is giving away too much to the FARC. This is a view shared by many House and Senate Republicans. How Trump ultimately comes down may be the deciding factor on Colombias $450-million request for aid under Peace Colombia, a mix of developmental assistance, institution building, and money for the Colombian military and security forces. The request adds to the roughly $10 billion in U.S. aid that Colombia has received since 2000 under Plan Colombia. Given the stakes, Santos really needs to get on Trumps good side. Pinzon said that Colombia wants to work with the Trump Administration [and] be partners of the United States. He cited Colombias statement backing the U.S. raid against Syria, probably the first Latin American country to come out and support the U.S. Pinzon noted that Santos had already spoken three times by phone with Trump, and that a meeting was scheduled in some weeks or months. Pinzon said he himself had spoken with some senior officials, and singled out Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly for praise. This is no time to move away from Colombia, said Pinzon. [Abandoning Colombia] is probably what the drug traffickers want. They want less resources for our military and security forces, and are create[ing] a political case so maybe we dont get all the support we need. Who is going to win? Nobody but the bad guys. Photo credit: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump is reportedly considering disbanding the US ninth circuit of appeals after court judges blocked two of his executive orders. Mr Trump said he was "absolutely" considering proposals to breakup the "outrageous" court. "Absolutely, I have," Mr Trump told the Washington Examiner of considering breakup proposals. "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous." "Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that's like, semi-automatic." The US President also took to Twitter to criticise the body earlier in the day, saying: "First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!" First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017 The attack comes after two of the former real estate mogul's executive orders were overruled by the court. District judges within the 9th Circuit ruled against Mr Trump's travel ban that sought to block citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US temporarily. On Tuesday, the Court ruled against a separate order that aimed to cut funding to so-called sanctuary cities. A federal judge in San Francisco made the ruling after San Francisco and Santa Clara County asked the courts to intervene, arguing that more than $1 billion was at stake for each of them. US District Judge William Orrick III said it was clear the Trump administration planned to use the order to block funding for more than just law enforcement, as federal lawyers had argued. Story continues Press secretary Sean Spicer called the block an "egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge". For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. Donald Trump's administration has said it will tighten sanctions against North Korea as it aims to quell rising fears that Pyongyang will launch a nuclear attack. All 100 members of the Senate arrived at the White House for a briefing by Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who maintained that Washington will "remain open to negotiations" but also prepared to defend the US and its allies. Mr Trump attended the meeting for approximately five minutes. The mass invitation is an unusual move on the part of the Trump administration, and Senator Chris Coons called the briefing "sobering". Read more North Korea shows military might in pictures of biggest drill ever The Democrat told reporters after the White House briefing that military options were discussed. It was a sobering briefing in which it was clear just how much thought and planning was going into preparing military options, if called for, and a diplomatic strategy that strikes me as clear-eyed and well proportioned, Mr Coons said. A statement from the Trump administration said: The President's approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programmes by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners." The United States seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies. Members of Congress have been seeking a clear White House strategy following repeated North Korean missile tests and fears that it could conduct a sixth nuclear bomb test. While the administration has said repeatedly that military strikes remain an option, officials have stressed that tougher sanctions are more likely given the risks of massive North Korean retaliation. Story continues To that end, North Korea's United Nations mission said in a statement that it will "surely win a victory in the death-defying struggle against the US imperialists". Democratic Senator Ben Cardin said there is no pretty military solution to North Korea. He said Mr Trump sending aircraft carriers to the region just heightens the temperature". However, the top US commander in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, disagrees - although he said his goal was to bring the North Korean regime "to [its] senses, not to [its] knees". Admiral Harris said that though the US missile defence system will protect Hawaii, it could be overwhelmed in an attack from North Korea. He proposed increasing missile interceptors in Alaska and increasing radars and capabilities in Hawaii and possibly along the west coast of the US. He added - during a Congressional meeting - that deploying American warships to waters around the Korean Peninsula and aerial exercises with bombers will also ameliorate [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un's worst impulses". US forces are also conducting other exercises with the Japanese and South Korean militaries in an effort to discourage North Korean action, but also prepare for it. China's special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs, Wu Dawei, held talks on Wednesday with his Japanese counterpart, Kenji Kanasugi, amid rising tensions and speculation that North Korea may soon carry out another nuclear or missile test. Mr Wu said the two sides also agreed on the importance of using peaceful means in resolving the problem. He said China opposes war and unrest on the Korean Peninsula. A US missile defence system - called the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system - is being installed in South Korea and will be operational in the coming days". The system is designed to shoot down approaching ballistic missiles, which are a threat since Seoul, South Korea and its 10 million inhabitants are within striking distance of North Korea. North Korea is not the only country in the region to be angered by the THAAD, with the work to set up the system having angered China and Russia who see the system's powerful radars as a security threat. Admiral Harris also said that the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier sent to the Sea of Japan is ready and able to defend any North Korean attack, adding if it flies it will die". Weve learned a crucial lesson in the past few months: our democracy is not as easily deconstructed as Steve Bannon might have hoped We should be proud of the resistance shown by our civil society. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP We have learned one crucial lesson since January 20 we are not Germany in 1933. I shared the fear that Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy. I am not convinced those fears have been entirely allayed. But the first hundred days of the Trump presidency have demonstrated that American institutions and traditions of democratic constitutionalism are not as easily deconstructed as Steve Bannon might have hope. We should be proud of the resistance shown by our civil society. Ordinary citizens have taken to the streets in record numbers; we have confronted our representatives in town-hall meetings; we have flooded members of Congress with letters and emails; we have organized ourselves into groups such as Daily Action, mobilizing the energies of millions unwilling to quietly acquiesce in the destruction of American democracy. In one weekend, the ACLU received more online contributions than it typically receives in six years. Art supply stores are enjoying gravy days, as Americans race to purchase poster boards and magic markers, the low-tech tools of peaceful protest. We should be proud of our so-called federal judges, who, in jurisdictions from Massachusetts to an island in the Pacific, have put a stop to Trumps travel bans and now have barred the administration from penalizing sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds. These judges, appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, have demonstrated the indispensability of judicial independence to the maintenance and preservation of constitutional values. We should likewise feel grateful for the work done by our great institutions of fake news that have withstood unprecedented attacks from the president, and have worked tirelessly to subject Trumps lies and distortions to the rigors of fact-checking and critical scrutiny. Story continues Early in the new administration, Steve Bannon, in a profanity-laced interview, called the free press the opposition party. Bannon was correct if by opposition we understand resistance to a politics of mendacity designed to deprive Americans of the truths necessary to informed self-governance. Also deserving our admiration is the resistance that has emerged from within government itself. Hundreds if not thousands of dedicated public servants in agencies from the CIA to the EPA, from the Pentagon to the Department of Education, remain distressed and appalled by Trump. These public servants have worked to keep the president in check by using two of the most powerful tools available to government officials news leaks and bureaucratic inertia. The leaks, in particular, have helped bring about an astonishing reversal in the administrations handling of Russia from treating Putin as cozy partner to world menace. Finally, some credit must go to President Trump himself. In his sheer incompetence and inconstancy, Trump has emerged as our best bulwark against Trump. But something else also is at work. As opposed to Bannon, a genuine radical with a grand vision and a resentful contempt for all elites, Trump always seemed something of an accidental authoritarian. The qualities that brought him success in real estate, reality TV and on the campaign trail a genius for self-promotion, a brazen disregard of facts and feelings, and an ability to effortlessly outrage and bully all promised to make a mess of the presidency. And yet the very craving for adulation, the need to chalk up successes, the deep, even cynical, pragmatism also predicted that Trump would have no stomach for Bannons reign of terror. The banishing of Bannon from the innermost precincts of power can only be viewed as a good. Which is not to say that grave dangers do not remain and constant vigilance is not warranted. Trumps environmental policies may prove catastrophic. His foreign policy, mercurial and possibly nonexistent, appears ill-equipped to master the challenges presented by North Korea, Iran and now Russia. But one hundred days in, we are entitled to a small measure of relief relief we have created for ourselves. A Pentagon inspector general is launching its own investigation into whether President Donald Trumps former national security adviser Michael Flynn took payments from foreign entities without approval, according to a letter released by House Democrats. The inspector general of the Department of Defence is probing whether Mr Flynn had failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving any emolument from a foreign government, according to the letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The investigation concerns payments of more than $33,000 that Mr Flynn received from Russian state-backed television network Russia Today in 2015. As a retired Army officer, Mr Flynn was obligated to request permission from the Department of Defence and State Department before receiving payments from foreign governments, members of the Oversight Committee allege. Read more Flynn probably broke the law taking Russian payments The Department of Defence told The Independent that they initiated their investigation of Mr Flynn on 4 April weeks before the Oversight Committee first took their accusations public. The Oversight Committee released documents on Wednesday showing that the Pentagon warned Mr Flynn not to take foreign government payments without approval. A letter sent by the DIA to Mr Flynn upon his resignation in 2014 explicitly states that foreign compensation requires advance approval. The Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution ... prohibits receipt of consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria, or salary by all retired military personnel, officer and enlisted, regular and reserve, from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained, the letter reads. The letter instructs Mr Flynn to obtain advance approval from the Army before receiving any such payments. Mr Flynns lawyer said the former lieutenant general reported his plans to visit Russia to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He also said Mr Flynn provided the DIA with a thumb drive of files, one of which states that Mr Flynn used a speakers bureau for the trip, implying it was a paid engagement. The lawyer, Robert Kelner, is calling for public release of the documents on the thumb drive. Story continues Elijah E Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, argued that Mr Flynn had concealed the payments he received from foreign sources and said the documents raised grave concerns" about why he had done so. Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation, Mr Cummings said in a statement. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the investigation "appropriate," and said the administration welcomes the inquiry. But the White House has also declined to turn over any documents concerning Mr Flynns work for the Trump transition team. Mr Flynn was fired as national security adviser shortly after Mr Trump took office, before it was revealed that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contact with foreign governments during the transition. Press secretary Sean Spicer answers a flood of questions over Michael Flynns failure to disclose dealings with Russia. pic.twitter.com/KU4cUOvISh HuffPost (@HuffPost) April 25, 2017 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed on Wednesday that documents pertaining to Mr Flynns activities before the inauguration are not in possession of the White House. He also dismissed requests for records of Mr Flynns contact with foreign governments after Mr Trump took office. To ask for every call and contact that a national security officer is made is pretty outlandish, Mr Spicer said at a press conference. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Mr Flynns lawyer said he briefed the Defence Intelligence Agency ... extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings. Donald Trumps plan to axe the office of the US womens ambassador is a clear middle finger to women globally, Amnesty International has said. Leaked documents revealed on Tuesday that planned cuts to the State Department where Mr Trump is seeking savings to help pay for more military investment included completely de-funding the Office of Global Womens Issues (OGWI), which promotes the rights and empowerment of women and girls. Charities including Oxfam and the Global Fund for Women reacted with outrage to the news, which came as Ivanka Trump was forced to defend her father during an event in Germany called Inspiring Women. Tarah Demant, senior director of Amnestys identity and discrimination unit, told The Independent: This is absolutely devastating. Its just the opposite of what the administration should want to be doing. Read more Factory used by Ivanka Trumps brand accused of violating labour laws Its like a very clear middle finger to women globally. This is a very clear pronouncement on what this administration feels about womens rights. Not that we had many questions anyway. All this does is yank an insanely small amount of money from people who depend on it. The proposed cuts would also see foreign aid reduced in other ways, including withdrawing health and development assistance cash from a string of developing countries. Making up the difference in aid funding as well as how it is administered to benefit women a central task for the OGWI would be a scramble, Ms Demant said. She added: It will be very difficult, if its possible at all, and in the meantime people will die, disproportionately women. Charities and NGOs lack the financial and diplomatic muscle to fill the role of the OGWI, she said. According to its website the office, headed until 20 January by ambassador-at-large Catherine Russell, a former adviser to Dr Jill Biden, was created to ensure US foreign policy took into account the needs and voices of women. Story continues On Tuesday Ivanka Trump told an audience in Germany, where she shared a stage with Chancellor Angela Merkel, she was really striving to think about how best to empower women in the economy, both domestically and across the globe. She also defended her fathers treatment of women and said the thousands he had employed in the Trump Organisation were a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man. Mr Trump was the subject of some 700 protests around the world as Womens March demonstrators reacted to the billionaires policies and past statements. It followed his derogatory remarks about Fox News host Megyn Kelly after a presidential debate, and a recording of him boasting of famous men being able to grab women by the pussy. State Department documents first leaked to Foreign Policy showed the Trump administration planned to reduce the OGWIs 2016 budget of $8.25m (6.43m) to zero in 2018, though the Presidents budget will still have to make it past Congress. Mr Trump is seeking to plough $54bn (42bn) into the military, which he said had been depleted. Immigration rights activists have reportedly been calling Donald Trumps new illegal alien crime hotline with reports of criminal extra-terrestrials. Launched yesterday, the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline was ordered by President Trump earlier this year and is now being run by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the ICE website, VOICE exists to help victims impacted by crimes committed by removable criminal aliens. Video not available for syndication The Simpsons mock Donald Trump's first 100 days But critics said it discriminated against undocumented migrants, a demographic less likely to commit crime than US citizens, according to numerous studies. Activists used social media to encourage people to report criminal aliens using the hash tag #AlienDay which happened to coincide with a day commemorating the Alien sci-fi films. RT: Call Trump's hateful hotline at 1-855-48-VOICE and keep telling him about "alien" crimes. Martians et al. Open 8am-8pm EST #AlienDay Katy Otto (@exfkaty) April 27, 2017 Call & tell them a long harrowing story culminating in a UFO sighting, then why you condemn this Nazi-style office: 1-855-48-VOICE #AlienDay https://t.co/LE86sYAhnZ JNA (@joelnanderson) April 27, 2017 In case you want to share your X-Files fan fiction with DHS... 1-855-48-VOICE https://t.co/o0LUR6GCCS Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) April 27, 2017 Immigration was a prominent theme in Mr Trumps election campaign and he vowed to take strong steps to control migratory movements. Story continues Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on launching the office that the victims of crimes committed by undocumented migrants were unique. These are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place because the people who victimized them oftentimes should not have been in the country in the first place, Mr Kelly said. But migrant rights groups have criticised the decision to launch VOICE. This just continues the campaign strategy Donald Trump employed to vilify immigrants and identify them with a small number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, Brent Wilkes, head the of League of United Latin American Citizens, told the New York Times. The VOICE initiative has also been dismissed as rhetorical, as it only provides information on individuals in custody, has no additional budget and uses existing ICE staff. Its website also states crimes must still be reported to local police. At least two of the measures included in Donald Trumps proposed tax cuts stand to make him, his family and the wealthiest Americans much richer, experts have claimed. The billionaire businessman's plans were described as the "biggest tax cut" in US history by American Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billed as a boon for ordinary businesspeople. The proposed cut to corporation tax and income tax for the US's highest earners, has caused outrage among some critics. But measures like reducing pass through business tax and the repeal of the estate tax, have been welcomed by the richest people in the country. A pass-through entity is a special business structure like a hedge fund, that is used to reduce the effects of double taxation. They do not pay income taxes at the corporate level but this is allocated among the individual owners instead. Mr Trump is well known for his real estate empire, which is reportedly run as a collection of pass through businesses. Tax cuts reducing them from 39.6 per cent to 15 per cent have been proposed by the US leader's administration. Video not available for syndication Anti Trump marchers demand he publish his tax returns They would allow him to directly benefit from the changes, according to Robert Reich, a former US Labour Secretary and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California. The biggest winners: Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and all the other billionaires Trump brought into his administration, Mr Reich wrote in a statement published on Twitter. Professor Reich, who served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labour under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, added that Mr Mnuchin would also benefit. Mr Trump placed his businesses in a trust controlled by his family on taking office in order to distance himself from ethics concerns. The President told reporters he would not have anything to do with his businesses until the end of his tenure. Story continues But earlier this month, Trump Organisation attorney Alan Garten told ProPublica Mr Trump could access money and assets from the trust at any time he chose. The proposed cut was nonetheless welcomed by hedge fund managers. "This should really be called the 'Put Rich Guys Back on Top Tax Act of 2017,'" said Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates. Robert Willens, an independent tax consultant, added: "For hedge funds, this is an unmitigated benefit as their tax liabilities could drop significantly. Obviously, they are quite enthusiastic and there may be a few fist bumps along the way." Mr Trump also wants to completely end estate tax. This inheritance tax is levied on legacies worth more than $5.45m left after a person dies. This would also directly benefit Mr Trumps family, as they would receive more money after he dies. It is currently taxed at 40 per cent but only affects the richest 0.2 per cent of Americans, according to the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities. The tax was only levied 4,400 times in 2011, out of 2.5 million deaths that year, the Tax Policy Centre said. Police destroys huge quantity of hooch Police has confiscated and destroyed a large quantity of home-brewed liquor including the ingredients from different places of the Chitwan district over a period of 10 days. In a signature theme of its first 100 days, the Trump administration, encouraged by conservative media outlets, has launched an assault on civil servants the likes of which should have gone out of style in the McCarthy era. Attacks on their credibility, motivations, future employment, and basic missions have become standard fare for White House press briefings and initiatives. In doing so, the administration and its backers may be crippling their legacy from the start by casting away the experts and implementers who not only make the executive agenda real but provide critical services for ordinary Americans. But in a move that should trouble all regardless of political affiliation, they also run the risk of undermining fundamental democratic principles of American governance. Searching for policy-based or political rationale for these moves overlooks a key point: that the United States civil service can be an enormous asset for presidential administrations regardless of party, and undermining it belies a misunderstanding of what public servants actually do. These good folks, the vast majority of whom do not live in Washington, get up in the morning to cut social security checks, maintain aircraft carriers, treat veterans, guard the border, find Osama bin Laden, and yes, work hard to protect the president and make his policies look good. Many of them earn less than they would in the private sector and are deeply committed to serving the American people. Any effort to undercut them is irrational on its face. The attacks continue several themes from Mr. Trumps campaign that made for good television then, but poor governance now. Trump spent his campaign painting Washington as corrupt and inept, an overblown charge that nevertheless has some merit. There is certainly room to clean up D.C.s act. But Trumps supporters, and at times even the mainstream press, go further today, accusing civil servants of conspiracy against the president, leaks designed to embarrass his administration, and even manipulation of geopolitics (some absurdly blamed the deep state for the tragic chemical weapons attacks in Syria) all without evidence. Civil servants present an easy target: They are rarely portrayed as societal heroes and have few external advocates. Likewise, they arent generally permitted to publicly respond to charges against them, no matter how preposterous or even explain the value of their work. For all these reasons, its been simpler for Trumps spokespeople and surrogates to blame them for the administrations own growing pains and infighting. After all, who knew how complex being president would be? Trumps aggressive villainization of anyone who disagrees with him has continued into his administration. In contrast, policymaking by its nature involves dissent. Trump and his team have shown little tolerance for it, even when it would make their policy execution stronger a habit consistent with anti-intellectualism and anti-expert sentiment in their political base. As a result, policymakers and analysts practicing their craft by dissenting or offering contrasting advice are deemed out of line rather than competent. The intelligence community has long been in Trumps sights, particularly since presenting findings on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. For such actions, career analysts have been deemed politicized, when the very act of offering uncomfortable analysis to their boss is perhaps the most important and apolitical pursuit they could undertake. Signatories of the State Department dissent channel cable a long-standing forum of policy debate on Trumps travel ban were likewise advised that theyd be better off quitting their jobs than offering alternative views. Just as troublesome is the apparent loyalty screening of civil servants and candidates for non-political positions in the executive branch. A talented career hire tapped to run a Defense Department think tank was pressured to withdraw from his prospective role after it resurfaced that he was among the Republican national security experts who had signed a Never Trump letter during the campaign. Trumps advisors seem content to isolate themselves from awkward advice or even a whiff of constructive criticism. During his campaign and transition, Trump and his surrogates suggested military or intelligence officials involved in policies he did not support would be purged from the ranks. Such a purge as such hasnt come to pass; indeed, Trump has lauded both communities on their own turf at Langley and the Pentagon. But the administration has concurrently taken baffling actions against civil servants in senior appointments, leaving consequential posts such as those responsible for embassy security, nuclear security, and ambassadorships empty for months rather than invite career appointees put in place by President Barack Obama to stay. (The degree to which such vacancies put the United States at risk will, frighteningly, probably not be revealed until a crisis occurs.) Worse, conservative media supporters of Trump have lobbied hard against individual staffers. Career servants rarely see themselves in the press, but recently experts like Chris Backemeyer, Alan Eyres, Andrew Quinn, Yael Lempert, and Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, among others, have been subject to personal attacks in conservative media outlets for the sin of working on portfolios that were part of Obamas policy agenda. That these staffers were involved for their expertise, rather than partisan or positional affiliation, seems lost on pundits advocating their dismissal. Cutting off your nose These anti-civil servant campaigns have been neither solely rhetorical, nor anecdotal. Trumps administration, in some cases supported by Congress, is well into a broader campaign for the deconstruction of the administrative state. Concrete steps can be found in the recently lifted federal hiring freeze (a step that offers little savings in the long run and prevents the government from recruiting much-needed talent); actively excluding expert staff from deliberations and decisions; reviving a congressional procedure permitting appropriations amendments to reduce an individual federal employees salary to $1; and proposing devastating budget cuts to many non-defense agencies. Recent revelations about the gutting and restructuring of U.S. foreign assistance is perhaps the most egregious, but likely not the last example. Trump and his team have a right to their make their own decisions, even the right to be wrong. However, in electing him the American people trusted that he would not only occupy the bully pulpit and be the populist leader-in-chief but someone who would make use of the full scope of the federal governments expertise, capabilities, and reach. (On this note, his apparent unawareness of, and surprise at, the full extent of the bureaucracies under his authority should be grounds for yet further alarm). His failure to do so is likely to cause damage beyond Trumps agenda. That he is tacitly or actively undermining civil servants ability to do their jobs should be deeply worrisome not only to Trumps detractors, but to all Americans in two respects: It slows down and, in some cases, brings to a halt a range of critical government functions, and it undermines the broader democratic principles that Americans have long held (or should hold) dear. Both are wholly unrelated to politics or the administration in question. They are also generally independent of the interests of the bureaucrats themselves, although some concern for their well-being shouldnt be controversial. Pulling qualified people from important civil service postings or otherwise preventing them from doing their jobs will undermine the governments ability to perform basic functions in support of the American people and their interests. This will sound either obvious (to those who have regard for the importance of a healthy government), or advantageous (to the likes of Steve Bannon and others who apparently loathe what they have erroneously deemed the deep state). But for the many who fall between these extremes, the rank and file in Washington is irrelevant, interchangeable, even superfluous none of which is true to fact. In reality, most the individuals serving the U.S. government (including those in more arcane and cobwebbed corners) exist to keep the trains, roads, planes, and hospitals running (somewhat) on time, or even running at all. As in all sectors of employment, there exists bloated payrolls, poor performers, duplication, and even fraud in the federal workforce. And given that they are employed on taxpayers dime, and in their interest, the highest expectations and oversight are merited. But for the most part these are trained individuals with expertise and motivation who are making some piece of the machine that needs to run, well, run. In addition to expertise, these individuals often bring experience to the processes of policymaking which, again, is not easily replaced. This includes not only the ability to cite federal code or navigate budget procedures, but also the ability to say, we tried that and it didnt work something that can save a new administration a lot of effort, assuming theyre willing to listen. Having employees who have been around the block not only helps the president avoid making the same mistakes as his predecessor, but it means preserving relationships with foreign and domestic entities. This makes the business of government run much more smoothly and reduces opportunities for misinterpretation. Its hard to imagine a more critical skill than being able to pick up the phone and call a congressional staffer, a religious leader, or foreign diplomat, and explain a situation or make a straightforward ask. This is all the more relevant in a crisis, for which Trumps current strategy makes his government frighteningly ill-prepared. Analysts, policymakers, and implementers can also offer the ground truth of how key audiences will react to policy change. Such advice may not be valuable to an administration set on disruption but should be highly prized by the American people. Even if the administration never budges from its original policy positions, proposals that are scrutinized, red-teamed, and launched by experts will be better considered and informed by the type of expertise and experience described above. An assault on democracy Depending on how far Trump takes these attacks, all these concerns may be secondary to the potential for erosion of democracy and good governance. First, there is the easy and unnerving comparison to the McCarthyism of the early 1950s, during which the senator from Wisconsin orchestrated a government-wide witch hunt for those considered to be soft on communism, if not actual communists themselves. (Trumps personal connection to McCarthy by way of the latters lead counsel, Roy Cohn a longtime Trump friend and advisor is perhaps not entirely coincidental.) McCarthys campaign sowed distrust and paranoia across the U.S. government and American society, stifling freedom of expression and leading to the firing of dozens of public servants for their beliefs, or in many cases suspected beliefs (many targeted were in no way sympathetic to communism). This may seem an extreme comparison, as there is not yet any indication the president plans to hunt down and prosecute those who hold a particular set of beliefs; however, a mentality and atmosphere of suspicion, in which one might be fired for expressing certain ideas or simply working in certain offices is fundamentally opposed to the principles of democracy and civil rights on which the U.S. government is based. Pushing away civil servants who are perceived to disagree with the party in power also sets up the U.S. electoral system as winner-takes-all contest more closely resembling a third-world dictatorship than the United States (other Trump tendencies, such as placing immediate family members in senior posts, make this comparison all the more apt). While historically a new administration replaces senior policymakers with its own ideological allies, the bureaucracy itself has remained apolitical. This allows for each party and specifically the party not in power at any given time to feel at least somewhat assured that critical national security decisions will be informed by something other than pure politics, i.e., that the individuals in power will not take steps which first and foremost serve their continued reign and personal interests as opposed to the larger interests of the nation. When this assumption is challenged, the stakes of a presidential election and electoral politics in general become astronomically higher, and can create the underlying conditions for violent conflict or even civil war. When political entities view victory as the only means of survival and see their rivals success as a guarantee of their own political demise, the gloves of civility come off in ways that could make the tactics of 2016 seem benign. Whether they realize it or not, Americans rely on the continuity of the U.S. civil service regardless of political environment. From predicting hurricanes to providing independent military advice, from monitoring pandemics to managing air traffic, assuming the basic trustworthiness of the average bureaucrat is foundational to day-to-day life. Testing their competence and pressing the basis of their views is valid and worthwhile. Undermining them and treating them as a foe to be vanquished should be disturbing to those in and out of Washington. It is one thing to offer substantive criticisms welcome in the U.S. political system and another to take on institutions in American life that are traditionally charged with establishing the factual basis that inform national-security decisions. Writing in January in the Atlantic, Jon Finer, former chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, continues: If Trump prevails in these fights, he could do more than simply enact his agenda; he could alter aspects of our political culture in ways that will be difficult to reverse. Even if, with all of that, one still views the civil service with extreme skepticism, treating the bureaucracy as an enemy makes it more difficult to address some of its very real flaws, of which there are many. Longevity is rewarded over merit. Hiring practices are lengthy, burdensome, and make it almost impossible to rapidly bring on board either young or experienced talent for temporary or permanent needs. Security clearance policies are both out of date and poorly managed, as evidenced by real challenges facing Trumps own administration. Performance evaluation is inconsistent and too often has little impact on whether employees are retained, promoted, or let go, even when serious problems are identified. Talent management, skill identification and development, and the flexibility toward new challenges are frequently employed buzzwords that are rarely internalized. Despite all that, many talented and passionate Americans are drawn to public service, carving out careers that work for themselves and for the nation despite these flaws. Trump, his administration, and Congress could rather than declaring the civil service the enemy offer agencies the flexibility and tools to recruit, develop, promote, and retain talent and shed poor performers. Civil service reform like the proposals offered by the Bipartisan Policy Center in its recent report is an unsexy pursuit (and not likely one to receive much attention in Breitbart), but will advance Trumps agenda far more than casting away civil servants altogether or conducting targeted witch hunts against those he views as threats. Continuing to discredit and dissemble the civil service would be a grave mistake for the president. He and his team were elected in part due to their status as outsiders which, while they may be loath to admit, means there are a lot of things they dont know. An apolitical body of experts and administrators exists specifically to fill this gap. To ignore it or worse, to destroy it risks not only the Trump administrations ability to implement its agenda and succeed, but the entire premise on which the American system of government rests. It is incumbent on Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and veteran bureaucrats like Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon individuals who came from that world but now have Donald Trumps ear to defend their people and the bureaucracy as a whole, while allowing that it has flaws which can and should be repaired. Without them, the system will likely break in ways we cant predict or easily fix. Photo credit: ALEX WONG/Getty Images By Chelsea Stone. Photo by: Getty Images. The Oval Office is perhaps one of the most recognizable rooms in the world, and while Presidents come and go, the historic office stays pretty much the same, save for updates on trimmings and artwork. President Donald Trump, however, has made one unusual addition to the famed Resolute Desk: a red button that, when pressed, summons a butler with an ice-cold Coke in hand. Trump's unconventional method for attaining his soft-drink fix was revealed in a recent story by the Associated Press chronicling Trump's first 100 days in office. The article reads, "A man accustomed to wealth and its trappings, Trump has embraced life in the Executive Mansion, often regaling guests with trivia about the historic decor. With the push of a red button placed on the Resolute Desk that presidents have used for decades, a White House butler soon arrived with a Coke for the president." Though the Coca Colasummoning is new, the red button, situated in a wooden call box, has been used in the past by presidents in need of an aide, Business Insider reports. However, it hasn't always been situated on the Resolute Desk, which was given to Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. This isn't the only alteration that the Trumps have made to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. First Lady Melania Trump reportedly called for the addition of a "glam room" to her presidential accommodations where she could ready her hair, makeup, and wardrobe for public appearances. And Donald Trump's own snacking habits have been in the spotlight before, as well. The New York Times reported early in his presidency that the White House kitchen stocked up on Lay's potato chips once the president moved in. Now we have a pretty clear idea of Trump's preferred beverage to wash down those salty crisps. So, though the phrase "red button" in relation to the Oval Office typically brings to mind something a little more ominous, for now, we can rest assured that the only power this particular button wields is its ability to obliterate a caffeine craving. Story continues More: Donald Trump's 1985 Apartment Looks Exactly How You'd Imagine It This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest. More from Architectural Digest: See What's Inside Donald Trump's Former Superyacht 126 Stunning Celebrity Homes Inside Jennifer Aniston's Gorgeous Beverly Hills Home Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady's Incredible L.A. Mansion Sarah Jessica Parker's Epic West Village Townhouse Inside Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian's California Dream Homes Donald Trump has said he will try to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) rather than "terminate" it, as he had previously threatened. Speaking before a White House meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Mr Trump said that he had been planning to terminate Nafta as of two or three days from now, but had been persuaded to reconsider, which he acknowledged would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system. Mr Trump added, Now, if I'm unable to make a fair deal, if I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate Nafta. But we're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. He later said renegotiation was starting today. Read more Trump former adviser Flynn to be investigated by Department of Defense That came after Mr Trump had tweeted about a softening of his position. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate Nafta rather than terminate, Mr Trump said in a tweet. I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate Nafta. Relationships are good-deal very possible! Mr Trump had escalated his rhetoric on Nafta in recent days, even slapping his administration's first sanctions on Canadian imports. At an executive order signing in Wisconsin, he said Nafta had been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and promised to make some very big changes or get rid of Nafta once and for all. On Wednesday, however, Mr Trump spoke with both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Pena Nieto, in what the White House described as pleasant and productive calls. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time, the White House said, and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. Story continues Mr Trump is required to give Mexico and Canada six months notice before pulling out of the deal. His tough talk this week signalled that notice may be coming, making both world leaders anxious. Mr Trudeau reportedly called Mr Trump twice on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss trade. Several senators also urged the president not to pull out of the multilateral trade deal an action experts say could set off a trade war between the three countries. Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy, Arizona Senator John McCain tweeted on Wednesday. @POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement The anti-Nafta rhetoric, however, is not new for Mr Trump, who has called the agreement the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere. He has promised to renegotiate or pull out of the deal since as early as 2015. The White House says the president will renegotiate the controversial deal with Canada and Mexico Donald Trump with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Along with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau they have agreed to reshape the Nafta deal. Photograph: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images The White House has announced that the United States will not unilaterally withdraw from Nafta, the landmark free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, after multiple reports that Donald Trump was planning to pull out of the deal. In a readout of calls between Trump, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, the White House said: President Trump agreed not to terminate Nafta at this time. However, the statement added the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. The news came after reports on Wednesday that Trump was planning to sign an executive order that would trigger the process for the United States to withdraw from the deal, which was negotiated by the George HW Bush and enacted by Bill Clinton in 1994. The US would have to give six months notice to withdraw from the free trade agreement and the executive order would start the clock in what the White House viewed as a negotiating tactic to force more favourable terms for renegotiation from Canada and Mexico. However, a White House official told the Guardian on Wednesday that the situation was more complicated than reported. On Thursday Trump characterized the discussion with Pena Nieto and Trudeau as a request from the two leaders for him not to pull out of the trade pact. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate, the president wrote on Twitter. I agreed ... subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible! One of Trumps key themes during his presidential campaign was his scepticism of free trade, in particular, the bad deals which he believed the United States had negotiated with other countries. Nafta had long come under particular scorn from Trump. In an interview last week with the Associated Press, Trump described the pact as a catastrophic trade deal for the United States and said I am going to either renegotiate it or I am going to terminate it. Story continues Trump has had recent tensions with Americas neighbours. Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray slammed Trumps plans for a border wall between the United States and Mexico as a hostile act on Tuesday and insisted yet again, contrary to Trumps campaign promises, that Mexico would not pay for the wall. With Canada, Trump announced a new tariff on softwood lumber on Tuesday that triggered concerns of a potential trade war between the two countries. He warned that people dont realise Canadas been very rough on the United States ... theyve outsmarted our politicians for years. The initial reports that Trump was considering pulling out of the trade agreement brought a horrified reaction from a number of top Republicans. John McCain tweeted that Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy @POTUS shouldnt abandon this vital trade agreement. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a statement saying scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea. Hey, humpback whale fans. We've got some really cute news and some really sad news about your favorite 80,000-pound mammal. Let's start with the grim: A troubling number of humpback whales are dying on the U.S. East Coast. Fisheries officials this week declared an "unusual mortality event" following the deaths of 41 humpbacks from Maine down to North Carolina. SEE ALSO: Serene underwater footage shows whale's-eye view of Antarctica In that region, 15 whales have died so far in 2017, adding to the 26 humpback deaths last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported. In an average year, only about 14 humpbacks die along that coastal stretch. NOAA scientists said they don't know why humpbacks are dying in such high numbers, though they're about to take a deeper look. He's just taking a long nap. Image: MERR Institute By declaring an unusual mortality event, NOAA kicked off a formal investigation process that could take months or years to complete, according to Mendy Garron, a stranding coordinator for NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region office. The Marine Mammal Protection Act defines an unusual event as "a significant die-off of any marine mammal population" that requires an "immediate response," she said during a Thursday press conference. Scientists have examined 20 of the 41 dead whales and found no evidence of an infectious disease. Ten of them, however, showed signs of blunt-force trauma or cuts from a ship strike a significant jump. Most populations of humpback whales are no longer listed as endangered, as of September 2016. Image: NOAA Fisheries Since there likely hasn't been a spike in vessel traffic in these parts, experts suspect the rise in ship strikes might be because the fish and krill whales eat are moving into harm's way. Whale prey might be moving around due to warmer water temperatures which are rising in part because of human-driven climate change though scientists don't know for sure, Greg Silber, a biologist with NOAA's Office of Protected Resources, told reporters. Story continues Ok, so... How about that really cute news? Ecologists in Denmark and Australia found that newborn humpbacks "whisper" to their mothers to avoid being overheard by hungry killer whales. Scientists used temporary tags on humpback mothers and calves in Exmouth Gulf in western Australia to record their interactions. The study, published this week in the journal Functional Ecology, found that baby whales communicate in "intimate grunts and squeaks" with their moms during the long migration to their feeding grounds. That's far more subtle than the loud, sonorous groans of male humpbacks. "This migration is very demanding for young calves," Simone Videsen, the study's lead author and a researcher at Aarhus University, said in a news release. A mother-calf humpback pair in Exmouth Gulf, Australia. Image: Fredrik Christiansen "They travel 5,000 miles across open water in rough seas and with strong winds," she said. "Knowing more about their suckling will help us understand what could disrupt this critical behavior, so we can target conservation efforts more effectively." For the study, researchers applied suction-cup tags to eight calves and two mothers. They found that mothers and calves spend significant amounts of time nursing and resting. Data tags also showed that calves "whispered" while swimming, suggesting the quiet calls help keep mom and baby together in murky waters. "Killer whales hunt young humpback calves outside Exmouth Gulf, so by calling softly to its mother, the calf is less likely to be heard by killer whales and avoid attracting male humpbacks who want to mate with the nursing females," Videsen said. She said the findings could help researchers better protect this crucial humpback habitat and ensure the nursers waters are kept as quiet as possible. WATCH: Stunning drone footage captures rare video of blue whales feeding Photo credit: Hyundai From Road & Track The Mark Corrigans of our modern world might be tempted to explain the endless courage of Edwardian pioneers solely as a trait of the period itself. Today's cynics might point at the fact that folks in the early 20th century just didn't have the life expectancy of our times, and with one war coming after another, putting it all on one card was an easier decision to make at the time. Some did that by strapping into a car with a 28.3 liter four-cylinder geared to do 130 mph at 1000 rpm; others wanted to boldly go where no one has gone before. But the courage of the early 20th century isn't lost in the 21st. In 2012, a man went skydiving from outer space; in 2018, a daredevil will try to surpass 1000mph on four wheels. If that wouldn't deserve a high five in 1912, it's only because high fives haven't been invented back then. Sir Ernest Shackleton's name should ring a bell to anybody who ever came within eyeshot of a bookshelf, a newsstand, or a theater stage. The Anglo-Irishman led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and was known for putting the lives of his men ahead of his own quest for glory, turning back to save his crew instead of forging ahead when conditions turned dire. After Roald Amundsen beat him to the South Pole in 1911, Shackleton purchased the purpose-built Norwegian schooner Polaris, rechristening it to Endurance after the Shackleton family motto fortitudine vincimus-"by endurance we conquer." His new aim was to be the first to cross Antarctica, using an additional steam engine when needed to guide the almost brand-new and highly durable ship across the ice fields. Photo credit: Topical Press Agency / Stringer / Getty It did not go as planned. The Endurance got icebound in less than a month, drifting frozen in the Weddell Sea from January until October. By November, the ice had pierced the ship's hull, forcing Shackleton's 27-strong team to put all the supplies and equipment they could salvage into the Endurance's three life boats and abandon ship for Elephant Island. While hunting for seals and penguins to survive, Shackleton realized the island was so far from commercial shipping lines, the crew had zero chance of being rescued. He asked the mission's carpenter to fortify their heaviest, 23-foot long boat, using canvas, oil paint, and (according to Shackleton biographer Ronald Huntford) seal's blood to make the boat tough enough to ferry five men on a 920-mile journey across the Southern Ocean. Out of three highly tempting destinations, the British island territory of South Georgia seemed to be their best bet given the direction of the prevailing winds. Story continues Photo credit: Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty Sixteen days later, they touched land again. Three men from the crew continued on foot for another 36 straight hours, finally reaching the whaling city Stromness. The local chief, Norwegian captain Petter Srlle couldn't believe his eyes. After having a bath, Shackleton immediately began organizing the rescue of the remaining two crew members on the other side of the mountains-and the 22 back on Elephant Island. Those men spent four and a half months alone, with no knowledge of the fate of the voyagers they'd sent back to civilization. It was August before Shackleton could finally sail in to get them out, using the Chilean tug Yelcho. Photo credit: Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty Traversing Antarctica today is slightly easier, to say the least. Yet in the last 100 years, nobody has managed to do it by car. That's where Hyundai came in, quite cleverly. Inspired by Shackleton's story, the automaker spent 10 month searching down the legendary explorer's ancestors. Luckily, his great-grandson, Patrick Bergel, was very keen to take on the 21st century challenge. Being an indoor guy with a job in the digital space, Bergel spent a lot of time in Iceland preparing for the journey under the guidance of Girli Jonsson, a man who has spent more than five years exploring the icy continent. Arctic Trucks, a company known for outfitting SUVs for south pole duty, was secured to build a properly fortified Hyundai. Following Shackleton's original route meant going from the Union Glacier Camp through the South Pole to McMurdo Sound, driving for 30 straight days, 20 hours a day and covering nearly 3700 miles-under 24-hour sunshine, surrounded on all sides by infinite whiteness with no visual landmarks for guidance. Photo credit: Hyundai The tool for the job, the team decided, was a Hyundai Santa Fe 2.2 diesel. Plain and simple, with a bone-stock engine, transmission, and front differential. The fuel tank capacity was increased to 60 gallons and an engine pre-heater was installed to help in the extreme cold of -18 F. The suspension was lifted and sub-frames modified to make space for the 38-inch tires, which ensured that the burly Hyundai would glide over the snow instead of plowing through it. Arctic Trucks did give the unassuming crossover one significant advantage: reduction gears in the wheel hubs to provide an increase in torque to spin those huge floatation tires. With an average speed of 16.7 mph throughout the expedition, the Santa Fe needed low-end grunt more than a long-legged overdrive. Photo credit: Hyundai You may be wondering how Bergel and Jonsson planned to drive a diesel-powered vehicle in temperatures that turn the fuel to jelly. Around the South Pole, vehicles run on commercial aviation fuel-Jet A is rated to ambient temperatures as low as -72F, making this, in a way, a jet-powered Hyundai. The team fueled up at at Union Glacier, getting another top-up 400 miles later at an airstrip. Next was a major refueling stop at the South Pole, ahead of the longest leg of their journey-from the South Pole to McMurdo, a distance of nearly 1000 miles. They took on twice as much fuel as the drive would require, ensuring they wouldn't run out in case of a setback. The tires had one tenth of the normal air pressure in them to maximize the contact patch and be kind to the delicate environment. With these wide tires at such low pressures, a Santa Fe could drive over your hands without hurting them. Despite the Hyundai SUV's humble origins, Bergel and Jonsson didn't have too many issues to report. The longest unscheduled stop was 45 minutes long, to secure a bolt that came loose during driving. The Santa Fe also overheated once, if you can believe it, when the wind shifted and started blowing the same direction as the rig was traveling. The car's airflow problems were solved by propping the hood open with a piece of wood. In a place where mother nature endeavors to break everything, the jacked-up Hyundai's reliability record is an impressive achievement in itself. Photo credit: Hyundai Perhaps not surprisingly, if you want to transport heavy equipment to a place where no civilian airplane should land, you need Soviet machinery from the Cold War era. Team Hyundai delivered its vehicles and crew to the Antarctic from Chile using an Ilyushin Il-76, the mother of all cargo planes. Here's how Mr. Bergel describes completing the journey that nearly killed his great-grandfather: We flew to Chile and then down to Punta Arenas, the most populated area in the south with an airstrip and the jumping-off point for people coming into the west of the Antarctic. Then we flew over, unloading the car on a blue ice runway with the Drake Icefalls-the end of a glacier crashing between two mountains-as the background. It was a first taste of the kind of impossibly beautiful stuff that you see down there. From there, to Patriot Hills and once you get past there you enter two or three days of featurelessness studded with sastrugi ice structures that get laid down by the wind. They are incredibly beautiful, they've got this kind of kinetic energy to them, like Brancusi sculptures that have been half-buried and re-formed. Very little snow actually falls in the Antarcticonly a few centimeters a yearand it's really just ice particles being moved around, so you really have to pick your way through those, rather than drive across them. Photo credit: Hyundai At the South Pole, it was just a rush of joy to be there at the bottom of the world and the sense of the planet becomes much more apparent. And then the fact that this was a place that my Great Grandfather tried to get to more than once and I was there, it felt like a genuine connection, one I could not have had without going. After that, we drove down the Leverett Glacier, which is a chunk of travel, and then it is pretty featureless again. So that's kind of a slog. Then we came across the Traverse, which was great-it's kind of like a road and at times you get up to reasonably good speeds. Then there's a sort of neck where the Leverett Glacier ends and the Trans-Antarctic Mountains begin, which is unbelievably beautifuland this is the point at which nobody in a wheeled vehicle has been beyond. Only a few dozen people actually get to see the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and most of them are unclimbed because you have zero support. I didn't realize we would be the first to do this in a wheeled vehiclebut that was sort of a cherry on the cake. I was there to be there. Photo credit: Hyundai The Ross Ice Shelf comes next. It's fed by glaciers from over the mountains and is moving two to five meters a year, so you are now traveling over just ice. There is a ceremonial sticka pole in the icemarking when the rock underneath has gone but the ice is about 2,000 feet thick at that point, so there's no danger of falling into it! There is sort of a flagged route, though, done by the guys on sleds so you don't wander off into crevasses. We had some big whiteout periods there and cloud level is incredibly low because it's so flat, so you get these kind of rolling clouds tumbling over one another. Then we came to Erebus, which is the only active volcano in the region. My Great Grandfather was the first to climb Erebus and I'd seen pictures of it as a kid. It is quite spectacular, with plumes of smoke coming out and Mount Terror standing alongside. It was wonderful because I was at the wheel and it kind of exploded out of the cloud. Photo credit: Hyundai The next challenge was a deep crevasse field on the edge of McMurdo and we had to rope up the vehicles to get over it. I guess that was the most concerning bit of the tripand it was one of the last bits! At night, around the camps, we would drive a loop in the snow and nobody was allowed to go outside it because it was not safe. But that was just sort of common sense-there wasn't a great deal of active danger. With the crevasse field we had to drive very carefully and we did get stuck at one point, for a few seconds. It wasn't the Hyundai, but one of the trucks we were tied to. There was a sort of vroomph then they got dragged out. Photo credit: Hyundai A one month journey, a century after Bergel's great-grandfather made his first attempt. Knowing how much this particular Santa Fe has been through, I almost found it hard to believe that they let me have a go behind the wheel on a rainy day in England, in the middle of a muddy quarry. But they did, mostly because the car is no museum piece. After the tour, it will go back to Antarctica to be used by the scientists who reside there. I realize how difficult it must have been to get through all that whiteness and the hallucinations that come standard with it. Yet in every other situation, driving this car on soft rubber must have been the easiest job in the world. It has all the comfort features, like heated seats and bluetooth, just like in any other Hyundai crossover, while the much higher seating position gives you maximum visibility in all directions. It's got loads of traction in low range, naturally, and hill decent if you feel lazy. Exploration vehicles don't get much cozier than this, and compared to a built-up Land Rover Defender, the Arctic Trucks Hyundai is like a Bentley Bentayga. Only it looks way more authentic when covered in mud. Photo credit: Hyundai Interestingly, it was Sir Ernest Shackleton himself who took the first car to Antarctica, years before the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The car in question was powered by a 15 horsepower, air-cooled four-cylinder engine, produced by the Scottish New Arrol Johnston Motor-Car Company. It also must have run pretty poorly at -18 F. You Might Also Like San Salvador (AFP) - El Salvador on Thursday became the first country in the world to ban the mining of metals in what campaigners called a landmark move for environmental protection. The law bans "prospection, exploration, exploitation, extraction or processing of metallic minerals in El Salvador," according to the text published Thursday in the official journal. "This is more than just a novelty," the president of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit, Mauricio Sermeno, told AFP. "It is a law that is necessary in the face of an industry which, far from bringing any benefit to communities, brings serious pollution to water sources and the environment." When lawmakers approved the bill in March, non-government campaign group MiningWatch Canada said El Salvador had "made history, becoming the first country to ban metal mining outright." Some Latin American countries thrive on mineral exports but local communities complain of environmental risks from toxic metals used in the process. The new law entered into force after being signed by President Salvador Sanchez Ceren. El Salvador says it will protect poor rural communities threatened by proposed mining projects. The country has had disputes with powerful foreign mining firms in the past. MiningWatch has said it hopes the Salvadoran legislation will set an example for other countries in the region. This month it seized assets belonging to an Australian-Canadian gold mining group, OceanaGold, for legal fees the company owed after losing a lawsuit over mining permits. In neighboring Guatemala, rural communities are challenging mining projects by Goldcorp of Canada and two US firms, Tahoe Resources and Kappes, Cassidy & Associates (KCA). Nicaragua has rejected projects by Canadian company B2 Gold. Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are among the poorest in the region. But mining accounts for a minimal portion of their economies and jobs, a recent study by various NGOs showed. Rupandehi sees surge in wheat production Rupandehi, a major wheat producing district, witnessed a surge in production of wheat due to favourable weather conditions from the monsoon season and widespread availability of fertilisers in the market. A proposed draft executive order that would pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement set off the latest round in a now-familiar series in Trumps White House: The friction of Donald Trumps nationalist campaign promises against the reality of governance, and the tension between moderating forces within the White House and more aggressive ideological purists. The draft of the executive order, its existence first reported by Politico, is in advanced stages of the process, a senior White House official told me on Wednesday afternoon. But on Wednesday evening, the White House released a readout of a call between President Trump, President Pena Nieto of Mexico, and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, saying that Trump had agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time. It quoted Trump as saying: It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date at this time, and said the three leaders had agreed to embark on renegotiation of the deal. Earlier on Wednesday, The New York Times had reported that Trump was likely to sign the order; the president wants to be more aggressive on trade, economic nationalism, America first, the senior White House official told me. Its still unclear what exactly is in the draft and how it would trigger the U.S. pulling out of the agreement, which requires six months notice before one of the signatories can withdraw. As a candidate who ran on protectionist trade policy, one of Trumps main betes noires was NAFTA, which he has called the worst trade deal ever approved in this country. Trumps rhetoric on NAFTA helped endear him to the white working class voters in formerly manufacturing-heavy areas who helped put him in the White House. He has repeatedly promised to renegotiate the agreement, and if all else fails, pull out altogether. Early on in his administration, Trump lived up to one trade-related campaign promise by pulling the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Recommended: The Border Battles of Atlanta But in the early days of his administration, Trump had shown signs of moderating on trade, or at least of entertaining more moderate views. Reports leaked out of a civil war over trade, with nationalist ideologues like Bannon and National Trade Council chief Peter Navarro on one side, and Wall Street-connected centrists like National Economic Council head Gary Cohn on the other. And a draft letter to Congress that leaked to the media appeared to show a more moderate posture towards NAFTA, suggesting less dramatic changes to the agreement and not proposing ditching it altogether. The senior White House official told me that Cohn and his allies had been against this draft executive order on NAFTA. Cohn has been seen as one of the key figures in the faction associated with Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump; infighting between this faction and Bannon recently spilled into public view. The conventional wisdom had been that the Kushner allies came out as the victors, with Bannons fall from grace representing the sidelining of the populist nationalism Trump espoused as a candidate. Bannon was removed from his seat on the principals committee of the National Security Council, and Trump himself chastised the chief strategist publicly, saying in interviews that Bannon had joined his campaign late and that it was Trump who led the White Houses strategy, not Bannon. Recommended: A Chilling Threat of Political Violence in Portland But despite weeks of Washington gossip assuming Bannons imminent downfall, Bannon is still there. And whether or not the order is signed, that it is even being considered ups the ante on the administrations posture towards U.S. trading partners following increasingly heated rhetoric from the administration. Trump has become increasingly aggressive towards Canada, imposing a tariff on Canadian lumber. "People don't realize Canada's been very rough on the United States, Trump told a meeting of agricultural leaders on Tuesday. They've outsmarted our politicians for years." Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch! Trump tweeted on Tuesday. Just last week, Trump told the AP in an interview that he was either going to renegotiate or terminate NAFTA, and that If they don't treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA. Bannon and Navarro reportedly wrote the draft of the order. Navarro is a trade protectionist academic who has sounded the drumbeat against China for years. The executive orders in which Bannon has had the largest hand havent had a great success rate; the first and second iterations of the travel ban targeting mostly Muslim nations did not stand up to legal challenges. Its also unclear whether Trump really could have unilaterally pulled out of NAFTA without congressional approval; a recent study by a Canadian think tank concluded that he cannot. But politically, the fact that the order came close to being signed could be a signal that Bannon is not a spent force, the nationalist wing remains influential in the White House. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Istanbul (AFP) - Global energy markets are moving in the right direction after oil prices fell to historic lows due to oversupply, Qatar's energy minister said Thursday, praising OPEC members for their adherence to a "successful" November deal to cut production. Minister of Energy and Industry Mohammed Saleh Abdullah Al-Sada told the Atlantic Council summit in Istanbul that a decade of high oil prices had led to a dangerous oversupply, price falls and now an "unprecedented shrinkage" in investment. But in a unusual move, OPEC members agreed in November to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day for six months beginning from the start of the year in a bid to shore up prices. The move was also partly matched by non-cartel producers led by Russia and the critical question is whether OPEC will take new action at its next meeting on May 25. "A balancing was bound to happen. What we want to do is to hasten that process of balancing," said Al-Sada. Speaking in Paris, OPEC's Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said he was "confident" that a consensus was building among cartel countries and non-members on maintaining the agreement at the May talks. "It takes time because of the number involved -- 24 countries -- every country has an important role to play," he said. Al-Sada hailed the fact that compliance to the November agreement has been almost 98 percent including all participants and had sometimes been over 100 percent among OPEC members, meaning they had exceeded the output cuts demanded. Compliance has historically been a problem within OPEC and Al-Sada said that adherence to past agreements had been on average only 70 percent. "The agreement was very successful and it helped the process of rebalancing," he said. "It (the market) is picking up. We hope to get a more accelerated balancing process in the second half of the year." - 'Boom and bust' - Story continues The energy minister of OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia Khalid al-Falih said earlier this month that the output cuts might have to be prolonged in order to achieve the desired rebalancing of the market. Without directly echoing his Saudi counterpart's comments, Al-Sada said the rebalancing was coming but would still take time. "The market today is well supplied and will be for the next years. The upturn is definitely going to come and the market will balance, yes, not in the coming two years but in four or five." Oil prices currently hover just around $50 per barrel after shedding around half of their value since mid-2014. Al-Sada denied that low oil prices were of benefit to anyone, describing their plunge as a "negative sum game". Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said that the oversupply and low oil price had pushed new conventional oil projects to a 70-year low. "As a result of the decline in activity in conventional oil we may see oil markets tightening in the 2020s," he said. Birol said energy markets has undergone a "revolution" due to the surge in output of shale oil, especially from the United States, a "second revolution" was underway due to liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Australia and other markets. He warned there was a risk of a "boom-and-bust cycle" in energy markets, saying this showed the importance of oil and gas producers diversifying their economies. By Robin Emmott VALETTA (Reuters) - Estonia's defense minister said on Thursday that Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to NATO. Russia and Belarus aim to hold joint war games in September that some North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013. Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other NATO governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the so-called Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna cited plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and gear there, possibly to set up a military outpost in its closest ally. "For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told Reuters in an interview in Malta. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analyzing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises," he said before a meeting of EU defense ministers. Russias Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the subject. Moscow denies any plans to threaten NATO and says it is the U.S.-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. "We see what they are doing on the other side of the EU-NATO border. Troops may remain there after Zapad," Tsahkna said, saying that Tallinn had shared its concerns with Baltic and NATO allies. He put the number of potential troops in the thousands. Such a move could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia just as the U.S.-led NATO alliance stations multinational battalions in the Baltic region in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. "QUESTION OF TRUST" The scale of this year's Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of NATO's most pressing concerns, as diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill. Previous large-scale exercises in 2013 employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats said. Russia, bridling at NATO's expansion eastwards into its old Soviet sphere of influence, says its exercises are a response to NATO's 4,000-strong new deterrent force in the Baltics and Poland that will begin to rotate through the region from June. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January the scenario for the Zapad 2017 exercises would "take into account the situation linked to increased NATO activity along the borders of the Union state," Russian media cited, in a reference to the union of Russia and Belarus. The exercises, to be held simultaneously on military training grounds in Russia and Belarus, aim to focus on joint planning, command tactics and joint troop formations, he said. "In the future we plan to strengthen the practical nature of such exercises, taking into account the emerging foreign policy realities," Shoigu added, in an apparent reference to the expansion of NATO, which is soon to include Montenegro. The U.S. Army's top European commander has called on Russia to open its exercises to observers to calm Baltic concerns. Asked about Moscow's possible motives for leaving troops in Belarus, Tsahkna said it was likely about President Vladimir Putin's image as a strong leader at home, as well as cementing ties with Belarus, which was alarmed by the Crimea annexation. "Russia has presidential elections next year and Putin needs to show strength to the Russian people," Tsahkna said. "It's also a question of trust with Belarus." The West has sought to improve ties with Belarus over the past two years, lifting some sanctions in an overture to the country's President Alexander Lukashenko, the man the West calls Europe's "last dictator." But Belarus remains Russia's ally and a member of Putin's Eurasian trade bloc. Belarus Defence Minister Andrei Ravkov has echoed Russia's position that NATO is a threat, also accusing Ukraine of raising tensions by aligning itself with the West. (Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Toby Chopra) Brussels (AFP) - EU leaders are expected at a summit this weekend to back automatic membership for Northern Ireland after Brexit if it ever reunifies with Ireland, sources said on Friday. Ireland will ask the 27 European Union leaders to endorse a text on the issue when they meet on Saturday without Britain to adopt guidelines for Brexit negotiations. While the move could rile London, European sources said it would only "state the obvious" and compared it to integration of the former East Germany into the EU after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A draft of the summit minutes seen by AFP says the 1998 Good Friday peace accord "expresssly provides for an agreed mechanism whereby a united Ireland may be brought about through peaceful and democratic means". "In this regard, the European Council acknowledges that, in accordance with international law, the entire territory of such a united Ireland would thus be part of the European Union," it says. Britain's vote to leave the EU has raised a host of sensitive issues about the future of Northern Ireland, with the EU insisting in the summit guidelines on the need to avoid a "hard border" with Ireland. The historic Good Friday accord, which ended decades of violence in the British province, includes provisions for Northern Ireland to reunify with the Republic in the future if it chooses to. - 'State the obvious' - Britain is already highly sensitive to territorial issues in the Brexit talks after the guidelines said Spain should have the final say over whether any eventual trade deal applies to the British outcrop of Gibraltar. The issue of a united Ireland rejoining the EU will not however be included in the summit guidelines themselves, an EU Council source told AFP. Brussels insisted that if added on Saturday a so-called "Kenny text" -- named after Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny -- would not change the situation of Ireland or Northern Ireland. Story continues "It would merely state the obvious, that a united Ireland would continue being a member of the EU," the EU Council source said. "The EU does of course not take a stance on the possibility of a united Ireland." By contrast, the EU has said that Scotland would have to reapply to join the bloc if it voted for independence from Britain after Brexit. The EU says questions about Northern Ireland are among those that must be resolved as part of the Brexit divorce agreement before talks can begin on a future EU-UK trade deal. The other key divorce issues the EU wants to settle are Britain's exit bill -- estimated by EU sources at 60 billion euros -- and the fate of three million EU citizens living in Britain, plus a million Britons living in the EU. Paris (AFP) - The European Parliament accuses French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen's party of defrauding it of nearly five million euros ($5.5 million) in expenses, more than twice an initial estimate, a French legal source said Thursday. The parliament accuses Le Pen's anti-EU National Front (FN) of using funds meant for parliamentary assistants to pay staff for party work in France between 2012 and 2017. The allegations, which Le Pen denies, have triggered an investigation in France. The parliament had initially estimated the amount of the contested salaries at 1.9 million euros but now believes the FN wrongfully expensed 4,978,122 euros, the source said, quoting a note to French investigators from the parliament's legal team. Patrick Maisonneuve, a lawyer for the parliament, confirmed the amount to AFP. The parliament believes 17 FN lawmakers in the European Parliament, including Le Pen, used European money to pay assistants for work outside the assembly, the source said. French investigators have not said how many of the jobs are in question. Le Pen, who came second in the first round of the presidential election behind centrist Emmanuel Macron, has portrayed the allegations as part of a plot to stymie her political ambitions. She will go up against Macron in a run-off vote on May 7. In March, Le Pen invoked her MEP's immunity in refusing to submit to questioning by investigating magistrates. Her chief of staff Catherine Griset and another party official have been charged with concealment. Brussels (AFP) - Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem gave a "strong commitment" Thursday that a deal to break the deadlock over Greece's bailout would be reached by next month. Differences remain wide on unlocking the latest tranche of cash for Athens from its 86-billion-euro ($91-billion) bailout agreed in 2015, in order to avoid a default in July. "The parliament has my personal strong commitment that we will achieve that deal for Greece in May. It needs to be done in May," Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister, told European Parliament in Brussels. "The situation in Greece is not good enough. Growth is falling back again," he said. Eurozone ministers are set to meet on May 22. In a sign of progress, the overseers of Greece's bailout -- the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF -- resumed a long-delayed audit Tuesday following an agreement on further reforms. But disagreements remain on the level of debt relief needed by Athens with powerful Germany resistant to further efforts. "Debt relief will be needed to find a solution. That's my opinion and I belive that is shared in the Eurogroup," Dijsselbloem said. "We need trust to continue, growth to continue. You have personal commitment and I will come back to the parliament with that fair deal for Greece." Our Tweeter in Chief Donald Trump, is known for playing fast and loose with facts, but you'd think a birthday message to his wife would be a nice softball. He can garner a few awws and then move on. Nope. SEE ALSO: The only Melania in the White House is this photograph On Wednesday, Melania Trump celebrated her birthday. And like most loved ones do on their spouse's birthday, Donald Trump took to Twitter to send his best wishes to his wife. However, when it came to the graphics, there was a ball drop. Or a star drop, if you will. If you look closely you'll notice that the flag in that graphics package only has 39 stars, which leaves out quite a number of states. And because nothing escapes the internet, Twitter definitely noticed. There are only 39 stars on that flag, sir. https://t.co/KATgoLIQUv Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) April 27, 2017 This is so weird: The American flag on @FLOTUS Melania Trump's birthday card only has 39 stars. H/t: @eventsforgood pic.twitter.com/IYd2hdOXGJ Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) April 27, 2017 Very weird. Since the 39 star flag was never official since we went from 38 to 42 states in 1890. https://t.co/TG5JWAPOA3 MyNinjaTurtle (@MyNinjaTurtle) April 27, 2017 To make matters even more worse, this is not the first time Donald Trump has shared the 39-star flag. Story continues As MSNBC's Chris Hayes pointed out, Donald Trump also shared the flag at the end of the video welcoming freed Egyptian American Aya Hijazi who was imprisoned in Cairo. Someone in the WH graphics operation has a 39-star flag saved on their computer as the current flag and is using it everything! Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 27, 2017 For reference, Mr. President, we've never actually had a 39-star flag in the history of the United States. The design was actually created in 1889 when flag makers were anticipating the addition of the Dakotas to the United states. Flag makers incorrectly assumed that what we know as North Dakota and South Dakota would be admitted to the US as only one state, not two. The New York Times notes: Long story short, flag makers jumped the gun, so now 39-star flag was never an official flag. They are now just collectors items. Note: there was never an official 39-star flag, but some folks thought there would be 39 states in 1889, so some flags were actually created Brian Ruh (@brianruh) September 5, 2016 WE NEVER EVEN HAD A 39 STAR FLAG https://t.co/XpMS0LMd97 SheriffFruitfly (@sherifffruitfly) April 27, 2017 Now, to be fair, this is probably just a graphic design mistake from the White House art department, not a comment on how many states Trump wishes we had. But the fact stands: The. President. Of. The. United. States. Tweeted. A. Fake. Flag. Happy Birthday, Melania! Visit Yahoo View for more celebrity videos. By Jean Yoon and J.R. Wu TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said a direct phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump could take place again and she urged the self-ruled island's political rival China to step up to its global responsibility to keep the peace as a large nation. "We have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the U.S. government," Tsai told Reuters in an exclusive interview on Thursday. "We don't exclude the opportunity to call President Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the U.S. government's consideration of regional affairs." The interview was the first since Trump, as U.S. President-elect, took a congratulatory phone call from Tsai in early December. It was the first contact between a leader of Taiwan and an incumbent or incoming U.S. president in nearly four decades and Trump cast doubt on Washington's long-standing policy of acknowledging Beijing's "one China" policy, which claims Taiwan is a part of China. The call angered Beijing because it fears contacts between Taiwan and government leaders would confer sovereignty on the island. Democratic Taiwan, self-ruled since 1949, has no interest in being ruled by autocratic China. However, Trump agreed to honour the "one China" policy in February and then hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort earlier this month. F-35 REQUEST Despite this, Tsai said Taiwan's ties with the United States have been improving. She said Taiwan may need to buy from its sole arms supplier the most advanced stealth jet in the U.S. arsenal. "We don't rule out any items that would be meaningful to our defence and our defence strategy and the F-35 is one such item," said Tsai, in the first remarks by a top Taiwanese official on the matter. Taiwan will eventually have to submit a weapons purchase list during talks with Washington. Tsai said, however, senior officials were not yet in place in the Trump administration to handle the issue. China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it was resolutely opposed to any country selling arms to Taiwan. Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun made the comment at a monthly news briefing in Beijing when asked about the possible sale of F-35 fighter jets from the United States to Taiwan. Speaking from the Presidential Office as she nears her first year anniversary in office, Tsai urged Xi to act like a leader. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, and froze official communication channels with Taipei soon after Tsai and her independence-leaning party took power. Tsai has said she wants to maintain peace with China, but that her government won't bow to pressure from China. WHO MEETING China continues to pressure Taiwan, Tsai said, adding that the upcoming May meeting of the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) would be an important benchmark for relations between the two sides. Taiwan has said it is facing a more complicated task this year in securing an invitation for the meeting after Beijing last year warned that acceptance of the "one China" principle was a condition for Taiwan's attendance. Most major nations and multilateral organizations, like the WHO which falls under the United Nations, formally recognise China. The case of Taiwan activist Li Ming-che detained last month in China on suspicion of endangering national security was another major issue that would test ties, Tsai said, in rare public comments on the issue. Li's family and the Taiwan government have been frustrated at not being told where Li is being held or what charges he may face. If China does not properly handle this, the people of Taiwan will feel uneasy, Tsai said. I think that this will seriously hurt cross-Strait relations." When she first took office, China slammed Tsai's inaugural speech as offering an "incomplete answer" to what it called an exam on bilateral relations. Tsai said: "Why not say we both are facing a new exam. We also look forward to China using a different perspective to face this new exam." "China now needs to have its own sense of responsibility," Tsai said, adding that the world was changing and China must change too. "I hope Chairman Xi Jinping, as a leader of a large country and who sees himself as a leader, can show a pattern and flexibility, use a different angle to look at cross-Strait relations, and allow the future of cross-Strait ties to have a different kind of pattern." Recalling her historic call with Trump, Tsai talked about more possibilities. "My first feeling was that this is a new (Trump) government and perhaps under this new government there will be many different possibilities that appear," Tsai said. She tweeted congratulations to Trump minutes after he took office in January, and when asked if she might tweet him again, Tsai said: "Might not be a bad idea. I'll give some thought to it." (Reporting by Jean Yoon and J.R. Wu; Editing by Bill Tarrant) Student unions to intensify protests against fee hike in private schools Various student unions have decided to intensify protests against the government for not taking any initiative to roll back the decision of Private and Boarding Schools' Organization Nepal (PABSON) and Nepal PABSON (N-PABSON) to hike tuition fees at private schools. By Edward Taylor FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Tesla executive Klaus Grohmann was ousted last month after a clash with Chief Executive Elon Musk over the strategy of Grohmann's firm, which Tesla had acquired in November, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The Silicon Valley luxury electric carmaker is counting on Grohmann Engineering's automation and engineering expertise to help it ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018. At the time of the purchase, it described Klaus Grohmann and the company he founded as a "world leader in highly automated manufacturing". Tesla planned to keep Grohmann on, and Grohmann wanted to stay, but the clash with Musk over how to treat existing clients resulted in his departure, the source said. Grohmann disagreed with Musk's demands to focus management attention on Tesla projects to the detriment of Grohmann Engineering's legacy clients, which included Tesla's direct German-based rivals Daimler and BMW, two sources familiar with the matter said. Reached by phone, Klaus Grohmann declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving, citing confidentiality clauses. "I definitely did not depart because I had lost interest in working," Grohmann said, without elaborating. A Tesla spokesman, asked about Grohmann's departure, praised him for building an "incredible company" and said: "Part of Mr Grohmann's decision to work with Tesla was to prepare for his retirement and leave the company in capable hands for the future. Given the change in focus to Tesla projects, we mutually decided that it was the right time for the next generation of management to lead." Two sources familiar with the matter said Tesla's plans to ramp up production with the help of the company now renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation remain on track. The management layer below Klaus Grohmann is continuing his work, they told Reuters. But they said parts of the workforce felt insecure about becoming so dependent on one client after the founder's departure. Last year, Tesla had said: "Under the continued leadership of Mr Grohmann, several critical elements of Tesla's automated manufacturing systems will be designed and produced in Pruem, to help make our factories the most advanced in the world." "Our factories are so important that we believe they will ultimately deserve an order of magnitude more attention in engineering than what they produce. At very high production volumes, the factory becomes more of a product than the product itself," Tesla said at the time. Tesla started out as a client of Grohmann Engineering, a small unlisted company based in Pruem, near the Luxembourg border, that helped companies design highly automated factories, a source familiar with the company told Reuters. As pressure grew to increase production volumes at Tesla, Musk decided to buy Grohmann Engineering and make Pruem a base for Tesla Advanced Automation. As well as BMW and Daimler, Grohmann counted the auto parts maker Bosch, chip maker Intel, and pharmaceutical firms Abbott Laboratories and Roche among its clients. Negotiations have started with some of the clients about how to compensate them for lack of resources devoted to their projects, one of the sources said. The German labour union IG Metall has demanded that Tesla's management formalise multi-year job guarantees and increase salaries as a way to provide assurance amid management turmoil. (Reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by Kevin Liffey) By Simon Lewis and Wa Lone YANGON (Reuters) - The United Nations' refugee agency has criticized a Myanmar government plan to resettle Rohingya Muslims displaced by recent violence in "camp-like" villages, saying it risks stoking tensions, according to a document seen by Reuters. The plan - confirmed by a senior state-level official - has sparked fear among residents that they would end up penned into de facto refugee camps, the document produced by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Myanmar said. Attacks on border guard posts in northwestern Myanmar in October last year by a Rohingya insurgent group ignited the biggest crisis of national leader Aung San Suu Kyi's year in power. Security forces stand accused of mass killings and gang rapes during the counterinsurgency operation that followed. About 75,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh to escape the violence, during which at least 1,500 houses across several villages were burned, while thousands more hid in forests and fields. Some of those who fled have now returned and built temporary shelters, but the authorities have barred them from rebuilding their homes permanently citing "security restrictions", according to residents who spoke to Reuters and the UN document. Instead, authorities have devised a plan to relocate some 1,152 households from 13 scattered hamlets into larger, more manageable "model villages". In a three-page "advocacy note" dated April 25 and circulated among humanitarian agencies on Wednesday, the UNHCR warned the plan could "create further tensions" in villages recently scarred by the violence. "Based on the information available on the model villages and concerns brought to our attention by affected villagers, UNHCR stressed the importance to allow displaced communities to return to their place of origin and have access to their previous source of livelihoods," UNHCR Myanmar spokesman Andrew Dusek said by email when reached for comment on the document. More than 1 million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine State, where many in the Buddhist majority consider them interlopers from Bangladesh. While Dusek said the UNHCR understood the plan was still at draft stage and may not have been finalised, Rakhine State government secretary Tin Maung Swe said the local administration had already started implementing it. Tin Maung Swe said relocation was in the residents' interests as the "model villages" would be closer to government services. Rohingya villages in rural northern Rakhine were arranged "randomly" at present, he said. "If these villages are not systematic, they will not develop and it will be hard to build hospitals, schools and police stations," said Tin Maung Swe. "Also we will have difficulties to take care of security in the region." "MODEL VILLAGES" According to the UNHCR document and residents, the government has begun clearing land for the "model villages", in which households would each get a 220-square-metre (2,400 sq ft) plot and about $150 to build a home. Residents told UN staff they feared losing access to their farmland and fishing grounds, and becoming stuck in what would become "like IDP camps", the UNHCR document said. "A forced relocation to the 'model villages' would not progress stabilization in these areas," the UNHCR document said. About 120,000 Rohingya have lived in "internally displaced persons" camps in Rakhine, dependent of international aid, since communal violence in 2012. Suu Kyi has pledged to begin closing the camps, following recommendations from a commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan. Five people whose homes were destroyed in November told Reuters by telephone about the living conditions since the violence subsided, expressing their worries about the government's plans. "The village here has completely changed because all of the houses were burned down," said a 32-year-old in Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son village, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Reuters has previously interviewed dozens of refugees, residents and Myanmar security officials about the military operation in Rakhine. Witnesses said troops raped Rohingya women, killed civilians, and burned homes in a sweep through several villages in November. Satellite imagery analyzed by New York-based Human Rights Watch showed massive fires that destroyed hundreds of homes. Officials have denied most of the allegations and blamed insurgents and villagers themselves for the fires. Myanmar has blocked independent media and observers from the area. Residents said that, while the area is now relatively peaceful, checkpoints and a 9 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew remain in place and soldiers regularly patrol near villages, making it hard for them to reach their fields and shrimp farms or the area's basic health clinics. Villagers also told Reuters they feared the plots in the new settlements would be too small for many households, which often comprise extended family groups of 30 people or more. "The government told us their plan is for all of the villagers to huddle in one place, in one village near the main road," said a school teacher in Dar Gyi Zar village, who also spoke anonymously. "We want to live in our original place as before." (Reporting by Simon Lewis and Wa Lone; Editing by Antoni Slodkowski and Alex Richardson) No matter where they live or what they specialize in, female doctors in the US earn significantly less than male doctors, a new survey shows. The wage gap for medical specialities is highest for vascular surgeons, occupational medicine, gastroenterology, and both pediatric endocrinology and rheumatology. In each case, men earn about 20 percent more than women in the same specialty, translating to about $89,000 more for male vascular surgeons or about $45,000 more for male pediatric rheumatologists. The self-reported data was gathered from 36,000 licensed doctors working full-time in the US by Doximity, a social media site for physicians. STAT reported Tuesday on the overall wage gap between male and female doctors about 27 percent and what this means for a profession that relies more and more on female practitioners. Depending on the state (or Washington, D.C.), up to 46 percent of doctors are women and about half the graduates of US medical schools are women. And in certain specialities, such as pediatrics and pediatric sub-specialities, between 52 percent and 62 percent of practitioners are women. The Doximity report supports other studies relating to physician pay. But one report, published in 2016, finds female radiologists earn slightly more than male radiologists at public medical schools. Cirebon (Indonesia) (AFP) - Female Islamic clerics in Indonesia declared a series of fatwas Thursday, including one to tackle child marriage, a rare example of women taking a leading religious role in the Muslim-majority country. The fatwas -- religious edicts that have no legal force but are influential -- were issued at the end of a three-day congress of female clerics in the country with the world's biggest Muslim population. The meeting in Cirebon on Java island, billed as the world's first major gathering of female Muslim clerics, attracted hundreds of participants. Most were Indonesian but there were also clerics from Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia. They issued a series of fatwas at the end of the gathering, the most eye-catching of which was aimed at tackling child marriage. It urged the government to raise the minimum legal age for women to marry to 18 from the current age of 16. The United Nations childrens' agency UNICEF defines child marriage as a formal marriage or informal union before age 18, and says women are most affected. The problem is widespread in Indonesia, with one in four women marrying before 18, according to the agency. Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, who attended the meeting, suggested authorities would examine the proposal: "I will take this recommendation to the government." He also praised the gathering: "This congress succeeded in fighting for justice in the relationship between men and women." Among the other fatwas issued was one against women being sexually abused; and one against environmental destruction, in a country that struggles every year with huge fires that are started illegally and devastate vast swathes of rainforest. Fatwas are regularly issued in Indonesia but it is usually the male-dominated Indonesian Ulema Council -- the country's highest Islamic authority -- that declares them. While the Ulema Council has issued rulings on environmental protection in the past, it tends to focus on religious topics such as edicts against blasphemy. It has rarely dealt with any issues affecting women. About 90 percent of Indonesia's population of 255 million people are Muslim. Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice. Dakar (AFP) - A special court in Dakar on Thursday upheld a life sentence against Chad's former president Hissene Habre for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture, but acquitted him of rape. The Extraordinary African Chambers, a body created by Senegal and the African Union (AU), sentenced Habre last May to life behind bars, an unprecedented ruling seen as a blow to the impunity long enjoyed by repressive rulers on the continent. The president of Thursday's appeal court Wafi Ougadeye said he confirmed the life sentence but quashed the rape ruling. The decision is final. Habre, a former desert warrior, refused to recognise the court's authority, so the appeal was mounted on his behalf in January by his court-appointed lawyers. He was absent from proceedings. "No proof of his guilt has been demonstrated," said Mbaye Sene, one of his court lawyers, though Reed Brody, a US-based expert who has worked closely with Habre's victims to secure the conviction, has described his crimes as among the best-documented in African history. The court further upheld the right of victims to seek compensation for abuses committed during his 1982-1990 rule, as well as to their relatives, and set the fund for reparations at 82 billion francs CFA (125 million euros; $136 million). Delphine Djiraibe, representing the civil plaintiffs, said 7,396 victims stood to benefit, but experts warned that Habre's assets remained unaccounted for. "The African Union must ensure that the mandated Trust Fund implements the reparation order of the court effectively and fairly," said Amnesty International's Erica Bussey. "Efforts should also be made to trace, freeze and seize Habre's assets for reparation," she added. - 'Finally at peace' - The final stage in Habre's conviction has brought closure for relatives of up to 40,000 people killed and many more kidnapped, raped or tortured during his time as president. Story continues Brody, the US lawyer, said the ruling was "a powerful message that the days when tyrants could brutalise their people, pillage their treasury and escape abroad to a life of luxury are coming to an end." "Today will go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," he added in a statement. Habre remains in custody and will serve his sentence in Senegal or in another AU country. He fled to Senegal after his 1990 ouster by Chad's current President Idriss Deby, and for more than 20 years lived freely in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children. The trial set a global precedent as the first time a country had prosecuted the former leader of another nation for rights abuses, and was seen as a landmark example of African rights abuses being tried on the continent. Souleymane Guengueng, who founded a Habre victims' association after suffering in one of the ex-leader's notorious prisons, said in a statement he was "finally at peace". "I hope that all the dictators in Africa take notice - no one is above the law!" he said. Self-driving vehicles are passe in Silicon Valley. Now it's all about flying transportation. This week, Google co-founder Larry Page unveiled his plans for a Kitty Hawk Flyer that can hover above the water. Sergey Brin, the other Google co-founder, is reportedly building a giant dirigible inside a NASA hangar. Uber, naturally, has its own plans for flying cars, which it touted earlier this week at its Elevate Summit in Texas. And a German aircraft builder says it's planning to create an Uber-style self-driving system with its own passenger "vehicle," which is really a small, ultra-light jet. SEE ALSO: This personal helicopter is the motorcycle of the sky One major advantage of such designs should they ever become reality is the ability to zip from Point A to Point B, unencumbered by bumper-to-bumper traffic or 65-mile-an-hour speed limits. But we don't need such futuristic vehicles to go really, really fast. The Bloodhound SSC vehicle, a supersonic car designed to beat the current land speed record of 763 miles per hour. Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images Back in October 1997, a British jet-propelled car became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier. The car, called ThrustSSC, reached a speed of 763 miles per hour over one mile, earning it the Outright World Land Speed Record, a title the car still holds. Andy Green, the driver, screeched across the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a fact that Silicon Valley's flying car fanatics probably already knew. The semi-arid region is home to the annual Burning Man Festival, the beloved rustic networking event of entrepreneurs. According to Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, the global governing body of motor sports, previous well-known holders of the Outright World Land Speed Record include: Thrust II, driven by Richard Noble, a Scottish entrepreneur who was the project director for ThrustSSC. Noble achieved a best speed of 633.468 miles per hour in 1983. He held the top honor until Andy Driver claimed the mantle in 1997. Story continues Blue Flame, driven by Gary Gabelich, who was the first to exceed 1,000 kilometers an hour (621.4 miles per hour) in 1970. He achieved 630.388 miles per hour in his rocket-powered vehicle, which raced across the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah the world's preferred venue for land-speed record attempts. The original Sunbeam car, which beat the 1925 land speed world record of 150.76 mph. Image: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Blue Bird, driven by Malcolm Campbell in 1935, back when car racing mainly took place on beaches. The British motorist reached 301.129 miles per hour, his ninth land-speed record since 1924. Golden Arrow, driven by Henry Segrave. This speedy vehicle hit 231.36 miles per hour in 1929. One thing that all of these vehicles have in common is their shape, with the need to reduce aerodynamic drag in order to maximize forward speed. It remains to be seen how fast the new air transports will be, or if a new air race will supplant the land speed one-upmanship. Experience 387 MPH in VR Feel what its like to set a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Click here to download the Within app to watch The Possible. WATCH: Meet the fastest cars on the planet Former Bachelor star Chris Soules is finally speaking out after he was involved in a deadly car accident. The ABC reality star was arrested for fleeing the scene of the collision, which left the driver of the other vehicle dead. Soules, 35, was silent about both his arrest and his involvement in the crime until Tuesday. In a statement delivered to People by his spokesperson, the former Bachelor claimed he was devastated by what happened. Soules sent his regards to the family of Kenneth Mosher, the deceased. Chris Soules was involved in an accident Monday evening (April 24) in a rural part of Iowa near his home. He was devastated to learn that Kenneth Mosher, the other person in the accident, passed away, the statement read. His thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Moshers family. New details about the deadly incident emerged hours after Soules arrest. A spokesperson for the Buchanan County Sheriffs Office told ET Online the reality star stood before a judge, who read him the official complaint, on Monday. He was given a $10,000 bond and had his passport rescinded as a result of the charges against him. Police told ET the collision occurred around 8:20 p.m.EDT on Monday. He was driving a Chevy pickup truck when he reportedly read ended a John Deer tractor trailer. Both vehicles entered a ditch and the driver of the tractor trailer was taken to a local hospital, where he died. Soules was taken into custody several hours later. Hes been charged with fleeing the scene. Its unclear whether he was drinking at the time, though that is one of many things listed in the general probable cause list. ET obtained a copy of the list, which sites, admission/statements, caused property damage, operating motor vehicles, possessed alcoholic beverage/containers, identified by witnesses, near scene of crime and caused personal injury. KWWL, a local news outlet based in Buchanan County, Iowa, broke the news Monday morning. State police responded to a call about an accident involving a pickup and a second vehicle, initially thought to be a tractor. At the time, the identity of the person killed in the accident was not public. Story continues This isnt Soules first run in with the law. According to Radar Online, hes been arrested several times and plead guilty to 13 various charges. His most serious arrest took place in 2006, when he was charged with driving under the influence. Chris Soules Photo: Getty Images Related Articles Buenos Aires (AFP) - Just as she does every Thursday, Taty Almeida ties her white scarf around her head, grabs her cane and joins her fellow octogenarian protesters to march around the square outside Argentina's pink presidential palace. Defying their advancing years, the bereaved mothers making up Argentina's most famous human rights group still gather here every week, demanding answers on what happened to the children they lost during the country's brutal military dictatorship. The Mothers of May Square -- Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Spanish -- turns 40 this week, a milestone that finds its members increasingly frail but ever determined to see their children's killers brought to justice. The group was born on April 30, 1977, when 14 women gathered to protest the military dictatorship installed in a coup the year before. They dared to challenge the regime at a time when repression was at its height. They risked the same fate as their political activist children -- torture, death or simply disappearing without a trace. Instead, the generals tried to laugh them off as "the crazy ladies of May Square." "We were crazy -- crazy with pain, with rage, with powerlessness," says Almeida, whose dyed chestnut hair and fiery eyes belie her 86 years. But "we transformed that rage into love, into a peaceful struggle," she tells AFP. Almeida's son Alejandro disappeared on June 17, 1975, in the run-up to the coup. A 20-year-old medical student, he was also a member of the People's Revolutionary Army, a leftist guerrilla group. He was one of 30,000 people "disappeared" by the regime or right-wing death squads in the 1970s and 1980s. - Secret struggle - Almeida, who came from a military family, was reluctant to join the Mothers at first. "I didn't dare to go. Given who I was, I was afraid they would accuse me of being a spy. But once I joined the group, it was a revelation," she says. Story continues Almeida is a retired school teacher. Many of her fellow members were housewives. Few had ever been involved in politics, and many were surprised to learn their children were in leftist militant groups. But they found themselves caught up in the same struggle against the regime. Soon, a sister group was born: the Grandmothers of May Square, who discovered their abducted daughters had given birth in captivity. An estimated 500 such babies were stolen and illegally adopted, often by families close to the regime. - Fighting not to forget - At that first protest, the 14 mothers stood still in front of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, holding up pictures of their missing children. Surprised by the unexpected protest, police ordered them to walk instead, since public gatherings of more than three people were banned. So two by two, they marched around a statue in the square. The group has been doing that ever since, even after the dictatorship fell in 1983. Today they are joined by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of young admirers and fellow activists. They got a champion for their cause when late president Nestor Kirchner came to power in 2003. After his leftist government took office, hundreds of retired military officers have been tried and jailed for dictatorship-era abuses. But many dark secrets remain. "We don't know where (our children's) remains are. We can't mourn them. We can't lay flowers at their graves. There's nothing more cruel," says Almeida. Instead, they march. Their rallying cries have evolved over the years. The slogan at the first protests was, "We want them back alive." Today, one protester intones the names of the disappeared. The others reply "present" after each one. It is a way of fighting to not forget. "The crazy ladies are still here," says Almeida. "And we are still on our feet." Kenneth Williams put to death by lethal injection after appeal to US supreme court fails to secure a stay on his sentence Kenneth Williams attorneys have appealed to US supreme court to stop his execution on grounds of intellectual disability. Photograph: AP Arkansas has carried out its fourth execution within a week, bringing to a troubling end the states controversial attempt to run a conveyor belt of death in an aggressive burst of killings unseen in the US for more than half a century. Kenneth Williams was pronounced dead at 11.05pm local time at the end of a 13-minute lethal injection that resulted in disturbing signs of distress on the part of the prisoner. Eyewitnesses in the death chamber reported that his whole body shook with 15 or 20 convulsions just minutes into the procedure, and that he continued to breathe heavily even after a paralytic was injected into him to render all movement impossible. After the killing was completed, the Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, the architect of the states controversial schedule of quick-fire executions, proclaimed that the long path of justice ended tonight. Arkansans can reflect on the last two weeks with confidence that our system of laws in this state has worked. But observers were left with anything but confidence in the states ability to conduct humane executions as doubts continued to dog the weeks proceedings. Those doubts are certain to deepen after Thursday nights killing, if the eyewitness accounts are any indication. The lethal injection began at 10.52pm with the injection of midazolam, a sedative that has a very controversial track record in executions. At the time, Williams was still making a statement, and was speaking in tongues. His voice tailed off as he said: The words that I speak will forever, forever ... At about 10.55pm he was reported by media witnesses to be breathing heavily and gasping. Then he went into at least 10 seconds of convulsions, in which his body was described as shaking, he lurched forwards quickly multiple times, and he moaned and groaned. Two minutes later, a consciousness check was carried out by rubbing his sternum and lifting his eyelids. Members of the execution team were sufficiently certain that he was unconscious to at that point administer the second drug, vecuronium bromide, that paralyses the muscles and stops all movement. Story continues But according to the witnesses, he was still breathing heavily and he issued a further moan and a groan at 10.59pm two minutes after the paralytic would have been given. The governors spokesman said after the execution was completed that Williams convulsions amounted to involuntary muscular reaction brought about by the midazolam. Asked whether he was worried that the heavy breathing had continued after the consciousness check was done, he replied: No I am not. Fears have swirled around the states insistence on using midazolam as its first of the three drugs. As a sedative, midazolam does not have the same properties as anaesthetics used to render people unconscious before hospital surgeries. It has been associated with several gruesomely botched executions in the past few years including that of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in which he writhed and groaned on the gurney for 43 minutes. During Monday nights execution of Marcel Williams in Arkansas, witnesses saw him breathing heavily and arching his back for several minutes. Lawyers representing the death row inmates had warned repeatedly that were the prisoner not fully unconscious they could be subjected to excruciating pain as a result of the third drug potassium chloride that stops the heart, yet no-one would know because the second drug vecuronium bromide is a paralytic that makes the individual incapable of any movement. Kenneth Williams made a lengthy statement before he was killed. He apologised to all his victims families, and said: I was more than wrong. The crimes I perpetrated against you all were senseless, extremely hurtful, and inexcusable. I humbly beg your forgiveness and pray you find the peace, healing, and closure you all deserve. He added: I am not the same person I was. I have been transformed. Some things cant be undone. I seek forgiveness. Then he began speaking in tongues. Earlier in the day, lawyers for the inmate had appealed to the US supreme court to stop the execution from going ahead on grounds that Williams is intellectually disabled and as such protected from being put to death. Under Atkins v Virginia, the supreme court prohibited capital punishment for inmates with intellectual disabilities. In the petition to the nations highest court, Williams lawyers argued that he has been examined by several mental health experts who have all found him to be intellectually disabled. Yet the prisoner has repeatedly been denied a hearing on the issue in effect, his claim to be protected by the US constitution from an unlawful state killing has never been addressed by the judicial system. Despite the plea, the nations highest court through Justice Samuel Alito denied the motion for a stay, thus allowing the execution to proceed. The nine justices, who included President Trumps nominee Neil Gorsuch approving his fourth execution, did not give a reason for their decision. Williams, 38, was one of eight prisoners who were given death warrants scheduled in rare double executions over an 11-day period this month. Hutchinson attempted to justify the mass execution, unparalleled in death penalty history by anything since 1951, by arguing that a batch of the sedative midazolam used as the first of three drugs in its lethal injection protocol would expire at the end of April. In intense legal jousting that reached up to the US supreme court on numerous occasions, four of the eight condemned prisoners were eventually spared execution in this round of killings. Three men have been put to death: Ledell Lee last week, and Marcel Williams and Jack Jones on Monday night in the first double execution in the US in 16 years. Williams was sentenced to death for the October 1999 murder of Cecil Boren. He had escaped from Cummins prison, the same institution in which he was set to be executed on Thursday night. At the time of the escape and Boren murder, he had already been serving a life sentence for the murder of Dominique Hurd in the previous year. After murdering Boren, he stole his victims truck and crashed it into another vehicle, also killing its driver, Michael Greenwood. On Thursday, Kayla Greenwood, the daughter of the deceased driver, wrote a letter to Hutchinson pleading with him not to go ahead with the Williams execution. When he took my father from us, Mr Williams caused us all a great deal of pain, she said. That does not mean that asking you to spare Mr Williams is not the right thing to do. It is. She went on to reveal that her family had paid for travel costs to allow the condemned prisoners own daughter, Jasmine, to visit him in prison before he died. Jasmine had done nothing at all but like me, she could lose her father, Kayla Greenwood wrote. If Mr Williams is executed, her loss, her pain will be as real as mine. I do not wish this on anyone. Williams addressed Kayla Greenwood personally to thank her for such kindness in his statement moments before he was killed. He said: To Kayla Greenwood and the whole Greenwood family, the acts of grace, forgiveness, and mercy you demonstrated to the person who had taken so much from you by bringing to me in prison my own baby and grandchild right before my scheduled execution. No rapists, murderer, terrorist, butcher, barbarian, not even old Beelzebub himself could withstand such a blast of glorious light and continue to walk in darkness. The families of Williams other victims, Boren and Hurd, however, did not oppose his execution. In addition to the crushed schedule of so many executions in such short order, the individual killings carried out by Arkansas in the past week have been controversial. As the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard Law School pointed out on Thursday, the three men already killed by Arkansas had potent claims for mitigation claims that the US supreme court itself has made clear must be considered when deciding who is eligible for the ultimate punishment. In an amicus brief filed on behalf of Williams, the project wrote: Arkansas has executed three men, all of whom experienced unspeakable abuse and had significant impairments never presented to a jury. Ledell Lee appeared to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, borderline intellectual ability, and a plausible but under-investigated innocence claim, but his conflicted counsel, drunk attorney, and mentally ill lawyer all failed to investigate this evidence. The brief went on: Jack Jones had bipolar disorder and a father who beat him and raped his sister. Marcel Williams had a mother who pimped him out to older women for sex starting when Marcel was a pre-teen. The jurors who sentenced these men to death never heard this evidence. Jacob Rosenberg is a reporter for the Arkansas Times Weeks after firing host Bill OReilly amid allegations of sexual harassment, Fox News is under fire once again for accusations of racial discrimination. Eleven current and former Fox News employees have filed a lawsuit alleging that Fox employees engaged in abhorrent, intolerable, unlawful and hostile racial discrimination and created a workplace more akin to Plantation-style management than a modern-day work environment". The case, which started with two former payroll employees, made headlines this week with the addition of former Fox and Friends co-host Kelly Williams. Williams claims he was harassed, belittled, and passed over for promotions at Fox because of his race. Read more Bill O'Reilly: Disgraced anchor to receive 'tens of millions' from Fox In one instance, Mr Williams claimed Mr OReilly refused to run a segment on the African American community that he suggested because it showed black people in too positive a light. [Wright] saw what was going on with people who were behind the scenes, and felt he had been subject of race discrimination throughout his career, and thought it was important to step up, Douglas Wigdor, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, told The Independent. The additional plaintiffs, all of whom have worked office jobs for the company, allege varying degrees of racial discrimination and harassment at the hands of former Fox News controller Judy Slater. One black employee alleges Ms Slater told her hair was too ethnic, asked her to beat box for her, and questioned whether all three of her children were fathered by the same man. Ms Slater allegedly told one black employee that the Black Lives Matter movement is racist, and complained to another about the problem of Indian people moving into her neighbourhood. According to the suit, Ms Slater regularly disparaged her black and brown employee's appearance, food, and families. Ms Slaters lawyer, Catherine Foti, told The Independent her client denies all allegations against her. Story continues The incendiary language by Attorney Wigdor raising the shameful period of Jim Crow and plantations is outrageous and draws a comparison that demeans the atrocities committed during those times, she said in a statement. These frivolous charges are solely aimed at generating headlines, inflaming racial tensions and poisoning potential jury pools and judges." The lawsuit also names General Counsel Dianne Brandi and Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox as defendants. Plaintiffs in the suit say they complained about Ms Slaters behaviour to Ms Brandi and Human Resources Director Denise Collins as early as 2012. Asada Blanco, the plaintiff in a similar suit filed on Wednesday, says she complained as early as 2008 eight and a half years before Ms Slater was fired. More than a dozen current & former Fox News employees are suing, saying they suffered years of racial discrimination https://t.co/xESrDyzwoU pic.twitter.com/eTvc9Tu9K1 Jim Dalrymple II (@JimDalrympleII) April 26, 2017 21st Century Fox fired Ms Slater in March, after 18 years at the company, after complaints about her discriminatory behaviour were leaked to the media. We take any complaint of this nature very seriously and took the appropriate action in investigating and firing Ms. Slater within two weeks of this being brought to our attention, said Fox News in a statement at the time. There is no place for abhorrent behaviour like this at Fox News. The plaintiffs, however, allege that Fox News knew about the allegations long before this year, and only terminated Ms Slater when they learned that former employees Tichaona Brown and Tabrese Wright planned to file a lawsuit. The fact that they fired her before we filed a lawsuit doesnt mean anything, Mr Wigdor told The Independent. Its going to be very obvious that numerous people complained about her conduct and nothing was done. Moreover, Mr Wigdor said, the plaintiffs allege Fox News engaged in a systemic pattern of treating white people differently than black people, with respect to the terms and conditions of their employment, pay and opportunities. 21st Century Fox did not respond to The Independents request for comment, but a spokesperson for Fox News told The New York Times that the network vehemently denies the allegations. Earlier this month the network fired Mr OReilly, their longtime host, after it was revealed that they had paid $13 million to protect him from allegations of sexual harassment. They fired founder and former CEO Roger Ailes last summer, after at least 20 women accused him of sexual harassment as well. Fox News Jesse Watters announced a two-day vacation from the network on Wednesday night, just a day after coming under fire for a controversial remark The Five co-host made about Ivanka Trump. Watters, a native of Germantown and East Falls, told viewers of The Five that he would be back on the show on Monday, CNNMoney reports. He joined The Five for the shows new 9 p.m. time slot this week. Watters announcement comes following a comment critics interpreted as a dirty joke about Trump that the host made Tuesday night. The Five was in the midst of a segment about how the president's daughter was audibly booed at a womens economic conference in Germany. WATCH: Jesse Watters on Fox News re Ivanka Trump: "I really like how she was speaking into that microphone" pic.twitter.com/HoJHLpMtq1 Yashar (@yashar) April 26, 2017 Its funny, the left says they really respect women, and then when given an opportunity to respect a woman like that, they boo and hiss, Watters said. So, I dont really get whats going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone. Some, including MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski and Commentary editor John Podhoretz, viewed the comment as innuendo: Unsubtle reference from reporter who's interviewed potus about his daughter https://t.co/Q0wSF1Y0pv Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 26, 2017 Congratulations, Jesse Watters, you're a disgusting pig as well as being a racist moron. https://t.co/lZbydxIV7l John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 26, 2017 FOX, clean it up. Microphone comments? Comments on hosts dresses? Get rid of those who cannot measure up. #enough #stepup #blatant #shame Mika Brzezinski (@morningmika) April 26, 2017 This Jesse Watters fellow seems like a charmer Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) April 26, 2017 Watters denied critics accusations that his comment about Trump was sexual in nature, saying in a statement that he and his fellow co-hosts were commenting on Ivanka's voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. He also made a similar statement on Twitter: Story continues On air I was referring to Ivanka's voice and how it resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. This was in no way a joke about anything else. Jesse Watters (@jessebwatters) April 26, 2017 The controversy comes at a difficult time for Fox News, which itself has come under fire following multiple claims of sexual harassment at the network. Fox terminated its relationship with Bill OReilly earlier this month following an investigation into sexual harassment allegations. In that instance, it was revealed that OReilly and the network spent about $13 million on settlements with five women who accused the former OReilly Factor host of sexual misconduct. OReillys ouster came a year after several women accused former chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, prompting his resignation from parent company Fox Television Stations Group in July. Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky and former anchor Alisyn Camerota additionally accused Ailes of past harassment this month. Watters joined Fox News in 2002 as a production assistant. In 2003, he made his on-camera debut as an OReilly Factor correspondent, where he became known for his man-on-the-street interviews on the "Watters' World" show segment. This controversy is the latest for Watters, who last year was accused of racism after producing a segment filmed in New York Citys Chinatown in which he asked Asian people if they knew karate, as well as if they knew if it was the year of the dragon. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said following the segment that Watters vile, racist behavior has no place in our city. Watters later apologized. I try to make it enjoyable for the person Im interviewing, Watters told television critic Ellen Gray in Dec. 2015. We always come away from the interview all smiles, for the most part. Most Popular on Philly.com Damascus (AFP) - Syria on Thursday accused France of concealing the real identity of those behind a deadly suspected chemical attack, a day after Paris said it had proof the Damascus regime was responsible. Western leaders have accused President Bashar al-Assad's regime of carrying out an April 4 sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun that was reported to have killed 88 people, including 31 children. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Wednesday laid out what he described as scientific proof the regime was behind the alleged attack, including analysis of samples taken from the scene. Damascus fired back on Thursday, condemning "the campaign of deceit, shameless lies and fabrications set forth by... Ayrault". "This is an attempt to hide the truth of this crime and its perpetrators," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement. "The French government has neither the authority nor the judicial qualification to determine what happened in Khan Sheikhun." Syria's government has repeatedly denied any use of chemical weapons including in Khan Sheikhun. In an interview with AFP earlier this month Assad said the allegation was "100 percent fabrication" and a pretext for the US decision to launch air strikes against the Syrian airbase from where Washington believes the attack was launched. Paris (AFP) - Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen delivered a ferocious attack Thursday on her globalist rival Emmanuel Macron, saying voters faced a choice "for or against France". The candidates' starkly differing visions on France's future are at the heart of the May 7 election run-off -- with Macron, a 39-year-old former banker embracing free trade and the EU, while Le Pen wants to seal France's borders and quit the euro. "The country Mr Macron wants is no longer France, it's a space, a wasteland, a trading room where there are only consumers and producers," Le Pen told a cheering crowd of some 4,000 supporters in the Riviera city of Nice, a rightwing stronghold. "It's no longer a nation but a splintered multicultural society... where the only law is the survival of the fittest," said Le Pen, who got fresh bad news Thursday in the "fake jobs" scandal afflicting her National Front (FN) party. "This election is a referendum for or against France I'm asking you to choose France," she said. But Le Pen, who the latest polls suggest is some 20 points behind her rival, also sought to cast a reassuring image aimed at broadening voter support for her anti-immigrant, anti-EU camp. "I pay no attention to your origins, your religion, your sexual orientation, the colour of your skin," she told the flag-waving crowd. "That doesn't interest me, what interests me is you." She has campaigned fiercely since she and Macron qualified Sunday for the runoff, while Macron was accused of a laggardly start to his second-round efforts but has stepped up the pace over the past 24 hours. - 'Neither banker, nor racist' - The former economy minister, speaking at nearly the same time as Le Pen on French television, said he aimed to heal the divide in France over its relationship with the EU. "I will defend (the EU) by reforming it," he said. "Our challenge is to reconcile our citizens with the EU... which we need to provide more protection to our citizens amid globalisation." Story continues Macron was booed and heckled on Wednesday when he visited a Whirlpool factory in the northern city of Amiens, his hometown, where the US appliances giant is threatening to partially outsource production to Poland. The besuited candidate had been meeting with union representatives kilometres away from the plant, but he was upstaged when Le Pen showed up at the factory unannounced. Her appearance forced a hasty change in plans and Macron ended up spending more than an hour debating with workers amid chaotic scenes as dozens of TV camera teams crowded around him. He left the incident relatively unscathed, and even shook hands with some workers before leaving. Macron and Le Pen topped the first round of the election on Sunday to advance to the runoff, but not everyone is happy with the line-up. On Thursday, students demonstrating against both candidates clashed with police in Paris, hurled bottles at the officers who responded with tear gas. Black-clad demonstrators broke off from a 1,000-strong crowd of mostly teens waving signs that said "Neither the banker, nor the racist". The latest poll suggests Macron will defeat Le Pen by a margin of 21 points in the runoff on May 7, and figures from France's traditional left and right -- both absent from the second round -- have backed him too. Le Pen journeyed to the Mediterranean coast Thursday to spend the morning aboard a fishing trawler, seeking to portray herself as the protector of small-time producers. - Five million euros - The "Battle of Amiens" at the Whirlpool factory -- as leftwing daily Liberation called it -- was the standout moment of the election so far, even though the candidates were not at the site at the same time. Much of campaign was dominated by the legal woes engulfing conservative Francois Fillon, whose campaign was dogged by allegations he paid his wife millions in public money for little work. He lost in Sunday's first round. But on Thursday there was a reminder of the allegations of wrongdoing also hanging over Le Pen. Investigators probing alleged FN expenses fraud at the European Parliament said the sum involved was now believed to be nearly five million euros ($5.5 million), more than twice an initial estimate. The parliament accuses the FN of using funds meant for parliamentary assistants to pay staff including a bodyguard to work in France between 2012 and 2017, which contravenes the assembly's rules. In March, Le Pen invoked her immunity as an MEP in refusing to submit to questioning by French prosecutors until after the election. "Five million euros, that's nonsense," said Wallerand de Saint Just, National Front party treasurer. PARIS (Reuters) - French riot police clashed with youths in central Paris on Thursday when a demonstration against far right leader presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron turned violent. Police replied with teargas as hooded youths threw bottles on the sidelines of a march by about 500 hundred high school students. Police also used teargas against protesters in the western city of Rennes where nearly 2,000 high school and university students, and far-left activists, held a demonstration, a Reuters correspondent there reported. In Paris, protesting students blocked the entrances, or staged election-related demonstrations, at about 20 high schools earlier on Thursday after student unions urged them to turn out. Students have been holding "neither Le Pen, neither Macron" protests at high schools since the two qualified on Sunday for a May 7 runoff vote in France's two-stage presidential election. "We are calling for action against far right candidate Marine Le Pen and the candidate of high finance, Emmanuel Macron," said UNL-SD student union leader Giuseppe Aviges, alluding to Macron's past as an investment banker. (Reporting by Leigh Thomas and Helene Dauschy in Paris, Pierre-Henri Allain in Rennes; Editing by Richard Balmforth) A French tourist survived a rare shark attack in New Zealand on Thursday, suffering only moderate injuries, rescuers and locals said. The woman, aged in her 20s, was bodyboarding in the afternoon at Curio Bay in the South Island when the shark attacked her leg, St John Ambulance said. She was airlifted to Dunedin Hospital's emergency department for treatment. Nick Smart, who runs the Caitlin Surf School, said the woman was in the water with friends when the shark attacked "out of nowhere". He said the woman's companions dragged her onto the beach and she remained calm as locals took her to a shelter and applied pressure to her wound while awaiting a rescue helicopter. "She was conscious the whole time but had a pretty good gash on her leg," he told the Otago Daily Times. "There wasn't a ton of blood, obviously it wasn't an arterial bleed." Shark attacks are uncommon in New Zealand, the last fatality being a 47 year-old man who was attacked at popular tourist beach west of Auckland in 2013. Before that, there had not been a shark attack death since 1976. By Andrea Hopkins OTTAWA (Reuters) - The front-runner in the race to become the next leader of Canada's Conservatives dropped out on Wednesday mere hours before the final televised debate, stunning party insiders and throwing the contest open to two remaining favorites. Reality TV star and venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary said he was withdrawing from the 14-way contest to replace former Prime Minister Stephen Harper because he had not gained enough support in the French-speaking province of Quebec, where elections are often decided. "I worked really hard and I couldn't move the needle" in Quebec, O'Leary told reporters, standing next to Maxime Bernier, a former foreign minister whose candidacy O'Leary said he would support. The Conservative Party of Canada will decide its new leader by May 27 to face Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the 2019 national election. "We are going to bring our forces together now so that we can win this race and then beat Justin Trudeau in 2019," said Bernier, a Quebec libertarian who was neck-and-neck with O'Leary for much of the race. O'Leary, who gained fame as a brusque dealmaker on the reality show "Shark Tank," had no political experience and tenuous ties to the party but stole the spotlight because of an outsized media profile and the support of Canadians who saw the businessman as a breath of fresh air. Bernier, by contrast, is a second-generation politician and free-market champion whose previous brush with fame came when he was dumped from Harper's cabinet after leaving confidential documents at the house of a girlfriend with links to organized crime. The endorsement by O'Leary will boost Bernier's chances, with populist immigrant-skeptic Kellie Leitch and current members of Parliament Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole representing Bernier's biggest threat. All four held their ground late on Wednesday at the final debate of the year-long contest, with Bernier arguing he was the best positioned to negotiate trade with U.S. President Donald Trump because they both want to end the supply management system of Canada's dairy sector. "I'm the only one who can make a deal with him," Bernier said during the debate in Toronto. "But if you want a deal with us, you must open the border to softwood lumber and other products. That is the only way to have free trade in North America." Trump is considering issuing an executive order to pull the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, a senior official in his administration said on Wednesday. The move could unravel one of the world's biggest trading blocs. Canada's Conservative vote will be decided by a preferential ballot that redistributes second-place votes until there is a winner. With 13 candidates, analysts have been wary of predicting a winner because even internal opinion polls have a hard time figuring out how preferences will shake out on the third, fourth, or fifth ballot that may be required for one candidate to win a majority of votes. (Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Grant McCool and Tom Brown) (PYONGYANG) - An acute shortage of gasoline in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang that has sparked price hikes and hoarding is raising fears of potentially crippling pain at the pumps if things dont get better soon - and driving rumors that China is to blame. The shortage, which is extremely unusual if not unprecedented, began last week when signs went up at gas stations around the city informing customers that restrictions on sales would be put in place until further notice. With no indication as of Wednesday night of when the restrictions might be lifted - or why they have been imposed - drivers continue to scramble to fill up their tanks and whatever other containers they can find. Prices, meanwhile, have shot up. They had been fairly stable, typically at about 70-80 cents a kilogram, but on Wednesday at least one station was charging $1.40. Gasoline is sold by the kilogram in North Korean filling stations. One kilogram is roughly equivalent to one liter, so a gallon at the station costs about $5.30. China supplies most of energy-poor North Koreas fuel, and in lieu of official explanations, rumors are rife that Beijing is behind the shortage. The concerns are adding to a tense and uncertain mood on the Korean Peninsula since U.S. President Donald Trump assumed office with repeated calls for Beijing - Pyongyangs economic lifeline-to get tough on North Korea, which has responded with counterclaims Washington is pushing for a nuclear war. Though trade between North Korea and China appears to be solid, and possibly even growing, there are indications Beijing has been quietly tightening enforcement of some international sanctions aimed at getting Pyongyang to abandon its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Limiting the oil supply has been openly discussed in Beijing as one option. Whether that is actually happening is unclear. David von Hippel, a senior associate with the Nautilus Institute who specializes in energy and environmental issues, said supplies of crude oil and oil products would drop markedly without Chinese imports. But he stressed other factors could just as well be involved. Story continues The shortages and price rises being seen may be due to a combination of factors, including both actual shortages of products, more products being routed to other users - specific ministries, key factories, or the military, for example-and, or, more product being placed into government storage facilities, he said in an email. I do not have a sense, at present, of which of these options, and in what combination, is the driver for the price rises and sales restrictions. But two days after the restrictions were announced, North Koreas state-run Korean Central News Agency carried an unusually acerbic, and even threatening, editorial denouncing a country around the DPRK, an obvious if not explicit reference to China. DPRK is short for North Koreas official name - the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. The DPRKs nuclear deterrence for self-defense ... is by no means a bargaining chip for getting something, the commentary said, adding that if the country keeps applying economic sanctions while dancing to the tune of someone ... it may be applauded by the enemies of the DPRK but it should get itself ready to face the catastrophic consequences in the relations with the DPRK. It is unclear whether the gas shortage has affected North Koreas military, state ministries and major projects, all of which get priority access to the state-controlled supply. But the North this month has staged a huge military parade, unveiled a sprawling high-rise residential district and on Tuesday conducted its biggest-ever live-fire air, land and sea military drill. It is also believed to be prepared to conduct what would be its sixth underground nuclear test. Several chains of gas stations are operated under different state-run enterprises-some, for example, are operated by Air Koryo, the national flagship airline - and prices can vary. North Korea gasoline customers usually purchase coupons at a cashiers booth to fill up. Leftover coupons can be used on later visits until their expiration date. A common amount for the coupons is 15 kilograms (19.65 liters or 5.2 U.S. gallons). The number of North Korean gas stations has grown steadily in recent years, mainly in Pyongyang, provincial capitals and along major highways. Pyongyang traffic has gotten significantly heavier since Kim Jong Un assumed power in late 2011. The greater number of cars, including swelling fleets of taxis, has been seen as an indication of greater economic activity. Many of the vehicles are used for business purposes, such as transporting people or goods. When I last visited in 2005, they were filling up our bus with gas rations from buckets, said Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a contributor to the 38 North website. Things have definitely changed. Melvin added that the growth of an actual domestic market for gasoline has made it possible to see when there is a problem, since prices are posted at the gas stations, making trends publicly trackable. There is also less rationing than in the past. If the apparent shortages are being caused by China, he said, the most likely explanation would be that less fuel is flowing across the border via pipeline. Such a slowdown or stoppage would have an immediate impact on prices and would take time to compensate for by ships, trucks or trains. The primary place for North Korea pipeline storage tanks in China is in the border city of Dandong. But it was also not clear if North Korean tankers were picking up as much fuel as usual. This article was originally published on TIME.com Jerusalem (AFP) - Constant fuel shortages and insufficent infrastructure have brought about a "humanitarian crisis" for Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the World Bank said on Thursday. In a report ahead of an international donor conference next week, it said Thursday that foreign aid alone cannot rescue the stagnant Palestinian economy without practical changes and Israeli cooperation. Gaza's sole electricity plant frequently runs out of fuel for its generators and rations power supplies to as little as four hours per day. The Islamist Hamas movement seized power in Gaza in 2007 from the Ramallah-based Fatah organisation of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. It imports diesel for the generators through Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA), but the rivals are in constant dispute over payment, leading to constant shortages. "During summer and winter peaks the scarce electricity supply is increasingly rationed to four hours during daytime," the report quotes the bank's West Bank and Gaza director Marina Wes as saying. "Recently, this situation has become the norm leaving Gazans without electricity during most of the day. This has created a humanitarian crisis for Gazas two million people." The shortages hit hospitals, clinics, water supply and other vital services, as well as household needs, she said. Protests broke out in January over the power cuts, which the Gaza health ministry warned could have "dangerous consequences" for patients. "The PA needs to address reforms to ensure that payment obligations to electricity suppliers are met as this will encourage the needed private generation investment," the bank said. "This is particularly important in Gaza to allow the construction of a high-voltage line from Israel to contribute to the relief of the energy crisis." The strip was heavily battered in a July-August 2014 war between Israel and Hamas that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people on the Israeli side. Story continues Its problems are exacerbated by a decade-old Israeli blockade. "Easing of Israeli restrictions on external trade... and opening up access to Gaza is essential to expand private sector growth and employment," the report said. "If both the PA and the Government of Israel implement changes, the impact of donor aid would increase significantly," it added. The report is to be presented at a May 4 meeting in Brussels of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, which coordinates international donor support for the Palestinians. US President Donald Trump is to host Abbas at the White House the day before, for talks on efforts to revive the Middle East peace process. George W Bush's chief ethics lawyer has called for Donald Trump to be impeached if he doesn't comply with Congress's demand to release documents relating to Michael Flynn. "US House must subpoena the docs," Richard W Painter wrote on Twitter. "If no compliance, impeach." "Zero tolerance for WH covering up foreign payoffs." US House must subpoena the docs. If no compliance, impeach. Zero tolerance for WH covering up foreign payoffshttps://t.co/2FrLnKdiBv Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) April 25, 2017 Mr Painter was commenting on the news Mr Trump's former National Security Advisor had likely broken the law by not disclosing payments from Russia and Turkey, according to the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else. And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And there are repercussions for the violation of law, Republican representative Jason Chaffetz told reporters after a classified meeting with the committee. Video not available for syndication Michael Flynn once said anyone seeking immunity 'probably committed a crime' Last month, investigators announced Mr Flynn had received more than half a million dollars from work for the Russian state-owned TV network RT and for work with a lobbying firm which likely benefited Turkey. Mr Painter suggested Mr Trump should be impeached if Congress refuses a subpoena to hand over documents relating to the payments. So far, the White House refused to hand them over. However, without a subpoena, the White House does not legally need to produce the records. Mr Flynn resigned less than a month into the job after it was revealed he had failed to tell Vice President mike Pence about conversations he had with Russian officials during the transition period. Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein has said the investigation could reveal a "cover up" of alleged connections between Mr Trump's team and Russia. Cologne (Germany) (AFP) - A German court awarded former chancellor Helmut Kohl record damages Thursday in a lawsuit against his one-time ghostwriters for publishing an embarrassing unauthorised biography. The judges in the western city of Cologne ordered the book's two authors and their publisher to pay one million euros ($1.1 million) to Kohl, 87, dubbed the "Father of German Reunification", for breaching his trust and sullying his reputation. "This is the highest sum ever awarded by a German court in a right to privacy case," the city's district court said in a statement. Kohl served for 16 years, steering the country through the final years of the Cold War and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2001-02, he taped more than 630 hours of interviews with journalist Heribert Schwan for a multi-volume memoir project that was scrapped part-way through. Over a decade later, Schwan used the material to co-author the biography "Legacy: the Kohl Protocols", which was published in late 2014 and became a bestseller -- infuriating Kohl, who later won a court case halting further print runs. The book, co-written with Tilman Jens, quoted Kohl as playing down the importance of pro-democracy protesters in the fall of the Berlin Wall and belittling the historic role of former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The elder statesman was also cited besmirching his former protegee Angela Merkel. The court on Thursday upheld the ban on reprinting 116 passages of the book which it said had derived from confidential discussions. Schwan had argued that he had given Kohl the option of switching off the tape recorder when discussing matters he did not want published. Lawyers for Schwan and Jens as well as the Heyne publishing company, a unit of Random House, said they would appeal the ruling. Kohl left active politics in 2002. Since a fall in 2008, he has suffered from impaired speech and uses a wheelchair. Berlin (AFP) - German lawmakers on Thursday approved a partial ban on the full-face burqa Islamic veil and a package of security measures aimed at preventing extremist attacks. The new laws follow several jihadist attacks, including a truck rampage through a Berlin Christmas market that claimed 12 lives, and come ahead of September elections. The new law on facial coverings falls short of a total ban in public places demanded by right-wing parties, like that in effect in neighbouring France since 2011. The prohibition will apply to public servants -- including election officials, military and judicial staff -- performing their duties. "The state has a duty to present itself in an ideologically and religiously neutral manner," says the text of the law passed by the lower house in the evening. Germany has since 2015 taken in more than one million migrants and refugees, most from predominantly Muslim countries. This has stoked a xenophobic backlash and boosted the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party, which has attempted to link the influx to a heightened threat of terrorism. - 'Limits of tolerance' - Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the social integration of immigrants requires "that we make clear and communicate our values and the limits of our tolerance to other cultures". The ban on full facial coverings allows exceptions -- for example, for health workers protecting themselves against infections or police officers concealing their identity. People can also be required to remove facial coverings in order to match them with their identity papers. New security measures also include the use of electronic ankle bracelets, if approved by a judge, for people deemed a security threat, in federal police cases -- such as known Islamic radicals considered potentially violent by security services. Another law paves the way for national and state police forces to pool their data in a new integrated IT system. Story continues Under another new measure, Germany will implement EU rules on the exchange of flight passenger data to counter terrorism and serious crime. And physical attacks on police, emergency services and military personnel on duty will in future be punished more severely, with up to five years' jail. The reforms follow the December 19 truck attack in Berlin claimed by the Islamic State group. The suspect, 24-year-old Tunisian national Anis Amri, was shot dead four days later by Italian police. The Amri case sparked public anger after it emerged he had already been in the crosshairs of security services and should long ago have been sent back to Tunisia, which for months refused to take him. National and state police and security services had monitored Amri for months, knowing that he had used multiple identities and addresses and had been in contact with radical Islamists. BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have arrested an army officer whom they described as having xenophobic views and another man who was found with explosives on suspicion they were planning to attack an as-yet unidentified target, prosecutors said on Thursday. The prosecutor's office in the city of Frankfurt said the 28-year-old lieutenant, a German citizen who had falsely registered as a Syrian refugee, was arrested on Wednesday in Bavaria in Germany's southwest. He serves with a German army brigade stationed in the French town of Illkirch, south of Strasbourg. Prosecutors said a 24-year-old student from Offenbach, east of Frankfurt, who also appeared to hold anti-foreigner views, was detained after explosives were found in his possession. Neither was named. "We know from various voice messages that both of the accused harbor xenophobic views," prosecutor Nadja Niesen told a news conference in Frankfurt. Asked if the two suspects had a precise target, she said: "This is still not known. We have to wait for further investigations. Concrete attack targets are not known." Police in Germany, France, and Austria searched 16 properties on Wednesday in connection with the investigation and seized mobile phones, laptops and documents. The soldier had previously been detained in late January by Austrian authorities on suspicion of having hidden an illegal gun in a bathroom at Vienna's main Schwechat airport. "Based on the current investigation the prosecutor's office believes, or has at least suspicions, that the accused soldier had possibly planned to carry out a severe act of violence in terms of an attack with the weapon stored in Vienna," prosecutor Niesen said. An investigation launched in February showed the soldier had used a fake identity to register as a Syrian refugee in Giessen, near Frankfurt, in January 2016, even though he speaks no Arabic and does not come from a migrant background. "I can't say why this was not noticed," said Niesen, describing the incident as very unusual. The student had known that the soldier had used a false identity to register as an asylum seeker, she said. The soldier moved to Bavaria, where he applied for asylum and moved into a shelter for migrants. He started receiving welfare support in January, the prosecutor's office said. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr and Sabine Siebold; Editing by Catherine Evans) OOne year ago, Germany was named the best country in the world, according to a poll by the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School. The poll relied on criteria measuring entrepreneurship, power, public education, and quality of life, among others. But for a growing number of Germans, the important thing was that it offered confirmation of their own self-image. Their country slipped to fourth in this years poll, behind Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but that seems unlikely to do much to dim the self-confidence of a country enjoying a surging economy and growing international cachet. Whether the field is migration or manufacturing, fiscal policy or renewable energy, Germans increasingly believe that they, and they alone, know best, at least judging from the attitude newly on display everywhere from newspaper columns to parliamentary speeches to barroom chats over beer. In German the phenomenon is summed up in one word: Besserwisserei, a know-it-all attitude, which the Germans themselves admit is somewhat of an engrained cultural trait. But its increasingly clear that one countrys allegedly evidence-based Besserwisserei is another countrys intolerable smugness. Just ask Germanys European neighbors, and others, including the United States, where resentment of Germans has been percolating for years, under constant threat of bubbling over. Resentment is only one part of the problem posed by Germanys self-satisfaction. The other is the growing threat that cultural vanity will begin to shade into self-defeating political egotism. Besserwisserei may be a cultural trait that reaches back centuries, but Germany wields more power in Europe today, particularly in the European Union, than at any time in recent memory. And the Germany of Chancellor Angela Merkel hasnt hesitated to throw it around. The rest of Europe certainly notices that things are increasingly done Germanys way, even when the German way arguably or as some of the countrys critics suggest, plainly isnt best. The big question for the future of Europe might be whether Germans will notice, too. The charges of egotism and high-handed behavior are relatively new. In the 1949-to-1990 Bonn Republic, West Germany was a humble subordinate of the Western alliance. Its meekness and rock-solid commitment to the good of the EU, in which political power was more widely distributed than it is today (mostly in the direction of Paris), stemmed from the World War II crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The postwar countrys sovereignty was held in check by the Western allies (and in the east by the Soviet Union), and its leaders fought to loosen the corset bit by bit through benevolent deeds. The West Germans were on their best behavior so as not to look aggressive or power hungry. Unification was a taboo topic, while national pride was shunned. And it was playing the good Germans (and the good Europeans) that paved the way to German unification in 1990. By then, most but not all of Europe trusted Germany, understanding it as a democracy willing to sacrifice its immediate interests for a European community that returned Germania to the family of normal countries. The difference, explains Sir Paul Lever, a former British ambassador to Germany and author of Berlin Rules, is that Germany is in the drivers seat. Germany is more powerful than ever, especially within the EU, not because it chose to be, but because theres no one else there capable of leading right now, he says, pointing to Frances weakened position in the union. But Levers not of the opinion that the Germans are conceited, rather theyre simply following their own self-interest because now they can, he says, noting that other European countries have freely chosen to fall into line. German high-handedness is eliciting angry charges of moral imperialism from Hungary, and its central European neighbors, including Slovakia, Poland, and Croatia, largely concur. Meanwhile, during the first round of the French presidential election, candidates from more than one party chastised Merkel for dictating a German eurozone policy. We order it, you obey, and tout suite, is how the German publisher Wolfram Weimer critically summed up Germanys new modus operandi during the bailout negotiations in an article titled Virtuous Totalitarianism. U.S. economist Paul Krugman repeatedly blasts Germany for moralizing on European fiscal policy, namely Germanys obsession with budget discipline, which he considers entirely counterproductive. Since Germanys setting of the onerous terms for the eurozones recovery packages, beginning in 2011, surveys in Europe show that many fellow Europeans consider Germans arrogant, insensitive, and egotistical (while, strangely, praising their dependability and influence in Europe). Whats ignited the latest storm of unhappiness with the Germans is the countrys whopping trade surplus ($271 billion in 2016), which balloons from year to year with no apparent end in sight. The problem with this is that Germanys surplus leaves many of its trading partners, such as the United States but also France and southern Europe, with unbalanced current accounts in their bilateral trade with Germany, which exacerbates their (in some cases, chronic) export-import imbalances. At worst, a sustained negative trade balance adversely affects growth, stability, and employment. Germanys surpluses have grown so large that even the International Monetary Fund takes it to task for the sin. Theres wide agreement, among German economists too, that the countrys export prowess is in large part the product of a low euro, low oil prices, and relatively low wages in Germany. Indeed, German exports benefit immensely from a euro that, for Germany, is undervalued. (The value of the one-size-fits-all common currency has to fit, as best as possible, every economy in the 19-member eurozone. The compromise rate is thus comparatively high, say, for Greece, Italy, and even perhaps France, while disproportionately low for Germany.) Critics, such as the IMF, claim that Germany, at the very least, has to rectify the imbalances by spending more and raising wages. The balance-negative eurozone countries say Germany has to give back, too not just take. The reason why Germany is so successful in exports, David McAllister, a leading German Christian Democrat, told Foreign Policy, is that its products are highly competitive, of very high quality. We carried out hard reforms to make this happen, he says, referring to measures streamlining the welfare state and unshackling the labor market. McAllister, a believer in balanced budgets, acknowledges the disapproval going around, but responds, Those countries criticizing Germany might like to ask themselves why they arent as successful, and instead of complaining look at why Germany is, and learn from that. In other words, do it our way and shut up about it. The surplus is just one place where the Germans tend, in the eyes of their peers, to wax pedantic and treat economic policy as a moral cudgel. There is no better example than Merkels famously lecturing the indebted countries of southern Europe to run their economies like the typical Swabian hausfrau, who is industrious, penny-pinching, resourceful. The implication, which some German politicos expressed out loud, was that in contrast with the Swabian housewife, the southerners were lazy and spendthrift. Moreover, Germany has managed to impose its fiscal conservatism on Greece and the other southern European economies: austerity, debt reduction, tight loan repayment schedules. Its not just that Germans seldom acknowledge the economic misery that many of their European neighbors are forced to endure. Germany, for example, boasts an all-time low youth unemployment rate of 6.6 percent, while in Greece and Spain 48 and 42 percent, respectively, of young people are out of work. Its also that German conservatives feel inclined to crow about their newfound influence a little too loudly. In 2011, in front of the Bundestag, Christian Democrat Volker Kauder announced, Now all of Europe is speaking German! referring to the budget discipline that all eurozone countries have signed up to now, some of them against their better judgment. Not everyone agrees that this amounts to arrogance. Philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger denies that any apologies are in order. Even when Germany does something obviously decent and generous, like taking in so many refugees, its accused of arrogance and unilateral behavior, he says. We cant be as humble as we were in the Bonn Republic, because Germany has more responsibility now that it cant shirk. Theres a new Germany thats not aggressive or intolerant. Of course, another reason German smugness can get under the skin is the fact that Germany simply isnt nearly as universally superlative as it might prefer to think. A close corollary of Besserwisserei has always been hypocrisy. So Germany may browbeat other countries about their deficits today, but other Europeans remember that in the 2000s, when the German economy was in the dumps, and again during the financial crisis, Berlin consistently ran budget deficits in excess of eurozone rules and avoided penalties for it. The deficits were critical for Germany to get its economy going again. Meanwhile, Germany insists that other countries follow its lead on climate change, shutting down nuclear power stations and switching to clean energy generation. But Germany is Europes biggest burner of dirty coal (seventh in the world), and its not on track to hit the Paris Agreements reduction targets for 2020. Its best-selling export is big, expensive, gas-guzzling luxury automobiles, including diesels. The Dieselgate scandal caught Volkswagen and other German car manufacturers cheating on emissions tests. And its no accident that the scandal was uncovered in the United States, far from the reach of German political and cultural power nor that Germanys discussion about the scandal has been just as focused on how the German auto companies in question can be saved rather than about the financial or moral atonement they might owe. Its obvious that the EU should take over emissions testing and that the commission should impose huge fines on Germany, Lever says. But it wont, because its Germany, thats why. It shows how much power Germany has now. Photo credit: THOMAS LOHNES/Getty Images London (AFP) - She may have endured death threats and racist taunts for challenging the legal basis of Brexit, but Gina Miller is not done testing the British government on its exit strategy. "Brexit is going to be the main issue for this election," Miller, an investment fund manager, told AFP after launching her tactical voting campaign on Wednesday. Miller's Best for Britain initiative puts her back in the spotlight, after winning a court case against the government by successfully arguing MPs should give the green light before Britain starts pulling out of the European Union. The high-profile case made her a national hero for some and saw her receive death threats and abuse from others, with some opponents viewing Miller as a "black widow spider" seeking to frustrate the result of last June's Brexit referendum. She has not been cowed by the experience, despite having to hire security, and has her sights firmly on the June 8 general election. Within hours of the British Prime Minister Theresa May taking the country by surprise last week by announcing a snap election, 52-year-old Miller launched a crowd-funding appeal calling for the "country's biggest tactical voting drive ever". The Best for Britain campaign will target marginal seats and support candidates who are committed to keeping the UK's Brexit options open. Miller hopes to encourage voters to back those who "will not just accept a hard Brexit", referring to May's decision to take Britain out of the single market and end free movement of EU citizens into Britain. "We'll work with any candidate who basically has strong principles... and that will vote with their conscience about what's best for Britain, and that's cross-party," she said, rejecting any potential criticism that her campaign is against the ruling Conservative Party. - 'Very weak opposition' - A Best for Britain crowdfunding page has already been backed by 10,000 people and raised over A300,000 ($385,000, 350,000 euros), which will be used to commission research to identify the best candidates. Story continues "In reality, there's probably about 100 to 115 marginal seats, but we'll probably only be able to work with about 20 or 30 of them, because of the time we've got but also because of the cap in spending," Miller explained. Her grassroots campaign also intends to educate the British public about tactical voting and fight "election fatigue", as voters head to the polls for the third national ballot in little over two years. In calling a snap election May is seeking to shore up her mandate for the Brexit talks, with polls suggesting her Conservatives will return with an increased majority. "If this predicted landslide happens, it would basically diminish democracy, it would just be an electoral dictatorship," Miller argued, lamenting a "very weak opposition" in the Labour Party. "There is no standing up and holding the government to account", Miller argued. "We cannot let that happen and that's a problem that every one of us should be worried about". Miller grew up in a politically-active household -- her father, Doodnaught Singh, was attorney general in Guyana -- and previously launched a campaign to bring more transparency to financial investments. But although she has seen herself become a key voice in the Brexit debate and will criss-cross the country to support candidates, Miller is adamant a political role is not for her. Nicosia (AFP) - Masked men abducted a four-year-old girl outside a nursery in the Cypriot capital on Thursday, sparking a search by police who issued an arrest warrant for her Norwegian father. The girl was snatched and forcibly taken from her mother as she was dropping her off at the nursery in Nicosia, police said. The two masked men got into a black jeep with a getaway driver before they sped away, they said. Police issued an arrest warrant for the girl's father, who is separated from her Greek Cypriot mother and lives in Norway. "A big operation is currently underway to locate her and police are on alert at all the crossing points, ports and airports within the Republic of Cyprus," said police spokesman Andreas Angelides. The girl was wearing a pink T-shirt and leggings at the time of the abduction. "We are calling on the public with any information as to the vehicle in question or the whereabouts of a girl matching the description to contact us at once," Angelides told state television. The father's lawyer was with the girl, media in Norway reported, but his whereabouts was unknown. "My client has indicated that he has been reunited with his daughter and that they are fine. I can't comment the case beyond that," his lawyer Morten Engesbak said, quoted by the Aftenposten newspaper. The parents are involved in a bitter custody dispute. It is widely believed the abduction is related to a previous kidnapping attempt last year in the divided island of Cyprus. In February 2016, an alleged Norwegian mercenary and two other men were taken into custody at a Nicosia crossing point into breakaway northern Cyprus -- a potential escape route for kidnappings. Their detention came after reports they had come to the island to take the child from her mother. "The child's mother had secured an injunction from Cyprus to have the child returned to her from the father -- who is Norwegian and whom she had separated from," Angelides told the Cyprus Weekly newspaper at the time. The men were eventually released due to lack of evidence and deported from Cyprus. (Reuters) - Google parent Alphabet Inc posted a surge in profit and revenue on Thursday as its core advertising business continued to grow at an extraordinary rate and problems such as an advertiser boycott of YouTube had little impact. Alphabet's profit beat Wall Street estimates and rose 29 percent to $5.43 billion, a growth rate that analysts called exceptional for a company so large. "For a company of Googles size to post the growth that it has is just a testament to the quality and usefulness of the products they make," said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. They are the dominant force in digital advertising." Shares of the company rose 2.8 percent to $916.80 after the bell on Thursday. Like its arch-rival Facebook Inc , Google has aggressively shifted the focus of its business to mobile advertising. Google is expected to command a 61.6 percent share of the search ad market worldwide in 2017, up from 60.6 percent in 2016, according to research firm eMarketer. Wall Street grew anxious as a series of high-profile advertisers fled YouTube amid concerns about ads appearing alongside extremist content. But Google's results showed that controversy was little more than a speed bump for the company as revenue rose 22.2 percent to $24.75 billion from $20.26 billion in the quarter ended March 31. (http://bit.ly/2qbMJGY) "YouTube revenues continue to grow at a significant rate, driven primarily by video advertising," Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said during an earnings call. Analysts marvelled at the company's ability to continue to post sizeable year-over-year gains from such a large base. Google's ad revenue, which accounts for the lion's share of its business, rose 18.8 percent to $21.41 billion in the first quarter. Paid clicks, where an advertiser pays only if a user clicks on ads, rose 44 percent. Analysts on average had expected a rise of 29.7 percent, according to FactSet StreetAccount. With the traditional business of search advertising maturing, the company is looking to YouTube as its next driver of growth. The strong results also allayed concerns about a recent controversy surrounding the video service and its impact on Google's ad revenue. YouTube had come under fire for ads appearing alongside videos carrying homophobic or anti-Semitic messages, prompting a number of companies to suspend their digital ads on the video service. Advertisers can be fickle and certainly the approval of the advertiser is critical, but less so than the approval of the user," said Phil Bak, CEO of ACSI Funds, an asset manager. Alphabet is also reaping the benefits of investing heavily in areas such as hardware and cloud. Revenue from its Google Other unit, which includes Pixel smartphone, Play Store and cloud business, rose 49.4 percent to $3.10 billion. Net income rose to $5.43 billion, or $7.73 per share, from $4.21 billion, or $6.02 per share, a year earlier. Analysts on an average had expected a first-quarter profit of $7.34 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Lisa Shumaker) Riyadh (AFP) - Gulf Arab states pledged Thursday to fight "terrorism" and "foreign interference" across the region. In a joint statement following a summit in Riyadh, interior ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said they were determined to prevent "harm to their national unity, the provoking of sectarian tensions and support for terrorist groups." The GCC states regularly accuse Iran of interfering in their internal affairs, particularly of stirring unrest in Bahrain and supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen -- charges Iran denies. They said GCC states had shown determination to build bridges of cooperation with other states in the region. "The biggest challenge facing any state in the modern world is preserving its national unity against foreign and domestic threats," said Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammad bin Naif, who chaired the summit. The GCC states "continue to face dangerous challenges emanating from Iranian and Iraqi soil," he said. The GCC was formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution and includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. Sunni-ruled Bahrain has been the scene of frequent protests and clashes with police since security forces quelled Shiite-led nationwide protests in 2011 that called for political reforms. Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab coalition that in March 2015 launched a military campaign against Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Dakar (AFP) - Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina has fought for close to two decades to deliver justice for the victims of former president Hissene Habre, who terrorised his people for eight years, leaving tens of thousands dead. Moudeina represented the victims during Habre's trial by a special court created by Senegal and the African Union. AFP asked her if Thursday's verdict upholding Habre's life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity represented a turning point for African justice, and what its implications were for the increasingly unpopular International Criminal Court. - What will be the impact of the verdict? - There will be a significant impact. You cannot imagine the joy this has brought today. We have spent 17 years in search of justice, and we were stuck in a kind of tunnel. Now we are out of the tunnel and stepping into the light. We are delivering a very strong message to dictators, to all human rights abusers. I believe everyone will pay attention. The fight against impunity has now begun in earnest, which is a turning point for Africa. Today, any African can allow himself to believe he could take on the most prolific offenders in court. - Could the special tribunal become a model for Africa? - Definitely. It would suffice for the African Union, which took on the task of setting up this jurisdiction, to do it again for other cases, but with improvements. This is a huge start. There were certainly errors that we will rectify in order to establish a very good jurisdiction. The way we organised witnesses and the victims was very badly organised. Chad is very far away and many were not able to come here. - Is it a real alternative to the International Criminal Court (ICC)? - For sure. The ICC has a complementary role that works alongside national jurisdictions. If today we have demonstrated that Africa is capable of judging Africans, we will no longer need to turn to the ICC, because we will have shown our capacity to judge our own. It was the Chadian victims of Habre who brought the case. At the beginning, there was just seven of us. Today, we have more than 4,385 in our camp. Two other associations have just over 3,000 victims and it is the victims who have done the work, not the West. They aren't from the West. First lady Melania Trump celebrated her 47th birthday Wednesday, her first since her husband Donald Trump was elected president and moved into the White House. The 45th first lady of the United States was born near Sevnica, Slovenia, which was then a part of communist Yugoslavia, and has maintained a quiet presence next to her husband all through his campaign and presidency. Read: 10 Fast Facts About First Lady Melania Trump That You Need To Know While she is still putting up at the Trump Tower in New York City, Melania is expected to move into the White House with her son Barron over the summer. Here are some quotes by the presidents wife as she turns a year older, courtesy Brainy Quotes: If I am honored to serve as first lady, I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in our country who need it the most. One of the many causes dear to my heart is helping children and women. After living and working in Milan and Paris, I arrived in New York City 20 years ago, and I saw both the joys and the hardships of daily life. On July 28, 2006, I was very proud to become a citizen of the United States - the greatest privilege on planet Earth. Melania Trump Photo: REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST Im very political. Im not political in public, Im political at home. You know, to marry a man like Donald, you need to know who you are. You need to know who you are, and you need to be very strong and smart. I don't have a nanny. I have a chef, and I have my assistant, and that's it. I do it myself. You know, those hours with your child are really important ones, even if it's just the two of you, being quiet in the car together. Do I agree with everything he says? No. I have my own opinions too, and I tell him that. Sometimes he takes it in and listens, and sometimes he doesnt. Donald & Melania Trump Photo: Getty Images Story continues We know what our roles are and we are happy with them. I think the mistake some people make is they try to change the man they love after they get married. You cannot change a person. I am not a 'yes' person. No matter who you are married to, you still need to lead your life. I am a full-time mom; that is my first job. The most important job ever. I started my business when he started school. When he is in school, I do my meetings, my sketches, and everything else. I cook him breakfast. Bring him to school. Pick him up. Prepare his lunch. I spend the afternoon with him. You judge a society by how it treats its citizens. We must do our best to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security, with the best possible education. Melania Trump Photo: REUTERS Related Articles The sound of an object crashing to the ground or the sight of a bright flash of light: These are some of the things that people with a condition called exploding head syndrome can sense, even though the events did not really occur, a new study finds. Little is known about this startling syndrome, but it does appear to be more common than previously thought, said the study, which was published online April 6 in the journal Cephalalgia. Despite the condition's name, no actual explosions take place when a person has exploding head syndrome. Rather, the phenomenon is considered to be a "sensory" sleep disorder, according to the study. [Top 11 Spooky Sleep Disorders] When a person with exploding head syndrome is either falling asleep or waking up, he or she may hear a thunderously loud noise, said study author Brian Sharpless, an associate professor of clinical psychology at Argosy University in Virginia. In a previous study, Sharpless found that about 13.5 percent of people experience the phenomenon at some point during their lives. Scientists still don't know why this phenomenon occurs, but one of the more popular theories involves a part of the brain called the reticular formation, Sharpless told Live Science. This area, located in the brain stem at the back of a person's head, is responsible for helping a person go to sleep, said Sharpless, who is also the editor of the book "Unusual and Rare Psychological Disorders" (Oxford University Press, 2016). "Going to sleep is sort of like shutting down a computer," Sharpless said: The brain goes through a series of steps. One of these steps involves "shutting down" the brain cells that are responsible for hearing, called the auditory neurons, he said. But when someone has exploding head syndrome, instead of shutting these neurons down, something could cause them to fire all at once, leading the person to "hear" a sudden, loud noise in his or her head, Sharpless said. Story continues The reticular formation is also thought to play a role in another strange sleep phenomenon called sleep paralysis, Sharpless added. During sleep paralysis, a person wakes up and is unable to move; he or she may report seeing things at the same time. "Dropping an object from a height" In the new study, 49 college students who all had experienced exploding head syndrome were interviewed about their symptoms by either a clinical psychologist or doctoral student in clinical psychology. Although the participants' experiences varied some had experienced only one episode, while one person reported 150 episodes the study revealed several commonalities, the researchers said. For example, the most common type of noise that people reported hearing was the sound of someone "dropping an object from a height," followed by a bang, an explosion and a door slamming, according to the study. People who experience the phenomenon don't report hearing speech, or anything articulate, Sharpless said. "It's mostly a really loud sound." Fear and a racing heart were also very common symptoms, according to the study. And just over a quarter of the people in the study reported seeing a flash of light. Sharpless said he was surprised that 14 percent of the people in the study said they "forgot how to breathe" during an episode of exploding head syndrome, a sensation that the individuals considered extremely frightening. As scary as the episodes may seem, for the most part, they are painless, the study found. Just a few study participants reported experiencing a mild headache or feeling hot, Sharpless said. Indeed, if a person experiences pain during an episode, that could be a sign of a more serious health condition, Sharpless said. A little-known condition The study showed that only about 10 percent of people who had exploding head syndrome ever told a doctor about it, Sharpless said. In some cases, when the people did tell their doctors, the physicians didn't know about exploding head syndrome, Sharpless said. The name exploding head syndrome was coined in 1986, but the phenomenon has been documented as far as back as the late 1800s, Sharpless said. A doctor in Philadelphia described the experiences as "sensory discharges." Later, in the 1920s, another doctor referred to the phenomenon as "snapping of the brain," Sharpless said. Even today, the condition is little understood, and some people with exploding head syndrome have mistakenly attributed it to government operatives pointing "directed energy weapons" at their heads, Sharpless said. [Top 10 Conspiracy Theories] But exploding head syndrome really is the result of something happening in the brain, Sharpless said. "Sleep is very complicated, and there are a lot of ways it can go wrong," Sharpless said. "This is one of them." Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations (Reuters) - Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday: NORTH KOREA China welcomes an apparently softer tone by the United States on the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis, but stresses its opposition to a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in South Korea. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe call on North Korea and other countries to avoid behavior or rhetoric that could increase tensions around Pyongyang's nuclear program. NAFTA Trump says he pulled back from the brink of killing the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico after requests from their leaders and expressed optimism about winning better U.S. terms in a renegotiated deal. GOVERNMENT SPENDING BILL Congress takes steps to extend until May 5 the deadline for reaching a deal on federal spending through September and head off a feared government shutdown at midnight on Friday. HEALTHCARE Prospects for U.S. House passage of a healthcare system overhaul before Trump's 100th day in office dim as Republicans struggle to find the needed votes, lawmakers and aides say. MICHAEL FLYNN The Pentagon's inspector general opened an investigation into whether Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, took money from foreign entities without needed approval, according to a letter released by House Democrats. A White House spokesman says it was "appropriate" for a Pentagon agency to investigate Flynn for possible wrongdoing in making a trip to Russia in 2016. WHITE HOUSE ACCESS Manufacturers and Wall Street have led the quest for business access to Trump in his first 100 days in office, with media companies and Silicon Valley seldom entering the presidential bubble, a Reuters review finds. FIGHTING MILITANT GROUPS Ten Democratic U.S. House members say they want Congress to vote on a formal authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Taliban. A suspected U.S. drone strike kills several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, a regional government official and an Islamist militant say, in a rare strike on Pakistani soil. AIR POLLUTION A U.S. appeals court grants a request from the Trump administration to put litigation on hold in which states and industry groups are challenging an Obama administration pollution control rule for mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants. (Compiled by Jonathan Oatis; Editing by Grant McCool and James Dalgleish) Paris (AFP) - Scientists said Thursday that they have manufactured tiny bricks out of artificial Martian soil, anticipating the day when humans may construct colonies on the Red Planet. Remarkably, the technique requires only that the red-hued building blocks be compressed in a precise way -- no additives or baking required. "The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave, they will be pioneers and I would be honoured to be their brick maker," said Yu Qiao, a professor at the University of California San Diego and lead author of a study in Scientific Reports. Structural engineers used a dirt mixture concocted by NASA that mimics Martian soil to make hundreds of 3 millimetre-thick (0.1 inch), disc-shaped bric By accident, they had discovered that high-pressure compression hardened the artificial soil into rock-solid structures stronger than steel-reinforced concrete. Once the stuff of science fiction, human habitation of Mars has captured the collective imagination, and inspired governments and billionaires to explore the feasibility of making the Red Planet a home away from home. In March, the US Congress passed a bill -- signed by President Donald Trump -- directing NASA to send a manned mission to Mars in 2033. Qiao believes real Martian soil could be compacted layer by layer to form a wall or shaped into larger bricks. Previous ideas for how to make construction materials on Mars involved building nuclear plants to fire bricks, or hauling large quantities of polymer -- a kind of glue -- from Earth. Professor Qiao's proposed masonry, on the other hand, would be 100 percent made-in-Mars and require minimal resources. "All the previous methods involved energy intensive heating or pretty significant space transportation from Earth for additives," the researcher told AFP. Iron oxide -- the component that gives Mars its reddish hue -- is thought to be the "cementing agent" that makes the soil so malleable. Story continues Whether real Martian soil would react in the same way is still uncertain, Qiao concedes -- only on site tests would tell for sure. But he hopes his approach will be given a hearing. Qiao initially set out to use lunar soil to make cement. When he applied the same technique to Martian-like soil, he discovered its exceptional properties. NASA's Curiosity rover collected samples of Martian dust and sand for the first time in 2012, analysing its composition in a laboratory inside the mobile robot. The soil was found to contain a complex chemistry of water, sulphur, and chlorine substances but no traces of organic carbon compounds that could indicate signs of life. Damascus (AFP) - Syria accused Israel of firing several missiles Thursday at a military position near Damascus airport, triggering a huge explosion and prompting a call from regime ally Russia for restraint. The Israeli military later said it shot down "a target" over the occupied Golan Heights neighbouring Syria, although it was unclear whether the two incidents were linked. Israel has carried out multiple air strikes in Syria since the country's civil war erupted in 2011, most of which it has said targeted arms convoys or warehouses of its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, which is a key supporter of the Syrian regime. In line with its usual practice, Israel's military declined to comment on the airport blast. But Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said it was consistent with his government's policy to prevent arms transfers to Hezbollah, while stopping short of confirming his country was behind any attack. Syria's state news agency SANA said several Israeli missiles hit near the airport causing material damage. "A military position southwest of Damascus International Airport was targeted at dawn today by an Israeli aggression using several missiles fired from occupied territory, sparking explosions in the area," SANA said, citing a military source. The source did not specify whether the military position belonged to the Syrian army or one its allies. - 'Huge fireball' - Earlier, Hezbollah said the blast was "probably" the result of an Israeli air strike. The militia's Al-Manar television said the raid hit a warehouse and fuel tanks, also without specifying whether they were its own or belonged to the Syrian army or another of its allies. Al-Manar said preliminary reports suggested the blast caused only material damage and no casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the warehouse was largely empty and "probably" Hezbollah's. Story continues A resident of the Dawwar al-Baytara neighbourhood in the southeast of the capital, who lives in a tower block that looks towards the airport area, said he had seen an immense fireball. "Around 4:00 am (0100 GMT), I heard an enormous explosion," Maytham, 47, told AFP. "I ran to the balcony and looking towards the south, in the direction of the airport, I saw a huge fireball." - Kremlin calls for restraint - The Kremlin called for restraint and Russia's foreign ministry condemned the attack. "We continue to consider that all countries need to refrain from any kind of actions that lead to an increase in tension in this already restive region and call for respect of the sovereignty of Syria," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Peskov did not confirm if Israel had warned Moscow of the strike, saying only their defence ministries "are in constant dialogue". Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova later said: "Gross violations of Syrian sovereignty -- no matter how they are justified -- are unacceptable." President Bashar al-Assad, quoted on Thursday by SANA, said Damascus was negotiating with Moscow to buy the latest anti-missile system to repel Israeli and American attacks. "It is natural for us to negotiate with the Russians now with a view to strengthening (our) systems, whether to face any Israeli threats from the air or the threats of American missiles," he said. The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base overnight on April 6-7 following a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province that left 87 dead, including many children. In Israel, the army said Thursday its "Patriot Aerial Defence System intercepted a target above the Golan Heights", without elaborating. A military spokeswoman refused to comment on Israeli media reports that the object was a drone. Israeli warplanes have hit Damascus airport and other bases around the Syrian capital in the past, targeting what it said were weapons stockpiles destined for Hezbollah. The airport, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) southeast of the city centre, was hit by Israeli air strikes in December 2014, Syrian state media reported at the time. Israel does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid it carries out. But last month, it said it had conducted several strikes near the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, targeting what it said were "advanced weapons" belonging to Hezbollah. The strikes prompted Syria to launch ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted over Israeli territory in the most serious flare-up between the two neighbours since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. On January 13, Syria accused Israel of bombing Mazzeh airbase in the western suburbs of the capital. There were several strikes near the same base last year. Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the armistice line on the Golan Heights had remained largely quiet for decades until the Syrian conflict began. Burying people in cemeteries is just another way humans are messing with the environment. Agence France-Presse reported bodies buried whole or cremated leach iron, zinc, sulfur, calcium and phosphorus into the ground that may later be used as farms, forests or parks. Putting them all in one place deprives soils in other areas of certain nutrients while giving them all to the flora at burial sites. Read: These Medieval Villagers Mutilated the Dead Because Zombies Those chemicals could last for hundreds, or even thousands, of years and can only increase along with population growth. If there had been no cemeteries, human remains, like those of animals, would be distributed randomly for the nutrients they release to be reused, AFP said. Putting them all into graveyards is something that can be regarded as not natural, researcher Ladislav Smejda of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague told the news service. Its a human impact. We are changing natural levels. cemetery-1700014_1920 Photo: Pixabay, public domain After a person dies, the long and complicated process of decomposition in which those nutrients are released into surrounding soil begins. Cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them, the Guardian reported. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down. Among the many other physical changes decomposition entails, microbes living in the body will begin to digest the organs and other tissues. A rotting corpse is teeming with life, the Guardian observed. See also: How Do You Know if Someone Is Really Dead? Make Eye Contact with an Ancient Mummy Related Articles Ancient remains found in California suggest that humans were present in North America some 130,000 years ago substantially earlier than scientists previously thought. A site in San Diego contains evidence that early human ancestors smashed mastodon bones and teeth to make rudimentary tools. The smattering of bone fragments, hammer-stones, and anvils now represents the oldest archeological site in the Americas, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The oldest widely accepted date for humanity's presence in North America is less than 15,000 years ago. If the findings are true, this would make the San Diego site older by a factor of nearly ten, the study found. SEE ALSO: A 400,000-year-old fossil offers new clues on how humans evolved "Extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence, and we feel that the Cerutti Mastodon site [in San Diego] preserves such evidence," said Thomas Demere, the study's corresponding author and curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Paleontologist Don Swanson points at rock fragment near a large horizontal mastodon tusk fragment. Image: San Diego Natural History Museum Some outside experts said they were deeply skeptical that the site is as old as the scientists claim, or that the mastodon bones show definitive signs of human activity. "I was astonished, not because it is so good but because it is so bad," Donald Grayson, an archaeologist at the University of Washington, told the New York Times. He faulted the study for failing to rule out other explanations for markings on the bones. John McNabb, an archeologist at the University of Southampton in England, said the study raises more questions than answers. In a commentary published in Nature, he said that, to prove this is truly evidence of human activity, more information is needed about how people even arrived there so long ago. But archeologist Erella Hovers agreed the study "points to a much earlier arrival of human relatives" than previous studies suggest. Story continues The new finding "has been rigorously researched and presented," Hovers, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in a commentary for Nature. However, the scientists' proposed narrative about the bone data "has some gaping holes that need filling," she added. The study's authors said they don't know which kind of early human ancestor was responsible for the bone breaking, since no human remains were found at the site. They also don't know how humans arrived in southern California, though they might've crossed the Bering Strait or traveled in a water craft from Asia. Unbroken mastodon ribs and vertebrae, including one vertebra with a large well preserved neural spine. Image: san diego natural history museum Demere and his colleagues acknowledged the skepticism toward their study. But they defended their results on a Monday call with reporters, noting the study was the result of more than two decades of research. San Diego paleontologists first discovered the mastodon bones and rock tools in 1992, during a routine survey at a freeway construction site. Using an excavator, scientists dug nearly 10 feet below the surface to uncover the remains, which neither geological forces nor human activity had disturbed in over 100,000 years, said Steve Holen, the study's lead author and director of research at the Center for American Paleolithic Research in South Dakota. A view of two mastodon femur balls, one faced up and once faced down. Neural spine of a vertebra exposed (lower right) and a broken rib (lower left). Image: San diego natural history museum Demere said back then, the site likely sat near a meandering stream near the coastline, the landscape filled with extinct Ice Age megafauna, including camels, horses, and deer. Today, the dig site is part of a sound berm on the north side of a San Diego freeway. Mastodon rib bones, vertebrae, and femurs showed distinct fracture lines that suggest they were broken while fresh not run over by a truck or demolished by nature millennia later. Other bone and molar fragments showed evidence of being hit with hard objects, while five large hammer-stones and anvils at the site show signs of wear and tear that could only come from human interference, scientists said. To verify their findings, the team conducted two experiments on elephant bones using large rock hammers and anvils, and produced the same types of fracture patterns. "People were here breaking up the limb bones of this mastodon ... probably to make tools out of, and they may also have been extracting the marrow for food," Holen said. He noted that human ancestors in Africa used this same approach on elephant limb bones some 1.5 million years ago. "As humans moved out of Africa and across the world, they took this type of technology with them," he said. Researchers studied the bones and archeological evidence for years. But it wasn't until recently that they were able to accurately estimate the date of the site. James Paces, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and co-author of the new study, used uranium-thorium dating from multiple bone specimens to determine their approximate age. He estimated the bones were about 130,000 years old, plus or minus 9,400 years, based on the distribution of naturally occurring uranium and its decay products. He said other methods, such as radiocarbon dating and luminescence dating which measures the amount of light emitted from energy stored in rocks had failed because of the bones' condition. "We now have a robust, defensible age for early humans being present in North America more than 100,000 years previous than what people had imagined," Paces told reporters. WATCH: This gene-editing technology has the potential to bring back the woolly mammoth By Zeba Siddiqui MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's antitrust regulator has ordered a probe into Swiss drugmaker Roche for allegedly using anti-competitive practices to restrict cheaper copies of a blockbuster cancer drug from reaching patients. Trastuzumab has been a mainstay of Roche's profit for years and brought in global sales of about $6.7 billion in 2016, but it has been challenged in the last three years by biosimilars which are sold at about a 25 percent discount to the original. India's Biocon and U.S. firm Mylan, which together sell biosimilars of the drug in over a dozen countries including India, filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) last year alleging Roche misled doctors and regulators to thwart competition to trastuzumab. "Roche adheres to all applicable laws and regulations in countries where it operates," Roche spokeswoman Shilpika Das said in a statement. "We are fully committed to cooperating with the authorities in India." India, with among the highest number of cancer patients in the world, is a big market for trastuzumab, which is indicated to treat certain forms of breast and gastric cancer and which Roche sells under the brand name Herceptin. Globally, the market for trastuzumab is getting increasingly crowded, with analysts saying late on Wednesday that U.S. biotech firm Amgen and partner Allergan are seeking approval for their form of trastuzumab later this year. Roche first launched the drug in India in 2002 and sells it for about 75,000 rupees ($1,170) for a 440 mg vial. In an interim order released on Tuesday, the CCI said it found merit in Biocon and Mylan's arguments, and ordered its director general to conduct a "detailed investigation" and submit a report within 60 days. Although the order is not final, the investigation could result in penalties, said a lawyer at the Delhi High Court, who declined to be named. Biocon said in a statement that it welcomed the CCI's order. Roche, which has been engaged in a legal tussle with Biocon and Mylan since 2014, has the option of filing a petition to contest the order, the lawyer added. In their complaint, Biocon and Mylan allege Roche wrote to doctors, hospitals, and state and federal regulators, misleading them about the safety of efficacy of the biosimilar versions. "When seen collectively in the background of surrounding facts and circumstances, they only appear to be a part of the bigger plan/strategy of Roche Group to eliminate competition posed by biosimilars to Roche's products in the relevant market," the CCI said in its order. ($1 = 64.0900 Indian rupees) (Editing by Alexander Smith and Biju Dwarakanath) By Matt Spetalnick and Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel is seeking an "understanding" with the Trump administration that Iran must not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria, Israel's intelligence minister told Reuters on Wednesday. In an interview, visiting Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said he was also using his meetings with White House officials and key lawmakers to press for further U.S. sanctions on Iran and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which is supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "I want to achieve an understanding, an agreement between the U.S. and Israel ... not to let Iran have permanent military forces in Syria, by air, by land, by sea," Katz told Reuters, saying this should be part of any future international accord on ending Syria's six-year-old civil war. Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, insisted, however, that Israel was not asking Washington to commit more forces to Syria, but to "achieve this by talking to the Russians, by threatening Iran, by sanctions and other things." There was no immediate comment from the White House. Katz was due to meet President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt. For its part, Israel has stayed mostly on the sidelines in the Syrian conflict and has shown no sign of significantly altering that posture. It has carried out only occasional air strikes when its has felt threatened, including by the delivery of weapons to Hezbollah militants. Israeli officials have estimated that Iran - Israel's regional archfoe, but also that of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states - commands at least 25,000 fighters in Syria, including members of its own Revolutionary Guard, Shi'ite militants from Iraq and recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan. ALARMING PROVOCATIONS Katz's visit came just a week after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Iran of "alarming ongoing provocations" to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy toward Tehran. Tillerson said the review would look not only at Tehran's compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, but also its behavior in the region. Trump, who may visit Israel as early as next month, has adopted a tougher stance against Assad. He ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base this month after blaming Assad for a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 70 people, many of them children. "It was important morally and strategically," Katz said of the U.S. strikes. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the gas attack. Israeli officials want Russia, which they see as holding the balance of power among Assad's supporters, to use its influence to help rein in Iran's activities in Syria. Though Russia has shown no willingness to restrain Iran, Israeli officials say there are indications that Moscow may see any long-term Iranian military presence in Syria as potentially destabilizing. Katz reiterated Israel's vow to continue launching occasional air strikes in Syria against Hezbollah forces detected transporting rockets or other weapons toward the Lebanese border, which he described as a "red line." (Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel shot down what it identified only as "a target" over the occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, hours after Syria accused it of hitting a military position near Damascus airport. "The Patriot Aerial Defence System intercepted a target above the Golan Heights," the official Israeli army Twitter account said, without elaborating. A military spokeswoman refused to comment on Israeli media reports that the object was a drone. Syria's state news agency SANA said earlier that several Israeli missiles hit near Damascus airport at dawn. Israel has not confirmed or denied the reported Damascus attack. But Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said it was consistent with Israel's policy to prevent arms transfers through to Hezbollah, while stopping short of confirming his country was behind the incident. "We are acting to prevent the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon by Iran," Katz told army radio. "When we receive serious information about the intention to transfer weapons to Hezbollah, we will act. This incident is totally consistent with this policy." In Moscow, the Kremlin called for restraint and the foreign ministry condemned the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not say if Israel had warned Moscow of the strike, saying only that their defence ministries "are in constant dialogue". In Moscow, visiting Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu that the Jewish state would not allow "concentration of Iranian or Hezbollah forces on the Golan border," Liebermans office said. Israel has conducted multiple air strikes in Syria since that country's civil war erupted in 2011, most of which it has said targeted arms convoys or warehouses of its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, which is a key supporter of the Syrian regime. Last month, it said it had carried out several strikes near the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, targeting what it said were "advanced weapons" belonging to Hezbollah. Story continues The strikes prompted Syria to launch ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted over Israeli territory in the most serious flare-up between the two neighbours since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. Around 510 square kilometres of the Golan are under Syrian control. The two countries are still technically at war, although the border remained largely quiet for decades until 2011, when the Syrian conflict broke out. Damascus (AFP) - A huge blast which struck near Damascus airport early on Thursday was caused by Israeli missiles hitting a "military position", Syria's state SANA news agency reported. "A military position southwest of Damascus International Airport was targeted at dawn today by an Israeli aggression using several missiles fired from occupied territory, sparking explosions in the area," SANA said, citing a military source. In the terminology of the Syrian regime, occupied territory can refer to Israel inside its internationally recognised borders. The missiles caused "material damage", the source said. The source did not specify whether the military position belonged to the Syrian army or one its allies. Earlier, Damascus ally Hezbollah said the blast was "probably" the result of an Israeli air strike. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. The incident occurred hours after Syria accused Israel of striking a Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla arms hub near Damascus airport, where supplies of weapons from Iran are sent regularly by air, a regional intelligence source said. (Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Mark Heinrich) By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - Italy's justice minister said on Thursday it was "a lie" to paint humanitarian ships saving migrants in the Mediterranean as criminals, responding to a Sicilian prosecutor who has repeatedly suggested some are colluding with Libyan smugglers. Carmelo Zuccaro, the chief prosecutor of the Sicilian port city of Catania, has said he has evidence of phone calls between people smugglers and aid groups, but he has not opened a criminal investigation or presented his evidence. The Catania court opened a fact-finding probe in February, saying traffickers may be funding non-governmental organizations involved in rescuing migrants who attempt the dangerous crossing from North Africa to Europe. NGOs have forcefully denied any wrongdoing and said their only objective is to save lives. "I hope the Catania prosecutor's office will speak through its investigations because I think it's the best way to clarify things," Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said in a live-streamed interview on la Repubblica newspaper's Web site. "If the prosecutor has evidence, which I think he will present in coming days, then we can consider it. In general, it's not right to make the story of the NGOs working in the Mediterranean as a tale of collusion with people smugglers because it's a lie." Zuccaro, contacted through his secretary and by email, did not respond to a request for comment. A parliamentary probe opened to look into the matter is due to hear testimony from Zuccaro next week. The sea route from Libya to Italy is the main passage for migrants seeking to reach Europe, with almost 37,000 arrivals already this year, an increase of more than 36 percent on the same period last year. More than 1,000 have died at sea since the start of 2017. Since Italy abandoned a search-and-rescue operation in 2014, humanitarian groups have increasingly taken to the sea to rescue migrants who people smugglers pack onto unsafe and overcrowded boats. But with an Italian general election looming before the summer of 2018, immigration has become a hot-button issue. The 5-Star Movement, which polls say is now the country's biggest party, said last week NGOs were offering a "taxi" service to migrants. Earlier on Wednesday, during his third appearance on national television in two days, Zuccaro told RAI state television NGOs were attempting to destabilize the nation's economy by ferrying migrants to Italy. "In my opinion some NGOs could be financed by traffickers and I know there has been direct contact," he said. "Smuggling brings in more money than drugs... NGOs have different objectives: to destabilize the Italian economy to their own advantage." (Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) Rome (AFP) - An Italian court on Thursday acquitted a humanitarian activist who had faced a possible prison term for trying to help a family of Sudanese migrants cross from Italy into France. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of three years and four months and a 50,000-euro fine to be imposed on French national Felix Croft, 28, following his arrest in July last year near the border town of Ventimiglia. The acquittal verdict was greeted by cheers from dozens of Croft's supporters who had attended Thursday's hearing at a court in nearby Imperia. "We await the decision of the prosecutor, who could appeal, but today, for me, justice has been done," Croft said after the verdict. "The voice of reason has prevailed: helping people is moral and legal." Croft's prosecution was a first for Italy and rights groups had voiced concern about the prosecution's attempt to use legal provisions intended to sanction people-trafficking to secure an exemplary sentence. Civil rights group Antigone said Thursday's ruling showed that, "In Italy, as in France, solidarity is not a crime." Croft, who has an American father, was arrested at a motorway toll barrier after agreeing to give five members of an extended family from Darfur a lift in his car from Ventimiglia into France -- a border that is supposed to be open under Europe's Schengen accords. Like many asylum-seekers who arrive in Europe via Italy, the family wanted to make their request to be allowed to stay as refugees in another country. Until recently it was relatively easy, thanks to Schengen, for newly-arrived migrants to move on from Italy. But as the volume of arrivals has grown in recent years, neighbouring countries have tightened border monitoring, insisting that asylum applications should be made in the first country of arrival. This has led to bottlenecks in places like Ventimiglia, where the local council controversially banned locals from distributing food to migrants sleeping rough in and around the town. Story continues The order was overturned at the weekend. Croft, who lives in Nice, just a short hop over the border, is banned from returning to Italy under an administrative order not affected by the court case. If it was not for that, he told AFP, "I would do exactly the same thing again tonight." Dubai (AFP) - A prominent Bahraini activist jailed for life for his role in anti-regime protests has been on hunger strike for two weeks to protest the treatment of prisoners, campaigners said Thursday. Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who also holds Danish citizenship, is an outspoken critic of Bahrain's Al-Khalifa monarchy, which has ruled the tiny Gulf archipelago for more than two centuries. Khawaja began the hunger strike on April 12 in a Manama prison to protest the "arbitrary detention and degrading treatment of prisoners in Bahrain," the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) said in a statement. It is the fifth such protest in six years by Khawaja, who was given a life sentence in June 2011 after being convicted of plotting to topple the monarchy. Sunni-ruled Bahrain, home to a majority Shiite population, has witnessed sporadic unrest since early 2011, when long-running demands for political reform intensified with nationwide demonstrations calling for an elected government. Authorities have since tightened their grip on Shiite-led dissent, jailing hundreds of protesters and stripping activists and clerics of citizenship. The GCHR also called for the medical evacuation of Khawaja and fellow rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who is behind bars while on trial for charges of insulting the state. Rajab, one of the most high-profile activists in Bahrain, underwent minor surgery earlier this month. His family has however said they remain concerned about his health. The UN is scheduled to hold a human rights review session on Bahrain in Geneva on May 1. AMMAN (Reuters) - Jets believed to be Russian or Syrian hit two hospitals in rebel-held Idlib province on Thursday following several other strikes on medical facilities in northwestern Syria in recent weeks, residents, medical workers and activists said. Rescue workers said one strike early on Thursday hit a hospital in Deir al Sharqi, killing at least three medics and injuring others. The second strike hit a cave hospital in Maar Zita village in southern Idlib province where medics said at least five were killed. "The regime and the Russians are trying to systematically target the remaining hospitals in Idlib to make life for people in liberated areas intolerable," said Younis Abdul Rahim, a civil defense worker who visited both sites. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces target hospitals or other emergency facilities. Russia, whose air force joined the war on his side in 2015, also denies targeting civilian infrastructure. Rescue workers say that, although many field hospitals have been moved underground, that has not been enough to protect them from bombs they say have hit at least eight medical facilities since the start of the month. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was appalled by the ongoing damage of medical facilities in northern Syria, adding that the destruction was depriving thousands of people of basic health services. Among the hospitals put out of service was one specializing in maternity and child care, the OCHA said on Wednesday. An air strike believed to be conducted by either Syrian or Russian jets hit a hospital in Kafr Takharim in Idlib on Tuesday and medical workers said at least 14 were killed, among them patients. "It is completely unacceptable that facilities and people who are trying to save lives are being bombed," said Kevin Kennedy, the OCHA's regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. Hospital attacks have killed hundreds of medical personnel since the war began, he added. Syrian civil defense emergency workers who track jet movement and radio traffic to warn civilians of potential air strikes say Syria's air force and Russian jets have recently intensified their bombardment of Idlib province. Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians have found refuge in the province that borders Turkey after being driven out of their homes. It is a main stronghold of the opposition forces, mainly Islamist-led rebel groups. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Gareth Jones) We often like to cast criminals as dumb, but one illegal operation has really impressed a judge. 20-year-old Brodie Gary Satterley from Maroochydore, Australia, was sentenced to three years' jail with immediate parole, and was also praised for his business skills in court, according to Sunshine Coast Daily. SEE ALSO: Chinese 'Breaking Bad' professor cooked 425 lbs of methylone after realising there was heavy demand Brisbane Supreme Court heard Satterley who was 18 when he engaged in low-level drug dealing charged interest on debts, gave price guides on product, discounts, and refunds when there were complaints. He also advertised that he had a high-quality product, asked for customer feedback, and even put together business strategy meetings. Justice Ann Lyons told Satterley, "it obviously wasn't the best business, but it's a good business model." "You obviously could do very well in business because you clearly are quite intelligent," she added, according to the paper. "Can I say that if you actually did some more study you could really make something of yourself? So please don't come back to court again." Satterley was caught in June 2015, when he was found to be under the influence in a parked car, where police discovered drugs and that he was dealing via his mobile phone. A tough upbringing, a determination to turn his life around, and a lack of criminal activity (as well as drug use) in the last two years were listed as reasons why Lyons didn't send the young man to jail. That, and she seems to really respect the hustle. Just minus the drugs. WATCH: This self-proclaimed cyborg turned his prosthetic eye into a tiny camera Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's opposition lined up Thursday behind a single candidate, veteran political leader Raila Odinga, in an unprecedented step to strengthen their challenge to the government in August's polls. Former prime minister Odinga, 72, was named presidential candidate by senior leaders of the National Super Alliance (NASA) at a large rally in the capital Nairobi. Odinga will, for the second consecutive time, challenge President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat of a 2013 election that he lost in the first round. However, this time five of the country's main opposition leaders have united, something they always failed to do previously. Musalia Mudavadi, a former vice president who struck out on his own in 2013, said that this time he and others had "sacrificed personal ambitions" to present a united front to challenge Kenyatta and his dominant Jubilee Party on August 8. Kenyatta countered by accusing the opposition of wanting to create a prime minister's job not provided for in the constitution. They were doing this instead of "finding a job for millions of Kenyans who need one," said a statement from the presidency. Tens of thousands of opposition supporters waited most of the day in Nairobi's downtown Uhuru Park to witness the declaration of Odinga as their presidential candidate. In a repeat of the main opposition ticket of four years ago, Kalonzo Musyoka, another former vice president, was named Odinga's running-mate. Other senior positions were divided among Mudavadi, Moses Wetangula and Issac Ruto. The five men stood together on stage in matching white shirts and hats, dancing in loose coordination to celebrate the announcement. "All NASA partners are equal, and one plays the role of the first among equals," Mudavadi told the cheering crowd. Musyoka insisted the alliance would hold. "We will work with Raila to move this country forward as a team, that is why we have remained together this far," he said. Story continues - Rival dynasties - "This is a great honour and I accept it," said Odinga who will be making his fourth attempt to become Kenya's president after failing in 1997, 2007 and, again, four years ago. A dispute over the result of the 2007 election led to two months of politically motivated tribal violence. The violence left over 1,100 people dead and only ended under immense international pressure that saw Odinga named prime minister in a power-sharing government with his opponent President Mwai Kibaki. Odinga again claimed fraud in 2013 but his challenge went to the courts, not the streets, and was dismissed. Kenyatta is hoping to win a second and final four year term alongside his deputy William Ruto. Both men were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of crimes against humanity for masterminding the post-election violence of 2007/08 but their cases were subsequently dropped. Kenyatta and Odinga are from bitterly competing political dynasties in Kenya: their fathers Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga were rivals in the independence era and the decades that followed. Odinga, like his father, has always coveted but never achieved the country's top job, while Kenyatta followed in his father's footsteps when he became the country's fourth president in 2013. The rivalry reflects tribal divisions in Kenya with Odinga's Luos commonly complaining that Kenyatta's Kikuyu community has monopolised power for its own gain. NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's main opposition alliance said on Thursday it had chosen veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga as its candidate for a presidential election scheduled for August 8. Odinga, 72, will face off against President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is running for a second and final five-year term. The two men were the main contenders in the last election in 2013. (Reporting by Duncan Miriri; editing by John Stonestreet) BOSTON The chemical arrived in September from a company in Ukraine, by way of a middleman in Portland, Maine. It was a whitish powder, and 10 grams a bit more than two teaspoons worth cost around $1,000. That wasnt bad for this business, and anyway, it was worth it. In 2015, this molecule had been shown to work against the single-cell parasite that causes visceral leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease that kills an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people a year. The chemical wasnt perfect, though. It was unstable so delicate that a hamsters body broke it down before it could actually do its job. Read the rest... Washington (AFP) - Can a lie strip a naturalized American of citizenship? That's what the US Supreme Court is weighing in the case of a Bosnian Serb couple who didn't come clean about the husband's wartime past. Divna Maslenjak broke US law when she failed to tell US embassy staff that her husband was in the Bosnian Serb army during the darkest days of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war when she applied for US asylum for her family, which they received in 1999. As a result, US government lawyers contended Wednesday, Maslenjak's acquisition of US citizenship eight years later is void. She and her family were declared illegal and deported from America to Serbia last October. But the Supreme Court justices questioned whether omissions seen to be lies were in themselves enough to forfeit American citizenship. The answer will have repercussions not just for the Maslenjaks, but potentially for millions of other immigrants, refugees and naturalized citizens. - Citizenship is 'priceless' - Every year, some 780,000 people become American by choice, through a process requiring them to be of "good moral character." They must mention any criminal record or past offenses, even minor ones. If someone is later deemed to have lied, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Homeland Security Department, says their "citizenship may be taken away." But the nine justices seemed concerned about the immense power the government has to revoke citizenship after an omission or untruth in the application process, whether voluntary or not. "It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship," Justice Anthony Kennedy told the government lawyer. Another judge, Stephen Breyer, conjectured that a person simply carrying a penknife where it was illegal could end up seeing American citizenship yanked away. Justice Sonia Sotomayor imagined a refugee who made no mention of a disliked childhood nickname. The court's presiding judge, John Roberts, wondered whether not flagging a traffic violation could trigger loss of citizenship. Story continues If someone "not answering about the speeding ticket or the nickname is enough to subject that person to denaturalization, the government will have the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want," Roberts observed. The government lawyer, Robert Parker, replied that naturalization was "the highest privilege the United States can bestow upon on individual." Laws passed by Congress, he said, "required that individuals who seek that high privilege must scrupulously comply with every rule governing the naturalization process." - 'Material' lie? - In the case of Divna Maslenjak, her husband was in the Bosnian Serb army when it was linked to the worst atrocity during the Bosnian war: the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica of 8,000 men and boys. But when applying for asylum, she told the US embassy in Serbia that Ratko Maslenjak had stayed out of the army between 1992 and 1997 and feared reprisals for that. When the untruth was discovered by US authorities, she did not deny it, but argued that it had no bearing on her refugee application, based on the fact that her family lived in a Muslim-majority area where they risked persecution from Bosnian Muslims. Her lawyer, Christopher Landau, said it was up to the US government to prove that "the false statement was material" to the asylum decision, and "the whole issue about her husband's military service was really not the basis for it." But the American government maintains it doesn't matter what the lie is -- any untruth at all is enough for naturalization to be revoked. Jennifer Chacon, professor at the University of California's law faculty, noted in Scotusblog, a website following the Supreme Court's cases, that more than 6.6 million people became naturalized Americans over the past decade. "Depending on the court's interpretation, all of them are potentially vulnerable to fines, imprisonment, and denaturalization on the basis of immaterial false statements," she wrote. Associated Press There has already been two coaching changes halfway through the NFL season with Indianapolis firing Frank Reich this week four weeks after Carolina did the same to Matt Rhule. The NFL had a record-tying 10 coaching changes last offseason and three-quarters of the teams have changed head coaches at least once in the past five years. Here's a look at some coaches who figure to be on the hot seat if things don't turn around in the second half of the season and some assistants who could be in line for head coaching jobs. Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - German airline group Lufthansa said Thursday it is not interested in snapping up troubled Italian carrier Alitalia, as Rome hunts for a buyer after workers rejected a bailout plan. "We are clearly not there to buy Alitalia," finance chief Ulrik Svensson said during a teleconference with analysts on Lufthansa's first-quarter financial results. Italian government ministers said Wednesday they would not oppose a takeover bid by the German behemoth, as they announced that Alitalia would be sold "to the highest bidder". Lufthansa, which already owns a stable of carriers including Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings, on Thursday reported a net loss of 68 million euros between January and March -- a worse performance than the same period last year. The result comes after a record year for Frankfurt-based Lufthansa, in which it booked profits of 1.75 billion euros ($1.90 billion) despite fierce competition from low-cost competitors and Gulf airlines such as Etihad. Loss-making Alitalia's future is up in the air after its workforce rejected a restructuring plan which management had presented as the only alternative to bankruptcy. Etihad, which owns a 49 percent stake in Alitalia, and other shareholders had made staff acceptance of the plan a precondition for their participation in a two-billion-euro recapitalisation plan involving a combination of loans and new shareholder financing. But despite earlier proposals being watered down in negotiations with unions, over two thirds of staff voted to reject them in a ballot on Monday, in which more than 90 percent of employees took part. The company's board on Tuesday asked the government to appoint administrators to find a purchaser or organise the winding up of the company. Etihad also holds a stake in struggling German airline Air Berlin, which has delayed the release of its 2016 annual results -- widely expected to show the firm in a poor light -- until Friday. Lufthansa has been mooted as a potential buyer for Air Berlin in the German press if the Gulf carrier decides to review its strategy in Europe. By Chris Kenning CHICAGO (Reuters) - At least 10 major U.S. airports say their rules prevent security officers from physically removing passengers from airplanes unless a crime is committed, meaning they would normally avoid incidents such as the one involving the passenger dragged off a United Airlines flight in Chicago. The April 9 incident sparked global outrage when images of a Vietnamese-American doctor being dragged through the aisle with blood on his face flooded social media and threw United into a public relations crisis. Officials at 10 of the busiest U.S. airports - in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Miami - said airport police would not physically remove a passenger from a plane over a seat dispute. In a case like this, if its not a criminal matter, we don't involve ourselves, said Michael Rodriguez, a spokesman with the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, which is responsible for security at McCarran International Airport. The passenger, David Dao, flying home to Louisville, refused to surrender his seat to make room for United crew members and was forcibly removed by aviation police at O'Hare International Airport. His attorney said he ended up with a concussion, missing teeth and broken nose. United Airlines initially blamed Dao but later apologized for its handling of the incident. [nL1N1HL0UK] United Chief Executive Oscar Munoz said the company would no longer use law enforcement officers to remove passengers from overbooked flights. [nL1N1HK0DL][nL1N1HN012] United on Thursday said after reviewing the incident that using law enforcement when there was no safety or security issue was a failure and called the incident a "defining moment." [nL1N1HY2A0] Security officials at other major airports said they had reviewed their rules and found them sufficient, with no need to amend them to avoid similar situations. Others said they had sent reminders to officers to avoid getting involved in such cases. Story continues New Yorks Port Authority Police, which patrol LaGuardia, JFK International and Newark Liberty International airports, reminded officers that in cases of overbooking they "will not assist in the physical removal of the passenger from the flight to accommodate the airlines request, said Joe Pentangelo, Port Authority police spokesman. Atlanta airport officers also would not have boarded the plane as O'Hare's police did, said Lane Hagan, airport precinct commander with the Atlanta Police Department, which oversees security at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, America's busiest airport. The view was echoed by all airports contacted by Reuters, although most would not comment on the United incident. "It couldnt just be, Oh, we have an overbooked flight, said Doug Yakel, spokesman at San Francisco International Airport. Chicago Department of Aviation officials have said the incident is under investigation and declined to comment. They have not discussed the incident in detail, citing pending litigation. According to a report released on Monday by the city, which is in charge of airport security, the three officers involved said Dao became combative after they unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to leave. However, at a Chicago City Council committee meeting this month, Deputy Commissioner of Security Jeff Redding said department policy calls for its officers not to board planes to handle customer service issues. Ordering a passenger who is not causing trouble to leave the plane so another person can take their seat would not constitute a lawful order, said John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University who has followed the United case closely. A carrier's need for seats is not among more than a dozen reasons that allows the airline to remove an already-seated passenger, he said. Law enforcement should not become involved unless it appears there is a danger to the safety or health of passengers, crew or the airplane, Banzhaf said. (Additional reporting by Laila Kearney and Gina Cherelus in New York, Editing by Ben Klayman) By Shihar Aneez COLOMBO (Reuters) - Activists in the Maldives say tolerance for dissent is rapidly disappearing after a prominent blogger who denounced Islamist extremism and state corruption was killed on Sunday and the government cracks down on criticism. Yameen Rasheed, 29, was found stabbed to death in the stairwell of his apartment block on Sunday. He had fronted a campaign to find a journalist presumed abducted in 2014 and had repeatedly warned police about death threats. The tropical Indian Ocean archipelago of 400,000 people has been mired in political instability since its uneasy shift to democracy in 2008, and critics accuse President Abdulla Yameen of autocratic behavior. Many potential challengers in elections due in 2018 have been arrested for alleged security offences while several activists, including one held in March on suspicion of spreading panic on social media after criticizing a development project, have been detained. The government denies targeting any critic unfairly, and the president condemned Sunday's murder, vowing to use all of the state's resources to bring the perpetrators to justice. Little is known about who is behind the violence, and earlier attacks on a blogger and the murder of a politician remain unsolved. Police reject accusations they have done too little to bring those responsible for the threats to justice. Some Maldivian activists have stopped publishing material for fear of further attacks, while others are seeking asylum abroad. "They can choose anyone of us. I don't know when they will attack me," said Shahindha Ismail at the Maldivian Democracy Network, who was threatened online with rape after she attended a press conference into journalist Ahmed Rilwan's disappearance. "There are two groups of people: One is radical Islamists and the other one is the politically motivated group. Both these two groups do not operate separately," she said. Significant numbers of radicalised Maldives youths have enlisted to fight for Islamic State in the Middle East. The United Nations said it was deeply alarmed by Sunday's killing, which came amid an apparent "upsurge in arrests and prosecutions of the political opposition". "We call on the authorities to take steps to remedy the shrinking space for exercise of the freedom of expression," the UN said. International criticism of the government has increased since ex-president Mohamed Nasheed was jailed in 2015 on terrorism charges after a rapid trial that observers called politically motivated. Olof Blomqvist of Amnesty International said activists felt "trapped between a rock and a hard place", referring to threats of violence and detentions. Muju Naeem, a blogger and friend of Rasheed's now living abroad, said authorities used Islam to frighten opponents who accuse the government of trying to hide corruption. "I left the country. Yameen stayed back and believed he could help with social justice. But that eventually got him killed," Naeem said by phone, requesting his location be withheld. "It is extremely frustrating... Somebody should be there to talk about it." (Additional reporting by Tom Miles in GENEVA; Writing and additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Nick Macfie) A man died in police custody Wednesday afternoon, but Cincinnati Police Lt. Steve Saunders said there is no reason to believe the death was caused by an officer. Authorities believe the man suffered a life-threatening medical emergency after a baggie containing a controlled substance broke open inside his mouth, according to Assistant Police Chief Paul Neudigate. Police and SWAT officers arrived in the 2800 block of West McMicken Avenue around 4 p.m. Wednesday with a "high-risk" search warrant in hand, according to Saunders. A warrant can be designated high-risk based on a suspect's history, known possession of weapons or the number of people believed to be in the space being searched. By Madeline Chambers and Paul Carrel BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Britons on Thursday not to delude themselves that they would continue to enjoy EU rights after Brexit and insisted the bloc would only agree on future ties with London after they have nailed down a deal to leave. Striking a firm tone in a speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament before a weekend summit on Brexit, Merkel also said talks on Britain's financial obligations to the EU would have to be addressed early on in the talks. "A third state, and that's what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights ... as members of the European Union," Merkel, the EU's most influential leader, told lawmakers. "I must say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions - that would be wasted time," she said, to loud applause from lawmakers. Arguing that the Brexit talks would only really get going after Britain's June 8 parliamentary election, Merkel stressed several times that all 27 remaining EU members agreed that the divorce settlement must be sorted out first. "We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," she said. Merkel, a conservative who will seek a fourth term as German chancellor in an election on Sept. 24, said one priority would be to protect the interests of EU citizens living in Britain, including 100,000 Germans. She said she was ready to make "a fair offer" to Britons in Germany if it was reciprocal. Merkel also said the talks would require a lot of effort in the next two years but expressed confidence that the EU side was ready. "In terms of substance and organization, we are very well prepared," she said. (Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Gareth Jones) BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Britons on Thursday not to delude themselves that they could negotiate an agreement on their future relationship with the European Union before they have nailed down a deal to leave the bloc. "We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," she told the Bundestag Lower House of parliament before an EU summit on Brexit. "A third state, and that's what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights ... as members of the European Union," she said. "I must say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions - that would be wasted time," she said, to loud clapping from lawmakers. (Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Paul Carrel) MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday and they agreed on the "convenience" of not scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but instead renegotiating the treaty along with Canada. Mexico's peso gained more than 1 percent after the White House released a readout of calls Trump had with Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the U.S. leader, a long-time critic of the trade pact, agreed to "bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation." (Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Adriana Barrera; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) Foreign minister called plans hostile and an absolute waste of money, as Trump appeared to back down on demand for funding from Congress The Mexican foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, tore into the idea of building a border wall, calling it unfriendly, a hostile act and unlikely to fulfill the objectives of stopping the flow of migrants and illegal merchandise into the United States. Appearing before the international relations commission in the lower house of congress, Videgaray unleashed uncharacteristically tough talk against Donald Trumps demand that Mexico pay for building a border, telling lawmakers that Mexico would not put a peso towards the construction costs. He also called plans for fencing off the frontier an absolute waste of money and said Mexico would pursue legal measures if its borders were infringed upon by the wall. The wall is not part of any bilateral discussion nor should it be, Videgaray said. Under no scenario will we contribute economically to an action of this kind. The foreign ministers comments come as the US president, who has insisted Mexico will pay for his campaign promise of building a border wall, pressures Congress to fund construction in the meantime. Trump had demanded Congress provide immediate funding for a border wall even raising the possibility of a government shutdown but appeared to be backing down on Tuesday. Political analysts in Mexico saw Trumps difficulties in persuading his own countrys Congress on key campaign promises repealing and replacing Obamacare and finding funding for a border wall as an opportunity for Mexican functionaries, who have preferred to not antagonize Trump, to take a tougher tone. Tough talk about the wall right now, right after Trump backing down, is low risk and comes without cost, said Carlos Bravo Regidor, professor at the Centre for Research and Teaching of Economics in Mexico City. [Trumps] been all bark, no bite. Trumps insistence on building a border wall has complicated Mexico-US relations, which had become close and cooperative on trade, commerce and security matters after decades of indifference and mutual distrust. Story continues Mexicos President Enrique Pena Nieto scrapped a trip to Washington in late January after Trump tweeted that his Mexican counterpart should cancel if a payment was not forthcoming. Both men subsequently spoke and agreed to not publicly discuss payment, though Trump used Twitter again to advocate building the border wall. The wall is going to get built and were setting record numbers in terms of stopping people from coming in and stopping drugs from coming in, Trump said on Tuesday, referring to a sharp decline in the number of undocumented migrants detained at the southern border since he took office. Roughly one-third of the nearly 2,000-mile Mexico-US border is already blocked by a barrier, something Trump wants to complete and insists will stem the flow of migrants and stop drugs from entering the United States. Security analysts have questioned Trumps assertion that the wall will stop illegal drugs since most illegal merchandise passes through legal ports of entry. One member of Congress, Senator Ted Cruz, introduced the EL CHAPO Act named for imprisoned Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman on Tuesday, which would send any money forfeited by El Chapo or other drug bosses to build a border wall. Guzman, whose cartel smuggled tons of drugs through tunnels under the border and once escaped from prison via a tunnel from his cell, was extradited on the eve of Trumps 20 January inauguration and prosecutors are seeking the criminal forfeiture of $14bn in illicit proceeds. Some in Mexico expressed skepticism with the prospect of El Chapo indirectly paying for a border barrier as the size of his fortune is pure speculation and presents the problem of how to seize it for the authorities, said Esteban Illades, a magazine editor in Mexico City. There is also the irony, he said, of funding the wall with a law named after a man who can tunnel through anything. Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, has committed $30 million to a new initiative that will help establish permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle. The money will go toward building a new facility specifically designed to house the city's homeless families and children, announced Seattle Mayor Ed Murray on Wednesday. In addition to the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation's $30 million, the City of Seattle will pledge $5 million to the multi-family complex. SEE ALSO: 8 innovations helping homeless populations around the world "Paul Allen understands the homelessness crisis requires everyone in our community, particularly our business leaders, to help," Murray said in a statement. "This commitment is an example of the incredible difference our philanthropic and business leaders can make in our community, as I called on others to do during my State of the City speech this year," he added. National nonprofit Mercy Housing Northwest, which operates 48 affordable housing properties in Washington state, will own the facility and take the lead in developing and operating it. Additional nonprofit partners are expected to join the initiative later, helping to provide crucial social services for the community. The exact location has not yet been determined. $30M from @PaulGAllen Family Foundation to develop housing for homeless families shows local business community can help with this crisis. pic.twitter.com/5Csn8rJAct Ed Murray (@MayorEdMurray) April 26, 2017 The project's goal is to help Seattle's homeless families and children "transition to stable housing and break the cycle of homelessness." Bill Hilf, CEO of Paul Allen's company Vulcan Inc., said they approached the City of Seattle several months ago in an effort to "make a significant impact toward disrupting the cycle of homelessness, and to give homeless families an opportunity to thrive." Story continues According to government data, 1,694 families are currently waiting for housing in King County, which incorporates Seattle and surrounding areas. Nearly 3,500 students enrolled in Seattle public schools experienced homelessness at some point during last year's school year. In 2015, Seattle declared a "state of emergency" over homelessness. Overall, recent estimates show there are approximately 3,000 people without shelter in the city a number that has steadily increased year after year, putting strains on Seattle's shelter system. As a result, many makeshift homes (dubbed "tent cities") have popped up. Job growth and economic success in Seattle have contributed to the problem, particularly as the city's tech industry has thrived. The influx of new workers has upped the population and made rent prices soar, pushing out those on the margins. Like Allen, others in the tech space have tried to curb their industry's negative impact on Seattle's homelessness crisis. Last year Amazon, another local tech giant that has undoubtedly contributed to housing shortages in the city, repurposed a building for its downtown campus as temporary housing for the homeless population. In Gabon this week, encountered many forest elephants on the beachsmaller, darker, and a bit peeved we were there. pic.twitter.com/30sKPJOLL9 Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) March 31, 2017 Allen is no stranger to using his fortune for social good. His foundation has funded efforts across various subjects since 1990, and through Vulcan Inc., he's spearheaded many conservation efforts such as the Global FinPrint initiative and the Great Elephant Census. WATCH: This coat doubles as a sleeping bag to keep the homeless warm in the winter Washington (AFP) - Microsoft on Thursday reported a strong jump in profits in the just-ended quarter but revenue fell short of expectations in the tech giant's first earnings report incorporating social network LinkedIn. Net profit rose 28 percent to $4.8 billion while revenues edged up eight percent to $22.1 billion in the quarter ending March 31, Microsoft said. Shares in Microsoft fell 1.8 percent in after-hours trade on the results. The earnings for Microsoft's fiscal third quarter come as chief executive Satya Nadella seeks to reduce the tech giant's focus on software, shifting to cloud computing and business services. "Our results this quarter reflect the trust customers are placing in the Microsoft cloud," Nadella said in a statement. "From large multi-nationals to small and medium businesses to non-profits all over the world, organizations are using Microsoft's cloud platforms to power their digital transformation." Microsoft reported revenue gains in cloud and business service operations, which offset a drop in "personal computing," which includes the Windows operating system that once made up its core business. Microsoft said revenue from its "Intelligent Cloud" rose 11 percent from a year earlier to $6.8 billion. LinkedIn, the professional social network acquired by Microsoft last year for some $26 billion, contributed revenue of $975 million. Microsoft said its Office commercial products and cloud services revenue increased seven percent. Office consumer products and cloud services revenue rose 15 percent, as the number of Office 365 consumer subscribers increased to 26.2 million. But revenue from its Surface family of tablet computers slumped 26 percent from a year ago, suggesting more woes for Microsoft's hardware efforts. Search advertising revenue rose eight percent while gaming from its Xbox operations saw a four percent rise. The party has harmed millions of their own former constituents. If they change course, they can reverse their losses The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic partys neoliberal turn. Photograph: Barry Lewis/Corbis via Getty Images The tragedy of the 2016 election is connected closely, at least for me, to the larger tragedy of the industrial midwest. It was in the ruined industrial city of Cleveland that the Republican Party came together in convention last July, and it was the deindustrialized, addiction-harrowed precincts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that switched sides in November and delivered Donald Trump to the Oval Office. I am a midwesterner too, and I like to think I share the values and outlook of that part of the country. I have spent many of the last 15 years trying to understand my regions gradual drift to the political right. And I have spent the last three weeks driving around the deindustrialized midwest, visiting 13 different cities to talk about the appeal of Donald Trump and what ails the Democratic Party. I met labor leaders and progressive politicians; average people and rank-and-file union members; senior citizens and Millennials; sages and cranks. Along the way I gawked at abandoned factory complexes and at Gothic-style water filtration plants. I visited affluent college towns and crumbling relics of twentieth-century prosperity. I ate pork tenderloins in Iowa and ribeye steaks in Indiana and fast-casual Italian offal (as a friend called it) in a bohemian zone of Chicago. I saw countless old fighter planes mounted on pedestals. I stood in a union hall in Indianapolis and breathed in that glorious odor of industrial beer mixed with decades of cigarette residue, the sweet fragrance of my youth. And what I am here to say is that the midwest is not an exotic place. It isnt a benighted region of unknowable people and mysterious urges. It isnt backward or hopelessly superstitious or hostile to learning. It is solid, familiar, ordinary America, and Democrats can have no excuse for not seeing the wave of heartland rage that swamped them last November. Story continues Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic disasters that have befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used to represent. The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic partys neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had nowhere else to go, they were making what happened last November a little more likely. Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer for them was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree ... every time they did this they made the disaster a little more inevitable. Pretending to rediscover the exotic, newly red states of the Midwest, in the manner of the New York Times, is not the answer to this problem. Listening to the voices of the good people of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan is not really the answer, either. Cursing those bad people for the stupid way they voted is an even lousier idea. What we need is for the Democratic party and its media enablers to alter course. Its not enough to hear peoples voices and feel their pain; the party actually needs to change. They need to understand that the enlightened Davos ideology they have embraced over the years has done material harm to millions of their own former constituents. The Democrats need to offer something different next time. And then they need to deliver. * They are already failing on this front. Consider the idea, currently approaching revealed truth among American liberals, that last Novembers electoral upset was in fact an act of political vandalism attributable to some violation of fair play by the Russians or the FBI director; that it had no greater historical significance than does an ordinary act of shoplifting. I met few who are actually buying that line. Tell people about how the Russians stole the election for Trump and everyone knows youre just reiterating a Beltway talking point. Mention how the Democrats betrayed working people over the years, however, and the radio stations board immediately lights up with enthusiastic callers. Remind people of the ways in which the Democrats have reoriented themselves around affluent, tasteful white-collar people and you hear a chorus of angry yesses; talk about how the Democrats live to serve the so-called creative class and a murmur of recognition sweeps the room. * People in the labor movement that I met in my turn around the midwest expressed complicated feelings about Donald Trump. On the one hand, everyone understands that he is an obvious scoundrel and they fear that his administration will bring about (via a possible supreme court ruling against public-sector unions) an epic defeat for organized labor. In the union hall of the Steelworkers local that represents workers at the Indianapolis Carrier plant a union hall where you might expect Trump to be venerated I spotted instead a flyer depicting the billionaire president with his famous pompadour on fire. The headline: Lying Con and Volatile Gasbag is Enemy of the Working Class. On the other hand, Trump at least pretended to be a friend of the working class, and it was working-class people in this part of America who turned against the Democrats and helped delivered him into the White House. By a certain school of thought, this should make working-class people the Number One swing group for Democrats to court. Of course it isnt working out that way. So far, liberal organs seem far less interested in courting such voters than they do in scolding them, insulting them for their coarse taste and the hate for humanity they supposedly cherish in their ignorant hearts. Ignorance is not the issue, however. Many midwesterners I met share an outlook that is profoundly bleak. They believe that the life has gone out of this region; indeed, they fear that a civilization based on making things is no longer sustainable. They tell me about seniors falling prey to Fox News syndrome and young people who are growing up without hope. And just about everyone I talked to believes that the national Democratic party has abandoned them. They are frustrated beyond words with the stupidity of the partys leadership. One thing we must never forget about the midwest, however, is that radicalism lurks just beneath the surface. The region has always swung back and forth between contentment and outrage; between Chicago Tribune-style business-worship and Eugene Debs-style socialism. I was reminded of this one night in Minneapolis, when a friend told me the story of a local Teamsters strike in 1934, a conflict that briefly plunged the Twin Cities into something akin to civil war. I have no doubt that people in this part of America would respond enthusiastically to a populist message that addressed their unhappy situation just look, for example, at the soaring popularity of Bernie Sanders. As things have unfolded thus far, however, our system seems designed to keep such an alternative off the table. The choice we are offered instead is between Trumpian fake populism and a high-minded politics of personal virtue. Between a nomenklatura of New Economy winners and a party of traditional business types, willing to say anything to get elected and (once that is done) to use the state to reward people like themselves. The publics frustration with this state of affairs, at least as I heard it on my midwestern trip, is well-nigh overwhelming. The way I see it, the critical test for our system will come late next year. The billionaire great-maker in the Oval Office has already turned out to be an incompetent buffoon, and his greatest failures are no doubt yet to come. By November 2018, the winds of change will be in full hurricane shriek, and unless the Democratic Partys incompetence is even more profound than it appears to be, the Ds will sweep to some sort of mid-term triumph. But when the resistance comes into power in Washington, it will face this question: this time around, will Democrats serve the 80% of us that this modern economy has left behind? Will they stand up to the money power? Or will we be invited once again to feast on inspiring speeches while the tasteful gentlemen from JP Morgan foreclose on the world? U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are, at present, expected to meet on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany this July. Unless, of course, they meet before that. Russian media outlet Kommersant reported that Trump and Putin may meet before the end of May, when Trump is in Europe for the NATO summit in Brussels and the G-7 summit in Taormina, Sicily. The Trump-Putin meeting would reportedly be held in some still unspecified European country. This was apparently confirmed by sources in both the Russian and U.S. administrations. Kommersant presents the argument that the first meeting will be significant in shaping U.S.-Russian relations in the time of Trump. Kommersant also helpfully notes that U.S.-Russian relations so far have not improved since the Obama era. The continuing case of Michael Flynn, who resigned after lying to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (and the American public) about whether he discussed lifting sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, and who may have committed a crime by not disclosing payments he received from Russian state-backed network RT. (Russian media and lawmakers called Flynns resignation the result of a Russophobic witch hunt.) Some Russian experts are skeptical that a face-to-face meeting will improve matters any more than a phone call could. Andrei Sushentsov, program director of the Valdai Club, tells Kommersant relations cannot be improved as long as the one-sidedness that characterizes all U.S. presidential administrations is in place. Some were more optimistic. Andrei Kortunov, general director of the Russian Council of International Affairs, is quoted as saying that the nitty-gritty of issues like Syria and Ukraine will not be resolved, and that the meeting is instead to begin finding common ground. Kortunov also thought that having the meeting around the NATO summit, at which Russia will surely be a (if not the) topic of discussion, could show that Trump is willing to invest political capital in U.S.-Russian relations. Story continues To be sure, there are issues other than Syria and Ukraine (or the state of rights in Russia, which at present do not protect elderly journalists from being beaten to death in prison or opposition activists from being harassed on the street) on which that political capital could be spent. Still, one wonders if the meeting between Trump and Putin, whenever it is held, will go the way of relations with Russia under Trump more broadly: with more innuendo than improvement. Photo credit: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images Democrats accuse White House of covering up for former Trump adviser Pentagon investigating Flynn for apparently undisclosed paid speeches Mike Flynns firing after 24 days in office made him the shortest-serving national security adviser in history. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images Donald Trumps former national security adviser is under formal investigation by the Pentagon for his apparently undisclosed paid speaking engagements in Russia, it emerged on Thursday. Retired army lieutenant general Mike Flynn, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief, has attracted the official scrutiny for potentially failing to obtain required approval for a Moscow speech to RT, a state-controlled news channel that US intelligence considers an arm of Kremlin propaganda. Acting Pentagon inspector general Glenn Fine disclosed the inquiry in an 11 April letter to the House oversight committee, which is also investigating Flynn. The committee released Fines letter on Thursday. Additionally, newly disclosed DIA documents show that Flynn was warned of criminal sanctions in 2014 should he fail to obtain express official approval for accepting money for services rendered to a foreign government. Just months after Flynns 2014 firing from DIA, the intelligence agencys lawyers informed the retired general of ethics guidelines for his post-government career. Among them, a letter dated October 2014 shows, was a warning that Flynn would need advance approval from the [Army] secretary and the secretary of state before accepting employment, consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria or salary from a foreign government. Violations of a host of ethics restrictions, including unapproved foreign compensation, carry criminal penalties, the DIA general counsels office warned. Yet the DIA was unable to find records of Flynn seeking any approval, let alone obtaining it, a 7 April letter from DIA to the oversight committee showed. The committee also released that letter on Thursday. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, accused the White House of covering up for Flynn through lack of compliance with the committees request for documents pertaining to Flynns payments from RT and his then-undisclosed lobbying work for clients tied to the Turkish government. Story continues I honestly do not understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn. The president fired him for lying about his communications with the Russian ambassador. They should be bending over backwards to cooperate, Cummings said at a Thursday press conference. Flynns attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House press secretary Sean Spicer later shifted the blame to Barack Obamas administration for granting Flynn security clearance. Every individual who came into this White House either applied for a security clearance or had one, he told reporters. Everyone in the government goes through the same SF-86 process every single person and so why would you rerun a background check on someone who was the head of the department of the Defense Intelligence Agency that had and did maintain a high-level security clearance? Theres no difference between administrations when you come in from one they rerun it. The reason they grant them for five years is that its a very extensive background, where they check your contacts, your places of residence, your employment. They go out into the field, they do a lot of that work, and then youre required to maintain updates to that clearance. They re-adjudicate it every five years. That occurred in this case and now the Department of Defense inspector generals looking into it. Spicer said he was frankly taken aback by Cummings allegations of a cover-up, insisting it was not true and that all relevant documents had been provided. Asked if Trump still believes that Flynn should receive immunity in exchange for his testimony, the press secretary said only: I have not asked him, but I believe that General Flynn should do what his counsel advises him to do. Trump fired Flynn, his major military surrogate on the campaign trail, in February after Flynn ostensibly lied to the vice-president, Mike Pence, over conversations Flynn had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak concerning easing sanctions on Moscow. The firing after 24 days in office made Flynn the shortest-serving national security adviser in history. Shortly after his firing, Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice. He disclosed 2016 lobbying work that could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey earning him over a half million dollars. Flynn was a Trump campaign surrogate during the August-to-November lifespan of the lobbying work. In December 2015, Flynn attended and spoke before a gala celebration of RTs 10th anniversary. He was seated to the right of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the event. Flynns Moscow trip has become a subject of myriad investigations into ties between Russia and Trumps campaign underway in Congress and the FBI. Asked about the speech in August 2016, Flynn acknowledged it was paid but declined to specify the amount. The House oversight committee subsequently obtained and disclosed that he received over $67,000 from Russian firms, including $33,750 for the RT speech. Through his lawyer, Flynn has offered to testify to the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committee investigations, but only after obtaining a grant of immunity against subsequent prosecution. Thus far, the congressional committees have denied discussing any such immunity deal. SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Separatist militants killed three Indian soldiers in the early hours of Thursday morning in an attack on a military army base in Kashmir, close to a de facto border with Pakistan, the army said. The two militants who attacked the base at Kupwara were killed as soldiers returned fire, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rajesh Kalia said. Disputed by two nuclear-armed neighbors, the Himalayan region is regarded as one of the world's most dangerous potential flashpoints. India has heavily militarized its side in order to stop cross-border infiltration that has fueled a long-running separatist insurgency and to counter Pakistani forces on the other side. India accuses Pakistan of aiding militant groups, a charge Islamabad denies, but anger against Indian rule is widespread in the Muslim-majority region. Street protests flared in recent weeks as thousands of Kashmiris vented anger against alleged abuses by Indian forces after a video emerged of a local man tied to the front of an army jeep and used as a human shield. In an attempt to contain the protests and limit the circulation of videos, India on Wednesday said it would block 22 social media websites in Kashmir for a month. (Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) An Illinois toddler whose disappearance sparked a desperate search this week has been found dead. The body of 16-month-old Semaj Crosby was discovered in a Joliet Township home early Thursday, more than two days since she'd been last seen playing with about a dozen kids gathered in a nearby yard. Read: Boy, 1, Found Dead at Day Care After Being Left Alone With 8-Year-Old Child Suspected in Death Semaj's body was discovered at about midnight, according to the Will County Sheriff's Office. Her family reported the toddler missing at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, just hours after Department of Children and Family Services officials say they saw her safe in her home. "DCFS had been at the home on April 25 at approximately 3:20 p.m. and had seen all three of the mothers children including Semaj," DCFS spokeswoman Alissandra Calderon said in a statement obtained by the Chicago Tribune. "There were no obvious hazards or safety concerns at that time." The family had been looking for her for an hour and a half, Public Information Officer Kathy Hoffmeyer told InsideEdition.com Wednesday. More than 80 people were at one point searching for the child, aided by bloodhounds and drones. An all-night canvas of the neighborhood using a helicopter equipped with an infrared and heat-seeking device found nothing, authorities said. A reverse 911 call was sent out last night to all residents within a five-mile radius. Read: Missing Florida Baby's Body Believed to Be Found in Woods Demaj's body was found after the Will County Sheriffs Office, along with the FBI, gained consent to search an area residence late Wednesday. The Will County Coroners Office pronounced Semaj deceased and an autopsy was scheduled for Thursday. Watch: 6-Year-Old Girl Missing Since 2012 Found Dead Related Articles: Swipe right on Snapchat on any given day and you might stumble upon a custom geofilter designed for someone's special occasion, be it a birthday, wedding or even a promposal. But have you ever wondered who's behind these bespoke filters? Custom geofilters are the must-have party accessory for the Snapchat generation and, now, talented designers are setting up businesses to quench people's thirst for bespoke filters. SEE ALSO: 'Promposals' get even more out of control with custom Snapchat geofilters "Snapchat geofilters are the millennial equivalent of a birthday card," says John Scott, founder of SnapThatFilter, a small business that designs bespoke geofilters for special occasions. Snapchat's on-demand geofilter site lets users choose from a broad selection of geofilter templates that can be mapped to a time and location. The site also allows people to upload their own designs, which go through a strict approval system by the Snapchat's geofilter team. Prices for Snapchat's templates begin at $5. People looking for a geofilter entirely unique to their special event and, crucially, not a Snapchat template are turning to geofilter designers like Scott to help make their parties pop. Scott works 9-5 as a senior designer for Debrett's and spends most of his waking hours outside of work on his "side hustle" designing geofilters. "I create most of the filters on my way in to work as I have a bit of a commute," says Scott. Once he's designed a filter, he sends it to his sister Hannah who handles the process of uploading the filters to Snapchat's geofilter site. As soon as Scott arrives home from the office, he gets back to work on the geofilters. Image: snapthatfilter Image: snapthatfilter "We've had to cancel filters on the day of weddings. And, in one case, the wedding was called off in the morning and then called back on in the afternoon," says Scott. He says he's seeing a big rise in demand for baby shower and gender-reveal party geofilters, and he's also started designing filters for school proms. Scott also produces wedding packages, which include a geofilter for the engagement, hen and stag parties as well as the wedding day. Scott charges 39 ($50) for bespoke filter design. Story continues So, how exactly does one become a Snapchat geofilter designer? When Scott went on a weekend away with his cousins in August 2016, he decided to test out making a geofilter. "We all had loads of people saying "How did you do that?!"" says Scott. "I suddenly thought, we could sell these and, as we were pre-drinking for a night out that night, we came up with the company name," he continues. Two weeks later, the website was live and they sold their first filter to a friend that day. But, only when Scott's bespoke geofilter for UK vlogger Zoella's and her boyfriend Alfie's Christmas party gained over 20 million views did Snapchat begin paying attention to his endeavours. Image: snapthatfilter "Snapchat got in contact to essentially say: 'Who are you and how did you get that many views?'" says Scott. Greg Collins who's originally from Dublin, Ireland was visiting NYC a few years ago when he spotted the just-rolled-out geofilters there and fell in love with the idea. At that point, Ireland didn't have any geofilters, so he researched how to create "community filters" the filters that appear in certain locations every day on the app. He began drawing up designs and submitting them to Snapchat and after six months, three of his filters were the first to go live in Ireland. Collins has since created community filters for Manhattan , London , and Las Vegas , each of which have gained around 20 million views. Image: greg collins Image: greg collins After community filters, Collins says he got "hooked" and began branching out into custom filters. Collins who now lives in NYC works in a tech startup in Manhattan by day, and by night works on commissioned geofilters, including weddings, college balls and parties. And, though Collins' 9-5 job means he doesn't have all the time in the world to work on filters, he has honed his skills at turning filters around very fast. He can make a filter in under an hour and he says it "isn't an issue balancing the two." "It also helps that it's something I love doing so I can easily throw on some music in the evening and get designing and the time flies," he says. Most of all, though, Collins loves people's reactions to their filters. "People get so happy when they see something unique to them on Snapchat for all in the vicinity to use, its as if it makes them feel famous for a short time so the feedback at that end is always great," says Collins. As the bespoke geofilters trend grows from strength to strength, more and more designers like Collins and Scott will no doubt appear on the scene. And, it's likely these side gigs will turn into full-time jobs. Both Collins and Scott share a love for their side gig, which somehow mitigates those bleary-eyed late nights. Next time you swipe right on Snapchat, you might stumble upon the handiwork of one such late night. WATCH: Snapchat Spectacles have a wind noise problem here's how to fix it ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - Blank screens and red text warning about threats to press freedom interrupted Mongolian television late on Wednesday to protest against legal changes media groups say could harshly punish journalists accused of defamation ahead of elections. With just three million people, Mongolia, best known as the birthplace of the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, has long stood as an oasis of democracy, sandwiched between autocratic giant neighbors China and Russia. Mongolia's political transformation since a peaceful revolution in 1990 has been a big plus for foreign investors eyeing its rich mineral resources. But with presidential elections in June, rights groups and journalists have expressed concern the government is using increasingly heavy-handed tactics to suppress media and stifle dissent, including jailing reporters. The government denies seeking to muzzle the press, saying the country is a democracy that values the freedom of the media. But this week, parliament is due to debate law amendments that could impose large fines on reporters accused of defamation, in what media groups say amounts to a threat to make them stop reporting on issues like rampant corruption. More than a dozen Mongolian television stations went dark for about one hour on Wednesday evening, some carrying only the text "Your right to know is under threat". On Thursday, one of the country's largest newspapers, Unuudur, carried the same message on its front page. Hashhuu Naranjargal, president of the civil-society group Globe International in Mongolia, said media outlets could face penalties of up to 200 million tugrik ($82,850) for violations under the amendments, while individual journalists and social media users could be fined 2 million tugrik ($828) each. The fines were a form of "economic censorship", said Naranjargal, that politicians might abuse to protect themselves. "The general political atmosphere is very negative about the protection of journalists," Naranjargal said. "They just want to prevent negative information about themselves," she said about politicians. Batbold Chimgee, a journalist for the website GoGo.mn, said the government had abused the libel law in the past to censor reporters. She said the 2 million tugrik fine was equivalent to three months salary for many journalists. "It's big money for journalists because Mongolian journalists don't make much money." (Reporting by Terrence Edwards; Editing by Ben Blanchard, Robert Birsel) A mother who carried her baby for the duration of the pregnancy despite the fact that it had no brain has said goodbye to her newborn. Keri Young and her husband Royce were informed of the child's condition by a doctor, in February. Despite their grief, Ms Young decided to continue with the pregnancy and gave birth to their daughter, who they had named Eva, in order to donate her organs to other babies in need. I was a spectator to my own life, watching a superhero find her superpowers," Mr Young wrote on Facebook after his wife made the decision. In literally the worst moment of her life, finding out her baby was going to die, it took her less than a minute to think of someone else and how her selflessness could help. After Eva was born two months Mr Young posted a picture of her alongside the couple and their son. She died shortly afterwards. We said hello and goodbye to our sweet Eva yesterday," he wrote. "She was so perfect in her own little way. Hundreds of people commented on the post expressing both grief and gratitude to the couple from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. One wrote: That courage and is the most humane gesture I've ever seen in my life. Another said: Thank you and your wonderful & brave wife for trying to turn a family tragedy into a blessing for others. Tondano (Indonesia) (AFP) - In a remote corner of the Indonesian archipelago, a modest synagogue stands in a tiny Jewish community that has found acceptance despite rising intolerance in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country. The red-roofed building on Sulawesi island is the only synagogue in the nation of 255 million people. Here, unlike other parts of the country, the Jewish community feel safe to practise their faith openly. "We can wear the kippah (Jewish skullcap) in the mall or anywhere we want, it's not a problem," Yobby Hattie Ensel, a Jewish leader from the nearby city of Manado told AFP. In Tondano, the "Shaar Hasyamayim" synagogue sits close to several churches and residents of different religions live, work, and worship alongside each other without incident. Indonesia has long been praised for its moderate, inclusive brand of Islam -- and this enclave of diversity is a testament to that. But across the archipelago, intolerance has risen in recent years as more conservative forms of Islam have become popular, driven by increasingly vocal hardline groups. Tensions in the Middle East, particularly between Israel and the Palestinians, spill over here and deepen religious divides. Outside the safe haven on Sulawesi, those who refuse to hide their faith have faced hostility. Yaakov Baruch, an Orthodox Jew who runs the Tondano synagogue, revealed how he was threatened with death in a Jakarta busy mall as he walked along with his pregnant wife. "From a few floors up, they shouted at me 'Crazy Jew'," he told AFP, adding the group of men then ran towards him and demanded he remove his skullcap. "They said to me: 'We don't want you to use your kippah in this country. If you continue to use it, we'll kill you'." In 2013, the country's only other synagogue in the city of Surabaya was demolished. It had been the site of anti-Israel protests for years, and was sealed off by hardliners in 2009 and left to decay. Story continues - Secret worship - Indonesian rabbi Benjamin Verbrugge concedes any flare-up of tensions in the Middle East provokes hostility towards the local faithful. "Problems between Israelis and Palestinians are a liability for me -- when someone is stabbed there, it makes me uneasy here," he said. Faced with such open hostility, the Jews in the capital worship in secret. Last month Verbrugge, head of the United Indonesian Jewish Community (UIJC), held celebrations for the festival of Purim, traditionally one of the most joyous days in Judaism's calendar, hidden in a small hotel room with a handful of fellow worshippers. The UIJC estimate there are around 200 practising the faith in the country, believed to be the descendants of traders from Europe and Iraq who came to Asia to trade. The organisation was set up to bring the nation's Jews together. The Jewish population in Indonesia is believed to have peaked at around 3,000 in the years before World War II, according to Rotem Kowner, a professor from the University of Haifa in Israel. The fact that those remaining are scattered across the archipelago means Verbrugge has to defy rules that forbid Jews from using electrical gadgets on the Sabbath to lead group prayers online via the LINE messaging app. The small community also faces more practical challenges, such as the fact kosher food is not widely available in Indonesia, said Phinechas, a local convert to Judaism. "I try my best to be a good Jew but I can't manage it 100 percent," he added. - Increasing intolerance - Faith-based tension has been mounting in Indonesia, undermining its pluralist reputation. Christian churches and mosques where Muslim minorities pray have been closed due to pressure from hardliners. Shiites and Ahmadis -- regarded as heretics by some Sunnis -- have been forced from their homes in mob attacks and on occasion even killed. Successive governments have been criticised for failing to tackle the radicals for fear of being accused of attacking Islam. Due to their small number and the fact most live in the shadows, the nation's Jews have not been a major focus of radical Islamic anger in Indonesia and have largely escaped the serious attacks directed at other minorities. But having a low profile also brings problems. According to the law, freedom of worship is guaranteed for all religions, including Judaism, but in practice Jews cannot be honest about their faith. Authorities allow Indonesians to put six different religions on their all-important ID cards -- Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. ID cards are vital for accessing government services, and for doing things such as registering marriages and births, meaning most Jews lie and put "Christianity" on the documents. The religious affairs ministry said in 2013 people who do not follow one of the six authorised faiths can choose to put nothing on their cards, but Indonesian Jews AFP interviewed had all put "Christian" to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Despite the challenges, Indonesian Jews nevertheless insist they are an integral part of the nation. Baruch said: "[The] Jewish community of Indonesia, we were in this country far before the country was born. It means we are part of this country as well." North Korea has appealed to Southeast Asian countries for support in its row with the United States to prevent what it warned could be a "nuclear holocaust", according to a letter obtained by AFP. In the letter to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' secretary general, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho warned the situation on the Korean Peninsula was "reaching the brink of war" because of Washington's actions. He urged the ASEAN chief to inform the 10-nation organisation's foreign ministers "about the grave situation" on the peninsula "and give them a proper proposal", while criticising at length US-South Korean military exercises. Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks in the wake of a series of North Korean missile tests and tough rhetoric from Washington on the isolated nation's rogue weapons programme. A copy of the North's letter, dated March 23, was obtained by AFP on Thursday ahead of an ASEAN leaders' summit in Manila where they are expected to discuss the situation on the peninsula. "I express my expectations that ASEAN which attaches great importance to the regional peace and stability will make an issue of the US-South Korean joint military exercises at ASEAN conferences from the fair position and play an active role in safeguarding the peace and safety of Korean Peninsula," the letter said. North Korea is known to have close ties with some ASEAN members, including Cambodia and Laos. However ASEAN has in the past spoken out against North Korea's nuclear ambitions. A statement released at the end of an ASEAN leaders' summit in Laos last year expressed "serious concern" over North Korea's nuclear testing and called on it to abide by relevant UN Security Council resolutions meant to curtail its atomic programme. - Unusual move - Ri's letter appeared to be a highly unusual move. A Southeast Asian diplomat said that, as far as he could recall, it was the first time North Korea had written a letter seeking ASEAN's help on the issue. Story continues It comes after Pyongyang's diplomatic ties with ASEAN member Malaysia were seriously damaged with the assassination in Kuala Lumpur in February of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean lader Kim Jong-Un. South Korea has blamed Pyongyang for the killing, accusing its agents of using a banned nerve agent. Ri wrote in the letter that the annual US-South Korea military exercises justified Pyongyang's decision to develop its own nuclear weapons. "It is a fact clear to everyone that when they deploy the means of nuclear strike that can drive the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear holocaust in just seconds... the nature of such exercises can in no way be defensive," the letter said. Washington has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Korean peninsula amid signs the North could be preparing for a sixth nuclear test. Admiral Harry Harris, who heads the US Pacific Command, said in Washington this week the US Carl Vinson strike group was in the Philippine Sea just east of Okinawa, "in striking range and power projection range of North Korea if called upon to do that." Summit host Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday called on the United States and Asian powers China, Japan and South Korea to exercise patience in dealing with North Korea. "It would be as good as any other time to advise people to just go easy," Duterte told reporters. "I would caution everybody... if there's a nuclear war here, a holocaust, this will become an arid land." Valletta (AFP) - NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Turkey on Thursday it must fully respect legal due process, as Ankara continues to make mass arrests after last July's failed coup. "Turkey has the right to protect itself and to prosecute those who were behind the failed coup attempt but that has to take place based on the full respect of the rule of law," Stoltenberg said as he arrived for an EU defence ministers meeting in Valletta. "I attach a great importance to these values myself and this is an issue we have discussed with the Turkish leadership," he added. Turkey on Wednesday detained more than 1,000 people and suspended over 9,000 police in a vast new crackdown against alleged supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based preacher President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of mounting the coup. Erdogan earlier this month narrowly won a controversial referendum which gives him increased powers, sparking increased concerns in Europe over the country's rights record. But at the same time, Turkey is a crucial NATO ally, sitting at a strategic crossroads and providing the US-led alliance with its second biggest military component after the United States. "Turkey is a key ally for many reasons, especially for its strategic geographic location bordering Iraq, Syria and all the violence, the turmoil we see to the south but (it is) also close to Russia and the Black Sea," Stoltenberg noted. The NATO secretary general, a former Norwegian prime minister, said he looked forward to an alliance summit in May in Brussels where all 28 member state leaders will be able to "discuss our common challenges." Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan has blamed Barack Obama for his 2015 presidential election defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, alleging the former US president headed a global conspiracy to get rid of him. Jonathan made the allegations in a new book out on Friday called "Against The Run of Play", which documents how he became the first Nigerian incumbent head of state to lose an election. He said Obama and his officials "made it very clear to me by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and were ready to do anything to achieve that purpose". "They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the election," he was quoted as saying in the 204-page book, by journalist Olusegun Adeniyi. Jonathan won widespread praise for conceding to Buhari before the final results were announced, preventing deadly violence that blighted previous elections in Africa's most populous nation. But he alleged Obama influenced Britain's former prime minister David Cameron and the current French president Francois Hollande to work against him. "I got on well with... Cameron but at some point, I noticed that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had to join them against me," he said. "But I didn't realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until France caved in to the pressure from America." Jonathan said he had a good relationship with Hollande, who was his first point of contact whenever there were difficulties with neighbouring Cameroon over the Boko Haram insurgency. In the wake of the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok, Hollande organised a security summit in Paris involving Nigeria and its neighbours. The talks were instrumental in the creation of a regional fighting force, which has been key to weakening the Islamic State group affiliate. "But weeks to the election, he had also joined the Americans in supporting the opposition against me," he added, according to an advance copy of the book seen by AFP. Story continues - Corruption claims - Jonathan attributed opposition to his re-election to claims by Buhari's All Progressives Congress (APC) party that he was not doing enough to fight corruption. "That was the same thing I kept hearing from the Americans without specific allegations," he added, rejecting claims he had done nothing to tackle the problem. Buhari has accused Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of leaving his government with a "virtually empty" treasury and said "mind-boggling" amounts of public money were stolen. Many senior figures in the PDP and Jonathan's administration, as well as his family members, are currently facing trial for corruption. Buhari, who led a military government in the 1980s, has been successful in operations against Boko Haram, whose insurgency has left at least 20,000 people dead in Nigeria alone. Jonathan, whose administration was accused of failing to properly equip and support the military against Boko Haram, again claimed Obama's administration undermined Nigeria's response. Nigeria's ambassador to Washington in 2014 publicly criticised the United States for refusing to sell it attack helicopters on human rights grounds. Jonathan said US laws prohibiting arms sales to countries with poor rights records "made the war against Boko Haram very difficult". A US embassy official in Abuja said in a statement it was "surprising" Jonathan appeared to be reconsidering his view of the election. Washington's policy before the vote was for a free, fair and transparent process, he said, adding the United States believed the result was "an expression of the will of the Nigerian people". Britain echoed the view, and called the vote "a credit to the Nigerian people and a truly historic moment for Nigerian democracy". It pointed to the assessment of independent observers, including the European Union, that there was "no evidence of systemic manipulation of the process". Police in Hong Kong have arrested and charged several pro-democracy activists over their involvement in a protest against the Chinese governments intervention in the election of two pro-independence lawmakers last year. Nine people were taken into custody Thursday morning local time for their involvement in the November rally outside Beijings liaison office in the territory, according to a Facebook post by political party Demosist, two of whose members were among the nine. The protest resulted in authorities using pepper spray and batons against protesters who charged a police barricade. Charges include inciting disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly and obstructing police officers. Those arrested were subsequently released on bail, and will appear in court on May 5, the party says. Avery Ng of the League of Social Democrats, who was among those arrested, wrote on Facebook that it was the third time this year that police had taken him from his home into custody. Never-ending political suppression! he said. Thursday marks the second time opposition figures have been arrested in Hong Kong in as many days, after two activists - who advocate for Hong Kong independence - were charged with unlawful assembly in relation to a brawl in Hong Kongs legislature. Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were among the youngest lawmakers elected in the territory last year, but were disqualified from taking their seats after refusing to take their oaths properly and pledging allegiance to the Hong Kong nation. The November rally, over which the latest arrests were made, was called in response to the intervention by Beijing to interpret the territorys Basic Law, or constitution, in order to prevent the separatist duo from taking their seats. It was considered Beijings most severe infringement on Hong Kongs autonomy. Yau, one of the two activists arrested on Wednesday, tells TIME that she believes the charges amount to political persecution. Story continues There is no ground to charge unlawful assembly as we had the right to protest, and it was our duty to attend the meetings in the [Legislative Council], she says. Nathan Law, another co-founder of Demosist who was elected as Hong Kongs youngest-ever legislator, says: The protest originated from Beijings move to undermine Hong Kongs rule of law, adding that these are absolutely political prosecutions. Last month, nine organizers of the 2014 mass pro-democracy protests that paralyzed the city for 79 days, were booked on charges relating to causing a public nuisance during the demonstrations, Reuters reports. The spate of arrests come as Hong Kongs deeply unpopular Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying reaches the end of his tenure. His successor, Carrie Lam, was picked late March in a closed contest with 777 votes out of 1,194 eligible electors, over a more popular rival. The arrests of the nine Umbrella activists came one day after Lam was elected. There is reason to believe that Leung Chun-ying is paving the way for the new government, which will be inaugurated on July 1, and to reduce the willingness for Hongkongers to make a stand when [Chinese President] Xi Jinping visits Hong Kong on that day, Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong student activist who headed the mass pro-democracy protests and co-founded Demosist last year, tells TIME by text message. The Chinese President is expected to administer Lams oath of office on July 1, 20 years after sovereignty was transferred from the U.K. to China. Theres a pattern of retaliation against pro-democracy figures, Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director of Amnesty International, tells TIME, noting that the arrests came a long time after the actual events in all three instances. Whatever the outcome of the various cases, Bequelin says that just the fact of prosecuting people is having an intimidating effect, suggesting that the sheer number of cases is intended to have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. - With reporting by Nash Jenkins / Hong Kong This article was originally published on TIME.com ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's doctors have advised him to take things slowly as he recovers from an undisclosed illness, and there is no need to worry about his health, his spokesman said on Thursday. Buhari did not attend a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, choosing to rest and work from home. That triggered speculation about his health and his ability to run Africa's biggest economy and most populous nation. Wednesday's was Buhari's second consecutive absence from the weekly meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Garba Shehu said Buhari's decision not to attend the meeting was last minute, otherwise he would have notified his cabinet and Nigerians. Buhari, 74, returned home in March after nearly two months' medical leave in Britain and said he would need more rest and health tests. Details of his medical condition were not disclosed. "President Buhari himself, on his return to the country, made Nigerians aware of the state of his health while he was in London. Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation," Shehu said in a statement. "Despite his lack of visibility, Nigerians should rest assured that President Buhari has not abdicated his role as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria." Shehu said the president received daily briefings on activities of government and met regularly with his vice president. Osinbajo, a lawyer who is seen as more business-friendly than Buhari, has played an active role in driving policy changes, chairing cabinet meetings during the president's medical leave. Shehu said Buhari was spending most of his time in his private residence which is equipped as an office, adding that he had gone through the worst period of his recovery in London. (Reporting by Felix Onuah and Tife Owolabi; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; editing by Ralph Boulton) Helsinki (AFP) - Finland's telecoms giant Nokia reported Thursday that it remained deep in the red at the start of the year, with sales in its main business, networks, on the decline. But the stock market rejoiced as analysts' fears of a much worse performance were allayed. The company posted a loss of 488 million euros ($532 million) in the first quarter, an improvement from the 609 million euros a year earlier, prompting chief executive Rajeev Suri to say he believed in an "improving business momentum, even if some challenges remain". Investors agreed with that assessment, sending Nokia's share price more than six percent higher on the Helsinki stock exchange to 5.29 euros by late morning. While the company's overall sales declined by two percent to 5.38 billion euros, sales in its core networks business fell by six percent, to 4.9 billion euros. An analyst at Aurel BGC, a Paris brokerage, called the results "quite reassuring" because investors had been expecting a steeper decline in networks revenues. "Markets have known for a long time that the trend is not very good," he told AFP. Most importantly, profit margins were better than those generated by Swedish rival Ericsson, the analyst said. "We saw encouraging signs of stabilisation in mobile networks," Suri meanwhile told reporters in a conference call. The company is eyeing business opportunities offered by the "path to 5G roadmap", Suri said, referring to the worldwide rollout of the lightning-fast 5G mobile internet service that operators expect to begin by 2020. Once the world's number one handset maker, Nokia transformed itself into a network equipment company and bought its hugely unprofitable French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent a year ago, sending the whole group's results plunging into the red in 2016. The firm recorded a net loss of 766 million euros last year, which Suri said in a statement was a "year of transition." Story continues But in fact the company has been going through a process of radical transformation for several years now. In 2013, it bought 50 percent of its network activities from Germany's Siemens, and the following year it pulled out of mobile phones. It sold its mapping unit Here in 2015 and completed the deal late last year to buy Alcatel-Lucent, which had only recorded one year of annual profit since its inception in 2006. Nokia was the world's top mobile phone maker between 1998 and 2011 but was overtaken by South Korean rival Samsung after failing to respond to the rapid rise of smartphones. GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea has agreed to a visit by the U.N. expert on the human rights of people with disabilities, the United Nations said on Thursday, a minor concession after years of criticism of Pyongyang's record from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The visit by Catalina Devandas-Aguilar from May 3-8 will be the first ever to North Korea by an independent expert designated by the Council, a 47-state body that is pushing for justice for crimes against humanity it says have been committed. North Korea has consistently denounced the Council's resolutions as a conspiracy by the United States and other "hostile forces", while its ally China has tried to shield it from scrutiny. It has not allowed any of a string of U.N. human rights investigators specifically focusing on North Korea itself to visit. Last month North Korean diplomats boycotted a Council session on abuses in North Korea amid rising tension on the divided peninsula following its latest missile tests and two nuclear tests last year. Devandas-Aguilar's visit will take her to Pyongyang and the South Hwanghae Province and will focus particularly on children with disabilities in North Korea, the statement said. North Korea, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), ratified the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in December 2016. "My upcoming visit to DPRK represents a key opportunity to learn firsthand about national realities, laws, policies and programmes concerning people with disabilities, as well as the challenges and opportunities the Government faces in implementing the Convention," she said in a statement. Devandas-Aguilar plans to hold a press conference in Pyongyang at the end of her visit and to submit her findings next year. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Stephanie Nebehay) Admit it: as a youngster you dreamed of building, designing, working on, or simply being around high-performance cars. If you are still compelled and determined to do so, it may not have to be a dream much longer. Koenigsegg is going on quite a hiring spree seeking out 40 new additions to its workforce. That may not seem like much, but considering Koenigsegg is a boutique automaker where the employees are probably on first name basis with one another, it's quite an increase. There's a wide range of openings for all sorts of labor as well. The Swedish supercar builder is seeking positions from assemblers, engine builders, detailers, painters, upholstery assistants, and much more. It sounds like an incredibly laid back work environment from the description provided on Koenigsegg's official hiring page, though, we'd imagine that doesn't mean the work is easy. Koenigsegg Agera RS1, 2017 New York auto show Koenigsegg Agera RS1, 2017 New York auto show Koenigsegg Agera RS1, 2017 New York auto show Koenigsegg is a unique automaker in that everything it does is performed in-house. From engines, transmissions, brakes, electronics, and software, Koenigsegg does it all. And its workforce seems to be integral to such cohesiveness. Whoever is lucky enough to join the team will likely be busy inside Koenigsegg's operations. The brand is currently undergoing build orders for its "Exclusive Series," the most recent being the Agera RS1 shown at the 2017 New York auto show. Outside of this series of vehicles, in which only 25 will be built, there's quite a waiting list for a brand new Koenigsegg at all. Interested parties will be served a four-year-long waiting list when it comes to purchasing their own Koenigsegg. By Aaron Maasho ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The number of Ethiopians who need food aid owing to drought has surged by more than two million from 5.6 million at the beginning of the year, an official said on Thursday. In January, the United Nations appealed for more than $900 million in aid for the Horn of Africa country, which has been hit by repeated droughts. Some areas of Ethiopia's Oromiya, Amhara, and SNNP regions are now facing severe water shortages, in addition to areas where the main harvests had failed this year, said Debebe Zewdie, head of public relations at the National Disaster Risk Management Commission. "The number has risen to more than 7.7 million people. 432,000 tonnes of food is needed until the end of the year," he told state-owned Ethiopian News Agency. Although it has one of the highest growth rates in Africa, Ethiopia's economy still depends heavily on farming, which employs three-quarters of the workforce in the nation of over 90 million people. Last year, failed spring and summer rains worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon affected 10.2 million people. Altogether, almost 13 million people across the Horn of Africa region currently require aid, including 2.7 million in Kenya, 2.9 million in Somalia and 1.6 million in Uganda, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Somalia, the U.N. has warned that the country risks a repeat of the 2011 famine that killed around 260,000 people. (Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by Larry King) By Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States issued about 40 percent fewer temporary visas in March to citizens of seven countries covered by President Donald Trump's temporary travel bans than it did in an average month last year, according to a Reuters analysis of preliminary government data released on Thursday. At the same time, the data showed that the total of U.S. non-immigrant visas issued to people from all countries was up by nearly 5 percent in March compared to the 2016 monthly average. Citizens of the seven Muslim-majority nations under the bans - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - received about 3,200 non-immigrant visas in March 2017, compared to about 5,700 on average per month during the 2016 fiscal year and more than 6,000 on average per month in 2015 and 2014. Trump's travel bans were later blocked by the courts. The State Department released the data to comply with a directive from Trump asking it to publish monthly breakdowns of the number of visas issued around the world. The department did not release data on the total number of all types of visa applications, so it is unclear whether the lower number of temporary visas for citizens of the seven countries is because of a higher rate of rejections or other factors, such as fewer applicants or slower processing times. A State Department official noted that "visa demand is cyclical, not uniform throughout the year, and affected by various factors at the local and international level. Visa issuance numbers tend to increase during peak travel seasons, such as during the summer and the winter holidays." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. March is neither a busy nor slow time for temporary visa issuances to people from the seven countries, several immigration lawyers said. Therefore, the significant drops are notable, they said. The data is preliminary and numbers could be subject to minor revision, the State Department said. Previously, such data was only available in aggregate by fiscal year, and the department declined to break out March visa data from previous years. Nevertheless, some immigration attorneys said the numbers released on Thursday provide a glimpse into how Trump's policies are affecting visa decisions. "Either there are many fewer people applying because they believe they will be denied, or a much higher rate of denials is already happening even though the executive orders have been blocked," said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. EXECUTIVE ORDERS Trump, who has said the travel bans were intended to make Americans safer from attacks by terrorists, signed an executive order on Jan. 27 barring people from the seven countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order was blocked by federal courts and the Trump administration replaced it with a revised, narrower travel ban effective March 16 which dropped Iraq from the list. Courts have also halted parts of the second order. The number of non-immigrant visas issued to Iranians dropped to 1,572 in March from 2,450 per month on average in 2016 according to the data. Iraqis received 684 such visas in March, compared to nearly twice that number per month on average in 2016, the data showed. Iranians also received fewer immigrant visas, which are granted to family members of U.S. citizens or those with jobs in the United States, than the average in previous years - 393 received immigrant visas in March, compared to 644 on average per month in 2016 and nearly 600 on average per month in 2015 and 2014. Although visitor visas were down across the board for the seven targeted countries, two of them saw the number of immigrant visas issued tick up slightly. Forty-one Libyans received immigrant visas in March, compared to 32 per month on average in 2016. Somalians received 171 visas in March compared to 150 on average in 2016. Immigration lawyers said that although the travel bans have been halted by courts for now, the administration's vow to put stricter controls on immigration is likely to have changed how U.S. consulates evaluate visa applicants. Stephen Pattison, a former State Department consular official now working as an immigration attorney, said consulates "are going to probably err more on the side of denying some people that they'd be on the fence about." Anecdotally, several U.S.-based lawyers with Iranian clients say their visa applications are taking longer to process and are being rejected more often since Trump took office on Jan. 20. They cite shortages of interview appointments for Iranians, interviews canceled at the last minute and longer "administrative processing" periods than they are accustomed to. "If you can't get an interview, you can't get a visa," said Babak Yousefzadeh, a San Francisco-based attorney and member of the board of directors of the Iranian American Bar Association. Some Iranians have decided that for now, it is not worth it to risk the expense and time of making U.S. visa applications, said Kiyanoush Razaghi, a Maryland-based immigration attorney. In addition to paying a standard $160 visa application fee, Iranians must typically travel to Turkey, Armenia or the United Arab Emirates for their interviews, since there is no U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran. "That's a fundamental change that I am seeing, at least in the community and among the clients that I have," Razaghi said. "They have a general feeling that now is not a good time to apply for a visa." Graphic: U.S. temporary visas issued to people in countries under Trump travel ban - http://tmsnrt.rs/2qd2ekN (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool) Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinians held a general strike on Thursday in solidarity with hundreds of prisoners in Israeli jails on hunger strike for 11 days, with some officials calling it the largest in years. Stores were closed and roads empty across the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel for 50 years. In the city of Ramallah, several dozen people gathered at a tent set up in a central square where a protest march was to begin. "This general strike is unprecedented in years," said Khalil Rizeq of the Union of Palestinian Chambers of Commerce. "All Palestinian industries, such as transport, bakeries, stores, all of the private sector and commercial institutions are participating." The strike was called in all cities in the West Bank, with only doctors and students nearing graduation excluded. Palestinian bus services were also on strike in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Oday Homaid, a 27-year-old engineer, arrived at Ramallah's Yasser Arafat Square with other workers from his lift maintenance company to participate in the protest. It was the "minimum that we can do for our prisoners," he said. Munther Karaja, a 42-year-old who had closed his pastry shop, said: "We can sacrifice one day for prisoners who have given years of their lives." Palestinian officials say some 1,500 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike that began on April 17, with detainees ingesting only water and salt. Israeli authorities have put the number at around 1,200. Some 6,500 Palestinians are currently detained by Israel for a range of offences and alleged crimes. Around 500 are being held under Israel's system of administrative detention, which allows for imprisonment without charge. Palestinian prisoners have mounted repeated hunger strikes, but rarely on such a scale. The hunger strike is being led by Palestinian leader and prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, of 2000 to 2005. Story continues The prisoners have issued demands ranging from better medical care to phone access. A series of demonstrations have been held in the West Bank in support of the prisoners, occasionally resulting in clashes with Israeli forces. Barghouti is popular among Palestinians, with polls suggesting he could win the Palestinian presidency. A Palestinian NGO said this week that Barghouti's health has seriously declined and that he was refusing medical treatment. Palestinian leaders have denounced Israel's refusal to negotiate with the hunger strikers, warning of a "new intifada" if any of them die. Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon said Thursday it is investigating President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn over payments he received from Russian government-linked firms. The Department of Defense said it was probing whether the retired lieutenant general failed to obtain required prior approval before accepting money from foreign governments. Flynn was specifically warned when he retired in 2014 that he had to get advance permission before accepting consulting fees, salaries, gifts, or travel expenses from a foreign government. Flynn, the former defense intelligence chief, was fired by the White House after 24 days as Trump's top national security aide over his communications with Russia's US ambassador, amid intense concern that Moscow had directed a concerted effort to interfere in last year's presidential election. But the Pentagon investigation, launched in early April, appears focused on the more than $33,000 dollars Flynn earned to attend an RT television gala in December 2015, where he sat at a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It could also extend to the $530,000 Flynn was paid to lobby for Turkey during last year's presidential election campaign. Such payments possibly violate Defense Department and US constitutional prohibitions on retired military personnel conducting activities involving foreign governments without advance clearance. Flynn ended a 33-year army career as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during 2012-2014. The Flynn probe adds to a number of investigations in Congress and the Department of Justice relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election, which US intelligence says was designed to boost Trump's prospects to win the presidency. The Pentagon confirmed its investigation after the House Oversight Committee released a 2014 letter the DIA sent to Flynn advising specifically that he needed advance permission from Congress before accepting any payments from foreign governments. Story continues Flynn's lawyer has said Flynn briefed the DIA before and after his Russia trip. But on Thursday Elijah Cummings, the committee's vice chair, said the DIA informed the committee that there is no evidence that Flynn requested approval to take the money from RT, which the US says is an arm of the Russian government. "We have no evidence, zilch," that Flynn sought any approval to accept foreign payments, Cummings said. Cummings also lashed out at the White House for not providing any documentation on Flynn in response to the committee's request. "I honestly do not understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn ... after the president fired him," Cumming said. "It makes the American people think White House has something to hide," he added. 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 The Pentagons watchdog has opened a probe into whether former National Security Advisor retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn violated the law by accepting payments from a foreign government. The investigation, revealed on Thursday by the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is the latest setback for the disgraced former Trump campaign aide and White House advisor, whose dealings with Russian entities are under scrutiny in multiple probes. In a letter to the oversight panel, the Department of Defenses acting inspector general, Glenn Fine said he would examine whether Flynn failed to obtain the necessary approvals before a trip to Moscow in December 2015 paid for by Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT. At the time, Flynn was retired from the Army but he was still barred from accepting payments from foreign governments without permission from the secretary of the army and the secretary of state. RT functions as a mouthpiece of the Russian state. That letter and two others released by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland seem to underscore Flynns worsening legal predicament. These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, he said in a statement accompanying the letters release. Robert Kelner, Flynns lawyer, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. He has claimed previously that his client informed officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which the retired lieutenant general helmed until his firing in 2014, about the trip to Russia. But another letter released Thursday would seem to undercut that claim. The DIA said it had found no records describing payment for Flynns December 2015 Russia trip and that he had not sought permission to be paid, the April 7 letter to the House Oversight Committee said. Meanwhile, a third letter released by Cummings reveals that Flynn was indeed informed in detail about his legal obligation not to accept funds from a foreign government following his departure from the Army. The Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits receipt of consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria, or salary by all retired military personnel from a foreign government without prior approval, a DIA official wrote to Flynn in October 2014. Story continues The trio of letters illustrate the increasing legal troubles facing Flynn as he confronts the fallout from his work on behalf of President Donald Trump and a coterie of foreign interests. Trump fired Flynn as his top national security advisor after less than a month in office after it was revealed that the former DIA director had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russias ambassador to the United States. As congressional and FBI investigators probe the Trump campaigns relationship to Russia in the aftermath of an election season that saw Kremlin agents attempt to boost the real estate moguls electoral chances through a campaign of hacking and leaking sensitive documents, Flynns work has emerged as one focus of the investigations. Investigators are examining whether Trump lieutenants conspired with Kremlin agents in their campaign to influence the U.S. election. If such collusion occurred, it may be highly difficult to prove. But the failure to disclose payments represent a straightforward path toward prosecuting Flynn. Flynn has sought immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony, a legal gambit that American officials have so far rebuffed. In exchange for his appearance at the RT gala, Flynn received a $45,000 payment from the outlet. RT covered Flynns travel, lodging, and expenses while in Russia, and also covered the cost of his sons travel. During that trip, Flynn was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner event, an appearance that the former national security advisors critics have seized on as evidence of his unusual ties to Moscow. During the 2016 campaign, Flynn emerged as a confidante and key advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump, who made a series of pronouncements on the campaign trail that broke with U.S. policy and favored the Kremlin. After his firing in 2014 after a falling out with the Obama administration, Flynn established a lucrative consulting firm, whose contracts may also come under scrutiny as part of the Defense Department probe. Between September and November 2016, Flynn Intel Group received $530,000 in fees from the Dutch firm Inovo BV, which is led by a Turkish businessman with ties to the Turkish government. As a result of that work, Flynn retroactively registered as an agent of a foreign power under U.S. lobbying law. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Good morning, everyone, and how are you today? We are just fine, thank you, although we will be somewhat distracted today by personal matters that will encroach on our usual routine of sending along interesting items. We apologize for any inconvenience, but a colleague or two will pick up the slack. Meanwhile, though, here are some tidbits to get you started. Hope you have a meaningful day and conquer the world Novartis was fined $49 million by South Korea, and insurance reimbursement was suspended for six months for nine of its medicines as a result of bribing doctors from 2011 to 2016, Reuters reports. The lack of reimbursement means that patients must find alternative treatments. The move by the Ministry of Health and Welfare came after prosecutors indicted six Novartis executives on the charges last year. A trial is now underway. Read the rest... By Manolo Serapio Jr and Martin Petty MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday it was pointless discussing Beijing's contentious activities in the South China Sea at this week's Southeast Asian summit, and no one dared to pressure China anyway. The no-nonsense former mayor scoffed at questions from reporters about whether China's rapid reclamation of uninhabited reefs or enforcement of an international arbitration ruling last year would be brought up with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Saturday. "Who will dare pressure?" he said. "Who can pressure China? Us?" Asked how ASEAN should deal with China, Duterte said dialogue was the only option. "The way we're doing, talking - that's the only luxury we have," he said. "Action? Tell us how. Tell me. Educate me how." The Philippines is hosting meetings of ASEAN this year. The bloc will adopt a softer than usual tone about South China Sea disputes and exclude references to militarization or island-building, according to a draft of the chairman's statement. China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. The Philippines' chairing of ASEAN comes amid a charm offensive by Duterte, who has opted to court China for its business and investment and avoid rows over sovereignty that dogged his predecessors. Duterte has been accused by critics of taking a defeatist position on China and on defending Philippine sovereignty. He considers his approach is pragmatic and says challenging China risks triggering a war. The previous government in 2013 filed a case with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to set the record straight on maritime boundaries. The tribunal did that last year, and invalidated China's claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Duterte, who has put the ruling on the back burner and said he will revisit it later in his term, said it was a waste of time for ASEAN to discuss that award now, and it was not relevant. LOOKING FOR TROUBLE "Arbitral is simply entitlement. It's not even a territorial thing. The only question at arbitral was entitlement, not jurisdiction, not even territory," he said. "How will you raise the issue? .... We cannot on our own enforce the arbitral judgment." He added: "Before, China said we will not honour (it), so why will you force (them) to honour? You're just looking for trouble. Can we go to war?" The Philippines is determined to agree a framework for a China-ASEAN code of conduct on the South China Sea during its chairmanship, though there is some scepticism about why it has China's support now, 15 years after the idea of drafting a code was agreed. Critics and some diplomats see China's compliance as a stalling tactic to show it was engaging in diplomacy, while buying time to expand and fortify its presence in the Spratly archipelago. Asked about China's sincerity towards completing the code, Duterte said tensions at sea were the fault of the United States. "Here's how it is. They (China) really claim it as their own, even a long time ago," he said. "The issue hasn't really exploded until the Americans made it to be." The mercurial leader said the issue of piracy would be raised during the summit, but his position was clear. "If any ship of any country of the ASEAN or any ship of that matter, in dealing with piracy, my order is just to blow them up," he said. "Why should I arrest them?" He was also asked his view on the rising tensions over North Korea's nuclear programme, an issue likely to be discussed by ASEAN. "My reaction is kindly, kindly use your patience," he said. "It would be as good as any other time to advise now, people, just go easy." (Editing by Nick Macfie) Manila (AFP) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday called the New York Times an "asshole" and rejected fresh criticism of his deadly drug war as he began hosting Asian leaders ahead of a summit. Duterte let loose with the crude insult two days after the major US newspaper wrote an editorial headlined: "Let the World Condemn Duterte", and which slammed the killings of thousands of Filipino drug suspects. "New York Times, asshole," Duterte told reporters at Malacanang presidential palace minutes after receiving Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, the first of nine Southeast Asian leaders to arrive for two days of talks starting Friday. Duterte, responding to a query about the editorial, also accused the newspaper of ignoring US military abuses around the world and said the paper should stop publishing. The editorial came out after a Filipino lawyer this week formally asked the International Criminal Court to charge Duterte and 11 other Filipino officials with mass murder and crimes against humanity over the drug killings. The New York Times called for the court to launch a preliminary investigation. "(This) would send an unmistakable signal to Mr. Duterte that he may eventually have to answer for his crimes, and would encourage governments to take measures against him, such as imposing tariffs on Philippine goods," it said. Duterte, 72, easily won elections last year after vowing to kill tens of thousands of criminals and stop what he said was the Philippines' descent into a narco-state. The killings have been widely condemned in the West but many Filipinos back the drug war, believing it will help to solve crime and corruption. - Human rights disdain - Duterte, who denies the allegations of summary killings and insists police only kill in self defence, on Thursday dared the International Criminal Court to pursue the case. "Go ahead with the trial and let us see," he said, as he repeated his disdain for human rights. Story continues "You know human rights (campaigners), I am not a worker for human rights," said Duterte, who frequently uses foul language against his critics. Duterte also renewed his verbal assault on two major Filipino media outlets that have been critical of his drug war. He threatened to get Congress, which is dominated by his allies, to withhold a new franchise for ABS-CBN television network, which he accused of failing to air his paid advertisement during last year's election campaign. He also accused the owners of the Philippine Daily Inquirer of corruption, alleging they had illegally acquired government property in Manila's financial district too cheaply. After meeting with Duterte, Bolkiah voiced support for the drug war. "We also share your country's concerns on the devastating effects of drugs upon society and I understand your personal resolve in combatting it," Bolkiah said. "In this regard, we welcome close collaboration through the exchanges of expertise and best practices in this area." Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday there was no point protesting Chinese artificial island building in disputed areas of the South China Sea because it could not be stopped. Duterte made the comments ahead of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit this week, and he confirmed he would not use the event to pressure China on its expansionism in the strategically vital waters. "It cannot be an issue anymore. It's already there. What would be the purpose also of discussing it if you cannot do anything," Duterte told reporters. China has been turning reefs and shoals in areas of the sea claimed by the Philippines and other nations into artificial islands, and installing military facilities there. The United States has criticised the construction work, warning against militarisation in the waterway where $5 trillion in annual trade passes. China's reclamation has also rattled other claimants, which include ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino, had challenged China by asking a UN-backed tribunal to outlaw Beijing's sweeping claims to the sea and its reclamation work. The tribunal last year ruled largely in the Philippines' favour. However Duterte, who came to office shortly before the ruling was issued, adopted a pragmatic approach to dealing with China in a bid to win billions of dollars worth of trade and aid. - 'US to blame' - Duterte, who has also sought to loosen the Philippines' long-standing alliance with the United States, on Thursday blamed the superpower for failing to stop China's reclamation activities. "Who can stop that? Us? It's only America. But how come they allowed that to happen," Duterte said, adding the United States could have used its navy to stop the reclamation work years ago. Duterte said he would not raise the ruling during the ASEAN events this week, with the bloc's foreign ministers meeting on Friday and the leaders convening on Saturday. Story continues "I will skip the arbitral ruling. It is not an issue here in the ASEAN," he said. "It's only between China and the Philippines so I will skip that." Duterte said he preferred to discuss a code of conduct on the South China Sea. Philippine diplomats have said a "framework" code of conduct might be completed by June. Duterte expressed optimism a code of conduct would ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the waters. "The code of conduct at sea is another story. It must be taken up," Duterte said referring to the ASEAN summit. Analysts have cautioned that China has been delaying negotiations on a code since it was proposed 15 years ago, and used that time to build its artificial islands and take control of other contested features. The ASEAN leaders will on Saturday express concern about events in the sea but will be less direct about island building, according to a draft of a chairman's statement to be released at the end of the summit. "We shared the serious concerns expressed by some leaders over recent developments and escalation of activities in the area which may further raise tensions and erode trust and confidence in the region," the statement said. However it did not mention China directly, nor the international tribunal's ruling. By Enrico Dela Cruz and Manolo Serapio Jr MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine Environment Secretary Regina Lopez said on Thursday she will ban open-pit mining in the country, toughening a months-long crackdown on the sector she blames for extensive environmental damage. The ban comes just days before the outspoken environmentalist-turned-regulator faces a confirmation hearing in Congress that could lead to her removal as minister after a storm of complaints from pro-mining groups. Lopez, who has already ordered the closure of more than half the country's operating mines and has previously described open pit mines as "madness", said it was within her prerogative to ban the practice, which is allowed under Philippines mining law. "Each open pit is a financial liability for government for life," she told a media briefing. "It kills the economic potential of the place." The ban will take effect immediately but will not cover existing mines, she said. Mining is a contentious issue in the largely underexplored Southeast Asian country after past examples of environmental mismanagement. Lopez in February ordered the permanent closure of 22 of 41 operating mines in the world's top nickel ore supplier and later canceled dozens of contracts for undeveloped mines to protect water resources. Miners have argued her actions are illegal and no mine has yet been closed as companies pursue an appeals process that can only be settled by President Rodrigo Duterte. The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines described her latest move as "absurd." "With this open-pit ban, she is essentially banning the mining of shallow ore deposits that can only be extracted using open-pit mining," said Chamber spokesman Ronald Recidoro. WANTS DUTERTE AS SUCCESSOR The ban would halt the $5.9 billion Tampakan copper-gold project in South Cotabato province in Mindanao island, the nation's biggest stalled mining venture. Tampakan failed to take off after the province where it is located banned open-pit mining in 2010, prompting commodities giant Glencore Plc to quit the project in 2015. Lopez has said the project would cover an area the size of 700 football fields in what otherwise would be agricultural land. There are currently 14 open pits in the country, 10 of them abandoned, said Lopez, who flew to several mining sites in recent weeks to inspect them. Lawmakers will resume hearings on Lopez's appointment on May 2 after sessions in March when pro-mining groups assailed her capacity as minister. Lopez said she was imposing the ban now because she was unsure of the outcome of the hearings. If lawmakers reject her appointment, Lopez said she wants Duterte to succeed her. "That's the kind of person you really need at DENR," she said, referring to her agency. "Brave, cannot be bought, everyone will be scared." (Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz and Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Richard Pullin) Hong Kong (AFP) - Nine democracy protesters were arrested in Hong Kong Thursday over an anti-Beijing rally in the latest swoop by police as activists say they are being persecuted. Concerns are growing that the semi-autonomous city's freedoms are under threat from Beijing, fuelling calls from some groups for greater autonomy or even a complete split from China. Pro-independence activists Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung were arrested and charged Wednesday over causing chaos in the legislature after being barred from taking up their seats as lawmakers last year. And last month nine pro-democracy activists -- including student protesters and lawmakers -- were charged for their roles in mass 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement rallies. The spate of arrests come ahead of an expected visit by China's President Xi Jinping to mark the 20th anniversary of the handover of the city by Britain back to China in 1997 on July 1. "I believe the police have set out to arrest all street activists so they won't dare to protest when Xi Jinping visits," pro-democracy leader Joshua Wong told AFP. Nine protesters were arrested Thursday over their participation in a rally in November against China's decision to intervene in the row over whether to disqualify Yau and Baggio. That protest outside China's liaison office in Hong Kong saw scuffles as demonstrators charged barriers and police used pepper spray to drive them back. The rally was triggered after Beijing announced it would make a special interpretation of Hong Kong's constitution to determine whether Yau and Baggio should be prevented from taking up their seats after staging an anti-China protest during their oath-taking. Beijing's final ruling, two days after the rally, effectively ensured the pair were barred. - 'Fight continues' - Two of those arrested Thursday belong to new pro-democracy party Demosisto, co-founded by student leader Wong. Others included members of the long-standing pro-democracy party League of Social Democrats (LSD), as well as student or former student protesters. Story continues The charges include illegal assembly, obstructing a police officer and assaulting a police officer, activists said. Police were unable to immediately confirm the arrests and charges. All nine protesters emerged from Hong Kong's Western police station Thursday afternoon and said they had been charged and released on bail. LSD chairman Avery Ng, who was charged with inciting others to cause disorder in public, said campaigners would "continue to voice our discontent and our anger towards the Communist Party and the Hong Kong government". Rights group Amnesty International criticised the arrests saying they were another example of "vague charges" against prominent activists. The move smacked of an "orchestrated and retaliatory campaign" against pro-democracy advocates, said Mabel Au, director of Amnesty International Hong Kong. Human Rights Watch warned authorities' "heavy-handed" approach could backfire, pointing to 2014's mass protests, prompted by restrictions imposed by Beijing on fully free leadership elections. In an annual report on the city released Thursday, the European Union called for democratic political reform in Hong Kong, saying that it had become "more polarised" in 2016. The reform process stalled after a Beijing-backed proposal to allow free leadership elections but restrict candidates sparked the 2014 rallies. "The EU encourages Hong Kong and China's central government to resume electoral reform...to reach agreement on an election system that is democratic, fair, open and transparent," the report said. UPDATE: 2:59 p.m. EDT Despite earlier confirmed reports, KIRO 7 News reported that there was no active shooter at Hawkins Middle School Wednesday. The Mason County Sheriff's office confirmed officers from multiple agencies were on scene at Hawkins Middle School in Washington and were clearing the school. The sheriff's office said it had not found any injuries. Authorities told responding officers to "slow down" in responding to the situation, though it remained unclear what that meant. UPDATE: 2:50 p.m. EDT Hawkins Middle School in Washington remained on lockdown following an active shooter situation, Mason County Chief Deputy Ryan Spurling told local KIRO 7 News Wednesday. Police advised parents to hold tight until further information was available. Police said they had a heavy presence heading to the scene of the middle school in Mason County, Washington. Original story: Police in Belfair, Washington, were responding to an active shooter at a nearby middle school Wednesday, officials confirmed to local KIRO 7 News. Police confirmed a shooter was in the cafeteria at Hawkins Middle School in Mason County, according to the Mason County Sheriffs Office. It was unclear if there were any injuries or deaths as a result of the shooting. Police said they were sending a response team to the middle school. Mason County is a little more than an hour outside of Seattle, Washington. This is a developing story. Check back for updates. Related Articles President Trump lashed out at congressional Democrats on Thursday, a day before lawmakers must pass a new spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. The administration is also looking to force a vote on a new health care bill. In a flurry of tweets, the Republican president accused the opposing party of, among other things, blocking health care for coal miners, bailing out insurance companies and threatening to close Americas national parks. The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 I promise to rebuild our military and secure our border. Democrats want to shut down the government. Politics! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 What's more important? Rebuilding our military or bailing out insurance companies? Ask the Democrats. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 Democrats jeopardizing the safety of our troops to bail out their donors from insurance companies. It is time to put #AmericaFirst???????? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 As families prepare for summer vacations in our National Parks Democrats threaten to close them and shut down the government. Terrible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 Some of Trumps statements were misleading. For example, the day before sending these tweets, the White House agreed to continue funding Obamacare in order to avoid a showdown with Democrats. Story continues Democrats are also not blocking health care for miners. The current resolution that guarantees miners health care expires Friday, and both Republicans and Democrats said this week they are working on permanent fix the Miners Protection Act that they hope to pass before the deadline. Otherwise, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., told the Herald-Dispatch that Congress would pass a continuing resolution to protect miners. And if the government does shut down, some National Parks, which are federally funded, would close. But in fact, Trumps executive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands could put some of them at risk. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trumps tweetstorm desperate and unhinged. These shutdown tweets show a startling lack of awareness for where the negotiations actually are, Matt House, Schumers communications director, wrote on Twitter. These shutdown tweets are desperate, unhinged, and show a startling lack of awareness for where the negotiations actually are. https://t.co/4EnXpJbyur Matt House (@mattwhouse) April 27, 2017 Later at a press conference, Schumer said its up to the Republican-controlled Congress to hammer out a budget deal. If theres a shutdown, it falls on their shoulders, Schumer said. They know that. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., also dismissed Trumps tirade. I dont pay attention to his 3 a.m. tweeting, Waters told Yahoo News, referring to the presidents proclivity for early morning social media missives. In his first 97 days in office, President Trump has tweeted, on average, 5.17 times per day https://t.co/tSqcuOSEMB Dylan Stableford (@stableford) April 27, 2017 Earlier this week, Trump threatened that he might not approve a bill this week if it does not include funding for a badly needed border wall that he claims Mexico, in some form, would eventually pay for. In a pair of tweets Sunday, the president accused Democrats of withholding money from the federal budget to start building the wall he wants constructed along the U.S. border with Mexico. The Democrats don't want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017 Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017 The Democrats dont want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members, Trump tweeted. He added: Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall. But by Monday, Trump said he would delay seeking funds for the wall until September in order to avoid a government shutdown. Read more from Yahoo News: Trumps chaotic first 100 days as seen through his tweets Trump approaches 100 days with lowest job approval rating in more than 70 years Foxs Jesse Watters sparks controversy with suggestive Ivanka Trump remark Ivanka booed at W20 summit after calling father a champion for women Obama makes first public remarks since leaving office Four years into his papacy, Pope Francis continues to be social medias hottest commodity. Pope Francis gave a surprise TED talk via recorded message on Tuesday night. It was the first time a Pope has ever gave a TED Talk, and the latest development in a growing partnership between Francis Vatican and social technology companies. His message? Why the only future worth building includes everyone. His message was more than a social media sensation. It was the latest development in an active courtship between Rome and Silicon Valley. Twitter reached out to the Vatican early, late in Pope Benedict XVIs papacy, and devoted a staff team that spent a year working to get the Vatican on to join the platform. Benedict launched the @Pontifex account late in 2012, but it has been Francis, who become pope just months later, who has made it an active part of the papacy. Pope Francis joined Instagram in 2016, and quickly set a record for gaining a million followers. Facebook has tried to get Pope Francis to join, but so far the Vatican has been hesitant, expressing concerns over how to control its message on the platform. MORE: Read What Pope Francis Said at Surprise TED Talk TED posted the backstory of their own negotiations with the Vatican on its blog. The 18-minute talk was a year in the making, and included several trips to Rome to seal the arrangement and 40 TED translators who work to post Francis message with subtitles in 20 different languages. At a certain point, nearly 80 people across our team and in Vatican City were aware of the talk - but we managed to keep it confidential until the moment we unveiled it at TED2017, Bruno Giussani, TEDs international curator, said. Pope Francis is someone who has shown he is willing to use technology to meet people where they are, Michael OLoughlin, author of The Tweetable Pope: A Spiritual Revolution in 140 Characters and reporter for America Magazine, explains. Francis seems to have the unique ability to capture the worlds imagination, so it makes sense that TED Talks would want him to be part of their platform. Story continues Twitter and TED might see the Vatican as its best free media, but for the Vatican, the value of these global technology partnerships is mutual. Pope Francis, at age 80, is working to make the Vatican, perhaps the worlds last truly medieval court, accessible to the modern world. For Francis, the TED Talk is the modern sermon, and his talk sounds like his homilies - accessible, tender and real. He also used the opportunity to promote his mission, building bridges across divides and caring for migrants, the earth and the poor. A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you, Pope Francis said in the video. And then there will be another you, and another you, and it turns into an us. And so, does hope begin when we have an us? No. Hope began with one you. When there is an us, there begins a revolution. TED is another way for Pope Francis to continue to reach the next generation, a demographic he knows is key to bolster the churchs future. Next year, Pope Francis will convene a gathering of the worlds bishops to discuss youth, faith and vocational discernment. In each country he visits, he makes a point to speak to youth and to seminarians. He drew millions on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day in 2013, and again in Krakow last year. So while Francis technological savvy alone is noteworthy, his TED appearance is another reminder that his true cultural power comes from how he uses new means to advance his message. First Twitter, then Instagram, and now TED Talks seems to be latest space where he is preaching the gospel, OLoughlin says. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Crispian Balmer VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis flies to Cairo on Friday, less than a month after church bombings killed 45 people in two Egyptian cities as part of a concerted campaign by Islamist militants to rid the Middle East of Christians. Home to some of the faith's earliest churches, the region's Christian communities have been in decline for decades, but wars this century in Iraq and Syria, and the emergence of Islamic Stat have put their future in doubt. Francis said on Tuesday he hoped his visit could be a "consolation and ... encouragement to all Christians in the Middle East". He also wants to improve dialogue with Islam. "The pope is very conscious of the fact that the Middle East may lose its entire Christian presence," said Nina Shea, the head of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank. "These are ancient communities that have their roots in the earliest Church. They aren't grafted on, or the result of Western evangelization. They are unique and they are being lost," she told Reuters by telephone. The largest exodus has been in Iraq, where Christians were caught up in the sectarian violence that wracked the nation following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and then actively persecuted as the Islamic State grew in power from 2014. No precise figures exist, but Shea said Christian numbers had fallen from 1.5 million in 2003 to between 100,000 and 200,000 today. Others say up to 400,000 may still live there, but many have lost their homes and been displaced. As Islamic State, also known as Daesh, started to seize towns and cities across Iraq, they ordered Christians who fell into their clutches to convert, pay a tax or face death. Those Christians who could, fled abroad or to Kurdish-held areas in the north. They appear highly reluctant to return to their old homes even as Iraqi forces gradually retake lost territory, including large swathes of the city of Mosul. "Daesh were people from Mosul, there were friends, people we know," said Kharallah Jamil, the Christian owner of a construction company who escaped with his family to the Kurdish city of Erbil after Islamic State forces seized his property. "I can't say whether we will go back. We were betrayed. People in Mosul were cooperating with Daesh, following their interpretation of Islam." END OF STATUS QUO Christianity spread through the Middle East during the first century, overtaking pagan Eastern cults and co-existing with older faiths, like Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Although Islam gained predominance in the region from the 7th century, many Muslim rulers allowed Christians freedom of worship. Centuries of status quo frayed with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War One. At the time, Christians made up some 15 percent of the regional population, but the figure now stands below four percent, according to the Pew Research Center. The figures vary from country to country. While Saudi Arabia officially has no Christian nationals, up to 40 percent of Lebanon's population is Christian, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Lower birth rates among Christians by comparison with Muslims has helped lower the overall ratio. Economic emigration has also played a part, with Western countries traditionally more willing to welcome in Christians than Muslims. There are more Christians from Jerusalem living in Australia than there are Christians left in the Holy City, according to Palestinian data, with the Palestinians saying Israeli occupation has convinced many local Christians to move abroad. While Christian migration from the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been a constant trickle, it has turned into a flood in nearby Syria, torn apart by six years of civil war. From a population of some 1.25 million in 2011, less than 500,000 remain today, according to ADF International, a Vienna-based group which promotes religious freedom. As in Iraq, the minority group has been persecuted by Islamic State, which has publicly executed Christian men and sold Christian women into slavery. Even in areas still under control of President Bashar al-Assad, the mood is grim. "There's not many left here. Most of our relatives, friends, maybe 70 percent have traveled or migrated abroad," said Suzanna Tannous, a Christian housewife from the Ghassani district of Damascus, only a kilometer from rebel-held Jobar. "There's no future for us here," she said, speaking in a cafe, the sound of falling shells thudding in the distance. INTIMIDATION AND MURDER It is a sentiment heard across the region, but the sheer numbers seeking to get out is clogging up the system. "The embassies won't take everyone ... and even if the embassies opened their doors to Copts, they won't even take one out of 500," said Bishop Macarius, the head of a Christian Coptic diocese in Minya, south of Cairo. Egypt's Copts make up some 10 percent of the country's 92 million people, by far the largest Christian minority in the Middle East. But despite having roots that date back to the Roman Empire, they feel marginalized and persecuted. Islamic State, which is battling President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has declared war on the nervous Coptic community, hoping to destabilize the Arab-world's most populous nation. Besides the Palm Sunday attacks, it claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo last December that killed 28 people and is chasing Christians from the Sinai, using intimidation and murder to force them out. Egypt's highest Islamic authority, al-Azhar, froze all dialogue with the Catholic Church in 2011 after former Pope Benedict denounced what he called "a strategy of violence that has Christians as a target". Pope Francis has worked hard to improve relations with the Muslim world, but the Hudson Institute's Shea said he would have to address directly the issue of religious persecution this week. "The context of this visit is the broad religious genocide against Christians in the Middle East," Shea said. "It is the elephant in the room, but it cannot be ignored." (Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing in Erbil and Ahmed Aboulenein in Qaraqosh, Luke Baker in Jerusalem, Amina Ismail in Cairo, Kinda Makieh in Damascus, John Davison in Beirut; editing by Philip Pullella and Anna Willard) London (AFP) - Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday accused the other 27 EU countries of lining up to oppose Britain over Brexit after Germany's Angela Merkel said the UK should have no "illusions" over the exit process. EU nation leaders have stressed a united stance as they plan to meet Saturday to set down the bloc's "red lines" -- although the talks will not begin until June, after a snap British election called by May to strengthen her negotiating hand. Speaking to parliament ahead of the key summit, the German chancellor stressed that "a third-party state will not have the same rights or even superior rights to a member state". "This may sound self-evident, but I have to say this clearly because some in Britain seem to have illusions on this point," she said. "That would be a waste of time." Later in the day, May accused the 27 other EU member states of joining forces against Britain. "We can see how tough those negotiations are going to be at times," May told a campaign rally in Leeds, northern England. "Our opponents are already seeking to disrupt those negotiations - at the same time as 27 other European countries line up to oppose us. "That approach can only mean one thing - uncertainty and instability, bringing grave risk to our growing economy with higher taxes, fewer jobs, more waste and more debt." The British leader is hoping to shore up her mandate in the June 8 ballot ahead of two years of gruelling negotiations. "The negotiations will be very demanding, without a doubt," said Merkel, the leader of the biggest EU economy. - Finance question - The EU has toughened its strategy, making new demands over financial services, immigration and the bills Britain must settle before ending its 44-year-old membership of the bloc. Britain could be required to give EU citizens permanent residency after living there for five years, in a challenge for May's Conservative government, which has vowed to limit immigration. Story continues The EU's latest draft negotiating guidelines, agreed on Monday, seek to ensure Britain does not get a better deal outside the bloc than inside. According to the document seen by AFP, the other EU countries will seek to hold Britain liable for the bloc's costs for at least a year after it leaves in 2019 -- longer than was previously proposed. Merkel said that talks from the very start must include Britain's financial obligations, including after Brexit. She said these issues must be resolved first in a "satisfactory" way before negotiations turn to Britain's future relations with the bloc -- a sequence Merkel called "irreversible". "Without progress on the many open questions regarding the exit, including the financial questions, it doesn't make sense to hold parallel talks on the details of a future relationship," she said. - 'Spirit of unity' - May started the Article 50 process of leaving the EU last month. Polls suggest her Conservatives will return to power in June with an increased majority. A new survey, by YouGov for The Times newspaper, meanwhile for the first time signalled more people now believe the Brexit vote was a mistake. May hosted a working dinner on Wednesday with key EU Brexit negotiators, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. EU ministers met in Luxembourg on Thursday to prepare the ground work for Saturday's meeting. "It seems that at the moment we are completely united on everything," said Maltese Vice Premier Louis Grech, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU. "Naturally we have to protect the EU's interests." He said a prime objective was "to ensure that we will conduct the negotiations in a spirit of unity and trust between the 27". May has committed to pulling Britain out of Europe's single market and end free movement of EU citizens into Britain. Earlier this week, a German senior finance official rejected this demand, in an interview with AFP. "What won't work is having access to the internal market without freedom of movement" for EU citizens, said Jens Spahn, state secretary at the finance ministry. "Or access for UK financial institutions to the European financial market if at the same time there is rampant deregulation in London. "You can have either one thing, or the other. These things must be clarified." Ivanka Trump has admitted she is still getting used to her role in the White House, having been unable to give a clear answer to a question about whether she represents her father, the American people, or her business interests. Ms Trump said she is still rather unfamiliar with what her actual role is in the administration of her father at a womens economic empowerment conference in Berlin, but confirmed she did not represent her business anymore despite the fact that she still owns her own fashion line. The erstwhile apparel and jewelry designer is an unpaid adviser with an office just steps from the Oval Office, and brushed off scattered groans from the crowd as she defended her father's policies as "politics" Read more Ivanka Trump booed and hissed after mentioning father Donald Sharing a stage with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, International Monetary Fund (IMF) director Christine Lagarde, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and others, Ms Trump was asked by the panel moderator, whom she was representing President Donald Trump, the American people, or her own business interests. Certainly not the latter, Ms Trump said, Ms Trump was reportedly invited by Ms Merkel to the G20 side event when The German Chancellor was at the White House last month. Some experts have suggested the invitation may be a way for Ms Merkel to improve relations with the bombastic US president after her sometimes-awkward meeting with him. Mr Trump refused to shake hands with Ms Merkel in the Oval Office as is customary and he also made it a point to criticise Germanys unfair low contributions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the 28 country military alliance. Inga Meyer, a creative director - speaking to NBC News - asked a question on many peoples minds: Why does she have the power and the position to meet Angela Merkel? She said Ms Trumps appearance on stage next to such accomplished and qualified women like Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and Ms Freeland was outrageous. Story continues I'm listening, I'm learning, I'm defining the ways in which I think that I'll be able to have impact, Ms Trump, adding that she wants to bring the advice, to bring the knowledge, back to the United States, back to both my father and the president in the hopes of having a positive impact. The president, years prior to his 2016 campaign for office, was caught on tape speaking in crude language about women. His political stances on womens health legislation and abortion rights has also been widely criticised. As a result the global Womens March drew millions of protesters the day after Mr Trump took office. Ms Trump went as far as saying her father is a tremendous champion of supporting families and praised his views on gender equality - to which the crowd responded with groans and jeers loud enough for moderator Miriam Meckel to ask for a response. You hear the reaction from the audience, so I need to address one more point: Some attitudes toward women your father has publicly displayed in former times might leave someone questioning whether he is such an empowerer for women, said Ms Meckel, the editor of a business magazine and a professor of corporate communications at a Swiss university. Are things changing? Ms Trump replied: I've certainly heard the criticism from the media, and that's been perpetuated. She added that her own personal experience and the fact that thousands of women have worked with and for Donald Trump for decades in the private sector are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man. Talking later to a small group of reporters, Ms Trump said she was unfazed by Ms Meckel's direct questions in a public forum. I'm used to it. It's fine, she said, and also shrugged off the audience's reaction. Politics is politics, as I'm learning, and there are many different viewpoints and people with different options and perspectives, she said. Ms Trump recently penned an opinion piece in the Financial Times with co-author World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. They wrote that only 55 per cent of women participate in the paid labour force globally and they continue to be an untapped source of growth. Whether Ms Trump is qualified or has enough influence over the President to change that is up for debate for many women who worry that she may be muddling the roles of her father and the office of the president. Ms Trump is scheduled to visit the Holocaust Memorial and the Siemens Company while in Germany. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he is considering splitting up the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after its recent rulings that have blocked two of his executive orders. There are many people that want to break up the Ninth Circuit. Its outrageous, Trump said to the Washington Examiner in an interview at the White House. Everybody immediately runs to the Ninth Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the Ninth Circuit. Because they know thats like, semi-automatic. On Tuesday, a California judge temporarily blocked the presidents efforts to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities, or municipalities that limit their cooperation with immigration enforcement agencies.If there was doubt about the scope of the order, the president and attorney general [Jeff Sessions] have erased it with their public comments, Judge William H. Orrick of United States District Court wrote in his ruling. Two other judges on the Ninth Circuit earlier this year blocked different versions of Trumps proposed travel ban, which targeted Muslim-majority countries. The Ninth Circuit has jurisdiction over nine west coast states and two U.S. territories. Eighteen of the courts 25 judges were appointed by Democratic presidents. You see judge shopping, or whats gone on with these people, they immediately run to the Ninth Circuit, Trump added. Its got close to an 80 percent reversal period, and whats going on in the 9th Circuit is a shame. This article was originally published on TIME.com President Trump does not plan to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement and will instead work to renegotiate it with Mexico and Canada, the White House announced Wednesday. Trump spoke Wednesday with President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada to discuss the agreement, which he called one of the worst deals ever during the 2016 presidential campaign. During the call, the White House said, Trump said he would not terminate the agreement at this time, and that the three leaders agreed to swiftly to move to renegotiate the agreement to the benefit of all three countries. It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation, Trump said in a statement. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better. The announcement comes hours after news reports suggested the White House was considering an executive order to begin the process of extricating the U.S. from the free trade agreement. The White House had set an internal deadline of April 29 to chart a path forward on NAFTA, and considered a range of options to meet Trumps goals of reinvigorating the U.S. manufacturing base, officials said. A senior administration official said Wednesday that whether or not the U.S. remains in or renegotiates the agreement, NAFTA as you know it today is going to change. But previewing the complexities of the issue, the official added that NAFTA is not zero sum, noting that it has benefited key U.S. industries like agriculture, even if it has hurt domestic manufacturers. The NAFTA announcement comes a day after the Trump Administration imposed tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber used primarily in home construction, in the latest development in a decades-long trade dispute. Trump and Trudeau held a animated call over the tariffs Tuesday, according to the Canadian government. It also comes as Trump continues to face down the Mexican government over his plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to force that country to pay for it. Pena Nieto and his government have repeatedly stated they will not budge on funding the border wall. This article was originally published on TIME.com Brussels (AFP) - The EU warned Poland on Thursday it may take legal action to stop logging in a UNESCO World Heritage forest, risking a new clash with Warsaw's right-wing government. The prospect was hailed by Polish environmental groups, deeply critical of the Law and Justice (PiS)-led government's environmental policy. Brussels gave Poland one month rather than the usual two to address its concerns about the ancient Bialowieza forest or face being summoned by the EU's top court. "One month was considered the right time considering the urgency of the situation," European Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio told reporters. He said Poland's reply to requests to stop large-scale logging in the forest was "not satisfactory" amid concerns it could cause irreparable biodiversity loss. The Bialowieza forest includes some of Europe's last primeval woodland and has been granted protected status by the UN heritage organisation. The threat comes with Brussels and Warsaw already at loggerheads over changes to Poland's constitutional court which the EU has warned could merit sanctions as a "systemic threat" to the rule of law. Since the populist PiS administration came to power in Warsaw in October 2015, it has come into conflict with Brussels on several fronts. The EU launched both the logging inquiry -- based on a complaint by environmentalists -- and the rule of law investigation last year. If the logging case goes before the European Court of Justice, Poland could face fines. But if found at fault on the rule of law Poland could face the far more serious prospect of seeing its EU voting rights suspended. The Bialowieza forest straddles Poland's eastern border with Belarus and is home to unique plant and animal life, including a herd of some 800 European bison, the continent's largest mammal. The vast woodland includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain ten thousand years ago. Story continues The Polish government began logging in May last year, saying it was clearing dead trees to prevent damage caused by the spruce bark beetle, and insisting the policy was entirely legal. Agata Szafraniuk, a lawyer with the ClientEarth environmental group, said Thursday that a case against it at the European Court of Justice would be a "huge embarrassment" for the PiS government. "Environment Minister Jan Szyszko, who sees no difference between the natural treasure that is the Bialowieza forest and a tree plantation, bears all responsibility for this crisis," said Robert Cyglicki with Greenpeace Poland. By Manuel Mogato and Martin Petty MANILA (Reuters) - China's support for finalizing a code of conduct in the hotly contested South China Sea is generating some hope in Southeast Asia of settling disputes, but those working out the terms remain unconvinced of Beijing's sincerity. Signing China up to a legally binding and enforceable code for the strategic waterway has long been a goal for claimant members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). But given the continued building and arming of its artificial islands in the South China Sea, Beijing's recently expressed desire to work with ASEAN to complete a framework this year has been met with scepticism and suspicion. "Some of us in ASEAN believe this is just another ploy by China to buy time," said one senior diplomat familiar with the talks. "China is expectedly stalling until it has completely attained its strategic objectives... What need is there for the green grass when the horse is dead?" The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which commits to following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight, and "refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features". But the DOC was not stuck to, especially by China, which has built seven islands in the Spratly archipelago. It is now capable of deploying combat planes on three reclaimed reefs, where radars and surface-to-air missile systems have also been installed, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative think tank. Beijing insists its activities are for defense purposes, in areas it considers its waters. Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines, however, all claim some or all of the resource-rich waterway and its myriad of shoals, reefs and islands. BINDING CONTRACT The ASEAN diplomat said the two rounds of talks so far this year gave the impression of progress, but details worked out so far were "essentially the same" as the DOC. Another diplomat from the 10-member bloc said the framework would be "re-stating most of the major points" of the DOC, but the hard part was getting China to agree to a legally binding contract. "Here lies the big challenge. You need to understand this is not just a simple matter of conforming to a set of words," the diplomat said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang did not directly answer a question on whether China would support an enforceable code of conduct, but said China hoped for the framework and code to be completed this year. Finalizing the framework would be a feather in the cap for the Philippines, which chairs ASEAN this year. Manila has reversed its stance on the South China Sea, from advocating a unified front and challenging Beijing's unilateralism, to putting disputes aside to create warm ties. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has opted not to press China to abide by an international arbitration decision last year that ruled in Manila's favor and invalidated Beijing's sweeping South China Sea claims. There will be no mention of the Hague ruling in an ASEAN leaders' statement at a summit in Manila on Saturday, nor will there be any reference to concerns about island-building or militarization that appeared in last year's text, according to excerpts of a draft seen by Reuters. A diplomat at the ASEAN secretariat said there was urgency from all parties to get the framework done this year, but ASEAN was taking "a leap of faith" with China and there were concerns about what the end result might be. Richard Heydarian, an expert on politics and international affairs at Manila's De La Salle University, said China's strategy was to project an image of being a responsible stakeholder rather than an aggressor, and avoid being bound to rules that could weaken its geopolitical position should the United States assert itself in the South China Sea. "China wants to come up with a symbolic framework that says to America 'Hey, back off, we're dealing with ASEAN on a very diplomatic level', but nothing significant enough to operationally restrict their ability to respond if the Trump administration takes a tougher position," he said. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Lincoln Feast) Mexico City (AFP) - An endangered vaquita porpoise was found dead in the Gulf of Mexico, the country's environmental protection authority said Wednesday, bringing to four the number of dead vaquitas found in 2017. There are only 30 remaining vaquitas (Phocoena sinus), scientists warned in February. The rare mammals, the world's smallest porpoise, live exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists warn that they face extinction by 2022. The remains of the vaquita were found Tuesday, 24 kilometers (15 miles) north of the town of San Felipe, in the state of Baja California on the Barra del Primer Estero beach, the statement read. The remains of the young vaquita, which measured 115 centimeters (45 inches) long, was in such an advanced state of decomposition that experts were unable to determine its sex. However, they did see cuts and lacerations indicating that the animal had possibly been trapped in a net, "which we can suppose was the cause of its death." Authorities say the vaquitas have been dying for years in gillnets that are meant to illegally catch another endangered species, a large fish called the totoaba. Smugglers ship the dried swim bladder of the totoaba to China, where it fetches tens of thousands of dollars and is eaten in soup. President Enrique Pena Nieto deployed the navy in 2015 to stop illegal fishing, increased the vaquita protection area and imposed a two-year ban on gillnets. Drones joined the effort last year. In a bid to save the vaquitas, the Mexican government announced plans on April 4 to place some of them in a temporary refuge. The environment ministry said the "ambitious emergency plan" would be carried out with help from international conservation groups. However, the plan is controversial as some conservationists say the vaquita is not an animal that can thrive in captivity. Pope Francis made a surprise appearance at the TED 2017 conference Tuesday as he spoke about power, interaction and the future. His talk, titled The Future You, was filmed in Vatican City and debuted at the at the conference in Vancouver. The future - like life - is shaped by interaction, the pontiff said. Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly, he said. Pope Francis ended his talk saying, The future of humankind isnt exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Read the full transcript from TED Talk below: Pope Francis: Good evening or, good morning, I am not sure what time it is there. Regardless of the hour, I am thrilled to be participating in your conference. I very much like its title "The Future You" because, while looking at tomorrow, it invites us to open a dialogue today, to look at the future through a "you." "The Future You:" the future is made of yous, it is made of encounters, because life flows through our relations with others. Quite a few years of life have strengthened my conviction that each and everyone's existence is deeply tied to that of others: life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions.As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: "Why them and not me?" I, myself, was born in a family of migrants; my father, my grandparents, like many other Italians, left for Argentina and met the fate of those who are left with nothing. I could have very well ended up among today's "discarded" people. And that's why I always ask myself, deep in my heart: "Why them and not me?"First and foremost, I would love it if this meeting could help to remind us that we all need each other,none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent "I," separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone. We dont think about it often, but everything is connected, and we need to restore our connections to a healthy state. Even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a fight that I carry within me, a flare deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it goes up in flames, leaving only ashes behind.Many of us, nowadays, seem to believe that a happy future is something impossible to achieve. While such concerns must be taken very seriously, they are not invincible. They can be overcome when we don't lock our door to the outside world. Happiness can only be discovered as a gift of harmony between the whole and each single component. Even science and you know it better than I do points to an understanding of reality as a place where every element connects and interacts with everything else.And this brings me to my second message. How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us. How wonderful would it be if solidarity, this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word,were not simply reduced to social work, and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries. Only by educating people to a true solidarity will we be able to overcome the "culture of waste," which doesn't concern only food and goods but, first and foremost, the people who are cast aside by our techno-economic systems which, without even realizing it, are now putting products at their core, instead of people.Solidarity is a term that many wish to erase from the dictionary. Solidarity, however, is not an automatic mechanism. It cannot be programmed or controlled. It is a free response born from the heart of each and everyone. Yes, a free response! When one realizes that life, even in the middle of so many contradictions, is a gift, that love is the source and the meaning of life, how can they withhold their urge to do good to another fellow being?In order to do good, we need memory, we need courage and we need creativity. And I know that TED gathers many creative minds. Yes, love does require a creative, concrete and ingenious attitude. Good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough. Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The "you" is always a real presence, a person to take care of.There is a parable Jesus told to help us understand the difference between those who'd rather not be bothered and those who take care of the other. I am sure you have heard it before. It is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. When Jesus was asked: "Who is my neighbor?" - namely, "Who should I take care of?" - he told this story, the story of a man who had been assaulted, robbed, beaten and abandoned along a dirt road. Upon seeing him, a priest and a Levite, two very influential people of the time, walked past him without stopping to help. After a while, a Samaritan, a very much despised ethnicity at the time, walked by. Seeing the injured man lying on the ground, he did not ignore him as if he weren't even there. Instead, he felt compassion for this man, which compelled him to act in a very concrete manner. He poured oil and wine on the wounds of the helpless man, brought him to a hostel and paid out of his pocket for him to be assisted.The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of todays humanity. People's paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves "respectable," of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road. Fortunately, there are also those who are creating a new world by taking care of the other, even out of their own pockets. Mother Teresa actually said: "One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense."Pope Francis: We have so much to do, and we must do it together. But how can we do that with all the evil we breathe every day? Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts. Now you might tell me,"Sure, these are beautiful words, but I am not the Good Samaritan, nor Mother Teresa of Calcutta." On the contrary: we are precious, each and every one of us. Each and every one of us is irreplaceable in the eyes of God. Through the darkness of today's conflicts, each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around.To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naive and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow. Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. It is like some invisible yeast that allows the whole dough to grow, that brings flavor to all aspects of life. And it can do so much, because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you. And then there will be another "you," and another "you," and it turns into an "us." And so, does hope begin when we have an "us?" No. Hope began with one "you." When there is an "us," there begins a revolution.The third message I would like to share today is, indeed, about revolution: the revolution of tenderness.And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.To listen also to the silent cry of our common home, of our sick and polluted earth. Tenderness means to use our hands and our heart to comfort the other, to take care of those in need.Tenderness is the language of the young children, of those who need the other. A childs love for mom and dad grows through their touch, their gaze, their voice, their tenderness. I like when I hear parents talk to their babies, adapting to the little child, sharing the same level of communication. This is tenderness: being on the same level as the other. God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. This is the same path the Good Samaritan took. This is the path that Jesus himself took. He lowered himself, he lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love.Yes, tenderness is the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility. Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you dont, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other. There is a saying in Argentina: "Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach." You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you dont connect your power with humility and tenderness. Through humility and concrete love, on the other hand, power the highest, the strongest one becomes a service, a force for good.The future of humankind isn't exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies.Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a "you" and themselves as part of an "us." We all need each other. And so, please, think of me as well with tenderness, so that I can fulfill the task I have been given for the good of the other, of each and every one, of all of you, of all of us. Thank you. This article was originally published on TIME.com Starting the search for your next home online -- whether it's a rental or purchase -- has become commonplace, if not completely expected. But when it comes time to tour homes and narrow your options, it may seem like only homebuyers have the advantage of calling on a real estate agent to help them through the process. But renters shouldn't sell themselves short. Many real estate agents will gladly represent a renter searching for his or her next place to lease -- it's just a matter of connecting with the right professional who's familiar with rentals in your target area. Real estate agents involved in lease deals often collect a commission or finder's fee from the landlord -- typically equivalent to one month's rent -- when a qualified renter signs on to move in. But in some parts of the country where finder's fees aren't common -- Seattle, for example -- agents will instead collect a flat fee of a few hundred dollars or more from the renter, depending on the level of service. [See: 8 Apartment Amenities You Didn't Know You Needed.] By enlisting the help of an agent, you get all the benefits available to a homebuyer: professional experience, local knowledge and an understanding of your budgetary constraints. "The biggest benefit is, first and foremost, the personal touch. I think it's something that's been lacking over the last five or six years in the real estate industry, especially on the rental side," says Justin Cleary, CEO of the Philly Apartment Company, an apartment rental agency in Philadelphia. Cleary says his company receives about half of its business from individuals moving to the Philadelphia area from out of town. "The other 50 percent are people that just don't want to bother sitting in front of a computer for days and weeks on end, trying to narrow down places. And I think the biggest difficulty is getting in to see properties," he says. Seattle Rental Group is a similar business with an apartment-finding service that specializes in employment relocations, which not only offers availabilities and sets up appointments for tours but introduces soon-to-be residents to the Emerald City. Story continues "They help people with a crash course of the area -- if you're interested in the closest grocery stores and what kind of people live there," says Kim Reidy, director of relocation for Seattle Rental Group. Still, leasing an apartment or home is far easier than buying a home, and many renters choose to go solo when searching for and leasing a place. As a result, professionals dedicated to the renting process are less common. Cleary says the Philly Apartment Company is one of the only apartment brokers in the Philadelphia area. Fred Thompson, director of the Property Management Division for Re/Max 200 Realty in Orlando, Florida, says he doesn't see many real estate agents taking renters through the entire process in his market. Most renters, he says, find the single-family homes for lease from Re/Max 200 online and reach out directly. "They may have a Realtor or sales agent open up a house and show it to them, but there's not really any tenant representation as far as leasing the property, and there's hardly [any] room on the listing price to move," Thompson says. Housing shortages aren't specific to the buy-and-sell market. High demand for rentals throughout most of the U.S. means available apartments and homes for rent are going fast -- and rents are rising quickly. In the state of Washington, the legally required notice to move out is just 20 days, where most places require between 30 and 90 days. Short notice combined with a fast-moving market means renters have to act fast and be strategic to find the right apartment or house. Reidy notes an agent helps to streamline the inquiry process so the renter can focus on narrowing options. "As a real estate agent, we can access the key box and therefore eliminate the appointments and just kind of show up," she says. Whether you plan to enlist the help of an agent or not, Thompson stresses renters should be prepared to move quickly to secure a desired rental. "They may want to be ready to go to their bank and get a cashier's check or money order for the deposit or first month's rent," Thompson says. [Read: The 10 Best Apps for Finding Your Next Apartment.] Here are six reasons you may benefit from using a real estate agent to help you find your next rental. Your location calls for it. If you're going to be living in the heart of downtown in a major city, having a professional on hand would be helpful -- and in a competitive market like New York City, a real estate agent is necessary to help you get appointments to tour available spaces. You're relocating to a new city. As someone unfamiliar with a city's layout and neighborhoods, it could be a major advantage to call in a pro who spends their days scouring neighborhoods for available homes and apartments. Some employers also include agent representation as part of their relocation packages. You're busy and can't look yourself. Whether you can't make it to your next city until your move date or you simply have a lot of important meetings, enlisting the help of an agent can eliminate that time crunch you've been struggling with. You want to rent a single-family home. Unlike apartment buildings where a property manager is often on site, single-family home rentals can be harder to find listings for and schedule tours. A real estate agent will have access to the local multiple listing service and will know which houses are for rent, and should be able to get you access in a timely manner. You want to rent in a mom-and-pop building. Similar to the single-family home rental issue, a desire to rent in a smaller building owned by a private investor may make visiting the property more difficult. A real estate agent with knowledge of all the buildings in the area and familiarity with the local investors will make it easier to find out if there's an open unit in that quadplex or three-floor walk-up. [Read: 7 Concessions to Ask About While You Search for Your Next Apartment.] You're having trouble scheduling a tour. If calls or emails to a property manager go unanswered, or you make it to the leasing office just after closing, it's a real estate agent's job to make that connection for you. With an agent representing you, it might be possible to schedule an after-hours showing or ensure the property manager knows you're serious about your inquiry. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to reassess the size of national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act of 1906, to determine whether the acreage covered by that designation conforms with the requirements and original objectives of the Act, while balancing the protection of landmarks, structures, and objects against the appropriate use of Federal lands and the effects on surrounding lands and communities. The task of making that determination, however, may a tricky one. It sounds like Zinkes report will hinge on a nebulous figure, which is a determination of the least amount of acres needed to accomplish the conservation purposes, says David Harmon, who co-edited The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation. If the administration decides to reduce the acreage of the monuments as a result of that decision, the sites could be opened up to drilling, mining and logging. Plus, says Harmon, the original objectives of the act are often misunderstood. Present-day critics who are talking about how its being used in way that it was never intended is bit disingenuous, argues Harmon. Congress knew that it was handing it [the Antiquities Act] off to Theodore Roosevelt, who used his bully pulpit, who sent the Navy around the world and dared Congress not to fund it. They knew exactly what kind of guy Theodore Roosevelt was. They also knew what else was going on into the world at the time. Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 8, 1906. In the decades leading up to the signing, Western expansion of the United States had sparked public fascination with the history and art of the American Indians of the Southwest. Organizations of American archaeology and anthropology formed, and their traveling exhibitions displayed their findings on Native American artifacts. But relatively few of the people involved in that growing field were actually scientists. The rush to find precious prehistoric objects led amateur archaeologists to flock to ancient sites in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico and start digging. (And it wasnt just an American phenomenon: Gustav Erik Adolf Nordenskjbld, son of a Swedish geologist and an Arctic explorer, set up camp in whats now known as Cliff Palace in the Mesa Verde National Park in Montezuma County, Colo., and brought the artifacts excavated by his team back to Stockholm.) As ancient graves were vandalized and wrecked for artifacts, and as the market for forgeries grew, experts worried how far it would go. For example, in 1901, after completing five months of field work in northeastern Arizona, Dr. Walter Hough, an ethnologist for the National Museum (a precursor to the Smithsonian Institution), concluded, The great hindrance to successful archaeologic work in this region, lies in the fact that there is scarcely an ancient dwelling site or cemetery that has not been vandalized by pottery diggers for personal gain. Story continues So the Antiquities Act - which gave the President the power to set aside land as historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest - was a seen as a possible solution, especially in that Progressive era of social activism and political reform. President Theodore Roosevelt started using it immediately, proclaiming Devils Tower in Wyoming (a spiritually significant site in the local Native American community) the first national monument on Sept. 24, 1906. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter In the years that followed, he also used that power to protect a wide range of natural wonders. He would go on to use the act to designate 14 more national monuments, including the Grand Canyon and Californias Muir Woods, and he is remembered as the countrys first conservationist president. And that is exactly what Harmon argues Congress could have expected. (Current Interior Secretary Zinke might have expected it too: he is a self-proclaimed unapologetic admirer of Teddy Roosevelt, who went viral for riding a horse to the departments Washington D.C. headquarters on his first day of work, has said he believes the 26th president had it right when he placed under federal protection millions of acres of federal lands and set aside much of it as national forests.) It was no surprise that Roosevelt used the power broadly. In fact, Harmon adds, though members of Congress debated whether to include an acreage limit, like 320 acres, that did not make it into the bill that became law. Since then, 16 presidents have used the Antiquities Act to designate 157 national monuments. So far, Harmon says, presidents have usually only rolled back national-monument designations for national monuments that they have personally designated. But the debate over public use of these lands has changed. On the one hand, awareness of the importance of environmental protection has grown, and it has become clear how important preservation of areas like national monuments can be. On the other hand, in the early 20th century, when the West wasnt as populous, this kind of federal authority was widely accepted. Designating monuments helped the local economies and drew visitors to these isolated areas. But then the population fills in, and states rights [advocacy] rears its head, and people become concerned that for every park thats created, its taking private taxable land and making it public place, says Dwight T. Pitcaithley, former chief historian at the National Park Service. This argument came up recently when Barack Obama used the Antiquities Act more than any other president to set aside more than 3.9 million acres of land for federal protection. While the original intent of the 1906 law was to stop people from doing whatever they wanted on historic sites, in recent years, people have gotten angry that they cant do whatever they want on these public lands. This populist sentiment argues that the Antiquities Acts method of setting aside public lands is actually taking land away from the public, limiting the places they can drive ATVs or graze their livestock, as Pitcaithley explains. Most recently, in 2016, Republican state lawmakers in Utah have fought against Bears Ears national monument designation. Yet Will Shafroth, CEO of the National Park Foundation and grandson of Colorado U.S. House Rep. John Shafroth, one of the original backers of the Antiquities Act, sums up the importance of the Antiquities Act in a way that may resonate with President Trump: Its a tool that Presidents can use to set aside something special for the country for future generations. This article was originally published on TIME.com Shortly after his victory in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump said he wasnt sure how much hed use Twitter once he got to the White House. Im going to be very restrained, if I use it at all, Trump told CBS 60 Minutes in a November interview. As the president approaches his first 100 days in office, that vow appears to have fallen short. Through Wednesday, Trumps 97th day as commander in chief, he has issued 501 tweets or retweets on his personal Twitter feed an average of roughly five tweets per day, including weekends. That figure doesnt include the 488 tweets or retweets that have been published on the verified @POTUS Twitter feed, which Trump inherited from former President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, when he took office. (Many of those are either retweets of @realDonaldTrump or messages identical to the ones published on the presidents personal Twitter.) And as was the case during his presidential campaign, @realDonaldTrump has often been combative, using the social media platform to spar with critics, float conspiracies and pick battles with foreign adversaries. But now, his tweets have the power of the U.S. presidency behind them. THANK YOU for another wonderful evening in Washington, D.C., Trump tweeted on Day 1, following the inaugural festivities. TOGETHER, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. THANK YOU for another wonderful evening in Washington, D.C. TOGETHER, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???????? pic.twitter.com/V3aoj9RUh4 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2017 The unifying tone lasted about 48 hours. Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Trump tweeted following the Womens March. Why didnt these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly. Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017 Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017 On Day 7, Trump engaged in some Twitter diplomacy, saying, If Mexico is unwilling to pay for his promised wall along the U.S. southern border, then it would be better to cancel a planned meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Story continues of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017 Nietos tweeted response: Meeting canceled. Esta manana hemos informado a la Casa Blanca que no asistire a la reunion de trabajo programada para el proximo martes con el @POTUS. Enrique Pena Nieto (@EPN) January 26, 2017 In late January, Trump took to Twitter to defend his executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries and blasted its critics, including Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world a horrible mess! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong they are sadly weak on immigration. The two Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 Statement Regarding Recent Executive Order Concerning Extreme Vetting: https://t.co/f6JO60I0Ul Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage,.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer. Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 Twelve minutes his bad dudes' warning, the former Celebrity Apprentice star tweeted that he would announce his nominee for the Supreme Court from the White House during a live primetime event. (Trumps pick, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by the Senate in a controversial vote on April 7.) I have made my decision on who I will nominate for The United States Supreme Court. It will be announced live on Tuesday at 8:00 P.M. (W.H.) Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 On Feb. 4, after a federal judge ordered the suspension of Trumps travel ban, Trump ripped the opinion of this so-called judge and vowed that the ruling would be overturned. The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017 He also fumed about polls that showed a majority of Americans opposed his travel ban. Any negative polls are fake news, Trump tweeted. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting. Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017 On Day 20, Trump weighed in on the decision by Nordstrom to drop first daughter Ivanka Trumps clothing line. My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017 On Day 29, Trump sparked yet another firestorm by declaring that national media outlets, including the New York Times, NBC and CNN, were the enemy of the American People! In March, Trump gave his 28 million Twitter followers several updates on the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. We are making great progress with healthcare. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2017 Big day for healthcare. Working hard! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2017 Two days later, the plan was abruptly pulled before a scheduled House vote as Trump failed to rally enough Republican support for it. On Day 44 coincidentally the number of his predecessor President Trump issued his most controversial tweet to date, claiming without evidence that Obama had wiretapped his phones inside Trump Tower before the election. Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017 The White House then called for a congressional investigation into the matter. Now, more than 50 days later, the administration has yet to publicly provide any evidence of Trumps charge. _____ Read more from Yahoo News coverage of Trumps first 100 days: As the investigation into ex-National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynns Russia connections heats up, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., questioned Thursday how coincidental the links are between President Trump and Russia. Im concerned not only about the vetting process, Im concerned that there are so many allies of this president, and some in his cabinet, who have connections to Russia, Waters said when asked by News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga if she was concerned about the stringency of the Trump administration vetting process. How is it that all of these people came together in one administration who have business with Russia, visits to Russia, involvement with the Kremlin and with the oligarchs of Russia? Theres something going on here. Waters has established herself as one of Trumps most aggressive critics in Washington, even speculating about the presidents impeachment. Unsurprisingly, she had few kind things to say about the White Houses latest moves, including a tax proposal and threats to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement. We dont know what it means, Waters said of the tax plan. This little one-page so-called plan does not have any specificity, it does not have any details, we dont know what hes talking about. She continued: And dont forget: You cant trust this president. When he comes out with one thing, hell change the next day. Look what he just did with NAFTA. Remember how NAFTA was a bad deal, how he was going to undo NAFTA, he was going to make sure that he breaks it up. Today, I find out hes backed off of that. Waters pivoted to Trumps widely mocked comment about enjoying delicious chocolate cake when he informed the Chinese president of airstrikes against a Syrian airfield. Hes backed off of China, he said that they were currency manipulators. He had chocolate cake with President Xi, and all of the sudden theyre not currency manipulators. She also weighed in on the ongoing saga between Ann Coulter and the University of California, Berkeley. The inflammatory conservative commentators supporters on the campus canceled a speech there after university and policy officials reported there were threats against her. Story continues I believe that whether you are right-wing, whether you are moderate, whether you are liberal or progressive, you have a right to speak, to have a voice on our campuses, Waters said. She deserves a right to speak like anybody else. By Kate Murphy Torture, mass arrests and even killings. Theyre all part of a feared brutal crackdown on gay men in the Russian Republic of Chechnya. Following two bloody civil wars, Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia, gained the right to run its own affairs. Its led by Ramzan Kadyrov, a Kremlin supporter once described as a medieval tyrant by a Chechnyan warlord, who was later killed by Kadyrov. Homosexuality is officially condemned in Chechnya, but many gay men say they were able to have a hidden social life before the crackdown. So how did we get to this point? The crackdown began after a rights-based group in Moscow applied for gay pride parade permits in the majority-Muslim region, which brought about counterprotests by religious groups. In early April, a Russian opposition newspaper called Novaya Gazeta first reported that authorities in Chechnya were rounding up over 100 gay men, or men suspected of being gay, and torturing them in detention centers. It also reported that at least three of them had been killed. Kadyrov has denied the allegations of the persecution of gay men. Kadyrovs spokesman Alvi Karimov said, You cannot arrest or repress people who just dont exist in the republic. He added, If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return. This is in fact a real concern of gay Chechen men. An anonymous Chechen man told CNN, If my family finds out Im gay, then no authorities, no troops are needed. They will kill me themselves. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has put the pressure on Russia to condemn the reported attacks. She released a statement saying, We continue to be disturbed by reports of kidnapping, torture and murder of people in Chechnya based on their sexual orientation and those persecuted by association. But ignoring the outcry, Putins spokesman said Russian authorities didnt find any evidence to support the reports of arrests and torture from the Chechen police. It came just a day after Putin and Kadyrov met for a televised meeting. Story continues Now the Russian LGBT Network is helping to evacuate Chechens who have been tortured or are currently in danger. A video created by Human Rights First is also bringing awareness to the issue as gay men from Russia read personal accounts of torture from Chechen victims. One of the accounts said, They called us animals, not humans, they say that we are going to die there. So, while it remains to be seen what will be done by Russia and the international community, when it comes to the deplorable human rights abuses in Chechnya, at least you can say, now I get it. By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump administration officials will likely meet in May to reach a final decision on whether the United States should stay in the Paris climate deal, after holding an initial meeting on Thursday at the White House, an administration source said. The group of advisers, which includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, was on track to make the decision before a Group of Seven summit on May 26, the source said. President Donald Trump made canceling the Paris agreement part of his 100-day plan for energy policy. He later said he was open to staying in the pact if Washington got better terms. Tillerson, the former head of Exxon Mobil Corp and Perry have said the country should remain in the agreement. McMaster shares that view, a source outside the administration said. Opponents of the pact include Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of oil-producing Oklahoma, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Nearly 200 countries struck the Paris agreement to limit climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions and making investments in clean energy. Many companies such as BP Plc and Microsoft Corp have urged the United States to stay in the agreement to protect their competitiveness. In addition, a group of nine Republican lawmakers urged Trump to stick to the pact, but to weaken the U.S. pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Representative Kevin Cramer of oil-producing North Dakota and eight other Republican House of Representatives members sent a letter to Trump urging him to use the country's "seat at the Paris table to defend and promote our commercial interest, including our manufacturing and fossil fuel sectors." If the United States is to stay in the 2015 agreement, Washington should present a new emissions cutting pledge that "does no harm to our economy," said the letter from Cramer, who advised Trump on energy and climate during his presidential campaign. Trump's Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, had pledged a 26 percent to 28 percent cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, by 2025. Most scientists say the world needs to curb greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of climate change, including rising seas, deadly heatwaves, and severe storms and droughts. The Republican lawmakers also said Washington should retain its seat on the Green Climate Fund, which aims to tackle climate change in poor countries, but not make additional transfers to it. Obama pledged $3 billion to the fund in 2014, and gave $1 billion to it, with the last $500 million payment coming in his last days as president. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis) Influential Republican lawmakers said that President Donald Trump should lay off on a threatened move to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake from Arizona, Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn have cautioned against signing an executive order to withdraw from the 23-year-old agreement allowing for the free flow of goods between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, Politico reports. McCain said that such a move would be disgraceful and a disaster, while Flake said a withdrawal would be harmful to his state and the country as a whole. Trumps administration said on Wednesday that the President, who has vowed to pull out of NAFTA, is considering a draft executive order to withdraw from the trade pact as it nears renegotiation. Trying to negotiate NAFTA makes sense, withdrawing from it doesnt, Graham told Politico. I think wed better be careful about unintended consequences, warned Sen. Cornyn from Texas. Earlier this week, Trump slapped tariffs on softwood lumber imports from Canada, after calling the countrys dairy practices unfair. Relations have also been tense with Mexico, which Trump has accused of destroying U.S. jobs while demanding that the country pay for a wall along its border with the U.S. [Politico] This article was originally published on TIME.com It appears Donald Trump wont achieve his campaign promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare before his first 100 days in office, as members of Congress direct their attention to averting a government shutdown. The White House has been scrambling to pass a revised health care bill since their first effort crashed and burned. Mr Trump ordered the White House-backed Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) to be pulled from a House vote last month, after it became obvious there were not enough votes to pass it. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, who many credit with bringing down the original plan, pledged their support for a revised version of the AHCA on Wednesday. The about-face hinged on the addition of a new amendment, allowing states to opt out of covering essential health benefits, and other key Obamacare protections. Read more House Freedom Caucus announces support for Republican healthcare bill The news sparked renewed calls for a health care vote, at the same time Republicans pushed to move a vote on government funding back by a week. Congress has been working all week on a spending bill to keep the government funded until September. Republicans on Wednesday suggested a continuing resolution that would push the funding vote back by a week. Democrats, however, threatened to oppose the continuing resolution and allow the government to shut down if Republicans scheduled the health care vote. "If Republicans announce their intention to bring their harmful TrumpCare bill to the House Floor tomorrow or Saturday, I will oppose a one-week Continuing Resolution and will advise House Democrats to oppose it as well," Democratic House Whip Steny Hoyer said in a statement. Democrats were surprised by Republicans' ability to put together a deal that satisfied the Freedom Caucus, sources with knowledge of the situation tell The Independent. Delaying the vote will give leadership time to examine and hone their message on what Democrats are calling a "backroom" healthcare deal. Story continues Speaker of the House Paul Ryan accused Democrats of dragging their feet on the spending bill on Thursday, but also admitted he likely would not schedule a health care vote for this week. We think its a really good step in the right direction, Mr Ryan said of the health care bill. Were having very productive conversations with our members, and well announce, when we have the votes, when were ready to go. Informal whip counts obtained by Politico on Thursday showed the Republicans were still at least two votes short of passing the bill. The latest version of the plan released by House conservatives looked similar to the initial proposal: The Obamacare insurance mandate would be revoked, and insurance enrollees would be offered a tax refund to offset the cost of their coverage. Crucially, however, states would be allowed to opt out of protections for seniors, those with preexisting conditions, or those who dont maintain their insurance coverage. Multiple outlets reported last week that the White House is pressuring House leaders to get a health care plan passed. Mr Trump faces increasing scrutiny as he approaches the end of his first 100 days of office without a single major legislative win. Asked whether hed like to see a funding bill or health care bill passed within the week, Mr Trump bragged, "I think we'll get both." For weeks, arch-conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus shouldered the blame for the collapse of the Obamacare repeal. Lawmakers blasted the conservatives in interviews with reporters in the halls of the Capitol, glared at them in meetings, and lamented the breakdown of order. President Trump tweeted at them, attacking them for opposing the bill in favor of a more conservative product. The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they dont get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018! Trump tweeted on March 30. Now the script has flipped. After moderate Rep. Tom MacArthur of New Jersey proposed an amendment to satisfy conservatives, the Freedom Caucus announced on Wednesday it would support the bill. The spotlight has now shifted to moderates in the House of Representatives who are still opposed or wavering on whether to support the health care reform bill. At issue is whether moderates Republicans - already loathe to support an Obamacare repeal that would increase the number of uninsured by 24 million - can vote for an unpopular bill many view as even more conservative than before. If the new Obamacare repeal effort fails, itll be moderate Republicans who could face the blame - or the applause. Unfortunately the pressure has shifted, it appears, said Rep. Chris Collins, a moderate from New York. Im not happy with it, but lifes not always fair. The new amendment was negotiated between Rep. Mark Meadows, the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and MacArthur, who is a a co-chair of the moderate House Tuesday Group. The amendment would allow states to opt out of federal mandates that insurers charge the same rates for people the same age, meaning that insurance companies could charge higher rates to sick people than healthy people. Critics of the effort say this undermines a core tenet of Obamacare that requires insurers to cover those with preexisting conditions. The amendment would also allow states to opt out of requiring insurers to cover essential health benefits, which include mental health, emergency services, maternity care and other measures. States would have to meet certain requirements to opt out, and prove that their own plans would reduce premiums, increase choice of health plans or boost coverage. Story continues The bill contains many of the other measures that moderates chafed against: defunding Planned Parenthood, rolling back the Medicaid expansion and allowing insurers to charge higher prices on the elderly. While the amendment has brought on board most of the Freedom Caucus, it does not appear to have swayed any moderates who had previously opposed it. And it may even deter some moderates who had supported it in the last round. Im still a no, said Rep. Dan Donovan of New York, who opposed the bill last month. The things I needed addressed in the replacement plan and that affect the people of the 11th Congressional District arent addressed by the amendment. I havent read the full text, but Im not on board with it, said Rep. LoBiondo of New Jersey who opposed the bill earlier. Others, including Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, a moderate who supported the earlier incarnation of the bill, and Rep. Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania, who voted for the bill in committee in March, would not say on Wednesday whether they supported the new version of the bill. If Republicans lose some moderate votes because of the amendment, it could fail in the House. Republican leaders in the House or whipping up votes but have said they wont bring the bill to the floor unless they can be sure they have the votes to pass it. Every time you move something, this is a balancing act, Donovan said. You have to make sure when youre gaining three votes Im not losing two here or three there. So its a difficult task to balance. Raising the stakes for Republicans is the increasing unpopularity of their effort. More Americans than ever view Obamacare favorably. Large majorities - 8 in 10 Democrats, 7 in 10 independents, and even a small majority of Republicans - say that there should continue to be national mandates that block insurers from charging more or denying coverage to customers with medical conditions, rather than allowing states to opt out, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll. A plurality of voters (43%) want to see President Trump work with Democrats to change the law, rather than with conservative Republicans (26%). The new version of the bill is not expected to garner any Democratic votes. MacArthur, a second-term Congressman, negotiated with the conservative Freedom Caucus without the blessing of the moderate Tuesday Group, which he co-chairs. Tuesday Group members had said they did not want one of their co-chairs negotiating on their behalf and wanted the bill to be worked through the appropriate committees, Ways and Means and Commerce. MacArthurs move to negotiate the bill means that he may ultimately force his own moderate allies to bear the responsibility of passing the bill. Rep. Charlie Dent, another co-chair of the Tuesday Group, accused the Freedom Caucus of blame-shifting by supporting the bill. A lot of them were taking a lot of heat. They were taking a lot of heat for the failure of the bill. They didnt like it, Dent said of the Freedom Caucus. My sense is that those who are opposed to the bill are not going to change their votes over this, he said. Dent suggested that MacArthur acted without support from Tuesday Group members. Tuesday Group [members] made very clear to me they didnt want anybody else negotiating on their behalf, he added. The Freedom Caucus conceded in a statement that the bill did not fully repeal Obamacare but said they would support it anyway. While the revised version still does not fully repeal Obamacare, we are prepared to support it to keep our promise to the American people to lower healthcare costs, the group said. We look forward to working with our Senate colleagues to improve the bill. Our work will continue until we fully repeal Obamacare. Now as Republicans tally the votes and with the Freedom Caucus on board, all eyes are on the moderates. Theres pressure on everybody here, said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma. Theyre all worried that people will pick up something that will never become law and use it as the basis of an ad against you. Collins, the Tuesday Group member, said his own moderate caucus wont face the heat that Freedom Caucus members faced three weeks ago. He argued that it was the Freedom Caucus that had pulled the bill far to the right. They wont face the same the wrath because we all know where it came from to begin with, Collins said. This article was originally published on TIME.com Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - An Israeli rights group warned Thursday that cutting power to the Gaza Strip would have "catastrophic consequences" after Israel said the Palestinian Authority was refusing to pay the bill. Hit by the bitter rivalry between the strip's Islamist Hamas rulers and the rival Palestinian Authority (PA), Gaza's only power plant shut down this month for lack of fuel, caused by a payment dispute. Gazans are now getting at best only a few hours of electricity each day. Things got bleaker still on Thursday when the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for the Palestinian territories said it had been notified by the West Bank-based PA that it would no longer pick up the bill for electricity streamed to Gaza directly from Israel. "The Palestinian Authority informed the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) that it would stop paying for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, with immediate effect," COGAT said in a statement. It did not say that as a consequence it would pull the plug, but the possibility alarmed Israeli rights group Gisha. "Residents of Gaza cannot endure an interruption of the electricity supply from Israel and cuts of the kinds discussed would have catastrophic consequences," it said in a statement. "Reducing the volume of electricity supplied by Israel to the Strip is a red line that cannot be crossed." In its Ramallah headquarters, the PA refused to comment on the COGAT statement. If confirmed, the move by the PA could be a sign of renewed confrontation with Hamas, which violently ousted it from Gaza in 2007 and has blocked its attempts to regain influence there. On April 4 the PA, headed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, announced it would temporarily cut stipends to its Gaza civil servants thrown out of their jobs in the Hamas takeover. The PA said it was forced into cutbacks by falling foreign aid. Story continues But others said it could be politically motivated, to stir up discontent in Gaza and destabilise the Hamas administration there. Gisha said that with the shutdown of the Gaza power plant, the 120 megawatts of electricity flowing through cables from Israel accounts for more than 80 percent of the power currently available to Gaza. Egypt, which borders Gaza, also helps. UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, Robert Piper, called on Thursday for all sides, and the international community, to work together to halt the decline. "With power outages at 20 hours a day and emergency fuel supplies running out, basic services are grinding to a halt," he said in a statement. "According to the Gaza ministry of health, fuel to power back-up generators at seven out of 13 hospitals in Gaza is expected to run out within three days," he said, adding his agency was allocating $500,000 to buy emergency fuel supplies. Rome (AFP) - Prosecutors on Thursday requested a 28-year prison term for a one-eyed, far-right extremist who was the alleged kingpin of a mafia gang that preyed on Rome's City Hall. The request came during summing up for the prosecution in the final stages of what has been an 18-month trial held in a high-security prison. Known as "Mafia Capitale", the case has exposed how organised crime infiltrated Rome's corridors of power and, for years, used extortion, fraud and inside accomplices to steal millions of euros destined for public services. "They chopped up the administration like slices of cheese," one of the prosecutors, Paolo Ielo, told the court. The scandal has been a major factor in leaving the city so cash-strapped it can barely afford to repair its buses when they break down, fill potholes in its streets or prevent trees from falling over for lack of maintenance. Prosecutors said Massimo Carminati, 58, a convicted gangster with a history of involvement with violent far-right groups, and 45 others should serve a combined total of 515 years behind bars for a variety of corruption-related crimes. Carminati and 17 others are accused of having belonged to a mafia-style network, making them liable for much tougher sentences if the judges agree. Among the accused are local politicians, businessmen and employees of the city, including a former boss at the city's rubbish collection agency AMA, for whom a 21-year sentence was requested. For Salvatore Buzzi, Carminati's alleged right-hand man, prosecutors asked for a sentence of 26 years and three months. Earlier in the trial, the court heard police wire-taps in which Buzzi, a convicted murderer, was heard to boast of skimming cash from funds allocated to feed and house asylum seekers. The prosecution alleged that Buzzi was the key intermediary linking Rome's political class to a murky underworld in which Carminati has long been a key player. Story continues - Eye lost in shootout - Among the many recordings of incriminating conversations played in court was one in which Carminati seems to describe himself and his associates as connecting the underworld and regular society. "There are those living up above and the dead down below, we are in between, in this middle world where everyone meets," he is heard as saying. Both men have been in custody since the scandal was exposed in December 2014 and authorities judged them too dangerous for the trial to be held in open court. Many observers questioned how they had been able to get so close to Rome's centre of power in light of their previous convictions. In 1983, Buzzi received a 30-year prison sentence for the murder of an accomplice in a forged cheques racket. He served only six years after pursuing his education and successfully portraying himself as a reformed character. Carminati was given a 10-year prison term in 1998 for membership of the Banda della Magliana, a criminal crew which ruled Rome's underworld in the 1970s and 1980s. Prosecutors say the gang reinvented itself as the core network behind Mafia Capitale. Carminati is also a former member of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), a far-right group that was involved in the 1980 bombing of Bologna railway station which left 85 people dead. He lost his left eye in a 1981 shoot-out with police. Civil parties to the case will present their claim for damages on May 2-3 before the trial is concluded with the defence's summing up. China is getting another behemoth cruise liner built specifically to cater to Chinese travelers that will set sail in 2019. Royal Caribbean has announced plans to build a new Quantum Ultra-class ship specifically for the Asia-Pacific region. The yet-to-be-named ship is touted as one of the most technologically advanced cruise ships that will feature new and cutting-edge experiences. Cruise brands have been increasingly turning their sights towards Asia to meet rising demand from the fastest-growing market in the world. This summer, the Norwegian Joy will lift anchor for the first time as the brand's first purpose-built ship for the Chinese market. Pitched as a first-class experience at sea, the ship will feature casinos, an open-air laser tag course, thrill rides, multi-story waterslides, and the industry's first Ferrari-branded racetrack at sea. Likewise, Carnival also commissioned Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri to build two liners tailored specifically for the Chinese market in a $1.5 billion deal that was inked earlier this year. Meanwhile, along with announcing plans for a new Quantum-class ship for China, Royal Caribbean also unveiled their 2018-2019 itineraries for Asia-Pacific, that include 7-night sailings to Japan, along with trips focused on New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. By Andrew Osborn and Richard Balmforth MOSCOW/PARIS (Reuters) - Russia accused French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign team of discriminating against its media on Thursday, saying it had trampled on the freedom of the press by banning Russian news outlets from its events. In Paris, a Macron spokesman confirmed that the Russian state-funded Sputnik news agency and RT TV channel had been barred from having media access to him, describing them as a "two-headed entity" which issued Russian state propaganda and fake news. Macron, a pro-European Union ex-banker and centrist, is widely seen as favorite to win the French presidency on May 7 by beating far right leader Marine Le Pen. Macron takes a hard line on EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, whereas Le Pen, an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a eurosceptic who backs the lifting of sanctions and takes Russia's side on Ukraine. The Kremlin has been irritated by accusations from Macron's camp that its campaign's networks, databases and sites have come under attack from locations inside Russia, fuelling suspicions that Russia is trying to undermine Macron's campaign in order to help Le Pen. The Macron spokesman referred to the two news outlets' "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information". "Spreading lies methodically and systematically - that's a problem," he said. "If this creates problems with the Kremlin, it will be the subject of an open discussion in the event of the candidate (Macron) being elected," the spokesman said. Moscow has rejected allegations of meddling, and on Thursday Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dubbed "outrageous" the move by Macron's team to refuse accreditation to Sputnik, RT and the Ruptly video agency last Sunday. Zakharova said Moscow viewed the ban as "deliberate and bare-faced discrimination against Russian media by the presidential candidate of a state that has historically been vigilant when it comes to free speech." She called on the relevant French authorities and international organizations to ensure that freedom of the press was upheld in the second round of voting. PUTIN AND LE PEN The Macron spokesman gave no specific examples of Russian media spreading fake news. But a Feb. 4 report by Sputnik quoted a pro-Putin center-right French legislator as saying Macron was a puppet of U.S. political and financial elites and that revelations about his private life would soon be made public. The report appeared to play a part in Macron being forced on Feb. 7 to deny rumors of an extra-marital gay relationship. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, said on social media that the Macron campaign was refusing to accredit her organization and the others for the second round as well however. "So this is how gracelessly freedom of speech ends in a country which prides itself on its freedoms almost more than it prides itself on its Camembert and Brie cheeses," said Simonyan. Last February, when political parties were squaring off for the first round of the election, Richard Ferrand, the head of Macron's En Marche! party, accused Sputnik and RT of spreading fake news with the aim of undermining Macron's campaign. RT has issued several statements denying suggestions that it is part of a campaign to spread fake news in relation to Macron and the French election. Russia's Putin granted an audience to Le Pen in the Kremlin last month, bestowing a level of international recognition that had until then eluded her in the countdown to the election. But the Kremlin says it is not backing any candidate in the election, which it says is purely a matter for the French people. (Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Ralph Boulton) Istanbul (AFP) - A Russian naval spy ship on Thursday sank in the Black Sea off Turkey's coast after hitting a Togo-flagged vessel packed with livestock but all of its 78 crew were rescued by Turkish coastguards. The Russian military said the Liman -- a former research ship re-fitted as an intelligence vessel -- had a hole ripped out of its hull in the collision with the Youzarsif H. The collision, whose precise circumstances remain to be explained, took place in fog outside the northwestern entrance to the Bosphorus Strait, one of the world's biggest shipping thoroughfares that passes through Istanbul into the Sea of Marmara. The Liman was struck at 11:53 local time (0853 GMT) with the ship sinking three hours later at 2:48 pm (1148 GMT), Turkish and Russian sources said. The Turkish coastguard said in a statement that the Togo-flagged vessel Youzarsif H was carrying a cargo of livestock. It said that of 78 Russian personnel on board the ship, 63 were rescued by the Turkish coastguard and the other 15 by the Youzarsif H itself. They were then transferred to a Turkish military ship, it said, without giving further details. "All the personnel were evacuated," it said. - 'Sad accident' - Turkish media said the Youzarsif suffered minor damage and went on its way after the incident. The Russian defence ministry confirmed the ship had gone down and said the crew were safe and would be taken from a Turkish vessel back onto a Russian ship. Turkish news agency Dogan said the area where the ships collided was shrouded in thick fog at the time, suggesting that the incident was accidental. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim spoke to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev by phone over the incident, describing it as an accident and expressing his sadness, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. It was not known where the Liman was sailing from or its destination. The ship was built as a hydrography research vessel in 1970 but turned into a spy ship in 1989 and armed with an Igla missile launcher, according to public records. Story continues - 'Russia wants it back' - Russian warships have travelled frequently through the Bosphorus Strait to and from the Syrian coast, where a navy presence has been deployed to bolster Russia's air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad. In February, military sources told Russian media that Liman would be observing NATO's Sea Shield exercise in the Black Sea. Cem Devrim Yaylali, an Istanbul-based Turkish naval expert and editor of the Bosphorus Naval News website, said the Liman had previously been to the Syrian coast but it was not clear where it was headed on this occasion. "A collision is not something that happens very frequently," he told AFP. He said the incident was an embarrassment for the Russian authorities as the Liman was likely carrying sensitive surveillance equipment that Moscow would want returned. "I imagine there will be a salvage effort to raise the ship before anyone else sees it," he said. "If the ship cannot be salvaged then Russia surely will try to take away the sensitive equipment from on board by divers." - 'Syria Express' - Relations between Russia and Turkey hit their worst state since the Cold War in November 2015 when Turkish war planes shot down a Russian jet over the Syrian border. But there has since been a dramatic reconciliation, with Moscow and Ankara now engaged in a joint effort to bring peace to Syria despite standing on opposing sides of the conflict. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to hold his latest talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Russia on May 3. As a Black Sea littoral state, Russia is allowed to have its military ships pass through the Bosphorus under the 1936 Montreux Convention on the Straits. The intense traffic of Russian vessels to and from Syria -- known as the Syrian Express -- has caused immense curiosity in Istanbul where the warships pass through the heart of the city in full view of ship-spotters. "There have been collisions but I cannot recall once that a military ship has sunk afterwards," Russia's former navy chief of staff admiral Viktor Kravchenko told the Interfax news agency. "This is an event that is out of the ordinary," he said. Moscow (AFP) - Russian police on Thursday searched the offices of the Open Russia movement of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which has called a protest against President Vladimir Putin at the weekend. The search came as three other Khodorkovsky-associated groups were put on the register of banned "undesirable" organisations for allegedly stirring unrest and undermining state security. The Open Russia movement, which was created by the former Yukos oil company owner after his release from prison and departure into exile in 2013, openly opposes Putin's rule and seeks to rally his opponents. The organisation's website said police seized equipment and some 100,000 flyers printed ahead of an anti-Kremlin protest dubbed "We've had enough" planned for Saturday. Moscow police did not issue an official comment about the search, but a source told the TASS news agency that it was conducted by anti-extremism officers. "The search has to do with the event on April 29," Open Russia coordinator Maria Baronova, who organised the protest, told journalists outside the building. Baronova said police were "seizing all equipment and all documentation" without showing a warrant and employees remaining inside were told not to leave. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Thursday that the Open Russia rally had not been sanctioned and warned that it would lead to "actions by the authorities." Russia saw the biggest anti-Kremlin demonstrations in years on March 26 after opposition leader Alexei Navalny rallied thousands of protesters over high-level corruption. More than a thousand participants were arrested at the rally in Moscow alone, with some jailed for up to 25 days. Thursday's raid appeared to be part of a campaign by the authorities to turn the screws on groups connected with arch-Putin foe Khodorkovsky. The justice ministry included three Khodorkovksy-linked organisations based abroad called OR (Otkrytaya Rossia), the Institute of Modern Russia and the Open Russia Civic Movement on its list of "undesirable" organisations that are banned in Russia. However, authorities said the ban would not directly impact the similarly-named Open Russia movement based in Moscow. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's largest internet group Yandex on Thursday raised its sales outlook for the year after settling a dispute with Google over product distribution on the U.S. company's Android operating system. Google announced a deal with Yandex and Russia's competition watchdog on April 17, pledging to stop requiring manufacturers of Android-based devices to pre-install its search engine and other applications. Yandex expects the settlement to "open the door to market share gains on mobile (devices) in 2017 and beyond," Chief Executive Arkady Volozh said in a statement. Yandex is the largest internet search engine in Russia, but has struggled to increase its share of this market on mobile devices, most of which use Android. The company's overall share of the Russian search market, including mobile, was flat quarter on quarter at 55.4 percent but down from 57.6 percent a year earlier. Yandex said on a conference call on Thursday that the Android case settlement's impact on the company's market share would be skewed to the second half of the year. The company now expects 2017 revenue growth of between 17 and 20 percent, having predicted in February a rise of 16-19 percent. First-quarter revenue jumped 25 percent. The company also said its cash pile stood at 61.4 billion roubles ($1.08 billion) as of March 31. Yandex said in February it did not rule out that its board of directors could discuss the possibility of a maiden dividend payout at one of its meetings this year. "Clearly we do see an increasing confidence about the overall economic backdrop," Greg Abovsky, Yandex chief financial officer, told a conference call when asked about the prospect of a dividend payout. "We do believe that we are in a better position, we have a strong balance sheet and we've just hedged out two years worth of office lease expense so I think the board will feel more confident about making a cash distribution decision now than it has before," Abovsky said. The company increased adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by 19 percent in the first quarter to 6.9 billion roubles on 20.7 billion roubles of sales. Net income was down 23 percent to 0.8 billion roubles due to a 2.2 billion rouble foreign exchange loss, while adjusted net income rose 18 percent to 3.7 billion roubles. It said online advertising revenues grew 23 percent, adding that its online taxi booking service was a major growth driver with sales up 75 percent. Nasdaq-listed shares in Yandex were up 5.8 percent in early trade on Thursday at $26.30. ($1 = 57.0386 roubles) (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Jane Merriman and Toby Davis) By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is distributing life-saving assistance throughout Yemen, including in the hard-hit areas held by Iran-allied Houthi rebels, sometimes by donkey or camel, a top Saudi aid official said on Thursday. Riyadh has faced mounting accusations a Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 to back its government against the Houthi movement has been responsible for many of the estimated 10,000 deaths - mostly civilians - in the conflict and created obstacles to getting humanitarian aid to famine-threatened regions. Yemen has been shattered by the conflict, in which the Saudi-led coalition has carried out almost daily air strikes in support of Yemeni government efforts to recover large swathes of territory including the capital Sanaa taken by the Houthis. "Our programs have been reaching all regions of Yemen, I want to emphasize all regions, irrespective of who controls it," Abdullah Al Rabeeah, supervisor general of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre, told a news conference. "As much as we have been in the south, we have been in the in north, our programs are also active in Houthi-controlled areas such as Sadaa, Hajja, Amran, and Sanaa," he said. Al Rabeeah, asked about civilian casualties, said "we are very conscious about the Yemeni civilians". "If you look at what we do as a humanitarian agency, I think it's way beyond any damage that is caused by any attacks," he said, noting its projects provided food, health, education and water and sanitation. Referring to the southern governorate of Taiz, where high rates of acute malnutrition have been reported, he said the Centre had used coalition air planes to drop medicines and food supplies to keep the four main hospitals functioning. "For the oxygen supply for the ICUs, intensive care units... we used animals to carry oxygen cylinders, we used donkeys and camels to carry oxygen cylinders through the mountains." ACCESS U.N. emergency relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien told Reuters this week that access remained a major problem in Yemen given bureaucratic restrictions and demands for "taxes, levies, bribes and fines" to be able to reach the sick and hungry. Al Rabeeah, a former health minister, backed a proposal for independent monitoring of the rebel-held Yemeni Red Sea port of Hodeidah to ensure that commercial and aid goods enter freely. "We would love to see that the access will have a neutral monitoring system that will allow the access of commercial and non-commerical items, and especially humanitarian," he said. The Yemeni government has proposed to the United Nations that it monitor the Hodeidah port to ensure that no arms are smuggled through it by the Houthis, Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr told Reuters in Geneva on Wednesday. "The deployment of monitors to the port requires the full consent of all parties and firm security assurances are needed for such monitors to be able to operate," U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke told Reuters on Thursday in a first comment after talks between bin Daghr and Guterres this week. (Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay; additional reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Ralph Boulton) Jakarta (AFP) - Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for major attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings, has regained strength in Indonesia and could spawn a new generation of extremists, a leading security think-tank warned Thursday. Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) does not pose an immediate threat and its leadership has for some years rejected violence to achieve its goal of forming an Islamic state, said the report from Jakarta group the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC). But it is also building a clandestine military wing in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, and there is a risk a more militant faction could emerge from the wider organisation as it steps up recruitment, it said. The military part of the organisation is not intended to be used in terror attacks. It is preparation for a potential future confrontation, but those who receive training will likely "be impatient to test their skills", said the think-tank. "The current JI could give rise to a more militant splinter that could be more professional in its organisation, training and recruitment than anything Indonesian extremism has to offer today," said the report from IPAC, headed by veteran security analyst Sidney Jones. JI was founded by a handful of exiled Indonesian militants in Malaysia in the 1980s, and grew to include cells across Southeast Asia. The Al Qaeda-linked group was blamed for terror attacks, mainly in Indonesia, that struck Western targets including the 2002 bombing on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people. The attacks prompted Indonesian security forces to mount a sustained crackdown that was credited with almost wiping out JI. However since 2010 JI has been regaining strength, and recent arrests of members suggest it should still be considered a danger, said IPAC. JI's leaders are strongly opposed to the Islamic State (IS) group, however. IS has in recent years been a major problem for Indonesia, with hundreds of radicals flocking to fight with the jihadists. A deadly attack in Jakarta last year was claimed by the group. White House press secretary Sean Spicer attempted Thursday to shift blame to the Obama administration for its role in vetting retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the national security adviser dismissed by President Trump. Spicer argued that the Trump transition team didnt vet Flynns appointment because he already held a security clearance at the time. My only point is that when Gen. Flynn came into the White House, he had an active security clearance that was issued during the Obama administration with all the information thats being discussed that occurred in 2015, Spicer said at the daily press briefing. I think the president made the right decision at the right time, and he continues to stand by that, Spicer said of Trumps decision to request Flynns resignation. However, at the time, Trump appeared sympathetic, saying Flynn was the victim of a witch hunt and defending his reported request for immunity to testify before Congress. Flynn resigned in February after it was revealed that he discussed lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador and then mischaracterized their conversations to Vice President Mike Pence. Flynn was also paid hundreds of thousands by foreign governments for consulting work; he filed documents in March indicating he worked as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkeys interests last year. Flynn, who also clashed with the Obama administration, served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency before being forced out in 2014. He went on to advise the Trump campaign, but was dogged by various controversies, including his decision to accept money from the Kremlin-funded RT network for a talk in Moscow in December 2015. Flynn told Yahoo News during last summers Republican National Convention about the payment, but that did not stop Trump from appointing him national security adviser. Asked directly if Flynn was sufficiently vetted by the transition team, Spicer again shifted blame by raising his security clearance under the Obama administration. Story continues Well, with respect, youre saying, our process, Spicer began. The process is, every government employee whos eligible for a clearance goes through the same process. So, its not we dont have a unique process. Spicer declined to say whether the administration regretted Flynns appointment, repeating his earlier statement that Trump made the right decision at the right time, regarding Flynns eventual ouster less than a month after inauguration. Read more from Yahoo News: Patients in the United States may be much more willing to disclose their sexual orientation to the staff in a hospital emergency room than health professionals think, a new study suggests. The researchers found that about 78 percent of health professionals surveyed thought that patients would not wish to divulge information about their sexual orientation in the emergency room. However, only 10 percent of patients who the researchers surveyed said they would refuse to provide this information when asked in this setting, according to the findings, published today (April 24) in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings are important, the researchers said, because other research has suggested that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) populations report having poorer health as well as less access to health insurance and health services than heterosexual populations. But a lack of data on sexual orientation has made it difficult to address the health disparities in the LGB community, the researchers said. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked] These findings demonstrate that there can be a difference between what health professionals perceive and what patients want, think and prefer, said lead study author Dr. Adil Haider, a surgeon and a director of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The study showed that the vast majority of patients surveyed indicated that they would be especially comfortable disclosing their sexual orientation in the ER if the question was being asked of all patients, Haider told Live Science. Currently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Academy of Medicine recommend that information about sexual orientation be routinely collected in federally funded population health surveys as well as in patients' electronic health records. But few hospitals and health centers are collecting this data, the study authors said. Different perceptions The researchers focused on the emergency room, because patients there do not choose their own doctors as they would in a primary care setting, Haider said. He also said that the researchers wanted to understand how willing health professionals would be to routinely collect this data from patients. Story continues In the study, the researchers conducted two separate nationwide surveys, one among patients who had sought medical care in an emergency room, and another of doctors and nurses who worked in emergency rooms. For the patient group, the researchers wanted to ensure there were enough people included who identified as lesbian, gay and bisexual, so they actively recruited people through organizations that advocate for these groups. The investigators wound up with a group of about 1,500 adults: Roughly half were straight, 16 percent were lesbians, 19 percent were gay men, and 12 percent were bisexual. The average age in the patient group was 49. The group of health care professionals included about 400 people and was composed of roughly equal numbers of nurses and physicians. The participants' average age was 51. The study found that more than three-quarters of health professionals thought that patients might be offended by or would refuse to answer questions about their sexual orientation in the hospital emergency room. However, only about 10 percent of patients reported they would be offended by or refuse to give answers to these queries, the study showed. Haider said that he suspects these different perceptions may exist in part because health professionals may feel they should ask about patients' sexual orientation only if this information has relevance to the disease they are treating. But Haider said this approach might actually be stigmatizing, because health professionals then wind up asking only some people this question, but not others. On the other hand, Haider said, patients seem comfortable with the idea of health care professionals routinely asking people provide information about sexual orientation. This normalizes the idea of sexual orientation and it just becomes demographic information that gets collected, so all a patient would need to do is to check a box on a paper-and-pencil form or an electronic tablet, he said. [How Do I Love Thee? Experts Count 8 Ways] Haider said the findings suggested that patients are interested in providing information about sexual orientation because they want to be seen as a whole person. Doing so may help in developing trusting relationships with health professionals and allow all people to feel respected, welcome and comfortable in their care, Haider said. The study also found that people who were bisexual felt the least comfortable about sharing information on sexual orientation, with 16 percent of bisexual people surveyed saying they would refuse to provide that information. Previous studies have shown that bisexual individuals experience higher levels of identity confusion than lesbian and gay individuals, the researchers said. Haider said the research team is conducting another study to evaluate which methods may work best to collect sexual orientation information in the hospital setting, such as whether to collect the information on documents or tablets or face-to-face questioning. Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations With Adam Rawnsley Senators not impressed with super-secret White House meeting. The big meeting is over and the reviews are coming in. And so far, a handful of Republican and Democratic senators have responded to the much-hyped classified briefing the White House delivered on North Korea Wednesday with a collective, meh. The hour-long brief was carried out by Trump cabinets top national security officials, including the secretaries of State and Defense, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Director of National Intelligence. Asked by reporters afterwards, the lawmakers offered assessments like Sen. Bob Corkers (R-Tenn.) declaration that it was an OK briefing, and Sen. Jeff Merkleys (D-Ore.) conclusion that he learned nothing you couldnt read in the newspaper. At least one anonymous Republican Senator complained to the Washington Post that the administration was short on straight answers on what the policy is toward North Koreas weapons programs. So, whats the strategy? Its becoming more apparent that despite some heated rhetoric, the Trump administration has little appetite for war with Pyongyang. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not to his knees, Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Harris said the U.S. aircraft carrier and several other warships near the Korean peninsula, along with a new U.S. missile defense system dispatched to South Korea are classic deterrent measures, and not the start of a military buildup. (For a sense of what that might look like, look back to President Bill Clintons tense standoff with the regime in 1994.) We want to solve this through political or economic measures, an anonymous senior administration official told the Daily Beasts Kim Dozier. There are no good military options. And the Wall Street Journal reports Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to use a United Nations meeting on Friday to ask allies to increase economic pressure on Pyongyang by enforcing economic sanctions, and closing North Korean embassies. Story continues More than North Korea. Adm. Harris also warned about increasing Chinese and Russian capabilities in the Pacific region. FPs Paul McLeary reports that U.S. officials have been concerned for some time over new submarine deployments by both countries in the Pacific, which Harris said represent dramatic improvements from previous classes of ships. He added that he has only about half the subs he needs for the region, and expressed concern that a shrinking U.S. submarine fleet is eroding long-held advantages over Beijing and Moscow. The gap between us and the next best is closing, Harris said. Pentagon calls the shots. The White House has handed off decisions over troop levels in Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon in an effort to do away with the Obama-era troop caps that military commanders have long complained privately were arbitrary. Buzzfeed was first to report the move on Wednesday. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement that no change to current authorized force levels has been made. This does not represent a change in our mission in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIS. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has undertaken a review of force levels, which are capped at 500 in Syria despite there being some 1,000 U.S. troops there using some bureaucratic hand waving and about 5,000 in Iraq. Its unclear how many U.S. forces are actually in Iraq currently, but its likely hundreds over the cap, since temporary assignments arent counted against the total. The Pentagon says the new system will make the process more accountable. About those troops in Syria. U.S. forces were only about six miles away from the airstrikes Turkey launched against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria Tuesday, drawing a rebuke from the Pentagon. Spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria Col. John Dorrian told reporters Wednesday that the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, some of whom Turkey considers terrorists, have been integral in fighting ISIS. Theyve been reliable in making progress against ISIS fighters under very difficult and dangerous conditions. Over the past year, they have made many, many sacrifices to help defeat ISIS and that keeps the whole world safer. So that is our position on that. The Trump administrations deputy presidential envoy for the anti-ISIS fight, (ret.) Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, told an audience at the Middle East Institute in Washington on Wednesday the U.S. relationship with Turkey takes work, and theres nothing we manage on a daily basis more intensely than Turkey. But, he said echoing several top U.S. generals who have told FP the Kurds are a critical and necessary partner to fight ISIS in Syria the Kurds werent our first choice. The moderate [Sunni Arab] opposition the Turks are training was our first choice, but when the training faltered, Washington had to turn to the Kurds, who were ready and willing to go. Assads chemical weapons. France on Wednesday released new evidence directly linking the Syrian regime to an April 4 chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people, including many children, and prompted President Donald Trump to order Tomahawk missile strikes against a Syrian air base. The new evidence, contained in a six-page National Evaluation prepared by French intelligence, represents the most detailed public account of Syrias alleged use of the deadly nerve agent sarin in the attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, FPs Colum Lynch reports. The French report calls into question what was viewed that the time as a landmark U.S.-Russian chemical weapons pact, which was signed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in late 2013. The pact was touted as practically eliminating Syrias declared chemical weapons program. France also said that since 2014, Syria has sought to acquire dozens of tons of isopropanol, a key ingredient of sarin, even though it committed to destroying its chemical arsenal in October 2013. New blood in Russia investigation. The flagging U.S. probes into the Trump administrations ties to the Kremlin are about to get an injection of fresh blood, FPs ELias Groll and Jenna McLaughlin tell us. Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have tapped April Doss, a former NSA lawyer, to join the committees investigation of Russias intervention in the U.S. election. Meanwhile, Rod Rosenstein, who was confirmed as deputy attorney general on Tuesday, will take the reins of the Justice Departments sprawling probe into Trumps Russia ties and Kremlin meddling. The two veterans are poised to bring legal and intelligence heft to probes that have been hobbled by a shortage of technical expertise and a lack of political cover at the Justice Department. Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley. Airstrikes. Damascus international airport was hit by an airstrike late Thursday evening, believed to be the result of Israeli warplanes. The BBC reports that Hezbollahs media channel Al Manar has accused Israel of carrying out the strike. Israels Intelligence Minister Israeli Israel Katz was circumspect in describing the incident, saying only that it was compatible with Israels policy of disrupting arms transfers to Hezbollah but refusing to specifically claim responsibility for the attack. However, an anonymous Middle Eastern intelligence source tells Reuters that the strike targeted a major Iranian arms shipment hub at the airport. Neighbors. Israel is growing warier of the prospect of a permanent Iranian military footprint on its doorstep in Syria and it wants the Trump administration to help. Israels Intelligence Minister Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz is in D.C. this week looking for an understanding, an agreement with the Trump administration to help stop Iran from putting even deeper roots down in Syria. Katz is hoping that sanctions and the diplomatic intercession of Russia could curb Iranian influence, but with thousands of militia members and military advisors holding territory for the Assad regimes manpower-deprived forces, Tehran still holds great sway in Syria. Shrinkage. New data shows that the Trump administration is relying on fewer contractors to support its wars, according to US News and World Reports Paul Shinkman. U.S Central Command has shaved 3,000 contractors off its total under the Obama administration, dropping from 45,500 down to 42,000. The vast majority of Central Commands contractors are supporting the war in Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, with 13,500 contract personnel supporting unspecified operations in the Middle East. Syria commands around a thousand contractors in order to support the roughly 1,000 troops currently in the country, sources tell the magazine. Exodus. Will the last person to leave the caliphate please turn the lights out? With the U.S.-led coalition closing in around the Islamic States remaining strongholds in Iraq and Syria, more and more foreign fighters are searching for the exits and fleeing towards Turkey. The Guardian reports that a British couple and a Florida man have turned themselves in to Turkish authorities after fleeing the group, part of a wave of foreign fighters defecting recently. European diplomats report receiving phone calls from Islamic State members looking for information on how to surrender and return to their home countries. Bots of war. Saudi forces stopped a remotely-operated boat laden with explosives from carrying out an attack off the coast of Yemen, according to NBC News. Saudi officials say the boat belonged to Houthi forces and was headed towards a Saudi Aramco oil terminal before it was stopped. The incident marks the second appearance of an unmanned explosive boat off the coast of Yemen, with Houthi forces using one of the vessels to attack a Saudi Navy frigate in January. That loving feeling. President Trump came into office promising a renaissance in defense spending with a 350 ship Navy, new nuclear weapons, more fighter jets, and more troops, leading defense stocks to soar. Now, however, the bloom is off the rose and the defense industry is starting to adjust its expectations to a much less lavish defense budget future. Defense One reports that the heads of the big defense contractors have shifted their rhetoric back towards the budget caps put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Both Lockheed chief Marillyn Hewson and Textron boss Scott Donnelly used their quarterly earnings calls warn investors that the budget caps and short term spending bills are hindering potential earnings. Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's al Shabaab gunmen shot and killed a senior national intelligence officer in front of his own house in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday, police and militants said, in the latest such incident by the group. The security officer, who was involved in conducting security operations against the group, was sitting in front of his house without his body guards when armed militants shot him to death, police officer Ibrahim Nur said. Al Shabaab, which is waging an increasingly deadly campaign of bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, claimed responsibility. "We are behind the killing of the national security general called Mohamud Haji Ali," Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaabs military operation spokesman, told Reuters on Thursday. Nur confirmed that and said the gunmen escaped. "Police and security forces reached the scene later to investigate and pursue the militants. It is difficult to prevent death- the officer had no guards with him when he was killed." Nur told Reuters. Early this month, al Shabaab said it was also behind a car bomb attack targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu that killed at least 15 people. (Reporting by Feisal Omar and Abdi Sheikh; Editing by George Obulutsa and Tom Heneghan) The Hill Former President Trump criticized two GOP Senate nominees who lost their races on Tuesday and had broken with Trump during the campaign on his unfounded claims of election fraud. Trump on Truth Social laid into Colorado Republican Senate nominee Joe ODea and New Hampshire Republican Senate nominee Don Bolduc after their races were called for (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co said on Thursday it would stop overbooking its flights, a decision that comes in the wake of a worldwide backlash against larger rival United Airlines for dragging a passenger out of the plane earlier this month. "Soon, we will no longer book a flight over capacity as part of the selling process," a Southwest spokesman told Reuters. Southwest, the No.4 airline by passenger traffic, had the highest forced bumping rate among large U.S. carriers, taking nearly 15,000 passengers off flights last year, or 9.9 per 100,000 passengers, down slightly from 2015. The carrier paid an average of $874 per bumped passenger, according to Transportation Department data. In comparison, United was in the middle of the pack in terms of the rate at which it forces people to give up seats. It bumped 4.3 out of every 100,000 passengers, and paid an average of $559 each per bumped passenger. Chief Executive Gary Kelly told CNBC that the airline would be discontinuing the practice "very shortly". "I have made the decision, the company's made the decision, that we will cease to overbook going forward. We've been taking steps over the last several years to prepare ourselves anyway," Kelly told CNBC. Earlier in the day, the company reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly profit, hit by higher operating expenses and a decline in average fares. The airline's shares fell as much as 4.3 percent to $54.52 in morning trading. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) Chicago will be getting a Starbucks Roastery, described as the Willy Wonka experience for coffee lovers, in 2019. The coffee theater will mark the third Roastery outpost in the US after Seattle and New York, and the sixth international location. Set to open on the Magnificent Mile, the Chicago store will be a sensorial coffee environment taking visitors through the process of roasting, brewing, blending and packaging of the brand's Starbucks Reserve coffees. The Chicago location will span four stories and 43,000 square feet. The store will also feature on-site baking from Italian baker Rocco Princi, who will bake artisan breads to pair with Starbucks Reserve coffees. Chicago was the first city outside Seattle to see the opening of a Starbucks store nearly 30 years ago. Along with opening 20 to 30 new Roastery locations over the coming years, Starbucks aims to open 1,000 new premium Reserve stores around the world. Reserve coffee bars are immersive and sensory spaces that delve into the craft of coffeemaking. LONDON (Reuters) - Queen Elizabeth will formally open a new session of Britain's parliament on June 19 after an early election on June 8, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday. The new parliament will be summoned on June 13, when it will elect a speaker. The members of parliament will then each take an oath ahead of the ceremonial state opening on June 19. As part of the state opening, the Queen delivers a speech setting out the government's policies and proposed legislation for the new session of parliament. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, editing by Elizabeth Piper) The Trump administration on Wednesday announced it is launching an investigation into aluminum imports, saying they could be harming US interests including national security. Following a similar probe launched last week into steel, this investigation will also be carried out under a little-used law -- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act -- which invokes national defense reasons to protect US production. And like the steel probe, China will again be in the spotlight. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told a news conference that aluminum imports had climbed 16 percent in 2016, while production had declined. "China subsidies have created overcapacity," he said. "At the very same time that our military is needing more and more of the very high quality aluminum, we are producing less and less of everything and only have one producer of aerospace quality aluminum." The Section 232 law was used primarily in the 1970s, during the oil crisis, and more recently in 2001 for steel. It gives the Commerce Department 270 days to investigate the issue and draft its findings after consulting with the Pentagon. The president then will have 90 days to decide whether to take any actions, which could include high tariffs on aluminum imports. Donald Trump has made protection of US industry, including the steel and coal sectors, a priority for his presidency. (WASHINGTON) - President Donald Trump has no intention of releasing his tax returns to the public, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Wednesday, asserting Americans have plenty of information about the presidents financial matters. For decades, presidents have released their tax returns. But Trump has so far refused, saying that he would share the tax documents only after the Internal Revenue Service completes an audit of them. Hes never disclosed proof of an audit and tax lawyers say theres nothing preventing him from releasing his returns if hes under one. Trump said before he launched his campaign that hed release them if he ever ran for office. If I decide to run for office, Ill produce my tax returns, absolutely, he told an Irish television station in 2014. And I would love to do that. Mnuchin appeared to close the door completely Wednesday. The president has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information, he said, inaccurately characterizing the presidents disclosures. The comment came as the secretary briefed reporters on the presidents new proposal to overhaul taxes. Democrats have sought to use the tax debate to pressure Trump to release his returns, arguing the information is necessary to evaluate how Trumps tax proposals would affect his personal wealth and his business bottom line. Mnuchin declined to comment on how Trump would benefit from his proposals. He and other administration officials left the room as reporters shouted questions about how the plan would affect the Trump family. Trump, a billionaire, owns a global real estate, marketing and property management company, which at the start of his presidency he placed in a trust that he can revoke at any time. His daughter and son-in-law, White House advisers, are also holding onto significant business assets. And Trumps adult sons run his Trump Organization. Story continues Trump officials have offered varying explanations for why the president does not disclosure his returns. White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said in a television interview in January that the fact that he won the election without putting out the information shows that people didnt care about it. Trumps sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have made similar points in various interviews, though recent polling suggests otherwise. Theres evidence the president has been thinking about the issue in recent weeks. He asked his friend and Las Vegas business partner Phil Ruffin, a fellow billionaire, whether he should put out the returns, Ruffin said. I advised him not to, Ruffin said. Its a waste of time, and hell spend years explaining them and never get to accomplishing any of his goals. Ruffin said he told the president that Democrats would hire armies of accountants to pore over the documents and make an issue out of any and everything. Even with Mnuchins seemingly definitive answer, the issue of Trumps tax returns isnt likely to go away. Democrats have threatened to hold up his tax proposals until they see the returns. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called Trumps tax plan unprincipled - and one that will result in cuts for the one percent, conflicts for the president, crippling debt for America and crumbs for the working people. Democrats also have been pushing for a vote on a bill that would require the president and all major-party nominees to publicly disclose their previous three years of tax returns with the Office of Government Ethics or the Federal Election Commission. On Wednesday, Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to Chairman Jason Chaffetz requesting that he allow a vote on the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. As Members of Congress, we have the ability and duty to legislate in order to promote government transparency, combat conflicts of interest, and ensure compliance with the Constitution, they wrote. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also slammed Trumps tax plan as a half-baked collection of ideas that add up to a huge giveaway to Donald Trump and his rich friends. If your last name is Trump, he added, this plan is great for your bottom line. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Juliet Izon. Photo by: Oberto Gili. It was not so long ago that making bone broth in your own kitchen was something reserved for the trend-obsessed. Now, not only are more people making it but also shops selling the stuff have sprung up everywhere from New York to Los Angelesyou can even find it at Target. So whats the next oddball ingredient youll soon see all over Instagram? We consulted with three of the countrys top celebrity chefs to hear what theyre stocking in their larder this spring. Mikaela Rueben Has cooked for: Brie Larson, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller Mushroom powders are great to work with. Providing unique flavor and loaded with nutrients, they can be added to broths, sautes, scrambled eggs, smoothies, teas, sauces, and so on. Each mushroom offers different benefits, so it's great to try a few to get to know the tastes and then explore deeper with the mushrooms you prefer. I've tried many different companies and products, but so far my favorite for cooking and nutritional benefits is 14 Mushroom Powder Steam Extract. It has a great flavor profile and a solid mixture of some of the more immune-strengthening mushrooms. Jonah Reider Has cooked for: Stephen Colbert, Swizz Beatz Im all about salt-curing things. I did it during the winter and plan on continuing this spring. Taking a sack of fish roe or a vibrant egg yolk and encasing it in salt, a bit of sugar, and fresh herbs or spices preserves them really nicely, intensifies flavor, and creates nice texture. In general, this method yields rich but complex flavors that are great matching counterpoints to the super-bright, light springtime ingredients coming into play this time of year. J Jackson Has cooked for: Lady Gaga, LeBron James Currently the most eclectic or unique thing I'm cooking with for a celebrity is kombucha, instead of just drinking it. I soak grains in it to make a bread similar to sourdough. You can also incorporate it into dressings and marinades, and Ive made frozen pops with it. I recommend a very neutral flavor pick. Kombucha has a lot of great properties because it helps with digestion, health, mental focus, and mood stability. Story continues More: Step Inside 37 Celebrity Dining Rooms This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest. More from Architectural Digest: 126 Stunning Celebrity Homes Ellen DeGeneres' Amazing California Estate Inside Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian's California Dream Homes Inside Jennifer Aniston's Gorgeous Beverly Hills Home Sarah Jessica Parker's Epic West Village Townhouse Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady's Incredible L.A. Mansion By Eric Auchard and Matthieu Protard FRANKFURT/PARIS (Reuters) - STMicroelectronics has extended the contract of its CEO by a year and lined up its operations chief to succeed him, seeking to end a battle over succession between France and Italy, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. The move came as Europe's second-biggest chipmaker, in which France and Italy jointly control a 27.5 percent stake, reported a pick up in profits and sales in a fiercely competitive global market marked by big takeovers and demand for sensors for the burgeoning "Internet of Things". Long-time CEO Carlo Bozotti will have its mandate extended by a year, while operations chief Jean-Marc Chery will become deputy CEO on July 1, STMicro said in separate statements. "This new organisation and the creation of a new deputy CEO position positions Chery as Bozotti's successor," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. STMicro hired head-hunter Spencer Stuart about a year and a half ago to find a replacement for Bozotti, whose current term was due to end at the company's annual shareholders' meeting on June 20. The 64-year-old Italian has been CEO for 12 years. However, Paris and Rome, which have regularly clashed over nominations of top managers and operational strategy, were at loggerheads over the succession, the source said, without elaborating on the nature of the dispute. The Italian treasury declined to comment, while the French economy ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In January 2016, Paris publicly complained about STMicro's strategy and hinted it was deeply dissatisfied with Bozotti when the company announced plans to cut about 430 jobs in France. Chery, a 56-year-old French national, joined Thomson Semiconducteurs in 1986, the company that subsequently became STMicro. He held various positions in product planning and manufacturing and in 2008 became chief technology officer. Separately, STMicro posted a 12.9 percent year-on-year rise in first-quarter net revenue to $1.821 billion on demand for its phone and industrial sensors. That marked a turnaround from six years of sales declines, but was in line with analyst forecasts. The company forecast 5 percent growth in revenue in the second quarter from the first, or up 12.3 percent year-to-year, and said it was on track to meet 2017 objectives. STMicro shares, up 36 percent so far this year and trading near nine-year highs, were up 2.1 percent at 1050 GMT. The anticipated 5 percent sequential revenue growth would mean STMicro is performing at least as well as several peers, including Texas Instruments, Infineon and Maxim. NXP, which has agreed to be acquired by Qualcomm, is poised for a small drop in revenue growth. But in a note to investors, UBS said the low single digit operating earnings growth anticipated for STMicro in 2017 "won't be enough to justify the recent strong run in the share". (1 euro = $1.0906) (Reporting By Eric Auchard in Frankfurt, Matthieu Protard in Paris; Additional reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Gwenalle Barzic; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath and Mark Potter) By Joe McDonald MILFORD, Pa. (Reuters) - A survivalist convicted of killing a Pennsylvania state trooper in a 2014 sniper attack that launched a massive manhunt was sentenced to death on Wednesday by jurors. The Pike County jury deliberated for about five hours before returning the verdict in the penalty phase of Eric Frein's trial. "Tonight full justice was delivered!!" District Attorney Ray Tonkin wrote on Twitter after the jury sentenced Frein to die. Frein showed no emotion as the death sentence was read in court. One of his attorneys William Ruzzo said he planned to appeal, CNN reported. "I'm surprised by it," he told reporters after the verdict. "But they're the jury ... we work within the system, and they made their decision." The same jury last week convicted Frein, 33, of first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer for the fatal shooting of Corporal Bryon Dickson II, 38, outside the Blooming Grove barracks. Frein, who evaded capture for weeks following the attack, was also convicted of other charges, including terrorism and the attempted murder of Trooper Alex Douglass, 34, who was shot and critically wounded as he rushed to Dickson's aid. Frein is a survivalist and at trial prosecutors told jurors that the sniper attack was aimed at sparking a "revolution" against the U.S. government. In closing arguments in the trial's death penalty phase on Wednesday, Ray Tonkin, the Pike County district attorney, repeatedly referred to Frein as "that murderer over there" and said the defendant methodically planned the ambush. Tonkin also played a recorded jailhouse telephone conversation in which Frein can be heard telling his mother how he wanted to sell his story to the media. Frein can be heard repeatedly laughing on the recording. Michael Weinstein, the lead defense lawyer, said Frein was the victim of a dysfunctional family who was influenced by anti-police views held by his father, a retired Army major. After the shooting, Frein eluded a 48-day manhunt through the dense forests of the Pocono Mountains, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Philadelphia. The $11 million search, which put the community on edge for weeks, ended when he was captured by U.S. marshals outside an abandoned airplane hangar near Tannersville, Pennsylvania. (Reporting by Joe McDonald in Milford, Pennsylvania and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Peter Cooney) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The 27-year-old man detained carrying knives near Prime Minister Theresa May's office in London on Thursday may have had contacts with militants outside Britain and may have traveled to meet them, a source familiar with the investigation told Reuters. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not specify where the suspect - who has not yet been named - might have traveled or who he was in contact with. The source said that investigators did not currently believe that the suspect had been in contact with Islamic State militants. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) Damascus (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Damascus is negotiating with regime ally Moscow to buy the latest Russian anti-missile system to repel Israeli and American attacks. "It's natural that we should have such systems," he said, quoted by Syria's official SANA agency on Thursday, the same day as Damascus accused Israel of firing several missiles at a military position near its international airport. "Israel has been committing aggressions on the Arab states surrounding it since its creation in 1948," Assad said in the interview with Venezuelan channel Telesur. "It is natural for us to negotiate with the Russians now with a view to strengthening (our) systems, whether to face any Israeli threats from the air or the threats of American missiles." "That has become a real possibility after the recent American aggression on Al-Shayrat air base in Syria," he added. The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the base overnight on April 6-7 following a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province that left 87 dead, including many children. Washington said the regime base was the launchpad for the attack, a charge Damascus denies. Russia's military said a day after the attack that Syria's air defences would be boosted. "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 For its part, Israel has carried out multiple air strikes in Syria since the country's civil war erupted in 2011, most of which it has said targeted arms convoys or warehouses of its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, a key supporter of Assad's regime. Assad also said that no country which had aided the Syrian opposition should be allowed to take part in Syria's post-war reconstruction. "All the states which stood against the Syrian people and took part in the destruction and sabotage will never take part in rebuilding Syria. That is final," he said. International organisations estimate that reconstructing Syria, devastated by a six-year war that has left over 320,000 dead, will cost upwards of $300 billion (275 billion euros). By John Irish and Matthias Blamont PARIS (Reuters) - A top aide of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen raised doubts on Thursday about a French intelligence report accusing Syria's leadership of a toxic gas attack, a position directly opposed by her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron. A declassified report published on Wednesday showed that French intelligence had concluded that government-backed forces had launched a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria. It also suggested Assad or members of his inner circle had ordered the strike on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where scores of people were killed. "I think that the international community can doubt it as long as there isn't an international inquiry under the auspices of the United Nations," Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen's National Front party, told France Inter radio. "I have no way of saying if it's true or not, but the (international community) can doubt it because we've had precedents," he said, referring to 2003 when false intelligence prompted a U.S.-led invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The chemical attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to order a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base. Assad denies his government has ever used chemical weapons and has also said Syria would only allow an "impartial" investigation into the poison gas incident. Russia, an Assad ally, vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on April 13 to condemn the chemical attack and push Damascus to cooperate with investigators. "WHAT'S PLAN B?" Contrary to her election rival Macron, Le Pen is opposed to current French policy in Syria, where Paris has backed Assad's opponents. She has described the Syrian leader as the "only viable solution" for preventing Islamic State from taking power in the country and called for a coalition with Russia. Trump's decision to launch the missile strike against Syria prompted rare criticism from Le Pen, who until then had viewed the new U.S. president as an ideological soulmate. "It is quite possible that it was the regime (who carried out the chemical attack), but what does that change? Do we still launch strikes? What's the plan B?" Philippot said. "Often in diplomacy it is not the choice between good and bad. It's the choice between the bad and the worst," Philippot said. "I think that Bashar is fighting Islamic State and I don't want a war between the United States and Russia. We need an international coalition." Syria's foreign ministry dismissed the French intelligence report on Thursday as "lies". "The Western states have become professional in the art of lying, deception and misleading to implement their policies in imposing hegemony on the world and to return to the era of colonization, mandate and guardianship," it said in a statement on Sana news agency. Macron, a former French economy minister, said on Wednesday he would support further strikes against Assad's chemical weapons' facilities. "If elected, I would take measures - in coordination with the (U.S.-led) coalition and if possible under a U.N. mandate, but even without - to neutralize the chemical capacities of Bashar al-Assad," he told reporters. French opinion polls suggest Macron will defeat Le Pen in the second-round runoff of the presidential election on May 7. (Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Andrew Callus and Gareth Jones) Something profound and seismic is happening in the way Western societies understand terrorism, and jihadi radicalization in particular. Until now, the terms of the debate were set by two master narratives about terrorists, usefully categorized in an Atlantic article published just over 30 years ago by the Irish intellectual Conor Cruise OBrien as the hysterical stereotype and the sentimental stereotype. The former saw terrorism as a form of pathology perpetrated by disgruntled abnormal[s] given to mindless violence, whereas the latter characterized it as a form of political resistance mounted by misguided idealist[s] driven to violence by political or social injustice or both. In the years since the publication of OBriens article, however, these two narratives have gradually lost their intellectual and cultural prominence, thanks in part to the enormous impact of Hannah Arendts thinking on the banality of evil and the enormity of the 9/11 attacks, which, as terrorism scholar Peter Neumann observed, made it very difficult to talk about the roots of terrorism, still less to sentimentalize terrorists. In their place a very different paradigm has emerged, driven by efforts to rethink the problem of terrorism in response to the rise of al Qaeda and, more recently, the Islamic State. At the center of this paradigm is the notion of the terrorist as an infantilized other: a marginal person whose outstanding characteristic is vulnerability. You might call it the snowflake theory of terrorism. This view is clearly an advance on seeing terrorists as either crazed fanatics or warriors for justice, but its paternalistic implications are just as dangerous as those implicit in the two paradigms it displaced. The explanatory rhetoric of the snowflake theory of terrorism could not be more different from that of the earlier two paradigms. Far from being a symptom of psychological dysfunction or political injustice, terrorism, in this new reframing, is redefined as a risk, borne mainly by the would-be perpetrators of terrorism rather than the would-be victims of future terrorist atrocities. Far from seeing terrorists as perpetrators of violence for political ends, this theory recasts them as victims of extreme ideas propagated by manipulative groomers. Nearly always, the terrorism or risk in question is the contaminant of jihadi-based terrorism, although the proponents of this paradigm commonly insist that it also applies to other forms of terrorism, including that of the far right. Story continues These explanatory tropes and motifs underpin the prevailing ideology of countering violent extremism in both Europe and North America. In Britain, for example, the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act makes it perfectly clear that terrorism is a risk to which people can be drawn into. Its now a legal requirement for specified authorities, including schools, colleges, universities, and child care services, to conduct r isk assessments to identify individuals vulnerable to radicalization. In a 21-page document, which provides statutory guidance for the relevant authorities listed in the 2015 act, the word risk appears 67 times. In all cases, the risk in question relates to the risk of individuals being drawn into terrorism. The word vulnerable, in the context of vulnerable to radicalization, appears 13 times. In his remarks at the Leaders Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism in September 2015, President Barack Obama similarly used the language of safeguarding in reference to radicalization. And finally, he said, we recognize that our best partners in protecting vulnerable people from succumbing to violent extremist ideologies are the communities themselves families, friends, neighbors, clerics, faith leaders who love and care for these young people. The same tone of paternal care informs a lot of media commentary on Western members of the Islamic State, who, it is claimed, were brainwashed or groomed by recruiters into joining the group. Referring to the three East London schoolgirls who absconded to Syria in February 2015, Sara Khan, the founder and co-director of the anti-extremism NGO Inspire, wrote in the Independent that they were groomed, adding, Just like child abusers groom their victims online and persuade them to leave their homes and meet them, male jihadists contact women through social media and online chatrooms, and build trust with them over time. Hayley Richardson, in Newsweek, similarly insisted that ISIL are using similar online grooming tactics to pedophiles to lure Western girls to their cause. In 2015, the New York Times ran a feature on a lonely and mentally unstable young woman from rural Washington who had been befriended online by Islamic State supporters and flirted with the idea of going to Syria. Despite the idiosyncrasies of her case the only Muslims she knew were those she had met online and the fact that she had never set foot in Islamic State territory in Syria and Iraq, the Times asserted that her story may provide clues about how ISIL recruits new members around the world. Or consider journalist Kurt Eichenwalds recent article for Newsweek, titled, How Donald Trump Is Fueling ISIS. According to Eichenwald, the presidents rhetoric and policies send a new message that reinforces the jihadi extremists propaganda and increases the likelihood that more Americans will die in attacks. Imagining the response of Western Muslims to Trumps use of the phrase radical Islamic terrorism, he writes, The emotional reaction of Muslims who are torn about whether to fight against the West would be strong. ISIS could not have asked for more, he continued, ventriloquizing this time for the terrorist group that the worlds vast majority of Muslims condemns. If such words can anger an ally as important as the Turkish president, referring to Recep Tayyip Erdogans rejoinder to German Chancellor Angela Merkels use of the term Islamist terror, what impact does it have on ordinary Muslims being bombarded with the ISIS message that they are in a fight to save Islam? This image of the terrorist as an infantilized and emotionally immature other, acutely sensitive to the slightest linguistic slur or trigger, reflects a deeper structural shift in the culture of contemporary Western societies, where, since at least the early 2000s, the language of risk and protection has come to inform and shape a growing number of social practices and organizations involving adults. This language finds its most ostentatious and, of late, infamous expression on college campuses, including the one Im writing this from. The idea that terrorism is a risk to vulnerable Muslims has at least three unfortunate social consequences. First, as former U.S. Ambassador Alberto Fernandez recently remarked, it is profoundly demeaning. It portrays Muslims, according to Fernandez, as if they are easily swayed yet dangerous children susceptible to becoming terrorists because of immigration policy or harsh words that supposedly hurt their feelings. It has also given rise to the pernicious argument that this group should be protected from words and ideas that risk offending their presumed religious beliefs or affiliations, for fear that not doing so will push them toward jihadi groups. Just as the safeguarding movement on U.S. campuses presumes, in the words of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, so does the radicalization discourse presume an extraordinary fragility of the psyche of Western Muslims. Far from protecting Muslims, safeguarding exposes them to what the Pakistani-Canadian writer Ali A. Rizvi describes as the racism of lowered expectations. Second, it depoliticizes jihadis and their would-be emulators by denying their agency as political actors, whose embrace of jihadi rhetoric and violence is predicated on reason as much as emotion. To reframe the Islamic State as a risk to vulnerable Muslims is to deny its potent intellectual challenge, and how its dual-message of Western moral degradation and Islamic authenticity can speak to even the most resilient and precocious of Muslims. Of course, stupid and naive people have joined or attempted to join the Islamic State, but many more have been highly intelligent and politically engaged, demonstrating great resilience and bravery by making it to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq. Third, the recategorization of terrorism as a risk to impressionable Muslims inverts the perpetrator-victim relationship, whereby the former is transformed into the latter. Its like saying domestic violence is a risk to the person who beats his wife. But, of course, like domestic violence, terrorism is a risk primarily borne by those who are on the receiving end of it (most of whom are Muslim). It is pernicious to argue for greater protections for Muslims against inflammatory speech from a counterterrorism perspective in the same way that it would be pernicious to argue that potential wife beaters should be shielded from slights directed at them from their wives. And it should go without saying that hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric targeted at Muslims is wrong precisely because it is hateful and dehumanizing, and not because, according to some engrained, neo-orientalist expectation, Muslims will lash out violently and indiscriminately against those who espouse this rhetoric or are somehow tenuously connected to it. Terrorism is a form of political violence, and those who engage in it must be taken seriously as autonomous moral agents. No doubt the Islamic State has captivated the imaginations of many young Western Muslims, and it can hardly be disputed that the number of young people involved in Islamic State-related terrorist plots in the West has risen in the past few years. In a recent study, Robin Simcox found that from September 2014 to December 2016 there were 34 Islamic State terror plots or alleged plots in the West involving 44 preteen and teenage participants. Yet the number of young people involved in terrorism should not be exaggerated. In a 2015 report on Western defectors to the Islamic State and other Sunni jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq, the journalist Peter Bergen and his colleagues found that the average age of the 474 individuals in their dataset was 24. This is young for an adult but is clearly beyond adolescence. In another study, carried out the same year, Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes reported that of the 71 individuals charged with Islamic State-related activities in the United States since March 2014, the average age was 26. Moreover, the total number of teenagers involved in Islamic State-related terror plots and defections to jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq is still minuscule and does not remotely justify the reframing of terrorism as a child protection issue, still less the mass thought-policing of Muslim communities, where many young people are suspected of harboring extreme ideas. In Britain, of the 3,955 people referred to the governments deradicalization program in 2015, 415 were 10 years old or under, while 1,424 were between 11 and 15. The ideology behind this program and the broader radicalization discourse on which it draws justify these stigmatizing interventions as safeguarding the very individuals they stigmatize. Even among the small number of young people involved in terrorist plots or terrorist groups, it needs to be acknowledged that, as the sociologist Frank Furedi has observed, it is not the vulnerable but often the more idealistic and intellectually curious who are attracted to extremist ideas. And this means taking them and their ideas seriously and not treating them as the whitest of snowflakes in need of protection. Photo credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images House passes bill targeting sanctuary city police with criminal charges if they do not help federal authorities with detention requests, including children at school Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state representative, described the bill on Twitter as a papers please measure reminiscent of Arizonas hardline and highly controversial SB1070. Photograph: Charles Reed/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trumps plan to punish so-called sanctuary cities was blocked in court this week, but the concept is enjoying more success at state level, where Texas is poised to enact a law forcing local police to act as federal immigration enforcers. A bill passed the Texas state house shortly before 3am on Thursday, after 16 often heated hours of debate amid pro-immigrant demonstrations outside the capitol building in Austin. Democrats in the Republican-dominated Texas legislature proposed a series of amendments in a futile effort to stall and weaken the bill, a version of which was already advanced by the senate. It puts sheriffs and other police chiefs at risk of criminal charges and other serious sanctions if they do not help the federal government enforce immigration laws by complying with requests to detain immigrants. There are also civil fines for non-cooperation by local entities including campus police departments. A Democratic state representative, Victoria Neave, began a four-day hunger strike on Sunday in protest at the bill. Another, Mary Gonzalez, wept on Wednesday as she talked in the state house about being a sexual assault survivor and expressed her fear that the law would help criminals. A third, Ana Hernandez, gave an emotional speech about her life before she became a US citizen. During the time we lived in undocumented status, although I was just a little girl, I remember the constant fear my family lived with each day, the fear my parents experienced each day as their two little girls went to school, not knowing if there would be an immigration raid that day, she said. I see myself in many other students now that share the same fear of being deported or having their parents deported, wondering whats going to happen to them. Republican hearts were not softened: they strengthened the language in the bill to allow law enforcement to ask the immigration status of anyone who is merely detained for example, during a traffic stop as well as arrested. They also refused to pass amendments calling for exemptions for young children at school or people in domestic violence shelters. Story continues Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state representative, described it on Twitter as a papers please measure reminiscent of Arizonas hardline and highly controversial SB1070, passed in 2010. The two Texas chambers will have to agree on a final version before the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, can sign it into law. The renewed effort comes after Donald Trump issued an executive order in January proposing to cut federal funds to sanctuary cities. These are informally defined as places where local authorities limit cooperation with immigration agents, notably when police decline to honour detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to hold people already in jail for longer so they can be picked up and potentially deported. On Tuesday, though, a judge in California said that Trumps order was an unconstitutional overreach of his authority and issued a temporary ban to stop it being enacted. But, energised by Trumps rhetoric, conservative states are forging their own paths where the White House has so far been unable to tread. Lena Graber, a staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said that it is likely to be easier for states to enact anti-immigrant policies. The legal analysis is different when its a state law versus a federal law. And so the states probably have more power in this [respect] than the federal government, she said. The states have more power to tell localities what they can or cant do but it actually depends on state constitutions. Florida lawmakers are mulling over a bill to end municipal sanctuary policies. Virginias Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, vetoed a restrictive bill last month. But Phil Bryant, the Republican governor of Mississippi, signed a law prohibiting sanctuary cities and banning any local policies that prevent public officials from enquiring about an individuals immigration status. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, this year at least 32 states and the District of Columbia have considered or are considering legislation on the topic, with 29 states examining possible bans and 15 states and DC weighing pro-immigrant stances (12 states have bills on both sides of the argument). Four states Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina passed bans before a national conversation began in 2015.. Kate Steinles murder in San Francisco by an undocumented immigrant who had been released from jail a few weeks earlier became a rallying cry for conservatives, and Trump often cited the killing during his election campaign. Proponents of mandatory cooperation argue that it creates uniform standards and makes communities safer by reducing the number of criminals who are released from jail and go on to commit other offenses. Opponents say that serious crimes are rare and that mandating local police to work with Ice in fact undermines safety by eroding trust between officers and communities, pushing undocumented immigrants deeper into the shadows and making offences less likely to be reported. Five Texas sheriffs from major metropolitan areas wrote an editorial earlier this month in the San Antonio Express-News arguing that compelling local police to act as immigration agents would be an expensive and damaging use of resources based not on sound reasoning but on anti-immigrant grandstanding. Critics also say that detaining individuals who otherwise would be released violates due process and that enlisting local officers for immigration enforcement encourages racial profiling. All of these policies, they do different things but theyre all about the use and discretion of local resources and staff time and there is no legal obligation for local governments or agencies to help enforce immigration law of any kind and in fact the constitution prevents them from being required to do it. Theyre allowed to offer help, as many do, but the idea that sanctuary policies are somehow going to be struck down in the courts is absurd because theyre totally legal, Graber said. The issue can also be seen in the wider context of the growing trend of Republican-led states seeking to create laws preempting ordinances passed by large liberal-leaning cities on culture wars topics such as guns, LGBTQ rights and the minimum wage, said Allie Yee, associate director of the Institute for Southern Studies. But the vague term sanctuary city leaves room for a wide range of interpretations. Abbott, the Texas governor, withheld $1.5m in criminal justice funding for the Austin area after the sheriff of Travis County announced in January that her department would not honour most Ice detainers. He also threatened to have her removed from her job, though she is an elected official. On Tuesday, though, Austin mayor Steve Adler told reporters after a discussion with the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, that the federal government does not consider the city and county to meet the definition of a sanctuary city. This is creating a lot of uncertainty for local elected officials about what they can do or cant do, Yee said. Is any kind of policy thats seen as friendly towards immigrants going to be then [tagged] with a sanctuary city label and will that jeopardise millions of dollars from the state or federal government? The Associated Press contributed to this report By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Republican-dominated Texas House of Representative approved on Thursday a bill to punish so-called "sanctuary cities" over criticism from Democrats that the measure could lead to unconstitutional racial profiling. The bill comes as Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has made combating illegal immigration a priority. Texas, which has an estimated 1.5 million undocumented immigrants and the longest border with Mexico of any U.S. state, has been at the forefront of the immigration debate. Texas' Republican leaders have embraced Trump's calls to punish localities they believe are shielding immigrants in the country illegally. Any anti-sanctuary city measure may face a tough road after a federal judge this week blocked Trump's executive order seeking to withhold funds from local authorities that do not use their resources to advance federal immigration laws. On a party line vote after about 16 hours of emotional debate, the Texas House approved the bill that would punish local authorities who do not abide by requests to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Police who do not cooperate with immigration authorities could be subject to fines and prosecution for a Class A misdemeanor, which can bring up to a year imprisonment. The bill also allows police to ask people about their immigration status during a lawful detention, even for minor infractions like jay-walking. The bill will have to be reconciled with another bill approved by the Texas Senate. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has said he would sign such a measure into law. "This bill has no effect on illegal immigrants if they have not committed a crime or are hanging out with someone who has," bill sponsor Republican Charlie Geren told the House. Under questioning, Geren told lawmakers there are no local authorities in Texas at present that he would consider a "sanctuary city." Rene Oliveira, a Democratic representative from the border city of Brownsville, said the bill has sent a chill through immigrant communities worried that even people in the United States legally can be picked up by police for minor infractions and subject to a process aimed at deportation. As the Texas House debated the measure, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who runs one of the nation's largest police forces, criticized the bill. "Violent crime is on rise across our Nation & some would rather men & women in blue go after cooks & nannies, instead of hardened criminals," he wrote on Twitter. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Dan Grebler) Texas police have accused a 38-year-old former kindergarten teacher of having sex with four high school boys - two of them at the same time - PEOPLE confirms. Heather Lee Robertson of Lufkin, Texas, was arrested Saturday and allegedly admitted to the acts, according to her arrest affidavit, which was obtained by PEOPLE. She is charged with four counts of having an improper relationship between an educator and a student and had multiple trysts with two of the students, court records claim. An investigation into her conduct began on Thursday, and officers spoke with all four students, according to the affidavit. The first boy allegedly told investigators he had started chatting and sexting with Robertson through Snapchat, the affidavit states. In time, she allegedly invited him over for sex. He brought a friend, leading to a group sexual encounter at her home, court records allege. The second student confirmed the account of the first. 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. Officers then spoke to two other students, who also admitted to having sex with Robertson on a few occasions, according to the allegations detailed in the affidavit. They claimed they would sneak out of their houses and Robertson would pick them up and take them back to her apartment to have sex before driving them back home. When confronted by police, Robertson allegedly admitted to the illicit affairs, court records show. She advised she recently became a heavy drinker and would sometimes not remember the details of the sexual encounters with the students, the affidavit alleges. Robertson remains in custody on an unspecified amount of bail and it was not clear if she has entered a plea. The school district where Robertson worked did not return PEOPLEs request for comment. But the superintendent told the Lufkin Daily News on Friday that Robertson resigned from her job on Thursday, hours after school officials learned of the accusations. Story continues Attempts to reach her defense attorney were unsuccessful. This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com Troops in Indian-administered Kashmir on Thursday opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators outside an army garrison where militants earlier killed three soldiers, hitting one civilian who later died. Police said the soldiers fired on a crowd of protesters who threw rocks at an army jeep as it emerged from the barracks, hitting a 40-year-old man. "In response they fired and injured a man. He later died," the inspector general of police for the region Javid Gillani told AFP. Police had earlier fired tear gas and live bullets into the air to try to break up demonstrations after what one officer called "intense clashes". The violence followed a pre-dawn assault on the garrison in Kupwara district, near the de-facto border known as the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Army spokesman Rajesh Kalia said two attackers had been killed and search operations were in progress to see if there were any more still in the area. Police said paramilitary reinforcements were being sent to the area, where demonstrators shouted slogans such as "We want freedom, and "Go India, go back". Incidences of civilian unrest following army operations against militants in Indian Kashmir have been rising, in what many analysts see as a sign of growing resentment in the disputed region. Roughly 500,000 Indian soldiers are deployed in Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in its entirety. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the Kashmir valley, one of the world's most heavily militarised spots where most people favour independence or a merger with mainly Muslim Pakistan. Clashes between rebels and government forces have become more frequent since the killing of a popular rebel leader, Burhan Wani, by Indian security forces last July which sparked widespread unrest. The latest incident occurred just a day after Indian authorities in the area ordered internet service providers to block 22 social media services including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp for a month to maintain "public order". Wednesday's move to block social media was the first time the government took such a step, although it regularly blocks the mobile internet signal in the volatile valley. Washington (AFP) - Republican congressional leaders expressed confidence Thursday that a short-term stop-gap spending measure that funds federal operations will pass, easing the threat of a government shutdown as Donald Trump marks his 100th day as president. The Republican-controlled Congress has struggled to meet a midnight Friday deadline to strike a final deal on funding through September 30, the end of the fiscal year. But House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was "confident we'll be able to pass a short-term extension" that gives Congress some breathing room -- until May 5 -- to wrap up negotiations without forcing a shutdown. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen announced the so-called continuing resolution, or CR, on Wednesday, saying it would keep the government lights on for the next several days as negotiators "finalize legislation to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year." The stop-gap bill must pass the House and Senate before Saturday to avoid a shutdown. Democrats and Republicans have squared off in debates over priorities that the White House had wanted included in the new spending bill, such as funding for a border wall and increased defense spending, as well as Democrats' demand to maintain cost-sharing arrangements that help low-income Americans purchase health insurance. Trump, eager to avoid the lousy optics of a budget clash at his 100-day mark, which falls on Saturday, has retreated from a demand to fund a wall on the southern US border with Mexico, although lawmakers stress that broader border security will be part of the package. Trump injected himself smack into the middle of negotiations with a Thursday tweetstorm. In seven morning postings, the billionaire businessman-turned-politician assailed several of the Democrats' positions, including the opposition party's refusal to fund the wall and call for a bailout of debt-saddled Puerto Rico. Story continues "I promise to rebuild our military and secure our border. Democrats want to shut down the government. Politics!" Trump tweeted. "The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!" Negotiations were ongoing, although US media reported that Trump eased his threat to withhold health subsidies paid to insurance companies under Obamacare so that premiums do not rise for low-income policyholders. "This decision brings us closer to a bipartisan agreement to fund the government and is good news for the American people," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But a new hurdle emerged Thursday, when top Democrats, eager to deny Trump a 100-day victory, told Republican leaders they would oppose the temporary government funding bill if Ryan scheduled a vote this week on a revived effort to repeal Obamacare. Ryan signalled he was not ready to schedule a health care vote for this week. "We've not yet made any decisions on a vote," he told reporters. "We're going to go when we have the votes." What the hell is this? Trevor Noah flames Southern states like Alabama and Mississippi for ostensibly celebrating slavery with Confederate Memorial Day, and explores how some Southern cities like New Orleans are beginning to dismantle their Civil War monuments in a very precarious way. A Taiwanese trekker is recovering in hospital after rescuers found him and his dead girlfriend on a mountainside in Nepal where they were stranded for 47 days, surviving on only water and salt after their food ran out. Liu Chen-chun, 18, died just three days before the rescue team located the couple in northwest Nepal, but her boyfriend managed to survive despite losing 30 kilos (66 pounds) during the ordeal. A severely malnourished Liang Sheng-yueh, 20, was being treated in hospital in Kathmandu, where he was airlifted after being rescued from the remote region. Rescuers said the pair followed a river downstream in the hope of finding a village after getting lost. But they became stuck when they reached the edge of a waterfall and were unable climb back up. "They had a drop of about 100 metres on one side and a steep uphill on the other. They were trapped," said Madhav Basnet who found them. Speaking haltingly and in broken English as he sipped hot soup, Liang told AFP on Wednesday it had been "very cold" on the mountain, and difficult to sleep. Basnet said that it was snowing heavily in the region when the couple reached the cliff and they had to shelter under a rock because they couldn't put up their tent on the uneven ground. They survived on potatoes and noodles until their food ran out, leaving them with nothing more than salt and water. Rescuers headed to the isolated area after they saw crows hovering above and found them lying down. "The area was so deep and narrow that it was impossible for a helicopter to land," Basnet said. The team used a long line to airlift them out and bring them to Kathmandu. Doctors treating Liang said that as well as his extreme weight loss, maggots had infested his right leg, but that he was recovering and regaining strength. The families of the trekkers alerted authorities when they didn't get in touch as scheduled on March 10. Liang's father travelled to Nepal after the couple went missing and chartered a helicopter to search for them. Story continues - 'Dream adventure' - Chou Chiang-chieh, a friend of the pair, said they were biking from India to Nepal on a "dream adventure". "She (Lui) fought to survive in the Himalayas for so long and I am really sad she didn't make it, it's such a pity, she's like a family to me," said Chou. Another high school friend posted a tribute to Liu, remembering her as a "happy child" always seeking new places to go. "I believe you will also live well on the other side," Corn Huang, who said she lived with Liu for a year during high school, posted on Facebook. The couple had been hiking at about 3,000 metres (9,842 feet) without a guide. Tour operators have been pushing for guides to be mandatory if trekkers go above a certain altitude to ensure their safety, said Ang Tsering Sherpa, the head of Nepal's mountaineering association. "Even popular routes can be tricky to navigate for new trekkers if there is snow or any other disturbances," he told AFP. In 2014, a snowstorm killed about 40 people in the popular Annapurna circuit, with many blaming the high toll on the lack of information for solo trekkers. About 30 percent of some 100,000 trekkers who visit Nepal every year do so without a registered guide, according to the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal. Association president Chandra Prasad Risal said accidents could be avoided if guides were used. "We hope this serves as a wake-up call to authorities," he said. President Donald Trump portrayed himself during the campaign as a brash, unconventional outsider who would drain the swamp of establishment elites and upend the status quo. Nowhere was his campaign more unorthodox than on foreign policy matters he advocated for a radical departure from the Republican establishment. Calling NATO obsolete amidst mounting threats to transatlantic security, embracing the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the face of spiraling Russian repression at home and aggression abroad, and advocating for less U.S. leadership in international affairs hardly seemed like a winning formula for a Republican presidential candidate. Yet Trump doubled down. He disparaged vital institutions like the European Union. He criticized stalwart American allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He railed against the military establishment, calling it a disaster. Perhaps most alarming of all, he expressed open admiration for authoritarians and dismissed the notion that American values were a beacon for the rest of the world. The Trump worldview was sufficiently jarring to unite neoconservatives, traditional realists, and liberal internationalists in a common defense of the postwar international order. Architects of the Iraq war joined with its critics, while human rights advocates made common cause with practitioners of realpolitik to sound the alarm over Trumps failure to defend, or even fully understand, the basic institutions that they held dear. But after a dizzying number of U-turns during his first 100 days, many now seem to think Trump will drop his more outlandish positions (having satisfied his patrons), and revert to a more traditional foreign policy. After all, he proclaimed NATO to be no longer obsolete, launched cruise missiles at Syria, and talked tough on North Korea and Iran. A visibly giddy Senator Lindsay Graham said he was the happiest dude in America. Trump may well be changing tack, but rather than trying to divine the overarching strategy driving every presidential tweet or tactical decision, we need to look at the broader picture of how this administration is approaching key issues to make sense of the cacophony emanating from the White House. I suggest looking at six key metrics of support for the international order to judge the foreign policy direction the Trump administration takes going forward. Story continues First, the bedrock principles of the international order are sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the inadmissibility of the use of force to change borders. President George H.W. Bushs decision to forcibly reverse Iraqs territorial gains in 1991 after its invasion of Kuwait was a classic defense of the international order. Today, these principles are most conspicuously under attack in Ukraine, where Russia continues to deploy its troops in the Donbass to subvert Ukraines sovereignty. A key question for the Trump administration going forward is whether it will support Ukraines sovereignty not just rhetorically, but by taking concrete actions to reverse Russias ongoing occupation, such as by providing military assistance. Second, the U.N.s Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined human rights as one of the pillars of the liberal international order. While different administrations have gone about supporting human rights in different ways, Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced the need to speak out about violations and take action in egregious cases. So far, the Trump administration seems to have outsourced human rights issues to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson failed to attend this years rollout of the State Departments annual human rights report and neglected to meet with dissidents and human rights activists during his trips to China and Russia. Third, the liberal international order is based on treaties and norms against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This includes biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. North Korea will provide an early test, in the form of the administrations response to Pyonyangs moves to develop nuclear capabilities. The United States met with a military response Syrian leader Bashar al-Assads recent use of chemical weapons, but a key test going forward will be whether America doubles down on its initial missile strikes if Assad decides to use such weapons again. Finally, Russias clear violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty will soon allow Moscow to deploy potentially nuclear-capable missiles within range of Americas Asian and European allies. This too will test whether the new administration is prepared to respond to a clear treaty violation and take military countermeasures against a dangerous new capability in the hands of a revanchist power. Fourth, the Bretton Woods institutions were established as part of the postwar consensus to support global trade, investment, and commerce. Although the IMF and the World Bank have rightly been criticized for aggressively pushing neoliberal solutions on transitional economies as part of the so-called Washington consensus, Trump has paradoxically argued for both protectionism and massive neoliberal-style deregulation at home. Going forward, will Trump double down on the campaigns mercantilist rhetoric and scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement, or embrace a more moderate stance on global trade? Fifth, support for democratic development has been a central tenet of American foreign policy since the World War II. Grassroots programs that support civil society, party building, free media, and other democratic institutions have helped to spread democratic norms to many parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America over the last few decades. Currently these democratic institutions are under assault as part of a global authoritarian revival. So far the Trump administration has said next to nothing about the promotion of democratic norms, while massive cuts to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets imply that these will not be priorities for Trump. A final aspect of the liberal international order is protecting citizens from the threat of terrorism. Here the administration has signaled strong resolve, but again the proof will be in the actual policies that the White House adopts. Fighting terrorist organizations like the Islamic State and countering the radicalization that sustains them requires American leadership, as demonstrated by the U.S. role in assembling the 68-member coalition to defeat the Islamic State. The Trump campaign wanted to have it both ways: retrenching the United States from its global commitments, but pledging to defeat and destroy the Islamic State in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sahel, Syria, and Yemen. Accomplishing that goal without investing in American leadership will be difficult, if not impossible. How the administration acts on the six pillars of the international order sovereignty, human rights, nonproliferation, global trade, democracy, and countering terrorism will allow us to judge over time the true content of Trumps foreign policy. Given the fact that the administrations rhetoric has been all over the map, it is pointless to try to distill a strategic approach at this time. Trump may prove to be a maverick, or perhaps he will revert to a more traditional foreign policy, but for now it seems the one thing we can count on is an unscrupulous defense of one familys parochial interests. Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Advisers to President Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House on Thursday to discuss whether the United States should remain in the Paris global climate deal and will likely meet again in May before making a final decision, an administration source said. The advisers are likely on track to reach a final decision before a Group of Seven meeting in late May, the source said. Nearly 200 countries struck the Paris deal in 2015 to fight climate change by taking actions such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Leslie Adler) Headlines of biggest tax cut ever obfuscate a plan light on specifics on how to pay for it and that, like healthcare reform before it, is already meeting stiff opposition in Congress Somebody put out the concept of a hundred-day plan, Donald Trump said last week. That somebody was Donald Trump, who set out a contract with the American voter for his first 100 days in office during a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last October. Despite playing it down, the president is now in a headlong rush to rack up achievements before Saturdays milestone. The frenzy continued on Wednesday with what the White House described as the most significant tax reform since Ronald Reagan in 1986 and one of the biggest tax cuts in history for both individuals and corporations. But to Trumps critics it was everything they feared and predicted, a brazen plan to rob from the poor and give to the rich, which in this instance includes the president himself. The Patriotic Millionaires, a group of 200 wealthy Americans who have opposed tax cuts for their own class, issued a pithy response: Patently absurd. The sweeping reforms propose reducing individual taxes from seven brackets to three and doubling the standard deduction. Simplification is likely to be seen as a boon by millions of people forced to spend hours filling in labyrinthine paperwork every year. But opponents say a proposed elimination of the estate tax would hand billions of dollars to the top 0.2%, including Trumps own family. Dramatic cuts in the taxes paid by both big and small corporations are intended to spur economic growth and create jobs. The top marginal tax rate would fall from 35% to 15%. Small businesses that account for their owners personal incomes would see their top tax rate go from 39.6% to the corporate tax rate of 15%. But tax is fiendishly complicated and a case study in not being able to please everyone. At a packed press conference, Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president who is now Trumps chief economic adviser, acknowledged: This isnt going to be easy. Doing big things never is. Well be attacked from the left and well be attacked from the right. Story continues Trump got his fingers burned on healthcare when a hastily compiled bill on which he seemed vague was shot down in the House of Representatives. Tax reform could meet a similar fate, not least because it is partly contingent on knowing what new healthcare legislation will look like. In addition, experts warn that the tax cut could reduce federal revenue by at least $2tn, swelling a national deficit that already stands at $19tn. This would be hard for many Republicans to contemplate, throwing more sand in the gears of Trumps legislative agenda. Joe Kennedy, a former chief economist at the commerce department and now a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation thinktank, wrote in a blogpost that the plan would add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade, an issue the administration further aggravates by proposing to cut taxes on so-called pass-through businesses. The unfortunate effect of these flaws will be to divert attention away from other proposals that have a greater chance of passing Congress, which will slow progress toward much-needed tax reform to boost the US economy. In addition, Reagan had the advantage of bipartisan cooperation, unlike the rancour and polarisation that scars Washington today a dysfunction that helped get drain the swamp Trump elected. This time, Democrats have already declared their opposition until Trump releases his own tax returns, but the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said on Wednesday that he has no intention of doing so. Soon after, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, warned that the White House plan would be rejected by taxpayers of all political stripes. Progressive senator Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, added that it would only make a rigged system worse and do little to help a collapsing middle class. Democrats will also be under pressure from their progressive base to resist what is seen as an old-fashioned return to Reaganite trickle-down economics likely to entrench inequality. Trump and his cabinet the wealthiest ever stand to benefit. Delvone Michael, a Tax March executive committee member, said: Today, Donald Trump proved once again that he is looking out for himself, wealthy corporations, millionaires, and billionaires not the American people. His plan crafted by Wall Street for Wall Street gives even more tax breaks to wealthy corporations and cuts the rate that corporations pay by more than half. Big companies are already swimming in profits they dont need extra help raking in more money. But for now, on Trumps own terms, it is a case of mission accomplished. As the 100-day deadline nears, he has won the news cycle with headlines such as biggest tax cut ever and flashbacks to Reagan-era photos of Tom Cruise in Top Gear and world heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson. He has deflected attention from his lack of legislative achievements and the ongoing investigations into his alleged links to Russia. He will claim to be a man of action, thinking big and leaving the awkward details to others. By Ayesha Rascoe and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he pulled back from the brink of killing the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico after requests from their leaders and expressed optimism about winning better U.S. terms in a renegotiated deal. Trump, during a White House appearance with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, said terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact he has long condemned as unfair to the United States, "would be a pretty big shock to the system," though he was planning to do so within two or three days. Hours after White House officials disclosed on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers had been considering an executive order to withdraw from NAFTA, he said he received telephone calls from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "They asked me to renegotiate. I will," Trump said. "And I think we'll be successful in the renegotiation, which frankly would be good because it would be simpler" than killing NAFTA. Trudeau said he had warned Trump of the disruption that pulling out of NAFTA would cause. Mexico's foreign minister said a good outcome for all three countries was possible under a new accord. News of the possible U.S. pullout from NAFTA rattled financial markets on Wednesday. Relative calm returned on Thursday after Trump's comments, and the Mexican peso strengthened 0.86 percent against the U.S. dollar while the Canadian dollar was flat versus the greenback. Mexico, Canada and the United States form one of the world's biggest trading blocs, and trade disruptions among them could adversely affect agricultural, automotive, energy and other sectors in all three countries. NAFTA erased most trade and tariff barriers between the neighbors, but Trump and other critics have blamed it for deep U.S. job cuts. Trump campaigned for president last year on a pledge to pull out of NAFTA if he could not renegotiate better terms. The United States went from running a small goods trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63-billion deficit in 2016. On Thursday he said NAFTA had been "horrible" for the United States but very good for Canada and Mexico. Story continues "If I'm unable to make a fair deal ... for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we're going to give renegotiation a good strong show," Trump said. 'GET TO WORK' Trudeau, speaking at a news conference in Saskatchewan, said he had urged Trump not to withdraw from the trade pact and warned that doing so "would cause a lot of short- and medium-term pain." "That's not something that either one of us would want, so we agreed that we could sit down and get to work on looking at ways to improve NAFTA," Trudeau said. Canada sends 75 percent of all its exports to the United States. On Tuesday, Trump said he did not fear a trade war with Canada, a day after his administration moved to impose tariffs on Canadian lumber. In Mexico City, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Pena Nieto had called Trump on Wednesday and spoke with him for about 20 minutes in a conversation focused exclusively on the looming talks over NAFTA's "renegotiation and modernization." Trump has accused Mexico of luring away American factories and jobs with cheap labor and other advantages enabled by NAFTA. During the presidential campaign he accused Mexico of sending rapists and criminals into the United States, and as president plans a U.S.-Mexico border wall. "I believe that all the conditions to reach a good negotiation exist, that will suit Mexico ... and that is also good for the region, for both Canada and the United States," Videgaray told local broadcaster Televisa. Trump's scorn toward multinational trade deals, part of his nationalist political message, appeals to Americans who feel such pacts have cost Americans jobs. He has said businesses that choose to move plants outside the country would pay a price. Trump made pulling out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, one of his first major acts after becoming president in January. Several agriculture lobby groups in Washington were told U.S Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, confirmed by the Senate on Monday, met with Trump on Wednesday evening to dissuade him from withdrawing from NAFTA. American Soybean Association President Ron Moore said, "When you're talking about $3 billion in soybean exports a year, any threats to withdraw from agreements and walk away from markets makes farmers extremely nervous." Formal NAFTA talks likely will not get started until August. The U.S. Trade Representative's office must first send Congress a notice that starts a 90-day consultation period preceding any negotiations. A USTR spokeswoman said the notice would not be sent until the Senate confirms Trump's nominee for trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Mohammad Zargham in Washington, Veronica Gomez and David Alire Garcia in Mexico City, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, and P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Tom Brown) By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to allow national monument designations to be rescinded or reduce the size of sites as the administration pushes to open up more federal land to drilling, mining and other development. Trump's order is part of an effort to reverse many of the environmental protections implemented by his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama that Trump said were hobbling economic growth. Trump's agenda is being cheered by industry but enraging conservationists. Legal challenges are expected because no president has ever rescinded a monument designation. In announcing the order on Wednesday Republican Trump said Obama's use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to create monuments was an "egregious abuse of federal power" that allowed the federal government to "lock up" millions of acres of land and water. The Antiquities Act gives a president the authority to create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. "Today we're putting the states back in charge," Trump said, adding that they should decide which land is protected and which is open for development. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters late Tuesday the order requires him to review about 30 national monuments created over the past two decades, and recommend which designations should be lifted or altered. The monuments covered under the review will range from the Grand Staircase created by President Bill Clinton in 1996 to the Bears Ears created by Obama in December 2016, both in Utah. Zinke said he will seek local feedback before making recommendations, adding that reversing a monument designation could be tricky. "It is untested, as you know, whether the president can do that," Zinke said. President Woodrow Wilson reduced the size of Washington state's Mount Olympus National Monument in 1915, arguing there was an urgent need for timber at the time. Story continues Zinke said he will review the Bears Ears monument first and make a recommendation to the president in 45 days. He has 120 days to issue a full report on all monuments to the president. Bears Ears protects Native American cultural heritage and sacred sites. Obama created the Bears Ears monument in the final days of his administration. Utah's governor and the state's congressional delegation opposed the designation, saying it was done against the wishes of citizens eager for development. Utah Governor Gary Herbert, and Senators Mike Lee and Orin Hatch, all Republicans, stood beside Trump as he signed the order. Trump said the lawmakers lobbied him for the order. Bears Ears is near where Texas-based EOG Resources Inc has been approved to drill. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan praised the order. "I commend the Trump administration for stopping this cycle of executive abuse and beginning a review of past designations," he said. Conservation and tribal groups were critical. "With this review, the Trump Administration is walking into a legal, political and moral mine field," said Kate Kelly, public lands director for the Center for American Progress. Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, warned Zinke not to make an "ideological" decision. He said previous monuments were decided "after years of close federal consultation with multiple local stakeholders." The five Native American tribes that pushed to create the Bears Ears monument to protect ancestral land said they will fight to protect it. The Outdoor Industry Association, the trade group of the recreation industry, also attacked the order. The group has estimated the outdoor recreation economy generates over $887 billion in consumer spending and creates 7.6 million jobs. "Less than 24 hours after joining with our industry to celebrate the economic power of outdoor recreation, in a hypocritical move, the Trump administration took unprecedented steps that could result in the removal of protections for treasured public lands," said Rose Marcario, chief executive of outdoor gear retailer Patagonia. On Friday, before the close of Trump's first 100 days in office, he is expected to sign an executive order that would review offshore areas available for offshore oil and gas exploration that have been restricted by previous presidents. (Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Jonathan Oatis and Jeffrey Benkoe) For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. President Donald Trump announced he is moving forward with a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement after all, following a dramatic show of brinkmanship. But NAFTAs not in the clear yet. Washington, Mexico City, and Ottawa were abuzz with speculation Wednesday that Trump would start the process for pulling out of the 23-year old trade pact, after Politico reported the White House was considering an imminent withdrawal. In phone calls late Wednesday, Trump reassured Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Pena Nieto he wouldnt pull out of the pact. But not before the reports of a possible withdrawal stirred anxiety in Ottawa and Mexico City, causing the peso to plunge. The White House notably didnt swat down Wednesdays reports, and merely said it wouldnt comment on rumors. Trump cleared up the matter during remarks from the Oval Office with Argentinian President Mauricio Macri Thursday. I was going to terminate NAFTA two or three days from now, but Mexico asked him to renegotiate instead, he said. I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate, he added. However, he didnt rule out scrapping NAFTA in the future. Now, if Im unable to make a fair deal, if Im unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But were going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot, he said. Trade experts say repealing NAFTA, which links the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican economies, would disrupt all three economies. Thirty-eight U.S. states rely on Canada and Mexico as their largest foreign markets. U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico totals nearly $1.2 trillion per year, almost double that of U.S. trade with China. Wednesdays drama may have been a negotiating stunt. But some observers suggested the move was aimed not only at a foreign audience Ottawa and Mexico City but a domestic one: Congress. Canada and Mexico have been ready for weeks to begin negotiations on updating NAFTA. Its the United States that hasnt been able to start the talks because it doesnt have its trade representative in place. Story continues Under U.S. law, the U.S. trade representative must formally notify Congress that the administration will begin renegotiations, starting the clock on a 90-day period before the talks can begin. But the confirmation of Trumps nominee, Robert Lighthizer, has been held up for months amid disagreement over a waiver Senate Democrats say he needs due to his past work for foreign governments. The Senate Finance Committee confirmed Lighthizer Tuesday, along with the waiver. Now he awaits confirmation by the full Senate. Trumps gambit might have been a way of pressuring the Senate to move quickly and confirm him. During his presidential campaign, Trump turned NAFTA into a political punching bag, calling it at times the worst trade deal in the history of the world, a total disaster, and catastrophic. He softened his stance after stepping into the Oval Office, though his bombastic rhetoric and repeated policy U-turns on NAFTA may be fraying Washingtons relations with Ottawa and Mexico City. If the United States wanted to withdraw from NAFTA, it would have to formally notify its neighbors six months in advance. After its repeal, Canada and Mexico could impose higher tariffs on U.S. imports, which could put the United States at a disadvantage given trade rules under the World Trade Organization. Each country negotiates their own tariff ceiling with the World Trade Organization. The United States ceiling is much lower than Mexicos, meaning if Trump nuked NAFTA, Mexico could slap much higher tariffs on the United States than the United States could on Mexico. FPs Jessica Holzer contributed to this report. Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday attacked a federal judge's ruling that blocked his executive order seeking to withhold funds from "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants, vowing to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Tuesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco was the latest blow to Trump's efforts to toughen immigration enforcement. Federal courts have also blocked his two travel bans on citizens of mostly Muslim nations. "First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!" Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday, referring to the San Francisco-based federal appeals court and its judicial district. The Trump administration has targeted sanctuary cities, which generally offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Later on Wednesday, Trump, asked in an interview with the Washington Examiner if he had considered proposals to break up the 9th Circuit Court, said: "Absolutely, I have." "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous," he told the newspaper. The latest ruling did not come from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to which Trump was referring. It came from the federal district court in San Francisco. Critics have said local authorities endanger public safety when they decline to hand over for deportation illegal immigrants arrested for crimes, while supporters argue that enlisting police cooperation to round up immigrants for removal undermines trust in local police, particularly among Latinos. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the "sanctuary" movement. In his ruling, Orrick said Trump's Jan. 25 order targeted broad categories of federal funding for the sanctuary cities and that plaintiffs challenging it were likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional. Story continues 'WILL CONTINUE TO LITIGATE' U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions blasted Orrick's ruling, saying Trump's executive order was "squarely within the powers of the President." "The Department of Justice cannot accept such a result, and as the President has made clear, we will continue to litigate this case to vindicate the rule of law," Sessions said in a statement. An appeal is likely to be heard by the 9th Circuit before it goes to the Supreme Court. Republicans view the appeals court as biased toward liberals, and Trump was quick to attack its reputation in his tweets. It "has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%). They used to call this "judge shopping!" Messy system," Trump said. The appeals court raised Trump's ire earlier this year when it upheld a Seattle judge's decision to block the Republican president's first travel ban on citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations. In May, the 9th Circuit will hear an appeal of a Hawaii judge's order blocking Trump's revised travel ban, which placed restrictions on citizens from six mostly Muslim countries. A Maryland judge also blocked portions of the second ban. Trump has issued sweeping condemnations of courts and judges when they have ruled against him or his administration. In February, he called the federal judge in Seattle who ruled against his first travel ban a "so-called judge." During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump accused an Indiana-born judge overseeing lawsuits against the defunct Trump University of bias based on his Mexican ancestry. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Diane Craft and Peter Cooney) Washington (AFP) - In a week full of trade discord, US President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to take action to boost the American aluminum industry which has been "unfairly damaged" by imports. The industry is "critical" to the defense industry," Trump said at the White House. "We can't afford to become dependent on foreign nations for the aluminum that our military relies on." The Trump administration on Wednesday announced an investigation into aluminum imports. That followed a similar probe launched last week into steel, and comes in a week where Trump has escalated tensions with Canada over lumber imports, and dairy exports, and then announced plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, and threatened to pull out entirely unless there is a "fair deal." Trump again pledged to bring back jobs in the aluminum industry and boost production. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross late Wednesday announced the probe into aluminum imports, which he said climbed 16 percent in 2016, while production had declined. And like the steel probe, China will again be in the spotlight. "China subsidies have created overcapacity," Ross said. Like steel, this investigation also will be carried out under a little-used law -- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act -- which invokes national defense reasons to protect US production. This was used primarily in the 1970s, during the oil crisis, and more recently in 2001 for steel. It gives the Commerce Department 270 days to investigate the issue and draft its findings after consulting with the Pentagon. The president then will have 90 days to decide whether to take any actions, which could include high tariffs on aluminum imports. Candidate Donald Trump at a news conference during his border visit in 2015. At right is Pete Saenz, mayor of Laredo. (Photo: Rick Wilking/Reuters) LAREDO, Texas Donald Trumps Boeing 757 had landed a few minutes earlier on a remote runway of the local airport here in this dusty border town, and as his guests boarded the aircraft to meet him, they found the New York billionaire in the planes gold-accented cabin watching coverage of his arrival on television, which was already steeped in drama. It was July 2015, a little over a month after Trump had officially launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In his announcement speech, Trump had vowed to build a great wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, accusing the nations southern neighbor of sending bad people across the border, including rapists, drug dealers and other criminals. Now after weeks of controversy over his comments, especially among Hispanic voters, Trump had come to see for himself the dangerous frontera he had heard so much about, mostly through the talking heads of cable TV. Trump seemed anxious about the trip. In a television interview the night before with CNNs Anderson Cooper and later with Fox & Friends, the former reality star had previewed his visit to Laredo, casting himself as someone bravely willing to put himself at risk to see a region that he likened to a war zone. I may never see you again, but were going to do it, Trump told Fox News. The National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, had been scheduled to give Trump a tour of the border in Laredo. But it abruptly canceled after the candidate was already in route citing concerns that the event would be tantamount to a political endorsement. On the ground, Trump aides scrambled for replacement tour guides, eventually wrangling Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz and Jesus Olivares, the city manager, who raced to the airport to meet the former reality star turned presidential contender. On his plane just a few miles from the border, Trump seemed nervous as he greeted his newly recruited tour guides. As Saenz recalled in a recent interview, the first thing Trump asked upon meeting him was whether it was safe for him to be in Laredo. Story continues Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz and Jesus Olivares, the city manager, with Donald Trump as he arrives for a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo: LM Otero/AP) Are you sure its safe for me to get down? Trump asked, about disembarking his plane. Briefly taken aback by Trumps genuine sense of danger, Saenz told Trump hed seen a few protesters gathered near the airports fence. With a heavily Hispanic population and voter rolls that tended to favor Democrats, Laredo was decidedly not Trump country, but the city had assembled a motorcade of local police to back up Trumps personal security. You may have some people yell at you, Saenz told Trump with a smile. But I think you will be OK. Recalling the moment nearly two years later, Saenz, a Mexican-American and registered independent who broke with many of his family, friends and colleagues to vote for Trump last November, chuckled. In his mind, I think he really thought there was danger, he said. Trumps trip to Laredo nearly two years ago marked his first and only visit to the U.S. border, even as his pledge to build the big beautiful wall became one of the iconic promises of his unlikely path to the presidency. Now nearing the 100-day mark of his time in the White House, Trump is struggling to deliver on his vow to build a wall amid skepticism from members of Congress over the price and scale of the project. Trumps visit to the border that summer foreshadowed many of the problems he now faces in selling lawmakers on the wall. And like misplaced fear for his own safety, those problems are rooted in a yawning gap between perception and reality about what exactly is needed to secure the nations southern border. A Department of Homeland Security report in February estimated that Trumps proposed wall would cost at least $21.6 billion to build though Senate Democrats, in a separate report released last week, put the cost at roughly $70 billion. Trump has repeatedly said Mexico would pay for the wall, but this week the White House made a last minute push to add funding for the project in a short-term budget measure that must be passed by Congress by this Friday to avert a government shutdown. U.S. workers replace fencing with a higher new metal wall along the border between Ciudad Juarez and Sunland Park, N.M., in September 2016. (Photo: Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images) White House officials defended the budget request by saying Mexico would eventually pay for the wall, as Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail though Mexican officials reiterated this week, as they have since 2015, that they have no intention of doing so. Late Monday, amid complaints from fellow Republicans, Trump dropped his budget request for the wall, saying he would ask for funding again in September when Congress is set to take up another budget bill. Dont let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL, he wrote on Twitter Tuesday, defending his decision to step away from the funding request. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc. Yet the political opposition to Trumps wall seems unlikely to change. Even many Republicans, especially those who represent border areas, dont agree with the idea of a wall as Trump has pitched it: a giant concrete structure that he has often joked gets taller the more Mexico complains about it. Instead, they have argued that the money would be better used to hire more Border Patrol agents and install more reinforced steel fencing. They are also arguing for money to be put into more digital surveillance efforts, like drones and cameras, which have proved successful in deterring migrants and drug traffickers along parts of the border where they are being used like El Paso, Texas, and near Yuma, Ariz. But those pressing for a different approach to a border wall have run up against a president who has not fundamentally changed his views on the border since the early days of his presidential campaign. His views seem impermeable to widely held truths about the border, including statistics that show a drop in crime. Trump has spent almost no time there, and his opinion appears to have been shaped less by the reality on the ground and what local officials say than by ominous, fear-driven headlines in the media and the views of hardline conservatives like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has long argued for the kind of wall Trump is asking for. The metal fence between Mexico and the United States near Puerto Anapra, Chihuahua state, in February. (Photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images) The challenges Trump now faces in pushing for his wall and the struggle his opponents are having influencing his controversial policy could all be seen in that lightning-quick trip to Laredo back in 2015. Saenz and other officials spent their face time with the candidate trying to explain why a one-size-fits-all approach to the border wouldnt work in their city or on other parts of the border. I dont think anyone who lives in a border town is against the idea of immigration reform and making the border more secure. We want that, but its the approach that people have a problem with, Saenz said. Aside from it being totally offensive to Mexico, which is an important trading partner for us, a big monstrous wall is not practical. It costs too much, and its not practical here in Texas. Building a wall along the border is not as easy as it sounds especially in Texas, where the terrain is more complicated than other parts of the roughly 2,000 miles of border shared between the U.S. and Mexico. More than half of the border 1,254 miles runs through Texas. Because of environmental laws and existing U.S. treaties, the existing border fence in Texas sometimes runs miles north of where the countrys actual border with Mexico exists. That has some worried that Trumps proposed concrete wall could potentially cut off U.S. neighborhoods near Brownsville, Texas, that currently sit on what is the Mexico side of the existing U.S. border fence. Lawmakers also worry that the concrete wall envisioned by Trump could potentially dam up the Rio Grande, which winds its way along much of the border. The river is a lifeline for residents and is often used as a source of water for livestock on the many ranches that line Texas border with Mexico. The Rio Grande snakes along the U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images) Texas lawmakers both Democrats and Republicans have also raised concerns about a concrete wall being built through the rolling canyons of Big Bend National Park, which runs along the border just east of El Paso and is widely considered one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the country. It would be like building a wall straight through the Grand Canyon, one Republican official, who declined to be quoted by name griping about Trumps approach to the border, told Yahoo News. Back in 2015, Saenz spent 40 minutes in a car with Trump as he and City Manager Olivares gave the candidate a tour of the border as it runs through Laredo. They showed him existing fencing south of the citys downtown area, dividing it from Nuevo Laredo, its sister city south of the border, which has struggled with gang violence. The fence, installed several years ago, had proved to be a successful deterrent to illegal immigrants trying to get across the border and to crime. As was the case elsewhere on the border, illegal crossings had been on the decline for several years, Saenz told Trump. While Saenz said he felt obliged to be a friendly host to Trump, he went into the meeting offended by some of the candidates statements on Mexico and the border, and he bluntly told him so, spending much of the car ride explaining how working with Mexico on trade and security issues was important for his city. In addition to lobbying against a concrete wall, Saenz delivered an impassioned defense of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has repeatedly criticized as the worst trade deal ever negotiated and has vowed to overturn words that have caused anxiety among officials in Laredo and other parts of south Texas that benefit from trade with Mexico. With a population of roughly 255,000 people, Laredo is the busiest inland port in the U.S., with more than half of all trade between the U.S. and Mexico coming through it last year adding up to an estimated $525 billion in imports and exports. He took Trump to the World Trade Bridge, where more than 5 million freight trucks cross each year, and argued that overturning NAFTA would likely turn his city and other parts of south Texas into ghost towns. A truck passes near border customs at the World Trade Bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in January. (Photo: Daniel Becerril/Reuters) As Saenz pressed Trump, he was pleasantly surprised at how different the candidate was in person from the blustery candidate he had seen on television. He was engaged and attentive and asking a lot of questions, Saenz recalled. He was really listening. He did not seem at all to be the Donald Trump that I had expected to meet. During the border tour, Trump asked Saenz if he knew if Mexico had a policy, direct or indirect, of sending bad guys over the border into the U.S. The mayor told him hed never heard of such a policy. Trump said hed heard the story from a Border Patrol agent. Before they ended the tour, Trump signaled to the mayor that he was open to negotiation on his proposed border wall. Maybe a concrete wall running along the entire border wouldnt work, the businessman-turned politician told him, according to Saenz. Maybe there would be sections where there was fencing and different kinds of surveillance. I was really encouraged, Saenz said. But when Trump bounded out of the car to hold a press conference, it was a different story. The candidate spoke of the great danger with the illegals a tremendous danger with illegals coming in and reiterated his call for a wall that Mexico would pay for. When Oliviares told reporters the city of Laredo did not think a wall was necessary at this time, Trump still tried to find agreement, noting that Laredo was just one section of the border. In certain sections, you have to have a wall absolutely, he said. And by the way, Trump added with a nod to his hosts, the wall will save you a tremendous amount of money. High tech surveillance equipment towers over the border fence in Nogales, Ariz. This view is from Nogales, Mexico the city straddles the border. (Photo: Christopher Morris/Corbis via Getty Images) Trumps appearance that day won him at least one supporter in heavily blue Laredo. Saenz came away from his meeting with the eventual GOP nominee convinced that his rhetoric and bluster on the campaign trail was part of a public persona and not who Trump would be in the White House. And last November, he cast his vote for the former reality star though he acknowledges that he wasnt fully happy with either candidate on the ballot. But in the months since, hes wondered if he made the right choice. In his first three months at the White House, Trump has not backed off his proposal for a massive concrete wall. A call for bids due this month on the project suggested the first phase of construction would begin near El Paso, with a second phase in other parts of Texas, including Laredo though members of Congress, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have signaled they would not support the project as currently pitched by Trump. Still, sitting in his office on a recent afternoon, Saenz said he was disappointed that Trump has not been more open to policy input from local officials like him. In some ways, hes an enigma, he said. I still give him the benefit of the doubt and I want him to succeed because he is our president, but he keeps disappointing me [on the wall]. I dont know why, Saenz added, with a laugh. Hes doing exactly what he said he was going to do. It shouldnt catch us by surprise. I shouldnt be shocked, but I am. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: We may finally have an explanation for a red waterfall in Antarctica that has puzzled visitors and researchers since its discovery in 1911. Blood Falls may owe its rusty, bloody color to salty water that has been trapped under the Taylor glacier for more than 1 million years. According to a new study published in the journal Glaciology, the color of the falls can be traced to iron-rich salty water, since the iron turns the brine red when it meets the air. What was previously unknown is the presence of an intricate plumbing system within the glacier that is allowing the iron-rich water to flow out, giving the spot the appearance of a constant stream of blood. The researchers at the University of Colorado and the University of Alaska used radio-echo sounding to transmit and receive electrical pulses on the glacier. This allowed them to view what was happening under the ice. The study shows that liquid water can persist for long periods of time perhaps as long as a million years within frozen glaciers. While it sounds counterintuitive, water releases heat as it freezes, and that heat warms the surrounding colder ice, said University of Alaska at Fairbanks glaciologist Erin Pettit, in a statement. In addition, salty water has a lower freezing temperature, which also helps the liquid water stay that way. Taylor Glacier is now the coldest known glacier to have persistently flowing water, Pettit said. The persistent liquid water is even more remarkable considering that the Taylor Glacier is not at the top of the list of the bodies of ice that sea level rise specialists are worried about. It has exhibited relatively limited surface melt and ends in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of East Antarctica, rather than the ocean, where it could be undermined by relatively mild ocean waters. WATCH: A newly developed artificial womb could save lives Bizerte (Tunisia) (AFP) - Dimming the lights on their patrol boat, Tunisian coastguards stand in silence scanning the sea for speedboats on clandestine missions to and from Italy. Smuggling gangs are using high-performance vessels to ferry people, drugs and cigarettes across the Strait of Sicily, a distance of just 95 miles (150 kilometres). Commander Mohamed Naceur Saadani says their use of speedboats is a "new and dangerous" phenomenon. Standing on the bridge of a patrol boat capable of 40 knots (about 70 kilometres, 45 miles per hour), he monitors a bank of glowing radar screens. Patrolling Tunisia's northern coast during a 24-hour operation, the crew are on particularly high alert at night, as the smugglers prefer to operate under cover of darkness. Migrants seeking a better future have long used Tunisia as a launchpad for bids to reach Europe. But amid the turmoil that followed Tunisia's 2011 revolution that unseated strongman president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, smugglers have strengthened links between the North African country and Italy, Saadani said. While the northbound traffic consists mostly of clandestine migrants and cheap cigarettes, Tunisian authorities say they are dealing with a growing influx of drugs coming in the opposite direction. In mid-March, Tunisia seized an "unprecedented" haul of more than 30 kilos (65 pounds) of pure cocaine worth around $6.4 million (six million euros). That shows that "a major international network is behind the operation", says Mohamed Walid Ben Ali, a coastguard at La Goulette port on the edge of Tunis. National Guard spokesman Khalifa Chibani says Tunisia is mainly a transit point and the drugs are destined for neighbouring countries, particularly Libya. - 'Faster boats than ours' - Saadani says traffickers had not previously been able to get drugs into Tunisia thanks to navy operations, but that if they succeeded once they would likely ramp up their operations. Story continues He warns that the same smuggling routes could also be used for trafficking arms through Tunisian waters. Chibani says the smugglers' high-performance speedboats pose an additional challenge for the coastguard. "Tunisians living illegally in Italy organise these operations with Italian smugglers and use speedboats -- mostly stolen -- which are very advanced and faster than ours," Chibani says. Smugglers who reach the Tunisian shore can load a boat with clandestine migrants and cheap cigarettes and set off again in as little as 15 minutes, he adds. Chibani says that in late 2016 and early 2017, the coastguard spotted five speedboats from Italy, but they managed to escape. The smugglers' high-tech equipment could be also used for "terrorist operations," he says. "That represents a danger not just for Tunisia but also for Europe." - 'Tunisia is a target' - A series of jihadist attacks in Tunisia in 2015 and 2016 left dozens dead. The country has been in a state of emergency since November 2015, when a suicide bombing in Tunis claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed 12 presidential guards. Tunisia also shares a long border with war-torn Libya, where the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011 left a country in chaos. Many of the armed groups that have profited from the unrest rely on smuggling for much of their income. Chibani wants other countries to support Tunisia in its efforts to tackle smuggling networks. He says the current level of international cooperation "does not correspond to the degree of threat that exists in the Mediterranean". Tunisia's coast needs an electronic surveillance system similar to one being installed on the country's land border with Libya -- as well as "speedboats as good as the ones the traffickers have," Chibani says. For Saadani, "Tunisia is a target". "We need to be prepared for every kind of threat," he says. Even lizards need life guards, sometimes. Dale Hall, alongside his nephews Jayden and Caleb, came to the rescue of one blue-tongue lizard that was found lifeless in his salt water swimming pool in Caloundra, Australia, on Tuesday. How? Just some old fashioned CPR. SEE ALSO: We can't stop watching this flippin' dog video "I was like, 'Oh no. Goner. First casualty for the pool,'" Hall told ABC News. The lizard (later named Dusty) was fetched out of the pool by Jayden, who began to apply CPR with the help of Caleb. While there was water coming out of Dusty's mouth, it still remained lifeless. After 10 to 15 minutes, the lizard was given to Hall, who had already dug a hole to bury it. But then something amazing happened. "I went to put it in the hole and it winked at me!" Hall told the news outlet. "I thought, 'Hang on here. It might be a goer still'." So Dusty was held upside down, and its stomach stroked to help get water out of its system. But it still remained lifeless after 20 minutes, and was put in the hole to be buried, yet again. Then Dusty started to twitch. Its health slowly began to improve. Hall called Wildlife Rescue Sunshine Coast to help, where a volunteer helped to keep Dusty warm before it was taken to Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. Dusty was placed in care on a nebuliser, where it is still recovering. "So there's a chance it's going to find its way back to my house. They're going to release it back in the backyard," Hall said. You know what they say. It's not over until it's over. WATCH: This water bottle tricks you into drinking more water Saint-Denis de la Reunion (AFP) - A suspected Islamist radical shot and wounded two policemen on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion as they tried to arrest him on Thursday, authorities said. The attack comes a week after a French policeman was shot and killed and two others wounded on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris, just days ahead of the first round of the presidential election. More than 230 people have been killed in a string of jihadist attacks on the French mainland since January 2015 and the country has been under a state of emergency for nearly a year and a half. "The man refused to be arrested and fired a rifle at police," a government official said, adding that the suspect -- in his 20s, who is believed to be a recent convert to Islam -- was now in custody. The lives of the two officers are not in danger and the anti-terrorist department of the Paris prosecutors' office is investigating the attack. The man lived with his mother, also in custody, in an apartment in Saint-Benoit, in the island's east. Authorities seized several weapons and other material that could be used to make Molotov cocktails, France's interior and overseas ministers said in a joint statement. The suspect "is a very discreet man who didn't seem to have a lot of friends and was never a problem," a neighbour said. "We did notice that he had been sporting a beard lately but we didn't pay much attention to it," added a young man. A jihadist network, the first in a French overseas territory, was smashed in Reunion in June 2015. Its leader, a 21-year-old known as "The Egyptian", was arrested and transferred to Paris. Authorities in Reunion estimate there are around 100 radicalised Islamists on the island. The local government official said Thursday's assailant was also "suspected of being radicalised". France's police union Unite SGP POLICE FO said it was "deeply shocked and angry after this new attack." Story continues It "shows that policemen are in danger throughout the national territory and not only in certain areas as judges would have us believe," it added. The string of terror attacks in France began in January 2015 with a massacre at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine. The following November, IS gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris, and a Tunisian man rammed a truck through crowds in Nice last July, killing 86 people. France remains on high alert as it prepares to choose between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election on May 7. Riyadh (AFP) - Two Saudi soldiers were killed Thursday in a rocket attack near the border with war-torn Yemen, the interior ministry said. They died in a simultaneous landmine explosion and rocket attack while on duty patrolling the border around Jazan, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. Saudi Arabia leads a Gulf coalition that has battled Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen for two years. The coalition is allied with forces loyal to internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi's forces have struggled to wrench control of large swathes of Yemeni territory from the Huthis, who control the capital Sanaa, much of the northern highlands and key ports on the Red Sea coast. On Wednesday Riyadh said it had intercepted a Yemeni rebel boat rigged with explosives headed for an Aramco oil distribution platform in the southwestern Jazan region. The United Nations estimates that more than 7,700 people have been killed in Yemen and millions displaced since 2015. Around two-thirds of the country's population faces the threat of famine this year. More than 140 Saudis, including soldiers and civilians, have been killed since Riyadh intervened in the Yemen war, many of them in cross-border shelling. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. service members were killed during an operation against Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan overnight on Wednesday, U.S. officials said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration looks to craft a strategy in the war-torn country. U.S. forces in Afghanistan said in a statement that a third U.S. service member was wounded in the raid, carried out with Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) against the militants. A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Captain William Salvin said the deaths occurred in the same valley where the United States had dropped a massive bomb on a complex of fortified tunnel being used by the Islamic State. Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb was dropped from an American MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan. The incident comes just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan and U.S. troops are battling suspected Islamic State militants in Nangarhar province. In this raid, Afghan commandos and coalition forces killed some 40 Islamic State fighters during a joint operation, said Attahullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Nangarhar governor. Khogyani said the raid was carried out against an Islamic State hideout in Achin district and some 13 militants were taken alive. Another U.S. soldier was killed earlier in April while carrying out operations against Islamic State in the same province. The Islamic State's offshoot in Afghanistan, known as the Sunni jihadist group's so-called Khorasan Province, is suspected of carrying out several attacks on minority Shi'ite Muslim targets. U.S. officials say intelligence suggests Islamic State is based overwhelmingly in Nangarhar and neighboring Kunar province. Estimates of its strength in Afghanistan vary. U.S. officials have said they believe the movement has only 700 fighters but Afghan officials estimate it has about 1,500. (Reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington and Josh Smith in Kabul. Additional reporting by James Mackenzie and Hamid Shalizi.; Editing by Bernadette Baum) By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts took issue on Wednesday with the Trump administration's stance in an immigration case, saying it could make it too easy for the government to strip people of citizenship for lying about minor infractions. Roberts and other Supreme Court justices indicated support for a deported ethnic Serb immigrant named Divna Maslenjak over her bid to regain her U.S. citizenship after it was stripped because she falsely stated her husband had not served in the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s after Yugoslavia's collapse. Roberts seemed particularly concerned that the government was asserting it could revoke citizenship through criminal prosecution for trivial lies or omissions. He noted that in the past he has exceeded the speed limit while driving. If immigrants failed to disclose that on a citizenship application form asking them to list any instances of breaking the law, they could later lose their citizenship, the conservative chief justice said. "Now you say that if I answer that question 'no,' 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, 'Guess what, you're not an American citizen after all?'" Roberts asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Parker. Roberts described the administration's interpretation as inviting "prosecutorial abuse" because the government could likely find a reason for stripping citizenship from most naturalized citizens. "That to me is troublesome to give that extraordinary power, which, essentially, is unlimited power, at least in most cases, to the government," Roberts added. President Donald Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally. Maslenjak entered the United States with her husband and two children in 2000, granted refugee status over a claimed fear of ethnic persecution in Bosnia at the hands of Muslims. They settled in Ohio. She became a U.S. citizen in 2007. At issue is her concealment of her husband Ratko's service in a Bosnian Serb Army brigade that participated in the notorious 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Story continues Maslenjak's citizenship was revoked. She and her husband were deported to Serbia last October. 'RATHER SURPRISING' Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer shared Roberts' concern, noting he had once walked into a government building with a pocketknife on his key chain in violation of the law. "It's, to me, rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that Congress is interpreting this statute and wanted it interpreted in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalized citizens," Breyer said. Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy also rebuked Parker, saying, "It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship." There are around 20 million naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The legal question is whether Maslenjak's false statements had a material effect on the U.S. decision to grant her refugee status. The government argued it only matters that she made a false statement, not whether it had any impact on its decision to grant refugee status. At a 2009 hearing to help her husband avoid deportation after he was convicted of making a false statement by concealing his military service, she admitted that when she had applied to be a refugee she had not revealed that from 1992 to 1997 the family lived in Bosnia and her husband served in the military. She was later convicted of lying on her citizenship application. This was the last oral argument of the court's current term. A ruling is due by the end of June. Related: For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) By Bill Berkrot (Reuters) - Biomarin Pharmaceuticals Inc said the annual price for its drug, which won U.S. approval on Thursday, to treat a rare and fatal type of pediatric brain disease is expected to be $486,000 after mandatory government discounts and rebates. The Food and Drug Administration approved Brineura, an enzyme replacement therapy, for patients aged 3 and older to slow the loss of walking ability, making it the first approved medicine for the progressive type of Batten disease known as late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis type 2, or CLN2. The approval was based on data from just 22 treated patients between the ages of 3 and 8, who were compared with 42 untreated patients. The therapy is infused directly into the fluid in the brain. "The FDA is committed to approving new and innovative therapies for patients with rare diseases, particularly where there are no approved treatment options," Julie Beitz, of the agency's Office of Drug Evaluation, said in a statement. Biomarin said it will offer a co-pay program to assist with out of pocket costs. Extremely high prices for treatments for very rare conditions are not uncommon and are typically covered by health insurers because there are so few patients. Biomarin said on a conference call that it expects European approval of the medicine at the end of this quarter after receiving a positive opinion from regulators. The company said about 20 children are born in the United States with CLN2 every year. As a condition of approval, Biomarin must further evaluate the safety of Brineura in CLN2 patients below the age of 2, including device related adverse events and complications with routine use. Data from that study could expand the approval to the youngest CLN2 patients. Biomarin must also conduct a 10-year patient registry study to determine long-term safety of the treatment. The company said it does not yet know what the duration of benefit of the treatment will be. It currently has data out to 96 weeks. Rapidly progressing CLN2 disease affects less than one in one million U.S. residents. Symptoms of CLN2 disease often do not present until age 3, at which point children experience seizures and language delays. As the condition progresses, eyesight and ability to walk and talk rapidly diminish. (Reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Tom Brown) By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers said high-profile briefings by the Trump administration on North Korea on Wednesday failed to provide the firm strategy they had hoped for dealing with what they described as a major national security threat. As a standoff escalated over the reclusive Asian nation's development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, President Donald Trump welcomed all 100 members of the Senate to a highly unusual meeting at the White House complex, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While administration officials often travel to the Capitol to brief lawmakers on national security issues, this time the entire Senate hopped on buses to the White House. Vice President Mike Pence and the four officials later briefed the House of Representatives. That classified meeting took place in a secure auditorium at the Capitol complex. The briefings came as Trump tries to put the best face on his first 100 days in office. He has signed executive orders to roll back Democratic policies but the period has been defined by an absence of any major legislative achievements. A few Democrats dismissed the Senate White House "field trip" as little more than a photo opportunity. Some Republicans were a little more enthusiastic. "It was an OK briefing," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters as he arrived back at the Senate. "I'm not certain I would have had the briefing today," he said. Asked if the administration had a firm strategy, Senator John McCain, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said, "They're developing one." This week, Trump has discussed North Korea with U.N. ambassadors, increased the U.S. military presence in the region, and leaned on China to pressure Pyongyang. Tillerson will chair a U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday to discuss tougher sanctions. After their briefing, members of the House expressed confidence in the administration officials who spoke, but some said they had real concerns. Representative Brad Sherman, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was not convinced that the administration would do enough to control Pyongyang. "I regard that level of resolve as very modest, weak and maybe even phony. The only way to put enough pressure on North Korea is to get China to do it," Sherman told reporters. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the administration wants to use "a variety" of tactics to push North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and said he agreed that all options must be on the table. "We have to have incredible military presence in the region, including missile defense, especially for this regime," he said. (Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Steve Holland, Phil Stewart, Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Rigby) The U.S missile defense battery being installed in South Korea will be operational in the coming days according to Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. Harris remarks came during a speech before a congressional panel Wednesday, following the transportation of key components of the ballistic missile interceptor - including its long range X-band radar - to their installation site in the South Korean town of Seongju. The ROK-U.S. alliance decided last July to deploy THAAD, thats a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which will be operational in the coming days and able to better defend South Korea against the growing North Korea threat, Harris said. In his speech, Harris expressed a lack of confidence in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un refraining from something precipitous as he moves closer to his stated goal of preemptive nuclear strike capability against American cities. In line with signals that the U.S. administration intends to ramp up economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, Harris said he wanted to bring Kim to his senses, not to his knees. He also echoed Trumps accusation that Beijing should be doing more to reign in North Korea, calling Chinas opposition to THAAD, and the penalizing of South Korean companies over the issue, preposterous, reports CNN. Testifying to the House, Harris urged lawmakers to add ballistic missile interceptors to installations already in place in Alaska and California and consider putting interceptors in Hawaii, the Washington Examiner reports. He also acknowledged that North Korean retaliation to any U.S. strike would endanger the lives of millions of Koreans in Seoul, and the 24,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, according to the Guardian. This article was originally published on TIME.com UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, pushed the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to focus "all eyes and all pressure" on Russia to try and end the Syrian conflict and pressed for council action even if it faces a veto by Moscow. "They are the ones who could stop this if they wanted to," Haley said of Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during his country's six-year-long civil war. "We need to put pressure on Russia." Russia has vetoed eight resolutions on Syria to shield Assad's government from action, most recently blocking a council condemnation of a deadly chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people, many of whom were children. China has backed Russia and vetoed six resolutions. "I will continue to press the Security Council to act, to do something, regardless of if the Russians continue to veto it because it is our voice that needs to be heard," Haley told a Security Council meeting on aid access in Syria. "Russia continues to cover for the Syrian regime, Russia continues to allow them to keep humanitarian aid from the people that need it, Russia continues to cover for a leader who uses chemical weapons against his own people," she said. Responding to Haley's remarks, Deputy Russian U.N. Ambassador Petr Iliichev told the council that Russia, Iran and Turkey were working to ensure compliance with a cessation of hostilities to allow delivery of humanitarian aid. "Neither you nor Western colleagues said a single word about what you are doing to improve the situation," Iliichev said. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Leslie Adler) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy's top officer said on Thursday that he would like to see more international participation in freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. "I think greater international participation there would be something to look forward to as sort of a strategic approach to that," Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said while speaking at an event, referring to the South China Sea. On Wednesday, the U.S. commander in the Asia Pacific region said the United States would likely carry out new freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea soon. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remained open to negotiations to bring that about. The U.S. stance, which appeared to signal a willingness to exhaust non-military avenues despite repeated warnings that "all options are on the table," came in a statement following an unusual White House-hosted briefing for the entire U.S. Senate followed by a briefing to the House of Representatives. Graphic - Carl Vinson strike group: http://tmsnrt.rs/2pqOMWA Graphic - North Korea's nuclear program: http://tmsnrt.rs/2n0gd92 The statement from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats described North Korea as "an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority." North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge confronting President Donald Trump, who has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile - a capability experts say Pyongyang could have some time after 2020. "The Presidents approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners," the statement said. "The United States seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies." U.S. lawmakers have been seeking a clear White House strategy following repeated North Korean missile tests and fears it could conduct a sixth nuclear bomb test. But some lawmakers on both sides went away dissatisfied. While the administration has said military strikes remain an option, officials have stressed tougher sanctions as the key strategy given the risks of massive North Korean retaliation - essentially representing a continuation of the policy of former President Barack Obama's administration, which failed to slow Pyongyang's weapons programs. Democratic Senator Christopher Coons told reporters after the White House briefing that military options were discussed. "It was a sobering briefing in which it was clear just how much thought and planning was going into preparing military options, if called for, and a diplomatic strategy that strikes me as clear-eyed and well proportioned," Coons said. Tillerson will chair a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday that is expected to discuss tougher sanctions, which U.S. officials say could include an oil embargo, banning North Korea's airline, intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese and other foreign banks doing business with Pyongyang. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said another means of diplomatic pressure would be for nations to close North Korean missions and to ostracize North Korea in international organizations. China objects to North Korea's weapons development and has called for a return to international negotiations, but U.S. officials have said Washington sees no value in talks until Pyongyang shows it is serious about denuclearization. 'A WILD DREAM' Earlier on Wednesday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry called U.S. attempts to make Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons through military threats and sanctions "a wild dream" and like "sweeping the sea with a broom." The administration is hoping for greater Chinese cooperation after a summit between President Xi Jinping and Trump last month, and a senior White House official said Beijing now appeared to acknowledge North Korea as a threat to China too. "You have seen some early indications of China doing a better job enforcing existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea," the official said, adding there had also been a clear effort to communicate to North Korea in the Chinese press "that its nuclear tests, missile tests, the existence of these programs can't be tolerated." China has been angered, however, by U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system in South Korea, complaining that its radar can see deep into China and undermines its security. The top U.S. commander in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational "in coming days" and suggested Beijing should focus on influencing North Korea rather than worrying about a purely defensive system. The front-runner in South Korea's May 9 presidential election has called for a delay in THAAD deployment, saying the new Seoul administration should make a decision after gathering public opinion and more talks with Washington. Harris said he believed Pyongyang's threats needed to be taken seriously and that the United States may also need to strengthen missile defenses in Hawaii. He said these were sufficient for now but could one day be overwhelmed, and suggested studying stationing new radar there as well as interceptors to knock out any incoming North Korean missiles. "I don't share your confidence that North Korea is not going to attack either South Korea, or Japan, or the United States ... once they have the capability," Harris told one lawmaker. U.S. officials have warned that a conflict with North Korea could have a devastating effect on ally South Korea and U.S. troops based there, a point Pyongyang underscored by a big live-fire exercise on Tuesday to mark the foundation of its military.Harris conceded that North Korean retaliation to any U.S. strikes could cause many casualties, but added that there was the risk "of a lot more Koreans and Japanese and Americans dying if North Korea achieves its nuclear aims and does what (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) has said its going to do." North Korea has vowed to strike the United States and its Asian allies at the first sign of any attack on its territory. In a show of force, the United States is sending the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters off the Korean peninsula, where it will join the USS Michigan, a nuclear submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday. South Korea's navy has said it will hold drills with the U.S. strike group. Harris said the carrier was in the Philippine Sea, within two hours' striking distance of North Korea if need be. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Phil Stewart, David Brunnstrom, Patricia Zengerle and Amanda Becker in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney) An Uber driver accused of sexually assaulting a female passenger on her way home from a chic Southern California beach town has been charged with rape. Angel Sanchez, 36, was arrested March 30, one day after he was accused of raping the victim on the street near her Santa Ana home. Read: Safety Concerns as Uber Drivers Text, Browse the Internet While Driving Prosecutors say the woman had been at a gathering with colleagues when one of them requested an Uber to take her home. At the time of the crime, defendant Angel Sanchez was a driver for Uber and is accused of picking up the victim in a 2016 gray Toyota Sienna, according to the Orange County DA's office. The woman ran from the minivan and immediately called 911 following the assault, prosecutors said. Sanchez was charged April 26 with one felony count of rape of an intoxicated victim. Sanchez is due back in court May 1 for arraignment. Uber's corporate office responded to the incident in a statement: "Nobody should go through what this rider reported to police. We worked with law enforcement on the investigation and will continue to work with authorities," a spokesperson said. Watch: Judge: Man Must Refrain from Sex Until Marriage for Rape of 14-Year-Old Girl The company has issued similar statements before as other cases of the ride share app's drivers allegedly raping passengers have arisen in recent months. Similar accusations have been made against Uber drivers in the past. Watch: H&M Security Guard Accused of Using Position to Kidnap or Rape at Least 3 Women: Cops Related Articles: LONDON (Reuters) - Britain would find it difficult to refuse a request for military assistance in Syria from the United States if President Donald Trump decided to take action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over chemical weapons use, foreign minister Boris Johnson said. The United States accused the Syrian army of carrying out an April 4 attack in which scores of people died from poison gas. It responded by launching cruise missiles against a Syrian air base, and has said it would not tolerate use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. Britain endorsed the U.S. response to the chemical attack, but was not directly involved. However, Johnson suggested the government would back Trump militarily if requested to do so in the event of any future chemical weapons attack. "If the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime ... and they ask us to help it would be very difficult to say no," Johnson told BBC radio. Johnson said it remained to be seen whether such military assistance might need the permission of parliament, which in 2013 voted against bombing Assad's forces in Syria to deter them from using chemical weapons. The April attack in Syria has raised tension between Western powers and Russia, which has provided military backing to Assad's government. (Reporting by William James, editing by Estelle Shirbon) London (AFP) - A total of 100 protesters Thursday demonstrated outside the US embassy in London against perceived rights abuses during President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office. Protesters stood in silence for half an hour while carrying a torch in one hand and a placard in the other reading "Refugees Welcome" or "No Ban, No Wall" during the event organised by Amnesty International. "In the space of just 100 days, President Trump has done untold damage to the USA's already less-than-perfect reputation for upholding human rights," said Kate Allen, Amnesty's UK director. Amnesty has been critical of several measures taken by Trump's government -- which marks 100 days in office this weekend -- including a travel ban targeting certain Muslim-majority countries and plans for a wall along the Mexican border. The first 100 days in office is "a major mark of what a president intends to do", Amnesty's Kerry Moscogiuri told AFP. "We think that the Statue of Liberty, were she real like me, would be crying today.". Amnesty said other protests will take place on Saturday in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In a written explanation to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday, United Airlines reiterated that it is reviewing its policies following the April 9 incident in which a passenger was dragged off its Chicago-Louisville flight due to overbooking. United CEO Oscar Munoz explained to the committee that the company is reviewing its policies to make sure not to put its passengers, employees and partners in impossible situations. The airline has also vowed not to ask law enforcement officers to remove passengers from our flights unless it is a matter of safety or security. We are working to regain our customers trust with the highest quality of service and deepest level of respect and care, Munozs statement read. As part of my commitment to ensuring we prevent something like Flight 3411 from happening again, we are finalizing a thorough review of our policies and will be making changes to avoid putting our customers, employees and partners into impossible situations due to policies we control. Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-South Dakota), ranking Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) and ranking Democrat Rep. Maria Cantwell of Washington, received Munozs statement. The United CEO also reiterated that the airlines staff will be required to check into flights 60 minutes before departure. Munoz and the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) were questioned by senior Republicans and Democrats following the April 9 incident. Also on Wednesday, the CDA sent the committee a letter vowing to help improve passengers experiences at airports in the city. As part of the review, at total of four Aviation Security Officers (ASOs) allegedly involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave on April 10, 12 and 19, 2017, CDA Commissioner Ginger S. Evans wrote, according to the Hill. United Airlines came under fire after a passenger named David Dao a doctor was violently dragged away from a flight from Chicago to Louisville. The video of Daos violent removal went viral, and Munoz issued an apology soon after. Story continues Daos attorney said earlier this month his client said he suffered a significant concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth. Related Articles Putting it mildly, United Airlines has not had a good 2017. Yet, even as they roll out new policies to make things seem better, they're still playing a dirty game in blaming the passenger for that infamous removal incident. SEE ALSO: United CEO re-accommodated from chairman seat on company board The airline has promised to address concerns raised by the incident, in which Dr. David Dao was forcibly removed from a plane and sustained several injuries in the process. The incident was caught on video by other passengers and set off a chain of PR nightmares for United that has led to the changes. United wants you know they mean BUSINESS so they printed a letter from CEO Oscar Munoz outlining their major changes in at least one major newspaper, The Washington Post. United took out a full-page ad in today's Washington Post pic.twitter.com/k05t8v9WsW Hunter Schwarz (@hunterschwarz) April 27, 2017 It's all part of a big press push by United to make them seem not so terrible, even after dragging Dr. David Dao off a plane, being stodgy about a "dress code," and allegedly killing a giant rabbit. Rolling out the red carpet The embattled flyer rolled out a list of changes meant to be eye-grabbing, like increasing the maximum bumped passenger payout to an eye-popping $10,000. Previously, it had topped out at $1,000. There's no word exactly how you can get to that number but, hey, it makes for nice headlines. United Airlines pledges to pay voluntarily bumped passengers $10,000 https://t.co/czPdn1vNRm pic.twitter.com/Qm2SJplv9i The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 27, 2017 There are other new policies, like making sure "law enforcement will not remove customers from a flight and customers will not be required to give up their seat once on board except in matters of safety and security." Story continues These two things would have certainly prevented the Dr. David Dao incident and, frankly, should have already been in place. Also, the "except in matters of safety and security" leaves things open to the airline's interpretation. But, hey, things seem like they'll suck less with United, right? Still playing the blame game Not so fast. Because, on the flip-side, they've also issued their report that, in its not-so-subtle wording, still aims to place the blame squarely on the passenger who was bloodied up as he was literally dragged from a plane. From United's account, published online, emphasis mine The report details how United reached out to security officers to assist in Dao's removal. The United version then continues: While United acknowledges the videos that circulated, it's shocking how nonchalant they are in describing Dao's removal and, if not for the tacked-on reference of going to a hospital, make no mention of the injuries Dao sustained in the process, which, according to Dao's attorney, included a concussion and a broken nose. In a weird way, this kind of dovetails with the freshly published accounts by the officers involved, obtained by Judicial Watch, which claimed Dao was flailing his arms and trying to throw punches, actions that other passengers denied and don't line up with what was captured on video. And it also aligns with United's m.o. all along: blame the victim. Munoz himself did so in his internal memo that described Dao as "disruptive and belligerent" despite evidence to the contrary. Not that his public statement was great, either. United CEO response to United Express Flight 3411. pic.twitter.com/rF5gNIvVd0 United (@united) April 10, 2017 So, sure, United swears up and down they've learned their lesson from this mess the David Dao mess, not the other ones and things will change, they swear. Their own ad says "actions speak louder than words." But, if nothing else, United has just proven with their own report of the incident the old cliche that the more things change, the more they stay the same. WATCH: This NYU student went undercover as a worker in a Chinese iPhone factory United CEO Oscar Munoz said the violent removal of a passenger earlier this month was a system failure and that the company was sorry for the death of a giant rabbit that died following a flight this week. In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Munoz said that the company would increase its offered compensation for people to give up their seats, improve training for employees and reduce the number of overbookings. United has been facing a public relations nightmare after videos of airport security personnel dragging 69-year-old David Dao off an overbooked flight went viral earlier this month. Munoz apologized to Dao after initially saying the passenger had been belligerent and disruptive in an email to employees. The operational mindset becomes front and center, and we forget sometimes that the people youre carrying are human and have interests and have desires, said Munoz. Connecting people, simple words, what they mean is connecting you to the things that are important to you, regardless of where youre sitting. Thomas Demetrio, Daos attorney, released a statement Thursday applauding Uniteds actions and changes. Demetrio said in an interview Monday that he wasnt interested in his client receiving an in-person apology from Munoz. Simon, a 10-month-old, 3-foot-long continental rabbit, who died following a recent United Airlines flight. (Photo: Caters) Munoz also expressed his condolences for the death of Simon, a valuable oversize rabbit that died following a United flight from London to Chicago earlier this week. We are deeply sorry for the loss of anything, from your luggage to, of course, a loved pet, Munoz said when asked about the death. A spokesman from United said that the rabbit was in good condition following the flight and his arrival at the Chicago facility. Simon had a vets checkup three hours before the flight and was fit as a fiddle, said Simons breeder, Annette Edwards, in an interview with the Sun. Something very strange has happened and I want to know what. New York (AFP) - President Donald Trump's threat to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement has US farmers worried their access to prime Canadian and Mexican export markets could shrink. The US neighbors are the second and third-largest importers of American agricultural goods, after China. And US agricultural exports to those countries have risen far faster than to other destinations since NAFTA took effect 23 years ago -- nearly quadrupling with Canada and quintupling with Mexico. But Trump has ceaselessly hammered the regional treaty, calling it a "disaster" for the United States. In tweet on Thursday he renewed his threat to "terminate NAFTA" if renegotiation efforts fail to achieve "a fair deal for all." For the farming industry, this is a non-starter and lobbyists in Washington have taken up the charge. "We do not want to go backwards with Canada or Mexico," said David Salmonsen, senior director for congressional relations at the American Farm Bureau. "We do not want to see anybody imposing tariffs or any new non-tariff barrier." US agricultural exports currently travel duty-free to Mexico and to Canada, with the notable exceptions of dairy and poultry goods, which are the subject of perennial disputes with the northern neighbor. In 2016, the US exported more than $20.5 billion in agricultural goods to Canada, or 15 percent of all American farm exports, with prepared foods first among them, followed by fruits and vegetables. - Preserve what's working - Before talks have even started, which can only happen after the White House notifies Congress, Trump raised the temperature this week by slapping import duties on Canadian softwood lumber, part of a 35-year-old trade dispute. Relations between Washington and Ottawa were further strained when the US president promised to defend American dairy producers against the export barriers he says they face in selling their goods in Canada. Story continues Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, said, "It's important that we fix what's not working -- dairy trade with Canada -- and preserve what is working -- our relationship with Mexico." He noted that US dairy exports to Mexico totaled $1.2 billion "amounting to nearly one fourth of all US exports." The group "has insisted and will continue to insist that any renegotiation of NAFTA preserves this vital trade relationship," he said in an email. Mexico imported $17.9 billion worth of US agricultural goods in 2016, or about 13 percent of US farm exports. Relations between Mexico City and Washington have suffered in the Trump era due to the US president's hostile remarks on immigration and plans to build a border wall. Corn growers are most concerned for the future of NAFTA. Mexico is their largest export market, where the grain is mostly used as cattle feed. "We want to do everything we can to keep that market open to us," said Kurt Hora, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. Yet Mexico already has reached out to suppliers in countries like Argentina or Brazil, hoping to add leverage when it arrives at the bargaining table. The US farming industry is firmly opposed to exiting NAFTA but ideally would like to see the trade pact modernized in order to advance some of their own claims, such as even greater access to the Canadian market or harmonizing certain standards. The now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which all the NAFTA members were party, addressed those and other issues. But Trump rose to power in no small part by campaigning against that agreement, helping seal its fate. Ottawa (AFP) - Canada and Mexico got a reprieve in their tough trade relationship with Donald Trump after the US president walked back his threat to jettison the NAFTA continental trade pact Thursday. After speaking by telephone with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts a day earlier, Trump announced that the North American Free Trade Agreement would instead be renegotiated. He still left open the possibility of withdrawing from the pact, however, if talks fail. "We're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot," Trump said Thursday morning from the Oval Office, while adding that "If I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA." Trump's unrelenting back-and-forth has kept Washington's two closest trade partners on edge as they move to revamp one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The Republican billionaire had threatened to scrap NAFTA altogether during his presidential campaign, and has kept his partners guessing about his intentions ever since. While most of his fire has been directed at Mexico, Trump abruptly shifted course this week to pick fights with Ottawa over softwood lumber and dairy products. US media reported on Wednesday that he was likely to give formal notice of pulling the United States out of NAFTA -- and then came the White House announcement that the US would renegotiate the agreement after all. In Mexico, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray warned Thursday that the end of NAFTA was "a real possibility." "We've confirmed it was something under consideration," he told Mexico's Radio Formula. Behind the scenes, politicians, diplomats and business groups have put pressure on Washington not to scrap the accord that created one of the world's largest trading blocs. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that while Trump is open to renegotiation, he is serious about a possible exit from the trade deal. Story continues "The president... made it clear that if the parties are unable to agree on a deal that is fair for American workers and companies, after giving renegotiation a good shot, he will move forward with termination," Spicer told reporters. Answering a reporter's question Thursday about the possible timeframe for NAFTA talks, Trump said: "It'll start very soon. It's actually starting today." Twice over a 24-hour period, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached out to Trump by telephone to extoll the virtues of NAFTA and warn that its demise would lead to massive job losses in both countries. - A fixture since 1994 - NAFTA has been a fixture in US relations with its two neighbors since it went into effect January 1, 1994 under president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Trudeau has repeatedly said he was open to renegotiating the pact, while reminding lawmakers in Washington that more than half of US states rely on free trade with Canada -- notably in the automotive and agricultural sectors. "I highlighted that whether or not there was a better deal to come, there were an awful lot of jobs, an awful lot of industries right now that have been developed under NAFTA," Trudeau said Thursday of his call with Trump. "And a disruption like canceling NAFTA would cause a lot of short and medium term pain for an awful lot of families," he added. Every minute more than one million dollars in goods cross the Canada-US border. US cereal producers, meanwhile, said they were "shocked and very worried" about the fate of NAFTA. - Market shudder - North of the border, Maude Barlow, president of the Council of Canadians, a leftist think tank, noted that "Canada has its own grievances" with its US neighbor and that it was time for Trudeau to stand up for Canadian interests. Business groups have been equally vocal after the Trump administration earlier this week slapped tariffs on some imports of Canadian timber and threated to retaliate against Canadian pricing moves to effectively limit access to its dairy market. (Neither timber, nor milk are covered under NAFTA). Analysts said renegotiating NAFTA is the lesser evil for Trump. Reports that Trump was considering an executive order to withdraw the US from the pact "sent a shudder through the markets," National Bank analyst Angelo Katsoras said in a research note. A move to do so, he added, would "elicit an uproar in Congress, risk disrupting the activities of companies with supply chains spread across the hemisphere, hurt the economy and trigger a wave of lawsuits." Miami (AFP) - Investigators are probing an unusually high number of humpback whale deaths since 2016 off the US Atlantic Coast, where many appear to have been killed by colliding with boats, officials said Thursday. A total of 41 humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) have died in the waters off Maine to North Carolina, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Twenty-six died last year, far higher than the average annual number of humpback whales for the area -- just 14. So far this year, 15 have already washed up dead. "The increased numbers of mortalities have triggered the declaration of an unusual mortality event, or UME, for humpback whales along the Atlantic Coast," said Mendy Garron, stranding coordinator at the NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region. A UME is issued whenever a stranding is "unexpected, involves a significant dieoff of any marine mammal population, and demands immediate response," she told reporters. Animal autopsies -- known as necropsies -- have been performed on 20 whales. Ten of the marine mammals showed acute signs of blunt force trauma or large propeller cuts from colliding with ships or boats, suggesting this was the likely cause of death. The other 10 had no such obvious signs, and researchers are continuing tests to find out what other factors could have contributed to their demise. - Cause unknown - "Whales tested to date have had no evidence of infectious disease," said Garron. Researchers stressed they have yet to uncover the cause of the unusual spike in deaths. "The answer is really unknown," said Greg Silber, coordinator of recovery activities for large whales with the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources. There is no known spike in vessel traffic in the area, but humpback whales move around in search of prey, which could bring them closer to shore, he added. Humpback whales grow to between 48 and 62 feet (15-19 meters), weigh 40 tons, and are known for their haunting songs that travel great distances underwater. Story continues Most humpback whales are no longer considered an endangered species, after that designation was lifted in 2016 due to a rebounding population. There are more than 10,000 humpback whales in the North Atlantic Ocean. But there are 14 distinct populations of the whales, five of which are still endangered, including those in the Arabian Sea, Cape Verde Islands, northwestern Africa, the Western North Pacific and Central America. An international moratorium on hunting them was established in 1982 and remains in place. Unusual die-offs of humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean were also reported in 2003, 2005 and 2006, NOAA said. The cause of those deaths were undetermined. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - US Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the UN Security Council on Thursday to ratchet up pressure on Russia to end sieges in Syria and help advance peace talks. "All eyes and all pressure now need to go to Russia, because they are the ones who could stop this if they wanted to," Haley told a council meeting on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria. Haley argued that years of appeals to Bashar al-Assad to allow aid deliveries to reach civilians in besieged areas had failed and that the focus must now squarely be on the Syrian president's main ally. "Who's the one member-state who continues to protect the regime that is keeping this humanitarian assistance from going through?" asked Haley. "Russia must live up to its promise to deliver real peace talks and a real political solution," said the US envoy. "The sieges of the Syrian people must be lifted. The war profiteering and the theft of medical supplies must be stopped." The council heard a report from UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien who said the humanitarian crisis was worsening in Syria, now in its seventh year of war. O'Brien called for a pause in fighting in eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, where he said some 400,000 civilians remain trapped, under siege by government forces. UN aid convoys have been unable to reach eastern Ghouta since October. Russia's envoy challenged the UN assessment of the humanitarian crisis, saying a cessation of hostilities was holding "in Syria, as a whole" and that access to besieged areas required "painstaking work." Petr Iliichev, the Russian charge d'affaires, stressed that Russia, Turkey and Iran were working to uphold a ceasefire. "Neither you nor your western colleagues have said a word about how you are putting pressure to bear," Iliichev told Haley. Describing the humanitarian crisis in Syria as a "catastrophe," French Ambassador Francois Delattre said a ceasefire and access for aid deliveries were needed to pave the way to credible peace talks. Story continues The United Nations hopes to bring the Syrian government and the opposition back to Geneva next month for a new round of talks on ending the war despite little progress in previous negotiations. Delattre said political talks can succeed with "much stronger pressure from Russia on the Syrian regime and a clear political re-engagement of the United States." More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria's six-year conflict, which has drawn in Russia and Iran in support of the government, while Turkey, Western countries and Gulf states have backed opposition forces. Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump said Thursday he was saddened by the crisis in Venezuela, where waves of anti-government unrest has claimed the lives of 28 people. "Venezuela is a mess," Trump said in response to a reporter's question as he received Argentine President Mauricio Macri to the White House. "I'm very sad for Venezuela, very sad to see what's happened in Venezuela," he said. "Venezuela is a very sad situation." His comments come as the government of leftist President Nicolas Maduro prepares to withdraw from the Organization of American States, a Washington-based regional grouping that encompasses all countries in the western hemisphere but Cuba. The Maduro government charges that a group of countries led by the United States is using the OAS to try to force him from office. Venezuela, a major oil producer on the brink of economic collapse, has been hit by waves of anti-government protests in response to deteriorating living conditions and a deepening political impasse. Caracas announced it was withdrawing from the OAS after the group called a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the crisis. Venezuela is expected to submit a letter of complaint later Thursday, formally setting in motion its withdrawal from the organization, a process that takes 24 months. BOGOTA (Reuters) - Venezuelans who regularly cross into Colombia to work, study or shop must apply for a special migratory card to ease their passage, the Colombian government said on Thursday. The cards will take the place of passports and allow entry to the Colombian provinces of La Guajira, Norte de Santander, Arauca, Vichada and Guania for residents of Venezuelan border areas, but not into the rest of Colombia, immigration authority head Christian Kruger said. Thousands of Venezuelans cross the border each day to attend school, work and buy food and medicines that are scarce in the socialist country. Some 40,000 Venezuelans reside legally in Colombia. The rule, which will take affect from Monday, comes amid tension between the neighbors, which have often been at loggerheads. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said recently that the socialist revolution in Venezuela had failed, prompting his counterpart Nicolas Maduro to threaten to reveal what he said were secrets from Colombia's peace negotiations with Marxist rebels and plans to assassinate guerrilla leaders. The Colombian foreign ministry said this week it was examining a refuge request from three Venezuelan soldiers. It is unclear when or how they arrived in Colombia, but Venezuelan authorities have said they deserted and fled their country in March. Colombia is among countries that have called on Maduro to hold delayed elections as violent protests continue. Venezuela said on Wednesday it was withdrawing from the Organization of American States. (Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Helen Murphy and Dan Grebler) Coral-munching crown-of-thorns starfish can be safely killed by common household vinegar, scientists revealed Thursday in a discovery that offers hope for Australia's struggling Great Barrier Reef. The predatory starfish is naturally-occurring but has proliferated due to pollution and run-off at the World Heritage-listed ecosystem, which is also reeling from two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching. Until now other expensive chemicals such as bile salts have been used to try and eradicate the pest -- which consumes coral faster than it can be regenerated -- but they can harm other marine organisms. Tests by James Cook University, in collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), showed vinegar was safe, effective and cheap. Study head Lisa Bostrom-Einarsson said crown-of-thorns were injected with vinegar at four sites on the reef over six weeks, causing them to die within 48 hours with no impact on other life. "We recorded live coral cover, abundance of coral disease, fish abundance and diversity, fish diseases and the abundance of closely related invertebrates before, during and after the six-week study period and found no detrimental effects," she said. Keeping crown-of-thorns under control however is a tough ask, with dive teams needing to individually inject each starfish before it dies and breaks-up. But despite the labour-intensive job, it is far more efficient than extracting them from the water before killing them. A major study of the reef's health published in 2012 showed cover had halved over the past 27 years and attributed 42 percent of the damage to crown-of-thorns starfish. - 'Massive effort' - GBRMPA director of tourism and stewardship Fred Nucifora said the new method would be used to target reefs identified as having high conservation and tourism values. "Culling crown-of-thorns starfish is a critical management activity to protect coral cover and boost reef resilience, particularly in the wake of coral bleaching," he said. Story continues Earlier this month, scientists revealed the 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) long Barrier Reef was suffering its second consecutive mass bleaching event due to warming sea temperatures, and said some coral had "zero prospect" of recovery. The reef contributes more than Aus$7.0 billion (US$5.2 billion) a year to Australia's economy, supporting the livelihoods of some 70,000 people, and there have been warnings that dying coral could cost the region more than a million tourists a year. Bostrom-Einarsson said while the innovative new method was good news, it would be tough to wipe out starfish altogether. "There are millions of starfish on the Great Barrier Reef and each female produces around 65 million eggs in a single breeding season," she said. "It would take a massive effort to try and cull them all individually, but we know that sustained efforts can save individual reefs." Vinegar has now been added to the GBRMPA's list of approved control chemicals, meaning operators can apply for permits to start controlling the starfish. The wife of a teacher accused of kidnapping a 15-year-old student has revealed the note her husband left behind when he took off with the teen. Read: Tad Cummins' Wife: He Told Me He Slept With Teenage Student, Asked for Forgiveness Speaking to Inside Edition exclusively, Tad Cummins' estranged wife Jill has exposed the contents of the note for the first time. "I'm getting away to clear my head of all this crap. I love you. Please don't call the police. They'll just think Im guilty and Im not. I'm so sorry," the note read. He even signed it with a heart. I really felt like mentally he had a heart time dealing with all this stress, Jill Cummins told Inside Edition as she fought back tears. She learned the shocking truth from police when she reported him missing the following day. They said, 'We have something to tell you. Elizabeth is also reported as missing,' and that was the very moment I realized that's when I knew something was going on between the two of them, she said. Tad Cummins, 50, vanished with Elizabeth Thomas on March 13. After five weeks, they were found at a remote cabin in Cecilville, Calif., after a tipster recognized them and called authorities. Thomas was reunited with her family and Cummins was arrested. He appeared in court in Sacramento on Monday, and faces one federal count of transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity across state lines. I won't let him hurt me like that again! I will not let him betray me like that again! I won't give him the opportunity ever again, Jill said. My daughters are hurt so bad. We had grandchildren that we had to tell this to that it has affected greatly. That really hurts me. Tad faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life in prison, if convicted. Jill revealed she and her husband spoke after his arrest. Tad called me from jail, she said as her voice cracked with emotion. It was very hard to hear his voice after all this time not knowing if I was going to hear it again. But he told me he was sorry. He told me he loved me and to please forgive him. Story continues The first thing she said to him was, How could this happen? Why would you do this to us? Why would you abandon me? Why would you leave with her? "He kept saying 'I love you,'" she said. And I said, 'Im sorry but Im not going to say that back.' I of course went into a rage of, 'Do you know what you've done to me? Do you know what you've done to your girls and your grandchildren?' He pretty much just over and over said, 'Im sorry.'" Jill said she also confronted her husband with those disturbing allegations that he filled a prescription for the male enhancement drug Cialis and lived with the teen for several days in this love nest at a commune in California. I said, Well, did you sleep with her? And he said, Yes, I did. And I didn't want any details but I knew the truth. I just wanted to hear it from him to me. And I told him I probably wouldn't be answering the phone anymore, she said. When questioned whether she asked her husband if he was in love with the student, Jill said she didnt want to talk about that because it is too hard. Tad Cummins is charged with kidnapping but his wife said that she was told by her husband that Thomas went with him willingly and could have left at any time. I told him I understand, but she is a child and you are a 50-year-old man and that's not right. She didn't have a choice whether or not to go with you. He says she did have a choice, Jill said. A lawyer representing Thomas told Inside Edition in a statement that the teen was brainwashed into running off with her teacher, calling him a "classic predator." He was suspended in January over allegations that he kissed Thomas at school. His wife stood by him at the time, telling Inside Edition that when she learned of his suspension, I thought he'd been accused of something he didn't do. Another insult to his family was that Tad had taken off in Jills car, leaving her stranded at work. Finally after not getting a hold of him, my youngest daughter took me to the house, came and picked me up because I couldn't drive his Jeep because it's a stick shift and I didn't know how to drive it, she said. Jill and Tad were just teenagers when they were married in 1985. They tied the knot on Jills 18th birthday her first summer out of high school. Read: Man Who Cracked Missing Student and Teacher Case Says Teen 'Looked Depressed' Everything was perfect. A loving Christian household, she said. Their Facebook page was adorned with posts like: I love us! and poignant images that evoke mixed emotions for Jill Cummins now. It's like that's a different Tad! It's a different person from the one who did this, Jill said, When I look at those it's good memories and it's like a death has happened because that person would never have done this to me! He has not entered a plea. He's expected to be transported to federal court in Tennessee in the coming days. Watch: Family Reunites With 15-Year-Old Girl Who Disappeared with Teacher Related Articles: Photo credit: MARK MIRKO/HARTFORD COURANT VIA AP From Redbook You can count on your Fitbit to track your steps, your calories burned, even your sleep. But here's something the company probably isn't going to tout on the packaging anytime soon: You can use a Fitbit to track down a murderer. That was the case in the tragic story of Connie Dabate, who was shot in her home in Ellington, Connecticut in December 2015 after returning from a spin class at her local YMCA, where her Fitbit had been logging her workout. Her husband Richard's explanation of events leading up to the murder made police suspicious. He said he had left the house first to drop their kids off at school when he got a notification that his house alarm had gone off; at home, he encountered a masked intruder who, when his wife also returned home, attacked him then shot his wife. The police were unable to find evidence of an intruder, but they did find a note on Connie's phone titled "Why I want a divorce." And here's where the Fitbit comes into play: The numbers on Connie's Fitbit were not matching up with Dabate's story. Investigators working on the case have Connie's Fitbit data, which she kept running after her class at the Y. The tracker showed the 39-year-old walking around her house with a timestamp that showed she was moving an hour after her husband claimed she was killed. Her activity stopped six minutes before her husband triggered their home alarm. Craig Stedman, a district attorney in Lancaster county unaffiliated with Dabate's case, told the Hartford Courant that using data like this isn't common, but he's done it before. "It is an electronic footprint that tracks your movements," Stedman said. "It is a great tool for investigators to use. We can also get the information much faster than some other types of evidence such as DNA tests." Dabate has been charged with felony murder, tampering with evidence, and providing a false statement. He's currently out on bail; his next court date is April 28. Story continues [h/t: The Cut] Follow Redbook on Facebook. You Might Also Like From Delish From 22-carat pizza engagement rings to a wedding gift registry service, Domino's knows we're obsessed with their cheesy dough. Their newest campaign, the Domino's Piece of the Pie contest, is letting fans put their love for pizza on full display. Olivia Mears, a costume designer from North Carolina, raised the stakes with her entry: A full-on pizza wedding dress made out of pizza boxes, hand-painted fabrics, and foam. Plus, she made a throne out of pizza boxes, so you could say she's our new idol. Mears said it took her a few hours each night for two weeks to complete the dress. Her friends and family had tagged her in posts about the contest, so she decided to give it a shot. "I love having definite goals that push me to be more ambitious and work harder in creating new things, especially when others get enjoyment out of it too," Mears said. If that wasn't enough, the dress fans out when you lay down, making for pretty much the best no-wedding wedding photos ever. "The 'stuffed crust' hemline functioning as a pillow when I lie down was a nice bonus," Mears said. The yearlong contest offers pizza lovers a chance to earn a piece of the company just by signing up for Domino's rewards program. As part of the contest, Piece of the Pie Rewards members are automatically entered in a monthly contest from December 2016 to November 2017, and each month 25 members win 10 shares of Domino's stock. For the Twitter and Instagram portion of the contest, fans had to follow Domino's on either of the social media platforms and post pictures tagged with #PieceOfThePieContest, showing or explaining why they love Domino's. The contest ended April 16, though winners have not yet been announced. Fifty winners will receive $10,000 each. (Just think of how many Cinna Stix that would buy!) One thing is for sure, people LOVE their pizza. More than 1,200 Instagram posts were tagged, and the results are seriously creative: Story continues Follow Delish on Instagram. You Might Also Like Photo credit: Facebook From Redbook Another day, another person trying to shame a woman for doing something natural and life-sustaining for her child. This time, Avery Lane was breastfeeding her 2-month-old son at a H&R Block on the military post where she lives when the manager told her "cover up with a towel or something," according to a post Lane uploaded to Facebook. Lane, who knew her rights - it's legal to breastfeed in public in Georgia, where she lives - told the manager, "No, but I have a muslin if you would like to cover your face." Unfortunately, her straightforward approach didn't deter the uninformed manager, who asked her to leave (she was in the store with a friend, not for herself). But instead of backing down, Lane called the military police herself so they could educate him on the state laws. Sure enough, the police backed Lane up and told the manager he couldn't force her out of his store for breastfeeding. Lane says "one of the MPs told me that there is nothing wrong with a mother breastfeeding her child," which, duh, but kudos to the military police for doing their jobs and supporting a woman who's just trying to live her life. "I'm only posting this because I hope more moms will stand up to normalize breastfeeding," Lane wrote on Facebook. "I refuse to cover my child or nurse in my car." And she shouldn't have to. Here's hoping her story helps more moms stand their ground in the face of breastfeeding shamers. Follow Ashley on Instagram and Redbook on Facebook. You Might Also Like A leading abortion doctor has warned the legal right to have an abortion will be abolished across America under Donald Trump. Dr Willie Parker, a prominent abortion advocate in the deep south of America, said he expected the Trump presidency to succeed in overturning Roe v Wade. President Trump has already pledged to do all he can to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion nationwide in 1973. In his first interview after winning the election, the billionaire said he wanted to appoint pro-life judges with the goal of overturning Roe v Wade automatically. Some expect his highly conservative Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to now attempt to put this into action. Dr Parker, who has been an obstetrician-gynecologist for more than 23 years and has carried out abortions full-time for almost a decade, said he thought the criminalisation of abortion was a concrete possibility with Mr Trump in the White House and he expected it would be much harder to do his job in the future. It was criminal once before, and it is their intent to make it criminal again, he told The Independent. So far all the things Trumps promised to do, hes made the effort to do. He was always pro-choice in the 1990s but he changed his position to sit with the politics of what was going to get him elected." Dr Parker, a former medical director of a Planned Parenthood affiliate, said the overturning of Roe v Wade would mean a womans access to abortion services is dictated by her postcode. If you overturn Roe there will be no federal law to protect a womans right to an abortion in every state, so there are a lot of states where abortion will become illegal, like some of the first states to approve it. Dr Parker, who has made a name for himself for performing abortions in states where almost no other doctors will do so, suggested it would remain legal in liberal states such as California and Hawaii but was likely to become illegal in states like Mississippi, Alabama, and many others. Story continues willie-parker.jpg (Getty Images for the Center for Reproductive Rights) Where you have Conservative people running the government they have campaigned on promising to make abortion illegal, he explained. In these states, women will have even more limited access to abortion than they already do. It means a womens health when it comes to her reproduction, would depend on her zip code and where she lives. It would make providing abortions more difficult. It would limit the places where we can provide. This would be likely to hit immigrant women and women of colour harder as restrictive abortions at state-level have already been found to have a disproportionate impact on these minority groups. Commentators have also argued the landmark decision is facing a new and severe threat in the wake of a Trump administration. They have floated the possibility of the Supreme Court gradually curbing Roe v Wades scope while leaving the decision strictly intact. To put this into context, a strongly conservative court could make procedures essentially illegal in practice by authorising restrictive abortion laws over time. In a similar vein, Dr Parker noted judges could be reticent to overturn Roe v Wade because it is a legal precedent which has provided the foundation of abortion law and policy for four decades. But Jennifer Dalven, director of American Civil Liberties Unions Reproductive Freedom Project, said she thought Roe v Wade could easily be overturned during Mr Trump's tenure. Last June, the Court issued a strong decision limiting the ability of politicians to obstruct a woman's access to abortion and the five Justices who signed that opinion are still on the Court, she said. But if Trump gets to appoint another Justice, the Court could allow states to ban abortion completely or give politicians the green light to put up roadblock after roadblock in the path of women. Either way, the effect will be the same for many people. Women who have decided that having an abortion is the right decision for themselves and their family simply will not be able to get one. In the last week, it has been suggested that President Trump could have the chance to appoint a second person to the Supreme Court as early as this summer after rumours Justice Anthony Kennedy could retire. It's worth noting that William Pryer, one of the contenders for the new role, has called Roe v Wade the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law. Ms Dalven, who has worked on numerous high-profile abortion cases as a lawyer, said she was deeply worried about the repercussions of overturning the law. For many folks abortion is legal but already out of reach. States like Missisipi, Kentucky and South Dakota only have one abortion provider. Things are already very bad but without Roe it would be a much, much worse version of what we have today. It is very frightening. Mr Trumps current Supreme Court pick, Gorsuch, has never ruled directly on Roe v Wade but anti-abortion activists cite the language he has used in his book on assisted suicide as evidence of his sympathetic position. To act intentionally against life is to suggest that its value rests only on its transient instrumental usefulness for other ends , the Judge writes. All human beings are intrinsically valuable, and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong. Nevertheless, when questioned during his confirmation hearing in March, Judge Gorsuch, a Protestant, referred to Roe v Wade as the law of the land and said he would have walked out of the door if Mr Trump had asked him to overturn it in his interview. Read more Donald Trump signs law aimed at cutting abortion funding In Dr Parker's opinion, anti-abortion advocates have already been emboldened into proposing restrictive abortion legislation since Mr Trumps arrival in the White House, saying: The people who feel he speaks for them they are feeling more empowered". He said carrying out abortions was starting to feel noticeably more dangerous under a Trump administration and he had experienced increased aggression from anti-abortion activists. It is getting a little riskier to do the work we do. The protesters are a bit more aggressive, they harass women and they harass providers, he explained. "I post a lot on Facebook and Twitter and Ive had death threats. Nobody has physically accosted me but people have said stuff like Somebody should shoot you in the head. I know where you live. If you think you can kill babies and it will be okay you are wrong. Dr Parker did not carry out abortions for 12 years of his career but began to see things differently after reading a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. For almost a decade now, the Alabama native has travelled around various states providing abortion care and has participated in lawsuits in Alabama and Mississippi to try and block state laws from closing abortion clinics. Dr Parker, who is in connection with law enforcement, has been racially abused by activists on a number of occasions during his career. There have been places where Ive had them call me a filthy negro abortionist, Ive had some say, Do I have to call you the n word? While abortion has become an increasingly partisan issue in the US in recent years, this has significantly increased under a Trump administration. Mr Trump is under pressure to keep the Republican Party, whose overwhelming majority of elected officials are anti-abortion, happy and reward the anti-abortion voters who helped put him in the White House. The Trump administrations actions since coming to power 14 weeks ago already show a commitment to implementing anti-abortion policies. On his fourth day in office, Mr Trump signed an executive order prohibiting US funding for any international aid groups which give women information about abortion, even if they do not perform the procedures. Read more Meet the woman travelling delivering abortion drugs by drone NGOs which receive funding from the US are prohibited from even mentioning abortion so its really a form of coercion because if you dont present a woman with all of her options you are really not counselling her, Dr Parker said. You are coercing her in a certain direction. In addition to this, at the beginning of the month the US state department announced it was ending funding for the UN population fund (UNFPA). In a letter to US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, the State Department said it was dropping the funding because the UN Population Fund supports, or participates in the management of, a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation. In short, abortion rights are coming under fire from all angles under the Trump administration and the fear of Roe v Wade being overturned remains a very real one for some. "Even though we had conservative and anti-abortion ideologues running in the majority in the legislature before Trump, we were always able to count on the veto power of the President [Barack Obama] to veto restrictive laws that jeopardised abortion rights," Dr Parker concludes. "Now we dont have that backstop". .verse-player-embed { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .verse-player-embed iframe, .verse-player-embed object, .verse-player-embed embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } When neonatal intensive care units in northeastern Brazilian hospitals started to fill up with babies with misshapen and abnormally small heads in late 2015, the first question everyone wanted answered was: What is causing this? As pictures of the babies started circulating around the world, a second question quickly followed: What would life be like for these infants? Within a few months, the international scientific community concluded that Zika virus infection in pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, could trigger devastating brain destruction in a developing fetus. Zika congenital syndrome, as it is now called, can manifest itself in profound ways a cratered skull, whole sections of brain tissue missing or subtler deficits such as hearing loss and vision problems. In the months since these babies began to be born, their families and the medical professionals treating them have been charting the progress of the survivors. For some, there is hope that brain plasticity neuronal workarounds will limit the damage. For others, development goals may not just be delayed, but missed entirely. Read more: Another night in the hospital: the unrelenting struggle of raising Brazils Zika babies To date, Brazil has confirmed Zika-related birth defects in more than 2,600 babies; another 3,200 suspected cases are still being investigated. STAT recently revisited two affected babies and their families. Maria Eduarda Pereira known as Duda was one of the first Zika infants born in Recife; she is now nearly 18 months old. Dr. Regina Coeli, of the Oswaldo Cruz University Hospital there, measures what would be small milestones for other children learning to swallow, sitting up with support as big gains for Duda. Story continues I would say Duda was one of the worse cases I have cared for, said Coeli, who said the little girl was in and out of hospital for the first nine months of her life. Even so, she has shown great development that you might have thought impossible for a child with that level of brain damage, so that spectrum can change throughout time. Eduarda Alvess daughter Sophia recently celebrated her first birthday. Like Duda and many other babies with Zika congenital syndrome, Sophias vision has been affected. Still, shes learning and developing. Sophia cant yet sit up by herself, but can hold herself in a sitting position if placed in one, and can stand if supported. Said Alves: Were going at her pace. Photo: Getty Images While Ivanka Trump has been the recipient of hisses during her Germany trip her first official overseas trip as an adviser to the president it certainly isnt in response to her wardrobe choices. On Wednesday night, the first daughter served up a sartorial win in a cream dress and statement earrings to a gala during the W20 Summit. The earrings were mismatched, which is an interesting and very fashion-forward choice for the first daughter during a formal event. Like every decision Trump makes, this was well thought out. She wasnt rushing out of the hotel only to grab two different earrings. They accessories are designed by Marni, and are sold as a set for $740. The emerald glass stone and rhinestone earrings feature bold geometric and floral-inspired constructions. One seems to be the petals, while the other could be the stem. They are huge and hard to miss, especially when set against a white dress, like the mother-of-three opted to do. Her white knee-length A-line frock hugged her body in a tasteful way. It had long sleeves and was very simple, which was the right move with those statement-making earrings. Clearly, she chose wisely with cream, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel was wearing the same exact color. Merkels blazer perfectly matched Ivankas dress. The duo sat next to each other and posed for photos twinning, whether Merkel liked it or not. Merkel wore her own statement jewelry, in the form of a chunky amber beaded necklace. You know what they saygreat politicians dress alike. No? Thats not a thing. OK, we tried. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty. It was discovered recently that the MLB.com At Bat and NHL iOS apps will let users change the home screen icons featuring their favorite team. Smartphone technology is undergoing an evolution with introduction of features such as an edge-to-edge display and a 10nm processor. But there is one trend from 2016 that is becoming increasingly popular with flagship smartphones dual cameras. Smartphone evolution would be incomplete without advancements in smartphone cameras and dual cameras seem the next frontier for the technology. The trend started with the iPhone 7 Plus. Even though the smaller size Apple flagship, the iPhone 7 had a single lens camera, Apple endowed the larger phone with two camera lenses packed in a single camera module. The setup made a huge difference in terms of camera performance effective zoom went up to 10x, which created a huge difference in the depth-of field in photos. Read: Leaked Dummy Hints That iPhone 8 Could Have Vertical Dual-Camera Since Apple showcased how dual-cameras made a difference in photography, many smartphone companies seem to have become interested in endowing their smartphones with the technology. Here are 5 smartphones expected to come with a dual-camera setup in 2017: Samsung Galaxy Note 8: Samsung's second flagship, expected to release in September, might have a dual-camera setup. Tech informant Eldar Murtazin tweeted a leaked image of the device on April 16. He claims that the phone in the image is a Note 8 prototype, featuring the dual camera setup. Samsung hasnt yet put out any information about the Note 8. Until it does, we will have to rely on leaks and rumors for an idea of what the phone will look like. Apple iPhone 8: Apples 10th anniversary device might also feature a dual-camera setup, but instead of a horizontal one like the iPhone 7S, it could feature a vertical one. Benjamin Geskin, renowned phone leaker claimed in a tweet Monday that he had acquired a computer numerical control (CNC) model of the upcoming device. CNC models are used in advances stages of device testing and might be an indication of what the final device would be. Story continues It makes sense for Apple to opt, once again, for a dual-camera setup after the iPhone 7 Plus, which received rave reviews for its camera performance. OnePlus 5: The next OnePlus device, which is expected to launch in June is also expected to feature a dual-camera setup, according to an image of the device obtained by India Today Wednesday, which shows a vertical dual-camera setup merged into a seamless back cover. Google Pixel 2: Googles Pixel successor is also expected to feature a dual-camera setup, according to Wccftech, which obtained some concept renders of the device in March. Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 8 vs. Google Pixel 2 LGs V20 successor: LG was the original company to endow its phones with dual-cameras, even though its G5 flagship, which released with the feature in 2016, did not do well. The companys V20 smartphones successor, expected to release in the second half of the year, might come with a dual-camera setup, according to Neowin. Related Articles By Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Didi Chuxing, China's top ride-hailing firm, is set to become the country's second-most valuable privately owned company, with a valuation of more than $50 billion, through a fund raising round of up to $6 billion, sources said on Thursday. The valuation represents a jump from Didi's $34 billion price tag in August, when it agreed to acquire Uber Technology Inc's China business, and also puts it closer to the U.S. firm's $68 billion. It also propels Didi well above Xiaomi Inc, which held the title of China's most valuable startup after a 2014 funding round valued the smartphone maker at $46 billion. Ant Financial, China's most valuable private internet finance firm and an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , is valued upwards of $60 billion. The funding round has drawn investors including Japan's Softbank Group Corp <9984.T>, private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, China Merchants Bank <600036.SS> and Bank of Communications <601328.SS>, two people familiar with the matter said. They declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly. Didi Chuxing and Softbank declined to comment, while Silver Lake, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The people said that part of the latest capital investment in Didi would be used for international expansion. Didi has sealed several overseas partnerships, focusing on intelligent driving, such as making use of artificial intelligence, as well as similar ride-hailing services. The firm is ramping up overseas activity as regulatory changes are set to take a toll on their local service. Draft rules released in October would slash the number of eligible drivers and double fares for users in major cities, the company has said. Since Uber exited the Chinese market last year following a drawn-out rivalry with Didi, the Chinese firm has sought to expand in Latin America, leading a $100 million investment in Brazilian ride-hailing service 99 in January. Last month it officially opened a lab researching artificial intelligence-related driving technologies in Silicon Valley in the United States. The company has previously entered a range of strategic agreements with U.S. tech firms including Lyft, TripAdvisor Inc and Udacity. (Reporting by Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell; writing by Kim Miyoung; editing by Stephen Coates and Neil Fullick) You dont get to compare your press secretarys performances to a soap opera and get away with it, especially if your Donald Trump, the president. The media, includi Stephen Colberts crew, will take such statements and run wild. They may even imagine an entire soap opera dedicated to Sean Spicer. Don't Miss: NASAs Cassini spacecraft has one final mission, which ends with destruction Trump said during a small working lunch at the White House last month that he wont fire Spicer, likening his popularity with daytime soap operas. Im not firing Sean Spicer, Trump said according to The Washington Post. That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in. Thats all The Late Show needed to create this first episode of The Bold and The Babbling, a soap opera starring Sean Spicer. While its definitely hilarious, Colberts Spicer sketch isnt nearly as funny as SNLs Spicer impersonation. Some tricks only Melissa McCarthy can pull off. Given that Trump has no intention of getting rid of Spicer in the near future, you can rest assured that Colbert, SNL, and everyone else mocking to Trump administration will have plenty of fresh material on a daily basis. Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com Netflix is currently available in nearly 200 countries across the globe, but the streaming giant has historically never been able to break into China. With upwards of 1.3 billion people, China is an incredibly important market for Netflix to tap into, especially amidst some analyst concerns regarding the companys ability to drastically increase revenue growth once its subscriber count plateaus. As for Netflixs conspicuous absence in China, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained last year: In China, you need specific permission from the government to be able to operate, so were continuing to work on that and were very patient. I think were going to be a success there, but its going to take some time. Don't Miss: Behold: This Galaxy Note 8 blows the Galaxy S8 out of the water Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it had finally managed to break into China, though not as a subscription service. As our sister-site Variety recently reported, Netflix recently inked a licensing deal with iQIYI, a massive streaming platform in the country with more than 500 million users. Interestingly enough, iQIYI is a subsidiary of Baidu. So while a licensing content deal wasnt likely Netflixs favored way to get into China, the company views it as a step in the right direction. Speaking on the matter, Netflix VP of content acquisition Robert Roy explained: China is an important market for obvious reasons; its also a challenging market for obvious reasons. Right now what we will do is look to license content into China. We closed a deal with iQiyi, which is exciting. For us, it does a couple of things. It gets our content distribution into the territory and builds awareness of the Netflix brand and Netflix content. As for the vitality of Netflixs entire business, the company recently said that it finally surpassed the 100 million subscriber threshold. And with the stock currently trading at an all-time high, investors clearly believe Netflix has a lot of room left for growth. Story continues Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed NEW YORK (Reuters) - Options traders are betting that the U.S. technology sector's strong rally has more room to run as big industry names Microsoft Corp, Intel Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc get set to report quarterly results. With tech companies poised to benefit from the Trump administration's new tax proposals, recent options trading in the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund, the PowerShares QQQ Trust and individual names such as Microsoft and Intel, points to investors' optimistic outlook for the sector, market experts said. "The flow has largely been bullish," said Ilya Feygin, managing director and senior strategist at WallachBeth Capital. "In a lot of these names, we have seen above-average call volumes recently." Investors usually use call options, which convey the right to buy shares at a fixed price in the future, to bet on share price gains. Puts, which convey the right to sell shares at a fixed price in the future, are usually used for defensive bets and have largely been out of favor. "People are not really positioning very much for the downside in technology," said David Russell, senior manager at online broker E*Trade Financial Corp in Chicago. The S&P 500 Information Technology Index is up about 14 percent year to date, topping all other S&P sectors. Its gain is more than double the 6.6 percent rise in the benchmark S&P 500 Index. A one-page outline of U.S. President Donald Trump's tax plan unveiled on Wednesday proposes deep cuts, many for businesses. It would lower the rate on repatriated earnings held offshore by multinationals to well below the current 35 percent. Big technology companies stand to gain a lot from the Trump administration's tax policies, said Mohannad Aama, chief investment officer of Beam Capital Management in New York. "The Trump trade of lower corporate taxes and reduced taxes on repatriation benefits tech the most as it is one, if not the most, profitable sectors in general and probably has the most funds held oversees," Aama said. Earnings reports through Thursday morning have supported options traders' bullish outlook on the tech sector, with 86 percent of companies beating analysts' earnings expectations, compared with 75 percent for all S&P 500 companies, according to Thomson Reuters data. Expectations for tech earnings growth have increased to 16.4 percent from 15 percent at the start of the month, when the reporting period began, the data showed. Microsoft, Intel and Alphabet are set to report quarterly results after Thursday's market close, and Apple Inc and Facebook Inc will do so next week. (Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Daniel Bases and Lisa Von Ahn) Samsung Electronic's Galaxy S8 and S8+ are displayed at its store in Seoul, South Korea, April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji By Hyunjoo Jin and Se Young Lee SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday flagged stronger earnings and announced a cancellation of treasury shares after posting a solid first-quarter profit boosted by the memory chip business, sending its shares to a new high. Samsung rejected a call from U.S. activist hedge fund Elliott to split itself in two but accepted part of the fund's proposals on Thursday, revealing plans to cancel its existing treasury shares worth over $35 billion by 2018. While the first quarter was a torrid time for Samsung as chief Jay Y. Lee was swept up in a political corruption scandal, the world's top maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions still managed to book a profit that supports expectations for record earnings in 2017. First-quarter operating profit for Asia's most valuable company by market capitalization was 9.9 trillion won ($8.75 billion), matching Samsung's earlier guidance. Revenue rose 2 percent to 50.5 trillion won. Elliott welcomed the share cancellation and said it saw "room for even more progress". The fund had called for Samsung to adopt a holding company structure by splitting itself in two, and to pay out a 30 trillion won a special dividend. "We are encouraged that Samsung Electronics has agreed to take the bold step of optimizing its balance sheet ... even as the company has faced obstacles," Elliot said in a statement. Samsung Electronics shares were up 2.6 percent at a record high in a flat wider market. In rejecting Elliott's call for a holding company structure, Samsung cited issues including regulatory and legal risks, and said it would not boost investor returns. "Samsung concluded the risks and the challenging environment surrounding a change in the corporate structure would not be beneficial for enhancing shareholder value and sustaining long-term business growth," it said in a statement. CHIPS SIZZLE A memory chip super-cycle and the revival of the mobile business - damaged by the costly failure and fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 last year - look set to underpin Samsung's profitability after the best quarterly result since 2013. Story continues "Looking ahead to the second quarter, the company expects to achieve growth on the back of continued robust memory performance together with improved earnings from the mobile business" following the global rollout of the new Galaxy S8 smartphone, Samsung said in a statement. Samsung's chip business remained the top earner with a record 6.3 trillion won operating profit, buoyed by price gains for both DRAM and NAND memory chips as supply growth constraints and demand for more firepower on devices such as smartphones and servers boosted margins. The Apple Inc competitor's mobile division reported January-March operating profit of 2.07 trillion won, down from 3.89 trillion won a year earlier. Samsung had no new premium product generate meaningful sales in the January-March period. Pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 launched in April were better than many analysts had expected, raising hopes the new flagship handset will make up for the failure of Note 7s. Recent complaints about red-tinted screens and spotty Wi-fi connection on the S8 would not have a major impact on the bottom line, analysts said. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Se Young Lee; additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates) If you only read the headlines, you'd think Samsung was in a tailspin. Its Galaxy Note 7 flagship phone, heralded as a true competitor to Apple's iPhone, was a disaster. Battery fires forced Samsung to stop selling the phones and recall them entirely. Seemingly ever single flight around the world for months surrounding the situation included a warning: No Samsung Note 7s. SEE ALSO: Samsung's Galaxy S8 event: Everything you need to know Things weren't any better elsewhere in the company. Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman and de facto head of Samsung, was arrested in February on corruption allegations involving the president of Korea. It's hard to think of a more brutal one-two punch. Turns out, Samsung has a pretty strong chin. The electronics manufacturer posted extremely good first-quarter earnings on Thursday, highlighting the size and diversification within the company. Samsung's phones might be it's most recognizable consumer product, but the company also makes boatloads of cash off the production of memory chips as well as televisions. The company made about $8.8 billion in profit in the first three months of 2017. Even with the battery issues, smartphones remained a bright spot for Samsung, highlighting that the problem may have proved to be a short-lived media headache more than anything else. Preorders for its upcoming S8 smartphone set a record for the company. Which is all to say it's not good for companies to generate bad headlines, but sometimes that's not the whole story. Uber, Pepsi, United Airlines, and plenty of other companies are dealing with PR problems, all entirely self-inflicted. Uber in particular saw its issues lead to a #DeleteUber campaign but even that seemed to have hardly made a dent. Sure, Samsung would prefer that its phones don't catch on fire or that its leaders get arrested. It would have made more money if the Note 7 remained on sale. But the company's issues haven't had a material impact on its business and that's the bottom line. WATCH: This NYU student went undercover as a worker in a Chinese iPhone factory By Masayuki Kitano and Aradhana Aravindan SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Foreign precision engineering firms are investing more in Singapore, drawn by strong semiconductor demand and government incentives aimed at re-tooling an economy short of skilled labor. The city-state is running programs worth billions of dollars to support productivity, automation and research, attracting global chipmakers including U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc and Germany's Infineon Technologies. This investment rush into electronics helped the technology sector log 57 percent output growth on average in October-February from a year ago, and kept Singapore from recession late last year. "I've lived in Europe, I've lived in Japan, I've spent a lot of time in Taiwan and other countries. From a proactive standpoint, Singapore is about as good as it gets," said Wayne Allan, vice president of global manufacturing at Micron, adding the Singapore government's long-term vision was key to Micron expanding its investment. Taking advantage of government grants, Micron is investing $4 billion to make more flash-memory chips in Singapore. It increased output by a third in the second half of last year and expects similar growth in the first half of this year. Linear Technology Corp, a maker of analog integrated circuits, has opened a third chip testing facility in Singapore, and will produce 90 percent of its global test equipment in the city-state. All this has created something of a virtuous circle in the semiconductor supply chain, with chip testing equipment supplier Applied Materials reporting record shipments to Singapore last year, said its regional chief, Russell Tham. It's unclear how much of this revival in Singapore's $40 billion chip industry is due to a so-called ultra-super-cycle in the global memory chip sector, and Singapore remains a smaller player than South Korea and Taiwan. "It is vulnerable to a pull-back," said Nomura economist Brian Tan. "If there's a turnaround in the semiconductor industry ... it becomes a lot more apparent that the underlying growth momentum is not great." -For graphic on 'global memory chip market forecast' click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2k8LOqk -For graphic on 'Singapore's semiconductor industry performance' click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2oLaZOi MOVING UP However, there are real signs that the targeted government incentives are helping firms move up the value chain. One of the larger programs is the Productivity and Innovation Credit, where Singapore has budgeted S$3.6 billion ($2.6 billion) for 2016-18. Another S$400 million automation support package is aimed at small firms, and a S$500 million Future of Manufacturing plan encourages testing new technologies. The Ministry of Trade and Industry says it encourages manufacturers to "embrace disruptive technologies" such as robotics. "These measures will help ensure the manufacturing sector in Singapore remains globally competitive," it said, attributing the strong semiconductors performance partly to demand from China's smartphone market and improved global semiconductor demand. For Feinmetall Singapore, whose products are used for testing semiconductor wafers, grants covered about two thirds of the $100,000 cost of a needle-bending machine it needed to help overcome an island-wide labor shortage. "If we use the same methods as before ... I don't think we can expect any growth," said Sam Chee Wah, the company's general manager, noting Feinmetall Singapore struggled to retain some workers for much longer than a year, even after nine months of training. GlobalFoundries Singapore, a wafer maker, has spent $50 million on 77 robots, each able to perform the tasks of 3-4 workers. This has helped the company move up the value chain into parts for self-driving cars and security-related chips for credit cards and mobile payments, says general manager KC Ang. Singapore now has about 400 robots per 10,000 workers, the world's second-highest density after South Korea. Most robots are used in electronics, according to the International Federation of Robots. And further developments are in the pipeline. AUTOS, IOT At its Singapore manufacturing hub, Infineon is developing productivity tools such as robotics and automated guided vehicles which it hopes to deploy to other production sites. Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors is also developing vehicle-to-everything technology, enabling vehicles to communicate with each other and roadside infrastructure. Instead of trying to compete with high-volume producers such as China or Malaysia, Singapore has shifted to higher-end products, said Jagadish C.V., head of Systems on Silicon Manufacturing, another firm making semiconductor wafers. "So you do the products which others can't do so easily," he said, adding his firm had shifted most of its output to specialized products, such as chips used in smartphones. CK Tan, President of the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association, noted the global chip industry is automating faster than other sectors because of cost pressure, a need to eliminate or reduce error, and have a consistent process control. "In Singapore, it's even more important for us to ... look at how to speed up or increase the level of automation because of the lack of skilled resources," he said. "The industry has recognized it has to move upscale. The government incentives play a part to allow the manufacturing side to be relevant, to be at least cost competitive." The Ministry of Trade and Industry said first-quarter growth in manufacturing - up 6.6 percent year-on-year, while overall GDP was up 2.5 percent - was due mainly to output expansion in electronics and precision engineering. Integrated circuits were Singapore's biggest export product among non-oil domestic exports in January-March, topping S$6 billion ($4.29 billion), according to trade agency IE Singapore. ($1 = 1.3972 Singapore dollars) (Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, Jessica Yu in HONG KONG and Orathai Sriring in BANGKOK; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Ian Geoghegan) By My Pham HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam's government said Facebook has committed to work with it to prevent content that violates the country's laws from appearing on its platform. In February, communist Vietnam complained about "toxic" anti-government and offensive content on Facebook and Google Inc.'s YouTube and pressured local companies to withdraw advertising until the social media firms found a solution. Facebook's commitment came during a meeting between its Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert and Vietnamese information and communication minister Truong Minh Tuan in Hanoi on Wednesday, a statement on the government's website said. "Facebook will set up a separate channel to directly coordinate with Vietnam's communication and information ministry to prioritize requests from the ministry and other competent authorities in the country," the statement said. The firm will also remove fake accounts and fake content about senior government officials, it said. A Facebook representative said the company had a clear and consistent process for governments to report illegal content. "We review all these requests against our terms of service and applicable law. We are transparent about the requests we receive from government and content we restrict pursuant with local law in our Global Government Requests Report," the representative said in an emailed statement. The report shows no content restricted at the request of Vietnam's government between July 2015 and June 2016, the latest period for which Facebook has published data. Vietnam's government tolerates little dissent and human rights groups and western countries have criticized its arrest of anti-government bloggers. While Vietnam makes up a very small part of the business operations of companies like Google and Facebook, it is one of Asia's fastest growing economies and a hot investment target for global consumer brands. Within Vietnam itself, YouTube and Facebook account for two-thirds of digital media market share in Vietnam, according to local agency Isobar Vietnam. Facebook has faced an unrelated challenge this week in nearby Thailand, where a man broadcast himself killing his 11-month-old daughter in a live video on Facebook that stayed on the platform for 24 hours before being removed. (Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Richard Pullin) Mukhaye Damali Former FDC presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye has blamed the current hunger and security situation in the country on mismanagement of politics in the country. Addressing journalists at his offices at Katonga road, Besigye says that parliament yesterday moved a motion requiring that state of emergency be declared after hunger hitting a number of districts due to drought that the country experienced last year. Besigye says that food shortage is not the only problem the country is currently facing but also security crisis and economic crisis lamenting that this has been building for a long time but the government has been paying a deaf ear. He notes that since citizens do not have control over their politics and resources which are in hands of few citizens, the issues mentioned above will never be addressed unless there is a change in the current governance. He notes that as a party, they are going to continue distributing food to Ugandans urging Ugandans to respond to the call to collect food and distribute to poor Ugandans. By Moses Ndhaye The Visiting Equatorial Guinea president Teodoro Obiang Nguema has asked African leaders to put in place policies which compel government departments and other agencies to begin buying locally made products from Africa. He says relying on buying and importation of foreign products will continue to affect African economic development. President Obiang made the remarks, while addressing a press conference on his arrival at state house Entebbe yesterday. He says the efforts being made by various African leaders to promote industrialization in Africa will remain futile if such policies are ignored. However, president Museveni underscored the need for African leaders to unite and promote peace in the region. Recently president Museveni ordered government ministries, departments and agencies to begin procuring products locally made in Uganda. The two presidents will this morning grace the ongoing oil and gas convention at Kampala Serena Hotel. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. High 66F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear. Low 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Dozens of sites will be available across the area this weekend for people to hand over unused, unwanted or expired prescription medications through a drug takeback program. This includes sites within or near the four-county area. The nationwide Prescription Drug Take Back initiative is sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Numerous police departments and other public safety agencies will have collection sites in all parts of Indiana, including nearly all Indiana State Police posts. There are also sites nearby in Ohio and Michigan. The collection sites are scheduled to be open 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. Organizers say the program aims to prevent prescription drug abuse and theft through proper disposal of those medications. The DEA reports more than 29,000 pounds of drugs were collected in Indiana during last years takeback day. The area drop-off sites include: Indiana State Police, District 22, 5811 Ellison Road, Fort Wayne Branch County Sheriffs Office, 580 Marshall Road, Coldwater, Michigan Sturgis Police Department, 122 N. Nottawa St. Sturgis, Michigan Williams County Sheriffs Office, 1425 E. High St., Suite 103, Bryan, Ohio Peering into the past, wide-eyed youngsters watched the major players of Holy week leap from the pages of Biblical history. And in the process, they learned about Jesus of Nazareths final week of ministry on earth. Jesus was crucified a lot and thats how he got into heaven, remarked seven-year old Joshua Soto who along with his family joined 45 others last Sunday for a Journey to the Cross at Prince of Peace Lutheran in West Salem. The event was held to coincide with the last day of Sunday School for church year, but according to Pastor Jason Schockman, it also had another purpose. Many people just go to church on Easter and dont get a sense of what led up to it. Theres a lot that went on prior, he explained. Schockmans wife Colette added that on Palm Sunday the Sunday School discussed the events of Holy week and then acted them out at the Journey event the week after Easter. The two events bookended Easter, she said. The last time the church sponsored the event was 2011. As the youngsters began their journey, each received a passport book to be stamped at each station. They met the angel that announced the empty tomb and witnessed the disciples foot-washing at the last supper. Ed Schmidt, a church elder played a Roman citizen who displayed a crown of thorns weaved from the actual plant that grows in the Holy Land. He also demonstrated the whip that was used to beat Jesus. Meanwhile, outside Daniel Kolander played the Roman centurion, explaining to his listeners that as a soldier he had many responsibilities, but the one he disliked the most was crucifixion, particularly of the man named Jesus. Children had the opportunity to pound nails into small boards, simulating the centurions grizzly work. Jesus had nails in his hands and feet, said five-year old Lillian Oeltjen of Holmen after she finished her board. Schockman summed up the event, saying that the intent was to give people a sense of what exactly went on during Holy week. The point is, we want kids to know that Jesus loves them, he said. A La Crosse womans play focusing on sexual abuse of military service men and women by their superiors and peers not only has earned a life-changing label but also will be featured on a national stage. Rachel Carters play, Speaking Out: Why I Stand, will be featured July 21-23 at the Womens Museum of California in San Diego. The sponsoring organization is the American History Theater in San Diego, which also has contracted her to lead workshops for survivors of military sexual trauma that weekend. Carter, who was raped in 2004 by a fellow soldier who was never punished, pulled the play together in 2013 from stories of assaults she and others endured to give voice to MST survivors. I spent over six years drowning in silence because I thought I was the only one, Carter said in an interview last week. Invisible War awareness Carter said she realized that there are legions of MST survivors when she saw The Invisible War, a highly acclaimed documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 and piled up awards. The Invisible War unveiled the depth of a sexual assault scandal in the military that had been cloaked in secrecy in a system that was more prone to punish and banish victims than seek justice for them. Meanwhile, it left predators free to continue their abusive behavior in the military, as well as in civilian life, Carter said. I realized that I wasnt alone and that I needed to stand up and speak out, Carter said. This theater project was a way for survivors and loved ones to share their stories and poems anonymously or with their first names. It gave them an outlet and helped them feel a part of this movement toward awareness and justice even if they are not in a place to put their face in front of it, she said. MST victims stories and poems about their experiences are the bones of the play, while actors read each entry to provide the flesh. In her own case, after she filed a charge, she was interrogated for several days and, ultimately, her commander forced her to drop the charge, she said. Carter was written up for fraternization, which was banned, but her assailant was not written up. Seeing him repeatedly in a subsequent assignment exacerbated her post-traumatic stress. The Army ultimately gave her an honorable discharge, based on its allegation that she had a personality disorder. She said she considers herself fortunate in receiving an honorable discharge, which is uncommon for MST victims. Thousands of cases reported, unreported The American History Theaters decision to stage Speaking Out is gratifying to Carter because it will help raise awareness of the extent of MST, she said. Although Congress and the military have promoted efforts to end the problem, it persists, with thousands of cases reported every year and even more unreported ones, according to U.S. Defense Department statistics. Many victims dont report assaults because they are afraid nobody will believe them or they will face retaliation instead of receiving help. The other important part of getting the play out there and into a theater like the American History Theater is that not only are these stories being heard across the country but also, hopefully, more survivors will hear them and realize they are not alone, she said. Ive had a lot of positive feedback from the survivors because it has helped them feel like their story what happened to them matters and that people are finally listening to what they have to say. This project is about helping victims become survivors just as much as it is about helping raise public awareness to the epidemic of military sexual trauma, Carter said. Its not just a military issue. Its a public issue, she said, adding that the play includes stories of survivors who were assaulted as far back as the 1960s and 70s. This has been going on for generations. Speaking Out: Why I Stand, which lasts 45 minutes to an hour and has its own Facebook page, premiered with a cast of 15 area actors in April 2014 at The Muse Theater in La Crosse. Among the actors was Dawn Noling of La Crosse, whose role was reading Rachels story and who describes the play as emotional and timely. Noling found one of the stories, written by Marine Corps veteran named Gary, particularly moving. He told of the return home of his daughter, Carri, after her military discharge in 2009. Gary didnt know the details of why his 20-year-old daughter received a bad conduct discharge until five days after she came home and drank herself to death, Noling said. Her father then discovered, after finding and reading her diaries, that she had been raped and was suffering from MST and PTS. These stories need to be heard, Noling said. So many young people have had to carry this burden of being sexually assaulted, but nobody believed them. They think their life is over. Thats what happened to Carri. After the play, Noling and Gary, who lived in Ohio, became Facebook friends, communicating increasingly through May and June 2014. They became engaged on July 12, 2014, and were married on Aug. 8, 2015, when she took his surname: Noling. That tragedy became something beautiful for us, she said. The play is very personal for me. These days, Gary has his times. Its hard to lose a child, especially in such a tragic, tragic way, Dawn said. He had no idea she had been raped, until he found her diaries. Survivor to advocate to lawyer Another Why I Stand story is that of Brian Lewis, who was in the Navy when a higher-ranking shipmate raped him in 2000. He also is in The Invisible War. Told by a senior officer not to cooperate with the Navy, Lewis said during an interview that he grappled with the trauma for a year before evolving into a survivor. He then became an advocate, including becoming the first male survivor of military sexual trauma to testify before Congress. The Twin Cities resident is within days of becoming a lawyer in Minnesota, where he can ramp up his advocacy. Rachels work is very valuable it is life-changing because it shows an actual persons face you might see on the street, he said. His rationale for submitting his story for the play: I hoped that it would put more light and more awareness to a topic that has fallen by the wayside and needs to be brought back. The American History Theater opted to showcase Carters play because it meshes with the theaters two missions, said co-founder and President Hal Berry, a 74-year-old retired history and theater professor. The first is to re-create national history on stage, warts and all, and the second, to help men and women in the military, as well as those no longer active, said Berry, who taught at a community college near St. Louis before retiring and moving to San Diego. Berry chose San Diego because of fond memories from his days in the Navy there right out of high school in 1960. Resistance to retirement prompted him to get a part-time gig teaching at Palomar College in San Diego. There, he met Amber Robinson, a student who would become the theaters co-founder in 2014 after she graduated. Amber is an incredible human being who served in the Army for 10 years, including three tours in Afghanistan and received the Bronze Star for Valor, Berry said. She is so talented, and her heart is so (attuned to) helping veterans who have had sexual trauma, he said. A keynoter at one of the theaters workshops told Berry and Robinson about Carters play, said Berry, who handles the theatrical side of the history organization, while Robinson coordinates events and workshops. You need to connect with her, Berry recalled the woman saying. This lady has a play, and we decided it would be a great thing. There is a lot of interest because San Diego is such a military town, and military people like history, Berry said. We have a huge VA here, and with the issues veterans face, its a ready topic. Females in Army see MST all the time Robinson, who is vice president and communications director for the nonprofit organization, said, As a female in the Army for 10 years, you see MST all the time. After their referral to Carter, the cards fell together, and we partner with the womens museum for the venue, she said. As for Carter herself, she seems different today from she was during an interview four years ago, when her demeanor was subdued, cautious and somewhat closed in even as she continued her struggle to overcome the trauma. Now, her voice is animated, more buoyant and hopeful. Carter attributed that change to the confidence she has gained from the therapeutic value of creating the play, her involvement with contributors and hearing from people who have found the play valuable to their recoveries. Noling echoed those impressions, saying, While reading for the play, I got to know Rachel and where she is coming from and her emotional connection. She is in a happy relationship (being remarried last fall) and has a lot of support from her family, Noling said. She is more secure because she has so much to look forward to. Despite collecting the information, by law, for more than 40 years, public schools continue to struggle to report accurate and comparable civil rights data to the Department of Education. The issue is whether different districts are providing the same type of data and working on the same definition, said outgoing Sparta Superintendent John Hendricks, when asked about comparing his districts attendance data with other districts. He said it was only valid to compare Sparta attendance figures among district schools, not across district lines. The U.S. Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights has been collecting data on the nations public school districts since 1968 when Congress passed the first laws mandating the reporting. The office collects information broken down by race and gender on such topics as advanced placement enrollment, student and teacher absenteeism, disciplinary action and bullying, producing almost 2,000 variables in the process. The data is used by the Education Department, national education organizations, state agencies and local school districts to monitor trends and identify areas that need improvement. But the data is only as accurate as the numbers schools and districts provide. Several area school districts have disputed numbers in the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection, even though the districts themselves are responsible for providing the numbers and verifying their accuracy. Officials at a few school districts went so far as to say people shouldnt compare numbers between different districts and across state lines. Data collection has begun for the 2015-16 dataset, and local education leaders and national policy experts have stressed the importance collecting accurate data for the survey. Despite the challenges, many experts say the data will only improve in quality as district leaders and states become more familiar with the definitions and requirements. (The Department of Education) must encourage teachers and schools to take accurate data, said Hedy Chang, the executive director of national nonprofit Attendance Works. States have to make sure data is comparable and that they are using the same definitions. Powerful statistics Federal civil rights data is used in many ways. When the data was first collected nearly 40 years ago, the primary reason was to help the education department enforce the nations civil rights laws a use that remains important today. As the amount of and types of data collected for the CRDC have increased, the department has also used the statistics to develop policy agendas. National organizations use the data to track trends in sexual harassment, chronic student absenteeism and student participation advanced placement and other honors classes. When it first released the data last summer, the CRDC highlighted chronic student absenteeism students missing 15 or more days of school per year. The department also focused on school discipline, which continues to show racial disparities, and the struggles of some schools and districts to provide teacher and staffing equity. This was the first year Education Department collected data that helped Attendance Works with its mission. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., Chang said her organization focuses on student absenteeism as a strong indicator of achievement and as a problem teacher and district interventions can solve to contribute to higher student performance. The federal CRDC data on absences is valuable to her organization because it allows analysis of trends and provides a way to compare schools and states. Before the data was collected, we had guesses from a few states, Chang said. This is the very first time we have had good data. The data is also important to schools, which use the numbers to augment other data collected on student achievement. The state of Wisconsin doesnt collect standardized data on student bullying, for example, so the CRDC allows districts to compare their numbers with peers in the state and around the nation. The data is very important, Holmens interim director of pupil services, Jill Mason said, as it allows the district to judge its progress. It allows staff members to see where resources are needed and new systems can be put into place. Do we have an issue? Are we doing well? she said. If we have an issue, do we have to put some new systems in place? At the La Crosse School District, Superintendent Randy Nelson said the CRDC data provides a powerful tool for the district to see how it measures up. The idea of continuous improvement is important for many school districts, and having access to this kind of data is a big part of the process. We want to get out in front of our data as quickly as we can, Nelson said. It helps us find out how different practices can provide more equity. Errors in the data Errors in the local data first came to light in the aftermath of a summer 2016 Associated Press investigation into chronic student absenteeism numbers. Reporters with the AP organized the data, inviting media outlets to localize the numbers for their readers. After the state of Florida later retracted all of the numbers schools submitted to the Department of Education, the AP pulled the data, saying it could no longer verify the accuracy of the numbers. But Florida isnt the only state with problematic data. When asked, officials at the La Crosse School District, which showed chronic absenteeism rates as high as 90 percent at some schools, said the numbers they had submitted were not accurate. They provided corrected numbers, which had lower absenteeism rates, and said they submitted those corrections to the Education Department but are still awaiting confirmation. According to the Education Department, a chronically absent student is a student who is absent for any reason for more than half a day on 15 or more school days during the year. The La Crosse district used the wrong definition for absences and counted absences for such things as taking school-sponsored field trips. Other districts also used their own definitions, resulting in such outliers as Prairie du Chien High School, which reported a 92 percent chronic absenteeism rate. Sparta High School, where students are marked absent for the day if they miss even only one period, reported a chronic absenteeism rate north of 70 percent. Data on teacher absenteeism was reported in similarly inconsistent fashion. While La Crosse officials verified the accuracy of the numbers in its data set, administrators at Onalaska disputed the numbers but declined to share updated data, saying such an undertaking would require time and resources the district didnt have. According to data on more than 20 schools in western Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota, about 20 percent of teachers miss more than 10 days of class during the school year. The Onalaska district showed more than 32 percent of teachers missing 10 or more days, and Holmens Viking Elementary reported a rate higher than 46 percent. Data on bullying and harassment also seems to show discrepancies. Several school districts, including Holmen and Onalaska, report much lower incidence rates than the La Crosse School District. La Crosse numbers had their peculiarities: Data La Crosse reported to the Department of Education included identical numbers for each of the three types of bullying considered. The American Association of University Women has also decried the data, especially the fact that more than two-thirds of school districts in the nation reported no cases of bullying or harassment during the 2013-14 school year. Officials at the Department of Education declined multiple requests for interviews about the data. Despite a few outliers, a spokesman for the education department said his organization stands behind the accuracy of the CRDC, which costs the department $2.8 million every two years. OCR believes that it is extremely important that school districts report accurate data and has implemented numerous steps to promote accuracy in reporting, the education department spokesman said. Ultimately, the quality of the CRDC data depends on accurate collection and reporting by the participating districts. Improving accuracy Many organizations that use and monitor the CRDC data argue for improving the data collection process rather than scrapping the CRDC. The topics the department of education collects information on are important, they said. Because the CRDC is so robust and comprehensive, a lot of organizations such as ours use the data to fulfill our mission, National Council on Teacher Quality state policy managing director Elizabeth Ross said. As more people become aware of data such as the CRDC, accuracies and errors are highlighted, said Paige Kowalski, the executive vice president for the Data Quality Campaign, a national organization that monitors quality in state and federal education data and advocates improvement. Districts and states become more aware of their obligations and the quality naturally improves as educators become more comfortable and skilled at reporting it. Some districts, including Winona and La Crescent in Minnesota, stood by their numbers. They also said they could understand how problems crop up. Many districts pull data from digital management systems such as Infinite Campus or Skyward. Those systems might be set up to track district-specific data or data that aligns with state reporting requirements, which might not line up exactly with federal definitions. The CRDC requirements, which district administrators said can take several people and a total of more than 100 hours to report each year, is just one of many data reporting demands districts face. Different reports may have competing requirements, adding to reporting complexity. There is just so much more collected now, said Regina Siegel, La Crosse director of pupil services and learning supports, holding up a 2-inch-thick binder containing all of the definitions and requirements of the 2015-16 CRDC. This is our manual now. Both Mason and Siegel said when errors in the data are identified, their districts are quick to note them. Both districts have dedicated more time and resources to making sure federal definitions are being followed and numbers are accurate. I dont think anyone is afraid to be accountable to the data, Nelson said. If you cant be fully certain the data is comparable it makes things difficult. In mid-October, the intersection of State Highway 12/27 and County Trunk A will have a shiny new Kwik Trip, which has traffic experts concerned about the amount of traffic in the intersection. They [Wisconsin DOT] are telling me right now that with the Kwik Trip going into that intersection and with the traffic it would warrant stop and go lights, Randy Anderson said, the highway commissioner for Jackson County. The additional Kwik Trip will significantly increase the intersection delay experienced by eastbound left turns on County Road A at Highway 12/27, said Diana Maas of the Wisconsin DOT. Hans Zietlow, the director of real estate for Kwik Trip, expects the new Kwik Trip to bring in between 1,500-2,000 customers a day. The Wisconsin DOT estimates this will generate a total of 3,130 new trips in and out of the store each day. Along with these new traffic signals, the turn lanes would need to be extended. This would require one of the driveways for Subway and the driveway for the Scholze Ace Home Center rental location to be removed on County Trunk A. The traffic signal project is estimated to cost $300,000-$400,000, which is money neither the DOT nor the Jackson County Highway Department have in their budgets. Anderson says the DOT thinks this is a local issue, so he doesnt anticipate getting funding for the project soon. It may be a deal where Kwik Trip gets in there and gets established. We then notice that there is a problem at the intersection and maybe not, and maybe it will warrant highway safety and improvement dollars to get into there and improve that intersection, Anderson said. Maas said that currently the intersection is eligible for getting signals, but it is not required. Since the primary impact is to County Trunk A traffic, the Wisconsin DOT feels like this is a local issue. While she did say state funding for the project may be available at a later time, she also said that the Wisconsin DOT would be willing to issue a permit for the signal if the city and/or county paid for the project to reduce the timeline. In the meantime, the Jackson County Highway Department is requiring Kwik Trip to go down to one driveway and move it away from the intersection to help improve traffic flow in the area. Anderson says the driveway access permit for Kwik Trip was recently approved by the Jackson County Highway Department, so construction is set to begin soon. The new 7,000 square foot Kwik Trip is expected to employ 30 people. La Crosses Kaplan Professional Education offices are not part of the recent announcement that Purdue University has bought Kaplan University. Purdue staff announced Thursday that the public Indiana university system would acquire Kaplan University and create a new public university designed to expand access to higher education. Kaplan University is a for-profit college owned by Kaplan Inc., a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Co., with locations all over the U.S. It is primarily a distance learning institution that also maintains 15 physical locations across the United States, including an Indianapolis campus. Kaplan Professional Education offers professional licensing and operates an office in La Crosse. That entity, plus the Kaplan University School of Professional and Continuing Education, are not part of the deal and will continue to operate separately, a Kaplan spokesman said Thursday. To launch the new university, Purdue will acquire Kaplan University and its institutional operations and assets, including its 15 campuses and learning centers, 32,000 students and 3,000 employees, Purdue announced in a written statement. All existing Kaplan University students and faculty will transition to the new university, which will use the Purdue name in some fashion not yet identified. The new university will be distinct from others in the Purdue system, relying only on tuition and fundraising to cover operating expenses, and not on state funding, according to Purdue. It will operate primarily online. Indiana resident students will receive a tuition discount. Nearly 150 years ago, Purdue proudly accepted the land-grant mission to expand higher education beyond the wealthy and the elites of society, Purdue President Mitch Daniels said in a written statement. We cannot honor our land-grant mission in the 21st century without reaching out to the 36 million working adults, 750,000 of them in our state, who started but did not complete a college degree, and to the 56 million Americans with no college credit at all. None of us knows how fast or in what direction online higher education will evolve, but we know its role will grow, and we intend that Purdue be positioned to be a leader as that happens. A careful analysis made it clear that we are very ill-equipped to build the necessary capabilities ourselves, and that the smart course would be to acquire them if we could. We were able to find exactly what we were looking for. Todays agreement moves us from a standing start to a leading position. Purdue currently serves students at its main campus in West Lafayette and at two regional campuses. The new entity will become a third level in the Purdue system, and will operate almost exclusively online. Betty Vandenbosch, Kaplans current president, will become chancellor of the new university. The plan still requires approval from the U.S. Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission. Both Purdue and Kaplan universities are accredited by the HLC. Gov. Mark Dayton has been a longtime opponent of efforts to allow public money to follow students to private schools. But the governor said he was asked to publicly repeat his position, so thats what he did Wednesday: I will veto any bill that has vouchers attached to it. Thats not all, though. Dayton clarified that his opposition extends beyond the traditional concept of private school vouchers. He opposes provisions in the House and Senate tax bills that would give breaks to people who donate to organizations that deliver private school scholarships, saying too many charities would want similar status. But Daytons threatened veto would take down more than tax credits for scholarship donations. It could take down the much larger tax bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on. New tax breaks for businesses, farmers, senior citizens and students are on the line. Sen. Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, the chair of the Senate tax committee, said the state already subsidizes private preschool scholarships, which Dayton supports. He also noted that state grants benefit private colleges. These are not vouchers, he said. Were not sending them a check and saying take it where you want. Its a credit just like we already have established in law for higher ed, for pre-K and for many other things that we do already. Republican leaders have been criticizing Dayton for refusing to join in budget bill negotiations until the House and Senate work out their differences. For the governor to come out this early and start talking vetoes, when he hasnt even negotiated a target yet, I think is a bit premature, said Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, who chairs the House taxes committee. Meanwhile, Dayton is holding firm on previous veto threats. Those include a lack of funding for public school prekindergarten programs, which he said is totally unacceptable. He will reject any bills that restrict abortion rights. And an acceptable transportation bill must have money for transit, Dayton said. The governor also doubled down on an earlier threat to veto any attempt to delay or weaken the states new buffer-strip requirement around farm fields. Dayton said the 2015 law is needed to address a water quality crisis. Youve got rivers and streams and small lakes in southwestern Minnesota where theres no aquatic wildlife, Dayton said. Fish cant survive. Im not making this up. Im just dealing with it, and the Legislature needs to deal with it. Dayton said he wont accept any buffer changes this session. But he might be open to some tweaking next session after the law has gone into effect. But Rep. Dan Fabian, R-Roseau, the chair of the House environment and natural resources committee, said there is strong opposition to the current buffer law. Fabian said he hears often from farmers, local government officials and others who want changes. To turn our backs on the concerns of rural Minnesota in this case I think would be doing a disservice and quite frankly be disrespectful to those folks, he said. BENSON, Minn. (AP) A plant in western Minnesota that burns turkey litter for power and was once heralded by politicians could soon be shutting down. Reed Anfinson, who serves on the city of Bensons economic development authority, said that 45 employees of Benson Power, formerly known as Fibrominn, were told this week that the plant could close. Xcel Energy has about a decade left on a contract to buy the power at a premium, but the utility company wants out. The costs to rate payers are near $100 million a year, the environmental benefits are minimal, and it just hasnt worked, said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, and chairman of the House energy committee. Company officials said in a statement that biomass power costs up to 10 times more than new wind power. As one of the industry leaders in reducing carbon emissions at a low cost to our customers, we want to pursue new and emerging technologies that are cleaner while still providing good economic value for customers, the statement read. In the 1990s, Xcel Energy sought permission to store radioactive waste in above-ground dry cask storage at its plant in Red Wing. The deal struck at the Legislature included a requirement that the company generate or purchase 125 megawatts of biomass energy. For the past decade, the plant has created work for turkey farmers and truckers who deliver biomass to the plant. Anfinson, who is also owner and publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News, said the plant accounts for a quarter of the citys current property tax revenues. A 29-year-old Tomah man was referred to the Monroe County District Attorney for allegedly assaulting a woman and making her frightened to leave her residence. A visibly distraught woman went to the police station and said she was attacked and imprisoned by Anthony Randall Van Dinter April 17. The woman said Van Dinter launched into an abusive tirade, and when she attempted to call police, Van Dinter disconnected the phone. She then attempted to grab her car keys but said Van Dinter slammed her hand in the door and head-butted her. She said Van Dinter dragged her to a bedroom and that she placed herself in a fetal position to protect herself. The woman said she remained in the bedroom all day because Van Dinter wouldnt let her leave the house. She told police she finally felt safe to leave when it was time for her to go to work. The report says the woman had bruises on her face and abrasions on her wrists. She told police that Van Dinter had been abusive before but said this was the first time she feared for her safety. Police arrested Van Dinter at the residence. He was referred for disorderly conduct, false imprisonment and battery. In other Tomah Police Department news: Lee J. Newbury, 28, Tomah, was referred to the Monroe County District Attorney after being accused of putting his hands around a womans neck. Police were dispatched to Dimensions shortly before 3:30 a.m. April 22 after a report of a physical confrontation. When police arrived at the scene, a man identified as Newbury flagged down the squad car and told police that a woman had locked him out of his truck and taken the keys. The report described Newbury as visibly intoxicated and unsteady on his feet. Police pulled up behind the truck in question and saw a woman exit the vehicle. The woman was crying and told police that she took the keys to Newburys truck because she believed he was too drunk to drive. She said Newbury attempted to pry the keys from her possession, put his hand around her neck and choked her. The report said the woman had red marks on her lower neck and upper chest. Newbury was referred for strangulation/suffocation. Terry Marks, 43, Tomah, was referred to the district attorney on multiple charges after an April 22 incident. Police were called to a Franklin Street residence and encountered a woman who complained of lower back pain. She told police that Marks kicked her in the lower back multiple times and had been physically abusive toward her during the past few weeks. Marks denied any altercation happened. He was referred for battery and disorderly conduct. A preliminary breath test registered a blood-alcohol count of .062, which triggered a bail jumping referral for violating a bond condition that prohibits him from consuming alcohol. John H. Bischoff, 54, Milwaukee, was referred to the district attorney for disorderly conduct. Police had three different contacts with Bischoff at McDonalds April 22. He was smoking in the restaurant during the third contact and told police he wanted to go to jail. He said he was distraught over the death of a close relative. Jeffrey S. Mohs, 44, and Katherine Marie Mohs, 41, both of Tomah, were referred to the district attorney for disorderly conduct after an April 22 incident. Police were called to a disturbance at a Grandview Avenue apartment. The report describes the residence as trashed with a broken chair against the wall and dirt from a flower pot throughout the kitchen. The report said the two yelled and directed obscenities toward each other. The argument reportedly escalated, and the two reportedly vandalized several of each others possessions. The report says neither person threw items at each other nor did the confrontation become physical. Katie Faulkner, 30, Tomah, was referred to the district attorney for bail jumping. She is accused for violating a bond condition that prohibits her from entering All American Do-It Center. Leadership was the focus of the Wisconsin Association of School Councils state meeting on Sunday and Monday. Four members of the Tomah High School Student Council attended the event. THS student Shelby Foss said the conference, which ran from April 23-24 in Madison, gave students tools to become better leaders. Its a conference that all the student councils in the state get to go to if youre a member of WASC, she said. Its really cool to meet all the people from different areas around Wisconsin, share ideas. There are dances there; there are a lot of fun activities to increase your leadership skills. One of the workshops focused on surveys and another focused on life after college, student Jenna Stott said. They were interesting and helpful, she said. One was on how to give and take feedback and conduct surveys that you actually get good results from and how to ... work with those results, she said. Then on (Sunday) there was one on college and how to prepare yourself for life after college while youre in college, which was really nice. It was unfiltered by like 20-year-olds, 25-year-olds. That was pretty fun to see that spin on it because you dont always get to see that. The THS student council members hope to incorporate some of what they learned at the conference in Tomah. Mallory Sweeney said the council hopes to use tools they learned at the conference to get more students involved at school. We learned how to further involve everyone and how to organize everything better and make sure everyone knows (whats going on) so that we have better attendance and that everything (flows smoothly), she said. Statistics from surveys could help, Foss said. A speaker (said), Make sure your surveys are short, make sure there are not multiple questions in (a survey), she said. I think sometimes thats what we might do wrong with our surveys, or we dont ask the right group of people. Student Jesse Arity said data collection is something the student council has been planning to pursue. Were going to collect data, and basically thats going to support us and help us get future results in the school (by) presenting it to administration, he said. Arity said the goal is to get stuff we want done (and have) everybody on board. The data will be collected after each event the school holds and then will be kept on file to improve events and get more students involved. Workshops were not all that were offered at the conference; there were also competitions, student council advisor Amy Ritter said. This was the first time Tomah participated in the competitions, she said. For the first time ever Tomah entered the speech contest, and we received a bronze, Ritter said. (Also) for the first time ever, Tomah entered in the writing conference and received a silver. Then our council, Shelby and another girl, Hannah Winchell, had submitted ... a project that they presented as a tri-fold ... and they received a gold on that. Another first for Tomah was the election of a student as a regional officer. Wisconsin has six regions and three representative per region. Foss was named the Region 6 secretary. Its something Ive always dreamed of being since freshman year, being one of those positions on the governing board itself, she said. Being able to represent our region as well as our region at the state level is really exciting, and I was ecstatic when I got it. Foss also won the Outstanding Honors Leadership award, and THS was recognized for the student council Region 6 fall summit the school hosted at the beginning of the school year. Kennedy Konsitzke and Jaden Jones from Tomah High School were recently chosen for the 2017 Kids from Wisconsin show troupe. Kids from Wisconsin will hit the road June 22 through Aug. 19. The theme of this years tour is Head Out on the Highway. Konsitzke is a senior and has been involved with choir, show choir and musicals. She teaches at Marilyn School of Dance, where she has danced since she was four years old. Jones, a sophomore, will be an understudy for the group. He has performed with choir, band, show choir and musicals. He also takes dance lessons at Marilyn School of Dance. In its 49th season, Kids from Wisconsin is expected to perform before more than 120,000 people across Wisconsin this summer. The group will stop in Tomah Tuesday, July 11 for a performance in the Tomah High School auditorium. Tickets can be purchased at First Weber Realtors or by emailing kfwtomahshow@gmail.com or calling 608-343-3133. So many citizens signed in at the 2017 Spring Fish and Wildlife Rules Hearings and Wisconsin Conservation Congress Vernon County meeting Monday, April 10 that it started 25 minutes late because people were still registering. The 71 citizens who attended were introduced to former Vernon County Fisheries Manager Jordan Weeks who is the new Mississippi River manager. Weeks introduced new Department of Natural Resources Vernon County Fisheries Manager Kirk Olson. DNR Wildlife Manager Dave Matheys, and wardens Shawna Stringham and Trevor Tracey represented the department, while Jason Leis, Greg Koelker, Sam Smith and Dave West represented the Conservation Congress. The meeting continued with Conservation Congress delegate elections. County citizens were given the chance to nominate and vote on their county delegates on the Congress. Incumbent Vernon County Conservation Congress Chairperson Koelker and representative West were nominated and elected by a voice vote to continue their representation for two years and three years, respectively. Leis, Tim Morgan and Smith also represent Vernon County but were not up for re-election. The purpose of the hearings is to provide the opportunity to make comments, ask questions and give input on proposed rule changes and Natural Resources Board and Conservation Congress advisory questions. After the elections was a presentation by County Deer Advisory Council Chairperson Leis. Next was proposed rule changes followed by the question: Do you favor establishing a hook-and-line harvest tag for muskellunge which would limit the harvest of muskellunge to one per year to promote the trophy aspects of Wisconsins muskellunge fishery? The resolution passed 28 to 21 in Vernon County and statewide by a vote of 1,912 to 1,865. Eight citizens submitted resolutions. Resolution 630117 passed 51 to 13. This would prohibit feeding deer statewide. It goes to the District Leadership Council. Resolution 632017 would allow live bait fishing for trout and harvesting trout during the early season in southwest Wisconsin. It was defeated 28 to 39, so no further action will be taken. Resolution 630317 recommending the DNR restores reliance on sound science to DNR policy, actions and communications was supported 61 to 2 and will be forwarded to the Legislative Committee. Resolution 630417 was for the DNR to assess the cumulative impacts of high-capacity wells as standard practice. It passed 61 to 1 and will be forwarded to the Environmental Committee. Resolution 630517 was for an environmental impact study of the risks of the Enbridge Pipeline 61 expansion and review of the condition of the pipeline. The resolution passed 58 to 3 and will be forwarded to the Environmental Committee. Resolution 630617 recommending changing the definition of a landowner passed 50 to 9 and will be forwarded to the Turkey and Upland Game Committee. Resolution 630717 about granting a turkey permit to any landowner valid only on their land passed 43 to 16 and will be forwarded to the Turkey and Upland Game Committee. 630817 requesting hydro-geological surveys be done in counties lacking them passed 60 to 3 and will be forwarded to the Environmental Committee. After the Citizens resolutions was the Wisconsin Conservation Congress County Meeting. Highlights of the DNR and the Congress public hearing questions relative to Vernon County include supporting a County Deer Advisory Council recommendation allowing CDACs to extend the archery deer season through Jan. 31 in farmland zone units that also have holiday hunts; 37 to 24. The group voted to support eliminating the fall turkey hunt drawing in favor of over-the-counter purchase of permits; 35-16. Two questions related to changing the walleye harvest rules on the Mississippi River were voted down in Vernon County but were overwhelmingly supported statewide. Vernon County voters supported a resolution allowing online voter accessibility to the hearing questions; 38 for to 28 against. Statewide, the vote was split at 35 counties approved to 35 counties rejecting with two in a tie, so the resolution passed. The use of lights to scan while night hunting for predators was voted down here 13 for to 36 against but supported statewide. There were two questions related to high-capacity wells. One would require public notice to residents within a 2-mile area when there is an application for a high-capacity well. The other would allow suspension of permits if a high-capacity well caused impact or impairment. The two were supported 60-0 and 59-1 respectively and passed in all 72 counties. A study to initiate a sandhill crane hunting season was voted down 12 to 45 but was supported in 52 counties. A rail safety measures resolution was supported 58-0 and passed statewide. A proposal to give CDACs the authority to institute earn-a-buck in areas where they are trying to maintain or reduce the deer herd was supported 28 to 8 opposed. The group also supported an incentive program that would provide tax breaks, deductions, etc. for property owners who allow access to deer hunting, 23 to 10. This passed in 59 counties. The annual hearings are held simultaneously in all counties. According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, more than 5,000 people attended statewide. For more information visit http://dnr.wi.gov/About/WCC/springhearing.html. 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(3) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (2) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (4) May 28 (4) May 27 (3) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (6) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (5) May 11 (4) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (8) Mar 11 (6) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (5) Mar 03 (7) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (7) Feb 03 (9) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (6) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (7) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (8) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (6) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (6) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (8) Nov 09 (8) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (8) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (3) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (5) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (5) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (5) May 26 (7) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (5) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (3) May 07 (6) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (6) May 03 (4) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (7) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (7) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (4) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (5) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (6) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (5) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (3) Feb 29 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (2) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (5) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (2) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (1) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 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(4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (5) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (2) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (2) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (4) Nov 15 (6) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (2) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (7) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (2) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 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Mar 22 (2) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (2) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Abstract The two major cities of the transnational Oresund region, Denmarks capital city Copenhagen and Swedens third largest city Malmo, are connected physically by bridge and are in many respects a single metropolitan area. However, the national-level responses to Europes refugee crisis have undermined efforts to integrate the economic, transport and other aspects of the Oresund. In January 2016, Swedish border controls went into effect to stem the flow of thousands of refugees who sought to leave Denmark for the more hospitable Sweden. The disruption brought upon by this development brings to light many social issues addressed by the local not national level. This essay focuses on these local impacts, examining what they indicate about the inadequacies of the current structural relationships between Europes local, national, and regional governments in the context of mass migration. I analyze these impacts using data compiled by the Eurocities network and through a case study of the Oresund region. First, I provide a brief overview of the role of cities in the legal framework for refugee admission and settlement, which places the exclusive decision making authority and policy responsibility at the national and regional level. Second, I examine two decision-making arenas in which cities have asserted the need for a greater voice: (a) the allocation of funds and support for refugee resettlement and inclusion, and (b) the establishment of border controls that affect local economies, using the Oresund region as a case study. Finally, I offer some observations about emerging relationships between local and national governments in Europe. In particular, I note the ways in which the refugee surge interacts with several simultaneous initiatives that are establishing stronger roles for local governments on the European and international stages, including the decentralization of functions that were once the exclusive province of nation states. KJ ABC/Randy Holmes; ABC/Randy HolmesBoth Iggy Pop and Lars Ulrich were friends of Lou Reed, and in an interview with Metallica's So What! fan magazine, the two musicians talk about working with the late Velvet Underground frontman. Eventually the conversation turns to Lulu, Metallica's critically-maligned collaborative album with Reed, which Pop says he "enjoyed." Ulrich revealed that Reed was "really saddened by the response" to Lulu. "The roles changed at the end where I became almost more maternal to him, and had to like sort of comfort him through this very difficult month when the record came out and it just got f*****g slammed," Ulrich remembers. You can read the entire, wide-ranging conversation, which took place during Pop's opening stint for Metallica's tour through Mexico last month, now via Metallica.com. A video clip of the discussion about Reed is streaming on RollingStone.com. In other Iggy Pop news, the Godfather of Punk's first three solo albums, 1977's The Idiot and Lust for Life and 1978's TV Eye Live, are being reissued on colored vinyl. All three records will be available in a limited edition bundle on June 2. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Thursday, April 27, 2017 Amy Howe on SCOTUSBlog recaps the argument of Maslenjak v. United States in the Supreme Court. She encapsulates the argument in her introduction: "[T]he justices were not especially sympathetic to the plight of Divna Maslenjak. The 53-year-old came to the United States as a refugee in 2000, fleeing ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. Maslenjak became a U.S. citizen seven years later, but last fall she was deported to Serbia. U.S. immigration officials stripped her of her citizenship after she admitted that she had lied about her husbands service in the Bosnian Serb military, but the justices seem likely to give her another shot at keeping it. Although they may not have been fans of Maslenjak personally, though, the justices were even less enthusiastic about the prospect of ruling for the government, expressing concern that such a ruling would give U.S. officials boundless discretion to take away citizenship based on even very minor lies." (emphasis added). Adam Liptak offers a similar analysis of the Justices' reaction to the U./S. government's position. Here is the transcript to the argument. Both sides were peppered with questions. Chief Justice Roberts seemed especially concerned with the U.S. government's position that the U.S. government might seek denaturalization of a citizen for virtually any misstatement on a naturalization petition (even one pertaining to speeding). The petitions ask extremely broad questions, including things like "have you EVER committed any crime for which you were NOT arrested?" His hypothetical to the U.S. government was whether the U.S. government could seek denaturalization for failure to disclose a speeding violation, which the naturalization petition would seem to call for even if the immigrant had not been cited or arrested for the offense. Justice Sotomayor wondered whether a failure to disclose embarrassing nicknames might result in the same; the petition asks for other names used by the immigrant seeking naturalization. Stay tuned. We should have a decision by the end of June. KJ https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/04/recap-of-the-supreme-court-argument-in-maslenjak-v-united-states-.html Thursday, April 27, 2017 The 2017 Outstanding International Corporate Counsel Award was presented this morning at the ABA Section of International Law Spring Meeting to Naosuke Fujita and Hiroki Inaba of Goldman Sachs Japan Co., Ltd. They were recognized for their pioneering work on behalf of the LGBT community in Japan and for their advocacy on behalf of same-sex marriage in Japan. The Outstanding International Corporate Counsel Award is given to a member of the Section of International Law who is a practicing attorney employed by a company or other entity as an in-house counsel and who has demonstrated a significant contribution to the legal profession and the furtherance of the practice of law in an international context (but not a government or international organization). The two individuals recognized today in Washington, D.C. are Naosuke Fujita, Managing Director and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs Japan Co., Ltd. and Hiroki Inaba, Vice President and Senior Counsel in the Goldman Sachs Legal Department. Both men work in Tokyo. (Pictured here from left to right are: Deniz Sadan Tamer (Co-Chair of the International Corporate Counsel Forum of the ABA Section of International Law); Hiroki Inaba of Goldman Sachs Japan; Sara Sandford (Chair of the ABA Section of International Law); Naosuke Fujita of Goldman Sachs Japan; and Peggy Kubicz Hall of Greene Espel PLLP in Minneapolis (Co-Chair of the International Corporate Counsel Forum of the ABA Section of International Law). Messrs. Fujita and Inaba were recognized for their pioneering work on behalf of the LGBT community in Japan and for their advocacy on behalf of same-sex marriage in Japan. They created several research and policy documents on LGBT rights and marriage equality, including a survey of same-sex marriage. They were also responsible for drafting a request to the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations () asking that this important and influential association of lawyers make a statement in support of marriage equality in Japan. More than 800 lawyers from around the world are attending this week's Spring Meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law. Messrs. Fujita and Inaba received a standing ovation from the audience of global lawyers for their work on LGBT rights and marriage equality in Japan. This was the first time that the award was presented to two individuals. Previous winners of the Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award are: Christine M. Castellano (2011); M. Catherine Vernon (2012); Ingrid Busson-Hall (2013); Alan Crain (2014); and Getchen Bellamy (2015). (mew) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/2017/04/golman-sachs-japan.html Thursday, April 27, 2017 A reciprocal one-year suspension has been imposed by the New Jersey supreme Court based on an identical Pennsylvania suspension. From the report of the Disciplinary Review Board The Joint Petition set forth the factual basis for respondents multiple Pennsylvania RPC violations. Specifically respondent agreed that, by letter dated November 10, 2011, he "reach[ed] out" to Dwayne Stevens, an employee with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, Bail Unit, in an effort to expand his criminal defense practice. The letter requested an opportunity for respondent to speak to Stevens "about the prospect of a mutually beneficial busines~ relationship." Respondent suggested they meet for lunch and, to that end, gave Stevens his phone number. On December 26, 2011, respondent sent similar letters to eight clerical assistants assigned to the bail unit in pretrial services at the Criminal Justice Center. In addition to proposing the same "mutually beneficial business relationship," respondent explained that he was "trying to find out who posts bail in Philadelphia so that [he] can follow up on [his] end." Further, he acknowledged that, although the requested information might be public, he was hoping they would expend the minimal effort and assist him. During the week of January 2, 2012, respondent approached Brittany Baggio, a court employee, at the information counter at the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia. He asked her to take a stack of his business cards and keep them at the information counter so she could distribute them to anyone looking for a lawyer. He also offered to pay Baggio if she gave a card to a prospective client who eventually retained his services. He suggested she give her name to the client or put her initials on the back of the card so he would know the source of the referral. He said the arrangement was "just between" them. Baggio refused to accept the stack of cards. Nevertheless, he placed the stack of business cards on the information counter and left. Prior to January i0, 2012, he returned to the information counter and left a stack of his business cards with a different court employee. Judge John W. Herron, Administrative Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Trial Division, conduct and, by letter dated respondent explain the improper became aware of respondents January 4, 2012, requested solicitation of referrals contained in the letters he sent to court personnel. Further, Judge Herron requested the names of all individuals to who respondent had made offers of compensation in exchange for business. Respondent was suspended from the court-appointed attorney list for the First Judicial District. For this conduct, the Joint Petition established that respondent violated Pennsylvania RPC 5.4(a), RPC 7.3(a)I, RPC 8.4(a), RPC 8.4(c) and RPC 8.4(d). The Joint Petition found, as an aggravating factor, that respondent "had been employed by the First Judicial District as a Juvenile Probation Officer since 2003, [and] was terminated from his employment for failing to return to work." As to the mitigation, the parties agreed that respondent admitted his misconduct and had been practicing law for only three years. For these violations, the parties agreed that a one-year suspension was the appropriate discipline, followed by a oneyear period of probation (with conditions). According to the OAEs brief, respondent "properly self-reported his Pennsylvania discipline" to the New Jersey disciplinary authorities. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/04/the-joint-petition-set-forth-the-factual-basis-for-respondents-multiple-pennsylvania-rpc-violations-specifically-responde.html The U.S. state of Arkansas has put three people to death in less than a week and another execution is planned for Thursday. Two of the prisoners were executed Monday the first double execution to be carried out in the southern U.S. state in 17 years. Officials in Arkansas recently announced plans to execute eight inmates over the course of four days by the end of April. Four of the planned executions have been blocked by legal action. The reason for so many executions in a short time is the state is running out of a drug used to carry out death sentences. The shelf life of the drug, called midazolam, is set to end at the end of April. Midazolam is one of three drugs used in a combination to carry out lethal injections in Arkansas. The drug is usually used by doctors to relax people and treat anxiety. In executions, it is used for the same purpose and is the first drug administered. The second drug, pancuronium bromide, is used to paralyze the body and stop breathing, while a third, potassium chloride, is given to stop the heart. State officials have said it is unclear when they would be able to replace the current supply of the drug for future executions. Megan McCracken is a lawyer and lethal injection expert at the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley Law School. She says planning so many executions in such a short time opens up many possibilities for dangerous mistakes to happen. To schedule two executions back-to-back four times in a very short amount of time just loads all the pressure into this very tight time frame. Really increasing the risk of mistakes and errors, and needlessly upping all of that pressure and risk. McCracken noted that the last time a state tried to execute two prisoners on the same night, one of the attempts ended up in a botched procedure. That execution involved the use of midazolam during a lethal injection execution in the state of Oklahoma in 2014. Officials admitted later that people performing the execution felt hurried in the procedure to get it done quickly and made mistakes. McCracken said she does not think Arkansas state officials had a good reason to plan eight executions over a period of a few days. The schedule was made based on the expiration date of the drug, which should not be the driving force for planning. The main reason for a shortage of execution drugs in Arkansas as well as many other states - is because most manufacturers do not want their drugs used to kill people. Many companies have requested that states do not use their drugs for this purpose. Some have even taken legal action in a bid to force states not to use their drugs for executions. McCracken says some states have passed laws keeping their source of execution drugs secret in order to avoid protests by companies and the public. She said the problem with this is that it takes away a level of oversight and accountability. She added that a problem with the three-drug method is that it creates a paralyzed state in which prisoners cannot really show any signs of trouble during the execution process. Once that prisoner is paralyzed, its impossible to see if he or she is conscious, suffering, struggling, in pain, etc. So no matter what, everything is going to look like it is going fine. Lethal injection is by far the most common method of execution in the United States. Some states also use electrocution, gas chamber, hanging or firing squad. Overall, the number of executions and level of support for the death penalty has dropped greatly over the past two decades. There were 20 executions carried out in the United States in 2016, the lowest level recorded in any year since 1991. This is half the number in 1996, and nearly five times lower than in 1999. Robert Dunham is the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. He said a drop in support for executions has been seen among all demographics, as well as across political and religious groups. However, public opinion surveys have shown that about 49 percent of Americans still favor the death penalty, while 42 percent oppose it. Dunham added that since 1973, 158 people have been released from death sentences after new evidence proved they were wrongly convicted. He said most research does not show clear evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. Americas death penalty has been criticized by some countries and international activist groups for being a violation of human rights. Dunham said this can lead U.S. diplomats to face questions on the issue when in discussions with other countries. When the United States has sought to get other countries to address human rights violations in their borders, the response that diplomats have frequently received is, Well when you stop executing people, we will maybe listen to you. Im Bryan Lynn. Bryan Lynn reported this story for VOA Learning English, with additional material from VOA News, the Associated Press and Reuters. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the death penalty and the methods used to carry it out? Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story shelf-life n. length of time something remains usable lethal injection n. shot administered as a means of carrying out the death penalty anxiety n. feeling of nervousness or worry botch v. do something badly due to carelessness of lack of skill accountability n. required to be responsible for something paralyzed adj. unable to move or feel part of the body conscious adj. to be awake and aware of things around you electrocution n. method of killing by electric shock chamber n. room used for a specific purpose deterrent n. something that makes someone decided not to do something This is Whats Trending Today. Do you know you can find the profile of Sudan, the worlds only male northern white rhinoceros on Tinder? Tinder is a smartphone app people use to find a date. Sudans profile says the fate of the species depends on me, and he enjoys travel and the outdoors. Since rhinos cannot use smartphones, who wrote the profile? Sudan lives in a wildlife conservancy in Kenya called Ol Pejeta. The conservancy created the profile to draw attention to the endangered species. There are only three northern white rhinos alive. Many were killed by poachers who took their horns to sell. In some cultures, the horns are used as special medicine. That is why they can be worth up to $50,000 per kilogram. The two female northern white rhinos are named Fatu and Najin. Conservationists said they have tried to get him to mate with the female rhinos. But neither of them has gotten pregnant. Animal experts are worried that the northern white rhino might become extinct. Sudan is 43 years old and may not live long. Most northern white rhinos only live between 40 and 50 years. That is why Ol Pejeta is working with Tinder to raise money for what are called Assisted Reproductive Techniques. One of these well-known techniques is in-vitro fertilization. That is where the egg of a female rhino is fertilized by the sperm of a male rhino. It becomes an embryo and then is implanted into a females uterus. In this case, they are hoping to use the more common southern white rhino to carry the embryo and hopefully give birth to a baby rhino. When people see Sudans profile on Tinder, they can give money to support the project. The conservancy hopes to raise $9 million for the project and to have 10 northern white rhinos in five years. Richard Vigne is the head Ol Pejeta. He says the eventual goal of the program is to introduce northern white rhinos back into the wild. And thats Whats Trending Today. Im Dan Friedell. Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on reports by the Associated Press and Reuters. Hai Do was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story date n. an occasion when two people who have or might have a romantic relationship do an activity together profile n. a brief written description that provides information about someone or something fate n. the future that someone or something will have conservancy n. an organization that works to protect animals, plants, and natural resources especially by purchasing and caring for areas of land endangered adj. used to describe a type of animal or plant that has become very rare and that could die out completely mate v. of animals : to have sexual activity in order to produce young embryo n. a human or animal in the early stages of development before it is born, hatched, etc. sperm n. a cell that is produced by the male sexual organs and that combines with the female's egg in reproduction uterus n. the organ in women and some female animals in which babies develop before birth Since Biblical times, the Jewish people have been inextricably bound up with the Land of Israel. In the days of King Solomon, when the Jews enjoyed a period of peace and tranquility, they were described as living in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. Kings 1 4:25. The same imagery is employed by the prophet Micah, in his foretelling of a future when everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. For Israels survivors of terror, especially its children whove lost both parents to the bloodlust of its enemies, and its parents whove lost children, the promise of peace comes late. The sobering words of our sages, that Israel is secured through suffering, ring painfully true to them. Yet some survivors continue to nurture a fierce bond with the Holy Land. In this article, we look at what happens when children lose both parents to terror. We consider the grandparents who are left to raise the surviving childrenoften infantsand the children, double orphans, scarred forever by the insanity of hatred that has destroyed their families. Scarred, but not defeated. Roee is a bright, energetic 14-year-old boy living in Jerusalem. He has dozens of friends at his yeshiva high school where he studies Torah at an advanced level. His grandfather loves to boast about his academic successes. The young man has big dreams for the future and has set impressive goals for himself. But Roee is not your average teenager. Last year, his bar mitzvah at Israels Western Wall made national, and even some international, headlines. His last name became known in Israel and to thousands around the world when his parents and siblings were slaughtered in their home by Arab terrorists. It was one of the most gruesome murders in recent Israeli history. Six years ago, on Friday night of March 11, 2011, the Fogel family was peacefully sleeping in their beds in Itamar, a settlement in Israels Samaria region. Roees sister, Tamar, who was twelve years old at the time, was out late at a youth group meeting. Two terrorists entered the Fogel home and stabbed to death parents Ehud (Udi) and Rut, and children Yoav, 11, and Elad, 4. Hadas, the youngest, a three-month-old baby was gruesomely murdered. When Tamar returned home that evening, she found the door lockeda sign that something was wrong. She woke up eight-year-old Roee through his bedroom window and urged him to unlock the front door. Tamar entered a horror scene of bodies and blood. Her two-year-old brother, Yishai, was lying next to his bleeding parents, crying and shaking them with his hands, trying to get them to wake up. Photos of the massacre elicited widespread horror not only in Israel, but around the world. In the Arab media, the attack was lauded as a heroic operation. Family members of the murderers described their relatives as heroes and legends. In short time, the headlines faded. Neighbors, friends and whole communities, as well as various organizations dedicated to aiding survivors of terror kicked in. Long after the cameras have left the scene, and long after it seems that some semblance of normal has settled in for the victims, the nightmare continues. Churban Bayit: The Destruction of a Home Since the start of the so-called First Intifada in 2000, twenty-four families have lost both parents to a terror attack. For some, the pain is fresh. Eitam and Naama Henkin were killed in front of their four children less than two years ago, on October 1, 2015, when terrorists sprayed their vehicle with gunfire. Two years ago or ten years ago, the pain, say survivors, never goes away. It becomes a lifelong accompaniment. Eleven years earlier, in December of 2000, Talia Kahane, 31, a childhood classmate of Rut Fogel, and her husband Binyamin Zeev Kahane, 34, were driving to their home in Kfar Tapuach when Arab snipers opened fire on their car. Minutes before the attack the couple had dropped off their 9-year-old son, Meir David, at Beit-El where he attended school. The couples five daughters, aged two months to 10 years, were in the car. Binyamin Zeev was killed instantly by a bullet to his neck and he lost control of the car. Talia, who was in the back seat with the infant, reached forward to grab the wheel, when she was shot as well. The car overturned, injuring some of the young girls. Talia was critically injured and died in the ambulance en route to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. The orphaned girls survived and made a full recovery. Aviva Herzlich, Talias mother, remembers feeling numbed by shock when she heard the news. It was like a punch in the gut. I couldnt think, I couldnt breathe. She immediately left her home in Tzfat and rushed to her grandchildren and has been with them ever since. Kahanes six children, Yehudit Leah, Meir David, Batya, Tzivya, Rivkah, and Shlomtziyon, were adopted by Talias younger sister and her husband who have eight children of their own. Herzlich lives next door. Talias sister, who also had an infant at the time of the attack, nursed two-month old Shlomtziyon together with her own child. After the attack on their family home, the three surviving Fogel children, Tamar, Roee and Yishai, were immediately adopted by their moms parents, Yehuda and Tali Ben Ishai, who have been raising them for the past six years. Yehuda, who lost his daughter, son-in-law and three beloved grandchildren in one day, says the surviving children gave him and Tali a reason to live. When you look at what happened with clear eyes, you can feel the utter devastation. It was literally a Churban Bayit like they refer to the Beit HaMikdash [Holy Temple]. To take a father, mother and three innocent children is to completely destroy a home, he explains. What we went through could permanently break many families. For Herzlich, sixteen years have passed since her childrens murder. The two oldest Kahane girls have since married and are building homes of their own. Though she remains optimistic about the future, she is still tested every day. The pain will be there forever. It leaves an indelible mark. We always feel the lack in our lives and miss them every day, she says. You learn to live despite the pain and the longing. Jay Litvin, who established and ran Chabads Terror Victims Project (CTVP) in Israel prior to his passing, wrote, while we tend to think of terror as that moment when the bus explodes or the bullet is fired, terror can continue its ripple effect, like a shockwave without end, well into the future. There is no road map to the end of terror for those who are already its victims. There is no hudna, no truce, no peace for the mothers and fathers, the children, the bereaved who continue to suffer as if the attack was yesterday or will, in their psyche, be again tomorrow. For many victims and the families left behind, the world was turned upside down and inside out in an instant. For young children, faith and trust in the safety of the world, in its very goodness, are brutally shattered. While diplomatic solutions are sought to end this possibility for the future, for the terror victim, the past remains the present and is moment by moment being projected into tomorrow, wrote Litvin. Rabbi Menachem Kutner, current director of the CTVP, notes that more than 3,000 victims and their families continue to need support and comfort years after their lives were first affected by terror. When an attack happens, CTVP sends an emergency response team to the site of the attack to determine how they can be of best assistance. But, say CTVP representatives, the real assistance is needed several days after the attack, when many of the wounded return home from the hospital to the havoc that now awaits them. By now, says Kutner, he and his team have unfortunately learned to assess the level of assistance survivors will need in the weeks and months to come, by their initial visits with them while they are still hospitalized. Some families will need moral support, others will need hot meals delivered and several basic needs looked after for them, and still others will need financial assistance on a large scale to get their lives back together, he says. In addition to providing their own assistance, CTVP volunteers help survivors navigate Israels bureaucratic National Insurance Institute to receive the assistance they need for medical expenses, rehabilitation, and pension. CTVP helps bereaved families with funerals, the shivah week, and the days and weeks following, when the reality of their loss sets in. We stay with these families as long as they need us, Kutner says. There is no end point to our help except the familys ability to re-enter their lives successfully. A Life Altered In the days and years following the Kahanes murder, Herzlich busied herself with the day-to-day care of her grandchildren to the exclusion of all else. Her son, Talias brother, was completing his IDF service when his sister was killed. In those days, the trauma was so overwhelming I could not function as a mother. Her son, she says visibly pained as she reflects on those first days of utter chaos, struggled to stay afloat without the benefit of adequate support. Today, at 34, he continues to live with the trauma. Another brother coped by diving headfirst into his work, his own young children witness to their father absent in all but the flesh. He dealt with his pain by just working late into the night and trying to lose himself in his work. His children suffered from the loss too. The ripple effects of the terror left yet another family traumatized in its wake. We all dealt with our trauma in different ways, Herzlich recalls. For ten years, we could not even talk about it. I didnt say a word. We were trying to protect the children. The elephant in the room was ignored, as each child, sibling and parent struggled with the overwhelming emotions of loss, anger and fear. But life continues even in the face of unbearable pain. After a decade, we finally started to put our lives back together. For the first time, I could start talking about it. In time, the family sought and received the emotional help they needed. The combined Bloch (Talias sisters family), and Kahane children became a single-family unit, and the love and support of the community brought much needed healing. Whenever I am with them, I just try to hug them, to let them know I am here and am never leaving them, says Herzlich. The two eldest Kahane daughters, who are now married with children of their own, have each pursued a career in psychology and therapy, hoping to use their personal experience of pain to help others. The Ben Ishais day-to-day reality has changed as well. Tali and Yehuda have taken on every aspect of child-rearing the surviving Fogel children, from daily school drop off and parent teacher conferences to navigating the teenage years. It is not easy to go back to being parents, says the grandfather. On the other hand, the responsibility to tend to the practical needs of the children has given him and his wife a path forward. We look at the children and we know that its not all over. Yishai, who was just two when his parents were killed, doesnt remember his mother. For him, his grandmother is his mother. We tell him about his mother and he knows he has an ima in heaven, explains Yehuda. But for him, his mother is my wife, who spoils him and loves him and cares for him. As the oldest, Tamar has the most memories of her parents. One month before their deaths, Udi and Rut threw her a large bat mitzvah party, a memory she treasures to this day. It was like a parting gift to her. They taught her all the fundamentals for living a meaningful Jewish life. She wants to take everything she knows about her parents, and everything they taught her into her life as an adult, explains Yehuda. Today, the 18-year-old is fulfilling her duties in the Israeli National Service. It is very important to her to talk about her mother. She is determined to continue her parents legacy. Roees tragic circumstances have built a deep inner strength, Yehuda relates. At his bar mitzvah he delivered a passionate speech about overcoming fear and the strength of the Jewish people. When you dont think of yourself as just being a part of a family but as part of the whole Jewish people, youll never be afraid of any challenge, he told his bar mitzvah audience. We have to carry on as a strong Jewish nation. Roees wants to be strong for others. The children do not want to be pitied, says his grandfather. They want to be normal. But they have special strengths to overcome the hand they have been dealt in life. Nothing about their lives is normal. Choosing Faith, Choosing Life On Pesach 2011, a month after the attack, the Fogels and Ben Ishais gathered around the Seder table just trying to get through the day. Eight-year-old Roee turned to his grandfather and told him that they needed to make a Misibat Hodaya, a thanksgiving celebration. The grandfather was surprised by the statement, but Roee insisted. We were saved! We need to thank G-d for that miracle, he said. And so, despite their staggering loss, the family made a party thanking G-d for the miracle of their three grandchildrens survival. I dont know how people who do not have faith or do not have a strong support system like we did, could possibly survive such a traumatic blow, says Herzlich. There are wounds in our hearts that will never heal. They may close slightly but the deep, deep pain will always be there. The only thing that keeps us going is our faith in the eternal soul and our hope to someday see them again. The families make a conscious decision to choose life. It strengthens us to know that our faith can help others and that Udi and Rut did not die in vain, says Yehuda. There is a purpose and reason in the huge toll we have paid. So many were inspired by their lives and have gone on to become better people because of them. To this day, people continue to talk about the Fogels lives and remember those who were viciously murdered for being Jewish in the Jewish homeland. Physical reminders of their loved ones also give the family hope. A yeshiva and a synagogue have been built in memory of those killed. Yehudas newborn granddaughter was named Rut. But the most enduring legacy, of course, are the children, especially when they find a way out of the depths of sorrow, to grow and live purposefully. As grandparents, says Yehuda, we are just awed by them. They give us such joy with their successes and accomplishments. Our task is simply to facilitate their lives by helping them as much as possible. We try not to get in the way. They are blossoming where they have been planted. Dusit International, one of Thailand's foremost hotel and property development companies, has signed a hotel management agreement with Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd. to operate the first ever hotel in the heart of Bangkok's world-famous Chatuchak Market. Forming part of Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd's new mixed-use development, Mixt Chatuchak (www.mixtchatuchak.com), the new hotel will comprise approximately 250 rooms and is strategically located a short walk from both the MRT (Mo Chit Station) and BTS (Chatuchak Station) mass transit rail systems, which provide easy access to all of Bangkok's main attractions. Don Mueang International Airport, which serves key domestic and regional destinations, is only 30 minutes' drive away. Chatuchak Market, also known locally as Jatujak or JJ, is located in the north of the city next to Chatuchak Park, one of Bangkok's largest green spaces, and near Or Tor Kor, recently named one of the world's best fresh markets by CNN. Comprising over 8,000 stalls selling everything from clothes and furniture, to art, ceramics, plants, souvenirs, drinks, food and even pets, JJ is one of Bangkok's top tourist destinations, attracting more than 400,000 shoppers every weekend. It is estimated that six out of every 10 tourists in Bangkok will visit the market during their vacation. Bang Sue Grand Station, which will replace the Bangkok Railway Station at Hua Lamphong as the terminus for all long-distance rail services from Bangkok, is also currently under construction next to JJ Market and is scheduled to open in 2019. The new station will be surrounded by several new commercial, business and residential projects. "JJ Market is a true Bangkok icon and we are delighted to have this opportunity to become part of its vibrant fabric," said Ms Suphajee Suthumpun, Group Chief Executive Officer of Dusit International. "With several exciting developments set to open near the market within the next few years, the area will only become even more appealing, and our new hotel will be perfectly positioned to meet the needs of the young, sophisticated travellers who visit the area seeking a distinctive localized experience." Ms Nontaya Apitanotai, the majority owner and Authorized Director of Dhanasansombut Development Co., Ltd., said, "Mixt Chatuchak is the only building located directly within JJ Market, making the mixed-use project and Dusit's new hotel a unique proposition for guests who will benefit from the large array of shops and services within our building as well as on their doorstep. Our companies share a complementary vision to impress the world with Thai hospitality, and by drawing on the energy, culture and vibrancy of the iconic JJ Market, we are confident this synergy will be a huge success." With 29 properties currently in operation across four brands in eight countries, Dusit International is in a significant growth phase which will see the number of Dusit properties reach 70 within the next three to four years across Southeast Asia, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the GCC region, Europe, and more key markets. Continuing the company's series of firsts, Dusit International recently became the first hotel operator in Thailand to to accept WeChat Pay, which allows Chinese guests to pay their hotel bills via the mobile e-payment platform initially at Dusit's owned properties in Thailand, and soon its other properties around the world. About Dusit International Established in 1948, Dusit International or Dusit Thani Public Company Limited (DUSIT) is a leading hospitality group listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Its operations comprise five distinct yet complementary business units: hotels and resorts, hospitality education, food, property development, and hospitality-related services. The group's portfolio of hotels, resorts and luxury villas includes more than 300 properties operating under a total of six brands (Dusit Thani, Dusit Devarana, dusitD2, Dusit Princess, ASAI Hotels, and Elite Havens) across 16 countries worldwide. The group also operates culinary schools and hospitality colleges in Thailand, plus catering companies for the education sector in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Dusit International's diversified investments in real estate development, hospitality-related services, and the food sector are part of its long-term strategy for sustainable growth, which focuses on three key areas: balance, expansion and diversification. For more information, please visit dusit-international.com. Sureerat Sudpairak Corporate Manager Public Relations +66 (0) 2200 9999 ext. 3321 Dusit Representatives of China and the European Space Agency are discussing potential collaboration on a human outpost on the moon and other possible joint endeavors, according to a spokesman for the European agency and Chinese media reports. The secretary general for Chinas space agency, Tian Yulong, first disclosed the talks about the envisioned lunar base in Chinese state media. They were confirmed yesterday by Pal Hvistendahl, a spokesman for the European Space Agency, or ESA. The Chinese have a very ambitious moon program already in place, Hvistendahl said. Space has changed since the space race of the 60s. We recognize that to explore space for peaceful purposes, we do international cooperation. China has launched its first aircraft carrier built entirely on its own, in a demonstration of the growing technical sophistication of its defense industries and determination to safeguard its maritime territorial claims and crucial trade routes. The 50,000-ton carrier was towed from its dockyard just after 9 a.m. yesterday following a ceremony in the northern port city of Dalian, where its predecessor, the Soviet-built Liaoning, also underwent extensive refurbishing before being commissioned in 2012, the Ministry of National Defense said. Development of the new carrier began in 2013 and construction in late 2015. Its expected to be formally commissioned sometime before 2020, after sea trials and the arrival of its full air complement. Vice chairman of Chinas Central Military Commission and Communist Party Central Committee member Fan Changlong presided over the launch, which came just three days after the anniversary of the Peoples Liberation Army Navys symbolic founding in 1949. Also attending was navy commander Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, a former commander of the South Sea Fleet responsible for defending Chinas claim to virtually the entire South China Sea. Reports of the launch said a bottle of champagne was broken across the ships bow and other craft in the port sounded their horns in celebration. Like the 60,000-ton Liaoning, which was purchased from the Ukraine, the new carrier is based on the Soviet Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style deck for taking off and a conventional oil-fueled steam turbine power plant. That limits the weight of payloads its planes can carry, its speed and the amount of time it can spend at sea relative to American nuclear-powered carriers. The main hull of the new carrier has been completed and its power supply put into place. Next up are mooring tests and the debugging of its electronic systems, the Defense Ministry said. China is believed to be planning to build at least two and possibly as many as four additional carriers, with one of them, the Type 002, reported to be already under construction at a shipyard outside Shanghai. They are expected to be closer in size to the U.S. Navys nuclear-powered 100,000-ton Nimitz class ships, with flat flight decks and catapults to allow planes to launch with more bombs and fuel aboard. Along with their role in protecting Chinas maritime interests, Chinese naval strategists see the carrier program as about having naval power commensurate with Chinas international status, to impress both external and domestic audiences, said Michael Chase, an expert on the Chinese military at U.S. think tank the RAND Corporation. The new carrier is likely to be seen as further evidence of Chinas desire to become the most powerful and influential country in the region, Chase said. That will be especially worrying to Indian security analysts who are already concerned about Beijings ambitions in the Indian Ocean, he said. India, along with Japan and Taiwan which also view Chinese carriers as threats, will likely respond by building new submarines and anti-ship missiles, said Ian Easton, a research Fellow at The Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia. Chinas expansionist behavior in the South China Sea and its aggressive efforts to undermine the security of Taiwan and Japan, in particular, have translated into a situation where few countries now trust that Beijing has benign motives, Easton said. China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be brought under control by force if necessary, and was seen as advertising that threat when it sailed the Liaoning through the Taiwan Strait earlier this year. According to Chinese reports, the new, as yet unnamed, carrier will carry 24 Shenyang J-15 fighters, based on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33, along with 12 helicopters for anti-submarine warfare, airborne early warning and rescue operations. That compares to 85-90 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters carried by a Nimitz-class carrier. The new carrier is part of an ambitious expansion of the Chinese navy, which is projected to have a total of 265-273 warships, submarines and logistics vessels by 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Naval Analysis. That compares with 275 deployable battle force ships presently in the U.S. Navy, Chinas primary rival in the Asia Pacific. The U.S. operates 10 aircraft carriers, has 62 destroyers to Chinas 32, and 75 submarines to Chinas 68. The U.S. Navy has 323,000 personnel to Chinas 235,000. China has offered little information about the roles it expects its carriers to play, although its planning appears to be evolving as it gains more experience. The Liaoning was initially touted mainly as an experimental and training platform, but in December was declared to be combat-ready and has taken part in live-firing exercises in the South China Sea, where tensions have risen over Chinas construction of man-made islands complete with airstrips and military structures. Christopher Bodeen, Beijing, AP MDT Explains | Why new carrier is significant China launched the navys second aircraft carrier, its first to be entirely homebuilt. While the 50,000-ton ship still needs considerable work before commissioning, analysts say its launch telegraphs Chinas ambitions to become the regions most powerful and influential country. Thats an alarming prospect to others. Heres a look at how the new carrier came into being and what impact it is expected to have. CARRIER SHOWS CHINAS MILITARY PROGRESS Chinas carrier program got off the ground with the purchase of the Varyag, an incomplete carrier begun during the 1980s and then inherited by Ukraine after the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Beijing bought the ship in 1998 and towed it to China, where it underwent years of extensive refurbishing before being commissioned as the Liaoning in 2012. It was originally described as being mainly for training and research but last year was declared combat-ready. Development of the new carrier began in 2013 and moved into high-gear in 2015. Based on the same original Soviet design, its construction is believed to have benefited greatly from lessons learned in fitting-out the Liaoning. Both ships suffer some of the limitations inherent in the design, including a ski jump-style launching system that limits the amount of fuel and bombs its Chinese J-15 fighters can carry. Michael Chase of the U.S. think tank RAND Corporation said the carriers reflect the progress Chinas has made in shipbuilding and other defense industries, and future carriers will be even more sophisticated, particularly in their propulsion and aircraft launch systems. CARRIER AT HEART OF CHINAS MILITARY AMBITIONS China had long said it needs aircraft carriers to protect its shoreline and other maritime interests. Thats seen as reflecting Beijings desire to put teeth behind its increasingly assertive claims to territory in the East China and South China seas, while establishing itself as the regions most powerful and influential nation and challenging Americas global influence and leadership. Carriers also factor into Chinas threat to use force to gain control over self-governing Taiwan, from which it separated amid civil war in 1949. Carriers could be deployed to intimidate the islands government and 23 million residents, something it apparently attempted earlier this year when it sailed the Liaoning through the Taiwan Strait. Fueled by a fast-growing defense budget that is now the worlds second biggest after the U.S., Chinas navy has also been acquiring destroyers, nuclear submarines and other ultramodern vessels. Its air force is meanwhile rapidly introducing fourth-generation fighter jets and has produced prototypes of two different kinds of fifth-generation stealth fighters. CARRIER RAISES CONCERNS AMONG NEIGHBORS Apart from Taiwan, Chinese carriers are seen as a threat primarily by Chinas historical rivals Japan and India. Beijing and Tokyo have long feuded over a collection of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea and China in recent years increased the presence of its navy and coast guard in the area while repeatedly sending military planes to patrol the nearby airspace. Many Chinese consider the dispute to be a legacy of Japans brutal invasion and occupation of much of their country during the 1930s and 1940s, memories of which are kept fresh by state propaganda and the education system. India has looked on nervously as the Chinese navy expands its presence in its traditional sphere of influence, the Indian Ocean. That includes the development of ports and airports with potential military uses in Pakistan and elsewhere, along with Chinas first overseas military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Chinese carriers are seen as less threatening to the regions leading military power, the U.S., although American officials have called for more transparency from Beijing about how it intends to use the ships. Rather than a military threat, the carriers are more of an indirect challenge to U.S. influence in the region. MDT/AP US businesswoman Phan Phan-Gillis was found guilty on Tuesday of stealing Chinese state secrets two decades ago, according to her lawyer, Shang Baojun. This verdict comes as mutual suspicions of spying between the worlds biggest economies grow. Two years ago, in spring, Phan Phan-Gillis, more commonly known as Sandy, was visiting China as part of an American trade delegation when she was seized by Chinese security officials while attempting to cross from the city of Zhuhai to Macau. According to the Financial Times, Phan-Gillis was sentenced at a secret trial to three and a half years in prison for espionage activities alleged to have taken place between 1995 and 1998. News of her sentencing has not been reported in China. Born in Vietnam to an ethnically Chinese family, Phan-Gillis moved to the US and eventually settled in Houston, Texas. There, she worked as business liaison between China and the US, advising Chinese and American businesses seeking customers and investment from both countries. After being detained, she was taken to Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi autonomous region several hundred kilometers away, where she was eventually tried and sentenced. Phan-Gilliss lawyer, said his client remained hopeful that she would be deported rather than serve her sentence in China. This is only the first trial, we have to wait to receive the official verdict and see after the period of appeals is over whether she will be able to leave the country, he told the Financial Times. If she is deported [back to the US], then I think Sandy will be able to accept this sentence. According to her family, Phan-Gillis was a business consultant who traveled regularly to China and who also served as president of the Houston Shenzhen Sister City Organization. Russian and American troops have joined hands at the River Elbe in Germany, bringing the end of the war a step closer. Statements have been released simultaneously in London, Moscow and Washington this evening reaffirming the determination of the three Allied powers to complete the destruction of the Third Reich. According to a statement issued by Downing Street, the commanders of a United States division and of a Russian Guards division met at Torgau, south of Berlin on 26 April at 1600 hours local time. In fact the first contact was made between patrols on 25 April when a first lieutenant and three men of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon of the US division met forward elements of the Russian Guards division. First Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue of the 3rd Battalion, 273rd Infantry, 69th Infantry Division took his men in a boat across the Elbe to be greeted by Lt Col Alexander Gardiev, Commander of the 175th Rifle Regiment of the 58th Guards Division, 34th Corps. They made arrangements for the formal handshake in front of photographers at Torgau the following day. By joining forces at Elbe, the American and Soviet troops have successfully cut the Germany army in two. However, The Times correspondent warns of the of the possibility of a protracted period of mountain warfare. The American and Russian military leaders have paid tribute to their troops. In Moscow 324 guns fired a 24 salvo in honour of victory of the freedom-loving peoples over Germany. General Omar Bradley, commander of the US 12th Army Group, praised the Soviet troops for their determination in forcing the Germans to abandon Russia and push them back to the Elbe River. He went on to pay tribute to the American forces: In 10 months you have advanced 1,120km (696 miles) from the invasion beaches. All this has been attained thanks to your courage, your spirit and initiative and thanks to your comrades who died in order to achieve this. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said: We meet in true and victorious comradeship and with inflexible resolve to fulfil our purpose and our duty. Let all march forward upon the foe. President Harry STruman welcomed the news: This is not the hour of final victory in Europe, but the hour draws near, the hour for which all the American people, all the British people and all the Soviet people have toiled and prayed so long. Marshal Joseph Stalin spoke of the war still ahead: Our task and our duty are to complete the destruction of the enemy to force him to lay down his arms and surrender unconditionally. The Red Army will fulfil to the end this task and this duty to our people and to all freedom-loving peoples. Courtesy BBC News In context Three days later (30 April) Adolf Hitler committed suicide with his wife of only a few hours, Eva Braun, in the underground bunker from where he had been directing operations. On 4 May a representative of Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitlers successor as chief of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces surrendered the Netherlands, Denmark and north-western Germany to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneberg Heath, south-east of Hamburg. The six-year European phase of historys most destructive war ended on 7 May with Germanys unconditional surrender to Eisenhower at Reims. Victory in Europe Day was celebrated on 8 May. However, the Soviets refused to accept the Reims agreement and insisted another peace deal was signed in Berlin on 8 May. As the Red Army was still fighting for control of Prague at the time, the ceasefire did not come into effect until 11 May. Women wailed as Indian soldiers carried a flag-draped coffin holding the body of one of their colleagues killed this week in a deadly ambush by autonomy-seeking Maoist rebels. The attack, which killed 25 soldiers, has raised fears that the five-decade insurgency is seeing a revival. This year is already one of the bloodiest in recent years, with 72 soldiers killed in the rebel heartland of Chhattisgarh. By comparison, 36 were killed during all of last year. You let him die, Kumars 15-year-old daughter cried to the soldiers carrying the body of her father to his home in the northern hill town of Palampur on Tuesday night [yesterday, Macau time]. Why didnt you do something? Indian soldiers have been battling the rebels across several central and northern states since 1967, when the militants also known as Naxalites began fighting to demand more jobs, land and wealth from natural resources for the countrys poor indigenous communities. The government has said the insurgents, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, pose the countrys most serious internal security threat. Before this year, the deadliest Maoist attack was in 2010, when rebels killed 76 soldiers in Chhattisgarh, one of Indias poorest states despite vast mineral riches. Rebel attacks in other Indian states are less frequent, but also sometimes result in casualties. Analysts said Prime Minister Narendra Modis government is slipping in its commitment to fight the rebels, and that authorities should be deploying more police and paramilitary troops while simultaneously focusing on boosting economic development for poor villagers who may be moved to support the rebels. Its as if no lessons have been learned from similar attacks in the past, said Ajai Sahni, a security analyst in New Delhi. The troops attacked on Monday had been having lunch along a partially built road cutting through scrubland, taking a break from scouting the area ahead of a construction team, when they were ambushed by about 300 armed rebels, touching off a three-hour gunbattle. I find it incomprehensible that the Indian state cannot deploy enough soldiers to protect 70 kilometers of road within the country, Sahni said. Facing a resurgence in the rebellion, the government should change its standard deployment and surveillance tactics, he said. Authorities also need to improve living standards for local villagers, noting that none had warned the troops about the presence of hundreds of armed rebels moving through the region. Years of neglect marked by a lack of jobs, school and health care clinics have helped to isolate the local villagers, making them open to overtures by the rebels, who speak their tribal languages and have promised to fight for a better future with more education and job opportunities. The government needs to reduce the economic deprivation, which has led to an alienation of the local people, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Raj Kadyan, a defense analyst, told India Today television channel. Other analysts noted that Mondays attack occurred when the soldiers deviated from the standard operating procedures by sitting as a group for lunch, without anyone standing watch, as reported by soldiers who survived the attack. One survivor said theyd first been approached by villagers, whom the rebels then followed. We thought it was a group of villagers coming toward us, when the rebels began firing from behind, said Sher Bahadur, who was among six soldiers injured. The rebels then opened fire from another flank, at which point the soldiers retaliated, killing or injuring an unknown number, he said. When paramilitary reinforcements arrived, the rebels scattered and fled back into the wild, carrying the bodies of the fallen militants with them. State officials said the military retaliation was slowed by the fact that the Maoists were using villagers as human shields. Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh described the killings as cold-blooded murder carried out in an attempt to destabilize the state government. Its a desperate attempt to block development in the state, Singh said, suggesting the rebels were trying to stop roads from being built to improve transportation and access for villagers and thus diminish the rebels influence. He said the government would not be deterred. The government will take this strike as a challenge, he said. The tough talk and promises of military retribution offered little comfort to the mourners at Kumars funeral Tuesday night. His brother said Kumar was brave in facing the rebel danger. He used to say that every time he went on an operation in the jungle, he didnt know if he would come back alive, said Vijay Kumar. His fears have become a reality with this attack. Nirmala George & Ashwini Bhatia, Palampur, AP Nobel laureate Carl Edwin Wieman gave a lecture on Tuesday titled Taking a Scientific Approach to Science Education in the auditorium of the University of Macaus Wu Yee Sun Library after he was conferred the Doctor of Science honoris causa in physics. In his talk, Wiemen stated that it is imperative to provide high-quality science education for all students, highlighting that the goal of a scientific education should be to help students think like a scientist, rather than making them become scientists. In this vein, Weiman emphasized that the mission of scientific education is to assist students in making better decisions and choices. He mentioned that students need to be able to develop a mental organizational framework, in which scientific concepts and selection criteria are clearly established. Such a framework can help students distinguish between problems that need to be solved and those that are irrelevant. Questioned by the Times about what current difficulties the science field is facing in regards to teaching methods, Wiemen said, the challenges are mostly just historical and tradition. Were trying to change the basic culture and historical perspective and that always takes a long time even when youve got really good research. During his talk, the scholar presented research conducted by his group which demonstrates that not all traditional methods of teaching are effective. You have [to get] them [students] thinking, practicing and giving targeted feedback to help them improve, he added. UM rector Wei Zhao mentioned in his opening speech that Wieman is a visionary scientist who has initiated groundbreaking research projects, having started many programs over the past decades to improve the effectiveness of science education. The rector noted that the talk is essential for university students to learn how to study with a scientific mindset. Teachers and students from local secondary schools also attended the talk. Wieman served as the associate director for science of the White Houses Office of Science and Technology Policy and is the chair of the Board on Science Education in the National Academy of Sciences, in addition to being the founder and chairman of PhET scientific simulation program. The program provides an extensive simulation package in order to improve the way that physics, chemistry, math, biology and earth science are being taught in educational institutions. Yesterday, the scholar also participated in an international academic symposium titled STEM Education Mini-Symposium: Building a New Culture for STEM Education in Asia, at the universitys Anthony Lau Building. Experts and scholars from the United States, Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau conducted an in-depth discussion on STEM education. LV Hong Kong police yesterday arrested two pro-independence lawmakers who were disqualified in a dispute over their oaths, in the latest round of legal action against activists involved in the Chinese territorys pro-democracy movement. Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching of the Youngspiration party were arrested and questioned at a police station for several hours before being released on bail. They told reporters they were charged with unlawful assembly and attempted forcible entry and must report to court tomorrow. The two young activists angered Hong Kongs Beijing-backed government when they used their swearing-in ceremony in October to stage an apparent protest by inserting anti-China insults into their oaths. Their attempts to enter the legislature during subsequent sessions to take their oaths properly descended into chaos when they were barred from the chamber while awaiting a court ruling, which later disqualified them from office. Leung and Yau were part of a new wave of lawmakers advocating greater separation from the mainland who were newly elected to office last year amid a rising tide of anti-China sentiment in Hong Kong, where fears are rising that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semiautonomous city. Three former assistants were also arrested. Leung said the charges, which relate to events on Nov. 2, were ridiculous. On that day, they scuffled with guards as they barged into the chamber, leaving the council session in disarray. We are still lawmakers at that time when we wanted to get into the chamber. Why is it unlawful? he said. The two said the charges were politically motivated. We are not afraid of this suppression and we will persist in our beliefs, Yau said. The Hong Kong government is pursuing cases against a number of other activists. Last month police arrested nine people, including university professors, former student leaders and lawmakers, on public nuisance charges for their involvement in the Umbrella Movement protests. The 79-day movement ended more than two years ago after protesters failed to win concessions over electoral curbs. The government is also trying to disqualify four other pro-democracy lawmakers who it says took their oaths improperly. Individual cases include another lawmaker charged earlier this month with desecrating the Chinese and Hong Kong flags after he inverted some on the desks of pro-government members during one of the chambers chaotic sessions last year. Kelvin Chan, Hong Kong, AP Inside a bright auditorium at an abandoned airfield near Munich, rows of men and women gaze at images flashing by on a giant screen: a Mercedes sedan; Porsche and Jaguar SUVs; the face of Elon Musk. Were in the midst of an electric assault, the presenter intones as the Tesla Inc. chiefs photo pops up. This must be taken very seriously. The audience is composed of BMW AG employees flown in for a combination pep rally/horror film intended to make them afraidvery afraidabout the future of the industry. The takeaway: The market is shifting in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago, and BMW must adapt. The subtext is a recognition that the company has gone from leader to laggard. For years, it set the benchmark in luxury, but it needs to hit the accelerator to fend off resurgent rivals such as Mercedes-Benz and new competitors like Tesla. BMW is falling behind in electrics, says Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment, which owns almost 1 percent of the company. Since January, the carmaker has cycled 14,000 engineers, marketers, and factory managersabout 10 percent of its workforcethrough day-long events to prepare them for a time when customers may order a robo-taxi by app instead of buying a car. In a temporary building at a BMW test track, they participate in workshops and discussions of car-sharing apps, laser sensors, and batteries. In the corners, BMW shows off the vehicles it sees as key to its future: a self-driving iNext with a retractable steering wheel; a Rolls-Royce whose roof and sides swing open to allow a comfortable exit; a Mini designed for sharing that changes colors to suit the drivers mood. Its easy to fall into a closed way of thinking, says Jutta Schwerdtle, a session leader who works in market research. This helps push people out of that. The training effort, pushed by Chief Executive Officer Harald Krueger, comes amid concerns hes not doing enough to address the challenges. Although BMW continues to post record revenue and profits, it lost the sales crown to Mercedes last year, and high-profile executives at the vanguard of new technologies have departed: Two leaders of its electric initiative moved to a Chinese e-car startup, and top designers have decamped for rivals as the German company has become less daring with new models. Its struggled to build interest in a revamped version of its high-end 7-Series sedan, and the styling of the 5-Series is meek in contrast to an aggressive makeover at Mercedes. Were either part of this shift, or it goes on without us, says Wolfgang Ober, who presented workshops on ride-hailing giants such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Chinas Didi Chuxing. BMW was an early convert to electric cars, introducing its first standalone battery-powered model, the i3 compact, in 2013 and the plug-in hybrid i8 coupe a year later. Lately, though, its focused more on under-the-hood conversions of existing vehicles, and sales of its electrics have trailed the likes of Tesla and the Nissan Leaf. BMW is planning only two new battery-powered cars by the end of the decade, and its first self-driving model isnt due until 2021. Tesla, which is gearing up to challenge BMWs bread-and-butter 3-Series, already offers autopilot, and Mercedes this fall will introduce an upgraded S-Class sedan that it says can self-navigate anything from country lanes to autobahns at speeds exceeding 120 miles per hour. BMW has lost its leadership in innovation, says Jurgen Pieper, an analyst at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt. Its not brave enough to get into pioneering projects and do something really new. That heightens the importance of the iNext, a low-slung, copper-colored sedan with butterfly doors on view at the pep rally. Under bright spotlights, attendees peer at the prototype, its kidney-shaped grille jutting forward, looking a bit like rabbit teeth. The self-driving electric will replace the 7-Series as the companys flagship in 2021, Krueger decreed last year. Nonetheless, BMW will rely on the 7-Series and other traditional gas guzzlers for many more years to finance the transition. The rally begins with a recorded presentation from Krueger viewed with virtual-reality gogglesan extravagance intended to stress the importance of adopting new technologies. The virtual Krueger exhorts participants to put all your effort and energy into the transformation. After a lunch of smoked haddock, semolina dumplings, and kale, the energy falters. Staffers sitting on unstable foam cubes in a stuffy room for a session on autonomous cars have no questions when Q&A time rolls aroundeven though their jobs may depend on understanding such systems. Still, Michael Manz, who develops sensors for self-driving cars, says the event is helping him better grasp BMWs mission and created a renewed camaraderie. We were reminded of what were trying to achieve, he says, sipping a pomegranate iced tea between sessions. It gets us focused on where were going. Elisabeth Behrmann, Bloomberg Lotte Group plans to divide four of its key businesses into operating and holding units in a move that will slash the number of cross shareholdings and extend its chairmans grip on the hotels-to-retail conglomerate rocked by a years-long family feud and a corruption trial. Lotte Confectionery Co. will absorb the investment companies created when the South Korean groups listed shopping, food and beverage units are each split into operating and holding companies under a plan to be presented for shareholder approval Aug. 29, Lotte Group said yesterday in a statement. The confectionery units investment company would then merge the holdings entities into a single business, effective Oct. 1, according to the filing. The single holding company structure and cutting cross shareholdings to 18 from 67 could give more clout to Shin Dong-bin, the 62-year-old chairman and younger son of the founder, by making it harder for his elder brother and rival, Shin Dong-joo, to win over enough shareholders to gain control. Lotte has faced criticism from the government for a proliferation of cross shareholdings that allowed family members to exert excessive control relative to the number of shares they owned. The restructuring plan will allow Shin Dong-bin to have larger stakes in the holding company than his older brother, Park Ju-gun, president of corporate watchdog CEOScore, said by phone yesterday. Park estimated the chairmans stake in the new holding company will be about 10 percent. Shin Dong-bin holds about 9.07 percent in Lotte Confectionery, while Shin Dong-joo holds 3.96 percent, according to regulatory filings. Trading in shares of Lotte Confectionery and the three other units: Lotte Shopping Co., Lotte Food Co. and Lotte Chilsung Beverage Co. was halted yesterday before the restructuring plan was announced. Combined, the four companies had a market value of about $12 billion as of Tuesdays close in Seoul. The Shin sibling rivalry isnt Lottes only challenge. With almost twice the revenue of Coca Cola Inc., Lotte Group has seen its operations in China suffer from economic retaliation after the company allowed U.S. anti-missile batteries to be deployed on land it provided in South Korea. Shin Dong-bin is also among Lotte executives who have been indicted on corruption charges. Read more on Shin Dong-bins indictment on bribery charges here. In 2015, Shin Dong-bin prevailed in a coup attempt by his older brother and their father. The plan backfired as the father, who was then chairman, got sidelined to an honorary position and the eldest son was stripped of group positions. Shin Dong-joo, 63, has since attempted multiple challenges to his younger brothers authority, but to little avail. In spite of the indictments, family feud and pressure from China, investors have been sticking with the chaebol. Over the past two weeks as of Tuesdays close, shares of Lottes listed affiliates had climbed about 15 percent, adding about $1.6 billion to the groups market value. A reorganization could also unlock value and pave the way for an initial public offering of Hotel Lotte Co., a move that was delayed after prosecutors began an investigation of the company in June 2016. The hotel unit IPO is likely to take place in 2019, the Lotte official said March 24. Sohee Kim, Bloomberg The Macao Water customer liaison group met this week with high-ranking officials from the company and government to discuss water seepage incidents in the region, specifically in relation to the old buildings, Macao Water informed. The meeting addressed the problem of the increasing number of aging buildings, which has had a significant impact on the rate of pipeline leakages and water seepage problems. The problem, which was said to have been seriously investigated, has been affecting many people, especially in old areas of the city. It has been brought several times to the plenary session of the Legislative Assembly (AL), especially by lawmaker Mak Soi Kun. At the conclusions of the meeting, Macao Water representatives said, It is evident that recently there are different levels of leakage and damage problems to pipelines in buildings caused by poor facility maintenance. Ultimately, water is wasted and both water quality and environmental hygiene have been affected, thus causing inconvenience to the daily life of the citizens. Representatives from the Macau Association of Concrete Inspection, Maintenance and Waterproofing and The Macao Association of Buildings Diagnosis also participated in the meeting to explain water seepage detection technology and related services. On the sidelines, the Executive Director of Macao Water, Nacky Kuan admitted to the media that the new water supply plant (to be built at Seac Pai Van, Coloane) suffered a delay at the beginning of the construction due to a land concession issue. However, he added that this initial delay would not in any way affect consumers as the company says that the completion date will be in line with the original plans forecast of the end of 2019. The worlds last male northern white rhino has joined the Tinder dating app as wildlife experts make a last-chance breeding effort to keep his species aliv. I dont mean to be too forward, but the fate of the species literally depends on me, the rhinos profile says. I perform well under pressure. The campaign called The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World, by a Kenyan wildlife conservancy and the dating app, focuses on the rhino named Sudan. The 43-year-old and his last two female companions are unable to breed naturally because of issues that include old age. Ol Pejeta Conservancy and the app aim to raise USD9 million for research into breeding methods, including in-vitro fertilization, in an effort to save the species from extinction. We partnered with Ol Pejeta conservancy to give the most eligible bachelor in the world a chance to meet his match, said Matt David, head of communications and marketing at Tinder. We are optimistic given Sudans profile will be seen on Tinder in 190 countries and over 40 languages. The conservancys website had crashed by mid-week. Sudan lives at the conservancy, protected by guards around the clock, with the two females, Najin and Fatu. Shanghai publicly announced its first issuance of a residence permit designed for foreigners providing housekeeping services in the citys Pudong area. Although statistics from the Shanghai Exit-Entry Administration Bureau indicated that more than 20 migrant house workers have received such permits in Shanghai, this is the first case authorities have made public. The woman from the Philippines is the first in the affluent Pudong district in which over 300 Fortune 500 companies are situated. Shanghai, which is home to the China Pilot Free Trade Zone, initiated measures in 2015 that allowed high-level professionals with permanent resident permits or work permits to apply for a residence permit for their foreign housemaid. Such applications should include documents such as an employment contract, financial support statement, personal insurance and a health certificate. As cited in Chinese reports, Liu Chen, a Chinese American and president of Shanghai Affinity Biopharmaceutical Co Ltd based in Pudong, applied for a one-year residence permit for a domestic worker he hired on March 14. The woman from the Philippines was granted the permit on March 31. He had worked for many years in Hong Kong, where the housemaid worked for his family. So he was delighted that the family could bring her along to Shanghai thanks to the new policy, said Chen Lijun, deputy director of the exit-entry administration office under Pudong district police. A housemaid who will be employed by a skilled professional can enter China either with a tourist visa and go to a local exit- wentry administration office for a residence permit, or apply for such a permit at Shanghais port of entry. In Macau, a non-resident permit is issued to employees who are specialized workers, domestic workers and non-specialized workers. The Times sent a query to the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL) to ask whether the region would also move towards a similar policy of issuing a residency permit to such workers. The bureau stressed that the importation of foreign workers is only endorsed on a temporary basis, adding that it always sought to ensure that local residents are given priority for sustainable employment prior to the approval of the importation of non-resident workers. DSAL handles the importation of foreign labor forces rigorously, and only allows the importation of non-resident workers on a temporarily basis when the local labor force is insufficient or when there is no suitable labor forces available, the bureaus reply stated. In addition, according to Law no. 21/2009 Law for the Employment of Non-resident Workers, non-resident workers do not enjoy the right of residence in the Macau SAR, DSAL briefly added. The Times also contacted Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), but a spokesperson only noted that they have no further information in relation to Shanghais policy. Shanghai further relaxed its policies in December 2016 to allow high-level experts from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan to apply on behalf of a housemaid. The permission for foreign housemaids is one of the measures Shanghai has unveiled since July 2015 in a bid to attract talented foreigners as it tries to convert itself into a global technological innovation hub by 2030. The application is open to all foreign experts with a masters degree or above, or those employed by an enterprise in Zhangjiang or the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, institutions of higher education, or scientific research. Experts in professional areas who are listed by the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau are also eligible to apply as they are deemed to contribute to the citys progress in scientific and technological innovation. Meanwhile, China kicked off a series of changes to the rules regarding permanent residence for foreigners. As cited in a report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, foreigners identity cards will be similar to those of Chinese citizens, as this will now be embedded in the chips in the machine-readable cards, to be used across railways, airlines, insurance agencies, hotels and banks. Approved by the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform, the reform plan serves the nations talent development strategy, which is to attract more innovative and entrepreneurial talent, and responds to social concerns, according to a Ministry of Public Security (MPS) official. Statistic shows that 1,576 foreigners became permanent residents in China in 2016, an increase of 163 percent from the previous year. Scheme for high level foreign professionals Late last year Shanghai introduced a scheme that will allow high level foreign professionals including Hong Kong and Macau residents to apply for a Shanghai Residence Card. These residents will be able to apply for the local hukou, however, it requires them to give up their Hong Kong and Macau ID cards. To entice the talents of these individuals, Card B allows returning Chinese and special talent residents from Hong Kong and Macau to apply for subsidies from a special fund to pay for their life and work needs in the city. Card B foreigners are also eligible to participate in the local housing provident fund for buying or renting a residence and paying property management fees, as local residents do. South Korean presidential front-runner Moon Jae-in outraged persecuted sexual minority groups by saying during a television debate that he opposes homosexuality, something his supporters say he had to do to win office in the deeply conservative country. Moon, a liberal candidate and former human rights lawyer, made the comments while responding to a conservative presidential candidate who argued gay soldiers were weakening the countrys military. Gay rights advocates, some of whom who were dragged away after approaching Moon following a speech at the National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday, see Moons words as hate speech. Police said 13 activists were detained at the scene of Moons speech on suspicion of violating laws that ban protests inside the gates of the legislature. Moons supporters defended his comments as in line with many South Koreans views. Moons camp didnt immediately respond to the criticism by gay rights activists. Sexual minorities are harshly stigmatized in South Korea and struggle with political visibility because a powerful Christian lobby keeps politicians from passing anti-discrimination laws. Among the five candidates who participated in the debate, only Sim Sang-jung, representing the minor Justice Party, openly advocates gay rights. After the conservative candidate, Hong Joon-pyo, argued that gay soldiers were weakening the countrys military, Moon said he agreed. Hong then asked Moon whether he opposed homosexuality, to which Moon replied, I oppose. When Hong double-checked, Moon said, Of course. Hong represents the party of ousted President Park Geun-hye, who was arrested last month and now faces the prospect of a prison term over corruption charges. He recently angered female voters over revelations in a 2005 memoir that he assisted a friend in a failed date rape attempt as a teen. The incident involved mixing the womans drink with a livestock stimulant, Hong wrote. A watchdog has recently accused South Koreas military of hunting down and prosecuting gay servicemen. That raised worries of more discrimination and hate crimes against sexual minorities. Moon later in the debate said that he opposed discrimination based on homosexuality, but was also against legalizing same-sex marriage. Moon needs to offer an apology and a correction of his comments made on live television, said Jung Yol, a gay rights activist. What he said was clearly hate speech, and since he is the candidate favored to win the election, his words can influence how people think. Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a group of South Korean human rights lawyers to which Moon once belonged, issued a statement denouncing the comments by Moon and Hong, saying the candidates revealed their ignorance on human and constitutional rights. We cannot look away from the issue as the candidates comments could encourage hate speech and discrimination against social minorities across the society, the statement said. South Koreas Constitutional Court formally removed Park from office on March 10. That triggered a 60-day presidential race. Opinion surveys favor Moon to win the May 9 election. AP The World Bank has increased from the amount of aid to be granted to Cape Verde over the next three years from US$42 million to US$90 million, announced Finance Minister Olavo Correia, who travelled to Washington to attend meetings of the Sprig meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Correia was given news of the extended funding at a meeting with the new director of the World Bank group of which Cape Verde is a part, Seydou Bonda, according to the Cape Verdean press. The Cape Verdean Finance Minister also met with the regional director of the International Finance Corporation, Vera Songwe, newly appointed as the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, to discuss the IFCs continued support to the Cape Verdean private sector Correia also met with other partners of Cape Verde, including the OPEC Fund for International Development, with which he analyzed partial financing of the cruise ship terminal on the island of Sao Vicente. MDT/Macauhub KOREAS In a defiant bit of timing, South Korea announces key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system have been installed a day after rival North Korea showed off its military power. SOUTH KOREA Presidential front-runner Moon Jae-in outraged persecuted sexual minority groups by saying during a television debate that he opposes homosexuality, something his supporters say he had to do to win office in the deeply conservative country. JAPAN Disaster reconstruction minister Masahiro Imamura has resigned over his remark that it was good that the March 2011 quake and tsunami had hit northern Japan instead of areas closer to Tokyo. THAILAND Police yesterday arrested a taxi driver accused of raping a Brazilian woman, saying the suspect had a criminal record and had already confessed to the crime. The 22-year-old victim arrived at Don Muang airport from Malaysia and had asked to be driven to central Bangkok. Instead she was driven to the outskirts of the city, where she was beaten and raped. PHILIPPINES An international human rights watchdog is calling on Southeast Asian leaders to take a stand against the Philippines war on drugs that has left thousands dead under President Rodrigo Duterte, the host of this weeks regional summit. SINGAPORE U.S. government attorneys are appealing a Chicago immigration judges decision to grant asylum to a teenage blogger from Singapore. That means 18-year-old Amos Yee remains in U.S. custody. USA President Trump is proposing the biggest tax cut ever even as the government struggles with mounting debt, in an effort to fulfill promises of bringing jobs and prosperity to the middle class. The top tax rate for individuals would drop by a few percentage points, from 39.6 percent to the mid-30s, according to an official with knowledge of the plan. IRAQ Paramilitary forces have captured Hatra, a 2,000-year-old historical site near the northern city of Mosul, where U.S.-backed forces have been battling the Islamic State group for months. The Shiite militias told state TV they captured the UNESCO world heritage site and were around three kilometers from a nearby town with the same name, without providing further details. VATICAN Pope Francis has warned the powerful to act humbly or risk ruin, in a TED talk urging the world to show more solidarity with the poor and weak. Francis delivered a videotaped talk to a TED conference in Vancouver on The Future You, the first by a pope. The Vatican released the video yesterday. The recently-launched individual visa scheme for yacht travel between Macau to Zhongshan, launched by the government in cooperation with mainland authorities, is underperforming and has failed to attract much interest. At the Macao Water customer liaison group meeting on Tuesday, director of the Marine and Water Bureau (DSAMA), Susana Wong, revealed that the highly promoted scheme was only used by seven yachts over the past five months. The scheme was intended to be introduced as a new option to promote Macaus tourist diversification. The director of DSAMA explained that the reason given for the projects lackluster performance is that the customs and docking fees are too high, which discourages travelers. Only one or two applications have been received so far. The problem is that the deposit [fee] for local yachts to enter Zhongshan is too high. Also the parking and customs fees are quite expensive, said Wong to TDM. However, while Wong acknowledged that the scheme was currently underutilized, Wong said she is working together with mainland authorities to reduce the costs of the plan in order to attract more interest from people. So far, no local yachts have undertaken any trip in the opposite direction. The plan was finally launched in November last year, and had already suffered a delay of almost one year due to the need for work to be completed in the docking point at Zhingshans Keppel Cove. In order to implement the yacht sailing project the MSAR government built 120 berth points in both Coloane and Fishermans Wharf area in addition to two immigration control check-points in each location. A transfer ferry was also put in place at the Coloane berthing point to be used as transfer boat from the yacht berthing point to the Coloane Village Pear checkpoint. RM Volunteers The Senior Companion Program at the CSI Office on Aging needs volunteers, age 55 and older, to assist homebound seniors by providing friendly visits, transportation or other assistance as needed. Senior Companions can make positive impacts by helping to improve the mental and emotional status of their clients. Senior Companions receive a stipend per hour of service (to income eligible seniors) and can work between 15 to 40 hours a week. They receive reimbursement for mileage, and training on age-related problems. Information: Dandre, 208-736-2122, or toll free, 800-574-8656. Volunteers St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center has opened some new areas to volunteer. The new Cuddler and Patient Comfort programs need volunteers immediately. St. Lukes has several other volunteer positions with opportunities to serve others and meet new people. By being a volunteer at St. Lukes Magic Valley, you are also a part of the auxiliary. For an application packet or information: Kim Patterson, 208-814-0861. Volunteers Interlink Volunteer Caregivers, a nonprofit organization, provides volunteers to elderly, disabled and chronically ill people, assisting with routine tasks so they can remain independent at home. Volunteers are needed in all eight counties of the Magic Valley to help with light housekeeping and also in the Wendell and Gooding area with transportation. Volunteers are reimbursed for mileage monthly and covered with excess auto liability insurance. Commitment is flexible with no minimum hours required. Information: Edie, 208-733-6333 or email ivcofmv@gmail.com. Drivers The Twin Falls Senior Center needs drivers to deliver meals to homebound seniors in Twin Falls Monday through Friday. The routes take an hour or less to complete. Commitment is based on your availability. Volunteers must be 18 years of age with their own car, and have proof of liability insurance and a background check. Drivers receive 53.5 cents a mile fuel reimbursement. Information: 208-734-5084. Volunteers The Twin Falls Senior Center has a ladies group (The Crazy Quilters), who are looking for individuals to put finishing touches on quilts as a group while socializing. The group meets from 9 a.m. to noon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. All quilt project proceeds are given to the Twin Falls Senior Center. Information: 208-734-5084. Volunteers Idaho Home Health and Hospice needs volunteers who will bring compassion, support and dignity to those facing a serious, life-limiting illness and their families. Volunteers can choose between offering respite to family caregivers or provide support with administrative tasks. Information: Heidi Walker, 208-734-4064 or Heidi.Walker@LHCgroup.com. Volunteers Horizon Home Health and Hospice is looking for volunteers to join their team to provide quality compassionate care to patients through the following activities: companionship, socialization, respite, and support for patients and families and much more. Information: Cynthia Nixon, 208-800-8085 or cnixon@horizonhh.com. Volunteers St Lukes Home Health and Hospice is looking for new volunteers to join its team to share compassion and care and increase the quality of life for patients and their families. This program is designed to offer companionship and socialization to the patients as well as respite and support for the caregivers. Information: Marie Sharp, 208-814-7603 or sharpm@slhs.org. TWIN FALLS Kasey Teskes career has revolved around helping all of his students. Over the past 20 years hes worked at schools with large groups of migrant, refugee and low-income students. He helps them clarify their goals and take steps toward achieving them. The Canyon Ridge High School principals efforts havent gone unnoticed. Teske, who graduated from Twin Falls High School in 1990, has been named Principal of the Year by the Idaho Association of Secondary School Principals. Its one of the highest statewide honors a middle or high school principal can receive. Hell be recognized Aug. 3 during an Idaho Association of School Administrators conference in Boise and at an institute for school principals Sept. 25 in Washington, D.C. Teske, who has been Canyon Ridges principal for four years, said Tuesday he was surprised and honored to find out he was nominated. He went through an interview with an award selection committee. When they called to tell me I was selected as Principal of the Year, I was like Whoa, he said. As a principal, I never feel like Ive arrived. Theres always room for growth as a person and educator, Teske said. And hes quick to credit the staff at Canyon Ridge High for successes at the school. Employees strive to help students see the big picture, Teske said, which helps overcome the tough day-to-day grind. Candidates for the award were required to compile a portfolio of accomplishments, including how their leadership positively affected student achievement. (Teske is) someone who has been a leader and proven himself in a lot of venues, said Rob Winslow, executive director of the Idaho Association of School Administrators. Teske is known throughout Idaho, is highly motivated and works hard, Winslow said. Its nice to see him recognized. Canyon Ridge focuses on empowering students to make their own decisions about learning. And, research shows, its beneficial for students to participate in extracurricular school activities. But for some students who are living in poverty, thats a challenge. So Canyon Ridge created a new offering this semester: club days twice a month. It allows all students including those who work or take care of younger siblings after school to participate in a club during the school day. Students filled out a survey about their interests, and 50 clubs were formed. Another new initiative: campus improvement day, with the inaugural event Friday. Each advisory class will have a portion of the school building theyll be in charge of cleaning and beautifying. Its a way for teens to have ownership of their school, Teske said. Academically, Canyon Ridge has a go on focus under a GEAR UP grant, encouraging students to pursue next steps after graduation such as workforce training, enlisting in the U.S. armed forces or going to college. Weve really been beating that down hard, Teske said. L.T. Erickson, secondary programs director for the Twin Falls School District, nominated Teske for the award. He has such an amazing vision for what he wants to do at the school as a whole, Erickson said. And he works with his staff to implement that and make it become a reality. Teske focuses on student achievement and makes it a priority for every student to pursue some type of post-high school education, Erickson said. It is an expectation that they will go on. Teskes staff members admire his vision, Erickson said. Hes always trying to improve and progress. The number of Canyon Ridge students taking dual credit classes earning both high school and college credits simultaneously doubled this school year. And last year, Canyon Ridges graduation climbed to 89 percent, up one percentage point. Were hoping to break that 90 percent threshold, Teske said. Its quite an accomplishment, he said, especially considering the large population of refugee students more than 100. We keep getting more and more, Teske said. He grew up in Twin Falls, attending Morningside Elementary School for kindergarten, Lincoln Elementary School, Robert Stuart Middle School and Twin Falls High School. He attended Ricks College for one year before serving a two-year church mission in Korea. That experience, Teske said, helped him understand cultural differences outside of sheltered Idaho. When he returned, he spent two years at the College of Southern Idaho and two years at Idaho State University. He later went on to earn advanced degrees, including a doctorate in education. Teske started his career in 1997 as a biology teacher at Twin Falls High. It was kind of cool to be hired back in the high school I used to attend, he said. He saw teachers dedication behind the scenes, which you dont fully appreciate as a student. Teske later taught science and was a comprehensive school reform grant coordinator at Robert Stuart Middle School and was vice principal at Oregon Trail Elementary School. He was principal at Oregon Trail for four years and principal at Robert Stuart for three years. Teskes efforts as an educator boil down to helping students prepare for the real world. Realistically, students will remember some class content and forget some, Teske said. I think the most important thing is for them to be life-ready. Shirley Jean Savaria, 78, of Twin Falls passed away Tuesday morning, April 25, 2017 at St. Lukes Magic Valley Hospital in Twin Falls. Services are pending and will be announced by White Mortuary, Chapel by the Park, Twin Falls. David L. Schaeffer, 73, of Rupert, Idaho died Tuesday April 25, 2017 in Rupert. Arrangements are under the direction of Joel Heward Hansen Mortuary. John Duane Hansen, 90, of Rupert passed away Wednesday, April 26, 2017 at his home. Funeral services are pending under the direction of Joel Heward Hansen Mortuary. Elwood Thompson TWIN FALLS Elwood Thompson, funeral services at 1 p.m. Thursday, April 27 at the LDS Church, 847 Eastland Drive North. A viewing will be held from noon until 1 p.m. prior to the service. Arrangements are under the direction of Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home. Loy Walden BUHL Loy Walden, funeral service at 3 p.m. Friday, April 28 at Calvary Chapel in Buhl. A viewing will be held from 5 until 7 p.m. Thursday April 27 at Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl. Fleeta Barron TWIN FALLS Fleeta Barron of Twin Falls, graveside service at 3 p.m. Friday, April 28, 2017 at the Buhl West End Cemetery to celebrate her ninety-five years. Arrangements are under the direction of Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl. Dennis Greener IDAHO FALLS Dennis Greener, funeral service at 11 a.m. Friday, April 28, in the Mountain View LDS Ward Chapel (1450 Mountain View Ln, Idaho Falls, ID). A visitation will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Thursday, April 27, at the church and again on Friday prior to services from 9:30 to 10:45 AM. Arrangements are under the direction of Eckersell Memorial Chapel. Robert Sorenson TWIN FALLS Robert Sorenson, graveside service with military honors at 2 p.m. Friday, April 28 at Sunset Memorial Park, Twin Falls. Marilyn McKim IDAHO FALLS Marilyn McKim, graveside service at 11 a.m. Friday, April 28 at the Paul Cemetery, 550 W 100 N, Paul. A visitation will be held from 9:30 until 10:30 a.m. at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E 16th St in Burley. Sylvan Clark HAGERMAN Sylvan William Clark, 94, funeral service at 11:00 a.m., Friday, April 28, at the Hagerman LDS Church. A viewing will be one hour prior to the service at the church. Arrangements are under the direction of Farmer Funeral Chapel in Buhl. Rozella Reed RUPERT Rozella Reed, funeral services at 11:00 a.m. Friday April 28, at the 7th Day Adventist Church in Heyburn. Burial will follow at the Paul Cemetery. Viewing will be held from 6-8:00 p.m. Thursday April 27, at Hansen Mortuary and one hour prior to services at the church. Services are under the direction of Joel Heward Hansen Mortuary. Travis Berkley TWIN FALLS Travis Berkley, funeral service at 3 p.m. Friday, April 28, at Reynolds Funeral Chapel, 2466 Addison Ave East. A viewing will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Thursday April 27 at the funeral home. John Firth HEYBURN John Firth, services at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29, at the LDS Stake Center, 424 West Ellis Avenue, Paul. A viewing will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Friday, April 28 at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 East 16th St, Burley and from 10 until 10:45 a.m. Saturday, preceding the service at the church. Janell R. Arrington TWIN FALLS Janell R. Arrington, funeral services at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 29, 2017 at the West Stake Center LDS Church, 667 Harrison Street in Twin Falls. Visitation is on Friday evening, April 28 from 6-8 p.m. at Reynolds Funeral Chapel, 2466 Addison Ave. East, Twin Falls as well as on Saturday from 10-10:45 a.m. Mary Belle Powell TWIN FALLS Mary Belle Powell, celebration of life with the residents of Woodstone Heritage, from 9:30 until 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29. There will be an open house at 1 p.m. at the family home in Hansen. Marvin Chamberlain TWIN FALLS Marvin Chamberlain, memorial service at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Snake River Elks Lodge, 412 E 200 S in Jerome. A reception will follow. Reynolds Funeral Chapel. Christine Chambers FILER Christine Chambers, memorial service at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29 at the Filer Church of the Nazarene, 315 Yakima Ave, Filer with a reception to follow. John Taylor TWIN FALLS John Taylor, graveside service at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Hazelton Cemetery. Arrangements have been entrusted to White Mortuary, Chapel by the Park. Beatrice Brandzej TWIN FALLS Beatrice Brandzej, celebration of life at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at Twin Falls First Methodist Church, 360 Shoshone St. E., Twin Falls. Arrangements are under the direction of Parkes Funeral Home. Marla Ricks REXBURG Marla Ricks, funeral services at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29 at the Plano LDS Chapel, 5973 North 5000 West in Rexburg. A visitation will be held from6 until 8 p.m. at Flamm Funeral Home in Rexburg and from 10 until 10:45 a.m. prior to the service. Two senior United Nations humanitarian officials Wednesday called for an end to airstrikes on hospitals, following reports that attacks damaged hospitals in northern Syria. It is completely unacceptable that facilities and people who are trying to save lives are being bombed, Kevin Kennedy, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, said in a joint statement with Ali Al-Zatari, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria. The persistent and unceasing attacks on hospitals and medical facilities are one of the most egregious features of this war and have taken the lives of hundreds of medical personnel and deprived people in need of their most fundamental human right- the right to life. It must stop, Kevin Kennedy added. Ali Al-Zatari called for the parties to the conflict to abide by their obligation under international humanitarian and human rights law to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals. The UN community is appalled by the ongoing damage and destruction of medical facilities in northern Syria, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, they said. According to the statement, several airstrikes impacting medical facilities were reported in April alone in Northern Syria, including a hospital specializing in maternal and child care. Almost all facilities were rendered out of service as a result. 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. Malawis President Peter Mutharika has officially banned child marriage this week after a two-year parliamentary process and subsequent approval in February. The constitutional amendment signed by the president raises the legal marriage age to 18. The offense is now punishable by five years imprisonment and a fine of about $143. However, rights campaigners say it is just a start, and the country must now enforce the ban. That amendment is showing exactly the aspiration of Malawians that we are saying No in totality to child marriage and the loopholes that were remaining of giving consents to parents are no longer there, said Jessie Kabwila, chairperson of womens caucus in parliament. According to a government survey released last year, 47 percent of women and girls are married before age 18. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has recently estimated that some 50% of girls married off in East, West and Central Africa were under 18. The report revealed that over 58% of spouses currently aged 20-46 years in Niger, Chad, Ethiopia and Guinea, were married when they were under 18. The UN thus warned that if the current increasing trend of child marriages continues across the prevalent regions, it will not be fast enough to offset population growth and early child marriage will double by 2050. Fresh violence in South Sudan has displaced about 25,000 in the town of Kodok on Tuesday, Doctors without Borders said. The move comes a day after the United States slammed South Sudans President Salva Kiir for the states man-made famine and ongoing conflict. We must see a sign that progress is possible, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told a United Nations Security Council briefing on South Sudan. We must see that ceasefire implemented, Haley said. The head of the U.N. mission in South Sudan, David Shearer, told members of the Security Council that 70,000 civilians could be displaced. According to Associated Press, South Sudans government troops were on an offensive in Kodok and the Upper Nile region. The offensive in Kodok appears to be one of the most significant this year, causing disarray among rebel leader Johnson Olony and his Shilluk forces. Conflict among various factions has prompted massive displacement that in turn has prevented farming, while looting and cattle rustling have destroyed many peoples assets. On February 20, the U.N. declared that some 100,000 people are already living in famine conditions in Leer and Mayendit counties with some 5.5 million are threatened by starvation in the Worlds smallest nation. Presentation of Produce in Georgia Agency "This program enables us to write a new chapter in the life of our country, to help both established entrepreneurs and startups, innovative young people spread their wings by offering them state programs in order to create new directions in Georgia's economy," Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili stated in his speech at today's presentation of the Produce in Georgia Agency.Starting today, the state program's implementing agency will have a new name and a renewed organizational structure. The Produce in Georgia Agency will incorporate three components: business (local production), export, and investments.According to Giorgi Kvirikashvili, all components under the program will transform into a unified agency called Produce in Georgia. The Prime Minister hopes that this new entity will prove flexible to make state support programs more effective and efficient."It will have a new front office, service office, that is, which will make it easier for businesspersons and startups to conduct their business and maintain relations with the state. Along with developing entrepreneurship, we are also determined to position our country in the international arena so as to attract new investments and increase export," the Prime Minister emphasized.According to Giorgi Kvirikashvili, the Georgian Government is actively working toward diversifying Georgia's trade markets. Georgia enjoys FTAs with the EU, Turkey, and CIS countries. In the nearest future, similar agreements with the EFTA, China, and Hong Kong will come into force. Currently, Georgia is also probing into prospects of signing an FTA with India."All of this creates immense potential for international and local investors. It is our goal to help investors see and use the exceptional opportunities and business environment in Georgia, this way boosting the export of Georgian products, and we are committed to doubling our efforts to this end. Moreover, several state agencies will join forces to ensure our exporters' global positioning. Produce in Georgia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Export Promotion Agency will work together to support exporters in exploring and taking root in new markets," the Prime Minister said.Giorgi Kvirikashvili singled out yet another novelty, the new institution of commercial attaches. The Prime Minister hopes that these envoys of Georgia, so to speak, who will work at Georgia's embassies in different countries, will actively introduce prospective investors to the opportunities in Georgia.The Prime Minister commented on the performance of the Produce in Georgia state program and discussed its achievements. Since the launch of the program, almost 170 projects have been financed under the industrial component alone, with their total investments amounting to 400 million GEL. Over 100 million GEL have been invested in the program's agricultural component. Over 20 hospitality sector projects, with investments making up 34 million GEL, have been supported. Investments in the cinema industry exceed seven million GEL. The component for supporting micro and small enterprises deserves special mention in that it has retrained almost 9,000 beneficiaries, provided co-financing to 5,000 beneficiaries, and created over 5,000 new jobs in Georgia's rural areas.The Produce in Georgia Agency will incorporate three independent brands: Produce in Georgia-Business, Produce in Georgia-Export, and Produce in Georgia-Investment. Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Giorgi Gakharia introduced the audience to the agency's goals and objectives. TripAdvisor promotes Georgia among international travelers The worlds largest travel website will promote Georgias touristic destinations to help the country attract more tourists.Georgias National Tourism Administration (GNTA) today summarised 2016 partnership and revealed plans for 2017 with TripAdvisor, a popular travel internet portal enabling travellers to plan and book their trips.Within the new agreement, www.tripadvisor.com will promote Georgia as a tourist destination among its users from 10 countries for the next six months.These countries will include:1. Germany2. Italy3. Poland4. Sweden5. Norway6. Denmark7. Israel,8. Ukraine9. Turkey10. RussiaWithin the marketing campaign the Georgian National Tourism Administration will spend about $65,000.TripAdvisor offers advice from millions of travellers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find the best hotel prices.TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 390 million unique monthly visitors, and 465 million reviews and opinions covering more than seven million accommodations, restaurants and attractions.The GNTA launched a similar campaign last year as well where about 200,000 GEL (about $83,163/77,610*) was spent. Problems of mountainous areas By Messenger Staff Unfortunately, Georgia has a number of mountainous regions that have been almost emptied, and it is amazing when we see those who refuse to leave their homes and live in difficult conditions in the mountainous parts of Adjara, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said during his visit to the Tsablana Village in the western Khulo municipality on April 19, where he paid tribute to victims of an ecological tragedy.During his last meeting in the mountainous region of Adjara, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili spoke about the necessity of improving living conditions for the mountainous population of Georgia. These territories are almost empties. In winter times the access to these places is almost impossible. The children cannot go to schools, as there are no proper classes there. There is often situation when population of these regions cannot receive medical care. The improper wood cuttings destroyed ecological system and such places are often under the threat of landslide.Kvirikashvili spoke about the uniqueness of the Adjarian highlands, and noted that 'wonderful people' live in this region.He stressed the government is trying to solve a problems for years and to provide victims of the disaster with housing.He stressed that finances have been allocated and a house is being built for the victims of the tragedy.On April 19 1989, a landslide claimed the lives of 23 people - including three children - in the village of Tsablana.has many times touched upon the problem of the mountainous regions, which are emptied due to the very hard economic conditions and practically have no normal educational prospects for the younger generations. That is why the younger generation abandons mountainous regions in search of better jobs and normal salary.Since gaining the independence the Government of Georgia promised to see for this issue, but so far very little had been done.Unfortunately, none of the governments of Georgia managed to settle the problem, which is becoming a burden; the capital city is becoming increasingly overcrowded, but development is chaotic, without proper studies of the grounds where new apartment buildings are built.People living nearby very often protest new construction project. However, the city leadership continue to turn a blind eye to the issue in many cases.Unfortunately, reactions are often belated in the country, and measures are often only taken when a fatality takes place.This is a very serious problem and Georgia could attract tourists in those areas, but initially the proper investments should be made. The News in Brief Nicholas Berliner: So-called Russian Embassy in Abkhazia will not have many neighbor embassies Support from the EU and U.S. is as strong and firm as it was before. Georgia has not lost our support, acting U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Nicholas Berliner has told IPN. He condemned the Russian Foreign Ministers visit to Abkhazia, and responded to the opening of the so-called Russian Embassy. According to Berliner, the so-called embassy will have no neighbouring embassies, as the international community considers Abkhazia as a part of Georgia. We continue supporting Georgias territorial integrity, he added. (IPN) De-facto Tskhinvali government to close crossing-point for illegal inauguration Locals of the Russian-occupied Georgian region of Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) cannot use the crossing-point between the breakaway region and the rest of Georgia for three days. The de-facto administration of Tskhinvali is closing the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) tomorrow due to the "inauguration of de-facto president-elect Anatoly Bibilov scheduled this Saturday, April 21. From tomorrow evening till Saturday morning, people will be temporarily deprived of the right to use the crossing-point "due to strengthened security measures". Illegal presidential elections were held in Russian occupied Tskhinvali on April 9 accompanied by a referendum on changing Tskhinvali regions name to the Republic of South Ossetia the State of Alania. Both acts have been denounced by Tbilisi and its international partners. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said earlier that any so-called elections or referendums in the occupied territories of Georgia are illegal and cannot have any legal effect. (Agenda.ge) Georgian MP injured after colleague throws ashtray, hits wrong person A member of the Georgian parliament was lightly injured on Wednesday, after a verbal and physical confrontation that led to an ashtray being hurled at his face. Otar Kakhidze was accidentally hit by an ashtray during a confrontation between two other MPs inside one of the MPs offices. Giorgi Kandelaki, a member of European Georgia, threw an ashtray towards Vano Zardiashvili, a Georgian Dream member, but missed. Instead, he hit Kakhidze, who was a bystander to the quarrel. Kakhidze, who is in the same party as Kandelaki, was filmed by the Georgian Public Broadcasters Channel 1 leaving the parliament building in Kutaisi Wednesday afternoon, accompanied by his fellow party member Giorgi Tughushi. This ashtray hurling incident was preceded by loud shouting between members of two opposition parties in the main hall of parliament, during a debate about whether a planned address by the head of the State Security Service should be open or closed to the public. Emzar Kvitsiani of the Alliance of Patriots accused European Georgia leader Giga Bokeria of being a foreign spy. It doesnt matter if the session will be open or closed when that foreign spy Giga Bokeria is sitting here, Kvitsiani said. This remark was derided by members of European Georgia, whose noisy reaction provoked Kvitsianis indignation. He took off his jacket, splashed water towards his opponents and rushed to the corner of EG MPs, but was timely stopped by parliaments security personnel. European Georgia was formed when members of United National Movement broke away from the party in a bitter feud over the role of leader Mikheil Saakashvili after the 2016 parliamentary elections. Kvitsiani has a background as a former warlord in Kodori Gorge in the northwest of the country. Kodori was the only part of Abkhazia that remained under Tbilisis control prior to the 2008 August War. He displayed disobedience to the central authorities, which led to a special operation by the army and interior ministry troops in the Kodori Gorge in 2006. Kvitisiani escaped to Russia, from where he returned in 2014, and was arrested upon arrival at Tbilisi airport. Kvitsiani was put on trial and found guilty of sedition and forming an illegal armed militia. The court sentenced him to 12 years in jail, but he was released in 2015 after the prosecution struck a deal. Since then he has been a member of the conservative Alliance of Patriots party. (dfwatch.net) Georgian Defense Minister meets with his French colleague Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria met with his French colleague Jean-Yves Le Drian. During the meeting, the ministers discussed bilateral defence cooperation aspects. The sides also focused on France`s engagement in the implementation of one of the elements of the NATO-Georgia Substantial Package. Within the framework of the working visit, the Minister of Defence of Georgia will also take part in the fire sparkling ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe dedicated to the memory of soldiers killed in combat operations. (1tv.ge) Is that not what the Democrat Party has created right here in America, transforming a once prosperous, strong, united, and safe nation into a debt-laden, militarily weak, socially divided, and increasingly dangerous society? Here are some of the Bizarro policies and beliefs inflicted on us by the neo-socialist, globalist, anti-American Democrat Party over the past few decades PAUL E. SCATS @ByKristenMClark The substance of plans Floridas public college and universities have for responding to campus emergencies or threats will soon be kept secret, under a proposed law that is on its way to Gov. Rick Scotts desk. The measure creates an exemption in Floridas public records law that shields from disclosure such materials as photographs, presentations, sheltering arrangements, training manuals and equipment and supplies related to emergency response strategies. Senators approved HB 1079 by a 36-0 vote on Thursday without any debate, a week after the House also passed it unanimously. More here. Photo credit: Miami Herald file photo @MichaelAuslen In the first big step toward agreement on the issue in Tallahassee, the Florida House is expected to adopt sweeping changes to its medical marijuana proposal Friday. New language (HB 1397) released Wednesday afternoon by Majority Leader Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, includes a number of changes pushed by advocates who came to public hearings: * Patients with chronic, nonmalignant pain would qualify for medical marijuana. * Doctors would not need a 90-day relationship with patients before they recommend the drug. * Edibles and vaping would be allowed. The language would maintain the House's slower ramp-up of licenses, granting licenses immediately to the seven growers under Florida's existing, limited medical cannabis program as well as an additional license to a black farmer. Then, the next licenses would kick in at 150,000 patients and 200,000 pateints. It also maintains a strong role for doctors in deciding how much cannabis their patients can use and how they should consume it, which has caused some concern in the medical community. Doctors worry that if medical marijuana in Florida functions too much like drug prescribing, they could be targeted by federal regulators. Marijuana may be legal for some patients here, but it is still a Schedule I drug under Federal law. Final Senate language has not yet been released, but it is expected that that chamber will make changes that move toward the House's position when it considers the legislation, likely early next week. via @learyreports WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has a new target: Sen. Bill Nelson and others trying to address a health care funding crisis in Puerto Rico. The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO! Trump tweeted this morning. Last night he said, Democrats are trying to bail out insurance companies from disastrous #ObamaCare, and Puerto Rico with your tax dollars. Sad! It seems Trump is referring to an effort from Nelson and Sen. Robert Menendez to address a Medicaid shortfall for Puerto Rico. The Democrats this week are pressing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the issue, noting that $6.4 billion in funding under the Affordable Care Act is set to run out at the end of the year, despite expectations it would last through 2019. The gap leaves Puerto Rico facing a Medicaid cliff that will have far-reaching consequences for both the island and the continental United States, Nelson and Menendez wrote to McConnell. The Democrats were members of the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Economic Growth in Puerto Rico, which issued a report in December that included a call for Medicaid funding. Sen. Marco Rubio was a member of the group and signed onto an April 7 letter urging Health Secretary Tom Price to address the Medicaid issue. We've asked Rubio for comment in light of Trump's comments. UPDATE: As of 1:45 p.m., Rubio has not responded. Despite what Trump says, its not clear Democrats are threatening to hold up a spending bill over the issue. Rubio and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Miami, are working the Territory Health Insurance Tax Relief Act of 2017, which would exempt health insurance providers in U.S. territories from paying a tax, which has been passed on to consumers in the forms of higher premiums. It is unfair to Puerto Ricans to have to pay this ObamaCare tax and endure higher premiums, only to be excluded from participating in the same health system that the rest of the United States does, Rubio said in a news release. As we work on the larger goal of repealing and replacing ObamaCare, this legislation would repeal the laws costly and unfair tax on Puerto Rico and help begin the process of revitalizing the health care system on the island. Students from all phases of their careers undergrad freshmen and seniors, MFA students plus one accomplished alum will present work at "Dance New Works" next week at the University of Montana. The final dance concert for the academic year at the School of Theatre & Dance is divided into three programs, each highlighting different facets of the art. "Emerging Choreographers," is a chance for younger students to get their work in front of a larger audience, said Heidi Eggert, a UM dance professor. Typically that means juniors, but this year two freshmen, Noelle Huser and Tiki Preston, will be featured. Eggert said it's a rarity for first-year students and their inclusion shows real "talent and perseverance." Additionally, Program I features a work-in-progress by dancer-choreographer Brian Gerke. The Missoula native studied dance at UM before leaving for New York as a sophomore when he was offered the chance to study with a professional company. He headed overseas, where he worked with the prestigious Iceland Dance Company for eight years. He returned and finished his BA credits at UM and is working on an MFA at the University of Utah. His piece for 11 dancers, "99.9," is a work-in-progress that he'll bring back to campus next academic year and continue developing for a full work. It features a sound score of both music and layered recordings of Gerke discussing his creative process. Gerke, who returned as a visiting artist, gives students a chance to study with someone working in the broader dance world a piece he set on UM students in 2012 was later performed at the Kennedy Center, said dance professor Nicole Bradley Browning. Gerke's choreography "pushes them in such a way that they learn about their physical virtuosity and what they're capable of in a different way than we're able to cultivate," she said, noting that the piece requires a "real, raw physical state" that's empowering and transformative for the students. Gerke's piece will be performed by freshmen, sophomores and juniors only, who can work with him again next year. *** "Creative Collaborations" is a full program that highlights a merging of courses, Eggert said. An advanced composition and choreography class and an advanced lighting design class worked together on the pieces. "This is an intentional merging of their creative voices early on," Eggert said. They collaborated for six weeks instead of meeting in the final week before the concert. In many productions, lighting design is crafted to complement the choreography. In this format, the designer's ideas are woven in from the beginning as they consider how light and shadow can inform the dancing. As an example, dancers Caroline Kinsley and Gina Sgrenci worked with lighting designer Alex Schofield on "Stellar." Schofield will mix live video of outer space scenes onto back projections and the two dancers on stage, who are "still the focal point but also act as a reflective surface," Eggert said. Bradley Browning said it's visual imagery that's difficult to pull off in the Open Space theater, but the students have taken the time to experiment and problem-solve. "Collaborations" is paired on "Program II" with work by Danielle Sather and Tsiambwom Akuchu, both MFA graduate students in the theater program who are interested in dance. "They are drawing the line closer and closer between theater and dance," Eggert said, and "closing the gap in their method of storytelling using their theatrical background and dance experience." Neither of their pieces use text, but the two employ movement to generate emotion and reveal a story. Akuchu came to UM as an actor, but quickly became engaged with the dance program, as he's a proficient urban dancer, Bradley Browning said. He soon was choreographing works, and studying ways to bridge hip-hop dance and acting. Sather's work draws on her research into the Japanese form of Butoh. Bradley Browning said the form, which has a rich history in post-World War II Japan, is used to "cultivate imagery of both the good and the bad in human life." For her piece, "Mari," she worked primarily with acting students. *** In another new wrinkle, the third program, "Where We Start," is standalone concert of graduating BA and BFA student work organized and staged entirely by students. It's the first time they've been presented as part of "Dance New Works" in this way, Eggert said. They were responsible for the news releases, bill design, stage management, and all the other facets of putting on a full show. Eggert said the program faculty felt the students had enough experience and team work to successfully take it on. Bradley Browning said the program will help bookend their experience at UM before graduating, and has helped create a tight-knit community: experiences that will help them as they move from college to professional development in their field. Like many arts careers, she said pursuing professional dance requires full commitment to succeed. The featured works are their thesis projects, which they started in the fall, choosing their own subject matter, collaborators, lighting design and more. The participating students are Hannah Dahl, Wyatt Guerrero, Caroline Kinsley, Kathryn Louise, Carissa Lund, and Gina Sgrenci. The presidential executive order to review 24 national monuments for potential resizing or elimination has drawn heated response from voices across the West. President Donald Trumps order tells Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review all monument designations larger than 100,000 acres made since 1996 to restore trust between local communities and Washington and (root) out abuses of power by previous administrations, according to an email statement from Zinke on Wednesday. While the order, issued Tuesday, does not strip any monument's designation, Zinke said in his statement that it would redirect the Interior Department to manage federal lands in accordance to traditional multiple-use philosophy. In the Trump Administration, we listen and then we act, Zinke said in the email. For years, the people of Utah and other rural communities have voiced concern and opposition to some monument designations. But too often in recent history, exiting presidents make designations despite those concerns. And the acreage is increasing. Zinke specifically mentioned Clintons 1996 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and President Barack Obamas 2016 Bears Ears National Monument as examples of overreach. The order also affects Montanas 377,346-acre Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument established by President Bill Clinton in 2001. Theres more to this decision than meets the eye, Missoula-based Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Conservation Director John Gale said in an email. Neither sportsmen nor other public lands users would stand in the way of an objective attempt to ensure the integrity of recent monument designations. Yet the administrations announcement could create unintended consequences that jeopardize important fish and wildlife habitat on public lands and invite unproductive dialogues that distract us from enhancing management of our public lands and waters. Indiana University environmental law professor Robert Fischman noted that the Antiquities Act gives a president the power to designate a national monument, but stands silent on disestablishment. So while Trump can order reviews of borders and management, he said only Congress has authority to erase a monument. I think what is happening here is that President Trump wants to make a big show of ordering a review (for which he needs no executive order) to appease opponents of monuments and parks, Fischman wrote in an email. Then, he can do nothing but make some suggestions to Congress. Revoking monument designations would undermine much of Trumps popular support. Congress has altered and disestablished parks, Fischman continued. The presidents have altered monument boundaries. None were done with the kind of fanfare we are seeing today. I think that suggests that Trump is acting for the fanfare and not for the disestablishment/revocation agenda. Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute Center for Energy and Environment, praised the executive order as a counter-move to other presidents massive land grabs. Presidents at least since Bill Clinton have misused the Antiquities Act of 1906 to lock up millions of acres of federal lands, Ebell wrote in an email. Some of these National Monument designations have had devastating effects on the people living near them. Jobs in resource industries have been destroyed, access for recreation and hunting has been eliminated, and environmental degradation has resulted from replacing active land management with de facto wilderness non-management. The Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics research organization in 2014 studied the economic performance of 17 national monuments larger than 10,000 acres in 11 Western states created since 1982. It found local communities at all 17 locations maintained or grew in population, employment, personal income and per-capita income. It found no evidence that designating those monuments prevented economic growth. The study included Grand Staircase Escalante and Upper Missouri Breaks, but was done before Bears Ears. Judging by the president's comments today, it's clear that he and his allies in Congress want to cripple, if not destroy, the Antiquities Act, an essential pillar of our public lands legacy, says Montana Wilderness Association Conservation Director John Todd, who spent 10 seasons guiding people through the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. Coincidentally, two members of the House and one senator reintroduced one of the most sweeping wilderness designation bills to Congress on Wednesday. Known as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, it would enroll about 23 million acres of federal roadless lands as wilderness in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington. Additionally, it would designate about 1,800 miles of rivers and streams as federal Wild and Scenic Rivers. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island submitted the companion bills in both chambers. Supporters claimed the bill would save taxpayers $245 million over 10 years by eliminating subsidized development in wilderness study and recommended wilderness areas, while creating 2,300 new jobs for restoring lands to wilderness character. Critics of the bill, which has been introduced numerous times but never received a vote, argue it has no support among the affected state congressional delegations. Upward Bound, a college preparation program, is at risk of shuttering at the University of Montana because part of its grant application to the U.S. Department of Education was not double-spaced as required. In a letter this month to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said if the decision stands, "it will be an example of bureaucracy at its very worst." In March, the federal agency deemed UM "ineligible for further consideration of funding" because a portion of its application was incorrectly formatted, according to a letter from the Department of Education to UM. Upward Bound celebrated 50 years at UM in 2016, and it is currently funded to serve 75 disadvantaged students, said director Twila Old Coyote on Wednesday. But Old Coyote said the program is scheduled to close May 31 unless the U.S. Department of Education reinstates its funding. The summer session is already canceled because the federal agency does not send funding notifications until the end of June, she said. The summer session was slated to serve 55 students for three months. "When you're serving over 50 students, you can't just wait until the end of June," Old Coyote said. "It takes months of planning and reservations, and we can't do that overnight." She said the summer closure will "absolutely" affect the ability of students to enroll in college. In its most recent funding cycle, Upward Bound received $337,500 for five years, and she said this year is the first the Department of Education added the spacing stipulation. "It's been a long-standing, successful program in both communities, and it's just going to be such a disservice, especially to our Native American students" if it closes, Old Coyote said. *** In his letter, Sen. Tester said the program has a "near 100 percent" high school graduation rate, and some 75 percent of its students enroll in college, compared to 27 percent of students with similar backgrounds nationwide. "Thanks to the University of Montana, and other Upward Bound and TRIO schools like it, students who never saw college as a possibility have gained the degrees they need to compete in a 21st Century economy," wrote Tester, a Montana Democrat. TRIO is a package of three programs helping students succeed in school. "If the Department rejects the university's application for a cause as minor as a spacing issue, it will be an example of bureaucracy at its very worst. "It is unconscionable to jeopardize the futures of disadvantaged students and deprive Montana businesses of well-trained workers over something so immaterial to the objectives of Upward Bound and TRIO as a whole." Media contacts with the U.S. Department of Education did not return voicemails or an email for comment Wednesday about how a decision might be reconsidered or appealed. *** Upward Bound helps students from two high schools in Missoula and one in Browning, and Old Coyote said she hopes the program can start again in September. She said she believes a "bridge" program will help students graduating this spring even though the summer session won't take place. Just one portion of the grant application was spaced incorrectly, and UM corrected the formatting error and resubmitted the document to the department, she said. It has not yet received a response. However, over the years, she said UM has received an estimated $12 million in support for Upward Bound. "I know that it works because our students come back and tell us what an impact this program has had on their educational goals and their achievements," Old Coyote said. In his letter, Tester called for continued funding, and he urged the secretary to overturn the decision to help high school students succeed in higher education. "Rejecting the University's application would only harm Montana students and only serve the interests of narrow-minded bureaucracy," Tester said. A minor celebrity from the television sitcom "Who's The Boss?" and a Snapchat ad were used as opposing weapons Thursday in the battle for Montana's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democratic candidate Rob Quist held a student rally on the University of Montana campus Thursday afternoon, just hours after actress Alyssa Milano held a get-out-the-vote event to support him at the same spot. The election is being held to replace Ryan Zinke, who was tapped to be Interior Secretary by President Donald Trump. Quist's main opponent is Republican Greg Gianforte, a businessman who lives in the Bozeman area, and who lost to incumbent Democrat Steve Bullock in November's gubernatorial election. Early voting has already started, but the special election is officially being held May 25. Quist, speaking into a megaphone to a crowd of several dozen students under cloudy skies, said maintaining access to public lands is a top priority for him if he wins. Ive been to probably almost 50 counties in the course of this election, and of course Ive been on a listening tour because I need to acquaint myself with the issues Montana is facing, Quist said. The No. 1 issue I hear is public lands, without a doubt. Thats one that pretty (much) sets us apart from the rest of the country. You know, we value our public lands out here because its what makes us special. Quist said 29 percent of Montanas land is wild and open country. Many other states around the United States have lost what we still have, he said. Ive traveled these states and I recognize it. You know, people out in Georgia, they have to go for hours at a time just to find a place to recreate. We dont want that in the state of Montana. I think the happiest people I know are people that spend a lot of time out in Mother Nature. If I encounter somebody thats having a rough day or a little depressed or grouchy, you know, I tell them, 'Perhaps you should take a walk in the mountains.' And on a side note, maybe Montana should tell that other guy to go take a hike. Quist attended UM, and referenced an old picture in the Montana Kaimin the student newspaper that showed him lying against a big rock on the Oval during a break between classes. In fact, it was a Montana student who first told me I should run, Quist said. I said, Well, what are you talking about? Im not a politician. And he said, Exactly. In the morning, Alyssa Milano best known for her roles in Whos the Boss?, Charmed, and Melrose Place" held a small rally and took students to the Missoula County Fairgrounds to vote early. Milano has traveled around the country supporting Democratic candidates this year. She didnt give a speech but posed for selfies with several college kids. Several students had to decline Milanos offer to drive them to vote at 10 a.m., saying they had to get to class. Meanwhile, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the House of Representatives, targeted UM students with a Snapchat geofilter ad that featured the caption How I Feel About Lyin Rob Quist." Courtney Alexander, a spokesperson for CLF, said that the ad would allow users to apply the filter after taking a selfie. The CLF has spent about $1.5 million in Montana so far in an effort to defeat Quist. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told the Huffington Post last week that it was going to contribute "six figures" to Quist's campaign. This story has been updated to reflect that the Congressional Leadership Fund is a super PAC. Attacking the news media is a tactic straight out of the Donald Trump playbook, and Greg Gianforte, who appears to be adhering to the presidents campaign model as closely as possible, capitalized on an opportunity last week to paint journalists as the enemy, too. This week, in an interview with the Billings Gazette editorial board, he offered an apology for his comments about the press and said he fully supports the First Amendment. He also said last weeks comments were just a joke. While his apology is appreciated, Gianforte needs to take pains to set a better example of civility from now on. As a potential federal officeholder, he should embrace all of the Constitutions amendments not just the second one and live by them. That means demonstrating his unequivocal support in both words and deeds, even when his audience might be egging him in a different direction. Such was the certainly the case last week when Gianforte, the Republican running for the U.S. House seat against Democrat Rob Quist, Libertarian Mark Wicks and write-in candidate Doug Campbell, celebrated his 56th birthday in Hamilton at a meeting hosted by the Advancing Conservatism Society, a local constitutional Christian group. Some 70 people were in attendance, including a Ravalli Republic reporter who was there to cover the event for the newspaper. And cover it he did. Reporter and Associate Editor Perry Backus wrote about the speech given by a local high school student, about the prayers and birthday cake. He wrote about Gianfortes speech in depth, including how the candidate echoed President Trumps promise to drain the swamp by imposing term limits and making it illegal for members of Congress to become lobbyists after theyve left office. And Backus wrote that toward the end of the candidates talk, a man in the audience said to Gianforte, Our biggest enemy is the news media and asked, How can we rein in the news media? The man followed up his question by turning to Backus, who was sitting next to him, and raised his hands as if he would like to wring his neck. Gianforte smiled, pointed at the reporter and said this: We have someone right here. It seems like there is more of us than there is of him. I dont have a simple solution for you. I will say that doing town hall meetings and getting out and visiting with people is very important. This joke made at the reporters expense wasnt funny at all. In fact, on its face, the statement demonstrated Gianfortes agreement that news media are the enemy. To be clear, the reporter never felt as though he were in danger of physical harm. But it should concern every Montanan when a candidate for Congress singles out any individual in a crowded room to point out that he is outnumbered. It should also concern voters that Gianforte has only recently become aware of the value of journalism. He was absolutely correct that personal meetings and town halls are very important for candidates and elected officials to hear directly from the public they purport to represent. It is even more important that journalists cover the issues and events of importance to voters. Montanas journalists will continue covering each candidate as we enter the final month before the May 25 special election. This coverage is absolutely critical to allow Montanas voters to make an informed choice in the election. It was disheartening to see contempt for this important work become a central and ongoing issue in the presidential campaign. President Trump has repeatedly criticized individual news organizations and journalists for coverage he considers unfavorable, including Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who was called a nasty guy by the president and who recently spoke at the University of Montana about his extensive coverage of the president. It was sickening to hear this contempt for journalists echoed in our own back yard. Of course, Gianfortes visit to Hamilton last week drew more public attention for his remarks about shooting prairie dogs than for his unfunny comments about outnumbering a lone journalist. He then spent the next few days fundraising and recreating with President Trumps son, Donald Trump Jr., and U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, which was duly covered by Montanas news media. Meanwhile, after their meeting with Gianforte, the Advancing Conservatism Society posted this message on Facebook: Give credit where credit is due. Perry Backus did a really nice write up of our Gianforte meeting on Monday night. This group is based in large part on shared esteem for the Constitution. However, the assumption from one of its members that news media is somehow our biggest enemy, and Gianfortes answer, heavily suggests that they have a lot of work to do educating people about it, particularly the First Amendment. UPDATED: The Montana Human Rights Bureau has found that a Kalispell company retaliated against a black employee who complained after one of her co-workers suggested a colleague's land could be a plantation and the woman's grandchildren could be slaves there. The bureau has found reasonable cause to believe TeleTech Services Corp., headquartered in Denver, also discriminated against Kiondra Bullock after she complained about racist jokes and comments in the workplace. Bullock filed a complaint in June 2016 with the bureau, a subdivision of the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. Bullock wrote in her complaint that TeleTech had retaliated against her after she had reported racist remarks by other employees. In answer to Bullocks complaint, TeleTech said Bullock who until then had received good performance reviews was a bad employee and the specific joke about Bullocks grandchildren working on a plantation was meant to be about child labor, not slavery, according to a response by the company, written in August 2016. TeleTech Director of Public Relations and Analyst Relations Olivia Griner said Wednesday the company does not comment on legal matters, so we have no comment at this time. On Friday, the company provided an additional comment on the complaint. "While we dont comment on the specifics of ongoing litigation, I can say we unequivocally deny the frivolous and meritless allegations by Ms. Bullock," Griner said. "As an organization committed to providing a diverse and inclusive working environment, we take all allegations of discriminatory conduct seriously and expect the highest level of integrity, honesty and respect at all levels of the company." Human Rights Bureau Investigator Tam Newby determined Bullocks complaint to be credible. The issue will now move to a contested hearing before the Office of Administrative Hearings. Bullocks lawyer Nate McConnell of Missoula said Wednesday there wasnt yet a date for the hearing. In response to TeleTech's additional comment, McConnell said Friday Bullock's complaint is not frivolous. "The Montana Human Rights Bureau spoke loud and clear: Ms. Bullock's claim has merit. Ms. Bullock is standing up to a multi-million dollar corporation and saying that discrimination has no place in Montana," McConnell said. From January 2015 to June 2016, Bullock was employed as a "team lead" at a TeleTech's Kalispell branch. In Bullocks complaint to the Human Rights Bureau, she states she told "Human Capital Manager" Andre Mehan that a site director at the company had asked her why black women do not like to swim. Bullock never heard of the company taking any action about the comment, according to her complaint. On April 11, 2016, Bullock and other coworkers were discussing a piece of property bought by one of the workers. According to the final investigative report, Bullocks coworker Alex Goodnight said, With all that acreage you could start a plantation and bring back slavery and (Bullocks) grandchildren could be the first slaves. Newby spoke to Goodnight as part of the investigation. Goodnight said he did not apologize to Bullock about the comment because TeleTech decided I did nothing wrong," according to the Human Rights report. In TeleTech's response to Bullock's complaint, the company said Bullock yelled at Goodnight in an unprofessional manner. Bullock reported Goodnights comment to her manager, Vanessa Oden, according to the final report. Oden alerted General Manager Jo Bowman, who later told Bullock the company's investigation into the incident was complete. Bullock said they asked her to provide a statement to Mehan, but she refused because the investigation was already complete, according to the final report. Bullock was later written up for yelling at Goodnight, but Goodnight was never punished for his remark, according to the final report. Bullock resigned and took another job, saying her working conditions had become intolerable, according to her complaint. Bullocks annual performance reviews from January 2016 and the year 2015 show high ratings and compliments on her ability to keep her employees engaged, according to the final report. Bullock was given a final warning about unprofessional conduct 35 days after she complained about Goodnights comment. Newby found there was credible evidence this final warning was a pretext for unlawful retaliation by TeleTech against Bullock for her complaining about race discrimination.'' RONAN Jeremiah Tsosie moved from Arizona to attend the Kicking Horse Job Corps Center to get certified in heavy construction equipment operations. Tsosie never thought college was the right place for him. He didnt like the structure of school, but he wanted to learn. He was willing to work, he said. The center had its semiannual open house Wednesday. Students drove in from Missoula, Deer Lodge and Troy to learn about the programs offered by the center and check out the campus. Donna Mitchell has worked at the center for about 27 years and calls it her second home. And sometimes my first, to be honest, Mitchell said. Mitchell works as the centers outreach and career transition coordinator, as well as its business liaison. The center contracts with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes for the facilities, but is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. The center also partners with the tribe to provide dental assistant training at the Salish Kootenai College. When his uncle told him about the center, Tsosie decided to move to Montana for the program. A member of the Navajo tribe, Tsosie thought it was cool the program was on tribal land. Even though there is a job corps program in Phoenix, Tsosie didnt like the programs offered there when he was considering where he should learn a trade. Tsosie, 23, will complete his education at the center in less than a year. When he's done, he plans to return to the Navajo Nation to work. Malia Kipp, a nursing instructor at the center, said many of its students come from other states. More students are from Colorado than Montana, Kipp said. The center has three training courses in the medical field, including certified nursing assistant, dental assistant and pharmacy technician. There is also a culinary arts program, facilities maintenance, machine equipment repair and heavy equipment operations. Students receive a living stipend and can get financial help when moving to the center. They also receive career placement assistance for up to nine months after finishing their program. Some students like Aiko Wong, 22, see the school as a steppingstone to furthering their education. Wong is training to be a certified nursing assistant and hopes to one day become a registered nurse. Center Director John Wheeler started in his position about a year ago. He said many college students discover that, even with a degree, they can't find work. The center gives young people, ages 16-24, not just a specific job training, but core values that help them succeed in any professional environment. Not everyone is meant to go to college, Mitchell said. Not everyone is meant to go to high school. Kicking Horse Job Corps Center is located at 33091 Mollman Pass Trail. The center has the capacity for about 170 students. The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole has denied parole for a Seeley Lake woman who admitted for the first time last week that she killed her husband 25 years ago. Becky Lynn Richards is serving a life sentence for the March 1992 death of Jim Richards. Parole board executive director Kristy Cobban said that Richards was denied parole Friday because board members questioned her remorse. Previous parole denials noted that she did not take responsibility for her husband's death. Prosecutors said Becky Richards shot her husband in the head after he discovered she had been stealing money from his logging business. Richards also was convicted of several counts of forgery and theft and was ordered to pay nearly $69,000 in restitution. She is eligible for another parole hearing in three years. WARM SPRINGS As water chemistry equipment goes, you cant beat a Coke bottle. Mixed in with the microfilters, GPS units and conductivity monitors on last weeks National Science Foundation river survey were eight red-capped plastic soda bottles. Project principal investigator Marc Peipoch of the University of Montana made sure they were in easy reach in his canoe. You can spend money on gear or you can buy Coke, Peipoch said. This is the best gas-tight bottle you can find. Replace the soda with river water, and a geoscientist can determine the age of radon gas isotopes dissolved within. Radon gas signifies underground water, and its isotopes slowly decay over about four days exposure to sunlight. Knowing the gas condition gives hints about the mix of ground water and surface water flowing in the Clark Fork River. At its headwaters just east of Anaconda, the Clark Fork looks like any pastoral stream. Just a couple dozen feet wide and a few feet deep, it writes a cursive script through the Deer Lodge Valley next to Interstate 90. An attentive motorist might notice a lot of earth-moving going on in its floodplain. Thats because in 1908, a catastrophic flood tore through the mine tailings of Butte and Anaconda and deposited lethal amounts of arsenic, copper and other metals throughout the drainage. The surge nearly ripped out brand-new Milltown Dam just east of Missoula. The dam held, and thats where several million tons of heavy metal sludge came to rest in its reservoir. Lots more got deposited in oxbows all along the Deer Lodge Valley. Known as slickens, these poisoned riverbanks remained virtually sterile for a century. Mining cleanup efforts between Butte and Missoula formed the largest contiguous federal Superfund site in the nation. A lot of the big-ticket work grew out of settlements between the legacy mining owners and the state and federal government. Those agreements provided millions of dollars for removal of Milltown Dam, reconstruction of Silver Bow Creek through Butte, and numerous other smaller projects throughout the drainage. Today, most of the upper Clark Fork work depends on the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for removal of the remaining toxic metals, and the Department of Justices Natural Resource Damage Program for restoration of the resulting ecosystem. Theyre working from a $96 million trust fund paid by the mining companies to repair damage to the 47-mile upper reach of the Clark Fork. To do that, we have to know how the upper Clark Fork should behave if it hadnt endured a century of abuse. That requires lots of scientific detective work. The upper Clark Fork is a sleeping giant of a fishery, said Will McDowell of the Clark Fork Coalition, a Missoula-based river conservation group. It has natural productivity, probably tied to those natural nutrient sources. If it was otherwise healthy, it could be a tremendous fishery. Theres no reason it shouldnt be, except for the metals. *** The Natural Resource Damage Program (NRDP) sees the upper Clark Fork in three segments: headwaters to Drummond, Drummond to Rock Creek, and Rock Creek to Bonner. That middle reach has the worst fishery conditions, but the upper end might be the source of the problem. Removing the heavy metals will have a big impact, but that leaves the nutrient load in search of answers. We want to know why is the green algae in that stretch from Drummond to Rock Creek so prominent? said NRDPs Doug Martin. And if possible, how to fix it? Whats the limiting factor? Is there something we could do or some way to use our restoration funds? But rivers are giant, moving chemistry sets, and the upper Clark Fork presents some remarkable puzzles. For example, phosphorus has a huge impact on plant growth in rivers. Add too much and it works like fertilizer that gooses plant growth, which consumes all the oxygen in the water and kills the fish. Phosphorus can come from things like cleaning products, which is why places like Missoula participated in campaigns to use non-phosphate-based laundry detergent to improve water quality. But it also occurs naturally, as any I-90 motorist driving by the Phosphate exit near Garrison might realize. That commemorates the last underground phosphate mine in the United States, which closed in 1993. The other major nutrient in a river system is nitrogen. Those who remember their earth science classes recall the frustratingly complex nitrogen cycle of phases the element goes through as it builds up and breaks down in living systems. University of Montana systems ecologist Maury Valett suspects that cycle is misfiring in the upper Clark Fork, jerking its plant and animal life in awkward directions. This river is way greener than it should be, Valett said. The state has set up a 15-phase project to remove the mining metals from the upper Clark Fork and restore its floodplain to a more natural condition. But that assumes we know what natural looks like. *** Valett and Peipoch have a five-year, $450,000 National Science Foundation grant to help the state agencies learn what that chemistry should be. Theyve combined with funding from state agencies to make sense out of huge collections of data developed over the years of restoration work on the river. And in the upper Clark Fork kitchen, lots of chefs stir the pot. The Warm Springs Ponds just above its headwaters were built to catch mining waste flowing down from Butte in Silver Bow Creek. They remove lots of copper, and also trap a great deal of nitrogen. But they also release arsenic downstream, and they interfere with water temperature and flooding cycles that other parts of the nitrogen cycle depend on. Then theres human activity, including the sewage treatment plants at Butte and Anaconda and Deer Lodge, the septic systems of the surrounding ranches, and the fertilizer applied to the farm fields. Theres acres of cow manure that both absorbs and releases different forms of nitrogen as it gets plopped onto and plowed into the soil. Theres even a possibility that the decades of ammonium-based explosives used in digging Buttes open-pit copper mine might be contributing residual nitrogen to the system. And dont forget the natural world. Valett and Peipoch can tell to some degree where the nitrogen compounds in the water come from. And a surprising amount bears chemical signatures of soil bacteria. That hints at the activity of wetlands full of microorganisms decomposing organic matter and turning it into nitrogen fertilizer. Thats why we need a bunch of boats and a bunch of bottles, Valett said. On a water-sampling float last November, a series of test sites showed virtually no nitrogen until one spot where it seemed to come in through a fire hose. But there was no smoking gun of a sewer pipe or irrigation ditch to produce the spike. Furthermore, the nitrogen was flowing in winter, when those microorganisms are typically too cold to digest anything. Conversations with mining historians hint at a possible ancient, underground wetland near Anaconda that might be insulated enough to function better in winter than in summer, when much of its groundwater gets drawn away for irrigation. But thats just a guess. It will take multiple floats down the river to determine where the nutrients come from and how to bring them into balance. *** It takes just six minutes for a freeway driver to cover the distance between Warm Springs and Racetrack. A canoeist needs about seven hours of constant paddling to get through the 11 miles of curlicue curves packed between those two exits. The UM sampling crews plan to float that reach several times a year. Of course, that counts the time needed to take new samples every 500 meters, to check every tributary stream for its water signature, and to escape the occasional entanglement with low-hanging willow bushes. The upper section of the river is closed to public floating because of all the restoration and remediation work along its banks. That makes it a haven for nesting geese and ducks, muskrats and beavers, and the occasional tail-slapping brown trout. This is fun science, Valett said. Its a chance to preserve and improve some of things Montana is known for. Were trying to help the landscape make sense. Its complicated as hell, but most good problems are. A man arrested for leading police on a high speed chase involving spike strips, driving into oncoming traffic and nearly running over an officer pleaded guilty Thursday in Butte district court to felony criminal endangerment. Additional charges against Mansour Alsubaihi, 21, were dropped in exchange for the guilty plea. Alsubaihi was originally booked for felony assault with a weapon for nearly hitting an officer with his car; two counts of assault with a bodily fluid; fleeing from police; reckless driving; and driving without a valid license, insurance, and lit headlights, and DUI. Judge Kurt Krueger waived a pre-sentencing investigation, and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 4. According to the plea agreement, the prosecution will recommend 10 years probation and immediate deportation via the Saudi Arabian consulate in Los Angeles following sentencing. On April 9 Alsubaihi flashed his lights at officers responding to a call at a North Side student housing complex and took off in his 2011 Dodge Charger. Officers pursued Alsubaihi to Interstate 15-90 eastbound, and near Woodville Hill he headed back toward town at over 90 mph. Police said they used stop sticks to blow Alsubaihi's tires, but that he kept driving, crossing into oncoming traffic and nearly striking another vehicle before turning around and nearly hitting an officer who jumped out of the way. Alsubaihi fought with and spit at officers when he was finally stopped, according to police. On March 18, Alsubaihi was arrested in Whitestown, Indiana, for reckless driving and driving without a license and gave a Butte address, according to Boone County, Indiana, police reports. Police said his Charger is registered in Kentucky. The afternoon Butte jail roster shows Alsubaihi still incarcerated. He has been there since April 10. Montana Tech spokesperson Amanda Badovinac said Alsubaihi is a registered student at the college. He remains in jail on a $50,000 bond. Crazy Horse family members Floyd Clown, Doug War Eagle, Don Red Thunder, and author William Matson will be available to meet and sign their book Crazy Horse: The Lakota Warriors Life and Legacy from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 28, at Books & Books, 206 W. Park St., in Butte. The Crazy Horse familys oral history had not been told outside the family for over a century. Now it is ready to be told by Clown, War Eagle, and Red Thunder who are the son and grandsons of Edward Clown who was the nephew to Crazy Horse and the keeper of the sacred bundle and pipe for the family after his mother Iron Cedar passed away. Their book includes what they know about one of Montanas biggest events, the battle of the Little Bighorn including who killed Custer, how he was killed, and what happened to his missing index finger. It also contains additional history that pertains to Montana. Clown, War Eagle, and Red Thunder live in Dupree, S.D., on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Matson, a documentary filmmaker, lives in Spearfish, S.D., but is originally from Tacoma, Washington. This is Matsons first book. Beginning in May and lasting throughout the summer and into the fall, Montana Wilderness Association is offering more than 100 free day hikes, overnight trips, and trail building and maintenance projects across some of the state's most magnificent backcountry. Beginning May 1, the general public can view the entire Wilderness Walks schedule and sign up for a Wilderness Walk at wildmontana.org/walks. The entire schedule is also available in MWAs Discover Wild Montana publication, a benefit for MWA members. Members are given a two-week period to sign up for a Wilderness Walk before registration opens to the public. This is the first year that our newest chapter, Southwestern Wildlands, has hosted Wilderness Walks, says Sally Cathey, MWAs southwest Montana field director. The great selection of adventures the chapter is offering highlights the beauty of the region and demonstrates why this corner of the state is Montanas best-kept secret. In addition to Wilderness Walks, MWA is also offering the public the opportunity to volunteer this summer on nine different volunteer trail projects happening mostly along the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail from the Beaverhead Mountains up the Badger-Two Medicine. Sign up for a trail project and view the entire schedule on May 1 at wildmontana.org/trailvolunteer. MWAs Southwestern Wildlands Chapter will host a public kick-off event, called Spring into Summer, for the 2017 Wilderness Walks season. It happens 5 to 8 p.m. Monday, May 8. at the Butte Brewing Company, 465 E. Galena St. Since the programs beginnings in July 1962, when MWA founders Ken and Florence Baldwin led 40 hikers on the first Wilderness Walk to Table Mountain in the Spanish Peaks, the intention of the Wilderness Walks program has remained the same to build grassroots support for wilderness and public lands by uniting a community around Montanas special places. Now in its 55th season, MWAs Wilderness Walks program continues to offer hikers of all ages and experience levels an opportunity to participate in traditional recreation opportunities while enjoying Montanas quiet beauty and remaining wild places. Below is a detailed list of all 2017 Wilderness Walks hosted by MWAs Southwestern Wildlands Chapter and located in the Butte and Dillon areas. Details: Amanda Hagerty at (406) 443-7350 (ext. 108) or at ahagerty@wildmontana.org. Humbug Spires Saturday, May 13 Location: Divide Leaders: Jack Kirkley and Brenda Kirkley This low-elevation hike provides a good early spring warm-up for our hiking legs. The trail varies in steepness, with a few huff-and-puff stretches up the geologically vertical granite. 5 miles, moderate Lake of the Isle Saturday, June 24 Location: Anaconda Leaders: Jim Fay and Glen Southergill Hike to Lake of the Isle, a beautiful mountain lake close to the Continental Divide at the foot of Mount Evans, in the Anaconda Range. 10 miles, moderately strenuous Coolidge Ghost Town Saturday, June 24 Location: Wise River Leaders: Callie Boyle and Matt Moore Hike deep into the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, through stands of pine, spruce, fir trees, and lichen-covered boulders, to the eerily beautiful Coolidge Ghost Town, continuing along picturesque Elkhorn Creek up to Elkhorn Lake. 12 miles, strenuous Trapper Creek to Granite Lake Saturday, July 1 Location: Melrose Leaders: Charlie O'Leary and Russ O'Leary The East Pioneer Mountains are a landscape of many uses. This off-trail hike is a quiet trek through summer elk range leading to a beautiful lake at the base of Granite Peak. Scenic vistas, open meadows, and unique terrain abound in this area adjacent to the East Pioneers Recommended Wilderness. 6 miles, strenuous Mount Haggin Saturday, July 15 Location: Anaconda Leaders: Mark Phillip and Dave Williams The hike ascends through forest fire regrowth, mature forest with tamaracks, and an alpine meadow before climbing Mount Haggin, Anaconda's dominant summit. The descent is a ridge walk, exiting through the Barker Lake area. 10 miles, strenuous Blair Lake Saturday, Aug. 19 Location: Monida Leaders: Kelly Hurston and Fran Galvin Explore the Centennial Mountains on the Montana-Idaho border above the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Blair Lake is located at 8,100 feet, near the Continental Divide Trail. 9 miles, strenuous Pintlers Geology Backpack Saturday, Aug. 26 Location: Anaconda Leaders: Dave Williams and Karen Williams An overnight backpacking trip to Upper Carpp Lake highlights the geologic diversity of the Anaconda Range. The campsite at Carpp Lake sits below Warren Peak, where participants have the option to take a day trip to Warren Lake. 14 miles, extremely strenuous Antone Peak Sunday, Aug. 27 Location: Dillon Leaders: O. Alan Weltzien and Neal Straus The Snowcrest Range, one of southwest Montana's treasures, is a long-standing Wilderness Study Area that has been recommended for permanent Wilderness protection. Running north-to-south, this local mountain range features stands of lodgepole pine alpine parks and plenty of wildlife. From the summit of Antone Peak (10,247 feet) we can survey several mountain ranges and the Centennial Valley. 4 miles, moderately strenuous Cave Mountain Saturday, Sept. 2 Location: Whitehall Leaders: Amanda Hagerty and Nathan Jones This backcountry-adventure focuses on public lands history and travels into the undeveloped area of Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. The hike ventures behind Cave Mountain, through mostly forested terrain with the opportunity to enjoy surrounding vistas. 4 miles, moderate Warren Pass Loop Friday, Sept. 15 Location: Anaconda Leaders: Fran Galvin and Irene Fries Warren Pass is an enjoyable loop hike in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness that offers superb scenery. The hike route follows Carpp Creek upstream, through Maloney Basin and Black Bear Meadows, to the base of Mount Warren. The hike descent winds through Upper and Lower Carpp Lake. 10 miles, strenuous Lost Creek Sunday, Sept. 24 Location: Anaconda Leader: Tom Forwood Spectacular gray limestone cliffs and pink and white granite formations rise above the canyon's narrow floor. Lost Creek Falls, in the park, cascades over a 50-foot drop to provide one of the most scenic spots in the park. Mountain goats, golden eagles, and bighorn sheep are frequently seen on the cliffs above, and pika are often seen and heard in the rock piles in the upper park. 3 miles, easy Wise River office to open The Wisdom and Wise River District Ranger Molly Ryan announces that the Wise River office will resume full visitor services from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday beginning Monday, May 1. These hours of public service will remain in effect for the Forest Service office in Wise River until late November 2017. The Wise River office can also be reached by phone starting May 1 at 406-832-3178. *** Upland Game Bird Council to meet An advisory council who presented their recommendations on a long-range strategic plan for FWPs Upland Game Bird Enhancement Program in 2012 will meet in Helena May 8-9 to participate with program planning efforts for the 2017 field season. The meeting will be held at FWPs Montana WILD, 2668 Broadwater Ave., beginning May 8 at 8 a.m. The public is invited to comment during the time identified on the agenda. Click Upland Game Bird Council for meeting details. For more information, contact Debbie Hohler at 444-5674, or by email dhohler@mt.gov. *** Design a project on ranger district The public is invited to be part of a collaborative process and join us for a public meeting and field trip to help in the design of an on-the-ground project. The project will aim to improve forest health and resiliency in the Willow Creek drainage of the Lincoln Ranger District. An open house will be held Tuesday, May 9, from 6-8 p.m. at the Lincoln Community Hall, 404 Main St. At this meeting, people will hear from forest specialists on how, together, we can identify and brainstorm ideas for project activities to positively impact an area that has been affected by insects and disease. Join specialists on a field trip to the Willow Creek area and discuss ideas for project design components. The field trip is scheduled for Friday, May 12, from noon to 4 p.m. To reserve a spot on the field trip, RSVP no later than May 9 by one of the following ways: Email: lroberson@fs.fed.us and include Willow Creek Field Trip in the subject line; or Call the Lincoln office at 406-362-7000. *** Commission to take up initiative The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission will take action on the Quiet Waters rule proposal in a special meeting May 12. The commission will hold a work session on May 11 at Montana WILD, 2668 Broadwater Ave., for an overview of the Quiet Waters rule proposal and will reconvene on May 12 to make a final decision. The commission will take public comment on the rule proposal at their special meeting on May 12. The meeting will be streamed live via video conferencing at FWP regional offices. Public comment can be given in person at any regional office or at Montana WILD. Both the work session and special meeting will be audio streamed live online at www.fwp.mt.gov. For the full agenda and additional information, visit FWP's website at fwp.mt.gov. Click "For Commission Information." *** Bikers urged to be prepared in grizzly country In many of Montanas growing communities from Bozeman, to Missoula, to Helena and the Flathead mountain bikers are finding more trails to ride and businesses to cater to their needs. But just like hikers, hunters and other recreationists, mountain bikers must take special precautions when riding in bear country. Mountain bikers are often traveling at high rate of speed and are quiet. This can create a dangerous scenario. Along with reducing speed and finding ways to make noise additional safety precautions include: Carry and know how to use bear pepper spray for emergencies. Let someone know where you are going and when you plan to return. Travel in groups of three or more people whenever possible and plan to be out in the daylight hours. If a member of the party is attacked by a bear, the other members of the party should be ready to use their bear spray on the bear to stop the attack, even if it means also spraying their fellow rider. Stay on trails or rural roads. Watch for signs of bears such as bear scat, diggings, torn-up logs and turned over rocks, and partly consumed animal carcasses. Use caution in areas like berry patches where bears may be feeding. Don't approach a bear; respect their space and move off. Specifically for mountain bikers, keeping bear spray in a readily accessible location is important. Various items are available at retailers that allow mountain bikers to keep bear spray readily at hand. These include chest holsters and holders that attach the bear spray to the bike frame. *** Shed hunters: WMAs are closed Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks reminds shed hunters that most Wildlife Management Areas that provide important winter range sanctuary for elk are closed until noon on May 15. Each year, a number of people can't seem to resist the urge to get a jump on the rest of the crowd and access WMAs early and unlawfully. It's important to remember that WMAs provide vital, protected winter range for deer and elk. And this is the time of year these animals are the most stressed. Also, shed hunters should stay alert and remember that most of Montana is bear country. It's easy to get so focused on searching for sheds that one can forget to remain ever mindful of bears. To find out when Montana's 72 WMAs open visit FWP's website at fwp.mt.gov; then click WMA Open/Close Dates. Recreationists seeking access to private land for any reason must ask first for permission. *** 2017 SuperTag chances are on sale Hunters can win the SuperTag drawing by purchasing one or more $5 SuperTag chances for the fall 2017 hunting season. Eight SuperTag hunt licenses are offered moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, elk, deer, antelope, mountain lion and bison. Winners may hunt any district open to the species for which they won a tag. SuperTags are available at all FWP offices, license providers, or online at fwp.mt.gov. Click "Montana's SuperTag." SuperTags can be purchased using FWP's online licensing service. A 2017 conservation license is needed to purchase a SuperTag. Proceeds from SuperTag sales go to enhance hunting access and enforcement. The Montana Public Service Commission is seeking public input ahead of a planned meeting with NorthWestern Energy to improve billing practices for ratepayers. Commissioners Roger Koopman (R-Bozeman) and Tony ODonnell (R-Billings) will meet with representatives from NorthWestern, along with PSC staff, Monday in Butte to discuss prior challenges related to customer billing and proposed improvements to increase transparency for ratepayers. Among the topics to be discussed are: Current practices related to estimated billing; Improved coordination with the PSC to better inform ratepayers of unusual billing events; And potential changes to the layout and format of bills to provide additional clarity for the ratepayer. The meeting is part of an ongoing inquiry by the PSC into the billing policies and practices of NorthWestern following a high volume of complaints related to estimated bills from December and January. Persons with past experiences or concerns related to NorthWestern billing procedures are encouraged to contact Commissioner Roger Koopman at Rkoopman@mt.gov or Commissioner Tony ODonnell, Anthony.ODonnell@mt.gov. Concerns can also be directed to the PSC Consumer Assistance staff at 800-646-6150. A blaze ignited by sparks from a woodstove caused serious damage to a home on Gaylord Street Wednesday night. The occupant was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, said fire marshal Brian Doherty, but no other injuries were reported. The single-story structure fire, reported at 7:09 p.m., burned so hot it melted siding on the neighbors house, Doherty said. He said it spread rapidly, but Butte-Silver Bow firefighters knocked it down quickly. However, clutter in the home made it difficult for firefighters to get inside, he said. Doherty said the occupant was starting a fire in his woodstove when sparks flew out and hit nearby combustibles including a highly flammable dog bed. The man tried but was unable to extinguish the fire. Flames were licking out a south window when firefighters from Station 2 the South Side Station arrived first, with Capt. Rick Hansen in Engine 1, followed by the Uptown Engines 2 and 4, with Capt. Ryan McCarthy and Capt. Chad Silk at the helm. Helping at the scene were Ed Randall, the countys community enrichment director, and personnel from the Red Cross, A1 Ambulance, NorthWestern Energy and the Boulevard Volunteer Fire Department. Doherty said the occupant, who was not identified, and his dog were alone in the house at 3517 Gaylord St. when the fire started. The dog also made it out safely, Doherty said. Firemen were finished at the scene at 8:50 p.m. The fire marshal said he cant emphasize enough the dangers of wood stoves, and that combustibles must be located a safe distance from the stove, and the chimney must be clean. People have to be real careful with wood stoves, he said. After months of infighting, House Republicans are unveiling a budget resolution Tuesday that would dramatically reshape the federal government, requiring more than $200 billion in cuts to mandatory programs and set the path for a major overhaul of the tax code. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 against accepting foreign payments as he entered retirement, according to new documents obtained by the House oversight committee. 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 Montana Republican Ryan Zinke has been saying he is a Theodore Roosevelt conservationist his entire political career. To thwart potential criticism and pressure, he throws the term about like a madman waving a burning tire at the end of a pole. Roosevelt is best remembered as a rancher, hunter, decorated military veteran, conservationist, and the president who began the government's role in environmental protection. Looking at Zinke's voting record and politics, there are no similarities. Zinke's voting record speaks against Roosevelts ideals: supporting legislation to sell public lands to pay off the national debt, backing the transfer of public lands to states, opposing the North Fork Protection Act ("I didn't like that bill... because it took natural development out for perpetuity forever), supporting a bill that would turn over Montanas public lands to developers, signing the Montana constitutional plan that includes resolutions to sell public land, blocking access to more fishing and hunting on public land, endorsing a bill to cut funding to the Habitat Montana Program that benefits conservation, increasing resource extraction on public land, and defending the federal government shutdown in 2013 that temporarily closed Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Naturally, Zinke marched into the beginning of this legislation session and voted for a bill to devalue public land and make transfer to states or private entities easier. Zinke's first day as secretary showed him riding a horse to work; you know, like Roosevelt would have done. Zinke held the reins tight in anticipation of a runaway, wore a black cowboy hat with a Texas cattleman crease, sitting in a cosmopolitan English saddle that hinted to wealthy New England riders who compete in hunter-jumper shows. After all, most of Zinke's dark campaign money came from the East. The image fell short of the mark, since the majority of cowboys dont ride English saddles. Once inside the new office, he reversed a ban on lead ammunition on national wildlife refuges, furthering the National Rifle Associations wishes, not Roosevelt conservation. Zinke has been busy filling the department with former Monsanto executives that harken to his days of voting to repeal portions of the Country of Origin Labeling Act, touring parks in his home state and vowing to take on sexual harassment and hostile work environments that put the Park Service in the public spotlight last year, pushing for resource extraction on public land, changing the Bureau of Land Management website's cover photograph from two children backpacking to a hunk of coal, and receiving checks for $78,000 donated from the president's salary to take care of the park maintenance backlog. Trump's proposed budget will cut the Department of Interior by $1.5 billion, all while Zinke plays cheerleader in his battle to take on the $12.5 billion park maintenance backlog. Zinke said, "Our nation can't run on pixie dust and hope." But it seems his department will be running on exactly that as people subsidize corporations to remove resources from public lands, manipulating markets, garnering a jelly-belly profit and leaving taxpayers to clean up the mess and pay for the resultant adverse public health and squandered economy. "I'm proud of my president. As a commander in chief, I'll follow him anywhere," drawled Zinke at Trump's Energy Independence Executive Order signing. Roosevelt said, To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. I don't see much resemblance between Zinke and Roosevelt, and therefore, we can conclude that American conservation has lost, yet again. Just how long will honest people tolerate the levels of dishonesty and high hypocrisy brought to us daily in our media? I, for one, think that our second Civil War is well under way. Friends believe that their way of life is under assault with distorted truths. Facts that are true for one should apply to us all regardless of our political bent. After pontificating for years if charges are true against Bill OReilly, he should be fired, not so for another Bill in the 1990s, however. The Left is so blinded by perpetual anger that it cannot see its own hypocrisy. We got to know Greg and Susan Gianforte years ago at a small group dinner at our home and were invited to their home several times. The Gianfortes are very nice folks, like the neighbors next door. Along with their successes in business, the Gianfortes have given back greatly to the state of Montana and its people, more than anyone else that we know. However, the charge leveled at Greg is that he is not from Montana and not for Montana, right? I guess with that logic the same could be said of MSU President Waded Cruzado, Bozeman Mayor Carson Taylor, and, in fact, most of our city council as they are Not from Montana. As far as getting the job done for Montana, the contest between Quist and Gianforte is no contest at all, and you know it just compare their records. I have never ever heard Greg say that he would sell one acre of Montana land or restrict fishing access. That is hogwash and again the high hypocrisy so evident in politics: character assassination rather than focusing on real issues. Thomas L. Hunter, Bozeman MUSCATINE After serving 37 years as director of Muscatine County Community Services, Michael Johannsen said the timing finally feels right for him to retire. Johannsen will retire on July 1, ending what he called a career full of community collaboration and gratitude. "The feeling I really want to leave people with is grateful," Johannsen said. "Life's about opportunities and Muscatine gave me an opportunity." Johannsen graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Psychology, before coming to Muscatine with his wife, Sue, in 1976. He was hired as an outreach worker for Muscatine's Commission on Aging, and promoted to director in 1978. One year later, Johannsen joined the Community Services department as an associate director. He was promoted to community services director in 1980, following the retirement of Kenny Duncan. "I've always been interested in human services, and I'm very grateful for those experiences," he said. "Muscatine has been very good to Sue and myself. We've had the opportunity to raise a family, work, live, recreate and build some great friendships." Johannsen said he is most proud of his work to increase housing options in the county. He has partnered with the Housing Authority to develop senior housing at Hershey Manor, and collaborated with the Muscatine Welfare Association to create group homes for low-income residents. "If you can stabilize someone's housing, then people can have a better opportunity to achieve their goals," Johannsen said. Johannsen has also been an advocate for the improvement and increased accessibility of mental health services in Muscatine and eastern Iowa. "Mental health has been an ever-evolving area since I started," he said. Over the past four decades, Johannsen has seen mental health funding cut, frozen, and just in the past three years, completely redesigned by the state. "It's not easy to attract [mental health] providers to small communities," he said. "The evolution of that has been one of the most interesting things in my career." Johannsen has helped lead the regionalization of mental health in Muscatine, Scott, Clinton, Jackson and Cedar counties, serving as CEO of the Eastern Iowa MHDS Region for more than a year. "I'll end my career with mental health still being a big piece, and still a piece that changes all the time," Johannsen said. "The goal is to see that the providers in the community provide quality services with good access for people who need the services at the time they need it." Johannsen has also been involved with the Muscatine Center for Social Action. Executive Director Charla Schafer said Johannsen is a main factor in why MCSA was founded. "Mike (Johannsen) is supportive of any gap he sees in providing service to the community," Schafer said. "He's an integral part of human service decisions, but his touch goes way beyond the scope of his daily work." She said Johannsen has been her mentor since she has lived in Muscatine, and his work and influence will be missed. "Muscatine and its residents were better the day he decided to move to the community," Schafer said. "He really is one of a kind." Johannsen said he has seen a lot change in Muscatine over the past four decades, including increased poverty and substance abuse, but some things never change, like the importance of small businesses and residents who care. "What hasn't changed is you can go down the street and people greet each other; they're interested in their community and people want to see it improve," he said. Johannsen said he is most thankful for his family, which has been by his side every step of the way, and for the friendships he has made through collaborations in the community. Muscatine County Budget Administrator Sherry Seright said the Board of Supervisors has formed a hiring committee to replace Johannsen as community services director. MUSCATINE A volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Muscatine County was honored at the state capitol Wednesday by Iowa Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds. Donette Griffin, from Blue Grass, was one of five Iowa residents to be presented the 2017 Excellence in Mentoring Award, as part of the state's celebration of National Volunteer Week. "I couldn't believe it," Griffin said. "I had no idea I was put in as a candidate. I received a letter at home from the governor and I thought it was just political advertising, but when I realized. I was so humbled and honored." Griffin has been a mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters for about 12 years, maintaining the longest-running Big Sister Little Brother match in Muscatine. "I didn't realize it was the longest until they told us this year," she said. "It just seemed so natural every year that we're going to be together." She first met her Little Brother, Robert Ribbink, when he was six years old, and would visit him in school for an hour every week. The tradition has held up and their bond continued to grow stronger over time. Now, Ribbink is preparing to graduate from high school this spring. "[Ribbink] made a comment that he can't imagine a year of school without me being involved with him, and I feel the same way," she said. "It's almost like one of my own kids. I'm just so proud of how he's matured and he's such a great young man now." Griffin said Ribbink plans to attend Muscatine Community College, thanks to her encouragement. "He's got hopes and aspirations for the future," she said. "And I'm still going to meet with Robert, we've already made plans while he's at MCC to try to stay connected." Griffin said she is grateful to Big Brothers Big Sisters Program Director Lindsey Philips, who nominated her for the Excellence in Mentoring award. "Seeing her and Robert interact, they've really formed a relationship beyond friends and have become family," Philips said. "I'm so happy to see him and proud of who he's become. And it really speaks to Muscatine; everyone wants to give back to the community." Griffin also wants to thank HNI Corp., where she is a team manager, for encouraging employees to join the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. "HNI is so good about that," she said. "They do not hesitate to take the time and it's because of this support that I could continue to do this." Griffin said even though she will keep in touch with her first Little Brother, she hopes to mentor another student in the future. "Knowing now that I did make a difference in his life, it just makes me feel so proud of him and better as a person," she said. "I just hope I'm as lucky with the next Little I have." Ribbinik joined Griffin for the ceremony at the state capitol on Wednesday. Muscatine resident Rose Strickland also received the Excellence in Mentoring Award for her work at Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Mississippi Valley in Davenport. MUSCATINE Muscatines graduation rates declined by about 2 percent, according to data released by the Iowa Department of Education this month. The Muscatine High School Class of 2016 had an 81 percent graduation rate compared with a 83 percent graduation rate for the class of 2015. During that time, statewide graduation rates increased slightly from 90.8 percent in 2015 to 91.3 percent in 2016. The districts overall 2016 graduation rate has increased 7 percent compared to the Class of 2009, the earliest available data on the Iowa Department of Educations website. Muscatine Community School District Superintendent Jerry Riibe said graduation rates are a work in progress. Its been an ongoing problem in Muscatine for decades and we need to keep working on it, he said. Weve made some progress but we really need the help of the entire community and particularly parents. Riibe said the district has undertaken several projects to support students and improve graduation rates, including a renewed emphasis on attendance, a restructuring of at-risk programs and an increased emphasis on mental health supports for students. Were also recognizing that we need to provide more emotional (and) mental health support to some students because that plays a part for some students," he said. "We also need to try and find some way to make sure that they are engaged in school in a different way, whether its through the academy model or with MCC or if its getting them involved in more activities." Muscatine High School Principal Jared Smith said the high school also has several programs to support students who are struggling academically, including the ninth and tenth grade academies, which have smaller classes, as well as tutoring and mentoring. Smith said the school has set a goal of engaging more students in clubs and activities to help them succeed. Were trying to link every student to at least one club or organization so thats a big piece of it, he said, adding that students who are engaged in clubs, activities or organizations are more likely to come to school and are more likely to succeed academically. But theres a lag between implementing these changes and seeing improvements in graduation rates. It is a little bit like turning a giant freighter, it takes a little bit of time to get that course corrected, Riibe said. Riibe emphasized the district needs the communitys input and support in helping students succeed. One of the things we have to do is continue to work with parents because its a family decision when a child drops out of school," he said. "We need to do more making sure that parents understand that in todays economy its really important that kids are leaving high school with a diploma." Louisa County Board of Supervisor Brad Quigley called for spot testing of area water wells by the Louisa County Board of Health. Quigley suggested well testing during the health board's regular meeting Wednesday. I want to see if our water quality is maintaining consistency, he said, explaining he hears complaints that the water smells like sulfur. BOH Medical Director Dr. Brian Masonholder, who attended the meeting by telephone, said that was not uncommon, and he had experienced it at his rural residence. Its been there 20-some years, Masonholder said, adding he did not think it was a health issue and likely was tied to natural conditions of the aquifer or increased temperatures in water heaters. Bruce Hudson, executive director of Rural Utility Service Systems of Southeast Iowa, which contracts with the health board for environmental health testing and monitoring, agreed. Hudson said the water heater problems generally stem from the metal bar that is inserted into the tank to reduce corrosion. The metal promotes a chemical reaction that boosts the production of hydrogen sulfide gas and causes the rotten egg smell. Louisa County Public Health Service Office Manager Heidi Pallister, who helps administer the BOHs environmental health program, said spot checks could cost from $20 to $120 each, depending on the number and type of items included in the test. Hudson suggested the county would be better off testing for radon gas in homes. Its a problem in the state of Iowa, he said, explaining the gas is linked to cancer. Pallister said the county tried to implement a radon detection program in the past, but it had not been successful, primarily because of the potentially high cost to resolve potential problems. Remediation could cost around $2,000, but Hudson said that could be worth it, if it prevented someone from getting cancer. He also said federal and state assistance was available, although most of the federal funding was limited to lower-income residents and the state had not offered assistance in Louisa County. Quigley said if a radon testing program was implemented in the county, a follow-up program to provide assistance also needed to be offered. In other business Hudson also reported he was working with state officials to develop more standardized testing processes for environmental labs. He said there are a wide range of processes being used and that leads to varying test results. Public Health Services Interim Administrator Roxanne Smith reported difficulty filling a part-time home health aide position that required a certified nursing aide, or CNA, which was causing the agency to lose referrals and force overtime on existing aides. Smith said most CNAs want full-time work, and staffing agencies also said their clients want to work full-time, something her position cannot guarantee. Quigley suggested Smith consider adding more hours to the position, while keeping it part-time. MUSCATINE In a unanimous vote during Monday's meeting, the Muscatine school board extended Superintendent Jerry Riibes contract for another year. Riibe, who has been with the district for four years, called the decision a vote of confidence. Board President Tammi Drawbaugh said the board is pleased with the districts progress in the past year and credited that progress to Riibes leadership. Background: Each year, the board reviews the superintendent's performance and decide if they wish to extend or terminate the contract. Each board member completes an evaluation survey and offer the superintendent feedback during a closed session, meaning the feedback the superintendent receives is not part of public record. The board then adjourns and returns to open session and vote on extending the contract. Conversation: Riibe said the boards decision to extend his contract is a vote of confidence. And in turn this has been a really, really good board to work with, he added. Riibe put together a report of the districts accomplishments, which he presented to the board at the closed session. In an interview Wednesday, Riibe said he discussed successes in reducing chronic attendance issues in the districts elementary schools, creating a consortium of private organizations to help the district attain its attendance goals and working toward increasing mental health supports for students in the district. In an interview, Drawbaugh said the board is pleased with Riibes work thus far. When I looked at the total results, the feeling is that Jerry is doing an amazing job, she said. We appreciate his work in the community, which ties clearly right back into what hes doing within the school district. Drawbaugh credited the districts partnerships with Muscatine Community College and with other organizations, to Riibes involvement in the community. That doesnt just magically happen, you need someone to drive that, she said. The board, she said, also appreciates Riibes communication skills. From a board perspective, we talk a lot about his communication, so he gives us enough information and in a timely manner, and as a board member, thats really important. Having seven different bosses is a daunting task and so Jerry does a great job of balancing some individual personalities, she said. Next steps: The board will evaluate Riibe's performance and vote on his contract annually. Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. 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Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] Wedding bells are ringing for one of Kenyas well-established gospel music producers, Jacob Otieno popularly known as Jacky B. The producer popped the big question and a diamond encrusted ring to his longtime girlfriend and baby mama Brenda Michelle in a dinner set up over the weekend. I love her so much. So I put a ring on it! wrote the producer on social media. The producer, who is behind most of Kenyas biggest gospel hits, proposed to Michelle as musician Pitson performed an acapella. Jacky B and Brenda have a one-year-old daughter Iman Atemi who was born last year and turns one in May. Brenda is a cinematographer and editor. Here are some of the biggest stories today. Bride of ISIS: Happily ever after to hell But instead of bringing love and contentment, their marriage left Islam trapped in a living nightmare. Fast forward four years and three husbands and she and her two small children are caught in limbo in northern Syria. North Korea rhetoric is angry but is conflict closer? With all of this, its hard to know if war is actually imminent or if these are the growing pains of US President Donald Trumps new administration figuring out how to deal with North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un. Daily reports of the fragile situation fuel worries that war is imminent. Why hasnt North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test? More than a month after US and South Korean officials publicly declared North Korea was ready to set off a nuclear bomb and almost two weeks since analysts said North Koreas only nuclear test site, Punggye-ri, was primed and ready, no detonation has happened. Erdogan shuns West with strikes on US allies, detentions To the irritation of the US, Turkey carried out airstrikes against US allies in Syria and Iraq on Tuesday. A day later, it was revealed that his government had detained another 1,000 opposition figures, in an ongoing purge that has outraged Europe. Chicago artist creates a mural of Michelle Obama and no ones happy But the mural, by Chicago artist Chris Devins, has sparked intense debate and not for the usual political reasons. Shortly after Devins finished the mural last Friday, criticism began bubbling up online. People accused him of copying the image from Rhode Island art student Gelila Mesfin, who had posted a nearly identical portrait of Michelle Obama on Instagram last year. France: Assad regime was behind Syria chemical attack The French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that samples taken from the attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun matched those from a previous incident. We have definite sources that the procedure used to make the Sarin sampled is typical of the methods developed in Syrian laboratories, he said. Brazilian keeper convicted of murder ordered back to jail By a majority of votes, the first panel of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court revoked Bruno Fernandes de Souzas habeas corpus and ordered the reinstatement of the preventive custody of the keeper. The decision by the court means Bruno will wait for appeal on his original sentence behind bars. Pope Francis is paying the rent on a private beach for the disabled The group Work of Love has rented a portion of the Little Madonna beach since 2012 and outfitted it with boardwalks, ramps and water vehicles to provide access to people in wheelchairs and those with other issues that make a day at the beach difficult. Trumps White House Family Affair Looks A Lot Like The Most Corrupt Nations In The World WASHINGTON For decades, the United States has worked with other countries to eliminate nepotism. Theres a good reason for that: Nepotism breeds corruption. Youve seen it in countries all over the world where theyve appointed family members, whether its their son, daughter, in-laws it provides for tremendous opportunities for corruption, said Shruti Shah, an international anti-corruption expert at Coalition for Integrity, a good-government nonprofit. Ivanka Trump Linked To Chinese Factory That Paid Workers $62 A Week The same day, a new report revealed employees of a Chinese factory contracted by G-III Apparel Group, the company that exclusively licenses Trumps branded clothing line, were working extra-long hours for little pay. Fox News Anchor: Employees Of Color Are Not Treated In Fair And Balanced Way Fox News veteran Kelly Wright, the only black man with an anchor position at the network, on Wednesday emotionally described being demeaned, marginalized, and prevented from advancing in his career due to racial bias. This hurts, Wright said at the beginning of his remarks at a press conference, telling attendees that hed prefer to be behind the anchor desk. Bernie Sanders And Democrats Are Introducing A New $15 Minimum Wage Bill WASHINGTON In a major win for the labor union-backed Fight for $15 movement and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) are introducing a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Bill Cosbys Daughter Writes Letter In His Defense, Says He Respects Women Evin Cosby has written a strong defense of her father, Bill, ahead of his June 5 trial. In a piece for Black Press USA, Cosby wrote about the toll that the accusations against her father have taken on her family, and denied that her father has ever been sexually violent with women. Airline passengers caught smuggling 300,000 of cocaine strapped to legs Passengers were found with nearly 300,000 of cocaine strapped to their bodies after stepping off a flight, according to police. Two men were arrested at New Yorks John F Kennedy Airport and photos show them with large packs of white powder taped to their legs and torsos. Shoppers disgusted at ridiculous dirty jeans which will set you back 300 You know how you normally strive to NOT get the nice clothes you buy with your hard-earned money covered in filth? Well, forget that. Mud-spattered jeans are all the rage apparently. But the overlords of fashion dont want you to do a DIY job on your trusty denims on the cheap. A 95-year-old gran has become the internets latest fashion modelling sensation Ernestine Ernie Stollberg might be aged 95 but she is taking the world of fashion by storm. The gran has been gaining recognition in some very stylish circles ever since she was first seen in promotional shots for a concept store in Austrian capital Vienna. Yes, a rhino has actually joined Tinder Flick through Tinder and you may come across Sudans profile. Hes 43, 6ft, originally from Kenya, loves the outdoors and travels widely. The catch? Hes a RHINO . Sudan is in fact the worlds last male white northern rhino and desperately needs to mate. All hail the Trump Twitter bump Twitter is growing. Twitter. Is. Growing. The service has been mostly flat or shrinking for months, but not this past quarter. In the first quarter of 2017, Twitters Daily Active Users rocketed up 14 percent and the Monthly Active number is now 328 million. It rose by 9 million in three months! Researchers found the body of 25-foot-long shark, and its grim but strangely beautiful Last week, the Marine Strandings Network was called in to investigate a dead shark in Cornwall, England. What MSN found was not just any shark: it was the fully intact floating carcass of a 25-foot-long basking shark. Photographer Matthew Facey also visited the sight to photograph the shark. Twitter celebrates Trumps first 100 days with the savage burns youd expect Were closing in on the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, even though its felt more like 100 years since the inauguration. Pundits are now trying to gauge where the president falls on the success scale, from SAD! to BIGLY!, for this somewhat important but still kinda arbitrary milestone. Uber just released a new update thats going to be terrifying and helpful for riders While its always been simple for Uber riders to quickly evaluate potential drivers, its long been a chore for riders to figure out what drivers think of them. Now, that information will be readily available Uber is finally making it easier to see your rider rating. Another day, another Google co-founder building a secret flying craft The Google co-founders just love to work on secret futuristic transportation projects. This time, its Sergey Brin but instead of glorified water speeders flying cars, like the Larry Page-funded Kitty Hawk Flyer unveiled earlier this week, hell reportedly opt for something a bit more extravagant for his airborne transportation: a massive airship. Turns out Serena Williams pregnancy announcement was all an accident Regardless of whether or not you hold the title of the greatest athlete in the world, Serena Williams is only human and makes mistakes, just like the rest of us. Only her mishap happened to spur countless of headlines this month. Theres one thing Kenyans like more than their morning tea, and that is political analysis. Or as I like calling it, conspiracy theory. With the ongoing political activities in the country, this job of analysing politics has become quite lucrative. Out of nowhere, some recently unknown figures are now regulars on our TV stations. One of them is Herman Manyora, a Language and Communication lecturer at the University of Nairobi. He is unapologetically pro-opposition, but once in a while finds a balance and makes objective observations. On Tuesday night when Kiambu results started coming in, it happened that Manyora was in Citizen TV studios. Naturally, he was asked to comment. He played along with Kabogos concession statement, and said that there are indeed forces out to push him out. He said all this is because of 2022 succession politics. He was obviously implying that the election was possibly rigged in Waititus favour, with fingers pointed at the Deputy President William Ruto. For context, Kabogo was last year in the news when he made a statement which was implied to mean that Kikuyu support for Ruto in 2022 is not guaranteed. This is actually an argument that was carried on by many pro-opposition blogger. However, you ask anyone who voted in Kiambu and theres an almost zero chance he or she thinks it was rigged. The ground was simply too hostile for Kabogo, especially in the last 3 or so weeks when propaganda reached unparalleled levels. Read: Kabogo shockingly concedes to Waititu Capitalizing on Kabogos well known arrogance, some guys started spreading fake news on nasty things he supposedly said. It was easy for the electorate to believe because it wouldnt be out of character for Kabogo to make such statements. Word spread fast, and this motivated thousands to turn up and teach him a lesson in humility. It was actually some kind of poetic justice because Kabogo is known to employ such tactics, but this time as they say, Pwagu alipata Pwaguzi. Everyone on the ground understands Kabogo lost fair and square, and thats why some viewers were not impressed by Manyoras analysis. Here are some reactions in reply to a Citizen TV tweet. Manyora: Kabogo is not a pushover. If there is a reason powers that be want him out, it is because of 2022 #TheBigQuestion, @HusseinMohamedg pic.twitter.com/VW3pJMCuJd Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg I am getting entertained by a stupid Professor. Nobody interfered with Kiambu nominations.Kiambu decided. @ManyiraHerman Duncan Muchiri (@DuncanMuchiri) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya the smallest way of thinking by a professor. Samuel Theuri (@Samuelk11218418) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg never understood why @ntvkenya n @citizentvkenya think this guy is a political analyst @HManyora must be coming cheap Free Thought (@Freddienjau) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg You need to understand kiambu politics more. He sponsored mcas in each ward and people got mad. We voted against him not for waititu. George Mugambi (@mugambimuthamia) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg No one in the party is pushing him out. It is the citizens of Kiambu especially the in sympathy to the women Eric.m.caffie (@Eric_caffie) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Prof Manyara papa hapo tawe.this is not true.Wanjiku has spoken not about future leadership.I think you pasting DP with unnecessary issues. Isaac Ndegwa (@ndegwa_isaac) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Bw. Manyora you arguments are out of context lately. Kindly have your facts check MP_Philip (@mp_philo) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg let Manyora know he lost fair and square, Ruiru he lost ground longtime ago and its his home turf. james kimani kuira (@jameskuira) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya manyora should not be talking about kiambu coz he knows nothing about kiambu Paul Kuria (@PaulKur07287030) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya Kabogo is just bitter of his pride he should not blame anyone he should have said all he said today yesterday. MUSSA CRANE (@cranesenteman) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg We are also fed up with the so called analysts like Manyora who tend to think that the know everything about politics #TheBigQuestion Enos Obura (@enos_obura) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg NO NO NO. Its not about 2022. Wanjiku has spoken LOUD & CLEAR. Direct Ticket Holders ALSO OUT 8/8/17! Heho (@Heho_K) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg These your analyst have no clue. Kabogo was removed by the people who had grown tired! KARIUKI NJOROGE (@Wa_Wamukuhi) April 26, 2017 @citizentvkenya who will save us from this so called political analyst from river Rd..Kiambu people have spoken James Gachago (@JamesGachago) April 26, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Its the people that didnt want Kabogo. Its that simple. Nelson Mukora Ndigi (@mukoran) April 26, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg This must be a professor of ignorance and stupidity Alafu (@gitundujeph) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya Hussein Pliz remove this Manyora hes too subjective!!!cant argue objectively only bringing his party politics!! kangethe winnie (@kangethewinnie) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Manyora should not even be close to Citizen stations.the man is deluded . this is not Moi era KINGSMAN (@davitorreto) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Tell Manyora that he does not know about Kiambu politics . We the people want Kabogo out and we are not under the direction if any one. Suleiman Mwangi (@Sukamwa) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Manyora is completely wrong . Today a vote against Kabogo was a vote favoring the Kiambu woman who carry more influence than you would think Eric.m.caffie (@Eric_caffie) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya I tend to agree with prof. Manyora on many occasions..but this one nimekataa, am from kiambu and the atmosphere on the ground was kabogo out MuturiMartin (@MuturiMartin) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya Manyora reading from different script Kabogo Paying for his arrogance peter koinange m (@koinangemp) April 26, 2017 @citizentvkenya @HusseinMohamedg Tell Manyora that he does not know about Kiambu politics . We the people want Kabogo out and we are not under the direction if any one. Suleiman Mwangi (@Sukamwa) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya why is Manyora insulting our intelligence? We simply didnt want Kabogo David Mwenda Kariuki (@davidmwendak) April 25, 2017 @citizentvkenya Prof Manyora should know Kiambu ppl were fed up,kabogo go home #JubileeNominations Joe Karanja (@joekaranja91) April 25, 2017 Kevin Ombima, best known by his performance name King Kaka (formerly Rabbit), has never shied away from showing his softer side on social media circles. From his baby mamas to his daughters, the rapper sure does know how to appreciate the special women in his life. On Tuesday, it was his mothers turn to be appreciated and showered with praise as she turned a year older on Wednesday. The Mr 254 rapper took to Facebook to celebrate his mom, Elizabeth, and introduce his brothers, Dennis and Calvin. In his post, King Kaka shared a personal incident that took place years ago when his mother was selling fruits in Industrial area. Kaka, being the doting son he is, would help his mom with the business and on a particular day, he was arrested by Nairobis City Council askaris. What ensued was his mother coming to his rescue so he wouldnt miss his college exams. Read the full post below: So my moms birthday is Kesho 26th April, I asked her how old she was turning, ati 50 something, ati ladies never reveal. Anyway wacha tunacheka hapo , it wasnt all smiles when we were growing up, thats Deno with the dark coat 2nd born and thats Calvo the 1st born and me the last born. Today I woke up and remembered an incident, my mom alikuwa anauza fruits Enterprise rd in industrial area and just after high school nilikuwa Naenda kumsaidia, so morning hours as she would go to the market , I would go to open her fruit stand. So a particular Thursday I had college exams in the noon and I had just opened the stand , and minutes before my mom arrived, Kanjo arrested me and took me to their car. So mom arrived akaambiwa your son ako kwa gari ya kanjo and she knew my paper was in an hours time. she came to the car and told Kanjo waniwachilie wamshike instead since I had a paper. I felt really bad that they would even consider arresting her, it was either they arrested her or I miss the paper. I was willing to miss the paper but not see my mom arrested, a few minutes later I was released but I said I am not going without my mother. Long story short, My mom made sure we got what we deserved, she is a strong believer in education. She struggled so that we could laugh today and we make sure she laughs daily. The Love is out of This world. Help me wish My Mom, Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth The Legend herself a Happy Birthday. The year was 2014 and the month was October when Kenyas top boy band Sauti Sol flew the Kenyan flag high by scooping the MTV EMA award for Best African Act. Consequently, the Afro-pop band became the first Kenyan music act to ever receive the award, validating both them and Kenyan music as a force to reckon with globally. To scoop the prestigious gong, the Sura Yako hitmakers beat other African artistes Davido (Nigeria), Diamond (Tanzania), Toofan (Togo) and Goldfish (South Africa). The win also saw Sauti Sol move into the final round as one of the 10 nominees in the INTERNATIONAL WORLDWIDE ACT category. Strangely, the four-member band never officially received the award until two days ago and close to three years later. Taking to social media, Sauti Sol, their manager Marek Fuchs, their publicist Anyiko Owoko, and band member Chimano all celebrated the arrival of the award. Finally! Shes home.? #BestAfricanAct A post shared by SAUTI SOL ?? (@sautisol) on Apr 25, 2017 at 1:04pm PDT Shes home #FINALLY #GodIsGreat #awesome #happiness #soulstyleattitude #BestAfricanAct #MTV #EMA @sautisol A post shared by WILLIS AUSTIN CHIMANO (@iamchimano) on Apr 25, 2017 at 9:03am PDT The Napa County District Attorneys Office is calling a new Restitution Court a success, returning $35,916 to victims during its first year of operation. The court began in January, 2016, as a pilot program to hold convicted criminals accountable for not paying restitution to their victims. In order to be eligible, the participants needed to be on formal, supervised probation for a felony crime and owe over $1,000 in restitution. Furthermore, participants were selected who had paid little or nothing to their victims during the time of probation. Twenty-three probationers appeared in court during its first year. They paid $35,916 in total restitution. The average monthly payment increased from $53 to $366. This is an increase of 591 percent. Two participants paid their original restitution order amount in full, District Attorney Allison Haley said in a news release. The court is a collaboration of the District Attorneys Office, Probation Department, Napa Superior Court and the restitution collection agency, California Service Bureau. The participants were ordered by their probation officer to appear in front of a Napa County Superior Court judge at 11 a.m. on the third Monday of each month. It was clear that being held accountable in front of a Napa County Superior Court judge was highly effective, Haley said. Many participants acknowledged in court that they could pay more to their victims, and did so in future months. The one hour of monthly court time also allowed victims to voice their concerns and see what was being done to follow up with court restitution orders. Based upon the success of the first year, the court agreed to extend the program at least throughout the end of the 2017. Anyone with questions should contact Assistant District Attorney Paul Gero at (707) 253-4211. Ivanka Trump, a top adviser to her father, President Donald Trump, went further than he has when it comes to support for allowing Syrian refugees to enter the US in the face of their country's ongoing humanitarian crisis. "I think there is a global humanitarian crisis that's happening and we have to come together and we have to solve it," she told NBC in an interview aired Wednesday morning. An executive order signed by the President in early March, currently held up by the courts, would ban immigration from six Muslim-majority countries, including Syria, and temporarily ban on all refugees form entering the US. It specifically blocks citizens of Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from obtaining visas for at least 90 days. Asked whether that would include opening the borders to Syrian refugees, Ivanka Trump, who formally serves in the administration as assistant to the President, indicated openness. "That has to be part of the discussion. But that's not going to be enough in and of itself," she said. The first daughter spoke to NBC following her participation in a W-20 Summit panel on women's economic empowerment in Berlin at the direct invitation of Chancellor Angela Merkel, her first international trip on behalf of the administration and a coming out of sorts. Trump's remarks come in the wake of a missile strike against an Assad regime airbase earlier this month. The President has said that the horrific images from a chemical weapons attack compelled him to authorize the strike. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ivanka Trump's brother, Eric Trump, said that his sister influenced that decision. "Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I'm sure she said: 'Listen, this is horrible stuff,'" Eric Trump told the Telegraph. Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Berlin, Ivanka Trump dismissed her brother's comments as a "flawed interpretation." "I, of course, shared my perspective and opinion. It aligned with his own. I think it would be, have to be -- I think it would be very hard as a human being to see the images that we saw and not react and not be very shaken to the core. That said, and while I expressed that sentiment, as a leader of a country, you can't make decisions based on emotion alone, and his decision was incredibly well informed and advised at every level," she said. "I'm proud of the action he took, how decisive he was, and the clear message he sent that heinous attacks of this nature using chemical weapons will not be condoned by the United States." CNN's Zachary Cohen and David Wright contributed to this report. President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico Wednesday he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact which he railed against as a candidate and as recently as last week declared was harmful to US workers. The name "Indian" was assigned to a race of people by (white European) outsiders based on racial ignorance (thinking they were in India). The name Negro was assigned to a race of people by (white European) outsiders based on racial ignorance (thinking all people south of the Sahara were the same). Both cultures were undeniably oppressed by those who assigned those names to them. In our era, even a die-hard traditionalist understands that the "Napa High Negros" is not a socially acceptable name, even though that term was considered appropriate in the past, and even if the mascot looked like Muhammad Ali or Barack Obama (a "proud" or "strong" negro), and even if it was originally chosen to honor Napa's historic black population. (As if...). There could be no legitimate argument that "Napa High Negroes" would have to be changed. Honestly, do we want our children to emulate the values of Stanford University or the City of Cleveland? Has anyone considered "Napa High Rebobs?" Even the die-hard Napa traditionalists must agree that a flying monkey with eyes of fire that is indigenous and exclusively "found" in Napa would be a pretty awesome mascot. Finally, bravo to those Napa High students who stood up and bravely gave voice to the minority opinion promoting human values, even in the face of a strident, angry crowd. That is the pride of Napa High School, not some mascot. Jess Raphael Napa Ready to go from zero Read more [...] Satellites and mobile phones, built on international standards, help the world get connected. But the communications technology we use on land does not work well underwater. As water covers over 70 per cent of the earth's surface, NATO has sponsored research into establishing the first ever digital underwater communications standard. Imagine a scuba diver approaching the surface, being made aware of nearby boating activity; or a submarine communicating with a land-based command post; or an underwater robot sending a warning to an oil rig after a leak is detected the possible applications of underwater communications are limitless. It could be used in many areas: for harbour protection, maritime surveillance, mine detection, surveying offshore wind farms and pipelines, or even underwater archaeology. The NATO Science and Technology Organizations Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE, see below for more info) has developed a standard for underwater acoustic communications called JANUS, which is recognised as a NATO standard by all NATO Allies since 24 March 2017. This marks the first time that a digital underwater communication protocol has been acknowledged at international level and opens the way to develop many exciting underwater communication applications. A network of marine robots CMRE is working to support effective underwater communication networks to allow undersea robots to work together and report back home (see the infographic on Digital Underwater Networked Communications). "Robots can behave intelligently and act as a team," says Joao Alves, Principal Scientist and Project Leader at CMRE. For example, one of the robots could find some interesting feature and call the rest of the team. With effective undersea communication, this can all happen in an autonomous way, without requiring direct human intervention. If needed, the operation can be managed by land-based engineers who monitor all the communications from a command and control room ashore. The connection to land is made through gateway buoys on the surface of the water equipped with radio links to local support platforms or satellites. This is particularly important for search-and-rescue operations, says John Potter, a scientist at the CMRE Strategic Development Office. Autonomous vehicles are relatively inexpensive and of course unmanned, so they can be sent to do dirty, dangerous jobs. Sound is known to have an impact on marine life, said Joao Alves. Aware of this risk, the Centre works with biologists and other scientists to protect the marine environment. Much of this development work is carried out on the Littoral Ocean Observatory Network, or LOON (see below for more info). The LOON is a test facility, installed in the harbour of La Spezia, Italy that plays a central role in NATO projects, many of which are developed in partnership with the European Commission. CMRE uses the LOON to develop and test communication solutions that contribute to the protection and monitoring of oceans and rivers by underwater robots. JANUS, the standard underwater language To be able to communicate with each other, underwater assets need common standards. In the air we can simply connect our gadgets to any WiFi hotspot without having to worry about the compatibility, says Joao Alves. Until now, there wasnt anything even remotely similar for the underwater domain. As with the industry standard for WiFi communication, an undersea communication standard has to be defined in order to guarantee the interoperability between equipment from different manufacturers. For the past ten years, CMRE has been working on the development of the first international digital underwater communication protocol, known as JANUS, which is now an approved NATO standard. JANUS was a Roman god of openings and gateways, says John Potter. Thats why it is called JANUS, because this language opens the portal between two domains, two different operating paradigms, through which they can talk. It is a digital underwater signalling system that can be used to contact underwater devices using a common format; announce the presence of a device to reduce conflicts; and enable a group of underwater devices (that can be underwater robots, submarines, divers or any other equipment operating under the surface) to organise themselves into a network, adds John Potter. Adopted globally, JANUS can make military and civilian, NATO and non-NATO devices interoperable, providing them all with a common language with which to communicate and arrange to cooperate. JANUS has been extensively tested at sea in exercises involving a number of partners (universities, industries and research institutions) covering a range of application scenarios. Close collaboration with NATO Allies has been particularly fruitful in developing JANUS for use in cases that may improve the safety of maritime operations. For example, the Portuguese Navy has been working with CMRE to develop new concepts to support the exchange of crucial information with submarines (typically only available at the surface via radio) such as the location of nearby ships. Digital data exchanges to support rescue operations in case of a submarine incident are currently also being developed. NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller arrived in Los Angeles late on Wednesday (26 April 2017), for a five day visit to California that will include meetings at the RAND Corporation, Google, Palantir, and Stanford University. In her first official visit to the United States since becoming Deputy Secretary General, Gottemoeller will discuss the global security outlook, counter-terrorism and challenges on NATOs southern borders with Dr Michael Rich, President of the RAND Cooperation and other senior RAND executives on Thursday (27 April 2017). Later that day, Gottemoeller will give a key note speech at San Diego University, addressing students, faculty and guests on the important role of women in promoting peace and security. On Friday (28 April 2017) the Deputy Secretary General will visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for talks with Dr William Goldstein, the Director of the facility, Dr Brad Roberts, and other scientists and experts about nuclear deterrence and posture policy. On Friday afternoon, Gottemoeller is set to take part in a roundtable discussion at Stanford University on modern defence and deterrence issues. The talks will be open to students, fellows and faculty and will be hosted by former US Secretary of Defence Bill Perry and former US Secretary of State George Schultz. On Saturday, Gottemoeller will meet with Dr Gloria Duffy, President of the Commonwealth Club, to plan future cooperation between the Club and NATO. Wrapping up the visit, Gottemoeller will visit the headquarters of Google and Palantir on Monday (1 May 2017). She will have talks with industry leaders on topics such as cyber security, private and public sector partnerships and the growing threat of cyber-attacks. I am looking forward to meeting with EU Defence Ministers and to discuss how we can further strengthen the cooperation between NATO and the European Union. I very much also appreciate this opportunity to visit Valletta, Malta, because I met with the Prime Minister yesterday, Prime Minister Muscat. And this is actually the first-ever visit of a NATO Secretary General to Malta. I appreciate that we are able to work with Malta, fully respecting the neutrality of Malta, as NATO works with many other neutral countries, like Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland. I think its important that we also work with Malta. I am looking forward to discuss NATO-EU cooperation with the EU Defence Ministers. We have made a lot of progress and we continue to make progress. We agreed 42 concrete measures in December last year on hybrid, cyber, operations, exercises. And we would like to step up and continue that cooperation. The importance of NATO-EU cooperation is something we see just offshore the coast of Malta, because we have the NATO maritime operation, Sea Guardian, providing support to the EU Operation Sophia. Currently there are four ships, NATO ships, three NATO maritime patrol aircraft, and some other assets, providing direct support to Operation Sophia, helping them with conducting their tasks. And we also have NATOs presence in the Aegean Sea. And we are also discussing what more we can do in Libya. Last week I spoke with Prime Minister Al-Sarraj; I expressed NATOs support to his government, to the Government of National Accord, the UN-supported government. And we also discussed how NATO can provide help to build up the defence institutions, build capacity in Libya; and our expert teams will meet in the coming weeks to discuss more details. QUESTION INAUDIBLE: Jens Stoltenberg: I welcome strongly European defence as long as it is in complementarity with what NATO does. And it has been clearly conveyed from the European Union that their aim is not to establish a new European army or develop command structures which compete with the NATO command structures, but this is something in complementarity with what NATO does. So, that will actually strengthen both NATO and the European Union; because many of the EU member states are also NATO members. So if you have stronger German defence, French defence, Italian defence, of course thats both good for the EU, for Europe, and for NATO. As long as it happens in a well-coordinated way. QUESTION INAUDIBLE: Jens Stoltenberg: Well, what we do is based on request from Libya; our activities are totally demand-driven, meaning that we only do things that Libya wants us to do. We got the request in February, then I spoke with Al-Sarraj, the Prime Minister, last week, and we agreed that our teams should meet in the following weeks to discuss the details. What we are working on is how NATO can help Libya build up defence and security institutions, like a modern ministry of defence with democratic control of the armed forces, like a joint chief of staffs and intelligence services. We have to understand the importance of institutions, because thats the foundation for security. Of course its important to train troops, but we have to make sure that when troops are trained they are part of a structure where you have democratic control and where troops are used in a good way. So thats the reason why we are working with Libya on how we can build defence institutions. QUESTION INAUDIBLE: Jens Stoltenberg: Well NATO is the most successful alliance in history and we have been able to preserve peace and security in Europe for close to seven decades, 70 years. And the strength of NATO is that we are 28 democracies where there are different political parties, different views on many things, but weve always been able to agree on the most important thing. And that is that we defend each other, we stand together based on the idea of one for all-all for one. And NATO is able to adapt, to change when the world is changing, we are also changing. In addition, NATO is strong because we work with partners. We have seen it in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, in many other places. History proves that NATO is able to defend and protect all allies because we stand together. QUESTION INAUDIBLE: Jens Stoltenberg: Turkey is a key ally for many reasons, but especially for its strategic geographic location: bordering Iraq, Syria and all the violence, the turmoil we see to the south, but also close to Russia in the Black sea. And Turkey has suffered many terrorist attacks; no other ally has suffered so many terrorist attacks. And they also saw a failed coup attempt in July last year. And of course Turkey has the right to protect itself and also to prosecute those who were behind the failed coup attempt. But that has to take place based on the rule of law, full respect to the rule of law. I attach great importance to those values myself, and this is an issue we have discussed with the Turkish leadership. So I look forward to meeting all the NATO leaders when they gather in Brussels in May; we will have Heads of State coming there, all 28 of them; with the new US president, the new French president but also with President Erdogan. So they will all meet and we can discuss all common challenges. Thank you so much, it was a pleasure to see you. Thank you. (Natural News) If you are familiar with the fraudulent practices of the pharmaceutical industry, then you know how much power some of these companies have. Cancer drugs are a multi-billion dollar business. In the past, we have seen Big Pharma use the power of the state to grant themselves monopolies on drugs to control the market. We have also seen outrageous price rises in many useful and necessary drugs. In light of this information, the following story should come as no great shock. After getting its hands on leaked internal documents, including emails and presentations, The London Times recently revealed that one of the worlds leading drug companies created artificial shortages and threatened to destroy supplies of life-saving cancer drugs to drive up prices in Europe. South African company Aspen Pharmacare, whose European headquarter is based in Dublin, wanted to impose a rise of up to 4,000 percent after purchasing the portfolio of cancer drugs from the British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for more than 270 million (or nearly $350 million) in 2009. After they had bought the rights to five cancer medicines, they started to drive up the price. Since the patent had long expired on drugs that Aspen bought, and there was no competition from other manufacturers, Aspen had free reign. In England and Wales, they exploited a loophole that enables a company to impose rises if an existing brand name is dropped. In 2013, the company raised the cost of the leukemia drug busulfan from 5.20 ($6.66) to 65.22 ($83.59), while the price of the blood cancer medicine chlorambucil jumped from 8.36 ($10.72) per pack to 40.51 ($51.92). Since 2012, Aspen Pharmacare actively tried to impose higher prices on its cancer drugs throughout Europe. The leaked cache documents cited by The Times showed that employees called for celebrations over price hikes of cancer drugs. Weve signed new reimbursement and price agreement successfully: Price increases are basically on line with European target prices (Leukeran, a bit higher!) Lets celebrate! an Aspen employee wrote in one of the emails. Aggressive approach to negotiating with European authorities In October 2013 Aspen threatened to stop supplying medicines if Italian authorities did not agree to price rises of up to 2,100 percent. Temporary drug shortages were orchestrated to increase pressure. At one point, a pharmacist wrote to Aspen and its Italian distributor to complain that due to a deliberately small supply of cancer medicine he had to choose which of sick two children was to receive the single package of medicine he had left. And Italy was not the only country suffering from the unscrupulous business practices of the firm. Several other countries including Belgium, Germany, and Greece reported significant shortages of cancer medicine at about the same time. In 2014 several staff members at Aspen Pharmacare systematically plotted to destroy stocks of life-saving cancer drugs during a price dispute with the health service in Spain. At some point, they stopped the direct supply of five drugs, leaving patients reliant on foreign packs of expensive medicine. When an employee at Aspens headquarters asked what he should do with existing Spanish packages of the medicine, a senior executive replied that they could not be sold due to a price dispute, adding that donating or destroying the entire stock were the only options. In yet another email from the company, employees discussed whether they would make more money if they sold cancer drugs destined for Italy in Spain, even though that would mean putting Italy out of stock. (Related: Read more about the Big Pharma drug cartels at DrugCartels.news.) These internal emails showed corruption on a whole new level. To increase the profits, Aspen was plotting to destroy supplies of medicines to create temporary shortages to increase pressure and eventually get what they wanted. Though the emails provide clear evidence of their inhumane practices of putting profits before people. Aspen did not address questions about the destruction of cancer drugs. In the companys defense, Dennis Dencher, chief executive of Aspen Pharma Europe, said the price rises were at levels appropriate to promote long-term sustainable supply to patients and claimed they had been increased from a very low and unsustainable base. Stay informed about the horrible practices of the cancer industry at CancerScams.com. Sources: DailyMail.co.uk TheTimes.co.uk Independent.co.uk (Natural News) A recent report from Mother Jones has revealed disconcerting information regarding the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) particularly regarding financial influence on behalf of a variety of industry giants. It really shows how commonplace industry influence over science and policy has become. The ACSH is essentially nothing more than a consumer front group for the businesses that fund it despite their assertions that the organization is independent, a quick look at their financial donors would certainly suggest otherwise. You can view the full financial summary here. One of the most concerning finds is their deep ties to the fracking industry, which has grown notorious for environmental pollution. Two fracking organizations Achelis Bodman Foundation and American Petroleum donated a combined $77,500 to the ACSH in just 2013 alone. Coca-Cola, which has come under fire for using their financial prowess for nefarious purposes in the past, donated a whopping $50,000 to the ACSH that year as well. Some other notable names on their list of corporate donors include McDonalds, Syngenta, Proctor & Gamble, and Bayer Cropscience. The ACSH has been subject to much criticism over the years. Sourcewatch.org quotes consumer advocate Ralph Nader as saying, A consumer group is an organization which advocates the interests of unrepresented consumers and must either maintain its own intellectual independence or be directly accountable to its membership. In contrast, ACSH is a consumer front organization for its business backers. It has seized the language and style of the existing consumer organizations, but its real purpose, you might say, is to glove the hand that feeds it. The ACSH purports itself as an independent science organization that sifts through scientific claims and evidence to determine what is true. The problem here is that their truth, like many others version of the truth, is colored by the cash they receive from corporate behemoths. For twenty-some-odd years, the ACSH kept their donation records in the dark, nary an eye had glanced upon their record of industry funding. But recently, that all changed when their financial summary for the year 2012 had been leaked to the press. In addition to the lengthy list of corporate donors, the document also reveals that the organization would be operating at a constant deficit, if not for the money they receive from their industry masters. In spite of the obvious evidence, the ACSH has continued to maintain that the organization is innocent and free of corporate influence, even as they rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from questionable companies and even as the group sets goals for obtaining even more money from corporate donors. As the internal documents from 2012 reveal, one of the ACSHs top goals was to Look for and seize opportunities to cultivate new funding possibilities. The document also states that the agency wanted to increase their revenue that year by $100,000. In addition to all of these donations, the ACSH has made a number of questionable if not downright wrong assertions regarding a number of chemicals and practices over the years. As Sourecwatch.org reports, the ACSH has supported and defended many hazardous products over the years including things like DDT, asbestos and Agent Orange. The organization has even allegedly referred to environmentalists and activists as terrorists whose arguments and criticisms are threats to society. The ACSH is infamous for their defense of GMOs, pesticides and other toxic modern technologies. Many people dont realize that ACSH is run by a convicted felon, explains Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, editor of Natural News. The group is headed by a convicted con artist who was convicted for medical fraud. Now he collects money from the drug industry to attack scientists who question the safety of vaccine ingredients and GMOs. U.S. Right To Know reports that in the past, the ACSH has denied that fracking pollutes water or air, that there is no evidence BPAs are harmful, and that exposure to mercury (a widely recognized neurotoxic heavy metal) in seafood does not cause harm to humans. And were supposed to trust that this organization not only knows what theyre talking about, but also that none of their opinions are influenced by the corporations that back them? Sources: MotherJones.com USRTK.org SourceWatch.org NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Bose is selling your personal information to third party mining companies, a new class-action lawsuit claims. The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago accuses the high-end headphone company of distributing their users listening history through their Connect app to third party companies for massive profit. Attorney Chris Dore, who represents the main plaintiff, Kyle Zak, told Yahoo.com that people should be uncomfortable with it. People put headphones on their head because they think its private, but they can be giving out information they dont want to share. Dore explains that a persons listening history reveals personal and often very identifying details. He gives an example in the lawsuit, stating that if a user listens to a Muslim prayer service, it is more likely that the person is Muslim. Dore further notes that other details, such as sexual orientation and political views, can be gleaned from a persons listening history. In a separate article on NBCNews.com, Dore notes that one of the issues raised by this lawsuit is that its not clear whats happening. The danger with undisclosed and unexplained data collection is, the world is open to these companies to do what they want. Bose has retaliated by saying these allegations are inflammatory and misleading. In their official response, which was reported on USAToday.com, Bose says, We dont wiretap your communications, we dont sell your information, and we dont use anything we collect to identify you or anyone else by name. The complaint alleges Bose to have broken several federal and state laws including the Federal Wiretap Act, the Illinois Eavesdropping Statute, and the consumer fraud and invasion of privacy laws. In the suit, Zak demands the company to destroy all the user data they have collected. If found guilty, the company stands to face damages exceeding $5 million. Unaware, untold, and now unapologetic Kyle Zak paid $350 for his QuietComfort 35 headphones. After reading the users manual, Zak followed Boses suggestion to download the Connect app which asked him for personal data like his name, e-mail address, and headphone serial number. In the same article in Yahoo.com, Zak alleges that Bose had sent all available media information to Segment.io, a third party site that collects customer data. He claims the company is quietly amassing customer data to boost profit. Zak is seeking millions of dollars in damages for users of QuietComfort 35, QuietControl 30, SoundLink Around-Ear Wireless Headphones II, Soundlink Color II, SoundSport Wireless, and SoundSport Pulse Wireless. Dore says that while Bose does have a privacy policy, users are not required to agree to it. The user does not interact with it in any way when signing up for the app. It also doesnt disclose this data collection, notes Dore. Technology is a double-edged sword This isnt the first time allegations of the voyeuristic tendencies of tech companies have been made. Only last year, Google was accused of listening to their users conversations via a specially-installed software that came with the downloading of Google Chrome. With this software, remote technicians could hear nearby conversations held near the computers where the browser was installed. Representatives of Google stated in their developer board that while we do download the hotword module on startup, we do not activate it unless you opt in to hotwording. (Related: Are you sure no ones listening? Learn more from articles at PrivacyWatch.news,) An article on BBC.com noted that there were eerie coincidences that prompted several people to ask whether their smartphones were listening in on them. What started as a half-joke on Reddit.com spurred a slew of responses that caused actual scientists to see if these claims were true. Cybersecurity expert Ken Munro was initially hesitant to test this theory but eventually caved in. He, along with colleague David Lodge from Pen Test Partners, developed a prototype app which used the existing functionality of Google Android. Their rough software proved that listening in to a persons conversation via a downloaded app is possible. Monroe told the author of the BBC.com article, I am not so cynical now. We have proved it can be done, it works, weve done it. Does it happen? Probably. Sources include: Yahoo.com NBCNews.com USAToday.com NaturalNews.com BBC.com DigitalTrends.com Bugs.Chromium.org (Natural News) A hospital in California is being sued for the accidental removal of a womans ovaries. The Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, Calif., has been fined $47,450 by health officials, reported Catherine Ho of SFGate.com. Doctors at Sequoia were supposed to remove the patients appendix, fallopian tubes, and uterus during surgery in February 2016; however, due to a mistake in the hospitals surgical schedule, the patients ovaries were taken out. The patient, according to the report by the California Department of Public Health, will require lifelong estrogen replacement therapy as a result. The report did not mention the patients name and age, nor did it mention if the ovaries were removed instead of, or in addition to, the appendix, fallopian tubes, and uterus. The care and safety of our patients and staff are the highest priority at Dignity Health Sequoia Hospital and we take this matter very seriously. After self-reporting this event to the CDPH, we fully cooperated during their investigation and immediately took steps to ensure this never happens again, including revising protocols and staff re-education, said a spokeswoman for Dignity Health, a Northern California health system. In an announcement by the California Department of Public Health, the agency has stated the fine against Sequoia Hospital is one of 17 civil penalties filed against 14 California hospitals. All of the penalties, which total $1.1 million all in all, concerned incidents that have caused serious injury or death. (Related: Brain Surgeons Cant Tell Left from Right: Third Operating Mistake on Wrong Side of Patients Head) Out of the 14 hospitals, four of them, including Sequoia Hospital, are in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of the hospitals, St. Lukes Campus and Kaiser Foundation Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center, are located in San Francisco. The other, Queen of the Valley Medical Center, is located in Napa. St. Lukes has been fined $47,452 after a patient felt dizzy and fell out of her bed while under the care of the hospital staff. The patient was not put through the prescribed hourly neurological checks and died despite undergoing emergency brain surgery. Kaiser Foundation Hospital has been fined $147,000 for two separate incidents in 2015 and 2016 that resulted in the deaths of the patients. In one, a patient receiving dialysis suffered massive blood loss and cardiac arrest after his line disconnected from his catheter. In another, a patient died after their tracheostomya surgical procedure to create an airwaywas mishandled and a tracheostomy tube cuff valve had been left inflated. A spokeswoman for Kaiser has said: We sincerely regret that these incidents occurred and extend our sympathy to the families involved. In response to these incidents, and to ensure such situations never occur again, we immediately investigated their root cause, evaluated our processes and implemented systemic improvements and training for our nurses, physicians, and staff. Queen of the Valley has been fined $225,000 for three incidents in 2013, in which hospital staff failed to properly track patients symptoms and dispense correct treatment. Two patients died while the third patient was left in a vegetative state. The California Department of Public Health, states Rhea Mahbubani of NBCBBayArea.com, is allowed to issue up to $75,000 in fines for the first administrative penalty of a hospital. The second penalty can go up to $100,000, and the third up to $125,000, as well as all subsequent violations within a three-year period. Hospitals that have been penalized have 10 days to appeal, and are required to issue a plan of correction. You can read up on more medicine-related and healthcare news by visiting Medicine.news today. Sources include: SFGate.com NBCBayArea.com (Natural News) After years of looking for a way to silence WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose site has been responsible for publishing revelation after revelation about the back-handed deals and illegal activity undertaken by political organizations, public figures and governments, the U.S. government appears set to arrest him and charge him with espionage. Only, if that happens, the government should also be charging several mainstream media reporters who also published sensitive intelligence information given to them by various Deep State sources. As reported by CNN, a formal probe of Assange began in 2010 during the Obama administration, which sought some form of legal retribution after WikiLeaks published thousands of documents provided by a former junior U.S. intelligence analyst, then known as PVT Bradley Manning, but who now goes by Chelsea Manning. (RELATED: Are the Feds going to arrest Wikileaks Julian Assange?) But the problem Obama prosecutors ran into was constitutional: The First Amendment, they believed, prevented the government from going after the publisher of classified data, in part because such information had also, in the past, been published by U.S. newspapers, networks and news sites as well. CNN noted: During President Barack Obamas administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasnt alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then. Now, however, prosecutors in the Trump Justice Department believe they have found a way to proceed against Assange. The view of Assange and WikiLeaks by the U.S. government started to change somewhat after prosecutors claimed to have found collusion between WikiLeaks and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked volumes of classified data about the U.S. intelligence communitys spying on American citizens, as well as other violations of the law. What role Assange allegedly had has not been made clear, but he has stated on numerous occasions that WikiLeaks is merely a vehicle for such information, a repository and publisher and does not collude with potential leakers to help steal sensitive data. That said, last week CIA Director Mike Pompeo was more specific than any previous U.S. official in describing that alleged role, claiming WikiLeaks directed Chelsea Manning to intercept specific secret information, and it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States. Continuing, Pompeo added: Its time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. CNN went on to push the discredited fake narrative that Russia used WikiLeaks to push negative information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton another charge that Assange has repeatedly denied but the governments planned prosecution of Assange raises another question: What to do with the reporters who also colluded with the leakers to publish their blockbuster stories? They would include Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian and his colleague, Ewen MacAskill, who both aided and abetted Snowden by interviewing him and allowing him to pass them the information he stole from the NSA. It would also include Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras of The Washington Post, who aided and abetted Snowden by publishing top secret details about ongoing NSA programs. They were aided by reporters Aaron Blake and Greg Miller, among others, in subsequent reporting. For that matter, what about The New York Times Michael S. Schmidt, Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo for aiding and abetting the improper and likely illegal unmasking of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn? (RELATED: If Trump Is A Putin Stooge, Then How Come Russia Benefitted So Much During The Obama Presidency?) Or CNNs Evan Perez and Jim Sciutto, for also publishing highly sensitive information involving Flynn? Didnt all of these journalists do what Assange did serve as a public conduit for sensitive intelligence information that was illegally leaked to them? What form of collusion did they engage in to get their stories and information? Does anyone seriously think these veteran reporters were chosen at random? If the Justice Department is going to hold Assange accountable for being an intelligence information clearing house, then they should also hold individual journalists and their publications equally accountable. Theyve both done the same thing. J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel. Sources: CNN.com TheNationalSentinel.com WashingtonPost.com NYTimes.com (Natural News) A Russian news outlet claimed the country has an electronic signal jamming weapon that could disable planes, ships, and missiles, according to an article published in TheSun.co.uk. This weapon could erase the entire US Navy with a single, cutting-edge electronic bomb. The Russian Electronic Warfare (REW) troops could detect and neutralize any target from a radar, a ships navigation system, to a satellite. The report also claimed that several years ago, a single Russian war plane flew a few times around the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea. It disabled the American destroyers systems, rendering it useless. The propaganda report even claimed to have high-ranking U.S. General Frank Gorenc saying, Russian electronic weapons completely paralyze the functioning of American electronic equipment installed on missiles, aircraft and ships. A U.S. military spokesperson has denied General Gorenc ever uttering these words. This news comes after U.S. President Donald Trump dispatched the USS Carl Vinson alongside a score of destroyers, a cruiser, and one submarine, to the Korean Peninsula. USS Carl Vinson is powered by nuclear reactors and carries nearly 100 aircraft. It is believed that President Trump is boosting the deployment of American troops in the region. President Trump has said he will send the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Nimitz to the Sea of Japan soon. It is thought that Russia along with China have sent a spy ship to the Korean Peninsula to thwart the American forces dispatch amidst the ever-growing tension in the region. The movements of the U.S. battleships in the region were also due to the comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He urged the U.S. to show restraint. At the brink of World War 3? Putin has called for restraint as the mounting dispute between the U.S. and North Korea continues to escalate. Even China warned both nations not to take this course of action. North Koreas Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un has been carrying out a series of nuclear tests and military exercises, which President Trump sees as provocation for war. Senior U.S. intelligence officials have said President Trump is all set to launch a pre-emptive strike if the nuclear tests by North Korea continue. Recently, Russia issued a statement, asking both sides to show restraint. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, urged both countries to refrain from taking any actions that could potentially lead to war. Even Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pleaded both countries to step back from going down an irreversible route. In case an all-out nuclear war breaks out between the two nations, there would be no winners. Yi urged both sides to stop sending threats and provocations to each other, and take a more civil approach to end the dispute. Related: Follow more developments on WWIII at WWIII.news. Now that a massive U.S. fleet is in the Korean Peninsula, tensions will continue to rise as long as the threats between the two nuclear-powered nations exist. Trump claims he is ready to deal with the Korean problem. But the secretive North Korea, through Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol, retorted that whatever comes from the U.S., they will cope with it. He further said that they are prepared to handle any situations. Han Song warned they are ready to go to war if they choose. Sources include: TheSun.co.uk 1 TheSun.co.uk 2 FoxNews.com (Natural News) McDonalds is the single biggest purchaser of beef in the U.S. and is also a major pork buyer. This fact bestows a serious responsibility upon the company, since misuse of antibiotics in the agricultural sector has led to antibiotic resistance, placing mankind on the brink of what the United Nations calls a post-antibiotic era. Over 2 million cases of antibiotic-resistant infections are diagnosed annually in the United States, leading to 23,000 deaths. Most of the meat commercially available in the U.S. the same meat being purchased by McDonalds is from factory farms, which are the biggest consumers of antibiotics in the country. In fact, 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals which are later eaten by humans often simply as a preventative measure to prevent the animals from getting sick, rather than to treat actual illness. The pressure is, therefore, immense on big meat purchasers like McDonalds to force change within the industry. After all, where McDonalds goes, many others will follow. This was illustrated recently when McDonalds announced its intention to totally stop using cage-free eggs within a decade, and over 100 companies immediately made the decision to do the same. To give credit where its due, it should be noted that McDonalds has been conscientious about trying to phase out the use of some antibiotics in chicken. In fact, last year, the company totally phased out the use of all antibiotics important to humans in their chicken, well ahead of their own 2017 deadline. And, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, while other companies have followed suit with poultry, with some even moving at a faster pace than McDonalds, very little change has been enacted when it comes to beef and pork. Theres been a lot of progress in the poultry industry in a relatively short amount of time, said Jonathan Kaplan, director of the Natural Resources Defense Councils Food and Agriculture Program. In the pork and beef sectors the atmosphere is still not super enthusiastic. And thats where McDonalds doesnt seem to be any more enthusiastic than its competitors. The company claims that trying to control the beef and pork supply chain is complicated and difficult. For one thing, while chickens are slaughtered when they are only a few weeks old, cattle are around 2 years old by the time they go to market. The company claims that this makes it far harder to prevent the use of antibiotics, because the animals are more likely to get sick in that time. They allege that if antibiotic use is removed too quickly, a serious shortage of beef could result. This argument holds little weight, however, since it is the routine and unnecessary use of antibiotics as a preventative measure that needs to be addressed not the treatment of genuinely sick animals. Another issue McDonalds faces is the fact that while there are only really two main chicken suppliers in the country, and their practices can easily be monitored and controlled, the fast food giant buys beef from thousands of different ranches, making such control far more complicated. Again, this argument doesnt hold much water, because a company as profitable as McDonalds could institute a division solely for the monitoring and accountability of those farmers. McDonalds seems to be handling the situation in a very slow and measured way. The company noted, We need to ensure that any change is purposeful, acceptable to customer preferences, and is designed for a continuous supply of products for McDonalds restaurants. The company continues to work with farmers, producers and other purchasers of food animals to influence meaningful change across the agricultural sector. This delay in eliminating antibiotics from their beef supply perfectly demonstrates how deeply McDonalds is locked into chemical agriculture, explained Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, editor of Natural News. While McDonalds and other fast food giants like Burger King, for that matter clearly do face hurdles in forcing change when it comes to the use of antibiotics in agriculture, the fact is time is running out; the time to act is now. Sources: ChicagoTribune.com HuffingtonPost.com USAToday.com Science.NaturalNews.com (Natural News) A potentially toxic craze is spreading like wildfire across the internet, and in an attempt to stay relevant, Starbucks has jumped on the bandwagon. So-called unicorn food, which is trending across social media, is any food item that has been made super colorful by the addition of food dye, marshmallows or naturally colorful items like pieces of fruit. Some people even go so far as to add little sculpted sugar manes, horns and tails to their creations. Starbucks contribution to the craze was a special edition drink they called the Unicorn Frappuccino, which was available in the U.S., Canada and Mexico for five days, starting April 19. Starbucks described its drink as a sweet dusting of pink powder, blended into a creme Frappuccino with mango syrup and layered with a pleasantly sour blue drizzle. It is finished with vanilla whipped cream and a sprinkle of sweet pink and sour blue powder topping. Lets face it, that sounds super yum. And the drink even changed color when mixed. Fun, right? Well, not so fast. Health-conscious people who adopt the craze by using brightly colored fruit or using naturally bright foods like turmeric or beetroot to add color can breathe easy. On the other hand, those who are making their unicorn toast, unicorn cupcakes or other items using food dyes need to be very careful. Adeline Waugh, a health and wellness blogger and food stylist from Miami, accidentally triggered the trend last year when she started using beetroot to add a pop of color to her photos. Ms. Waugh is more than likely horrified by the way in which her unicorn food, which was both aesthetically beautiful and nutritious, has sparked a craze for sugary, dyed foods. As noted by The New York Times, Waughs dye is made from cream cheese and crushed up natural ingredients like chlorophyll, for green or crushed up, freeze-dried blueberries for purple Her work contains no marshmallows, artificial dye or towering horn-shaped fondants. There is nary a sprinkle in sight. And thats an important distinction, because artificial dyes are anything but harmless, and children are particularly vulnerable to their effects. For this reason, a consumer watchdog organization in Washington is pushing for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban all synthetic dyes, including Blue 1 and 2, Green 3, Citrus Red 2, Red 3 and 40, and Yellow 5 and 6. The worst offenders are Yellow 5 and 6, and Red 40, all of which have been linked to cancer. Artificial dyes also cause other serious issues for children, including hyperactivity (as any parent of an ADHD child will know), allergies, learning difficulties, and behavioral issues like irritability and aggressiveness. Its astonishing to me that people think theyre being hip and politically correct by poisoning themselves with toxic food dyes, explained Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. It just demonstrates the utter nutritionally illiteracy of those who incessantly seek to obediently conform to popular memes. A 2007 study published in The Lancet, found that children who consumed synthetic dyes started to display hyperactive behavior within an hour. This study prompted changes in food dye legislation in the U.K. What many parents who feed their children brightly colored cereal, candy, soft drinks and other foods dont realize is that artificial dyes are made from compounds that were extracted from petroleum and coal tar. And while even small concentrations of a single food colorant may pose health risks, many of these foods contain several different colors. Parents need to be aware that food colors also lurk in unexpected places like over-the-counter medications and even apparently healthy foods like yogurts. The rule of thumb when it comes to food is actually very simple: To ensure your entire family is eating healthy, nutritious food, make sure it is clean that means unprocessed, fresh, organic whole foods that havent been genetically modified, and havent had unnatural things added to them like toxic dyes. And if youre willing to stick to Ms. Waughs original concept of naturally bright, nutritious unicorn food, then go ahead and have some fun with it! Sources: BBC.com NYTimes.com OrganicConsumers.org Newsmax.com USAToday.com (Natural News) Just next door in the state of Colorado, its use is commonly recommended to patients to help relieve pain and provide relief from disease. But in Utah, cannabis consumption is apparently not only frowned upon, but it could end up actually barring a patients access to life-saving medical treatments. This is exactly what happened to 19-year-old Riley Hancey, who was hospitalized just after Thanksgiving this past year, after coming down with a severe form of pneumonia that caused one of his lungs to collapse. Reports indicate that Hanceys condition required a double lung transplant, which he would have received had traces of cannabis not turned up in his system. Hanceys lung collapse was so severe that, according to his YouCaring fundraiser page, he lost all gas exchange function of his lungs due to scarring, as a result of the infection. He needed priority access to new lungs, in other words, but was callously denied such by the medical team at the University of Utah Hospital, which takes an aggressively discriminatory stance against patients who choose to use nature for purposes of relaxation and enjoyment. Though the hospital would not comment specifically on Hanceys case with regards to its refusal to perform the surgery, it did tell the media that it follows strict guidelines as to deciding how it will distribute its services to patients. Part of these guidelines includes lumping cannabis use in with tobacco and alcohol as vices that must be addressed prior to receiving surgery. The reason for these guidelines is that we have a responsibility to ensure our patients have the best possible outcomes and that we are good stewards of the rare resource of the donated organ, the hospital said in a statement to CBS News. Generally speaking, we do not transplant organs in patients with active alcohol, tobacco or illicit drug dependencies or abuse until these issues are addressed, as these substances are contraindicated for a transplant. University of Pennsylvania agrees to treat young man when University of Utah refuses Such a policy sounds fair and reasonable until one comes to the realization that, at least with regards to cannabis, it isnt at all necessary. After looking around for a more open and less discriminatory hospital to perform the procedure, Hanceys family found a compassionate ally at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. According to reports, Hancey was able to receive a new set of lungs on March 29, with no injury to himself or to his surgeons resulting from his cannabis use. As usual, the silly Reefer Madness rhetoric of the likes of the University of Utah was proven false, and once again reveals the extent to which prohibitionists are willing to go to maintain the status quo even if it means potentially leaving someone to die. His transplant surgery went well and the doctor is optimistic, Hanceys family wrote on the young mans fundraising page, completely debunking the nonsense excuses given by the University of Utah. There is still a very long road ahead, so please keep Riley and company in your thoughts. You can keep up with Hanceys ongoing progress and recovery by visiting his YouCaring support page. As many cannabis users are, Hancey is described as having been a healthy teen prior to his pneumatic condition, and one who regularly engaged in physical activity, travel, and other pleasures. He was hardly the junkie that the University of Utah probably assumed he was, once again showing the lunacy of the war on cannabis, not to mention the fact that its now been shown once again that the most dangerous thing about cannabis isnt cannabis itself, but rather being caught with it on your person or in this case, inside your body. Follow more breaking news stories on cannabis medicine at CannabisCures.news. Sources for this article include: CBSNews.com YouCaring.com The Northern Fleet HQ has told Izvestia that the upgrade of the equipment aboard the Belgorod is still in progress to tailor the ship to new missions. The work is due for completion next year, with the Navy to receive the boat then. For now, the Belgorod is on the slipway of the worlds largest Shop 55 of the Sevmash Shipyard. The Belgorod is the derivative of an unfinished Project 949A Antei-class (Oscar II-class) nuclear-powered cruise missile attack submarine. The latter class was developed by the Soviet Union in response to the deployment of US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups throughout the ocean. Sevmash laid down the Belgorod in 1992, but the construction of the submarine, which was 76% complete, was put on the back burner in 2006. However, the Navy again took interest in the unfinished submarine, albeit in a role different to her aircraft carrier killer purpose. The top brass decided to convert the ship into a carrier of deep-water manned and unmanned submersibles. The sub is supposed to be equipped with the plethora of special and diving equipment and pressure equalization chambers for access to deep-water submersibles. One of the latter is the Bester. The Belgorod also will carry the Magma geophysical complex for offshore geological exploration in the Arctic. The Magma will slash the cost of the research in inaccessible areas fourfold. Research will be feasible irrespective of weather and ice conditions. "The Belgorod may well be called a multipurpose submarine," expert Dmitry Kornev tells Izvestia. "The boat can haul deep-water submersibles, bathyscaphs and remote-controlled systems. She herself will be able to operate down on the seabed too. Therefore, the Belgorod can be used for both military and peaceful purposes. For instance, the submarine will lay underwater cables or set up the Garmoniya system. She also will assist in mineral exploration and production on the Arctic shelf plate." Just before Matt Mendelsohn began work on his honors thesis in human health, he was hospitalized with a staph infection. His year-plus effort of grinding stems, leaves and roots of various blackberry species then teasing the chemicals apart to isolate 55 different extracts in a bid to find one to help battle the bug that causes an increasing number of antibiotic-resistant infections was now personal. Working from a similar breakthrough by his thesis adviser, ethnobotanist Cassandra Quave, Mendelsohn discovered that two root extracts, one from the common blackberry and another from a species of dewberry, help conquer staphs defense system. Quave, an assistant professor in Emorys Center for the Study of Human Health and in the School of Medicines Department of Dermatology, holds the patent on the compound she teased from the roots of an elmleaf blackberry that do the same. When I first came to Emory, it was not my first thought to do research, but I definitely understand its importance to medicine, Mendelsohn says. Its the actual work to increase the efficiency of our current antibiotics and lengthen their use, he adds, so that we can face down what we know is a growing health crisis of our antibiotics not working when we need them. Those tools will be especially helpful to Mendelsohn in his planned career. He entered Emory on the pre-med track, expecting to major in math and either biology or chemistry. The human health major was just taking shape at the time. A pioneering program that links Emorys diverse efforts in health education, research and the liberal arts, human health captured Mendelsohns attention instead. His first year on campus, he sought as many health and sciences classes as he could earning induction into the Phi Eta Sigma freshman honor society for his efforts and filled his time outside the classroom with club lacrosse and his fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau. Mendelsohn, as the son of two doctors, was enjoying learning about nutrition and other components of health when his sophomore roommate Justin Robeny began raving about the deep science work being done in Quaves lab. Quave 00C had made a name for herself by rigorously applying hundreds of years of knowledge of plant-based healing to tackle the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance. The Quave Research Group includes an interdisciplinary team of scientists and a handful of carefully selected students, all working on the antibacterial potential of plants. Quave requires her 25-30 student workers to have a strong science background as well as a willingness to volunteer for at least 10 hours a week for a semester, to prove their commitment and learn their way around the equipment. In her five years running the lab, she only oversaw three students work on an honors thesis. That is, until this year, when three more earned the honor Mendelsohn among them. He demonstrated excellence in the abstract understanding and the physical requirement of this work, Quave says. I think the lesson here is that with strong mentorship and hard work on the part of the student, Emory undergraduates are able to thrive. Blackberries versus bacteria So what, exactly, did Mendelsohn do? The details are likely to be published, as was previous Quave lab research that included an undergraduate researcher. But broadly, Mendelsohn decided to see if eight other species in the genus rubus, the flowering plants we mostly know as types of blackberries, had similar success in beating back staphs defense as one that Quave uncovered. Specifically, Quave found a refined fraction extract from the rubus ulmifolius (the elmleaf blackberry) inhibited formation of biofilm. The biofilm creates a protective layer over the bacteria, which can make them thousands of times more resistant to antibiotics. Mendelsohn pulled out different chemicals from different parts of each of his plants, grinding some of the tougher plant parts with equipment once used to grind dense horse hoofs. From there, he had to tease his crude into four different partial fractions, an intense amount of chemistry work to make extracts. Mendelsohn says he was spending about 20 hours in the lab weekly, just to get the extracts ready for step two: applying various concentrations of his extracts on microplates of staph bacteria. In that work, Mendelsohn was measuring for two things: would any of his assays affect the growth of the bacteria, and would any inhibit the biofilm? Together, he was looking for the extract that would not affect bacterial growth but would damage the biofilm. Though it sounds counterintuitive, that allows for a compound that can go after the biofilm, which is not an essential function of bacteria the way growth is, thereby preventing the development of future resistance. In the long term, that would mean these could be used along with existing antibiotics, making them more effective for longer use, Mendelsohn says. Better appreciation of scientific pursuits Other students in Quaves lab have completed some of that process. But Kate Nelson, the biology lab manager where Mendelsohn did the final parts of his research, says his work falls in line with deeper research. One big question is whether his extracts could coat artificial implants, such as hip replacements, since bacteria easily latch onto their smooth surfaces and create problems. Next we would see if, with antibiotics, is there an increased effectiveness to where we can use them prophylactically, Nelson says. He really got the full spectrum of work to get us here. Mendelsohn is aware of the years of research still ahead for his findings, and he still plans on doing clinical work as a doctor. But his time in Quaves lab has given him a new perspective on his gap year next year. He is spending it at the Tisch MS Research Center of New York, working as a lab research assistant on the causes and treatments of multiple sclerosis. There is ample opportunity to get into research here at Emory, and the lab still sounds interesting to me, Mendelsohn says. I feel like with my experience, I have a better appreciation of scientific pursuit in general. In her third year at UC Santa Cruz, Amy is doing research on the universes most violent events. She is about to publish a paper on the topic, is headed to Harvard for a summer research program, has a 3.7 GPA, and plans to go to graduate school. But a decision her parents made to bring Amy to the U.S. at the age of 4 leaves her with worries and obstacles many other students dont face. Amy (not her real name) is undocumented, which means she is ineligible for some scholarships, may be hampered in her graduate studies because she isnt allowed to get federal research funds, and, in the current political climate, lives with an undercurrent of anxiety that her family could be deported. But thanks to more than a half-dozen programs at UC Santa Cruz, Amy and approximately 400 other undocumented students on campus have been able not only to survive, but to thrive. The programsfunded by the University of California and some private donationsprovide counseling, internships, legal help, support groups, an extended orientation program, and even a lending library of 3,000 textbooks for undocumented students to borrow. The campuss Educational Opportunity Programs office (EOP) carries out these programs, which were developed by and, now, implemented by, students and counselors. Why is it critical to have these services? says Pablo Reguerin (Oakes 94, Latin American and Latino studies), who is assistant vice provost for student success at UC Santa Cruz. Because undocumented students represent an enormous asset in terms of their intellectual, academic, and human capital for the state. Aside from these benefits, this is a matter of our own humanity and social justice. Changing policies The history of undocumented students at UC campuses is a checkered one. Before 1991, undocumented students were allowed to pay in-state tuition at UC institutions provided they could prove they had lived in the state for a year and a day and planned to make California their home. Then, in 1990, an employee at the UCLA Office of the Registrar sued, saying he was forced to quit because he could not follow those rules. The employee won an injunction and soon undocumented students were being charged out-of-state tuition rates, which basically barred them from a UC education. A 2001 state law, AB 540, changed the rule so that undocumented students could again pay in-state fees. More state laws, passed in 2011, allowed these students to receive some state financial aid. Finally, in 2012, President Barack Obama signed an executive order dubbed DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which prevented young people who were brought to this country as children from being deported while they were in school. College seemed within reach for more undocumented students until the election of Donald Trump, who had called for a hard line on immigration policy. That prompted UC President Janet Napolitano, in November 2016, to not only reiterate the UC systems support of undocumented students and but also allocate money for undocumented student programs. UC Santa Cruz will receive $275,000 in each of the next three years. Harvesting talent Santa Cruz programs funded by this money, along with private donations, include free legal services for students and their families, peer counseling, support groups, a textbook lending library that hands out about 650 textbooks each quarter, and an intense five-day orientation program for undocumented students. Besides learning how to navigate the wooded campus and schedule classes, the orientation gives undocumented students information on renewing their DACA status, negotiating with landlords who may be averse to renting to undocumented students, budgeting, getting emotional support, and finding financial aid, among other subjects. Most importantly, the UC Santa Cruz Career Center also offers an internship program available to undocumented students through the Professional Career Development Program (PCDP). These internships are especially important for undocumented students, who may come from low-income families and find themselves facing a funding gap of $7,000 to $9,000 a year, according to Reguerin. For five undocumented members of UC Santa Cruzs STEM Diversity Program this year, the PCDP program means an opportunity to not only do hands-on research in fields like neurodegenerative diseases and gene expression but also receive a stipend for their work, according to Yulianna Ortega (Merrill 05, biology and Latin American and Latino studies), director of the STEM Diversity Program. Two other undocumented STEM students are working on administrative projects. In addition, a program called Lamat, funded by philanthropist Julie Packard (Crown '74, biology; M.A. '78) allows community college students, including those who are undocumented, to be part of a summer research session in astrophysics. I see these efforts as an opportunity, especially in the sciences, to find and harvest the remarkable talent we have in these communities, says UC Santa Cruz Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. Have potential, need opportunity While UC Santa Cruz sometimes lost capable students from wealthier schools to institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, Ramirez-Ruiz says, he and others have been able to attract a pool of equally talented students, many undocumented, who are ready to bring their differing viewpoints in order to find solutions to complex astrophysical problems that are often more innovative and creative. The students attacked problems with vigor and were quick to think on their feet, Ramirez-Ruiz says, but their status in society often made them feel unwelcome. They knew, in order to stand out, they had to do better than everyone else because of the excessive resistance they are constantly confronting, Ramirez-Ruiz says. Undocumented students from UC Santa Cruz have not only gone on to graduate school, but also a number are working in fields like education, biotechnology, public health, and in the nonprofit sector. Says Ortega: These students have so much potential. They just need the opportunity. The fact is, the talent is already here, already contributing positively to society, and some of these students are just brilliant, Ramirez-Ruiz says. There is a clear message from society to them that they are second class and that they dont belong here. But despite this unyielding defiance, the level of determination shown by these students is basically unmatched. We need to give them an opportunity because in terms of market value, they are an investment that will give you the highest return. UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal agrees. UC Santa Cruz is committed to supporting these hard-working, talented students who continue to make valuable contributions to the campus and to their fields of study, Blumenthal says. The Anakin method: Using artificial intelligence to fight disease A team of chemists have created new software inspired by Star Wars that will help researchers test and develop medicine faster. Growing up in small-town Central Alabama, Justin Smith was drawn to Legos and science fiction books and films, like Star Wars and Star Trek things that allowed him to imagine futuristic realities. Hes still building works inspired by his love of science fiction, but theyre very real. For the past year, the University of Florida doctoral student and colleagues have been developing software using artificial intelligence, specifically a neural network, that can be taught and even learn on its own. The developers hope the new software will lead to faster, cheaper and more accurate testing of treatments and potential cures for diseases and viruses, like diabetes and HIV. I wanted to make a difference in the way medicine is developed, said Smith, who studies at UFs chemistry department and recently introduced the software in a study. With this software, drug companies can identify a target protein, like those that drive the HIV virus, and test binding molecules to proteins that can stop the protein from working, essentially stopping the disease in its tracks. The software is called ANAKIN-ME (Accurate NeurAl networK engINe for Molecular Energies) or Ani for short. And describing Ani as fast is an understatement. In order to bind a molecule to a protein, researchers need to understand the molecules energy. Smith taught the neural network to calculate energies and forces in molecules hundreds of thousands of times faster than the previous most accurate method and much more accurately than the quickest methods that currently exist. The combination of speed, accuracy and low cost will allow researchers to run experiments that were previously impossible, said Smiths mentor Adrian Roitberg, a UF chemistry professor and study co-author. Drugs that used to take decades to test can be tested in months, said Roitberg, who emphasized the softwares accuracy. Justin Smith (right) and Adrian Roitberg discuss the new method. The software might also help engineers and manufacturers develop materials like solar cells and plastics. The network is useful when building things, as it can identify the right materials and take away much of the trial and error, Roitberg said. The problem with some previous methods is that they were not adapted to the way molecules move and bend, while others that were adapted to movement failed to work in complex chemical environments. So, Smith took a different approach. The idea was to design a method that works the same way they teach cars to drive. You dont teach a car to drive down a straight road and then expect it to take corners, for instance, said Smith, a UF Foundation graduate fellowship recipient. Because molecules move, I realized we needed to design a way to teach the neural network that things are not rigid. The speed at which Ani computes might allow researchers to test huge numbers of possible molecule and protein connections, or study big, complex molecules. Though its already advanced, Ani is still learning. It knows organic chemistry, but eventually the network might be able to train itself to perform even more accurately. And as for the reason Anis creators named it after a Star Wars character, Roitberg said, In those movies, computers were solving problems long before words like artificial intelligence or machine learning existed. So its a shout out to science fiction and the way it spurred interest in computers solving real-world problems. Olexandr Isayev with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill co-authored the study. A report from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) said that in light of protectionist attitudes from the US and Britain in the midst of Brexit, Australia should turn its focus to more open economies, Xinhua news agency reported. CEDA's Policy Committee Chairman Rodney Maddock said Australia was too committed to its "traditional" trading partners and should focus on the "substantial" opportunities offered by Asian nations. "With concerns about trade barriers stemming from Brexit and the Donald Trump presidency, Australia should focus on engagement with its immediate region where growth opportunities are substantial," Maddock said. "There is a significant opportunity for Australian outbound investment in distribution systems for chilled and fresh foods in Asia, which remain poor. "There are significant emerging markets with an exploding middle-class, demanding higher quality products and services. This represents a huge opportunity for Australia," he added. Maddock said that there were misconceptions about local benefits of outbound investment, but said it could deliver "significant economic benefits" through investment in exports. "In reality, (offshore investment) can deliver significant economic benefits to the Australian economy and in fact create jobs both here in Australia and abroad. "The lifting of trade barriers and integration of Australia into the global market place has resulted in the biggest increase in our living standards in our history," he added. --IANS sm/mr ( 260 Words) 2017-04-27-13:58:21 (IANS) Relations between India and Italy are set on the path to recovery, after strains that developed over the past years, with the Joint Economic Commission slated to meet in Rome in May after a gap of eight years, it was announced here on Thursday. Visiting Italian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Ivan Scalfarotto said at the Italy-India Business Forum here that Indian Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be leading a delegation for the joint commission meeting scheduled to be held in the middle of May. Scalfarotto is currently in India at the head of a 140-member delegation, that includes representatives of 60 Italian companies, in a bid to boost bilateral trade and investment relations. Bilateral relations were affected following the death of two Kerala fishermen at the hands of two Italian marines in the Enrica Lexie case in 2012. "This India-Italy Business Forum is the official launch of a new partnership between both countries and involves the sharing of knowledge and experience," Italian Ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni said addressing the packed venue. Noting that some Italian companies like Fiat and Ferrero Rocher are household names in India, Additional Secretary Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Atul Chaturvedi said the government had asked India's ambassador in Italy to start an outreach programme to attract small and medium industry to India, on the lines of a similar programme started in Germany. "This is the first Italian business delegation to India since 2011 and signals the revitalisation of our relationship after its slowing down over the past some years," Licia Mattioli, Vice President of the Italian Industry Association Confindustria, said. "Despite the political and bilateral uncertainties of the last few years, Italian companies in India played a central role in keeping our cooperation going," she said. Bilateral trade in 2016 amounted to around $7.3 billion. There are over 600 Italian companies present in India. Italian foreign direct investment in India amounts to around 5 billion euros. Between Mumbai and Delhi, around 900 business-to-business meetings are planned during the ongoing bilateral business forum towards increasing collaborations. Italy is offering collaborations in areas of its expertise including food processing, infrastructure, heavy machinery, renewable energy, advanced technology, as well as information and communication technology. Talking to reporters on the Italian marines' case, Scalfarotto said it is now with the International Court under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and relations between the two governments are back on track, as signalled by the meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome last year. Regarding a free trade agreement, he said negotiations were on between the European Union and India and Italy is encouraging the EU to expedite the signing of an FTA. --IANS bc/dg ( 470 Words) 2017-04-27-17:04:08 (IANS) The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Thursday said that it has approached the Supreme Court to plead for a review of its judgement issued over the BS III vehicles. In a statement, SIAM said that it has filed a review petition with the apex court to point out "certain facts" that were not covered in the judgment. The move comes after the apex court banned the sale and registration of non-BS IV compliant vehicles from April 1, 2017. According to the industry association, the Supreme Court has "erroneously construed" an office memorandum from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (dated March 3, 2017) to be an office memorandum dated March 3, 2015. This "erroneously construed" office memorandum led to the misunderstanding that the government had "sent a clear message" to the manufacturers to stop production of BS III vehicles before April 1, 2017, the industry association said. "Whereas this was a government assurance given three weeks before the judgement, that unsold stocks of BS III vehicles which were in the pipeline, would be permitted to be sold and registered even after 1st April 2017 as has been done even when BS II and BS III were implemented," the statement said. "Acting on the representations made on such clarification issued by the government of India as late as in March 2017, as well as the plain reading of the rules, the manufacturers had a reasonable and legitimate expectation that unsold inventories of BS III stocks could be sold even after 1st April, 2017, and until such stocks were exhausted." SIAM highlighted in the review petition that the staggered phase-in of BS IV emission norms for vehicles was not done to help the auto industry as mentioned in the judgment. "This staggering was done to ensure that adequate capacities for the BS IV fuel supply get established to expand the coverage of fuel availability to other parts of the country as per the roadmap agreed with the oil industry," the statement said. SIAM elaborated that the Supreme Court has further based its judgment on an assumption that there will be 80 per cent reduction in emissions of PM (particulate matter) between BS III and BS IV standards. "Though it may be true for only heavy vehicles, but such reduction is much less in other categories of vehicles," the statement said. In the petition, SIAM stated that the auto industry has invested Rs 25,000 crore to upgrade vehicle technologies to BS IV level and was therefore an equal contributor in ensuring the improvement in the environment. --IANS rv/vt ( 442 Words) 2017-04-27-20:26:09 (IANS) US President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Canada and Mexico that he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), but warned that the US would still pull out if he could not negotiate a better deal, the White House said. Trump, in phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto on Wednesday, agreed to proceed swiftly to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. The White House said the phone conversations were "pleasant and productive". "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a written statement that accompanied the readout of his phone calls. "It is an honour to deal with both President Pea Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," he said. Trump reiterated those points Thursday morning, tweeting, "if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate Nafta." He also claimed that the two leaders reached out to him. The US President railed against the trade accord as a presidential candidate and last week called it as harmful to US workers. As he approaches his 100th day in office on Saturday, Trump and his advisers are hurriedly working to check off promises made during the campaign, one of which was to renegotiate or withdraw from Nafta, CNN reported. Trump has already removed the US from another massive trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was negotiated under former President Barack Obama. Trump's decision to remain in Nafta came the same day a senior administration official revealed the White House was considering an executive order to withdraw from the trade accord. Many Republicans, including Senator John McCain, had cautioned Trump not to pull out from Nafta. "It will devastate the economy in my state," McCain said on Wednesday. "I hope he doesn't do that." "Scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," said Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. During his run for office last year, Trump made his disdain for Nafta a central component of a populist message designed to engender support among working class Americans, said the report. He consistently cast the agreement -- which was negotiated by former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's presidential opponent Hillary Clinton -- as a raw deal for the middle class. Last week, Trump derided Nafta during remarks in Wisconsin meant to highlight American manufacturing. "It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of Nata once and for all," Trump said. --IANS soni/dg ( 491 Words) 2017-04-27-20:30:08 (IANS) A recent study suggests that parkinson's disease, a disorder of the central nervous system, may start in the gut and spread to the brain via the vagus nerve. The study published in the journal Neurology. The vagus nerve extends from the brainstem to the abdomen and controls unconscious body processes like heart rate and food digestion. The preliminary study examined people who had resection surgery, removing the main trunk or branches of the vagus nerve. The surgery, called vagotomy, is used for people with ulcers. Researchers used national registers in Sweden to compare 9,430 people who had a vagotomy over a 40-year period to 377,200 people from the general population. During that time, 101 people who had a vagotomy developed Parkinson's disease, or 1.07 percent, compared to 4,829 people in the control group, or 1.28 percent. This difference was not significant. But when researchers analyzed the results for the two different types of vagotomy surgery, they found that people who had a truncal vagotomy at least five years earlier were less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than those who had not had the surgery and had been followed for at least five years. In a truncal vagotomy, the nerve trunk is fully resected. In a selective vagotomy, only some branches of the nerve are resected. A total of 19 people who had truncal vagotomy at least five years earlier developed the disease, or 0.78 percent, compared to 3,932 people who had no surgery and had been followed for at least five years, at 1.15 percent. By contrast, 60 people who had selective vagotomy five years earlier developed Parkinson's disease, or 1.08 percent. After adjusting for factors such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, arthritis and other conditions, researchers found that people who had a truncal vagotomy at least five years before were 40 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than those who had not had the surgery and had been followed for at least five years. "These results provide preliminary evidence that Parkinson's disease may start in the gut," said study author Bojing Liu, MSc, of the Karolinska Instituet in Stockholm, Sweden. "Other evidence for this hypothesis is that people with Parkinson's disease often have gastrointestinal problems such as constipation, that can start decades before they develop the disease. In addition, other studies have shown that people who will later develop Parkinson's disease have a protein believed to play a key role in Parkinson's disease in their gut." The theory is that these proteins can fold in the wrong way and spread that mistake from cell to cell. "Much more research is needed to test this theory and to help us understand the role this may play in the development of Parkinson's," Liu said. Additionally, since Parkinson's is a syndrome, there may be multiple causes and pathways. Even though the study was large, Liu said one limitation was small numbers in certain subgroups. Also, the researchers could not control for all potential factors that could affect the risk of Parkinson's disease, such as smoking, coffee drinking or genetics. (ANI) Poet Zeeshan Niazi of Kanpur presented and conducted the proceedings with his wit and ability. The evening commenced with a heart wrenching performance by adolescent girls from SAKSHI NGO and their performance to the song 'Aye Khuda' depicted the evils against women prevalent in the society. It spread a strong message encompassing issues like female foeticide, dowry, rape, domestic violence, girl child education, gender equality and among others. A lyrical follow up to the message of gender disparity was next - Ghazals by Shakeel Ahmed. The overflowing hall and appreciative applause evidenced the audience response. His singing, range and depth fascinated everyone present. Dr Tandon said that promoting the cause of literature and ensuring its robust growth to the benefit of writers and poets, the very soul of the nation's culture, was necessary to retain our basic values, sensitivity and rootedness to our civilization in a fast changing world. SIET aims to bring the Urdu and Hindi poetry and literature back into mainstream awareness by showcasing the awesome talent that exists in this sphere. (ANI) India on Wednesday shrugged off former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsaan's claim that New Delhi and Afghanistan intelligence agencies gave funds and other assistance to Pakistani Taliban militants to fight Islamabad. "India attaches no credibility to the claims made by an alleged former TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsaan," sources told ANI. In a video released by Pakistan military's media wing Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Ehsaan claimed that he and his accomplices had links with India's Research and Analysis Wing, reports the Express Tribune. "My name is Liaquat Ali, aka Ehsanullah Ehsan and I belong to the Mohmand Agency. I joined the TTP in 2008," he said. "They [the TTP leadership] got their [Indian] support, their funding and took money for every activity they did. They pushed the TTP soldiers on the front lines to fight against the Pakistan Army and went into hiding themselves," he added. Asserting that TTP had taken help from RAW, Ehsan said, "When they started taking help from India and RAW, I told Umar Khalid Khorasani [TTP commander] that we're supporting the kuffar [non-believers] and helping them kill our own people in our own country." "He [Khorasani] said, 'Even if Israel agrees to fund me to spread terror in Pakistan, I will take their help'. At that point, I had figured out that the TTP leadership was functioning to serve its own self-interest and agendas.These [terrorist] organisations have their committees in Afghanistan through which they communicate with NDS and through it RAW. NDS gave them documents [Afghan IDs] so that they can easily move around [in Afghanistan]," he said. Last week, Ehsan had surrendered to the security forces, ISPR Director General Major General Asif Ghafoor said. (ANI) Cultivation in 1.54 lakh hectare land in six districts was affected due to thunderstorms in the past few weeks. The state Agriculture department has carried out a study to assess the loss and the preliminary report in this connection was submitted to the department. The final report in this connection will be submitted within a week in which details of the monetary loss due to the natural calamity in agriculture will be mentioned. In the preliminary report it has been mentioned that agriculture in 64 blocks and 1,953 mouzas was affected due to thundershowers and rainfall. Mainly banana cultivation was affected by the bad weather. Huge quantities of vegetables were also damaged in many parts of the city. The state government will be providing compensation to the affected farmers. The six districts where crops were damaged are Nadia, South Dinajpur, East and West Burdwan, East and West Midnapore. The most affected districts are East Burdwan and West Midnapore.UNI SJC KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-870517.Xml At least three soldiers, including a captain, lost their lives after terrorists attacked an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir''s Kupwara district. Two terrorists were also killed in the attack on the Army base located close to the Line of Control (LoC). Meanwhile, reports state that two more terrorists are still holed up and attempts are being made to smoke them out. This is not the first time terrorists have gunned down Armed Forces personnel after invading and attacking their camp. Here''s a timeline of the major strikes at the Indian Army camps in the recent years: -January 2, 2016 The Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force was attacked by a group of heavily armed terrorists on January 2, 2016. Four terrorists were killed by the security forces, and the Indian Armed forces lost three brave men including NSG''s Lt Col Niranjan, who attained martyrdom when a bomb exploded while he was inspecting a terrorist''s body. The terrorists belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group. -September 18, 2016 In one of the bloodiest attacks on the Indian Armed forces, 19 soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Uri area of Baramulla. Four fidayeen militants stormed an Army camp at Uri in Baramulla District near the LoC on September 18, 2016. The high number of casualties in the Uri terror attack was due to the fact that a large number of soldiers, of the Dogra Regiment, had been stationed at the camp in tents and other temporary structures as there was a changeover of guards. Some of these tents caught fire during the attack, and the fire spread to other parts of the barracks. While the four terrorists were neutralised immediately, India also conducted a surgical strike in retaliation on September 29, 2016, against militant launch pads across the LoC in Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir. Nearly 20-50 militants were neutralised as per the Indian Army. The militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed is suspected of being involved in the planning and execution of the attack in Uri. -November 29, 2016 Seven soldiers, including two Majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in the Nagrota area of Jammu and Kashmir, triggering a fierce gun battle that raged for more than 12 hours. -December 5, 2014 Heavily armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters of the Army in North Kashmir''s Uri town, killing 17 jawans and injuring 19 other personnel in the terror strike. Six militants were also killed in the operation. (ANI) Venting their angst against the Centre in wake of the Sukma attack, the Shiv Sena on Thursday castigated the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Government for not being able to chalk out a strong anti-terror policy. Shiv Sena in its Saamna editorial blatantly attacked Prime Minister Modi over his comment post Sukma naxal attack and asserted that by making mere statements to avenge the death of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel would not solve the propose. "All attacks by terrorists are cowardly acts, but it is the security personnel whose lives are being sacrificed. The Chhattisgarh attack claimed 26 lives. Our home minister says that they will not tolerate such attacks. But the truth is in past one month, 100 CRPF jawans have sacrificed their lives. By just saying that 'we will not let the sacrifices of CRPF jawans go in vein' is not enough. Why are we not able to combat the aggravating situation?" the Saamna editorial cited. Drawing an analogue between the vulnerable situation in Kashmir and Chhattisgarh, the Shiv Sena averred that the President's rule should be imposed. Chiding the dispensation at the Centre for siphoning political benefits out of the sacrifices of security personnel, the Shiv Sena questioned until when the BJP would run its government by taking lives of soldiers of the nation. "The situation in Kashmir is volatile. Now, even women have picked up stones there and are attacking soldiers. The President's rule should be imposed in Kashmir to pacify the situation and the same treatment should be given to Chhattisgarh," the editorial read. The Shiv Sena further took a jibe at the Centre's claim that demonetisation would curb terrorism and said that post the currency swap, terrorist attacks seemed to have increased. "At the time of bringing demonetisation, it was being asserted that the banning of high denomination notes will curb terrorism. But on the contrary terrorist attacks seemed to have increased. The incident in Chhattisgarh is a testimony that the BJP's claims of combating terrorism have failed," the Saamna editorial said. (ANI) The West Bengal government will set up a state-of-the art bus terminal at Jaigaon situated in the Indo-Bhutan border at an estimated cost of Rs 7 crore. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate a gate in Jaigaon today and the area would be developed into a commercial hub. The Urban Development department has chalked out a comprehensive scheme for the development of Jaigaon, which is a thickly populated area. The state government is now engaged in the improvement of infrastructure building of Jaigaon. The Public Health Engineering department has chalked out a scheme worth Rs 91 crore to provide drinking water to the area. This will solve the drinking water crisis in the area. The state government has also proposed to set up an economic area development zone in Jaigaon along the international road connecting India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. This will also increase the economic activities of the area.UNI SJC KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-870522.Xml A US national, identified as Glenn Bernard Conway (67), was found dead at a jungle road near Molley SSB camp in Siliguri sub-division in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, police said today. The body was found on Wednesday and sent Darjeeling hospital for an autopsy. Police said, he was resident of Massachusetts,USA. Police said the foreigner had entered into India on April 18 through IGI airport in New Delhi. The US embassy was informed about the tragedy of the sexogenarian. UNI XC-PC AKM 1104 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-870525.Xml Meanwhile, the HC has demanded release of over 100 separatist leaders and activists, particularly alleged stone-pelters , some of them booked under Public Safety Act (PSA) during the past six months. A spokesman for the outfit said that a police party raided the house of DeM chief last night and arrested her. However, she said no reason for her arrest was given. Asiya, facing several cases for her alleged anti national activities, is presently out on bail. Meanwhile, Mr Geelani remained under house arrest since May last year, when he returned from New Delhi, a spokesman for the amalgam Aiyaz Akbar said. He said large number of security forces and state police personnel remained deployed outside the residence of Mr Geelani to prevent him from moving out. However, he was arrested several times for defying restrictions only to be released later in the evening each time. More than 100 people, including youths, are detained in different jails and police stations in the state. He demanded their immediate release. UNI BAS SB 1052/1407 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0094-870792.Xml A massive gun-battle was witnessed earlier in the day as terrorists attacked an Indian Army camp in Kupwara's Panzgam in Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were neutralised and three Army personnel lost their lives. Here is a timeline of the deadly attack that unfolded today: The terrorists entered the Kupwara Army camp around 4.40 a.m. In few minutes two terrorists were neutralized by the forces, while one managed to escape. The camp is around 10-12 km away from the Line of Control (LoC). There are total nine units in the area and the camp includes artillery and infantry units. The area of the camp is around 600 and 400 meters. There are two layers fencing around the camp and the distance between both the fences is 50 to 75 meters and both were cut by the terror group. The terrorists entered from the back side of the firing range and then cut the fence and reached the officer complex area, sources state. The terrorists first hit the officer complex then moved to the other place. All the three AK-47s belonging to them have been recovered during search operation. Total Weapons recovered are: 1. Three AK 47 2. Nine magazines 3. One Chinese pistol 4. Hand Grenades 5. Mapping sheet 6. Two GPRS equipment 7. One smart phone All three were wearing black 'pathan' suit and half combat jacket. Seven Army soldiers were injured, six are in Srinagar and one is being treated in Kupwara itself. According to reports one of them is in a critical condition. Meanwhile, reports of stone pelting have emerged from locations near to the site of the Army camp attack. The political fraternity has come together in condemning the attack and also paying their tributes to the slain soldiers. (ANI) They said the decision to appoint Mr Rai was taken in a meeting of AAP legislators held here at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence. Mr Pandey tendered his resignation from the post following AAP's debacle in the MCD polls and asked party chief Arvind Kejriwal to appoint someone else. "I have resigned from the post of AAP Delhi Convenor, conveyed to National Convenor @ArvindKejriwal to give this responsibility to someone else," the AAP leader tweeted yesterday. The AAP has managed to get only 48 seats of the 270 wards of all the three Municipal Corporations.UNI DS SHK 1608 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-870999.Xml Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's recent four-day state visit to India, her first after seven years, was an eventful milestone in the India-Bangladesh relationship. This high-profile visit is expected to further boost to bilateral ties between India and Bangladesh as the two nations signed 22 pacts, including one on civilian nuclear cooperation and a defence agreement which includes a USD 4.5 billion (around Rs. 3,200 crore) line of credit to buy Indian military hardware. train and bus services, between West Bengal and Bangladesh were also launched during the visit. Apart from the various events, including Sheikh Hasina's visit to Ajmer Sharif and her meeting with industrialists, what went quite under-reported was the very moving Sommanona ceremony to honour Indian soldiers martyred in 1971, held befittingly at Manekshaw Center, Delhi Cantonment. With the two Prime Ministers seated on the dais flanked by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and two of Bangladesh's Ministers, Manekshaw Centre's auditorium was full with a group of Bangladesh's Bir Mukti Joddhas (brave liberation soldiers) of the Mukti Bahini, Indian Army, Navy Air Force veterans of the 1971, two former Indian Army Chiefs, Generals V.N. Sharma and Deepak Kapur, the three service chiefs, diplomats, senior officials and serving Indian armed forces officers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his address at Manekshaw Centre by praising Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's efforts. When he referred the Bangabandhu's family being rescued from imprisonment in 1971, he pointed to Major Ashok Tara, who had conducted the rescue and was sitting in the audience with his wife. Referring to Bangabandhu's murder on 25 August 1975, PM Modi said "16 of her family were murdered, but Sheikh Hasina stood still like a rock.' Those were moments when Sheikh Hasina was visibly moved. She and her sister escaped the bloodbath as they were in West Germany. That was an indeed trying time for her. Completely broken owing to the senseless killing of her parents and siblings, and with a hostile government in Bangladesh, she was provided asylum in New Delhi from 1975 to 1981. Holding forth on the progress made by Bangladesh in its post-liberation decades, PM Modi had the entire audience stunned when he rattled off many facts and figures extempore. "There is one thought in South Asia which breeds, inspires and encourages terrorism. The thought whose priority is not humanity, but extremism and terrorism...Without being selfish, the two countries worked for the betterment of entire region, it's sad that there is a third mentality which exists.. It's my clear mandate that my neighbouring country Bangladesh should also develop along with India.. As a friend, India will offer whatever required to Bangladesh. I have same dream for Bangladesh as I have for India, Jai Hind! Jai Bangla," said PM Modi. In a moving ceremony, PM Hasina honoured the following next of kin of six posthumous gallantry awardees of Indian Armed Forces martyred during the 1971 War of Bangladesh's Liberation: Mrs Vilambini, the widow of Lance Param Vir Chakra recipient Naik Albert Ekka, who was in a wheelchair, Mrs. Santosh, sister of Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) recipient Major Anup Singh Gehlot, Mrs. Gurdev Kaur, widow of Subedar Malkiat Singh, Mrs. Sugam Singh, widow of MVC recipient Havildar Sugam Singh, Mrs Kavita Das, sister-in-law of MVC recipient Lt Samir Das, an Indian Navy clearance diver, who fought alongside the Mukti Bahini, Mrs. Arundhati Samanta, widow of Vir Chakra (VrC) recipient Squadron Leader A.B. Samanta and Mr. Vishwa Nath Chakravarty, brother of VrC recipient Lance Naik Mohini Ranjan Chakravarty of the Border Security Force. "I pay tribute to some special Indian friends, the martyrs and their families...This time the struggle was for our freedom..The history of Bangladesh has been written by the blood of Indian martyrs," said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Interacting with this writer, Colonel Sajjad Ali Zahir, Bir Protik, who accompanied PM Hasina and conducted the honouring ceremony recalled, "I was posted in Pakistan Army's 14th Para Brigade in Sialkot, when news came of unspeakable atrocities by Pakistan Army back home. After trying hard, I finally managed to escape into India and was brought by the Indian military to a secret camp in Sylhet district, where I became the trainer for the Mukti Bahini." Meanwhile Pakistan Army passed a death sentence against him for 'deserting his post'. "We began our guerrilla operation from September 1971 and quickly raised an artillery battery to cause maximum damage to the Pakistani forces as they had to be stopped from committing human rights violations.. At one point, we found a government office which had been turned into a sex-labour camp with kidnapped women locked up on the first floor. I am still haunted by the memory of a girl who wrote her name, Ratna, in blood on the wall of a labour camp before dying". The third India-Pakistan war during December 1971 was historically significant as it liberated erstwhile Bengali East Pakistan from decades of oppression by the ruling military government of West Pakistan culminating in horrific genocide by Pakistan army and created the new nation, Bangladesh. On 25 March 1971, the liberation war was launched by the Mukti Bahini, as Pakistani soldiers aided by local collaborators, had reportedly killed an estimated 3 million people, raped 200,000 women and forced millions of people to flee to India. Eventually, when Pakistan sparked off the war on December 3, 1971, it took only 13 days for India Army to encircle East Pakistan. On December 16, 1971, Pakistan's eastern army commander signed the instrument of surrender at Dhaka, as 93,000 Pakistan armed forces personnel surrendered to Indian Army all over what got declared as the newly born nation of Bangladesh. The year 2011 was marked by extended celebrations in Bangladesh, for one of which it invited 17 Indian veterans of that war, in December 2011. Simultaneously Headquaters, Eastern Command, Kolkata hosted three serving Bangladesh Army officers, 22 Mukti Joddhas (Mukti Bahini veterans) and Indian armed forces veterans, including. Bangladesh Parliament's Deputy Speaker Shaukat Ali, former Eastern Command chief of staff Lt. Gen. (retired) J.F.R. Jacob, former Indian Army chief and Member of Parliament, Gen. (retired) Shankar Roychowdhury. Prime Minister Hasina's first ever visit to, Tripura, on 11-12 January 2012, which she referred to as a pilgrimage, marked a high point in the extended celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Bangladesh's Liberation war. Accompanied by her sister, Sheikh Rehana and an over 100-strong delegation, including some more ministers, businessmen and intellectuals, she came on an invitation by Tripura Central University for being conferred with the degree of Doctor of Literature, by for her "great contribution to the protection of multicultural democracy and peace". "As we touched down at Agartala airport last evening, a flush of emotions overwhelmed me as I recalled the tremendous sacrifices during our glorious struggle for independence," said Prime Minister Hasina, in a voice choked with emotion, after receiving the degree of from Vice President of India Hamid Ansari at Agartala on 12 January 2012. Fondly recalling the help Tripura had extended during 1971 Liberation War spearheaded by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she further said, switching to Bengali, "I express my deep gratitude to the people of Tripura who gave us food, shelter and clothing and care when the people of our country were subject of inhuman and barbaric torture in the hands of Pakistani Army and migrated to this land.I was further amazed when I came to know that before this university was set up, this place was a training camp of the Bangladesh liberation soldiers". Awami League's current tenure is the best time for India to resolve all pending issues with Bangladesh and develop its connectivity to India's North Eastern states, which will go a long way to boost trade and development of that region. The views expressed in the above article are that of Colonel (retired) Anil Bhat (ANI) In a condolence message to his son Rahul Khanna, the President said he was deeply saddened to learn of the demise of the actor-politician, who passed away after struggling with bladder cancer in Mumbai this morning. ''A multi-faceted personality, Vinod Khanna was an iconic film actor, Parliamentarian, Minister of State for External Affairs and Union Minister for Culture and Tourism. "In his passing, the Indian film industry has lost a highly talented and acclaimed doyen, known for his powerful and versatile acting. He shall be remembered also for his contribution to the welfare of the people whom he served with commitment and sincerity in his various capacities in the Government of India,'' he added. The President extended heartfelt condolences and hoped for strength to bear this irreparable loss with courage and fortitude.UNI SD SW SHK 1855 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0005-871407.Xml : Manipur minister of irrigation and flood control Letpao Haokip today informed that a high-powered committee would be set up to settle the grievances of the Mapithel dam affected people. Mr Haokip said this while meeting a delegate of the dam affected people at the Secretariat. He informed that that he himself would head the committee. Ministers of PHED, CAF&PD, Works and Agriculture , three representatives each from Mapithel Dam-affected bodies will be the members. Letpao was briefed about the grievances faced by the affected village chiefs/headmen. Letpao Haokip also assured the villagers that the matter would be taken to the higher authority for prompt redressal of their grievances. Asserting that the State government would spare no efforts in redressing the genuine grievances of the dam-affected villagers, the Minister sought the cooperation of the affected villagers so that the Government solved the matter for once and for all. Chiefs/Headmen of about 17 villages affected by the upstream and downstream of Mapithel Dam took part in the meeting . They were led by M. Ngaranmi, Co-Chairman, Mapithel Dam Affected Coordination Committee(MDACC). The minister was assisted by Parliamentary Secretary (PHED) Leishiyo Keishing, Secretary (IFCD) Gopen Meitei, Chief Engineer (IFCD) Ksh. Pritam Singh .UNI NS KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-871428.Xml Bihar Cabinet today approved Bihar Land Property (Regulation and Development) Rules paving way for lodging of cases against builders on the receipt of complaints from people investing in realty sector. The set of rules was approved in a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. State Principal Secretary (Cabinet Secretariate) Brajesh Mehrotra told newspersons here that Bihar Land Property (Regulation and Development)Rules were sanctioned in consequent to Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, already notified by the Centre. Mr Mehrotra said the new rules would protect the interest of consumers investing in realty sector and would also bring transparency in transaction between them and builders. He said as per provision in the Act, a real estate regulatory authority would be created so that people could lodge their complaints against builders in the authority. Mr Mehrotra said the act would not be only binding on all residential as wellas commercial projects but also all other ongoing projects for which work completion certificates had not been obtained. He said now developers had to deposit 70 per cent of amount received by them for construction in separate bank accounts and the money would be withdrawn in proportion to a particularly work completed under the project, of which certificates had been issued by architects, engineers and chartered accountants.MORE UNI DH KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-871519.Xml Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah on his last day of Bengal trip today exuded confidence that his party will form government in Bengal in the nearest future. " I witnessed massive enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win elections in Bengal," Mr Shah said. The BJP president said the BJP wanted a government in the state which would provide employment, check cross-border infiltration and build a "sonar Bangla". "I am really overwhelmed and happy to see so many people supporting Modi government in Bengal. I am now sure that Ab ki bar Bangal mein Modi sarkar (this time, Bengal will have a BJP government)," he said. In the last leg of his tour, Mr Shah alleged that the kind of atrocities the state government inflicted on its people has never been seen anywhere in the country after independence. Mr Shah called the level of poverty in Bengal as the worst in the country, and exuded confidence that the state would become as prosperous as Maharashtra and Gujarat once his party forms a government after the next assembly polls. '' You can never see the kind of poverty which is visible in West Bengal, I assure you that once a BJP government is formed in West Bengal the state will turn into a happy state like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana," Shah said adding that once BJP comes to power, "there will be real parivartan in Bengal". "I am sure that BJP will definitely come to power in Bengal after all other states. I can assure you that you do not have to move the court to hold immersion of Durga idols. There will be democracy, there will be employment for youths," he said. The BJP has decided to end the era of torment on Bengal's people and bring a people's government here, Mr Shah said. The BJP president held a booth level committee meeting (booth no. 231) at Sukantanagar area in Rajarhat and launched a "booth chalo abhijan". He also met some voters in the area and interacted with them who offered him sweets and showered flower petals at him. BJP chief in his last day of Bengal trip welcomed people from all corners of the society irrespective of any party to join BJP so as to strengthen the party's support in Bengal. Expressing his worries regarding Bengal's development, Mr Shah said,"You all know about issues like Narada, Sarada scandals and law and order problems. But there remains another issue where has the fund allocated to the state by the Centre gone?" . "While the 13th Finance Commission had allocated Rs 13,585 crore to Bengal in five years, you will be happy to note the Narendra Modi government gave Rs 2,82,942 crore to Bengal. Where has this money gone?" he asked the crowd at a Vikas Sabha of the party. "There has been no development in the state no roads, poor electrification in rural areas. Can Mamataji tell the people of the state where the money went," he added. Opposing to West Bengal Chief Minister's protest against demonetisation he said: "While the entire world has been praising the note ban, only Didi (Mamata Banerjee) was crying hoarse." The BJP president exhorted the people of Bengal to give his party a chance "since you have already tried the the Congress, the Left and the TMC." "Do not think much about Narada and Saradha . Let people irrespective of any party join us. Visit each and every booth and address people to strengthen party's support,"he said. Shah left for the airport after addressing party workers in Rajarhat and launching the booth chalo abhijan. The BJP president had yesterday visited a slum in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Bhawanipur Assembly constituency. On the first day of his visit, he'd had a meal at a Dalit home at Naxalbari in north Bengal. The BJP chief today also paid a visit to Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's residence at Bhawanipur in the city. Three leaders including former Congress leader Kanak Debnath, former AICC member Manoj Pandey and former TMC leader Anupam Dutta joined the BJP at the programme. at a programme in Mahajati Sadan in the city yesterday.UNI BM SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-871810.Xml Cleric Fethullah Gulen was held responsible for a failed coup in July last year. The detained have been accused of creating a parallel leadership by directing police officers, who are also loyal to the cleric, reported The New York Times. Around 9,100 police officers have been suspended because of their alleged links with the cleric. Interior minister Suleyman Soylu termed the development as the 'most important step' towards exposing a group that was infiltrating into the police force with the aim of establishing an alternative police organisation. Around 1,009 people have been detained who are believed to be loyalists of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. The arrest was followed by detention of 38 opposition activists. Last week, these activists were questioned in regard to their involvement in protests about accusations of voter fraud in the recent referendum. (ANI) A total of 91 militants had been killed in clashes that erupted over kidnapping of drug smugglers who were to pay Taliban as part of an opium deal, Anadolu Agency quoted spokesman for the Afghan National Police Rahmatullah Turkistani as saying. The fighting took place in the Darzab district of Jowzjan province. Jowzjan province, like many parts of northern Afghanistan, is not a traditional Taliban stronghold. Earlier on April 13, U.S. dropped a huge 'Mother of All bombs' (MOAB) in a network of tunnels in Nangarhar province, killing at least 90 ISIS militants. U.S. military spokesman Capt. Bill Salvin last month said that his country aimed to drive ISIS out of Afghanistan by the end of this year. U.S. believes that there are up to 1,000 ISIS militants in Nangarhar and Kunar province, Anadolu Agency quoted Salvin. (ANI) The departments tasked with deputing a representative each to the joint investigation team (JIT), which will probe the money laundering case against Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family, have submitted lists of the proposed names to the Supreme Court. The JIT, announced by the Supreme Court in its Panamagate verdict, is to be led by a director-general level FIA officer is to include officials from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), the State Bank of Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence. "The Supreme Court has received names from the six government departments," The Dawn quoted a source, as saying. The Supreme Court had directed the departments concerned to furnish three names each, from which one each would be picked by the Supreme Court to form a six-member JIT. Soon after the announcement of the JIT by the apex court in its Panamagate verdict, many expressed concern that the probe team would just prove to be a "dry-cleaning shop" for the Sharif family. Others believed that it essentially placed the Prime Minister at the mercy of the Pakistan Army. Though the names of the committee representatives have not been officially released, it is believed that the FIA has furnished the names of three addition director generals, namely Wajid Zia, Ahmed Latif and Dr. Shafeeq. Wajid Zia belongs to the police cadre and has also served in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), as did Ahmed Latif. (ANI) Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 01:08:06|Editor: yan Video Player Close MOGADISHU, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Somalia's security forces have arrested five Al-Shabaab suspects and seized a vehicle laden with explosives in the northern port town of Bosasso, officials said on Wednesday. Police Commissioner of Bari region, Abdihakim Hussein Yusuf said the security forces received a tip off from members of the public and swung into action to thwart a terrorist attack in the town. "We have captured five Al-Shabaab suspects and a vehicle loaded with explosives after receiving prior intelligence. Investigation is still continuing now," Yusuf said. He said the suspects who were arrested on Tuesday night have been planning to carry terror attacks on unspecified locations in Puntland including public places. Hussein said the security forces have enhanced operations to identify the group's targets, saying this was a significant operation against the terror cells in the region. The latest arrest comes after Al-Shabaab and pro-Islamic States' militants killed nine Puntland soldiers in a roadside blast. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 03:53:42|Editor: yan Video Player Close ZAGREB, April 26 (Xinhua) -- A third victim of a maritime accident nearby Dubrovnik, the coastal city of Croatia, was found but four others were still missing, rescuers said on Wednesday. Strong winds and high waves blocked the search for survivors, they added. A rubber boat carrying nine people collided with port authority's ship, which was on a medical emergency, in the Kolocep bay near Dubrovnik. The incident killed two people, injured two and left five others missing, according to local media reports. Doctors at a local hospital said one of the injured suffered a broken collarbone while the other had minor injuries. Passengers on the boat were employees of a restaurant on the nearby island of Sipan, reports said, adding the owner of the restaurant operated the boat. According to a coastguard captain, the rubber boat was not equipped with navigation lights. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 04:33:53|Editor: Tian Shaohui File photo taken on Feb. 4, 2017 shows French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron addressing a campaign rally in Lyon, France . Centrist candidate and former minister of economy Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on Sunday came out on top in the first round of the French presidential election, according to projections by several pollsters. (Xinhua/Han Bing) PARIS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- According to the official results proclaimed Wednesday by the French Constitutional Council, the leader of "En Marche" Emmanuel Macron led the first round of French presidential election with 24.01 percent of the votes, ahead of the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen who received 21.30 percent. These results are without substantial modifications in regards to the numbers published Monday by the Ministry of the Interior. The two candidates who led, Macron and Le Pen will face each other in a runoff on May 7. The candidate for the right-wing party Francois Fillon got the third place in the voting, gathering 20.01 percent of the votes, just ahead of the leader of the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, with 19.58 percent. Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon finished with only 6.36 percent of the vote. No other candidate broke through the 5 percent barrier. Sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan received 4.70 percent of the vote ahead of Jean Lassalle (no affiliation) at 1.21 percent, Philippe Poutou (New Anti-Capitalist Party) at 1.09 percent, Francois Asselineau (Popular Republican Union) at 0.92 percent, Nathalie Arthaud (Worker's Struggle) at 0.64 percent and Jacques Cheminade (Solidarity and Progress) at 0.18 percent. The rate of abstention rose to 22.23 percent. Out of 47,582,183 registered voters, 37,003,728 voted. The number of abstaining votes was 659,997 and that of votes "validly expressed" was 36,054,394. The vote under high security was held "without notable incident," said the president of the Constitutional Council, Laurent Fabius, during a press conference. "We have annulled the votes expressed in the voting stations where there substantial irregularities were produced, which remained very low," he declared. In total, "4,691 votes have been annulled, against 2,541 in the first round of voting in 2012," he clarified. In several large French cities, some citizens discovered Sunday on the verge of voting that they were no longer registered on the electoral lists. The cause: forgetting to notify officials of a change of address or an error from the local town hall. Many have filed a plea in district courts since Sunday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 05:09:01|Editor: yan Video Player Close DUBLIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The Central Bank of Ireland on Wednesday fined Allied Irish Banks (AIB) 2.3 million euros for breaches of money laundering and terrorist financing regulations. In a statement, the central bank identified six breaches of the 2010 criminal justice act as a result of significant failures in AIB's anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing controls, policies and procedures. One of the six breaches refers particularly to AIB's failure to report suspicious transactions without delay to Irish police and revenue authorities. This is the second enforcement action taken in the last six months by the central bank against a bank for unacceptable weaknesses in its anti-money laundering framework. AIB is one of the big four commercial banks in Ireland. In February 2009, the Irish government announced a massive rescue package for AIB and its rival Bank of Ireland (BOI), as their bad loan losses soared following the collapse of a domestic real-estate bubble. At present, the government holds 99.9 percent of stake in AIB. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 06:09:15|Editor: An Video Player Close Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong delivers a speech during her visit to the Confucius Institute at the Durban University of Technology in Durban, South Africa, on April 26, 2017. (Xinhua/Tian Hongyi) DURBAN, South Africa, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Confucius Institute serves as a "rainbow bridge" connecting the hearts of the two peoples of China and South Africa, said visiting Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong here on Wednesday. Liu paid a visit to the Confucius Institute at the Durban University of Technology and was warmly welcomed by faculty members and students. The vice premier toured an exhibition on the teaching achievements of the Confucius Institute and attended a student art show featuring South African and Chinese dances as well as recitals of excerpts from Confucian Analects and Nelson Mandela's autobiography. In her remarks, Liu described Confucius Institute as an important platform for exchanges and mutual learning among diverse civilizations. The leaders of China and South Africa attach great importance to the building and growth of Confucius Institute, she said. With 10 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classes, South Africa, which is dubbed the "Rainbow Nation," has the most number in Africa, which hosts a total of 48 Confucius Institutes and 27 Confucius Classes. The Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classes in South Africa help local people learn Chinese language and culture, and contribute to the mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples, she said. Liu noted that South Africa added Chinese language to its school curriculum in 2015 and is currently conducting trials at 11 primary and secondary schools. As the trials expand gradually in the next phase, the door will open for more South African children to embark on a remarkable journey of Chinese language and culture, she added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 06:19:17|Editor: MJ Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered probe into whether the federal government had overstepped the line in controlling the country's education system. Trump signed an executive order titled Enforcing Statutory Prohibition On Federal Control of Education, which directed the Department of Education to review "all Department of Education regulations" and examine whether these regulations comply with federal laws. It is the policy of the executive branch "to protect and preserve state and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools and school systems," the document said. The secretary of education shall rescind or revise any unlawful supervision conducted by the federal government within 300 days of the issuing of the executive order. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 06:44:21|Editor: An Video Player Close BERLIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Wednesday that China has sufficient reasons to enhance defense capability to safeguard its overseas legitimate interests and also contribute to regional and international peace. He made the remarks when asked by a German journalist about China's intention behind the launch its first domestically built aircraft-carrier at a joint press conference with German Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. China's overseas interests, including personnel exchanges, have been extending around the world, Wang said. There are nearly 30,000 overseas-registered Chinese-funded enterprises and millions of Chinese nationals working and living overseas, he said. Moreover, a large number of the cargo ships on key international waterways are either carrying Chinese goods or are related to China, he added. Wang stressed that one thing is for sure and remains unchanged: China will continue its national defense policy that is defensive in nature, and will never and has no intention to seek expansion. China is seeking to establish a new type of international relationship with cooperation and win-win as its core, and hopes to work with other countries for building a community of common destiny for mankind, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 06:59:24|Editor: MJ Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian police said Wednesday that the number of arrests after Monday's robbery of a private security company in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, had risen to 14. The crime has been attributed to Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), one of Brazil's largest gangs headquartered in Sao Paulo. In a statement, the federal police said that four people were arrested on Wednesday on suspicions of having participated in the robbery of Spanish company, Prosegur, in Paraguay's border city with Brazil. Two of those arrested Wednesday were injured in a shootout with police on Monday in the southern state of Parana, in which another three gang members were killed. According to press reports, the robber stole around 40 million U.S. dollars but Prosegur, the Spanish company involved, denied this on Tuesday and said the loot was closer to 8 million U.S. dollars. One security guard was killed and another was injured, along with three civilians, in the attack. The Brazilian government has placed itself at the full disposal of Paraguay to collaborate with the investigation into the attack. Diabetic mouse with engineered cells that produce hormones to help maintain blood sugar levels implanted beneath the skin along with bio-compatible LED lights. Far-red light triggers the cells to produce hormones that help maintain blood sugar levels, and the lights can be turned on or off with a smartphone. (Credit: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Regulatory Biology) WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Swiss researchers said Wednesday they have developed a system that, for the first time, enables smartphones to remotely manage and treat diabetes in mice. In a study published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers said they developed a smartphone app and used it to command engineered cells to produce insulin that helps diabetic mice achieve and maintain stable blood sugar levels within two hours. "We believe that the ... concept could pave the way for a new era of personalized, digitalized, and globalized precision medicine," Haifeng Ye, professor of the East China Normal University in Shanghai, China, who led the study, told Xinhua. For the study, the researchers first created cells that produced insulin when illuminated by far-red light, the same wavelengths emitted by therapy bulbs and infrared saunas. Then, they added the cells to a soft bio-compatible sheath that also contained wirelessly-powered red LED lights to create HydrogeLEDs that could be turned on and off by an external command. Finally, the HydrogeLEDs was implanted into the skin of diabetic mice to allow users to administer insulin doses remotely through a smart phone application. In a small pilot experiment, the system also involved a control box called SmartController that communicates with the smart phone via the global GSM network and executes commands to turn on the HydrogeLEDs. The scientists also paired the system with a Bluetooth-enabled glucometer, which allowed remote transmission of glycemic values to the smart phone for analysis. When the measurements exceeded a pre-set threshold, the smartphone will signal the SmartController to turn on the HydrogeLEDs to enable insulin production. "This work combines the unique capacity of electronic devices in reading and generating digital signals with the maximal theranostic precision of biological cells, and represents the first mobile healthcare system that unites the global markets of point-of-care technologies, mobile phone technology and cellular medicines," Ye said. Ye expressed the hope that future versions of the system could have a glucometer, which would also be implanted in the body, to monitor the patients' blood sugar levels 24 hours a day in order to automatically trigger the therapeutic response. Currently, more than 415 million people worldwide are living with diabetes, and frequently need to inject themselves with insulin to manage their blood sugars. In a commentary accompanying the paper, Mark Gomelsky of the University of Wyoming said Ye's study takes us one step further toward "smart" cell-based therapies. "How soon should we expect to see people on the street wearing fashionable LED wristbands that irradiate implanted cells engineered to produce genetically encoded drugs under the control of a smart phone?" asked Gomelsky. "Not just yet, but (this work) provides us with an exciting glimpse into the future of smart cell-based therapeutics." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 07:49:37|Editor: MJ Video Player Close CARACAS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- At least 12 people died and another 11 were injured Tuesday during an outbreak of violence at the Jose Antonio Anzoategui prison, in the eastern state of Anzoategui, Venezuelan local media reported on Wednesday. The private daily newspaper El Universal quoted the National Guard as saying that a fight broke out between prisoners between 1:00-6:00 a.m. Tuesday, when a group identified as "Los Caraquenos" tried to take control of the penitentiary. Faced with this attempt, said El Universal, a group led by prisoners known as "El Balu", "El Yan" and "Casanova", sought to contain the offensive, resulting in the deaths of 12 people. The daily Ultimas Noticias quoted Venezuela's Minister of Prison Affairs Iris Varela as saying that of the dead, "nine were killed by bullets, two due to an overdose of drugs and one by beating." She added that 10 people would appear in court on Wednesday, charged with being responsible for the violence. Varela also accused the opposition to the government of President Nicolas Maduro of instigating the attack by paying 50,000 U.S. dollars to 15 inmates. She said that she had proof that the National Assembly, held by the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable, had paid this sum to raise tensions in the troubled country. "They offered 50,000 U.S. dollars. We have had a video of this since yesterday but we do not want to make it public as it contains inappropriate images of a criminal nature," claimed Varela. Photo provided by Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 7, 2017 shows top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un (unseen) recently supervising a ballistic rocket launching drill of the Korean People's Army (KPA). (Xinhua/KCNA) WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump aims to use economic sanctions and diplomatic measures to pressure Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs, U.S. officials said Wednesday. "We are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on the DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue," senior U.S. officials said in a statement. The statement, jointly issued by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, came after they briefed members of Congress on Washington's policy towards the DPRK on Wednesday. The senior officials said the U.S. seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, calling DPRK's pursuit of nuclear weapons "an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority." "We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our Allies," said the statement. After the briefing, one senator told The Washington Post that members of both parties left frustrated that they were given "very few details about what has changed." The briefing lacked "even straight answers on what the policy is regarding North Korea (the DPRK) and its testing of ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles)," said the senator, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the meeting. "Several senators asked specifically, 'What is the policy?' and the briefers gave us very, very few details," the senator told the newspaper. An unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile was launched by the U.S. on Wednesday morning during an operational test from an air base in California just after midnight amid growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. MONTEVIDEO, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Uruguay's President Tabare Vazquez and Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy agreed on Wednesday that progress could be made for a free-trade agreement (FTA) between the South American trade bloc Mercosur and the EU. In a joint press conference after their summit, Vazquez said that "the political conditions in both blocs today allow us to be truly optimistic." The president added that the objective is for the FTA deal to be concluded before the end of the year. Rajoy said that "we will continue driving the agreement with Mercosur within the European Union." From his perspective, this commercial agreement would allow to bring together two regions "which share values and are poles of stability and prosperity in an agitated world." Rajoy arrived in Uruguay on Tuesday, after being in Brazil, for an official visit which ends this afternoon. The free-trade talks between the EU and Mercosur began in the mid-1990s, but hit an impasse between 2004 and 2010, after neither side was willing to make more concessions, in agriculture for the Europeans, and in the industrial sector for the South Americans. Talks resumed in 2012, but reached another impasse in 2014. Mercosur groups Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Workers sort out food and beverage products on a high-speed train from Qingdao to Chongqing in January.[Yu Fangping / For China Daily] China Railway Corp said that it will introduce more food suppliers and offer passengers more meal options on high-speed trains, after recent media reports bashed the overpriced boxed lunches provided on bullet trains. The operator of the country's high-speed railway system said in a statement released on Tuesday night that it will build a "fair and open" online platform accessible to qualified suppliers, with a view toward letting passengers order meals directly. The suppliers do not need to be companies subordinate to the 18 local railway bureaus, according to the statement, which did not give a timetable. A spokesman for the company who was approached by China Daily on Wednesday declined to share more details about its plan to make the catering service more market-oriented. The measure was announced after recent media reports criticized lunches sold on bullet trains as being too expensive, often between 40 yuan ($5.80) and 65 yuan ($9.45). The cheapest meal, at 15 yuan, is also available, but train attendants often try to sell meals priced above 40 yuan when they push their trolleys through carriages at dinner time. "They usually try to sell the expensive ones first. They won't sell the cheap ones until the expensive ones are sold out. They never tell you they have 15-yuan meals until you ask," said Gu Xin, a public servant from Shenzhen who takes bullet trains several times a year. The Xi'an-based Chinese Business View reported earlier this week that attendants' income is tied to the boxed lunches they sell to passengers, which is why they seldom recommend the cheaper ones. And unlike elsewhere, where food prices are overseen by a local price supervisor, the prices of meals on trains are supervised by the railway authority. The railway spokesman denied that the meals are priced high for profit. "The catering service is offered as a basic service, not a pure business act that mainly looks for profit," he said. "We are currently speeding up the technical preparation for realizing the new plan ... to make it possible for passengers to order meals online as soon as possible." The price of meals on bullet trains has been a heated topic in recent years. In 2015, the railway authority requested that all bullet trains make sure there are boxed lunches available at 15 yuan and bottle water for 2 yuan at all times, after it was criticized by passengers who thought 40 yuan for a boxed lunch was too much. Others disagree with the criticism. Wu Qilun, a business and investment consultant, said the price range (between 40 and 65 yuan) matches the status of high-speed trains, which target middle-income and high-end customers. An internet user on Sina Weibo, "Haozheng Liuzhen", said that the quality of the boxed lunches on trains, not the price, is the biggest problem. "In Japan and Taiwan, boxed lunches on high-speed trains look good and taste good as well," the user wrote. "China Railway Corp should allow more private companies to enter the market and let the market decide how much the meals should cost." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 08:09:43|Editor: MJ Photo provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez delivering a speech in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 26, 2017. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). (Xinhua/Venezuela's Presidency) CARACAS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). In a live TV address, Rodriguez said that "the OAS has persisted in intrusive actions against the sovereignty of our country and for this, we proceed to withdraw from the Organization." On Thursday, April 27, Venezuela will deliver a letter to the OAS announcing its exit, triggering a process that will last 24 months, said the minister. According to Rodriguez, this decision was carried out at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's instructions to protect the country's "sovereignty", adding that Venezuela would not participate in future OAS events as they advocate for "interventionism." Venezuela has long accused the OAS secretary-general, Luis Almagro, of being a leader in instigating a "coup" against the government of President Maduro. This exit is not conjecture, it has to do with the dignity of our people, said Rodriguez. The minister also compared the OAS' actions to the stance it took against Cuba in 1962, when it kicked the country out before reinstating it in 2009. After her announcement, Rodriguez continued lambasting the OAS, tweeting that "we will never allow those who bend the knee to offend Venezuela! Our sacred nation! Nation of Bolivar! Fatherland of Chavez! We will win!" Earlier on Wednesday, the OAS had held a special meeting in Washington DC and voted in favor of calling an emergency meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Venezuela. This meeting is likely to discuss whether to apply the OAS' Democratic Charter to Venezuela, which would suspend its membership. Alongside this, Venezuela has called for an urgent session of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss what Rodriguez called "threats against the constitutional order in Venezuela, as well as the interventionist actions undermining its independence, sovereignty and its right to self-determination." Venezuela has been racked by a political and economic crisis, which has spiralled into clashes between government and opposition supporters in April, leaving at least 29 people dead. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 10:09:36|Editor: MJ A protestor burns tyres in front of the entry of the Whirlpool factory in Amiens, France, on April 26, 2017. Three months ago, the Whirlpool Corporation announced that it would relocate production from the site in Amiens to Poland in June 2018 and close the clothes-dryer factory which employs close to 290 people. Some 60 employees of the Whirlpool factory have been on strike since Monday. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen) YANGON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's fifth parliamentary sessions of both houses will resume in Nay Pyi Taw on May 18, two months after the fourth sessions ended on March 18, according to an announcement of the parliament on Thursday. In the resuming parliament sessions, some laws are expected to be promulgated and parliament representatives-elect in the April by-election will be sworn in to office. In the last April by-election, the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won a total of nine seats out of 19 vacant ones, occupying nearly half number of the parliamentary seats. Of the nine seats won by the NLD, five are with the House of Representatives (Lower House), three with the House of Nationalities (Upper House) and one with the Shan state parliament. The current parliament was formed through the general election in November 2015 and dominated by election-winning NLD party. Elephants frolic in water at Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, about 90 kilometers north of Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, on March 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Peng) COLOMBO, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government agreed on Wednesday to hand over some elephants from an elephant orphanage in the Central Hills of Pinnawala to individuals and religious places under conditions. The Government Information Department said the maintenance of the present number of 88 elephants in a restricted land area of 30 acres at Pinnawala had become a difficult task. Accordingly, the proposal made by Minister of Sustainable Development and Wildlife Gamini Jayawickrama Perera to provide some elephants to individuals and religious places under definite conditions, was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers. Recommendations on issuing orders for providing elephants for Perahera, a rich Sri Lankan parade of dancers and elephants, regularizing registration of domesticated elephants and ensuring their protection were also approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, the Government Information Department said. The Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage has become a major tourist attraction with thousands of tourists and locals each year. Pinnawala is known to have the largest herd of captive elephants in the world. YANGON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Representatives of seven member countries of the Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) are gathering here for a two-day meeting to seek cooperation in combating money laundering and terrorism financing. BIMSTEC groups Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan. In their discussions which began Wednesday, the representatives touched on topics including evaluation for better cooperation in combating the financing of terrorism, the cyber threat in the financial sector of the regional group, development of human resources to fight the illicit financial flow and preventing financing of terrorism, Myanmar News Agency reported Thursday. The ninth meeting also discussed issues on cooperation between international organizations and improving the legal framework of the membership countries. In September last year, Myanmar hosted a meeting of BIMSTEC anti-drug trafficking group, focusing on capacity building and technical assistance between the member countries. Law enforcement agencies of member states of BIMSTEC have been closely cooperating in combating terrorism and transnational crimes including drug trafficking. ACCRA, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Ghana's illegal mining, arguably the most topical issue spanning the past few weeks, has sparked strident public outcry. The case against the practice is its unprecedented sophisticated nature which has caused massive destruction to the country's water bodies, forests and farmlands. Perhaps, the most worrying aspect of illegal mining, popularly called "galamsey" (gather and sell), is the threat it is causing to Ghana's major rivers like the Pra, Birim, Bia and Ankobra, sparking fears Ghana may have to import drinking water within the next 10 years. It is no wonder a coalition of media against galamsey has been formed to back government's action to halt this harmful practice or at least make it conform to fresh government policies and guidelines to restore sanity in small-scale mining. The impact of illegal or small-scale mining has been felt in neighboring Cote d'Ivoire which Tuesday sent a delegation to Ghana for talks on measures to stem the threat to its water bodies. The Ivorian delegation Tuesday scheduled a meeting with Ghanaian officials over the rippling effects of illegal mining in Ghana on that country. Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Benito Owusu-Bio, told the media in the Western regional town of Prestea after touring some mining sites that River Tano and Bia River, which tributaries enter Ivory Coast's lagoons had polluted that country's water bodies. The meeting was therefore arranged to find an amicable solution to the problem. Following a two-week ultimatum by the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources John Peter Amewu, to all illegal miners to halt their activities, more than 540 excavators have been withdrawn from mining sites. The Minister has also revoked all mining licenses while halting the issuance of new ones to prospective small-scale miners. The government's action has received widespread support from chiefs, the media, non-governmental organizations, and other organized bodies, urging the government to take sterner measures to protect and preserve Ghana's water bodies, forests and farmlands. The Chief of Prestea-Hemang, Nana Ntaboah Pra IV, says he backs the government's decision to halt mining in the water bodies, which has destroyed River Ankobra that serves as a source of drinking water for the people. "We have taken the move to destroy dredgers being used for mining in Ankobra River and even four days to the 2016 general election we burnt eight of them," he stated. Nana Pra has subsequently asked Ghanaians not to politicize the government resolve to halt illegal mining in water bodies, while appealing to the main regulatory bodies - Water Resources Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency - to join the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to clamp down on mining in rivers. Two deputy ministers, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi and Owusu-Bio as well as some officials of the Minerals Commission later visited Wasa Akropong in the Wasa Amenfi East in the Western region to find out the extent of destruction caused by illegal miners. | 2017-04-27 10:50:48|Editor: MJ Video Player Close BAGHDAD, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi paramilitary units, known as Hashd Shaabi, on Wednesday retook control of ancient remains of the Hatra city in south of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh after clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants, the paramilitary units said. The paramilitary fighters backed by the army's helicopter gunships freed the IS-held archaeological site after clashes with IS militants, the media office of the predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi said in a statement. Afterwards, the paramilitary units continued their advance toward the nearby town and started heavy clashes with IS militants, the statement said without giving further details. The recapture of the ancient site came at the second day of an operation launched by the Hashd Shaabi units to dislodge IS militants from their desert stronghold in the town of Hatra and nearby villages, some 100 km southwest of Mosul. In the first day of the operation, the Hashd Shaabi drove out IS militants from 12 villages near Hatra area. Hatra dated back to 2,000 years. It is well-known for its high walls full of inscriptions and watchtowers dotted around the fortified city, which includes temples and ruined walls, where Hellenistic and Roman architecture blend, merged with Eastern decorative features. The ancient city was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987, the first such site in Iraq. In March 2015, the Iraqi Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said that IS militants stole and destroyed the ancient Hatra city. Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. The IS extremists also destroyed many old temples, shrines, churches and precious manuscripts in the city of Mosul and many other areas. Chaos and fragile security following the U.S.-led invasion to Iraq left many historic sites across the country in the hands of looters who carried out random excavations and stole tens of thousands of antiquities. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 10:55:46|Editor: An Video Player Close BANGKOK, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Outbound Chinese tourists, the number of whom is growing rapidly in recent years, have gained much attention during the 2017 global summit of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) held in Bangkok from Wednesday to Thursday. Many speakers talked about how to win a bigger share of Chinese tourists. A total of 122 million Chinese tourists made outbound trips in 2016, while Thailand remained the top destination for Chinese tourists, according to a report jointly issued by Chinese travel services provider Ctrip and China Tourism Academy (CTA) in January. "(The growing number of Chinese tourists) is the biggest opportunity for your tourism industry and for our countries," said former British Prime Minister David Cameron during his speech on Wednesday, noting that tens of millions of Chinese people join in the middle class and want to be travelers every year. Indian market was also paid attention to during the summit as Indian service providers were also invited to share their ideas. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, asked the industry to get prepared and adapt itself for the future as China and India will become top tourism source markets in the near future. Travel and tourism stimulates the economy by generating over 7.6 trillion U.S. dollars globally, supporting over 292 million jobs, which is now 1 in 10 jobs worldwide, said David Scowsill, president and CEO of WTTC, during his opening speech for the summit. Scowsill urged over 900 leading figures from the public and private sectors to stand up and make a real difference. SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Militants attacked a military camp in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday, police said. The attack was carried out in Panzgam village of frontier Kupwara district, close to Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir, about 106 km northwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "Militants this morning attacked a army camp in Kupwara here," a local police official told Xinhua. "We are being told militants trying to enter the camp." Heavy gunfire was going on between the two sides and some casualties were feared, police said. SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, April 27 (Xinhua) -- At least three Indian troopers, including an officer and two militants, were killed Thursday after militants attacked a military camp in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The attack was carried out in Panzgam village of frontier Kupwara district, close to Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir, about 106 km northwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "In an attack this morning on our camp, two militants were killed," Indian military spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia told Xinhua. "Three of our soldiers, including an officer, have also been martyred fighting the militants." Heavy gunfire was going on between the two sides and further details are awaited, officials said. Last year, a similar attack on Indian army's camp in Uri town in the region left 19 troopers dead and many others wounded. Following the attack in Uri, the Indian army claimed it carried out "surgical strikes" inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir inflicting significant casualties on infiltrators and their supporters, which triggered tensions between the two countries. The confrontation saw increase in cease-fire violations on Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB) in Kashmir between the two countries. Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir. WELLINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Almost three quarters of New Zealand's native fish species are threatened with or at risk of extinction as pollution of its waterways worsens, according to a government report out Thursday. New Zealand's rivers and lakes are under increasing pressure, according to the latest national report from the Ministry for the Environment and the government's Statistics New Zealand agency about the state of fresh water. The report measured the quality of our waterways, water quantity and flows, biodiversity in rivers and lakes, as well as the cultural health of fresh water. It found nitrogen levels were getting worse at 55 percent and better at 28 percent of monitored river sites, while phosphorus levels were getting better at 42 percent and getting worse at 25 percent. Of the 39 native fish species monitored, 72 percent were either threatened with or at risk of extinction. "This report confirms our urban waterways are the most polluted, but we are seeing more declining trends in pastoral areas and it's important we do something about it now and continue to track any progress," Secretary for the Environment Vicky Robertson said in a statement. "The implications for our freshwater species are really critical," she said. "Many of our species are found nowhere else in the world so it is even more crucial we don't lose any under our watch. We need to consider the resilience of all species in any decisions we make that affect the environment." Environment Minister Nick Smith said the report highlighted how fresh water challenges varied significantly across the country and that the problems had arisen due to agricultural and urban development over many decades. "It confirms New Zealand's most significant fresh water quality challenge is diffuse nitrate pollution. The problem is worst in urban environments but the negative effects impact on a greater number of rivers and lakes in rural, pastoral environments," Smith said in a statement. The government was working on tighter regulation of nutrients, new provisions for protecting water ecology and the development of good management practice for farmers and other water users, he said. Environment campaigners said the report was the latest evidence that New Zealand's fresh waterways were in serious trouble, with the worst pollution driven by the expansion and intensification of dairy farming. The Forest and Bird group pointed out that while the report made the point that nitrate-nitrogen concentration in urban areas was 18 times higher than native forested catchments, compared to 10 times higher in rural areas, only 1 percent of New Zealand was urban, while 40 percent was pastoral. "Therefore the magnitude of the problem is far greater than this statistic would suggest," freshwater advocate Annabeth Cohen said in a statement. In the last 10 years, the dairy cow population had grown at nearly three times the rate of the human population. "Our freshwater is in crisis, and the primary cause is intensifying land use associated with dairy farming," said Cohen. The opposition Green Party called for a moratorium on new dairy farms, and an end to subsidies for the large irrigation schemes that promoted unsustainable intensive farming in environments that were unsuitable for such farming. "This report shows worsening nitrogen pollution, primarily from agriculture, which, along with phosphorus, causes excessive weed growth and can make water unsafe to drink," Green Party water spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said in a statement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 11:55:56|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close MACAO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Macao to celebrate International Museum Day which falls on May 18 with traditional rituals and other events, the special administrative region's cultural department said Thursday. Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau said the traditional Drunken Dragon Festival will be held early next month to kick off the celebration, featuring Chinese dragon performance, offering sacrifices to ancestors and carnival. The festival is to be held at Macao's Red Market, a building which was built over 80 years ago and will serve as a living museum for vendors to sale fresh meat, seafood, vegetables and groceries. An exhibition and a symposium will also be held at the market on Macao's traditional rituals, custom and the history of the fishermen, the bureau added. A number of other events, such as seminars and work shops, will also be held next month to mark International Museum Day. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 12:00:57|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close BERLIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday that all parties concerned shall implement the resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council concerning the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in a comprehensive and complete manner. Wang made the remarks at a joint press conference with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel after attending the third session of China-Germany Strategic Dialogue on Diplomatic and Security Affairs. "Here I want to emphasize that all the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council concerning the DPRK so far have, as always, included two aspects -- opposing Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons and taking measures to deter its nuclear and missile activities on the one hand, and on the other, highlighting the peaceful settlement of the issue by avoiding the actions that may aggravate tensions and resuming the six-party talks as early as possible," he said. The Security Council's resolutions should be carried out in a comprehensive manner, and the parties shall not implement them only according to their own needs, Wang stressed. The imposition of sanctions on the DPRK and the resumption of dialogues are both means to implement the resolutions, Wang said, adding neither the continuous nuclear and missile tests nor the reckless military drills on the Peninsula accords with the spirit of the resolutions. No major crisis has occurred on the Korean Peninsula so far over the past few days, Wang said, noting the Peninsula peace and stability was in the first place a blessing for the two peoples on the both sides of the 38th Parallel, and also fit the expectations of all peace-loving countries. The current relative stability in the region owns to the common efforts of all and the restraints exercised by the specific parties concerned, Wang said, reminding all parties that the temporal peace is susceptible to occasional accidents. He called on all parties concerned to refrain from taking any more actions that would escalate the confrontation on the Peninsula. The parties concerned have begun a new round of contacts and interactions following the current tension, as meetings in all forms and of all sizes among different parties have been convened, Wang said. The most pressing thing for now is to prompt all parties concerned to get back to the negotiating table, so as to solve the nuclear issue on the Peninsula, said Wang. The top Chinese diplomat said he appreciates Germany's understanding and support of the "double suspension" initiative proposed by China. The proposal, announced by Wang on March 8 this year, aims to defuse the looming crisis only if the DPRK suspends its nuclear and missile activities in exchange of the stop of war games by the United States and South Korea. The "double suspension" is only the first step to get all parties concerned back to negotiation and dialogue, he said, noting China's ultimate goal is to realize Peninsula denuclearization and establish mechanisms for lasting peace in the region. China will, as always, remain firm and committed to the prospect, and play a constructive role in making it happen, Wang added. CANBERRA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government will introduce export restrictions on domestically-produced natural gas from July 1 to secure enough gas for the domestic market, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Thursday. Following a series of meetings with gas industry heads aimed at securing domestic supply at a fairer price, Turnbull said that the requirements asked of the gas companies had "not been met," forcing the government to act. In a statement, Turnbull said the government would introduce the Australia Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, which would have the power to "impose export controls on companies when there is a shortfall of gas supply in the domestic market." The government will secure domestic gas supply with the introduction of export restrictions to ensure the Australian market has adequate supplies before exports are permitted, Turnbull said. "The shortage of domestic gas supplies has resulted in dramatically higher prices in Australia - higher than prices paid in the markets to which Australian gas is being exported." "By ending the shortage, and ensuring the domestic market has adequate supplies, we will ensure gas prices in Australia are lower and fairly reflect international export prices as they should." "Australians are entitled to have access to the gas they need at prices they can afford." Resources Minister Matt Canavan said while the action was not the government's preferred course of action, the lack of compliance from the gas companies had forced the intervention. "It is not tenable for Australia to be the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) but to have some of the highest prices for gas in the world," Canavan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday. "They have not got us to where we would like to be, we are still not at the point where we believe our manufacturing sector has adequate supplies of gas," he said. The prime minister said that "full consultation with the industry" would take place before the measures are introduced on July 1. WELLINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government has set a new medium-term target of cutting net debt to between 10 percent and 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025, Finance Minister Steven Joyce said Thursday. "We have made great progress in our immediate target of reducing net debt to around 20 percent of GDP by 2020," Joyce said in a statement. "Net debt is expected to be at 24.3 percent of GDP by the end of this financial year. Now it's time to set a new target for net debt out to the middle of the next decade." It was appropriate that any new debt target helped provide the capacity to absorb future shocks. "We have learnt from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Canterbury earthquakes that shocks can come along at any time, and sometimes they come in pairs," said Joyce. "In taking the decision to support New Zealand's most vulnerable people through the GFC, and to support Canterbury after the quakes, we had to borrow significant sums of money. All up we borrowed the equivalent of around 20 percent of our GDP," he said. "We are a geologically young country, and we are also a small country in an often turbulent world, so there are plenty of shocks ahead of us." With net debt at around 10 percent to 15 percent of GDP, New Zealand would have the capacity to absorb a couple of big shocks at once. The government would also allocate 11 billion NZ dollars (7.6 billion U.S. dollars) in new capital infrastructure over the next four annual budgets, Joyce said. "We are investing hugely in new schools, hospitals, housing, roads, and railways. This investment will extend that run-rate significantly, and include new investment in the justice and defence sectors as well," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 12:51:10|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel attend a joint press conference in Berlin April 26, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Qing) BERLIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Germany understands China's efforts to open its markets step by step, and it is "unrealistic" to expect China to fully open its market overnight, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Wednesday. He made the remarks at a joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi after attending the third round of China-Germany Strategic Dialogue on Diplomacy and Security. Germany is confident that China will not reverse its opening up policy, and the bilateral economic and trade exchanges aim for win-win results, Gabriel said, adding that the open market and equal partnership are the common aspirations for both countries. He also said China is one of Germany's closest partners in world politics, adding that the rapid development of bilateral ties in all areas is a result of the high mutual trust between the two sides. Gabriel also said that Germany supports China's Belt and Road Initiative and is ready to increase the pragmatic cooperation with China within this framework. Many major issues of global concerns can not be solved without China, Gabriel said, noting that Germany attaches great importance to China's international role and is ready to strengthen the bilateral cooperation in global and regional affairs. Germany is fully confident of the prospect of the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, he noted. For his part, Wang said China expects Germany and members of the European Union (EU) to exert influence so that the bloc could at the earliest date implement its obligations stipulated in Article 15 of the protocol on China's accession to the WTO, a "stumbling block" of China-EU economic cooperation. In accordance with the article, WTO members should cease the surrogate country approach in anti-dumping investigations on China after Dec. 11, 2016, which expires exactly 15 years after China's admission. China appreciates Germany's positive attitude in solving the aforementioned problem, Wang said, noting that the two countries also have remarkable consensus on reaching the China-EU investment agreement and opening the free trade cooperation as early as possible, he said. In the dialogue, the two sides agreed to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership, make joint preparations for the upcoming high-level visits, and promote the dialogue mechanisms on people-to-people, financial and security exchanges. Beijing and Berlin believed their economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature, and the two nations have far more complementarities than competitions in this aspect. The two countries said they are willing to facilitate the investments of companies, noting that amid the rising economic anti-globalization and protectionism, China and Germany, both major trading nations in the world, shall uphold free trade and investment and deliver their explicit support for openness, inclusiveness, cooperation and win-win results. Moreover, as the second and fourth economies in the world, China and Germany also shoulder responsibilities to safeguard peace and stability, said Wang, adding that China supports Germany to play a more important role in European affairs and global governance. China's Europe policy remains consistent and stable, even though the continent has entered a key period, as the peoples of France, Britain and Germany will in the coming months vote on their countries' development directions and the European integration, he said. Wang added that it is China's hope and belief that Germany, as the core country in Europe, will keep committed to the European stability, and work with China to offset global uncertainties with a stable bilateral relationship, and facilitate regional integration with enhancing the China-Europe cooperation. China welcomes Germany's increasing emphasis on Asia, and China particularly, on its agenda, said Wang, adding that Beijing warmly welcomes German Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries, who will attend the Belt and Road Forum on International Cooperation next month as the representative of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the meeting, the two sides also exchanged opinions on the issues of common concern, such as Korean Peninsula and Syria, and agreed to solve these conflicts by peaceful means. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 13:31:18|Editor: An Video Player Close by Xue Lei, Nguon Sovan PHNOM PENH, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative not only benefits all participating countries and regions, but also strengthens relations among them, Cambodian Minister of Economy and Finance Aun Pornmoniroth has said. The Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of Silk Road. "It is a promising initiative, which not only benefits all members' economic performance, but also strengthens ties," Aun Pornmoniroth told Xinhua in an interview ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be held from May 14 to 15 in Beijing, capital of China. The Belt and Road Initiative will help develop some of the economically least integrated parts of the world through greater connectivity, including the construction of infrastructure, the minister said. "As the dynamics of international relations are changing rapidly, we look to China to play an even larger role on the global stage," he said. He said China is well-positioned to play a leading role in deepening regional economic integration through strengthening regional connectivity and regional economic development. In regional connectivity, he said that the initiative benefits all participants in Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania, lowering transportation cost, increasing trade volume and value, and extending trade accessibility. For regional economic development, Aun Pornmoniroth said that the initiative fosters collaboration within the regions with a flow of people, goods, trade, capital and ideas, thus enhancing economic performance in each country and region through better connectivity by road, rail, aviation, which will support stronger links in trade, investment, banking and finance. Aun Pornmoniroth said that under the Belt and Road Initiative, Cambodia and China agreed to focus on core areas of infrastructure, agriculture, capacity building, industrial cluster, cultural tourism and finance. In infrastructure, he said the bilateral cooperation focuses on transportation such as railway, highway, aviation, communication, network, aerospace and nuclear energy. On the agriculture, it focuses on specialized crops, aquatic and animal products, as well as food processing, agricultural inspection and quarantine, he added. In capacity building, it concentrates on technology exchange, international aid, and personal training. According to the minister, Cambodia will benefit from this initiative through increasing trade and investment with China and other countries. He said the Cambodian government has also just adopted its "Industrial Development Policy 2015-2025," which focuses on the diversification of the industrial base and promotion of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises. "China will be a key market for Cambodia's export diversification and investment programs," he said. Cambodia-China bilateral cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative is an example of win-win cooperation, and represents a form of "South-South" cooperation, which will provide benefits not only for Cambodia and China, but also for the whole region, Aun Pornmoniroth said. He added that the initiative will help contribute to successful implementation of the Industrial Development Policy and development goals of Cambodia in many aspects. "In summary, this cooperation would provide great benefits to Cambodia's socio-economic development in the medium and long term," he said. Meanwhile, the minister suggested that, apart from physical connectivity, China put greater emphasis on people-to-people relationship to enhance greater friendship between Cambodia and China. "We are looking to China not only for financing and investment flows, but also to bring in management skills, technical knowledge and skills knowledge and new technologies and expertise, particularly in the area of infrastructure development," he said. "In other words, we believe China should be a knowledge provider." HANOI, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam is expected to welcome over 1.271 million person-times of Chinese visitors in the first four months of 2017, up 61.1 percent year-on-year, said the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) on Thursday. From January to April, the country's foreign arrivals are forecast to hit 4.284 million person-times, up 30.3 percent year-on-year. Concerning markets of Vietnamese tourism in the first four months, China maintains the largest one with 1.271 million person-times during four-month period, followed by South Korea (701,837 person-times), Japan (261,571 person-times), Russia (230,946 person-times) and the United States (228,521 person-times) among others. In April alone, Vietnam is likely to welcome 1.071 million person-times of foreign visitors, up 34 percent year-on-year, making it the fourth consecutive month in 2017 that the foreign arrivals surpass one million. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 14:06:25|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his country would not terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but would renegotiate it with Mexico and Canada. "President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time, and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly... to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said in a statement following Trump's calls with the leaders of Mexico and Canada on Wednesday. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau," the statement said. Earlier, local media reported that the Trump administration is considering an executive order to quit NAFTA. Trump recently ramped up his criticism of Canada and required a 20 percent tariff on imports of Canadian softwood lumber. Canada said it was ready to come to talks on renewing NAFTA at any time, while Mexico said that the negotiations would have to be of a trilateral nature. During the campaign, Trump has called NAFTA one of "the worst trade deals" in history. Analysts warned that U.S. exporters could face high tariffs without NAFTA, because the U.S. exporters not only have gained greater tariff preferences under the deal, but also have been exempt from potential tariff hikes facing other exporters. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 14:06:25|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen on Thursday called for renegotiations with the United States on a repatriation agreement that the two countries signed 15 years ago. Under the agreement, Cambodians who are permanent residents of the United States, will be deported to Cambodia if they are convicted of a felony. Speaking during a university graduation ceremony here, Hun Sen said that Cambodia wanted those convicted Cambodians to continue to stay in the United States after they had served their prison sentence. "It is an immoral act to deport them, separating them from their wives, children and families in the U.S. for the whole life," the prime minister said. "They have violated the U.S. law and have been punished under the U.S. law already, so they should be allowed to continue to stay in the U.S." Hun Sen said that Cambodia does not want to cancel the deportation agreement with the United States, but requests to amend it for "humanitarian and human rights reasons." "I hope that the U.S. will accept the request on the amendment to the agreement in order to give an opportunity to convicted Cambodian citizens to continue living in the U.S. with their families," he said. Some 550 convicted Cambodians have been deported from the United States since 2002, many of whom cannot even speak Cambodian language. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 14:11:27|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A big explosion rattled the surrounding area of the international airport of the capital Damascus early Thursday morning, eyewitnesses told Xinhua. Following the blast, whose cause is still unclear, fire broke out near the airport, and lit up the sky over that area at dawn. Several blasts were heard near the airport and that people near the southern part of Damascus, where the airport is located, woke up to the rattling sounds of explosions. Russian media outlets said that the airport was struck by five Israeli airstrikes, whose targets are not clear. The airport has a military section which has warplanes and munition. If confirmed, it would not be the first Israeli strike against Syria, as Israelis have ramped up their airstrikes on military positions in Syria recently, targeting a military base in Qunaitera province in the south this week, and a military position near the ancient city of Palmyra last month. File photo shows Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari (R) talks with guests during his daughter's wedding reception in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, Dec. 16, 2016. (Xinhua/Olatunji Obasa) LAGOS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has opted to work from home, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed said Wednesday. The minister told reporters after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja, the country's capital that the Nigerian leader has already called for files requiring his attention to be moved to his official residence. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo is presiding over the meeting. "We just concluded the Federal Executive Council meeting. I'm sure you noticed that the President was not there. He was not there because he asked that he be allowed to rest and asked the vice president to preside," he added. "And he will be working from home. He has asked all his files to be taken to him in the house. He will be working from home today," he said. Mohammed told reporters that Osinbajo will visit the President at home later in the day. There has been controversies over the state of health of President Buhari, who returned to the country on March 10 after a 49-day medical sojourn in London. The 74-year-old Nigerian leader was only seen in public once throughout last week, when he joined other Muslim faithfuls for a Juma'at service on Friday at a mosque located near his office inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The service lasted less than one hour after which Buhari returned to his residence. The President's continuous non-appearance at public events is linked to his ailing health and the need to take further rest. NEW DELHI, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday launched an ambitious scheme to help people fly cheap to small towns across the country. The scheme has been named UDAN - an acronym for "Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik" meaning "the common man flies" - and it connects small towns with big cities through cheap flights under India's first national aviation policy launched in June last year. "Earlier aviation was considered to be the domain of a select few. That has changed now. We had the opportunity to frame a civil aviation policy, which caters to aspirations of the people of India," Modi said. "Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities are becoming growth engines. If aviation connectivity is enhanced in these places, it will be beneficial," he added. Earlier announcing the launch in a series of tweets, the Prime Minister's Office said that the airfare for a one-hour journey of 500 kms has been capped at 2,500 Indian rupees (35 U.S. dollars), which will be an all-inclusive charge. Under the scheme, five companies will operate flight services on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports across the country. The operators will include private airlines SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Turbo Megha, Air Odisha and state-owned Air India's subsidiary Airline Allied Services. Of the 44 airports, the Indian government had identified 22 which were flight-ready last year. The list included Bhavnagar in the west, Bhatinda in the east, Gwalior in the center, Durgapur in the east and Jaisalmer in the west. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 14:46:36|Editor: MJ Video Player Close KABUL, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations has urged warring sides in Afghanistan to take further measures for better protection of civilians from harm in the war-hit country, said the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Thursday. "In the first quarter of 2017, UNAMA documented 2,181 civilian casualties (715 dead and 1,466 injured), a 4 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2016. Civilian deaths decreased by 2 percent while civilian injuries decreased by 5 percent," it said in a statement. "It is civilians, with increasing numbers of women and children, who far too often bear the brunt of the conflict," Tadamichi Yamamoto, special UN envoy and head of UNAMA, was quoted in the statement. The ground engagements continued to cause most civilian casualties, followed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as well as suicide and complex attacks. "With the so-called fighting season imminent, I appeal to all parties to take every measure possible to prevent unnecessary and unacceptable harm to Afghan civilians," said Yamamoto. "During an armed conflict, the intentional killing and injuring of civilians is a war crime," said Yamamoto, adding that "anti-government elements must stop this deplorable practice and everybody must apply and respect the definition of 'civilian provided by international humanitarian law." The UNAMA also expressed concerns by increases in both children and women casualties in the first three months of the year. A total of 88 women were killed and 185 wounded while 210 children lost their lives and 525 injured across the country over the period. The Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for 62 percent of the civilian casualties and security forces were responsible for 21 percent for death and injuries to the non-combatants over the period, according to the statement. Meanwhile, 9 percent of casualties took place during ground engagement for which responsible party could not be determined and the rest 8 percent were caused by unattributed unexploded ordnance, the UNAMA data said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:26:45|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China's steel industry group has voiced concern over the U.S. probe on steel imports, saying the move sends a signal of protectionism and is against the principles of fair trade. The announcement by China Iron and Steel Association came in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's call for the initiation of a trade probe on steel imports on national security grounds last week. The U.S. president has signed a memo directing his administration to expedite an investigation into whether steel imports are jeopardizing U.S. national security. "China's steel exports to the U.S. are quite limited, which absolutely won't affect the security of the U.S. steel industry," the association said in a statement, adding that U.S. steel imports mainly came from other countries, not China. In 2016, China exported 1.17 million tonnes of steel to the United States, accounting for only 1 percent of China's total exports of the material. Data from the United States showed they imported 789,000 tonnes of steel from China, accounting for merely 2.6 percent of the country's imports of the metal. The statement stressed that both China and the United States were facing industrial overcapacity in the global market, and as a major producer, consumer and trader of steel, China had taken solid steps to address the issue. Likewise, the Unites States should also make efforts to adjust industrial structure and eliminate outdated capacity to promote healthy development in the sector, the statement said. Tackling overcapacity in bloated sectors such as steel and coal has been high on the Chinese government agenda in recent years. In 2017, China aims to slash steel production capacity by around 50 million tonnes. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:31:46|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- All the parties concerned should work together to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue related to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Wednesday. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, anchor and chief international correspondent of the U.S. cable news network CNN, Cui said that the current situation on the Korean Peninsula "is a challenge to all of us, China, the United States, Russia and others." "And we should work together to seek a diplomatic solution to this issue," he said. The veteran Chinese diplomat was referring to the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula in the wake of recent DPRK's test firing of missiles and the U.S. threat to launch pre-emptive strike to eliminate the threat by the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. administration under President Donald Trump has warned that the U.S. policy of strategic patience is over and all options, including the military one, are on the table to deal with the DPRK threat. Washington fears that the DPRK could soon acquire a ballistic missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead to its mainland. Cui said China has been making a lot of efforts to seek a peaceful solution to the DPRK nuclear issue, mainly on two fronts. On one hand, China has been implementing "very effectively and strictly" all the UN Security Council resolutions on the issue and sanctions; On the other hand, China has been pursuing diplomatic efforts "in the hope that everybody else will join us in a serious search for a real, effective and peaceful solution to this issue," Cui explained. Cui emphasized that China's goal is clear, that is, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula while maintaining peace and stability there. "I think this is the shared goal of the parties concerned and this will certainly serve the interests of both China and the United States. And we have to be persistent on that," Cui said. He said China strongly advocates that all the parties concerned refrain from doing things that will escalate the situation even further. On the meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, held early this month at the Mar-A-Largo estate in Florida, Cui said the two leaders got along very well with each other, which is "a very reassuring development" to the bilateral ties. The meeting gave "a clear guidance and a clear sense of direction" on where the relations should be going, he noted. Xi explained to Trump China's position and considerations on the DPRK nuclear issue and Trump listened carefully, Cui said. On the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system on South Korea despite China's strong protests, Cui said China is gravely concerned about the U.S. move. It will not help reduce the tensions on the Peninsula, but rather will undermine mutual trust and confidence between China and the United States, because it poses "a serious threat" to China's security, he said. "We will not change our position," Cui added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:41:48|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy to the United Nations said Wednesday that China is ready to work with other countries to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through innovation. "Today's world is one community. Our shared future hinges on innovation," said Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, at a commemorative event marking the World Intellectual Property Day 2017. "China remains committed to innovation-driven sustainable growth," Liu added. The UN co-sponsored commemorative event was organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the World Intellectual Property (IP) Day on April 26. Creation and innovation have been the beacon for human civilization and the fountain nurturing human progress, said the ambassador, adding that "thanks to innovation, our lives have transformed. Our sustainable development goals, be it poverty eradication, education or healthcare, have been propelled." Liu said at the event that China has incorporated the 2030 Agenda in China's 13th Five-Year Socio-economic Development Program and set the course of pursuing innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development. China has also launched the campaign of "Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship," which entails a package of measures and policies to encourage creativity and entrepreneurship on an unprecedented scale, said Liu. "We are building a national system of technological and institutional innovation, to integrate science and technology into economic and social development, to convert research into development, and to foster new drivers of development," he said. The theme of the World IP Day this year is "Innovation -- Improving Lives," with a particular focus on women as innovators and beneficiaries of innovation for socio-economic development. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:41:48|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close SYDNEY, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A fleet of 10 panda vans have been officially launched in Sydney on Thursday, to begin their journey around Australia to promote the China-Australia Year of Tourism 2017. The journey will see the "panda explorer" take groups of Chinese travel ambassadors on a 30,000- kilometer adventure, exploring a variety of cities and towns, including outback Australia. The initiative is a promotion for cooperation between the two nations and hopes to bring more Australian visitors to China. Director of the China National Tourist Office Luo Weijian said the campaign is a "first for China Tourism." "Of the more than 1 million Chinese visitors to Australia each year, most visit cities and popular destinations but few have the chance to experience life right throughout the continent," Luo said. "So the panda vans fulfil two roles, taking China to hundreds of towns and also, giving Chinese people an insight into the diverse landscapes and cultures of Australia." Plans are also underway for a special meeting between a koala and giant panda at the Adelaide Zoo in the state of South Australia. The campaign also hopes to educate more Australians about Chinese culture, by acting as a roving travel information booth and giving out prizes to locals encountered during the road-trip. Chairman of Tourism Australia Tony South told Xinhua he hopes those in the vans will become "great advocates of Australia." "I'd like to think that their aspirations for coming to Australia are satisfied and they can go home happy," South said. "For anybody, the most powerful thing you can get is a recommendation from a friend. If that happens, then I think we've done a good job." Along the journey, the panda vans will capture video and images across Australia to be shared across Chinese social media. As for the selection of pandas to be the star of the campaigns, the decision was simple. "Australians love pandas just as much as Chinese people love koalas," South said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:56:50|Editor: ying Video Player Close HAVANA, April 26 (Xinhua) -- In a cobbled street in Old Havana, La Bodeguita del Medio, a famous restaurant-bar known for its mojitos and top-notch Cuban cuisine, held a special celebration for its 75th anniversary. This old cellar is now a famous tourist site in the Cuban capital and it is estimated that more than 1 million people have passed by this place to taste a distinctive cocktail or try a typical dish like ropa vieja or congri rice. "Today nobody comes to Cuba without going to La Bodeguita del Medio to eat or drink a mojito or to El Floridita and drink a daiquiri and that is important," said Angel Fernandez, director of La Bodeguita del Medio franchise. Known for its mojito, a Cuban cocktail with a mixture of rum, sugar, tonic water and peppermint, La Bodeguita del Medio is considered part of the Caribbean nation's cultural heritage. "It is not only a part of gastronomic culture but also of the Cuban culture and I believe that this is the success of La Bodeguita del Medio, which is present in various parts of the world today because it symbolizes the most authentic Cuban food, cocktails and music," he added. During the celebration on Wednesday, Cuban tourism authorities recognized staff who have been at the venue for more than 20 years. "La Bodeguita is distinguished above all by our treatment of customers because our founder said we should provide customers with a unique experience," said Jose Pumarada, director of La Bodeguita del Medio. La Bodeguita del Medio is not only famous for its gastronomic legacy, but also for being one of the greatest exponents of typical Cuban food. Coupled with a bohemian and very Cuban atmosphere, the restaurant has been the sanctuary for many intellectuals, artists and political figures over the years. Renowned personages of all eras have visited the restaurant, including Ernest Hemingway, the American novelist, short story writer and journalist. "We have the tradition of Cuban food as well as the mojito. Although they were not invented here, we did start to commercialize them in the country through the figure of Hemingway due to his visits to the place," he said. Pumarada, who has been working at the restaurant for more than a decade, said the Old Havana spot has become a must-visit site for tourists every year. Its walls are marked and signed by visitors. Currently, it has branches all over the world including in Mexico and several European countries. At the end of May, a new branch will open in the eastern Chinese city of Shanghai. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 15:56:51|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close By Evan Duggan VANCOUVER, April 26 (Xinhua) -- A row that erupted this week between Canada and the United States over Canadian softwood lumber exports proves that Canada must expand its lumber trade to China and other Asian markets, Canadian officials said Wednesday. NEW TARIFFS Canada's government and the lumber industry must quickly diversify their export markets to reduce reliance on the United States, Premier of Canada's British Columbia province Christy Clark said. "We have already increased our softwood lumber exports to China by over 2,000 percent with strong progress in other markets," she told reporters gathered at a lumber yard in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge. "We are going to continue to work on that. It is our hope that one day our markets will be so diversified that we don't need another softwood deal with the United States," she said. This week, the United States slapped Canadian softwood lumber with new import duties ranging from 3 to 24 percent, starting next week. In recent decades, U.S. administrations have occasionally blasted the Canadian lumber industry as unfairly subsidized, claiming that Canadian softwood is being "dumped" into the U.S. market at costs that undercut U.S. forest producers. The U.S. lumber industry argues that because most Canadian timber is harvested on government-owned land, the resulting low prices for the right to harvest that wood has kept Canadian lumber below market value. The new tariffs applied to Canadian wood by the Trump administration is a "shakedown" that mirrors similar unsuccessful attacks on Canadian lumber by the U.S. industry and government in the past, said David Emerson, B.C.'s special trade envoy to the United States. "We're going down a path we've all seen before," he told reporters on a conference call. "It's egregious. It's terrible." He said the Canadian federal government needs to fight the tariffs aggressively through every legal means as it has done successfully in the past. But Canada's lumber industry must diversify in the meantime, he said. LOOKING TO CHINA "Hopefully (this fight) will cause Canadians to reflect deeply about the importance of building trade bridges with other parts of the world, and for British Columbia, that's really largely going to involve Asia," he said. Canada exports about 4.8 billion Canadian dollars (3.54 billion U.S. dollars) in total forest products to China annually, including about 1.6 billion Canadian dollars (1.18 billion U.S. dollars) in lumber. Over the last ten years, Canadian forest product exports to China have climbed from 5 to 15 percent of the country's total forestry exports -- still just a fraction of the lumber that Canada exports to the United States. There are currently no import tariffs applied to Canadian softwood by China, according to the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC). Derek Nighbor, FPAC's CEO, told Xinhua in a Wednesday interview that he travelled to China three months ago as part of a B.C. government trade mission. He said China's appetite and ability to build commercial and residential structures with B.C. wood is increasing. "As our companies get to know the Chinese market better, and as our governments deepen their relationships, I think there is untapped potential in China most definitely," he said. The CEO noted both Canada and China are struggling with an unpredictable U.S. administration. "We and the Chinese share a common bond right now just around general uncertainty," he said. Meanwhile, Canada's International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and Finance Minister Bill Morneau visited China last week as part of exploratory free trade talks, according to the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster. Morneau said the trip aimed to boost relations with China and key industries there, while Champagne worked to promote the use of Canadian lumber in home construction in China. Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr will also travel to China in June with forestry leaders in a bid to find new markets for Canadian softwood, the report said. China's second aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock into the water at a launch ceremony in Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, April 26, 2017. The new carrier, the first domestically-built one, came after the Liaoning, a refitted former Soviet Union-made carrier that was put into commission in the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 2012. (Xinhua/Li Gang) Hi, here's what you need to know about China. DALIAN, Liaoning -- China launched its second aircraft carrier Wednesday morning in a Dalian shipyard in Liaoning Province in northeast China. The new carrier, the first developed and built by China, was transferred from a dry dock into water at a launch ceremony starting at about 9 a.m. in the Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. xhne.ws/TteYF ---- BEIJING -- President Xi Jinping has called for concrete efforts to maintain China's financial security. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks Tuesday afternoon at a group study attended by members of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. xhne.ws/vULYO ---- MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he looks forward to meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road Forum on International Cooperation to be held in Beijing next month. Putin said that his country enthusiastically echoes China's Belt and Road Initiative while meeting with the visiting member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Li Zhanshu, on Wednesday. xhne.ws/DP8cH ---- BEIJING -- China's major industrial firms continued to post double-digit growth in March, adding to signs of a stabilizing Chinese economy, official data showed Thursday. The companies reported a 23.8-percent year-on-year profit growth last month, slowing from 31.5 percent in January and February but still much faster than the 8.5-percent increase in 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). xhne.ws/ad3Hk Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 17:12:21|Editor: ying Video Player Close MANILA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A business advisor to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has doubted the ambition of U.S. President Donald Trump to boost the U.S. manufacturing, saying on Thursday that Trump was trying to bring back jobs at the expense of consumers' benefits. Joey Concepcion, chairman of ASEAN Business Advisory Council, made the remarks at a press briefing ahead of the 30th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. Citing low costs as one of the strength of ASEAN countries, Concepcion said the costs for corporations in the United States will be far much higher than in ASEAN. "Who is going to buy an iPhone that is going to cost much more in America than what can be done in Asia?" said Concepcion, adding the United States will bring back the jobs at the expense of consumers' benefits. Concepcion noted that even the Philippines, where a call center employee earns at most 500 U.S. dollars a month, is also looking to import rice from other countries, because it benefits the consumers. If there is no roadmap to level up the product, "just open the door," said Concepcion when asked to comment on the protectionism, as seen in President Trump's trade polices such as the threat to levy high taxes on goods imported from other countries. The ASEAN summit, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of ASEAN, is seen as the first meeting between ASEAN leaders since the election of Trump as U.S. president. The leaders are expected to talk about the negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, amid U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. KATHMANDU, April 27 (Xinhua) -- One of the two tourists from China's Taiwan, who went missing for 47 days and was rescued alive on Wednesday, is recovering well in a Nepalese hospital, a doctor involved in his treatment said Thursday. A rescue team from the Asian Trekking in Nepal rescued male Liang Sheng Yueh alive while his female friend Liu Chen Chun was found dead in the northern mountainous region of Dhading district in central Nepal. Liang has been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in Grandee International Hospital while the body of his female friend has been kept in Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, according to a senior official of the trekking company. Dr. Usha Kayastha involved in the treatment of Liang told Xinhua that the patient has been recovering and has already taken some soup. "He is seriously malnourished." Madhav Basnet, one of the rescuers who had accompanied Liang in the hospital from Wednesday to Thursday morning, told Xinhua that the patient has been able to read books. "He seems to be weak but normal." The families of the two have been informed of the rescue efforts and results, Basnet said. "A couple of family members of Liang have already arrived in Kathmandu." The pair went missing on March 10. Their parents had asked the Asian Trekking, which has experiences in rescue efforts in high altitude areas, to find their whereabouts. The company mobilized and sent its rescue teams to the areas where they were last seen. The first rescue team spent 16 days searching them but failed to locate them. The second team spotted the pair six days later. During its search mission, the second rescue team noticed some vultures making rounds around the area that led to the rescue of the two. "When we were searching them in the area we noticed vultures making rounds there. We identified a red garment outside a gorge," said Basnet, adding "When we reached there, we found the couple lying inside the gorge, one alive and one dead." According to Dawa Steven Sherpa, managing director of the Asian Trekking, the couple had trekked the areas on their own without seeking support from any trekking company. During the trekking, they had headed for the wrong direction due to snowfall. As they moved froward, they slipped to the gorge, thus making it impossible for them to return, Sherpa said. "They had survived for so many days by eating snow with the salt they brought with them after they ran out of food in four to five days," said Sherpa. The duo received trekking permit for Langtang National Park in Rasuwa district, effective from February 21 to April 1, through the Nepal Tourism Board in Kathmandu. DAMASCUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army confirmed that Israel missile fire targeted a Syrian military position near the international airport of the capital Damascus earlier on Thursday, according to the state TV. Israel fired several missiles from inside the occupied territory against one of the military positions southwest of the Damascus airport, causing fire and several explosions in the targeted site, which left damages, the report quoted Syrian army as saying. This attack, the army statement continued, comes as a desperate attempt to lift the morale of the terrorist groups. It added that the attack will not dissuade the Syrian army from continuing its war on terror. It's not the first Israeli strike, as the Israelis have ramped up their airstrikes on military positions in Syria recently, targeting military base in Qunaitera province in southern Syria this week, as well as a military position near the ancient city of Palmyra last month. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 17:52:37|Editor: ZD Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun said Thursday that China resolutely opposes the deployment of the THAAD anti-missile defence system, pledging to continue real combat-oriented military training and drills to safeguard national security. Yang made the remarks during a press conference when answering a question on the latest development that parts of the THAAD anti-missile defence system were moved to the Republic of Korea (ROK) for deployment. Yang noted that the current situation in the Korean Peninsula was complicated and sensitive and that China had been involved in much constructive work for regional peace and stability. The spokesperson said the Chinese military would carry-out real combat-oriented training and drills, as well as tests on its new-type weaponry to safeguard national security and regional peace and stability. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 18:02:42|Editor: ZD by Xinhua writer Chen Shilei BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- For a Western world that embraces competition, it is not easy to understand the Chinese way of thinking that calls for harmony and stability. As Beijing is preparing for a high-level forum on the China-proposed Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative that eyes win-win cooperation, some concerns from the West have emerged over China's motives. The B&R Initiative proposed by China in 2013 consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. It aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Some media reports say the initiative is not win-win as China "seeks to dominate," adding that China's state-owned firms "grab the lion's share" of major projects. But such assertions overlook the fact that capital, including money and human capital, to build the giant trade and infrastructure network needs to come not only from Chinese enterprises, but also from their Western partners. For Western companies, the Belt and Road Initiative presents "multinational businesses with historic possibilities," according to an article published online by Forbes in February. The article listed the five key areas of interest for Western firms. They are capacity building -- the B&R Initiative's massive funding requirements must come from both public institutions and private investors offering opportunities for Western services firms -- as well as clean energy and sustainable projects, strategic value chains, new markets for consumer goods and faster transit times for cargo. Also, some media reports arbitrarily link the initiative with politics, saying China seeks "global leadership" through the initiative. In fact, the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed during the post-crisis era when the world urgently needed an open and inclusive global economy. Almost nine years after the 2008 financial crisis, the world economy is still struggling to recover. According to a UN Conference on Trade and Development and World Bank report last year, foreign direct investment around the world dropped by 13 percent, while global trade grew by slightly more than 1 percent, the worst performance since the crisis. Meanwhile, fragmented international cooperation makes it difficult to effectively integrate resources to address global challenges. Against such a backdrop, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative offering opportunities for cooperation and development for all, which shows the Chinese leader's global vision and China's willingness to shoulder due international responsibilities as a major developing country. Furthermore, as some Western media are hyping the absence of some Western leaders at the upcoming forum, they should be reminded that the initiative is not an elite club for Western countries but serves mostly for developing countries. It is a circle of friends, with representatives from more than 100 countries attending. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country supports the Belt and Road. Although Merkel is unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict, she will send Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries in her place. Britain and France will also send high-level representatives. Western countries ought to be more open-minded about the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, a country deeply influenced by a philosophy of seeking common ground while preserving differences. It is hoped that countries along the ancient trade routes and beyond will benefit from the initiative and realize common prosperity to spur a sluggish world economy. MAKUENI, Kenya, April 27 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were killed and 12 others seriously injured in a grisly road accident along the busy Nairobi-Mombasa highway in eastern Kenya early Thursday. Area divisional police commander Zacharia Bitok said the accident occurred when a commuter minibus which was ferrying passengers from Mtito-Andei to Nairobi collided head-on with a truck that was headed to Mombasa a few meters from Salama market in Makueni County. Bitok said the driver of the minibus was among those killed. "The truck, which was loaded with timber, overturned following the impact of the collision," Bitok told journalists at the scene. "The eight died instantly while 12 others among them the lorry turnboys were rushed to Machakos level-5 hospital," he added. He said the driver of the minibus failed to overtake some vehicles leading to a head-on collision with the truck. Bitok said the whereabouts of the others remains unknown. The accident has disrupted trafficking flows since the truck is blocking the busy highway. The incident comes two days after another one happened few meters away from the scene and killed 27 people and 20 others were injured in the accident at Kambu, Kibwezi area. Police say they are investigating both incidents. Kenya ranks among African countries with the highest toll of road accidents that are caused by over speeding and lethargic enforcement of traffic rules. Government statistics indicate that the East Africa nation loses at least 3,000 people annually from road carnage, with close to half being pedestrians while several others are left with injuries, according to statistics from the police. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 18:17:53|Editor: ying Video Player Close JALALABAD, Afghanistan, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Fifteen Afghan civilians were injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar on Thursday, the provincial government spokesman said. "An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attached to a bicycle was detonated in a main square in Bati Kot District roughly at 10:30 a.m. local time, injuring 15 innocent civilians," spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told Xinhua. Five of the injured were shifted to a main hospital in provincial capital as they were suffering severe wounds while 10 wounded people received treatment in the district's hospital, the official added. Provincial Gov. Gulab Mangal has instructed concerned authorities to provide best medical treatment for the injured, Khogyani said. He blamed anti-government militants for planting the device. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants and Islamic State (IS) fighters have presence in parts of the province, 120 km east of Kabul. About 715 civilians were killed and over 1,460 others injured in conflict-related incidents across Afghanistan in the first three months of the year, according to figures released by the UN mission in the country. Out of casualties, 86 civilians were killed and 132 others wounded in IED attacks across the country over the period. A photo taken from the rebel-held town of Douma shows flames rising in the distance which are believed to be coming from Damascus International Airport following an explosion early in the morning of April 27, 2017.(Xinhua/AFP photo) DAMASCUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army confirmed that Israel missile fire targeted a Syrian military position near the international airport of the capital Damascus earlier on Thursday, according to the state TV. Israel fired several missiles from inside the occupied territory against one of the military positions southwest of the Damascus airport, causing fire and several explosions in the targeted site, which left damages, the report quoted Syrian army as saying. This attack, the army statement continued, comes as a desperate attempt to lift the morale of the terrorist groups. It added that the attack will not dissuade the Syrian army from continuing its war on terror. It's not the first Israeli strike, as the Israelis have ramped up their airstrikes on military positions in Syria recently, targeting military base in Qunaitera province in southern Syria this week, as well as a military position near the ancient city of Palmyra last month. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:18:09|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close MANILA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated on Thursday that Manila will continue to engage Beijing through bilateral dialogue, citing that it is the best way to resolve the South China Sea issue. Asked what is the best way to deal with China, Duterte said, "The way we are doing ... talking. That's the only luxury that we have. Talking." Duterte was speaking to the press at the Malacanang presidential palace after delivering his joint statement with visiting Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei. He said that is exactly what he would suggest to his fellow ASEAN leaders when they meet for a summit on Saturday. Southeast Asian leaders will meet on Saturday to discuss how to strengthen ASEAN economic community, and regional and international issues that may affect stability and peace in the region. Duterte also said that he will discuss the ongoing crafting of the framework of a code of conduct in the South China Sea. "At least if there's a conduct and they would agree, so many things will be out," Duterte said. A reader in Helsinki on Wednesday shows the photo of the cancelled coin design carried by a news article published by Finnish broadcasting company Yle. (Xinhua/Li Jizhi) HELSINKI, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Finnish Finance Ministry has cancelled the release of a special coin designed to celebrate the country's centenary of independence. The design of the five-euro coin was published earlier on Tuesday. It pictured the execution of a group of reds, based on a real photo taken during 1918 Civil War. The other side would have featured the tower of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium built in 1938. Minister of Finance Petteri Orpo described the picture as "tasteless" and the Ministry cancelled the authorization of the coin some hours later. Orpo had approved the administrative documents for the coin. He said on Tuesday he had not paid enough attention to its details. Ilkka Suppanen, the designer of the coin, defended his creation. He told national broadcaster Yle that he had believed the civil war theme would have been seen as a plus for minister Orpo. It would have shown that Finland can deal with difficult subjects, said Suppanen. The design had been approved by the art committee of the Mint of Finland. The sales of the coin had been scheduled to start next week. The cancellation concerned plans for a series of celebratory coins with five euro face value. Henna Karjalainen, Director of Communications for the Mint of Finland, told Xinhua on Wednesday that earlier this year a celebratory gold coin with 100 euro face value was published, as well as a series of silver coins with 10 and 20 euro face values. The selling price of the celebratory coins is higher. Finland's civil war broke out in January 1918, just weeks after Finland declared itself independent. Ten thousand people were killed in action, but 27,000 died in prison camps and in terror. In the war, the whites defeated the reds who had taken over most of southern Finland. Upon request from the whites, German forces landed in southern Finland and captured Helsinki in May 1918, before the whites reached the capital. One of the largest prison camps for the defeated reds was on an island just off Helsinki, later named Suomenlinna. On the Finnish political scene, left leaning persons have traditionally used the term "civil war", while conservative circles have called the conflict "war of liberation". Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:28:12|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close LUSAKA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Zambia has honored the 18th Chinese Medical Team for its exemplary contribution to the provision of healthcare services in the last one year. The team was awarded with a Certificate of Honor during a ceremony Wednesday attended by both Zambian government and Chinese embassy officials. Ministry of Health Spokesperson Kennedy Malama said the team which has been in Zambia for the last one year has left an indelible footprint which shall not be forgotten because of its exemplary commitment to duty. He said Zambian medical doctors have learned a lot from the team whose work has been incident-free as well as the sharing of their knowledge with the local personnel. "We commend the Medical Team for your contribution in the last one year. It is very clear that Zambia would not have been the same without this support we are getting from China in the health sector," he said. The establishment of a telemedicine link at the Levy Mwanawasa General Hospital is another milestone to the improvement of health care delivery brought by the team which has helped local personnel make correct diagnosis. According to him, Zambia appreciates China's support to the health sector which dates back to the 1970s, adding that it was delightful that the support has continued to increase over the years. Apart from the medical teams that have been coming, Zambia has benefited greatly from China through training of health personnel, donation of medical equipment as well as the construction of infrastructure such as the Levy Mwanawasa General Hospital whose capacity will soon be expanded from 150 to 850 beds. Chen Shijie, the Charge d' Affaires at the Chinese Embassy said the Medical Team has brought not only high level medical treatment technologies but also the traditional Chinese medical methods like acupuncture and manipulation therapy to Zambia. The team, he said, has also helped build the capacity of local medical staff by imparting them with knowledge on how to use new technologies. Since 1978, China has dispatched 487 doctors to Zambia, he added. While appreciating the level of cooperation in the health sector between the two countries, the official said more cooperation in the areas of medical equipment and medicine was needed, adding that China was eager to work closely with Zambia to promote the health cooperation to a higher level. "It is our sincere hope that, with more favorable policy support from the Zambia government, more China medical equipment and medicine could have access to Zambia market, which I am sure, will help to alleviate the shortage of medicines in Zambia," he said. Gou Jianjun, Team Leader of the Medical Team commended the support his team has received during its tour of duty in Zambia from both the government and local people. He said the establishment of the telemedicine systems in which Zambian hospitals are connected to the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Henan Province have resulted in fruitful activities such as discussion of difficult cases, live telecasting of surgeries and international academic exchanges. This has played a positive role in strengthening the exchange and cooperation in the medical field between China and Zambia, he added. Plans to establish the China-Zambia Endoscopy Center is also expected to increase competence of Zambia's local hospitals in diagnosis and treatment to a new level. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:33:15|Editor: ying Video Player Close FRANKFURT, April 27 (Xinhua)-- A German soldier suspected of planning a terrorist attack was arrested on Thursday, the prosecutor in Frankfurt am Main said. The 28-year-old soldier had been stationed in French city of Illkirch, and planned to carry out an terrorist attack out of xenophobic reasons, local media reported. He first came into suspicion when he hided a firearm in the toilet of Vienna Airport in the end of January, officials said. Searches were made by 90 policemen on Wednesday in 16 places in connection with the suspect in Germany, Austria, and France. A 24-year-old student was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of the soldier's accomplice, prosecutors said. Further investigation is underway. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:33:16|Editor: ying Video Player Close LUSAKA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Police have arrested four people in connection with a spate of fires to public buildings that hit some parts of Zambia following the arrest of the country's leading opposition leader, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Esther Katongo, the police spokesperson said the four were arrested on Wednesday afternoon near a prison in Lusaka, the country's capital with an assortment of items believed to have been used in setting up the fires. The opposition leader is being held at the prison the suspects were arrested from. Among the items found in the car they were driving included two brown plastic bottles of potassium permanganate, a small paper containing some black power, four rechargeable batteries, one empty container which was smelling of petrol and two paper tubes and some match sticks, she added. "You may wish to note that a combination of some of the substances found in the suspects can cause an instant explosion or fire," she said. The quartet were currently under police custody as investigations continue and the police have since warned people planning to cause confusion that they will be arrested as officers have been placed on high alert. A number of public buildings including courts, markets and a dormitory at a public college have been set ablaze in the recent weeks following unrest caused by the arrest of Hakainde Hichilema, the country's leading opposition leader who has been charged with treason. Suspected supporters the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, are escorted by police officers as they arrive at a courthouse in Bursa, Turkey, April 27, 2017.(Xinhua/Reuters photo) ANKARA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- More than 9,100 Turkish police officers were suspended late on Wednesday over their alleged links to the Gulenist Group, state-run Anadlu Agency reported Thursday. Earlier on Wednesday, more than 1,000 suspected Gulenists in the police force were detained in national raids across Turkey, according to the Interior Ministry. The operations were carried out as part of a probe led by chief public prosecutor's office in Ankara. The U.S.-based Fethullah Gulen is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the July 2016 coup attempt, which left 249 people killed and nearly 2,200 injured. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:43:22|Editor: ying Video Player Close GAZA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement warned on Thursday of the "unprecedented" measures Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party threaten to carry out against the Gaza Strip. Khalil al-Hayyah, deputy chairman of Hamas poliburo in the coastal enclave, said in an e-mailed press statement that the Gaza Strip is a barrel of explosive powder that would explode at any time "in the face of Abbas and the Israeli occupation." "President Abbas can't put more pressure on the Gaza Strip because it would explode at his face and in all directions," said al-Hayyah. "Hamas can never be pressured or blackmailed. It will keep being patient and continue to struggle." Abbas and his Fatah Party earlier warned Hamas that "unprecedented measures" will be soon taken against the Gaza Strip to oblige Hamas rulers to end more than ten years of internal division. They said measures that would directly hurt the daily life of more than 2 million people of the enclave are to be immediately executed if Hamas refuses to hand over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority. "The President (Abbas) will certainly fail to put pressure on Hamas or on the populations of the Gaza Strip, because Gaza has never kneeled to the occupation or any other power on earth," said al-Hayyah. Meanwhile, Hamas movement also said in an emailed leaflet that an earlier Israeli attack on Gaza "can never force Gaza armed resistance to stop their struggle against ending the occupation and liberating the occupied territories." Earlier, Israeli tanks shelled on eastern Gaza Strip in response to a shooting attack by Gaza gunmen on an Israeli army force patrolling the border area. Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, after weeks of fighting with Abbas' security forces. Since then, an internal political and geographical division over administrative, financial and security issues has remained between the two sides despite a series of Arab and international mediations. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 19:58:29|Editor: ying Video Player Close LUSAKA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Microsoft Corporation has handed over the ownership and management of an Intellectual Property (IP) Hub to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the regional bloc said on Thursday. The online IP Hub project was started by Microsoft in 2014 to create and encourage an intellectual property culture in Africa as an initiative developed under Microsoft 4Africa, as an online learning resource to drive awareness around intellectual property. It was to be piloted for two years and thereafter be handed over to the regional bloc member countries. The regional bloc confirmed in a statement that the IP Hub was officially handed over during a ceremony held in Nairobi Kenya on April 26 on the sidelines of the commemoration of this year's World Intellectual Property Day. "The COMESA IP Hub is a concerted effort between the public and private sector for the development of a regional platform that can contribute to a strengthened national IP protection system, in a manner that promotes innovation, business development and trade," COMESA Secretary-General Sindiso Ngwenya said in the statement. He added that the value of IP and IP protection has not yet been fully utilized within the region and that the hand over marks a shift in the regional bloc towards the realization of the need to protect IP, with copyright protection being the initial step. In addition to handing over the IP Hub, Microsoft 4Africa will continue to collaborate with IP authorities in the regional bloc to automate their IP registration processes. Microsoft and COMESA are also working together to enable the creation of new IP by promoting a trusted cloud infrastructure, underpinned by relevant policies around cyber security and data privacy. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 20:03:32|Editor: ying Video Player Close ZAGREB, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic unexpectedly dismissed on Thursday three ministers and members of the junior party from the government. Plenkovic decided to expel minister of justice, minister of the interior and minister of environmental protection and energy, all three members of the party the Bridge, after they supported the opposition request for the launch of the confidence vote for the minister of finance. The opposition wants to dismiss minister of finance because he was one of the directors in Agrokor, the biggest private company in Croatia that is struggling to avoid collapse. The sudden decision made by Plenkovic put the government at risk, as the ruling party doesn't enjoy a majority in the parliament. Croatian media reports say the government will barely survive this crisis. Bozo Petrov, the Bridge party leader, said Thursday that the prime minister is trying to demolish the government. Croatian government is in power only six months. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 20:43:40|Editor: ying Video Player Close ISTANBUL, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A Russian warship sank after hitting a cargo ship in the Black Sea on Thursday due to heavy fog, but all were rescued, Turkish media said. The incident occurred off the Kilyos neighborhood in Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Strait, where the Russian warship crashed into a cargo ship and sank later, Turkish press reports said. Initial reports said 15 soldiers went missing, but the Russian defense minister was quoted as saying that all 78 Russians onboard were rescued. The freighter, which departed from Romania and was heading to Jordan, was carrying livestock and all 17 people aboard are in good condition, the reports said. Turkey's NTV said the Russian ship, named Liman, sank in the collision believed to be caused by heavy fog in the area. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has called his Russian counterpart to express his sorrow, the reports said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 20:43:42|Editor: ying Video Player Close BERLIN, April 27 (Xinhua) -- In a statement to German federal parliament on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she supported the EU's proposed line of negotiations to not address future relations between the EU and Britain before the Brexit conditions are clarified. Ahead of the first European Union (EU) Brexit summit on April 29, Merkel outlined the conditions for Britain's withdrawal from the EU. One such condition is the issue of pending financial obligations by Britain towards the EU which has to be resolved before any other framework for future relations can be discussed. The order in which these important issues need to be settled is "not reversible," Merkel said. Merkel also stated that she feels many people in Britain are "under the illusion" that Britain, as third party, would retain the rights of a member state. British Brexit supporters have advertised the withdrawal from the EU, suggesting it would be possible to remove obligations while still profiting from the union. The German chancellor said the goal would be preserving German interests in Britain and avoiding disadvantages to the EU, adding there was a "strong consensus concerning the course of negotiations with Great Britain" among the 27 remaining EU member states. The 27 heads of state and government of the remaining EU member states will decide on a regulatory guideline concerning the Brexit negotiations this Saturday. This will be used as a basis for the negotiating mandate that the 27 states will give the European Commission, according to Merkel. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 20:43:43|Editor: ying Video Player Close by Shi Hao MOSCOW, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia concentrated its fire on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and blasted the military bloc for being a trouble maker during the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) that ended Thursday. At the two-day event, Russia's top military officials said NATO's military expansion in Europe and interference in Middle Eastern affairs will only undermine security and stability there. As a de facto response to the West-dominated Munich Security Conference, the annual MCIS serves as an opportunity for Russia and its partners to air their positions on global and regional issues and lash back over various Western accusations. The MCIS this year was held at a time when Russia and the United States failed to mend their ties as many had expected after U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. CONFRONTATION IN EUROPE "Europe is gradually turning from the most stable and low-militarized region to a zone of heightened tensions and confrontation," said Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov at the conference. He said NATO accuses Russia of being the main source of military threats, while the U.S.-led alliance itself is increasing the scale of military activities in countries near Russia, such as the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. NATO's eastward expansion and deployment of a missile defense system in Europe break the balance of power in the region and increase the risk of military incidents, Gerasimov said. In a latest move, the Pentagon deployed a small number of state-of-the-art F-35 fighters to Estonia, Russia's neighbor, earlier this week. In addition, the Ukrainian crisis is expected to distance Russia and NATO further. Also this week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed the bloc's strong support for Ukraine and encouraged Kiev to go further with reforms to strengthen its defense forces. "The relations between Russia and NATO are at their lowest level since the end of the Cold War," Gerasimov said at the MCIS. Earlier this month, Trump expressed a similar regret when he told the visiting Stoltenberg that the United States is "not getting along with Russia at all" and the relations between the two countries "may be at an all-time low." If Russia-NATO conflicts persist and the alliance keeps expanding and practicing large-scale military activities on its eastern flank, Gerasimov said Russia will be forced to respond adequately and carry out necessary deterrence measures. CONFLICTS IN SYRIA The recent toxic gassing incident in Syria has sharply intensified the chronic spats between Washington and Moscow, a firm supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On April 7, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Syria's Sharyat military airfield in Homs province, after the West accused Damascus of gassing civilians on April 4 in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. But the Russian Defense Ministry said the deadly intoxication was possibly caused by the explosion of chemical weapons produced and stored by the rebels in a local depot during a raid by the Syrian Air Force. At the MCIS, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said: "We regard the U.S. missile attacks as a serious violation of international law. They also threatened the lives of our servicemen conducting fights against terrorism in Syria." Following the missile strikes, Russia suspended the memorandum of understanding on air safety in Syria it had signed with the United States in 2015. Russia also vetoed a United Nations resolution drafted by the United States, Britain and France demanding the Syrian military provide UN investigators with unfettered access to details of their operations on the day of the alleged gassing attack. "For a long time, Russia made attempts to establish cooperation on Syria with the United States and its coalition. However, it has been not possible to achieve a full understanding so far," Shoigu said at the conference. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:03:49|Editor: ying Video Player Close VALLETTA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The minimum wage will increase by 8 euros (8.71 U.S. dollars) per week, or 400 euros per year, by 2019, Maltese government authorities revealed on Thursday. This will be the first increase to the minimum wage in Malta for the last 27 years that is not related to cost of living adjustment. The agreement stipulates that minimum wage earners who have completed their first year of employment will be entitled to a mandatory 3-euro-per-week increase in the second year. Furthermore, they will be entitled to a further 3 euros per week in their third year of employment. Increases will be backdated to Jan. 1, 2017 for those who have completed their first year of employment. This new agreement will be signed by the social partners, the Maltese government and the opposition on Friday. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollars) Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:08:52|Editor: ying Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, April 27 (Xinhua) -- At least seven suspected militants were killed when U.S. pilotless aircraft launched missile strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of North Waziristan on Thursday, local Urdu media reported. Aaj News said that the U.S. drones fired two missiles to pound two hideouts of the suspected militants in Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal area located along Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Quoting tribal sources, the report added that both the hideouts were completely destroyed in the attack that took place at about 2 p.m. local time (0900 GMT). The killed included a commander of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and his six accomplices who were holding a meeting in one of the targeted hideouts. Thursday's drone strike is second of its kind in Pakistan since the beginning of this year. On March 2, at least two suspected militants were killed in a similar attack in the neighboring tribal area of Kurram agency. Pakistan is against the drone strikes within its territory as it calls them violation of its sovereignty. A Turkish boat at the Black Sea near the village of Kiylos, April 27, 2017.(Xinhua/Reuters photo) ISTANBUL, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A Russian warship sank after hitting a cargo ship in the Black Sea on Thursday due to heavy fog, but all were rescued, Turkish media said. The incident occurred off the Kilyos neighborhood in Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Strait, where the Russian warship crashed into a cargo ship and sank later, Turkish press reports said. Initial reports said 15 soldiers went missing, but the Russian defense minister was quoted as saying that all 78 Russians onboard were rescued. The freighter, which departed from Romania and was heading to Jordan, was carrying livestock and all 17 people aboard are in good condition, the reports said. Turkey's NTV said the Russian ship, named Liman, sank in the collision believed to be caused by heavy fog in the area. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has called his Russian counterpart to express his sorrow, the reports said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:29:00|Editor: ying Video Player Close VILNIUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Lithuania's Ministry of Economy plans to announce another contest to find a head for the state's Department of Tourism after the first round failed to select one, the ministry said in its press release on Thursday. The chief post of the department has been left vacant since a scandal of fake photos representing the Baltic country forced the resignation of the former director. According to the ministry, 10 applications were submitted for the first contest, but only two entered the selection process after three were found unqualified and the other five withdrew. "According to the rules, the candidate is declared as a winner if he or she collects the highest score in the scale up to 10, but not less than 6 points; however, both candidates were below this mark," Nerijus Rudaitis, chairman of contest commission and chancellor at the Ministry of Economy was quoted as saying in the press release. The former head of Department of Tourism Jurgita Kazlauskiene resigned this February after her department was criticized for using fake photos to illustrate Lithuania's landscape in a marketing campaign with slogan "Lithuania, Real is Beautiful." Local media say some of the photos have been purchased from websites Shutterstock or Flickr, including some taken in Slovakia and Finland. Lithuania launched the "Real is Beautiful" campaign in October last year, aiming to draw more tourists to its sandy beaches and lush woodlands. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:34:02|Editor: ying Video Player Close NAIROBI, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Kenya and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday launched the revised Immigration Border Procedures and Operations Manual to capture new immigration laws, policies and procedure. The manual, which was first developed in 2006 and later revised in 2010 to accommodate further changes, will help address various migration challenges facing Kenya in today's ever mobile, complex and challenging world. Speaking in Nairobi at the launch, Director of Immigration Services Gordon Kihalangwa said that the revised manual will aid border officials in tackling a myriad of migration challenges facing Kenya. "Human trafficking, terrorism, and document fraud are some of the complex challenges we are currently facing at our border posts," Kihalangwa said. The officials say instability, radicalization and armed conflict in neighboring countries have created an uncertain environment for immigration in Kenya which has been addressed in various policy documents including the revised manual. IOM Head of Kenya County Office, Mike Pillinger, noted that the manual is a result of re-assessing immigration and border management against a backdrop of evolving migration trends, policies, profiles, legislations and regulations. "It pools pertinent up-to-date policies and procedures for the guidance of immigration officers in their daily work at the border posts across Kenya and headquarters in Nairobi," Pillinger said. The Minister-Counsellor, Yoshihiro Katayama from the Embassy of Japan said the revised manual is a significant step towards the enhancement of border management in Kenya. "Enhancement of better border management in Kenya means it will help the country mitigate security risks and reduce anxiety," he said. The revision of the Immigration Border Procedures and Operations Manual is one of the activities under the Immigration and Border Management (IBM) project that IOM is implementing in partnership with the Department of Immigration Services of the Government of Kenya, and supported by funding from Japan. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:34:03|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China Thursday ratified a treaty on exchange of convicted criminals between China and Tajikistan at the bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee. The treaty allows convicted persons to serve prison sentences in their home countries to facilitate their rehabilitation. Currently, both China and Tajikistan have nationals serving terms in each other's prisons, Minister of Justice Zhang Jun said Monday when explaining the treaty to legislators. Ratification of the treaty enhances judicial cooperation and promotes friendship between the two countries, said Zhang. The treaty was signed on Sept. 13, 2014 in Tajik capital of Dushanbe and has been ratified by the Tajik side. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 21:39:06|Editor: ying Video Player Close ISTANBUL, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A Russian warship sank after hitting a cargo ship in the Black Sea on Thursday due to heavy fog, but all were rescued, Turkish media said. The incident occurred off the coast of Kilyos in Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Strait, where the Russian warship crashed into a cargo ship and sank later, Turkish press reports said. Initial reports said 15 troops went missing, but the Turkish coast guard confirmed later on its website that all 78 Russians onboard were rescued. The freighter, which departed from Romania and was heading to Jordan, was carrying 17 crew and 8,800 sheep and was only slightly damaged, the reports said. The Turkish coast guard said the ship was flying a Togo flag. Turkey's NTV said the Russian ship, named Liman, sank in the collision believed to be caused by heavy fog in the area. The Turksih military sent a search and rescue plane to the area following a call for help from the Russians, and the conditions of the Russian crew are good, NTV said. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has called his Russian counterpart to express his sorrow, press reports said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 22:24:22|Editor: ying Video Player Close SANAA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The warring parties in Yemen are gearing up for a looming battle over the western city and port of Hodeida amidst growing fears any military escalation there will lead to catastrophic consequences. The government and the Saudi-led coalition are pushing for this battle for several goals, the first of which is to prevent the Houthi-Saleh alliance from using the Hodeida port to smuggle weapons primarily from Iran. The government and the coalition are also accusing the Houthi-Saleh alliance of using the port to threaten international navigation with direct attacks on ships and naval mines as well as seizing aid delivered through this port for civilians affected by the war. Lately, the Houthis attacked a Saudi frigate off Yemen with a boat which the coalition said had sailed from Hodeida. Yaseen Al-Tamimi, a political writer and analyst, said Hodeida has a geopolitical significance and seizing it will affect the power of the Houthi-Saleh alliance and force it to make concessions for the sake of the peace process. "In addition, the government and its backers are seeking to suffocate the alliance through taking its remaining lifeline of income, the Hodeida port," Al-Tamimi said. Besides taking over all seaports and regions of natural resources, the Yemeni government with international and regional support has taken several steps including the relocation of the Central Bank from Sanaa into Aden in an effort to cut all sources of income of the alliance. Another goal of the government and the coalition for the Hodeida battle is to restrict the Houthi-Saleh influence to their region that was supposed to be established in accordance with the outcomes of the 2013 national dialogue conference, observers said. The Houthi-Saleh alliance rejected the outcomes of the dialogue conference and seized power and the capital Sanaa in September 2014, triggering a civil war and later in early 2015 the Saudi-led military intervention. Nabil Albukiri, a researcher in international strategies and political writer, said: "the government and the coalition are seeking to surround the Houthi-Saleh alliance from all directions to limit its influence to a region where it does not have a large public support for its political project." "In the end that could trigger a popular uprising against the alliance in its region amid the ongoing war and blockade on the country," Albukiri added. "In other words, the fall of Hodeida will represent a huge military, political and economic loss to the Houthi-Saleh alliance." In recent weeks, the government forces with direct support from the Saudi-led coalition intensified the battles against the Houthi-Saleh forces in the adjacent province of Taiz as a prelude for the Hodeida battle. Taiz and Hodeida lie on the Red Sea, the first overlooks the strategic Bab El-Mandab Strait, one of the world's busiest waterways. They are the most densely populated cities in the country, with more than 2 million people living in Hodeida at the moment. Observers argued that military escalation in Hodeida will not only deepen the dire humanitarian crisis but also will result in so many deaths of civilians as international organizations accuse all warring parties of indiscriminate attacks and flagrant violation of international laws. Hassan Al-Warith, a political writer, said Hodeida has the last seaport run by the Houthi-Saleh alliance and that is why the alliance is mobilizing tribes and forces to defend it by all means. "If war escalates in Hodeida, tens of thousands of civilians are expected to die. The battle will be very fierce and I don't think it would be won by any side," Al-Writh said. "Two years of war have passed and it is still raging. No obvious military victory has been achieved by any side. We should admit this fact. I don't know what makes them believe the war in Hodeida will be different from a war of attrition and chaos they have been busy with in several regions for two years," he added. The UN has urged the parties to the conflict to keep the Hodeida port functioning as it is a major lifeline for imports while warning military escalation in Hodeida will deepen the already dire humanitarian crisis in the country. Yemen has the world's largest humanitarian crisis since 1945 with two thirds of the population, around 19 million, in need of humanitarian and protection assistance, the UN said. Hodeida has the highest poverty and malnutrition rates in Yemen. "If the fighting worsens and cuts the lifeline through the port of Hodeida, the survival of millions of civilians is at risk," said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), in a press release. Some observers expected that the United States will increase its support to the Saudi-led coalition during the Hodeida battle. Adil Al-Shuja'a, a politics professor at Sanaa University, argued that the United States is committed to supporting the coalition in its Yemen war. "I expect direct U.S. engagement in the battle under Trump whose administration wants to send a clear message to Iran," Al-Shuja'a said. "Moreover, U.S. projects in the region depends largely on funds from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, mostly from Saudi Arabia, a matter which increases the possibility of direct US engagement of the war in Yemen in the future," he added. Abaad Studies and research Center, however, expected the United States will not be directly involved in the war in Yemen at a time when it is busy with local disagreements. The United States has expressed concern over threats by Iran-backed militias to international navigation and its interests in the Red Sea. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 22:29:23|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China has been commended for its positive role in addressing the infrastructure gap in Africa. China's infrastructure development projects in Africa have been boosting employment while enabling skills development and technology transfer, according to speakers at a seminar recently organized in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa to deliberate on the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. Organized under the theme, "Belt and Road Initiative: African Perspective," the seminar has attracted speakers and presenters of senior government officials, diplomats, scholars and representatives of international institutions among others. Recalling a report by the World Bank, Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onochie, Resident Representative to Ethiopia of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), said Sub-Saharan Africa lags other developing regions in all dimensions, especially in the power sector, where electricity generating capacity per capita has changed little over 20 years. Only 35 percent of the population has access to electricity and Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest road and railroad densities among developing regions, noted the UNDP Official. "China is playing an important role in addressing the infrastructure gap in Africa," she said. She also underlined the need for UN and other institutions to forge closer partnership with China to crowd-in private investment in infrastructure, support countries to improve efficiency in public investment in infrastructure. Atnafseged Kifle, Advisor to Ethiopian State Minister of Transport, noted on his part that all engineering projects undertaken by China involve the construction of infrastructures much needed by Africa. For that purpose, he said China introduces competitive industries urgently needed by African industrialization and hires large number of local workers for the construction. "Global investment that follows infrastructural advance not only boosts local employment but also generates spillover effects, such as skill development, management experience, and technology transfer, which also help to reduce the high unemployment rate in Africa," he said. He said Ethiopia's Ministry of Transport has a strong view that African policy makers to make the most of Chinese investment in infrastructure development coined under the "Belt and Road Initiative," so as to foster sustainable development. He further noted that African countries need to seize the unprecedented opportunity of Africa-China partnership to team up in planning and promoting infrastructural development and industrial collaboration. The UNDP official has also hailed the development cooperation between China and Ethiopia. "China's role as an international player in development cooperation continues to grow, through bilateral cooperation and multilateral channels. At the 2015 UN Summit in September, China announced a South-South Cooperation Aid Fund worth 2 billion U.S. dollars," she said. The South-South cooperation remains an important framework for engagement between Ethiopia and China on promoting sustainable development, she said, adding that the UNDP has used this vehicle to promote cooperation between China and Ethiopia in the area of renewable energy technologies. Regarding the Belt and Road initiative, the UNDP Resident Representative said the initiative presents a unique opportunity to Ethiopia by building on the existing good partnership with the China on several fronts. "The UN stands ready to support the Government to develop bankable proposals that China could consider funding under the initiative." "I also trust that the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be hosted by China in May 2017 will help to further consolidate the support within the context and aspirations of Agenda 2063 and 2030 agenda for sustainable development," she said. Ethiopia is aggressively pursuing a transformative agenda anchored on industrialization for structural change to achieve middle income status by 2025, reiterated the UNDP Resident Representative. "This is an excellent opportunity for collaboration between the UN agencies and China to support this outcome by strengthening systems, knowledge, and technology adoption towards industrial transformation in Ethiopia," she said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 22:34:24|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday urged the European Union to stop interfering in Hong Kong and Macao affairs and to contribute more to China-EU relations. The European Commission and European External Action Service issued their 2016 reports on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR Wednesday. China has always objected the EU annual reports on Hong Kong and Macao since their return to the motherland, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily press briefing, adding that it is well known that "one country, two systems" has made remarkable achievements. "We urge the EU to halt interference in Hong Kong and Macao affairs, and contribute more to the China-EU relations," Geng said. He said that the SAR system has been effective under the Constitution and the basic law of the two SARs. China will stick to "one country, two systems," "Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong," "Macao people governing Macao,"and a high degree of autonomy, said Geng. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 22:59:34|Editor: yan Video Player Close ISTANBUL, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from the energy sector met in Istanbul on Thursday over how to meet the world's growing demand for energy in a sustainable way. "The economy is growing and our energy needs are very obvious," U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said at a meeting hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank based in Washington. "The U.S. is committed to ensuring universal access to affordable and reliable energy to promote economic growth and energy security," Perry remarked. "For this reason, we are focused on developing all sources of energy." He stressed the importance of traditional sources like coal, gas and nuclear as well as renewables. "All will be needed for energy and economy security in the foreseeable future," he said. The secretary pledged that the Trump administration will issue policies to accelerate progress in all sorts of energy. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, noted that the energy sector has been going through major transformations and the meeting is set to provide a solid platform for discussions in detail. "We are witnessing many transformations such as the development of solar energy, the inclusion of wind in the system and the reduction of the costs of renewable energy sources," he said. Referring to the fact that Russia, the Caspian countries, Iran and the Gulf countries account for 70 percent of global resources, Birol spoke of Turkey's "very advantageous position" in transporting the oil and gas to the established markets as in Europe and the emerging markets as in Asia. Frederick Kempe, president and chief executive of the Atlantic Council, highlighted the importance of developing comprehensive regional energy partnerships. "We will focus on growth that will be handled with the topics of peace, stability, prosperity and economic integration," he said. "And the regional energy partnerships will be at the center of all of them." Representatives of energy companies from 45 countries, during their two-day meeting, will also discuss the issues of strengthening regional business alliances, trade in the Eastern Mediterranean region, diversifying European natural gas supply and sustainable energy enlargement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:14:41|Editor: An Video Player Close Photo taken on March 22, 2017 shows the Gwadar port area in Gwadar, Pakistan. (Xinhua/Liu Tian) by Xinhua writers Yang Shilong, Zhang Zhihuan NEW YORK, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative is a very positive project that helps boost sustainable economic development in the world, especially in ill-connected Asia, a former U.S. diplomat has said. "I think it's a very important project. I think the idea of reconnecting Asia is very important," Marc Grossman, vice chairman of The Cohen Group, told Xinhua in a recent interview. "Because if you look at the area, especially in South Asia, this is a part of the world where, unlike many other parts of the world, there are very few connections really." "When you think about how well-connected Europe is and how much an advantage that has been for its economic development, all those things have yet to come in parts of Asia and Southeast Asia, parts of central Asia, certainly in South Asia as well," said Grossman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and under secretary of state for political affairs. "So this is a big vision on the part of the government of China," he said. Grossman, who was the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from February 2011 to December 2012, said the Belt and Road Initiative would help tackle the unifying challenge in South Asia -- economic growth. "What is the unifying challenge in South Asia? For example, people need jobs. People need sustainable economic development. People need a future," he said. "So I think one of the most interesting things about this vision is that it could really produce a lot of jobs for many, many people (in the region)." The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of infrastructure projects currently under construction throughout Pakistan, is a "very interesting, specific example" of the Belt and Road Initiative comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, Grossman said. "These are positive things, so I'm sure there are lots of reasons to be interested in the Belt and Road Initiative, but for me, it's the question of economic growth," he said. Globalization has lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty. However, Grossman said that some people have been left behind, so he regarded the Belt and Road Initiative as an opportunity to provide jobs to those who have not yet benefited from globalization. The former U.S. official said the upcoming Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in mid-May, the highest level of its kind since the initiative was proposed, represents "a continuing, very important effort on the part of the Chinese government" to showcase the Belt and Road Initiative. "When the summit occurs in May, I think the Chinese side will have a chance to really discuss their objectives and to be honest with people about some of the concerns that are out there. That's only natural. This is a big project and so it's not surprising that people would have concerns about that," he said. The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013 consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. It aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Grossman said China's message has to be clear that the Belt and Road Initiative is a joint project on a voluntary basis, and "not some effort by China to control a lot of other countries." "This is a joint development project. It's not just China telling you what to do or telling you how to do business or giving you some instructions somehow," he said. "I've always believed that you have to start with a vision, so the Chinese have this vision and so now the question is who will carry out the vision and how will the vision be carried out, and that's one of the most important issues (the summit has to answer)," he said. Grossman expressed the hope that some early results would be presented at the summit to demonstrate the great potential and feasibility of the huge project. "I think it's very important to make sure that there's some real success, some early demonstration that this works," the expert said. "People would like to see an example of how this works and how it works fairly, transparently and successfully." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:19:41|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIEV, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Ukrainian government has launched a major police reform to bring the country's law enforcement system closer to European standards, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Thursday. "We are officially starting the project of the police reform in Ukraine, which is implemented with the support of the European Union (EU)," Avakov told reporters, while presenting the reform project. During the first stage of the reform that will last for 18 months, police officers from western, eastern and central Ukraine will undergo a series of trainings to boost their professional skills and improve communication with people, Avakov said. Besides, the initial stage of the reform envisages a renovation of 20 out of 700 police stations in Ukraine, he added. The EU has allocated 6 million euros (about 6.5 million U.S. dollars) for the implementation of the first stage of the reform. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:19:44|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met Thursday in Malta with EU defense ministers for talks on strengthening NATO-EU cooperation and European defense, NATO said in a press release. The two-day meeting in Valletta is the first-ever visit of a NATO chief to Malta, the country that currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Ahead of the meeting, Stoltenberg stressed that NATO was working more closely with the EU on issues such as cyber defense, hybrid challenges, exercises and maritime security. "We agreed on 42 concrete measures in December last year. And we would like to step up and continue that cooperation," Stoltenberg told media, according to the NATO website. Stoltenberg said the importance of NATO-EU cooperation could be seen "just off Malta's coast," where NATO's maritime operation, Sea Guardian, is providing support to the EU's anti-migrant smuggling mission Operation Sophia. He added that currently there are four NATO ships, three NATO maritime patrol aircraft, and some other assets involved. "We are also discussing what more we can do in Libya," Stoltenberg said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:24:48|Editor: yan Video Player Close SINGAPORE, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from China's Guangzhou city and Singapore discussed here Thursday openness, innovation and collaboration aimed at forging closer ties between the two sides. The discussion came as Guangzhou, the capital of China's southern Guangdong province which is preparing to host the 2017 Fortune Global Forum later this year, hosted a roadshow in Singapore. At the event, Guangzhou Vice Mayor Cai Chaolin said Guangzhou and Singapore share many similarities including city scale, cultural background and language, and Singapore, in fact, even hosted the first Fortune Global Forum in 1995. "Our forward-thinking outlook and cooperation in the past years have enabled us to pursue meaningful projects together that have enriched our economies," the vice mayor said. "What lies ahead is exciting. We look forward to have more collaboration between the two sides." Two letters of intent on the Sino-Singapore collaboration were also signed at the roadshow. Guangzhou is one of the most important business centers in China and also a gateway to the outside world. In the last five years, Guangzhou has witnessed an average of 10.1 percent increase in its gross domestic product (GDP), with local service industry's growth approaching that of developed economies, representing 66.77 percent of the total GDP in 2016. Guangzhou has continued to increase its investment in advancing technologies talent, and improve convenience, effectiveness and efficiency of trade facilitation and services, thus creating more opportunities for cooperation with Singapore and the region. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:44:55|Editor: yan Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The government of China on Thursday provided life saving nutrition assistance worth 8 million U.S. dollars to support the United Nations World Food Program's (WFP) response in drought-hit Ethiopia. The contribution from China will enable WFP to provide specialized treatment for more than 277,000 moderately malnourished children and women due to the ongoing drought that affected parts of the east African country. La Yifan, the Chinese Ambassador in Ethiopia, said during the handing over ceremony that China is a friendly country, providing support to its best ability. "We are a developing country, but we obliged to provide assistance to other countries through the World Food Program," he said. The ambassador appreciated efforts made by the Ethiopian government to reach out the emergency needs of its drought affected citizens. He also called on the international community to fulfill the commitments made in the fight against climate change, as a sustainable solution to minimize the occurrence of natural disasters such as the ongoing drought that affected parts of the Horn of African region. John Aylieff, WFP Ethiopia Representative and Country Director, appreciating China's contribution to support people in drought affected Ethiopia, said that the support has come at a crucial moment as the east African country endures the worst drought in 50 years. "While the government did so much itself, support from the international community was needed. It was at this moment that China came forward," he said. Tadesse Bekele, Advisor at Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management, also appreciated the contribution from China, saying that "China is very generous to Ethiopia." "I am very much delighted that this supplementary food assistance will help those desperate people, and we will be able to save the lives of children and lactating mothers," he said. According to Tadesse, the Ethiopian government is working on proactive measures to minimize the effect of the drought in its effort to save the lives of millions of people. The Government of Ethiopia and its humanitarian partners on January this year have officially launched the Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD) for 2017, looking for 948 million U.S. dollars to reach out to 5.6 million people with emergency food and non-food assistance. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:49:57|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Thursday published an urban water atlas for Europe during a meeting of ministers in charge of water management from the 43 members of the Union for the Mediterranean in Valetta. This tool is the first of its kind and provides information about water management in European cities. It shows how different water management choices, waste management and climate change would affect the long-term sustainability of water use in cities. The atlas aims to encourage European citizens to take an interest and get involved in water issues, according to the Commission. There are two online tools presented with the atlas to help European cities with water management. The first one is City Blueprint, which is an interactive tool to support strategic decision-making. It presents up to 25 different aspects of water management of a city and provides tailor-made options for making urban water services more sustainable. The other is City Amberprint, which is a tool for assessing a city's progress towards becoming smart and sustainable. The publication is funded by European Union Horizon 2020 strategy. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:49:57|Editor: yan Video Player Close VIENTIANE, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Lao Ministry of Health (MoH) has said as of May 1, all cigarette products of all brands, either domestically made or imported for commercial purposes in Laos, must be affixed with health warnings covering 75 percent of the packaging. "If we find violations of this regulation, the violators will be warned, have their products seized, fined or have their business license suspended," Phat Keungsaneth, head of the Secretariat to the National Tobacco Control Committee, said on Thursday. "We expect that in three months, cigarette products circulated in the market that are yet to be labeled with health warnings will disappear and replaced with those with pictorial warnings affixed on the packaging." Phat said as other countries that signed the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have done similarly, the move will promote public awareness of health hazards and the menace of smoking cigarettes and inhaling secondhand smoke. "These efforts will help the government inspect and prevent smuggled cigarettes and promote health protection among the general public, especially from non-communicable diseases," Lao News Agency quoted Phat as saying. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-27 23:55:01|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIEV, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has pledged to create favorable conditions for Chinese businesses in Ukraine, local media reported Thursday. "I am committed to sparing no effort to create the conditions for the effectiveness of our cooperation. China is our principal economic partner, and we express strong intention to continue developing our partnership," Groysman was quoted as saying during a meeting with Sun Bai, chairman of China National Complete Engineering Corporation (CCEC). Ukraine is willing to implement joint projects with China in agriculture, energy and infrastructure, Groysman added. Sun said that the CCEC is ready to discuss the possibility of creating China's first modernized agricultural park in Ukraine. Sun also suggested holding a Chinese-Ukrainian agricultural forum in Beijing in September and later in Kiev. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:00:03|Editor: An Video Player Close Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), presides over the closing meeting of the 27th session of the 12th NPC Standing Committee in Beijing, capital of China, April 27, 2017. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng) BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) closed its bi-monthly session Thursday, adopting a revised surveying and mapping law and ratifying two treaties. Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the closing meeting of the four-day session, which opened Monday. LEGISLATION The session approved the revised surveying and mapping law, which was formulated in 1992 and amended in 2002. Revisions deal with the use of safe, reliable technology and equipment, managing navigation and positioning reference stations and supervision of Internet mapping services. The law will help protect the security of important national geographic information and boost the sound development of the geographic information industry, said Zhang. President Xi Jinping signed a decree to publish the revised law, which will take effect on July 1. Lawmakers also deliberated a draft law on nuclear safety, draft amendments to the securities law and the standardization law. QUOTA OF NEW NPC DEPUTIES As the tenure of current lawmakers expires in March 2018, and new lawmakers will be elected, plans on the quota distribution of deputies to 13th NPC were adopted at the session. According to the plans, no more than 3,000 deputies should be elected to the 13th NPC, with 36 from Hong Kong and 12 from Macao. Deputies from ethnic minority groups will account for about 12 percent of the total. Taiwan will have 13 deputies for the time being, to be elected by a 122-strong group consisting of Taiwan compatriots from provincial-level regions, central departments and the People's Liberation Army. REFORM OF JUROR SYSTEM Lawmakers decided to extend the trial reform of the people's juror system by a year to increase public participation in legal proceedings. The two-year pilot program at 50 courts in 10 provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Hebei and Heilongjiang is due to end in May. In 2016, jurors at the 50 courts participated in the hearings of 11,642 criminal cases, 64,917 civil cases and 5,213 administrative cases. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:00:05|Editor: yan Video Player Close VALLETTA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The sum of 3.7 million euros (4.02 million U.S. dollars) in EU funding has been secured to finance three new projects aimed at enhancing Malta's security, Maltese Parliamentary Secretariat for EU Presidency Ian Borg announced on Thursday. The projects' estimated cost is around 5 million euros, so the EU funding will cover three quarters of the costs. The projects aims to invest in x-ray scanning equipment to enhance Malta's Customs Department's capabilities, providing access to language learning for migrants, and to facilitate their integration in Maltese society. Another project will focus on the completion of a high degree isolation unit to ensure that transmission of infections does not occur. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:25:17|Editor: yan Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy will continue escort missions, a long-term task, Yang Yujun, spokesperson of the Ministry of National Defense (MOD) said at a press briefing Thursday. China will continue to play its role in maintaining regional stability and safeguarding vital marine routes, Yang said when responding to reporters' questions on the resurgence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia this year. On April 15, Frigate Hengyang of China's 25th convoy fleet rescued a Panamanian ship from suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The Chinese navy also freed a Tuvalu-registered vessel that had been hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden on April 9. Since December 2008, Chinese fleets have escorted more than 6,000 ships through the area and have rescued or assisted more than 60 ships. Also at the press briefing, Yang Yujun pointed out the progress and improvements China's second aircraft carrier has made. The aircraft carrier was launched Wednesday. "Its design and construction drew on the experience of the Liaoning, and have improved on many aspects," said Yang, referring to the country's first aircraft carrier, which was rebuilt from the Soviet Union ship Varyag and completed in 2011. The name of the new aircraft carrier will be announced when it is delivered and commissioned to the PLA Navy, according to Yang. The new aircraft carrier, the first developed and built by China, will undergo equipment debugging, outfitting and mooring trials, with its main body already completed. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:30:18|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 27 (Xinhua)-- The European Union (EU)'s 27 member states on Thursday put the seal on the guidelines of the Brexit talks, Malta's deputy prime minister and minister of European affairs told reporters in Luxembourg in the run-up to the bloc's Brexit summit this weekend. "Today's meeting was remarkable in the sense that it was an unprecedented signal of trust, unity, and consensus of the EU 27," Louis Grech, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, said at a press conference following the EU's general affairs council, which met for the first time in an EU 27 format without the presence of Britain. "All delegations agreed with the overall trust of the guidelines, and express their full support," he said. Grech said the guidelines were "a very good start to these complex negotiations ahead of us," and "the basis for negotiating directives under article 50 (of the EU's Lisbon Treaty)." He outlined that the key priorities of the EU member states at this stage were issues pertaining to citizens rights, financial settlement, and border matters, stressing it was in the mutual interest of EU 27 and Britain to avoid any uncertainty. The guidelines will be adopted and unveiled on Saturday at the EU summit convened by European Council President Donald Tusk late March, in the wake of Britain's notification letter declaring its intention to leave the block after 44 years of membership. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:30:19|Editor: yan Video Player Close CHICAGO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- United Airlines on Thursday announced 10 major changes to its current policies regarding customer services and some of the company's code of conduct for employees in an effort to improve its images damaged by a PR crisis four weeks ago. In an email to the media, United Airlines said the changes are "the result of United's thorough examination of its policies and procedures" in the wake of the forced removal of a customer aboard United Express Flight 3411 on April 9. The changes, some of which United said will take effect immediately, include limiting the use of law enforcement, not requiring seated customers to give up their seats unless safety is in concern, increasing customer compensation to 10,000 U.S. dollars, reducing overbooking and changes to how United employees should travel with company's flights. In this latest announcement, the company's CEO Oscar Munoz apologized again for the incident that took place on the United flight two weeks ago, saying "this is a turning point for all of us at United," and "these changes are just the beginning of how we will earn back their trust." Earlier this month, Dr. Dao, a Kentucky doctor of Vietnamese decent, was dragged off a United flight by airport security after refusing to give up his seat for United employees. The United is now facing a lawsuit by Dao and government probe into the incident, plunging stock price and severe damage to its image among customers. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 00:55:30|Editor: yan Video Player Close DAR ES SALAAM, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A senior official with the East African Community (EAC) said on Thursday implementation of the bloc's single customs territory (SCT) has tremendously reduced the cost of doing business in the region. Dicksons Kateshumbwa, chairman of the EAC Committee on Customs, said turnaround time has been reduced from 21 days to 3-5 days on average between the entry points to Kampala in Uganda, Kigali in Rwanda, and Bujumbura in Burundi. The six-member EAC is implementing a number of customs projects, including the SCT, transforming the way of doing business for the benefit of EAC members economies. "Capacity building and sensitization to support the SCT has been done and is ongoing," Kateshumbwa told a news conference in Dar es Salaam. The SCT started in 2014 on both the northern and central corridors where goods are assessed and declared at the first point of entry and move to the destination partner state with taxes and duties paid upfront. Kateshumbwa said integration of customs functioning was enhanced through cross-border deployment of staff in partner states, leading to better accountability, deterrence of smuggling and closer cooperation among customs authorities. "So far we have rolled out goods on the SCT on pilot basis," Kateshumbwa said. "However, the most important decision we have made today is that we have agreed on the full implementation of the SCT effective July 31, 2017." He said customs automation across the region has been enhanced in all member states -- Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan -- with upgrades of the customs systems and migration to more advanced and robust systems. "At regional level an inter-connectivity program has been initiated to address the current weaknesses in customs valuation and monitoring of goods across the region," he said. Kateshumbwa said due to the changing and dynamic business environment, the EAC has embarked on a comprehensive review of EAC Common External Tariff (CET) to align to the realities of trade. "The CET is supposed to be reviewed after every five years. The exercise is expected to be finalized by the end of this year," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 01:15:36|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China's economic planner has pledged more efforts to push forward structural reforms in 2017 as the world's second-largest economy is still in the middle of overall rebalancing. Supply-side structural reform remains high on this year's work agenda, said a statement released Thursday after a two-day meeting of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Solid and effective measures will be rolled out to cut excessive capacity, reduce the number of unsold homes, de-leverage, bring down business burdens, and improve weak areas. The NDRC said it aims for new breakthroughs in economic restructuring. While the economy has shown signs of stabilizing in the first quarter, structural problems remain and uncertainties linger, which requires unwavering and continued efforts to deepen reforms, according to the statement. Other key areas were also highlighted, including cutting red tape, reforms in taxation and finance, the mixed ownership of state-owned firms, opening up in more sectors, and environmental protection. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 01:30:40|Editor: yan Video Player Close TEHRAN, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry on Thursday criticized the Pakistani government for its "failure" to protect its borders against militant groups who recently killed Iranian border guards in a cross-border attack, Tasnim news agency reported. Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said Pakistan should be held accountable for the presence and operation of militant groups in its territory. The Islamic republic will spare no efforts to follow up on the issue through all diplomatic and political channels, Qasemi was quoted as saying. On Wednesday, 10 Iranian security forces were killed in the clashes with the armed groups in the southeastern border region of Iran. Four guards were injured in the clashes, which took place at the Mirjaveh border point in Sistan and Baluchestan province. The border guards were patrolling when they were targeted, Tehran Times daily reported. "Our border guards had been targeted from inside Pakistan's soil," Iranian police speaker Saeed Montazerolmahdi was quoted as saying by the daily. "Our investigations show that long-range arms had been used to launch the attack," he said. Over the past decades, Iran's eastern and southeastern border had been the scene of clashes between Iranian security forces and armed drug smugglers on the one hand and security forces with the ethnic Sunni rebels on the other. Jaish al-Adl, or "Army of Justice" has claimed responsibility for the attack on Iran's border guards. The Sunni rebel group claimed to fight for the rights of Sunni Muslims in the Iran's provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan. On Thursday, Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli also said that Tehran will pursue the commitments of neighboring Pakistan to the security and border agreements between the two countries through diplomatic channels. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 01:45:46|Editor: yan Video Player Close LOME, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Celebrations marking the 57th anniversary of Togo's independence on Thursday culminated with a military and civilian parade. President Faure Gnassingbe, Prime Minister Selom Klassou, parliament speaker Drama Dramani and other senior officials and opposition leaders were among those attending the celebrations on the avenue of the new presidential palace, on the northern outskirts of the capital city, Lome. Togo became independent on April 20, 1960. On Thursday, a special tribute was paid to Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the country, who was assassinated in a coup in 1963. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 01:55:51|Editor: yan Video Player Close STOCKHOLM, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Swedish government on Thursday proposed a list of measures to make it harder for paperless migrants to stay in Sweden. These include tougher fines on companies that hire illegal migrants, seeing over the production and distribution of personal identification cards, and giving police greater authority to finger-print, check IDs and use force to carry out deportation orders, Swedish public television broadcaster SVT reported. Companies are currently fined 2,500 U.S. dollars for hiring people living in Sweden illegally. The Swedish government proposes doubling the fine to 5,000 U.S. dollars, and then to 10,000 U.S. dollars in a second phase for companies that have had illegal employees for more than three months. The proposals, presented Thursday in a press conference with Interior Minister Anders Ygeman and Minister for Justice and Migration Morgan Johansson, are intended to facilitate and expedite the deportation of asylum seekers whose applications have been denied. "Employers that exploit people who are already vulnerable should feel the sting," Johansson said. The public debate surrounding the repatriation of asylum seekers whose applications have been denied skyrocketed in Sweden after the terror attack in Stockholm on April 7. Rakhmat Akilov, an Uzbek man, was arrested for driving a truck that killed four people and injured 15 others. Akilov had been living in Sweden illegally after his asylum application was denied. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 01:55:51|Editor: yan Video Player Close SANAA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A Yemeni pro-government military commander along with at least seven soldiers were killed Thursday in Yemen's northeast province of Marib in a missile attack fired by rebel Houthi fighters, a military official said. "Colonel Abdullah al-Rashedi, commander of the third battalion, and at least seven soldiers were killed and 20 others wounded in a rebel missile attack that targeted a government military base in Serwah district west of Marib early on Thursday," the official said. Many of the injured were in critical conditions, the official said on condition of anonymity. Marib, situated about 173 km northeast of the rebel-held capital Sanaa, has been recaptured by the government forces backed by a Saudi-led military coalition last year. The oil-rich province has since been under frequent attacks from rebel Houthi fighters and their allied forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Last week, Houthis claimed they shot down a Saudi-led coalition Black Hawk helicopter in Marib, killing 12 military personnel aboard. However, the Yemeni defense ministry's news website denied the rebel allegation and said the coalition helicopter was brought down by friendly fire "as a result of a misreading of the air defense system." Saudi Arabia is leading a mostly Arab military coalition to fight Houthi rebels in Yemen in a bid to restore the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was ousted by Houthis in September 2014. Houthis and Saleh militias have still controlled over most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemeni people, half of them civilians, and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian agencies. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:05:52|Editor: yan Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Michael Flynn, the former U.S. national security adviser, was warned by the Pentagon in 2014 against receiving foreign payments, said new watchdog documents released on Thursday. According to the documents released by the House Oversight Committee, Lt. General Flynn was warned on October 8, 2014 by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that he was prohibited by the Constitution from receiving payments from foreign sources without advance permission. "Accordingly, if you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance," Flynn was told in a DIA letter. In 2015, Flynn reportedly received about 34,000 U.S. dollars for a speech at an event in Moscow, Russia, and he was also under media scrutiny for his past lobbying on behalf of Turkey. In a statement released on Tuesday, Flynn's attorney said that Flynn briefed the DIA "extensively" on his 2015 overseas trip to Moscow and he answered questions that were posed by DIA on the trip. However, another DIA letter to the Congress released Thursday by House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings appeared to counter the defense of Flynn's team. "DIA did not locate any records referring to LTG Flynn's receipt of money from a foreign source... DIA did not locate any records of LTG Flynn seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source," said the DIA letter. Flynn was forced to step down in February after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his telephone conversation with the Russian Ambassador to the United States, in which he made comments about U.S. sanction on Russia. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:10:56|Editor: yan Video Player Close JERUSALEM, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Israel's army said Thursday that its Patriot missile defense system intercepted an incoming object from Syria, reportedly a drone, while it was above the Israeli-held Golan Heights. Local media reported that the projectile was a drone that crossed from Syria to Israel's aerial territory. A military spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the Patriot system "intercepted a target above the Golan Heights" in northern Israel. The statement did not provide further details. The incident came in the wake of an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria during the night between Wednesday and Thursday. The Syrian army confirmed that Israel missile fire targeted a Syrian military position near the international airport of the capital Damascus. Israel fired several missiles from inside the annexed territory against one of the military positions southwest of the Damascus airport, causing fire and several explosions in the targeted site, which left damages, according to a report on the state TV that quoted Syrian army source. Israel has not officially assumed responsibility for the attack, but local media reported that the strike targeted a weapon arsenal of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group that fights alongside President Bashar al-Assad army. It was not the first Israeli strike, as the Israelis have ramped up their airstrikes on military positions in Syria recently, targeting military base in Qunaitera province in southern Syria this week, as well as a military position near the ancient city of Palmyra last month. Israel seized the Golan Heights during the 1967 war and annexed it later in a move that has never been recognized internationally. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:20:57|Editor: MJ Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently invited African Union (AU) chief Moussa Faki to Washington for a meeting but backed out at the last minute, according to local media reports. AU Commission Chairperson Faki received an invitation from Tillerson to Washington on the week of April 17 after his meetings at the United Nations, according to Foreign Policy that quoted sources familiar with the arrangement. While Faki had scheduled his trip to Washington on April 19 and 20 and was waiting for further details of the meeting from the U.S. State Department, Tillerson's office "went radio silent for several days", Foreign Policy reported. When U.S. State Department later contacted Faki's aides as the AU chief was about to leave for Washington, a new offer of meeting with lower-level State Department officials was made, said the report. However, Faki cancelled his Washington trip entirely. "African Union officials were incensed," Foreign Policy quoted Reuben Brigety, former U.S. ambassador to the African Union, as saying. "This is ridiculous, particularly at a time when Africans are increasingly becoming more and more aware of their choices in partners around the world," Brigety reportedly said. Citing a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Foreign Policy reported that the meeting was requested by Faki's team and the State Department "never guaranteed one would happen." However, the U.S. official acknowledged that there was a "miscommunication in the Secretary's availability." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:26:00|Editor: yan Video Player Close YEREVAN, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Armenia and the European Union held the first round of negotiations on Wednesday in Yerevan on forming a common aviation area, according to Armenpress. The talks were led by the Director of the General Department of Civil Aviation of Armenia (GDCA) Sergey Avetisyan, and Deputy Head of Unit for Aviation Agreements of the European Commission Klaus Geil. According to Piotr Switalski, Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, who also attended the first round of negotiations, introduction of European standards and regulations will make Armenia "a member of our family." Armenia will have bigger opportunities for connecting with the world, which is of paramount importance, he added. GDCA Director Avetisyan said the agreement with the EU will create conditions for geographic diversification in the field and will effectively boost competition, which leads to price cuts and better services provided by airline companies. This will not only lead to lower prices for air fares for Armenians, but also contribute to stronger integration between Armenia and the EU along with the development of the aviation sector. On December 1, 2016, the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council of the EU adopted, without discussion, a mandate that would enable the European Commission to launch talks on a comprehensive air transport agreement with Armenia, which, when reached, will liberalize air travel from Armenia to all EU member states. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:41:04|Editor: yan Video Player Close ZAGREB, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Thursday ruled out a snap parliamentary election after three ministers of the Bridge of Independent Lists party (Most) were dismissed, a coalition partner in the government. Plenkovic, who is also the leader of main ruling party Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), said his party would secure a majority parliament and his cabinet would continue its work after the sack of the three ministers. "We will make sure political stability remains," he said. But he said his party was also ready for a snap elections if events took an unexpected turn, although he believed the situation was unlikely. Plenkovic said that he has support from the HDZ for a possible cabinet reshuffle. The three ministers were dismissed because they failed to support Finance Minister Zdravko Maric amid opposition's demand for him to step down due to what it claimed a lack of credibility in dealing with a financial crisis that hit Croatia's biggest private food company, Agrokor. Bozo Petrov, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Most party, said Plenkovic' move was toppling the coalition government. "Right now the government is not stable, and the prime minister is responsible for its stability," Petrov said. Croatian main opposition, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), expressed it won't participate in a reshuffle and its leader Davor Bernardic said SDP was prepared to take responsibility for Croatia. It was up to Plenkovic to prove that he has a parliamentary majority. If he does not, a snap election has to be called, Bernardic said. Croatian People's Party (HNS), also an opposition party, rejected any possibility of participating in the government reshuffle but supported a national unity government. Political analysts here believed there were two options for Plenkovic, either to find new coalition partners, or to dissolve the government and hold new elections. A dispute between HDZ and Most last year toppled their previous government after just six months in office, a snap election was held. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 02:46:06|Editor: yan Video Player Close MAPUTO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The leader of Renamo, the main opposition party in Mozambique, said on Thursday he is considering to extend a truce with the government. "War is not a good thing. Those that hate democracy think they can end with the opposition using cannons are wrong," Afonso Dlhakama said. "War doesn't solve anything but only brings mourning. That's why I gave truce and I will extend it in the coming days." The outcome will depend on the feedback from the government as peace talks are still in progress, Dlhakama told members of his party in a conference call in central Tete province. According to local media reports, Dlhakama said truce cannot be a decision from only one side while the other is not corresponding, because this has led to problems before. He mentioned a peace agreement signed in Rome in 1992. "Renamo complied with the agreement while Frelimo (the ruling party) alleged that it was finished. Now we are renegotiating as brothers, because nobody wins with war, but we all win with peace in Mozambique," he said. A truce, in place since late December, has been holding despite a few incidents. Dlhakama appealed to members of his party to stay away from provocations and do their best to permit the country to live in a tranquility and harmony. If successful, it would be the fourth time that the truce has been extended. The first was in December for few days, the second in January, and the third started in March and will be ending in early May. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 03:16:16|Editor: MJ Video Player Close MOSCOW, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed here on Thursday to cooperate in various areas, although territorial spats persist between the two countries. Russia and Japan both claim a group of islands off Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia. "We discussed the subjects of joint economic activities in the Southern Kurils," said Putin at a joint press conference with Abe after their talks in the Kremlin. Russia will arrange a trip for Japanese officials and businessmen to the disputed islands this summer to study specific cooperation opportunities, said Putin. Putin said his country is ready to assist Japan in the restoration of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant and offer the latest technologies for cleaning contaminated soil and processing radioactive waste. According to Putin, both sides discussed plans of increasing Russian energy supply to Japan and Japanese enterprises were encouraged to invest in Russia. The decades-old territorial disputes have prevented Russia and Japan from signing a post-World War II peace treaty and hindered diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries. At the press conference, Abe said he and Putin were striving to conclude a peace treaty and hailed the agreements reached during their talks. "Vladimir and I want to strengthen mutual trust between our peoples through a new approach that does not depend on the old ideas," said Abe. To promote people-to-people exchanges, the two countries are planning to simultaneously hold the Year of Japan in Russia and the Year of Russia in Japan in 2018, Abe added. Combination of file photos show Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 29, 2016 and U.S. President DonaldTrump at a press conference at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on Feb. 15, 2017. (Xinhua) by Xinhua writer Shi Hao MOSCOW, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia concentrated its fire on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and blasted the military bloc for being a trouble maker during the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) that ended Thursday. At the two-day event, Russia's top military officials said NATO's military expansion in Europe and interference in Middle Eastern affairs will only undermine security and stability there. As a de facto response to the West-dominated Munich Security Conference, the annual MCIS serves as an opportunity for Russia and its partners to air their positions on global and regional issues and lash back over various Western accusations. The MCIS this year was held at a time when Russia and the United States failed to mend their ties as many had expected after U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. CONFRONTATION IN EUROPE "Europe is gradually turning from the most stable and low-militarized region to a zone of heightened tensions and confrontation," said Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov at the conference. He said NATO accuses Russia of being the main source of military threats, while the U.S.-led alliance itself is increasing the scale of military activities in countries near Russia, such as the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. NATO's eastward expansion and deployment of a missile defense system in Europe break the balance of power in the region and increase the risk of military incidents, Gerasimov said. In a latest move, the Pentagon deployed a small number of state-of-the-art F-35 fighters to Estonia, Russia's neighbor, earlier this week. In addition, the Ukrainian crisis is expected to distance Russia and NATO further. Also this week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed the bloc's strong support for Ukraine and encouraged Kiev to go further with reforms to strengthen its defense forces. "The relations between Russia and NATO are at their lowest level since the end of the Cold War," Gerasimov said at the MCIS. Earlier this month, Trump expressed a similar regret when he told the visiting Stoltenberg that the United States is "not getting along with Russia at all" and the relations between the two countries "may be at an all-time low." If Russia-NATO conflicts persist and the alliance keeps expanding and practicing large-scale military activities on its eastern flank, Gerasimov said Russia will be forced to respond adequately and carry out necessary deterrence measures. CONFLICTS IN SYRIA The recent toxic gassing incident in Syria has sharply intensified the chronic spats between Washington and Moscow, a firm supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On April 7, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Syria's Sharyat military airfield in Homs province, after the West accused Damascus of gassing civilians on April 4 in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. But the Russian Defense Ministry said the deadly intoxication was possibly caused by the explosion of chemical weapons produced and stored by the rebels in a local depot during a raid by the Syrian Air Force. At the MCIS, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said: "We regard the U.S. missile attacks as a serious violation of international law. They also threatened the lives of our servicemen conducting fights against terrorism in Syria." Following the missile strikes, Russia suspended the memorandum of understanding on air safety in Syria it had signed with the United States in 2015. Russia also vetoed a United Nations resolution drafted by the United States, Britain and France demanding the Syrian military provide UN investigators with unfettered access to details of their operations on the day of the alleged gassing attack. "For a long time, Russia made attempts to establish cooperation on Syria with the United States and its coalition. However, it has been not possible to achieve a full understanding so far," Shoigu said at the conference. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 03:21:17|Editor: yan Video Player Close ACCRA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The United States would expel 7,000 Ghanaians this year for breaching terms of their visa agreement, a U.S. diplomat said on Thursday. U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Robert P. Jackson said the Ghanaians had overstayed their permits and were currently at different stages of their deportation process. "About 7,000 of them are currently at different stages of the deportation process, and we are not apologetic about that," Jackson said at an event in the Brong Ahafo region, 400 km north of the capital, Accra. "We have a lot of Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the U.S. and I think that they need to be concerned about whether they would be allowed to remain illegally," Jackson said. "My guess is they will be given some options but the president will be serious about asking those who've violated their visa status to depart." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 03:31:20|Editor: yan Video Player Close WARSAW, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo met with visiting Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari here on Thursday, saying the Polish government is interested in close cooperation with India in mining. In a joint press conference, Szydlo underlined that India is traditionally one of the key non-European partners of Poland, saying: "Poland appreciates India's growing role in the international scene and the progress it has made in recent years." Szydlo said she also discussed civil aviation and military cooperation with Ansari. According to Ansari, in recent decades, India and Poland have been able to build strong economic relationships. During his visit to the chancellery of the prime minister, a cooperation agreement on agriculture was signed between the Agriculture Minister of Poland Krzysztof Jurgiel and his Indian counterpart. The purpose of the agreement is the development and coordination of bilateral cooperation in the agricultural sector. It aims to strengthen bilateral scientific and technological cooperation in the field of agriculture. Ansari also attended the Poland-India Business Forum, organized by the Polish Ministry of Economic Development. Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, April 27, 2017. (Kremlin Photo) MOSCOW, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed here on Thursday to cooperate in various areas, although territorial spats persist between the two countries. Russia and Japan both claim a group of islands off Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia. "We discussed the subjects of joint economic activities in the Southern Kurils," said Putin at a joint press conference with Abe after their talks in the Kremlin. Russia will arrange a trip for Japanese officials and businessmen to the disputed islands this summer to study specific cooperation opportunities, said Putin. Putin said his country is ready to assist Japan in the restoration of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant and offer the latest technologies for cleaning contaminated soil and processing radioactive waste. According to Putin, both sides discussed plans of increasing Russian energy supply to Japan and Japanese enterprises were encouraged to invest in Russia. The decades-old territorial disputes have prevented Russia and Japan from signing a post-World War II peace treaty and hindered diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries. At the press conference, Abe said he and Putin were striving to conclude a peace treaty and hailed the agreements reached during their talks. "Vladimir and I want to strengthen mutual trust between our peoples through a new approach that does not depend on the old ideas," said Abe. To promote people-to-people exchanges, the two countries are planning to simultaneously hold the Year of Japan in Russia and the Year of Russia in Japan in 2018, Abe added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 03:41:23|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIGALI, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on Thursday toured a model rural settlement project in eastern Rwanda. The Ntebe model village, in Rwamagana district, brings together communities where they can work together in sectors such as agriculture and share yields and profits, with easy access to schools, health centers, water, power and sanitation infrastructure, Rwanda's Minister of Local Government Francis Kaboneka said. Desalegn arrived in Kigali on Thursday on a three-day state visit. Rwanda and Ethiopia are expected to sign a number of joint partnership agreements this week aimed to boost cooperation in various areas. Development of the Ntebe model village for internally displaced persons (IDPs) began in 2008. The village now has 772 beneficiaries in 204 households. Rwanda targets to settle 70 percent of its rural population in model villages by 2020, up from the current level of about 55.8 percent, according to Rwanda local government officials. Desalegn is scheduled to tour terraces in Gicumbi district in northern Rwanda on Friday, before addressing a joint press conference with his host, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in Kigali. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:16:49|Editor: yan Video Player Close FREETOWN, April 27 (Xinhua) -- President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone said Thursday he will be leaving office next year and "graciously hand over" to his succesor. In his last state-of-the-nation address, delivered on the country's 56th independence anniversary, Koroma said he was leaving a "legacy of peace and unity" that all Sierra Leoneans should be committed to defend. A presidential election has been scheduled for March 2018. Koroma commended the country for its resilience, noting that over the years, he has observed that his countrymen have learnt to overcome the challenges of war, disease and division. He said that during his last 10 years of service, he is proud of what the country has achieved, adding that Sierra Leone has experienced an uninterrupted peace and stability of governance rated as one of the most "peaceful in the continent." During his tenure, he said, the country has also attracted an "unmatched record of foreign investments" resulting in the employment of many of the country's young people especially in the extractive sector. Koroma called on his people to stick to the country's motto of "unity, freedom and justice." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:41:55|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday met George Soros, founder of Central European University (CEU), over the dispute with Hungary. During the meeting, Soros briefed Juncker about the latest developments of the case regarding CEU, the main issue of his visit, according to a New Europe report. Juncker told Soros that the Commission had sent a letter of formal notice to Hungary, in a legal action, about the education law, according to the report. Earlier, Hungarian President Janos Ader ratified a new regulation that demands an international treaty to be signed between Hungary and the home country of a foreign university that operates in Hungary. Under the rules, the foreign university operating in Hungary also needs to have accredited courses in its home country, which CEU does not have. CEU was founded in 1991 and based first in Prague and later in Budapest. It delivers both American and Hungarian diplomas. It currently has approximately 1,400 students and 370 faculty members from more than 130 countries and regions. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:46:56|Editor: yan Video Player Close PARIS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- More than 300 students were taken ill on Thursday due to suspected food poisoning in Rouen, a city in northeastern France, regional authorities said. Children, aged between 3 and 12, reported symptoms of vomiting and nausea after eating school lunches prepared at the same central canteen. "The children were treated by a group of one hundred healthcare workers including, doctors, nurses and rescue teams in 41 schools and 6 nurseries," Jean-Marc Magda, director of Normandy and Seine prefect's office, was quoted as saying by local media. Twenty five kids were sent to emergency services while the others were undergoing treatment at their schools after noting that many were stricken. "The children are cared for, then comes the time of the investigation. At this stage, one can imagine everything: insufficient cooking, bad handling, rules of hygiene not respected," Magda said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:52:00|Editor: yan Video Player Close LISBON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Portugal has concluded that Spain's plans to build a nuclear waste deposit in Almaraz, around 100 km east of the Portuguese border, is safe, local media revealed on Thursday. Nuno Lacasta, president of the Portuguese Agency for the Environment (APA), said at a press conference in Lisbon that the waste deposit was an "adequate solution" and would meet international safety standards. "There are no estimated transboundary impacts in a normal situation of functioning of the waste deposit," Lacasta pointed out. He said however that Portugal should accompany the upcoming phases of the project. Spain's decision to build the deposit was announced on December 29. Portugal sent a complaint to the European Commission in January regarding the deposit, calling for a study on the impact the waste facility will have on Portugal to been carried out. However Portugal reached an amicable agreement with Spain to withdraw the complaint in February, with Spain agreeing that Portuguese specialists, including engineers, could visit the plant in Almaraz to determine its safety conditions. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:57:01|Editor: yan Video Player Close ROME, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Italian prosecutors are investigating six suspects, including several officials, in the deaths of 29 people at a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy that was flattened by a massive avalanche earlier this year. On January 18, a 120,000-ton mass of snow sped down a mountain at about 100 kilometers per hour and tore into the four-star Rigopiano Hotel, located at altitude of 1,200 meters in the mountainous Abruzzo region. Most of the fatal victims were subsequently found in the entrance hall of the hotel, where they had gathered to wait for a snow plough to dig them out of the snowbound resort so they could leave. A total of 11 survivors -- including four children -- were eventually dug out of the rubble and snow. Italian prosecutors said after the fatal incident that they would investigate why distress calls from the hotel were initially dismissed, why the snow plough didn't arrive until long after the avalanche hit, and whether safety procedures were followed. Questions were raised as to whether the hotel should have been evacuated sooner, given that the incident took place after four powerful magnitude-5 earthquakes shook central Italy amid record snowfall, and there was a level-four avalanche alert that day. Also at issue is the delay in dispatching one of two available turbine snow ploughs, in spite of the fact that hotel staff had requested one hour before the avalanche struck around 4:30 pm. All those under investigation are being probed on possible charges of manslaughter, negligence, and causing bodily harm. The hotel manager is being investigated on additional charges of workplace safety omissions, Italian news agency Ansa reported. A former mountain hut in Italy's scenic Apennine mountains, the Rigopiano became an upmarket hotel and spa in the early 1970s. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 04:57:02|Editor: yan Video Player Close DUBLIN, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A man and a woman aged in their 20s were arrested on Thursday in southeast Ireland's Waterford city on suspicion of being involved in Islamic-related terrorist activities. The man is from Ireland and the woman is from the United Kingdom, according to Irish police. In a statement, police said they were arrested at a rented flat on suspicion of facilitating the transfer of money and information in relation to alleged international terrorist activities. Police cordoned off the flat where the two persons were arrested and a number of items, including mobile phones and computer equipment, were seized for examination. The arrests followed an 18-month operation led by local and national police units, with intelligence input from counter terrorism agencies in the United Kingdom. Both are being held at Waterford police station. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 05:22:06|Editor: yan Video Player Close LONDON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- As part of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an exhibition about Russian Revolution on Thursday opens at the British Library. It shines new light on the unprecedented and world-changing events of the period, focusing on the experiences of ordinary Russians living through extraordinary times. The British Library said the exhibition will tell the incredible story of the Revolution through posters, letters, photographs, banners, weapons, items of uniform, recordings and film. The exhibition begins in the reign of the last Tsar and explores the growth of revolutionary movements and colossal social and political change, showing the transformation of Russia's traditional monarchy into the world's first Communist country. Key figures such as Nicholas II and revolutionary leaders including Vladimir Lenin will be examined along with the political events of the period. Items going on display for the first time include material from the Library's extensive collection of Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik propaganda, as well as a letter written by Lenin in April 1902, applying to become a Reader at the British Museum Library, now part of the British Library. The letter is signed with his pseudonym, Jacob Richter, which he was using in order to evade the Tsarist police of the time. Katya Rogatchevskaia, lead curator of Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths, said: "It is impossible to understand the world today without an understanding of the Russian Revolution, and we will be taking visitors on a journey to explore how the events of Revolution changed the world forever." The exhibition is accompanied by a varied season of events exploring how the Russian Revolution changed the world forever, exploring the impact on Russian literature, architecture, music and artistic expression, as well as examining the life and times of key figures, such as Lenin and the Romanovs. The British Library is Britain's national library and one of the world's greatest research libraries. By An Baijie in Beijing and Wang Mingjie in Pretoria,south Africa | China Daily | Updated: 2017-04-27 07:00 Vice-Premier Liu Yandong meets with South African Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa in Pretoria on Monday. They witnessed the signing of six cooperation agreements. [Photo/Xinhua] South African President Jacob Zuma said that his country hopes to learn from China's governance experience to achieve more rapid development for South Africa. Zuma made the remark while meeting with visiting Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong at the president's residence in Pretoria on Tuesday. Zuma asked Liu to extend his sincere greetings to President Xi Jinping. Zuma said he is glad to see the quick implementation of the consensus reached between the two presidents on the establishment of the China-South Africa High-Level People to People Exchange Mechanism. The exchange covers areas like education, culture, science and technology, health, youth, women, news media, think tanks, tourism and sports. On Monday, Liu attended the first meeting of the group overseeing the exchanges. Xi said in a congratulatory letter that the exchange is the first high-level dialogue between China and any African country to push people-to-people and cultural interaction. The start of the exchange process will provide more opportunities for the people of both countries to participate in the development of South Africa-China relations and enjoy the benefits of the development of ties, Zuma said. South Africa will never forget China's support during the country's anti-segregation fight, Zuma said, while expressing his wish to speed up his country's development through deepening ties with China. Zuma said he appreciated China's constructive role in safeguarding international peace and security, and he spoke highly of China's contribution to global economic development. Liu extended Xi's best wishes to Zuma, and she said that the China-South Africa relationship is at its highest point under the leadership of the two presidents. The two countries have deepened political trust, achieved results in practical cooperation and supported each others' core interests and major concerns, Liu said. She said comprehensive strategic cooperation in areas like production capacity, energy, resources and infrastructure will benefit both peoples. Liu noted that both nations are important parts of the G20 and BRICS associations, and added that China hopes to enhance communication with South Africa in international affairs to safeguard the interests of developing countries. Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 05:27:08|Editor: yan Lawyer Thomas Demetrio(L), who is representing David Dao, the passenger who was violently dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight, speaks as lawyer Stephen Golan (C) and Dao's daughter Crystal Dao Pepper look on during a press conference in Chicago, Illinois, the United States, on April 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ping) CHICAGO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A passenger, who was violently dragged off an overbooked United flight has reached a settlement with the airline, his lawyer said on Thursday. Thomas Demetrio, a prominent Chicago attorney representing the 69-year-old David Dao, said in a news release that "the United has taken full responsibility for what happened on Fight 3411" on April 9. He didn't disclose the sum, which should "remain confidential" as agreed by the two sides. Dao, a Vietnamese-American doctor, was hospitalized after three aviation policemen at Chicago O'Hare International Airport was summoned aboard and dragged him from the plane to make space for four crew members on the flight bound for Louisville, Kentucky. He suffered concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth, which led to an online uproar against the misconduct. Demetrio praised United for taking "full responsibility for what happened on Flight 3411, without attempting to blame others, including the City of Chicago." The three aviation policemen involved in the incident are employees of the City of Chicago. They have been all put on leave for investigation launched separately by the city authorities. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 05:32:10|Editor: MJ EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini addresses the press conference following the informal meeting of EU Defense Ministers in Valletta, Malta on April 27, 2017. Defense is one of the fields where EU integration is advancing the most, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Thursday at the informal meeting of EU Defense Ministers in Malta. (Xinhua/Yun Yuan) VALLETTA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Defense is one of the fields where EU integration is advancing the most, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Thursday at the informal meeting of EU Defense Ministers in Malta. The need to be consistent and move forward on EU defense and security cooperation is very relevant as a demand is seen for this work, she added. The different fields were reviewed on the move forward, mainly permanent structure cooperation, synchronization of defense budgets and EU defense action plan to finance both research and capability. Maltese Minister Carmelo Abela for National Security and Home Affairs added that there is a proposal for a European Defense Fund. The Ministers also examined the promotion of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in the field of Defense. Further decisions on this and the coordination of defense budgets will be further decided upon on the 18th of May. "With crises around us, a rapid reaction force that might be deployed in some areas has also been deemed necessary," added Mogherini. The rapid response, Toolbox needs to be strengthened, including the EU battle-groups to reinforce their effective financing, added Abela. Lawyer Thomas Demetrio(L), who is representing David Dao, the passenger who was violently dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight, speaks as lawyer Stephen Golan (C) and Dao's daughter Crystal Dao Pepper look on during a press conference in Chicago, Illinois, the United States, on April 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ping) CHICAGO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A passenger, who was violently dragged off an overbooked United flight has reached a settlement with the airline, his lawyer said on Thursday. Thomas Demetrio, a prominent Chicago attorney representing the 69-year-old David Dao, said in a news release that "the United has taken full responsibility for what happened on Fight 3411" on April 9. He didn't disclose the sum, which should "remain confidential" as agreed by the two sides. Dao, a Vietnamese-American doctor, was hospitalized after three aviation policemen at Chicago O'Hare International Airport was summoned aboard and dragged him from the plane to make space for four crew members on the flight bound for Louisville, Kentucky. He suffered concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth, which led to an online uproar against the misconduct. Demetrio praised United for taking "full responsibility for what happened on Flight 3411, without attempting to blame others, including the City of Chicago." The three aviation policemen involved in the incident are employees of the City of Chicago. They have been all put on leave for investigation launched separately by the city authorities. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 05:47:17|Editor: yan Video Player Close CARACAS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela will officialize its withdrawal from the Organization of American States (OAS), Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said on Thursday. "Venezuela has withdrawn from the organization (and) today we will officialize our withdrawal. We have broken the historic chains of imperialism, we are an independent country, a free country and that is how it will continue to be," Rodriguez said in a TV address. The move comes after members of the hemispheric bloc voted on Wednesday to hold another meeting of foreign affairs ministers to debate Venezuela's political and economic crises, despite the country's objections, which Venezuela said violated the bloc's own rules. "We know that behind this gathering, this coalition of a fraction of regional governments, sights are set on the sovereignty of our country. There is an intention to intervene and instruct our country," said Rodriguez. Relations between Venezuela and the Washington D.C.-based hemispheric bloc have been deteriorating for a while, with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro tirelessly pursuing sanctions against the South American country for alleged democratic violations. Almost a year ago to the day, on April 28, 2016, Almagro met with Venezuelan lawmakers from the right-wing opposition coalition, after which he announced he would invoke the OAS' Inter-American Democratic Charter against the country, which would suspend it from the bloc and pave the way for sanctions, the Venezuelan News Agency (AVN) reported on Thursday. Shortly after, in June, Almagro organized a vote on the measure, which failed to get sufficient backing. This year, Almagro has continued to focus his efforts on sanctioning Venezuela, as Wednesday's gathering shows, leading the South American nation to finally decided to withdraw from the hemispheric bloc. The process of exiting the OAS will take two years, said AVN. Meanwhile, Rodriguez said the government will continue to push for dialogue with the right-wing opposition to resolve the country's problems. She also announced that Venezuela will take part in an emergency meeting of foreign affairs ministers from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), to be held on May 2 in El Salvador. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 05:52:20|Editor: yan Video Player Close CARACAS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan authorities have arrested a police officer suspected in the killing of a young man during anti-government protests earlier this week, the public prosecutor's office said on Thursday. Officer Gerson Quintero, 36, was to be charged in the coming hours over the death of Christian Ochoa, 22, who was shot during protests in northern Carabobo state. According to the preliminary report, Ochoa left "his home in the district of Miguel Pena on April 24, as a group of people were protesting nearby." "Later, the youth received several gunshots, and was immediately taken (to hospital) where he died," the report said. Venezuela has been racked by violent anti-government protests by right-wing opposition groups opposed to the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, leaving some 29 people dead. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 06:02:23|Editor: yan Video Player Close TIRANA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Thursday night's violent development inside Macedonia's parliament building, in which several lawmakers were injured by protesters, caused concerns in Albania. Albania's foreign ministry said in a statement that it was monitoring the escalation of the situation in Macedonia with great concerns. Such scenes of violence against the elected representatives of the Macedonian people are unacceptable, Albania's foreign ministry said. It added that violence wouldn't help to solve situation. Meantime, Albania's prime minister Edi Rama called on Macedonia's political leaders to show restraint and avoid rhetoric that could further escalate the tense situation. "We also call the relevant structures there to be engaged in ensuring public security and protect all citizens, without exceptions," Rama said late Thursday in a televised interview. Speaker of the Albanian parliament, Ilir Meta, expressed great concern too over the recent events in Macedonia and the situation there. Meta urged Macedonian authorities to distance themselves from violence, taking immediate measures to stop the violence and its consequences. Macedonia's stability remains highly important and crucial to the stability and security of the Balkans and its future, Meta said. Protesters stormed into the building of the Macedonian parliament on Thursday afternoon after the MPs from SDSM and the smaller Albanian parties elected Tallat Xhaferi from DUI as new Parliament speaker. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-28 06:02:24|Editor: yan Video Player Close MINSK, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Belarus hopes for resetting relations with the United States after the new U.S. administration has come to power, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei said in an article published by the "Belaruskaya Dumka" magazine. The Foreign Minister said that at present the positive trend appeares in the relationship between Belarus and the United States. In particular, he noted the lifting of sanctions against Belorusneft, BelTechExport and BelOMO, and the barriers to the work of the Belarusian potash company in the U.S. market have been removed. On this occasion, Makei stressed that he would really like Washington to give up political inertia towards Belarus. The minister said the achievement of the agreements on the de-escalation of the situation in eastern Ukraine contributed to the strengthening of the image of Belarus as a neutral state with serious peacekeeping potential. Makei believes that the key task is to further intensify the dialogue with the United States. Hinds: No water shortage Saying the last rainy season was not as rainy as it should have been amid climate change and noting a peren- nial challenge in the dry season, he said his ministry is working with WASA to ensure an equitable distribution of available supplies. He recalled recently telling Parliament that the countrys four reservoirs are up to expected level capacity at this time. He related, I pointed out there was no water shortage. The issue is are we able to provide water 24 hours a day to every citizen, every household, every business institution in TT 24 hours a day. As I said that is not yet the case. It remains an aspiration. Refuting rumours, Hinds said the hospitals at Mount Hope have adequate water tanks and are under no threat. He accused some persons of stirring up strife among citizens over water and so behaving like terrorists. Hinds said the United National Congress (UNC) had mismanaged millions of dollars that could otherwise have been used to improve water-supply. He denied any political discrimination in water provision saying the Government serves all. Ramdeen earlier said residents are suffering water woes in areas as diverse as Brazil, Morvant, Five Rivers, Maraval, Barrackpore, Debe, St Joseph, and Mt DOr. Whats really going on? he mulled. He lamented that residents of areas such as Fullerton and Icacos have not had water for 45 days, leaving small children to have to resort to carry buckets of water from nearby river. He alleged a water-supply black market where a truckload sells for $1,000. Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge said there exist two Trinidads one of tall buildings and one of water shortages. He said he grew up in Belmont amid water shortages, where he said nothing has changed, but that in west Trinidad where he now lives there is no water shortage. I cant remember a single day in West Trinidad in which I did not have water. It does not have a water shortage in Hillsboro, Maraval where the Minister (Hinds) lives, but in areas that rejected the PNM there is a shortage. Energy Minister, Franklin Khan, said the former UNC government up to 2001 had made people think theyd almost reached water for all. Challenging Ramdeens figures that UNC regimes supply better than PNM regimes, Khan said,You dont use statistics to play the fool and try to fool the population. Saying TT produces 187 gallons per person per day, Khan said the issue is not production of water, but distribution. He said communities far from distribution and at high elevations have distribution woes. Khan said water distribution is also hurt by an aging infrastructure. He said those close to the source and on the distribution system get water, but with the best will in the world, no-one could give Fullerton a full-time water supply. Forgotten La Brea Along the way, there are tiny board houses bent and warped like old men, oftentimes with modern concrete structures in the same yard. These are testament to the power of geology and time. Decades ago, residents were warned to put nothing up besides wooden structures on the shifting earth that plagues this part of the country. Later generations would defy caution and, as prosperity flowed through the area, brick and mortar became standard. But prosperity ebbs as well. I doing all the interviews for the past two weeks. I will tell you all about TOFCO and what going on in La Brea, the man promised. Whether he works there or used to is unclear, he is vague on that point. You have to pay me for the interview though. Historically producers of much of the countrys wealth, communities like La Brea in the islands southwest, do not seem to be reaping permanent benefits from the position. Even though the area is industrial, La Brea lacks its own fire station. Appliances must come from Point Fortin. Gerald Debiset, area local government councilor, says a lack of water, poor road infrastructure and chronic low levels of employment are problems too. A 2016 report found that the areas rate of poverty is 6 per cent higher than the national average. Its unemployment rate is 7.2 per cent versus the 3.4 per of the rest of the country. Projects like Angelin make a difference in this place. The loss of the construction of the platform is not just a topic of national debate. It has divided a community. Our interview subject spares us a few words before, free of charge, before he goes. Is not just people in La Brea cause that to go, he told us, They know why they take the platform. A mile and a half away, TOFCO, the company that was supposed to be constructing the platform sits on the coast. Huge cranes sprout from its yard, almost skeletal looking. With the exception of a few cars moving into and out of the compound, it is quiet. The suspended dust cloud from incomplete road work gives the whole scene a yellowish, forlorn aspect. It is a popular view in the community, particularly among the young and usually male. Listening, one gets the sense that residents think the community is being conspired against. It is not the only view though. An elderly gentleman set up with fruit and craft right outside the Pitch Lake says: (Oilfields Workers Trade Union President General Ancel) Roget chain up them fellas and them. He had no right to say what he said and now look what happen. You think this hurting Roget? These people have to understand that half a bread, is better than no bread at all. His statement is all the more surprising because he purports to be a senior union man who has a full-time job working offshore. The stall is just a side hustle. Unlike jobs, opinions here abound on why BP decided to move construction of the Angelin platform to another country and depending on which residents you speak to blame keeps shifting. Some people blame TOFCO for provoking protests by its lack of concern for workers health, even though the company itself has a good safety record. I leave out the TOFCO work some years ago, said one youth, The company not coming clean. I was a welder there and they used to have us welding metal alloys. All kinds of dangerous fumes and skin rash. This fellow admitted he was not certified to weld and was only able to secure a job at TOFCO after several years of trying through a contact. I am grateful, because I learned a lot when I was there he said, But right now, I am only working part time at another place and I have to wait until they call me out. Nicole Olivierre, La Breas Member of Parliament and former Energy Minister, said there are some serious shortfalls in the communitys education system, starting at the primary level. The schools are not performing as well as they could or have done in the past. When you have these challenges at the primary school level, the opportunities that these students have are diminished. This entrenches the cycle of poverty, she said. Additionally, students were not going on to tertiary level education, which left them at a disadvantage in getting jobs once the lower level skilled construction projects were complete. Olivierre identified steps being taken to enhance the level of technical skill found within the community, including the establishment of an NESC campus. But she said the areas young people needed to do more to acquire qualifications in fields such as chemistry and electrical engineering. Clarifying her earlier statements assigning a portion of the blame for the situation to residents, the MP said, It cannot be that the residents actions were the only one that factored into the Angelin decision. But it certainly would have been one of many factors. She went on to explain that BPs timeline for the project made it impossible to keep it in La Brea, but noted however that, generally speaking, when you have a climate of tension and hostility, it is a negative that will be applied when an investor is analyzing where they can place their investment. One of the things that makes Trinidad and Tobago such an attractive investment destination is not only its highly-educated workforce, but its stable democracy, whether this is at the national level or the localised political climate. Beyond education, some alternative perspectives on the La Brea situation emerged from the neighbouring local government district. Chanarbaye Ramadharsingh, the councilor for Rousillac/ Otaheite explained that often, people had a stereotype about La Brea residents and were unlikely to hire them because of it. She would not elaborate on this stereotype or concept as she called it. Checks throughout La Brea and Rousillac though, would reveal that several contractors would not hire La Brea residents after many of them failed mandatory drug testing at worksites. Ramadharsingh explained that her district was not as badly affected by the loss of the Angelin project because people had more opportunities to be self-sufficient. You will find that we are more agricultural over here and we will grow a lot of our food. We also will start businesses where we could hire our children. Land ownership in Rousillac/ Otaheite was more restricted, discouraging unrestricted migration into the community. Ramadharsingh thought that the open state and Petrotrin lands in La Brea brought people into the area, swelling the numbers looking for work. She said many of the people living there now, did not have deep roots in the community. On top of all of this, companies in the area have cut down the number of local sub-contractors, choosing instead to bring their own hires into the community. Local contractors in turn have decreased the amount of local labour they would normally hire. This is the result of a combination of reasons presented thus far, including reducing work stoppage time due to protests, the lack of qualifications within in the community to do work beyond low level construction, or general unsuitability for the work, as well as the countrys economic hard times. Given the loss of the Angelin, we asked Olivierre if she was afraid of the community losing the Mitsubishis Caribbean Gas Chemical Limited (CGCL) $6.3 billion project. The La Brea MP said that project had already had its fair amount of challenges, but that Mitsubishi had shown a level of commitment to its investment that made it unlikely that it would leave La Brea and TT. She said the company has made a commendable effort to involve local contractors, though La Brea residents believe more could be done. As the Mitsubishi project continued, Olivierre exhorted La Brea residents to see themselves as partners in their communitys future development. The CGML plant is expected to produce methanol and will come on stream in 2019. Son finds mom hanging According to reports, at 2.20 pm, Enil Stapleton arrived at his KP Lands, Valencia home and discovered his mother Joan Stapleton hanging from a rafter in the living room. He cut down his mother and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late. Valencia police were called in and officers led by Sgt Ramkissoon visited the scene. The womans body was removed to the Sangre Grande Mortuary. Relatives later told police that Stapleton had become depressed and refused to take her medication for the past two months. Despite her depression, relatives told police that Stapleton never gave any indication that she was suicidal Prison officers fear riots over dry taps President of the Prison Officers Association Ceron Richards confirmed the water shortage at the prisons. This water shortage affects these two prison institutions every year and nothing has been done by past governments and the current administration to remedy the situation, Richards said. He said that on Tuesday, officers complained to him saying they are worried for their safety as inmates are getting angry at not being able to bathe or even clean their slop buckets. Richards says he will be seeking a meeting with the Prison Executive on the issue. Over the past few weeks, fiery protests have taken place in various parts of the country by residents over a lack of pipeborne water despite assurances by Public Utilities Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, that there is no water shortage in the nation. (See Page 16A) Efforts to reach Prison Commissioner Cecil Duke on the matter yesterday proved futile. Prisoners angry over cases being adjourned Several prisoners, some of whom have been in custody for the last six years, began complaining loudly after Deputy Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle adjourned their matters to next month. Busby Earle-Caddle is acting as chief magistrate until an appointment is made by the Judicial and Legal Services Commission and said she needed to get advice on how to proceed with some of the cases in the Eighth Magistrates Court. When some of the prisoners became agitated yesterday, they were ordered out of the docks and taken to the holding cells at the St Vincent Street courthouse, where they continued to complain. Sources said the prisoners had to be forcefully quieted by police officers. Two weeks ago concerns of unfinished cases left behind by Ayers-Caesar were raised and earlier this week, Law Association president Douglas Mendes,SC, indicated that they will meet with Chief Justice Ivor Archie, the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions to find a workable solution. Mendes, on behalf of the association, also expressed immediate concerns about the fact that a judge was appointed and took up office leaving behind outstanding, part-heard matters. In a statement, the Judiciarys Court Protocol and Information Manager Alicia Carter- Fisher had assured that the magistrates court would not be adversely affected. Carter-Fisher said there were no ongoing preliminary inquiries before Ayers-Caesar but she was presiding over paper committals which could be continued by another magistrate Attorney advocates for protecting natures gifts At that point in time, I was working within the ACS secretariat under the Caribbean Sea Commission. I was acting as a legal researcher and unit assistant. After the legal adviser had left the organisation, I acted temporarily as legal adviser for the ACS. She said it was there her passion for ocean governance and protection of the regions marine environment grew. The Caribbean Sea Commission itself was a project by the ACS to seek to get the United Nations (UN) to declare the Caribbean Sea a special area in the context of sustainable development, recognising that several of the territories within our Caribbean region are heavily dependent on our Caribbean Sea, to generate their economies. For example, when tourists come to TT or any other of the Caribbean territories one of the principal attractions for tourists is the beaches. Stephens began writing and compiling her book last year, after being invited by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Hamburg, Germany to conduct research in the area. She said, Naturally my leaning was to our own Caribbean Sea and trying to talk about the legal implications for the mechanisms for protection of our sea. In the 88-page book, Stephens defines the Caribbean Sea and the Caribbean region, and explains the importance of the sea to the region [the ACS region and not just Caricom]. She looked at Caribbean economies and the role the sea plays in their development, and explored the concept of the wider Caribbean. These countries have a shared patrimony which is the Caribbean Sea, she explained. Stephens is currently advocating for a delimitation of the Caribbean Sea, as it is a matter of a balancing of rights because there are, States that have a right to navigation within the high seas and States that have a right to protect their marine area. What are we going to do in respect of areas outside of the national jurisdiction, and how are we going to deal with the areas that fall outside of the scope of what we are legally entitled to and which is binding in the international community? In the text I examine the issue of the protection of our waters, even outside of the scope of national jurisdiction and how we can go about doing that as well as alternative approaches. For her, designating the Caribbean Sea a special area is so important for the Caribbean since, it generates much revenue for our Caribbean territories in terms of the tourism industry. The Caribbean Sea is also a repository for the oil and other hydrocarbons and the fishing industries are also dependent on the Caribbean SeaAntigua and Barbuda, one of their principal industries, is fishing, and it was estimated that at least one million dollars is generated on these islands through fishing alone. Stephens said protection for the sea should not only be national and regional, but rather a wide net protection as possible should exist and be recognised internationally. While she notes that there were legislative frameworks in place, she believes they were not adequate or wide enough for the seas protection. She said this countrys Environmental Management Act, which includes management of the marine environment, is not enough. You have specially protected areas demarcated under the EMA, but this is only national recognition of our territorial waters and the jurisdiction within our exclusive economic zone. She does not think that TT and the region has as wide legal recognition, especially of the special status of the importance of the Caribbean Sea. She said while there were conventions that TT and the region are signatory to, such as the Marpol Convention 1978 [protection for pollution from ships], Cartagena Convention [which governs entire Caribbean region], and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, among others, many of these are soft law which are not enforceable and to which states are not bound. What was recognised within these conventions was that even though there is an attempt to protect the marine environment, we wanted a specific type of protection. In that there is widespread protection of the entire Caribbean Sea. She said it is very important to do so since there are many threats to the Caribbean Sea, among them tourism, highlighting that in the past there had been destruction of the coral reef as a result of tourism. You have the whole issue now where you have issues resulting from climate change. This is something that is really critical to our Caribbean territories, because with the impact of global warming you have issues such as coastal erosion and you have a number of natural disastersyou dont have to look too far back to see the number of natural disasters. While, Stephens said, there were some organisations and individuals in the region, such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and professionals like Dr Wendel Parham, executive director of Caribbean Agriculture and Research and Development Institute who recognised the threat posed to the Caribbean Sea, she believes many more need to be sensitised on the issue, with the media playing a major role. When asked if Government was doing enough on the issue of climate change, she replied, I dont think there is enough sensitisation about the issue of climate change. I think that should be an on-going project to have these things earmarked in the media so people are more and more sensitised to the impact of climate change. She noted that it is so important, it has been included as part of the UNs 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and UN representatives will be visiting to TT to discuss entering into an an agreement about what is happening with the areas outside of national jurisdiction. It will not just affect TT and our Caricom neighbours and ACS neighbours, but it will also impact on the international community. Natures Gift the Caribbean Sea is available on Amazon. National Trust takes heritage education to the sea The Western Isles Boat Tour is a part of the National Trusts drive to educate citizens of the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago. Other tours of the National Trust include: public, cultural and school Tours on Nelson Island. This island is a heritage site that has a diverse history. It was a quarantine station for the East Indians during Indentureship; the site of Tubal Uriah Butlers incarceration during World War II; the detainment centre for the Black Power Revolutionaries in 1970 and has the oldest roofed building (built in 1802) in continuous use. Other historical facts of the western isles: In the 1950s, Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams was secretly married on Caledonia Island. Lenegan Island had an isolation hospital during the Indentureship period. Chacachacare Island is the largest of the islands and has several structures which include: a hospital, convent, chapel, doctors house and a lighthouse. The National Trust was established by the Act of Parliament in 1991 and is a membership organisation. For further details about the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago please contact 1-868- 225-4750 or visit our website www.nationaltrust.tt. $200,000 to keep the peace in Enterprise This was revealed yesterday during the weekly police press briefing where Superintendent Richard Smith said that Operation Enterprise a specific anti- crime operation for the Central Trinidad area was a resounding success since its launch recently by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon. Supt Smith is coordinating the operation and yesterday reported to the media on its success. He said that for the year, Enterprise in Chaguanas has experienced 18 murders during a bloody battle between two criminal gangs for control of turf in which to conduct illegal activities including robberies and drug trafficking. He said that since Operation Enterprise was launched, which has seen a detailed and sustained police and solider presence in Enterprise, crime has fallen dramatically and there has been no murder recorded in that area for weeks. Asked why such a sustained approach could not be duplicated in communities across the country, Supt Smith said the Police Service does not have sufficient resources. If only we were able to sustain it, I would like very much to see the operations in Enterprise happen all over the country, Supt Smith said. But Operation Enterprise has taken a lot of resources. We really deploy our personnel as and when the need arises. So to ask why cant we deploy the same to all areas of Trinidad and Tobago, we just dont have that amount of resources. Generally per capita we would say that we have enough officers, but when we have an area that has been affected you would have to pump more resources into that specific area to bring back a sense of normalcy. Supt Smith revealed that it costs $200,000 monthly, to sustain Operation Enterprise as both police and soldiers have to be paid overtime as officers work 24-hour shifts, meals and drinks for officers on shift and also to properly maintain vehicles used in the operation. In addition to police and soldiers being visibly present in all areas of the Enterprise community on a 24 hour basis, Operation Enterprise has seen officers conduct town meetings and paid visits to schools in order to reconnect with the community. Smith said that from January to March, before Operation Enterprise, there were eight woundings, one burglary, one case of larceny and two cases of malicious damage, along with the 18 murders in that community. With the operation in place, there have been no murders committed in Enterprise. Our plan is to stay as long as it takes. We want to ensure the residents of Enterprise will feel a sense of safety and security so we will stay there for as long as it takes. We will not just uproot and run, Supt Smith assured. Attorneys claim Property Tax Act unconstitutional They say the notices being sent out by the commissioner of valuations to evaluate properties in preparation for taxation under the act are null and void. The meeting took place on Tuesday evening at the St Augustine South Community Centre. Attorney Jagdeo Singh said, We think there are several challenges that could be mounted against this act. We intend to take action about the notices which have gone out. We believe they are beyond the power of the commissioner of valuations, and we intend to file a case asking that the penalty provisions of the act be deemed unconstitutional. The provisions of the act, he said, are unconstitutional because it was not passed with a two-thirds majority. Singh said it goes against the bill of rights guaranteed in the constitution and empowers the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) to place a charge on homes. This, he said, goes against the right to the use and enjoyment of the property, the right to privacy, and the right to due process of law among other things. The qualification of people doing the evaluation and making the recommendations to the commissioner, he said, is a matter of concern and they intend to ask the commissioner for a list of the valuation professionals and their qualifications. Concerns were expressed about the practicality of Finance Minister Colm Imberts recent announcement that Government was hiring 150 people to be trained (to be part of a total of 248) to assess over half a million properties by May 22. Asked if pensioners will be exempted from paying the property tax, attorney Larry Lalla said the act provides for certain categories of people to apply to the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) for a deferral of tax, but that was not an exemption. The tax would become a charge on your property which could be collected from your estate after you die, he said. He also said that based on the Valuation of Lands Act, 1970 the commissioner has the power to value the lands and to request further information. While he may have the power to request certain documentation, he said, I doubt he has the power to take photographs. This could lead to abuse. Asked whether squatters or people without deeds or leases to land would be exempted, attorney and COP general secretary Clyde Weatherhead said they will not. The occupier of land is defined as the owner even if the owner has no deed or lease to the land, he said. He added while there is provision to apply for a deferral, the problem is whether or not that person would feel qualified to make an objection on his own or would have to pay a lawyer to object on his behalf. Asked whether they should fill out the forms sent out by the commissioner, Weatherhead said, The form that is here is not the form in the act. Displaying a form, he said, What is on top of this piece of paper is not what is in the law. Neither the Minister of Finance nor the Commissioner of Valuations can change what is the law passed by the Parliament. The form in Schedule II of the Valuations Act, he said, does not ask for attachment of any document. It is not the prescribed form in law. It is illegal. The only other time the forms can be filled, he said, is if it was sent by the commissioner by registered mail and addressed to the property owner, and not by someone walking around and sticking it in the mail box. Those who received unaddressed notices were advised to keep a record of it and if any problem arises, to show what was sent. No reasons from magistrate who convicted Machel and Kernal In January, Busby was granted leave by Justices of Appeal Alice Yorke-Soo Hon and Mark Mohammed to obtain Maureen Baboolal-Gafoors reasons for convicting Montano and Roberts on December 10, 2012. She found them guilty of assaulting patrons during a fracas at the Zen nightclub at the corner of Keate and Frederick Streets, Port of Spain, on April 26, 2007. Objecting to the move to obtain the magistrates reasons were attorneys representing the two, who argued that Baboolal- Gafoor had since retired from the bench and her judicial authority had come to an end. Yesterday in the Court of Appeal, Busby indicated that he would have to abandon any defence to the request for the magistrates return to give her reasons. He said the legislation only allows for a judge to return after leaving the Bench and suggested that the legislation be amended to allow the same for magistrates. Busby was also granted additional time to file the prosecutions response to Montanos and Roberts appeal of their convictions, despite strong objections by attorneys Jagdeo Singh and Keith Scotland who lead a team of lawyers for the two entertainers. Singh complained of the irreparable damage and prejudice suffered by Montano who, he said, has spent a lot of money to return to Trinidad from California in the United States to attend court and because of the conviction he cannot take engagements or endorsements. (Montano also holds US citizenship.) Scotland, who represents Roberts, reminded the court that the alleged offences took place a decade ago. Montano was found guilty of assaulting Gerard Bowrin, Janelle Lee Chee, Brandis Browne and Russell Pollonais. Roberts was found guilty of assaulting Browne and Pollonais. Two other artistes, Joel Zan Feveck and Rodney Benjai LeBlanc, who were also charged with Montano and Roberts, were found not guilty. Montano and Roberts were spared a jail sentence and ordered to compensate the victims as well as pay fines to the court. The magistrate ordered Montano to pay compensation totalling $13,500 and fines totalling $13,700. Roberts was ordered to pay compensation totalling $11,000 and fines totalling $13,000. Montano faced an additional charge of using obscene language, but he was reprimanded and discharged for that offence. Also appearing for Montano are attorneys Larry Williams, Kiel Tacklalsingh, Vivek Lakhan-Joseph and Criston J Williams while Daniel Khan and Asha Watkins-Montserrin also appear for Roberts. Cops seize cops phones Police executed warrants on the officers who were ordered to hand over their cell phones. While some readily complied, others resisted before eventually handing over their phones. They claimed their phones contained sensitive information both of a personal and professional nature . Officers are now examining the contacts list, jpeg images, voice notes, video recordings and WhatsApp content of the phones as part of their investigation . The highly confidential memo, compiled by Division Head Snr Supt Kenny McIntyre, contained information pertaining to anti- crime initiatives including roadblock exercises, raids, mobile and foot patrols to be undertaken by officers within Central Division between the extended Easter weekend, from Holy Thursday straight to Easter Monday . The memo detailed the number of officers designated to carry out a specific task in a specific location and also the time of the activity . The memo was leaked to social media on April 13. Several officers from this division have already been interviewed including Snr Supt McIntyre who said the leak was very embarrassing to the Police Service and forced him to restructure the Easter weekend anti- crime plan . McIntyre told investigators this was a serious breach which, had it gone undetected, could have placed the lives of officers at risk as the criminal element would have had been ready and waiting for officers . Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams is being kept abreast of the status of the ongoing investigations which Newsday understands is close to being completed and could see several officers facing disciplinary action . Contacted yesterday for comment, Snr Supt McIntyre said he heard, through the grapevine that officers cell phones were seized. If that is true, I have no problem because that type of behaviour (leaking of the memo) cannot be tolerated at all, the top cop said . Moruga gets water after protest On Monday residents staged a fiery protest in the Santa Maria community to highlight some of the major issues which have been plaguing them for many years. Two of the main issues were a lack of water as well as deplorable road conditions. Pensioner Francis Chico Hospedales, 76, said he had not received a supply of water since Carnival and called on the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) to be more consistent in their distribution process. I am a sickly man and water is something we need daily. Today water came for a few hours. Under the previous government, water lines were installed in the rural community. However not all the lines are functional and so, whenever there is a supply, only a few people benefit. There are also public tanks within the community but the truck-borne supply is also inconsistent. No everyone gets water from the trucks. The trucks ensure however that the school (Santa Maria RC) receives a supply and whatever remains, the people get. No one wants to come in here. Just look at the road condition, said another resident. Residents complained that for too long the authorities have neglected them although the Penal Rock Road is the major road which links various communities like Penal, Barrackpore and Moruga. On Monday president of the Penal Rock Road Community Council Lester Guevarro vowed to continue protest as residents patience have run out. He added that there are landslips, inadequate street lighting and no community centre to facilitate residents Decline in fish sales after oil spill Whenever these things happen, customers stay away, said fisherman Sunil Supersad. They do not want to buy anything because they are afraid the fishes are unsafe to eat. It is bad for us because we lose out and no one pays us any compensation for our loss of earnings. Supersad operates at the Otaheite Fishing Depot at Bay Road in South Oropouche. He believes because of the direction of the winds and currents at sea, the fuel did not wash ashore at Otaheite. Instead, it made its way to the south-western peninsula. It is 35 years now I am in this business. Our men went out fish at Point (Fortin) this morning and spotted oil in the water. We want to know what chemicals Petrotrin is using to clean it and what effect it will have on the fish. Another fisherman from Otaheite said the fish on sale were purchased elsewhere and not from the area. Petrotrin estimated that an estimated 300 barrels of the fuel entered the Gulf of Paria after the leak. Since the discovery, officials from the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, Environmental Management Authority and the Institute of Marine Affairs together with other bodies engaged in clean-up activities. Petrotrin, in a media release, said aerial and marine surveys revealed that the oil was moving in a west north-westerly direction. There were also reports of oil in the Guaracara River. However, the company reiterated that the spill occurred in the port of Pointe-a- Pierre which is northwest of that river. According to the Ministrys head of corporate communications Rory Subiah, the ministry is employing the Incident Management System to manage the spill in coordination with Petrotrin and other government agencies. All of this, Subiah added, was in accordance with the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan. At Coffee and Carat Shed beaches in La Brea, there were no visible indication of oil in the water. SASC: Hard to probe staff at childrens homes In reply to Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial, SASC chairman Jagdeo Maharaj said homes often dont report incidents immediately to the SASC so that the worker can be removed and an investigation begun, despite being told to. Opposition Senator Khadijah Ameen asked if the SASC Act has been amended to allow the Childrens Authority to help in such probes. SASC executive officer, Utra Ali, replied no, but said talks have been held with the Childrens Authority whose resources can be used once the law is amended. SASC state counsel II Djallon Frederick said the Childrens Authoritys expertise is about children, but the SASCs interest is probing the workers. So we have to be very careful in our emphasis if we want to get the report in and get the person properly investigated, that we parallel the two and co-mingle what we have. Frederick said the SASC investigators do not have the specific training or resources as the Children Authority. Many a time wed get an investigator, theyd begin and many of them deny doing the investigation. They dont want to do the investigation. Its a whole begin again process to start from scratch. The way the regulation is worded, we are not even allowed to direct the investigator as to how to do the job. So what tends to happen is that when the report comes in certain questions arent answered. Weve had incidences when reports have come in two and three times and it still doesnt satisfy the questions. Frederick said these delays open the SASC to pre-action protocol letters from workers on suspension protesting the lengthiness of such probes. Hed love for the Childrens Authority to supply investigators trained in both child and adult aspects, to spare the SASC from unearthing a senior employee willing to investigate a peer. The issue most times is that the senior person is on the same compound. They dont want to be investigating their peers and I get the impression that sometimes that impacts on the report that we get in the end. Ive been stymied by getting disciplinary action, either because the reports are insufficient or people start and they stop halfway through and we have to start all over again. Business chambers: Defer tax until next year The Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Couva Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce and Penal/ Debe Chamber of Commerce said in a release yesterday they understand Governments need for increased revenue because of the decline in oil and gas revenues. Expressing concern on the hasty implementation of the tax, they said they strongly believe that the requirements stipulated on the form cannot be fulfilled before the May 22 deadline. Apprehensive about the uncertainty regarding the rates, they said, Government should host a series of consultations to educate the population on the tax implementation process and the assessment of land and property. While they do not object to the tax, they said Government must acknowledge that small and medium enterprises are barely surviving owing to the rising cost of doing business, and the imposition of other taxes such as business levy, green fund levy, National Insurance Scheme, reduction in the fuel subsidy, unavailability of foreign exchange and value added tax on food items. To impose the tax at this time, the chambers said, Would cause unease amongst the population who are already struggling given the downturn in the economy. They suggested that Government apply an incremental increase over the next three years. We believe the tax on plant and machinery is a disincentive to encourage the expansion of production within the manufacturing sector given Governments need to foster local productivity, reduce the importation of foreign goods and seek export markets as a means of earning foreign exchange. The chambers said they would like to see some transparency regarding the allocation of the funds derived from the tax and how it is to be used for development. Valencia cops get air-conditioned mobile unit Last week they complained about the intense heat and dust they had to endure. They also complained about the lack of washroom facilities and a proper place to have meals. After their plight was highlighted by Newsday on Monday, Deputy Commissioner of Police Deodath Dulalchan intervened. The police were told that the refurbishment should be completed in three weeks Ministry owes EMBD $2B Rambharat said the EMBD had to deal with debt payments. He said the EMBD has undertaken some audits into some contracts which is being dealt with by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi. There are other contracts still to be paid. The ministry itself has the usual payables that have accumulated which we deal with when funding is available, he said. Rambharat said after the closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd, the Voluntary Separation of Employment Package (VSE P) required the development of 8,885 residential lots. In 2010, when I looked at the cost to develop a lot of land it was $150,000 to $170,000. The average cost now is over $750,000, he said. My estimate, when we are done with the Caroni VSE P, taxpayers would have spent about $18 billion. On average, we have spent $1 million per Caroni worker...and it is not over yet. He denied claims that his ministry has not been distributing leases, saying that many people do not show up for their leases. The minister later announced the closure of the Seafood Industry Development Company saying the National Agricultural Marketing Development Company (NAMDEVCO) is also under review. Last week, Caroni Greens Ltd an entity formed to replace Caroni (1975) Ltd was shut down and 72 persons placed on the breadline. NAMDEVCO is responsible for collecting and disseminating data. I am not satisfied by the level of work and have asked NAMDEVCO to do an exercise relating to staffing and its structure to ensure it meets the requirements of the country. I have asked the ADB (Agricultural Development Bank) to look at some complaints we have received and deal with them such as inflexibility, bureaucracy and poor customer service. We are not going to progress in agriculture in the way we have run it for the last 30 to 40 years. A mental change must take place in agriculture starting with the ministry, Rambharat said. Ramadhar says reform must take place first He said Government should also fully effect campaign and party and finance reform and local government reform legislation. Addressing a large gathering on Tuesday evening at the St Augustine South Community Centre, Ramadhar said the property tax law is bad and some people will not be able to meet the May 22 deadline to submit forms for valuation. The first person who is charged, I will defend them together with my team, Ramadhar said. On his call to fully implement procurement legislation, he said, We have a long history of corruption in government, where taxpayers dollars have been stolen in the past and I am almost certain being stolen in the present. Unless we fix things, they will continue to be stolen. The Peoples Partnership government, he said, insisted on procurement legislation and this Government must introduce it. On party and campaign financing, he said, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on elections. When a Government gets into power they have to pay the piper. Unless we fix that, the people of Trinidad and Tobago will continue to pay back the financiers. He said the last government had begun draft legislation but the current administration is still to deal with the issue. Local government reform, he said, was necessary to ensure that property tax was paid to local government organs to meet the needs of communities, and must not go into the Consolidated Fund as is currently prescribed. Agreeing that taxes are payable to a government, Ramadhar said people do not agree that their homes should be made uncomfortable due to taxation. Noting that some were saying that they will not paint their houses because the uglier it looks, the less tax they will have to pay, he said, We cannot allow this nation to become a slum. Govt, Opposition blame game in Senate Government Senator Foster Cummings told senators about time he spent recently in the community of Enterprise in Central Trinidad. Cummings said crime was a reality in these kinds of communities in TT where very often the parlour on the corner could very well be the drug block. He said while the Government is pursuing a holistic approach to reducing crime, the Opposition continues to see it as way to score cheap political points. Cummings said the United National Congress (UNC) as part of the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government had only one strategy for crime and this was the limited state of emergency in 2011. When Sturge objected to this comment, Cummings quipped, You introduced it. Dont run from it. Describing the Opposition as reckless and irresponsible, Cummings said the Opposition is part of the architecture of governance in TT but fails to understand this. In response, temporary Opposition Senator Chrislyn Moore countered, The Opposition is the intellectual viagra for the Government. The Tobago Forwards leader and former PP justice minister claimed that Tobago is now the Peoples National Movements (PNM) hostage and rising crime on the island has shocked its population. While welcoming the Governments decision to scrutinise the contract for the recently departed Super Fast Galicia, Moore called for transparency regarding the contracts for the Galicias replacement vessels. Independent Senator Paul Richards disagreed with Moore that it was only the Governments responsibility to deal with crime. Richards said the history of TT showed that all governments and oppositions have made little progress in dealing with crime. Never send a cop to do a man's job We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. An International conference on Micro & Nano-Satellites will be held at Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (CNRST) in Rabat, Moroccos capital city, May 2-3 to discuss latest innovations in this high-tech industry. The MNSAT event will be attended by experts from major aerospace industries like IEEE Aerospace, Surrey Space Center and much more. The speakers will cover all the aspects of micro-nano satellite including architecture, component technologies, guidance, navigation, control, infrastructure, such as ground station systems and launch opportunity, R&D applications & missions, regulatory issues and education. The conference will bring together researchers, developers, industrialists and experts from academia and space industry sectors working in space industry, nano and micro satellite fabrication, consulting, telecommunication and ground station, and launch services. The event will serve as a forum for the dissemination of state-of-the-art research, development, implementation of micro and nano satellite technologies and its applications. The key objective of MNSAT is to create a program that achieves a balance between theory and practice, academia and industry, systems/tools-oriented research and content creation. The nanosatellite (Cubesat) and microsatellite (Small Sat Small Satellites) have been growing rapidly in recent years, and were based on the Spanish low cost manufacturing for Commercial and Communication Satellites from the 1990s. Development activity in the 150 kg range has been significantly exceeding that in the 50100 kg range. With continued advances in the miniaturization and capability increase of electronic technology and the use of satellite constellations, nanosatellites are increasingly capable of performing commercial missions that previously required microsatellites. The new government led by the PJDs Saad Eddine El Othmani won a vote of confidence in the Moroccan Parliament ending a six-month long post-electoral deadlock that left the country without a government. Moroccan MPs approved the new governmental coalition by 208 votes in favor and 91 votes against, while forty deputies abstained. Speaking to MPs before the vote, El Othmani laid out the headlines of the 2017-2021 government program, which, he said, will continue on the reform path launched by the previous government. El Othmani was criticized for not using figures to corroborate his government goals but he pledged 50 billion dirham (nearly $5 billion) for rural development, and the construction of 15 new dams to boost renewable energy. Other projects featuring prominently in the government program include bolstering regionalization, promoting employment and social cohesion and consolidating Moroccos influence at the regional and international level. The reform of the educational sector and the judiciary are also priorities for the newly inaugurated government along with safeguarding Moroccos territorial integrity. King Mohammed VI appointed Saad Eddine El Othmani, President of the national council of the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), Head of Government in place of Abdelilah Benkirane who staggered in forming a coalition government after five months of negotiations. The adherence of six parties to the new governmental coalition gives El Othmani a comfortable majority of 240 seats out of 395, composed of the PJD (125 seats), the RNI (37), MP (27), USFP (20), UC (19) and the PPS (12), leaving opposition to liberal PAM with 102 seats and conservative PI with 46 seats. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said after talks with Moroccan government members in Rabat that his country can serve as a logistics hub for Moroccos exports to Russia and Balkan countries. Hungary can serve as a logistics hub for Moroccos exports towards Europe, Russia and Balkan countries, Szijjarto was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the head of governments office. The Hungarian official also expressed willingness to promote economic ties to be as excellent as political ties between Morocco and Hungary, adding that the North African kingdom can also offer Hungary a gateway to Africa. Szijjarto who is in Morocco to prospect the means to reinforce economic partnership met with head of government Saad Eddine El Othmani, Tourism Minister, Mohamed Sajid, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, Energy and Mines Minister Aziz Rebah, and Industry Minister Moulay Hafid Elalamy. Reinforcing bilateral ties was at the heart of the talks between the Hungarian Minister and Moroccan officials. In this respect, the two parties agreed to set up the Moroccan-Hungarian Economic Partnership Council. They also scheduled the holding of a joint economic committee in October. A forum will take place in tandem with the joint committee. Morocco is also looking forward to receiving more Hungarian tourists. The first cooperation agreement in the field of tourism was signed by the two countries in 1998. In 2016, trade between the two countries totalled 2 billion dirhams, up from 1.8 billion dirhams in 2015, according to data by Moroccos exchange office. Szijjartos visit was also an occasion to renew the cooperation agreement between the two countries in the field of education providing for 100 Hungarian scholarships to Moroccan students. The European Union reiterated on Thursday its willingness to strengthen the excellent partnership and mutually beneficial relationship binding it to Morocco and renewed its determination to work to this end with the new Moroccan Government. In a joint statement by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Frederica Mogherini, and the Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, the EU congratulated the Head of Government Saad Eddine El Othmani on the formation of a new government that won a vote of confidence on Wednesday. We take this opportunity to confirm the determination of the European Union to work together with the new Moroccan Government on strengthening the excellent partnership between the EU and Morocco in order to face common challenges, the two EU officials said in the joint statement. Morocco has long been a strategic partner in our neighborhood, with which we have developed a long-standing relationship of trust, said the European officials, adding, EU-Morocco cooperation is solid and includes many strategic areas, making our relationship mutually beneficial. The EU also reiterated its support for the continuation and deepening of the reform process Morocco started in the wake of the 2011 constitutional reforms undertaken under the authority of King Mohammed VI. Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments display that made him a Christian-right martyr. Photo: Jaelyn deMaria Leary/The Albuquerque Journal/AP The denouement of the weird saga of Robert Bentley is getting weirder yet. Bentley recently resigned the governorship of Alabama in a plea deal after years of fighting a losing battle against heavy evidence of an extramarital affair with a staffer that went over the line into misappropriation of state funds and attempted intimidation of witnesses. But before he left office the septuagenarian Love Gov had the opportunity to appoint a temporary U.S. Senate replacement for new U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He chose state Attorney General Luther Strange, ignoring rumors the new senator had given the Bentley scandal a wide berth in exchange for this supreme favor. Now the voters of Alabama will get to weigh in via a special election (the primary is in August and the general election is in December), and thanks to his Bentley connection, Strange is far from being a shoo-in. This week the Alabama Senate race went from being overshadowed by peculiar things to being a peculiar thing in itself when Roy Moore, the twice-elected, once-removed, and once-suspended chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and perhaps Americas most prominent theocrat, declared his candidacy. Moore pledged to help Donald Trump make America great again by first returning the country to fidelity to God and the traditional family. In case this left anyone in doubt that the man once called the Ten Commandments Judge had not changed, he offered this pithy observation: I know and I think you do too that the foundations of the fabric of our country are being shaken tremendously, said Moore. Our families are being crippled by divorce and abortion. Our sacred institution of marriage has been destroyed by the Supreme Court, and our rights and liberties are in jeopardy. So Moore is not running on what youd call an upbeat, right track message. But he never really has. After a West Point education and some odd experiences as a kickboxer and an Australian cowboy, Moore settled into a reasonably quiet legal and judicial career in eastern Alabama. He first came to national attention in the 1990s as a state circuit court judge who was sued by the ACLU for posting the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and holding pretrial prayers. He eventually prevailed on appeal, but more important, was able to use his attempted martyrdom by godless liberals to get himself elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000 after winning a highly competitive Republican primary. In an early concurring opinion on a case involving a lesbian mother who was trying to win custody of her children from an allegedly abusive ex-husband, Moore threw down the gauntlet to the tyranny of sodomites everywhere: Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies ones ability to describe it. That is enough under the law to allow a court to consider such activity harmful to a child. To declare that homosexuality is harmful is not to make new law but to reaffirm the old; to say that it is not harmful is to experiment with peoples lives, particularly the lives of children. Soon Moore became embroiled in a dispute with a federal judge over his continued display of the Ten Commandments this time via a large monument he commissioned and after defying the judges orders and arguing the Judeo-Christian God reigned over church and state alike, he was finally removed from his position by a state commission and became a national conservative evangelical martyr for real. Moore inevitably entered electoral politics, but in part because of his poor fundraising skills, he fell short in two gubernatorial elections in 2006 and 2010. In 2012, though, after a brief feint toward a Republican presidential run, he made a triumphal return to the state Supreme Court, being elected chief justice again. True to form, by 2016 Moore managed to get himself suspended (a sanction just short of removal) for fighting implementation of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Quite a career, eh? And now Moore will take his virtually universal name recognition and his hard-core Christian-right base of support into a low-turnout multicandidate Senate race where almost anything can happen. At least one Alabama political observer, John Archibald of the Birmingham News, thinks Moore will at least make a runoff. If he does even better than that, Moore would become a figure who might even stand out in Donald Trumps Republican Party. The one sure thing is that if Moore fails in his third statewide non-judicial race, he cannot follow it up with a third run for the Supreme Court and perhaps a third effort to get himself tossed off the bench. At the age of 70, Moore is under Alabama law too old to run for that position. So this Senate race could be his last hurrah, praise the Lord. Feeling confident. Photo: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images U.S. consumer confidence has soared to a level not seen since 2001, according to the latest numbers from the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index. The weekly national survey found Americas sentiment about [the] national economy is the highest its been since August 2001. Bloomberg attributes this to resilient job growth, higher stock prices and income gains. The Bloomberg numbers come just days after the Conference Board found a slight dip in consumer confidence in April. Still, the number was very high and only disappointing when compared to Marchs confidence numbers, which were the highest theyve been since December 2000. That slight downturn was expected after confidence numbers surged in the wake of President Trumps election. While most consumers believe the economy will continue to expand in 2017, like most issues of national importance this one is not immune to partisan differences. As Bloomberg notes, its comfort-index numbers among Republicans show continued growth and just hit their highest levels since 2007. Democrats, meanwhile, are confident in very little. Having mistakenly attacked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for thwarting his sanctuary cities order, Trump now wants to dismember it. Photo: Olivier Douliery - Pool/Getty Images Fresh from his tweeted attacks on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for a district court decision against his executive order seeking to punish sanctuary cities that said court of appeals being a court of appeals did not have a thing to do with, President Trump went out of his way in an interview with the Washington Examiner to say he wants to break up the Ninth Circuit. Thats by no means a novel idea for a Republican; conservatives have always disliked the Ninth Circuit as too liberal, much as the Fifth Circuit has an unsavory reputation among liberals as being too conservative. With judicial appointments depending on who is president when vacancies occur and how confirmations are handled by the Senate, you just cant keep the circuits balanced in any way. But Trump seems to be under the impression that if the Ninth Circuit went away, hed stop having all these legal problems with his executive orders. As I noted this morning when Trump pitched his earlier temper tantrum about the Ninth Circuit, the judge who messed with his sanctuary cities order, William Orrick, would still be a federal judge no matter which court of appeals had jurisdiction over appeals from his rulings. And so long as Trump keeps issuing orders that affect California, California judges will have the ability to grant Californians relief when appropriate, which is all that Orrick did. Aside from all that, Trump does not seem to have the foggiest idea why these godless liberal judges from hippie-land keep ruling against him: The language could not be any clearer. I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they dont even mention the words in their rejection on the ban, Trump said of his travel ban. And the same thing with this [sanctuary city decision]. I mean, when you have people that are being enabled to commit crime. And in San Francisco, when you look at Kate Steinle, being shot and here is the court, you know, right in that same general area. And when you look at a Kate Steinle, when you look at so many other things. A pretty cursory glance at all the adverse decisions on the travel ban should inform Trump that the problem was not with the language of his order, but with the things he said during the campaign that suggest the order was an implicit effort to impose a blatantly unconstitutional Muslim ban. He might eventually prevail on that issue if it reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, but he has no one but himself to blame until then. As for the new decision on the sanctuary cities order, all his ranting and raving about murderous immigrants has almost nothing to do with the legal issues, which involve the contradiction between his attorneys claim his order is intended to be merely symbolic, and his own (and his attorney generals) claims they will strip the sanctuary cities of any and all federal funds. If you did not know better, you might suspect the whole saga is intended to excite Trumps hard-core base, which may otherwise become disappointed by all he has been unable to accomplish so far. In any event, splitting up the Ninth Circuit aint happening so long as Democrats have the 41 senators needed to filibuster such a plan in the Senate. But the president is free to rave on if he wishes. 40-Something Cowgirls in the Grand Floral Parade during Portland Rose Festival 2016. Photo: Peng GE/Getty Images The city of Portland, Oregon, is hosting its annual Rose Festival, an event that usually entails a parade billed as a multicultural event, complete with bands, community members, government officials, schools, classic cars. But this year, the popular and anodyne Avenue of Roses Parade has been scuppered over safety concerns, after violent protesters threatened to disrupt it. The ire of local leftist groups was seemingly raised because the Multnomah County Republican Party was slated to march, as it has done in the past. Two anti-fascist groups had announced plans to protest GOP participation, but things escalated after campaign organizers received an anonymous email threat. The message said rioters would shut down the parade if the Republicans attended, reports the Oregonian. To avoid violence, organizers decided to call off the event. You have seen how much power we have downtown, the anonymous email said, and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely. This is non-negotiable, the message warned, adding that otherwise, protesters would rush the parade and drag and push those marching with the Republican Party. The parade organizers reportedly made the decision after meeting with police, who said they could not provide additional security to the marchers or attendees. A petition circulated Wednesday to bring back the event, reports the Washington Post, but the organizers arent budging. Our official position is were extremely sad about this, a spokesman for the Rose Festival Foundation told the Oregonian. The two groups who had originally planned to protest Direct Action Alliance and Oregon Students Empowered disavowed the email, but also refused to back down on their protest. Direct Action Alliance released a statement that claimed known members of neo-nazi and anti-immigrant hate groups planned to attend, adding that no Portland child will see a march in support of this fascist regime go unopposed. The Multnomah County Republicans, which planned to keep marching had the parade gone forward, wrote a letter urging the city and police to investigate, pointing out that differences in opinion we may have do not begin to constitute hateful rhetoric, much less offer any excuse for discarding American traditions of political participation and First Amendment protections. In a later statement, the party chair said its members were disappointed in the cancellation, and that the Multnomah County Republican Party is not composed of Nazis and white supremacists and those who think we would tolerate marching in a parade with folks carrying swastikas are delusional. The 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade started in 2007, according to the Oregonian, and was an attempt to rehabilitate the neighborhoods image, which had a reputation for being a rough and crime-ridden area. Jason Chaffetz. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz announced that he plans to leave Congress before the end of his term because he wants to spend more time with his family and/or take a potential Fox News gig. If I do step down early, it will be months from now, he said. But on Wednesday Chaffetz announced that before making his final exit from Congress, hell take several weeks off to tend to a medical issue. As he explained in an Instagram post, complete with cool X-ray pictures, his 12-year-old foot injury requires immediate surgery. Chaffetz is set to fly home to Utah this morning and undergo surgery in the afternoon, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Ive got an angry foot, Chaffetz said. I will miss more than a couple of days of votes, but its unavoidable. It has absolutely nothing to do with my other announcement. But I have to deal with it. Chaffetz said hell definitely return to Congress. Absolutely. No doubt about it, he told the paper. Good thing Congress has top-notch medical coverage. Superior enthusiasm, an unpopular GOP president, and now an advantage in early congressional polling: All these are assets for the donkey party going into the midterms. Photo-Illustration: Daily Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images To the gradually but steadily increasing body of evidence that Democrats are likely to have a solid performance in the 2018 midterm elections comes another factor: the so-called generic congressional ballot, which means polling of which party voters are likely to prefer in upcoming U.S. House elections. FiveThirtyEights Harry Enten notes that in generic congressional balloting Democrats are in the best position at this early stage of the midterm election cycle of any opposition party dating all the way back to 1942. They currently lead the GOP by a 45 percent to 40 percent margin in the polling averages. Democrats are in a historically great position according to the generic ballot. Typically, at this point in a midterm cycle the first half of the year after the preceding presidential election the party in control of the House is fairly popular. Most likely, they did at least OK in the last election (they still control the House, after all) and they simply havent had enough time to upset the electorate too much. Republicans in 2017, though, are one of the exceptions to the rule. As Enten observes, one of the other rare moments when the party controlling the House looked to be in relatively bad shape the year before midterms was in 2013, and Republicans rebounded to do very well in 2014. They did not, however, have the current GOP Congresss handicap of being the White House party. [H]eres the problem for the GOP: Midterms are almost always about the president. Voting for Congress in midterm years is essentially just a mechanism for passing judgment on the White House. In 2018, unlike 2014, the House and presidency will be controlled by the same party. And when we look at the generic ballot numbers this early in the cycle while also accounting for who holds the White House, the generic ballot has forecasted midterm House results fairly well. According to Enten, the historical record suggests the Democrats current 5-point margin in the generic congressional ballot should all other things being equal swell to about 8 points by November of 2018. Thats near, if not equal to, the size of the national popular-vote margin they will need to regain control of the House, given the obstacles they face thanks to Republican gerrymandering and superior vote distribution. None of these calculations, however, fully take into account the phenomenon of a president as unpopular as Donald Trump is at present. One would figure his unpopularity, if it is sustained, will be a further drag on GOP performance in 2018. The other way to look at it, though, is that the current generic ballot numbers already factor in an unpopular GOP president, and since his numbers may not go much lower (given his solid and hard-to-disappoint base), perhaps Republicans wont suffer the usual slide going into the midterms. Any way you slice it, though, it is not a good sign for Republicans that all the indicators for 2018 look negative, with the main consolation being that they may not get much worse. If they do, it could be time for a grand old disaster. Bill Shine. Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic As Fox News is roiled by lawsuits and the ouster of Bill OReilly, the networks co-president Bill Shine has retained the backing of the Murdochs. On Monday, Rupert Murdoch took network co-presidents Shine and Jack Abernethy to lunch at Marea, a seafood restaurant near Foxs midtown headquarters a highly public show of support. But privately, Shine is expressing concern about his future at the network. According to three sources briefed on the conversations, Shine has told friends he recently asked Ruperts sons James and Lachlan the CEO and co-chairman, respectively, of network parent company 21st Century Fox to release a statement in support of him, but they refused to do so. The sources said Shine made the request because of withering press coverage of Fox News in recent weeks. A source added that Shine has privately complained that Rupert isnt fighting for him in the press, which is why he wanted explicit support from the sons. Through a Fox News spokesperson, Shine denied personally going to James and Lachlan for a statement. A Murdoch spokesperson said Shine did not directly ask for a statement. By refusing to back Shine at this tumultuous moment for the network, the Murdochs may finally be signaling that theyre prepared to make the sweeping management changes theyve so far resisted after forcing out CEO Roger Ailes last summer. Shines continued leadership has angered many Fox News employees, especially women, who view him as a product of the misogynistic Ailes culture. Shine joined the network in 1996, served as Sean Hannitys producer, and rose through the ranks to become Ailess deputy. In that role, sources say he had the power to stop multiple instances of sexual harassment, including that of former Fox booker Laurie Luhn, but did not do so. (Through a Fox News spokesperson, Shine denies this.) Hes currently a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed this week by former Fox host Andrea Tantaros. Sources say there are multiple reasons Rupert Murdoch hasnt replaced Shine. In the immediate wake of Ailess dismissal, Shine provided stability to run the network day-to-day. More recently, Murdoch hasnt wanted to be seen as caving to critics, especially the New York Times. Another problem is that there is no logical successor who could oversee programming at the network. Theres also the question that Shine may simply know too much about Fox News inner workings at a time when federal prosecutors are investigating the network. Former CFO Mark Kranz was reportedly granted an immunity deal to aid the FBI probe. Fired executives take immunity deals, an insider said. So its a very tricky situation. In an interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday, first daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump said admitting Syrian refugees into the U.S. has to be part of the discussion around ending the humanitarian crisis in the civil-war-ravaged country. Thats quite a break from her father, who is so against the idea that both failed versions of his travel ban have included temporary suspensions of all refugee resettlement to the U.S. President Trump has previously expressed more support for safe zones within Syria than for bringing Syrians to the U.S. But Ivanka sees Syria as a global humanitarian crisis, as she told NBC News Hallie Jackson. We have to come together, and we have to solve it, she added. Does that include opening the border to Syrian refugees in the U.S.? Jackson asked. That has to be part of the discussion, but thats not going to be enough in itself, Ivanka said. The First Daughter appears to hold some sway over her father on the issue of Syria. Her brother Eric previously said that Ivankas reaction to images of injured children after a gas attack in Syria helped push President Trump toward bombing the country. Ivanka disputed that version of events this week, calling it a flawed interpretation of what happened. Whether her opinion on the matter of refugees will change her fathers stance remains to be seen. If Trump does flip-flop on this issue though, it wont sit well with those tweeting in their MAGA hats. Let me think about that for a moment....No. Great discussion, thanks! https://t.co/VZl00Y0sB1 Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 26, 2017 Ivanka Trump is a globalist or at best incredibly misinformed & naive. She should not be advising Trump. https://t.co/c5UVPlaqNv Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 26, 2017 IVANKA TRUMP on the Today Show Said taking in Syrian Refugees had to be in the discussion. HELL NOand Help them THERE pic.twitter.com/S9cLG22T0N ZOLA for TRUMP! (@InTheYear1611) April 26, 2017 Ivanka should not be making policy statements on #refugees that contradict @POTUS. Her comments are turning off Trump voters. John Cardillo (@johncardillo) April 26, 2017 Please tell me, Ivanka, where on the America First platform (that got your father elected) does it say Syrian refugees are our concern? Grand DuchessForgotten American (@NoTatsClassy) April 26, 2017 But this shit is hard. Photo: Shawn Thew - Pool/Getty Images Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, two of President Trumps top advisers, appear to have little in common beyond their devotion to a manifestly unfit chief executive. But a probing Politico piece chock-full of delightful behind-the-scenes details about the first 100 days in the West Wing reveals one other thing: They both keep long-term to-do lists on whiteboards in their West Wing offices. Bannons is a list of Trumps campaign promises, reflecting the president at his most combative and uninformed. Notably, theres also a list of 11 promises that have been delayed, a sign of Bannons optimism that Trump really is the right-wing nationalist he suggested during the campaign. Kushners whiteboard, on the other hand, lists bipartisan projects relating to veterans and infrastructure that he hopes to achieve with his newly created Office of American Innovation. No wonder these two keep feuding. Earlier this month, reports had Bannon flirting with unemployment after weeks of clashing with Kushner, who prefers a methodical approach to Bannons bulldozer. But Politico says the baby-faced real-estate heir and the crater-faced media mogul have reached a detente and Bannons place in the White House appears safe, for now. Even with their disagreements, its hard to imagine that Kushner and Bannon cant use each others help. The more people to manage the child in the Oval Office, the better. As Politico notes, Trump aides have learned to dumb down presentations, keep him apprised of how the news will cover his decisions, and above all else talk him out of doing crazy things. But the articles most amusing details involve Trumps greatest obsession the media. For example: Trump has met in the Oval Office with right-wing aggregation king Matt Drudge, who keeps an open line of communication with Kushner. Sean Spicer has a daily pre-briefing ritual of asking Trump what hed like to see on TV that day. The media obsession has even filtered down to staffers, who are so sensitive to media critiques that they were offended by stories doubting the White Houses ability to pull off an Easter Egg Roll. When the event was held without major disaster, they were offended again that no one praised them. As Trumps first 100 days wind down and he scrambles for some great success to point to, theres a lot of scrambling outside the White House for a narrative that best encapsulates what has been a largely ineffective and tumultuous 100 days. Let that scramble end, because an anonymous White House official summed it all up in a quote to Politicos reporters: I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here, the official said. But this shit is hard. Lock him up? Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Defense Department inspector general is investigating President Trumps former national security adviser Michael Flynn over payments he received from foreign governments after he retired from the Army in 2014. As a former military officer, Flynn was required to ask for Pentagon approval before pocketing foreign payments and he was explicitly told that when he retired, Maryland representative Elijah Cummings revealed Thursday. The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Cummings made public Thursday a letter from the inspector general saying it seeks to determine if Flynn failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving the payments. He also released a letter sent to Flynn in 2014 explicitly telling him not to take foreign payments without approval. These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, Cummings said. Flynn is known to have received $45,000 from RT, the Russian-backed news network, for speaking at a dinner in 2015. His company, Flynn Intel Group, was also paid $530,000 last fall for work it did on behalf of the Turkish government. We have no evidence, not a shred, that he (Flynn) disclosed his payments from RT, the Kremlin-backed propaganda outlet, and we have no evidence, zilch, that he obtained permission from the secretary of the Army and the secretary of State to accept any foreign-government payments as required by law, Cummings said at the news conference. The Democrat also pushed the White House to release documents it has that could aide in the Oversight Committees investigation. I honestly dont understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn, he told reporters. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that some of Trumps cabinet secretaries are becoming frustrated by how slowly the administration is moving to fill positions in their agencies. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson does not share their complaint. The New York Times reported on Thursday that the former Exxon Mobil CEO has done almost nothing to fill the nearly 200 State Department jobs that require Senate approval. Since the confirmation process takes months, that could mean the department will be understaffed well into next year. And in a move that will do nothing to tamp down the paranoia thats reportedly spreading throughout the department, R.C. Hammond, Tillersons spokesman, told the paper that he sees no sense in finding people to fill jobs that may be eliminated if Congress grants Trumps request to cut the State Departments funding by a third. Several senators from the presidents own party, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said that such drastic cuts to the State Department wont pass the Senate. But Tillerson is still preparing to scale back. Hammond said that Tillerson will launch a listening tour among State Department employees in the coming days, then form a plan to restructure operations. Per the Times: The first step was to find out where the Titanic was, and then it was to map out where everything else is, Mr. Hammond said, likening the departments organizational structure to a sunken ocean liner and its seabed surroundings. I think were still in the process of mapping out the entire ocean floor so that we understand the full picture. The listening tour will enable Mr. Tillerson to hear from diplomats on how to reorganize and refocus, Mr. Hammond said. What youll see us do over the next several months is start to ask the question, ask people to contribute their vision of what they think the big mission is, he said. Not until that part is accomplished can we even begin to think about how to restructure anything. And to think, last month State Department employees were said to be worried that Tillerson had plans to tear up an attractive office next to his own to install cubicles. As it turns out, thats a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the, uh President Trump visits Snap-on Inc. in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on April 18, 2017. Photo: Mark Hoffman/TNS via Getty Images Jared Kushner and the rest of Team Trumps so-called globalists seemed ascendant in recent weeks, but that changed on Wednesday morning. Following a string of smaller trade-related victories for Steve Bannon and his motley crew of White House nationalists, administration officials said Trump was considering a draft executive order that would accomplish one of their top goals: announcing that America intends to withdraw from NAFTA. It lasted about 12 hours. Late on Wednesday, the White House said Trump told his Canadian and Mexican counterparts that he does not intend to pull out of NAFTA after all. According to a readout of his pleasant and productive calls with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries. From the start, it appeared that floating the withdrawal from NAFTA was a negotiating tactic. As New Yorks Eric Levitz noted, Pulling out altogether would create so much economic uncertainty and opposition from within the GOP and corporate America its almost unthinkable that the White House would go through with it. The reversal isnt a surprise, but its unclear why it happened so comically fast. Is the Trump administration tidying up after a proposal leaked by warring White House factions sparked a harsh backlash, or was this part of the plan all along? According to Bloomberg, there was indeed infighting among White House staffers on how to address Trumps frequent campaign promise to renegotiate or withdraw from NAFTA. And like many of the Trump administrations befuddling moves in recent days, Wednesdays drama might have been sparked by the presidents 100th day in office: Trumps top advisers had been embroiled in a debate over how aggressively to proceed on reshaping U.S. participation in Nafta, with hard-liners favoring a threatened withdrawal as soon as this week and others advocating for a more measured approach to reopening negotiations with Canada and Mexico. Some of Trumps advisers wanted a dramatic move before Trumps 100th day in office on Saturday to fulfill a key campaign promise, while others said he could let the milestone pass and revisit the issue later through more formal procedures, according to two White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Wednesdays leak definitely sparked drama, with lawmakers from both parties blasting the move. Republican Senator Ben Sasse called it a disastrously bad idea, and both of Arizonas Republican senators agreed: Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy - @POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) April 26, 2017 Increasing trade barriers with CAN and MEX will result in lost jobs and higher consumer costs in #AZ. Strengthen #NAFTA, don't abandon it Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) April 26, 2017 The New York Times reported that the threat of withdrawal from NAFTA was meant to increase pressure on Congress to authorize new negotiations, and on Canada and Mexico to accede to American demands. Its possible the Trump administration backed off because they felt theyd already accomplished those goals. The Mexican peso, the Canadian dollar, and shares of companies that rely on NAFTA all dropped on Wednesday, with the currencies bouncing back after the late-night reversal. Trump may feel the show of strength put him in a better negotiating position, but it wasnt a necessary step for bringing Canada and Mexico to the negotiating table. Per the Times: Both Mexican and Canadian officials have said repeatedly that they are ready to negotiate changes to the trade agreement. Written in the early 1990s, it is outdated in key respects: Its drafters, for example, did not foresee the rise of the internet. Canada is ready to come to the table at any time, Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for the Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told Reuters on Wednesday. Mexico is anxious to get the negotiations finished by early 2018 because it has presidential elections in July of that year, and its unclear if the new administration will be willing to talk. It will be in the best advantage of the countries involved that we finish this negotiation within the context of this year, Mexicos economic minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, told CNNMoney earlier this month. The talks cant begin until August at the earliest because the Trump administration has to give Congress 90-days notice under the guidelines for renegotiating NAFTA. Plus, the notification must come from Trumps trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. His confirmation has been held up over work he did for China and Brazil. While Trump tends to focus his NAFTA-related wrath on Mexico, and now Canadas lumber and dairy industry, last week he acknowledged that Congress which is controlled by members of his own party is holding up the process. We want to start to negotiate with Mexico immediately, and we have these provisions where you have to wait long periods of time, Trump said while touring a factory in Wisconsin. The whole thing is ridiculous. Pinata exporters beware. Photo: Carlos Tischler/NurPhoto via Getty Images The White Houses globalists may be cucked. For much of the past month, as Steve Bannons stock slid and Jared Kushners rose, the president began toeing the swamps line on trade and foreign affairs: China ceased to be a currency manipulator; the administration leaked relatively modest ambitions for reforming the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); NATO became the opposite of obsolete; and protecting Syrian babies against chemical weapons became a vital national-security interest of the United States. But this week, Trump made America nationalist again slapping tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber; threatening to take similar action against Ottawas high-protein milk; giving Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross the green light to investigate the trade abuses of foreign steel and aluminum exporters; and, now, preparing an executive order that would signal Americas intent to withdraw from NAFTA. As the Washington Post reports: President Trump is seriously considering signing a document within days that would signal his intent to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement within six months, three people familiar with the matter saidSigning the document does not require Trump to withdraw from NAFTA after six months, but it is a required step if he plans to eventually do so. The White House is expected to soon take a separate step by signing a letter to Congress that would notify lawmakers of the administrations intention to renegotiate NAFTA. Its hard to imagine that this is anything more than a negotiating tactic. NAFTA has been the foundation of trade relations on the North American continent for 23 years. Pulling out altogether would create so much economic uncertainty and opposition from within the GOP and corporate America its almost unthinkable that the White House would go through with it. Increasing trade barriers with CAN and MEX will result in lost jobs and higher consumer costs in #AZ. Strengthen #NAFTA, don't abandon it Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) April 26, 2017 Last week, President Trump threatened to shut down the government if Congress didnt fund his border wall. He then backed down amid opposition from his own party. Trumps NAFTA threat seems likely to follow a similar trajectory. Nonetheless, the mere threat of such disruptive action is enough to move markets and sour diplomatic relations. Mexicos peso and the Canadian dollar have already taken a hit on todays reports. America first, Puerto Rico last. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, Donald Trump proclaimed the night he won the Oval Office. Five months later, the president pledged to shut down the government to prevent any emergency aid from reaching a certain subcategory of U.S. citizens. Democrats are trying to bail out insurance companies from disastrous #ObamaCare, and Puerto Rico with your tax dollars. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017 The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 Puerto Ricans are American citizens who pay taxes. But unlike other citizens, they live in an area where Medicaid is not funded as an entitlement available to all who qualify for aid but rather, as a block grant. Now, due to a debt crisis that our federal government is complicit in perpetuating, the island will run out of Medicaid funding by the end of this year. At that point, a half-million of its residents will likely lose access to health coverage. Democrats are imploring Republicans to include funding for Puerto Ricos Medicaid plan in the next spending bill. The case for doing so is not merely humanitarian. If 500,000 Puerto Ricans lose access to health insurance, a good number will avail themselves of their citizenship rights and move to the mainland. This would swell the Medicaid rolls of U.S. states, where the cost of covering the medical care of low-income residents is far higher than it is in Puerto Rico. Which is to say: Its quite likely that rescuing Puerto Ricos Medicaid program would not merely save the lives of low-income citizens, but also accomplish some things that Republicans actually care about, like averting an even larger burden on taxpayers and reducing low-skilled migration to the American mainland. But to achieve all that, Trump and his party would need to first go on record in support of directing health-care funding to an island of Hispanic-Americans. And the president would, apparently, prefer to shutter his own government than do that. Which is odd. After all, Trump has made it clear that his hard-line immigration positions arent informed by animus for nonwhites, but merely loyalty to American citizens of all stripes. And he has also insisted that he loves Hispanics and believes that all Americans deserve access to health care. Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016 Is it possible that these sentiments were less than sincere and that Trump sees himself as president for some Americans, but not others? Cant wait to see this screen again. Photo: sd619/Getty Images With Ajit Pai and the FCC rolling back rules protecting an open internet, allowing your internet-service provider to stop acting as a public common carrier, theres been speculation about what exactly will happen. One common talking point is that this is just a return to normalcy, and customers dont need to worry about the results. Heres Doug Brake, senior telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (which gets a fair amount of funding from telecom companies), writing today in an op-ed for The Hill: [Pro-net neutrality] agitators want to preserve common-carrier classification under Title II for one and only one reason: They want the Internet to be a highly regulated utility. They arent interested in a productive conversation about an innovation-oriented internet and communications system. Weeks before Pais proposal was to be released, some were already labeling it a catastrophe. But the reality is that Pai looks to be returning broadband to the legal regime that seemed to have worked pretty well from the dawn of the commercial Internet up until 2015. This is, frankly, horseshit. While it may have appeared to the average consumer that the internet before the FCC regulation worked pretty well, the back end was an unseemly mess that actively made using the internet worse. To briefly explain: Between your end connection and the internet at large lies your ISP, which provides that final last-mile delivery of services. Your ISP taps into the internet at physical ports, known as internet-exchange points. As the rise of streaming HD video took off at the turn of the decade, led mainly by Netflix, ISPs realized that they were about to get hosed. Consumers were going to start needing a lot more bandwidth, and ISPs would have to invest capital to provide it, including upgrading and adding many more internet-exchange points. But thanks to a lawsuit by New Yorks attorney general Eric Schneiderman against Time Warner Cable about slow broadband speeds, we have internal emails and graphs from Time Warner Cable (now known as Spectrum after a merger with Charter Communications last year) that show how at least one ISP allegedly saw its soon-to-be-overwhelmed infrastructure not as a problem, but as a source of potential profit. One Time Warner Cable exec wrote in 2011 that the companys strategy, when it came to upgrading its physical internet-exchange points, should be focused not on providing the best service, but on getting content providers like Netflix to pay for the right to get a direct connection to paying subscribers. If the content provider didnt pay up, it would be forced through transit, meaning its data would go through a slower, more circuitous route to your television or laptop screen. We really want content networks paying us for access, wrote the unnamed exec, and right now we force those through transit that do not want to pay. This meant Time Warner Cable and Netflix entered into a series of extended negotiations. Until Netflix agreed to pay, Time Warner Cable refused to add more internet exchange points between Netflix and its customers, resulting in broadband speeds dipped below what Netflix needed to deliver HD streaming. This meant Time Warner Cable customers often experienced buffering and degradation of video quality while watching Netflix. Netflix finally agreed to pay up in late 2014, and an internal graph produced by Time Warner Cable shows how the payoff worked to speed up Netflix, and how slow things would have remained if Netflix hadnt coughed up the cash (its the second-to-last row you want to focus on): Time Warner Cable, during its long and contentious negotiations with Netflix, never told customers that their Netflix connections were slower because Netflix wasnt paying up in fact, at the same time Time Warner Cable was deliberately neglecting the infrastructure needed to support Netflix, its ads explained why Time Warner Cable could deliver Netflix without buffering. This wasnt just happening at Time Warner Cable Netflix eventually signed the same type of deal with every major ISP. Its only because of the lawsuit in New York against Time Warner Cable that we know the internal thinking of one ISP but its a safe assumption that the same calculations were being made at every other major ISP as well. Netflix needed to be able to directly connect to an ISPs network, therefore Netflix had to pay up. And Netflix wasnt the only company that had to enter into these deals. Time Warner Cable did the same thing to companies like Riot Games, which makes the extremely popular online game League of Legends, and backbone internet providers that actually deliver the vast majority of what you see online. Anti-net-neutrality proponents may argue that this was simply a problem of transparency the only problem was that Time Warner Cable customers didnt know their Netflix speeds sucked because of behind-the-scenes negotiations but otherwise, Time Warner Cable should be able to strike whatever deals it wants with content providers. But entrenched monopolies mean that even in some alternate reality where Time Warner Cable, instead of bragging about its Netflix speeds, ran TV ads and put up billboards all across New York openly announcing that it was deliberately providing slower streaming speeds in order to extract money from a company it wouldnt have mattered. Time Warner Cable (Spectrum) was (and still is) by far the largest internet provider in New York State, and in some cities, like Rochester, its the only one. The same is true across the country per the FCC itself, about 48 percent of Americans live somewhere where only one ISP offers internet speeds faster than 25 Mbps, and one in five can only choose one ISP for any broadband access at all. Either the content provider pays up or the service remains slow, and the customer remains caught in the middle. Its likely that your Netflix streaming speed wont be affected by this rollback CEO Reed Hastings has publicly said hes not worried because Netflix is too popular for ISPs to try to alter direct-connection deals. But smaller content providers (including would-be competitors to Netflix) dont have that luxury, and new tech will inevitably come down the line that will place new demands on broadband speeds. When that happens, unregulated ISPs will engage in the same anti-consumer practices that they did before. We dont have to imagine how it will happen, because weve seen it before. Sizing: The intimates industry has a reputation of being exclusionary though thats slowly changing. Size inclusion was a big sticking point for us, and so we tried to highlight undergarments offered in a wider range of sizes. Cut: Whereas mens underwear comes down to three main cuts (boxers, briefs, and boxer briefs), its the Wild West out there for women. Theres the sisterhood of briefs, bikinis, and thongs from which others descend, such as the boyshort, hipster, and cheeky. Then there are the capitalized cuts, like the French cut that harks back to the Baywatch days of one-pieces, and the G-string, which is the next best thing to nothing at all. Rise is another consideration maybe you prefer a high-rise (a la My Calvins ), low-rise, or something in the middle. Material: How a pair feels will depend on what its made from. Cotton is a favorite for its breathability. Modal is an alternative often seen in sustainable options since its biodegradable. For its airiness, mesh (usually manufactured from nylon) works as another popular textile. To make a panty more moldable to the body, some stretch (either elastane or spandex) will generally make an appearance on tags. Since underwear is such a personal choice, theres really no right answer to which material is best but to help you, weve detailed the materials used in every recommendation. Price: Even though almost all of us would consider underwear an essential, it isnt always priced that way. Our focus, therefore, was on the undies that truly feel well worth it. Each of the picks is denoted as $ (under $15), $$ (under $25), or $$$ (over $25). Dr. Del Bohnenstiehl Co-science Lead, North Carolina State University Del Bohnenstiehl is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University. Much of his research focuses on volcanic and hydrothermal systems in mid-ocean ridge and arc systems, ocean basin seismicity and marine tectonics. He also works collaboratively on issues related to the ecology of sound in the oceans, and he oversees the operation of North Carolina State Universitys unmanned surface vehicle, which conducts benthic-mapping studies in estuarine environments. Bohnenstiehl received a B.S. in Geology from Eastern Illinois University (1995), a M.S. in Geology from Vanderbilt University (1998), and PhD in Marine Geology and Geophysics from Columbia University (2002). Bohnenstiehl has spent many months at sea over the last two decades working in the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern Oceans; however, this is his first time participating on an Okeanos Explorer expedition. Mess That said isn't g*psy a slur too? Reply Thread Link I thought of that as well! If I can recall correctly, when people say that racial slur, they mean : A) People from Romania or B) A racial mixture of Romanian, Indian and African So why not just say the race instead of the g-word? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link no, it means romani people. romania has little do with it Reply Parent Thread Link Here in Ireland they often are Irish people who live in caravans etc but the politically correct term is Travellers. Also I used to live in an area with a lot of Romanian people but wouldn't ever consider calling them travellers. Edited at 2017-04-27 01:34 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's my understanding that some of the travelers, as they're called in the UK and Ireland, are Romani but not all. In fact, I think all of the travelers in Ireland are genetically distinct from the Roma and are native Irish. And if you're Romani you're not necessarily from Romania although a lot of them were spread out through Eastern Europe. I think they're genetically traced back to northern India. Edited at 2017-04-27 01:34 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link you recall wrongly when people call somebody a gypsy or some variant of, they're referring to roma / romani people, who are all descended from a diaspora out of northern india. it's a myth that we came from africa, although gpysy itself derives from egypt I think, that's where people falsely believe romani come from. Edited at 2017-04-27 01:35 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Almost, but people from Romania = Romanians = Romani. Romani are or used to be a nomadic group that originated from India but live all over Europe today. They have their own heritage and language. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It is, but the British and Irish apparently don't care Reply Parent Thread Expand Link No it's not That's something tumblr losers made up. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link No, it's a word used to describe a wanderer. Reply Parent Thread Link Yup. Roma is the correct term for an outsider to use. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link what a tool Reply Thread Link He can't paddleboard his way out of this mess Reply Thread Link nnnnn Reply Parent Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link "I've come from Kent and I grew up with a lot of, like, freewheeling, cool, interesting characters like that. I certainly wasn't taking a slant at that at all. I'm very respectful." Wut is this explanation? I'm very respectful, lol, okay. Reply Thread Link IKR? What a mess... Reply Parent Thread Link "I used an offensive slur but I'm still respectful!!" Reply Parent Thread Link kent and 'cool' and 'freewheeling' is not something i would ever put in the same sentence Reply Parent Thread Link lol mfte Reply Parent Thread Link lmao ikr what kind of Home Counties mess. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I feel like only people from Kent could consider Kent 'wavy' or some shit. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link mte I went to uni in Canterbury and I loved it but ia Reply Parent Thread Link But is he the race that the slur is used for, because if he is then why should we care? If he is, then I must say that this reminds me of the Republicans that called Mr.Obama a racist for saying the n-word. Reply Thread Link I'm pretty sure he's not. Wikipedia says: "Pikey or "pikie" is a slang term, which may be pejorative, used mainly in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to refer to people who are of the Traveller Community. In a pejorative sense it means "a lower-class person", perhaps 'coarse' or 'disreputable'." It sounds like he was using it in the second sense. Reply Parent Thread Link Oh! Then what is his problem? I hope everything he works in flops from now on. :/ Reply Parent Thread Link Well according to wiki: Bloom's mother's family lived in Tasmania (Australia), Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. Nothing on his dad's side but Colin Stone doesn't sound Romani to me unless he changed his name. Pretty sure we can rule out even the 1/16 Cherokee excuse. It's just the good old case of not understanding that just because you have a personal affinity to a culture and people because you rolled when it was all good doesn't mean you get to use their slurs because you have not had them thrown at you for real. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link he's not romani or a traveller, he's trying (and failing) to say that he's lower-class Reply Parent Thread Link I've never heard this word before. What does it mean? Reply Thread Link A lower class person, apparently. Reply Parent Thread Link but if he's using it to refer to himself...?? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's a slur for Irish travellers and sometimes Romani people, but it's also used to describe working class antisocial people (basically another word for chav). It sounds like he's using it to imply he's rough, as that's what most of our racist population think travellers are. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It took me a while to realise 'pikey' was a slur I'm ngl. Reply Thread Link According to whom? Is there a master list of slurs that I should be aware of? Reply Parent Thread Link Orlando Bloom is British? Reply Thread Link somehow i always thought he was australian Reply Parent Thread Expand Link If he were Australian he would've said more slurs than this by now. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yeah me too lol wtf Reply Parent Thread Link Same, maybe it's bc he dated Miranda Kerr... idk Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah I always forget he's not lol Reply Parent Thread Link lmao same but that's because i get a lot of his details mixed up with heath's :( Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao mte, could've sworn he wasn't Reply Parent Thread Link Girl where you been? What did you think he was? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link well fuck Reply Thread Link He need to fuq me Reply Thread Link Honestly I had no idea that was a slur, but if I had said it and people told me to why it was offensive, then I would of course apologize for my ignorance. Orlando's comment is BS Reply Thread Link I have never even heard the term until this post so had I heard it in passing I would have thought it was some weird British term or something lol I guess you really do learn something new every day. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm only aware of it because of the movie "Snatch," and thought it was the British equivalent of America's "trailer trash." Reply Parent Thread Link The only time I've heard it used was in SW England, where it was slang for a cheap/miserly person. I had no idea it was linked to the Romani/Traveller peoples until this post. /themoreyouknow Reply Parent Thread Link Trash It makes you wonder how many POS celebs are racist...probably 99% Reply Thread Link He's racist because he described himself as a Pikey? Da fuck? Reply Parent Thread Link Wow, it's not even the "sorry if you were offended" non-apology. It's just a straight up denial that anything offensive was said. Reply Thread Link Because he doesn't see it as offensive...AND THAT'S OKAY. Reply Parent Thread Link ugh gross. i think a lot of people just think it's another word for chav or scally but it really isn't Reply Thread Link Yes this basically. I'm from up North so we say chav/scally where i'm from, but a lot of my friends from down south have always said 'pikey' instead. I think the vast majority regionally just think it's their area's version of chav. Reply Parent Thread Link That's definitely how it seemed to me when I was a kid (in Surrey). But obviously I've learned better now and wouldn't use the word. Reply Parent Thread Link Chav is also related to Romani culture - chava means boy. Reply Parent Thread Link I was holding out hope because of the LOTR/PotC soft spot but yeah. Cancelled. Fuck him. Reply Thread Link Are you personally offended by his use of the word? Do you personally know anyone who is? Reply Parent Thread Link 15 Horror Movies You Need To See - And The Urban Legends That Inspired Them - https://t.co/w947pOs4xy pic.twitter.com/OyfUFhxiGZ Screen Rant (@screenrant) 26 april 2017 15. THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES THE MOTHMAN OF POINT PLEASANT In West Virginia folklore, the Mothman is a legendary creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 12, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated November 16, 1966, titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something". The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the country. On November 12, 1966, five men who were digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia, claimed to see a man-like figure fly low from the trees over their heads. This is often identified as the first known sighting of what became known as the Mothman. Shortly thereafter, on November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, told police they saw a large white creature whose eyes "glowed red" when the car headlights picked it up. They described it as a "large flying man with ten-foot wings", following their car while they were driving in an area outside of town known as "the TNT area", the site of a former World War II munitions plant. During the next few days, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firemen who sighted it said it was a "large bird with red eyes". Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he believed the sightings were due to an unusually large heron he termed a "shitepoke". Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at a creature in a nearby field its eyes glowed "like bicycle reflectors", and blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd dog on the creature. Wildlife biologist Dr. Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings all fit the sandhill crane, a large American crane almost as high as a man with a seven-foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes, and that the bird may have wandered out of its migration route. This particular crane was unrecognized at first because it was not native to this region. : John Klein is involved in a car accident with his wife, but while he is unharmed, his wife mentions a moth shaped creature appearing. After her death, John begins to investigate the secrets behind this mentioned Mothman. It takes him to a small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where he discovers a connection with the same problem. Here he meets Connie Mills, while he continues to unravel the mystery of what the Mothman really is. 11. CANDYMAN BLOODY MARY Urban legend that says that anyone who chants the words Bloody Mary three times in front of a mirror will summon a vengeful spirit. This spirit has been reported to do a variety of things to the person who summons her, including killing the person, scratching their eyes out, driving them mad or pulling them into the mirror with the spirit generally referred to as the spirit of a woman or even a witch. This is an old legend, but in 1978 a folklorist named Janet Langlois published an essay on Bloody Mary, which led to the tale becoming a popular slumber party ritual done by girls as well as boys. No one knows the origins of the Bloody Mary legend; over the years, she has been rumored to be anything from a witch that was killed for practicing witchcraft to a modern-day woman killed in a car crash, depending on what part of the country you live in. : Helen Lyle is a student who decides to write a thesis about local legends and myths. She visits a part of the town, where she learns about the legend of the Candyman, a one-armed man who appears when you say his name five times, in front of a mirror. Of course, Helen doesn't believe all this stuff, but the people of the area are really afraid. When she ignores their warnings and begins her investigation in the places that he is rumored to appear, a series of horrible murders begins. Could the legend be true? 7. THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK THE FOUKE MONSTER The Fouke Monster, also known as the Southern Sasquatch, is a legendary cryptid reported near the town of Fouke in Miller County, Arkansas, during the early 1970s. The creature was accused of attacking a local family. Initial sightings of the creature were concentrated in the Jonesville/Boggy Creek area, where it was blamed for the destruction of local livestock. Later, sightings were made several hundred miles to the north and the east of Fouke. The creature was named by journalist Jim Powell, who reported on it for the Texarkana Gazette and the Texarkana Daily News. Various reports between 1971 and 1974 described the creature as being a large hominid-like creature covered in long dark hair, which was estimated to be about 7 feet (2 m) tall with a weight of 250300 pounds (110140 kg). Witnesses said that its chest was about 3 feet (1 m) wide. Later reports, published during the early 1980s, claimed that it was far larger, with one report describing it as 10 feet (3 m) tall, with an estimated weight of 800 pounds (360 kg). Some accounts describe the Fouke Monster as running swiftly with a galloping gait and swinging its arms in a fashion similar to a monkey. Reports also describe it as having a terrible odor, the odor being described as a combination of a skunk and a wet dog, and as having bright red eyes about the size of silver dollars. A variety of tracks and claw marks have been discovered which are claimed to belong to the creature. One set of foot prints reportedly measured 17 inches (43 cm) in length and 7 inches (18 cm) wide, while another appeared to show that the creature only had three toes. : A 1970s documentary-style drama questions the existence of a hairy 7ft tall Sasquatch-type monster that lives in a swap outside of Fouke, Arkansas. According to the locals the monster walks on two feet, has a characteristic smelly odor and kills chicken, cattle, dogs and livestock but so far it hasn't killed any people. The monster supposedly harassed two families in the late 1960s, but since then few have seen the monster yet it can be heard in the swap at night. Actual interviews with area residents tell the tale. Could this be real of a conspiracy of a backwoods community looking for attention? 5. THE AMITYVILLE HORROR THE DEFEO POLTERGEIST On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house situated in a suburban neighborhood in Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island, New York. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. Some of the experiences of the Lutz family at the house are described in the book as follows: - The house was plagued by swarms of flies despite the winter weather. - The Lutzes' 5-year-old daughter, Missy, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie," a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes. - Kathy had vivid nightmares about the murders and discovered the order in which they occurred and the rooms where they took place. The Lutz children also began sleeping on their stomachs, in the same way that the dead bodies in the DeFeo murders had been found. - George would wake up around 3:15 every morning and would go out to check the boathouse. Later he would learn that this was the estimated time of the DeFeo killings. : Supposed true story about George and Kathleen Lutz whose dream house turns into a nightmare. James Brolin and Margot Kidder are the unsuspecting new tenants of a house whose previous occupants had been murdered in their sleep. The Lutzes and their children are menaced by the lingering evil in this frightening ghost story. 2. INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS NESSIE The Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, is an aquatic being which reputedly inhabits Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, and is often described as being large in size, with a long neck and one or more humps protruding from the water. Popular interest and belief in the creature has varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with a few disputed photographs and sonar readings. The creature commonly appears in Western media where it manifests in a variety of ways. The scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster as a being from folklore without biological basis, explaining sightings as hoaxes, wishful thinking, and the misidentification of mundane objects. : In this clever mockumentary, eccentric German director Werner Herzog heads to Scotland to shoot a film about Loch Ness Monster lore, where he is tailed by another filmmaker who is documenting Herzog's creative process.what's your favorite ''urban legend''?? When OPEC instituted their recent production cuts, the theory was that oil markets would balance after crashing in 2014. After Donald Trump won the presidency, many speculated that price fluctuation would become the norm based upon his inexperience in public office and statements during the U.S. presidential campaign. Popular news outlets also conjectured that he would start World War III and possibly limit democracy. So far none of those fears have come to fruition and its now time to realize that the geopolitical risk which has caused oil prices to rise in recent weeks is overblown. Brimming crude inventories and U.S. shale record output are the key factors keeping prices depressed. But if prices were to rise, the reason should be a drawdown in inventories, not overheated, geopolitical rhetoric. According to Matthew Kroenig Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council: On almost every front, the U.S. is positioned for the challenges to come with the current team and policies in place. There are, of course, worldwide geopolitical challenges that could affect oil prices and supplies. The U.S. deployed the controversial THAAD missile defense system in South Korea sparking fierce protests from China and further straining the already tense relationships between the U.S., North Korea, Japan and China over this issue. Around the same time, North Korea attempted another missile launch in mid-April and news surfaced that the test was disrupted using cyber-warfare. An increase in tension in this area of the world could, of course, impact oil markets. But through all of this chaos, President Xi of China has called for stability, in what is the equivalent of an election year in one-party China. Xi doesnt want a war between the U.S. and North Korea with China caught in the middle. Its simply bad economics for the U.S. and China. After the recent meeting between Trump and Xi, the Chinese are considering a tougher stance on North Korea, lessening the chance of a geopolitical standoff, which is welcome news for global oil markets. Syria remains another important geopolitical factor for oil markets. French intelligence services reported forces loyal to Assad, carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria. , confirming earlier suspicions of Western intelligence services. The report also states that Assad has carried out over 140 gas attacks while being backed by Russia and Iran. These developments could potentially be troubling for oil price stability if the U.S. and other allies were to respond again with force. The Trump administration even alerted the Russians before his recent targeting of a Syrian airfield, and the U.S. is still a signatory to the landmark P5+1 nuclear deal between Iran and western powers. Foreign Affairs Magazine reported that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had tense but engaging meetings, with his Russian counterpart and Vladimir Putin in late April. Each side believes the glass is half full in their relationship, after the Syrian strikes, and neither side believes there will be any direct military or diplomatic conflicts taking place. It seems that at this point, Putin isnt going to let Syria dictate his relationship with the U.S. or his stance on energy policies. Related: Russia Thwarts ISIS Attack In Far East Oil Hub The current international environment is undeniably tense, but one should be wary of oil prices rising based purely on political or geopolitical risk. What should concern bullish investors are announcements by the Saudi Energy Minister stating, It is too early to decide if OPEC will extend production cuts, along with Libyan political instability, Venezuelan production going offline, and Nigerian unpredictability. These are geopolitical issues that can greatly affect crude prices. But even if we take these OPEC related factors into account, a pre-2014 crash price level for oil seems further away than ever before as the world is still awash in oil. Next to outages and production cuts in OPEC member states, there are also a number of facts pointing to increased oil output, which could continue depressing prices in the long run. According to Mark Papa, chief executive of Centennial Resource Development. We are still in a carbon-based economy, and we see more demand than ever. U.S. drillers are increasingly eager to invest money in short cycle projects, resulting in a surge in U.S. oil rigs employed, which have now hit a two-year high along with drillers in the Gulf of Mexico reporting a record high output of 1.7 million bpd in January based on numbers from the EIAs Short Term Energy Outlook. Related: GM Factory Seizure Threatens Oil Sector In Venezuela Goldman Sachs has taken a somewhat contrarian view from other investment banks and firms who follow oil prices as it predicts oil at $50 a barrel based on: Improvements in technology and costs involved with shale extraction. Price fluctuations are now likely to be within the realm of 10-20 percent, rather than quadrupling noted when new technology methods were being tallied. The strategic case for oil rising has solid reasons, and while there is geopolitical uncertainty, the market is still flush with crude. It doesnt seem wise to let geopolitical corrections cloud oil and gas investment decisions. With the Trump administration potentially adding to the supply glut by opening up federal lands and other previously untapped, U.S. offshore drilling sites through an executive order, it seems unlikely that U.S. oil production growth will subside anytime soon. Supply and demand along with large-scale supply cuts should be at the forefront of pricing decisions, and if geopolitical risk is part of that model, then it should be objective, unbiased geopolitical analysis, not simply the hype that we have seen recently. By Todd Royal for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Drama continues in the global copper sector this week. With key LatAm producer Southern Copper seeing workers end a strike at the Toquepala mine in Peru but Freeport McMoRan announcing it may suspend expansion plans at its Grasberg, Indonesia mega-mine over regulatory uncertainty. And elsewhere in the world, one little-followed event may have a bigger impact than any of those happenings. A long-awaited power project in one of the worlds most prospective copper centers. Thats the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worlds sixth-largest copper producing nation but a place where development of a massive in-ground resource base has been hampered by limited access to power. But the electricity challenge here could at least partly solved now. With Congos state utility SNEL reportedly signing a term sheet to import surplus power from neighboring South Africa. The scope of the deal is large. Under the term sheet, SNEL would bring in 200 megawatts of power from South African utility Eskom. That amount would be a significant boost to Congos overall power supply which is currently running about 1,200 megawatts. In fact, local sources said the South African imports could increase available electricity across the country by as much as 20 percent. Such a rise in power to mines would have a major effect on copper production. Congos output has been flatlined since hitting a record 1.03 million tonnes in 2014 largely because of a 750 megawatt power supply deficit across the country. Related: Is Canadas Oil Industry Regaining Momentum? Miners have been working on dedicated power projects to meet this shortfall. But imports would bridge the gap much more quickly than expected with officials saying power could start flowing from South Africa as early as June. If extra power does arrive that quick, it would de-bottleneck a lot of new mining capacity. Allowing Congo producers to ramp up supply over the next few years. That would be good news for those companies, and for copper buyers globally. It would also affect the cobalt market, with 50% of global production coming as by-product from Congo copper ores. Watch for news from utilities SNEL and Eskom on finalizing the import contract. Heres to turning on the lights. By Dave Forest More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: April 26, 2017 Over 1,600 Iranians showed up at the Interior Ministry April 11-15 to sign up to run in the May 19 presidential election. The majority were ordinary people, including some odd characters who despite lacking political backgrounds or qualifications registered their names enthusiastically. Some even traveled long distances to Tehran from their towns and villages, including a 92-year-old man and a shepherd. But what are the motives behind these peculiar candidate registrations? Even if approved, would these individuals have been able to win the publics vote? The most likely answer is no. Based on Article 115 of the Iranian Constitution, the president must be elected from among religious and political figures possessing the following qualifications: Iranian origin, Iranian nationality, administrative capacity and resourcefulness, a good past record, trustworthiness, piety and convinced belief in the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the official religion of the country. Based on these criteria, anyone with an Iranian birth certificate can essentially show up at the Interior Ministry to register to run. However, the decision on whether they will be allowed to compete in the race lies with the Guardian Council, a body made up of six experts in Islamic law selected by Irans supreme leader and six jurists elected by parliament from among a list of jurists nominated by the head of the judiciary. As such, it is evident that the ordinary Iranians who show up to register will not be allowed to compete. Yet more and more are seen entering the Interior Ministry every four years, each with their own personal agenda. Statistics on those registering to run for the presidency this year was announced by the head of Irans Elections Headquarters, Ali Asghar Ahmadi, on April 15, hours after the registration period came to an end: A total of 1,636 candidates filed [to run] for the election 137 of them are women. The youngest person to register is 18 years old, and the oldest is 92. In the previous presidential election, 686 candidates signed up for the vote. According to Ahmadi, 226 of the registered individuals are below the age of 30, and 430 of them hold a bachelors degree. In 2001, when former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami was re-elected, the Guardian Council approved 10 candidates one of the highest figures ever. Irans first presidential election following the 1979 Islamic Revolution was another exception, with 96 candidates cleared to run in the 1980 presidential poll. The presence of Iranians from all walks of life in front of the election headquarters waiting to register also caught the interest of media outlets. Every day, prominent news agencies all published images of the odd and interesting characters who came to register under a section called The sidelines of registration day. Given the increasing use and influence of social media networks, videos and images of these odd characters also began circulating on cellphones of Iranian citizens, thus creating a source of humor. But the question is, why do these ordinary Iranians register to run for a position they know they are probably not qualified for and that the Guardian Council will never approve? Layla Ashouri, a sociologist and professor in Tehran, told Al-Monitor, The main reason is the excessive desire to be seen by society. Given the expansion of social media networks, ordinary citizens feel they have a good potential to showcase themselves and get attention in the wider world. If they are lucky, the video of their registration could circulate on the cellphones of millions of Iranians. For people who have problems related to their personality, this is seen as a success. However, the jokes sparked by these odd registrations have prompted political figures to criticize the current registration situation and request a law to limit the number of applicants. In an April 14 Instagram post, Secretary of Irans Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei wrote, It is scorning both the Iranian people and the countrys democracy that on the first day of the registration process, there comes an applicant claiming to be God; on the second day, another one calls himself a prophet. Someone brings his child to sign up for the competition, and foreign and domestic media publish photos and reports of these psychopaths as applicants to contest Irans presidential election. Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, a prominent cleric in the holy city of Qom, released a statement on his website April 14 criticizing the situation. Shirazi wrote, We have heard of many people from different regions complaining and expressing worry about the current unorganized state of the [candidate] registrations for the presidential election. They believe that some individuals, both consciously and unconsciously, who are trying to mock the presidential election and cause harm to the establishment, have come to register and even lined up without having the required criteria. We need a solution as soon as possible so that [only] those who at least have the minimum requirements for the post can register. [I] wish measures had been taken in previous years to solve this problem and am surprised as to why the leaders of this country have not [already] done anything to solve this. On April 18, judiciary chief Sadegh Amoli Larijani also expressed his annoyance at the large crowds registering for the presidency, saying, Parliament and the Guardian Council can devise ways in accordance with the constitution to narrow down the range of people who can register and establish a set of minimum requirements for the candidates so that not just anyone can register. This kind of registration is an insult." These criticisms are made every time an election approaches in Iran, especially as reports of odd characters registering as candidates begin to spread. However, as always, they are quickly forgotten. Pakistani militants from Afghan side want to return to Pakistan: Ehsanullah Ehsan ISLAMABAD: Ehsanullah Ehsan, the former spokesman for the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has disclosed in a video that the Pakistani militants now operating from the Afghan side of the border want to give up terrorism and return to the country. Ehsan, who was one of the few known faces of the Taliban leaders, surrendered to security forces earlier this month, according to a military spokesman. He would routinely take responsibility for the attacks in Pakistan. He had claimed responsibility for a series of major attacks, including those at Wagah, on Malala Yousafzai and on a camp of foreign tourists in Gilgit. The Pakistan Army on Wednesday released Ehsans video, who confirmed the groups involvement in terrorist attacks in public places, extortion, kidnappings and receiving financial support from Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies. I have noticed during my nine years of association with the TTP that the group would mislead the people, particularly the youth... [using religion as a tool]. The Taliban leaders are involved in the massacre of Muslims and extortion of money from the people, he said in the nearly six-minute video. Ehsan, whose name is Liaquat Ali Momand and belonged to Mohmand agency, was speaking in Urdu. The Taliban carry out blasts in public places, schools, colleges and universities. Our religion does not allow such attacks, he said. After a rift within the TTP surfaced in 2014, Ehsan joined several other Taliban commanders from Mohmand tribal agency to form a splinter group TTP Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. As the groups spokesman, Ehsan would claim responsibility for the attacks in Pakistan. He had joined the TTP in 2008, months after Baitullah Mehsud launched the group in South Waziristan. Ehsan disclosed that the TTP developed cracks after the Pakistani forces launched a major operation in North Waziristan tribal region in 2014. He revealed that all the Taliban leaders fled to Afghanistan after the operation, and that they had links with Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies, who supported and provided financial assistance to the terrorists. He said that senior Taliban leaders had gone into hiding and had left the fighters to engage the Pakistani forces. He admitted that several camps of the JuA were destroyed in shelling by Pakistani forces in Lalpura area of Nangarhar province in February, adding that several Taliban commanders were killed in the attack. He said that the stranded commanders and fighters were now disappointed [in their leadership] and want to return to Pakistan. Ehsan said that the Taliban leaders focused on the social media after the Pakistani media blacked them out. The TTP leaders would share propaganda material on the social media to mislead the people, especially the youth, he said. I appeal to the youth who use social media not to be misled by the Taliban leaders, as they are playing in the hands of foreign agencies. This is the reason I have surrendered to the Pakistan Army. He talked about differences in the ranks and files of the Taliban. Every Taliban leader wanted to become the chief and senior leaders Khalid Khorasani, Fazalullah and Khan Said Sajna had been vying for the leadership after the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud. Then the Shura decided to carry out balloting and Fazalullah was nominated the new chief. No one can expect anything good from such groups who elect leaders using balloting. Ehsan said he had challenged TTP Jamaat-ul-Ahrar chief Khalid Khorasani over receiving aid from Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies. But he said that he will receive aid even from Israel if they (Taliban) are given for terrorism in Pakistan. I realised that the Taliban leaders were doing all this for personal agenda. These groups have formed committees in Afghanistan who have contacts with RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) and NDS (National Directorate of Security). The NDS has formally given them ID cards called tazkira so that they can easily move from one place to other. It would be difficult for the Pakistani groups to move freely in Afghanistan if they did not have Afghan ID cards, he said From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As... I have been thinking about gift giving in Shakespeare. There doesn't seem to be too much of it if I remember rightly. What there is tends to be more insult... I have been thinking about gift giving in Shakespeare. There doesn't seem to be too much of it if I remember rightly. What there is tends to be more insult... Man plans, God laughs. Or so the saying goes. My intention was to send out this post so last evening, but "the internets" in my home has been unavailable,... Man plans, God laughs. Or so the saying goes. My intention was to send out this post so last evening, but "the internets" in my home has been unavailable,... I've been wanting to write something up about how at Mass we worship God just as Homer described his guys doing 3000 years ago, and how this is essentially... I've been wanting to write something up about how at Mass we worship God just as Homer described his guys doing 3000 years ago, and how this is essentially... By the end of 2016, this part of the internets will be no more. The blog posts are being moved to the new home of *A Good Beer Blog* but this place, this... By the end of 2016, this part of the internets will be no more. The blog posts are being moved to the new home of *A Good Beer Blog* but this place, this... There are tons of specials everyday as most of you know, and you'll always see the various types linked on the Reference column at the right of this bl... There are tons of specials everyday as most of you know, and you'll always see the various types linked on the Reference column at the right of this bl... Well, for this site anyway. This page is going dark. I simply dont post enough to warrant paying for it any longer. Any future posts will appear at my old... Well, for this site anyway. This page is going dark. I simply dont post enough to warrant paying for it any longer. Any future posts will appear at my old... My latest post on Catholicmom.com is up here! An excerpt: So while I can no longer shield my adult children, or forbid or prevent them from doing whatever ... My latest post on Catholicmom.com is up here! An excerpt: So while I can no longer shield my adult children, or forbid or prevent them from doing whatever ... Kate Spade I never once set foot in one of the stores, passing by never saw a thing Id buy for myself or anyone I know. But when I walk by now a sense... Kate Spade I never once set foot in one of the stores, passing by never saw a thing Id buy for myself or anyone I know. But when I walk by now a sense... FROM *THE BOOK OF MIRACLES* Hi people, for current subscribers, or for those who may wish to become new subscribers, please go to the Subscribe to Blog via... FROM *THE BOOK OF MIRACLES* Hi people, for current subscribers, or for those who may wish to become new subscribers, please go to the Subscribe to Blog via... In one of her letters, St. Catherine of Siena said -- well, she said basically the same thing in more than one letter, but I'm quoting Letter T5/G225 to... In one of her letters, St. Catherine of Siena said -- well, she said basically the same thing in more than one letter, but I'm quoting Letter T5/G225 to... We went to the SC State Fair on Sunday. I headed to the livestock shows - just to look. But I came away with a new Boar from Kewanee Farms out of Georgia... We went to the SC State Fair on Sunday. I headed to the livestock shows - just to look. But I came away with a new Boar from Kewanee Farms out of Georgia... Quick Quotes "Christianity brought reverence for what is below us." - Goethe ____ "Your salvation is in the hands of God...There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord." - EWTN Q&A ____ "It is a truism in the interpretation of Scripture that its spiritual message is disclosed only to those who bring to their reading a consciousness of their need for God and his mercy. Only they get it and appreciate the urgency of the message. The others are all bewildered. - Msgr. Herron Democratic congressional candidate Patrick Nelson urged U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, to vote no on the latest version of House Republican legislation to repeal and replace former President Obamas health care plan. She has run on and she has touted and she has kept saying the words, independent and bipartisan. If there was ever a time for the congresswoman to be independent and bipartisan, it is right now, said Nelson, who contacted The Post-Star on Thursday to elaborate on a press release his campaign issued. Nelson, a political activist and 2016 Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention, is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Stefanik in 2018 in the 21st Congressional District. Tom Flanagin, a spokesman for Stefanik, said Wednesday evening that Stefanik was waiting for final text of the legislation. Congresswoman Stefanik has long advocated for a replacement package that improves healthcare quality and accessibility and lowers costs while covering pre-existing conditions, he said. She continues to advocate for these principles as members continue to discuss the path forward. Nelson said the legislation sets up an unfair price differential between the young and the elderly, and creates states rights issues for states such as New York that require health plans in the state to incude certain benefits. Nelson called the latest version the zombine health care bill, a reference to House leaders canceling a vote on an earlier version of the legislation when there was not enough support to pass it. We killed it once. Its back from the dead, Nelson said. We have to kill it again. GLENS FALLS The final price tag is in for the citys attempt to fight a Freedom of Information request. The fight, which the city lost, will cost it a total of $15,222. The city lost so conclusively that Warren County state Supreme Court Judge Robert J. Muller ruled it must also pay legal expenses for The Post-Star and WNYT-TV. The judge has now determined those expenses to be $9,846. The city also had to pay $5,376 to the private lawyers it hired to defend Glens Falls in the case. The city had refused to make public a document recommending that Assessor Lauren Stack be fired. Stack was charged twice with DWI, but did not notify supervisors of the first charge and also did not volunteer during earlier interviews that she had spent four years in prison in Florida for four felony drug-related burglary convictions. Lawyers offered a variety of reasons why the document should be kept secret. First, the city attorney said the document was discussed in an executive session and thus could remain secret. He also said the document should be secret because it discussed personnel issues. While personnel issues related to a termination can be discussed in executive session, written recommendations on those issues become public when the governing body accepts the report, according to Bob Freeman, executive director for the state Committee on Open Government. He is the top state official on Freedom of Information Act issues. The city could have released the document but blacked out portions that were personal. But when the judge read the document, he didnt find anything that should be withheld. The report did not include any personal and intimate details of (Stacks) personal life, he said. The city had no reasonable basis for withholding the report, Muller wrote. In fact, the respondents reasons for denying the request repeatedly changed and, ultimately, rested on an argument that lacked merit, Muller said. The city had hired the law firm of Carter, Conboy, Case, Blackmore, Maloney & Laird of Albany to fight the case in court, rather than using the city attorneys services. The Post-Star and WNYT-TV were represented by Greenberg Traurig of Albany. The law firm tried to argue that its legal expenses were actually $45,049, but acknowledged it had taken the case for a flat fee of $6,000. Law firms can ask for more than what they agree to be paid, if they can show that they did more work, Muller said. But he said the firm couldnt show it did $45,049 of work. Much of the work was used to train two lawyers in FOIL law, which the city should not have to pay for, Muller said. The firm asked to be awarded $25,000, rather than $45,000, but Muller said it was unclear how that figure was determined, and did not grant that request. HAGUE Police reported no new progress Thursday morning in the effort to find the person who shot and robbed a store clerk Tuesday afternoon. Officers from four agencies were returning to a command post in Hague on Thursday to continue the investigation into the shooting of 63-year-old Jim Rypkema. He owns and operates Hague Market, where the shooting occurred around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Rypkema is recovering in a Vermont hospital from multiple wounds from a small-caliber gun that police said happened when a masked man robbed his store Tuesday afternoon. Police said a small amount of cash was stolen. His wife gave an update to the Lake George Mirror newspaper late Wednesday. We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of well wishes and support from friends, customers and others who heard about the shooting, Sally Rypkema told the paper. Jim is doing pretty well under the circumstances and we are incredibly grateful that none of the wounds are life-threatening. Jim feels very lucky both to have survived this attack and to be receiving such wonderful support. Its times like these when we feel so unbelievably grateful to live in a small town like Hague, where everyone watches out for each other. Thank you to everyone! Police believe a large man and short, stout woman were involved in the shooting. They do not know if they fled in a vehicle, but were last seen headed north from the store on foot. Dozens of officers from the State Police, sheriffs offices in Warren and Essex counties and Ticonderoga Police were involved in the investigation as of late Wednesday. Authorities have asked to speak with anyone who was in the market on Tuesday regardless of any suspicious activity noted. Police described the two suspects as a white male, about 6 feet, 2 inches and approximately 250 pounds, wearing hiking boots and dark green or army camouflage pants. He wore a camouflage mask and was believed to have been responsible for the shooting, police said. He was believed to be traveling with a white woman who is 5 feet, 4 inches tall and approximately 200 pounds. She was believed to be wearing a green skirt and a black shawl. Anyone with information in the case or who saw suspicious activity in Hague on Tuesday was asked to call State Police at 583-7000. KINGSBURY For years, police in the Hudson Falls area had heard rumors that Robert N. Middleton had been having inappropriate contact with teenage boys, plying them with gifts to come to his home, police said. But it wasnt until recent months that officers were finally able to find a boy who disclosed what they believe has been going on for years in Middletons home on Quarry Crossing Street. The boy alleged that Middleton had been rewarding him and other underage teens with gifts if they had sex in front of him, police said. Washington County sheriffs Senior Investigator Tony LeClaire said police had heard stories about Middleton for years, but had not been contacted by anyone willing to give statements or have him prosecuted, until recently. He would take them to a trampoline park in Albany, on tubing trips and buy them gifts like bicycles and sneakers, LeClaire said. Middleton would also pay them cash to recruit new teens to his home, according to police. We found indications he would pay these kids $50 to bring different kids around, LeClaire said. Investigators spoke to dozens and dozens of young people as part of the investigation, and they believe Middletons illegal contact with the teens may date back 5 to 10 years, LeClaire said. There are no allegations Middleton had sexual contact with the teens, but police do not know what he was doing while the boys were engaged in sex acts at his behest. There is no evidence he videorecorded the encounters, LeClaire said. Middleton did not consent to being questioned by police, requesting a lawyer. His lawyer, William Montgomery, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Middleton is a registered sex offender in California, but because of a loophole in New York law, he did not have to register here, LeClaire said. He is a part-time resident of San Francisco, and is registered there for a 1990 conviction. He is originally from the Hudson Falls area, and lives part of the year at the Kingsbury home on Quarry Crossing where the alleged sex acts took place. Because his conviction in California predated New Yorks sex offender registry statute, state officials who reviewed his situation determined Middleton was not subject to the New York law, according to police. It was determined he did not have to register here, LeClaire said. He was convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age, and served nearly 4 years in prison, California records show. Middleton was charged Wednesday with four felony counts, including two counts of attempted use of a sexual performance by a child and two counts of first-degree attempted promoting prostitution, police said. He was arraigned in Kingsbury Town Court and sent to Washington County Jail without bail. Anyone with information in the case was asked to call the Sheriffs Office at 746-2497. Fire departments across the region will hold open houses this weekend as part of the seventh annual RecruitNY event. Statewide, nearly 400 fire departments across New York state plan to host open houses in an effort to attract more volunteer firefighters. Among local departments, Fort Ann, Hague and Pottersville have events Saturday, as do Wilton and Schuylerville. West Fort Ann will have open houses Saturday and Sunday. Cambridge will have an open house Sunday, as will Whitehall. Those listings are according to the RecruitNY website. Other departments do open houses at different times of the year. QUEENSBURY The jury hearing the Lake George boat crash case heard tearful testimony Thursday morning from the man who was operating the boat that defendant Alexander West collided with, gripping testimony that had many in the gallery in tears as well. Later in the day, the Warren County jury also heard from West himself, at least through a videotape of a police interview of him the day after the fatal crash last July. In the video, West repeatedly tells police he was not intoxicated, though his statement seems to conflict with those of other witnesses. The morning testimony from Lake George resident Robert Knarr was riveting and emotional as he described what he remembered from the night of the collision. Knarr, 68, broke down numerous times, at one point Warren County Judge John Hall asking him if he needed a break, as he recounted the moments during, before and after the crash that claimed the life of his 8-year-old granddaughter and seriously hurt his daughter. He spoke of the pandemonium and emotions as those in his boat were thrown around, and realizing the extent of the injuries for those on board and obvious fatality of his granddaughter. Knarr also testified about having one or two glasses of wine earlier that night, between 6 and 8 p.m., and refusing to take a breath test for alcohol content as his loved ones were treated at Glens Falls Hospital. He first told the officers he would take the test maybe in an hour, but then said he agreed before the Warren County Sheriffs Office advised him it had gotten a search warrant to take a blood sample from him. Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan said documentation will be introduced to the jury that showed Knarrs blood alcohol content was 0.00 percent. That sample was taken later the night of July 25, though it was unclear how long after the crash. Knarr explained to the jury why he initially didnt consent to the breath test. I was really, really angry that they were bugging me about this while they couldnt find the freaking people who ran over my boat and killed my granddaughter, he said. I said, Find them! Knarr also went over how the crash occurred, telling the jury he was headed southwest in his 90-year-old wooden GarWood powerboat, along the lakes west shore near his home on Cramer Point when the other boat hit on the right side. Out of nowhere, we got hit by a boat, he said. Despite the screaming on his boat, it just moved off, Knarr recalled. Defense lawyer Cheryl Coleman, though, said the video seemed to show Knarrs boat leaving the scene while Wests stayed behind. Coleman also grilled Knarr about a comment he made to police at Glens Falls Hospital related to the breath test, about talking to a lawyer who told him he didnt have to take the test. Knarr acknowledged he lied, though when he offered to explain why, saying I had other things I was concerned about at the hospital. Do you have any idea what I was going through? he asked. Coleman replied she did. In 1997, her daughter died at the age of 6, though she did not share those details with the jury. West, 25, of Lake George faces a 12-count indictment that includes counts of manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault and leaving the scene of an accident for allegedly boating recklessly and under the influence of drugs and alcohol during the crash that killed California resident Charlotte McCue. He has pleaded not guilty. Charlotte was killed instantly when Wests boat went over the top of Knarrs. The jury also on Thursday heard Wests version of events in his own words, watching a video of West speaking to investigators from the Warren County Sheriffs Office the morning of July 26. He told police he had just two Corona beers at the Log Bay Day party he attended, but stopped drinking by the early afternoon. West also said he didnt drink at dinner before the crash, when others have testified he had two Moscow Mule mixed drinks. He reiterated numerous times that he was not under the influence when the crash happened, and said he fled the scene because he was scared his boat was going to sink. I was not intoxicated or impaired in any way. I just panicked and didnt know what to do, he said. Im being honest, I have nothing to lie about. It was an accident. West stared at the screen as the video was played, seemingly becoming emotional as he watched a portion where he cried as he told of learning a child had died from the collision. He told investigators that neither he nor anyone on his boat saw the Knarr boat, and he questioned whether its lights were on. We basically didnt see them until we hit, he said. West also said he believed the boat was facing west, which would have given his southbound boat the right of way. He was afraid his boat was going to sink, and its lights were knocked out by the crash, so they headed to the closest place he thought he could find a dock at Tea Island Resort. The occupants of the other boat left the scene first to go to a nearby boathouse, and West said he and his friends didnt know anyone was hurt. West called the crash terrifying and agreed to give a blood sample. The sample was taken later that day after a search warrant as obtained, and found he had used marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy, but the test results will not be part of the case because the search warrant was found to be legally flawed because it was not put in writing promptly. Sheriffs investigators John Maday and Terri Jeffords were clearly suspicious of his story, and repeatedly questioned why he left and didnt call police if he didnt think anyone was hurt. Prior witnesses have testified about screams being audible from hundreds of yards away. Maday also testified about interacting with Knarr at Glens Falls Hospital, saying he didnt smell alcohol on him or notice any signs of impairment. He said Knarr did agree to take a breath test when told police were getting a search warrant for a blood sample, but by that point his earlier refusal and mention of talking to counsel had forced police to go the route of getting a warrant. Testimony ended Thursday most of the way through the hour-long video, with the remainder to be shown Thursday was the ninth day of the trial, and the prosecution may wrap up its case Friday or Monday. Amendment IV, U.S. Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. What the Washington County Board of Supervisors would have you believe is that the Fourth Amendment, reproduced in full above, allows police officers to seize large sums of money you are carrying in your wallet or suitcase or car, or seize the car itself, when they suspect the money might have been made illegally. The beautiful thing about the Bill of Rights is how clear it is. Go back to the First Amendment, which starts, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion Or try the Second Amendment, which ends, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. All 10 of the amendments are definitive. They use words such as all and shall. They do not use words like sometimes and depending. What is happening with civil asset forfeiture when police officers seize assets from private citizens based on officers suspicions the assets were acquired illegally seems unconstitutional on its face. Searches without specific cause, followed by seizures of colonists assets, were one of the provocations that led to the American Revolution. In typical human fashion, however, once the colonists were in charge, government forfeitures, without arrests or warrants to justify them, continued. They continue today, and through a program that shares seized assets, they help to fund local police departments. Recently, Washington County supervisors voted to approve spending more than $60,000 in seized funds on police training, equipment, travel and investigations. Only one supervisor Hartfords Dana Haff voted in opposition. It is nice to have the money. Its always nice to have money, especially when large quantities are dumped in your lap. Whitehall Supervisor George Armstrong said, Its great that we can put these ill-gotten gains to good use. I just turned 75 and Ive never had any problem with the law, so I have very little sympathy for those who have. Later, he also said, We need to get this money out of the hands of people who denigrate our community. Notice how Armstrong assumes the money was ill-gotten, something which does not have to be proven under civil asset forfeiture. Notice, too, how Armstrong assumes the people from whom the money was taken were criminals themselves, when criminal prosecution is not necessarily part of civil asset forfeiture. In these cases, the government assumes the money or other property was acquired through illegal activities, without assuming anything about the owner. The property is seized, and often, the owner is not even charged. But after his property is seized, the only way the owner can reclaim it is by going to court and presenting evidence it was earned or acquired legally. This can be expensive, with no guarantee of success. Nationally, huge amounts of money and property are being taken from American citizens without proof of wrongdoing. Its offensive to our justice system, under which people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and its offensive to the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment guarantees no citizen shall be deprived of property without due process of law. So this procedure is distinguished by the way it baldly ignores the dictates of two out of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights. Civil asset forfeiture has excited opposition from people across the political spectrum, but especially from conservatives like columnist George Will and Sen. Rand Paul for the way it undermines civil liberties. Count Hartfords Haff among those who say no to easy money and yes to the Bill of Rights instead. The rest of the Board of Supervisors could learn something from his example. Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Rob Forcey, Editor Ken Tingley, Projects Editor Will Doolittle, Controller/Operations Director Brian Corcoran and citizen representatives Jane Kana, Dan Gealt and George Nelson. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: The peso is up by 1.1% at 18.9823 per dollar as of 7:36 a.m. ET. A White House statement late Wednesday said US President Donald Trump told leaders of Canada and Mexico that he will not terminate the treaty, but will renegotiate with them. Earlier that day, Politco reported that the administration is considering an executive order on withdrawing the US from NAFTA. The peso was down by about 2.0% following the report. As for the rest of the world, here's the scoreboard as of 7:40 a.m. ET: Kasich listed some of the shifts in Trump's platform with which he not only agreed, but said he favored during his 2016 presidential campaign. "It's sort of like, I shake my head," he said. "China's not a currency manipulator. We like NATO. We're not going to deport 13 million people. "It's interesting. You see, it's interesting. Never in my lifetime have I been called boring, but I think I was a boring candidate for president because I tried to be responsible." Kasich said one of the biggest problems he faced as a candidate was that since he was a sitting governor, he could not make outlandish promises. "I couldn't actually say that this guy could jump 12 feet in the air and slam dunk over Draymond Green," Kasich said, referring to the Golden State Warriors star and pointing at Business Insider Executive Editor Brett LoGiurato. "You could say that," LoGiurato said jokingly. "Yeah, but that would be what we would call 'fake news,'" Kasich quipped back. "So I wouldn't say these things." Kasich also pointed to a signature promise that many of the Republicans who sought the presidency in 2016 made: ripping apart the Iran nuclear agreement as soon as they took office. "I'll give you a good one," he said of an example of an outlandish, unfulfilled promise. "'When I'm president, I'm ripping up the Iran deal on Day One!' I haven't seen anyone rip up anything. Including a number of the members of the United States Senate." Reviewing the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, Kasich said it was far too soon to give the president a grade. The Ohio governor, who at times has been sharply critical of Trump, added that he supported the missile strike on a Syrian government-controlled airfield earlier this month, which followed a chemical attack on civilians that the US has said was carried out by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. During and after the campaign, Trump advocated an "America First," more isolationist foreign policy, touting nonintervention in foreign wars. "I actually think the Syria strike mattered, and I'll tell you why," Kasich said. "I was at the Munich [Security] Conference with John McCain. And people were really wondering about the country. And I think that strike demonstrated some American strength, which I think some people wanted to see. That was good." But Kasich, who during his presidential bid advocated a tougher stance against the Syrian government, said he had "yet to see a strategy" on a larger scale from the White House on Syria's civil war and Assad's government. "But I do think the act in and of itself did have an impact on the world in the way they were looking at us," he said. "I do believe that." Taking another look at the Trump presidency, Kasich said the administration like all that preceded it would be judged on the economy it fosters and leaves behind. "I think there will be great disappointment if all of a sudden there's not economic growth," he said. "Look, it always gets down to jobs. You don't have economic growth, things go south. If you have economic growth, people feel better about things. "People would rather live in an area of poverty than in an area where there are no jobs," he continued. "Because if they live in poverty, they have a certain sense of hope they can get out of it. If there are no jobs, there's no hope. And bad things come from that." A letter the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month revealed that Flynn did not seek or gain permission to accept money from Russia's state-owned news agency, Russia Today (RT), for a speech he gave in Moscow in 2015. The revelations were announced in a press conference Thursday. "The evidence that Rep. Cummings just outlined is powerful, mounting, incontrovertible evidence that there has been a violation of criminal law," Sen. Richard Blumenthal said at the press conference, referring to Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. "This evidence is powerful in showing that Gen. Flynn broke significant criminal laws," Blumenthal said. "The DIA letter, the DOD letter, the inspector general letter, all testify to a flagrant violation of federal criminal statutes that must be investigated and prosecuted." Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Cummings, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a joint press conference on Tuesday that Flynn appeared to have broken the law. The DIA letter saying Flynn did not seek permission from the agency before accepting the RT payment appears to contradict a statement Flynn's lawyer released on Tuesday. "As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the Department of Defense, extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip," Robert Kelner, Flynn's lawyer, said in the statement. But Flynn, who headed the DIA between 2012 and 2014, did not brief the agency on the thousands of dollars he received from RT to speak at its 10th anniversary gala, according to the DIA. In failing to disclose the payment, Flynn may have violated the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits retired military personnel from receiving payments from foreign sources without advance permission. Blumenthal called for a special prosecutor to investigate Flynn and others in the Trump administration who might have connections to foreign governments. "For all the reasons that Rep. Cummings outlined so powerfully about the White House seeking, in effect, to cover up for Gen. Flynn, we can't count on the attorney general or his deputy, who report to the president of the United States and the White House, to do that job," Blumenthal said. "There needs to be a special prosecutor." He also called for a special prosecutor to investigate "the conflicts of interest on the part of President Trump and others in the White House." Flynn was forced to step down from his position in February after only 24 days amid revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn last month offered to testify before the congressional intelligence committees in exchange for immunity from prosecution a signal to some legal experts that he thought he may have committed a crime. Neither of the committees have taken him up on the offer. The Microsoft Surface hardware business, encompassing the Surface Pro tablet, Surface Book laptop, and Surface Studio desktop PC, shrunk revenues 26%, a $285 million decrease, over the same period in 2016. The reason for the decline, according to Microsoft: "increased price competition in the premium 2-in-1 category and product end-of-lifecycle dynamics." No doubt, that's not great news for the Surface business. Still, in a weird but real way, it's good news for Microsoft. "Increased price competition" just means that other manufacturers are building their own Surface-style, high-end convertible tablet/PC devices, and selling them for less than Microsoft's own product lineup. This would be a problem if, like Apple, Microsoft was a hardware company. But the whole point of the Surface products in the first place was to get PC manufacturers building more touch-friendly, stylus-friendly Windows tablets and computers. So if every PC manufacturer out there is building lots and lots of Windows PCs that compete with the Surface...well, again, that's bad for the Surface business, but good news for the Windows business. Given the overall shrinkage of the PC market, Windows is fighting against Apple's Macs for a bigger piece of a smaller pie and its tactics appear to be working. Apple isn't sitting idle, pitching its iPad Pro tablet as a laptop alternative, trying to match the sales pitch for the Surface Pro. Users haven't exactly come along for the ride, though, with the iPad still lacking the right mix of features to replace a laptop. As for the bit about "product end-of-lifecycle dynamics," that could refer to the fact that the Surface Pro 4 tablet is now over a year and a half old, possibly hinting at a rumored Microsoft Surface Pro 5 yet to come. The account can be handled by a next-of-kin or a beneficiary in order for them to retrieve the money of their deceased relatives. Here are the steps to take in order to retrieve such monies. 1. A notice of death must be submitted to the bank(s). In some banks in Ghana, you can submit the notice of death to any branch of the said financial institution but in other banks, you will have to submit it to the branch of the deceased. After a notice of death is presented, no debit entries are allowed on the account until a probate letter or Letter of Administration is received. However, deposits into the account are accepted. Cheques for withdrawal received after the notice of death are returned, no interest is charged on current accounts. Meanwhile, any investment held in the name of the deceased which is yet to mature should be allowed to run its tenor. The account is marked as Customer Deceased. 2. Provide the bank with certified true copies of the Probate or Letters of administration. A Letter of Administration is a formal document issued by a court of probate appointing a manager of the assets and liabilities of the estate of the deceased in certain situations. READ ALSO: BNI investigates Venture Capital over missing GH32 million This letter must be signed by the Registrar must be sighted and indicated as such on the reverse of the Certified True copy. If the deceased died intestate and the balance falls below a certain amount (the amount is determined by the court) the Bank must be presented with a Registrars Certificate issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. 3. The named executors or administrator must provide IDs for verification. The names stated in the letter must tally with those indicated in the Probate or Letters of Administration. Any differences in names must be rectified by the court or by a sworn affidavit. If all the documents are found to be in order the following details must be recorded in the Probate/Letters of Administration Register held at the branch: Date Received Date of the Probate/Letters of Administration Where granted Value of the Estate Names of the Executors or Administrators. Actual Amount Paid 4. If payment is to be affected in cash the following processes must be followed: A debit transfer voucher must be passed to close the account and a Payment Order issued in the names of the named Executors or Administrators. The Payment Order must be endorsed by the Payees and opened by the Authorised Officials for payment. READ ALSO: HFC Bank Ghana appoints new board chairman 5. If the Executors or Administrators have an account for the management of the deceaseds Estate, the deceaseds account should be closed and a Payment Order issued in favour of the Executors or Administrators of the Estate. This comes at a time the NDC insists the issuance was done in secrecy and skewed to favour a business partner of Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta, Trevor G. Trefgarne of Franklin Templeton. However, government maintains due process was followed religiously in the issuance. Speaking at the Public Accounts Committees first public hearings for 2017, the Second Deputy Governor of the central bank, Dr Johnson Asiamah, said a level playing field was adopted before the bond was issued. Asked by Effutu MP Alex Afenyo-Markin if every potential investor, no matter where they are in the world, had equal opportunity to purchase the bond, Mr Asiamah explained: The way it works in practice is that there is something we call an auction calendar. At the beginning of every year, government comes out with its borrowing plans and when you look within, you will see all the auctions that are planned ahead. So if you are located in another part of the world, you would have already seen what is about to come. Now, when they auction the particular one you are interested in when the time is due, they deal with their bankers in Ghana for settlement and thats it. And I believe that before these auctions are done there is some advert the ministry churns out and so its transparent. Speaking to Class News on this latest twist to the raging debate, Mr Markin, who is also a member of the committee, said government had been exonerated by the comments of the central bank which is made up of professionals, rather than politicians. She passed on yesterday April 26, 2017. Vida Akrong was an agric student and a member of the Dr. Hilla Liman Hall. A friend of the deceased who spoke to Pulse News said " She was admitted for some time and discharged. Later on she was coughing severely and sent to korlebu. She was there for days and God called her home at around 10:40 am" READ ALSO: Legon student falls from 4th floor to death The deceased reportedly celebrated her 22 birthday in March 2017. The body has since been deposited at the mortuary. From the music stars and screen gems to the finest TV host, we bring you top 9 Ghanaian men who women cant get over them. 1. John Dumelo John Dumelo is an award-winning actor and an entrepreneur. 2. Chris Attoh Chris Attoh is married to Nigerian actress, Damilola Adegbite and their have a handsome son together, Brian Attoh. 3. Adjetey Anang Adjetey Anang is a Ghanaian actor, who was recently rated by his fellow actor, Chris Attoh as a demigod in the movie industry. 4. Elikem Kumordzi Elikem is a Ghanaian actor, tailor an d married to Zimbabwean beauty, Pokello Nare. 5. Reggie Rockstone Born in the U.K. on April 11th in the late 1960s, Reginald Osei aka Reggie Rockstone continues to win our hearts with his craft. 6. Samini Dancehall artiste, Samini has won many accolades with her hit songs and vibes. 7. Sarkodie Sarkodie has captured the hearts and attention of many women across the globe with his music and cuteness. 8. Joey B Some ladies say when you meet Joey B, you might even forget you have a partner. He is handsome and classy. 9. Kofi Adjorlolo According to reports, the deceased who was getting jilted for the second time committed suicide in the early morning of Monday, April 24, 2017. ASP Alexander Tieku, a District Police Commander (DPC) stationed at Garu-Tempane, the upper east region of northern Ghana confirmed the incident in a chat with News Ghana. This is about the second time she has been jilted by someone. Somebody promised to marry her but later disappointed her and she killed herself. We have informed the family and we are waiting for them to come so we conduct the post mortem and convey the body to the police hospital mortuary in Accra for preservation," said the DPC. ALSO READ: Court arraigns textile trader who attempted suicide in Lagos Her body was discovered following a call to the police by Haruna Abdul Fataw, the General Manager of GNBank who wanted a new police officer due to her failure to show up for work. According to The Sun UK, he took this action following a fight with his wife, Jiranuch Trirat, 21, who he accused of cheating on him. This incident which happened on Monday, April 24, 2017, in Phuket, Thailand saw Wongtalay put a rope around the neck of the infant and throwing her off the edge before proceeding to do the same thing. The alleged unfaithful wife, Trirat saw the horrific video and informed the police who conducted a search and found the body of the pair in the southern part of the south of Phuket International Airport, Sakoo. ALSO READ: Another man drops suicide note on Facebook This follows pictures and comments on social media that show two cans of the product that are clearly different in packaging but bear the same name and logo. As one Facebook user, Kofi Gbedemah earlier put it: There's a difference between these two cans. I want to know from Diageo (Guinness Ghana Ltd) if they're both genuine. But Malta Guinness Ghana has since responded, saying that both products are genuine. In a Facebook post, it said the two products are brewed in our sister company in Nigeria and a Licenced Brewer in Togo. Below is the full statement from Malta Guinness Ghana Reference to comments on social media about Malta Guinness cans, we would like to state that Malta Guinness is a premium brand from Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL), a subsidiary of Diageo PLC which operates in over 180 countries over the world. According to him, Sam George has done a lot of things to dent his own credibility and it will be good he stays away from matters that bother on credibility. In an interview on Kumasi-based Ultimate FM, he said "Nonsense! Where is the credibility of Sam George? Is Sam George is the defender and spokesperson for Ibrahim Mahama." Ibrahim Mahama is at the centre of a headline for allegedly issuing some dud cheques to the Customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). READ MORE: Sam George claims government owes Ibrahim Mahama GHC24 million He's been investigated by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO). Lawyer Kwame Adofo however, called for the prosecution of the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Revenue Authority and other officials at the harbour for covering up such criminal deals. "There is a lot that he has done we do not want to go into it. Lets first concentrate on what Ibrahim Mahama has done, if you an ordinary person had done that, you could have gone to jail," he added. He said "If you commit an offense you have to pay for it to serve as deterrent to those standing by watching. Mr. Jackson told a local media in the Brong Ahafo Region on Thursday, April 27 that they are on the process and do not feel sorry about that. In fact, about 7,000 of them are currently at different stages of the deportation process. And we are not apologetic about that, he said. Mr Jackson had earlier told Accra based Class FM that Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the US must be concerned because the new administration will ask them to depart. One thing that I do think that Ghanaians need to be aware of is, I think the president-elect, as I mentioned, is likely to be more rigid about illegal immigration. We have a lot of Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the U.S. and I think that they need to be concerned about whether they would be allowed to remain illegally. My guess is they will be given some options but the president will be serious about asking those whove violated their visa status to depart, Mr Jackson said.According to him, the Trump administration would not paint every African country with the same brush. Ghanas economy is growing, Nigerias is shrinking. We have a very different relationship with Ghana. Ghana is more supportive of free trade and shares a long history of peaceful existence which Nigeria does not have, so I think we need to be cautious, he added. READ ALSO: Philip Addison reveals why AMERI has no expertise in power projects He said "we thought that we have come far, PPR is operating the plant, so lets take first soft approach to renegotiate because they themselves have expressed that willingness to renegotiate failing which we terminate." Mr Addison in an television interview on Metro TV said they also recommended a termination in the event that renegotiation fails. READ ALSO: NDC MPs want probe into Addison committee for accepting freebies Revelations by the 17-member Committee set up by the energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko to investigate the AMERI after its investigations disclosed that it had discovered many lapses in the contract. The report stated that the erstwhile administration fraudulently paid an extra $150 million in the power plant deal. READ ALSO: Minority to petition CHRAJ over AMERI sponsorship of Addison committee According to the report, although the contractor, PPR, financed and built the plant at the cost of $360 million, AMERI, which secured the deal requested payment of $510 million from government. The Minority in Parliament has called for an investigation over alleged malfeasance by the Philip Addison-led committee when the committee undertook a trip to Dubai as part of its work. According to the Minority, the Addison Committee placed itself in a situation of conflict of interest which is a clear violation of the Constitution. Responding to their claims, Philip Addison said AMERI did not influence the committee. "If you see the contract, there is nothing in that contract that tells you that it would be performed by a third party. All the warranties and guarantees were given by Ameri. "Now it turns out that this is a company that has no idea, expertise, and history about power projects; so how did they enter into this kind of agreement? So if you make statements by which another party is induced and it turns out that those statements are false, they are fraudulent misrepresentation," he added. He said AMERI rather served as an agent to secure the contract and further subcontracted it to third parties including General Electronics (GE) and Metcar to build, install and run the power plants. Mr Addison said based on their findings, the committee has recommended a renegotiation of the contract or outright abrogation if the renegotiation proves futile. "First of all, there is $150 million that is the contract price, then they subcontracted it to PPR for $360 million. So that is $150 million out of the $510 million. In addition to that, in the agreement, there are variable charges which had been put in the agreement as $16.6 million. I questioned these both here in Ghana and at Dubai. But the president who was speaking at Soabe in the Eastern Region said such threats will not deter him from his fight against galamsey. I havent said that I am going to stop mining. Mining has been done for decades in this country by several generations. I am only saying that I am against those mining without legal backing. Illegal mining, that is what I am against. Today, Kyebi, Abirem, its a sad sight to behold. Mining along the water bodies cannot continue if we want to preserve nature and our system. I have been told some of the people engaged in illegal mining, have threatened to vote against the NPP in 2020 if I crack the whip on the culprits. I am more concerned about fulfilling Gods purpose and devising measures to propel the nations development. Thats my focus and not election related issues. READ ALSO: Nana Addo unfazed by threats from illegal miners to vote against him Things we must do to propel development are the things I am concerned about. Our forefathers left us the natural resources, if we cant protect them then we should leave them for future generations the President added. After the media and other stakeholders started a massive campaign against galamsey, some people involved in the act threatened to vote against the Nana Addo-led government in election 2020. These people include some residents of Prestea and Tarkwa-Breman all in the Western Region. They argue that galamsey has been part of their lives for a long time and it also serves as a means of livelihood for them. The youth in Tolon, Zebila, Mpohor, Savelugu, Nanton, Sagnarigu hit the streets soon after the announcement Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate their anger at the choice of the president, arguing that some of the nominees did not actively campaign for Nana Addo during the 2016 election. READ MORE: At Zebilla, the capital of the Bawku West District in the Upper East Region, the youth vandalized items at the District Assembly building, the NPP office and the residence of the Member of Parliament, Hon. Frank Adongo Fuseini who doubles as the Upper East Deputy Regional Minister. The youth apart from destroying properties, they also blocked portions of the Bolgatanga and Bawku road with lorry tyres set ablazed. READ MORE: For instance the MP for Mpohor, Alex Agyekum has been threatened not to step foot in the area, if the President does not revoke the nomination of one Ignatious Asa Mensah, whos said to have been fielded by the MP as DCE, an accusation the latter has rejected. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has appointed 212 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) across the country. MMDCEs are nominated by the President pursuant to Article 243(1) of the 1992 Constitution and Section 20(1) of the Local Government Act 1993, Act 462.on Wednesday. New Patriotic Party (NPP) activist have been up in arms over the nominations, condemning some of the presidents decisions against their wish. However, Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Hajia Alima Mahama at a press conference urged Ghanaians to support their MMDCEs. According to her, the 212 appointees are "capable men and women with expertise, experience and temperament to head the Assemblies and inspire a new era of rapid development in our country." The Nana Addo administrations long-term plan for MMDCEs and local government is to have MMDCEs elected. She said "It is the wish of the President that those who were not named will appreciate that there are other positions they may be called upon to serve in the interest of the nation." 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! There have been speculations about the health of the President, as yesterday's meeting was the second consecutive FEC he will be missing while he is presently in the country. Mr. Mohammed confirmed that President Buhari had asked that all the files on his table be brought to his official residence within the presidential villa. We just concluded the federal executive council meeting, Im sure you noticed that the president was not there. He was not there because he asked that he be allowed to rest and asked the VP to preside. And he will be working from home. He has asked all his files to be taken to him in the house. He will be working from home today, Mr. Mohammed said. It would be recalled that the state house correspondent of a leading Nigerian newspaper, The Punch, had written about the ill-health of President Buhari, which sparked negative reactions from the president CSO. The journalist was expelled from the state house, but has been recalled after the intervention of the country's secret police. Buhari has maintained a low public appearance since he returned to the country after a 49-day medical vacation in the United Kingdom. The rough outline of "principles," as the White House called them, contains several ambitious proposals, including cutting the federal corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 35% and shifting to three personal income tax brackets from seven. But most analysts agree that it is unlikely the proposed changes will make their way to Trump's desk in their current form. While nearly all Democrats are likely to oppose Trump's plan, its biggest obstacle could be Republicans concerned about the budget deficit. For years, conservative Republicans have railed against deficit increases under President Barack Obama, and most leading Republicans including House Speaker Paul Ryan have advocated a deficit-neutral tax plan. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters that the tax plan would "pay for itself" with increased economic growth, but most economists and experts don't think that justification will placate the deficit hawks in the GOP, which could lead to adjustments in eventual legislation. The biggest adjustment will likely be to the proposed corporate tax rate of 15%, analysts said. JPMorgan economists Jesse Edgerton and Daniel Silver wrote in a note to clients on Thursday that the Congressional Budget Office would likely be harsh on the 15% proposal when it comes to the deficit. "The Congressional Budget Office has scored every 1 [percentage point] reduction in the corporate tax rate with a budgetary cost of about $100 billion over 10 years," Silver and Edgerton wrote. "Thus, reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15% would be scored as adding about $2 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years." The potential for such a drastic increase in the deficit would make the "the likelihood of its passage through Congress slim," the JPMorgan economists said. Michael Zezas, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, also said he doubted the corporate rate would be anywhere close to Trump's proposed level. "Unless you believe a bipartisan approach is possible and could somehow include this level of corporate and pass-through rate cut (we think it is very unlikely), then achieving this level is a function of what is politically and procedurally possible through the budget reconciliation process," Zezas said in a note to clients. "In that context, a 15% level does not seem realistic, in our view, and therefore tells us little about what is actually acceptable to the White House." As Zezas wrote, Republicans are taking the plan through the budget reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate. One issue with that process is that any bill passed through reconciliation can't be projected to increase the deficit 10 years after its effective date, limiting the White House's options. Beyond the corporate tax rate, the plan's proposal to eliminate several deductions is popular for instance, the deduction for state and local taxes. Currently, people can deduct their payments on state and local taxes from their federal taxes. Trump's plan would eliminate that deduction, along with all other itemized deductions besides charitable donations and mortgage payments. Some lawmakers from Republican states could come out against eliminating this provision. While most people taking the deduction are in traditionally liberal states like New York and California, residents in states like Texas and Tennessee, where Trump won handily in November, also take advantage of it. The New York Times' Nate Cohn reported that swing Republican-leaning districts would be hit hardest by the elimination of the provision. Mnuchin suggested on Thursday that the plan may look very different were it to arrive on Trump's desk as a tax bill passed by Congress. Mnuchin told "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanopoulos that he could not make guarantees about the outcome of the plan because he wasn't sure what it would eventually look like. During a meeting at the White House with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Trump was asked about the decision by the government of President Nicolas Maduro to withdraw Venezuela from the Organization of American States in response to the bloc's pressure the South American country. "Venezuela is a mess. Venezuela is a mess," he said, according to a pool report. "We will see what happens," he added, according to news agency EFE. The Trump administration has given limited attention to Venezuela during his first three months in office. Trump's Treasury department did impose new sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, designating him a drug trafficker and accusing him of "." Switzerland's second largest bank also said it had bounced back to black in the first quarter, posting a net profit for the first three months of the year of 596 million Swiss francs ($599 million, 549 million euros), compared with a 302-million-franc loss a year earlier. Credit Suisse in a statement that the share issue should provide it with more flexibility in carrying out its ongoing restructuring plans, bolster its capital ratios and protect it against unexpected market volatility. Following the share issue, which will be voted on at an extraordinary general meeting on May 18, Credit Suisse estimates its tier-one CET capital ratio -- an important gauge of a bank's ability to resist a financial crisis -- will rise to 13.4 percent from 11.7 percent currently. The bank already approved a capital hike of $6.0 billion back in the autumn of 2015 to allow its new chief Tidjane Thiam to embark upon a wide-reaching restructuring plan, pivoting its focus towards wealth management and Asia. At the time, it said it aimed to raise between 2.0-4.0 billion Swiss francs by taking part of its Swiss branch public. But on Wednesday, the bank said it had reconsidered, and now aimed to maintain full ownership of its Swiss division. "We believe that keeping 100 percent of our valuable Swiss bank, while raising capital through a rights offering with pre-emption rights, is the right course of action and will result in significant value creation for shareholders over time," Credit Suisse chairman Urs Rohner said in the statement. Observers initially welcomed Thiam's plans, but their optimism has faded as the bank has faced market turbulence and legal woes that sent its stock price plunging more than 30 percent last year. The four convicts, Joseph Moses, 24, Samuel Job, 19, Gideon Ode, 25, and Daniel Abraham, 24, were found guilty on a four-count charge of armed robbery and conspiracy by the presiding judge, Justice Olubunmi Ayoola. Making her presentation, the prosecutor, Mrs. Abdulrahman Temitope told the court that the convicts committed the offence on October 14, 2013, at about 8 pm along the Kajola expressway in Osogbo. Temitope narrated that the convicts conspired among themselves to rob one Abubakar Rauf of his motorcycle with registration number BDG 896 QB. "The suspects conspired to attack the complainant with a knife and dangerous weapons before collecting his motorcycle. They also injured the complainant and carted away his Bajaj motorcycle to their house before they were apprehended, Temitope said, adding that the crime committed had been a serial occurrence within the vicinity which had led to the death and missing of some persons. She added that the offences contravened Section 6 and are punishable under section 1 of the Robbery and Fire Arm (Special Provision) Cap R11, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. The officer, Inusa Saidu Biu, made the statement in a Facebook post on Tuesday, April 25. The Nigeria Police Force had in a statement on Wednesday said it is investigating matter. In the post, Biu claimed that the 'enemies' of the President are orchestrating his (Buhari) death. He wrote, "After they poisoned him, God did not let him die; Buhari, the cat with nine lives. Now they want him to resign so that they would continue to steal our yam (treasury). No way; your enemies will die like mosquitoes before you, including those who are commenting negatively. Shege ya buro uba, Zamu ci uwaku. If Buhari dies, I promise to kill 200 people." The post, which went viral, sparked outrage on the internet, with many calling for the immediate arrest of the policeman. Reacting to the post, the Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Moshood Jimoh, said the police headquarters is aware of the situation. He said the police has commenced an investigation to first determine if Biu is indeed a policeman. "We have seen the post and we are investigating it. Anybody can post anything on the social media. We first need to ascertain if that man is a policeman and the necessary procedure will be taken. A policeman should not make public comment on social issues. We are investigating and will make the findings public very soon." In the past few days, multiple reports have indicated that Buhari's health condition may have worsened. The superstar will be hosted by Mixmag and Smirnoff Sound collective as he delivers an electrifying set at the event in Brooklyn. The official winner of the #SMIRNOFFX1FEMALEDJ initiative, DJ TGarbs will also be live in New York City supporting The Cap at The Lab NYC. To be a part of the LAB event, you can tune into the live stream on at 12AM WAT. Follow @Smirnoffng social platforms to view the BTS activities of DJ Spinall and DJ TGARBS in New York City. Smirnoff X1 has promoted the brands global commitment through its International Womens day initiative; #SMIRNOFFX1FEMALEDJ and the entire; We are Open campaign. Smirnoff X1 is the newest product from the worlds number one premium vodka. The extra smooth, triple distilled brand has 2variants; the X1Extra Smooth and the X1 Chocolate popularly described as one of a kind because of its intense chocolate flavor and described as one of a kind. Termed 'junk news' the percentage of fake news isn't as high as during the last presidential elections in America. Published by Oxford University, the research found out that one-quarter of the news on the French elections shared on Twitter and Facebook. The research defined junk news as fake news expressing "ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan or conspiratorial" views. Most of the fake news is focused on the leading presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old has shocked the country to emerge the leading candidate for the job of the first citizen. The good news surprisingly is that French people are sharing more better quality stories than the Americans did during its Presidential election. "French voters are sharing better quality information than what many U.S. voters shared and almost as much quality news and information as German users share," said the Oxford Internet Institute on Friday, April 21, 2017. The report was made available a day before. Facebook is helping to deal with the scourge of fake news during this period. The social media network has suspended 30,000 accounts suspected of spamming fake news. In related news, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is about to launch a crowd-funding campaign to star Wikitribune- an online publication dedicated to publishing news stories based on facts and not alternative facts. Jimmy Wales aims to "bring the fact-based, fact-checking mentality we know from Wikipedia to news" according to what he told tech website Wired. Adebayo, who resides in Badagry area of Lagos, pleaded not guilty to a two-count charge of defilement and sexual assault. Kokoye said the accused lured the girl into his apartment with biscuits and had defiled her. The cry of the girl alerted a neighbour, who broke into the room and to her surprise, she caught the accused inserting his fingers into the girls private part." The case was reported at the police station and the accused was immediately arrested, said Kokoye. The offences contravened Sections 137 and 261 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015 (Revised). The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Section 137 prescribes life imprisonment for child rape. The Senior Magistrate, Mr Patrick Adekomaiya, granted the accused bail in the sum of N500,000 with two sureties in like sum. According to Jakarta Post, the deceased suspect identified as Douglas Hope Onyebuchi, aka Kabaka, was killed in Tanah Tinggi, Central Jakarta on Wednesday, April 26, 2017. The Jakarta Police Chief, Insp. Gen. M. Iriawan who confirmed the incident, said the police shot Onyebuchi who was a suspect in a drug smuggling case in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta. Insp. Gen. Iriawan added that the police had coordinated an operation with the Directorate General of Customs and Excise to track Onyebuchi and his Indonesian wife, Yani Andriani, after being suspected of smuggling a package containing two kilograms of methamphetamine from Guangzhou, China. The statement from the police chief reads: Some drugs were shipped from Guangzhou, disguised in pairs of sandals. We later followed the shipment to Jl. Cengkir Raya in Kelapa Gading. The police had seen Andriani watching the package being placed inside one of the rooms in the dorm house. We watched her for two days until we concluded that she was a suspect. The police proceeded to arrest Andriani. Further investigations led police to another location on Jl. Maladewa in Tanah Tinggi, where Kabaka was hiding. During his arrest, he fought back and tried to grab one of the officers guns. Therefore, we had no choice but to take him down. In a report by Punch Newspaper, the Ooni's media aide on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 said the first class monarch is committed to according his colleagues and every category of people the respect they deserve. He said: Nobody should castigate anybody for doing what he did because of the position he holds and because of his age Ooni would not stop to accord his colleagues and every category of people the respect they deserve. The Ooni of Ife is not ready to make any official statement over what happened between him and the Oba of Lagos. He still holds Oba Akiolu in high esteem and what happened yesterday will not stop the Ooni from holding him in high esteem. ALSO READ: Oba of Lagos' beef with Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi defies Yoruba culture Read his story here: "My name is Emeka, a 27-year-old man. I graduated from a private university three years ago and have been in charge of my father's company in Lagos after he was made a traditional ruler in our hometown and had to travel often to the village. My mother being the first wife, also had to relocate to the village with him leaving me to take care of the Lagos home front which includes my siblings, house helps and my 32-year-old stepmother who has now turned into a thorn in my flesh. I knew there will be a problem when Chinwe refused to relocate to the village with my father saying she could not live in the local community after spending all her life in Lagos and London. Apart from that, she argued, she needed to be in Lagos to oversee her boutique as no one would be able to handle it adequately. So my parents left without her and that was when she began exhibiting her wayward lifestyle as she would go out at will and come back whenever she pleased and there was no one to call her to order. As my father's wife, I could not caution her apart from always giving her advice but she would not listen to me. Chinwe was a party freak and she now took the opportunity of her husband's absence to frolic around town and when information got to my father, he came down to Lagos and warned her of the consequences of the kind of life she was living. He also placed an embargo on her frequent outings, especially going out at night. And that was when my problems started as Chinwe now turned on me and tried to seduce me. She has done everything to get me to have regular sex with her but apart from it being an abomination where I come from, being a prince, I cannot bring myself to sleep with my father's wife. Now she has turned to threatening me that she would tell my father that I raped her and knowing how my father turns to a baby when dealing with Chinwe, I am sure he would not think twice before believing her. I don't know how to handle this sex-starved woman who is making my life a living hell. Emeka." The teaser for the day was: How Nigeria voted: I will pack out of the house to let peace reign - 35% I will report Chinwe to my parents to call her to order - 30% I will report Chinwe to our town union - 5% I will sleep with her no matter what happens - 32% "The current hepatitis E epidemic is closely linked to a lack of water, hygiene infrastructure and sanitation," said MSF in a statement. The site of attacks from the jihadist group Boko Haram since 2015, Diffa sits on the border with Nigeria and harbours at least 300,000 refugees and displaced people living alongside an already poor population, according to United Nations figures. The UN has called on the international community to increase financing of aid to the region. Between December 2016 and April 23, 25 pregnant women died of the disease and 135 cases were identified in Diffa, according to MSF. "Water and sanitary services clearly do not meet the needs of this population," said Elmounzer Ag Jiddou, who heads MSF's work in Niger. MSF is focusing on early detection of the disease, treating people for free and running a campaign promoting hand washing in order to stem the epidemic. Last week, Niger's health minister said the situation was under control while calling on anyone with symptoms of hepatitis E to visit a health centre immediately. Umoh, however, said that most of the malaria cases were from children under the age of five. I can confirm to you that out of these 691 cases of malaria, 560 of the cases were children under the age of five." The mothers of the affected children come here to give us excuses of not using the treated mosquito nets because of the heat." I tell you, prevention is better than cure and all and sundry, high and low should key into the Net therapy." Net on the doors and windows are not enough to tackle mosquitoes, but treated mosquito nets should be used during sleep for the children and adults, she said. According to her, less spending is involved in the prevention of malaria than in its cure. Prevention is key. Everyone should take prevention seriously, because mosquito infects the Red Blood Cells and when they are destroyed, one gets pale." This in turn can result to anaemia and this can lead to heart failure, she said. Umoh expressed dismay that anti-malarial drugs are building resistance to some of the users as a result of drug abuse. Now what we are experiencing is that there is resistance of anti-malarial drugs, because most people are abusing it, she said. According to the medical doctor, Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs) for the treatment of malaria are the most abused. Mohammad Mohiuddin, UNICEF chief, Sokoto Zonal Office, made the disclosure on Wednesday in Sokoto at a sensitisation meeting for media practitioners, religious and traditional leaders, as well as other stakeholders. He also said that UNICEF had released N17 million to the government for logistics and social mobilisation activities. In response to the recent CSM outbreak in the states, UNICEF is delivering about 850,000 doses of meningitis vaccines to Sokoto state government, he said. On the meeting, the official said it was part of the support UNICEF has been providing in response to the meningitis outbreak in Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara states. Mohiuddin explained that the sensitisation meeting was to empower the participants on ways to engage members of their communities in passing key messages to contain the outbreak. He said UNICEF had been using its field network consisting of local government area consultants, voluntary community mobilisers and volunteers to also pass down key messages on healthy living. The communities in Bodinga, Rabah, Dange Shuni, Sokoto North, Sokoto South, Tureta, Goronyo, Isa, and Gwadabawa are being sensitized especially on current CSM campaign and the date, place and time of vaccination. For the remaining 14 councils, community members were informed on prevention and how to seek help from health personnel, he said. Sekibo came to the floor of the Senate on Thursday, April 27, 2017, blowing the whistle severally. Raising a point of order, Sekibo said the $50 million recovered from a private apartment at Osborne Estate, Ikoyi belonged to the Rivers state government. The lawmaker asked that the money should be returned to the Rivers state government. We appreciate the effort of the president for setting up a committee to look into it, Sekibo said. Also appreciate the fact that Nigerians are worried that the money that does not belong to anybody was lodged in a private apartment. Mr. President we are worried of the claims of the DG NIA and the attorney-general of federation that the money belongs to NIA and it was approved for covert operations. ALSO READ: Fani-Kayode says NIA DG is covering up for Amaechi We are worried because at the end of every budget year, every such funds not used by agencies are usually returned to the coffers of the federation, which is central bank. We have a suspicion and our suspicion is coming through this direction - the Rivers government had forwarded a petition claiming the loss of over $700 million allegedly taken by the former governor of the state and we pray the senate to do something about it at the time but it became too political. That was a whistle that the Rivers government blew at the time. We are coming back to say that money found in 7b - we have done our interim investigation by the Rivers state government and we are blowing the whistle the second time. We trust the capacity of the vice-president as the chairman of the investigative team. And on behalf of my constituents I am blowing the whistle the third time. After speaking, Sekibo blew the whistle again, the third time. The announcement was made by Senate Leader Ahmed Lawan on Thursday, April 27. By next week ... we should be able to finish our own work and pass the budget to Mr. President to sign, Lawan told journalists after a meeting with Buhari. Lawan also said that the National Assembly had planned to pass the budget in March and April but couldnt do so due to some delays. Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje had warned of further delays in passing the budget after accusing the police of taking critical documents from his home. Gojes home was raided on April 20 due to information received from a whistleblower. President Buharis spokesman, Garba Shehu stated this in a statement on Thursday, April 27, 2017. Shehu noted that the president was eager to work but doctors have asked him to slow down. Shehu maintained that President Buhari had not fully recovered from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom. He stated that President Buhari receives daily briefing on activities in government from his vice, Yemi Osinbajo. The statement reads: The Presidency hereby assures the good people of Nigeria that, despite the insinuations of a number of media organisations, there is no need for apprehension over the health of our President, Muhammadu Buhari. President Buharis absence at the Federal Executive Council meeting of Wednesday, April 26, was a last minute decision; otherwise, the cabinet and the public might have been alerted in advance. As eager as he is to be up and about, the Presidents doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago. President Buhari himself, on his return to the country, made Nigerians aware of the state of his health while he was in London. Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation, as the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, intimated in his press briefing after the FEC meeting on Wednesday. Despite his lack of visibility, Nigerians should rest assured that President Buhari has not abdicated his role as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria. He receives daily briefings on the activities of government, and confers regularly with his Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. His private residence, in which he has been spending the majority of his time recently, also has a fully equipped office. The denial is in reaction to the allegations that the police officers who raided Senator Danjuma Goje's residence took away the documents. Police operatives last Thursday ransacked Goje's Abuja home after a tip-off that criminal activities might be ongoing in the house. The force said the raid was part of a wider investigation of the ex-Gombe State governor. However, Goje, who is the Chairman, Senate committee on appropriation, blamed the delay in the passage of the 2017 budget on the raid. Speaking during plenary on Wednesday, April 26, Goje said the Police left with valuable items relating to the 2017 budget. He said, "At the end of the raid, they left with N18 million; $19,000; 4000 Saudi riyal. The police also left with my laptop, 18 files from my office. "The Police truncated work on 2017 budget by the invasion of my house. Nigerians should therefore blame the Police for the delayed passage of the 2017 budget." But in a statement released by the Police on Thursday, April 27, it said no document relevant to the 2017 budget was taken from Goje's house.# ALSO READ: Reps summon IGP over invasion of Gojes residence It described the senator's statement as "a deliberate distraction to cast aspersion on Police investigation to pervert the end of justice." The statement signed by the Police Force spokesman, CSP Jimoh O Moshood, reads: 1. The attention of the Nigeria Police Force has been drawn to reports in the media credited to Senator Danjuma Abdullahi Goje captioned Blame the Police if 2017 Budget is not Ready Senator Goje REPS gives Police 24 hours to return budget documents allegedly carted from Gojes residence 2. The report in its entirety is false, misleading and capable of misinforming Nigerians about the statutory roles and duties of the Nigeria Police Force as provided under Sections 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations, which includes prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due enforcement of all laws and regulations, and authority to enter any house or premises to execute search warrant. 3. It is pertinent to set the record straight and inform Nigerians of the facts of the matter. A search warrant duly obtained from court of competent jurisdiction was professionally executed in the house of Senator Danujma Goje on 20th April, 2017 at No. 10 Haile Salasie Street, Asokoro District Abuja which was subsequent upon intelligence report at the disposal of the Force that large sum of money suspected to be stolen public funds and other incriminating items are about to be moved out of the said house. 4. It is worthy of note that on arrival of the Police team to Senator Danujma Gojes house, the house keeper Ango Usman informed the Senator of the presence and mission of the team and he promised coming but later switched off his phone. 5. The search warrant was successfully executed in the presence of three (3) close relatives of Senator Danjuma Goje who are residing in the house and the recoveries were made in their presence. The three (3) relatives listed below opened the house and took the Police team round the building, and endorsed their signatures after the completion of the search as required by the procedure of law on search warrant which contained the money, documents and Laptop recovered, and none of the items include 2017 budget document. This is available for inspection by any interested members of the public (i) Danjuma Mohammed, a master Degree holder from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and a Chartered Quantity Surveyor is a nephew to Senator Danjuma Goje. (ii) Ango Usman, House keeper to Senator Danjuma Goje . (iii) Aisha Umar, Alias Iklima a step daughter to the Senator Danjuma Goje. 6. For avoidance of doubt, the followings are the sum of money both in local and foreign currencies, vital documents and a Laptop recovered for investigation when the search warrant was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje i. Cash sum of Eighteen Million and Fifty Six Thousand Naira (18,056,000) only ii. Cash sum of Nineteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty (19,850 US Dollars). iii. Cash sum of Nine Thousand Four Hundred (SR9, 400) Saudi Riyal iv. Thirty Eight (38) Files and Six (6) Envelopes containing documents, some of which are listed below a. File on funds spent on security administration and information gathering a-g - 2009 b. File on release of funds for Special operations a- f - 2009 c. File on Gombe State Government of Nigeria Cash inflow 2005 d. File on Project 2007 Executive Briefs on how to fight opposition in Gombe State Strategies and Tactics e. Envelopes containing permit to operate as an Oil Industry Service Company (special categories) 2011 f. A File containing write-ups on how Governor Shekarau plotted the assassination of Sheikh Jafaru g. Letters from Alhaji Mohammed Danjuma Goje (Sarkin Yakin Gombe) to the MD LUBELL Nigeria Ltd of proposed residential Devt at Kashere Phase II dated 16/01/2007 and 19/11/2010. 7. The Nigeria Police Force wishes to state categorically that there was no single document relating to 2017 budget sighted or removed by the Police team that executed the search warrant. There is video recording of the execution of the search warrant. 8. The Inspector General of Police honoured the invitation of the National Assembly on 26th April, 2017 to explain the legality of the search warrant that was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje on the 20th of April, 2017. 9. Further investigation is currently ongoing into the matter. Police actions are in line with the provisions of Sec. 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations as mentioned in paragraph 2 above and consistent with Sec. 9 & 144 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015. 10. The Nigeria Police Force sees the report in the media credited to Senator Danjuma Goje as a deliberate distraction to cast aspersion on Police investigation to pervert the end of justice. Zakzaky was arrested in December of 2015 on the heels of a bloody clash between members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN)--which he leads--and soldiers. The Shiites had barricaded the Sokoto road which empties into Zaria on the day Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Tukur Buratai and the top brass of the Nigerian army were plying the route. Zakzaky has been in protective custody since that time amid growing calls for his release. This week, protesters took to the streets of Abuja to demand for his release, but the JPM has been left disgusted by it all. JPM organised a counter protest of its own this week to drive home its message. "The danger that these latest calls portend to us as a people, is the likelihood of our nation, experiencing the ugly scenarios that those countries who under the guise of human right and freedom, have been made to carelessly unleash terror perpetrators back into their own society, leaving them to cause greater harm to the innocent citizens", JPM said through a statement read on its behalf by Comrade Kola Salawu. Salawu said Nigeria is headed down a slippery slope if government caves into the demands from groups to set "terrorists" free. The statement from JPM read in part: "Terror suspects all over the world, are not the ordinary crime suspects to be treated with kid gloves. Terrorism is a threat to humanity and anyone involved deserves the maximum punishment that the society prescribes. "It is therefore worrisome to us that some external influences and local collaborators, are asking Nigeria to adopt this same model that has proven disastrous in relating with terror suspects whom they want Nigerian security to treat as innocent until they kill someone. The outcome would then be to summarily execute these people when the deed has been done. "We want to categorically condemn and oppose the call for the release of the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Sheikh Ibraheem El Zakzaky unconditionally, despite the overwhelming case of incitement to violence and terrorism built against him. His organization was found by a Judicial Panel to be heavily militarized. There are videos of his members training for military combat. "The military recovered arms and ammunition during a raid on his enclave. His members had attacked troops and killed a soldier. They have threatened mayhem on the country. IMN has foreign support to unsettle Nigeria. This is the man that some characters in Nigeria with foreign support are canvassing unconditional release for. "If El Zakzaky is released without trial as being demanded, we would be compelled to extend the same sick courtesy to would be terrorists in the future. We will be compelled to as a country make on site execution of terrorists the norm with all the attendant risks. "We condemn in the strongest terms possible the ill advised attempts by the Shiite to denigrate the Office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because the incumbent occupant refused to be browbeaten into compromising citizens' safety. "merely stated the fact when he said El Zakzaky remains in detention because there is an appeal against his court ordered release. It is therefore unacceptable for any group or individuals to vilify the Vice President for simply standing by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. "Those calling for the release of El Zakzaky have failed. They may just as well add and other high profile Boko Haram suspects to the list of those they want released. This will help confirm how much they hold Nigerians in disdain to the point where they want terror masterminds strolling around freely to commit more crimes. JPM had more stern words for Zakzaky apologists. April 26, 2017 Israeli intelligence believes that the developing crisis between the United States and North Korea will last a very long time and that its potential to erupt into a full-fledged conflict is high. According to this assessment, President Donald Trump will increase pressure on Pyongyang in a series of stages, all the while trying to coordinate his moves with the Chinese as much as possible. In Israel's estimation, Trump used his meeting with his Chinese colleague April 8 to request China's help in bringing about North Korea's disarmament from nuclear weapons. If you fail to do that, Trump told the Chinese leader, we will have to do it ourselves through other means. It remains unclear as to how much the Chinese will cooperate and provide the goods, and it is even more unclear whether Trump will go all the way and use force, but initial indications regarding China's cooperation are hardly positive. On April 26, the Chinese responded negatively to reports that the United States is planning to deploy a battery of THAAD anti-ballistic missiles in South Korea. As stated in an earlier Al-Monitor article, when Trump first entered the White House, the Israeli assessment was that the North Korean issue would capture first place in the list of issues to which the new administration would be devoting its time and energy. Politicians in Israel, especially on the right, are thrilled with this development. "As long as the North Korean issue bothers Trump and keeps him busy, the attention he devotes to the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be limited," one senior Israeli politician told Al-Monitor last week on condition of anonymity. "This serves the interests of Netanyahu and his right-wing government." The North Korean issue was raised in meetings between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as in the three meetings held to date between Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and his US counterpart, Secretary of Defense James Mattis. In an interview with Walla News on April 25, Liberman said, "The nuclear crisis with North Korea has direct implications for Israel. It is important to realize that the madman from North Korea is the closest ally that [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and the Iranians have. There is an axis of evil running from North Korea to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Furthermore, we can see the activities of this axis in Yemen and Iraq as well." He continued, "The goal of these people is to contest stability around the world. We are talking about a radical, insane group. It will have implications for us, too. Every nuclear crisis anywhere in the world impacts the entire world." Israeli intelligence has evidence that the Syrian nuclear reactor built secretly in Deir ez-Zor which foreign reports claim was destroyed by the Israeli air force in 2007 was constructed under North Korean guidance. An International Atomic Energy Agency report from 2011 confirmed this assessment and the fact that North Korean scientists were permanently stationed on site at the reactor, which was supposedly modeled after a similar reactor in North Korea. At the same time, North Korea also cooperates closely with Iran. Israel believes that Iranian scientists were present at almost all of North Korea's nuclear tests and received briefings on various topics related to them. Iran's Shahab missiles were developed with the active and vital assistance of North Korea and are based on the North Korean Nodong missile. According to Israel, Tehran, Pyongyang and Damascus are completely synchronized and coordinated. On the other hand, the main reason why developments in North Korea are vital to Israel's national security is that the whole world is watching as this crisis unfolds, with particular attention coming from Tehran. "If Trump perseveres, resulting ultimately in North Korea's nuclear disarmament, it will send a resounding signal, which will be picked up quickly by Tehran," a senior Israeli defense official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "The Iranians will realize that the Americans have resolve, and that they have zero chances of being allowed to make a nuclear breakthrough once the agreement expires." The other possibility is that the American effort fails and that Trump's resolve evaporates. This could result in the collapse of global policy against Iran's nuclear program and the growing realization in Tehran that with a little patience and persistence, the world will eventually come to terms with a nuclear-armed Iran. Israel estimates that North Korea has the capacity to manufacture plutonium-based nuclear weapons, but it is still far from obtaining the technology to install a nuclear warhead on a long-range ballistic missile. As of now, it still does not have any ballistic missiles that threaten the United States. Nevertheless, the assumption is that if the North Koreans are allowed to continue with their accelerated research and development program, they will eventually be able to fire an effective nuclear weapon at the West in general and the United States in particular. "As of now," says one senior Israeli defense official on condition of anonymity, "that must never be allowed to happen, and President Trump knows that." So far, Jerusalem has expressed considerable satisfaction with US foreign policy in dealing with Iran and North Korea. Political sources claim that last week, one Israeli Cabinet minister said that Trump's election slogan of "American first" had since expired. So far, Trump is having a hard time getting his internal policies off the ground. He has, however, shown determination and leadership when it comes to all the most pressing foreign policy issues. All of the above has no impact on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Here too, Trump has shown surprising assertiveness and determination, which was hardly anticipated. In this case of the Palestinian issue, however, Jerusalem hopes that Trump's enthusiasm wears off as quickly as possible. So far, Netanyahu has ordered a freeze on the development of several thousand housing units in the occupied territories that his government approved just a few months ago. That's because right now, no one wants to risk angering Trump. The House gave the order in reaction to the allegation that the documents were carted away when police raided Gojes residence. The House also resolved to set up an ad-hoc committee to invite the IGP to appear before it and explain what warranted the alleged invasion and the laws which backed the police to carry out such operations. The ad hoc committee is expected to submit its report within two weeks for further legislative action. Debating the related motion, moved by Rep. Yunusa Ahmad (APC- Gombe), lawmakers who spoke on the matter said the budget report was scheduled to be laid before the Senate and House. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the budget report was for consideration and passage during the week. The lawmakers expressed anger over the way the police and other security agencies had been invading homes of private citizens under the guise of fighting corruption without recourse to due process. Leading the debate on the motion, Ahmad said the invasion of Gojes residence amounted to gross violation of his fundamental human right. Rep. Toby Okechukwu (PDP-Enugu) accused the security agencies of attempting to come to the legislature. They have cowed the judiciary. Now they have proceeded to the legislature. We cannot allow that. We must call to question anything considered untoward. Gojes house was invaded, we dont know the reason. This kind of whistle-blowing should be driven by intelligence, he said. Similarly, Rep. Sergius Ogun (PDP- Edo) said the House must put a stop to the undue harassment of innocent citizens by security agencies in the country. The police should not get away with it. If a senator can be so treated, what is the fate of the ordinary Nigerian? We must put a stop to it, Ogun added However, Rep. Ahmed Musa (APC- Kaduna) who spoke against the motion, described the debate as judgmental. Musa said taking a stand on the alleged police invasion of Gojes residence without an investigation negated the principle of separation of powers and would subject the House to public ridicule. It is the duty of the executive arm of government to investigate perceived crimes, and asking the police to return documents was tantamount to asking them to return their exhibits, he said. The House also resolved that the executive should refrain from making statements that connote the usurpation of the judiciarys powers considering it negative effects on the doctrine of separation of powers. This followed a motion on Thursday in Abuja by Rep. Leo Ogor (Delta-PDP) on the need to prevent erosion of the Doctrine of Separation of Power. Moving the motion, Ogor explained that by the clear provision of Section 2 (3) of the EFCC Act, the chairman of the anti-corruption agency shall be nominated by the President subject to the confirmation of the Senate. Convinced that the EFCC Act is an Act of the National Assembly that can only be set aside by a court of competent jurisdiction, and until that happens, the law remains in force and binding on all persons and authorities in the country." Further aware that the Executive Arm of Government has not filed any proceeding in any court to challenge the provision of Section 2 (3) of the EFCC (established) Act of 2004. Ogor said that under the doctrine of separation of powers, the interpretation of the constitution and Acts of parliament was the sole responsibility of the judiciary and not that of any person or official of the other arms of government. He said that the statement credited to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was capable of eroding the doctrine of separation of powers with its obvious implication of instituting a dictatorship in the country. Contributing to the motion, Rep. Simon Arabo (Kaduna-APC), said that there was need by the executive to tow the line of separation of powers. Also, Rep. Kingsley Chinda (Rivers-PDP), said that people should not continue to upgrade opinions to be actual facts. Government should be responsive and listen to the opinions of the masses, he said. The motion was unanimously adopted when it was put to a voice vote by the Speaker, Mr Yakubu Dogara. Babalola said her attackers picked on her over unfounded rumors that she wants to be Deputy Governor after expiration of the tenure of the incumbent. Babalola was attacked shortly after arriving the venue of the burial. She said she sensed trouble when some of the hoodlums began making utterances to the effect that her rumored deputy governorship ambition was meant to checkmate the governorship ambition of the late Senator. Adeleke had openly declared his intention to succeed Governor Aregbesola as Osun's number one citizen. Babalola served in the penultimate cabinet as Special Adviser to the Governor on Federal Matters. She said her attackers were certainly politically brainwashed. I am a proud daughter of Ede and Uncle Isiaka has been a mentor and we never had any disagreement till the news of his death was broken to me while in Lagos on Sunday morning. I was heartbroken and immediately cut all my other engagements and came down to Ede from Lagos. We worked together with Uncle for the re-election of Governor Aregbesola in 2014 and for his own election into the Senate in 2015. Those who masterminded the attacks on me are people with poor understanding of the relationship between us and who act based on their own political permutations only, Babalola said. Not long after we sat down for the prayers, I sensed some hoodlums saying some things like me wanting to be Deputy Governor while Uncle (Senator Adeleke) has declared his ambition to be Governor from the same Ede. I heard them talking about the new caretaker committee members being more of my loyalists than those of Senator Adeleke. "And before we knew it, they grew more daring and unruly and brought down the canopy on the dignitaries present. It was the most unruly and irresponsible act I have seen in our land in history, Babalola added. She said it was unfortunate that "the miscreants" robbed a prominent son of Ede, the state burial that he deserved. That cannot be the best way to honour the memory of Uncle Adeleke. Senator Adeleke was a man of his people; a lover of peace and a political associate of Governor Aregbesola", she said. Obasanjo also said that Jonathan lost in 2015 because he thought he could buy the election. Obasanjos revelations were contained in a book titled Against the Run of Play, which was written by former presidential spokesman, Segun Adeniyi. I saw the emergence of Jonathan as an opportunity to solve the problem of minority agitation. The three majority ethnic groups in Nigeria can always sort themselves out but not so for the minority. A good example is my state here in Ogun, he said. Despite the best of intentions, nobody from Ogun West has been able to become governor because of this minority issue and it will take a conscious effort to make it happen. So, it was in the context of that I had to plead with prominent people in the North to allow Jonathan run for a term. There were certain decisions taken by Jonathan very early in his administration that pointed to the fact that the office was bigger than him and one of them was the appointment of a petroleum minister. Jonathan gave me the impression that he was not going to give her the portfolio but at the end he did and we can see the consequence. He, of course, knew what he was doing, Obasanjo added. Jonathan had accused Muazu of helping the opposition to secure his defeat in the 2015 elections. The post reads: Ordinarily, I would have ignored the allegation that I betrayed President Jonathan and my party, but doing so could create the impression that I really did. I find it difficult to believe that President Jonathan would level such allegation against me. How can one betray himself? As the then National Chairman of the PDP, I have been at the forefront of the presidential campaign train. Those who insinuate that I betrayed President Jonathan and my party are being economical with the truth. In the face of abuse, insult and open ridicule by our friends and brothers we supported President Jonathan faithfully. In all sincerity, I gave my best and all to my party. Those who blame us for not delivering maximum votes to the former President in the north seem to have forgotten that it is the people who vote. In the face of abuse, insult and open ridicule by our friends and brothers we supported President Jonathan faithfully. In all sincerity, I gave my best and all to my party. Those who blame us for not delivering maximum votes to the former President in the north seem to have forgotten that it is the people who vote. Jonathans allegations are contained in a book, Against the Run of Play, written by former presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi. ALSO READ: Goodluck Jonathan's campaign manager defects to APC He said the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State frustrated the plan to make him (Tinubu) President Muhammadu Buhari's running mate in the presidential election. The ex-governor of Lagos State disclosed this in a book titled 'Against the Run of Play,' written by Segun Adeniyi, the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay. Tinubu said his opponents convinced Buhari using religion - that a Muslim-Muslim ticket could cost the party the election. But the APC leader said the argument was not genuine. He said El-Rufai was pushing for Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly to be picked as Buhari's running mate. Tinubu added, "What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) did behind my back was wrong. We always do things as a group. By the time they joined, we were already too far ahead in our processes but we accommodated them. "We agreed to take their state structures and subsume them into the part and they all had their opportunity to nominate the candidates of their choices for different political offices. "But they went behind to instigate Buhari and some other people in the party against me on the pretext of religion. That was not right. They were canvassing arguments that the Christians in the North would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. "Nasir el-Rufai was also selling the same argument within the CPC (the defunct Congress for Progressive Change) because, at that point, he still wanted to have Pastor Bakare brought in as Buharis running mate." He said some senators and governors at the time, who defected from the PDP, asked him on the eve of the primaries if he and Buhari have agreed to run together. Tinubu said he dodged the question because they wanted to make it a condition for supporting Buhari. He said without their support, Buhari might not have emerged winner of the primaries. "I told them that it was better to resolve such issue after the primaries, but they wanted to make it a condition for supporting Buhari, which, for me, was very wrong. I told them I could not insist on this as a condition for my support for Buhari. I felt that was not right to hold Buhari hostage in this manner," he added. "I believe the support that we gave was fundamental to Buhari clinching the party nomination. Without that support, a different outcome would have been most likely." He stated that Buhari later requested him to nominate three persons for the Vice-President job. Tinubu said he presented only Yemi Osinbajo. "I backed down because I did not want to be depicted as causing a problem. I backed away from the position in order to offer Buhari a name I once raised with him in 2011: that of Professor Yemi Osibanjo," he added. According to Punch, the students were suspended for not attending the school's Easter Youth Alive programme. These students and their parents are claiming that there is nothing in the school's rules that state that it is compulsory to attend these events. A 400-level student said:We were going for the services in the morning and night and people were getting tired of it because we were also preparing for exams. So, the Vice- Chancellor got angry and ordered that those who missed the services be sanctioned. "Some were suspended for four weeks and those who had missed eight services for the four days got a year. Another 300-level student said:The mood in school is really tense. Though students are not protesting but they are angry because you are preparing for an exam youre not sure you will sit for, until the paper starts. They stopped me from sitting for a paper last week because I did not go for a service and I dont know if I will be allowed in today either. So, do the students have any right to complain or does the school have the right to suspend the students for not attending a church programme? As most people know, Covenant University is a school run by World Mission Agency (WMA), a Christian mission organization, which is an arm of Living Faith Church World Wide, also known as Winner's Chapel. This makes it a Christian school with core values like spirituality and responsibility. In fact, the school's website says that 'students are not permitted to do what they like but they are compel to do what is right at all times.' As a church-owned school, I think it is expected that students should attend the school's church programmes and face the consequences, if they refuse. However, the suspended students and their parents are claiming that there is nothing in the school's rules that state that it is compulsory to attend these events. So, who is at fault here? The students for not attending or the school for trying to enforce the church's religious obligations on it's students? Meanwhile, the school's chancellor, Bishop Oyedepo has warned people to stop criticising the school's fees, allegedly N799,500 per session for 100 level students or face the wrath of God. He said,"The school fees has Gods approval and is in accordance with the quality of facilities provided by the university in meeting the educational needs of the nation. He got seriously criticised for saying this. The latest is Nigerian Pastor Tim Omotoso of the Jesus Dominion International Church in Durban, South Africa,who was accused of sexually abusing 30 young female members of his congregation! According to an expose by South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) television channel, the pastor handpicked the girls from his music group, known as Simply Christolite, while others had reportedly dropped out of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. On the false excuse of rescuing them from drugs, Omotoso told them to live with him, then proceeded to have unprotected sex with them. After going into hiding, he was reportedly arrested inside the toilet at the Port Elizabeth Airport shortly after his flight landed in SA. He was later arraigned in court on Friday, April 21, 2017, and his bail has been denied by a South Africa Magistrates' Court. As usual, most people wonder how and why this happened, while others immediately begin to defend the preacher. The reason why this happens is because we, the church, put our pastors on a pedestal. We see them as demigods, that should never be criticised or judged. We adore them, worship them, and their word is law. Most people can not even dream of trying to contradict their preachers. If anyone dares to say anything, we hit them with the misused "Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm" bible verse. A 'Man of God' says do something, no matter how ridiculous or strange, we do it no questions asked. He says, 'bring your money,' you say, 'how much?,' 'bring your cars,' you ask, 'how many?,' 'give me your child's school fees,' you say, 'how many terms?' Take a minute to imagine that kind of power, it is intoxicating and capable of turning anyone's head. It is no surprise that most preachers fall, take advantage of it and do the most unimaginable things with it. In order to stop this madness, we need to wake up and stop making our preachers gods. We can respect them, listen to them, but never put them in positions where they can not be corrected. They are pastors, but they are human beings first with all the urges and desires that we all have. Let's not forget that. EU leaders are relieved at the prospect of a victory for Macron, a pro-European centrist, in a run-off on May 7 against eurosceptic far-right leader Le Pen. But for commentators on all sides of the political divide in Britain, Macron spells bad news for Prime Minister Theresa May as she embarks on Brexit talks after her own expected re-election in June. "Emmanuel Macron would be bad for Brexit and Theresa May," said the eurosceptic Daily Telegraph newspaper, which is close to May's Conservatives. "French presidential favourite Macron may drive hard bargain in Brexit talks," said the left-leaning Guardian. May formally notified the EU on March 29 of Britain's intention to end its 44-year-old membership, following the shock referendum vote for Brexit last June. In order to curb mass migration into Britain, she intends to pull Britain out of Europe's single market, while still pressing for access for British firms. But several EU leaders have warned Britain cannot "have its cake and eat it". Macron dedicated a chapter to Europe and its benefits in his election manifesto, and on Brexit, said he would defend the integrity of the single market. "All companies who have access to it must be subject to the same rules," he said. In a rare honour for a presidential candidate, Macron met May in London in February, where he promised "a fair execution of Brexit protecting French and European interests". But he told a rally of expatriate voters afterwards: "The best trade deal for Britain... is membership of the EU." 'Macron as the enemy' The Financial Times daily laid out several reasons why Macron as president "could make matters a good deal tougher for the British in Brexit talks". "He is a convinced European" who will likely offer few concessions -- particularly on access to the single market for Britain's dominant financial services sector. "Some analysts believe that as a former Rothschild banker, he will want to do everything possible to maximise Paris's position as a financial centre after Britains departure," the FT said. Others take a more emotive view. "I see Macron as the enemy," said Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who was a key player in the Brexit vote, and now backs Le Pen. "He wants Brussels to be even stronger, and I can't see that it's in our interests when the Junckers and others are all lining up to try and punish Britain," Farage told LBC radio, referring to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, acknowledges that "on the face of it, it looks bad". "Macron has taken quite a tough line on the whole issue of Brexit, arguing that the EU needs to take a tough line with Britain in order to set an example to other countries that might be tempted to follow a similar route," he told AFP. "Whereas Marine Le Pen has expressed understanding for the British position." However, he said "a tough line is not necessarily bad for Britain if it forces Britain to compromise and to be more honest about the trade-offs it faces". Can Dundar, who fled to Germany last year while appealing against a near six-year jail term for revealing state secrets, told AFP in an interview however that it could be too late after they abandoned their "ideals" to win a refugee deal with Ankara. Speaking shortly after Turkey detained more than 1,000 people in a new crackdown against alleged supporters of a cleric accused of orchestrating a coup bid last year, Dundar added that the "whole country is under arrest". "This is the first time that one president has that kind of power and this is really dangerous. We are fighting against this aggression, all we have is just this - with a pen, it's really difficult to fight against this kind of oppressive government," Dundar said. "That's why we need Europe, because we are defending the European principles in Turkey -- but unfortunately we see the European leaders at the other side of the fence." Dundar was in Brussels to address European civil society leaders just days after the EU's enlargement commissioner said the bloc may have to find a new form of relationship with Turkey, whose EU membership bid has stalled. The EU has expressed concerns over a referendum to extend Erdogan's powers and over the post-coup bid crackdown, but Dundar said that Europe was now largely powerless due to the "dirty" refugee deal negotiations. "I guess Europe has lost its chance to have an impact on Turkey, because from the beginning, after the refugee deal, they gave a lot of support to this government, just to stop the refugees coming to European soil and to keep them in Turkey," he said in Brussels. 'Stick to your principles' He added: "You have to mention the importance of press freedom, democracy, human rights those issues and unfortunately no European leaders have done that. So that's the main problem, I mean just stick to your principles and don't sacrifice them for your daily business." Dundar said the latest arrests showed that Erdogan was using the coup as an "excuse and an opportunity to enhance his power. That's why the whole country is under arrest, not only his opponents." He pointed out that Turkey had slipped to 155th in the world media freedom rankings published by watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday. A string of other Cumhuriyet journalists have been jailed since Dundar left. Dundar, who was sentenced by a Turkish court in May 2016 to jail for a story about a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border, and escaped an apparent assassination attempt before sentencing, said he was hopeful he would be able to return home one day. Kandahar's powerful police chief Abdul Raziq last December called for a "safe zone" for Taliban militants, a contentious plan centred on Afghanistan's long-standing accusation that the insurgency is fuelled by Pakistan's support in cross-border sanctuaries. Since then, around two dozen insurgents have sought sanctuary in the southern province - from senior commanders to low-level fighters -- with Raziq's trusted aide, Sultan Mohammed, instrumental in getting them to leave Pakistan, security sources say. Three of them spoke to AFP by telephone from secret locations in Kandahar. All say they have been granted de facto amnesty, and some given housing and cash handouts in exchange for not returning to the battlefield. "Sultan Mohammed told me: 'Come back to your country, your homeland without fear. I guarantee no one will touch you'," 37-year-old Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former member of the Taliban's economic commission, told AFP. "He came to the border in his car to receive my family," said Rauf, who defected earlier this year from Quetta in southwest Pakistan with his three wives and children. Other Taliban figures who the sources claim sought refuge in Kandahar include senior commanders Malim Paida, Mohammadullah Khan and an insurgent leader known as Doctor Khalil -- a longtime fugitive who escaped in a mass jailbreak in Afghanistan's second largest city in 2011. While extracting a handful of cross-border militants is unlikely to significantly de-escalate the conflict, the effort underscores a new push by officials to shift what they see as the insurgency's centre of gravity from Pakistan to Afghanistan. But sheltering or ceding ground to insurgents with blood on their hands is a risky and controversial gambit. The Taliban last week orchestrated one of the deadliest attacks on an Afghan military base since 2001, killing at least 144 people in an assault that has caused widespread anger and left security forces facing disarray. As the stubborn insurgency expands, Mohammed likens his effort to poking "small holes in a large dam", intent on a piecemeal collapse of the structure. "The return of these Taliban figures will pave the way for others to come back," he told AFP. 'Tired of war' Minutes after Khalil crossed the border through the Pakistani town of Chaman this year, he says the Taliban began hunting for him. "They would have killed me for abandoning the movement," he said. Fatigued by war, from Quetta he reached out to Mohammed, who offered him sanctuary with the stipulation that he return with his family -- seemingly a surety against him turning rogue. Once in Afghanistan, he said Mohammed offered him accommodation, food, and a one-time payment of roughly $200. Now he is helping Mohammed gather phone numbers of other Pakistan-based Taliban members willing to relocate. "Many are tired of war and want to return, but are afraid of Pakistani intelligence on that side and of being arrested and tortured on this side," Khalil told AFP. Like Raziq, Mohammed is a police commander well-known for brutality but also credited for taming Kandahar districts that were once a hornet's nest of insurgents. Taliban sources speaking to AFP inside Pakistan dismissed his efforts as an "enemy trap". Islamabad denies supporting the militants, saying it uses Taliban sanctuaries as a "lever" to pressure the group into talks with Kabul. But prominent Taliban figures have accused Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of manipulating the group. Insurgent sources claim former Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour was trying to branch away from the ISI, forging ties with Iran, Russia and Arab world, before he was killed in a US drone strike while exiting Iran. 'Come home' Afghanistan's National Security Council has refused to comment on the Kandahar strategy, saying only that the Taliban are allowed to relocate to Afghanistan under state protection. A top security official told AFP last year that the government's goal "is to bring the Taliban from Pakistan to Afghanistan". But the renegades interviewed by AFP say they are practically living in hiding as they fear revenge attacks. Some have questioned the strategy's usefulness. "There aren't one, two, or three hundred Taliban," said Kabul-based researcher Rahmatullah Amiri. "There are thousands and not everyone is in Pakistan. How will this plan make an impact?" Mohammed said disarming and reintegrating even a few is worth the effort. The US embassy in Addis Ababa said there had been four grenade blasts this month in Gondar, a city in the north known for its ancient castles. A popular stop on Ethiopia's tourist circuit, Gondar was also the scene of anti-government protests last year that led to the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency. "The embassy recommends US citizens carefully consider whether travel to Gondar is necessary at this time," the embassy said in a statement. A spokesman for Ethiopia's government had no immediate comment. While Ethiopia has enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years and falling poverty rates, protests erupted in 2015 by communities disenchanted with the government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Human rights groups say hundreds of people were killed and thousands arrested when security forces cracked down on the demonstrations. The unrest erupted in the central Oromo region near the capital and then spread to Amhara in the north, including Gondar. State-run Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported this month that Ethiopia's human rights commission had submitted a report to parliament saying 669 people were killed in last year's protests, along with 63 security officers. Some 50,000 people in Kodok in Upper Nile state, many of whom fled fighting six weeks ago in the town of WauShilluk, were at risk from the violence, said David Shearer, who also heads the UN mission in South Sudan. "The conflict has widened rather than contracted over the past few weeks," Shearer told a news conference. "As we speak, there is an ongoing operation by the SPLA (the government's Sudan People's Liberation Army) on the western side of the Nile... toward the town of Kodok. They are on the edge of Kodok," he said. Civilians were fleeing Kodok and "possibly headed to the Sudanese border," he added. The attack was the latest in an upsurge in fighting in South Sudan since the beginning of the year that has driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes. Shearer said that 60,000 people per month had been forced to flee across the border in the first three months of the year. The UN Security Council on Tuesday discussed the worsening conflict in South Sudan, but members were divided on the way forward to rein in the warring sides. The United States, backed by France and Britain, said an arms embargo and sanctions could put pressure on the parties to return to political talks, but China and Russia disagreed. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and more than 3.5 million people displaced. A spokesman for the ministry of penitentiary affairs, who gave the toll of dead and wounded, said nine of those killed died of gunshot wounds. The deadly clashes erupted early Tuesday in the eastern city of Barcelona at the Jose Antonio Anzoategui prison, considered one of the country's most violent. The prison had been undergoing reforms aimed in part at disarming inmates, but "there are still arms there and there are prisoners who rebelled," the ministry spokesman said. "At this moment, an investigation is still underway, and this Wednesday those responsible will be brought before the courts." He declined to detail what caused the fighting. A prisoner rights group said a power struggle took place within the gang that has de facto control over the prison. "It was like a coup d'etat" against the gang's boss, who was killed in the fighting, said Carlos Nieto of the group Window on Freedom. "The group that wanted to seize power were inmates who had been transferred from the General Penitentiary of Venezuela," some 350 kilometers (220 miles) to the west, he said. The Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, a non-governmental monitoring group, said 14 inmates were killed at the prison last year. Estimates of the country's prison population range from nearly 55,000 to 88,000, many of them in overcrowded jails awaiting prosecution. The government provides no official figures on inmate populations. "It's a sad day for free speech," Coulter told the New York Times. The right-wing commentator had insisted she would show up at Berkeley, a famously progressive campus, on Thursday even though the university said it could not provide a suitable venue because of security threats. But Coulter said she was forced to reconsider her decision after the conservative Young America's Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans, which had sponsored her talk, backed out, accusing the university of creating a "hostile atmosphere." "Everyone who should believe in free speech fought against it or ran away," Coulter told the Times. The controversy over her talk put the spotlight on the San Francisco-area university long heralded as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. University officials have insisted that security could not be guaranteed during Coulter's visit, citing threats and recent violent protests. They proposed an alternate date -- rejected by Coulter -- when fewer students would be on campus. She is a conservative firebrand, author, attorney and political commentator. She is famous for blunt attacks on those who don't share her views. Her 2015 tome on immigration was called "Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole." 'University not a battlefield' Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks underlined in a letter to the campus community on Wednesday that the university was committed to free speech but also to safety. "Sadly and unfortunately, concern for student safety seems to be in short supply in certain quarters," he said. "This is a university, not a battlefield," he added. "We must make every effort to hold events at a time and location that maximizes the chances that First Amendment rights can be successfully exercised and that community members can be protected." In February, a planned speech at the university by a right-wing provocateur and former Breitbart editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, was cancelled following violent protests that caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus. Violence has also erupted on the streets of the city during recent events that drew opponents and supporters of President Donald Trump. The latest controversy surrounding Coulter's visit has tested Berkeley's legacy as a champion of free speech and elicited criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Many say the university was being targeted by extremists from the far right and left because of its iconic status. Liberal TV talk-show host Bill Maher said last week the school had turned from being a cradle of free speech into a "cradle of (expletive) babies." Ex-presidential contender Bernie Sanders also waded in, denouncing activists trying to silence Coulter. "Obviously Ann Coulter is outrageous -- to my mind, off the wall," he told the Huffington Post. "But you know, people have a right to give their two cents worth, give a speech, without fear of violence and intimidation." The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday the cancellation of her talk marked a setback. It's a pretty serious situation, even for a guy who has encountered worse. H. Jermaine Cox was at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in 2002 when his now-ex-wife bought their home in Davenport. A year later, the Marine was serving in Iraq, "as part of the first push into the country at the start of the war." Back in Davenport, everything seemed fine. For the first five years, Cox's house at 1023 W. 14th St. was OK. No problems. But heavy rains in 2007 flooded the yard, which is the lowest lying in the neighborhood. With every heavy rain thereafter, Cox had to pump several feet of water off his property. Real estate disclosure laws were in place when the home was sold in 2002, but no disclosure was made regarding the serious and chronic flooding. Cox went to every city official he could think of to get help. Was there a way to redirect the water? Were loans available to fix the problem? Could the city do anything, up to and including buying the property? "I could never sell it to somebody else," Cox said. "I have a conscience." Now deemed disabled for his severe PTSD, resulting largely from a deadly firefight in Iraq, Cox has becoming increasingly frustrated over the seemingly hopeless situation at home. In a July 2015 email to Cox, Bruce Berger, Community Planning & Economic Development director for Davenport, wrote, "... we have the engineering recommendation that the water problem is too prohibitively expensive and/or impossible to rectify and so the house should be razed." In other words, the city said the house is so bad, it should be torn down. But the declaration would represent the conclusion of the city's involvement, sort of. "This is what ticks me off: The city said they would help," Cox said Monday. "As a disabled vet with child support to pay, it would exhaust all of my money to try to fix it or buy the pumps to keep it dry, and I wouldn't be able to eat. "It's in the process of foreclosure now. Why make me go through foreclosure when no one can live in the house? The city has had three budget cycles to work this into, and they didn't. They also get FEMA money, but I evidently don't qualify, because my house isn't in the floodplain." Cox offered to sell the property to the city for $50,000 but didn't reach a deal. "There has to be a better solution than foreclosure," he said. "When that happens, it becomes the city's problem." Some would say, because the city's problems are taxpayers' problems, waiting for foreclosure might be the more financially responsible position to take. If it goes into foreclosure and is deemed a nuisance property that cannot be repaired or sold, the city saves the $50,000 purchase price and pays only the cost of demolition, which is estimated at $20,000. "His (Cox's) summary is accurate that we could not find a financial resource to acquire and demolish," Berger wrote in an email Tuesday. "We explored FEMA and other potential assistance opportunities, but nothing fit this situation. "This property may fall into the category of abandoned houses that, unfortunately, are unable to be salvaged with the costs substantially outweighing the value. Ultimately, this outcome likely results in demolition. Jermaine was very forthright in discussing the situation and I know was hoping that the City or someone would acquire it. Maybe someone will still come forward to acquire, but in this situation, it will not likely be the City." Less than 24 hours after Berger sent his email response to questions about Cox's property, an excavator showed up in Cox's backyard parked right up to the garage door. "The city taped a notice to my door in December, saying the garage was deemed a nuisance," Cox said Wednesday. "They said the siding wasn't in compliance. I fixed it once, but I suppose all the moisture in the walls froze and pushed it back out. I got an email from the city with several names on it, and I replied that I needed more time, because it was December. "I didn't get a response. "The garage door is brand new, and I have my snowblower in there. I just can't believe they didn't tell me when they were going to come tear it down." Standing on his driveway Wednesday afternoon, Cox noticed someone had disconnected the power supply to the garage, presumably in preparation for demolition. Late in the afternoon, Davenport Public Works Director Nicole Gleason returned a phone call and explained about the garage demo. She said the city's Intent to Demolition was sent on Dec. 9. Given Cox was sent his first notice about the condition of his garage roof and siding in June 2014, she said, he had plenty of warning. But I pointed out it's been four months since the city had any communication with Cox about the garage. Was anyone going to let him know when the demo crew was coming, so he could remove items of value? "Honestly, probably every other property on the (city's demo) list is empty vacant for years and years and years," she said. "So, that's a good point." Gleason acknowledged it may be a good idea for Davenport to adopt a new policy that gives a second notice to homeowners whose property is not in compliance when they still are living there. "This is a very unique situation," she said, adding that all 21 homes and garages torn down by the city last year were vacant. It seems likely Cox's house soon will be vacant, too. He has run out of viable options. "I'll be out a place to live and my credit score," he said. "I'm more than burned out on this. It's kind of depressing: You have a property you tried to save, and you're out of luck. "I can't say I was a victim. I should have been wiser. "Now my neighbors think it's my fault there are snakes all over here. I don't like them, either. "Honestly, I don't know what to do. All I know is it's heading into foreclosure. I can't afford to fix it. If I had the money, I'd take out a billboard, saying, 'This property floods. Do not buy!'" A Rock Island man was sentenced Thursday to up to 20 years in prison for the September 2015 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Louis K. Woodson Jr. Juwan Attron Johnson, 19, declined to make a statement before District Court Judge Joel Barrows handed down the sentence during a short hearing in Scott County District Court. Barrows sentenced Johnson to up to 10 years in prison on charges of voluntary manslaughter and intimidation with a dangerous weapon, both Class C felonies. The sentences will be served back-to-back. He will be required to serve at least five years of the sentence on the intimidation charge before he is eligible for parole. He was given credit for time already served in the Scott County Jail and was ordered by Barrows to pay $150,000 in restitution to Woodsons heirs. As part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Johnson will not appeal the sentence. About 1:24 a.m. Sept. 2, 2015, officers responded to the Brady Mart, 3107 Brady St. for a report of a shooting, according to police. Johnson had a 9mm handgun and waited in the parking lot for three people to leave the store, police said. Three people ran from the business, and two of them got into a waiting vehicle. Johnson fired several rounds into the vehicle and struck Woodson, who was in the back seat, according to police. Johnson was identified by witnesses at the scene, according to police. Woodson, of Quincy, Illinois, suffered two gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at Genesis Medical Center-East Rusholme Street, Davenport. At a plea hearing in March, Johnson said he acted in a sudden or irresistible passion because of serious provocation, which is an element of the voluntary manslaughter charge. In November 2012, Johnson was adjudicated as a delinquent juvenile on a felony charge of mob action in Rock Island County. In February 2015, Johnson pleaded guilty in Scott County to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to two years of probation and a suspended five-year prison term. A petition to revoke his probation was filed Sept. 10, 2015, and a bench warrant was issued for him the following day. On April 20, his probation was revoked, and he was ordered to serve the original prison sentence. Brandt Construction Co.'s last ditch effort to win the Rockingham Road reconstruction project has failed. The Davenport City Council has approved awarding the contract to Langman Construction and denied the appeal of Brandt after its bid for the project was disqualified. Rock Island-based Langman Construction's bid of $2.44 million was almost $200,000 more than the bid of Brandt, but Finance Director Brandon Wright deemed that Brandt was not a responsible and reliable bidder. Attorney Greg Jager, from the Pastrnak Law Firm, represented Brandt through the appeal process. City Administrator Corri Spiegel previously denied Brandt's appeal. The city gave Brandt the opportunity to appeal to the City Council, which Jager did at the council's Wednesday meeting. Jager's defense centered on questions of whether the city followed its own purchasing guidelines, and he attempted, with the help of project manager Kevin Smiley, to explain delays with Brandt's completion of a project on Jersey Ridge Road. In the report card for the Jersey Ridge project provided to Brandt, Jager said that it received a satisfactory score for both timeliness and the overall project and that there was nothing written in city code that indicated one factor could be used to disqualify a bidder. "Over the past decade, Brandt has performed $24 million worth of work in the city," Jager said. "There haven't been any complaints given to Brandt, report cards given to Brandt until he was the apparent low bidder on the Rockingham Road project." Summing up, Jager said that there was not enough evidence to support Wright's decision to disqualify Brandt from the Rockingham Road project. Doug House, construction analyst for the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting, supported the city's decision to disqualify Brandt, citing the lack of timeliness, safety violations and various disputes at Brandt. House said his organization provided documents to the city about an East River Drive project, which also experienced significant delays and created additional work for staff. Kathy Jones, one of the workers currently on strike at Brandt, chastised the company for its working conditions and labor practices. "Brandt Construction is capable of making the right decisions when it comes to its workers, but they have decided not to," Jones said. "It's sad that employees are the ones suffering when it comes to their decisions to do the right thing." Taking into account the current labor dispute and past problems with Brandt, Alderwoman Maria Dickmann, 2nd Ward, and the other members of the City Council voiced support for staff's recommendation. "Considering Mr. Brandt has about a dozen striking employees that he has continued to refuse to meet with, I can't see how on earth they would be able to complete this project in a timely manner," Dickmann said. "This level of construction is going to need the utmost attention, and we do not want our friends down on the west end experiencing any more delays than is absolutely necessary." Terrence Brandt disputed Dickmann's figures and said only three employees were on strike. "We don't actually have a contract so theoretically they're on strike," Brandt said. "There is no bargaining unit whatsoever. We're an open shop company." Dickmann fired back that whether or not they were fired to lower the number, they were still considered on strike. "They won their National Labor Relations Board complaint, so I just don't think it's their opinion," Dickmann said. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley says he thinks the reports Wednesday that the Trump administration was considering leaving the North American Free Trade Agreement was a negotiating tactic and that the pact has been good for agriculture. Grassley, R-Iowa, spoke with reporters from the Quad-Cities on Thursday after meeting with a delegation to Washington, D.C., led by the Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce. The delegation is in Washington this week for its annual meeting with area lawmakers and executive branch agencies. Grassley, who has long been a champion of free trade, said there were two options floating Wednesday renegotiation or withdrawal. "I think the withdrawal one is posturing," he said. President Donald Trump has long complained that NAFTA was a bad deal for the United States. And late Wednesday, there were reports that the Trump administration was preparing an executive order to withdraw from NAFTA. Later, the president tweeted that he would renegotiate with Mexico and Canada instead. Trade is an important part of the Quad-Cities economy, and Grassley said it has been good for Iowa agriculture. On Thursday, the president told reporters he would seek to renegotiate, but he left open the option of terminating the pact if negotiations are not successful. Iowa legislative Democrats warned Thursday they are planning to do battle next year if Republicans seek to make major changes to state's public employee retirement system. Iowa Sen. Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids, the Democratic leader in the Senate, joined a handful of Quad-City area Democratic legislators in Davenport on Thursday for a post-mortem on the 2017 session, which Hogg called "brutal" for working families. The Republican-controlled Legislature adjourned last weekend after making sweeping changes on several fronts, including reductions in collective bargaining rights for most public employees, a voter identification law and a host of other changes. Democrats still have to wait another 19 months before they'll get a chance to compete with Republicans at the polls. But asked what they expected were major issues to come in the 2018 session, Hogg said water quality and income taxes will be big topics. He also raised the idea Republicans, much like they did with collective bargaining, could seek to make changes swiftly to Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System, or IPERS. "We will be defending IPERS," he said. Both Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds have said a task force will review the future of IPERS. Reynolds also has raised the prospect of shifting to a 401k-like system, while protecting retirees and employees who are relying on the current system. Locally, Hogg blamed Republicans for failing to get a bill passed addressing per-pupil inequities in Iowa's school funding formula. The Senate passed legislation, 47-0, to eliminate the inequity over 10 years, as well as imbalances in transportation funding. Its first year cost was $14 million. Currently, some school districts, including Davenport, can't spend as much as some others. The legislation failed to get a vote in the House, with officials there blaming new revenue projections that prompted the state to make mid-year budget cuts for fiscal 2017, as well adjustments for 2018. Hogg, however, said Republicans devoted money to such things as targeting Planned Parenthood, so there were funds that could have gone to the legislation. State Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, rejected Hogg's criticism, saying that when Democrats controlled the Senate, they didn't move on the inequity issue. "That's just plain politics," he said. The Iowa Department of Transportation said this week it received 16 bids for various elements of a new Interstate 74 bridge and a pair of affiliated projects. An official said, however, it will likely be at least another couple weeks before final awards are made. The DOT gave contractors until Tuesday to submit proposals. Although some of the 16 bids overlap, the response appears to have been a robust one. Ten different companies or joint ventures submitted 16 bids on four different packages. Sam Shea, a district transportation planner in the DOT's Cedar Rapids office, said Wednesday the agency is pleased, although it is still in the process of ensuring that the bidders were responsive to the solicitations and that they meet state's requirements to take on the project. "We saw plenty of interest," Shea said. Prior to the bidding, the DOT said it had estimated the cost of the contracts to be awarded at between $400 million and $450 million, and it looks as if the bids mostly came in under that. The DOT allowed contractors to bid as a combined package on the part of the bridge going over Mississippi River channel as well a separate span that will lead from the water's edge and connect to the central span. Bids also were accepted for those as separate projects. For the combined package, the bids ranged from between $322.1 million and $416.2 million. The lowest bid was from Lunda Construction Co. of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The second lowest bid was at $357.8 million. Two joint ventures bid the projects separately, and those came in at $393.6 million and $416.5 million between them. A separate joint venture bid on one of the projects, but not the other. Separately, there were six bids on the viaduct over downtown Bettendorf and off-ramp leading to U.S. 67 there. Bids for that package were sought separately from the others. Those bids ranged from $30.1 million to $37.9 million. The lowest bidder in this case was Civil Constructors Inc. of Freeport, Illinois. The Iowa DOT's review process can take as long as 30 days, although it usually makes an award before that. In this case, however, the size of the project may lead to a longer time frame, with the Federal Highway Administration's Iowa and Washington, D.C., offices both weighing in, Shea said. "It looks like we are probably at least two weeks away, perhaps a little more," he said. In Illinois, a contract is expected to be awarded in June for work from the river to 7th Avenue in Moline, which will include the viaduct over downtown and street improvements to accommodate the interchanges. That's estimated at $120 million. Then, likely in September, contracts will be awarded for work on the interstate from 7th Avenue to just south of Avenue of the Cities, as well as street improvements, including reconstruction of 19th Street. That work has been estimated at $128 million. Construction on the I-74 bridge is expected to get underway yet this summer with work on the foundations in the Mississippi River. The span itself is expected to be built in 2019 and 2020, and the existing bridge is scheduled to be torn down in 2021. As Margot Hary held up a rock in her clenched right fist in front of the Davenport City Council, she recalled a story a homeless gentleman told her about children beating him up with rocks. Hary, who serves as homeless outreach coordinator at The Center, was trying to impress upon the City Council that the community should embrace organizations like Timothy's House of Hope, which helps the homeless, but was shut down by the city over zoning issues. "He held up his blanket and ran down the street to get away from them," Hary said. "I want all of us to put our rocks down." Timothy's House of Hope, which moved to 1602 Washington St. earlier this month from 1407 W. 4th St., has been a popular site to feed the homeless. But because of its current C-2 zoning, General Commercial District, it's new location prohibits use of its kitchen for that purpose. The city issued a cease and desist to the organization, but during Wednesday's Council meeting, members of the community and organization took the first step toward fighting back. The Compassion Church, which operates the facility, has retained attorney Mike Meloy, who said the city is discriminating against the nonprofit and is violating the state and federal constitutions as well as the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. "We are here to tell the Davenport City Council that the city of Davenport's actions violate Pastor (Jim) Swope and Pastor (Nick) Cantwell's religious freedom of association and religious rights protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution (and) Article 1 section 3 of the Iowa Constitution," Meloy said. Cantwell, the lead pastor at the church, said it's the mission of the church to reach out to all people, regardless of whether they have a home. "We at Compassion Church believe that people are not bums, but are people," Cantwell said. "We also believe that it is not a warm and fuzzy feeling, but it is the right thing to do. We are asking you tonight to help us continue to help the people on Washington Street, people here in Davenport, Iowa, as we continue to reach out to the homeless." Rebecca Selix, an alumni of Timothy's House of Hope, offered her own testimony of how the church helped her improve her life. Selix also mentioned how caring people on the street were because of the contributions of Swope, Timothy's House of Hope and other nonprofits. She took aim at Alderman Ray Ambrose, 4th Ward, whose comments last week I dont have a warm and fuzzy feeling for the homeless as other people do, and other statements, caused outrage in the community, while she dispelled misconceptions about the homeless. "As a former bum, I want you to know that my character has remained the same, whether I was homeless or had an apartment or was rooming with somebody," Selix said. "My character did not change." Americans For Prosperity-Iowa State Director Drew Klein also issued a statement rebuking Ambrose for his comments and the city's decision to close the organization's operations. It is truly appalling that city officials are citing long ignored zoning regulations to shut down a ministry that has done nothing but serve underprivileged members of the Davenport community," Klein said. "Alderman Ray Ambroses words on this issue have been particularly distasteful, referring to members of the homeless community as bums and claiming he does not share his communitys sympathy for these individuals. "We believe the individuals seeking to close Timothy's House of Hope should take a step back and ask themselves why people elected them to govern in the first place. Shuttering a ministry that is doing incredible work in the community is probably not what their voters had in mind. In making her comments in a public forum, Selix said she probably had outed herself as a former homeless person, which she has kept quiet because of the prejudices and difficulties the homeless face, but said the organization helped her get back on her feet. "What Timothy's House does and what Compassion Church does is help people rise above their circumstances," Selix said. "It propels them forward." After the meeting, Ambrose said that his objections were in reference to concerns he received from businesses and residents in his ward and his intentions were only to protect the neighborhood. "I feel bad because I do homeless outreach, but my family focuses on the children that have some challenges," Ambrose said. "We work with kids whose families struggle. I'm not a hater of the homeless." The Davenport City Council did not comment publicly on any of the testimony they received Wednesday evening. However, Mayor Frank Klipsch said the city was willing to work with Meloy and the organization to work out the issues. "This was approached as a zoning issue not an anti-Timothy's House of Hope issue," Klipsch said. "We can definitely sit with them and staff and see what's involved." John Brown, the longtime Rock Island County Clerk chief deputy, announced his retirement Wednesday, and County Clerk Karen Kinney named Rock Island County Board member Nick Camlin to succeed Brown. Camlins appointment means he will resign from the county board where he represented District 15 in Rock Island. However, Camlin will be able to keep his position as Rock Island County Township Clerk. Kinney said Browns service has been invaluable in helping to keep all county elections running smoothly and I cannot thank him enough for all of his dedicated service to the residents of our county. Brown worked 1982 to 1997 under John Gianulis and then Richard Dick Leibovitz when they were the county clerk. He joined Kinneys office in 2010. Brown said he wont be far away as he will remain active in the Rock Island County Democratic Party. This will allow me the time to work on the significant issues at hand, Brown said Wednesday at news conference where he announced his retirement and Kinney named Caimlin as his replacement. This is not the time to be silent. Outside of his political duties, Camlin, 29, said he has been working at Washington Junior High School in Rock Island as a grant coordinator. Camlin said he is ready for his new duties. John has been training me on elections. As a county board member I already know about the budgets and county policies, many of which Ive written and I have a lot of experience with county operations. Camlin added that he will submit his resignation for his seat on the county board effective Monday. County Board Chairman Ken Maranda said Wednesday that he will declare a vacancy at Mays regular meeting of the board. He has 60 days to then fill the post. Since Camlins term expires Nov. 30, 2018, and there is less than 24 months left in Camlins term, Maranda can appoint a successor. However, Maranda said Camlin was vice chair of the board and ran the committee-of-the-whole, which means there will be some changes to some committees. Ive not made any decisions on who will be vice chair, Maranda said. I havent asked anybody yet. I just learned Nick (Camlin) was leaving a couple of days ago, so I dont want to rush into anything. 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 Unless you've been in a coma, you've seen the video of what I will delicately call the incident involving United Airlines at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. You've seen the doctor turned into a bloody mess after airport cops hauled him off the plane because United needed the seats for its own crew members who had to be in Louisville for work just like the doctor who said he couldn't leave the plane because he had patients to see in the morning. And you have come to your own conclusions as to who is at fault. Maybe you think it was United for forcing a passenger off the plane once he was seated. Or maybe it was the police who brutally dragged the man off the plane. Maybe you even think it was the passenger, 69-year-old Dr. David Dao, who refused to give up his seat. But I'll bet you don't know who the real villain is, the one who, despite the fact that he was nowhere near Chicago, is really responsible for the mayhem at O'Hare. Here's a hint: He's the president of a major country in North America and his initials are DJT. No kidding. President Trump is the bad guy. Just ask Frank Guan, who writes for New York magazine. According to Guan, the whole thing started with "President Trump's January 27 imposition of Executive Order 13769, known generally as the 'Muslim ban,' which resulted in huge protests at airports across the nation, and seemingly emboldened some customs and immigration agents to inflict petty tyranny on helpless people whose skin is not white." Dao is of Asian ancestry. Never mind that there is no Muslim ban, despite what progressives who despise President Trump may think. The travel ban, which is temporary, affects only six Muslim majority countries all of them either failed states or places connected to terrorism. Muslims from every country on earth except for Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria may still enter the United States. Never mind that there were no customs or immigration agents involved. And, while we're at it, never mind that if cops are targeting Vietnamese senior citizens because their "skin is not white" that's news to me. None of that gets in the way of the New York magazine piece. Frank Guan has scrupulously connected the dots and they lead from the White House to O'Hare Airport. "While Dao was not abused Sunday by Customs and Border Protection or ICE agents," he concedes, "the incident fits a general pattern that has emerged since the presidential election, of increased hostility from law enforcement toward people of color." Never mind that the law enforcement officer dragging the doctor off the plane was also a "person of color." He was African American. Still, this is Donald Trump's fault. But he's not the only villain. It's also white racism's fault and ultimately, it's America's fault. Don't take my word for it. Clio Chang has written a piece in the New Republic, another liberal magazine, which reports that Dao's race wasn't always mentioned in news accounts of the incident. Some reports referred to him only as a "passenger" or a "doctor" leaving out his ancestry. That bothers Chang, who writes: "The problem with expunging the passenger's race from the discussion is that it plays into this myth of the raceless minority. It presumes that there is little potential for an Asian man to be treated worse on a United flight because of his race than a white man. It suggests that Asians in America have more in common with white people than non-white people. "The other way to look at it is as part of a pattern of prejudice in this country violent and otherwise against people of color." So there you have it: The incident at O'Hare is obviously racist America's fault in general and Donald Trump's fault in particular. (Tell me something I don't know.) That's the view, anyway, from that comfy liberal elite bubble that too many journalists spend too much time in. RAPID CITY | Timothy Edward Coats, 63, passed away on April 22, 2017. He was born on April 24, 1953, to Harry and Ruth (Rudolph) Coats in Sioux Falls, SD. He was the second born son, having an older brother, who died in infancy. He then became the oldest of seven children. Tim graduated from Lincoln High School and joined the U.S. Navy in 1971. He served as a data systems technician for the next six years. While being stationed in California, Tim became a born again Christian. Upon receiving an honorable discharge in 1977, he decided to attend Free Will Baptist Bible College in Nashville, TN, to pursue a BA degree in Pastoral Administration. During his time at Bible College, he met his future wife, Kathy Jenkins from Norton, VA. They were married on Aug. 2, 1981. Tim and Kathy enjoyed a short missions trip to the country of Panama with Steve and Judy Lytle. Tim was then employed by the Free Will Baptist Home Missions Department to establish a church in the surrounding area of Rapid City, SD. Harvest Time Free Will Baptist Church was founded in Box Elder. Here Tim would remain for the next thirty-three years. These years were blessed with five children and a number of secondary jobs. Tim served as the chaplain for Rapid City Regional Hospital, Hospice Chaplain, a driver for Croell Redi-Mix, a customer service representative for Ditech, and Combined Insurance. Grateful for having shared his life are his wife, Kathy Coats; daughters, Melody Coats of Antioch, TN, Bethany Coats of Rapid City, and Emily (Paul) Boettcher of Lennox, SD; sons, Jeremy Coats of San Diego, CA, and Zachary Coats of Rapid City; siblings, Becky (Bob) Smith of Parker, SD, Gyna Merriman of Valley City, KS, Monica (Les) of Indianapolis, IN, Melinda (Ron) Keefer of Wasilla, AK, Laura (Bryan) Keil of Pacifica, CA; and many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. He was preceded in death by grandparents, Harmon and Rose Miller; grandparents, Joseph and Julia Rudolph, parents, Harry and Ruth Coats; brother, Johnny Coats. Tim loved the beauty of the Black Hills and the abundant opportunities for hunting that could be enjoyed here. Unfortunately, he was involved in a hunting accident on April 22, 2017, that would claim his life. Visitation will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 28, at Kirk Funeral Home. Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, at Calvary Baptist Church. Burial will follow at Mountain View Cemetery. Memorials may be directed to the Harvest Time-Free Will Baptist Building Fund. An online guestbook may be signed at the Kirk Funeral Home website. Cyprus extradites Russian citizen charged with embezzlement at Yukos subsidiary MOSCOW, April 27 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) - Russian national Vyacheslav Shimkevich, allegedly involved in embezzling assets from Yukos subsidiary, Tomskneft, has been extradited from Cyprus, according to the press service of Russias Prosecutor Generals Office. Shimkevich is charged with complicity in large scale embezzlement committed by an organized group and money laundering, the statement reads. Investigators claim that from March 2005 and May 2006, Shimkevich, being an owner and deputy director of Rekma.V.G. company, was implicated in embezzlement of assets belonging to Tomskneft oil producer and monetary funds of its subsidiary Tomskneft-Service. In 2008, Shimkevich was put on the international wanted list. In 2009, Russian law enforcement authorities established his whereabouts and sent an extradition request to Cyprus. Three years after, the Larnaca District Court dismissed the extradition request. On March 30, 2017, the Supreme Court of Cyprus overturned the lower courts decision and granted extradition of Shimkevich. The Justice Minister of Cyprus approved this ruling, according to the statement. Khodorkovskys Otkrytaya Rossia NGO put on "undesirable organizations" list MOSCOW, April 27 (RAPSI) - The Justice Ministry has added several foreign NGOs including Otkrytaya Rossia, founded by former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to the list of "undesirable organizations", according to the statement published on the ministrys website on Thursday. The decision was made upon the request of Russias Prosecutor Generals Office. On Wednesday, the Prosecutor Generals Office recognized Otkrytaya Rossia NGO, Open Russia Civic Movement based in the United Kingdom and the Institute of Modern Russia (IMR) located in the U.S., as undesirable organizations. According to prosecutors, these organizations implement special programs and projects aimed to discredit election results in Russia and recognize them as illegitimate. The Prosecutor Generals Office believes that undesirable foreign organizations create conditions for protest rallies and destabilization of political climate in Russia. The law under which foreign NGOs can be put on "undesirable organizations" list if they are believed to be a threat to the constitution, defense or security came into effect on June 3, 2015. These organizations will be prohibited from working and from circulating information materials in Russia, and their offices and branches will be closed. A decision to declare a foreign or international NGO an undesirable organization can be made or reversed by the Prosecutor General or his deputies, based on consultations with the Foreign Ministry. The Justice Ministry will compile and publish a list of non-grata organizations. On March 28, President Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting "undesirable" NGOs from creating Russian legal entities. Currently, the Open Society Foundation (Soros Foundation), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the MacArthur Foundation, Freedom House and others are among blacklisted organizations. Timber industry leaders in Montana are applauding the results of a federal investigation that found Canada unfairly subsidizes its timber business, allowing Canadian companies to undercut U.S. businesses with lower prices and lots of volume. To level the playing field, Canadian lumber is now expected to face new countervailing duties an import tax ranging from 3 percent to 24 percent, starting next week. Enthusiasm also has greeted an announcement by U.S. Department of Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross that a 20 percent tariff will be imposed on imported softwood lumber from Canada in June. The United States is in the midst of negotiating another softwood lumber agreement. The old agreement expired in 2015, and since then, Canadian firms have been sending products into the United States bearing prices with which U.S. companies cant compete. Thats because, unlike the largely free-market system here, the Canadian timber industry is heavily subsidized by the government and is a major part of that nations economy. Also, the currency exchange rate is favorable for Canadian companies that export products here. The U.S. Lumber Coalition says that, if left unchecked, Canadian trade practices would give them an ever-increasing market share for Canadian product, displacing U.S. workers, producers and landowners or even allowing Canadian mills to take over U.S. assets. Julia Altemus, the executive director of the Montana Wood Products Association, said 7,000 jobs in Montana depend on the timber industry, including loggers, truck haulers and approximately 800 people directly employed by lumber mills and other manufacturers like Roseburg Forest Products in Missoula. This has definitely paved the way for a better negotiated agreement and gives us some leverage, she said. Were happy. She was referring to the U.S. Department of Commerce announcement on Monday verifying that Canada subsidizes softwood lumber production, which the U.S. Lumber Coalition said distorts the U.S. softwood lumber market to the detriment of sawmills, their employees and communities. The Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations (COALITION) filed a petition in 2016 asking the Department of Commerce to investigate. Todays ruling confirms that Canadian lumber mills are subsidized by their government and benefit from timber pricing policies and other subsidies which harm U.S. manufacturers and workers said Coalition legal chair Cameron Krauss. Reuters reported on Monday that both Canada's foreign minister and natural resources minister object to the 20 percent tariff, saying it will drive up U.S. home construction and renovation costs. *** Since the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement expired, Altemus said its been a free for all. Weve been in a stand down for quite a while, she said. The Canadian government somewhat imposed their own tariff knowing full well the U.S. would eventually impose a tariff, so that helped level off lumber prices. But the fact that the U.S. dollar is so much better, the Canadians can make money. Altemus said that the Commerce Department is expected to impose the 20 percent tariff in June to go along with the countervailing duty. It should probably be more than 20 percent, she said. Weve always assumed it would be about a 20 percent tariff. Its what we had expected. Were OK with it. Its better than what we have now, which is a free for all. In 2015, the timber industry in Montana lost about 500 jobs as the softwood lumber agreement expired, allowing Canadian firms to gain more market share. Canadian firms have also purchased at least 50 American timber mills in the last 12 years. Before that, they didnt own any. Altemus said that the Montana wood products industry has been especially hard hit by the influx of Canadian products. We grow the same trees and make the same products, she said. When the Chinese market dried up, the easiest haul route was into the U.S. It has really hurt Montana, absolutely. Altemus said the U.S. wood products industry has always known Canada subsidizes its softwood lumber industry. Thats the way their government is and its a different business model than we do, she said. This announcement gives us more leverage with the trade office to negotiate a more fair settlement. Gordy Sanders, president of Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley, said his company employs 140 people. I think for us, we see some kind of tariff as something thats necessary to help balance the playing field on both sides of the border, he said. Canadians have kind of taken advantage of the situation, and unloaded or dumped an awful lot of volume the last couple years. Thats caused a number of permanent mill closures around the country and layoffs of numerous people. I think this will be helpful, ultimately, when its finalized June 23rd or 24th. The Department of Commerce is still considering U.S. industry claims that Canadian lumber is dumped in the U.S. market to flood it and cause price drops. A preliminary antidumping ruling is scheduled for June 23. Most U.S. producers would look forward to a quota, Sanders said. Prices are important too, it just depends on how everything is structured. There is still a fair amount of uncertainty of how the trade issue unfolds over time. There was a time when Mike Campbell thought he wanted to become a bio-chemist. That thought didnt last long. I think I went to school for that field for a quarter, Campbell. I quit that and began to cook. Deep down in his heart, Campbell knew all along that he was meant to be a chef. That love for preparing fine food allowed him to travel from Alaska to San Francisco to Salt Lake City. Along the way, hes had the opportunity to serve royalty, design kitchens for large corporate restaurants and teach the masses some of the finer points of cooking on television. But, perhaps most important for him and his family, that love for everything culinary led them to the small town of Darby where theyve built a restaurant that Campbell likes to say has developed its own cult-like following. During the busy summer months, customers often have to wait to get into the Little Blue Joint Restaurant on the towns Main Street. Its kind of become like a cult restaurant for some, Mike Campbell said. We still meet people who want to keep this quiet. They tell us, This is our restaurant. We dont want to tell anyone else about it. The small restaurant, with its even smaller kitchen, has kept Campbells inner chef somewhat confined to a menu of pizza, hamburgers, and Mexican food. Thats all about to change. Mike Campbell and his wife, Monica, recently purchased the historic building next door that currently houses the towns iconic Sawmill Saloon. They are in the middle of a major construction project to add to the back of their restaurant to nearly triple their seating and the size of the kitchen. That additional space is going to allow Campbell to once again unlock his inner chef. We will be able to do some finer dining, Campbell said. We will have steak and seafood on the menu. Ill have my own personal chef station where Ill be able to prepare dishes like butter soaked scallops. When theyre done sometime toward the end of May, the restaurant will be able to seat about 78. Currently, theres room for about 28. I know that were going to be able to fill it, Campbell said. There are nights when we have a line going down the sidewalk. Some people just arent willing to wait that long to eat. But as big a project as tripling the size of a restaurant might be, the Campbells arent stopping there. While one crew of craftsmen is working to complete the restaurant expansion, another is busy renovating the rooms above the Sawmill Saloon. When theyre done, visitors to the town will have another option for lodging that will include a fine meal in the morning at the couples new bed and breakfast. Right now, there are really not many places to stay here, Monica Campbell said. In the summer, there are motorcyclists, bicyclists and tourists coming through here constantly. Were going to be able to offer them a really nice room and a wonderful breakfast. The couples two children plan to help them operate their growing business. They grew up in the restaurant business, Mike Campbell said. They dont even know what the word stress is. They just know how to get things done. For those who love to relax under the ancient collection of well-used chainsaws that decorate the Sawmill Saloons rafters, the Campbells are quick to say the bar will remain the same. Its everyones local watering hole, Mike Campbell said. Its one of those places that you find in every small American town. Were not going to change a thing. The town would probably revolt if we tried. The brick building that houses the Sawmill Saloon was originally constructed in 1903 as a bank. The two walk-in safes from that era are still in use to protect the bars liquor supply and other items. We close the doors every night, Mike Campbell said. In 1933, the building became a bar and a hotel. Some say there was a period that the upstairs was a house of ill repute. Originally, the bar was decorated in a style popular back in the 1940s. It was kind of like this gangster-looking place, Mike Campbell said. Sometime in the 1960s, it was redone in logger motif. That was back when the mills were running strong. Darby is in the midst of another change to meet the times that are coming. We know this town is going to grow, Mike Campbell said. There are so many good things happening here right now. We love this town. Theres really no other place that we would rather be. I think Montana seduces you, Monica Campbell said. Its really beautiful, plus the bears and mosquitoes are much smaller than they are in Alaska. The founder and former owner of what was Stevensvilles largest employer said the company is struggling as it looks for more work and new ownership. My fingernails are about worn out from holding on, Max Downing said Wednesday. The fabricating plant on the southern edge of Stevensville is currently operating with a skeleton crew of about 10 right now. Last November, the company significantly reduced its workforce through layoffs or reduced hours following a downturn in the natural resource industries that hit the steel fabrication company hard. At the time, the company said it expected that the layoffs would be temporary, but things havent improved. Downing had planned to retire at the end of March. Hes stayed in an attempt to find some projects that would put people back to work and to seek a new owner for the company. There does appear to be a resurgence in the mining industry, which Downing said could lead to some work for the Stevensville plant, which builds very large pieces of specialty equipment. At its height, Downing said the company employed over 110 people at salaries that averaged $50,000 a year. We had a payroll of upwards of $6 to $6.5 million, Downing said. Thats important for Stevensville and Ravalli County. With most of the log home businesses and sawmills gone, theres not a lot of industry left in the county. There are some large mining projects coming online around the country, including the expansion of a coal mine in Colorado and a gold mine in Nevada. That could lead to some projects for the Stevensville company that celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. Im trying to keep encouraged, Downing said. Im seeing a lot of projects getting underway out there. This is a great facility, with great employees. Im going to do what I can to move them forward. A recent survey of former employees indicated that about 80 would return if there was work to be had, he said. Every month or so I am seized with an elaborate and unfeasible idea for a book, and e mail friends an absurd precis sketch. Here's a recent example. I love the idea, but I can see, a month after I made my sketch, that logistics and finances make it unattainable, for now at least. Anyone who has more resources and time than me is welcome to pinch the idea and run with it... After Catastrophe: journeys to the lost islands of the Pacific Ever since Plato wrote about Atlantis, humans have been fascinated by stories about islands lost to the sea. Atlantis was an imaginary place, but in the South Pacific Plato's vision of watery apocalypse has been a reality. The tectonic plates that lie under the Pacific regularly generate earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, as they scrape and grind against one another. The region's cyclones bring another sort of violence. Over the last thousand years a series of islands have pulled underwater by earthquakes, blown to pieces by volcanoes, and covered by stormy waters. The Pacific's drowned islands survive in the stories passed down by their survivors, and in the logbooks and letters of sailors and missionaries. Today, when global warming is melting ice and raising seas, and humanity is haunted by the thought of environmental catastrophe, the lost islands of the Pacific have much to teach us. To understand the drowned islands we must float over water that was once dry land, visit the refuges where the survivors of catastrophes rebuilt their societies, read old manuscripts in colonial archives, and listening to old stories around kava bowls. The book is divided into five sections. The puzzle of Tuanaki In 1842 two Christian missionaries stopped for a few hours at a heavily wooded coral atoll at the southern end of the Cooks archipelago. The inhabitants of Tuanaki lived in spacious houses segregated by gender, preferred dancing to fighting, and could afford to gift their visitors a boatload of taro and coconuts. Many Cook Islanders knew about Tuanaki, and by the 1840s a few families from the island had resettled on the much larger and more populous Rarotonga. When a group of missionaries went in search of Tuanaki in 1844 and again a decade later, though, they could find no trace of the island. Burotu, island of the gods A series of rocks extend from a small bay on the western coast of Matuku, an isolated piece of Fiji's Lau province. According to oral tradition, the stones are a pathway that leads down to Burotu, a drowned island where demigods and immortal animals live. Stories say that every tree and flower on Burotu is red, a colour associated, in Fiji and many Pacific cultures, with wealth and power. The island is supposed to rise from the sea occasionally and then disappear again, after a few hours or minutes. In 2003 it was spotted by a schoolteacher and a group of his students. The traditional religions of Tonga and Samoa named Pulotu as the place where chiefs' souls went after their bodies died. Linguists have identified Pulotu with Burotu, and geologists have identified a small island just beneath the waters east of Matuku. Fragments of Kuwae Kuwae was a huge, high island at the centre of the archipelago nowadays known as Vanuatu. Its people spoke dozens of languages, and grew kava that attracted buyers from the distant Polynesian society of Tonga. In 1453, though, Kuwae exploded. Ash and smoke filled the sky, ruining harvests across the northern hemisphere and hastening the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The disaster of 1453 turned Kuwae into a collection of small, blackened islands separated by a boiling sea. Kuwae's people fled from the eruption in boats, but in only six years the first of them had returned. A young Kuwae chief named Roi Mata soon took control of the devastated fragments of his homeland, and then conquered more land in the south of Vanuatu. Roi Mata was an innovator. He blended Melanesian and Polynesian culture, reorganised the lives of his subjects, and stabilised a society traumatised by the eruption of 1453. Taporapora and the great dispersal Today Taporapora is the name of a sandbar that lies a few hundred metres from a tiny bach village at the end of a peninsula in the Kaipara harbour. But many hundreds of years ago, when humans were establishing themselves on Aotearoa, Taporapora was the name of an island that boasted a school of traditional learning and a plantation of aute, the plant Polynesians beat into tapa. Surrounded by the warm Kaipara, the island was like a fragment of the tropical region that the settlers of Aotearoa had left behind. But war soon troubled Taporapora, and a huge storm dispersed its people to many parts of Aotearoa. Today farmers and archaeologists find tapa beaters in the muddy creeks that run into the Kaipara, and old stories about the island are still told on the region's marae. Nuku'alofa's sinking archipelago Tonga's capital and only city is separated from the open ocean by a maze of reefs and atolls. The atolls have a long history. Medieval Tongan poets paid tribute to their beauty, and the masons who raised pyramids on the graves of Tonga's kings cut slabs of beachrock from their shores. James Cook cruised amongst them, and the famously brutal Tongan warlord Finau Ulakalala stopped at a pagan temple on the island of Pangaimotu to talk with his gods via a delirious shaman-priest. The people of 'Eue'iki, the largest of the atolls, made an alliance with sharks, and held a ceremony where they sang to attract the creatures and then hung garlands of flowers around their necks. Today, though, the atolls in Nuku'alofa harbour are sinking and shrinking. Some have already disappeared, sending their old inhabitants to the suburbs of Nuku'alofa. This MS Awareness Week, Lydia from the Multiple Sclerosis Trust offers some advice on relationships and MS. Relationships on Female First Patience is a virtue Patience is hugely important in any relationship, but when your loved one is struggling with the symptoms of MS, it is even more vital. This could mean not immediately jumping in like a know-it-all when cog fog clouds their thoughts (cognition issues are common symptom of MS), understanding that they may not always be able to keep up with your pace when MS fatigue rears its ugly head, or simply giving them enough time and space to make sense of an MS diagnosis in their own way. A little bit of patience can make a very big difference. Its good to talk (but only when youre ready) Some people may be happy to talk about their MS, but others might find it more difficult, especially if the diagnosis is still very raw. Never put pressure on your partner; theyll open up when they are ready, and it is your job to be there to listen whenever they need a good old moan. Stay informed MS is a complex condition which can sometimes be misunderstood, so its always important to sort out the facts from the myths. Visit mstrust.org.uk for a whole wealth of information on MS, from the latest research to the best ways to manage different symptoms, or call the MS Trusts free enquiry service on 0800 032 38 39 with any questions you might have. You could also offer to attend medical appointments with your partner. The better you understand the condition, the better support you can give. Keep a sense of normality It might be tempting to wrap your partner up in cotton wool, smother them in love and affection, and forbid them from lifting a finger. Although they might find this fun for a while (we all love being pampered now and again!), in the long-term this overbearing approach is bound to wear thin. Most people with MS are determined to try and live as normal a life as possible and will resent constantly being asked if they are ok. They will ask for help if and when they need it, so dont force it upon them. Let your partner take the lead When it comes to choosing treatments and managing symptoms, let your partner take the lead. You may not always agree, but it is their body and they know it best. Less is more Fatigue is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of MS, so when you want to spend quality time together, embrace the simple pleasures in life rather than suggesting activities that could leave your partner feeling completely exhausted. Who doesnt love an evening snuggled up on the sofa watching Netflix? Be willing to adapt MS is unpredictable. Different people with MS experience different symptoms at different stages. You dont know how youll feel day to day or even hour to hour, so its important to be flexible with your plans. You dont have to let MS rule your lives, but you do have to be willing to adapt. Lets talk about sex (baby) It is only natural for couples to be worried about how MS might affect their physical relationship, and it is true that in some cases difficulties can arise. A diagnosis and the symptoms of the condition will undoubtedly affect how your partner feels about sex and intimacy and how they might relate to you, but if youre both open and honest about how youre feeling, youll be in a much better place to deal with any issues. Be prepared to change routines to accommodate fluctuating energy levels, to adapt sexual positions or find different ways to be intimate with each other that don't involve sexual activity. Be their partner first The partner of someone with MS may find that at certain stages they are taking on some aspect of care. This might be personal care, helping out around the house with day to day tasks or helping your partner get around if they have poor mobility. If this is the case, always remember youre first and foremost their husband or wife; boyfriend or girlfriend; the role of carer should never overtake that. Ensure youre always there for them An MS diagnosis is the start of a long and unpredictable journey, and theres likely to be many bumps along the way. So just being there, unconditionally, through it all, is the most important thing. For more information about MS, visit mstrust.org.uk. What is MS? Multiple sclerosis is a condition that affects the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. It is a lifelong, condition, usually diagnosed in peoples 20s and 30s, and can cause a wide variety of symptoms, including eyesight problems, fatigue, balance problems, altered sensations and cognitive issues. Over 100,000 people in the UK live with MS and it affects around three times as many women as men. There is currently no cure. Who are the MS Trust? The MS Trust is a charity which works to make a difference today for the more than 100,000 people living with MS in the UK. We produce practical, reliable information, online and in print, and offer a telephone and email enquiry service to anyone who needs to know more about MS. We work to make sure everyone affected by MS can access good quality, specialist care. We offer a full range of support to both specialists and health professionals with an interest in MS, including online information, publications, newsletters and professional development. We work in partnership with health professionals to improve MS services now and in the future. Guwahati : Assam police on Wednesday had arrested three government officials including a Block Development Officer (BDO) with huge cash in lower Assam's Baksa district. According to the reports, Baksa police had recovered Rs 3.80 lakh from a vehicle bearing registration number of AS-01-AZ-2853 where the government officials of Barama development block were travelled. Police also arrested BDO of Barama development block Radhika Ranjan Sheel and two junior engineers of the block named Phatik Haloi and Amalesh Nath. A top police official said that, the officials carried the amount in the vehicle and it is suspected to be public money. 'Verification process of the seizure cash and interrogation is going on,aA the top police official said. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday arrested three officials of Nagaland governemnt for allegedly providing government fund to outlawed NSCN (K). According to the reports, the arrested government officials were involved as collector of NSCN (K). The sleuths of NIA had arrested state Social Welfare department joint director Tulula Pongen, Land resources department joint director Alienba Pangjung Jamir and UDA K Lashito Sheqi. A top official of NIA said that, they had allegedly charged large scale of extortion and collected illegal tax from the various government departments, organizations on behalf of the banned outfit group. 'They were also provided government money to NSCN (K). The three government officials were arrested on the basis of their alleged involvement in paying huge money to several outlawed groups including NSCN (K), NSCN (R), NNC,'A the top NIA official said. The sleuths of NIA had seized huge quantity of demand letters, payment receipts from government department offices. On the other hand, the arrested government officials were appeared before the special NIA court in Dimapur and the court sent Jamir and Sheqi to five-day police remand while Pongen sent to hospital for treatment as she was reported sick. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati : Security forces had apprehended a militant of NSCN (K) from Arunachal Pradesh's Tirap district on Tuesday evening, officials said on Wednesday. Kohima based Defence PRO Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer said that, based on intelligence input, Assam Rifles troops launched operation at Khonsa town in Tirap district and nabbed the militant. The nabbed militant was identified as Wanglam Pansa alias Alam and security personnel recovered a pistol, ammunition in possession from him. He was terrorizing and extorting money from Khonsa Town. During interrogation he revealed that he was tasked by an NSCN (K) cadre to carry out extortion from government departments of Khonsa Town,' the Defence PRO said. Security forces has been carrying out aggressive operations in the South Arunachal Pradesh and this apprehension has struck a blow to the extortion activities being carried out by the underground cadres of the group in the area. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati : After a gap of almost 12 years, the tripartite talks between the All Assam Students' Union, Government of India and Government of Assam at the Home Ministerial level was held at North Block here today in the presence of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and representatives of All Assam Students' Union. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh while taking part in the discussion assured the AASU representatives that the spirit of Assam Accord would not be allowed to get diluted at any cost. The Union Minister, who has been closely monitoring the implementation of the Accord, stated that the Government of India and the Government of Assam are committed to a flawless NRC updation exercise in Assam and to provide Constitutional and economic safeguards to the indigenous people. He also stated that AASU representatives can contact him any time to discuss issues pertaining to the Assam Accord. Singh further informed that a committee with representatives from Government of India, Government of Assam and AASU will be formed to ensure time bound implementation of all clauses of the Accord. 'All issues raised by AASU will be discussed in detail and implemented in a time bound manner. We are also mulling the option for second line of defense along the border for strengthening border security and checking infiltration. Besides, erection of fencing along Indo-Bangla border has already begun,'A Singh said. The Union Home Minister also stated that construction work of Bogibeel Bridge would be completed within December, 2017. Terming the talks as meaningful, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that we have started a meaningful and good beginning to the implementation of Assam Accord. Today's talks have ended on a positive note, as we have discussed in detail clause-wise time bound implementation of the Accord for providing constitutional and economic safeguards to the people of Assam,'A Sonowal said. The Chief Minister further informed that in the coming days political and official level engagements will continue for implementation of all clauses of the Accord within a stipulated time frame. AASU Adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya, while terming the outcome as positive, thanked Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal for their initiatives to hold the talks after a long hiatus. Bhattacharyya said that all 60 proposals placed by AASU for clause-wise implementation of the Accord were discussed threadbare in the talks. The AASU Adviser also said that they have raised the issue of raising of a Special Task Force at district and state levels for detection of illegal immigrants. 'A bilateral agreement between Governments of India and Bangladesh for deportation of the illegal immigrants was also suggested by AASU in the discussions,' Bhattacharyya said. He also disclosed that the next tripartite talks would be held after two months to speed up the momentum of the whole process. The tripartite talks which lasted for nearly 45 minutes discussed threadbare clause wise time bound implementation of Assam Accord particularly Clauses 6 and 7 pertaining to Constitutional safeguards to indigenous people and economic safeguards. It also discussed the process of NRC updation exercise to weed out the names of illegal immigrants, complete sealing of the porous border on a war footing including riverine areas to prevent influx of illegal immigrants once and for all. Revival of Ashok Paper Mill, tackling the recurrent flood and erosion problem, protection of the riverine island Majuli from the fury of the Brahmaputra, revamping the Brahmaputra Board, setting up of new institutions were some of the other issues that came up during the discussions. While Union Home Secretary Rajeev Meharshi and Joint Secretary (North East), MHA Satyendra Garg represented the Government of India, the Government of Assam by State Industry Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary, Media Adviser to Chief Minister Hrishikesh Goswami, Legal Adviser to Chief Minister Shantanu Bharali, Chief Secretary VK Pipersenia, Principal Secretary, Home Hemanta Narzary, Commissioner and Secretary, Home LS Changsan and Resident Commissioner Rwitticka Kalita, the AASU was represented by Adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya, President Dipanka Nath, General Secretary Lorinjyoti Gogoi and educationist Basanta Deka. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Kathmandu, Nepal: Indian Ambassador to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri called on CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli at the partys central office at Dhumbarahi in the Capital on Thursday. During the meeting, the duo discussed on ranges of issues regarding the current political situation in the country, states the office of the UML. Though none of the sides have made public about the exact matter of discussion, a reliable source close to the meeting has claimed that Indian ambassador Puri sought reason to protest the constitution amendment bill registered in the parliament. As the UML has not only protested the recent constitution amendment bill but also the agreement reached between the government allies and the agitating Madhes based parties to revise the bill to address their grievances. Kathmandu, Nepal, The government decision to revise the schedule of the local-level election has left the people in general and party cadres disappointed. Not only the people of province number 1, 2, 5 and 7 but also the people of province number 3, 4 and 6 are disappointed with the government decision. The people of were eagerly waiting for the arrival of May 14 , the date earlier announced for holding the local level election nationwide, to take part in the local election to be held after 19 years. The people in general have been casting a suspicion that the government would backtrack from the commitment and responsibility of holding elections in the pretext of responding to the concerns of the dissident forces, which would have intended to blemish the recent change in the pretext of protesting the elections. As one after another disappointing voices are continually coming against of the elections, people in general seem skepticism for the timely completion of three tiers of elections, which is indispensible to implement the constitution and to institutionalize the recent change. Notwithstanding the thirsting of the people to chose their own representatives to run local units, the government has decided to hold first phase of local elections on May 14 covering the provinces 3, 4 and 6 while the second phase of election is fixed for June 14 covering provinces 1, 2, 5 and 7. Hundreds of thousand people who have returned home taking a break from their works in home and abroad just to participate in the election are left in confusion with the revision of the election schedule. The people are worried that whether they would be deprived of choosing their representatives at the local-level, despite a long wait in this regard. The postponement of the poll date has had its impact even on election related activities as well. The elections campaign reached in the village level have also relatively gone down in the in the aftermath of the announcement of new date for the election. Kathmandu, Nepal: With the aim to forge consensus on contentious issues related to the issue of constitution amendment, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has convened an all-party meeting on Friday. All the political parties represented in the Legislature-Parliament are invited to attend the meeting. It is said that top leaders of the parties are invited in the meeting. KATHMANDU, April 27: A group of student unions locked up the offices of the Private and Boarding Schools' Organization Nepal (PABSON) and National Private and Boarding Schools Association Nepal (N-PABSAN) 's offices in protest of their cavalier attitude toward the private boarding schools fleecing exorbitant school fees from the parents. Nepal Students Union, ANNFSU, ANNFSU-Revolutionary among others have been protesting against the fee hike in violation of the standard fees determined by the government since Tuesday. Cadres and leaders of these unions barged into the office of PABSON at Dilli Bazar and N-PABSON's in Kupandole and padlocked them. The aim is to bring those school charging exorbitant fees from the students to book, according to ANNFSU's President Nabina Lama. The agitating unions have demanded that the private schools revoke the existing fee structures, PABSON having offices across 73 districts and N-PABSON in 40 are responsible to regulate the private schools across the country. PABSON Secretary-General Rajendra Baniya urged the government for its positive intervention for the resumption of the padlocked organizations. Earlier on Wednesday, the unions had padlocked more than 100 private schools in the Kathmandu valley against the exorbitant fees. RSS 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 A loud explosion hit close to the Damascus International Airport in Syria, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. CNN's Ian Lee has more. As featured on Syria: Explosion rocks Damascus airport A loud explosion hit close to the Damascus International Airport in Syria Thursday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. You have permission to edit this collection. Edit Close Exploring the Holocaust from the perspective of survivors and their rescuers, the Museum of Tolerance held a Special Screening of Echoes from the Attic directed by filmmaker Debbie Goodstein, on Monday, April 24th , as part of the museums Yom HaShoah week (April 24 30). The Polish Consulate co-sponsored the event. The screening was followed by a discussion with director Goodstein and members of her family that were in the attic and was moderated by the Museum of Tolerance's Director, Liebe Geft. The film and discussion was well received by the audience. Goodsteins 1988 iconic feature documentary Voices From the Attic told the intimate yet epic story of Goodsteins family in Poland and the Polish family who rescued them and then hid them in their attic for two years during the Nazi Occupation. Echoes From the Attic, her sequel made in 2015, explores the often tense and distant relationship between them and its effect on both the Jewish refugees and their Polish rescuers when the family returned more than two decades later. It is the story of the triumph of an enduring bond, forged in war, tempered by compassion and made resilient by love. Debbie Goodstein is a writer-director whose other works include: Mighty Fine (2012), a feature film starring Chazz Palminteri and Andie McDowell and Saying Kaddish (1991) a TV movie that was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Does acceptance of a commutation moot a prisoner's collateral legal challenge to a prison sentence he is still serving? | Main | "Criminal Law as Family Law" April 27, 2017 Interesting new survey data on various criminal justice reform issues from Charles Koch Institute This press release from the Charles Koch Institute reports a few highlights and provides this link to a set of really interesting survey data on a set of criminal justice reform questions. Here are the basics from the press release: The Charles Koch Institute (CKI) ... released a poll surveying 1,200 American voters who participated in the 2016 presidential election about their views on criminal justice issues such as civil asset forfeiture, overcriminalization, and mandatory minimum sentencing. The results, which represent responses from a broad range of Americans including voters who identify as liberals, moderates, and conservatives suggest significant support for criminal justice reform. Notably, this support even comes from Trump voters: When asked whether criminal justice reform is a priority for the country, 81 percent of Trump voters described the issue as either very important (34 percent) or somewhat important (47 percent). Trump voters were also more likely to have experience with the criminal justice system, as 54 percent of them reported knowing someone who is or has been incarcerated. When asked about civil asset forfeiture, 59 percent of Trump voters either strongly disagreed (28 percent) or disagreed (31 percent) that police should have the right to seize private assets of a suspect even if that individual is never prosecuted. Furthermore, when asked if judges should have more freedom to assign forms of punishments other than prison (such as civil or community service), 63 percent of Trump voters strongly agreed (26 percent) or agreed (37 percent). There appears to be an appetite among conservatives to get right-on-crime, said Vikrant Reddy, a senior research fellow with CKI. Conservatives have been observing the criminal justice system, and they have opinions on how to make it better. In short, they want reforms that prioritize public safety, respect individual rights, and advance human dignity. For any and all would-be criminal justice reform advocates, the detailed particulars of the full poll results are worth checking out. The poll probed all sorts of interesting concepts by asking whether respondents agreed or disagreed with statements like "it's important to have mandatory minimum sentences" and "possession of drugs should not be met with prison time" and "too many people are in prison for non-violent crimes" and "the current criminal justice system unfairly targets racial minorities." April 27, 2017 at 05:23 PM | Permalink Comments I have suggested a massive explosion of civil forfeiture. Stop seizing the houses of ghetto grandmas whose grandsons dealt drugs. Stop kidding around, you stupid lawyer assholes at DOJ. Are these the stupidest human beings ever born? Start seizing Facebook/Google/Twitter/Microsoft. These are abominations to our world. They have acted as vehicles of thousands of crimes. Their moderation of content has waived any immunity as common carriers. Then, as federal property, bust them up. Sell the parts, and keep the proceeds for the government. Civil forfeiture is the golden road to busting of monopolies, and of monopsonies. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 28, 2017 12:01:05 AM Post a comment The stakes are very high for 30-year-old Russian national Denis Davydov, who traveled to the US legally in 2014 and overstayed his visa, requesting asylum as an HIV-positive gay man who faces persecution in his home country. After taking a trip to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Davydov was detained by border and customs agents in Florida, where the Associated Press reports he's been held in a detention center now for more than a month. Davydov had been living in San Jose, as Bay City News reports, and his story has been brought to media attention by Sergey Piskunov with RUSA LGBT, a group that represents Russian-speaking members of the LGBT community. Davydov's attorney, Aaron Morris of the New York-based Immigration Equality,which advocates for LGBT immigrants, confirmed to the AP that Davydov has been receiving his HIV medications while in detention, but that he needs access to a specialist. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Jaime Ruiz has declined to comment on this specific case. Piskunov tells Bay City News, "Hes a gay man and HIV-positive. Russia is not the best place for either of those and hes a combination of both." Piskunov spoke to Davydov and says that ICE agents were "trying really hard to find something wrong" with his documents, and put him on a plane to Miami from St. Thomas for detention. In Russia, Piskunov says, very little regard is given to the health of HIV-positive men, or gay men in general. "They have money for war in Ukraine, Crimea, Syria they have money for all these military expenses but they dont have money for the medical system. And they dont care. And, Piskunov adds, "I believe hes not going to live too long" if he's deported to Russia. We have several friends in common who passed away because of HIV consequences," Piskunov says. News of Davydov's case comes just weeks after reports emerged of the torture of gay men in concentration camps in Chechnya, in which the New York Times reports that gay men have been starved and violently interrogated, and the actions have been characterized as a "cleansing." Below, the last picture Davydov posted of himself on the beach in St. Thomas. Performer and playwright Taylor Mac will, for only the second time, be performing all 24 hours of his epically ambitious A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music this fall at The Curran. The wildly inventive and partly improvisational musical play, which Mac has workshopped and performed in pieces both in New York and across the country over the last several years, has only had one continuous, 24-hour performance, last October at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn with Mac himself on stage all 24 hours, often in platform heels. Producer and patron Carole Shorenstein Hays says, "I am thrilled to be welcoming the exceptional mastermind Taylor Mac back to the Curran. That he will be gracing our stage with the show in its entirety for the first time since that ever so magical evening in Brooklyn, makes me very excited for the Curran and for the Bay Area as a whole." Hays previously booked Mac at the Curran during its Under Construction series in January 2016, doing only six of the 24 hours of the piece over two weekends and I reviewed Act 2: 1806-1836 here. Mac performed with his orchestra and troupe of "Dandy Minions" (a rotating cast of local performers and stagehands) with both the audience and performers sharing the Curran stage, the curtain and main theater at his back, while the theater itself was under renovation. The full-scale production will be done in six-hour segments over four days in September, spanning two weekends, and this time with an entire house full of seats and no one sitting on the floor. It's a co-production of the Curran and Stanford Live, in association with Magic Theatre and Pomegranate Arts. And most recently, the show was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it won the Edward M. Kennedy Award for Drama Inspired by History. The four parts in which Mac performs and reinterprets over 240 songs, about ten per decade per hour, beginning with America's independence in 1776, all through a radical queer lens and touching on moments affecting minority communities in each decade will be as follows: Friday, September 15 at 5pm (Chapter 1: 1776-1836): The American Revolution from the perspective of the yankee doodle dandy, the early womans lib movement, an epic battle between drinking songs and early temperance songs, a dream sequence where the audience is blindfolded and the heteronormative narrative as colonization. Sunday, September 17 at 2pm (Chapter II: 1836-1896): Walt Whitman and Stephen Foster go head to head for the title of Father of the American Song, culminating in the queerest Civil War Reenactment in history. Oh, and: a production of The Mikado set on Mars. Friday, September 22 at 5pm (Chapter III: 1896-1956): A Jewish tenement, a WWI trench, a speakeasy, a depression, a zoot suit riot all make the white people flee the cities. Sunday, September 24 at 2pm (Chapter IV: 1956-the present): Bayard Rustins March on Washington leads to a queer riot, sexual deviance as revolution, radical lesbians, and a community building itself while under siege. Following this complete performance of the piece, Mac will be doing an abridged, three-hour version on the Stanford campus and prior to the Curran performances, he and his company will be working in residency with Stanford students, some of whom will have the opportunity to perform in, or work backstage on, the Curran and Stanford performances. Mac has said that he was first inspired to create this piece in San Francisco, participating in the first AIDS Walk here in 1986. As he puts it, via the New York Times, bringing together parts of his New York company with members of the Bay Area theater community "allows the form of the creation to mirror the content of the work: a community building itself through the performance of all that history and music on our backs." And he is no stranger to intensely long theatrical creations that ask almost as much of their audiences as they do of the performers. Previously, he brought his five-hour-long The Lily's Revenge to the Magic Theatre in 2011, which like the Brooklyn performance of this latest work, required meal breaks. In a 2016 interview with the Curran, Mac said he was inspired to make this epic sort of "durational" theater by the incredibly complex, grief-ridden, and cathartic circumstance of that first AIDS Walk when he was a queer teenager living in Stockton. "I wanted to put the audience in a situation in which they are under some kind of complicated circumstance and Im under some sort of complicated circumstance and as a result of falling apart together were building bonds." A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music will move on to be restaged in Spring 2018 in Los Angeles, at the Theater at Ace Hotel, again in four six-hour segments, and the abridged version will also be performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington on March 6, 2018, and at Arizona State University in Tempe on April 27, 2018. You can sign up at the Curran's website to be alerted when tickets go on sale, and this will, in fact, be the next show occurring at the theater following a four-month hiatus, following the current run of The Encounter. Below, a behind-the-scenes look at A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music from the January 2016 preview run. UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks took to the New York Times today with an op-ed concerning both the Ann Coulter speech kerfuffle and the ongoing use of the campus as a locale for physical battle in an ideological war. In an email to the entire campus Wednesday, Dirks said, "This is a University, not a battlefield," and he continues to elaborate on that in the op-ed, writing that "The campus has become a magnet for groups who seek to use the site of the birth of the Free Speech Movement as a staging ground for violence and disruption." Dirks reinforces the idea that the much publicized mess that sparked much of this "free speech" debate on February 1, when disgraced alt-right pundit Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak on campus, was largely caused by outside factions who were not affiliated with the university. "Masked protesters infiltrated peaceful student demonstrations and set fires, injured people and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage," Dirks writes. "While the school remains absolutely committed to ensuring that all points of view can be voiced and heard, we cannot compromise the physical safety of our students and guests in the process." And he continues to assert that those looking to do battle in Berkeley should not be seen as ideological heroes of the left or right. "Free speech may be the new clarion call of the far right, but the real subtext of those who try to disrupt institutions built on principles of openness and inclusion with violence is only barely disguised," he writes. Berkeley has been widely criticized and mocked over the last week due to Coulter's high-profile fight to speak on campus. She was invited by student groups, including the Berkeley College Republicans, but Dirks claims that the group did not clear the date with the administration ahead of time. Over the weekend we saw Senator Bernie Sanders speak out in support of allowing Coulter to speak, saying, "What are you afraid of her ideas? Ask her the hard questions. Confront her intellectually. Booing people down, or intimidating people, or shutting down events, I dont think that that works in any way." And the Times has a separate piece today about the strange irony of the Free Speech Movement being turned on its head and used against liberals, given that the age of political correctness on college campuses and in the media, it's been argued, has only served to stifle conservative thought and label it as bigoted. The piece cites recent incidents at Middlebury College and UCLA in which guest speakers with controversial ideas were physically attacked by student mobs, and while some of the blame can be put on the passions that have become more inflamed since the election of President Trump, many of these conflicts have been bubbling up for years Bill Maher last Friday brought up the time that Berkeley students tried to block him from speaking at a December commencement ceremony three years ago. Per the Times: Many liberals denounce what they see as a growing tolerance of aggressive and intolerant speech against minorities and immigrants. That has only grown worse now that Mr. Trump is president, and people like Ms. Coulter feed on that, they argue. The result has been such toxicity on college campuses that even conservatives acknowledge it is causing their side to dig in irrationally, growing intractable even when the speaker is someone like Mr. Yiannopoulos, who has defended pederasty, or Richard Spencer, a white supremacist and self-appointed leader of the fringe alt-right movement. In a lighter take, The Onion mocked the tensions at Berkeley with a piece headlined "Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From Wall Street Journal Found On Park Bench." The satirical piece concludes, "At press time, a black-clad group of 50 students were throwing bottles at the bench while chanting, 'No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist U.S.A!'" Previously: Ann Coulter Backs Out Of Berkeley Event After Student Groups Abandon Her A week after a San Francisco cable car conductor was arrested in an alleged fare theft scheme, a second conductor has been booked on similar charges. As previously reported, 61-year-old cable car conductor Albert Williams was arrested last week, after a two month long investigation allegedly revealed that he'd been pocketing the cash fares ($7 per one way ride) paid by passengers. Late Wednesday evening, the San Francisco Police Department announced a second arrest this time of David Reyes, a 55-year-old SF resident and fellow cable car operator. According to the SFPD, Reyes is the "second suspect" in the same investigation that nabbed Williams, and was taken into custody at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the 1200 block of Mason Street, perhaps fittingly the same block as San Francisco's cable car museum. Police say that Reyes was "booked into San Francisco County Jail on the charges of embezzlement and theft of public monies." According to a spokesperson with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, he remains in custody as of Thursday morning. Meanwhile, Williams' case is beginning to wind its way through the court system. According to Bay City News: On April 20, Williams appeared in San Francisco Superior Court to face the felony misappropriation of public money and embezzlement charges. He pleaded not guilty. While Williams is accused of taking only $919, prosecutors indicated that the amount could increase as the investigation continues. Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Lee said on April 20 that a search of Williams home found at least $32,000 in cash in a safe and multiple receipts for luxury items. Additionally, a review of the cash fares Williams has reported over the past five years found similarly low totals compared to other operators on the same route and shifts, Lee said. Prosecutors allege that Williams and Reyes both circumnavigated the cash fare reporting safeguard by simply failing to give fare receipts, the only record that the money had been paid. As noted last week, this has been an ongoing issue for cable car operators: In March of 2005, cable car service screeched to a 2.5-hour halt after two gripmen were fired for allegedly stealing fares. And still, the issue persisted, with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom saying in January 2006 "I am convinced, based on my own personal experience, (the money) is not going to Muni, but it's going in the pockets of some of our well-meaning operators." The most recent scandal has caused the SFMTA to rethink the acceptance of cash fares, with director Ed Reiskin saying last week that the agency "will explore long-term options such as eventually removing cash as an on-board payment option for our cable car system." A timeline for such a change, should it be made, has not yet been announced. Previously: San Francisco Cable Car Conductor Faces Felony Charges After Allegedly Pocketing Fares SIOUX CITY | Southern Siouxland was issued a frost warning from midnight to 9 a.m. Thursday. The warning included Monona and Harrison counties in Iowa and Burt, Cuming, Cedar and Thurston counties in Nebraska, according to the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls. The predicted overnight lows were estimated to hit between 29 and 35 degrees in those areas which brought the potential to damage or kill sensitive outdoor vegetation left uncovered. The weather service says the sun will peek back through Thursday, bringing a warmer high of 55 degrees. Clouds will move back in Thursday night, with a low around 35. Friday brings a 30 percent chance of precipitation, with rain and snow showers possible before 9 a.m., then chances of rain showers continuing throughout the day and into the evening. The high will be 52 degrees. Friday night's low will be 36 degrees. Showers are likely Saturday and Sunday with high near 52 and 43 degrees, respectively, the weather service said. IDA GROVE, Iowa | A proposed consolidation of the Battle Creek-Ida Grove and Odebolt-Arthur school districts is headed to a June 27 vote, after a regional education board found the reorganization petition is legal. At a April 19 public meeting in Ida Grove, the Northwest Area Education Agency Board of Directors signed off on the petition, clearing the way for the special election. Combining the two districts would require approval from a majority of voters in each district. The consolidation proposal has gone down to defeat twice, in 2011 and 2016. The Battle Creek-Ida Grove and Odebolt-Arthur districts have had a whole-grade sharing agreement in place for nearly a decade. Students from both districts attend middle school in Odebolt and high school in Ida Grove. Each district has an elementary school for grades K-5. Long ago, before the big wave of Iowa school consolidations primarily in the 1960s and 1980s, the four towns each had their own schools. Odebolt and Arthur merged in 1956, as did Battle Creek and Ida Grove in 1994. In September 2016, 84 percent of Battle Creek-Ida Grove voters approved the consolidation but it failed in Odebolt-Arthur, with only 43 percent voting in favor. Prior to that vote, school officials said all existing school arrangements would stay the same and no buildings would close as part of any approved reorganization. They also said a consolidation would remove some overlapping expenses in the two districts, chop health insurance costs and reduce property taxes. Through a reorganization incentive, the combined districts would get a three-year tax break on the state mandated uniform levy of $5.40 per $1,000 of property valuation. However, through consolidation the district would lose state money toward sharing positions such as a superintendent, business manager and other positions. According to court documents, Martin-Martin picked up the 15-year-old girl on April 4 near 18th and Court streets and drove her to his home in the 600 block of Court Street. The two went to the basement, where Martin-Martin had sex with the girl on a mattress. NORTH SIOUX CITY Several public and private entities have partnered in an effort to create more affordable housing options in North Sioux City. The North Sioux City Housing and Redevelopment Corporation, First Financial Bank USA of Dakota Dunes, the South Dakota Housing Development Authority's Governors House Program, Siouxland Habitat for Humanity, J&M Real Estate Group and other project partners announced a plan to build nine new homes in the southeast South Dakota community. This initiative was kick-started by after a housing study that revealed the need for more affordable housing in the city of about 2,530 residents. Of the nine new homes, six will be Governors homes, part of a state program that provides funding for housing for low-income residents, the elderly and people with disabilities. Three other homes will be Habit for Humanity homes. The new dwellings will be located in the city's Campbell Addition, a new housing development near River Drive situated on 3.64 acres donated by First Financial. The Governors homes will be comprised of five three-bedroom/two bathroom homes and one two-bedroom/one-bathroom home. All homes will include a driveway, shed, and a full unfinished basement. Future owners can also include options such as kitchen appliances, a washer and dryer set-up, a finished basement, garage preparation or garage additions at an additional cost. The homes will be built in phases, with the first two to arrive in the summer of 2017. The next two will be delivered in fall 2017 and the final two to arrive in spring 2018. Pricing for the six Governors homes will not exceed $135,000, excluding the additional add-on options, for income qualified applicants. Income guidelines for households of two or less cannot exceed $44,030, or 70 percent of the state median income and households of three or more are limited to $50,320, which amounts to 80 percent of the state median income. J&M Real Estate Group is handling applicants for the Governor's homes, while those interested in a Habitat home should contact Siouxland Habitat for Humanity. This project is one of the first to benefit from the city of North Sioux Citys new tax increment district, which allows the city to pay for infrastructure improvements over a longer period of time, making this project financially feasible for the small community. LE MARS, Iowa | The trial for a man accused of killing his sister has been continued until later this summer. Thomas Bibler had been scheduled to stand trial for first-degree murder on May 16. At the conclusion of a pretrial conference Thursday in Plymouth County District Court, District Judge Jeffrey Neary ordered that the trial be continued. No new date was set, but Neary asked lawyers to determine the availability of their witnesses for trial beginning on either July 11 or Aug. 15. Neary said in his written order that he would set a new trial date soon after meeting with lawyers on May 11. Bibler, 34, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, willful injury and going armed with intent in connection with the June 11 stabbing death of Shannon Bogh, 27, of Le Mars. Last month, Bibler waived his right to a jury trial and will instead have a judge decide his case. His attorney, public defender Billy Oyadare, had earlier filed notice that Bibler intends to assert a defense of insanity and/or diminished responsibility at trial. On Thursday, Neary ordered Oyadare to designate his expert witnesses by May 12 so that prosecutors may conduct discovery, if needed. Bibler is accused of assaulting Bogh in her home at 591 15th St. SW with an edged weapon. She died a short time later at the Le Mars hospital. A witness to the stabbing identified Bibler as a suspect, and he was arrested without incident in the apartment about 30 minutes after the assault. IOWA CITY, Iowa An autopsy revealed a Sioux City native was shot to death at the Iowa City office where he worked. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that the body of 34-year-old Jonathan Wieseler was found Sunday morning inside Lederman Bail Bonds, across the street from the Johnson County Jail. Iowa City police say preliminary autopsy results released Wednesday show Wieseler had been shot. No arrests have been reported in Wieseler's death, and the Iowa City Area CrimeStoppers are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect. Adam Santi, a friend of Wieseler's, said Wieseler was engaged to be married, and his bachelor party in Las Vegas had been scheduled for the coming weekend. Services will be 9 a.m. Saturday at St. Mary's Church in Iowa City. Visitation will be 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at Lensing Funeral & Cremation Service in Iowa City. Wieseler was a 2001 graduate of Sioux City North High School, and he earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 2005 and a law degree in 2009 from the University of Iowa, according to his obituary. SIOUX CITY | Verna Hoffman had to forgive, she said, because hating Elias Wanatee turned her into someone she did not like. Others in her family, she said at Wanatee's sentencing hearing Thursday, can't yet bring themselves to forgive him for killing her father, Vernon Mace. "I do forgive you, because me holding all that hate for you made me an ugly person," Hoffman said. "I forgive you. Other people in my family may not. Soon my kids will forgive you. "You get to live, and he doesn't." District Judge Duane Hoffmeyer sentenced Wanatee, 48, of Sioux City, in Woodbury County District Court to 50 years in prison for second-degree murder for the Feb. 17, 2016, stabbing death of Mace. Wanatee must serve at least 35 years before he's eligible for parole. He also was ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to Mace's estate. While in prison, Nick Scurra said, he hoped that Wanatee would think about how he stalked Mace that night and could have made a better decision than to confront Mace and stab him in the street. "We hope his thoughts find a way to absorb what he's done," said Scurra, Mace's son-in-law. Wanatee declined his opportunity to make a statement before he was sentenced. As he was led from the courtroom after the hearing, he stared straight ahead and did not look in the direction of Mace's family. Wanatee's sentencing brought to a close a case that included two trials, a change of venue and a verdict on a lesser charge. Initially charged with first-degree murder, Wanatee stood trial in December in Woodbury County. The trial ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict after more than 11 hours of deliberations. Hoffmeyer ordered the second trial be conducted in Council Bluffs after public defender Jason Dunn had asked that the retrial be moved because local media coverage of the first trial would make it harder to seat a second jury in Woodbury County and ensure that Wanatee receive a fair trial. A Pottawattamie County jury heard the case in late February/early March and after five hours of deliberations found Wanatee guilty of second-degree murder rather than first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Wanatee stabbed Mace, 50, of Sioux City, in the street in the 1900 block of West First Street. Medical evidence during the first trial showed that Mace was stabbed nine times, the fatal wound puncturing his diaphragm and slicing his liver, causing massive internal bleeding. There were no eyewitnesses to the stabbing, and police never found a weapon. During police interviews, Wanatee denied killing Mace, and Dunn suggested at trial that Wanatee had acted in self-defense because Mace had threatened Wanatee with a gun two weeks earlier. The conviction is the second time Wanatee has been found guilty of another person's death. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1991 for the death of Kelton "Kelly" DeCora outside a Sioux City bar. Wanatee appealed the conviction and had the charge reduced to second-degree murder. He was released from prison in January 2015. NCI Building Systems, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets metal products for the nonresidential construction industry in North America. It operates in four segments: Engineered Building Systems, Metal Components, Insulated Metal Panels, and Metal Coil Coating. The Engineered Building Systems segment offers engineered structural members and panels; and self-storage building systems under the Metallic, Mid-West Steel, A & S, All American, Mesco, Star, Ceco, Robertson, Garco, Heritage, and SteelBuilding.com brands to builders, general contractors, developers, and end users directly, as well as through private label companies. The Metal Components segment provides metal roof and wall systems, metal partitions, metal trims, doors, and other related accessories for use in new construction, and repair and retrofit applications; roll-up doors; and interior and exterior walk doors under the MBCI, American Building Components, Eco-ficient, Metal Depots, and Doors and Buildings Components brands to manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, lumberyards, cooperative buying groups, and other customers. The Insulated Metal Panels segment offers insulated metal panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and cold storage end-market applications under the Metl-Span and CENTRIA brands. The Metal Coil Coating segment engages in cleaning, treating, and painting flat-rolled metals in coil form, as well as in slitting and/or embossing the metal, before the metal is fabricated for use by industrial users. It also cleans, treats, and coats heavy and light gauge metal coils for use in construction products, heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, lighting fixtures, ceiling grids, office furniture, appliances, and other products; and provides toll coating and painted metal package services under the Metal Coaters and Metal Prep brands. NCI Building Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. Entergy Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the production and retail distribution of electricity in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Utility and Entergy Wholesale Commodities. The Utility segment generates, transmits, distributes, and sells electric power in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, including the City of New Orleans; and distributes natural gas. The Entergy Wholesale Commodities segment engages in the ownership, operation, and decommissioning of nuclear power plants; and ownership of interests in non-nuclear power plants that sell electric power to wholesale customers, as well as provides services to other nuclear power plant owners. It generates electricity through gas, nuclear, coal, hydro, and solar power sources. The company sells energy to retail power providers, utilities, electric power co-operatives, power trading organizations, and other power generation companies. The company's power plants have approximately 24,000 megawatts (MW) of electric generating capacity, which include 5,000 MW of nuclear power. It delivers electricity to 3 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The company was founded in 1913 and is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana. The following companies are subsidiares of NRG Energy: 3279405 Nova Scotia Company, 3283764 Nova Scotia Company, 7549709 Canada Inc., 7644868 Canada Inc., 7711565 Canada Inc., AC Solar Holdings LLC, Ace Energy Inc., Agua Caliente Borrower 1 LLC, Agua Caliente Solar Holdings LLC, Agua Caliente Solar LLC, Allied Home Warranty GP LLC, Allied Warranty LLC, Arthur Kill Gas Turbines LLC, Arthur Kill Power LLC, Astoria Gas Turbine Power LLC, Bayou Cove Peaking Power LLC, Beheer-en Beleggingsmaatschappij Plogema B.V., Berrians I Gas Turbine Power LLC, BidURenergy Inc., Big Cajun I Peaking Power LLC, Bluewater Wind Delaware LLC, Bluewater Wind Maryland LLC, Bluewater Wind New Jersey Energy LLC, Boquillas Wind LLC, Cabrillo Power I LLC, Cabrillo Power II LLC, Camino Energy LLC, Carbon Management Solutions LLC, Carlsbad Energy Center LLC, Carlsbad Energy Holdings LLC, Chester Energy LLC, Chickahominy River Energy Corp., Cirro Energy Services Inc., Cirro Group Inc., Citizens Power Holdings One LLC, Commonwealth Atlantic Power LLC, Connecticut Jet Power LLC, Cottonwood Development LLC, Cottonwood Energy Company LP, Cottonwood Generating Partners I LLC, Cottonwood Generating Partners II LLC, Cottonwood Generating Partners III LLC, Cottonwood Technology Partners LP, Delaware Power Development LLC, Devon Power LLC, Doga Enerji Uretim Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Doga Isi Satis Hizmetleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Doga Isletme ve Bakim Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Dunkirk Gas Corporation, Dunkirk Power LLC, EHI Development Fund LLC, EME Eastern Holdings LLC, EVgo Services LLC, Eastern Sierra Energy Company LLC, Ecokap Power LLC, El Segundo Energy Center II LLC, El Segundo Power II LLC, El Segundo Power LLC, Elkhorn Ridge Wind II LLC, Energy Alternatives Wholesale LLC, Energy Choice Solutions LLC, Energy Curtailment Specialists, Energy Plus Holdings LLC, Energy Plus Natural Gas LLC, Energy Protection Insurance Company, Everything Energy LLC, Forward Home Security LLC, GCP Funding Company LLC, GenOn Energy, Geostellar Inc., Gladstone Power Station Joint Venture, Goal Zero, Goal Zero Europe GmbH, Goal Zero LLC, Granite II Holding LLC, Granite Power Partners II L.P., Green Mountain Energy, Green Mountain Energy Company, Green Mountain Energy Sun Club, Gregory Partners LLC, Gregory Power Partners LLC, Hanover Energy Company, Huntley IGCC LLC, Huntley Power LLC, Independence Energy Alliance LLC, Independence Energy Group LLC, Independence Energy Natural Gas LLC, Indian River Operations Inc., Indian River Power LLC, Intellastar LLC, Ivanpah Master Holdings LLC, Ivanpah Project I Holdings LLC, Ivanpah Project II Holdings LLC, Ivanpah Project III Holdings LLC, James River Power LLC, Kaufman Cogen LP, LSP-Nelson Energy LLC, Long Beach Generation LLC, Long Beach Peakers LLC, Long Beach Power LLC, Louisiana Generating LLC, MEC Esenyurt B.V., MEC San Pascual B.V., Maplekey UK Finance Limited, Maplekey UK Limited, Meriden Gas Turbines LLC, Middletown Power LLC, Midway-Sunset Cogeneration Company, Midwest Finance Company LLC, Midwest Generation EME LLC, Midwest Generation Holdings I LLC, Midwest Generation Holdings II LLC, Midwest Generation LLC, Midwest Generation Procurement Services LLC, Midwest Peaker Holdings LLC, Mission Bingham Lake Wind LLC, Mission Del Cielo LLC, Mission Energy Construction Services LLC, Mission Energy Holdings International LLC, Mission Energy Wales LLC, Mission Funding Zeta LLC, Mission Midway-Sunset Holdings LLC, Mission Midwest Coal LLC, Mission Minnesota Wind LLC, Mission Watson Holdings LLC, Mission Wind Boquillas LLC, Mission Wind New Mexico II LLC, Mission Wind Owaissa LLC, Mission Wind Pinnacle LLC, Mission del Sol LLC, Montville IGCC LLC, Montville Power LLC, NEO Chester-Gen LLC, NEO Corporation, NRG Acquisition Holdings Inc., NRG Advisory Services LLC, NRG Affiliate Services Inc., NRG Alexandria LLC, NRG Arroyo Nogales LLC, NRG Arthur Kill Operations Inc., NRG Asia-Pacific Ltd., NRG Astoria Gas Turbine Operations Inc., NRG Astoria Power LLC, NRG Audrain Generating LLC, NRG Audrain Holding LLC, NRG Bayou Cove LLC, NRG Berrians East Development LLC, NRG Bluewater Holdings LLC, NRG Bluewater Wind Massachusetts LLC, NRG Bourbonnais Equipment LLC, NRG Bourbonnais LLC, NRG Brazoria Energy LLC, NRG Business Services LLC, NRG CTA Holdings LLC, NRG Cabrillo Power Operations Inc., NRG Cadillac Inc., NRG Cadillac Operations Inc., NRG California Peaker Operations LLC, NRG Capital II LLC, NRG Carbon 360 LLC, NRG Cedar Bayou Development Company LLC, NRG Chalk Point CT LLC, NRG CleanTech Investments LLC, NRG Coal Development Company LLC, NRG ComLease LLC, NRG Common Stock Finance I LLC, NRG Common Stock Finance II LLC, NRG Connected Home LLC, NRG Connecticut Affiliate Services Inc., NRG Connecticut Peaking Development LLC, NRG Construction LLC, NRG Cottonwood Tenant LLC, NRG Curtailment Solutions Canada Inc., NRG Curtailment Solutions Inc., NRG DG Development LLC, NRG Development Company Inc., NRG Devon Operations Inc., NRG Dispatch Services LLC, NRG Distributed Energy Resources Holdings LLC, NRG Distributed Generation PR LLC, NRG Dunkirk Operations Inc., NRG ECOKAP Holdings LLC, NRG ESA Joint Development LLC, NRG El Segundo Operations Inc., NRG Energy Center Eagles LLC, NRG Energy Center Oxnard LLC, NRG Energy Fuel LLC, NRG Energy Fuel Services LLC, NRG Energy Gas & Wind Holdings Inc., NRG Energy Holdings II Inc., NRG Energy Holdings Inc., NRG Energy Inc., NRG Energy Labor Services LLC, NRG Energy Petroleum LLC, NRG Energy Services Group LLC, NRG Energy Services International Inc., NRG Energy Services LLC, NRG Equipment Company LLC, NRG Fuel Cell CA1 LLC, NRG Fuel Resources LLC, NRG Fuel Transportation LLC, NRG GTL Holdings LLC, NRG Gas Development Company LLC, NRG Generation Holdings Inc., NRG Gladstone Operating Services Pty Ltd, NRG Granite Acquisition LLC, NRG Greenco LLC, NRG HQ DG LLC, NRG Holding Leasing Vehicle 7 LLC, NRG Home & Business Solutions LLC, NRG Home Services LLC, NRG Home Solutions LLC, NRG Home Solutions Product LLC, NRG Homer City Services LLC, NRG Huntley Operations Inc., NRG Identity Protect LLC, NRG Ilion LP LLC, NRG Ilion Limited Partnership, NRG Independence Solar LLC, NRG International LLC, NRG Kaufman LLC, NRG Latin America Inc., NRG Lease Co LLC, NRG Lease Development LLC, NRG Limestone 3 LLC, NRG Maintenance Services LLC, NRG Mesquite LLC, NRG Mextrans Inc., NRG MidAtlantic Affiliate Services Inc., NRG MidCon Development LLC, NRG Middletown Operations Inc., NRG Middletown Repowering LLC, NRG Midwest Holdings LLC, NRG Midwest II LLC, NRG Montville Operations Inc., NRG NE Development LLC, NRG Nelson Turbines LLC, NRG New Roads Holdings LLC, NRG NewGen LLC, NRG North Central Operations Inc., NRG Northeast Affiliate Services Inc., NRG Norwalk Harbor Operations Inc., NRG Ohio Pipeline Company LLC, NRG Operating Services Inc., NRG Oswego Harbor Power Operations Inc., NRG Oxbow Holdings LLC, NRG PacGen Inc., NRG Peaker Finance Company LLC, NRG Portable Power LLC, NRG Potrero Development LLC, NRG Power Marketing LLC, NRG Procurement Company LLC, NRG Project Company LLC, NRG Reliability Solutions LLC, NRG Renter's Protection LLC, NRG Repowering Holdings LLC, NRG Residential Solar Solutions LLC, NRG Residential Solar Solutions Leasing II LLC, NRG Retail LLC, NRG Retail Northeast LLC, NRG Rockford Acquisition LLC, NRG Rockford Equipment II LLC, NRG Rockford Equipment LLC, NRG Saguaro Operations Inc., NRG Security LLC, NRG Services Corporation, NRG Sherbino LLC, NRG SimplySmart Solutions LLC, NRG Solar Arrowhead LLC, NRG Solar CVSR Holdings 2 LLC, NRG Solar Dandan LLC, NRG Solar Guam LLC, NRG Solar Ivanpah LLC, NRG Solar Ring LLC, NRG Solar SC Stadium LLC, NRG Solar Sunrise LLC, NRG South Central Affiliate Services Inc., NRG South Central Generating LLC, NRG South Central Operations Inc., NRG South Texas LP, NRG Sterlington Power LLC, NRG Storage Fabrication & Delivery LLC, NRG Storage on Demand NY LLC, NRG SunCap Leasing I LLC, NRG Telogia Power LLC, NRG Texas C&I Supply LLC, NRG Texas Gregory LLC, NRG Texas Holding Inc., NRG Texas LLC, NRG Texas Power LLC, NRG Texas Retail LLC, NRG Trading Advisors LLC, NRG Transmission Holdings LLC, NRG ULC Parent Inc., NRG Victoria I Pty Ltd, NRG Warranty Services LLC, NRG West Coast LLC, NRG Western Affiliate Services Inc., NRG Wind Development Company LLC, NRG Wind Force LLC, NRG Wind LLC, NRG dGen Advisory Services LLC, NRGenerating German Holdings GmbH, NRGenerating International B.V., NRGenerating Luxembourg (No. 1) S.a.r.l., NRGenerating Luxembourg (No. 2) S.a.r.l., New Genco GP LLC, New Jersey Power Development LLC, Norwalk Power LLC, O'Brien Cogeneration Inc. II, ONSITE Energy Inc., One Block Off The Grid Inc., Oswego Harbor Power LLC, Pacific Generation Company, Petra Nova CCS I LLC, Petra Nova Holdings LLC, Petra Nova LLC, Petra Nova Parish Holdings LLC, Petra Nova Power I LLC, Pure Energies Group, Pure Energies Group ULC, Pure Energies Installation Inc., Pure Energies Solar Services Inc., Pure Group Inc., RDI Consulting LLC, RERH Holdings LLC, Reliant Charitable Foundation, Reliant Energy, Reliant Energy Northeast LLC, Reliant Energy Power Supply LLC, Reliant Energy Retail Holdings LLC, Reliant Energy Retail Services LLC, Restoration Design LLC, Roof Diagnostics Solar Holdings LLC, Roof Diagnostics Solar and Electric LLC, Roof Diagnostics Solar and Electric of NY LLC, Saguaro Power Company a Limited Partnership, Saguaro Power LLC, San Gabriel Energy LLC, San Joaquin Energy LLC, San Juan Energy LLC, San Pascual Cogeneration Company International B.V., Sherbino I Wind Farm LLC, Solar Partners I LLC, Solar Partners II LLC, Solar Partners VIII LLC, Solar Power Partners, Solar Pure Energies ULC, Somerset Operations Inc., Somerset Power LLC, South Texas Wind LLC, Station A LLC, Sunrise Power Company LLC, Sunshine State Power (No. 2) B.V., Sunshine State Power B.V., TCV Pipeline LLC, Tacoma Energy Recovery Company, Taloga Wind II LLC, Texas Coastal Ventures LLC, Texas Genco GP LLC, Texas Genco Holdings, Texas Genco Holdings Inc., Texas Genco LP LLC, Texas Genco Services LP, US Retailers LLC, Valle Del Sol Energy LLC, Vienna Operations Inc., Vienna Power LLC, WCP (Generation) Holdings LLC, Watson Cogeneration Company, West Coast Power LLC, XOOM Alberta Holdings LLC, XOOM British Columbia Holdings LLC, XOOM Energy BC ULC, XOOM Energy California LLC, XOOM Energy Canada ULC, XOOM Energy Connecticut LLC, XOOM Energy Delaware LLC, XOOM Energy Georgia LLC, XOOM Energy Global Holdings LLC, XOOM Energy Illinois LLC, XOOM Energy Indiana LLC, XOOM Energy Kentucky LLC, XOOM Energy LLC, XOOM Energy Maine LLC, XOOM Energy Maryland LLC, XOOM Energy Massachusetts LLC, XOOM Energy Michigan LLC, XOOM Energy New Hampshire LLC, XOOM Energy New Jersey LLC, XOOM Energy New York LLC, XOOM Energy ONT ULC, XOOM Energy Ohio LLC, XOOM Energy Pennsylvania LLC, XOOM Energy Rhode Island LLC, XOOM Energy Texas LLC, XOOM Energy Virginia LLC, XOOM Energy Washington D.C. LLC, XOOM Ontario Holdings LLC, XOOM Solar LLC, and eV2g LLC. Read More 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. LEONARDTOWN, Md. Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme. (April 26, 2017)The Leonardtown Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.DRUG ARREST: On Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 1:04 am, Tpr. Manning initiated a traffic stop on a passenger car on Route 235 at Exploration Drive for a traffic violation. Tpr. Manning made contact with the driver, Andarius Ocyrus Conner, 20, of Waldorf, and detected the strong odor of marijuana. A probable cause search was conducted, resulting in the recovery of multiple plastic baggies containing a total of approximately 61 grams of suspected marijuana and a digital scale. Mr. Conner was placed under arrest and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. He was charged with CDS Possess with Intent to Distribute, CDS: Possession- Marijuana, and CDS: Possess Paraphernalia and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-013789)DRUG ARREST: On Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 2:05 am, Tpr. Manning initiated a traffic stop on a truck for a traffic violation. While the vehicle was coming to a stop, Tpr. Manning observed the driver throw a plastic baggie out of his window. Tpr. Manning recovered the baggie, which contained suspected cocaine, and made contact with the driver, Terence Llewelyn Mason, 52, of Mechanicsville. Mr. Mason was placed under arrest and charged with Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance and Possession of Paraphernalia. He was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-014200)THEFT: On Friday, April 14, 2017 at 2:07 pm, Tpr. Mulhearn responded to the Wal-Mart for a reported theft. Investigation revealed Vincent Douglas Smith, 56, of Lexington Park, had placed several items in a backpack. Mr. Smith proceeded to the checkout register and paid for some items, but none of the items in his backpack. Mr. Smith was placed under arrest and issued a "Notice Not to Trespass". He was transported to the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack and issued a criminal citation for Theft Less than $100. (17-MSP-015491)BURGLARY: On Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 1:50 am, TFC S. Ditoto responded to the Vapor 99 in Lexington Park for an alarm. TFC Ditoto observed that the front glass door of the business was shattered and spotted a suspect fleeing the scene on foot. The suspect ran to the area of the Golden Corral and was joined by a second suspect. One suspect, a juvenile male, 14, of California, was apprehended. The second suspect, a juvenile male, 17, of California, was apprehended a short time later. Both suspects were placed under arrest and transported to the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack for processing. They were charged with Burglary - Second Degree, Malicious Destruction of Property Less than $1,000, and Theft Less than $1,000 on a Juvenile Release. (17-MSP-016010)THEFT: On Monday, April 24, 2017 at 5:00 pm, Senior Trooper Evans responded to the Wal-Mart for a reported theft. Investigation revealed that Rebecca Leeann Wathen, 19, of Bushwood, had placed items in a bookbag and attempted to leave the store. Ms. Wathen was issued a "Notice Not to Trespass" and transported to the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack for processing. She was issued a criminal citation for Theft Less than $1,000. (17-MSP-017089)Antoine Markel Yates, 24, of Loveville, on 4/1/2017Timothy Dyshawn Hall, 23, of Lexington Park, on 4/6/2017Andre Ladawl Turner, 54, of Great Mills, on 4/9/2017Joseph Walter Carter III, 56, of Mechanicsville, on 4/10/2017Gregory Bertrand Gagnon, 51, of Mechanicsville, on 4/10/2017Darren U. Humphries, 37, of Chicago, IL, on 4/11/2017Blakie Neil Jones 2nd, 29, of Lexington Park, on 4/11/2017Jackie Marie West, 23, of Leonardtown, on 4/11/2017Michael Edward Knick, 46, of Mechanicsville, on 4/12/2017Joyce Elaine Hart, 39, of Waldorf, on 4/13/2017Michael Anthony Guerra, 55, of Fort Madison, IA, on 4/14/2017Thomas Joseph Mayo, Jr., 56, of Waldorf, on 4/15/2017Ross Phillip Ogilvie, Jr., 28, of Great Mills, on 4/15/2017Victori Ashley Lynch, 26, of Saint Inigoes, on 4/17/2017Alfred Johnathan Thomas, 44, of Lexington Park, on 4/21/2017Nicholas Stellway, 21, of Leonardtown, on 4/21/2017Dennis Andrew Gibson, 34, of Chaptico, on 4/22/2017Sebastian R. Melendez, 32, of Glenn Dale, on 4/23/2017Zachary Joseph Grant, 25, of Hollywood, on 4/24/2017Michaun Renee Hunt, 25, of Harrisonburg, VA, on 4/25/2017 They want their voices heard. LGBT activists will stand together Friday at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center in protest of the 55th annual Mayors Prayer Breakfast. "A diverse group of organizations have banded together to confront hate from visiting our community, said Michael Gagne, protest organizer. Mayor Jack Seiler has decided welcoming Hate at The Mayor's Prayer Breakfast is more important that representing the thousands of GLBT citizens that elected him to office over the years. The 55th annual event faces controversy after announcing Jim Daly as the featured speaker. Daly is the CEO of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian policy institute with an anti-LGBT history. Local LGBT activists have requested Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler decline the breakfast invitation however, Seiler considers his involvement an honor. As Mayor, I am an honorary host and speaker, and I have prayed with and spoke to this group for the past 8 years, Seiler told SFGN previously. My message is, has been, and will be one of kindness, compassion, inclusion, tolerance and respect. In the past, that message has been very well received at this Prayer Breakfast. In fact, over the years, this Prayer Breakfast has brought our community together, united individuals and houses of worship of different faiths, and had an incredibly positive impact on our City. Every year, it seems that a very diverse group leaves the Prayer Breakfast motivated, excited, and energized to assist others and build community. But according to Gagne, Seilers idea of a diverse group leaves the LGBT community behind. In 2014, Mayor Seiler refused to vote for a non-binding resolution supporting marriage equality, he said. It would appear Mayor Seiler feels he doesn't want the GLBT support anymore." Non-profit LGBT organization Truth Wins Outs Wayne Besen will be a guest speaker at the protest. The protest begins at 7 a.m. and runs through 9 a.m. on the corner of 17th Street Causeway and Eisenhower Blvd. The protest organizers encourage participants to bring signs. If You Go: Ft. Lauderdale Mayor's Prayer Breakfast Protest April 28 7 a.m. - 9 a.m. Ft Lauderdale Convention Center 1950 Eisenhower Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316 For more information, contact Ansh Grover at (904) 486-0746 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . On April 21 about 100 people gathered at the Pride Center to discuss access to health care. Town Hall panelists included US Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), Gary Resnick (Mayor of Wilton Manors), and Dr. Toni Lewis (Service Employees International Union). Deutch represents Wilton Manors as well as other parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Mayor Gary Resnick acknowledged that some people still lack access to health care. Speaking as a mayor, an employer and a consumer, Resnick said, Health care is a right, but our system is broken. He pointed out that Wilton Manors faces three major health challenges: an aging population, a growing population with HIV and a large population of low-income service industry workers without employer-based health insurance. Deutch emphasized that any plan to fix access to health care had to provide services, and hold down costs. He labeled both the failed GOP plan and the new one, Trumpcare. According to Deutch, Trumpcare 2.0 would shift decisions about access to health care to the states. Rick Scott could allow insurers to bar people with pre-exiting conditions from service. Scott could also eliminate required coverage for transgender, substance abuse or mental health services. When Deutch stated, I am not prepared to leave [access to health care] up to Governor Scott, the audience broke into applause. Trumpcare 2.0 would also defund Planned Parenthood. During the discussion, an audience member decried partisanship, and advocated a no labels, problem-solver approach. Deutch distinguished between problem-solving and the false equivalence of the no labels position. Deutch had helped to found the bipartisan Congressional Climate Change Caucus. In order to join, a person has to bring in someone from the other party. As of March 30, this caucus had 34 members, 17 Republicans and 17 Democrats. Deutch described this caucus as an example of a bipartisan problem-solving approach. Deutch contrasted that caucus with the GOPs trench warfare on access to health care. All newly implemented programs encounter unanticipated problems. Traditionally, legislators work to strengthen these new programs. Instead, the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care ACT (ACA) over 50 times, but has failed to develop any alternative that even a majority of the GOP in the House could support. Deutch cited Governor Rick Scott as the worst example of partisanship threatening health care access. Several people in the audience reported still being unable to afford accessing health care. One person wanted to know about the Single-Payer, Medicare-for-All Bill of John Conyers (D-MI). This bill would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare. That bill now has 78 co-sponsors. As the GOP is attacking the ACA, Deutch felt that protecting and building on the ACA had greater strategic and practical importance. He did say that legislators should examine the public option and opening up Medicare. Dr. Toni Lewis said that it was time to stop being surprised at the craziness. She urged people to create street heat about health care to move legislators to action. From the ACAs beginnings, a significant number of people opposed it from the left. They favored Medicare-for-All or a single-payer system. Some people still cannot afford to access health care. As Florida has refused to expand Medicaid, a much larger number of potential Medicaid recipients lack any access. Some of those without access are LGBT. Some live with HIV. If some people still lack access to health care, they may also lack enthusiasm about protecting the ACA. The GOP may not be the only ones having trouble maintaining their coalition. People can contact Congressman Deutch at https://teddeutch.house.gov/forms/writeyourrep/. Follow Sean McShee on Twitter @SeanMcShee 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. Satellite Break-up ESA With more than 750 000 pieces of dangerous debris now orbiting Earth, the urgent need for coordinated international action to ensure the long-term sustainability of spaceflight is a major finding from Europes largest-ever conference on space debris. We require a coordinated global solution to what is, after all, a global problem that affects critical satellites delivering services to all of us, said Brigitte Zypries, German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, at a press briefing on the conferences closing day in Darmstadt, Germany. ESA Director General Jan Woerner appealed to space stakeholders to keep Earths orbital environment as clean as possible. Developing and implementing the ESA Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme as decided during ESAs last ministerial council in 2016 will be a key factor. In order to enable innovative services for citizens and future developments in space, we must cooperate now to guarantee economically vital spaceflight. We must sustain the dream of future exploration, he said. The call for international action came on the final day of the European Conference on Space Debris, a gathering of over 350 participants from science, academia, industry and space agencies worldwide held at ESAs mission control centre, where the ESA Space Debris Office and the SSA effort are based. Findings from the week-long meeting were presented to media in front of Minister Zypries, who is also the German national aerospace coordinator, and Director General Woerner by senior ESA managers and representatives from the national space agencies of Italy, France, Germany and the UK, as well as the Committee on Space Research and the International Academy of Astronautics. Addressing the space debris threat The latest results of debris research were featured, especially the safe disposal of retired satellites and rocket stages and the still uncertain challenges posed by satellite megaconstellations being considered by commercial operators. Only about 60% of the satellites that should be disposed of at the end of their missions under current guidelines are, in fact, properly managed, noted Holger Krag, head of ESAs debris office. Researchers also confirmed there is now a critical need to remove defunct satellites from orbit before they disintegrate and generate even more debris. This means urgently developing the means for actively removing debris, targeting about 10 large defunct satellites from orbit each year, beginning as soon as possible starting later will not be nearly as effective, said Dr Krag. Inconvenient truths Since 1957, more than 5250 launches have led to a population today of more than 23 000 tracked debris objects in orbit. Only about 1200 are working satellites the rest are debris and no longer serve any useful purpose. Many derelict craft have exploded or broken up, generating an estimated 750 000 pieces larger than 1 cm and a staggering 166 million larger than 1 mm. In orbit, these objects have tremendous relative velocities, faster than a bullet, and can damage or destroy functioning space infrastructure, like economically vital telecom, weather, navigation, broadcast and climate-monitoring satellites, said Dr Krag. Working for the future Launched in 2009, SSA is developing software, technologies and precursor systems to test a fully European surveillance network that will ensure independent data on space infrastructure. Additionally, the Agency is developing new technologies under the Clean Space initiative that promise a significant reduction in the creation of space pollution at all stages of space activities. Space debris threaten all working satellites, including Europes Sentinels and the Galileo navigation constellation, and any loss of space infrastructure would severely affect modern society, noted Dr Krag. The sustainable use of space has been persuasively shown to be at risk, and the status quo is obviously no longer acceptable. We must now start removing dead satellites. Findings ? 7th European Conference on Space Debris The essential component of totalitarian propaganda is artifice (het toepassen van kunstgrepen. svh) . The ruling elites, like celebritie... Vicious tornadic storms swept across Brazil and Paraguay killing 3 and making 150 families homeless on April 26, 2017. There is really something going out-of-control with Mother Nature. A powerful tornado hit the south of the district of Caazapa, Paraguay on April 26, 2017. The damaging twister destroyed more than 300 homes in the communities of Cerrito, Colonia Neufeld, Lima and Loma Hovy. According to first reports, the vicious tornadic storm made no fatalities, but only heavy material damages. In Colonia Neufeld, 80% of the houses were destroyed and the villagers were left out homeless. In Loma Hovy, 70% of the houses were wiped off. In Cerrito, even the police station was affected. The heay weather also triggered tree fall, landslides and other damages. Never Seen It is the first time that the district 743,25 km and 17,928 inhabitants suffers such a heavy attack of nature. Even older people cannot remember a tornado of this magnitude that destroyed everything in its path in less than ten minutes. On the same day, at least 19 cities have been partially damaged as a furious thunderstorm swept across the northern part of the state of in Santa Catarina in Brazil. Three brothers, aged 3, 10, 16, died electrocuted after a utility pole collapsed on the street in Itajai. Around 7:30 pm on Wednesday (26), more than 13,000 houses had lost power in the state, a good part of them in the region of Joinville. In Itajai, where the storm hit pretty strongly, 40 houses have beens destroyed (heavily damaged) scrambled by trees. Two real apocalyptical weather phenomena. Follow us: Facebook and Twitter Play at the new site will be free and first come, first served through the... Local educators participated in a districtwide walk in in Longview Wednesday morning to raise awareness about the ongoing struggle to fully fund education in Washington. According to a press release from the Longview Education Association, several walk-ins across the district featured a teacher who told a story about the successes and challenges they face. Washington State Sen. Dean Takko attended an event at Cascade Middle School and later visited Broadway Learning Center, the districts special education preschool. Longview Superintendent Dr. Dan Zorn was also attended the Cascade Middle School event. Students spoke about why they like being in school and teachers spoke about their hopes for their students. This gave our members the opportunity to call upon legislators to follow through on their court-ordered mandate to fund public education, LEA President Ray Clift said in a press release. We have so many wonderful things going on with students in our schools, but we also have wanted to raise awareness about challenges we face. This is part two in a series on the Monticello Hotels changes. Check Sundays Daily News for the conclusion. Life under the Phil Lovingfoss regime wasnt all that bad, Monticello Hotel employees and tenants say. Sure, there were stories of former owners alcohol abuse and the embarrassing Hotel Hell TV appearance. The historic buildings splendor had faded. The elevators often didnt work, and there were pest problems. The six-floor hotel ran with a staff of fewer than a dozen people. But while money was tight, friendships were tighter. Tenants paid relatively low rents under yearlong leases, some for apartments with a view of R.A. Long Park. Many had little intention of moving. But as new owners took over last fall, it didnt take long for the status quo to unravel. Employees and tenants speak of a haphazard management style. Rising rents and new month-to-month leases forced many tenants to move, and an unpredictable work environment led many employees to leave. We tried our hardest to get along with those people and do what they wanted, said Courtney Russell, a former front desk worker at the Monticello. They just came in and just caused chaos. Many of the problems stem from when managers Hollie Hillman and Breanna Alleman controlled operations in the months immediately after a group of investors bought the hotel. But the new general manager, Sharon Walker, says these concerns are solved, vacancies are filling up and reconstruction continues. Hours cut, shifts changed Once the new owners took control, the hotels eight or so employees were told they would have to reapply for their jobs and take drug tests. One employee didnt pass the drug test, but the others were rehired. Yet, within three weeks, many saw their hours cut dramatically, and several were shuffled to new positions. Later, another employee was fired. When Craig Dieffenbach (the project manager) came in ... he says, You dont have to worry about losing your job. Youre not going anywhere, I want to keep you. And I really liked him, I had no problems with him, recalled Tammy Miller of Longview, a former front desk employee who had worked there for five years. But after a few weeks, Miller was told her position would be eliminated and that she would work only one day a week as a graveyard shift housekeeper. I was blindsided. Its like, Seriously, what did I do? And they were like, No you didnt do anything wrong. Were just moving people around to what their strengths and weaknesses are, Miller said. Miller, who had never been a housekeeper, quit the next day. It didnt take long for other employees to follow. Russell said her hours on the front desk were cut from three days a week to two, then eventually just to one graveyard shift. Russell said she didnt get along well with Hillman either. They kept me at the front desk for a while, but the hours starting changing, the shifts started changing, the days started changing. It was kind of all over the place, Russell said. Front desk employees also now were supposed to do housekeeping too, even while wearing professional office attire. Without any housekeeping experience, Russell said it would take her 45 minutes to an hour to clean one room, and she was expected to do three to four rooms a day. Meanwhile, the front desk would be unattended and she had to try to answer calls with her cell phone, she said. Previously, the front desk workers managed new tenant leases, ensuring each new person had paid their deposit and first months rent before they received their keys. The new owners took away that responsibility, but at times Russell said she still was supposed to know who should get a key without any records to verify, causing confusion. Hollie had no idea how to run the hotel. Im sure that she was probably good at running her restaurants and weed shops (both in Longview) but theres a little difference, Russell said. After Hillman was kicked out of the operations, Breanna Alleman took charge in October. Alleman eventually shifted duties so that someone on front desk duty was no longer expected to clean at the same time, according to employees. But the graveyard shifts were impossible to maintain for Russell, who worked two other daytime jobs. She quit in October. Former security guard Ryan Harris said he quit at the end of February, after about two years at the hotel, because his hours also were slashed from full time to one day a week. Alleman said by email that all of Lovingfoss employees were still employed there by the time she stepped down from operations in December. But that doesnt square with what other employees and tenants said. Now, only one of Lovingfoss original employees still works at the hotel, according to several tenants and employees. It seemed like they were trying to push the old employees and bring employees that they already had or friends that they had at their other businesses, Russell said. Tenant turmoil With the steady exodus of employees came a tide of tenant turnover. Faced with rising rents and lease changes, several of the hotels roughly 30 tenants moved. Some got eviction notices, while others were ordered to switch apartments to make way for construction. Within a few weeks of taking over, the new owners tried to switch leases from one year to month-to-month, according to tenants and employees. According to tenants, the owners wanted more flexibility. Janyce Duvall, 74, said she never expected anything to go wrong when she signed a new month-to-month lease in early November. Within a few days, Alleman handed Duvall an eviction notice to leave by Nov. 30. A week later, Alleman returned and gave Duvall an extra week to move out, and Duvall left by Dec. 4. The landlords told Duvall they wanted to make her apartment into a hotel room. But after Duvall left, a new family was moved into the space, she said. Duvall said she always made sure to pay her rent on time and wasnt sure why they kicked her out. I didnt do anything wrong, she said. Alleman would not say why rents rose or why tenants were switched to month-to-month leases. We were operating closely with the other owners wishes; all decisions were discussed with all, prior to notifying tenants, Alleman said by email. It was around the time that Janyce (Duvall) was evicted that I was no longer interested in helping with operations. I didnt feel that the decisions being made were in line with my personal morals, Alleman wrote. She did not elaborate. Meanwhile, tenants contended with living in a construction zone. Water and power were temporarily turned off. The main elevator broke down. For two or three weeks, tenants had to rely on a manually operated 1920s-era elevator that they were not allowed to operate themselves; they had to call an employee to run it on their behalf. The new management also tried to force Duvalls granddaughter Ariel Peterson, 26, to move into another apartment, Peterson said. She refused, citing her yearlong lease and state tenancy law. Later, she lost her job and missed her February rent. The landlord filed an eviction action in court, and she agreed to pay and move out. My impression is that these are people who think theyre opening up a restaurant and they want to have a great successful business but theyre not really realizing that at this point in time, its a housing unit and people live there, said Peterson. Theyre not used to following landlord-tenant laws. They just kind of are doing what they can to build up their business and all of these people that live there are now are kind of like afterthoughts. New management, again Sharon Walker, the new general manager, said she couldnt speak about many former tenants experiences because much of that happened before she took over in January. She said rents have gone up to help pay for the cost of the remodel and add future amenities, such as including internet and cable within the rent. Were trying to provide something and make it great, Walker said. Walker said the new rent prices are based on market rates. At the Monticello, new leases for 885-square-foot apartments rent from $1,100 to $1,550, or $1.25 to $1.75 per square foot. Thats higher than many similarly-sized apartments rent for in Longview, which range from about $775 per month to about $1,200 per month, according to Zillow, a real estate website. Most of the hotels 40 rentable rooms are full, Walker said. Half of the 10 new luxury apartments on the third floor are already pre-leased, she said. Walker said between the remodel, employee and tenants, everything is starting to run like clockwork. Everyone does such a good job being a team, she added. A log truck rolled over and blocked traffic at the Oregon Way and Industrial Way intersection as noon approached Wednesday. The truck had come down off the Lewis and Clark Bridge and was making a right turn onto eastbound Industrial Way when it rolled over. Witnesses on the scene said that the truck stopped at the stop light before making a right turn at about 10 to 15 mph, said Longview police Sgt. Mike Hallowell. Witnesses said they watched as the trucks load shifted and the driver tried to compensate, to no avail. The truck then tipped and fell over, though the load did not unravel. The driver of the truck, Jeremy Naumann, had been removed from the scene by noon. He was taken to St. John Medical Center, where he was treated and released. Responding units were preparing to shut down both lanes eastbound on Industrial to prepare to clean up the accident around 12:30 p.m. Traffic was redirected down Baltimore Street. It caused a significant disruption with the amount of traffic we get over there, commercial and private vehicle traffic was significantly impacted, said Hallowell. There was a lot more fanfare because of the location. Longview police and fire, WSDOT and several Longview city departments assisted with redirecting traffic and clean up Wednesday afternoon. Roads were clear and traffic was flowing again shortly after 2 p.m. Editors note: Todays editorials originally appeared in The Seattle Times. Editorial content from other publications is provided to give readers a sampling of regional and national opinion and does not necessarily reflect positions endorsed by the Editorial Board of The Daily News. The script being played out in Olympia this month is as depressingly familiar as an action movie franchise with one sequel too many. The Legislature has closed a 105-day session with a whimper, failing again to deliver a budget on time. The failure is magnified by the stakes. This session was arguably the most important policy and budget discussion of our state history as lawmakers no longer had any excuses to reform the state education financing system. It has been the same script for the past three budget-writing sessions one overtime session after another. Now, if history is a guide, the Republican-led Senate and Democrat-led House will stare across the negotiating table until the eve of a government shutdown in June. Currently, theyre not even engaged in meaningful budget negotiations because Republicans wont come to the table until the Democrats vote on the new taxes that fund their budget. The public is tired of this. The Washington Supreme Court has held the state in contempt for an astonishing 21 months for failing to fully fund basic education in its McCleary case. The state needs leadership and courage at this historic moment. Negotiate now, and end the political charades. Each party bears blame in different ways. House Democrats, as usual, started budget negotiations with a smorgasbord of new taxes which appeal to their supporters. But they have not been willing to put their votes where their mouths are and approve the $3 billion in tax increases which underpin their two-year budget and McCleary-mandated education financing plan. Stunningly, they ignored the Supreme Courts primary demand ending the decades-long pattern of foisting state funding duties onto local school levies, which vary widely between wealthy and poor districts. Thats a failure of leadership. Democrats should vote on a realistic tax package. Republicans, on the other hand, tell their voters theyll live within the states means and hold the line on higher taxes. Yet the GOPs own flawed budget shows the need to raise taxes to fully fund education, because their no-new-taxes budget makes unjustified cuts to the human services safety net and early education. They need to get real about revenue. The GOP plan to resolve the McCleary case would dramatically raise property taxes on middle class homeowners in Puget Sound cities while giving rural districts not coincidentally represented by Republicans property tax cuts. It also requires the plan to be put to a public vote, delaying final resolution of the McCleary case. Thats cynical political strategy, not statesmanship. Gov. Jay Inslee should be a constructive moderator in this fray. But he risks being counterproductive by engaging in the partisan bomb-throwing endemic in Washington D.C. blaming Republicans. On Friday, the political theater became absurd as the GOP Senate worked to force a meaningless vote on the Democrats tax plan. It was a dud, although it threw fuel on the partisan fire. The parties are no closer to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, Washington badly needs help. More than a million school kids are waiting for the state to fully fund education. Students who were in kindergarten at the beginning of the McCleary case are now in 9th grade. On average, their absentee rates are among the highest in the nation, and their teachers face the potential of layoff notices in May because of the delayed state budget. Elsewhere, patient care at the states biggest psychiatric hospital has been so bad the hospital is at risk of federal defunding. Foster kids sleep in hotels instead of homes. The state has one of the highest property crime rates in the nation. Instead of addressing these glaring, embarrassing problems, lawmakers hold news conferences to point fingers. Weve seen this B-movie script before. End the theater. Compromise. Get to the negotiating table. Washingtons students are waiting. ACA has been good for Washington state The Affordable Care Act, in terms of access to health-care coverage, is clearly a success in Washington state. Enrollment data released last week shows a record number of people bought health insurance through Washingtons insurance marketplace, Washington Healthplanfinder, during the open enrollment period that ended Jan. 31. Washington has more than 38,000 new people buying insurance through the exchange this year and an additional 60,000 getting free insurance through Washington Apple Health. Under the Affordable Care Act, nearly 2 million people in Washington state and tens of millions more across the country have health insurance coverage. State officials estimate the number of uninsured people in Washington state, astoundingly, has dropped below 6 percent. Thats impressive, considering the estimated percentage of uninsured drivers in Washington state is about 16 percent, according to carinsurance.com. The ACA, also known as Obamacare, is not failing in Washington state. Not only do more Washingtonians have access to health insurance, new statistics show more young, healthy people have been signing up. More than a quarter of the people who are buying insurance through the Washington exchange this year are 34 or under. Having young people sharing the risk with older, sicker folks helps ensure the viability of the health insurance market going forward. Although consumers dont have a choice of insurance companies in some counties, when companies no longer have to fear that Congress or the president is going to kill the ACA more insurance companies may get into the marketplace. Now its up to Congress to stay out of the way of success and focus instead on making the Affordable Care Act better. More work should be done on making health insurance affordable, including more accountability for health-care costs. Incentives approved by Congress to keep insurance companies in the marketplace and potentially attract new ones should not be forsaken now. Congress could also make it easier for companies to sell insurance across state lines. But the main principles of the ACA should not be abandoned: more access to health insurance through some government subsidies and Medicaid; coverage for pre-existing conditions; coverage for all, including preventive care and family planning; and insurance through a parents policy until age 26. Congress tried and failed to replace the Affordable Care Act. Now those same lawmakers should be focused on making the law better, not destroying it. tech2 News Staff Google has launched a new update for its Trips app to add essential functionality, including the ability to manually add flight and hotel reservations in the app. The company has also added a feature where the app will automatically parse train and bus reservations from your Gmail inbox. The company launched the app back in September 2016 to help users plan their trips. The app has received minor updates since the initial launch, but this update marks an essential feature addition for users who may rely on both online as well as offline means of reservation. The new update will start rolling out in coming days to Android and iOS users worldwide. The app is being described as Travel Planner as it works like a travel guide and itinerary maker that will pull up all the information like flight itineraries, hotel reservations and so on from your Gmail. You just need to tell the app, where you have to go, download the guide for offline use and it will start planning. Google offers a variety of day plans including popular daily for the top 200 cities in the world. Google claims it has automatically assembled the most popular sights, attractions and even local gems into the full days tour, and all these are based on visits by other travellers. hidden Just imagine deploying latest techniques in image processing to know if a fruit is of good quality. A couple of Indian computer scientists have just done this by developing an automated defect detection technique for fruits. Shape, size, colour and texture are important grading parameters to find quality of a fruit. One of the major tasks in post-harvest processing of oranges is classification of fruits based on their external appearance and determination of skin defects. Manual quality check for grading of fruits is subjective, time-consuming and inefficient, particularly when dealing with large quantities of fruits. Researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Annamalai University in Chidambaram have developed a new technique based on image processing for automated quality check of fruits based on colour and texture features of fruits. They took a set of healthy oranges and another of oranges with skin defects and developed a database of images, with a series of attributes. They deployed an image processing tool known as grey level co-occurrence matrix to develop the new algorithm for fruit checking. We used image analysis techniques to classify orange fruits into two commercially grading stages, which successfully extract useful and meaningful features to uniquely represent external surface for classification purposes, researchers observed in their study, which appeared in scientific journal Current Science this week. They suggest that the technique could be useful for detection of skin damages on other fruits as well in future. R Thendran and A Suhasini are co-authors of the study. Orange is the third most important tropical fruit crop in India, after mango and banana. After harvest, fruits are shifted to packing plant for analysis of various quality parameters which determine price and destination. Orange grading is generally carried out based on external visible criteria such as size, shape, colour and texture of the fruits. Indian Science Wire hidden Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma said the internet should be a utility available to the whole world, putting his weight behind a UN call for e-commerce to boost developing economies and help fight poverty. Ma, who advises the United Nations trade and development agency UNCTAD on small business and young entrepreneurs, was the star attraction at a conference on e-commerce for development. "The internet should be treated as a utility and should be treated also as the infrastructure of global development," he said. "Everything will be online and everything online will have data. And data will be the energy for innovation." UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi said he and Ma would meet in Kigali in July with 10 African presidents and young entrepreneurs, aiming to persuade the politicians of their responsibility to help their young populations realise their potential. Ma said his first trip to Africa would focus on e-commerce payment to support inclusive and sustainable development, as well as education and environmental protection. Ma, a Chinese citizen, said he would bring a big group of Chinese business leaders looking for business opportunities and partnership in Africa. He said Alibaba Group Holding Ltd had created 33 million jobs in China because each small business online could create at least three jobs. He met US President-elect Donald Trump in January and said the firm would create a million US jobs. Earlier, a group of developing countries launched a roadmap for using e-commerce to drive growth, narrow the digital divide and help poorer countries develop. Argentina's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra said she hoped the World Trade Organization would agree a new e-commerce mandate at a meeting in Buenos Aires in December. Pakistan's Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said only half the world's population would be online by year end - 40% in the developing world and 15% in poorer countries. "The offline population in developing countries is mostly poor, female, elderly, less educated and in rural areas," he said. Issues such as data protection and taxation of crossbred online purchases must be worked out, he said, but e-commerce could be "a bulwark against the negative effects of globalisation". The developing world needed a voice, he said, comparing a small group of internet giants, such as Amazon, e-Bay and Alibaba, to the veto-wielding nations of the UN Security Council. Reuters hidden Top military officials from the United States and Europe called on Wednesday for better information-sharing to fight terrorism and regular coordinating meetings for justice officials. "Terrorism is a transregional problem and presents a clear and present danger to us all," U.S. General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. European Command, told reporters after the first gathering of European defense chiefs to focus specifically on countering violent extremism. He said it was imperative to improve the speed at which data was shared, and to address countries' concerns about revealing "sources and methods" to bolster the fight against Islamic State and other extremist groups. "We've made advances in this without a doubt, but it still remains one of the things that weve most got to work on," Scaparrotti said. The challenges were growing due to growing use of social media and encryption by Islamic State, he said. Failure to share information could keep authorities from connecting the dots and preventing violent attacks, he said, citing the Paris attack that killed a police officer last week. "No nation stands alone and no nation is immune to the threat of violence posed by terror," he said. Scaparrotti said European chiefs of defense, foreign ministers and defense ministers already met regularly to coordinate on counterterrorism, but similar meetings were needed for judicial officials too. Italy's defense chief, General Claudio Graziano, said Wednesday's talks allowed officials to share experiences and discuss ways to increase intelligence-sharing given the growing threats of failed states, illegal migration, poverty and violence. "I'm encouraged that we're going to carry on this effort," he said. "We have to recommend some possible options to our political leaders." The all-day meeting included senior military officers from 28 European nations, the United States, and officials from the European Union, the U.S. Defense Department and the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Scaparrotti underscored the need for NATO members to boost military spending to the agreed target of 2 percent of gross domestic product. Many NATO members still spend less. Scaparrotti said growing threats had changed the equation. "It's important because we are living in an environment that is changing dramatically," he said. "It will take resources, determination and resolve to see the end of terror in Europe." Reuters tech2 News Staff Cassini has successfully completed the first of its "Grand Finale" dives, between Saturn and its ring systems. No spacecraft has ever been to this region, so close to the gas giant before. Out of an abundance of caution, Nasa engineers used Cassini's dish shaped communication antenna as a shield during the first of these dives as it was unknown what kind of particles would be encountered in this region. The Nasa scientists expected only matter the size of smoke particles, but as the spacecraft was travelling at a speed of 124,000 kph, even small particles could have damaged the sensitive systems on board. As the communications antenna was used as a shield during the dive, Cassini lost the ability to maintain contact with Earth. At 12:31 PM IST, the Goldstone facility in California's Mojave desert established contact with the spacecraft and the data started flowing in. The images show features of the atmosphere on Saturn, from the closest distance so far. Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington said "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare." Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like. I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape." More images are expected from the dive as well as results of scientific studies of the observations made during the final Titan flyby. Cassini is a collaborative mission by Nasa, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, it arrived at Saturn after visiting Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter. The spacecraft made its final close flyby to a moon of Saturn, zipping around Titan with a slingshot maneuver that initiated the final set of orbits around Saturn. The next "Grand Finale" dive is scheduled for 2 May, and the spacecraft will crash into Saturn on 15 September to avoid contaminating the moons of Saturn, which may host life. hidden Hackers are demanding increasingly hefty ransoms to free computers paralyzed with viruses, as cyber criminals seek to maximize profits from large numbers of victims willing to pay up, according to cyber security firm Symantec Corp. The average demand embedded in such malicious software, which is known as ransomware, more than tripled last year to $1,077 from $294, and the pricing has continued to rise in 2017, according to Symantec. "The bad guys haven't found the top end of what people will pay," Symantec Director of Security Response Kevin Haley said in a telephone interview. Symantec said 69 percent of ransomware infections in 2016 hit consumer computers, with the remainder targeting businesses and other organizations. More than a third of consumer ransomware victims around the globe pay cyber criminals to regain access to their data, according to Symantec. In the United States, where such attacks are most prevalent, 64 percent pay. "If six out of ten people will pay your ransom when it's three hundred bucks, you're thinking 'What if I raise it to four hundred? What if I raise to five hundred?'" Haley said. The surge in cyber extortion has been fueled partly by the sale of ransomware kits, which sell for $10 to $1,800 on underground markets and make it easy for wannabe cyber crooks to get in the business, according to Symantec. One kit, known as Atom, lets users name their demand, which its creators collect from victims and pass on to attackers, minus a 20 percent commission. Ransomware attacks have increased sharply over the past year, with criminals targeting hospitals, police departments and other providers of critical services in the United States and Europe. In some cases, the attacks have interrupted critical public services. U.S. and European hospitals have been forced to divert patients to other facilities when ransomware paralyzed computer systems. Local police have been forced to manually dispatch calls, and San Francisco's public transit system was unable to collect fares for a weekend during the busy Christmas shopping season. Reuters hidden Anti-Kremlin protesters who run the regular risk of being detained by the police are being given a helping hand: A smart phone app that allows them to instantly inform others where and when they have been arrested. Russia faces a presidential election next year, which Vladimir Putin is expected to contest, and was last month shaken by large anti-government protests. More are planned. The result of a collaboration between a Russian firm, a human rights group and an opposition movement, the notification system, called Red Button, automatically transmits the location and emergency contact details of a detained protester. That, says its St Petersburg-based developer Alexander Litreev, should allow others to act quickly to help free them as it will include details of the police station where the individual is being held. "Using this information, human rights defenders can help this person in some way, like sending him a lawyer," Litreev told Reuters in an interview. "When I see that people are being detained and experiencing violence at the hands of the authorities, and people can't do anything about it, I think this must be fought against," he said. Litreev said he sympathized with the country's liberal opposition and sometimes attended protests himself. President Vladimir Putin remains by far the most popular politician in Russia, but opponents argue he keeps a check on dissent through control of the media, especially television, and limiting protest. In developing the app, he partnered with the Open Russia foundation, founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and OVD-Info, a human rights organization that monitors detentions. The app will also allow observers to track how protests unfold as it is linked to a special Twitter page that will generate maps and notifications. It is currently available for devices on iOS and Android and, according to Litreev, some 4,000 users have already downloaded the app, which is free. A version for Windows will launch in the summer. The alert system is due to go live on 29 April -- the day when Open Russia has called for nationwide demonstrations against the government. Another protest, organized by opposition politician Alexei Navalny, is scheduled for 12 June. Reuters tech2 News Staff We are still in the process of reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S8, and we are fans of the Infinity display that Samsung went with for its flagship smartphone this year. While our unit seems fine, early adopters who have received the first batch of smartphones are seeing red, literally. The displays on some units showcase a red-tint while others look normal or balanced. Samsung in a press conference said that the red-tint appears due to the nature of the display and there's little that can be done to control it. At the press conference, Samsung also highlighted the fact that it inspects every single Galaxy S8 unit and that it is pretty confident about the quality of its products. At the same conference, an official shed more light on the recent red tint issue with the displays saying, "Due to the nature of Super AMOLED displays, there can be natural differences in color. Users can optimize the color depending on their preferences." In a previous report, it was made clear that Samsung would roll out software updates for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ units. The software update would allow users to adjust the colour settings to their preferences. Samsung also said that if owners were not happy with the results, they could get their units replaced. (Also Read: Worried about breaking your Galaxy S8? Samsung says Dont drop it) Replacing a damaged Infinity display upon damage will be a pricey affair. Andorid.com.pl reported that a broken display will set owners back by a good 250 euros (roughly Rs 18,000). Featuring an all glass body means that owners will have to be careful as even the Gorilla Glass 5 laden back and front screen could easily shatter. Of course, you could just buy one of the many cases that Samsung launched along with the S8 this year. PTI Messaging app WhatsApp is working on solutions to enable businesses to use its platform to connect with consumers and India will play a "crucial role" for the product, a company official said today. Last year, the Facebook-owned company had said WhatsApp will test tools that allow users to communicate with businesses and organisations like banks and airlines through its platform. While WhatsApp does not intend to introduce any third- party ads, it is looking at ways to monetise the platform and working with businesses could be a step in that direction. WhatsApp remains free for consumers. "... we are definitely in building the product phase. So, what you will see over the year is different tests, both for small and large businesses, and figuring out what's a good experience for these businesses on WhatsApp," WhatsApp spokesperson Matt Steinfeld said. He further said: "India is going to play a crucial role in that." India is the biggest market for WhatsApp. Of its over one billion users, about 200 million are here. In India, it competes with the likes of Hike and SnapChat. Facebook, on its part, has a strong focus on bringing businesses to its platform as well. Over five million businesses globally actively advertise on Facebook. WhatsApp has been working on introducing features to enhance engagement on the platform. It had recently launched a story feature to allow users to express their thoughts using pictures and animations. WhatsApp is also attempting to foray into digital payment services, with India as a test bed. The company is looking to hire a digital transactions head for the country. In February, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton had met IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to discuss ways in which WhatsApp could contribute to India's vision for digital commerce. "We listen very carefully to feedback from people across India and how to better serve them. India is obviously our largest country and it's going to be one of the most important markets," Steinfeld pointed out. He added that the company is keen to understand how it can contribute more to the vision of Digital India. Following the government's move to recall old notes of Rs 500 and 1,000 in November last year, there has been a massive growth in digital transaction volumes in India, including credit and debit cards, mobile banking and m-wallets and UPI. Meningitis outbreak kills 813 in Nigeria Reuters, Abuja : A meningitis outbreak in Nigeria has killed 813 people so far this year, the country's health minister said, as Africa's most populous country and aid organisations attempt to tackle the surge in infections. The government on Wednesday approved a house-to-house search in northern Nigeria to identify those afflicted with meningitis for vaccination and treatment, Isaac Adewole told reporters after a cabinet meeting under vice president Yemi Osinbajo. The West African nation in April launched a mass vaccination campaign as part of its emergency response to the outbreak in its northwestern states, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said. The NCDC said the infection killed 33 people in 2016. More than 2,000 people died from an outbreak of the disease in Nigeria in 2009, with basic healthcare limited in rural parts of the country, where most people live on less than $2 a day, despite the country's huge oil resources. Meningitis is the inflammation of tissue surrounding the brain and spinal cord which can be caused by viral or bacterial infections. It spreads mainly through kisses, sneezes, coughs and in close living quarters. The NCDC is working with the World Health Organisation, the U.N's Children's Fund and Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, to try to control the outbreak. Russia may put troops in Belarus to challenge NATO: Estonia A Russian soldier fires a portable air defense rocket during the International military games \"Masters of Antiaircraft Battle\" outside the Russian southern town of Yeisk.AP Reuters, Valetta : Estonia's defense minister said on Thursday that Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to NATO. Russia and Belarus aim to hold joint war games in September that some North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013. Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other NATO governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the so-called Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna cited plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and gear there, possibly to set up a military outpost in its closest ally. "For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told Reuters in an interview in Malta. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analyzing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises," he said before a meeting of EU defense ministers. Russia's Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the subject. Moscow denies any plans to threaten NATO and says it is the U.S.-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. "We see what they are doing on the other side of the EU-NATO border. Troops may remain there after Zapad," Tsahkna said, saying that Tallinn had shared its concerns with Baltic and NATO allies. He put the number of potential troops in the thousands. Such a move could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia just as the U.S.-led NATO alliance stations multinational battalions in the Baltic region in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. The scale of this year's Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of NATO's most pressing concerns, as diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill. State University distributes laptops among students State Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Advocate Tarana Halim, MP distributes laptops among the students of State University of Bangladesh on Thursday. Campus Report : As a part of digitalization of country, State University of Bangladesh organized a "Laptop Distribution Ceremony" at the University campus at city's Satmasjid Road on Thursday. State Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Advocate Tarana Halim, MP was the chief guest on the occasion and distributed laptops among the students. This was an excellent opportunity for the students to receive laptops from the Minister. Besides, the students of the University were delighted to have the minister with them. The minister thanked the University authority for such an initiative. She encouraged the idea of the University and urged students to be attentive towards study in building the nation and technology friendly. She also instructed the students not to misuse the technology rather get involved to use the best part of technology in their academic and personal advancement. The University is technology friendly and conceived the motto of Digital Bangladesh of the Prime minister and accordingly decided to distribute laptops to its students. It is worth mentioning that the Digital Bangladesh implies the broad use of computers, and embodies the modern philosophy of effective and useful use of technology in terms of implementing the promises in education, health, job placement and poverty reduction. The motto underscored a changing attitude, positive thinking and innovative ideas for the success of "Digital Bangladesh". The motto further emphasizes on the four elements of "Digital Bangladesh Vision" which are human resource development, people involvement, civil services and use of information technology in business, education and economic development. Dr AM Shamim, President, Board of Trustees of the University, Major General (Retd) M Shahjahan Acting Vice Chancellor and AH Lutful Hassan, Registrar of the University spoke on the occasion. Two students of the University also expressed their feelings on behalf all students. The program was attended by the faculty and staff members, educationists, students and distinguished guest. Project Fair at ITHS The KG students of International Turkish Hope School demonstrating their plan at a Project Fair held at the school\'s Uttara campus in the capital on Wednesday. Campus Report : International Turkish Hope School (ITHS), Uttara Preschool Section arranged a Project Fair for KG students at the school premise on Wednesday. This event was organized by KG Section of ITHS where students were able to showcase their various and regular classroom activities by packaging those into projects. The fair presented projects on English and Bangla Language skills, Mathematical techniques, Scientific skills, Social skills, and Awareness on personal hygiene. The teachers were responsible for integrating young children into the world of learning by teaching them various methods which helped them to think differently and create new things. The fair was held on a regular school day at Uttara Preschool and Junior Section Auditorium from 10.00 am to 12:20 pm. The Fair started with projects with bright and vibrant colors, and then it displayed some mentally stimulating objects created by the students with the help of their teachers. The participating students wore colorful headband signifying the fair. A good number of visitors attended the Fair, which included parents, teachers and other students of ITHS, and this had encouraged the participating students and made the event a success. The excitement of the KG students at the Fair was worth noticing, and this represented their enthusiasm and interest in presenting and describing their creations/activities to others. They successfully elaborated their ideas to visiting crowd and responded to queries on their respective projects very well. Overall, the environment was very pleasant, illuminating and friendly for both participants and visitors. Govt takes steps to keep dollar price stable: Tofail Economic Reporter : Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed on Thursday said the government has taken steps to keep the value of US dollar stable against Taka so that the prices of imported commodities could not rise during Ramadan. "Ramadan is ahead . . . many essential commodities are being imported and if the value of dollar goes up the prices of such commodities will be increased," said Tofail Ahmed while talking to journalists after a meeting with Viet Nam Ambassador in the city Tran Van Khoa at his secretariat office. He hoped that the value of dollar will become normal soon. The commerce minister said the government has taken all measures to protect the right of consumers. "We've taken all measures so that none can create any unusual situation ahead of Ramadan," he added. The country has surplus stock of commodities such as chickpeas, pulses, sugar and oil at present, he said, adding that the commerce ministry has taken steps to supply essential commodities to market at fair price. "During Ramadan essential commodities will be sold through dealers across the country and there will be 'truck-sale' system in the cities like previous years," said the commerce minister. About his meeting with Viet Nam's ambassador, Tofail Ahmed said the meeting of joint economic commission of Bangladesh-Viet Nam will be held in Viet Nam this year and a delegation headed by the commerce minister will take part in it. Tofail said he urged the entrepreneurs of Viet Nam to invest in Bangladesh as the government is offering special incentives for foreign investors. Bangladesh has also huge skilled manpower, he added. Women empowerment touches ethnic communities in CHT 2400.003 BSS, Dhaka : The country's enduring soothing breeze of women empowerment also touches different ethnic groups in three hilly districts, called as Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The women belonging to different indigenous groups, once who were lagging behind of development, are now advancing themselves like almost the same pace with mainstream womenfolk of the country. It is amazing to see that student ratio at different schools and colleges in the CHT are in favour of girls. "The numbers of girls are higher than the boys at most of the educational institutes in CHT," said Women Affairs Officer of Khagrachhari district Madhabi Borua citing statistics. She said girls of ethnic groups are giving more importance in education than the boys and it is reflected into the overall women empowerment in different indigenous communities. Referring to various ongoing women development programmes taken by the present government, Madhabi said the government is giving technical training as well as providing microcredit to the women here to make them self- sufficient. "The initiatives are helping local women to a great extent in achieving a respectable position in the society," she said adding in just a few years back, women were at the backseat of development endeavor of ethnic groups. But the situation has been changed during the last couple of years. Currently, many indigenous women are entering into the mainstream workforce after completing their higher secondary education and many of them even with higher education from the country's reputed universities. "I would like to build up my career in this hilly district. I can enjoy all kinds of government facilities from this remote district," said Mili Tripura, a health educationist working in Modern Hospital in Khagrachhari district. Mili, who graduated from Jahangirnagar University said, "Presently I can buy quality products like dresses or crockery from online shopping. I don't need to go to Chittagong city for shopping. I just need money to buy quality stuffs and I am earning this from my job here." Happy Tripura, another lady from one of the ethnic groups who graduated from Dhaka University said, "There are not so much differences in lifestyle of educated women between plain land and hilly areas. Rather we are getting more facilities from our workplace here compare to the same as plain lands." Although education and other opportunities changes lifestyle of indigenous women, the women development has not been taken place at a same pace among all the ethnic communities in the CHT region. Khagrachari Nagar Social Welfare Officer Rokeya Begum said woman of the Chakma tribe are far advanced in regard of their empowerment compare to other ethnic groups. "As they (Chakma women) are more educated, they take more government facilities to uplift their living standard," she said. Vice Chairman of Khagrachhari Sadar Upazila Beauty Rani Tripira said "Previously women of ethnic groups didn't have the capability to take their own decisions. But currently, they are participating in different development programmes of the government. They are achieving self-sufficiency gradually." Previously, she said the indigenous girls made their traditional clothe "Tinom" for their own need but now they are producing "Tinom" as commercial basis with the help of some Non-Government Organisations(NGOs). "Upazila Parishad is also providing support to them. The tribal women are also getting different training from youth development department. These kinds of initiatives helped the ethnic women a lot to attain their financial empowerment," she added. Bandarban Thanchi Upazila women Vice Chairman Bokuli Marma said, "Earlier the indigenous women have no idea about women empowerment. Now they have learnt about their rights. They are going to job market with education. Upazila Parishad is providing them all necessary supports to this end." Bangladesh made huge progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to the UN evaluation report on MDG, published in November last year, Bangladesh made the highest progress in attaining MDG on women empowerment in South Asia. The government attaches special attention for ensuring development of ethnic women in its National Women Development Policy-2011. The policy gives guideline to take various initiatives so that the women of ethnic groups can improve their living standard without shackling their tradition and culture. Students leaving schools facing job-crisis globally Sophie Edwards : The world is experiencing a "learning crisis" with many poor and vulnerable children still being excluded from school, and many of those who do attend emerging with low literacy and numeracy levels that make it hard to find work, according to a forthcoming World Bank report. Global educators were given a sneak preview of the upcoming 2018 World Development Report during a session at the Civil Society Forum, a series of side events part of the World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C. The report, titled "Learning to Realize Education's Promise," will focus on education for the first time in the history of the institution's flagship study. Researchers working on the report said they chose to focus on education because the persistent shortcomings they identify are largely going unacknowledged by governments and the development sector. "We want to make it clear for the development community as a whole this problem of the hidden exclusion and education failing those who need the boost from education the most," Halsey Rogers, co-director of the forthcoming report, said. The WDR2018, which will be officially launched at the next set of World Bank meetings in October, will address what World Bank Senior Economist Shwetlena Sabarwal described as a "learning crisis" in low- and middle-income countries, where many students are leaving school with low literacy and numeracy levels and without the skills needed to get jobs, she said. These deficits are likely to be felt even more keenly as markets continue to globalize and advances in technology and automation transform the workforce, making it even harder for students to catch up, Sabarwal said. "What this means is that when students finish primary school, having spent 4 or 5 years at great personal and opportunity costs to attend school, they are leaving without literacy or numeracy skills. This is what we call the learning crisis," she said. For example, in Malawi and Zambia, more than 80 percent of students at the end of the second grade (aged 7) could not read a single word, while in India three-quarters of grade 3 (aged 8) students could not calculate a simple two-digit subtraction. Among older children across 10 Francophone African countries, studies reveal that nearly half of grade 6 students (aged 12) had only basic maths skills and 71 percent could only make basic inferences from reading, according to a concept note published in January. Sabarwal also referred to "persistent gaps" between levels of achievement between rich and poor students and also between genders, so much so that in some cases "schooling exacerbates social inequity," she said. Middle-income countries are also experiencing the learning crisis, Sabarwal said, with attainment levels failing to keep pace with more developed countries. In some instances the highest performing students in middle-income countries perform worse than the lowest performing students in high-income countries, she said. For example, this occurs in Algeria, the Dominican Republic, Republic of Kosovo, and Tunisia, according to the concept note. Talking about some of the causes of this learning crisis, Sabarwal referred to insufficiently prepared teachers and high absenteeism rates; education and training systems that are out of date and not linked to the needs of the economy; and funding that never reaches the classroom. The forthcoming report will argue for an increased emphasis on measuring learning and data, drawing on lessons from within and outside the school system to improve education outcomes, such as looking at health and nutrition of the child and addressing technical and political barriers. The report's recommendations draw on new thinking, such as advances in cognitive neuroscience, which better our understanding about how children learn; innovative approaches to teacher management; and recent evaluations about education interventions, Rogers said. The WDR2018 will emphasize the need for better information and metrics about education levels, saying that the learning crisis is currently not being acknowledged by many governments because of a lack of data - "very few countries have systematically measured learning before it's too late," Sabarwei said. "Counties need to start acting as if learning really matters to them - systematically measuring learning and skills, which will allow them to track progress and find gaps," she added. However, focusing on measurement and metrics can actually work against school children as standardized testing and a push for results leads to scripted approaches to teaching and an excessive emphasis on examinations, according to Linda Odour-Noah, research consultant at the East African Centre for Human Rights Education. Odour-Noah said she "did not see daylight" during her final years at school in Kenya due to the obsession with grades and performance. "Too much of an emphasis on results can lead to schools engaging in teacher-centric approaches and scripted approaches, which don't elevate needs for children," she said. She also criticized the WRD2018 outline for not focusing enough on financing for education, pointing to a "worrying trend of decreasing education budgets" in Kenya, which dropped from 22 percent to 16 percent over the past few years. "There is no chance we can assure accessible, quality education if we are not financing it sufficiently," she warned. Katie Malouf, policy advisor at Oxfam International, agreed that the report needs to focus more on financing. "There is a loud silence on the importance of financing for education and the relationship between financing and learning," she said, pointing to recent research from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment showing a "clear correlation between expenditure on education and learning outcomes increasing." (Sophie Edwards is a reporter for Devex based out of Washington D.C. and London where she covers global development news, careers and lifestyle issues). Barrister Mainul Hosein making a point on \'terrorism\' and \'quality of democracy\' at former British Prime Minister David Cameron\'s meeting with the members of the Civil Society at a city hotel on Thursday. Mridha, 2 other rly officials get 4yrs jail for graft UNB, Chittagong : A court here on Thursday sentenced three officials of Bangladesh Railway(Eastern Zone), including its former general manager Yusuf Ali Mridha, to four years imprisonment in two graft cases. The other convicts are ex-senior welfare officer Golam Kibria and former additional chief mechanical engineer Hafizur Rahman. The court also fined them Tk 10,000 each in each case, in default, they will have to suffer six months jail. Anti-Corruption Commission Assistant Director SM Rashidur Reza filed the two cases with Kotwali Police Station on September 10 and 13 in 2012 respectively for irregularities in the recruitment test of assistant chemists and fuel checkers for BR. After examining all the records and 18 witnesses, Mir Ruhul Amin, judge of divisional special judge court, handed down the verdict acquitting five other accused. On August 3 in 2016, a Dhaka court sentenced Yusuf Ali Mridha to five years' imprisonment in a case filed for accumulating wealth illegally and concealing the information. On April 9, 2012 , Border Guard Bangladesh detained former Railways, Minister Suranjit Sengupta's assistant personal secretary and Mridha along with Tk 70 lakh stashed in a car. Following the incident, Mridha was suspended. Hillary`s aides threatened me with tax audit: Joy bdnews24.com : Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has told 'The Daily Caller' that US State Department aides, under then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, threatened him with a tax audit if Bangladesh did not call off an investigation into Muhammad Yunus. "They threatened me with the possibility of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service," Joy told the pro-Republican Conservative news outlet. "I have been here legally for 17 years and never had a problem. But they said, 'well, you know, you might get audited.'" Between 2010 and 2012 US State Department officials had repeatedly tried to pressure his mother into dropping the investigation against the Grameen Bank, said Joy. Joy said he had previously had friends in the state department, Prime Minister's ICT Affairs Advisor Sajeeb Wazed Joy at a programme titled 'Call for National Unity on the Spirit of the Liberation War' at Hotel Sonargaon in Dhaka on Friday. Photo: asif mahmud ove "They would say over and over again, 'Yunus has powerful friends' and we all knew they were talking of Secretary Clinton. Everybody knew it was Mrs Clinton." Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has previously claimed Clinton and her department had exerted pressure on her son to stop the investigation. "Hillary Clinton phoned me and exerted the same pressure. Even the US State Department summoned my son Joy three times and told him that we would face trouble," Hasina told the 'Dhaka Tribune' in February. Former Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni had also claimed Yunus had influenced the World Bank decision to pull out of the Padma Bridge project over allegations of corruption. "Professor Yunus obviously tried to punish or tried to retaliate and punish the government of Bangladesh, especially [Prime Minister] Sheikh Hasina," she said. "He knew how important the Padma [bridge] was for our economy, for our people's government, and it would revive the whole of south of Bangladesh." Yunus is a close friend of the Clintons and a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. The Daily Caller contacted Grameen America and the Clinton Foundation for comment on the story, but has yet to receive a response. The article does not have a comment from the US State Department. Trader stabbed to death in Pabna UNB, Pabna : A trader was stabbed to death by miscreants at Shibrampur in the district town on Thursday. Mahmud Hasan, officer-in-charge of Pabna Sadar Police Station, said 4-5 miscreants swooped on Faruk Karim, 45, a trader of bakery items, near Muzahid Club School around 6:30 am and stabbed him indiscriminately, leaving him dead on the spot. On information, police recovered the body and sent it to Pabna General Hospital. The motive behind the murder could not yet be known. BD facing data gap in monitoring SDGs UNB, Dhaka : Bangladesh is facing a considerable data gap for monitoring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as data of two-thirds of the indicators are either partially available or not available at all, says a study report. The report, titled 'Data Gap Analysis for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Bangladesh Perspective, says the data of less than one-thirds of the indicators are readily available to evaluate the implementation of SDGs in Bangladesh. General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission prepared the report. The report along another two-'Banking Atlas' and 'Environment and Climate Change Policy Gap Analysis in Haor Areas'-was launched at a programme at NEC Conference Room in the city on Thursday. The GED and the Support to Sustainable and Inclusive Planning (SSIP) Project of UNDP Bangladesh jointly arranged the programme. Placing the findings of the Data Gap Analysis, GED Member Prof Shamsul Alam said out of total 230 indicators (Bangladesh did the analysis with 240 indicators as seven indicators repeated twice and two repeated thrice) to monitor the 169 targets under 17 global goals, data of only 70 indicators are readily available while data on 108 indicators are partially available and 63 indicators related data are not available at all. "With support from relevant government agencies and under overall leadership of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), we will soon chalk out a detailed plan to get the remaining data to monitor the SDGs progress in the country," he said. Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said there will be no data gap finally. "We've already asked all the data-producing agencies to provide or generate the data, and will soon get the remaining ones." He said Bangladesh will obviously achieve many of the SDGs well before the set deadline -- 2030. He, however, said Bangladesh is helpless to prevent the adverse impacts of climate change, though Bangladesh is not responsible for the curse. "The impacts of the climate change hinder normal activities of people and economic activities in the country's Haor and low-lying areas." The government will prepare a master plan for the development of haor areas, the minister said. Noted economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud said Haor regions are not poor in terms of having resources, but the areas need to be developed so that the common people can get benefits of haors. About data gap, he said the data collection drive is important as the drive creates awareness among people to reach the goals. The study report titled 'Banking Atlas' showed 'substantial improvement' in access to and use of formal banking services at upazila level in Bangladesh in between 2010 and 2015, sending a strong message of improvement in financial inclusion. The number of branches of the banks, accounts, amount of deposit and amount of credit has increased during the time (in between 2010 and 2015) connecting more rural poor to the formal financial network. The Workshop Outcome Document on 'Environment and Climate Change Policy Gap Analysis in Haor Areas' recommended better coordination among government agencies, engagement of private sector for development in haor areas, and efforts to be taken to preserve and conserve haor bio-diversity and ecosystems. The report also recommended leasing out water bodies to social organisation instead of individual by revising the water body regulations and rolling out new programmes to bring the diversification of agricultural products to improve lifestyle and livelihood of haor people. UNDP (Bangladesh) Country Director Sudipto Mukerjee, Director General of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Dr KAS Murshid and Director General of Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) Dr Toufic Ahmad Choudhuryalso spoke on the occasion. US vows sanctions, to activate Thaad system `within days` The US says it plans to activate a missile defence system in South Korea "within days" and tighten economic sanctions against North Korea. The announcements from the Trump administration come amid rising fears about the North's military advances. The Thaad system was originally not expected to be in use until late 2017. Many South Koreans oppose it, fearing they will become a target. North Korea has vowed to conduct more missile and nuclear tests. Speaking to members of the US Congress on Wednesday, Adm Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command, said Thaad would be "operational in the coming days to be able to better defend South Korea against the growing North Korea threat". He has said the system is designed to bring North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "to his senses, not to his knees". The arrival of the defence equipment at the Seongju site on Wednesday was met with protests by locals. It has also angered China, which fears the system's radar capabilities will affect its own military security, and that it changes the balance of power in the region. The Thaad deployment comes at a time of escalated fears of military action on the ever-tense Korean peninsula. After repeated missile tests by North Korea - including a failed ballistic missile test on 16 April - and threats of further nuclear tests, US Vice-President Mike Pence warned North Korea not to "test" President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, a US submarine - the USS Michigan - joined a group of warships in the Korean peninsula led by aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson. North Korea meanwhile threatened to sink the aircraft carrier and launch a "super-mighty pre-emptive strike" against what it called US aggression. After a special briefing for all 100 US senators, top US officials announced President Donald Trump's strategy on North Korea. "The president's approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners," said a joint statement issued by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. The US already has extensive sanctions in place on North Korea, including a blanket ban on trade and a blacklist of anyone dealing with North Korea. A White House official said an option under consideration was to put North Korea back on the state department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Under measures announced last year, North Korean government property in America remains frozen and US exports to, or investment in, North Korea are banned. Two accused put on remand Police rescued minor girl Sumaiya, daughter of one Jakir Hossain from Rahmatbagh of Dakkhin Dania in city\'s Kadamtali area 23 days after she was abducted from Kamrangirchar. Two arrested abductors including a woman being shown at the Media Centre on Thur Court Correspondent : The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Court of Dhaka on Thursday placed two persons- Sabina Akhtar Bristi and Siraj Mia alias Babul on a three-day remand each in the case filed in connection with the abduction of minor girl Sumaiya. Magistrate Pranab Kumar of the CMM Court passed the order after Kamrangirchar Police Station SI Rajibul Islam produced them in the court seeking 10 days' remand for interrogation. Five-year old Sumaiya was abducted from in front of her house at Borogram in Kamrangirchar on April 3. After Sumaiya's father lodged a General Diary (GD), a team of Kamrangirchar Poice Station rescued the child from a house at Rahmatganjbagh, Dakhin Dania under Kadamtali Police Station on Thursday. Re-construct dams in haors on time Staff Reporter : Economists on Thursday suggested the government to complete the construction works of the embankments in the haor on time to avert disaster. "If the embankments are constructed within the time frame, such disaster can be avoided," said Professor Hamidul Huq, teacher of Economics Department of United International University at a workshop on Thursday. He said that the engineers' should not be blamed for embankment breach. "The embankments, constructed there are not strong enough to take the load of heavy fall of unusual water," he said, adding the civil administration cannot avoid the responsibility. The workshop on Environmental and Climate Change Policy Gap Analysis in Haor Areas was organised at the NEC conference room. Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, Prof Dr Wahiduddin Mahmud and UNDP's Country Director Sudipto Mukherjee attended the workshop. AKS Murshid, Director General of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dr Tawfique Ahmed Chowdhury and Professor Hamidul Huq, teacher of Economics Department of United International University also spoke on the occasion. Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud said leasing system will have to be stopped at first to protect the haors from flood- waters, economists on Thursday said. "As the haors are leased out to businessmen, the common people are not allowed to catch fishes there. So the government must stop the leasing system to ensure common people's fishing opportunity," he said. He said as 40 per cent of the haor remains waterlogged during the dry season, the area becomes very congenial for fishing. "A comprehensive plan with involvement of all ministries concerned is needed for the development of the haor area," said noted economist. Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said embankment like Himalayas can't protect the haor region from the threats of flash flood due to climate change, "We will have to think how to manage the haor right now. A master plan with the help of the locally and internationally experienced people will be formulated to protect the haor area from floods and improve the standard of life," he said. He said climate change is mainly responsible for the recent flood in haor area. "Impacts of climate change are mainly responsible for snowfall in London in April and rains in some parts of India, Iran and other regions," he added. Four militants found dead Wife, daughter of one radical rescued from hideout Staff Reporter : Four suspected militants were killed in explosions during the 33-hour 'Operation Eagle Hunt' at the militant hideout in Shibnagar area of Chapainawabganj district on Thursday evening. The bodies of the militants will be recovered from the militant den today (Friday) morning and likely to be sent to Sadar Hospital morgue for autopsy. Intelligence sources said, the cop personnel rescued Sumaiya Begum, 35, wife of suspected militant Rafiqul Islam alias Abu who was killed in explosions, and his six-year old daughter Suraiya Islam alias Majida around 5:00pm and 5:23pm respectively. They were taken to the District Sadar Hospital by two separate ambulances under police custody. The members of law enforcing agencies led by of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) ended their 33-hour anti-militant operation around 6:00pm, M Khurshid Hossain, Deputy Inspector General (Rajshahi Range) of Police told reporters yesterday evening. Abu, his wife and two children were staying in the house free of cost since February. Two other people may have joined with them recently, the police official said. The SWAT launched the 'Operation Eagle Hunt' around 9:00am on Wednesday which was ended at 6:00pm on Thursday as the law enforcers found four bodies after entering the house in Shibanagar village of Mubarakpur Union in Shibganj upazila of the district, the DIG said. During the operation, a huge blast and sporadic gunshots were heard from about 500 yards away from the den and the sound of explosion did not come out since 4:30pm as soon as law enforcers brought out Sumaiya and her daughter in the afternoon, he said. "The four militants, including Abu, killed themselves with their explosives. All four are reportedly men. Abu's wife Sumaiya Hossain and their daughter is currently in police custody," the DIG claimed, adding the identity of three other militants could not be known immediately. We believe the four killed include mid-level leaders of "Neo JMB," a terrorist group police claim was responsible for last year's deadly Gulshan attack, the DIG said. The Crime Scene Unit and Bomb Disposal Unit of Police visited the den in the evening, he said. Proloy Kumar Joarder, Deputy Commissioner of CTTC, said that the militants threw grenades and shot at law enforcement officials whenever they attempted to approach the building. Police on Wednesday suspended the raid on the one-storey house due to darkness, the DC said. Heavy sounds of gunshots and explosions were heard near the house till the last evening but no law enforcers were hurt, he claimed. Law enforcers cordoned off a suspected militant hideout in Shibnagar village early Wednesday, said Chapainawabganj Superintendent of Police TA Mojahiudul Islam. "We will file different cases in this connection," he said. Assistant Superintendent (Gomostapur Circle) of Police Mainul Islam said that tipped off, police encircled the suspected militant hideout around 5:30am on Wednesday. Quoting locals, Habibur Rahman, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Shibganj Police Station, claimed Abu alongwith his family rented the house two and half months ago introducing him as a spice vendor. The owner of the house, Saidur Rahman, 75, rented it to one Abu free of cost, the police official said. I am `proud` of BD: Cameron bdnews24.com : Former British prime minister David Cameron has apologised for not being able to visit Bangladesh during his six-year tenure, but says he has many reasons to be "proud" of the country. He has said he made it a "priority" to visit Bangladesh when he is no longer prime minister. "I am delighted to be here. I am proud to be here for many reasons," he said, speaking before a select group of audience in Dhaka before leaving on Thursday, ending a less than 24-hour visit. "I am sorry I did not manage to visit Bangladesh as prime minister," he said at the beginning of the talk. In the end he once again "apologised" for that and said his successor Theresa May is also "as enthusiastic as I am" in the British-Bangladesh relations.Cameron, who resigned as prime minister last year after Brexit voting, met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, visited a garment factory inside Dhaka, where the British aid has a project, and also attended a closed-door roundtable of the International Growth Centre during his visit. The Growth Centre is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science and in partnership with the University of Oxford, it works to promote sustainable growth in developing countries, based on 'high quality' research. Cameron is the chair of a commission that was launched in March under this Growth Centre. The British Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry organised the event at a hotel where he spoke before the diverse group including Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed. He highly praised Bangladesh's development successes and rattled off a list of what made him proud about Bangladesh. "I am immensely proud of the contribution half a million British-Bangladeshis have made to our economy, society, music, and culture. They enrich Britain and make it a better and stronger country," he said. "British-Bangladeshis are participating in every aspect of our national life including political life." He said Bangladesh is also a "shining example" of how aid can be used for lifting poverty and ensuring better health and education for the people. "To those who say aid does not work I would say 'come to Bangladesh and see what this has done'," he said, giving examples of how British aid benefitted people. But he said the next stage of Bangladesh's development would involve massive investment in infrastructure, huge investment of energy as business continues to grow and also investments in skills and professional education. And for that, he said Britain would remain as a partner of Bangladesh as always even after the Brexit, as he sought to allay concerns about the uncertainty once the UK leaves the European Union. He said they would be working "even harder" with the friends like Bangladesh. He identified ensuring high quality democracy, fighting corruption and terrorism as three challenges the world is currently facing. Democracy, rule of law or access to justice are important: Cameron Staff Reporter : The former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, termed terrorism, lack of quality democracy and corruption as the three-key bars for the global development. David Cameron started with the challenges before the world leaders such as to ensure functional quality of democracy, access to justice and corruption-free administration. He was forthright in saying that terrorism is not clash of civilisations or clash of ideologies. It is cash of ideologies within Islam -- a religion of peace .The world leaders must fight terrorism together which is found everywhere. The visiting former British Premier said this as the Keynote Speaker in a discussion programme tilled 'Global Challenges in 2017' which was arranged by British - Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BBCCI) at Hotel Four Points in the city's Gulshan area on Thursday afternoon. Enam Ali, President of the BBCCI, gave the welcome speech and journalist Zillur Rahman conducted the function. "The development democracy must contain the freedom of expression, the rule of law and smooth voting," David Cameron opined adding Bangladeshis have been playing a vital role in the British politics and economy. Replying to a question of a senior lawyer and former Law Adviser to last caretaker government Barrister Mainul Hosein, the former British Premier discussed the issue of terrorism and its impact on working of democracy, rule of law or easy access to justice. He was clear that democracy was to be preserved to defeat terrorism. He added that fighting terrorism must not mean helping autocracy. Barrister Mainul specially pointed out that Bangladesh terrorism has no connection with international terrorism. Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed thanked David Cameron on behalf of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. In particular he expected trade between Bangladesh and U K to expand David Cameron came to Bangladesh in a short 'private visit' on Wednesday night and left Dhaka yesterday evening. CPD distinguished fellows Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya and Mustafizur Rahman, Maj Gen (retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim and BNP leader M. Hafizuddin Ahmed were present, among others and put questions on the effects of globalisation and exclusionism. BD-UK ties to remain unchanged after Brexit Former British Prime Minister David Cameron now on a visit to Bangladesh called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at Ganabhaban on Thursday. PID photo *Offers training to BD workers on managerial skill, design and entrepreneurship, * Ban on cargo plane from BD would be removed soon * Appreciates BD's success in socio-economic development Staff reporter Expressing firm optimism over bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Bangladesh, former British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday said there will be no change in the bilateral relations between the two countries following the Brexit. He said that bilateral relations between the two countries will continue to grow in the years to come. "There's a win-win situation in the relations between the two countries, and the ties will continue to grow," Cameron said when he met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in her official residence of Ganobhaban in the morning. A referendum was held in the UK on 23 June, 2016 to decide whether it would remain in the European Union or not. And those who were in favour of leaving the EU won by 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. However, after the meeting, PM's Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina put emphasis on resolving the issue of cargo plane embargo from Bangladesh and said a British company has been appointed to oversee security management of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka. In this connection, Cameron expressed the hope that the problem of cargo plane ban from Bangladesh would be resolved soon. While talking about the trade relations with Bangladesh, Cameron said British investors are coming to Bangladesh for making investment. The former British Prime Minister offered training to the Bangladeshi workers on managerial skill, design and entrepreneurship. He also mentioned of the big contributions of Bangladeshi diaspora to the UK's economy. The former British prime minister highly appreciated Bangladesh's success in socioeconomic development under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. "Bangladesh is nearing the status of a middle income country," he said. The prime minister said her party has been working for speedy economic development of the country and accordingly the government is implementing its policies. She also highlighted government's stunning success in agriculture, food security, women empowerment and digitisation. Sheikh Hasina said, the government is setting up 100 economic zones across the country for further industrialization and generating employment, and facilities like electricity and gas will be available in these zones. PM's International Affairs Advisor Dr Gowher Rizvi, Senior PMO Secretary Suraiya Begum and UK High Commissioner in Dhaka Alison Blake were present on the occasion. Ive been reporting on environment issues for almost 15 years, and during most of that time, it hasnt exactly been a breaking news beat. There are disasters like wildfires or the Gold King Mine spill. But for the most part, covering issues like drought, climate change and energy policy doesnt usually involve a race to deadline. It seems like thats been changing lately, however. Part of that change is due to the Trump administration. Even more aggressively than President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and advisor Karl Rove, the Trump administration has identified environmental regulations and scientific research as targets to weaken. With every appointment to the federal agencies and each announcement of a rule rollback, reporters around the nation are racing to understand what that might mean for the readers they serve. At the same time, so many issues across New Mexico demand attentionfrom the planned closures of coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners to the states nuclear waste issues. Writing this Monday afternoon wrap up for New Mexico Political Report readers helps me keep up on whats happening across the state and our region when it comes to water, public lands, wildfire, forests, nuclear waste, energy and lots of other issues. If you think so, too, please share it with some of your friends or family members, and consider signing up for NMPRs email list or liking them on Facebook. Climate caucus Chaired by Republican Sen. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology challenges reputable climate scientists, praises testimony from climate deniers and plans to review federal climate change programs to ensure theyre necessary. But, theres also a bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the US House of Representatives. Formed just over a year ago, the caucus is focused on finding economically viable solutions to the impacts of climate change. At the end of March, co-chairs Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, and Carlos Curbelo, a Republican, both of Florida, announced 10 new members. The caucus now has 34 members, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Members come from coastal states, including Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, Oregon and California that will be affected by sea level rises, but also from states like Nebraska, Colorado, Vermont, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Utah. So far, there are no New Mexico names on the list. ConocoPhillips selling San Juan stake Last week, oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips announced plans to sell off its stake in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and Colorado. According to FuelFix: The Houston oil explorer said its 1.3 million acres stretching from Colorado to New Mexico will fetch $2.7 billion in cash, as well as contingent payments of $7 million per month if natural gas prices stay above a certain level. These payments, which could last for six years after the beginning of 2018, are capped at $300 million. The story also noted that the move is expected to cut the companys exposure to natural gas, which has become less profitable in recent years. The deal, according to a statement from the companys CEO, would improve the companys balance sheet and return cash to shareholders. Water news The Detroit Free Press ran a story touching on the Southwests future water woes. Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and senior water scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory raised an idea Midwesterners likely hated during a recent lecture: Because of the Great Lakes abundance of potable, fresh water, you might imagine that theres a giant bulls-eye that can be seen from space thats sitting above the Great Lakesmeaning its a target area, in a sense, for the rest of the country, Famiglietti said. Because theres so much fresh water, you can imagine that 50 years from now there might actually be a pipeline that brings water from the Great Lakes to Phoenix. I think that thats part of our future. The global water crisis is far worse than most people imagine, Famiglietti said, adding that its almost an unsolvable problem. Here in the Middle Rio Grande, farmers should be happy about the winters solid snowpack. Julia Dendinger with El Defensor Chieftain reported that the irrigation season looks good for the valleys farmers: [MRGCD hydrologist David] Gensler said the snowpack in the Rio Chama basin was significantly higher than average this year, which should translate to more water in El Vado Lake to the north. Since that story was published, theres been more good news for New Mexicos farmers: The state has come out of Article 7 restrictions. That provision of the Rio Grande Compact prevents the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District from storing water in its upstream reservoirs if Elephant Butte is below a certain level. Last week, the Taos News reported on the state of the Cimarron River since a December crash when a fuel tanker dumped more than 1,000 gallons of gasoline into the river. According to the story, the New Mexico Environment Department has said the river is getting much closer to pre-spill conditions. Later this spring, local municipalities like the village of Cimarron, Springer and Raton will start drawing from the river again, once theyve received approval from the state. The spill affected local ranchers, and access to the river is still closed within the Cimarron Canyon State Park. EPA lowdown Last week, a conservative organization sued US Environmental Protection Agency officials who may have used a cell phone encryption app to thwart government oversight and transparency. Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. After Politico reported that some EPA officials were reportedly using the Signal app to contact reporters or environmental activists, Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking access to those messages. When the agency failed to respond, Judicial Watch filed the suit, which it says could expose how the anti-Trump deep state embedded in EPA is working to undermine the rule of law. Meanwhile, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has asked the agency for a 24/7 security detail. The former Oklahoma Attorney General, who had sued the agency he now heads, is the first to ask for that level of security. According to a draft EPA budget, which includes millions of dollars in cuts to the agencys core programs, an around-the-clock detail for Pruitt would require hiring 10 new security guards. In February, E&E News reported on why Pruitt, like US Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has requested additional security: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is getting security from the US Marshals Service, The Washington Post reported last week. The unusual security move came after protesters prevented DeVos from entering a Washington middle school. Myron Ebell, who was the head of Trumps EPA transition team, said boosting security for Pruitt is a wise move. I think its prudent given the continuing activities by the Left to foment hatred and the reported hostility within the agency from some unprofessional activists, Ebell said. Ebell was also the target of protests while leading the EPA transition team. Hundreds of students marched in November from Georgetown University to protest outside his office at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Post reported. And last on the EPA front for this week, the agency has just opened the public comment period for its rollback of environmental regulations. A summary of the agencys actions in April is included on the EPAs website, as well as information on how to submit your comments. Nonprofit news Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, sued the Trump administration over its proposed border wall and border security measures. The congressman and the nonprofit want the US Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection to prepare a supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement for the border program. After Trumps executive order announcing the creation of the border wall, Department of Homeland Security issued two requests for proposals, one for a solid concrete border wall prototype and another for other border wall prototype. According to the lawsuit, the impacts of Trumps border wall on wildlife merit more study. And its not just the wall: Plaintiffs say DHS failed to properly study how its buildup of infrastructure along the border since 2001including roads, radio towers, remote sensors and stadium lightinghas affected wildlife as well as parks, reserves, wetlands, and desert streams and rivers. A report prepared for the Environmental Defense Fund looks at the economics of methane-capture from the oil and gas industry. Analysts collected information from 60 companies that provide methane leak detection and repair services to see how robust the industry is and what its future growth might be. Although federal regulations to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells, processing plants and pipelines are currently under fire, five states including Wyoming, California and Colorado have relevant regulations. In those states, companies are experiencing 5 percent to 30 percent business growth. The industry is fairly new, and more than half the companies are small businesses. While Texas isnt one of the states with methane regulations, 23 of the 60 companies are headquartered there. Environment New Mexico Research and Policy Center also released a report last week that breaks down state-by-state and city-by-city data on air pollution. The report includes information about how many days out of the year seven New Mexico cities have elevated smog pollution. These include Albuquerque (113 days out of the year), Carlsbad-Artesia (94), Espanola (61), Farmington (101), Hobbs (68), Las Cruces (112) and Santa Fe (53). To read the entire report, visit environmentnewmexico. org. The Undead Archives I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world. The Blue Moon Saloon is partnering with the 31st Annual Festival International de Louisiane for the annual Rhythms & Roots LIVE MUSIC series on Wednesday, April 26. Doors open at 10 p.m. IND L!VE offers highlights of the many live music events taking place in and around Downtown Lafayette this Festival weekend. GERARD DELAFOSE & COREY LEDET Thursday, April 27 Feed & Seed Doors: 8 p.m. Admission: $10 Gerard Delafose and Corey Ledet perform at the Feed & Seed on the second night of Festival. Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. FESTIVAL KICKOFF WITH CC ADCOCK AND DOUBLEWIDE Thursday, April 27 The Wurst Biergarten Doors: 7 p.m. The Wurst is all about local musicians so come out and support them as they usher in an amazing Festival weekend. FIL: CHAS JUSTUS & THE JURY + BLAYZE N SADDLES CD RELEASE PARTY Thursday, April 27 Artmosphere Bistro Doors: 9 p.m. Festival International de Louisiane and Louisiana International Music Exchange after hours show at Artmosphere. JAMBOXX Thursday, April 27 The Grouse Room Doors: 9 p.m. Jamboxx performs at the Grouse Room on Thursday, April 27. Doors open at 9 p.m. RHYTHMS & ROOTS: RODDIE ROMERO & THE HUB CITY ALL STARS Thursday, April 27 Blue Moon Saloon Doors: 10 p.m. The Blue Moon Saloon is proud to partner with the 31st Annual Festival International de Louisiane, presented by LUS Fiber , for the annual Rhythms & Roots LIVE MUSIC series. FESTIVAL AFTER PARTY: WEST KING STREET BAND Thursday, April 27 The Greenroom Doors: 11 p.m. Admission: Free The Greenroom hosts its own, free Festival After Party with the West King Street Band on Festival Thursday. BACH LUNCH: SIRIUS PLAN Friday, April 28 Parc Sans Souci Doors: 11:15 a.m. Admission: Free Presented by the Lafayette Science Museum Foundation, Bach Lunch is a concert series on Fridays during the Spring and Fall seasons where participants enjoy lunch to the sounds of live music at Parc Sans Souci. LOUISIANA INTERNATIONAL MUSIC EXCHANGE (LIME) 2017 Friday, April 28 Warehouse 535 Doors: 1 - 4 p.m. Festival International's Louisiana International Music Exchange (LIME) celebrates 10 years of bringing South Louisiana music to the world. FESTIVAL AFTERPARTY WITH ROYAL TEETH AND BROTHER JAC Friday, April 28 The Wurst Biergarten Doors: 9 p.m. Admission: Free Join the Wurst Biergarten for night #3 of its Festival concert series with two of their favorite bands. Show up early to catch the Kabuki Dancers and friends next door in Parc Lafayette. FESTIVAL AFTERPARTY WITH THE SHAKE BACKS Friday, April 28 Warehouse 535 Doors: 9 p.m. Warehouse 535 is hosting a Festival After Party with local rock 'n' roll outfit The Shake Backs this Saturday. FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL AFTER HOURS: THE REVELERS Friday, April 28 Artmosphere Bistro Doors: 9 p.m. Festival International de Louisiane and Louisiana International Music Exchange after hours show at Artmosphere. SICKBAY PRESENTS FORMING THE VOID + SMITH + ROBOT + REI CLONE Friday, April 28 Poets Doors: 9 p.m. Admission: $7 Sickbay is proud to present an unofficial Festival International afterparty featuring Lafayette's FORMING THE VOID with SMITH+ROBOT (Austin) and REI CLONE (Denton), Friday, April 28th at Poets! 10pm! Only $7! Come bask in an unfiltered display of sound and fury and sheer heaviosity! SEAN ARDOIN & ZYDEKOOL Friday, April 28 Feed & Seed Doors: 10 p.m. Sean Ardoin & Zydekool perform at the Feed & Seed on the third night of Festival. LADIES NIGHT WITH DJ WILDCARD Friday, April 28 The Grouse Room Doors: 10 p.m. Ladies get in FREE and they get to dance the night away to DJ Wildcard mixes! So grab your best gal pals and kick off your weekend with The Grouse Room. RHYTHMS & ROOTS: LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS Friday, April 28 Blue Moon Saloon Doors: 10 p.m. The Blue Moon Saloon has partnered with the 31st Annual Festival International de Louisianefor the annual Rhythms & Roots LIVE MUSIC series featuring the Lost Bayou Ramblers. FESTIVAL AFTER PARTY: MICHAEL JUAN NUNEZ & THE AMERICAN ELECTRIC Friday, April 28 The Greenroom Doors: 11 p.m. Admission: Free The Greenroom is hosting a free Festival After Party with Michael Juan Nunez & The American Electric on Festival Friday. FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL WEEKEND AT SAINT STREET INN Saturday, April 29 - Sunday, April 30 Saint Street Inn Doors: 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Come and enjoy some of your favorite brunch fare with some great music during Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette. SICKBAY STAGE: SWAMP BREW + GOOLS + PAGODA MAMBO + KREWE DEL SOL Saturday, April 29 Rukus Boardsports Doors: 2 p.m. Sickbay & Rukus present SWAMP BREW, GOOLS (nola), PAGODA MAMBO, and KREWE DEL SOL (br) at the unofficial SICKBAY STAGE behind the shop, Saturday, April 29th from 2pm til 6pm during Festival International! FREE SHOW! ALL AGES! AN EXPLOSION OF WORDS AND SOUND Saturday, April 29 Cite des Arts & The Hive Doors: 2:30 p.m. Six French-speaking poets from Canada and Louisiana meet at this show to display their colors and culture. From different horizons, they will make you discover or rediscover their part of the country, their beauty, their uniqueness. BROTHER DEGE PLUS GRAND NATHANIEL AND THE GHOSTS WITH FRIENDS Saturday, April 29 The Wurst Biergarten Doors: 9 p.m. Join the Wurst Biergarten for night #4 of its Festival Concert Series featuring Brother Dege. FESTIVAL AFTER DARK WITH TANK AND THE BANGAS AND JESSE SLAYTER Saturday, April 29 Warehouse 535 Doors: 9 p.m. Come join Warehouse 535 for Festival After Dark, the only Festival Internacional After Party you need. There will be a LONDRI silent disco tent set up in the lawn, and Jesse Slayter on DJ before Tank and the Bangas take the stage. FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL AFTER HOURS: PINE LEAF BOYS & RAYO BROTHERS Saturday, April 29 Artmosphere Bistro Doors: 9 p.m. Festival International de Louisiane and Louisiana International Music Exchange after hours show at Artmosphere. Rayo Brothers opening the show, and Pine Leaf Boys taking it home! NITECAPS REUNION Saturday, April 29 Nightcaps Doors: 9 p.m. Both the Nitecaps and ShanaHans sides will be open with your favorite old school music to dance to. RHYTHMS & ROOTS: FEUFOLLET Saturday, April 29 Blue Moon Saloon Doors: 10 p.m. The Blue Moon Saloon is proud to partner with the 31st Annual Festival International de Louisiane, presented by LUS Fiber, for the annual Rhythms & Roots LIVE MUSIC series. THREE AM Saturday, April 29 The Grouse Room Doors: 10 p.m. Thee AM headlines the Grouse Room this Saturday. Doors open at 10 p.m. CEDRYL BALLOU & THE ZYDECO TRENDSETTERS Saturday, April 29 Feed & Seed Doors: 10 p.m. Hit Feed N Seed after you've filled up on Festival and keep the dancing moves going with Cedryl Ballou & The Zydeco Trendsetters. FESTIVAL AFTER PARTY: NEW NATIVE BRASS BAND Saturday, April 29 The Greenroom Doors: 11 p.m. Admission: Free The Greenroom is hosting a free Festival After Party with the New Natives Brass Band on Festival Saturday. REGGIE'S ISLAND JAM 2017 Sunday, April 30 Reggies Soulfood Doors: 10 a.m. Join Reggie's Soulfood on Sunday, April 30, at 10 a.m., for Reggie's Island Jam 2017. FESTIVAL AFTER HOURS BRUNCH: MICHAEL DOUCET & PSYCHO SWAMP + TMONDE & SABRA & THE GET RIGHTS Sunday, April 30 Artmosphere Bistro Doors: 11 a.m. & 8 p.m. Come out for the Festival International de Louisiane and Louisiana International Music Exchange after brunch show at Artmosphere. Then stick around for Artmospheres Festival Wrap Party with TMonde and Sabra & The Get Rights. LIL POOKIE & COREY LEDET Sunday, April 30 Feed & Seed Doors: 5 p.m. Sunday Funday at Feed N Seed with Lil Pookie & Corey Ledet. Don't miss the early fun. FESTIVAL WRAP PARTY WITH THE UNDERHILL FAMILY ORCHESTRA Sunday, April 30 The Wurst Biergarten Doors: 6 p.m. Join the Wurst Biergarten as they wrap up another amazing Festival weekend with their friends in The Underhill Family Orchestra. FESTIVAL AFTER PARTY: THE GOOD DUDES Sunday, April 30 The Greenroom Doors: 7 p.m. The Greenroom will host a free Festival Wrap Party with the Good Dudes closing out Festival Sunday. RHYTHMS & ROOTS: BLUE MOON ALL STARS Sunday, April 30 Blue Moon Saloon Doors: 10 p.m. The Blue Moon Saloon is proud to partner with the 31st Annual Festival International de Louisiane, presented by LUS Fiber for the annual Rhythms & Roots LIVE MUSIC series! A Louisiana state trooper has filed suit against Third Circuit Court of Appeal candidate Candyce Perret, claiming she defamed him in TV and radio spots that began airing in the past week. Photo by Robin May The ex-husband of a woman believed to have made claims against former Judge Susan Theall in television and radio ads paid for by the Candyce Perret Campaign filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife and Candyce Perret. Lafayette attorney Kirk Piccione filed the suit in the 15th JDC in Lafayette Wednesday on behalf of Nicholas J. Schittone, a Louisiana state trooper. The suit alleges that Brooke R. Stoma, his ex-wife, is the woman whose voice is heard in Perret campaign ads that have run for the past week on area television and radio stations. In the ads (view the TV spot here and listen to the radio spot here), the woman claims that Theall ignored complaints of child abuse she made against her then-husband in a 2013 divorce case over which Theall presided. A transcript of the radio version of the ad quotes the woman as saying that Theall "didn't even look at the evidence of abuse to my children. She didn't want to be bothered with pictures of their bruises or written reports from their doctor." The Independent reported on the questionable allegations in the ad Tuesday. On her campaign website, Theall calls the claims in the ad about how she handled the divorce "a complete fabrication." Although the woman is not identified in either the television or radio versions of the ad (the TV spot calls her "Sarah"), Schittone says in his suit that both he and his attorney in the divorce, Gay Babin, recognized the woman's voice as that of Stoma. In addition, Schittone says they recognized documents used in the ad as those that were used in the divorce proceedings. "Defendant Candyce Perret published these allegations with reckless disregard for the truth," the suit alleges. "A minimal investigation would have revealed that many of the allegations made by defendant Brooke R. Stoma in the commercial were patently untrue and that defendant Brooke R. Stoma actually petitioned for joint custody in her divorce proceeding, stating, "It is in the best interest of the minor children of the marriage that joint custody be awarded to petitioner, Brooke Rachal Schittone, and defendant, Nicholas John Schittone." The suit says the commercials are also misleading when they say that Theall ignored evidence of abuse of the couple's children. "In fact, a simple review of the court record would have revealed that the parties amicably discussed joint custody and visitation schedules in open court, with defendant Brooke R. Stoma stating under oath that she agreed with the stipulations discussed," according to the suit. "Judge Theall," the suit continues, "was not asked to review the evidence by defendant Brooke R. Stoma. The parties submitted a stipulated consent judgment, the Interim Order, wherein both sides agreed to joint custody." Schittone's suit points out that both parties were represented by attorneys throughout the divorce process. Contrary to the claims in the ads, the suit states, "A simple review of the court record would have revealed that Judge Theall ordered a psychological evaluation of the parties and the children. After that psychological evaluation, neither party requested that the court look at the doctor's options and reconsider the stipulated consent judgment of joint custody." Piccione says in a telephone interview that Nicholas Schittone felt compelled to sue because the allegations of abuse "are a nuclear bomb for his career" as a Louisiana state trooper. "The State Police take allegations of abuse extremely seriously," Piccione explains. "Mr. Schittone's boss became aware of the allegations in the ad and word that the woman in the ad was his ex-wife. Mr. Schittone feels he had to defend himself against this defamation and libel." Read the suit here. Continues Piccione, "Mr. Schittone filed suit to defend his name and save his career. He was clearly shaken by these attacks on him and his character." Attorney Kirk Piccione says Perret's claim that she reviewed the case file before airing the controversial ad is false. Piccione says Candyce Perret posted on her Facebook page that she had reviewed the divorce record. Piccione says he believes that statement is also false. "There is no record of Ms. Perret or anyone associated with her campaign having checked out the record of that case," Piccione says. The suit, which contains transcripts and other records from the divorce case, has been assigned to 15th JDC Judge Marilyn Castle. It seeks "reasonable" damages from Perret and Stoma for the impact on Nicholas Schittone's reputation "both professional and personal," for humiliation, for mental anguish, "and other losses to be fully described at trial." Perret could also face disciplinary sanctions from the Louisiana Supreme Court's Judicial Campaign Oversight Committee if the contents of the ads are shown to be false. If false, the ads could violate Canon 7(A)9, which states that "a candidate shall not make, or cause to be made, a false statement" about another candidate. The Judicial Oversight Campaign Committee will neither confirm nor deny that a complaint regarding the ads has been filed. The only way the general public would learn that a complaint had been filed would be for the committee to report a finding of a violation. Perret and Theall face each other in a runoff election on Saturday for the eight years remaining on the seat made vacant by the election of Judge Jimmy Genovese to the Louisiana Supreme Court last November. Rusty (left) and Troy Cloutier MidSouth Bank founder-President Rusty Cloutier and his son, Troy, who was promoted to CEO of the bank last November as part of a succession plan, have been fired in an abrupt move that has been the talk of the Lafayette banking community. MidSouth issued a press release mid-morning Thursday announcing the ousters: This decision by the Board of Directors is part of a transition plan already underway to improve the performance of the Company. Jim McLemore has been appointed President and CEO on an interim basis for both the holding company and bank. Mr. McLemore has over 30 years of banking industry experience, including 8 years with MidSouth as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Mr. McLemore will also retain his position as Chief Financial Officer during the interim period. These leadership changes are effective immediately. Jake Delhomme, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MidSouth Bancorp, Inc. stated, The Board of Directors is fully supportive of Mr. McLemore in his immediate endeavors as President and CEO. The release goes on to announce the recent hires of Erin DeWitt as chief risk officer, a position she held at Scottrade Financial Services, and Kade Peterson, a former executive at USAmeriBank, as chief information officer. Founded in 1985, MidSouth is headquartered in Lafayette and has assets of $1.9 billion as of March 31, 2017. The bank has 57 branches in Louisiana and Texas. More details of BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packhams attempts to disrupt wild bird hunters in Malta have emerged. Although Packham was recently cleared of assault allegations relating to his campaign to stop the annual slaughter of rare migratory birds on the Mediterranean island, one witness has claimed that the presenters actions were actually far more extreme. Im telling you, he was stark bollocking naked, British tourist Stan Krepps, who claims to have witnessed one of Packhams attempts to sabotage the Maltese bird hunters, told The Daily Excess. He was like a wild man, running screaming through the trees where theyd set up their nets, his todger swinging wildly as he puled the nets down! Krepps told the newspaper that he was surprised by the speed with which Packham had disrobed before launching his naked assault. If you ask me, hed done that sort of thing before he certainly seemed at ease with no strides on, claimed Krepps, who went on to describe how the naturist naturalist went on to confront a group of hunters. The poor bastards were clearly intimidated by him. I mean, who wouldnt feel intimidated to have some angry bloke with his tackle out standing in close proximity? Whilst the sixty eight year old Streatham pensioner confirmed that Packham hadnt physically assaulted anyone, he did note that, as the bird fancier turned around sharply, Packhams flailing member had narrowly missed hitting one of the police officers who had arrived on the scene. I mean, it could easily have knocked that copper clean off of his feet, said Krepps. Im sure that would have counted as assault but no contact was actually made. The copper was just startled by it. Daily Excess Rural Affairs Editor Giles Twick isnt surprised by Krepps account of Packhams nude antics. He got form for it, he asserts. Obviously, I have absolutely no proof to support this, but hes always given me the impression that hed like nothing better than to strip naked and commune with nature. Like I said, I have no proof of this, but he just seems the sort. You know what theyre like, these tree hugging, conservation green lot any excuse to get their kit off. Besides, the word naturalist is very close to naturist, isnt it? The newspapers TV critic, Peregrine Wogglethorpe is even more forthright on the subject of Packhams predilection for nudity. For Gods sake, I think that we all remember how he eagerly kicked his clothes off during that Spring Watch dogging special supposedly so as to blend in and not frighten off the outdoor sex enthusiasts they were surreptitiously filming, he snorts. Then there was that business of the annual Countryfile nude calender according to my sources, that sick bastard Packham volunteered to pose starkers for no less than five of the months! Although Packham has so far not responded to these allegations, the BBC has pointed out that there has never been a dogging special edition of Spring Watch and that the annual Countryfile calender most certainly does not involve nude photographs of the presenters. I know what I bloody saw or rather what other grossly offended viewers have told me that they saw, you know my religious beliefs prevent me from watching all that filth on TV, retorts Wogglethorpe, who claims that all his TV reviews are based upon information provided by viewers, rather than actually watching the programmes. The BBC might claim their Countryfile calender competition they run is for viewers to submit photographs for the calender, rather than for them to suggest possible poses and locations for the presenters, but I know better! It actually features the presenters nude in some agricultural or wildlife context, with viewers suggesting the scenarios via the annual competition! Not only is Wogglethorpe adamant as to the existence of the calender, but he believes that a sinister purpose lies behind it. Its clear to me that it is all part of an agenda on the part of those pinkoes at the BBC, in league with the bloody green brigade, to promote naturism, he says. Thats their ultimate aim, to get us all walking around in the buff, worshipping trees and turning vegan, all in the name of the bloody environment! His colleague Giles Twick sympathises with Wogglethorpes theory. I know theres nothing new in these nude calenders I remember when they were all the rage, with the likes of middle-aged Womens Institute members, Rugby clubs and vicars used to pose starkers for them, I say starkers, but you never actually saw anything it was all artfully posed with carefully placed objects to cover up the naughty bits but at least they used to have the excuse that they were for charity, he muses. But this alleged BBC naked presenter calender has no such excuse what else can it be for, other than to advance the agenda of naturism? Besides those old-style calenders featured people who simply wouldnt sexually arouse anyone seeing them near naked. This rumoured BBC calender is quite different: all those nature programme presenters it features are quite fit all that outdoor life stuff which means that any nude pictures of them will undoubtedly be pornographic in nature! Wogglethorpe claims to have had the phantom calendar described to him by a reader who has allegedly obtained a copy. It really is quite disgusting the picture for March, for instance, features a naked Packham, full frontal to the camera, holding an alarmed looking owl in front of his groin! he says. Surely that must constitute some kind of animal cruelty? He turns up again in October, this time sitting naked in front of a roaring fire in a country kitchen, legs crossed and caressing a ferret to cover up anything untoward! At least in September, which he also does, he doesnt use any animals to cover his modesty this time hes in an orchard with an apple press between his legs! Other Countryfile presenters supposedly posing in the raw for the calender include Matt Baker and Julia Bradbury. Matt Baker poses naked with a shepherds crook fo rApril, supervising the lambing, a strategically placed sheep dog covering his vitals, while, for August, Julia Bradbury is nude on a combine harvester, Wogglethorpe alleges. Oh, and lets not forget dear old John Craven. Naturally, they deploy him in January a reassuring older figure who wont startle anyone and will help ease people into the nude theme. Hes depicted driving a tractor naked, a three-quarters rear view, with him looking over his shoulder and just a peek of bum cleavage peeking up above the seat. Pure filth, I think youll agree. Again, the BBC have denied the existence of any such calendar, pointing out that Julia Bradbury hasnt presented Countryfile for some time. The Green Party, meanwhile, has claimed that the Daily Excess is clearly engaged in a campaign to try and discredit environmental issues, by linking them and some of their most visible proponents to pornography, using non-existent evidence. In 2009, at age 23, Drew Philp bought a house at auction in Detroit for $500. An idealistic white kid from working-class, rural Michigan, hed moved to the predominantly African-American city a year earlier with no friends, no money and no job. The Detroit he came to know was riddled with crime, poverty and blight. He received near-daily offers of drugs, and his neighborhood, the historic Poletown, resembled an urban prairie. Yet he had grand plans to rehab his dilapidated Queen Anne from the ground up and save a little piece of the declining Motor City in the process. It took Philp about a month to clear tons upon tons of garbage including, bizarrely, the better part of a sawed-up Dodge minivan from his house with a pitchfork and snow shovel. Throughout the grueling restoration process, he sought to make meaning and community from the ashes of a failed metropolis. Adapted from a 2014 Buzzfeed essay that captured the imagination of millions of readers, "A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City" was released by Scribner on April 11. Philp will give a reading at Scratch Brewing Company in Ava at 7 p.m. May 4. A condensed and edited transcription of Scene618's interview with Philp follows. Scene618: In the book, you write, Detroit was just America with the volume turned all the way up. Can you sum up what you mean by that? Drew Philp: Well, I think that both the problems and the wonderful things about the United States are present here to a greater degree than maybe anywhere else in the United States. For example, the Detroit metro area is the most racially segregated metro area in the United States. It also has this kind of wonderful spirit of hard work and discovery that is absolutely essential, and I think those things mirror the U.S. as a whole, and also are just so much louder here, because this is the kind of crucible of America, in some ways. 618: What do you think intrigues people about your story of rebuilding a home in a mostly deserted city thats full of blighted houses and wild animals? Do you think your readers find the concept romantic? Philp: I think there is a certain kind of realness to whats going on that some people might not have the opportunity to experience, if they work a very comfortable 9-to-5 and live in a very comfortable house and are curious kind of how the other half lives, maybe. So I think thats one part. But I also think Detroit is the kind of spiritual center of the U.S. and the Rust Belt in general, and I think people are very curious to see what actually happened. I think the old notions of what happened here arent sufficient, and arent quite true, and I think people understand that on some fundamental level, and there is a lot of unfinished business in Detroit, too. As I said, were the most segregated metro area in the United States. We also were one of the best places to live in the world just 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and the schools were perhaps the best in the United States and the world. We had the highest rate of homeownership in the nation. Really nice place to live, despite the problems. And to go from that to one of the worst places to live in the United States, in terms of these kind of classic metrics, is I think (something) that needs understanding. Because the thinking goes, if it can happen IN America, it can happen TO America as well. 618: I know you cleared a months worth of junk and garbage out of your house to make it livable. Was there anything you kept? Philp: I did keep little things. A lot of places like this have little treasures in them. There werent a whole lot in mine. But for example, this beam that I wrote about a little bit for the BuzzFeed story that features heavily in the book thats holding my entire house up was cut out of this wildly abandoned building just down the street. The building looked like it had been in the bombing of Dresden, and it was no longer a building, just a pile of rubble. There were huge beams that were once holding up the roof, so some of my friends and I took one of those beams and used it to hold up my house, frankly. It sticks out of the drywall in the ceiling and serves as a reminder, as we kind of clear the quote-unquote trash out, and the city changes, I think its important to be aware, still, of what we came from. Another example is my countertops. Theyre from the floors of an abandoned soda pop factory. My kitchen cabinets came from a high school that the city tore down, with all these cabinets in there that I was able to reuse. I do have quite a few mementos from around the neighborhood and the city, certainly. 618: How has the city of Detroit changed since you first moved there and bought your house? Philp: Its almost a different city than I moved into. Things are moving very, very rapidly right now. There is lots and lots of money pouring into the city. I think largely, America had forgotten about Detroit or didnt want to think about Detroit, rather, and there was this idea that Detroit is an apocalyptic hellhole. I dont think that was true, number one, but until very recently, thats been the only way people view Detroit they call it ruin porn. Right now, Detroits being kind of rebranded as the comeback city, and that involves lots and lots of money. And I think theres a tension between that money and kind of what was developed in Detroit when people werent looking, which I think was, frankly, a new way of treating other human beings and living in the United States that involved less economics and more community. So I think there is a kind of death match between this enormous amount of money coming to the city and these alternative values that people had begun to tangibly explore in Detroit. 618: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? What do you think communities across the country can learn from your story and from what Detroit experienced when it was down? Philp: I think that we had to reassess what our values were as Americans, because Detroit put the world on wheels, and then everybody drove away in the cars that we barely made anymore. So we had to take a really clear look at what we value in the United States, and I think those values have come up quite different than what they were originally, what we hoped them to be. For example, we talk about the United States as this land of opportunity and the best country in the world, but what does it say when we are shutting off water to a tenth of city, to one out of ten people in the city? What does it say when we are foreclosing on one in every four homes in Detroit? What does that say about us as a people, that we cant even house and provide the most basic services to our neighbors? At that level, when its a city the size of Buffalo, New York, that is losing their homes, what does that say about Christian values that we profess that we hold? We had to look at these things deeply, and I think in Detroit and places like it, people have had to evolve, and understand in a new way how to do things, but also in a very old way how to treat ones neighbor again in the biblical sense that doesnt just involve monetary profit. 618: What about your neighborhood, Poletown? How has it changed? Philp: My neighborhood is getting ready to change very rapidly. There are far, far fewer abandoned houses than when I moved in. When I moved on my block, including my own house, there were five abandoned houses now theres only one. Theyre really clearing up the neighborhood a handful of young white kids like me are moving in and fixing up houses in the same neighborhood, but the neighborhood is getting ready to transform in a big way. Were very close to downtown, were very close to Eastern Market, which is I believe the largest open-air market in the United States, and theyre not going to let it stay this way for long. However, there is a really strong community thats been here for generations, in some cases, that doesnt want to go and wants to be part of whatevers going to happen next, and the issue right now or the fight right now is making sure everybody who wants to stay and has stuck it out for the last number of decades is able to. The Democratic-controlled Illinois Senate has narrowly endorsed a plan requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns. Senators approved the proposal 32-19 on Thursday. It would mandate that presidential candidates release five years' worth of tax returns to appear on the general election ballot in Illinois. The plan is sponsored by Democratic senator and gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss of Evanston. Senate Republicans accused him of using the issue to play politics in the wake of President Donald Trump's election. Trump broke with longstanding tradition during the 2016 election by not releasing his tax returns. Biss says the measure would provide voters with information they need to evaluate candidates for the nation's highest office. Republicans say potentially disqualifying a candidate nominated by a national party could create practical or even constitutional problems. The bill is SB982. Associated Press Madigan noted after the meeting Thursday that there's a growing cry from school superintendents, human services providers and credit-rating houses to adopt a full year state budget. The state has been without a budget since June 2015 the longest of any state in at least 80 years. But he emphasized he and Rauner have agreed to short-term deals when focusing on the budget. James Bleyer of Marion said he has never thought of himself as a war hero and took advantage of the Veterans Honor Flight because he was eligible. Tuesday, he said he felt like a hero. The first flight provided by Veterans Honor Flight of Southern Illinois from Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois is in the books. Bryan Questelle, chairman of Veterans Honor Flight of Southern Illinois, welcomed the group to the airport. No one else will be first, Questelle told veterans and guardians. Honor Flight Network is a not-for-profit network of organizations created in 2005 to honor veterans for their sacrifices by taking them to see their war memorials. Veterans are flown to Washington D.C. at no charge. Veterans Honor Flight of Southern Illinois is a local group that is part of that network. Each veteran has a guardian, who could be a family member, friend or volunteer, to accompany the veteran during the trip. Guardians pay a portion of the cost of the trip. Although guardians are reminded continuously to stay with their veteran, most do not need the reminder. They take their roles seriously and work to make sure each veteran has a fulfilling experience. From the time they arrive at the airport to the time they return, everything is provided for the trip. In addition to their guardian, medical staff is available if a need arises. Several Honor Flight volunteers accompany the group to help out. For the veterans on the trip, the day is about so much more than seeing the monuments. It is also about remembering and honoring their service. It is so pleasant to be recognized. I was 17 when I went into the service and I will be 89 in a few months. Thats 72 years; thats a long time, Bleyer said. Archibald Mosley described his service saying he was a corporal serving in a Marine Corps amphibious unit, but his hat and his daughter, Elizabeth Lewin, said more. He wore a hat that said Montford Point Marine. Camp Montford Point was a segregated Marine camp adjacent to Camp Lejeune. In the 1940s, no African-American was an officer, Mosley said. Lewin was quick to talk about her fathers medals and badges, which includes a Congressional Gold Medal awarded in 2011. It opened doors and I raised four daughters, Mosley said. The group arrived at the Marion airport by 4:30 a.m. More than 50 veterans were on the trip, about half from World War II and half from the Korean War. Before departing the airport, many of the vets said the first thing they learned in the service was hurry up and wait. They joked at times that the trip was a lot like that. The group was met at Reagan National Airport by a crowd who cheered the veterans. Two U.S. Park Police cars escorted the buses through Washington D.C. the entire day. It is a service they provide for Honor Flight groups. The group visited the National World War II Memorial, where the buses were met by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro. Other stops included the Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Monument, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, U.S. Navy Memorial, Marine Corps Memorial, Air Force Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. At the U.S. Navy Memorial, the group was met by Rear Admiral Charles W. Rock, Commandant of Naval District Washington, and retired Rear Admiral Frank Thorp, IV, president and CEO of the U.S. Navy Memorial. Adm. Rock spent time visiting with the veterans. They saluted the buses off as they drove away, which touched many of the veterans. At the Women in Service for America Memorial, Josephine Jo Renshaw of Carbondale was honored for her service in the Army Nurse Corps from 1945 to 1947. Renshaw served in England and was flown to France to attend dances for the GIs who liberated Paris. Later she was sent to France. She earned the Army Good Conduct Medal, Womens Army Corps Service Medal and European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal. The final stop was at Arlington National Cemetery for changing of the guard where the group was met by 1st Lt. Justin Rojek of Du Quoin. He is a member of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, also known as the Old Guard, which serves at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Rojek answered questions and explained the ceremony. Then it was back to Reagan National Airport for dinner before boarding the plane for the return trip to Marion. Gottaswing, a swing dance group, entertained the group with dancing and 1940s music. Harold Magnuson, a Korean War veteran, said the Korean War Memorial was his favorite stop. I picked myself out of the guys (statues) in the field, Magnuson said. They looked so lifelike. Those faces. They are looking around, James Bleyer said. "You get to thinking about it and how those guys died, it gets to you," Don Cooper of Harrisburg said. P.J. Pershbacher of Johnston City had never been to Washington D.C. He would recommend the trip to any veteran. Bleyer said the support and appreciation expressed by those who showed up in Washington D.C. and Marion was remarkable. "Those little kids in Reagan National Airport ... they weren't over six years old. That was spine-chilling," Bleyer said. "Then coming home to Marion and seeing that crowd of people. It was pretty impressive." As Donald Trump approaches the 100-day marker of his first year in office, he has defined himself not as the Dealmaker in Chief but as The Backdown President. What a deliciously strange irony that until Monday night he set the stage for a government shutdown over, of all things, his campaign centerpiece The Wall. Strange because Trump, who now calls the faux deadline "ridiculous," promised so much by his 100th day. Delicious because everything Trump does is scrumptious, especially eating chocolate cake while launching real missiles. And it was always clear to perennial observers of Washington's sausage factory that the new president's ambitions exceeded the pace and will of the nation's political class. Today's Republican Party may control the executive and legislative branches, but its members are hardly trilling in harmony, thanks to the too-rare interference of mental clarity. The wall may have bestirred the passions of Trump's base recently represented at the White House by that classy trio, Sarah Palin, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, who managed a convincing imitation of cowpokes at the Ritz by mugging beneath a portrait of former first lady Hillary Clinton but its construction wasn't exactly a national mandate. The only person to place this fantasy in proper perspective was former Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose succinctness was an elixir for the babble-weary. Clenching his teeth, he said, "We're not going to pay for that [expletive] wall." Next thing you know, Trump was asking Congress to include billions of dollars for the wall in an omnibus bill, which must be passed by Friday to keep the government running. He wanted $1.5 billion for this fiscal year, which runs until September, and another $2.6 billion in 2018. Democrats said no way, and some Republicans also balked. After all, the whole premise of the "big, beautiful wall," later amended to, perhaps, fencing in "certain areas," was that Mexico would pay for it. So familiar was Trump's wall trope that during rallies, he'd bait crowds with Who's going to pay for it? Mexico! This was fun for the crowds, but also rather absurd, some of us noted, repeatedly. The disconnect between the witty and the witless was that Trump fans took him seriously, not literally, while the media silly gooses took him literally but not seriously as many have mentioned. This is a clever observation, but it's ludicrous to suggest that reporters shouldn't take literally a president's or candidate's words. Certainly other nations and leaders do. Trump himself, however, seems to take his own words neither literally or seriously, as his backtrack record suggests. On Monday, he walked back his demand that wall funding be included in the bill, saying that he was open to delaying funding until September. No doubt, his White House aides reminded the president that un-funding the government doesn't usually work out well for the majority party. During Jimmy Carter's presidency, the government was shut down five times for brief periods, mostly over abortion-related issues. Ronald Reagan, who sauntered in and enjoyed credit for the release of the Iran hostages, was the right cowboy at the right time. In more recent memory, the 2013 shutdown, orchestrated by tea party Republicans and instigated by Sen. Ted Cruz, resulted in at least some midterm losses for the party. Notably, Republicans lost the governor's seat in Virginia, where a sizable number of federal employees live. Two years later, with a promise to drain the swamp and build a wall between the U.S. and its southern neighbor, Trump oozed down his escalator to capture the imaginations of both the unemployed and the corporate expats who failed them. Endowed with the panache of Howard Stern and the moral vigor of a man who boasts about grabbing women by their nethers, he convinced fewer people than voted for his opponent that he was the right clown for the right rodeo. To each his own, I suppose. As for the wall, Trump's campaign trope was repackaged awkwardly in a Sunday tweet as "Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form." Hardly a rallying cry, but at least we're spared another partisan war for now. Americans, meanwhile, have learned three lessons: The best things happen when The Backdown President retreats; we, and not Mexico, will be the ones footing the bill for the wall, if ever it is built; and Trump, in just under 100 days, managed to bring the government close to crisis on a promise that was always a con. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has been caught in controversy from the moment he and his Turnaround Agenda stepped into office. Hes at the center of the states budget impasse, which has left Illinois without a budget for 666 days. A March Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll found that about six in 10 Illinois voters disapproved of the job Rauner is doing in the midst of the states unprecedented fiscal crisis. As if that werent enough, Rauner a Republican governor in a pretty liberal state has angered some within his own party with his laissez-faire stance on birth control and abortion. Now, hes angering pro-choice advocates in the state with a seeming flip-flop on abortion coverage. When Rauner ran for governor, his campaign was decisively without an agenda on social issues. During a debate ahead of the 2014 primary, Rauner said he thought abortion was a tragedy, but said its a decision that should be made among a woman, her family and her doctor. In a 2014 Associated Press questionnaire during the campaign for governor, Rauner said he agreed with restrictions to late-term abortion, but said, again, that abortion is best decided by a woman and her doctor, according to an October 2014 AP story. Last year, Rauner angered Republicans when he signed two bills: One expanded insurance coverage for birth control, and the other prevented anti-abortion medical providers from withholding from women who seek an abortion information about providers who would perform the procedure. The head of the Illinois Family Institute called Rauner a traitor in response. Months later, it appears Rauner has changed his tune on abortion. According to an AP story earlier this month, Rauner said in the 2014 campaign questionnaire: "I dislike the Illinois law that restricts abortion coverage under the state Medicaid plan and state employees' health insurance because I believe it unfairly restricts access based on income. I would support a legislative effort to reverse that law." But now that legislation that would do just that and that supporters say would strike language in existing Illinois law that would make abortion illegal in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn its decision on Roe v. Wade, commonly called trigger language is making its way through the General Assembly, Rauner has said he wont sign the legislation. Despite that, House Bill 40 passed the Illinois House on Tuesday night along party lines. A Rauner spokeswoman told the AP, recognizing the sharp divisions of opinion of taxpayer funding of abortion, he does not support HB40." Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported that Rauners office told Sen. Sara Feigenholz, who is sponsoring the legislation, that the governor would support the bill if the portion to allow taxpayer money to be spent on abortion were removed; Feigenholz refused. Theres no denying taxpayer funding for abortions is extremely controversial, as Rauner said last week. But it seems suspect that Rauner, who has perpetuated the budget crisis by clinging to his Turnaround Agenda, would double back on a campaign pledge. Taxpayer funding for abortion didnt suddenly become controversial it certainly was so in 2014 when Rauner first said he would support abortion coverage for Medicaid recipients and state employees. Abortion is a convenient casualty in a country that is increasingly divided over the issue as the 2018 governor's race looms. While Rauners expressed support for removing trigger language from state law is comforting to Illinoisans (like me) who are afraid access to abortion will vanish here as a result of possible changes at the federal level, its not all that comforting now. For a governor whos directly contradicted his own campaign pledge on abortion, anything is possible. Legislators who are serious about removing the trigger language from state law should stop wasting time and act now to protect at the very least our legal access to abortion in the state. HB 40 is going nowhere in its current form and serves only to deepen party divisions but a bill to at least keep abortion legal if Roe v. Wade is overturned should be a high priority, and one that the governor says he is behind (at least, for now). The recent exhibition of an Orangeburg-based artist and producer showcases her lifelong interest in social justice. Ellen Zisholtzs Art with a Conscience is on display at the Cochran Gallery in LaGrange, Georgia, through May 30. Zisholtz is co-president of the Center for Creative Partnerships, an educational group based in Orangeburg and New York that seeks to advance issues of social justice through the arts. I really believe that the artist should be the conscience of society. And, that artists ought to tell people what theyre thinking and bring out different emotions in people with their artwork," Zisholtz said. She said she has 21 paintings in the show. (Gallery owners) Wes and Missy Cochran have one of the largest collections of art ... in this country, she said. Zisholtz met them during her time as director of South Carolina State Universitys I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium and became friends with the couple. One of her paintings in the show, Dantes Liberty, shows the Statue of Liberty facing the harbor and includes the text, Liberty Stands In NY Harbor Welcoming Those Our Laws Exclude. And thats very relevant today. I did this a couple of years ago, she said. But its even more relevant today with all the really terrible rounding up of people. Nevermore pictures a crow, representing Jim Crow laws, perched in front of a swastika. In the Name of... shows a bloody cross superimposed on a Confederate flag. People who are projecting racism and hatred often hide behind Christianity and often say they are doing it in the name of, Zisholtz said. New American Gothic was inspired by a scene she saw in Columbia. I saw this couple ... and I didnt believe that I saw a woman in a burka walking there, she said. This man was pushing a baby carriage and walking behind him was a woman in a burka, in the summer when she must have been stifling. And it really upset me because thats such a terrible way to treat women." 16th Street is titled after 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four girls were killed in a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. The painting is a triptych that depicts a stained-glass window from the church, with robed Klansmen shown in the left third of the window. I do have a commitment to social justice. Its really been lifelong, Zisholtz said. It came to a head when I was in college and had the opportunity to study with Kenneth Clark. Clark was a psychologist and educator who testified in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that toppled the separate but equal doctrine of racial segregation. He was really inspiring, Zisholtz said. Im from New York City, but I came to the South hoping that I could make a difference here. And Ive met a lot of civil rights heroes here that Ive worked with. In 2015, she was awarded the Civil Rights and Social Justice Medal, presented by the mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, during the commemoration for slain civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer. In her role with the Center for Creative Partnerships, she served as the producer of a recent production of Letters Home, a play based on a book that poet Sylvia Plaths mother, Aurelia, published of her daughters letters home with commentary. Written by playwright Rose Leiman Goldemberg, the production celebrated the acquisition of the Goldemberg Archive by the New York Public Librarys Billy Rose Theatre Division. In the coming weeks, Zisholtz will serve as a panelist at a civil rights event at New York University. Zisholtz served as director/curator of the I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium for 10 years. At S.C. State, she was also an assistant professor in visual and performing arts. She was a co-founder of the professional theater at Rutgers University and taught at both Rutgers and New York University. Zisholtz earned a bachelor of arts degree in history at City University of New York, a masters degree in arts management at New York University, and studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. Louis McDonald doesn't know why God has allowed him to live a century, but he is thankful for the loving friends and family who have made his life's journey worthwhile. He said God knows how appreciative he is to have been blessed to live 100 years, with most of his time spent in a community he has grown to love and respect. "He ought to know. I thank him every day," he said. McDonald celebrated his milestone birthday on March 26 and had two celebrations in recognition of it. The first was held on March 25 at Morningside Assisted Living Center in Orangeburg, where his tidy room is filled with pictures of his beloved late wife, Martha, and other family members. McDonald is the father of two sons, Mike and Louis Jr., and the grandfather of five. Some of his family members and friends gathered at the center to deliver birthday greetings on his special day. A second celebration was held March 26 at St. Andrews United Methodist Church in Orangeburg, where McDonald served on the missions committee and took part in its community outreach. "We had four different dinners after church during the year for four different charities here," he said, including CCMO, Meals on Wheels and Edisto Habitat for Humanity. McDonald loves people and giving back to his community. Not only has he been faithful to his church, which is where wanted to go for his birthday, but he also worked for Belk for 49 years. "I was manager of a store in Georgia for 21 years, and then I came to Orangeburg as a division manager and was in charge of approximately half of the old (Orangeburg) Mall store," McDonald said. He was also a longtime volunteer at the Cooperative Church Ministries of Orangeburg, where he interviewed people to determine their needs. "I would mostly interview people. I was chairman of the board twice. I enjoyed interviewing people and trying to help them solve their problems, and in most cases we were able to," said McDonald, who served four and a half years in the U.S. Army Infantry Division. He said his first plane ride was among his most memorable life experiences. "It's just amazing what I've seen in my life. It amazes me to see these little kids running around with telephones in their hands. The first time I used a phone was when I was 8 or 9 years old, and my hands couldn't reach it because it was up on a wall," McDonald said. How does it feel to be 100? "Just like it feels being 90," McDonald said, noting that while his arthritis has sidelined many of his activities, he still enjoys life. He has friends who visit and do things for him, including take him to the doctor and go out to eat with him, he said. With his neatly cut white hair and cleanly shaven skin, McDonald says he tries to keep himself up as best he can. But, he said he's not sure what it means when people tell him that he doesn't look his age. "People ask me, 'You don't look like you're 100 years old.' I say, 'What are you supposed to look like?' Nobody knows," he said. McDonald said he used to fish, an activity he still enjoyed at age 95. While his mobility is limited, he said he is thankful to still be in his right mind. He does crossword puzzles to keep his mental faculties sharp, he said. A Montgomery, Alabama native, McDonald moved to Knoxville, Tennessee as an infant. He has lived in Orangeburg since 1975. McDonald said he has enjoyed the community of Orangeburg, where he has made wonderful friends. Having outlived his two siblings, the centenarian acknowledged that he is thankful to God for life and being able to see another day. "It's the Lord doing it. I had nothing to do with it because the Lord did it. I've enjoyed my life. I've never had a lot of money, but money ain't much. It's just something there for us to get by," McDonald said. He cherishes his friendships, which are much more valuable, he said. "I've had so many wonderful friends. The best friends I've ever had are right here in Orangeburg. They've been mightly good to me." DENMARK The campus of Denmark Technical College was filled with hundreds of happy, squealing children attending the annual DTC Youth Fun Day. The event was part of the Week of the Young Child, an annual celebration of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the accrediting agency for the DTC Early Care and Education Associate Degree Program. The event, sponsored by the Early Care and Education division at Denmark Tech, is an opportunity for child care workers, families and students to be recognized for all their hard work. DTC Interim President Dr. Christopher Hall said he was impressed with the range of activities and the enthusiasm of the student workers. From the children attending this event to the students enrolled in our college, DTC is an important community resource," Hall said. "We are entrusted with the care of their children, and it is a role we take very seriously. Public Service Interim Dean Rosaland Kenner and the ECE/ECD students spent many long hours preparing for the event, and it was obvious by the appreciative looks on the childrens faces that they enjoyed every minute. Pictures of Sesame Street characters adorned the walls, and Elmo and the Easter Bunny gave out candy and posed for pictures. Activities ranged from active to sedate as children chose between many activities such as a bouncy house, story time, making goo worms, face painting, sack races, hula hoops, magic sand and cotton candy. Students and employees patiently worked with the children. Kenner was pleased with the outcome, noting, This event gives our students real-world experience and lets the public enjoy their hometown college. Denmark Technical College staff thanked everyone for their participation and support in the event, with special thanks given to the Bamberg County Sheriff's Office, the Early Childhood Development/Early Childhood Education students and participating faculty members for their hard work and sacrifice that helped make Youth Fun Day a success. The Early Care and Education Associate Degree Program is fully accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. For more information, call 803-793-5176 or go to www.denmarktech.edu. Orangeburg County officials paid a visit to China as part of an economic development marketing trip last week. Sen. John Matthews, D-Bowman; Orangeburg County Council Chairman Johnnie Wright and Orangeburg County Development Commission Executive Director Gregg Robinson visited the Guangdong Province, located on the South China Sea coast. Matthews declined comment on the visit, saying "I signed a confidentiality agreement and I can't violate that." Robinson also declined comment on specifics. He said the two-day trip -- April 20 and 21 -- was primarily a marketing mission for the county. I am able to confirm that officials from the S.C. Department of Commerce and Orangeburg County attended an aerospace and automotive event in China and met with potential prospects, our U.S. consulate, as well as members of the provincial chamber of commerce, Robinson said. These events and meetings are designed to secure investment in Orangeburg County and the State of South Carolina. As with any project we may or may not be actively working, we are unable to disclose any further details and therefore have no further comment at this time, he said. Robinson praised Matthews commitment to the Orangeburg area. "Sen. Matthews is by far one of the biggest advocates in the state of South Carolina," Robinson said. "We are lucky to have him as our delegation chairman. He is a force when meeting with prospects." Matthews celebrated his 77th birthday on April 21 in China. "It was a new experience," Matthews said. Wright could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Orangeburg County is already home to China-based textile manufacturer Labon, which chose Orangeburg for its first U.S. plant in December 2016. The company is investing $3.1 million and creating 23 new jobs over the next five years. It specializes in the research, development and manufacture of technical fibers and textiles for a variety of applications, including sealing, friction, hand protection and flame-retardant products. For example, the company's products can be found in firefighters uniforms. The operation is located in a 15,700-square-foot facility at 122 Industrial Boulevard. Labon is the 14th international company to locate in Orangeburg County. A new president needs to staff his administration with people who will be loyal to him. Donald Trump's problem is that he does not have enough loyalists to staff the White House, much less the entire executive branch. Previous presidents have come to Washington after enough time in politics to develop concentric circles of loyalists who can take jobs at all levels of government. Just look at the people who stood ready to help the Bush family or the Clintons over the years. Trump, who never held public office before winning the presidency, didn't have that. In addition, he campaigned with an abrasive style that alienated a significant portion of the Republican Party's political talent. Beyond that, Trump's way of running his business, even though it made him a billionaire, was small in scale -- in his Trump Tower office, he relied heavily on a tight circle of people who were either related to him or had been with him for a very long time. Now, Trump's style has led to an acute staffing problem across the administration and also to high-profile infighting in the White House. The former means that Trump cannot assert full control over a massive federal bureaucracy that is already inclined to resist him. The latter has led to an almost comical situation in which the president has piled portfolio upon portfolio on trusted son-in-law Jared Kushner -- now commonly referred to as one of the most powerful men in Washington -- who had no preparation for the responsibility. On the question of the federal bureaucracy, many Trump supporters are dismayed by the slowness with which he is hiring for the various government departments and agencies. According to a database compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and the Washington Post, out of 553 important positions that require Senate confirmation -- and that is by no means all the political appointments Trump has to make -- only 22 Trump nominees have been confirmed, while another 53 have either been formally nominated or are awaiting formal announcement of their nominations. That leaves 478 jobs with no nominee at all. Even though that slow start across the bureaucracy is probably more consequential, the White House palace intrigue has received the lion's share of press attention. Lately, the spotlight has focused on friction between Kushner and top adviser Steve Bannon. And that, too, is partly a function of the lack-of-loyalists problem. The president himself suggested that in a recent interview with the New York Post's Michael Goodwin. When Goodwin asked whether Trump still had confidence in Bannon, Trump said: "I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve." It doesn't take a mind reader to interpret that as a vote of no confidence. Members of the Bannon coterie in the White House were said to be shocked. Veterans of earlier White Houses faulted Bannon for not trying to build relationships with people who could be his allies in the West Wing. When trouble came, who would go to bat for him? But a bigger problem was revealed by Trump's observation that Bannon had only joined Trump late in the campaign. In the China of Chairman Mao, veterans of the Long March held a special place; they had been with the Great Helmsman for the entire journey. The situation is much the same in any American political operation, where candidates value people who have been with them all the way. In TrumpWorld, that's nobody -- outside the president's family and a few assistants from Trump's company. Trump named Bannon chief executive of the campaign on August 17, 2016. Even though Bannon's Breitbart News had supported Trump for longer, the president is right -- that is pretty late in a campaign that began in earnest more than a year and a half earlier. Bannon wasn't there for the Long March. Of course, other top White House aides, like chief of staff Reince Priebus and spokesman Sean Spicer, were also latecomers, and they were never fully part of the campaign. Not surprisingly, there have been trust issues; no Long March loyalty for them, either. Thus Trump's focus on the family. After dispatching sons Don and Eric to run the business, Trump formally brought daughter Ivanka and Kushner into the White House power structure. (The president sought and received a Justice Department opinion arguing that the White House is exempt from federal anti-nepotism law.) And Trump began to pile jobs on Kushner. The Middle East peace portfolio. Point of contact for foreign leaders. Tackling the opioid crisis. Heading the Office of American Innovation. "No human being can do all that stuff," says a Republican White House veteran. When Bill Clinton's White House went off the rails in the spring of 1993, Clinton tried to recover, barely more than 100 days in office, by hiring the veteran Republican political operator David Gergen. The addition helped smooth things a bit, in part because it showed Clinton was willing to reach outside his circle to help run the government. Donald Trump will probably have to do that too. (Reach outside his circle, that is, not specifically hire Gergen, which would cause some Republicans to leap from tall buildings.) The president will have to entrust with power a new set of Republicans who weren't on the Long March and who aren't related to him by blood or marriage. It's coming, sooner or later. A Salley woman will serve two years in prison after pleading guilty to felony driving under the influence charges in a vehicle accident that claimed the life of her own child. Tiffany L. Brown, 30, of 1670 Boylston Road, pleaded guilty to one count of child endangerment, one count of felony DUI resulting in death and two counts of felony DUI resulting in great bodily injury. Circuit Court Judge Ed Dickson sentenced Brown to prison for 10 years on the child endangerment charge. After she serves two years, the balance of the sentence is suspended to five years of probation. For felony DUI resulting in death, Brown was sentenced to prison for 20 years and a fine of $25,100. After she serves two years and pays $10,100, the balance of the sentence will be suspended to five years of probation. And for the two counts of felony DUI resulting in great bodily injury, Brown was sentenced to two terms each of 15 years in prison and a fine of $10,100. After she serves two years and pays of $5,100, the balance will be suspended to five years of probation. Dickson also ordered Brown to undergo random drug/alcohol testing. The sentences, including the fines, are concurrent. Brown was driving under the influence of alcohol when she struck a 2006 Kia sedan at 3:15 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. State trooper Joey Gambrell stated that the driver and passenger of the Kia were treated at the hospital for their injuries. Gambrell also stated that two of Browns other children were in the vehicle when their 6-year-old sister died. 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 Laman Ismayilova Roughly 18,731 tourists visited the Gobustan State Historical-Artistic Reserve, a home to the worlds most important petroglyphs stone and iron-age figures carved thousands of years ago. The department head at the Reserve, Namil Mammadov, told Azertac that the number of visitors in the first 4 month of the year is more than in the same period of 2016, while bulk of them are foreigners. The number of foreign tourists, who visited the Reserve listed among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, is 11, 418, while the number of domestic tourists is 2, 720 people. The visitors from Russia, Arab countries, Iran, Turkey, Italy, Britain, France and other countries made up the majority of tourists, he said. Settled since the 8th millennium BC, the area contains more than 600,000 distinct paintings, going as far back as 20,000 years to as recent as 5,000 years ago. The rock paintings in the State Historical-Artistic Reserve depict a wide range of figures and scenes, including various hunting scenes, war scenes, trading scenes, and individual animals, and people. The Gobustan petroglyphs were repeatedly investigated by the famous Norwegian explorer and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, who recognized local boats petroglyphs as the oldest known images of pirogue in the world. These vessels, similar to the old Scandinavian ships, prompted him to make sensational hypothesis statement about the connection between Norwegians and Azerbaijanis. Thor Heyerdahl concluded that the ancestors of the Scandinavians were the migrants from Azerbaijani region. Apart from petroglyphs, there is also this musical gemstone known as Gaval Dash, which makes a tambourine-like sound when it is hit in different points. Another interesting touristy spot is a stone slab with a Latin inscription dated by the first century. The stone lab was left here by 12th Roman legion of the Emperor Domitian, which indicates that legion had stayed here. By Azernews By Sara Israfilbayova More than 26,700 people got new jobs in the first quarter 2017, said Salim Muslimov, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Azerbaijan. Muslimov, addressing a meeting with representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan [AmCham], noted that more than 40,000 jobs were created during the period. He went on to say that a bill on "On unemployment insurance" was submitted to the Milli Majlis [Parliament] and added that he attaches particular importance to the cooperation of the Ministry with AmCham. In accordance with the draft law, the insurance premium will be equal to 1 percent of the amount of the insured's salary, of which half will be paid by the employer and the other half by the employee. This is the lowest figure in the world, as in some countries the contribution is up to 3-5 percent of wages. The amount of payments will be differentiated depending on the length of service and time spent without work. If the insured's work experience is more than 10 years, the payment will be equal to 65 percent of the salary that he received during the last 12 months, if the experience is less than 3 years, the insurance payment will be minimal. Within the framework of the principle of separation of social responsibility in the sphere of employment put forward by the President, active measures to secure employment were continued on the basis of the vacancies of state companies. The labor contract was extended with 17,900 employees, while 23,000 employees concluded new labor contract with the employer in the first quarter of 2017. Taking into account the vacancies presented outside of this framework, in the first quarter of 2017, 26,700 people were provided with work. 1.226 people were involved in trainings and additional education courses, the minister stated. The Minister also informed the participants about the reforms in the sphere of pensions, changes in the Law on labor pensions, their nature and goals, work carried out in the field of social partnership and so on. Unemployment rate in Azerbaijan is 5 percent, while the poverty level equals to 5.3 percent. By Azernews By Kamila Aliyeva Azerbaijan state oil company SOCAR is sure to finalize the construction of carbomide plant in accordance with schedule and launch production no later than early 2018. The construction of a carbamide plant is complete by 94.8 percent, the plant's director Khayal Jafarov said at the second SOCAR International Caspian and Central Asia Downstream Forum Trading, Logistics, Refining, Petrochemicals scheduled for April 24-26. He said that engineering work and procurement of equipment have been done by 100 percent, construction work by 82 percent, civil engineering work by 93 percent, and installation of equipment by 70 percent. Jafarov added that it is planned to complete all work and start adjustment and commissioning of the plant by the end of 2017. He noted that the plant will produce 650,000-660,000 tons of carbamide per year. It is planned to supply a quarter of production, that is, 150,000-200,000 tons of carbamide, to the Azerbaijani domestic market, he said, adding that the remaining part will be exported to Turkey, Georgia and the markets of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea countries. Jafarov recalled that Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of a carbamide plant. The net cost of the project for the construction of production capacity units amounts to about 498 million euros. "Samsung acts as a general contractor, but has no license to produce ammonia, which will be an intermediate product in the process of production, and carbamide. Therefore, the relevant licensing agreements have been signed with Danish Haldor Topsoe for ammonia and Stamicarbon for carbamide in Netherlands," the director of the plant clarified. Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly, that is, no emissions into the atmosphere are expected. The plant will be completely autonomous and produce electricity independently. It will consume electricity in the amount of 25-26 megawatt per hour. "The construction of infrastructure to provide the plant with gas, industrial water and connection to electricity networks, as well as electricity in emergency situations, will be completed in June or July this year," Jafarov said. As many as 3,000 jobs were created at the peak of the plants construction. Once the plant is commissioned the number of jobs will decrease to 300-350. At first, construction work was financed out of the state budget and about 205 million manat has been allocated by 2015. But later it was decided to switch to project financing and negotiations were launched with the banks. "As a result, a 500 million euro credit line was opened by Korean Eximbank under Azerbaijan's state guarantees to complete the construction. So, Eximbank directly provides 251 million euros, while 249 million euros are allocated by three commercial banks with the support of Eximbank - UniCredit, Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank, Jamalov said. Speaking about carbamide exports, he noted that the main market for the sale will be Turkey. According to market research, today Turkey imports about 1.5 million tons of carbamide. By 2020, imports are expected to grow up to 1.8 million tons. Taking into account the fact that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be launched by the end of this year, it will be possible to supply carbamide to the Turkish market quickly and inexpensively, Jafarov said. Despite the construction of a carbamide plant in Azerbaijan, building a carbamide plant in Georgia remains on agenda, he added. Fuad Ahmadov, financial director of SOCAR Polymer company who also participated in the event, said that the final investment decision on the project of construction of the SOCAR GPC, a gas processing and petrochemical complex of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, in the country is expected to come out by early 2018. Currently, SOCAR is negotiating with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) company for the financing of the construction of SOCAR GPC, he noted. The construction of the complex will take four years, and it is planned to complete it in late 2022, he added. More than 150 delegates including managers of SOCARs units and members of Azerbaijani Parliament as well as high-level officials, industry leaders, analysts, trade and financial experts, top executives, managers and representatives from ministries and transnational oil&gas companies from Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and other countries participate in the event. The three-day forum featured eight plenary sessions. By Azernews By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has met with Florence Mangin, the Director of the Department of Continental Europe at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development. The two hailed the current status of relations, and emphasized that the reciprocal visits of the presidents of both countries gave further impetus to the bilateral cooperation, Azertac reported. Azerbaijan and France enjoy high level political dialogue, said Florence Mangin. She stressed that the visit of President Ilham Aliyev to France in March of this year was very productive. She also noted that French companies remain interested to work in various spheres of the economy, especially, in the fields of agriculture, energy and transport in Azerbaijan. Citing the successful cooperation in energy field between the two countries, Mammadyarov said that there are favorable opportunities in other areas for French companies as well. The FM put an emphasis on works related to TAP project, as well as North-South and East-West corridors and prospects of these projects. Mangin further informed that two French banks are interested to participate in financing of abovementioned projects. Mammadyarov touched upon the current status of negotiation process on the draft strategic partnership agreement between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the European Union. The French diplomat stated that her country supports the enhancement of the relations between Azerbaijan and EU and the signing of this agreement soon. The Minister also highlighted the negotiation process on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and stated the importance of applying the principles of territorial integrity, sovereignty, independence and inviolability of borders of states within the internationally recognized borders in a holistic manner in respect of protracted conflicts. He added that changing the recognized borders of states by use of force is unacceptable and this is contrary to the norms and principles of international law. The FM reiterated that the current status-quo is unacceptable and unsustainable as was repeatedly declared at the level of heads of state of OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries. Further, the political consultations have been held between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan and France. The meeting was joined by Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov and Florence Mangin. Khalafov praised political relations between the two countries and stressed the role of the reciprocal visits in further development of political dialogue. He also hailed reciprocal visits of the heads of the states of both countries and political dialogue, adding there are great potential for development of cooperation. He provided an insight into the large-scale economic reforms carried out in Azerbaijan, progress achieved in the country in the field of diversifying the economy. The Deputy FM invited the French companies to participate in the projects implemented in Azerbaijan. He also highlighted cultural and humanitarian relations between the two countries. Mangin, in turn, praised relations between the two countries, adding reciprocal visits of the presidents of both countries give a significant contribution to the development of bilateral cooperation. Khalafov said France as the co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group has a great role in solving the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The conflict is a great obstacle to the regional development. The Deputy FM touched upon current state of Azerbaijani-EU relations and stressed the importance of sustainability and long-lasting of these ties. Student nurses host 5K Saturday The Casper College Student Nurses Association will host a 5K run/walk, Zero Tolerance Sexual Assault, on Saturday, beginning at 8 a.m. at Crossroads Pavilion on North Poplar Street. The fee to participate is $20 per person with half of the proceeds benefiting the student nurses association and the other half benefiting the Self Help Center. Children 14 and under can participate for free when accompanied by a registered adult, and all those under 18 must have a responsible adult with them. To register or for more information, contact Karen Price, Casper College nursing faculty and association sponsor at 268-2683 or kprice@caspercollege.edu. Percussion group in Sunday concert Four percussion pieces will have their Wyoming premiere when the Casper College Percussion Group performs in concert at 3 p.m., on Sunday, April 30 in the Wheeler Concert Hall. The concert is free and open to the public. The four pieces to be premiered are: Opening Remarks by Jeffrey Smith, Vote of Confidence by Art Jarvinen, Akadinda Trio by Emmanuel Sejourne, and Cajon Trio for Nate#1 and Nate#2 by Ron Coulter. Other selections will also be performed including Henry Mancinis arrangement of Triplets. The three sophomore members of the Casper College Percussion Group are Louis Potvin, Payson, Arizona; and Lindy Stewart and Solomon Shah of Casper. The Wheeler Concert Hall is located in the Music Building on the Casper College campus. Doll collectors meet Monday Casper Doll Collectors Club will meet at 7 p.m., Monday at the Senior Center, 1831 E. 4th St. The group will enjoy a presentation of whimsy dolls from a fellow collector in Sheridan. For information, contact Janet at 234-4044. CLIMB hosts free CNA meeting CLIMB Wyoming hosts an informational meeting for its free Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training for single mothers from 5:30 to 7 p.m., on Tuesday at the Casper CLIMB office, 632 S. David St. If you enjoy caring for others, the right fit for you might be in a high-demand occupation making $12 an hour. You must be available for shift work. You will receive support with CNA testing and licensing after the training is successfully completed. For more information, email casper@climbwyoming.org or call 237-2855. Spring Fling May 6 The 12-24 Club kicks off the countdown to Septembers Recovery Rally on May 6 with the Spring Fling at the Wolcott Gathering Place, 500 S. Wolcott St., from 3 to 9 p.m., outside if the weather allows, fingers crossed. The band Cory McDaniel and Amy Gieske play with in Seattle, the Gone Johnson Revue, will be performing, with intermission sets by Jim Oliver and Suzanna Morrison. There will be food, all kinds of activities for kids, and the opportunity to purchase Rally raffle tickets at a 10 percent discount. Full details on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/events/ 1833124926949584/. Follies returns to NCHS A beloved tradition returns to Natrona County High School with Follies: 2017 A Day In The Life, running May 11-13 at 7 p.m. in the John F. Welsh Auditorium. Follies is a variety show-style play that features comic skits, songs, and dance numbers that feature NCHSs rich talent in the performing arts and students who wouldnt normally take the stage. This years show follows the everyday trials and tribulations of high school, featuring interprestive dance by the NC Dance Company, student written and directed comedy scenes, songs by the schools Harmony and Vocal Jazz singing groups, the NC Jazz Band and more Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students/seniors, and can be purchased from the NCHS main office or at the door. All proceeds benefit NCs performing arts program. For more information, contact Zach Schneider at zach814@myncsd.org. Shrine Circus May 13-14 The 67th annual Shine Circus will be held at 3 p.m., and 7 p.m., on Saturday, May 13, at The Arena at the Natrona County Fairgrounds. A special performance will be held on Sunday, May 14 (Mothers Day) at 3 p.m. All children 12 and under are free. Adults pay only $10 at the door. Doors open one hour prior to performance. The circus is put on by The Jordan World Circus from Las Vegas. Help Yourself Stuff to help you. Buddhist meditation Saturday American Buddhist monk Gen Kelsang Rinzin returns to Casper to teach on inner peace from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Saturday at Healthy Life Studio in the Sunrise Shopping Center, 4200 S. Poplar St. Everyone is welcome. There is a guided internal meditation, the teaching and a Q&A. A $15 donation is requested if you can afford it. Questions, call Joe at 315-1987. Real Food starts May 16 Its time to stop eating so many processed and packaged foods and start eating more whole foods! Join this five-week program and learn how to plan meals, shop, and cook using whole, natural ingredients. Also learn how to read labels and decipher ingredient lists. Real Food will meet Tuesday evenings from 5:30-7:30 starting May 16 and finishing June 13. Classes will be held at the UW Extension office at 2011 Fairgrounds Road. Half of the class time will include hands-on healthy cooking in our foods lab. The cost is $30, which covers all materials, including food. For more information and to register, contact Karla Case, RD, at 235-9400 or kcase@natronacounty-wy.gov. Register soon as classes fill up quickly. Buddhists meet David Vaughn is a Buddhist living in Casper who finds himself feeling more and more isolated and wishing that he had someone to share his Buddhist interests with. But there are no Buddhist temples here; no place for people who wish to share stories of Dharma or Karma, no place to learn and exchange meditational techniques, no place to meet people of like minds for friendship, conversation, companionship, or even romantic interest. So Vaughn has decided to take matters into his own hands and do something about it. He proposes to establish a Casper Buddhist Fellowship, and set up a common meeting place where the Buddhists of Casper can congregate at regular intervals to practice our Buddhist customs; where Buddhists can go to and feel safe, mingle with other Buddhists, and experience all of those most wonderful things that the Buddhist religion has to offer. Vaughn invites all who are interested to contact him at davidvaughn991@yahoo.com so that a dialogue might begin. Saturday watercolor sessions The schedule for the Saturday Morning Watercolor Sessions from 10 a.m. to noon for April at Art 321 is below. These are coordinated by Ellen Black, 265-6783. $10 per session. April 29, building perspective, Dave Sneesby. May 6, practice session; May 13, Matting and Framing Your Paintings; May 20, practice session; May 27, Techniques for Aerial Perspective. June 3, practice session; June 10, Oriental Painting, Claudette Mowery; June 17, practice session; June 24, Big Brush Landscape. DAV mobile van in Casper The DAV Mobile Service Office Van will make a visit to Casper on May 4, parked at the Casper National Guard Armory, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. One of the various services DAV provides at no cost to veterans is the Mobile Service Office (MSO) Program. These "offices-on-wheels" travel to under-served communities across the country to help veterans and their families obtain the services and benefits they have earned. Staffed by highly trained DAV National Service Officers, the MSOs provide professional support throughout the claims and appeals process. When you come to one of the MSO locations, please bring your identification, Social Security number, and any other pertinent documentation regarding your military service. DAV membership is not required to utilize these free services. For more information about MSO stops in the area, please call Leroy Kenner, NSO Supervisor at (307) 433-2752. Call for portraits at Art 321 This is an open call to all artists in the community, working in any medium, to exhibit their artwork in the Art 321 - Casper Artists Guild Portrait Exhibit in May. Please note that artwork needs to be delivered to Art 321 Gallery by April 28. Learn about Airbnb The Natrona County Library will offer an Airbnb class from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday. Learn how to navigate the site and create listings. Feel free to bring digital photos of the space you would like to list along with any other information about your listing to receive help with your first post. Call 577.READ x2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information. DAV info seminar So many veterans feel confused about benefits and services theyve earned. Theres so much to know, and so many changes from one year to the next. Thats why local members of the nonprofit DAV (Disabled American Veterans) will present a veterans Information seminar from 6 to 9 p.m. May 3 at the Casper National Guard Armory, 5905 CY Ave. Like all DAV services, the seminar is free to all veterans and members of their families. In conjunction with the seminar, from 8 to 9 p.m., the NSOs will be providing claims assistance. For further information, please contact NSO Leroy Kenner Jr. at 307-433-2752. McIntyre photo workshop May 5-6 If you love the photography of Suzette McIntyre now on display at Art 321 Gallery, you will be eager to sign up for her workshop coming in May. "Convergent Photography" is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday and Saturday, May 5 and 6, instructed by McIntyre. Participants need to bring a digital camera. Fee is $130 for members/ $170 non-members. Job fair May 3 The Department of Workforce Services is holding a Youth Job & Career Fair with the intent of informing youth and young adults in Casper of job openings, career opportunities, and college or training options that are available to them in the Casper community. Youth and young adults between ages 16 and 24 who want to jump-start their careers are encouraged to attend. Individuals should dress to impress and take copies of their resumes to the Agriculture Resources & Learning Center from 9 a.m. to noon on May 3. The event aims to connect youth with a range of employment opportunities and help them explore the diversity of education and career options available to them in the future. For more information, call 234-4591. Babysitting class at rec center The next Babysitting 101 class for ages 11 to 14 will be offered from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 6 at the Casper Recreation Center. Babysitting 101 is a fun, interactive class that trains the emergent babysitter in important topics such as: getting a business started, understanding the likes and dislikes of children and getting equipped with ideas for playing with kids of all ages. Students will learn solutions to the most common problems babysitters face and how to perform basic first aid. They also make and fill their own babysitting bag to use on the job and receive first aid information and a resource guide. The cost of the class is $20 for those without a rec center pass and $18 for those with an annual rec center pass. Registration can be completed at www.activecasper.com, by calling 235-8383 with a credit card, or by stopping at the Rec Center at 1801 E. Fourth St. Felt scarf workshop at Nic A felt scarf workshop will be held from noon to 3:30 p.m. May 13 at the Nicolaysen Art Museum, instructed by Tatiana Lushnikova. Fees are $40 for members, 30 for students with valid student ID, and $55 for non-members. Please pre-register and pay by May 8. Bring a friend and save $10 on your class fee. This class is recommended for high school students and older. In this class, students will learn the process of wet felting and produce their own piece of handmade fiber art. For more information, contact Zhanna at zgallegos@thenic.org or call 235-5247. Mindfulness workshop at UU Everyone is invited to a free two-hour workshop facilitated by mindfulness instructor Tim Clark at 4 p.m. May 14 at the Unitarian Universalist Community of Casper, 1040 West 15th St. Attendees will explore the what, why, and how of living in the present moment, how to develop mindfulness, how to use it to stay present, and where those efforts lead. The class will be mostly discussion with some meditation. Clark has more than 25 years of experience with many different meditation traditions. For more information, contact Laura at 259-4469 or info@uucasper.org. Job fair in Douglas May 17 The Douglas Workforce Center is hosting a job fair on Wednesday, May 17, at the Eastern Wyoming College campus in Douglas. The event is open to veterans only from 10 to 10:30 a.m., and then welcomes the general public from 10:30 a.m. to noon. Job seekers are encouraged to bring copies of their resume and dress for an interview. For more information call the Douglas Workforce Center at 307-358-2147. Corporate team building with (theater) murder Casper Theater Company will be teaching teambuilding workshops. After determining areas of emphasis designed to a specific business, the workshop will be steered in that direction. For more information, visit www.caspertheatercompany.net, or Casper Theater Company on Facebook or call Casie at 247-6167, or Donna at 267-7243 to set up a time. Teen Challenge spring groups Smart Step Families: Putting two families together is never easy. The Smart Step Families, led by a Christian couple, will give answers and encouragement. Thursday evenings starting in March. Call Pastor Mark or Linda at 259-1081. Insight: Discovering the path to Christian character, especially in the midst of stress. For more information, call Teen Challenge Wyoming at 258-5397. There are nine sessions to the class. Professionals in Recovery: An ongoing Christian recovery group. For more information, call Gary at 267-7777. Free to Grow: Helping people overcome disappointments and setbacks that have arrested or are presently hindering their emotional and spiritual development. Starts in February and meets on Thursdays. For more information, call Jane at 797-7271 or Judy at 251-5644. There are 12 sessions to the class. Peacemaking: In this world of division and conflict, its important for Christians to stay grounded in what the Bible teaches about resolving differences with others in a God- honoring way. Sunday at 4 p.m. For more information, call Teen Challenge Wyoming at 258-5397. There are 12 sessions to the class. Stepping into Freedom: A Christ-centered 12-step program that offers support for anyone struggling with a life controlling problem like drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual addiction, gambling or workaholism. There are 12 sessions to the class. New ministry at HPCC Family Life Ministry at Highland Park Community Church is offering premarital, marriage enrichment, and parenting workshops, seminars, retreats and conferences, empowering families to thrive through Gods love. Please visit the website for more information or to register, http://hpcc.church/FLM. Dementia caregiver support Wyoming Dementia Care offers five Alzheimers Caregiver Support groups each month. Caregivers of those with dementia-related illnesses and the loved ones they care for are welcome at any of the group sessions. Professional staff from Intermountain Home Companions will be on hand to offer separate activities and snacks for those who need care. There is no charge for Wyoming Dementia Cares support groups or for the respite care provided during the approximately one-hour sessions. The morning support group sessions meet on the first and third Thursday of each month at 10 a.m. at Central Wyoming Senior Services, 1831 E. Fourth St. The afternoon support groups meet at 1 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month at Life Care Center of Casper, 4041 S. Poplar. The evening groups meet on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. at Meadow Wind Assisted Living, 3955 E. 12th St. For information, email wyodementia@casperseniorcenter.com or call Dani Guerttman at 265-4678. Family continues suicide support Good Grief, Support will continue at 5:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at the 12-24 Club, 500 S. Wolcott, by request of attendees. Anyone who is grieving a suicide or death or considering suicide is encouraged to attend. Attendance, as well as the content, will be strictly confidential. The Fresh Start Cafe will be open, and you can eat during the meetings. This meeting place was offered by Dan Cantine of the 12-24 Club. You need not be a member to attend. For more information, email jlh35@hotmailcom. New depression group begins J.R.s Hunt for Life is offering See it Clearly, a free peer support group for people suffering from depression and other mental conditions that lead to suicidal thoughts and actions. The group is led by like-minded peers wishing to offer support. Anonymity and confidentiality is offered to all attending. Meetings are at 6:45 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at 500 South Wolcott in the conference room on the second floor, (12-24 Club). Those who have considered or attempted taking their life or are struggling are welcome. For more information, email jlh35@hotmailcom. Parkinson's exercise Rocky Mountain Therapy is offering a Parkinson's exercise program. Join us from noon to 1 p.m. Thursdays at Rocky Mountain Therapy, 2546 E. Second St., Building 500. These classes are open to anyone with Parkinson's or caring for someone with Parkinson's. Thursday's class is tailored for the individual with more advanced Parkinson's and focuses on improving endurance, safety and managing symptoms. We are open to all ages and can tailor the class to meet varying exercise needs. The cost of the class is $5. To RSVP, call 577-5204 and ask for Jerri or Shannon. Celebrate Recovery every Friday Celebrate Recovery meets at 5:30 p.m. every Friday at Highland Park Community Church, just south of Elkhorn Valley Rehabilitation Hospital on East Second Street. A family meal starts the evening, followed by praise and worship. At 7 p.m., there's either a lesson from Celebrate Recovery's planned curriculum or a testimony by a person who has found recovery through Christ. Then, people go to gender-specific small groups until 8:30 p.m., when dessert and fellowship conclude the evening. Child care is available at no cost. For more information, contact Chris at 265-4073. Here and Now: Dementia-focused monthly art class Classes are every third Tuesday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m. There is no charge. Here and Now is a program made possible through a collaboration between Wyoming Dementia Care and the Nicolaysen Art Museum. It is designed to provide a supportive environment for people with dementia and Alzheimers and their loved ones. To register, contact Dani with Wyoming Dementia Care 265-4678, ext. 106, or at wyodementia@casperseniorcenter.com or Zhanna Gallegos at 235-5247 or at zgallegos@thenic.org. Casper police officials envision of number of changes for the department in the next five years including possibly building a new headquarters and buying body cameras, according to a draft of the departments strategic plan released Tuesday. The plan outlines a number of expected changes in the department, detailing both broad policy changes and specific purchases. The proposal the first of its kind for the department focuses on six areas: staffing and training, infrastructure, technology, enforcement practices, internal organization and partnerships with community groups and other law enforcement agencies. The department also identified a number of its challenges in the plan, including difficulty recruiting and retaining officers, increased violence against officers across the country, more encounters with people in a mental health crisis and decreased state and city funding. Police Chief Jim Wetzel said department leadership began working on the plan in the fall. The plan outlined will guide the department in the coming years and will serve as a foundation when he approaches city government for funding in the future, he said. The plan is still a draft, however, and the results of an external review of the department as well as public input will be considered before finalizing the document. We need to look holistically at the needs and requirements of the department, he said in an interview Wednesday. The release of the strategic plan comes at a time of turmoil at the police department. In the past month, two-thirds of officers in the department said they had no confidence in Wetzels leadership and Casper City Council members have called for investigations into allegations against the chief. However, the chief said Tuesday that he had no plans to resign and was waiting for the results of the outside audit of the department, expected in September. He previously described the divide within the department as a clash of cultures and said the strategic plan was a good example of the direction he wanted the department to take. The vision of the department, as outlined in the document, is to be a professional police organization of irrefutable noble character, respected and trusted by the entirety of the community and its citizens to guard their freedoms, safety, and security. This describes to me the culture we need to have here at the Casper Police Department, Wetzel said. New purchases The department moved into its current headquarters on David Street in 1976, but the building no longer meets the needs of the operation, Wetzel said. Extensive remodeling and reconfiguration efforts (to the department headquarters) over this 40-year period is providing diminishing returns and now fails to met both current and future operational and administrative requirements, the plan states. Wetzel said the department needs more space so officers arent so jammed together. He also said theres a need for more meeting spaces and better electronic connectivity in the building. The department also requires more space for victim services and so that victims and suspects can be kept apart. He said the department should also build a soft interview room with couches quite different than the current whitewashed, sterile rooms where victims could be interviewed in a more comfortable environment. He also said the room where evidence is now stored is woefully inadequate and that sometimes the area near the room has a significant smell of marijuana because of poor air control in the facility. He said the department could also collaborate with other area law enforcement to create a joint evidence storage facility, but that the idea is in the preliminary stages. Wetzel said there havent been in-depth conversations about the possibility of a new headquarters and that he recognizes funding a new police station during difficult economic times would be a challenge. He said building a new headquarters would be a huge commitment but that he wanted to get the conversation started. Theres so much concern about the economic environment in front of us, he said. We know its going to be tight for the foreseeable future. The plan also outlines a number of other imminent purchases, including body cameras, drones and law enforcement software. Wetzel said the department is now considering buying body cameras for officers. He said he was hesitant to purchase them previously because of the laws surrounding their use. Now that law and policy is more clearly defined, including a law created by the 2017 Wyoming Legislature, the department is ready to create its own policies and assess costs. He said he believes body cameras are well on their way to becoming standard police equipment, just like a badge or a ticket book. I fully recognize the value in them its not a matter of if but of when, he said. He also said the department is considering buying a drone to help take aerial photos of crime scenes and aid in search and rescue. But first the department needs to develop a policy regarding its use. The technology would help investigators and other staff evaluate information more quickly and help the department function more efficiently. Some programs would help organize internal information and knowledge, while others would help with investigations. He also outlined a need for a variety of software programs that would help the department analyze information. He said the department hadnt made any decisions about which programs to buy but has considered a number of companies. Wetzel said the department hadnt approached the city about budgeting for these new purchases but said that the plan will serve as a foundation for those talks in the future. Changes to staffing The department needs more officers and civilian staff, the plan states. The department is currently authorized at 99 sworn officers, but five of those positions are currently open. Wetzel said he analyzed data about the departments staffing level about two years ago and found that the department needed at least 20 more patrol officers as well as five more detectives. Wetzel brought a proposal to the city that would allow him to hire four officers a year over the next five years, but the economic downturn halted that plan after he was able to hire only four more patrol officers and one detective, he said. The external analysis of the department will also consider staffing levels, and Wetzel said he believes the group will come to a conclusion similar to his. I dont know how they wouldnt find us understaffed, he said. Increased staffing would allow officers more time on each call and also provide for more proactive work building relationships with the community, he said. The plan outlines changes to hiring and training practices in both the short and long term. The department plans to increase the amount of money it uses for recruitment and hiring and also wants to recruit more mid-career officers. One need of the department is more officers who speak languages other than English, especially Spanish. To address that issue, the department plans to incentivize the hiring of people who speak multiple languages and help current officers learn languages. The plan also includes a number of changes intended to boost morale and encourage relationships within the department. One of the plans is to conduct an annual internal quality of life survey of department employees. Wetzel said the survey would be a chance to hear what officers have to say and gather ideas about how the department could improve. We expect our officers and employees to be invested in their respective roles to enhance quality of life to the community, the plan states. However, it is difficult to expect them to be invested in that endeavor when there is a lack of quality of life for them internally within the organization. That suggestion comes three weeks after an internal survey conducted by the Casper Police lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police showed a morale crisis within the department. The document also outlines other plans, including the creation of regular family events and programs to support officers and their mental health. U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, whose comments about men wearing tutus sparked outrage earlier this week, called Wyomings best-known cross-dresser and apologized, Larry Sissy Goodwin said Thursday afternoon. Goodwin, 70, of Douglas, said he accepted the apology during the lengthy Thursday talk. We had a nice conversation, he said. He offered an apology and I have no doubt to believe it was genuine. He was very genuine with his comments. I think we had a respectful dialogue. If anything comes out of this, we both agree that its opening a discussion and illuminating the issues to the benefit of everyone concerned. Enzis spokesman also confirmed the phone call and personal apology. Im told they talked about the importance of respect for one another and treating others as they would want to be treated, said the spokesman, Max DOnofrio, in an email. During a recorded conversation last week at Greybull High, Enzi said, I know a guy that wears a tutu and goes to the bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it a little bit. Thats the way he winds up with that kind of problem. Enzi apologized for the statement Tuesday, after the story went national, and said he was trying to argue that decency cannot be legislated. Enzis spokesman reiterated a previous statement that Enzi wasnt referring to Goodwin whose story has been featured in the past on NPR and NBC, and in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. Enzi was talking generally, DOnofrio said. As many people thought that Sen. Enzi was referring to Mr. Goodwin, he wanted to make sure that he apologized to him personally, the press secretary said. I understand that Sen. Enzi also clarified that his example was not referring to Mr. Goodwin, or any specific person, and emphasized that nobody, including LGBT individuals, should be bullied or feel unsafe. Enzi, in his comments to the students, did not say he was offering a hypothetical. Enzi told Goodwin on the phone Thursday he wished the media would have covered other aspects of the speech, said Goodwin, who is retired and a Vietnam veteran. Enzi made an analogy that Goodwin described as touching. A person can start with a clean sheet of paper and if they criticize another human the paper becomes wrinkled. The person can apologize and try to smooth out the paper, but wrinkles will remain, Goodwin said. The moral is I can apologize and I can smooth this paper out and its OK, Goodwin said. But of course not; theres still wrinkles and still a little hurt. I thought that was an interesting analogy. The news stories that Enzis comments generated have gotten people talking, Goodwin said. I think the dialogue will take care of itself, he said. In coming days, groups throughout the state have scheduled a number of fundraisers and LGBT discussions. An Evansville bar, for example, is advertising an event Friday where patrons will receive a free drink if they wear a tutu. Goodwins been invited to some events in Laramie. He noticed theres one scheduled in Casper and expects to attend it, too, he said. Goodwin doesnt own tutus, he said, but he sometimes wears petticoats, which people may mistake for tutus, he said. He said he probably wont buy any dance attire for any of the upcoming events. Petticoats are fine, he said. Twelve beds may be removed from the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston if there are not enough nurses to treat patients, officials told lawmakers Thursday. There are now 93 beds at the mental health treatment center, said Tom Forslund, director of the Wyoming Health Department, which runs the facility. In a worst-case scenario, well have to start shutting down portions of the hospital, Forslund told members of the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee, which met at Casper College. Beginning Monday, Forslund will be unable to hire new employees, due to a hard hiring freeze that the Wyoming Legislature inserted into the budget bill during the 2017 session. Any vacant positions that are funded with at least 80 percent of general funds or more, those positions that are open at end of month are eliminated, he said. They are frozen and swept. And so we wont be able to fill those positions anymore. Lawmakers received information on the issue Monday and did not propose any bills for the 2018 session to remedy it. The Legislature enacted a number of cuts to the Health Department and other agencies after the energy downturn caused state revenues to plummet. At the same time, lawmakers rejected numerous proposals to increase revenue during the 2017 session. Wyoming State Hospital treats people who have been diagnosed as insane and are accused of or who have been convicted of committing crimes. Those beds will continue to remain filled, Forslund said. The beds that could be removed from hospital operations would be for people who are involuntarily committed because they are a danger to themselves or others. In addition to holding people at the Evanston hospital, judges also commit individuals to hospitals throughout the state that have contracts with the Department of Health. The Evanston facility doesnt have room for everyone who is committed. There are currently 75 beds for people who are involuntarily committed. If a dozen beds were removed, more people would be sent to contract facilities, Forslund said. The state is already grappling with the increasing cost of involuntary commitments. Forslund on Thursday told lawmakers that his department had spent all the money the Legislature provided for commitments and has started to dip into the states rainy day fund. Thirteen nursing positions both registered nurses and nursing aides are currently unfilled at the state hospital, he said. Three are vacant because people recently left the state hospital, Forslund said. Ten were vacant positions that Forslund said he had recently decided to not fill because he needed the money to give current nurses a salary increase, he said. Forslund told lawmakers hes struggled to keep staff in Evanston. Employees leave for more lucrative positions elsewhere, he said. The Legislature never provided more money to help curb the problem. I need to get those salaries up to compete, he said. Forslund decided to give nurses raises with money from the 10 vacant positions. He didnt know at the time that the Legislature was going to enact a hard hiring freeze and he wouldnt be able to fill the spots, he said. The director emphasized nothings set in stone and any closure of part of the hospital would be a worst-case scenario. His department has been scurrying to hire new people before the Monday deadline, he said. Because were getting some people hired, its less likely than a few weeks ago, he said. The Wyoming Department of Health has started to dip into the states $1.7 billion rainy day fund to pay for involuntary commitments of people who are a harm to themselves or others, the agencys director told lawmakers Thursday morning. The Legislature provided the Health Department with $4.4 million for the two-year budget cycle to pay to commit people. As of Tuesday, the Health Department has spent $4.6 million, and the first year of the budget cycle isnt yet complete, Health Department Director Tom Forslund told members of the Joint Labor Health and Social Services Committee at a meeting in Casper. During the 2017 legislative session, lawmakers authorized the Health Department to use up to $10 million to pay for peoples treatment. Costs have continuously run over the amount lawmakers have budgeted in recent years for Title 25, the term that lawmakers use to refer to the state statute requiring people be treated. Lawmakers have studied the issue for years and have passed legislation that appears to be making a dent in the problem, Forslund said. Forslund told lawmakers he has little control over the budget. Its how many people are put into the system by the courts, he said. The process for involuntarily committing someone usually begins with a doctor or police officer, who signs a form saying a person is suffering from a mental health issue and must be detained, usually at a hospital. Then the person is medically evaluated and must have a hearing within 72 business hours. A judge subsequently decides whether the person stays in the hospital for another 10 days. By the end of the 10 days, there is a hearing where a judge determines whether the person should be involuntarily committed at the Wyoming State Hospital or a hospital on contract with the Health Department. There are signs that involuntary commitments are declining in the counties where they are most common, Forslund said. Eleven people had been committed in Fremont County as of the end of March. The Health Department projects a total of 15 for the year. Last year, 41 were committed. Natrona County has committed 49 people this year. Forslund said 65 total are expected to be committed. Last year, the county committed 114 people. Thirty-two people in Sweetwater County were committed and 43 are projected for the entire year. Last year, 81 people were committed. However, involuntary commitments are up in other parts of the state, he said. Laramie County had 21 last year. Thus far this year, it has performed 33. The states largest county is projected to commit 44 people by the end of the year twice as many as last year, Forslund said. The Health Department has worked with judges, county commissions and local mental health centers to get the numbers down, Forsland said. But there is no one solution, he said. Part of the problem may be that judges are concerned about people and as a result are sending them to a higher and more expensive level of treatment than necessary. Officials at Caspers Central Wyoming Counseling Center are working with Wyoming Medical Center about identifying patients mental health issues before they reach a crisis level, its CEO Brandon Wardell told lawmakers. Sen. Ray Peterson, a Cowley Republican, said he is concerned that people are receiving initial treatment from hospitals that are equipped to house them during involuntary commitment. Its counselors are convincing judges that that the patients need to be committed, which is more lucrative for the hospitals. We need to get away from that, he said. Lawmakers killed a proposal in the 2017 legislative session to raise cigarette taxes. The new revenue would have in part paid for Title 25. Editor: I grew up in Wyoming; I am studying for a degree elsewhere but return as often as I can afford to. I still consider myself a Wyomingite, and always will. This is why I am deeply disturbed by Sen. Enzis recent comments that "the guy who wears a tutu to the bar and is surprised when he is treated differently... [is] asking for it." While I appreciate that the senator apologized for his comment, the justification offered by his spokesman only deepens the profound fear felt by many Wyomingites. The spokesman explained that the senator talked about how many Wyoming folks take a live and let live approach to life, but we need to be conscious that everyone may not react the same way to differing value and belief systems. I have grown up respecting that, when fellow Wyomingites object to my being gay, it often comes from sincere faith. But Enzis and his spokesmans statements suggest that that is not enough, that I must accept violent reactions to expressions of my identity. Legitimizing violent reactions to expressions of my identity leaves me asking: If I hold hands with my significant other, am I asking for it? If I dress in a way that is unlike other Wyoming men, do I deserve a beating? If Im overheard talking about a significant other, what response does that earn me? These questions are not just rhetorical. I, and so many others, deserve to know the circumstances under which our Wyoming communities, colleagues, and politicians are comfortable with us being victims of violence. If we as a state fail to grapple with these questions, we will lose any last claim to being the Equality State, the state of live and let live. That is not the Wyoming any of us believe in, and not a Wyoming I want to come home to. After receiving widespread negative publicity for making offensive comments in front of Greybull High School students when asked about Wyomings gay and lesbian community, Sen. Mike Enzi issued a flimsy apology. More than just the poor choice of words he admitted to, his offensive statements reveal a staggering level of ignorance on his part, showing he has no understanding of the day-to-day experiences of LGBT persons and the ways that such harmful rhetoric can serve to perpetuate discrimination and violence against them. His apocryphal story about knowing a guy who wears a tutu and goes to the bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights is insultingly reductive, as it offers a highly questionable story in place of showing any understanding at all about the breadth of the day-to-day experiences of those with a different sexual orientation. His story may as well be a projective test that reveals just how shallowly he conceptualizes these issues. The live and let live approach espoused by Enzi and others, who feel no additional action is needed to combat prejudice against LGBT persons, finds it limits in Enzis story. It is as if to say that society will agree to tolerate you being different, so long as you dont push it in somebodys face by doing something as audacious as dressing in clothing not associated with your gender. This approach puts conditional limitations on the degree to which one person shows consideration for the basic human rights of another, making it as if the other person asks for it a little bit, as Enzi said, when they then become the recipient of harm at anothers hands, for simply standing out. We must reject this line of thinking for what it is: ignorant and harmful. We must call on Enzi to not just apologize but also meet with Wyoming LGBT groups and show, through action, that he is committed to education and reducing victimization. In order to be the Equality State in more than name alone, we must hold our representatives accountable to this basic standard. Editor: It puts me in an uncomfortable position to defend John Barrasso, but I can't get past the fact Obama placed the United States and its economy on the hook by reducing the size of our economy without any congressional approval with the Paris Agreements. You see, what Larry Wolfe doesn't seem to understand or wishes to completely ignore that we in America vote for our representatives and we the people are due to have our voices heard and represented. Instead, Wolfe chooses to ignore the word games that Obama had with "agreement," "accord" and "treaty" and not allow the American people their voice. We the people voted for our Senate, and the Senate is our voice. We are due the proper advise and consent roles of our Senate in treaties that affect the way we eat, affect the way we travel, affect the way we heat and cool our homes, affect the way we pay for our education systems. Yes, Wolfe is perfectly happy with his benevolent dictator he worships in Obama and is unhappy how unconstitutional laws and treaties can be undone. What's particularly disturbing is that Wolfe teaches environmental law at the University of Wyoming. The ends justifies the means, by hook or by crook philosophy of today's radical activist groups should be exposed for what they are and called out on it. This man knows our rights have been taken away with this "treaty" that semantically is being called an "agreement." Shame on Larry Wolfe! I hear the word compromise often bandied about these days. I would say compromise is impossible until we all decide on where we are going and where this all this ends. How can we compromise if we don't share the same values?!? I may be so bold as to say that if you control the way a people receive and use their energy, you control most of their lives. Compromise is impossible if you have one population that wants to control your lives and another population that wants to keep their freedom and liberty. Editor: I want to take a moment to comment on the Lemonade Day promoted by Hilltop Bank. We have gone through a time when nationally some people have demeaned business owners as well as some of our values as Americans. I commend Hilltop for recognizing the importance of our small businesses and the values that have made our country great. With the Lemonade Stand project, Hilltop is teaching that entrepreneurship and/or small business is possible, valuable, and admirable. They are teaching our youth to make money and save money. Thank you to Hilltop Bank. Now as a community, let's support our kids as they learn some life lessons. And let's not forget to support our local businesses. The Sawmill Fire came within 8 miles of Sonoita-Elgin earlier this week, but its economic effects were starting to burn a hole in the profits of the wineries and vineyards dotting the vibrant heart of Southern Arizonas wine country. The wineries lost more than half their customers early this week after the blaze forced Arizona Department of Transportation officials to close State Route 83 off Interstate 10 on Monday, nearly 24 hours after the blaze sparked on Sunday. ADOT reopened the road on Thursday afternoon to cheers from vineyard operators who were bracing for a catastrophic drop in business this weekend one of the final gasps of spring before business drops off for the summer. This is really, really good news, Flying Leap Vineyards founder and President Mark Beres said moments after ADOT reopened the main road into Sonoita off Interstate 10. Almost two-thirds of our sales come on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Getting it reopened for the weekend should do us good. Im hopeful. ADOT spokesman Tom Herrmann said there will be speed restrictions along Route 83 and possible lane changes while crews repair the guardrails burned in the blaze. On Thursday, Beres said the closure had cost him 70 percent of his customers earlier in the week. The winery at 342 Elgin Road in Elgin usually sees between 40 and 60 people on weekdays, and nearly three times that on weekends. On Wednesday, just six people came into the winery, he said. With Route 83 closed, visitors from Phoenix and Tucson had to detour nearly an hour out of their way, taking Interstate 19 to Nogales then cutting over on Route 82 through Patagonia. Another alternative: cutting through Benson. Kelly Bostock made the trek from her Dos Cabezas WineWorks in Sonoita on Wednesday through Patagonia to get her son to Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson. She came back via Benson. It took me four hours round trip. It was brutal, said Bostock, who with her husband Todd owns the winery at 3248 Highway 82. With the road open, the drive on Friday should take about 45 minutes. A shorter commute is not the only reason Bostock was breathing a sigh of relief that the road reopened. Like Beres, she worried that the closure would devastate sales on what is usually her busiest day. An average of 100 people a day come into Dos Cabezas on Saturdays and Sundays, she said The 40,000-acre Sawmill Fire was still active Thursday afternoon, but ADOTs Herrmann said unless it regains strength and threatens Route 83, the road would remain open. Even with the road open, Sonoita-Elgin wineries could see business slow down this weekend, said Beres neighbor Kent Callaghan. Any time this happens it just shuts everything down for a while, said Callaghan, the owner/winemaker of Callaghan Vineyard at 336 Elgin Road. Just the idea that people know theres a fire down here even when its over they tend to shy away. I dont know if theyre thinking about it or what. Its just one of those things. Johnny Contreras was 8 years old when he went to his first Tucson International Mariachi Conference workshop. It launched a lifelong love for and a career in mariachi music. The 35th annual conference began with workshops April 26 and culminates in a daylong fiesta April 29. Contreras is a prime example of the events aim: education. Its not only the music that provides our students with something valuable in their lives. Its the education, too, says Alfonso Dancil, chairman of the organizations board of directors. The conference gives them a desire to make themselves betternot only in music, but in their future careers. For Contreras, now 44, the workshops lured him back year after year. By the time he was 15, he was giving private guitar lessons. He became one of the conferences workshop leaders when he was 18. And he has been the mariachi director at Pueblo High School for 15 years. The conference became part of my upbringing, says Contreras. The workshops are open to students of all levels. While mariachi experience isnt necessary, beginners are expected to know basic sheet music. More than 900 students participate each year, says Dancil. Contreras learned much at the workshops, but they have done more than that: They have helped validate mariachi music, he says. A lot of people have this certain idea of what mariachi music is: fat, drunk guys in a bar playing way too loud, he says. But the instructors at the workshops are so virtuosic. Theyre the best teachers in the world. Imagine youre in Little League and the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are your teachers, he says. Thats what the mariachi conference is like. These guys can play mariachi, but they can also play Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. To me, the mariachi conference validates being a mariachi musician. Many of those future mariachi musicians get to show what theyve learned this year at an open-to-the-public concert April 27. Its a rewarding feeling to see these kids in the workshops, and then to see them in the showcase, says Dancil, who also works in advertising sales at the Arizona Daily Star. It puts a smile on your face and makes you want to dance and sing. Students in the workshops invest time, energy, and effort into their music and performances. And it is the performing that is the highlight, says Contreras. When you study for a test, you have to wait weeks for it to be graded, he says. But with mariachi, the reward is immediate. You perform and the crowds reaction is instantaneous. Theres nothing like it. We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some April 27 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. The long-awaited temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will open its doors to the public in June, but youll need to make reservations. From Saturday, June 3, to Saturday, June 24, the public can tour the temple from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The temple will be closed Sundays. After that, when the temple, at 7281 N. Skyline Drive, is dedicated, it will be closed to the public, according to press materials. This is Arizonas sixth LDS temple and the nearest for local Mormons, who previously had to trek to Gila Valley or Mesa. Church leadership in Salt Lake City announced the construction of the Tucson temple in 2012 and broke ground in 2015. In March, James Michael Moeller of the Tanque Verde Ward, was named president of the temple. The temple will be dedicated Sunday, Aug. 13, with a cultural performance celebrating the dedication on Saturday, Aug. 12. The public will have no access to the dedication and limited access to the cultural celebration. Border Patrol agents who witnessed a rollover accident Wednesday on Interstate 10 and went to provide aid to the occupants discovered the vehicle was carrying undocumented immigrants in a smuggling attempt, the agency said. The agents were westbound on I-10 east of Benson when they saw a white pickup truck turned upside down. The agents arrived at the scene and begin administering first aid to the occupants, according to Customs and Border Protection. There were seven people in the truck, including five Mexican nationals who were in the country illegally, and two U.S. citizens, CBP said in a news release. The two male U.S. citizens were taken to a hospital for evaluation of their injuries. Only one of the illegal immigrants required treatment at a hospital, CBP said. The five Mexican nationals were arrested and were to be deported. The two U.S. citizens are facing prosecution for smuggling, the agency said. If the county administrators recommended $1.24 billion budget is approved by the Board of Supervisors this summer, homeowners will pay the same combined property tax rate $5.83 for every $100 of taxable value as they did this year. However, they will pay that rate on a tax base that is projected to increase by 3.3 percent next year, due to rising property values and new construction, meaning overall property tax burdens may increase for some. Last year, the average homeowner whose property value was estimated to be around $158,400 would have paid about $924 in total county property taxes. This coming year, that average propertys value is expected to increase to roughly $165,900, spelling a total annual property tax bill rise of roughly $44, according to housing price estimates provided by the county and calculations by the Star. The levy is expected to bring in $469 million, $15 million more than the current years property tax revenues. That figure excludes taxes levied by the numerous other taxing entities in the county, like school and fire districts, whose rates the supervisors do not control. The total recommended budget is $1.24 billion, nearly $11 million more than the current years. The total county tax rate is composed of the four property taxes the supervisors control: the primary, which Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry recommends keeping at $4.29, and three secondary property taxes for the library district, the flood-control district and debt service, currently at 52 cents, 33 cents and 70 cents respectively. All would remain unchanged under the recommended budget. Huckelberry qualifies his proposal, saying it is likely the final budget adopted by the state will have impacts on Pima Countys final budget and may change the recommendations made in this memorandum, according to a bolded section of his April 26 memo to the supervisors. However, Huckelberry said there is probably very little chance of having to change the recommended rate as a result of the Legislature. Increased public safety employee retirement costs stemming from recent court decisions made a tax cut difficult, according to a county release. As it stands, the current budget contains roughly $86 million in cost shifts from the state to the county, according to the memo. Supervisor Sharon Bronson said those shifts for things like the Arizona Long Term Care System and court system salaries are significant in terms of our ability to address local needs. Bronson said they also make it difficult to cover the roughly $5.6 million in supplemental budget requests from various departments, the largest of which $4.8 million came from the Sheriffs Department to cover costs associated with pay raises approved in recent years, among other expenses. Huckelberry recommends denying the Sheriffs Departments request in his memo. Supervisor Ally Miller, who has been a frequent critic of county spending practices, did not return a call seeking comment. While he said he invites scrutiny of his departments budget, Sheriff Mark Napier said his department was thoughtful about the supplemental request, and would be disappointed if it werent approved. The department has recently curtailed a number of expenses, including decreasing supervisory staff and cutting down on overtime, while trying to avoid impacts to what happens when you call 911 and need a deputy. Without the supplement, Napier added, I just dont see the room in our base budget to absorb that. We dont have a lot of room to make additional cuts that wont impact public safety. Budget hearings begin next Tuesday, with justice and law enforcement departments including the sheriff up first at 1:30 p.m. The supervisors will approve a final budget June 20 after mandated truth taxation hearings on three of the four supervisor-controlled property taxes. PHOENIX House Republican leaders outmaneuvered a bid by Democrats to finally get the Legislature to vote whether to approve the federal Equal Rights Amendment. Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley, D-Tucson, complained during floor action Thursday that her legislation to put Arizona on record in favor of the amendment never even got a hearing. So she made a motion that the measure be brought to the full House for an immediate vote. The maneuver, which is legal under House rules, caught GOP leaders by surprise. But rather than simply allowing a vote on her motion, Speaker J.D. Mesnard made a procedural motion to instead have the House recess. That was approved along party lines, denying Democrats the vote they sought and effectively keeping Republicans from having to go on the record on whether they support or oppose the amendment. The proposal, approved by Congress in 1972, says that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. And it would empower Congress to enforce provisions. That action sent it to the states for ratification. Legislatures in 36 states have acted, most recently Nevada earlier this year; HCR 2012 sought to add Arizona to that list, though four states have taken action to rescind their prior votes. The measure needs approval of 38 states to become part of the U.S. Constitution. A parade of Democrat lawmakers urged colleagues in the Republican-controlled House to quash the motion to recess and allow a vote. Do you want to go home and tell your daughters and granddaughters that you preferred to take a recess than actually have the opportunity to be leading and continuing to lead the state of Arizona? asked Rep. Isela Blanc, D-Tempe. Retired Monsignor Arsenio S. Carrillo, a native Tucsonan who served 40 years at St. Augustine Cathedral, died Wednesday morning, April 26, at his home on Tucsons northeast side. He was 87. Carrillo, a former vicar general for the diocese, had been ill, said Steffannie Koeneman, a Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson spokeswoman. She did not have information about his health issues. Frank Sotomayor, a cousin of Carrillos, released a statement from the family: Our family grieves for the loss of our beloved Cheno while we also celebrate his devoted half-century of service to the Catholic community of Tucson. We are thankful that he is now with our Lord and Savior. We sincerely thank everyone who has expressed condolences for his passing. We mourn the loss of one of our finest priests, said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas. Not only was he loved by the members of the St. Augustine Cathedral, but of the larger community as well. He was a leader known by many ... his image on the overpass near downtown is a reflection of his being an exemplar among us. We will miss his warmth of heart, his quick wit and his deep kindness, said Kicanas. On a Facebook post in Spanish, Santiago Benton, 41, recalled his years as a young altar boy serving with the monsignor. Benton said Carrillo was a perfect model of a priest and pastor. He radiated love, understanding, patience, tremendous wisdom and his sermons were the most inspirational that I have heard in my life. He made an impact on me and thousands of other persons. Carrillo was ordained a priest on May 26, 1956, and was pastor at the cathedral from September 1969 to June 29, 1995. He then served as associate pastor until his official retirement July 1, 2002, said Koeneman. In a 2006 interview with the Star, he described himself as a frustrated mariachi, explaining he was looking forward to hearing Mariachi Cobre and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra perform at a concert in the Old Pueblo. The concert was a celebration of Carrillos 50th anniversary in the priesthood and a fundraiser to restore the cathedrals placita and hall, which were renamed after Carrillo. Carrillo said by the age of 12 he knew he wanted to be a priest. He was inspired by Father Carmelo, a Spaniard who was a very kind, generous person and the pastor at Holy Family Church when Carrillo was a boy. He was a consoling person to people in need, and I wanted to be the same when I grew up, recalled Carrillo, one of seven children born to Guadalupe Sotomayor Carrillo and Federico Carrillo. His father, who suffered from leukemia, supported the family by selling fruits and vegetables throughout Tucsons barrios with the help of his children. Carrillo said knowing that the cathedrals hall and placita would be renovated and dedicated in his honor made him feel humble and proud. I take it as gratitude as part of my service at the cathedral. In my time, I have celebrated thousands of baptisms, first Holy Communions, weddings and funerals, he said. Funeral services are pending. PHOENIX Saying sometimes parental admonitions are not always enough, Gov. Doug Ducey this morning signed legislation which will make it illegal for the state's newest drivers to use their cell phones by behind the wheel. But not just yet. The legislation which takes effect July 1, 2018 bans not just texting but even making calls for those with a learner's permit as well as teens for the first six months after they get an actual license. First-time violations can result in a $75 fine and having the new motorist's restrictions things beyond cell phone use like not driving after midnight and limiting the number of other teens in the vehicle extended for an additional 30 days. A second violation is a $100 fine with an extra six months of restrictions. And a third offense results in license suspension for 30 days. The measure was approved over objections from some legislators who said it should be up to parents to ensure that new drivers in the family aren't texting or chatting. Ducey said he understands that, having already raised two teen drivers and with a 13-year-old waiting in the wings for his chance. "I had more than advice, he said about his experiences with his sons. "I had a contract they needed to sign. But the governor said that goes only so far. "The law is a teacher, he said. And Ducey said there is a "tremendous learning curve for new drivers. "So I'm hopeful that parents are advising their kids not to text and drive, he said. "Now the law will reinforce that. Sen. Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said she crafted the legislation to be the most politically acceptable, affecting only the newest drivers and only for six months. Prior measures going back more than a decade which sought to impose a more encompassing ban have proven to be non-starters. But Ducey said he supports something even more expansive than what landed on his desk. "I would have signed a bill that restricted texting from 16 to 18, the governor said. "I think your rights, your ability to vote, serve your country begin at 18. Ducey's signature means that Arizona will no longer be one of just two states without any laws about the use of cell phones by motorists. According to AAA, 46 states plus the District of Columbia ban text messaging by all drivers. But while there is no such law in Texas or Missouri, both do ban teens from using cell phones. Mexico Alleged gang leader captured in Juarez MEXICO CITY Mexican prosecutors say they have captured the alleged leader of the La Linea gang, the group they say is responsible for most of the recent executions in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. La Linea is a violent gang that has long acted as enforcers for the Juarez drug cartel. The Attorney Generals Office said Thursday the suspect, Miguel Angel Amaya Loya, and another top member of the gang were caught with guns and drugs. Paraguay Gang gets away with $11.72M from vault ASUNCION The gang that blasted into an armored companys vault this week got away with $11.72 million in cash the biggest heist in Paraguays history, prosecutors said on Thursday About 50 attackers armed with assault rifles used explosives to open the vault of the Prosegur company early Monday in the border city of Ciudad del Este. The robbers also torched about 20 cars before they escaped to Brazil. One police officer was killed . Brazilian gangs are suspected of carrying out the attack. Brazils Federal Police had arrested about 15 men, but seven were released Thursday for lack of evidence. Police also seized assault rifles and recovered about $1.5 million after a gunfight . Pakistan Taliban say militant used for propaganda ISLAMABAD The Pakistani Taliban say the countrys top intelligence service is using a captured senior militant to spread propaganda that the militant group is beholden to spy agencies in India and Afghanistan. Pakistans army released a video showing Ahsanullah Ahsan, a longtime media spokesman for the Taliban and another extremist group, saying he surrendered to Pakistani forces after he saw militant leaders receiving aid from the two neighboring countries. On Monday SBS screens a one-off doco Simon Reeves Colombia, travelling to Cartagena, Medellin and rural areas of Latin America. Simon Reeve is on a journey around Colombia, one of the most spectacular countries in the world, which for 50 years has been gripped by a brutal civil war. Starting his journey on the tropical Rosario islands, Simon explores the murky history of Colombias drugs barons, visiting the nearby port city of Cartagena, where a historic peace deal was signed by the government and the guerrilla army FARC, bringing an end to the long war. Despite the formidable challenges, Simon finds hope for the future in the notorious city of Medellin once home to Pablo Escobars notorious cartel. Simon meets the former Mayor to find out how the city has been transformed from the most dangerous city on earth to one of Colombias liveliest and most creative. Finally, Simons journey takes him to the most rural areas of Colombia, where he meets the farmers battling for a different future one not fuelled by the global demand for drugs. They are seeking support from the government to stop farming coca, the plant form of cocaine, and to grow legal crops. With land ownership, poverty and drugs at the heart of Colombias problems, it is in the countryside that the countrys future will be decided. Monday, 1 May at 8.30pm on SBS. Help India! By Umair Azmi for TwoCircles.net In a recent piece in the Indian Express (April 19, 2017), titled Iqbals Wrong Turn, public intellectual Pratap Bhanu Mehta sought a connection between the philosopher Dr. Muhammad Iqbals theory of tolerance and the killing of the Pakistani student, Mashal Khan. Mehta takes issue with the readings of others who see Iqbals theory of toleration as one that goes beyond liberal pieties, and argues that the religious approach has certain inherent limitations. Support TwoCircles The pamphlet in question, Islam and Ahmadism was written in response to three articles written in the Modern Review by Jawaharlal Nehru in which, among other issues, he sought to know whether Dr. Iqbal considered the Turkish nationalist leader, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, or the Turks in general to have abandoned Islam in light of their actions which included replacing the Arabic language of the Quran with Turkish in the Latin script. Nehrus articles, in turn, were written in response to another pamphlet of Dr. Iqbal Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims. Dr. Iqbal refused to argue that they had abandoned Islam. Laying down the criteria for belonging to the Muslim community, he wrote: As long as a person is loyal to the two basic principles of Islam, i.e., the Unity of God and Finality of the Holy Prophet, not even the strictest mullah can turn him outside the pale of Islam even though his interpretations of the law or the text of the Quran are believed to be erroneous. In spite of these liberal criteria, Ahmadis, according to Dr. Iqbal fell outside the pale of Islam, for they denied the finality of the Holy Prophet. This, according to Mehta, is to cast Ahmadis out of toleration. The lesson is that what matters is not the theory of toleration (which everyone professes) but the boundaries of toleration Securing unity of a religious community through allegiance to a single principle, symbol or totem, has violence inherent in it. It seems that for Mehta, an idea can be based on tolerance only if it includes everyone within its fold, or at least all those who claim to subscribe to it. Take two of the most popular ideologies of the day: liberalism and feminism. If Mohan Bhagwat were to claim that the RSS ideology is the epitome of liberalism (considering that the Sangh now claims to follow Gandhi as well as Ambedkar, this is no longer a totally outlandish suggestion), should we expect Mehta to acquiesce to it? Or if traditionalists who believe in gender-based division of roles (the females role being limited to household chores) claimed to be feminists, should we expect feminists to accept it without a murmur of protest? If liberals and feminists do protest, would Mehta be consistent and point them out as the narrow boundaries of toleration inherent in those ideologies? To take a more concrete actual example rather than an imagined one, will the republican in him consider North Korea to be a democratic republic, for the official name happens to be Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea? If a religion becomes intolerant on account of having an unalterable core, then consistency demands that all ideologies be considered equally intolerant. The only ideology that would be tolerant of all would be one that is devoid of all content, an ideology that is non-existent. The only community that would be tolerant would be one that is based on nothing. Liberal tolerance and religious tolerance Mehta argues that the question of toleration from the perspective of religion has severe limitations. Presumably, his idea of toleration would not suffer from these limitations. What is that idea? A newspaper article would not give enough space to elucidate a complete theory, but one does expect its application in other writings from the same author. In his article titled Jain lessons for Haryana (The Indian Express, September 2, 2016), Mehtas reflections on a nude monks address in the Haryana assembly, and the relation between dharma and politics are remarkable: But his presence also raised interesting cultural issues around pluralism, shame and the body. In a way, his presence was a riposte to liberals not because it was religious. But it did raise the question of how modern societies deal with really radical difference. How much are we seamlessly willing to accommodate cosmologies that are radically different, where monks are sky clad and inhabit public spaces? Or is modern society more disciplinary, and less pluralistic, than we suppose? We should not be so smug. It would be tempting to read this as an example of radical tolerance. But none of this reflection on the nature of modern pluralism and the limits of its accommodation can be found in Not majority vs minority (The Indian Express, September 6, 2016). Here, it was a question of communities not extending courtesies they demand to their members. But all that liberalism requires to get started is extending the courtesy of the very same argument that communities use to keep other communities out, to individuals within them. The freedom from another community cannot be the freedom to oppress within. The solution: laws based on liberalism should ride rough shod over personal laws. One would think that an individual desiring freedom from community based laws could make use of the Special Marriage Act. But in his righteous liberal rage, why should Mehta be bothered with such trifles? With his repeated harping on the un-representative nature of the board, one might be forgiven for believing that the Constitution of India was written by a body chosen on the basis of universal adult franchise. Or perhaps representation is a criterion that is to be applied selectively. The difference in Mehtas attitude to radical difference among Jains and Muslims is remarkable, considering that the two articles were written within a week. While one demands reflection, the other demands only the most severe attack, and possibly, suppression by force. Is this due to a soft corner for Jainism, or due to intolerance for Islam? Either way, it is indicative of extreme personal prejudice and intolerance. This is the limit of toleration that Mehta espouses- one where ideas are shoved down the throat under the garb of individual rights, freedom and dignity, for the only understanding that these concepts may have are those presented by liberalism. It seems those who do not subscribe to liberalism are perpetual infants, in need of the benevolent liberal masters forcing them for their own good. It is a telling illustration of a theory of toleration that is free of the limitations of a religious theory. In contrast with liberal tolerance that enforces a monoculture is the theory borne out of religious considerations- where every community was allowed to live their lives as they deemed fit in accordance with their own civil laws. This is the practice that can be found in the earliest years of Islamic rule, as well as in the last of the caliphates, the Ottoman caliphate with its millet system. The tension regarding the limits of toleration were actions that were totally abhorrent to the Muslim psyche, such as incest and widow-burning, and even in these cases, the balance usually tilted in favour of the communitys own ethics rather than Muslim morality. Yet Mehta would have us understand that it is the religious perspective that has limitations. The Islamic caliphates, especially the Umayyad caliphate of Andalusia produced remarkable cosmopolitan multi-cultural societies. The same may be true of the Byzantine Empire, with its Christian basis, and India as well. A totem of unity did not inhibit the flourishing of multiple cultures. But India, with its various forms of religion and no totem of unity, also produced one of the worst forms of structural violence in all of human history- the caste system. So much for the correlation between the insistence on religious unity and violence. Iqbals complicity in anti-Ahmadi violence As a postscript to his first pamphlet, Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims, Iqbal added: I understand that this statement has caused some misunderstanding in some quarters. It is thought that I have made a subtle suggestion to the Government to suppress the Qadiani movement by force. Nothing of the kind. I have made it clear that the policy of non-interference in religion is the only policy which can be adopted by the rulers of India. No other policy is possible. I confess, however, that to my mind this policy is harmful to the interests of religious communities; but there is no escape from it and those who suffer will have to safeguard their interests by suitable means. The best course for the rulers of India is, in my opinion, to declare the Qadianis a separate community. This will be perfectly consistent with the policy of the Qadianis themselves, and the Indian Muslim will tolerate them just as he tolerates other religions. Everyone but the rabid anti-Islamic troll knows that Muslim toleration of other religions does not imply lynching as happened with Mashal Khan. Yet, Pratap Bhanu Mehta charges Dr. Iqbal with being complicit in intolerance, the context being violence against Ahmadis in Pakistan. If such tenuous connections are all that is required for the charge of complicity, dare we apply similar standards to our holy cows? Consider this from Gandhi (cited by D.N.Jha in the introduction to The Myth of the Holy Cow): Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth. Our mother gives us milk for a couple of years and then expects us to serve her when we grow up. Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain. Our mother often falls ill and expects service from us. Mother cow rarely falls ill. Hers is an unbroken record of service which does not end with her death. Our mother when she dies means expenses of burial or cremation. Mother cow is as useful dead as when she is alive. Scores of such paeans to cow protection are attributed to the Mahatma. Should he then be held complicit in the murder of Akhlaq? But Gandhi is no longer considered the faultless saint. The faultless sage of the age is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. As opposed to Gandhi the sanatanist conservative, he is supposedly the supremely rational modern, unfettered by the chains of the past. What role does he play? In the Constituent Assembly debates regarding what ultimately became Article 48, Muhammad Saadullah pleaded for the removal of the illogical connection between animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and the prohibition of slaughter of cows, calves, etc. By ignoring this plea, and giving his stamp of approval to the directive principle, did not Ambedkar the rational endorse the scientific nature of gau-raksha? Must we then hold him complicit for atrocities in the name of the cow such as Una and numerous others? Or is it only the Allamah who must meet a standard of innocence not demanded of others? The contours of liberal toleration (at least the variety that Mehta upholds) appear to be very strange. There may be room for nudists, but there seems to be an allergy to anything Islamic (or does the allergy extend to all Abrahamic religions? Or non-Indic religions?) whether it be philosophy or civil law. The author is an engineer, with a Masters degree in Computer Science, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Help India! TCN News Navaid Hamid, President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (confederation of sixteen major Muslim organizations) has expressed deep concern over the deteriorating law and order situation in Kashmir valley and continued cycle of violence for the past eight months. Support TwoCircles Mushawarat firmly blames that Modi Government and the PDP- BJP coalition partner for their utter failure to bring about peace in the state. This the main reason for disquiet against the government among the people who are subjected to brutal use of excessive force. Hamid said that the over reaction of the security forces, under the direction of the policy makers in New Delhi, to deal with the stone pelters has further spoiled the chances to bring normalcy in the state. As Mushawarats statement said, the unfortunate part of the crisis is the continuous insistence of the BJP leaders that the crisis in J&K is a Law & Order problem and not a political crisis which needs to be solved through dialogue with all stake holders and persuasion and human approach. It further said that instead of reaching out to the protesters, they are being dealt with force. All saner politician and defense experts including Former Army Chief Gen Malik, Lt Gen Panag and former GOC Lt. Gen Hooda pleaded for initiation of political dialogue with the all stake holders to end political crisis in the state. Mushawarat alleges center for the ignorance of basic public demands that the center had ignored their pleas as well as appeals of political groups. India is one of the greatest democracies in the world and the approach of our leaders should be to reach out to all those people who have remained away from the national mainstream, there is a need to apply balm to their wounds rather than further alienating them. Hamid said that we all must walk on the path of peace and resume negotiation to find peaceful solution to the issue. Day by day the Kashmiri youth is feeling alienated because of the continuous attack on the students from Kashmir by the hate mongers of RSS affiliated organizations in educational institutions mostly in the BJP ruled states. The government should act firmly against these hoodlums. A good number of brilliant students have left their educational institutions because of state patronage to the culprits. What the BJP and other right-wingers fail to understand is the danger of the total alienation of the Kashmiri youths. Recently a group of civil society activists under the leadership of Yashwant Sinha, former foreign minister and BJP leader had visited valley and had submitted a vision document for resolution of the issue. Mushawarat firmly demands that the Government of India that should immediately give up policy of repression and excessive use of force and initiate unconditional dialogue with all stake holders on lines of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee policy. AIMMM further urges government to give due considerations to Yashwant Sinhas recommendations to solve the current crisis in the state. Mushawarat also appeals to the agitating youths and students in valley to stop violence and concentrate on studies to build their future and reminds them that violence would not bring any resolution to crisis. Mushawarat is of firm view that the Kashmiri students and youths should adopt more peaceful means to highlight their problems instead of violence. New Delhi: Veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who had been admitted to Mumbai's Hospital for the last few years, has died. He had been suffering from cancer for some time now and died at 70 years of age. From films to politics, Vinod Khanna was quite active. Mr. Vinod was born on 6 October 1946 in Peshawar, Pakistan. After the partition of independence, his family settled down from Pakistan to Mumbai. Khanna was undergoing treatment at Mumbai's HN Reliance Hospital. Recently, one of his photos went viral on social media, after which his son had said that his health was just fine. V. Khanna had been a veteran actor of Indian films. Since the recruitment to Vinod's hospital, the entire Hindi cinema was praying for his health. Vinod Khanna: Celebrities met him in hospital Salman Khan had reached Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital to meet V. Khanna at midnight. Salman Khan had done many films with Mr. Khanna and has considered him as his lucky Mascot and mentor. Apart from Salman Khan, CM Devendra Fadnavis of Maharashtra also reached out to meet him. At the same time, actor Irfan Khan also offered best wishes to V. Khanna for his health. Irrfan Khan said on Thursday that he was surprised to see the recent photo of actor V. Khanna. Irfan Khan wished Vinod to recover soon. Vinod Khanna: Most expensive actor of 80's Vinod, a superstar of the 70s and 80s, was the star who made his debut as a villain. In 1968, he started his film journey with Sunil Dutt in the film 'Man ki Mit'. He played negative characters in many films like 'Purab aur Paschim', 'Mera Gaon Mera Desh'. In 1971, he played a major role in 'Hum Tum Aur Woh'. At the same time, both Vinod and Amitabh Bachchan were at the boom of their Bollywood career. Mr. Khanna was considered as a strong opponent of Amitabh Bachchan, both superstars worked together in films such as 'Mukaddar Ka Sikandar', 'Parvarish', 'Amar Akhtar Anthony'. Vinod was one of the most expensive stars in Bollywood from 1987 to 1994. Vinod Khanna: Died with 150 films on his credit Despite being at the peak of his career, Vinod retired from the film industry and became a follower of Osho. He was used to going to Osho's ashram in Pune and was impressed with this extent that he kept several shooting schedules in Pune only. According to many media reports, Vinod went to America after retirement and spent nearly 5 years with Osho. Vinod acted in nearly 150 films in his four decades long cine career. Every character played by the legendary Mr. Khanna is alive in the hearts of cinema lovers. The other day whilst driving to work, I came across a roundabout outside Stratford, the new home of pro-Remain group Stratford4Europe, and I noticed it was decorated with EU flags. Yet this time, last year, I never once saw supporters of Stronger In, the main campaign group that fought to keep us in the EU, exercise that much passion before the referendum in June last year. But since Brexit became a reality, all of a sudden, these Europhiles have emerged out of the wood-works to overturn a democratic result. Yet if the likes of Gina Miller and Sir Richard Branson exercised this much energy before the referendum, Remain might have actually won. It is questionable as to how much time and energy these activists going on street protests and establishing new groups like Best for Britain, Open Britain and Stratford4Europe invested into knocking on people's doors last year to persuade them to vote to remain a part of the EU. That is where elections are won. I am pretty sure I can no longer count how many pro-Remain groups there are now on my one hand. The beautiful feat about democracy is that everyone is entitled to an opinion and it is refreshing to see people exercise passion in their beliefs. But these Europhiles are showing that vigour and excitement at the wrong time. Brexit is happening. If Theresa May wins a stonking majority, she will be the first prime minister elected with a mandate to leave the EU. There is nothing arch Remainers can do about that. So when the likes of Tony Blair, Gina Miller and Professor AC Grayling emerge out of nowhere to tell us to fight Brexit, they conveniently forget more people voted for this than any government in our democratic history. Yet I am sure it was their complacency that the British people would never vote for anything 'so stupid' that caused Sir Richard, Mrs Miller and Professor Grayling to keep quiet in the first place. How could these 'ignorant people' dare to challenge their cushy little lives, eh? How very dare you! white house Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who finds himself defending President Donald Trumps asinine actions on a daily basis, has finally reached his breaking point. Today, he finally kicked off at a reporter, and even better, it was a black woman. Facing the brunt of his outburst was April Ryan, the Washington DC bureau chief on behalf of American Urban Radio Networks. You dont seem so happy, said Ryan, teasing Spicer. Turns out he doesnt respond well to teasing. She was asking a simple question During Tuesdays press briefing, Ryan simply asked Spicer if the Trump administration was looking to revamp its image amid the Russia investigations, the falsely-accused Obama wiretapping scandal, and all the rest. Spicer replied instantly, No, we dont have that. Then he got all on the defensive for Trump yet again, telling Ryan, I get it, before launching into an intense rant about the whole Russia thing. He said that ever since he arrived in office, hes been telling the press time and again that there is no connection between Trump and Russia. He then joked that If the President puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow thats a Russian connection. Spicer kindly pledged to Ryan, I appreciate your agenda here, but the reality is... and then Ryan tried to speak and Spicer interrupted her, Hold on. That was an early sign of the cracks starting to show as he was ready to pop. He told her to at some point, report the facts. But for all we know, the facts are that Trump and Russia are in cahoots, and all signs point to it, no matter how much Spicer denies it and says theres no collusion between them. At present, the Russia investigations are ongoing. Spicer should appreciate those facts. And not alternative facts. Dear God, please not alternative facts. Then Ryan started shaking her head and things got ugly Spicer saw Ryan shaking her head, without saying a word, from the midst of the crowd of reporters and it started to rile him. Im sorry that disgusts you, he said sarcastically, before Ryan did a quick 180 to spin the questioning to a different approach, and asked him about the meeting Trump will be having this week with Condoleezza Rice. Avoiding the question about Rice, Spicer pointed out that it was interesting that Ryan chose to ask the Rice question directly after the Russia question, because she asked Spicer what the Trump administrations plan was to improve our image (Spicers words), and then said that the meeting with Rice is meeting somebody that hasnt been a big supporter. He then angrily accused Ryan of being hell bent on trying to make sure whatever image she wanted to portray of Trumps White House in her report stays. Spicer, now very agitated, then told Ryan, Im sorry, please stop shaking your head again. Ryan quickly responded on Twitter with a single-word tweet: Lawd!!!! Lawd!!!! Ryan appeared later on MSNBC to say that shes been reporting from the White House for two decades, ever since Bill Clintons second term, and says shes never seen anything quite like Spicer in all her days of political reporting. She added that her question was simple, essentially asking Spicer how he intended to fix the perception problem about Trumps White House. She perfectly described Spicers resultant tangent as it went off into this Russian dressing, no shaking my head or whatever. Ryan says that Spicer is simply trying to make this administration look better than it actually is, saying that she was treated like roadkill at todays briefing. Ultra Remainers Sir Richard Branson and Gina Miller are banding together to destroy Brexit. It has been revealed by the Daily Mail that the Virgin boss is bankrolling a new campaign to defeat pro-Brexit MPs. Mrs Miller, the businesswoman who defeated the Government in the Supreme Court over whether the Prime Minister has the authority to trigger Article 50, has recently launched a new campaign called Best for Britain. She is urging Remain voters to participate in a strategy to remove MPs who support leaving the EU, calling it a big tactical voting effort. The campaign group is offering to invest 300,000 in marginal seats to assist candidates who want to reverse the recent legislation that has allowed Theresa May to trigger Article 50, the mechanism for leaving the EU under the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. According to Mrs Miller, she is fighting to defeat an elected dictatorship. She said that 10,000 have donated to the campaign so far. Sir Richard has also provided office space for her group and provided 25,000 to help with its launch. Virgin chairman Peter Norris is joining as a board member. 'British people should not have to accept final deal' Mrs Miller said the British people should not have to accept a deal with the EU that they do not like and that is why she wants to support candidates who would vote against a final agreement. She said if they have to put up with a shoddy EU deal that makes families worse off, that is an elected dictatorship. The businesswoman also attacked Prime Minister Theresa May for using this snap election as an opportunity to cede more power, refuting her claims it is about strengthening Britain's hand in upcoming EU negotiations. Mrs Miller is not standing as a candidate herself, but she wants to support MPs who are open minded about Britain's future and ensure Parliament scrutinises the final deal effectively. But with opinion polls suggesting the Tories are on course to win a huge majority, the businesswoman may find it very difficult to help elect candidates who support remaining in the EU. 'Fight against hardest Brexit possible' Open Britain, a campaign group that supports Britain's membership of the EU's Single Market, was also dealt a further blow earlier this week when pro-Remain Conservative MPs Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan quit. They both left because they were unhappy Open Britain are also targeting pro-Brexit MPs in the upcoming general election. It is believed Mrs Morgan was on that list. Ms Soubry wrote on Twitter she was unhappy that the group were targeting her friend, Mrs Morgan. Despite this, pro-Remain groups have received high profile support after former prime minister Tony Blair said he would throw his weight behind the Liberal Democrats, who are campaigning to defeat Brexit. Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said he wants to fight against the hardest Brexit possible. There have even been rumours he may well become a candidate himself. Mrs Miller's rise to fame Mrs May called a general election last week in an effort to strengthen the Government's mandate going into the Brexit negotiations. She also triggered Article 50 in March this year. But she only did so after securing enough parliamentary support to issue Article 50. The Conservative leader had always intended to begin Britain's exit from the EU in March, but her decision was delayed by Mrs Miller's challenge to the Government in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said in January this year Mrs May could not trigger Brexit without parliamentary approval. The Attorney General, Jeremy Wright MP, continued the Government's fight for the Prime Minister to commence Britain's EU divorce proceedings without parliamentary approval in the Supreme Court to challenge Mrs Miller's successful bid to delay Brexit in the High Court. The businesswoman's victory last November propelled her to fame. After learning about last year's vote to leave the EU, Sir Richard met with the Prime Minister during the beginning of her premiership to try to persuade her to reverse this vote. 52 per cent of people who voted in last year's EU Referendum decided to leave the superbloc. Donald Trump has made it clear that he's not a fan of the mainstream news media. On Tuesday, the president continued his war of words with one of his favorite media targets. Trump on Twitter From the day Donald Trump announced his campaign for president and labeled illegal immigrants as "murderers" and "rapists," it didn't take long before he faced backlash from the press. Over the next year and a half, the former host of "The Apprentice" would receive non-stop coverage, most of it negative, which resulted in Trump shaming reporters and journalists in the process. It became routine for Trump to refer to members of the media as "terrible" and "the most dishonest people" he had ever met, prompting his supporters to follow in his footsteps. With the exception of Fox News and a handful of other members of the right wing media, Trump would go on to give certain news outlets nicknames, including the New York Times who he referred to as "failing." Since then, the billionaire real estate mogul refers to any criticism in the media that he doesn't agree with as "fake news," which appeared to continue in a March 28 message on Twitter. The failing @NYTimes would do much better if they were honest! https://t.co/ATy8R3knS2 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017 Taking to his Twitter account on Tuesday morning, Donald Trump posted an article that was published by the New York Post, where the newspaper questioned the New York Times over their fact-checking of the president. As expected, Trump was not happy. "The failing @NYTimes would do much better if they were honest!" Trump tweeted out. The title of the article by the New York Post reads "The New York Times ongoing dishonesty only helps Trump," and accuses the paper of being biased against the commander in chief. Moving forward Donald Trump has only been president for just over two months, but in that time he's created a constant stream of controversy that has surrounded his administration. From the growing scandal involving Russia, to his controversial executive orders, and his legislative failures like health care, it doesn't appear likely that the media is going to slow down in their attacks on Trump, which isn't going to go over well with the new president. In recent weeks, the scandal surrounding Russia and Donald Trump has only heated up with each passing day. With most news outlets holding Trump's feet to the fire on the issue, the president has found that Fox News is his only safe space in the media. Trump on Fox News Even before he pulled off the upset over Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States last November, Donald Trump was surrounded by a constant controversy regarding Russia. Since the billionaire real estate mogul refused to release his tax returns, reports circulated and alleged that Trump had financial ties to the Kremlin. In addition, several of Trump's past and current advisers and associates have been exposed for having their own link to Russia, in one way or another. In an attempt to deflect from the issue at hand, Trump has made several baseless allegations, with his latest including a Fox News story that targets former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. As seen on his Twitter account on March 28, Trump continued to lash out. Why doesn't Fake News talk about Podesta ties to Russia as covered by @FoxNews or money from Russia to Clinton - sale of Uranium? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017 The latest conspiracy about the Clinton campaign involves John Podesta and his alleged time on the board of directors of a Russian based energy company. Not much is known about the allegations, but that hasn't stopped Donald Trump from promoting it ad nauseam. Doubling down on tweets made on Monday night, Trump once again used his Twitter following to push the Podesta/Clinton/Russia conspiracy, while blasting "fake news" in the process. Trump Plugs Fox & Friends (Again) and Clinton Hit Piece on Twitter https://t.co/17uDyogaCO (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/YgU3lCxhLS Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 28, 2017 Trump on 'fake news' "Why doesn't Fake News talk about Podesta ties to Russia as covered by @FoxNews or money from Russia to Clinton - sale of Uranium?," Donald Trump sent out on Twitter Tuesday night. As expected, the commander and chief has a close bond with the conservative network, which has only increased in recent days. Last week, Trump tweeted out for his supporters to watch a broadcast of Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, while doing the same for "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday morning. As of press time, the only allegations taken seriously are the ones being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee which show Russia hacked the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. A few days ago, North Korea arrested a US citizen Tony Kim, known as Kim Sang-duk, making him the third American citizen detained in a country governed by Kim Jong. After they were arrested, they all met heavy conditions, miniature cells, little water and food, and even less light, the New York Times writes. Subsequently, the forcible acknowledgment of the "crime" they have been charged with, (theft of posters) followed mounted trial and conviction for many years of slavery, with no chances of a pardon. Three detained Americans are currently Otto F. Warmbier, Kim Dong-Chul and earlier mentioned, Tony Kim. The conditions in which they are located are known from the story of US citizens who have experienced this agony in North Korea and were released sooner or later after the intervention of highly-positioned US politicians. "I was held in a cell that was 1.5 1.5 meters. There were no lattices, and when they would close the small opening at the door, it was a complete darkness. There was no way to communicate with the outside world" said Laura King, an American journalist detained in 2009. US missionary Kenneth Bae after being released, published memoirs "Unforgettable" where he wrote that he was questioned for 15 hours a day, from 8 am to 11 pm, every day for four weeks in a row. The New York Times briefly described the cases of currently detained Americans in North Korea. Tony Kim Mr. Kim has been teaching at the University of Science And Technology in Pyongyang for a month and was trying to embark on an aircraft to leave the country just before he was arrested on Saturday, said a staff member at Chan-Mo Park University. "The reason for his arrest is unknown, but I learned later at the university that allegedly it has nothing to do with his work with at the university. He has done some other activities outside the university, such as h the helping at orphanage " Reuters Park said. Mr. Kim, a man in the mid-50's, has previously taught at Yanbian University of Science and Technology in China, near the border with North Korea. In Pyongyang, he traveled with his wife, who is considered to still being in the state, but it is not known whether she was arrested. According to his Facebook page, Kim graduated accounting in the United States and has been an accountant for over 10 years. Otto F. Warmbier Otto F. Warmbier is a 21-year-old student from Virginia University who traveled to North Korea on a group trip and was also arrested on a home flight in January 2016. A month after that, he was sentenced "because he tried to steal a propaganda poster". At a press conference held last year, obviously frightened Otto admitted the poster theft and said he did that because a fellow student "promised him a $ 10,000 used car if he did." "I've made the worst mistake in life," Warmbier said in a confession, but it was not clear whether he was honest or forced to say so. Kim Dong-Chul Kim Dong-Chul is an American entrepreneur who was sentenced to 10 years in April last year for "spying and other offenses". A month before the trial, Mr. Dong-Chul also appeared at a press conference in Pyongyang organized by the North Korean government and apologized for attempted theft of military secrets in co-operation with South Koreans. The South Korean intelligence agencies have resolutely denied it. His fate was not known until January 2016 when the authorities in Pyongyang allowed CNN to interview him. Dong-Chul was then presented as a 62-year-old naturalized US citizen from Fairfax, Virginia, and said he had previously run a trade and tourism company in the special economic zone of Rason in North Korea, close to the Chinese and Russian borders. He said he was arrested in October 2015 when he was meeting a former soldier of the North Korean Army to exchange certain classified information. The President of the United States orchestrated an exclusive meeting with two of Colombias former leaders. The conference occurred a week ago at Donald Trumps Mar-A-Lago estate. He seemed to infuse himself into the South American countrys never-ending political fight over their peace treaty. The White House affirmed this encounter today in a press conference in Washington, D.C. Deputy Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stated that former Presidents Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe were there with a representative from the resort and quickly made proper acquaintance when the president strolled in their direction. She commented during the media briefing, "There was nothing past a swift hi greeting." No one knows any details Sanders refused to respond to question on why no one openly covered the meeting between the three political leaders since it is very hazy as to when the actual conference happened. Press Secretary Sean Spicer responded to media interrogations surrounding the briefing between America and Columbia, stating, I am unable to provide any information right now. No one even knew of the meeting until President Pastrana took to Twitter to say thanks to Donald Trump for the thoughtful and exceptionally straightforward discussion about the issues and points of view of Colombia and its surrounding areas. Trump, Pastrana, Uribe and Santos Both Pastrana and Uribe are reliable pundits of a notable peace treaty that recently formed between the rebellion leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. Their government is a stable South American ally to the United States. The two politicians are likewise unforgiving examiners of Columbias current President, Mr. Juan Manuel Santos. The political leader is one of the original creators of the peace treaty and highly anticipated to attend a meeting of his own with President Trump within the next few weeks. A representative for Santos chose not to remark on Trumps experience with Uribe and Pastrana when requested by a reporter from ABC News. Donald recently spoke to Santos in February during a telephone conference between the two Commanders-in-Chief. They talked about the U.S. assisting Colombia in creating peace within the South American nation, after 52 years of constant conflict between them and FARC. As indicated in an article from VOA News, government officials claim Santos approached President Trump to call on him for support. He needs the U.S. President to convince Congress to finance efforts that would help encourage the process of implementing the peace treaty. Former President Barack Obama firmly contributed his support in Colombias endeavors during negotiations that surrounded the treaty. Last year, the Swedish industrialist awarded Santos with a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the peace agreement. The Marxist FARC have been in a never-ending battle with Colombias government for over five decades. There have been over 220,000 individuals killed since the violent war initially began. Before the state of Arkansas conducting the first dual execution in 17-years, the lawyers for inmates Jack H. Jones Jr. and Marcel Williams challenged the use of the drug Midazolam that was used to kill them. They reportedly said that because of their medical conditions, using the drug might be ineffectual and cause the executions to be "unconstitutionally painful." The practice of executing an inmate through Lethal Injection was actually designed to be painless but as a Blasting News article which details the process explains, there are plenty of cases that have been widely reported which have given the appearance and to many no doubt that the executions had been botched. Signs of suffering for death row inmate A reporter for the Associated Press was present at the dual executions and said that he saw Mr. Jones move his lips for up to two minutes after the lethal injection process began. But he could not confirm whether the inmate was gasping for air or if he was experiencing any pain. The New York Times reported that in a court filing, the lawyers said that Mr. Jones "gulped for air during the execution" and stated that this was "evidence of continued consciousness." As a process, the executioners are supposed to be able to find a vein to administer the drugs quickly, but they reportedly spent up to 45 minutes trying to find a vein in Mr. William's neck to insert the central line. When they couldn't do that, they had to look elsewhere. Opposition, stays and other execution In the mentioned Blasting News article, it was reported that Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson was rushing to execute up to seven inmates before the end of the month because the drug was going to expire but encountered conflicts with pharmaceutical companies, attorneys and human rights groups along the way. Those public's outrage and efforts by attorneys have resulted in four stays issued by the courts until the state was able to carry out the execution on Ledell Lee who was executed last Thursday. As of this writing, nothing has been done to stop the scheduled execution of Kenneth Williams, a fourth inmate, this coming Thursday. Judge Kristine G. Baker of the United States District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas had initially issued a temporary stay for Marcel Williams before she would eventually reject it. She also ruled against a separate challenge as to when the curtains to the death chamber should be opened for witnesses to view in an adjoining room. Following the execution of Mr. Jones, the victim's daughter, Lacey Seal who survived his assault told reporters that she was glad it was done and was also glad that this chapter in her life was now closed. The incident happened in San Franciscos Pacific Heights neighborhood shortly prior to 9 p.m. on Saturday night, when a woman was walking along Steiner Street. Reportedly she was between Green and Vallejo Streets when a man grabbed her from behind, placing a black bag over her head and then attempting to put her into his truck. Motorist and neighbors come to the aid of the San Francisco woman David Covert, a Pacific Heights resident, was in his home at the time and told ABC7 News he heard a woman screaming very loudly for around seven to ten seconds. However it was a motorist that came to the San Francisco womans aid. According to a report by Fox 2, the 18-year-old man and his girlfriend were in a parked car in the area and saw the suspect who they said looked to be in his forties place the black bag over the womans head in a kidnapping attempt. The driver reportedly turned on his cars bright lights, all the while honking his horn loudly. This brought several neighbors out of their homes, who then chased the suspect, ultimately scaring him away after he released the victim. Witnesses say the suspect put a black bag over the woman's head and tried to drag her into his car around 9 p.m. https://t.co/wLEAKGeCVx KTVU (@KTVU) April 25, 2017 Kidnapping suspect tracked down in Petaluma According to San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak, without the motorists intervention it is likely the attempted kidnapper would have succeeded and taken the woman into his vehicle. Reportedly the suspect did get away at the time, but not for long. Without stating how they did it, the SFPD tracked down the suspect the following day in Petaluma. He was taken into custody following a high-speed pursuit, followed by a collision. Lt. Michael Nevin of Northern Station said the woman is safe due to the actions of what he dubbed great Samaritans in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, who came to her aid and prevented the woman's abduction. Fox 2 report that the unnamed 31-year-old woman did not know her attacker and that she had been on her way home from her place of work in the Marina District when it happened. Female residents in San Francisco concerned about the attempted kidnapping ABC7 News report that people they spoke to in the area, especially women who walk at night, have been shaken by the news of the attempted abduction. That report quoted Aliah Singh as saying it is really frightening, adding that she always assumes her own safety, but that she shouldnt. Alex Ferroggiaro, another San Francisco resident said she tries not to look at her phone and to always be aware of whats going on around her when she walks at night. While police are not releasing the name of the suspect due to the ongoing investigation, they do state he is a 46-year-old Sonoma County man. After two months in the White House, the scandal surrounding Russia is only getting worse for President Donald Trump and his administration. While Trump continues to deny any wrongdoing, top celebrity critics of the president are not backing away from voicing their criticism. Trump's Twitter backlash If there's one area of concern that Donald Trump will be forced to deal with it's over his alleged relationship with Russia. From the early days of his campaign for president, to his current role as commander in chief, the former host of "The Apprentice" has been linked to the Kremlin in more ways than one. Since being sworn in to office last January, Trump has done his best to deflect from the issue, but reports continue to trickle out on an almost weekly basis linking him, or his associates, back to Russia. Whether it's his current Attorney General Jeff Sessions or former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn being exposed for communicating with Russian officials, or House Intel Chair Devin Nunes breaking protocol and giving the president information gathered during a committee investigation, Trump is starting to get backed into a corner. As seen across Twitter on March 28, Hollywood stars are not holding back their thoughts about the billionaire real estate mogul. Putin wanted to install a kleptocracy here so the US would be a mismanaged, corrupt, chaotic mess like Russiahttps://t.co/paGTcRFn2I ABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) March 28, 2017 Actor Alec Baldwin, who plays the role of a satirical Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live," took to Twitter on Tuesday to rip into the leader of the free world. "Putin wanted to install a kleptocracy here so the US would be a mismanaged, corrupt, chaotic mess like Russia," Baldwin tweeted out. In a follow-up message on Twitter, Baldwin continued to attack Trump for his ties to Russia. "We need President who will build a wall around our electoral system 2 keep that KGB agent masquerading as a world leader out of our affairs," he wrote. We need President who will build a wall around our electoral system 2 keep that KGB agent masquerading as a world leader out of our affairs ABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) March 28, 2017 Moore unloads One of Donald Trump's most vocal critics has been filmmaker Michael Moore, who joined in with Alec Baldwin in hammering home the opposition to the president. "Historians in the near future will mark today, March 28, 2017, as the day the extinction of human life on earth began, thanks 2 Donald Trump," Moore tweeted. Moore sent out several additional tweets, highlighting Trump's recent decision to cut climate change regulation, while encouraging voters to contact their representatives to give their thoughts on the matter. Historians in the near future will mark today, March 28, 2017, as the day the extinction of human life on earth began, thanks 2 Donald Trump Michael Moore (@MMFlint) March 28, 2017 Trump has signed orders killing all of Obama's climate change regulations. The EPA is prohibited henceforth from focusing on climate change. Michael Moore (@MMFlint) March 28, 2017 Takei talks Devin Nunes canceled all House Intel meetings on #RussiaGate. Someone should tell Donald the strings on his puppet are not supposed to show. George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 28, 2017 In addition to Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, actor George Takei made sure to chime in on the issue on his social media account. "Devin Nunes canceled all House Intel meetings on #RussiaGate," Takei wrote on Twitter , before adding, "Someone should tell Donald the strings on his puppet are not supposed to show." As celebrities use their popularity to expose Trump and his administration, it's appears as if it will take a lot of convincing from the White House to change their tune. Ever since the first few months of the 2016 presidential election, the rumors surrounding Russia's involvement in the Donald Trump campaign have only increased. With Democrats having predictably voiced their concern, Republicans have been split on the issue, causing a divide on the political right. Coulter and Cheney As Donald Trump picked up stream during his campaign, various news outlets would break stories linking the billionaire real estate mogul and his associates back to Russia in one form or another. Whether it was former advisers like Roger Stone or Paul Manafort, or his refusal to release his tax returns, Trump continued to raise more questions over his ties to the Kremlin than he cleared up. Since Election Day, it's been all but confirmed that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee in favor of Trump, though some supporters of the president refuse to accept the information as facts. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke out against Russia, which didn't go over well in a series of tweets by Ann Coulter on March 27. DICK CHENEY: 'No question' Russia meddled in US election, and it could be an act of war' https://t.co/BP6mlKfkpP pic.twitter.com/jeKN9nw0VQ Business Insider (@businessinsider) March 27, 2017 While addressing those in attendance at the Economic Times Global Business Summit in New Delhi, India on Monday, Dick Cheney lashed out against Russia for their reported involvement in the 2016 election. Cheney said there was a "very serious effort" made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to interfere in the election, going as far as saying, "In some quarters that would be considered an act of war." Only Dick Cheney & the NYT still think it was the Russians: Were Hackers who broke into DNCs email really Russian? https://t.co/KG7ZzBEKdv Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 27, 2017 Digging up history Dick Cheney's comments didn't sit well with conservative author Ann Coulter, who called out the former vice president on social media. "Only Dick Cheney & the NYT still think it was the Russians," Coulter wrote on Twitter, while attaching an article titled "Were Hackers who broke into DNC's email really Russian?" DICK CHENEY, Aug 2002: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them..." https://t.co/huzEHztsIz Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 27, 2017 In a second tweet on the matter, Ann Coulter mocked Dick Cheney for being wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 invasion. "DICK CHENEY, Aug 2002," she prefaced," before posting a Cheney quote reading, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them..." Moving forward While conservatives appear torn on the issue of Russian interference in the election, the pressure is currently mounting on Donald Trump and the White House. The former host of "The Apprentice" has done whatever he can to deflect from the issue, including his now infamous and baseless allegations that Barack Obama wiretapped his office in Trump Tower during the election. Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi are doing well after their time on "The Bachelor." They have both moved on, and now Nick is doing "Dancing With the Stars, " and she is by his side helping him out. Now Nick is sharing about their wedding plans or more like lack of plans. The couple is taking things slow right now and don't have big plans to rush into things. Nick shares that they are taking it slow At this time, Nick and Vanessa aren't even making wedding plans. He shared saying, "No, no. Like Vanessa and I have said, it's too early for us right now. We're still just doing a lot of new things together." They are just now learning how their relationship works in the real world and they aren't ready to get married just yet. Other couples from the show have taken it slow as well. Kaitlyn Bristowe and Shawn Booth still aren't married, but are still together and doing great. Nick Viall shared that they are excited about everything and they are just being open about the fact that they are taking things slow. Nick isn't sugar coating anything for anyone. Another issue is that Vanessa Grimaldi is from Canada, so they have to do everything right and legal. Nick shared the details. "She's living with me. But obviously, we're still working through the visa stuff so she may have to pop back to Montreal at some point. While we're in L.A., we're living together." Nick Viall also said that he hasn't been able to go back to Montreal besides while he was on the show "The Bachelor." He really wants to do that again. It sounds like Nick is having a fun time with Vanessa, but they are just enjoying their lives right now. It doesn't seem like there will be any rush for them to get married. It wouldn't be surprising if Nick and Vanessa wait a really long time to get married. Are you shocked to hear that Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi are taking things so slow with their wedding? Do you think that this couple will ever get married? Sound off in the comments section below on your thoughts, and don't miss watching Nick on Monday nights on "Dancing With the Stars." Over the last month, Fox News has been dealing with the sexual harassment scandal that led to firing of Bill O'Reilly just over a week ago. In the aftermath, the network has been creating a narrative that they are "changing the culture," but that didn't appear to be the case during a recent broadcast. Fox News trouble It was over a year ago when the first signs of trouble started at Fox News. The network's founder and former CEO Roger Ailes had been accused of various acts of sexual assault and was forced to step down from his role with the company. The news sent a shock-wave through the number one cable news station in the country, but executives had to deal with the dark cloud of controversy hanging over them at the same time. As Fox News was dealing with the fallout from Ailes, the New York Times released their bombshell story about Bill O'Reilly which revealed the host had reached a $13 million settlement with five different women who accused him of sexual harassment. The allegations had such a negative reaction from sponsors that the network reached a buyout and O'Reilly's two decade dominance came to an end. While Fox News attempts to rebound and re-brand, one host on "The Five" didn't make things easier on Tuesday night, which resulted in social media going viral on April 26. Here's the full clip of Jesse Watters saying he liked how Ivanka "was speaking into that microphone." pic.twitter.com/hwfJl3jil5 David Mack (@davidmackau) April 26, 2017 During the Tuesday night edition of "The Five" on Fox News, fill-in co-host Jesse Watters made a comment about Ivanka Trump that many are calling "sexist." While addressing Ivanka's recent speech in Berlin, Germany at the W20 summit, Watters made an joke that hinted about oral sex. "I really like the way she was speaking into that microphone," Watters said, with a smirk on his face. His comment came ironically as he was lecturing the political left on their criticism of Donald Trump over his treatment of women. When a company sends the clear signal that women are basically sub-human, vile behavior thrives even after top offenders are fired. Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 26, 2017 I wonder how Fox would have reacted if an anchor at MSNBC said this https://t.co/G13lfczxN7 Nathan McDermott (@natemcdermott) April 26, 2017 Twitter reacts In response, Jesse Watters and Fox News got hammered across social media. "When a company sends the clear signal that women are basically sub-human, vile behavior thrives even after top offenders are fired," CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted out. "I wonder how Fox would have reacted if an anchor at MSNBC said this," CNN reporter Nathan McDermott wrote. Jesse Waters complains the Left doesn't respect Ivanka Trump and then in front of 2.5 million people intimates Ivanka was blowing her mike. John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 26, 2017 The apple does not fall from the tree, wherein the apple in question is Bill O'Reilly's disappointing adult son Jesse Watters. Ned Resnikoff (@resnikoff) April 26, 2017 The Jesse Waters on-air joke about Ivanka doesn't really dispel those employee claims that Fox News has a leering frat boy atmosphere, huh? jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 26, 2017 "Jesse Watters complains the Left doesn't respect Ivanka Trump and then in front of 2.5 million people intimates Ivanka was blowing her mike," New York Times columnist John Podoretz tweeted. "The apple does not fall from the tree, wherein the apple in question is Bill O'Reilly's disappointing adult son Jesse Watters," Ned Resnikoff of Think Progress added. Watters attempted to later clarify his comments by explaining he was speaking about Ivanka Trump's voice, but many didn't believe he was sincere his explanation. Kenya Moore thought she had found love when she started dating Matt Jordan last year. The two had great chemistry on "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and Kenya kept gushing about him as if he was the love of her life. Moore even opened up about how he could father her child, and then not be obligated to stick around. However, when the show wasn't filming, Kenya learned that Matt had a violent side to him as he kicked in a hotel door in Mexico on a vacation. And now that they have split up, Kenya is labeling herself as a domestic abuse victim. According to a new social media update, Kenya Moore is now revealing that she believes she will love again. Her relationship with Matt was brought up on the "Real Housewives of Atlanta" reunion, which aired last night on Bravo. As it turns out, she is already dating someone new, but she did write on social media that she believes in finding love again. Does Kenya Moore see herself as an abuse victim? Moore knows that Matt expresses himself on Instagram, so she decided to do the same thing. And she indirectly called him out for being abusive and essentially affecting the way she will love another man. You never love the exact same way twice. But no matter what. You will love again. It will be different but it will be beautiful, read a quote that Kenya Moore shared on Instagram, writing her own thoughts; My love will always be unconditional. The most beautiful thing about me is my heart. I may make mistakes but my intentions are always pure. Love is not always easy but it is real and it is beautiful. Who is Kenya Moores new boyfriend? On the "Real Housewives of Atlanta" reunion, Andy Cohen asked Kenya about her new boyfriend. As it turns out, Moore told him that she was dating someone special, but she hadn't expected him to bring it up. And when Andy told her that Matt had talked about her new boyfriend on Instagram, she decided to confirm the new relationship. However, she didn't say anything else about this new relationship. It makes sense that Moore has moved on from this failed relationship, but many are wondering who the new guy is. Maybe he will appear on the next season of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta," which may start filming in a few months. But now that she has confirmed the new relationship, one can imagine Matt has something to say about it. What do you think of Kenya Moore's post on Instagram? Do you think she's playing a role as she keeps bringing up the abuse, even though she has moved on? The Trump administration is in a quandary because studies by experts in conjunction with classified intelligence reports have concluded that North Korea has acquired the ability to produce one Nuclear Bomb every six or seven weeks. It is difficult to verify such information but Donald Trump is worried because time is running out. North Korea is progressing at a fast rate According to New York Times, the determination in North Koreas approach is gradually showing up. Till now, American presidents used to keep tabs on nuclear programs of North Korea like its nuclear test, or a new variant of a missile. These were matters of worry but were not taken seriously. However, the country is now believed to be ready with nuclear bombs that could reach Seattle and this could happen in a couple of years. Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who has visited the North Korean facilities seven times, has summed up the situation in this way. He had directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico from 1986 to 1887, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. The threat of North Koreas sixth nuclear test is looming large and it would be the sixth one in a span of 11 years. Its last three tests had generated Hiroshima-size explosions. Donald Trump cannot ignore the signs. He expressed his feelings when he said that people had not bothered about North Korea for decades and it is now time for action. He wants United Nations Security Council to consider imposing more restrictive sanctions, including that of energy supplies. The Chinese connection President Xi Jinping of China had talked over the phone with President Donald Trump and urged for restraint in dealing with North Korea. That could be the background for Trumps message to the UNSC about sanctions. The unpredictability of Trump could play an important role to pacify China and keep North Korea in check. In the opinion of people in the know, the strength of North Koreas nuclear arsenal could reach the 50 mark by the time Donald Trumps term ends. It has been working on the sly and could spring a surprise because American officials believe that Pyongyang has mastered the art of miniaturizing the weapons for easy installation on its missiles, irrespective of range. That is certainly not good news for South Korea and Japan, and the large number of American troops deployed there. The destructive power of the five blasts that North has carried out over the past decade has continued to increase and that is a matter of concern for the world. North Korea is believed to be holding an inventory of 1,000 ballistic missiles in at least eight varieties and Kim Jong Un, the leader, continues to dream of targeting one of the main cities of the USA with his nuclear bomb. A strong earthquake hit the west coast of Chile on Monday, April 24. The earthquake had a 6.9 magnitude and was also felt in the capital Santiago. The Chile Emergency Service revealed no significant damages. Since the quake occurred in the offshore, it did not cause injuries. The earthquake did not impact North America. The Earthquake: epicenter and probably Tsunami warning According to the Geological Survey, the epicenter was located 85 miles away from Santiago, and 22 miles from the west coast of Valparaiso. People closer to the ground looked for places which were higher in level, keeping in mind the 2010 deadly Tsunami. According to one of the residents, a 26-year-old nurse, the earthquake was short, but the tremors were powerful. People were running carrying their children. Some even headed for the hills when there was a Tsunami alarm. The Chilean authorities ordered the people near the coastal area to evacuate the place as soon as possible. They suspected an occurrence of Tsunami at 60 miles West of Santiago. Officials lifted the Tsunami concerns. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center highlighted small waves of half a foot in height. There was a state of panic and terror among the locals. Keeping in mind the 2010 deadly quake, combined with Tsunami, which killed millions, people were anxious. An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 is considered to cause significant damage, which can be widespread. However, since it had been reported in the offshore areas, the effects were considerably low. The aftershocks Right after the earthquake, people in Santiago faced two subsequent aftershocks. The aftershocks were of 5.0 and 5.4 magnitudes. President Michele Bachelet confirmed no possible human loss or damage occurred because of the calamity. She also appreciated the orderly manner followed by the people to evacuate the place. A spokesperson for the local government shared problems in telephone network connectivity in few places due to the 6.9 magnitude earthquake. Chile being located on the Pacific Ring of Fire follows an age-old history of few of the deadliest quakes. This includes the 2010 earthquake accompanied by Tsunami, which led to a widespread destruction. The magnitude was measured to be a devastating 8.8. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the 2010 earthquake is considered the tenth biggest earthquake in history. Chile also holds the record for experiencing the largest earthquake in history, with a 9.5 magnitude in 1960. Chile was also shaken by another major earthquake very during Christmas 2016. This had a magnitude of 7.6 and caused severe damage to roads, structures, and buildings in the country. The war against malaria has made progress over the past decade, but there is still a long way to go, and Chinese researchers are leading the way on more than one front. Roughly half of the world's population - 3 billion people - still remains at risk. In 2006, there were 266 million cases a year leading to 750,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. By 2015, the numbers had diminished, but remained huge - 212 million cases, 429,000 deaths. And a staggering 90 percent of all cases are in Africa. Dr Deng Changsheng, manager of the department of science and technology at Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, told a group of 27 journalists visiting from Africa recently, that strategy used to cause a major decline in malarial regions of China is showing promise in Africa. The approach is called fast elimination of malaria by source eradication (FEMSE). It involves mass drug administration (MDA) of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT) - in other words, clearing an affected population of the malarial parasites by mass drug administration. Artemisinin, by the way, is the drug that won 85-year-old Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine. She had mined the recipe, derived from the sweet wormwood plant, from the annals of ancient Chinese medicine. Today it saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year in Africa alone. The drug has not been cheap, but Deng said the cost could be brought to as low as $15 per person over the next decade. Today it's about $40, according to Deng. Thanks to a worldwide push, ACT treatments rose from 187 million in 2010 to 311 million in 2015. The big fear facing the effort right now is that the parasites are showing signs of developing a resistance to artemisinin, the same way some strains of tuberculosis are shunning off some of modern medicine's most potent antibiotics. "The spread of artemisinin resistance in Africa would be a major setback in the fight against malaria, as ACT is the only effective and widely used anti-malarial treatment at the moment," writes Professor Arnab Pain of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Therefore it is very important to regularly monitor artemisinin resistance on a worldwide scale," he added. The study, led by Jun Cao of the Institute for Parasitic Diseases in China, found drug-resistant malarial parasites in a Chinese patient who had been in Equatorial Guinea and returned to China. The ACT therapy, which usually takes three days to rid the patient of the disease, took five days in this case. This "partial resistance", they said, has been noted in other parts of Southeast Asia, and the great fear is that "partial" morphs into "complete". "This is one of the great challenges facing us in the fight against malaria," the World Health Organization says on its website. The holy grail of that fight, of course, remains a vaccine, and The Associated Press reports that three African nations have just been chosen to test the world's first malaria vaccine. WHO announced Monday that Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will begin piloting an injectable vaccine next year with hundreds of thousands of young children, who have been at highest risk of death. The vaccine, which has partial effectiveness, has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives if used with existing measures, WHO's regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said in a statement. The challenge is whether impoverished countries can deliver the required four doses of the vaccine for each child. The vaccine will be tested on children 5 to 17 months old to see whether its protective effects shown so far in clinical trials can hold up under real-life conditions. At least 120,000 children in each of the three countries will receive the vaccine, which has taken decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Kenya, Ghana and Malawi were chosen for the vaccine pilot because all have strong prevention and vaccination programs but continue to have high numbers of malaria cases, WHO said. The countries will deliver the vaccine through their existing vaccination programs. WHO is hoping to wipe out malaria by 2040, despite the increasing resistance problems to both drugs and insecticides used to kill mosquitoes. The vaccine was developed by GlaxoSmithKline, and the $49 million for the first phase of the pilot is being funded by the global vaccine alliance GAVI, UNITAID and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com. 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. HA NOI Many companies in Viet Nam, such as FPT Group, BIDV, Bao Viet Life Insurance and Hoc mai online education portal, are using Facebook Workplace. Participants heard this at a workshop to share success stories of Workplace, an enterprise social network for daily work and internal communication, across Vietnamese companies in Ha Noi on Wednesday. They all said Workplace helped in improving communication, business exchange and interaction between members, and subsequently helped boost productivity and save time and money for companies. FPT CEO Hoang Viet Ha said most FPT employees were young and did not like to use email for work. Workplace was easy to use, fast to deploy and had a friendly interface. It brings employees closer because it creates a friendly working environment. It helps increase communication between members, build internal culture and reduce email costs, Ha said. Following six months of operation, Workplace has become an essential part of the FPT Group. Several employees and working teams rely on Workplace to solve their problems. Some 22,600 users and 3,000 active groups create between 7,000 and 8,000 posts daily and there are some 7,400 active users per week, according to Ha. Nguyen Thi Thu Hoa, Bao Viet Life Insurance Companys head of MIS Department, said her company used to send up to 5,000 SMSes daily to insurance consultants. By using Workplace, the number of SMSes was reduced to 50 daily. Workplace helped us tackle challenges by correctly announcing new products and training courses in a timely manner. It provides support to agencies and sales staff anytime and anywhere, Hoa said. Workplace is a dedicated and secure space for companies to connect, communicate and collaborate. Organisations of all sizes can use familiar Facebook features such as newsfeed, groups, messages and events to get work done, Ramesh Gopalkrishna, head of Workplace, APAC at Facebook, said. More than 14,000 businesses are using Workplace on every continent, including Antarctica. We are excited to see more Vietnamese businesses incorporate Workplace into their organisations to transform internal culture and communications, which will help drive greater efficiency and productivity among their employees, Gopalkrishna said. Workplace by Facebook is a communication platform helping companies internally connect, communicate and collaborate at work. This platform utilises familiar Facebook features such as newsfeed, groups and messages to help teams get things done. VNS HA NOI The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) is showcasing Vietnamese seafood products at the Seafood Expo Global, which is being held in Brussels, Belgium, from Tuesday to Thursday. In a 264sq.m. booth, the association introduced Viet Nams seafood specialties, including tra fish (known as pangasius), shrimp, tuna and tilapia fish, as well as cattle fish, octopus and dried seafood products, all of which come from 25 Vietnamese seafood producers and exporters. The pavilion attracted foreign businesses, which shared experiences in trading aquatic and seafood products. In the context of a pangasius crisis in Spain and the Carrefour supermarket chain ceasing to sell Vietnamese pangasius, VASEP and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development held a press conference at the exhibition to provide clear information about Viet Nams pangasius processing and exports to European partners. In his interview with Vietnam News Agency correspondents, VASEP general secretary Truong inh Hoe said the press conference aimed to create a correct information channel to deal with the communication crisis on pangasius, targeted at increasing exports of Vietnamese aquatic and seafood products to Europe. Alfons van Duijvenbode, a Dutch consultant, said European consumers have a bad impression of Vietnamese pangasius due to false information on social media. In recent years, the consumption of Vietnamese pangasius has fallen in the EU, meanwhile other fish have maintained or even increased sales volum, he said. He suggested the Vietnamese aquaculture industry interact more with consumers to provide them exact information about the products. Head of Vietnamese Trade Office in Belgium Nguyen Canh Cuong said that the office had worked with local partners such as Foreign Trade Association to provide information to Belgium businesses and consumers. Also at the event, Viet Nam held other trade promotion activities, including a dialogue for shrimp value chains and a programme for visitors to try Vietnamese seafood. Seafood Expo Global, the largest of its kind globally, drew the participation of over 1,600 exhibitors from 77 countries and territories this year. It is expected to attract more than 26,000 visitors and exporting and trading enterprises from 144 nations and territories. VNS HA NOI Vietnamese enterprises can meet some international standards of transparency, however, large companies still disclose little information about anti-corruption programmes, said Nguyen Thi Kieu Vien, executive director of Towards Transparency Viet Nam at a workshop in Ha Noi. This was reported from the results of a survey entitled Transparency in Corporate Reporting (TRAC) Viet Nam 2017, conducted by Towards Transparency, the national contact of Transparency International in Viet Nam. The study aims to create a transparency baseline for corporate reporting in Viet Nam and to promote international standards and clean business practices. It is also hoped to contribute to raising awareness of business transparency and integrity to companies, investors, the Government and citizens. Participants were selected from the Viet Nam report of 500 biggest enterprises (VNR 500) in 2015, including the 10 largest foreign direct investment (FDI) companies, the 10 largest State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the 10 largest listed companies. The assessment was based on companies publicly available data on the three main dimensions of transparency: anti-corruption system, organisational transparency and country-to-country reporting. According to the report, only nine of the 30 companies publicly announced anti-corruption programmes, 18 out of 30 disclosed their structure and ownership, 4 out of 30 firms did not have websites, 16 of the companies did not provide information on subsidiaries abroad, while no company published information on every factor. For anti-corruption programmes, the enterprises averaged a score of 10 per cent (100 per cent being the most public, 0 per cent the least amount of information disclosed). Of which, the SOEs averaged the lowest (1.9 per cent), followed by listed firms (5.1 per cent). The top-rated companies were Posco, Cargill Viet Nam (65 per cent), Samsung Vina (54 per cent), CPV (42 per cent) and Vinamilk (38 per cent). FDI companies got the best results in this area as they apply their policies in other countries to their Vietnamese operations, explained Viet Nams MCG Management Consultings director Pham Ngoc Linh. In organisational transparency, some firms scored quite well, with FPT and Vinamilk scoring 100 per cent. The last criteria of country-to-country reporting had the worst results with a score of 0 per cent for all participants, as 16 enterprises did not provide information about their foreign operations while the remaining 14 had information but could not meet the criteria. The score of zero does not assess the quality of the provided information, it only mentions the fact that enterprises had not disclosed information, Linh added. The findings from the report are expected to serve as a basis for advocacy efforts to standards on transparency and anti-corruption in Viet Nams private sector. The TRAC report workshop also heard different ideas on improving transparency from the participants. One Government Inspectorate officer said that collecting information via companies websites was not appropriate in the context of Viet Nam, because not many enterprises had fully informative websites, except for those operating in services or e-commerce. The researchers chose samples of the 30 largest companies, however, 90 per cent of Viet Nams enterprises are small and medium-sized, only 10 per cent are large enterprises. Therefore, the results of this study are not able to reflect the transparency of corporations in general, lawyer Ngo Van Hiep told Viet Nam News. VNS HA NOI The Viet Nam Glass and Ceramics for Construction Corporation (Viglacera)s annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday highlighted the companys business plan to implement investment activities in Cuba. The company plans to set up a joint venture in ceramic and porcelain tiles with chartered capital of nearly US$40 million and total investment of some $61.8 million. In the first phase, Viglacera will contribute capital by providing technical services, spare parts replacement and cash to renovate two factories to serve Cuban market demand and export and invest in new production lines of sanitary ware and floor tiles. In the field of tourism and hotels, Viglacera is also co-operating with domestic partners to attract capital to establish a company, expected to have charter capital of some $3 million, to cooperate with Cuban partners. In addition, the corporation plans to set up a company in Cuba to implement real estate projects, initially to invest and upgrade two hotels owned by two groups in Cuba, at the same time seeking new investment projects. Viglacera also plans to invest in industrial park infrastructure, with a 168ha project in Cubas Mariel Special Economic Zone. Last December, Viglacera entered into a joint venture partnership with Cuban giant developer Geicon to manufacture building material in the Caribbean island nation, of which, Viglacera was responsible for upgrading two existing ceramics and sanitary ware plants and investing in two more, four years after the joint venture is operational. VNS Monika Bickert, head of product policy at Facebook, who is visiting Viet Nam, talks with Viet Nam News about what the American social network company is doing to keep the Vietnamese Facebook community safe. Where is Viet Nam positioned in the world in terms of active Facebook users? As of now, in Viet Nam, we have 48 million people who regularly use Facebook, and I believe, almost 30 million are logging in every day, and 45 million are logging in from their mobiles. We dont go by country, but the Southeast Asian market is one of our fastest-growing regions. Fake news and fake accounts are a growing concern for Facebook users here. What is Facebook doing to handle the problem? Will you be working with the Vietnamese government to address this issue? Fake accounts are a concern for us as well. We are very interested in using technologies to help us enforce our policies. We have been investing in ways to identify fake accounts based on account behaviour. We have implemented some of these new technologies in the past months and have seen very positive results; we have been able to find more fake accounts. Of course, we also want people to report things to us. The Vietnamese government can report contacts to us if they think that those are violating policies, and so can every person on Facebook. The policy we apply to deal with fake accounts is the same no matter who we get the report from. We prioritise it and try to review reports within 24 hours and remove accounts that are fake. Do you have plans to help the Vietnamese government prevent and remove content that is against the countrys laws and culture? It is important for us to keep the dialogue going with governments, including the government of Viet Nam. If they make us aware of content considered illegal, it will go through the same process like anywhere in the world: first, does it violate our standards? If it doesnt, then we have our legal team look at the request to evaluate the legality of the content. Facebook is willing to work with the Vietnamese government, as with any government in the world. What kind of collaboration is Facebook working on with the Vietnamese government to prevent the publishing of content that violates laws here? Ill briefly say that I dont have much to share right now about the meeting with the Vietnamese government, other than to say that this is a normal part of my job, and our job, which is to make sure that we are communicating with the communities we serve, and that includes civil society group and government officials. I do that regularly. I can, however, share how we generally interact with governments, because the way we do that with Viet Nam is the same way we do it across the world. Sometimes, governments request us to remove content that is illegal in that specific country. When we receive such requests, we check if it violates the Facebook Community Standards (e.g. bullying, violent content, hateful speeches). Often it will, because as you know, if it is hate speeches, it violates our standards, and it is easy for us to remove them. If it does not violate our standards, we bring in our legal team. There is a process by which we work with the government to understand how it violates their law, and our legal team will assess whether or not the content does violate the said law. If yes, Facebook prohibits its appearance; we make that content unavailable in that country. We will then publish that request in the government request record, which we release every six months. If you look at our last government request record for Viet Nam, you will see that there was no request from the government. We have another report coming out quite soon. Considering the steady rise in the number of active users in Viet Nam, does Facebook plan to start a Vietnamese helpdesk or education platform? People will only come to Facebook if its a safe place to connect and share with the people they care about. Our Safety Center is a frequently-used resource. We recently updated the Safety Center, with significant inputs from the Facebook community. For example, people asked for more video content, and the new site includes eight different videos about policies, products and resources Facebook offers. We have promoted these in our community in Viet Nam. The Safety Centre and Bullying Prevention Hub is available in over 50 languages, including Vietnamese. We are always keen to work with partners, schools, and communities who can help us raise awareness of these safety resources. VNS AK LAK Smoke from charcoal furnaces is threatening the environment around Cu Mgar District in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province of ak Lak, affecting residents health. People in Cu Dlie Mnong Commune have reported that they are forced to inhale the smoke and dust from charcoal incinerators in the locality every day for the last several years. Productivity of hundreds of hectares of crops has also been affected, the Voice of Viet Nam reported. Although people have repeatedly petitioned local authorities, the situation has not been resolved. In other districts, people have also chopped trees in forests for production purposes, thereby destroying the natural forest cover, residents told the media. Tran Quoc Tien, a resident, said a dozen charcoal incinerators of Phuc Minh Co Ltd consume tens of tonnes of firewood everyday and discharge smoke and dust directly to the environment, seriously affecting the health of people, animals and plants. The company was licensed and put into operation at the end of 2011 with three incinerators, with capacity of 20 tonnes of firewood per day. The capacity has now reached up to 300 tonnes per day with 12 incinerators. We have lived with the smoke and dust for six years already. We cannot live like this anymore. Some children are suffering from severe pneumonia, Tien said. The incinerators have also affected to the yield of coffee plants, the main crop grown by residents, he said. Thai Van Ngan, a senior villager from Tan Lap Village , said besides the negative impact on the health of people, animals and plants, trucks transporting firewood for the company have also contributed to the destruction of the inter-village road system, making the road very muddy in the rainy season and dusty in the dry season. The residents have reported the incident to the authorised agency several times, but the problem persists, according to Ngan. Truong Van Chi, chairman of the Peoples Committee of Cu Mgar District, said the inspection team had worked directly with the company many times and penalised and asked it to fulfill its commitments to address the issue, but the company still repeated the violation. He promised that the situation be resolved soon and said the companys licence would be revoked if it continued to violate environment regulations. Along with Cu Mgar, other districts also have many charcoal incinerators. According to the rules, companies are permitted to use firewood from agriculture and coffee plants. But recently, they have also been utilising illegal sources from natural forests, leading to difficulties in the protection and development of forests in localities. Nguyen Van Quang, deputy head of forest protection station of Ea Kar District, said the police have been asked to investigate the incidents. VNS On the occasion of the National Holiday of the Netherlands, called Kings Day, which falls on Thursday, Viet Nam News presents an article by the Embassy of the Netherlands in HaNoi. Orange tradition Every year on the 27th of April, the Netherlands celebrates its national holiday, called Kings Day, in honour of the birthday of King Willem-Alexander. Until the crowning of King Willem-Alexander in 2013, the holiday was known as Queens Day and was celebrated on the 30th of April. Festive spirit: The Royal Family of the Netherlands. Photo courtesy of the embassy of the Netherlands Kings Day is known for its free markets, nationwide festivities and the opportunity for orange madness: a kind of frenzy named after the national colour. Those taking part in Kings Day celebrations commonly wear orange clothing or even dye their hair orange in honour of the House of Orange-Nassau, the Royal family of the Netherlands. Orange food and drinks are also popular. The free markets are flea markets throughout the country, where one in five Dutch citizens sell their second-hand goods for bargain prices, or try to earn some money with innovative ideas and games. Trade and innovation are a big part of the Dutch culture and mind-set. Joining in: The Royal Family of the Netherlands celebrates Kings Day. Photo courtesy of the embassy of the Netherlands Next to the markets, many concerts and special events are organized in public places. A free outdoor concert is held on Amsterdams Museumplein, where as many as 800,000 people gather. World famous DJs like Hardwell (who, by the way, will be in Ha Noi on May 20), Martin Garrix, Armin van Buuren and Tiesto will play there. Many young people celebrate during these concerts or on the streets and squares (and in Amsterdam, the canals as well) on Kings Day Eve and the birthday itself. Sea of colour: People celebrate Kings Day in Amsterdam. Kings Day is known for its free markets, festivities and orange madness: a kind of frenzy named after the national colour. Photo courtesy of the embassy of the Netherlands The Royal family visits a different city every year, where they participate in local events, concerts and activities. This visit will be on national television. All the Dutch Embassies, including the one in Viet Nam, organise a Kings Day reception where most people will wear (a touch of) orange. Relations between the Netherlands and Viet Nam have been growing steadily, especially in the fields of climate change adaptation and water management, sustainable agriculture, innovative energy, maritime industry, and logistics. The Dutch Embassy in Viet Nam takes this national day as an opportunity to show appreciation towards local partners, with whom it has formed strong ties both in political and economic terms. Focus of the relations is building a green future together. VNS A NANG The Japan-Viet Nam Friendship Association of Japans Kawasaki City donated more than 210 bicycles to poor students yesterday, the organisations annual charitable donation to Viet Nam. Usuda Reiko, a member of the association, told Viet Nam News that underprivileged kids in a Nangs Cam Le, Hoa Vang, Ngu Hanh Son districts and Quang Nam Province will benefit from the bicycle donation this year. She said the association has called Japanese people and more than 12,000 second-hand bicycles have been delivered since 2003. a Nang and Hoi An boost cultural exchange with Japan annually by hosting the annual Viet Nam-Japan Culture Exchange Festival in August. Japan plans to open a Consulate General in a Nang as a way of boosting tourism and exchange between Japan and the central city. Japanese language teaching has been taught at some junior secondary schools as part of the citys foreign language teaching programme for 2012-20. a Nang also reserved a 1.2ha area for developing the Japan-Viet Nam Culture Centre in Ngu Hanh Son District as well as launching direct flights from a Nang to Osaka. VNS BANGKOK World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) leading authority on global travel and tourism industry announced the winners of the 2017 Tourism for Tomorrow Awards on Thursday at a global industry summit in Bangkok, Thailand. Designed to honour and celebrate inspirational, world-changing tourism initiatives, the awards are presented in five categories, which reflects WTTC goal to balancing the interests of people, planet and profits and to keep in line with United Nations International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017. Winners of the awards this year were selected by a panel of independent experts, academics, business leaders, NGOs and government representatives for the forward thinking and eco-friendly approach, which contributes to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the UNs 2030 agenda. WTTCs Community Award goes to Ol Peteia Conservancy, Kenya; Destination Award goes to Chobe Makgadikgadi and Okvango delta Ramsar site of Botswana Tourism Organisation; Environment Award goes to Misool eco-resort of Indonesia; Innovation Award goes to Mapping Ocean Wealth, a project by US-based The Nature Conservancy; People Award goes to the J Willard and Alice S Marriot Foundations China Hospitality Education Initiative (CHEI). I am delighted by the high standard of all our finalists. Those taking away the Awards this year represent the very best in sustainable tourism, and we hope that their example will both educate their peers and lead the sector forward, President and CEO of WTTC David Scowsill said. He also said that this years winners are fine examples of how the industry can be sustainable while bringing improvements to both the environmental and cultural surroundings in which it operates. Fiona Jeffry OBE, WTTC Chairwoman and founder, said that the winners continue to push the sustainability agenda and help develop a better, more responsible and accountable sector, better tourism experiences and a protected planet. The summit will conclude Thursday with sessions on the afternoon focusing in latest trends in the global tourism industry. VNS VIENTIANE Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Lao counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith yesterday agreed to accord top priority to nurturing ties of traditional friendship and special solidarity, saying this would be decisive in ensuring victory of either countrys revolutionary cause. The consensus was reached in talks in Vientiane on the occasion of Phucs first official visit to Laos as Vietnamese Prime Minister. The two leaders also agreed that high-level agreements, especially the Joint Statement issued on the official visit to Laos by Viet Nams Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in November 2016 and the Joint Statement released during the visit to Viet Nam by Laoss Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith last year, would be implemented more effectively. They pledged to build on the outcomes gained at the 39th meeting of the Viet Nam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee on bilateral co-operation and to strive their utmost in carrying out the Viet Nam-Laos bilateral co-operation agreement during the 2016-2020 five-year period. The Vietnamese and Lao governments will map out long-term orientations to collaborate for sustainable development of bilateral relations, increasing economic and trade ties while ensuring social welfare and environmental protection, the leaders said. They also agreed to enhance high-level delegation exchanges and effectively deploy bilateral co-operation mechanisms in politics, external affairs, security-defence, trade and investment. The two sides are aiming to increase two-way trade value in 2017 by 10 per cent year-on-year and step up economic connectivity, particularly in energy and transport. Agreements signed by both sides, particularly the protocol on co-operation in defence and security for 2016-2020, the protocol on border line and national border markers, the agreement on border and border gate management regulations, and the agreement on building Vientiane-Paksan-Thanh Thuy-Ha Noi highway, will be implemented efficiently, the premiers said. They also agreed to enhance cultural and people-to-people exchanges and jointly organise activities to celebrate the 55th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 40th anniversary of signing the Viet Nam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. PM Phuc presented his Lao counterpart and the Lao people with copies of Vietnamese-Lao and Lao-Vietnamese dictionaries symbolising mutual understanding. They two leaders saw co-operation in education and training as a bright spot in bilateral co-operation, and affirmed that this would be stepped up in the future. They also agreed to strengthen co-ordination at regional and international forums like the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and sub-regional co-operation mechanisms, as well as support each others initiatives and activities within the framework of ASEAN. They also said that they would step up co-operation with each other and with other countries and international organisations for sustainable and effective use and management of water resources in the Mekong River. This was important for ensuring mutual benefit of countries in the Mekong basin, especially downstream nations. They noted the need to develop mechanisms for bilateral co-ordination as well as co-ordination with other stakeholders for assessing and monitoring the impacts of the use of river water resources. The two sides also stressed the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea (South China Sea); settling disputes via peaceful means and international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); implementing fully and effectively the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and reaching soon a framework for the Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC). They said they looked forward to finalizing the COC in mid-2017, thus contributing to peace, security, stability, co-operation and development in the region and in the world. A Joint Statement was issued by both nations to mark the visit of the Vietnamese PM. Phuc on the same day met with Laos Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, the National Assembly Chairwoman Pany Yathoutu and Vice President Phankham Viphavan. VN-Laos Friendship Year Prime Ministers Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Thongloun Sisoulith yesterday launched the Viet Nam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 in Vientiane. The event is part of activities celebrating 55 years of diplomatic relations and the 40th anniversary of the Viet Nam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. Lao PM Sisoulith said the launch of the Viet Nam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 declared to the world the importance of the friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive co-operation between the two countries. The special relationship was established by late Presidents Ho Chi Minh, Kaysone Phomvihane and Souphanouvong, and have been nurtured by generations of Vietnamese and Lao people, he said. He noted that bilateral ties have grown steadily since the establishment of diplomatic ties, especially since the signing of the treaty in 1977. The ties have been fruitful in many areas, bring practical benefits for both peoples, he added. Locality-to-locality connections have also been strengthened, helping boost trade and investment ties, he said. PM Phuc described the Solidarity and Friendship Year as a milestone marking a great stride in the two countries special relations. What they have achieved is a priceless asset created by generations of Vietnamese and Lao leaders and people, he stressed. He voiced his belief that joint efforts will successfully contribute to the forever green and forever sustainable friendship and solidarity between the two nations. Both leaders said they believe practical and meaningful celebrations during the year would intensify bilateral ties and help educate people, especially the young, on the special relationship enjoyed by both countries. VNS President Tran ai Quang meets voters in HCM Citys Districts 1, 3 and 4 yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang HCM CITY Voters in HCM Citys Districts 1, 3 and 4 told President Tran ai Quang yesterday that they were concerned by the deteriorating natural environment in the country. They said they were also worried about the failure to settle complaints about land use rights. Worsened traffic congestion in the city was another concern, they told the President as the latter collected voters feedback ahead of next months parliamentary session. Agreeing that protecting the environment had become an urgent task, Quang said Viet Nam has adopted the stance of not sacrificing the environment for economic development at any cost. He said the environmental impacts of all projects will be carefully evaluated to ensure sustainable growth. The Government has recently halted several projects with dubious environmental impact assessments, he noted. The Party, State and localities were paying great attention to the question of settling land disputes, the President said. Referring to the recent incident in ong Tam Commune in Ha Noi, the Party Central Committee has directed Ha Noi leaders to draw proper lessons from it and prevent similar occurrences in the future, the President told voters. While authorities should maintain discipline, they should also stay close to voters and sort out their problems through constructive dialogues, Quang said. He also noted down voters opinions on a number of draft laws including the revised Law on Corruption Prevention and Control, a guiding decree on the Land Law and revisions to the Law on Denunciation. President Tran ai Quang on the same day also met with voters in HCM Citys Can Gio District. He suggested Can Gio look towards rapid and sustainable development with a focus on marine economy, agriculture, and ecological-historical-craft village tourism. HCM City should improve Can Gios transport infrastructure, Quang said, accelerating the construction of a bridge connecting Can Gio with Nha Be district while strengthening dykes to prevent erosion in response to climate change. I am honoured to have been born and raised in Can Gio, a resident of An Thoi ong Commune told the President. This place contributed so much to the American War but the infrastructure and the roads are yet to be developed to meet residents demand, he said. A number of residents also proposed ideas to promote agricultural production and investment attraction. As the only coastal and poorest district of the southern metropolis, the municipal authorities must promptly consider locals suggestions regarding capital, animal breeds and plant varieties, technological application in goods manufacturing, and education-training, Quang said, adding that further attention should be paid to social welfares, poverty reduction, vocational training and job creation. He urged them to fine-tune support policies for the poor, armed forces, war heroes and those in charge of protecting and managing biosphere forests. VNS AN GIANG An Giang Province wants the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to help frame housing policies that will enable the relocation of 20,000 families living in landslide-prone areas in the next five years. The petition was made at a meeting on Tuesday with a group of ministry officials led by Minister Tran Hong Ha held to discuss the severe landslides along the Vam Nao River. The province also sought financial aid to repair the damage caused by landslides over the last couple of years. According to Tran ang uc, director of the An Giang Department of Natural Resources and Environment, 38 landslides occurred along riverbanks in the last two years, destroying 142 houses and other properties and causing losses of more than VN100 billion (US$ 4.4 million) each year. Some 162km of the provinces 400km of riverbanks are vulnerable to landslides, and 20,000 households live on them. The landslide along the Vam Nao River in Cho Moi District on April 20 is estimated to have caused losses of VN9 billion ($396,400). Since then 107 households have been evacuated from vulnerable areas. uc dismissed some experts contention that excessive mining of sand was to blame for the disaster, saying there was no such activity in that area. He called on the ministry to study the flows of the Tien and Hau rivers to preclude more such disasters. Ha hailed the provinces efforts to relocate families and prevent human losses, and promised to convey its suggestions to the Government. But he also instructed the Viet Nam Environment Administration, which functions under his ministry, to review all sand mining projects in the Mekong Delta and assess their environmental impact. Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung has instructed authorities in An Giang to monitor the situation and ensure no further mishaps occur at the site of the landslide. He told them to move people out of dangerous areas, restrict the number of vehicles and people travelling through the affected area, and investigate the cause of the landslide. He instructed the Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development, Natural Resource and Environment, Planning and Investment, and Finance and An Giang Province to identify the cause of the disaster, provide relief to the affected people and ensure the safety of others living in the vicinity. The landslide, which occurred in My Hoi hamlet, has left a crater 380m long, 120m wide and 42m deep. No one was killed possibly because the authorities forced people in the 14 houses to evacuate after their neighbours discovered the danger and informed them. Cho Moi District authorities have identified 200 land plots for relocating people living along the river, and will build a new road to the area. An Giang Province has three solutions: changing the rivers flow in places where there have been severe landslides, identifying land plots to resettle people living in vulnerable areas and refusing permission for houses in vulnerable areas, Tran Anh Thu, director of the province Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said. Sand mining There are 265 highly vulnerable spots in the Mekong Delta where landslides have caused the loss of 500 hectares. The situation has been blamed on overexploitation of sand. An Giang has issued licences to eight enterprises to mine sand in areas ranging from 21 to 99 hectares for one to eight years. They include two in My Hoi ong Commune, who have licences to mine 60ha. Prof Dr Le Anh Tuan, deputy head of Can Tho Universitys Mekong Delta Climate Change Institute, told Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper that when sand is mined and removed from a river, there is nothing to absorb the energy of the water and the gushing waters cause landslides on the shore. Biologist Nguyen Huu Thien said: When upstream localities mine sand, it causes landslides downstream. In the coming time there will be more 11 hydropower dams on the Mekong River and no sand will come to the Mekong Delta. Landslides will become more severe. Dr Duong Van Ni of Can Tho Universitys environment and natural resources faculty said: We need to do a general survey of the entire delta to mitigate the landslide problem. VNS A labour ministry proposal to double the overtime limit for workers to 400 hours per year has evoked a mixed response from workers, and clear disagreement from some officials. Photo baocongthuong.com.vn HA NOI A labour ministry proposal to double the overtime limit for workers to 400 hours per year has evoked a mixed response from workers, and clear disagreement from some officials. In draft revisions to the 2012 Labour Code, the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs has proposed that Vietnamese employees are allowed to work overtime for up to 400 hours per year. The current limit is a maximum of 200 extra hours per year per worker, according to Article 106 of the 2012 Labor Code. In some specific areas like textiles and garments, leather, aquaculture processing, telecommunications, water and power supplies, overtime is capped at 300 hours per year. The latest proposal came at the request of many enterprises whove argued for several years that more overtime is needed to improve production efficiency, increase workers incomes and raise the competitiveness of Vietnamese labour market. A study by the ministry showed that the maximum number of overtime hours allowed in Viet Nam was currently 30 hours per month, much less than other countries in the region. The limit was 36 hours per month in China, 45 hours in Laos, 56 hours in Indonesia, 72 hours in Singapore, 104 hours in Malaysia, and no limit in Cambodia and the Philippines. The ministry said its proposal sought to harmonise the benefits of enterprises and labourers, and boost the competitiveness of Viet Nams labour market to match other countries in the region. Good and not-so-good Several female workers felt overtime limits should not be increased by much because they needed time to take care of their children and families, the An ninh thu o (Capital Security) online newspaper reported. It quoted Nguyen Thi Duyen, a female worker at the Bac Thang Long Noi Bai Industrial Park as saying working overtime helped her increase her income, but she preferred to spend time for her children. If the draft was approved, enterprises would have a legal basis to ask workers for more overtime work, she said. Hoang Thu Hang, a female worker in an industrial park in Bac Ninh Province, applauded the proposal. She said almost workers of industrial parks came from other provinces and had to cover their living expenses and save some money. If the overtime limit was increased, she could earn more, Hang said. Not good at all Le inh Quang, deputy head of the Labour Relations Department under the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour, said he did not agree with the proposal. Quang said any increase in overtime limits should be carefully calculated to avoid the situation that enterprises take undue advantage of workers. A representative of an export processing zone in Ha Noi said specific assessments of Vietnamese physical conditions had to be made before green lighting the proposal. He said that workers at the processing zone had reported feeling faint as they worked. This meant they were suffering from high work intensity. Other experts also advised caution about increasing overtime limits, saying workers needed enough time to rest so that they could reproduce their capacity. VNS A new crack in a road alongside the Ong Chuong River in An Giang Province prompted local authorities to urgently evacuate four households yesterday. Photo tuoitre.vn AN GIANG A new crack in a road alongside the Ong Chuong River in An Giang Province prompted local authorities to urgently evacuate four households yesterday. The two-metre wide crack, running about 200 metres long from the riverside to the road connecting Kien Thanh and Kien An Communes in Cho Moi District, triggered fears of landslides. Cho Moi authorities decided to ban trucks from passing the area. This is the only road linking two communes of more than 18,000 residents, so it will be extremely difficult for the residents should landslides occur, Cho Moi Peoples Committee Chairman Truong Trung Lap told vnexpress online. VNS HA NOI Facebook has committed to work with the Government of Viet Nam in keeping the Vietnamese community and advertisers safe and help small businesses grow in the country. Head of Product Policy at Facebook Monika Bickert said this at a meeting with Minister of the Ministry of Information and Communication Truong Minh Tuan in Ha Noi on Wednesday. Highlighting co-operation and goodwill of Facebook, Tuan asked Facebook to work closer with the Government of Viet Nam in preventing and removing fake accounts and fake news, explicit, hateful and violent contents or contents which are against Viet Nam laws and regulations on Facebook. Tuan said Viet Nam sees Facebook as a medium that helps connect friends and exchange experiences. Viet Nam does not prevent or ban Facebook or other social media networks, provided they comply with the countrys international laws and regulations. The nation has a population of around 92 million people, 70 per cent of whom use the Internet, and about 45 million are Facebook users, Tuan said. Bickert said that Facebook will work with Viet Nam in various areas, including keeping the Vietnamese community and the advertiser safe and helping small businesses and developers grow, introducing Facebook Workplace, helping curb false news and lift news literacy. Responding to request of the Government of Viet Nam, Facebook outlined its Government Request process and report, which details their process for reviewing content against Facebooks terms and applicable law, Bickert said at the meeting. Facebook will take action against content that violates its policies and encourages users in Viet Nam to report content using their reporting tools so they can take swift action, affirmed Bickert. We are committed to building a safe, informed and supportive community for the 48 million people in Viet Nam who use Facebook to connect and share with their family and friends and the things that matter to them, said Bickert. We are also committed to helping small businesses in Viet Nam grow. Through our SMEs Boost programme, we plan to train more than 2,600 small businesses in Viet Nam, Bickert added. VNS BANGKOK ASEAN countries have the potential to become one of the worlds most attractive destinations for travel and tourism, a panel of speakers consisting of high level officials from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines said at the World Travel and Tourism Summit 2017 Global Summit today in Bangkok, Thailand. The panel, including Minister of Tourism of Thailand Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, Minister of Tourism of Indonesia Arief Yahya, Secretary of Tourism of the Philippines Wanda Teo and Regional Director of the Asia and Pacific Office International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Arun Mishra, discussed the future of the region as an integrated single destination on the global travel and tourism map. ASEAN, which was formed in 1967, has expanded its membership to 10 countries in the South East Asia region -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia and Laos, as well as Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Singapore, along with Thailand and Viet Nam. The bloc, with total population of 629 million, is currently one of the worlds fastest growing economies following the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 with a combined GDP that is projected to catch up to the European Unions in 2030, according to a research published by the Asian Development Bank Institute last year. The regions travel and tourism industry is to play a huge part in the realisation of that projection, said Wattanavrangkul, who urged ASEAN countries to speed up on the regions connectivity through numerous methods of transportation -- air highways, sea and rivers. Consistent and high economic growth among ASEAN countries in recent years as well as visa-free travel have seen a surge in the number of intra-ASEAN tourists, which is to remain one of the blocs key priorities in the years to come. ASEAN member countries tourism authorities place great importance on the process to streamline visa application and facilitate ease of travel for visitors to the region. Work has started on the ambitious single visa entry project for ASEAN countries as well as the establishment of ASEANs land-based north-south corridor, which will connect all ASEAN countries from the south of China all the way down to Malaysia, the east-west corridor that begins in India and goes all the way to Viet Nam. The Thai minister said ASEAN countries are connected in many ways. Visitors can choose to travel either by land, by sea, by air and even by the Mekong River, which runs through Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam. Despite the vast tourism potential, the region also faces numerous daunting challenges, especially in developing infrastructure and human resources, both key factors for a robust tourism industry. The ministers urged the private sector to cooperate with governments to invest in airports, seaports and other networks of transportation. Mishra from the ICAO said ASEAN countries must invest more in training high skilled workers, especially in the field of aviation technology to help with the regions already-congested air traffic. Indonesian tourism minister Yahya called on ASEAN governments to bring out greater harmonisation of regulations that will allow member countries to better address their shortage of labour in specific fields with a freer flow of high skilled workers. Answering question regarding whether individual countries should prioritize promoting their own destinations or the whole region as one single destination, Yahya said the blocs shared vision is to develop ASEAN as one single destination with each member ultilising their competitive advantages to form a united front in competition with Asias larger competitors such as China and India. VNS Tong thong Philippines Duterte co the muon chieu long Trung Quoc trong Cap cao ASEAN cuoi tuan nay, khong tuyen bo gay gat ve Bien ong. Tong thong Philippines, phai, gap Chu tich Trung Quoc Tap Can Binh, khi ong Duterte en tham Bac Kinh hoi thang 10 nam ngoai. Anh: Rappler "Chu tich ASEAN nam nay, Philippines, duong nhu se ua ra quan iem on hoa ve tranh chap Bien ong trong hoi nghi cap cao au tien", chuyen gia Richard Javad Heydarian, ai hoc De La Salle, Philippines, noi voi VnExpress khi nhac toi Hoi nghi cap cao Hiep hoi cac quoc gia ong Nam A (ASEAN) lan thu 30 va cac hoi nghi lien quan dien ra tai Manila vao 28/4 va 29/4. Co trong tay tai lieu du thao ve tuyen bo cua chu tich ASEAN, ong Heydarian luu y cum tu "ap dung ay u cac tien trinh phap ly va ngoai giao" la quan iem ong thuan o muc thap nhat ma ASEAN a at uoc tu au nam 2016. Van e a uoc neu len trong hoi nghi giua lanh ao Hiep hoi voi Tong thong My vao thoi iem nam ngoai la Barack Obama tai Sunnylands. ang chu y, no uoc neu len truoc khi Toa trong tai quoc te thang 7/2016 tuyen bo Philippines thang kien Trung Quoc, trong o bac bo yeu sach uong luoi bo cua Bac Kinh o Bien ong. Ong Heydarian cho rang thao luan ve tranh chap se khong co tien trien. Tong thong Philippines Duterte se trung thanh voi mau thuc chung noi tren, chi noi ve "tien trinh phap ly", ton trong Cong uoc luat bien nam 1982 cua Lien Hop Quoc (UNCLOS). Tham chi ong Duterte cung se khong e cap toi phan quyet cua Toa trong tai. "Chinh quyen cua ong Duterte khong muon gay xao tron viec cai thien quan he voi Trung Quoc va tranh lam mat long cac thanh vien ASEAN than thien voi Bac Kinh", ong Heydarian nhan manh. Tong thong Philippines tu khi len nam quyen a the hien ro quan iem muon co quan he gan gui voi Trung Quoc. Ong Duterte khang inh chi co Trung Quoc moi giup uoc Philippines, ac biet la xay dung nen kinh te. Nha lanh ao Philippines thang than cho biet se khong gay chien voi Trung Quoc vi tranh chap tren bien, thua nhan khong the ngan Bac Kinh xay dung cac co so tren bai can Scarborough, khu vuc hai nuoc co tranh chap, tham chi cho biet Manila san long chia se voi Trung Quoc cac tai nguyen trong khu vuc nuoc nay tuyen bo chu quyen chong lan o Bien ong. Cac quan chuc Philippines tiet lo Manila va Bac Kinh se thao luan truc tiep ve Bien ong trong thang 5, i nguoc voi quan iem am phan a phuong cua ASEAN. Binh luan ve du thao tuyen bo cua Chu tich ASEAN sap toi, Giao su Carl Thayer, Hoc vien Quoc phong Australia, ai hoc New South Wales, cho biet Philippines thay oi rat nhieu so voi tuyen bo chung cua Hiep hoi trong nam ngoai, theo huong giam thieu cac van e quan trong. Manila khong e cap van e phi quan su va tu kiem che trong thuc hien tat ca cac hoat ong, ke ca cai tao at o Bien ong. Philippines cung khong nhac en toi an toan hang hai va lien lac tren bien, cac quy inh uoc neu trong Tuyen bo cua cac ben (DOC). "Ro rang ong Duterte co ve ang no luc giup Trung Quoc bang cach lam diu bot bat ky van e nao ma Bac Kinh co the phan oi", ong Thayer noi. To ra than trong hon, Ei Sun Oh, nghien cuu vien cao cap tai Truong nghien cuu quoc te S. Rajaratnam, ai hoc Cong nghe Nanyang, Singapore, at ra hai kha nang rang Philippines co the khong neu len tranh chap Bien ong tai hoi nghi cap cao (do ang co quan he than thien voi Trung Quoc), nhung cung co the to ra kien quyet hon (keu goi ASEAN oan ket). Theo ong, viec du oan khong de dang vi Philippines gan ay co su ao nguoc chinh sach lien quan en Bien ong. Hom 13/4, Tong thong Duterte tuyen bo hoan ke hoach keo quoc ky tren ao Thi Tu thuoc chu quyen cua Viet Nam o Bien ong, vi "coi trong tinh huu nghi voi Trung Quoc". en 21/4, Bo truong Quoc phong Philippines Delfin Lorenzana a en tham ia iem nay. Ong Lorenzana cho biet ong Duterte yeu cau ong khao sat e am bao cac ha tang o Thi Tu uoc xay dung cang som cang tot. La nguoi theo doi dien bien Bien ong trong nhieu nam, Giao su Stein Tonnesson, Khoa nghien cuu Hoa binh va xung ot, ai hoc Uppsala, Thuy ien, nhan inh neu Tong thong Philippines khon ngoan nhu mot so nguoi anh gia, ong se tan dung thien chi voi Trung Quoc e thuc ay mot co che ngan xung ot thong qua Bo quy tac COC. "Co che o bao gom viec ngan can hieu qua hoat ong xay dung o bat cu a hay thuc the nao va ua ra khung thoi gian nham phi quan su hoa cac ao tranh chap", ong Tonnesson bay to hy vong. Nha nghien cuu Philippines Richard Javad Heydarian cho rang neu Tong thong Dutert bo qua, khong ban toi van e cai tao va quan su hoa Bien ong tai Cap cao ASEAN sap toi, thi o la ieu ang that vong vi ay la moi quan ngai lon khong chi cua rieng Philippines ma con cua nhieu nuoc. Trung Quoc a trien khai cac vu khi tien tien va chien au co toi cac ao nhan tao ma nuoc nay chiem giu o Bien ong. "Cac chuyen gia an ninh ang lo rang Trung Quoc co the som co kha nang thiet lap mot khu vuc ngan cam tren thuc te, chu yeu gay thiet hai cho mot vai nuoc ASEAN, trong o co Philippines. That la la, tuyen bo du thao cua chu tich ASEAN lai diu giong hon rat nhieu so voi tuyen bo cach ay 4 nam, khi Myanmar lam chu tich ASEAN", ong Heydarian noi. Viet Anh WATERLOO The upcoming expiration of two federal grants aimed at retraining workers initially caused consternation among labor officials, but Iowa Workforce Development has assured those currently in apprenticeship programs can continue their efforts. We have multiple funding sources to help unemployed workers, said Ben Humphrey, an attorney at IWD. Iowa Workforce Development has been working with our finance folks and our program folks to create a plan so that on June 30, when the grant expires, we are able to help as many people as possible maintain their training and work-based learning opportunities to help them find long-term, self-sustaining employment. About 800 Iowans are enrolled in both programs, and IWD will continue to work with dislocated workers to ensure they can enroll in apprenticeship programs or other retraining opportunities. The confusion stemmed from the fact IWD manages two national emergency grants, according to Humphrey. They include a jobs-driven program focused on apprenticeships, which was always expected to expire June 30 this year, and another grant aimed at lower-skilled workers impacted by the bird flu. IWD officials modified the latter grant to help with other workforce training initiatives after the flu epidemic didnt cause as much harm as anticipated. The agency intended to extend it for a year to further aid dislocated workers. But they received word from the U.S. Department of Labor recently an extension was unlikely and applying could put future grant opportunities at risk. While letting the second grant lapse will mean returning an estimated $2.8 million to the federal government, officials decided it was more important to have better odds of getting future grants when Iowas unemployment rate could be higher. Iowas unemployment rate is 3.1 percent, one of the 10 lowest in the nation. State Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, who sits on the State Workforce Development Board, said the agencys decision made sense. He also stressed the importance of focusing on mid-skill jobs and efforts to train and retrain workers for the jobs of the future. He encouraged those interested in an apprenticeship program to contact Iowa Workforce Development. Information about reaching various departments within IWD is available at www.iowaworkforcedevelopment.gov/. But Dotzler still has concerns about whether Iowa will be able to fill middle-skill level jobs in the future, jobs that require more than a high school education but not necessarily a four-year college degree. He noted the Iowa Business Council reported a couple of years ago Iowa will need to replace more than 610,000 workers by 2025, but the state has only grown by about 200,000 people in the last 20 years. We cannot afford to waste the skill sets of anybody, Dotzler said. Its a critical problem in Iowa, and I believe the Iowa Legislature really failed on this front this session. He pointed to the cuts to educational institutions by the Republican-led Legislature during this past 2017 session. Those fears, he said, are compounded by cuts and uncertainty in funding from federal agencies. A man convicted of using an AK-47 to kill a woman and wound her boyfriend as they walked their dog in Denver has been sentenced to life in prison. A judge sentenced Michael Close on Friday to a life term without the possibility of parole in the death of 21-year-old Isabella Thallas and added an additional 48-year sentence for the attempted murder of her boyfriend. The Denver Post reported that Close yelled out the window at the couple as they urged the dog to go potty outside his apartment in June 2020 before getting the weapon and firing it 24 times. Dinner planned for Saturday WATERLOO St. Pauls United Methodist Church, 207 W. Louise St., will host a beef and noodle dinner Saturday. Serving will be from 4 to 6:30 p.m. The menu will include all-you-can-eat homemade beef and noodles, coleslaw, potatoes, beverage and dessert. Cost is $9 for adults and $4 for kids younger than 12. There also will be baked goods and crafts for sale. Open house set in Cedar Falls CEDAR FALLS The Village Cooperative of Cedar Falls, 914 Bluegrass Circle, will host an open house from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Several units will be open for viewing. The co-op includes an exercise room, heated parking and car wash, wood working shop, guest suite and secure building. INDEPENDENCE Court filings made public Thursday indicate the Arlington man accused of leaving the scene of a crash that killed an Aurora farmer plans to fight the charge. Lawyers for Chris Soules, 35, say he acted reasonably after the crash. The former reality television star has hired Alfredo Parrish, Brandon Brown and Gina Messamer of the Des Moines firm Parrish Kruidenier Trial Lawyers as his defense counsel. He is charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident, a felony that carries up to five years in prison. Parrish, the founder of the firm, is a high-profile attorney who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, including death penalty cases and more than 30 first-degree murder cases, according to his biography. Locally, longtime residents will recall Parrish, among other cases, represented Kenneth Hardy in connection with the 1989 murder of Rochelle Barry of Charles City at the Mitchell Avenue sand pits in Waterloo; Jan Hollins in connection with the 1983 murder of public defender Al Davidson outside the Russell-Lamson building; and one of several Waterloo police officers who faced charges in 1989 resulting from a grand jury probe of the Police Department. Parrishs team immediately filed a Demand to Preserve Evidence, asking for the right to investigate for themselves all evidence, reports and data related to the crash or investigation. Soules is scheduled to next appear in court at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday for a preliminary hearing at the Buchanan County Courthouse in Independence. But in Iowa preliminary hearings generally are waived, so it is unlikely he will be there. He is required to wear an ankle bracelet for monitoring. Soules is accused of rear-ending a tractor driven by Kenneth Mosher, 66, of Aurora, who died at the scene. Soules initially called 911, but left the scene before he could be questioned. Authorities say Soules was located at his home about 10 miles away but initially refused to answer his door for officers. He was arrested five hours after the crash when authorities obtained a warrant to enter the home. Soules was released on bond Tuesday after 10 hours in jail. Investigators are looking into who drove Soules away and whether alcohol, speed or texting played a role in the crash. The sheriff says alcoholic beverages were found at the scene and police are trying to determine who possessed them. A statement issued Thursday by his lawyers and Soules publicist argued audio of the 911 call showed initial portrayals of Soules having fled the scene were misleading. The statement noted Soules identified himself on the call and explained his role in the terrible accident. It added he tried to perform CPR on the victim and stayed until emergency medical personnel arrived two facts that arent clear on the call. The 911 recording includes someone performing CPR, but it isnt clear it was Soules, who told the dispatcher he didnt know the technique. The call was abruptly ended by Soules, who police say then took off in a truck. His attorneys are confident that once all the evidence is made public, it will show Soules acted reasonably and did everything in his power to provide aid to Mr. Mosher, the statement said, adding everyone in this close-knit farming community is mourning Mr. Moshers passing. The media was granted expanded news media coverage rights in Soules trial, so news media will be allowed to photograph and video all public proceedings. Media outlets from across the nation have been inquiring about coverage of Soules case. Soules, who starred in The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars, has been released from custody on bond pending trial. The Associated Press and news editor Pat Kinney contributed to this article. WATERLOO Recipients of the citys annual historic preservation awards will be honored at a banquet next week. The Waterloo Historic Preservation Commission is inviting the public to its 2017 awards banquet May 4 at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. A social hour will begin at 6 p.m. with the awards ceremony at 6:30 p.m. The following five recipients were chosen to receive the award this year: Ann Olsson is a former member of Historic Preservation Commission and a longtime historic preservation advocate. She was among those who fought to ensure the Wonder Bread Building was preserved after it was closed during the Hostess bankruptcy in 2012. Dave Morgan and SingleSpeed Brewing saved the iconic downtown bakery at Jefferson and West Third streets through a $6 million historic renovation, turning it into a production brewery, restaurant and taproom. AHTS Architects were honored for historic architectural services provided for JSA Developments renovation of the Walden Block buildings in the 200 block of West Fourth Street downtown. The firm also received Preservation Iowas 2016 preservation at its best award for small commercial projects. Laura and Mike Hoy were honored for their work and support of the Walnut Neighborhood. The couple bought and restored a home in the neighborhood, while Laura works with several organizations in the district which is pushing for historic recognition. Brad and Holly Cote were recognized for their authentic renovation of 310 Independence Ave., which was build in 1904 by George Fowler of The Fowler Co. While there is no charge to attend the awards banquet, guests are asked to RSVP to John Dornoff in the Waterloo Planning and Zoning Office by calling 291-4366 or emailing john.dornoff@waterloo-ia.org. DES MOINES Democrats on Thursday rehashed an extraordinarily horrible legislative session that Senate Minority Leader Rob Hogg called far and away the worst in his career. That is because the Republican majority enacted policies that will hurt workers, hurt women, hurt families and hurt our economy, the 14-year Cedar Rapids Democratic lawmaker said during an event at the Cedar Rapids Public Library. Iowa lawmakers wrapped up their 104-day 2017 session last Saturday, approving a $7.269 billion budget that Rep. Liz Bennett, D-Cedar Rapids, said does nothing to help regular Iowans. The ideological-driven agenda underfunds health care, education and mental health, she said. When Republicans fail to fund the priorities that we should fund in our state, we all suffer, Bennett said. At the top of Democrats worst of list are changes the GOP made to public employee collective bargaining and workers compensation, as well as funding levels for several other parts of state government, including higher education. Funding for the University of Iowa and Iowa State University is at its lowest level since 1998, Hogg pointed out. After cutting the current year budget by $111 million in January, the 2018 budget represents cuts on top of cuts, said Rep. Todd Taylor, D-Cedar Rapids, who predicted the 2017 session will go down in history as one of the worst years legislatively. Republicans have a far different perspective on their first session in complete control in 20 years. They improved Iowas job climate by reducing regulations on small businesses, reducing frivolous lawsuits and creating uniform employment law, according to Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. The GOP increased funding for K-12 education, gave schools more budget flexibility and improved public safety by banning texting while driving and providing substance abuse treatment for OWI offenders. Those public safety measures may have been the bright spot of the session, Hogg said. There were far more regrets, however. The medical cannabis bill approved in the final hours of the session will create more false hopes than remedies, he said. Although it continues Iowans access to cannabidiol oil to treat epilepsy it is weak because of the limits on THC levels and the number of conditions for which medical cannabis would be available. It was a very bad year for water quality, Hogg added. The House and Senate each passed their own water quality bill, but Republicans couldnt reach agreement among themselves on a very weak water quality proposal. The Democratic score card makes clear Iowa needs a new direction, Hogg said. Democrats will continue to listen to Iowans, hold Republicans accountable, and encourage more Iowans to get involved as citizens, he said. DES MOINES Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey cant say what Donald Trumps farm policy will look like. But after meeting with the president, he expects an emphasis on opening markets and easing regulations. I think we got pieces of it, Northey said after joining 13 other state ag officials, farmers, ag policy advocates and food producers and processors in a Tuesday meeting with Trump at the White House. Its hard to capture that whole policy in a short conversation. It was clear, Northey said, Trump leaned very heavily on Sonny Perdue, the newly confirmed USDA secretary. As some of these issues would come up, he would turn and look at Secretary Perdue and say, Can you give me some background on that? Northey reported. So we certainly got the sense that he highly respects his secretary of agriculture, that he wants to be engaged himself as president and wants to make the rest of the federal government work for ag producers as well. However, there were few specifics. I cant tell you what the administration is going to be pushing in the next farm bill, said Northey, a third-term GOP secretary of agriculture. The president talked about opening new markets for agricultural products as well as need to be firm in how we deal with trade partners, he said. Another focus of the hour discussion was regulations that increase expenses for food producers and processors. When Northey had a chance to address the president, he talked about ethanol. I mentioned were a big ethanol production state and before I could even make an ask on ethanol, the president jumped in very quickly and said, You know, Im a big supporter of ethanol, he said. There wasnt time to get into details about E15 and waivers, but Trump reiterated his support. DES MOINES Fresh from a meeting with President Trump and USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says he is willing to join them in Washington if presented the right opportunity. I dont know what my role that might be, Northey said after the meeting Tuesday at the White House. I certainly would love to work with him as Iowa secretary of ag. If there is another job that is offered, I would be very willing to consider that as well. Northey made clear there has been no offer, but there might be jobs that would appeal to him if the experience and the difference he could make made them worthwhile, Northey said Wednesday. Northey was mentioned as a candidate for governor if Gov. Terry Branstad didnt seek re-election in 2018. However, he was quick to pledge support for Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds when it became clear Branstad would be leaving midterm to become ambassador to China. He thought about but didnt run for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2014. Northey has kept his options open whenever asked about opportunities beyond his current post. Taking a job with the USDA could involve giving up his farm interests. I love living in Iowa. I love being here close to family and close to the farm, he said. If he was offered a USDA job, that absolutely would be part of the consideration. Whatever job hes doing, Northey is looking forward to working with Perdue. So whether its working with him from here or working with him there we will work very closely together, he said. CEDAR FALLS The guest of honor was absent, but his impact was profoundly felt not just among those present but throughout the community Jon Crews loved. His family accepted the citys Representative Citizen Award on his behalf at the annual Business & Industry Award luncheon Thursday, sponsored by city government and Cedar Falls Utilities. Crews, who died of liver cancer last month, was the face of Cedar Falls in his record 30 years as mayor, in three separate stints spread over five decades of tremendous community growth. Crews was informed before his death he would receive the award. He drafted a portion of an acceptance speech and asked his son, Ryan, an assistant professor of podiatry in the Chicago area, to deliver it. Shortly after hearing hed been awarded this tremendous honor, my father humbly told me, Youre not supposed to get an award for doing your job, Ryan Crews said. But in truth, being mayor wasnt a job to my father. It was a calling. My father was never off the clock as mayor. Both in times of joy and tribulation, his thoughts were of appreciating the amazing city he loved and considering ways to help it continue thriving. With a slight quiver in his voice, Ryan Crews then read a statement from his father that said: In accepting this award I represent many Cedar Falls citizens who have contributed to the great community we have in common. It has truly been an honor to serve with so many of you on projects, like the recreational trails, industrial parks, the Recreation Center, the Library, Historical Society endeavors and the revitalization of downtown and the (College) Hill. ... Thanks to those in attendance for all youve done and will continue to do. I am truly honored to have so much family here and want to say thank you to them for their continued support over the years. I never viewed my father as a politician, Ryan Crews said. His eyes were never set on power plays. ... He was a civil servant with his intentions squarely set on helping Cedar Falls becoming the best version of itself... . As we leave here today, I encourage all of you to do the same. In Cedar Falls there were many mayors before, and will be many mayors after Jon Crews, Ryan Crews said. But for those of us lucky enough to have seen just an inkling of the pride my father had in this town, he will always retain the moniker of The Mayor. He was a tireless supporter of the community. ... Whether it was an event at the Gallagher-Bluedorn (Performing Arts Center) or simply a child running a lemonade stand, he was likely to make an appearance to show his support. We are deeply touched by the outpouring of love and support that we receive in this time, Jon Crews widow, Ronelle Langley, said in accepting the award. Common sense and a good heart served Jon well in this community for which he had such deep affection, said Bob Hardman. He and wife Becky were 2016 recipients of the Representative Citizen award. He presented the honor to the former mayors family. He recently told Ronelle if he had to make a speech it would be three words: I love you to you, to my family and to Cedar Falls. Hardman said. As a leader and as a citizen its clear Jon Crews left the legacy of that love to the people of this city who will continue to reap the benefits for many years to come. Crews was nominated for the award by a mayoral committee and his successor, current Mayor Jim Brown. Other businesses institutions and projects received John Milton Overman appreciation awards, named for the citys first mayor. Honored were: Veterans Memorial Park expansion, quality of life partnership; Slumberland Furniture relocation/renovation at the former College Square Hy-Vee, redevelopment investor; UnityPoint Health Prairie Parkway clinic building, quality of life; Martin Brothers Distributing expansion, continuing investor; Echo Development 604 Clay St. office building renovation, redevelopment investor; North Cedar Church of the Nazarene, community support for relief efforts in the September flood; and Cedar Valley Preschool and Child Care Center, recognized by CFU for energy conservation. WATERLOO Jaxton Engstrom caught the train for a ride to Cedar Falls Wednesday with his family and entire third-grade Lou Henry Elementary School class. But while his classmates were seated in a passenger car, the 9-year-old got to sit right up front with engineer Dave Hendrix, his parents and special needs teacher Jessica Stakey. It was all arranged by CN Railways Waterloo staff and received plenty of support from area law enforcement agencies, whose cars blocked railroad crossings along the route. Jaxton suffers from Batten disease, a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive neurological impairment. Among the symptoms that at times affect him are visual impairment and loss of motor skills, including the ability to walk and talk. Before boarding the train near Sullivan Park, Jaxton felt his way along the outside of the train engine and bent down to touch the tracks. He cant see these things, explained his mother, Tina. Thats how a child who cant see learns. She said Jaxton probably prefers the train ride to the more extravagant trips some children with diseases go on. Really, for him, the best thing is this. Its OK to touch, its OK to get on. Jaxton also is very tuned in to sounds. After climbing into the engines cab with the help of Stakey, he wasted no time checking out the surroundings. Before long, he found the horn. Nate Lemley, an engineer who also helped get him into the cab, gave a warning to those standing below right before the first blast: Hey, you guys, plug your ears! For the next few minutes, Jaxton repeatedly sounded the horn. As the train headed toward Cedar Falls, it stopped along Broadway Street near Wagner Road for a ceremony renaming a control point in Jaxtons honor. A control point is a location where trains can switch tracks or pull onto a side track to let another train pass. After everyone climbed off the train, railroad company staff pulled a tarp off the sign marking the control point and its new name Jaxton, to applause of those assembled. This sign will stay here, be here for years to come, said Nick Kruckenberg, a CN manager. Jaxtons name will be announced over the (train) radio now probably 50 times a day. He pulled out a second full-size sign and handed it to the family. This ones for Jax to take home, said Krukenberg. Brett Engstrom, Jaxtons father, called the day amazing and unbelievable. I never thought Id have a relative much less a son with a railroad control point named after him. Stakey, a Kruckenberg family friend, was instrumental in making it happen. She approached me about getting Jaxton a train ride, said Krukenberg. Fortunately, we were able to take it to our superiors and do something bigger. While Jaxton spends the majority of his school day with Stakey, he is also assigned to Andy Hansens regular education classroom. Classmates have gotten attached to him this school year, his first at Lou Henry. He works with peer reading buddies throughout the day, said Stakey. Theyve wanted to learn about him and how to interact with him. The class of 19 children and their teachers were seated in a passenger car with comfortable couches and large windows provided by the Iowa Northern Railway for the event. Noted Hansen, Hes new to the school, but hes got some solid friends in this class. Among those are Carson Nielsen, Brett McGovern and Javae Smith. Its all about Jaxton today, its almost like his birthday. He really means a lot to me, said Smith, noting his own brother, a kindergartner, is also a vision impaired special needs student. The boys were paired with Jaxton for reading early on in the year. They also enjoy playing with him at recess. We have a really special relationship, said McGovern. Were lucky we got to him at the beginning of the year. While Nielsen enjoyed the train ride, he was missing Jaxton. We havent got to spend much time with him, but still its fun, he said. On the day last week when the University of California at Berkeley canceled today's appearance by Ann Coulter, the fiery conservative commentator received a hero's welcome on Fox News. "This is the third time this year protesters and rioters have denied conservatives an equal chance to speak at Berkeley, which is, as we said, a taxpayer-funded school nominally subject to the First Amendment," Tucker Carlson told viewers as he introduced Coulter. "You'd think so anyway. Apparently, though, hecklers and rioters get a veto there, as long as they are left of center." By rescinding an invitation to speak -- and subsequently offering an alternative date, when class is not in session, which Coulter declined -- Berkeley made Coulter a free-speech martyr. The episode was a win for her. My takes are so hot, she could say, that liberal snowflakes melt at the mere thought of having to confront them. Instead, she said this: "I am definitely giving the speech. I was invited to give a speech." Now, a day ahead of her original date, Coulter finally has abandoned her plan to speak on the Berkeley campus -- which she could have done, despite the university's withdrawal of an invitation, because she had picked a public plaza as the site for her remarks. Nothing good could have come of Coulter's stubbornness. Berkeley anticipated violent demonstrations, which is why the university canceled her talk in the first place. "If somebody brings weapons, there's no way to block off the site, or to screen them," Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "In an open space, you have almost no control over that. The challenges are immense." Even groups that sought to bring Coulter to campus were uncomfortable with her initial refusal to pull out. "We're worried about it turning into a huge battle between her security and conservative militia and antifascists and others," Pranav Jandhyala, founder of a nonpartisan campus club called BridgeCal, told The Post. "We're worried about violence and student safety and our own safety, as well." BridgeCal partnered with the Berkeley College Republicans and a national organization called the Young America's Foundation to coordinate Coulter's appearance. The foundation said in a statement Tuesday "Ms. Coulter may still choose to speak in some form on campus, but Young America's Foundation will not jeopardize the safety of its staff or students." Ultimately, the Young America's Foundation on Wednesday ordered Coulter not to appear at Berkeley, according to her. "Everyone who should be for free speech has turned tail and run," she said. Coulter's frustration is understandable, but there was virtually zero chance that she would have been able to lead the kind of productive, interactive session she had envisioned. The Berkeley student newspaper reported in March, when Coulter was booked, that she planned to address illegal immigration and had insisted on a question-and-answer period, so that she could engage students. In an outdoor venue, surrounded by protesters, it is hard to imagine the best-selling author would have managed a constructive dialogue. Coulter shouldn't be in this position; she ought to be allowed to speak. But she already has made her point by being canceled. She would have gained nothing by showing up, anyway. Ann Coulter said Wednesday she is canceling her speech planned today at the University of California, Berkeley, because she had lost the backing of conservative groups that initially sponsored her appearance. Its a sad day for free speech, Coulter said. After she contracted to give a speech, the university announced it would not provide a venue. In canceling a speaking engagement by the right-wing flame thrower, the famously liberal school has embarrassed, betrayed and besmirched its proud legacy as the birthplace of the free-speech movement of the 1960s. It also has more than earned the lawsuit filed against it Monday by the Berkeley College Republicans and Young Americas Foundation, the two groups originally sponsoring Coulters appearance. The school says free speech is not the issue here, security is. You may recall the chaos that attended a February speaking engagement by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor and professional ass who is arguably best known for directing a racist troll army that briefly drove Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones off Twitter last year. His speech had to be canceled after the university was, in the words of spokesman Dan Mogulof, invaded by more than 100 individuals clad in ninja-like uniforms who were armed and engaged in paramilitary tactics. They threw objects, set fires and left about $100,000 in damage in their wake. The area has seen other recent violent political clashes as well. So UCB, citing what it says is a credible threat of similar upheavals, initially demanded Coulter end her speech by mid-afternoon. She agreed, but the school then canceled outright. An offer of a different date was rejected. Coulter said she was otherwise engaged and also complained the new date falls during a week when classes are canceled and students are busy studying for finals. Even taken at face value, UCBs reasoning does not persuade. It strains credulity to believe campus police and the Berkeley Police Department, with its 170 sworn officers, could not secure the school sufficiently to allow Coulter to speak and protesters to protest while keeping 100 would-be rioters in line. Oaklands 753 officers and San Franciscos 2,293 are just down the road and across the bay, respectively, and could, one presumes, provide any needed reinforcement. Heck, if its that bad, call out the National Guard. Even that would be better than this act of spineless capitulation, a public university ceding veto power over free speech to a bunch of terrorists. In so doing, it emboldens these left-wing punks or some future army of right-wing thugs to believe they can shut down any opinion they dislike just by threatening to misbehave. It is hard to imagine a worse message or a more disheartening messenger. There are few legitimate reasons for abridging free speech. If the speaker speaks slander, exhorts violence, or creates an abusive work environment, you might have a case. But the First Amendment carves out no exception for hate speech. Shame on Howard Dean for a recent silly tweet that claimed otherwise. And shame on anyone else on the left who is willing to look the other way because this particular abridgment involves the vile and reviled Coulter. Freedom of speech is not the sole property of liberals, nor of conservatives. It is the heritage of Americans. Fifty-three years ago, an earlier generation of Berkeley students protested and suffered arrest to vindicate that heritage after they were barred from handing out fliers about the Civil Rights Movement. Berkeley didnt understand free speech in 1964 and, apparently, not enough has changed five decades later. Sorry, UCB, but this one is not even close. Ann Coulter should be in town today. You should have let her speak. Soon after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, attendance at Priscillas beauty salon in the Latino section of Des Moines East Side began to fall. Quite a bit, said owner Eva Ortiz, who offers haircuts, perms, highlights and facial waxing at the place she has owned six years in Iowas capital city. Sometimes when its that low, I think, What am I doing here? Most of Priscillas customers are Latinas and many of them are not going out much these days. Some who are undocumented are too afraid of being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and deported. Ortizs isnt the only Latino-owned business suffering in the Des Moines metro area. At Los Laureles, a long-running restaurant popular both with state Capitol workers and members of the Latino community, customers are down by about half over the last two months, according to owner Cynthia Mayorga. Business is down by a fifth to a quarter at the sprawling La Tapatia Grocery, Manager Sergio Marquis said. The fears are not unwarranted. Trump got elected pledging to build a wall along the Mexican border and has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, saying famously, When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. He seems to be making good on his January pledge to step up immigration enforcement as such apprehensions rose nationally by about a third in the first weeks of this administration, compared with this time last year. By mid-March, 5,441 immigrants with no criminal records had been detained, according to The Washington Post. Thats out of 21,362 detentions, compared with 16,104 by mid-March last year. Neither was as high as that time frame in 2014, under President Barack Obama, when 29,238 immigrants, including 7,483 noncriminal ones, were arrested. The harshest enforcement action doesnt necessarily follow the toughest political rhetoric. But earlier this month it was reported the Trump administration even deported a 23-year-old California farm worker who had permission to stay under Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That granted a reprieve from deportation to people brought here as children by their parents. They got two-year renewable work permits, a policy Trump has not officially rescinded. Lawyers for Juan Manuel Montes have said he was picked up by ICE agents Feb. 17 and escorted across the border, although his work permit was valid until 2018. But Homeland Security says he left on his own and wasnt allowed back in when he tried to return two days later. Jeff Norris, a Des Moines immigration attorney, said enforcement activity has picked up substantially under Trump. Under Obama, ICE targeted criminal convicts as they were discharged from probation, he said. But now agents can go after anyone without papers. He said Homeland Security has taken prosecutorial discretion away from immigration courts. So the best that lawyers like him can do is look for extenuating circumstances that could keep a client in the U.S. The Washington Post reports in memos it obtained, the Homeland Security secretary ordered aggressive new enforcement guidelines for detentions and deportations. They call for immediately sending back border-crossers instead of detaining them until they can have hearings. And they would increase ICE agents by 10,000 and Border Patrol agents by 5,000. Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman, confirmed the new policies are based on the Homeland Security directives and a Trump executive order. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told CNN deportations are aimed at people who pose a public safety threat, but U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News anyone here illegally is subject to deportation, and he didnt exclude those covered by DACA. Whats happening in Des Moines is probably a microcosm of what is happening in cities and towns across America. One of the sad paradoxes for the small, independent businesses built to serve Latino communities is customers who fear deportation avoid those places the most, thinking they would be magnets for ICE agents, said Mayorga, Los Laureles owner. Marquis of La Tapatia said fearful shoppers prefer shopping at night at chain stores where they wont be as visible as a group. He believes some fears are overblown, touched off by rumors of ICE stings that spread on social media. But Wil Melgar, the editor of Conexion Latina, billed as Iowas largest Latino newspaper, says enforcement activities have stepped up locally since January. Before, it would happen, but people wouldnt pay attention because they were just targeting people with felonies, he said. Now theyre taking anyone without papers, whether they have a criminal record or not. Melgar heard of a raid on a local Mexican restaurant in which four employees were arrested but one was released and posted about it on Facebook. He said agents also seem to be targeting particular people, perhaps after getting tips. But he has heard once there, the agents have asked for other employees papers and taken away those who couldnt produce them. Mayorga said she saw a raid at a gas station and stories abound of other ICE sightings. The fears have prompted some undocumented Latinos to go to lawyers to give power of attorney to other people to safeguard their children and possessions in case they get deported, Melgar said. These detentions are never going to return all 11 million undocumented immigrants to their homelands. Too many employers, landlords, businesses, communities and schools depend on their presence. But the federal government can cause a lot of fear and hardship in the meantime, as large Obama-era deportations showed. We need comprehensive immigration reform. In the heart of Western coal country, fair competition is taking a back seat to big money. In Wyoming, fossil fuel companies are king and state lawmakers want to keep it that way. Coal production is first in the nation. The state also is fourth in natural gas production and ranks eighth in pumping crude oil. As a consequence, other sources of energy represent a threat. The state fears sunshine shining down from above and winds blowing off the mountain ranges. The GOP-controlled Legislature has proposed a law to tax companies selling renewable energy. SF0071 requires utility companies in the state to provide electricity to their customers from eligible resources. This includes coal, hydroelectricity, natural gas, nuclear and oil. The bill requires electricity in the state be 100 percent derived from qualified resources by 2019. Any company doing otherwise would be fined $10 per megawatt. Wyoming is a great wind state and we produce a lot of wind energy. We also produce a lot of conventional energy, many times our needs, Republican Rep. David Miller told InsideClimate News. The electricity generated by coal is amongst the least expensive in the country. We want Wyoming residences to benefit from this inexpensive electrical generation. We do not want to be averaged into the other states that require a certain (percentage) of more expensive renewable energy. Miller is engaging in political double speak and his argument is illogical. The cost of alternative sources of energy now is comparable to the dirty energy of coal. When this new kind of energy is cheaper and less toxic, why should it be penalized to preserve black rock? Yes, the party preaching against overregulation has no problem doing so for a buddy with deep pockets. The solar and wind industry is taking business away from coal. Instead of letting market forces play out, the response is to punish the upstarts not to mention the environment. Fortunately, SF0071 never made it out of committee. An ironic twist on that protectionism blew in from the original vortex of coal. In the hilly Appalachian town of Benham, Ky., is the Kentucky Coal Museum. The town once was a coal camp whose population peaked at about 3,000. Today, 500 folks call the sleepy town home and the mines are but a memory. Only the storefront museum remains as a reminder. The museum needed to lower its energy costs, and instead of lobbying politicians for help, it reached out to the power of the sun and installed solar panels on its roof. We believe this project will help save at least $8,000 to $10,000 off the energy costs on this building alone, Brandon Robinson, communications director of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, which owns the museum, told a local radio station. So its a very worthy effort and its going to save the college money in the long run. Who can afford not to save $10,000 a year? Certainly not coal advocates in Kentucky. Their brethren in Wyoming should take notice. Fossil fuel represents the past. Its dirty and emits air pollutants harmful to the environment and public health. Beyond that, the U.S. Department of Energy recently acknowledged industries related to renewable energy employ more workers than coal, oil and gas combined. Efficiency and cleanliness represent the future. For the sake of humanity, it could not have come too soon. A prominent Russian reporter who revealed horrific details of a crackdown on gay men in Chechnya has told CNN she is in hiding after receiving death threats. Elena Milashina, a journalist at the Russian-language Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said she abandoned her apartment in Moscow and plans to leave Russia altogether after Muslim clerics in Chechnya delivered a fiery sermon calling for "retribution" against her and other journalists. "This is the first time we got that kind of threat, when 15,000 people got together in a mosque and announced jihad against all the staff of Novaya Gazeta," Milashina told CNN in an interview. "It will last forever until the last of us dies." Speaking to a packed mosque in the regional capital, Grozny, the clerics adopted a resolution calling for the "instigators" of the reports to be held to account. The sermon was broadcast in full on regional state television in Chechen and independently transcribed for CNN. The editorial board of Novaya Gazeta released a statement calling the sermon "an incitement to massacre journalists." Shortly afterwards, the newspaper received two envelopes filled with white powder. "We still don't know what the powder is. We have asked the security forces to check it," Milashina told CNN. "But all of us, including me, consider this situation is very serious." Reports of torture The threats come after a series of reports first written by Milashina focusing attention on allegations of mass arrests and torture of gay men in the mainly Muslim republic of Chechnya, in southern Russia. CNN has spoken to several victims who say they have fled the region after being detained and suffering horrifying abuses. "They tied wires to my hands and put metal clips on my ears to electrocute me," said one victim, whose identity CNN agreed to hide for his safety. "When they shock you, you jump high above the ground," he told CNN at an undisclosed location. Chechen authorities have refused to acknowledge the violence, denying that there are any gay men in Chechnya. The Kremlin says it has no confirmation of any gay men in Chechnya suffering abuse. But the reports have clearly struck a nerve. Local Chechen television has broadcast footage of Muslim clerics condemning what they called "women's gossip" and "lies" in newspaper reports. Threats against journalists not new In a country where journalists are routinely beaten up or even killed for their work, the clerics' remarks have been taken as a worrying development. Novaya Gazeta is no stranger to violent threats against its staff. In 2006, its star Chechnya reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. And since 2000, at least five other Novaya Gazeta journalists have also been killed in Mafia-style hits, a grim testament to how dangerous reporting in Russia can be and the bravery of reporters like Milashina who continue to report on Chechnya. "The only way to stop people who might possibly think of murdering my colleagues is to show them there will be another one," she told CNN. Asked if she was prepared to put her life on the line for that ideal, Milashina replied: "Yes. Absolutely. That makes me much stronger than my enemies in Chechnya." Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. 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20th Century Korean War from 1950-1953 pitting US-led United Nations coalition forces against the North Korean and Chinese militaries has been in pause mode for 64 years. The Korean Armistice was signed on July 27, 1953 by the United States, China and North Korea. It called for a cessation of hostilities until a lasting peace agreement between the warring parties could be negotiated and signed. That, of course, has not happened due as much to North Koreas rationally maniacal behavior and ruthless treatment of its citizens, as to its role as a useful pawn of the Chinese and American governments. The Chinese feel compelled to let the incendiary North Korean government in Pyongyang irritate and provoke the United States and much of the world community, and the Americans dont mind having a large military presence to deter North Korea but also to keep an eye on the China and the Southeast Asian region. China has apparently reinforced its military forces on its border with North Korea. Russia has a short land and maritime border with North Korea. In 2015 officials from the two countries signed an agreement to construct a road connection between the two neighbors during their Year of Friendship. According to NK.News.org, North Korea and Russia envisioned closer collaboration between the two states in political, economic and humanitarian spheres. As tensions ratchet up in the wake of North Koreas nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests, Russia has apparently shored up its military forces near the bustling Russian port city of Vladivostok, home to Russias Pacific Fleet and within range of North Korean missiles. US-Led Coalition These military moves by China and Russia make sense if war breaks out between a US-led coalition including South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Australia (for starters) and North Korean forces. The extra forces would likely be used to stanch the tide of North Koreans expected to stream out of North Korea. In the unfortunate circumstance that sees North Koreas first use of a nuclear weapon, a US retaliatory strike would ensure that the radiologically damaged would seek care in China and Russia, care that China and Russia can ill-afford to provide on a large scale. During a protracted conventional conflict, it seems likely that enterprising organizations in China and Russia would attempt to funnel weapons and aid to the North Koreans to keep the US-led coalition occupied while they ponder their strategic and tactical options. With the US bogged down in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, there are many moves that the Chinese and Russians could make contrary to US interests. The political and pundit classes in New York City and Washington, DC believe that the Trump Administration will just kick the Kim Jong-Un tin can down the road for another US president. The same elites told us all that Hillary Clinton would, with great certainty, win the 2016 presidential election. After 100 days of the Trump presidency, they still shake their heads in disbelief. Yet, they seemed to believe fully in President Trumps punitive April cruise missile strikes in Syria undertaken after a Bashar Al Assad use of a nerve agent on his own citizens. But Trumps people say that the time for strategic patience with North Korea is over. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Perry Como of the US State Department, declared as much during a recent visit to South Korea. Has Americas new Ken and Barbie, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, been advising President Trump on the matter? As for Chinas influence, it has warned North Korea not to test Trump even as it recently resumed flights to North Korea from Beijing. Time will tell if China is serious in assisting the US or not. Intellectuals? Beyond the political and pundit classes who grace the world with their intellectual acumen are those across the spectrum who think that North Korea is the way it is because of the policies and practices of the US government. Those outlandish claims should not be seriously entertained. Kim Jong-Un is seen in this video smoking a cigarette and, at one point, sitting at a desk not far from an aircraft runway watching his air force and army in action. It looks a lot like a Monty Python skit until you realize that the North Koreans really believe they are a competent military power. And then there is the North Korean Armys recent live fire exercise. What kind of commanders and political leaders think that the alignment of this artillery on a beach? The commanders are essentially giving their troops a death sentence as US standoff weapons systems would mostly obliterate such massed artillery. North Korean military doctrine is as obsolete as much of its weaponry is. Still, war is horrible and North Korea would, initially, likely cause a lot of pain to the northern portions of Seoul, South Korea. US, South and North Korean civilian casualties would certainly follow. Pain reduction, not elimination, depends on the lethality of US preemptive missile, bomber and cyber-attacks designed to neutralize what the US-led coalitions intelligence believes to be the targets most important to hit first. Most likely, both North Korean nuclear weapons testing and medium-long range missile sites would be targeted, simultaneously with other North Korean conventional military assets. Before such a conflict de-confliction lines with China and Russia would have to be opened. The Fight North Korea has to know that if it moves any weapons systems into the open, the heat or electronic emissions will get them killed. US intelligence services have tried hard to anticipate how quickly the North Koreans can load and reload artillery and the extent of their ammunition supplies. Then there are the diesel submarines North Korea has in operation. US military antisubmarine warfare aircraft and detection is the best in the world and the Navy would be quick to begin the search for North Korean submarines. US attack class submarines would have to eliminate the DPRKs undersea threat very quickly, just as US air forces would be called upon to clear the airspace above North Korea as rapidly as possible. North Korean surface vessels would not do well against US anti-ship weaponry with its advanced guidance systems. On the ground and from the sea, the situation is less clear. North Korea is vulnerable to amphibious landings on both its coastlines on the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. The US Navy and Marine Corps would not attempt such landings until many days into a conflict though. North Korea is said to have sleeper cells in South Korea that would be activated to destroy key communications nodes and other critical infrastructure. North Korean Special Forces are said to be a dangerous threat as in any conflict they would be tasked with infiltrating South Korea to engage in sabotage. It is not known how the North Korean civilian population would respond to an attack. The nation is home to 25 million people who have mostly known nothing but privation and austerity. Of course, thats the view from the outside. There are tantalizing hints that the civilians there might stay away from the fighting to a limited degree. Books smuggled out of North Korea like The Accusation give a hint of some of the thinking of the well-educated and economically better positioned denizens. But the US experience with insurgencies from Vietnam until the present have not been pleasant, successful affairs. At any rate, the will of the North Korean population would play a significant role in a protracted conflict. Some argue that the US should learn from its 20th Century Korean War experience. But comparisons are invalid. The conflict took place as the US was drawing down from World War II and cold political winds were blowing. Since that time the North Koreans have spent a lot of time training to fight but have not been engaged in protracted conflicts for the last two decades as the US has been. There is no substitute for training but when military forces have experience in combat operations and maintain a training regime there is going to be a mismatch at some point favoring the US. Yet another consideration is the Joint Force capabilities of the North Korean military versus the US-coalition interoperability and joint force training. There is no evidence to suggest that North Korea has networked its fighting forces to wage war in the cross domains of sea, undersea, land, air, space and cyber. Nor has North Korea conducted extensive training exercises with partner or allies equivalent to Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea. No One Knows and that Unfinished Business Thing A long term conflict in which the US-led coalition fails to bring North Korea to its knees would allow other nations to make risky moves. Would Russia invade Eastern Ukraine and move up to the Dnieper River? Would China move on Taiwan? Would Turkey move further into Syria? Would Iran move further into Syria and Iraq? Would Russia get more aggressive in Libya? Would Europe further splinter as some members of the European Union back the US while others do not (the UK would fight with the US)? Would the American public support a longer term war effort? Unfortunately, the US, North and South Korea issue is unfinished business. Not too many people on the planet want to see a video of the Kim Jong-Un of the future sitting at his portable desk smoking a cigarette while watching the North Korean Death to America ICBM successfully launched and carrying a nuke toward the United States. If that ICBM made in through US missile defenses, the United States nuclear retaliatory response would turn North Korea into a radiological waste-land for decades. No one in the world wants to see that happen either. John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel@gmail.com WtR Staying out of debt is easier said than done, I know. However, its something you can do, and its something you should be practicing everyday. As Christians, we are in this world, but we are Morales also expressed his fear and concern over the U.S. intervening in Syria and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, in an exclusive teleSUR interview. We were a country submitted to the empire, and we freed ourselves, Bolivia's President Evo Morales said in an exclusive interview with teleSUR from New York Wednesday. As Bolivia began the pro-tempore presidency of the Organization of the American States earlier this month, Morales explained that this opportunity will be the best space to speak out against the empire. The OAS is the best instrument of imperialism, as Fidel said, it's the U.S. Ministry of Colonies, he told teleSUR, while UNASUR respects the vote of the people, the sovereignty of each member state, whether it is a right-wing or a left-wing government. In Venezuela, there is a coup attempt, but the OAS is an instrument for the coup. He added, It looks like (U.S. President Donald) Trump wants to take over the world, but the real leaders are the people, recalling the constant history of U.S. interference in the domestic affairs of Latin American countries and arguing that the United States was really behind the OAS and Secretary-General Luis Almagro. He expressed his fear and concern over the U.S. intervening in Syria and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He reiterated his support for Venezuela's government, arguing that what was really at stake was Venezuela's oil reserves, and congratulated Lenin Moreno for winning the elections in Ecuador. In his opinion, the left will continue leading the countries of the region, he told teleSUR, affirming that in 2019, the people will win, referring to the upcoming presidential elections in the Andean country. About the diplomatic spat with Chile regarding access to the sea, he deplored the situation, saying, I don't understand the arrogance of some state officials in Chile, I wish we could be working together to fight contraband, etc., but Chile does not accept the idea that Bolivia could grow." The victim's body was found with stab wounds. The case is just the latest in a string of dozens of attacks and murders of human rights defenders. Yet another Colombian human rights defender was found murdered Thursday in the southwestern department of Cauca, one of the regions hardest hit by the countrys more than half century-long civil war and ongoing violence against rural social leaders. Diego Fernando Rodriguez, a legal representative for a local community council in the Gana Plata area in Caucas Mercaderes municipality, was found dead Thursday morning with stab wounds. The coordinator of the Human Rights Network of Southwestern Colombia, Deivi Hurtado, stated that Rodriguez was found dead with signs of violence that indicate it was an assassination, Colombias W Radio reported. According to Caracol radio, authorities have already launched investigations into the Rodriguez case. The killing comes amid a wave of violence against progressive social leaders in Colombia, particularly in Cauca and other regions of the country where demobilization of the FARC rebel army has created a power vacuum in some rural areas. According to social organizations, at least 11 community leaders have been murdered in Cauca alone so far this year. In February, human rights defender and campesino leader Falver Ceron, also from Cauca, was killed after being shot at least 11 times. More recently, in what appears to be part of a systematic campaign against supporters of the peace process and progressive politics, two demobilizing FARC rebels were murdered in less than 10 days. One of the victims, Jose Huber Yatacue, was shot dead in the Cauca town of Toribio. According to official statistics, a staggering 156 social leaders were killed in Colombia in the 14 months between Jan. 1, 2016 and March 1, 2017. Amid the crisis, rights groups have urged the Colombian government to prioritize tackling paramilitary violence that often targets progressive social leaders including campesinos, Indigenous activists and other human rights defenders. According to the U.S. State Department, paramilitary forces are responsible for up to 80 percent of the human rights abuses committed in Colombias 52-year civil war that has claimed the lives of some 260,000 people and victimized millions more. Thousands are expected to be in the streets Wednesday as a new round of pro- and anti-government marches take place in Caracas. Students from all across Venezuela gathered in the capital city Caracas Wednesday for a march in support of the government of of President Nicolas Maduro calling for peace and dialogue and and rejecting violence that has at time broken out in demonstrations led by the right-wing opposition in recent weeks. Under the banner of marching "In favor of peace and against violence," the demonstration kicked off at Plaza Morelos at 10:00 a.m. local time, bringing together socialist youth supporting the educational achievements of Maduro's government. The past three weeks have seen large protests in favor and against the Maduro government, during which more than two dozen people have been killed and at least 437 injured, according to Attorney General Luisa Ortega, while opposition protests have at time turned violent. Many of the victims of fatalities have been young people and students. Of those killed, three deaths have been attributed to state security forces, while two of the dead are members of the police themselves. Eight were electrocuted as they attempted to loot a bakery, while five other were killed in incidents expressly connected to opposition protests. On the other hand, 10 of the deceased are attributed to right-wing violence. Government supporters or chavistas accuse right-wing opposition leaders of attempted to portray the deaths as examples of state repression and evidence of the dictatorship that they are aiming to topple in order to try to justify a foreign intervention. The opposition has called for more marches as recent protesters have clashed with police when they attempted to break police cordons and head to areas where pro-government demonstrators were gathered. A new round of opposing marches have been organized in Caracas for Wednesday. Maduro has called for a broad dialogue, which the opposition has rejected and in turn demanded his removal from office. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, will hold an urgent session on May 2 about ongoing opposition violence in Venezuela. Is Belgrade the New Berlin is a question recently raised in Vogue by Marry Holland. Her article starts with a bold claim that no city makes you feel more like a New Yorker than Belgrade. While I am a Belgrader, I have no clue why someone in the New Berlin should feel like a New Yorker (what, do New Yorkers feel like Berliners?) and am not a lifestyle writer to comment on those claims. I am a birder and I can claim that out of Serbias total of 350+ bird species, highly urbanised inner city areas of Belgrade hold almost 100 birds, while the outskirts have more than 200 species. The question is, where to see them? I have written about this topic several times and always choose some of my favourite sites to recommend. This time I will be more objective and let the local eBirders and their activity choose the hotspots instead. eBird says that, at the time of writing (April 2017), there are some ten hotspots that have crossed the 100 bird species mark. But, if you check the hotspot map of Belgrade, you will notice three single green hotspots and, along the Danube, two clusters with 3 and 4 green hotspots. So, instead of writing about 10, I will shorten the where-to-watch list to the eTop-5 (+1). Here they go: 5. The smallest of Belgrades most productive sites, the Galovica canal offers more than 100 birds. It flows from the western suburb of Surcin through arable fields reaching the Sava river SW of New Belgrade. There are walking paths on both sides of the canal, with bridges at 1.3 km / 0.8 mi and 2.5 km / 1.6 mi from the Sava river embankment. Best birds: Eurasian Marsh, Hen and Montagus Harriers; Northern Lapwing, Ruff; Green and Wood Sandpipers, Common Kingfisher, Red-backed and Great Grey Shrikes, Eurasian Golden Oriole, Tree Pipit, Yellowhammer, Reed Bunting. eBird checklist Getting there: City bus 95 and 94. In order to reach Galovica, one has to walk or drive 3.5 km / 2 mi from New Belgrade along the embankment. 4. The Veliko Blato lake has more than 100 eRecorded bird species and lies in the suburb of Krnjaca, on the northern bank of the Danube. It is a large, shallow lake surrounded by reedbeds, offering a circular walk of 6 km / 3.5 mi. The lake is a private property, run by the Mika Alas fish farm company and visitors must ask for permission in advance (management contacts). Best birds: Common Shelduck, Garganey, Ferruginous Duck, Little Bittern, White-tailed Eagle, Black and Whiskered Terns, Eurasian Penduline Tit, Bearded Reedling, Savis Warbler, Common Reed Bunting. At the southeast part of the lake is a breeding colony of Black-crowned Night, Purple and Squacco Herons. eBird checklist Getting there: City buses 95, 96 and 104; after the Sebeski Canal bus stop, there are 1.6 km / 1 mi to the fish farm entrance. Status: The youngest nature reserve in the city 3. With more than 130 bird species recorded here in the last few years (cover photo), the Beljarica backwaters (a.k.a. Crvenka, not to be mistaken for the namesake settlement further downriver) consists of 900 ha / 2,200 ac of river branches, ponds, willow and poplar forests with oak and ash stands, as well as large hybrid black poplar plantations. When the water levels are low, it is possible to explore it on foot, but local birders mostly walk along almost 6 km / 3.5 mi of embankment overlooking the wetlands. Best birds: Black Stork, White-tailed Eagle, Black-winged Stilt, Green and Wood Sandpipers, Ruff, Spotted Redshank, Common Greenshank, Dunlin, Little Stint; Common Kingfisher, Common Hoopoe, European Bee-eater, Wood and Willow Warbler and the Common Chiffchaff. eBird checklist Getting there: Either on foot over the Pupin Bridge from Zemun (reachable by bus 85, 17 and 73), or from the suburb of Kovilovo, reachable by bus 106 (there are additional 4.5 km / 3 mi of asphalt road before one reaches the embankment). Status: Proposed for protection, but threatened by plans for a large scale development. 2. The Reva lake and the Danube backwaters along it are a complex of three 100+ hotspots adding to a 141 bird eRecorded here (in 479 eBird checklists so far). This area consists of the reed-fringed Reva lake proper (as observed from the bridge crossing it) and about 6 km / 3.5 mi of grassy embankment with a view of the backwaters. Habitats are similar to Beljarica. Best birds: Garganey, Ferruginous Duck, Little Bittern, Squacco and Night Herons, White-tailed Eagle, Whiskered Tern, Eurasian Hobby, Red-backed and Lesser Grey Shrikes, Eurasian Penduline Tit. Main eBird checklist Getting there: Get off the bus 108 at the stop called the Oil Refinery and follow the dirt road left of the blue Jeep Commerce building until you reach the bridge over the Reva lake. A few hundred metres further, you may also reach the embankment and check the Danube backwaters for several kilometres. Status: Threatened by ongoing construction works (e.g. no one has reported any more otter sightings since the construction started last year). 1. The Veliko Ratno Island in the middle of the confluence of the Sava and the Danube rivers, together with the Kozara backwaters at the northern bank is a complex cluster of four 100+ hotspots, followed by the next four hotspots. Summed together, there are 177 bird species eRecorded so far at those hotspots (in 1,186 checklists). What makes this area so complex is the issue of getting there. Access is not restricted, but the area stretches over two islands, surrounding waters and three banks of two rivers, so for practical reasons, it should be treated as four areas. Habitats are similar to Beljarica. Best birds: In winter Scaup, Velvet Scoter, Smew and Black-throated Diver; Pygmy Cormorant, Black-crowned Night Heron; Icterine and Wood Warblers. For the White-tailed Eagles nest cam on the island, search the YouTube for Orao Belorepan Veliko Ratno Ostrvo 2017. Main eBird checklist Getting there: To Usce Park, 84 and 15; to Dorcol Promenade, city buses 79 and 24 (overlooking the rivers, both sites are at their best in winter); to Kozara, city bus 104 (best in spring). Veliko Ratno Island can be reached either by boat taking sunbathers to the Lido beach or, in summer, by pontoon bridge (best in spring). Status: Veliko Ratno Island is a protected nature reserve, while Kozara is proposed for protection. + 6. The sixth area doesnt quite reach the 100 birds mark on its own. I am talking of the 511 m / 1700 ft high Avala mountain, some 15 km south of the city. Four eBird hotspots located at the top and the slopes of the mountain have listed 85 species so far, but without any waterbirds, this is impressive in its own right. If we add the birds of arable fields surrounding the mountain (Beli Potok), its checklist goes to 101. With different habitats at lover altitude hornbeam and maple, oak on southern slopes; at higher altitude beech, at northern slopes planted conifers this place offers somewhat different set of birds and is well worth a mention. Best birds: Woodcock (very hard to see), Tawny Owl, 6 species of woodpeckers including Middle Spotted, Gray-headed (rare) and Black; Goldcrest, Short-toed Treecreeper; in winter joined by Firecrest and Bullfinch. Main eBird checklist Getting there: City buses 401, 403, 405, 407 and 408. Status: Nature reserve Apr 27, 2017 | By Tess A group of students from George Mason University in Virginia have given 10-year-old Isabella Nicola Cabrera a chance at realizing her dream of becoming a violinist with the help of a specially designed 3D printed prosthetic. Despite being born with only half her left arm and no left hand, Isabella, a fifth-grader from Alexandria, VA, has dreamed of learning to play the violin. Fortunately for her, the 10-year-old has had much support in realizing her dream, both from her music teacher at Island Creek Elementary and a team of dedicated students from the George Mason Universitys bioengineering department. Isabellas music teacher first built her a prosthetic that enabled her to move a violin bow with her left arm and to hold its strings with her right fingers. Though the prosthetic was functional, it was quite heavy for the young girl, making it difficult to use. It was at that point that her music teacher reached out to his alma mater George Mason University to see if any current students were up to the task of making a bespoke prosthetic. Sure enough, a team of five bioengineering students, including Ella Novoselsky, Racha Salha, Mona Elkholy, Yasser Alhindi, and Abdelrahman Gouda, took on the challenge of designing and 3D printing a prosthetic that would enable Isabella to play her violin. The project even became the teams senior year capstone project. After a few different prototypes and several design tweaks (i.e. reducing the weight, making it as comfortable as possible, etc.), the bioengineering students were able to deliver a 3D printed violin prosthetic fit for the ambitious 10-year-old. Weighing in at only 12 ounces, the final 3D prosthetic, dubbed VioArm, is stunning bright pink with sparklesone of Isabellas specifications. Isabella was fitted with her new 3D printed prosthetic last week and was overjoyed with her new playing ability. With the help of Elizabeth Adams, a violin/viola professor at the George Mason School of Music, Isabella even managed to play some simple scales, including Ode to Joy and Twinkle Twinkle using her new hot pink limb. Understandably, everyone involved in the project, Apr 27, 2017 | By Benedict Massachusetts-based 3D printing company Markforged is using its new Atomic Diffusion Additive Manufacturing (ADAM) process and Metal X 3D printers to advance its futuristic 3D print farm vision of large-scale metal manufacturing. When Markforged unveiled its new Metal X 3D printer at CES earlier this year, we were struck by one thing in particular. Unusually for a Markforged product, it wasnt the 3D printer itself, but the way that the company said it should be used. Massachusetts-based Markforged, which cemented its place in additive manufacturing history when it released the worlds first carbon fiber 3D printer, the Mark One, said it had designed the Metal X to work not just as a standalone machine, but as part of a large-scale 3D print farm consisting of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of 3D printers. It is on these multi-printer 3D print farms that Markforged believes future large-scale metal 3D printing will take place. Given the focus from some quarters on making 3D printers bigger, Markforgeds approach stands out as a different option: rather than increase the size (or speed) of an individual 3D printer to increase its manufacturing capacity, you could instead use several 3D printers working in sync, controlled by a central system capable of assigning tasks for maximum efficiency. Its a daringly simple concept, one that is also followed by companies like Brooklyn-based Voodoo Manufacturing, but its also an ambitious one. Markforged is essentially telling manufacturers that they wont just need a handful of 3D printers in the futuretheyll need thousands. The Markforged Metal X 3D printer can inspect parts as they are being printed Markforged recently released some extra information concerning its proposed 3D print farms, which the company says will shorten development time, closing the gap between prototyping and production. According to Markforged, there are three key focus areas for making the concept a success. The first of these involves using the companys new ADAM 3D printing technology to reduce printing costs. The second involves deploying smart sensors to build a platform for the print farm, and the third involves using its enterprise-grade fleet management software, which can optimize workflows, provide predictive analytics, and connect, monitor, and report results across a fleet of connected printers. ADAM, the 3D printing process used by the new Markforged Metal X 3D printers and 3D print farms, builds on the companys carbon fiber printing processes, but replaces carbon fiber with 60% metal powder. The company says this new process improves machine reliability, surface finish, final-part dimensional accuracy, and repeatability. ADAM is an end-to-end process that starts with metal powder, captures it in a plastic binder (which makes it safe to handle), and then forms it into the part shape one layer at a time, explains Markforged CEO Greg Mark. After printing you sinter the part in a furnace, burning off the binder and solidifying the powder into the final fully-dense metal part. An important part of the 3D print farm project is reducing the overall cost of 3D printing for businessessomething that Markforged will absolutely need to demonstrate considering the scale of setting up one of these print farms. At present, Markforgeds desktop printers cost $3,499, but the company is working on a two-year target to make each printer in its print farms costs less than $1,000. Part printed using Markforged's ADAM 3D printing process Of course, the idea behind the print farm is to have huge numbers of these printers running simultaneously. Assuming that the resulting high turnover of parts could generate suitable revenue, this would then hypothetically justify the investment in a sintering furnace, required to burn off the plastic binder used in the ADAM 3D printing process. A full stack production furnace, which can handle the output of 500-1,000 3D printers in a print farm, costs around $800,000. When making quick prototypes, users of this new Markforged 3D printing technology could also use microwave sintering to produce pure metal parts within hours. The company says it has been microwaving ADAM parts with a 90-minute cycle time. Fortunately for Markforged customers, the 3D printing company has developed its ADAM 3D printing process to work with a variety of 3D printable materials. ADAM leverages well known MIM materials that are used in demanding, end-use applications, Mark says. Best of all, the process supports hundreds of metals. 17-4 Stainless Steel is the first material we will ship, but many others are in beta testing including Tool Steels, Titanium, Aluminum, and Inconel. Markforgeds cloud-based fleet management solution, Eiger, is used to control the many 3D printers in a print farm. In the next 2 years Markforged will achieve the technological leap to true digital metal manufacturing, Mark says. Its time for mechanical engineering to enter the digital age. Posted in 3D Printer Maybe you also like: E. Thomas Finan at The Millions: In March, the acclaimed poet Derek Walcott died at the age of 87. Born on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, Walcott became a literary voice known throughout the globe. Celebrated for his verse and his plays, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a MacArthur genius grant, an Obie award, and countless other prizes. He also taught at a number of institutions, including Boston University (where I now teach, though I didnt know Walcott personally). Reconciliation was one of Walcotts great tasks as a poet. He fused the iconography of the Americas and of Europe in order to create a hybrid poetry. He combined allusions to classical myths with descriptions of the landscape of his native Saint Lucia, and he incorporated quotations from countless European authors in his works. This enterprise of poetic fusion reached a peak in perhaps his most famous work,Omeros, a reworking of Homer that loosely follows the terza rima verse form used by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy. Omeros was published shortly before Walcott won the Nobel Prize in 1992, and, at least if last months obituaries are to be believed, will go down as a landmark piece in his poetic oeuvre. While Omeros has gotten most of the headlines, a shorter and much earlier poem, 1956s Ruins of a Great House reveals some of the abiding concerns of Walcotts work in a more condensed way. In only about 50 lines, it shows how Walcott reworked tradition and reflected on the legacy of colonialism. The poems setting is the manor house at the heart of a former lime plantation. The speaker wanders the ruins of the house and conjures hints of the suffering wrought by life on this plantation. more here. Howard Tharsing at Threepenny Review: In 1896, when Jack London was twenty, the San Francisco Chroniclehad referred to him as the boy socialist of Oakland. His fame grew out of his power as a public speaker. Week after week he stood on a soap box in the little park in front of City Hall arguing that the unbridled capitalism of his day condemned a great many of his fellow citizens to lives of degradation and misery while enriching a small number outrageously. Dozens of speakers held forth in the park every week, but Jack London always drew the biggest crowds and held their attention better than any other speaker. And in 1897, when Oakland passed a law forbidding public meetings on public streets, London challenged the law by getting himself arrested for climbing on that soap box and speaking. Oakland authorities were surprised that instead of paying the fine or consenting to spend a few days in jail, London demanded a jury trial. Acting as his own lawyer, London argued that the law violated the constitutions guarantees of the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and he won. Even at that young age, London already had long experience in the exploitation of labor and the difficulties suffered by the poor. He had worked in a fish cannery, in a coal mine, and in a jute factory, and as a fisherman, a seal hunter, an oyster pirate, and an officer in the Fish Patrol. He had traveled across the country as a hobo jumping trains. He had spent thirty days in jail in upstate New York on a charge of vagrancy. more here. Jason Daley in Smithsonian: Wax worms, which are the larval stage of the wax moth Galleria mellonella, are commonly used in the United States as fishing bait or birdfeeder snacks. But in Europe, the worms are considered a beehive pest where they chew through the beeswax, disrupting the hive. But researchers have found another use as plastic recyclers. Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper and scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, picked some wax worms out of one of her beehives and put them in a plastic shopping bag. She left to clean the honeycomb panels. When she returned, the worms were all over the place. "When I checked, I saw that the bag was full of holes. There was only one explanation: The worms had made the holes and had escaped. This project began there and then," she says in a press release. Bertocchini and colleagues from Cambridge University began studying the creatures and found that the common wax worm can not only munch but also metabolize polyethylene, the plastic in shopping bags which makes up about 40 percent of the plastics used in Europe. They published their results this week in the journal Current Biology. In order to study the worms munching ability, the researchers put 100 wax worms in a plastic shopping bag from a U.K. supermarket. Within 40 minutes, holes began to appear. Within 12 hours, they had eaten about 92 milligrams of plastic, which Bertocchini says is pretty fast, especially compared to bacteria discovered last year which dissolves polyethylene at a rate of about 0.13 milligrams per day. As Ian Sample at The Guardian reports, the researchers wanted to make sure the worms werent just chewing the plastic into microscopic particles. So they smooshed up some of the worms and applied the paste to the plastic, which also caused holes to appear. The caterpillars are not just eating the plastic without modifying its chemical make-up. We showed that the polymer chains in polyethylene plastic are actually broken by the wax worms, co-author Paolo Bombelli says in a press release. The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut. The next steps for us will be to try and identify the molecular processes in this reaction and see if we can isolate the enzyme responsible. The hope is that the discovery could lead to a method for breaking down polyethylene that is currently filling in landfills and clogging waterways. But just how that will work is speculative. The enzyme could be produced by modified E. coli bacteria or plankton that would attack plastic in the wild, writes Sample. Bombelli also suggests it may be possible to breed and release an army of wax worms. But that means learning more about the worms motivation. More here. Your wedding is your Big Daythis makes it the perfect moment to show off your personality and tastes as a couple. Trends making the rounds this year include onsite illustrators and customized 3D cake toppers, but perhaps nothing feels as fresh as a bit of bud to go with the bubbly. Cannabis has officially crossed into lifestyle territory, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Bay Area, where you can partake at secret underground dinners, industry conventions, and limb-loosening yoga classes. If you think cannabis weddings are just an excuse for a stoney couple to hold an extravagant group smoke session, reconsider: Just as there is an industrial complex composed of every kind of vendor to support every kind of traditional wedding, there are increasingly plenty of options for cannabis lovers to host formal or casual, elegant or quirky, and intimate nuptials that also celebrate their love for this particular botanical wonder. Themed invitations and wedding favors, cannabis-infused appetizers and desserts, and signature strains in place of signature cocktails are just a few ways couples are infusing cannabis into their festivities. Like any wedding, these things require planning. The Wedding Planner: Cannabis Wedding Expo This week (on April 30th), more than 50 wedding and cannabis vendors will gather at the Westfield's Bespoke event space for what is being called the first-ever cannabis wedding expo in the state of California. As at any wedding-planning event, you can sample (unmedicated) foods from caterers, get hair and makeup demos, and talk face-to-face with various photographers, florists, officiants and more about your vision for your day. You don't have to have an MMJ card to attend, but all guests must be 21 and up. // Saturday, Apr. 30, 11am to 4pm at Bespoke at Westfield San Francisco Centre, 845 Market St., Level 4 (SoMa); $10 tickets at cannabisweddingexpo.com. The Fashion: Smokies Toke Couture Pilar Johnson started her San Franciscobased brand in 2012 when she noticed there was a void in the industry for quality cannabis-inspired accessories. While wearing a pot leaf necklace or barrette to your wedding might sound a little high, some of Johnson's handmade itemsincluding cannabis leaf earrings, pendants, cuff links, and money clips ($8 to $100)have a kind of sweet, vintage vibe. Of course, you'll also find suitably stoner gifts for your wedding party and guests: Grab a round of "Best Buds" tees, "Freshly Baked" aprons, and customized stash jars. // etsy.com/shop/SmokiesTokeCouture The Magazine: Love and Marij Think of this as Brides magazine for stoners. Love and Marij is go-to website for all things related to cannabis weddings. Here you'll find tips for how to host a bud or vape bar at your reception, recipes for infused treats, advice from experts, party favors, and more. Plus, get inspiration from couples who've successfully pulled off cannabis weddings and ogle their pretty pictures. // loveandmarij.com The Venue: Terra Gallery & Events Well known in the city as a wedding and events venue for modern party planners and art lovers, Terra is open to hosting your cannabis wedding (from ceremony to reception) in its two-level, 24,000 square-foot space. You can bring your meticulously crafted bud bouquet and wow your guests with some fancy nug centerpieces at the reception, but you and your guests will have to step outside on Terra's patio to indulge in any smoking or vaping. Expectedly, there are details and legal concerns that need to be addressed with the venue, but the team at Terra is openminded. One thing is certain: Until recreational use goes fully legal in 2018, all guests who plan to partake must bring their MMJ cards. // Terra SF, 511 Harrison St. (SoMa),terrasf.com For three years, a suburban New York family embraced their son's postcollege girlfriend. She joined them for Sunday dinners, birthdays, holidays, weddings and funerals. The unspoken expectation was marriage. Then, after several months of turmoil, the couple split. The man's mom was heartbroken: "I feel like I lost a daughter," she says. Breaking up is hard and not just for the young couple. Many parents form bonds with their adult child's significant other. Perhaps they've known them since they were kids, or the couple lived together almost married so the partner was part of the family. And sometimes after a breakup, parents worry their child will never find another seemingly perfect partner, says Susan Newman, an author and social psychologist in New Jersey "especially if they are looking for grandchildren." What's a parent to do? Erase the former partner from memory? Reach out and say goodbye? Tell your child he or she is making a big mistake? "Parents always need to side with and support their child, even if they think they are nuts for breaking up," says Linda Lewis Griffith, a marriage and family therapist in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Griffith, who counsels young adults in her practice, notes that a breakup can be an intense period of sadness, upheaval and adjustment for the couple. If parents want to vent, they should express their feelings with friends and other family members, not with their kids. "Parents need to allow themselves time to grieve, then adapt and move on to make room for the next relationship," Griffith says. While it's not necessary to unfriend the former love on Facebook, she says, don't actively engage with him or her. Continued contact leaves both parent and child in an emotional limbo. If it feels impossible to have no contact at all with the ex, Griffith suggests sending a card with a simple message of best wishes. And if a card seems too cold, Newman offers the following advice: Consult your child. Ask how your son or daughter feels about you continuing the relationship. Explain the difficulty of severing a longtime emotional connection. "Some adult children couldn't care less," Newman says, while others will be upset, "feeling parents have abandoned them." Give it some time. If your adult child reacts negatively, you might wait a month or two until emotions are not so raw. Then ask again about reaching out. But don't push it. Call the ex. If your child doesn't mind, call to express your sadness, how much you will miss the ex and the hope that your paths will cross again. Finally, whatever you do, don't get caught in the middle, Griffith says. If the ex calls and wants you to advocate for him or her with your child, don't. The fallout can get messy. Mary W. Quigley, a journalist and author, has written two books about motherhood and work. A New York University journalism professor, she is the mother of three adult children and blogs at Mothering21.com. Hearing help Costco and Sams offer free hearing tests to determine if you need a hearing aid. BJs offers 40 percent off many hearing aids, plus a free battery supply for one year and a free three-year warranty. Most warehouse clubs offer reduced prices on glasses and contact lenses, too. Low-cost prescription drugs A 2018 Consumer Reports study found that Costco has the cheapest prescription drugs among brick-and-mortar stores, outperforming Walmart and big chain drugstores. Sams also offers signifcantly lower drug prices, according to Consumer Reports. (BJ's stores do not have pharmacies.) You don't even have to join the clubs to get those low prices anyone can use a Costco or Sam's Club pharmacy but both offer additional drug discounts for members. For example, Costco members who have prescriptions their health insurance won't cover (or who don't have insurance at all) may be able to joint the store's Prescription Program and likely save on a variety of drugs check out the list of meds included here. You can even get prescriptions for your pet. In-store pickup The one thing many people hate about warehouse stores is how crowded they can be during weekends and at other peak periods. Members of Sams Clubs dont have to deal with that hassle. They can go online and order what they want. Employees will gather the items together and have them ready for customers to pick up at the time of their choosing. And the best part? Its free and may cut down on impulse buying! BJs offers a similar program. Members reserve their items online, give employees two hours to fill their order and then pick up their items. Delivery While all may offer standard delivery, Costco and BJs have partnered with Instacart in select areas to offer same-day delivery on your everyday items. Since you are ordering through a third party, you dont need a membership, but you still get the warehouse price! The Instacart service does charge a delivery fee, and it can fluctuate based on demand. (Youll have to see if the delivery cost outweighs yearly membership as another way to save.) Noem secures second term with big win over Smith The win is historic as Kristi Noem becomes the first woman to win re-election to the highest political seat in the state. The Australia share market Monday closed firmer on hope of a gradual appreciation of the Chinese yuan. At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index rose 60.7 points, or 1.33 per cent, to 4612.6 points and the broader All Ordinaries index added 58.6 points, or 1.28 per cent, to 4632.7 points. The market was also inspired by the news that Australian federal government struck a A$11 billion deal with Telstra over the planned national broadband network. Open Briefing with MD/CEO Andrew McLellan Melbourne, April 27, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Bluechiip Ltd ( ASX:BCT ) is pleased to provide the script of the Open Briefing interview with the MD/CEO Andrew McLellan. In this Open Briefing(R), Andrew discusses: - Labcon OEM agreement - Sales and developer kit pipeline - Genea Biomedx and Planet Innovation progress - Working capital openbriefing.com 1. Andrew, Bluechiip recently signed its third OEM agreement, with Labcon North America. What is significant about this agreement? MD Andrew McLellan: The agreement we have signed with Labcon North America is very significant for several reasons. - It's the third OEM agreement in just 18 months since our OEM strategy was launched. - It's the first OEM agreement for BCT in our major target market, North America, which equates to over 40% of our target market. - Labcon has already identified end customers and placed orders for Bluechiip's products for those customers to trial integrated products. - Bluechiip has already received the first license fee instalment with ongoing quarterly licenses fees to be paid over the next 18 months from the date of the agreement. Labcon North America purchased a developer kit in June 2016 and from then until signing the OEM agreement in April 2017, they performed detailed and significant due diligence to confirm that Bluechiip's technology is valid and that it is critically important for Labcon's customers. They undertook a global, independent survey of bio preservation operators which confirmed that the market for Labcon and Bluechiip in the bio preservation market is substantial. They identified, based on a bottom up analysis, an immediate market $40M a year market opportunity for Bluechiip equipped 2 ml vials. While 2 ml vials are the most common size, they only account for a portion of the overall vials market which is estimated at $US200m per year with vials ranging from 0.1 through 5ml. openbriefing.com 2. In terms of accelerating conversion of developer kits into OEM agreements, can you tell us the number of developer kits sold, how many OEM agreements BCT has signed and are the developer kits profitable? MD Andrew McLellan: Our OEM strategy was launched in mid 2015 with one of our early sales of a developer kit to Genea Biomedx who subsequently signed a partner agreement in December 2015 and completed due diligence to convert to a full OEM development and supply agreement in February 2016. We expect the first of Genea Biomedx end products, with Bluechiip's technology embedded, to be sold into the market this calendar year. We have now sold over 10 developer kits with 3 having now converted to full OEM partners. We expect each OEM agreement to ultimately grow into a multi-million-dollar revenue stream. While developer kits in themselves are not a major revenue line, at around $10k per kit, they are an indication of the interest potential partners have in Bluechiip's technology and lead to further sales and activity. We are now seeing a conversion to full OEM agreements each of which address multi-million dollar market opportunities. Looking at the agreements we have in hand now the direct available market within each is substantial: - Genea Biomedx serves the Assisted Reproductive Technology market, better known as IVF market, which performs 1.8m IVF cycles per year, with 4 to 16 eggs per cycle the available market is 18m eggs per year requiring Bluechiip temperature tracking technology, for Bluechiip the opportunity is over $20m per year. - Labcon has externally identified an immediate market of $40m per annum with an ability to increase to over $200m; and - Planet Innovation is targeting partners in the cryopreservation, transport and life science instrument space with market opportunity for Bluechiip consumables of over $30m per annum. We are seeing an acceleration in the conversion of our pipeline discussions that started 18 months ago with the first sales of developer kits which then translate into OEM agreements. We have well over 30 pipeline discussions ongoing that include nondisclosure agreements with partners. openbriefing.com 3. How is this conversion to OEM agreements being reflected in revenues today and the revenue outlook? MD Andrew McLellan: While our revenues are still very low they have been growing fast and only reflect the sales of developer kits and early stage work with our clients. Our first OEM product revenues, which are the major revenue kicker for us, start to flow in financial 2018 and initially they address $50m of identified end markets out of an initial broader market of $250m. Looking at revenues over the last 2 financial years, our cash receipts from customers have grown from $56k, to $139k a year and we expect that to almost double again this financial year. Each of these customers is paying commercial margins for license fees and development services and products. As noted, that's before sales of end products by our existing OEM partners, including Genea Biomedx, which we expect to start flowing in 2018 financial year. 18 months ago, we began executing our OEM strategy, putting in place our pipeline process including the developer kits that allow our partners to adopt Bluechiip technology. At the same time, we continued to execute a suite of products including the hand-held reader and multi sample readers. We are now seeing traction in the market. In the first half of the 2017 financial year, we received $125k of cash receipts from customers. With the Labcon agreement, executed shortly after the release of our third quarter 4C report, we have received an inflow of cash from the license agreement and product orders which will further translate into income this final quarter. Looking to the end of the 2017 financial year will see a significant year on year increase in total revenue for Blue Chiip. Looking to the next 18 months and beyond we have executed agreements with major partners who are global companies with global access. They are paying us commercial margins and although they have not released integrated Bluechiip products yet we see those products coming on line and generating significant increase in FY18 onwards. openbriefing.com 4. When do you expect the first product revenues from your OEM agreement with Genea Biomedx agreement? MD Andrew McLellan: Genea is a good example of the layered revenues that our business model generates. We have received revenue from: license fees; development services; and prototype products. In FY18 we expect to receive revenues from product sales. Genea Biomedx already has instruments in the market and continues each year to expand that installation base through its distribution partner Merck. Bluechiip's technology is being developed into consumables that are used on the existing Genea Biomedx Vitrification and Incubation platforms so we expect the uptake of Bluechiip technology to roll out across existing customers and based on this and market feedback we expect a very good uptake. openbriefing.com 5. What is the relationship between Merck, Genea Biomedx and Planet Innovation? How does this relate back to BCT? MD Andrew McLellan: Genea Biomedx has an exclusive agreement with BCT to use our products in the Assistive Reproductive Technologies market. Their exclusive global distribution partner is Merck Bio Pharma, which is part of the global pharmaceutical company Merck, whose sales reps are out in the market today selling Genea Biomedx's platforms for the assisted reproductive technologies market. Planet Innovation has been involved in the development and manufacture of Genea Biomedx's equipment and currently manufactures the incubation and vitrification platforms that are being distributed globally by Genea Biomedx. Planet Innovation, as a development partner, also has access into other organizations in the life science sector across the globe, and is actively pursuing opportunities to include Bluechiip technology with their partners. openbriefing.com 6. What's the relationship between sales and working capital for BCT? MD Andrew McLellan: We are entering a different and exciting phase with down-stream demand from our OEM partners pulling product through our supply chain. That pull from customers means we are required to build our inventory and convert our existing prototype products into full production units including the multi-vial reader and hand held reader. This accelerating sales growth will require working capital but the expected margins are good and the expected returns on that capital are very attractive. About Bluechiip Limited Bluechiip Ltd (ASX:BCT) understands that every sample - stem cells, blood, eggs, sperm and other biospecimens - is critical, so our objective is to manage each one with optimal quality in the most efficient way. Bluechiip's advanced management solution is the only one that provides sample temperature with ID in cryogenic environments to. Most importantly, this delivers confidence in every sample. Bluechiip's unique patented technology is a MEMS-based wireless tracking solution that contains no electronics. It represents a generational change from current tracking methods such as labels (hand-written and pre-printed), barcodes (linear and 2D), and Radio Frequency Identification. Bluechiip tags are either embedded or manufactured into storage products such as vials or bags. Each product can be easily identified, and critical information such as sample temperature, is detected by readers and stored in the Bluechiip software. In addition to functioning in extreme temperatures, the Bluechiip(R) Advanced Sample management solution can survive autoclaving, gamma irradiation sterilization, humidification, centrifuging, cryogenic storage and frosting. Bluechiip's technology has applications in healthcare, including in cryogenic storage facilities (biobanks and biorepositories), pathology, clinical trials and forensics. Other key markets include cold-chain logistics/supply chain, security/defence, industrial/manufacturing and aerospace/aviation. Bluechiip: Delivering confidence in every sample. First jointly manufactured plants under recently announced strategic alliance between Emefcy and RWL provide path to enhanced revenue from deployments and RWL Water Announce Shipment of Packaged Plants to Accelerate China Market Adoption Melbourne, April 27, 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 completion of manufacturing and delivery of Emefcy's packaged demonstration plants to two of the company's Chinese strategic partners, China Gezhouba Group Corporation ( SHA:600068 ) (CGGC) and Beijing Sinorichen Environmental Protection Corp. Ltd. ("Sinorichen"). Produced at RWL Water's manufacturing facility in Israel, the Emefcy demonstration plants are expected to be installed and begin operation by the end of Q2 2017. China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) is one of China's largest construction and engineering companies which operates in over 100 countries, with over 4,000 successful projects, including the great Three Gorges Dam Project. CGGC and Emefcy intend to jointly bid on an initial 345 rural wastewater treatment plants of varying capacity in two key Districts in Hebei. Should the partners win the bidding, deployment could occur over the course of 2017. Sinorichen is a leader in wastewater treatment consulting and engineering services throughout Beijing Province and Northern China. Sinorichen intends to deploy Emefcy's MABR-based wastewater treatment systems to rural communities in Beijing Province and throughout Northern China. Richard Irving, Chairman of Emefcy, commented: "We believe these packaged plants are delivered in a form which helps to accelerate our partners' time to deployment and potentially enhances Emefcy's share of revenue in these deployments. These are key early results of our successful strategic alliance with RWL Water whose engineering skills coupled with Emefcy's product development capability are highly complementary." Henry Charrabe, CEO of RWL Water stated: "With our global leadership position in designing packaged water and wastewater treatment solutions, we are excited to leverage that experience to engineer these containerized solutions and assist Emefcy in executing on their solid 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. 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/ A team of doctors from Abu Dhabi visited the Saifee hospital here to meet Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed, who is being treated for obesity at the medical facility. The doctors from VPS Healthcare hospital in Abu Dhabi yesterday visited the hospital in south Mumbai where the staff cooperated with them, Doctor Aparna Bhaskar, one of the specialists in the team treating Eman, said today. The team shared all of Emans medical reports with the visiting doctors. They met the patient while she was undergoing physiotherapy sessions, she said. The Abu Dhabi doctors visited Eman upon her sister Shaimaa Selims request. Eman weighed around 500 kg when she was brought to Mumbai in February. Selim had recently alleged that the doctors at Saifee hospital made false claims about Emans weight loss of 262 kg from 500 kg. Refuting the allegations, Bhaskar said on Tuesday that Selim may be criticising the doctors to extend her sisters stay at the hospital. In a video posted online, Selim recently said that Doctor Muffazal Lakdawala, the bariatric surgeon who is leading the team of doctors treating Eman, has made false claims about her complete recovery and weight loss. Lakdawala had on April 11 said that Eman has so far lost 262 kg during the treatment. Emans sister is said to be planning to shift her out of India for a better treatment. A member of the patient coordination team of Lakdawala also confirmed the visit of doctors from Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile, the Saifee hospital has also invited a team of experts from various medical fields to visit Eman today and review her health condition. The doctors at Saifee want a third party opinion on Emans health condition as her sisters allegations have upset many from the team of experts treating her. Selim has lately been criticising Lakdawalas team and the hospital for allegedly not treating her sister properly. Lakdawala, however, refuted the allegations earlier and stated that in his capacity as a bariatric surgeon he had done his job properly. The efficiency of Emans body parts has been increased from 5 per cent to over 70 per cent, he had said. He also said that her neurological problems were being addressed by specialists. Last month, Eman underwent her first bariatric surgery in which doctors reduced two-third of her stomach size. Her genetic tests show she has a rare gene mutation that cannot be cured through surgery. One man was severely injured Wednesday after his motorcycle collided with a pick-up truck on Silver Bluff Road. Assyrian Militia Denounces Assad, 'Other Backward, Extreme, and Terrorist Groups' A militia that primarily represents Assyrian Christians in Syrias northeastern al-Hasakah province confirms to Breitbart News that not all Christians in Syria support the war-ravaged country's dictator Bashar al-Assad, as common knowledge has suggested. "We stand as I said not only against the acts and policies of the Assad regime but all the other backward, extreme and terrorist groups which target and threaten the existence of our people in Syria," Sewerios Malke of the estimated 2,000-strong Syriac Military Council (MFS) militia told Breitbart News. "The Syriac and Christian people in the regime-controlled areas are still facing several oppressions and threats including terrorizing by pro-regime forces, killing, kidnapping for ransom and other threats too which happened hundreds of times, especially in areas far from the terrorist controlled areas as it [the regime] calls them," later revealed Malke. Assad considers all opposition groups, including those backed by the United States, to be terrorists. Although many Christians across the country have reluctantly" directed their loyalty to Assad, the MFS militia has spoken against the dictator and requested direct assistance from President Donald Trumps administration. Malke accused the Assad regime of oppressing Syrian Christians and using them as cannon fodder. The dictator "was oppressing them [Christians] and denying them their national, ethnic, cultural and political rights," he said, adding, "He used them as a shield for what it wanted to accomplish. He used their areas as military areas against the opposition forces, and that resulted in them being targets." Moreover, the militia spokesman also said the dictator used his relationship with the Christians for propaganda -- to promote an image of himself as the protector and savior of the ethnoreligious minority group. "The Syrian regime has been using the Syriac and Christian card a lot to make propaganda for its benefit, but the reality is -- neither now nor in the past -- it was caring about the Syriac Christian situation, proclaimed the militia spokesman. Asked what he would request from President Trump if he had the opportunity to speak to him face-to-face, Malke said he would ask for direct military "support needed for our forces who are fighting against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). He noted that, right now, U.S. military aid is only reaching other opposition groups. The MFS militia is part of the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-Arab alliance, preparing to fight ISIS jihadists to retake their Syrian de-facto capital Raqqa. In the offensives leading up to the fight for Raqqa, "we gave a lot of sacrifices and lost many of our friends, leaders, and fighters," pointed out Malke, adding: Mainly the Syria Democratic Forces are receiving a great amount of support from the USA and the international coalition, and we are thankful for that, but it is basically focused for the Arab Coalition in SDF. We would like to ask for special support for our Syriac Christian forces that would enable us to function more efficiently and fulfill our goal to protect our people and possibly expand our operations to protect the Syriac Christian community in other areas in Syria like Homs, Hama and Damascus countryside. The U.S.-backed SDF is led and predominantly made up of fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) that controls large swathes of northern Syria. MFS is identified by some news outlets as the armed wing of the Mesopotamia National Council (MUB). It was launched in January 2013 by the Syriac Union Party. MFS members include Syrian Christians who identify as Assyrians, Syriacs, and Chaldeans. The Syrian dictator transformed a monastery in the Christian-majority city of Mhardeh, located in northern Hama province, into "an artillery base to bomb the surrounding areas," pointed out Malke. Residents of regime-controlled Mhardeh recently urged the Syrian regime and their allies, including Iran's terror proxy Hezbollah, to leave their territory. Persecution and genocide at the hands of jihadist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda have forced most Syrian Christians into territory controlled by either Assad or the Kurds. After days of deadly clashes in August 2016, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), signed a ceasefire with the Assad regime that gave the Kurds control of most of al-Hasakah province, where MFS is based. The MFS spokesman told Breitbart News that Assad repeatedly refused to defend Christians from their enemies or provide them the necessary tools to fight the terrorist group themselves. "All Christians who live in western Syria and close to [the Syrian capital] Damascus are aligned with the Syrian government," argued retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Sargis Sangari, the head of the Near East Center for Strategic Engagement and expert on Assyrian Christian issues. He added that Christians in al-Hasakah and in eastern Syria "must stick with the Kurds and other power brokers in the east, including those aligned with either Russia or Turkey for survival." "The Christians in the middle sections of Syria (Homs-Damascus area) are mostly Arab Christians who maintain a force of about 20,000 fighters supported by the Assad regime," also said Col. Sangari, who also serves as an adviser for the Iraq-based Assyrian Army known as Dwekh Nawsha Increased freighter and bellyhold volumes saw Amsterdam Schiphol airport report a 9.5% rise in March airfreight throughputs to 154,000 tonnes. Europes number three cargo gateway in 2016 also enjoyed a strong first quarter in 2017, handling a record 420,168 tonnes from January to March, up 8% on the same period last year. Jonas van Stekelenburg, head of cargo at Schiphol, said that his teams focus on pharmaceutical, e-Commerce, and perishables customers had led to further growth, especially in the Asia and Europe markets. Said van Stekelenburg: Our pharma initiatives have led to boosted pharma volumes both inbound and outbound to the US, South America, and Asia, and we will continue to work with the Schiphol Cargo Community to develop this further. Unfortunately, the growth in the Latin American and African regions is a bit behind. The Netherlands cargo hubs upbeat 2017 first quarter continues a trend seen elsewhere among the worlds top freight airports. Global top hub Hong Kong registered 11.5% year-on-year growth to 1.1m tonnes in the first quarter of 2017, while Dubai and Singapore airports both saw impressive cargo tonnage increases in the first three months, up by 3.5% and 6.2% respectively. In Europe, regional number one Frankfurt recorded a 5.8% increase in airfreight and airmail volumes in the first quarter of 2017 to 535,764 tonnes. Amsterdams March figures were boosted by a 7.2% growth in full freighter volume and a belly volume growth at 13.2%. Asia remains the largest market for the Dutch hub, with figures up four percent on inbound to 70,648 tonnes, and 12% to 74,332 tonnes on outbound, with Shanghai, China, remaining the busiest cargo destination. The European market grew due to new cargo flows across Europe, where cargo transits at hubs such as Baku, Azerbaijan, and Moscow, Russia, en route to final destinations in Asia. As a large number of flights now transit Europe en route to China, we can attribute a proportion of the growth in our European figures to the Asian market, said van Stekelenburg. A decrease in full freighter volumes on inbound cargo from North America led to a 6% decrease on volume to 36,422 tonnes, but exports to the same market were up 12% to 38,666 tonnes, due to increased full freighter and belly volumes. Asia, due to its growing economy, saw both inbound and outbound cargo volumes inflate, up 4% to 70,648 tonnes, and 12% to 74,332 tonnes respectively. Africa inbound and outbound cargo capacity was down due to decreased capacity: 5% to 30,319 tonnes, and 16% to 12,364 tonnes respectively. The Middle East saw an inbound decrease of 4% to 21,723 tonnes, while outbound went up 13% to 31,910 tonnes. Latin America outbound cargo was down 15% to 15,855 tonnes due to decreased freighter capacity. However, inbound volume was up 31% to 30,952 tonnes. Share this story Logistics firm Dachser has expanded its airfreight station at Shanghai Pudong Airport Bonded Zone. The Germany-headquartered firm said work on its facility in Shanghai to expand it to 6,000 sq m from 3,000 sq m had now been completed. The expansion allows the company to operate with a two airport gateway strategy. This will speed up airfreight processing, the company said. Inbound and outbound cargo for the ten Dachser branches in its north China region will be routed through Shanghai Pudong Airport and the Beijing International Airport, depending on their geographical proximity, specific requirements of the goods and current market situation. The north China gateway demonstrates Dachsers high quality process management across continents, said Yves Larquemin, managing director air and sea logistics north China." Consolidating cargo via the gateway instead of handling it individually at local airports will harmonize processes and extend service capabilities, said David Wang, airfreight gateway manager north China. Share this story April 27, 2017 Congress already had at least four pro-Israel caucuses. Now it can add an anti-Palestinian one to the list. A handful of conservative Republicans unveiled their Israel Victory Caucus at an April 27 Capitol Hill event. The group's stated goal is to persuade the Palestinians that they've been defeated and they should recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state as a precursor to any negotiations. The PLO formally recognized "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security" in 1993. "Israel has been at war with its immediate neighbors over its right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people for nearly 70 years," said Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, who co-founded the caucus with Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. "It is our view that Israel has been victorious in this war, and that this reality must be recognized in order for any peace to be achieved between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors." DeSantis, a member of the House Foreign Affairs panel, traveled to Israel last month to scope out potential sites for the US Embassy if it relocates from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He said he was confident President Donald Trump would announce his decision to move the embassy when he visits Israel in late May or early June. "I think the announcement of that trip is a signal that it is more likely to happen than not," he said, "and sends a powerful signal to other countries around the world that America is back, and that we will stand by our allies and will not let folks cower us into not doing the right thing." The caucus is the brainchild of Daniel Pipes, a former academic who leads the nonprofit Middle East Forum. The left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Pipes an Islamophobe, but he insists he supports moderate Muslims against radicals. Pipes has long argued that the current approach, which favors direct negotiations between two equal sides, is bound to fail. Better for everyone involved, he argues, for the Palestinians to be forced to admit that they have lost. "Only the definitive victory of Israel the Middle Easts only haven for free speech, women and minorities will bring an end to this fight and eventual peace to the region," the Middle East Forum argues in an invitation to the caucus launch. The group says that Knesset member Oded Forer of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu has made an official request to open a sister Israel Victory Caucus in Jerusalem, "and it is hoped that the two caucuses will hold events together this July in Jerusalem to push the shared agenda forward among both governments and populations." According to the forum, Reps. Keith Rothfus, R-Penn., Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., also attended the launch of the caucus. But the reception failed to get any traction among more moderate members, raising criticisms that it's a purely partisan effort that further erodes the longtime bipartisan support for Israel while achieving little or nothing of value. "I think getting the Palestinians to accept a two-state solution that's consistent with Israeli security is hard enough. Asking them to say 'we're a bunch of losers' is an unnecessary concession," said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who co-chairs the bipartisan Israel Allies Caucus. Another co-chairman, House Foreign Affairs ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., lamented the fragmentation of support for Israel on Capitol Hill. He said he wasn't invited to participate in the launch of the new caucus. "I think Israel should remain a bipartisan issue," he told Al-Monitor. "And so when you have groups breaking off and they're all partisan," that's not optimal. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a member of both the Democratic Israel Working Group and the Congressional Hellenic-Israel Alliance, said the new caucus' rejection of two-state talks was doomed to fail. "What's the point of this caucus?" Nadler asked. "What are they going to add? How will it help Israel?" House Republican Israel Caucus co-chairs Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., both declined to comment about the launch of the Israel Victory Caucus. Meanwhile, the liberal pro-Israel group J Street lost no time exploiting the caucus launch to raise money. "In the manifesto outlining the groups approach, Daniel Pipes writes 'Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction and despair' before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved," J Street wrote in a fundraising email. "Thats barbaric thinking. And its totally at odds with the views of Israels security establishment, which consistently argues Palestinian despair leads to instability, violence and disbelief that Israelis want peace." Pipes' forum responded in kind. "Wars end when one side gives up," the forum wrote in an online posting. "Which side do you want to win, J Street? The Palestinian?" April 26, 2017 In 2014, a young Egyptian man in his early 20s was to be wed in a few hours. Celebrating, he rented a scooter with his friends, driving around and cheering in joy. They were stopped at a checkpoint, and, upon finding out that the groom did not have a license for the scooter, the police officer moved to confiscate the scooter. When the young man begged to keep it, the officer and his informants whaled on him, beating him to death. Imagine going out to celebrate getting married, and returning a corpse, said lawyer and head of United Group for Law Negad El Borai, who spoke about one of the 150 cases of torture he has handled over two years. Borai decided to take a stance, but what started as a draft law to end torture ended up in his own prosecution and with two judges being investigated in the first official session April 24. We first used to provide legal aid to torture victims, but we found out that these cases lead nowhere, Borai said. More than 80 complaints against the prosecutions deliberate sluggishness were handed to the general prosecutor. The lawyer explained that such cases need quick investigation before torture marks are gone. Yet again, no action was taken against the common practice. Several victims spoke to Al-Monitor about the torture they have survived, be it in police stations or at the hands of national security. Upon arrest, the detainee receives a reception party usually involving beating, slapping and kicking. Verbal abuse is an integral part of the forces language. Humiliation is accompanied by psychological torment through death threats, threats to the victims family or witnessing the torture of other victims. Urgent medical attention is a rarity, and hordes of detainees are placed in small, filthy rooms. During interrogation, electrodes are connected to genitals, bones are broken and ice-cold water is used. A trademark method of Egyptian torture is officers extinguishing cigarettes on prisoners bodies. Confessing to trumped-up charges may save a person from rape. Homicide and out-of-control torture have led to the death of 50 citizens across Cairo and Giza in 2015, and this is only the official number. Solitary confinement for months on end has been used against human rights lawyer Malek Adly, activist Ahmed Douma and many others. "It felt like time stood still. It just wouldn't move, said Noor Khalil, 24, recalling his torture sessions. "I kept thinking how our lives are so cheap to them. The legal stagnancy sparked the idea of an anti-torture law. In November 2014, professionals from all related bodies including Ragia Omran from the National Human Rights Council, professor of criminal law Emad al-Fikki and Ihab Sallam from the United Nations put together the draft. Needing a review from the judiciarys perspective, Judge Hesham Raoof who previously held the position of assistant minister of justice and Judge Assem Abdel Gabbar vice president of a criminal circuit were consulted, giving their input and amendments. Al-Monitor got hold of the bill. The draft stipulates that the district attorney should promptly and as soon as he is informed of a torture incident give orders to begin the investigation (Article 122). Any governmental officer who ordered or permitted the torture of an individual is to be penalized with rigorous imprisonment (Article 126). The compensation to be paid to the victims or their successors shall not be less than 250,000 Egyptian pounds (Article V), and an official, permanent government board for the prevention of torture shall be constituted by a resolution from the prime minister (Article IX). To finalize the law, the draft was sent to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the Supreme Judicial Council in April, only for the councils president to file a complaint against the two judges. They were accused of the participation in drafting a law against torture with an illegal group headed by Negad El Borai." Minister of Justice Ahmed El-Zend ordered their referral to the disciplinary board for investigation. Borai was also interrogated and charged with harming the public security, disruption of state institutions and receiving foreign funds, among other charges. I find this a subliminal message that the government does not want to face and combat torture, Borai stated. It's a negative message that would give protection to torturers, he said. Attempts to shut down Al Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, which has stood against torture and deaths in detention since 1993, began in 2004. Later, in 2016, the decades-old center received a Health Ministry order for closure over violation of license and changing activity. This is absurd; we have been conducting the same activities for years. One of the main problems [with the regime] is posting on our Facebook page about torture and the Interior Ministrys abuses, said Al Nadeems director, Magda Adly. Tyranny cannot tolerate any degree of criticism, Adly said. April 26, 2017 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Representatives of Fatah and Hamas met April 18 in Gaza City. Fatahs delegation presented Hamas with a road map from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to end the split and resolve Gaza's crises. Although on April 16 Hamas refused to meet with Fatah without the presence of all Palestinian factions, the bilateral meeting took place. Fatah announced April 11 that a high-level delegation would meet with Hamas. The delegation, however, was reduced to two members of the Central Committee instead of six, and Fatah refrained from giving any justification. Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Eita told Al-Monitor that Abbas' message, which Fatahs delegation delivered to Hamas, centered on demanding that Hamas enable the Palestinian consensus government to operate effectively in the Gaza Strip, dissolve its administrative committee, and agree to hold local and general elections within six months. Abu Eita explained that Hamas welcomed the idea for the consensus government to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip and told the Fatah delegation to consider the administrative committee dissolved once the government sets up in Gaza. At the end of the meeting, Hamas promised to deliver its response in writing to Fatahs Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmad, who is in charge of the reconciliation dossier, within a week. Prior to the meeting, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said at an April 17 press conference in Gaza City that Hamas agrees to elect the National Council, hold presidential and legislative elections in three months and enable the national consensus government to work freely in the Gaza Strip. Salah al-Bardawil, a member of Hamas' political bureau, told Al-Aqsa Voice April 19 that it was a positive meeting during which both sides raised important issues and paved the way for Palestinian reconciliation by enabling the consensus government to manage the Gaza Strip. Bardawil said, We agreed with the Fatah delegation that the consensus government take over governance of the Gaza Strip, and that the administrative committee steps aside once the government takes over its full functions. Bardawil explained that Hamas expressed to Fatahs delegation its desire that measures be taken to pave the way for the consensus government to set up operations. These measures include stopping the blue tax on industrial diesel fuel to restore electricity services in Gaza, Bardawil said. He added that the sides also agreed that civil servants in the Strip will obtain the remaining 30% deducted from their salaries April 4, and denied that Fatahs delegation gave Hamas a one-week time limit to respond to Abbas' message. Addressing the Palestinian Ambassadors to Arab and Islamic Countries Conference held April 12 in Manama, Bahrain, Abbas warned that unprecedented measures will be taken to address the Palestinian split in the coming days. Hamas rejected his warning and organized marches April 15, 17, 18 and 20 in the Gaza Strip repudiating Abbas' conspiracy against Gaza. Akram Atallah, a political analyst and writer for Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, told Al-Monitor that tepid Hamas-Fatah ties prompted Fatah to reduce the number of delegates from six to two and limit the delegations task to the delivery of Abbas' message. He pointed out that the current state of relations between the two sides are negatively affecting the Gaza Strip and exacerbating its crises. Atallah anticipated that Abbas' "unprecedented" measures would target the electricity, health and other Gaza sectors that are subsidized by the Palestinian government to pressure Hamas. He said that the escalatory measures have followed Abbas' return from the Arab Summit in Amman and that Abbas was likely pressured to gain control of the Gaza Strip to prove his ability to continue to lead the PA. Tayseer Muheisen, professor of international relations at the Islamic University in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, Abbas is well aware of the regional and international changes, more precisely that Donald Trump is now the US president and intends to implement an initiative rather than promote negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the application of which requires that Abbas hold the reins in all Palestinian territories, particularly the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. He explained that Abbas is convinced that failing to seize control over Gaza will negatively affect his legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. Israel's Walla reported April 25 that Abbas' next measures would consist of halting the Palestinian governments' payments to some Gazan institutions and refraining from paying Gaza civil servants their salaries. Previously, the government refused to exempt Gaza from the blue tax and withheld the operational budgets of the Hamas-run ministries in Gaza. Muheisen believes that the situation in Gaza is more likely to worsen due to tense Fatah-Hamas ties, and this is why Hamas contained Abbas' resentment and prevented him from meeting with Fatah and other factions at a proposed meeting April 12, where Hamas could share its stance toward Abbas' demands, especially in terms of the administrative committee, the consensus government, electing the National Council, and holding presidential and legislative elections. Abbas and Hamas are likely to continue to reject the other's conditions for reconciliation, and Gaza's citizens are well aware that they are the ones paying the cost. April 27, 2017 The Iranian chief of staff for the armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri, triggered outrage on the April 23 anniversary of the founding of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with his comment, The Revolutionary Guard along with the Islamic resistance [Shiite factions] in Syria and Iraq have become a shield protecting the Iranian people. Iran has a growing military presence across the region, from Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and Yemen, via local militias that are proxies of the Iranian regime. This has divided local societies over whether that presence protects their interests or simply the national interests of Iran itself. Official Iranian propaganda claims that Iranian efforts in the region serve the interest of the region's peoples and that Tehran has no ambition to spread its clout beyond its own borders. But from time to time, Iranian officials reveal other intentions. In a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on April 24, the new Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, spoke of his countrys support for the Iraqi government and for the strength of the Iraqi state, implying that Irans role is simply one of support without any intentions linked to Iranian national interests. However, this is seemingly contradicted by Bagheri's statement, The Revolutionary Guard has enabled the Islamic Republic of Irans deterrent forces and defensive capabilities to operate beyond Irans geographical boundaries. Bagheri's comments clearly show that Iran has a national agenda behind its regional presence and that its actions are intended to help spread its influence beyond its borders. Iran argues that imperial powers are hostile to the Islamic region as a whole, and that Iran is the center of that region because it is more Islamic than other regional countries. Under this line of thinking, it is natural for Iran to embark on battles beyond its borders to protect its interests, which are seen as Islamic interests. On April 25, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian officials and ambassadors from Islamic countries, The founding of a terrorist group in the name of Islam has spread discord and division among Islamic countries, especially in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. This is all the result of oppressive and ugly American and Zionist plots to wage war on Islam, but the oppressors in this world are more hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran than to any other country because Iran is more Islamic. His statement reveals an arrogance in the Iranian view of the regions peoples. Priority is constantly given to Iran over other Muslim-majority states, because the republic is seen as more Islamic. Official Iranian discourse says as much: The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, saw the Islamic world as a single but fragmented nation and Iran as mother of the villages of Islam that is to say, the central foundation of the Islamic nation. That means that just as Mecca was the original source of Islam, Iran has become the religions center and reference point. Khomeini sees Iranian Islam as the original Muhammadan Islam, as opposed to the Islam practiced in other countries such as Saudi Arabia, which the Iranian regime sees as corrupted, deviant and Americanized. There is a clear imperialist viewpoint in this discourse that does not recognize geographical borders but gives itself the right to extend its domination across other Islamic countries on the pretext that the "center" is more important than the other regions, which must be used to strengthen the center. The Iranian regime has implemented this idea consistently in its dealings with its political and military proxies throughout the region. The latest example is the deal over a mainly Qatari group of hunters who were kidnapped in southern Iraq and freed in a deal overseen by Iran, which also secured the release of Iranian prisoners and Hezbollah fighters held by the Syrian opposition. Abadi said he did not know the identity of the kidnappers but openly criticized the act, saying it was a violation against all Iraqis and a crime and an insult to all Iraqis because [the hostages] were guests in Iraq and were on its territory with official permission from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The issue of the hunters sparked anger in Iraq and across the region, as it was seen as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Iraqs former Deputy Prime Minister Hoshyar Zebari tweeted in English: Release of Qatari hunters in Iraq after 16 months in captivity by a pro Iranian & Hizbullah Shia armed group is a travesty of sovereign Iraq. Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called the incident an insult to Iraq. An Arab activist tweeted sarcastically, After the return of the Qatari hostages, we call for the Iraqi ambassador to Qatar to be expelled and replaced by the ambassador of Iran, which runs Iraqs affairs. Iran has used its influence with Shiite militias in the region to serve its national interests. Some say that in 2006, when the United States was openly threatening to attack Iran and take down its regime over the dispute surrounding its nuclear program, Iran used its influence with Lebanons Hezbollah and persuaded it to kidnap two Israeli soldiers, triggering a war with Israel that distracted the United States from the issue of Iran. Also, some believe that after 2003, Iran continued to provide military and other support to Shiite and Sunni resistance factions in Iraq throughout the American occupation to distract it from any plans for a future war on Iran, which President George W. Bush (2001-2009) had classified as part of his axis of evil. Countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen will remain prey to regional rivalries for influence as long as they do not enjoy strong, national and domestically born policies that prevent regional powers from imposing their influence there. April 27, 2017 As Iran's presidential campaigns kick off, some headlines in Tehran and abroad have increasingly zeroed in on a recurring theme: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a preferred candidate. However, while Khamenei's conservative political proclivities are well-known, they do not always mean him tipping the electoral scales in favor of hard-line contenders. In fact, a different trend is emerging during this election cycle, much like it did in 2013: Underdogs trying to use the idea of being Khamenei's preferred candidate to their benefit while vying for victory at the ballot box. In the run-up to Irans 2013 election, there was much talk in Western media regarding the supreme leader's supposed preferred candidate, Saeed Jalili. Some pundits called him "the anointed one." Numerous US government officials asked me about Jalili's "frontrunner status" as a result of "Khameneis support." This year, a similar dynamic is emerging around the candidacy of Ebrahim Raisi. This begs the question: How do relatively unknown bureaucrats with no national profile and no executive experience inside Iran manage to cultivate this reputation outside the country during the short campaign season? Rather than Khamenei or the political establishment selecting a favorite among the 2013 contenders, it was Jalili who used Western media to portray himself as the supreme leader's preferred candidate. Indeed, Jalili announced his candidacy during a CNN interview in Istanbul. Moreover, on the same day that he was approved to run, Jalili gave an interview to the Christian Science Monitor in which he was declared the frontrunner. Western media and pundits ran with Jalili's self-serving depiction as Khamenei's man, which was reported back into Iran via hard-line media as fact citing Western news coverage as evidence. But seeking to avoid a repeat of Iran's 2009 presidential election and the ensuing instability, Khamenei seemingly stayed above the fray in 2013. Perhaps pushing back against Jalili's efforts to appropriate his image and sell it to voters, Khamenei bluntly stated in a speech, "I do not favor anybody. From this moment onward, foreign media will say with ulterior motives that I favor a particular candidate. This is a lie. I do not favor anybody." Contrary to Jalili's depiction, Khamenei emphasized the correlation between voter turnout and legitimacy of the political establishment by saying, "My first and foremost recommendation is participation through the ballot box. This is more important than everything else. It is possible that some people do not want to support the Islamic Republic for any reason, but in any way they would like to support their country. Therefore, these people should go to ballot boxes as well." In the end, Jalili lost receiving only 11.8% of the vote. Fast-forward one week into the 2017 campaign, and Raisi is in the initial stages of utilizing Jalili's 2013 playbook. The primary drivers of his campaign thus far are Western and hard-line media outlets, as well as Western pundits who call him "Khamenei's pick to safeguard the Republic of Virtue." All of this begs a second question: Why is Raisi following the same failed strategy that Jalili pursued four years ago? Like Jalili before him, Raisi does not have an independent base of support. With Khamenei once again pushing for high turnout and claiming he doesn't favor any candidate, this makes it even more challenging for Raisi to cobble together enough votes to win. Thus, portraying himself as Khamenei's preferred candidate is his most probable path toward securing a viable support base from which to grow his candidacy. But will that alone be enough to win? If past is prologue, the answer is likely no. It's nearly impossible to predict whether voters will mobilize on election day, but it's reasonable to assume that turnout will reach 65-75% beating the 62.8% in 2005, and remaining under the 79.9% in 1997. Rouhani's 18.6 million votes in 2013 came with a 76.2% voter turnout, likely requiring this year's winner at the polls to garner 17-19 million votes for a first round victory. It is an uphill climb for conservative presidential candidates when turnout approaches 70% and according to a recent poll, approximately 45% of Iranians don't know who Raisi is. He is almost certainly aware of all this, which may explain what appears to be the second part of his strategy. Knowing that Khamenei-centric voters alone are unlikely to secure victory, Raisi has started to build off that group by also utilizing former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's base: ultraconservative, economically disillusioned and anti-establishment voters. To that end, many similarities are emerging between Raisi's campaign and Ahmadinejads presidency from advisers and supporters, to populist policies and rhetoric. It's too early to know if this gamble will work, and it could produce a variety of outcomes enlarge Raisi's voting bloc, destroy his support among Khamenei-centric voters, mobilize voters to cast anti-Raisi ballots for Rouhani, or a combination of the latter two scenarios. If Raisi is the only hard-liner left in the race on election day, it is less likely that his association with Ahmadinejad's cohort will damage his depiction as the supreme leader's preferred candidate. Between now and May 19, Raisi will likely bank on his self-serving portrayal as Khamenei's man, receiving a boost from American "hard-liners" by virtue of their disposition: Only the supreme leader's ballot counts, and the other 55 million eligible voters in Iran do not matter. That's why Iranian hard-liners intentionally target their American counterparts their only bet is to have the "true believers" come out in droves for "Khamenei's preferred candidate" and for others to stay home. Short of that, it will be difficult for hard-liners to produce a candidate who can surpass Rouhani's 18.6 million votes in 2013. Trying to predict Iranian politics can be a humbling experience. Many presidential elections in the past produced surprises and upsets: 1997 (Mohammad Khatami), 2005 (Ahmadinejad), 2009 (pandemonium) and 2013 (Rouhani). Anything can happen, and Khamenei may very well prefer Raisi to be president even though there is no definitive evidence so far to prove that assertion. Unless that changes, it is more instructive to focus on how and why Raisi is posturing to fit that description. April 27, 2017 What was going through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus mind when he forced German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to choose between a meeting with him and one with the BTselem and Breaking the Silence human rights groups? Hard to believe that Netanyahu assumed a senior politician of a major European power would bend his will to that of a foreign leader and give into the prime ministers ultimatum by scrapping his planned meeting with the human rights groups. How would German Chancellor Angela Merkel have explained such a surrender to her citizens? After all, Gabriel did not ask to meet with any law-breaking settlers from illegal West Bank outposts who attack Palestinians, beat Israeli peace activists and pelt Israeli troops with stones (actions about which Netanyahu is stingy with his posts and tweets). The members of BTselem and Breaking the Silence are law-abiding citizens. And Netanyahu has, after all, championed the approach whereby anything not proven to be illegal is legal. That includes a steady supply of cigars and champagne to the Netanyahu household by business people, to cite an unrelated example (a scandal currently under police investigation). While treading on safe ground in Israeli public opinion, as my colleague Mazal Mualem wrote here, Netanyahu and his band of merry men and women are trampling on Israels foreign relations. With their other foot they are crushing Israelis right to protest, which is the very life and soul of a democracy. The crisis over the Israeli human rights organizations operating in the occupied territories is one of the inevitable side effects of the occupation, with which Netanyahu has not only learned to live, but also to take advantage of them for his personal political benefit. But the disagreement over the meetings with Breaking the Silence and BTselem disguises dangerous trends, exceeding short-term electoral considerations in both Jerusalem and Berlin. The last line of the announcement by the prime ministers office on the cancellation of the meeting with Gabriel says that our relations with Germany are very important and they will not be affected by this. Obviously, Germany will not sever ties with Israel over this incident and others like it. Nonetheless, the strident clash with the German foreign minister joins a series of troubling signs in the Jerusalem-Berlin relationship. In February, Germany canceled a meeting between Israeli ministers and their German government counterparts, scheduled for May in Jerusalem. Official sources in Germany told reporters that the cause was not a scheduling conflict, as reported by the German side, but rather Germanys growing frustration with the recently adopted Regularization Law legalizing wildcat Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and the prime ministers declarations about plans to expand the settlements. Reuters reported at the beginning of March on a top German officials warning that relations with Israel had sunk to a record low in recent years, for the same reasons. Gabriel presumably expected that meetings with BTselem and Breaking the Silence would stir controversy and a media storm; less than three months ago, in February, Netanyahu instructed the Foreign Ministry to rebuke Belgiums ambassador to Israel over a meeting by visiting Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel with representatives of those same organizations. This begs the assumption that Merkel and her advisers concluded that a public clash with Netanyahu would not harm her standing in German public opinion. Germany under Merkels leadership has been Israels chief advocate in Europe, blocking numerous initiatives against the Israeli occupation in the European and international arenas. This week, another crack appeared in this protective armor. Try telling the Germans that a state whose leader boycotts their foreign minister because he met with human rights advocates is a shining example of democracy. Try convincing them to oppose European boycotts against products manufactured in Israeli settlements because boycotts are an unacceptable weapon. The competition with the chairman of the far-right HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Naftali Bennett, for the hearts and minds of the West Bank settlers and of the radicalizing right wing is pushing Netanyahu into inventing fresh enemies at home and abroad. The leftist label has worn thin. Tacking it onto Yair Lapid, the chairman of the centrist Yesh Atid Party who walked the streets of Stockholm urging passersby to shout after him We love Israel, is a source of ridicule (as Lapid does everything in his power to distance himself from a "leftist" image). The new blood pouring into the Labor Party with its new recruits, Gens. (Res.) Amiram Levin and Yom-Tov Samia, is eroding its distinctly shaky leftist brand, with the generals more center-left than left. The prime minister did, indeed, score points with Israeli public opinion for defending Israels honor against the non-Jew who wished to humiliate it. Gabriels landing in Israel was a godsend. Since President Barack Obama left the White House, the prime minister has not had a similar opportunity to prove his manhood as an intrepid leader daring to stand up to world leaders in defense of his homeland. The timing was perfect: On the eve of Israels Holocaust Remembrance Day, Gabriel arrived in Israel on April 24 to participate at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies. Netanyahu could not have wished for better enemies: a German politician on one side and the radical Israeli left on the other. And there is no nobler goal: defending the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), an army made up of all our children, as President Reuven Rivlin told Gabriel at their meeting, which did take place. When it comes to the children/troops, even the State Comptroller isnt given any leeway. Contrary to the Comptroller's report I back those heading the IDF, Netanyahu said shortly before the recent publication of the Comptrollers special report on the military and political shortcomings of Israels 2014 Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. The prime ministers close associate, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, also probably generated some additional support for himself within the Likud Partys influential Central Committee when he likened Israeli peace activists to the relatives association of the Basque underground prisoners in Spain. A member of the Israeli government felt it appropriate to equate a terror organization (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna [ETA]) that has murdered 829 people using bombs and bullets with Israeli reserve soldiers whose only sin is the publication of testimony, based on personal traumatic experience, about Israeli abuses of Palestinian civilians. Among the activists of Breaking the Silence are young people who more than once shielded radical settlers with their bodies against Palestinians when serving in the West Bank. As Mazal Mualem wrote for Al-Monitor, incitement against human rights activists and outspoken criticism of Germany are sure bets in Israeli public opinion. This gamble may not end with invective against Breaking the Silence on social media and an exchange of verbal blows between Jerusalem and Berlin. Gabriel was well-advised to refuse to take a phone call from Netanyahu after Netanyahu canceled their meeting. I bet that if the call had taken place, the pro-Netanyahu mouthpiece the Israel Hayom newspaper owned by gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson would have reported that Netanyahu gave the German guest a scolding. April 27, 2017 When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas walks into the White House on May 3, a team that includes a 43-year-old Western-trained career diplomat will have done most of the preparations for this important visit. Husam Zomlot, an assistant to Abbas appointed to head the PLOs delegation to Washington, moved to the US capital and took up his position April 1. A few months earlier, Zomlot surprised many at the Fatah Congress by getting the sixth most votes in the elections for the Fatah Revolutionary Council. Ambassador Amal Jadou, another Western-trained career diplomat and assistant to the foreign minister for European affairs, told Al-Monitor that the new generation of Palestinian diplomats are quite different from the previous cadre of PLO representatives in various capitals. Palestinian diplomacy has seen a lot of change in recent years, with younger and more professionally trained and career-oriented diplomats filling the top positions," Jadou said, noting that the new diplomats are building on what was accomplished by older PLO cadres, "who joined the diplomatic service coming from being either active in Palestinian student councils or part of the Palestinian armed struggle. Before being promoted, Jadou worked in the presidents office. Jadou credits Abbas with choosing her and many of the new corps of diplomats. I was working with the president and he pushed me forward. He saw how I work, noticed my demeanor and personality and recommended me to the Foreign Ministry. Another rising star in the crop of new Palestinian diplomats is Ambassador Ammar Hijazi. Hijazi, the assistant to the foreign minister for multilateral affairs, told Al-Monitor by phone from Ramallah that the current team of Palestinian diplomats is the most diverse and professional in the history of the Palestinian struggle. Most of us are career diplomats and not political appointees. Our background and our training focused specifically on the positions we are now occupying, he said. The vast majority of the current generation of Palestinian diplomats and senior government officials have a number of things in common. Most were born in Gaza or the West Bank. They come from largely humble backgrounds, were mostly raised in refugee camps and did their undergraduate studies at local universities. Almost all have postgraduate degrees from Western universities. In a March 31 profile in Politico, Zomlot talks about his early days in the Gaza Strip's al-Shabura refugee camp. Zomlot was able to complete graduate degrees from the London School of Economics as well as a two-year fellowship at Harvard University focusing on economic issues. Similarly, Jadou, born in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, received her education at Bethlehem University and Birzeit University, and obtained her Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy affiliated with Tufts University specializing in diplomacy and international relations. Hijazi studied at Al-Azhar University in Gaza and got his graduate degree from Malta University. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat got his doctorate in political science from the University of Bradford in England, and Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, got his civil engineering degree from the American University in Cairo. Jadou's career path was not as easy, in a highly competitive and largely male-dominated club. She sees herself as a nontraditional diplomat. I am not interested in symbolic issues. My approach is different from many of the older generation. I belong to the social media generation. I am open and frank and speak passionately about the struggle that I am committed to, she said. Jadou talks about her early days as an activist in Bethlehem with the Fatah-affiliated Shabibeh movement as the head of the movements foreign relations committee as well as with the local popular committees. It was in the work on the ground that I developed my passion for change using my abilities and speaking on behalf of my cause. Later, I was able to hone my skills with academic and professional training, she said. Hijazi and others were sent by the Palestinian government to Spain for formal diplomatic training. The training in Spain was both in terms of learning the Spanish language as well as mastering diplomatic skills, he said. Many of those trained in Spain are serving the Palestinian cause in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, he told Al-Monitor. Imad Jadaa, the Palestinian ambassador to Chile, and other ambassadors in Latin America are fluent in Spanish. There are similar stories of well-educated Palestinians throughout the world who are younger than previous generations of diplomats. These relatively younger diplomats include Ambassador to Turkey Faed Mustafa, Ambassador to Sri Lanka Zuhair Zaid, Ambassador to Germany Khouloud Daibes and Ambassador to the Holy See Issa Kassissieh. Palestinian diplomacy has come a long way since the early days of the PLO. The credentials necessary for top positions now include abilities and skills that earlier diplomats didnt have. However, the Palestinian diplomatic corps faces the same challenges that all diplomats do: to truly represent their people without losing touch with their homeland. Most countries do that with three- to four-year rotations. While Palestinian diplomats tend to stay longer, the rotations are taking place more often to keep new blood flowing. As Abbas and his team continue to depend on diplomatic channels, the presence of young, well-educated and articulate representatives in diplomatic missions around the world will be the key to the realization of Palestinian dreams of independence and statehood. April 26, 2017 BAGHDAD Some residents of the primarily Sunni city of Samarra have long felt anxious about a perceived rise in the number of Shiites there. These feelings were amplified recently when throngs of Shiite visitors crowded the streets to commemorate the martyrdom of the 10th imam, Ali al-Hadi (829-868). Sami-al-Masoudi, a Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) leader, said April 2 that more than 1.5 million people came to Samarra during the observance. The strong Shiite presence during the occasion revived Sunni fears of Shiite dominance. Some Sunnis even allege that the Shiite Endowment, which manages Shiite religious landmarks, has confiscated properties of the Sunni Endowment. An official of the latter told Arab media outlets April 6, There have been attempts to falsify property documents of mosques in Baghdad, Diyala and Samarra, in the real estate registration departments, and transfer their ownership to the Shiite endowment in the absence of their rightful owners. There has been a demographic change in the predominantly Sunni city, which is also home to the shrine of the 11th Shiite imam, Hasan al-Askari, and the cellar where Imam al-Mahdi, known as the hidden imam, is said to have disappeared. The demographic changes are visible in some areas of Salahuddin [province], where people have not been allowed to return home after the expulsion of the Islamic State (IS). This is also happening in the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra, where coordinated Shiite resettlement operations are ongoing, Noura al-Bajari, a Sunni member of parliament, told Al-Monitor. "Some Shiite parties are paying considerable amounts to the Sunni owners of real estate and lands to abandon their properties for Shiites to take over them completely. This resulted in higher numbers of Shiite residents in the city." She also noted, The armed Shiite factions [of the PMU], raising Shiite slogans and pictures of Shiite religious authorities and leaders, justify their presence in the city [by saying they need] to protect religious sites from IS and other extremist groups." Al-Monitor toured the city, and indeed found that Shiite symbols and slogans are visible around every corner, along with photos and portraits of Shiite leaders, banned parties and armed factions. However, Razzaq al-Haidari, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who represents the Badr Shiite bloc, challenged Bajaris view. The presence of the PMU in Samarra is necessary to prevent IS from returning to the city and to protect its residents against terrorism," he told Al-Monitor. The number of assassination operations and bombings has significantly declined due to the PMU protection in the city. They are protecting both Sunnis and Shiites alike. Many Samarra residents are calling upon the PMU to remain there to protect them against the terrorist groups that have killed many" of the residents. Haidari also defended the Samarra operations command, which said Jan. 27 it was considering setting up a concrete wall around Samarra to provide security for the people of the city and to reduce the tight security procedures inside it. The same day, the Samarra tribal council rejected that idea, saying it would serve as a partition of the city causing further sectarianism inside it. Shiite cleric Amran Abdul Hussein, who visits Samarra periodically to perform religious rituals there, told Al-Monitor, Samarra is a city for all Iraqis, and every citizen has the right to live there. It is not a city confined to Sunnis only. The Shiite presence in the city today is just and fair, as hundreds of Shiites were displaced from Samarra" when Saddam Hussein was president. Haidar Kazim, a Shiite resident of Baghdad, told Al-Monitor, I visit the Shiite shrines in Samarra every year, which contributes to the citys prosperity, boosts tourism and helps create more jobs. The people of Samarra are the first to benefit from the Shiite interest in the city. Sheikh Salah Taha, an imam at one of the citys major mosques, said in October that Shiite militias had already taken over Samarra and displaced its Sunni residents. "Ever since, the city has become divided in two parts: the suburb where the displaced Sunnis are living, and a part inside the city controlled by a mixture of Shiite militias. Khaled Jassam, a Sunni and secretary of the Salahuddin Council, begged to differ. He told Al-Monitor about hyperbolic reports and events in relation to the displacement and the Shiite-Sunni conflict in the city. He said, There have been some violations. Government committees were set up to deal with them, and the issues were solved in no time. There is no such thing as demographic change in Samarra." Jassam said houses near the Shiite religious shrines were bought for protective purposes. Ammar Hikmat Elbaldawi, deputy governor of Salahuddin province, told Al-Monitor, There is no attempt to change the demographic component. People in Samarra do not object to Shiites visiting religious shrines. However, some politicians are trying to stir up sectarian issues to increase their chances in the upcoming elections. Shiites come for short religious visits to Samarra, in addition to the temporary presence of the PMU alongside the army and the federal police. There are no [Shiites] who are coming to permanently live in the city, he said. Elbaldawi also said there are no plans to build a wall around the city. Samarra has always been a mixed city, but the people have managed to live in harmony in the past. Sunnis used to manage and look after the Shiite shrines of the city. However, the 2006 bombing of the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams by Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda militants ignited sectarian strife and even a civil war of sorts between the residents, who are seeking today to regain trust in each other. April 27, 2017 WASHINGTON A senior US counterterrorism official says there is no magic bullet to resolve the growing rift between the United States and Turkey over the US use of Syrian Kurdish forces to liberate Raqqa from the Islamic State. Retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, the deputy special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, spoke April 26 at a forum organized by the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, a day after Turkey bombed Kurdish fighters in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq and in northeastern Syria. At about the same time Wolff spoke, Turks skirmished with Kurds in Hatay on the Turkish-Syrian border. The US-led coalition is counting on the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces to retake Raqqa, the capital of IS' shrinking caliphate. However, that force is dominated by members of the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both Turkey and the United States regard as a terrorist group. Turkey infuriated the Trump administration by failing to coordinate its latest attacks with the United States and giving only the most minimal of warning. US forces were only 6 miles away from the bombing in Sinjar, which killed about 20 members of the YPG and a half dozen peshmerga, forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government that is at odds with the PKK and nominally allied with Turkey. Asked by Al-Monitor how the United States could successfully carry out its mission of defeating IS and liberating Raqqa given the higher priority Turkey is placing on hitting the YPG and the PKK, Wolff said, There's nothing we manage more intensely than Turkey. We'll continue to manage it and work with the Turks on every possible level." He added, That doesn't mean these irritants don't flare up. There's no magic bullet to resolve the contradictions between the US strategy of relying on the YPG to retake Raqqa and the Turkish opposition to the YPG as an arm of the PKK. Wolff insisted that the Syrian Democratic Forces actually include more Sunni Arabs than Kurds and put the proportion at three-quarters Sunni Arab and only one-quarter YPG. Others have disputed these numbers and say that the force remains dominated by Kurds, who have proven to be the most reliable local partners against IS, and that the Sunni members are largely Bedouin and do not represent settled Syrian Sunni tribes. Despite Turkish opposition to the YPG, Wolff made clear that no other force has emerged on a timeline commensurate with the US desire to retake Raqqa and end its role as a hub for plotting terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. We believe this is the only viable effort to liberate Raqqa, Wolff said of the current US strategy, which closely mirrors that of the Obama administration. How long can you allow [IS] and its external operations to wait? We have a sense of urgency here. Repeatedly questioned about US goals for ending the civil war in Syria, Wolff said the Trump administration understands the complexity of the conflict but is focusing on Raqqa and eliminating IS from the Euphrates Valley in both Syria and Iraq. He said the administration had a plan for building the right consensus with locals and installing a new local government for Raqqa that could win Sunni allegiance. But he suggested that the Trump administration so far has no strategy beyond that, saying that deeper US involvement would require an investment that Washington is not yet prepared to make. You have to decide if that sort of conflict is in our national interest, he said. This administration is trying to work their way through that. Its easy to say 'do it all' and then someone presents you with the bill. The latest dispute with Turkey follows President Donald Trumps congratulatory phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following Erdogans narrow victory in a referendum on substantially increasing the powers of the Turkish president. The attacks raise more questions about Turkeys reliability as a partner against IS, and whether the United States and Turkey can work together effectively to try to end the Syrian civil war. Other speakers at the event described a bleak picture in which al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters increasingly dominate other forces opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in effect reinforcing the US decision to rely on the Kurds. Al-Qaeda now dominates Idlib, said Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute. He said that is also true of rebel forces north of Aleppo and in Hama. The situation is different in southern Syria, Lister said, where there are some 30,000 members of the Free Syria Army who are supported by Jordan and US Special Forces. Six years into the Syrian conflict, the overall picture is one of extreme fragmentation and population displacement, with a half million people killed and some 6 million refugees in neighboring states and in Europe. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict or at least institute durable local cease-fires are floundering, said Robert Ford, the last US ambassador in Damascus. He called Turkish intervention in Syria an unmitigated disaster and suggested that Ankaras main priority now was simply to maintain a wedge between YPG-controlled enclaves in Afrin, in northwestern Syria, and the self-styled Kurdish state of Rojava to the east. At this point, the Turks are trying to cut their losses, Ford said. They cant get to Raqqa before the YPG can. As for getting rid of Assad, once Erdogans No. 1 goal, thats fallen on Turkeys priority list, Ford said. April 26, 2017 Turkey appears to be hoping that its bombing this week of Sinjar in Iraq and Rojava in northern Syria will enable it to intervene in those countries on a larger scale. Since Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield in Syria in August 2016, attacks against organizations linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Syria and Iraq have always been on the agenda. Harassment artillery fire on Rojava, an autonomous but unrecognized Kurdish area, has been constant. After the coalition of countries battling the Islamic State (IS) decided to exclude Turkey from a pending operation to retake Raqqa in Syria, Turkey's massing of troops on the border has signaled its intentions. The latest Turkish operation came early April 25, when the Turkish air force attacked the PKK's Yazidi allies in Iraq's Sinjar region and many positions in the Deriq area of northern Syria. Turkey also bombed Qarachok Mountain in Syria, targeting the headquarters, press center, liaison offices and Voice of Rojava radio, all belonging to the PKK-affiliated People's Protection Units (YPG). Reports said 20 YPG staff members working in those units were killed and 18 wounded. The YPG is working with the US-led coalition against IS in Syria. But Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group because of its ties to the PKK. Turkey has tried unsuccessfully to convince the United States to end its affiliation with the YPG and instead work with Turkish-backed forces. Turkey also hit five targets in the Kersey Valley and Amude village attached to Sinjar. One target was Radio Cira, which has many Yazidi listeners. Kersey had served as a refuge in 2014 for Yazidis fleeing IS. In this Turkish air attack, one militant of the Sinjar Resistance Forces (a local Yazidi self-defense unit) and five peshmerga forces were killed; nine peshmerga were wounded. Turkeys chief of general staff office explained the operation in a written statement: Syria and northern Iraq are used by the PKK and its extensions to smuggle terrorists, weapons, ammunition and explosives to our country. After Turkeys National Security Council declared the end of Operation Euphrates Shield, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said operations would continue under new names and Turkey would never allow Sinjar to become a second Qandil. Qandil is the PKK's main headquarters in the mountains of northern Iraq. On April 4, Erdogan said, There are efforts in Sinjar to create a second Qandil. There are now 2,500 PKK personnel at Sinjar as part of these efforts. Before the April 25 air attacks, Turkish newspapers were reporting a scenario of Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) entering northern Syrias Tell Abyad to sever links between the Kurdish cantons of Rojava. According to the most widely held theory, Turkey seeks to oust the YPG from Tell Abyad, where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens live together; entrust the region to the TSK-supported Free Syrian Army; and open it to Arab settlement. Kurdish sources also drew attention to increased TSK military moves at Akcakale, across the Turkish border from Tell Abyad, and more frequent artillery harassment toward villages in the Afrin area. That all these moves coincide with the lead-up to Erdogans visit May 16-17 to Washington have added new dimensions to the situation. What is Turkey after? What does Ankara want to achieve? Since Turkey has decided that an autonomous entity in northern Syria under Kurdish leadership is a threat to its security, Ankara has opted for an aggressive policy. The much-publicized PKK connections of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG military arm provide Turkey's government with ample political support domestically. In the most recent event, even the main opposition the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) offered the government its full support. Ozturk Yilmaz, the CHP's deputy chairman, told the media, The PKK has made a major redeployment from Qandil toward Sinjar. Turkey has to defend its border. Our struggle with the PKK is fully justified by international law. This is all very normal actually, belated. The Sinjar Yazidis' support of the PKK and their increasing contacts with Rojava have amplified the perceived threat against the Turkish state. Ankara has made sure that Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) shares its concerns. Although Massoud Barzani, KRG president and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, doesnt approve of Turkey's attacks, he still holds the PKK responsible. This bombing was prompted by the PKK presence at Sinjar. We are demanding the PKK forces leave Sinjar Mountain, he said. Although it's not the collective position of all Kurdish parties, Barzanis approach makes Ankara feel somewhat at ease. The Barzani governments attitude is widely reported and played up in the Turkish media, which hardly mentions the negative reactions of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Iraqi Kurdish Gorran Movement (Movement for Change), the Islamic Movement, the Islamic Union Party and the Islamic Society Party, which deplore Turkey. Another of Turkey's major objectives, in addition to eroding Kurdish gains in the region, is to terminate the US partnership with the YPG under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey has vehemently opposed a Raqqa operation in cooperation with the YPG and has instead offered to set up an army of 10,000 TSK-supported local fighters. If Turkey continues such operations, the power distribution in the field is bound to change. The YPG might have to pull back its forces from around Raqqa and Tabqa to defend Rojava against Turkey. This will further weaken and stall the operation against IS in Raqqa. But this may also make Turkey's offer of a partnership more worthwhile for the United States. Iran, Russia and the Syrian regime want the Syrian army to be the ones to liberate Raqqa, thus preventing the United States from establishing and maintaining a presence in Syria. Meanwhile, how do the Kurds interpret the Turkish attacks? Sipan Hemo, YPG general commander, made this assessment for Al-Monitor: "This is not an unexpected development. They were preparing for this for a long time. Certainly, major powers must have known about it. Both the Russians and Americans must have known of Turkish preparations. We noted how the American troops working with us were upset that they couldn't stop these Turkish attacks. They went to Qarachok and mixed with the people. This was not an official decision from above, but a reflection of sentiments of their commander on the ground. In a way, it was to tell the Turks, If you hit the Kurds, we are here. Actually, it was Russia that was controlling Turkey in Syria." But to achieve victory in Idlib, Russia "is giving the green light to Turkey. Havent you noticed how major rebel units that were once supported by Turkey are melting away because of this Turkey-Russia cooperation? Asked if the YPG will withdraw its forces involved in the Raqqa operation to the north if Turkish attacks continue, Hemo replied: For us, fighting IS is not a tactic, but a strategic choice. We are not doing this to get more weapons from the US. If these attacks continue, the Raqqa operation will suffer, as we will have to fight on two fronts. Certainly Russia, Iran and Syria will be happy, because they all want the Raqqa operation to fail" so Syria can liberate Raqqa without the United States. As to scenarios of Turkey's army entering Tell Abyad in Syria and the local resistance it might encounter, the YPG's Hemo had this to say: We dont expect a ground operation against Tell Abyad," because not only is there a "sizable presence" of Kurds there, for the most part, "Arabs there won't support Turkey." "Arabs in Tell Abyad are those who earlier escaped from Turkey-supported gangs and who returned after we liberated the town," he said. Also, "Turkmen presence isn't significant. Isho Gweriye, president of the Syriac Union Party and a member of the Syrian Democratic Assembly, said not only the Kurds but all peoples of the area see Turkeys attacks as aggression. He made this assessment for Al-Monitor: These attacks are a continuation of [Turkey's] chauvinist policies. It was important for Erdogan to go to Raqqa. But the US policies did not allow him. What Erdogan wants is for the forces now involved in the Raqqa operation to return to the north. As [SDF] units were entering Tabqa, the Turkish army stepped up its operations. This is important. Erdogan wants to disrupt the Raqqa operation and insert the Turkish forces into the operations." He added, "All this is happening on the eve of Erdogans Washington trip. This is an effort to influence Washington. But it is the people of the region who are paying the highest price. It only fuels animosity between the peoples. Arabs are uncomfortable also. Our people see Turkey's moves as an occupation of our land, a violation of sovereign rights and as colonialism. Turks may get the support of a few who are promoting their own private interests, but the tribes here do not approve of Turkeys designs. April 27, 2017 With just over two weeks before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans long-sought meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington, why did Turkey bomb and kill the United States' top allies in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria? The timing of the attack on April 25 has left many pundits scratching their heads. Turkish artillery strikes against the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in an area stretching from Kobani to Serekaniye were reportedly continuing today. YPG sources contacted in northern Syria said the attacks had expanded to include the town of Tell Abyad, which Turkey and its Free Syrian Army rebel allies have been eyeing for some time. In a breaking development, the Turkish General Staff announced that there had been 13 separate attacks on 11 Turkish border posts from YPG-controlled areas. Turkeys formal justification for the wave of airstrikes against the Syrian Kurdish group that left 25 militants dead and 30 others wounded goes something like this: The YPG is no different from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Both pledge allegiance to imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. So lets cut the crap about them being different. Since 1984, the PKK has been prosecuting a bloody campaign inside Turkey, initially for Kurdish independence and now for self-rule, and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and Washington alike. The PKKs Syrian iteration, the YPG, are by extension also terrorists. And thanks to US air support, they now control nearly two-thirds of Syrias border with Turkey, and pose a huge threat to Turkey's security. Turkey has been making these arguments for a long time, in turn bullying and pleading, with the United States to axe its partnership with the Syrian Kurds and to team up with Turkey and its Syrian Arab allies instead. But the Arab rebels are bitterly divided, poorly motivated and display jihadist proclivities, all of which has propelled the United States to stick with the Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies. None of this is likely to change in the immediate future, so why risk souring the rendezvous with Trump by taking actions that imperil the fight against IS on the eve of the final push against its so-called capital Raqqa? To be sure, the US reaction to the Turkish airstrikes has been uncharacteristically loud. The US Central Command has led the chorus of protests with assorted statements and tweets in support for the YPG. Our partner forces have been killed by #Turkey strike, they have made many sacrifices to defeat #ISIS, a Centcom spokesman tweeted. The State Department grumbled that the strikes had not been coordinated. But the White House has yet to utter a single rebuke. Trump has already drawn sharp criticism for his hasty congratulatory phone call to Erdogan over his scandal-tainted referendum win, and Erdogans unremittingly undemocratic behavior was rewarded with an invitation to meet with Trump May 16. A stiff reaction to the Turkish strikes would have allowed Trump to fend off such critiques, especially amid intense media scrutiny of his business ties with Turkey and the shadowy lobbying activities of Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser, on behalf of the Turkish government. Turkish pundits have varying explanations for Erdogan and Trumps behavior. One is that Trump and his intensely Iran-phobic inner circle see Turkey as a valuable ally against Irans theocrats. Asli Aydintasbas, a prominent Turkish columnist for Cumhuriyet, is among those espousing this view. There is a group around Trump within the White House that wants to maintain good relations with Erdogan, she wrote today. They see Turkey as a counterweight against Iran. In an effort to capitalize on pro-Israel and anti-Iran feelings in the White House, Erdogan has become increasingly vocal against Iran and conspicuously less hostile toward Israel. Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogans son-in-law who is widely viewed as a shadow prime minister, is said to be exploring a possible visit to Israel before May 16 to sweeten Erdogans meeting with Trump. Another explanation for the airstrikes is that Erdogan is seeking to deflect attention from the allegations of massive fraud still swirling around the referendum. Veteran journalist Umit Kivanc argued in his column for the independent online news portal Duvar, It would not be a bad thing if we realized that we are dealing with a leader who is a master of amassing power and staying in power. The formula for remaining in power can be nothing but war at this stage. Still others believe that Turkeys moves against the YPG are calculated to draw the YPG into a fight and to drive a wedge between the United States and the Syrian Kurds, and to some extent they have. Syrian Kurdish officials say they expect more than verbal condemnations. They want a no-fly zone over the areas under their control. Unless the United States takes firm steps to prevent further Turkish aggression, they may even withdraw from the Raqqa campaign. Nothing would please Turkey better. And despite all the turbulence, the United States is unlikely to resort to such measures against a fellow NATO member and Erdogan knows this. Thus, according to a Turkish official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, It made more sense to do this before the visit than after, when we will be turning a new page. As for Trump, even the sharpest US pundits are hard pressed to decipher his true reasoning. And where Turkey fits into it, if at all, is anybodys guess. I have friends and family who spend unlimited time and energy and cash to make sure their travels are comfortable, and predictable, and safe. Idiots. I can't remember a vacation that was comfortable and predictable, and safe. Because comfortable, predictable, safe vacations are, by their very nature, forgettable. I'm sure I've had them. Like I'm sure I brush my teeth every morning. I just don't remember the details. Give me memorable travel any day. Like the trip I was impaled with a shard of glass in Sparta and felt I needed to be carried home on my own shield. I had the wound sutured by a chain-smoking, anesthesia-poor doc in a dimly lit room the color of dirty lime sherbet. Sure, it was just a wine glass that got me, but there's a story to remember. Right down to the paint on the walls. What's the point of travel without a tale to bring home, a keepsake to last a lifetime? Who could forget how, on that same trip, our beloved driver wrecked the rental van in mountains near Olympia. Three times. Now that's what I call a vacation. Mamie Archibald at the site of the Moccasin Massacre. My family still shudders at the Moccasin Massacre of 1998, a quiet weekend that began with a cold swim in waters beneath a scenic mountain waterfall, and ended in a bloody pile of snake carcasses. A couple of my children might remembering it as scarring. But none will forget it. Ever. I went camping with friends 30 years ago, a spur-of-the moment weekend trip to the Sipsey Wilderness. Lacking the proper equipment, I emptied two half-gallon glass juice bottles - that's how juice came back then - and fastened them together with a length of rope. I slung them around my neck and set off down the trail. Some 100 yards later they came together like clackers - that deadly-but-awesome '70s plaything. You don't forget a parched weekend spent boiling dirty creek water in a Vienna sausage cans. My wife will never forget - or let me- the time I got into a fight with a cabbie while trying to get her to the emergency room in Atlanta. It's the only thing we remember about the trip. That's me in the middle, preparing for vacation torture. That's Murray on the right. No idea who that kid on the left is. Sometimes all the planning in the world means nothing. My dad was a planner, a be-prepared Boy Scout who plotted every course and diagrammed every stop on remarkable camping trips each year. We went to amazing, wonderful places in a big blue tent. But I remember details from only a few. There was Big Bend National Park in West Texas, where I lost my naivete. I chased a dingy, colorless roadrunner around a cactus, and was shattered when it took off and flew away. No beep-beep or nothing. That's also the trip my family came to remember as "The time Murray (my brother) got caught in a sandstorm. There was another trip, to the Okefenokee Swamp, that was known as "The time Murray got caught in quicksand," but I was too young to remember anything but the family slide shows. There was Kentucky, where I was attacked by a swarm of bees, and North Carolina, where Murray - it was always me or Murray - was stung by a stingray. We don't remember those places - any of them - for the beaches or tranquility or the blessed rest or relaxation. We remember the travels that test us, that force us outside our ourselves and leave a little to bring home. A story. A memory. A lifetime souvenir of survival and adventure and ... living? Now that's a vacation. The Liberty National building won't be part of the 20 Midtown development after all. A group including Scott Bryant of Scott M. Bryant & Co. and Dick Schmalz of RGS Properties - the pair that developed 20 Midtown - bought the building in late December for $3.6 million from Pembroke Academy Investments LLC. The pair planned to make it part of the Publix-anchored mixed-use development. They bought the building out of foreclosure, and in Alabama, owners may redeem the property within 365 days of a foreclosure sale. The original owners - Liberty Redemption LLC- redeemed the building Thursday. "The previous owners had a legal right to redeem the property within a certain period of time," Schmalz said. "We're disappointed in losing the opportunity, but we still have plenty to work on." The old Liberty National building on 20th street between Third and Fourth avenues south has been sitting vacant since 2010. The 80-year-old structure is riddled with asbestos, and one of the walls had begun to buckle. Last year, bricks and debris began falling off the building and onto the sidewalk below. Schmalz previously told AL.com the building was riddled with asbestos that would cost upwards of $10 million to safely eliminate. Liberty National moved from the downtown Birmingham building to an office in Hoover in 2010 and it's been vacant ever since. In 2010, Corporate Realty Development announced plans to buy the building and demolish it and replace it with a 400,000-square-foot office tower of around 12 stories. The company needed to secure a commitment for a major corporate tenant before moving forward, and the deal never came to fruition. The future plans for the building are unclear. The attorney representing Liberty Redemption did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. 8:45 p.m. April 27: This story has been corrected to reflect the proper name of the company that owns the building. bow hunting.jpg A Brewton, Ala., inventor has lost his court fight against an archery company he says stole his design for a "catapult riser" bow. This image is an illustration of the complexity of modern hunting bows and not a literal representation of the bow in the court battle. (File) Here are the top business stories on AL.com for Wednesday, April 26, 2017. Follow all of Alabama's business news here anytime. A Brewton inventor has waived his right to appeal a ruling which has apparently ended his six-year court battle against an Oregon archery manufacturer. Just four years ago, Andy Harp was pushing a cart down Gadsden's Broad Street, selling gourmet pops he had made the night before in his home. Now Harp's idea, Frios Gourmet Pops, has 14 locations either under construction or about to open, to join another 16 already going. Buc-ee's, a Texas-based chain of gas station and convenience stores, has announced expansion plans that will bring its namesake cartoon beaver mascot into Florida and coastal Alabama. Birmingham Venture Club is taking applications for small companies to pitch their business plans in a head-to-head competition with a $10,000 cash prize. Urban Standard in Birmingham reopened Wednesday after a January fire required its closing, selling coffee, breakfast and lunch. Imagine an on-demand staffing app that connects residents with local jobs in the hospitality and healthcare industries on their own schedule. That concept is now a reality thanks to Appleton, a downtown Huntsville business looking to hire 100 people this summer. A small group from the Leadership Class 30 hopes to make a big impact with a new documentary shedding light on homelessness in Huntsville. As part of the project, two members went homeless in Huntsville for four days and three nights. Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington announced today that the department has won several recent felony and misdemeanor prosecutions for unemployment compensation fraud around the state. Daily Show Jordan Klepper Alabama.jpg "The Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper walks on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., for a piece featured during the show's "Alabama Week," which aired Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Comedy Central) For the third time this week, "The Daily Show" explored Alabama's history, this time focusing on the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement in . The New York City-based show, which airs Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central, learned shortly after the 2016 presidential election that it was least popular in Alabama, according to in the U.S. Noah opens the latest "Alabama Week" segment with another crack about his show being least watched in the state: "And that was even after I released my country album "Honky Tonk Noah," complete with a mock-up graphic. The host then tosses to correspondent Jordan Klepper, who examines how Alabamians honor their state's conflicting past, from its Civil War background to its pivotal role in the civil rights movement. "The Daily Show" featured Alabama on night three of "Alabama Week" during the segment "We Shall Overcome This Rebel Yell," which aired Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Comedy Central) "This week, Alabama celebrated 'Slavery Flag is Awesome Day, which showed that the mix of race and history isn't just an issue in Alabama, it's the issue," Klepper says to intro his piece, called "We Shall Overcome This Rebel Yell." His narration says that "The Daily Show" knows that the South is a "hot mess" of conflicting identities, pointing out pivotal moments in civil right history contrasting with Alabamians commemorating a "less-inspiring history" like preserving Confederate heritage in the same places those moments happened. Klepper traveled to Selma where he spoke to Mayor Dario Melton about local Civil War reenactments, for which the mayor says his office urged participants to pay for their own security. When he says they didn't, Klepper asks, "So you stopped the Confederate soldiers?" before offering the mayor a high-five. The segment then features Selma march organizers Alabama Sen. Hank Sanders and Faya Toure. Later, to make a point about a community with different perspectives coming together to live as one, Melton paraphrases a line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which he said "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." Klepper intentionally misinterprets the point as a line about bestiality, saying "I had learned a lesson here. Alabama was an upside-down place where lions laid with sheep, and civil rights marchers supported Confederates. I, for one, found their tolerance completely intolerable." Selma Mayor Dario Melton, right, speaks with "The Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper during a segment from the show's "Alabama Week" series, which aired Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Comedy Central) Back in the studio, Noah challenges Klepper and suggested he missed the point of the lion/sheep analogy, and the correspondent shares what he really learned in Alabama. "Alabama may have these painful, conflicting histories, but the people there aren't choosing to sweep them under the rug," Klepper says. "They live with them side by side, trying to learn from their past rather than bury it. In a way, it's the story of America." Then he gets in another bestiality dig. Worth noting, Klepper also traveled to Tuscaloosa to shoot a segment involving Paul Finebaum and his show's callers that did not air Wednesday night. With Alabama native Roy Wood Jr. left to document his travels back to his home state, we'll see if the Finebaum piece gets left on the cutting room floor. "The Daily Show" will continue "Alabama Week" on Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The show sent all four correspondents (including Birmingham native Roy Wood Jr.) and two crews to several cities this week to film multiple segments about Alabama history, politics, culture and more. Watch the segment below: Lisa Herring.png Birmingham City Schools superintendent finalist Lisa Herring speaks with parent Cedric Small and his daughter Mollie before her final interview on Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Erin Edgemon/eedgemon@al.com) Lisa Herring, the second finalist for Birmingham City Schools superintendent, said the best thing about the school system is the children. She said children should always come first. "Children are more than just tests," she said. Recognizing that many members of the community have spoken out against the superintendent search, Herring said she would work hard to ensure the community's confidence. "My vision has to be your vision," she said. Herring currently serves as chief academic officer for Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky. The school system serves more than 100,000 students, making it the 27th largest school system in the United States. During her final interview for the superintendent post, Herring showcased herself as the candidate with the most experience, more than 20 years, working in urban school systems. "Our children are the most important asset," she said. "We have to do this right. We have to stick to the execution of doing it right. I hope you will see that I will be honored to lead that work." The other finalist for the job, Regina Thompson, had her final interview before the Birmingham Board of Education on Tuesday. The Birmingham Board of Education will meet at the central office at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 2 to select the new superintendent. Before that time, the public will have a chance to share their thoughts on the two finalists in a survey now accessible on the Birmingham City Schools website. The survey will close at noon on Monday, May 1. The BOE will weigh the survey results when making their decision. During her interview on Tuesday, Thompson touted her knowledge of Birmingham as she is a product of the school system herself. She currently serves as the chief of teaching and learning for Richland County School District One in Blythewood, S.C. The school system serves about 24,000 students, which is comparable to Birmingham's system. In South Carolina, Thompson works under Superintendent Craig Witherspoon, who served as Birmingham City Schools superintendent for four and half years, until he resigned in October 2014. The Birmingham BOE fired him in July 2012, but that decision was overturned by the Alabama State Department of Education. Herring presented her vision for her first one to three years during a 45-minute interview on Wednesday evening. She said engagement will be critical in the first 90 days. She said she would immediately work to engage the trust of the Board of Education, community stakeholders, school employees and parents. She said she will work to empower teachers by creating a teacher focus group. "Teaching and learning is the core of our work - to be able to account for that is critical," Herring said. Within the first year, she said she would ask for an audit of curriculum and instruction to find out what is working and what isn't working. Data will be analyzed to determine the achievement gap, she said. Herring spoke about investing and retaining teachers by providing professional development. During her first year, Herring said the school system needs to look at its strategic plan and consider revising it. The second year, the strategic plan will be rolled out, she said. Herring said she would develop an instructional improvement plan, which is an assessment of student achievement and learning, which will help keep educators accountable to improve Birmingham's schools. She said she would give an annual state of the district address to the community to "highlight the great work" the system is doing. When asked about teacher recruitment, Herring said the district should recruit all year long, and the district should go directly to universities to recruit new teachers. She said mentoring is critical to the success of teachers, and she wouldn't be where she is without mentoring. Cedric Small brought his daughter, Mollie, a third grade student at Huffman Academy, to both of the finalist interviews. "As a parent, I am ultimately concerned about the direction that the school system is going in," he said. He said he wanted his daughter to witness firsthand the process of how a superintendent is selected. Mollie, who had her photo taken with each candidate, said she likes both Thompson and Herring. "It is a hard decision," she said. "I don't know which one I am going to choose (as her favorite)." Mollie said she asked Herring if she would ever consider not requiring students to wear uniforms. Herring told her that she would consider it, she said. Hazel Boykin, the parent of a Bush Hills Academy student, said she spoke to Herring about her concern over Birmingham City Schools being turned into charter schools. She called Herring a "sweet person" who was honest about her role in overseeing charter schools in her previous post. Boykin said she is a product of Birmingham City Schools, and she is concerned about the level of education that students are receiving now. "I always lived in poor neighborhoods, but we didn't have poor education," she said. The Alabama Association of School Boards, which served as the search firm, released the names of five finalists for superintendent about two weeks ago. The finalists were: Garrett L. Brundage, of Conyers, Ga.; Ronnie A. Dotson, of Grayson, Ky.; Timothy Gadson III, of Minneapolis, Minn.; Lisa N, Herring, of Louisville, Ky.; and Regina Thompson, of Blythewood, S.C. Gadson dropped out of the running on April 16 the "political climate" of the search. Dotson dropped out after a bomb threat was called into the Board of Education's central office during candidate interviews on April 19. "I just don't think the people here would be accepting of me," said Dotson, the only white candidate among the finalists. Richard Franklin, president of the Birmingham American Federation of Teachers, filed a lawsuit against the school system on April 21. The suit alleges the school board violated state law by spending money for travel and other expenses for four out-of-state superintendent candidates without prior approval by the board, which requires a majority vote. The lawsuit asks that a judge Issue a declaratory judgment that the BOE's actions violate Alabama law and that the board must expressly approve any expenditure of public funds and that the board is "obligated to seek reimbursement of all Board funds expended without authorization." No hearing has been set in the case as of late Wednesday afternoon. Others in the community have spoken out against no internal candidate were named as a finalist for the post. Birmingham's interim Superintendent Larry Contri lost a lawsuit -- filed against the school system last week -- asking a judge to halt the superintendent interviews or add him to the list of finalists. Contri, who worked for the school system for 49 years, is set to retire from Birmingham City Schools effective June 30, per the settlement of another lawsuit. Lisa Herring's Resume by Erin Edgemon on Scribd A convicted sex offender is back behind bars, accused of kidnapping and sexually torturing another male. Eric Arthur Howard, 42, was booked into the Jefferson County Jail on Tuesday, according to jail records. He is being held on bonds totaling $120,000. Howard's arrest followed grand jury indictments issued on April 7. The indictments include allegations of sodomy, sexual torture and sexual abuse. Howard abducted the male victim, whose age was not available, with the intent to inflict physical injury and/or to violate or abuse him sexually, records claim. Among the allegations against Howard are claims that he raped the victim with an "inanimate object." The Blountsville man was arrested in Blount County in 1995 on two counts of first-degree sex abuse, and pleaded guilty to the felony charges the following year. The victim in that case was a 6-year-old boy, according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's Community Information Center. In that case, he was sentenced to four years, nine months and 90 days in prison, with 90 days to actually serve. Efforts to obtain additional details in the recent case weren't immediately successful, but this story will be updated if more information is released. Two men are each being paid more than $12,000 a month to run the Birmingham division of the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, but only one is allowed to show up to work. The state of Alabama has paid suspended Jefferson County District Attorney Charles Todd Henderson $43,051 since Jan. 27, according to the state finance department's online check registry. Henderson was suspended Jan. 13 - about four days before he was to take office for the first time - after being indicted for first-degree perjury stemming from his testimony in a divorce case months before. Henderson had been sworn in before the indictment. Henderson also has been prevented from working at the District Attorney's Office or having contact with employees there while his case is pending. A judge has set his trial for Sept. 11. The order suspending Henderson did not specifically mention whether it was to be, with or without, pay. But Barry Matson, executive director of the Office of Prosecution Services and Alabama District Attorneys Association, said that Henderson was due to draw the pay under his suspension. Matson said that Henderson made a request to his office after the indictment seeking to draw his pay. Matson said he checked with former Attorney General Luther Strange's office and was told it was a suspension and they felt Henderson would be entitled to the pay. Meanwhile, Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr was elevated to acting deputy district attorney while the charges have been pending. His bi-weekly pay jumped from $4,454 in January to $6,161 (or more than $12,000 a month) beginning in February. Henderson's bi-weekly pay is $6,205. An attorney for Henderson declined comment. Carr acknowledged the pay bump but declined comment for the story. Henderson, a Democrat, won the November general election against long-time Republican incumbent District Attorney Brandon Falls. The indictment by the special grand jury alleges that Henderson at a Sept. 26 hearing before Circuit Judge Patricia Stephens in the divorce case of Charbel Akl v. Yareima Carmen Valecillos Akl "did... swear falsely and such false statement was material to the proceeding in which they were made." Court records show Henderson had been appointed guardian ad litem in the Akl's divorce case (at the request of Mrs. Akl) in January 2016 to represent the interests of the couple's child. But in May he was removed as GAL after allegations that he was biased against the father and the mother was working on Henderson's campaign. The focus of the perjury charge is on a portion of Henderson's testimony at the Akl's September trial when he was asked: "since she has been campaigning for you, has there been a time where you have spent the night at her apartment?" Henderson twice replied "no." But attorneys for Ms. Akl's husband have produced a private investigation report that states Henderson had stayed over at the apartment. One of Henderson's attorneys, James Parkman, said that while Ms. Akl and Henderson did "hook up" in July 2016, Henderson had already been removed as guardian ad litem in the case. He said Henderson thought the question meant whether he had a relationship with Mrs. Akl during the time he was guardian for her daughter. Henderson denies he lied and his attorneys have said the charge is politically motivated. The man credited with leading police to Elizabeth Thomas and Tad Cummins at the culmination of a 38-day Amber Alert search will receive reward money Friday. Griffin Barry will get a $10,000 reward during a presentation outside the office of Thomas family attorney Jason Whatley in Columbia, Tennessee. Barry additionally will receive a $1,000 reward from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation because Cummins was on the state's "Top 10 Most Wanted" list, said public information officer Susan Niland. "Our plan is to give it to him on Friday, when he comes to Tennessee to collect the other reward money," Niland told AL.com. "We were not involved in the other reward, so I don't have any specifics." Barry, a former Tennessee resident, has been credited for helping find 15-year-old Thomas and ex-teacher Cummins at a secluded cabin in California near the Oregon border. Barry, 29, is a caretaker on the property. He called TBI's tipline to report a possible sighting of Thomas and Cummins on April 19. The following day, Cummins was taken into federal custody to face a charge of transporting a minor across state lines for sex. Thomas was returned to Tennessee with her family this past Friday and has since been receiving therapy and other treatment following nearly six weeks on the run with Cummins. Cummins wanted to flee Tennessee with Thomas because he was being investigated for having an inappropriate relationship with her, authorities have said. Cummins was fired by the Maury County, Tennessee school system the day after the March 13 disappearaces. The ex-teacher came under investigation after a 12-year-old student reported seeing Cummins kiss Thomas in the classroom at Culleoka Unit School. Culleoka is about 60 miles south of Nashville near the Alabama state line. Amber Alerts were issued in Tennessee and Alabama during the nearly six-week search. In Tennessee, Cummins is facing additional charges of aggravated kidnapping and having sexual contact with a minor. A Huntsville woman facing a manslaughter charge was under the influence of methamphetamine when she was involved in a wreck that killed a motorcyclist, a crash report shows. Donna Hardy Donna Charlene Hardy was arrested late Tuesday in connection with the 2016 crash that killed 56-year-old Toney resident Johnny Dean Hopkins, records show. Hardy, 46, was booked into the Madison County Jail on a grand jury indictment that charges her with manslaughter, a Class B felony. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years imprisonment. A toxicology screen by the Alabama Department of Forensic Science indicates Hardy was under the influence of meth at the time of the wreck, according to a state trooper crash report. The toxicology results were released to police after they were analyzed Oct. 19, 2016 -- about three months after the crash, the report states. Hardy wasn't charged with a crime until prosecutors presented the case to a Madison County grand jury and obtained an indictment, records show. The indictment has not yet been made public. Hardy's 2002 Ford Ranger crossed the center line of Jeff Road in Madison County and collided head-on with Hopkins' 2007 Honda motorcycle July 26, 2016, according to the crash report. Hopkins was pronounced dead at the scene near Will Raby Road. Hardy and a passenger in her truck were taken to Huntsville Hospital for treatment of their injuries, the report states. This diagram is included in a state trooper crash report about the wreck that left a Toney man dead. The other driver, Donna Hardy, was on meth at the time of the crash, the report states. Hardy was traveling an estimated 55 mph on the southbound side of Jeff Road, which has a 45 mph speed limit, the report states. Hopkins' motorcycle was hit about 3 feet across the center line on the northbound side around 3:40 p.m., troopers said. Hopkins was traveling an estimated 45 mph, the report states. "Hardy had no explanation for why she crossed the center line," a trooper wrote in the report. The report lists Hardy's DUI as the primary factor that contributed to the crash. Her truck also is listed in the report as the primary contributing vehicle. Both vehicles were totaled in the crash. Criminal record Hardy was been arrested on drug and DUI charges in the past, most recently for driving drunk in Huntsville on New Year's Day 2014, according to records. Hardy was found guilty of DUI in Huntsville Municipal Court after being arrested near Westchester Drive and Hastings Road on Jan. 1, 2014 just after 1 a.m., according to court records. Her breathalyzer test results showed a 0.15 alcohol level, which is higher than the .08 legal limit. Hardy received a 365-day jail sentence but it was suspended, records show. The woman also was ordered to 24 months probation and required to pay $1,200 in fines and $289 in court costs, according to records. Hardy appealed the conviction to Madison County Circuit Court, but the appeal was dismissed and the case was remanded back to city court, records show. In March 2009, Hardy was arrested on charges of first-degree possession of marijuana and possession of a controlled substance, court records show. The charges eventually were dismissed at the request of Madison County prosecutors because Hardy completed a drug court program. She paid court costs, fines and fees, and she was determined to be "drug-free," according to court records. In 2010, Hardy returned to the Madison County Jail to serve 72 hours for possession of a controlled substance. It is not yet clear whether Hardy has an attorney for the manslaughter case. She was released from the Madison County Jail on $30,000 bail but could not be reached for comment. A grand jury issues an indictment when it determines there is enough evidence for a case to proceed to trial. A trial date has not yet been scheduled in the manslaughter case. Note: This story was updated on April 27 to correct the name of a street, Westchester Drive. Rep. Mo Brooks U.S. Congressman Mo Brooks speaks at Washington Update Luncheon sponsored by Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County. (Bob Gathany/bgathany@AL.com) (Bob Gathany) The last holdout among Alabama's six Republican House members is now backing the new, and now reworked, Republican health care plan. U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks issued a statement Wednesday evening giving his endorsement to the proposal that would overhaul the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Before the bill was pulled just before what was expected to be a defeating vote last month, Brooks was the only member of Alabama's Republican congressional delegation refusing to support it. The state's lone Democrat in the House, Rep. Terri Sewell, R-Birmingham, has not backed the GOP plan. But he announced his position change hours after the House Freedom Caucus - of which Brooks is a member - gave its support to the bill after an amendment was introduced by Congressional moderate Tom MacArthur, R-New Jersey. Brooks credited the amendment with driving down costs associated with Obamacare that were included in the original GOP proposal earlier this month, known as the American Health Care Act. "The Freedom Caucus worked tirelessly and used its political muscle to negotiate and successfully force conservative and states' rights changes to the AHCA, thereby making the AHCA a different and better bill for the American people," Brooks said in his statement. "The Freedom Caucus changes will partially repeal Obamacare while driving down health insurance costs for tens of millions of Americans." Brooks also pointed to an amendment introduced by Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Birmingham, that would remove "the most expensive individuals from the market and placing them in a high-risk pool akin to the state of Maine's highly successful model." Still, Brooks said, the health care plan needs work. The congressman has also sponsored a bill that would fully repeal Obamacare. "Despite these conservative advances, there is still much to be done," Brooks said. "While the amended AHCA does not fully repeal Obamacare, it is drastically better than what it was a few weeks ago. I am committed to working with my Senate colleagues to build on the progress made in the House on the AHCA to deliver on our promises to the American people." No vote on the health care bill has been scheduled but Brooks called on the House to vote no later than next week. We explore systemic violence in Arizona where the highest number of Native Americans were killed by police in 2016. Winslow, Arizona, United States On a cool evening in March, a group of Navajo gathered in front of the police department in Winslow, Arizona, holding signs, carrying candles, and demanding justice. It was March 27, one year since 27-year-old Navajo mother Loreal Tsingine was shot dead by Winslow police officer Austin Shipley. Tsingine, was shot five times by Shipley on Easter Sunday, 2016, after allegedly shoplifting from a local Circle K shop. Brandon Benallie, a Navajo member of the national council of The Red Nation, a countrywide organisation of Native and non-Native activists, teachers, students and community organisers that advocates for Native American rights was at the demonstration. He says that after Tsingine was killed in the afternoon, her body was left in the pavement until six the next morning. From a Native perspective, you have to take care of the memory of that person. Essentially, shes supposed to be respectfully remembered before the sun sets, Benallie says. To leave her out there for over 12 hours as they waited for a coroner to arrive it was extremely disheartening and disturbing that they allowed that to happen. For Benallie, Tsingines death, and the deaths of 23 other Native Americans at the hands of police in 2016, is a sad affirmation that this racism and violence committed towards Native people is systemic. Rise in killings Native Americans, who make up 5.2 million or 1.7 percent of the countrys population, are the only group that saw a rise in deaths due to police shootings, from 13 in 2015 to 24 in 2016, according to the Guardians The Counted. In 2015, Native American deaths were measured as 5.49 per one million people. Blacks killed by police were 7.69 per million. Last year, the number for blacks was 6.66 per one million, while the number for Native Americans rose to 10.13 per million. Every other racial group saw a decrease, including those whose race is listed as other. These numbers are so terrible, Benallie says. This isnt the oppression Olympics. Theres no gold medal for who gets killed more by police. When you look at the Latino, black and Native communities, theyre all suffering. In 2016, six Native Americans were killed by police in southwest Arizona, the state that is home to the majority of the Navajo Nation and where the highest number of these killings occurred. Benallie says the struggles of Native Americans must be viewed through the lens of settler-colonialism, likening their situation to that of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. The Navajo Nation is a 71,000 square kilometre semi-autonomous territory spanning three separate US states and essentially serving as a reservation, with border towns like Winslow and nearby Flagstaff lying on its edges. These border towns have served as guard stations to control the Navajo, Benallie says, with police as the tools of the settler-colonial process. ALSO READ Indigenous tribes: Arizona road a threat to sacred land Tsingines death Of the six Native Americans killed by police in Arizona last year, Tsingines case was the most controversial. It sparked outrage in the Native community. In Shipleys bodycam footage, Tsingine can be seen brandishing a pair of scissors. Ryanle Benally, a Winslow resident who saw Shipley fire, told the local daily newspaper, the Arizona Republic, that when the officer confronted Tsignine, he grabbed her and her whole body flew over and slammed into the concrete. He says he saw Shipley pin her to the ground with his knee and at that point thought she was going to be arrested. That should have been it, he said. Shipley began yelling, Stop resisting! Benally then thought the officer pulled out his taser. It wasnt. It was a rapid fire, five times, the witness said. It was later revealed that Tsingine had a history of mental illness and previous altercations with the police. Shipley also had a history of using excessive force and falsifying records, according to documents from the Arizona Republics investigation into his employment record. Shipley had drawn his gun on suspects five times, his Taser four times including once on a teenage girl with her back turned to him, and used physical force at least three times. He had been an officer for three years. For Native and non-Native residents of Winslow, the revelation of Shipleys employment history raised questions about whether he was qualified to be a police officer. In July, Maricopa County lawyer Bill Montgomery announced that after a four-month internal investigation, Shipley had been cleared of any criminal conduct and wouldnt be charged. In October, Shipley, who went on paid leave shortly after killing Tsingine, resigned after being presented with the results of a separate internal investigation. Benallie and others question why there wasnt enough evidence for charges, but enough to spur Shipleys resignation. Montgomery told Al Jazeera that the investigations varied greatly: An internal affairs investigation and an employment decision do not have the same burdens of proof. ALSO READ: Life on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation Violence doesnt begin when someone dies Aside from his work in the Red Nation, Benallie helped form the group Bordertown Justice Coalition, which aims to end police violence against his community. The coalition also started the Justice for Loreal movement to support Tsingines family, with whom they work closely. Benallie says that while representatives of the Winslow Police Department travelled to the Navajo Nation to speak with her family, there have been no meaningful reconciliation efforts. He says Tsingines murder was not a random act of violence against Native people. Police violence, Benallie points out, doesnt begin when someone dies. Tina McGrath, 48, a Navajo, mother and resident of rural northern Arizona, agrees. She says that she has endured 20 years of racial profiling and targeted policing. I feel like [the police] are watching us, she says. They know us. One of the worst encounters occurred in 2013, she says, when her family was celebrating her husbands birthday in Flagstaff. Two employees of a local petrol station followed her son Perratin, who is in his mid-20s and suffers from schizophrenia, and daughter-in-law back to their hotel room after arguing with them at the petrol station. McGrath says the employees were drunk. A fight ensued and someone at the hotel called the police. When they arrived, McGrath says that she tried to explain that the petrol station employees had instigated the trouble. But the police believed [the employees]. They took their story over ours, she says. When the police began to arrest Perratin, he tried to grab on to his father, and the police jumped on both of them, McGrath says. I thought they were going to kill them, she says. I didnt know what to do. Panicked, she approached the police and shouted for them to stop. She says one officer, Ryan Darr, pushed her and she flew back, landing in a seated position. Documents provided by the Flagstaff Police Department (FPD) relating to this event and Darrs employment record confirm much of McGraths account of the events. As we struggled on the ground I felt a pull on my arm I could also see other family members closing in, said Darr in the police report, explaining why he pushed McGrath. The impact broke a screw in McGraths spinal fusion, which had been installed to connect two vertebral segments in order to stop pain in her lower back. McGrath filed a complaint against Darr, citing use of excessive force. In the police records regarding the complaint, investigating officer Lieutenant Lasiewicki wrote in his findings that Darr, did push Tina. The amount of force he used was minimal and justified. Regarding the accusation of excessive force, Sgt Darr is exonerated. Of the few witnesses Lasiewicki was able to contact regarding the incident was one of the petrol station employees who had been arrested for assaulting the McGrath family. In the police report, the individual admits he had been drinking. According to the FPD documents, Darr had received five commendations since 2008. The records also show three citizens complaints filed against him, including McGraths and another which alleged use of excessive force. Internal FPD investigations found them all to be unfounded. to be untrue. Through Lasiewickis investigation, the city prosecutor instructed Darr to issue McGrath with a court summons for resisting an officer, a misdemeanour offence. McGrath says she was never informed of the summons. After roughly a month she was stopped by a police officer for a traffic violation and arrested for missing her court date. I sat in jail five [for] days with a broken back. Thats how I found out I got charged, McGrath says. She was given another court date and ordered to complete community service. As time went on, the spinal fusion began bending, McGrath says, due to the broken screw, causing her to use a wheelchair and suffer even greater pain. I went to court in a wheelchair. I did community service in a wheelchair. McGrath says the fusion remains unrepaired. She now walks with a cane. The pain reminds her every day of the assault. I want to fight this, she says. I have rights. OPINION: Native Americans expect nothing good from Trump Astounding disparities Al Jazeera requested documents concerning the arrest records of both Winslow and Flagstaff police. Although Native Americans account for 25 percent of Winslows population, they averaged nearly 64 percent of arrests from 2012 to 2015, according to police filings. In nearby Flagstaff, public police reports from 2011 to 2015 show that Native Americans accounted for an average of 47 percent of arrests. US census data from 2010 says Native Americans account for 11.7 percent of the citys population. Al Jazeera presented these statistics to Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which, according to their website, aims to secure equal justice for all through the rule of law. These are truly astounding disparities. When we see disparities like this, often theyre attributable to some unlawful policy or practice such as racial profiling, Clarke responds. According to FPD Deputy Chief Dan Musselman, 56 percent of the Native Americans who have been arrested are repeat offenders and more than half of them dont live there, but come from other towns or the nearby Navajo Nation. Sergeant Cory Runge of the FPD said that while the census for Coconino County/Flagstaff Metropolitan area indicates Native Americans account for 27 percent of the population, these census numbers may be a little misleading because it is estimated that 75 percent of every Navajo dollar is spent in border towns. The FPDs relationship with the community is variable and dependent on countless factors involved within each interaction, Runge says. Many Native Americans come to Flagstaff to do their shopping, according to Musselman and Runge. McGrath agrees, saying that shops are scarce on Navajo lands, so many come to border towns to purchase goods. Even so, these are significant disparities, that warrant closer analysis, Clarke says in reference to the arrest statistics. Its hard to believe theres any explanation other than race being a factor. It certainly deserves an investigation. ALSO READ: Will killings by police rise in Trumps America? Navajo leadership Although McGrath wants to fight her grievances, she says that she is unsure of how to proceed and that there is little institutional help. McGrath sat in front of a table covered with police reports, complaints, and documents prepared for the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission which was created to assist and investigate alleged rights abuses of Navajo Nation members committed by Native and non-Native institutions and their employees. Current Navajo institutions are relatively new. The commission was founded in 2006, after reports of violence against Navajo in border towns. The office of the president of the Navajo Nation was created in 1991 following a restructuring of the national Navajo government. McGrath, Benallie and other Navajo residents of Flagstaff and Winslow, say their national Navajo leadership and institutions have a troubled history which does not inspire confidence. Of the Navajos eight presidents, four have been investigated for criminal acts centring around corruption, fraud, misused funds and other charges. Albert Hale, the Navajo Nations second president who served from 1995 to 1998, was the first president to resign. His resignation was spurred by his being under investigation for more than 50 felonies and misdemeanours. Leadership needs to understand these are [governmental] institutions forced upon us by the colonisers. We didnt develop these, Hale tells Al Jazeera when asked about the Navajo peoples lack of trust in their government when it comes handling human rights abuses as well as other issues. The former president stressed that offices such as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission and the presidency are not a part of the tribes history and that a Navajo sense of justice is lacking. Hale has also served more than a decade in the Arizona legislature and US Congress. He left the state legislature in 2017 after losing re-election for Arizonas seventh district. During his long tenure in what he called the colonisers institutions, Hale said that he tried to educate both the Navajo and his colleagues in state and national government about the struggles and contributions of Native people. ALSO READ: US campaign against Columbus Day gaining steam We have the numbers Hale has experienced his own loss at the hands of the police. In 1952, when he was a toddler, his father was arrested by police in Gallup, New Mexico, another border town. He was missing for several days. My mother didnt even know where he was, he says. Then they found him in the morgue. Hale believes his father was beaten to death by police while in custody, although this was never confirmed. Hales mother was left to struggle, to find ways to support the family and raise four children. He empathises with Tsingines child. Police violence doesnt end with the victim. It extends out, Hale says, and police have to be made aware of that. The FBI announced a pilot programme in 2016 to track deadly use of force by law enforcement, but as of yet, no information is publicly available regarding the initiative. Hale says institutional powers like the police must be educated about cultural differences and the economic and cultural importance of Native people. Benallie, on the other hand, believes a united approach between marginalised peoples Latino, black and Native must be employed to end oppression. We must unite to smash these structures that continue to murder us, Benallie says. We have the numbers, in the end, to make that a reality. Follow Creede Newton on Twitter: @creedenewton In 1219, a poor Italian friar called Francis of Assisi set off on a long and perilous journey to meet the Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil. The two shores of the Mediterranean had been at war for more than a century, during which the Latin Church had tried to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule. The Fifth Crusade was in full swing, but Francis, who would later become one of the most venerated religious figures of Christianity, was determined to meet with the Sultan and possibly stop the violence ravaging the Eastern Mediterranean, which he had strongly condemned. Historians say the meeting between the Muslim ruler and the Christian friar in Damietta was cordial, with the two men discussing the need for dialogue and peace between the two faiths. Francis could not prevent the wars that followed, but the encounter set a cornerstone in the relations between the two religions that Medieval iconography has immortalised in many paintings. Away from ideological and institutional barriers, Francis had crossed the sea to meet first and foremost other men, whose ideas and beliefs he was eager to understand. OPINION: The legacy of the Crusades in contemporary Muslim world Eight centuries later, another Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, is set to pay a two-day visit to Cairo that bears a striking similarity to the one his predecessor made. Pope Jorge Bergoglio, who chose to be named after the friar of Assisi, will visit Egypt under the motto The Pope of Peace in the Egypt of Peace. The motto Pope Francis has chosen is emblematic. His call for peace and the need for dialogue between East and West is as true today as it was 800 years ago at the time of Francis of Assisi, said Orazio la Rocca, an author and veteran analyst who has covered the Vatican and its Popes for more than three decades. Violence in the name of religion was the issue then; it is still the issue today. Muslim and Christian spiritual leaders are coming together in Cairo to say that nobody can legitimately draw on religions to feed wars and terrorism. The visit of the Pope, who will arrive in Cairo on Friday, comes three weeks after two separate bombings killed 49 Egyptian Copts and injured another 120 during the Palm Sunday celebrations in churches across Egypt. The head of Egypts Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, was leading prayers in the Cathedral of Alexandria before a suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of the church. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks. Considering the expansion of the circle of wars and violence and the rise in terrorism and sectarianism, the voice of reason calls us to seek the means of cooperation rather than seeking conflicts. by Al Azhar statement But if the bombings aimed to cast a shadow on the Papal journey, they had the opposite reaction: the Pope is even more determined to fulfil the visit, sources close to the Vatican said. The tragic events that hit the Coptic Church make the gesture of the Pope and his meetings in Cairo even more significant. Its the bravery of peacemakers and the goodwill of all the spiritual leaders involved to make the visit possible, despite the security risks involved, said Marco Tarquinio, the director of Avvenire, a Catholic newspaper. Pope Francis will meet with Sheikh Muhammad Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Mufti of Al Azhar University, the most prestigious centre of learning in the Sunni Muslim world. He will also meet with Pope Tawadros II and pay a courtesy visit to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Sheikh Tayeb and the Roman Pontiff will deliver a speech at an international peace conference convened by the theological university. The event, with 300 delegates from all over the world, is meant to call for peace between religious leaders, societies and countries of the world, Al Azhar said in a statement. Considering the expansion of the circle of wars and violence and the rise in terrorism and sectarianism, the voice of reason calls us to seek the means of cooperation rather than seeking conflicts To respect instead of rejecting each other, to live in peace instead of fighting and to tolerate instead of being fanatical, said Al Azhar. The Grand Mufti has also invited to Al Azhar the Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, a long-time champion of interfaith dialogue. Tayeb will thus bring together Christian leaders from the East and West, as Cairo goes into lockdown following the announcement of a three-month state of emergency after the Easter bombings. The Pope and the Patriarch will find a battered Coptic community, exhausted by the continuous threats and persecutions that are causing the exodus of hundreds of families from the Sinai Peninsula and Upper Egypt towards the northern cities of the country. In areas controlled by Salafists, such as the Minya region, reports have emerged of continuous physical and psychological harassment of Copts, ranging from the beatings of women in the streets to stone-throwing. Incidents have been reported of Coptic homes and places of worship being set on fire, while people have reportedly been asked to restrain their religious services or the display of religious symbols. Egyptian Copts number about eight million and represent about 10 percent of the total Egyptian population. They are the biggest Christian community in the Middle East, and their survival may become the testbed for the rising interfaith dialogue that the Grand Mufti of Al Azhar wishes to champion. Acquitting religions of terrorism is no longer enough, Tayeb said in a significant speech delivered in February. We need to take a step forward by bringing the principles and ethics of religions into this tumultuous reality. With the conference in Cairo, the Grand Mufti, who also chairs the Muslim Council of Sages, hopes to champion a new course that he said should stem primarily from spiritual leaders. Tensions between religious leaders have no reason to exist today There needs to be peace between those who preach religion Those who do not possess something cannot transmit it to others, Tayeb said. OPINION: Holy Week for Egypts Copts will never be the same Imam Yahia Pallavicini, president of the Islamic Religious Community of Italy, said interfaith dialogue should be supported by a coordinated effort to translate humanitarian and universal messages into tangible working programmes. We need to share a common vision and a common work to defend religious plurality, where no space should be left to ambiguity. We need to build a common front against the brainwashing and manipulation of religions without hesitation, separating good from bad apples, Pallavicini said, noting that religious plurality is part of our society. The time when faith, nation and colour of ones skin were one thing, is over, the imam said. As theologians, we should guide Muslims to find a balance between citizenship and religious coherence, away from bigotry and useless formalisms. In this context, the visit of Pope Bergoglio also holds political meaning. While politicians both in the East and the West are busy building barriers and fanning the flames of a religious war, the Pope is flying to Cairo to send out exactly the opposite message, Tarquinio said. The Pope fills a political void. Spiritual leaders in Egypt will show the efficacy of simple gestures in building bridges between communities, in stark contrast to the ineptitude of those politicians who dangerously manipulate the religious discourse for other gains, he said. Badme, on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia The disputed border town of Badme is where war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998. It lasted for two years and devastated both countries. In 2002, a Hague boundary commission ruled that Badme was part of Eritrea. It was a ruling that both countries initially accepted. But Ethiopian troops continue to occupy the town. Nowadays an uneasy standoff exists between the two countrys armies along the still-contested border a few kilometres north of Badme, at the tip of Ethiopias Yirga Triangle, which juts into Eritrea. But now there are others moving along the border: Eritreans who travel through the regions hills, trying to keep out of sight of their own military, to escape into Ethiopia. After crossing at night we tried to sleep but could hear the hyenas around us, said 22-year-old mother-of-two Yordanos. We started shouting and then Ethiopian soldiers came for us. Once picked up by the Ethiopian army, Eritrean refugees are deposited at Badmes so-called entry point, a compound of simple buildings that marks the start of their journey to gain asylum in Ethiopia. With Yordanos is another mother-of-two, as well as 15 boys and young men aged between 16 and 20 who crossed to avoid enforced and indefinite military service. After receiving a letter to join up I hid for five months in the rural areas, said one 18-year-old. But then I heard the government was looking for me, so I crossed. There are 12 entry points along Ethiopias 910km border with Eritrea from where refugees are moved to a screening and registration centre in the town of Endabaguna. Afterwards they are assigned to one of four refugee camps in the Tigray region bordering Eritrea. We are brothers and sisters, said Luel Abera, a reception coordinator at the entry point in the town of Adinbried, about 50km southeast of Badme. Most highland Eritreans from around the capital, Asmara, share the same language, the same Christian Orthodox religion and the same culture as Tigrays Ethiopian inhabitants. In February 2017, 3,367 Eritrean refugees arrived in Ethiopia, according to the Ethiopian Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs. Ethiopia currently houses around 165,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers, according to the UN refugee agency. Thousands more Eritreans are thought to live in the country outside the asylum system. They even come through the Afar and the worlds lowest depression, said Estifanos Gebremedhin from Ethiopias Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs. In the Afars Danakil Depression, a desert straddling the Eritrean border to the east of the Tigray highlands, daytime temperatures frequently soar above 50 degrees Celsius, accompanied by a fierce gale known as the Gara (Fire Wind). They are using every chance they can, Estifanos said. Today in India, what you eat is who you have voted for. Jyoti Malhotra has been a journalist for more than 30 years and is based in New Delhi, India. The food police have struck in Lucknow, the capital of Indias Uttar Pradesh, cracking down not only on the illegal sale of beef but also the perfectly legal sale of buffalo meat. In sympathy, the chicken and goat-sellers in the city have mutinously downed their shutters. As a result, vegetable prices have sky-rocketed, but the states newly elected chief minister Yogi Adityanath, an avowed bachelor who has devoted his life to the worship of god but has no qualms about dabbling in politics, remains unmoved. These days in BJP-ruled India, what you eat is who you have voted for. The food on your plate is directly linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) decision to not only strictly implement the ban on slaughtering cows, considered sacred animals across the country, but also shut down the business of transporting buffalo. In the BJPs lexicon, it seems, all bovines are equal. Of course theres more to the kebab than meets the eye. The meat trade in India is run mostly by Muslims who are largely antipathetic to the BJP and what it stands for. Its not difficult to see why, as Muslims have often faced the brunt end of communal mob fury and paid with their lives: In Gujarat in 2002 about 800 Muslims were killed; in 1992, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque, several hundred Muslims lost their lives; and before that in 1987 in Meerut, 42 Muslim men were forcibly picked up and shot in cold blood. Revenge and reconciliation In a country as diverse as India, which was birthed in 1947 in the horrors of violence that accompanied a division along religious lines, neither revenge nor reconciliation is a new motif. In the ebb and flow of centuries, good and bad kings have presided over both communal conflagration and the brotherhood of men. Previous governments of the Congress Party have often paid lip service to minority Indians, including Muslims, and sometimes aided and abetted communal riots. A former BJP government run by Atal Bihari Vajpayee between 1998 and 2004 acknowledged that Muslims feel especially disenfranchised and said that they must be integrated into the mainstream. But Narendra Modis government has been different. It has maintained a stony silence in the face of climbing social tension in the past three years. Under Modi it seems the BJP is determined to avenge 800 years of Muslim rule in India that started when the Afghan king Mahmud of Ghazni invaded the country in the 11th century and destroyed a temple in Somnath, especially holy to Hindus. A dominant strain in the party today believes that Muslims must fall in line and repent for the sins they committed against Hindus in the long-gone past. OPINION: Umbrella politics of Hindutva So when a Muslim man was killed barely 50km from the capital, Delhi, in 2015, on the rumour that he stored beef in his refrigerator, Modi didnt say a word. As Lucknow becomes vegetarian and the rest of Uttar Pradesh follows suit, the question is whether the BJP will use its incredible political majority in the state to monitor personal choice. by In early April, a dairy farmer named Pehlu Khan was murdered by vigilantes protesting their allegiance to the sacred cow. They accused Khan of taking the cow that he had just bought from a cattle fair in Rajasthan to the slaughterhouse. Modi, once again, did not condemn the act or issue a statement or a tweet that promised that justice would be done. The BJPs parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose foot soldiers play a big part in turning the tide in favour of the BJP when elections need to be won, wants to ban not only beef but also buffalo meat. The cow gives milk, like your mother does. Should you kill your mother or should you treat her in a sacred manner? an RSS follower asked me. So last week, the nations solicitor-general told the Supreme Court that all cattle would soon get tamper-proof tags with a unique identification number akin to the social security numbers that Indians are getting these days which will prevent cow smuggling and protect the animal by exhibiting a range of data including the type of horn and tail. Is the penny finally starting to drop? Some people say the Modi government is getting perturbed about the terrible press his foreign investor-friendly government has been getting from all these cow troubles. Its one thing, after all, to implement a nonsensical fatwa on the kind of food you can eat, but quite another to allow those accused of a lynching to go scot-free. BJP leaders are also slowly realising that Indias unique diversity makes it incredibly difficult to implement a meat or even a beef ban. For example, Indias predominantly Christian population in the northeast eats beef, and a beef ban in these parts will make the BJP so unpopular that it will never be able to come to power. Moreover, India earns as much as $4bn annually from exporting buffalo meat largely to the Middle East, but also to South-East Asia. Certainly, thats not petty change. So, perhaps the penny is finally beginning to drop. OPINION: How the BJP has come to dominate lower-caste politics BJP-run Rajasthans chief minister Vasundhara Raje spoke up about Pehlu Khans murder more than three weeks after the incident, to say that the guilty would not be spared. But there was not one word of commiseration to the family. Nor has anyone bothered to deny the remarks of Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria, who said Pehlu Khan was lynched because he had at least three cases of cow-smuggling registered against him. BJP leaders say, off the record, that these cow vigilantes dont belong to the party and bring it shame. But Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister, is regularly confronted by statements that his own former organisation, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, and other extreme right-wing bodies make about or against Muslims and neither he nor his government has said nary a word on the issue yet. From a public health point of view, the overenthusiasm in shutting down Uttar Pradeshs so-called illegal abattoirs is a welcome step after all, several of them are run in terrible conditions. It seems that 27 tests need to be cleared to run an abattoir they must have working air-conditioning, running water, etc, which is all very well in theory, but in practice terribly difficult to fulfill. In fact, several government-run abattoirs were also shut down because they violated one or another of these requirements. Which means that small meat retailers have nowhere to go, except undertake small-scale operations in the bylanes of inner cities. So as Lucknow becomes vegetarian and the rest of Uttar Pradesh follows suit, the question is whether the BJP will use its incredible political majority in the state to monitor personal choice. And why it feels so insecure that it must even consider the need to do so. Editors note: An eariler version of this article incorrectly claimed that India earns as much as $1bn a year from buffalo meat exports. The actual figure is $4bn. Jyoti Malhotra has been a journalist for more than 30 years, is based in New Delhi, India, and has worked in a variety of news media, such as print, TV, radio and the web, in both English and Hindi. Her areas of interest include domestic Indian politics as well as Indias foreign policy, especially across South Asia. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. The Guardian recently featured a heart-rending story about children rescued from trafficking in Togo, paralleling a previous story on the same subject in Benin. Both reports painted a picture that will be familiar to many: ruthless employers exploiting the innocent; parents compelled by poverty to sell their children; cultural backwardness making things worse, helpful NGOs saving the day. Its powerful stuff. But its also highly misrepresentative. And its actually so simplistic that while I doubt neither the integrity nor the good intentions of these journalists or those publishing similar pieces, their work arguably makes things worse for the very people whose suffering they are trying to highlight. In what follows, Ill explain how, and Ill do so by drawing on 10 years of research and a recent book I have published on the issue, with some of the very communities mentioned in these articles. Migrants, not victims First, some background. Trafficking exploded as an issue in West Africa when a boat full of irregular migrants was intercepted on its way from Benin to Gabon in 2001. Because it was full of children and teenagers, it was labelled a slave-ship that heralded the arrival of a modern-day slave trade. UNICEF was responsible for this initial labelling, but it was picked up by international journalists, the US Trafficking in Persons Office, and countless NGOs. Within months it had become accepted knowledge and millions of dollars began to flow into the region to end the scourge of child trafficking. But there was a problem. The young people on that boat didnt consider themselves victims of any crime, and certainly not child trafficking. In 2007, I interviewed a number of them and it was clear that they were just youngsters migrating for work. Adri was 19 when we spoke and 13 at the time of his rescue. We were migrants, he said, not slaves. Wed paid a smuggler to get us to Gabon because we were hoping to find some work there in the fisheries. So, after being rescued by the authorities, he and his friends had to go back to their villages until they had made enough money to leave again, which most of them promptly did. READ MORE: A migrants journey begins This was far from unusual. In the years I spent working in Benin and Nigeria, I interviewed hundreds of kids officially labelled as victims of trafficking and not one told me that hed been kidnapped or coerced. Other researchers have found similar things in Benin, in other West African countries, and in countries as diverse as Argentina and South Africa, to name only two. Then why were they moving? The most obvious and basic answer is that these kids needed the money, like anyone else living under capitalism. Its not that they were starving, in the way that one thinks when one reads sentences like poverty pushes their parents to sell them. Few people experience poverty like that, and almost no one in Benin or Togo is starving. But everybody needs money. Whether that be to pay school fees, to get ready for marriage, or simply to help out at home, money is essential and for many people migrating is the only way to access it. Sometimes kids will move of their own accord and at others parents will find them a job and take part of their earnings as a contribution to the household. Hardly the same as a sale. People with access to what I call 'meaning-making power' - the press, respected international agencies, the type of folk we quote as authorities - tend to reproduce sensationalist received ideas without even questioning them. by Reproducing sensationalist ideas So, what is going on here? Why is it that journalists and the development workers they talk to say one thing and academics like me and these young migrants say another? For one thing, sadly, most development workers and pretty much all the journalists who interview them simply dont spend enough time in these places to really understand what is happening. The journalists who write these stories will probably have spent a few days on site at most, while the majority of international NGO staff or UN employees will have spent barely any more. Although it may sound ridiculous, of the 100 or so development workers I interviewed as part of my research, only a handful had ever even met the communities they labelled with their words or targeted with their policies, and none had ever lived among them. This matters a lot. Because it means that people with access to what I call meaning-making power the press, respected international agencies, the type of folk we quote as authorities tend to reproduce sensationalist received ideas without even questioning them. When it comes to children, one of the most powerful of these is that they are all inherently vulnerable and thus in danger when at work or on the move. The result is that many migrant working children are automatically assumed to be victims of trafficking when they are away from home, with the blame put variously on irresponsible parents, weak states, or abstract poverty. UN staff are taught to think like this, and the journalists who interview them are inevitably taught to think the same. But that isnt the whole story. Because not all development workers uncritically accept what they are told and some know that reality is more complex. However, as Nina, a very senior UN employee once told me: The trouble is that stories about poor kids migrating because of political-economic injustice simply dont sell. Its suffering that sells in Africa. You have to be sexy to raise money, and trafficking or slavery is sexy. OPINION: On capitalism and coercion Just think about that for a minute. Its not about corruption, at least not in the formal sense of that term. Its about is an entire political system designed to eschew the political economy of lack and instead reproduce comforting stories about African cultural backwardness amid the grinding pressure of poverty, since thats what sells among the largely white, Western media audience and the donor agencies we fund. If suffering is sexy in Africa, its not the kind that is caused by our governments. Making things worse This brings me back to the Guardian piece and to similar pieces like it. I dont doubt that the journalists who produce this work are good people trying to make the world a better place. I know a number of them and am certain that they believe in what theyre doing. The problem is, though, that this kind of work arguably makes things worse. It deploys a gaze which is almost pornographic. In this respect, it disempowers the people it looks at and de-politicises the conditions in which they live. By constructing children as victims, it legitimises policies or raid-and-rescue missions that often make life worse for rescued kids. And by individualising suffering and exploitation, it detracts from the global structures that make these things possible. Though many examples of this tendency exist, one in particular stands out. In the early 1990s, US Senator Tom Harkin, who was then the worlds most influential political donor in the global fight against child labour, introduced a bill to the US Senate to ban textile imports from Bangladesh unless factories could show that they were child labour-free. Harkin had been horrified by images of working children in Bangladeshi factories and was disgusted that their labour propped up US retail supply chains. His intention was thus to help. Yet from the perspective of the kids he sought to assist, his intervention was an unmitigated disaster. Almost overnight, thousands were laid off, with many ending up in far worse conditions on the street, in sex work, or in dangerous factories even further under the radar. Surely it would have been better for him to address the power of US corporations buying from Bangladeshi factories, demanding an extension of labour rights and good pay all the way down to the young workers in question? OPINION: Abolitionism A hostage to capitalist forces? Ultimately, the pornographic gaze that allows for these kinds of interventions is part of the problem it seeks to remedy. Far better, I would suggest, for journalists to spend longer with the people on whom they report, to let them tell their own stories, and to use the privilege of access to the global press to contextualise their stories in global structures of power and exclusion of the kind characterising life under neoliberal capitalism. Then they might start making a difference. Neil Howard is Research Fellow at the University of Antwerp and Founder-Editor of Beyond Trafficking and Slavery at openDemocracy.net. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Authorities keen to make French port city migrant-free after Jungle closure are hostile to refugees, charity claims. The clearance six months ago of the so-called Jungle camp in Calais has not stopped refugees from gathering there, the charity Care4Calais warned on Thursday. About 400 refugees live in three small camps in the French port city, in far worse conditions than the Jungle, the report said. Living rough on the streets means no access to sanitation at all, with scabies, fungal infections and gum infections at an all time high, the organisation said. Since the UK halted the transfer of minors last year, some have been returning to Calais with about 150 in the city labelled as unaccompanied children. There are an estimated 2,000 unaccompanied minors scattered around France. Many vulnerable people have been abandoned and are urgently at risk, as highlighted here in Calais, said Sue Jex, head of Care4Calais UK operations. The current approach of sweeping it [the refugee crisis] under the carpet represents the unacceptable prioritisation of short-term politics over peoples lives. READ MORE: One day in Calais: The refugees hiding in the forest Calais has been a magnet for refugees trying to reach Britain for more than a decade. From there, refugees try to break into trucks heading to Britain. French authorities are determined to demonstrate that Calais is now a migrant-free zone, which has led to an increasingly hostile environment for refugees. Police focus on arrests and detention to discourage refugee presence on the streets. Those living in these camps are in daily fear of the authorities, with police visits taking place on a regular basis that often include confiscation of the refugees sleeping bags and other possessions, the report said. Banning food aid The Mayor of Calais banned food distributions in a large area of Calais in early March, saying that they spurred ethnic tensions and conflict between rival groups of refugees. The ban was later overturned by a court at the joint request of associations working with migrants. Care4Calais said that French police continue to disrupt food distribution through ongoing intimidation and arrests while it takes place. Last summer, the French interior minister strengthened legal processes enabling deportation under the Dublin regulation, which states that asylum seekers must apply for asylum in the first EU country they enter. Since then transfers have increased, with 17,529 Dublin certificates issues during the first 11 months of 2016, according to statistics provided by the interior ministry. Extradition of Kosovos ex-PM accused of war crimes by Serbia blocked over fears he may not get a fair trial. A French appeals court has turned down a Serbian request for the extradition of former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, who was a rebel commander during the 1998-99 Kosovo war. The Serbian government, which considers Haradinaj a war ciminal, called an urgent cabinet meeting to discuss the refusal on Thursday. The French court released Haradinaj with immediate effect. Authorities had detained him as he flew into France on January 4 after a request from Serbia, which wants to put him on trial over his role in leading the insurgency in its former southern province of Kosovo. READ MORE: Roma in Kosovo My children are poisoned by lead The arrest further strained ties between Serbia and Kosovo, which declared independence with Western backing in 2008 and has demanded that Belgrade drop its efforts to prosecute people linked to the conflict. In Serbia, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucics government scheduled an urgent session at 10:00 GMT to discuss its future moves after Haradinajs release. We have to consider all implications of this move, a government official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. He declined to elaborate. In January, Serbia said it would hit back if France declined to extradite Haradinaj, now a Kosovo opposition politician. Also, pro-government media in Serbia swiftly described the French court ruling as shameful. Parties to the case have five days to appeal. Haradinajs lawyer, Rachel Lindon, said the court ruled against the extradition because he would not have had a fair and balanced trial if sent to Serbia. He lost three and half months of his life waiting for this decision, Lindon told AP news agency, but happily its over. She said it is unclear whether he will stay in France. Kosovos President Hashim Thaci said the court decision was good news for the Haradinaj family and Kosovo. Once again it is proven that the slanders of the Serb secret services against the Kosovo Liberation Army [the wartime rebel force] are unfounded and not taken into consideration by the democratic world, Thaci said in a statement. IN PICTURES: Dark and smoky shelters for refugees stranded in Serbia A Serbian court has charged Haradinaj with killings, torture and abductions of Serbs, ethnic Albanians and minority Roma people during and after the 1999-1999 war. Officials said all evidence have been handed over to the French court. In 2005 and 2007, Haradinaj was tried and acquitted of war crimes at a UN tribunal in The Hague. The Kosovo conflict ended after NATO bombed the now-defunct Yugoslavia, comprised of Serbia and Montenegro, for 78 days to force a pullout of its troops and end a counterinsurgency campaign against ethnic Albanians. Victims celebrate court ruling for Hissene Habre, who is convicted of human rights abuses against thousands. An appeals court in Senegal upheld the life sentence of Hissene Habre, former Chad president, on war crimes charges. The court also ruled on Thursday that millions of dollars of compensation awarded to more than 4,000 victims would be managed by a trust fund. The trial against Habre began in July 2015, though victims and survivors have been pursuing the case against their former leader for 16 years. The victims leaving the court has smiles on their faces, said Al Jazeeras Colin Baker, reporting from Dakar. Habre is the first former head of state to be convicted for human rights abuses in the court of another nation. The court dropped the rape conviction against Habre because the charge was introduced during the trial, said head appeal judge Ougadeye Wafi. However, the judge said he believed the accounts of a witness who said she was raped by Habre. I have been fighting for this day since I walked out of prison more than 26 years ago. Today I am finally at peace. I hope that all the dictators in Africa take notice no one is above the law! said Souleymane Guengueng, who began collecting accounts of survivors not long after being freed in 1990 from prison, and founded the Association of Victims of Crimes of the Regime of Hissene Habre. Clement Abaifouta, the president of the association and a former prisoner who was forced to bury dead inmates, said this was the beginning of something new. Today is a great and a famous day for all victims. I am dreaming of now building a new society without the violence, a new society with democracy and with respect for human beings, he said. Over 90 witnesses testified in the trial. The Extraordinary African Chambers was created by the African Union and Senegal to try Habre for crimes committed during his presidency from 1982 to 1990. A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habres government of systematic torture, saying 40,000 people died during his rule. Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but legal twists and turns over a decade saw the case go to Belgium and then finally back to Senegal after unwavering pursuit by the survivors. Future war crimes cases While it took decades for Habres case to come together, the methods used in trying the former president may be used in other trials going forward. Some say that future war crime tribunals targeting Syrian officials could be next. There was no precedent in Senegal of taking up these kind of cases beforehand, Stephen Rapp, a lawyer with The Hague Institute for Global Justice, told Al Jazeera. We have laws in Europe that allow cases to be brought if there is an impact of the crimes in Europe. And we have a massive impact of the crimes in Syria in Europe. Just have to look at the refugees, of the 11 million people displaced in Syria, Rapp said. Habres case contained powerful documentation, including files of his own political police, documents in his handwriting and testimonies from those who received his orders. There is a similar trove of evidence relating to Syria available. A special team set up by the UN to prepare prosecutions of war crimes committed in Syria was established earlier this year, though a commission of inquiry has been collecting evidence since 2011. That commission has amassed around 7,000 interviews and witness statements so far. While Syria is not a member of the Rome Statute, and efforts to refer the conflict to the ICC have been vetoed by Russia and China in the past, justice may instead run by way of European courts. I think the lesson here is that with solid documentation, with the dedication of victims, with the support of international organisations and some supportive states, you can achieve justice even in places even where people think its impossible, Rapp said. Additional reporting by Jenna Belhumeur Suspected Russian and Syrian air strikes bombard several districts in Idlib province, killing at least a dozen people. At least 19 people were killed in suspected Russian and Syrian air strikes in several districts in Idlib province, a local official of the Syrian Civil Defence told Al Jazeera. 19 people were killed today. Khan Sheikhoun, Maaret al-Numaan, Jisr al-Shughour and other areas were targeted by suspected Russian and Syrian air strikes since the morning, Hamid of the Civil Defence said on Thursday. In the suburbs of Maaret al-Numaan, al-Jamea hospital was hit, he added. Medical facilities attacked in April Apr 2 Maarat Nouman Hospital, Idlib Apr 4, 16 Mercy Hospital Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib Apr 7 & 8 Heish Clinic, Idlib Apr 17 Ikhlas Hospital Shnan, Idlib Apr 17 Erbin Hospital Eastern Ghouta Apr 22 Central Hospital Abdin, Idlib Apr 25 Kafr Takharim Hospital, Idlib Apr 26 Naseeb Hospital, Daraa Apr 26 Al Latamneh Hospital, Hama Apr 27 University Hospital East Deir, Idlib Apr 27 SAMS Ambulance and Evacuation Medical Point Maar Zeta, Idlib Source: UOSSM The Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, is a volunteer rescue group that operates mostly in rebel-held territory in Syria. Idlibs health directorate reported that the strike on al-Jamea hospital killed at least three patients and injured four others. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) also reported that suspected Russian air strikes targeted Idlib and killed at least 16 people, including seven children. The SOHR also said many of those killed in the attack were medical volunteers. Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs just outside the town of Khan Sheikhoun, the SOHR added. The regime and the Russians are trying to systematically target the remaining hospitals in Idlib to make life for people in liberated areas intolerable, said Younis Abdul Rahim, a civil defence worker who visited both sites. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces target hospitals or other emergency facilities. Russia, whose air force joined the war on his side in 2015, also denies targeting civilian infrastructure. Rescue workers say that, although many field hospitals have been moved underground, that has not been enough to protect them from bombs they say have hit at least eight medical facilities since the start of the month. A suspected chemical attack killed at least 87 people on April 4 in Khan Sheikhoun, and left at least 300 people injured or affected. Most of Idlib province has been under rebel-control since 2015 and is regularly bombed by both Syrian and allied Russian warplanes. In its latest report, the SOHR said at least 10,915 civilians, including 2,393 children, were killed in government air strikes and barrel bombs dropped by helicopters in the past 30 months. In addition to that, 64,000 others were injured in these attacks. As the Syrian conflict enters its seventh year, more than 465,000 people have been killed in the fighting, more than a million injured and over 12 million Syrians half the countrys prewar population have been displaced from their homes. With additional reporting by Diana al Rifai: @D_R_23 US, Mexico and Canada agree to renegotiate NAFTA hours after rumours of new executive order to leave the trade pact. US President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he will not pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), just hours after administration officials said he was considering a draft executive order to do just that. The White House on Wednesday made the surprise announcement in a read-out of calls between Trump, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries, the White House statement said. It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation, Trump said in the statement. READ MORE: NAFTA and the US, explained The Mexican government confirmed the conversation in a statement issued late on Wednesday. The leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining the North American Free Trade Agreement and working together with Canada to carry out a successful renegotiation for the benefit of all three countries, the statement read. The White House announcement came hours after administration officials said Trump was considering a draft executive order to withdraw the US from the deal though administration officials cautioned it was just one of a number of options being discussed by the president and his staff. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the potential executive order, which was first reported by Politico. Some saw the executive order threat as posturing by Trump to gain leverage over Mexico and Canada as he tries to negotiate changes to the deal. Trump railed against the decades-old trade deal during his campaign, describing it as a disaster. The NAFTA trade deal, which took effect in 1994, has been blamed by Trump and other critics for wiping out US manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico to take advantage of low-wage labour. Trump told the AP news agency in an interview last week that he planned to either renegotiate or terminate the NAFTA. I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United StatesIt hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico, he said. The administration appeared to be divided on Wednesday over how and when to proceed, as they balanced a newfound cautiousness with the desire to rack up accomplishments before Trumps 100th day in the job. Hundred days of Trump Some were gunning for Trump to sign a draft order this week, while others were weighing up the complications surrounding withdrawing from or renegotiating the deal without Congress fully onboard. Trump could withdraw from NAFTA but he would have to give six months notice. And it is unclear what would happen next. The law congress passed to enact the trade pact might remain in place, forcing Trump to wrangle with politicians and raising questions about the presidents authority to raise tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. READ MORE: Mexicans left behind by NAFTA see opportunity in Trump The US administration announced earlier this month that it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada. Trump has also been railing against changes in Canadian milk product pricing that he says are hurting the American dairy industry. In January Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which would have been the largest ever trade pact as measured by the gross domestic product of the 12 intended member countries in the Americas and Asia. The Trump administration last month submitted a vague set of guidelines to congress for renegotiating NAFTA, disappointing those who were expecting Trump to demand a major overhaul. In an eight-page draft letter to Congress, acting US Trade Representative Stephen Vaughn wrote that the administration intended to start talking with Mexico and Canada about making changes to the pact. The letter spelled out few details and stuck with broad principles. But it appeared to keep much of the existing agreement in place, including private tribunals that allow companies to challenge national laws on the grounds that they inhibit trade a provision that critics say allows companies to get around environmental and labour laws. Reports on Wednesday of the possible executive order drew objections from some in Congress, including Senator John McCain of Arizona. Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy, he tweeted. @POTUS shouldnt abandon this vital trade agreement. Intelligence and Security Committee says government did not disclose key documents over killing of Reyaad Khan in Syria. British politicians who examined the details of a drone strike which killed a British man in Syria said they were disappointed by the governments lack of transparency during investigations. On August 21, 2015, the UK conducted a drone strike in Raqqa for the first time outside the traditional theatre of war, killing 21-year-old British national Reyaad Khan, a suspected fighter with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), and two other people. We are in no doubt that Reyaad Khan posed a very serious threat to the UK, the Intelligence and Security Committee in the UK said in a report on Wednesday. There is nevertheless a question as to how the threat is quantified, and in this instance whether the actions of Khan and his associates amounted to an armed attack against the UK or Iraq which is clearly a subjective assessment, the committee said. The [governments] failure to provide what we consider to be relevant documents is profoundly disappointing, the report added. Camerons self-defence justification Despite not having a parliamentary mandate to take military action in Syria, then Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs at the time that Khan was seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the West, including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain, such as plots to attack high-profile public commemorations. Cameron described the attack in ISILs de facto capital as an act of self-defence. The strike against Khan was also thought to have killed two other individuals travelling in the same vehicle: Rahul Amin and another passenger, the committee said, adding that it was possible the deaths of the pair were collateral damage. READ MORE: The future of war Inside UK drone command We have been prevented from looking at this issue in as much detail as we consider it requires. On the basis of the information that was made available to us, there would appear to be questions around the assessment of the possibility of collateral damage which would benefit from further scrutiny, the report explained. For the strike to be justified under the UN Charter, an assault must be a necessary and proportionate response to an armed attack which is deemed imminent. Government should be more transparent However, the investigating MPs said they were unable to assess if this was the case, as the government failed to disclose vital documents. The government should be more transparent about these matters and permit proper scrutiny of them, said Dominic Grieve, chair of the committee. The group had initially sought to investigate two other drone strikes which killed UK nationals Junaid Hussain and Mohammed Emwazi in August and November 2015, Yasmine Ahmed, Rights Watch director, told Al Jazeera. But the group was unable to do so because US-operated drones were used on both occasions. This curtailed the scope of the committees probe, despite the UK being complicit and perhaps even facilitating the attack, Ahmed claimed. It appears that there is no oversight or accountability on strikes of this nature, Ahmed said. Additional reporting by Jenna Belhumeur Arms depot near Damascus International airport goes up in flames after series of overnight strikes blamed on Israel. Israeli strikes have hit an arms depot operated by the Lebanese Hezbollah group near Damascus airport, Syrian opposition sources told Al Jazeera. Witnesses said a total of five strikes occurred near the Damascus airport road, about 25km from the capital, early on Thursday. Syrian state TV quoted a military source saying rockets fired from Israeli territory targeted a military area in the southwestern part of the airport which caused explosions. Later on Thursday, Israeli military reported shooting down an aerial target over the Golan Heights. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. Al Jazeeras Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beirut, said the missiles were so powerful that the impact was felt several kilometres away in the Damascus countryside. In recent weeks, Israel has increasingly carried out a number of strikes against Hezbollah targets for what they describe as a red line, he said. Allegedly video of the #Damascus International Airport tonight on fire after what are claimed to be Israeli airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/jftHcxtyQ2 Vince Beshara (@vincebeshara) April 27, 2017 We will act Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking from the United States where he has been meeting US officials, told Israeli Army Radio: I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israels policy to act to prevent Irans smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah Naturally, I dont want to elaborate on this. The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicates an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act. Katz added. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment. Reuters news agency, citing an intelligence source, said the depot that was targeted handles a significant amount of weapons that Tehran, a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sends regularly by air. The source said the arms depot gets a major part of the weapons supplied to an array of Iranian-backed armed groups, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in battle against Syrian rebels. Rami Abdurrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the blasts were heard across the capital, jolting residents awake. Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosions near the airport road were followed by flames rising above the area. Previous Israeli strikes In May 2013 Israel struck three areas in Damascus suburbs, allegedly to destroy Iranian rockets being delivered to Hezbollah. Damascus airport was also hit by Israel in May 2013. The Syrian army said on January 13, 2016 that Israel had targeted the Mezze military airbase. Mezze airbase is just a few kilometres from the presidential palace. Israel has in the past targeted Hezbollah positions inside Syria where Iranian backed groups are heavily involved in the fighting. The Syrian government warned in January that it would retaliate against any attack targeting its own areas. Hezbollah-linked Al-Manar TV channel said the dawn raid struck fuel tanks and a warehouse near Damascus International Airport and that it was probably the result of an Israeli strike. It added that initial indications were that the blast had caused only material damage and not deaths. Fighters storm military camp close to heavily militarised Line of Control, killing three soldiers, Indian army says. At least three Indian soldiers and two suspected rebels were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after fighters stormed a military camp close to the heavily militarised Line of Control dividing the disputed region, Indian officials said. The fighters used guns and grenades to target soldiers in Panzgam, northwest of Kashmirs main city of Srinagar, said army spokesman Rajesh Kalia. A group of at least three fighters hurled grenades and fired automatic weapons at the sentry of the highly guarded army camp, a police officer said, speaking to AP news agency on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorised to speak to the media. READ MORE: Can the Kashmir conflict be resolved at the ballot box? Two fighters were killed in an ensuing gunfight while another was believed to have escaped, the officer said. He confirmed that three soldiers, including an army officer, were killed and said that five soldiers wounded in the attack were airlifted to the Indian armys main base in Srinagar for specialised treatment. There was no independent confirmation of the incident and no rebel group fighting against Indian rule has immediately issued any statement. India and Pakistan each administer a portion of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. Most people in the Indian-controlled portion favour independence or a merger with Pakistan. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the rebel uprising and a subsequent Indian military crackdown. Rebel groups have largely been suppressed by Indian forces in recent years. However, public opposition to Indian rule remains deep and is now principally expressed through street protests marked by youths hurling stones at government forces. IN PICTURES: Female Kashmiri students lead anti-India protests Street protests flared in recent weeks as thousands of Kashmiris vented anger against alleged abuses by Indian forces after a video emerged of a local man tied to the front of an army jeep and used as a human shield. In an attempt to contain the protests and limit the circulation of videos, India on Wednesday said it would block 22 social media websites in Kashmir for a month. What is NAFTA, who are the winners and losers, and why did Trump call it the worst trade deal in US history? US President Donald Trump, on the campaign trail, labelled NAFTA the worst trade deal ever signed by the US. Trump blames NAFTA for wiping out US manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico where labour is cheaper. In April 2017, US President threatened to pull out of the trade agreement. Canada and Mexico insisted to renegotiate it instead, and Trump agreed. Here is what NAFTA is all about. What is NAFTA? NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement to lift tariffs (taxes on imports and exports) on virtually all goods traded among the US, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994, after it was signed on December 17, 1992 by: US President George H.W. Bush Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney Mexican President Carlos Salinas What is the purpose of NAFTA? The aim of NAFTA was to make it easier for companies in the three countries to do business across borders. The argument for NAFTA was that by boosting economic integration there would be increased economic prosperity in all three countries. Can Trump pull out of NAFTA? As per the NAFTA agreement, a country can withdraw from it after giving six months notice. In the US, Trump can set that in motion without congressional approval. In April he requested a renegotiation of the terms of the NAFTA agreement. Has the US lost jobs because of NAFTA? Researchers have found mixed effects on the US labour force. Some industries have shrunk, while others have grown. The Economic Policy Institute said in 2013 that some 700,000 jobs had been lost as production moved to Mexico with California, Texas, and Michigan among the worst hit states. A 2014 report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that at most 5 percent of dislocated US workers could be traced to imports from Mexico. It said over four million Americans lose their jobs each year by plant shutdowns and mass layoffs, regardless of trade. A nonpartisan report by congress published in 2015 said, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. Who benefits from NAFTA and who loses? Since NAFTA, trade quadrupled among the three countries, surpassing $1tn in 2015, reported Reuters news agency. Economists Shushanik Hakobyan and John McLaren studied NAFTAs effect on the US labour market in 2016. They found a severe impact on income among blue-collar workers in the most affected industries and areas. College-educated workers were less likely to be affected, they said, and executives saw some benefits. The most affected workers were college dropouts working in industries that depended heavily on tariff protections in place prior to NAFTA. These workers saw wage growth drop by as much as 17 percentage points relative to wage growth in unaffected industries, McLaren told UVA Today. If NAFTA is not to blame for manufacturing job losses, what is? It is difficult to separate effects of NAFTA from other developments. Economists note that manufacturing employment was already in decline before NAFTA was signed. Much of the decline can be attributed to automation in US industry. Companies have been able to increase output with fewer workers. Also, US tariff cuts on Mexican trade under NAFTA were implemented at roughly the same time as tariff cuts with most other countries as the US entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Competition from Chinese exports increased during the same time period and boomed as China joined the WTO in 2001. Economists are more united in the view that the US has lost more jobs to China than to Mexico. What is NAFTAs impact on Mexico and Canada? According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), NAFTA gave a major boost to Mexican farm exports to the US, which have tripled since NAFTAs implementation. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican auto-manufacturing jobs have also been created, and most studies have found that the pact had a positive impact on Mexican productivity and consumer prices. But there are significant downsides: Mexicos economy grew at an average rate of just 1.3 percent a year between 1993 and 2013 during a period when Latin America was undergoing a major expansion, and poverty remains at similar levels to 1994, while mass unemployment has increased. Some believe that, instead of fulfilling its promise of providing cheaper food to Mexicans, NAFTA deepened Mexicos dependency on food imports, leaving it unprotected from volatility in international food prices and exchange rates, reported Al Jazeera recently. On Wednesday, thousands of Mexican farmers and workers took to the streets demanding that NAFTA be abandoned. They argue that the deal has devastated Mexican small farms, which struggle to compete with US imports. Canada has seen strong gains in cross-border investment in the NAFTA era, according to the CFR: Since 1993, US and Mexican investments in Canada have tripled. Canadian agriculture, in particular, saw a boost, while employment in Canadian manufacturing held steady. However, the productivity gap between the Canadian and US economies remains wide: Canadas labour productivity remains at 72 percent of US levels. Raila Odinga, ex-prime minister, to race against Uhuru Kenyatta in August under National Super Alliance coalition. Former prime minister Raila Odinga has been named as Kenyas opposition presidential candidate for the August general election. Senior leaders of the National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition made the announcement at Uhuru Park in the capital Nairobi on Thursday during a rally attended by tens of thousands of supporters. In a repeat of the 2013 election line-up, 72-year-old Odinga will challenge President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is running for a second and final five-year term. Kenyas five main opposition leaders hope their unprecedented alliance will be enough to defeat the ruling Jubilee Party on August 8. Kalonzo Musyoka was named Odingas running-mate and prospective deputy president another repeat of the 2013 scenario. Other positions were divided among senior opposition leaders, Musalia Mudavadi, Moses Wetangula and Issac Ruto. Addressing the crowd, Mudavadi said he and the others had sacrificed personal ambitions to present a united front, an effort that has always failed in the past. All NASA partners are equal, and one plays the role of the first among equals, he said. Hope for peace Kenyans hope the vote will be largely peaceful, as it was in 2013. But the country is still haunted by the two months of violence that followed the disputed 2007 presidential poll, when political protests spilled into ethnic bloodletting with more than 1,200 people killed. Odinga ran and was defeated in the last two elections and comes from one of Kenyas most powerful political families. READ MORE: Kenyas Odinga I wont run if commission not reformed He was prime minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2012 as part of a power sharing government set up to end the violence after former president Mwai Kibakis contested win in late 2007. Odinga, who identifies as a left-winger, named his first son Fidel, after the Cuban leader, and has vowed to root out corruption, reform the public sector and strengthen local government. A hospital that his father helped build in the countrys west, the familys power base, is nicknamed Russia after its main financial backers. Odinga has refused to rule out street protests if the elections are rigged. Decision to halt payments could lead to a complete power shutdown in Gaza, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. The Palestinian Authority has notified Israel that it will no longer pay for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, as the World Bank warned of power outages deepening a humanitarian crisis. The move could lead to a complete power shutdown in Hamas-ruled Gaza, and cut off medical services and water supplies for its two million residents. COGAT, a branch of the Israeli military, said it was notified by the President Mahmoud Abbas government on Thursday that electricity payments will stop immediately. Abbas has threatened to exert financial pressure on Hamas to cede control of Gaza, a territory it seized in 2007 after a brief war. Reconciliation attempts since then between rival governments in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza have failed. Illogical Hamas official Ismail Radwan reacted with fury, saying: Its illogical that Gaza is besieged and deprived of electricity, water and basic needs for the sake of political prices. The PA declined to say why it had taken the step, but had already put pressure on Hamas by withholding the Israeli fuel that until two weeks ago powered Gazas only generating plant, and by slashing the salaries of the civil servants who are one of the mainstays of Gazas struggling economy. READ MORE: Power crisis leaves Gazas main hospital on the brink Israel deals with the PA on electrical and fuel supplies for Gaza because it does not engage with Hamas, which it regards as a terrorist organisation. The World Bank said on Thursday that power outages were affecting vital services such as hospitals, clinics, water supplies, and households daily lives. During summer and winter peaks, the scarce electricity supply is increasingly rationed to four hours during daytime, said a report, quoting West Bank and Gaza director Marina Wes. Recently, this situation has become the norm leaving Gazans without electricity during most of the day. This has created a humanitarian crisis for Gazas two million people. OPINION: How factionalism is killing the Palestinian struggle We are so worried, Samir Zaqout of human rights group Al Mezan told Al Jazeera. This policy punishes everyone, not just Hamas. What is the goal? We dont understand. Health officials say the Gaza Strips 13 hospitals and 54 medical centres are running short of funds and fuel for emergency generators. They say some 620 kidney patients in need of dialysis three times a week and newborns are at particular risk from blackouts, with generators at all the medical facilities using a total of some 2,000 litres of fuel per hour. Health crisis fears All health services could stop within the coming few days, said Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman of the Gaza health ministry, calling on humanitarian organisations to offer more help. Israel charges the PA $11 million a month for the electricity, deducting the sum from the transfers of Palestinian tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Authority. Israeli sources said Gaza needs 400 megawatts of power to ensure full 24-hour supply to its residents. That goal is not being met even when the power plant is operational. It usually produces 60 megawatts, added to the 125 megawatts supplied by Israel and 25 megawatts that come across power lines from Egypt. At least 65 percent of residents in Gaza live in poverty, 72 percent are food-insecure, and 80 percent have grown dependent on international aid, according to a recent report published by the EU-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Unemployment in the territory hit an unprecedented 43 percent in the last quarter of 2016. General strike held in solidarity with hunger striking prisoners as Fatah party calls for day of rage on Friday. Schools, banks and businesses across the West Bank were closed on Thursday as Palestinians observed a general strike in solidarity with more than 1,500 prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Public transportation came to a halt, and public and private institutions, including universities, were shut for the day. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners declared an indefinite hunger strike last week to protest grievances, including medical negligence, administrative detention and limited family visits. About 6,500 Palestinians are currently in Israeli jails, 500 of them held under administrative detention. Groups working to support the prisoners in their hunger strike also declared Friday to be a day of rage, in which Palestinians were called on to confront Israeli soldiers at various contact points. The strike was called by imprisoned Fatah party leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for his involvement in the Second Intifada against the Israeli occupation. Barghouti launched the hunger strike on April 17. Those taking part in the hunger strike are ingesting only water and salt. At a protest camp near the Old City in Ramallah, dozens of young men sat on plastic chairs surrounded by images of prisoners on strike as loudspeakers blasted songs about Palestinian detainees. Holding a bright yellow Fatah flag, 26 year-old Ibrahim al-Rashidi said he had joined the strike for personal and political reasons. My cousin is on hunger strike. He has been in prison for 13 years, Rashidi told Al Jazeera. I want to send a message that I am with the prisoners. All the Palestinian people are with the prisoners. It will give the prisoners power and strength after they see the support they have. Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Ramallah, said almost every business and shop was shuttered in the occupied territories. President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah Party the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank announced Friday to be a day of rage and called on all Palestinians to clash with Israeli forces to express solidarity for the ongoing mass hunger strike, Palestinian Maan news agency reported. Fatah called for Palestinians to express their unity by performing Friday prayers at the many solidarity tents that have already been set up across the West Bank. INFOGRAPHIC: What it means to be a Palestinian prisoner in Israel The excessive practices of the Israeli occupation, particularly those of the Israel Prison Service, necessitated that we clash with the occupier everywhere across our homeland, the official statement said. Fatah called for the general strike to include all aspects of daily life. The statement said that Israel would be held responsible for the lives of all Palestinian prisoners and for any unrest in the region that may emerge as a result of Israels stubbornness and indifference toward these prisoners demands, Maan reported. Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, said that the issue of prisoners rights had helped breach political divisions in Palestinian society. All the Palestinians are united behind the prisoners in their hunger strike, Fares said. READ MORE: How Israel denies rights to Palestinian prisoners It shows that today, the Palestinian people are united. All the factions, all the unions, everyone is showing his or her solidarity in the villages and the cities. The Palestinian national crisis had become very deep and there was a feeling that it was impossible to act together with a single voice. But today, the days before and the days that will come after, I believe that the Palestinian people will reach some important conclusions. Letter to Red Cross Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit on Wednesday urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to intervene with Israeli authorities to halt their abuse of Palestinian prisoners. Abul Gheit sent a letter to ICRC president Peter Maurer requesting the committee (ICRC) urgently intervene with Israeli authorities to stop the various abuses being committed against those prisoners of war, the Arab League said. Abul Gheits letter is part of contacts with international actors to stop violations against Palestinian prisoners of war in Israeli prisons, the League said in a statement. He called for the ICRC to demand Israel ensure treating Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike according to norms and standards set in international humanitarian law. With additional reporting by Nigel Wilson: @nigelguywilson All 78 personnel of Russian intelligence vessel rescued after collision with a Togo-flagged freighter. A Russian warship has sunk after colliding with a freighter off the coast of Istanbul in the Black Sea, according to Turkeys coastal safety authority. The Turkish coastguard said all 78 personnel in the Russian intelligence vessel named Liman were rescued on Thursday. There are no victims among the crew, Russias defence ministry said in comments carried by the countrys Interfax news agency. Liman sustained a hull breach due to a collision with the ship Ashot-7, 40km northwest of the Bosphorus Strait, according to Russias defence ministry. It also said that Ashot-7 didnt get significant damage and continues to move on its route. The Russian military said it was trying to identify the owner of the Ashot-7 ship. Turkeys coastal safety authority said the ship sank after colliding with a Togo-flagged livestock vessel. Turkish officials did not give any details on the ship, or the condition of its crew. GAC, a Turkish shipping agency, said separately that the collision was caused by fog and low visibility. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to express his sadness over the collision, Turkish prime ministry sources said on Thursday. Reconnaissance ship The Liman is a former research vessel that the Russian navy has retro-fitted into a reconnaissance ship. Military sources told Russian media in February that it would be observing NATOs Sea Shield exercise in the Black Sea. Turkeys Bosphorus Strait, which cuts through Istanbul, is one of the worlds most important waterways for transit of oil and grains. The waterway connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Leader of Social Democrats among the injured after violence broke out following election of ethnic Albanian as speaker. Protesters have stormed Macedonias parliament and attacked legislators after an ethnic Albanian was elected as parliament speaker. Clashes over several hours on Thursday injured 77 people, including 22 police officers and several MPs, authorities said. Dozens of protesters, some of them masked, broke through a police cordon after the opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonias ethnic Albanian minority voted to name Talat Xhaferi as parliament speaker. Shouting, hurling chairs and grabbing camera tripods abandoned by startled journalists, the protesters attacked parliamentarians, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who was seen bleeding from the forehead. TV footage showed a bloodied Zaev and other Social Democrat politicians surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting traitors and refusing to allow them to leave. Many of the protesters were supporters of former prime minister Nikola Gruevski, whose nationalist party won elections in December but did not get enough votes to form a government on its own. He has been struggling to put together a coalition government and his supporters have been holding nightly street rallies for two months across the country to protest against the political situation. A tense standoff lasted for three hours, and hundreds of protesters swarmed through the parliament building. Police said 30 legislators and a number of journalists who had been trapped inside were eventually evacuated safely. After being initially overwhelmed, police fired flash grenades and clashed with protesters, expelling them from the building. The scariest thing is that this was allowed to happen, Ivana Jordanovska, a political activist, told Al Jazeera from Skopje. For more than two years, we have seen how the police act when anti-government protests take place. And now [when the opposition is targeted], the police did nothing. The police was absent. Neighbouring Albanias foreign ministry reacted to the violence, saying it was monitoring the escalation of the situation in Macedonia with great concern. Greeces foreign ministry said it was concerned its neighbour Macedonia may be sliding into deep political crisis. A ministry statement expressed sadness and concern and called on Macedonias political rivals to show a spirit of compromise and collaboration. Gruevski called for people to calm down after Thursdays incident. Gruevski and his nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party ruled Macedonia for a decade until December last year when the election saw VMRO-DPMNE secure 51 seats in the 120-seat parliament two more than the SDSM but the conservatives failed to reach a deal with kingmaking Albanian parties. Although Zaev reached an agreement with the Albanian groups, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to give him a mandate to form a government, leaving the country without a functioning leadership. An ally of Gruevski, the president expressed concern over the controversial demand of Albanian parties that Albanian be made an official language across Macedonia. Critics of the demand feared it could lead to the break-up of the country of about two million people a quarter of whom are ethnic Albanians. Chinese leaders say they are glad Washington is open to resolving tensions with Pyongyang through talks. Chinese leaders say dialogue is the only way to resolve the Korean crisis. The threat of more nuclear tests and missile launches is alarming many. But there are concerns that a US missile defence shield in South Korea will endanger regional stability. Beijing fiercely opposes the system, known as THAAD. A diplomatic solution to the Korean crisis does seems possible and the Trump administration has signalled it is willing to try all non-military options. Chinese leaders say they are glad that the US is open to resolving the tension through talks. Presenter: Martine Dennis Guests: Einar Tangen Political analyst Gordon Chang Author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World BJ Kim Former policy counsellor at the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy English News Belt and Road initiative helps Belarus fulfill auto dream Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 27 Avril 2017 China is helping us develop national industry wholeheartedly, said Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Semashko. Belarus cannot realize its car dream so soon without Chinese enterprises rising strength as well as the Belt and Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Semashko added. By Wu Yan, Qu Song, Zhang Guangzheng and Xing Xue from Peoples Daily Belarus auto dream has come true as a result of its cooperation with Chinese car maker Geely. Their partnership has entered a fast track since the Belt and Road initiative was put forward by China in 2013. BELGEE, taking the first three letters of Belarus and first three letters of GEELY, a Chinese car maker, is the first Belarus-Chinese joint venture in auto industry and the only Belarusian manufacturer of passenger vehicles still under operation. The quality of cars made by BELGEE has been recognized by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko after a test drive, who later ordered to use the companys cars as official business vehicles. Belarus has been restrained by bottlenecks to develop its automobile industry, but did not give up the dream. After its independence, Belaruss industrial capability was still underdeveloped due to long-term division of labor system in the former Soviet Union. For a very long time, the world renowned heavy truck production base couldnt even produce an independently-developed vehicle. Belarus dream toward building its own pillar car industry was always frustrated by the lack of capital, talent, technology and market demand. In the past, Ford Motors of the US, German Volkswagen and other carmakers have invested in Belarus but all ended up in vain. In 2011, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd. started cooperation with Belarusian auto enterprises after its 2010 acquisition of Volvo Cars. As the construction of the Belt and Road initiative was advanced, the partnership started to drive on a fast lane. Vladimir Pavlovich, assistant to BELGEE general manager, said he felt very proud when the first batch of cars rolled off the assembly line though he had previously thought it impossible to manufacture domestic passenger vehicles. I really appreciate that China has helped us realize our car dream ahead of time, said Pavlovich, who had worked in heavy machinery industry for a very long time before the joint venture was founded. China is helping us develop national industry wholeheartedly, said Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Semashko. Belarus cannot realize its car dream so soon without Chinese enterprises rising strength as well as the Belt and Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Semashko added. By the end of 2016, the joint venture had created high tax revenue and provided jobs for many locals since the old factory started operation in February 2013. The benefits are more than that. The Geely Holding Group has not only brought capital, equipment and technologies but also cultivated auto workers for the joint venture, which is more important for Belarus to develop its own vehicle brands, according to Andrey Semelev, acting general manager of BELGEE. In 2016, the BELGEE sent a total of 92 Belarusian employees to Geelys base in China for a specialized training lasting one to six months. Anna, 23, was one of the trainees. Now with expertise in polyvinylchloride (PVC), Anna said she never saw how a car was made before attending the training. The Chinese trainers are very nice, patient and conscientious, she added. Zimmer, 31, head of the welding workshop, said he learnt a lot of professional knowledge and management experience in China, which he thinks will be useful in future. Cheng Wenan, BELGEEs production general manager, was proud that Geely has established the joint venture with an overseas partner. President Xi visited Geely in January 2003 soon after he became the governor and Party secretary of East Chinas Zhejiang Province, said Cheng, also general manager of Geely overseas manufacturing center. Cheng remembered Xis comments that if we dont give additional strong support to companies like Geely, then whom are we going to support?, saying that Xis attention to the joint venture in recent years have helped accelerate its development. That indicates a national leaders supports to self-developed brands and the globalization of the countrys enterprises, Cheng added. Pic: Belarusian workers learn to weld under the guidance of Chinese technicians. (Photo by Wu Yan from Peoples Daily) Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) In a statement today, senior special assistant on media, Malam Garba Shehu said President Buharis absence at the Federal Executive Council meeting of Wednesday, April 26, was a last minute decision. Otherwise, the cabinet and the public might have been alerted in advance. As eager as he is to be up and about, the Presidents doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago. President Buhari himself, on his return to the country, made Nigerians aware of the state of his health while he was in London. Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation, as the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, intimated in his press briefing after the FEC meeting on Wednesday. Despite his lack of visibility, Nigerians should rest assured that President Buhari has not abdicated his role as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria. He receives daily briefings on the activities of government, and confers regularly with his Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. His private residence, in which he has been spending the majority of his time recently, also has a fully equipped office. God is the giver of life and health. We are grateful that He has seen our President through the worst period of his convalescence in London. We are thankful that the President has passed a number of benchmarks already. We pray that God continues to see him through this period of recuperation. Conservatives need to use the political power already in their hands to begin a grassroots transformation of academia. The totalitarian exclusion of Ann Coulter from a state university in California is one reminder of the need for reform. The grotesque of politically correct "science" recently paraded around Earth Day is another. In fact, the Orwellian control of academia by the left virtually guarantees that tens of millions of young Americans will not only lack knowledge that can be remedied by study and reflection but have instead noxious stews of pseudo-knowledge percolating out of their ears and guiding (or rather misguiding) their whole lives. There is precious little conservatives can do in places like the People's Republic of California. The so-called "Berkeley Free Speech Movement" of the early 1960s was a fraud from beginning to end. Nearly all the faculty and university administration comprised people who were radically leftist, and it was only the method of protest (screaming obscenities) that bothered anyone. Ann Coulter would have been as unwelcome then at Berkeley as she is today something conservative commentators were noting all through the 1960s, when almost never was a commencement speaker at any university a prominent conservative, and nearly all the commencement speakers were leftists. Here is the opening for conservatives both to dramatically improve academic thought in America and to ameliorate the horrific treatment given conservatives in public universities. Gallup shows that conservatives outnumber liberals in 44 of the 50 states and are outnumbered in only 4 of the fifty states. What is even more interesting is that out of the 25 states in which the conservative advantage over liberals is at least 15 percentage points, Republicans control the legislature in every single state, typically by lopsided margins. Moreover, Trump and his "deplorable" supporters carried every one of these 25 states except Virginia. In fact, conservatives ought to be able to move on this issue in other states that have clear conservative advantages over liberals, have strong Republican legislative majorities, and went for Trump: Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Alaska, and Michigan. How ought Republican state governments backed by strong conservative state voter pluralities to act? Hold state legislative committee hearings and similar investigative tools to determine the composition of the faculty in state universities both in that state and nationally. Explore examples of persecution of conservative students, student groups, and faculty in the state and nationally. If half the states of the nation reported finding persistent intolerance toward conservatives and their ideals and presented some dramatic examples, that would put the left on the defensive. State governments could then create specific seats in state universities intended to balance or try to balance the grotesque imbalance in the state and nationally. State legislatures could provide funding for specific research purposes like exploring alternative explanations for global warming and exploring whether global warming is real and exposing problems in the current leftist global warming theory. Science departments in state universities that fell dully in line with the left's cant need not receive funding (after all, these departments would have found nothing new), but those that did legitimate and valuable work in these areas could receive more funding. States that found that conservative students nationally had almost no real options could even create new colleges for conservatives nationally who wished to learn in a friendly environment. Four or five such colleges could even become global magnets for sincere students of conservative opinions who wished to learn, study, and research in a non-punitive academic environment. This would also create something these oppressed conservatives in academia desperately need: the chance for bright students to become professors and begin to create a conservative body roughly comparable to the number of conservatives in America a sort of affirmative action for this hated minority in colleges. State governments in conservative states have the power to do this and, by doing this, to really begin to transform America and to undo the long decades of totalitarian leftism on campuses which is, perhaps, the single greatest obstacle to the revival of our nation. Are there are state legislators or governors in Flyover Country with the guts and honor to pick up this banner and carry it into battle? If not if all those in state government we think are our friends are simply smiling frauds then we need to find new friends. Drawing on a tradition that goes back to Hegel via Marx and through Alexandre Kojeve in the 20th century, Francis Fukuyama is famous for his assertion that we are approaching the end of history that human progress and civilization end with the spread of liberal democracy and market economics across the globe. With the end of history also comes the end of conflict: we are living in a much more peaceful world than our grandparents' generation and the generations that preceded them. While the case can plausibly be made that there is less death and human conflict than in the past, the end of history theory seems entirely hubristic; universalist; and, in a way, messianic. To suppose that the history of humanity will end one way or another is a vain attempt at prophesying. Time and time again, those who advance the end of history theory always end up flat on their faces. Hegel first proposed the theory when he saw Napoleon's conquests across Europe, and with the French general came the ideas of the French Revolution, and it seemed as though the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity would hold sway over Europe. Karl Marx was also a proponent of the end of history, believing that human government would result in a cataclysmic revolt on the part of the proletariat and the establishment of a communist, egalitarian paradise. But as history has come to show, the experiment in communism has ended, with only death and misery to show for it. And the end of the Cold War brought on the new wave of end of history theorists. Led by Francis Fukuyama, this new wave promises that liberal democracy and market economics have triumphed over the forces of old world aristocracy and totalitarianism. And with this new sense that liberal democracy is the be-all-end-all of human government, there is a sense that we must foster its growth around the world. Often this has meant imposing liberal democracy by force, as demonstrated by our wars in Iraq and Libya. There is an American universalist belief that liberal democracy is good for all peoples at all times. There seems to be no acknowledgment of historical context. I do not mean to criticize liberal democracy. As far as I can see, it is the form of government that has delivered enormous prosperity to millions of people. It is the greatest safeguard of human rights and has shown the most respect for the dignity of the individual. But it is also important to recognize that liberal democracy is a fragile thing, and it often rests upon illiberal foundations. This brings me to 2016 and the lessons we can learn from such a tumultuous year. The year brought a near political revolution throughout the Western world, from Brexit to the rise and election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe, and the potential unraveling of global institutions such as the European Union and NATO. Europe and North America (and the world itself) have been rocked. What sort of lessons can we learn? How are we to interpret the meaning of this shift? One lesson is that liberal democracy rests on illiberal foundations, or, to put it another way, pre-liberal conditions must be maintained for liberal democracy to work. There must be certain assumptions agreed upon by a people before a liberal democracy is to be formed. Common traditions, religion, language, and civic principles provide the foundations on which classical liberalism can thrive. In the absence of such commonalities, trust between people frays, and the only thing that can hold together a fractured society is an ever more powerful state. Nations have a culture, and that geographic proximity does not create solidarity among different peoples and cultures. People have desires, both spiritual and cultural, that cosmopolitan globalism simply does not meet. An agreed upon moral framework cannot exist within a "multicultural" society; and in the absence of cultural institutions and traditions, the only thing that will hold a society together is the force of the state. The "end of history" is a foolhardy theory. Human history has a funny way of throwing curveballs and making things unpredictable. It is true that we live in a time of unprecedented peace, that we have less internal strife and crime and fewer wars among nations. But we cannot take this for granted. History shows that major conflicts usually create periods of long-lasting peace, but this peace never lasts. The Thirty Years War, regarding the population lost, is still the bloodiest war ever fought. Once the war ended in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia, peace reigned in Europe, relatively speaking, until the start of the Seven Years War a century later. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna brought peace to Europe for a century until the start of the First World War, which was then followed shortly after by the Second. Since the end of that conflict, we have been in a state of mostly global tranquility. But if the pattern of history continues, it seems that peace cannot last forever. If 2016 has taught us anything, it is that democratic institutions must be vigilantly protected. They should never be assumed to be impervious to outside forces and should never be taken for granted. Tim Colvin is a political science/classical civilization double major with a minor in philosophy at Fordham University. He is from Kings Park on Long Island. The Sick Man of Europe is a phrase that was first used to describe the waning Ottoman Empire. Since then, it has been applied to various European countries over the years suffering from political and economic dilapidation, whether it was Britain or, later, Germany. In the United States, we have our own "sick man." California is gravely ill. It is suffering from ideological madness, economic illiteracy, stubborn pretension, and general Democrat corruption. As Donald Trump nears passage of repealing Obamacare, on cue, as predicted, California is putting into motion its own single-payer proposition, S.B. 562. It sounds like a virus. As the state teeters on a raft of businesses fleeing to friendlier states, this will only accelerate that trend. If Silicon Valley catches a cold and sneezes, and it too decides to migrate elsewhere, the muni bonds for the entire state immediately default. The pensions alone are bound to do it anyway, even with Silicon Valley remaining. The math will simply refuse to go along any farther. The left has already radically injured the state finances, as the budget is over $150 billion in debt even as it has increased taxes by more than ever before. And now, with another new entitlement, at $370 billion a year projected in the first year even if you slush-fund all the other accounts into one from Medicare to Medicaid to the ACA massive new taxes on businesses and individuals would be required to fund this pig. Adding to the exodus of businesses already leaving, I doubt new businesses would be attracted ever to come here again. This week, there was already a media push on the steps of the state capitol, with unshaven Hollywood extras wearing previously handed out white lab coats to stand behind Democrat lawmakers backing the bill. Of course, we can only assume there are corrupt lobbyist groups who will be exempted from this tyranny, such as public unions, who will still be able to get their individual plans that run $2,500 a month paid for without being thrown into this hellscape. California is on suicide watch. It's not sure if it wants to be around anymore. I'm not sure we can help it ever recover at this point. As one attorney general, Kamala Harris, steps down to replace Barbara Boxer, another attorney general is secreted out of the glands of selfsame power in the form of pus-spewing Xavier Becerra. The stench of cronyism is ranker than a Port-A-Potty at a chili cook-off. It's like a Pez dispenser that keeps previously inserted candidates on rotation to be continuously spit out and reincarnated as they rise to the top. The Democratic Party that has taken over the state is sick and getting sicker. And Democrats' prescription is not to try to get well, but to get fatter with debt and offer more free whatever(at this point, it doesn't matter) and keep the party going. In 2006, when Democrats were trying to take over the House and Senate, a majority of them voted for a wall on the Mexican border. President Obama, Senate leader Harry Reid, House leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Dick Durbin, then-senator Hillary Clinton, and then-senator Joe Biden all voted for the wall. The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the major networks supported these Democrats. They did not call them racists and anti-immigrants. In September 2013, Obama and the Democrats actually shut down government because they didnt get their way on Obamacare. The media, of course, blamed Sen. Ted Cruz and the Republicans. The media did not suggest that Obama and the Democrats compromise and work across the aisle with Republicans. In September 2015, Obama and the Democrats threatened to shut the government if Republicans left $500 million for a non-government agency, the special interest group Planned Parenthood. Again, the media blamed Republicans and did not suggest that the Democrats compromise. Now, in March 2017, Democrats who voted for a wall threaten to shut down government if any funding for a wall is included. The media have not called out Democrats to compromise, nor have they called them obstructionists. They instead have wondered if Trump would be willing to compromise with Democrats. With Democrats, it is always one way. Of course, as long as Sen. Lindsay Graham and Sen. John McCain go along with Democrats, they are in high demand for media appearances. In summary, the media puppets will blame Republicans no matter what. The bias is astonishing and pathetic. Of course, throughout all the genuflecting to Democrats and the constant repetition of Democrat talking points as news, the media pretend they are very serious about vetting out fake news. Google is just as willing as other media outlets to report Democrat talking points and push their agenda as real news. Why would anyone trust them to analyze what is fake and what is real? The day the public sees the following headline in the AP, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today, they may start believing that the media is serious about telling the truth: "Durbin and Schumer back out of their promise to build a border wall." Otherwise, we know that most of the media are continuing to be the sycophants and hypocrites that they have been for a long time. The scene was too much for Fox News reporter Jesse Watters. Ivanka Trump was holding a big microphone in her dainty hand and held it perilously close to her mouth. She looked almost like she was nibbling on it as she talked into it. Jesse Watters, the Bill O'Reilly protege who recently moved to the 9 p.m. slot on Fox News as a host of the "The Five," made a comment on Tuesday that critics saw as a lewd joke directed at Ivanka Trump. ".... I don't really get what's going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone." Watters denied he was making a joke about Ms. Trump performing oral sex, but I am skeptical. Now, it is true that for years, Ivanka has used her body and her sexuality to get ahead in the business world. See the photo below of a slick, greased up Ivanka in a tight bathing suit holding a very phallic drill. But that is still no justification for making sexual jokes about her. Ivanka does deserve criticism, however, for her left-leaning politics and the way she has made her father tilt to the left. Ivanka made her microphone mistake at a conference in Germany, where she spoke about "women's entrepreneurship." First daughter Ivanka Trump discussed female entrepreneurship, her father and feminism at the W20 Summit in Berlin on Tuesday, joining a panel that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Netherlands' Queen Maxima. Feminism was a central topic on the panel[.] ... "I do label myself a feminist, and I do think of that in broad terms," she said later. Discussing her father, Trump said the president agrees with her about the need to empower women, saying that he had encouraged her "to fully lean into this opportunity and come into the White House and be by his side" and to take part in discussions like the Women20 Summit. Whom else do we know who talked constantly about women, to the exclusion of all else? Hillary Clinton! She engaged in the worst form of identity politics, constantly peppering her speeches with mentions of women, just to get their votes. Ivanka is not trying to get votes, but she does want to be liked and admired by the liberal media, so she is doing the exact same thing as Hillary. Ivanka claims to be passionate about "female entrepreneurship." How is female entrepreneurship different from male entrepreneurship? Are there different rules of economics for women? Do women-owned businesses have different kinds of balance sheets? Are women mentally inferior, so that they need special help starting businesses that men don't? How many women were helped to start a business from Ivanka's presence at this conference? How many women need help specifically from a woman to start a business and can't learn from the same sources everyone else does? You see, once you start asking questions, Ivanka's "women empowerment" effort looks like a sham. All that's missing is the tax-free foundation Hillary had to solicit money while she worked in government. Wait a minute Ivanka is doing that, too: Ivanka Trump told Axios on Wednesday that she was working to start a "massive fund" with donations from both nations and companies to boost female entrepreneurship. Immediately, the prospect of Ivanka Trump founding and directing her own global foundation, and soliciting foreign donations, while also shaping foreign policy, set off a firestorm. Ivanka Trump has a very senior position advising the president. How is it going to look if she asks people who do business with the government to donate to a fund she is affiliated with? Will businesses donate with the expectation of getting favors from the Trump administration? You bet! Ivanka's just like Hillary: the emphasis on divisive identity politics and now the sleaze. Trump promised to drain the swamp, but Ivanka herself is part of it. Ivanka Trump is a liberal. She is pushing Trump to take in more Syrian refugees, which may explain why Trump, after promising on the campaign trail not to take in any more of them, is not only admitting them at a faster rate than Obama but is taking Syrian refugees bound for Australia as well. There's plenty to criticize Ivanka for. She's like a young Hillary Clinton clone. Let's just keep the sex out of it. Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com. The city of Portland decided to cancel the annual 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade after email threats were received promising violence if the event went forward. The family-oriented event was threatened with disruption by thugs who promised to "stab to death" marchers associated with the Multnomah County Republican Party. After consulting police, organizers decided they couldn't protect marchers or bystanders and ended up canceling the event. Oregonian: At least two protests were planned for the day of the parade, one by Oregon Students Empowered and another by Direct Action Alliance. Both events were mentioned in an email sent to parade organizers on Saturday, threatening to shut down the event with hundreds of protesters in the street. "You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely," the anonymous email said, telling organizers they could cancel the Republican group's registration or else face action from protesters. "This is non-negotiable." The parade is organized by the 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association, a part of the neighborhood business organization Venture Portland. Representatives from neither organization returned calls for comment. The cancelation isn't necessarily a win for the protest groups. Jacob Bureros, an organizer with the Direct Action Alliance, said the organization which intended to speak out against fascism and white supremacy during the parade is sad to hear the news. "We are disappointed that the parade was canceled," he said. "We're members of this community and this is an awesome parade." James Buchal, chairman of the Multnomah County Republican Party, said his group was ready to march despite the protesters. He said the party had no hand in cancelling the event, and was taken by surprise when they heard the news. After seeing the email last weekend, they had no plans to back out. "We weren't willing to just walk away quietly," he said. "The next thing we knew the whole thing was canceled." Organizers pulled out after contacting Portland police, according to Rich Jarvis, spokesman for the Rose Festival Foundation. When police said they couldn't offer any additional security for the parade, organizers decided to cancel it due to safety concerns. "The showdown was imminent," Jarvis said. "They were boxed into a corner, they simply had no choice. In order to avoid a violent outbreak, they had to cancel the parade." Lined up to oppose the thugs were pro-Trump supporters who promised to confront the thugs. These were the same two groups who clashed in Berkeley earlier this month, and rather than having to deal with potential chaos in the streets, organizers decided to retreat. But at what cost? The parade is a "soft target" for the thugs. With families guaranteed to attend, they knew full well their threats would lead to cancelation especially since their unreasonable demand that parade organizers ban the local GOP from marching could not be met. Any protestation they make about not wanting to disrupt the parade is a lie. That said, there is an object lesson here for other cities. Unless the police are willing to strictly enforce the law and play hardball with the black shirts, they may as well roll up the sidewalks. These threats will only increase now that the thugs have been successful in their efforts. Any gathering of political opponents of the antifa movement will be targeted. When people's constitutional right to peacefully assemble or speak is curtailed by a mob, only strong action by government to forcefully, if necessary, guarantee those rights is possible. No other option is satisfactory. And that appears to be where we're headed if the violent thugs don't cease and desist their efforts to violate the rights of their political opponents. One must wonder. How does Janet Napolitano do it? How does she continually wind up in places of power, despite her consistent reputation for ineptitude and corruption? While she was governor of Arizona, Napolitano requested increased federal border security for her state, a praiseworthy action. But later, while the head of Homeland Security, she actually opposed the same request made by her successor, Arizona governor Jan Brewer, even though Brewer's request was essentially identical to Napolitano's. Hypocrisy knows no bounds. In an extraordinary disconnect from practicality, Napolitano once proposed that the solution to airline hijacking was to require all passengers to keep their hands on their laps throughout the flight. There is more. After a terrorist attempted to firebomb an aircraft during landing, a passenger saved the day by overpowering the would-be mass murderer. In response to this failure to prevent the terrorist from boarding the flight, Napolitano said (with amazing audacity) that "the system worked." Apparently, the secret system involved having a large Dutch passenger on board to wrestle the bomber (sarcasm, of course). The saga continues. Now, Napolitano has somehow become head of the University of California, and apparently has not changed a bit. She is accused of hiding $175 million in taxpayer funds from the public. While she justifies this as an emergency fund, or what is often known as a slush fund, she cites among her list of emergencies funding for illegal immigrants. Slush funds, although improper, are often a means of overriding bureaucratic foot-dragging when an immediate and legitimate need exists. The practice, while frowned upon, at least oftentimes serves the taxpayer. However, Napolitano's case is quite different in important respects. According to a news article at Fox, Napolitano was dodging accountability for the funds with which she had been entrusted, trying to conceal her deeds from auditors, and requesting even more tuition money her department did not need. All the while, she was overpaying her staff. Who does Napolitano think she is a Clinton? She is one of the most reviled women in America today among a large swath of the population, infamous for her casual "Lamborghini" joke while discussing the harvesting of aborted unborn babies for their organs in an undercover 2015 video expose, yet Planned Parenthood executive Mary Gatter was once a small girl in pigtails precociously gazing at the camera on a sunny day. Gatter is back in the news after a new video from the Center For Medical Progress finds her doubling down on her shockingly callous remarks of two years ago. "I did it in L.A. I'm committed to it, I think it's a great idea," she says of trading the organs of murdered babies for cash in the new video. "What kind of volume do you need and what gestational ages?" Gatter, who now serves as Planned Parenthood, Pasadena, Calif. medical director, coldly asks after being notified that a would-be customer is looking for liver, lung, and brain parts from unborn babies. Gatter has been pilloried for haggling over the price paid to Planned Parenthood to collect intact fetal specimens, with her tossed off joke, "I want a Lamborghini," marking her as especially unfeeling in the eyes of an outraged public. In the new video, the bargaining continues, with her casually dismissing a price of $50 per specimen as outdated. "Yeah, fifty's on the low end," Gatter says. "Fifty was like 12 years ago." Yet in a blog titled "The Landis-Foster-Hutton Family Tree," we see a more human side of Gatter in an array of pictures, starting with her as a smiling two-year-old sitting atop a pony "in 1948 or 49" and ending with her working in a clinic or hospital in Iran in 2008. It's interesting to see this same woman as the small girl holding a kitten while posing for a long-ago photo with her mother and sisters, or as the fresh-faced college student with a promising future ahead of her. Gatter's own writing on the blog post hints at a turbulent upbringing: I was born in New York City in 1946, the eldest of three daughters of L.Stewart Gatter and Julie Coady, his second (or possibly third or even fourth, by inconsistent family legend) wife. She was 30 years younger than he, and had met him when she went to work as his secretary, right out of Julia Richmond High School. I never really knew my father, as he died (at age 62) when I was 6, leaving my mother with the three girls, aged 6, 5 and 2. While she expresses admiration for a mother who raised her and her siblings pretty much on her own, her appreciation of her father is rather different: What I know about my father is that he was born in 1890 or so in Newburgh, NY and was an only child. This was fairly unusual for the time, so I am left to wonder what that was about. He graduated from Princeton in 1912 and then NYU Law School. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the FIRST World War, but sat i[t] out in Washington D.C. Thereafter he became a divorce and patents lawyer in New York, and apparently was quite the Bon Vivant and man-about-town. He had 'falling-outs' with many people apparently [.] Also, I guess he had a little problem with alcohol. She adds, "My father, for all of his wonderful elan and joie-de-vivre, apparently was a really poor money manager, and left her (my mother) with basically nothing." As for her own development, Gatter writes: In terms of my life, my mother moved us all to what had been the summer vacation home in Montauk, New York, so I grew up there. I went to college and then spent two years in the Peace Corps (in Uganda) and then went to Medical School. I am now a gynecologist, working for Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles. It is a path that has taken her to peddling the body parts of murdered unborn children for money. Real people make news, both good and bad. This family tree pictorial gives a curious if brief glimpse at the little girl who grew up to be an abortionist. Sometimes, things are that simple. In chemistry, there is a simple but profound law that all first-year students learn: that matter at high concentrations automatically diffuses toward matter at low concentrations. In biological systems, it can explain a lot of what goes on. It apparently also holds for social systems. Consider if Country A has well developed social support (welfare) systems and exists alongside Country B, which has very little such safety net systems, guess where inhabitants will migrate. If you are poor in Country B, you are naturally drawn toward Country A why wouldn't you be? But one has to ask, can Country A's social systems absorb all of Country B's (and C's, D's, and E's) disaffected and still offer the same beneficent social support systems to its own poor? This is the very situation that the U.S. (Country A) faces along its southern border (and others). Can the U.S. take in the poor and disadvantaged of all of our southern neighbors? Could China take in all of Southeast Asia's poor? Could Europe take in all the poor of the Middle East and North Africa? But not simply take in. Take in and maintain the same level of social support? If the answer to that question is only up to a point, then a controlled border is essential to the social welfare systems of Country A. In a situation of fully open borders, the poor in Country A will face a far more problematic future. Note, however, that the situation for the wealthy in Country A is not substantially affected by the drawdown of social safety net systems in Country A. Those wealthy don't need such social systems. They're wealthy! And this could explain the love affair of the coastal elites with the open borders policy of the Democrats, just as their parents weren't troubled by the Democrat-led issue of mandatory school busing in the 1960s-1970s their kids (our current elites) were in private schools back then i.e., unaffected by public school busing. After the White House let it be known yesterday that the administration was readying an executive order that would terminate U.S. participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico and Canada agreed to renegotiate the treaty. Reuters: The White House said Trump spoke by telephone with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and that he would hold back from a speedy termination of NAFTA, in what was described as a "pleasant and productive" conversation. "President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," a White House statement said. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," Trump was quoted as saying in the statement. The Mexican and Canadian currencies rebounded in Asian trading after Trump said the U.S. would stay in NAFTA for now. The U.S. dollar dropped 0.6 percent on its Canadian counterpart and 1 percent on the peso. The White House had been considering an executive order exiting NAFTA as early as Trump's 100th day in office on Saturday, but there was a split among his top advisers over whether to take the step. During his election campaign Trump threatened to renegotiate NAFTA and in the past week complained bitterly about Canadian trade practices. It was under an executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 23 that the United States pulled out of the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. News of the potential presidential action to withdraw from NAFTA earlier drove the Mexican and Canadian currencies lower. An executive order of U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA would have triggered a formal process with a timetable for completion. The fact that Mexico and Canada both agreed to renegotiate means that renegotiations can take place in a far less stressful atmosphere, with no deadlines. Of course, the president will have that executive order in his back pocket if he feels he needs it. From his campaign rhetoric, President Trump is going to want more than cosmetic changes or tweaking to the deal. By most estimates, NAFTA has harmed U.S. manufacturing, including the automotive, textile, computer, and electrical appliance industries, although it has benefited export industries like agriculture. Depending on which measurement you use, NAFTA has created 2-5 million jobs in the U.S. alone. It has quadrupled trade and spurred economic growth. But the nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs lost have helped hollow out the middle class. Overall, it's a matter of debate whether NAFTA has been a plus or a minus for the U.S. economy. It largely depends on what part of the country you live in and the industry in which you are employed. Can renegotiation save or even bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S.? The president thinks so. He will get a good chance to prove that in the next few months as trade representatives from the U.S. and our closest neighbors sit down to discuss changes to this pivotal deal. North Korea poses a threat and theres no alternative but to counter it. But the situation is not like this recent military analysis on Fox News. North Korea put a variety of new missiles on display during the April 15 parade, and while at least one of them was reportedly a prototype, some experts thought they spotted actual fakes. A closer look at some of the soldiers in that parade suggests those missiles may not have been the only things that weren't quite battle ready. This was more about sending a message than being combat effective, said Michael Pregent, a former Army Intelligence Officer with over 28 years of experience working conflicts around the world and now an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. Of course, North Korea would use fake missiles in a parade. These things are typically used in training drills because real ones arent tolerant of certain mistakes. Using the dummies in a parade makes the same sort of sense. Some of the commandoes most memorable images to emerge from North Koreas dramatic parade featured the special operations commandos who were carrying what appeared to be AK-47s with grenade-launching capabilities. It turns out that what many people believed to be grenade launchers are actually what's known as "helical" magazines, a piece of equipment that organizes rounds in a spiral shape to maximize capacity and that is notorious for jamming, according to Pregent. Identifying the soldiers in the first photograph as commandoes or Special Forces is a mistake. These are assault troops. They are equipped with body armor and carrying Kalashnikovs with an enormously high capacity magazine. They are intended to provide their own suppressing fire as they charge an enemy position. They wont have time to load standard 30 round magazines. If the tubular magazine jams, as the Fox article claims they are prone, immediate action is simple and, if further action is required, the overall volume of fire is worth a few malfunctions. Thats the calculation, at any rate. Claiming that it isnt without trials of our own is to underestimate the enemy. The folding stock indicates that these are motorized or possibly airborne troops. The folding stock facilitates entrance and egress from a vehicle. These troops approach the forward edge of the battlefield in trucks or get right on it in armored personnel carriers before they dismount. Airborne troops would be trickier but the idea is similar. Theyll be followed up by straight leg infantry to exploit their break through enemy lines since assault troops would be expected to take high casualties. Pregent claims that the type of sunglasses being worn by those same troops looks like a flat-face frame, and thats not ballistic. That would wraparound and would also protect your eyes. What the beef about sunglasses is, I dont know. Whod be caught dead in anything but designer style, I guess? The next three photos show soldiers with training grenades on their launchers. Yes, same as the big missiles. You can buy these training aids on Ebay or the Gun Auction websites, no security clearance or prior military experience required. Some are rubber ducks. Some have the real body that has never been filled with explosives or propellant and are marked as such. This should be no problem for a military weapons expert. Of course, theyre training dummies. The caption on the last of these three photos is particularly disconcerting. Are those launchers affixed to the tips of rifles, or something else? Its not clear, experts say. The rifle is obviously a standard RPG7. Its been around since 1961. The training round is obviously not live. If common sense isnt enough, there is no cap or pull ribbon on the fuse at nose to remove the cap. The white band and red cap probably indicate a training round. Ordinarily, the entire round is earth drab in color. The thinking behind all of this is Korean War Era. Probably, the North Korean strategy will be artillery bombardment preceding mass infantry charges. Can we defeat something like that? Probably! We can call down a lot of air and artillery fire precisely enough to avoid hitting our own troops, even if we dont have as many. But there will be mass infantry battles in all of this and lots of artillery from both sides. Putting North Korea in its box is something Douglas MacArthur advocated over fifty years ago. Its too bad that our leaders kicked the can until North Korea is on the verge on going nuclear. That is the real game changer. Were lucky to have a president who realizes that and is taking action on it. But sneering at the enemy is never a good idea. Were looking at generations brought up to hate America. That is the real tragedy of it all, that our leaders let that happen for so long. These people will probably sell their lives dearly. They were told the same things all soldiers are told, in one way or another, and there is nothing wrong with that, in itself. Kill your enemy, but never dishonor or sneer at his soldiers. Theyre doing the same thing that our boys are. Its just a damn shame that things always work out like this, every so often. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) facilitated two meetings at the Fort Young Hotel in Dominica, from 10th April, 2017 to 12th April, 2017. These meetings were the Sixth Technical and Ninth General Living Standards Measurement Committee (LSMC) meetings and the First Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS) Steering Committee Meeting. The Sixth Technical and Ninth General LSMC meetings were held from 10th April, 2017 to 11th April, 2017. The Anguilla Statistics Department will be working along with the Ministry of Social Development on the Country Poverty Assessment (CPA) in the conduct of the Survey of Living Conditions (SLC) component. The CPA assesses the current living conditions and main factors affecting the welfare of residents. It helps to reduce the extent and severity of poverty. The LSMC meetings were jointly organized by the OECS and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to: 1. Receive status of the main decisions tabled for action from the 5th Technical and 8th General LSMC meetings; 2. Share experiences and lessons learnt from implementing household surveys and for planning to implement the full CPA; 3. Receive from the OECS Project Coordinating Unit (PCU) status updates for the Enhance CPA Project; 4. Discuss and approve the Enhanced CPA Annual Work Programme and Budget 2016-2017; 5. Agree on the methodologies, instruments and criteria for the assessments of poverty and inequality according to international best practices; 6. Agree on modalities for data dissemination and sharing; 7. Agree on a revised term of reference for the LSMC. The Anguilla Statistics Department recognizes the importance and need for quality statistics and the development of statistics. The Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS) supports the OECS Economic Unions development and integration agenda by formalizing, empowering, consolidating and promoting the Regional Statistical System (RSS) so that it can respond to the demand for relevant, high quality and Treaty-enabled data and official statistics. The First RSDS Steering Committee meeting was held on 12th April, 2017, following the launch of the RSDS on 11th April, 2017. The meeting was jointly organized by the OECS and the World Bank. The purpose of this meeting was for the Committee to contemplate the Economic Affairs Council (EAC) endorsement as it discusses and deliberates its role to oversee the implementation of the RSDS. Representatives from the OECS Member and Associate Member States were present at the meetings. Anguilla was represented at both of these meetings. Senior Statistical Officer Dilece Connor and Senior Social Worker Lauraine Gumbs represented Anguilla at the Sixth Technical and Ninth General LSMC meetings, and Senior Statistical Officer Dilece Connor represented Anguilla at the First RSDS Steering Committee meeting. Fake News question of the week: Will Trump risk a government shutdown over the wall? The media flip back and forth on whos to blame for a government shutdown depending on which branch is controlled by Republicans. But the shutdown hypothetical in this case is a trick question. A failure to build the wall IS a government shutdown. Of course it would be unfortunate if schoolchildren couldnt visit national parks and welfare checks didnt get mailed on time. But arranging White House tours isnt the primary function of the government. The governments No. 1 job is to protect the nation. This has always been true, but its especially important at this moment in history, when we have drugs, gang members, diseases and terrorists pouring across our border. The failure of the government to close our border is the definition of a government shutdown. This isnt like other shutdowns. Democrats cant wail about Republicans cutting Social Security or school lunches. They are willing to shut the government down because they dont want borders. Take that to the country! As commander in chief, Trump doesnt need Congress to build a wall. The Constitution charges him with defending the nation. Contrary to what you may have heard from various warmongers on TV and in Trumps Cabinet, that means defending our borders not Ukraines borders. Building a wall is not only Trumps constitutional duty, but its also massively popular. Although Trump doesnt need congressional approval for a wall, it was smart for him to demand a vote. Let the Democrats run for re-election on opposing the wall. Let Sen. Claire McCaskill explain to the parents of kids killed by illegals that she thought a wall was inhumane. Let Sen. Angus King say to the people of Maine that instead of a wall that would block heroin from pouring into our country, he thought a better plan was to sponsor a bunch of treatment centers for after your kid is already addicted. Let Sen. Chuck Schumer tell us why its OK for Israel to have a wall, but not us. Let open borders Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio tell African-Americans that its more important to help illegal aliens than to help black American teenagers, currently suffering a crippling unemployment rate. Republicans are both corrupt and stupid, so its hard to tell which one animates their opposition to the wall. But the Democrats are bluffing. Theyre trying to get the GOP to fold before they show us their pair of threes. Now that Trump has capitulated on even asking for funding for a wall, the Democrats are on their knees saying, Thank you, God! Thank you, God! No politician wants to have to explain a vote against the wall. What the Democrats want is for Trump to be stuck explaining why he didnt build the wall. Then it will be a bloodbath. Not only Trump, but also the entire GOP, is dead if he doesnt build a wall. Republicans will be wiped out in the midterms, Democrats will have a 300-seat House majority, and Trump will have to come up with an excuse for why hes not running for re-election. The New York Times and MSNBC are not going to say, We are so impressed with his growth in office, were going to drop all that nonsense about Russia and endorse the Republican ticket! No, at that point, Trump will be the worst of everything. No one voted for Trump because of the Access Hollywood tape. They voted for him because of his issues; most prominently, his promise to build a big beautiful wall. And whos going to pay for it? MEXICO! You cant say that at every campaign rally for 18 months and then not build a wall. Do not imagine that a Trump double-cross on the wall will not destroy the Republican Party. Oh, well get them back. No, you wont. Trump wasnt a distraction: He was the last chance to save the GOP. Millions of Americans who hadnt voted in 30 years came out in 2016 to vote for Trump. If he betrays them, theyll say, You see? I told you. Theyre all crooks. No excuses will work. No fiery denunciations of the courts, the Democrats or La Raza will win them back, even if Trump comes up with demeaning Twitter names for them. It would be an epic betrayal worse than Bush betraying voters on no new taxes. Worse than LBJ escalating the Vietnam War. There would be nothing like it in the history of politics. Hes the commander in chief! He said hed build a wall. If he cant do that, Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished, and the country is finished. COPYRIGHT 2017 ANN COULTER DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500 (ANSAmed) - Palermo, April 27 - Catania prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said Thursday on state broadcaster RaiTre that "in my opinion, some NGOs could be financed by traffickers and I know of contact (between them). This trafficking is currently bringing in as much money as the drug trade". He was speaking on the issue of an inquiry opened recently by his office. "Perhaps it could be even more disturbing," he added, positing that some NGOs might "have different ends, such as destabilizing the Italian economy in order to benefit from it". Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said that he hoped "that the Catania prosecutor's office will speak through the investigation and documents, since I think that this is the best way. If the prosecutor general has proof of this, we will make an assessment." "In general," he added, speaking to Repubblica TV, "it is not fair to reconstruct the history of NGOs as a story of collusion with traffickers. This is a lie." Interior Minister Marco Minniti said it would be a mistake to make "generalisations" about the NGOs while the "issues raised cannot be underestimated". "We are waiting for the results of this investigation," Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro said. "Everything is being built up around the words of the Frontex director (Fabrice Leggeri, Ed.), who in my opinion must cover the fact that their ships have moved north of Malta and, obviously, those of the NGOs remain where they were. This is clearly an annoyance in a particularly delicate period, such as the European elections one with elections in important countries." In speaking at the Senate Defense Committee, the Frontex director said recently that it was a "paradox" that NGOs carry out so many rescues at sea, "about a third", "when there have never been so many public ships deployed in the sea between the EU and Italy". He added that, on the basis of migrant statements, "in some cases the traffickers give telephones to the migrants with the numbers of NGOs", but did not specify which. Giro was questioned on Thursday at the Fiumicino airport, where he welcomed 68 Syrian refugees that came through 'humanitarian corridors'. Giro said that he did not think that coordination between NGOs and traffickers induces migrants to try the crossing. He added that "intervention to keep people in Africa must be done first, before Libya. And this is exactly what the government is doing with the countries of West Africa." Migrant traffickers fund some NGOs - prosecutor Zuccaro tells Italian TV (ANSAmed) - Palermo, April 27 - Catania prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro told Italian TV Thursday that "in my opinion some NGOs may be financed by (migrant) traffickers, and I know of contacts". He said this traffic "is today reaping profits like drugs trafficking". Justice Minister Andrea Orlando responded by saying he hoped Zuccaro "speaks via investigations". Orlando said "in general, it is not right to reconstruct the history of the NGOs as a history of being in cahoots with the traffickers, it is a lie".Catania prosecutors have accused NGOs of picking up migrants off Libya after receiving phone calls from numbers which they say migrants have been given by traffickers. Frontex, the EU border agency, has also voiced concern about the action of some NGOs. (ANSAmed). BEIRUT - An Israeli airstrike early Thursday morning led to an enormous explosion near the Damascus airport, reported the Al-Manar television station. The broadcaster is under the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, which is fighting across the border in Syria alongside regime and allied foreign forces. Israel has in the past conducted other airstrikes on weapons depots in the area that it suspected were actually held by Hezbollah. Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, in refering to the pre-dawn explosions near the Damascus airport and speaking to Army Radio from the United States, appeared to confirm involvement by saying that ''the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah''. Katz also quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that ''whenever we receive intelligence that indicates an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act''. (ANSAmed) - Palermo, April 27 - Catania prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro told Italian TV Thursday that "in my opinion some NGOs may be financed by (migrant) traffickers, and I know of contacts". He said this traffic "is today reaping profits like drugs trafficking". Justice Minister Andrea Orlando responded by saying he hoped Zuccaro "speaks via investigations". Orlando said "in general, it is not right to reconstruct the history of the NGOs as a history of being in cahoots with the traffickers, it is a lie".Catania prosecutors have accused NGOs of picking up migrants off Libya after receiving phone calls from numbers which they say migrants have been given by traffickers. Frontex, the EU border agency, has also voiced concern about the action of some NGOs. (ANSAmed). ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean (ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 27 - The following are some of the main events scheduled for today in the Euro-Mediterranean area: ALEXANDROUPOLI (GREECE) - First international congress on the 'western silk road'. LA VALLETTA - EU, informal meeting of defense ministers (also on the 27th). HAMMAMET - Arab festival of radio and television (until April 28). TATAOUINE (TUNISIA) - Premier Chahed visits after people protested to ask for the development of the region. ROME - India Theater - Mayakovsky's play Mystery-Bouffe premieres with company of migrants and volunteers. (ANSAmed). Traffickers may pay some NGOs, posits Catania prosecutor Justice minister calls for proof to be presented (ANSAmed) - PALERMO, APRIL 27 - Catania prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said Thursday on state broadcaster RaiTre that ''in my opinion, some NGOs could be financed by traffickers and I know of contact (between them). This trafficking is currently bringing in as much money as the drug trade''. He was speaking on the issue of an inquiry opened recently by his office. ''Perhaps it could be even more disturbing,'' he added, positing that some NGOs might ''have different ends, such as destabilizing the Italian economy in order to benefit from it''. Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said that he hoped ''that the Catania prosecutor's office will speak through the investigation and documents, since I think that this is the best way. If the prosecutor general has proof of this, we will make an assessment.'' ''In general,'' he added, speaking to Repubblica TV, ''it is not fair to reconstruct the history of NGOs as a story of collusion with traffickers. This is a lie.'' ''We are waiting for the results of this investigation,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro said. ''Everything is being built up around the words of the Frontex director (Fabrice Leggeri, Ed.), who in my opinion must cover the fact that their ships have moved north of Malta and, obviously, those of the NGOs remain where they were. This is clearly an annoyance in a particularly delicate period, such as the European elections one with elections in important countries.'' In speaking at the Senate Defense Committee, the Frontex director said recently that it was a ''paradox'' that NGOs carry out so many rescues at sea, ''about a third'', ''when there have never been so many public ships deployed in the sea between the EU and Italy''. He added that, on the basis of migrant statements, ''in some cases the traffickers give telephones to the migrants with the numbers of NGOs'', but did not specify which. Giro was questioned on Thursday at the Fiumicino airport, where he welcomed 68 Syrian refugees that came through 'humanitarian corridors'. Giro said that he did not think that coordination between NGOs and traffickers induces migrants to try the crossing. He added that ''intervention to keep people in Africa must be done first, before Libya. And this is exactly what the government is doing with the countries of West Africa.'' (ANSAmed). First-quarter GAAP earnings per share increased to $2.34 and core earnings per share (non-GAAP)* increased to $2.01. Revenue decreased to $21.0 billion, reflecting the timing of commercial and defense aircraft deliveries. For the full year, GAAP earnings per share guidance increased to between $10.35 and $10.55 from $10.25 and $10.45 and core earnings per share (non-GAAP)* guidance increased to between $9.20 and $9.40 from $9.10 and $9.30, primarily driven by a lower-than-expected tax rate. "With a sharp focus on performance and productivity, our team delivered another quarter of solid financial results, including year-over-year earnings growth and strong operating cash flow," said Boeing Chairman, President and chief executive officer Dennis Muilenburg. "In turn, we continued to position Boeing for growth with investments in new products and services, innovation, and our people, while again demonstrating our commitment to return significant cash to our shareholders." "We also achieved major milestones, including the certification of the new 737 MAX 8 and first flight of the 787-10 Dreamliner, and we captured a $3.4 billion contract award for 268 Apache helicopters." "We remain on track to achieve our full-year revenue, earnings and cash flow targets as our teams deliver on our large and diverse order backlog. As we do so, we're focused on accelerating productivity, quality and safety improvements, strengthening execution on development programs, and capturing new business opportunities." Operating cash flow in the quarter of $2.1 billion was driven by solid operating performance and timing of receipts and expenditures. During the quarter, the company repurchased 14.9 million shares for $2.5 billion, leaving $11.5 billion remaining under the current repurchase authorisation which is expected to be completed over approximately the next two years. The company also paid $868 million in dividends in the quarter, reflecting a 30 percent increase in dividends per share compared to the same period of the prior year. Cash and investments in marketable securities totalled $9.2 billion, down from $10.0 billion at the beginning of the quarter. Debt was $10.8 billion, up from the beginning of the quarter, primarily due to the issuance of new debt. Total company backlog at quarter-end was $480 billion, up from $473 billion at the beginning of the quarter, and included net orders for the quarter of $27 billion. Commercial Aircraft Commercial Airplanes first-quarter revenue was $14.3 billion on services growth, offset by lower planned 737 deliveries, as we prepare for 737 MAX entry into service in May. First-quarter operating margin increased to 8.5 percent, reflecting improved performance on production and services programs, cost growth on the initial production of KC-46 Tanker aircraft, and less favourable delivery mix. During the quarter, Boeing successfully completed first flight of the 787-10 Dreamliner. The 737 programme rolled out the first 737 MAX 9 and received FAA certification for the 737 MAX 8. Demand continues to be strong for the 737 MAX with more than 3,700 orders since launch. Commercial Airplanes booked 198 net orders during the quarter. Backlog remains robust with more than 5,700 airplanes valued at $417 billion. Defence, Space & Security Defence, Space & Security first-quarter revenue was $6.5 billion. First-quarter operating margin increased to 11.3 percent, reflecting improved performance at BMA. Boeing Military Aircraft (BMA) first-quarter revenue was $2.6 billion, reflecting lower planned deliveries, and operating margin increased to 12.2 percent on improved performance. During the quarter, BMA was awarded a contract for 268 AH-64E Apache helicopters from the U.S. Army, a contract for 17 P-8A Poseidon aircraft from the U.S. Navy, Royal Australian Air Force, and the U.K. Royal Air Force, and a contract from the U.S. Air Force for an additional 15 KC-46 Tanker aircraft. Network & Space Systems (N&SS) first-quarter revenue was $1.6 billion, reflecting lower volume on Commercial Crew. Operating margin was 6.3 percent driven by lower satellite services volume and investments in development efforts. During the quarter, N&SS announced an order for a 702 satellite with a dual payload from SKY Perfect JSAT and Kacific. Global Services & Support (GS&S) first-quarter revenue was $2.3 billion, reflecting timing of contracts. Operating margin increased to 13.6 percent largely reflecting improved performance. During the quarter, GS&S was awarded a contract from the Republic of Korea Air Force to continue long-term sustainment of F-15 aircraft over the next five years. Backlog at Defence, Space & Security was $63 billion, of which 34 percent represents orders from international customers. Additional Financial Information At quarter-end, Boeing Capital's net portfolio balance was $4.0 billion. Total pension expense for the first quarter was $334 million, down from $629 million in the same period of the prior year. Unallocated items, eliminations and other revenue decreased primarily due to the elimination of intercompany revenue for one aircraft delivered under operating lease. The effective tax rate for the first quarter decreased from the same period in the prior year due to higher-than-expected tax benefits related to share-based compensation in the first quarter of 2017. Outlook The company's 2017 updated financial and delivery guidance (Table 7) reflects continued solid performance across the company and the impact of the lower-than-expected tax rate. The move will add 945 seats per week to the Australian city from 25 March 2018, representing a 10% increase in capacity. This means Emirates customers can enjoy even more seamless A380 to A380 connections via its hub in Dubai to 18 points in the UK and Europe. The additional weekly seats on the route will support more business and leisure travel between Dubai and Melbourne and together with Qantas new Melbourne, via Perth, London B789 Dreamliner service beginning on the 24th March 2018, offers customers more options to London and Europe under the joint partnership. At a ceremony attended by key travel industry executives, Emirates was crowned Best Airline Worldwide. It was also named Airline with the Best First Class, Airline with the Best First Class Lounge and Best Frequent Flyer Programme. Adel Al Redha, Emirates executive vice president and chief operations officer, said: Our customers are at the heart of our brand. In every step of the customers journey, we thoroughly and regularly examine the product to achieve a high level of customer care. Providing a truly memorable experience is about continually innovating across our product and offering a personal touch and a warm welcome. Moreover, our Skywards accolade solidifies the programmes standing as an industry-leading loyalty programme that offers Emirates customers value through exceptional privileges and benefits. We are honoured to be recognised for our efforts by Business Traveller Middle Easts readers. The partnership will enable both airlines to capitalise on their strong links with Maharashtra and further propel domestic and international arrivals into the state capital Mumbai and beyond. It is the first time an Indian state has signed a tourism collaboration agreement with the airline sector. Under the agreement, the three entities will pool marketing resources to participate in travel-trade events in key international markets such as the UK and the UAE; jointly promote Destination Maharashtra through advertising campaigns; and organise inbound familiarisation trips for media and travel agents. Shri Jaykumar Rawal, Honourable Minister of Tourism, Government of Maharashtra, said: We are honoured to welcome this opportunity to strengthen our cooperation with Etihad Airways and Jet Airways. This MoU is the beginning of a strategic partnership with two leading and most important international airlines to attract as many international tourists as possible. Together, we can create benefits for travellers and shareholders. Our aim is to jointly put in place the best strategies and practices to increase Maharashtras marketing footprint and position it as the most preferred destination. Smt. Valsa Nair Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary, Tourism and Culture, Government of Maharashtra, added: This is a landmark agreement that will provide valuable support for Maharashtra Tourisms global campaigns and marketing activities, as well as some of the industrys most important trade and business events. This unique and important partnership between Maharashtra Tourism, Etihad Airways and Jet Airways will boost the states image exponentially. James Hogan, Etihad Aviation Group President and Chief Executive Officer, said: Being part of one of the worlds largest economies, Maharashtra has plenty to offer business and leisure travellers. We are therefore delighted to expand our links to promote tourism to this vibrant state, which we have been serving with dedicated flights for 13 years. This is the first time a state government in India has ventured into such a tourism partnership with the airline industry, hence we appreciate the opportunity to work with our strategic Indian partner Jet Airways on the breakthrough agreement. Our combined operation with Jet Airways between Abu Dhabi and Mumbai, complemented by Jets widespread domestic services, is further testament to the importance of Maharashtra on our route map. Naresh Goyal, Jet Airways Chairman, added: It is a moment of both pride and honour that the Government of Maharashtra has chosen to join hands with Jet Airways and our strategic partner Etihad Airways in this unique initiative of leveraging our collective resources to strengthen travel and tourism to the state. Mumbai is Jet Airways home hub and the airline shares a warm and emotional bond with Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra. We operate our highest number of flights from the city and have always positioned and promoted Mumbai as the gateway to the state and the country. Our mutual network represents a huge market that can be potentially accessed in support of this initiative. Al Jazeera has reported witnesses said a total of five strikes occurred near the Damascus airport road, about 25km from the capital, early this morning. Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said: "I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah ... Naturally, I don't want to elaborate on this. "The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act." Said Katz. The explosions have caused a huge fire and material damage. As yet, no casualties have been reported. Voted by readers of the magazine, the distinction reflects Flydubais comprehensive regional network, evolving business model and its role in creating trade and tourism flows in previously underserved markets. Ken Gile, chief operating officer at Flydubai, represented the airline at the awards. The award is nominated and voted for by the AHIC advisory board which has more than 40 hotel industry leaders from around the region. The award recognises the Dubai-based airlines role in providing opportunities for the hotel industry in the region through its evolving business model and its agility and flexibility as a young airline. This strategy has enhanced Dubais economic development in line with the Government of Dubais vision of creating trade and tourism flows in previously underserved markets. From a network of 93 destinations in 44 countries, flydubai has opened up 62 routes that did not previously have direct air links to Dubai or were not served by a UAE national carrier from Dubai. Ghaith Al Ghaith said: I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of the whole flydubai team in recognition for their work and for the contribution they have made to the growth of the airline. flydubais achievements would not be possible without the vision and leadership of the UAE and we remain committed to contributing to its success. Malta has launched an initiative that it hopes will see the island nation become a major aerospace centre of excellence. The vision of Maltas National Aerospace Centre (NAC) is to become a sustainable agency operating as a centre of aerospace research development and innovation (RDI) in technology areas of value to national industry and European competitiveness. This will be achieved through R&I excellence in science and technology. The NAC was set up as a separate legal entity and is capable of entering into contracts, employing personnel and managing property for its operations. Furthermore, it will assist in the development of a national aerospace policy, represent the government on matters relating to the aerospace industry, and ensure necessary coordination in the implementation of aerospace policy. The Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) has agreed to share its technical know-how and provide its support and capabilities to assist the NAC, which will aim to deliver high-quality, low-cost, and practical training courses in a geographic location that can be easily reached by European, African and the Middle Eastern customers. The training facilities are centred at Xewkija, on the island of Gozo, in Malta. Formally known as Gozo Heliport and used for scheduled helicopter flights from Malta International Airport until 2006, it has a 174 metre (571ft) 10/2 runway, two 22 metre wide aprons, a hangar and fire station. The NAC facility is ideal for UAS flight-testing due to Maltas operational environment, stakeholder community, logistics and communications. These assets include its geographical location in the centre of the Mediterranean, together with the favourable climate throughout the year. The flight-test facility is available for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), universities, research institutions and UAS operators. At Xewkija, NAC provides services and support for UAS flight-testing including hangarage, workshop and maintenance facilities, offices for flight-test instrumentation and post-flight data analysis, and UAS training courses. Being close to the sea, the facility enables its clients to perform flight-testing over land and water. In addition, it allows for a very quick and easy transition between the launch site and for beyond visual line of site (BVLOS) operations at a variety of altitudes. The NAC enables short and long flight tests, depending on client requirements. It caters for small to medium-sized fixed-wing UAS, using the airstrip, and all ranges of rotary-wing UAS. The facility allows visual line of sight (VLOS) flight-tests as well as BVLOS tests through NACs extensive segregated airspace in Maltese territorial waters, reaching a peak altitude at FL155, depending on the distance from the shore. Such an extensive segregated airspace is ideal to test multiple UAS technologies and applications, such as sense-and-avoid technologies, maritime search and rescue applications, and integration of UAS with commercial aircraft. NACs facility, coupled with NLRs long-standing research in UAS operations involving integration into civil airspace, makes it the ideal location for testing. The organisation aims to create a portfolio of training courses in aerospace-related topics. It will also provide theoretical and practical training for new UAS pilots in the form of courses accredited by the Maltese and Dutch Civil Aviation Authorities. The NAC also offers individual technical assessments, consisting of a review of all UAS documentation, ground inspection, and flight inspection. It offers manufacturers the possibility of utilising its facilities to demonstrate their products to their own clients, which may include fixed-wing or rotor-wing UAS types, or UAS systems and other related technologies. In addition, should a client procure a new UAS and would like to practice piloting it, NAC can provide that opportunity at Xewkija. The MoU defines a framework for collaboration in the peaceful use of space, in line with the UAE Space Agencys strategic plans to enhance collaboration with international stakeholders in the sector. The MoU covers various aspects of the peaceful use of outer space, as well as collaboration in the fields of policy-making, regulations, space science, technology, and human capital development in the space sector. The MoU was signed at the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Dr. Mohamed Al Ahbabi, director general of the UAE Space Agency, and Dr. Azzedine Oussedik, director general of the Algerian Space Agency. The signing was attended by Abdelkader Messahel, Algerian Minister for Maghreb, African Union and Arab League Affairs, HE Dr. Khalifa Al Romaithi, Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, and other senior representatives from both parties. Al Romaithi highlighted that the MoU is in line with the UAE Space Agencys efforts to develop stronger ties with various international stakeholders in the sector, with the aim of supporting the national space sector and assuring its development over the coming decades. Al Ahbabi said that the two parties are joined by mutual interest in space exploration, supported by various initiatives and programs. This collaboration, Al Ahbabi added, is bound to support these efforts, especially within the context of pan-Arab collaboration to revive the regions ancient position as a pioneer of space science. The MoU is the second signed with an Arab space agency, after the singing of a similar document with the Bahraini National Space Science Agency last year. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. PM Karapetyan says it is necessary to improve the current model of forest management in the country. The PM mentioned at the Cabinet meeting that a relevant consultation was held on April 26, since concerns are raised often lately regarding illegal loggings. It is necessary to improve the current model of forest management and bring it to compliance with modern management requirements. At this moment the current management level is assessed as insufficient, the PM said. He tasked the minister of agriculture to diagnose the existing problems in the forest preservation field and present modern management methods and proposals. The agriculture ministry is also tasked with presenting anti-logging projects. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the UNECE Region and the UNECE session titled Economic Integration and Cooperation towards 2030 dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) was held in Geneva from April 25 to 26 during which Armenias Deputy Foreign Minister Ashot Hovakimyan delivered speech, the MFA told Armenpress. The Deputy FM said during its activity the UN Economic Commission for Europe played a key role in the regions economic development. According to him, the ECE contributes to strengthening the cooperation of the European countries, as well as the economic integration in accordance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Ashot Hovakimyan said Armenias Government reviewed the poverty reduction strategy by targeting the directions of human capital development, increase of employment, improvement of social protection system and institutional modernization of public administration. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Member of Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Naira Karapetyan delivered speech at the PACE spring sitting by criticizing Azerbaijans actions on abusing Interpols name and reputation, reports Armenpress. In her speech Naira Karapetyan said any topic related to human rights and fundamental freedoms is strictly important and they must be kept under the spotlight. We must highlight the role of Interpol as an effective tool for inter-state and inter-national cooperation in fight against crimes. However, there is one important question which should be clearly defined: no country has a right to abuse Interpols reputation and name for fulfilling its own goals, mainly for political reasons. Some member states of the Council of Europe tried to violate the Article 3 of Interpols rules of procedure which bans Interpols interference in political, religious or racism related affairs, she said. Karapetyan stated that CoE member state Azerbaijan uses Interpol for such cases, and presented several examples. For instance, recently Azerbaijan applied to Belarus for arresting blogger Alexander Lapshin. Lapshin is accused of criticizing the Azerbaijani leadership and visiting Nagorno Karabakh [Artsakh Republic], a Republic which legally declared its independence half a century ago. While Interpol, as later was revealed, denied Azerbaijans application over Lapshin, the Russian-Israeli blogger was arrested and extradited from Belarus to Azerbaijan, the MP said, adding that this is a vivid example of abusing Interpols name and reputation. I really want to believe that our joint efforts will give their results, and an important organization like Interpol will no longer be used by certain countries as a political platform, Naira Karapetyan said. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. Official representative of the Russian MFA Maria Zakharova has read the articles published in Azerbaijani press over the comments of the Russian MFA on the case of Dilham Askerov sentenced to life in prison in the Republic of Artsakh. She assesses those articles blatant. Answering the question of an Azerbaijani journalist on the case of Dilham Askerov during a weekly briefing, Zakharova noted that those articles are not analytical, critical or constructive, they are just blatant. And after that you ask us to give more information? After such articles one wishes to put an end to any kind of interactions. I can be very sincere. You know how open we are for media, but excuse me, no one has allowed to demonstrate vulgarity, Zakharova said. She asked the Azerbaijani journalist present at the briefing to convey her concerns to other journalists in Azerbaijan in case of possibility. Its not a journalistic work, our Azerbaijani partners agree with us who even have apologized for such an intonation. Keeping the public informed and using troublesome and complex issues, that no one conceals, for regular outbreaks are different things, the official representative of the Russian MFA said. As a result of reconnaissance operations by the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Ministry, National Security Service and Police, citizens of Azerbaijan Shahbaz Jalaloghlu Guliyev (born 1968) and Dilham Askerov (born 1960) were found and arrested in the territory of Shahumyan region of Nagorno Karabakh, for illegally crossing the border. Another saboteur, Azerbaijan citizen Hasan Hasanov (born 1978) was eliminated as a result of resisting arrest. His body was transferred to the Azerbaijani side. Dilham Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev were convicted for kidnapping and murder on ethnic hatred grounds, violence using weapons against a minor, espionage, possession of weapons and ammunition, attempted murder of two persons, and illegally crossing the border . Dilham Askerov was sentenced to life imprisonment and Shahbaz Guliyev to 22 years imprisonment. YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the Armenian revolutionary Federation (ARF) will sign a new agreement on cooperation in the visible future, RPA spokesperson, Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov told the reporters after the Executive Body meeting of the party. The talks are already in the final stage, are almost completed. I can say that in the visible future the Republican Party of Armenia and the Armenian revolutionary Federation will sign a new agreement on cooperation, Armenpress reports Sharmazanov saying. He did not mention exact time, only said it will take place in the near future. Aiming to visit every country in the world to commemorate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeares birth, and the 400th anniversary of his death, it has visited 136 countries out of 196. The only country the company could not get permission and insurance to visit was Syria, so they performed in the Zaatari refugee camp on the Jordanian border to an entirely Syrian audience. (photo journal) While Rhode Island may be the smallest state in the country, [it] has become a powerhouse when it comes to attracting artists and art lovers to its shores. And the method by which state leaders have leveraged Rhode Islands tax code to benefit the creative community could serve as a model for other states looking to cultivate a stronger arts economy. Niti Aayog also washed off its hand on the issue of taxing agri income in the country calling it a personal view of one member Bibek Debroy. New Delhi: Rebuking Niti Aayog, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said that the government has no plan to introduce tax on agricultural income. Mr Jaitleys statement came after media reports that Niti Aayog on Tuesday had made a strong case for taxing agriculture income by bringing it within personal income tax. I have read the paragraph in Niti Ayog Report entitled Income-Tax on agriculture income. To obviate any confusion on the subject, I categorically state that the Central government has no plan to impose any tax on agriculture income, said Mr Jaitley. Finance minister said that as per the Constitutional allocation of powers, the Central government has no jurisdiction to impose tax on agricultural income. Later in the day, Niti Aayog also washed off its hand on the issue of taxing agri income in the country calling it a personal view of one member Bibek Debroy. Several newspaper reports published on April 26th, 2017, state that Niti Aayog or its draft three-year action agenda has recommended that farm income in India be taxed to expand the existing Income-Tax base. The Niti Aayog categorically states that this is neither the view of the Aayog nor is such a recommendation made anywhere in the Draft Action Agenda document as circulated to the Governing Council at the meeting on 23rd April 2017, said the think tank in a statement. Niti Aayog notes that the views on taxing farm income expressed by member Bibek Debroy were personal and not those of the Aayog, it added. On expanding the base on the personal income tax side, other than elimination of exemptions, is to also tax rural sector, including agriculture income above certain threshold, Mr Debroy had said . The non-farm income in rural area is already taxed. Mr Debroy had said that income tax should apply on agriculture income only above a threshold, which could be more or less at par with the personal income tax exemption limit, which at present is `2.5 lakh, as per reports. Bringing agricultural income in personal income tax is politically controversial issue as farmers are a big vote bank in the country and agonizing them will have political fall out which no party in governance wants to risk. Veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who was battling cancer, took his last breath this afternoon at 11.20am. Mumbai: Veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who was battling cancer, took his last breath this afternoon at 11.20am, at Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. He was admitted to the hospital earlier this month. His co-actors and celebrities reacted on Twitter mourning their grief over his death. Rajinikanth took the medium of Twitter to grieve over the actors demise. He wrote, My dear friend Vinod Khanna will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family. (sic) Actor Rishi Kapoor, who has worked in films like Amar Akbar Anthony with Vinod Khanna, shared a picture of the films poster and tweeted, Will miss you Amar R.I.P. (sic) An emotional Rishi changed his display picture on Twitter with Vinod Khanna's picture and further tweeted: Amitabh Bachchan who was also a part of the same film, left his promotional interview of Sarkar 3 mid-way, as soon as he learned the news of the veterans death. Vinod jis Mere Apne co-actor Shatrughan Sinha posted the news of formers death on Twitter. He tweeted, Vinod Khanna, truly Mere Apne, one of my most admired and loved personalities, the supremely handsome & talented superstar is no more.. (sic) Filmmaker Subhash Ghai shared his last meeting with the lovable actor and said, I met him last year at convocation of whistling woods film school when he was honoured with a maestro award by students for his outstanding contribution. A real handsome man on and off screen both. Celebrated his life with love n dignity n compassion for others n in service to his nation as mp. He will always live in my heart n mind. Good bye vinod RiP. (sic) Akshay Kumar also passed his condolences to the charismatic actor's family. Anupam Kher also expressed his grief. He said that he will miss the actor's larger than life performances. Hema Malini, who has worked in many films with Vinod Khanna, and has an unreleased film 'Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi' with him, too expressed her grief. Noting Vinod Khanna as the best actor of his era, and considering it as a huge loss to the film industry, Lata Mangeshkar tweeted: Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, who worked as a production manager in Vinod Khanna's 'Mera Gaon Mera Desh', is deeply saddened by this news and shared a throwback picture. Mukesh Bhatt, who was very close to the actor revealed to a daily, "He was suffering from cancer for the past couple of years. He seemed to have recovered at one point, but then he suffered a relapse. The last time I met him was about six months back." Anil Kapoor shared a picture of the late actor with his sons and passed his condolences to the family. Taken aback by this news, Sanjay Dutt said, "It is saddening to hear of the demise of Vinod Khanna ji. I have watched him as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He is and always will be family to the Dutts. May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshay, Rahul and Sakshi." A post shared by Ajay Devgn reads: Remembering Vinod ji, Kajol wrote: Irrfan Khan and Riteish Deshmukh shared a picture of the legend and expressed their sadness. From the younger troop, Varun Dhawan, Sonakshi Sinha and Anushka Sharma tweeted about Vinod ji's demise. Saddened by the news, Sidharth Malhotra and Bhumi Pednekar also tweeted about it. Vivek Oberoi passed his condolences to the late actors family and wrote, An icon passes on but his legend remains in r hearts & minds! RIP #VinodKhanna ji u will be missed, Heartfelt Condolences @R_Khanna & Akshay! (sic) Top officials will review package to boost tourism, infrastructure in the state today. New Delhi: As the situation in Jammu and Kashmir continues to deteriorate, the Centre aiming to soothe frayed tempers within the Valley and bolster the PDP-BJP alliance has called for a high-level meeting on Thursday to review the release of a relief package for the troubled state. According to highly placed sources, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has summoned top bureaucrats, including home secretary and defence secretary, and their counterparts from the road transport, tourism and power, to take a call on the release of the package. They informed that apart from releasing funds for the state, various steps that are required to be taken for bolstering tourism and improving other basic facilities, like roads and power, are likely to be discussed. A review of the prevailing law and order situation may also come up for deliberation during the course of discussion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced Rs 80,000crore package for J&K in November 2015 during his visit to the state. It included money for providing relief and rehabilitation of the 2014 flood victims, rehabilitation of West Pakistan refugees and Kashmiri pandits, for building of roads and highways, and developing health infrastructure and promoting tourism. Sources said that not all the funds had been released in totality at that time and the state had received a part of it. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had even said in 2016 that the Centre might add more funds to the Rs 80,000 crore package, depending on resources. The April-27 meeting called by the PMO, therefore, will also review the possibilities of releasing additional funds in the form of a package. The development comes after J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti met the Prime Minister earlier this week amid escalating violence in the state. The move to release the relief package is being viewed as a positive signal to the people of the state on behalf of the Centre, as well as to bolster the PDP-BJP alliance ruling the state. An influential section in the PDP wants Ms Mufti to snap up ties with the BJP. Though her meeting with Mr Modi was seen as a signal that everything was fine between the alliance partners, the Centres decision to release funds to the state may send a clear signal that the coalition government in J&K is here for keeps. The NGOs will only be granted accreditation after evaluating their internal governance and ethical standards. New Delhi: Observing that a strict statutory framework is necessary to regulate government funding to NGOs, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to consider enacting a law to ensure regulation and accountability of over 30 lakh NGOs. A three-judge bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul told the counsel for the Centre that the existing regulations were not sufficient to regulate the NGOs across the country not only for effective disbursal of funds but also to take action for non-compliance of law. In a brief order, the bench said, The petition relates to money given to NGOs but there is no law to regulate them. The guidelines proposed by the Centre are not enough. We would like the govt to consider and examine in eight weeks the desirability of giving statutory status to the entire process. The CJI pointed out that each year, government departments disburse funds to the tune of `950crore to the NGOs and this has been going on for years. There seems to be no assessment of what happens to these funds whether they are properly being utilised or not. Since this is government money, we want to know how many NGOs have been blacklisted and how many NGOs have been prosecuted. If the guidelines suggested by the government is given statutory status it will have some effect. Amicus curiae Rakesh Diwedi informed the court that during 2002 to 2009, the Centre through Council for Advancement of Peoples Action and Rural Technology (Capart) had disbursed Rs 4,756 crore to the NGOs and voluntary organisations. During the same period, states had given Rs 1,897 crore to NGOs. And, on an average Rs 950 crore are given to NGOs by the Centre and states each year. He said recommendations have been made for de-listing 15 voluntary organisations and criminal prosecution have been initiated against 159 voluntary organisations for defaults or misappropriation. In the guidelines, the Centre said it has proposed stringent guidelines for the NGOs, requiring them to register afresh online with Niti Aayog. They will be provided a unique ID and subjected to the Income Tax Act and Foreign Contribution Regulations act. The NGOs must give details of the audited account, I-T returns, area of operation and names of key personnel, the guidelines says. The NGOs will only be granted accreditation after evaluating their internal governance and ethical standards. The past record of the NGOs too will be put under scrutiny before accreditation. The accredited NGOs will be subject to three-tier scrutiny to evaluate the funds utilised. The scrutiny would also include the quality of work, the guidelines also state the NGOs and VOs getting govt funds are required to execute a bond to refund the amount with 10% interest if work not done. Misappropriation of funds would warrant registration of criminal case against NGOs/VOs and signatories will be jointly and severally responsible to refund the amount. If the government is not satisfiecd with the progress of the projects or considers that the guidelines have been vioalted, it reserves the right to termiante the grant in aid with immediate effect. The grant will be blacklisted if it was found that funds were received by suppressing facts and giving misleading information. While Haryana had more than one lakh (1,00,611) NGOs, Punjab accounted for 84,752 such organisations. CBI has filed the report in response to an apex court order asking the agency to conduct a survey on the total number of NGOs in the country and go into their functioning to ascertain their financial irregularities. The states that had more than one lakh NGOs were Maharashtra (5.18), Uttar Pradesh (5.48), Kerala (3.69), West Bengal (2.34), Tamil Nadu (1.55), Andhra Pradesh (2.92) and Madhya Pradesh (1.36). The incident took place at Panjgaon at Chowkibal when militants stormed the battalion camp which is in-charge of road opening duties. The fidayeen, with the intention of carrying out a suicide attack, tried to force their way into the army installation. (Photo: PTI/File) Srinagar: An Army captain and two soldiers were on Thursday killed when militants carried out a Fidayeen attack on an army camp in Kupwara in north Kashmir. The Army officer killed was identified as Captain Ayush, official sources said. At least 5 more jawans were injured, said reports. The incident took place at Panjgaon at Chowkibal when militants, suspected to be of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad stormed the battalion camp which is in-charge of road opening duties on the crucial roads in this area. Two militants were killed as army foiled their attack, the sources said. However, a hunt is on to ascertain if any militant sneaked into the camp under the cover of darkness. The minister also asked senior officials to prepare a blueprint of the proposed strategy to tackle left-wing extremism. Family members of CRPF jawan Naresh Yadav, mourn in Darbhanga on Wednesday. He was killed in naxal attack in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Facing criticism for keeping Central paramilitary forces headless, the Centre on Wednesday hurriedly cleared the appointments of CRPF and ITBP chiefs, two days after the Naxal attack in Chhattisgarhs Sukma that left 25 security personnel dead. Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar, an IPS officer of 1983 batch of Uttar Pradesh cadre, was named CRPF chief, while R.K. Pachnanda of the same batch of West Bengal cadre was picked as the new head of the ITBP. With lack of intelligence-sharing between the state police and the central forces suspected to be the main reason for high casualty rate of security forces in Maoist-infested Chhattisgarh, Union home minister Rajnath Singh chaired a high-level meeting on Wednesday and asked for strengthening of intelligence-gathering mechanism, analysis of ongoing operations, identification of problem areas and their resolution for better results. Sources said that Mr Singh has asked senior security advisor in the home ministry, K. Vijay Kumar, to stay put in Chhattisgarh to ensure coordinated operations against the Maoists. The minister also asked senior officials to prepare a blueprint of the proposed strategy to tackle left-wing extremism. The plan would be presented at the May 8 meeting to be attended by chief ministers as well as top civil and police officials of 10 Naxal-affected states. Wednesdays meeting was attended by national security advisor Ajit Doval, Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and senior officials, who discussed ways on finetuning the new strategy to make it more effective and minimise casualty of security forces. The meeting also discussed road construction activities in Naxal-hit areas and Mr Singh asked officials to look for alternative modern technology to complete projects on time. The top officials told the home minister that currently 90 per cent of Maoist activities were limited to 35 worst-hit districts, even though the Naxals have influence in areas spread over 68 districts in the country. Sources said the home ministry has called for better intelligence-sharing and coordination among the security forces in the Bastar region. The Chhattisgarh police has been asked to accompany the Central forces in Maoist areas. This is a necessity as the Central police personnel on duty in the Naxal-infested areas has virtually zero knowledge of the local terrain and intelligence. If they are accompnaied by local policemen, they would have better chances of taking on the Maoists, a source said. The CRPF has also been asked to resolve some inherent problems like weaponry, logistics and intelligence-gathering mechanism to ensure better results in anti-Naxal operations, sources said. The brazen ambush in Sukma, according to agency reports from Chhattisgarh, is suspected to have been planned by Situ, a wanted Naxalite commander, who was camping for the last few days in Tadmetla village, barely 7-8 km from the scene of the attack. It was in this village that 75 CRPF personnel and one policeman were massacred in April 2010. We suspect that the attack was planned by Situ and his group with the support of local lower-rung cadres and militia members, a source said. The first military battalion of Maoist rebels, likely to be involved in the carnage, is headed by Hidma. It has been active in the Bastar region, particularly Sukma, and launched several attacks on security forces. The battalion has two companies one headed by Situ and another by Nagesh. India and Russia share a special strategic partnership, which has stood the test of time, says Jaitley. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during a conversations on C Peter Mc Colough Series on International Economics at Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Union defence minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday the increasing use of cyberspace by terror elements has posed a major national security challenge for many countries. Speaking at the sixth conference on International Security in Moscow, Mr Jaitley said: Terrorism is being reinvented in newer and even more dangerous manifestations. The manipulation of young minds by fundamentalist groups using new technologies and social media has already caused long-term damage to our societies. One manifestation of this is the recent string of lone-wolf attacks in many countries, he said. The ministers statement came amid the disturbances in Kashmir, which the Indian authorities believe are fanned through social media. On Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered suspension of internet services in the valley for one month or till further orders. Without naming Pakistan, the defence minister said the opportunistic efforts by some nations to support terrorist proxies by training, funding or providing safe havens to such groups for their limited objectives should be strongly resisted. Speaking on the dangers posed by radical Islamist fighters coming back home from the conflict-torn West Asia, Mr Jaitley said: Even as we work to eliminate the breeding grounds of terrorism in West Asia, the dangers of such elements returning to their home countries have become a major challenge. We need to encourage closer information exchanges and intelligence cooperation to address this threat. On Indo-Russia ties, Mr Jaitley said: India and Russia share a special strategic partnership, which has stood the test of time. Our cooperation in defence and security has been robust. Russia is Indias foremost defence partner. On the changing global power equations, he said: The continued unpredictability in ties between major powers has brought new uncertainties to the fore. These reflect a wider diffusion of power in the international system, which by itself is a positive development. He added that Europe is witnessing a sharpening of divisions in the continent not seen since the Cold War. Making a very significant point, Jaitley said: Building on our strong ties with Russia, we also hope to steadily enhance our linkages with Central Asian countries. Later this year, Indian and Russian armed forces will hold the INDRA tri-services joint military exercises in Russia. This would be a historic occasion as it will be the first time that India and Russia are taking part in joint exercises in such a format with each other or with any other country. Earlier in the day, Indias defence minister also had held meetings with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu and the Brazilian Defence Minister Paul Belens Jungman Pinto on the sidelens of the security meet. Cypriot President Anastasiades will hold talks with PM Narendra Modi on Friday. A volunteer at Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi briefs Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades (centre) about the place on Thursday. Mr Anastasiades is on a five-day state visit to India. (Photo: AP) New Delhi: Just days ahead of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans visit to India, New Delhi has pledged continuing support to the unity and integrity of Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades is currently on a five-day visit to India. India also said it was aware of Turkeys close ties with Pakistan but said Indo-Turkish ties stand on their own strength. As reported recently by this newspaper, the timing of the visit of President Anastasiades has raised eyebrows, with Turkish President Erdogans visit set to begin from Sunday. Turkey is a close friend of Pakistan and has backed it on many occasions at international fora. On the other hand, India has steadfastly backed Cyprus, which has had a history of animosity with Turkey. The regime of the Turkish Cypriots, which controls one-third of the territory of Cyprus, is not recognised by almost all countries in the world, including India, but Turkey recognises Turkish Cyprus. The de-facto partition of Cyprus in the mid 1970s followed hostility between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. India has extended unwavering support to the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Cyprus, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said on Thursday. However, the MEA also said India and Turkey enjoy close, friendly and deep-rooted ties. Meanwhile, in the wake of a question on a purported remark of a Turkish official regarding the issue of any membership for India of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the MEA said the issue of membership of the OIC is in the realm of speculation, thereby indicating it was nothing but mere speculation. While Cypriot President Anastasiades will hold talks with PM Narendra Modi on Friday, Turkish President Erdogan will hold talks with PM Modi on Monday. New Delhi had also placed the 16th request for consular access to Jadhav with Islamabad which was promptly rejected. New Delhi: India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there on charges of espionage, the external affairs ministry said on Thursday. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) said that the well being and state of Mr Jadhavs health is a matter of great concern to India as Mr Jadhav has been in Pakistans custody for more than a year. The MEA also said it was awaiting a response from Pakistan on the visa application of Mr Jadhavs parents who want to travel to Pakistan to see their son. We havent seen, we havent met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistans custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Mr Jadhav is a matter of great concern. We have asked the Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our high commissioner made a request on providing a re-port on his medical condition. So we await Pakistans response, the MEA said. Indian high commissioner Gautam Bambawale had on Wednesday met Pakis-tan foreign secretary Teh-mina Janjua in Islamabad and had handed over a petition by Mr Jadhavs mother to the Pakistan government and an appeal for the court of appeal that will hear the case of Mr Jadhav. India had also requested Pakistan to facilitate visas for Mr Jadhavs parents who have filed their visa application with the Pakistan high commission and want to visit Pakistan to meet their son and file the petition and appeal in person. New Delhi had also placed the 16th request for consular access to Mr Jadhav with Islamabad which was promptly rejected. The Delhi police spotted Nitin and Salman when they were allegedly attempting a burglary in Prashant Vihar area of Rohini on Wednesday. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life but he eventually died. (Photo: File/Representational Image) New Delhi: A suspected burglar has died after the police shot at him, and then donated blood to save his life. The Delhi police spotted Nitin, alias Sonu (24), and Salman when they were allegedly attempting a burglary in the Prashant Vihar area of Rohini early on Wednesday. The police said Sonu opened fire at the police party and in retaliation, the police fired at him. Salman managed to flee, but Sonu fell when he was hit by five bullets. He had bullet injuries on his leg, lower back and arms. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life. But Sonu died on Wednesday night, DCP (Rohini) Rishi Pal said. Doctors at the hospital said that he required four units of blood, which were provided by the four policemen, including the SHO of Prashant Vihar SS Rathee and constable Ashok, who took part in the shootout. Pal said that the policemen told him that while firing at the suspect was a part of their duty, donating blood was a "humanitarian duty". Murders took place in Allahabad, a lawyer was killed in Pratapgarh but the media did not highlight these incidents, says Akhilesh. Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday mounted a scathing attack on chief minister Yogi Adityanath over law and order. Talking to reporters on the Saharanpur clashes that took place last week, Mr Yadav said that his government had been constantly blamed for jungle raj and the media also highlighted incidents by placing his photograph on TV channels. When the Badaun sisters were found dead, the matter went right up to United Nations. Do you now have the courage to show the chief ministers photograph when criminal incidents take place now? Murders took place in Allahabad, a lawyer was killed in Pratapgarh but the media did not highlight these incidents, he said. Referring to the Saharanpur communal clashes, Mr Yadav said that the BJP MP, MLAs and local leaders were solely responsible for what happened. Never before has any IPS officer been targeted in the manner in which SSP Saharanpur and his family was targeted by BJP leaders. Today, people are living in the shadow of fear, he said. Amit Shah also called on party activisits to work in unison to strengthen the partys organisation and grip on voters. Kolkata: Throwing a challenge to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on her home turf, BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday declared that the BJP will not rest till it conquers Bengal. He asserted the lotus would definitely bloom in the Trinamul Congress supremos Assembly constituency Bhowanipore too. Seventy per cent of the country is under the rule of the BJP. But I feel until it comes to power in Bengal, the mission of Ebar Bangla (Now Bengal) will not be accomplished. The lotus will bloom in Bhowanipore too, he said at a rally in Ms Banerjees Assembly constituency in the afternoon. Mr Shah also called on party activisits to work in unison to strengthen the partys organisation and grip on voters. Reiterating that the BJPs prospects in the state were bright for 2019, he noted Prime Minister Narendra Modis development chariot would continue to succeed further. At around 2 pm, the BJP president, accompanied by senior leaders Kailash Vijayvargiya, Babul Supriyo and Dilip Ghosh, visited the Chetla Lockgate area in Kolkata Municipal Corporations Ward 82 under tight security arrangements. He was welcomed with beating of drums and a shower of flower petals. Mr Shah held a meeting with party workers as part of its booth chalo drive and visited five families at their homes. He was greeted with an aarti and was offered sweets. In the morning, Mr Shah quipped the chief minister had started suffering from BJP phobia, and said while speaking at the Kolkata Press Club: Mamataji has developed BJP phobia. She now finds the BJP everywhere... She earlier used to criticise the CPI(M). Now she criticises the BJP. This is a sign that speaks a lot about our party. Brushing aside Trinamuls accusation that the BJP was behind a conspiracy to implicate its leaders in the Narada sting, Mr Shah claimed Ms Banerjees party had no answers refuting the allegations against them. Several Trinamul leaders were caught taking money on TV. This is not just an allegation. There is no conspiracy in it, he said. Mr Shah added: Now the case is under investigation by the CBI, which does not work under my orders, and I am no one to direct it. He rejected speculation that the Trinamul leaders accused in the Narada case had got in touch with the BJP to save themselves. He also attacked the Trinamul government over its politics of appeasement, and targeted the state government over the deterioration of law and order in the state. Mr Shah said the BJPs Ebar Bangla mission would bear fruit soon. Mr Shah claimed that the BJP had done nothing to divide people on the basis of their religious faith, and added: We never divide voters on the basis of who is in the minority or in the majority camp. We only focus on development. In a swipe at the Trinamul Congress, the BJP chief noted that no BJP leader had been booked in a case of corruption. He said: Our struggle is against Trinamul and the corruption perpetrated by it. We witness an unprecedented support for the BJP in Bengal. We want to bring back the lost glory of Bengal. AAP, Congress routed and Arvind Kejriwal team continues EVM tirade. Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Delhi BJP President, Manoj Tiwari and party's Delhi incharge Shyam Jaju during a press conferecne after the party's huge victory in the MCD elections, in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Riding the Modi wave, the Bharatiya Janata Party swept Delhis civic polls on Wednesday, bagging an unprecedented 181 of the 270 municipal wards. With AAP managing to win just 48 seats, and Congress trailing at the third position with 30 seats, the BJPs victory margin is the highest ever in Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls. Its a vote against negative politics, BJP chief Amit Shah said. A quixotic Arvind Kejriwal, unable to handle the electoral rout, continued to wage his battle against the windmills the EVM machines. As for the Congress, the worse perhaps is not yet over. After Congress finished a poor third, with its MCD berths dropping from 77 to a meagre 30 wards, the partys Delhi chief Ajay Maken, and AICC in-charge of Delhi, P.C. Chako, offered to step down, taking responsibility for the MCD debacle. Resignations also came from AAP leaders, with its Delhi unit convenor, Dilip Pandey, and party functionary, Alka Lamba offering to quit over the drubbing. Winning MCD polls was crucial for the BJP after its total rout in the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections. The victory is being viewed as the BJPs return to the national Capital. The results are a clear indication that the BJP managed to re-establish its connect (after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls) with Poorvanchalis, the middle class and a considerable section of voters in the jhuggi-jhopdi clusters. The victory not only reiterated Modi magic, but is a major boost for the party in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit was the only Opposition leader to admit on a television channel, Yes, there is a BJP wave. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, Grateful to the people of Delhi for the faith in BJP. I laud the hardwork of team @BJP4Delhi which made the resounding MCD win possible. As TV headlines screamed Modi demolishes Kejriwal, the AAP bandwagon continued to vent their wrath on the EVM machines. Delhis deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, ranted, EVM manipulation is the bitter truth behind the crushing blow to the AAP in the municipal polls. However, not everyone in the party fell for Mr Kejriwals crusade against the EVMs. As BJP marched towards a historic win in the MCD polls Wednesday morning, Bhagwant Mann, AAPs MP from Punjab, breaking his silence since Punjab election results were announced on March 11, said: AAP lost Punjab as the leadership committed grave blunders. Reports from Punjab stated that Mr Mann was looking at various options and would take a final call after his return from the United States. I am leaving for United States to meet my children. I will take a call on my future political move after returning in May-end, he told the local media. The defeat in the MCD polls, soon after it lost Punjab and Goa Assembly polls, has added to the AAPs kitty of woes. If AAP had won the MCD polls, the victory could have helped resurrect Mr Kejriwals ambition to play a key role in Opposition politics during the 2019 general elections. Early in the day, when AAP was heading for a major defeat, Mr Kejriwals mentor-turned-rival and anti-corruption crusader, Anna Hazare, told a news agency, Kathni aur karni mein antar pad gaya hai (There is a world of difference between what they preach and what they practise). For Congress too the cup of woe brimmeth over, as a senior functionary quipped. After the crushing defeat in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, and losing out to the BJP in Goa and Manipur, a beleaguered Congress had pinned its hopes on the MCD polls. But with the party sliding down from 74 wards to 30, it is going to be a Herculean task to match up to the BJP and Mr Modi in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Resentment continued to brew against party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who has repeatedly failed to deliver for his party. The Congress tried to cover its drubbing with the vote share argument, saying that it had remained intact. While the BJP led with a massive 36.08 per cent vote share, AAP was second with 26.23 per cent and Congress third with 21.09 per cent. Ms Dikshit also said on the TV channel, Its the peoples mandate, accept it gracefully. The chief minister had asked bureaucrats on March 20 to submit details of their assets on the prescribed format within 15 days. Lucknow: Despite strict instructions and reminders by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, some 150 IAS officers in the state have not submitted complete details of their moveable and immovable assets. The chief minister, according to sources, is keen to identify and segregate the black sheep in the cadre in order to refurbish the image of his government and prevent scams and scandals in the coming months. The chief minister had asked bureaucrats on March 20 to submit details of their assets on the prescribed format within 15 days. It is now over a month and 120 IAS officers have not given details of their movable assets while 30 have not disclosed their immovable assets. A large number of officers belonging to the Provincial Civil Services have also not furnished their property details. The chief secretary has summoned all departmental chiefs on May 3 to discuss the issue. Principal secretary of personnel and appointment Kamran Rizvi has also informed the bureaucrats that non-compliance of the chief ministers directives would lead to unhappy consequences. According to sources, most of the bureaucrats are shying away from furnishing their property details mainly because of the format they have been provided. A senior official said that the format offers no leeway for the officials since everyone is required to give details of the movable and immovable property of their immediate and extended families and also the income of these members of the family. This implies that property bought in the name of father-in-law and sister-in-law will be under the scanner, a retired IAS officer said. Kamat made his decision to quit all party posts public through a press release on Wednesday. Mumbai/New Delhi: On the day the party was routed in the Delhi civic polls, senior Congress leader and former minister Gurudas Kamat has, once again, turned in his resignation. The veteran leader had last attempted to resign from the party in February 2017, as he had objections over the working style of Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam. This time, however, its the party high commands decision to appoint former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and MP Rajiv Satav as members of a team that will take decisions in poll-bound Gujarat that seems to have sparked his latest resignation. Mr Kamat, who is in charge of Gujarat Congress, had been preparing the party for the elections there. Mr Kamat made his decision to quit all party posts public through a press release on Wednesday. It reads, I welcome the decision to give charge of Gujarat to Shri Ashok Gehlot and four other AICC general secretaries I had met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi last week on Wednesday and discussed that I should be relieved of all responsibilities. The Congress has not reacted to his resignation yet. On Wednesday, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi decided to hand over Gujarats affairs to the partys team that was responsible for its victory in the Punjab Assembly polls. Mr Gehlot was leading the AICC team along with Mr Satav, Meenakshi Natrajan and others. Sources in the party revealed that Mr Gehlot replaced Mr Kamat, as the party high command considered him a better strategist and an election manager. Some in the party also maintained that Mr Gehlot was closer to the Congress president than Mr Kamat. While Mr Kamat claimed on Wednesday that he repeatedly urged the party high command to be relieved of his responsibilities, only a week back he was in Ahmedabad preparing for the Assembly elections scheduled to be held at the end of the year. Mr Kamat is known to take such sudden steps. He had earlier refused to take the oath of office and returned to Mumbai over portfolio issues during the UPA 2 regime. However, Mr Kamats loyalty towards the Gandhi family has always worked in his favour and party never took any action against him. A senior leader from Congress said on the condition of anonymity, Mr Kamat should understand that Mr Gandhi is very serious about the Gujarat elections this time. Thats why he has appointed these people in Gujarat. For the sake of his political future, he should take this decision sportingly. A senior JD-U leader said Sonia Gandhi said the Congress was ready to take the lead in any such agitation. New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has taken a lead getting the opposition to field a common candidate for the coming presidential polls. She has also assured all opposition parties that her party would actively participate in mass agitations and protests to counter the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah juggernaut. This, said sources, would contribute to the much-needed alternative narrative, which needs to be built to oppose the BJP. She met JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI leader D. Raja and most recently, JD(U) Rajya Sabha member Sharad Yadav on Tuesday night. She also met Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday evening. Though talks with the Congress president focused on the need to field a common opposition presidential candidate, she also said there was a need to come together on mass movements, Mr Raja said. A senior JD-U leader said Ms Gandhi said the Congress was ready to take the lead in any such agitation. The last time all opposition parties came together was after demonetisation. The Congress with TMC, SP, BSP, Left and NCP had held three marches to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. It had also held seminars on the note ban. CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury has already said that instead of falling into the trap of the BJP-RSS narrative, the opposition needs to counter Mr Modi on an alternative narrative with mass agitations highlighting the failed economic policies and the state of agrarian distress in the country. After the BJPs impressive win in Assembly elections in the five states, especially the massive mandate it received in Uttar Pradesh, there are increased efforts among opposition parties to come together. Even BSP supremo Maywati has said she was ready to come on a common platform before the 2019 general elections. The presidential polls in July are seen to be the first such experiment of a united opposition. Sources, meanwhile, said that the Congress chief met or spoke with almost all senior leaders of major opposition and regional parties. Channels have also been opened with parties like the Biju Janata Dal and the Shiv Sena, who have been lately miffed with the rise of the BJP in their respective states of Odisha and Maharashtra. While leaders maintained that no names have been discussed as of now, the names of NCPs Sharad Pawar and JD-Us Sharad Yadav are doing the rounds as possible candidates for the presidential polls in July. However, the Left parties have maintained that they were interested in a nonpolitical candidate. Earlier they had also mooted that President Pranab Mukherjee should be fielded for a possible second term. One could see lush green fields, blue river, fishes jumping out of water albeit in gouaches on paper. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is real yet her smile, her face is abstract. Thats how veteran artist Ganesh Haloi explains abstractionism to me. You get attracted to it and similarly in our day-to-day lives, we use many things in abstract form. The very word abstract is controversial for Haloi. He gives me an example of an idiom often used by villagers Anand mein aanth tukde ho gaye. This idiom is also abstractionism at its best. We make our world beautiful with abstract. It is a kind of salvation from bonded thoughts which makes you delighted, says Haloi whose rare body of work is being shown at Documenta 14. There will be two sets of Halois works which will exhibited at Documenta 14 from April 8-July 16 in Athens, Greece and in Kassel, Germany from June 10 to September 17, 2017. Two bronze sculptures will also be showcased. While exhibiting and representing modern Indian art on one of the prestigious and famed art events is indeed an honour, Haloi remains calm and unaffected. Adam Szymczyk (artistic director of Documenta 14) came and saw my paintings and I was selected... It gave me a kind of joy, says Haloi very calmly. But talk about his childhood and the impact of nature on his works, one can gauge child-like enthusiasm in the voice of the octagenarian. Speaking of his childhood home at Jamalpur in Mymensinh, which is now in Bangladesh the surroundings and lush green fields had a great local impact on Haloi but when he grew up he thought of nature as a creative force. His paintings bear a clear stamp of nature in all its glory. One could see lush green fields, blue river, fishes jumping out of water albeit in gouaches on paper. River is never stagnant. Nature has this harmony inwhich you survive. Theres a reason for sound, music, rhythmic movements of nature so that you can feel and respond, explains Haloi. Abstractionism is going from formlessness to form. However, Haloi differs and volunteers to explain. We are preoccupied with various things in our life and we forget to notie the constant presence of the abstract. Tribal people bursting into a sudden dance is abstract, someone singing is also abstract... I dont think my paintings as abstract. It is a desire that exudes energy, power and takes shape. We often see things but dont register. Theres a whole new world between the known and the unknown, between what is present and what is absent. I dont paint a particular landscape. I make my own landscape, harmonises it and takes it beyond the known limit, explains Haloi. Halois latest works displayed in January by Akar Prakar were chosen for Documenta 14. His paintings emphasise a bond with nature. Once students asked a teacher how we could paint God because we have neveer seen of felt him. Teacher asked them to seek inspiration from the universe which has been so beautifully created by God himself. So it is only after studying nature that you realise that you too are a creator, elucidates Haloi slowly. The artworks on display use beige, green, blue and black and have a geometrical patterns to them. Circle, semi-circle, triangle, vertical, ragged lines are used deftly by Haloi to bring cohesiveness to his works. Dots, dashes etc become cryptic signs for trees, water and green fields. Isnt geometry in our life? asks Haloi. Geometry provides stability... Without it theres nothing. True, the earth we live in is round, it rotates on its axis, revolves in circles around sun, we live in square and reactangular houses and so geometry being a crucial aspect of our living is what Haloi wants us to understand. His paintings are also inspired by his stint to make copies of the Ajanta murals for the Archaeological Survey of India. Haloi insists that paintings and sculptures belong to the world of silence; they wont scream and shout for your attention. And this is the most powerful medium. His paintings have a lyrical poetic quality about them similar to the poems of William Wordsworth to whom nature appears as a formative influence superior to any other. Lush green rice fields, flowing gentle river, fishes darting out of water lead to a symphony of emotions. When I listen to music, I do not hear its lyrics... I never follow the words but sounds. It moves me, says Haloi. Listening more of Western classical music, Haloi also likes Rabindra sangeet. The artworks are like a distant music coming from shudoor (afar). You need to pay attention and focus on the rhythm and sound to understand it. One can feel a pull best described by Radha when she hears Krishna playing flute. Halois paitings represent a harmony between man and nature. Reena Lath, director, Akar Prakar is all praises for Haloi. Over the years our relationship with Ganesh Haloi has only strengthened and grown. When we had met him first in 2004, as young gallerists, we were a new entrant in the art world, but he embraced us as a magnanimous Guru does young naive learners. As our interactions with him became frequent, our understanding on art also grew with it. In his gentle and soft spoken manner he convinced us to visit Benaras and Ajanta, the two places in India which according to him has inspired the best of Indian artists and art. This for us was a turning point in the way we not only viewed Indian art but specifically Ganesh Halois abstractions, says Lath. A peek into Halois diary where he identifies each colour with his own life experience is a symbolic representation of his practice. Black is my faith, Blue is the wideness, Green is the field, Red is my seed, White is the wildness, Yellow is the sunshine, I am composite of these colours, Which ultimately leads me to an unknown destiny. The NGT had banned 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi-NCR saying "they are the prime source of air pollution in Delhi". New Delhi/Jammu: The Centre on Thursday urged the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that ban on diesel vehicles should be based on their emissions and not age. The NGT reserved its order on banning 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi-National Capital Territory Region (NCR). Appearing for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar that diesel technology had considerably improved and any restriction should be on basis of emission of the vehicle and not the age. She told the bench that the government is doing its best to tackle the pollution. The green tribunal had on November 26, 2016 banned 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi-NCR saying "they are the prime source of air pollution in Delhi". The BJP retained its turf with an impressive 181 wards, while AAP and Congress had to content with 48 and 30 wards. Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu greets Delhi BJP President, Manoj Tiwari as party's Delhi incharge Shyam Jaju (R) looks on during a press conferecne after the party's huge victory in the MCD elections, in New Delhi. (Photo: AP) New Delhi: The Delhi State Election Commission on Wednesday asserted that the civic polls were held in a "transparent and impartial manner", even as a bruised AAP raised the spectre of an "EVM wave" across the national capital. "The elections and the counting have passed off peacefully. And it proves that we carried out the exercise in a transparent and impartial manner. And, no one can doubt it," Delhi State Election Commissioner SK Srivastava told reporters. He was responding to a question over AAP leader Manish Sisodia's "EVM wave" remark earlier in the day, after the poll verdict, which reduced AAP to a distant second. "EVM tampering is the bitter truth of the country's democracy. One can crack jokes on us initially, but fearing being made fun of, we cannot refrain from speaking the truth," Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, told reporters. Senior minister in the Delhi government Gopal Rai said an "EVM wave" is sweeping across the city. By 11 am, only one AAP candidate, Ashok Kumar, had registered a win. He won east Delhi's Shakurpur ward. The AAP, led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, had been raising the issue of alleged tampering of EVMs. The Commission, however, remained steadfast on its stand. On the day of the polling, Srivastava had said, "Out of 13,000 polling stations, EVMs were changed in only 18 cases. It shows our EVMs are unhackable, robust and no wrong can be done. It (the number) speaks for itself," Srivastava said, adding that the machines have done well. Today, he reiterated, his stand that the Generation-1 EVMs, used in the polls, were "foolproof". The BJP retained its turf with an impressive 181 wards, while AAP and Congress had to content with 48 and 30 wards. Activist Manoj Misra's plea sought action against Ravi Shankar and said his remarks interfered with free and fair dispensation of justice. The National Green Tribunal on Thursday issued contempt notice to the Art of Living foundation's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on a plea against him for blaming the Centre and the panel for damaging Yamuna floodplains. (Photo: File) New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal on Thursday issued contempt notice to the Art of Living foundation's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on a plea against him for blaming the Centre and the panel for damaging Yamuna floodplains by allowing his NGO to hold a cultural extravaganza. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar issued notice to Ravi Shankar while seeking his reply before May 9, the next date of hearing. The plea filed by activist Manoj Misra has sought action against Ravi Shankar and said his remarks interfered with free and fair dispensation of justice. In a statement published on the AOL's website, Ravi Shankar had blamed the government and the NGT for permitting AOL to hold the function and said his foundation had obtained all necessary permissions, including from the green panel, and the event could have been stopped in the beginning itself if the river was so "fragile and pure". In the plea filed through advocates Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, Misra said the AOL head was "in the habit" of making statements to "denigrate the dignity and status of this tribunal, which was an interference in the fair dispensation of justice", that is the bedrock of the rule of law. The cops are waiting for the findings of the autopsy reports of the bodies. Forensic department personnel arrive at residence of the deceased in the transit camp at Indira Nagar in Andheri on Wednesday. (Photo:Mrugesh Bandiwadekar) Mumbai: The D.N Nagar police team found the bodies of three occupants of a transit camp residence in Andheri west on Wednesday morning. While a 33-year-old male, Sameer Khan who ran a local vada pav-cum-tea stall was found hanging from a ceiling fan inside his residence, room number 35, his stepmother and grandmother were found dead on a bed. The police is waiting for findings of the autopsy report of the three bodies to determine the exact cause of the deaths. The police, though, suspects that Khan killed his stepmother Minatai Khan (55) and grandmother Fatima Shaikh (85) and then hanged himself with a nylon string. Khan, who owned a roadside teashop in the area, had moved to the transit camp at Indira Nagar three months ago. The police source added that prima facie it looks like murder, because the dead bodies of the women bore no injury marks, but there was blood oozing out of the grandmothers mouth. Speaking to The Asian Age, Arun Chavan, assistant commissioner of police attached to D.N. Nagar division said, The three bodies were found from Room number 35 of the transit camp in Andheri west. Two relatives of Sameer Khan had arrived at the spot, and we will question them to get to the root of the problem, which triggered Sameer to take such a drastic step of hanging himself instead of approaching for help. According to the police sources attached to D.N. Nagar police station, the incident took place at 9.30 am on Wednesday morning. A three-year-old neighbour opened the door of Sameers house to give tobacco to his grandmother Fatima. When she opened the door, the minor saw Sameer hanging from a ceiling fan, and the bodies of his stepmother and grandmother were lying on opposite beds, and their faces were covered with a bed sheet. The girl then went crying to her parents, who immediately alerted the police officials. Sameer, who used to work with his stepmother Minatai, at a teashop, selling tea and vada pav at the roads corner, did not interact much with the people in the society. Few people knew his grandmother, Fatima, since she used to stay alone at home the whole day. The police is probing the case from various angles to ascertain whether it was a murder or suicide. Instructor and trainee killed as aircraft crashes into Wainganga river. Mumbai: Two pilots, including a woman trainee, were killed when a training aircraft of the National Flying Training Institute crash-landed in Wainganga river in Gondia district of Vidarbha region on Wednesday. Both the pilots, trainer Ranjan Gupta (35) and the trainee Himani Kalyani (24), are believed to have died on the spot. While the reason behind the crash is not yet known, sources claimed that the plane crashed allegedly after hitting a ropeway wire over Wainganga river. Both the instructor as well as the trainee are believed to have hailed from Delhi. Himani was undergoing an 18-month training at NFTI and Wednesdays sortie was her final check flight session of her training. The bodies of trainer Ranjan Gupta and trainee Himani Kalyani The instructor and the trainee pilot in the aircraft, NFTI aircraft no. DA 42 Nike, were both found dead on the stop. The aircraft had taken off at around 9.25 am and was on its regular training sortie for NFTI, which is situated in the central city of Gondia. According to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) of Mumbai, the plane lost contact with them at around 9.35 am. The plane crashed within 20 minutes of its take off. Sources said that though the actual reason behind the crash is yet to be established, the plane had come very low than its usual path. After it tried to raise its height and fly higher it got in contact with a ropeway located between Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, which resulted in the crash, said a source. While a team of Airports Authority of India (AAI) inspected the spot on Wednesday, a team from the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) too reached Gondia on Wednesday. The DGCA team will commence its inspection from Thursday. The recipients of the 2017 awards will be invited to a special reception at Buckingham Palace later this year. London: A prominent Indian businessmans food processing plant in Britain has won the prestigious Queens Enterprise Award 2017 for its exceptional contribution to the UKs trade, industry and economy. Yusaffali MA, 61, said the recognition for his Birmingham-based Y International (UK) Ltd will spur his Abu Dhabi headquartered Lulu Group International to further expand business interests in the UK. I am extremely honoured and proud to hear the news about Y International UK Ltd being selected for the prestigious Queens Award this year. This great recognition will surely help us further strengthen our plans to expand business interests in UK and continue with our innovations and contributions to the dynamic economy of UK, the Kerala-born, UAE-based entrepreneur said in a statement. Y International UK Ltds food processing plant, which employs 300 local staff, was established in Birmingham in 2013 to source and process food products from UK to support the demand for high-quality British products for sale in Lulu Groups hypermarkets across the Middle East, India and Far East. We are in the process of setting up another world-class food processing plant in the 12.5 acres of land allotted by Birmingham City Council, to further boost our exports and cover bigger variety of products. The planned investment would be to the tune of 36 million (`300 crores), Yusuffali said. The Queens Award for Enterprise is conferred annually by Queen Elizabeth II on her birthday, April 21, upon businesses that display great enterprise across the fields of innovation, international trade, promoting opportunity through social mobility and sustainable development. The awards are open to nominations and selected based on the recommendation of Downing Street and published in the official London Gazette. All entries are subject to auditing and scrutiny by over 30 UK government agencies before being included in the roll of honour. Y International (UK) Limited, Birmingham, listed in the Gazette as an international distributor of grocery products, perishables products and non-foods products, was chosen in the international trade category. The recipients of the 2017 awards will be invited to a special reception at Buckingham Palace later this year. The 6.9-billion-dollar Lulu Group, ranked as a top retailer in the MENA region and listed among the top 50 fastest growing retailers in the world by Deloitte, has made UK headlines in recent years for acquiring the iconic Scotland Yard building in London and for its investment in luxury retail brand East India Company. The company boosted its market up to 18 per cent, after growing 25 per cent year-on-year, according to Canalys. The research reveals that Huawei shipped nearly 21 million units this quarter, after being second to Oppo for the last two quarters. Despite boosting its market up to 55 per cent year-on-year, Oppo slipped to the second spot with just under 20 million units shipped. Chinese smartphone maker, Huawei has regained the lead in Chinas smartphone market in the first quarter of 2017. The company boosted its market up to 18 per cent, after growing 25 per cent year-on-year, according to Canalys. The research reveals that Huawei shipped nearly 21 million units this quarter, after being second to Oppo for the last two quarters. Despite boosting its market up to 55 per cent year-on-year, Oppo slipped to the second spot with just under 20 million units shipped. Chinas smartphone market continued to expand in the first quarter this year. Canalys estimates 114 million smartphones shipped in China during the period, an increase of 9 per cent year-on-year. According to Canalys research analyst Lucio Chen The top three vendors are pulling away at the head of the market, accounting for more than 50 per cent of shipments for the first time this quarter. In the first quarter of 2016, Huawei was leading the market, with Vivo in the second place Oppo gaining the fourth position, accounting for 43 per cent of the market. At the time Xiaomi occupied third place, but by the recent quarter had fallen to fifth behind Apple on shipments of just over 9 million units. Xiaomi continues to face pressure from Huaweis online smartphone Honor line, as well as Oppo and Vivo, since their marketing strategies are taking attention away from Xiaomi. Canalys research analyst Mo Jia said,To grow Xiaomi will need to quickly switch from being a value-for-money vendor to become an aspirational brand. Akbaruddin said that 'we shared perspectives on how to work together at UN in line with growing India-US ties.' Nikki Haley met Akbaruddin at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN here on Wednesday. (Photo: Twitter) New York: The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley discussed with her Indian counterpart Syed Akbaruddin the economic and anti-corruption reforms undertaken by India to spur growth and measures to strengthen Indo-US partnership at the world body. Haley met Akbaruddin at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN here on Wednesday. "They discussed peacekeeping reform and India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth,according to a statement issued by the US Mission to the UN. The two ambassadors also discussed the "close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the United Nations. Akbaruddin said that "we shared perspectives on how to work together at UN in line with growing India-US ties." Indian-American Haley, who was the Governor of South Carolina before being appointed by President Donald Trump as Washingtons envoy to the UN, has quickly garnered a reputation at the world body for being tough-talking and blunt. Earlier this month, Haley had said that the US would try and "find its place" in efforts to de-escalate Indo-Pak tensions and that Trump could play a role in such endeavours. India had swiftly rejected any US role in resolving Indo-Pak issues, saying the overnment's position for "bilateral redressal of all India-Pakistan issues in an environment free of terror and violence hasn't changed". People dont realise that Canada has been very rough on the United States, says Donald Trump. Washington: Trade tensions spiked between Washington and Ottawa as President Donald Trump accused Canada of being very rough on its southern neighbor and threatened to retaliate against new restrictions on US dairy products. Mr Trump also touted his administrations surprise decision late on Monday to rekindle an old trade conflict with Americas second-largest trading partner by slapping new tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. People dont realize, Canada has been very rough on the United States. Everyone thinks of Canada of being nice but theyve outsmarted our politicians for many years, Mr Trump told a group of farmers at the White House. He said Canada was hurting American dairy farmers near the border, from Wisconsin to New York, by blocking dairy exports and were not going to put up with it. Mr Trumps aggressive comments echoed a tweet he sent earlier in the day, just hours after the Commerce Department announced it was imposing tariffs of up to 24 percent on Canadian softwood lumber, which it says is improperly subsidized. Addressing reporters at the White House on Tuesday, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said the twin disputes underline the problems with the North American Free Trade Agreement linking the United States with Canada and Mexico, which Mr Trump has vowed to renegotiate. If NAFTA were functioning properly, you wouldnt be having these kinds of very prickly and unfortunate events back to back, Ross said. They are generally a good neighbor. That doesnt mean they dont have to play by the rules. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the unexpected burst of tough rhetoric by vowing his government would be very firm in defending Canadas interests. But Mr Trudeau also said his officials will work constructively together with the United States. Minister in Indias Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad called it a bilateral issue, not meant for the forum. United Nations: India has strongly objected to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a UN General Assembly session here, asserting that it is a bilateral matter which should not be brought up in the UN forum. Minister in Pakistan's Permanent Mission to the UN Masood Anwar raised the Kashmir issue in his statement to the UN General Assembly session of the Committee on Information on April 25. He said Pakistan appreciates the efforts by the UNs Department of Public Information in arranging coverage of events related to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. "We would urge you to do the same for the people of Kashmir who continue to suffer under foreign occupation, Anwar said. As soon as these remarks were made, Minister in Indias Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad interrupted Anwars speech and strongly raised objections to the mention of Kashmir by the Pakistani delegate. "It is a bilateral issue which should not be brought here, Prasad told the Chair of the session. Pakistans Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, also present during the session, was heard prodding Anwar to "carry on" speaking even as Prasad raised his objections with the session's Chair. Later, before delivering India's statement at the session, Prasad said the Kashmir issue was totally unrelated to the forum. "Before I begin my statement, I would like to thank the Chair for its deft handling and not allowing the elaboration of a subject which is totally unrelated to this forum as was tried by a member state," Prasad said. The Committee on Information is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly established to deal with questions relating to public information. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the Department of Public Information and for providing it with guidance on policies, programmes and activities of the Department. Catalina Devandas-Aguilar is scheduled to arrive in the isolated nation on Wednesday. Geneva: North Korea has agreed to host a UN rights expert for the first time, granting access next week to the special rapporteur on disabled people's rights, the world body said Thursday. Catalina Devandas-Aguilar is scheduled to arrive in the isolated nation on Wednesday following an invitation from Pyongyang, the UN rights office said in a statement. Her visit "will be the first ever to the country by an independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council," the statement said. The rights council has accused North Korea of committing crimes against humanity and detaining up to 120,000 people in brutal prison camps. The North Korean regime last month boycotted a rights council session scrutinising its record, branding the body's work a "mere political attack". Devandas-Aguilar said the upcoming visit marked a important chance to study the situation in the country, with a particular focus on children living with disabilities. "My upcoming visit to DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) represents a key opportunity to learn firsthand about national realities, laws, policies and programmes concerning people with disabilities," she said in the statement. Pyongyang last December ratified an international convention on the rights of disabled people. Devandas-Aguilar said she would explore the challenges and opportunities the government faced in implementing that pact. During her six-day mission, the expert will visit Pyongyang and the South Hwanghae Province, followed by a press conference in the capital on the final day, the UN said. This was convey by Polish PM to Hamid Ansari when the two leaders met here to discuss issues of bilateral and mutual interests. Warsaw: Poland on Thursday assured India of its support to New Delhi's bid for membership in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. This was conveyed by Polish Prime Minister Beata Syzdlo to Vice President Hamid Ansari when the two leaders met here to discuss issues of bilateral and mutual interests. The two countries signed an agreement in the agriculture sector and agreed that there was much scope to increase cooperation in railway and defence sectors as well as in areas like food processing, solar energy, clean coal, treatment of solid waste. The agreement was signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh and Polish Agriculture Minister Krzystof Jurgiel in presence of Ansari and Syzdlo. Ansari thanked Polish leadership for its support to India's bid for NSG membership, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) issue and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. "We are happy to have Poland's support for India's claim for permanent membership of an expanded UN security council," Ansari said as he appreciated the support extended by Poland to India's membership of the MTCR. Poland is a member of the 48-nation NSG, a group of nuclear supplier countries that seek to prevent proliferation by controlling the export of materials, equipment and technology that can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. "For past few decades, India and Poland relations are growing with a good pace. Today my talks with the prime minister of Poland was very productive and we discussed entire gamuts of our relationships," said Ansari. Ansari said there was much scope to increase the bilateral cooperation especially in areas like mining, agriculture, civil aviation, food processing, solar energy, clean coal and other field. The two sides can also cooperate in railway and defence sectors, he added. "As vibrant democracies, we also share views on the need to adopt a comprehensive and principled stance against the scourge of terrorism. We agree on the need for the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN," the vice president said. Ansari said that Indian cultural festivals would be organised in various cities of Poland. Polish Prime Minister Sysdlo appreciated India's growing influence and the progress made by it. "We can expand our trade relation in various sector. We hope to export apples to India and increase our cooperation in agriculture field," she said. India has close economic ties with Poland. Indian investments in Poland amount to around USD 3 billion and Polish investments in India are of about 600 million USD. "Our cooperation will be mutually beneficial. We hope to expand our cooperation in mining sector. We have rich experience in mining sector in cutting edge technology," the Polish prime minister said. "We also hope to cooperate in civil aviation and defence sector," she said. by Paul Wang Those arrested are all members of groups struggling for democracy. Attempt to frighten" public opinion. China excludes political reforms within the next 10 years. The EU: universal suffrage would give more solidity to the territory government. Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - This morning, a group of nine activists - who had participated in the demonstrations of Occupy Central, demanding democracy in the territory - were arrested. They are being charged with having participated at an unauthorized protest last November against Beijing's influence on the constitution of the Territory (Basic Law). The Standing Committee of the National Assembly of the Chinese People has determined that every Hong Kong parliamentarian should swear allegiance to China, excluding any claims for independence. The statement has in fact led to the disqualification of two deputies, the young Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching, for taking an improper oath. The group of arrestees had expressed their opposition. Yesterday the two parliamentarians were arrested; Today Derek Lam Shun-hin and Ivan Lam Long-yin of the Demosisto Group were arrested; Avery Ng Man-yuen, Dickson Chau Ka-faat and Chan Man-wai of the League of Social Democrats; Tak-cheung and Sammy Ip Chi-hin of the group Students struggling for democracy; Devon Cheng Pui-lun former president of the student union of Lingnan University. Many of the activists had already been arrested this year and then released on bail. Apparently their arrest today is due to their refusal to pay a new bail. Leung Kwok-hung (nicknamed "long hair), a parliamentary member of the League of Social Democrats, said the arrest was a "preventive political persecution" to prepare the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Motherland, next July. For the occasion, Chinese President Xi Jinping will be present in Hong Kong. Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Leung said, " The purpose is to make those who want to come out and express their views on July 1 feel frightened. Its an obvious abuse of prosecution powers to achieve a political objective." The return of Hong Kong to the motherland occurred in 1997 under the slogan "One nation, Two systems", allowing the territory to maintain the liberal style of society. But Beijing's influence over Hong Kong is strong from an economic, and above all political point of view. China has excluded universal suffrage for the Legco (the Hong Kong Parliament), as well as the direct election of the head of the executive. Precisely because of this, in September 2014 there was a great sit-in in the central areas of the island, called Occupy Central, involving at least 800,000 people who demanded the governor's direct election. Although the Basic Law (the Hong Kong Constitution) states that political and democratic reforms may be considered after 2006, China has always excluded this possibility. On 22 April, Wang Zhenmin of the Office of China-Hong Kong Relations ruled out political reforms within the next 10 years. Right now, the European Union, in a report on Hong Kong, is urging authorities to start the process of electoral reform, which would give much more solidity to the government of the city. "The EU - the report says - encourages the Hong Kong SAR and Chinas central government to resume electoral reform in line with the Basic Law and to reach agreement on an election system that is democratic, fair, open and transparent.." It adds that universal suffrage would give the government greater support and legitimacy from the population, pursuing economic development and addressing social challenges such as socio-economic and generational divisions. 26 October will be a national holiday. The five-day funeral ritual will start on 25 October followed by King Maha Vajiralongkorns coronation. A huge cremation complex is going up outside Bangkoks Grand Palace. Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies) Thailands military junta announced yesterday that the cremation of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej will take place on 26 October 2017, just over a year after his death. Government spokesman Lieutenant General Sansern Kaewkumnerd said that five days of funerary rites would begin on 25 October with the cremation on the second evening, which will be declared a public holiday. King Bhumibol, 88, was the longest reigning monarch in the world. Although ill for years, his passing still left many Thais bereft. Since his death on 13 October 2016, the country has been in deep mourning with mass public display of sorrow. Many Thai have taken to wearing monochrome black or white clothing for the duration of mourning period. Very popular with ordinary Thais, he was the symbol of national unity and a protector of all religions. A huge cremation complex is being constructed on a parade ground specially reserved for royal funerals outside the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The complex will include towering pavilions and hundreds of statues of gods and mythical beasts, representing Mount Meru the allegorical centre of the universe in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain cosmology and where Thais believe Bhumibols spirit will return. Bhumibols successor, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, is expected to hold his own coronation soon after the cremation. On 6 April, the new monarch signed the new Thai constitution. With the new charter, which favours the military junta, King Maha Vajiralongkorn reformed the royal institution and consolidated its constitutional prerogatives. Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon said that the Islamic State group apologised for firing on an Israeli military unit. The reference is bout an incident last November in the Golan Heights. Officially Israel is neutral in the Syrian conflict, but it has helped anti-Assad and anti-Iran groups, including Jihadis. Jerusalem (AsiaNews/Agencies) For years, media have reported extensively on contacts between Israel and the Islamic State (IS) group opposed to Syrias Assad regime and Iran. However, for the first time, a former Israeli minister has confirmed the claims. Speaking at a recent public event in the northern city of Afula, former Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon said that IS apologised for attacking an Israeli unit in the Syrian Golan Heights. Contacted by various media, the office of the former minister and his aides refused to or clarify comment the statement but the latter gave credence to allegations that Israel and IS have been in contact. What is certain are Yaalons words. There was one case recently where Daesh opened fire and apologized, he said, using ISs Arabic acronym. This was an apparent reference to a clash that took place near the Syrian border last November, in which IDF troops exchanged fire with members of an IS affiliate. After a brief gun battle, the Israeli military attacked the terrorist group with airstrikes and tank fire. Yaalon was interviewed on stage a Channel 10 news journalist. His comment about the Islamic States apology was made as part of a broader point about Israels policy for Syria. The latter is largely non-interventionist, but Israel has attacked Syrian ground-to-air missile systems in the past. And this morning, a missile strike hit a site near Damascus airport, ostensibly by Israel. Officially, Israel and much of the Western world consider the IS affiliate in the Syrian Golan Heights, known as the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army, to be a terrorist group. Communication with them is technically illegal under Israeli law, constituting contact with an enemy agent. Nevertheless, the IS affiliate is an important player in the fight against the Assad regime and its main backer, Iran, Israel's historic enemy. Yaalon himself acknowledged that Israel has carried out strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assads forces in retaliation when spillover fire allegedly hits the Israeli Golan Heights. This has led Syrian media to accuse Israel of directly aiding the Islamic State and other rebel groups. And such cooperation goes beyond just rescuing wounded IS fighters to include intelligence sharing, air monitoring, and direct shelling and air strikes. Israels actions are motivated by fear that an opposition force might hold the area near the Golan Highland some 1,200 square kilometres Israel occupied in 1967 in the Six-Day War as Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon during the years of Israeli occupation. This nightmare lasted for years, eventually forcing Israel for the first time to retreat from southern Lebanon without a peace deal in return for its evacuation. Now the nightmare of southern Lebanon appears to be haunting Israel in the Golan. by Uri Avnery The great Israeli statist presents the Palestinian leader. In prison for 15 years, the latter is behind the hunger strike undertaken by inmates against prison conditions. His charisma can overcome Palestinian divisions between Fatah and Hamas. Perhaps this is why Israel will not release him. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) I have a confession to make: I like Marwan Barghouti. I have visited him at his modest Ramallah home several times. During our conversations, we discussed Israeli-Palestinian peace. Our ideas were the same: to create the State of Palestine next to the State of Israel, and to establish peace between the two states, based on the 1967 lines (with minor adjustments), with open borders and cooperation. This was not a secret agreement: Barghouti has repeated this proposal many times, both in prison and outside. I also like his wife, Fadwa, who was educated as a lawyer but devotes her time to fight for the release of her husband. At the crowded funeral of Yasser Arafat, I happened to stand next to her and saw her tear-streaked face. This week, Barghouti, together with about a thousand other Palestinian prisoners in Israel, started an unlimited hunger strike. I have just signed a petition for his release. Marwan Barghouti is a born leader. In spite of his small physical stature, he stands out in any gathering. Within the Fatah movement he became the leader of the youth division. (The word "Fatah" is the initials of "Palestinian Liberation Movement, in reverse), The Barghoutis are a widespread clan, dominating several villages near Ramallah. Marwan himself was born in 1959 in Kobar village. An ancestor, Abd-al-Jabir al-Barghouti, led an Arab revolt in 1834. I have met Mustafa Barghouti, an activist for democracy, in many demonstrations and shared the tear gas with him. Omar Barghouti is a leader of the international anti-Israel boycott movement. Perhaps my sympathy for Marwan is influenced by some similarities in our youth. He joined the Palestinian resistance movement at the age of 15, the same age as I was when I joined the Hebrew underground some 35 years earlier. My friends and I considered ourselves freedom fighters, but were branded by the British authorities as "terrorists". The same has now happened to Marwan a freedom fighter in his own eyes and in the eyes of the vast majority of the Palestinian people, a "terrorist" in the eyes of the Israeli authorities. When he was put on trial in the Tel Aviv District Court, my friends and I, members of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), tried to demonstrate our solidarity with him in the courtroom. We were expelled by armed guards. One of my friends lost a toenail in this glorious fight. Years ago I called Barghouti the "Palestinian Mandela". Despite their difference in height and skin color, there was a basic similarity between the two: both were men of peace, but justified the use of violence against their oppressors. However, while the Apartheid regime was satisfied with one life term, Barghouti was sentenced to a ridiculous five life terms and another 40 years for acts of violence executed by his Tanzim organization. (Gush Shalom published a statement this week suggesting that by the same logic, Menachem Begin should have been sentenced by the British to 91 life terms for the bombing of the King David hotel, in which 91 people many of them Jews lost their lives.) There is another similarity between Mandela and Barghouti: when the apartheid regime was destroyed by a combination of "terrorism", violent strikes and a world-wide boycott, Mandela emerged as the natural leader of the new South Africa. Many people expect that when a Palestinian state is set up, Barghouti will become its president, after Mahmoud Abbas. There is something in his personality that inspires confidence, turning him into the natural arbiter of internal conflicts. Hamas people, who are the opponents of Fatah, are inclined to listen to Marwan. He is the ideal conciliator between the two movements. Some years ago, under the leadership of Marwan, a large number of prisoners belonging to the two organizations signed a joint appeal for national unity, setting out concrete terms. Nothing came of this. That, by the way, may be an additional reason for the Israeli governments rejection of any suggestion of freeing Barghouti, even when a prisoner exchange provided a convenient opportunity. A free Barghouti could become a powerful agent for Palestinian unity, the last thing the Israeli overlords want. Divide et impera "divide and rule" since Roman times this has been a guiding principle of every regime that suppresses another people. In this the Israeli authorities have been incredibly successful. Political geography provided an ideal setting: The West Bank (of the Jordan river) is cut off from the Gaza Strip by some 50 km of Israeli territory. Hamas got hold of the Gaza Strip by elections and violence, and refuses to accept the leadership of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), a union of the more secular organizations which rules the West Bank. This is not an unusual situation in national liberation organizations. They often split into more and less extreme wings, to the great delight of the oppressor. The last thing the Israeli authorities are willing to do is release Barghouti and allow him to restore Palestinian national unity. God forbid. The hunger strikers do not demand their own release, but demand better prison conditions. They demand, inter alia, more frequent and longer visits by wives and family, an end to torture, decent food, and such. They also remind us that under international law an "occupying power" is forbidden to move prisoners from an occupied territory to the home country of the occupier. Exactly this happens to almost all Palestinian "security prisoners". Last week Barghouti set out these demands in an op-ed article published by the New York Times, an act that shows the newspaper's better side. The editorial note described the author as a Palestinian politician and Member of Parliament. It was a courageous act by the paper (which somewhat restored its standing in my eyes after it condemned Bashar al-Assad for using poison gas, without a sliver of evidence.) But courage has its limits. The very next day the NYT published an editor's note stating that Barghouti was convicted for murder. It was an abject surrender to Zionist pressure. The man who claimed this victory was an individual I find particularly obnoxious. He calls himself Michael Oren and is now a deputy minister in Israel, but he was born in the USA and belongs to the subgroup of American Jews who are super-super-patriots of Israel. He adopted Israeli citizenship and an Israeli name in order to serve as Israel's ambassador to the USA. In this capacity he attracted attention by using particularly virulent anti-Arab rhetoric, so extreme as to make even Binyamin Netanyahu look moderate. I doubt that this person has ever sacrificed anything for his patriotism, indeed, he has made quite a career of it. Yet he speaks with contempt about Barghouti, who has spent much of his life in prison and exile. He describes Barghoutis article in the New York Times as a "journalistic terror act". Look who's talking. A hunger strike is a very courageous act. It is the last weapon of the least protected people on earth the prisoners. The abominable Margaret Thatcher let the Irish hunger strikers starve to death. The Israeli authorities wanted to force-feed Palestinian hunger strikers. The Israeli Physicians Association, much to its credit, refused to cooperate, since such acts have led in the past to the deaths of the victims. That put an end to this kind of torture. Barghouti demands that Palestinian political prisoners be treated as prisoners-of-war. No chance of that. However, one should demand that prisoners of any kind be treated humanely. This means that deprivation of liberty is the only punishment imposed, and that within the prisons the maximum of decent conditions should be accorded. In some Israeli prisons, a kind of modus vivendi between the prison authorities and the Palestinian prisoners seems to have been established. Not so in others. One gets the impression that the prison service is the enemy of the prisoners, making their life as miserable as possible. This has worsened now, in response to the strike. This policy is cruel, illegal and counter-productive. There is no way to win against a hunger-strike. The prisoners are bound to win, especially when decent people all over the world are watching. Perhaps even the NYT. I am waiting for the day when I can visit Marwan again as a free man in his home in Ramallah. Even more so if Ramallah is, by that time, a town in the free State of Palestine. (from Gush Shalom) Acting together, the Religious Affairs Bureau, Public Security and the United Front carried out the operation. Seized before Easter, the bishop of Wenzhou is back home. Bishop Guo Xijin of Mindong is still in police custody. The confrontation with the Vatican increases. Beijing (AsiaNews/UCAN) Heilongjiangs Communist authorities congratulated themselves for "blocking illegal religious activities". When police raided a small community hall during Mass, they ransacked the place and tried to arrest the parish priest and the communitys lay leader. The action was taped and the video was briefly posted on-line (pictured). In it, several police agents can be seen discussing animatedly with worshippers and trying to remove Fr Shen Yanjun, an underground priest who took up his post in the church in Qinshan (Wudalianchi) seven months ago. In a statement, local authorities said they "successfully stopped an underground Catholic priest from holding an illegal religious activity." The police raid was a joint operation between the Religious Affairs Bureau, Public Security and the United Front. Since they are opposed to a dialogue between the Chinese government and the Holy See, the Religious Affairs Ministry and the United Front (which includes the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) continue to clash with the Church and the Vatican. Before Easter they seized two underground bishops Mgr Vincent Guo Xijin of Mindong and Mgr Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou to prevent them from celebrating Easter services in their respective diocese. Both are recognised by the Holy See but not by the government. Sources told AsiaNews that Mgr Shao is now back home whilst Mgr Guos whereabouts remain unknown. by Pierre Balanian Hassan Abu Hamza wanted to be called Paul, in memory of the saint who, like him, is of Syrian origin. He intends to retrace his footsteps of tolerance after being a fierce persecutor. Online there are those who accuse him of having betrayed Islam. Others think it is a "Daesh attempt to infiltrate" fighters in Europe. Berlin (AsiaNews) For the past three days, Arab and Islamic media and social networks have been a buzz with photos of the baptism and the news of conversion to Christianity of Hassan Abu Hamza for the past three days. The former Sharia judge of al-Fath's Islamic extremist army was also a member of al Qaeda and commander of the military arm of the Nusra Front. The repentant Islamic terrorist chose the name of another convert to Christianity: St. Paul. And like Saint Paul, he wants to become a great example of tolerance after being one of the most fierce persecutors of Eastern Christians. Appearing in a popular YouTube video from Germany (click here), Paul Hassan Abu Haza wanted to challenge those who had advised him to stay in the shadows, out of fear he would be killed in retaliation. He spoke of his singular experience, with the same coldness towards death that had characterized his work among jihadist groups. These include some of the most brutal movements to emerge in recent years in the Middle East, from al Qaeda to Nusra, passing through Daesh [Arabic acronym for the Islamic State]. "I am the son of a Muslim family," says the former jihadist, "and I was born in Syria. Ever since childhood I had decided to follow the oath of jihad [holy war] for Islam. " Paul began his jihadist journey in Iraq at the age of 19, becoming one of the founders of al Qaeda of Mesopotamia. Returning to Syria, he ended up in the suspect network and was therefore arrested. A year later he left the jail, thus beginning the founding of the Salafite terrorist organization. In short, he became one of the first fighters to establish a regime of Islamic power in Syria well before the start of the war. Arrested a second time, he spent seven years in jail. Throughout this time, Paul experienced the same dreams he actually called nightmares: "I was in the middle of an empty church - he says - in front of the crucifix, I was convinced that it was the work of the devil who was tempting me" . Released from Hassan prison, he became a military emir [jihadist commander] and a judge of the "Caliphate" in the Sharia Islamic tribunal during the Syrian Revolution. The vicissitudes of the war in Syria lead him to Istanbul, where he began to think that Allah cannot be a God of blood. Thus began a period of Gnosticism and of seeking meaning to life. He migrated with the flows of refugees to Austria, then Germany. It was in Austria, during his illegal journey towards Germany, that he saw the exterior of a church on a hill: the same church he had seen from outside in its "nightmares" during his seven years of imprisonment. In Hannover on the second day of his arrival at the refugee camp, "for the first time in my life" he went to a church. The interior of the building and the crucifix in it were the same he had seen when he was in prison in his tormented dreams. He therefore decided to go to a Protestant church in Berlin, where he continued to draw near to Christianity. "The tenderness of the Lord and Jesus Christ - he said - gave me brothers of faith with clear messages." Meanwhile, the controversy on social media is ceaseless: from the Islamic side, there are those who see in the conversion of the former emir a betrayal worthy of death because he is a traitor. "In addition to betraying his country, becoming involved in the revolution in Syria, he now betrays his maker and his faith. " On the other hand there are those who, among the Christians of the East, express skepticism about a "criminal who seeks impunity for mistakes committed by abusing our naivety." Finally, there are also those who thank God "for having saved a soul immersed in blood and suffocated by hatred from hell". One girl, on the other hand, even wrote "to the Christian brothers in Europe to be careful" and to be "distrustful" of his type, while for another it is "Daesh's attempt to infiltrate the European world with a Christian mask." Beyond all controversy, the riddle of a former jihadist emir who spent his entire life struggling for the Islamization of his own land and who, today, has decided to embrace Christianity while seeking asylum in Europe remains. Gedhun Choekyi was six years old when he was kidnapped. Since then, he has been held incommunicado. This week Tibetans marked his 28th birthday. Beijing seeks to impose itself on the future of Tibetan Buddhism, but Tibetans demand the lamas release. Dharamsala (AsiaNews/Agencies) Tibetan religious leaders marked the Panchen Lamas 28th birthday on Tuesday. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has been held incommunicado for the past 22 years ago after Chinese authorities abducted him and his family in 1995 when he was identified by the Dalai Lama, Tibets exiled spiritual leader, as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, who is tasked with finding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Held since he was six, Nyima has been called the youngest prisoner of consciousness in history. A Beijing-backed candidate, Gyaincain Norbu, was then installed by China in his place, and remains unpopular among Tibetans. Nothing is known about Gedhun Choekyi Nyimas fate since he vanished. Requests by the United Nations and other international agencies and human rights organisations to visit him have consistently been refused by Beijing. Two years ago, a Chinese official said that the Panchen Lama "is living a normal life and does not want to be disturbed." In an open letter released on Tuesday, the Panchen Lamas birthday, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner Tenzin Dorjee chose words that spoke directly to Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, voicing his sadness that the missing Panchen Lama may never read his words. Ever since you were abducted as a young child at the age of six, the Chinese government has refused to share even basic information about you and your whereabouts, Dorjees letter reads. Please know that I think about you every day, and as each year passes, my resolve to find you and restore you to your rightful role becomes stronger. In a statement this week, the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said that The continued detention of the Panchen Lama in secret is an act of enforced disappearance. For the TCHRD, this is a serious international crime that violates multiple human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major international human rights instruments. The selection of reincarnate lamas in Tibetan areas of China is now subject to approval by Beijing, with high-ranking religious teachers often cultivated by the government as patriotic lamas politically reliable figures who will not call for Tibetan independence from Chinese rule. China is now keen to engineer a process that produces a pro-Beijing monk as the next Dalai Lama when the present holder of the title, now 81, eventually passes away. For his part, the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, reacted to Beijings interference by saying that he might be the last Dalai Lama. In fact, Without any recognition from the Dalai Lama, the Chinese authorities can never be able to put the stamp of legitimacy to their selection of any religious leader, whether it is the Panchen Lama or a future Dalai Lama, Bhuchung Tsering, vice president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in an April 25 statement. China might want to have its own version of Rule by Incarnation, Tsering added. But it is the will of the believers that will really matter. And The earlier the Chinese authorities realize this, the better it will be for them. The meeting aimed at boosting the role of female clerics in spreading Islamic teachings. Participants discussed and issued some fatwa. Broadening the role of women in Islam can counter extremist groups' propaganda. Muslim women can be "agents of change." Polygamy causes violence and is not part of Islamic teachings. Jakarta (AsiaNews) The first national conference of Muslim female clerics ended today in Cirebon, West Java. More than 700 of imams, scholars and Islamic academics took part in the three-day event at the Kebon Jambu Al-Islamy College. The meeting was organised to boost the role of female clerics in disseminating Islamic teachings based on the Quran, the Indonesian Constitution and international law. The Fahmina Foundation (affiliated with the Wahid Institute), the Rahima Islamic Studies Centre, and the Alimat Family Rights Group organised the event. The seminar focused on three major issues: child marriage, sexual violence against women, and environmental damage", problems that contribute to social inequality, said Ninik Rahayu, one of the organisers. For participants these issues were the most relevant in their respective communities. During the meeting, the female clerics discussed and issued some fatwas, religious rulings, on crucial issues that directly affect millions of Indonesian women. One of the issues centred on the role of women can play in educating communities about peaceful Islamic teachings. According to some speakers, this has been effective against the propaganda of violent extremist groups in the communities affected by fundamentalism. Participants from a number of Muslim majority countries, like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, shared their experiences. Afghan Ambassador to Indonesia Roya Rahmani said that Muslim women could introduce a narrative of dynamic Muslims. She added that Muslim women should be recognised as good negotiators because they can embrace people more effectively and tenderly than men. From Pakistan, Bashra Qadeem shared her experiences promoting respect for different faiths and cultures in high schools in Peshawar, where communities often see teenage boys recruited as suicide bombers. Through dialogue, in which mothers are eventually convinced that such martyrdom is wrong and not Islamic, women can become agents of change, Qadeem said. The conference also highlighted the views of Indonesian Muslims over the controversy of polygamy. Women emphasised that this practice is not part of Islamic teachings. According to Siti Ruhaini Dzuhayatin, who represents Indonesia at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperations (OIC), Islam never introduced the concept of plural spouses. Polygamy has existed since the jahiliyyah era, Siti said, referring to the era of ignorance in Middle Eastern history prior to the advent of Islam. At that time, men were allowed to have an unlimited number of wives, but When Islam came, it humanised the practice by limiting the number [of wives a man could take], she added. We should learn that the Quran itself pushes for monogamy, said cleric Nur Rofiah of the Jakarta Quranic College. She added that the Holy Book says that if men are not able to treat women fairly, then they must only have one wife. So, the requirement [for taking a second wife] is strict and thats because the practice can lead to violence against women. Free newsletter Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole. Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer. More powerful 1.0-litre engine will be the same as in Renault Kwid 1.0 The entry-level model from Datsun, the Redigo, has been on sale in India since June 2016. Datsuns first model off the Renault-Nissan alliances CMF-A flexible platform, the Redigo hasnt found too many takers right from the beginning. The Redigo Sport, launched a few months ago, was a cosmetic update, and it did help sell a few more units. Though the car has its plus points, the relatively weaker brand strength and a small engine have penalised its sales potential. The model is currently powered by a 799cc, three-cylinder engine mated to a five-speed manual gearbox generating 54hp. The carmaker is now readying a more powerful variant of the entry-level hatch which is slated to hit the showrooms in the coming months. This new model will have a larger 1.0-litre engine, and like the 800cc Redigo, the new engine will be the same unit that is also found under the hood of its sibling, the Renault Kwid 1.0. Also similar to the French company, Datsun is likely to offer this engine with two gearbox options, a standard five-speed manual as well as an AMT gearbox. The more-powerful 1.0-litre motor in the Kwid has done wonders to the cars driveability, and one can expect a similar improvement in the Redigo. The addition of the AMT gearbox and the 1.0-litre engine will widen the cars appeal and enable it to take on the similarly equipped competition like the Alto and, of course, the Kwid. Going by the pricing of the Kwid, expect Datsun to price the 1.0-litre Redigo at a premium of about Rs 30,000 over the 799cc hatchback. Read our Datsun Redigo review The second half of 2017 will witness the launch of five new Ducatis, including the new entry-level Monster and Multistrada. Its going to rain Ducatis in 2017, with the Italian bike makers India line-up set to get larger by five new bikes. Starting in June-July this year, Ducati will launch the new models in four consecutive months, resulting in the availability of nearly all of Ducatis global line-up in India. As Ravi Avalur, managing director, Ducati India, puts it, There is nothing that we offer internationally that we dont intend to make available to customers in India. The five new models that will be introduced this year are the Multistrada 950, the Monster 797, the Scrambler Desert Sled, Scrambler Cafe Racer and the SuperSport. The Multistrada 950 and the Monster 797 are entry-level bikes in the Multistrada and Monster ranges respectively, making these ranges more accessible to riders with relatively limited experience looking for a more affordable alternative. The Scrambler Desert Sled and the Cafe Racer are modified versions of the Scrambler, the first tailored for off-roading and the second for fashionable urban riding. The SuperSport is essentially a Monster with a fairing, powered by a 937cc, twin-cylinder engine with an output of 113hp at 9,250rpm. The introduction of a larger variety of models, especially entry-level ones, is a well-timed strategy for Ducati, considering BMW Motorrads beginning of India operations with a very competitively priced line-up. As before, these new models will be brought to India via the CBU route, imported from Ducatis manufacturing plant in Thailand. Confirms supply of over 3,000 Safari Stormes to the Army and Navy. Tata Motors has formally signed a contract to supply an initial order of 3,192 units of its Safari Storme 4x4 to the Indian Armed Forces. Late last year, Autocar India reported that the Storme beat Mahindra Scorpio as the choice for the armed forces general service vehicle after more than a year of rigorous testing in various terrains across the country. It will be categorised under a new GS800 (General Service 800) vehicle classification that subscribes to the basic criteria of a hardtop vehicle with air conditioning and 800 kg of minimum payload. The army wanted to move away from a GS500 (General Service 500kg) platform, which includes the Gypsy, as the need was for a hardtop vehicle with a heavier payload carrying capacity. Safari Storme for the armed forces will be significantly different from the civilian version with an upgraded drivetrain, heavily modified suspension and other changes. Commenting on the recently bagged order, Vernon Noronha, vice president, Defence & government business, Tata Motors Limited, said, This variant of the Storme has been modified from the one available for civilians with an upgraded drivetrain and significantly modified suspension. The Safari Storme was conceived and designed keeping in mind the need for a rugged, comfortable and reliable vehicle, making it popular with law enforcement agencies. We will shortly commence delivery of these vehicles for the army and the navy in a phased manner. Additionally, in 2015, Tata Motors Defence arm won an order to supply 1,239 units of its high-mobility 6x6 multi-axle trucks to the army to be used for loading, unloading and transportation of ammunition, spares and other operational equipment. The order was valued at over Rs 900 crore and was the single largest order awarded to a private Indian original equipment manufacturer in the country. Toyota has confirmed its plans for the upcoming 2017 Cyprus Motor Show. The automaker has prepared a fleet of new hybrids to drool for in the said motor show. The 2017 Cyprus Motor Show is set to open its doors on May 4 and will end on May 7. Car enthusiasts have high expectations as this will be the comeback of the motor show, after being on hiatus for five years. Interestingly, Toyota has confidently prepared to present an impressive lineup of its latest hybrid cars. The automaker will show off the Toyota Rav4, Aygo, Yaris, C-HR, and Auris in the upcoming motor show. The 2017 Cyprus Motor Show will treat the guests to enjoy some exclusive offers from Toyota. The automaker has prepared unique promos on selected models on the show. The motor show will also serve as an avenue for Toyota to educate the public on the advantages of hybrid cars. Toyota experts will provide comprehensive notes on how people can benefit from the hybrid technology. Meanwhile, Toyota is just the first brand to confirm its plans for the upcoming 2017 Cyprus Motor Show. According to the official announcement at the Facebook account of the show, there are more than 30 of the most famous automakers that have confirmed to participate this year. The 2017 Cyprus Motor Show will be held at Pavilion 4 of the National State Fair. Visitors will just have to pay the entrance fee of 5 ($5.50). However, children 12 years old and below can come in free of charge. Doors will open at 5:00 p.m. on May 4 and 5. However, on May 6 and 7, the show will begin earlier at 11:00 a.m. The show ends at 10:00 p.m. on all four days of the show. Official teasers from the other participating brands will most likely come out in the next days. Watch out for our next report for more updates. My global network of spies have been giving me a lot of intel on unregulated entities and potentially fraudulent activity in the financial markets, so Ive rounded em up to help yall stay safe. SEC charges against Demitrios Hallas and Kevin Amell The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against former broker Demitrios Hallas for recklessly trading unsuitable investment products for five clients and misappropriating more than $170,000 in funds for one customer. Instead of investing these funds on the customers behalf, Hallas allegedly deposited the funds into his own personal bank accounts and spent them on personal expenses. Prior to this, the SEC also charged portfolio manager Kevin Amell for diverting nearly $2 million from a Massachusetts-based fund which he had trading authority over to his personal brokerage account. In the complaint, it was detailed that Amell matched trades between the fund and his personal account at prices that he intentionally and fraudulently skewed to benefit himself. CFTC complaint on Capitol Equity and RED List updates U.S. financial services watchdog CFTC also filed a civil enforcement action against hedge fund Capitol Equity FX, LLC for commodity futures fraud, which involved commingling customer funds with personal funds of its principals and agents, Robert Leland Johnson IV and Marisa Elena Johnson. The firm has also been charged for off-exchange, leveraged or margined retail forex fraud and failure to register with the CFTC. As for its Registration Deficient List or RED List that identifies unregistered firms that may be engaged in illegal financial services practices, the CFTC added 71 new entities to bring its total to 110. This list aims to help U.S. consumers make informed investment decisions by providing information about foreign entities that are acting in an unregistered capacity. FCA warnings on unregulated and clone firms Over in the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued several warnings against clone firms posing as regulated entities to solicit funds from customers. The regulator reiterated its call for investors to check the Financial Services Register to avoid falling victim to financial fraud. Among its recent warnings are against Global Marketing Online Limited/ADS Securities (clone of FDA registered ADS Securities London Limited), Zeb Insurance, and House of Loans (clone of Advantage Leads Limited t/a House of Loans), and Zenith Investor. Canadas crackdown on binary options marketing In Canada, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) continues its investigations into binary options firms and has proposed a ban on the advertising, offering, selling and trading of binary options in the country. A provincial regulator, the Manitoba Securities Commission, has already issued a warning against unregistered binary options broker TorOption. Authorities are wary of aggressive sales tactics involving some Cyprus-regulated firms and many unregulated binary brokers that could expose Canadian clients to financial scams. According to an official statement from the regulator, depositing funds with offshore entities can make it difficult or impossible for clients to fully recover losses as most transactions take place for the purpose of stealing money or personal information. As discussed in the School of Pipsology, staying educated and doing your homework are among the first steps in protecting yourself from trading scams. Do your research, check broker reviews, double-check regulator watchlists, and exercise extreme caution before forking over your hard-earned funds! Police are investigating an overnight homicide in Tampa. Man's body found in liquor store parking lot early Thursday Body found at North 23rd Street and East Lake Avenue in Tampa Homicide investigation ongoing According to police, officers responded to the area of North 23rd Street and East Lake Avenue just after midnight. A man's body was found in the parking lot of the Lake Avenue liquor store. Police have identified the victim as 39-year-old Curtis Eugene Thomas who lived on 21st Street. Tampa police release mug shot of homicide victim, Curtis Thomas. Police have not released a cause of death, only saying Thomas suffered severe upper body trauma. Officers have not said if there are any witnesses or leads in the case. The early-morning investigation shut down two blocks around Lake Avenue and 22nd Street as part of the investigation. Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay has offered a $3,000 reward for any information in the case that leads to an arrest. The Democrat leadership has made constant, profound and incredible pronouncements that one's supportive vote for Republicans is tantamount to surrendering Democracy forever. Understanding their sincere thinking in their extreme position: How will you still vote on this election day? Democrat; because the continuance of this Democracy from the existential threat of extreme Republicans is paramount. Republican; the process of having a choice is the democratic method within what "Democracy" does exists. Overhauling Useless Regs, Senate Cuts Through More Red Tape Senate Bill 434 (Amend Environmental Laws 2) It was a pleasure to provide a legislative update at the North Carolina Coastal Conference about legislation that I and others have sponsored to enhance our coastal economy House Bill 13 Class Size Compromise Requiring local school districts to achieve a district-wide average class size of 20 students in grades K-3 and a single class maximum of 23 students in the 2017-18 school year; and Requiring local school districts to achieve a district-wide average class size in grades K-3 that is equal to the teacher-to-student ratio currently in law and being funded by the state (either 18, 16 or 17 students, depending on the grade level) and a single class maximum of three above that number in the 2018-19 school year. Directing superintendents to submit regular reports on class sizes, total numbers of classroom and special subject-area teachers and corresponding funding sources, and authorizing the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to conduct periodic audits to ensure accuracy; and Requiring superintendents to affirm the accuracy of their reports. Those who knowingly submit inaccurate information could be subject to penalties. Senate Request Revisions to Federal Fishery Regs Contact: Bill Cook Bill Cook bill.cook@ncleg.net When it comes to regulations, it's an invisible tax. Such taxes are especially onerous when unnecessary and over-burdensome. Yesterday evening, we (conferees) for Senate Bill 131(Regulatory Reform Act of 2016-2017) reached an agreement and the conference report passed the Senate and cleared the House today - the bill now goes to the Governor. The wide-ranging legislation amends a number of state laws related to business, state and local government, agricultural, energy, environmental, and natural resources policy. Streamlining Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) rules on temporary erosion control structures are included. The provision directs the CRC to adopt rules regarding the use of temporary erosion control structures consistent with rules adopted by the Commission as agenda item CRC-16-23. We provide an exemption from the sediment criteria rule for sand from the Cape Shoal Systems "borrow sites" which are used for beach re-nourishment and fill projects. We request a study of erosion patterns near terminal groins to determine whether erosion rate calculations should be adjusted due to improved erosion conditions.Unquestionably, there are regulations that we need to keep in order to protect public health and the safety of our environment. Any regulation that is unnecessary, ambiguous or outdated should be scrapped. These regulations are invisible taxes. Thus, they increase the price of goods and reduce employment.Yesterday evening, continuing the strong record of eliminating and simplifying job-killing rules, the Senate passed Senate Bill 434 (Amend Environmental Laws 2) . Too often the focus has been on creating new programs instead of eliminating or reforming programs which are no longer operating effectively. A provision in this bill repeals the ban on plastic bags along certain areas of the Outer Banks. This plastic bag ban has not been effective. After two years of the ban, there were more plastic bags on the beach than before the ban. It is an unnecessary burden on our job creators, and it has become very costly to business, in some cases to the tune of $50,000 per store location, annually. Please click here to see the data that was comprised by the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality Other provision of the bill will allow the Marine Fisheries Commission to adopt rules to establish Shellfish Aquaculture Enterprise Areas to facilitate shellfish aquaculture opportunities through advanced siting and pre-approvals from relevant federal and State agencies. This will hopefully expedite shellfish leases in certain pre-approved areas (where there are fewer use conflicts and environmental concerns). This model has been used in other states including Maryland and Florida.We address a technical clarification to transplanting of oysters and clams to allow floating upweller systems in marinas and off docks. These systems are allowed in Virginia, Maryland and other states currently. The small shellfish from these systems are not market size and cleanse themselves long before they reach market size. This clarification will provide public health protection but flexibility for the division to work with the shellfish industry in its seed nursery activities.Time after time folks will approach me about the current moratorium on river herring. Thus, we are requiring in SB 434 that the Division of Marine Fisheries review its Fishery Management Plan for river herring (blueback herring and alewife) and report by December 15, 2017, to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Agriculture and Natural and Economic Resources on the river herring stock assessment.Due to current issues of locating a spoil site for maintenance dredging of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway between Beaufort Inlet and the border with Virginia, a section of SB 434 allows the Division of Coastal Management of the Department of Environmental Quality and the State Property Office to negotiate with our federal partners in regards to an agreement for acquiring dredged material easement sites. This approach is currently used in South Carolina, where they have an agreement in place between the State and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.The Senate's House Bill 13 compromise preserves our longstanding goal of reducing kindergarten, first, second and third-grade class sizes while addressing local schools' concerns about any unintended potential consequences of implementation. Our changes to House Bill 13 will phase in implementation of class size reductions over the next two school years by:This phase-in is supported by sponsors of the original House bill and the N.C. Association of School Administrators. Bear in mind, the current K-3 class size requirements have been on the books for years, and the General Assembly has appropriated tens of millions of dollars to fund them. In fact, since 2014, local school districts across the state have received a total of $152 million to lower class sizes - and every year, they are guaranteed about $70 million in recurring dollars. However, not all school systems have used the extra funding to reduce class sizes, and many systems could not or would not provide data on how they spent the money - choices that led to the concerns they now have about implementation, fears that special subject-area teachers could be fired and the need for a legislative resolution.So to ensure a smooth transition to smaller class sizes, we have committed to continuing to study and work on funding issues surrounding enhancement teachers in subject areas like art, music, drama and P.E. And to ensure state tax dollars intended to reduce class size are actually used for that purpose, our bill will strengthen accountability measures for local school districts, including:For years, one of the Senate's top priorities has been lowering class sizes in the early grades - because the research shows it leads to improved academic outcomes for our students. We are pleased to arrive at a solution that gives administrators, teachers, parents, and students certainty about what will happen next school year - while making sure the taxpayers are getting the smaller class sizes they've paid for. Senate Joint Resolution 205 passed unanimously in the Senate yesterday. The joint resolution encourages the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow shellfish cultivation and aquaculture activities in North Carolina waters containing submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). Presently, the Corps of Engineers overprotects our North Carolina SAV. This policy is more stringent than policies used in other coastal states, including the Commonwealth of Virginia. Amending this federal rule has tremendous potential to create new jobs with the shellfish and aquaculture industry. Thanks to investments by the General Assembly during the last two fiscal years which I championed, the number of new shellfish lease applications compared to last year has nearly quadrupled. The Senate also adopted Senate Resolution 370 yesterday opposing the privatization of the South Atlantic Federal Fishery Resources through catch share management. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 98 President Donald Trump's administration is telling lawmakers it plans to continue paying ACA cost-sharing subsidies, Politico reports. Here's what you should know. 1. Democrats and Republicans fiercely debated the subsidies with Democrats threatening to allow a government shutdown if the administration discontinued subsidies. 2. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., confirmed the news. In a statement to Politico, she said the Democratic Party's two main concern were subsidies and funding for President Trump's Mexican border wall. She said the party has "made progress on both of these fronts." 3. Politico reports lawmakers are weighing a one week extension of current funding levels as they work towards finalizing a budget. 4. Keeping subsidies on the books is good for both parties, Politico reports. It allows Democrats to protect the ACA, while allowing Republicans to avoid blame for any chaos or confusion in the insurance markets. The administration funds the subsidies with no impact on Congressional spending. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., said to Politico, "If we pull the subsidies I think there would be nobody with a health insurance plan next year." 5. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R, reaffirmed that Congress would not be paying for the subsidies. He said in a news conference, "CSRs, were not doing that. That is not in an appropriation bill, thats something separate that the administration does." The following hospitals announced or completed plans in the last week to expand, upgrade or renovate their facilities. 1. New hospital planned for Lee County, Georgia Construction could begin in 2018 for a new hospital in Georgia's Lee County, according to a WFXL report. 2. Mercy Health plans $56M medical facility Cincinnati-based Mercy Health plans to build a $56.3 million facility in Perrysburg, Ohio, according to a Toledo Blade report. 3. Novant Health to add 100 jobs with $49M expansion at Clemmons Medical Center About 100 new jobs will be added to Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health's Clemmons Medical Center when construction on the facility is completed this summer, according to the Triad Business Journal. 4. Calvert Memorial Hospital plans $51M expansion Calvert Memorial Hospital in Prince Frederick, Md., received approval from the Calvert County Planning Commission to go ahead with its planned $51 million expansion, according to The Bay Net. 5. Premier Health hospital in Ohio unveils $40M expansion Englewood, Ohio-based Good Samaritan North Health Center, part of Dayton, Ohio-based Premier Health, is investing $40 million in service expansions, according to a 2 News report. 6. La Porte Hospital plans to break ground on $125M facility La Porte (Ind.) Hospital, part of Indianapolis-based Indiana University Health, chose the site of its new $125 million facility, officials announced April 20. 7. Community Hospital in Indiana completes $20M surgical department Munster, Ind.-based Community Hospital finished its $20 million surgical department this month, The Times reports. 8. Kaiser Permanente to open North Arundel Medical Center Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States will open the North Arundel Medical Center in Glen Burnie, Md., in June. 9. Delray Medical Center to open 4-story patient tower in July Construction has been ongoing at Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach, Fla., on a new four-story patient tower. Jared Smith, COO of the medical center, said the facility is expected to open in July, according to the Sun Sentinel. Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente's planned takeover of Maui County's three public hospitals in Hawaii is one step closer to reality after state lawmakers approved funding for the operational transition, according to a Maui Now report. Kaiser is slated to take over Hawaii Health Systems Corp.'s Maui Region, which includes Wailuku-based Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula (Hawaii) Hospital and Lanai Community Hospital in Lanai City, as of July 1. This week, Hawaii lawmakers designated approximately $73 million for transition-related expenses, including monies for employee separation benefits and capital projects such as repairs, renovations and upgrades, according to the report. "The transfer of operations of Maui Memorial Medical Center to Kaiser Permanente is the largest privatization effort in Hawaii," Hawaii House Speaker Joseph Souki said in the report. "Once completed it will mean a more efficient and more effective healthcare future for the residents of Maui County." The union that represents television and film writers voted Monday to authorize a strike a week before the union's contract is due to expire, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have been at an impasse over compensation and benefits. In addition to pay increases and larger residuals for shows streamed on Netflix and Amazon, WGA has demanded greater employer contribution to its health plan. Although many see the vote as a negotiating tactic to pressure the Hollywood studios, a strike could have widespread repercussions through the TV and film industry. The vast majority 96.3 percent of the Writers Guild of America voted in favor of the strike. The union said 67.5 percent of its eligible members participated in the vote, calling it a "historic turnout," according to the report. The union has roughly 13,000 members. Instead of contracting with a commercial health plan, the Hollywood studios currently contribute 9.5 percent of a writer's pay to the union's insurance fund, which it uses to cover members' healthcare costs. But as a result of rising healthcare costs, the fund is running out of money, according to Vox. WGA is projected to spend $163.2 million this year on health benefits while receiving $150 million in contributions from the studios, meaning it will lose $13.2 million in 2017. A reserve fund covers the excess costs, according to the report. The gap is expected to widen: By 2020, WGA will spend above $60 million more on healthcare than it brings in, which will nearly deplete its reserve fund. In negotiations, which began in March, the WGA demanded the studios provide additional contributions to the health insurance fund. "In this negotiation, we don't seek a better health plan, only a solvent one," the union wrote in its overview, according to the report. "For both the health fund and the pension plan, additional contributions are important goals. And in the context of industry profitability, these contributions are affordable." A Montana legislative budget panel agreed to a temporary $13 million tax on the state's biggest hospitals to balance its 2018-19 budget, Q2 KTVQ reports. Here are four things to know about the proposed tax. 1. Under the tax, 14 Montana hospitals would pay a total of $13 million annually during the next three years beginning in June. 2. The size of the hospital would determine its individual fee, according to the report. The taxes range from $835,300 for the state's largest hospital, Billings Clinic, to $2,900 for Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical Center. 3. The measure passed initial votes in the state's House and Senate. 4. Montana Hospital Association Vice President Bob Olsen told Q2 KTVQ: "There's a feeling that the hospitals, especially the larger hospitals in Montana can afford to make this contribution to the state, inasmuch as they benefited from [Medicaid] expansion." Declining reimbursements, high deductible health plans and uncertainty from government payers are the key issues keeping hospital and health system CFOs across the country up at night. But many are developing innovative ways to address these issues with population health and waste eliminating strategies. A panel of CFOs discusses their top priorities at the Becker's Hospital Review 8th Annual Conference in Chicago. The panel, moderated by America's Healthcare Leaders Founder, CEO and Publisher Dan Nielson, included Pittsburgh-based UPMC Physician Services Division CFO Ann Evans; Fountain Valley, Calif.-based MemorialCare HealthCare CFO Karen Testman; and Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Healthcare Senior Vice President and CFO John Orsini. The key priorities for the panelists include: Integrating hospital and physician practice acquisitions Developing population health infrastructure Improving access to care Selecting EMR/IT platforms Focusing on ambulatory and outpatient care Lowering the cost of care Optimizing current cost structures Maximizing advanced practitioners The panelists took a deeper dive into outpatient investments, acquisitions and operational efficiencies to lower the cost of care. Outpatient investments Ms. Testman said MemorialCare's focus is shifting from the inpatient hospitals to the ambulatory and outpatient care clinics. Many patients never make it to the hospital because physicians resolve their issues in the outpatient setting. "Our focus has been trying to buy lower cost alternatives for our patients, which is why we decided to invest heavily in freestanding ambulatory surgery centers," said Ms. Testman. "In our market, most of our competitors have ASCs as well as hospitals. We've invested in our own freestanding imaging centers whereas most of our competitors are doing that on an HOPD basis. It's been a good thing for us to get into that world" MemorialCare recently partnered with dialysis company Fresenius to better coordinate care for patients with kidney disease. Ultimately, the system hopes to prevent the need for dialysis and when patients do need it, encourage home dialysis instead of dialysis at the more costly outpatient centers. The health system also turned its focus to consumerism with a concierge program, which takes backend employees and moves them to the front end of the process as the patient's point of contact. MemorialCare applies the concierge program to certain elective procedures and collects payment upfront; if patients aren't able to pay, their surgery is canceled. "We always had a program in place for service collections and attempted to collect upfront," said Ms. Testman. "What makes this different is our employees are specially trained in customer service and collectionsand we will go forward with canceling or postponing cases." Integration Northwestern's focus over the past several years has been acquisitions and integration. "We've been careful to integrate and maintain performance," said Mr. Orsini. "The integration with our IT has helped us make sure our performance hasn't slipped with the integration with the hope that when the investments are complete, our performance will continue to rise even further." Integration on the business side is challenging, but integrating cultures is even harder. Mr. Orsini said both sides should work together to move in the same direction to prevent culture wars from derailing the transaction. "Northwestern is very deliberate and focused in finding the right partner," he said. "We've looked at smaller tuck-in deals that we haven't done because it wasn't a cultural fit or there were other things constricting the structure of the deal." UPMC has also experienced significant growth through acquisitions. The health system now includes 25 hospitals and more than 600 other physical locations. In some cases, practices are under-utilized with two or more unused exam rooms at any given time. "Our organization has grown tremendously over the past few years by merging, joint venturing and acquiring practices," said Ms. Evans. "Now we have to step back and consider whether we have the best physical footprint for our organization." Operational efficiencies UPMC is also creating operational efficiencies and patient satisfaction with biometrics; when patients arrive at the physician's office and use an automated system to check in. As a result, the front desk staff that formerly spent time at registration moved to the back end to manage referrals and help patients navigate the system appropriately. "We've gotten good feedback on that," said Ms. Evans. "I was a little bit of a skeptic initially of the biometrics because of the population in Western Pennsylvania it's second only to Florida as the largest elderly population. But what happened in our organization is we got great feedback." The system also mandated all employed physicians provide same-day appointment access, which means the physicians are available if patients call in needing a specialist in short order. That doesn't mean the patient will see the specialist of their choice, but a specialist will be available to see them. "That's not the protocol our physicians were used to operating under," said Ms. Evans. "That's underway now and a big initiative for us." Despite the changes in healthcare and challenges for leadership, all three panelists were bullish on the healthcare industry moving toward value-based care. "The industry in general is going to survive," said Mr. Orsini. "It draws empathetic, caring people that want to figure things out. We are facing what every other industry, except higher education, has faced. If you look at other industries, they've all gone through periods of consolidation and excess capacity. The reality is that healthcare has a lot of excess capacity so we will squeeze that out as an industry and technology will allow people to better care for themselves overall." The Trump administration will continue to pay cost-sharing reduction subsidies for now, according to Politico. The decision is a compromise between Democrats and Republicans as they negotiate a budget to avoid a partial government shutdown that would begin Saturday if no agreement is reached. Cost-sharing reduction subsidies were created under the ACA to help offset the cost of providing discounted deductibles to low-income ACA enrollees. These payments which total roughly $7 billion each year, according to Politico were authorized and paid for by the executive branch under the Obama administration. However, two years ago, House Republicans filed a lawsuit questioning the legality of the payments because no specific appropriation was created for them. The Trump administration delayed the lawsuit in February while it decided whether to continue the payments. Democrats wanted Republicans to make a long-term commitment to fund cost-sharing reductions by including them in the spending package. However, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., made it clear Republicans would not agree to that. "CSRs, we're not doing that," he said, according to another Politico report. "That is not in an appropriation bill, that's something separate that the administration does." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made the deal for the executive branch to continue funding the cost-sharing reductions over the phone Tuesday. However, it is not clear how long the payments will continue, according to Politico. "Our major concerns in these negotiations have been about funding for the wall and uncertainty about the CSR payments, [which are] crucial to the stability of the marketplaces under the ACA," Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. "We've now made progress on both of these fronts." A recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggested eliminating the cost-sharing reductions would actually cost the federal government $2.3 billion due to increases in premium tax credits, even after accounting for savings. More articles on finance: Manatee Memorial Hospital to operate at 'risk level' if county doesn't increase indigent care funds Hawaii lawmakers designate funds for Kaiser hospital takeover AMGA calls for CMS to streamline MA, MSSP and Medicare FFS Here are 15 recent news updates on health IT companies. Allscripts' Professional EHR achieved full certification under ONC's 2015 edition health IT product criteria. Allscripts also announced its eChart Courier service has exchanged 10 million medical records since launching in 2015. American Well rolled out AW10, a new platform designed to streamline telehealth use for providers. CardioNet will pay $2.5 million and implement a corrective action plan as part of a HIPAA settlement to resolve its alleged disclosure of unsecured electronic protected health information. Cerner and NeuroLogix Technologies, a Cleveland Clinic spinoff, will integrate tools to enhance concussion management. Cognitive Medical Systems, a clinical decision support provider, and Motive Medical Intelligence, a clinical workflow software provider, will help the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs implement clinical decision support over the next year. ePatientFinder partnered with the healthcare sales company Rep Network to extend clinical trials to patients. IBM Research developed deep learning and visual analytics technology to identify the severity of diabetic retinopathy, an eye disease that can cause blindness if left untreated in diabetic patients. Medsphere Systems Corp. introduced a scheduling tool for the company's EHRs. NTT Data Services and Praxify partnered to improve clinical workflows at hospitals and health systems. Persistent Systems and Boston-based Partners HealthCare joined forces to develop an open-source platform for clinical decision support apps. Samsung integrated American Well's real-time telehealth platform into Samsung Health, the company's health and medical app. Siemens Healthineers signed an agreement to acquire Medicalis Corp., a health IT company based in San Francisco. Surescripts, a health information network focused on e-prescriptions, launched a new tool to track and monitor e-prescription trends. Zoom Video Communications created a telehealth service called Zoom for Telehealth, which integrates with Epic EHRs. Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center's Acting Chief of Staff Barbara Temeck, MD, has officially been suspended from the role, without pay, according to a Cincinnati Business Courier report. Here are 10 things to know: 1. Dr. Temeck was named acting chief of staff in 2013, but was removed from the role in February 2016, pending administrative action. The removal came soon after serious allegations of wrongdoing perpetrated by Dr. Temeck came to light. 2. In February, a group of 34 current and former staff members sent an unsigned letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald expressing their urgent concerns about the state of care at the Cincinnati VA. 3. Allegations against Dr. Temeck were varied. There were reports that she prescribed controlled substances to spouses of colleagues without a valid substance license. 4. The whistleblowers also alleged that Dr. Temeck told operating room staff they were being "too picky" after reporting surgical instruments being brought into ORs with blood and bone chips from prior surgeries. 5. Additionally, there were reports of delayed and substandard care at the medical center. One veteran describes being turned away when he needed hip surgery. He was told that the hospital no longer employed hip surgeons. 6. The VA launched an investigation into the incident, and asked the Office of Inspector General to launch an additional investigation. 7. A Cincinnati.com report notes that after Dr. Temeck's removal, she kept her title but was relegated to a data-entry job at the medical center. Ralph Panos, MD, replaced her as acting chief of staff. 8. Dr. Temeck could also be facing felony charges for the improper prescribing of controlled substances "outside the scope of her DEA license," according to Cincinnati.com. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio could ask a grand jury to indict her. 9. Dr. Temeck's lawyer stated that Dr. Temeck will appeal the suspension, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier. 10. The proposed discharge notice indicated that "the suspension didn't involve a question of professional conduct or competence," the Cincinnati Business Courier reports. Republicans recently revealed an amendment to the American Health Care Act. Here are seven reactions from leaders of healthcare groups. The Children's Hospital Association in a statement addressed the amendment's potential effect on children. "On behalf of our nations childrens hospitals and the patients and families they serve, Childrens Hospital Association continues to oppose the newly modified American Health Care Act and strongly urges the House of Representatives to reject the bill. Recently adopted changes only worsen the AHCA by putting children with pre-existing conditions at increased risk of losing healthcare coverage and failing to correct the Medicaid cuts that would impact over 30 million kids." Diane Horvath-Cosper, MD, advocacy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, in an emailed statement, said she does not support the revised healthcare bill. "This new proposed ACA repeal bill has the same dangerous ingredients as the reckless bill that failed in Congress a month ago in the wake of vocal, widespread opposition from patients across the county. It will still put comprehensive reproductive healthcare out of reach for millions of women, especially low-income women, by attacking Medicaid, Planned Parenthood and abortion coverage," she said. "On top of that, this new bill goes further by allowing states to opt out of providing protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, making premiums impossibly out of reach for these patients. It's reprehensible that any of our elected officials would vote to reduce Americans' healthcare coverage, and it's just bad leadership to keep trying to pass such flawed bills." Sister Carol Keehan. president and CEO of Catholic Health Association of the United States, in a statement said proposed changes to the GOP healthcare bill "are even more disastrous for people who have just gotten healthcare." "Changing the current rules to undermine essential benefits requirements and protections for people with pre-existing conditions, as well as allowing insurers to set annual and life time caps on the care they cover, would seriously undermine health security and leave many individuals with substandard protection. Even the proposed state high-risk pools would be an inadequate and under-funded solution to a problem that need not exist in the first place," she said. James Madara, MD, CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association, penned a letter to House leaders, indicating the AMA's opposition to the revised healthcare bill. "As we have previously stated, we are deeply concerned that the AHCA would result in millions of Americans losing their current health insurance coverage. Nothing in the MacArthur amendment remedies the shortcomings of the underlying bill. The amendment does not offer a clear long-term framework for stabilizing and strengthening the individual health insurance market to ensure that low and moderate income patients are able to secure affordable and adequate coverage, nor does it ensure that Medicaid and other critical safety net programs are maintained and adequately funded," Dr. Madara wrote. Margaret Murray, CEO of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, said in an emailed statement the ACAP remains opposed to the AHCA. "This revived effort to pass a fundamentally flawed bill does not address the basic threat that the American Health Care Act poses to the health coverage of millions of Americans. Over the next 10 years, the bill would cut funding for Medicaid by more than $800 billion and phase out the enhanced federal funding match for the Medicaid expansion," she said. "This would degrade access to services for the 70 million-plus people who rely on Medicaid for effective health coverage. This, combined with changes in Marketplace-based coverage would result in the loss of health coverage for up to 24 million Americans, according to the most recent estimates from the Congressional Budget Office." Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, said in a statement the amendment "continues to put health coverage in jeopardy for many Americans." "Our top concern is what this change could mean for older and sicker patients, including those with pre-existing conditions, such as cancer patients and those with chronic conditions. For these reasons, along with our previously stated concerns about the AHCA, we cannot support the bill. However, we urge Congress to continue to work with stakeholders on a solution that provides meaningful coverage," Mr. Pollack said. "The amendment proposed this week would dramatically worsen the bill. The changes included put consumer protections at greater risk by allowing states to waive the essential health benefit standards, which could leave patients without access to critical health services and increase out-of-pocket spending. This could allow plans to set premium prices based on individual risk for some consumers, which could significantly raise costs for those with pre-existing conditions. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office has not yet scored the amendment. However, CBO previously projected that the AHCA would result in 24 million fewer people covered in 2026. It is unlikely this amendment would improve these coverage estimates." Bruce Siegel, MD, President and CEO of America's Essential Hospitals, said in a statement the amendment does not improve upon the AHCA, which was pulled from the House floor last month. "The amendment now being considered would threaten basic healthcare benefits and important consumer protections. Worse, these changes are expected to add to the already staggering total of 24 million additional uninsured people under the AHCA," Dr. Siegel said. "This latest version of the AHCA is not an improvement. It's simply bad policy that will cut a lifeline of healthcare for millions of Americans. The legislation also would leave unchanged more than $800 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, breaking the nation's safety net and saddling states, local governments and taxpayers with new costs for indigent care." More articles on leadership and management: Survey: 54% of physicians concerned about FDA nominee Dr. Scott Gottlieb's conflicts of interest 6 tips for working with someone who isn't a team player Alice Hyde Medical Center in rural NY to eliminate 32 jobs Meridian-based East Mississippi State Hospital, which provides behavioral health, chemical dependency and nursing home services, will cut 74 jobs as the facility faces decreased funding, reports The Meridian Star. Here are four things to know. 1. State budget cuts played a role in the decision to eliminate jobs. In total, EMSH faces a $5 million state budget cut, which is part of a nearly $20 million cut to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, according to the report. 2. Affected jobs include recreational staff, administrative staff and teachers at EMSH's Bradley Sanders Adolescent Complex, according to the report. 3. In addition to the job cuts, EMSH plans to consolidate its adolescent complex with the Oak Circle Center at Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield, according to the report. 4. Charles Carlisle, director of EMSH, told The Meridian Star some facility employees, such as direct care staff, nurses and psychologists, could potentially move to Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield. He noted other employees could potentially move to local government positions. More articles on leadership and management: Survey: 54% of physicians concerned about FDA nominee Dr. Scott Gottlieb's conflicts of interest 6 tips for working with someone who isn't a team player Alice Hyde Medical Center in rural NY to eliminate 32 jobs The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted Thursday to send the nomination of Scott Gottlieb, MD, as head of the Food and Drug Administration to the Senate floor for a vote. "Dr. Gottlieb is the right person to lead the FDA in its vital mission and move the agency forward so that America's patients benefit from the remarkable discoveries our nation's researchers are working on," Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in a statement announcing the vote. "He has impressive qualifications from nearly every perspective; he has been a practicing physician, held three roles at FDA and is a cancer survivor." Dr. Gottlieb previously served as deputy commissioner of the FDA, senior advisor to the FDA commission and director of medical policy development for the FDA. He is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and advises major pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Cell Biotherapy and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Though no longer a practicing physician and hospitalist, Dr. Gottlieb serves as a clinical assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City. The committee was originally slated to vote on Dr. Gottlieb's nomination Wednesday, but postponed the vote to allow senators to review his answers to questions about potential conflicts of interest, according to The Street. Ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., voted against Dr. Gottlieb because she felt he did not provide sufficient evidence to clear doubts about his industry ties. "I was encouraged that, in his answers to these questions, Dr. Gottlieb committed to upholding the gold standard of FDA approval, and to working on important priorities like improving the post-market surveillance of medical devices," she said. "But I am deeply disappointed in the lack of specificity in many of Dr. Gottlieb's other answers. Many of them were vague. And some questions were flat out ignored. Most importantly, his answers did little to address my concerns about whether Dr. Gottlieb is truly committed to putting families' health first." The Hill reported Dr. Gottlieb's approval in the Senate HELP Committee indicates he will likely be confirmed in a full Senate vote. More articles on leadership and management: East Mississippi State Hospital to eliminate 74 jobs: 4 things to know Care New England eliminates jobs at multiple hospitals Survey: 54% of physicians concerned about FDA nominee Dr. Scott Gottlieb's conflicts of interest Former WellCare Health Plans CEO Todd Farha and the Tampa, Fla.-based company's former CFO Paul Behrens have until May 1 to pay a combined $26 million in civil payments and restitution for their involvement in a healthcare fraud scheme, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. Mr. Farha and Mr. Behrens were two of five WellCare executives indicted in 2011 for allegedly defrauding Florida's Medicaid program by producing false documents to inflate the costs of behavioral health services. Federal prosecutors alleged the former CEO and CFO engaged in the Medicaid fraud scheme from July 2003 through October 2007. In June 2013, a federal jury in Florida found Mr. Farha and Mr. Behrens guilty on two counts of healthcare fraud. Mr. Behrens was also found guilty on two counts of making false statements related to healthcare matters. Both of the former executives entered into consent judgments with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which require them to pay restitution and civil penalties stemming from the healthcare fraud scheme, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. As part of the consent judgment, Mr. Farha, who is currently serving a three-year prison term, must pay $12.5 million to the SEC and another $7.5 million to WellCare. He's also barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company until April 2022. Mr. Behrens, who is serving two years in prison, must pay $4.5 million to the SEC and another $1.5 million to WellCare as part of the consent judgment. The former executives' payment deadline of May 1 comes just one week after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Mr. Farha of his 2013 conviction, according to Reuters. More articles on legal and regulatory issues: Shuttered NC hospital's settlement over improper layoff notifications receives preliminary approval How technology can help hospitals base malpractice reserves on more than a gut feeling Michigan hospital pays $791k to resolve false billing allegations As of Thursday, Pennsylvania hospitals must notify the caregivers of elderly patients of their impending discharge and provide them with information and training about the patient's specific needs and health concerns upon returning home, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Pennsylvania's Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act was signed by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf in April 2016. The legislation was backed by groups like AARP and has been well received among the Pennsylvania healthcare community. "We recognize [that upon discharge from a hospital] many patients are groggy or don't feel well, or maybe they're older and it's difficult to remember things when you get home," said Connie Feiler, senior manager for patient education at Pittsburgh-based UPMC, according to the Post-Gazette. "On admission now, we're to ask all patients, 'Would you like a caregiver involved after your discharge?' ... We've always known that was the right thing to do, but now it formalizes the process." To read the entire Post-Gazette report, click here. More articles on patient engagement: Nurses sitting at the bedside linked to higher patient experience scores American Diabetes Association recognizes 1st digital education program Healthgrades unveils chatbot for patient engagement Fifty-eight percent of reimbursements from Indianapolis-based Anthem are linked to value-based care models, 75 percent of which are shared savings, shared risk and population-based payment models, Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish said on the first-quarter earnings call this week, according to a report from Forbes. "We've got over 64,000 providers now engaged in ACOs and patient-centered medical homes who are accountable for cost and quality of care for over 5.5 million commercial members, which is a huge uptick compared to prior years," Mr. Swedish said, according to Forbes. The company operates 159 ACOs across the country as part of its move into value-based care, according to the report. Competitors Aetna and UnitedHealth Group are also moving in the same direction, Forbes notes, but Anthem uniquely offered details into its progress in this round of earnings reports. Read the full story here. More articles on payer issues: Anthem's profit climbs 43.7% in Q1 as its ACA exchange presence remains unclear Anthem appoints VP of provider alignment Marshfield Clinic joins Cigna's provider network The National Patient Safety Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement announced in March plans to merge, effective May 1. The move will combine the safety programs of each organization, creating a robust institution focused on accelerating advances and improvements in the field of healthcare quality and safety. The leaders of both IHI and NPSF will stay on with the combined entity after the merger. Derek Feeley, CEO of IHI, will retain his title and oversee the new organization. Mr. Feeley served as IHI's executive vice president from 2013 to 2015 before taking the reins as CEO. Prior to joining IHI, Mr. Feeley worked in the Scottish government as Director General for health and social care and CEO of the National Health Service (NHS), where he advised the government on issues pertaining to healthcare quality, including patient safety. Tejal Gandhi, MD, the president and CEO of NPSF, will stay with the merged organization with a new title: chief clinical and safety officer of IHI. Prior to taking the helm of NPSF as the president and CEO, Dr. Gandhi, a board-certified internist, was the executive director of quality and safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for 10 years. Both leaders spoke to Becker's Hospital Review in April about the merger, what drew them to the patient safety field and what they hope their organization can achieve in the future. Derek Feeley, CEO of IHI Dr. Tejal Gandhi, President and CEO of NPSF Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Question: How will your role change after the merger? Dr. Tejal Gandhi: At IHI, I will be the chief clinical and safety officer. I will oversee all the safety work and I will oversee the creation of a new combined safety group. IHI also has a broader portfolio in quality, so I'm looking forward to being engaged in that as well. Derek Feeley: I will continue to be the CEO of the new organization. The nature of my role doesn't change too much, just the scope of it. Q: What makes NPSF and IHI compatible? DF: We know each other well. We've worked together for a number of years and we started to realize there was real synergy between the two organizations and the work we do. One example of our compatibility would be the outstanding thought leadership at NPSF coupling with IHI's ability to disseminate services across large sections of the industry. We felt we could be more impactful together and realized the merger was the optimal thing to be doing. TG: If you look at the safety work we've been doing, we've been focused on many of the same things such as changing leadership culture and taking a systems approach to improving patient safety. By coming together, we create a larger and more powerful voice and right now the healthcare system is being bombarded by many voices. What NPSF and IHI are asking of the industry is so similar, it just makes sense to ask as a joint voice rather than adding to the multitude of voices that already exist. Q: How will the merger improve the ability of NPSF and IHI to aid healthcare leaders and clinicians in ensuring patient safety is a top priority as the healthcare landscape continues to change? TG: I think one of the ways our single more powerful voice can impact health systems is by bringing our different strengths together. We're able to make recommendations on safety improvements and IHI can bring them to the front lines where they'll be implemented. DF: IHI has a great international reach that NPSF really doesn't have, so that's a way we can work together to improve healthcare not just in the U.S., but more broadly. The single voice is really important. IHI and NPSF can now speak with one voice with a single call to action with a common set of tools and approaches. Improving quality and safety is really the kind of work that needs to be done with "sense making." We can make sense of some of the complexities involved in this process with a mix of thought leadership and action. NPSF has been more of a think tank and IHI more of a do tank. At the moment there are groups that tend to go to either IHI or NPSF. Now we can reach them with a combined set of programs. Q: What drew you to the patient safety and quality field? DF: I've been working on this for a long time. Back in 2005-2006 I spent a year as a Harkness Fellow in Healthcare Policy with [Oakland, Calif.-based] Kaiser Permanente and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was there I heard about the IHI's 100,000 Lives Campaign to reduce harm in hospitals. That was really my introduction to the world of safety and quality. I was determined to take back home to Scotland with me the basis of the 100,000 Lives program. We had every single hospital in the country implement a set of well-evidenced patient safety interventions. Two things we did were to educate hospitals about the practicality of the inventions and empower the staff at the point of service. We wanted them to understand that this was not just a new set of policies or procedures; this was a new set of plans that actually empowered care takers. TG: I got into this area predominately based on my experience as an internal medicine resident. I had a great experience, but I saw things that could have been done better and I got interested in the systems by which we can improve healthcare. I think my clinical practice was a major driver. I was seeing in my practice every day that things weren't going as well as they could. It's great to write papers, but unless it changes practice, then what's the point? So I got into to the operational side of things and that's been the focus of my career. Q: If you had to choose just one, which patient safety issue do you think should be of most concern to healthcare leaders today? TG: The biggest challenge is to make sure patient safety stays at the core of what of what healthcare leaders are doing because there are so many ways it could lose momentum. That to me is the number one issue, to have leadership stay focused on patients' safety despite everything else, all the changes that are coming at them. DF: I'm with Tejal on this one. Leaders shouldn't just choose one safety issue to focus [on]. We have come a long way on patient safety and we've done it issue by issue, project by project. We need to move to something that is more systemic. That's going to take some changes. It's going to require leaders to think about culture in their organization and collaboration and the need to tackle these issues and be willing to share and be more transparent. This is a mindset shift to make patient safety a system property. Q: What achievement as a leader of your respective organizations are you most proud of? DF: I'm very proud we've made this merger happen. Beyond the last 12 months, I look back with some satisfaction. We're starting to think about the absence of dignity and equity as safety issues that are harmful to patients. We've started to promote this and gotten some health systems to begin working on this issue. TG: I'm proud of the merger. This year marks NPSF's 20th anniversary. I'm very proud of this organization the first organization to have sole focus on patient safety and that brought patient voice into the conversation. This predates me but it is something I'm very proud of. The work we've done around creating best practices has been really impactful in the patient safety space. We've had many organizations adopt these practices. Also, a report we did called "Free from Harm." I think that particular report was really a north star for us on how we're going to accelerate changes in patient safety. Q: What do you hope to achieve in the next year? TG: I think in the next year we are going to create a much larger and unified voice around safety. We're really going to integrate the resources of our two organizations in year one so we can really feel like we're making a strategic impact on improving patient safety and working with a much more robust patient safety portfolio. So far we've been very reactive in healthcare. I'd like to see us address how to prevent harm in the first place and work to find ways to intervene before safety risks turn into harm. We need to move from reactive to proactive. DF: Tejal and I shared a realization that patient safety needs a reboot. This is the time for reinvigoration in the patient safety field. We want healthcare leaders to see patient safety as the no. 1 priority. I'd like to see us get patients and family much more involved in patient safety and feel more empowered in their care. I'd like to see the acceleration of progress in patient safety. Now is the time for acceleration. More articles on quality: Cheap, common drug effectively treats postpartum haemorrhage CMS readmission penalties don't correlate with outcomes, are unfair to hospitals with sicker patients, study says CHOP researchers develop artificial womb for premature infants: 7 things to know Five Democratic senators on Tuesday sent a letter to Scott Gottlieb, MD, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration, regarding the imposed hiring freeze at the agency. The senators called upon Dr. Gottlieb to explain how he would ensure the FDA has a sufficient amount of employees and resources to meet its federal responsibilities during the hiring freeze. "The Trump administration has failed to present a clear view about hiring policies at the FDA and whether the agency will be prepared to meet its commitments," the senators wrote. "Given its crucial public health role, it is imperative that the FDA remain a strong regulatory agency equipped with sufficient, reliable funding and a robust workforce." Five Democratic lawmakers signed the letter: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass., Sen. Patty Murray, Wash., Sen. Robert Casey, Pa., Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, R.I., and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Wis. President Trump in January signed an executive order implementing a hiring freeze on all federal agencies. At present, the FDA is short about 1,000 jobs. More articles on supply chain: 3 things to know about National Prescription Drug Take Back Day Q1 pharma results: How 6 drugmakers stacked up GHX recognizes 2017 healthcare supply chain leaders Concord (N.H.) Orthopaedics donated $10,000 to the New Hampshire Food Bank, according to Windham Patch. Here are three notes: 1. The donation will pay for 20,000 meals. 2. Concord Orthopaedics made the donation in honor of "patients, primary care physicians, nurses, clinical support staff, physical therapists and other medical personnel that Concord Orthopaedics works with throughout the year," according to Windham Patch. 3. Concord Orthopaedics also has offices in Derry, New London and Windham. Norwood, Ohio-based Mayfield Brain & Spine will build a new office location in Green Township, according to Cincinnati Business Courier. Here are five things to know: 1. The practice plans to build a 6,998-square-foot office, based on a Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission filed report. 2. The Rural Zoning Commission approved the new building on April 20. 3. No price estimate for the building has been disclosed. 4. A Mayfield spokesperson told Cincinnati Business Courier the building's plans were not far enough along to discuss publicly. 5. Currently, the practice encompasses seven locations with 23 physicians. To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below Pakistan has reportedly arrested 29 Indian fishermen on Thursday near its coast alleging that they violated the maritime boundaries. A spokesperson for the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency reportedly said five boats were also seized alongside the Indian fishermen. The detained Indian fishermen have been handed over to the Docks Police, say reports. NFF secretary Manish Lodhari said that the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized their four boats off the Gujarat coast on Wednesday. The fishermen had sailed from Porbandar in Rajasthan a few days ago and were apprehended by the PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line (IMBL). "We have learnt that at least 23 fishermen on four boats were apprehended by the PMSA near Jakhau and they were being taken to Karachi", Lodhari said. Agriculture depends on an available labour market, domestic and foreign, MPs said Shortages in numbers of agriculture and horticulture workers risk becoming a "crisis" if urgent action is not taken to fill gaps in labour supply, MPs have said. In a report launched following claims that labour shortages could see food rotting in fields, the parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said UK agriculture could not function without foreign labour. Since the vote to leave the European Union, where many seasonal and farming workers come from, businesses have had increased difficulty in recruiting foreign labour, committee chairman Neil Parish said. The report found Government statistics are inadequate for measuring agricultural labour needs, particularly around seasonal labour. They must be reviewed by the end of 2017 to make sure they are adequate for making employment and immigration policy post-Brexit, the report urged. The Home Office has said a new "seasonal agricultural workers scheme", which is unnecessary while the UK retains free movement of labour with the EU, could be introduced in a short period of time, some five to six months. It is "vital" the labour supply available to the agriculture and horticulture sectors does not dry up because of uncertainty caused by new immigration arrangements instituted following the UK's exit from the EU, the MPs said. Mr Parish said: "Without sufficient labour, both from the UK and overseas, agricultural and horticultural businesses cannot function. "For a long time the industry has relied on foreign workers to perform temporary and permanent roles to make good shortages in the availability of UK labour; UK agriculture could not function without foreign labour. "The period since 23 June 2016 has seen increased difficulties for businesses recruiting foreign labour and has presented severe challenges for the industry. "Government statistics do not properly measure the problem and should be reviewed so that the sector is confident that post-Brexit immigration policies are based on an accurate assessment of agriculture's demand for, and supply of, foreign labour." A Government spokesman said: "The Labour Force Survey is conducted by the Office for National Statistics and is the largest household study conducted in the UK on labour. "Until exit negotiations are concluded, the UK will remain a member of the EU with all of the rights and obligations that membership entails, and employers in the horticultural and food processing sectors are free to continue to recruit EU workers to meet their labour needs." Riz Khan hopes to make a million pounds in sales in a year with his online underwear brand, horni Former BBC news anchor Riz Khan is to launch an online underwear brand, with the journalist turned businessman targeting more than 1 million sales in the first year. Dubbed horni - a nod to the company's pledge to give at least 10% of pre-tax profits to global rhino conservation - the new venture is being bankrolled by 1.5 million of Mr Khan's own money. The broadcaster told the Press Association that horni is expected to generate around 1.2 million in revenues in its first year. However, Mr Khan added that he expects the uptake to be much higher as the brand campaign grows, saying: "We should be doubling and tripling revenues rather quickly." Private equity investors have already been eyeing the business with interest, Mr Khan said, but insisted that he does not want to involve them until a later date. "I have wanted to keep the brand message clear of any interference or outside influence for now." Mr Khan, who has also done stints at Al Jazeera and CNN, said that he hopes he can eventually manufacture some horni products in the UK, creating new jobs. Currently, horni products are manufactured in India and Sri Lanka. The UK's decision to leave the EU also played a part in Mr Khan's decision to support a British-based charity, Save the Rhino International. "I was surprised at the outcome of the Brexit vote, but being a hardcore Brit, I decided that it was important to support a country that I love," he added. Naples is one of the new destinations Jet2 will fly to direct from Belfast The loss of the open skies agreement following Brexit would have a "terrible" impact on the airline industry, the boss of Jet2 has warned. Steven Heapy spoke to this newspaper as the airline confirmed it was adding eight routes to Belfast International Airport, including six that are new to Northern Ireland. The airline will now fly to Antalya in Turkey, Costa De Almeria in Spain, the Greek island of Crete, Madeira, Malta, Naples in Italy, Paphos in Cyprus and Rhodes. Jet2 already operates a number of flights to Spain, the Canaries and eastern Europe from Belfast. The move is expected to create around 50 new jobs. "We've been looking at Belfast International Airport for some time with a view to expansion," Mr Heapy said. "Our brand and products are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the local travel agents, and we've had a lot of support from them. "We've decided to put a fourth aircraft into Belfast. It's different from the existing three, because it's a (Boeing) 737-800, which is bigger and has a longer range, and that has allowed us to reach some of the new destinations." The flights start in April and May next year, and seven will fly once a week, while the Costa De Almeria link is twice a week. But Mr Heapy said that if demand was strong, the airline could look at increasing the frequency of the services. He said he believed competition was "a healthy thing", with Jet2 now going head-to-head with Ryanair. Speaking about concerns over what will happen if the open skies agreement, which allows carriers to fly anywhere within the EU, is scrapped after Brexit, he said: "There are a lot of concerns around Brexit. There's freedom of movement, of capital, of labour and open skies. "Probably the biggest of that is the open skies. It's our job as the airline and tour operator community to communicate with the Government to put forward the case for aviation and travel. They really need to make sure they deliver open skies, because if we didn't have that, or have anything less than what we have now, it would be terrible for the industry and terrible for people who want to travel." He said without the agreement it would be very hard to "operate or launch" routes. Speaking about the new routes, Graham Keddie, managing director of Belfast International Airport, said: "Of course, with the welcome expansion will come new employment opportunities. "Up to 50 jobs spread throughout the airport will have to be filled, including ground crew, pilots and cabin crew, which will mean 1.5m in wages injected into the local economy." The pace of growth in housebuilding in Northern Ireland is the slowest of 12 UK regions at just 17%, according to a report published today. Work was started on 761 new houses in the province from January to March this year - up from 650 over the same period 12 months ago. Overall, the number of new homes started across the UK was at its highest in a decade over the first quarter of the year at 42,470, the National House Building Council (NHBC) said. But the rate of growth in Northern Ireland was outpaced by all other UK regions. In the north-east of England, there was a 39% uplift in new homes, while London saw a 38% jump and eastern England 31% growth. The first quarter's 17% growth follows a sluggish increase of 1.7% during 2016, to 3280. In contrast, new home starts surged by 33% in 2015. Jamesy Hagan of local housebuilder Hagan Homes - which almost doubled turnover to 16.7m in the most recent financial year due to a pick-up in the industry - said: "We continue to lag behind the UK due to the length of time that it takes in Northern Ireland to get planning approval compared to the UK." He also claimed builders were charged "excessive" sums for bonds to cover any potential cost of any drainage systems left unfinished by developers. David Little, regional director for the NHBC, added: "We have seen a very pleasing start to the year, continuing the growth seen in 2015. "Belfast and the surrounding commuter areas remain particularly popular, and the feedback from estate agents is that demand for new, quality homes exceeds the supply coming through." Conor Mulligan, the managing director of housebuilder Lagan Homes, part of Lagan Group, also claimed that the planning process was as an inhibiting factor in the growth of the housing market. He additionally said it was disappointing that many construction workers for Northern Ireland companies were instead working on houses in England. "The overwhelming constraint in housing supply is the planning process," Mr Mulligan claimed. "Many of the larger housebuilders could be building much more if they could only obtain the approvals in a timely manner. It is a tragedy when we have a housing crisis here that a sizable part of our industry's resources are being employed in England." NHBC's managing director, Neil Jefferson, said the UK figures were "encouraging". Boris Johnson has been quizzed about his description of Jeremy Corbyn as a "mutton-headed old mugwump" but what does it mean and where does it come from? It's an insult that perhaps only Boris Johnson would use, and it appears that even he did not know exactly where it came from. The Foreign Secretary said he had borrowed it from author Roald Dahl's children's classic Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. In fact, the word appears not in that book but in the much-loved story-teller's 1972 follow-up, Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator, in which Willy Wonka refers to Mrs Bucket as "my dear old muddle-headed mugwump". But Dahl himself was borrowing from earlier sources when he used the term, which has made a surprising number of appearances in popular culture with a series of entirely different meanings. Explaining where he had found it, Mr Johnson told ITV1's Good Morning Britain: "It's a long time since I read it, but I think it's in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. "I think Willy Wonka says it either to the parents of Violet Beauregarde or Augustus Gloop." In fact, mugwump was initially a native American term for a war leader, which was taken up in the 1880s to describe members of the US Republican party who switched to support Democrat presidential candidate Grover Cleveland. For some time afterwards, the word was used in the US to describe a political turncoat. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as "a person who remains aloof or independent, especially from party politics." More recently, mugwumps featured in the graphic and surrealistic 1959 novel Naked Lunch by Beat Generation writer William Burroughs - filmed by David Cronenberg in 1991 - as a bizarre and reptilian alien species. Expand Close Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is kissed by a supporter at a rally in Harlow, Essex. PA PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is kissed by a supporter at a rally in Harlow, Essex. PA The term also appeared in the best-selling Harry Potter series to describe members of the International Confederation of Wizards, of which the character Albus Dumbledore was appointed Supreme Mugwump. Mugwumps even entered the UK pop charts in 1994 when they were mentioned in the chorus of Bomb The Bass hit Bug Powder Dust, a homage to the Burroughs book. Theresa May quizzed BBC Radio Derby's Chris Doidge asked Theresa May if she knew what a mugwump is. Her response can be heard below. Corbyn response Responding to the comments during a campaign visit to Harlow in Essex, Mr Corbyn said: Were eight days into the election campaign and the Tories have reduced to personal name calling. Ive never been involved in that and never will be. Were in this election because we have a serious debate to be held on all the issues facing this country, such as housing, schools, health We approach this in a responsible, serious way, I leave that kind of language to others. Mr Corbyn promised a country that is properly housed, as he unveiled research showing Labour councils have built an average of nearly 1,000 more homes since 2010 than their Tory counterparts. We will build a million homes over the period of a Parliament, half of which will be council and housing association for rent and be totally affordable, because that is the Labour way. Comedian David Baddiel weighs in A tweet by David Baddiel has been labelled the "greatest own ever" after he compared Boris Johnson's language to fictional schoolboy Billy Bunter. The comedian hit out at the Foreign Secretary after his description of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a "mutton-headed old mugwump". Baddiel, 52, posted on Twitter: "Nothing makes me want to vote for Corbyn more than Boris Johnson using - and thinking it's adorable - his stupid Billy Bunter language." One user challenged him over the comparison to Charles Hamilton's obnoxious, anti-hero character, replying "you haven't read much Billy Bunter, have you @Baddiel?" This prompted what one fan dubbed the "greatest Twitter own ever" as the television presenter responded with a photo of a newspaper clipping showing himself as a young boy surrounded by annuals in which the character appears. Baddiel later clarified that he does not want to vote for Mr Corbyn but "Boris saying c**** stuff like that just *makes* me want to". Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International activist Jenny Pollock dressed as the famous New York Statue of Liberty landmark outside the US Consulate in Belfast as they draw attention to a host of human rights concerns during President Trumps first three months in office on April 27th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Amnesty International hold a protest to mark US President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office outside the US Embassy in Belfast A group of human rights campaigners have gathered outside the US Consulate General in Belfast to protest against Donald Trump's actions during his first 100 days in office. The Amnesty International activists, including student Jenny Pollock dressed as the Statue of Liberty, staged the demonstration to draw attention to a series of human rights concerns during President Trump's first three months in the White House. Amnesty has been strongly critical of several measures from the new US government, including the multi-country travel ban affecting Muslim majority countries, the 120-day halt to its refugee resettlement programme and plans for a wall on the Mexican border. The protest group gathered at the gates of the consulate holding cards with the words "No ban", "No wall" and "Refugees welcome". Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty's Northern Ireland programme director said: "In the space of just 100 days, time and time again President Trump has threatened and undermined human rights in the United States and around the world." He added: "The Statue of Liberty stands for American values of freedom and an age-old willingness to shelter people uprooted through war and persecution. "We continue to stand for those values, even while President Trump has shown that he cares little for what this great symbol of America represents." Mr Corrigan hand delivered a dossier addressed to the US Consul General Daniel Lawton outlining 100 ways "in which President Trump has threatened human rights in his first 100 days in office". Prior to passing sentence, Judge Smyth was informed the incident occurred after two groups of friends clashed in a nightclub on Dunbar Link. A Crown Court judge spoke of the potentially devastating consequences of "reckless drunken behaviour" following a 'one punch' incident that left a young man with a brain injury. The injured party had been out celebrating his A Level results in the centre of Belfast last June when he was punched by Holywood man Benedict John Lowry. After falling and striking his head on the cobbles, the 18-year old was rushed to the Mater Hospital. He sustained brain injuries in the incident, was transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital and continues to receive medical treatment. During Thursday's sentencing, Judge Smyth said similar incidents have resulted in one person dying and another charged with manslaughter. Lowry, from Bangor Road in Holywood, admitted causing grievous bodily harm to the other man as a result of the early morning incident on June 23, 2016. The 20-year old was handed a combination order of 12 months probation and 80 hours community service after being told it was accepted his behaviour was "totally out of character" and that his remorse was geniune. Prior to passing sentence, Judge Smyth was informed the incident occurred after two groups of friends clashed in a nightclub on Dunbar Link. This initial altercation didn't involve either Lowry or the injured party - but trouble flared again when the two groups left the club around the same time and ended up on the street. Prosecuting barrister Peter Magill said that around 2.30am "words were exchanged between members of each party" which was caught on CCTV. Mr Magill said this led to Lowry and the injured party facing each other and arguing. The CCTV captures a third party coming between the two men - but not the punch. An eye witness reported seeing the injured party backing off and walking down the street. At this point, Lowry took off his top and approached the other man "in an aggressive fashion." The witness also saw Lowry striking the other man once with his fist on the side of his face, when the the injured man had his hands down. Mr Magill said: "All the indications are that the blow may have caused him to lose consciousness immediately. He made no attempt to block his fall, which resulted from the blow. He fell to the cobbles, and the other side of his head hit the street." Belfast Crown Court heard no further blows were inflicted. Police arrived at the scene and while the injured man was rushed to hospital, Lowry was arrested and immediately accepted responsibility. When he was shown CCTV footage, he appeared "somewhat surprised by his own aggressive behaviour." Regarding the injured man, Mr Magill said: "He was in a bad way - so much so that it was found he was not able to get up and walk about, or attempt to talk until about seven days after the incident." He continues to be affected by the brain injury he sustained, is still receiving treatment and while he is "steadily getting better", it is not yet known whether he will make a full recovery. Defence barrister Kelly Doherty told the court Lowry was "truly sorry" for the injury he caused and also the difficulties faced by the injured man's family, adding the remorse her client has expressed with genuine. Pointing out that from the outset Lowry admitted what he had done, Ms Doherty revealed that when asked by police during interview about how he felt, Lowry replied: "I am so guilt-ridden ... I am so sorry for the injury." He also said: "It is my fault this has happened", as well as wishing the man he injured a "speedy recovery." Regarding Lowry, Ms Doherty described him as a "young man who has never lifted his hand in violence against anyone", adding that on the night in question he had no idea of the gravity of the injury caused. The barrister told Judge Smyth that Lowry "has not taken this matter lightly" and has sought counselling as a result of the "profound impact" it has had on him, and the guilt he feels. Ms Doherty concluded by saying: "A combination of recklessness and high levels of alcohol has resulted in this young man in the court, and the impact on the injured party and his family." Speaking of the "enormous repercussions" the incident has had on the injured man, Judge Smyth said this incident should act as a "stark reminder" of the consequences of "reckless drunken behaviour." Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth was among 10 people killed during the Kingsmill massacre, said he wants full disclosure to the inquest Relatives of some of those killed during the Kingsmill massacre have threatened to pull out of an inquest if legal authorities in the Republic of Ireland do not co-operate. Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth was among 10 textile workers gunned down during the roadside ambush, said he would not be satisfied until there was full disclosure. He said: "The Dublin government have to step up and give all that they have because we know they have information on the killings so why not pass it over? "We need to have the complete disclosure because we will not be happy until we have it. "There is only one option - get the full disclosure from the south or else. "Otherwise, it's just a partial inquest." Mr Worton was speaking after concerns about delays in the delivery of documentation from An Garda Siochana were raised during a preliminary hearing at Belfast's Laganside Court. Alan Kane QC said: "Justice would be denied to them (the families) if the inquest were to be completed until there is adequate disclosure of materials by the authorities in Dublin." The factory workers were travelling home from work when their minibus was ambushed in January 1976. They were asked their religion then lined up on a country road and shot dead in a sectarian attack blamed on the IRA. Only one man, Alan Black, survived despite being shot 18 times. Victims' relatives are seeking details from the Garda about the weapons used, intelligence and the getaway van employed by the gunmen. However, Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan cannot direct an officer to give evidence to the inquest without new legislation. The court was told that a letter outlining areas of concern was sent earlier this month and that Sean Doran QC, counsel for the coroner, has met with Irish officials to discuss the case. Judge Brian Sherrard said the material from Gardai was of "central importance" and he could not contemplate closure until all avenues had been explored. He said: "I am mindful of the need to ensure that the totality of the information that is being sought is provided. "This matter will not be closed until I am satisfied we have taken the appropriate steps." Meanwhile, the court also heard that the families are to be given a document detailing the history of the weapons used at Kingsmill. The paper, produced by the PSNI, details any links with other IRA attacks. The inquest, which stalled to allow police to investigate a partial palm print found on a van believed to have been used by the gunmen, is expected to resume hearing evidence next month. Judge Sherrard said he was content to proceed but cautioned that witnesses could be recalled if the Garda information threw up new leads. "We will keep pushing with regard to this," he added. Outside, victims campaigner Willie Frazer, who accompanied some of the families to court, said: "The Irish government has got a lot of information. They should hand it over." The petrol bomb broke the window and ended up in the living room of the property and started a fire. Police have charged a 38-year-old man arrested in the south Belfast area as part of an investigation into human trafficking. He has been charged with human trafficking and sexual offences and will appear in court on Thursday. It comes after police received a report that a woman was being assaulted outside a property on Tuesday evening. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Bell, from PSNI Human Trafficking Unit, said: "Our enquiries led us to arrest a 38-year-old man on suspicion of a number of offences including human trafficking for sexual exploitation, rape and sexual assault. "These enquiries, including a search of a property in the area are continuing as we work with partner agencies to ensure the woman receives appropriate support and assistance." Alin Rotariu was remanded in custody at Belfast Magistrates' Court A self-employed mechanic has been remanded into custody accused of human trafficking. Alin Rotariu, 38, with an address at Larkstone Street in Belfast, was also charged with a string of offences including rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment and possession of a weapon when he appeared at the city's magistrates' court. Rotariu, who appeared in the dock alongside a Romanian interpreter and prison guard, spoke only once during the brief hearing. When asked by District Judge Fiona Bagnall if he understood the charges, alleged to have occurred between September 2015 and April 2017, he replied: "I know, I know." Defence lawyer Jim Sheridan said his client was aware of but denied all of the charges, which he claimed resulted from a dispute with the alleged injured party. Mr Sheridan said: "He certainly does not accept these charges." The court was also told the defendant had told police after caution "none of the charges were true; that they were all lies". A Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) constable said he believed he could connect the accused to the charges. The officer also disclosed that the alleged victim was now in secure accommodation. Throughout proceedings, Rotariu, who was dressed in a light grey tracksuit, stood with his hands clasped at his front. No application for bail was made because efforts to find a suitable address were continuing. Mr Sheridan added: "We do intend to make a bail application but not today." Rotariu was remanded into custody and is expected to appear via video link on May 5. District Judge Fiona Bagnall remanded Rotariu in custody to appear again by video-link in a week's time. A mechanic was remanded in custody on Thursday charged with trafficking and raping a woman in Belfast. Romanian national Alin Rotariu is also accused of imprisoning the same alleged victim. The 38-year-old, of Larkstone Street in south Belfast, was arrested as part of a police investigation into suspected human trafficking. Officers received a report that a woman was being assaulted outside a house in the city on Tuesday evening. Rotariu appeared before Belfast Magistrates' Court to face a total of 10 charges. He is accused of arranging of facilitating the woman's travel in September 2015 with a view to her being exploited. Further charges relate to her alleged false imprisonment and rape between January 1, 2016 and April 25, 2017. Rotariu is also charged with sexual assault, threats to kill, common assault and possession of an offensive weapon, namely a knife, with intent to commit assault. Three other counts relate to concealing, possessing and converting criminal property - 940 in cash. Speaking through a translator, he acknowledged the allegations but insisted they are denied. The court heard Rotariu told interviewing police: "None of the charges are true, they are all lies." Defence solicitor Jim Sheridan added that the case related to a dispute between his client and the alleged victim. "He certainly doesn't accept these charges," the lawyer said. Mr Sheridan questioned an investigating detective in a bid to find out if the woman is still in the Belfast area. He explained that he wanted to know for the purpose of a future bail application. But the detective replied: "At the minute all I can say is that she is still co-operating with police. "She is in secure accommodation at present." District Judge Fiona Bagnall remanded Rotariu in custody to appear again by video-link in a week's time. Former property tycoons Michael and John Taggart's fight against being declared bankrupt centres on the firm that controls 1bn of Nama loans in Northern Ireland, it has emerged. It was revealed in the High Court that the Co Londonderry brothers are challenging Promontoria Eagle's standing at a meeting where creditors rejected an alternative proposal. Dublin registered Promontoria Eagle, a subsidiary of US private equity giant Cerberus, was set up to manage the former Nama property loan book. The Taggarts, said to have total debts of up to 213m, are facing bankruptcy petitions brought by Ulster Bank. Proceedings were issued after the house builders lost a legal battle over their liability for millions of pounds in personal guarantees for land purchases and development on either side of the Irish border. Earlier this year the petitions were put on hold so Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) proposals could be put to a meeting of creditors. An IVA involves a binding agreement to pay back at least some of the outstanding debts. A majority of creditors must vote in favour of the plan before bankruptcy proceedings can be stopped. It was disclosed at that stage that the total amount owed to unsecured creditors was 213m, with liabilities to Ulster Bank assessed at around 11m. The alternative resolution involved payments of 0.03 pence in the pound. At a previous hearing it was confirmed that the proposal was rejected by a majority of creditors. However, the Taggarts began moves to challenge a decision by the chairman of the meeting to accept the outcome of the ballot. Counsel for the brothers raised issues over the standing of a creditor he did not name at that stage. He contended that the proposal would have been approved without their inclusion in the vote. But in court yesterday Bankruptcy Master Kelly disclosed the identity of the firm. She said: "The Taggarts' own challenge (relates) to Promontoria Eagle." A lawyer representing Ulster Bank responded that her client had been happy with the outcome of the vote. She indicated, however, that it will be contesting the standing of other creditors to counter the Taggarts' move. Adjourning proceedings, Master Kelly listed the case for a further review in June. The brothers have been locked in litigation with the bank for several years. As part of the legal battle they unsuccessfully claimed its actions contributed to the collapse of the Taggart Group. Once a huge house-building operation on either side of the Irish border, with further interests in Britain, Europe and the United States, the firm was decimated in the 2007 property market crash. Within a year it had gone into administration. Michael Taggart, who was at one time among Ireland's richest businessmen, insisted his company would not have gone bust if bank concerns had been disclosed sooner. But a judge ruled against him after describing his evidence in the case as being "flawed, inconsistent and implausible". A disturbing video highlighting shocking incidents at an old factory site in county Armagh has been released by police. The harrowing incidents occurred at the old factory site on Victoria Street in Lurgan. Police said it's an area locally known as the Lurgan Drop Off and many parents have left their children there without knowing what goes on. Officers also warned that the area is used by dissidents to stash weapons and said children could be playing "just feet away from bombs". The incidents included a 14-year-old boy covered in his own urine and unable to speak, abandoned by his friends, and a 14-year-old girl who was semi conscious and throwing up. Officers had to keep clearing her mouth to stop her choking on her own sick. Friends had abandoned her and she spent nearly 24 hours in hospital. Police said the site has become a dumping ground, drug den and drinking spot all at once. In addition police found several drunk 13-year-old girls with blankets on them sleeping out all night - they had told their parents they were staying at a friend's house. A 13-year-old boy was discovered collapsed out of sight forgotten by his friends and it was only by chance that police stumbled across him. Police also recovered a knife and discarded clothing, including underwear. Officers said: "This isn't a playground. It's a death trap. What's going on there is way beyond anti-social behaviour. It's dangerous. "Like a building site it's not a safe place for anyone during the day so just imagine it at night. "Dissident Dan has been known to use the site to hide his weapons. Your kids could be playing just feet away from bomb. "One exploded last year when no-one was near it. That's how unstable they are. "Now imagine if your child stepped on something in the dark." Police have urged parents to know where their children are and to keep them away from the site. "It's only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed. We don't want to be giving that knock on your door," they added. David Gantley, diocesan property administrator, with curtains damaged during a previous attack on St Patricks Church in January An elderly parishioner has been treated for minor injuries following attacks on two different churches within the space of an hour. Booklets and a wooden prayer stool were set alight in a back room of St Patrick's Church on Donegall Street in Belfast shortly after 6pm on Monday evening. The woman, aged in her 70s, was in the church at the time and received burns to her hands as she attempted to extinguish the blaze before fire crews arrived. A spokesman for the Diocese of Down and Connor said he does not believe there was a sectarian motive behind the attack. "This parish sees itself as a church of the people and for the people and because of this there are always people in the building," he explained. "The fire alarm went off and a lady happened to be in the church at the time. She saw smoke and when she went to investigate she discovered the fire. "In an attempt to remove the booklets from the building she ended up burning her hands." No structural damage was caused and there was no impact on services including a 'mass of hope' for the city's homeless community which was held last night. SDLP councillor Paul McCusker has condemned the attack and described it as "totally unacceptable". "Any attack on any church is an attack on all of the community,'' he said. "Last night, the church shared a message of hope and reached out to Belfast's homeless with the launch of a soup kitchen which shows the positive work St Patrick's do daily, and the church plays a vital role in the north Belfast community and Belfast as a whole." Mr McCusker said it is totally unacceptable and disappointing because a review of security could result in restricted access which will impact on those who use the church the most. The fire comes almost three months after someone set fire to a set of velvet curtains worth 10,000 which caused damage to the church. In a separate incident on Monday evening, a small prayer book was set on fire at St Brigid's Church in south Belfast at around 7pm. Police confirmed that a teenager was arrested on Tuesday night on suspicion of arson and has since been released on bail pending further enquiries. The spokesman for the diocese said he does not believe the attacks were motivated by sectarianism, adding: "This is being treated as a social and pastoral issue". Detective Inspector McCambridge said police are investigating a possible link between the two incidents. He appealed for anyone who may have seen anything suspicious to contact them by calling 101 quoting reference number 984 24/04/17 and CC 1074 24/04/17. The "rule of law not the rule of the jungle" is required in Larne amid fears that someone will end up dead in the wake of multiple arson attacks in the town, community representatives have said. East Antrim MLA Roy Beggs spoke out after a delegation of UUP representatives met with Superintendent Darrin Jones, the new District Commander for Mid and East Antrim, and senior PSNI officers. The meeting discussed the high-profile criminal feud which has led to a series of arson attacks in the town since Easter. The most recent incident on Sunday involved a car being driven into the front of a house on the town's Killyglen Road and set on fire. In a separate incident earlier that week, a car was driven backwards into a hair salon on the town's Main Street and set on fire, causing extensive damage to the business. Prior to that, five vehicles were extensively damaged after being set on fire over the Easter weekend. There was a failed attempt to set a sixth alight. Mr Beggs said that the meeting had provided an opportunity for "frank discussion about the recent arson attacks, assaults and crime in the Larne area". "The Ulster Unionist Party backs the rule of law and not the rule of the jungle and we will remain totally supportive of the PSNI as they continue to try and combat the ongoing issues," he stated. "We were given details of the additional police resources and patrolling that have been committed to the Larne area to try to combat the feuding elements. "It is imperative that those who have endangered life are brought to justice and no more innocent bystanders are caught up in what has become a tit-for-tat fall out. "The police need the eyes and ears of the community to help bring this to an end." UUP MLA John Stewart said he had the "strong impression that the new police commander is determined to deal effectively with the culprits". "The message which has to go out is a simple one: the only legitimate force of law and order is the PSNI, and people deciding to take the law into their own hands and seek revenge themselves only leads to a downward spiral of destruction," he added. Superintendent Jones said: "We have met with a number of community and elected representatives about the recent attacks in Larne. "We reassured them that we are taking the incidents seriously and doing all we can to bring an end to the current tensions in the area as well as put those responsible before the courts. We are asking people with influence to help us do that. "We will continue to have a strong police presence on the ground in Larne." Gardai said the arrests were made as part of an ongoing intelligence-led operation A man and a woman have been arrested in the Republic of Ireland on suspicion of being involved in radical Islamic terrorist activity, according to RTE. The woman, from the UK, and the man, from Ireland, were detained in Waterford city around 10am on Thursday. They are both aged in their 20s. It is understood they are being held on suspicion of facilitating the transfer of money and information in relation to alleged international terrorist activity. The pair were arrested under the Criminal Justice Terrorist Offences Act 2005. Gardai said in a statement that the arrests were made as part of an ongoing intelligence-led operation into persons involved in suspected terrorism activity. "As part of an ongoing intelligence led operation into persons involvement in suspected Terrorism activity, an operation was conducted by Gardai in Waterford City this morning, Thursday 27th April, 2017. "Two persons were arrested on suspicion of having committed offences under the Criminal Justice Terrorist Offences Act, 2005. A male and female, both aged in their twenties were arrested. "Both persons were taken to Waterford Garda Station and are detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984. " Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said it was critical for ministers to obtain Parliaments consent before taking action. It would be difficult for Britain to say No if Donald Trump asked for assistance in military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad in response to further chemical attacks, Boris Johnson has said. And the Foreign Secretary indicated that Prime Minister Theresa May might not seek MPs approval in a parliamentary vote before British forces were deployed. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said it was critical for ministers to obtain Parliaments consent before taking action, and warned Mrs May not to do so under cover of the election period, when there were no MPs in place. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Government should focus on securing a political settlement in Syria, rather than taking unilateral action. Mr Johnson said there was no question that Assads regime was responsible for the sarin gas attack earlier this month which prompted a US retaliatory cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base. Asked whether Britain would be ready to join the US in similar action if the chemical assault was repeated, Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: I think it would be very difficult for us to say no. How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the Government, for the Prime Minister. But if the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime dont forget, it was Assad who unleashed murder upon his own citizens with weapons that were banned almost 100 years ago if the Americans choose to act again and they ask us to help, as I say, I think it would be very difficult to say no. Britain is carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq against terrorists of the so-called Islamic State (IS), but has taken no military action against the Assad regime. MPs backed the action against IS in a December 2015 Commons vote but rejected strikes against the Syrian government in 2013. Mr Johnson said that the question of whether parliamentary approval would be needed for any military action needs to be tested. Pressed on whether the Government would have to bypass Parliament if there was a phone call in the night calling on the UK to support US action, he told LBC radio: You are putting your finger on the issue. There was no doubt about Assads responsibility for the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun in north-western Syria, in which more than 80 people are believed to have died. We know Assad did it, the Foreign Secretary said. The Foreign Minister had suggested it would be hard to turn down a request to support Donald Trump if there were further Syrian chemical attacks. Theresa May has dismissed as hypothetical a suggestion from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that it would be difficult to say No to supporting further US air strikes against Bashar Assads regime. The Prime Minister stressed the importance of finding a solution with a political transition away from president Assad. Mr Johnson had suggested it would be hard to turn down a request to support Donald Trump if he sought to launch further strikes in response to any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. And the Foreign Secretary indicated that the Prime Minister might not seek MPs approval in a parliamentary vote before British forces were deployed. Mrs May sought to play down the prospect of military action, saying: This is a hypothetical issue because there is no proposal on the table for further strikes in Syria. What is important is that we look to see how we can bring about a solution in Syria that is going to lead to a strong and stable Syria. That means a political transition, it means political transition away from president Assad. On a campaign visit in Chesterfield she said the UK had been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to say to the Syrian regimes backers, including Russia, that now is the time to stop president Assad from bombing his own people. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said it was critical for ministers to obtain Parliaments consent before taking action, and warned Mrs May not to do so under cover of the election period, when there were no MPs in place. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Government should focus on securing a political settlement in Syria, rather than taking unilateral action. Mr Johnson said there was no question that Assads regime was responsible for the sarin gas attack earlier this month which prompted a US retaliatory cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base. Asked whether Britain would be ready to join the US in similar action if the chemical assault was repeated, Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: I think it would be very difficult for us to say no. How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the Government, for the Prime Minister. But if the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime dont forget, it was Assad who unleashed murder upon his own citizens with weapons that were banned almost 100 years ago if the Americans choose to act again and they ask us to help, as I say, I think it would be very difficult to say no. Britain is carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq against terrorists of the so-called Islamic State (IS), but has taken no military action against the Assad regime. MPs backed the action against IS in a December 2015 Commons vote but rejected strikes against the Syrian government in 2013. Mr Johnson said that the question of whether parliamentary approval would be needed for any military action needs to be tested. Pressed on whether the Government would have to bypass Parliament if there was a phone call in the night calling on the UK to support US action, he told LBC radio: You are putting your finger on the issue. There is no legal requirement on the Government to seek parliamentary approval before ordering military action but it has become convention to consult MPs, except in the event of an emergency. United has settled the case with passenger David Dao, who was removed from a flight earlier this month (David J Phillip/AP) A doctor who was dragged off a United flight after he refused to give up his seat to crew members has reached a settlement with the airline for undisclosed amount. David Dao's legal team announced the settlement in a brief statement on Thursday, saying the agreement includes a provision that the amount will remain confidential. Mobile phone footage of the April 9 confrontation on board a plane at Chicago's O'Hare Airport sparked widespread public outrage over the treatment of Mr Dao. The footage showed airport police officers pulling the 69-year-old father-of-five from his seat and dragging him down the aisle. His lawyer claimed he lost teeth and suffered a broken nose and concussion in the incident. Earlier, United announced steps it would take to reduce overbooking of flights. Among other things, the airline said it will raise the limit on payments to customers who give up seats on oversold flights to 10,000 dollars (7,750) and it will improve training of employees. Mr Dao's lead attorney, Thomas Demetrio, praised the airline and its chief executive, Oscar Munoz, for accepting responsibility and not blaming others, including the city of Chicago, whose airport security officers yanked Mr Dao from his seat and dragged him off the United Express plane. Mr Dao never filed a lawsuit against United, but Mr Demetrio had said legal action was likely. Mr Dao was waiting to fly to Louisville, Kentucky, an April 9 when the airline decided it needed four seats for Republic Airline crew members who needed to travel to work another United Express flight in Louisville the next morning. When Mr Dao and his wife were selected for bumping, he refused to leave. Video of the incident has sparked more than two weeks of criticism and mockery of United. Mr Munoz initially blamed Mr Dao, but later said he was horrified by the event and called it a failure on United's part. On Thursday, United released a report on the incident that outlined new policies to prevent a repeat. The airline vowed to reduce, but not eliminate, overbooking - the selling of more tickets than there are seats on the plane. Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Demonstrators protest United Airlines at O'Hare International Airport on April 11, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Demonstrators protest United Airlines at O'Hare International Airport on April 11, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Demonstrators protest United Airlines at O'Hare International Airport on April 11, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.The protest was in response to airport police officers physically removing passenger Dr. David Dao from his seat and dragging him off the airplane. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Demonstrators protest United Airlines at O'Hare International Airport on April 11, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. AFP/Getty Images United will not say whether ticket sales have dropped, but the airline's chief executive acknowledged the incident could be damaging. "I breached public trust with this event and how we responded," Mr Munoz said. "People are upset, and I suspect that there are a lot of people potentially thinking of not flying us." To head off customer defections, United had already announced that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked flights, and will require airline crews travelling for work to check in sooner. Earlier on Thursday Southwest Airlines, which bumped the most passengers off its planes in 2016, announced plans to stop overbooking flights, citing the United incident as a catalyst. AP John F Kennedy kept a diary during his brief stint as a journalist in Europe A diary kept by a young John F Kennedy during his brief stint as a journalist after the Second World War in which he reflected on Hitler and the weakness of the United Nations has sold for more than 700,000 dollars (547,260). Boston-based RR Auction said the diary sold for 718,750 dollars, far exceeding the pre-sale estimate of 200,000 dollars (155,740). Joseph Alsop, a JFK collector from Beverly, outbid one other live and six telephone bidders in a packed house for the 61-page diary. Alsop, 71, plans to add it to his personal collection, auction officials said. The diary is mostly typed but includes 12 handwritten pages. It was written in 1945 when 28-year-old Kennedy was a correspondent for Hearst newspapers and travelled through a devastated Europe. Executive vice president Bobby Livingston said the auction was thrilling, with bidders from around the country vying for the personal observations of the man who had become president. "My expectations were exceeded, but I'm not surprised because it's such a significant and historic manuscript," Mr Livingston said. He said the diary's new owner is the nephew of brothers Joseph Alsop V and Stewart Alsop, two influential columnists during the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy gave the diary to Deirdre Henderson, a research assistant in his campaign office in the late 1950s who now lives in the Boston area. In the diary, Kennedy reflected on his time in a gutted Berlin and even saw Hitler's bunker, speculating that he was not killed. He wrote that Hitler "had in him the stuff of which legends are made." But Henderson said in an interview last month that should not be misinterpreted as sympathy for the German dictator. "He said that in reference to the mystery surrounding him and not the evil he represented," Henderson said. Kennedy expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the fledgling United Nations, questioning whether it "will prove effective in the sense of its elaborate mechanics being frequently employed or vitally decisive in deterring war or peace." Henderson said she put the diary up for sale so it can be properly preserved, and she's confident the winning bidder will respect her wish. She said she wanted the sale to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Kennedy's birth this year. "I'm more than pleased with the outcome," Henderson said. "I think it was the right price at the right time." Kennedy, the 35th US president, served from January 1961 until he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. AP It's not often that Sinn Fein loses a PR battle with the DUP, but yesterday, Michelle O'Neill lost game, set and match to Arlene Foster. On the same day that it became public that Mrs O'Neill would on Sunday be eulogising eight experienced IRA assassins killed by the SAS 30 years ago as they attempted to murder policemen in Loughgall, Mrs Foster rose above traditional DUP churlishness about the Irish language by visiting Our Lady's Grammar School in Newry and making a creditable stab at expressing her thanks with "Go raibh maith agat". In fairness to Mrs O'Neill, eulogising republican terrorists is part of her job description and she would have agreed to that before the Westminster election was called, but the timing was unfortunate. It was only two days ago that she expressed her disappointment "that parties which are opposed to Brexit and Tory cuts and which are pro equality have not been able to agree a progressive alliance to contest the Westminster election". If she'd any hope of persuading Alliance, the Greens and the SDLP to reconsider, she's blown it. None of those parties take a strong enough moral line about cooperating with apologists for murder. Indeed, some of their members seem to think that justification of terrorism is a lesser sin than being against gay marriage, but there are limits. Parties appealing for centrist support would have trouble on the doorstep explaining why they were in cahoots with the chief mourner for what Sinn Fein call the "Loughgall Martyrs". Mrs Foster infuriated many moderate nationalists during the Stormont election campaign by her tactlessness about the Irish language, but last week she had asked to meet non-political Irish language enthusiasts so she could "respect and better understand" the language and culture. Among the earliest to respond was Fiona McAlinden, principal of Our Lady's. "We are very proud of our Irish department, the achievements of our pupils and we thought we could showcase what we do," she told the BBC later. The school put on a drama and songs for Mrs Foster and young women told her what the language meant to them. Clearly, Mrs Foster was at her friendly best, telling the school that she was on "a journey" with the language and that people have nothing to fear from engaging with another culture. There was no mistaking the warmth between her and three teachers in the video of their goodbyes. She tweeted afterwards about the picture of two girls saying "Together we are strong" in both languages: "Beautiful gift from Our Lady's Grammar School, Newry which I visited today." "Thank you," tweeted the school, "to Mrs Arlene Foster for accepting our invitation to visit Our Lady's today. We were delighted with her." Meetings are being arranged with other Irish advocates, which pleases even people like me, who haven't spoken Irish for years but have an affection for it. It is a fine language, and - like my mother, who was bi-lingual - I've hated seeing it used as a political weapon. Sinn Fein will do their best to reclaim Irish as a weapon, but if Mrs Foster goes on learning, and Irish speakers keep helping her, who knows? Maybe other unionists can follow in the footsteps of Linda Ervine, Chris McGimpsey and many previous generations of Ulster Protestants and reclaim the language for everyone. Yesterday, Mrs Foster had the last word. "It is disappointing," she said, "that when I am trying to make this a shared place for everybody in Northern Ireland that other leaders are doing things that frankly are wrong and backward-looking." I don't envy the Sinn Fein scriptwriter who's been given the job of writing Mrs O'Neill's response. Graham Gudgin essentially argues the case (Comment, April 24) for the two Irelands, Northern and the Republic of, to be each an integral part of a larger political and economic union: either that of the European Union, or that of the United Kingdom, or both, as it is at present with Northern Ireland - being part of the UK, it is part of the European Union. But, if a choice has to come, he would argue for the UK, rather than the European Union. The assistance Northern Ireland receives from the Treasury to maintain its present level of welfare spending, it receives because its levels of personal taxation, or company taxation, are the same as other parts of the UK, even though Northern Ireland as a unit (and the same applies to similar parts of the UK, even parts of England) may actually return less to the Treasury than is spent on Northern Ireland by the Treasury. A similar system to this at present does not operate throughout the European Union (hence, for example, the present woes in Greece) and will not operate until the EU achieves the greater political union it has in mind. Whether the Republic of Ireland will be happy with a greater political integration with greater control from Brussels is an interesting point. On entering the EU, the Republic received large, one-off subventions to help it to build its infrastructure, which was woefully behind that of Northern Ireland. Having done that, it hit on the idea of raising money through low corporation taxation to encourage companies to locate their headquarters in Dublin. The outflow to the Republic seems to be of little concern to London, but not to Brussels, and steps are being taken not to prevent a state within the EU from setting its own corporate tax rate, but to make sure that it's a rate that applies only to economic activity within that country and not other EU countries. Surely, what should interest the Northern Ireland electorate, yet not sufficiently emphasised, although underlying Graham Gudgin's article, is that, in effect, no party - not even Sinn Fein - is standing on a ticket of a separatist Ireland. WA MILLER Belfast Indian soldiers arrive near the site of a gunfight at the Panzgam army base north of Srinagar, April 27, 2017. Suspected Pakistani militants stormed an army garrison in Indian Kashmir on Thursday and killed three soldiers after crossing the de facto border with Pakistan, Indian officials said. An Indian Army officer Capt. Ayush Yadav, 27 was among the soldiers killed in the pre-dawn suicide attack on the Panzgam army base in north Kashmirs Kupwara district, about 125 km (77.6 miles) from Srinagar, an army spokesman said. He identified the two other slain soldiers as Subedar Bhoop Singh and Naik B.V. Ramanna. Two as yet unidentified militants were killed in retaliatory action while a manhunt was on for a third attacker who fled the scene, defense spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia told BenarNews. The militants attacked the army base at about 4:30 a.m. Thursday. Our quick response team retaliated forcefully. They gunned down two militants following an exchange of fire that lasted over seven hours, Kalia said. Five soldiers were injured in the attack, he said. We have retrieved the bodies of two attackers, but have yet to ascertain their identities, he said, adding, A search operation has been launched to track down a third attacker who managed to escape from the shooting site. The attackers are believed to be Pakistani nationals and members of the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militant outfit, Kalia said. The Pakistan-based group, led by Masood Azhar, has been blamed for at least three recent strikes on Indian army installations near the Line of Control (LoC) that killed 32 soldiers since January 2016. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in its entirety. The two nations have fought three full-blown wars, largely over the ownership of the disputed Himalayan region since the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. India has on several occasions blamed Pakistan for supplying funds to militants in Kashmir, a charge its neighbor denies and blames the decades-old unrest in the Muslim-majority region on what it calls oppressive Indian rule. Indian Kashmir, or the state of Jammu and Kashmir, has been grappling with a separatist insurgency that has claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people a majority of them Kashmiri civilians since the late 1980s. Civilian killed Thursdays attack came amid growing unrest in the region, which has witnessed ongoing clashes between security forces and anti-India protesters since the killing of a separatist leader in July 2016. More than 100 people have been killed and more than 10,000 injured in the violence. Hours later, clashes erupted after anti-India protesters poured into the streets of Kupwara district demanding the bodies of the suspected militants for burial. One civilian identified as Mohammad Yusuf Bhat, 50 was killed when security forces opened fire to disperse the stone-hurling mob, police said. We had no option [but to open fire], the districts superintendent of police Shamsher Hussain told BenarNews. Many security personnel were injured in the violence, he added. Social media ban Meanwhile, anger among Kashmiris is brewing over a decision by the state government on Wednesday to block 22 social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and YouTube, for a month. The ban was necessary to ensure public safety as these sites were being misused by anti-national and anti-social elements to instigate people, the government said. It is being felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interest of peace and tranquillity in the state, the order said. The ban on social media is ridiculous and exposes the governments failure to govern the state. I am confused as to how banning social media will improve the situation on the ground. You cant subdue peoples anger by blocking websites, Shahid Ahmad, a Srinagar-based software engineer, told BenarNews. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based media rights group, also hit out at the decision, saying it will bring neither peace nor order in the region. Such broad censorship clearly violates the democratic ideals and human rights India purports to uphold, said Steven Butler, CPJs Asia Program coordinator. Police call out for militants inside a house in Shibganj, Chapainawabganj district to surrender before starting an operation code named Eagle Hunt, April 26, 2017. Bangladeshi police said they planned to resume a raid on a suspected militant den early Thursday in northwestern Chapai Nawabganj district, despite concerns that two children could be inside the one-story house. Officials said police came under gunfire and grenade attacks from inside the house as they encircled it Wednesday during an operation code-named Eagle Hunt. Acting on a tip, members of the polices counter terrorist special branch surrounded the house in the village of Shibganj-Trimohoni, about 316 km (196 miles) from the capital Dhaka. We have been conducting the operation based on specific information, Abdul Mannan, an additional deputy commissioner of the counter terrorism unit, told BenarNews. Bombs were hurled as soon as the police encircled the house at dawn Wednesday, he said. A militant, his wife and their two children could be inside the house, police and neighbors said. Special weapons and tactics (SWAT) members and the counter-terrorist unit began Eagle Hunt to free the children around 5 p.m. Wednesday but suspended actions about four hours later. We will not carry on the operation tonight. We will restart the operation at the light of dawn tomorrow, Proloy Kumar Joarder, a counter terrorism and transnational crimes unit officer told reporters shortly after the operation ended. His statement was aired live by some television stations. We think they are the members of the old faction of the Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh, he said, referring to a banned militant group also known as JMB. Joarder said police wanted to wait until daylight to resume the raid because of concerns about the children. Onlookers have been banned from gathering near the site over safety concerns. We could not believe that a militant den is here; [gun]fire is coming from this house, Abdul Alim, an elected member of the Mobarakpur union council, told BenarNews. Ours is a peaceful area. People are in panic over what could happen. In March, at least 30 people including 18 suspects, three law enforcers and five children, were killed in a series of bombings, grenade attacks and other violence as Bangladeshi security forces launched counter-terrorism raids nationwide. In one instance seven people three police and four others were killed when a pair of bombs exploded amid a crowd of onlookers as police conducted a raid on a militant den in Sylhet district. When a person gets arrested, a bail-bonding operation frees the suspect from jail by vouching for the defendant. The bond company pays bail to get the suspect out of jail until the next court date. Read moreCrackdown on shady bail bond activities 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. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern. neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke. Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten. Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen. Reposted from MWRO Blog Having family and friends in prison teaches you a lot about what things are like from "the inside." MWR... For Immediate Release, April 27, 2017 Contact: Aletris Neils, Executive Director, Conservation CATalyst, (602)717-2406 Chris Bugbee, Senior Scientist, Conservation CATalyst, (305) 498-9112 Enrique Aviles, Hiaki High School, (520) 272-2004 Randy Serraglio, Center for Biological Diversity, (520) 784-1504 Pascua Yaqui Students Name New Arizona Jaguar 'Yo'oko' TUCSON, Ariz. Students at Hiaki High School on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation today announced Yo'oko Nahsuareo as the new name for the wild jaguar recently photographed in the Huachuca Mountains of southern Arizona, 90 miles southeast of the reservation. The name translates to Jaguar Warrior. Yo'oko is the Yaqui word for jaguar, a nod to the big cat's revered place in cross-border indigenous cultures in the Southwest. Students at the school, which provides Yaqui cultural studies and language courses, cast votes for their favorite names over the past few weeks and received instruction on jaguar biology and natural history. We take great pride in our native heritage at Hiaki High. We are the Warriors. We're proud to have our language, our word for jaguar, be represented and attached to such an incredible cat, said Tatiana Martinez, a senior at Hiaki High. Yo'oko has family in Mexico, just like we do. Like the Yaqui people, jaguars live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a reminder that undivided communities of people and wildlife existed on this land for thousands of years before current political boundaries were established, said Aletris Neils, Conservation CATalyst's executive director. There are several places throughout the region that use indigenous words for jaguar in the place name. These cats have always been part of the Southwest. Their history is written on the land. Neils has been mentoring students at Hiaki High School since 2015. In the process of teaching Hiaki students about jaguars, I've also learned a great deal about the Yaqui connection with wildlife including Yo'oko, she said. It's vital that our youth become actively engaged and involved in conservation issues. We won more than 750,000 acres of critical habitat for jaguars in the United States in 2014, and these cats are definitely making a comeback here, said Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity. Yo'oko is another feline pioneer, like the famous jaguar El Jefe, who lived in the Santa Rita Mountains for several years. We want these kids to grow up in a world where El Jefe and Yo'oko are part of a larger breeding population of jaguars that includes the United States. If we protect the places where jaguars live, we can make that vision a reality. Yo'oko is the first jaguar officially verified in the Huachuca Mountains. The young male was photographed on the Fort Huachuca Army Base. He's the third jaguar detected in the state in the past year and a half. Throughout the jaguar's geographic range, they are revered as deities and symbols of strength and prowess. Becoming a jaguar warrior was an elite honor, said Chris Bugbee, Conservation CATalyst's jaguar biologist. What an appropriate place for the Jaguar Warrior to turn up. It's even possible that Yo'oko traveled into the Huachuca Mountains from Mexico using Yaqui Canyon. Jaguars face many threats throughout their range, particularly in Mexico. Originating from a breeding population south of the U.S.-Mexico border, they've begun re-establishing their historic range in the United States in recent decades. Yo'oko is a true warrior for making this treacherous journey. He brings us hope that by prioritizing jaguar conservation, we can rectify past mistakes and ensure that jaguars persevere as part of our natural heritage for the sake of future generations, said Neils. Background Jaguars are the third-largest cats in the world after tigers and lions. They once lived throughout the American Southwest, with historical records on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the mountains of Southern California and as far east as Louisiana. Jaguars virtually disappeared from this part of their range over the past 150 years, primarily due to habitat loss and historic government predator control programs intended to protect the livestock industry. Jaguars continue to move into Arizona from Mexico. El Jefe was photographed by trail cameras more than 100 times in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson between 2012 and 2015. A third jaguar was photographed in the Dos Cabezas Mountains in November 2016. Seven jaguars have been confirmed by photographs in the United States in the past 20 years. The Pascua Yaqui Tribe is a group of indigenous peoples that traditionally roamed throughout northern Mexico and the American Southwest. The Pascua Yaqui Reservation gained official recognition by the U.S. federal government in 1978 and is home to approximately 3,300 people. Their sacred Yaqui Deer Dance is a highly respected native ceremony that has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. Researchers at the University of Florida and several peer institutions have developed a model mapping the spread of Zika virus in the Americas and predicting that the virus arrived in Brazil in late 2013 or early 2014 before spreading throughout the region. The model also projects the number of microcephaly cases that will occur by the end of the year, with hundreds of cases in Mexico, Haiti and Colombia, and thousands of cases in Brazil due to Zika virus infection. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Bahia, a region of northeast Brazil, the epidemic model estimates 2.19 percent of Zika infections during the first trimester resulted in a child born with microcephaly. By applying this rate throughout the region, the model projects that by Dec. 10, 2017 nearly 3,000 children will have been born with microcephaly in Brazil as a result of Zika virus infection. For the period between Feb. 1, 2016 and Dec. 10, 2017, the model projects 728 microcephaly cases in Haiti, 723 cases in Mexico, 504 cases in Colombia and 43 cases in Puerto Rico. The strength of the model comes from how much information it is incorporating from different sources, said Natalie Dean, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and the UF College of Medicines department of biostatistics. Dean worked with Ira Longini, Ph.D., a professor of biostatistics in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and the UF College of Medicine, and Diana P. Rojas, M.D., a graduate student in the department of epidemiology in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and the UF College of Medicine, to examine the data. Longini collaborated with Elizabeth Halloran, D.Sc., from the University of Washington and Alessandro Vespignani, Ph.D., from Northeastern University to design this study. The epidemic model considers 12 cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Recife and Sao Paulo, to determine where Zika virus first arrived, projecting an estimated 90 percent likelihood that the virus was introduced to Brazil between August 2013 and April 2014. While it could have landed in any of these cities, Rio de Janeiro has a higher probability of being the city of introduction than any of the others considered. The researchers compared the modeling projections with phylogenetic data on Zika virus to determine that December 2013 was the most likely time of introduction. In addition to the most likely time and location of the Zika virus introduction to the Americas, the article discusses how the virus spread throughout South America and the Caribbean. We think air travel from Brazil to other countries in South America and the Caribbean caused the virus to spread throughout the region, Longini said. Rojas also suggested travel has played a role in spreading the disease. Zika was introduced to Brazil from ZIKV-endemic areas mostly from the Pacific Islands, she said. It spread into the Caribbean very quickly in islands infested by the mosquito vector. This could be due to tourism and the high mobility of people between these islands. Although the Zika virus can be spread between humans through sexual transmission, mosquitoes are thought to be the primary vector of human infection. Scientists consider Aedes aegypti the primary vector of the virus. Aedes albopictus is also a potential vector, covering a much larger geographical area than A. aegypti, although infectious disease experts know less about A. albopictus capacity to spread Zika. Zika virus is still circulating in Latin America, Rojas said. The large outbreaks are over in some of countries but there is still transmission of the virus in areas with presence of the mosquito vector, so people have to take precautions when traveling to any of these areas with transmission. She also emphasized that, in Florida, continued surveillance is necessary to detect future transmission within the state. 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 With all the technological advancements that it has to offer, it can actually make a big difference in the way surgeries are performed but researchers and doctors in India are still not completely sure about this Artificial limbs that can help people walk, artificial eyes that help blind people see! Who knew that original body parts can be replaced by artificial ones. Welcome to the new world of bionics. Traditional applications of bionics in healthcare, including artificial organs replacing, mimicking and even enhancing biological function when compared to native organic equivalents, is quite old. Recently there has been a new wave of bio-inspired treatments that act through the reorganisation of the existing biological organs in an individual to enhance physiology. According to Suresh Ramu, CEO Cytecare Hospital, Bionics, which is a combination of biology and electronic equipment, is gaining a rising demand in India, even though the technology is currently in its developing stages. Presently, many medical institutions prefer bionics over organ transplants or usage of traditional methods such as a wooden leg or a marble or glass eye. However, bionics still has a long way to go as it requires a more growth inductive environment for further development. Bionics Market Bionics, when extended to the field of medicine, seeks to replace or enhance organs or parts of the human body using artificial prosthesis. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.1 per cent from 2012 to 2017 to reach $17.82 billion by 2017, according to report by MarketsandMarkets. In another report by Mordor Intelligence, The Indian artificial organs and bionics market is expected to reach USD 2.15 billion by the end of 2019. The CAGR during this period of estimation is expected to be 11.65 per cent. Currently, the global market is dominated by North America, primarily due to higher per capita income and increased awareness among the population. Following North America are Europe and Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific market is filled with potential and is penetrated only to a certain extent. There is great scope for new entrants in the emerging markets of Asia and Latin America. Dr Deepak Joshi, Assistant Professor, Centre for Biomedical Engineering, IIT Delhi said, Unfortunately, the awareness about bionics in India is still below expectations. The main reason is the research and development in bionics at infancy stage. The awareness about artificial organs has to be done intensely to get full benefit of this technology. Further, start-ups in this emerging area of technology will strengthen the healthcare sector. Also, there is an urgent need of clinicians and engineers working together to make strong impact of this technology in India. The courses like biomedical engineering with a focus on bionics will help students to get ready for future in bionic research and artificial organs. Dr Narayan Pendse, Associate Vice President, Medical Strategy & Operations, Fortis Healthcare underlines the importance of high-end care institutions. Most of the publications too are only in scientific research journals and practically no information is available in the public domain. Many doctors feel that this is an evolving area of science and medicine and is still futuristic for a healthcare system like ours; it will take years for the technology to be more user friendly and affordable hence interest levels are low. Ironically, a population like ours will need bionics the most - aging population, high incidence of road traffic accidents, and high incidence of diabetes related morbidity like amputations and loss of vision. Hence, strong messaging on the importance of developing bionics is needed supplemented by detailed cost-benefit analysis. Market drivers Bionics market in India is hugely driven by some of the positive and negative factors that are playing a crucial role in its growth with one or more hindrances. Indias rapidly aging population, increased number of people suffering from organ failures, rising incidents of motors accidents and injuries leading to amputations, rapid technological advancements in the bionics sector and huge scarcity of donor organs for organ transplantations are directly or indirectly responsible for the growth of the bionics market. There are some factors limiting the growth of the market stringent regulatory framework for use of artificial organs and bionics and sometimes fear of malfunction or failure of device. Milestones Bionic Eye Bionic Eye help a blind person to see even the basics of light, movement and shape. Argus II is the first ever bionic eye which uses electrodes implanted in the eye, which could help people who've lost some of their retinal function. The recent development in the field have been bionic eye, which allows blind or heavily sight-impaired individuals to make out objects, see edges and detect light. This is a huge improvement for anyone in need of the technology, said Ramu Bionic ear It is a neural prosthesis designed to produce hearing sensations by electrically stimulating nerves inside the inner ear of deaf patients. It is surgically placed under the patients skin behind the ear and consist of stimulator. Here in India, Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed an cochlear implant that will boost the hearing capacity of the hearing impaired. This implant can create and convey sound to people severely hard of hearing due to loss of sensory hair cells in the cochlea. Unlike hearing aids that make sounds louder, cochlear implants bypass the damaged hair cells of the inner ear (cochlea) to provide sound signals to the brain. Prosthetic Limb A hand amputee can expect a replacement hand that replicates a whole host of normal hand functions and looks remarkably lifelike. Similarly, in case of amputated legs or other locomotors, amputee can now get a replacement that replicates a whole host of normal organ. Bionic Heart Worlds first bionic heart was developed by Australian researchers. It pumps blood without a pulse. India in Bionics: Status & Challenges In India, cochlear implants have been developed by a unit of DRDO. The imported cochlear implant generally costs about Rs 7 to Rs 10 lakhs. The indigenous bionic ear will be available for Rs 1 lakh. Scientists from institutes like Advanced Numerical Research and Analysis Group (Hyderabad), Andhra University, Visakhapatnam and Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL), Visakhapatnam, are working with DRDO on this project. This bionic ear is under clinical trials now. Also, Bionic eye or retinal implant has been co-invented by an Indian origin Scientist, Dr Rajat N Agrawal, an ophthalmologist and retina specialist/surgeon, University of Southern California, US. The device will enable to restore the sight of people who go blind due to conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. He is presently working in collaboration with All India Institute of Medical Sciences and several IITs to indigenously develop a cheaper variant of the eye implant so that people in India can afford it. The indigenously developed implant is expected to bring down the cost to Rs 5 lakh from its present cost of Rs 45 lakh. Indian bionics market is still lagging behind as compared to markets of other countries. Dr Neeta Raj Sharma, Associate Dean, LPU School of Biotechnology & Biosciences said, Beyond biology, engineering, and clinical challenges, bionics have to face the regulatory and policy considerations. Since clinical trials and regulatory strategies are well established for traditional drugs, the bionics and implanted biosensors need new paradigms to test its efficacy and safety to replace the existing technologies. Future of Bionics Bionics can be the next big thing in healthcare sector. With all the technological advancements that it has to offer, it can actually make a big difference in the way surgeries are performed but researchers and doctors in India are still not completely sure about this. While major challenges (overcoming host immune response, contact blood clotting, high costs, device failures and defects) are being overcome as newer versions are developed and the learning curve matures, it is still a distant dream for bionics to replace the traditional way of treating disease or surgery. The surgical profession by learning and training is wired to deal with natural tissues and adapting to artificial ones will not come easy. However, as software and hardware evolves further to venture into the biomechanical domain it is bound to profoundly impact the very concept of natural versus artificial and may completely alter the traditional approach towards disease and surgeries, said Dr Pendse There are certain limitations of the current technologies in bionics research in establishing the absolute integration between mind, body and machine. In most of the cases, bionics products do not replicate the complex fluid movements and also not capable to communicate directly with brain. At Lovely Professional University (LPU), we are trying to mix the knowledge of various domains together to overcome the possible hurdles in the desired research work. In my opinion, LPU bio-sciences and bio-technology schools are perfectly flourishing on these lines and multi-disciplinary researches one after the other, said Dr Sharma The next decade can be exciting for the field of Bionics. Just as biologists are discovering the structural and physiological mechanisms that underlie the functional properties of plants and animals, engineers are beginning to develop a fabrication tool kit that is sophisticated enough to capture their salient features. As the performance gap between biological structures and our mechanical analogs shortens, engineers may feel increasingly encouraged to seek and adopt design concepts from nature. Although the devices they construct may at first appear alien, their origins in the organic world can serve as an odd familiarity. Dr Kalpana Joshi shares her thoughts with BioSpectrum on current biotech education and the academia-industry gap Dr Kalpana Joshi is Professor and Head of the Department of Biotechnology at Sinhgad College of Engineering (SCOE). The institute is affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) and recognised by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi. Recently, SCOE has received NAAC "A" Grade. BTech Biotechnology course run by the department is first AICTE approved course in SPPU. Dr Joshi completed her doctorate in molecular biology from National Chemical Laboratory. She headed in-vitro biology group at Pharma R and D, besides giving consultancy to pharma companies like Glenmark, Matrix, Hyderabad and Orchids, Chennai. The SCOE department has a team of faculty with expertise in fermentation engineering, biochemical engineering, pharma biotechnology, biochemistry, analytical chemistry and microbiology. Faculty is active in fetching grants for research, patents and publications. Dr Joshi shares her thoughts with BioSpectrum on current biotech education and the academia-industry gap Do you think biotech schools are teaching what industry needs? Field of biotechnology is ever expanding and evolving. Pharma companies have diversified into production and business of biotherapeutics, vaccines and immunologicals, and molecular diagnostics. Industries such as agri-biotech, dairy biotech, food biotech are coming up and have specific requirement of skilled manpower. I feel giving hard core fundamental knowledge of the subjects and skill development are essential to meet industry requirement. Specific requirements of industry when it comes to biotech education? Industry requires experienced and trained manpower. There is no time for training in companies. I remember my former boss used to tell me Kalpana this is not university for training. Take someone who would work from the next day.' Biotech schools need to develop necessary laboratory skills and strong basics. Where is the gap according to you? As a manager in drug discovery R&D of top pharma company, I used to interview candidates from renowned biotech schools in India. Major observation was students lacked practical skills and basic knowledge of fundamental subjects like microbiology, immunology, molecular biology, biochemistry etc. We at SCOE decided to focus on developing strong knowledge and skills in three pillars of biotechnology namely microbiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology with blend of engineering fundamentals like mass transfer, heat transfer, unit operations, plant design and process development. We have created excellent facilities so that students get to handle top brand equipment like PCR, HPLC, Lyophiliser, fermenters, microfiltrations and develop practical skills in molecular biology, animal tissue culture and data analysis softwares. Gap is at many places. I can give examples. Students use graph papers to plot graphs. We need to train them to use Excel to analyse data and plot graphs using softwares like Prism and SPSS normally used by industries What do you do to bridge the skill gap if it exists? At Sinhgad Institutes, we have state-of-the-art laboratories where students are trained for developing practical skills in microbiology, enzymology, molecular biology, fermentations and reaction engineering. We also teach them computation and statistics. Students work on projects and develop skills in at least one technique such as PCR, HPLC or cell culture. They are trained to be analytical, logical and develop problem solving capacity. Students are encouraged to do industry internships and projects in collaboration with companies and national laboratories. What has been the investment in student training? We have invested in infrastructure, facilities, equipment and faculty. Faculty members are PhD/ MTechs from renowned institutes like NCL, IITs, ICTs with industry exposure. If faculty does not know what is happening in the industry then it is difficult to percolate it to students. We ensure that faculty gets exposure to industry and maintain interactions with industry experts The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued warning letters to 14 companies based out of U.S. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued warning letters to 14 companies based out of U.S., who are selling more than 65 products illegally making false claims to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure cancer. The products are promoted and sold most commonly on the company websites and social media platforms without the approval of FDA. Promoting or selling products claiming to diagnose, treat, prevent, alleviate, or cure the diseases without first demonstrating to FDA that they are safe and effective for their labeled use is a breach of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA has demanded the 14 companies to provide their answers for correcting the violation, while failing to do so may lead to legal action, seizing products, injunction, and/or criminal suit. In the past 10 years, more than 90 letters have been issued by FDA warning companies that market hundreds of fake products in their stores, websites, and on social media sites for cancer cure claims, as a part of FDAs efforts to safeguard consumers from frauds related to cancer health. Opinion | 04 November 2022 | Interviews India needs to connect OPD with the cashless insurance network to bring them into the digital economy After having raised $1.2 million from Entrepreneur First and GrowX Ventures in 2021, how do you see the perfor...Read more How to make every day World Design Day in SA World Design Day is all about exploring and enhancing natural creativity and planting small seeds on change in collectively designing a more human-friendly and inclusive society for all. Sune Stassen, festival director for the Open Design Festival, quotes Jerry Hirschberg, who stated: Creativity is not an escape from disciplined thinking, it is an escape with disciplined thinking. Sune Stassen, festival director for the Open Design Festival She elaborates that kids and adults alike learn best when they play and that the beauty of exposing kids to creative activities from a very young age is as vital as having access to clean drinking water. The key here is to not just deal with creativity as an extramural activity for the arty kids but to also use it as a powerful tool to create a conducive and accessible environment for learning across all learning areas, so that all children can benefit. She adds that creative activities and tools will not only enable all children to develop core life skills like people and communication skills, critical thinking, problem solving and holistic thinking but is also a vital building block to help children to develop to their full potential, in their personal and academic development. It helps them to grasp and simplify complicated things quicker and boost their innovative and entrepreneurial skills. It empowers them and gives them confidence to tackle future challenges no matter their career choice one day. Thats exactly where World Design Day fits in. It took place on 27 April 2017 and had a strong youth focus. GLOBAL World Design Day's youth focus 19 Apr 2017 I reconnected with Stassen on the importance of design education, on the importance of starting young with design thinking, what to expect from Open Design Cape Town this year and how you can take part in World Design Day. What makes an effective educational workshop? What makes an effective educational workshop? An equal fun, inviting and playful environment where every child feels safe and supported, which then gives them great confidence to explore, participate and be themselves. How does the local experience differ from the global workshops? How does the local experience differ from the global workshops? The environment and the use of materials might be different from place to place but in a supportive and fun environment, kids are kids no matter where they are. Because they are like sponges absorbing knowledge and information, its in their nature to explore and play together and that is usually no different in a local experience to anywhere else in the world. Images from Open Design CTs World Design Day 2017 event. It is also a great experience for the kids to see what other kids their age are doing in other parts of the world. Each of the five cities that are participating Seoul, South Korea; Milan, Italy; Montreal, Canada; Puerto Escondido, Mexico; and Cape Town, South Africa - will make a video and give their children the opportunity to wish the others happy world design day. Its going to be very exciting for them to know that there are kids in other parts of the world doing the same workshop and hopefully give them a sense of pride and belonging to be part of the bigger community and experience. How can individuals celebrate World Design Day, if they're not attending a workshop like this? How can individuals celebrate World Design Day, if they're not attending a workshop like this? World Design Day is also Freedom Day, and most people understand art to be about self-expression. The core of design is to improve the life standards of people. This realisation highlights the importance of it, especially once we understand the incredible value it can add to healthcare, transport, education, communication, in our communities and cities it's a necessity, not a luxury! Celebrating World Design Day is therefore very fitting for South Africans. Its not only about making but also about how we all think and do. Its about how we use our creative and innovative skills with a human-centric approach to bring about change and transformation in the way people think, behave, socialise, travel and communicate, so that we can collectively design a more human-friendly and inclusive society for all. Images from Open Design CTs World Design Day 2017 event. No matter if you decide to have your own creative party with friends to get your creative juices flowing or if you decide to explore a community that you have never visited before, or choose a few hours of this special day to educate yourself around social or environmental challenges and share with others, be sure to challenge your thinking and find ways to do things differently planting small seeds of change on this day and every other day is a very fitting way to celebrate World Design Day. Above all have fun! Talk us through Open Design Cape Town's offering in August this year. Talk us through Open Design Cape Town's offering in August this year. The Open Design Cape Town Festival will run from 14 to 25 August. This first week will be hosted at the festival hub, Cape Town City Hall from 14 to 20 August and the second week will kick-off the city activation programme from 21 to 25 August. Open Design is driving the Afrikan design innovation and education agendas with great commitment. We believe that innovation, education and community are the building blocks of a sustainable, inclusive, prosperous society. We know that design and innovation are the unifying threads that link the building blocks and solutions to help us to develop a better, more human-friendly and inclusive future world. This twelve-day festival brings these concepts together through more than 72 exciting events. One of our flagship events, the designing careers programme for high schools, takes place on 15 August and is always a hit. It brings together children from different communities to learn from iconic SA designers and to explore the many study options if they want to pursue a creative career. Adults will also be spoiled for choice. Pecha Kucha will again host their sell-out event at the magnificent auditorium, Cape Town City Hall on the eve of 15 August and check for tickets from end-April for the first international Steam Symposium in Africa on 14 August, for those concerned and passionate about the direction of education. Another flagship event, Talk100, will be hosted on weekday mornings, 16 and 18 August. Speakers will talk about the impact and added value of design and innovation in, for example, agriculture, transport and healthcare. Theres also Open Design Family Makers Day on 19 August; a film festival, Architectural Open Studios on 22 and 23 August; Dine with Khayelitsha on 25 August and many other events during the second week to look forward to. Keep an eye on the #WorldDesignDay hashtag and visit the Open Design website and their Twitter feed over the next few months to stay in the loop. Wi-Fi is no longer just a conduit to connect to the internet. If used properly, it is a connection to the world and all of the opportunities it holds. As the South African business IT landscape moves away from outdated 20th-century tech, an increased focus is placed on the internet of things (IoT). This focus demands insights that can be gathered from wired and wireless tech, including mobile, while facilitating the journey to the cloud. In the fast food and retail sector, in particular, any downtime means exponential losses, and customer insights are crucial to the continuous garnering of brand equity, and operational efficiency. Main pain points According to Brad Fraser, Infoprotect CEO, customers experience various pain points in their endeavour to capture and action these insights. The main pain points experienced include the balancing of opportunity with risk, the speed of innovation which drives faster refresh cycles, and the essential insights that must be gathered from the mobile generations experiences. As such, Infoprotect has partnered with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, to deliver an efficient full-stack solution. Networks are moving from legacy IT network requirements to a service delivery focus. In this modern age, cell phones and tablets are increasingly becoming the preferred network devices and these offer a wealth of data-driven opportunities, confirms Pieter Engelbrecht, business unit manager at HPE Aruba. Considering the synergy between our offerings, it was inevitable that we would partner to offer Wi-Fi-as-a-service to drive this tech shift. Brad Fraser Wi-Fi-as-a-service Wi-Fi-as-a-service includes guest Wi-Fi, which allows fast food and retail businesses to grow their databases, enrich visitor insights, and market to visitors in real time. This enables data capturing, progressive profiling, multi-venue configuration, configurable templates, content delivery and social login options. The powerful insights are captured and visualised within the intuitive, configurable cloud-based Skyfii Analytics and marketing solution, adds Fraser. The dashboards and reports generated are designed to empower data-driven decisions within both marketing and operations teams. Essential to network management, intelligent reporting delivers measurements such as foot traffic counts, keeping unique guest tallies and identifying peak visitor times. Geo-fencing technology defines areas of interest while heat mapping allows the tracking of visitors in real time. Enabling targeted marketing By understanding how customers spend their time engaging with a business, and how they utilise the Wi-Fi, targeted marketing strategies can be developed. Through the correlation of various data sources, strategies become driven by behavioural segmentation and proximity targeting, attributing marketing campaigns to real visitor behaviour and, ultimately, leading to greater success. It all begins with a good quality Guest WiFi experience, building a rich customer database and then through the use of behavioural data, marketing to customers in a real time, contextual and relevant fashion to drive loyalty and sales. Addressing business and IT challenges In addition, mobile-first networks are designed to address business and IT challenges. These platforms act as the intelligent software layer between network infrastructure components, third party IT services, and business and end-user facing applications, adds Engelbrecht. This, combined with a reliable and secure analytics and location engine, offers access to contextual data crucial to effective business intelligence. Together, the companies will be empowered to host, provide connectivity (WAN, LAN), offer business services and manage customers entire network from end-to-end- utilising a state of the art data centre and ensuring the utmost in data security and analytical insights. SAN FRANCISCO, US: Uber wants to launch a system of flying cars to move people around cities, with a goal of putting demonstration projects in place by 2020. The ridesharing giant announced a series of partnerships to manufacture "vertical takeoff and landing" (VTOL) vehicles and put networks in place, a system dubbed Uber Elevate. The partner cities working with Uber are Dubai and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolis in Texas. "The goal of these partnerships is to develop a new on-demand VTOL network to enable customers in the future to push a button and get a high-speed flight in and around cities," Uber said in a statement. The announcement came at a summit held in the Dallas area with partners in the project. 'Why can't I push a button and get a ride?' "What started as a simple question 'why can't I push a button and get a ride?' has turned, for Uber, into a passionate pursuit of the pinnacle of urban mobility - the reduction of congestion and pollution from transportation, giving people their time back, freeing up real estate dedicated to parking and providing access to mobility in all corners of a city," said Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden. "Urban aviation is a natural next step for Uber in this pursuit, which is why we are working to make push a button, get a flight a reality." Uber's goal is to have the first demonstration network in place in Dubai for the 2020 World Expo in that city, and another pilot in Dallas the same year ahead of "full-scale operations" in the Texas region by 2023. More ambitious than Kitty Hawk The announcement came a day after Silicon Valley "flying car" startup Kitty Hawk, reportedly backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, released a video of its airborne prototype and announced plans for deliveries of a "personal flying machine" this year. Uber's plans appear more ambitious and include partnerships with US-based Bell Helicopter, Brazilian manufacturer Embraer and Slovenia's Pipistrel to produce flying machines for short distance urban operations. "Uber's Elevate network is an exciting opportunity for Bell Helicopter to help transform how cities move people and products in the future," Bell president and chief executive Mitch Snyder said in a statement. Embraer CEO Paulo Cesar de Souza e Silva praised the "unique opportunity to complement the air transport knowledge of a visionary and revolutionary ground transport company." "Vertiports" The Uber plan also includes partnerships for "vertiports" for the flyers to take off and land, along with changing stations for the transporters, which are expected to be mainly electric-powered. Uber's agreement with Dubai Roads and Transport Authority calls for a joint study into pricing models, people movement and determining where routes should be created in the city. "The partnership will result in everything from hover and forward flight tests to actual flight operations in the Dubai area," according to a joint statement. Uber has grown into the world's largest venture-backed startup, with a valuation estimated at some $68 billion despite ongoing obstacles with regulators and taxi operators. Source: AFP The 2017 Maserati Quattroporte GranSport is set to be officially unveiled in May to the local South African market, but is already available for pre-orders, and comes in two trims, namely GranSport and GranLusso. At the recent Shanghai Auto Show, the company celebrated the milestone delivery of the 100,000th car produced at the Avv. Giovanni Agnelli Plant. "We are extremely proud of our 100,000th milestone, as it cements Maserati as an important player in the luxury sedan market, both globally and in South Africa. The new Quattroporte is the brands flagship vehicle, and has undergone restyling that accentuates its elegance and its signature Maserati personality, explains Brad Graaff, operations manager for European Automotive Imports - South Africa (EAI-SA), Maseratis official importer in South Africa. Increasingly enamoured customers He says that South Africans, as all global Maserati customers, are increasingly enamoured by the Italian brand of luxury. The milestone 2017 Maserati Quattroporte GranSport shown at the Shanghai Auto Show was built at the automakers Avv. Giovanni Agnelli Plant in Italy. Featuring a solid white exterior and an elegant shade of tan inside, this Quattroporte GranSport is fitted with 21" Titano rims and features eye-catching red brake callipers. 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 PR Newswire BRISBANE, Australia, April 26, 2017 BRISBANE, Australia, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Orocobre Limited (ORE:ASX, ORL:TSX) (Orocobre or the Company) is pleased to provide an update from its joint venture (JV) partner Advantage Lithium Corp. (TSXV:AAL) (Advantage Lithium) that Phase One drilling will commence early next week at its flagship lithium property, located in the Cauchari Salar of Jujuy province in NW Argentina. Phase one will be a five hole program and Phase two drilling is planned for later in 2017, comprising a further 12 holes and leading to a scoping study by early 2018. Advantage Lithium is increasing its interest in the project from the current 50% to 75% through the expenditure of US$5m or by completing a Feasibility Study. Orocobre holds the remaining interest. The Cauchari project lies approximately 20 kilometres south of Orocobre's producing Olaroz Lithium facility. Highlights Commenting on the update, Managing Director Richard Seville stated, "We are extremely pleased with this progress update from our JV partner Advantage Lithium and their commitment to fast-tracking exploration and development works at Cauchari." Please see the attached release from Advantage Lithium for further details. For more information please contact: Richard Seville Andrew Barber Managing Director Investor Relations Manager T: +61 7 3871 3985 T: +61 7 3871 3985 M:+61 419 916 338 M: +61 418 783 701 E: [email protected] E: [email protected] Notes: About Orocobre Limited Orocobre Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange (ASX:ORE) (TSX:ORL), and is building a substantial Argentinian-based industrial chemicals and minerals company through the construction and operation of its portfolio of lithium, potash and boron projects and facilities in the Puna region of northern Argentina. The Company has built, in partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation and JEMSE, the first large-scale, greenfield brine based lithium project in approximately 20 years at the Salar de Olaroz with planned production of 17,500 tonnes per annum of low-cost lithium carbonate. The Olaroz Lithium Facility has a low environmental footprint because of the following aspects of the process: The Company continues to follow the community and shared value policy to successfully work with suppliers and the employment bureau to focus on the hiring of local people from the communities of Olaroz, Huancar, Puesto Sey, Pastos Chicos, Catua, Susques, Jama, El Toro, Coranzuli, San Juan and Abrapampa. The project implementation is through EPCM (Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management) with a high proportion of local involvement through construction and supply contracts and local employment. The community and shared value policy continues to be a key success factor, training local people under the supervision of high quality experienced professionals. The Company also wholly-owns Borax Argentina, an important regional borate producer. For further information, please visit www.orocobre.com Competent Person's and Qualified Person's Statement The technical information in this announcement has been prepared by Murray Brooker of Hydrominex Geoscience. Murray Brooker is a geologist and hydrogeologist and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. Murray has sufficient relevant experience to qualify as a competent person as defined in the 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. He is also a "Qualified Person" as defined by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101. Murray Brooker consents to the inclusion in this announcement of this information in the form and context in which it appears. Additional information relating to the Company's Cauchari project is available in the existing technical report entitled "Technical Report Cauchari Project, Argentina" dated April 30, 2010, which was prepared by John Houston. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information This report contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information contained in this report may include, but is not limited to, the estimation and realization of resources at the Cauchari project, the viability, recoverability and processing of such resources, potential operating synergies between the Cauchari project and the Olaroz project, and other matters related to the development of the Cauchari project. Such forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to the risk that further funding may be required, but unavailable, for the ongoing development of the Company's projects; changes in government regulations, policies or legislation; fluctuations or decreases in commodity prices; the possibility that required permits may not be obtained; uncertainty in the estimation or economic viability of mineral resources; general risks associated with the feasibility and development of the Cauchari project; unexpected capital or operating cost increases; uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones; as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended June 30, 2016 filed at www.sedar.com. The Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking information are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the Company's ability to carry on its exploration and development activities, the timely receipt of required approvals, the prices of lithium and potash, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all factors and assumptions which may have been used. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP. #1305 - 1090 West Georgia Street Vancouver, BC V6E 3V7 Tel: 604.343.3760 Fax: 604-683-1585 www.AdvantageLithium.comTSX Venture Exchange Symbol: AAL Advantage Lithium Mobilizes Rig for Phase 1 Drilling at Cauchari, Argentina Drilling represents first step in systematic, fast-track exploration and development program Vancouver, British Columbia, April 26, 2017 Advantage Lithium Corp. (the "Company" or "Advantage Lithium") (TSXV: AAL; OTCQX: AVLIF) is pleased to announce that a drill rig will be mobilized later this week to its flagship lithium property located in the Cauchari Salar of Jujuy province in NW Argentina. The first hole of a five-hole, Phase One program is expected to be collared early next week. This marks the Company's first step in a systematic, fast-track exploration and development work program. Phase Two drilling is planned for later in 2017 and will comprise a further twelve holes leading to a scoping study by early 2018. Advantage Lithium is increasing its interest in the project from the current 50% to 75% through the expenditure of US$5m or completing a Feasibility Study. Orocobre (ASX:ORE; TSX:ORL) holds the remaining interest. Cauchari News Highlights David Sidoo, CEO of Advantage Lithium, commented, "In line with our aggressive development timeline, we are commencing work at our flagship Argentina project of Cauchari, just weeks after completing the transaction with our partner, Orocobre. We will be focusing on expanding the existing resource at the project where a large exploration target has been projected. We have engaged Andina Perforaciones, one of Argentina's leading drilling contractors, to undertake the initial phase of what will ultimately be a 17 hole program." Cauchari Project Information Program Details The initial, Phase 1 drill program scheduled to start next week consists of five rotary drill holes targeting the north-west (NW) and south-east (SE) blocks of the property with a surface area of ~5,500 hectares These will be deep holes to approximately 400m below the salar surface, with the objective of (1) probing for extensions laterally and to depth below the existing inferred mineral resource in the SE sector and (2) opening a new front in the NW sector which the company believes to be prospective for extensions of lithium-bearing brine below the Archibarca alluvial fan. Later in 2017, a complementary 12-hole diamond drill (DDH) program will be initiated to provide core for aquifer parameter tests and to also install monitoring holes for pump tests on the primary rotary holes. Additional rotary and/or diamond drill holes will be added as justified by initial results as we proceed towards engineering studies. Specialized packer instrumentation will be used to collect brine samples for analysis under strict QA/QC protocols monitored by a Qualified Person as required by NI43-101 guidelines. In-hole geophysical profiling and geological logging will provide the basis for determining the most promising aquifer zones for packer tests. Considerable technical and operating skill is required to successfully complete exploration and brine pumping wells in the unconsolidated sedimentary sequences of the salars and to do so at 4,000m above sea level in a rigorous climatic region with sub-zero winter temperatures. The company is therefore most pleased to have signed a contract and to be working with Andina Perforaciones who have multiple years of practical experience in Cauchari and other salars of NW Argentina. Together with the Company's technical staff and supporting community relations team, the company expects to complete the Phase 1 work program by year-end 2017. (1) An exploration target is not a mineral resource. The potential quantity and grade of the exploration target is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource in the volume where the Exploration Target is outlined. It is uncertain if further exploration drilling will result in the determination of a Mineral Resource in this volume. The technical information in this news release has reviewed and approved on behalf of the company by Murray Brooker, MAIG, RPGEO, a "Qualified Person" as defined in NI 43-101. About Advantage Lithium Corp. Advantage Lithium Corp. is a resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of lithium properties and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The common shares of the company are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V:AAL), and the company is also traded on the OTCQX Best Market in the U.S. (OTCQX: AVLIF). The company has acquired a 100% interest in five projects in Argentina and up to a 75% interest in a sixth, called Cauchari. Cauchari is located just 20 km south of Orocobre's flagship Olaroz Lithium Facility. The Company is also earning an interest from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corp., in a portfolio of five lithium brine projects in the Clayton and Lida Valley regions of Nevada, USA, including 70% in Clayton NE. Further information about the Company can be found at www.advantagelithium.com. ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP. Per: "David Sidoo" David Sidoo, President Tel: 604.343.3760 | Fax: 604.683.1585 Email: [email protected] Cautionary Statement: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "is expected","intends", or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Advantage that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation. 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. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/orocobreadvantage-lithium-to-commence-drilling-at-cauchari-300446841.html SOURCE Orocobre Limited The state has applied for a stay of execution in the case in which Francistown High Court Judge Barnabas Nyamadzabo instructed government to compensate Zone 6 farmers whose beasts were slaughtered during the 2011 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak, accordingly. Government had initially proposed to compensate the farmers P1700 per beast. The farmers bone of contention was that government killed their uninfected beasts. Most of them were commercial farmers who spent thousands of Pulas in improving their breeds; therefore the P1700 per beast compensation offered by government was regarded inadequate. Instead, the disgruntled farmers who lost about 1800 cattle demanded P9, 294 million for their cattle. Some farmers claimed that they reared beasts which valued at P80 000 each. The government had intended to give farmers around P3.6 million as opposed to P14 million of the market price of the slaughtered cattle. The state believes it has prospects of success in the appeal. It says the judgment should not be processed as they feel that they might resolve issues with the farmers. The registrar shall not proceed with the matter in quantification of adequate compensation as per the Order of 03 March 2017, until the outcome of the appeal, reads the application. The state further contends it has the right to appeal the interlocutory judgment which was delivered on that fateful date. In his verdict, Nyamadzabo had said that the Director of the Veterinary Services decision to order the slaughter of the farmers cattle during the FMD outbreak around June 2011 be set aside as it was unreasonable. He also said the decision was unfair having regard to the status of the farmers cattle at the time.The amount of P1700.00 determined by the Minister at the time proposed or paid as compensation for each beast of the farmers slaughtered at the time be set aside in favour of a reasonably negotiated amount or one assessed by the Registrar and Master. The applicants be and are entitled to costs (as taxed or agreed), ruled Nyamadzabo at the time. Justice Nyamadzabo had further said that the respondents actions to slaughter uninfected and vaccinated cattle, was contended that they ought not to have exterminated in light of the respondents communication and extensive efforts made to conduct at least two vaccination phases on those uninfected cattle. He said that normally, when a large number of cattle is found infected in a given Zone the whole Zone is declared infected for purposes of making it easier for the Department of Veterinary Services to limit and fight the spread in a smaller area such as a Zone rather that the whole country. By declaring a Zone infected cannot reasonably be taken to mean that each and every cloven hooved animal found in that Zone is infected. Considering that outbreak occurred in one corner of this relatively large area as Zone 6 and efforts seem to have taken reasonably quickly to contain the spread, it seems not farfetched that cattle from other parts of the Zone which would not have come into contact with the infected cattle would have remained uninfected, he said. He continued that in this circumstance, he finds merit in the farmers contention that their cattle had remained uninfected during the outbreak especially that the Department of Veterinary Services has not availed specific documentary evidence showing that every beast belonging to the concerned farmers was infected. Nyamdzabo added that the Director of Veterinary Services is the absolute authority responsible for the prevention and control of diseases of animals in the country and matters incidental thereof. The Director at the time was quite alive to these responsibilities, he added. Nyamadzabo further added that it was suggested by the farmers attorney that the Office of the President (OP), in particular His Excellency the President usurped the powers of the Director when the Presidential Directive was issued. However he said that in the Directors answering affidavit as well as the memorandum which outlines proposal of the Ministry of Agriculture to the Office of the President are clear that the decision to exterminate cattle in Zone 6 did not originate from OP. As it is the Presidential Directive simply approved measures already taken by the Director and his Ministry on strategies deemed appropriate to eradicate the disease, he explained. In their earlier arguments, counsels for the farmers, Duma Boko and Mirriro Furusa said that P1700 is inadequate to compensate the farmers. Boko said at the time that farmers have invested a lot but the government offers to give them peanuts in return. He said by killing farmers cattle government has affected many peoples source of living as they depended on their livestock for their livelihood. He told the court that Presidential directive is not the law and that the government must respect the constitution. There is no provision in the Diseases Animal Act that directs the President and the Minister of Agriculture to direct the slaughter of the infected cattle, Boko said. He said that those powers are only reserved for the Director of Veterinary Services according to the Constitution. Furusa said that the cattle were not infected but they were in an infected area. The Director is within his rights to declare an area infected. However his powers do not end there, he must go further and scientifically prove that animals are infected, he said. In addition he said that just because an area is declared FMD does not mean all cattle in that particular area are infected. In response, Ndiye Balule of the Attorney General argued that Section 5 of Diseases Animals Act states that any animal within an infected area should be isolated, slaughtered for purposes of disease control. He said that if the animal is in that locality it will be exposed to the virus. Balule opposed Bokos insinuation that President Ian Khama is the one who ordered the slaughter of the cattle. The Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) Publicity Secretary Tshepo Makhani has told Northern Extra that his party was never allocated any four constituencies under the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) pact. He said anything purporting that was devoid of truth and misleading party members. However, the agreement made public following the launch of the new UDC, which includes Botswana Congress Party, clearly spelt out the number of constituencies for all contracting partners.Botswana National Front had the lions share at 22 followed by BCP at 17 and 14 for Botswana Movement for Democracy while BPP was allocated four (4) constituencies, these being Tati East, Tati West and two other constituencies in Serowe. Makhani however, dismisses such records as false and intended to confuse BPP members. We still maintain that BPP was never officially allocated any constituency as we are yet to be officially given those constituencies we are supposed to contest for in the 2019 general election. All this talk of BPP having been allocated four constituencies is simply rumours we hear from the grapevine. Our party president has long dismissed such talks as hogwash and baseless. When the party is officially allocated constituencies, we will duly inform our membership accordingly, Makhani said. Efforts to get a comment from UDC mouthpiece Moeti Mohwasa hit a snag at press time as his mobile phone rang unanswered. However, Dr Kesitegile Gobotswang who was the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) negotiating team leader was not prepared to discuss BPP issue in the media. I dont want to discuss the BPP issue currently as it is an internal issue which is going to be resolved internally by the UDC at the most appropriate time, Gobotswang said. A political commentator, Ndulamo Antony Morima said that the current stance by BPP clearly shows that the problems at UDC are far from over. Morima, said that the coalition should by now be preparing for the next general election instead of squabbling over constituency allocations.Under such circumstances, there is a likelihood of vote splitting among the coalition partners if this is not addressed as a matter of urgency by the umbrella. If BPP is grumbling over constituencies, there is that likelihood for their members to sabotage any nominated UDC candidate in their area. Apart from vote splitting, there is also the likelihood of infightings during the primary elections of the UDC over constituency allocations which might not favour some, Morima said. He said the action by BPP should not be taken lightly looking at the fact that its President Motlatsi Molapisi holds the chairmanship of the UDC. On Friday evening, the media and some recognisable faces from the fashion industry were hosted to a cocktail launch event at the recently opened MADISON- The Heart of New York store. The store, located at the new Game City shopping complex wing, is a welcome development that promises to add diversity to the already growing retail market in the city. MADISON, which is famous for being bold and not afraid to create breathtaking pieces in all colours under the rainbow, is renowned for its stylish and trending shoe styles. Narrating their journey during the event, the man behind the Gaborone store, Calvin Nthekeng explained that he and his wife, Rita started their company UNIQUE BUILDERS Pty (LTD) in 2008, a year after they met. He said that the intention was to use the company to construct their house in Block 8. They managed to build the house, but it was not until 2011, after he quit a highly paying job that they embarked on running a family business, something that was not an easy feat in the beginning. One of their projects is CROCS, which is located at Riverwalk. He noted that with the addition of Madison, they also look forward to expanding their business to other locations in the city such as Rail Park, Airport Junction and CBD as soon as they get spaces. We intend to expand the product offering to include mens range, bags and accessories in the second half of 2017, he said. Nthekeng noted that customers would find a pair of shoes for any occasion, whether a bridal party, date or wedding, at MADISON. Or maybe you are just looking for an everyday 8 to 5 shoe. Ladies we have it all here for you, he said. He further explained that MADISON is an International Franchise store that is opening for the first time here in Botswana and at Game City. We are a fashion brand that is not shy to offer our customers Stylish and colourful shoes that are ahead of the pack Former leader of Cuba, Fidel Castros life is celebrated through a photographic exhibition currently on show at the National Museum. Castro, who made his spiritual transition last year, was revered for his political leadership, resilience and ability to connect with people from all walks of life. Despite his acclaim, Castro was also an enigma of sorts, and perceived differently. While he was touted as a hero by many, he was also brandished a horrid dictator in certain quarters. This exhibition brings the curious closer to learning more about this fascinating political icon. Ambassador of Cuba to Botswana, Patricia Pego Guerro noted that the exhibition is aimed at not only preserving the countrys history but also sharing it with Botswana. Botswana and Cuba share a history that spans 39 years and it was fitting for us to share the fascinating story of Castro through pictures that tell a story about his life. The good thing about art displays is that individuals can interpret the work in their own way. The exhibition features images in black and white spanning over three decades. One picture that piques interest is of Castro with former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Castro was one of the first leaders Mandela visited after his release from prison in the early 90s. Castro was a simple man as evidenced in the pictures where he mostly wears his trademark outfit, a kaki military overall with cap and boots. From the pictures, one gets the sense that Castro was a peoples person and had legions of fans that believed in him and his ideologies. Brief Bio Fidel Castro, who was born in 1926 near Biran, Cuba orchestrated the Cuban Revolution and was the head of Cubas government until 2008. Beginning in 1958, Castro and his forces began a campaign of guerrilla warfare, which led to the overthrow of former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista. As the countrys new leader, Castro implemented communist domestic policies and initiated military and economic relations with the Soviet Union that led to strained relations with the United States that culminated in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Under Castro, improvements were made to health care and education. Castro was also responsible for fomenting communist revolutions in countries around the world. However, the 1991 collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its negative impact on Cubas economy led Castro to relax some restrictions over time. Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016 at the age of 90. The exhibition runs until the end of May. The National Museum operates Monday to Friday from 8am until 4pm. *Additional information: www.biography-people Site traffic information and cookies We use cookies to collect and analyse information on our site's performance and to enable the site to function. Cookies also allow us and our partners to show you relevant ads when you visit our site and other 3rd party websites, including social networks.You can choose to allow all cookies by clicking Allow allor manage them individually by clicking Manage cookie preferences, where you will also find more information. NEW DELHI (PTI): Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat is embarking on a three-day visit to Bhutan on Thursday during which he is set to discuss ways to strengthen defence and security ties between the two countries. Rawat will hold talks with the top brass of the Bhutanese defence forces. He will also call on Bhutanese King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk. The aim of the visit is to deepen defence ties between the armed forces of the two neighbours, army sources said. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley meeting Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu along with respective delegates from India and Russia on the sidelines of the 6th Moscow Conference on International Security, in Moscow on April 26, 2017. A PIB photo MOSCOW (PTI): Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu have discussed ways to expedite supply of military platforms by Russia to India as well as joint development of defence systems. A range of other issues relating to defence cooperation between the two countries also figured in the meeting held in Moscow on Wednesday. Jaitley, who is in Moscow to attend an international security conference, called the talks "very fruitful". "We have future plans to set up manufacturing units in India and these are subjects of discussion which came up in my bilateral meeting with the Defence Minister and I am sure with the level of engagement we have, this relationship will continue to grow," Jaitley told the media. Russia has been India's largest supplier of military systems and a number of co-development projects were being finalised by both the countries. Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given the go ahead for setting up an Indo-Russian joint venture for production of 200 Kamov military helicopters for India under a US$ 1 billion deal. The issue is understood to have figured in the meeting between Jaitley and Shoigu. Later this year, Indian and Russian armed forces will hold the INDRA tri-services joint military exercises in Russia. "This would be a historic occasion as it will be the first time that India and Russia are taking part in joint exercises in such a format with each other or with any other country," said Jaitley while addressing the security conference. Jaitley said India and Russia have taken steps to further strengthen the engagement between armed forces of the two countries. "We will shortly negotiate a new armed forces training agreement," he said. He said the Indo-Russia relationship goes far beyond just the ties between the governments. "Russia has been a true and trusted friend of India, which is regarded so by the people of India and there has been a much greater cooperation at the level of defence. "It is a cooperation which extends to Joint Military exercises, training cooperation and also with regard to supply of equipment which India purchases from Russia," Jaitley said. Jaitley also met Brazilian Defence Minister Paul Belens Jungman Pinto and discussed issues relating to defence and security cooperation between the two countries. The Dutch hub handled a record 420,168 metric tons during the first quarter of 2017 with the Asia and Europe markets experiencing the most growth. Amsterdams Schiphol Airport handled a record 420,168 metric tons of cargo during the first quarter of 2017, an increase of 8 percent year-over-year, the airport said. In March alone, the airport handled 154,000 metric tons of cargo, a year-over-year increase of 9.5 percent, thanks to 7.2 percent growth in full freighter volumes and 13.2 percent growth in belly volumes. Asia is still the largest market for the Dutch hub, with Shanghai remaining as the busiest cargo destination. During the quarter, Asia inbound freight totaled 70,648 metric tons, while Asia outbound freight stood at 74,332 metric tons, up 4 percent and 12 percent year-over-year, respectively. We are very pleased that our commitment to enhancing the experience of our pharmaceutical, e-Commerce, and perishables customers, and our continued commitment to quality and transparency in the supply chain is leading to further growth, especially in the Asia and Europe markets, said Jonas van Stekelenburg, Head of Cargo, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Our pharma initiatives have led to boosted pharma volumes both inbound and outbound to the USA, South America and Asia, and we will continue to work with the Schiphol Cargo Community to develop this further. Irish businesses are being reassured over a new tax plan launched this week by US President Donald Trump. The US has pledged to reduce its corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%, as part of a bid to encourage American companies to keep their operations at home. After Kim Kardashian was held at gunpoint at her Paris hotel room in October of last year, she has somewhat shied away from the public eye. Today, more than six months after the incident, she made her debut TV appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The 36-year-old opened up to the host about how she believes it was meant to happen to her and how it has changed her as a person. She then broke down as she told Ellen that the robbers had been following her one social media for two years as there she flaunted her expensive diamonds. I know it sounds crazy, but I know that was meant to happen to me, the reality star said. Im such a different person.I really feel like things happen in your life to teach you things. I was definitely materialistic and I just dont care about that stuff anymore. Im not here to show off the way that I used to. The eldest of the Kardashian Krew also opened up about family life with her husband Kanye and their two children, North-West and Saint. The family of murdered schoolgirl Arlene Arkinson are being forced to endure "exquisite cruelty" because of delays to her inquest, a coroner's court has heard today.. Frustrations at the slow pace of progress were aired by the Arkinson family lawyer during a preliminary hearing at Laganside Court in Belfast The case, which opened last year, has been effectively stalled over a wrangle to obtain information from legal authorities in the Republic of Ireland. Barrister Ivor McAteer said correspondence with the Chief State Solicitor's Office in Dublin had been continuing for months. He said: "The actions thus far, for the family, amount to exquisite cruelty. "All the right noises have been coming for over a year now but we are still in the same position." Documentation in four key areas is being sought for the inquest. The material includes papers on the lines of inquiry pursued by An Garda Siochana, searches carried out south of the border, and a purported meeting between Garda officers and convicted paedophile Robert Howard's former girlfriend Patricia Quinn and her daughter Donna Quinn in Letterkenney, Co Donegal. Gardai officers may also be asked to give oral evidence. Judge Brian Sherrard, who is presiding over the case, said he was reluctant to conclude until all avenues had been "bottomed out". "The family are uppermost in my mind," Judge Sherrard said. "Nevertheless this inquest will amount to a new opportunity for our community as well as the family to gain a full understanding of what took place in relation to Arlene's disappearance and death. "We still have a way to go before I would be in a position to confidently close this matter. "The relationship with An Garda Siochana extends across a whole range of cases. For that reason I would be reluctant to abandon the route that we are on at the moment." Arlene, 15, from Castlederg, Co Tyrone, vanished after a night out across the border in Co Donegal in August 1994. She was last seen being driven down a country road by Howard. Despite extensive searches, including a fresh dig in Tyrone last year, her body has never been found. The Arkinson family, who have closely followed proceedings, were not in court for the brief hearing. Their barrister said they were struggling to comprehend the hold-ups. Mr McAteer added: "They are aware that there is a rightful reluctance to draw this to a conclusion pending the bottoming out of this particular matter. "But, it's difficult to comprehend what's going on." Howard was acquitted of Arlene's murder in 2005 by a jury that was not told of his lengthy criminal past, which included the murder of a south London teenager several years earlier. He remained the prime suspect until his death in prison in 2015. Judge Sherrard said he hoped substantive progress would be made ahead of the next preliminary hearing scheduled for May. Former Taoiseach and EU ambassador John Bruton has launched a blistering broadside on British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Mr Bruton said Johnson had "criminally misled" the UK over the consequences of leaving the EU, before rowing back and tempering his remarks. "Boris Johnson attempted to simplify the Brexit issue by saying we can have our cake and eat it," he told a parliamentary committee in Dublin. "It was a memorable phrase and it was criminally wrong. "It criminally misled - I shouldnt say criminally, it is not criminally - but it irresponsibly misled the people of Britain." The ex-Taoiseach, who was EU ambassador to the US between 2004 and 2009, said the UK was thrust into a predicament because it did not try to understand the complexities involved. Mr Bruton said smaller countries like Ireland were forced to get to grips with how the EU operates for their own interests. "The UK felt until now that they dont have to understand the EU, that they would make a decision to leave and that the consequences were going to be light," he told senators on a special Brexit committee. "I think they are going to find that the consequences will not be light - and that is the consequences they are paying for this search for too much simplicity." Mr Bruton also suggested the UK might yet change its mind on leaving the EU, once it fully realises the alternative. "While I believe it may seem impossibly optimistic today, I believe conditions can be envisaged in which, eventually, the UK voters might either decide, either not to leave the EU at all, or to decide, after it has left, to rejoin," he said. Mr Bruton said Ireland should work "to keep that possibility alive". Bruton says Ireland should keep alive the possibility of the UK not leaving the EU or of it rejoining after it leaves pic.twitter.com/cKg7TQaH9K RTE News (@rtenews) April 27, 2017 The current hard Brexit proposed by Theresa May would do incalculable damage to Ireland "politically, emotionally and economically", he warned. "We cannot simply wait for this to happen," he added. "While seeking to mitigate the effects of Mrs Mays chosen hard Brexit, we must also do everything we can to ensure either that, at the end of the day, there is no Brexit." Former Tanaiste and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has said that it was her absolute conviction that protest in Ireland is a sacred right, but said it was also her conviction that it should be peaceful protest. Deputy Burton was testifying at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today in the trial of Solidarity TD Paul Murphy and six others for falsely imprisoning Ms Burton and her adviser Karen OConnell at a protest in Jobstown. Ms Burton, please dont make a speech now, responded Raymond Comyn SC, counsel for Cllr Michael Murphy. Ms Burton said she was aware that a lot of people disagreed with her political views and that she had no problem with that. She said her grandfather had been involved in the 1913 Lockout in Dublin on the side of the strikers who had been left destitute by their employers. Paul Murphy (34), together with South Dublin Councillors Kieran Mahon (39) and Michael Murphy (53) and four other men, are charged with falsely imprisoning Ms Burton and her adviser Karen OConnell by restricting their personal liberty without their consent at Fortunestown Road, Jobstown, Tallaght. Paul Murphy of Kingswood Heights, Tallaght; Kieran Mahon of Bolbrook Grove, Tallaght; Michael Murphy of Whitechurch Way, Ballyboden, Dublin; Frank Donaghy (71) of Alpine Rise, Tallaght; Ken Purcell (50) of Kiltalown Green; Michael Banks (46) of Brookview Green, Tallaght and Scott Masterson (34) of Carrigmore Drive, Tallaght have all denied the charges. Ms Burton said she had been invited to speak at the graduation ceremony, which she said was particularly special as An Cosan provided a second-chance education for people who may have had their schooling disrupted. She said she felt the protesters were spoiling not only a special day for the graduates, but also a mark of success for the community. Im not from any well-off situation; I was the first person from my community to go to college, Deputy Burton told Kerida Naidoo SC, defending Councillor Kieran Mahon. Mr Naidoo accused Ms Burton of giving evasive answers and of making a long, self-serving political speech. Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, intervened to say that if Mr Naidoo didnt want political answers he shouldnt ask political questions. When Mr Naidoo asked her if she had been aware that many people in Tallaght were very angry about the austerity policies that had been implemented by the government in recent years, Ms Burton replied that she knew that some people were angry. I dont think Tallaght was particularly different to the rest of the country, said Ms Burton, adding that quite a few of her friends, relatives and colleagues lived in Tallaght. Ms Burton was also asked whether she had told her adviser that she should go on social media and say that it was shameful that young children were there and no-one was minding them. She replied that doing anything on social media was the last thing on her mind, and that she was having a conversation with Ms OConnell to try and keep her calm. Mr Guerin put it to her that the debate around the introduction of water charges had become a lightening rod issue through which people expressed their dissatisfaction with the austerity programme of her government. She replied: Some people did. There were a lot of people who had very strong opinions on other issues. She said she was aware of the significant demonstrations about the issue and was absolutely interested in it. I formed the view that it would be possible to have a change in the charges programme that would allow for clean water and a national investment programme at a cost that would be strictly capped. Mr Guerin put it to her that by November 2014 her government had imposed significant reductions to the income of the working poor. The former Minister denied this. She said there were some reductions which were very painful but said there were no significant reductions. As Minister I faced one of the worst crises in the history of the country, adding that during her tenure rates of unemployment fell to significantly less than half what they were when she took office. The horrific level of unemployment began to fall, she said. Earlier today, Deputy Burton struggled to contain her emotion as she told the trial about the moment herself and her advisor were instructed to move from a garda car to a waiting jeep in the midst of an angry crowd. I was quite frankly terrified, she told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, describing the crowd surging around her as very, very wild, and enraged. They were wishing all kinds of stuff on me, illness and death; shouting and roaring names like c**t and bitch, she said. Ms Burton said Deputy Murphy looked pretty happy with himself and was smiling broadly as he spoke through a megaphone behind the unmarked garda car in which she remained sitting for over an hour with her advisor Karen OConnell. He was the man with the megaphone, the person who sort of stood out, she said. The former leader of the Labour Party said that earlier that day as she made her way to a graduation ceremony at a church in Jobstown, she was struck twice in the back of the neck, once with a water bomb which had drenched her hair and jacket. Deputy Burton told Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, that it had been a very happy and celebratory occasion when she arrived at An Cosan education centre in Tallaght where about 60 people were graduating with a variety of degrees and diplomas. Ms Burton said that as she walked as part of a procession to a nearby church for the graduation ceremony, she had encountered protesters including a young man who repeatedly put a camera phone in her face and said speak to us, Joan. She said she got a shock when she was struck in the back of the neck twice, at first by what felt like a ball, and moments later by a water bomb. She said her advisor gave her a loan of her jacket and that she dried her hair as best as she could with a tissue before speaking at the church. Ms Burton said that towards the end of the ceremony, gardai advised them to leave very quickly by a side door to a waiting unmarked garda saloon car. She said that when she and her adviser got into the car, it was immediately surrounded by a large crowd shouting abuse and banging on the car and throwing eggs and other missiles. The court heard that Karen OConnell became extremely upset and began to cry, and that the two women put their arms around each other. Ms Burton described one woman attacking and banging the car who was beside herself with rage, very, very, very angry, wishing all kinds of stuff on me, illness, death, she said. Deputy Burton became upset as she told the court that her shoe began to come off as she tried to make her way to another garda car, on instructions from a superintendent. There were two lines of gardai to one side of the car when I got out. It was very terrifying, the crowd surged, the shouting and roaring was much more intense. The inspector stood in front of me and walked backwards, he kept saying look at me, look at me, to try and keep me focused, because I didnt know what was going to happen. I kept thinking I was going to fall; I began to lose one of my shoes. The crowd was very, very wild. He kept saying, dont worry about your shoe'. I kept thinking if the crowd got us, where would we run to, and how would I run without my shoe, she said. The court heard that the jeep that Ms Burton and her advisor were escorted into was also surrounded and blocked by protestors, and that the left window was shattered. The guards were getting a horrible time, they were being pushed and shoved and pelted with eggs, she said, describing one guard beside her car window as very stoical, he just stayed right were he was. She also described seeing two gardai being pressed backwards against the bonnet of the car by the crowd. Ms Burton said the jeep made very painful progress, inch by inch by inch through the crowd, which included a number of children aged nine or ten. I was really worried about the children who were around, that was my fear, that they could have been hurt, she said, adding later that she felt the children were in a place of danger. After another two hours, the jeep turned off the main road towards the Jobstown Inn, and the guards told Ms Burton and her advisor that when they opened the doors, they would have to run to another car. I know that road since I was a child. I felt I was running for my life. I ran up the incline of the hill, Karen was beside me, the crowd running to follow us. I just legged it as fast I could. I was very stiff and cold when I got out of the car, I dont know how I got the energy, she said. Ms Burton said the gardai then drove her into the hills and to the Phoenix Park, where she used the toilet facilities and had a cup of tea. She said that throughout the incident a number of people contacted her by text, phone call and social media, including her daughter and her Labour Party colleague Brendan Howlin. She said she took a couple of photos in the first car and gave her phone to her advisor in the second car. The court heard that there were 42 videos of the incident on her phone when she gave it to gardai to download. She told Sean Guerin SC, defending Paul Murphy, that she couldnt hear much political language and was more struck by the personalised language and name-calling of herself and the gardai. However, she said that at one point she heard Deputy Murphy say peaceful protest or something like that. The trial continues before Judge Melanie Greally and a jury of seven men and five women. Its expected to last up to six weeks. Trinity College has been scammed out of money, reported to be up to 1m, destined for needy students. The money was siphoned off by thieves who sent emails asking college officials to change bank account details for payees. The Trinity Foundation was alerted by its bank to suspicious activity in its accounts. Some of the funds have reportedly been recovered. However, a Trinity spokesman says it is too early to say whether everything can be recovered. He says any shortfall will be made up from the university's future commercial revenues. In addition to the garda investigation, TCD and Trinity Foundation are conducting a detailed investigation. They have asked an external computer forensic team to help in establishing the technical details of what happened. The Irish Sun reports that 1m may have been taken in the scam - a figure TCD would not confirm. The Data Protection Commissioner's office has been informed and is liaising with the university. "As both the garda criminal investigation and internal investigation are continuing, Trinity will not be making any further statements at this time," the college says in a statement. The Trinity Foundation, which helps disadvantaged students, was established as an independent charity in 1994. Since 1994, the Foundation has raised funds in excess of 280m. Stephen Breen, crime editor with the Irish Sun, told the Pat Kenny Show: "Trinity had no idea this was happening until the police in the UK contacted the Bank of Ireland and said in relation to your accounts here, it appears that there could be some suspicious transactions." Health Minister Simon Harris has accused anti-vaccine campaigners of dangerous "scaremongering", writes Fiachra O Cionnaith of the Irish Examiner. He said their comments risk the health and in some cases lives of children and adults in need of vital medication care. Speaking at an Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association information event at the RCPI to mark world immunisation day, Mr Harris insisted that the only people who should be giving medical advice are doctors and qualified experts. He said there has been a growing trend in Ireland and abroad of unqualified groups giving out "misinformation" about the realities of vaccines, resulting in cases were there remains a low take-up of the HPV cancer vaccine and treatments for other conditions. Insisting the situation "is not harmless", he said the "nonsense" being put forward by some people "with no medical qualification whatsoever" is putting vulnerable people at risk and must not be listened to by the public. "I'm not in any way qualified to give advice on vaccinations, but the people who are qualified are doctors, scientists, the European Medicines Agency, our medical community here in Ireland and the World Health Organisation. "Sadly what we have seen in recent times are people who are not doctors, not scientists, not medical experts giving advice that runs counter to all the medical information available. "That's not harmless, that has a real impact. "We have vaccines in this country that can save lives, we have a vaccine that can prevent our young people who can prevent young girls dying of cancer, and yet we have misinformation, scare-mongering and quite frankly nonsense being given out by people with no medical qualification whatsoever," he said. The vaccine information event also heard from Trinity college biochemistry and immunology expert Prof Kingston Mills, who said "it is incumbent on all of us to assess the benefit versus risks [of vaccines]," adding this should be based on "sound medical advice" and not "misinformation". The High Court has approved a settlement worth 6.3m for 'Grace' , the young woman with intellectual disabilities who was left in the care of a foster family for 20 years despite physical abuse, gross neglect and possible sexual abuse. President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly approved the settlement describing the failure of care in this case as a scandal, write Daniel McConnell and Fiachra O Cionnaith of the Irish Examiner. Grace's story has been extensively covered in the Irish Examiner over several years. In court, the Health Service Executive (HSE) apologised to the woman in court for the failings in her care. The court heard those failings included inadequate monitoring and oversight of her care and inadequate action to remove her from the foster home after significant concerns had been raised. In its apology, the HSE said the care she received "fell short of the compassionate, caring and personalised support that she was entitled to". In the letter of apology from Chief Officer Aileen Colley and read out to the court by senior counsel the HSE said it sincerely regretted that Grace experienced "a number of very serious failings" in her care during this time up to 2009. These included, the statement said: "Inadequate monitoring and oversight of your care; an absence of necessary liaison between those responsible for your placement in the foster home ; inadequate action to remove you from your foster home after signficiant concerns had been raised and an absence of the necessary protocols and arrangments to support the placement of vulnerable children and adults with a disability in foster families. It added: "The care you received fell far short of the compassionate, caring and personalised support you were entitled to . For all of these faiilings I wish on behalf of the HSE to sincerely apologise to you." The letter concluded: " I want to reassure you and everbody associated with your care the HSE has taken steps both locally and nationally for continued service improvements, standards and safe care." Approving the settlement, Mr Justice Kelly said the reasons why 'Grace' was left in the foster care placement in 1996 despite recommendations from professionals and health board personnel that she be moved "remained a mystery". He said a decision to move her was reversed by a three-person health board committee, after representations were made by the foster parents to the then minister for health. He said it remained a mystery as to how that decision was made. He said it was a scandal when you considered how this young woman had been treated while in the care of the HSE and its predecessor. As reported in the Irish Examiner, Grace has very significant needs and was unable to speak. In court, Mr Justice Kelly said there was a suggestion that she had been sexually abused. He said she had certainly been physically abused. Mr Justice Kelly said a decision had been made in 1996 to remove 'Grace' from the foster family. But he said that decision had been reversed by a three-person committee in the health board for reasons which remained a mystery to this day. He said this was after representations were made by the foster parents to the then minister for health. He said the decision was made in the teeth of recommendations from the professionals and health board personnel. State-owned land is being opened up for development in a bid to ease the housing crisis, writes Daniel McConnell of the Irish Examiner More than 800 sites across the country owned by local authorities and public bodies will be offered to the private market to help boost housing supply. The plan is to provide at least 50,000 new homes. In total, more than 2,000 hectares of land controlled by city and county councils and other bodies including CIE, the IDA and HSE, will be offered to private developers and housing associations. According to the plan, Four in Dublin alone are capable of providing 3,000 homes, including at least 1,000 social units. Expressions of interest from developers are to be sought over the coming days. The Department of Housing has also identified 30 sites owned by public bodies in the main cities of Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford totalling around 200 hectares, another 73 controlled by the Housing Agency of 250 hectares and a massive 1,500 hectare land bank comprising 700 sites controlled by city and county councils. Speaking at the launch, Mr Coveney said that on some sites will be exclusively social housing where other projects will be a mix of social and private housing. He said: "For the first time, we have a central database of land available for housing. This map represents both the opportunity to deliver housing and also the granular data on active delivery from sites around the country. The Minister commended both South Dublin County Council and Dublin City Council for their proactive approach in bringing forward four key sites that will deliver up to 3,000 much-needed social and affordable homes. These sites are located in Kilcarbery (South Dublin); and Infirmary Road, Emmet Road, and Oscar Traynor Road (Dublin City). I want all local authorities to take up the mantle and to bring forward sites as quickly as possible for development in this way. Opening up State-land for mixed-tenure housing is a major policy intervention: if others control scarcity in terms of land supply, they control the market. I want the State to ensure that does not happen, the Minister said. Cork city and county are to see huge tracts of land made available to the market to help boost housing supply, in the plan. Cork city and county will receive 46m in funding to allow the development of over 3,000 homes by 2021. The funding will support six projects in Cork city and county, as part of a national investment of over 220m. It is understood that in Cork city, two sites will be prioritised to deliver the housing. The first is a 15.5m development plan for the South Docks area which will involve significant transport infrastructure improvements and upgrade to Albert Quay. It is also likely a new bridge to cross the Lee will be included as part of improvement works for the Eastern Gateway Bridge western approach. This is very ambitious project which we see delivering 700 new homes by 2021. The immediate effect will be to open up the development of residential units on two sites in the South Docks, said Mr Coveney. The second is a 10m development of a site on the Old Whitechurch Road which will lead to the development of up to 600 houses. According to documents obtained by the Irish Examiner, the infrastructure proposed consists of rerouting the high voltage overhead lines which traverse the site and prohibit development at present. It will also include the improvement and widening of approach roads on all sides of the site to improve accessibility and capacity, installation of an access route critical to enable site development in phases, and augmentation of drainage, water and utility infrastructure/services to link the site to main services, the documents state. Also included in the plans are: a link road in Midleton to facilitate access and create potential for competitive delivery in 2019 and 2020; transport and amenity infrastructure to provide housing in a key area for large employment developments at South Docks; critical investment in roads infrastructure in Carrigaline, Ballincollig and Glanmire. The Government could be facing court action against the decision to press ahead with plans for the new National Children's Hospital. The Connolly for Kids Hospital campaign group and the Jack and Jill Foundation have sought legal advice after the project at the St James' Hospital in Dublin got the green light. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Britain must engage in "constructive dialogue" with the European Union before negotiations can begin on its departure from the bloc. "We need to know how Britain sees its future relations with us," she told the German Parliament today. The Trump administration has said it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action. President Donald Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defence secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. The same team was also meeting with House members in the Capitol to outline the North's escalating nuclear capabilities and US response options to what they called an "urgent national security threat". After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Mr Trump's approach "aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners". It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the US would defend itself and friends. The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Korea's progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the US mainland. A flurry of military activity, by North Korea and the US and its partners on and around the divided Korean Peninsula, has added to the world's sense of alert. While tensions have increased since Mr Trump took office, they have escalated dramatically in recent weeks as American and other intelligence agencies suggested the North was readying for a possible nuclear test. Although such an explosion has not yet occurred, Mr Trump has sent high-powered US military vessels and an aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while the North conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, earlier this week. Yesterday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious US missile defence system that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns. America's Pacific forces commander, Admiral Harry Harris Jr told Congress yestday the system would be operational within days. He said any North Korean missile fired at US forces would be destroyed. "If it flies, it will die," Admiral Harris said. The Trump administration has said all options, including a military strike, are on the table. But the administration's statement after briefing senators - all 100 members were invited - outlined a similar approach to the Obama administration's focus on pressuring Pyongyang to return to long-stalled denuclearisation talks. Mr Trump's top national security advisers said they were "open to negotiations" with the North, though they gave no indication of when or under what circumstances. The strategy hinges greatly on the cooperation of China, North Korea's main trading partner. "China is the key to this," said Senator John McCain, who got a preview of Mr Trump's message at a dinner with the president this week. Among the options are returning North Korea to the US state sponsor of terrorism blacklist, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week was under consideration. His spokesman, Mark Toner, said yesterday that another tactic is getting nations around the world to close down North Korean embassies and consulates, or suspending them from international organizations. But sanctions will be the greatest tool at the Trump administration's disposal. Mr Tillerson is chairing a UN Security Council meeting on Friday designed to get nations to enforce existing penalties on North Korea and weigh new ones. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral Harris said he expects North Korea to soon be able to develop a long-range missile capable of striking the United States, as Mr Kim has promised. "One of these days soon, he will succeed," Harris said. North Korea's UN mission said on Wednesday the nation would react to "a total war" with Washington by using nuclear weapons. It vowed victory in a "death-defying struggle against the US imperialists". Protesters have clashed with police in Paris during a demonstration against both candidates in the upcoming presidential elections. Marching under the motto Neither Le Pen, nor Macron - against finance and fascism they threw projectiles at riot police. The disturbances follow a similar march in Lille yesterday. Candidates Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron today verbally clashed over the future of the fishing industry today. The exchange marked a return to more traditional campaigning after the extraordinary "battle of Whirlpool", when both candidates sought to harness France's blue-collar vote at a threatened home appliances factory. The anti-EU far-right populist Ms Le Pen was up before dawn to cruise aboard a fishing trawler on the Mediterranean. The sea trip was her latest television-friendly effort to portray herself as the candidate of France's workers against the centrist Mr Macron, whom she paints as the candidate of the financial, political and pro-EU elite. Mr Macron has a scheduled television appearance this evening. Ms Le Pen said after her voyage aboard the trawler, Grace of God 2: "My grandfather was a fisherman, so I am in my element." She said France will take back control of its maritime policies if she is elected in the second-round vote on May 7. The far-right candidate again tore into Mr Macron's more economically liberal policy plans. He fired back on Twitter, saying Ms Le Pen's proposals to take France out of the EU would sink France's fishing industry. "Have a nice trip. Europe's exit she proposes, it's the end of French fishing. Think about it," he tweeted. With her sea voyage, Ms Le Pen continued to hammer home the blue-collar theme she sought to take ownership of on Wednesday with a surprise visit to the threatened Whirlpool clothes-dryer factory in northern France. That wily campaign manoeuvre put Mr Macron on the defensive and prompted him to meet angry Whirlpool workers later that same day. Today, newspapers and commentators debated which of the two candidates scored the most points in the remarkable Whirlpool drama which highlighted their clash of styles and was broadcast live on French news channels. "War is declared", ran the front-page headline of the daily Liberation. Former presidential candidate Francois Bayrou - a Macron ally - awarded victory to the centrist, saying Mr Macron showed courage by spending more than an hour trying to reason with workers at the plant in Amiens. Mr Bayrou, speaking on BFM television, said Mr Macron's impromptu visit - his attempt to take back the initiative after Ms Le Pen stole his thunder by popping up earlier in the day at the Whirlpool factory gates - could have been "very bad for him". Mr Macron was whistled and booed when he first arrived, amid chaotic scenes. But he stood his ground, patiently and at times passionately debating with workers in often heated exchanges about how to stop French jobs from moving abroad. "Arriving to whistles, he (Macron) left shaking hands", which showed his character, Mr Bayrou said. A man armed with several knives has been arrested in Whitehall, London, on suspicion of planning a terror attack, Scotland Yard said. The suspect was carrying a rucksack containing at least three knives when he was detained "following a stop and search as part of an ongoing operation", police said. The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that he was held at approximately 2.22pm on Thursday by armed officers from the Specialist Firearms Command. It went on: "The man, aged in his late twenties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. "Knives have been recovered from him. "He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. "Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat." The suspect was held yards from the scene of last month's terror attack by Khalid Masood. The bearded suspect, who was dressed in dark clothing, was wrestled to the ground on a traffic island at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall, close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. Images from the scene showed three knives and what appeared to be a mobile on the ground close to a brown rucksack. An officer in forensic overalls could be seen taking photographs of the knives. The suspect was detained at the scene for several minutes within view of journalists and passers by before he was eventually taken away in a police vehicle. Recruiters Harry Peasnell, 27, and Andy Burnage, 22, were leaving the adjacent building which houses various Government offices after a meeting with officials when they were told over the tannoy the usual entrance on to Whitehall was closed. As they made their way back towards Parliament from the alternative House Guards Road entrance they said they were pushed back up Great George Street by several plain clothes police officers. They then made their way to Parliament Square where they said they saw a man in his 20s or 30s, who they thought was the suspect, being spoken to by police next to the wall of the offices. Mr Peasnell, who says he regularly has meetings in Westminster, said police were "quick on the scene" and that he was not worried like he was during the terror attack in the area just weeks ago. "Last time all the buildings were on lockdown and no one was allowed to leave," he said. Westminster has been on a state of heightened alert since Masood launched his attack on March 22, killing five people, including Pc Keith Palmer. Masood drove at pedestrians before stabbing Pc Palmer as he guarded the cobbled forecourt of the Palace of Westminster. He was shot dead by police. A builder working on the road nearby said: "I saw the police officers catch him. They caught him and got him on the ground." Asked if the suspect was waving knives, acting aggressively or shouting, the witness said: "No." Two police officers have been shot and wounded on the French island of Reunion during the arrest of a man suspected of links to radical Islam. Police managed to detain the man and his mother, and found weapons and material for making explosives in their apartment in the town of Saint Benoit de la Reunion. The two officers, from a special national police intervention force, were taken to hospital with light injuries. The arrested man was wanted for "glorifying terrorism", the French interior ministry said. Anti-terrorism prosecutors have taken over the investigation because the man was suspected of links to radical Islam, according to Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre. The man appeared to be acting alone, according to a local Reunion official. The shooting came a week after a police officer was killed in Paris in an attack claimed by the so-called 'Islamic State' group, which shook up France's presidential election campaign. The country is under a state of emergency after multiple Islamic extremist attacks. Extremists have notably targeted French security forces. One of France's biggest overseas territories and located east of Madagascar, Reunion is an ethnically diverse island with a mix of religions at the crossroads of historic sea trading routes between Africa, Asia and the Arab world. French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen have both visited the island during the campaign. They will contest a tense run-off election on May 7. Donald Trump has laid out his plans for renegotiating a trade deal with Mexico and Canada. Speaking earlier this afternoon in the White House, the US President reiterated his position on getting the best possible deal for the United States with its two nearest neighbours. With a GPS tracker strapped on its back one of the ACT's rarest birds of prey has been shown to migrate from Canberra to the Northern Territory. The study used tracked a little eagle, a threatened species in the ACT and a quarter of the size of a wedge-tailed eagle. A Little Eagle munching on a parrot. Credit:ACT Environment Directorate The little eagle's flight path stretched 3,300 kilometres and took it to Daly Waters in the Northern Territory. The distance was travelled in a three-week period. The migration was documented as part of a combined ecological research study undertaken by the ACT government, University of Canberra, CSIRO and Ginninderry Joint Venture. A vet's letter showing that Simon was fit to travel. Credit:Courtesy Annette Edwards Edwards told The Post that she has shipped about a dozen rabbits internationally in the past without any problems, on carriers including United. "Any other bunnies I've sent to the US have been fine," she said Wednesday. "I've been doing it for quite a few years. I don't sell unless it's to the right person, because these animals are not like normal rabbits. They're more like dogs, so you have to have the right facilities for them. They can't go into a rabbit hutch." Simon the rabbit Edwards said she was at first hesitant to sell Simon at all, intending to keep the black-haired, blue-eyed rabbit as a pet. Simon's father, Darius, is 4 feet 4 inches long from the tip of his nose to the back of the toes on his hind legs; the gray rabbit took over the Guinness record from his mother. Edwards said she isn't sure why her rabbits grow so large but credits the "very, very laid-back atmosphere" in the English countryside. At only 10 months old, Simon already measured 3 feet 5 inches long, and Edwards believed he may have been on track to break his father's record. "Now that's very big for a bunny of 10 months, and they grow 'til they're 18 months old," Edwards said. "So he could have took over his dad, who knows?" Darius' offspring sell for close to $US400 each, Edwards said. An American man had contacted Edwards through her website, where she maintains photos of Darius, who has become something of a celebrity. The man had inquired about buying Simon, Edwards said, and finally convinced her after promising the rabbit would be going to a loving home. "I did say I was keeping Simon," Edwards said. "But we found a lovely man. He was going to be a pet. He was going to be much-loved." It was through the buyer, not United Airlines, that Edwards said she first found out that Simon had died. "He rang me because he had a phone call and was on his way to pick up," she said. "He said, 'I don't know if you've heard the news,' but he obviously was very upset, just like we all are." Edwards, who declined to identify the buyer, said she is waiting to hear more details from United about what happened. Last year, United Airlines transported 109,149 animals and reported 2.11 "incidents" - including death, injury or loss - for every 10,000 animals transported, according to the Transportation Department's Air Travel Consumer Report. The average rate of death, injury or loss among all airlines last year was 0.92 incidents per 10,000 animals transported. In total, 27 animals died while being transported on United flights between January 2015 and February 2017, according to the department. Simon's death comes not long after viral videos captured a passenger being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight. The incident this month triggered a public-relations crisis for United, which initially defended itself by stating that the passenger, David Dao, had "refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily." United chief executive Oscar Munoz, who in March received the 2017 Communicator of the Year award from PRWeek magazine, was blasted for a subsequent tone-deaf statement, in which he apologised "for having to reaccommodate these customers." Though Munoz would eventually issue a deeper apology two days later, by then the damage to the airline's brand was palpable. United stock prices had fallen and the incident had made the airline the butt of numerous memes online. Chicago Department of Aviation officers used "minimal but necessary force" when they dragged Dao off United Express Flight 3411 on April 9, according to an incident report released this week. Dao, a doctor from Kentucky, suffered a concussion, a broken nose and other injuries. He also lost two of his teeth, according to his attorney, Thomas Demetrio. Answers Africa is one of a kind platform created for Africans both locally and in the diaspora and those seeking for more in-depth information about Africa. We have always focused on creating the highest quality informational contents right from the beginning. We share the most relevant information on the latest and trending news, events, people, and places in Africa. We produce contents across various categories including Politics, People, Love and Romance, Nature, Entertainment, Technology and pretty much everything else that Africans may find relevant. We aim to answer the most relevant questions about Africa in areas of entertainment, famous people, emerging technologies while we also engage with various distribution capabilities to connect with Africans in need of information who rely on our website to keep in touch with the world that is changing so fast. These are some of the articles you may be interested in reading: 10 Famous TV Personalities Born In Ethiopia Ethiopia is a country best known for its fast athletes like Dibaba and Bekele, breathtaking models like Liya Kebede and of course Haile Selassie but there are also famous TV personalities who are doing a great job in entertainment and pushing the country to civilization. The following is a list of ten most famous TV ... 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How Brendan Greene Became a Game Designer to Look Out For and Facts About His Failed Marriage The name Brendan Greene may not easily ring a bell in the larger society but for gaming enthusiasts, he is considered a god and this is because of his invention of the video game, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, also called PUBG. Based on the popular last-man-standing/battle royale concept, Greenes creation has taken the gaming world by ... WFAAs Sonia Azad Bio Does The Reporter Have A Husband Or Boyfriend? Emmy Award-winning journalist and Health & Wellness reporter Sonia Azad is on the news segment News 8 Daybreak for the television station WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas, a channel which she joined in October of 2015. Besides her time on the news, Azad is also a marathon runner and a certified yoga instructor. She has covered major news ... This Is Everything You Should Know About Caroline Heldman, Her Career Portfolio and Other Facts Love it or hate it, there is no escaping the fact that feminism has come to stay in our world. The movement has continued to garner momentum over the years and this is due to the sustained push by several women, and even men, including the likes of Caroline Heldman. A Professor of Politics at ... Understanding The Enigma That Is Gavin McInnes, The Controversies He Has Stirred and All About His Wife Gavin McInnes is a polemical English-born writer and TV personality, who is best known for his racist and fascist ideologies, as well as his co-ownership of Vice Media and Vice Magazine. He is also an actor a How much would you spend on quick weekday lunch in the city? It appears the day of the $5 sausage roll are long gone with almost a quarter of of Melbourne's city workers now spending between $15 and $20 for lunch. Hardware Lane a heartland of Melbourne's dining precincts. It's all part of a sustained boom in retail and hospitality spending, with more than $3.03 billion pushed through tills and eftpos machines in the past year. Remarkably since 2006, 800 new hospitality businesses have opened in the city, equating to one new cafe, restaurant or bar opening every week. Is this the end of civilisation? asks Chris Wilkinson, Turramurra. "I noticed on last night's MKR that Manu and another judge used their fork in the right hand and knife in the left for the entree.Yes, I occasionally use my fork with my right hand for peas but without a knife in the left." Now from Ulsan [south] Korea a logistics question from Michael Fletcher. "Regarding coverage of the recent four Pence visit to Sydney, I wondered 'who does all the laundry for these people?' The second family, the security detail, the myriad hangers-on accompanying the visit. For sure the second lady doesn't fill out a laundry list, pop it in the bag and hang it on the door handle before 8:00am. Can C8 answer this pressing issue?" Former ABC TV producer director John Lander of Killarney Heights writes: "Following your coverage of the appalling new impossible-to-read weather graphics on ABC News, I thought I'd complain directly to them via the ABC News website. After a long search, I eventually found a carefully hidden 'feedback' link, completed it, ticked the 'yes, I'd like a reply' box, and sent it. I still haven't received any sort of response, the graphics remain unchanged and I've run out of complaining options. C8 keep up the pressure." Re the recent correspondence about Mygov, etc, just as irritating for me is the current habit of interpolating "for" in NSW government department names, eg, Planning for NSW (PfNSW), Transport for NSW (TfNSW). What did it cost to change stationery, signage, etc, for this silly, unnecessary idea and what overpaid spin doctor dreamt it up? Keith Parsons, Newcastle. From Ted Richards Batemans Bay: "Ian Edwards (C8), the name 'western front' was originally the German term to refer to the World War One front line and it was just simply adopted by the Allies." Now it's a plan that claims to protect 65,000 Australian jobs from the gas crisis: the recent sharp jump in gas prices and looming supply shortages for east coast industry. Early this month it was the alleged 457 visa crackdown to save local jobs and new citizenship rules to protect Australian values. Last month it was Snowy Mark II, the plan to re-energise the electricity scheme by using "pumped hydro" technology to help avoid blackouts. The revelation came amid panic over South Australia's energy output and the withdrawal of the dirty coal-fired electricity generator at Hazelwood in Victoria. Another week, another Turnbull government attempt to reassure voters that it is tackling the nation's problems by putting Australia first. This time the government's "Australia first" proposal notwithstanding the political cynicism of the sound bite, the allusion to big cuts for household power bills, and the broader problems with national climate change policy is better than nothing. From July 1 the "Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism" will allow the federal resources minister to force gas producers in the main the Santos-led consortium that exports through Gladstone in central Queensland to direct more supply to domestic users than to overseas-based contracted customers. Santos operates and owns 30 per cent of the GLNG project one of three LNG constortia liquefying and exporting gas from Gladstone. While the other two supply more to Australian users than exports, Santos committed to its project knowing it would have to source much of its gas for export from other local suppliers. The proportion was almost 60 per cent in the March quarter. Such a drain exacerbates the shortage created by bans on gas exploration in Victoria and to a lesser extent NSW and the Northern Territory. Under the Turnbull scheme suppliers such as Santos will be able to source potentially cheaper gas from overseas when needed to fill those higher-priced external contracts, while preserving locally sourced gas for Australian users. In theory the effect in Australia should more closely match supply and demand in the gas market when the absence of such a mechanism would create shortages and keep upward pressure on prices. Three alleged Australian jihadists captured at gunpoint in Lebanon could be stripped of their citizenship, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said on Friday. It's understood the trio, who are reportedly Australian-Lebanese dual nationals, do not wish to return to Australia. A man walks with his children past burnt-out cars in a street in west Mosul earlier this month. Credit:Getty Images The men were arrested in a local army raid after a Syrian born IS member was captured last year and, after an interrogation, admitted to working with the three Australians whom he lived with. They have been jailed at the notorious Roumieh prison, north east of Lebanon, according to a News Corp report. A Dengue fever outbreak ravaging the island nation of Nauru has now hit about 10 per cent of asylum seekers living at the Australian-run regional processing centre. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection confirmed 41 people living at the facility had contracted the mosquito-borne viral disease by the end of March. That number is likely to have risen as health authorities struggle to contain an outbreak that is estimated to have affected up to 900 people on the island of 10,000. But authorities, including Australia's immigration department, are refusing to detail the extent of the crisis or what strategies have been put in place to combat it. Wholesale gas prices should halve as a result of the federal government's intervention in the export market, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has claimed. The forecast was leapt on by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who called on Mr Turnbull to outline a time frame for the fall in prices, saying it would be little more than "hot air" if gas companies did not confirm relief was on the way for domestic industrial buyers. Australia's massive liquefied natural gas export sector is back at the centre of political debate after the Turnbull government on Thursday slapped export restrictions on east coast producers who have strangled local supply to fulfil international contracts. An "Australian domestic gas security mechanism" will allow export controls to be imposed on companies when a gas supply shortfall is identified. Johnny Depp has blamed his former business managers for his financial woes saying "If I want to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, it's my thing". It was the latest salvo in a legal battle over the Hollywood star's spending that began in January when he accused his financial advisers of "gross mismanagement" and claimed they owed him $US25 million ($33 million). Two weeks later The Management Group, which handled Depp's finances from 1999 until early 2016, filed a counter-action in Los Angeles seeking a trial. They accused the actor of breach of contract and fraud, and claimed he owed them millions of dollars. Kerin Kenny worked so much overtime she became physically ill. Once, she was so exhausted she slept under her desk. But it wasn't until the bullying began that her mental health started to deteriorate. Kerin Kenny sits at home in front of one of her paintings. Credit:Eddie Jim Abused in front of other staff. Talked about behind her back. Undermined. "There were a whole lot of little things," Ms Kenny said. "It became a very toxic environment in the office." Former federal MP Ross Cameron is appealing his 4- year suspension from the Liberal Party over an attack on Premier Gladys Berejiklian while she was NSW Treasurer. Mr Cameron will address the NSW Liberal state council in Goulburn on Saturday in a bid to have the party overturn the suspension, which was handed down by the state executive in February. Party sources believe Mr Cameron has a reasonable chance, with right faction support, of achieving the 60 per cent vote required to have the decision reversed. But they warn the outcome would be a slap in the face to NSW party officials and Ms Berejiklian. During a Sky News interview in 2016, Mr Cameron savaged Ms Berejiklian over her opposition to a push for the introduction of plebiscites to give all local branch members a vote in the preselection of state and federal Liberal candidates. I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army: T I P S 1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army Both Brisbane's proposed underground rail project the Cross River Rail and the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail project are in line to receive funding in the May 9 federal budget, according to comments made by Treasurer Scott Morrison in Canberra on Thursday. Mr Morrison explained measures in the Budget to separate borrowing for uneconomic reasons ie "bad debt" - from borrowing for infrastructure and energy projects ie "good debt". Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's focus on Liddell coal power station misses the wood for the trees, says Paul McArdle Credit:Tony Moore Speaking in Canberra, Mr Morrison hinted the changes meant an initial $1 billion for the $10 billion three-state Inland Rail project, which in Queensland runs from Inglewood to the Port of Brisbane via Toowoomba. Also some money would be provided for the Cross River Rail project, Fairfax Media reported from Mr Morrison's afternoon speech. One of Queensland's most prominent businessmen has called for a ban on political donations as he appeared before a Crime and Corruption Commission hearing into alleged candidate misconduct in last year's local government elections. Springfield Land Corporation deputy chairman Bob Sharpless appeared before the CCC on Thursday to answer questions about donations he made to candidates in the 2016 Ipswich, Brisbane and Logan council elections. Bob Sharpless, the deputy chairman of Springfield Land Corporation, made thousands of dollars' worth of donations to politicians. Credit:Cameron Atfield Mr Sharpless, who had made thousands of dollars' worth of donations to politicians of all stripes, told the commission he would like to see all political donations banned. "I would love to see it happen," he said. Almost one in three children taken into the care of Queensland Child Safety last year had a parent who currently or previously used methamphetamine. The figure is in the latest Child and Family Performance Statistics, covering the 12 months to December 31, 2016. About one in three children taken into care with Child Safety had a parent with current or previous methamphetamine use recorded. Credit:Kimberley District- WA Police Of the 749 children taken into state care for whom parental methamphetamine use was recorded, in most cases - 75 per cent - the type of methamphetamine used was ice. The most serious harm assessed among those children was neglect (59 per cent), followed by emotional harm (29 per cent), physical harm (11 per cent) and sexual abuse (1 per cent). A simple household condiment has been welcomed on the Great Barrier Reef as a cost-effective way to eradicate the crown-of-thorns starfish. A 20ml dose of white vinegar, when injected into the base of the starfish arm, can kill it within 48 hours and disintegrate the body, according to field trials conducted by the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority and James Cook University. A single injection with household vinegar at the base of the arm is sufficient to kill 100 per cent of injected crown-of-thorns starfish. Credit:Lisa Bostrom-Einarsson The finding was a step forward for the 30 individuals and business operators authorised to cull starfish along the reef, according to MPA Crown-of-thorns starfish project manager Mary Bonin. "The relentless predator has been responsible for a large percentage of coral deaths over the past 50 years - but it has an Achilles' heel," she said. Once one combines the advances in computing, big data mining, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, driverless vehicles and robotics it's not too hard to foresee that the impacts of the digital technology revolution may have, to date, been simply a clearing of the throat. Don't just take my word for it, A 2016 report titled Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, prepared for global finance giant Citi, stated that "a job is considered to be 'exposed to automation' or 'automatable' if the tasks it entails allows the work to be performed by a computer, even if a job is not actually automated". On that basis, the researchers found 47 per cent of current US jobs at risk. Fritz Lang's futurist film Metropolis (1927) imagined an automated future. The real one won't be as pretty. Credit:Fairfax Media According to Futurist.com, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data shows that, averaged across the world, 57 per cent of jobs are susceptible to automation. This rises to 69 per cent in India and 77 per cent in China. The low-risk jobs tend to be those which emphasise social or creative skills. Which puts me in mind of the cuts to funding for the humanities subjects over the last few decades. Can you spell "irony"? When Andrew Lemon moved to Eltham in 1982, Labor was promising to finally do away with a proposed freeway that had threatened to bulldoze through the area for two decades. John Cain jnr became premier that year, and Labor sold off some of the freeway reserve in the area. Houses now stand on it. "People said, 'That's it, there won't be a freeway here now'," said Dr Lemon, a historian. Labor has different plans now: on Wednesday, Premier Daniel Andrews promised $100 million to plan the North East Link, a tollway to link the Metropolitan Ring Road in Greensborough to either the Eastern Freeway in Bulleen or EastLink. A 20-year-old Tasmanian woman is fighting for her life at a Melbourne hospital after her fiance allegedly set her on fire. Nicole Evans is in an induced coma at The Alfred hospital where she was flown for specialist treatment, including surgery for burns to more than 50 per cent of her body. Tasmania Police allege her fiance, Matthew John Davey, doused her with an accelerant and set her alight at a house in Chigwell in Hobart's northern suburbs on Monday. Mr Davey, 34, has been charged with one count of grievous bodily harm and two counts of common assault. An interim family violence order and restraint order have been lodged with the court. A lead detective has told Lloyd Rayney's defamation trial his suspicion of the barrister evolved daily from when his wife disappeared to the day he was named the prime and only suspect in her murder. Detective Senior Sergeant Carlos Correia, who was in charge of the investigation, earlier testified in the WA Supreme Court that Mr Rayney was the only suspect who had "never to this day" been excluded over his wife's murder. A detective leading the Lloyd Rasyne murder investigation says what lead him to target Lloyd Rayney as a suspect. He said in his statement, which has been largely objected to by Mr Rayney's legal team as hearsay, that he could not pinpoint the exact day Mr Rayney became a suspect in the murder of Supreme Court registrar Corryn Rayney in August 2007. By the time police planned to execute the first search warrant on the Rayney family home on August 22, Det Sen Sgt Correia said he considered him the "highest priority suspect" but not the only one. Jerusalem: Israel's Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. Flames rise after an explosion near an airport west of Damascus, Syria. Credit:AP The incident occurred hours after Syria accused Israel of striking a Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla arms hub near Damascus airport, where supplies of weapons from Iran are sent regularly by air, a regional intelligence source said. Syrian and rebel officials blamed Israel for the explosions on Thursday morning at warehouses near the Damascus airport that the Israeli news media said were housing weapons bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Washington: Ivanka Trump, juggling dual roles of White House adviser and daughter of the president, said in an interview aired Wednesday that the United States might need to admit more refugees from Syria, a pointed public departure from one of her father's bedrock populist positions. Ivanka Trump's comments, which seemed to question the basis for President Donald Trump's two executive orders that tried to bar migrants from Syria and other predominantly Muslim nations, set off a minor scramble in the West Wing. Advisers grappled with a political problem unique to Donald Trump's family-business White House: how to manage an officially empowered daughter who is prone to challenging elements of the president's conservative agenda. "I think there is a global humanitarian crisis that's happening, and we have to come together and we have to solve it," Ivanka Trump told NBC when asked about the refugee crisis in Syria, which has created a nativist backlash in European countries. Asked whether that would include admitting Syrian refugees to the United States, she replied: "That has to be part of the discussion. But that's not going to be enough in and of itself." London: Armed British officers arrested a man carrying knives near Prime Minister Theresa May's office in London on Thursday on suspicion of preparing an act of terrorism. The 27-year-old man was detained by counter-terrorism officers on Parliament Street, a stone's throw from the parliament building and May's Downing Street office, during a stop-and-search in an ongoing security operation, police said. No one was injured in the incident, and Mrs May was not at Downing Street at the time because she was campaigning in northern England ahead of the June 8 election. "Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat," police said in a statement about Thursday's incident. Latest News NABs net profit up 8.3% Good results driven by home loan growth, rising interest rates Refinancing volumes soar in changing market Brokers need to take advantage of $16.9 billion boost A feeling of loneliness as a new broker A lack of knowledge around credit policy Differences between perceptions versus reality High levels of attrition among new brokers have pushed one industry professional to help those just entering the field establish themselves.Aaron Christie-David, managing director at Atelier Wealth, said the fact that 50% of new industry brokers fail in their first 18 months was quite alarming.Discussions with those just starting out as mortgage brokers revealed a number of common themes around why this attrition rate is so high, he told Australian Broker:While he understood that in a 100% commission-based model, there would be natural turnover, there still needed to be something done to lower this rate, he said.One main reason for this high attrition rate was the ease in which someone could become a broker.Ive approached the MFAA to ask what were doing to address people wanting to become a broker. If all it takes is doing a day as a Cert-IV or doing a diploma, that in my eyes is far too easy.With brokers planning their clients financial future, the wrong loan structure or the wrong advice could have serious ramifications, he said. This means the bar has to be raised when educating those new to industry.After being mentored by some of the top performing brokers in the industry, Christie-David felt he wanted to do the same and play this forward.We should leave the industry in a better place than what we found it. We should be able to help the next generation of brokers who are coming in to succeed.This 50% attrition rate did not reflect well on the industry as a whole, he added, as it eroded trust in the community.The community doesnt trust us as much because brokers may not stick around. If we have more successful brokers, this increases our footprint which in turn leads to better trust and credibility.To do this, Christie-David is now creating his new mentoring initiative, which could be a simple meeting around coffee or drinks where experienced brokers discuss growing pain challenges with those new to the industry.Im not trying to start a full day conference for new brokers. I dont think thats what they need or want. What they want is a small community to go over the challenges theyve got with someone whos walked that path before.These meetings would ideally be held once a quarter, he said, to give new brokers time to implement any suggestions they were provided with during these meet-and-greet sessions.The focus for this new community would be aspects such as upskilling or business development since groups like Finance and Coffee already cover scenarios and case studies with members.Christie-David said anyone who has ideas about how to establish this sort of group or who are already running their own mentor program should get in touch. The adversary violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between the Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces 45 times, from late Wednesday night to early Thursday morning. April 27, 2017, 09:41 Azerbaijan fired over 350 shots at night STEPANAKERT, APRIL 27, ARTSAKHPRESS: During this time the Azerbaijani armed forces fired more than 350 shots toward the position-holders of the Republic of Artsakh Defense Army, and with different-caliber shooting weapons, the defense army informed. But the Artsakh defense army vanguard units are in command of the operational and tactical situation, and they continue confidently carrying out their military watch. Counterpoint, hosted by Scott Harris, is heard every Monday night on WPKN 89.5 FM, Bridgeport, CT between 8:00 9:30 pm ET. Webstreaming and audio archive at http://wpkn.org 1) Professor Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, talks about the Republican Party's embrace of "white replacement theory," WRTs fascist origins, why Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become a role model for much of the GOP -- and the dangerous rise of rightwing extremist political violence in the US.2) Cody Hounanian, Executive Director of the Student Debt Crisis Center discusses his group's response to President Biden's announced plan to address student loan debt, which includes forgiving up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers and extending the payment freeze one final time until the end of the year.3) Jenna Grande, Press Secretary with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) discuss CREW's recent article, "Big Oil Has Given $1 Million to Fuel Seditionists," and related issues of Big Oil's influence on US energy, environment and climate policy.4) Liz Dupont-Diehl, Associate Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group discusses her group's recent reporting on CT based health insurance companies that are requesting double-digit premium increases for individuals and small businesses, as they spend billions on stock buybacks and excessive executive salaries, and lobbying.Some segments featured on Counterpoint are edited for re-broadcast on the syndicated Between The Lines radio news magazine. Visit their web site at http://www.btlonline.org for free subscriptions to mp3 - podcast audio files, program summaries and interview transcripts. An archive of current and past Counterpoint interviews are accessible for free at our Counterpoint Radio web site: http://counterpointradio.org The full 2-hour unedited program can be accessed for a 2 week period after the show, at the WPKN Radio archives: http://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/search/counterpoint Azerbaijan has never refused from its terrorist policy and now also continues acting the same way, Davit Babayan spokesperson of the President of Artsakh Republic, told Armenpress, commenting on the recent activeness of the Azerbaijani side in the frontline as a result of which the Armenian side suffered losses. April 27, 2017, 15:51 Azerbaijan continues its terrorist policy STEPANAKERT, APRIL 27, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: Azerbaijan continues its terrorist policy as always did. Now we see that they are conducting military exercises with Turkey, and they started to hold the so-called PR campaign of these exercises on the days of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. This is another form of information, political terrorism. During these days they have advertised their military exercises they are going to conduct in May and complete on the eve of triple holiday of May victories. We are carefully following these developments, the army is brought to the highest level of preparedness, he said. Davit Babayan emphasized that Azerbaijans and Turkeys such policy must be in the spotlight of international community and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. He recalled that in 2016 Turkey and Azerbaijan again hold joint military exercises after which Azerbaijan launched the April four-day way also provoked by Turkey. According to Babayan, by such steps Turkey puts in a bad situation the remaining NATO member states since NATO has repeatedly stated that it opposes any conflicts solution by the use of force and supports exclusively the peaceful settlement. He said Turkey puts in a difficult situation the US, as a NATO leader country and one of the Co-Chair countries of the Minsk Group. International community must give a respective assessment on such policy. In general, if assessments were addressed on time, respective steps were taken, perhaps, the situation would be different today, he said, adding that Azerbaijan, realizing a very weak or no reaction from the international community on its terrorist actions, continues the same policy. Davit Babayan once again stated that the international community must very strongly react to Azerbaijans and Turkeys every step that can pose a threat for the regional peace and stability. 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... On the latest episode of Designated Survivor titled Lazarus, President Kirkman considers serious candidates for Vice President. His administrations Speaker of the House, Kimble Hookstraten, finds herself embroiled in a scandal that she might not be able to use her clout to get out of. Agent Wells and Jason Atwood return from North Dakota with a critical new lead while journalist Abe Leonards investigation takes an unexpected turn. How will this all end for the President and the people of the United States? With only a few episodes left, this will certainly be an interesting time for Designated Survivor fans! Lets find out what happens! Lazano is Alive! Hannah and Jason see that Lazaro is not dead after visiting a hidden shelter and coming upon the True Believers. They are then chased by the strays congregating around the silo. Jason is shot in the process after Lazano is discovered. Speaker Hookstratten and the President pass a bill regarding gun control which is set into motion with both of their assistance. The speaker makes the case for the President Kirkman through a bipartisan vote. Both Seth and Aaron are wondering if Speaker Hookstratten will be called upon by the president to be his Vice-President after the untimely death of Peter MacLeish. President Kirkman does indeed ask Hookstratten to be his Vice-President, the first female Vice-President in the nations history. Senator Hookstrattens Secret Links to Turkey Liam Price visits Senator Bowman and shows him a paper detailing secrets about Speaker Hookstratten and her link to Turkey. The story about the speaker breaks on the website Politico and both Seth and Aaron are shocked by what they read regarding the Speaker. Aaron confronts Bowman and accuses him of setting up the Speaker. ABC Sets Spring 2017 Finale Dates for Once Upon a Time, Scandal and More>>> Emily and Seth talk to the President and it appears that Senator Hookstratten accepted gifts from Turkey. Hookstratten feels that she is not wanted in her position as she is the old guard who knows many secrets about her constituents. The House Ethics Committee reveals they are opening an investigation into the Speaker regarding her improprieties and her links to Turkey. The President Finds Out That Lazano is Still Alive! Hannah goes to check the body of who is believed to be Lazano and realizes it is not him, despite the fact that his dental records and fingerprints match. Someone from the White House hacked into the system and changed the records of the dead man with Lazano. Liam Price meets with Senator Hookstratten and it is revealed the two worked together 12 years earlier and had a falling out when she realized he was stealing from both her and her constituents. Hookstratten realizes that he is the leak that revealed the information to Bowman regarding her past. She then reveals she still has the original evidence against Liam and says she has forwarded it to Senator Bowman. Now the Speaker has the upper hand against him. The President refuses to withdraw his support of Hookstratten and wants more than ever to push forward her nomination for Vice-President of the United States. Hannah meets with her informant and wants to know about Patrick Lloyd. It is revealed that he inherited a fortune from his father and runs the former multi-million dollar corporation called Browning Reed. Lloyd is now a political player working against the United States government. Lloyd reveals that he helps veterans and will not allow Americans to fall apart under the weight of their own government. They realize that Lloyd is part of Pax Americana and is looking to overtake the United States government through a grassroots movement. Hannah arrives at her motel and realizes that something is not right; someone has been in her room. While trying to get back to her car she is stabbed in the neck and carried off by a bunch of unseen men. It is later revealed that Nassar is one of those men behind her attack. The White House Leak is Revealed! Abe Leonard meets with an informant in the shadows who is later revealed to be Jay Whitaker, the Homeland Security Adviser. Designated Survivor Recap: Who Will Fill the Ninth Seat of the New Supreme Court?>>> Designated Survivor airs on ABC on Wednesdays at 10/9c. Want more news? Like our Designated Survivor Facebook page. (Images courtesy of ABC) The 11th session of the Tax Policy and Administration Advisory Committee of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) was held in Armenia. April 27, 2017, 16:08 Armenia hosts EAEU member states specialists dealing with tax affairs STEPANAKERT, APRIL 27, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: At the request of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), Armenias Finance Ministry hosted via skype the specialists and partners dealing with tax affairs from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan delivered welcoming remarks at the session by attaching importance to regularly organizing such as they make it possible to settle issues existing in the EAEU space. It is natural that numerous issues subject to settlement will emerge in the EAEU space as a newly formed international economic organization, and such platforms and meetings enable to quickly record, discuss and settle the existing problems, the Minister said. Tigran Davtyan Director of the EEC Financial Policy Department, informed that the session is being held twice a year at different EAEU member states. A number of key issues were discussed at the session. The representatives of all member states participated in the session, only the representative from Belarus was taking part via skype. The agenda was quite interesting. Productive discussions were held. During the years of the EAEU activity we have reached the point that we manage to eliminate the disagreements between the member states thanks to such meetings, Davtyan said. The 100 prepared to move to the bunker in DNR, but not everyone was planning on making the trip. And even those who made the trip might not make it into the bunker, because no one could agree on who would get a spot inside. Meanwhile, Raven made a heartbreaking decision about her own future. Here are the best quotes from DNR. The 100 Recap: Is There a New Commander?>>> Dont worry, they might ditch him, but Im too awesome to leave behind. Emori: This is why they left us behind? To scavenge tech? Murphy: Hey, we talked about this. We didnt get left behind. Theyre coming back. Emori: Forgive me if I dont believe what your people say anymore. Raven: Murphys actually right. Dont worry, they might ditch him, but Im too awesome to leave behind. If anyone can convince mortal enemies to move in together, its you. Roan to Clarke At least it would be a warriors death. Better than melting. Octavia: All I can think about is theres a war going on and Im not in it. Ilian: No war will stop praimfaya. Octavia: At least it would be a warriors death. Better than melting. My people have a saying: Do not fear death, for it is only the beginning of the next journey.' Ilian: My people have a saying: Do not fear death, for it is only the beginning of the next journey.' Octavia: Reincarnation? You believe in that? Ilian: The crops, they die in winter and then return in spring. Most people dont know when their winter will come, but we do. And thats a gift. So what then? Just stay here and die? Spend your last days wasted? That seems to be a popular choice with the people I care about. Harper: Just tired of fighting, Monty. Monty: I know. We all are. But in that bunker, well be safe. Harper: Every time we think that, something bad happens. Monty: So what then? Just stay here and die? Spend your last days wasted? That seems to be a popular choice with the people I care about. That doesnt mean that Im not right. Becca: Were the same, you and I, and I know the truth. You dont want to live in a bunker, and you dont want to be the good little soldier, always doing what Clarke tells you to do. I know what you do want. Raven: Stop. Stop! God, youre not real. Youre a symptom. Becca: That doesnt mean that Im not right. The 100 Interview: Lindsey Morgan on Ravens Bittersweet Decision>>> If youre gonna go out, might as well go out with a view. Hallucination Becca to Raven We dont think its a way to live. Monty: Are you really willing to die when theres a way to live? Are they? Jasper: Thats just it. We dont think its a way to live. You sent them down to die. The difference now is that they have a choice. And so do you. Jaha: Mr. Jordan, I will not leave children here to die. Bellamy: You sent them down to die. The difference now is that they have a choice. And so do you. We cant save them if they dont want to be saved. Jaha to Monty about those choosing to stay behind May we meet again. Bellamy: May we meet again. Jasper: We wont. Bellamy: Whatever the hell you want. When I was spacewalking, everything was right. I just want that again. Raven: Do you have any idea what it feels like to be in pain every day? When I was spacewalking, everything was right. I just want that again. Murphy: Im sorry. Im sorry for doing this to you, Raven. Raven: This is not your fault, Murphy. I could deal with losing my leg, but losing my mind Murphy: What do you want me to tell the others? Raven: Tell them I floated myself. The 100 season 4 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW. Want more news? Like our Facebook page. (Images courtesy of the CW) On this episode of The 100, DNR, Clarke tries to broker peace between Trikru and Azgeda, Raven is revisited by Becca and Roan comes up with a plan to determine who survives Praimfaya and who dies. Count on mankind to fall apart in the face of total annihilation. Indra is determined that no member of Ice Nation makes it into the bunker, so shes called on Trikrus allies to drive the Ice Nation out of Polis. A woman named Ankara comes to recruit Ilian for the fight who is spending the end of days on his familys farm with Octavia. Ilian takes a hard pass. Octavia is surprised to learn that Ilian is actually a kick-ass warrior, but he doesnt see any point in fighting when the end of the world is nigh. A Warriors Death Octavia wants to fight, even if Ilian doesnt see the point. Shed rather die a warriors death than being consumed by Praimfaya. Ilain tells her his people dont fear death because it is just the beginning of the next journey. Crops die in the winter and return in the spring. Most people dont know when their winter will come, but they do, and thats a gift. Ilian doesnt want to waste time fighting. The 100 Recap: Jaha Searches for the Second Dawn>>> Free Will Jaha and Monty have returned to tell their people about the bunker which also comes complete with a water filtration system and a hydroponic farm. He informs everyone that its time to pack up and head to Polis. Not everybody is rejoicing at the news that they get to hunker down in a bunker for years with Jaha calling the shots. Harper tells Monty shes tired of fighting. He reassures her that once theyre in the bunker, theyll be safe, but Harper reminds him that every time they think that, something bad happens. Monty sees the bunker as a chance for a future, and he encourages Harper to reconsider giving up, Harper isnt the only one not interested in going to the bunker. Riley and Jasper are part of a group determined to decide their own fates. The Art of War Roan, Abby, Clarke, Miller and Jackson arrive on the outskirts of Polis. Abby informs Clarke that Skaikru made an agreement with Trikru to share the bunker, and they would rather go to war than live with Azgeda. Clarke reminds Abby that they already have a deal with Roan. She realizes her people are about to ambush Roan, but Abby informs Clarke that Indra agreed to make room for Roan as long as he doesnt put up a fight. But Echo, having learned of the plan, arrives with warriors to save her king and takes the others hostage. Echo tells Roan of the Trikru-Skaikru alliance, and he confronts Clarke who swears she just learned of Trikrus plans. Roan believes her and thanks Clarke for trying to come to his defense. Clarke tells Roan they dont have to go to war, but Roan says its too late. Skaikru betrayed him. Clarke reminds him that the bigger picture is survival. If Azgeda was willing to hunker down with Skaikru, why not Trikru as well? Roan is convinced Skaikru and Trikru were planning to assassinate him, but Clarke tells him that Kane cut a deal with Indra that would spare his life. This isnt good enough for Roan who isnt about to hang his people out to dry. Trikru may have seized control of the temple and the bunker, but Azgeda surrounds it, ensuring that nobody can get in. Clarke is certain Indra will be forced to come to some sort of compromise. Roan agrees to talk with Indra, but hes keeping her people as hostages as collateral. Clarke wants Roan at the meeting, but Roan views Kane as a traitor. Besides, if anyone can convince mortal enemies to move in together, its Clarke. Raven is Revisited by Becca Raven, Emori and John are still at the lab, packing up some of the tech equipment. Ravens health continues to decline, and shes experiencing hallucinations. Shes got Becca in her head. Becca tells Raven her time is running out, and shes not talking about the radiation, shes referring to Ravens brain. The computer code is destroying her neurons at an advanced rate. Soon, Raven wont know how to tie her own shoes. Becca urges Raven to take the shuttle up into space and die with a view. Her people dont need her help now that they have the bunker. Emori wonders what happened to Miller who was supposed to return from Polis to pick them up along with the supplies, but since hes been captured, they have no way off the island. As Emori and John watch Raven coming unraveled, they consider their options. John says they can ride out the radiation in the lighthouse bunker, but Emori points out they dont have enough food for five years. The Blood of the Commanders Roan and Clarke arrive at the temple where Clarke meets Gaia. She thanks the Flamekeeper for helping to find the bunker, but Gaia isnt a fan of Wanhedas. Clarke handed over the Flame to an unworthy king. Gaia keeps up the ruse that the flame was destroyed as a result. Roan and Clarke head into the bunker to talk to Indra and the other war chiefs of the Trikru alliance. Theres a lot of bad blood between these two tribes, and Indra believes war is inevitable. The only reason it didnt happen before was because of Lexa. Clarke tries to smooth the waters, pointing out they all share a common goal to survive Praimfaya. Its coming in six days, and anyone in the bunker will be dead. As far as Indras concerned, the only option to break the stalemate is to fight. Clarke argues the bunker will hold 1200 people, and theres no reason they cant all share it. All of the clans can survive, and that is what Lexa would have wanted. Indra agrees, and if Lexa were still around, the clans would have obeyed her. But since theres no commander to rule them, its war. Roan leaves, but Clarke stays behind. She knows Gaia has the Flame because Octavia told her. Clarke isnt about to sit around and let the clans fight over the one thing that can save them. Gaia points out that not even Wanheda can stop the clans from killing each other. Maybe not, but a commander could. Gaia says they need a Nightblood for that, so Clarke grabs Gaias knife and cuts herself, revealing that she meets the requirements. Clarke asks Gaia to make her the commander. Pro-Choice Jasper and his merry band of rebels continue to party, locking themselves into a room. Jasper and a few of the others are also armed and dangerous. He puts his hand up to the door and reveals the letters DNR are written on his palm do not resuscitate. Bellamy and Monty try to convince him to put down the gun and open the door, but he insists they arent coming out. Harper pleads with Monty to just go and leave them alone, but Jaha is determined to get inside and prepares to blow open the door. Bellamy warns Jasper someone is going to hurt, but Jasper replies if they dont want anybody to get hurt, they wont open the door. Jaha doesnt want to leave children behind to die, and Bellamy reminds the former chancellor thats exactly what he did when he sent them to earth. The difference now is they have a choice, and so does he. Jaha backs down and prepares to head out. Monty doesnt want to give up, but Jaha agrees with Bellamy that he cant save people who dont want to be saved. Jasper and Harper emerge to say goodbye to Bellamy who still holds out hope hell meet his friends again. Jasper assures him that they wont. After the others leave, the partying resumes, Harper spots Monty who decided to stay behind to be with her. He hasnt changed his mind but is hanging around in case they change theirs. Skairipa Returns Ankara returns to Ilians farm with a few others, one of whom recognizes Octavia. She murdered and beheaded one of his friends. Octavia warns them to leave, but theyre determined to fight. Octavia has no choice but to engage and she brutally murders them all as Ilian looks on. She tells him this is who she is. The 100 Interview: Lindsey Morgan on Ravens Bittersweet Decision>>> The Ascension Echo and Roans war council is interrupted by the ascension call. They dont understand how this is possible since the flame was destroyed. He realizes hes been tricked. Echo warns Roan that a new commander is bad for them. They still control the tower, and she wants to stop the ascension, at least until they know who the new commander is, but Roan already knows. Everyone gathers together, and Indra questions her daughter about this mysterious Nightblood. Gaia keeps mum and moves forward with the ceremony Clarke enters the room, and Indra objects that Wanheda is not a Nighblood, but Gaia proceeds with the ceremony, revealing that Clarkes blood is the blood of the commanders. Roan speaks up, stating that Clarke is making a mockery of their faith. She tells Roan shes trying to save them, Roan orders Echo to bring in Abby who has serious reservations about Clarkes plan. The flame could kill her, but Clarke has decided they have no other choice. Roan urges Abby to reveal how Clarke became a Nightblood, and Abby sells Clarke out. Roan argues that if anyone can be made a Natblida and take the Flame, they can no longer trust the blood. Indra declares the war has been delayed long enough, but Roan points out that Clarke is right about fighting a war being the wrong way to decide who survives. He suggests one final conclave consisting of one champion from each clan. Whoever wins, gets the bunker. Indra agrees. Hope Floats Miller and Jackson are freed and return to the island. Raven informs John shes not going with them. She knows shes dying, and shes tired of being in pain. She plans to go into space and do one final spacewalk. Murphy apologizes for everything hes done to her, but she assures him none of this is his fault. She can deal with losing her leg but not her mind. Raven tells Murphy to pass along the message that shes chosen to float herself. Skaikrus Champion Arrives Bellamy arrives in Polis and learns about the final conclave. The entire city is to be the battlefield, and theres not time limit or guns. Without guns or anyone trained in Grounder combat, Bellamy realizes theres no way that Skaikru can win. Only Skaikru does have a champion, and she just arrived in the city Octavia. Will Monty convince Jasper and the others to fight for their survival? Have we seen the last of Raven? Let us know what you think in the comments section below. The 100 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW. Want more news? Visit our 100 page on Facebook. (Image Courtesy of The CW) The Vampire Diaries spin-off The Originals has never quite achieved the popularity of its predecessor. But with the departure of Delena and company, The Originals has a chance to lure viewers who are craving a supernatural fix to New Orleans, a city teeming with sexy vampires, powerful witches and displaced werewolves, all munching on the occasional plate of beignets, bead-wearing tourists and swilling a glass of bourbon to wash it all down. There may not be a Damon or Stefan Salvatore, but there are two hot brothers: one with an impish grin and another with impeccably-coiffed hair. While theres tons of dysfunctional family drama and all sorts of creepy big bads, we have a few suggestions on how The Originals could become as addictive as the series that sired it and help diehard Vampire Diaries fans stave off withdrawal. Major Character to be Recast for Riverdale Season 2>>> Create Some Epic Romances Central to The Vampire Diaries success was the love triangle between Damon, Stefan and Elena which evolved into one of TVs most memorable couples Delena. But a ton of other great romances occurred over the series eight seasons: Caroline and Tyler, Bonnie and Jeremy, Caroline and Stefan, Bonnie and Enzo and Alaric and Jo, not to mention tons of steamy hook-ups. Its in the love and lust department where The Originals continues to come up short. Hayley always had eyes for Elijah but being his brothers baby mama made the whole possibility of an immediate coupling kind of incestuous and icky. It took until season 2 to distance Hayley and Klaus definitively enough for Elijah and Hayley to consummate their relationship. But the love affair was short-lived, and Elijah stood by as Hayley married the loyal-as-a-Labrador, earnest, bayou-born-and-bred werewolf, Jackson. As far as love triangles go, this one was a dud that didnt exactly inspire viewers to don T-shirts emblazoned with Team Jackson or Team Elijah. After a brief marriage, Jacksons heart was literally ripped from his chest, clearing the way for Hayley and Elijah. But guilt and grief prolonged an immediate reunion, until the two had one final tryst before Elijahs five-year nap. After this excruciatingly-long build up, Elijah and Hayley are finally free to be together, but concerns for a new threat looming over little Hope has pushed their happily ever after to the back burner once again. Fans have waited for this ship to sail, and it would suck if it hits some rocks and sinks. Mark Consuelos Cast as Riverdale Season 2 Villain But Theres a Catch>>> Rebekah and Marcel have failed to make a go of it (thanks in large part to her prolonged absences), and Kol and Davina were an engaging twosome when Kol was inhabiting the body of a much cuter, much more charismatic witch named Kaleb played by Teen Wolfs Daniel Sharman (dont body swap your characters into more appealing alternatives.) And in spite of finally being free from their uber bitch of an aunt, Freya has failed to do more than dance on a few bars and drag home one frat boy who her younger brother scared off before she could get to second base. The biggest challenge has been finding Klaus a love interest that surpasses the yumminess of Klaroline. Its hard to ignore the physical resemblance between Caroline and Cami, but the pseudo psychotherapist turned vamp never had Carolines Type-A perkiness or the feisty rapport with Niklaus. Other attempts to hook up the Original bachelor have been lackluster (Aurora, Genevieve) and short-lived. Holding out for a reunion between Stefans widow and the Original single dad is probably fruitless, but in a perfect world, his prophecy that hed be Carolines last love would come true. Give Klaus Back His Bite Klaus Mikaelson has spent centuries murdering and torturing others indiscriminately (including members of his own family.) His reasons have been revenge, self-preservation or a response to some perceived slight or betrayal. But at the end of season 3, Klaus made the ultimate sacrifice by offering himself up in exchange for the safety of his siblings, Hayley and his daughter. Now that Klaus is free again and has returned to the bosom of his family, he is committed to being a loving parent, and the result, so far, has been a neutered version of the homicidal-hybrid tyrant he used to be. Its hard not to miss the cheeky, vicious and unapologetic Klaus who resembles another vamp whose journey from bad boy to anti-hero was a long road full of speed bumps, Damon Salvatore. Why Vincent is the Coolest Character on The Originals>>> Theres a reason Damon didnt become mortal until The Vampire Diaries series finale. Fans may have liked the idea of a human Damon growing old with his dream girl, but actually watching him living out his mortal life in presumably humdrum fashion would have been a snooze because good Damon was okay, but bad Damon was even better. Until Klaus dials back the Mr. Mom routine, Elijah is willing to torture, kill and maim, as is big sister Freya, who has shown she inherited the Mikaelson mean streak. Rebekah and Kol were a bit down after returning to the land of the (un)living and scampered off to parts unknown to wreak some Original havoc (no humanity switches on this lot, darling) but they will be back, which should shake up the family dynamic once again. The only thing better than watching the Mikaelsons battle outside forces is to witness them fighting their own demons (sound familiar?) But we want the Klaus who buried his enemies behind brick walls, banished them to eternal drowning at the bottom of the ocean, killed a beloved doppelganger and her aunt and suppressed his foes through various methods (invoking an age-old curse, ripping out their hearts, snapping their necks.) We long for the tantrum-throwing sociopath, unburdened by a conscience, who staked his own father, cock-blocked his siblings or daggered them for being insubordinate and whose most endearing quality has to be his ability to rationalize and defend his most deplorable deeds. (That and a sense of humor so dry that viewers are parched after each episode.) Being a good parent and a diabolical vamp shouldnt have to be mutually exclusive. Find the Fun The Originals has always been intense with hefty dialogue, and the depth and scope of the storylines have, at times, resembled a Shakespearean tragedy. Its possible to fight evil or even be evil (Katherine, Kai, Silas) and still maintain a wicked sense of humor, but the Mikaelsons have become quite dour of late. Its time to throw back a few Hurricanes, crack a few jokes. After all, they dont call it The Big Easy for nothing. The Originals is a good show, but if it takes a few cues from The Vampire Diaries, it could be great. How do you like the reformed Klaus? Do you buy him as the doting dad? Could Freya become the meanest Mikaelson? Does The Originals need to lighten up? Should the show aspire to be more like The Vampire Diaries? Let us know what you think in the comments section below. The CW Sets Finale Dates: Two-Hour Supernatural and the End of Reign>>> The Originals airs Fridays at 8/7c on The CW. Want more news? Visit our Originals page on Facebook. (Image Courtesy of The CW) JP Corry has been awarded the CORE Standard by Business in the Community Northern Ireland. This achievement recognises JP Corry as an accredited leader in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Following an in-depth examination of JP Corrys CSR processes and policies, Business In the Community granted JP Corry with the CORE certification. Ciaran McConnell, JP Corry managing director, said: Participating in CORE has been a very valuable process for the business. While we have always been proactive with our CSR efforts within our local communities, CORE has provided us with a framework to identify what we are doing well, and highlight areas where we can improve. This process has enabled us to build an extensive portfolio emphasizing our CSR initiatives and ultimately demonstrating our commitment to CSR practice to our staff, customers and suppliers During the CORE process, JP Corry established its own CSR Committee, which includes staff from various departments across the business. The Committee has been developed to adopt a strategic approach to CSR practice, whilst encouraging and driving new CSR initiatives. Following this accreditation, JP Corry has been shortlisted for the Building Stronger Communities award at Business in the Community Northern Irelands Responsible Business Awards. Taking place at the Belfast Waterfront on 1 June 2017, these awards recognise Northern Ireland businesses for their contribution to their people, planet and places where they operate. Dozens of Knauf employees have pledged their commitment to the charity, Walking With The Wounded (WWTW) at a recent joint event at the Knauf plant in Sittingbourne. As one of the worlds largest manufacturers of lightweight building products and systems, Knauf and its employees throughout the country, have selected WWTW as its charity partner for 2017. WWTW director of fundraising Andrew Cook, WWTW beneficiary Duncan Welton, and selected guests were welcomed to the manufacturing facilities of Knauf to launch the partnership, which included a factory tour and event sign up. Mr Cook said: During this year we will engage with around 3,000 veterans. Our programmes are growing across the country all the time, but to do that we need more money to upscale and support more veterans. We are hugely grateful for the support that we are receiving from Knauf and look forward to a great partnership in 2017. The pledge will see Knauf employees participate in several upcoming charitable events, including WWTWs flagship annual fundraising event, the Cumbrian Challenge, and raise money for a worthy cause. WWTW not only helps to raise funds, but actively works to retrain and re-skill men and women who have been wounded both physically, and mentally, during their time in military service to their country. Mr Welton is one of those men, and after 12 years in the army, he was homeless and out of work, suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder. WWTW was there to help him, as the charity has been with many others. Knauf UK and Ireland managing director, Ian Dean, said: We are delighted to announce our partnership with Walking With The Wounded. At Knauf, we not only aim to raise funds for our chosen charity, but also engage with our employees while doing so. Employees took the opportunity to register their interest for the 2017 charity events calendar, which so far comprises: Cumbrian Challenge 2017 12-13 May Mens Health, Survival of the Fittest 8 July Windsor Half Marathon 24 September. These events are just the beginning with further dates to be added to the calendar throughout the year. While competing, Knauf employees will be supported by WWTW, with a number of beneficiaries taking part alongside the Knauf teams. For more information and to help Knauf raise money for WWTW, visit the event specific Virgin Money Giving pages. http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fund/knaufcc http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fund/knaufwindsor http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fund/knaufsurvivalofthefittest. Picture caption: Knauf UK and Ireland managing director, Ian Dean (left), welcomes WWTW director of fundraising Andrew Cook (middle) and WWTW beneficiary Duncan Welton (right) to the Knauf factory in Sittingbourne. MDF profile manufacturer and distributor, The W.Howard Group has appointed top sales talent to its expanding UK and Irish team. Andy Minas joins the team as national account manager (south), joining the business from Jet Cox and formerly of Catnic where he has 12 years experience looking after builders merchants, distributors, national housebuilders, regional builders, construction companies and architects. On the back of the Group's acquisition of Balcas Kildare including its KOTA brand at the end of 2016, Damian Woods also joins the team in a business development manager role. With 18 years' experience in the UK and Irish construction markets, Mr Woods role within the Group is to grow its presence in the Irish market and drive KOTA sales in both the UK and Ireland. Speaking about his new role, in which he will develop the W.Howard range of MDF products with existing national and independent merchants, new merchants and buying groups, Mr Minas said: "During the course of my career, I have built successful professional relationships to increase market share, identify sales opportunities and secure new accounts. I am delighted to have joined the W.Howard Group, as it has a great reputation in the marketplace and I am looking forward to using my knowledge and experience to benefit the business." Mr Woods added: "With the launch of The W.Howard Group's first standard stock range offering into the Irish market, I will be working with head office buyers, promoting our service levels and ensuring that it is easy for branches to purchase product from the Group. There is enormous potential in the market to grow KOTA sales both in the UK and Ireland, both in terms of product benefits and W.Howard Groups capacity to supply. With my extensive knowledge and experience of the KOTA product and market, I will drive sales to support and achieve the vision of the Group. The W.Howard Group managing director, Graham Williams, concluded: "These appointments really demonstrate the Group's commitment to growth and the development of our offering across the UK, Ireland and continental Europe. We are working together with our merchant partners to support the industry, its builders, carpenters and construction companies by providing an extensive and innovative range of MDF profile products and solutions." South Jersey Election Day results roundup: Who won, who lost? Follow along for news throughout Election Day and race results as they come in. I didnt know anything about New Guinea hardly anybody did. I looked it up out of curiosity in my encyclopaedia which gave me just very little information, and I stopped by the library and looked up a little bit more about it, and somehow it just stuck in my mind. I began to think, Wouldnt it be fun to open up a new post? As I thumbed through the memo I thought to myself, I wonder what poor devil we will send to the jungles of New Guinea? But somehow it stuck in my mind. I HAD been in Washington for a long time and I was looking for an onward assignment and was getting nowhere with it when, one day, there crossed my desk a big fat memorandum asking for permission to open a new post in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. In the decades following World War II, as colonies across the globe gained independence, the United States worked to establish embassies and consulates in these new nations, some in the remotest areas of the world. Papua New Guinea, which gained autonomy from Australia on 16 September 1975, was one such case. Mary Olmsted was assigned as the first US consul general to PNG in early 1975 and was later became the first US ambassador upon independence. So I thought it over very, very carefully, the pros and the cons. I didnt have an assignment, nothing was on the horizon, Id been turned down for two or three, and, why not, and see what would happen. So I wrote a memorandum to the Director General and sent copies of it to the Director of Personnel, the head of assignments, and everybody else I could think of, and said I would like to be considered to open the post, which would open as a Consulate General in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Well, dead silence ensued. And several days later the Director-General came into my office with my memo in hand, and he said, You really mean this? And I said, Yes, I do. And he said, If you mean it, I can get that assignment for you. But he said, I want to be sure you mean it. I said, Yes, I mean it. So indeed he delivered. There was some protest from the desk level in the geographic bureau, but I weathered that storm. The desk thought it was nonsense to send a woman to Papua New Guinea. That point was made very clear, and in writing, and when I got that memo I had to laugh a little bit. I said they wont dare cancel this assignment now that there is written evidence that cancellation would be on the basis of discrimination. I learned considerably later, toward the end of my tour there, that the government of PNG, the people who were running the country, were very puzzled when the United States sent a woman there as their first representative, and they didnt know how to take it until the US named Anne Armstrong as ambassador to the United Kingdom. They read about that in Time Magazine, and they thought, Well, the United States sent a woman to London, and they sent one to Port Moresby. And they felt that kind of put them in the same league as the United Kingdom, and they felt very pleased about it. Then they began to say, We, too, should have women who are able to take high positions in our government. We should train them and bring them along and give them appointments. And I think my appointment there had something to do with improving the status of women in Papua New Guinea, and their ambassador here [in 2004 was] a woman. The Department sent in an advance team consisting of the young man who was to become our administrative officer and another young man who was sent out from the Department. They looked around to try to locate both housing and office space for us. Then my secretary went out [to New Guinea] a few days before I did. When I arrived we moved into some rather shabby quarters over a lunch counter and a bookstore. There was no furniture in our quarters. We had ordered office furniture from Australia, but obviously it wouldnt get there for a couple of months. So we borrowed three battered desks and five chairs from the people we were renting the space from. These were straight chairs, not swivel chairs. As I say, these offices were a bit grubby. They were carpeted with large squares of blue and bluish-green cheap carpeting, and curtains were orange and white. The offices were broken down into little rabbit warrens. There were just these little rabbit warrens.The floors creaked when we walked across them. We took out one of the walls to make a slightly larger office for me. We did little shopping locally. Things were expensive, and there wasnt very much variety. One day when we had three visitors and all our staff of three were there, one person had to stand because we only had five chairs. So I told the administrative officer, For goodness sakes, go out and buy a few chairs locally and we can use them, and we did. We also bought a large heavy table to put out Telex on, got the Telex installed, and that linked us up first with Australia and then later with Washington. We felt a little bit more in touch with things. Then one day our shipment from [Embassy] Tokyo arrived. When a new post is opened, they always ask one of the large embassies in the area to make up a shipment of things that a new post will need and send them down. Well, obviously Tokyo cleaned out its attic when it made its shipment for us. This great big lift van arrived and was opened up, and the things were put in boxes in the reception room. We opened them one by one, and the stationery, envelopes, and consular forms, and seals and rubber stamps and all kinds of things that we needed, and there were paper clips. We couldnt get any paper clips locally. Running an office without paper clips is a bit of a challenge. They also sent our flags. They sent one flag that was nineteen feet long, and we had to open it up through the doors of three offices to see what size it was. Im sure it was the largest flag in all of PNG. We found exactly one use for it all the time that I was there: we strung it up on the Bicentennial Fourth of July. So little by little, we did get established. Our shipment of office furniture arrived from Australia after a few months, and we had swivel chairs and real desks and desk lamps and all sorts of things that made us feel that we were coming up in the world. It wasnt until the end of the year that we really felt that we were fully operational. By that time, other personnel had arrived. The American staff consisted of a political officer, an economic-commercial officer who initially did consular work, an administrative officer, and two secretaries, one of whom also served as the code clerk/communications clerk. And we started hiring locals, and we decided that we would hire Papua New Guineans, not Australians. We got the word out on the grapevine that we were looking for people, and we had to train them. I had a very young American staff, they were very good in training the local people. They really made an all-out effort. My secretary was teaching touch typing to the local staff; others were encouraging them to take correspondence courses from Washington and helping them with that. There was a very good feeling among the local staff and my junior officers. A lot of new legislation was being passed, things that were of interest in Washington such as the basic laws on mineral rights, and mining, and things like that. And I had a very competent political officer who could study a vast mass of material, and write a very sharp paper: Mark Easton. He did a lot of basic reporting on labour laws, and other things that would be of interest to an American corporation going to PNG. And also there was a very intense political situation, politics at the country level. New political parties were being established, they were breaking apart, and still newer ones were being formed, and people were defecting from this party to that party and so on. Mark called me up from the parliament one day. He said, I think theyre going to take the decisive vote on independence. Come on down. So I went down, got in the visitors gallery, and sat there and watched as the chief minister [Michael Somare], as he was then called, made a very impassioned plea for them to vote for independence as of a certain date. The vote was taken, and was in favour of independence, and I was one of the first to congratulate him. [Somare] told me this story later. The night before the crucial vote was taken he had a dream where he was back in his native village, and he was in his canoe and was paddling. He said it was moving very rapidly over the water, and he was just going along at a great rate and he felt very calm, and very confident, and when he woke up he thought, This is the way my drive for independence is going to go. So when he got to his office he called up the leader of the opposition and said, Im going to press for a vote on independence today in parliament. And the leader of the opposition said, Ill fight you all the way on this. I was in the visitors box which happened to be right next to where the leader of the opposition sat, and usually one of his Australian advisers would sit in the visitors box and pass him notes. But the Australian adviser was off someplace having a beer or something and the leader of the opposition didnt have any guidance, so the vote went through. And it all turned out just the way the canoe ride predicted. On the day of independence, we had a little ceremony elevating the consulate general to the status of embassy, and we unveiled our plaque which read Embassy of the United States in place of the one that said Consulate General of the United States. I became the charge daffaires. Then I think sometime in late October I got the cable saying that President [Gerald] Ford wanted to appoint me as ambassador, and was this agreeable with me. I sent back a very quick cable saying, Yes, Id be delighted! My name was eventually sent up to the Senate, and I was confirmed in absentia. We had a little ceremony in my office, at which I was sworn in by my consular officer. I just had my office staff and I invited a couple of people from the Foreign Office [and] we broke out the champagne. There was a great ceremony sponsored by the government to celebrate independence. It was treated rather casually by Washington, which was not terribly eager to get up a great big delegation. The Australian adviser in the Department of Foreign Affairs said to me privately that he hoped the United States would not send a large or a high-level delegation. He said, Its going to be very difficult for us to provide the kind of security you would expect. And I think that was true. Washington sent the Governor of Iowa, who was then Chairman of the Governors Association, and the mayor of Ft Lauderdale, who [eventually became] a Member of Congress, and their wives came up on a special plane from Australia which brought a large number of the independence visitors and delegates. When they arrived at the airport in Port Moresby, the tarmac was filled with many groups of tribal people dancing in tribal ceremonial costumes, dancing and singing. It was just a kaleidoscope of colour. It was a sight you cant imagine. And as they were coming down the ramp of the plane, our delegation saw all this. It just blew their minds. I could hardly get the American delegation in their official car they were so busy taking pictures. And then there was the ceremony which the Prince of Wales attended; he was the representative of the Throne. They had a few important people sitting on a little bench at this ecumenical service, which was in the Catholic cathedral, and of this group one of them came in tribal costume with his bow and arrow. And among the congregation there were a few people in tribal costumes. I might tell you there had been quite an argument in the diplomatic corps among the men as to what the proper dress was going to be for these occasions, and the British were holding out for the most formal regalia possible, black tie, if not white tie, and cutaways, and all that. The Australians werent about to go into that sort of thing, and moreover they didnt want the British trying to tell them what the proper dress was in their own backyard. Things got a little tense in some of the diplomatic corps meetings. I sat there and enjoyed it thoroughly. Listening to men wrangling over what clothes they were going to wear can be quite funny. I saw that our objectives were to demonstrate a friendly interest in a newly independent country, and that meant a lot of PR work, and a lot of what I did was essentially PR. What our interests were initially, very little. Potentially we might have an interest in their very considerable natural resources. And we might eventually have some very heavy investment there. We were also interested in seeing that difficulties with the Indonesians should not develop. A border war would be a very nasty thing. Indonesia could go in and wipe out the Papua New Guinean government, theres not much question about that, I think. They would have a great deal of trouble in conquering the countryside, but they could march in if they so desired. I didnt think that was a likely prospect, but who knows what turn of events will take place and when, and this was something that Washington wanted to keep an eye on. Mary Olmsted was interviewed by Ann Miller Morin in 1985 and Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1992 Those who are already thinking about their 2018 holiday now have more choices from East Midlands Airport as Jet2.com and Jet2holidays has announced its biggest ever summer flights and holidays programme, with prices starting at just 47. The leisure airline and holiday company has introduced flights and holidays to 32 summer beach and city destinations from the Castle Donington airport with summer 2018 seeing 920,000 seats on sale and thousands of two-star to five-star hotels available. The destinations costing 47 will be Budapest in Hungary, Prague in the Czech Republic, Pisa and Verona in Italy, and Girona in Spain. The flights from East Midlands Airport will go to popular sun and city destinations, including Costa de Almeria, in Spain. This destination was launched in 2017 with one flight a week but this has been doubled to two. There will also be an increase to two flights a week to Dalaman in Turkey, Corfu and Zante in Greece and Split in Croatia. The service to Verona, Italy, will offer additional capacity due to larger aircraft being used on the route and Dubrovnik flights will be able to take more passengers to the Croatian city due to extended seasons. Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, said: "This is a huge summer programme yet again from East Midlands Airport, with 920,000 seats and thousands of hotels through our award-winning airline and holiday operator. Such sustained growth is only possible by looking after our customers, which shows our continued investment into offering great-value package holidays and family-friendly flights is working. "By continuing to grow across all of our bases, including established ones such as East Midlands, this proves our formula is the right one." Andy Cliffe, managing director of East Midlands Airport, said: "Jet2.com has a great customer service ethos, which mirrors our own. The airline is incredibly popular with people in the region, bringing with it growth in both passenger numbers and destinations served." Meanwhile, Jet2 is celebrating after winning two accolades in the inaugural TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice awards for airlines, winning the Best Airline UK and Best Low-Cost Airline Europe prizes. The awards are based on the reviews and ratings of millions of travellers from the past 12 months, covering every major carrier worldwide. The 32 destinations Jet2.com will be flying to from East Midlands Airport in 2018: CROATIA Dubrovnik, Split CYPRUS Larnaka, Paphos CZECH REPUBLIC Prague GREECE Cephalonia, Corfu, Heraklion, Kos, Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Zante HUNGARY Budapest ITALY Pisa, Verona MALTA Malta PORTUGAL Faro Madeira SPAIN Alicante, Almeria, Fuerteventura, Girona, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Malaga, Menorca, Palma, Reus, Tenerife TURKEY Antalya, Dalaman 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. Korean automobile company on Thursday announced that it would produce a compact sedan and a compact SUV especially for the Indian domestic market with an investment of approximately $ 1.1 billion in Andhra Pradesh. Even now, many villages have no roads and the delivery of nets can require an airplane, helicopter, boat, truck and days of walking often in the rain. At 61, Freeman has spent more than half of his life fighting malaria. He is the kind of guy you want nearby if your car gets stuck in the mud, which he has seen happen a lot while overseeing the distribution of more than five million insecticide-treated mosquito nets in PNG. This country has very, very difficult geography, with little infrastructure, said Tim Freeman, a logistician for Rotarians Against Malaria. IT WOULD be tough to find a location more hospitable to the spread of malaria than Papua New Guinea. Its always the rainy season; sometimes the rainier season, said Freeman. His teams distribute nets to all of PNGs 20,000 villages and keep track of their work. We can tell you the history of the nets in every one of them, he said. It has been a group effort. A malaria adviser in WHOs country office works with Freemans teams, helping determine how many nets are needed and providing technical guidance. WHO also sets global policy and targets, and helps translate these into country-specific plans. Australia has contributed financial resources, and Population Services International, a US-based NGO, has deployed outreach officers to teach communities how to use mosquito nets consistently and correctly, and how to identify the symptoms of malaria and seek treatment quickly. The efforts have paid off. Malaria has dropped like a stone, Freeman said. We have seen a massive decrease in the incidence, agreed Dr Manuel Hetzel, an epidemiologist who evaluated the malaria-control program from 2008 to 2012 while working for the Institute of Medical Research in PNG. Two advances are responsible for PNGs progress: the near-universal distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets and an infusion of money for diagnosis and treatment of malaria. Armed with a Global Fund grant of $US109 million in 2009 and guided by WHOs technical recommendations, PNG distributed more than 7.5 million nets during the following six years. The effort has halved the incidence of malaria from 400 cases per 100,000 population to 200. Between 2009 and 2015, the incidence of malaria admissions to public health facilities dropped by 83%, and malaria death rates in health facilities fell by 76%. Bednets are not the only interventions credited for the advances: surveillance, diagnosis and treatment also play roles in prevention, said Dr Rabi Abeyasinghe, who coordinates malaria activities for WHO in the Western Pacific Region, where malaria is endemic in 10 of its 37 countries. Surveillance helps planners identify where to distribute bednets, and treatment of individuals prevents other cases from occurring. If there are people with malaria parasites walking around, the mosquitoes will get infected and transmit it to other people, he said. But the advances are in peril. As donors seek maximum impact for their investments, and focus on countries that need support most, investment in middle-income countries with a low-to-moderate disease burden is declining. Malaria programs in these countries will need to explore other funding arrangements, including increased support from domestic resources. For example, the Global Fund, which bankrolls approximately 80% of the financing for malaria programs, has cut its funding to PNG by about 50%. Donors are interested in countries that have a high burden of malaria but a low income, said Stefan Stojanovik. PNG is a low-middle income country. The Global Fund and other donors are shouldering much of the financial burden, but governments will have to contribute more resources themselves if they are to control malaria in a sustainable way, said WHOs Dr Jan Kolaczinski. The lower the burden, the harder it is for malaria programmes to make the case for government funds, as ministers will shift their attention to diseases that pose a more apparent public health problem, he added. Korean small car maker is ready for a ride in the fast-growing Indian car market with an investment of $1.1 billion (about Rs 7,000 crore). It will set up a manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh with an annual capacity of 300,000 units. Kias parent company Hyundai is the countrys second-biggest car maker with a 17 per cent market share. The country's largest carmaker (MSI) has earmarked Rs 4,500 crore capital expenditure for the current financial year. "Capex for this year (2017-18) is Rs 4,500 crore," MSI Chairman RC Bhargava told reporters in New Delhi. The amount would be spent on various activities including replacement of machinery, R&D and marketing initiatives, he added. On R&D alone, the company plans to invest in the range of Rs 700-1,000 crore, Bhargava said. Some portion of the capital expenditure (capex) could also go towards the acquisition of land for expansion of sales and service network, he added. "This (capex) includes a certain provision for land but this can change depending on the progress made. There will be no monetary restrictions on implementing the programme for building the sales and service network," Bhargava said. MSI had earmarked Rs 3,500 crore capex for the previous financial year that ended on March 31. Sahara chief today said in Supreme Court that he would pay Rs 1,500 crore in the SEBI-Sahara account on or before June 15, 2017. However, the apex court warned Roy of dire consequences if the cheque was dishonoured. Financial year Export value ($bn) 2004-05 15.66 2005-06 16.70 2006-07 17.16 2007-08 20.92 2008-09 24.89 2009-10 29.44 2010-11 43.05 2011-12 43.21 2012-13 39.14 2013-14 34.99 2014-15 36.22 2015-16 32.63 2016-17 35.55 Source: GJEPC India's gems and jewellery exports jumped by 8.95 per cent for financial year 2016-17 on recovery in demand from the United States (US), Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the three destinations accounting for over 75 per cent of India's overall shipment of precious ornaments by value. Data compiled by the apex industry body the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) showed India's net exports of gems and jewellery at $35.55 billion (Rs 238,252.79 crore) for the financial year 2016-17 compared with $32.63 billion (Rs 213,871.29 crore) for the corresponding period last year. Hiralal, a 36-year old headteacher in a small government school in Basarpur, a village in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, was absent 45 out of 200 working days (22.5%), the school time prescribed by the Right to Education (RTE) Act. (The name of the teacher and the school have been changed to maintain confidentiality.) In a country where only 59% of grade III children can read and understand a passage, according to the governments National Achievement Survey, good quality teaching could be key to changing the school environment and encouraging learning. Contrary to common perception, Hiralal was not absent because he had decided to skip school without legitimate reasons; he was absent 21 days because of official reasons such as examination duty, trainings and election-related duty, and 15 days for personal reasons, including 10 medical leaves, which he was entitled to as part of his contract. On average, at Basarpur School were on official duty for 16 of 200 days (8.4%). While overall teacher absence was 18.9%, teacher absenteeism without reason or because of truancy was only 2.5%, according to a recent study conducted by the Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit that works in education across six statesChhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Hiralals case study was a part of this research, which covered 619 government schools with 2,861 . There is religious harmony among different faiths in India overall, a commissioner of USCIRF said on Wednesday, contradicting the independent bipartisan American body's claims that religious tolerance and conditions "continued to deteriorate" in India in 2016. The dissenting statement on India comes from Tenzin Dorjee, a commissioner of the US Commission for International (USCIRF). Dorjee, the first Tibetan to be a USCIRF commissioner, opposed the decision to place India in Tier-2 countries' list. Such a statement coming from a USCIRF member along with its annual report on international is quite significant, given that in the past its Commissioners have been quite harsh on India, which is the birth place and home to major religions of the world. "Overall, I have observed and experienced religious harmony among faiths in India," Dorjee said in a statement that came along with the report. This is for the first time that a USCIRF Commissioner has issued a statement differing with its views on India. "The purpose of writing these brief comments is to share my perspective of having lived, educated and worked in India for many years. India has provided refuge to Tibetan refugees, including my late parents and I, who escaped Communist China's invasion and religious persecution in Tibet. Tibetans are most grateful to India and her people for providing them a second home for almost six decades," he wrote. "While Tibetan Buddhism is most severely restricted in Tibet, it thrives in India with re-established monastic universities such as Sera, Drepung, Gaden and others with systematic and rigorous study programs," Dorjee said, giving his perspective on holistic understanding of religious conditions in India. He said India is one of the great ancient civilisations of the world, a birthplace of major religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and a home of different faiths. "At an interfaith conference on harmony, His Holiness the Dalai Lama while appreciating centuries - old religious diversity and harmony in India, said: '... Despite this (in- house faiths and imported faiths), the fact is that these religions have been able to co-exist with each other, and the principle of Ahimsa (nonviolence) has really flourished in this country'. "Even today, this principle has a strong bearing on every religion. This is very precious and India should really take pride in it," he quoted the Dalai Lama as saying. Dorjee said the Dalai Lama has lauded secular India as defined in the Indian Constitution that respects all faiths and those who do not follow any faith. "Overall, I have observed and experienced religious harmony among faiths in India," he said. That said, India must effectively address problematic religious conditions including outbreaks of communal violence due to interfaith conflicts and politics, Dorjee said. "While I do not condone any form of violence, given India's multi-faith stance and with the second largest populace in the world, such intermittent outbreaks of violence are understandable," Dorjee said. Noting that the USCIRF report highlights religious conditions in India and the need for Indian government to protect the freedom of religious minorities, Dorjee urged the Indian government to "amend its nonsensical constitutional provision that deems Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains to be Hindus". These three faiths have their own distinctive founders, religious histories, and practices followed by millions of people in India and abroad, he said. "In regards to banning cow slaughter, it is not uniform across India. Even in state like Uttar Pradesh, legal slaughter houses cater to the needs of beef consumption," Dorjee said. "In regards to Sikhs' religious requirements, they travel freely in India wearing unshorn hair and turban and Article 25 of the Indian constitution deems Sikhs' carrying kirpan legal as an article of faith," he said, adding that in regards to the caste system, Indian government and people must uphold human dignity and eradicate this social evil. "In my view, the designation of India as Tier 2 is unfortunate given that 19 of her 29 states may not involve in severe violations of religious freedom as in the remaining 10 states. I strongly urge the Indian government to allow USCIRF commissioners to visit India to discuss local religious conditions including interreligious harmony," Dorjee added. Prime Minister on Thursday stressed the need for improving air connectivity as an engine of growth, saying that it would enable the common man to fly. "Our aim is that people in rubber slippers should also fly," he said, while launching the regional connectivity scheme (RCS), also called Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN), from the Jubbarhatti airport to boost regional connectivity. The prime minister flagged off the maiden Shimla-Delhi flight under the scheme. The flight is being operated by Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India. The airline has deployed its 42- seater ATR plane on this sector. He also inaugurated flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and the Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through a video conference. The prime minister also announced that the next flight to take off under the scheme would operate on the Mumbai-Nanded sector. Later, he laid the foundation of the Hydro Engineering College at Bilaspur online. Modi said earlier it was believed that air travel was meant only for the "Raja-Maharaja and elite class". Even the mascot of Air India was a maharaja, he said. The prime minister recalled that he had raised this issue with Rajiv Pratap Rudy, civil aviation minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, and said cartoonist R K Laxman's Common Man should be the mascot of the airline. Modi said better connectivity would help the country's youth who, given the opportunity, could change the "fate and picture" of India. He said in the absence of any aviation policy in the last 70 years, a large number of air-strips constructed during the second world war were lying idle. These airports would be put to use under a policy formulated by the government and 30 such airports would start commercial operations, Modi said. He said that the air fare had been capped under the UDAN scheme and would cost less than taxi fare. Travel time would be cut down from hours to minutes, Modi said. "The Delhi-Shimla flight is cheaper than a taxi ride. A taxi will take at least nine hours and is available for a fare of Rs 10 per km. A flight will now cost you Rs 6-7 per km on the same route and will also save you time," he said. Advising airlines to start a circular route connecting Nanded Sahib, Amritsar Sahib and Patna Sahib, the prime minister said it would attract Sikhs from all over the world. Regional connectivity will bring development to tier-2 and tier-3 cities which are becoming "growth engines", said the prime minister. This will also enhance connectivity to the north-eastern region, he added. "The scheme will also contribute to integration. Different cultures and traditions will be able to intermingle," Modi said, voicing the slogan "Sab ude, sab jude (let everyone fly and unite)." Jayant Sinha tweeted, "UDAN all set to unify India as its soaring wings of regional air connectivity span across 70 airports." At the inauguration of the Hydro Engineering College, the prime minister said the institute at Bilaspur would help in providing specially trained manpower for the hydro power sector which has the potential of generating over 1.5 lakh MW of power. It is a unique fusion of air power and water power on Thursday, he said. Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Union Health Minister J P Nadda and Leader of the opposition in the HP Assembly P K Dhumal received the prime minister, who was accompanied by Union ministers Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Jayant Sinha at the Jubberhatti airport. The prime minister arrived here in an IAF chopper from Chandigarh. Later, he flew to the Annandale helipad by the chopper and drove straight to Shimla's Ridge, the venue of a rally. With the UDAN scheme, the government aims at connecting 45 unserved and under-served airports and make flying affordable by capping fares at Rs 2500 per seat/hour. Five airlines were awarded 128 routes under the scheme last month after a bidding process. Parents of several students on Wednesday staged a demonstration outside the collectorate in Ghaziabad to protest the annual charge and fee hike by some private school managements, even as police arrested five people in connection with the stir. Some of the parents had also blocked the road in front of the collectorate and disrupted traffic on the Hapur road, sources said. Senior superintendent of police Deepak Kumar said the parents were adamant and demanding action against the "monopoly" of school managements. "I personally reached there and pacified the guardians," he said. The SSP said he then arranged a meeting of the enraged parents at Harsaon police lines where district magistrate Nidhi Kesarwani listened to their grievances. Five people have been arrested for blocking the road. they were later released on bail, the SSP said. D M Kesarwani told the parents that notices will be issued to the school managements to "not harass" the children for annual charges. A three-member committee, which was constituted earlier on the issue, has used the explanations tendered by school managements in support of their levying the annual charges. "Now the final report will be submitted on May 11, till that day no annual charges will be taken from parents by any school," she said. The iconic Teen Murti Chowk and the in New Delhi will now be known after the Israeli city Haifa with the NDMC approving their renaming ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Jewish nation. The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) on Thursday took a decision in this regard at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. This is the second renaming of a road approved by the NDMC within a month-- and fifth in two years. The civic body had renamed Park Street earlier this month after Bangladesh's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ahead of that country's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's India visit. "The Teen Murti Chowk will now be known as 'Teen Murti Haifa Chowk' and the will be known as 'Teen Murti Haifa Marg'. The decision was taken unanimously in today's council meeting," a senior NDMC official told PTI. The Israeli city, which these places are being named after, was liberated from the Ottoman occupation by Indian soldiers during the First World War. Large number of Indian soldiers of the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade died during the battle and nearly 900 are buried in Israel, the official said. Modi is likely to visit Israel in July, which will be the first by an Indian Prime Minister, as the two countries celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. Every year, September 23 is celebrated as Haifa Day in India and Israel as a mark of respect to the soldiers who lost their lives in the battle and to mark the end to 400 years of the Turkish control over the city. Demands to rename the two have been made over the past few years by different organisations, including the RSS. Senior RSS functionary Indresh Kumar had demanded in 2015 that the government acknowledge the role played by the three regiments of the Indian Army in the Battle of Haifa in 1918. According to the Ministry of Culture, a "wrong impression" has been built about the Teen Murti Chowk that it has something to do with Mahatma Gandhi. "The Teen Murti Chowk was named to mark the role of the three cavalry regiments. But no one knows this today. The moment people think of the Teen Murti they think of Gandhiji's monkeys. This is a wrong impression that needs to be corrected," it had earlier said. In 2015, Aurangzeb Road was renamed as APJ Abdul Kalam Road. Race Course Road, where the prime minister's residence is located, was renamed as Lok Kalyan Marg last year. Earlier this year, the civic body had renamed Dalhousie Road as Dara Shikoh Road after the elder brother of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked why there was no objection from lawmakers on the governments decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making permanent account number (PAN) cards, a move which was given effect by the latest budget from July 1. 542 persons are sitting in Parliament, why do they not object to it? If they are not objecting, why should we go into it, a Bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. When it was told that the Centre has earlier made a statement in the apex court that it would not make Aadhaar mandatory, the Bench said, They cannot be bound by it. It cannot preclude Parliament from enacting a statutory provision. The court was hearing three petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act. Section 139AA, introduced through the latest Budget and the Finance Act, 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of I-T returns and making application for allotment of PAN with effect from July 1, 2017. The Bench also observed that tax evasion existed in India and it was a shame that citizens do not want to pay taxes. The court said there was no doubt that Aadhaar should be voluntary and observed since tax evasion existed, the government could bring in new statute to stop such leakage. Defending the Centres stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi referred to around 10 lakh fake PAN cards and said Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. We have reached to 99 per cent of population. We are not at a nascent stage, he said and questioned the maintainability of these writ petitions saying they had not raised the issue of violation of privacy. Senior Advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for a petitioner, said section 139AA was not part of the original Finance Bill and was introduced at the last moment. He referred to the Aadhaar Act and said there was not a single word saying the intention behind the statute was to check black money and weed out fake PAN cards. To this, the Bench said, The purpose of the Aadhaar Act is different from that of section 139AA of the I-T Act. Therefore, the validity of section 139AA cannot be seen at the touchstone of what is there in the Aadhaar Act. It would again hear the arguments on Thursday. During the hearing, the apex court, on a lighter vein, observed that when a man is getting married, he has the best income and once a maintenance petition is filed, he becomes a pauper. However, Datar said when Aadhaar has not been made mandatory in the Aadhaar Act, the government cannot make it complusory in the IT Act and the Centre had earlier given an undertaking before the court that except for social welfare schemes, they would not make it mandatory. "The Supreme Court had directed them that they cannot make it mandatory. The mandate of the Supreme Court can not be undone. My right of not to have a Aadhaar can not be taken away indirectly," he said. He also argued that the "dangerous" thing was that as per proviso of section 139AA of the IT Act, if someone does not quote his Aadhaar number while filing IT return, his PAN card will be deemed invalid. When the bench asked whether section 139AA would also apply to non-natural persons like a company, Datar said. "No. It is applicable to individuals only." He said that section 139AA discriminated between firms and individuals and forces a person to quote his Aadhaar for PAN and it was "virtually like a civil death". When the petitioners said they were not raising the issue of privacy in the matter, the bench asked, "the entire thinking change the moment you exclude the privacy part." "We are going into the validity of a Parliamentary legislation. Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided that Aadhaar should be made mandatory for PAN....It is not for this court to say that PAN was not working, so this is good. That is not permissible. We cannot question the wisdom of Parliament like this," the bench observed. However, the Attorney General countered the petitioner's submission and said, "10 lakh PAN cards have been found to be fake. Are they propagating a general public interest or propagating the fraud (fake PANs) which is going in". Rohatgi also clarified that nowhere in section 139AA of IT Act, was it mentioned that it would be effective with retrospective effect. However, Datar said that in Delhi, for 100 persons, 132 Aadhaar cards have been issued and 34,000 private enrollment agencies have been blacklisted. To this, the Attorney General said in Delhi, there were migrants and the government cannot destroy the Aadhaar cards of people after their death. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for two other petitioners, also questioned the government's move and said no one can be compelled to have a Aadhaar card just because section 139AA says so. He also said the biometric system in Aadhaar was not fool proof and there were instances where data has been leaked. "These are issues of public interest. It is like an electronic leash and people do not want to live with it. People cannot be compelled to part away with their vital details to private enrollment agencies," he said. The Centre had earlier faced searching questions from the apex court for making Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards, despite its order that it should be optional. The government had earlier said that fake PAN cards were being used to "divert funds" to shell firms. OWASCO The problem came to the forefront last fall. Tests of drinking water from Owasco Lake showed detectable levels of blue-green algae toxins. More samples of water from supplies for Auburn and Owasco were taken and sent away for testing. The toxins were still there, even if the levels never exceeded the health advisory standard 0.3 parts per billion set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Regardless, local government officials and stakeholders were concerned. Blue-green algae in Owasco Lake wasn't new, but toxins from the algal blooms winding up in drinking water supplies was a new problem. And while it didn't pose any immediate problems, many worried about what would happen when, not if, the blooms reemerged. As Auburn and Owasco leaders considered ways to treat drinking water, state agencies provided support. The state Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health got involved. Samples continued to be tested to ensure the toxins were no longer at detectable levels. Representatives of the environmental and health agencies weren't the only state officials paying attention. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, too, followed reports of the problem and wanted to take action. At an event Wednesday yards from the shore of Owasco Lake, Cuomo said the lake's water quality challenges propelled him to include a $2 billion fund in his budget proposal that would support water infrastructure projects across the state. While Cuomo delivered a presentation to legislators in January outlining the water infrastructure fund, he cited Owasco Lake and problems posed by blue-green algae toxins. He also committed to provide more than $2 million for Auburn and Owasco drinking water system upgrades a pledge he kept. The 2017-18 state budget includes the funding for the two municipalities. Cuomo's push for an overall state water infrastructure was also successful. The budget includes $2.5 billion for water system improvements. "It's a significant expense," he said. "But as I mentioned this is a statewide problem and there is no cheap solution to this. This is not the place where you'd want a cheap solution because this goes to literally the health and the quality of the water we're drinking." In past years, Cayuga County investments provided in state budgets are overlooked. When state officials discuss a project or initiative in central New York, the focus often is on Syracuse and Onondaga County the largest city and county in the region. That wasn't the case this year with the funding for Owasco Lake, most of which will be used for the installation of treatment systems to ensure blue-green algae toxins are removed from the drinking water supply. Before the state budget agreement was reached, the state Legislature passed an extender to fund government operations. That measure included the $2 million proposed by Cuomo a fact he touted when his office distributed a press release highlighting the projects funded by the extender. When the state budget agreement was finalized, the funding was still there. And he again mentioned the money coming for drinking water from Owasco Lake. That set the stage for Wednesday and the event at Emerson Park Pavilion. For the first time since August 2014, Cuomo appeared in Cayuga County and he highlighted the water quality investments in this year's budget the funding for Owasco Lake and the $2.5 billion water infrastructure fund. In interviews with The Citizen, several local officials welcomed the funding. But even Cuomo admitted that more may be needed. "It's a problem statewide. It's a problem right here, as you know, and it's a problem, I'm afraid, that is only going to get worse if we don't address it," he said. "It's not going to get better on its own." The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scored an emphatic victory in all the three municipal corporations in Delhi, despite allegations of corruption and dismal performance, as well as strong anti-incumbency. Elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) show a complete rout of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was relying on these polls to validate its rule over Delhi. The relationship between municipal bodies in Delhi and the Delhi government is fractured and fraught. For many years now, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has had a stranglehold over Delhis municipal structure, which actually lubricates the administrative wheels on which the capital is run. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first flight on Thursday under the Regional Connectivity Scheme Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (Udan) by flagging off the Alliance Airlines flight on Shimla-Delhi sector from Jubbar Hatti airport near Shimla. The Madras High Court has granted anticipatory bail to Sachit Singhi, the co-founder of online accommodation aggregator . The development comes on a complaint filed by a vendor, Jigsaw Advertising and Solutions alleging that the startup has not paid dues of over Rs 1.69 crore. Earlier, his petition for anticipatory bail was dismissed by a sessions court. Legal sources said that the Court has now granted anticipatory bail to the start up entrepreneur. The Centre on Wednesday said it was in the process of procuring nearly 250 bullet and mine protected vehicles for use by the security forces engaged in anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh. It also said 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen were deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. Reacting to media reports, the home ministry said in a statement that it is factually not correct to observe that lack of financial resources is a reason for casualty of valuable lives of police and CRPF personnel in the battle against Left-wing extremism. The funds released for Security Related Expenditure Scheme have increased from Rs 575 crore in 2011-12, 2012-2013, 2013-2014 to Rs 675 crore in 2014-15, 2015-2016, 2016-2017. The above increase is in spite of the fact that states now get a greater share (42 per cent) of the Centre's tax resources. Earlier this used to be only 32 per cent. The statement said it was incorrect to say that Chhattisgarh Police is in shambles. In addition to 45,000 central forces personnel, over 20,000 state police personnel are posted in Bastar region. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. 42 bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet- protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Referring to the recruitment process of security personnel, the home ministry said it was an ongoing and a continuous one. For a force of 70,000, about 3,000 policemen retire every year and there is always a pipeline of 6,000 people under recruitment, it said. Chhattisgarh Police force is well equipped and a Bastar package for police was introduced in 2015. There is complete coordination between the Centre and state forces. In fact 2016 has been the most successful year in anti-LWE operation, it said. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016 which is three times the number of police personnel killed. Even this year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far which is more than the average annual killings of Naxals before 2015. It is wrong to say that 72 CRPF personnel have sacrificed their lives in 2017. As a matter of fact 38 CRPF personnel have been killed in Chhattisgarh in 2017. These figures clearly indicate that anti-Naxal operations are achieving success, the statement said. The central government's policy has been very helpful and has substantially brought down the violence figures in the state. There has been 7 per cent decline in overall violence incidents since 2013. The LWE cadres are in fact in retreat and resorting to desperate attacks. A Bastaria Battalion has been sanctioned recently with a strength of around 750 to be recruited from the local tribals. Similarly 10 Special India Reserve Battalions (SIRB) and 56 India Reserve Battalions are being raised in the LWE areas. On the development front various initiatives have been taken recently such as sanction of a 5,412 km road project at a cost of Rs 11,725 crore, inclusion of all 35 worst-affected LWE districts in the skill development programme, providing Navodaya and Kendriya Vidyalayas, banks, ATMs and post offices in these districts. On the health front, the statement said, the flagship NHRM programme is followed up by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on a constant basis and a super speciality hospital has been approved recently at Jagdalpur by way of upgrading of Jadgalpur Medical College. The next of kin of the soldiers killed currently get around Rs 84 lakhs as assistance. There were no directions by the home ministry regarding not showing grieving widows on TV channels. It was a suggestion verbally made keeping in mind the sensitivities of the bereaved families and the fundamental decency of not intruding to the privacy of the grieving families, it said. The Supreme Court on Thursday fixed the reserve price for the proposed auction of Sahara group's luxury township, Aamby Valley, at Rs 37,392 crore and directed the official liquidator to prepare the draft terms and conditions for the sale. The draft terms, to be prepared in consultation with Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), are to be submitted before the court at the next hearing on June 19. Though Sahara claimed that the circle rate of properties in was Rs 49,000 crore and the enterprise valuation was Rs 1 lakh crore, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A K Sikri and Ranjan Gogoi went by the submissions made by the official liquidator of the Bombay High Court. The valuation, based on different methodologies prepared by valuer Techmech International, was submitted in a sealed cover to the court. After considering the submissions of the liquidator and consulting with Sebi counsel Arvind Datar and Amicus Curiae Shekhar Naphade, the bench zeroed in on the reserve price, which is said to be based on fair market value of the properties. Meanwhile, the bench accepted two post-dated cheques offered by Sahara for Rs 2,052 crore while warning group chief Subrata Roy, who was personally present, that he would be sent to Tihar jail, if these were not honoured. The first cheque of Rs 1,500 crore would be payable on June 15 and the second one for the remaining sum a month later. Earlier, pleading that the group should not be strangulated by selling off its only revenue source, Sahara counsel Kapil Sibal promised that once the second cheque is encashed in July, the group would submit another cheque of Rs 3,000 crore. This third cheque could be encashed by October, Sibal said. He also said 40 per cent of was owned by a cooperative society, several of whose members might be affected. When the bench asked Sebi for the principal amount due, Datar informed the court that the total principal amount pending was Rs 25,781 crore and out of this the sum paid so far alongwith interest amount to Rs 14,612 crore and the sum due came to Rs 11,169 crore. The court said it would come to the question of interest later. It decided to allow both the processes, the auction of and the cheque repayment, run in parallel. Following directions given in the last hearing, Roy, dressed in a cream coloured bandgala and black pants, was present in court no. 2 along with younger son Seemanto Roy and several group executives. When judge Misra asked him if he was willing to pay, Roy said, "I am trying my best from the beginning." Misra said, "We are warning you. If the cheques are not realised, we will be compelled to send you to Tihar Jail from here." The court extended his parole till the next hearing. Three years ago, Roy was summoned and was sent to jail by the bench of judges K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar, the present chief justice, for non-compliance with the court's directives in the matter of money raised by two group firms Sahara India Real Estate Corp and Sahara Housing Invest Corp. He came out on parole in May last year to attend the funeral of his mother. Since then the court has given several conditional extensions of parole tying it to repayment of a few hundred crores each time. In his last visit to the court over three years ago, Roy was attacked with ink by a person who claimed to be an investor inside the court premises. But, this time security was tight in the court premises. After the hearing was over group executives and lawyers whisked away to a waiting vehicles through the rear exit of the court. When journalists tried to ask him for reactions, Roy pleaded to be left alone saying, " I am not supposed to say anything." The court actually sent Prakash Swamy, a former journalist who acted as the power of attorney for MG Capital, to jail for one month for contempt of court. The US-based fund, which had shown interest in buying Sahara group's interests in Plaza Hotel for $550 million, had backed out when the court asked it to deposit Rs 750 crore to establish its bona fides citing a cross-collateral obligation, which required it to buy interests in another property too. Following this, in its last hearing, the court directed the presence of Swamy and imposed costs of Rs 10 crore on him. Though the fund sent its US attorney, it did not immediately pay up the costs imposed on its representative. Swamy, who was present in court, expressed his inability to pay the costs and pleaded for forgiveness. He said he had covered UN in the past and he did it for personal friendship and did not fully know the implications. "If you are a journalist, why did you get into a business like this? It is greed and temptation. Temptation sometimes leads to confinement," Misra said adding, "If we forgive you, we will be sending a wrong message." Veteran Bollywood actor and former union Minister passed away this morning at the age of 70. The actor, also a BJP MP from Gurdaspur, Punjab, was reportedly battling bladder cancer for quite some time now. National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) chairman Bhupendra Singh has said there was no proposal "as of now" to extend a price cap to other medical devices. The railways will soon be reaching an understanding with Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for refining crude oil imported by the transport behemoth itself a move that is likely to save Rs 2,000-2,500 crore a year on taxes for the ailing transporter. An Alliance Air ATR-42 aircraft with 15 passengers will take off from Shimla airport on 11.15 am on Thursday heralding the launch of (RCS). Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney has heard criticism of the $15 million aerial gondola that's funded in this year's state budget. With state legislators and observers slamming Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the investment, she wants to make one thing clear: The gondola was a local idea, not an Albany idea. Mahoney co-chaired a task force that developed proposals for Cuomo's consideration. He then included the plans in his 2017 State of the State address and budget proposal. The task force, she said, met twice in person and held two other meetings over the phone. The panel also held a public hearing. One member of the task force, state Sen. John DeFrancisco, said in an interview with The Citizen earlier this month that the gondola wasn't one of the group's recommendations. He attributed the idea to Cuomo, who he said "started making calls shortly before the budget was released that he wanted to do the gondola." Mahoney differed with DeFrancisco's comments. She said the central New Yorkers on the task force requested Cuomo's support for the gondola project. "The requirement that (Cuomo) had was that it be a bottom-up process and he put local people on a task force and asked us to prioritize how that investment should be spent at the fair, and we came together," she said. The task force's work began using an updated project list from a master plan that was developed in 2015, when Cuomo proposed the first round of funding for the state fairgrounds. One of the projects on that list was the gondola, according to a PowerPoint presentation provided by Mahoney's office. "It was talked about at the very first meeting and then every meeting after that," Mahoney said. "It ended up on our list of priorities." Mahoney believes the gondola was an appealing choice to receive funding from the state because of investments being made in the trail system across New York. While the gondola has been discussed as a way to transport people from the fairgrounds to the nearby Lakeview Amphitheater, officials say the goal is to make it a year-round attraction. In a fact sheet released by Cuomo's office in January, the state said the gondola "will serve as a link between the fairgrounds and Onondaga County's 'Loop the Lake' trail system and serve as a multi-season tourist attraction for central New York." Mahoney said the plan is for a private operator to run the gondola, which will offer passengers views of Syracuse and Onondaga Lake. The terminus for the gondola will feature a refurbished Taste NY area, where visitors can sample New York-made beverages and food products year-round. Any benefits of the gondola have been overshadowed by critics who say that it's an example of government waste. Locally, some central New York leaders have railed against the $15 million project. Mahoney thinks those who are behind the anti-gondola rhetoric also have criticized Lakeview Amphitheater, a project along Onondaga Lake. The amphitheater hosted its first concert in 2015. Its first full season was last summer. The continued criticism, Mahoney said, could make it more difficult for the region to receive the state's financial support in the future. "This was an opportunity for us on the local level to invest $50 million in the state fairgrounds where we live and the infighting over it doesn't make it appealing, I would imagine, to continue to partner," she said. "And there's a lot of places across the state that would like the opportunity to do this kind of thing." The gondola is scheduled to be completed by June 2018. The project must be approved by the Federal Highway Administration because it would cross over Interstate 690. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Uttar Pradesh government plans to open its doors to infrastructure majors, revamp its industrial policy, hold an investment summit and improve its ease of doing business ranking. In a major relief from the long wait for getting patents examined, the government is confident of reducing the time taken for examining patents to 18 months from the current 48 months. The reduction will be in place by March 2018, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday, speaking at the annual Intellectual Property Awards by industry body CII. As a step to bring uniformity in risk management across banks, Reserve Bank of India has prescribed rules for chief risk officer (CRO) stating that he shall directly report to chief executive officer, managing director, and board panel. The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee conferred the 52nd Jnanpith Award on Prof. Sankha Ghosh in New Delhi today (April 27, 2017). . . Speaking on the occasion, the President said that a poet and critique par excellence, a teacher of reputation, a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award, way back in 1977, Padma Bhushan Prof. Sankha Ghosh is indeed the most deserving recipient of this award. A professor of Bengali and an authority in his own right on the works of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, Prof. Sankha Ghosh represents the fluid brilliance that characterizes Indias multifarious literary genius. It is indeed an example of his brilliant fluidity that an author who strove to master Bengali academically, expressed himself in perhaps the most difficult literary genre of poetry. . . The President said that in conferring the award on Prof. Sankha Ghosh the selection board noted that his poetic idiom and experiments with various poetic forms mark his greatness as a creative talent. They also observed that Prof. Ghoshs poetry, while conveying messages, have remained free from polemics. One look at his works, be it Adim Lata- Gulmomay, Murkho Baro Samajik Noy or Baborer Prarthana, to name a few, and one would be left in no doubt about every word of the observations mentioned by the selection board to be to the point and correct. . . The President said an ardent writer of Bengali poetry, his literary works reflect a rare poetic style that encompasses not only a lyrical style but also a deep reflection of the social milieu. His poetry often takes on superficiality in our society and are indeed a candid commentary on contemporary issues. He said that he was sure that as a teacher, Prof. Ghosh would have positively influenced the impressionable minds of his students, as much as enriching the readers of his literary works.. . The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee has condoled the passing away of Shri Vinod Khanna. . . In a message to his son, Shri Rahul Khanna, the President has said, I am deeply saddened to learn of the demise of your father, Shri Vinod Khanna. . . A multi-faceted personality, Shri Vinod Khanna was an iconic film actor, Parliamentarian, Minister of State for External Affairs and Union Minister for Culture and Tourism. In his passing, the Indian film industry has lost a highly talented and acclaimed doyen, known for his powerful and versatile acting. He shall be remembered also for his contribution to the welfare of the people whom he served with commitment and sincerity in his various capacities in the Government of India. . . Please accept my heartfelt condolences and convey the same to the members of your family. May you all have the strength to bear this irreparable loss with courage and fortitude". . . Implementation and progress of various new urban development and housing missions launched by the central government in Haryana will be reviewed tomorrow i.e April 28, 2017 at a high level meeting. . . Union Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu will chair the review meeting in Chandigarh. Chief Minister of Haryana Shri Manoharlal Khattar, concerned Ministers of the State Government, Secretaries of the two urban ministries, Chief Secretary of Haryana and National and state Level Mission Directors of new urban missions and other senior officials will be attending the review meeting. . . The central government launched Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Smart City Mission and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) to enable inclusive and sustainable urban development and to address infrastructure deficit in urban areas of the country. Progress under these schemes and implementation issues will be reviewed tomorrow. . . Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) is being implemented in all the 80 statutory cities and towns of Haryana. So far, 24,986 Individual Household Toilets have built in Haryana out of the target of 1,06,373 besides 1,679 Community and Public Toilets out of the target of 10,394. Out of the total 1,449 urban wards in the State, 412 wards have reported 100% door to door collection of Municipal Solid Waste. While 3,490 tonnes of solid waste is being generated every day in Haryana, 25% of this is being currently processed against the mission target of 100% by October, 2019. . . In Haryana, 10 of the 80 mission towns have so far been declared and certified as Open Defecation Free. These are: Panipat, Sirsa, Mandi Dabwali, Thanesar, Pehowa, Ladwa, Shahbad, Kalanwali, Ellenabad and Rania. . . Ministry of Urban Development has so far released Rs.75 cr to Haryana under Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban). . . Under AMRUT, 20 cities and towns are included in the Mission. A total investment of Rs.2,544 cr has been approved under this mission for providing water taps to all urban households in mission cities as first priority besides improving sewerage and drainage networks, non-motorised urban transport and providing open spaces. Total central assistance of Rs.764 cr has been approved for Haryana under Atal Mission. . . AMRUT cities in Haryana are: Panipat, Sonipat, Ambala, Ambala Sadar, Bahadurgarh, Hissar, Karnal, Rohtak, Bhiwani, Jagadhari, Palwal, Sirsa, Faridabad, Jind, Panchkukla, Thanesar, Gurgaon, Kaithal, Rewari and Yamuna Nagar. . . Faridabd and Karnal have been included in Smart City Mission. While Faridabad got selected for funding under this mission under Fast Track Round of competition, Karnal is to compete in the third round of completion in progress. An investment of Rs.2,600 cr has been approved under the Smart City Plan of Faridabad. . . Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban)- Housing for All, construction of 4,299 houses at a cost of Rs.338 cr as proposed by the Haryana Government has been approved by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation. Central assistance of Rs.224 has been approved for this and Rs.119 cr has been released to the State. Construction of 958 houses for urban poor has so far been completed. . . AAR/KM India and Cyprus here today signed Work Plan for 201718 to implement an already singed MOU for cooperation in the agriculture sector. It covers areas such as joint research projects, training/exchange programme for scientists/experts working in the specific fields in various institutes of the two countries, exchange of germplasms and technology, promotion of private sector participation and joint workshops and conferences etc.. . Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare welcomed Shri Nicos Kouyialis and said that Indias relations with Cyprus have always been warm and friendly with the two countries supporting each others views on various international matters. . . Shri Singh said that India has achieved tremendous progress in the Agriculture and Allied Sectors, which remains a principal source of income in the country. The government is working not only to accelerate agricultural production to meet the rising demand for food, but also to increase the income of those dependent on agriculture. Union Agriculture Minister said further said the government has set a target of doubling farmers income by 2022 and briefly highlighted the initiatives taken in this regard.. . Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said that the government has laid great focus on furthering relationships with like-minded countries, not only to improve trade and investment prospects but also to share the knowledge earned over the years. Shri Singh thanked the Cyprus minister for his visit to India and said that it has provided an opportunity to further enhance the bilateral relationship between the two countries. Uma Bharti to launch Water Conservation Programme for Bundelkhand Union Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Sushri Uma Bharti will launch extensive water conservation programme for drought prone areas of Bundelkhand, Marathwada, Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput in Odisha. Sushri Bharti will formally launch the programme on April 28, 2017 at Bandri, Sagar (Madhya Pradesh). Announcing this in New Delhi today the Minister said that her Ministry has prepared a master plan for artificial recharge of ground water in Bundelkhand region. In UP region of Bundelkhand, around 1100 percolation tanks, 14000 small check dams/Nala bunds and 7200 Recharge pits/shafts have been identified. In MP region of Bundelkhand, around 2000 percolation tanks, 55000 small check dams/Nala bunds and 17000 Recharge shafts have been identified. She said as a part of ground water exploration, 234 wells in UP are proposed to be constructed in five districts of Bundelkhand i.e., Banda, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Chitrakoot and Mahoba. As a part of ground water exploration, 259 wells in MP are proposed to be constructed in six districts of Bundelkhand. Sushri Bharti said her Ministry has taken up new initiatives under National Ground Water Management Improvement Schemes (NGMIS) with an objective to effectively improve ground water conditions in stressed blocks, ensure sustainability of resource both quantitatively and qualitatively, participatory approach in ground water management and institutional strengthening. In Bundelkhand region of UP, six districts covering an area of 11851 sq km have been considered under this initiative. In Bundelkhand region of MP, five districts covering an area of 8319 sq km have been considered under this initiative. The Minister informed that Incentivization Scheme for Bridging Irrigation Gap (ISBIG) scheme is being prepared by the Ministry with an objective to complete CADWM works along with correction of system deficiencies in canal network for bridging the gap between Irrigation Potential Created (IPC) and Irrigation Potential Utilised (IPU), improving the water use efficiency in irrigation and providing assured supply of water to every farm field and transfer of control and management of irrigation system to the Water Users Associations (WUAs). In Bundelkhand region of UP, Betwa and Gursarai canal, Rajghat canal, Ken canal system, Gunta Nala dam and Upper Rajghat canal with target to bridge 17,1030 hact under this scheme is being proposed. The scheme will benefit Jhansi, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Lalitpur and Banda districts in Bundelkhand region. In Bundelkhand region of MP Rajghat Canal Project with target to bridge 68007 ha under this scheme is being proposed. The scheme will benefit Tikamgarh and Datia districts. The Minister said in Marathwada region of Maharashtra seven schemes with target to bridge 53365 ha gap between IPC and IPU is being proposed. The scheme will benefit Aurangabad, Latur, Nanded, Prabhani, Nanded, Solapur and Osmanabad districts and involve an expenditure of Rs. 250 crore. An area of 3727 sq.km in Marathwada is proposed to be covered under National Ground Water Management Improvement Schemes involving an expenditure approximate of Rs. 380 crore. Aquifer mapping of 9101 sq. km. of area in Marathwada has been completed. Management Plan of 7775 sq. km has been submitted to Maharashtra government. Sushri Bharti said in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput (KBK) region of Odisha, nine projects with target to cover 0.68 lakh ha of potential under the scheme to bridge the gap between PIC and IPU is being proposed. The scheme will benefit Malkangiri, Bolangir, Nuapada, Rayagada, Kalahandi and Bargarh districts of KBK region. 305 wells have been constructed in the region. 89 water bodies from KBK region with estimated cost of Rs. 32 crore and targeted revival of irrigation potential of 5739 ha have been included for providing central assistance under PMKSY. These water bodies are part of cluster of 760 WBs in Odisha in which central assistance of Rs. 107 crore has been released including those in KBK region. Out of the 99 ongoing major medium irrigation projects to be completed in phased manner by March, 2019 under AIBP, four projects namely Lower Indra (KBK), Upper Indravati (KBK), RET irrigation and Telengiri shall benefit KBK region. Ultimate irrigation potential of these schemes is 1.44 lakh ha. During 2016-17, an amount of Rs. 233 crore was released for these schemes under AIBP and CAD Schemes. Since FDR, a presidents first 100 days offer an important if arbitrary measure for evaluating success. While it is unlikely any executive will again match the productivity of Roosevelt, most scholars of the presidency agree that this period still matters for advancing an administrations agenda. The electoral success of a political party depends on many factors. But the most important one is the correct reading of domestic developments and how they are connected to global economic and political trends. Parties must understand both of these environments when developing their campaign strategies. The New York State Association of Counties is aiming to support women who serve in county government. NYSAC President William Cherry announced the launch of the Women's Leadership Council, a seven-member panel that will provide resources for women serving in county-level positions. One reason for the council's formation, according to NYSAC, is that women are underrepresented at the local level. In New York, 23 percent of local and state government posts are held by women. The chair of the council's executive committee will be incoming NYSAC President-elect MaryEllen Odell, who serves as Putnam County executive. "I'm honored to chair the launch of this important initiative, and to work with my colleagues in county office to provide resources to women in elected county positions," Odell said. "I look forward to celebrating the launch of the Women's Leadership Council as I begin my NYSAC presidency this fall." Other members of the council's executive committee include Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino and Tioga County Legislature Chairwoman Martha Sauerbrey. Sullivan County Treasurer Nancy Buck and Claudia Braymer of the Warren County Board of Supervisors are also on the panel. Rounding out the council are two county legislators Lucille McKnight of Albany County and Martha Robertson of Tompkins County. The creation of the council comes as the state is marking the 100th anniversary of women being granted the right to vote in New York. The state was ahead of others in allowing women to vote. The 19th Amendment, which establishes that right in the Constitution, wasn't ratified until 1920. A university student with an interest in weapons and extremism was accused on Wednesday of planting a homemade bomb on a London subway train with the intention of causing carnage. Prosecutors say Damon Smith left a knapsack filled with explosives and ball bearings on a London Underground train in October. The abandoned bag was reported by passengers to the driver, who noticed it contained wires poking out of a clock. It did not explode. Prosecutor Jonathan Rees told jurors at London's Central Criminal Court that Smith "built an improvised explosive device which he intended would explode and endanger the lives of those traveling on that Tube train or, at the very least, cause serious damage to the train itself." Rees said the 20-year-old computer science student, who has a form of autism, had an interest in guns and explosives, and had searched online for Islamic State group material. Smith told police he was brought up Christian but thought Islam was "more true," though he denied being an extremist. Material recovered from his home included photos of Smith posing with guns, including one on a laptop labeled "2016 an Islamic State fighter." Police also found shredded paper with instructions from an al-Qaida article entitled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom." Smith claims the device was only meant to spew smoke. He denies possessing an explosive substance but has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of perpetrating a bomb hoax. President said Thursday hes still ready to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) if he cant renegotiate better terms for the US but that he decided to hold off on a decision after appeals from the leaders of Canada and Mexico. At least seven militants were on Thursday killed in missile strikes by a US pilotless aircraft in Pakistan's north-west tribal area of North Waziristan. The US drones fired two missiles to pound two hideouts of the militants in Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal area located along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Xinhua news agency reported. Both the hideouts were completely destroyed in the attack that took place at about 2 p.m. (local time). Those killed included a commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and his six accomplices, who were holding a meeting in one of the targeted hideouts. Thursday's drone strike is second of its kind in Pakistan since the beginning of this year. On March 2, at least two suspected militants were killed in a similar attack in the neighbouring tribal area of Kurram agency. At a recent all-hands meeting with employees, Kevin Systrom, a founder and chief executive of Instagram, showed off one of his favorite charts: Days to Reach the Next 100 Million Users. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A)'s first international faculty director has stepped down from the post with effect from September 1, 2017, exactly a year before his term ends. Nanda cited personal reasons, including long distance between him and his immediate family, in his resignation letter to IIM-A Board of Governors (BoG) chairman and Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla. An alumnus of IIM-A from the 1983 batch, Nanda was a Robert Braucher Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School and later a Harvard Business School faculty member, before he took charge on September 2, 2013. Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has established lapses at five broking firms in the National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) scam. As per an audit finding, the brokers failed to meet the fit and proper criteria and also found to be in violation of certain securities regulations. Giving in to employees' demand, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) tweaked the appointment rules for executive director (EDs). According to sources, the market regulator has decided to increase the number of ED posts to nine from eight. Six of them would be for staffers and the rest would be lateral or on deputation basis. In the firing line after the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) dismal show in the Punjab Assembly polls and the more-recently held MCD elections, party's Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and organisation-building head Durgesh Pathak have resigned from their respective posts. Singh took to Twitter to convey the same. "Maine Punjab ke prabhaari pad se apna isteefa rashtriya sanyojak Arvind Kejriwal ko de diya hai. Durgesh ne bhi sah-prabhaari pad chhoda," he wrote. (I have handed over my resignation from the post of in-charge to party president Arvind Kejriwal. Durgesh has also resigned from his post.) The AAP faced a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) twice over - in the Punjab Assembly polls and the MCD elections. The resignation phase started in the AAP with party convenor Dilip Pandey resigning following the election results. The AAP members have blamed the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) malpractice for its defeat. Following the BJP's victory in the MCD polls, Congress leaders like Ajay Maken, Gurudas Kamat and P.C. Chacko also announced their resignations from their posts. The BJP has swept the polls to Delhi's three municipal corporations, North, East and South winning 181 seats out of 270 seats. The party succeeded in retaining power in the three civic bodies for the third consecutive term. The AAP with 48 seats finished second, Congress with 29 seats third. 12 seats went to others including Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Indian Lok Dal (INLD) and Independents. AAP leader Ashutosh dismissed the suggestions of Kejriwal's resignation over the party's defeat. AAP MLA Alka Lamba also offered to resign from Chandni Chowk assembly constituency on party's poor show. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As many as 100 Taliban and pro-ISIS militants were killed in a clashes in northern Afghanistan. A total of 91 militants had been killed in clashes that erupted over kidnapping of drug smugglers who were to pay Taliban as part of an opium deal, Anadolu Agency quoted spokesman for the Afghan National Police Rahmatullah Turkistani as saying. The fighting took place in the Darzab district of Jowzjan province. Jowzjan province, like many parts of northern Afghanistan, is not a traditional Taliban stronghold. Earlier on April 13, U.S. dropped a huge 'Mother of All bombs' (MOAB) in a network of tunnels in Nangarhar province, killing at least 90 ISIS militants. U.S. military spokesman Capt. Bill Salvin last month said that his country aimed to drive ISIS out of Afghanistan by the end of this year. U.S. believes that there are up to 1,000 ISIS militants in Nangarhar and Kunar province, Anadolu Agency quoted Salvin. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Army on Thursday said a search operation for the third terrorist is on and has assured to find him soon in Kupwara's Panzgam area. "Search operation for the third terrorist is on. The identity of the terrorist is being ascertained, the material found points likely towards foreign terrorists," the army told ANI. The army further asserted that only after recovering one additional AK-47, had they concluded that a third terrorist was also with them. "Two terrorists who were killed earlier in the day, their identities and search operations are in progress. Only after recovering one additional AK-47, that indicates the presence of a third terrorist with them, who is absconding," added the army. Earlier in the day, a massive gun-battle was witnessed here as two terrorists were neutralised and three Army personnel lost their lives. Around 4.40 a.m, the terrorists entered the Kupwara Army camp from the rear side of the firing range. They had also cut the fence and reached the officer complex area, sources said. Within minutes, however both the terrorists were neutralised, while one managed to escape. There are total nine units in the area and the camp includes artillery and infantry units. The area of the camp is around 600 and 400 meters. The arms and ammunition recovered were, three AK 47, nine magazines, one Chinese pistol, hand grenades, mapping sheet, two GPRS equipment and one smart phone. All three were wearing black 'pathan' suit and half combat jacket. Seven army soldiers were injured, six are in Srinagar and one is being treated in Kupwara itself. According to reports one of them is in a critical condition. The political fraternity has come together in condemning the attack and also paying their tributes to the slain soldiers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Despite changes made to the House Republicans' bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, U.S. Rep. John Katko's position hasn't changed. If the bill comes to the floor for a vote in its current form, Katko, R-Camillus, would oppose it. "I am pleased the House continues to work on this," he said. "My position remains unchanged and I look forward to reviewing what modifications are made in the Senate." The GOP has spent the last two months working to build support for the bill, the American Health Care Act, which would repeal portions of the 2010 health care law commonly referred to as "Obamacare." When House Republicans first planned to hold a vote on their bill, the measure was pulled by Speaker Paul Ryan. Katko, who has opposed the legislation from the beginning, said it didn't have enough support in Congress. One challenge for Republicans is the party's conservative wing known as the Freedom Caucus and moderate members were opposed to the health care repeal bill. Each side had different reasons conservatives felt it wasn't a full repeal and moderates believed the bill would go too far and didn't emphasize health insurance coverage. Recently, leaders from the conservative Freedom Caucus and moderate Tuesday Group met and developed a compromise focused on two key components of the Affordable Care Act: essential health benefits and pre-existing conditions. The proposed amendment to the GOP health care bill would allow states to opt out of requiring insurance companies to provide coverage for certain services, including maternity care and preventive care. States could also opt out of a mandate that was implemented to ensure people with pre-existing conditions pay the same health insurance rates as healthy individuals. The changes could be enough to secure support from Freedom Caucus members, but it likely won't win over moderates. In an interview with The Citizen last week, Katko said the compromise amendment was "ridiculous." "It's not really a change at all," he said. "It still gives people freedom to get out of the essential health benefits ... All those things are really pretty important stuff." Bollywood celebrities have expressed their heartfelt grief and condolences at veteran actor Vinod Khanna's demise who breathed his last at 11 Ace director Karan Johar took to Twitter to pay tribute to the legendary actor. He wrote, "His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers...." Distributor of the Hindi dubbed version of SS Rajamouli's 'Baahubali 2', KJo even decided to cancel the premiere of the film as a mark of respect to the veteran actor. "As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight...," posted the 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' helmer. Sanjay Dutt, who is saddened by his demise said, "I have watched Vinod ji as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He is and always will be family to the Dutts. May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshay, Rahul and Sakshi." Vinod Khanna's 'Amar Akbar Anthony' co-star Rishi Kapoor tweeted in response to the veteran star's death. "Remembering the good times with you, Vinod. Thank you for being my friend." Here's what other celebs tweeted: . (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cash Suvidha, one of India's fastest growing Fintech company has recently announced its partnership with KrazyBee, a Bengaluru based micro-lending platform, with an aim of facilitating easy and quick financing solutions for college students to pursue their passion. As a part of MoU, Cash Suvidha has provided funding small amount of loan, which will be dispersed to college going students for meeting their necessary requirements such as laptops, camera, Mobiles, watches and other related electronic items. Rajesh Gupta, Founder, Cash Suvidha said, "Long before any thriving business, multiple offices, or even employees, we want to empower students' right when they think the word idea. Our association with KrazyBee is more like a direct investment into students' dreams and aspirations. We are empowering the next generation through providing them a support system which will enable them to take a step forward in acquiring relevant skills." He further added, "We are confident that through this alliance, we will reach out to a wide range of student community and will play a significant role in advancing their careers." Through this association, Cash Suvidha is expected to cater to a credit line of over 1000 students every month from over 100 colleges in all the metro cities and a few tier - II cities by the end of 2017. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A protester was killed in Jammu and Kahsmir's Panzgam area of Kupwara even as the army was engaged in an encounter with terrorists. The protesters were demanding bodies of terrorists that were killed during Kupwara encounter. Two terrorists were neutralized, while three army personnel lost their lives. Around 4.40 a.m, the terrorists entered the Kupwara Army camp from the rear side of the firing range. They had also cut the fence and reached the officer complex area, sources said. Meanwhile a search operation for the third terrorist is on and the army has assured to find him soon in Kupwara's Panzgam area. "Search operation for the third terrorist is on. The identity of the terrorist is being ascertained, the material found points likely towards foreign terrorists," the army told ANI. There are total nine units in the area and the camp includes artillery and infantry units. The area of the camp is around 600 and 400 meters. The arms and ammunition recovered were, three AK 47, nine magazines, one Chinese pistol, hand grenades, mapping sheet, two GPRS equipment and one smart phone. All three were wearing black 'pathan' suit and half combat jacket. Seven army soldiers were injured, six are in Srinagar and one is being treated in Kupwara itself. According to reports one of them is in a critical condition. The political fraternity has come together in condemning the attack and also paying their tributes to the slain soldiers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said just as much as funds, the country also needs their ideas, energy and drive from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The President congratulated all the awardees -Rahul Bajaj, Chairman, Bajaj Auto Ltd. for receiving this year's CII President's Award for Lifetime Achievement and those conferred with Woman Exemplar Awards. He said that the institution of the CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Award in 2005 is a welcome initiative to promote women's empowerment at the community level by discovering and recognizing those who have, against all odds, excelled and contributed significantly to the development process in India. "This will be a great encouragement for the countless number of women who are contributing in different ways to strengthening our nation and its economy," he said while presenting the CII President's Award for Lifetime Achievement to Bajaj and CII foundation Woman Exemplar Award in New Delhi today. He urged the CII to leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to re-imagine interventions and transformative solutions to address the higher developmental challenges in India. He emphasized that they should have a pan-Indian outlook and not limit themselves to a few geographies for CSR development. He stated that given the magnitude of the challenges before our country and the relatively short time available to address them, partnerships will play a very crucial role. "It is important to collaborate for achieving scale, developing solutions to complex social problems and for technology development," he added. The President said that to herald a new dawn in our nation, we must leverage the strengths of all sectors: the resolve, resources, and convening power of governments; the compassion, will and outreach of non-profits; the innovation, know-how, and capabilities of the private sector; and the determination and aspiration of communities as a whole. He said that he expects CII as an industry association to reinforce and converge the initiatives of corporates in this sector. He was delighted that this is being undertaken through a dedicated CII Foundation set up for this purpose. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a tragic blow to the Indian film industry, Bollywood icon Vinod Khanna breathed his last on Thursday. The veteran actor was hospitalised and later discharged from HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Girgaum, Mumbai due to severe dehydration. He was also reportedly battling cancer for years. Born on October 6, 1946 in a Punjabi family to Kamla and Kishanchand Khanna in Peshawar, Vinod studied commerce at Mumbai's Sydenham College before moving into acting. Khanna was married to Geetanjali between 1971 and 1985 and has two sons with her, Rahul Khanna and Akshaye Khanna. He married Kavita with whom he has two children, Sakshi and Shraddha. Vinod Khanna appeared in 141 films between 1968 and 2013 and also forayed into politics by joining the BJP. He was Minister of State for Tourism and Culture in 2002. He might have made his debut as a villain in Sunil Dutt's 1968 film 'Man Ka Meet', but later started playing lead roles. The film, which was made to launch Sunil Dutt's brother Som, helped make Vinod the cynosure of all eyes. Within weeks of the release of the film, more than a dozen producers lined up outside his house to sign him. The actor also received a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 for his contribution to the film industry for over three decades. Here are some of the most acclaimed works of the celebrated actor. Hum Tum Aur Woh (1971) He played the solo lead hero in the flick which was directed by Mere Apne (1971) 'Hum Tum Aur Woh' was followed by the 1971 multi-starrer and critically acclaimed 'Mere Apne' that was directed by Gulzar. Achanak (1973) His role in this critically acclaimed movie as the military officer turned fugitive received tremendous applause from both the film industry and his fans. Imtihan (1974) The film had Khanna playing a tough college teacher who is falsely accused by one of his students of sexual harassment which had him essaying both sensitivity and charm in equal measure. Shaque (1976) He was universally praised for his role and some say the underrated film contains the best acting of his career. Aap Ki Khatir (1977) Rekha and Vinod Khanna starred together in this situational comedy about a wife who takes a loan from a loan shark for the sake of her husband and then is desperate to pay off the loan. Inkaar (1978) Based on Kurosawa film High And Low (1963), the film has Khanna playing a hardworking cop who moves heaven and hell to get to the root of a kidnapping and wins back the heart of his former girlfriend (Vidya Sinha) in the process. Wanted (2009) An official remake of a Telugu film Pokiri, the film stars Salman Khan, Ayesha Takia, Prakash Raj, Vinod Khanna and Mahesh Manjrekar in the lead roles. Dabangg (2010) Directed by Abhinav Kashyap and produced by Arbaa.z Khan, Vinod Khanna was seen as Salman Khan's father in 'Dabangg' Ek Thi Rani Asi Bhi (2017) The biopic features Hema Malini in the lead role, and maps Vijay Raje Scindia's political career and her estrangement from her son Madhavrao Scindia (Rajesh Shringarpure) after the death of her husband Jivajirao Scindia (Vinod Khanna). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi has been arrested in Srinagar. Andrabi, the founder of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, an Islamist separatist organisation is also a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The DeM is known for the diktats it issues periodically to the Valley residents on things Andrabi and her 'brother' Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Toiba leader Hafiz Saeed consider un-Islamic Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader, who is now in jail. Few captured militants have confessed that videos of her speeches are shown at terror training camps across the Line of Control. Earlier in 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested Andrabi from her residence in Soura in connection with two cases registered against her - one for waving Pakistani flag and other for addressing a rally by Hafiz Saeed via phone in Pakistan. Earlier in the day, two terrorists were killed, while three soldiers lost their lives as an Army camp in Kupwara's Panzgam in Jammu and Kashmir was under attack. An officer was among the three Army men who were killed in the attack. The location of the under attack-camp is close to the Line of Control (LoC). This the second major attack on defence forces in a week, as last Monday as many as 25 CRPF personnel were killed in an encounter with Naxals in Chhattisgarh's Sukma. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011 caused extensive damage to the Tohoku area in Japan. This agricultural high school building was washed away by the tsunami and the experimental facilities were destroyed. Many companies are offering to support the reconstruction. Kubota Corporation, a major agricultural equipment manufacturer, has provided various support to this agricultural school. Yasunori Kawachi, General Manager, CSR Planning Department, Kubota Corporation, said, "The production line for domestic market is in front and the one in the back is the These high school students will benefit agriculture in the future, so we decided to actively support them." Students began to grow soba that was suitable to the environment after the earthquake. Masahiro Yamane, D. AGR., Miyagi Prefecture Agricultural High School, said, "By using soba, we really want to help people who suffered from the earthquake. We sprinkled soba seeds near Sendai Airport. When landing at Sendai Airport from the sea side, passengers can see heart-shaped art made by soba. By using soba to create the heart shape on the salt-damaged farmland near the airport, we expressed the spirit of restoring the affected area." Memorial and reconstruction commemoration events are held every year in areas that suffered from the earthquake. The students who have been making soba noodles in temporary houses performed for volunteers and visitors who observed the event. Anju Kanayamazawa, Second Year, Miyagi Prefecture Agricultural High School, "It is very nice to hear various comments such as 'Amazing to see it's done by high school students' or 'Delicious.' Kubota employees also participated and delivered brown rice bread which was made through supporting activities for the Kumamoto earthquake that occurred in 2016. At the venue, various lanterns displaying wishes of reconstruction were decorated and various programs were held. It was a day showing that the people have power to defeat natural disasters. Kawachi further said, 'The Kubota Group operates in the fields of food, water and the environment. We would like to build relationships through communication with local communities and society. By doing so, we aim to coexist with society as a good corporate citizen. In the future, we would like to continue actively contributing to society not only in Japan but also in Asia and around the ." Yangon, the capital city of Myanmar generates approximately 1,600 tons of garbage. Appropriate garbage disposal facilities are urgently needed. As the first Joint Crediting Mechanism project in the country, Myanmar's first waste incineration power plant produced by JFE Engineering Corporation has been completed. JCM (Joint Crediting Mechanism) is a system that can be utilized to achieve Japan's emission reduction targets by disseminating excellent environmental technologies to developing countries. In this plant, 60 tons of waste are incinerated per day, generating about 5,200 MWh of electricity per year. Annually energy-originated CO2 emissions are reduced by approximately 2,400 tons. JFE Engineering Corporation is the industry's leading manufacturer in Japanese waste power plants. In foreign countries, it has been engaged in various infrastructure developments centered in Southeast Asia. For over 20 years, it has contributed to infrastructure development in Myanmar using a wide range of product technologies. In order to advance this project, three years ago, a joint venture was established with the Ministry of Construction of Myanmar. Tsutomu Oyama, Project Manager, Yangon WtE Plant Project, JFE Engineering Corporation, said, "Operators from all over the world, not just Japan, are carrying out the operation with local Burmese operators. As an aid from Japan, an online monitoring system has been introduced and it was our company's first trial." Yasuhisa Miwa, General Manager, Yangon Branch, JFE Engineering Corporation, said, "Up until now, we have contributed to infrastructure development, such as bridges and roads. In the future, we would like to continue contributing to support people's lives in fields such as Waste to Energy, water supply, or power generation. Leveraging the expertise cultivated here, we hope to cooperate with our branch in Southeast Asian countries to develop business in this region." As the demand for infrastructure development accompanying economic development increases, it seems that further improvement of Japanese technology in Southeast Asia can be expected. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kazakhstan's Ambassador to India Bulat Sarsenbayev called on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E.Palaniswami and discussed potential cooperation between Kazakhstan and Tamil Nadu. During their meeting, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu expressed confidence that the opening of the Kazakh Consulate would make a significant contribution to the extending of bilateral economic ties and expressed readiness to provide all possible support for the effective functioning of the institution. The Kazakh envoy also held an interactive session "India-Kazakhstan: building a strategic partnership" organized by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in Chennai. The moderator of the interactive session from the Indian side was Mr. S.Sridharan, Managing Director of CII Chennai Zone. The session was also attended by representatives of more than 55 leading companies - members of the CII in Chennai. During this event, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan gave a broad description of the main areas of cooperation between Kazakh and Indian companies, elaborated about the work of the government in creating a favourable business climate and easing in the tax system for investing companies. In addition, in the second part of the two-hour session, the Ambassador answered many questions from representatives of Indian companies. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state in India in terms of industrial production (after the state of Maharashtra). It is the most urbanized state. Unlike most states of the country, industrial production is fairly evenly distributed throughout the territory. Tamil Nadu ranks second among the states of India in terms of the level of development of the IT industry, just after Bangalore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A massive gun-battle was witnessed earlier in the day as terrorists attacked an Indian Army camp in Kupwara's Panzgam in Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were neutralised and three Army personnel lost their lives. Here is a timeline of the deadly attack that unfolded today: The terrorists entered the Kupwara Army camp around 4.40 a.m. In few minutes two terrorists were neutralized by the forces, while one managed to escape. The camp is around 10-12 km away from the Line of Control (LoC). There are total nine units in the area and the camp includes artillery and infantry units. The area of the camp is around 600 and 400 meters. There are two layers fencing around the camp and the distance between both the fences is 50 to 75 meters and both were cut by the terror group. The terrorists entered from the back side of the firing range and then cut the fence and reached the officer complex area, sources state. The terrorists first hit the officer complex then moved to the other place. All the three AK-47s belonging to them have been recovered during search operation. Total Weapons recovered are: 1. Three AK 47 2. Nine magazines 3. One Chinese pistol 4. Hand Grenades 5. Mapping sheet 6. Two GPRS equipment 7. One smart phone All three were wearing black 'pathan' suit and half combat jacket. Seven Army soldiers were injured, six are in Srinagar and one is being treated in Kupwara itself. According to reports one of them is in a critical condition. Meanwhile, reports of stone pelting have emerged from locations near to the site of the Army camp attack. The political fraternity has come together in condemning the attack and also paying their tributes to the slain soldiers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Stone pelting returned to haunt the Valley on Thursday, as a mob was seen hurling stones and bricks at Army personnel near the site of the terror attack in Kupwara. At least three soldiers including an Army officer lost their lives in the attack on an Army camp this morning. The injured soldiers were airlifted to Army's 92 Base Hospital here for treatment. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were launched to ensure no untoward elements were left in the vicinity. The stone pelting began a few kilometers away from the Army camp in Kupwara where the terror attack took place at 4:30 a.m. The protesters were trying to disturb movement of the Army convoy by pelting stones on the security forces. The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces and in the run-up to the Srinagar by-polls on April 9. The People's Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state had on Wednesday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. Tension in Kashmir over the past few months has escalated immensely and several terror modules have been identified in the process. More than 100 soldiers have been killed in the Valley since the beginning of 2016, and the number tally has been rising rapidly as these attacks have become more frequent in recent times. Not only soldiers but the number of civilian causalities in the region has also witnessed a sharp rise after the sentiment of dissent among the people of the region increased last year. Driven by separatist, a large section of the people residing in the Valley resorted to protests against the army after popular Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was encountered last year. This led to a sharp escalation of tension in the region, fuelled by stone-pelting by the residents. When the army retaliated with pellets, several innocents suffered permanent injuries and a large number of people succumbed to injuries. When the first by-polls were attempted in the Valley earlier this month, there was a large-scale violence in specific regions, with Anantnag witnessing violence and bloodshed. More than three hundred people suffered injuries and around eight men were killed in the middle of retaliatory gunfire and stone-pelting. The Mehbooba Mufti government has made several attempts to scale down the violence in the terror-trotted Valley, but has failed miserably. Yet the soldiers and the civilians in the region continue to be victims of major attacks originating from across the border. This attack comes days after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had a discussion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to improve the situation in the Valley. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) For the first time in 27 years, the Marshall Tucker Band will bring their brand of southern rock to the New York State Fair. The group, known for hits such as "Can't You See, "Fire on The Mountain" and "Heard It in a Love Song," will perform at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 29 at Chevy Court. The concert is free with admission to the fair. The concert will be the first for the Marshall Tucker Band at the fair since 1990. The band has performed at the fair three times. The Marshall Tucker Band has sold millions of album since its formation in 1972. The group's songs have been featured in movies and television shows. Country Music Television named "Can't You See" the fourth-greatest southern rock song. "We're very happy to be able to bring the Marshall Tucker Band back after a long absence," said Troy Waffner, the fair's acting director. " The band's music is timeless and I know this will be a highlight on our Chevy Court schedule this year." Aug. 29 will be one of two Senior Days at the fair. Police, Fire and Rescue Day also will be celebrated. First responders and senior citizens will receive free admission tickets. The Marshall Tucker Band is the third Chevy Court act announced by the fair. The list is headlined by alternative rock band 3 Doors Down, which will perform at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 23 the fair's new opening day. Peter Noone and Herman's Hermits will perform at 2 p.m. Monday, Aug. 28. The fair will run from Aug. 23 through Sept. 4. The Lahore High Court on Thursday is likely to hear a petition challenging Jamaat-ud- Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed's detention by Pakistan. In February, Saeed and his four aides challenged their house arrest, as well as the addition of their names in the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), in the Lahore High Court. They were put under house arrest on January 30 invoking Section 11EEE of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997. Earlier on April 20, Pakistan Interior Ministry in a written reply to the Lahore High Court defended the detention of the JuD leaders saying that no laws were violated in issuance of the detention orders against Saeed and his aides. The ministry said in its reply that the orders were issued under section 11EE of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, which deals with the proscription of person. It added that the JuD and FIF had been kept under observation on the basis of a report sent by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. In light of that report, the federal government had reasons to believe that JuD and FIF were engaged in certain activities which could be prejudicial to peace and security and in violation of Pakistan's obligation to the United Nations Security Council resolution. A division bench headed by Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan examined the report and adjourned hearing of the petition for April 27. Hafiz Saeed, Prof Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid, Qazi Kashif Hussain and Abdullah Ubaid had challenged their detention through Advocate A.K Dogar. The lawyer argued that the government detained the JuD leaders without any justification. He said the UN resolution followed by the government did not seek detention of any citizen. He also alleged that the government detained the petitioners to please India and US. The JuD has already been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in June 2014. The JuD chief also carries a reward of USD 10 million announced by the US for his role in terror activities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Missouri State University has announced special scholarships for Indian students. During his visit to India Colonel Stephen Robinette Associate Vice President, International Studies, MSU, USA, made a number of important announcements for Indian Students. Colonel Robinette also discussed some issues viz. US Immigration rules, safety and security of Indian students in Missouri State University. The University has announced "International Excellence Scholarship" of USD 5000 each, per year for Indian Students. Students with animating skills and disciplined approach towards learning can avail this scholarship throughout their duration of study in Missouri State University. The "International Excellence Scholarship" will help students to overcome the financial strain while studying in the US. Explaining the same Col. Robinette, Associate Vice President, International Students, MSU said, "MSU has not limited 'International Excellence Scholarship' to any numbers and offers the same scheme to all eligible candidates. We believe that it will be unjustified to restrict scholars in numbers. One, who has merit and is eligible, will keep getting it like earlier." "We have welcomed Indian students for over ten years and will continue to do so with the same zeal and enthusiasm," said Colonel Robinette while addressing the immigration issues of Indian students. Our Sub continent office, based out of the National Capital Region, is continuously in touch with all aspiring students and their parents to give proper and thorough counseling, direct or via the approved education agents. The office provides guidance support in terms of applying for a visa and the interview, thereafter. Missouri State University is a diverse university which has maintained a global focus for more than 25 years. Missouri State University is predominantly announcing courses which are tailor-made for Indian Students. For instance, MSU has introduced a new course, Master of Science in Computer Science for Indian Students. Post the paper of New Immigration Rule was signed by President Trump Indian students are apprehensive to study in US universities. Thus, the university has announced Computer Science course to ease out situation for Indian Students. Degree in Computer Science and STEM from US University allows students to work 3 years without work Visa in the USA. Talking about the safety and security of Indian Students Col. Robinette said, "Our campuses are patrolled 24/7 and there are support groups for students that require extra attention. In view of the recent unfortunate events, we have tightened our security even further. We have a zero tolerance policy for any sort of racism or discrimination. Our students can freely approach the International student services for any sort of support they may require. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said that India has handed over to Pakistan, a letter of appeal from the mother of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a military court on espionage charges. "We have made a 16th request to Pakistan for consular access and also informed about Jadhav's mother who wants a visa to visit him," MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. He added that Jadhav's mother has requested the intervention of the Federal Government of Pakistan for his release and has expressed the desire to meet him. On being asked if India would score 100 in requests seeking consular access to Jadhav, Baglay said, "We wanted to get out on 0". We have no chargesheet against Jadhav. We don't even know who defended him." Meanwhile Pakistan continues to refuse New Delhi's request for consular access. Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua turned down the request on grounds that it did not apply to spies. Jadhav has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage. India has denied the allegations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Aiming to venture into the market in Nepal, budget-hotels network OYO announced the launch of its debut hotel in Kathmandu, following its successful venture into Malaysia in January 2016, where it has now grown to 200 hotels. OYO partners with hotels to standardise and transform their rooms enabling a better experience for guests. It pioneered the use of technology in budget-hotel category to make property operation and management more seamless. Launched in 2013, OYO's network has grown to 7000 hotels in 200 cities. "OYO has been at the forefront of the small and budget hotels revolution in India. Building the category grounds-up, we have employed technology and operational acumen to deliver delight to our customers and unparalleled benefits to partners. Our network has witnessed robust growth to become the largest in India. After our successful overseas foray in Malaysia, we are now thrilled to offer OYO's hassle-free and standardised stay experience to travellers visiting Nepal," said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO - OYO. According to the Department of Immigration, of the 174,803 tourists that visited Nepal in 2016, the highest number of travellers were reported from India. A further boost to cross-border trade and tourism is expected with India and Bangladesh set to reopen the defunct trans-border rail routes which would extend links to Nepal and Bhutan. The travel and hospitality sector in India is witnessing a phenomenon of impulse planning. Even as travel-planning cycle reduces further, the expectations from on-ground suppliers and agents of delivering a non-negotiable and predetermined experience have become stronger. Affordable and trusted stay-options remain one of the top concerns for most travellers. With OYO in Nepal, Indian travellers will find it easier to extend their impulse-planning behaviour while planning a holiday. Nepal is also one of the few countries that offers visa-on-arrival to Indians. "Today, 70 percent of Indians admit to unplanned spending - from relationships to shopping, instant gratification is the new norm. At the same time, they are increasingly looking at discerning or standardised experiences; even if the purchase decision was driven by impulse. With our promise of standardided and predictable stays across 7000 hotels in over 200 cities, OYO caters to the impulse-planning behavior displayed by millennial traveler," said Agarwal. OYO is an urban innovator that is tackling the lack of equilibrium between demand and supply of quality living space. Using technology and talent to fix this socio-economic problem, it has transformed over 70,000 hotel rooms in India and Malaysia. Further, it invests in skilling and training the staff of its partner-hotels to deliver better service. This performance-driven approach has, in turn, enabled better revenues and profits for partners, and delightful service and experience for guests. The company has generated new employment opportunities and nurtured micro entrepreneurs. OYO's hotel-booking app is among the fastest in the world, enabling guests to search and book a room in less than five seconds with just three taps. The company also recently launched OYO Captains, to provide personalised on-ground local assistance to guests. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Activists from the JK Kashmir Forum took to the street to protest against Islamabad's recent announcement to declare Gilgit-Baltistan, a disputed area in Pakistan's northernmost administrative territory that borders the disputed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as its fifth province. "Pakistan cannot make Gilgit-Baltistan as fifth province, we are against it," said forum leader Shoib Lone. "Jammu and Kashmir has its own importance as per the historical point of view, but unfortunately large portions of land have been grabbed by China and Pakistan. So we are here to spread the awareness that it is our territory and we will not allow anyone to play the dirty politics with our state," Lone said, as the forum activists gathered at tourist reception center (TRC) and raised their voices against Pakistan. Earlier this month, Pakistan's Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada had told Geo TV that a committee headed by Advisor of Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz had proposed giving the status of a province to Gilgit-Baltistan. However, India has flatly rejected this move claiming that Gilgit-Baltistan is an integral part of its territory. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said the Parliament the Parliament has already passed a resolution declaring the entire Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. "One should not doubt the intention and policies of the NDA Government with regard to Jammu and Kashmir," she added. The area is significant to both Pakistan and China as the multi-billion CPEC passes through the region. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the first official meeting between representatives of Washington and Islamabad, all thorny issues including India-Pakistan relations and Kashmir were discussed on the table when Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar met U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster at the White House on Tuesday. Dar hoped that these consultations would improve the relations between the two allies, reports the Dawn. "These were very comprehensive talks. Security, defence, regional issues, Pakistan-India relations, Kashmir, Afghanistan, you name it, we discussed it. This is a composite discussion. All topics were discussed and very positively," said Dar. The finance minister acted as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's special envoy for the meeting, which was not centred on financial issues. Later, at a news briefing at the embassy the minister described the meeting as "very positive talks between two willing partners", but conceded that there were "some irritants and stalemates" in the relationship. When asked if the U.S. had asked him to stop the alleged cross-border movement of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan, Dar said, "We will not allow our territory to be used against any country, but no other territory should be used against our territory either. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan on Thursday arrested 29 Indian fishermen near its coast alleging that they violated the maritime boundaries. Five boats were also seized alongside the Indian fishermen, Geo News quoted a spokesperson of the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) as saying. The detained Indian fishermen have been handed over to the Docks Police. Earlier on April 9, then PMSA detained six fishing boats and arrested 42 Indian fishermen on board from near International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) off Jakhau coast in Kutch. Last month, nearly 100 Indian fishermen were taken into custody for fishing illegally in Pakistan's sea boundaries. In addition, 19 boats were also held during the MSA's raid. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan Defence minister Khawaja Asif has said that the unresolved Kashmir issue had the potential to threaten the peace and stability of the entire region even as he accused India of not reciprocating the efforts made by Islamabad. "The Kashmir issue must be resolved in accordance with the UN resolution. I must share that all peace overtures and sincere efforts made by Pakistan are not being reciprocated [by India]," Geo news quoted Asif, while speaking at the sixth Moscow Conference on International Security. "India continues to stay away from any plausible diplomatic approach for the resolution of Kashmir issue," the minister added. He stressed it was the responsibility of the community to address some of the long-standing conflicts of the . Meanwhile, expressing his views on the situation in the Middle East, he dubbed the United States' missile strike on Syria as 'external interference.' In a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on the sidelines of the conference, Asif also said that Pakistan would support all initiatives to bring peace in Afghanistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday warned Sahara chief Subrata Roy in connection with returning money to the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (SEBI) investors, saying that if the cheque which was submitted to the apex court was not received by June 19 he will be sent to the Tihar Jail. The Sahara group has submitted three cheques of Rs. 1,500 crore and the other two are of Rs. 500 crore and Rs. 3,000 crore. Roy's lawyer told the three judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Dipak Misra that the former is concerned about the issue and he is here as far as the apex court orders to. However, the apex court insisted that money has to be deposited. Justice Misra observed that the question of exoneration does not arise. The official liquidators had valued the Amby Valley property and submitted it to the Top court in a sealed cover. The apex court asked Roy that whether he commits to pay or not, to this, he stood and gave an affirmative reply. Kapil Sibal, one of the lawyers appearing for Roy, told the apex court that the Amby Valley property was worth to the tune of Rs. 49, 000 crore approximately. Roy is currently on a parole. Earlier on April 21, a special SEBI court had quashed a non-bailable warrant issued against Roy as he appeared before the court. The warrant was also quashed on grounds that Roy will appear in all hearings now as the court asked him to submit an undertaking for the same. The next hearing in this matter will take place on May 18 when the argument on framing of charges will begin. The apex court earlier on April 17 ordered the auction of Sahara's Aamby Valley over the business conglomerate's alleged failure to deposit money for refunding to its investors. The top court ordered the selling of Rs. 34,000 crore worth of Sahara properties and directed its chief Subrata Roy to appear before it on April 28. Taking strong note of non- submission of over Rs. 5,000 crore by the Sahara group, the apex court bench warned Roy from further toying with the court's order, and issued an ultimatum that non-compliance of its order will leave Roy in massive trouble. Earlier, the apex court had refused to hear a fresh plea of Sahara Group seeking more time to deposit Rs. 5000 crore (approx.) with the SEBI. On March 21, the apex court had warned Sahara, saying it would auction Aamby Valley project if the latter fails to deposit the amount of Rs. 5,000 crore (approx.) The apex court had in its last hearing asked the Ghaziabad Development Authority to deposit Rs. 1,100 crore to the apex court registry for acquiring land from Sahara. Roy was sent to the Tihar Jail on March 4, 2014 for not complying with the apex court's orders in connection with a long dispute with the market regulator SEBI. The SEBI alleged that Roy failed to comply with the apex court's order directing him to return the investors' money. Sahara, once among India's high-profile firms, has in the past made several failed attempts to raise the bail money using its prized overseas hotels that include the Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London. Sahara says it has paid more than 80 percent of the dues to share-holders, but SEBI has disputed that and said the company has not paid more than Rs. 10,000 crore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Karnataka's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president B. S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday lashed out at senior party leader K. S. Eshwarappa for creating ruckus in the party, asserting that rebel leaders will be given an appropriate answer. "The senior leadership, as well as the people, is witnessing all that is happening. The rebel leaders will be given an appropriate answer. Had Eshwarappa sat down and discussed his concerns, the party would not face such a situation," said Yeddyurappa. Yeddyurappa further stated that while Eshwarappa was defying the senior leadership by calling for such meetings, B L Santosh was the mastermind who engineered the rebellion. This is the first time, the leader has launched a full-fledged attack against B L Santosh, an RSS man, who enjoys considerable clout with president Amit Shah. Earlier, Yeddyurappa had accused Eshwarappa of 'creating problems' in the party. The rebel leaders' meeting in Bengaluru came months after both, Yeddyurappa and Eshwarappa were called to Delhi to sort their differences. Both leaders were pulled up by the senior leadership and Eshwarappa was asked to refrain from all independent activities of the Sangolli Rayanna brigade. For both leaders, however, nothing seems to have changed. The party and workers continue to be divided between the two prominent BJP faces. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) According to the advisory firm PropTiger.com's findings, the sector in India witnessed a revival after demonetisation, with sales increasing by 13 per cent as compared to 22 per cent fall in the previous quarter across top nine cities of India. A subsidiary of Elara Technologies Pte Ltd., which also owns Housing.com and Makaan.com, the firm on Wednesday released the findings of the 'Realty Decoded Report' for the January-March quarter of the financial year 2016-17. The total sales increased from 43,500 units in Q3 to 51,700 units in Q4 in FY17. There has been an increase in the number of launches across these cities by 19 percent, the highest in the last eight quarters. Around 51,500 units were launched in Q4 in FY17 as compared to 43,250 units during the preceding quarter. The report further highlights that the surge in the volume was primarily driven by Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru, which together accounted for 57 per cent of total sales across top-nine cities in Q4 FY'17. Mumbai contributed nearly 23 per cent to the total sales during the quarter, followed by Pune at 18 per cent and Bengaluru at 16 per cent. As far as launches are concerned, Mumbai contributed a maximum share of 26 percent to total launches followed by Hyderabad at 14 percent and Gurugram at 13 percent. "Residential markets seem to have recovered from the demonetisation lows with sales and launches showing healthy levels in Q4 in FY17. Large part of the recovery is driven by the affordable housing segment which has found favour after getting infrastructure status," said Anurag Jhanwar, Business Head (Consulting and Data Insights), PropTiger.com, Housing.com and Makaan.com. The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear a case involving Sahara chief Subrata Roy and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) over a dispute of returning money to its investors. Earlier on Friday, a special Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) court had quashed a non-bailable warrant issued against Roy as he appeared before the court. The warrant was also quashed on grounds that Roy will appear in all hearings now as the court asked him to submit an undertaking for the same. The next hearing in this matter will take place on May 18 when the argument on framing of charges will begin. The apex court earlier on April 17 ordered the auction of Sahara's Aamby Valley over the business conglomerate's alleged failure to deposit money for refunding to its investors. The top court ordered the selling of 34,000 crore rupees worth of Sahara properties and directed its chief Subrata Roy to appear before it on April 28th. Taking strong note of non- submission of over 5,000 crore rupees by the Sahara group, the apex court bench warned Roy from further toying with the court's order, and issued an ultimatum that non-compliance of its order will leave Roy in massive trouble. Earlier, the apex court had refused to hear a fresh plea of Sahara Group seeking more time to deposit Rs. 5000 crore (approx.) with the SEBI. On March 21, the apex court had warned Sahara, saying it would auction Aamby Valley project if the latter fails to deposit the amount of Rs. 5000 crore (approx.) The apex court had in its last hearing asked the Ghaziabad Development Authority to deposit Rs. 1,100 crore to the apex court registry for acquiring land from Sahara. Roy was sent to the Tihar Jail on March 4, 2014 for not complying with the apex court's orders in connection with a long dispute with the market regulator SEBI. The SEBI alleged that Roy failed to comply with the apex court's order directing him to return the investors' money. Sahara, once among India's high-profile firms, has in the past made several failed attempts to raise the bail money using its prized overseas hotels that include the Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London. Sahara says it has paid more than 80 percent of the dues to share-holders, but SEBI has disputed that and said the company has not paid more than Rs. 10,000 crore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear the WhatsApp Privacy Policy case. Assuring the Supreme Court that it was actively considering a law on protecting data imprint of individuals on WhatsApp, Facebook and other social networking sites, the Centre earlier on April 18 had sought deferment of the hearing in the matter. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was in the process of evolving the data protection framework. Earlier on January 17, the apex court issued notice to WhatsApp and the Central Government on the data privacy. The court also agreed to examine as to whether Facebook's access to details of calls, messages, photographs and documents exchanged by the users of WhatsApp violated the citizens' right to privacy. Earlier, the instant messaging platform had said that its new privacy policy does not infringe on the privacy of users and no third party can read the messages due to its end-to-end encryption. When a user deletes his or her WhatsApp account, the information is no longer retained on its servers, the company had claimed before the Delhi High Court. A petition filed before the Supreme Court had claimed that there is no protection of data on Facebook and WhatsApp. According to the petitioner, there are 157 million users on WhatsApp and Facebook, therefore the service provided by the social network and messaging app should be considered as a public utility service. In September 2016, the Delhi High Court had ordered WhatsApp to delete the data of users who had deleted the messaging app from their devices. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi [India], Apr 27 (ANI): Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's recent four-day state visit to India, her first after seven years, was an eventful milestone in the India-Bangladesh relationship. This high-profile visit is expected to further boost to bilateral ties between India and Bangladesh as the two nations signed 22 pacts, including one on civilian nuclear cooperation and a defence agreement which includes a USD 4.5 billion (around Rs. 3,200 crore) line of credit to buy Indian military hardware. train and bus services, between West Bengal and Bangladesh were also launched during the visit. Apart from the various events, including Sheikh Hasina's visit to Ajmer Sharif and her meeting with industrialists, what went quite under-reported was the very moving Sommanona ceremony to honour Indian soldiers martyred in 1971, held befittingly at Manekshaw Center, Delhi Cantonment. With the two Prime Ministers seated on the dais flanked by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and two of Bangladesh's Ministers, Manekshaw Centre's auditorium was full with a group of Bangladesh's Bir Mukti Joddhas (brave liberation soldiers) of the Mukti Bahini, Indian Army, Navy Air Force veterans of the 1971, two former Indian Army Chiefs, Generals V.N. Sharma and Deepak Kapur, the three service chiefs, diplomats, senior officials and serving Indian armed forces officers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his address at Manekshaw Centre by praising Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's efforts. When he referred the Bangabandhu's family being rescued from imprisonment in 1971, he pointed to Major Ashok Tara, who had conducted the rescue and was sitting in the audience with his wife. Referring to Bangabandhu's murder on 25 August 1975, PM Modi said "16 of her family were murdered, but Sheikh Hasina stood still like a rock.' Those were moments when Sheikh Hasina was visibly moved. She and her sister escaped the bloodbath as they were in West Germany. That was an indeed trying time for her. Completely broken owing to the senseless killing of her parents and siblings, and with a hostile government in Bangladesh, she was provided asylum in New Delhi from 1975 to 1981. Holding forth on the progress made by Bangladesh in its post-liberation decades, PM Modi had the entire audience stunned when he rattled off many facts and figures extempore. "There is one thought in South Asia which breeds, inspires and encourages terrorism. The thought whose priority is not humanity, but extremism and terrorism...Without being selfish, the two countries worked for the betterment of entire region, it's sad that there is a third mentality which exists.. It's my clear mandate that my neighbouring country Bangladesh should also develop along with India.. As a friend, India will offer whatever required to Bangladesh. I have same dream for Bangladesh as I have for India, Jai Hind! Jai Bangla," said PM Modi. In a moving ceremony, PM Hasina honoured the following next of kin of six posthumous gallantry awardees of Indian Armed Forces martyred during the 1971 War of Bangladesh's Liberation: Mrs Vilambini, the widow of Lance Param Vir Chakra recipient Naik Albert Ekka, who was in a wheelchair, Mrs. Santosh, sister of Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) recipient Major Anup Singh Gehlot, Mrs. Gurdev Kaur, widow of Subedar Malkiat Singh, Mrs. Sugam Singh, widow of MVC recipient Havildar Sugam Singh, Mrs Kavita Das, sister-in-law of MVC recipient Lt Samir Das, an Indian Navy clearance diver, who fought alongside the Mukti Bahini, Mrs. Arundhati Samanta, widow of Vir Chakra (VrC) recipient Squadron Leader A.B. Samanta and Mr. Vishwa Nath Chakravarty, brother of VrC recipient Lance Naik Mohini Ranjan Chakravarty of the Border Security Force. "I pay tribute to some special Indian friends, the martyrs and their families...This time the struggle was for our freedom..The history of Bangladesh has been written by the blood of Indian martyrs," said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Interacting with this writer, Colonel Sajjad Ali Zahir, Bir Protik, who accompanied PM Hasina and conducted the honouring ceremony recalled, "I was posted in Pakistan Army's 14th Para Brigade in Sialkot, when news came of unspeakable atrocities by Pakistan Army back home. After trying hard, I finally managed to escape into India and was brought by the Indian military to a secret camp in Sylhet district, where I became the trainer for the Mukti Bahini." Meanwhile Pakistan Army passed a death sentence against him for 'deserting his post'. "We began our guerrilla operation from September 1971 and quickly raised an artillery battery to cause maximum damage to the Pakistani forces as they had to be stopped from committing human rights violations.. At one point, we found a government office which had been turned into a sex-labour camp with kidnapped women locked up on the first floor. I am still haunted by the memory of a girl who wrote her name, Ratna, in blood on the wall of a labour camp before dying". The third India-Pakistan war during December 1971 was historically significant as it liberated erstwhile Bengali East Pakistan from decades of oppression by the ruling military government of West Pakistan culminating in horrific genocide by Pakistan army and created the new nation, Bangladesh. On 25 March 1971, the liberation war was launched by the Mukti Bahini, as Pakistani soldiers aided by local collaborators, had reportedly killed an estimated 3 million people, raped 200,000 women and forced millions of people to flee to India. Eventually, when Pakistan sparked off the war on December 3, 1971, it took only 13 days for India Army to encircle East Pakistan. On December 16, 1971, Pakistan's eastern army commander signed the instrument of surrender at Dhaka, as 93,000 Pakistan armed forces personnel surrendered to Indian Army all over what got declared as the newly born nation of Bangladesh. The year 2011 was marked by extended celebrations in Bangladesh, for one of which it invited 17 Indian veterans of that war, in December 2011. Simultaneously Headquaters, Eastern Command, Kolkata hosted three serving Bangladesh Army officers, 22 Mukti Joddhas (Mukti Bahini veterans) and Indian armed forces veterans, including. Bangladesh Parliament's Deputy Speaker Shaukat Ali, former Eastern Command chief of staff Lt. Gen. (retired) J.F.R. Jacob, former Indian Army chief and Member of Parliament, Gen. (retired) Shankar Roychowdhury. Prime Minister Hasina's first ever visit to, Tripura, on 11-12 January 2012, which she referred to as a pilgrimage, marked a high point in the extended celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Bangladesh's Liberation war. Accompanied by her sister, Sheikh Rehana and an over 100-strong delegation, including some more ministers, businessmen and intellectuals, she came on an invitation by Tripura Central University for being conferred with the degree of Doctor of Literature, by for her "great contribution to the protection of multicultural democracy and peace". "As we touched down at Agartala airport last evening, a flush of emotions overwhelmed me as I recalled the tremendous sacrifices during our glorious struggle for independence," said Prime Minister Hasina, in a voice choked with emotion, after receiving the degree of from Vice President of India Hamid Ansari at Agartala on 12 January 2012. Fondly recalling the help Tripura had extended during 1971 Liberation War spearheaded by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she further said, switching to Bengali, "I express my deep gratitude to the people of Tripura who gave us food, shelter and clothing and care when the people of our country were subject of inhuman and barbaric torture in the hands of Pakistani Army and migrated to this land.I was further amazed when I came to know that before this university was set up, this place was a training camp of the Bangladesh liberation soldiers". Awami League's current tenure is the best time for India to resolve all pending issues with Bangladesh and develop its connectivity to India's North Eastern states, which will go a long way to boost trade and development of that region. . (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Security Experts have said that the summers are not going to be easy in Jammu and Kashmir as more terror attacks may take place. Talking to ANI in New Delhi, Defence Expert Rahul Jalali said "In the winters, Pakistan has managed to infiltrate lots of terrorists and this time the summer is not going to be easy. There are more than 150 terrorists in Pakistan who are waiting to be launched in India." He said that the army will have to very alert because Kupwara had always been on the target of terrorists as it is very near to the Line of Control (LOC). Terrorists have targeted Kupwara time and time again," said Jalali. He apprehended that the attacks may be increased because of the "terror recruitment which is taking place locally". He termed the Kupwara attack a repeat of what had happened in Uri, Nagrota and right from Pathankot. "The pattern is similar and luckily the casualties have not been higher in comparison with other attacks," he said. Echoing similar sentiments, another Defence Expert Anil Gupta said that the summers will be more difficult for the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. "One thing is definite that there will be infiltrations from Pakistan in the summers," he said. He, however, maintained that there was some sort of security lapse in Kupwara. Another Defence Expert, PK Sehgal was of the view that India should declare Pakistan a terrorist state. "If Pakistan continues to think India is a banana republic than we are capable of bringing Pakistan to its knees also," said Sehgal. Maintaining that India's strategies should be very clear for Pakistan, Sehgal demanded that "it is high time that parliament of India should declare Pakistan a terrorist state". Three army jawans lost their lives in an encounter with the terrorists who attacked an army camp in Chowkibal's Panzgam area in Kupwara district of Kashmir on Thursday. At the time of filing this report, the encounter was going on and two militants have been reportedly killed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal matter. The matter will be heard at 2 p.m. Earlier on April 12, the apex court had adjourned the matter. The final hearing was put off after the Centre informed the court that a meeting of Punjab and Haryana has been convened by it on April 20 to resolve the matter. The court, however, made it clear that if a solution was not found, it would proceed with the matter on the next date of hearing. The bench, also comprising of Justice Amitava Roy, considered the statement of Solicitor General, Ranjeet Kumar and deferred the hearing in the case. Earlier this month, the apex court refused to hear the Punjab Government's plea to adjourn the SYL Canal matter till the election results were announced and posted the matter for further hearing till February 22. Senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani, appearing for the Punjab government, sought an adjournment which the top court refused. A bench headed by Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh refused the plea and asked, "What has the Supreme Court to do with the election results?" In January, the apex court asked both the Haryana and Punjab Governments to file their replies on the issue within three weeks. The Punjab Government had earlier sought more time from the court to file a detailed reply on the same. A bench of the court headed by Justice Ghosh and Justice Amitava Roy granted the decision. The apex court had, in November last year, termed the law passed by the Punjab Government in 2004 to terminate the SYL Canal water sharing agreement with neighbouring states as 'unconstitutional'. Holding that the Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, 2004 was not being in conformity with the provisions of the Constitution, the top court answered in the negative to all four questions referred to it in a presidential reference. A constitution bench of the court ruled that Punjab could not and should not have taken a 'unilateral' decision to terminate the agreement with Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and Chandigarh to share the Ravi-Beas river waters. The court ruling was also followed by resignations of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Captain Amarinder Singh and state Congress MLAs. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least three soldiers, including a captain, lost their lives after terrorists attacked an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. Two terrorists were also killed in the attack on the Army base located close to the Line of Control (LoC). Meanwhile, reports state that two more terrorists are still holed up and attempts are being made to smoke them out. This is not the first time terrorists have gunned down the Central Reserve Paramilitary Force (CRPF) personnel after invading and attacking their camp. Here's a timeline of the major strikes at the Indian Army camps in the recent years: -January 2, 2016 The Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force was attacked by a group of heavily armed terrorists on January 2, 2016. Four terrorists were killed by the security forces, and the Indian Armed forces lost three brave men including NSG's Lt Col Niranjan, who attained martyrdom when a bomb exploded while he was inspecting a terrorist's body. The terrorists belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group. -September 18, 2016 In one of the bloodiest attacks on the Indian Armed forces, 19 soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Uri area of Baramulla. Four fidayeen militants stormed an Army camp at Uri in Baramulla District near the LoC on September 18, 2016. The high number of casualties in the Uri terror attack was due to the fact that a large number of soldiers, of the Dogra Regiment, had been stationed at the camp in tents and other temporary structures as there was a changeover of guards. Some of these tents caught fire during the attack, and the fire spread to other parts of the barracks. While the four terrorists were neutralised immediately, India also conducted a surgical strike in retaliation on September 29, 2016, against militant launch pads across the LoC in Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir. Nearly 20-50 militants were neutralised as per the Indian Army. The militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed is suspected of being involved in the planning and execution of the attack in Uri. -November 29, 2016 Seven soldiers, including two Majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in the Nagrota area of Jammu and Kashmir, triggering a fierce gun battle that raged for more than 12 hours. -December 5, 2014 Heavily armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters of the Army in North Kashmir's Uri town, killing 17 jawans and injuring 19 other personnel in the terror strike. Six militants were also killed in the operation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to boost air travel between smaller cities by making flights far more affordable for "tier 2" and smaller towns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said he wants to see people who wear hawai chappal (flip flops) in a hawai jahaz (airplane). Prime Minister Modi was addressing a public rally at Ridge Maidan here after flagging off three UDAN flights on Shimla-Delhi route. He said those who have looted poor will have to return to them. "Our government has brought down stent prices considerably. This benefits poor the most," he added. "We want our youth to get jobs, children must have access to good education, elderly must get affordable healthcare," he said, adding that "it is a delight that several households in the rural areas have been benefitted through the Ujjwala Yojana". Sounding the poll bugle for next assembly elections in the state, Prime Minister Modi said the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) wave is entering Himachal Pradesh. "Time has changed. Now wave from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Delhi is entering Himachal Pradesh," said Prime Minister Modi. Taking a dig at Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh's links with the disproportionate assets case, the Prime Minister said, "Probably no Indian Chief Minister has spent so much time with lawyers." The assembly elections in the state are to be held in late 2017 as the term of current assembly ends on 7 January 2018. Himachal Pradesh has 68 seats. Highlighting his government's work, the Prime Minister said "Our sole aim is farmer welfare. Our Government has brought the most comprehensive Fasal Bima Yojana for the farmers". "Our government is devoted to take the country to new heights. Today, India has emerged as one of the fastest growing nations," he added. Talking about the benefits of digital payments, Prime Minister Modi urged everyone to undertake less cash and encourage more digital transactions. "The BHIM App can transform the way we transact, said Prime Minister Modi, who launched the App on April 14 this year in Nagpur on the occasion of birth anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Developed by Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the Aadhaar-linked Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) mobile app is based on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Days after getting bail from the Bombay High Court, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, accused of plotting the 2008 Malegaon blast, on Thursday alleged that she was a victim of the Congress government's conspiracy. "I am a victim of Congress government's conspiracy, I suffered nine years of injustice," Thakur said. Thakur criticised Congress leader P. Chidambaram for linking saffron to terrorism. "For misbeliever, saffron is always linked to terrorism, because they are afraid of it. For the demon, saffron is the strongest weapon," she added. Thakur said she would undergo treatment and blamed the Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) for her ailment. "In 2008, I was illegally taken by the ATS Mumbai and for 13 days I was held captive. I was tortured. I used to be physically fit, but I am not fit now and the ATS is responsible for that," she said. On Tuesday, Thakur was granted bail. She was directed to submit her passport to the Investigative Agency (NIA) court and appear on the dates mentioned before the trial court. The NIA had informed the court that it had no objection to the court granting bail to Thakur. The High Court, however, rejected the bail of Lieutenant Colonel Purohit. Thakur and Purohit had filed separate appeals. The hearing in Purohit's plea concluded on February 17 while Thakur 's on February 20. The blast took place on September 29, 2008 opposite the Shakil Goods Transport Company in Malegaon. It was caused by an explosive device fitted to a motorcycle. In 2009, the ATS chargesheeted 12 alleged 'Hindu extremists', including Purohit and Thakur for the crime. The ATS chargesheet stated that Thakur 's scooter was used for the blast by prime accused Ram Kalsangra (absconding). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday expressed his grief over the demise of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament and veteran actor Vinod Khanna and said that the late leader was a daunting person, who till the last moment of his life worked for the people of his constituency. Hailing Khanna as a hardworking and committed person, Naidu said that the former's demise has brought huge loss to both the political world and film fraternity. "I feel very sad to know that Shri. Vinod Khanna our colleague in Parliament and a veteran actor is no more. He entered in BJP in 1997 and became Member of Parliament in 1999. He has been a four time MP from the BJP. He also served as union minister in the Union Government. Very duty minded. I have done many campaigns with him," said Naidu. "He used to adhere to the schedule and use to participate in as many program as possible for the party. We lost a very good actor and politician. He was a very lovely person. Till his last moment he was working for the people of his constituency. I feel sorry my heartfelt condolences to the family and may his soul rest in peace," he added. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh took to Twitter to express his condolence over Khanna's demise, adding that he had carved a special place in the hearts of millions of Indians. "Shri Vinod Khanna had an illustrious career in films and politics. He carved a special place in the hearts of millions of Indians," Rajnath tweeted. "With the demise of Vinod Khannaji the people of India have lost a fabulous actor and sensitive politician. May his soul rest in peace." Congress president Sonia Gandhi also condoled the sad demise of the veteran film actor. Remembering him as a gifted actor, who dominated the silver screen with his outstanding persona, Sonia Gandhi said that Vinodji had a rare and profound influence over the masses by his simple and charismatic character. She also expressed solidarity with Khanna's family and prayed for the departed soul. The veteran actor was hospitalised and later discharged from HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Girgaum, Mumbai due to severe dehydration. He was also reportedly battling cancer for years. Vinod Khanna appeared in 141 films between 1968 and 2013 and also forayed into politics by joining the BJP. He was Minister of State for Tourism and Culture in 2002. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the landThe "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didnt have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldnt have noticed it at all.The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here . In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."The book,, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reasonFranklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began. FDR prolonged the Depression . He certainly didn't cure it. WWII did NOT end the Great Depression . It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy! The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party . They ATTACKED Republicans!People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for. America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism . The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted . See also here Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being(to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey. The revival of the fertilizer projects, Gorakhpur, Barauni, Sindri and Talcher, an additional annual production capacity of 75 LMT would be created making India self-reliant in meeting the annual domestic demand of around 320 LMT, from being a net importer currently. Financial allocations and the ground level work would start in 2017 and the five plants would become fully functional by 2020-21, said Union Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers and Parliamentary Affairs, Shri Ananthkumar. He presided over a Joint review meeting on revival plans for closed fertilizer projects under Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. Shri Kumar said that for realising Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's vision of 'Fertilizer Security for Food Security', the Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, in coordination with Ministries of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Power & Coal, is following a two-pronged strategy. This strategy includes existing fertilizer capacity augmentation by increasing the efficiency of the plants and revival of closed fertilizer projects. Shri Kumar mentioned that there has been highest ever production of urea, 245 LMT, in the country in the previous year without incurring any additional cost and utilising the existing capacity. He further mentioned that the 100% Neem Coating Urea has increased the per granule efficiency of urea by decreasing demand by 10% and increasing the yield by 10%. Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas in the revival plan, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan said that a massive investment to the tune of Rs. 50,000 crores is being undertaken for revival of closed fertilizer plants and setting up of gas pipeline network to connect Eastern India to the National Gas Grid. Production from these four major Fertilizer plants will ensure enhanced domestic fertilizer production and availability which will give an impetus to the vital agricultural sector there by aiding the Second Green Revolution, he added. Shri Pradhan informed that the progress of the construction of the pipeline network in eastern India, including the 2,650 km Jagdishpur-Haldia & Bokaro-Dhamra Natural Gas Pipeline, popularly known as 'Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga', and the 50 LMT Dhamra LNG terminal was reviewed in the meeting. A total investment of Rs. 13,000 crores for the pipeline and of Rs 6,000 crores for Dhamra LNG terminal is going to be undertaken, he added. The Minister said that this pipeline network would provide uninterrupted feedstock linkage to the revived fertilizer plants, wherein Gorakhpur, Barauni and Sindri plants would be natural gas based and Talcher would be coal gasification technology based, for which coal linkages have already been provided. Shri Pradhan added that the foundation stones for the five fertilizer plants would be laid down post monsoon this year and would be completed by 2020-21. The Talcher Unit is being revived by a consortium of PSUs namely Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers (RCF), Gas Authority of India (GAIL), Coal India Ltd. (CIL) and FCIL by investing Rs. 8,000 crores. Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL), CIL & National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) have registered a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) by name Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Limited (HURL) for revival of closed urea plants of FCIL at Gorakhpur and Sindri and of Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd. (HFCL) at Barauni, by an investment of Rs. 20,000 crores. An Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) has also been constituted to oversee the revival process. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Axis Bank declined 1.72% to Rs 508.40 at 9:40 IST on BSE after net profit dropped 43.13% to Rs 1225.10 crore on 4.33% rise in total income to Rs 14181.31 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 26 April 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 29.63 points or 0.1% at 30,103.72. On the BSE, 5.08 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 9.17 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 525 and a low of Rs 503.60 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 638 on 7 September 2016 and a 52-week low of Rs 424.60 on 10 January 2017. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 26 April 2017, rising 5.74% compared with the Sensex's 2.42% rise. The scrip had also outperformed the market over the past one quarter, gaining 11.56% as against the Sensex's 8.75% rise. The large-cap bank has equity capital of Rs 479.15 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2. Axis Bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at Rs 21280.48 crore as on 31 March 2017 as against Rs 20466.82 crore as on 30 December 2016 and Rs 6087.51 crore as on 31 March 2016. The ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances stood at 5.04% as on 31 March 2017 as against 5.22% as on 31 December 2016 and 1.67% as on 31 March 2016. The ratio of net NPAs to net advances stood at 2.11% as on 31 March 2017 as against 2.18% as on 31 December 2016 and 0.7% as on 31 March 2016. The bank's provisions and contingencies (excluding tax provisions) rose 120.93% to Rs 2581.25 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016. During the quarter, an account with loan outstanding of Rs 1660 crore in the cement and cement products space was downgraded, which was part of watch list. Upon successful regularization during the same quarter, this particular account was subsequently upgraded. Thus gross slippage and upgradation numbers for the quarter are both influenced by the similar amount. The company has made a provision of 25% against the loan outstandings on this account at the end of the quarter. The bank's net interest income (NII) grew 4% to Rs 4729 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016. Net interest margin for Q4 March 2017 stood at 3.83%. The board of directors have recommended dividend of Rs 5 per equity share of face value of Rs 2 per equity share for the year ended 31 March 2017, Axis Bank is one of the biggest private sector banks in India. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Hong Kong stock market reversed early losses to chalk up to highest level in 20 months on Thursday, 27 April 2017, as investor sentiment remained supported by the US announcement it would renegotiate the NAFTA deal, soothing fears after reports said Donald Trump was considering leaving it. The market also drew support from continuous flows of money from mainland Chinese investors. The Hang Seng Index inclined 120.05 points, or 0.49%, to 24698.48. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index was down 56.38 points, or 0.55%, to 10261.25. Turnover decreased slightly to HK$76.3 billion from HK$78.6 billion on Wednesday. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) M. Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister for Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting launched two important initiatives of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (Ministry of MSME), viz. Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council (MSEFC) portal and MyMSME Mobile App. Kalraj Mishra, speaking on the occasion, said that Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council (MSEFC) portal on http://msefc.msme.gov.in, would facilitate implementation of the delayed payment provisions of the MSMED Act 2006 and also assist in monitoring of delayed payment cases. This online platform is expected to be a significant step in the direction of Digital India from the perspective of the MSME Sector in the country. With the access to this platform, micro and small enterprises would be able to file their delayed payment related grievances online. The grievance filed would be communicated through email and SMS to the parties involved. It would also help officers of the Ministry of MSME as well as the State Government concerned in monitoring the progress of cases both at the State and National levels. He also informed that most of the States have already uploaded the information regarding delayed payment cases on MSEFC portal. As on 31 March 2017, 3690 cases involving an amount of Rs.1660 crore are being considered by various MSEFCs. In fact, the online portal would be of great help to start-ups since delayed payment is probably the single biggest problem for start-ups. In addition, the MyMSME mobile app on http://my.msme.gov.in, also launched by M. Venkaiah Naidu, provides information on all schemes implemented by the Ministry of MSME at one place. The MSME units have had always been complaining that information on all schemes were not available at a single place. Such a compilation is certainly the need of the hour so as to ensure that entrepreneurs need not be searching multiple windows for help or information. With the help of MyMSME mobile app Ministry of MSME would be providing one single window to MSMEs to access information on all schemes implemented by the Ministry and as well as apply for any of them. And MSMEs can also lodge grievances pertaining to Ministry of MSME through this app. Prime Minister has recently spoken about the need for moving forward to M-Governance (Mobile Governance) from e-Governance, on the occasion of the Civil Services Day celebrations. This mobile app has enabled the MSME Sector to usher in the era of M-Governance. Union Minister of State for MSME Haribhai Choudhary stated that the Ministry has embarked on the journey to make every scheme online. He stated that MSME Internet grievance monitoring system has already resolved the grievances of more than 3000 persons. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) National Commission for Schedule Tribes (NCST) has asked Uttar Pradesh Government to furnish information on fake certificates of Gond tribal community. The Secretary, NCST in his letter to Chief Secretary, UP has said that it has been brought to the notice of the Commission that many persons from Nayak Brahman and Brahman Ojha community in Gorakhpur, Devaria, Maharajganj, Basti, Aajamgarh, Mau and Balia districts have obtained fake certificates of Gond tribal community to get Govt Jobs. The Chief Secretary, UP has been asked to furnish the information of total population of ST community and percentage along with population and percentage of Gond community in the State. He has also been asked to furnish the details of the persons from Nayak Brahman and Brahman Ojha community who have been issued the certificates of Gond tribal community. The Commission has also asked that weather any civil or criminal action been taken against persons having fake certificates of Gond tribal community. The Commission has taken the cognizance of the issue on the representation from an NGO. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, launched UDAN - the Regional Connectivity Scheme for civil aviation, from Shimla Airport. Under this scheme, flights have begun today from Shimla, Nanded and Kadapa Airports. The Prime Minister also unveiled an e-plaque to mark the laying of Foundation Stone of a Hydro Engineering College at Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh. The Prime Minister addressed the gathering at Shimla Airport, and also at Nanded and Kadapa via video link. He said the lives of the middle class are being transformed, and their aspirations are rising. He said that given the right chance, they can do wonders. He added that the aviation sector in India is filled with opportunity. Mentioning the scheme name - UDAN - Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik - he said that aviation was once considered the domain of a select few, but that has changed now. He said the new civil aviation policy marks an opportunity to cater to the aspirations of the people of India. He said Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities are becoming growth engines, and enhanced aviation connectivity between them will be beneficial. He said the UDAN scheme will help the tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Receives bids for 1.42 crore shares The initial public offer (IPO) of S Chand And Company received bids for 1.42 crore shares on the second day of bidding, as per the data showed on NSE as at 16:30 IST. The IPO was subscribed 1.85 times. The issue opened for bidding yesterday, 26 April 2017 and closes tomorrow, 28 April 2017. S Chand and Company on 25 April 2017 has raised Rs 219 crore from 15 anchor investors by selling 32.62 lakh shares. The shares were allotted to the anchor investors at Rs 670 per share, the top end of the Rs 660 to Rs 670 per share price band for the IPO. Anchor investors included Eastspring Investments India Consumer Equity Open, Nomura Singapore, Indus India Fund (Mauritius), Volrado Venture Partners Fund-II, HSBC Global Investment Fund, HDFC Company Trustee, Axis Mutual Fund, Sundaram Mutual Fund and Birla Sun Life Asset Management. S Chand and Company's IPO consists of a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 325 crore and an offer for sale of up to 60.23 lakh equity shares by the selling shareholders. The price band of the issue is set at Rs 660 to Rs 670 per equity share of face value of Rs 5 each. The offer for sale of issue of up to 60.23 lakh equity shares is comprised of promoter selling shareholders, the other selling shareholders and the investor selling shareholders collectively termed as selling shareholders. Investor shareholder, Everstone Capital Partners II LLC offers to sell upto 48.14 lakh shares. The net proceeds from the fresh issue will be utilized towards the repayment of loans availed by the company and one of its subsidiaries, EPHL, which were utilized towards funding the acquisition of Chhaya. Repayment/prepayment, in full or in part, of certain loans availed of by the company and certain of Its subsidiaries, VPHPL and NSHPL; and general corporate purposes. The company reported consolidated net loss of Rs 88.48 crore on total revenue of Rs 150.80 crore in the nine months ended 31 December 2016. S Chand and Company is a leading Indian education content company. The company delivers content, solutions and services across the education lifecycle through its K-12, higher education and early learning segments. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two police officers were shot and injured by a suspected radical Islamist when they tried to arrest him on the French island of Reunion on Thursday. The suspect opened fire with a shotgun as a special police squad raided his home in the town of Saint Benoit, BBC reported. The police said the man, who is in his 20s and now in custody, was spreading Islamist propaganda online. Weapons and ingredients used to make Molotov cocktails were found at his flat, French Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said. The local media said the officers were not seriously injured and the suspect was also shot during the raid. France's counter-terrorism authorities have opened an investigation into the incident. The Interior Minister said the suspect's mother was also being questioned. --IANS soni/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two police officers were injured on Thursday in a shooting on the French island of Reunion by a suspected radical Islamist. The suspect, who is believed to be in his 20s, shot at the policemen when they tried to arrest him, officials said. It is immediately not known why the man was being arrested, Daily Mail reported. French officials have launched a counter-terrorism investigation into the shooting. --IANS soni/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five, including three soldiers and two militants, were killed in a 'fidayeen' (suicide) attack on an army camp on Thursday in north Kashmir's Kupwara district. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the Line of Control (LoC) around 4.30 a.m." Defence Ministry Spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. "The three soldiers killed, included a captain and a non-commissioned officer (NGO)," the spokesman added. Searches were going on inside the camp to ascertain whether or not the militants managed to sneak into the camp. --IANS sq/in (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hiralal, a 36-year old head teacher in a small government school in Basarpur, a village in Rajasthan, was absent 45 out of 200 working days (22.5 per cent), the school time prescribed by the Right to (RTE) Act. (The name of the teacher and the school have been changed to maintain confidentiality.) In a country where only 59 per cent of Grade III children can read and understand a passage, according to the government's National Achievement Survey, good quality teaching could be key to changing the school environment and encouraging learning. Contrary to common perception, Hiralal was not absent because he had decided to skip school without legitimate reasons; he was absent 21 days because of official reasons such as examination duty, trainings and election-related duty, and 15 days for personal reasons, including 10 medical leaves, which he was entitled to as part of his contract. On average, teachers at Basarpur School were on official duty for 16 of 200 days (8.4 per cent). While overall teacher absence was 18.9 per cent, teacher absenteeism without reason or because of truancy was only 2.5 per cent, according to a recent study conducted by the Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit that works in across six states -- Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Hiralal's case study was a part of this research, which covered 619 government schools with 2,861 teachers. Data and information about teacher absence from schools are often conflated with teacher absenteeism. Teachers might be "absent" from classrooms because of several legitimate, and sometimes even useful, reasons, known as "teacher absence". On the other hand, "teacher absenteeism" refers to teachers being absent from school without a legitimate reason, that is, truancy. Confusing teacher absence with teacher absenteeism could lead to ineffective policy, and unfair and demotivating vilification of teachers. Often when teachers were not present physically in the classroom, it was for official reasons, such as trainings, data collection, and authorised leave, the study found. Official reasons for absence include "official academic duties", such as trainings and cluster meetings; "official school administrative duties" such as data collection, submission of reports or data related to the mid-day meal programme, children with special needs, and work related to various student-incentive programmes such as distribution of textbooks; and "official other departmental work" which included work related to elections, census surveys, etc. Several studies have found a large difference between teacher absence and teacher absenteeism. For instance, teacher absence was found to be 23.64 per cent, in a 2016 World Bank Group study, while teacher absenteeism without reason was 4.7 per cent. Despite this, popular discourse on teacher accountability, and senior government officers often refer to remarkably high figures of teacher absenteeism -- around 25 per cent, but sometimes even as high as 50 per cent -- without citing any research evidence. On a regular school day, Hiralal, rides his motorcycle to Basarpur School, one of more than a million elementary schools in the country. Hiralal mostly reaches 15 minutes before the school -- with 82 students in Grades I to V, three full-time teachers, and one temporary teacher -- starts. Its students are mostly Kanjars, a historically nomadic community which primarily produces liquor and runs brothels, according to community members. The community finds it difficult to make their children's a priority, they said. It was largely due to the efforts of Hiralal -- who chiefly teaches mathematics and environmental science -- that the school was set up in 2001, and has been running since then, with rising enrolment. Until a school building was sanctioned in 2007, Hiralal paid the monthly rent of Rs 200 for a school building out of his pocket. Teachers at the school face many challenges: The school mainly targets marginalised communities who cannot provide adequate home support for their children, it doesn't have adequate infrastructure, fewer teachers than even the number of grades in the school, and little monitoring or support by district- and block-level education officers. It takes two of the teachers between one and two hours to reach school (higher commute times have been linked with greater teacher absenteeism), and still they mostly attended school regularly and punctually, and took about 11 authorised personal leaves, on average. Should we consider the possibility that the nature of teaching itself encourages teachers to be committed and motivated, and hold themselves accountable without external monitoring, provided there is an enabling work environment that facilitates collegiality and trust? Teacher absenteeism is often seen as the single-most critical issue that is plaguing the government school system. For example, the government suggested biometric systems as a means to curb teacher absenteeism in its 2016-17 economic survey. The new evidence from this study, and some previous evidence, begs the question: Should we instead focus our energies on systemic reform in the education system through ensuring adequate number of trained teachers, making relevant and good quality continuous professional development opportunities available for them, and by doing away with non-academic duties of teachers? A culture of targeting and blaming teachers -- who often work in challenging situations -- for matters that are beyond their control might be counterproductive and adversely affect the government school system. (In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform. Anish Madhavan is head of field research at the Azim Premji Foundation. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org) --IANS/IndiaSpend anish/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on Thursday hoped that European Union (EU) member-state Cyprus will increase its investments in India's fast growing economy after the deadlock over a revised tax treaty was resolved. The Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs was speaking at a business seminar which hosted Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. The conference 'India-Cyprus Business Session' was jointly organised by Assocham, CII and Ficci here. Last year a revised double taxation avoidance agreement(DTAA) was signed between the two countries. The provisions of the new DTAA came into force from April 1, 2017. The revised accord aims to avoid the burden of double taxation for taxpayers of two countries in order to promote the flow of investment, technology and services. The minister said the resolution of the DTAA issue and acceptance of Cyprus' request for removal of its territory from the 'notified jurisdiction area' list have paved the way for greater inflow of investments from the EU member-state. The 'notified jurisdictional area' is a term used for a country or territory which does not adheres to an 'effective exchange of information' mechanism with the Indian government regarding transactions by Indian nationals in its territory. Meghwal said that Cyprus should broaden and diversify its investments portfolio in India and also invest in the government's flagship schemes such as 'Make in India' and 'Digital India'. On its part, the EU member urged the Indian industry to invest in Cyprus' banking, finance, shipping and pharmaceutical sectors. "I am pleased to inform that during my visit to New Delhi, a number of bilateral agreements and Memoranda of Understanding will be signed in the fields of merchant shipping, air services, agricultural cooperation, education and culture," President Anastasiades said. "I believe that these areas of cooperation are some of those that have the potential to significantly boost our economic and commercial exchanges.". --IANS rv/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a development which could lead to the creation of healthier beers and drought-resistant crops, a team of Australian researchers has cracked the genetic code of the grain barley. The researchers sequenced the barley genome, one of the most complex of all the cereals, which could allow scientists to modify the grain through breeding programmes, Xinhua news agency on Thursday quoted researcher Rachel Burton as saying. Burton from the University of Adelaide said cracking barley's genetic code was a "major achievement" which could lead to healthier beers and lower beer production costs. "If you can make barley that's better for malting then that's going to help with energy costs at the brewery, that's got to be good for the planet," Burton said. "If you're interested in a low carbohydrate beer for beer drinkers who don't want the calories, then you may be able to tailor your malt earlier on to make your beer less fattening, I suppose." Burton said her team was able to successfully experiment with malted barley which ferments cleaner and, therefore, brews beers more efficiently. "One of the things that we're very interested in is how quickly the walls (of the barley's cells) break down (to release the sugars)," she said. "If you can think of barley grain that breaks down those walls efficiently ... you will release lots of the starch and get a good fermentation. "But the remnants of wall when they go into the brewery they will be sticky and that can block the filters up in the brewery which adds to the cost. "So if you can find varieties where you get quick and complete degradation of cells walls ... that may be better for brewing." Meanwhile, Murdoch University's Professor Chengdao Li said Australian researchers had played a vital role in the research, adding that barley was one of the most complex grains to study. "Cereal crops, including bread wheat, durum, barley and rye, have some of the most complex genetic histories among the world's cultivated species," he said on Thursday. The breakthrough could also lead to the development of drought-resistant grains, something which could boost the nation's economy. Currently, 30 per cent of the world's malting barley comes from Australia and exports are worth more than $750 million. --IANS py/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Though most of the bank executives are confident of their cybersecurity strategy and preparedness, lack of practical testing makes the defence vulnerable, a new report said on Thursday. According to global professional services company Accenture's new global report that involved 275 senior security executives across the banking and capital markets sectors, 78 per cent of executives surveyed expressed confidence in their overall cybersecurity strategy. But when it came to stop a breach, phishing and malware attacks, 59 per cent of the were unable to detect breaches for several months while 36 per cent of all the attacks were successful in stealing some data or information. "As Indian financial services firms are in the initial stages of adopting digital technologies, they have a unique opportunity to set up proper checks and balances to prevent cyber attacks," said Piyush Singh, Managing Director (Financial Services Group) Accenture in APAC and India. Nearly 48 per cent of respondents cited internal breaches as having the greatest cybersecurity impact and 52 per cent indicated a lack of confidence in their organisation's ability to detect a breach through internal monitoring. "They should also focus on deploying practical testing scenarios that include highly realistic simulated attacks. No amount of vulnerability scanning or risk assessment will replicate that," Singh added. While the banks' security teams detected a high number of each company's breaches, virtually all the respondents said they learned about the remainder of the breaches from their own employees, pointing to the critical importance of establishing strong awareness, strengthening internal training programmes and establishing effective internal escalation processes. Twitter's decision to block the British police and intelligence agencies from accessing data to identify terrorist plots has evoked criticism from the government. To ensure that its data is not used for surveillance, the micro-blogging site blocked the access to key streams of information on April 25 that is used by police and M15 to identify potential threats. "We are protesting this decision. We are in talks with Twitter on getting access to this data," The Telegraph quoted a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, as saying. The spokesman also called for other social media companies to be a part of government's fight against terrorism. According to reports, government had paid a third-party company for a service that tracked terms related to potential terror attacks -- before this was blocked by Twitter cutting off access to its API. This is not, however, for the first time that Twitter has taken a tough stance against a government's surveillance plan using social media data. In December 2016, the social media site blocked US law enforcement agencies from accessing real-time data through a deal with Dataminr. This decision by Twitter has come after a tremendous pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "We prohibit developers using the Public APIs and Gnip data products from allowing law enforcement - or any other entity - to use Twitter data for surveillance purposes. Period," Twitter had said in a blog post then. Discussions are currently ongoing between the British government and Twitter to resolve the issue. It is believed that the data being requested would be anonymised. --IANS qd/sm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has decided to reorganise its army to build a strong and modernised new-type military, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday. According to Defence Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun, the Central Military Commission took the move to shift the focus of the Chinese Army from quantity to quality and efficiency. Yang said 13 army groups will be formed from the previous 18. In response to a question on reform of military academies and research institutions, Yang said it aims to adapt to the new command system and military structure, as well as to provide talent and theoretical and technological support to the building of a first-class military force. The reform is now underway, he added. --IANS py/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A court here on Thursday took cognisance of the chargesheet filed in a corruption case against suspended Chhattisgarh official B.L. Agrawal. Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge Virender Kumar Goyal said: "I have gone through the material/documents/statement of witnesses filed with the chargesheet.. I take cognizance of the offence under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) IPC and Section 8 (Taking gratification, in order, by corrupt or illegal means, to influence public servant) of Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 against the accused." The court also directed CBI to supply documents to the accused. Meanwhile CBI filed its reply on the bail plea of accused Syed Burhanuddin but Burhanuddin's counsel sought time to advance his argument on bail after inspecting the chargesheet. Accused Bhagwan Singh moved his bail plea. The court listed the matter for May 3 for further hearing. On April 20, the CBI chargesheeted Agrawal, Burhanuddin and Singh. Agrawal, an Indian Administrative Service officer and then Principal Secretary (Higher Education) in the Chhattisgarh government, was arrested by the CBI on February 21 on charges of trying to "settle" a case being probed by the central agency against him. He is currently in judicial custody. Hyderabad-based Burhanuddin was arrested on February 23 for helping Agrawal to settle the case. Bhagwan Singh, a resident of Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, is also accused in the case. The CBI registered an FIR on February 18 against the accused officer, Singh, Burhanuddin and others on the charge of criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The CBI claimed the Agrawal had agreed to pay Rs 1.5 crore to Burhanuddin as gratification for helping him in a pending case. --IANS akk/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CPI-M on Thursday said it was not averse to joining hands with the Congress and other secular forces to forge a broad-based unity in combating the attack on democracy and secularism in West Bengal. Communist Party of India-Marxist State Secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said a joint struggle was needed to fight the poison of communalism being spread by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the autocratic attitude of the Trinamool government in the state. "We leftists, the parties within the Left Front and those Left forces outside the Left Front, can take the responsibility of leading the struggle against the attack on life and livelihood in the state and the anti-people economic policies of the BJP government at the centre and the Trinamool regime in the state. "But in the specific situation that is emerging in West Bengal, we need a broader unity of political forces by including the Congress and other democratic and secular parties to fight the attack on democracy and secularism in the state," Mishra told media persons after a two-day CPI-M state committee meeting. However, he said the call was not for any electoral alliance or understanding. "That we will decide at the time of elections. Here we are giving a call for a joint struggle." Mishra said the Trinamool could not be a part of the broadbased unity visualised by his party. "Because the existence and the policies of the Trinamool government in the state has helped the BJP's rise. We ran the government in the state for 34 years, but during that time the BJP could not raise its head." "Had there been no Trinamool, the BJP would not have gained in strength in the state. To fight the BJP's divisive policies, one has to combat the Trinamool's autocratic rue. Similarly, it is not possible to take on the autocratic rule of the Trinamool by shutting one's eyes to the BJP's divisive policies," he said. Mishra said his party's call for roping in the Congress for a joint struggle in the state does not militate against the CPI-M central committee's stand of not getting into any electoral understanding with the country's oldest political party. The CPI-M-led Left Front and the Congress had forged an electoral understanding in the state for last year's assembly polls, but the alliance came a cropper. "We are not talking of any electoral alliance. But we welcome all secular forces including the Congress who want a joint struggle. Let them build a platform, we will be there. Things like who will provide the leadership is not important, considering the crisis in the state." Mishra said an effort was on to convert communal polarisaiton into political polarisation in the state. "Efforts are on to create a perception that the BJP, and not the Leftists, can provide an alternative to Bengal's dictatorial regime. "The BJP is playing Ram, while the Trinamool is playing Hanuman. This is a dangerous game." He said the CPI-M state committee has instructed the entire party to go all out in making the March to Nabanna (state secretariat) call given by the Leftist peasant organisations on May 22 a success. --IANS ssp/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ahead of the upcoming visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India, Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades on Thursday asked India to tell Turkey that the status quo on the territorial dispute on his island is unacceptable. "We look to friends and allies such as India to convey the message to Turkey that the status quo is unacceptable, and that it needs to engage constructively and actively in the efforts underway," he said while delivering a keynote address at India Trilateral Forum organised by Observer Research Foundation on the 'EU-India strategic partnership in the 21st century: a Cyprus perspective'. "India has been a long-standing, reliable ally in our efforts to reunify Cyprus and its people through a comprehensive settlement," he said. The northern part of the Mediterranean island country is under Turkish occupation in 1974. "Peace in Cyprus will send a strong message to our fragile region and beyond, and will be to the benefit not only of Cyprus and its people, but also to Turkey, the EU, and the region," he added. Erdogan will arrive here on April 30 on a two-day state visit to India. Terming India and the EU "natural partners" and their strong economic links, Anastasiades said their relationship is well beyond its infancy and it is "now our task to see this relationship into full maturity." On the security challenges faced by both India and EU, he said: "Cyprus, and indeed the EU, stand with India as staunch supporters of a comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. "Like India, we are fully aware of the fact that terrorist networks are global and require a unified response," he said. "In places like Afghanistan, India and the EU can forge closer cooperation for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan and for the cause of peace and stability in the region." Supporting the Free Trade agreement between India and EU, Anastasiades said it "will provide the space for EU Member States to maximise their bilateral engagement with India, in all possible sectors of economic activity." "FTA will help Cyprus seize the opportunity to engage actively with India in sectors like renewable energy, most notably in solar energy and natural gas, in shipping and financial services," he said, welcoming Indian firms to explore business opportunities in Cyprus. Anastasiades is paying India a state visit from April 25 to 29. On April 28, he will be accorded ceremonial welcome and will participate in delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. --IANS rs/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dara Shikoh, the great grandson of Akbar, was a child of India, Minister of State for External Afffairs M.J. Akbar said here on Thursday. Inaugurating the "Dara Shikoh: Reclaiming Spiritual Legacy of India" event, organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the minister said: "Dara Shikoh understood the people of India, he went ahead to connect with the local masses. He inspired for translations of Gita and Upanishads in Persian language." "The whole idea behind the programme was to highlight the efforts contributed by Shikoh to maintain harmony and unity among people. His aim was better coordination between Hindus and Muslims and deepening faith in each other," ICCR President Lokesh Chandra told IANS. Eminent scholars, academics and historians from seven countries -- the US, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and India will participate in the two-day conference. Dara Shikoh was a spiritually and intellectually inspired Mughal prince. In 1655 Shah Jahan declared him the Crown Prince of the Mughal Empire. He was, however, assassinated by his younger brother Muhiuddin (later, Emperor Aurangzeb) in a bitter struggle for the throne. "Dara Sikoh as a historical entity represents such glorious principles of Indian history, culture and heritage. ICCR is organising an International Conference with participation from more than seven countries as well as Indian historians and intellectuals to discuss and celebrate this conference along with play of Dara Sikoh and an exhibition" shared Amarendra Khatua, Director General ICCR. On this occasion, a 90-minute play theatrical production directed by Tripurari Sharma, Professor at the National School of Drama, will be staged on Thursday evening. --IANS som/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Flagstaff Unified School District and Flagstaff Police are still investigating who is leaving threatening notes around Flagstaff High School. Flagstaff High School students were released early on Wednesday after another note was found -- the sixth in the past month. No new names or dates were in the note, according to Flagstaff Police Sgt. Cory Runge. Wednesday was an early release day, but after finding the note officers and school officials released students at around noon instead of around 1 p.m. Students were told to shelter in place, which means the students were able to walk around the school but the doors to the outside were locked. There was already a strong police presence at the school today because one of the previous five notes had mentioned April 26 as a date that something might happen. In March, five notes were found in bathrooms around the school. The notes stated that something would happen at the school on April 20 or April 26. One of the notes also mentioned a few teachers and students by name. At a meeting last week at Flagstaff High School, Flagstaff Deputy Police Chief Dan Mussleman said the department has interviewed about 50 to 60 people about the notes at the school. The department has also been granted about six search warrants for information and evidence. He said the department has several leads and is working with the FBI and the Arizona Department of Public Safetys Crime Lab to analyze evidence in the case. He declined to say what evidence other than the notes was found and who the department had interviewed. He said the department does have a plan in place in case something happens, but declined to detail the plan. At Tuesday nights Flagstaff Unified School District board meeting, Flagstaff High School Principal Tony Cullen said the school has instituted several measures to help keep students safe and is working on a rough draft of a letter to parents on what to expect if an emergency happens at the school. He said the students and staff have been doing lock-down emergency drills on a regular basis through the whole school year. Staff have put laminated posters in the school's bathrooms to remind students on what to do in an emergency if they find themselves in the hall or bathroom. Staff have also been limiting early access to the building in the morning, he said. In the past, it was not unusual for students to arrive early to school and hang out with friends in the common area. Staff are now keeping the doors locked until 7:30 a.m. and limiting the number of outside doors that are unlocked that students can use to go in and out of the building. Those doors that are unlocked have either a security camera or a person or both watching who comes in and out. The school has also instituted a hallway pass system for students, Cullen said. Each teacher has a sign-out sheet in their room where students must sign out and then back in to use the bathroom or get something from a locker during class. Cullen said the school is also working on a draft letter to parents with tips on how to help their student and what to expect in an emergency situation. It warns parents not to drive to the school and tells them that they will receive further instructions from either the school district or police about where and when they can pick up their student. It may not be at the school, he said. The letter also reminds parents or whoever is picking up the student to bring an ID. Cullen also suggested that parents make sure that the emergency contact list that the school has is up to date and lists anyone who might be coming to pick up a student in an emergency. Were not going to release a student to anyone, unless we can verify that that is the person theyre supposed to be with, he said. Anyone with information about the notes should contact Detective Barreras at (928)679-4055 or Silent Witness at (928)774-6111. Silent Witness is offering a reward of $5,000 for information leading to an arrest. Actress Deepika Padukone shot the title track of "Raabta" in one night. The film's director Dinesh Vijan messaged to ask her if she could shoot the title track for his film and she instantly agreed. Vijan said in a statement: "Deepika gives attention to small details and that makes all the difference. She sat with me for some time to understand the nuances and mood of the song. After that it was a swift shoot." He added: "I am glad she shot for the title track of my film. I believe she is lucky for me." Vijan and Deepika have previously worked together during "Love Aaj Kal" and "Cocktail". "Raabta", starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon, is set to release on June 9. --IANS nn/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ruling AIADMK General Secretary T.T.V. Dinakaran, arrested by Delhi Police for alleged bribery, was flown here on Thursday for further investigation. Soon after landing at the Chennai airport, Dinakaran was taken to Rajaji Bhavan in Besant Nagar where central government offices are located for questioning. Dinakaran is the nephew of AIADMK General Secretary V.K. Sasikala, who is in jail in Bengaluru after being convicted for corruption. Delhi Police also flew down Dinakaran's friend Mallikarjuna to Chennai along with the former. The Delhi Police arrested Dinakaran on charge of trying to pay Rs 50 crore as bribe to Election Commission officials through middleman Sukesh Chandrasekar, who has also been arrested. The alleged bribe was to secure the party's "two leaves" symbol to his faction of the AIADMK. The AIADMK split into two after the death of Jayalalithaa in December 2016. One faction is led by Sasikala and the other by former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam. The Election Commission had frozen the party's "two leaves" symbol and the party name when the two groups claimed the same. The poll panel is hearing the case as to which faction the symbol should be allotted to. On April 26, Dinakaran was remanded to five days in police custody. Police would search Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna's residences and also analyse their laptops, computers and bank statements to get more possible leads to establish their involvement in the bribery case. "The transaction had taken place through some Chennai operators and there are possibilities that the team can obtain some data through their laptops and computers," a Delhi Police Officer told IANS. "We want to establish the route through which Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna came in contact with Sukesh Chandrashekhar, a co-accused in the case," the officer added. Chandrashekhar was arrested from a south Delhi hotel on April 16 night, allegedly with Rs 1.3 crore meant for bribing poll panel officials. Chandrashekhar had allegedly told the police he was Dinakaran's "middleman" and was asked to pay the money to the officials for allotting the party symbol to AIADMK's Sasikala faction. --IANS vj/mr/py (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day may reduce prostate cancer risk by more than 50 per cent, show results of a study on 7,000 Italian men. The findings were then validated in laboratory studies which suggested that the coffee substance caffeine might have some protective effect against cancer. "The observations on cancer cells allow us to say that the beneficial effect observed among the 7,000 participants is most likely due to caffeine, rather than to the many other substances contained in coffee," said Maria Benedetta Donati from Institute for Research, Hospitalisation and Health Care (I.R.C.C.S.) Neuromed in Pozzilli, Italy. The study, published in the International Journal of Cancer, sheds light in a field still hotly debated to this day -- the role of coffee, and specifically caffeine, in relation to prostate cancer. A protective effect of the popular drink has already been suggested by some recent studies. "In recent years we have seen a number of international studies on this issue. But scientific evidence has been considered insufficient to draw conclusions. Moreover, in some cases results were contradictory," first author of the paper George Pounis from I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed said. "Our goal, therefore, was to increase knowledge in this field and to provide a clearer view," Pounis said. For the study, about 7,000 men were observed for four years on average. "By analysing their coffee consumption habits and comparing them with prostate cancer cases occurred over time, we saw a net reduction of risk, 53 per cent, in those who drank more than three cups a day," Pounis said. Then the researchers sought confirmation by testing the action of coffee extracts on prostate cancer cells in laboratory studies. They tested, in particular, extracts containing caffeine or decaffeinated. Only the first ones significantly reduced cancer cells proliferation -- an effect that largely disappeared with decaffeinated extracts. The researchers believe that the Italian-style of coffee making might also contribute to the protective effect. "We should keep in mind that the study is conducted on a central Italy population," Licia Iacoviello from I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed noted. "They prepare coffee rigorously Italian way: high pressure, very high water temperature and with no filters. This method, different from those followed in other areas of the world, could lead to a higher concentration of bioactive substances. It will be very interesting, now, to explore this aspect," Iacoviello said. --IANS gb/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A day after a court here remanded AIADMK leader T.T.V. Dinakaran to five-day's police custody, a Crime Branch team on Thursday flew him and his aide Mallikarjuna to Chennai for further investigations into the alleged attempt to bribe officials of the Election Commission to release the party's "two leaves" symbol. "The Crime Branch team left for Chennai along with Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna today (Thursday) morning," a senior police officer told IANS pleading anonymity. Police would search Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna's residence to get more possible leads to establish their involvement in the bribery case. "The transaction had taken place through some Chennai operators and there are possibilities that the team can obtain some data through their laptops and computers," the officer said. Dinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night by the Delhi Police Crime Branch for trying to pay out Rs 50 crore in bribes to the poll officials through Sukesh Chandrasekhar to ensure the "two leaves" poll symbol was allotted to the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) faction led by Sasikala. "The police want to establish the route though which Dinakaran and Mallikarjuna have come in contact with Sukesh Chandrashekhar, who is a co-accused in the case," the officer said. Chandrasekhar was arrested from a south Delhi hotel on April 16 night, allegedly with Rs 1.3 crore meant for bribing poll panel officials. Chandrasekhar had allegedly told the police he was Dinakaran's "middleman" and was asked to pay the money to the officials for allotting the party symbol to AIADMK's Sasikala faction. --IANS sp-am/ruwa/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three soldiers and two suicide attackers were killed on Thursday in a 'fidayeen' attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. Seven other soldiers were injured in the assault. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the Line of Control (LoC) around 4.30 a.m.," Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. "The three soldiers killed included a Captain and a Non-Commissioned Officer," he added. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment, defence ministry sources said. Reports said two of the soldiers were in critical condition. Informed sources said the militants cut through the barbed wire fencing of the firing range of the army camp, after which they resorted to grenade attacks and indiscriminate firing. The spokesman said two terrorists were killed in the attack. Some reports said one of the militants had escaped and a search was on to trace him. --IANS sq/mr/py/nv (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a rare incident, a bride in Bihar's Samastipur district refused to marry a dark complexioned groom, saying he was unsuitable for her, a police official said on Thursday. Not expecting anything of this sort, the "baraat" (marriage party) was shocked to hear the girl's flat refusal to accept the boy as her groom. The incident was reported from Sinhma village under the Rosera police station's jurisdiction in Samastipur district, about 100 km from Patna. "The bride refused to marry the dark complexioned groom immediately after the ritual of 'Jaimal' (exchange of garlands between bride and groom) was performed on Wednesday," a local police official said. Kumkum Kumari, in her early 20s, surprised all when she refused to marry groom Indal Kumar on the ground of his dark complexion. After the incident, the groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is not first such case in rural Bihar where the social scales are tilted heavily against women. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, who were illiterate, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past week. "Times seem to have changed for women as several schemes have been launched for their empowerment by the state and central governments," said an elderly villager, who was to attend the marriage ceremony. There are several such cases across the state that go unreported. In rural Bihar, hundreds of weddings take place in the traditionally auspicious marriage season known as "Lagan", which is in progress now. Till a few years ago, in rural Bihar, it was rare for a woman to refuse a groom selected for her by her parents and family. In fact, the reverse was the rule, as the groom or his parents would often walk out of the wedding venue on grounds like inadequate dowry or the bride's education or her complexion. These days, women going for marriage on their own terms is not a rarity even in rural parts of the state. --IANS ik/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior Congress leader Gurudas Kamat on Thursday again requested party President Sonia Gandhi to relieve him of the responsibilities of Rajasthan and other positions. Kamat also denied any move to join the Bharatiya Janata Party. In a letter to Gandhi on Thursday, Kamat said: "Am truly grateful but suprised that the AICC spokesperson yesterday announced that I continue to be the General Secretary in-charge of Rajasthan. "I had written to you 'my heart is not in the job anymore'. Hence, please relive me from Rajasthan and other positions also," he wrote. Kamat had quit all posts in the party on Wednesday. Congress on Wednesday had appointed former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as General Secretary in-charge of Gujarat in place of Kamat. As General Secretary, Kamat was handling the party affairs for the crucial western Indian state of Gujarat, besides Rajasthan, and Union Territories of Dadra, Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. "I am truly grateful to the Congress president and vice-president for having announced through the AICC spokesperson yesterday (Wednesday) that I will continue to be General Secretary in-charge of Rajasthan inspite of my request to relieve me from all posts," said Kamat in a statement on Thursday. "I had clearly stated to Rahul Gandhi during our meeting, 'my heart is not in the job anymore' and therefore I need to be relieved and that since elections are due in Gujarat this year and Rajasthan next year, there is not a day to waste and that he should make the new appointments urgently," he added. In June 2016, Kamat created a flutter by announcing his decision to quit the Congress and politics, but was persuaded by the Gandhis to stay back and continue working for the party. Prior to that, he had shot into headlines in July 2011 when he abruptly quit the Manmohan Singh ministry, citing "personal reasons" for his move. --IANS sid/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, the first Indian American to hold a cabinet rank, visited India's UN Mission on Thursday for a wide-ranging discussion with Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin. "We shared perspectives on how India-US can work together at the UN in line with our growing ties," Akbaruddin told IANS after the meeting. Haley described their meeting in a tweet as "great". "We discussed India's economy, peacekeeping reform and the partnership between India and the US." A US Mission statement added that they also discussed "India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth" and "the close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the UN." Permanent Representative to the UN has a cabinet rank in the US government and Haley has emerged as a powerful and outspoken voice on foreign policy in the US, even as she deviated from some of the early positions of President Donald Trump. However, the differences have virtually disappeared as Trump moved closer to her stances due to realpolitik and Congressional pressures. For example, Trump has embraced her hardline on Russia after chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Syria. A critic of how the UN works, Haley has been insistent on reforming it, especially the peacekeeping operations as a cut in US contributions to the world body looms. "I know for a fact that Nikki feels very, very strongly about taking on problems that really people steered away from," Trump said on Monday during a White House lunch for Permanent Representatives of members of the Security Council. Trump thanked Haley for her "outstanding leadership" and said she was doing a "fantastic job." It was not known if the Security Council reforms with a permanent seat for India -- a priority for New Delhi -- came up during the conversation with Akbaruddin. President Barack Obama has backed India's quest, but the Trump administration has not publicly endorsed it and Haley has only said that she was open to the idea. Asked about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here in March, she admitted candidly, "First of all, I'm in learning mode. And as I look at that, I know there is conversations of reform of Security Council." She then added: "I'm open to hearing anyone on what they have to say and looking at it and going further." With the US contributing 28.36 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, Washington is giving priority to reforming the operations. Historically India has been the largest troop-contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations and 7,678 are serving now. India has also been advocating reforming the peacekeeping operations, especially how the mandates are set by the Security Council, often without consulting the troop-contributors. As Governor of South Carolina, Haley showed interest in India's economy and its potential and led a trade delegation in 2014 to India seeking investments and stronger commercial ties with her state. (Arul Louis can be reached at Aarul.l@ians.in) --IANS al/in (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India intends to make its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy more efficient and speedier, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday. "The mindset of the government is to make the IPR policy more efficient and speedier," she said, while addressing the World Intellectual Property Day celebrations here. She also gave away the National Intellectual Property Awards on the occasion "India's IPR policy is TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) Acompliant and forward looking," she said. Sitharaman also said creating awareness is very important, and launching an IPR Awareness campaign in schools across the country by Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) is a step in creating a mindset and respect for innovation right from the schools. On Tuesday, the CIPAM, in collaboration with the International Trademark Association (INT), started an IPR awareness campaign in schools from one such institution in the national capital. A Union Commerce Ministry release here said that a programme is being worked out to conduct over 3,500 IPR awareness programmes in schools, universities and industries across the country, including in Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities, as well as in rural areas, along with translating content into various regional languages for a wider reach. Earlier this week, the government extended the Start-Ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP) scheme for three years till March 2020 to ensure protection of entrepreneurs' patents, trademark and designs. --IANS bc/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Poland on Thursday signed an agreement on the exchange of information and technology in the agriculture sector. The agreement, signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh from the Indian side, will see cooperation between the two nations and emphasise on the need to expand their trade relations. The signing ceremony took place after the formal talks between visiting Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo. The two sides will explore more possibilities to strengthen their collaboration in mining, food processing and defence sectors. Ansari is on a three-day state visit to Poland and will meet Polish President Andrzej Duda, who will make a state visit to India later this year. Ansari will also meet the Speaker of the Polish Senate. The Vice President will be the main speaker at a business forum on Thursday, organised by the Polish Ministry of Economic Development. Some 150 businessmen and companies from the two countries will participate in the deliberations. He will also interact with several key members of the Indian community. --IANS bhutani/soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The landmark Indo-US logistics pact that provides for cashless refuelling, replenishment and related services to the militaries of the two countries could be functional as early as July with most of the kinks ironed out, informed sources said. "The agreement is likely to be implemented before the Malabar exercise," the sources told IANS referring to the annual India-US-Japan naval drill in the Bay of Bengal that is slated for July. Manohar Parrikar, then India's Defence Minister and his US counterpart at the time, Ashton Carter, had inked the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) last August. Under this, both countries will designate military facilities on either side for facilities like refuelling and replenishment -- with the books being balanced at the end of year. During joint exercises like Malabar, both countries were required to make payments each time for using each other's facilities. Now, the accounts will be settled once a year. According to the sources, the details of the agreement have been worked out, with India sharing its "point of contact" list. The US had shared its list last year. This list lays down the ports globally where vessels of the two countries can dock to take on supplies. The sources also said that the vexed issue of arriving at a common accounting system for the three services has also been resolved. The agreement had been pending for 10 years, with the former Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government fighting shy of expressing its opinion one way or the other. It comes at a time when the US has been vocal about the growing activities of China in the South China sea and has repeatedly stressed on freedom of navigation. LEMOA is a tweaked, India-specific version of the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), which the US had first proposed in 2004 at the sixth meeting of the India-US Defence Policy Group. The LSA, in turn, is a version of the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) that the US has with several NATO nations. India had provided logistics support to the US during the 1990-91 Gulf War, when the Chandra Shekhar-led government under Chandra Shekhar granted overflight rights US militaty planes and even permitted refueling -- but revoked this after protests. During the 2004 Tsunami, US support came in handy with India lacking the capability to provide assistance to the vast affected areas, as it did after 2015 Nepal earthquake. Experts say the agreement will help provide such humanitarian assistance in future. Laxman Behera, a member of IDSA's Defence Economics and Industry Centre, termed the pact a "step forward" in consolidating the India-US strategic partnership. "This is another example of growing proximity in relations between the two countries. It will be helpful for India, because if the army, navy or air force goes somewhere, you would not have to complete the formalities for logistics support," Behera told IANS. The pact will benefit the navy the most, he added. (Anjali Ojha can be contacted at anjali.o@ians.in) --IANS ao/vm/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gujarat Lions produced a disciplined bowling performance to restrict Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to 134 in their Indian Premier League (IPL) clash at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Thursday evening. This was the third consecutive match in which the big three guns of the RCB batting line-up -- Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers -- proved to be a damp squib. Pawan Negi was the highest scorer for the hosts with 32 runs off 19 balls which included three boundaries and two sixes. Kedar Jadhav, who smashed 31 runs off 18 deliveries, was the only other RCB batsman who managed to trouble the Gujarat bowlers. For Gujarat, Australian pacer Andrew Tye returned figures of 3/12 while left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja also picked up a couple of wickets. RCB skipper Virat Kohli was the first to go when he was picked out by Aaron Finch at short fine leg while attempting a big shot off young pacer Basil Thampi. Tye then took consecutive wickets with the first two balls of the next over to put the visitors in the driver's seat. He struck a crucial blow with his very first ball of the match when he induced an outside edge off the dangerous Gayle with wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthick doing the honours behind the stumps. The Australian pacer then produced a similar delivery to remove Travis Head, whose edge travelled to Suresh Raina at first slip. Jadhav and de Villiers then tried to spark an RCB comeback, adding 36 runs between them off 26 balls. Jadhav kicked off the partnership with three boundaries off Thampi in the sixth over. But the partnership did not last too long as Jadhav was removed by Jadeja. The batsman had exposed his stumps while attempting a late cut to third man, but he missed as the ball held its line and crashed into the stumps. RCB plunged into further trouble when a mix-up between de Villiers and Mandeep Singh coupled with an excellent piece of fielding by Jadeja saw the South African being run out. Negi then strode to the middle to play a slam-bang knock and produce a 40-run stand with Mandeep. It was however, not enough to revive the hosts' innings. By the time Negi hit an Ankit Soni delivery into the hands of Thampi at deep midwicket, the wind had been knocked out of RCB's sails. Brief scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore: 134 in 20 overs (Pawan Negi 32, Kedar Jadhav 31; Andrew Tye 3/12, Ravindra Jadeja 2/28) vs Gujarat Lions. --IANS ajb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mosul (Iraq), April 27 (IANS/AKI) Air strikes killed an Islamic State leader on Thursday and destroyed one of the jihadist group's bases in the beleaguered Iraqi city of Mosul, local media reported, citing a military intelligence statement. "The international coalition fighter jets have killed the IS leader called Abu Luqman al-Aafri in al-Shefaa district, located near al-Najjar district in western Mosul," read the statement quoted by the IraqiNews.com website. "The jets also bombarded a headquarter for the group in the same area," the statement added. Only four districts of western Mosul were yet to be recaptured from IS, the Iraqi army said earlier on Thursday. More than 400,000 people have been displaced from west Mosul alone since the push to retake it was launched in mid-February, Iraq's Immigration Ministry said on Thursday. The militant group has lost dozens of its leaders in the operation to re-take western Mosul, including IS's alleged second-in-command, Ayad Hamid al-Jumaili, who was reportedly killed there in an airstrike on April 1. Fewer than 1,000 IS militants remain in Mosul, coalition officials estimate. Iraqi forces backed by the US-led coalition and paramilitary troops dislodged IS fighters from eastern Mosul in January after three months of battles. The huge offensive on Mosul, was launched on October 17 last year. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israel and the US held preliminary talks about a possible visit by President Donald Trump to Jerusalem, an Israeli official said. "There are initial discussions between the (Israeli) Foreign Ministry and officials with the (US) administration about a visit by President Trump," said an Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details of the visit have not been set. He estimated the chances that the visit would happen as "very high", Xinhua news agency reported. The Hebrew-language Ynet news site reported that a US delegation would arrive in Israel on Thursday to begin talks on the subject. The Times of Israel reported that Trump, who is expected to hold his first travel overseas as a president to Brussels next month, might expand his trip by arriving in Israel on May 21 or in the following days. The trip would mark Trump's first official visit to Israel. If materialized, the trip would come at a sensitive time, as Israel marks Jerusalem Day, an annual celebration to mark the "unification" of Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump in Washington in February. They talked about a positive change between the two allies after years of frictions with the Barack Obama administration, mainly over the expansion of the West Bank settlements and the nuclear deal with Iran. --IANS vgu/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jharkhand assembly unanimously passed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, 2017, at a specially convened session on Thursday. Jharkhand Urban Development Minister C.P. Singh tabled the GST Bill in the house. Main opposition Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) legislator Stephen Marandi had suggested two amendments but those were not moved. As the bill was passed, the JMM legislators came to the well of the house shouting slogans against the amendments to two key land acts of the state. "GST has been passed unanimously. The JMM legislator did not move any amendments. Now it will pave the way for one country, one tax," Singh told reporters. "Jharkhand is a producing state and it may suffer some losses. The central government has agreed to compensate the losses taking 2015-2016 as the base year," the minister said. --IANS ns/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three days after the Supreme Court ruled in T.P. Senkumar's favour, the Kerala government is yet to reinstate the IPS officer as the state police chief. On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered the Kerala government to restore Senkumar as the Director General of Police after noting that his removal in May last year was "arbitrary". Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has held numerous meetings over the issue since then. On Wednesday, Law Secretary P.G. Harindranath submitted a report that Senkumar should be appointed without further delay. The Vijayan government removed Senkumar in 2016 after a public outcry over alleged mishandling of a temple fire tragedy and a murder case. The Chief Minister will also have to find a new post for present DGP Loknath Behra, who replaced Senkumar. Behra is also holding the additional charge of the Vigilance Department after its chief Jacob Thomas and was asked to proceed on leave in March. Senkumar, meanwhile, has written to Chief Secretary Nalini Netto, saying that he should be allowed to rejoin duty. Senkumar, who is set to retire on June 30, dispelled media speculation that he may go on leave after rejoining duty. Instead, he promised to work till the day he retires. --IANS sg/tsb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The well-being of Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Indian national who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges espionage, still remains a matter of concern, a senior official said on Thursday. "We haven't seen, we haven't heard (Jadhav), he has been in Pakistan's custody for well over one year," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said in his weekly media briefing here. "Therefore, the well-being and the state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern," he said. The spokesperson said that on Wednesday Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale again sought a report from the Pakistani government on Jadhav's medical condition. "So, we await Pakistan's response," he said. Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer, was allegedly arrested in Balochistan in March 2016. Pakistan has accused him of being a spy. A military court sentenced him to death on April 10. Including on Wednesday, India has sought consular access to the Indian national 16 times but Pakistan has denied this every time. In Thursday's briefing, Baglay said an application for a Pakistani visa was filed by Jadhav's mother in her private capacity "but the (Indian) government has asked the government of Pakistan that this request may be facilitated". He added that there has been no response on this either. As for the Pakistan government's claims that Jadhav's trial was conducted in a transparent manner, Baglay said: "We have nothing from the government of Pakistan officially in terms of the documents, details, chargesheet, evidence etc. We don't know who defended him." Baglay said that, because of this, "there is great concern about not only his well-being but ensuring justice". --IANS ab/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A kingpin of an inter-state gang of automobile thieves was arrested in west Delhi in the early hours of Thursday after a scuffle with two beat constables who were fired upon by the accused, police said. Irshad, 25, heads a gang from Mewat region of Haryana and had come to Delhi to steal high-end cars as well as trucks, police said. Police said the constables hailed a Swift Desire car moving in the Kirti Nagar area under suspicious circumstances to stop around 2 a.m. Its five occupants, in the age group of 25-30 years, assaulted constables Vijay Kumar and Sandeep Kumar. Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Kumar said that during the scuffle, Irshad opened fire at the constables but missed. While he was reloading his countrymade pistol, he was overpowered with the help of two locals. Police are trying to arrest his four accomplices who escaped from the spot. --IANS sp/tsb/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British politicians are still living under the "illusion" that Britain will retain most of its rights and privileges once it leaves the European Union (EU), German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said. She warned, "Countries with a third-country status, and that's what Great Britain will be, cannot and will not have the same or even more rights as a member of the EU." All 27 member-states and the European institutions agree on this, she added. EU leaders will meet on Saturday to formally adopt their joint negotiating position on Brexit, the Guardian reported on Thursday. The future relationship can only be discussed once the exit issues -- such as Britain's payments to the EU budget -- are resolved, Markel told MPs while addressing Bundestag, lower house of Germany's Parliament. On the sequence of the Brexit talks, she said "some people in the UK still have some illusions on that score". "That would be just a waste of time," she said. Merkel said the immediate Brexit priorities to decide on were: The rights of EU citizens in the UK, Britons in continental Europe and Britain's ongoing financial obligations. "We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," Merkel said. The German Chancellor said, "The sooner the UK government is ready for constructive solutions, the sooner we can meet its wish to talk about the future relationship. But first, we need to know how the UK government envisages that relationship. It can only be done in that sequence." EU officials estimate that Britain faces a bill of $65 billion because of EU budget rules. Britain's politicians have, however, said the government will not pay a sum of that size, the daily reported. Merkel's speech comes as a stern rebuke for Britain, which had been hoping there was some ambiguity in the EU position on whether trade talks could run in parallel with negotiations on separation terms before a financial settlement. Minutes before the Chancellor spoke, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was pressed in an interview whether trade would have to wait until the divorce bill was settled and he responded: "We'll see". Merkel said talks about Britain's financial contributions to the EU budget could not wait until the end of the negotiations but had to be part of the talks from the start. She also stressed the need to protect rights of an estimated 100,000 German citizens living in Britain as her government's first priority. In return, she added, Germany would be prepared to make a "fair offer" to British citizens living in Germany. --IANS soni/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pentagon's Inspector General had already opened an investigation into whether former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn received foreign payments without Pentagon's approval, according to a newly released document. "This office has initiated an investigation to determine whether Lieutenant General (LTG) Flynn, US Army (Retired) failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving any emolument from a foreign government," according to a letter by the Inspector General's office of the Pentagon to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The letter was released on Thursday by Democrats in the House committee, Xinhua news agency reported. Also on Thursday, Elijah Cummings, ranking member and a Democrat in the House committee released documents which showed that Flynn was warned on October 8, 2014 by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that he was prohibited by the Constitution from receiving payments from foreign sources without advance permission. "Accordingly, if you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance," Flynn was then told in a DIA letter. In 2015, Flynn reportedly received about $34,000 US dollars for a speech at an event in Moscow, Russia and he was also under media scrutiny for his past lobbying on behalf of Turkey. In a statement released on Tuesday, Flynn's attorney said Flynn briefed the DIA "extensively" on his 2015 overseas trip to Moscow and he answered questions that were posed by DIA on the trip. However, another DIA letter released by Cummings appeared to counter Flynn's team's defence. "DIA did not locate any records referring to LTG Flynn's receipt of money from a foreign source... DIA did not locate any records of LTG Flynn seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source," said the DIA letter. Flynn was forced to step down in February after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his telephone conversation with the Russian Ambassador to the United States, in which he made comments about US sanctions on Russia. --IANS lok/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first Rs 2,500 an hour flight from here as part of the government's scheme that makes air travel cheaper and accessible to lower middle class families of India and plans to enhance connectivity with more airports across the country. The first regional flight under the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has put the fare at Rs 2,036. "I want to see poor people fly," Modi said, addressing a gathering here. "If the middle class of our country gets a chance they would change the image as well as the destination of the nation. The lives of the middle class will transform and their aspirations are increasing," he said, adding the scheme is going to help tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh and other places where it would be launched soon. The aviation scheme caps airfare for an hour-long journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter at Rs 2,500. The Scheme is a key component of the Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15 last year. On March 30 this year, the central government under the scheme awarded contracts to five companies to operate flight services on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports. --IANS sar/vm With the launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of a highly-subsidised regional air connectivity scheme from this Himachal Pradesh tourist resort on Thursday, you can now fly to Shimla from the national capital for just Rs 2,000. Modi during his day-long visit to the Queen of Hills launched the central government's UDAN, or "Ude Desh ka Har Nagarik" scheme, building efficient regional air connectivity, from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2,196 metre above sea-level and some 22 km from here. Accompanied by Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha and J.P. Nadda, Modi simultaneously flagged off the inaugural UDAN flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video conferencing. The Shimla Airport had been shut for scheduled flights since September 6, 2012, affecting tourists and business travellers to the state. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight. The seating capacity of airlines under the UDAN scheme will range from 19 to 78 and 50 per cent of the seats in every flight will have a fare cap of Rs 2,500 per seat per hour. The airline companies chosen are Airline Allied Services (Alliance Air), SpiceJet, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha. The operations under the scheme are intended to provide air connectivity to un-served and remote routes with airfare being capped at Rs 2,500 for an hour's journey of around 500 km, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement. This was Modi's third visit to Himachal Pradesh and first to the state capital since he became the Prime Minister in May 2014. Later in the day, Modi will hold a massive roadshow and address a public meeting, which is likely to see participation of over one lakh party workers, at the historic Ridge -- once the promenade for the British colonial rulers when this city was their summer capital. Himachal Pradesh is scheduled to go to the polls in November. --IANS vg/in/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks on May 1 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will arrive here on April 30 on a two-day state visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. At a media briefing here, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that Modi will hold delegation-level talks with Erdogan after the visiting dignitary is given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the morning of May 1. President Pranab Mukherjee will also host a dinner banquet in honour of the Turkish President. Erdogan is visiting India after he won a referendum in his country earlier this month which gave him more executive powers as President. Ghanashyam said that, during the visit, Erdogan will be accompanied by some cabinet ministers, senior officials and a 150-member business delegation that will take part in a a meeting of the India-Turkey Business Forum. Stating that bilateral trade between India and Turkey stood at $6.4 billion, she said: "India's main export products to Turkey are textiles and fabrics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastic products, machinery and automotives." She said that there was scope for cooperation in other areas such as construction, infrastructure development, renewable energy, tourism and film shooting. A number of Indian companies have established their presence in Turkey through production facilities or project participation. "Both India and Turkey have been battling terrorism for long and understand the need for acting against this global menace," Ghanashyam stated. She said that following the talks between Modi and Erdogan on May 1, some agreements that are currently being finalised, are expected to be signed. Erdogan last visited India in 2008 when he was the Prime Minister of his country. President Mukherjee visited Turkey in 2013. Modi also met Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, in 2015. --IANS ab/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Almost 43 per cent of business and IT leaders in India -- higher than the average 38 per cent for Asia-Pacific and Japan -- see employee experience as a critical aspect of achieving their business objectives, a new study said on Thursday. According to the study, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Dell, Indian firms realise the value of technology and innovation and the importance of constantly improving customer experience better than other developing countries in the region. This puts India in a unique position in Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ), where collectively only six in 10 (61 per cent) business leaders felt that existing technology in their organisation is sufficient to meet their business goals. "To establish a balance, IT and business leaders need to embark upon a workforce transformation strategy and provide employees, appropriate end user technology -- the requisite devices and software -- in order to attain the two-fold objective of increasing employee efficiency, as well as retaining talent," Indrajit Belgundi, Director and General Manager, Client Solutions Group, Dell India, said in a statement. The study also found that most security breaches that have occurred in the past 12 months are because of vulnerabilities at the device level. Nearly 43 per cent of breaches in India occurred due to lost/stolen assets by an employee, while 39 per cent occurred due to a security breach of an employee device. --IANS sku/na/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) June 19, 2019, Wednesday All private universities in Uttar Pradesh will now have to give an undertaking to the government, saying that their campuses will ... Ahead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to India this month-end, a senior Turkish official has said that his country does not have any objection to India becoming a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "I don't think Turkey has any objection to India joining the group," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to President Erdogan, said in response to a question by IANS at a meeting on "India and Turkey's Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. Setting aside all speculation about Turkey's support for India's NSG membership bid, Cevuk said: "We feel that we also are interested in nuclear cooperation with India and all other peaceful countries that seek peaceful use of nuclear technology. So, I don't think Turkey at all has any objection to India's membership." Turkey had earlier conveyed its position that it would favour a consensus on the issue. During his visit to India in November last year, Turkish Minister for Development Lutfi Elvan said that India needed to work on its NSG membership bid "to convince the other countries". "We are ready to join the consensus if it is reached," Elvan was quoted as saying. China had blocked India's membership bid at the NSG plenary in Seoul in June last year on the ground that for a country to become a member of the 48-nation bloc, it should be signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Turkey had earlier supported India's membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). At Wednesday's meeting, Cevik said that Turkey would seek to build its relationship with India during Erdogan's visit that starts on April 30. "We are prepared to help you in building up your economy," he said. He said that Turkey was hosting the bulk of refugees fleeing from Syria while other European nations were not taking in these refugees. Stating that the world was opposing Erdogan because he supported the oppressed, he said: "This is where we need India's help. Our new presidential system will speed up the process of democracy." Erdogan earlier this month won a referendum that gave him more executive powers as President. Speaking on the occasion, Kerem Alkin, Professor at Istanbul Medipol University's Faculty of business and Managerial Sciences, said that Turkey wanted India to share its experience in power generation. "There may be negotiations on energy supply during President Erdogan's visit," Alkin said. "We can work together on global energy demand, especially renewable energy." He also said that Turkey and India could work together on education and food programmes in West Asia and Africa. Transportation, communication, logistics, tourism, retail and financial services are other areas flagged by Alkin where opportunities for cooperation between the two countries lay. (Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in) --IANS ab/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Rana Daggubati says that his "Baahubali" co-star Prabhas deserves more credit than anyone for his involvement because what he has done for the film is greater than any other individuals contribution. "What Prabhas has done for the film and what he has given is far greater than any of us could have done," Rana told IANS, heaping praise on his co-star with whom he locks horns in the film. In the film, Prabhas and Rana play warring brothers who fight over the ownership of an ancient kingdom. Asked about the debate on who is the real hero of "Baahubali" on social media, he said: "This is a franchise-based film and it's not driven by just one character. If you look at the franchise, each character is important from the perspective of the story. It's the content that even drives all the actors but not any individual's stardom." He also went on to add that both their characters are equally important. "We are like Ram and Raavan. Without these two characters, there's no Ramayan. Similarly, without Prabhas and I, there's no 'Baahubali'. We complement each other as characters and we need each other," he said. Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, the film also stars Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia, Sathyaraj and Ramya Krishnan. The second part in the franchise is slated for release on Friday. --IANS hp/nn/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Industrialist Abhey Oswal's eldest son Pankaj Oswal has sent legal notices to his father's companies Oswal Agro Mills Limited (OAML) and Oswal Green Tech Limited (OGL) seeking transfer of his shares, a statement said on Thursday. Pankaj Oswal has filed a a petition with Delhi High Court where he has alleged that people are attempting to oust him from the estate of his father including suit properties. He has claimed his absolute proprietary rights to the extent of one fourth undivided share in the estate of his father, who died on March 29, 2016. On April 24, the Delhi High Court has stayed all orders related to all properties of Abhey Oswal and directed all parties to this partition suit to appear for hearing on July 28, the next date fixed for hearing. "I will not let other people take the rightful share of the legal heirs and I will do whatever it takes to win the battle in a legal way," Pankaj Oswal said in a statement. "I have discovered some hitherto hidden, but significant, wrongdoings happening at the group companies' end. Abiding by the law, I will take every possible step to unearth the misconduct by the wrong people and seek justice," he said. After the death of the elder Oswal, all his assets, properties and businesses known or unknown, in and outside India have devolved on his legal heirs -- widow Aruna Oswal, sons Pankaj and Shael Oswal and daughter Shallu Naveen Jindal. --IANS akk/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation on Thursday to pay homage to Bollywood actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna who died at a Mumbai hospital following a prolonged illness. Khanna, 70, a sitting BJP MP, was battling cancer and was hospitalised for about a month before his death on Thursday that left millions of his fans, including politicians, grieving. "Will always remember Vinod Khanna as a popular actor, dedicated leader and a wonderful human. Pained by his demise. My condolences," tweeted Modi. President Pranab Mukherjee sent "heartfelt condolences" to the Khannas describing Vinod Khanna as "a highly talented and acclaimed actor and MP". Other politicians who expressed grief over his death include Home Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP President Amit Shah and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Fadnavis tweeted he was "saddened to know about the demise of one of the greatest legends of (the) Indian cinema". Shah said that the nation had "not only lost an actor par excellence but an outstanding politician" and said his death was "an irreparable loss for the Indian cinema and the BJP". Wrote Rajnath Singh: "Vinod Khanna had an illustrious career in films and politics. He carved a special place in the hearts of millions of Indians." Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje expressed "condolences to the family and fans of the veteran actor and dynamic leader." Finance Minister Arun Jaitley prayed for "peace to the departed soul and solace to his family". Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said he "deeply" mourned the death of Khanna "a versatile film personality and a great human being". Union Agriculture Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said he was "very sad to know of the demise". Textiles Minister Smriti Irani, also an actor-turned-politician, said Vinod Khanna was "a legend in his own right". She said she "had the honour of producing a series with him". Union Minister of State for Power Piyush Goyal was also "deeply saddened by the demise of the BJP leader". --IANS ks/nv/sar/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday called the level of poverty in Bengal as the worst in the country, and exuded confidence that the state would become as prosperous as Maharashtra and Gujarat once his party forms a government after the next assembly polls. Amit Shah, who completed his three-day visit to the state on Thursday on the first leg of his 15-day Vistar Yatra (party expansion tour), thanked the people for making the trip a "grand success". "The sort of poverty seen in Bengal, is not seen anywhere else in the country. I assure you once the BJP forms a government here, Bengal will also become prosperous like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana," he said while addressing party's booth level workers at Sukantanagar of Rajarhat in the city's north eastern fringes. Amit Shah said the enthusiasm he has seen over the three days, makes him confident that his Bharatiya Janata Party will form a government in Bengal in 2021. "I want to thank the people of Bengal with folded hands for making our booth level programme a grand success. Looking at the enthusiasm among the people, one thing is certain-- 'Ab ki bar Bengal me BJP sarkar (this time, Bengal will have a BJP government)," he said. The BJP wants to form such a government in Bengal, that would protect the state's culture and heritage as well as address the burning issues like unemployment and infiltration, he added. "We want such a government here, that people do not have to worry before organising Saraswati Puja in Bengal or rush to the High Court to get permission for the immersion of the Durga idol. "We want such a government that would bring employment to the unemployed and stop the Bangladeshi infiltrators right at the border," Shah said. Accusing the Trinamool Congress state government of unleashing "unprecedented torture" on the people, Shah insisted on forming a "people's government" in the state under the leadership of BJP. "The sort of torture that has been perpetrated on the people of Bengal, is unprecedented in independent India. The BJP has decided to end the era of torment on Bengal's people and bring a people's government here," he said. --IANS mgr/ssp/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Pranab Mukherjee will be conferred Cyprus's highest order of merit during the course of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades's ongoing visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. "President Anastasiades will confer the award, the Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios III, on honourable Rashtrapatiji during a meeting between the two dignitaries," Rita Ghanashyan, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said at a media briefing here. The award is named after Cyprus's first President, Archbishop Makarios III, and is conferred on foreign heads of state and government. Mukherjee will be conferred the award when he hosts Anastasiades for a banquet on Friday. Also on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks with Anastasiades following which some agreements are expected to be signed, Ghanashyam said. She said that Cyprus supported India in crucial multilateral issues, including UN Security Council reforms and New Delhi's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. "Cyprus and India enjoy robust economic ties. Cyprus is a major investor in India with cumulative foreign direct investment of about $9 billion," Ghanashyam said. "Cyprus is the eighth largest foreign investor in India and has invested in areas such as financial leasing, stock exchange, auto manufacture, manufacturing industries, real estate, cargo handling, construction, shipping and logistics," she said, adding that there was also scope for cooperation in sectors like pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, tourism and film production. Anastasiades, who arrived in India on April 25, will depart from New Delhi on Saturday. This is his first visit to India. Then Indian President Pratibha Patil visited Cyprus in October 2009. Modi and Anastasiades also held talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September 2015. --IANS ab/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has called for wider and more active use of social and new media for publicising work being done by the central and the state government, an official said on Thursday. The Chief Minister gave the direction during a late night review of the working of the Department of Information and Public Relations. He said with changing times, the governments also needed to change old and traditional styles of working so as to ensure that people were made aware of the work being done for their welfare. Asking officials of the department to effectively develop and use social and new media, Adityanath said that a strategy be stitched up to use mediums like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the schemes and policies of the government. This, he added, would enable the people to know what all was being done for their welfare. Adding that the credo of the state government was 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas', the Chief Minister asked the Information Department to play its role well in this regard and make Uttar Pradesh a front-ranking state in the country. He also directed the department to prepare a statewide action plan on occasion of the birth centenary of Jan Sangh ideologue Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to inform people on various projects, schemes and programs being undertaken by the state and the Centre. also called for special steps to take these schemes to the Dalits, poor, marginalised and the oppressed. He also called for work in the direction of taking forward the "Swacchta Mission" (Cleanliness mission) and cashless economy. Stressing on the need of better coordination between information and other departments, the Chief Minister said the latest technology should be used by the department and for it, arrangements should be made to train the personnel. Russia should lead the process of stabilisation of the situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Thursday. "Pakistan would support all initiatives to bring peace in Afghanistan," said Asif during a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu. Asif was in the Russian capital to attend the 6th Moscow Conference on International Security, Geo TV reported. "The world is not getting calmer and stable, and in these conditions, we are again and again saying that fighting international terrorism requires the consolidation of all interested forces," said Shoigu. Asif spoke about the Kashmir issue at the conference and said that if unresolved, the issue has the potential to threaten the peace and stability of the entire region. "The Kashmir issue must be resolved in accordance with the UN resolution," Pakistan's Defence minister said. Asif accused India of staying away from any plausible diplomatic approach for the resolution of Kashmir issue. "I must share that all peace overtures and sincere efforts made by Pakistan are not being reciprocated (by India)," he said. Expressing his views on the situation in the Middle East, Asif termed the US attack on Syria in retaliation to the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun town as "external interference". --IANS soni/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A reconnaissance ship belonging to the Russian Navy collided with a vessel in the Black Sea on Thursday due to heavy fog, but all were rescued, the Defence Ministry said. The incident occurred off the Kilyos neighbourhood in Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Strait. The hull of "the Liman", a 1,560-tonne reconnaissance ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was breached below the waterline, with the crew fighting to keep the vessel afloat, the ministry said in a statement. Later, the Turkish Coast Guard said it rescued 78 people from the Russian ship, according to TASS news agency. The other ship was identified as the Togo-flagged livestock carrier "Youzarsif H". "The Liman" was built during the Soviet times in Poland and commissioned in 1970. It is mostly unarmed, but carries a radar station, a hydroacoustic detector and other reconnaissance equipment needed to track surface ships and submarines. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Samsung India on Thursday introduced the 'Smart Healthcare Citizenship Initiative' that provides affordable and quality healthcare to patients from the economically and socially weaker sections at Civil Hospital here. As part of the programme, Samsung is providing advanced and innovative healthcare equipment such as ultrasound and digital radiology (x-ray) manufactured by the company. "We are pleased to partner with the government of Mizoram to offer healthcare solutions with the effective use of technology. Through this collaboration, we aspire to provide many more people in Aizawl and its adjoining areas easy access to advanced healthcare facilities," said Deepak Bhardwaj, Vice President, Samsung India, in a statement. The 'Samsung Smart Healthcare facility' was inaugurated by Pu Lal Thanzara, the state Minister for Health and Family Welfare in the presence of other dignitaries. --IANS anuj/na/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Sahara chief Subrata Roy to deposit Rs 1,500 crore, as offered by him, by June 15, failing which he will have to go back to jail even as it sent a proposed buyer of Sahara's assets to jail for contempt. Asking Roy, who was present in the court, to pay the money, the bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice A.K. Sikri recorded his assurance that cheque of Rs 1,500 crore would be honoured on being presented on the due date. "We are warning you today, if cheques are not realised, amount does not come, we will be compelled to send you to Tihar Jail straight away from here," the bench told Roy asking him to be present on the next date of hearing on June 19. Roy was present in the court in pursuance to April 17 direction to be present in the court in person. Seeking some more time to pay the money, he told the court that he would pay Rs 1,500 crore by June 15, another Rs 552 crore by July 15 and Rs 3,000 crore by October 30. The court was given two checks of Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 552 crore towards the payment assured in the month of June and July. Sahara has still to pay balance Rs 11,169 crores of the principal amount of Rs 25,781 crore to the investors from whom two group companies - SIRECL and SHICL - had raised in 2008 and 2009 through OFCDs . Asking Roy to be present in the court on June 19 when court would hold further hearing in the matter, the bench in the meanwhile asked the official liquidator of Bombay High Court Vinod Sharma to proceed with the preparation of the terms and conditions for the auction of Sahara's Aamby valley property. The court said that the reserve price for the auction of Aamby Valley would be Rs 37,392 crore. The terms and conditions would be placed before the court on June 19 for it consideration and approval. The official liquidator of Bombay High Court in a report on the worth of the Aamby Valley by an evaluator said that the market value of Aamby Valley is Rs 37, 390 crore and the fair value is Rs 43,000 crore. Senior counsel Kapil Sibal, appearing for Roy, too quoted a price that was little more than the one quoted by the evaluator but said that the enterprise value of the property was Rs 1 lakh crore. Meanwhile, the court sent Prakash Swamy -- the power of attorney holder for a US-based company MG Capital Holdings LLC, New York that had shown interest in buying Sahara's New York-located Hotel Plaza -- to jail for one month for not depositing Rs 10 crore fine ordered by the court for backing out and misleading the court. The court had on April 17 ordered Swamy to deposit the fine with its registry by April 27. The bench sent Swamy to Tihar jail after the court was informed that he has not deposited the money. Seeking mercy, Swamy said that he was an old journalist who had reported United Nations for ten years. He said that he filed the affidavit as people in the company concerned knew him and promised him some good gains from the deal. He described himself as "small man". Telling Swamy that "small man should not try to be big", the bench said: "You should not have gone into this. You must understand the gravity of the case." "If we forgive you it will send wrong message," Justice Misra said pointing out that sometimes "tempting situation lead to confinement". Swamy had earlier told the court that US-based MG Holding was buying Sahara's Plaza Hotel, following which the court has asked them to deposit Rs 750 crore in Sahara-SEBI Refund account to prove their bona fides. However, in the next hearing, the court was informed that the US company had withdrawn the offer after doing due diligence of the property. --IANS pk/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday condoled the death of veteran film actor Vinod Khanna, describing him as a "gifted actor", who dominated the silver screen with his outstanding persona. "Vinodji had a rare and profound influence over the masses by his simple and charismatic character," said Gandhi. Gandhi has expressed solidarity with Khanna's family and prayed for the departed soul. --IANS sid/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Expressing sorrow and concern over the attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday said Pakistan-sponsored terror has become a "festering wound". "In this hour of grief, the entire Congress family's deepest condolences are with the families of the martyrs. The whole country is worried about terror attacks," said Gandhi. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi too expressed concern over the attack and said such attacks must be met with strategic and decisive action. "Repeated terrorist attacks, especially on army camps, is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic and decisive action," Gandhi tweeted. "My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack," he wrote. Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad also expressed sorrow and grief over the attack on an Army camp in Kupwara district, in which three Army men and two militants were killed on Thursday. "I am shocked to learn that three of our Army bravehearts, including an officer, were martyred in this cowardly act of militants. I express my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families," said Azad. --IANS sid/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has seized an antique 24-kg idol of Lord Vishnu, said to be 500 years old, from West Bengal's Siliguri when it arrested a man who has to smuggle it to Nepal, an official said on Thursday. In a joint operation with the Customs Department, personnel of the SSB's 41st Battalion arrested Bihar-based smuggler Pulkit Rishi, 60, on Wednesday from National Highway-31 near Bagdogra in Siliguri after a tip-off. "The smuggler was carrying a 500-year-old unique idol of Lord Vishnu, estimated worth Rs 45 crore in the antiques market. His arrest lead us to bust a gang of smugglers who specially steal antique idols from temples in Bihar and sell them to Nepal from where they are sent to other foreign countries," SSB spokesperson Deepak Singh told IANS. Rishi disclosed that the idol was stolen by him and his accomplice Shiv Shankar Mehta from Tikka Batti temple in Bihar's Purnia district nearly two months ago and it was to be sold to a Nepal-based antique dealer. According to the officer, the expert of the Historical Department of North Bengal University has confirmed in thier examination of the idol that it is rare metal sculpture weighing 24.07 kg. "Purnia police has been informed about the arrest," said the SSB officer --IANS rak/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Syrian Army on Thursday said an Israeli missile targeted its military position near the airport here. Several missiles were fired by Israel targeted at positions near the airport and caused fire and several explosions that left damage, Xinhua news agency quoted the army as saying. The attack was a desperate attempt to lift the morale of the terrorist groups, it said. It's not the first Israeli strike as the Israelis have ramped up their airstrikes on military positions in recently, targeting a military base in Qunaitera province and a military position near the ancient city of Palmyra last month. Ahram Online, by Azza Radwan Sedky To corroborate his catchphrase, President Trump may be willing to intimidate the whole world, and the attack on Syria is proof In 2003 President Bush Jr insisted beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, Hussein deserved a showdown like no other, one that ultimately saw Hussein hanged, prosperous Iraq destroyed, and law-abiding Iraqis obliterated as divisive and unruly sects emerged. And lets not forget Islamic State finding in Iraq an easy gaping void. It was proven afterwards that Saddam Hussein never possessed weapons of mass destruction, but after 11 September some country had to be at the receiving end of the bashing stick. Iraq was unfortunate enough to be the picked-on country, earning the wrath of the US. Conveniently, Saddam had invaded Kuwait, irked George Bush senior, threatened Israel, and failed to abide by US rules; besides, Iraq had oil. Iraq fit the bill, so it became a fitting target. End result: one Arab country down. Fast forward to today. Six years ago, Syria descended into civil war. Soon afterwards it became a festering ground for self-serving allegiances, with every player -- Iran, Turkey, the US, Russia, Sunnis, Alawites, Shias, opposition forces, Islamic State, other Islamists, and Assad's followers -- after its own conquest; amid all this the victims were without doubt the Syrians. Lately, the world seemed willing to end the Syrian crisis. Islamic State was losing ground. The current US administration backed off from insisting that President Assad had to go. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, also said that despite Russias support for Assad, the US and Russia can cooperate to end the war in Syria. There was light at the end of the Syrian tunnel. More significantly, Assad was in a better position than he had been in the last six years. And yet, out of the blue a chemical weapons attack struck Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town, killing 89 and bringing all the promising efforts to a halt. The US confirmed that chemical weapons were launched from Assads Shayrat Airfield. In retaliation, some 59 US air missiles hit the Shayrat Airfield killing 13 people and destroying the facility. President Trump's swift decision to attack the airfield had far reaching ramifications that resonated around the world with benefits for the US president. At face value, President Trumps decision revealed a humane, empathetic president moved by the sight of dead children. I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me, a big impact, Trump said. But there is more to the attack than compassion towards Syrian children. The strike told friends and foes that the US has taken upon itself the role of the almighty watchdog, affirming that a new sheriff is in the Oval Office. In particular, the attack was meant as a wake up call to North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the world at large. It said, World, you had better watch out; the new president means business. No doubt the decision to act so speedily in the face of what seemed a hideous act improved Trumps image among Americans too. Obama had once drawn a red line against Assad's use of chemical weapons, but went back on his word; here was Trump setting the red line in stone. That the attack served President Trump and US is a given; that it helped Syrians is fictitious. The Syrian opposition cheered and terrorists celebrated. Weakening the Syrian army will allow Islamic State to dominate the area near the airfield. more importantly, it further pitted Syrians against one other. Like Iraq, Syria was the perfect target. Like Saddam Hussein, Assad had irked the US. The Russians were proving themselves in Syria and had to be told off. And did the fact that the Syrian crisis was on the verge of ending irk some even further? End result: second Arab country stays down. A symbolic but powerful move, the attack cost the US nothing but the missiles. The aim was not to aggravate the Russians to the point of retaliating, merely to tell them who is mightier. In fact, the Russians, who utilised the same airfield were forewarned an hour before the attack. Hence, the act angered Moscow, strained US-Russian relations further, but didnt kill any Russians end of story. From another perspective altogether, Assad and the Russians denied that the Syrian army used chemical weapons. Russia asked the US to provide evidence for its claims and put the 4 April release of chemical weapons down to an air strike that hit a storage facility where rebels were storing them. Similar to what happened in Iraq, time will tell where the truth lies. In an alarming but apt revelation, the BBC said in a story following the attack, The question thus arises: who once again slipped something in to yet another US president as 'evidence' of the existence of 'chemical weapons' in a country Washington objects to, and what exactly was it? The attack and the ambience of superiority that followed will set the tone and approach for all American officials, a tone that is intimidating with words if not actions. Even before the attack US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that she wears heels to kick those against Israel or those who talk down the US. After the attack, and while the US held the rotating leadership of the UN Security Council this month, Haley blasted not only Assad but the Iranian and the Russian governments for supporting Assad. Assad did this [launched a chemical weapon attack] because he thought he could get away with it. He thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia would have his back. That changed last night. Lets hope this attitude abates. The world is not ready for another round of intimidation. The writer is an academic, political analyst, and author of Cairo Rewind: the First Two Years of Egypt's Revolution, 2011-2013. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday expressed concern over the attack on an Army camp in Jammu and and said such attacks must be met with strategic and decisive action. "Repeated terrorist attacks, especially on Army camps, is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic and decisive action," Gandhi tweeted. "My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack," he added. Three Army men and two militants were killed on Thursday in an attack on an Army camp in the Valley's Kupwara district. --IANS sid/ruwa/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Guerrillas believed to be foreigners sneaked into an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday and killed three soldiers in an audacious pre-dawn attack that left two militants dead, officials said. Seven other soldiers were injured in the fighting that erupted after the insurgents at 4.30 a.m. cut through the two-layered barbed wire of the firing range at the Panzgam army camp in Kupwara district, some 120 km north of Srinagar. Taking advantage of the surprise element, the attackers hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately, causing the casualties. Two of the soldiers in hospital were said to be in critical condition. The army retaliated, killing two militants. A third reportedly escaped, triggering a massive search operation. In no time, crowds gathered outside the army camp shouting slogans and resorted to heavy stone throwing, the officials said. The army opened fire killing a 70-year-old civilian. "The mob resorted to heavy stone throwing demanding the bodies of the slain militants," an officer said. "The fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the LoC (Line of Control)", which divides Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan, Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. According to officials, the identify of the terrorists was being ascertained. The dead soldiers included Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment. Panzgam is the rear administrative area for over nine army units in Kupwara district and is spread over an area of 240,000 sq metres. The camp is about 20 km from Kupwara town and some 10 km from the LoC. The attackers were engaged by a Quick Reaction Team (QRT). Three AK-47 assault rifles, nine magazines, 156 rounds of AK-47, a Chinese pistol, a pistol magazine, three grenades, three matrix sheets, two GPS devices, a smartphone and a radio set were recovered from the suicide attackers. --IANS sq-ao/mr/sar (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President has told the leaders of Canada and Mexico that he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), an accord which he railed against as a presidential candidate, the White House said. Trump, in phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, agreed to proceed swiftly to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. The White House said the phone conversations were "pleasant and productive". "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a written statement that accompanied the readout of his phone calls. "It is an honour to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," he said. As he approaches his 100th day in office, Trump and his advisers are hurriedly working to check off promises made during the campaign, one of which was to renegotiate or withdraw from Nafta, CNN reported. Trump has already removed the US from another massive trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was negotiated under former President Barack Obama. Trump's decision to remain in Nafta came the same day a senior administration official revealed the White House was considering an executive order to withdraw from the trade accord. Many Republicans, including Senator John McCain, had cautioned Trump not to pull out from Nafta. "It will devastate the economy in my state," McCain said on Wednesday. "I hope he doesn't do that." "Scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," said Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. During his run for office last year, Trump made his disdain for Nafta a central component of a populist message designed to engender support among working class Americans, said the report. He consistently cast the agreement -- which was negotiated by former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's presidential opponent Hillary Clinton -- as a raw deal for the middle class. Last week, Trump derided Nafta during remarks in Wisconsin meant to highlight American manufacturing. "It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of Nata once and for all," Trump said. US President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Canada and Mexico that he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), but warned that the US would still pull out if he could not negotiate a better deal, the White House said. Trump, in phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, agreed to proceed swiftly to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. The White House said the phone conversations were "pleasant and productive". "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a written statement that accompanied the readout of his phone calls. "It is an honour to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," he said. Trump reiterated those points Thursday morning, tweeting, "if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate Nafta." He also claimed that the two leaders reached out to him. The US President railed against the trade accord as a presidential candidate and last week called it as harmful to US workers. As he approaches his 100th day in office on Saturday, Trump and his advisers are hurriedly working to check off promises made during the campaign, one of which was to renegotiate or withdraw from Nafta, CNN reported. Trump has already removed the US from another massive trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was negotiated under former President Barack Obama. Trump's decision to remain in Nafta came the same day a senior administration official revealed the White House was considering an executive order to withdraw from the trade accord. Many Republicans, including Senator John McCain, had cautioned Trump not to pull out from Nafta. "It will devastate the economy in my state," McCain said on Wednesday. "I hope he doesn't do that." "Scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," said Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. During his run for office last year, Trump made his disdain for Nafta a central component of a populist message designed to engender support among working class Americans, said the report. He consistently cast the agreement -- which was negotiated by former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's presidential opponent Hillary Clinton -- as a raw deal for the middle class. Last week, Trump derided Nafta during remarks in Wisconsin meant to highlight American manufacturing. "It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of Nata once and for all," Trump said. --IANS soni/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that that he would not immediately move to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the White House said. This came on Wednesday just hours after administration officials said Trump was likely to sign an order pulling the US out of the deal, the New York Times reported. The White House described the evening phone calls with President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada as "pleasant and productive". Trump told both that he would quickly start the process of renegotiating Nafta - not abandon it, as he promised during the 2016 presidential campaign, "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up-to-date through renegotiation," Trump said in a statement issued by the White House at 10.33 p.m. "I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." The announcement that came in a read-out appeared to be an example of Trump's deal-making in real time, the New York Times report said. It followed a day in which officials signalled that he was laying the groundwork to pull out of Nafta - a move intended to increase pressure on Congress to authorise new negotiations, and on Canada and Mexico to accede to American demands. --IANS in/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the face of India's bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council, a senior Turkish official has said that his country wanted the five permanent members of the world body to give up their veto powers. "Turkey wants the United Nations Security Council members to rescind their veto powers," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said at a meeting on "India and Turkey's Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. "This kind of veto power is blocking international justice," Cevik said. Turkey is a member of the group called Uniting for Consensus (UfC) that is opposed to expansion of permanent seats in the UN Security Council. Other members of the group include Italy, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, Malta, Costa Rica, Colombia and San Marino. Cevik said that instead of a country trying to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, "this veto thing should be eliminated so that countries get a fair share, fair result of the Security Council". President Erdogan is set to come on a bilateral visit to India from April 30. --IANS ab/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The death toll in the collapse of the Hooghly's temporary jetty in West Bengal rose to five with the recovery of two more bodies on Thursday, officials said. As many as 18 people remain missing in the accident following the collapse of a temporary wooden jetty at Telinipara Ghat in Bhadreswar due to high tide on Wednesday. "Two bodies were recovered on Thursday morning. The number of missing persons has gone up to 18," Hooghly Superintendent of Police Sukesh Jain told IANS over telephone. According to the police, passengers waiting to cross over to North 24 Parganas district's Shyamnagar on the other side fell into the river as the wooden structure collapsed. The locals managed to save some passengers from drowning before rescuers and police reached the spot. --IANS sgh/mgr/sm/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday the UDAN regional connectivity scheme will make air travel accessible to greater number of people across the country. "Looking forward to being in Shimla, where I will flag off the first UDAN flight under Regional Connectivity Scheme, on Shimla-Delhi sector," Modi tweeted. "UDAN makes air travel accessible to a wider range of citizens and enhances connectivity with many more airports across India," he said. Modi said the inaugural UDAN flights on Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors will also be flagged off. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15 last year. Airfare for a one hour journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for a 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs 2,500. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has put the fare at Rs 2,036. On March 30, 2017, the central government under the scheme awarded contracts to five companies to operate flight services on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports. --IANS am/ruwa/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said British politicians are still living under the "illusion" that Britain will retain most of its rights and privileges once it leaves the European Union (EU). "Countries with a third-country status, and that's what Great Britain will be, cannot and will not have the same or even more rights as a member of the EU. All 27 member-states and the European institutions agree on this," said Merkel. EU leaders will meet on Saturday to formally adopt their joint negotiating position on Brexit, the Guardian reported on Thursday. The future relationship can only be discussed once the exit issues -- such as Britain's payments to the EU budget -- are resolved, Markel told MPs while addressing Bundestag, lower house of Germany's Parliament. On the sequence of the Brexit talks, she said "some people in the UK still have some illusions on that score". "That would be just a waste of time," she said. Merkel said the immediate Brexit priorities to decide on were: The rights of EU citizens in the UK, Britons in continental Europe and Britain's ongoing financial obligations. "We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," Markel said. The German Chancellor said, "The sooner the UK government is ready for constructive solutions, the sooner we can meet its wish to talk about the future relationship. But first, we need to know how the UK government envisages that relationship. It can only be done in that sequence." EU officials estimate that Britain faces a bill of $65 billion because of EU budget rules. Britain's politicians have, however, said the government will not pay a sum of that size, the daily reported. Merkel's speech comes as a stern rebuke for Britain, which had been hoping there was some ambiguity in the EU position on whether trade talks could run in parallel with negotiations on separation terms before a financial settlement. Minutes before the Chancellor spoke, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was pressed in an interview whether trade would have to wait until the divorce bill was settled and he responded: "We'll see". Merkel said talks about Britain's financial contributions to the EU budget could not wait until the end of the negotiations but had to be part of the talks from the start. She also stressed the need to protect rights of an estimated 100,000 German citizens living in Britain as her government's first priority. In return, she added, Germany would be prepared to make a "fair offer" to British citizens living in Germany. --IANS soni/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) craigslist: thailand jobs, apartments, for sale, services, community, and events craigslist provides local classifieds and forums for jobs, housing, for sale, services, local community, and events The United States would deport 7,000 Ghanaians this year for breaching terms of their visa agreement, a US diplomat said on Thursday. US Ambassador to Ghana Robert P. Jackson said the Ghanaians had overstayed their permits and were currently at different stages of their deportation process, Xinhua news agency reported. "About 7,000 of them are currently at different stages of the deportation process, and we are not apologetic about that," Jackson said at an event in the Brong Ahafo region, 400 km from the capital, Accra. "We have a lot of Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas in the US and I think that they need to be concerned about whether they would be allowed to remain illegally," Jackson said. "My guess is they will be given some options but the President will be serious about asking those who've violated their visa status to depart." Actor Sanjay Dutt has paid tributes to veteran actor-politician Vinod Khanna, who died here on Thursday due to prolonged illness. He says the late star was and will always be family to him. "It is saddening to hear of the demise of Vinod Khanna ji. I have watched him as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He was and always will be family to the Dutts," Sanjay said in a statement. Khanna is survived by his former wife Geetanjali and their sons Akshaye and Rahul, who are now actors, and his present wife Kavita and son Sakshi and daughter Shraddha. Sanjay, who has worked with Khanna in films "Khoon Ka Karz" and "Kshatriya", paid his condolence to Khanna's family. "May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshaye, Rahul and Sakshi," he added. Khanna was hospitalised for over a month for suspected cancer. He was 70 and is survived by his wife, three sons and a daughter. Khanna was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in the first week on April after reportedly suffering from severe dehydration. The actor was the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the Lok Sabha from Punjab's Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab. --IANS dc/nv/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Business leaders from Italy, part of a large trade delegation that is in India since Wednesday, were puzzled when Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gave their event a miss at the last moment. Both Sitharaman and DIPP secretary Ramesh Abhishek were scheduled to attend the programme, but were conspicuous by their absence. The visiting Italian deputy minister for economic development shrugged off the development but members of the business entourage were left to wonder if this hinted at souring of ties between the two countries after Italian marines shot two Indian fishermen five years back. Government sources, however, cited a sudden inter-ministerial meeting as the reason for Sitharaman's absence. Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is not responsible for in Maharashtra and accused the previous Congress-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) administration of creating "dead assets" by building dams without constructing canals to facilitate the flow of water. "The Congress-NCP government in the state had built dams but did not construct canals. By constructing these dams, they created dead assets worth Rs 80,000 crore. They question us (the BJP) as to what we have done. You have created dead assets and they are not benefiting farmers, so you (the Congress and the NCP) should answer why farmers did not get water (from these dams)," he said. "We are not responsible for . Those who were in power for 30 years, they just exploited the poor, Dalits and never thought of farmers and due to this the present situation (agrarian crisis) has arisen." Gadkari was speaking at the state executive meet of the BJP in adjoining Pimpri-Chinchwad township. Till over 50 per cent farmland comes under irrigation, suicide by farmers will not stop, the transport minister said. "The government is taking steps to bring maximum agriculture area under irrigation," the BJP leader maintained. "When we came to power, the agriculture growth rate (in Maharashtra) was in minus. However, due to the efforts of the Devendra Fadnavis government, the growth rate is 12.5 per cent now. However, we are not satisfied with this growth rate. Only when the growth rate surpasses 20 per cent that will come down," Gadkari said. Talking about people with criminal background joining the BJP, the former party president said such elements change later. "Even if a person with criminal background joins the party, he becomes virtuous." He said the BJP admits people with their shortcomings. After accepting them, it's the party's responsibility to reduce their vices and turn them into good workers. "The responsibility of old party workers has increased. Accept the new people who are coming into the party." Gadkari said unless people from other parties join the saffron outfit, it will not able to broaden its base and become a big organisation. "The BJP's vote share will increase only when the vote share of the Congress and the NCP comes down. Competent people will always rise in the party," he said. Results of the Delhi civic body polls and just held Assembly elections, including those in Uttar Pradesh, reflect the people's faith in the BJP and its leadership, he said. He asked the party workers not to allow power to go into their heads. "People are seeing their future in the BJP. People from all walks of life think if there is a party which can fulfil their dreams, it is the BJP. Senior Congress leader on Thursday said he has requested party president Sonia Gandhi to relieve him of the responsibilities of Rajasthan. In a letter to Gandhi, Kamat said he was grateful to her for relieving him of the charge of Gujarat. "Am truly grateful but surprised that the AICC spokesman yesterday (Wednesday) announced that I continue to be the general secretary in charge of Rajasthan," he said. "I had written to you 'my heart is not in the job anymore.' Please relieve me from Rajasthan and other positions also," he said in a release here quoting the letter. On Wednesday, Congress appointed former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as its general secretary in-charge for Gujarat in place of Kamat, who had welcomed the decision. The Congress high command revamped the entire team in Gujarat by replacing the general secretary in-charge and appointed four new secretaries. The veteran Congressman has had internal problems within the party in Maharashtra after its debacle in the state civic polls. He, however, refuted reports that he was planning to join the BJP. "I will continue to serve the people of Mumbai and Maharashtra. I will raise issues which impact them," he said. Rajasthan goes to polls next year and hence the party should make new appointments at the earliest, he added. Kamat, in a series of tweets yesterday, had made it clear that he had already asked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to relieve him on February 3, the day the Congress list of candidates (for Mumbai civic polls) was declared in Mumbai, and again on February 21, the day of polling. Prior to the BMC polls, the former president of Mumbai Congress, had repeatedly expressed his grouse against the "working style" of city unit chief Sanjay Nirupam over the distribution of party tickets. Kamat had accused Nirupam of "driving out" second generation leaders of the Congress and blamed his "negative attitude" for the exit of former MLA Krishna Hegde and some corporators who have joined the BJP. Kamat had withdrawn himself from campaigning for the party. Nirupam, however, had denied the charges. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief on Wednesday said the Centre offered enough financial assistance to West Bengal but there was no development in the state, and asked the Mamata Banerjee government to answer where the money has gone. Hitting out at the Trinamool Congress over Narada and Sarada scams, Shah said he is worried about the development and progress of West Bengal. "You all know about issues like Narada, Sarada scandals and law and order problems. But there remains another issue - where has the fund allocated to the state by the Centre gone?" he asked. "While the 13th Finance Commission had allocated Rs 1,3,585 crore to Bengal in five years, you will be happy to note the Narendra Modi government gave Rs 2,82,942 crore to Bengal. Where has this money gone?" he asked the crowd at a 'Vikas Sabha' of the party. "There has been no development in the state no roads, poor electrification in rural areas. Can Mamataji tell the people of the state where the money went," Shah said. He also took a swipe at Banerjee for protesting demonetisation and said, "While the entire world has been praising the note ban, only Didi (Mamata) was crying hoarse." The BJP president exhorted the people of Bengal to give his party a chance "since you have already tried the the Congress, the Left and the TMC". Three leaders including former Congress leader Kanak Debnath, former All India Congress Committee (AICC) member Manoj Pandey and former TMC leader Anupam Dutta joined the BJP at the programme. Some intellectuals including a popular Bengali writer, including actor-turned BJP MP Roopa Ganguly were also present on the occasion at Mahajati Sadan. As the results of the April 23 voting for the three municipal corporation elections poured in on Wednesday, the party supporters did not break into a rapturous celebration, as is the normal practice, due to the Monday killing of 25 CRPF men in Chhattisgarh. However, it did not fail to take a dig at the AAP. A poster outside Delhi BJP office said 'Delhi vasiyo badhai, Kejriwal ki hesiyat batai' (congratulations citizens of Delhi, put Kejriwal in place). There were no bursting of crackers at the Delhi BJP office at Pandit Pant Marg since morning, or dancing to tune of drumbeats by party workers and supporters, or splashing of colour and distribution of sweets. BJP leaders and workers paid floral tributes to the Central Reserve Police Force men killed in Maoist attack in Sukma. Union Ministers M. Venkaiah Naidu and Jitendra Singh were among those who came visiting. Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari on Wednesday announced there would be no celebrations in view of the Chhattisgarh attack. "We won't celebrate this victory and dedicate it to the CRPF personnel who lost their lives in the Sukma attack. We are with their families," Manoj Tiwari told reporters later. The BJP won 181 of the 270 wards that polled on Sunday, way above the halfway mark to secure control of all the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi - North, South and East. The BJP won 64 of 103 wards in North, 70 of 104 in South and 47 of 63 in East. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal could manage wins in just 48 wards and the Congress was way behind with 30 seats. "We have decided not to celebrate the victory. We want to dedicate this victory to the CRPF jawans," said Sunil Yadav, President of the Delhi unit of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha. Huge LCD screens were put up in makeshift tents where mediaperons and party workers were seated in groups, watching the counting trends. Meanwhile, the AAP office at Rouse Avenue wore a deserted look as only a very few party volunteers could be seen there. Barring spokesperson Ashutosh, the party office saw no other AAP leader in the morning. There were no signs of preparations for any prospective celebrations either. AAP top brass congregated at Kejriwal's house following the party's debacle in the civic polls, while the party office wore a desolate look. Besides Kejriwal, other leaders present at his house included Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Dileep Pandey, Gopal Rai, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai. Later, several AAP MLAs and ministers including Satyendar Jain, Kapil Mishra, Imran Hussain, Alka Lamba, Nitin Tyagi, Rajesh Gupta, Sanjeev Jha reached the CM's house and reviewed the poll results. As poll results showed the AAP coming a distant second in the polls, Rai emerged from the house to tell the media that the BJP win was "due to EVM tampering". Even at the Delhi Congress office, which a few hundred meters away from the AAP's, there were no top leaders except for some party volunteers. Air strikes on two hospitals in rebel-held northwestern Syria left 10 people dead including two babies in incubators, a monitor said. They were among 19 people killed as a result of strikes across rebel-held Idlib province yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. An AFP correspondent in the village of Deir Sharqi, where one of the hospitals was hit, saw extensive damage and wards buried in rubble. It was the third time in less than a week that medical facilities in the province, controlled by rebels and jihadist groups, had been hit in air strikes. "Apparently Russian aircraft... Carried out four successive raids at dawn on a hospital on the outskirts" of Deir Sharqi, it said. "Six civilians in the emergency department were killed, including two babies in incubators, after the destruction of the facility's oxygen generator" which was keeping them alive, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The AFP correspondent saw at least one destroyed incubator, rooms and corridors filled with rubble, and dusty or damaged beds and equipment. In one room, a wall had collapsed on a medicine shelf and in another, medical supplies were strewn across the room. Later in the day, four medical staff from a dispensary in Maarzita, in southern Idlib province, were also killed in what were likely Russian strikes, the Observatory said. A further nine people including five children were killed in strikes on various other areas of Idlib province on yesterday, it said. On Saturday, an air raid on another hospital in Idlib had wounded five people, the Observatory said, but it could not say whether the raid was Syrian or Russian. Another hospital was hit Tuesday in northwestern Idlib, putting it out of service, Abdel Rahman said. The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used. Idlib is regularly bombed by the air forces of Syria and its Russian ally. More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An India-born doctor and his wife along with another Indian-origin woman doctor have been indicted by a grand jury in the US for allegedly performing genital mutilation on two girls, in a first-of-its kind federal prosecution in the country. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both from Michigan state, were yesterday charged with conspiring to perform female genital mutilations (FGM) on minor girls out of Attar's medical clinic in Livonia. The Attars were arrested on April 21. They were charged with helping another Indian-origin doctor Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Michigan, in performing genital mutilation on two 7-year-old girls in February at a clinic owned by Fakhruddin. They were charged with a total of seven counts for performing FGM on minor girls. The counts also include charges to transport these minors across state lines and to obstruct justice. The federal indictment alleges the trio also tried to obstruct the investigation by telling other people to make false statement to authorities. The doctors are also accused of lying to investigators. It is the first-of-its kind federal prosecution over the "brutal practice" which federal authorities said will not be tolerated in the United States. Unless they work out a plea deal, the three accused are headed to trial now, Detroit Free Press reported. "Female Genital Mutilation has serious implications for the health and well-being of girls and women," Acting US Attorney Daniel Lemisch of the Eastern District of Michigan said in a statement. He said the "brutal practice" is conducted on girls for one reason, which is to "control them as women". "The federal government is continuing this investigation to ensure those responsible are brought to justice," he said. Steve Francis, Acting Special Agent in Charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations Detroit Field Office said as the first federal indictment in the US, the charges against the three individuals will "hopefully deal a critical blow" to stamping out this inhumane practice in the US and around the world. Genital mutilation has been condemned by the UN and outlawed in the US. But the practice is common for girls in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. According to an online physician directory, Fakhruddin graduated from the Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India in 1988. The charges say that Nagarwala used to perform the medical procedure on minor girls at Burhani Medical Clinic (BMC) in Michigan that was owned and operated by Fakhruddin. Fakhruddin's wife was employed at BMC as an officer manager. The compliant against the Attars said that the couple arranged and assisted in the female genital mutilation of minor females performed by Nagarwala. While they allowed their clinic to be used by Nagarwala to perform the procedures, Farida assisted Nagarwala during the female genital mutilation procedures. Fakhruddin told federal agents this month that he has known Nagarwala and she occasionally saw patients at his clinic even though she was not employed there. He said Nagarwala only saw the patients at BMC when the clinic was closed and that Farida used to be present in the examining room while Nagarwala treated the minor girls. The investigation revealed that several minor girls informed forensic personnel that Nagarwala had performed procedures on their genitals and one minor girl said Farida had been present when Nagarwala did the FGM procedures. According to the complaint, some of the minor victims travelled interstate to have the procedure performed. The complaint alleges that the FGM procedure was performed on girls who were approximately six to eight years old. The number of girls under 18 at risk for FGM in the US has quadrupled since 1997. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 513,000 women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US. FGM has been a crime under federal law since 1996 and is punishable by up to five years in prison, however FGM is not a crime in 26 US states, including Michigan. The complaint filed against Nagarwala last week had said federal agents reviewed her telephone records and further investigation revealed that parents of two minor girls had travelled to Michigan. The girls were later interviewed by a forensic expert and one of the girls said she was told she was coming to Detroit for a "special" girls trip, but after arriving at the hotel, she learned that she and the other girl had to go to the doctor because "our tummies hurt." The girls had been taken to Nagarwala, who performed the procedure on the girls. The World Health Organisation said female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. WHO said FGM, which is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pentagon says two US service members were killed in Afghanistan. Navy Capt Jeff Davis says they were killed overnight yesterday during an operation against the Afghanistan-based Islamic State group in Nangahar Province in the eastern part of the country. He says the US is gathering further details. The US has been battling the Islamic State Khorasan group in Afghanistan for months. About two weeks ago, the US dropped what's called the "mother of all bombs" on an IS complex in Nangahar Province, just days after a US Army special forces soldier was killed in the region. The bomb is the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the US, and killed several dozen militants. The US estimates that the group has about 800 fighters in Afghanistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five militants were killed today in a security operation carried out by a Pakistani paramilitary force in the restive Balochistan province near the border with Iran. The military operation carried out by the Frontier Corps in the Kech district came a day after eight Iranian border guards were killed by suspected militants in a town near the Pakistan-Iran border in the province. Deputy Commissioner Kech Sirmad Ali Khan said that the the five militants, including a father and son, were killed during the operation by Frontier Corps. The suspected militants were said to be involved in a series of attacks on Frontier Corps personnel and other security installations near the Pakistan and Iran border. The Iranian media reported that eight Iranian border guards were killed in a town in the Sistan and Baluchestan province close to the border. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least eight Iranian border guards were killed in firing by suspected outlaws near the Sistan- Balochistan border along Pakistan's troubled Balochistan province, state-run IRIB agency reported. The border guards were killed after clashes erupted near the town of Mirjaveh in the Iranian province of Sistan- Balochistan which has a border crossing with Balochistan. Four other border guards were also injured in the clashes, the agency reported. The Sistan-Balochistan province is the largest Iranian province in the southeast of Iran and has its borders with Pakistan's restive Balochistan province. Security forces are often attacked by armed bandits, drug dealers, and outlaws in the area. A commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by two terrorists in Sistan- Balochistan province's border area with Pakistan last year. In July last year, four Iranian guards were killed in the border region with Pakistan. The Iranian media has claimed that the Jaish al-Adl militant group - accused by Tehran of links to al Qaeda - carries out regular attacks in Sistan and Balochistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Farmers in Sinnar and Igatpuri talukas here who have parted with their lands for the proposed Mumbai-Nagpur 702-km Sumruddhi Expressway project, will be compensated adequately, according to Nashik Collector B Radhakrishna. Currently, measurement survey work is underway in 10 districts falling under the project. Farmers and locals of Sinnar, Shahapur taluka in Thane and some other districts in Maharashtra have been holding protests against the project. Last week a group of farmers in Shivade village in Sinnar had held a protest against the measurement exercise. "The government will take care of the farmers affected by project and they will get proper compensation for their land. They would be provide with alternative land," he told reporters here last evening. Yesterday, a large number of farmers and locals had gathered at Shahapur in Thane to stage a rasta-roko over the project. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Tamil Nadu minister today described his party as one "without father and mother," and said people's aspirations for unity in the now divided AIADMK was being reflected among the leaders in both camps. Cooperation Minister Sellur K Raju said 'works' for holding the keenly anticipated merger talks between the two factions, led by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam, respectively, were on. "AIADMK is a movement without father and mother. Our Amma (mother-Jayalalithaa) is no more," he said. "People and supporters want the party, which Amma built through her hard work, to be united. This aspiration is reflected among the leaders of both factions," he told reporters. The senior leader exuded confidence that the AIADMK government will not only complete its term of five years but also retain power in the 2021 Assembly polls. Asked whether the faction will follow suit on removing posters of AIADMK chief VK Sasikala from the party's district offices also, Raju said a panel has been formed to go into the matter. Banners featuring Sasikala had been pulled down from the AIADMK headquarters here yesterday, a demand made by the rival Panneerselvam faction on Tuesday. However, the AIADMK (Amma) faction said the banners were pulled in lines with a decision taken earlier and that it had nothing to do with Panneerselvam camp leader E Madusudanan's demand in this regard. Meanwhile, Finance Minister D Jayakumar said the Amma faction was ready for the merger talks with the Panneerselvam camp. "As mentioned earlier, the doors are open .. If they come for talks we are ready (to hold discussions)", he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday said it was alive to its earlier orders, which had held that Aadhaar should be voluntary. We are alive to the orders passed by this court which says it should be voluntary, a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. The apex court made these observations while hearing the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act, which was introduced through the latest Budget and the Finance Act, 2017. Section 139AA of the IT Act provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of income tax returns and making application for allotment of PAN number with effect from July 1 this year. Senior Counsel Shyam Divan, representing the petitioners, argued that section 139AA was unconstitutional and it was in direct collision with the Aadhaar Act. The entire Aadhaar Act is voluntary. It creates a right in favour of citizens. It does not create a duty. The act is entirely voluntary. How can they make it mandatory under the Income Tax Act? The scheme under the Aadhaar Act is in direct collision with the provision of section 139AA, he said. He also argued that there was no question of forcing a person to give his consent for Aadhaar and this was an issue which alters the relationship of Republic of India with its citizens. However, the Bench observed, We have to interpret a statute according to the objective with which it has been framed. Referring to the earlier orders passed by the apex court, Divan said a five-judge bench had in October 2015 said the Aadhaar card scheme was voluntary and not mandatory till the matter was finally decided by the apex court. He said in that order, the court had also said a larger Bench was required to be set up for final disposal of the petitions but it has not been constituted till now. BJP chief Amit Shah today described Bengal as the "most poverty-stricken state" in the country and said once his party came to power in the state, it would "flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat". "Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," he told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers here while winding up his three-day visit to the state. Shah said under BJP rule in West Bengal, no one would have to "approach the court" for the immersion of Durga idols and the people would be free to observe religious festivals such as Saraswati puja. In February, a section of students in a school on the outskirts of Kolkata had objected to Saraswati puja celebrations, triggering a controversy. Asserting that Bengal was "next" on the (BJP's) radar, Shah said he had coined a slogan, 'Ebar Bangla' (this time, Bengal) for the purpose. "I witnessed massive enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win (elections) in Bengal," he added. Shah said the BJP wanted a government in the state which would provide employment, check cross-border infiltration and build a "sonar Bangla". "Only the BJP under (Narendra) Modi's leadership can provide such a government. No one else can," he claimed, adding, "Bengal will flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat." The BJP chief also accused the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". Earlier, the BJP chief visited three houses at Gouranganagar, on the outskirts of the city, as part of a mass contact programme aimed at expanding the saffron party's base in the state. The residents greeted him by blowing conch shells and offered him sweets. Shah had yesterday visited a slum in Banerjee's Bhawanipur Assembly constituency. On the first day of his visit, he'd had a meal at a Dalit home at Naxalbari in north Bengal. The BJP chief today also paid a visit to Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's residence at Bhawanipur in the city. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP president Amit Shah will undertake a three-day visit of Tamil Nadu from May 10, Textile Minister Smriti Irani said today. Shah would be in Chennai on May 10 and 11 to attend some party functions and also hold discussions with state unit leaders, she said during an interaction with BJP office-bearers and workers in nearby Tirupur. Shah will visit Coimbatore on May 12 and interact with party workers, BJP sources said. Irani highlighted the BJP's resounding victories in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa Assembly elections and in the Delhi MCD Polls and urged party men to work hard to replicate it in Tamil Nadu also. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) German luxury carmaker BMW Group on Thursday announced a partnership with under which it will supply premium vehicles to the Indian business house's global operations. BMW Group will be the preferred premium mobility supplier for across 50 countries and over 70 internationally, the company said in a statement. Besides India, the agreement will cover countries such as Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France and UK where has operations, it added. As part of the pact, BMW will offer privileges on its products such as preferential pricing, customised financial services and aftersales support to Aditya Birla Group. Commenting on the partnership, BMW Group India Director- Sales Rene Gerhard said it is yet another step to bring the BMW experience closer to its exclusive clientele. Aditya Birla Group Joint President - Corporate Administration Subrato Sarkaar said the initiative would give the group employees an enhanced user experience and service benefits, globally. Cambodian leader Hun Sen called on the United States today to stop forcibly deporting convicts with Cambodian heritage to the Southeast Asian nation, saying they should revise a policy that splits up families. More than 500 felons have been sent to Cambodia through a repatriation deal, though many were raised in the US and arrive in the country having never visited and unable to speak the language. "America is very smart...They keep only good people while they deport prisoners out of their country back to us," said Hun Sen, the strongman premier who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades. "I hope the father of human rights which is America...Will accept the proposal to amend the agreement to offer convicted Cambodians a chance to stay in the US with their families," he added. The prime minister's comments come after Cambodia's foreign ministry said earlier this week it wanted to renegotiate the 15-year-old agreement allowing both nations to deport criminals with ties to the other country. The foreign ministry spokesman said the deal had been "criticised by both Cambodians here and Cambodian communities in the US" as a form of "double punishment" for those who are deported against their will. A spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh told AFP they had been informed of Cambodia's desire to amend the agreement. Hun Sen routinely hucks insults at the United States and jumps on any opportunity to point out hypocrisy in American foreign policy. Washington secretly bombed Cambodia during the Indochina wars but went on to be a major donor as the country emerged from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge genocide, pouring billions in aid into the country. It also took in tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Yet relations between the two nations have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, a period that has seen Cambodia grow closer to regional superpower Beijing. China has lavished the poverty-stricken country with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans over the past few decades. Unlike aid from the US, Beijing's support comes without pressure to address rights abuses or strengthen the country's fragile democracy. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Children account for one-third of civilian casualties in Afghanistan's grinding conflict in the first three months of 2017, and are paying an increasingly high price in the fighting, a UN report said today in Kabul. From January to March, 210 children were killed -- up 17 percent from the same period last year -- and 525 injured, out of a total of 2,181 civilian casualties (715 dead and 1,466 injured). The overall total is slightly down, by four percent, compared to the same period in 2016. Among women, 88 deaths were recorded, a figure that jumped 54 percent from last year, mainly due to aerial bombardments -- an increasing danger as the Afghan Air Force begins to carry out its own strikes. Overall, the report showed 148 deaths and injuries from airstrikes in the first quarter, compared to 29 last year. "We are extremely concerned about the increase in the number of casualties among women and children, particularly deaths," said the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which has documented civilian victims of the conflict since 2009. "The 17 per cent increase in child casualties reflects the failure of parties to the conflict to take adequate precautions to protect civilians, including through marking and clearing unexploded ordnance after fighting ends," said Danielle Bell, head of human rights for UNAMA. The main cause of casualties remains fighting on the ground, claiming up 35 percent of the victims. The number of civilians fleeing fighting hit a record high last year, said the UN, with 600,000 internally displaced -- which, when added to hundreds of thousands of refugees returned from Pakistan in 2016, threatens to overwhelm already meagre resources allocated to refugees. The UN blames 62 per cent of civilian casualties on anti-government elements, mainly the Taliban, who are gearing up for their spring fighting season after an unusually violent winter. Unexploded mines and ammunition abandoned by fighters remained the second highest cause of civilian casualties (19 percent of the total), with attacks marking 17 percent. Kabul province had the highest number of casualties thanks to multiple attacks in the capital, followed by provinces where fighting is most sustained -- such as Helmand, virtually under Taliban control; Kandahar and Uruzgan in the south, and Nangarhar in the east, where the Islamic State group is in a turf war with the Taliban. "It is civilians, with increasing numbers of women and children, who far too often bear the brunt of the conflict," said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN envoy to Afghanistan. "With the so-called fighting season imminent, I appeal to all parties to take every measure possible to prevent unnecessary and unacceptable harm to Afghan civilians. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has fundamentally altered the physical and political landscape in the strategic South China Sea through militarisation and large-scale land reclamation, a top American admiral has claimed. Chinese military modernisation is focused on defeating the US in Asia by countering US asymmetric advantages, Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of US Pacific Command told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing. "North Korea continues to disregard UN sanctions by developing and threatening to use intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons that will threaten the US Homeland," Harris said. "China has fundamentally altered the physical and political landscape in the South China Sea through large scale land reclamation and by militarising these reclaimed features," Harris said. He said China continues to press Japan in the East China Sea, stepping up diplomatic and economic pressure against Taiwan, and methodically trying to supplant US influence with "our friends and allies in the region". "Furthermore, China is rapidly building a modern, capable military that appears to far exceed its stated defensive purpose or potential regional needs. China's military modernisation is focused on defeating the US in Asia by countering US asymmetric advantages," Harris alleged. China's military modernisation cannot be understated, especially when one considers the Communist regime's lack of transparency and apparent strategy, he said, adding that China is committed to developing a hypersonic glide weapon and advanced cyber and anti-satellite capabilities that present direct threats to the Homeland. "China's near-term strategy is focused on building up combat power and positional advantage to be able to restrict freedom of navigation and overflight while asserting de facto sovereignty over disputed maritime features and spaces in the region," the top American commander said. Harris said the rapid transformation of China's military into a high-tech force capable of regional dominance and a growing ability to support aspirations for global reach and influence is concerning. "China's activities on the seas, in the air and in cyberspace have generated concerns about its strategic intentions," he said. Referring to the Chinese construction activities in the disputed areas of the South China Sea, Harris said China's military-specific construction in the Spratly islands includes the construction of 72 fighter aircraft hangars - which could support three fighter regiments - and about 10 larger hangars that could support larger airframes such as bombers or special mission aircraft. All of these hangars should be completed this year, Harris said. "Despite its claims to the contrary, China has militarised the South China Sea through the building of seven military bases on artificial islands constructed through the large-scale damage of a fragile environment in disputed areas," he said. The presence of these military capabilities undermines China's consistent claim that these massively expanded features are for safety and humanitarian purposes, Harris said. Recently, China has tried to obscure the military purposes of its Spratly islands efforts by calling for private investment, residential settlement and tourism, he said. "The latter may prove especially problematic as China's land creation effort over the past a few years has destroyed the once vibrant marine ecosystem surrounding the features," Harris added. China claims almost all of the South China Sea, including islands more than 800 miles from the Chinese mainland, despite objections from neighbours such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China needs to step up economic pressure on North Korea, after Pyongyang "upped the ante" in its nuclear testing in recent months, the US State Department has said. Beijing "frankly has to put economic leverage on North Korea," spokesman Mark Toner yesterday said. "Our message to China is, the time for strategic patience -- for waiting North Korea out, for trying to gently nudge it back into talks -- is past." Toner spoke a day after top US security officials pledged to step up sanctions to force North Korea to resume dialogue over its nuclear program, toning down more virulent rhetoric from recent days. Today, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to press hard for global action on the North Korea issue as he chairs a special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York. Toner said China needs to take the lead in that pressure. "What I think is significant from the last (US) administration to this administration is, North Korea has upped the ante, has increased its pace of ballistic missile testing, nuclear testing, with the clear intent of pursuing either greater reach for its nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons." "And that's, frankly, as I said before, a game-changer that we need to address. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Navy and other agencies conducted a security exercise off the coast of Kerala this week to assess the preparedness in dealing with an asymmetric threat emanating from the sea. Attack and security groups were formed for the three- day exercise dubbed as 'Sagar Kavach.' Over a 100 ships and patrol crafts of the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, Coastal police and other coastal security agencies participated in the exercise held off the coast of Kerala, Mahe and Lakshadweep and Minicoy (L&M) Islands from April 25 and undertook round-the-clock patrolling of the seas. Extensive aerial surveillance of the adjoining seas was also mounted by aircrafts of the Coastal security group including unmanned aerial platforms to detect ships and vessels of the attack group, Navy said in a release here. Vice Admiral AR Karve, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief, Southern Naval Command who is also the Commander in Chief, Coastal Defence, undertook a review of the progress of exercise, with all the concerned stakeholders on April 26 at the Joint Operations Centre (JOC), Kochi. Representatives of participating agencies such as Coast Guard, Coastal Police, Cochin Port, Fisheries Department, Marine Enforcement Wing (MEW) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) attended the review and provided feedback on important coastal security measures pertaining to their charter. Keeping the monsoons in mind and stressing on the importance of saving precious lives in the eventuality of an incident at sea, all agencies were also briefed on the mechanism for search and rescue off Kerala and Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands including use of maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) Toll-Free number 1554. Sagar Kavach is a bi-annual exercise undertaken to evaluate interoperability and coordination between integrated maritime security agencies, which were set up to strengthen coastal security as a fallout of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, in intelligence gathering, surveillance as well as anti-terrorism and counter insurgency. The entire exercise was conducted by the Coast Guard and was monitored at the JOC,Naval base, Kochi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Khalsa College student has allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room here, the police said today. Top college officials, including the principal, have been booked in connection with the incident, they added. Harpreet Singh (22), a resident of Bathinda, took the extreme step last night as he was not allowed to appear in the BSc (agriculture) final year examination due to a poor attendance. A section of the college students staged a protest today demanding a criminal case against the college management, including the principal and the class in-charge, for creating such a "grim" situation for the deceased to end his life. The agitating students also blocked the busy GT Road, leading to a traffic snarl. The students told the reporters that they had accompanied Harpreet to the principal and the registrar of the college, urging them to issue him the roll number for the exam. The deceased had submitted an application, along with a medical certificate, which said that he was down with chikungunya, besides undergoing an eye surgery, leading to the shortage of attendance. But, the college authorities did not issue the roll number to him, which would have enabled him to appear in the examination. An FIR under section 306, IPC (abetment of suicide) was filed this afternoon against top college officials, including principal Mehal Singh, registrar Devender Singh and head of the agriculture department Randeep Kaur Bal. No arrest was made so far, the police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The opening up of commercial to private companies will bring in competition in the coal sector and reduce power tariff, a top official said on Thursday. "Let's begin by saying commercial is a very big reform in the coal sector and the idea is to bring in competition for the monopoly coal miner, which is a public sector company called Coal India (CIL)," Coal Secretary Susheel Kumar told PTI. India is in the process of throwing open commercial to private firms for the first time in four decades, with the aim of shifting the world's third-biggest coal importer towards energy self-sufficiency. "So, this is the intervention which the government wants to bring in. And what we wish to achieve ultimately in the coal sector is to reduce the prices of coal so that our ultimate end-use consumer who is a power consumer gets power at cheaper rates," the secretary explained. The government, he said, wants to convey to potential investors that sustainable and efficient mining, not revenue maximisation, is the idea behind commercial coal auction. "The objective of the government is not maximising the revenue. The idea is not to earn money... So, whatever model we work out, we will work out in such a way that objective (of sustainable and efficient mining) is met and prices of coal come down," Kumar added. As per the Coal Mines Special Provision Act of 2015, the government can open up commercial coal mining for private players. With a chunk of the population going without electricity, Kumar suggested that the government should ensure these people get power. "So, the entire (coal) sector is operating in such a way that we reduce prices, and what is the mechanism? The mechanism is competition, more efficiency, more mechanisation. What we hope to achieve through commercial mining is these mines will attract efficient power sector players who will invest in a big way and bring in that efficiency, ultimately reducing the prices," the secretary added. The government plans to auction four blocks under commercial mining in the first phase. A group of secretaries has also suggested that the government should create competition for CIL by opening up commercial coal mining. The CRPF today rejected reports that the bodies of some of its 25 personnel killed in the Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh's Sukma were mutilated. "With all authority, I deny that any martyred jawan's body was mutilated," acting chief of the force Sudeep Lakhtakia told reporters here. According to some accounts, private parts of some of the slain personnel were mutilated by the guerrillas to "avenge" alleged rape of local women by security forces. Altogether 25 CRPF personnel were killed and six wounded in an ambush by Naxals in Sukma district on Monday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 69-year-old Dalit writer Kusum Meghwal has alleged threat to her life over objection by a few groups on her new book on Rajput warrior Maharana Pratap. According to the complaint filed by the writer at Ambamata police station in Udaipur, she had been receiving threat calls from a few fringe groups since the past week over her portrayal of the Rajput warrior in her book 'Maharana Pratap Bhil Rajputra The - Kshatriya Ya Rajput Nahi'. The book claims that Maharana Pratap belonged to the Bhil community and was elevated as Rana of Mewar later. Meghwal claimed that she was also being bullied on social media for raising a fresh debate on the warrior. "The writer had lodged a complaint following which I have asked the police official concerned to investigate the matter. She has given us the phone numbers and a probe is underway," SP Udaipur, Rajendra Prasad told PTI. An author of over 65 books, Meghwal alleged that she had received calls from individuals claiming themselves to be Thakurs and from Karni Sena. "I have been getting calls from unknown numbers who are threatening to kill me for writing the book. Some of the callers claim they are from the Karni Sena while others say they are Thakurs. I have not ventured out from my house in the last seven days," she said in her complaint. The Ambedkarite writer further stated that the word 'Bhil' comes from Sanskrit word 'Bhilla', which means brave and martial. The Bhil community has traditionally been spread all over Mewar and known for their martial prowess. The BJP-led Rajasthan government had earlier raked up controversy while stating that Maharana Pratap had won the famous battle of Haldighati, contrary to conventional wisdom that his adversary Mughal emperor Akbar was the winner. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US today said that there are early indications that China is doing a better job than before on enforcing UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea. But at the same time it noted that it was too early to arrive at any conclusion on this issue. "You have seen some early indications of China doing a better job enforcing existing UN sanctions on North Korea. You can see in the Chinese press and in other areas that China is really making a clear effort to communicate to North Korea that its behaviour, its provocative behaviour, the nuclear tests, missile tests can't be tolerated," a senior official with the Trump administration said. "So I think you have seen two things an acknowledgement of the threat to China, but I think you have also seen a willingness for China to take this problem on in new ways. We ought to suspend judgment until we see how this develops in the coming days, months, so forth," the official said in response to a question. But he also noted that North Korea's behaviour also poses a threat to Chinese interests and security. "What is different about how China is viewing the problem in North Korea today is that China is viewing that problem as a threat not only to US interests and security, or South Korea and/or Japanese interests and security, but also a threat to Chinese interests and security.And so I think that is a big shift in and of itself," the official said. China on February 18 imposed a halt on coal imports from North Korea until the end of 2017, hardening its stance after a new missile test by Pyongyang, in accordance with new sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council. The State Department said China has taken some steps against North Korea, but it needs to take more such steps. China's influence on North Korea is probably more than that of any other country and Beijing needs to exercise that influence on Pyongyang, said State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner. The US, however, dismissed China's concerns on the US deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) missile in South Korea. "THAAD is a defensive system and it is being deployed, frankly, out of concern over South Korea's vulnerability to North Korea's continued aggressive behaviour. That's all it is," Toner said. The US and South Korea argue that the THAAD is aimed at countering missile threat from North Korea. But China says most of the THAAD systems can monitor best part of its territory. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran was this afternoon brought here by the Delhi police, two days after he was arrested by them in connection with an alleged bribery case. A Delhi police team probing the Election Commission (EC) bribery case brought Dhinakaran and his friend Mallikarjuna by flight from the national capital and they arrived a little after 1 PM. Dhinakaran's supporters Pugazhenthi and Nanchil Sambath were at the airport when Dhinakaran arrived. The police had secured warrants from a Delhi court to search the Chennai residences of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting the duo along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK (Amma)faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. Chandraseka had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, police had said. Police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any EC official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by jailed AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, had earlier faced a revolt by some of the Ministers, even as efforts are on for the merger of the rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) (Amma) leader T T V Dhinakaran, arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with a bribery case, was today brought here and searches were conducted at his residence in the city as part of the probe. Delhi Crime Branch police personnel led by Assistant Commissioner Sanjay Sherawat searched the residences of Dhinakaran and that of his associate Mallikarjuna, police sources said tonight. The police had secured warrants from a Delhi court to conduct the searches which were part of efforts to gather "further evidence" in the alleged attempt by Dhinakaran to bribe EC officials, they said. However, they did not state whether any seizures were made. Besides the two, others connected to them were also questioned over illegal channels and conduits used for sending money to Delhi from here, the sources said. Earlier, the two were brought here by a flight around 1 pm by the Delhi police team, two days after their arrest in the case. Dhinakaran's supporters Pugazhenthi and Nanchil Sambath were at the airport when Dhinakaran arrived. Dhinakaran was arrested on the night of April 25 in Delhi following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said alleged middleman Sukesh Chandrasekar, who was the first to be arrested, had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the (Amma) faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. They had seized Rs 1.30 crore from Chandrasekar when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran has been accused of allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, police had said. Police are also verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any EC official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by jailed chief V K Sasikala, is facing a revolt by influential section of state ministers who have decided to keep the two out of party affairs. A doctors' body has urged members to ensure that the patient's kin lodge police complaint against the pharma company in case of any untoward incident after administration of generic drugs, stressing that their quality was a matter of concern. The move comes in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's directive to doctors to prescribe only generic drugs. The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) asked all its members to prescribe only when there are drug combinations and issue directions to pharma companies to maintain the quality of the drugs since they are also important pillars of the system. "We want to convey here that it is not the case that we don't prescribe generic drugs but currently the accessibility and quality of these drugs are serious issues which are very much beyond our control," it said. It further urged the government to put in place a mechanism and infrastructure to ensure foolproof quality checks on all drugs manufacturing companies. "Ideally, for every 50 manufacturers, we will need one drug inspector and for every 200 medical stores, a single drug inspector and the government will have to provide this," it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Christian Eriksen reignited Tottenham's bid to catch Premier League leaders Chelsea as the Dane's late blast sealed a vital 1-0 win against Crystal Palace on Wednesday. Mauricio Pochettino's side were well below their best for long periods at Selhurst Park, but Eriksen came to the rescue in dramatic fashion with 12 minutes left. His sumptuous long-range strike closed the gap on Chelsea to four points after their title rivals had moved seven points clear with a win over Southampton 24 hours earlier. With five games remaining, Tottenham remain in the hunt to be crowned champions for the first time since 1961 as they look to avenge Sunday's agonising FA Cup semi-final defeat against Chelsea by pipping them to the title. Pochettino will hope his players are revitalised by their eighth successive league win, but the Tottenham boss must know they have to improve to beat Arsenal in Sunday's crucial north London derby. After defeating Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool recently, Palace deserved better than defeat here, although they should still be safe from relegation. Recognising the weakness that Chelsea exploited so ruthlessly, Pochettino dropped Son Heung-Min and recalled Ben Davies after his experiment with using the South Korea forward out of position at left wing-back failed at Wembley. Despite that change, it wasn't easy for Tottenham to erase the scars of their semi-final collapse. When Eriksen worked space for a shot, the winger's hurried effort sailed wide and Victor Wanyama fared no better with a wayward strike from an acute angle. Those bungled early raids foreshadowed a subdued half from Tottenham as they struggled to rebuild their shaken confidence. Faced with a supremely organised Palace side with the pace and power to hurt them on the counter, Pochettino's men looked fatigued mentally and physically. Christian Benteke threatened to bludgeon the visitors into submission when the muscular Palace striker tested Hugo Lloris with a low strike. Anxiety was afflicting every decision Tottenham took and when a weak clearance fell to Kyle Walker in space inside the penalty area, the defender wastefully volleyed high over the bar. Already on a booking, Wanyama was fortunate to escape a red card after catching Andros Townsend with a sliding tackle. - Bolt from the blue - ====================== Townsend was proving a thorn in his old team's side and the winger fired just over after a clever turn took him past the Tottenham defence. Desperate to ignite his punchless side, Pochettino sent on Son and Moussa Sissoko at half-time to give Tottenham an extra man in midfield and the changes gradually had a positive effect. Just as significantly, Mamadou Sakho, who had been imperious at the heart of the Palace defence, was carried off early in the second half after his knee twisted awkwardly when he stretched to tackle Harry Kane. Tottenham should have taken immediate advantage of Sakho's absence when Walker's cross picked out Alli's well- timed run, but the midfielder guided his shot wide from close-range. Alli produced a more accurate effort moments later, yet it lacked the power to beat Wayne Hennessey and when Kane headed straight at the Palace keeper soon after it appeared Tottenham were destined to be frustrated. But Eriksen had other ideas and the Dane snatched the winner with a bolt from the blue in the 78th minute. Dropping deep to take possession, Kane teed up Eriksen and, as Palace backed off, he unleashed a precise low 25-yard strike that fizzed past the slow to react Hennessey and sparked wild celebrations from Pochettino and his players. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) CRPF personnel deployed for long stints in the Naxal hotbed of Sukma in Chhattisgarh are showing signs of fatigue, according to officials. Home Ministry officials, who visited Chhattisgarh after the massacre of 25 CRPF men by Naxals, have found that the majority of 45,000 paramilitary personnel undertaking the high-risk anti-Naxal operations in Bastar region have been posted there for over three years. "Fatigue has been noticed in jawans as many of them have been posted in Sukma for last five years even though normally they should be there for three years," an official said, adding that there is decline in motivation due to their long deployment in the area. Being posted continuously in Bastar is very stressful and the jawans prefer to join counter-insurgency operations elsewhere including in Kashmir, even though they face militant attacks and stone pelting mobs regularly there. This year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far while the CRPF has lost 38 personnel in Chhattisgarh, the official said. Anti-Naxal operations take a toll on security personnel as they face guerrilla warfare in hot and humid conditions and treacherous terrain. The home ministry officials indicated that the 100-strong CRPF personnel, who were attacked by the Naxals on Monday, seemed to have not been sufficiently vigilant leading to such high casualties. The central government has been trying to boost the morale of the forces by providing them necessary infrastructure and logistics for anti-Naxal operations, they said. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. 42 bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet-protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Around 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen have been deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016, three times the number of police personnel who lost their lives. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today asked officials to fix a meeting with the Uttar Pradesh government to resolve all kinds of inter- state issues, especially those concerning canal water and irrigation. Khattar issued the directions in a meeting that reviewed the progress of the 'Chief Minister's Announcements in Faridabad and in Palwal districts' here. He told his officers that there were many such issues in these and other districts that could be easily resolved through dialogue by organising meetings with Uttar Pradesh. To speed-up execution of development projects, he asked officers to adopt a vertical rather than a horizontal approach for further expansion of health and educational infrastructure in the state. The chief minister said schools and hospitals to be built in cities and big towns of the state should be multi-storey, an official release. Norms, wherever required, should be revised for this purpose, Khattar said. "The vertical approach for growth and expansion of health and educational infrastructure would require a lesser amount of land," he said. The chief minister also directed the Town and Country Planning Department to develop a Haryana Urban Development Authority sector in Hodal on the lines of the Deen Dayal Jan Awas Yojana to provide affordable housing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today urged the people of Himachal Pradesh to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying they should follow the example of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi from where "fresh" winds of change are flowing into the hill state. "Himachal Pradesh is awaiting an era of honesty. Earlier, we used to take out woollens after snowfall in Himachal Pradesh (as the chill spread to other states). But now the time has changed. The winds from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, even the fresh winds from Delhi, have arrived in Himachal Pradesh," he said addressing the BJP's Parivartan Rally here. He was referring to the BJP's performance in assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and the results of the municipal elections held in Delhi earlier this week. In an apparent attack on state Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh of the Congress, he said he had hardly ever seen a chief minister spend so much time with lawyers. "Hope you understand...," he said referring to Singh facing charges of graft. He urged the people to vote for the BJP and walk with him "on the path of honesty". He said it was time people ditched the corrupt for all-round development. The Prime Minister said he would not spare those who had looted the country. "In elections, people stood with us as they want to be with the honest," he said. The term of the Himachal Pradesh assembly ends on January 7 next year. The elections are likely to be held in November or December. Modi also said that his government took "decisive decisions" and ensured that the benefits reached the last man in the queue. "Those affected by the decisions of my government are surely not happy and would try to harm (us) but I am prepared," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Four Thai army rangers were shot dead in an ambush after a roadside bomb toppled their truck in Thailand's insurgency-plagued south today, police said, the latest rebel attack to undermine already stagnant peace talks. The Muslim-majority border region has seethed with violence for over a decade as ethnic Malay insurgents battle the Buddhist-majority state for more autonomy. Near daily shooting and bomb attacks have claimed more than 6,800 lives since 2004, with both sides accused of rights abuses and atrocities. The toll rose today after an army patrol team was gunned down in Narathiwat province after their pickup truck was hit by a roadside explosive. "After the car tipped over the road four (rangers) were shot dead at the scene," said provincial police commander Manas Suksamas. The violence comes after the most prominent insurgent group rejected peace talks organised by the ruling junta in a rare press statement earlier this month. The shadowy Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) is believed to be behind much of the violence, although it never claims attacks and shuns publicity. Experts have long said it is not loyal to a group of rebel negotiators that have been meeting with the Thai junta, which seized power in 2014. The Thai government has consistently refused to talk to BRN even though it has the most control over the insurgents. The BRN called for international involvement in the talks, which have so far born little fruit. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Syria today accused France of concealing the real identity of those behind a deadly suspected chemical attack, a day after Paris said it had proof the Damascus regime was responsible. Western leaders have accused President Bashar al-Assad's regime of carrying out an April 4 sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun that was reported to have killed 88 people, including 31 children. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault yesterday laid out what he described as scientific proof the regime was behind the alleged attack, including analysis of samples taken from the scene. Damascus fired back today, condemning "the campaign of deceit, shameless lies and fabrications set forth by... Ayrault". "This is an attempt to hide the truth of this crime and its perpetrators," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement. "The French government has neither the authority nor the judicial qualification to determine what happened in Khan Sheikhun." Syria's government has repeatedly denied any use of chemical weapons including in Khan Sheikhun. In an interview with AFP earlier this month Assad said the allegation was "100 percent fabrication" and a pretext for the US decision to launch air strikes against the Syrian airbase from where Washington believes the attack was launched. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police have arrested a German soldier who had posed as a Syrian refugee on suspicion he was planning an attack, apparently motivated by anti-foreigner sentiment, in a case that German prosecutors said Thursday was "more than strange." The 28-year-old lieutenant, whose name wasn't released, faces charges of preparing an act of violence, Frankfurt prosecutor's spokeswoman Nadja Niesen told reporters. The officer, who was "of German background" and stationed in France, allegedly stashed a loaded pistol in a bathroom at the Vienna airport that was discovered, leading Austrian authorities to take him into temporary custody when he went to retrieve it in February, Niesen said. Though under investigation in Austria, authorities there did not keep him in custody and he was arrested in southern Germany yesterday. A 24-year-old student from the soldier's hometown of Offenbach was also arrested. "We know from various voice recordings that both had anti-foreigner views," Niesen said. The officer had registered as a Syrian refugee in the state of Hesse at the end of 2015 and had been living "sporadically" at a home for asylum seekers on and off since January 2016. Though he was officially stationed with the Bundeswehr in 2016, authorities say he wasn't required to be present at all times. German media reported that the officer intended to blame the attack on foreigners. Refugees have carried out several deadly attacks in Germany over the past year, stoking anti- migrant sentiment in the country. "It sounds more than strange," Niesen said. "I think we have to await more from the investigation to find out more about his motivation." Sixteen buildings were searched in Germany, Austria and France in connection with the investigation, and multiple mobile telephones and other electronic devices were seized as evidence, Niesen said. Niesen said the suspect knows no Arabic and she did not know how he managed to pass himself off as a Syrian refugee. "This is quite an unusual story," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has initiated a "ghar wapsi" campaign to de- radicalise "misguided" persons and 25 youth from various districts are being counselled after a tab was kept on their online activities. The initiative comes after the ATS recently arrested four suspected terrorists from the ISIS Khorasan module and came across posts, likes and remarks of these youths on social media which showed that they were being radicalised. Keeping in mind the influence of ISIS sympathisers on youth, the ATS has unveiled a 12-point strategy for the Ghar wapsi programme and also announced a helpline number for parents and families who suspect their children or people known to them are getting radicalised online. Security forces have noticed that terror operatives are targeting youngsters between 15 and 25 years of age by inciting communal passions. "The initiative aims at helping families in de-radicalising youngsters, who are often targeted by terror operatives who radicalise them online and use them in carrying out terror activities. We will lend support to such families as part of our de-radicalisation programme," an ATS official said. Two control room numbers of ATS - 0522-2304588 and 9792103156 - have also been set up which people can contact for help and the families have been assured that the identities of such youths and their families will be kept a secret. The IG ATS said police will take the help of not only clerics, parents, family members but also friends of such youths and make them understand religion in the right perspective. The youth going for the de-radicalisation programme of ATS, will be engaged in an interaction with police to gain their confidence and the process will be last over one year. Surprise visits have also been planned for such youths to check their activity and the ATS will also help in education and employment of the youth by recommending their names under various government schemes. "As there is no guarantee that the youth may not be radicalised again, the ATS will keep their details with and keep checking their activities randomly," they said. They said the focus of the programme is to target the terror mindset. "The programme aims to show the right path to the misguided youngsters through counselling," the UP ATS said. "Presently ghar-wapsi or de-radicalisation of at least 25 youth from various districts of Uttar Pradesh is already on," IG ATS, Asim Arun said, adding these youths belong to seven districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bijnor and Muzaffarnagar. "The ATS is keeping a tab on online activities and some families would be approached for the de-radicalisation process, if required," he said. "Keeping in mind that they were being influenced by radical propaganda, efforts are being made with the help of their families for their de-radicalisation," a senior ATS official told PTI here. The UP ATS had seized some important documents after the March 7 encounter in Lucknow in which a suspected terrorist belonging to an ISIS module was killed. Following this, the probe was expanded to five states. The ATS had received information that the ISIS had been expanding its network in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Bihar and some youth from these states had joined the terror organisation. Six others were detained for questioning and during interrogation, it was revealed that their role is negligible and in the absence of adequate proof they were not arrested, they said. The arrested persons had tried to brain wash and subsequently push them on the path of terror. "Many a time, some families feel that one of their members has tread the wrong path and may subsequently opt for the terror route. But they feel helpless. Hence, the families are advised to approach the ATS Control Room at the earliest. The UP government and UP Police stand with them," an ATS statement said. The programme includes involving misguided youngsters' friend and religious head during the counselling. Efforts will also be made to keep the identity of the misguided youngster a secret and also the counselling process. The programme will be considered to be over after the marriage of the misguided youngster or when his employment has been ensured. "These youngsters will never be used for gathering intelligence or trapping terrorists," the ATS said. The UP ATS had on April 20 arrested four persons -- Mufti Faizan and Tanveer, who are connected with the ISIS and were arrested from Bijnor district. Nazim Shamshad Ahmed (26), who hails from Bijnor, was nabbed from Thane district adjoining Mumbai and Muzammil from Punjab in a joint operation with others states.It has detained six youths, who were later handed over to their families to facilitate their "de-radicalisation". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Around 600 employees working at the Halol plant of General Motors in Gujarat have decided to launch an agitation as the company will be stopping production at the plant from tomorrow. The car manufacturing plant was commissioned near Halol town of Panchmahal district in central Gujarat in 1996. "As the plant will close down tomorrow, all 600-odd workers who have not relocated to the company's new plant in Talegoan near Pune will take part in a dharna in Halol from tomorrow," president of employees union Rachit Soni told PTI. "When the company first announced to shift manufacturing facility to Pune in 2015, out of 1100-odd workers, some 400 accepted the transfer. They got a negligible pay hike for relocating. Remaining workers are still here," said Soni. "General Motors India...Will cease production at Halol manufacturing facility on April 28, 2017, as the company consolidates manufacturing at its Talegaon facility. We will support our employees throughout this transition," GM India President and Managing Director Kaher Kazem had said in a statement on March 7. Soni said the company offered to give Rs eight to ten lakh each to these employees under a voluntary retirement scheme. Those working at Talegaon plant draw average salary of Rs 50,000 while workers at Halol are paid around Rs 30,000, he alleged. He said the union had made two demands. "Those who accept VRS should be given Rs 30 lakh as one-time settlement and those opting to move to Talegaon must get a monthly salary of Rs 50,000," said Soni, adding that the state Labour Department had not done anything to solve the workers' problem. However, state Labour Minister Dilip Thakor claimed that senior officials of his department were trying their best to see that no injustice was done to the employees. "I had sent my officials to Halol a few days ago to find an amicable solution. We are regularly in touch with the union as well as the company. We are trying best to see that employees do not suffer," said Thakor. Soni alleged that Labour Department officials were not willing to take up the issue with the company management. "It is true that officials met us and claimed to have taken up the issue of VRS offer. However, officials then told us that the company has rejected the demand. When we asked them to raise the demand about salary, the officials refused," he said. Senior officials at the GM Halol plant refused to comment on the issue. The Gujarat government had told the High Court yesterday that it would examine the legal aspects of the dispute between the company and the employees within four weeks. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered yet another top-order collapse as they were bowled out for 134 by Gujarat Lions in their IPL encounter at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here today. Andrew Tye (3/12) was the pick of the Gujarat bowlers, while Ravindra Jadeja (2/28) snapped two wickets and Basil Thampi (1/34) and Ankit Soni (1/28) picked up one wicket each to underline a discplined bowling performance by Lions. RCB, who were bundled out for 49 -- the lowest total in IPL history -- by Kolkata Knight Riders in an earlier match, were left tottering at 22-3 at one stage. Pawan Negi (32) and Kedar Jadhav (31) then played entertaining knocks to emerge as the top scorers for the hosts. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nine companies, which have come under the Enforcement Directorate's radar over money laundering charges in the Aircel-Maxis deal, have filed appeals in the Madras High Court challenging the summonses issued to them by the investigating agency. A single judge of the court had on January 5 dismissed petitions including that of former Union minister P Chidambaram's son Karti and the companies challenging the summonses saying their pleas cannot be entertained in view of the Supreme Court monitoring the probe over the Aircel-Maxis deal, a part of 2G scam cases. In their appeals, the companies including Advantage Strategic Consultants Private Limited, said the circumstances had changed since the single judge passed the order as a special CBI court in Delhi in February discharged all accused in the Aircel-Maxis cases filed by the CBI and the ED. Though Karti was a petitioner in the matter before the single judge, the present appeals have been filed only by the nine companies. When the appeals came up for hearing, the bench of justices Huluvadi G Ramesh and RNT Teeka Raman directed Special Public Prosecutor for ED Anand Grover and Additional Solicitor General G Rajagopalan to seek necessary clarification from the Supreme Court whether the high court would have jurisdiction to hear the pleas. The bench then posted the matter to June 5 for further hearing. Earlier, senior counsel Vijay Narayan and Nalini Chidambaram, appearing for the petitioners, argued the circumstances when the single judge passed the order had changed after the special CBI court in Delhi discharged former Telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his industrialist brother Kalanithi Maran and others in the Aircel-Maxis deal cases connected to the 2G spectrum scam. They further submitted that the special judge in his February 2 order had quashed the FIR filed by the ED. Hence the Supreme Court's bar on other courts entertaining matters related to 2G scam cases would no longer apply to this matter and the high court had jurisdiction to consider the appeals, they said. Recording the submission, the bench said the prime question to be adjudicated was maintainability of the matter and directed the ED counsel and the ASG to seek clarification from the apex court. The ED had carried out searches in the premises of Advantage Strategic Consultants Private Limited and others and issued summons to their directors under Sec 37 of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in August last year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chartered accountants' apex body ICAI on Thursday said it has initiated disciplinary action against four of its members for "misconduct" with respect to offering advice on exchanging old currency notes for new ones. As part of efforts to fight the black money menace as well as curb corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 last year announced cancelling of old Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. Without providing specific details, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) said the cases related to these members were taken up on a fast-track mode. The institute initiated suo moto action following media reports that post certain members were providing advice in a manner that was in violation of Chartered Accountants Act and Rules framed thereunder. "Hearing in five cases, where information was available against chartered accountants who had been named in the media reports was conducted on fast track mode," ICAI said in a release. The remaining one case where further information is awaited would also be concluded shortly, it added. After following due process, the institute said its board of discipline found four chartered accountants guilty of misconduct under the provisions of the Chartered Accountants Act. "Broadly, they were found guilty of offering to advise about exchange of old currency to new one which was contrary to the applicable laws," ICAI said. From November 8 till December 30, 2016, entities, including individuals, were allowed to deposit the invalid notes with banks. For a specific period, exchange of junked notes was also permitted. India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the External Affairs Ministry said today. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India as the former Indian Navy officer has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year on charges of espionage. "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our High Commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request on providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response," Baglay said. India has demanded from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the external affairs ministry said today. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay also said the government is yet to receive a copy of any charge sheet against Jadhav, and did not even know who had defended him in the military court that sentenced him the death sentence. Maintaining that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India, Baglay said, "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked the Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our high commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request for providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response." Yesterday, the Indian government had made a request for the 16th time to Pakistan for consular access to Jadhav, the spokesperson said. "We wanted to get out on 0," he said when asked if India would be scoring a 100 in requests in seeking consular access. Baglay also hoped that Pakistan would expedite the visa for Jadhav's mother and father who want to see their son as also file an appeal in person, if required. They have applied for the visa in the Pakistan High Commission here, he said. Bambawale had also handed over to the Pakistan foreign secretary an appeal by Jadhav's mother as well as a petition by her seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. The Indian envoy had also met the Pakistani foreign secretary on April 14 and expressed India's concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told media after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authenticated copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence on the charge of "espionage" by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Baglay was asked about a "confessional" video released by the Pakistan army yesterday of former Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan in which he has said that the Taliban militants were in touch with the Afghan intelligence agency and India's Research and Analyst Wing (RAW) which provided funds and set targets inside Pakistan for attacks. To this, the MEA spokesperson replied, "We know the value of such coerced confessions. All that they reflect is a mindset on the part of those who put out such coerced confessions, which believes that others in the world also do what they do. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Sri Lanka will set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) to discuss the development of a port, petroleum and other industries in the Lankan city of Trincomalee, the external affairs ministry said today. The setting up of the group is mandated under the Cooperation in Economic Projects agreement signed yesterday after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe here. Noting that Lanka IOC has had the rights to develop the Tank Farm since 2003 but currently only 'Lower Tank Farm' is developed, MEA Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said India has proposed to Sri Lanka to develop 'Upper Tank Farm' as joint venture. "Upper Tank Farm in Trincomalee will be jointly developed by India and Sri Lanka... This needs fresh investment. Sri Lanka also had special requirements. There will be discussions between the two sides on various aspects and details. "A port, petroleum refinery and other industries in Trincomalee, for which a JWG will be set up to further discuss and flesh out details," Baglay added. Asserting that the government's approach of Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas"was also aimed at its neighbours, he said the pact is aimed at achieving greater economic, investment and development cooperation in a progressive manner, through joint ventures that will ensure the wellbeing of the people of the two countries. The main areas and the scope of cooperation will include a regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) fired 500 MW capacity LNG Power Plant; an LNG Terminal /Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) in Colombo/Kerawalapitiya; a 50 MW solar power plant in Sampur. Other focus areas under the agreement would be identifying industrial zones; important road segments Mannar- Jaffna, Mannar-Trincomalee and Dambulla-Trincomale Expressway under Indian investments; the railway sector development in Sri Lanka including new projects for track upgrade and purchase of rolling stock. Asked about the suggestions made by the Afghan Envoy here yesterday on an India-US-Afghanistan trilateral strategic partnership, Baglay said there is convergence among the three countries in their objective to promote peace and stability and defeat terrorism imposed on Afghanistan from outside. Trilateral consultation and potential for trilateral cooperation among these three countries for capacity building and development in Afghanistan reflect this convergence, he added. He further said India is committed to stand with Afghanistan in protecting that country's sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, peace and stability, as also economic development. On a query about the outcome of the recently-held Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) joint study group meet in Kolkata and China's insistence to elevate it to ministerial level, Baglay said India attaches great significance to it. "A very senior veteran diplomat heads that Joint Study Group which just met in Kolkata. Our Additional Secretary was there to assist him. The Group is to synthesise various chapters of the country reports," he said noting, BCIM was established in 2013. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's geostrategic interests align perfectly with that of the US in terms of being concerned about China, a top American Admiral said today. Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of US Pacific Command, welcomed improved Indo-US defence ties, saying the two countries are now involved in increased defence trade and technology transfer. "We are heavily involved and when I say we, the Navy is heavily involved in working with the Indians on the development of their aircraft carrier, their indigenous aircraft carrier. That's an exciting program," he told Senators on the topic of Indo-US defence relationship. "I think India's geostrategic interests align perfectly with ours in terms of being concerned about China; in terms of the interaction or the intersection, rather, of China and India, including along their long land border, but especially in the Indian Ocean; especially in the approaches to the Indian Ocean, the Andaman Islands and the like," Harris said. Indo-US defence relationship, he said, offers a tremendous opportunity. "I have made India a formal line of effort at Pacific Command because I believe it represents a tremendous opportunity for the US writ large and for PACOM in particular in the mil-to-mil space," Harris said. "We share democratic values with India. We're the world's two largest democracies. We share cultural values with Indian- Americans that live and work and lead in our country. "In the mil-to-mil space, we are in a very good place and getting better. India is purchasing a lot of American equipment. The world's second-largest C-17 fleet, for example, is Indian. The Indians have P-8 Poseidon aircraft, US helicopters; howitzers and on and on. There is a lot of opportunity there and we should continue to work that," Harris told Senator Gary Peters from Michigan. Peters sought to know about India's role in the Indian Ocean region at a time of Chinese aggressiveness. "China's One Belt One Road strategy seeks to secure China's control over its continental and maritime interests, with the hopes of dominating Eurasia and exploiting natural resources for future economic gains. Such designs place the country at odds with the US, but also nations like Japan and India," he said. Currently, China's economy and budget is four times greater than those of India, he said, acknowledging New Delhi's budgetary constraints. However, India is an ambitious and growing country both in population and its economy, Peters said. "China and India naturally have competing interests at stake on the continent and adjoining maritime domain. India has expressed concerns over China's recent expansion into the South China Sea and perceived strategic goal in that region; also given the fact that India is a democracy, certainly shares many values with us here in the US," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian-born peer and prominent businessman Raj Kumar Bagri, who was the longest-serving chairman of the London Metal Exchange, has died here. He was 86. Lord Bagri was the first Indian-origin chairman of the London Metal Exchange (LME), which held a minute's silence yesterday, a day after his death as a mark of respect for his "dedicated service". "As the longest-serving chairman in the LME's history, he played a crucial role in key milestones in the LME's development, including the response to the 1996 events in copper trading, the 2000 demutualisation of the LME, and the introduction of the LME's electronic trading platform. His vision, leadership and inspiration were responsible for the world-leading and modernised LME of today. Bagri also demonstrated a strong philanthropic commitment, via his founding of the Bagri Foundation," LME said in a statement. Bagri, who was also awarded the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 for his services to the British industry, had been actively involved in the metal trade and industry for over 58 years and began his career in India before moving to London in 1959. The Kolkata-born metals trader went on toset up the successful Metdist metals company. "I am proud and privileged to have known Lord Bagri for over 35 years, including serving on the board of the London Metal Exchange under his chairmanship," said Nigel Dentoom, the Chief Executive Officer of CCBI Metdist. "His influence, determination, and success in leading the exchange successfully as chairman are embodied in its history. Both the LME and the global physical markets will sadly mourn his passing but his legacy will live on," Dentoom said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian steel magnate Sajjan Jindal has met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during a visit to Islamabad, triggering speculation in Pakistani media over revival of bilateral talks amid strains in ties. The meeting between Sharif and Jindal took place yesterday at the premier's private residence in the country's hill station Murree, about 45 kms from Islamabad. After opposition parties created an uproar over the "secret" meeting, Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif said there was nothing secret about the meeting. "Mr. Jindal is an old friend of the Prime Minister. Nothing 'secret' about the meeting & should not be blown out of proportion. Thank you," Maryam tweeted. The family members of Sharif received Jindal at the Islamabad airport after he come from Afghanistan. Jindal was later escorted to Murree in an official protocol where he had an hour-long meeting with the prime minister. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Rajasthan cabinet today approved a loan of Rs 3, 291 crore for the repair and renovation of the Indira Gandhi Canal Project (IGNP). Following a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, state PWD Minister Yunus Khan said the detailed project report (DPR) for the work has been prepared and loan will be taken from the New Development Bank. The Rajasthan Irrigation Department and the IGNP board had sent a loan proposal, which the chief minister has approved in principal, he said. "It is for the first time that such a big amount has been approved for repair and renovation of the canal," Khan said. The work on the project will start in October and will be completed in two years, he said. The minister said the entire canal network will be renovated and strengthened. This includes 60 km of the main and 52 km of the feeder canal and repairs to 800 km of the canal, he said. The canal has a capacity of 17,500 cusec but due to leakage, it has reduced to 9,000 cusec. Similarly, the feeder capacity has reduced to 11,000 cusec, Khan said. "Due to leakage, water did not reach the tail end of the canal. In the monsoon, excess water was flowing into Pakistan. After the repair these issues will be resolved," he said. In addition to it, funds will also be used for 'sem' affected areas such as Hanumangarh and Ganganagar. Around 7,000 hectare of land is affected, where water will be removed to make land fertile, he said. The cabinet also relaxed norms under the promotion and assured career program scheme. Earlier, employees with more than two children were not entitled for the scheme for five years after their recruitment. The cabinet reduced the limit to three years. The relaxation will be given to employees who joined after June 1, 2000. The chief minister also reviewed the Jal Swavlamban Yojana and directed district in-charge secretary and the minister concerned to visit districts every month for two days. The ministers were also directed to sit at Secretariat from Monday to Wednesday and hold regular public meetings at home and office. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch five communication satellites by the year-end, its chairman A S Kiran Kumar said on Thursday. The satellites, proposed to be launched, are aimed at improving the communication system within the country, he said. "There are five (satellites) that are coming up... All are communication satellites," Kumar told PTI here. All the satellites would be put in space by the end of this year, the noted space scientist said. "Specific use is (to) improve the number of transponders available... (for communications). It will improve our communication capability within the country very significantly," Kumar said. The chief was speaking on the sidelines of a lecture organised on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the Osmania University. In his lecture, Kumar gave an overview of the satellites launched by the and their purposes in the areas of weather forecasting, disaster management, space exploration, geo-spatial applications, education and agriculture among others. Kumar said India is the only country to achieve the feat of having a large number of satellites. and the government has made GPS-aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) mandatory for all aircraft by 2019 to ensure safety and precision landing, he said. India has 4,000 heritage sites for which ISRO plans to make an inventory and site management plan , Kumar said. In February this year, the space agency scripted history by successfully launching 104 satellites, including India's weather observation Cartosat-2 Series, in a single mission on board its dependable Polar rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. Pakistan today stuck to its stand on Kulbhushan Jadhav's sentencing, saying the military court's ruling was based on specific evidence and the trial was conducted in a "transparent" manner. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of retired Indian Navy officer Jadhav, sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria claimed that Jadhav has been tried for espionage according to the law of the land in a "transparent manner". Jadhav's sentencing was based on specific evidence as well as his "confessional statement" that also led to the dismantling of the terror network in the country, Zakaria was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan. Zakaria's remarks at a briefing came a day after the appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given to Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua by Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale, who also handed over a petition by Jadhav's mother seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Jadhav was given death sentence earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Zakaria, during his briefing, also claimed that there was "irrefutable proof" that India was not only "perpetrating terrorism" but also using the Afghan soil to destabilise it. Zakaria said that India's role in "sponsoring terrorism" in Pakistan was "fully exposed" in light of the statements of Jadhav and former Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. "The revelations made by former spokesperson of TTP Ehsansullah Ehsan and the confessional statement of Kulbhushan Jadhav are irrefutable proofs against India," he said. Zakaria claimed that India was not only sending spies inside Pakistan to "perpetrate terrorism" but also using the Afghan soil to "destabilise" the country. He also claimed that as many as 13 Indian "RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agents" were killed in the 'mother of all bombs' attack carried out by the US in Afghanistan earlier this month. He said this had vindicated Pakistan's claims. Zakaria said that Ehsan has stated that Jamaat-ul Ahrar terror group was working on Indian agenda to destabilise Pakistan. Zakaria, in his briefing, also slammed the clampdown on internet in Kashmir and claimed that India had banned it to "hide grave human rights violations". He also criticised the alleged arrest of Kashmiri leaders. On the disappearance of retired Pakistani colonel Habib Zahir in Nepal, the spokesperson said Pakistan's mission in the country was closely looking into the matter. He said it was a case of entrapment and the involvement of India cannot be ruled out. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It was the exceptional bravery of a jawan that the three terrorists who stormed the army camp in Kupwara today could not cause further damage. Gunner Rishi Kumar, on sentry duty, stopped the advancing terrorists from penetrating deeper into the camp which is located about 100 kms from here. He killed two terrorists and was injured by the third one who fled, a defence spokesman said. During the gunfight, Captain Ayush Yadav and two soldiers were killed while five others were injured. "Gunner Rishi Kumar was on sentry duty when the fire fight (with militants) started. He observed the terrorists approach and waited for them to come within close range," the spokesman said while giving details of the 35-minute encounter this morning. "He then engaged them and was hit on his head but was saved by bullet proof patka," the spokesman said here. However, the whiplash of the impact caused the soldier to fall down, he said. "He immediately recovered and fired back to kill the two terrorists. Running out of ammunition, he moved out of his bunker and tried to pick the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third, who fired and injured him, thus managing to escape," the spokesman said. "During the incident, Rishi Kumar has shown the indomitable spirit of Indian soldier," he added. Interacting with media persons from his hospital bed here, Kumar said, "When I saw the terrorists approaching me while firing, I took position, fired at them and killed two terrorists." Kumar, who hails from Ara in Bihar, has eight years of service in the army. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Death toll in the jetty collapse in the Hooghly river at Bhadreswar in Hooghly district rose to five and four persons were arrested today. Superintendent of Police Sukesh Jain said that the toll mounted to five after bodies of two women were recovered. Three persons got drowned and around 12 others had gone missing after a portion of a bamboo jetty in the Hooghly river gave way under the impact of a high tide yesterday. Jain said that four persons, all lease holders of the jetty, were arrested and booked under various IPC Sections like 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 280 (rash navigation of vessel). Jain said that local people told the police that the jetty had been in bad shape and needed repair. Soil test for the repair work had also been done, he said. Meanwhile, 20 boats of disaster management department searched both banks of the river from Serampore to Tribeni, a stretch of around 30 km, for bodies. The Hooghly district administration has opened a camp at the affected Telenipara ghat where missing complaint of 12 persons were registered. The accident occurred when the passengers were waiting at the bamboo jetty at Telenipara for boarding a launch to cross the river and reach Shyamnagar in North 24 Parganas district. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today expressed grief at the death of Bollywood actor and former Union minister Vinod Khanna. In Khanna's demise, "We lost a popular political leader, a skillful actor and a good individual," Das said in his condolence message. Khanna gave a new height to Hindi cinema with his acting prowess, he said. May God give peace to his soul and strength to his family members at this hour of grief, Das said. Former Chief Minister Arjun Munda also condoled Khanna's death. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union today filed a complaint against two websites for allegedly spreading malicious reports that the students were glorifying the Sukma naxal attack. "The websites www.Srishtanews.Com and www.Dainikbharat.Com are spreading reports claiming that JNU students are glorifying the Sukma naxal attack," JNUSU president Mohit Kumar Pandey said. The pictures linked with the reports are of celebrations in September 2015 and the 2013 JNUSU elections, and another picture was taken when former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar got bail in 2016, he added. He alleged that the websites had ideologies similar to that of the BJP and the RSS and the reports were spread widely. "Spread of such content is maligning JNU students who are actively participating in several social service activities. Students and faculties are getting threats of murder, rape and are being abused because of this," Mohit said. "We request you to register an FIR against people who are behind such websites and make sure that such incidents are not repeated," he said in the complaint. The police officials confirmed that the complaint is being currently examined. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kerala government today announced an education loan repayment scheme to help students from financially backward families. The scheme is to provide relief to debt-ridden families, who had taken education loans for their wards, State Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said while making a statement under Rule 300 in the Assembly. Giving details about the scheme, Vijayan said, "It is not a loan waiver programme, but a scheme to help repayment of education loan." It would have retrospective effect from April 2016 to loans taken up to Rs. Nine lakhs, he said. A state-level bankers committee had estimated an amount of Rs.900 crore as the burden under the scheme, the Chief Minister said. The new scheme was announced at a special session held at the Old Assembly hall in the Secretariat complex here to mark the 60th anniversary of the first sitting of the first Legislative Assembly. The first sitting of the Assembly was held on April 27, 1957 after the Communist government headed by late leader E M Sankaran Namboothripad assumed office. Vijayan and leaders from ruling CPI-M led LDF and Congress-led UDF opposition spoke about the strides the state had made in the last 60 years. Vijayan said legislative business should be given prominence in the Assembly and termed the special sitting as a "historic" moment. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala wanted consensus among all on development matters. Former Chief MinistersV S Achuthanandan and Oommen Chandy and the lone BJP member O Rajagopal were among those who spoke. The session also witnessed the introduction of a bill by Education Minister C Raveendranath to make teaching of Malayalam compulsory in all educational institutions in the state. The Malayalam Language (Compulsory Language) Bill, 2017 envisages to make teaching Malayalam in all government, aided, unaided, self-financing educational institutions and also CBSE, ICSE and other Boards. Fisheries and Cashew Industry Minister J Mercykutty Amma informed the House thatthe State planned to constitute a Kerala Cashew Board. She said the decision had been taken in the wake of the Centre's refusal to set up a board for promotion of cashew industries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Seoul-based Kia Motors Corporation today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Andhra Pradesh government for setting up a car manufacturing plant in Anantapuramu district. The tie-up is expected to give a major boost to the state's efforts to emerge as an industrial manufacturing hub. The plant, to come up on a 600-acre site at Penukonda, about 75 km from Anantapuramu, will be the South Korean company's first unit in India and the seventh in the world. Kia Motors President Han-Woo Park signed and exchanged the MoU with AP Industries Secretary Solomon Arokia Raj in the presence of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Industries Minister N Amarnath Reddy. Kia will invest USD 2 billion on this plant which will have a capacity to manufacture 3 lakh cars per annum. "This is an exciting and mutually-beneficial project and a next major step in Kia's global expansion plans," Park said on the occasion. The work on the plant would commence in September and the production of cars would start in the second half of 2019, he said. The company currently had a presence in 80 markets worldwide. "Kia will be a strong new force in the Indian automobile market. It will be a strong boost to the Indian automobile industry," Park remarked. "This is a significant step in my effort to turn Andhra Pradesh into an automobile manufacturing hub," the chief minister said. "It's a historic day today and the strong bond between AP and Kia will endure," Chandrababu said. Kia would provide direct employment to nearly 10,000 people once the plant becomes fully operational. The company plans to produce a 'strategic' compact sedan and a compact SUV, especially for the Indian market, at the new plant. The state government will provide training through the Skill Development Corporation to create the required human resources for the plant. Kia is the second big ticket investment in AP in the last three years in the automobile manufacturing sector after the Hero Motors plant in Chittoor district. Isuzu, another car maker, also has its production unit in Chittoor district of the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A leopard strayed into a residential area here this morning and injured a person before being captured by wildlife officials from a house, after a five-hour-long effort. Before entering the house through the roof, the leopard injured Ajay Bhardwaj. The startled residents locked themselves in a room as the big cat hide under the stairs, wildlife officials said. The four-year-old male leopard was tranquillised around 2:30 PM after three to four attempts. It has been kept under observation, they said. The injured has received treatment for nail scratches, officials said. "As soon as we were informed by the locals, a team of Gurgaon Police and wildlife officials reached the spot. They cordoned off the area to avoid any untoward incident," ACP-PRO of Gurgaon Police Manish Sehgal told PTI. The leopard entered the area around 9:30 AM, he said. Last year, a leopard was hacked to death by angry villagers in Mandawar village here. The wildlife officials said animals stray into human habitats due to scarcity of water in the Aravalli region. The Gurgaon district administration and Haryana Forest Department have started to replenish water bodies and pits in the Aravalli region with tankers so that thirsty animals do not stray into residential areas. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao today proposed the concept of 'Gurukul Dakshina' and appealed to alumni of the Osmania University (OU) to make contributions under alumni donations. "As we have gathered here to celebrate the centenary of our university, I would like to propose the concept of 'Gurukul Dakshina'. "The colleges and the university we studied at are like a Gurukul in the modern sense of the term. Therefore, all the alumni should give something back to our Gurukul which has given us so much," the governor, an alumnus of OU, said addressing an 'Alumni Meet' as part of the centenary celebrations of the varsity here. Alumni donations are a highly-developed tradition all over the world, especially in American universities, he said. "In 2015, the total endowments of the colleges and universities in USA stood at a staggering USD 37 billion or Rs 2,40,000 crore. Most of these endowments are donations by alumni," Rao said, adding that the alumni donations are used to build the world-class facilities and legacy projects. "One of the important traditions in American universities which we should emulate in India is that distinguished alumni are given empowered positions in the governance of their alma maters," the governor said. The 35,000-plus members of the IIT Bombay Alumni Association (IITBAA) are strongly connected to their alma mater and the IITBAA has so far donated over Rs 300 crore to their institute, he added. "Inspired by the example of the IIT Bombay Alumni Association, the 'Friends of Mumbai University' platform aims at mobilising substantial donations for major developmental activities in the university. "I am mentioning this here because I strongly believe that Osmania University may also consider establishing a 'Friends of Osmania University' platform to bring together not only its alumni but also its vast network of well-wishers as well as corporate and philanthropic organisations in Hyderabad. Come to Mumbai...I have prepared a blueprint..I will explain to you," Rao said. Rao had done his Law graduation from the OU. "Of all universities, I do feel that Osmania University must feature among the top 200 universities in the world. "As Chancellor, I often attend the convocation ceremonies both in Maharashtra and in Tamil Nadu universities. In at least 8 out of ten cases, the top medals in various streams are won by women students. However, when it comes to the job market, women are distinctly missing," he said. The governor said there is a shortage of almost 50 per cent of faculty members across the country. He said the union HRD ministry had formed a Task Force to study the issue of faculty shortage and to suggest ways and means to overcome the same. "The Task Force, among various suggestions, recommended that women should be encouraged to join the academic profession and take up teaching career and research," he said. Quoting a survey conducted by an American think-tank covering 22000 publicly-traded companies in over 91 countries, the governor said, "the survey showed that companies employing 30 per cent and more female executives earn more profits...So it makes sound economic sense to employ more women as professors, as members of board and in all other professions. All of us have to become enablers of this transformation". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken and the party's in-charge for the state P C Chacko were today asked by Rahul Gandhi to "continue to do the work they are doing", a day after the two stepped down owning moral responsibility for the MCD poll debacle. In an indication that they may continue in their posts for now, Gandhi asked them to continue the work for strengthening the party after they met him today, Congress sources said. Sources said Gandhi told the two leaders that the Congress had improved upon its performance since the last assembly poll and that efforts were needed to strengthen the party further. "They have done a good job, if not a perfect one," the Congress vice president was quoted as having told them, while noting that they should have taken other party leaders along. Delhi's former chief minister Sheila Dikshit had yesterday assailed Maken for having excluded senior leaders like her from campaigning. The two leaders will again meet Gandhi next week to chalk out the party's strategy for revival in Delhi, where it increased its vote share from 9 per cent in the last assembly election to 21 per cent in the civic poll. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Demanding immediate action against the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, India on Thursday said it was a matter of concern that even after eight years of the strike, they continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay's remarks came amid reports that Pakistan has rejected a re- investigation of the Mumbai attack case, and has again demanded "concrete" evidence against Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the strike. "It is the Pakistan government's responsibility to bring to book the perpetrators and all those involved in conspiring, executing and mounting the 26/11 attack in which 166 people were killed. "It is a matter of concern that well after eight years of the attack, the perpetrators continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan and have not been brought to book," he said. However, Baglay did not specifically comment on reports from Pakistan that it has told India that a re-investigation of the Mumbai attack case was "not possible" as the trial was at an advanced stage and demanded "concrete" evidence against Saeed, saying he was not aware of any such development. Asked about an incident involving a Sikh girl in Pakistan who was forced to convert to Islam, he said such incidents are regularly reported from that country, and it was the responsibility of the government there to ensure safety and security of its nationals, including minorities. He also said that India keeps raising with the Pakistan government such issues whenever these come to its attention. Government today told the National Green Tribunal that there was a "misconception" that only diesel pollutes the environment. "NGT has concluded that diesel vehicles are more polluting than petrol and CNG. Government has submitted that there are various pollutants that cause air pollution from vehicles. "Diesel may be inferior to petrol in some pollutants such as particulate matters and oxides of nitrogen, but petrol is also inferior to diesel in some other pollutants. Hence, the misconception that only diesel is a polluting technology or fuel," Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand told the NGT. Opposing the ban on 10-year-old-diesel vehicles, the Ministry of Heavy Industries told the tribunal that diesel was not the only polluting fuel as they have higher fuel efficiency which leads to 10-15 per cent lower carbon dioxide emission compared to a petrol vehicle. "Assuming a 10 per cent lower carbon dioxide emission for diesels, diesel passenger vehicles in India's fleet would have saved over 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, thereby significantly helping in the commitment of reducing the country's emissions intensity per unit GDP by 33 -35 per cent below the 2005 level by 2030 at 21st Conference of Parties at United National Framework Convention on Climate Change," Anand said. The ASG also referred to the Delhi government's odd-even road rationing scheme and said that Central Pollution Control Board unequivocally establishes that pollution levels did not come down due to reduction in vehicles. "Report of CPCB shows unambiguously that on diverse locations in Delhi on a sample basis, the PM emissions levels not only did not come down, during the full operation of odd even scheme but was measured to be significantly higher during this period, in contrast to periods when there was no odd even scheme in operation and when the number of vehicles on Delhi roads was bound to be higher. "That vehicles generally make a significant difference to PM emission levels in ambient air quality level is both misleading and over simplistic," she told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar. The ASG also pointed to report published by Central Road Research Institute in 2002 and said it clearly mentions that the average age of cars plying in the city of Delhi was between the age of 5-6 years and, hence, the vehicles of 10-15 year old vintage were seldom used and their contribution to air pollution of Delhi was minuscule. Advocate Saliq Shafique, appearing for Vardhaman Kaushik who has filed the case against deteriorating air quality in Delhi-NCR, contested the submissions of the ASG and said that diesel vehicles were primary contributors to air pollution. The bench, after hearing the arguments from various parties, reserved its verdict on the plea filed by the Centre seeking modification of NGT's order banning diesel vehicles. On January 13, the Centre had moved the Supreme Court seeking lifting of the ban on 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi and NCR, saying it was affecting the economically weaker sections. Noting that diesel is the prime source of air pollution in Delhi, the tribunal had held on November 26, 2014 that all diesel vehicles which are more than 10 years old, will not be permitted to ply in Delhi-NCR. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil translated volumes of 'Vachana', penned by 12th century social reformer Basavanna and others, in 23 Indian languages on the occasion of Basava Jayanthi on April 29. 'Vachana' is a prosaic form well known in the Kannada literature. This style of writing was used by Basavanna for spreading social awareness and bring equality in the society in the 12th century. "It has taken 10 years to complete the translation of selected 'Vachanas' into 23 Indian languages. Unveiling of the work by PM Modi will help spread Basavanna's ideology and philosophy across the country," Bangalore-based Basava Samithi President Aravind Jatti told reporters here. Modi will also release the digital version of the work at the first ever celebration of Basava Jayanthi at the national level here. Union ministers from Karnataka Ananth Kumar, D V Sadananda Gowda, Ramesh Jigajinagi and state Higher Education Minister Basavaraja Rayreddy and former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa will be present at the event. The 23 'Vachana' volumes, edited by esteemed literary scholar late M M Kalburgi and translated by 20 people, was commissioned by the Basava Samithi at a cost of Rs 2.5 crore. Of which, the Karnataka government contributed Rs 1 crore. The 'Vachana' volumes will be released on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the organisation, set up by former Vice President D B Jatti in 1964 with an aim to spread Basavanna's message across India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today condoled the passing away of the veteran actor and BJP MP Vinod Khanna, saying the void he left in Indian cinema will be difficult to fill. "I am deeply saddened by the passing away of a great film personality and Member of Parliament (from Gurdaspur, Punjab) Vinod Khanna. I am shocked at his untimely death. May his soul rest in peace," Naidu said in a condolence message. Khanna had been associated with BJP for the past twenty years. He was also Union minister during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, Naidu noted. "His death is a great loss to the party and to the people of Gurdaspur. I pray to God to give strength to his family members to overcome this irreparable loss," he said. The Information and Broadcasting Minister said Khanna's contributions to the Indian cinema is tremendous and it will be very difficult to fill the void caused by his untimely death. Khanna's movies were widely acclaimed and accepted by a huge fan following, he added. People will always remember his performances in movies such as Mere Apne, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Jail Yatra, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Inkaar, Amar Akbar Anthony, Rajput, Qurbani, Kudrat and Dayavan, the minister said. Khanna, 70, died of cancer at a Mumbai hospital today. He was four-time MP from Gurdaspur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan today said that it will decide "on merit" the request made by India for consular access to its citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on spying charges. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that India has sought consular access to 46-year-old Jadhav. "We have made it clear time and again that Pakistan and India have signed an agreement on consular access in 2008, and according to clause VI of that agreement, decision to grant consular access in cases where detentions and arrests relate to political or security matters, the request of consular access will be decided on merits of the case," he said. Referring to Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale's demand for consular access to Jadhav during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua yesterday, the spokesman said that the Indian diplomat had submitted a request for an appeal "which will be examined by experts." Zakaria's statement differs from that of army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor who had said last week that Jadhav was a spy and consular access cannot be given to spies. Similarly, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua was quoted by local media as saying yesterday that consular access agreement was related to prisoners and not spies. Pakistan has rejected India's request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. Zakaria alleged that Jadhav was a serving commander of Indian Navy, working for Indian intelligence agency RAW and was caught red-handed. India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. Jadhav made confessions, and was tried for espionage activities, Zakaria said, adding that his trial was conducted according to the law of the land in a transparent manner. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." The Pakistan Army had also released a "confessional video" of Jadhav after his arrest. However, India denied Pakistan's contention and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistan's agencies. "Pakistan has always highlighted to the International Community that India uses Afghan soil against Pakistan and it has been repeatedly stated by those in India in position of authority and responsibility that their effort is to squeeze Pakistan from the eastern and western borders," he alleged. He urged the international community to take note of "Indian state sponsorship of activities of subversion, terrorism and financing of terrorists against Pakistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Twenty-nine Indian fishermen were arrested by Pakistan's maritime authorities for allegedly fishing in the country's territorial waters, officials said today. A Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) spokesman said the Indian fishermen were handed over to the Docks Police Station for further legal process. The authorities also seized five Indian boats. "The Indian fishermen will be presented before a judicial magistrate," a police official said. He said the Maritime Security Forces had apprehended the Indian fishermen for fishing illegally in the Arabian Sea in Pakistan's coastal area. Last month, the PMSA had twice apprehended Indian fishermen. On March 26, the PMSA had arrested 100 Indian fishermen and seized 19 boats while in early March some 85 Indian fishermenwere arrested and sent to jail. On January 27, the Maritime Security Agency had arrested 60Indianfishermenand seized 10 boats. The arrests of fishermen have continued this year even though Pakistan released some 219 Indian fishermen as a goodwill gesture on January 5 and before that released another batch of 220Indianfishermenon December 25. Fishermenfrom both countries are arrested frequently by the maritime security agencies of both countries for illegal fishing and often stray into illegal waters due to absence of any proper technology to confirm the coastline border between Pakistan andIndianear Sir Creek in the Arabian Sea. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flagged off a flight from Shimla to New Delhi, the first such venture under a government scheme which seeks to popularise regional air travel on short sectors by capping fares at Rs 2,500 per hour. "I want to see people who wear Hawaii chappal (rubber slippers)in a hawai jahaaz (aircraft)," PM Modi said at the launch of the flight under the government's regional connectivity scheme (RCS), six months after it was announced last October. The prime minister also simultaneously flagged off RCS flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through a video-conference at the event. He announced that the next flight under the scheme would operate on the Mumbai-Nanded sector. Modi said that the Delhi-Shimla flight, with a fare of Rs 2,036 per seat, will be cheaper than a taxi ride. "Earlier we used to believe that air travel was meant only for rajahs and maharajahs. This is the thinking that we need to change," he said. The prime minister also recalled that he had proposed to Rajiv Pratap Rudy when Rudy was the civil aviation minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government that the Maharajah be replaced as the mascot for Air India with cartoonist RK Laxman's Common Man. Under RCS, five airline operators, which were selected after a bidding process last month, will have to provide 50 per cent of their total seats on a flight on select sectors at fares not more than Rs 2500 per hour. They were together awarded 128 routes. The government will also provide financial assistance to the operators on these routes. The scheme provides for various benefits including no airport charges and three-year exclusive flying rights on the routes. The flight from Shimla is being operated by Air India's subsidiary, Alliance Air. The airline has deployed its 42- seater ATR plane on this sector. Twelve passengers were aboard the plane, which can accommodate only up to 15 passengers when flying out of Shimla because of the length of the runway and other factors such as altitude and temperature. Under RCS, called Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN), the government also aims at connecting 45 unserved and under- served airports. "It has been 70 years since Independence but we have only 70-75 airports. After RCS we have been able to add more than 30 new airports for commercial operations," Modi said. He also advised airline operators to explore a circular air route connecting Nanded Sahib, Amritsar Sahib and Patna Sahib, saying it would attract Sikh tourists from across the world. Regional connectivity will bring development to tier-2 and tier-3 cities which are becoming "growth engines", he said. It will also enhance connectivity to the north-eastern region, he added. "The scheme will also contribute to national integration. Different cultures and tradition will be able to intermingle," he said. "Sab ude, sab jude (Everyone will fly and unite)," was the PM's slogan. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, who also attended the event, tweeted, "UDAN all set to unify India as its soaring wings of regional air connectivity span across 70 airports." Later, Modi also laid the foundation of the Hydro Engineering College at Bilaspur through a video-link. He said the institute would help provide specially trained manpower for the hydro power sector. Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Union Health Minister J P Nadda and Leader of the opposition in the HP Assembly P K Dhumal received the prime minister, who was accompanied by Union ministers Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Sinha at the Jubberhatti airport in Shimla. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vice President Hamid Ansari today said that his ongoing visit to Poland has been very productive and he would go back to India on a positive note. Addressing the Indian community here, he said a 25-hour stay is not a long stay, but it was very productive". "Meeting with Polish leadership was an eye opener. We understand our potential in various Fields where we can cooperate and enhance our relationship," Ansari said. "The future of Indo-Polish ties is very bright. We have had talks where mutual cooperation can be enhanced. Our trade partnership which stands at USD 2.8 billion is increasing step by step. But we have to go beyond that. 'Make in India' is the one programme where Poland has an opportunity and can invest," the vice president said. Ansari stressed that he would go back to India on a positive note. Appreciating the contribution of Indians, he said the Indian community in Poland contributes immensely in enriching Indo-Polish relationship. Ambassador of India in Poland Ajay Bisaria hosted a reception in the honour of Ansari. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP leaders today mourned the death of actor-politician Vinod Khanna, remembering him as a versatile actor and a great human being. The 70-year-old actor died of bladder cancer at a hospital in Mumbai this morning. Khanna joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1997 and was a Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur, Punjab. The sitting MP had won the seat four times. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley tweeted, "Condolences on sad demise of veteran actor & BJP MP Shri #VinodKhanna ji, may God render peace to the departed soul & solace to his family. "Shri #VinodKhanna ji was a great actor and a gentleman politician - will miss him." "Pained by the sad demise of #VinodKhanna, my colleague in NDA-1 govt, a legendary actor & MP. My condolences to his family. May his soul RIP," Information & Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari called him a versatile actor. "I deeply mourn the demise of senior @BJP4India parliamentarian Vinod Khanna, a versatile film personality and a great human being," he wrote. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis remembered Khanna as a Bollywood legend. "Saddened to know about the demise of one of the greatest legends of Indian cinema, former Union Minister and BJP MP @ Vinod Khannaji," Fadnavis tweeted. He said Khanna will be remembered forever for his contribution not just in the Indian film industry but also in politics. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pope Francis is facing a religious and diplomatic balancing act as he heads to Egypt this weekend, hoping to comfort its Christian community after a spate of Islamic attacks while seeking to improve relations with Egypt's Muslim leaders. Security has been tightened, with shops ordered closed and police conducting door-to-door checks in the upscale Cairo neighborhood where Francis will stay Friday night. His only public Mass is being held at a military-run stadium. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis wasn't overly concerned and wouldn't use an armored car, as his predecessors did on foreign trips. Francis insisted on going ahead with the trip even after twin Palm Sunday church bombings killed at least 45 people and a subsequent attack at the famed St Catherine's monastery in Sinai. "We're in the world of 'new normal,'" Burke said. "But we go forward with serenity." The highlight of the two-day trip will be Francis' visit Friday to Al-Azhar, the revered 1,000-year-old seat of learning in Sunni Islam. There, he will meet privately with grand imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, and participate in an international peace conference. Francis has insisted that Christian-Muslim dialogue is the only way to overcome Islamic extremism of the kind that has targeted Christians and driven them from their 2,000- year-old communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. While condemning extremist attacks against Christians, he has said he is traveling to Egypt as a messenger of peace at a time when the world is "torn by blind violence." But his message of dialogue and tolerance has been rejected as naive by even some of his fellow Jesuits, for whom Islam remains "a religion of the sword" that has failed to modernize. Even ordinary Egyptian Christians see his visit as a nice gesture but one that ultimately won't change their reality. "He has been saying the same words for years, which is all about love and tolerance, but political Islam ruined the world and the most important change should come from Al- Azhar," said John, a 24-year-old Coptic Christian student from Cairo who declined to give his last name because he feared reprisals. The visit, though, marks a diplomatic breakthrough for Rome after Al-Azhar severed relations with the Vatican in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI demanded Egypt better protect its Christian minority following a New Year's Eve church bombing that killed more than 20 people. Francis has spent the better part of his four-year papacy seeking to mend the ties, and last year hosted el-Tayeb at the Vatican. His reciprocal visit will cement the renewed relationship and should help el-Tayeb as he confronts an unprecedented campaign in Egypt's pro-government media accusing Al-Azhar of failing to do enough to combat Islamic extremism. While Al-Azhar has been increasingly vocal in denouncing attacks and trying to spread an image of moderation, "it is considered by some in Egyptian society to be fundamentally incapable of reforming the religious discourse," said Michele Brignone, managing editor of Oasis, the Italian journal of Christian-Muslim dialogue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today pitched for adopting bio-toilets and asked the industry to come forward to maintain them at railway stations. Prabhu was speaking at the ISC-FICCI Sanitation Awards and India Sanitation Conclave, jointly organised by FICCI and India Sanitation Coalition (ISC). The minister said industry should apply their business minds to develop water-less, odour-less and vacuum toilets to further the Swachch Bharat Mission. Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan initiated at the behest of the prime minister is progressing speedily with state governments vying with one-another to achieve an open defecation free (ODF) status, he said. Hindustan Unilever CEO Sanjiv Mehta said India needs to create awareness on sanitation, besides building infrastructure. Mehta said HUL recently built a first-of-its-kind urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centre in Azad Nagar, Ghatkopar, one of the largest slums in Mumbai. The centre, named Suvidha, provides toilets, hand washing facilities with soap, clean showers, safe drinking water and laundry operations at an affordable cost. The government's aim to achieve the Swachch Bharat mission by October 2, 2019 cannot be accomplished in isolation, Mehta said. "It is imperative for all stakeholders to join hands and build partnerships to create a positive impact," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Pranab Mukherjee will go on a one-day visit to Punjab on May 2. He will be the Chief Guest at the 8th Convocation of Lovely Professional University (LPU), Chaheru, in Phagwara Sub-division of Kapurthala district, an official spokesman said today. Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnor will preside over the function, he said. It will be the President's second visit to the LPU. He had visited the varsity in 2013, also in connection with its convocation. A university release said the President will give gold medals to 38 students while 15,988 regular and distance learning students drawn from different parts of the country as well as 50 other countries will get degrees, diplomas and certificates. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The proposal to rename the iconic and Teen Murti Chowk, after Israel city 'Haifa' has been deferred, the NDMC claimed on Thursday hours after its vice chairman had announced clearance of the move. New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) Vice Chairman Karan Singh Tanwar had issued a statement that the proposal has been "unanimously" approved in today's meeting which was presided by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. A council member, who was present at the meeting, had also confirmed the development to PTI. However, hours later, the civic body issued a statement that the matter has been "deferred". "The agenda item on renaming of Teen Murti Chowk and has been deferred," the statement said. The statement by Tanwar, issued earlier, had claimed, "The Teen Murti Chowk had been renamed as Teen Murti Haifa Chowk and the had been renamed as Teen Murti Haifa Marg, as resolved unanimously by all members." The idea was proposed ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel likely in July, which will be the first by an Indian Prime Minister, as the two countries celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. The Israeli city, which these places are being considered for renaming after, was liberated from the Ottoman occupation by Indian soldiers during the First World War. A large number of Indian soldiers of the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade died during the battle to free the city and nearly 900 are buried in Israel, the official said. Every year, September 23 is celebrated as 'Haifa Day' in India and Israel as a mark of respect for the soldiers who lost their lives in the battle and to mark the end to 400 years of the Turkish control over the city. Demands to rename the two places have been made over the past few years by different organisations, including the RSS. Senior RSS functionary Indresh Kumar had demanded in 2015 that the government acknowledge the role played by the three regiments of the Indian army in the Battle of Haifa in 1918. According to the Ministry of Culture, a "wrong impression" has been built about the Teen Murti Chowk that it has something to do with Mahatma Gandhi. "The Teen Murti Chowk was named to mark the role of the three cavalry regiments. But no one knows this today. The moment people think of the Teen Murti, they think of Gandhiji's monkeys. This is a wrong impression that needs to be corrected," the ministry had earlier said. If approved, this would have been the fifth renaming of a road in less than two years in the capital, the latest being the Park Street, which was renamed earlier this month after Bangladesh's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, ahead of the country's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India. In 2015, Aurangzeb Road was renamed as APJ Abdul Kalam Road. Race Course Road, where the prime minister's residence is located, was renamed as Lok Kalyan Marg last year. Earlier this year, the civic body had renamed Dalhousie Road as Dara Shikoh Road after the elder brother of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Several Punjab leaders including Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, former CM Parkash Singh Badal, state BJP chief Vijay Sampla, today expressed grief over the demise of actor-politician Vinod Khanna. Khanna, the veteran Bollywood star and Gurdaspur BJP MP, died of cancer at a Mumbai hospital this morning. In his condolence message, the Chief Minister recalled the contribution of Khanna in the overall development of Punjab's border areas, especially the Gurdaspur district. "In the death of Vinod Khanna, Indian polity has been deprived of a fine politician and a great human being, as well as a powerful actor. The void left by him will be hard to fill," Amarinder said. Extending his heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved family, the Chief Minister said he prayed to the Almighty to give them courage to bear this tragic loss and to grant peace to the departed soul. Shiromani Akali Dal patron and former CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son and the SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal expressed shock at the demise of the Gurdaspur MP. "Vinod Khanna ji will be always remembered for the stellar role played by him in constructing bridges on the Beas and Ravi rivers. This was a real boon for the people of Gurdaspur and neighbouring areas", the former CM said. Sukhbir said in the death of Vinod Khanna, he had lost an elder associate who was always positive in his outlook and had a zeal for serving the people as well as his mother state Punjab. He said Khanna's death had left a void in Gurdaspur constituency which would be difficult to fill. Union minister and Punjab BJP chief Vijay Sampla while extending his heartfelt condolences said Khanna's death was a big loss to the party. Sampla said, "Vinod Khanna was not only a actor par excellence but he was also a mass leader who was sensitive towards the poor and needy." "Khanna was a dedicated leader who worked hard for the party. His death is an irreparable loss to the BJP and his contributions to the party and society will always be remembered. I pray that his departed soul may rest in peace," he said. Meanwhile, because of the death of BJP MP Vinod Khanna, Punjab BJP's state executive which was scheduled for April 30, has been postponed, The state Secretary BJP Punjab, Vineet Joshi, said now the state executive is rescheduled to be held on May 14 at Ludhiana. Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Kanwar Pal Singh has also expressed grief over the demise of Khanna. Punjab Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu termed the death of Vinod Khanna as a colossal loss not only for Punjab but for the entire nation. In a statement here today, the Minister said Vinod Khanna was like his elder brother from whom he imbibed the clean and honest political values. He further said that Khanna was in himself an institution of films and was a source of pride for Punjabis. He also said that Khanna was one of those rare gems who made it big in political arena also and served as Lok Sabha MP four times. Aam Aadmi Party state convener, Gurpreet Singh Waraich 'Ghuggi' said, "Vinod Khanna was one of the finest actors of his time and a generous politician but above all he was gentle soul. Indian cinema will always miss a superstar who was known for his own style of acting. As a politician, he served the people of Gurdaspur with his humbleness. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Traders in Mudalipalayam area in Tirupur district downed shutters today to protest filing of cases against residents, who had ransacked a relocated wine shop, even as the outlet was opened with police protection. Over 500 residents in Mudalipalayam area had ransacked the shop, which was relocated from the national highway and smashed liquor bottles and brought down the roof of the bar attached to it, yesterday. All this happened before the police team could arrive at the scene. Cases have been filed against 200 persons in the area for indulging in arson and ransacking the outlet, police said. Protesting against police action, traders and owners of petty shops downed shutters in the area. However, residents were in for shock, as they found the government-run liquor shop open this afternoon, with police protection. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and BJP chief on Thursday fired salvos at each other on the last day of the latter's three-day visit to the state where the saffron party wants to expand its footprint after a string of electoral successes. Shah targeted the TMC government, saying under it West Bengal had become the "most poverty stricken state" in the country, and promised to help it "flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat" once the BJP came to power there. Banerjee, who, after decimating the Left in its bastion in 2011, has been fiercely defending her turf, accused the BJP of trying to "intimidate" her party and declared she would "capture Delhi". "Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," Shah told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers in Kolkata while winding up his three-day visit to the state. The BJP chief who, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is being credited for the massive upswing in the party's fortunes, winning assembly elections in several states including Uttar Pradesh, said West Bengal was the "next" on his radar. "Ebar Bangla (West Bengal this time)...I have seen great enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win (elections) in Bengal," he added. "Only the BJP under (Narendra) Modi's leadership can provide such a government. No one else can," he claimed, adding, "Bengal will flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat." The mercurial TMC leader, who has been taking on the BJP over a variety of issues, including raids on her party leaders and their arrest in corruption cases, shot back, saying, "They (BJP) are afraid of the TMC. That is why they are trying to intimidate us. "But the TMC cannot be browbeaten. We hold our heads high. Those who challenge me...I accept the challenge. We will capture Delhi," she said, addressing a public meeting in Birpara. Apparently referring to Shah's visit to a slum in her Bhawanipur constituency in Kolkata yesterday, she said,"They come from Delhi and spread lies. They are in a hurry (to capture power in Bengal). They are threatening to unleash the CBI on TMC leaders. They cannot handle Gujarat, but they are eyeing Bengal." Rejecting Shah's claim of an impoverished West Bengal, Banerjee said,"Development is the biggest pillar of our strength in Bengal. What we can achieve, nobody can match that. Our government works for the poor. No one can match the work done by us." "India's industrial growth rate is 7 per cent, while that of Bengal is 10 per cent. India's growth rate in the service sector is 9 per cent, while that of Bengal is 13.99 per cent." Banerjee took a dig at Shah, who had lunch in a Dalit household in Naxalbari a couple of days back, saying, "Lunch at a Dalit household and dinner at a five star hotel...We do not believe in such photo-ops." Renewing her charge that the BJP incited people in the name of religion, she asked them to not align with the saffron party. "We work for all the religions, castes, communities," she said, alleging that the BJP was "trying to destroy" West Bengal by its "divisive politics". Shah, on the other hand, accused the Mamata Banerjee government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". The BJP leaders have been accusing the state government of orchestrating "atrocities" on Hindus and appeasing the minority community. With the political fortunes of Congress and the Left in a free fall, the BJP has been trying to claim their space in the eastern state. Although BJP's vote share in West Bengal dipped since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from 17.5 per cent to 10.2 per cent in the 2016 Assembly polls, the party won three seats for the first time contesting on its own in the state. Earlier it had polled around 4.06 per cent votes in 2011. In the 2016 Assembly polls, BJP garnered around 56 lakh votes, up from 19.5 lakh in 2011. In the state where the party hardly had any presence a few years ago, its candidates had polled more than 10,000 votes in 262 out of 294 Assembly segments. A multi-pronged approach is needed to augment the performance of ports in South Asian region, a World Bank report today said. It also suggested encouraging private sector participation in the ports sector. The report said several of the ports -- including India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Mundra ports, Sri Lanka's Colombo port and Pakistan's Qasim -- improved their performance. On the other hand, two other Indian ports like Mumbai and Tuticorin were much behind in terms of performance. A promising three-pronged approach for improving performance in the region would include encouraging private sector participation, strengthening governance of port authorities' boards and promoting competition between and within ports through transparent and competitive concession bidding, a World Bank report on "Competitiveness of South Asia's Container Ports" said today. It said some ports "such as Colombo, Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Mundra, and Qasim, improved the use of their facilities between 2000 and 2010. Others, such as Mumbai and Tuticorin, fell further behind." It said Colombo, which also improved its operational performance during this period by almost halving the share of idle time at berth, ranked as one of the top South Asian ports in 2010 in terms of operational and economic performance. "Chittagong and Kolkata, which performed well in terms of the use of their facilities in 2010, ranked poorly on operational performance, with the longest vessel turnaround times in the region," it said. South Asia's trade almost doubled in the past decade, with trade as a percentage of GDP increasing by 18 percentage points between 2000 and 2014. Since 2000, the region has also enjoyed the second- highest economic growth in the world (after East Asia), growing at an average annual rate of 6.8 percent. The report said, "Despite this progress, trade accounted for a smaller share of GDP in South Asia (47 percent) than in East Asia (55 per cent) in 2014, and South Asia's economic competitiveness continued to lag behind that of other regions. Global indicators, such as the Global Competitiveness Report, point to shortcomings in the institutional, business, and investment environments and highlight concerns that the region may not have the infrastructure needed to compete more successfully in the global economy, the report added. In all countries in the region except Sri Lanka, such indicators rank inadequate infrastructure among the most problematic factors for doing business. "Weak transport and logistics services, including slow expansion of port capacity, contribute to South Asia's lack of competitiveness. On the 2014 Logistics Performance Index, South Asia trails both East Asia and middle-income countries in logistics performance, particularly in the infrastructure component," the report said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe arrived at Udaipur today on a three-day personal visit. He will be in the city till April 29. The Sri Lankan prime minister is slated to attend a wedding ceremony here. Wickremesinghe was welcomed at Dabok Airport by Udaipur Divisional Commissioner Bhawani Singh, who presented him with a bouquet of flowers. A troop of Rajasthani folk dancers was also there at the airport to greet the visiting dignitary. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A suspected burglar has died after the police shot at him, and then donated blood to save his life. The Delhi police spotted Nitin, alias Sonu (24), and Salman when they were allegely attempting a burglary in the Prashant Vihar area of Rohini early yesterday. The police said Sonu opened fire at the police party and in retaliation, the police fired at him. Salman managed to flee, but Sonu fell when he was hit by five bullets. He had bullet injuries on his leg, lower back and arms. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life. But Sonu died last night, DCP (Rohini) Rishi Pal said. Doctors at the hospital said that he required four units of blood, which were provided by the four policemen, including the SHO of Prashant Vihar SS Rathee and constable Ashok, who took part in the shootout. Pal said that the policemen told him that while firing at the suspect was a part of their duty, donating blood was a "humanitarian duty". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Telangana legislature would meet on April 30 to take up amendments to the land acquisition act passed by it last year. The Legislature Secretariat today sent out a communication about the meeting to all members of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. The meeting, expected to be held for a day, would take up amendments suggested by the Centre to the Land Acquisition Act passed by the state legislature, sources said. The meeting would be part of the Budget session, which was held in March, as the legislature has not been prorogued. The legislature had last met on April 16 for passing the bill to hike reservations for backward sections among Muslims and STs. The Legislative Assembly had passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Telangana Amendment) Bill, 2016 in last December. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Online propaganda videos on Jihad inspired Nazim Shamshad Shah, the suspected ISIS member who was arrested last week during a nation-wide sweep, and he wanted to do some "sabotage work", investigators today claimed. "He was impressed by Jihadi thoughts while watching some video clips on Facebook and started chatting (online) on the topic," an official of Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad said here. Shah was arrested from Mumbra in neighbouring Thane in a joint operation of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh ATS as a part of a multi-agency nationwide crack-down on April 20. Three others were arrested from Punjab, UP and Bihar. Shah had come to Mumbra from Bijnour in UP for a job three months ago, the ATS officer added. He wanted to do some "sabotage work" and his local connections were being investigated, said the official. Investigation also revealed that Shah had worked in Saudi Arabia in two stints. First he worked as a plumber in Damam for two years and then at "Habab in Makkah" in 2015, the official added. While in Saudi, he was arrested by local police in a passport-related case and jailed for 18 days. He was then deported to India. Currently he is in the custody of UP police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A sub-adult tiger that went missing from Umred-Karhandala Wildlife Sanctuary near here last week, has died of electrocution in Kothurna village in Chandrapur district, a top state forest official said today. The tiger died after it came in contact with an electric fence, put up by a farmer in the village. The farmer was today arrested by the forest department, the official said. "The deceased tiger, identified as T-10 and named Shriniwas, had gone missing since April 20. The forest department had launched a search operation, in which his radio collar was found in Kothurna village on the same day," Maharashtra principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife), Shree Bhagwan, said. Thereafter, the forest authorities started meticulously scanning the area near which the radio collar was found, he said. "The forest team today came across tiger droppings in the area. The officials grew suspicious and questioned a farmer, who owns a farm nearby," the official said. "During the questioning, the farmer Mahadev Irpate admitted that the tiger had died last week after it came in contact with the electric fence he has put around his farm. He also told the forest officials that when he found the tiger dead, he removed his collar and threw it somewhere and thereafter buried the carcass nearby," Bhagwan said. Shriniwas was an offspring of tiger Jai, who has also gone missing since last year from Umred-Karhandla wildlife sanctuary, the official said. The process to exhume the carcass is on and further investigation is being carried out, Bhagwan said. He, however, made it clear that it cannot be called a case of poaching. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he will not pull out from the NAFTA treaty for now but will swiftly begin renegotiating the trilateral deal with them, a White House statement said. Trump spoke with both President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada over phone and decided to not terminate North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the White House said. NAFTA is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico and the US to create a trilateral trade bloc in North America. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honour to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," Trump said according to a readout of the call issued by the White House. "Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said. The announcement comes amid reports that the US is planning to withdraw itself from the trilateral trade bloc. A draft executive order was in the final stages of review and could be unveiled within a week or two, two White House officials were quoted by Politico website. The New York Times recently quoted an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump is likely to sign an executive action that would begin the process of withdrawing the US from NAFTA. "The White House wants Congress to approve those negotiations under legislation that would allow expedited approval of the reworked agreement, but talks between administration officials and congressional Republicans have moved slowly. The order would give Trump a credible alternative," the daily reported. During his entire presidential campaign, Trump has been very critical of NAFTA, which came into force in 1994. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The White House is giving the Pentagon greater flexibility to determine the number of US troops in Iraq and Syria, in another move by President Donald Trump to shift greater power to his military leaders. The decision will give Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to send more forces into Syria, to assist US-backed local troops as they move to retake Raqqa from the Islamic State group, which has used the city as a de facto capital. It will also let him adjust the force numbers in Iraq, in the ongoing fight to oust IS from Mosul and stabilize it as the rebuilding begins. The Pentagon has already been making quiet, incremental additions to the troop levels in both countries in recent months, adding hundreds of Marines in Syria to provide artillery support, and sending more advisers into Iraq to work with units closer to the fight in Mosul. Those moves were done with White House approval, but without any formal adjustment to the longstanding troop caps that had been set by the Obama administration. Dana White, chief spokesperson for the Pentagon, said Wednesday that Mattis has not made any changes yet to the current authorised force levels. Under the Obama White House, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that forced commanders to get approvals for routine tactical decisions and personnel moves, and provide justification for any troops sent into war zones. Commanders have argued that they should be able to determine troop deployments based on the military capabilities they believe are needed at any given time. The new authority will provide greater transparency about the actual number of US forces in Iraq and Syria after several years of public confusion about the accurate totals. Under the Obama-mandated caps, the US was limited to 503 officially deployed troops in Syria, and 5,262 in Iraq. The Pentagon, however, has closer to 7,000 in Iraq, and hundreds more than the cap in Syria, but doesn't count them because they are on temporary duty or not counted under specific personnel rules. The change, however, could trigger concerns particularly in Iraq, where there are political sensitivities about the footprint of American and coalition troops and fears about occupation forces. Officials worry that if they publicly acknowledge there are thousands more troops there, it could fuel opposition and problems for the Iraqi government. Trump's decision applies only to the two countries, and so far does not affect Afghanistan, although that change has also been discussed. "This does not represent a change in our mission in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIS," said White, using another name for the Islamic State group. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump tempered his agreement to renegotiate NAFTA today with a warning that the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico would be terminated if there is no "fair deal." Trump campaigned for president on promises to scrap NAFTA, calling it "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed" and a "disaster" that has resulted in millions of US industrial jobs lost mostly to Mexico. But yesterday, the White House said Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time" during calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Today, Trump confirmed that was the case. "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate," the president tweeted. "I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible!" NAFTA was established January 1, 1994 under then- president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The US trade deficit in goods and services last year with Mexico was USD 62 billion, but with Canada the US had a surplus of USD 8 billion. of Trump's softened position soothed fears of a possible trade war and sent most Asian markets up today. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Police today arrested two drug peddlers and recovered around 1,870 banned medicinal tablets from their possession. The accused were arrested near Roli village in Moga district, police said. The duo has been booked under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and investigation is underway, they said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid Intelligence warning that an ISI-trained group in the garb of Hindu seers might strike prominent religious sites in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister has called for the construction of boundary walls around the holy spots. The priest-turned-politician also asked the officials concerned to ensure laying of 4-lane road connecting famous temples for the convenience of visitors. Adityanath, the Hindu hardline leader who took over as chief minister of the most populous state over a month ago, gave the directive at a presentation of Religious Endowment Department here late last night. Assistant Superintendent of Police (Security), Mathura, Siddharth Verma said they had received information that terrorists dressed as 'sadhus' could enter the state to carry out attacks. The pilgrim town of Mathura is a sensitive area as it is situated along the state's border with Rajasthan and Haryana, prompting police to instal metal detectors, X-ray machines and CCTV cameras at vantage places, as well as carry out surprise checks at night shelters, guest houses and hotels. "Checking is being done daily and undercover police personnel are keeping a watch at public areas after reports that a group of 20-25 men dressed as seers are planning to attack important places, especially pilgrim centres, in Uttar Pradesh," Verma told PTI. The group, allegedly trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been directed to target Ayodhya, Varanasi, Vrindavan, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, he said. "All district police chiefs and Railway superintendents of police have been informed about the threat. We are coordinating with other agencies to thwart such attempts," UP anti-terror squad Inspector General Asim Arun said. Central Intelligence agencies have been sharing inputs with the UP Police since February about increased activity of terrorists in the state. According to the latest alert, the ISI is planning to launch attacks in the northern state under the code name 'Operation Krishna India'. "The agency (ISI) has reportedly trained the group for months to familiarise them with Hindu religious practices. Members of the module are planning to enter UP through the Nepal border in the guise of seers," the reports said. In February, Intelligence agencies in the state were tipped off about four dozen terrorists sneaking into UP through the porous border with Nepal. Uttar Pradesh shares a 599.3 km open border with Nepal touching seven districts - Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Sravasti, Balrampur, Sidhharth nagar and Maharajganj. "As per the Intelligence inputs, the group has also been trained by Pakistan's ISI in Hindu religious practices, and might try to blend with the local populace before carrying out deadly strikes at prominent religious sites and other sensitive spots," police said. The Intelligence agencies had picked up intercepts through electronic surveillance in which youths were heard discussing the deaths of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) men in Telangana as well as IS suspect Saifullah in Lucknow. A Khurasan module was busted after Saifullah's death last month. Recently, some self-radicalised youths were also arrested by the UP Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). In 2016, eight suspected members of SIMI had tried to evade the police by adornig saffron robes in Madhya Pradesh. The men were later killed in a police encounter. The US has raised 'serious concerns' over its citizens who are either detained or missing in Iran, urging the Middle East country to 'immediately release' them so that they can reunite with their families. The development comes on sidelines of April 25 meeting of the Joint Commission overseeing implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in Vienna, where the US delegation raised serious concerns with the Iranian side regarding the cases of US citizens "detained and missing in Iran", said State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner. "The US delegation had called on Iran to immediately release these US citizens so they can be reunited with their families," he said. According to reports, US citizen Siamak Namazi has been 'unjustly' detained in Iran since October 2015 and his 81- year-old father Baquer Namazi, also a US citizen, has been detained in Iran since February 2016, Toner said. Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer Namazi are serving 10-year prison sentences in Iran. Iran does not recognise dual nationality. Also, the Middle Eastern country rarely allows consular visits to dual nationals in its jails. "The United States is deeply concerned about reports of their declining health and well-being in detention. The United States urges Iran to immediately release Siamak and Baquer on humanitarian grounds," Toner said in a statement. He also expressed concern over Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran 10 years ago while on an unauthorised CIA mission. "It has also been more than a decade since Robert Levinson disappeared from Iran's Kish Island. Iran is committed to cooperating with the United States in bringing Bob home and we call on Iran to fulfil this commitment. "The United States remains unwavering in its efforts to return Bob to his family," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers. The Trump administration has launched an investigation into the impact of aluminum dumping by countries like China and Russia citing a threat to US national security. "Imports have been flooding into the aluminum industry," the US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at a White House conference. Ross said this is in reaction to real world conditions that imports of aluminum have been increasing steadily in recent years, while American producers have experienced cuts in their jobs and plants have been shut down. The US President Donald Trump will sign an order later today directing the Commerce Department to complete the investigation as "soon as possible" of dumping. China, the world's top producer and consumer of the metal, is expected to be the worst hit by this executive action. Since 2015, as many as eight smelters have shut down in the US as a result of influx of foreign aluminum. The metal is in high demand in the US defence industry, particular for building high-tech planes like F-35, F-16 and C-17. The investigation will determine if there is sufficient domestic aluminum capacity to meet US defence needs, Ross said. Although he said China was a major contributor to the global excess capacity in aluminum production, he said imports from other countries, including Russia, were also causing problems. "The problem we have is there's only one American smelter that produces the high-purity aluminum needed for these uses. Just one. And that company has been having some problems. They, in fact, filed a trade case against dumping on their own," Ross said. "Imports have been flooding into the aluminum industry," Ross said. The US imported more than 6.5 million metric tonnes of aluminum in 2016 for use in the auto industry, construction and a variety of other sectors. Canada was by far the biggest foreign supplier, with shipments totaling more than 3 million tons, followed by Russia (755,545 tonnes), the United Arab Emirates (557,723 tonnes) and China (518,773 tonnes). US companies also exported nearly 3 million tonnes of aluminum last year, down slightly from previous years. The biggest destinations were Mexico (764,488 tonnes), China (730,355 tonnes) and Canada (688,427 tonnes), followed by South Korea and Vietnam. The investigation mirrors a probe the Commerce Department launched last week focusing on the steel industry. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Venezuela has said it was quitting the Organization of American States in anger at pressure from the bloc over the government's handling of a violent political crisis. Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez yesterday said the government would launch a two-year process to pull out of the Washington-based regional diplomatic grouping. "Tomorrow, as President Nicolas Maduro has instructed, we will present a letter of complaint to the OAS and we will begin a process that will take 24 months," she said in a televised address. The OAS and other international authorities have voiced concern about the state of democracy in Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro is resisting opposition pressure to remove him from office. So far this month, 28 people have been killed, several of them shot, in anti-government protests that have erupted into clashes with riot police. Yesterday, the permanent council of the 35-nation OAS upped the ante by taking its discussions about Venezuela to a higher level. Its members agreed by a majority of 19 to hold a meeting of their foreign ministers to discuss the crisis, the bloc said in a statement. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has previously branded Maduro, an elected socialist, a "dictator" for stifling the opposition. Maduro's government has bristled against what it says is international interference in its affairs. Rodriguez branded the OAS an "interventionist coalition" led by Washington. "Venezuela will not take part in future in any activity or event where there is an intention to take a position of interventionism or interference," she said. Venezuela has suffered an economic collapse fueled by a plunge in international prices for its crucial oil exports. A vocal critic of the United States, Maduro says the economic crisis is due to a US-backed capitalist conspiracy. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the early 80s, his fans were shocked when debonair Vinod Khanna announced that he was quitting Bollywood and following his spiritual Guru Osho Rajnish. "His spiritual foray coincided with the time the actor and his then wife Geetanjali developed differences. Vinod Khanna chose to shift base from the lights of tinsel town to Koregaon Park (where Rajnish's ashram was located) in Pune," veteran film journalist Dilip Thakur told PTI. "He left the film industry, to make a comeback a few years later with Mukul Anand's "Insaaf". But when he announced the decision to quit Bollywood while he was at the peak of his career, his fans, who were in love with his trademark swagger and suave personality, were taken aback," Thakur reminisced. ""Insaaf" got a terrific success as Khanna had a dedicated audience," he said, recalling the film career of the actor who today lost battle with bladder carcinoma at the age of 70. "He had a flourishing career but decided to follow the path of spirituality," Thakur said. Thakur recalled that in 1982, Khanna had called a press conference, alongside wife Geetanjali and sons Akshay and Rahul, and announced to astonished journalists that he was quitting the industry to join the spiritual guru as his disciple. The actor rechristened himself Swami Vinod Bharti during the period, and also followed Rajnish to Oregon commune in the US. Later, Khanna was candid enough to declare that he made his comeback only to ensure financial security, Thakur said. Khanna was also among the first crop of actors to endorse a brand, Thakur said, recalling the response his Cinthol advertisement received. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Didi Chuxing, China's top ride-hailing firm, is set to become the country's second-most valuable privately owned company, with a valuation of more than $50 billion, through a fund raising round of up to $6 billion, sources said on Thursday. The valuation represents a jump from Didi's $34 billion price tag in August, when it agreed to acquire Uber Technology Inc's China business, and also puts it closer to the U.S. firm's $68 billion. It also propels Didi well above Xiaomi Inc, which held the title of China's most valuable startup after a 2014 funding round valued the smartphone maker at $46 billion. Ant Financial, China's most valuable private internet finance firm and an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is valued upwards of $60 billion. The funding round has drawn investors including Japan's Softbank Group Corp, private equity firm Silver Lake, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications, two people familiar with the matter said. They declined to be identified because they are not authorised to speak publicly. Didi Chuxing, Silver Lake and Softbank declined to comment, while China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The people said that part of the latest capital investment in Didi would be used for international expansion. Didi has sealed several overseas partnerships, focusing on intelligent driving, such as making use of artificial intelligence, as well as similar ride-hailing services. The firm is ramping up overseas activity as regulatory changes are set to take a toll on their local service. Draft rules released in October would slash the number of eligible drivers and double fares for users in major cities, the company has said. Since Uber exited the Chinese market last year following a drawn-out rivalry with Didi, the Chinese firm has sought to expand in Latin America, leading a $100 million investment in Brazilian ride-hailing service 99 in January. Last month it officially opened a lab researching artificial intelligence-related driving technologies in Silicon Valley in the United States. The company has previously entered a range of strategic agreements with U.S. tech firms including Lyft, TripAdvisor Inc and Udacity. (Reporting by Julie Zhu and Cate Cadell; writing by Kim Miyoung; editing by Stephen Coates and Neil Fullick) (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Alex Lawler and Bate Felix PARIS (Reuters) - OPEC wants oil inventories to decline further and is working to ensure a policy-setting meeting in May reaches consensus, the group's secretary-general said on Thursday in comments pointing to an extension of a global supply cut. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers originally agreed to curb production by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) for six months from Jan. 1 to support the market. Oil prices have gained support from the pact but a supply glut has been slow to shift, limiting their increase. As a result, OPEC members including top exporter Saudi Arabia have signalled support for extending the deal at a May 25 meeting. OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo, speaking at a conference in Paris, and other officials from OPEC countries said the oil market was moving towards a balance between supply and demand with the help of the agreement. "While it is evident that the market rebalancing is now moving forward and investment specifically in short-cycle projects is returning, it is essential we do not take our eyes off our desired goals," Barkindo said. "We need to see the global stock overhang move closer to its five-year average." Barkindo did not comment directly on whether the cut would be extended, but he said efforts were under way led by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who is OPEC president in 2017, to get a consensus before ministers meet next month in Vienna. "We are confident that the collaborative effort of Minister Khalid al-Falih and other ministers ... will eventually facilitate a successful conclusion of the meeting in Vienna on the 25th," Barkindo said. Falih met his Azeri counterpart Natig Aliyev and both agreed to support continuing the production cut agreement that was signed in December, the Saudi Energy Ministry said on its Twitter account on Thursday. His views were echoed by the oil ministers of OPEC members Iraq and Angola, and the head of Saudi Arabia's state oil company, who were also attending the Paris conference. Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said production cuts were gradually leading to a long-awaited rebalancing of the market. The output curbs, two-thirds of which are from OPEC producers, are aimed at clearing a supply glut that has depressed oil prices. Iraq last year asked to be exempt from cutting output, raising doubts over whether it would comply with the OPEC deal or wish to extend it. But Luaibi said on Thursday Baghdad would go with the consensus reached by OPEC. Angola's oil minister, Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, said he believed the deal would be extended beyond June. OPEC and the outside producers are trying to erode a glut that is keeping prices at less than half the level of mid-2014, cutting producer oil income and reducing investment in new fields. "The market is moving toward rebalancing," Amin Nasser, chief executive of state oil giant Saudi Aramco, said at the event. "I see the oil market pointing upward and expect it to continue improving." The International Energy Agency said in its latest monthly market report that oil stocks in industrialised countries stood at around 3.06 billion barrels at the end of February, a figure that mostly includes crude and oil products. Stocks were some 336 million barrels above the five-year average, the Paris-based IEA said. (Additional reporting by Reem Shamseddine, Writing by Rania El Gamal and Ahmad Ghaddar, Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans) (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with neighboring Canada and Mexico was "very possible," but he threatened to scrap the pact if the countries failed to reach a "fair deal for all." "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate," Trump wrote on Twitter. "I agreed ... subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible!" Trump has repeatedly vowed to pull out from the 23-year-old trade pact if he cannot renegotiate better terms for the United States, which went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Trump's comments came one day after he told the leaders of Canada and Mexico that he would not end the trade agreement now. White House officials had earlier said the administration was considering efforts to withdraw. On Wednesday, the White House said Trump had spoken with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time. "The leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," it added. The three North American countries form one of the world's biggest trading blocs, and disruptions among them could wreak havoc in the auto, agricultural and other industries. The Mexican and Canadian currencies maintained their rebound early on Thursday after Trump's latest comments. The U.S. dollar dropped nearly 0.3 percent against its Canadian counterpart and about 1 percent against the peso. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday that numerous "conceptual flaws" in the treaty needed to be addressed. "NAFTA needs tightening," Ross said, adding that more should be done to ensure that participants in the bloc have a trade advantage over other countries. (Reporting by Susan Heavey and Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order to pull the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a senior administration official said on Wednesday, a move that could unravel one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The news, first reported by Politico shortly before midday, rattled financial markets and could raise tensions ahead of negotiations to update the NAFTA pact between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Mexico's peso and Canada's dollar spiralled lower against the U.S. dollar, with the peso shedding about 1.5 percent in just over an hour, while Canada's "loonie" lost about 0.45 percent. Stocks in both U.S. neighbours also weakened, with Mexico's benchmark IPC index falling more than 1 percent in 15 minutes. A disruption in trade between the three NAFTA partners could wreak havoc in the auto sector and other industries, hitting profits at companies that have benefited from zero-level tariffs and Mexico's relatively low labour costs. "To totally abandon that agreement means that those gains are lost," said Paul Ferley, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Scrapping NAFTA would also hit U.S. farmers whose exports to Mexico have grown under NAFTA. Chicago Board of Trade corn futures fell 5 cents a bushel. Trump has repeatedly vowed to pull out from the 23-year-old trade pact if he is unable to renegotiate it with better terms for America. He has long accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs. The United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Trump has stopped short of a formal threat to kill NAFTA so far, but legal experts say he likely has the authority as president to give a 60-day notice that America is exiting the pact. It was under an executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 23 that the United States pulled out of the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Details about the draft order on NAFTA were not immediately available. But Trump has faced some setbacks since he took office in January, including a move by courts to block parts of his orders to limit immigration. Withdrawing from NAFTA would enable him to say he delivered on one of his key campaign promises, but it could also hurt him. "Mr. President, America's corn farmers helped elect you," the National Corn Growers Association said in a statement. "Withdrawing from NAFTA would be disastrous for American agriculture." Mexico had expected to start NAFTA renegotiations in August but the possible executive order could add urgency to the timeline. The Mexican government had no comment on the draft order. The country's foreign minister said on Tuesday that Mexico would walk away from the negotiating table rather than accept a bad deal. Trump recently ramped up his criticism of Canada and this week ordered 20 percent tariffs on imports of Canadian softwood lumber, setting a tense tone as the three countries prepared to renegotiate the pact. Canada said it was ready to come to talks on renewing NAFTA at any time. "At this moment NAFTA negotiations have not started. Canada is ready to come to the table at any time," said Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto, David Ljunggren in Ottawa,; Rodrigo Campos in New York and Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Writing by Jason Lange; Editing by Tom Brown) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) When you hear the word Google, you first associate it with search. When you disagree with someone over a fact, Google it. You want to know where to go on vacation, Google it. You want to know what a company does, Google it. 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 Archived Results for 2009 Newer Older Entries Page 1 Page 2 Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna passed away on Thursday morning at the age of 70 after prolonged illness. The veteran actor was hospitalised in HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Girgaum on March 31 after complaining of severe dehydration. A photo of the actor was circulating the internet where he looked frail and thin which sparked rumours that he was suffering from bladder cancer. However, Khanna's sons said that their father was stable and recovering. The star reportedly died in the early hours of Thursday. Achievements Born on October 6, 1946 he has been starred in many films like Amar Akbar Anthony and The Burning Train. He made his acting debut with Mann Ka Meet in 1968. He went on to win numerous awards, including the Filmfare award for best supporting actor for Haath ki Safaai and in 1999, the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award, and again in 2007 he won a lifetime achievement award at the Zee Cine Awards. He was seen in more than 100 films between 1968 and 2013. However, in 1982 he decided to quit the film industry in his peak years and follow his guru Osho Rajneesh. After a five year break, he returned to make hit movies like Insaaf and Satyamev Jayate. Tryst with politics Khanna joined politics in 1997 and got elected from Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab in the Lok Sabha polls. In 2002, during the time of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, he became Union minister for culture and tourism. Six months later, in January 2003, he became a Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs. Khanna lost the 2009 election, but was re-elected from Gurdaspur in 2014. He was one of the first from Bollywood fraternity to have joined politics, in 1997. Biggest hits Vinod Khanna acted in several top Bolywood hits in the 70s and 80s such as Mere Apne, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Gaddaar (1973 film), Jail Yatra, Imitihaan, Inkaar, Kuchhe Dhaage, Amar Akbar Anthony alongside Amitabh Bachan and Rishi Kapoor, Rajput, Qurbani, Kudrat, Dayavan, Kaarnama,Suryaa: An Awakening, Jurm and many others. He was last seen in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer 'Dilwale' in 2015. Vinod Khanna has four children - Rahul Khanna, Akshaye Khanna, Sakshi Khanna and Shraddha Khanna. Loss for the film industry The film fraternity are sending messages of condolences to the actor's family and expressing the loss to the film industry. Bollywood film director and TV personality Karan Johar tweeted: His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... - Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 27, 2017 Rishi Kapoor paid tribute to him on Twitter calling him Amar for Vinod Khanna's iconic role in the movie Amar, Akbar, Antony: Will miss you Amar. RIP. pic.twitter.com/WC0zt71R4J - Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 playback singer, Asha Bhosle took to twitter to express her condolences: Very sad to hear about Vinod Khannaji. A decent man and a star till the very end. My condolences to his family. - ashabhosle (@ashabhosle) April 27, 2017 Much before we knew the word Swag, he had it. Go Well Sir. Enjoy your new Journey. We will miss you. #VinodKhanna - Anubhav Sinha (@anubhavsinha) April 27, 2017 Hindi film actress Richa Chadha says: RIP #VinodKhanna sir. You were the fantasy of most women in the northern India through the 1980s. You shall be missed by one and all ???? - TheRichaChadha (@RichaChadha_) April 27, 2017 German model and actress Evelyn Sharma expressed her love and respect on twitter: Sad to hear about the demise of #VinodKhanna ???? Sending lots of love and prayers to his family... - Evelyn Sharma (@evelyn_sharma) April 27, 2017 MP of Lok Sabha from Mumbai, Milind Murli Deora expressed his support to the Khanna family: RIP Vinod uncle: a legend on & off the screen. So many fond memories. Heartfelt condolences to Akshaye, @R_Khanna & the family#VinodKhanna - Milind Deora (@milinddeora) April 27, 2017 Bollywood's most celebratedIndian film director, Anubhav Sinha tweeted:Apart from the film fraternity, even the Indian Finance Minister shared his condolences: Reliance Industries on Wednesday said it has signed a deal with Germany's Resysta to produce in India an alternative to wood that can be used to make wood-like furniture and other material. The move will help bring to India a unique composite of natural fibres, polymers and a specialised blend to create an alternative to wood which will help save forests while also offering durable, waterproof and recyclable raw material. Reliance said "it has entered into a licence agreement with Resysta International GmbH (Resysta) which gives the company exclusive rights of production and marketing of RelWood, a natural fibre polymer composite (NFPC), in India". This compound will be the raw material for the production of sheets and various profiles used in a wide range of wood and plywood replacement applications, the company said in a statement. Wood today finds applications from furniture to toys. But this comes at a price -- the price of barren land and tree stumps that are left behind. Now, after years of innovative engineering and research a product has been created, a product that doesn't just save the trees, but also gives the ability to carry on the craft of woodworking. RelWood is a superior product that looks like wood, feels like wood but is much stronger and durable. Its ?production does not require any trees to be felled and is also economical compared to natural wood. RelWood is made out of environmentally friendly resins comprising natural silicates, polymer and specialised blend of additives. It is an attractive, sustainable not plastic alternative to wood. Its unique properties include water resistant, fire retardant, UV and termite resistant, bend and molding flexibility. Vipul Shah, COO Petchem, RIL, said "Through this strategic partnership with Resysta, RIL is looking forward to produce the RelWood compound exclusively in order to meet the fast-growing demand of real alternative to tropical wood." In what could be called a significant recovery of antiques, the Central Armed Police Force Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) on Wednesday seized a 500-year-old idol of Lord Vishnu, estimated worth Rs 45 crore, from Siliguri. The Historical Department of North Bengal has confirmed the idol as Vaisnava icon. It is a rare metal sculpture of Gour/Netai. The SSB today issued a press statement saying, "The idol was dispatched for examination by Historical Department of North Bengal, University of North Bengal. The experts confirmed that the image indicates the prevalence of Chaitanya Vaisnavism in Bengal. The Vaisnava 'Lanchhana' on the forehead of the figure indicates that it is undoubtedly Vaisnava icon." The SSB had received specific input about the movement of smuggler after which it conducted a joint operation with Customs and apprehended the accused. During preliminary interrogation, the accused revealed that this idol was stolen by him with the involvement of one of his accomplice from Tikka Batti temple, purnia, Bihar, nearly two months ago. The SSB said that the accused had contacted dealers of antique in grey market based in Nepal so that this idol could be disposed off to someone willing to pay a good price. However, before he could materialize the deal with dealers based in Nepal, the accused was intercepted and arrested by the personnel of SSB and Customs while he was on his way to Nepal. A thriving network of smugglers keeps stealing antique idols from temples in Bihar. They sell them in Nepal from where they are sent to other countries in the East and West, where collectors buy them at very high prices. After taking a slew of administrative decisions to improve law and order situation in the state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has now decided to roll out a new central family planning scheme - Mission Parivar Vikas - to address maternal and infant mortalities in Uttar Pradesh. The Economic Times on Wednesday reported that the state government has devised a new strategy to drive home the message of family planning in its most populous districts. Read Also: Uttar Pradesh govt cancels 15 holidays on birth, death anniversaries of VIPs The government has decided to place free condom boxes at strategic locations in cities and villages, a kit for newly wed couples with packs of condoms, emergency contraceptive pills and a pregnancy testing kit. It will also organise saas-bahu sammelans to create awareness about the family planning. Yogi Adityanath's latest move is in accordance with the Central government's direction that had asked the then Chief Minister, Akhilesh Yadav, to develop a strategy where vulnerable districts in the state could be targeted for intensive and improved family planning services. Read Also: Yogi Adityanath completes a month as UP CM: Here are the top decisions he took Former CM Akhilesh Yadav ignored the Centre's instruction which was related to findings of the Central Health Ministry. However, the new Chief Minister has shown his commitment to improve healthcare system in the state. Last year in September, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare identified 145 high focus districts having the highest total fertility rates in the country. These 145 districts are in the seven states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Assam - that constitute 44 per cent of the country's population. These districts were identified based on total fertility rate and service delivery for immediate, special and accelerated efforts to reach the replacement level fertility goals of 2.1 by 2025. The Health Ministry said that the data suggested that these 145 districts had total fertility rates of more than/equal to 3.0 (56 per cent of the 261 districts in the seven states) and are home to 28 per cent of India's population. "These districts have a substantial impact on maternal and child health indicators as about 25-30 per cent of maternal deaths and 50 per cent of infant deaths occur in these districts," the Health Ministry had said. According to the reports, a new contraceptive injection is being rolled out, where women opting for it will be paid an incentive of Rs 100 per shot. "Nearly 47,000 nurses and Asha workers would be trained to give these injectables," ET reported. The Supreme Court today extended till June 19 the parole of Sahara chief Subrata Roy with a warning that failure to meet the deadline of June 15 for payment of Rs 1,500 crore would land him in prison once again. Roy, who in compliance with the last order appeared before the court, was told by the apex court that he has to frequently make the payments as per the roadmap approved by the court or face further imprisonment. The Sahara chief gave an undertaking to a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that he would deposit Rs 1,500 crore by June 15 and another payment of Rs 552.22 crore by July 15 in the SEBI-Sahara account and filed an affidavit. The apex court warned Roy that he may be sent to jail again if the amount is not paid. In a related development, the bench, which also comprised Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, ordered the arrest of Chennai-based Prakash Swamy, who failed to deposit Rs 10 crore as per the last order. He will serve one month-jail for contempt of court. Swamy had filed an affidavit on behalf a foreign firm expressing his intent to buy Sahara's New York-based hotel. He had failed to comply with the apex court's direction to show his bonafide by depositing the amount in court to establish his intention to buy the property. The bench also allowed the Sahara group to make electronic payment through RTGS in the Sebi-Sahara account on or before June 15. The apex court directed Roy to remain personally present on June 19, the next date of hearing. It asked the Official Liquidator of Bombay High Court to prepare terms and conditions for auctioning the Aamby Valley property for its approval on June 19. Irked over non-submission of money, the Supreme Court had on April 17 decided to sell Rs 34,000 crore worth properties of the Sahara Group at the Aamby Valley and had sought Roy's presence before it. Making its mind clear, the bench had said the court may rethink about varying the interim order of bail and consider sending the contemnor (Roy and others) to custody. It had also cautioned Roy from playing with the court's order and said non-compliance of its order would invite the wrath of the law. The court had agreed to the amicus curiae's suggestion that Official Liquidator (OL) of the Bombay High Court be directed to conduct the sale. Taking serious note of Roy's parole extension, it had said he should have been taken into custody after conducting last rites of his mother and "indulgence" was granted for repayment of money in the SEBI-Sahara account. The bench had also taken strong note of the affidavit of Prakash Swamy, power of attorney holder of MG Capital Holdings LLC, New York, USA, that there was difficulty to go with the transaction of purchasing Sahara's Hotel Plaza. It had taken note of the fact that the company did not deposit Rs 750 crore with the SEBI Sahara Refund Account to show its bonafide in purchasing the Hotel Plaza, valued at USD 550 million. It had directed Swamy to deposit Rs 10 crore within ten days, failing which non-bailable arrest warrant would be issued against him. The apex court had on April 6 warned the Group that if it failed to deposit Rs 5092.6 crore in SEBI-Sahara refund account by April 17 in pursuance of its order, it will be "compelled" to auction its property at the Aamby Valley. The court had on November 28 last year asked Roy to deposit Rs 600 crore more by February 6 in the refund account to remain out of jail and warned that failure to do so would result in his return to prison. It had on May 6, 2016 granted a four-week parole to Roy to attend the funeral of his mother. His parole has been extended by the court ever since. Roy was sent to Tihar jail on March 4, 2014. Besides Roy, two other directors -- Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary -- were also arrested for failure of two group companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL) -- to comply with the court's August 31, 2012 order to return Rs 24,000 crore to their investors. Director Vandana Bhargava was not taken into custody. Sebi chief Ajay Tyagi on Wednesday said that the initial share sale of NSE will "take time" as co-location issues need to be sorted out while a decision is likely soon on the exchange's appointment of Vikram Limaye as new CEO. Limaye, currently chief of IDFC, was selected by the board of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in February. The exchange has already received approval from shareholders and board on the appointment of Limaye as new Managing Director and CEO of the NSE. Now, the bourse is awaiting Sebi nod. Asked as to when this approval can come through, Tyagi said: "We had sought certain additional information which has been given to us 3-4 days back. So, we will decide very soon." NSE, which filed its draft papers with regulator Sebi in December to raise an estimated over Rs 10,000 crore through IPO, is also waiting for the regulator's go-ahead. Replying to a query on NSE's IPO, Tyagi said, "That will take time as the NSE itself wants that co-location issue to be sorted out. It will take some time." The IPO will see existing shareholders offloading 20-25 per cent shares to the public through the offer for sale (OFS) route. The offer may give the exchange a valuation of Rs 50,000 -55,000 crore, officials said, adding that the IPO itself could be worth about Rs 10,000 crore. The bourse is facing regulatory scrutiny for allegedly providing preferential access to some entities with respect to co-location and algo trade facilities. Besides, Sebi will soon put in place norms to check any misuse of the high-frequency trade. Talking about the timeline on high frequency, Tyagi said "there was discussion paper last year and so it is something which Sebi has only just learnt about. It is a complicated issue and so, we have just learnt of it. We want to come out with proper regulations. But we will proceed very quickly." High frequency trading, also called algorithmic trading or algo in market parlance, refers to orders generated at a super-fast speed by use of advanced mathematical models that involve automated execution of trade, and it is mostly used by large institutional investors. HFT exposes the market to possible systemic risks. The Sebi chief also said the regulator will expedite the pending issues. Asked about how the legacy issues like NSEL, algo stack up against his earlier job with the finance ministry, Tyagi said "with the finance ministry, it was more about policy issues". "Here (as Sebi chairman), it is a deep dive into capital markets and trying to learn what are the issues. It is a different sort of an experience. But on the pending issue, I have taken stock and I can only assure that we will expedite them. You will see the result soon," he added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off much awaited regional connectivity scheme UDAN - Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik - saying dreams of middle class will take flight with this. The three inaugural flights were launched in the sectors of Shimla-Delhi, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad. While launching the first flight under the UDAN scheme, Prime Minister Modi said: "My dream was to see a person who wears a 'hawai chappal' to fly on the 'hawai jahaz' or plane." He further said that the scheme caters to the aspirations of the people of India, making flights cheaper than taxi fare. "The lives of the middle class are being transformed and their aspirations are increasing. Earlier, aviation was considered to be the domain of a select few. That has changed now," the Prime Minister said. Air India on Tuesday had opened bookings for the first launch flight from Shimla to Delhi with all inclusive fares starting at Rs 2,036. The routes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCE) are spread out across all corners of the country. Read Also: Cheap flights to boost tourism and connectivity: Why PM Narendra Modi's UDAN scheme is a game changer New carriers which have won bids to operate flights on these routes can partner with other airlines to offer connecting flight Airfare for a 1 hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 26, 2017 Happening now - PM Modi flags off first UDAN flight under Regional Connectivity Scheme, on Shimla-Delhi sector. https://t.co/vbG9VFN31Q PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 27, 2017 Here's all you need to know about UDAN UDAN is an innovative scheme to develop the regional aviation market and increase regional connectivity. The scheme would be in operation for a period of 10 years. Under the scheme, nearly 50 per cent of the seats on every flight will cost Rs 2,500 per seat. This will be applicable for flights where the distance is less than 500 km and duration is one-hour. Under UDAN, five airlines will operate flight services on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports across the country. The operators will include SpiceJet, Air Odisha, Air India subsidiary Airline Allied Services, Air Deccan, and Turbo Megha. The scheme was envisaged on June 15, 2016 to provide connectivity to un-served and under-served airports of the country through revival of existing air-strips and airports. This first-of-its-kind scheme will create affordable yet economically viable and profitable flights on regional routes so that flying becomes affordable to the common man even in small towns. It is a market-based mechanism in which airlines bid for seat subsidies. The selected airline operator would have to provide a minimum of 9 and a maximum of 40 seats - subsidized rates - on the UDAN Flights for operations through fixed wing aircraft and a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 13 Seats on the Flights for operations through helicopters. The UDAN is likely to a give a major fillip to tourism and employment generation in the hinterland. Through introduction of helicopters and small aircraft, it is also likely to significantly reduce travel timings in remote and hilly regions, as well as islands and other areas of the country. Airfare for a 1 hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 26, 2017 Here's why it is a game-changer Tourism Tourism is one area which has not been given the due attention. Agra and Jaipur witness thousands of foreign tourists every year. However, there is no direct air link between the two cities, making it inconvenient for tourists who have to come back to Delhi to visit Agra. The situation is similar at other tourist places, if not worse. Despite having an airport, there is hardly any flight landing in Shimla. Some of the tourist destinations which will now be connected under UDAN scheme include Agra, Shimla, Puducherry, Jaisalmer, Porbandar, Diu, Gwalior, Kullu, Pantnagar, Shillong and Mysore. Economy UDAN scheme is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the interiors of the country. Aviation has a multiplier effect on the economy. There will be requirement of security personnel and ground staff for the upkeep of the airports. Besides helping the middle-class fly for cheaper prices, UDAN will also make it easier for business people to make it to the tier-2 cities. This will give a huge fillip to investments in India's hinterlands. The routes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCE) are spread out across all corners of the country. New carriers which have won bids to operate flights on these routes can partner with other airlines to offer connecting flights. Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Thursday tweeted, "UDAN network will cover the whole country, giving a major economic boost to hinterland areas." "This will have a positive effect on the economy, in terms of employment and investment," Raju added. Connectivity With the help of UDAN, the local connectivity is set to get a major boost. Besides helping people connect with friends and families, the new scheme will also be helpful in getting skilled workforce to smaller towns as they will able to cut short on their travel time and fly back to their home cities after work. The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked why there was no objection from lawmakers on the government's decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making permanent account number (PAN) cards, a move which was given effect by the latest budget from 1 July. "542 persons are sitting in Parliament, why do they not object to it? If they are not objecting, why should we go into it," a Bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. When it was told that the Centre has earlier made a statement in the apex court that it would not make Aadhaar mandatory, the Bench said, "They cannot be bound by it. It cannot preclude Parliament from enacting a statutory provision." The court was hearing three petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act. Section 139AA, introduced through the latest Budget and the Finance Act, 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of I-T returns and making application for allotment of PAN with effect from July 1, 2017. The Bench also observed that tax evasion existed in India and it was a "shame" that citizens do not want to pay taxes. The court said there was no doubt that Aadhaar should be voluntary and observed since tax evasion existed, the government could bring in new statute to stop such "leakage". Defending the Centre's stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi referred to around 10 lakh fake PAN cards and said Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. "We have reached to 99 percent of population. We are not at a nascent stage," he said and questioned the maintainability of these writ petitions saying they had not raised the issue of violation of privacy. Senior Advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for a petitioner, said section 139AA was not part of the original Finance Bill and was introduced at the last moment. He referred to the Aadhaar Act and said there was not a single word saying the intention behind the statute was to check black money and weed out fake PAN cards. To this, the Bench said, "The purpose of the Aadhaar Act is different from that of section 139AA of the I-T Act. Therefore, the validity of section 139AA cannot be seen at the touchstone of what is there in the Aadhaar Act." It would again hear the arguments on Thursday. During the hearing, the apex court, on a lighter vein, observed that when a man is getting married, he has the best income and once a maintenance petition is filed, he becomes a pauper. However, Datar said when Aadhaar has not been made mandatory in the Aadhaar Act, the government cannot make it complusory in the IT Act and the Centre had earlier given an undertaking before the court that except for social welfare schemes, they would not make it mandatory. "The Supreme Court had directed them that they cannot make it mandatory. The mandate of the Supreme Court can not be undone. My right of not to have a Aadhaar can not be taken away indirectly," he said. He also argued that the "dangerous" thing was that as per proviso of section 139AA of the IT Act, if someone does not quote his Aadhaar number while filing IT return, his PAN card will be deemed invalid. When the bench asked whether section 139AA would also apply to non-natural persons like a company, Datar said. "No. It is applicable to individuals only." He said that section 139AA discriminated between firms and individuals and forces a person to quote his Aadhaar for PAN and it was "virtually like a civil death". When the petitioners said they were not raising the issue of privacy in the matter, the bench asked, "the entire thinking change the moment you exclude the privacy part." "We are going into the validity of a Parliamentary legislation. Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided that Aadhaar should be made mandatory for PAN....It is not for this court to say that PAN was not working, so this is good. That is not permissible. We cannot question the wisdom of Parliament like this," the bench observed. When the bench asked whether section 139AA would also apply to non-natural persons like a company, Datar said. "No. It is applicable to individuals only." He said that section 139AA discriminated between firms and individuals and forces a person to quote his Aadhaar for PAN and it was "virtually like a civil death". When the petitioners said they were not raising the issue of privacy in the matter, the bench asked, "the entire thinking change the moment you exclude the privacy part." "We are going into the validity of a Parliamentary legislation. Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided that Aadhaar should be made mandatory for PAN....It is not for this court to say that PAN was not working, so this is good. That is not permissible. We cannot question the wisdom of Parliament like this," the bench observed. Also Watch: The Supreme Court has put a poser as to why there was no objection from lawmakers on the government's decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making PAN cards , a move which was given effect by the latest budget from July 1. "542 persons are sitting in Parliament, why do they not object to it? If they are not objecting on it, why should we go into it," a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. When it was told that the Centre has earlier made a statement in the apex court that they would not make Aadhaar mandatory, the bench said, "they cannot be bound by it. It cannot preclude Parliament from enacting a statutory provision." The apex court was hearing three petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act. Section 139AA, introduced through the latest budget and the Finance Act 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of income tax returns and making application for allotment of PAN number with effect from July 1 this year. During the hearing, the bench also observed that tax evasion existed in India and it was a "shame" that citizens do not want to pay taxes. The top court said there was no doubt that Aadhaar should be voluntary and observed that since tax evasion existed, the government could bring in new statute to stop such "leakage". "We know that tax evasion is there. When tax evasion is there, the government is trying to block these leakages by bringing new statute. We citizens are like that. It is a shame that we do not want to pay tax," the bench said. Defending the Centre's stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of Income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi referred to around 10 lakh fake permanent account number (PAN) cards in the country and said Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. "We have reached to 99 per cent of India's population. We are not at a nascent stage," he told the bench and questioned the maintainability of these writ petitions saying they have not raised the issue of violation of privacy. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for a petitioner, told the bench that section 139AA was not part of the original Finance Bill and was introduced at the last moment. He referred to the Aadhaar Act and said there was not a single word saying that the intention behind the statute was to check the black money and weed out fake PAN cards. To this, the bench said, "the purpose of the Aadhaar Act is different from that of section 139AA of the IT Act. Therefore, validity of section 139AA cannot be seen at the touchstone of what is there in the Aadhaar Act." "It (Aadhaar) is voluntary, there is no doubt about it," the apex court said, adding, "Today, we are dealing with a statutory provision which is enacted by Parliament". The bench, which would continue hearing the arguments tomorrow, also said the purpose of Aadhaar was to extend the benefits of government welfare schemes to the poorer sections so that the money was not misused. During the hearing, the apex court, on a lighter vein, observed that when a man is getting married, he has the best income and once a maintenance petition is filed, he becomes a pauper. However, Datar said when Aadhaar has not been made mandatory in the Aadhaar Act, the government cannot make it complusory in the IT Act and the Centre had earlier given an undertaking before the court that except for social welfare schemes, they would not make it mandatory. "The Supreme Court had directed them that they cannot make it mandatory. The mandate of the Supreme Court can not be undone. My right of not to have a Aadhaar can not be taken away indirectly," he said. He also argued that the "dangerous" thing was that as per proviso of section 139AA of the IT Act, if someone does not quote his Aadhaar number while filing IT return, his PAN card will be deemed invalid. When the bench asked whether section 139AA would also apply to non-natural persons like a company, Datar said. "No. It is applicable to individuals only." He said that section 139AA discriminated between firms and individuals and forces a person to quote his Aadhaar for PAN and it was "virtually like a civil death". When the petitioners said they were not raising the issue of privacy in the matter, the bench asked, "the entire thinking change the moment you exclude the privacy part." "We are going into the validity of a Parliamentary legislation. Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided that Aadhaar should be made mandatory for PAN....It is not for this court to say that PAN was not working, so this is good. That is not permissible. We cannot question the wisdom of Parliament like this," the bench observed. However, the Attorney General countered the petitioner's submission and said, "10 lakh PAN cards have been found to be fake. Are they propagating a general public interest or propagating the fraud (fake PANs) which is going in". Also Read: 'Aadhar cards for cows': Indian government wants to protect each cow and its progeny Rohatgi also clarified that nowhere in section 139AA of IT Act, was it mentioned that it would be effective with retrospective effect. However, Datar said that in Delhi, for 100 persons, 132 Aadhaar cards have been issued and 34,000 private enrollment agencies have been blacklisted. To this, the Attorney General said in Delhi, there were migrants and the government cannot destroy the Aadhaar cards of people after their death. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for two other petitioners, also questioned the government's move and said no one can be compelled to have a Aadhaar card just because section 139AA says so. He also said the biometric system in Aadhaar was not fool proof and there were instances where data has been leaked. "These are issues of public interest. It is like an electronic leash and people do not want to live with it. People cannot be compelled to part away with their vital details to private enrollment agencies," he said. The Centre had earlier faced searching questions from the apex court for making Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards, despite its order that it should be optional. The government had earlier said that fake PAN cards were being used to "divert funds" to shell firms. President Donald Trump is proposing "the biggest tax cut" ever even as the government struggles with mounting debt, in an effort to fulfil promises of bringing jobs and prosperity to the middle class. White House officials today were to release broad outlines of a tax overhaul that would provide massive tax cuts to businesses big and small. The top tax rate for individuals would drop by a few percentage points, from 39.6 per cent to the "mid-30s", according to an official with knowledge of the plan. Small business owners would see their top tax rate go from 39.6 per cent to 15 per cent, said the official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the proposal before the White House announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in a this morning speech, said the proposed overhaul would amount to "the biggest tax cut" and the "largest tax reform" in US history. White House officials already have said the top corporate tax rate would be reduced from 35 per cent to 15 per cent. WHAT WILL THE PLAN INCLUDE The plan will also include child-care benefits, a cause promoted by Trump's daughter Ivanka. Trump sent his team to Capitol Hill yesterday evening to discuss his plan with Republican leaders. "They went into some suggestions that are mere suggestions and we'll go from there," said GOP Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The White House's presentation will be "pretty broad in the principles," said Marc Short, Trump's director of legislative affairs. In the coming weeks, Trump will solicit more ideas on how to improve it, Short said. The specifics should start to come this summer. Short said the administration did not want to set a firm timeline, after demanding a quick House vote on a health care bill and watching it fail. But, Short added, "I don't see this sliding into 2018." REPUBLICANS OPEN TO TRUMP's TAX PLAN Republicans, who slammed the growing national debt under President Barack Obama, have said they are open to Trump's tax plan, even though it could add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade. Echoing the White House, Republicans argue the cuts would spur economic growth, reducing or even eliminating any drop in tax revenue. "I'm not convinced that cutting taxes is necessarily going to blow a hole in the deficit," Hatch said. "I actually believe it could stimulate the economy and get the economy moving," Hatch added. "Now, whether 15 per cent is the right figure or not, that's a matter to be determined." The argument that tax cuts pay for themselves has been debunked by economists from across the political spectrum. Archived Results for 2011 Immortals A few minutes into the movie and I got a little worried. The dialogue, especially during the first few scenes really made me want to cringe. By: Kevin Swann Search Terms: mickey roarke Search Terms: immortals For 24-year-old Simranjeet Singh, it is a lean day at work. The national agricultural market in Karnal, Haryana, where he manages a family-run fertiliser outlet, is blazingly hot. Ongoing wheat procurement is the only visible activity in the market. Singh expects fertiliser sales to gain momentum once wheat harvesting is over and monsoon (kharif) sowing begins. However, any buyer who steps into his shop cannot help but notice the new process that has now become integral to his business. The moment someone asks him for any of the 20-odd fertiliser varieties sold at subsidised prices, he takes out a fingerprint-reading point-of-sale, or PoS, machine, inserts a SIM card, activates it by keying in his 12-digit unique identity number (Aadhaar), and authenticates it by using his fingerprint. This tiny machine has records of the shop's current stock, and after generating a sales receipt, automatically updates the stock position. It shares all this information with a central server, ensuring that the trail of each and every transaction can be tracked by the government, which provides the subsidy, as well as fertiliser companies. The customer, too, has to share his Aadhaar number and follow the same authentication exercise. The idea is to help the government know exactly how much quantity was sold, by whom, from where, and when, and make the fertiliser distribution system transparent to curb leakages and corruption. Singh is among the 816 fertiliser retailers in Karnal district supposed to use the system. At least 600 have already started doing so. In the nearby Kurukshetra district, all 550 registered retail outlets are on board. Since not every retailer is a tech-savvy millennial like Singh, the changeover is not a breeze for everyone, but they have no option. The two districts of Haryana are part of a nationwide 19-district pilot project initiated by the central government to reform the way it distributes the Rs 70,000 crore annual fertiliser subsidy. By June 1, 2017, the government wants all 1,75,619 fertiliser retail outlets in 673 districts of 29 states and seven Union Territories to switch to PoS-based sales - kicking off a phase-wise, national rollout of a system for tracking the movement of subsidised fertiliser. "We are planning to have 2,00,000 PoS machines in fertiliser retail outlets across India by May 31," says a senior government official handling the project. The present system, where companies sell subsidised fertilisers and are compensated by the government, will continue. What will change is the use of Aadhaar and technology for tracking transactions at each and every stage for plugging leakages. While this is definitely a way forward, experts say it hardly qualifies as a major reform. They point at the direct benefit transfer, or DBT, system in LPG, where subsidy is directly transferred to customers' bank accounts as an ideal, and warn that the new system retains quite a few big problems of the earlier system - including the hefty burden on financials of companies and failure to check fertiliser overuse. THE EVALUATION Even as the fertilizer ministry was going ahead with the pilot programmes, the government think-tank, NITI Aayog, engaged Microsave, an international financial inclusion consulting firm for an evaluation of these projects. In a presentation to NITI Aayog in February, the agency pointed out that the exercise had resulted in hundreds of retailers - 31 in Pali district, 51 in Hoshangabad district, one in Rangareddy district, 131 in Krishna district, 35 in Una district and 50 in West Godavari district - shutting shop as tracking reduced diversion and, hence, the 'business' potential. While this strengthens the case for a nationwide rollout, there was a concern that the experiment might result in chaos during the peak season as "35 waiting customers at any time, minimum two attempts (for authentication) and five-six minutes per transaction" might make PoS transactions unsustainable. "Assuming five minutes per transaction and 10 hours of operation, a retailer can handle just 120 transactions a day - without any break or server problems," says the agency. Other operational and technical issues were also highlighted. Since surveys were conducted only in shops where PoS machines were functioning, the study was perhaps insufficient to highlight the connectivity issues that may pop up during the large-scale rollout. Microsave has also given solutions to some of these problems that the government may be considering at the moment. DBT in Fertiliser Introduction of DBT in fertiliser has been under discussion ever since the government changed the method of selling LPG cylinders and paying companies directly. Now, companies sell at market prices, and the subsidy is transferred to consumers' bank accounts. This, the government claims, has helped it weed out lakhs of ghost beneficiaries and end leakages. The fertiliser industry, which sells at government-fixed rates and then endures a long wait for reimbursement of the subsidy amount, has been a strong votary of a similar system. This is because delays in subsidy refunds severely cramp their working capital flow. DBT, they say, will make subsidy an issue between the government and the consumer and they will get to sell their products at market prices. But that is not happening. Mansukh L. Mandaviya, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers, says the DBT system being implemented in fertiliser is different from the LPG subsidy regime. Instead of paying the consumer, the plan is to release the subsidy to fertiliser companies after retailers sell to beneficiaries, he says. This will make the industry's life more miserable. That is because, as against the current system of claiming 95 per cent subsidy for urea after materials are received in districts and the balance after acknowledgement by retailers, the industry will now get subsidy money only after the actual sale. "Under the present urea policy, there is a provision for 1.25 months for sales realisation. The inventory carrying period will increase to about six months for the urea industry. This will increase working capital requirement and interest costs. There is a need to make provision for at least 180 days working capital in the pricing policy as DBT is implemented across the country," says Satish Chander, Director General of the Fertilizer Association of India. Urea is a key fertiliser for which the government provides subsidy (see Budgetary Allocation). In addition, there are 21 grades of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers with different subsidy rates. The subsidy rate for urea also varies from company to company due to different production processes, plant efficiencies, vintage, etc. DOUBTFUL IMPACT Ashok Gulati, agricultural economist and former Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, a government body that recommends minimum support prices for agricultural produce, says the pilot that is being tried out is not DBT at all. "Real DBT is when money is transferred to beneficiaries' accounts. This is not what they are doing. What they are doing is at best an administrative solution to cut leakages, as they believe this is where maximum leakages take place," he says. He says leakages cannot be plugged unless there is a restriction on how much a farmer can buy at the subsidised price. "As long as you have no quantitative restrictions, and your price remains low, you cannot plug leakages," he says. "Free up urea prices. If he is using more, let him buy at market prices. Or else, you will have, as in case of Bihar, an allocation of 200 kg urea per hectare with yield that is half of Punjab's. Fertiliser purchased at subsidised prices gets smuggled." The originally envisaged fertiliser DBT system had several features to tackle the problems highlighted by Gulati. The question is whether those ideal conditions exist or not. For instance, the government wants 100 per cent Aadhaar penetration in all DBT districts. It is also talking about seeding the Aadhaar number in the soil health care data base and in the land record data base. Once that is done, technically, a farmer who buys fertiliser after authenticating himself through his Aadhaar number can be identified and barred if the volume he buys is disproportionate to the land he owns or cultivates as a tenant farmer. The success of the plan, though, depends on the robustness and penetration of India's soil health card system and digitisation of land records. As far as the central government is concerned, the pilot projects where there PoS experiments have been successful will continue. In other places, including the two districts in West Bengal where the pilot projects did not take off due to lack of interest from the state government, the success of the programme will depend on the close coordination among all stakeholders. This includes state governments, district administrations, fertiliser companies, technology partners and the central government. The government has already said that after May 31, subsidy will be paid only on the quantity of fertiliser sold through PoS devices. This may result in companies pushing for installation of these devices in as many centres as possible. But that alone will not be enough for the successful implementation of the system. Karnal's Singh has not seen any change in his business after he switched to the PoS system. This could be because there was no major diversion or misuse of subsidised fertilisers from his outlet. It could also mean that a mere change in administrative procedures, as Gulati highlights, cannot bring in any major change. What is certain is that India's fertiliser subsidy distribution system needs reforms. The question is if that is be done by switching over from 'price policy to income policy', as Gulati would suggest, or through a system of PoS system-led monitoring. There are no easy answers. @joecmathew The Reserve Bank will soon put into circulation new Rs 10 coins that have been minted to commemorate 125th year of National Archives of India. The central bank will also put into circulation new Rs 5 coins to celebrate 150th anniversary of Allahabad High Court. On the design of new Rs 10 coin, the RBI said that on the reverse of the coin, there will be an image of National Archives Building in the centre with inscription '125 YEARS' below the image. It will also bear logo of 125th anniversary celebration. The year 1891 and 2016 in English shall be written on the upper and lower periphery of the coin respectively. The year 1916 and 2016 in international numerals shall be written respectively on left and right top of the image. The RBI said the existing coins in this denomination shall also continue to be legal tender. On the design of new Rs 5 coin, the RBI said the coin's face will bear an image depicting centre facade of Allahabad High Court Building emerging from the book. The year 1866-2016 in English numerals shall be written at the bottom of the image, the RBI said in a release. It seems Reliance Jio customers will finally stop enjoyingfree services. The company has released a slightly revised tariff list for itsconsumers. The new list of tariffs will have different offers for Prime andNon-Prime members. Moreover, any user who does not subscribe to the Prime membership won't be qualified for offers above Rs 149. Also read: Reliance Jio effect: Now, Vodafone offers 27GB free 4G data for 3 months; here's how you can get it The company continues to offer the Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan offerwhich extends to the Rs 309 and Rs 509 packs. However, the added benefits of these packs (Rs 309 and above) will only beavailable for first recharge. First recharge benefits do not extend to customers who had already subscribed to the SummerSurprise offer. Also read: Reliance Industries stock seen rising 100% in 2 years Here's a detailed list of Jio's new tariffs: Rs 19 data pack For Prime members: The data pack offers one day validityalong with 200MB of data. For Non-Prime members: The limit will be halved to 100MB Rs 49 data pack For Prime members: Comes with a validity of 3 days and datalimit of 600MB For Non-Prime members: Data-limit will will be halved to300MB validity stays the same. Rs 96 data pack For Prime members: The plan comes with a validity of 7 daysand a limit of 7GB data. There is adaily limit of 1GB, after which the speed will drop to 128Kbps. For Non-Prime members: These members will only get 0.6GBdata for the same price but the plan will keep running for 7 days/ Rs 149 data pack For Prime members: This pack comes with 28 days validity,and just 2GB 4G data for the entire period. Users will only get 300 SMSs withthis data pack. For Non-Prime members: The same price will just get you 1GBof data for non-Prime members. Rs 309 data pack For Prime members: The user will get unlimited data but only84GB of which will be available at 4G speeds and there is a 1GB/day limit aswell. The validity will last for 84 days. Once the 84 day period comes to anend, the user will have to recharge will only get 28GB for 28days wiithsubsequent recharges. For Non-Prime members: Prime members cannot avail this planwithout subscribing to Prime. Rs 509 data pack For Prime members: Similar to the Rs 309 pack this plan willbe unlimited but the consumer will get 168 GB of data at 4G speeds and an upperlimit of 2GB per day. The validity will last for 84 days. Once the 84 dayperiod comes to an end, the user will only get 28GB for 28days wiith subsequentrecharges. For Non-Prime members: This pack can only be availed oncethe user is subscribed to Jio Prime. Rs 999 data pack For Prime members: Offers 120GB data at 4G speeds for aperiod of 120 days. Subsequent recharges will only give the user 60GB for 60days. For Non-Prime members: This pack can only be availed oncethe user is subscribed to Jio Prime. Rs 1,999 data pack For Prime members: Offers 185GB data at 4G speeds for aperiod of 150 days. Subsequent recharges will only give the user 125GB for 90days. For Non-Prime members: This pack can only be availed oncethe user is subscribed to Jio Prime. Rs 4,999 data pack For Prime members: Offers 410GB data at 4G speeds for aperiod of 240 days. Once the 84 day period comes to an end, the user will get 350GB for 180days wiith subsequent recharges. For Non-Prime members: This pack can only be availed oncethe user is subscribed to Jio Prime. Rs 9,999 data pack For Prime members: Offers 810GB data at 4G speeds for aperiod of 420 days. Subsequent recharges will only give the user 750GB for 360days. For Non-Prime members: This pack can only be availed oncethe user is subscribed to Jio Prime. Cab aggregator, Uber plans to take you flying into the future. The American company has ventured into flying-cars project by promising to exhibit their first functional prototype by the year 2020. So is it safe to say we're living in the future? According to a report by the BBC, Uber has plans to join hands with plane manufacturers to develop and test a network of flying cars by the year 2020. Further, they want to implement this network in the real world by 2023. Also Read: Ola, Uber competition like Vietnam War: CEO Bhavish Aggarwal Won't it cost as much as travelling in a plane? Surprisingly, the company claims that once the service gains acceptance it will eventually cost as much as current car rides. Is this just Air-talk or Uber really means it? Well, this can't be confirmed yet but considering that the company was one of the forerunners in self-driving technology, it is quite possible that Uber executes this with the same vigour in future. Also Read: Uber moves HC for Rs 12 crore in damages from taxi owners bodies What does it have for India? India is still in the initial stage of experimentation with driver-less cars, so jumping right to flying cars still feels like a far cry. Uber has been struggling with their brand image lately and this new development might help them re-align the investors trust in the company. In India, the brand is struggling with driver union strikes. Uber India approached the Bombay High Court seeking Rs 12 crore in damages from taxi owners and drivers associations for harming its reputation and livelihood of drivers by protesting against the company. Last year, Xiaomi had launched the Mi 5 in India but was highly criticised for launching its lowest variant of the device. This year, the company has decided not to launch their flagship in India. According to a report by India Today Tech, the company's latest device Xiaomi Mi6 won't be hitting Indian shelves. The Mi 6 was launched last week and received tremendous response from Indian media. However, the Chinese smartphone brand has been clear with its intentions about not launching the flagship devices in India, and this year is no different. Xiaomi claims that bringing flagship devices to India will get too expensive for the company. Maybe, Mi5 was a perfect example why the company is this reluctant in launching its best in India. Last year's Xiaomi Mi 5 received a lukewarm response in the Indian market. However, that was because the company just launched the base variant of the device and was pitting against the likes of OnePlus 3. Although Xiaomi is not launching their flagship in India, but the India Today report claims there's something in the pipeline for our market. Xiaomi's Mi Mix 2 and Mi Note 3 are possible contenders but then again, they fall in the "expensive" bracket too. In China, Xiaomi Mi 6 has received an overwhelming response. The device's first flash sale will happen on April 28 and within a week it has managed to cross 10 lakh registrations for the sale. Though the Indian market won't get its hands on Xiaomi's beautiful flagship, here are the specifications that would have made it a great buy. The Mi 6 runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, the same chipset powering Samsung's Galaxy S8. It further packs in 6GB of RAM and Adreno 540 GPU. Featuring a 5.15inch 1080p display, the Mi 6 boasts a stainless steel border running on the edges with a curved glass body and is splash resistant. It comes with a dual camera setup at the rear - 12MP wide-angle sensor with 4-axis optical image stabilisation and a 12MP telephoto lens. It also comes with a dedicated Potrait Mode. The latter can be used for 2x optical lossless zoom. Xiaomi has done away with the 3.5mm audio jack and the Type-C port will be used for charging, headphones and even data transfer. The Mi 6 also packs in a 3350 mAh battery. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. met with Consulate General of Dominican Republic in NYC Carlos Castillo on Wednesday, April 12 at the borough presidents office. The two discussed the contribution of the Dominican diaspora in the Bronx, NYC and throughout the state as well as future plans to work together on initiatives to improve the lives of Dominicans and Dominican Americans in the borough and throughout NYC. Last week, President Trump opened up federal funds to help alleviate damage from February flooding in Northern Utah. But more problems could be just ahead. On KVNUs Speak to the Mayor hour during For the People on Wednesday, Logan Mayor Craig Petersen reviewed problems the city had with flooding back in 1983 and more recently in 2011. He said an expert from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more commonly known as the weather service, talked to city officials this past Friday and said more flooding woes could be on the horizon. The message from the gentleman from NOAA is that potentially 2017 could be a combination of both those years. We have a huge snowpack and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that weve got continuing rain. Weve had rain all this week, we have rain forecast into next week, warned the mayor. So we not only had a big snowpack but we continue to accumulate and if in the latter part of May or the first part of June, we were to have a series of hot days, we could have some significant flooding problems. Again I dont want to be Chicken Little, but he suggested that we might actually experience record flows on some of our rivers, Petersen said. The mayor said the Logan River might be more of a concern than some of the other rivers this time around. But he stressed that the city is very aware of the potential later this spring and is monitoring the situation. He said based on the models the weather service uses to predict temperatures and accumulated snowpack and how those factors will effect river levels, sand bags will be prepared and other measures taken based on possible impacts. Bears Ears National Monument designated by President Obama (Photo: U.S. Department of the Interior) WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands, calling the protection efforts a massive federal land grab by previous administrations. It was yet another executive action from a president trying to rack up accomplishments before his first 100 days in office, with Saturday marking that milestone. And it could upend protections put in place in Utah and other states under a 1906 law that authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use. During a signing ceremony at the Interior Department, Trump said the order would end another egregious abuse of federal power and give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs. Trump accused the Obama administration of using the Antiquities Act to unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control a practice Trump derided as a massive federal land grab. Somewhere along the way the Act has become a tool of political advocacy rather than public interest, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said. And its easy to see why designations in some cases are viewed negatively by those local communities that are impacted the most. In December, shortly before leaving office, President Barack Obama infuriated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on more than 1 million acres of land thats sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings. Republicans in the state asked Trump to take the unusual step of reversing Obamas decision. They said the designation will stymie growth by closing the area to new commercial and energy development. The Antiquities Act does not give the president explicit power to undo a designation and no president has ever taken such a step. Trumps order was one of a handful he intended to sign this week in a flurry of developments before his 100th day in office. The president has used executive orders aggressively over the past three months; as a candidate, Trump railed against Obamas use of this power. Wednesdays order will cover several dozen monuments across the country designated since 1996. They total 100,000 acres or more and include the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Bear Ears, both in Utah. Zinke was directed to produce an interim report in 45 days and make a recommendation on Bears Ears, and then issue a final report within 120 days. Zinke said that over the past 20 years, the designation of tens of millions of acres as national monuments have limited the lands use for farming, timber harvesting, mining and oil and gas exploration, and other commercial purposes. While designations have done a great service to the public, Zinke said the local community affected should have a voice. Some, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have hailed the order as the end of land grabs by presidents dating to Bill Clinton. But Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said that if Trump truly wants to make America great again, he should use the law to protect and conserve Americas public lands. In New Mexico, Obamas designation of Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument have preserved important lands while boosting the economy, Heinrich said, and that story has repeated across the country. If this sweeping review is an excuse to cut out the public and scale back protections, I think this president is going to find a very resistant public, Heinrich said. Members of a coalition of five Western tribes that pushed for the Bears Ears National Monument said theyre outraged the administration will review a decision they say was already carefully vetted by the Obama administration, including a multi-day visit last summer by then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Davis Filfred, the Navajo Nation representative on the coalition, said it would be heart-breaking if the review leads to an attempt to strip the monument of designation. Once its designated, its designated. He should just honor our past leaders and those who were before him, Filfred said. Hes disregarding the Native Americans, the first people of this nation. This is sacred land. Filfred said he and the coalition wont stand by idly if Zinke tries to undo the designation. Hes going to be in for a fight. Were not going to let this down easy. ___ Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City contributed to this report. Digitization involves the conversion of text, pictures, or sound into a digital form that can be processed by a computer. At Utah State Universitys Merrill Cazier Library more than 120,000 images, manuscripts, state documents, personal journals, all kinds of historical items are going into a huge digital archive that has a much longer life span than paper, for example. On KVNUs For the People program on Tuesday, Todd Welch, associate dean for Special Collections and Archives, said theyve also digitally documented specialty items such as beat poetry, the Jack London papers, Mormon Americana and the rich history of the 130 years of Utah State University. Then our newspaper collections, which I think a lot of your listeners would be interested in, we participated in the Utah digital newspaper project and so we have a lot of the old, historic, pre-1923 small community newspapers that came out either weeklies or bi-weeklies. And so its a rich history of what life was like (in the) 19th and early 20th centuries, he said. Welch said its practical to preserve history this way because todays students are wired differently than past generations and expect things, including historical documents, to be online. So theyre not likely to come to a reading room and look through boxes or folders. More information can be found at https://archives.usu.edu/ including information on how you can donate, or have scanned, items of historical interest to be digitized. Utah State University Extension will offer two classes for Spanish speakers in May. The first course, Creaciones en la Cocina, is a Latino adaptation of USU Extensions popular Food Sense program. The second class, Fortaleciendo tu Futuro Financiero,Clases de Educacion Financiera, teaches principles of financial literacy. Program Coordinator Paloma Jensen said both classes are free of charge and open to the public, with free childcare available. Jensen enjoys helping Cache Valleys Spanish-speaking community access these important resources. I like to work with the people and share ideas and experience about both subjects, she said. In every class, I learn a lot. It doesnt matter if I hear the class many times. Every class, something is new, and we learn a lot together. The teachers love to share the information with the people. Its so exciting! Creaciones en la Cocina begins on Wednesday, May 3, at 5:30 p.m. The 4-part series will also be held on May 10, 17, and 24. Instructors of the course are Celina Wille and Jensen. We cook different recipes from Peru, Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, Jensen said. Were going to learn what habits we can use to be healthy. Its also an opportunity to get to know each other and feel more comfortable. In the kitchen we talk and laugh a lot. We do the class, and then at the end we do Zumba. Its fun to do this! Creaciones en la Cocina will take place at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, located at 725 S. 250 E. in Hyde Park. Fortaleciendo tu Futuro Financiero is a three-part course which begins on Tuesday, May 9, and also takes place on May 16, and May 23. A family dinner is served free of charge during the first 30 minutes of class, after which children are excused to the nursery while their parents learn more about managing their finances from instructor Jorge Manan. We have amazing teachers, Jensen said. Were going to learn how to make a budget, about taxes and how we can save money. Discussion topics also include: Its important because everyone should know, no matter what you do, that finance is important, Jensen said. The finance problem at home is that we lack the habits to manage our money. We should know how to do a budget at home, and then its something you can start to learn and then do the practice at home. Fortaleciendo tu Futuro Financiero takes place at Centro de la Familia, located at 316 N Gateway Drive in Providence. For more information about the classes and/or to register, call 435-994-4896. Archived Results for 2012 Newer Older Entries Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Archived Results for 2013 Newer Older Entries Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 (Beijing) Frances PSA Group, maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, saw its China sales plunge 46% in the first quarter as it suffered from lack of scale, chaos in its dealer network, and competition from rising Japanese brands in the worlds largest auto market. Sales at PSAs main joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group Co. Ltd. tumbled 45.3% in the first three months of the year to 80,298, while its smaller joint venture with Changan Automobile (Group) Co. Ltd. fell by an even steeper 62% to just 1,906 vehicles, according to figures released by the company on Wednesday with its latest quarterly results. The Dongfeng venture makes cars under PSAs mainstream Peugeot and Citroen brands, while Changan makes the companys upscale DS cars. PSAs quarterly declines mirrored similar retreats for other major foreign brands, as China scaled back tax incentives designed to encourage sales of small-engine cars. But the PSA declines were far larger than a 7.6% decline for Volkswagen AG and a 19% fall for Ford Motor Co. Dongfeng Vice President Liu Weidong told media earlier this month that PSAs main joint venture was being hurt by three major factors. Chief among those was the companys late arrival to SUVs, which have become a hot seller among Chinese car buyers. The company has also been hurt by resurging Japanese brands, which suffered their own setback five years ago when many consumers boycotted such cars at the height of a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo. Lastly, anti-monopoly policies from Beijing prohibit the company from working closely with its dealers on pricing. Our final sale prices were in a state of disarray, Liu said. There was a period when our dealers were selling cars at losses of 4,000 yuan ($580), 5,000 yuan. In the end it was a real bloodbath with huge losses for everyone. In that kind of environment, its natural that no one would be paying attention to customers and service. Liu also attributed the difficulties to different priorities for the two joint venture partners, with PSA focusing more on profitability while Dongfeng wants to gain market share. PSAs weak China performance came as it posted a broader 4.2% gain in first quarter worldwide sales. China now accounts for 11.4% of PSAs sales, behind its home European market and also the Middle East. The companys weak performance contrasts with the overall China market, which grew 15% last year for passenger cars. French brands have been losing money in the market since the second half of 2015. PSA arrived in China three decades ago, ahead of most global brands and at a time when domestic rivals were still in their infancy. But the company has suffered from an identity crisis in recent years as it finds itself in a difficult niche that makes its cars comparably priced but less-attractive than more-popular Western nameplates. At the same time, its models are significantly more expensive than lower-quality domestic Chinese brands. Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com) Archived Results for 2014 CommenTerry: Volume Thirty-nine State legislators should be congratulated for eliminating the 100-school cap on charters and tweaking the charter school law over the last four years. North Carolina's charter school community is thriving thanks to their work. By: John Locke Foundation Search Terms: Search Terms: commonterry Archived Results for 2015 Newer Older Entries Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 | BY Ricki Green | Qantas will premiere the third series of its Feels Like Home brand campaign this Sunday, 30 April via The Monkeys. Filmed in Perth and London, the third series highlights Qantas history-making route between the two cities which goes on sale today ahead of the first flights in March 2018. The latest chapter features the real story of the Perth-based Charlton family reuniting with their grandmother in the UK. It also tells the story of a young couple managing a long distance relationship between Australia and London. Qantas group executive for brand, marketing and corporate affairs, Olivia Wirth, said the build-up to the Perth-London service was the perfect opportunity to evolve the successful campaign. Says Wirth: The Kangaroo Route to the UK has had special meaning for Australian travellers since Qantas first flew to London the 1940s. With this new series of Feels Like Home, we wanted to capture the memories and emotions that Australians associate with the Kangaroo Route, but also look ahead to a new era with our non-stop Perth-London flights. We think it does a beautiful job of exploring the significance of linking Australians directly to the UK for the first time, focusing on real people and experiences. Qantas invests heavily in promoting Australia as a tourist destination and the campaign, which is also running in the UK, also shows some of the fantastic places travelers can visit in Western Australia in a single hop. Qantas worked with creative agency The Monkeys to develop the series. Justin Drape, The Monkeys co-founder and chief creative officer, said the new campaign built on the homecoming stories that features in the first two series. Says Drape: The late Neil Lawrence, Mark Molloy and the Qantas team started this campaign with beautiful emotional stories that have resonated with all Australians who travel. With the Charlton family and Imogens and Michaels story, we wanted to continue this type of storytelling while also showing what it means to be able to fly directly between Australia and London. As in the first two series, the campaign is soundtracked by Martha Marlows version of the Randy Newman song, Feels Like Home. Since launching in 2014, the Feels Like Home campaign has clocked up over 17 million views on social media channels alone. The new series will be seen on TV, outdoor, in-terminal, and on digital and social channels. The stories: The Charlton family; Anna, Michael, and their girls live in Perth, while Annas mum Jackie lives in Bristol, UK, where Anna was born. Anna and Michael met in Europe while WA native Michael was travelling, and the couple moved permanently to Australia, where they had their two children. Jackie has a very close relationship with the family despite the distance, with plenty of video chats, phone calls and parcels but misses her daughter and grandchildren. Michael surprises Anna with flights home for the family to see her mum in the UK. Imogen and Michael met at University in their hometown of Brisbane. When Michael moved to London for work in 2016, Imogen remained in Australia to complete her studies for a further 12 months. Michael surprises Imogen with a trip back to Australia after a long time apart. In a lovely turn of events, since completing the shoot Imogen has moved to London, where the couple now live and work. Creative agency: The Monkeys Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer: Justin Drape Senior Creative: Scott Dettrick Copywriters: Chelsea Parks & Hugh Gurney Executive Planning Director/Partner: Fabio Buresti Head of Planning: Michael Hogg Managing Partner: Matt Michael Group Content Director: Humphrey Taylor Content Director: Samantha Heckendorf Content Manager: Tim Leathart Head of Production: Thea Carone Senior Integrated Producer: Sally Lankshear Executive digital producer: Sabrina Riedel Designers: Melissa Watson, Eva Godeny & Lauren Elliot Production Company: Exit Films Director: Glendyn Ivin Producer: Karen Sproul Production Managers: Jacquie Riley & Samantha Lombardo DOP: Germain McMicking 2nd unit DP: Sam Chiplin Casting: Kirsty McGregor, McGregor Casting Production Designer: Pete Baxter Edit House: The Butchery Editors: Jack Hutchings & Rohan Zerna Post Production: Alt.vfx Original composition by Randy Newman Administered by: Universal Music Publishing Pty Ltd Music Director: Ramesh Sathiah & Mark Rivett Vocals & Guitar: Martha Marlow String Arrangement: Jonathan Zwartz Sound Designer: Simon Kane Executive Producer: Katrina Aquilia Photographer: Paul Blackmore Behind the scenes photographer (UK): Richard Wadey Media Agency: OMD Business Director: Dorothee Gomez Account Director: James Graff Account Director: Eimear Hughes Trading Director: Anastasia Nicholas | BY Ricki Green | The iconic QVB launches its latest campaign Make It Memorable via agency partner The Royals, embracing its notability as the ultimate home of occasion shopping for gifting and experiences in Sydney. In a world where expectations and inspirations are rising, shopping experiences are no longer defined by the act of purchase but the journey towards acquiring something new. The new campaign embraces this and is bringing Make It Memorable to life showcasing how shopping, dining and experiencing the QVB is in itself an occasion. There is a similar sense of anticipation upon receiving an invitation to an occasion that guests and hosts alike can look forward to, enjoy and celebrate, making a special moment a memorable one. Says Victor Gaspar, group general manager, Ipoh: This campaign highlights what makes the QVB so wonderful one of Australias most iconic and beautiful buildings that houses everything you need to prepare for an occasion; from the gift to the outfit and everything in between. We want to help our customers make a special moment a memorable one. The campaign will launch through the QVBs digital and social channels and will feature throughout the centre from April. Make It Memorable will continue to feature throughout the year with unique masterclasses and pop up events surrounding special occasions such as Mothers Day, an engagement party, Christmas and a special birthday. It will create a series of memorable and romantic experiences at the QVB throughout the year. The first Masterclass will take place for Mothers Day with media personality and mum Kate Waterhouse hosting an exclusive Champagne High Tea together with acclaimed interior stylist Steve Cordony. Customers are invited to attend this unique event to experience a truly memorable evening together at QVBs historic Tea Rooms, helping them celebrate a unique Mothers Day. In celebration of this event, a beautiful floral swing installation will also be created under the Dome from the 27th April in the lead up to Mothers Day, where customers can have their very own unique photos taken and are encouraged to share the images through social media for the chance to win a memorable experience at the QVB. Customers can purchase tickets to the Masterclass here. Creative Direction and Production: The Royals Photographer: Toby Burrows Styling: Meg Gray | BY Lynchy | In collaboration with Disney, Cheers has commissioned a series of 4 campaign videos for the launch of its Star Wars Rollinz figures promotion. The videos were produced by K3 Communications Singapore together with videographer Gan. The first 3 videos were done in teaser style to draw interest to the promotion. Drawing on widely recognised Star Wars movie cues, the videos follow the humorous encounters of 2 Star Wars fans while in the Cheers stores. The video campaign has garnered over 80 thousand views so far. Victor Cheong, General Manager, Cheers, said, Cheers is always looking at fun and interesting ways to connect with our customers. We are pleased to be able to partner with Disney and Brand Loyalty to bring the iconic Star Wars franchise to our Cheers and FairPrice Xpress stores. We are heartened by the enthusiastic response to the videos created for this rewards program, which is part of our ongoing engagement effort to add more to the lives of our customers. Goh Wee Kim, Creative Partner of K3 said, We are grateful for the opportunity to partner Cheers in this fun and engaging project. These videos show that great works can be effectively delivered at any budget or form if we are willing to think out of the box. Credits Creative Team: Josh Yang, Shery Wee Accounts Servicing Team: Seah Hui Shan, Garrick Lee Creative Directors: Goh Wee Kim, Nicholas Leong Videographer: Gan | BY Lynchy | Publicis One Vietnam has promoted Kate Bayona-Garcia, currently Head of Digital & Innovations, to General Manager of Leo Burnett Vietnam. This appointment follows the launch of Publicis One in Vietnam last year which saw Lukasz Roszczyc, previously Managing Director, Leo Burnett Vietnam, appointed to CEO as part of the Publicis One Vietnams country board. The board is headed by Chairwoman, Hoang Thi Mai Huong and also includes Francois Goddet as Chief Integration Officer and Hoang Dao Hiep as Advisor for Growth. In her new role, Bayona-Garcia (pictured left) will continue to develop the growing Leo Burnett operation in Ho Chi Minh City. Over the past five years, Kate has been a strong contributor to the remarkable growth of the agency and the advancement of its capabilities. As one of the top leaders in Vietnams communications industry, Bayona-Garcia brings more than 12 years of international leadership to the role. Im confident in her ability to foster further integration and collaboration of Leo Burnett with the greater Publicis One Vietnam team, said Roszczyc. Why the US votes the way it does Governing Beaufort County Related to: Government Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 A less subjective view of governing and the policies that influences the lives of Beaufort County residents to a degree far greater than many realize and far more than some care to admit. It will be launched on Saturday at 10am at Belconnen Fresh Food Markets Piazza by Arts Minister Gordon Ramsay with free performances by various dance groups including Wiradjuri Echoes, Feel the Music Deaf Dancers, and dance artists from Ausdance ACT's youth mentoring program Escalate. There will also be free dance displays at the markets on May 6 by dance schools and groups on May 6 from 10am. "These include the relocation of CWP Renewables' asset and operations centre to Canberra, with employment of at least 24 people by 2022, and the establishment of a microgrid export business in the ACT," he said. But under the territory's Coroner's Act, a Coroner is only forced to conduct an inquiry into a fire if ordered to by the Attorney-General; otherwise, it is up to the discretion of the Court as to whether an inquiry is deemed necessary. While some in attendance were surprised to see her there - public housing was not the agenda - chair of the community council Tom Anderson said it was the minister's idea to attend although she was only able to confirm she would be coming about half an hour before the meeting kicked off. "Additionally, the ATO has advised that it expects to raise more than $4 billion in additional tax liabilities this year from large public groups and multinationals. And further, just last week the ATO had a major win in the Full Federal Court over Chevron, who were seeking to reduce their tax with aggressive internal transfer pricing arrangements. "If you had a Productivity Commission report into Australia from England in the 1880s or in 1787 they would have said 'Don't go to Australia'. If you would have had a Productivity Commission report into public transport, you'd shut it down. After the government conceded the project's costs would be higher than if the fleet, or some of it, was built offshore, the auditor-general confirmed Defence costing models forecast a premium of about 15 per cent on the Australian build option for DCNS. Discovering Beaufort County Related to: Community Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 A look at the people, geography and history of a large familiar county separated by one big flowing river. A Historical Perspective Related to: Native Front Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 History is the social genetic code of who we were, who we are, and ultimately, who we will become. Regional Business Related to: Business Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 We wish to expose the various businesses providing the variety of services that support the marketplace within the various communities of northeastern North Carolina, which is the region that Beaufort County NOW serves. Health and Fitness Related to: Native Front Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 In body, mind and spirit do we, humans, experience life and by that experience examine a purposeful future. Government Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 Page 118 Page 119 Page 120 Page 121 Page 122 Page 123 Page 124 Page 125 Page 126 Page 127 Page 128 Page 129 Page 130 Page 131 Page 132 Page 133 Page 134 Page 135 Page 136 Page 137 Page 138 Page 139 Page 140 Page 141 Page 142 Page 143 Page 144 Page 145 Page 146 Page 147 Page 148 Page 149 Page 150 Page 151 Page 152 Page 153 Page 154 Page 155 Page 156 Page 157 Page 158 Page 159 Page 160 Page 161 Page 162 Page 163 Page 164 Page 165 Page 166 Page 167 Page 168 Page 169 Page 170 Page 171 Page 172 Page 173 Page 174 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 Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) released the results of the aptitude test for Secondary School Certificate (SSC) on its official website. When was the exam conducted? Maharashtra Class 12 exams were conducted from February 28, 2017, while class 10 SSC exams were held from March 7, 2017. Why was this test conducted? The tests were introduced for the first time last year to help students in planning their careers after class 10. How many students appeared for the online exam? Over 16,67,445 students appeared for the online exam in February. How many students appeared for the class 10 and class 12 exams? This year, Maharashtra Class 12 exams were conducted from February 28, 2017, and more than 15 lakh students appeared for the exam, while class 10 SSC exams were held from March 7, 2017, where 17,66,098 lakh students appeared for the exam. How to check the results? Go to the official website Click on the relevant link. Enter your seat number. After submitting seat number, the detailed reports will be displayed on the screen. According to a report, Vinod Tawde education minister and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis launched the new portal on April 26, 2017. About MSBSHSE: The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education is an autonomous body established under the provisions of the Maharashtra Act No. 41 of 1965. The board conducts the HSC and SSC Examinations in the state of Maharashtra through its nine Divisional Boards located in Pune, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nasik, Kolhapur, Amravati, Latur, Nagpur, and Ratnagiri. Every year, around 14 lakh candidates appear for HSC exam, whereas 17 lakh candidates appear for SSC examination. Combat Crime Related to: Community beaufort county arrests nc beaufort county crime stoppers beaufort county jailbird beaufort county nc arrest records beaufort county nc arrests beaufort county nc mugshots washington nc arrests Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 The purpose of this category is to help the public learn about injustices in the criminal justice system and to brainstorm and come up with meaningful solutions. Our Founding Principles Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 This ongoing examination into what influenced the United States of America to become a nation of such profound greatness is a group effort. Please join us. The European Union warned the U.K. that its remaining 27 countries are now its chief concern rather than anything Theresa May might want to achieve from Brexit as it seeks to limit negative consequences from Britains departure. Our position is determined by the interests of the 27, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters on Thursday at a meeting of national ministers in Luxembourg. It was the first time since the U.K. joined the EU in 1973 that official EU ministerial talks have taken place without a British representative. The European affairs ministers signed off on the Brexit negotiating guidelines that will form the basis of talks with the U.K. over the next 18 months, covering the EUs starting position on issues ranging from the rights of European citizens in Britain, the U.K.s financial obligations and when the two sides can start discussing a potential free-trade deal. This is a damage-limitation process, Italys junior minister for European affairs, Sandro Gozi, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Luxembourg. Saturday Summit The guidelines are due to be approved by leaders of the 27 EU countries at a summit in Brussels on Saturday. Talks with the U.K. are scheduled to begin shortly after the British election on June 8. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin that the U.K. cant expect preferential treatment, telling her national parliament that some officials in London are still harboring illusions about that. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker who, along with the EUs chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, met with May in London on Wednesday, explained to the British prime minister that its essential to come to a swift agreement on an orderly exit, commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. Barnier entered the Luxembourg talks with the words: We are ready. There are only two Acid Green Porsche 918 Spyders in the world optioned out with the Weissach package and now one is for sale from Dubais Knight International. We had the chance to see this very 918 at last years Top Marques Monaco event and were told it was originally purchased by a Swiss man. At the time, it had an asking price of 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million) and while the current seller hasnt publicized an asking price, prospective buyers shouldnt expect much change from $3 million. The car is currently on display in the UK and will be sold with British registration alongside a license plate reading 918S. It has just 3,100 miles on the clock and is absolutely extraordinary when viewed in person. Pictures and video fail to accurately capture the cars paint finish but rest assured, it is absolutely breathtaking, hence why this 918 is worth so much more than most. VIDEO PHOTO GALLERY Not many vehicles are cooler than an ex-military Humvee, but an Opel armored truck, with its own rocket launcher, could top it. Produced at the peak of World War II, when conditions on the Eastern Front were already poor, the Opel Maultier Panzer-Werfer 42 demonstrated its combat skills by providing mobility and protection for the crew. Based on a standard Ford 3-ton VS000S 42 truck, with sets of Carden-Lyd tracks, and wheel assemblies from captured British Universal type carriers, the vehicle is 19-feet and 5in long, 7-feet and 2in wide, and 8-feet and 6in tall, to the top of the rocket launchers. It tips the scales at approximately 7 tons, when loaded, and benefits from 8mm armored plates at the front, sides, and rear, and 6mm at the top and bottom. When it was operational, the Opel Maultier Panzer-Werfer 42 used to carry a 15cm, 8-barreled Nebelwerfer rocket launcher, mounted on an armored swivel mount, and could transport a crew of 4, at approximately 20mph (32km/h), on almost any terrain surface. From 1943 to 1944, Opel, which was a division of General Motors at the time, built 300 units of this military vehicle, and one of them is going under the hammer at AuctionsAmerica, on May 12, where its estimated to sell for $40,000-$50,000. It may look ready to conquer the field, but it lacks an engine and transmission. The vendor says that the buyer could use a late model diesel unit and gearbox to get it in running order. PHOTO GALLERY Business Newer Older Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Photo: RDCO The popular 'Go Fish' fish stocking program at Shannon Lake has been postponed due to unprecedented high water levels. While the stocking of about 500 young rainbow trout at the West Kelowna lake was planned for this Sunday, the water level has forced the event to be postponed by a week. Weve never seen Shannon Lake so high, and as a result, the net thats used to keep fish in for the youth fishery, isnt long or deep enough to do the job this year, said Bruce Smith, communications officer with the Regional District of Central Okanagan. Our Peachland Sportsmens Association volunteers are busy making modifications and plan to put the net in soon. While the Shannon Lake event has been postponed, the RDCO says the Hall Road fishing pond in Mission Creek Regional Park will still be stocked on April 30. The stocking will continue every weekend until June 18. Kids can view the hundreds of fish being dumped into the lake, and those under 15 years can try their hand at catching one 25-30 centimetre long rainbow trout per day, without a fishing licence. This Sunday's Go Fish event at Hall Road fishing pond will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nanaimo RCMP are hoping a surveillance video will help them nab a boozy bad guy who went to some effort to steal a couple of bottles of liquor during a early morning break and enter. At 3:57 a.m. Monday April 24, the suspect broke into the Cassidy Country Kichen, 2930 Trans-Canada Highway. The video clearly shows the suspect approaching from the side of the restaurant with his face covered, gloves on and holding a large rock, said Cst. Gary O'Brien. After violently throwing the rock at the front door several times, the glass door smashes and the male goes inside. While not shown on the video, the suspect leaves within two minutes carrying two bottles of hard liquor and some mix. The man then runs north bound along the Trans-Canada Highway. Photo: Contributed The Volinspire Volunteer of the Week is back and this week it's Jenny Agar. What inspires you to volunteer? I grew up in a small town with a strong sense of community, which I believe is why I am so passionate about volunteering. I enjoy making a positive difference in the community in which I live. I am so proud to work for a company that aligns its values with the values by which I try to live by every day. Which causes are you most passionate? I am very passionate about the BC Children's Hospital Foundation, United Way Central & South Okanagan/Similkameen, Terry Fox Run Kelowna, and other events that Prospera Credit Union sponsors or volunteers with. I have friends who have had to stay at Children's Hospital, and the difference the donations make is what allows the hospital to do what they do. I have always been passionate about supporting causes that help or give back to children. What impact have you seen volunteers make in the community? One event that was created by Prospera staffer Angela Burnell that I believe makes an impact is Bats For A Cause. This softball tournament inspires sponsorship and community participation that helps make our community a better place, and the event has gotten bigger every year. The fundraising we do fort this event goes to BC Children's hospital. Last year, I believe we raised over $80,000! How can people learn more or get involved? Volunteer time is always needed by organizations in the community, and I have found Volinspire to be a wonderful platform to get involved and learn more. Is there anyone you would like to recognize? I am forever grateful to work for Prospera Credit Union. Do you know an inspiring volunteer? Nominate them for a volunteer spotlight. Photo: Ryan Flett/Lower Columbia This summer, another flight between Kelowna and Victoria will grace the skies. Starting June 5, Pacific Coastal Airlines will offer a midday flight between Victoria and Cranbrook, with a single stopover in Kelowna. From Monday to Friday, and again on Sunday, the new flight will leave Victoria International Airport at 11:45 a.m. and arrive in Kelowna at 12:50 p.m. From there it will continue on to the Canadian Rockies International Airport in Cranbrook, returning to YLW to leave at 3:45 p.m. and ending back in Victoria at 4:50 p.m. The extra, mid-day flight means there will now be three non-stop flights between Victoria and Kelowna during the week, and two non-stop flights between the cities on Sundays. A single flight between Kelowna and Victoria runs on Saturdays. That plane leaves Victoria at 8:45 a.m. and arrives in Kelowna at 9:50 a.m. Travelling in the opposite direction, it leaves at 10:15 a.m. and arrives back in Victoria at 11:20 a.m. Pacific Coastal Airlines is a privately owned, B.C.-based airline operating out of Vancouver International Airport, and flying to 14 regional airports. Photo: Facebook Nathan Fahl A Kelowna man with a laundry list of prior convictions will spend an additional 19 months behind bars for stealing a bait car last March. Nathan Fahl, 28, pleaded guilty to theft of a vehicle and driving while prohibited in February, a week before his trial was set to begin. On the evening of March 30, 2016, Fahl was caught on a hidden camera inside a bait car, after police were notified the car had been broken into near Rutland on Highway 97. The bait car was tracked by police and found abandoned five kilometres up Postill Lake Road, but police could not locate the suspect at the time. Fahl, a prolific offender in the community, was recognized on the video by police, and he was found and arrested a month later on May 6. Fahl has never possessed a driver's licence. Fahl, who has been addicted to drugs for all of his adult life and spent much of it behind bars, remained in custody until December, when he was granted bail on the condition he be released into the care of Adult and Teen Challenge Okanagan Men's Centre, a Christian-based rehabilitation centre in Lake Country. Fahl attended the rehab centre for ten days. Things didn't go well for him there, and he was asked to leave after ten days, said Fahl's defence counsel, Michael Newcombe. He just found the program very difficult and it was outside of the scope of his abilities to handle. While Justice Richard Hewson acknowledged positive letters from Fahl's addictions counsellor, a chaplain at his prison and a teacher who's working with Fahl to complete his Grade 12 education, he accepted the Crown's submission for a 30-month sentence for the two charges, minus 11 months credit for time already served. Given what he's been able to do, there is a hope he can rehabilitate himself and somehow become a functioning member of our community, Justice Hewson said. At the same time, the offences he's committed are serious. Fahl's sentence includes 18 months of probation following his release from prison. The Lord's changed my views so much, Fahl told the court. The way I feel about giving back to the community, it's one of my top goals. It's not over for me, I can actually live by the rules out there and be a productive member of society. Photo: The Canadian Press A soldier who died while training at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright was in a type of armoured vehicle that has been involved in other fatal accidents. Sgt. Robert Dynerowicz died in hospital and three other soldiers were hurt after their LAV III crashed Tuesday on a gravel road on the base in east-central Alberta. Col. Conrad Mialkowski, commander of 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, said the accident is under investigation. "At this time we don't understand fully what occurred," Mialkowski said Wednesday. "But what we do know is that it was a single-vehicle accident of that light armoured vehicle or LAV III with Sgt. Dynerowicz as the crew commander, another crew member in the turret of the vehicle with him, a driver and a soldier in the back." The LAV III is an eight-wheeled, heavily armed and armoured utility vehicle that served as the backbone of Canada's war effort in Afghanistan. Some crew in LAV IIIs can drive with their head and shoulders exposed to give them greater visibility. Mialkowski said the LAV III has been the workhorse of the army for years and is safe. He said his unit is currently using hundreds of them. In 2014, Lt.-Col. Dan Bobbitt died when his LAV III rolled during training at CFB Wainwright. Four other soldiers were injured. Photo: Contributed Commuters on Pandosy Street may have noticed some serious-looking police action this morning. But, there's no need for concern it was only a drill. The RCMP's Southeast District Emergency Response Team held training exercise at two homes near Kelowna General Hospital that are set to be torn down. The ERT officers, similar to SWAT teams in the United States, were practising entering buildings in emergency situations in full combat gear with dog teams as well. Since the houses were planned for demolition, they didn't need to be concerned about damage in the intense training session. The action drew curious onlookers. Members spent the day conducting strategic manoeuvres at 2169 and 2159 Pandosy St. and thanked the property owner, Alana Marrington of 2169Pandosy.com, for allowing them to practise on site. Once the homes are demolished, a new four-storey mixed-use development will be built on the property, that offers condominiums and medically related retail and office services. Photo: David Ogilvie A power line was knocked down on Wednesday. Firefighters arrived on scene just at about 6 p.m. to Douglas Road, between Boucherie Road and Thacker Road. It was not clear what caused the lines to be knocked down. Hydro crews were on scene investigating. Photo: The Canadian Press British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is defending the time it took her government to cool Vancouver's scorching housing market, telling voters watching a TV debate the Liberals wanted to make sure they didn't wipe out the equity people have built in their homes by acting rashly. But Clark says measures the government took, including a 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver, have worked by slowing rising house prices. British Columbia's May 9 election campaign passed a pivotal moment Wednesday night as the three party leaders participated in the final debate, outlining their differences on housing, the economy and leadership. NDP Leader John Horgan accused the Liberals of waiting too long to come to the aid of families trying to put a roof over their heads, while Green Leader Andrew Weaver said the government's policies have turned housing into an investment vehicle. The leaders debated for the first time last week on radio, which was largely remembered for a testy exchange after Clark touched Horgan on the arm and told him to calm down, causing the NDP leader to ask his Liberal counterpart not to touch him again. The debate on Wednesday featured more three way clashes, but the moderator asked Horgan directly about his temperament, asking if he has anger-management issue. Horgan says he gets angry when he sees government inaction on a range of issues. The campaign has defined distinct choices for voters from the three parties. The Liberals are trying to maintain a 16-year grip on power with a platform that would cost $157 million in new spending over three years. Clark is promising a personal income tax freeze, a small business tax cut and four more balanced budgets, building on a string of surpluses in the last five years. The Liberals have run a largely stay-the-course campaign so far, highlighting their stewardship of Canada's top-performing economy. Horgan is running on the slogan "It's time for a government that works for you," a swipe at the Liberals over political donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. Clark has fired back on Horgan on political donations after it emerged some of the NDP's senior campaign staff were being paid by the United Steelworkers Union. Horgan also supports a daycare program that would cost $10 a day, a significant increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the elimination of medical services premiums, something the Liberals have promised to halve, starting in January. Weaver is promising to double the tax on foreign home buyers and extend it across the province, while also providing free daycare for working parents who have children under the age of three. Alanna Kelly The mother of a 17-year-old Kelowna girl who died from an overdose in March said her daughter was turned away from help before she could be saved. Chelsea Christianson was a goofy, loving teen who enjoyed acting, gymnastics and nature. Her mother calls her 'one of a kind' and said the last two years of her life wasnt her It was the drugs. When I first found out that she was having difficulty with drugs, it was really hard to find resources and nobody really knew anything for resources in the interior, said Kimberly Christianson. She suffered from depression and turned to drugs to make her feel better. Chelsea spent time in the adolescent psychiatry unit at the hospital and had been accessing the youth shelter in downtown Kelowna where she had a reconnect worker, mental health worker, addiction and drug worker and a psychiatrist. After seven months, they finally received a referral to be accepted into the Peak House, a residential alcohol and drug treatment facility for youth in East Vancouver on July 5, 2016. That was my first moment in time that I had peace, that she was there for a little bit, she recalls. Chelsea went into detox for 10 days and when she finally arrived to Peak House, she was kicked out. Within a few hours they were calling me and they just said she has to leave. She cant stay, Christianson said. They just said there was a policy and they wouldnt let her stay and I found out later it was an in-house policy that another youth from Kelowna had been there. Castanet reached out to Peak House for a comment but did not receive a response in return. At that time, she was refusing to stay at home and went back to living on the streets. That was when things got worse. Christianson now knows that her daughter overdosed multiple times and was transported in an ambulance but she was never notified. She was going to the hospital overdosing and getting treatment and then saying, I don't want my mom, or anyone to know, and then they would keep her for an hour and send her on her way, she said. She was potentially almost dying every single one of those times and nobody knew. Chelsea would have been celebrating her 18th birthday a few days ago, and now a 'Rest in Peace' Facebook page is filled with loving words and birthday wishes for the bubbly blonde.' She died from an overdose after inhaling methamphetamine and fentanyl on March 19. A long term facility is what Christianson thinks would be part of the solution but added the stereotype around mental health and addiction needs to shift. My daughter didn't deserve to die because she had a struggle, because she had an addiction. She deserved to get help, just like everyone else. Photo: CTV A trio of incidents in East Vancouver Wednesday has led to a public warning from police. A 21-year-old woman was pulled into some bushes outside an unoccupied house and sexually assaulted as she walked on East 46th Avenue near Doman Street about 2 a.m. An hour earlier, a 34-year-old woman was grabbed as she entered an apartment building near Joyce Street and Vanness Avenue. When she screamed, the man ran away. And, about 12:30 a.m., a 22-year-old woman was walking near Joyce and Monmouth Avenue when she was approached from behind and told not to move. The woman ran off and called police. The suspect in all three incidents is described as a man between 20 and 40, about five foot six to five foot eight. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: CTV A transgender candidate in the provincial election is the target of hateful flyers in her Vancouver riding. Morgane Oger is running for the NDP in Vancouver-False Creek. The flyers distributed in the West End this week say: "The truth is there are only two genders, male and female and they are God given and unchangeable" and warn against embracing "homosexuality and transvestitism." Oger is the first openly transgender person to run for MLA in B.C. While Oger was hurt by the message, she's more worried about others in the community. "I know I'm resilient, but not everybody else is," Oger told CTV. "It's very sad." Oger's BC Liberal opponent, Sam Sullivan, condemned the handouts. "We are an inclusive province, and this kind of rhetoric has no place in the public discourse of this province," he said. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: The Canadian Press Wood Buffalo Mayor Melissa Blake says she's not expecting last May's wildfire to have much of an impact on the Fort McMurray area's long-term population. Before the fire, the municipality was expecting growth of between one and three per cent over the next five years and Blake said Wednesday she's not expecting that to shift much. The downturn in oil prices and resulting layoffs had already caused the population to shrink in the oilsands region after years of breakneck growth during boom times. "The economy has changed. Investment has diminished," said Blake. "It's a very different, more stable environment that we're operating in." In the near term, while some residents may have not come back since the fire, others are being attracted by a surge in construction activity as homes are rebuilt. "I think over a longer horizon we're going to come out just net-even if you will," said Blake. On May 3, it will have been a year since a ferocious wildfire spread into Fort McMurray and forced everyone out of the northern Alberta city. Nearly 2,600 dwellings were destroyed. Photo: Contributed The defence lawyer for a man who admits he strangled his wife and buried her body in their home says his client acted in self-defence. Closing arguments are set for today at the second-degree murder trial of Allan Shyback. He is also charged with causing an indignity to the body of Lisa Mitchell, 31, who was last seen alive in Calgary in October 2012. An undercover "Mr. Big'' sting operation was launched in 2013 and ended with Shyback's confession and arrest in Winnipeg a year later. During his testimony this week, Shyback told the judge hearing the case alone that he had been the victim of nearly a decade of domestic abuse and that Mitchell had attacked him with a knife the day she died. "I expect self-defence to be the first defence that will be raised and that can lead to a complete acquittal," Shyback's lawyer, Balfour Der, told court Tuesday. Mitchell's mummified body was found in a Rubbermaid container that had been entombed in cement in the basement of the house she and Shyback shared. "There is no defence raised to the indignity charge. I would expect there would be a finding of guilt," said Der. Photo: The Canadian Press Ontario's first balanced budget in a decade is being released this afternoon and is expected to contain new money to benefit seniors, students, parents, caregivers and patients. The deficit-free fiscal plan gives the province's Liberal government some room to bring in new spending as it heads into an election year. In a speech this week, Premier Kathleen Wynne said her plan has fairness at its heart and her approach is not to cut services, taxes and regulations and hope the results will trickle down to Ontarians. Finance Minister Charles Sousa has already announced the budget will include a public transit tax credit for seniors, and what he calls a "booster shot" for health care. The government has also already indicated there will be funding to increase respite services for people who act as caregivers to friends and family members, money for child-care spaces, a student job training placement initiative, investments in innovation, and money for affordable housing. But even with a balanced budget this year, Ontario will still have debt of more than $300 billion. Photo: The Canadian Press The Conservative leadership race now enters the final weeks with penultimate debate showcasing the task at hand for the majority of candidates: take down clear front-runner Maxime Bernier. Wednesday night's final party debate in Toronto was supposed to be a big political spectacle in its own right, with the May 27 climax looming on the calendar. But then celebrity businessman and front-runner Kevin O'Leary went and quit the race just hours before, a development that some party members seemed to welcome; when the debate moderator announced he wouldn't be on stage, sustained applause broke out. "Today, the race just got real," said candidate Erin O'Toole. "Elvis has left the building." O'Leary threw his support behind Bernier, his closest rival in the contest. The Quebec MP is known for his libertarian bent and self-proclaimed "Mad Max" nickname. His competitors seized on both as they turned on him fast. Michael Chong called his policies "extreme," highlighting Bernier's pledge to cut the size of federal programs by a third. What's necessary to beat Trudeau was a point of contention during the event, with candidates also pivoting to attack Kellie Leitch and her proposals on face-to-face interviews for all immigrants and tests for Canadian values. Lisa Raitt, an MP from a Toronto-area riding, said giving the suggestion the party is not inclusive is a direct way to lose all the seats the party has in that area. She said people who might support the policy should do so at the party's peril. But everyone mostly saved their fire for Bernier, the pile-on heaviest over the MP's bedrock pledge of abolishing supply management, an issue that's leapt into the national spotlight anew after catching the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump who has said he wants it gone too. Photo: Contributed Castanet News reached out to candidates running in the ridings encompassing the Central Okanagan. These include Kelowna-Lake Country, Kelowna-Mission and Kelowna West. Each candidate was given the same six questions, and asked to respond by Monday, April 24. Here are the answers to question three from those who replied. Question 3: The rental vacancy rate in the Central Okanagan remains below one per cent. How would you propose to specifically tackle this rental crisis? Shelley Cook, BC NDP - Kelowna West - Ensuring people have access to adequate, suitable, affordable housing is the foundation to healthy communities where individuals, families and business can thrive. The BC NDP are committed to building 114,000 new affordable rental, non-profit, co-op and owner purchase housing units through partnerships over 10 years. As MLA for Kelowna West, I will fight for every unit of housing I can get for my riding, and will work with local government, key stakeholders/user groups and the broader community to ensure the units best meet our local needs. Housing units will be funded through a tax on speculation on our housing. People who buy property in Kelowna West, but dont live or work here and leave property empty, will be charged a 2 per cent tax on speculation. All revenue collected will go into our BC Housing Affordability Fund. This tax will also help to make housing more affordable generally by releasing some of the pressure on the buyers housing market, allowing renters to move into their own homes and freeing up rental units. We will work with the federal government to ensure that promised funds come to our province/community, and wherever possible, leverage more funds through additional partnerships. We will invest in student housing by removing unnecessary rules that prevent universities and colleges from building affordable student housing. Whenever possible, we will use BC wood products to construct new housing in Kelowna West and throughout B.C. Chuck Hardy, BC Conservatives - Kelowna-Mission - The big picture, we should be helping everyone old to young...all ages. We are all the same, Canadians first, and help each other share in the good times. We have oil ,gas, water ,power and we still pay. Harwinder Sandhu, BC NDP - Kelowna-Mission - We will take major steps to make housing more affordable with a comprehensive ten-year plan: Through partnerships, we will build 114,000 new rental, social, co-op, and owner-purchased housing units. We will crack down on the cheaters who are distorting B.C.s housing market. And, instead of the BC Liberals land giveaways to their developer friends, well use public land to build housing that British Columbians can afford. This major housing initiative will create thousands of stable, long-term jobs for B.C.s construction workers and home builders, and thousands of secure homes for British Columbians. Wherever possible, we will construct all types of housing from innovative B.C. manufactured wood products, creating new markets for BC wood products and new jobs in B.C.s forest industry-based communities. Steve Thomson, BC Liberals - Kelowna Mission - The Central Okanagan is not alone in this problem. Our government has been working hard to address the issue of affordable housing, beginning with a total investment of almost a billion dollars in the last year alone that will create close to 5,300 new units of affordable housing. In addition, by supporting home buyers with a reduction in the property transfer tax and making interest free loans available to an estimated 42,000 first-time home buyers, through the BC HOME Partnership Program, we will be creating additional room in the rental market. The rental housing issue is not a provincial issue alone. It requires a coordinated approach. And so our government is providing leadership in bringing both municipal and federal governments to the table, along with housing advocates from the non-profit and cooperative housing sectors to create new supply, improve affordability and work on related economic policies to support increasing incomes. Rainer Wilkins, Green Party - Kelowna-Mission - A BC Green Government would increase the availability of affordable housing: BC Green government will invest up to $750 million per year in to support the construction of approximately 4,000 new units of affordable housing per year. BC Green government will work with federal and local governments to make land available for the construction of affordable housing. BC Green government will work with social housing agencies and federal and local governments to develop and implement a provincial housing plan to address deficiencies in the supply of affordable rental accommodation based on priority needs. BC Green government will lead a comprehensive rethink of zoning to ensure that it is consistent with government objectives such as the provision of affordable housing. Issues for consideration include densification, especially along transit corridors; revitalizing neighbourhoods surrounding schools; cultural and social amenities; and complete communities. A BC Green government will protect existing social housing and reduce operating costs by investing $100 million per year in retrofits and renovations of older units. Green government will partner with First Nations, non-profit developers, cooperatives and the private sector to support planning and construction of low income rental units. Green government will introduce incentives for the construction of, and/or conversion of existing buildings for rental property. Norm Letnick, BC Liberals - Kelowna-Lake Country - There is a shortage of both affordable rental and owner occupied housing in our area. Both municipal and provincial levels of governments have taken steps to help including increasing densities, allowing secondary suites, working to improve development permit application times and providing incentives for purpose built rental housing. Province-wide we have made the largest single-year investment of $920 million to create nearly 5,300 new units of affordable housing. We are also reducing the property transfer tax for first time home buyers and offering an interest free loan to an estimated 42,000 first time home buyers for up to $37,500 to help them with their down payment. As they enter the ownership market, they will create room in the rental market. In addition, if elected, I would use the experience I gained as the President of a not-for-profit Housing Corporation in Banff from 1993-1998 to help increase the amount of entry-level rental and below-market owner occupied housing here in our community. Over seven projects, the Banff Housing Corporation helped more than 200 families achieve their dream of affordable housing. Alison Shaw, Green Party, Kelowna-Lake Country - The rental vacancy rate in the Central Okanagan remains below one per cent. How would you propose to specifically tackle this rental crisis? Everyone has the right to a place to live. Affordable housing is yet another issue the BC Liberals have downloaded to municipalities and left them to figure out. The real estate market has contributed substantially to the provincial GDP, which is why it has been neglected, but this has come at a significant cost. Right now, the speculation market is driving up the costs of homes, making it unaffordable for average British Columbians to access affordable shelter. We would double the foreign buyers tax to 30 per cent and increase the property transfer tax on those not intending to live in homes to discourage flipping. These strategies will be applied across the province to begin protecting those in the Central Okanagan from the same struggles that residents in Vancouver have faced trying to get into the housing market. Right now my family and I have been looking for over six months for a house to rent or own that fits within our budgets. We are two working professionals who have not been able to find a place long-term. I cannot even imagine what others must be facing. In Kelowna-Lake Country rental vacancy rates are ridiculously low while rents are exorbitantly high, among the highest in Canada. In addition to discouraging speculation which will open more units to rent, the BC Greens Affordable Homes Strategy will support the construction of 4000 more affordable housing units a year, provide incentives for the creation and protection of rental housing, and will enhance the Residential Tenancy Act to control rent increases and protect tenants from the rent creep that is incentivized in this type of climate. Photo: Hartmut Witschel It appears Mother Nature wants us to know who's really in charge. She won't seem to let Spring arrive gracefully without one last reminder of the season that was. Joe Rich residents woke this morning to a large dusting of snow. Depending where you live, accumulations could have been as much as 10 centimetres. To the west, more snow is falling on Highway 97C, the Okanagan Connector. Most accumulations appear to be settling in the areas around Pennask Summit and the Elkhart Lodge. The forecast for the Connector calls for snow to taper off to flurries by about noon today as the snow level rises from 1,000 to 1,500 metres. More flurries are expected this evening and overnight. Flurries on the Coquihalla are forecast to change to rain showers later today. Photo: Contributed Life in a small town has always held an attraction for Phyllis and Bert Terry. After living for years in small towns around BC and the Prairies, the Penticton couple have donated $30,000 to help provide medical equipment for the Penticton Regional Hospital expansion. Bert's ties to small town life date back to his childhood. His father worked as a station agent for the CPR and the family lived in a number of rural towns, including several years in Hardisty, AB, east of Edmonton. After taking a break from high school in 1947 to help construct a new oil pipeline from Alberta to Wisconsin, Terry eventually returned to school and graduated in 1950 in the equally small town of Hughenden, AB. After a short stint as a telegraph operator with the CPR in the village of Leoville, Sask., Terry joined the RCMP in 1952 and remained with the Force for 25 years until retiring in 1977. He was posted at several detachments around BC. Terry continued his working career with the provincial government, including stints with the Ministry of Human Resources, the BC Liquor Board and as a coroner. His final job was in Penticton where he worked as a liquor inspector. Phyllis Terry grew up in Courtenay and was working as a telephone operator in the Vancouver Island community when she met Bert through some friends. I enjoyed small places, Bert said. You knew everybody and you got involved in the community. Although Phyllis had spent her entire childhood in Courtenay, she relished an opportunity to experience life other communities. One year he took me on a trip to all the places he had lived in Alberta and Saskatchewan, including Leoville, she recalled. But by then there was nothing there the railway had shut down. Bert said Phyllis quickly became attached to each community. Every place we lived, she never wanted to leave, he said. And when she got to the new place, she didnt want to leave there either. A move to Fort St. John and the Peace River country in the mid-1970s was especially tough. He dragged me up there, Phyllis said. But the people were so friendly. The couple moved to Penticton in 1986. Phyllis admitted she cried all the way down to the Okanagan, but they soon found life in the Peach City much to their liking and opted to retire here. They have now decided to donate to the South Okanagan-Similkameen Medical Foundations PRH campaign. The couple emphasize the SOS Medical Foundations efforts to provide new medical equipment for the PRH expansion will benefit everyone in the community. Photo: The Canadian Press Farid El-Hayouni and Ibtissam Saidi are almost certain they won't live on Prospect Drive again. The couple had a duplex on the street in Fort McMurray's north end, where they lived with their three young sons and El-Hayouni's parents. They had a beautiful view of a nearby pond from their bedroom window and, on warm nights, their block would fill with the sounds of children playing. But their home was one of nearly 2,600 dwellings destroyed in last May's wildfire. The flames forced more than 88,000 to flee for safety and caused an estimated $3.8 billion in insured damage. The rebuild of the oilsands city has lumbered along in the year since. About 650 development permits have been issued representing 900 dwelling units about a third of what was destroyed. About 33 families were living in rebuilt homes as of the start of April. "We are rebuilding. It is happening," says Erin O'Neill, operations manager with the local recovery task force. "Demolition was done long ago ... We're glad to already see people moving home." El-Hayouni, an engineer at an oilsands mine, and Saidi, a stay-at-home mom, are in limbo. They adore Fort McMurray and want to stay, but they feel drained even thinking about rebuilding where their home once stood. "It's like a grave for me now," Saidi, 32, says as she holds her 15-month-old son Wassim on her lap. Waterways, Fort McMurray's oldest neighbourhood, faces particular challenges that have slowed the rebuild. One is how to manage future flood risk from the nearby Clearwater River. There are also concerns over slope stability because trees that held the soil together burned up. Photo: The Canadian Press British Columbia's election campaign is entering its final stretch after a TV debate Wednesday night that saw the three party leaders spar on the economy, housing and political leadership. Liberal Leader Christy Clark is trying to maintain her party's 16-year grip on power and while her record was a target for her opponents, Clark was also on the offensive as she took shots at the NDP and Green party's financial policies as a risk to an economy that has led growth across the country. But growth has also meant scorching house prices in the Vancouver area. Faced with the charge from NDP Leader John Horgan that the Liberals waited too long to help families trying to put a roof over their heads, Clark said she wanted to make sure the government didn't wipe out the value people have built in their homes by acting rashly. "For people who already own a home, you have a lot of equity in that home, it is your investment and it's something that you want to protect. So it was really important that our government make sure we did all of our homework," said Clark, adding measures her government has taken like a 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver has helped slow rising house prices. Green leader Andrew Weaver told Clark her government has a wrong-headed view of housing. "Houses and accommodations should be there for people to live in, not to be viewed as commodities to trade like gold or potash," he said. Weaver and Horgan traded barbs during much of the debate, with the Green leader saying the New Democrats are not much of an alternative to Clark's Liberals who have been in government since 2001. "Sixteen years and your whole narrative is to be better than the B.C. Liberals," said Weaver. "Well, Mr. Horgan better than really bad is still just plain bad." The leaders debated for the first time last week on radio, which was largely remembered for a testy exchange after Clark touched Horgan on the arm and told him to calm down, causing the NDP leader to ask his Liberal counterpart not to touch him again. The debate on Wednesday featured issue-dominated topics, but the moderator also singled out Horgan on his temperament, asking if he has an anger-management problem. Horgan said he gets angry when he sees government inaction on a range of issues from underfunding of schools to a lack of support for children in care, which has resulted in suicide. "I'm passionate. I got involved in public life because I wanted to make life better for people," he said. Clark was also put on the spot when she was asked about a stipend she once collected from the Liberal party on top of her salary as premier and about the political donations that have led to a police investigation of B.C.'s political parties. The Liberal leader deflected the question on trust, partly by discussing her economic record. "I am someone ... who has in my first term as premier experienced some controversy, but I have always done that with the best interests of people at heart, making sure that we are creating jobs for people." Photo: The Canadian Press Quebec Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux has tabled a bill to force municipal police officers to ditch their colourful protest pants. The bill amends the Police Act to obligate police officers and special constables to wear the uniform and equipment provided by their employer. Montreal police have been wearing camouflage and other brightly coloured pants since July 2014 as part of pressure tactics stemming from a battle over pension reforms. The bill would require the heads of police forces to enforce the rules and would impose hefty fines on officers who don't comply. Coiteux has previously said it's important for police to wear their uniforms to maintain public confidence and ensure officers can be easily identified. Photo: RCMP A team of scuba divers was being called in Thursday to help in the search for four hunters missing in northeastern Alberta. The RCMP dive team from British Columbia was to arrive in the area north of Fort Chipewyan in the afternoon. Police said the divers would work with boats equipped with sonar to search beneath the surface of the Rocher River. On Wednesday, RCMP and Parks Canada shifted their efforts to a recovery operation after failing to find the men in the rugged bush. The hunters left Fort Chipewyan on Sunday night in a boat, which was later found in the river that flows through Wood Buffalo National Park. Earlier this week, more than 70 people took part in the search which included three helicopters and volunteers from the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations. Photo: Google Maps A small portion of the Mabel Lake Forest Service Road east of Mabel Lake is being closed temporarily to all vehicle traffic due to safety concerns. The ministry says the closure takes effect Friday, Apr. 28 at 7 a.m. and covers a a 100-metre stretch of the road, starting at about the 11.5 km mark. Officials are concerned about the stability of the roadbed in the area and the need to ensure public safety. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations engineering staff have determined that soil in the area has become heavily saturated with water and that slumping of the roadbed has occurred, which has prompted the closure, said a statement. Closure signs will be posted on the route and on the junction with the Three Valley Mabel Forest Service Road (also known locally as the Wap Forest Service Road) to notify road users. The closed section is about one kilometre north of the main entrance to Mabel Lake Provincial Park, so public access to the park from the south will not be affected. Access to the northern portions of the road will also remain unaffected. The ministry says the road will reopen once the roadbed has been repaired but a construction timeline has not yet been determined. Photo: The Canadian Press A young woman stranded for hours after scaling a construction crane in the middle of the night is a thrill seeker, a friend said Thursday. Marisa Lazo, 23, appeared in court Thursday to face six counts of mischief by interfering with property. Lazo was granted bail for $500 with several conditions, including staying away from construction sites and rooftops. The dual Canadian-American citizen also had to surrender her U.S. passport and attend "suitable counselling." Lazo's perilous climb and the dramatic hours-long rescue operation that followed on Wednesday made headlines around the country. Her friend, Sara Burton, called her a "really good girl" and an "adventure-seeking" person. "When I saw it, I knew that it was maybe not the best decision, obviously, maybe some logic was not playing into place," Burton said outside court. "But the fact that she did it was not a shock to me or that she had the ability to do it." Firefighters said Wednesday they believed Lazo climbed up the crane, crawled out along the boom, and slid down a cable to a large pulley, where she was stranded. Photo: Contributed A 24-year-old Penticton man is facing several charges, after allegedly kicking a police officer in the head while being arrested. The Penticton RCMP was called 100 block of Rosetown Avenue, near Value Village, at 2:45 p.m. on April 22 for a report of a male entering and stealing from vehicles. When officers arrived he attempted to flee on foot. He was eventually arrested, kicking a female police officer in the head in the process. The man was intoxicated and was released once sober on a promise to appear on charges of mischief, theft, assaulting a peace officer and obstruction. Photo: The Canadian Press A senior RCMP officer says he warned superiors about the lack of firepower for front line officers long before the 2014 Moncton shooting rampage that left three Mounties dead. Supt. Troy Lightfoot told the RCMP's trial on labour code charges Thursday he became concerned about officer and public safety after various active shooter incidents including the 2005 attack in Mayerthorpe, Alta., that killed four Mounties. "We felt at the time that we were basically outgunned," Lightfoot said of active shooter incidents. "I felt that we needed new tools." The allegations against the RCMP stem from its response to Justin Bourque's shooting rampage in Moncton, N.B., in which he killed three officers and wounded two others. Bourque was armed with a semi-automatic rifle. Police use of C8 carbine rifles became a central focus in the fallout from the shootings, with some Moncton officers complaining they were outgunned because they did not have carbines. The high-powered weapons have a greater range than the officers' standard-issue pistols. Lightfoot told Moncton provincial court Judge Leslie Jackson he contributed to a briefing note in 2006 that recommended looking at carbines for Mounties, and was told his team should continue researching the issue. The national police force ultimately approved the C8 carbine rifles in September 2011, but the rollout took time. Earlier this week, Supt. Bruce Stuart testified that the carbine purchasing, training and rollout was a highly complicated process with many people involved, and one that was not to be rushed. Alphonse MacNeil, a retired assistant commissioner with the RCMP, has said the carbines should be rolled out faster. His 2015 report on the Moncton shootings concluded the high-powered weapons could have made a difference in that incident. Photo: pixabay The Downtown Penticton Association is fundraising for a Canada 150 fireworks celebration. We are looking to bring to Penticton the largest fireworks show this city has ever had. With a goal of $20,000 it will truly be an amazing display of colour lighting up our nighttime sky over Okanagan Lake, reads a GoFundMe campaign launched by the Association. So far Ellis Don Construction has come through with the majority of the funds, pitching in $5,000. The City of Penticton has contributed $1,500, while the DPA has put up $1,000. Perrin Orthodontics has promised $500, for a total of $8,000 so far. Donations can also be made at the Downtown Penticton office. Photo: The Canadian Press Kevin O'Leary says he and Maxime Bernier went several rounds trying to convince the other to drop out of the Conservative leadership race. But O'Leary says he was the ultimately the one to leave because Bernier had the better argument the seats needed in Quebec for a parliamentary majority could only be delivered by a Quebec-based leader. O'Leary says while he's now gone from the race, he doesn't intend to be forgotten. Instead, the reality TV star and businessman said his campaign team and Bernier's are merging in order together deliver Bernier the leadership and then the federal election in 2019. O'Leary insists that his decision to drop out of the race wasn't motivated by the concern that losing it would tarnish his personal brand. He told The Canadian Press he'll prove that by campaigning for the Conservatives from now until the next election to fulfil his original promise to unseat the Trudeau Liberals. The person involved in Wednesdays fatal shooting in Penticton has been released without charge, according to the RCMP. This was an isolated event, and not a random act as both parties were known to each other. We do not feel the public is at risk, Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth said. All of our police resources remain engaged in this ongoing investigation. Multiple police officers remained at the scene at 988 Creston Ave., as of Thursday morning. Sources tell Castanet that the alleged shooter in Wednesdays homicide called 911 immediately after the incident. Officers were called to the apartment building at about 10:30 a.m. and arrived to find a deceased male. Witnesses heard loud banging and yelling, I know you're in here, prior to a gunshot. It remains possible that the suspect could face charges at a later date. Anyone with information on the shooting that has not spoken to police yet is asked to contact the Penticton RCMP at 250-492-4300. The Near Occaisions of Sin As a Catholic Educated Catholic in the process of being Catholically Educated, the Nuns tried very hard to get me to understand how I needed to avoid the Near Occasions of Sin. It was not until very recently that I fully realized how hard it is to avoid such occasions. Last month my newspaper told me about one of my fellow Georgians who stole a Krispy Kreme Donut Truck. He and his sticky fingers and sticky steering wheel were eventually caught but not before he had been the leader of a protracted high speed chase. I decided to look up my fellow Georgian's high speed chase on the Internet and found that there have been other Krispy Kreme Truck Hijackings in other places throughout the Good Ole USofA... Madison, WI on 11/24/07 Tampa, FL on 5/11/11 San Antonio, TX on 1/6/12 I don't think the nuns would be too harsh on anyone who stole a Krispy Kreme Truck. I always found Catholic Nuns to be very understanding (except when one of their students tried to write left handed). They would have seen right away that these hijackers probably did not put themselves in the Near Occasion of Sin. Those trucks were driven to where these weak willed hungry people were minding their own business and all of a sudden there was the Near Occasion of Scrumptious Sin parked right in front of them. It was not their faults that Krispy Kremes are so irresistibly delicious. Our Federal Government ought to get involved. They ought to make Krispy Kreme take out some of the Scrumptiousness. Exactly how much, you ask? I would not be so bold as to impose my own opinion on the Donut Industry because they have always tried so hard to make us happy...and fat. I do think that a Congressional Blue Ribbon Panel ought to be appointed to come with the 3 R's (Right Removal Requirements). We all know that this is going to take time because the Congressional Blue Ribbon Panel will need at least 10 years of donut sampling and many trips to the Krispy Kreme Factories in Hawaii and the South of France before they can arrive at the Proper Scrumptiousness Removal Determination. Seriously, this is getting to be serious. First we lost Twinkies and now a yet to be determined amount of Scrumptiousness is going to be removed from Krispy Kremes. Actually I really do not care about any of this. On the other hand, if they start hijacking Cannoli Trucks, then you would certainly see me write a letter to my Congressman. Would I kid u? Smartfella Emergency Management and DOT Monitoring Rivers That Have Crested or Are Predicted to Crest in Next Few Days Move to higher ground when flash flood warnings are issued. Don't wait for instructions. Never drive into flooded areas or across flooded roads. If you cannot see the road, it may not be there. Do not walk through moving water. Just six inches of fast-moving water can knock over an adult. Follow detours and obey traffic barricades that close off roads. Never park or camp along streams, rivers or creeks. Contact: Ford Porter Ford Porter govpress@nc.gov RALEIGH: Despite sunny skies, North Carolinians need to look out for flooding in low-lying areas, avoid flooded roads, and stay tuned to local weather updates, Governor Roy Cooper warned today.said Governor Cooper.Local and state Emergency Management officials continue to monitor several rivers and smaller streams such as the Cashie near Windsor; the Tar River in Rocky Mount, Tarboro and Greenville; and the Neuse in Goldsboro and Kinston.The unofficial amounts of rainfall range from 3.5 to 5.5 inches in the foothills, to between 5 and 9 inches of rain across the Piedmont and 4 to 5.5 to 9 inches of rain in coastal counties. There remains some chance of rain over the next few days, but the coverage area for any additional rain is expected to be scattered and limited.Gov. Cooper is continuing to get regular updates from state Emergency Management and Transportation officials.Transportation and emergency management are monitoring several dozen flood gauges for minor to major flooding that will continue, in some areas, as late as Monday. Some of the more critical areas of concern as of Wednesday include Clayton, Smithfield, Rocky Mount and Greenville.There is the potential for major flooding along the Tar River in Rocky Mount through Thursday morning and in Greenville through Sunday. The Cashie River near Windsor may have some flooding later today or tomorrow that could impact several properties in low-lying areas. Moderate flooding is expected on the Tar River tomorrow at Tarboro and potentially in Princeville (peaking Friday afternoon); and in Greenville (peaking Sunday morning). The Neuse River near Goldsboro also will see moderate flooding peaking Sunday evening with Kinston peaking on Monday morning.As of midmorning on Wednesday, there were eight primary routes and 109 secondary routes impacted by high water. I-795 in Wilson County is also closed in both directions between Exit 40 (NC-42) and Exit 43 (US-301) due to flooding.Transportation officials urge drivers to never drive around barricades, even if the road appears clear. Flooding can cause washouts underneath the roadway, and DOT crews will not open a closed road until it has been inspected for safety.Emergency officials urge residents to follow these safety tips:For the latest flooding information, download the ReadyNC mobile app and check the flood gauges nearest you. For real-time travel information, visit DriveNC.gov or follow NCDOT on Twitter. (TNS) -- The Alaska Senate on Wednesday reduced the Alaska Performance Scholarship and eliminated a needs-based financial aid program, creating in their place "innovation" grants for public schools.Senators approved the measure, Senate Bill 103, in a 13-7 vote , moving it to the Alaska House for consideration.Lawmakers who supported the bill said Alaska needed to prepare its public school students for 21st century learning and the new innovation grant program would help pay for those efforts. But those in opposition said the state had to fully pay for education first and lauded the scholarship program for keeping Alaska's top performers in state, as well as helping Alaskans afford college."What this bill does is it makes thousands of Alaskans pay thousands of dollars more to go to school," said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, who voted against the bill. "This will deny thousands of Alaskans the ability to go to college in Alaska. Shouldn't we be doing the exact opposite?"The Senate bill would cut away two levels of the three-level Alaska Performance Scholarship , instead of completely eliminating it, which was originally proposed in the Senate and met with public criticism.Under the bill passed Wednesday, only high school students with at least a 3.5 grade-point average and a "very high minimum score on a college entrance examination" would be eligible for the state scholarships. Those students could receive up to $4,755 a year to attend an Alaska college, university or vocational-technical program, as they do now. The bill would eliminate scholarships for students who receive an average 3.0 grade, currently up to $3,566 a year, or 2.5 GPA, now $2,378.Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, voted for the bill Wednesday and said she hoped the scaled-back program would prompt Alaska students to work harder in school and achieve higher grades to receive a scholarship."I really see this as instead of accepting status quo, really encouraging those students who have done less than stellar work," she said during the Senate floor session.Since the Alaska Performance Scholarship started in 2011 under Republican Gov. Sean Parnell, 8,606 students have received a total of $48.8 million, according to data from the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education.Starting in the upcoming budget year, the state would pay $6.6 million a year to pay for the highest-level scholarship, according to a financial document attached to the bill. That's slightly less than in the current year, when the state distributed $7.3 million to top scholars, according to the commission.The Senate bill would also eliminate the Alaska Education Grant , created by the Legislature to provide needs-based financial aid to eligible Alaska high school graduates pursuing an undergraduate degree or vocational certificate in state. Students have received $28.1 million in those grants since 2011, according to the commission.Under the Senate bill, 2017 high school graduates would be the final group eligible for the scholarships and grants. The programs would phase out over the next four years, with the exception of the highest-level scholarship.As the scholarships for individual students end, the new innovation grant for school districts would begin.The bill would rename the "Alaska higher education investment fund" that paid for the scholarships and grants to the "Alaska education innovation grant fund."The fund would pay for the remaining scholarship and the new school grants that, according to the bill, would support "innovative education ideas," which could include instruction delivered through technology or pilot projects that bring "new instructional approaches" into classrooms."It is a time for innovation. It is a time to collaborate with local school districts," said Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, during the Senate floor session. "It's time to provide more for our Alaska students to increase their opportunity to compete globally in a world that is ever-changing."The Senate Finance Committee, co-chaired by MacKinnon and Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said in a sponsor statement for the bill that the goal of the legislation was to provide Alaska students with better outcomes through "innovative new educational delivery methods." The statement said the performance scholarship had not achieved "the results we had hoped for."But Sen. Tom Begich, D-Anchorage, said the bill did not promote innovation, especially in light of the budget passed by the Senate Majority that cut public school funding by $69 million . The grants were like dangling a small amount of money in front of schools hungry for adequate funding."That will lead to a scramble between those who can afford good grant writers and those who can't," he said during the Senate floor session. "Those who still have some resources left crawling over those without resources."Tim Parker, president of NEA-Alaska, said the teachers union believed grants could only work after the state Legislature passed a "comprehensive fiscal plan that funds education." He said Alaska school districts are currently grappling with balancing budgets, cutting positions and increasing class sizes."It's not a very decent time to talk about how we're going to innovate," he said during an interview Wednesday.Anchorage School Board President Tam Agosti-Gisler said she had "some mixed feelings" about the bill. She said the Anchorage School District had programs that she felt could qualify for the innovation grants. However, she added, she knew the reduction of state scholarships would affect students, especially first-generation college students, she said."I can't help but feel, though, that we're robbing from Peter to pay Paul," Agosti-Gisler said.The University of Alaska said in a statement that the elimination of the scholarship and grant could affect the university system's tuition revenue by as much as $8 million each year. UA's governing body, the Board of Regents, passed a resolution earlier this year opposing the elimination of both programs."We believe ending the program would be extremely detrimental to growing our enrollment, incentivizing young Alaskans to remain in-state for college and then joining Alaska's workforce," the statement said.House Education Committee chair Rep. Harriet Drummond, D-Anchorage, said Wednesday that it was difficult to tell if there was enough time in the legislative session for the bill to move through the House.Drummond said she planned to speak to MacKinnon on Thursday about the bill, and wanted to "give her the opportunity to convince me that I need to change my mind."But on Wednesday, she said, "This bill disturbs me greatly." After 18 months as Rhode Island's first chief innovation officer, Richard Culatta will become the new CEO of the nonprofit International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) on May 1.The ISTE Board of Directors* had been looking for a new CEO since Brian Lewis' employment ended last September. Out of a 42-person interview pool, Culatta earned that spot because of his proven innovation record at the U.S. Education Department and the state of Rhode Island, along with a good grasp of the needs of ISTE's members, who hail from more than 92 countries and number upward of 17,000."Whats really important is that the individual whos serving as a leader understands how to take innovation from theory to practice, said Mila Thomas Fuller, the board president.An innovation guy at heart, Culatta led the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education for four years, first as a deputy director and then as the director. This office is well-known for its startup mentality, an approach he brought to Rhode Island in January 2016 as the state's chief innovation officer.While at Rhode Island, he has helped Gov. Gina Raimondo rebrand the small state as an innovation lab that's working to change how government and education operates. The innovation team is progressing toward the governor's goals of every public school teaching computer science by December and every college saving students money by adopting open textbooks. He's also worked on the Government Innovation League, which brings leaders together across state agencies to solve problems they're facing, engage citizens and build tools.Culatta described his role at Rhode Island as a startup guy, and now his job is nearly finished."We've sort of proved that there is a good model there and we can get good value at the state level, and it's time to hand off the baton to someone else who can manage it in the future," Culatta said.He also has been a long-time ISTE member and sees the potential for the organization to start conversations among educators about how to tackle challenges related to technology, including digital equity, next-generation assessments and a smoother transition between high school and college.In his new role, Culatta will manage 50 ISTE staff and will be based in the organization's Arlington, Va., office. The board is hoping to see its new CEO build deeper, more meaningful member relationships while providing resources and services to help them. It also would like to see him explore and focus on innovative uses of tech for teaching and learning, along with guiding advocacy efforts and the organization's international strategy. (TNS) -- LONDONDERRY Renata Dryer came to the senior center with a list of things she wanted to accomplishThat included learning how to send text messages and download apps on her iPhone.Luckily, she was joined by Londonderry High student Lizzie Niven, who helped Dryer with her technology troubles.Dryer was one of about 16 local seniors participating in a technology help program that joined area seniors with Londonderry High students for an afternoon of technology support."I wanted to learn to send photos to my daughter who lives in Florida," she said.The free technical support session gave older citizens a chance to bring in their devices and get help from computer-savvy students.Students spent time April 26 sharing their expertise on phones, laptops, and other devices and answered any questions seniors had about their own technology interests.Bonnie Ritvo brought her iPad and iPhone to the center to brush up on her skills.Ritvo said she uses her iPad to navigate Facebook, music and emails and her phone for other things. She was happy with the turnout."There are a lot of kids and a lot of people here this year," Ritvo said.Ann Carroll of Derry said she was learning all about downloading some apps and what to do when her battery power decides to dwindle."It's very helpful," she said.Mary Vincenti of Londonderry got some valuable tips from the students on how to get more apps on her phone.She said the students were wonderful to come to the center and help.Blash said the student/senior connection was part of an overall effort to support the senior center and community.Students from the high school also help with other projects at the center including a recent St. Patrick's Day luncheon that joined seniors and members of the school's honor society.Blash also noted another project between high school and senior center where students will be doing an oral history project, interviewing local seniors on their lives and times and then creating videos to capture their thoughts and feelings."The interaction between students and seniors is great," Blash said.Another technology help session is scheduled for May 10 at 2:30 p.m. at the senior center on Mammoth Road. Dual enrollment programs, which allow high school students to take college courses for college credit, have been getting some bad publicity lately.In 2013, the popular college watchdog site Minding the Campus reported problems with instructor qualifications. More recently, an article here on the Martin Center site questioned the way dual enrollment programs are administered in North Carolina. And just last week, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote about grade discrepancies among dually enrolled students at several Atlanta Metro-area high schools.I am not suggesting such complaints are baseless, nor do I fault those writers for bringing them up. However, as we address the issues surrounding dual enrollment, I would hate to see us throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.In the interests of full disclosure, I have been involved with dual enrollment for well over 30 years, in just about every way imaginable.I actually took a dual-enrollment class in high school. (Yes, they had them back then.) And my first full-time faculty gig involved teaching two days a week at a local high school.As a department chair and dean, I oversaw dozens of dual enrollment courses, both on campus and off. All four of my children took multiple college classes while still in high school. And I currently teach between 80 and 100 dually enrolled students each semester on a branch campus of our state's largest university.So I'm a big fan of dual enrollment. Now that the program is finally getting some attention, it's frustrating to see that so much of it is negative. Done right, dual enrollment offers incredible benefits for students and their families.First, because dual enrollment programs in most states are heavily subsidized, students can earn anywhere from a handful of college credits-two or three courses-to two full years of college for a fraction of what it would cost them after they graduate from high school. With the average price tag at a state university approaching $25,000 a year, that represents a significant savings for hard-working middle- and lower-class families-and could well translate into less debt for the students.Dual enrollment also provides opportunities for students who are stuck in low-performing schools, or who have simply matured beyond the level of their high school peers, to escape what can be, for some, a hellish environment.We often hear about "school choice," which I generally support. Yet as the name for Georgia's program-"Move on When Ready"-suggests, dual enrollment offers real educational choice for students who often desperately need it.Most important, taking dual enrollment courses enables students to transition to college while still in a relatively protected environment.In working with college students over three decades, I have observed that young people typically must make two key adjustments during their first year. One is intellectual-that is, they must adjust to the academic rigor-while the other is social, meaning they must learn to handle their newfound freedom as nominal "adults."Attempting to navigate both passages at once can create problems. Many students find themselves slacking off, perhaps flunking out, in some cases even abusing alcohol and drugs.Conversely, taking college courses while they're still in high school (and presumably living at home with their parents) allows students to make that first adjustment without simultaneously having to make the second. Once they leave home and become full-time college students, having already been acclimated to the academic demands, they can focus on exercising their freedom responsibly.Speaking of rigor, that was one of the issues raised in the Martin Center article. Some have suggested that dual enrollment courses are not as rigorous as they should be and that Advanced Placement courses at the high school may actually do more to make students "college ready."That has not been my experience. I have written extensively ( here and here , for instance) on the comparison between dual enrollment and AP, and I won't re-hash those points in this space. Suffice it to say, I don't believe AP courses are usually equivalent to actual college courses, much less superior.All four of my kids took multiple AP courses and did quite well. As high school classes go, they are typically much better than average, and I have no doubt they do more than most high school classes to prepare students for higher education.But I've never found AP courses particularly college-like. They're more like high school classes on steroids, with twice as much busy work (aka "projects") and twice as many grades-often 50 or more a semester. Compare that to the typical college course, where students may have only five or six grades all semester (or three!), and the difference becomes apparent.Unfortunately, many people equate "rigor" with the amount of work required and not with the quality of that work-or with the quality of thought that goes into it. True college-level rigor involves thinking critically and independently, something often far removed from the standardized test-driven rote memorization of high school courses, including AP.Of course there are exceptions, instances where a particular AP course may be preferable to its dual-enrollment counterpart. No doubt there are also areas of the country where dual enrollment courses do in fact lack the necessary rigor, and students are better served by remaining at the high school.I just believe those exceptions are relatively rare-and virtually non-existent when colleges follow certain "best practices."For one thing, my experience suggests that dual enrollment is most effective when students take courses on the college campus, rather than at their high school. Obviously, traveling to the college can be difficult for some students, which is one reason high-school-based courses are so popular.The problem is that, when students are in such familiar surroundings, it still feels like high school to them. Making the class "feel like" college-so that the students, correspondingly, act like college students-can be a challenge under those circumstances.Ideally, students are not only on the college campus, but integrated into classes with regular college students. That scenario also has clear advantages for the institution, as students who come to campus for one class are somewhat likely to stay and take others-which may be another reason high schools don't much like the idea.Even if they are offered at the high school, dual enrollment courses should be taught by experienced college faculty, preferably tenure-track. That, too, can be a hard-sell, as senior faculty often don't want to teach off-campus. Hence the common practice in many states of hiring high school teachers as adjuncts-a practice also supported (and in some cases demanded) by school administrators.That is usually a bad idea-even though many high school teachers are well qualified and would make excellent college instructors.When "college" courses meet on the high school campus, with high school teachers, is it any wonder they're not always truly college courses? In addition, as the Minding the Campus article points out, some high school teachers are in fact not qualified, which leads to problems with rigor and transferability of courses.Dual enrollment programs thrive when colleges and local school systems work together in the best interests of students to ensure that courses are not just "college-like" but exactly the same as regular college courses. Then dual enrollment becomes a truly remarkable experience for students, while also doing a great deal of good for the community.While some institutions don't handle dual enrollment right, it would be a mistake to conclude that they aren't legitimate. Login to Leave a Message Only members are allowed to send us messages. 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The Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) announced Thursday that the unemployment rate in the Northwest Georgia region in March was 4.9 percent, down three-tenths of a percentage point from 5.2 percent in February. In March 2016, the rate was 5.5 percent. The rate declined because more people became employed as the labor force continued to grow. The number of employed residents increased by 2,199 to 393,375, as the labor force grew by 940 to 413,528. The labor force consists of employed residents and those who are unemployed, but actively looking for jobs. The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance, a measure of new layoffs, rose by 1,038 or 39.5 percent, to 3,669. Most of the increase came in manufacturing. Over the year, claims were down by 516, or 12.3 percent, from 4,185 in March 2016. Metro Daltons unemployment rate in March was 5.8 percent, down three-tenths of a percentage point from 6.1 percent in February. In March 2016, the rate was 6.6 percent. The rate declined because more people became employed as the labor force continued to grow and employers continued to add jobs. The number of employed residents increased by 368 to 59,386, as the labor force grew by 143 to 63,021. The labor force consists of employed residents and those who are unemployed, but actively looking for jobs. The number of jobs increased by 400, or 0.6 percent, to 70,000. The job growth came in services such as retail trade, professional and business services, and the federal government, along with manufacturing. Over the year, 200 jobs were added, a 0.3 percent growth rate, up from 69,800 in March 2016. Job growth came mostly in trade, transportation and warehousing. The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance, a measure of new layoffs, rose by 285, or 29.1 percent, to 1,264. Most of the increase came in manufacturing. Over the year, claims were down by 736, or 36.8 percent, from 2,000 in March 2016. Metro Gainesville had the lowest area jobless rate at 4 percent, while the River Valley region had the highest at 6.1 percent. Meanwhile, Georgias seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for March was 5.1 percent, down from 5.3 percent in February. It was 5.5 percent in March 2016. Job seekers and employers are encouraged to use GDOLs online job listing service employgeorgia.com to search for jobs or recruit new employees. In March, 4,179 new job openings in the Northwest Georgia region were posted on Employ Georgia. Throughout the state, 85,055 new job openings were posted. Local area unemployment data are not seasonally adjusted. Georgia labor market data are available atdol.georgia.gov Visit dol.georgia.gov to learn more about career opportunities, Employ Georgia and other GDOL services for job seekers and employers and to connect with us on social media. Tennessees county unemployment rates for March 2017 have decreased in 91 counties, increased in three, and remained the same in one, according to data released on Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD).For the month of March, Davidson County has the states lowest major metropolitan rate at 3.4 percent, a decline from 3.6 percent of the prior month. Knox County is 3.9 percent, decreasing from Februarys 4.1 percent. Hamilton County declined from its previous months rate of 4.8 to 4.5 percent and Shelby County has an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent rate, a decrease from the previous 5.5 percent in February.Preliminary unemployment rates for Tennessee and the U.S.have fallen by two-tenths of a percentage point in March. The decline places rates at 5.1 and 4.5 percent, respectively.The state and national unemployment rates are seasonally adjusted, while the county unemployment rates are not. Seasonal adjustment is a statistical technique that eliminates the influences of weather, holidays, opening and closing of schools, and other recurring seasonal events from economic time series.The Economic Analysis and Labor Force Estimates are prepared by the Employment Security divisions labor market information specialists. The division reports metrics and contextual information as it relates to employment, income, and population in Tennessee. Labor force topics are narrated in monthly newsletters and additional resources are available on Jobs4TN.gov.The state unemployment release for April will be published on Thursday, May 18, at 1:30 p.m. CT. Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County: HAMILTON COUNTY , U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. The speed limit on U.S. 27 in the construction zone is 45 MPH. The contractor may have temporary lane or shoulder closures on U.S. 27 between 7PM-6AM. On weekdays during this report period between the hours of 9AM and 3PM, the contractor will have a temporary right lane closure on eastbound MLK Blvd. As the project progresses, there may be short term temporary lane closures for the safety of the traveling public on city streets within the project area. Flaggers will assist with these closures and they will be properly signed in accordance with the Federal Highway Administrations Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. During Phase 1 of the U.S. 27 project, the contractor will be working on the northbound side of U.S. 27 on the bridges. Work will consist of demolishing and reconstructing the outside sections of the bridges along U.S. 27 North. Also on U.S. 27 South, they will be constructing a large retaining wall between the Olgiati Bridge and 6th Street. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is July 2019. For more info, visit the project website http://www.tn.gov/tdot/topic/US27-reconstruction-chattanooga. [Dement Construction Co., LLC/JM/CNP230] Hamilton County , SR 317 (Apison Pike) the grading, drainage and paving on from Old Lee Highway (LM 5.58) to SR-321 (Ooltewah-Ringgold Road) (LM 7.84): Work on this project continues. During this report period the contractor may have intermittent lane closures throughout the project from 9AM to 4PM. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is May 2017. [Wright Brothers Const. Co. /Pruett/CNN279] Hamilton County , SR-320 (East Brainerd Road) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: Work on this project continues. During this report period, the contractor will have intermittent lane closures between 9AM-2PM. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Hamlett Drive as the contractor installs road crossings and borings. Traffic has been switched onto the newly-constructed section from the west end of the project to the Hurricane Creek Rd./East Brainerd Rd. intersection, allowing the contractor to work on the other side of the roadway. The contractor may have short-term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Original completion date is June 2017. Estimated project completion date is December 2017. [Jones Brothers Contractors, LLC /Pruett/CNN383] Hamilton County , SR-153/SR-319 (Hixson Pike) bridge repair on Hixson Pike over SR-153: Work on this project continues. The outside lanes in both directions on the bridge on Hixson Pike over SR-153 are now closed. This lane closure will be in place until late November 2017. During this report period the contractor may have intermittent lane closures on SR-153 from 9PM to 6AM to do work under the bridge. If there are any temporary closures needed on SR-153 as part of this project, they will take place at nighttime on Sundays through Thursdays between 9PM and 6AM and on weekdays on SR-153 South between 9AM and 3PM and on SR-153 North between 7:30AM and 3PM. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as necessary during these temporary closures. Estimated project completion date is May 2018. [Mid-State Construction Co. /Micka/CNQ941] Hamilton County , U.S. 27 (SR-29) resurfacing from north of Signal Mountain Road (LM. 3.02) to north of SR-29 (MM. 6.0/LM 6.07): Work on this project has begun. The contractor will have temporary intermittent lane closures on Sundays through Thursdays between the hours of 8PM each evening to 6AM the following morning to mill and pave the roadway. THP and flaggers will assist with traffic control as necessary during these temporary closures. Estimated project completion date is June 2017. [Wright Brothers Construction Co, Inc./Micka/CNQ189] A Tennessee Board of Regents committee on Thursday approved four administrative appointments recommended by Chancellor Flora Tydings as part of a strategic reorganization of the TBR system office to reflect its streamlined mission as a unified community and technical college system under the states FOCUS Act. The chancellor outlined the reorganization in a special called telephone meeting of the Board's Personnel and Compensation Committee this afternoon. The committee unanimously approved the plan, which under TBR policy allows the appointments to be effective immediately. The full Board will act on the appointments at its June 23 meeting, through its review and approval of the committee's minutes. The committee approved appointment of James King as executive vice chancellor. Mr. King joined the college system in 1983 and has been vice chancellor of the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology since 1999. In his new role, he reports directly to the chancellor and will help lead various initiatives for student success and to unite the community and technical college systems. The reorganization plan replaces two separate departments the Office of Community Colleges and the Office of Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology with a new Office of Student Success. Mr. King will also serve as the interim vice chancellor for student success, leading that office until a search for permanent vice chancellor is concluded. The two offices had been led by two vice chancellors Mr. King as vice chancellor for technical colleges and Warren Nichols, who left in February to head a community college in Texas, as vice chancellor for community colleges. The new office will also work on student services across the system. The plan also creates a new Office of Economic and Community Development that will work closely with state agencies to more quickly and efficiently provide for the workforce training needs of business and industry. It will serve as the college systems first point of contact for businesses in need of workforce training and will coordinate how the systems campuses provide it. The committee approved appointment of Dr. Carol Puryear as vice chancellor of economic and community development. Dr. Puryear joined the TBR system in 1994 as coordinator for professional development at Middle Tennessee State University and has been associate vice chancellor for instruction and special projects at the colleges of applied technology since 2012. She was also director of TCAT-Murfreesboro from 2007 to 2012. The committee approved Dr. Tydings recommended appointment of Dr. Randy Schulte as interim vice chancellor of academic affairs until a national search is concluded for a successor to Dr. Tristan Denley, who is leaving next month to become vice chancellor for academic affairs at the larger University System of Georgia. Dr. Schulte, whose career in education began in 1976, has been TBRs associate vice chancellor for academic affairs since 2014, after six years as assistant vice chancellor. TBRs Office of Academic Affairs is nationally recognized for its cutting-edge initiatives and research on student academic success, including co-requisite remediation, guided pathways and high-impact practices. The restructuring also creates a new Office of External Affairs to consolidate outreach, communications, marketing and government relations functions that were spread through other offices. The committee approved Dr. Tydings recommended appointment of Dr. Kimberly McCormick as vice chancellor of external affairs. Dr. McCormick joined the system office as special assistant to the chancellor in February, after working in Chattanooga State Community Colleges administration from 2008 through 2016. She was the colleges vice president for economic and community development in 2015-16, after serving as provost and vice president for academic affairs, associate vice president for academic affairs, interim dean of the business and information technology division, and associate vice president for student affairs, admissions and school relations. Before joining Chattanooga State, Dr. McCormick was an educator in the Hamilton County Schools from 1991 to 2008, rising from high school teacher to administrator. Reorganization of the college systems administrative structure was prompted largely by its changing mission under the FOCUS (Focus on College and University Success) Act approved by the state legislature last year. The act created new governing boards for each of the six former TBR universities. The new boards assumed administration of their campuses from TBR when the boards convened for the first time in March and earlier this month. When Gov. Bill Haslam announced the FOCUS Act legislation in December 2015, he said the plan would give TBR a concentrated focus on the states 13 community and 27 technical colleges, including student success. In his 2016 State of the State address, the governor elaborated further on his vision for the community and technical college system as the main vehicle in his Drive to 55 initiative to increase the percentage of working-age Tennesseans with college degrees or postsecondary certificates and diplomas to 55 percent by 2025. Dr. Tydings, who became chancellor on Feb. 1, told the committee that after careful thought and consideration on how we move forward in making the Tennessee Board of Regents the premier technical and community college system, I feel these appointments are necessary to accomplish that vision. Regent Parker Smith of Kingsport, the committee chairman, said the new appointees will help move the college system forward. Board of Regents Vice Chair Emily Reynolds of Nashville said, Chancellor Tydings has made great progress in her first three months in her new role as chancellor. With the appointments she brings us today, I am excited about the future of the TBR system. Example for the structure of an important biomolecule, here solved from snall crystals: the Photosystem-II dimer is part of the photosynthesis machinery. An international team of researchers, including DESY scientist Henry Chapman, has been awarded a research grant by the Human Frontier Science Program to develop a novel method for imaging individual biomolecules with atomic resolution. The team will receive a total of 1.35 million US-Dollars over a period of three years. The collaboration includes Ned Seeman from New York University (USA), Rick Millane from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Trevor Forsyth from Keele University in the UK (seconded to the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France) and Chapman. The intercontinental collaboration is addressing the challenge of imaging single macromolecules with X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). These devices, driven by powerful particle accelerators, produce incredibly bright and short pulses of X-rays that can reveal the spatial structure of molecules with atomic resolution. Currently, this sort of investigation requires scientists to crystallise the molecules first. The tiny crystals diffract the X-rays, and from that diffraction pattern the molecule's structure can be calculated. However, growing crystals from biomolecules especially those of particular interest to science is often a painstaking process and sometimes not possible at all. A method to image biological macromolecules without having to crystallise them would be a significant advance to the field. The team aims to engineer samples in a general way to make it easier to measure diffraction signals from them, and to interpret the signals. To this end, an extra structure will be added to each molecule that can act as a holographic reference to correctly interpret and combine diffraction data from many such particles. The collaboration brings together essential expertise: Seeman is a pioneer of nanotechnology using DNA molecules, Millane is the world expert in phasing diffraction data ranging from crystallography to coherent imaging and fibre diffraction in between. Forsyth is an expert on neutron and X-ray fibre diffraction and on obtaining structures from structured biological systems and in the biology and biochemistry of various systems including amyloids. Chapman, who was recently awarded the Rontgen Medal, is an X-ray laser pioneer who has developed many methods and techniques that have become standards at XFEL facilities worldwide. His aim is to extend beyond current limits of research with free-electron lasers. The Human Frontier Science Program aims to promote intercontinental collaboration and training in cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research focused on the life sciences. Out of this year's 1073 proposals, only 30 projects were chosen for a grant. This funding scheme brings together a truly remarkable diversity of places and ideas, and were really lucky to have this chance, emphasises Chapman, who is also a professor at the University of Hamburg and a member of the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging and the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science. The international Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) is based in Strasbourg, France, and receives financial support from the governments or research councils of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, as well as from the European Union. Chicago's top venture capitalists are well-known leaders whose identities often define their firms. But what about those who aren't on the marquee? Behind the big names, there are principals and associates finding deals, mentoring startups and figuring out how to improve the industry they work and play in. Blue Sky introduces you to some of the folks helping Chicago firms figure out where to invest their millions. Ezra Galston, principal, Chicago Ventures Advertisement Age: 32 Role: Finds and invests in companies and helps them succeed by introducing them to other VCs, helping with business development and potential hires and serving as a de facto therapist. Advertisement Signature deal: SpotHero Mentor: Stuart Larkins (Chicago Ventures), Roy Bahat (Bloomberg Beta), Dan Levitan (Maveron), his parents Education: Bachelor's degree in happiness from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study; MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Social media: @ezramogee on Twitter; blog at Breaking VC As a professional poker player turned startup employee turned business school student, Ezra Galston was looking for a way to stand out when he entered venture capital in 2012. His strategy: social media. "When I came into the venture world in Chicago, there were these entrenched major personalities," Galston said. "I wasn't quite sure how I could stay visible around people like J.B. Pritzker and Matt McCall ." Already a blogger since college, he decided to use Twitter and a personal site to document his journey into venture capital and to build credibility and relationships. Galston also hoped to capture the attention of promising entrepreneurs whose first instinct would be to turn to established firms such as Pritzker Group Venture Capital. His path to business started with a custom degree at New York University called "The Pursuit of Happiness in an Increasingly Individualistic World," which was an amalgam of philosophy, sociology, history, psychology and economics. But with that degree, Galston said his most profitable option after college was playing professional poker. Over time, he said he became more interested in the business side of gaming, so he moved to Chicago in 2007 to work with friends on Cardrunners Gaming. Advertisement While in business school at the University of Chicago, Galston started at Chicago Ventures, then called I2A Fund, as an associate whose main responsibility was sourcing companies. Now a principal, he's Chicago Ventures' go-to guy for investments in consumer-facing companies. He's led investments into SpotHero, Blitsy, Luxury Garage Sale and others. Offline relationship-building is also important to Galston; he said it's how Chicago Ventures got a crack at investing in SpotHero's $4.5 million Series A in 2014. Galston said he was friendly with SpotHero CEO Mark Lawrence and, while helping him practice his pitch to investors, suggested they consider Chicago Ventures as well. "I think one of the best roles someone on the more junior side can provide an entrepreneur is a very comfortable, genuine, private feedback loop," Galston said. He described venture capital as a karma-driven business, and said his goal is for entrepreneurs even those Chicago Ventures has not yet invested in to feel comfortable with him. It's one of the metrics he uses to measure his own progress. "Does the CEO, or do other executives at the company, feel comfortable calling or texting at any hour of the night with problems or issues?" he said. "I look to other things that are not purely money-in-the-bank financials at this point in my career to try to assess the success of what I've been doing." aelahi@chicagotribune.com Twitter @aminamania With an abundance of misinformation being shared as news and a segment of the public not trusting mainstream media, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales decided to get everyday people in on the reporting process. Wales plans to launch a news website called Wikitribune, which would have professional journalists working alongside volunteers who proofread, fact-check and suggest changes. Advertisement "The quality of the media and the level of public trust in the media has really declined to a point where it's causing problems in society," he said Wednesday, during a speech in Chicago at the Morningstar Investment Conference at McCormick Place. "There's been a lot of discussions about fake news obviously, (President Donald) Trump has used that (term) a lot," Wales said. "I'm not going to go in on the president's tweets, but there is an issue. We have to have good, quality media. It needs to be honest and it needs to be trusted by the public." Advertisement Wales made the comments Wednesday in his first public speech since announcing the initiative Tuesday. Wikitribune isn't affiliated with Wikipedia. The project is relying on donors, rather than the ad-driven model he said has incentivized some news organizations to post clickbait on their sites. The model is still being worked out, he said, but the site would employ one reporter for every 500 donors who contribute $15 a month. As with Wikipedia, the site's content would be available to everyone. While the site is currently raising money just to start up operations, eventually Wikitribune will allow people to donate for a specific area to be covered. "Local news is potentially where this can get very interesting," Wales said, noting many local news operations have seen their coverage of government diminished, as a smaller number of journalists are stretched to cover larger geographic areas. "One of the functions of local journalism is to be that watchdog," he said. "In these small towns, there are going to be a lot of brother-in-laws of mayors who are doing very well with construction contracts, because nobody is really investigating." People could also donate for specific topics to be covered, Wales said. For example, if enough donors wanted to fund reporting on Bitcoin, a journalist could be dedicated to that coverage. Editorials and opinion pieces will not be a part of the platform initially, he said. Advertisement While many hybrid citizen journalism efforts haven't been successful, Wales said, some effort is needed to provide quality news from sources people trust. Wales said he's been encouraged by a rise in digital-only subscriptions of the New York Times and a membership program that supports The Guardian newspaper. He believes there's a sense of group goodwill that comes with supporting newspapers. "A good quality general interest newspaper, when you pay for it, you pay because you want everybody to read it, so that they make better decisions voting, and understand all the pros and cons," he said. "It's really important that people are willing to do that, and its really important that people trust journalism." Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer. Twitter @cherylvjackson Caterpillar is paying its new CEO about $400,000 less in base salary than his predecessor, according to the company's proxy statement. Jim Umpleby, who took over as CEO on Jan. 1, is receiving a salary of $1.2 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Former CEO Doug Oberhelman was receiving a salary of $1.6 million. He remained executive chairman of Caterpillar's board until March 31. Advertisement Oberhelman had not received a salary increase since 2012, according to the filings. At about $10.4 million, his combined salary and incentives in 2016 fell more than $3 million below the company's target value due to "very weak market conditions that the company faced," the filings state. Caterpillar executives receive a mix of a fixed salary and variable incentives. Advertisement Some incentives for executives are based on operational performance measures related to their responsibilities, such as cost reduction and aftermarket parts sales. The maker of mining and construction equipment is under federal scrutiny for its use of a parts subsidiary based in Switzerland and tax-saving practices. Jim Umpleby, who took over as CEO on Jan. 1, is receiving a salary of $1.2 million, about $400,000 less than his predecessor. (PR Newswire) Issues with that subsidiary have dogged the company for eight years, sparking a Senate investigation, shareholder lawsuits, and proposed taxes and penalties totaling $2 billion. The years of scrutiny came to a head in March, when authorities from three agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, raided Caterpillar's Peoria headquarters and two nearby facilities. Umpleby and other company executives have said repeatedly that the company is complying with the federal investigation. Board Chairman David Calhoun mentioned the investigation in his letter to shareholders in the proxy statement. The company hired a former U.S. attorney general to "take a fresh look at Caterpillar's disputes with the government, get all the facts, and then help bring these matters to an appropriate resolution," Calhoun wrote in the letter. Caterpillar announced last week that it plans to move its headquarters and 300 employees to Deerfield from Peoria to make it easier to meet with its customer base. About 100 employees will make the move this year, with the rest in the northern suburb by mid-2018. amarotti@chicagotribune.com Twitter @AllyMarotti Attorney Thomas Demetrio, who is representing Dr. David Dao, the man who was dragged from a United Express flight, speaks at an April 13, 2017, news conference at the Union League Club of Chicago. At the time, Demetrio indicated a lawsuit was likely. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) Thomas Demetrio, the Chicago personal injury lawyer who negotiated an undisclosed settlement with United Airlines in its passenger-dragging incident, is no stranger to holding airlines accountable. Well-known in legal circles, Demetrio, 69, has been in the spotlight since the April 9 episode in which smartphone video captured Dr. David Dao being violently dragged off a United Express flight. Chicago aviation security officers at O'Hare International Airport removed him to make room for late-arriving airline employees headed to Louisville, Ky. Advertisement Speaking for Dao and calling out United, Demetrio held a nationally televised news conference, appeared on NBC's "Today" show and became a trending search on Google. Demetrio grew up in Evanston and attended the University of Notre Dame and Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law. He landed a job with personal injury lawyer Philip Corboy's firm upon graduating from law school in 1973 and became a named partner in 1982, according to the firm's website. Advertisement Demetrio has carved out a successful record of aviation litigation that has included well-known crash victims and record settlements. His cases include representing a widow whose husband was killed with musician Jim Croce in a 1973 Louisiana plane crash as well as the family of musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in a 1990 helicopter crash in East Troy, Wis. In 1999, Demetrio obtained a $25.2 million settlement on behalf of the family of Pittsburgh businessman Marshall Berkman, who was killed in the 1994 crash of a USAir flight. All 132 passengers aboard the Boeing 737, which originated in Chicago, died in the crash outside Pittsburgh. On April 13, four days after video of Dao's forcible removal from a United plane went viral, Demetrio held a news conference broadcast live on multiple networks, updating Dao's medical condition and decrying United's mistreatment of its passengers. He warned that a lawsuit was "probably" in the works. "For a long time airlines United in particular have bullied us," Demetrio said. "Just treat us with respect, make us feel like you really care." A week later, an American Airlines flight attendant was captured on video arguing with passengers before takeoff of a flight from San Francisco to Dallas after he reportedly yanked a stroller from a mother holding her baby. Demetrio appeared on NBC's "Today" show Monday to announce he was also representing the still-unidentified American passenger. rchannick@chicagotribune.com Twitter @RobertChannick Ebony magazine pays its freelancers, the company that owns the African-American lifestyle publication said, but recently some have slipped through the cracks. The iconic magazine, which began in Chicago, came under fire this week from contributing writers who say they've gone months without pay. Michael Gibson, chairman of Ebony Media and co-founder and chairman of CVG Group the Austin, Texas-based private equity firm that bought the magazine last year said a lag was created in payment to some freelancers when his firm purchased the magazine. Advertisement "The timing of (the purchase) didn't allow for us to do our thorough due diligence we typically do," Gibson said. It took CVG about four months to buy Ebony, he said. Transactions like that typically take six to nine months, enough time to bring in a consultant and assess practices in the company, like payment to freelancers. In Ebony's case, the consultant was brought in after the purchase, and somehow the company missed payments to some freelancers. Advertisement Gibson declined to comment on how much Ebony owes to freelancers or how many writers didn't receive payment. The company is working on revamping its freelancing budget, he said. Though the magazine still has staff writers, it relies "very heavily on freelancers," he said. "We're obviously deeply sorry it has reached this point." Gibson said there is no timeline for when the unpaid freelancers will receive their checks, but he said Ebony "made a pretty large payment this week" to freelancers. "I can tell you we will be taking care of it as soon as possible." The sting of the pending payments is particularly painful for the writers, many of whom are black and have held the publication in the highest esteem. "Ebony and Jet (magazine) were in my home from the time I was able to read," said AJ Springer, a Dallas-based freelancer who said he has been writing for Ebony since last summer. Springer said the publication owes him $1,775. "I haven't gotten a dime," he said. "In the 12 years I've been (freelancing) ... I haven't really had to chase anybody down for payment." Jagger Blaec, a writer who has not worked with Ebony, brought attention to the issue in an essay on the media site The Establishment. After her essay published Monday, the floodgates opened. Freelancers took to Twitter to share their own stories. Advertisement "I was floored," said Zerline Hughes, an Ebony freelancer based in Washington, D.C. "I really, really thought I was the only one I don't know why I thought that that wasn't getting paid." Hughes said Ebony owes her nearly $3,000, though representatives from the company have told her a check for part of that amount is in the mail. Ebony was a family-owned business from its first publication in 1945 until CVG Group bought the publication, along with now-digital-only Jet, last summer from Johnson Publishing. In the years leading up to Ebony's sale, the struggle to shift from print to digital platforms contributed to declining media revenues for Johnson Publishing. Though Gibson said Ebony has seen an increased number of monthly visitors to the website, he declined to disclose revenue. amarotti@chicagotribune.com Twitter @AllyMarotti Softwood lumber is stacked at Murray Brothers Lumber Company woodlot in Madawaska, Ontario, on April 25, 2017. The upper Midwest timber industry is welcoming the Trump administration's announcement that it's imposing tariffs averaging 20 percent on softwood lumber entering the United States from Canada. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP) President Donald Trump is teeing up a trade war with Canada, and the state of Illinois, along with the Chicago area, could get bloodied should this cross-border confrontation escalate. This week the administration imposed a tariff on Canada's softwood lumber, used primarily for home building. It is also threatening to take action against Canadian dairy farmers for what the administration views as unfair business practices. Advertisement The full impact of these actions is just sinking in, but already Trump's harsh rhetoric toward our northern neighbor is rattling Illinois businesspeople. To say the least, they don't want trouble, disruptions or hard feelings upsetting a traditionally smooth and profitable relationship. There's a lot at stake. Canada is Illinois' top export customer and, by proxy, a significant employer throughout the state. That relationship is even more direct in the Chicago area, where Canadian companies own brand-name firms like BMO Harris Bank, which employs 7,000 people in Illinois. Advertisement "Picking a fight with our state's largest foreign trading partner is disturbing for Illinois," Greg Baise, CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, which represents 4,000 member companies, wrote in an email to me. Illinois and Canada definitely share a multitude of commercial interests. Last year, the state's companies shipped nearly $16 billion worth of goods to Canada and performed $2.7 billion in services to customers in that country, according to Canadian and U.S. government data. Topping that list is equipment and machinery, which accounted for 30 percent of products sent to Canada. That's followed by goods linked to energy, 19 percent; transportation, 12 percent; chemical, mineral and metals, 18 percent; agriculture, 8 percent; and other goods, 13 percent. It's a pretty representative sampling of Illinois' major commercial interests. What's more, the Chicago area hosts over 200 Canadian companies. In addition to BMO Harris, there's Canadian National Railway, Manulife Real Estate and Bombardier transportation. Right now, Canadian-owned CIBC is making a play to acquire PrivateBancorp, a regional commercial and consumer lender. Canadian outposts employ thousands of workers regular folks benefiting from healthy trade relations with Canada. Statewide, 344,300 jobs depend on U.S.-Canada trade and investment, according to the Canadian government. Advertisement They are a hearty people too. Apparently, not even our state's changing and occasionally intemperate climate discourages Canadians from visiting Chicago and other Illinois regions throughout the year. In 2016, touring Canadians spent $307 million on Illinois vacations, the Canadian government reports. With all this at stake, there's little wonder why state and local business leaders are jittery about the Trump administration's eagerness to blast Canada. That's especially true because Trump is angry over lingering issues like lumber and dairy that have been debated and managed for decades between the two countries and periodically resolved before the World Trade Organization. Some expect Trump's bluster is merely a page from his "art of the deal" playbook and that he's trying to soften up Canada for future negotiations involving the North American Free Trade Agreement. Nonetheless, the impact of a 20 percent tariff on Canadian soft lumber could be felt right away. The Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Home Builders says the tariff will raise the price of new home construction by at least $3,000 per home and will have a chilling effect on housing starts and related construction employment. John Cruickshank, recently named consul general of Canada in Chicago, says the impact of the tariff already is being felt and, if it continues, will hurt housing in the Chicago area and throughout the Midwest. Advertisement "It's immediately harmful to American interests, including Illinois," he says. "Try to build a house in Illinois and you are facing a Trump lumber tax." (A Toronto native, Cruickshank is no stranger to this area, having been at the Chicago Sun-Times for seven years, serving as editor and then publisher, before leaving in 2007.) What other fallout could occur? In the extreme, Canada could push back and impose fees, tariffs or just make it more difficult for U.S. goods, including products originating from Illinois, to enter Canada. Moreover, frosty relations can chill the Canadian interests' desire to invest in or expand their Chicago-area and Illinois companies. If Canadians are made to feel less welcome, it could also damage tourism. Some people, including President Trump, believe Canada needs the U.S. market more than the other way around. But Illinois, for example, imported $25 billion worth of products from Canada last year. Advertisement Keep in mind that the bulk of these goods are related to energy, chemicals, plastics and other industrial uses the basic stuff that helps the state's economy stay on track. Those I spoke to about this issue hope the trade war talk and threats cool down, and U.S.-Canadian relations quickly become less contentious. Trump's concerns didn't merit the actions launched this week by his administration, which now has fearful Illinois companies thinking of ways to protect themselves and their Canadian business partners. It's just like the anthem says: "O Canada, we stand on guard for thee." roreed@chicagotribune.com Twitter @reedtribbiz A three-story building at 400 N. May St., also known as Bird Tower Lofts, is pictured April 26, 2017. The full-block 1.7-acre site in Chicago's Fulton Market District is up for sale for $17.5 million. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) A group of investors that has owned a full block in the Fulton Market District for more than three decades is ready to sell, hoping to become the latest longtime owner to cash in on the neighborhood's soaring property values. The latest offering is a three-story building at 400 N. May St., also known as Bird Tower Lofts. Advertisement The 75,000-square-foot loft office building's name comes from the painted birds that adorn a wooden water tank atop the 87-year-old structure. The 87-year-old bulding known as Bird Tower Lofts is seen April 26, 2017, in Chicago's Fulton Market District. The owners of the loft office building have put the building at 400 N. May St. up for sale, asking $17.5 million for the structure and its site. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) Quirks aside, buyers beware: It's unlikely to sell for a song. Advertisement The asking price is $17.5 million, many million dollars higher than its owners could have dreamed of just a few years ago. "The market in this area is booming, so why not try it?" said Lech Losiowski, the manager of the limited liability corporation that owns the property. Losiowski said the group has owned the 1.7-acre property, which includes a large parking lot that could eventually be redeveloped, for 32 years. Losiowski, a longtime Chicago resident, now lives in California. Real estate investors have been flocking to the area on the northwestern edge of the West Loop in recent years. Once known for meatpackers and food distributors, the area is now known for properties including Google's Midwest headquarters, McDonald's future corporate headquarters and the Soho House hotel and private club. The May Street property is being marketed for sale by brokers at SVN Chicago Commercial. The site is bordered by May and Kinzie streets and Racine Avenue. Metra tracks run along the north side of the parcel. The asking price is significantly lower than other blocks in the area have sold for, including Oprah Winfrey's former Harpo Studios campus. Chicago developer Sterling Bay bought that block for $30.5 million in 2014, and is building McDonald's future offices on the site. Bird Tower Lofts will come at a significant discount because it is along train tracks on Fulton Market's northern edge. Most importantly, the property is within a planned manufacturing district, where real estate uses such as residential and retail are prohibited. "Retail really pushes land prices, which is why Fulton has gone so high" just two blocks south, said Matt Garrison, managing principal of Chicago-based R2, which owns real estate in the area and previously has looked into buying the May Street property. "It's attractive real estate for creative office (tenants), but to generate the types of prices seen on Fulton requires huge retail rents." Advertisement The property is most likely to appeal to a developer with "patient money," said Chad Schroedl, one of the SVN brokers representing the sellers. A long-term owner of the property could wait to see how potential changes to PMD zoning play out in the next year or two. In the meantime, a landlord could make upgrades to the building and replace expiring leases with new deals at considerably higher rents, Schroedl said. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 31 A pedestrian passes truckloads of food products as she make her way down Fulton Market on an early morning in March. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) If zoning were to become more permissive in the coming years, an owner would likely replace the existing building with a larger one, or build onto it where the parking lot now is, he said. "Everyone's reading the tea leaves (regarding future zoning), but it's difficult," Schroedl said. "(The buyer) will be somebody that's comfortable with the zoning as it is now." A wooden water tank rises above Bird Tower Lofts, photographed April 26, 2017, in Chicago's Fulton Market District. Owners of the 75,000-square-foot loft office building have put it, and its 1.7-acre site, up for sale. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) For now, at least, the property will continue to catch the eye of birders as well as developers. Losiowski commissioned artist Richard LeMoine to paint the birds on the water tank in 2002, according to a 2003 article in a Chicago Audubon Society newsletter. The paintings on the tank feature a blue jay, red-headed woodpecker, ruby-throated hummingbird and white-throated sparrow. Advertisement rori@chicagotribune.com Twitter @Ryan_Ori Francine Rico, 49, a certified nursing assistant, is photographed April 27, 2017, at the headquarters of SEIU Healthcare Illinois in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Workers at 53 nursing homes have announced plans to strike next week. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) Some 5,000 workers at 53 Chicago-area nursing homes are threatening to go on strike next week if long-running contract negotiations don't satisfy their calls for higher wages and staffing levels. SEIU Healthcare Illinois announced the walkout plans Thursday morning before the last scheduled contract negotiations took place between the union and Illinois Association of Healthcare Facilities, which represents the nursing homes staffed by SEIU members. Advertisement "We've prepared as though we're going on strike," said Greg Kelley, president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois. If the walkout happens, it would begin May 4 at 15 nursing homes, with the rest joining May 5 and 6, and would continue indefinitely, Kelley said. The workers on strike would include certified nursing assistants, food service workers, housekeepers and janitorial staff. Among the 53 nursing homes affected are 10 facilities in the Alden network, one of the larger nursing home operators in the state. Advertisement The union represents 10,000 workers in 103 nursing facilities. Several nursing homes said they have contingency plans in place for a walkout. "We're fully prepared to take care of our residents and patients 100 percent if there is a strike," said Brad Bartels, administrator at Glenview Terrace Rehabilitation Center. He declined to offer details. The facility, which has 314 beds, offers short-term rehabilitation and traditional long-term care. Union members have voted to strike over the last several weeks after their contract, which had been extended several times, expired Feb. 15. Negotiations were sporadic and took a yearlong hiatus before beginning again in February. Since then, the union has filed several unfair labor practices complaints against the Illinois Association of Healthcare Facilities, alleging it refused to furnish information required for good-faith bargaining, among other violations. One of the workers' main concerns is inadequate staffing, which they say makes it difficult to properly attend to patients. "It means that you can't take a breath," said Francine Rico, 49, a certified nursing assistant at The Villa at Windsor Park, a nursing and rehabilitation center in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. Rico has worked at The Villa for 19 years, feeding and showering patients and helping those who are bedridden turn over every two hours. She earns $14.78 an hour, which is better than many of her colleagues, but even she has to "jiggle and juggle to make ends meet" despite working full-time and she is frustrated that some new workers earn as much as she does despite her seniority. Advertisement If a strike is called, Rico acknowledged the stress of not showing up to work to care for a vulnerable population but believes her patients would support the walkout. "I'm worried about them, but at this point I know that if we do what we need to do as our union it will make it better for our residents down the road," said Rico, who lives in South Shore with her husband, who works as a barber, and two grandchildren, ages 7 and 5. Jon Ollmann, vice president of operations at Villa Healthcare, which operates The Villa at Windsor Park, said in an email that the public can "be assured that the care and safety of our patients has and always will be our highest priority. We have already begun organizing efforts to ensure that we will have more than adequate resources available for as long as necessary should the need arise." He added: "In an industry that is in dire need of payment reform due to underfunding, we want to take this opportunity to thank all our caregivers for their countless contributions and tireless efforts on behalf of our seniors and others throughout Illinois." Many nursing homes are funded largely through Medicaid, which operators say suffers from low and inconsistent reimbursement. The average wage for the nursing home workers is $11 an hour, according to Larry Alcoff, chief negotiator for the union. The union is proposing they be paid well above minimum wage as it increases, arguing the work is worth more than minimum, and that there be a structure to ensure that employees with more tenure are paid more. Advertisement The minimum wage in Chicago and Cook County is set to gradually increase to $13 by 2019. But employers have asked for the contract to waive the minimum wage requirement so that they can pay less, Alcoff said. A representative from the nursing home association did not respond to a request for comment. The union also wants the contract to assert "the rights of workers regardless of immigration status" and offer assurances that employers won't "act as agents" for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Alcoff said. Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, a member of the City Council's Progressive Caucus, attended the union's announcement and said he supports the workers in their planned strike. "I can guarantee you there are very few people in this world who would take on this job with same type of passion, the same type of patience that is required to give people the dignity that they need," he said. aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @alexiaer President Donald Trump's top tax lieutenants are billing his approach as relief for the middle class, saying ordinary taxpayers would see big cuts while the rich would go on paying as much as they do now. That description, however, is sharply at odds with what details the administration has put forward thus far. On Wednesday, the administration released a one-page document consisting of 19 bullet points describing how Trump planned to approach tax relief as president. The plan would sharply reduce taxes on businesses while also bringing down rates on individual income, with the goal of simplifying the process of filing taxes. Pitching the plan on Wednesday evening, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said again it will not cut taxes on the rich overall: "Effectively, the effective tax rate will not be a reduction for the rich," Mnuchin told Tucker Carlson. "This is really about a middle-income tax cut." But experts on taxation who have reviewed Trump's ideas say the wealthy would enjoy the greatest benefits, with uneven and uncertain savings for ordinary households. The broad outline was generally similar to a proposal that Trump had put forward as a candidate, which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated would save a typical taxpayer in the richest 1 percent of households $317,000 a year. That amounts to 14.1 percent of the annual income of a typical household in that rarefied group. By contrast, typical households with middling income would save about $1,100 a year on average, which translates to only 1.5 percent of their yearly income. Meanwhile, some could even pay more, especially single parents and large families. Trump's plan would eliminate certain provisions that currently work to these groups' advantage. The dearth of detail in Trump's plan suggests it's still possible that, between now and in its final form, the plan could radically alter who would benefit from it. Mnuchin said that while Trump wants to reduce the marginal rate wealthy taxpayers owe on their income, he also wanted to eliminate exemptions and deductions that the rich can use to reduce their tax bills. It would be difficult, however, for Trump's aides to identify enough breaks and loopholes to make up for the major tax cuts that Trump wants to grant affluent taxpayers. In addition to reducing the rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, Trump would also eliminate the estate tax - which is paid almost exclusively by wealthy heirs when a family member passes away - and a 3.8 percent surcharge that the rich pay on income from their investments imposed as part of President Barack Obama's health-care reforms, also known as Obamacare. Trump would reduce the rate on businesses, which is now 35 percent for large corporations, to 15 percent, a provision that would help the rich in several ways. For instance, because corporations could hang onto more of their profits, shares in public companies would become more valuable, benefiting shareholders - a group that tends to be well off. At the same time, wealthy taxpayers could set up corporations to handle their personal income in order to take advantage of that reduced rate and avoid the higher rates on household earnings. "If the tax rate is this low on business income, relative to non-business income for individuals, then there is no way to prevent a substantial amount of income from shifting over to business income," said Douglas Elmendorf, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, Trump plans to maintain two of the largest breaks for wealthy taxpayers, the deductions for interest paid on mortgages and contributions to charity. That doesn't leave much fat to trim, according to William Gale, who served as a senior economist on President George H.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. "I don't see how it would be possible NOT to have a net tax cut for high income households - and a big one at that - given what is proposed," Gale wrote in an email. Mnuchin's claims recall those of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who made a similar pledge as the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. At the time, Gale and other experts concluded that making up for tax cuts on the rich by getting rid of breaks and loopholes would be difficult if not mathematically impossible. Trump is proposing more tax relief for the wealthy than Romney did, noted Gale, who is now at the Tax Policy Center. Whether Trump's proposals can in fact avoid a tax cut for the rich remains to be seen, Gale wrote, given that the administration has only made general statements so far and has not laid out a detailed plan. As a candidate, Trump talked often about increasing taxes on the wealthy - but he also sometimes said that the wealthy would receive a cut. "They will go up a little bit," Trump said of taxes on the rich in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News last May. The next day, however, Trump said that the well off would pay less in taxes compared to the current system. Mnuchin had said on at least two previous occasions that the administration's plan would not reduce the burden on the wealthy - in an interview on CNBC a few weeks after Trump's election and again at his confirmation hearing in the Senate in January. Trump's proposals would also benefit many ordinary Americans. Wages would likely rise somewhat if business taxes were reduced, and Trump is also planning on helping parents deal with the expenses of child care. Some middle-class households could pay more, however. Those with many members or single parents are particularly at risk. During the campaign, Trump proposed eliminating features of the tax system that give single parents a break and that allow families to pay less depending on their size. In all, that plan was projected to increase taxes on about 8 million families. It was unclear from the brief document the administration released Wednesday whether the administration looking for a different approach, but in an interview with Stephanopoulos on Thursday, Mnuchin declined to say whether some families would have to pay steeper bills. "Can you guarantee that no one in the middle class is going to pay more?" Stephanopoulos asked. "I can't make any guarantees until this thing is done and it's on the president's desk," Mnuchin said. PDT, the New York cocktail bar Please Don't Tell, pops up at Bad Hunter Saturday and Sunday nights, just before the James Beard Foundation awards Monday night. You enter the original PDT through a phone booth inside the hot-dog shop Crif Dogs. The pop-up will be a little easier to find; just head to Halsted Street to find the entrance to Bad Hunter's upstairs Herbarium space. Advertisement Reservations are no longer available, but the bar has saved some space for walk-ins, said an Herbarium spokesperson. RELATED: 15 parties and dinners for James Beard weekend Advertisement PDT founder, author and 2012 Beard Award Outstanding Bar Program winner Jim Meehan brings four of his house cocktails, including the best-selling Bentons Old Fashioned. Made with bourbon infused with bacon fat from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Tennessee, this is the drink that launched the fat-washed spirits trend. Meehan, who grew up in River Forest, will also pour four new Chicago-exclusive cocktails at the pop-up. Plus, there will be hot dogs created by chefs Rick Bayless (Frontera, Lena Brava), Sarah Grueneberg (Monteverde), Cosmo Goss (The Publican) and Dan Snowden (Bad Hunter), who will serve a veggie dog on a guajillo chile hot dog bun with poblano and pistachio pesto, avocado crema, cotija cheese and crispy carrots. In a nod to the traditional PDT experience, pop-up guests will walk through a makeshift hot-dog stand where complimentary samples will be passed while supplies last. Drinks created by Bad Hunter for the pop-up, including a Fords gin and tonic and a Lot No. 40 rye whiskey milkshake, will also be available for purchase. 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday and Sunday at The Herbarium at Bad Hunter, 150 N. Halsted St., 312-912-4882, www.theherbariumchicago.com. lchu@chicagotribune.com Twitter @louisachu Proxi, the second restaurant from chef Andrew Zimmerman and co-owner Emmanuel Nony of Sepia, is slated to open mid-June. Here's a sneak peek at the space and what you can expect. (Joseph Hernandez/Chicago Tribune) (Joseph Hernandez/Chicago Tribune) Even though Proxi is still more than a month from opening to the public slated for the second week of June crews are busy inside and outside the restaurant to get the space open for chefs and food industry movers in town for the James Beard Awards. Two years in the making, Proxi is the latest project helmed by Sepia's chef Andrew Zimmerman and co-owner Emmanuel Nony. "With Sepia turning 10 years old this summer, we felt it was time to unleash our second project," said the latter during a media walkthrough of the space Monday. Advertisement "Even though it seems like the right time to (open a restaurant) at 10 years in, we felt we were ready at our eighth anniversary to do this," said Zimmerman. "Finding the right space took time." That space? On the corner of Jefferson and Randolph streets, just down the block from its older sister the backdoors of Sepia and Proxi are only 20 feet apart. Advertisement Whereas Sepia is locally and nationally lauded for its classic approach to fine dining and wine, Proxi will exude a totally different aesthetic and attitude, says Zimmerman. "The menu and the kitchen are inspired by the things that I can't do in Sepia." "Live-fire cooking and casual eating is our impulse for the food program," says Nony. "I have an eclectic culinary palate, so I wanted something that would allow me a lot of flexibility in terms of the food I would cook," says Zimmerman. "One of the things that made the most sense was casual street foods a lot of those foods are cooked over flame, like a beach bonfire in Bali, or a small charcoal grill on the side of the street in Thailand." While details about the menu are slim-to-none, expect global influences. "It's a return to more basic cooking techniques," says Zimmerman. "No sous vide." An oval-shaped bar at Proxi. (Joseph Hernandez/Chicago Tribune) The linchpin of the Proxi experience is the custom-built, 2.7-ton live-fire hearth Zimmerman commissioned for the space. "Imagine two Mini Coopers, stacked," he said. "It took 3 hours to move in back here." Another feature is a Josper coal oven from Spain, which combined with the open-flame hearth, will allow Zimmerman's team to build and develop flavors in different ways. Nony and Zimmerman explained that at Sepia it was too costly to re-fit the exhaust for live-fire cooking, but building out Proxi gave them the opportunity to design their dream kitchen. This includes the dining room, which looks into the open kitchen. "I like feeling more connected to the dining room and more connected to the guests," says Zimmerman. Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > The drink program, too, will depart from Sepia's wine-focused offerings. While Sepia sommelier Arthur Hon will still create a "well-considered list (for Proxi)," says Nony, "the focus is more casual." General manager Petros Papatheofanis explains: "We're going the opposite of local, and opening up to global spices and herbs. What's in the food finds its way into the cocktail." The street food inspiration will spill over to the bar, with a beer-focused program featuring Japanese, Mexican and Indian beers, plus potential collaborations with local breweries. "There are no boundaries, but we want to give guests something different." Advertisement Four wide banquettes done up in handsome orange leather will provide a view of the dining room and into a planned lounge space. (Joseph Hernandez/Chicago Tribune) As contractors measured, sawed and painted, Nony pointed out what the space will become. To the left of the open kitchen will be a private 14- to 16-seat dining space, which will eventually be closed off from the rest of the room. In front of the kitchen, a chef's table will provide a front-and-center view of the kitchen staff, while along the south wall, four wide banquettes done up in handsome orange leather will provide a view of the dining room and into a planned lounge space. On the Jefferson Street side of the restaurant, an oval-shaped, 30-foot long bar will serve guests the full food and drink menu, with windows opening onto proposed sidewalk seating. Sound-absorbing panels cut into a bricklike design line the ceiling vaults. (Joseph Hernandez/Chicago Tribune) Many features of the space are original, including the vaulted barrel-shaped ceiling. "But the acoustics weren't great," explains Nony, who detailed how the team brought on an expert to consult on muting the reverb. The result is now a clever piece of design: Sound-absorbing panels cut into a bricklike design give the space a modern villa feel. Though the space was definitely not ready during the tour Monday, Nony, Zimmerman and team are rushing to polish up the spot for its debut during the James Beard Awards weekend for industry guests. "It probably won't be ready until 10 minutes before the doors open, when Nony and I give the space a final look," jokes Zimmerman. Proxi, 565 W. Randolph St., proxichicago.com jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com Twitter @joeybear85 The first time I saw Joe Mantegna in the flesh he was in the flesh, naked as a newborn baby on stage at the Shubert Theatre in a 1969 production of "Hair." It was his first professional acting job in what is now nearly 50 years of steady and acclaimed work on stage, in films and on television. Advertisement "I have been very lucky," he says on the phone from California, where he and his family have long made their home. He will, he promises, be appropriately dressed Wednesday, when he will be honored by having the southeast corner of Hudson and Armitage avenues designated Honorary Joe Mantegna Way. On that corner is the River Shannon tavern and the building above it is where Mantegna once lived. Advertisement "It was a great apartment that I shared with two other guys, guys I still know," he says. "The neighborhood was a little dicey then. There was a gang, the Hudson Headhunters, and we had to dodge around those characters. But we each had our own bedroom." He was there for about two years and didn't spend a great deal of time in the tavern, which is 70 years old and for the last several years has been owned by Lyn McKeaney, a former classmate of Mantegna's at Morton East High School, where they appeared in plays together. Ceremonies start at 4 p.m. and are expected to last until 7 p.m., with Irish bagpipers and Italian beef sandwiches donated by Buona beef, along with hot dogs from Downtown Dogs, a raffle for Cubs tickets and a few speeches. All proceeds from drink sales will be donated to Mantegna's charity of choice, Easter Seals Chicago. As McKeaney says, "Joe has never forgotten the city that he grew up in. He is a tireless supporter of numerous causes." Mantegna was born and raised on the city's West Side, near where his mother, Mary Ann (who died last year at 101 but who, says her son, "lived long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series"), wrapped packages in the mail order department at Sears. He was eight years younger than his brother Ronald, and their late father, Joseph, was beset with medical problems and often away from home. When he was 8 and suffering from rheumatic fever, Joe spent five months in La Rabida, where he would continue outpatient treatment until he was 21. While there he was cast in two hospital theater shows. In one he played a dog, in the other a pixie. "And that," he says, "is how my career as an actor got started." When he was 12, the family moved to Cicero and he attended Morton East, where he was deeply influenced by drama teacher Jack Leckel, who, many years later, would call Mantegna "the most outstanding student I ever had." He appeared in any number of school shows and also played bass in a band called The Apocryphals (you can see/hear a short clip of the band on YouTube), which later played with another local group, The Missing Links, whose members went on to form the band Chicago. After high school and a short time at Morton Junior College, he enrolled at the Goodman School of Drama. He stayed two years, leaving shy of graduation after landing the role in "Hair." Advertisement After "Hair" he spent time in "Godspell," started dating his "Hair" co-star, Arlene Vrhel, and hooked up with the adventurous Organic Theater company. In his five years there he appeared in many of its shows. And then he got the idea for and helped write "Bleacher Bums." The show was a smash and financial salvation for the Organic. But it also began to shatter the ensemble. When it had an off-Broadway run in New York, several cast members stayed. Mantegna decided to move to LA, later saying, "I knew that if we didn't go then, we never would." He and Arlene (they married in 1975) drove from Chicago to LA in a van with Organic colleague Dennis Franz, two cars in tow. There were some lean years at first, with just a few small roles in film and television. In 1980 he and a few former Organic cast members opened in a tiny Los Angeles theater in a new production of "Bleacher Bums." The show was again a hit (it would play for nearly a decade there). In 1983 he got a call from an old Chicago pal. Playwright David Mamet wanted Mantegna to play Ricky Roma, the compellingly sleazy real estate salesman in his new play, "Glengarry Glen Ross." That play earned Mamet the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and Mantegna won the Tony Award for best actor. That changed his life. "I came back to California like a conquering hero," he says. "I had a Tony and every TV network was offering me series and stuff, and it was like Cinderella. It just kept going from there." And on and on. There were movies and there was TV. (You can find his many credits at www.imdb.com). In 2007 he replaced Chicago actor Mandy Patinkin in the CBS show "Criminal Minds," and that long run has provided not only life continuity but financial stability. His wife has operated for almost 15 years a restaurant called Taste Chicago in Burbank, Calif., its menu packed with such local culinary offerings as Italian beef sandwiches, Chicago-style hot dogs and pepper and egg sandwiches. They have two daughters, Gia, an actress, and the eldest, Mia, who has autism and works as a makeup artist. He devotes much of his time and energy to various causes, notably veterans affairs and autism. Advertisement He is an inordinately amiable, down-to-earth man and seems to have remained friends with everyone he has ever known. Composer/musician Alan Barcus, who has known Mantegna since the "Hair" days (a few years later they collaborated on a musical), puts it like this: "Joe is the most genuinely nice person I have ever known and always has been." Wednesday's event is not the first such tribute for the actor, and he is not the first Chicago theater person to be so honored. But in light of a new city ordinance that would restrict honorary signs to people no longer living, he may be the last to see his name go up. "Joe's was among of the last signs to be approved for a living person in Chicago," says Linda Zabors, who runs the nifty and informative everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-honorary-street-signs website www.honorarychicago.com. His name already appears elsewhere. In April 2011 he received the 2,438th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and two months later Cicero renamed the corner of Austin Boulevard and 25th Street in that suburb Joe Mantegna Boulevard. "It's all significant to me," he says. "Each one reminds me, takes me back. The Hollywood star reminds me of driving into LA with Arlene and Dennis and nothing but dreams. The Cicero street name has me remembering all those high school shows, the fun of it all. And now, this one will take me back to my days learning the craft at the Goodman. "But I must tell you there is something sobering about it all, too, when I think about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. I could have had my name inscribed on that wall but I was lucky. So Wednesday will give me a nice feeling, the feeling that in my life not only have I been lucky in so many ways but that I may have done something right along the way." rkogan@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @rickkogan RELATED STORIES: An original 'Bleacher Bum,' Joe Mantegna, on his Cubs' wild night Joe Mantegna on travel: From Midway to Moscow Stephen Colbert, other celebs get their own baseball cards 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) There was a time when scores of defiant adolescents asserted intellectual independence from their parents by turning their backs on religion. In this more agnostic age, picking up the Bible can be just as startling an act of rebellion in many households. So it proves in Kirill Serebrennikov's splendid "The Student," a stormy, swoon-inducingly shot bout of Russian moral wrestling that hits as hard and as heavily as a nastoyka hangover. Though Serebrennikov clearly takes a side in this rhetorical battle between an aggressively Christianized high-schooler and his liberal, Jewish-born biology teacher, this is a welcome study of religious fanaticism that doesn't discredit either party's intelligence, and knows its oats either way: Viewers who are either unfamiliar with or estranged from the Good Book should prepare themselves for a veritable tsunami of scripture, rigorously extracted and reassembled as riveting spiritual debate. If that sounds a tough sell, it probably is: The fevered verbal tone and vertiginous formal activity of Serebrennikov's films gives them narrower international appeal than, say, those of his compatriot Andrey Zvyagintsev, though they're comparable in heft and gravity. At a time when arguments over educational "safe spaces" and belief-based "micro-aggressions" are prominent in the media, this wildly escalating classroom drama based on a stage work by German playwright Marius von Mayenburg serves as a frightening cautionary tale. Whether it ultimately comes down for or against unqualified free speech, however, is one of many potential topics of post-screening conversation. Advertisement Three years ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin passed a bill enforcing mandatory religious education in all state schools permitting students and their parents a choice among six religious disciplines, the dominant ideology of Orthodox Christianity chief among them. It was a motion that stood somewhat in conflict with the official separation of church and state, placing clear emphasis on how far modern Russia has drifted from the enforced atheism of Communist rule. As portrayed in "The Student," schools still appear to be in a transitional phase on this front. So it is that bright, sulkily handsome teenager Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov, an impressive brooder) attends side-by-side classes with patient Orthodox priest (Nikolai Roschin) and more spikily atheistic biology teacher Elena (Victoria Isakova), each of whom is free to represent their own spiritual views, or lack thereof, in their lessons. When Venya angrily protests in a gorilla costume, no less against Elena's unquestioning teaching of evolutionary theory, the school's conservative-leaning principal (Svetlana Bragarnik) wearily suggests that Elena incorporate creationism into her syllabus. Advertisement Elena is far from Venya's only foe in this regard, though thanks to Isakova's testy, fiery performance, she's by far his most formidable. Elsewhere on campus, he outrages his history teacher by quoting the Gospel of St. John to dubiously prove why there's no need for industrialization, and makes a collective enemy of his already dismissive female classmates when he successfully advocates to ban two-piece bathing suits from swimming classes. That the female-dominated school administration largely accommodates the demands of this male Christian crusader could be viewed as a rueful representation of Russia's political hierarchy; though it's brutally, persuasively sad as character study, "The Student" maintains a grotesque satirical streak throughout. "The Student" 3 stars No MPAA rating Running time: 1:53 Opens: Friday at Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., www.facets.org; in Russian with English subtitles. RELATED STORIES: 'Jeremiah Tower' review: How a Calif. chef reinvented American cuisine Advertisement 'The Devil's Candy' review: Satan worship plus heavy metal not as sweet as it sounds 'Burning Sands' offers a lesson in hazing violence Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP) Ricardo Gamboa is the creator of "Brujos" and co-stars in the web series about a group of gay Latino grad students dealing with the supernatural. (Open TV) Early in the new web series "Brujos," a struggling Latino actor returns from an audition and happily informs his friends: "I'm gonna be Thug No. 3 on 'Chicago P.D.'!" It's a quick joke but the subtext is thick: It's a real acting gig, a paying gig also a blatantly, depressingly stereotypical gig for an actor of color but it's a gig! Advertisement The poor guy never even makes it to the set because something supernatural has arrived in their home, turning the lives of these roommates gay Latino grad students inside out and upside down. Creator Ricardo Gamboa (who also co-stars) calls the series a "dark comedy and supernatural thriller that draws on telenovela forms but also shows like 'Charmed' and horror films of the '80s." Shot on the South Side (primarily Little Village), the first four episodes are available online. According to Gamboa, eight more episodes will be shot this summer and released in the fall, rounding out a 12-episode season. Advertisement So far, the series has a lot going for it and a good deal that needs work, as well. I don't think that is necessarily a drawback. The episodes are short (7 to 9 minutes) and that brevity helps you overlook some of the show's narrative hiccups. Why this bad energy has crashed into their lives now is left a bit murky. But it is clear that the guys are under siege by an unseen force. Their nemesis a secret society of rich straight white men descended from the earliest colonizers who arrived in these parts, looked around and promptly claimed ownership. As Gamboa drolly put it, "The story takes on an allegorical dimension." To fight back, the roomies employ the services of a spiritual guide, a santera (played by Arisbel Garcia Ramirez) who casts a spell that gives them the power of a coven the power of brujos (witches) and in the early going, they plainly have no idea what they're doing. Ricardo Gamboa, star, writer, and co-director of "Brujos." (Open TV) The details of how this plays out (and what's happening exactly, and when) gets confusing. The series would benefit from a bit more hang-out time spent amongst the brujos, since their rapport as friends feels like an important through line. Representation is important, but so is cohesive storytelling. Despite it all, the show has a distinctive sensibility and a cast of characters who are self-aware but also ding-dongs, which tends to be a winning combination. "You hear conversations about, 'We need more diverse representation in TV and movies,' and sometimes it's a really superficial, just recoding social norms with a multicultural facade," Gamboa said. "What I was interested in doing when I wrote this was centering non-normative people and people of color, who are not necessarily adhering to respectability politics. "It's not 'The Cosby Show' but it's also not the 'George Lopez' show. The queer community of color often doesn't get opportunities to be represented and we have actual queer people of color playing queer people of color which is something you couldn't even get out of 'Moonlight,' right? The lead of that movie is straight (in real life). So all the those things were really important to us." The show is also partially a response to "shows like 'Looking' and 'Girls,' which portray young people living in these hotbeds of urban America where people of color are everywhere, but they don't actually make it into the frame." Gamboa (who is pursuing a doctorate in American studies at New York University, focusing on topics including race and violence) used "my own experience of being a queer racialized person growing up on the South Side of Chicago, surrounded by working-class people of color and queer people" as inspiration for "Brujos," as well. Advertisement "I always felt we were supernatural in the way that we survive in a world that is oftentimes targeting us for marginalization." It's worth pointing out that one of the roommates in the show is white. He's the type of person who very casually says terrible things, but there's a comedic flair to his dialogue. "Part of that was exploring some of the fissures that occur within the LGBTQ community along the lines of race," Gamboa said. "Some people will think it's racist. Other people will think it's funny. My job isn't to tell you what to think, but to create an opportunity for those conversations: Are those jokes racist or is he just cool with these guys? "For years we've seen tokenization of minorities in the media." With "Brujos," Gamboa and company flip the script. The first four episodes of "Brujos" can be streamed at www.brujostv.com. Advertisement nmetz@chicagotribune.com Twitter @Nina_Metz RELATED STORIES: Relationships at heart of this year's Latino Film Fest Carrie Coon, Ewan McGregor lure us into 'Fargo' abyss a third time 'Empire' star filming Chicago indie drama about a teen wrongfully accused 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) David Levithan, noted for expanding the role of gay characters in teen literature with influential novels such as "Boy Meets Boy," has won the 2017 Chicago Tribune Young Adult Literary Award. Levithan champions diversity in children's literature as a senior editor at Scholastic books and has written or co-written 18 young adult books, seven featuring gay characters. His books include the best-sellers "Every Day," "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" (co-written with Rachel Cohn) and "Will Grayson, Will Grayson" (with John Green). His novel "Two Boys Kissing" was on the longlist for the 2013 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Advertisement "He's had incredible resonance," said Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune literary editor at large. "These books have really changed the conversation about love and romance." The award will be presented at the Tribune's Printers Row Lit Fest on June 10-11. Advertisement Levithan answered questions from the Tribune via email during a recent trip to England. The following is an edited transcript. Q: In 2003, "Boy Meets Boy," a positive, upbeat gay love story, was a real departure for teen novels. Did you set out to rock the YA world? A: Well, I (and a number of the other authors writing queer YA in 2002-03) definitely wanted to change the way LGBT stories were told in YA With some notable exceptions, the landscape was pretty bleak and we wanted to unbleaken it, in order to make it better reflect real life. But, to be honest, changing the body of literature was only a small part of it; we knew the impact that YA could have on teenage lives, and we wanted the LGBT-positive impact to spread. Q: Since then, there's been pretty seismic change in terms of LGBT stories in YA. What, in your view, was a major turning point? A: We changed the narrative. There are genuinely too many authors to name who populated their books with human, dimensional queer characters whether it's the rainbow boys in Alex Sanchez's novels or the geography club rebels in Brent Hartinger's or the affectionate girls in Julie Anne Peters' or Sara Ryan's novels or the devastatingly real tortured souls in Ellen Hopkins' work or the more fantastical but still emotionally real souls in Cassandra Clare's novels. It wasn't just that we got a place at the table, but that we were given interesting things to do and say once we were sitting there. Q: What were you like in high school? A: A lot like I am now. Really bookish. Really into music. Really, really into my friends. Q: Did you identify as gay in high school? Advertisement A: I wasn't out or in when it came to high school I was just oblivious. It's easy very easy to see what my identity was going to be, in retrospect. But at the time pre-internet, pre-"Ellen," pre-"Dawson's Creek" I didn't have the cultural tip-off I needed to figure it out. Q: You're known in part for high-profile collaborations. What in your experience is the hardest part of collaborating? A: The hardest part should be giving up control over the story but honestly that's one of the most fun parts too. So I'll say the hardest part is waiting for the next chapter and I say this with the full knowledge that I am often the one making my collaborator wait. The best part is writing something you never would have written alone and having a partner in crime when it comes to bringing it out into the world. Q: As an editor, what do you consider your greatest accomplishment? And tell me about something you wish you'd done differently. A: When I started the PUSH imprint, I thought my greatest accomplishment would have been discovering new writers. Little did I know that it would be immensely more satisfying to be working with the same authors 10 or even 20 years later and seeing them grow as authors. This fall I'm publishing my author (and best friend) Billy Merrell's first novel, "Vanilla," over a decade after I published his memoir, "Talking in the Dark." And it's even more of a wonder to me because of how we've both grown, as a writer and as an editor, respectively, in the interim. As for something I wish I'd done differently, the seemingly ridiculous and utterly true answer is that I think even the mistakes are there for a reason, and when you botch one thing it helps you fix something else later on. Even the books I lost out on the only ones that it bums me out to think about are the ones that didn't actually go on to be successes. The ones that did well I'm glad they found the audience. "The Book Thief" is one of my favorite books, and I was the underbidder on it. But all of the things that went so right for it wouldn't have necessarily happened on my watch, so I'm glad it found the home it did. Truly. Advertisement Q: We're said rightly, I think to be living in a golden age of YA literature. What, if anything, remains to be done? There are so many more voices that need to be a part of our literature. We're getting there, one book at a time. I am profoundly happy to live in a time where "The Hate U Give" is the No. 1 YA book in America for over a month. (The book follows a 16-year-old African-American girl as she copes with the aftermath of witnessing a police officer shoot her unarmed friend.) I wish we were in a place where a book like "The Hate U Give" wasn't necessary but as long as it is, give us the Angie Thomases to be our truth-tellers. We need as much truth-telling as we can get these days. nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com Twitter @nschoenberg In May 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness, when Ulysses S. Grant was new in command of the Northern troops facing the Confederate forces of Robert E. Lee, an irate Gen. Charles Griffin stormed into Union headquarters. Griffin complained loudly that he'd pushed back the enemy but, getting no support, had to retreat. Condemning by name several officers including his immediate superior, he then stomped away again. Grant, sitting nearby, whittling and smoking, growled to Gen. George Meade, his top aide, "Who is this Gen. Gregg? You ought to arrest him." Advertisement Meade came over, and, noticing that Grant's uniform coat was unbuttoned, began buttoning it up "as if he were a little boy," an aide remembered, while also saying calmly, "It's Griffin, not Gregg, and it's only his way of talking." There is something so homey and so human about this scene that says so much about Grant and Meade and their close working relationship, focused entirely on beating the Rebels. Meade, the victor at Gettysburg, was the commander of the Army of the Potomac, and he could have sulked and moaned when, just a short time earlier, he'd been superseded by Grant. Instead, for the good of the war effort, he'd set aside his personal feelings. Grant, meanwhile, gave his full attention to winning the war, even to the point of leaving his uniform a bit disheveled and letting Meade treat him like, well, a little brother. Advertisement When Stephen W. Sears relates this scene in "Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac," it is particularly refreshing. For hundreds of pages up to this point, his story of the top leaders of the main Union army, charged with protecting Washington, D.C., and prosecuting the war against the main Rebel forces, has been about arrogance, ineptitude, ambition, favoritism, pomposity, politicking, moral cowardice and flirtations with treason. Much of this stink arises out of that tin general, the "Little Napoleon," George B. McClellan, a man for whom the word blowhard was invented, and his coterie of toadies. "Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac" by Stephen W. Sears, Narrated by George Guidall (Chicago Tribune) Although highly skilled at organizing an army and winning the affection of the troops, McClellan had no conception of how to use an army. Often, he left the decisions about the fighting of battles to subordinates, being himself miles from the fighting. As one soldier-historian of that war relates, "Curiously enough, there was almost always something for McClellan to do more important than fight his own battles." McClellan's hubris is a key thread of any history of the Union armies during the Civil War, and many books note how, one night, President Abraham Lincoln and an aide called on the general at his home, only to be told, after waiting a half hour, that McClellan had gone to bed. Sears, however, details how this happened not once, but at least twice. At this point, it's worth asking whether the world needs another book about the Civil War and about the myriad failings of Little Napoleon. The awkward title of the Sears book is an indication of the difficulty. The title "Army of the Potomac" was taken by Bruce Catton for his three-volume trilogy in the 1950s. Around that same time, T. Harry Williams employed "Lincoln and His Generals" for one of his two books on the leading Union military men. "Lincoln's Generals" was the name of the 1994 book edited by Gabor S. Boritt, featuring five essays, one written by Sears. And, since 1983, Sears himself has published four books examining key battles fought by the Army of the Potomac as well as a full biography of McClellan. "Lincoln's Lieutenants," however, isn't a regurgitation of earlier works. It is an masterful synthesis of the stories of the battles and of the men at the many levels of the Union command from the top down to the brigade level. It's a narrative about amazing courage and astonishing gutlessness, about well-meaning wrong-headedness and lightning-flash strategic genius. It explains why Union movements worked and, more often, didn't work in clear-eyed explanatory prose that's vivid and direct. And each page tells a human story. Consider Philip Kearny, a general whose approach was to lead by example. Early in the war, his left arm was shattered by grapeshot and amputated, but that didn't stop him, as Sears relates. Coming across a battle-stunned, officer-less company of New Jersey soldiers, he shouted, "Well! I am a one-armed Jersey son-of-a-gun, follow me! Three cheers!" Advertisement Taking over command of a division, he decided he needed to make an impression on his new troops so "he rushed out to the skirmish line, drew the Rebels fire (losing two of his staff killed), and rode back into his lines shouting, 'You see, my boys where to fire!' " He bragged to a colleague, "General, I can make men follow me to Hell!" During one battle, though, he was alone and lost near dark when he came upon a group of Confederate soldiers. Sears writes that, spurring his horse, Kearny crouched "low in the saddle. There was a barrage of shots, and a bullet struck him at the base of his spine and coursed through his body and killed him instantly." Such courage, even in its foolhardiness at times, was striking among the Union commanders, and, yet, any officer who approached the front lines knew he was putting himself in harm's way and so did their loved ones. What's extraordinary for a reader today are the letters that these soldiers sent to their wives and families describing battle with a gusto and attention to detail that's downright astounding. For instance, five days after Fredericksburg, Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys writes to his wife: I felt gloriously, and as the storm of bullets whistled around me, and as the shells and shrapnel burst close to me in every direction scattering with hissing sound their fragments and bullets, the excitement grew more glorious still. Oh, it was sublime! Later, as Meade's chief of staff, he wrote home this little scene: Advertisement A shell thrown from a battery of the enemy on our flank had passed between Genl. Meade & myself, had taken off a small part of the tail of my horse grazed heavily Genl. Meade's boot close to the knee, passed between Genl. Griffin & Genl. Bartlett, burying itself in the ground five feet behind them & covering them & their staff with dirt. It did not explode. Not that the Union officers were all just standing around. Most, like Kearny, were at the front of their troops, and many paid the price. During a single month of the Wilderness Campaign, the Army lost 30 of its 41 brigade commanders, and, at the regimental level, the carnage was even worse. John Gibbon, who eventually rose to lead a corps, wrote in his memoirs about such losses and how they were disastrous for the Northern forces. It wasn't just that new untested commanders had to be brought in to replace those lost. It was, he wrote, that "the very best officers, and the very bravest men were those who fell. These always remained in the ranks and did the fighting and by their example and spirit stimulated the rest." It was a war of attrition, one that, for much of the conflict, the Union was losing because its leaders permitted Lee and other Confederate generals to create makeshift fortifications for their troops before most battles, forcing the Union soldiers to charge unprotected against waves of bullets. It was this reality of the war that crippled McClellan as a warrior. In 1862, after the Battle of Seven Pines, the commanding general saw the battlefield covered in dead and wounded, the first and only time he was present to see such carnage. And he was shaken to his core. Sears writes: Advertisement His revulsion at the bloody arithmetic of battle pointed to something deep-rooted in his military character a reluctance to accept the human toll necessarily expended by a commander to win a battle or a campaign. As he put it in another letter, 'Every poor fellow that is killed or wounded almost haunts me!'" At that point, the question was whether, like his subordinates, McClellan would have the "moral courage" to accept the responsibility to expend the lives of his soldiers to win victory. He never did. Indeed, after a later battle, one of his aides wrote that, because his forces were having success in one portion of the field, "he was afraid to risk the day by an attack" on another area as well. Sears writes: " 'Afraid to risk'" an epigraph for the generalship of George McClellan in his own words." Patrick T. Reardon, a former member of the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, is the author of eight books, including "Requiem for David," a poetry collection, and "Faith Stripped to Its Essence," a literary-religious analysis of Shusaku Endo's novel "Silence." 'Lincoln's Lieutenants' Advertisement By Stephen W. Sears, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 896 pages, $38 Most employees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shy away from the public spotlight, focusing instead on the behind-the-scenes work of enforcing laws intended to protect public health and wildlife. Then Donald Trump became president. Advertisement Even before Trump introduced a budget last month that would eliminate thousands of EPA jobs and abolish or dramatically scale back several key environmental initiatives, some agency employees began speaking out on their own time to tell Americans about the value of their efforts to clean up the nation's air, water and land. At the EPA's Chicago office, which oversees the agency's work in six states around the Great Lakes, employees have participated in rallies protesting Trump's policies, organized a social media campaign and showed up at community forums to promote what they do for a living. Advertisement Outraged citizens forced Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to back down from an attempt to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, the thinking goes. Perhaps they also can save the government's environmental watchdog. "If nobody cares about us losing our jobs, that's fine," EPA geologist Felicia Chase said during a recent lunch-hour conversation with members of the American Federation of Government Employees local that represents about 1,000 agency workers in Chicago. "The bottom line is the environment and public health are at risk. Everybody should care about that." Chase and her colleagues stressed that while they are not authorized to speak for the agency, as citizens they feel the EPA is unfairly targeted by politicians and campaign contributors from polluting industries. Heriberto Leon, a community involvement coordinator, often is sent to explain the EPA's work in cities and small towns across the Midwest coping with the toxic legacy of abandoned industrial sites. He said that unlike the politicians and talking heads who routinely accuse the agency of undermining the American economy, the people he meets tend to have more immediate concerns. In Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, residents ask when the EPA is going to finish digging up yards contaminated with brain-damaging lead from a nearby smelter. People in Ogden Dunes, Ind., call with concerns about a spill of cancer-causing waste from a U.S. Steel plant on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Community groups press for updates about the long-running cleanup of Waukegan Harbor, a project seen as key to redeveloping the city's lakefront as a tourist destination. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 10 Workers replace the top foot of soil April 25, 2017, as part of an EPA lead cleanup at a residential building in Pilsen where children live. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) "If you just listened to TV, the negative messaging out there is that we kill jobs and over-regulate," Leon said. "That's not the message we hear on a day-to-day basis while we're out in the community, doing things like showing people how to install a water filter or explaining what's next with a soil-remediation project." Many EPA employees are particularly alarmed that Trump chose Scott Pruitt to head the agency. As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times seeking to limit the agency's authority to regulate pollution, often in concert with oil and gas interests that supported his political campaigns. During his first days as EPA administrator, Pruitt already has moved to roll back tougher fuel economy standards for automakers, denied a petition to ban a controversial pesticide, delayed more stringent limits on lung-damaging smog and launched efforts to scrap President Barack Obama's plans to fight climate change. Advertisement Pruitt made a quick trip last week to East Chicago, Ind., another city where the EPA is cleaning up a lead-contaminated neighborhood. He said he came to "show confidence to the people here in this community that we are going to get this right," but his public remarks at a Pennsylvania coal mine and other events have focused largely on eliminating EPA regulations that he and Trump have described as overly burdensome to industry. Mike Mikulka, president of Local 704 at the EPA's Chicago office, noted that it took years for the agency to broker legal settlements with DuPont and other companies to pay for the East Chicago project. Trump's proposed budget would slash funding to enforce the federal Superfund law that gives the government authority to hold polluters accountable for environmental damage. The proposal also would eliminate a $300 million annual fund for Great Lakes restoration and similar programs that have helped improve Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico. Mindful that Trump's transition team called for consolidating at least two of the EPA's 10 regional offices, staff in Chicago worry that the administration's plans to abolish the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is a sign the agency might close the local outpost and pull back throughout the region. Pruitt has said he plans to cede more authority to the states, but the White House is proposing to cut grants that finance state environmental programs by 45 percent. "That's crazy," said Mikulka, who said morale among EPA employees is lower today than it was when former Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush pushed industry-friendly agendas. Advertisement "We're here to protect public health," said Steve Faryan, a Superfund coordinator who juggles work at dozens of contaminated sites and said his annual budget has remained flat for more than three decades. "If they cut the budget and the EPA staff, we're going back to the days when there are more public health problems. The enforcement won't be there; the money won't be there to help." Jon Peterson, a geologist, coordinates a related program that helps communities clean up less-contaminated sites known as brownfields. Local officials from both political parties welcome the assistance, he said, because it clears abandoned industrial properties for new projects that spur economic development. "Somebody has to pay for that, but of course they want to cut our little program's budget, too," Peterson said of the new administration, pointing to a map dotted with projects completed in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio all states that Trump won in November. To be sure, the EPA has always been unpopular in some quarters. The agency often is in conflict with corporate interests that fiercely resist environmental regulations. It also draws criticism from groups that feel the EPA moves too slowly or succumbs to political pressure when influential local interests push back. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Often it takes persistent citizens, pressure from nonprofit groups and the glare of media attention to force the agency's leaders to take more aggressive action. In Flint, Mich., for instance, staff from the EPA's Chicago office responded quickly two years ago to complaints about rust-colored, foul-smelling water streaming from household taps. Agency experts raised alarms about high levels of lead in the water, a hazard created when a state-appointed emergency manager switched the city's source of drinking water and the local utility stopped treating the water properly. Advertisement The Obama administration's regional administrator was forced to resign after failing to warn the public about the emerging public health crisis. But during the past year, staff from the Chicago office have been shuttling back and forth to Flint to oversee an overhaul of the city's water distribution system, distribute water filters to residents and test the safety of household taps. People in places like Flint still look to the EPA for help, said Chase, who described sitting with mothers who had put socks on their babies' hands to prevent them from scratching rashes caused by the caustic tap water. "I joined the agency because I wanted to be one of those people who upholds the law so bad actors aren't out there harming what we consider precious," Chase said. "It is really frustrating to realize the people who are managing what you do just don't get it. Or maybe they don't want to get it." mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com Twitter @scribeguy Michael Jones was arrested in 2015 in the killing of 15-year-old Kristy Wesselman near Glen Ellyn in 1985. Here's some background on the case against him. (Jonathon Berlin and Christy Gutowski / Chicago Tribune) (Jonathon Berlin And Christy Gutowski/Chicago Tribune) It was 40 years ago this summer that Michael Jones abducted a woman at gunpoint in Chicago as she rode her bike home from work and beat, sexually assaulted and choked her with a rope before releasing her outside a hospital. She and four other women who have accused the former Champaign handyman of rape or other sexually motivated offenses over the years may come face to face with him again if allowed to testify in ongoing DuPage County court proceedings in the July 21, 1985, killing of 15-year-old Kristy Wesselman near Glen Ellyn. Advertisement In a motion filed this month, prosecutors asked a judge to let them present graphic evidence during Jones' murder trial to show his alleged propensity as well as motive and intent to commit such sexual violence. He pleaded guilty in the bicyclist's 1977 attack, but the four other cases prosecutors want to introduce either were not charged or did not end in a conviction, court records show. Jones, 64, has been held without bail since his September 2015 arrest. He has pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors said his genetic profile matched DNA evidence collected at the crime scene long ago. Advertisement Kristy was last seen alive on a Sunday afternoon nearly 32 years ago as she walked along a well-worn path toward her nearby home after buying a candy bar and a soda at a grocery store. Her body was found the following day in a field not far off the foot trail that connected her neighborhood and the shopping plaza at Illinois Route 53 and Butterfield Road, but the case stymied detectives for decades. The student-athlete and sophomore class leader at Glenbard South High School suffered eight stab wounds. Her assailant sexually assaulted her before fleeing with a ring that belonged to her. And, in the recent court filing, prosecutors for the first time revealed publicly that the killer tied a shoelace around her neck as well. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 19 Bill Wesselman and his mother, Sandy, leave the DuPage County courthouse in Wheaton on Oct. 13, 2015, after Michael Jones pleaded not guilty in the killing of Kristy Wesselman. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) Prosecutors maintain the other cases though none involving murder fit a pattern similar to Kristy's slaying in that many of the other young women said they were attacked with a weapon in a public place during summer near their home; were raped, choked and restrained in some manner; and had their jewelry stolen. They argue the probative value of the evidence in those cases outweighs "any prejudice to the defendant." "It is imperative that the (judge or jury) be informed of these similar acts so that they properly assess the credibility of the anticipated defenses like alibi, straight denial, consensual sex with the victim, or attempts to explain away the DNA evidence linking this defendant to the crime," the motion read. "Only when the (judge or jury) is given the full picture of the defendant's conduct can they meaningfully determine the credibility of the defenses likely to be asserted by the defendant." The defense has not yet responded to the motion, but it is expected to fight it, which will spark a pretrial hearing. If her testimony is required, the woman who survived the 1977 attack told the Tribune she would do so willingly. The victim, now in her late 60s and living in a collar county suburb, said she was never notified of Jones' early release from prison and has spent years "looking over (my) shoulder." "I would do it in a heartbeat because this lady and her daughter deserve all the support they can get," the woman, who asked not to be publicly identified, said of Kristy Wesselman and her mother, Sandy. "At this point in my life, I'm not afraid of him anymore." She was a 27-year-old mother at the time of her attack. But that wasn't the first time Jones was accused of sexual violence. One year earlier, in August 1976, a 23-year-old Jones was arrested after an abduction and rape of an 18-year-old girl who was walking home along Irving Park Road in Chicago. Advertisement Jones was charged but not convicted a point his accuser described as heartbreaking, especially in light of the later allegations. "I believe I was among the first, but really who knows," she said in an email to the Tribune shortly after Jones' late 2015 arrest. "It breaks my heart knowing if my outcome was different, along with the victim after me, it would be different, and this young girl would be alive." She could not be reached for comment regarding the prosecution's recent motion, but in an earlier telephone interview said she is eager to see him prosecuted. Jones grew up in Chicago and Schiller Park with his mother, half-sister and stepfather, who was a Chicago police officer. All three are now deceased. Although sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for the 1977 case, Jones served less than six years before being paroled in June 1983. He relocated to the Champaign-Urbana area and married his first wife less than a year later in May 1984, public records showed. Kristy was killed 14 months later. Although he didn't live in the Chicago area at the time, Jones often returned to visit his parents and at least one other relative who lived near the Illinois-Wisconsin line, according to two people who were close to him throughout the 1990s. Advertisement According to a report submitted to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, and obtained through a Tribune public records request, Jones' parole officer made a home visit two months after Kristy's killing and reported he was diligently attending psychological counseling and making $400 a week working maintenance for an apartment management company. "His community and family adjustment has been excellent," the parole officer wrote in the Sept. 11, 1985, report. But, according to the prosecution's recent motion, Jones at that time began a decade of drugging and sexually assaulting an underage girl with whom he was in a position of trust. He was never charged with any wrongdoing related to her, or a friend of hers who prosecutors also allege was victimized by Jones during a one-time incident in about 1990. Besides allegations involving the young girls and the two 1970s-era cases, prosecutors are seeking permission to introduce as evidence the August 1994 complaint of a Champaign-area woman, a prostitute at the time who accused Jones of drugging and attacking her after she accepted his offer of a ride on his motorcycle. The woman said she awoke nude on a bed to find Jones trying to put a syringe in her arm and, after she managed to break free, she ran from his apartment half naked and hid in the bushes. Jones, though, told police he had consensual sex with her and that his activities with prostitutes is "somewhat of an outlet for those kinds of aggressive sexual tendencies he has and this is how he maintains control," according to the prosecution motion. Two months later, Jones' first wife sought an order of protection, alleging he "fondled" a young relative the same girl prosecutors cited in their motion. The couple divorced in 1996. Nearly three years later, Jones was accused and later pleaded guilty to a 1999 domestic battery charge for hitting the teenage daughter of his then-live-in girlfriend with a hot skillet. Advertisement In 2005, Jones married another woman. His second wife, Joni, said the couple lived peacefully for a decade in Champaign County until she accused him of domestic battery in 2015 for yanking a phone out of her hand during a dispute. He pleaded guilty and, because of the earlier battery case involving the hot skillet, the charge involving his wife was upgraded to a felony and required Jones to provide a sample of his DNA for submission to a national database. The sample matched DNA in Kristy's case, authorities said. His wife, Joni, filed paperwork to end their 10-year marriage in February 2016. The divorce was granted this year. In a telephone interview this week, Jones' ex-wife said he was not typically a violent man during their relationship and she never suspected he could be capable of such violence. She no longer speaks to him, she said. "I thought I knew this man, but evidently I didn't," she said. She said the two met through work in 2003, long after Kristy's killing and, though his ex-wife said she is not sure if he is guilty, she is glad if her decision to pursue the domestic battery case helped the Wesselman family. "I can't say because I wasn't there 30 years ago," she said when asked if she believes Jones is guilty. "He's never said he has or hasn't done this." Advertisement Later, she said, "I've read the stories (about Kristy's killing). You always feel good if you help someone and I'm a Christian lady. I give credit to the man upstairs." Prosecutors did not seek to enter the two battery convictions into evidence in their motion because neither involved a sex-related offense. Attorney Tony Thedford, president of the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said such prosecutorial motions can be devastating for the defense, but it is a well-established area of the law. He said the "other crimes" evidence does not have to be a conviction and can be very persuasive to jurors. "The government has to prove in most cases that the probative value outweighs the prejudicial effect," Thedford said. "It has to be based on a hearing. The standard to get this in is pretty vigorous. It doesn't just come in on paper. They would have to bring in live witnesses. ... These women get their day in court." Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Jones has no connection to the Wesselman family, and he was never a suspect in the long police investigation. Kristy's mom, Sandy Wesselman, said this week she was startled to learn about Jones' troubled history after his arrest. "It's like, 'Dear God, how does he get away with it?' " Advertisement Now 77 and living in Colorado, Wesselman has repeatedly flown in for Jones' pretrial hearings. Prosecutors briefed her on the latest motion, she said. When told of the 1977 survivor's offer to help, and supportive comments from the defendant's ex-wife, Sandy Wesselman said she is thankful. "I don't know if I would have that much courage to relive it and open myself up to cross-examination," she said. "That is amazing." Freelance reporters Clifford Ward and Megan Jones contributed. cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com Twitter @christygutowsk1 The Illinois Tollway board on Thursday unanimously voted in favor of a plan to widen the busy central Tri-State, an ambitious $4 billion project the agency says can be funded without tax money and without increasing tolls. The rebuilding and widening proposal, an expansion from an earlier $1.9 billion plan to just rebuild the existing Eisenhower-era thoroughfare, would add a lane in each direction and use "flex lanes" on inside shoulders for buses and emergency vehicles. Advertisement The main construction work would run from 2021 to 2025, following planning and design work and discussions with community residents and stakeholders, such as railroads and utilities, according to Tollway staff. The vote at Thursday's board meeting came after more than 90 minutes of mostly positive public comment. Advertisement "I would very much prefer spending time with my family rather than on congested roadways," James Shaw, 47, of St. Charles, said during the hearing. He commutes to Hinsdale on I-294 and supports widening the roadway. Others who spoke in favor of the project included representatives for construction organizations, chambers of commerce and government entities such as the Pace bus service, Cook County, and the villages of Justice and Rosemont. Tollway officials say that paying for the project won't be tied to increased tolls, and also will not rely on state, federal or local government money. The expanded project can be financed through improved toll collection, excess revenue from other Tollway projects like I-390, incremental revenue from the new I-294 lanes and lower debt service costs, as well as additional bonding, Tollway staff said. "We are happy to say that we are able to make these upgrades, to give this congestion relief, to fix these intersections without any increase in tolls," Tollway Board Chair Bob Schillerstrom told reporters after the vote. The financial strength of the Tollway, which relies exclusively on user fees, stands in contrast to other public transportation agencies like Metra that have been waiting for years for a state capital plan. The plan includes "SmartRoad" technology, already being implemented on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, that will provide real-time traffic information to drivers and help Tollway staff determine the best use for flex lanes. The flex lanes will initially be used for buses and emergency vehicles, but in the future could become a managed lane that opens to regular traffic during peak hours, said Aimee Lee, the Tollway's senior manager of strategic planning and programming. Counting the added lanes and flex lanes, the width of I-294 would increase from the current four lanes to six in each direction. It is not yet known what homes and businesses could be displaced because of the expansion. Schillerstrom said he hopes no homes will be impacted, and that the Tollway will be meeting with communities to hear their concerns as it proceeds with the project's design. Lee said congestion on the Tri-State will get much worse without widening in the next two decades. Travel time on the southbound central I-294 during morning rush hour, for example, could grow from 24 minutes to an hour by 2040, Lee said. Advertisement Originally built in 1958, the central Tri-State was widened twice previously, first in 1972 and again 20 years later. With widening, travel speed during peak periods would increase from 24 mph to 45 mph, Lee said. She said the area would see $330 million in annual savings a figure that takes into account, among other factors, lost productivity during jams from reduced travel delays. The Tollway said the project will also create or sustain as many as 43,000 jobs, she said. Some objected to the widening proposal. In a letter to Schillerstrom, Hinsdale Village President Tom Cauley said there is no information to suggest that congestion will increase or that there is a need to widen the tollway through Hinsdale. Cauley said the widening would likely have a "devastating impact" on property values and parks, increase noise, and possibly hurt revenues received from the Hinsdale Oasis. Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance, which advocates for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit, questioned the need for the expansion. Burke said in an interview that research shows that new and widened roads in urban areas exacerbate traffic congestion in the long term by inducing more driving that over time fills in the additional space. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "Adding lanes on the Tri-State will generate more traffic and tolls, which is a great way for the Tollway to subsidize the rest of the system but a lousy way to relieve congestion and make our region more livable," Burke said. He said bus lanes are a good idea, but any additional transit ridership will be a "drop in the bucket" compared with the new vehicle trips caused by adding lanes. He said the area should instead invest in community design and transit systems that take cars off the road and that workplace programs should be created to help people avoid rush-hour car trips. Advertisement Lee said the added lanes would take pressure off local roads like York Road and Route 83, which are seeing heavy traffic as a result of drivers trying to avoid I-294. She said the Tollway also expects more population growth and employment growth to cause more congestion. "There's congestion there now," Schillerstrom said. "We have about 130,000 cars that use the tollway per day, and all you have to do is spend a little bit of time there during rush hour either in the afternoon or the morning to know we need congestion relief." He said the widening would save the average commuter 240 hours a year. The I-294 project is part of the 15-year Move Illinois capital program, which has included the widening and rebuilding of the Jane Addams, completed late last year. mwisniewski@chicagotribune.com Twitter @marywizchicago Dr. Charles DeHaan was sentenced April 27, 2017, to nine years for Medicare fraud. He is alsocharged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse against three handicapped or elderly people in Winnebago County. DeHaan denies the allegations. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune) A house call doctor awaiting trial on charges that he sexually abused patients was handed a nine-year prison sentence Thursday for Medicare fraud. Dr. Charles DeHaan, who worked in the Chicago area for many years, also was ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution. Advertisement DeHaan is still awaiting trial in Cook County on charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault of a handicapped woman from Des Plaines, as well charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against three disabled or elderly people in Winnebago County. DeHaan, 62, has strongly denied those charges. Judge Frederick Kapala said DeHaan's time in prison for the fraud will be in addition to, not concurrent with, any sentence he receives for the sexual abuse allegations, should he be convicted of them. He also must serve three years of supervised release and submit a DNA sample. Advertisement Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paccagnini asked for a sentence of almost 11 years, arguing that DeHaan violated the doctor-patient trust by victimizing vulnerable patients. "He shattered that security and that comfort," he told the judge. A Tribune investigation revealed that, starting in 2009, 20 women reported alleged sexual misconduct by DeHaan to police in Rockford, the base of his practice, though Winnebago County authorities did not charge him with sexual abuse there until 2015. Some women came forward to report alleged abuse by DeHaan after learning through news reports about the Medicare fraud charges lodged against him in federal court in 2014. Federal prosecutors accused DeHaan of billing Medicare nearly $6 million for services he never performed from 2010 to 2013, including for at least 13 patients who were dead. DeHaan later pleaded guilty to two counts of health care fraud, for which he was sentenced Thursday. Federal authorities were allowed to introduce the sexual abuse claims against DeHaan for consideration in his sentencing, although he will be tried separately in circuit court on those charges and has pleaded not guilty. DeHaan also has been sued by at least 12 women who claim he engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with them. Many of DeHaan's accusers, some of whom spoke to the Tribune, are housebound and disabled. Among the claims are that DeHaan masturbated in the presence of patients, groped them or engaged in oral sex, according to police reports and court documents. Advertisement DeHaan's ability to pay the restitution ordered in federal court is unclear as his lawyer said he's deeply in debt, presumably because of legal bills and because his license to practice medicine in Illinois has been suspended since 2014, the year he was charged with overcharging the government for Medicare reimbursements. DeHaan sat stoically during Thursday's sentencing. He then gave a slight smile to his attorney and nodded and winked to his family before being escorted back to jail. Before the sentence was announced, DeHaan's family and friends testified that he was a man of integrity and faith who often did volunteer work and loved helping patients for its own sake, not for the money. His wife, Mary DeHaan, said the couple married 36 years ago after meeting at a Bible study. He helped launch Harvest Bible Chapel of Rockford by hosting the congregation in their home, she said. Her husband started a franchise house call practice in Chicago in 1993, which she said she and their three daughters helped run. Mary DeHaan said she found the sexual abuse claims against her husband "confusing," calling him "a man of integrity ... (with) a servant's heart." Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Family members hugged and shed tears after the sentence. Advertisement The doctor also spoke before the sentence was handed down, thanking his family and friends for testifying on his behalf. He said he started a house call business because his father and grandfather had both been doctors who made house calls, and he thought it was important to serve people who were isolated at home. After going with his father on house calls while growing up, DeHaan said he became a doctor and practices medicine for 30 years, including at SwedishAmerican Hospital in Rockford. DeHaan, who lives in Belvidere, outside Rockford, previously had an office in northwest suburban Mount Prospect. Regarding the sexual abuse allegations, he said he will contest the charges in court, adding, "I can say without hesitation that none of the accusations against me are true." DeHaan's attorney, Debra Schafer, said she would appeal Thursday's sentence. rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com Twitter @RobertMcCoppin Federal prosecutors have ordered a company co-founded by Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown to provide financial records connected to a man who allegedly paid a $15,000 bribe to secure a job in Brown's office. The citation to discover assets was served Wednesday afternoon at Brown's home in the 8800 block of South Constance Avenue, which is also the registered address of Goat Masters Corp., according to a copy of the citation filed in federal court Thursday. Advertisement Brown's husband, Benton Cook III, signed for the paperwork, the records show. The citation ordered Cook, who is the company's registered agent, to appear at the U.S. Attorney's Office on May 9 "to be examined under oath" about Sivasubramani Rajaram, an ex-employee of Brown's office convicted of lying to a federal grand jury investigating pay-to-play allegations. Advertisement Rajaram, who was sentenced to probation in February, admitted he paid a $15,000 bribe disguised as a loan to Goat Masters, a goat meat supply company owned by Brown and her husband, in order to obtain a job in 2014. The citation was filed because Rajaram still owes about $7,300 in court-ordered forfeiture, records show. Cook was ordered to bring any Goat Masters financial documents relating to Rajaram, including any agreements or contracts, accounts, receipts or correspondence. If Cook fails to comply, he could be arrested and held in contempt of court. The development comes amid an ongoing bribery investigation involving hiring and promotions within Brown's office. Brown has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and neither she nor her husband has been charged. Rajaram pleaded guilty last April to one count of perjury, admitting that he falsely testified to a federal grand jury that he had not talked with Brown after his hiring. He also acknowledged lying to the grand jury when he said he had spoken only "three or four times" to another high-ranking clerk's office employee -- identified by prosecutors only as Individual B. A few weeks after Rajaram's false testimony, Brown's cellphone was seized by the FBI. Earlier this year, prosecutors alleged in a court filing that Brown had exchanged numerous phone calls and text messages with Rajaram around the time he "loaned" the cash to Goat Masters. Individual B had "suggested" Rajaram make the loan to Brown in order to be hired and then helped him get the money to Brown's company, prosecutors said. The filing also alleged Brown had solicited and received an additional $10,000 loan for the same company from a "senior-level" employee of the clerk's office. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Brown's criminal defense attorney, Edward Genson, said earlier this year that the money paid by Rajaram was a legitimate loan that had "nothing to do" with his hiring. "It certainly wasn't a bribe," said Genson, adding that the money has since been paid back. In an interview last year with the Tribune Editorial Board, Brown said she and her husband founded the goat meat supply company after securing "several acres of land down south" and buying goats from Arkansas and Texas. "They have a lot of babies. So you can buy a few goats, and you can increase the number, your profit, very quickly," Brown said. "Goat meat is actually eaten by a lot of different groups in the United States. It's very profitable." Now in her fifth term, Brown beat out two challengers in last year's primary even though the Cook County Democratic Party had dropped its endorsement of her after the public disclosure of the federal investigation. jmeisner@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @jmetr22b Chicago auto mechanic Fidel Urbina, a suspect in the slaying of a customer, was captured by Mexican authorities after 17 years on the run, according to the FBI. Urbina was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2012. (FBI) A former Southwest Side auto mechanic who eluded authorities for nearly two decades after jumping bail in a sex assault case was ordered held Thursday without bond. Fidel Urbina, 41, was flown back to Chicago this week after his capture in Mexico in September in a tiny village in a remote part of the border state of Chihuahua. Advertisement In court Thursday, Cook County prosecutors outlined the brutal details of Urbina's alleged crimes before he fled the U.S. in 1998. Assistant State's Attorney Craig Taczy said Urbina had offered a ride home to a woman who worked in a tavern in March 1998 but instead forced her into a car at knifepoint and repeatedly raped her first in the car and then in an apartment. She escaped and called police after the attacker fell asleep. Advertisement Urbina was arrested on charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault, but he was freed from Cook County Jail after posting 10 percent of the $70,000 bond, according to court records. In October 1998, while that case was still pending, Gabriella Torres brought her car to be repaired at the garage where Urbina worked, according to Chicago police. The next day, police found a 1990 Chevrolet Lumina on fire in an alley in the 2300 block of West 50th Street, prosecutors said. Inside the trunk, they found Torres' body, bound with wire and duct tape and severely burned, Taczy said. Nearby was Torres' car, a 1985 Oldsmobile. Prosecutors said fingerprints matching Urbina's were found in or on her car. In addition, semen found in Torres' body matched Urbina's DNA profile, prosecutors said. Torres' death was ruled a homicide by strangulation and blunt force trauma. Two people had been seen fleeing the burning Lumina. They later were arrested and pleaded guilty to arson, prosecutors said. Urbina had asked the two to help burn a car, prosecutors said, and they had seen him douse the Lumina with gasoline, helped him push it into an alley and watched him set it ablaze. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Urbina also had told another person that he had "killed a lady" and needed help moving a dead body that he had at the garage, prosecutors said. Advertisement A few days after the killing, Urbina missed a scheduled court date in the pending assault case, prosecutors said, and authorities learned he had fled the country. On Thursday, Judge James Brown ordered Urbina held without bail. "There is no doubt in this court's mind that an order of no bail is absolutely appropriate in this case," the judge said. Urbina was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2012, and his case was profiled on the "America's Most Wanted" television show. mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com Twitter @crepeau Steven Randy Rueckert, left, and Daniel Herbert, attorneys for Jason Van Dyke, confer with Van Dyke during court Aug. 11, 2017. Van Dyke was at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building in Chicago for a hearing on the shooting of Laquan McDonald. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) For the second time in a little more than a year, attorneys for the Chicago police officer charged in Laquan McDonald 's slaying have asked a Cook County judge to waive his court appearances at Leighton Criminal Court Building, saying his safety is in danger. In a motion filed last week but made public only Wednesday by the judge presiding over the high-profile case, attorneys for Officer Jason Van Dyke cited three alleged incidents of "threatened violence, intimidation and threats" during the officer's court appearance last month. The motion asks that Van Dyke be allowed to skip routine court appearances or be ensured safe access to the courthouse. Attorneys filed a similar motion in March 2016, citing concerns for Van Dyke's safety then as well. Judge Vincent Gaughan later said he had worked out a "security plan" to ensure Van Dyke's safe entry and exit from the courthouse on Chicago's Southwest Side. Advertisement In the latest motion, attorneys said the "intense public scrutiny" given the case has led to Van Dyke being harassed even inside Gaughan's courtroom. The court-ordered release in November 2015 of video showing the white officer shoot the black teen 16 times in 2014 sparked public outcry and one of the worst crises in Police Department history. Advertisement At Van Dyke's court appearance on March 23, the motion alleged, a person sitting in the same row as the officer for an hour and a half held a sign reading "16 shots and a cover up." After the hearing, she held up the sign 6 inches from Van Dyke's face, followed him out of the courtroom and lingered in the hallway until defense attorneys alerted a sheriff's deputy about the matter, the motion said. A Tribune reporter who attended the entire hearing did not observe the alleged incident. This excerpt from video released to the public shows the most complete version of the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. It is edited for length by the Chicago Tribune. Warning: This video contains graphic images. (Chicago Tribune) On that same date, Van Dyke was approached by a woman in the security line outside the courthouse who said "in a loud and provoking voice" that she recognized him from television, according to the motion. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > In addition, the filing said that a group of young black males approached Van Dyke "while in the courtroom and the hallway outside the courtroom," circled around him and "scowled." Gaughan, who had been informed of the alleged harassment by last week's hearing in the case, warned then that similar actions would not be tolerated. "Anybody compelled to come to a courtroom should not run a gamut where they are insulted, intimidated or even threatened," the judge said. "That's not going to be allowed in this courtroom or outside of my courtroom. "No matter what anybody's charged with, no matter what anybody's done, they should not be compelled to go through some type of harassment." Van Dyke is charged with six counts of first-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated battery and one count of official misconduct. Advertisement mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com Twitter @crepeau Video obtained by the Chicago Tribune shows footage at the time of the April 10, 2017, fatal shooting of Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles in Chicago's West Chesterfield neighborhood. (Chicago Tribune) A man with a long prison stint in his background for attempted murder fatally shot a Cook County judge and wounded his girlfriend outside the judge's residence earlier this month, Chicago police said Thursday in announcing the first-degree murder charges. At a news conference Thursday evening at police headquarters, Cmdr. Rodney Blisset, who heads the Area South detective bureau, released few details of the investigation but said detectives reviewed videos and compiled a timeline of events, leading to the arrest of Earl Wilson, 45. Advertisement Videos obtained by the Chicago Tribune did not show the actual shooting but provided glimpses of the gunman arriving on the scene in a red Pontiac Sunfire and fleeing on foot in an alley behind Associate Judge Raymond Myles' Far South Side home. Wilson, who was arrested without incident at 5:08 p.m. Tuesday coming out of his Englewood neighborhood residence, has a criminal record dating to the early 1990s, Cook County court records show. He was sentenced in 1992 to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted murder and home invasion for stabbing a former girlfriend two years earlier, according to the records. He was released from prison in 2004. Advertisement The brazen attack on Myles, believed to be the first fatal shooting of a Chicago-area judge in more than three decades, touched off a massive, round-the-clock investigation by numerous detectives and their supervisors. The judge had worked for many years at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, the county's main criminal courthouse, winning respect as hardworking and friendly. Wilson's arrest comes two weeks after authorities charged Joshua T. Smith, 37, as the alleged getaway driver in the attack on Myles and his girlfriend shortly before dawn April 10. Smith's videotaped statements to police after his arrest assisted police in targeting Wilson as the suspected shooter, law enforcement sources told the Tribune. Police also are investigating the possible involvement of a third person in the plot, the sources have said. At the news conference, a reporter asked if police had additional suspects in the shooting. "There's more work to be done," replied Blisset, declining to be more specific. Blisset could not say how Wilson and Smith knew each other. The Tribune has reported that police are looking into whether the judge's girlfriend was targeted in the attack for personal reasons. Smith is related to a former husband of the judge's girlfriend. She ended that marriage two years ago after discovering he might be a bigamist, and he later secured an emergency order of protection against her after alleging she had threatened to shoot him, court records show. Advertisement Police have said that shell casings found outside Myles' home matched ballistics evidence from an attempted armed robbery in the early morning hours three months earlier in Englewood. The Tribune has learned that attempted holdup in which the victim was shot and wounded took place on the same block where Wilson lives. "It underscores the real problem of illegal guns that also are used over and over to cause havoc in some of our communities by individuals who also commit these crimes multiple times over," Blisset said. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters that Wilson "is no stranger to the criminal justice system," noting he served 12 years of the 18-year prison sentence for the 1992 attempted murder conviction. Since his release from prison in 2004, he's been arrested for vehicle theft, domestic battery and a weapons violation, Johnson said. Wilson was convicted of possession of a stolen motor vehicle in 2009 and sentenced to three years in prison, according to court records. During Smith's April 13 bond hearing, prosecutors disclosed that the killing of Myles, 66, a judge since 1999, had been hatched weeks earlier as a plot to rob his girlfriend, not to target the judge. Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles (Circuit Court of Cook County) Prosecutors said the gunman had been tracking the movements of Myles' girlfriend for two to three weeks to learn her schedule. In a video statement to detectives, Smith said his partner lay in wait for the girlfriend before 5 a.m. April 10 after observing she regularly left the judge's home in the West Chesterfield neighborhood to work out early in the morning, according to prosecutors. Advertisement The gunman surprised the woman by the back garage of the two-story brick residence, shooting her in the left thigh, prosecutors said. Apparently hearing the gunfire, Myles emerged onto the rear porch and confronted the gunman. He was shot five times and killed. The girlfriend, 52, survived. Smith, who said he stayed in the getaway car in the alley behind the judge's house, told detectives he heard gunshots, then picked up the gunman and drove off. The gunman fled with only the woman's gym bag but tossed it away in anger when he discovered it contained no money, prosecutors said. The gunman had been led to believe the judge's girlfriend might be carrying as much as $3,000, according to the sources. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The woman's purse was left behind at the crime scene with a gun inside it, according to law enforcement sources. Smith was ordered held without bond on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated battery as well as a misdemeanor count of obstruction of a peace officer for allegedly instructing his ex-girlfriend and her daughter to lie to police for him. Police have said the ex-girlfriend owned the getaway car but did not know about the robbery plot. Advertisement Court records show that the judge's girlfriend had her marriage declared invalid in February 2015 after receiving information leading her to believe her husband, then 72, had been married to another woman when the two wed in Markham nearly 11 years earlier. According to a transcript of court proceedings in February 2015, the judge's girlfriend testified she had only recently learned of her husband's alleged bigamous relationship when the other woman died. Later, in August 2015, as part of the divorce case, the ex-husband obtained an emergency order of protection after alleging in court that his former wife had cursed at him and threatened to shoot him. jgorner@chicagotribune.com Twitter @JeremyGorner Kevin Jerome Gilyard, 31, who goes by the name Kevin Gates, a Louisiana rapper whose 2016 studio album reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200, pleaded guilty to a gun charge and was sentenced to 30 months in prison April 26, 2017, according to court records. A Louisiana rapper whose 2016 studio album reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 was sentenced to 30 months in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to a gun charge from a Chicago arrest. Kevin Jerome Gilyard, 31, known by his stage name Kevin Gates, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in connection with a 2013 arrest, according to court records. Advertisement Gilyard was arrested around 8:10 p.m. Oct. 29, 2013, in the 7200 block of South Stony Island Avenue, according to police records. Arrest warrants were issued for Gilyard at least twice in the case, once in 2013 when he failed to show up in court, and again in December 2016, according to court records. Advertisement He was back in custody at the end of March, according to court records, and had been held ever since. In handing down the sentence, Bridgeview Branch Court Judge Neil Linehan gave Gilyard credit for 34 days already spent in jail in the case, according to court records. Gilyard broke onto the music scene in 2013 with "The Luca Brasi Story" after a series of mixtapes that depicted the gritty side of his life. The critically lauded effort also brought the rapper into the major label sphere. He signed to Atlantic Records, and released "Stranger Than Fiction" shortly thereafter, the release that began his stint as a Billboard chart fixture. Gates' style couples rap and R&B-style singing, while hewing to the bleak, autobiographical style that he has said came from the "pain" of his life. His only studio album, the platinum-selling "Isiah" released in January 2016, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200. The Chicago History Museum has on display several photographs taken by amateur street photographer Vivian Maier, who became celebrated and famous posthumously. Her work has been the subject of a long-running legal dispute. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) Former Rogers Park artist Jeffrey Goldstein has long expressed disgust over Cook County's takeover of the Vivian Maier estate, saying a cumbersome government bureaucracy had no business managing the reclusive Chicago nanny's stunning archive of world-famous photographs. When the public administrator first began pursuing Maier's assets in 2014 amid the ongoing search for an heir, Goldstein abruptly sold his trove of Maier negatives to a Canadian art dealer, later telling the Tribune that "I'd rather cut my wrists" than be forced to partner up with the county. Advertisement Now Goldstein's defiant stance has landed him in federal court, where lawyers for Public Administrator David Epstein filed a copyright infringement lawsuit alleging he illegally profited off of Maier's posthumous fame. The suit also accused Goldstein of using "bad faith sham negotiations" with the county. The litigation marks the latest twist to what has become a multifront court fight over the rights to Maier's remarkable work as a street photographer that came to light only after she died virtually penniless in 2009 and now is likely worth millions of dollars. Advertisement The county worked out a deal last year with the owner of nearly 90 percent of Maier's film negatives that will keep her photographs visible to the public, but the lawsuit against Goldstein adds further uncertainty to what will become of the artifacts of her life that were acquired by other owners. It also ratchets up what was already a volatile disagreement between the county and Goldstein, who has refused to cooperate with the public administrator's efforts to marshal the estate's assets and hold them until a rightful heir can be found, if ever. In addition to damages, lawyers for the county asked a federal judge to order Goldstein to forfeit any profits he made from the sale of Maier's work proceeds that could top more than half a million dollars, according to the suit. The public guardian also wants Goldstein to turn over the rights to a website he used to sell Maier's works and pay attorneys' fees. Whatever the outcome of the suit, the estate may never gain control of Goldstein's original cache of 17,500 black-and-white Maier negatives. The Chicago Tribune has learned that Toronto gallery owner Stephen Bulger, who bought them for an undisclosed sum in 2014, recently resold the negatives to a consortium of private investors in Switzerland. The Vivian Maier photography exhibit at the Chicago History Museum in 2017 featured a portion of Jeffrey Goldstein's Maier collection.. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) Reached by telephone Wednesday, Bulger confirmed the sale but declined to reveal the price or who bought them, saying the purchasers had so far wanted to stay out of the public eye. Leah Jakubowski, the general counsel for Epstein's office, said Wednesday she could not comment on the pending litigation or whether the county was aware of the resale of the Goldstein negatives. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Goldstein from selling or relocating any of Maier's materials still in his possession, including dozens of vintage photographic prints she made during her lifetime as well as home movies and other personal effects. The judge stopped short of granting a separate request by the county to physically seize the items from Goldstein while the case is pending, saying that to do so he would have to find an art curator to take care of the collection because the court is not accustomed to housing "valuable works of art." Advertisement In a telephone interview Wednesday, Goldstein's attorney, Eugene Murphy, accused the county lawyers of venue shopping by trying to get relief in federal court that they've been unable to obtain in the probate proceedings. Murphy said he intended to file a motion to dismiss the federal case for lack of jurisdiction. "It's an inappropriate end-around," Murphy said. Lawyers for both sides are due back in federal court on Thursday, when Durkin may decide how the case will proceed. For much of her life, Maier lived and worked as a nanny in Chicago's well-to-do northern suburbs, snapping thousands of photographs of street life in Chicago while taking the children in her care on shopping trips and other expeditions. She left no will when she died at 83. One of the greatest ironies of Maier's posthumous fame is that while she was alive she showed her work to almost no one even herself. It wasn't until the contents of her storage locker it included more than 150,000 negatives as well as prints, home movies, letters and newspaper clippings were auctioned off that people started looking at the photos and recognizing the quality of her work. After Maier's photographs burst onto the scene eight years ago, art fans, bloggers and amateur genealogists alike have delved into the implausible back story of the reclusive, pack-rat nanny. It's led to endless debates on who gets to profit from her work, how she would have wanted it presented and whether Maier would have even wanted any of the attention she's now receiving. Advertisement It's also led to an exhaustive but so far fruitless search for a rightful heir. In his Oscar-nominated documentary "Finding Vivian Maier," John Maloof, who owns 90 percent of Maier's film negatives, detailed his encounter with Sylvain Jaussaud, a first cousin once removed he found in a small French sheepherding village. Jaussaud, who said he remembered Vivian fondly, signed a deal for just $5,000 that gave Maloof his rights to the images. That arrangement stood until June 2014 when David Deal, a Virginia lawyer and avid photographer, went out of his way to track down another Maier cousin once removed in a different town in France. Deal then filed an action in Cook County probate court seeking to have the cousin named as heir to the Maier estate. Deal's filing led to a takeover by the county's public administrator, which by law has the authority to gather assets and administer the estate while the heirs remain uncertain. If no rightful heir is ever determined, the funds would be deposited into a general state coffer under Illinois law. In the federal suit against Goldstein filed last week, county lawyers said an heir had not yet been determined. Jeffrey Goldstein, seen here in 2015, is being sued in federal court for copyright infringement lawsuit, accused of illegally profiting off of photorapher Vivian Maier's posthumous fame. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune) Meanwhile, after lengthy negotiations, Epstein's office entered into a settlement last May with Maloof allowing him to continue to produce and exhibit her work and keep an undisclosed percentage of any profits, with the rest going to the estate. Maloof said Wednesday he's been busy developing and cataloging Maier's film, including thousands of color images she shot later in her life that have never been seen by anyone. A new exhibit of black-and-white photographs is scheduled to open later this year in Los Angeles, and a new book is also on the way, he said. Advertisement From the beginning, Goldstein took a different tack than Maloof. After county lawyers served him with papers asking him to itemize his Maier assets, he responded by filing a counterclaim against the county, arguing that without his painstaking efforts to print and promote the thousands of negatives Maier left behind, her work might never have been discovered in the first place. Before the countersuit was dismissed by a probate judge, Goldstein told the Tribune that he would continue to fight a county bureaucracy he said has no business taking control of an art project, let alone a project as vital as Maier's lifework. The federal lawsuit filed last week accused Goldstein of "illegally profiting from the unauthorized exploitation" of copyrighted material and also misleading the public "about the legitimacy of the products" he offered by using Maier's name on his website and in promotional materials. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The lawsuit claimed Goldstein was generating up to $500,000 a year in sales of Maier prints at the time the county took over the estate. In the fall of 2014, he expressed an interest in reaching a resolution with the county but then, according to the suit, went behind everyone's back by selling the majority of his holdings to the Bulger Gallery in Canada. "Both Goldstein and Bulger believed that transferring the negatives out of the reach of the U.S. and Illinois courts would impede enforcement efforts of the estate," the lawsuit alleged. In court Tuesday, Goldstein's lawyers objected to the temporary restraining order, saying there was no evidence Goldstein had tried to sell or hide any of his Maier assets since the deal with Bulger. Advertisement The judge, however, said he believed the public administrator has a legitimate "fear of being burned twice." "Given what happened the last time, I don't find it unreasonable," Durkin said. jmeisner@chicagotribune.com Twitter @jmetr22b SPRINGFIELD Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan on Thursday met for the first time since budget negotiations broke down in December, with both sides offering up different versions of what went down as the Capitol impasse nears the two-year mark. The roughly 40-minute private meeting was revealed in a pair of dueling statements, with Madigan calling on Rauner to "focus" on a spending plan and the governor contending the speaker "hinted" he may be open to the economic and political changes Rauner has made a prerequisite to a deal. Advertisement Neither side was willing to provide further details about the morning confab, which comes as lawmakers enter the final month of the spring legislative session and traditionally work to craft the state's annual spending plan. "I requested a meeting with Gov. Rauner to ensure he understood my desire to pass a full-year budget and discuss the urgent need for a resolution to the state budget impasse," Madigan said. "Schools, human service providers, rating agencies and thousands of others have asked us to do one thing pass a budget. I ask the governor to turn his focus to the budget." Advertisement Madigan has long said a budget agreement could be reached if Rauner put aside his economic agenda, which now includes a property tax freeze and changes to the state's workers' compensation system to cut costs for businesses. But the Rauner administration said the meeting provided hope that Madigan may be coming around to the governor's ideas. "For the first time in more than two years, Speaker Madigan today hinted that he may be willing to enact a truly balanced budget with changes that will help create jobs, properly fund our schools and lower property taxes," said Rauner spokeswoman Eleni Demertzis, who added that "it's too soon to tell if the speaker will ultimately agree to follow through." And so it seems not much has changed in the months since the camps have met, save for the state's deepening financial problems and growing uncertainty for higher education and the state's social safety net. Illinois has gone without a complete budget since July 2015, after Rauner vetoed most of the out-of-balance spending plan sent to him by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly. Democrats didn't send him a budget last year. Still, money has continued to go out the door under a patchwork of court orders and temporary spending agreements. The latest stopgap budget expired at the start of the year, leaving universities, community colleges and social service providers without funding. The House approved legislation this month that would free up $815 million from special funds for higher education and social services, but the Senate has yet to act as some lawmakers are still hoping to reach a broader agreement. Dozens of higher education advocates gathered outside the Capitol on Thursday to call for funding, chanting "save our schools" and "Rauner's gotta go." Some universities recently saw their credit ratings lowered because of a lack of money during the stalemate, and schools have laid off workers and cut programs. They were joined by two of the Democratic candidates for governor, Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston and billionaire entrepreneur J.B. Pritzker. Also running are Chicago businessman Chris Kennedy, Ald. Ameya Pawar and downstate school Superintendent Bob Daiber. "Who thinks Bruce Rauner's doing a great job? I can tell you who. Universities in Wisconsin think that Bruce Rauner's doing a great job. Universities in Iowa and Indiana and Missouri," Biss said. "They think Bruce Rauner's (doing) a great job sending our young people out of Illinois, making our colleges and universities unaffordable, slashing programs, harming faculty, sending people fleeing this state, hurting our families, hurting our communities, hurting our economy." Advertisement Rauner has railed against the latest one-time spending proposal, saying it will add to the state's debt without putting in place the economic changes he's called for as part of a budget deal. "People think that we are arguing about the budget in Illinois. They think the issue is about the budget. What it really is, is about whether or not we are going to become a growth state or not," Rauner told a group of business leaders this week. "When people say the most important thing is a budget, they mean more deficit spending." Rauner chief of staff Richard Goldberg told a Senate panel there are a few more weeks left in the session to strike a deal. At times he put the onus for Illinois' problems on the General Assembly, much to the consternation of Democrats who control it. "The state government in areas where the governor can control without the General Assembly getting in his way and stopping things and being obstructionist just to try to slow progress is better off," Goldberg said when asked whether the state is better or worse off since Rauner took office. "And areas where we cannot do anything without approval of the General Assembly, you know, that's self-evident." Democrats accused the governor of failing to show leadership. "When you try to just push this all off on the General Assembly, that's not the definition of a leader in my estimation," said Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago. In other action, the Senate approved legislation that would allow Illinois to license gun dealers, an effort supporters say would crack down on irresponsible sellers behind the city's gun violence. Opponents argue gun shops already are regulated by the federal government. Advertisement Meanwhile, the House passed a measure that would allow for the automatic expungement of a juvenile's criminal record. The effort comes out of the governor's bipartisan criminal justice reform panel, which was charged with finding ways to cut the state's prison population. Supporters say wiping a minor's record will allow them to find jobs and go to college and break out of the cycle of crime. hbemiller@chicagotribune.com mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com Anappeals court has reversed an award in the city of Chicago's favor related to a lawsuit the city filed to collect higher tax payments from online hotel reservation firms. (Allison Terry / Chicago Tribune) A 12-year-old lawsuit filed by the city of Chicago to collect higher tax payments from online hotel reservation firms took another twist when a state appellate court reversed a $29.1 million award in the city's favor. The 1st District Appellate Court struck down a June 2013 decision in which a Cook County judge determined Expedia, Hotels.com and Hotwire should have calculated a then-3.5 percent hotel tax not just on what hotels collected for the rooms, but also the online reservation firm's facilitation and service fees. Advertisement A little more than two years later, it was decided those firms would pay the city $29.1 million the amount of 2005 to 2014 hotel taxes still owed by the three companies. At the start of 2015, after the city changed its tax code to be more explicit, the companies began collecting what is now a 4.5 percent city hotel tax based on the price it pays the hotels plus the fees it charges. But the appellate court on Wednesday concluded that before the law was changed, the tax code as written applied only to the amount paid to the hotels. The appeals panel sent the case back to the trial court with an order to rule in favor of the online rental companies. "The city is not entitled to additional tax revenue," the ruling stated. Advertisement The court did not rule on the 2014 changes to the city tax code, saying it "applies to transactions entered into after the period in question here." The city's next move options could include accepting the ruling, appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court or working out a settlement with the online hotel reservation firms was not clear. Law Department spokesman Bill McCaffrey declined to comment on the ruling, an uncharacteristic response from city officials who in the past have been quick to issue statements after courts issue rulings. City finance officials did not have an immediate response as to whether the city had collected the $29.1 million. hdardick@chicagotribune.com Twitter @ReporterHal WASHINGTON Ex-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has agreed to pay his estranged wife, former Chicago Ald. Sandi Jackson, $1,200 a month in temporary alimony starting in June, a court document filed Thursday shows. A proposed order setting out the payments was signed by attorneys for both Jacksons and won't take effect unless a judge signs off. The case is back in court Friday, just days after his attorney vehemently objected to her side's lengthy questioning on matters including the name, phone number and address of every sex partner besides her during their roughly 25-year marriage. Advertisement Now, after months of sometimes bitter and public wrangling, an alimony agreement could signal the couple might be moving toward burying the hatchet. Another sign of a possible truce: A plan for a hearing about alimony that could have lasted two days has been dropped. Instead, attorneys asked for a perfunctory status hearing on Friday, court documents show. If approved, the alimony would come on top of $1,529 a month Jackson Jr. pays in child support for their children, ages 17 and 13. Under the proposed order, Jackson Jr., 52, also would keep paying his children's private school tuition and for health insurance for his wife and children, at least for now. Advertisement Meantime, Sandi Jackson, 53, has set aside a request that he pick up her attorney fees, the proposed order says. She has been rebuffed since November in her bid for alimony. Her attorney has said she was behind on bills and borrowing from friends and selling belongings to get by. Sandi Jackson lives in Washington and wanted the divorce heard there. Jackson Jr. lives in Chicago and had wanted the dissolution of the marriage handled there, but this week he moved to dismiss the Cook County case. Once a Democratic power couple, the two fell from grace and resigned their offices before pleading guilty to federal charges in 2013. He admitted misusing about $750,000 in campaign cash and she acknowledged failing to report much of the money on income taxes. Both served time in prison. It emerged in the divorce case that he is collecting about $138,400 a year, about $100,000 in workers' comp and the rest of it Social Security Disability Insurance payments. He has bipolar disorder and depression, his attorney said. Jackson Jr. will be represented by his attorney but will not attend Friday's hearing, said Brendan Hammer, his Chicago attorney. kskiba@chicagotribune.com Twitter @KatherineSkiba Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Subscribe here. Topspin Gov. Bruce Rauner says he's settling into his new digs on the state fairgrounds after moving out of the 162-year-old Executive Mansion during renovations, though the ambiance apparently is a tad questionable. Advertisement "It's perfectly fine," Rauner said of the modest brick bungalow he now occupies when in Springfield, which is usually reserved for the state's agriculture director during the fair. "It's actually very romantic because our bedroom windows overlook the goat pens. It's like, whoa boy." Rauner added it was probably a good thing that wife Diana traveled frequently for her job as the head of an early childhood education group. The governor was asked about the move after speaking to a friendly crowd of business groups in Springfield on Wednesday. Advertisement Beyond the goats, Rauner also said he's had to find alternative housing for his hunting dog, Stella, after they discovered a family of foxes living under the stairs. Rauner said he was hoping to avoid a "social media event." "She's an aggressive bird dog, she's a hunting dog and I learned my first morning that there's a den of foxes under the stairs, so a mom and six little pups," Rauner told the audience. "So Stella is not with me right now, she is being kept in another place where we don't have to have an interaction that would be very unproductive. "So I hope these puppies grow fast and move on," said Rauner, whose office later indicated Stella is spending "some time up north." "That would be a great thing." The Rauners, who owned at least nine homes as of late 2013, moved out last week. The governor's office posted video and photos of the governor loading bags into the rear of his 1993 Volkswagen van, moving the last few items after crews spent the past several weeks packing antique furniture for storage. Diana Rauner has led efforts to renovate the mansion by raising private money. Officials have said that $14 million has been raised and pledged to date, with $1 million coming from the Rauners themselves. The Executive Mansion has long been in disrepair and hasn't undergone a major overhaul since the early 1970s. A Tribune walk-through in 2015 revealed water stains, buckling wallpaper and a hole in the ceiling of a bedroom honoring a former governor all housed in a crumbling exterior hidden by overgrown landscaping. (Monique Garcia) What's on tap *Mayor Rahm Emanuel's public schedule was not available. *Gov. Rauner will stream a school visit on Facebook Live. He'll also appear at a holocaust memorial service in Springfield and at a prison program event in Decatur. Advertisement *The Illinois House and Senate are in session. *Faculty and students from state colleges and universities are set to rally in Springfield to try to put budget pressure on Rauner. Democratic candidates for governor are scheduled to attend. From the notebook *Violence prevention funding: A group of minority lawmakers is pushing a bill to dole out $56 million in funding for violence prevention programs, saying gun violence has spiked as community programs go without funding during the budget impasse. The legislation would see $2 million grants given out to groups in 28 districts across the state that have seen high levels of violence, including several in the Chicago area. The money would be earmarked for youth services, after-school programs, summer jobs and other initiatives. Lawmakers contend the funding is crucial to help vulnerable communities that have been hurt further by a state budget impasse that continues to squeeze human service agencies. "We know for a fact that gun violence in the state has seen a sharp increase since our budget impasse began," said Rep. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago. "This is no coincidence." The money would come from the state's main checking account, something that could prove challenging given Democrats who control the General Assembly have been unable to reach agreement on a full spending plan with Republican Gov. Rauner for nearly two years. "We have to, absolutely have to, invest in funding programs that we know will address the violence that's already occurring, help prevent future violence, and to provide some type of trauma care for those who are the victims of that violence," said Rep. Litesa Wallace, D-Rockford. (Haley BeMiller) What we're writing *Board yanks ex-Speaker Hastert's General Assembly pension. *Summers won't run for governor, backs Pritzker, jabs Kennedy. Advertisement *Emanuel hits Trump on sanctuary city ruling, tax-cut plan. *Illinois House approves bill aimed at closing pay gap between men, women. *Union asks state to halt Emanuel's rebranding of Chicago airport cops as security. *Cook County judge removed from bench indefinitely, pleads not guilty to federal mortgage fraud charges. *CPS set to transform high school application process. *In divorce case, Sandi Jackson seeks details about her husband's sex life. Advertisement What we're reading *Axelrod weighs in on Cubs' Theo Epstein's political future. *Best Emanuel dancing video since "Blurred Lines" at Taste? *Blockbuster Video still thriving in one U.S. state. The answer might not surprise you. Follow the money *City Treasurer Kurt Summers reported $4,500 in contributions the same day he announced he wouldn't run for governor. Included was a $2,500 donation from Bradley Tusk, a former deputy governor under Rod Blagojevich. Advertisement *Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here. Beyond Chicago *Trump wants to slash tax rates for individuals, businesses, but president changes course on child care benefit. *White House briefs Senate amid scary moment with North Korea, AP reports. *House Republican Freedom Caucus gives revised health care bill thumbs up. *Trump considers executive order that would start withdrawal process from NAFTA. Ann Coulter said Wednesday that she was forced to cancel her speaking event Thursday at the University of California, Berkeley amid concerns of violence, calling it "a dark day for free speech in America." Police and university officials said they were still preparing for possible violence and protests whether Coulter comes to campus or not. In an email to The Associated Press, Coulter said that despite the event's cancellation she might decide to turn up anyway. In emails to The Associated Press, Coulter confirmed that her planned speech on illegal immigration, followed by a question-answer session, was canceled. But she remained coy about what she might do instead. "I'm not speaking. But I'm going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country," Coulter said in an email. "I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment." "I have my flights, so I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment," Coulter said in an email. Officials at UC Berkeley said last week they feared more violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited "very specific intelligence" of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum. Efforts by the university to cancel or delay the event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech. Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks sent a letter to the campus Wednesday saying the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students. "This is a university, not a battlefield," Dirks said in the letter. "The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to Free Speech the other to the safety of our campus community." Berkeley's reputation as one of the country's most liberal universities, in one of America's most liberal cities, has made it a flashpoint for the nation's political divisions in the era of Donald Trump. Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists. Similar violent clashes also erupted at the same site, a public park, on March 4. In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans. The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that had helped book Coulter's campus speaking events, both pulled their support Tuesday citing fears of violence. They blamed the university for failing to ensure protection of conservative speakers. "Berkeley College Republicans do not want to endanger people's lives so because of the university's unwillingness to do their job we are forced to cancel the event," Troy Worden, president of the campus Republicans, said Wednesday. Coulter echoed the blame on Twitter: "I'm very sad about Berkeley's cancellation, but my sadness is greater than that. It's a dark day for free speech in America." Police and university officials said they remained concerned by online chatter and intelligence that groups on the extreme ends of the political spectrum were ready to incite violence. Capt. Alex Yao of the Berkley campus police force said police presence will be strong Thursday. "You will see a high number of highly visible law enforcement. We're going to have a very, very low tolerance for any violence," he told a news conference. He said Berkeley police had reached out to local and state police forces "to let them know we might be calling for assistance." Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia carried out more than 154 executions last year, the third highest total in the world. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) The Saudi religious police had gotten word of Ahmad Al-Shamri's tweets and came to his door sometime in 2014. He was accused of using social media to say disparaging things about Islam and the prophet Muhammad, according to activists. The charge: Apostasy, a crime punishable by death. Advertisement But activists with Human Rights watch say Al-Shamri was likely mentally unstable. The biggest sign was the crime he was accused of: he was tweeting such thoughts in a country where public statements like that could mean a death sentence. Al-Shamri pleaded insanity, saying he has a mental disorder and that he was drunk, high and in an altered mental state when he made the comments, according to Hala Dosari, who is on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch, an organization that conducts investigations into human rights abuses. Dosari has been trying to get information about Al-Shamri's case since 2014. Advertisement She told The Washington Post that his trial focused heavily on Koranic law and little on any mitigating mental illness. As a result, Al-Shamri has been sentenced to death for being an atheist. His case provides a glimpse into the Saudi Arabian judicial system, which routinely tries to hide capital trials and death sentences from the outside world, activists say. What is known is that there's been a surge in death sentences since 2014. More than 400 people have been put to death since then, according to a report by Amnesty International. "The conservative religious folks have full control of the justice system," said Adam Coogle, with Human Rights Watch. "Judges come from religious seminaries in Saudi Arabia. They see themselves as preservers of Saudi Arabia's character as an Islamic state," he said. "And they come down hard on people who step out of line." Most of the sentences are based on Koranic law, not a penal code, and Coogle said judges and prosecutors have almost unlimited leeway "not only to decide cases, but what constitutes a criminal offense in the first place. Sometimes is just a description of your behavior." A spokesman with the Saudi Arabian embassy did not immediately return a Washington Post message seeking comment. Saudi Arabia executed at least 154 people in 2016, although activists believe the number is higher. The country ranked third in 2016 in executions, according to Amnesty International's report. Condemned people in Saudi Arabia are killed by beheading and shooting. And Amnesty International has grouped the country with those where people can receive the ultimate punishment for crimes other than murder. Death sentences, the report says, can be based on "confessions" extracted through torture. Advertisement "A large number of these executions were not imposed for the most serious crimes but for offences such as nonviolent drug-related crimes which are not even mandatorily punishable by death according to the authorities' interpretation of Islamic Shari'a law," according to the report. Among those killed by the state last year was Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. Most of the people killed on Jan 2 - 47 in all, some by beheading and other by firing squad - were Sunni Muslims accused of terrorism. But Nimr was a Shiite put to death for political activism, according to The Washington Post's Liz Sly. He led some of the Arab Spring-inspired protests that roiled the country in 2011. The U.S. State Department "raised concerns at the highest levels of the Saudi government about the judicial process," Sly reported. And there were international calls demanding clemency and calling the execution a human rights violation that targeted a "peaceful expression of dissent." Amnesty International had serious misgivings about his trial and treatment: "The trial proceedings contravened international fair trial standards. The authorities did not inform his family before he was executed. They refused to return his body for burial, despite the family's numerous requests, thereby compounding their suffering." BANGKOK An heir to the Red Bull fortune failed to show up Thursday to face charges over an alleged hit-and-run that killed a Thai police officer almost five years ago, as prosecutors declared they would now seek a warrant for his arrest. Prayuth Petchkhun, a deputy spokesman for the attorney general's office, told the AP that Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya failed to meet a 4 p.m. deadline. His office had said that if Vorayuth failed to appear, it would send his case to the police on Friday so they can ask the court for an arrest warrant. "If it turns out that he is in Thailand, Thai police can find him and arrest him. But if he is abroad we will then begin the extradition process," Prayuth said. Vorayuth has been a no-show for meetings with prosecutors on several occasions, complaining through his attorney of unfair treatment or citing duties abroad. A recent report revealed that he's been living lavishly, traveling to Formula One races, snowboarding in Japan and cruising in Venice. Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya, whose grandfather co-founded energy drink company Red Bull, walks to get in a car as he leaves a house in London on April 5, 2017. (Matt Dunham / AP) Daranee, the mother of Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya, walks to get in a car with her son in London on April 5, 2017. (Matt Dunham / AP) The case is one of several involving the offspring of Thailand's elite that have attracted public scorn as examples of judicial impunity in which the well-connected are able to avoid or delay justice in way that ordinary Thais wouldn't be able to. On Thursday, prosecutors rejected Vorayuth's latest request for a delay and said he must show up by 4 p.m. "The suspect must meet prosecutors as scheduled. If he does not, it would mean he has the intention of delaying and evading the case and we will proceed with requesting an arrest warrant from the court," Somnuek Siangkong, another spokesman for the attorney general's office, said at a news conference ahead of the deadline. Vorayuth is accused of fleeing the scene of a 2012 crash in his Ferrari after allegedly hitting a police officer on motorcycle patrol. Advertisement Vorayuth has failed to show up when ordered to face criminal charges of speeding, hit-and-run, and deadly, reckless driving. Police say Vorayuth disputes the reckless driving charge, claiming the officer swerved in front of him. The speeding charge expired after a year. The more serious charge of hit-and-run, which police say carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, expires Sept. 3. The reckless driving charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail, expires in 10 years if left unchallenged. As we stumble toward the 100-day mark of the Trump presidency, the president's frequent assaults on the news media appear to have taken on a distinct purpose. With the White House visibly agitated by the possibility of brutally negative 100-day coverage of President Donald Trump's tenure so far, he has insisted that the press is misrepresenting his record, while also vastly inflating it himself thus preparing his voters to dismiss everything they are being told about his historic lack of accomplishments. A new Post-ABC News poll suggests that this may be working for Trump. It finds that enormous majorities of his voters believe the news media regularly publishes false stories. Even bigger majorities of them believe the news media's falsehoods are a bigger problem than the Trump administration's falsehoods are, while only small fractions think the administration tells falsehoods or that his lies are the greater problem. Just look at these findings, which I pulled from the crosstabs: 80 percent of Trump voters think it's a bigger problem that news organizations produce false stories, while only 3 percent of them think it's a bigger problem that the Trump administration makes false claims. (Among Republicans overall, this is 69-14.) Only 17 percent of Trump voters think the Trump administration regularly makes false claims, while 76 percent of Trump voters think it doesn't. (Among Republicans overall, this is 31-65.) By contrast, 78 percent of Trump voters think that news organizations regularly produce false stories, while only 19 percent of them think otherwise. (Among Republicans overall, this is 70-27.) Meanwhile, 84 percent of Trump voters think he's keeping most of his major campaign promises, while only 4 percent think he isn't, and 89 percent of them think he's honest and trustworthy. The question is whether those things are related: Amid increased press scrutiny of Trump's falsehoods and failings, do Trump's assaults on the media and the related widespread belief among Trump voters that the media regularly produces false stories further bond them to Trump and make them more likely to believe he's succeeding? It's possible. Note this finding from another new poll of Trump voters, this one from the University of Virginia Center for Politics Poll: Nearly nine in 10 respondents (88 percent) said that media criticism of Trump reinforces that the president is on the right track, and the same percentage agreed with Trump's assertion that the press is "the enemy of the American people." The lies that tumble from Trump himself are unprecedented in scope, audacity and frequency. The Post fact-checking team documented more than 400 false or misleading statements as of Day 91 of his presidency. Other administration members have taken their cues from this, particularly press secretary Sean Spicer, who set the tone early on by lying about Trump's inaugural crowd sizes and accusing the press of falsely diminishing them. Yet to Trump voters, not only does this reality not exist at all; such critical media scrutiny of him and his administration also is a sign that he's doing something right that he's on their side, and the news media is the enemy. Now, a few caveats. Americans more broadly take a very dim view of the media, too: Fifty-two percent say news organizations regularly produce false stories, and Americans say very narrowly that the administration's falsehoods are the bigger problem, by only 43-40. (One bright spot: Fifty-nine percent say the administration regularly tells falsehoods.) What's more, these findings among Trump voters could reflect generalized hostility toward the press and a general desire for Trump to prevail. And as The Post's Callum Borchers notes, it's hard to measure what counts as a "false" media story, making public sentiment about the press hard to discern. Meanwhile, as Politico Magazine recently detailed, behind the scenes, Trump and the administration have a somewhat more conventional relationship with reporters than his theatrical assaults on the media suggest. It's also unclear how far Trump's media strategy will ultimately get him: Even if his voters nod along with it, the broader mainstream sees Trump as dishonest and disapproves of his performance at historic levels. Still, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Trump is accomplishing one of his key goals. In the minds of his voters, at least, his project to obliterate shared agreement on the legitimate institutional role of the media in informing the citizenry proceeds apace. Washington Post OK, I had said I wasn't going to write about Ivanka Trump again anytime soon. But that was before Trump was insulted Tuesday at the faux globalist do-gooder W20 conference in Germany. Advertisement Speaking on a panel, "Inspiring Women: Scaling Up Women's Entrepreneurship," Trump was cool and collected when asked about her role in the Trump White House. And despite the curt moderator's attempt to scold Trump, saying, "some attitudes toward women your father has displayed might leave one questioning whether he's such an empowerer for women," Trump still proved successful in defending the president. Imagine if that same statement had been directed at Chelsea Clinton about her father, former President Bill Clinton. The moderator would have been chastised. But when directed at President Donald Trump, the moderator was praised and Ivanka Trump was greeted with boos. Advertisement If Chelsea Clinton had been at the Berlin conference, the adoration and swooning would have been almost too much to bear. Does anyone believe the over-hyped and under-accomplished Clinton would have been booed had she defended her father? The insufferable audience would have treated her like an icon, never mind her own family's history of mean-spirited treatment of women. But putting the Clintons aside, can anyone really think of a better representative than Ivanka Trump to speak for the administration during a discussion on women in business? Trump has actual real-world experience in manufacturing, she's launched retail lines that bear her name and she has taken real risks in the unforgiving retail marketplace. Both as an entrepreneur and a White House adviser, Trump is a unique asset. She has the president's ear and has proved, by all accounts, to be calm, poised and capable. Even prior to receiving her formal White House position, Trump back-channeled with members of Congress during the transition on the issues of child-care tax credits and paid maternity leave legislation. And, as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has noted, Trump is providing "input on a variety of areas that she has deep compassion and concerns about, especially women in the workforce and empowering women." But for the rancorous crowd of vindictive anti-Trumpers, Ivanka Trump's demonstrated commitment to female empowerment fell on deaf ears. Nothing she could have said would have appeased the eco-euro-leftist phonies in the crowd. Everybody needs to just get over Ivanka Trump's role at the White House. It is not unprecedented and appears to be handled in a way that is transparent and compliant with the spirit and letter of the law unlike Hillary Clinton's role in her husband's White House. It's clear that Trump is a net plus for this White House. And her success is good for our government and the country as a whole even the "resistance." Washington Post Ed Rogers is a contributor to the PostPartisan blog, a political consultant and a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses and several national campaigns. Related articles: Advertisement Does Ivanka Trump's new fund violate ethics law? Ivanka Trump and the cult of the first daughter It was bad enough when Hillary Clinton as secretary of state agreed to have meetings with people who had given to her foundation. Now, according to news reports, Ivanka Trump, while a federal employee, is soliciting donations for a new fund from foreigners. This comes on top of instances in which she sat with heads of state (from Japan and China) at a time that her business was doing deals in their countries. Mike Allen, co-founder and executive editor of AXIOS Media and former chief political reporter for Politico, reported: "Ivanka Trump told me yesterday from Berlin that she has begun building a massive fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe. Both countries and companies will contribute to create a pool of capital to economically empower women. Canadians, Germans and a few Middle Eastern countries have already made quiet commitments, as have several corporations, a source said." Advertisement If true, this is egregious and potentially illegal, according to multiple ethics and legal experts. "If the donation would be a quid pro quo bribe, then asking for it is certainly solicitation of a bribe, which is every bit as criminal as the bribe itself," Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told me via email. "But I started that sentence with 'if' because I don't have enough facts about the donation request to opine on the ultimate bribe issue." Advertisement Nevertheless, he said: At the very least, though, a donation is a "present," which if made by a foreign government or an agent of such a government or an entity controlled by it is expressly banned by the text of the foreign emoluments clause with respect to anyone holding "any office of profit or trust" under the United States. Whether it counts as an "emolument" becomes irrelevant if it's a "present," which any donation would at least be. Tribe explained, "Even if the first daughter and assistant to the president somehow manages to create formal distance between herself and that version of the Clinton Foundation, which of course her father denounced endlessly during the campaign, the hypocrisy of the move is jaw-dropping." He added, "Such contributions would surely constitute a financial benefit to her brand, and her family's brand even if she is unable to spend a penny of the contributions themselves. As such, soliciting such contributions violates at least the spirit of the foreign emoluments clause." Even more explicitly, the Office of Government Ethics rules, former Republican ethics counsel Richard Painter told me, "prohibit use of official position to solicit for ANY charity or other private entity." The OGE guidelines specifically state: "Executive branch employees are subject to restrictions on the gifts that they may accept from sources outside the government. Unless an exception applies, executive branch employees may not accept gifts that are given because of their official positions or that come from certain interested sources." Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 55 Ivanka Trump gestures as she attends the 4-man Boblseigh on day sixteen of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Olympic Sliding Centre on February 25, 2018, in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. Ivanka Trump is on a four-day visit to South Korea to attend the closing ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. (Andreas Rentz / Getty Images) The rationale for this is obvious (except to Trump). "Even if a gift is from a person or organization that has no official dealings with the employee's agency, accepting a gift offered because of the employee's official position may create an appearance of using public office for private gain," the OGE guidelines explain. "Moreover, if an employee receives a payment from an outside source in some circumstances, the public may believe that the employee is serving two masters or is distracted by outside activities." It's stunning, really, that she apparently would behave in ways so flagrantly in violation of ethical and legal norms, especially in an administration promising to "drain the swamp" and after a campaign in which the Clinton Foundation was vilified. Certainly, as ethics guru Norman Eisen told me, "the devil is in the details" with these arrangements. That said, coupled with the Trump family's ongoing web of conflicts perpetuated by their refusal to sell assets (as Cabinet secretaries were required to do), this takes on, as Eisen puts it, the appearance of "a slow-motion train wreck unfolding before our eyes." Eisen adds: "The worst thing of all is that the goal is a very noble one that the Trumps have made it impossible to honestly pursue because of the kleptocratic baggage they've brought to government." The solution is simple: Ivanka Trump should leave the administration and refrain from actions that every other executive branch employee is prohibited from undertaking. If only we had some sort of body, an independent branch of government, perhaps, that was explicitly tasked with oversight responsibilities. The Washington Post Advertisement Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Related articles: Don't forget what really matters about Ivanka Trump Ivanka Trump and the cult of the first daughter Ivanka Trump's White House job is unethical and dangerous Often hailed as an early feminist work, Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" plays April 27-29 at the Moss Mansion. Produced by Backyard Theatre and directed by Glenda Brauneis and Matt McCave, the production begins at 7:30 each night. Call 406-239-3947 or email Backyardtheatermt@gmail.com to make reservations. Norwegian playwright Ibsen wrote about the struggle between independence and security in this classic work. The theme still resonates with readers and audiences today. The play tells the story of Nora and Torvald as they rise above gender issues to ask the bigger question: To what extent have we sacrificed ourselves for the sake of social customs and to protect what we think is love? Nora's struggle and ultimate realizations about her life invite us to examine our own lives and find ways we have made ourselves dolls and playthings in the hands of forces we believe to be beyond our control. Backyard Theatre is donation based. Funds from this performance will be donated to the Moss Mansion and used for future performances. A picture made available on Feb. 15, 2017, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and then-retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn attending an exhibition marking the 10th anniversary of RT (Russia Today) TV news channel in Moscow on Dec. 10, 2015. (Michael Klimentyev / Sputnik / EPA) There is something about the fixation on the Michael Flynn story that doesn't add up. It doesn't look great that in January 2016, the future Trump national security adviser did not disclose payments he received from Russia's propaganda network, RT, on his application to renew his security clearance. Advertisement But he did brief the government in 2015 about his trip to Moscow to speak at RT's annual gala that December and in April of last year, with that information in hand, the Obama administration renewed Flynn's top-secret security clearance. All of this is important because Democrats are insinuating that Flynn was one of the links between President Donald Trump and Russia, potentially contributing to collusion in the 2016 election. Advertisement Among the drip-drip of leaks about ongoing probes, none has indicated that Flynn played a role in Russia's influence operation against the Democrats last year. But because Flynn did not disclose his payment from Russia's propaganda network and because he is accused of not telling his White House colleagues that he discussed U.S. sanctions before taking office, partisans now freely tar Flynn as a Russian agent. That insinuation grew on Thursday when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a letter from the Pentagon's inspector general that confirmed that office had begun an investigation into whether Flynn failed to obtain approval to be paid $33,750 for a speaking engagement at the Russian network's annual gala in December 2015. This is also a subject of that committee's own probe. It's likely this issue will come up in the House and Senate intelligence committee investigations into Russia's influence of the 2016 election as well. On this score, Flynn screwed up. Another letter released by the oversight committee Thursday says the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Flynn directed from 2012 to 2014, has no record of him disclosing this payment in the context of the security clearance process. All of this sounds pretty bad. And yet, that letter also says the agency was well aware of Flynn's trip to Moscow. Flynn not only briefed his former colleagues in September 2015 about his upcoming trip, he also briefed them after he returned. If Flynn was trying to hide his trip to Moscow, why did he tell the Defense Intelligence Agency about it before and after his trip? Also while Flynn was in Moscow, officials at the agency's headquarters exchanged emails with their liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow about Flynn's participation in the RT gala, according to the letter. This was known to the agency in April 2016, when the agency approved Flynn's "top secret/sensitive compartmented information" clearance as is standard for a former top official who might need to be consulted on sensitive topics. That approval is significant. The process for renewing a security clearance at that level is intense. It includes interviews with associates and friends and an extensive background check. Flynn took a polygraph test as part of his reapplication for the security clearance. The Obama administration knew about his Moscow trip. His clearance was renewed. That leaves two explanations. One would be that the officials responsible for these background investigations are incompetent and didn't learn he was paid to speak at the RT event. That would be bizarre; Flynn himself had mentioned in later media interviews that he was paid by his speaker's bureau for the RT event, even though he did not acknowledge that his speaker's bureau was paid by RT. The other explanation for the renewed clearance would be that at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency's investigators did not assess Flynn's trip to Moscow to be grounds to suspend or revoke his access to government secrets. It's strange that Flynn would not consistently disclose his payment by RT, and that he did not ask permission in the first place to be paid. That showed poor judgment on his part. Agreeing to speak at a Russian propaganda network's annual gala is also evidence of poor judgment. But bad judgment is not evidence of collusion. Bad judgment is also not the same as treason. Just ask the investigators who approved Flynn's security clearance a year ago. Advertisement Bloomberg View Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. Related articles: At 100 days, Donald Trump's no Russian puppet or fascist Yes, James Comey is to blame for Hillary Clinton's loss. But he's not the only one. Ivanka Trump is successful. Get over it. Advertisement Trump can climb down from the wall. He's already succeeding without it. The White House had promised to roll out a "tax plan" Wednesday. Instead of a fully developed plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and senior adviser Gary Cohn put out a one-page sheet with bullet points, something you might see as a first draft of a campaign white paper. Worse yet, as we anticipated, Mnuchin and Cohn wound up getting grilled on whether President Donald Trump, who stands to save millions (via, among other things, elimination of the alternative minimum tax), would release his tax returns. Mnuchin was emphatic: "The president has no intention." He falsely asserted, "The president has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information." He and Cohn had no specifics about the savings for voters by tax bracket or about the expected increase in the debt. The Post reported, "The proposal is a one-page outline key details are left incomplete but it presents an initial offer to begin negotiations with lawmakers, as White House officials think reworking the tax code is one of their biggest priorities to boost economic growth." The plan appears to be more of a pipe dream than a viable plan. ("Many budget experts say they believe the White House's plan would reduce federal revenue by so much that it would grow the debt by trillions of dollars in the next decade, growing interest costs and slowing the economy.") On its face, it seems to offer massive tax cuts for rich individuals who can use pass-through companies to pay a 15 percent corporate rate. The plan would eliminate all individual deductions except the charitable and mortgage interest deductions. It was not clear whether the plan would keep the exclusion for employer-provided health-care plans, which, if taxed, could substantially raise taxes for middle- and working-class workers. In addition, the proposal would eliminate the estate tax, benefiting only a tiny number of super-rich heirs because estates up to $5.49 million are already excluded. In short, the hyped rollout was a bust. House GOP leaders gingerly praised the outline as providing "critical guideposts" for their tax-writing efforts. In some sense, the Republicans now have the worst of all worlds. There is a White House plan hanging out there that would seemingly deliver huge tax cuts for the rich and create a gusher of red ink, but with no hope in the short term of passing it. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the proposal. "At a time when income distribution is getting even worse in America, the President's outline clearly makes life easier for the wealthy and special interests and makes life harder for middle class and lower income Americans," he said in a written statement. "It couldn't come at a worse time. Clearly, the President and those at his level of wealth would benefit while tens of millions of American families are hurt." House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted it as well. "True to form, President Trump's tax plan is short on details and long on giveaways to big corporations and billionaires," she said in a written statement. "Instead of focusing on hard-working families as he promised, President Trump's tax outline is a wish list for billionaires." She added, "What few details are here overwhelmingly cut taxes for the richest and do little for middle class Americans and those trying to get there. Besides which, nowhere does President Trump indicate how his deficit-exploding tax plan will actually be paid for." The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget gave it the back of the hand in a written statement, which read in part: "Unfortunately, it seems the Administration is using economic growth like magic beans the cheap solution to all our problems. But there is no golden goose at the top of the tax cut beanstalk, just mountains of debt. Here is some real math: Debt is twice its historical average; higher as a share of the economy than any time outside of the World War II era; and growing faster than the economy with no end in sight." Thanks to Trump, Republicans, including the GOP candidate in the Georgia 6th Congressional District special election, are going to be asked whether they support it. If not, the base may get huffy. If they do embrace it, they will get slammed as catering to the rich and setting a new level of fiscal irresponsibility. CNN quotes one griping senior GOP aide as saying, "It's really easy to talk about big cuts. We're about solutions. They aren't to that point yet, either on the policy or on the personnel level, and it's both obvious and disruptive to the process." This is classic Trump all flash and big talk, with very little substance. His economic team plainly was not prepared to provide anything approaching a detailed "plan," but now Republicans' actual tax plan, if they ever come up with one, will be judged in comparison with a cotton-candy plan that could never become law. Trump did "accomplish" one thing he reminded us he has concealed his taxes and may stand to reap enormous tax savings as a result of his plan. This hardly seems like populism. Come Friday, Chicago Public Schools students, parents, teachers and principals deserve to learn if the district will make good on its threat to close school three weeks early because of a budget shortfall. The district is awaiting a ruling from a Cook County judge on its lawsuit that argues the state's funding system is biased against CPS' largely low-income, minority students. Presumably if the ruling favors the district, schools stay open, even though it is unclear where the money to fill the budget shortfall the current consensus estimate is about $130 million would come from, or how fast. If the judge instead rejects the district's suit? No one is saying. Advertisement Mayor Rahm Emanuel refuses to reveal whether he'd let school close early, perhaps June 1, if the court rules against the district and the legislature doesn't come through with additional funding as it did last year. CPS CEO Forrest Claypool says "we'll know exactly where we stand" on the possible early closing after that court ruling. But the district already knows where it stands: Advertisement In a deep fiscal hole and still spending more than it takes in. Buried beneath a towering pile of debt yet still borrowing. At the mercy of bankers and a line of credit to keep the lights on and the teachers in front of 381,000 students. On the hook for a $720 million pension payment by the end of June and a similar payment next year and more huge payments in years to come. Frantic for a Springfield bailout but so far getting stiffed by Democratic leaders and Gov. Bruce Rauner for a promised $215 million in pension relief. Struggling to keep open underenrolled schools for yet another year because the district has a moratorium on closings until 2018. Under fire from irate aldermen who fumed at a recent hearing on CPS' never-ending fiscal crisis. "People in this city need an answer," said Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. "This is getting ridiculous. Where's Mr. Claypool? Where is the board? And when are we gonna get an answer about the future of our children?" Where, then, does CPS stand? Where it usually stands: on the brink of fiscal collapse, not in control of its fate and unsure whether it can shield students from budget cuts in classrooms. Advertisement Our bet is that Claypool and Emanuel will find a way for CPS to finish the year on June 20, as scheduled. To close schools early would hugely disrupt the education of students and force parents to scramble to make alternative arrangements. And it would be a stinging setback for a mayor who fought hard to expand the school day and year. Even a judge's ruling that sides with the district won't end this crisis. But it could provide CPS with a new weapon in its fight for more money from Springfield. Last year, Gov. Bruce Rauner and lawmakers cut a deal to fund schools, funneling more than $100 million to CPS. Court rulings and appeals often drag on. Comparable cases in other jurisdictions have lasted for years. Whatever the judge decides on Friday, parents, students and teachers need to know now if the school year will end early. If schools stay open as scheduled, though, more cuts could come. That could get ugly. But not as ugly as a silent and empty school three weeks before the scheduled start of summer break. Not as ugly as graduation ceremonies hurried or canceled. Not as ugly as kids at loose ends and parents scrambling to care for them, particularly if summer school also is axed. Not as ugly as a school system that couldn't keep the most profound promise it makes to educate students for a full school year. Closing Chicago school doors 20 days early would be catastrophic, a humiliation Chicago should never tolerate, and would never forget. Related articles: Advertisement Claypool: How CPS is fighting for quality education CPS proposes school year dates for 2017-18 If CPS ends the school year on June 1, it's students who will be hurt A Chicago charter school fights to stay open Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. In a statement released to reporters, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan on Thursday announced he had requested a meeting with Gov. Bruce Rauner to emphasize his commitment to crafting a new state budget. If only Rauner would focus, Madigan said, the General Assembly could "pass a budget." The two did meet, and Rauner said he hoped Madigan finally was moving toward a compromise but that it's "too soon to tell." Beyond that, neither camp was talking. Advertisement So what to make of Madigan's statement? Where's a fact-checker when you need one? Is Madigan being sincere or are his pants resembling tinder for a small fire? A verification exercise of Madigan's four sentences is in order. Sentence 1: "I requested a meeting with Governor Rauner to ensure he understood my desire to pass a full-year budget and discuss the urgent need for a resolution to the state budget impasse." Advertisement We share Madigan's frustration at the lack of a full-year budget. That's why this page has consistently opposed short-term, stopgap budgets. You know, the type Madigan and his House members passed just three weeks ago. Perhaps the speaker forgot about the $815 million that House members approved April 6 as an emergency antidote, in lieu of dedicating their attention to a full-year budget. Perhaps Madigan also forgot about the stopgap budget Democrats and Republicans strung together in July 2016 so they could leave Springfield to campaign for re-election. Maybe Madigan also blanked on the stopgap spending for universities Democrats approved in April 2016, instead of working on a full-year balanced budget. And Madigan most definitely did not recall the one-month budget he and fellow Democrats approved in July 2015 after they sent Rauner a budget that was at least $4 billion out of balance. Stopgaps, which Madigan apparently now opposes, wouldn't be necessary if the legislature got serious about passing a balanced, full-year budget, which it hasn't done in at least a decade. Sentence 2: "Throughout the governor's time in office, we have agreed to seven compromise budget bills when negotiations are allowed to focus on the budget." Many of those compromises were temporary budget deals, emergency money and carve-outs that stood in place of full-year balanced budgets. In this sentence, Madigan suggests Rauner should focus on the budget, not his other agenda items. Yet for decades, the budget process in Illinois has included all kinds of side deals to get spending plans passed, including issues that fall outside the narrow line items of the budget. There is no purity to the process. That's why it's called sausage-making. Sentence 3: "Schools, human service providers, rating agencies and thousands of others have asked us to do one thing pass a budget." Advertisement That sentence is mostly true. But it's missing a crucial word: balanced. Schools have not been served by budgets that provided them only partial funding, which has been the state's practice since 2012. Human service providers have not been served by budgets that threw them scraps after union workers and their pensions got priority. And rating agencies have asked for budgets that don't rely on fairy dust. All of those entities are asking for stable, balanced budgets, not the kind Democrats have advanced. Sentence 4: "I ask the governor to turn his focus to the budget." Fine and good. Rauner, Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton and all of the 177 legislators should turn their full attention to budgeting. One lawmaker, Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, recently said he would not vote on any bills that weren't essential to getting the state beyond its financial crisis. What if every lawmaker did the same? Advertisement Meanwhile, Rauner's state agency heads have not offered plans for spending cuts, which Republicans say the state needs. That's not helpful. Madigan's House has been focusing on social issues such as expanding taxpayer funding of abortions. Not helpful. The Senate started working on a budget compromise but quit when Rauner and the GOP moved the goal posts. Senators have been pouting. Not helpful. What's most unproductive is rhetoric. Madigan's four-sentence statement shifted the blame to Rauner; Rauner responded with a statement that implied some optimism they might strike a deal. Madigan so far has not tried to find common ground. Is he sincere this time? Advertisement Or are his pants on fire? Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Related articles: Gov. Rauner reaches the 839-day benchmark and it's not pretty Tax dollars and abortions: When politics and scare tactics roil a difficult debate Can Bruce Rauner save himself? Advertisement Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. In companion editorials, the Tribune says a "floundering charter (school) should be closed," but then chastises Chicago Public Schools for closing Amandla, a failing charter school. The Tribune ignores the compelling facts about Amandla: The Illinois State Charter School Commission itself found Amandla fails to meet the commission's own academic standards; the commission's outside experts rated Amandla either below standard or far below standard in every metric they considered; Amandla's math and reading scores were in the bottom 20 percent of schools; Amandla's African-American and low-income students consistently underperformed comparable students. And those are only a few examples of Amandla's unacceptable academic performance. The Tribune also suggests that Amandla, whatever its flaws, was a better option for students. But the commission concluded that if Amandla closed, 69 percent of Amandla's students would attend comparable or superior schools within their assigned neighborhood boundaries. Advertisement Even that finding understates the real comparison. The commission ignored the fact that, if Amandla closed, its students could choose not just their assigned neighborhood schools, but also other charter schools the kind the Tribune praises and other neighborhood schools. When CPS learned that the commission had not even considered other superior options, CPS informed the commission that it would guarantee every Amandla student a seat in schools with the district's strongest rankings (2+, 1, or 1+). Those superior options included seats at Noble Comer (Level 1), one of CPS' excellent charter schools, as well as Kershaw (1+), Deneen (1+), Sherwood (1+), and Williams (1). The commission refused to consider those obviously superior options. The Tribune pays lip service to the notion that quality schools are what matter. But when it comes to the facts, the Tribune lines up with advocates who claim that all charters are good because they are charters. We should be focused on providing quality education for all students, not defending charter schools that fail even the most basic tests for academic performance. Advertisement Forrest Claypool, CEO, Chicago Public Schools Bruce Rauner, shown celebrating his election win in 2014, promised to "shake up Springfield" when he became governor. He has not accomplished that goal. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune) Saturday, as we've all heard, will mark President Donald Trump's 100th day in office, a traditional performance benchmark. Less well known is that Saturday will also mark the 839th day in office for Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. Admittedly, 839 doesn't have the same pleasing roundness or historical resonance as 100. In fact it's virtually the dictionary definition of a random number. But both milestones are arbitrary. And an assessment covering 839 days makes for far less of a snap judgment than one covering just 100 days. Advertisement So let's review. In the beginning Advertisement Rauner, a wealthy private equity investor and political novice, ran for governor as a Republican in 2014 on a populist pledge to "shake up Springfield" and "bring back Illinois." After two years, three months and 18 days in office, he's done neither. Springfield is inert. The power centers have held and the General Assembly is more paralyzed by partisanship than it's ever been. And rather than bringing back Illinois, Rauner has dragged it down. The state has been unable to pass a full-year budget on his watch. In paying for day-to-day operations largely through court orders, consent decrees and statutory mandates Illinois is now spending approximately $17 million a day more on average than it receives in taxes and fees. This has caused the backlog of unpaid bills to grow to nearly $12.8 billion, not including approximately $800 million in late-payment interest penalties that have accrued. The estimate of our worst-in-the-nation unfunded pension liability has risen under Rauner to $130 billion from $105 billion. Each of the three major credit rating agencies has downgraded Illinois twice since Rauner was inaugurated, continuing a long slide that's making it ever more expensive for the state to borrow money. Public colleges and universities have been particularly hard hit in the budget crisis and are getting hammered by the rating agencies five now can only sell "junk" bonds. The schools are accordingly cutting programs, staff and days of operation. Advertisement Downward spiral A survey released by the United Way of Illinois in early April found that 46 percent of human services agencies have had to reduce the number of clients they work with because money isn't coming in from the state, and 1 in 4 have completely eliminated programs in such areas as job training, youth development and mental health care. Andrea Durbin, chief executive officer of Illinois Collaboration on Youth and chair of the 70-member Pay Now Illinois Coalition of human service providers currently suing the state for money owed them, said 64 percent of programs that serve homeless youth have cut staffing or programs in the last two years. She added that 43 of 46 counties participating in Redeploy Illinois, a diversionary program for juvenile offenders, have had to cut or reduce service. Rauner told WTTW-Ch. 11's Amanda Vinicky in an interview that aired Wednesday that the state isn't worse off than when he took over, and that he'd give himself "an A." But only 36 percent of registered voters said they approved of Rauner's job performance in a statewide poll taken in March by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, while 58 percent disapproved. "I'd like to actually give him some credit for some of the positive things he's accomplished over his last two years in office," said Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza during a March speech to the City Club of Chicago. She then unfurled a piece of paper and read, "This page intentionally left blank." Point by point Advertisement The dig was neither accurate nor fair. Rauner has taken important steps to overhaul our criminal justice system, to tighten ethical standards in government and to boost early childhood education, among other things. His staff sent me a 10-page list touting the governor's initiatives and achievements in his first 839 days. But it's a paltry, unimpressive list compared with the goals he outlined during his first State of the State address shortly after his inauguration. During that speech he talked up legislative term limits, a property tax freeze, business-friendly reductions in workers' compensation benefits and an end to the union-friendly "prevailing wage" and mandatory union dues laws. He had lots of notions there were 44 such items on the initial version of his "turnaround agenda" but, as it turned out, he had no idea how to advance them through a legislature dominated by members of the opposing party Rauner's supporters are in a perpetual dudgeon about veteran Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, whom they blame for every irresponsible act of fiscal stewardship in Springfield since the mid-1980s. In truth, Illinois has had Republican governors for 20 of the 32 years that Madigan has held the speaker's gavel, and the irresponsibility that left us in dire straits well before Rauner took office was bipartisan. True, Madigan is very powerful. But when Rauner was making his extravagant promises and thumping his chest in 2014, he evidently failed to account for the inevitability that Democrats were going to maintain control of the legislature and the fact that Madigan is not easily browbeaten. Advertisement The Madigan nightmare Rauner won that election with 50.3 percent of the vote. But with such a scrawny mandate, how was he then going to put points on the board? Prove that he could build on his victory, reach across the aisle and be a leader? His Plan A, such as it was, began with refusing to negotiate a budget with the Democratic leaders until they passed some elements of his broader pro-business agenda. If Madigan and Democratic Senate President John Cullerton balked at this hostage-taking, which they did, and things started to go to hell, which they also did, Rauner's Plan A had the angry citizenry blaming Madigan and the Democrats, who would then surrender to him. Was this the arrogance of a hyper-successful businessman accustomed to the power of swagger and cash? Was it the naivete of an ideologue? Either way, it didn't work. Plan A kept Rauner in nonstop campaign mode, attacking Madigan as corrupt while pouring millions of dollars into off-year legislative races to slightly weaken the Democratic legislative majorities. But Madigan has been neither intimidated nor outmaneuvered by the chirpy statehouse rookie with a big bankroll, a bumper-sticker political mentality and an impotent legislative caucus. Advertisement And Rauner apparently has no Plan B; no alternative strategy other than digging in his heels, pointing his finger and waiting for the Democrats to embrace his free-market think-tank fantasies. Rauner is good at running for office. He's good at staying on message. Rauner's downfall But he's not good at his job. By waving his bankroll around and threatening Democratic lawmakers with expensive re-election challenges, Rauner's made them more beholden to Madigan and Cullerton, their protectors. By defaming Madigan nonstop in speeches, on TV and on the web, he's driven Madigan's job approval numbers down to just 26 percent in the most recent Simon Institute poll (10 points worse than Rauner's), which is down from 40 percent in a 2009 poll, but also driven a wedge in a relationship that's key to finding accord. By ducking the truly tough decisions for example, refusing to outline the specific program cuts and tax increases he would sign off on to balance the budget without billions of fantasy dollars Rauner revealed his fundamental political cowardice. Advertisement Even if you think Speaker Madigan is evil personified, you have to admit Rauner's been clueless about how to work with or around him. And even if you like Rauner's ideas for improving the state's business climate, you have to admit he's proved remarkably inept when it comes to advancing them. When he was running against incumbent Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn in 2014, Rauner blasted Quinn as "a massive failure" for not solving the very problems that have gotten measurably worse since January 2015. Rauner deserves a solid whack with his own yardstick. In early 2010, when the grim realities of governing were settling in on President Barack Obama, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin smirked in a speech to those who'd embraced his 2008 presidential campaign message of "hope and change" and asked, "How's that hopey, changey stuff workin' out for ya?" In that spirit, Rauner backers, 839 days in with 557 days left to turn things around before Election Day 2018, how's that shakey-uppy stuff workin' out for ya? Twitter @EricZorn Metal act Fit For A King is coming to the Pub Station Ballroom on Tuesday, June 13, for an early show at 6 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages performance are $16 in advance and $18 at the door. Igor and the Red Elvises play separate show at 10 p.m. the same night. In November 2015, four days before Fit For A King was set to play a show in Paris, a music venue in the city was violently attacked by terrorists. The attacks bred a frightened and brittle community, one left mourning the lives of 128 concert goers. It was egregious and horrific, and it tore into the refuge that music fosters. We were in Germany during the attacks, and with four days before we were playing Paris, we were all flooded with the reality of death, remembers the bands lead vocalist, Ryan Kirby. I couldnt stop thinking about how fragile life is, and how deeply death affects you. He spent the remainder of the tour with other members of the band writing what would turn into Deathgrip, a record that represents not only the inescapable nature of death, but its grip over how we all live our lives. More than anything, we want our fans to be our friends, and we want to stand out as gentleman, said guitarist Bobby Lynge. The result of their agenda is not only a catalog of commanding metal music, but a compelling and well-built voice, one that rests on the willing shoulders of a band set on being open to others. It's midnight on a Saturday and you stumble out of whatever bar you've been frequenting somewhere downtown, desperately craving a Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch and a cheap but delicious margarita as a chaser. Instead of hauling yourself into the back of an Uber and heading to Wicker Park, Chicagoans will soon be able to make the trek to another boozy cantina, this time in the Loop. Advertisement Though the taco giant failed to open another chain that served alcohol in 2016, it's a new year and a new opportunity to chase your burrito with a beer. Taco Bell Cantina applied for a liquor license for 407 S. Dearborn St., according to Eater Chicago and city records. The Wicker Park location, which opened in 2015, was the first Taco Bell in the country to serve alcohol and has since been the home to many a last-stop before the drunken masses head off to their beds and bottles of Advil. Advertisement While there's no date associated with a future opening of Chicago's second location, other boozy Taco Bell restaurants have opened in Las Vegas and Austin. Between a spiked Baja Blast, beer on tap and margaritas for all under $10, more Taco Bell Cantinas are welcome, anytime. @shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com A former associate pastor at an Arlington Heights church was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday for distributing child pornography, according to court records. Clovis Vilchez-Parra, 36, also was ordered to register as a sex offender after pleading guilty to the charge during a hearing in Cook County's Rolling Meadows branch court. Numerous other pornography charges were dropped in exchange for his plea. Advertisement Vilchez-Parra was a priest at the Mision San Juan Diego Catholic Church at the time of his arrest in 2015 by police in Palatine, where he lived in housing provided by the Archdiocese of Chicago, authorities said. Prosecutors said Vilchez-Parra used computer file-sharing software to locate, download and distribute pornographic images of children younger than 13. The computer activity was traced by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, prosecutors said. Authorities obtained a search warrant and found the images on a laptop computer and a flash drive at his residence, prosecutors said. Advertisement After his arrest, the archdiocese said in a statement, Vilchez-Parra was withdrawn from ministry "pending the resolution of this matter." A native of Peru, Vilchez-Parra came to the U.S. in 2007 and worked at Our Lady of Mercy in Chicago before going to Mision San Juan Diego, where he had been associate pastor for 18 months. Judge James Karahalios gave Vilchez-Parra 460 days credit for time served on electronic monitoring. George Houde is a freelance reporter. It was 55 years ago when Aurora resident Antje Brandon came to America from her home in Berlin, Germany. The then 22-year-old had never been to the United States and recalls that "the only thing I knew about America was from Hollywood movies. I expected lots of high rises and new things." As the new bride of an American in the military, she ended up in Georgia at the army base, Fort Benning. She was surprised to see stately old homes. "I also was surprised by all the fruit stands," she continues. Fresh produce was scarce following the war in Germany and Brandon was surprised to see roadside stands with plentiful supplies of peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe and other fruits. "I had never had watermelon or cantaloupe before," she says. "I liked the watermelon but it took me a while to get used to the cantaloupe." She also was introduced to broccoli, Lima beans, okra and succotash. Advertisement Because she married so young, Brandon had little experience with cooking. "My mother did all the cooking when I lived at home," she explains. She kept her romance with Edward, an America soldier, a secret from her parents for a while because she wasn't sure they would approve. But they welcomed her boyfriend when they met him. "My mother found out that he was cooking for himself in a little apartment at the base so she invited him to dinner three times a week," says Brandon. "She would always make him cookies because he had a sweet tooth. She would give him the cookies and say, 'Antje made these.' I didn't make those cookies. She did. Edward was in for a surprise when we married because I couldn't even bake a cake from a box mix," she laughs. Her mother and grandmother both cooked and baked without recipes so there was no way she could get them to write down recipes for dishes. She says that in the early years of marriage, the couple cooked together and figured out how to make a variety of meals. "He knew how to make Southern fried chicken and I knew how to make rouladen so when we entertained, we just made one dish or the other." Although Edward passed away several years ago, Brandon still makes his simple fried chicken. "We always used only drumsticks. We just put some salt on them, rolled them in flour and fried them in vegetable oil slowly until they were nice and crispy. We served it with rice and corn." Advertisement One of the foods that Brandon was not able to find in the United States for many years was "German bread. The bread here was so spongy and fluffy," she explains. German bread is composed mainly of whole grains, such as rye, spelt, millet, and wheat that are less processed. The end result is a very moist dense bread. She has found a very similar bread at Mariano's supermarkets in recent years. Although she has fond memories of Germany, she does not want to return. "Germany has changed. I remember all of the little markets and bakeries. There were so many bakeries. On Sundays, the bakeries would open from 2 until 4 each afternoon so people could get cakes for afternoon tea. Now, it is all Americanized with supermarkets. It is not the same as I remember," she says. Over the years, Brandon, 77, learned how to make several new dishes and often hosts her children and their families for dinner. She has four grown adult children and five grandchildren which makes for a full table for holiday meals. She still prefers simple recipes and often pulls out her favorite almond pound cake recipe. "It is an old recipe that only has five ingredients. They are all ingredients that I usually have on hand and it can be made so quickly," she says. When strawberries are in season, the cake makes a perfect base for strawberry shortcake, she notes. She usually uses soft tub margarine but says that butter can also be used for a firmer cake. She shares the recipe for others to try for a quick dessert. Brandon also shares her recipe for rouladen. The most challenging part is to find the thin slices of beef. Butchers will usually slice the beef for customers on request. She notes that the slices have to be thin like for fajitas but larger, about 4 inches by 6 inches. "Otherwise, it is really an easy meal," she says. Almond Pound Cake pound soft margarine 2 cups sugar 6 eggs Advertisement 2 cups self-rising flour 1 tablespoon almond extract Cream together margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour and almond extract and mix until blended. Grease a 10-inch tube pan. Spread batter in the pan. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour. Cool cake in pan and then remove. Cake keeps well for several days and also freezes well. Beef Rouladen 1 small onion 1 large dill pickle Advertisement 4 slices bacon 4 slices of beef loin cut into 1/4-inch thick pieces measuring about 4- inches by 6 inches each Vegetable oil Water Gravy mix Peel and quarter onion. Cut dill pickle into quarters. Lay one slice of bacon flat and place one piece of onion and one piece of dill pickle on the bacon. Roll up. Repeat for remaining pieces. Lay meat out flat and place one bacon bundle on each piece of meat. Roll up. Secure each roll with string or a long tooth pick. Heat a thin layer of vegetable oil in a frying pan. Add rolls of meat and brown on all sides. Pour in water to cover the rolls about halfway about 2 cups. Lower heat and simmer until tender, about 60 to 90 minutes. Remove meat rolls and keep warm. Add gravy packet to liquid. Cook and stir until thick and smooth. Pour gravy over rolls. Serve with potatoes. When the new city of Aurora website home page came up on the large screens at this week's City Council meeting, there were some audible "oohs" and "aahs" from the audience. "Oh, thank you, we like to hear that," said Clayton Muhammad, director of communications for the city, with perhaps a slight sound of relief in his voice. Advertisement Muhammad has been working with Civic Plus to develop the new site for more than a year. It will replace a site that has been with the city for more than 10 years, and has been the subject of complaints about being old, ugly, and hard to navigate to put it nicely. "We've all heard many comments about our website," said Mayor Robert O'Connor. "I don't want to repeat those words that have been said about it." Advertisement In contrast, Muhammad described the new site as "really clean, really contemporary, really sleek." He called the site "responsive" and said that anything a person sees on the computer will be the same as it is seen on other devices, such as a smart phone or tablet. He said the site is "content-managed," allowing department and division heads to update information themselves, instead of having to go to a central technology person. "We've already trained 32 people to update," Muhammad said. Everyone will get a chance to see and try the new site sometime this weekend, when it goes live. Civic Plus spent a lot of time researching Aurora, meeting with officials, citizens and even hearing the complaints about the old site. The company has done such local sites as Elgin, Highland Park, Lisle and Plano, and also has done larger cities, such as Buffalo and Plano, Texas (with a population close to Aurora's). The new site features more on the home page, including news headlines, what Muhammad called a "robust" calendar and even a Facebook Live feed. There also is a feature where people can click on city services listed alphabetically, rather than having to go through the departments. After the launch this weekend, Muhammad said the final part of the process is to "morph it into what we want by hearing the comments." slord@tribpub.com A charter school proposed for Aurora's East Side is no longer seeking to open. The Greater Good Education nonprofit had applied to open the charter school to the East Aurora School District 131 board, which denied the request in January. The organization then appealed the denial to the State Charter School Commission, but on Friday withdrew its appeal, commission staff confirmed. Advertisement Because the organization withdrew the appeal, the commission will not issue any findings, staff said. Robin Lenart, executive director of Greater Good and the planned school principal, said the organization doesn't have plans to bring the proposal forward again, but it is looking into other ways to "serve the students and families of Aurora." Advertisement "We decided to withdraw our appeal to the Illinois State Charter School Commission, believing that it was the appropriate action to take given the current political climate and the uncertainty surrounding state funding for all public schools in Illinois," she said in a statement. East Aurora spokesman Tom Jackson and school board President Annette Johnson expressed satisfaction with the withdrawal. "We were pleased to hear the appeal was withdrawn regarding the proposed charter school, and we are thankful to all those from the East Aurora school community, including our staff and board of education, who participated in the process," Jackson said in an email. Johnson said she does not oppose all charter schools, but did oppose Greater Good's proposal. She thought the school would duplicate programs already in place in East Aurora, and there were "big flaws" in the proposal. She said the charter could have competed with the district for grants and resources. "Really, right now, the district is making so many good strides, people just need to let the district play out," she said. The charter school, which would have been the first for Greater Good, proposed to work with students who have dropped out or who are at risk of dropping out. The applicants said the school was not designed to compete with East Aurora High School and would instead work with the district and community organizations, but throughout the process district officials and community members expressed concerns that the school would siphon resources from East Aurora or would duplicate services. In her statement, Lenart said dropout recovery is an issue the organization cares about deeply, and members think the community cares about it as well. Advertisement "We hope that we have been able to bring increased focus and attention to the serious need for additional educational options," she said. sfreishtat@tribpub.com Twitter @srfreish Julia L. Gutierrez, 53, has been charged with murder after her husband was found dead by police officers responding to a request for a well-being check, officials said. (Kane County state's attorney's office; Linda Girardi / Beacon-News) Julia Gutierrez pleaded guilty but mentally ill Thursday to murdering her husband, Eduardo, in their Geneva home with a poisoned smoothie. In January 2016 she gave him a smoothie containing a fatal dose of six Temazepam pills. On Thursday, she was sentenced to 22 years in prison as part of an agreement with Kane County prosecutors. Advertisement Gutierrez, 54, who spoke quietly only to answer questions during the hearing, rocked in her chair as the crime was described by Assistant State's Attorney Greg Sams and when one of Eduardo's five sisters, Lidia Pyecha, read a statement to Judge D.J. Tegeler and others in his courtroom. "It sickens us to think Eddie let his guard down. Eddie gave his life for her," Pyecha said. "His life was taken way too early." Advertisement Another sister, Rachel Mooney, added afterward, "There is no adjective to describe how we feel." Geneva police responded to the Gutierrez's Crissey Avenue home Jan. 28, 2016, after concerned friends of the family reported a "strange" package arrival that contained $40,000 in cash, a check for $5,000 and a note written by Julia stating "Ed has been suffering so much," Sams said. Eduardo "appeared to be deceased for some time" when officers found his body in the living room, Sams added. Julia Gutierrez was located semi-conscious in a bathroom. Officers reported a note in Julia's handwriting that included statements such as "I love him so much, please forgive me" and "Hope to see you in heaven." Numerous prescription pill bottles were recovered by police from the home. Prosecutors have long suggested the case was an attempted murder-suicide. Julia Gutierrez told police she suffered for years from an environmental illness and "wanted to die ... so many times." "He was suffering more than me," Sams said, quoting Julia Gutierrez's comments to police. Despite Julia's perception, Eduardo's sisters said their brother remained upbeat and a supportive member of their close-knit family even though they didn't all live in the same state. They described Eduardo as a hard-working man dedicated to his religion, his family and customers of his small business. He "exemplified being a servant to God," Pyecha said. "All of this came to an abrupt end." Pyecha and Mooney also reflected on Julia, who was their sister-in-law for decades. Advertisement "We are devastated that you will have to spend time in prison for a terrible decision," Pyecha said through tears in court. Mooney, outside the courtroom, said the family has "deep sadness" for Julia. Gutierrez's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Julia Yetter, cited a Kane County Diagnostic Center evaluation which diagnosed Gutierrez with a mental health disorder that included depression. In a statement, State's Attorney Joe McMahon said the case reflects the challenges of mental health issues in the community, including the limited resources available to help those in need. Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News. When I first wrote about Trevor McMaken back in the fall of 2015, I described this new Aurora pastor as one of the city's "biggest cheerleaders," even though he and his young family had only been living here a short time. Eighteen months later, McMaken's City of Light Anglican Church, housed at Hill Elementary School on the West Side of Aurora, is going strong, he told me, with Sunday attendance growing and a vibrant mentoring program making a difference with at-risk students there. Advertisement And McMaken continues to be among the city's staunchest supporters, most recently in a far-reaching way. On Tuesday, a story he co-authored about the prayer vigils held at murder sites during Aurora's darkest days was featured online in CT Pastors, a department of the global Christianity Today that is geared toward church leaders around the world. Advertisement "Uniting a violence-plagued city in prayer" was the headline, followed by this subhead: "Neither death threats nor tepid response discouraged two pastors from praying over every murder site in their city for years." It's a story that deserves to be told far and wide, for it is as unique as it is powerful. http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2017/april-web-exclusives/uniting-violence-plagued-city-in-prayer.html McMaken said he was "blown away" when he began hearing about those Prayer Coalition for Reconciliation vigils and the role they had in helping police and the community dramatically reduce Aurora's murder rate. It became quickly obvious, he added, this was a story that should be shared in Christian communities far beyond the city itself. One of the first meetings he and wife Bonnie had when contemplating starting a church here at the time, they were with Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton was with Dan Haas, co-founder of the Prayer Coalition; Randy Schoof, pastor of Warehouse Church; and First Presbyterian Pastor Jeff Moore. What these clergymen all had to say was similar, recalled McMaken: That this is an amazing city with real need, but that God has already done some incredible things here. "I'd never head a story like it before," he said of the way churches and government came together as gang violence rocked the city. "As Christians, we believe prayer makes a difference; that the church in the neighborhood should make it better," McMaken told me on Thursday. "But here was a tangible and, in some ways, quantifiable example of that." McMaken said he was so moved by the story "I probably told it 100 times." And every time he did, his listeners "would walk away in awe." Advertisement It was Bonnie's father, Matt Woodley -- mission pastor with the Wheaton church -- who encouraged his son-in-law and helped him write the story, which includes interviews with Haas; coalition co-founder Rev. David Engbarth, who now lives in Florida after serving St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic churches; and former Aurora Police Chief Greg Thomas. I've read McMaken's story a couple of times now and have nothing but praise for how well it is researched and written. As the authors points out in their article, those vigils were not necessarily welcomed by city officials and local business leaders, especially at first. And even The Beacon-News took a volley of criticism for our commitment to covering every single one of them 27 in one year alone -- no matter how fast and furious they seemed to be coming at us. Certainly the culture of praying together as a community continues here in other ways, including Pray Aurora, hosted by Schoof at Warehouse Church from noon to 1 p.m. the first Thursday of every month; and Pray Fox Valley, a quarterly prayer night. Also, the National Day of Prayer Walk (across Aurora) will be held May 4, beginning at 9:30 a.m. at the southwest corner of Orchard Road and Galena Boulevard, continuing through noon at downtown's Water Street Mall and City Hall, and concluding around 6:15 p.m. at McCoy Drive and Route 59. Residents are also encouraged to do neighborhood walks throughout the day. And, of course, Haas is still holding these prayer vigils, though they are thankfully much fewer and further between. He's even taking the Prayer Coalition playbook outside our city limits. Since January, he's been working closely with Pray Chicago in an attempt to get more churches involved in fighting the violence now plaguing parts of that city. At a workshop last weekend, he passed around copies of McMaken's story to a group of about 70, which got "some of the folks there excited" about the possibilities. But it's more than bowing your head in prayer, Haas insisted. It's about forming relationships with residents, with neighborhood groups, with officials and police. It's building trust and sharing information and learning to feel comfortable with each other. That's especially true in a place as big as Chicago, he added, where the focus has to be on individual neighborhoods because "it's just too big" for a single person's efforts. Advertisement Who knows at this point how one city's response to so much bloodshed will affect hot spots in other crime-riddled areas. But there's no reason why "a story of healing" can't be repeated elsewhere, said McMaken, continuing his role as passionate cheerleader. "Part of sharing this story," he concluded, "is also to celebrate the beautiful community Aurora is becoming." Dcrosby@tribpub.com From the large picture windows of his log home, Mike McMeans watched the Bighorn River rush past the greening spring grass of his front yard last Wednesday. Normally its a soothing scene, but in the record-setting high water year of 2011 the once placid river rose to within about 4 to 5 feet of the deck that extends out from his two-story windows. The house, built in 2004, became an island while the large island across from the house went under water. For two weeks McMeans and his wife were displaced from their home, which is located about 7 miles south of Hardin. This is setting up like 2011, McMeans said as he gave a tour along the river bank to a visitor. Were one rain event away. High water As of Tuesday, the Bighorn River was flowing at 11,500 cubic feet per second more than four times the average flow at this time of year and was scheduled to rise to 12,000 cfs on Wednesday. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bighorn River flow at St. Xavier since Nov. 1, 2016, is the highest in 81 years of record keeping. The culprit is a huge snowpack in Wyoming where a predicted runoff about 200 percent of average has sent water into Bighorn Reservoir at a higher rate than it can be evacuated. Managers of Yellowtail Dam, the large concrete gate between Bighorn Reservoir and the Bighorn River in Montana, are in a race against time and nature. Were going to continue to try to push as much water as we can through the system, Clayton Jordan, of the Montana Office of the Bureau of Reclamation, told a gathering of anglers, guides, fly shop owners and homeowners last Wednesday at a meeting in Fort Smith, just minutes from the dam and river. Were aware some homeowners are being impacted, Jordan said. But with a maximum possible runoff prediction of 2.8 million acre feet of water the high water year of 2011 saw 2.5 million acre feet the Bureau is worried about holding too much water in Bighorn Reservoir. On the high end of its April 1 water forecast, the Bureau predicted river releases could hit 12,500 cfs in May and 13,500 by June. At the beginning of April the high end of the Bureaus forecast was just over 10,500 cfs, so that high number has already been exceeded and theres still lots of snow in the mountains and always the chance of heavy spring rainstorms. A religion It seemed appropriate that the roughly 75 people the majority of them anglers were crowded into the community room in the small town of Fort Smiths Baptist church last Wednesday to express their concerns to Bureau of Reclamation officers. In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing, reads the first line in Norman Macleans famed fly-fishing novella, A River Runs Through It. Religion can be a hot-button issue, and so can fly fishing when it comes to flows in the Bighorn River. Thumping at the makeshift pulpit on the warm evening was Anne Marie Emery, executive director of the Bighorn River Alliance, a river and fly-fishing advocacy group. The main targets of her sermon were Jordan and Steve Davies, Montana area manager of the Bureau. The main theme hammered home by Emery was that the group was tired of the Bureaus conservative water management, holding back water in an attempt to ensure a full reservoir through the summer. She also complained that having the rivers management broken down between Wyoming, where the Bighorns headwaters are located, and Montana is not working for Bighorn anglers. As evidence of this, eight of the last 10 years have resulted in sustained releases over 7,000 cfs, the Alliance complained in a letter delivered to the Bureau and read at the meeting. One would have to look at the prior 24 years to see that happen again. Seven of the last 10 years have resulted in sustained releases over 8,000 cfs. One would have to look at the prior 29 years to see that happen again. Finally, six of the last 10 years have resulted in sustained releases at or above 10,000 cfs. One would have to look at the prior 37 years (almost as far back to the year the dam was closed) to see that happen again. The letter goes on to criticize the Bureau for favoring lake users at the expense of homeowners, river anglers and lodges, a complaint thats been aired since the agency reconfigured its operating criteria. Nevertheless, we genuinely feel BOR intentionally favors lake interests in Wyoming over river interests in Montana, despite the overwhelming disparity in number of users, economics, accessibility and most importantly long-term viability, the letter continued. Bureau stance Davies assured the crowd that the Montana and Wyoming offices are in constant contact about managing the high water. Weve been in daily operational mode for two months, he said. We have calls weekly with the Wyoming office. I assure you intensive cooperation is occurring. To that comment one angler mumbled under his breath, We dont want discussion, we want results. Part of the problem, Davies told the crowd, is that for the past five to 10 years runoff has fluctuated dramatically. Right after 2011s record high water the Bighorn Basin saw record low inflows. Its very challenging conditions given that the Bureau has relatively new operating criteria thats meant to try and ensure at least minimal flows for fish in Montanas Bighorn River while also guaranteeing enough water to make Horseshoe Bend Marinas boat ramp usable in Wyomings end of the Bighorn Reservoir. Climate change is factoring into this, Davies said. Were seeing earlier runoffs. We are recognizing earlier temperatures that are much higher. Were looking at modeling efforts to try and document that. None of that mattered to long-time Bighorn fisherman Richie Montella. We used to have a steady flow of 3,500 (cfs), he said, standing to address Davies. We dont need this erratic up and down. Angler and former fly shop owner Gordon Rose also pushed Davies and the Bureau to be more liberal with its pre-runoff water releases from the dam to avoid the wild swings in river flows come springtime. This annual water fight extends back to at least 2006, when lake users from the community of Lovell, Wyoming, began demanding more water for boating in the 70-mile-long Bighorn Reservoir that straddles the Montana-Wyoming border. They were backed by the National Park Service, which manages the land around the reservoir as the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. This year, though, because of the high runoff and high releases out of the dam, it will be later than normal that the boat ramp at Horseshoe Bend Marina will be usable the southernmost ramp. Until then, lake users at that end have to drive the 14 miles farther north to Barrys Landing, a boat launch that has less camping and fewer amenities than Horseshoe Bend. We are not managing right now to provide them boat access, and they are understanding, Davies said. In the long-term, he said the Bureau of Reclamation is working on mathematical models to try and better understand water flows based on the variability of mountain snowpack, rainstorms and earlier runoff. That provided little salve to the sore folks gathered under the Big Horn Baptist Churchs towering white steeple. Some, like Montella, walked out shaking their heads. On the banks Meanwhile, McMeans is dealing with a river that in 2011 ate about 25 feet of bank, forcing him to move an irrigation wellhead back 10 feet. Ive been fighting this since 2009, he said. Roughly 10 years ago we didnt get these high flows for such an extended period of time. He has neighbors with similar concerns, some of whom may lose structures, not just river bank. The high water is frustrating for such homeowners because the dam was built partly as a means of flood control, the No. 2 concern after generating power. Providing irrigation water is third and last comes recreation. Following 2011s high water McMeans added 225 tons of limestone to the river bank in front of his house in an attempt to prevent more loss of his property. Now hes thinking he may need to add additional rock to protect a stretch of bank farther upstream. Its either riprap or lose your property, he said. The good thing with the riprap is its improving the fishery. I dont have to go anywhere else. The parking area was abandoned when I pulled my pickup next to a patch of state land known to harbor turkeys. It was the same spot Brett French had taken a gobbler during last spring's turkey season, and due to my early arrival for our weekend hunt I was walking it alone. French and I hiked these same hillsides on opening day. The excitement of the new season had attracted other hunters to the section as well, and I was happy to see the turkey woods empty a couple of weeks later. I was a little better prepared this time around. I invested $11 in a crow call after seeing how effective the screeches are at producing shock gobbles from spring turkeys. My heart rate and feet accelerated instantly when my crow squawk was returned by a nearby gobble. This tom was hot and alone. He returned my poorly executed chirps from a double reed elk call with excited gobbles. The tom was puffed up with his fan on full display and only 50 yards away. All I needed to do was get him into the range of my old Stevens bolt-action 20-gauge shotgun. But it didnt take many of my awkward approximations of a hen to alert the old gobbler of my status as a green turkey hunter. The tom went silent, dropped his tail feathers and walked into a brushy draw never to be seen again. I wanted to harvest that bird but I was hardly upset with the missed opportunity. The interaction between predator and prey was different from anything I had experienced before. I had a lot of reasons for chasing gobblers this spring. Among them, my freezer was starting to look empty after several months of daily elk entrees, and I didnt have any weekend hunting plans ahead of archery elk season. Still, I didnt expect to get hooked on turkey hunting. The failed attempt at the tom solidified my new addiction. French and his hunting buddy Uriah Price were waiting at the cabin when I arrived. Price hails from Kansas and speaks turkey as a second language. After shooting light Price kept a few gobblers near the cabin engaged in conversation from their roost. I started to have a new optimism about my chances of returning to Billings with a cooler full of wild meat. The next morning we set up in a patch of trees close to the neighboring private land where we heard the turkeys gobble the night before. Price threw out yelps, purrs and guttural crow calls to get the unseen gobblers talking. While they were happy to oblige, the toms were unwilling to leave the hens we could hear in their group and come into shooting range. We hiked a couple other locations throughout the day. Despite several hours of our best efforts we couldnt scare up a gobble anywhere. We returned to the comfort of the cabin and its wood stove to regroup. Cold beverages and a proposed early elk steak supper nearly derailed our evening hunt, but we managed to get our gear together and hit the woods one more time. We drove past a block of state land on our way to where I saw the gobbler the night before. A lone tom scurried across the gravel road and stopped us in our tracks. He was headed toward public property but we had to double back a half mile to legally access the land. It was a fast and strenuous uphill hike. Price moved quicker than French and me, so he was already calling the tom to a clearcut when I joined him on the top of the overlooking ridge. I dropped down behind a tree and got my shotgun pointed to where I thought the bird would travel. It wasnt long before the gobbler appeared on the opposing hillside a couple hundred yards away. The tom wasnt even waiting for Price to finish his call before answering with gobbles. He was desperate for a hen but remained suspicious. He stopped every few steps to look for threats. It took minutes for him to close the distance guided by Price's masterful calling, but in my mind it was hours. The anxiety chewed on me. I double and triple checked the safety on my gun and started to worry my position behind the tree wouldnt allow me to get a good shot at the bird. Price had to remind me to keep still. My suspicions were confirmed when the tom emerged farther to the right than I anticipated. He was just 20 yards away but the tree was between us. I lifted my muzzle and dropped it on the other side of the trunk. I tried to be smooth and stealthy but the birds sharp eyes saw me anyway. He turned to run just before I got my shot off and put him to the ground. I dont plan on saving any of the meat for Thanksgiving, but Im thankful for the meals the turkey will provide. Im even more grateful for the opportunity to hunt with people like French and Price who have helped me find success and meaning in Montanas timber. Together with law enforcement, city and county officials updated about 40 Blue Creek residents Wednesday on steps theyre taking to mitigate blowing trash and safety concerns at the Billings landfill. The city of Billings has asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for a permit to nearly double the size of the landfill, space that Public Works Director Dave Mumford said wont be needed for about 40 years. Mumford expects to have an answer from DEQ on the permit request in the next few weeks. Along with Yellowstone County Commission Chair John Ostlund, Mumford reiterated the citys plan to spend $18.5 million over the next two years to design and construct a three-sided transfer station at the landfill that will compact trash. The new facility, which will grind materials including rebar and concrete, will extend the life of the landfill up to 20 percent, Mumford said, and will also make operations safer for landfill workers. Itll also keep some of the trash, such as plastic bags, from blowing onto the streets near the landfill, including Jellison, Blue Creek and Hillcrest roads, which Mumford said are picked up every morning that the weather is amenable. But he acknowledged that approach is just a Band-Aid. When the wind blows, its horrible out there, Mumford said. We have heard you, but we didnt put enough energy and effort into some of the problems" that neighbors pointed out. Over the next three years, the city plans to plant $90,000 worth of trees around the existing landfill as well as the proposed expanded landfill across Hillcrest Road to the south to serve as a windbreak. Ostlund said that local law enforcement Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder, Montana Highway Patrol Capt. Keith Edgell and Billings Police Sgt. Jason Gartner were all present Wednesday have said they will rely on the public to help them cite landfill-bound motorists who endanger others by not securing their loads. Linder said that sheriffs deputies can cite vehicles with unsecured loads based on a report from someone who can identify the vehicle and is willing to testify about what they saw. Potentially dangerous unsecured loads include mattresses, firewood even tires, he said. Ostlund said that county-owned Hillcrest Road will not be moved, as previously discussed during the DEQ permitting process. Rather, as the landfill is expanded, a bridge will be constructed and an underpass installed to take city garbage trucks off Hillcrest and into the landfill. That way, the compacting facility wont have to be moved when the new landfill opens. We think that will work well for everyone, he said. This proposal will save everyone money. Some neighbors questioned how water coming out of the landfill will be monitored. Others said they doubted that workers were cleaning up the roadways daily, while some suggested that landfill employees should educate users on the requirement to secure their loads. Blue Creek resident Gary Blain said he appreciates the efforts being made to clean up the neighborhood. Its not a great situation, but its one we need to put our shoulder behind, he said. What are we going to do with our garbage? It has to go somewhere. Think of Pavol Demes as a sort of Thomas Jefferson. He was, after all, one of the founding fathers of his country, Slovakia. Or, at least the Slovakia that is now part of the democratic West. Demes grew up behind the Iron Curtain and remembers when Russian troops invaded his country in 1968 to help protect the country from itself. That's what they were told and forced to repeat. Demes was trained and worked as a biomedical researcher, but during the "Year of Miracles" in 1989, when the country of Czechoslovakia was transformed by the "Velvet Revolution," he found himself at the fore of figuring out how to rebuild a collapsed country and make it a democracy. So, he and others literally studied the democracies of the United States and Britain, formed a temporary government, then set about making a permanent change. The Velvet Revolution a revolution without a single life lost gave way to the "Velvet Divorce" in which the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully split and still remain at peace and democratic. Slovakia is located in Central Europe with 5 million people. Its capital is Bratislava. As a former foreign minister, a former director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and an adviser to the Slovak Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, he spends his time building relationships between America and Slovakia, as well as teaching in academia about democracy and civil society. This week, Demes is in Billings meeting with leaders and students at both Montana State University Billings and Rocky Mountain College. He sat down to talk about civil discourse in a democracy and world affairs with The Billings Gazette in this question-and-answer session. Demes: I was part of the transitional process (in Slovakia) and I discovered the power of civil society or civic organization. Because we lived under a centrally commanded system, communism was about everything controlled political, economic and social life. I was fascinated that citizens themselves can do changes. The United States was the model country for us so we came and learned how to build a foundation of civic groups, community foundations and so on... Ever since, I have been engaged in this area. So, biomedical science was my first life, a shorter one by now, I'm 61; the longer period of my life is now in helping change society to be rules-based, open society. Gazette: So under communism, you're told we were the enemy. Then you come over here. What was coming to America like for the first time? Demes: For us during communist era, the United States was, by official propaganda, the key enemy and constantly threatening us and so on. But people were not buying it. The U.S. was associated for us with freedom freedom of speech, freedom of religion, political and civic rights. Since I am Slovak, the U.S. had a deeper meaning because the largest group of Slovaks living outside of Slovakia are those in the United States. We had a huge diaspora here. Many families had links to communities people-to-people links. Through that, we were getting information. Plus, there was Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. These were banned media in those days, but we were listening and getting the information about this country. Once communism collapsed, there was a dream to build a similar free society in our country. It became a desire on the individual and collective level. Gazette: What's the first thing you do to set up a new democracy? Demes: There was no precedent. We needed to do it from scratch, but a key was that the Velvet Revolution was started by students and intellectuals. It was not a revolution because of economic or security reasons, it was a call for freedom it was a freedom agenda. It was the oppressive nature of the regime people wanted to get rid of... Our country opened up for political freedoms, but we didn't know what it is because we had only one party. First, we had six months of party formation that was allowed. The first free and open elections were six months after the revolution so we had an interim government which was mixed communist and revolutionary forces...The election resulted in a coalition government. Our first president was very interesting Vaclav Havel who was a dissident and playwright but we couldn't study him because he was rebellious against the regime and had been put in prison for four years. He couldn't perform in public life and suddenly this dissident who had tried to challenge the system and was a troublemaker became our president... It was filled with a lot of emotions and hope. I think what we tried to do was not invent the wheel, but went out and invited people in, and learned how to build institutions, political, economic and social... This was a massive learning period. Gazette: What was worth collapsing the entire social order of a country for? Demes: The overarching dream of going back to Europe. That was not only about geography, but it was going back to new sets of values in societal arrangements. For us, the key dream to join institutions of the West joining the European Union, joining NATO, becoming part of the Trans-Atlantic family... There was symmetry. We wanted to become members of the Western Institution and the West created the conditions with open arms. Gazette: For those of us who have lived in a free society, we can read about a communist nation, but we have never experienced it. What was it like growing up under a centralized, communist society? Demes: The Iron Curtain for us was both a physical thing but also mental. We were not allowed to communicate between these two blocs and it was completely absurd. We couldn't get literature from the West. We couldn't travel. There's the Danube River and Bratislava from the window of my apartment, I see Austria, across the river. Imagine that many people never crossed the river because they were not allowed because it was "the West." Many people didn't get permission to travel. To get western literature or to religious (materials) just smuggling Bibles was a big issue. If they caught you at the borders and caught you with Bibles, it was a problem. The absurdity of the regime was huge. But, we learned how to cheat the regime. There was doublespeak. In families, people spoke one language and described realities. And our parents told us that when you're at school, you answer a question like this. For example, I was 12 in 1968, when Russia/Warsaw Pact troops invaded because suddenly in Czechoslovakia, there was an ambition to have freer version of socialism or communism, so the Russians sent over 100,000 troops to protect us from ourselves. They were beating my principal teacher because he was putting up posters that said, "Russians go home" and the Russians took him in '68 and beat him. So, this is how I was exposed at 12 years old to realities. I went home and my father told me, "OK, you'll have to answer at school what this act was bringing in tanks and soldiers. We called it an invasion, but in public we had to call it, 'act of international solidarity.' So, we needed to develop a language that was sort of mandatory to pass an exam or to keep a job. All media after 1968... would have to go the communist party and they'd ask, "How do you label this act of Soviet troops?" And, if you said it was an act of solidarity, fine, pass, you can continue. If you said that you protested because this was brutal violation of international norms, then fine, you are gone. Thousands of people lost jobs after 1968 and it was called "the period of normalization." Normal means that rules were set by the communist party and they told us what is normal and what is not. There was a schizophrenic situation about how we acted, spoke, and cheated the system. But, people developed interesting survival skills to keep sanity and values and a sense of normalcy. I think what is fascinating is that even though we had these 40 years of communism that was blocking us and many people were in jail or killed on the border when they tried crossing illegally, we, in 1989, suddenly people rediscovered what comprises freedom. Gazette: It seems like to those of us in America, that there has been an erosion of civilized discourse or that our society is changing. Is that us being hypersensitive, or as a person who studies this, has there been a change? Demes: The U.S. is going through dramatic changes and for us, who care about your country, inspired by your country and helped by your country, many processes that are taking place in your country, both in political and civic life are difficult for us to understand... If you listen to what your smart people and political analysts, they lost the capacity to predict things in your country. I was here a week after the election, attending seminars on international relations, and I never found the situation in the U.S. so difficult to read. When I was asking questions, very knowledgeable people about American foreign policy ...I got two types of answers. First, I don't know. Second, too early to say. The parameters of foreign policy were always known. If Democrats won, they'd want to have a little different thing than if Republicans won. But from an international standpoint for the past 25 years, in the U.S., you could predict things toward Europe or the TransAtlantic alliance. Now, there are open questions. Also, there's a high degree of polarization in the United States. I never have seen so many heated debates between my American friends. Gazette: How do we get away from the constant one-upsmanship in public discourse? I love that you "studied" democracy and most of us just live it. So having studied it, what are some of the ways out of this polarization? Demes: I think there are a few new facts that the United States never experienced after the post 9/11 period. Post 9/11 U.S. is different than it was pre-9/11. In 9/11 attacks, you discovered your vulnerability. You thought you were a secure place. After 9/11, you took a lot of measures to deal with your own security and how to deal with broader international security. Secondly, you lost after last year that belief that there are a few things that if you do, you make it. Donald Trump, with his vocabulary and style, he (got elected) on his own without much party politics. He came out of nowhere and was able to articulate a few things that the American public somehow feared or was uneasy or angry about. I think you discovered that you are vulnerable toward some of the parameters of societal life with how you speak about women or how you treat minorities or how you develop co-existence of different groups. Your melting pot suddenly started to be looked at and your protection got new levels (of scrutiny). There are some megatrends that are shaping all of our lives...We suddenly (in Slovakia) have an influx of immigrants from the Mideast... The European Union is confronted with the realities of security and culture of Islam. A few years back, it was a non-issue. But today, how do we treat Islam and how to deal with Islamophobia in the European Union? That is a megatrend shaping how people feel. But, going back to the roots ... the basic principles upon which the Western world was built with its belief system and humanism, acceptance and tolerance and a rules-based society; respect of facts and so on. We do not need to start inventing something completely (different) to counteract stupidity. If something is stupid or not true, you can't develop better stupidity and bigger lies. Gazette: Because you lived through lies? Demes: Exactly. There are a few things that are common-sensical. If you are a media person, then you need to do your job -- write, check facts and report. You do not need to study a new philosophy of truth. You do not need to start a new type of fact-checking. If you start to question your ability to report what you see and hear, you'll end up in a psychiatric clinic. For the full interview with Demes, including how the Beatles may have helped destroy communism, please go to billingsgazette.com or on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp6lUqV90vw. Why these young voters in Pueblo want to get more youth involved in voting Renaissance and the Umbrian Countryside is the title of the Oct. 11-19 tour to Italy offered through Rocky Mountain College. The nine-day trip is led by Rocky art professor Mark Moak, who is in his fifth year of leading the tour. The number of people is limited to 14. Travelers will be exposed to exquisite art and cathedrals, fine wine and food, Moak said. The weather in October makes it a very pleasant time to be in Italy, he said. The tour starts in Florence, where members of the tour will visit the Accademia Gallery to see the statue of David. Theres lots of free time to visit museums and the market, Moak said. And Ill be completely at their disposal. Theyll rent bicycles and tour Lucca next. And then travel to Villa Pieve, a medieval villa that has been added to over the years. It contains an arts-oriented education center where a variety of workshops are offered. The tour will also include a bus trip to Assisi to explore the town where St. Francis was born. It will also take participants to Orvieto, a really cool town in the region where there are some amazing frescos, which really had a major impact on Michelangelo. It is also home to Orvieto Cathedral, as well as Orvieto Classico, "a wonderful white wine," Moak said. The cost of the trip is $2,100, which doesnt include air fare. A $300 deposit is due by May 1. For information, click the link in this story at billingsgazette.com, email Moak at moakm@rocky.edu or call him at 661-2223. Montana State University Billings and its hometown must work and grow together. A task force of university and community leaders recently kicked off a concerted nine-month effort to determine how MSU Billings can better meet the needs of residents and businesses throughout the eastern half of Montana. The idea is: How can the campus help the community meet its goals? interim Chancellor Ron Larsen said at the first task force meeting on April 20. The task force is really about defining and strengthening the connections between MSUB and the community, said John Cech, deputy commissioner of higher education. The first meeting got the panel off to an excellent start with clear and compelling charges from Larsen, Cech and Regent Martha Sheehy of Billings. Sheehy is a great representative for the Billings area and she spoke eloquently of the task ahead for the volunteer group. The task force is not being asked to create a vision for MSUB, Cech said. That will be up to the faculty. Larsen noted that student and faculty discussions also are underway to get those perspectives. The task force plans to meet through November to discuss MSUBs role in the local economy. The group aims to have recommendations by December that will be presented to MSU President Waded Cruzado and Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian. Those recommendations are expected to go to the Board of Regents at its January meeting. MSU Billings challenges are well known: Declining enrollment over the past decade and a steeper decline after the Great Recession spiked student enrollment. Because much of the universitys funding is tied to enrollment, painful budget cuts have been necessary. Former Chancellor Mark Nook identified student retention as priority after finding that MSUB loses full-time undergrad students at a higher rate than peer institutions. Of course, lower retention means lower graduation rates, too. In addition to university members, the community task force includes: Dr. Deborah Agnew of Billings Clinic, Career Center Principal Scott Anderson, attorney Bobby Anner-Hughes, Big Sky Economic Development Executive Director Steve Arveschoug, John Beaudry of Stillwater Mining, school Superintendent Terry Bouck, Billings Chamber President John Brewer, Dan Carter of ExxonMobil, Jennifer Corning, City Councilman Brent Cromley, Billings Clinic Foundation President Jim Duncan, state Rep. Jeff Essmann, Gazette Publisher Mike Gulledge, state Rep. Kathy Kelker, Rimrock Foundation CEO Lenette Kosovich, Dull Knife College President Richard Little Bear, St. Vincent Healthcare CEO Steve Loveless, developer Greg McDonald, Northern Hotel owner Mike Nelson, Lisa Perry of NorthWestern Energy, Sanderson Stewart President Michael Sanderson, First Interstate Vice President Kristi Summers, St. Johns Lutheran Ministries CEO David Trost, VisitBillings Executive Director Alex Tyson and Underriner Motors CEO Bill Underriner. The task force will help MSUB identify opportunities that will build Billings and communities throughout our region. The collective knowledge of this task force will be a powerful tool for transforming MSUB into a vital, cutting-edge higher education source. MSUB has long been part of Billings; now it must strive to become the heart of its community. By Weining Hu Companies that would like to setup in China will benefit from a more efficient corporate registration process by the end of October this year. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) released an opinion (the Opinion) on April 11 that outlined its digitization effort, which will entail the construction of a nationwide digitized corporate registration platform and a new electronic business license. This reform will improve the turnaround-time and streamline the registration workflow for all types of companies. The Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce (AIC) online system is currently the only platform that allows foreign invested companies (FIEs) to register their business online, but more regions of China will follow suit once a national model is ready to set forth. New market entrants who plan to register their startups in China should understand the new regulatory changes governing setup procedures. Online company registration available by October According to the Opinion, the SAIC will work to optimize the online registration process through streamlining application steps and the content of application materials. The new electronic registration program allows entrepreneurs to register an account online, upload scanned supporting documents, and authorize e-signatures when submitting the application. The SAIC will also standardize the design of an electronic business license, including formatting and listed credentials. A series of management protocols for issuing an electronic license are also under drafting by the SAIC. After these nationwide protocols are defined, the SAIC will require sub-national registrars to develop their local systems in alignment with the national standards. In an April 19 announcement that followed the Opinion, the SAIC clarified that both provincial level and municipal level AICs will need to open their respective enterprise name pools. This will further optimize the online registration process: all company registration applicants will be able to use the online name-query platform to check if another business has registered the same company name. Digital registration pilot programs shed light on reform Before the SAIC announced the countrywide reform, it ran several successful digital registration pilot programs for Chinese entrepreneurs in different parts of the country, including the capital Beijing and Jiangsu province, which is near to Shanghai. The initial stage of Beijings pilot program was only open to applicants from domestic high-tech companies in Haidian district. These pilot programs illustrate how the new registration process will make setup easier for new market entrants. When registering a company with the local AIC, an applicant used to go through a time-consuming process that requires many rounds of online registration for different purposes and in-person application materials submission at the local AIC counters. Further, the old online registration system did not accept scanned supporting documents. The new system will expand the functionality of the online system to process digital documents that used to be required at local AIC counters. Under the pilot program, applicants easily registered their business at their desktops without visiting local AICs, a paperless process that significantly saving time for entrepreneurs to focus on core business. RELATED: Business Advisory Services from Dezan Shira & Associates Scope for FIEs to expand Recent changes have shown that further pilot programs began to implement necessary technical support to process registration applications from foreign invested companies. Starting from April 19, Beijing AIC online registration system began to accept applications from FIEs. Since SAIC does not have adequate technology or resources to verify the identities of all foreigners, it requires an FIE to entrust a lawyer in China as a local agent to submit its business registration application online. The designated lawyer is responsible for filing the companys basic information online and providing legal verification and endorsement for all key shareholders identities and accuracy of the application materials. Changzhou municipal in Jiangsu province have also just issued work guidance to expand the current pilot programs to include applications from foreign invested companies. If these trials work well, the SAIC will implement the pilot model across all regions of China from October this year. The trend shows that more and more foreign companies in China will benefit from this digitization program as the reform spread out across all regions of China. 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 This Dezan Shira & Associates 2017 China guide provides a comprehensive background and details of all aspects of setting up and operating an American business in China, including due diligence and compliance issues, IP protection, corporate establishment options, calculating tax liabilities, as well as discussing on-going operational issues such as managing bookkeeping, accounts, banking, HR, Payroll, annual license renewals, audit, FCPA compliance and consolidation with US standards and Head Office reporting. Payroll Processing in China: Challenges and Solutions In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we lay out the challenges presented by Chinas payroll landscape, including its peculiar Dang An and Hu Kou systems. We then explore how companies of all sizes are leveraging IT-enabled solutions to meet their HR and payroll needs, and why outsourcing payroll is the answer for certain company structures. Finally, we consider the potential for China to emerge as Asias premier payroll processing center. Dezan Shira & Associates Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China has started the process of having the Juyan archeological site recognized with a UNESCO cultural heritage listing, said local authorities on Wednesday. The Juyan archeological site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. [File photo] According to Sun Jianjun, a culture official with the Alxa League (Prefecture), the Juyan ruins, including city sites, walls, pavilions, beacon fire relics, farmland and tombs which fanned out across the Ejin River basin, were first built in 102 B.C. during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. "It is one of the largest and best-preserved sites on China's ancient Silk Road," he said. The site covers about 19,600 square kilometers. "For more than 2,000 years, it witnessed exchanges of China with the west, as well as communication between ethnic groups of north China," Sun said. Sun's office will submit an application to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage before August 8, the 70th anniversary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. UNESCO has acknowledged 1,052 world heritage sites across the globe. China has 50 such sites, including 35 cultural sites, 11 natural sites and four mixed sites, according to the UNESCO website. For Gao Hengrui, 20, going to a bookstore is no longer only about buying books, rather, it is a "culture hunt." Wine tasting, photo exhibitions, themed lectures -- cultural events like these have made bookstores a "must-go" for young Chinese. "Bookstores today are not just stores, but public spaces where people can relax," Gao said. As China's consumer spending on culture grows, the country's bookstores are reinventing themselves. Redefining themselves as "knowledge centers" or "cultural hubs," physical bookstores are reviving an industry in a downturn. CITIC Books, the book chain owned by Chinese conglomerate CITIC Group, for example, offers value-added services to meet the demand of a niche market. CITIC Books targets a group of customers it calls "the rising class," offering them new products in its bookstores, such as drones and 3D-enabled phones. To diversify its income streams, CITIC Books also offers customized services to corporate executives, selecting the "right" books to cater to the demand of individuals based on their personal characteristics such as age and interest. "Bookstores are not just selling products now. In fact, they are selling lifestyle," Fang Xi, general manager of CITIC Books, told Xinhua. In 2016, CITIC Books' parent company, CITIC Press, generated a net profit of 128 million yuan (about 18.6 million U.S. dollars), 28 percent more than the previous year, according to the company's annual report. Revenue growth will accelerate as the book chain opens more stores this year, according to Fang. Confident in the company's growth potential, Fang said that CITIC Books plans to open another 60 stores in 2017. Like CITIC Books, branded bookstores around the country are looking for their own niche market. In Guangzhou, a bookstore operates much like a boutique shop, offering designer accessories and artwork while giving readers space to read. In Beijing, a bookstore features cats, inviting cat lovers worldwide to spend an afternoon with books, coffee and their favorite pets. What underlies the transformation of physical bookstores is a shift in China's consumption, which is becoming increasingly diversified and culture oriented. "Not that long ago, big companies in China had all the power to determine what products would be made available to the market," said CITIC Group chairman Chang Zhenming in the company's annual report. "That era is long gone, and consumption models have changed to reflect the primacy of customer desire." Whether it's selling artworks or offering coffee, booksellers have their own way to answer the call. "The change in bookstore culture exactly reflects what's going on in the economy," Fang said. Cultural spending in China as a whole is gaining momentum as authorities push the cultural sector. China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), the country's social and economic development blueprint, is attempting to make the culture a "pillar" in the country's economy. Local governments have also introduced detailed support measures, including rewards and tax incentives, to encourage physical bookstores. According to a poll conducted by Renmin University of China, the Culture Consumer Index, a measure of the country's cultural consumption, increased from 73.7 in 2013 to 81.5 in 2015. With government support and rising demand, publishers like CITIC Books cannot find a better time to innovate. You are here: Home North China's Hebei Province announced Wednesday it would call for international bids to plan and design Xiongan New Area. Aerial photo taken on April 1, 2017 shows Xiongxian County, north China's Hebei Province. [Photo/Xinhua] Global companies are welcomed to bid with their ideas for a 30-square-km area at initial stage, said Niu Jingfeng, deputy director of Xiongan New Area preparatory committee. Niu told a press conference that the committee had organized top talent in drafting the plans for the new area and a competition would be organized for design ideas. Specific plans on administrative control were also welcomed, he said. The area has had tight controls on land resources, household registration, house sales and construction since last June to restrict speculation, Niu said. Neighboring counties, cities and districts also have similar control measures since April 1, when plans for Xiongan New Area were announced. The new area, some 100 kilometers south of Beijing, will eventually cover 2,000 square kilometers, with a population of 2 to 2.5 million. It is expected to help transfer Beijing's non-capital functions. To prepare for the land purchases, relocation of local residents and new construction work, the committee mobilized 1,500 cadres in local villages to explain the policy and hear public opinion, said Niu. Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is acting to fulfill a promise he made to US President Donald Trump: Get 1 million small and medium-sized US businesses enrolled on his online platforms to sell their products to China's growing middle class and create 1 million jobs in the United States. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma after their meeting at Trump Tower in New York, US, January 9, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] Ma announced on Tuesday that Alibaba will host a two-day conference in Detroit in June to teach US businesses how to sell to the company's 443 million customers in China on the world's biggest e-commerce site. "We are already a gateway for thousands of global brands, retailers and companies to sell to Chinese consumers. And we want to expand that gateway (and) level the playing field to make it easy for American entrepreneurs, small businesses and farmers alike to take advantage of the China opportunity," said Ma, also Alibaba's founder, in an open letter. Called the Gateway 17, the conference will be held on June 20-21 and is expected to attract more than 1,000 US businesses, the company said in a statement. Ma will speak at the event. Ma met Trump in New York in January, shortly after he was elected, to discuss how Alibaba could help create jobs in the US. Ma promised he would help create 1 million jobs over five years by enabling small businesses to sell goods on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms primarily on its Taobao and Tmall websites. Jennifer Kuperman, head of international corporate communications at Alibaba, said that the 1 million figure is nothing but "conservative". "If you think about the number of businesses on our platform, if they even hire one person to help with the demand from Chinese consumers, that gets you to a million jobs; so that's very simple. And that we think is basically conservative, because we believe that we're going to make it larger than that in the next five years," said Kuperman. Brion Tingler, head of external affairs for Alibaba, said that Detroit is an ideal location for the event. "Detroit has a long history of selling to China. Detroit is also considered home to some of America's greatest ingenuity and innovation and its location is convenient to attract small business people and farmers from the heartland," he said. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said that China is an "important and viable market for a wide range of products and services. This event will open doors for Michigan businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs by helping them identify and enter into new relationships there". Brian Gao, president of the Detroit Chinese Business Association, said his group is excited that Detroit will be the host city. "The DCBA views Jack Ma as one of the most important entrepreneurs in the 21st century, and to host his only scheduled public speaking engagement for 2017 in Detroit is a seminal moment for our organization and the state of Michigan," Gao said. You are here: Home Heavy smog hits Beijing. [Photo/China.org.cn] China will increase research on smog in its battle against air pollution in Beijing and surrounding areas. Government agencies, including environmental protection authority, academies and institutions will work together to integrate resources, according to reports of a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday. Scientists working on anti-smog research may be given extra funding from the central budget. The work will focus on causes of the heavy seasonal air pollution, emission control and health. The government hopes to improve air quality and explore transferable pollution control systems for all parts in the country which suffers from smog. China is addressing air pollution with stricter measures on emissions and an emphasis on clean energy. The Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining said earlier this week that Chinese cities reported more "good air" days in 2016. The issuance of a cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline is a positive step forward for infrastructure development long awaited both in Montana and throughout the United States. President Trumps willingness to put American jobs first signals a commitment to pro-growth policies that will be made possible through public-private partnerships built to construct, rebuild, and restore Americas aging infrastructure network. For years the public has heard the same thing: our infrastructure is failing and its time to do something about it. Thus far, however, the public has seen very little action, and inaction has borne a heavy cost. With out investments like Keystone XL, we face losing the next great resource development opportunity to international competitors. Already, plans to expand the TransMountain Pipeline in Alberta and British Columbia will more than double existing line capacity for exports to a growing Chinese market. This could lead to rising cost pressure for the Canadian oil and reduce our countrys energy security. The cross border permit for Keystone XL was a step in the right direction to ensure that the United States would remain a part of the export conversation. Pipelines, roads, railroads, airports, and other forms of energy and transportation infrastructure are part of an interconnected system that allows American goods and services to move throughout the country, strengthening our economy and our position in an increasingly global marketplace. Investing in our future by investing in infrastructure, will create long term economic growth opportunities as well as jobs. Often derided by critics as temporary jobs, construction jobs on Keystone XL will provide income for thousands of workers for months at a time, as well as bolster the economies of communities that the pipeline will pass through. Construction projects by their nature are temporary undertakings, but when pieced together with other projects they create long-term employment and careers. Infrastructure also creates opportunity throughout the supply chain as manufacturers scale up production to meet the demands of construction. On the recently constructed Dakota Access Pipeline, American materials and American workers built a pipeline that will transport domestically produced crude oil to domestic refineries making critical energy resources available to consumers throughout the country. Keystone XL will provide Americans a stable and reliable import option from our Canadian neighbors and cement a strong cross-border economic relationship that stands to benefit both Americans and Canadians. Ten of China's major news agencies and websites formed a union in Beijing on Wednesday in order to provide better copyright protection for the media. The union was set up at a conference on internet copyright protection, where a declaration of the union was read by Zhou Xisheng, CEO of ChinaSo, a search engine set up by the country's major news organizations, and a founding member of the union. According to the declaration, the union will play a significant part in issues including the unified management of news copyright, and will support its members to uphold their own copyrights. The declaration also criticized misconduct in the news business, such as piracy, incorrect or fake quotes and unauthorized reprints, which severely hurt the enthusiasm of journalists and negatively affect the sustainable development of the business. The union has called for the society to respect and protect news copyrights, and has asked for more news organizations to join the union to improve the situation. A total of 115 media outlets released a joint statement at the conference, also calling for better copyright protection in the news business. China has been emphasizing the importance of copyright protection recently, as a national copyright monitoring website was set up on April 20, which was seen as a step forward in the nation's crackdown on piracy. The website, www.12426.cn, is managed by the Copyright Monitoring Center under the Copyright Society of China, providing identification, security monitoring, early warning and rights infringement solution services for registered copyright owners. A flower show organized by the Expo on April 26. [Beijing Times] The tickets of the Beijing International Horticulture Expo will begin presale in the first half of 2018, and the first batch of licensed goods will be available in June this year. The overall ticketing program has already taken shape. Companies that are responsible for selling the tickets will be selected in the third quarter of this year, and the sample of the tickets will be determined by the end of this year. Meanwhile, the Expo also identified and signed its first batch of global partners on April 24. The first group of global partners -- Air China, CYTS, Bank of Beijing, Shunxin Holdings and Vanke Group -- will participate in the arrangement and operation of the Expo in the fields of aviation, park operations, tourism reception, financial services, green food, venue construction and so on. The Expo will later seek sponsors from the internet, automobile, new energy, insurance, clothing and other industries. The Expo will also formulate an Intellectual Property Protection Plan to protect brand sponsorship. Additionally, the Expo has identified ten businesses as the first group to produce licensed merchandise. The first batch of licensed products will be available as early as June this year. Flash Try a locally flavored meal, get your shoes shined, mail a postcard or just grab some groceries. More and more Chinese family travelers are opting to taste the flavor of old Los Angeles at a legendary farmers market. "They are increasingly open to explore real stories of American people," said Lexie Wei, a Los Angeles-based tourism consultant. "Chinese tourists' interest and tastes have improved. They want stories." Wei's recent WeChat blog on the Original Farmers Market, an old farmers market in Los Angeles city, has generated more than 60,000 views in just a few weeks. An article introducing the market's history and stories behind its shops and restaurants turned out to be a hit with the Chinese audience. "It's not just an average farmers market. It has a rich history. It is a microcosm of the American culture, and represents the vicissitudes of Los Angeles and even the history of Chinese immigration," said Wei. Chinese visitors get a taste of old Los Angeles at the Original Farmers Market. (Provided to China Daily) Chinese visitors get a taste of old Los Angeles at the Original Farmers Market. (Provided to China Daily) Established in 1934, the open-air market has more than 100 different shops, restaurants and grocers. It evolved from a traditional farmers market, where farmers sold their vegetables and produce to local customers, to a tourist destination. Two Chinese restaurants have been there for decades. "The market is a unique place with a lot of history and charm. It's a cultural landmark in Los Angeles," said Maritza Cerrato, marketing and tourism specialist with the Original Farmers Market. "Ninety percent of the shops are family owned and operated. You can meet the owners, and in many shops you can see multi-generations of families working side-by-side," said Cerrato. "Local people come here and sit at the same table every day, read newspapers and talk about the news with their friends. This is a place for visitors and locals to meet." Meeting local people and learning stories of human interest are the top reasons the farmers market is gaining popularity among Chinese travelers. "There is a sandwich shop run by the original owner in his 90s, a toy store operated by a veteran and an Asian restaurant run by an American couple who had lived in Singapore for many years," said Wei. The US tour operators need to dig deep and present these stories to Chinese visitors, because in the future travelers aged 25 to 35 will make up the majority of the overseas Chinese tourists and they tend to focus on the cultural experience, said Wei. "A combination of nature, stories and urban development will mostly resonate with Chinese visitors," she said. The Original Farmers Market started noticing the increase in Chinese visitors a year ago. "We have been proactively reaching out to the Chinese travel market and welcoming Chinese visitors for a number of years," said Cerrato. The market is a "China Ready" program designation, which means they offer Chinese-language brochures, a Chinese-version website and accept UnionPay, a popular bank card in China. Not top market yet, China is definitely a fast growing market, with 20 to 30 percent of international tourists Chinese, according to Cerrato. In January the market celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year with Chinese cuisine and traditional performances for the first time. A hand-crafted steel rooster sculpture made by the market's own craftsmen was displayed at the Farmers Market Plaza next to the iconic Clock Tower to celebrate the Year of Rooster. The 430-pound, 5-foot-tall sculpture will be a permanent display. "It was so much fun and we will do it again next year to welcome more Chinese," said Cerrato. Flash A total of 52 slain Syrians were laid to rest in a cemetery in the capital Damascus on Wednesday, nearly two weeks after a deadly explosion targeted their busses while evacuating their towns in northwestern Syria. Fifty-two bodies, part of over 120 slain Syrians, were brought to the predominantly-Shiite neighborhood of Sayyida Zaynab south of Damascus, as another group of bodies were buried in Aleppo city in northern Syria. On April 15, a suicide bomber detonated his car bomb at a gathering point of buses transporting Shiites evacuating from two pro-government towns of Kafraya and Foa in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. Photos of some bodies hanging out from bus windows and others laid on ground near the vehicles haunted Syria as well as the world. The blast rocked the rebel-held Rashideen area in the countryside of Aleppo province, where buses carrying 5,000 pro-government Shiite people waiting for the reactivation of a deal designed to secure their transportation to government-controlled area in Aleppo. The deal was later continued and the busses continued to their destination in Aleppo, while rebels and their families evacuated the rebel-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani. The deal was sponsored by Iran and Qatar, with no role for the UN. Flash Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated on Thursday that Manila will continue to engage Beijing through bilateral dialogue, citing that it is the best way to resolve the South China Sea issue. Asked what is the best way to deal with China, Duterte said, "The way we are doing ... talking. That's the only luxury that we have. Talking." Duterte was speaking to the press at the Malacanang presidential palace after delivering his joint statement with visiting Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei. He said that is exactly what he would suggest to his fellow ASEAN leaders when they meet for a summit on Saturday. Southeast Asian leaders will meet on Saturday to discuss how to strengthen ASEAN economic community, and regional and international issues that may affect stability and peace in the region. Duterte also said that he will discuss the ongoing crafting of the framework of a code of conduct in the South China Sea. "At least if there's a conduct and they would agree, so many things will be out," Duterte said. Flash Microsoft Corporation has handed over the ownership and management of an Intellectual Property (IP) Hub to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the regional bloc said on Thursday. The online IP Hub project was started by Microsoft in 2014 to create and encourage an intellectual property culture in Africa as an initiative developed under Microsoft 4Africa, as an online learning resource to drive awareness around intellectual property. It was to be piloted for two years and thereafter be handed over to the regional bloc member countries. The regional bloc confirmed in a statement that the IP Hub was officially handed over during a ceremony held in Nairobi Kenya on April 26 on the sidelines of the commemoration of this year's World Intellectual Property Day. "The COMESA IP Hub is a concerted effort between the public and private sector for the development of a regional platform that can contribute to a strengthened national IP protection system, in a manner that promotes innovation, business development and trade," COMESA Secretary-General Sindiso Ngwenya said in the statement. He added that the value of IP and IP protection has not yet been fully utilized within the region and that the hand over marks a shift in the regional bloc towards the realization of the need to protect IP, with copyright protection being the initial step. In addition to handing over the IP Hub, Microsoft 4Africa will continue to collaborate with IP authorities in the regional bloc to automate their IP registration processes. Microsoft and COMESA are also working together to enable the creation of new IP by promoting a trusted cloud infrastructure, underpinned by relevant policies around cyber security and data privacy. Flash A Russian warship sank after hitting a cargo ship in the Black Sea on Thursday due to heavy fog, but all were rescued, Turkish media said. The incident occurred off the coast of Kilyos in Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Strait, where the Russian warship crashed into a cargo ship and sank later, Turkish press reports said. Initial reports said 15 troops went missing, but the Turkish coast guard confirmed later on its website that all 78 Russians onboard were rescued. The freighter, which departed from Romania and was heading to Jordan, was carrying 17 crew and 8,800 sheep and was only slightly damaged, the reports said. The Turkish coast guard said the ship was flying a Togo flag. Turkey's NTV said the Russian ship, named Liman, sank in the collision believed to be caused by heavy fog in the area. The Turksih military sent a search and rescue plane to the area following a call for help from the Russians, and the conditions of the Russian crew are good, NTV said. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has called his Russian counterpart to express his sorrow, press reports said. You are here: Home Flash China on Thursday urged the European Union to stop interfering in Hong Kong and Macao affairs and to contribute more to China-EU relations. The European Commission and European External Action Service issued their 2016 reports on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR Wednesday. China has always objected the EU annual reports on Hong Kong and Macao since their return to the motherland, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily press briefing, adding that it is well known that "one country, two systems" has made remarkable achievements. "We urge the EU to halt interference in Hong Kong and Macao affairs, and contribute more to the China-EU relations," Geng said. He said that the SAR system has been effective under the Constitution and the basic law of the two SARs. China will stick to "one country, two systems," "Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong," "Macao people governing Macao,"and a high degree of autonomy, said Geng. Funding for Laurel's water intake project remains alive in the waning days of the Montana Legislature, but it now depends on the outcome of the bonding debate. The state Senate passed an amended version of House Bill 586 on Wednesday. The bill originally proposed a $2.5 million appropriation to the city of Laurel to help pay for its water intake, which is close to completion in the Yellowstone River. Amendments made by a Senate committee this week removed any monetary appropriation in the bill and replaced it with language relying on an infrastructure bill. Rep. Dennis Lenz, a Republican representing the Laurel area, sponsored the bill and said it was tough to get a standalone appropriation through the Legislature. If they were going a straight up or down vote on the bill, it was going to die in Finance and Claims (committee), he said. Laurel's best shot at intake funding appears to be in Senate Bill 367, a bonding bill carried by state Sen. Eric Moore, R-Miles City. Statewide infrastructure bills like his have been contentious topics for multiple sessions. The House Appropriations Committee inserted $1.7 million for the intake project into Moore's bill on Wednesday, after which it headed for the House floor. Lenz's bill, the one that specifically addresses the intake, still requires passage by the House after the amendments. It passed the Senate on Wednesday with a 42-6 vote. The bill was amended in Finance and Claims," said Sen. Tom Richmond, R-Billings, on the Senate floor. "This is a vehicle without gas in the tank. There is no funding here, but we need the vehicle to try and find gas somewhere else. The vehicle Richmond referred to is likely to be Moore's infrastructure bonding bill. The water intake provides water to Laurel residents and the CHS refinery. Floods in 2011 shifted the riverbed, which caused problems for the old intake. The city has received federal emergency funds for the new intake project but has battled with Gov. Steve Bullock's office over a required local match. China Aviation Daily | Apr. 27, 2017 In the summer season 2017, RusLine Ailrines will commence scheduled flights out of Pulkovo Airport to three new European destinations: Bergen (Norway), Palanga (Lithuania), and Tallinn (Estonia). The carrier also plans to expand its route network of domestic flights from St. Petersburg. From the 22nd of May, RusLine's aircraft will depart from Pulkovo to Tallinn twice a day, every day, except for Saturdays (when there will be one flight a day). Connections to Bergen will be in operation twice a week from the 1st of June: on Thursdays and Sundays. From the 10th of June, flights for the resort town of Palanga will depart every Saturday. Moreover, RusLine will continue its scheduled flights leaving five times a week from St. Petersburg to Oslo, and will resume flights to Vilnius. From the 29th of May to the 13th of July, and from the 18th of August, connections to the Lithuanian capital will depart five times a week. Between the 14th of July and the 17th of August, Vilnius Airport will be closed for reconstruction of the runway and aircraft will be temporarily redirected to Kaunas. In this summer season, domestic flights of RusLine will go from Pulkovo in 11 Russian directions: Voronezh, Gelendzhik, Ivanovo, Kirov, Kursk, Lipetsk, Penza, Tambov, Ulyanovsk, Cheboksary, and to a new route for airline from St. Petersburg Nizhny Novgorod. All flights will be operated using the Bombardier CRJ100/200, designed to carry 50 passengers. Evgeniy Ilyin, Chief Commercial Officer of Pulkovo Airport's managing company Northern Capital Gateway remarked: "RusLine is one of the fastest growing regional carriers and is a participant in Pulkovo Airport's M2 transfer programme. Its extensive route network, which takes in 17 domestic and international destinations from Pulkovo, allows RusLine's passengers to travel in comfort around Russia, and opens up for those living in various parts of the country the opportunity to fly to the cities of the Baltic States and Norway with a convenient connection in St. Petersburg." RusLine has been operating regular connecting flights out of St. Petersburg since 2010. The airline has twice won the accolade of being Pulkovo Airport's most successfully expanding regional carrier at the annual LED Together award ceremony which recognises the airport's best airlines. Over a period of 3 months in 2017 at Pulkovo, RusLine serviced 10,200 passengers: 3% more than for the corresponding period the previous year. The militaries of the United States and Republic of Korea are accelerating installation of the controversial Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system south of Seoul. If, as US Pacific Command chief Harry Harris claimed, THAAD is expected to be operational "in the coming days", there is little chance of it being suspended because of protests from Beijing and Moscow, even though it comes at a time when Washington and its allies want them to commit more comprehensively and deeply to coordinated moves. Although the official excuse has been Pyongyang's wayward stuntsmanship and the threat it poses, making THAAD a fait accompli and pre-empting any change of mind from the next administration in Seoul may be a more powerful driver behind the rush to get THAAD up and running in the ROK. Of course, Beijing and Moscow have valid reasons to protest, because the advanced system upsets the regional strategic balance and its radar undermines Chinese and Russian security interests, even though both the US and ROK claim otherwise. And since the deployment of THAAD in the ROK is now seemingly done and dusted, China and Russia have no choice but to respond. Yet, whatever form that takes, it will not be end of the story, since the nascent coalition against Pyongyang's nuclear/missile program is likely to be collateral damage from the intransigence of Washington and Seoul. Beijing and Moscow are in the same boat with Washington and its regional allies on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula thanks to a shared security interest. And in the White House's latest rhetoric on Korean Peninsula denuclearization, China and Russia are referred to as "partners in the region", indicating unprecedented eagerness for a united front. Beijing, however, has been identified as crucial to dissuading the DPRK from continuing along the path it has chosen. So much so that Washington seems to believe that Beijing alone can make a dramatic difference. Beijing, on its part, has been consistent in adherence to diplomacy and pursuing a nuclear-free peninsula with the united efforts of all stakeholders. The push to make THAAD operational in the ROK, however, creates a serious distraction for Beijing, because it represents a new security threat to it, one it must now address as a matter of urgency. Washington and Seoul claim Beijing is misreading the situation and overreacting, but that is because they are not willing to take Beijing's concerns seriously and have not looked at the matter from Beijing's perspective. Seoul does not seem to care what this means in the long run. But THAAD threatens to permanently change the regional landscape and only adds new dynamics to a situation that was already complex and requiring of careful handling. Editor's note: This is the seventh in a series of reports focusing on the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, the proposed extended trading route linking Asia, Europe and Africa. An employee arranges blades for circular saws at an assembly line at Gang Yan Diamond Tools, a Chinese manufacturing plant, located in the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone in Rayong, southeast of Bangkok. [Photo/Agencies] When Xu Genluo arrived in Thailand in 2000, he barely knew anyone and spoke very little Thai. At the time, the executive with Holley Worldwide Holdings, a private developer of electrical equipment in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, was uncertain if his business would grow because there was little Chinese investment in the country, which styles itself "The Land of Smiles". Now, the company operates an industrial zone in Rayong, a city on the east coast of the Gulf of Thailand, in partnership with a local business. Total investment has reached $2.5 billion and 86 Chinese companies operate in the zone. "To us, the Belt and Road Initiative has provided a boost when we needed it most," he said, referring to two proposed trade routes, officially called the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Data provided by the Chinese embassy in Bangkok show that China has been Thailand's largest trade partner since 2013, the year the initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping. Last year, the total import/export volume between the two countries was $65.8 billion, an increase of 2.5 percent from 2015, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Thailand's main exports to China are plastics and rubber products, plus mechanical and electrical goods. In return, a wide range of machinery and electronic items account for about 50 percent of China's exports to Thailand. The countryhome to one of the largest groups of ethnic Chinese in the world and a gateway to Southeast Asia's 600 million consumersis a favored destination for Chinese investment. Last year, China was the third-largest investor in Thailand, following Singapore and Japan, according to the Board of Investment of Thailand. The number of Chinese tourists visiting the country also has soared in recent years. Last year, there were 8.77 million trips, more than four times the number in 2013, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Zhang Peidong, economic and commercial counselor at China's embassy in Bangkok, said Thailand's development plans and national strategies are a good fit for the Belt and Road Initiative, and will offer new business opportunities for Chinese companies. However, for the investments to succeed, companies must develop a culture of cooperation, build good brands and obey local laws and conventions, according to a report Zhang wrote last year that was posted on the embassy's website. In February, Hirunya Suchinai, secretary-general of the Board of Investment of Thailand, told Sing Sian Yer Pao Daily News, a Chinese-language publication in the country, that the initiative has boosted domestic development. She hopes to see more Chinese investment in the biotechnology, nanotechnology and digital technology sectors to help Thailand reach the targets set in Thailand 4.0, a new, government-designed economic model to develop high-tech industries and innovation. Jack Ma (R), founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, and then US President-elect Donald Trump pose for the media after their meeting at Trump Tower in New York, January 9, 2017. [Photo/VCG] Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is acting to fulfill a promise he made to US President Donald Trump: Get 1 million small and medium-sized US businesses enrolled on his online platforms to sell their products to China's growing middle class and create 1 million jobs in the United States. Ma announced on Tuesday that Alibaba will host a two-day conference in Detroit in June to teach US businesses how to sell to the company's 443 million customers in China on the world's biggest e-commerce site. "We are already a gateway for thousands of global brands, retailers and companies to sell to Chinese consumers. And we want to expand that gateway (and) level the playing field to make it easy for American entrepreneurs, small businesses and farmers alike to take advantage of the China opportunity," said Ma, also Alibaba's founder, in an open letter. Called the Gateway 17, the conference will be held on June 20-21 and is expected to attract more than 1,000 US businesses, the company said in a statement. Ma will speak at the event. Ma met Trump in New York in January, shortly after he was elected, to discuss how Alibaba could help create jobs in the US. Ma promised he would help create 1 million jobs over five years by enabling small businesses to sell goods on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms primarily on its Taobao and Tmall websites. Jennifer Kuperman, head of international corporate communications at Alibaba, said that the 1 million figure is nothing but "conservative". "If you think about the number of businesses on our platform, if they even hire one person to help with the demand from Chinese consumers, that gets you to a million jobs; so that's very simple. And that we think it's basically conservative, because we believe that we're going to make it larger than that in the next five years," said Kuperman. Brion Tingler, head of external affairs for Alibaba, said that Detroit is an ideal location for the event. "Detroit has a long history of selling to China. Detroit is also considered home to some of America's greatest ingenuity and innovation and its location is convenient to attract small business people and farmers from the heartland," he said. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said that China is an "important and viable market for a wide range of products and services. This event will open doors for Michigan businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs by helping them identify and enter into new relationships there". Brian Gao, president of the Detroit Chinese Business Association, said his group is excited that Detroit will be the host city. "The DCBA views Jack Ma as one of the most important entrepreneurs in the 21st century, and to host his only scheduled public speaking engagement for 2017 in Detroit is a seminal moment for our organization and the state of Michigan," Gao said. By Meng Fanbin in Beijing and Yuan Hui in Hohhot | China Daily | Updated: 2017-04-27 08:17 Nontoxic colorant from rare earths is expected to be put into full production in the current year in Baotou, the biggest city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, following a decision by the local government to upgrade the rare earths industry to value-added processes against previously mining the raw materials. "Due to its perfect coloring and nontoxic properties the coloring agent, mainly for plastics and leathers, can replace most existing dyes in the market," said Zhang Hongjie, inventor of the colorant and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There are currently two kinds of coloring agent in the Chinese market: organic compounds releasing toxic gases with high temperatures and inorganic compounds containing heavy metal elements like lead and cadmium. The research findings were very important, because China's plastic output is the second biggest in the world and plastic products have been criticized a great deal by Western countries for containing harmful materials, Zhang said. The move to produce the colorant follows plans by private company Century Zhongtian (Beijing) Investment Co Ltd and the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center to form Zhongke Century Technology Co Ltd. That was in the wake of the research center successfully manufacturing the nontoxic tolerant in November. Baotou-based Zhongke Century, which aims to be the world's biggest rare earth colorant research center, plans to invest 1 billion yuan ($14.5 million) and build two production lines with respective annual output of 50 metric tons and 100 tons, worth a combined 10 billion yuan each year. "The preparation work at early stage of the project is under way," said Geng Biao, general manager of the investment company. "Currently site selection and fundraising is taking place," Geng added. Estimates are that rare earths reserves in Baotou account for 83 percent of the total in China and 30 percent of world reserves. The local government is promoting the upgrade of its rare earths industry from previously exploiting the raw materials, to developing comprehensive processing technologies with higher added value. Around 5.9 million yuan in special funds were allocated by the Office of Science and Technology in Inner Mongolia, to financially support the construction of a production demonstration line at the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center. "Technologies for producing colorant from rare earths and sulfides are one of the most import improvements in developing rare earth in the downstream chain," said Chi Jianyi, director of the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center. The technology was listed in a list of prescribed alternatives to toxic and harmful materials, issued by Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Widely used in the fields of plastics, paints, inks and leathers, the coloring agent has huge potential in market demand, said Chi. "Without toxicity, the coloring agent we produce is totally environmentally friendly and can even be used in lipstick manufacturing." Based on three patented technologies, the green dyestuff is a synthetic product of rare earth elements including lanthanum, cerium and sulfides. Research into the rare earth colorant began in 2003, when scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences worked with experts from Russia, who used traditional methods to produce the rare earth agent. "The traditional method is not only sophisticated but also very costly, so it can not be used in large-scale production," said colorant inventor Zhang Hongjie. The start of production of the colorant will be the result of more than 10 years of successful research by the laboratory. Zhang said scientists had invented a totally new method of producing colorant from rare earths and sulfides which was simple and practical, without using hydrogen sulfides and other toxic materials. The patented technology will also see large-scale production of the staining material. At the moment studies on rare earth sulfide synthetics, especially on their application, remain at the early stage. Contact the writers at mengfanbin@chinadaily.com.cn and yuanhui@chinadaily.com.cn A worker monitors production at an iron and steel plant in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province. [Photo by Si Wei/For China Daily] China's steelmakers need to press ahead with capacity cutting and deleveraging, despite the sector's strong performance in the first quarter of the year, an expert said. Gu Jianguo, executive vice-chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association, said the entire industry needs to remain sober about the latest favorable results, as there is still not a solid foundation for the sector to realize sustainable returns. Steel companies should continue to avoid "near-sighted behavior", and avoid expanding output blindly, Gu said at a news conference on Wednesday. Industry data showed that steelmakers' output and profits increased in the first three months. Between January and March, total crude steel output grew by 4.6 percent year-on-year, with the average daily output in March reaching a record high, according to the CISA. In the same period, combined profits among CISA's members amounted to 23.3 billion yuan ($3.4 billion), compared with losses of 8.75 billion yuan last year. The three-month statistics, however, are insufficient to forecast the trend for the entire year, Gu said. "More observations are necessary on steel demand and consumption." Besides, falling exports and fluctuations in prices are two problems facing the industry, Gu added. Liu Zhenjiang, CISA's secretary-general, said the steel mills, in addition to further slashing excessive capacity, should also attach importance to deleveraging to avoid debt problems. China set a goal of reducing steel capacity by 50 million metric tons in 2017, and will continue its drive in 2018, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic regulator. The target was built on the progress China made in 2016, when the country slashed steel output by 65 million tons. Zhang Yingying, an analyst at Beijing-based JLC Network Technology Co Ltd, said the new round of capacity cuts is likely to cause supplies to run slightly low in provinces such as Hebei, Shandong and Jiangsu, major steel production bases. "Prices might decline correspondingly in a small range within a short period," she added. The country's annual steel output stood at 1.1 billion tons, with an apparent consumption of 800 million tons a year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Labourers shovel coal at a coal storage site in Hefei, Anhui province July 21, 2011.[Photo/Agencies] China's listed coal companies made more money in the first quarter aided by rising coal prices, Securities Daily reported Thursday. As of April 26, among the eight coal companies that released their first-quarter financial report, seven said their net profits saw large increases, except Henan Shenhuo Coal & Power Co Ltd. Pingdingshan Tianan Coal Mining Co Ltd reported a 102.96 percent increase in its first-quarter operating revenue, while net profits surged 7962.83 percent to 317 million yuan. Among the 11 coal companies that released their Q1 profit forecast, seven said they expected higher earnings, three forecasted that they could reverse previous losses, and one hoped to reduce loss. Jizhong Energy Resources Co Ltd estimated its net profits at 155-310 million yuan in the first quarter, up 3587.67-7275.33 percent year on year. Last year, the company posted a net profit of 270 million yuan, an increase of 1422.70 percent from the previous year. Anhui Hengyuan Coal Industry and Electricity Power Co Ltd also expected to make a net profit of 287 million yuan in the first quarter, jumping about 5878.06 percent from a year earlier. All coal companies attributed the earnings hike to sharply rising coal prices and robust demand. Coal prices in China have surged since last year, as a result of the government's effort to curb industrial overcapacity. Premier Li Keqiang said in the Government Work Report that China will reduce coal production by at least 150 million tons this year. At the end of 2016, the price index of Bohai Bay thermal coal was 593 yuan per ton, up by 222 yuan per ton compared with the beginning of the year. During the week ending April 18, 2017, the price was 599 yuan per ton. However, coal prices are expected to see a decline in the second quarter, Deng Shun, a coal researcher at GF Futures told the newspaper. Normally, April and May sees weak demand. Furthermore, enterprises have produced too much coal due to high profits, Deng added. The National Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday that the government will encourage coal companies to merge and restructure to increase efficiency in the industry and take measures to return thermal coal prices to a reasonable range. The Airbus A350 takes off for its maiden flight at the Toulouse-Blagnac airport in southwestern France June 14, 2013. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn] China Southern Airlines has signed a deal worth nearly $6 billion to buy 20 aircraft from European plane maker Airbus SAS, the carrier announced on Wednesday. The price of each Airbus A350-900 aircraft is at about $298.9 million, including airframe and engine, according to the catalogue price of Airbus SAS, a division of the multinational Airbus Group SE that manufactures civil aircraft. The Guangzhou-based company, which ranks as Asia's largest airline by passenger numbers, will take delivery of the A350-900s starting in 2019, with all of the planes to be handed over by the end of 2022. The total consideration will be paid to Airbus SAS in installments according to the respective delivery schedule for each of the relevant Airbus Aircraft from 2019 to 2022, according to the announcement. China Southern, which recently agreed to sell a minority stake to American Airlines, is buying its first A350s as part of a push to expand the fleet to 1,000 planes by 2020 from 700 now, said Wang Changshun, the president. The Airbus aircraft will boost China Southern Airlines' capacity in Aircraft Transport Kits or ATKs by 12.1 percent versus the level as of December 31, without accounting for retirements, said the company. The Airbus A350-900 model can carry 325 passengers and 16 tons of cargo in a typical configuration, according to information on the Airbus website. China Southern and its units have ordered more than $15 billion of new aircraft from Airbus and Boeing Co since 2015 as more people fly in the worlds most populous nation. The airline has been adding routes to Australia, New Zealand and countries in Southeast Asia as it competes with China Eastern Airlines Corp and Air China Ltd. The International Air Transport Association predicts China will surpass the US to become the world's biggest air-travel market by 2024. BERLIN Germany understands China's efforts to open its markets step by step, and it is "unrealistic" to expect China to fully open its market overnight, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Wednesday. He made the remarks at a joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi after attending the third round of China-Germany Strategic Dialogue on Diplomacy and Security. Germany is confident that China will not reverse its opening up policy, and the bilateral economic and trade exchanges aim for win-win results, Gabriel said, adding that the open market and equal partnership are the common aspirations for both countries. He also said China is one of Germany's closest partners in world politics, adding that the rapid development of bilateral ties in all areas is a result of the high mutual trust between the two sides. Gabriel also said that Germany supports China's Belt and Road Initiative and is ready to increase the pragmatic cooperation with China within this framework. Many major issues of global concerns can not be solved without China, Gabriel said, noting that Germany attaches great importance to China's international role and is ready to strengthen the bilateral cooperation in global and regional affairs. Germany is fully confident of the prospect of the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, he noted. For his part, Wang said China expects Germany and members of the European Union (EU) to exert influence so that the bloc could at the earliest date implement its obligations stipulated in Article 15 of the protocol on China's accession to the WTO, a "stumbling block" of China-EU economic cooperation. In accordance with the article, WTO members should cease the surrogate country approach in anti-dumping investigations on China after Dec 11, 2016, which expires exactly 15 years after China's admission. China appreciates Germany's positive attitude in solving the aforementioned problem, Wang said, noting that the two countries also have remarkable consensus on reaching the China-EU investment agreement and opening the free trade cooperation as early as possible, he said. In the dialogue, the two sides agreed to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership, make joint preparations for the upcoming high-level visits, and promote the dialogue mechanisms on people-to-people, financial and security exchanges. Beijing and Berlin believed their economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature, and the two nations have far more complementarities than competitions in this aspect. The two countries said they are willing to facilitate the investments of companies, noting that amid the rising economic anti-globalization and protectionism, China and Germany, both major trading nations in the world, shall uphold free trade and investment and deliver their explicit support for openness, inclusiveness, cooperation and win-win results. Moreover, as the second and fourth economies in the world, China and Germany also shoulder responsibilities to safeguard peace and stability, said Wang, adding that China supports Germany to play a more important role in European affairs and global governance. China's Europe policy remains consistent and stable, even though the continent has entered a key period, as the peoples of France, Britain and Germany will in the coming months vote on their countries' development directions and the European integration, he said. Wang added that it is China's hope and belief that Germany, as the core country in Europe, will keep committed to the European stability, and work with China to offset global uncertainties with a stable bilateral relationship, and facilitate regional integration with enhancing the China-Europe cooperation. China welcomes Germany's increasing emphasis on Asia, and China particularly, on its agenda, said Wang, adding that Beijing warmly welcomes German Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries, who will attend the Belt and Road Forum on International Cooperation next month as the representative of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the meeting, the two sides also exchanged opinions on the issues of common concern, such as Korean Peninsula and Syria, and agreed to solve these conflicts by peaceful means. HANOI Vietnam is expected to welcome over 1.271 million person-times of Chinese visitors in the first four months of 2017, up 61.1 percent year-on-year, said the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) on Thursday. From January to April, the country's foreign arrivals are forecast to hit 4.284 million person-times, up 30.3 percent year-on-year. Concerning markets of Vietnamese tourism in the first four months, China maintains the largest one with 1.271 million person-times during four-month period, followed by South Korea (701,837 person-times), Japan (261,571 person-times), Russia (230,946 person-times) and the United States (228,521 person-times) among others. In April alone, Vietnam is likely to welcome 1.071 million person-times of foreign visitors, up 34 percent year-on-year, making it the fourth consecutive month in 2017 that the foreign arrivals surpass one million. CANBERRA - Australia needs to shift its trade focus from traditional partners such as the United States and Britain in favor of emerging economies such as China and India, according to an economic report released on Thursday. A report from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has said in light of recent protectionist attitudes from the US and Britain in the midst of Brexit, Australia should turn its focus to more open economies such as China. CEDA's policy committee chairman, Professor Rodney Maddock said Australia was too committed to its "traditional" trading partners and should focus on the "substantial" opportunities offered by Asian nations. "With concerns about trade barriers stemming from Brexit and the Trump presidency, Australia should focus on engagement with its immediate region where growth opportunities are substantial," Maddock said. "There is a significant opportunity for Australian outbound investment in distribution systems for chilled and fresh foods in Asia, which remain poor. "There are significant emerging markets with an exploding middle-class, demanding higher quality products and services. This represents a huge opportunity for Australia." Maddock added that there were misconceptions about local benefits of outbound investment, but said it could deliver "significant economic benefits" through investment in exports. "In reality, (offshore investment) can deliver significant economic benefits to the Australian economy and in fact create jobs both here in Australia and abroad," Maddock said. "The lifting of trade barriers and integration of Australia into the global market-place has resulted in the biggest increase in our living standards in our history." BEIJING - China's steel industry group has voiced concern over the US probe on steel imports, saying the move sends a signal of protectionism and is against the principles of fair trade. The announcement by China Iron and Steel Association came in response to US President Donald Trump's call for the initiation of a trade probe on steel imports on national security grounds last week. The US president has signed a memo directing his administration to expedite an investigation into whether steel imports are jeopardizing US national security. "China's steel exports to the US are quite limited, which absolutely won't affect the security of the US steel industry," the association said in a statement, adding that US steel imports mainly came from other countries, not China. In 2016, China exported 1.17 million tons of steel to the United States, accounting for only 1 percent of China's total exports of the material. Data from the United States showed they imported 789,000 tons of steel from China, accounting for merely 2.6 percent of the country's imports of the metal. The statement stressed that both China and the United States were facing industrial overcapacity in the global market, and as a major producer, consumer and trader of steel, China had taken solid steps to address the issue. Likewise, the Unites States should also make efforts to adjust industrial structure and eliminate outdated capacity to promote healthy development in the sector, the statement said. Tackling overcapacity in bloated sectors such as steel and coal has been high on the Chinese government agenda in recent years. In 2017, China aims to slash steel production capacity by around 50 million tons. VANCOUVER - A row that erupted this week between Canada and the United States over Canadian softwood lumber exports proves that Canada must expand its lumber trade to China and other Asian markets, Canadian officials said Wednesday. New tariffs Canada's government and the lumber industry must quickly diversify their export markets to reduce reliance on the United States, Premier of Canada's British Columbia province Christy Clark said. "We have already increased our softwood lumber exports to China by over 2,000 percent with strong progress in other markets," she told reporters gathered at a lumber yard in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge. "We are going to continue to work on that. It is our hope that one day our markets will be so diversified that we don't need another softwood deal with the United States," she said. This week, the United States slapped Canadian softwood lumber with new import duties ranging from 3 to 24 percent, starting next week. In recent decades, US administrations have occasionally blasted the Canadian lumber industry as unfairly subsidized, claiming that Canadian softwood is being "dumped" into the US market at costs that undercut US forest producers. The US lumber industry argues that because most Canadian timber is harvested on government-owned land, the resulting low prices for the right to harvest that wood has kept Canadian lumber below market value. The new tariffs applied to Canadian wood by the Trump administration is a "shakedown" that mirrors similar unsuccessful attacks on Canadian lumber by the US industry and government in the past, said David Emerson, BC's special trade envoy to the United States. "We're going down a path we've all seen before," he told reporters on a conference call. "It's egregious. It's terrible." He said the Canadian federal government needs to fight the tariffs aggressively through every legal means as it has done successfully in the past. But Canada's lumber industry must diversify in the meantime, he said. Looking to China "Hopefully (this fight) will cause Canadians to reflect deeply about the importance of building trade bridges with other parts of the world, and for British Columbia, that's really largely going to involve Asia," he said. Canada exports about C$4.8 billion($3.54 billion) in total forest products to China annually, including about C$1.6 billion($1.18 billion) in lumber. Over the last ten years, Canadian forest product exports to China have climbed from 5 to 15 percent of the country's total forestry exports - still just a fraction of the lumber that Canada exports to the United States. There are currently no import tariffs applied to Canadian softwood by China, according to the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC). Derek Nighbor, FPAC's CEO, told Xinhua in a Wednesday interview that he travelled to China three months ago as part of a BC government trade mission. He said China's appetite and ability to build commercial and residential structures with BC wood is increasing. "As our companies get to know the Chinese market better, and as our governments deepen their relationships, I think there is untapped potential in China most definitely," he said. The CEO noted both Canada and China are struggling with an unpredictable US administration. "We and the Chinese share a common bond right now just around general uncertainty," he said. Meanwhile, Canada's International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and Finance Minister Bill Morneau visited China last week as part of exploratory free trade talks, according to the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster. Morneau said the trip aimed to boost relations with China and key industries there, while Champagne worked to promote the use of Canadian lumber in home construction in China. Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr will also travel to China in June with forestry leaders in a bid to find new markets for Canadian softwood, the report said. Shanghai Disneyland is the most favored domestic destination for tourists planning to travel during the May Day holiday from April 29 to May 1, according to a list released by online travel agency Ctrip. Let's take a look at the most popular locations for a long weekend getaway. No 10 The Songcheng Scenic Spot Rolf Bulander, chairman of Bosch's Mobility Solutions business sector, said the company aims to better meet the needs of the Chinese market in the future. [Photo provided to China Daily] Bosch, a leading global supplier of automotive technology and services, is demonstrating a series of automated, connected and electrified mobility solutions at the 2017 Shanghai auto show, as part of its efforts to shape the future of smart mobility with local partners. "Bosch possesses deep insights into trends in the automotive industry and is actively leading change, which also helps Bosch to better meet the needs of the local market," said Rolf Bulander, a member of the board of management and chairman of the company's Mobility Solutions business sector. In the field of automated driving, Bosch is now working with local partners, including leading high-definition map providers AutoNavi, Baidu and NavInfo, to introduce a crowd-sourced, robust and accurate map service that will be an important prerequisite for automated driving in China. As part of this joint development, Bosch said it will adopt an open and standardized approach, which will be interoperable with different OEMs and map providers worldwide, allowing Bosch's customers to choose their preferred map supplier. Bosch has also started its automated test drive on Chinese roads with a locally developed demonstration car, which is equipped with five Bosch mid-range radars and a multipurpose camera, Electronic Stability Program, Electric Power Steering system, together with integrated localization and augmented reality HMI supported by Baidu iV. In connected mobility, Bosch is now working with Huawei, China's world-leading communications technology provider, and Vodafone, a British multinational mobile network operator. The three are conducting road tests in Germany of its telematics communication technology, the LTE-V2X, to achieve real time data exchange between vehicles and provide the technological readiness for connectivity and automated driving. The cooperation with Huawei has also been extended to China, where localized development and testing are being carried out on vehicle anti-collision warnings and emergency braking in accordance with the requirements of Chinese regulations and local road conditions to better serve the domestic market. In March, Bosch signed a memorandum of cooperation with HealthLink, a leading Chinese provider of third-party emergency services management, to launch the "i Rescue" emergency service. In addition to enhancing its own innovative capabilities, Bosch is to launch in China a program called the Auto Artificial Intelligence Accelerator to offer help to promising startups with a focus on technologies and solutions in the areas of driver assistance, autonomous driving and smart mobility solutions. The initial application period for companies interested in the program is before May 15. Ultimately, there will be 15 outstanding domestic entrepreneurial teams selected, said Bosch. The company is the first global automotive technology and services supplier to launch an incubator accelerator project in China. Bosch said it will fully leverage its innovation abilities, global experience and industry resources and advantages to support the fast development of outstanding local startups. Elmar Degenhart, chairman of Continental's executive board, gives a speech at the Shanghai auto show. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Automotive supplier Continental AG is to continue its heavy investment in China to seize new opportunities emerging in the world's largest auto market, according to its senior executives. Elmar Degenhart, chairman of Continental's executive board, said the group invested 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in the past five years in China and plans to invest a similar amount in the next five years. Degenhart made the remarks at a news briefing during the Shanghai auto show that will run to April 28. "We are growing fast with all of our five divisions, so we are taking care that none of our business are falling behind when it comes to localization," said Degenhart. Since starting its business in China in 1994, Continental has built 27 production facilities for its business units of chassis and safety, interior, powertrain, tire, and contitech as well as 17 research and development centers in the country. Ralf Cramer, president and CEO of Continental China, said among other projects, the company is building a new research and development center in Chongqing and is to start manufacturing of a 48-volt mild hybrid solution later this year at its expanded Tianjin plant. Cramer said the solution, which helps to cut cars' gasoline use, has great potential in the country as many automakers are technologically unlikely to meet the China's requirements that by 2020 new cars' fuel consumption should not exceed 5 liters per 100 kilometers. A highly integrated high-voltage drivetrain, tailor-made for Chinese requirements, is also scheduled for manufacturing in China. "Continental is a technological leader in the field of electric mobility", said Rudolf Stark, a senior executive at the company's powertrain division. "We are already in large-scale production with high-voltage and 48 volt mild hybrid drivetrain technology. To us electrification is the path into the future of clean mobility." Continental has joined hands with telecom operator China Unicom to build a 50:50 joint venture in Shanghai. The move is designed to establish a world-class intelligent transport system solution provider to satisfy the increasing market demands in China. The joint venture will focus on vehicle data services and applications, intelligent vehicle applications as well as connected vehicle software and hardware integration solutions, said a Continental news release. "Their (China Unicom's) strong automotive experience as well as their very well established access to high-potential service market are a perfect strategic fit for us," said Helmut Matschi, head of Continental's interior division. "Continental is committed to providing mobility solutions and services to people and goods, and we see China as the market primed for services. "We also fully believe that China will continue to be a strong market for nobility services. With this new joint venture, we will accelerate the development of connected vehicles and make the future mobility start earlier with us," said Matschi. Jiang Zhengxin, senior vice-president of China Unicom, said: "With the international strength of our partner Continental, we are enhancing our global connected service capability for connected vehicles. "Continental is a leading automotive supplier with abundant experience in automotive electronics development and manufacturing. "Thus, we firmly believe we will deliver world class intelligent transportation products and systems." Honda debuts the hybrid edition of its popular CR-V crossover at the Shanghai auto show on April 19, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] The Japanese brand's hybrid version of its popular CR-V sport utility vehicle made its world premiere on April 19, the first media day of the 2017 Shanghai auto show. The CR-V hybrid will go on sale later this year in China, where potential consumers were spurred by stricter regulations on air quality. The automaker said the CR-V hybrid will come loaded with the full suite of Honda Sensing advanced safety and driver assistance technology. The new model will be powered by Honda's Sport Hybrid drivetrain that applies Intelligent Multi-Mode Drive two-motor hybrid system. The i-MMD hybrid motor, already used in the Honda Accord hybrid, combines a 2.0-liter 4-cylinder with a pair of electric motors, one powering the engine and the other mated to the differential. The new model will be capable of running on three modes and switch smoothly among the Electric, Hybrid, Engine mode. Honda announced an electrified vehicle developed exclusively for the Chinese market will be launched in 2018 at the auto show, and brought the NeuV concept mini-vehicle to China for the first time. HANOVER, Germany The combination of better cameras, better sensors and machine learning will lead to more extensive application of robots in production, said ABB Group's chief digital officer Guido Jouret in an interview with Xinhua at the Hanover Fair. Jouret, who leads the development and deployment of ABB's digital solutions since last October, underlined that the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is to interconnect the islands of automation, namely to automate and connect multiple separate systems that are currently disconnected. "It's very difficult to make a sensor as sensitive as human's fingers which make work like quality check hardly able to be done by robots," Jouret told Xinhua, adding that complex tasks that cannot be automated today are "opportunities." Robots like YuMi, which was introduced as world's first truly collaborative dual-arm robot by ABB in 2015, are designed for high-precision manufacturing such as producing smartphones or complicated electronics. Jouret believed that they would have potential to be widely applied in China as a strong manufacturing power. "There are already some elements of learning ability in YuMi, while in future we will see more cameras, more sensors and more inputs which could be both visual and auditory, maybe like listening to the environment and responding cases of strange sounds or signals," he told Xinhua. While most robots currently live in cages, because they can injure people, Jouret pointed out in future, especially in certain service industries, robots could work side-by-side with people; whether it's in agriculture picking fruits, delivering medicines or in hospitals helping take care of patients. "Robots will take some jobs and create opportunities for better jobs, rather than taking all jobs," he said, adding many countries with the most robots are also countries with the lowest unemployment. China is very farsighted in investing in automation, Jouret said. As the cost of labor increases, the amount of value created per worker has to increase as well, and therefore the automation is important. "We are absolutely interested in having conversations about partnerships with Chinese companies," he added. Visitors walk in front of the ZTE stand at the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain, Feb 22, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] DHAKA - China's ZTE will build the world's largest virtual Subscriber Data Management (vSDM) platform for Bangladesh's cellular service provider Banglalink. Over 35 million Bangladeshi mobile users will benefit from the newly transformed network, said Banglalink in a statement received here Thursday. ZTE is a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet. Banglalink, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based company VEON Ltd., is one of the leading digital communications service providers in Bangladesh with over 31 million subscribers. According to the statement, vSDM will help to manage Banglalink's customer data more efficiently and increase service availability. The upgraded network can simultaneously support 2G/3G/4G/VoWiFi/VoLTE and other high tech services, it said. With this virtualization network, users can enjoy faster mobile broadband, video chat, multimedia conference, multimedia message and other services, said the operator. This technology will also ensure a faster network and its seamless connectivity will help users engage with the digital world. "Bangladeshi people are getting more data oriented in their daily lives, staying always connected is critical in today's world," Sanjay Vaghasia, chief digital officer of Banglalink, was quoted as saying in the statement. "Our partnership with ZTE will enable us to embrace not only the digital agenda but with virtualization at an incredible pace, help us escalate faster, and increase our reach to our end customers whilst maintaining the highest standards of security," said the officer. Vincent Liu, chief executive officer of ZTE Corporation Bangladesh LTD, said, "Digitization has become the vital part of today's world. It is a proud moment for us to partner with Banglalink and bring more people under the coverage of latest vSDM technology." 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 Clear strategy of the State Council will employ best minds, channel resources China's State Council established a clear strategy for tackling air pollution and its causes by establishing a new body of procedures and processes that will include input from different ministries and departments to break down administrative divisions. The new, nationwide plans will be backed by central government funding, according to an announcement from the State Council's executive meeting on Wednesday, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang. The new measures, led by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, require input from the ministries of agriculture, health, and industry and information technology, as well as universities and research institutions. Top-tier professionals will work together within the new process to deal with most pressing issues in reducing air pollution. The result is to be a clear timetable and road map for improving China's air quality, while the new measures will help to collect and use the highest quality resources across departments. Research will be centered on pollution formation, effective control of air pollutants, and providing relief for residents, especially those in the hard-hit Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The aim is to improve local air quality through tangible measures that can later be widely applied across the country. Li stressed tackling pollution and its causes in his Government Work Report in March. He also emphasized the importance of targeted scientific measures in dealing with the problem as he sought suggestions from the National People's Congress delegations. In 2016, the 338 cities monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection enjoyed good air quality on 78.8 percent of the days, up 2.1 percentage points from 2015, Minister Chen Jining said on Monday. Also on Monday, China launched another round of monthlong environmental inspections in seven provincial regions to push local governments to reduce pollution. Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said that the new plans will help allocate research efforts more wisely, avoiding overlapping efforts, while also making the country's fight against air pollution more systematic. "We do need better efforts in sorting out effective measures in fighting air pollution and that definitely calls for cooperation across various fields. The new mechanism will help us to achieve more targeted measures in reducing pollution," he said. Meng Dongxue follows 17 public accounts on WeChat, and they are all about babies. "Hundreds of strangers are helping me raise my little girl, Xuegao," said the 26-year-old, whose daughter is 5 months old. Meng is among millions of new moms in China. Last year saw the most births this century, 18.46 million, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Unsatisfied with merely providing adequate food and clothing for Xuegao, the top concern when Meng was a child, she is focused on scientific parenting and education. To ensure her baby has the best parenting available, Meng follows public accounts created by pediatricians and psychologists. "I don't want to be an old style mom, and some of my parents' experiences are already outdated," Meng said, citing a recent disagreement about a pillow. Her parents and parents-in-law think Xuegao should sleep with a pillow, but Meng insists she should not have a pillow until she learns how to sit. "A prominent pediatrician posted an article, saying that babies feel uncomfortable on pillows when their spine is not well-developed," she said. "It was scientific and convincing." This modern parenting style has given rise to WeChat groups related to everything from breast-feeding to baby food, catering mostly to young parents used to getting their information online. "I receive hundreds of messages a day from moms who share the same concerns about raising children. I can always seek help," said Feng Hua, 29, who has a 6-month old girl. "Their answers are a panacea for all my problems." Nianiashuo, an account Meng follows, has attracted nearly 20,000 subscribers since it was created in 2015. Zhou Jieren, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, posts three articles a week about her personal experiences. She works as an entrepreneur at a biomedical company, and her husband is a pediatrician, so the couple try to provide scientific parenting tips. "We are overwhelmed by parenting information on the internet, but the quality of advice can be misleading," Zhou said. According to Cai Jing, a gynecologist at Xinqiao Hospital in Chongqing, most of her patients were born in the 1980s. She reads a lot of articles about pregnancy and shares her professional advice with expectant moms. "The parenting environment is changing, with mothers inclined to entrust their babies to thousands of faceless netizens," she said. "It surely helps, but seeking professional advice is essential." Taiwan resident Lee Ming-che, who is under investigation for endangering national security, was "in good physical condition", the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday. Lee was detained on suspicion of jeopardizing national security, and some groups in Taiwan have used the case to stir up trouble, the office said earlier this month. He is in good physical condition and is being given good medical care, said Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, at a regular news briefing on Wednesday. "Lee's medical needs have been taken care of. He has also written a letter explaining the situation to his family," Ma said. The suspect's legal rights are being protected during the investigation," Ma said. The mainland has always encouraged exchanges between people from both sides of the Straits and has issued mainland travel permits for Taiwan residents, Ma said, adding that every year more than 5 million Taiwan residents visit. During the briefing, Ma also urged the Taiwan authorities to adhere to the 1992 Consensus. The mainland has always maintained hope that the two sides will adhere to the 1992 Consensus, which serves as the foundation of cross-Straits relations. However, the relationship changed on May 20, when the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan denied the consensus, Ma said. "If the Taiwan authorities sincerely want to restore the communication mechanism across the Straits, they should return to the common political ground - the 1992 Consensus," he said. Ma also confirmed the upcoming visit to the mainland of Lien Chan, former chairman of the Kuomintang in Taiwan, and said he is expected to meet Zhang Zhijun, head of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office. When asked about a mainland citizen who left his tourist group while traveling in Taiwan earlier this month, Ma said the tourist has returned to Xiamen, Fujian province. "The related mainland tourism authority and travel agency have conducted investigations on the tourist and the tour group leader," he said. Ma urged mainland tourists to observe a revised regulation on travel in Taiwan, which was made public on April 13. Trend suggests IP protection gaining a stronger foothold in digital media More people increasingly willing to pay for quality content on the internet, including novels and music - a change in behavior that could promote copyright protection and tackle online piracy, according to a new report. The 2016 Annual Report of Copyright Protection on the Internet in China was released at the National Conference on Copyright Protection in the Digital Environment in Beijing on Wednesday, the 17th World Intellectual Property Day. Copyright holders, internet companies, government departments, international organizations, industry researchers and observers gathered to share opinions and experiences on copyright protection in the digital environment. With improvements in the IP environment and the convenience of online payment, "users are more willing to pay for digital content - and did so last year", said Liu Duo, director of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, a research institute of information and communication technology, which released the report. "Users paid for more types of digital content, including online games, soap operas, music and literature," she said. Last year, the South Korean drama Descendants of the Sun attracted 5 million paid users on iQiyi, a major online broadcasting platform, the report said. Nearly 200 million yuan ($29 million) was paid to the company. In 2016, users spent 212.3 billion yuan on digital content online, a year-on-year increase of 28 percent, according to a separate report released in October by Blue Lotus Research Institute. With the rapid development of digital technology, it is easier to access content online, including novels, music and TV dramas. The lower threshold also caused trouble: "One of my works published by a newspaper in 1998 has been widely spread and shared on WeChat, which I did not give permission to," said Zhang Kangkang, a well-known writer, referring to the social media app. "The title of my work has also been tampered with to attract attention. "Both behaviors violate my rights. But I do not know what to do or who to talk to protect the copyright of my work in this digital world. Do I just write a notice and put it on my WeChat account too?" Although concerns still exist, China has been working to tackle online piracy for more than a decade. For example, the National Copyright Administration of China initiated an annual crackdown campaign dubbed Sharp Sword to go after pirated music, videos, games, animation and software online. The campaign aims to create a good online copyright system and has been carried out for 12 consecutive years. Copyright protection is also one of the country's top development strategies, said Zhou Huilin, the administration's deputy director. "China's copyright development has wooed the world and made real progress," said Chen Hongbing, head of the World Intellectual Property Organization' China office. He added that copyright protection improvements have been seen in many fields in China, including amended laws and regulations and more strict legal practices. Xiongan New Area in Hebei province, which will soon start construction, is calling for worldwide competitive bids for the planning and design of the area's first phase, a local government official said on Wednesday. The zone designated for the first phase will have a footprint of 30 square kilometers, Niu Jingfeng, deputy head of the area's preparatory committee, said at a news conference. The work of land requisition is about to begin. That will be followed by residential demolition and the resettlement of villagers, and then by infrastructure and ecological projects, he said. "Constructing the Xiongan New Area, which is of national significance, is a very challenging historical test for Hebei," Niu said, adding that the province is determined to "obtain good marks". Niu said the area has set up a leading group for the area's planning and construction, led by the province's Party chief, Zhao Kezhi, and Governor Xu Qin, the top two government officials in Hebei. Under their leadership, first-class institutions and high-end talent are drafting development plans for the area. Hebei has also established a committee for the area's preparatory work. The committee has taken over some jobs from the three counties included in the new area - Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin. It will handle administration, personnel, Party affairs and the maintenance of social stability. Since June, Hebei has been closely involved in the three counties' planning, land use, household registration, real property transactions and construction. It has successfully stopped real estate and vehicle speculation, as well as illegal residence registration and construction, Niu said. In the next step, the area will embark on a series of programs for administrative management reform, innovation for investment and financing systems, and equalization of public services. Problems that arose in the past related to administrative disputes have been alleviated, according to a report released on Thursday by a Beijing court. The Beijing No 4 Intermediate People's Court, selected as part of a pilot program to improve hearings of administrative cases, said in its report that it accepted 2,893 administrative disputes last year, twice the amount it accepted in 2015. The increase can be attributed to the court's strict and effective measures for filing cases, which means all appeals in line with laws were accepted immediately after registration, instead of being subject to a court review, as was the case previously, it said. To reduce interference from governments when courts hear administrative disputes, judicial reform implemented by the central leadership in 2013 required the intermediate people's court to handle administrative cases involving the suing of governments of the city's 16 districts. Under the requirement, the intermediate people's court was established in December 2014. Last year, all 16 district governments in the capital were sued, with the biggest number of cases involving the Haidian, Dongcheng, Xicheng and Chaoyang governments, it said. "Almost 70 percent of the cases were related to people's livelihood," said Cheng Hu, vice-president of the court. "Many conflicts between residents and governmental departments involved the renovation of old buildings, demolitions and environmental improvements." Cheng complimented the attitude of administrations, saying that every governmental department involved in cases had taken the initiative to attend the court, respond to litigants' questions and solve disputes. "The previous problem that many citizens complained of about it being too hard to confront officials in courtrooms has been alleviated," he said. In addition, governmental departments as defendants lost 79 lawsuits, of which about 20 percent were related to the disclosure of official information, the report said. "Some governmental departments were sued because they didn't handle or delayed administrative affairs, while others failed to follow administrative procedures while handling the affairs," Cheng said. URUMQI - More than 21,000 college graduates have returned to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region after finishing their studies in other parts of the country, local authorities said Wednesday. Over the past 17 years, more than 90,000 students from Xinjiang have attended schools in more economically developed regions. Among them, over 21,000 have graduated from universities and returned to the region, according to Xinjiang's department of education. Since 2000, "Xinjiang Classes" have provided students from remote parts of the region with the opportunity to study at high quality schools in other parts of the country. The students mostly came from ethnic minorities, and 93 high schools in 45 cities have taken part in the program. Xinjiang is home to 47 ethnic groups including Han, Kazak, Mongol, Tajik and Uygur. "The schools have done a lot to encourage economic and social progress in Xinjiang. Many graduates have become successful in various industries," said Sun Qi, deputy head of the Xinjiang education department. Born into a farming family, Mirzat Hamurat was accepted into a high school in eastern city of Qingdao in 2006. After graduating from Lanzhou University, he became a photojournalist with a Xinjiang TV station. "Thanks to 'Xinjiang Classes' a kid like me from the countryside was able to become a journalist. I'm very grateful," said Hamurat. Tibetan students have been able to go to high schools in larger cities outside their autonomous region since the 1980s, many also returning home after graduation. China officially launches its second -- and the first domestically developed -- aircraft carrier on Apr 26, 2017, in Dalian, Liaoning province. [Photo/Xinhua] China will decide how it develops the country's aircraft carriers and the supporting facilities according to mission needs, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Thursday. China will make an overall plan for the development of carriers and key supporting infrastructures such as harbors and training and logistic facilities, ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said. Yang's comments follow the launch of China's second aircraft carrier which is the country's first domestic-made carrier. Yang said that the name of the carrier will be revealed when the vessel is officially handed over to the People's Liberation Army Navy. Yang also invited United States Defense Secretary James Mattis and other senior US military officials to visit China as soon as possible at both nations' convenience. "China is willing to work constructively with the US in risk management and settle differences, and willing to continue increasing mutual trust of both militaries," he said. When asked about the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Yang said that the current situation is "complicated and sensitive". "China has done much constructive work in maintaining peace and promoting dialogue," he said. Yang said China resolutely opposes the deployment of the Thermal High Attitude Air Defense system in the Republic of Korea, and will "continue to conduct specific combat drills and test new weapons to defend China's national security and regional peace". New details emerged on Wednesday in the case of Guo Wengui, the fugitive Chinese tycoon suspected of major fraud, including the way Guo used subordinates to create phony contracts and other documents to dupe bank loan officers. The details were reported by Beijing News. Guo took out a fraudulent loan of 3.2 billion yuan ($464 million) from the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) using forged official seals, counterfeit contracts and fake invoices, the newspaper reported. Guo, 50, secured the loan in 2010 in collusion with suspected corrupt officials, the newspaper said. He fled overseas about three years ago and his whereabouts is unknown. Interpol has issued a "red notice" for the Chinese billionaire, according to Lu Kang, Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a news briefing earlier this month. Former senior executives who worked for Guo have confirmed that the large loan was obtained illegally, the newspaper said. Yang Kesen, former legal representative of Beijing Pangu Investment Inc, one of Guo's companies, said he was merely Guo's "puppet". "I had to do what Guo asked me to do," Beijing News quoted him as saying. He admitted to signing a series of counterfeit documents to help Guo get the loan. Yang Ying, chief financial officer of Beijing Pangu, said Guo, given his credit status at the time, would not have been granted such a large loan through legal channels. Xie Honglin, manager of Beijing Pangu's financial department, said, "The company's bank account had less than 10 million yuan on deposit available to Guo in 2009." At least three senior executives of Beijing Pangu said Guo told them he had gained the support of Xiang Junbo, who was chairman of ABC at the time, according to Beijing News. Lyu Tao, former deputy general manager of Beijing Pangu, said Guo once asked him and Yang Ying to follow through with the loan application because Xiang had supported it in mid-2010. According to the newspaper, Guo instructed Lyu to forge the seals of a construction company, and then faked contracts with the company for the construction and interior decoration of his real estate development near National Stadium Pangu Plaza, which is known for its dragon-shaped building. Guo also asked Yang Ying to fabricate a "decent" financial statement so it would pass the bank's credit check. After the loan was granted, Guo used 1.6 billion yuan to buy controlling rights in China Minzu Securities. He also allegedly channeled 600 million yuan via underground banks to Hong Kong, and he spent 70 million yuan for a Hong Kong villa. The scandal was exposed when the National Audit Office conducted an audit to the Agricultural Bank of China and found the fake invoices provided by Guo's company. Guo then instructed Lyu and Yang to destroy materials related to the fake invoices and contracts. Guo managed to pay back the 3.2 billion yuan loan by borrowing money from other sources in 2014, four years ahead of the deadline "because we feared more irregularities would be found if the audit continued," Yang was quoted by Beijing News as saying. China's top anti-graft authority announced earlier this month that Xiang Junbo, the former ABC chairman and former chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, is under investigation on suspicion of a serious violation of the code of conduct of the Communist Party of China. Xiang, 60, one of the most prominent financial regulators in China, served as deputy governor of the People's Bank of China between 2004 and 2007. Later he served as chairman of ABC, one of the so-called big five State-owned commercial banks. Guo and his family ranked 74th on the Hurun China Rich List in 2014 with a fortune of 15.5 billion yuan ($2.25 billion). During his business career, Guo formed an exclusive club for wealthy and influential people including senior officials and people from the business sector. It was known as the "Pangu Club" because its members often met at Pangu Plaza. The club was a collection of senior officials, including Ma Jian, former vice-minister of State security, and Zhang Yue, the top official in charge of political and legal affairs in Hebei province. Both Ma and Zhang are being investigated. China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page Northern China's largest freshwater wetland has received more than 10 million cubic meters of water from reservoirs since April 5, as part of long-term water compensation measures to restore its ecological environment. A man skims garbage off the water at Baiyangdian in Hebei province, April 6, 2016. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/chinadaily.com.cn] The supplement will last about two months to bring about 33 million cubic meters of water into the wetland in Anxin county, Gao Kejun, deputy head of the county's Bureau of Water Resources, said in an interview with Hebei Daily. The wetland is located within the recently proposed Xiongan New Area, which is of national significance, according to the central government. When the proposal to set up Xiongan New Area was announced earlier this month, the central government said one of the major tasks was to create a city with a scenic ecological environment, blue skies, fresh air and clean water. "To complete the task, we must restore the water environment of Baiyangdian which has the ecological functions of regulating climate and maintaining ecological balance," Gao was quoted as saying. Gao said that due to years of dry climate with little rainfall, Baiyangdian has frequently suffered from a water shortage. "Thus, bringing in water from outside areas has been very important for it." The wetland has been topped up with water 32 times since 1996. At present, a project to draw water from the Yellow River -China's second-longest river- to feed Baiyangdian is under construction. When completed, the project can provide Baiyangdian with 110 million cubic meters of water each year, Gao said. As well as supplying more water, the restoration of the wetland includes controlling water pollution, which is also underway. According to Liu Lixin, deputy head of the county's Bureau of Aquaculture and Animal Husbandry, the county is in the fifth phase of eliminating fish net cages which pollute the water with fish feces and leftover bait. "All the net cages will finally be removed," Liu said. Contact the writer at: zhangyu1@chinadaily.com.cn China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou 1 completes its first fuel resupply test with the Tiangong II space lab at 7:07 pm on Thursday in this simulated image. SCREENSHOT FROM CCTV Tianzhou 1, China's first cargo spacecraft, has completed the country's first in-orbit refueling test with the unmanned Tiangong II space laboratory, the China Manned Space Agency said on Thursday. Zhang Youxia, commander-in-chief of China's manned space program, called the Tianzhou 1 mission a success. The space agency said in a news release the refueling test was a major technology breakthrough and has paved the way for China to assemble and operate a space station. The agency also said China has become the third nation to complete in-orbit refueling technology, following Russia and the United States. As the first of the planned three in-orbit refueling tests for Tianzhou 1, it took five days and wrapped up at 7:07 pm on Thursday. Pang Zhihao, executive editor-in-chief of Space International magazine, said the refueling demands designers to add pipelines in the spacecraft's docking adapter and create a difference in pressure in fuel tanks of both spacecraft to transfer the fuel. "Making sure there is no leakage of fuel is crucial," he said. The agency said that after the first test, the two spacecraft will stay connected as they orbit Earth for about two months, and the second in-orbit refueling test will be conducted in the latter part of June. After that, the two spacecraft will undock, and the cargo vessel will make sophisticated, automated maneuvers to circle the space lab and docking with the lab at a different site. The two spacecraft will then fly independently about three months, and near the end of that period they will dock for a third time a fast docking maneuver that is expected to be completed in six hours, compared with at two or more days for a typical docking and carry out the third refueling test. Eventually, the cargo vessel will be directed by ground control to plunge back to Earth. The Tianzhou 1, the country's largest and heaviest spacecraft, was launched at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on April 20. Tiangong II has been in space since mid-September and carried two Chinese astronauts from mid-October to mid-November. It is now unmanned. China plans to start construction of a space station around 2018 and complete it by around 2022, according to the manned space agency. China's top graft buster said on Thursday that 946 corrupt fugitives are still at large in foreign countries, and China hopes those nations will support its war against corruption. Thursday's disclosure was the first time China has released the exact number of corrupt fugitives abroad. Of the 946, most of whom are corrupt officials, Chinese law enforcement officers have a good idea of where 365 are. But the whereabouts of the other 581 are unknown, according to the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. "These corrupt fugitives used illegal means to grab a large amount of public funds and escaped abroad to avoid punishment, which has seriously harmed people's interests and undermined our credibility and social justice," said Liu Jianchao, director of the CCDI's International Cooperation Bureau. "We hope the public will provide clues about the fugitives, as well as report corrupt officials who intend to flee," he said. Liu also called for countries harboring such fugitives to adhere to international conventions on fighting corruption and actively assist Chinese law enforcement authorities. Feng Jingyou, a senior official in the CCDI's International Cooperation Bureau, said China respects different legal systems in other countries, but hopes that such countries would not shelter corrupt Chinese fugitives, nor facilitate their asset transfers. "We urge some individual countrieswhich have ignored the suspects' corruption crimes and issued them visas under investment immigration policies in return for economic benefitsto tighten the management of visas and revoke the visas already issued," Feng said. Liu said the fugitives should return to China to confess their crimes and seek lenient punishment as soon as possible. "We have the resolve and ability to uphold the law, ... and we'll make every effort to bring them back to face justice, and never will allow them to get away with no legal penalty." In recent years, a large number of corrupt Chinese officials have escaped abroad, especially to the United States and Canada, because of a lack of extradition treaties and legal differences, Liu said. Some of them have obtained permanent residence in those countries, he said. "We hope that overseas Chinese and foreign friends recognize the nature of these fugitives and expose them to drive them away," Liu said. China launched a massive crackdown on corruption in November 2012 and in 2014 started an operation called Sky Net to hunt for corrupt fugitives abroad. In April 2015, Interpol issued "red notices"requests to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending repatriationfor the 100 most-wanted corrupt Chinese officials. So far, 40 have returned from more than 16 countries and regions, while half of the remaining fugitives are still on the run in Western countries, CCDI figures show. On Thursday, the CCDI also made public detailed information about 22 high-profile Chinese fugitives, 15 of whom are in the US and Canada. The information included suspects' photos, ID numbers, passport numbers, suspected crimes, the date they fled China and their suspected current location. The 22 people are considered high priority cases because of the difficulty that Chinese law enforcement authorities have encountered in their attempts to locate and return them, according to the CCDI. A scientist conducts tests for 1GENE, a genetic testing company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Xinhua] Increasingly strict government controls on genetic information have resulted in longer, slower registration procedures for new and developing drugs. However, the procedures could pose a threat to the people's privacy, according to an expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In an exclusive interview with China Daily, Chen Kaixian, who is also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said rather than providing extra safeguards, the precautions are actually making genetic information less secure. He urged greater streamlining of the procedures to ease the bottleneck and shorten the registration process. In late 2015, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a statement outlining extra application and approval procedures for clinical drug trials conducted in collaboration with foreign pharmaceutical companies or by research institutions funded by money from overseas. The same strictures apply if projects are overseen by foreign nationals. The measures require tests to be conducted on a greater number of people, which has resulted in a substantial rise in the amount of personal information being collected and stored. According to Chen, the stricter procedures have had a negative effect on many potential new treatments in China. "Many companies have reported six to nine months extra waiting time, which has seriously slowed down the approval process for badly needed new drugs," he said. "Given the concerns related to privacy and security, it's entirely reasonable for national governments to collect and store people's genetic information. However, that should be balanced with the research and development of new drugs." Although he is in favor of prohibitions on the disclosure of genetic information, especially overseas, Chen said the measures should be amended: "The current procedures can still be improved to make them more efficient." In contrast, Zhou Qi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Animal Research, urged even stricter management and regulation. "Genetic information cannot be replicated, and is crucial to life-science research and the development of drugs," he said. Scandals In recent years, there have been a number of scandals involving illegal cross-border projects in the field, largely as a result of the increasing availability, affordability and accuracy of genetic testing. However, these activities are largely underground, so they are difficult to detect, according to Zhou. Fortunately, the government has recognized the importance of protecting genetic information and has constantly strengthened management of the collection and exportation of human body samples that can be used for genetic testing, particularly when the process involves overseas nationals, he said. Where Has the Time Gone, consisting of five short stories done by five directors, will open the upcoming 2nd BRICS Film Festival in Chengdu. [Photo provided to China Daily] Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has teamed up with four established directors from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa to make a movie. Where Has the Time Gone is a feature-length coproduction that will be the opening film at the upcoming 2nd BRICS Film Festival, to be held in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, from June 23 to 27. The movie consists of five short stories, 18 minutes each, done by the five directors. Each film, done in the local language, portrays the country's unique culture, says Jia. Besides Jia, the other directors are Walter Salles from Brazil; Aleksey Fedorchenko from Russia; Madhur Bhandarkar from India and Jahmil X.T.Quebka from South Africa. The directors are all masters in their own right. For instance, Salles' Central Station was nominated for the Oscars in the best foreign language category in 1999, and Quebka is seen as one of the best directors in South Africa thanks to A Small Town Called Descent (2010) and Of Good Report (2013). Jia is internationally known for his socially conscious films, such as Still Life, a Golden Lion winner in Venice in 2006; and Mountains May Depart, nominated in Cannes in 2015. Most of Jia's early movies are based in his province of Shanxi, which is also the case with his short piece in Where Has the Time Gone. Called Revive, the tale, starring Zhao Tao, his favorite actress, is about a couple's decision to have a second child. Left-behind children in Guizhou wear bracelets for security ( chinadaily.com.cn ) Updated: 2017-04-26 Left-behind children make Chinese dumplings in Qianxinan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest Guizhou province. [Photo/news.k618.cn] The Civil Affairs Bureau of Qianxinan autonomous prefecture in southwest Guizhou province is providing rural left-behind children in primary schools with intelligent bracelets for dynamic monitoring of their security with the help of big data and a fund of more than four million yuan ($580,433). Since last year, the Civil Affairs Bureau of Qianxinan has constructed a tripartite network involving governments, schools and families for the childrens protection. The basic information of some left-behind children has been recorded into a management system. The system links up autonomous prefectures, counties, townships and villages. Departments like the Youth League committee and the Women's Federation work jointly to monitor the security of left-behind children and children with special needs. Statistics up to April 18, 2017 suggest that of 126 towns and subdistrict offices in Qianxinan, 76 have recorded information about a total of 32,044 such children. Edited by Peter Nordlinger The daughter of the first Iraqi family to arrive in Bismarck since Lutheran Social Services reopened its office here in 2009 is graduating from college this weekend. Merna Douri will walk across the stage at the University of Mary in Bismarck on Saturday to receive her bachelor's degree in business and health care administration and then continue into the school's master's program in business administration. She is the oldest and the first of four Douri children to graduate college. "We are so proud of her," her mother, Abtsam Douri, said this week in their northeast Bismarck home. The 25-year-old undergraduate student transferred to the university in 2015, where she adapted quickly to life in college. She lives at home with her parents and previously worked at Walmart to help pay for her school tuition. She also became heavily involved in DECA, where she got to know Karel Sovak, a collegiate DECA adviser. "I was blown away by the hardships (her family) endured," said Sovak, a marketing and management professor at the Gary Tharaldson School of Business. "Still, she doesn't see herself as a victim; she doesn't see herself as anything less." The Douri family fled Iraq in 2008 to escape religious persecution, because they are Christians. After ISIS entered their home country, all of the Christians fled to Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey. They told my dad that he or one of his kids was going to be killed, Merna Douri said. We had to pay money or convert to Islam. We didnt have a third option, but we made it a third option (to) just move. The family relocated to Turkey and enrolled to become refugees with the United Nations refugee agency. Abtsam Douri said they were asked if they had any family or friends in another country, and her husband mentioned his cousin, who had been in Bismarck since the '90s. At age 17, Merna Douri and her family landed in New York. They stayed for a day or so before heading to Bismarck, where they lived in apartments before moving into their current house in 2012. Merna's father, Raeed Douri, got a job working on the assembly line in Walmart, and her mother started working at Lutheran Social Services as an Arabic translator, where she still works today. Her father now owns his own electronics repair shop, Raeed & Sons Electronic Service. Merna Douri entered 11th grade at Century High School. Despite her fears, she managed to graduate with good grades. "I was so scared (in high school); I did not know any English," said Merna Douri, who didn't talk for three months in high school. "Somebody would see me, and I'd have no idea what they were saying." After graduation, Merna Douri went to Bismarck State College. She wanted to go to pharmacy school, but none existed in the area and she said she was too afraid to move away from her family. Instead, she took business classes online through Dickinson State University for a year before enrolling at the University of Mary. I would love to own a business, which is why I dont want to give up on pharmacy, she said. "I want to go to school for pharmacy and then, in the future, open my own pharmacy. Merna Douri has a love for math and science, which is fitting because her mother was a high school chemistry teacher in Iraq. Abtsam Douri said the strict Islamic culture in their country restricted the careers they could pursue. Abtsam wanted to be a dentist, and her husband, an electrical engineer. "In high school (in the United States), you can choose what you like," Merna Douri said. "Over there, no, your grades decide for you." Abtsam Douri said she's grateful for the opportunities she and her family have in the United States. In the beginning, it was really hard, Abtsam Douri said. We came to this country without any English, and we wanted to start a new life. America is our home now." Abtsam and Merna Douri said the community and their neighbors have been very nice and supportive. Even when we came and bought this home, all of our neighbors, we like all of them, they came and introduced themselves, and I introduced me and my family, Abtsam Douri said. We share food all the time," Merna Douri added. The Douri family became naturalized U.S. citizens last spring. Merna Douri has three younger brothers, Fadi, 24, who will graduate from North Dakota State University in December, Rami, 19, who is studying at BSC, and Dani, 18, who will graduate from Century High School next month. Merna Douri works as a material analyst at Bobcat in Bismarck. She also helps out at her father's electronics repair shop. Sovak said Merna Douri is a natural business leader. I know from working with her dad that she has that business sense. I think she already knows what it would be like to have a business, and I have no reservations in saying she would be successful," Sovak said. Merna Douri is among nearly 900 students graduating from the University of Mary this spring. The commencement ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Bismarck Event Center. China officially launches its second -- and the first domestically developed -- aircraft carrier on Apr 26, 2017, in Dalian, Liaoning province. [Photo/Xinhua] China's first carrier, CNS Liaoning, was rebuilt from a former Soviet cruiser. Its first totally home-built aircraft carrier, which was launched on Wednesday, relies on China's own research and technologies and it marks a new milestone in the modernizing of the Chinese navy. Besides launch of its second aircraft carrier, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy has also disclosed a series of missions to be carried out this month, which are part of its long-term efforts to improve its combat readiness. The launch of the first "home-made" aircraft carrier will give a significant boost to China's naval strength, and help safeguard the country's sovereign integrity, security, and development interests. Hard and soft power are both needed to realize China's pledge to become a major maritime power. In this respect, hard power includes mature maritime industries and technologies as well as naval strength, while soft power is more about oceanic culture and the rule of law. China's maritime strategic focus, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping, is more efficient exploitation of resources, ecological protection, technological innovation, and securing national maritime interests. Developing the maritime economy lays the foundation for the path toward becoming a major maritime power, which also requires advanced technologies, quality education, the employment of top talents, and effective naval capabilities. To achieve these goals China is expected to not just map out and implement its maritime strategies, but also make extra institutional efforts to optimize the laws on territorial matters and streamline operations in the waters. And there will be a wide range of challenges to be overcome, including latent natural disasters, maritime disputes, and non-conventional security threats such as piracy. That is all the more reason for China to build up its navy in accordance with its role in global governance and the need to protect its security and development interests. A viable approach to enhanced defense capability and efficiency would be about strengthening the bond shared by the military and civilians, in particular, State-owned defense enterprises and their private counterparts. On the one hand, qualified private companies can be involved in the defense industry which will increase competition and prompt State-owned enterprises to stay innovation-minded, while on the other hand allowing certain defense materials and products to be used for civilian purposes. Given careful guidance and policy support, China has great potential to strike a balance between a market-oriented economy and national defense buildup. The author is director of the China Ocean Strategy Studies Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. SHI YU/CHINA DAILY China has always known that only through innovation in space science and technology can it become a space power. In the past year, scientists and engineers have made major breakthroughs in the technology needed for space exploration. Tianzhou-1, China's first cargo spacecraft, was launched into space and docked with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space laboratory last week. A retrievable scientific research satellite, SJ-10, went into space in April 2016 and completed experiments in microgravity and space life science. In June 2016, Long March-7 Y2, the medium-sized carrier rocket used to lift Tianzhou-1, made its maiden flight. Four months later, the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft was launched and docked with Tiangong-2 where the two astronauts lived for 33 days. Aerospace innovation can directly benefit people, as more than 2,000 aerospace inventions are used in various sectors to promote social and economic development. For example, turbine-pump technology developed for the aerospace industry has been used in a fire pump to spray water as high as 400 meters. China plans to launch six to eight BeiDou-3 satellites later this year as part of a plan for the 35 domestically made satellites to provide worldwide navigation services by 2020. China designated the Space Daythe second one was observed on Mondayto encourage innovation and mark the anniversary of the launch of its first satellite, Dongfanghong-1, in 1970. More than four and a half decades later, China plans to launch the Chang'e-5 lunar probe at the end of November this year, and experts say the country could realize the dream of putting astronauts on the moon within 10 years. China's contribution to the space industry has been widely appreciated. Making peaceful use of outer space, China has signed cooperation agreements with more than 30 countries and organizations, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, France, the European Space Agency and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. China has also helped more than 20 countries and regions with 50 launches, and exported satellites to nine countries. Besides, it will become the only country with a permanent space station when the International Space Station retires in 2024. China will continue to promote innovation in space science, space technology and space applications, contributing more to both national development and the well-being of humankind. Xinhua News Agency Workers from TBEA Shenyang Transformer Group Co assemble equipment in a plant in Shenyang, Liaoning province. [Photo by Zhang Wenkui/For China Daily] Almost three years into the sharp drop of global commodity prices, economic conditions have become very difficult for many of the world's 60 poorest countriesa group the International Monetary Fund refers to as "low-income developing countries" (LIDCs). As discussed in a recent report by the IMF, the situation is particularly challenging for commodity-dependent countries, which have seen tax and export revenues shrink markedly in response to lower commodity prices. With commodity prices expected to remain subdued over the medium term, more decisive policy changes will be needed to restore macroeconomic stability. But policies must be designed to reduce the pains on the populations and preserve the longer-term growth prospects. Fuel commodity exporters have been the hardest hit by the commodity price declinewith the effects being more marked where exchange rate adjustment has either been resisted (by central banks) or is ruled out as an option (because currencies are tied to the US dollar or the euro). On average, in fuel exporters the large drop in oil prices, together with spillovers to the non-oil economy, has pushed countries into recession and more than halved fiscal revenues. Non-fuel commodity exporters have suffered lessbecause export prices have fallen much less than oil prices and because they have benefited from lower oil import billsbut they are experiencing strains as well, with growth dropping below 4 percent, from 4.5 percent previously. While their growth rate seems solid compared with more advanced economies', it is too slow to lift large numbers of people out of poverty and provide jobs for young and rapidly growing populations. Doing substantially better, economies less dependent on commodities (so-called diversified exporters) have generally maintained their growth momentum at some 6 percent per year. But some have felt the adverse effects of the end of the commodities boom. The reversal in commodity exporters' growth momentum, coupled with only limited adjustment of macroeconomic policies so far, has resulted in significant weakening of fiscal positions of many countries, particularly fuel exporters. Thus, many of these countries are now seeing sharp increases in public debt. In diversified exporters, where fiscal deficits have remained high due in part to high outlays for public investment, debt is rising as well, from already high levels. With this, risks of debt distress are intensifying in many LIDCs. The stress of the banking sector are further compounding the growing vulnerabilities. With weak growth and rising government arrears, indebted enterprises are facing loan-servicing difficulties, imposing strains on national banking systems. Such stresses have already emerged in one-fifth of the LIDCs. Moreover, the story of economic development in LIDCs over the past year is not uniform. For example, it has been a very difficult period for countries suffering from armed conflict and/or those hit by drought in Eastern and Southern Africaand millions of people are at risk of famine and starvation in the worst-hit countries. The challenge for policymakers, particularly in commodity exporting countries, is to restore macroeconomic stability while containing the burden imposed on the most vulnerable and preserving longer-term growth prospects. This requires fiscal adjustments to put budget positions on a sustainable path while continuing to invest in people and infrastructure. Policies will typically need to include efforts to raise fiscal revenue by broadening the tax base and to cut back on low-priority and wasteful spending; if budget deficits are not reduced, public debt levels will soon become increasingly difficult to sustain. The sharp decline in commodity prices has depressed growth and fiscal accounts in commodity exporting countries, most notably fuel exporters, leading to rising public debt levels. With careful design, the budget adjustments needed to put public finances on a sustainable path can be implemented in a manner that limits the burden on the poorest segments of the population while protecting growth-critical outlays. Policymakers now need to act quickly and decisively. And for their part, development partners need to stand ready to provide more support. Sean Nolan is a deputy director in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department, IMF; Hans Weisfeld is deputy division chief, Strategy, Policy and Review Department, IMF; and Klaus Hellwig is an economist, Strategy, Policy and Review Department, IMF. A woman talks with a salesman at a property market fair in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.[Photo/China Daily] ACCORDING TO THE LATEST OFFICIAL DATA, so far this year, 50 key cities nationwide have made 764.5 billion yuan ($111 billion) by selling State-owned land in the realty market, which is 53.3 percent higher than that during the same period in 2016. Beijing Youth Daily comments: What is strange is the fact that most of the 50 cities have taken measures to prevent speculation in the realty market but at the same time the revenue from land sales jumped by more than 50 percent. This indicates that developers still expect higher housing prices in the near future, which fly in the face of what many local governments have done to control the too rapid rise in home prices. Many of them still have confidence that home prices will still rise despite the policies introduced by local governments. The developers have ample money in hand, as they are given large loans by domestic banks, which means they can purchase land at much higher prices than last year. They are not afraid of the stagnation of the housing market, which will make it impossible for them to repay their loans since even if they cannot sell the houses they have built, the risk will not be theirs but the banks'. Against this backdrop, it seems that the policy to set conditions for home purchases and getting loans is far from enough to stop the house prices from soaring, let alone allowing low-income earners to have a home to live in. What local governments need to do is to spend the money from land sales on building low-rent houses or affordable homes, which will hopefully meet the needs of low-income urban residents. When the majority of middle- and low-income families can have low-rent homes or affordable homes to live in, the need for commercial housing will quite possibly reduce, and therefore home prices will not rise that rapidly or possibly drop. Students from Guangxi University of Science and Technology play with pupils in Tantou township, Liuzhou city, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in July. English, dancing, painting and calligraphy classes were held for the pupils during summer vacation. Tan Kaixing / for China Daily IT IS REPORTED THAT some schools have installed cameras in classrooms and dormitories and provide the video to live broadcast websites. Beijing News comments: The pupils are watched by tens of thousands of people nationwide. It reminds us of the movie The Truman Show, where the main character lives in an artificial mini-world where he is watched by a worldwide audience around the clock. The difference is, at the end of the movie Truman escapes from the artificial world in which he has been living, but the pupils are still being watched by audiences nationwide even though the media has exposed the voyeurism. Legally speaking, school authorities that install cameras in classrooms and dormitories and provide video to live broadcast websites violate pupils' rights, because they invade the children's privacy without their consent. According to reports, some of the schools argued they obtained consent from the pupils' parents when installing the cameras. The problem is, even though the pupils are minors they have the right to their own privacy, and so the consent of their parents is not valid. More important, the schools did not tell the parents that videos would be provided to live broadcast websites to be streamed nationwide. Some "experts" have even claimed the pupils are attending a class and classrooms are public areas, so such broadcasts are not infringing on their privacy. Such opinions are nonsense because they totally ignore the pupils' legal right to privacy and the fact that classrooms are not public spaces to which everyone has the right of access. China has been constantly improving the rule of law and made many achievements in the past few years. But it seems, teachers and schools need reminding they must respect the legal rights of their pupils. If the pupils realize their privacy and legal rights are being violated in such a way, how can they trust the rule of law? The 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's reunification with the motherland is also an occasion to review its past and look forward to its future. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has made great achievements since the reunification. The principle of "One Country, Two Systems" and the Basic Law have been successfully implemented in the SAR, and its security and interests fully safeguarded. And with the implementation of the principles of "Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong" and a high-degree of autonomy, Hong Kong residents have enjoyed extensive rights and freedom. Since China resumed its sovereignty over the SAR on July 1, 1997, the central government has followed the Constitution, the principle of "One Country, Two Systems" and the Basic Law, and supported the Hong Kong chief executive and the SAR government to establish the rule of law. Moreover, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, has interpreted the Basic Law five times and made 10 decisions accordingly. These interpretations and decisions involve the right of abode in Hong Kong, the election of the chief executive by universal suffrage, diplomatic immunity and oath of members of the Legislative Council, which have played an active role in dealing with the relationship between the central government and the SAR. Hong Kong has maintained an orderly election procedure according to the Basic Law. Five administrations, four chief executives and six Legislative Councils have been elected in the SAR. The electoral commission's membership has expanded from 800 to 1,200. And Hong Kong has maintained its position as an international financial, maritime and trade center. Despite all this, Hong Kong faced some problems and challenges, such as the right of abode and people from the Chinese mainland purchasing infant formula in the SAR on a large scale. But those problems have been solved. The biggest problem hindering Hong Kong's development is the election of the chief executive and Legislative Council through universal suffrage. Although the NPC Standing Committee announced its decisions on universal suffrage on Aug 31, 2014, the Legislative Council has not approved the political reform plan advanced by the SAR government. And the 79-day "Occupy Central" movement, which started in 2014, has seriously undermined the rule of law in Hong Kong and affected its international image and investment environment. The other significant issue facing Hong Kong is the non-implementation of the national security legislation stipulated in Article 23 of the Basic Law. Although the Hong Kong government prepared a draft law on the issue in 2003, it was withdrawn. The advocacy of "Hong Kong independence" by some political organizations and antinational activities of a few Legislative Council members make the national security legislation an urgent task to achieve, but it is also necessary to maintain the right balance between "universal suffrage" and the legislation. To publicize the principle of "One Country, Two Systems" and the Basic Law in Hong Kong society is necessary, too. Besides, Hong Kong should focus on developing its economy and improving its residents' livelihood. Over the past two decades, Hong Kong's economic growth has slowed down and it has been grappling with many livelihood issues that need to be resolved, and all these are the result of over-politicization of Hong Kong society. Because of the political contradictions mentioned above, the Hong Kong government has been caught in endless disputes, leaving it little time to resolve residents' livelihood issues and implement its policies. Over-politicization of society and an underperforming economy are the challenges Hong Kong faces. If Hong Kong focuses on strengthening its economy, improving its residents' livelihoods and promoting social harmony, it will have a brilliant future. Work on the Hong Kong section of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge will be completed by the end of this year, and the SAR can play the role of a "super liaison" in the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road). And with the support of the motherland, Hong Kong can still use its existing advantages to improve its position in the international economy. The author is a professor of law in Peking University. By An Baijie in Beijing and Wang Mingjie in Pretoria, South Africa | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-04-26 17:06 South African President Jacob Zuma said that his country is willing to learn from China's experience on governance to achieve more rapid development. Zuma made the remarks while meeting with visiting Vice-Premier Liu Yandong at the president's residency in Pretoria on Tuesday. Zuma asked Liu to extend his sincere wishes to President Xi Jinping and added that he was glad to see the quick implementation of the consensus reached between the two presidents on the establishment of the China-South Africa High-level People to People Exchange Mechanism. The mechanism covers areas like education, culture, science and technology, health, youth, media, think tanks, tourism and sports. On Monday, Liu attended and presided over the first meeting of the mechanism. Xi said in a congratulatory letter to the meeting that the mechanism is the first high-level dialogue between China and any African country to focus on people-to-people and cultural exchanges. The official launch of the mechanism will provide more opportunities for the people of both countries to participate in the development of South Africa-China relations and enjoy the benefit brought forward by the development of bilateral ties, Zuma said. South Africa will never forget China's support during the country's anti-apartheid fight, Zuma said, while expressing willingness to speed up his country's development through deepening ties with China. The president appreciated China's constructive role in safeguarding international peace and security and spoke highly of China's contribution to global economic development. Zuma also expressed gratitude toward China's efforts to help African countries to achieve self-development, and he hoped to keep close communication and coordination with China under such frameworks as the United Nations and BRICS. Liu extended Xi's sincere wishes to Zuma. She said that the China-South Africa relationship is enjoying its best period under the leadership of the two presidents. The two countries have deepened political mutual trust continuously, made fruitful achievements in practical cooperation, and supported each other on issues of core interests and major concerns, Liu said. The first meeting of the mechanism has been held successfully, and boosted people-to-people exchanges between the two countries in the future, she said. China is willing to make joint efforts with South Africa to push forward these exchanges and enhance cooperation in areas including production capacity, energy, resources and infrastructure, Liu said, adding that the comprehensive strategic cooperation will benefit the people of both countries. Mentioning that both China and South Africa are big powers in the G20 and BRICS, Liu said China would like to enhance communication with South Africa in international affairs to safeguard the interests of developing countries. China, S. Africa relations advance Vice-premier's visit sees progress in science and health exchanges Vice-Premier Liu Yandong's wide-ranging visit this week to South Africa made concrete progress in cooperation between the nations. Vice-Premier Liu Yandong meets with South African Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa in Pretoria on Monday. They witnessed the signing of six cooperation agreements. [Photo/Xinhua] She also helped strengthen their friendship, such as in her meeting with Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, chief of South Africa's Zulu nation, in Pretoria on Tuesday. Zwelithini has been well known for his role in promoting bilateral friendship. The Zulu community has a long history of fighting colonial rule and seeking national independence, and their king is respected by many. Zwelithini has visited China several times, and became the head of the South Africa Zulu and China Culture Promotion Association in March. Liu visited him at Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria, where he was getting a checkup. Zwelithini said he anticipates further development of the friendship, adding that he will visit China soon to further experience the nation's charm and achievements. Liu met with South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane on Tuesday, and they attended the China-South Africa High-level Dialogue. On Monday, Liu attended the launch of the China-South Africa Science Park cooperation program. Liu noted the progress made by both sides from working together in such science and technology areas as biology, information, mining, lasers and new materials. In December 2014, President Xi Jinping and his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma reached a consensus on science park cooperation. During the first meeting of the China-South Africa High-level People to People Exchange Mechanism on Monday, science and technology were included as a key field of cooperation. "Building a science park is an effective tool to develop the science and technology industry and to shore up sustainable development with technological innovation," Liu said. China is willing to share with South Africa its experience in planning, building and operating high-tech zones, she added. Liu also attended the China-Africa Conference on Health Cooperation on Monday. Documents signed at the conference include an agreement between China and Malawi on promoting maternal and infant health and pacts on hospital cooperation. China's proposal to hold the ministerial-level conference aims at implementing the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Johannesburg Summit in 2015 and making health a highlight of China-Africa cooperation, Liu said. She said they should address the needs of both sides and promote the accessibility of medical and health services in Africa. Goals include boosting disease prevention systems and capacity building in Africa, strengthening support groups, and promoting staff exchanges to benefit the public, Liu added. US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discusses the Trump administration's tax reform proposal in the White House briefing room in Washington, US, April 26, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday unveiled the principles of the long-awaited tax reform plan that will significantly cut income taxes for Americans and corporates, ahead of the administration's first 100 days in office. The plan would reduce the number of personal income tax brackets to three from seven, and it would cut the top individual income tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent, Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), said at a press briefing at the White House. At the same time, the plan would cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and it would also impose a one-time tax on overseas profits of US companies, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the same press briefing. That "will bring back trillions of dollars that are offshore to be invested here in the United States, to purchase capital and to create jobs," he said. The plan would also eliminate all tax deductions for individuals except from mortgage interests and charitable tax deductions, according to Mnuchin. "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big," Cohn said, noting President Donald Trump has made tax reform a priority and the Republican-controlled Congress also wants to get it done. "We are determined to move as fast as we can and get this done this year," Mnuchin added. However, it's still unclear whether the plan, what US officials called the "biggest tax cut" in US history, would be revenue-neutral or would significantly increase US fiscal deficits. Mnuchin has repeatedly argued that the administration would count on the compounding effect of strong economic growth over the next decade to finance the tax cuts. "This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes," he said. However, many economists are skeptical about that argument, as the US economic growth will average about only 1.9 percent over the next ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "In order for a corporate income tax cut to 15 percent to be self-financing, it would have to raise the level of growth to 2.8 percent on average," said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation, adding most economic models would not expect the tax cuts to boost US growth by additional 0.9 percentage points over the 10-year budget window. The details of a complete tax proposal probably won't be ready until June, according to Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "You can either have a small tax cut that's permanent or a large tax cut that is short-term. I don't think we decided that," Mulvaney told Fox News on Sunday. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May welcomes European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to Downing Street in London, Britain April 26, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] LONDON - Britain is committed "to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union", British Prime Minister Theresa May told European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday, her spokesperson said. "The PM had a constructive meeting this evening with President Juncker of the European Commission," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Following the UK's letter of notification under Article 50 (that it is exiting the EU), she reiterated the UK's commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union." Reuters A North Dakota Department of Human Services budget with record funding yet dozens of fewer employee positions is headed to the governors desk. House Bill 1012 was passed by a 44-3 vote in the Senate on Thursday and contains $3.77 billion in total spending and authorization for 2,156 employees. A total of $1.34 billion in the bill is general fund spending, the rest is from various special funds. It cruised through the House with a 75-15 vote on Wednesday. DHS is one of few budgets this session not subject to strict cuts which were needed to address fiscal concerns that have wracked the state for more than a year leading to the Legislatures convening. Total spending in HB1012 was increased from the $3.46 billion base level. Total staff positions were decreased from 2,211. HB1012 also contains a trio of recommendations for potential studies, including a look at treatment of people with behavioral health issues, nursing facility rates and of the operations of DHS. Lawmakers called the bills contents a solid overall package despite the state's tight budget constraints. Democrats said they felt the bill comes up short in some areas, particularly behavioral health, but otherwise was strong legislation. An employee arranges blades for circular saws at an assembly line at Gang Yan Diamond Tools, a Chinese manufacturing plant, located in the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone in Rayong, southeast of Bangkok. Chaiwat Subprasom/reuters Thailand's economy is developing rapidly as a result of increased Chinese investment. Xu Wei reports from Bangkok, with Cang Wei in Hangzhou. Editor's note: This is the seventh in a series of reports focusing on the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, the proposed extended trading route linking Asia, Europe and Africa. When Xu Genluo arrived in Thailand in 2000, he barely knew anyone and spoke very little Thai. At the time, the executive with Holley Worldwide Holdings, a private developer of electrical equipment in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, was uncertain if his business would grow because there was little Chinese investment in the country, which styles itself "The Land of Smiles". Now, the company operates an industrial zone in Rayong, a city on the east coast of the Gulf of Thailand, in partnership with a local business. Total investment has reached $2.5 billion and 86 Chinese companies operate in the zone. "To us, the Belt and Road Initiative has provided a boost when we needed it most," he said, referring to two proposed trade routes, officially called the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Data provided by the Chinese embassy in Bangkok show that China has been Thailand's largest trade partner since 2013, the year the initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping. Last year, the total import/export volume between the two countries was $65.8 billion, an increase of 2.5 percent from 2015, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Thailand's main exports to China are plastics and rubber products, plus mechanical and electrical goods. In return, a wide range of machinery and electronic items account for about 50 percent of China's exports to Thailand. The country - home to one of the largest groups of ethnic Chinese in the world and a gateway to Southeast Asia's 600 million consumers - is a favored destination for Chinese investment. Last year, China was the third-largest investor in Thailand, following Singapore and Japan, according to the Board of Investment of Thailand. The number of Chinese tourists visiting the country also has soared in recent years. Last year, there were 8.77 million trips, more than four times the number in 2013, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Zhang Peidong, economic and commercial counselor at China's embassy in Bangkok, said Thailand's development plans and national strategies are a good fit for the Belt and Road Initiative, and will offer new business opportunities for Chinese companies. However, for the investments to succeed, companies must develop a culture of cooperation, build good brands and obey local laws and conventions, according to a report Zhang wrote last year that was posted on the embassy's website. In February, Hirunya Suchinai, secretary-general of the Board of Investment of Thailand, told Sing Sian Yer Pao Daily News, a Chinese-language publication in the country, that the initiative has boosted domestic development. She hopes to see more Chinese investment in the biotechnology, nanotechnology and digital technology sectors to help Thailand reach the targets set in Thailand 4.0, a new, government-designed economic model to develop high-tech industries and innovation. In late 2011, when Anyaporn Papan joined the Thai subsidiary of Chinese cellphone maker OPPO Electronics, the brand was barely known in the country and its sales volume was small, compared with other major players. Six years later, Papan is proud that the company's products have gradually gained the trust of Thai consumers. OPPO phones now hold market share of more than 10 percent in the Southeast Asian country: "The sales volume is exhilarating. Now, most Thai people know our brand. I feel proud of that." When she joined the company, Papan realized it faced an uphill battle because made-in-China products were a seen as low-quality goods at the time. "However, we have proved that made-in-China products can be of good quality," the 32-year-old Bangkok native said, adding that the OPPO's self-centric features have made its cellphones favorites with Thai people, who enjoy taking selfies. Before she started working for OPPO, she thought it was a South Korean company because it employed so many K-pop stars in advertising and endorsement campaigns. She enjoys the company's culture, especially because the Bangkok operation has a rough 50-50 split between Chinese and Thai employees: "Everyone works for each other. If I find myself too occupied with something, I can always seek help from a colleague." Papan has switched posts several times, and is currently working as assistant to the CEO. "I have a very good boss who appreciates his team members' abilities and is able to get the best out of them," she said. Papan, who speaks proficient Mandarin, learned Chinese in college. She also studied in China for a year. "That's why I decided to find a job that would allow me to use the language," she said. Initially, she found it difficult to adapt to Chinese food, so for the first few months of her stay she only ate instant noodles. That was before she visited a Sichuanese restaurant and became "addicted" to the spicy fare that is the calling card of the southwestern province. "My ancestors came from China, so I'm delighted to see the two countries building closer ties that will provide mutual benefits and development," she said. Later this year, a new ocean route for the importation of fruits is expected to open, linking the port city of Qinzhou, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, with Thailand. Wang Wenyuan, deputy director of the Guangxi Qinzhou Free Trade Port Area Administration Committee, said the new route will further increase China's imports of tropical fruits from Thailand. "In two or three years, we expect to see annual imports of more than 200,000 metric tons. That will play an important role in expanding economic cooperation between Guangxi and nations in Southeast Asia," he said. The route is one of five set to open by the end of the year. They will connect Guangxi, in the Beibu Gulf, to destinations across the globe. "In addition to routes to Southeast Asian nations, the new routes will help to connect Qinzhou with the Middle East and Europe," Wang added. So far, Qinzhou, the largest container port in Guangxi, has opened 15 international routes. Fang Jianli, deputy general manager of the Qinzhou Free Trade Port, said the facility has the potential to open more international routes in the coming years and deepen cooperation with the rest of the world. According to Wang, since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013, Guangxi has seen a rise in foreign trade and exchanges. Now, the port plans to become an ocean-shipping hub for China's vast southwestern regions. "Delegations from Sichuan province and Chongqing recently visited Qinzhou to seek deeper cooperation. Production costs will be greatly reduced when cargo from the southwestern provinces and Chongqing is shipped overseas via Qinzhou," he said. "The distance between Southwest China and Qinzhou is about 350 kilometers less than to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, and about 800 km less than to Shanghai on the east coast." According to official statistics, the port's throughput reached 360,000 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) in the first three months of the year, a rise of 15 percent from the same period a year ago. The full-year figure is expected to be more than 1.8 million TEUs, compared with 1.37 million TEUs last year. In 2020, the Qinzhou government will raise annual throughput to more than 5 million TEUs. Ethiopia is among the first African countries interested in the strategy ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - The Belt and Road Initiative is a golden opportunity to bring about regional integration and sustainable economic growth for Africa, said Berhane Gebre-Christos, special envoy of the Ethiopian prime minister, on Tuesday. The envoy made the remarks at the opening of a seminar organized on the initiative in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. Welcoming the initiative, Gebre-Christos said he is looking forward to the expected effects of the initiative. "The initiative is a project that will affect millions of people, and it will be one of the most important issues of the 21st century," he said, adding that the comprehensive approach of China means that the aspirations and development strategies of all countries involved will be considered and included in the initiative. Speaking on the occasion, La Yifan, Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, said that the seminar was organized as part of preparation for an upcoming Belt and Road Initiative forum scheduled for next month in Beijing. The ambassador noted that the forum in Beijing would review the achievements made since the announcement of the initiative and would deliberate on the way forward. La said that China has already set aside $40 billion through the Silk Road Fund for the initiative, and $30 billion through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Export-oriented Ethiopia was among the first in the continent to show interest in the initiative. The East African nation will rely heavily on infrastructure investment to transform its low-income agrarian economy to a medium-income, export-oriented economy by 2030. Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hirut Zemene, hailed the Sino-Ethiopian overall partnership, and cooperation in infrastructure development in particular, such as the Addis Ababa light rail and the Ethiopian-Djibouti rail projects. She had high expectations for the initiative, expressing belief in its capacity to affect structural transformation in Ethiopia and across Africa. While the trade aspects of the initiative have been given high hopes, some stressed that the soft power of the initiative should also not be ignored. Melaku Mulalem, head of the Foreign Policy Analysis Department, at the Ethiopian Foreign Relations Strategic Studies Institute, said that as China-Africa trade volume is expected to reach $400 billion by 2020, there will be a need for skilled manpower to handle the changes. China gives 10,000 scholarships annually to African students, which, according to Mulalem, is not enough. Mindful of the gap, China established last year an Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development under the Peking University. ISSCD is an educational program for officials of developing nations with an aim of helping them make a difference in their home countries after their studies. Currently, 48 students are enrolled in the institute. Pakistan's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative will help the nation achieve balanced development across all its provinces and bring about economic stability, said Pakistan's permanent representative to the United Nations. "Like China, which wants to see in its own country more balanced development between the mainland and the coastal areas, we too want to see (progress in) certain provinces of my country, which are not as developed as other parts," Maleeha Lodhi said. "We want to ensure that there is balanced development in our country, that all provinces benefit equally from China's investment and its critical help in Pakistan's infrastructure and, of course, the trading relationship will grow," she said. In 2015, the two countries announced the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a series of infrastructure projects valued at more than $50 billion that will modernize Pakistan's roads and highways, with the crux of the projects focused on developing Gwadar Port, which will serve as a link between the Belt and Road projects and the Maritime Silk Road projects. "I think the fact that China has stepped forward to play a leadership role in the economic connectivity of the region means that the peace dividend that this region has been waiting for so long is going to materialize," Lodhi said. She said that economic prosperity in the region will bring about "incentives for peace", with China reversing the fortunes of a region that has seen wars, military intervention, and occupation. Pakistan is rich in natural resources such as coal, oil and gas, but has in recent years experienced economic turmoil, slow GDP growth and low foreign investment. The Belt and Road projects will benefit the people of Pakistan directly because Chinese investments will go to areas critical to Pakistan's infrastructure, Lodhi said. "So really, this project is about the economic welfare of the Pakistan people, on mutually beneficial terms, because China gains, Pakistan gains - it's a win-win," she said. amyhe@chinadailyusa.com A cargo train carrying electronics and general merchandise, leaves Chengdu, Sichuan province, for Europe on June 8.Jin Ma Mengni / Xinhua WARSAW - The rail cargo service between the Chinese city of Chengdu and Poland's Lodz, which began operating in 2013, has become a popular logistics route for Chinese trade with Europe, as well as the fastest direct freight route between the two regions. In Lodz, a stop along the Chengdu-Europe railway service, the first cargo trains arrived three-and-a-half years ago. "During last year and a half, we've seen more economic activity and export trains are carrying Polish products back to China," said Michal Gawin, CEO of Spendcont, which operates a cargo terminal in Lodz. He said they observed accelerated business since last year. "This time last year, we operated approximately 15-20 trains a month. In the last half year, we've seen a more than 50 percent increase with 45-50 trains," he said. While cargo can be transported from Poland to China by sea and air, the railway transit time and price is most optimal, Gawin said, adding goods transported include mostly electronics and general merchandise from China, while Poland sends industrial cargo, food products with long expiration dates and machine parts. Recently, measures have been taken to increase the speed of the railway connection, such as nonstop cargo-scanning container inspection introduced on the Polish-Belarus border. "We hope that the Belt and Road Initiative continues to develop, so that more high-quality products can be sent from Poland to China and in the opposite direction," Gawin said. Krzysztof Piatkowski, deputy mayor of Lodz, said his city attaches a lot of importance to this train connection, as well as cooperation with China. According to Piatkowski, the Chengdu-Lodz connection contributed to the city becoming an important hub. "The train connection is perceived as an opportunity by local food producers of juices, sweets, alcohol, including our famous Lodz cider," he said. Masahiro Imamura, Japanese disaster reconstruction minister, bows after submitting his resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Wednesday.Jiji Press Via Agence Francepresse TOKYO - Japanese disaster reconstruction minister resigned over his remark that "it was good" that the March 2011 quake and tsunami had hit northern Japan instead of areas closer to Tokyo. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe accepted Masahiro Imamura's resignation on Wednesday. Imamura was replaced by Masayoshi Yoshino, former deputy environment minister from Fukushima, which was also hit by radiation leaks from a tsunami-hit nuclear power plant. Nobody died from radiation, but overall, the tsunami and the quake killed more than 18,000 people across northern Japan. Imamura's resignation came a day after he made the remark at a ruling party reception, which Abe also attended. "It was good that (the disaster) hit the Tohoku region, up there. There would have been a massive, enormous damage had it occurred closer to the capital region," Imamura said, referring to reconstruction cost. He immediately retracted the comment and apologized, but Abe's face reportedly froze. He apologized again on Wednesday for hurting the feelings of those in the disaster-hit northern Japan, but denied giving up his parliamentary seat. Imamura came under fire earlier this month over his outburst and a suggestion during a news conference that those who left voluntarily following the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant should fend for themselves. His blunder is the latest in a string of remarks and scandals that have plagued Abe's government in recent months, prompting opposition lawmakers to step up their effort to weaken Abe's grip on power. They were boycotting Wednesday's parliamentary committee meetings. In March, Abe's reconstruction adviser, who had been criticized for having his underling carry him on the back to hop over a puddle while visiting a flooded town last year, resigned after making a joke over rubber boots. Imamura's predecessor faced allegation he stole female underwear. Also, earlier this month, a trade vice-minister was forced to quit over an adultery scandal. Jiranuch Trirat (center) holds up the body of her 11-month-old daughter who was killed by her father, at a hospital in Phuket, Thailand, on Tuesday.Dailynews Via Reuters BANGKOK - Thai media came under fire on Wednesday for publishing images of a man killing his infant daughter in a Facebook Live video, a grim case that sparked outrage and raised fears of copycat killings. The video, filmed on Monday on the resort island of Phuket, showed Wuttisan Wongtalay hang his 11-month daughter from an abandoned building before taking his own life. The footage was online for hours before it was removed on Tuesday, prompting cries for Facebook to move more quickly to take down clips of grisly crimes and killings. At least one major Thai daily also printed images of the suicide on its front page on Tuesday. A media body has since slammed some news outlets, which it said showed graphic and "inappropriate" images of the crime. "The News Broadcasting Council of Thailand received complaints about reporting on a man who killed his child and himself via Facebook Live," the organization said. "Those reports were inappropriate," it added, warning channels and newspapers against giving graphic coverage to similar crimes because they "may lead to copycats with the understanding that those actions will draw attention". Police said they believe the killing was motivated by a "family feud" and that the father was unhappy with his wife's child from another relationship. "His wife has a boy aged about four years old from her previous relationship," police officer Jullaus Suvannin said. 'Appalling' In a statement on Tuesday, Facebook described the incident as "appalling". "There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed," the social network said. The killing was only the latest grisly crime to be published on the social network. Last week Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to work to keep the site's live-streaming function from being used to propagate harrowing acts after a man in the US state of Ohio broadcast footage of himself shooting a stranger dead. WASHINGTON - Donald Trump and US lawmakers inched closer to a deal on Tuesday avoiding a government shutdown, as the president, eager to showcase a win marking his first 100 days, retreated from a demand to fund a border wall. With the government set to exhaust its current funding at midnight on Friday, the White House is under the gun to craft a compromise that would keep the government running while not appearing to cave on Trump's demand that Congress fund a wall on the border with Mexico. "Hopefully, we'll reach an agreement some time in the next couple of days," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, but he did not rule out passing a short-term extension that gives lawmakers time to craft a final deal. While lawmakers said the funding legislation would steer clear of including funding for a border wall, it is expected to cover broader border security measures, such as the use of drones or anti-tunnelling technology. But a deal remained far from certain. Among the sticking points is the fate of cost-sharing arrangements that help reduce health insurance costs for low-income US citizens buying plans through the Affordable Care Act, the reform implemented by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama. Trump had been on a collision course with lawmakers over the wall, demanding that Congress include funding to start construction in its new spending bill. Democrats blasted the approach, warning that Republicans risked being blamed for shuttering the government barely three months into Trump's administration. "There aren't enough Republican votes to put the wall in" to the spending bill, said veteran Senator Patrick Leahy, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. With jitters rippling through Washington, Trump apparently agreed to soften his demand days before the deadline. He said that he was open to delaying funding for the wall's construction until September, according to The Washington Post. By Tuesday, the government was acknowledging Trump's plan could be pushed back. "Building that wall and having it funded remains an important priority to him," adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News. "But we also know that that can happen later this year and into next year." Photo provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez delivering a speech in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 26, 2017. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). [Photo/Xinhua and Venezuela's Presidency] CARACAS - Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). In a live TV address, Rodriguez said that "the OAS has persisted in intrusive actions against the sovereignty of our country and for this, we proceed to withdraw from the Organization." On Thursday, April 27, Venezuela will deliver a letter to the OAS announcing its exit, triggering a process that will last 24 months, said the minister. According to Rodriguez, this decision was carried out at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's instructions to protect the country's "sovereignty", adding that Venezuela would not participate in future OAS events as they advocate for "interventionism." Venezuela has long accused the OAS secretary-general, Luis Almagro, of being a leader in instigating a "coup" against the government of President Maduro. This exit is not conjecture, it has to do with the dignity of our people, said Rodriguez. The minister also compared the OAS' actions to the stance it took against Cuba in 1962, when it kicked the country out before reinstating it in 2009. After her announcement, Rodriguez continued lambasting the OAS, tweeting that "we will never allow those who bend the knee to offend Venezuela! Our sacred nation! Nation of Bolivar! Fatherland of Chavez! We will win!" Earlier on Wednesday, the OAS had held a special meeting in Washington DC and voted in favor of calling an emergency meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Venezuela. This meeting is likely to discuss whether to apply the OAS' Democratic Charter to Venezuela, which would suspend its membership. Alongside this, Venezuela has called for an urgent session of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss what Rodriguez called "threats against the constitutional order in Venezuela, as well as the interventionist actions undermining its independence, sovereignty and its right to self-determination." Venezuela has been racked by a political and economic crisis, which has spiralled into clashes between government and opposition supporters in April, leaving at least 29 people dead. The National Weather Service and Morton County's emergency manager will host a free severe weather seminar at 7 p.m. May 9 at the Mandan Rural Fire Department, 3014 34th St. N.W. in Mandan. The SKYWARN seminar is open to the public to provide an opportunity to learn more about severe weather in this area with an option to become a weather spotter for the NWS. Through photos and video, the interactive seminar will cover thunderstorm formation and hazards, flash floods, tornadoes, lightning, wind and hail, and how to prepare in order to stay safe. Participants will learn the important differences between watches and warnings and the proper way to report severe weather to the NWS. Anyone desiring to become a SKYWARN spotter must complete a form provided at the seminar. No registration is necessary, and the session will last about one hour and 45 minutes. Information provided by SKYWARN spotters is used along with Doppler radar technology, improved satellite and other data to enable NWS to issue more timely and accurate warnings for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flash floods. For more information, go to www.weather.gov/bis/skytrain. By An Baijie in Beijing and Wang Mingjie in Pretoria,south Africa | China Daily | Updated: 2017-04-27 07:00 South African President Jacob Zuma said that his country hopes to learn from China's governance experience to achieve more rapid development for South Africa. Zuma made the remark while meeting with visiting Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong at the president's residence in Pretoria on Tuesday. Zuma asked Liu to extend his sincere greetings to President Xi Jinping. Zuma said he is glad to see the quick implementation of the consensus reached between the two presidents on the establishment of the China-South Africa High-Level People to People Exchange Mechanism. The exchange covers areas like education, culture, science and technology, health, youth, women, news media, think tanks, tourism and sports. On Monday, Liu attended the first meeting of the group overseeing the exchanges. Xi said in a congratulatory letter that the exchange is the first high-level dialogue between China and any African country to push people-to-people and cultural interaction. The start of the exchange process will provide more opportunities for the people of both countries to participate in the development of South Africa-China relations and enjoy the benefits of the development of ties, Zuma said. South Africa will never forget China's support during the country's anti-segregation fight, Zuma said, while expressing his wish to speed up his country's development through deepening ties with China. Zuma said he appreciated China's constructive role in safeguarding international peace and security, and he spoke highly of China's contribution to global economic development. Liu extended Xi's best wishes to Zuma, and she said that the China-South Africa relationship is at its highest point under the leadership of the two presidents. The two countries have deepened political trust, achieved results in practical cooperation and supported each others' core interests and major concerns, Liu said. She said comprehensive strategic cooperation in areas like production capacity, energy, resources and infrastructure will benefit both peoples. Liu noted that both nations are important parts of the G20 and BRICS associations, and added that China hopes to enhance communication with South Africa in international affairs to safeguard the interests of developing countries. Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn Oysters wreak havoc on Denmark's seashore. Photo from Danish Embassy's Sina Weibo account. Danish people would never expect that the oyster crisis confronting their country may turn into a food-lovers' bonanza in China. The European country's dilemma may be the last thing Chinese people would ever understand as they see the abundance of seafood as a treat, rather than a problem. The Danish Embassy published a story on Monday evening on its official Sina Weibo account, China's twitter-like social network, about the problems for their country caused by an invasion of the exotic oysters. Chinese internet users enthusiastically responded with much discussion about ways to address the issue on Weibo, then WeChat, another popular social media network. The embassy makes a small joke in the post to invite Chinese people to eat oysters in Denmark which triggered heated debate. Apparently, when it comes to eating, Chinese people are very serious and they already started to make plans for their oyster journey. The most popular comment came from someone suggesting oyster visas should be issued "with 10 years' unlimited round trips and one-month-long stay and I can eat up them all in five years" received over 10,000 likes. There are people even recommending visa-free and oyster immigration policies in China. Chinese internet users make comments below the Danish Embassy's post to address the oyster issue. Screeshot of the Danish Embassy's Sina Weibo The oysters, known as Pacific oysters, are a new species in Denmark and have caused huge damage to the seashore's ecological environment. Their proliferation is unstoppable since they have no natural enemies there. People have to get across them in shoes before swimming. What's worse, their occupation leads to the endangerment of the Limfjord, a Danish local oyster. Scientists and fishermen made numerous complaints to the nation's conservation authority but the thorny issue remains unsolved. They also encouraged local people to bring them to their dining tables and few were motivated. The Danish Embassy is very grateful for Chinese people's innovative advice such as building oyster sauce factories and organizing oyster-dining journeys. It also said as long as China permits, they'd love to export oysters to China. A cataract patient in Mozambique (middle) helped by doctor Zhu Siquan (right) through the CSR program of HNA Group. Back to 2011, the program sponsored 300 cataract patients with their eye surgeries in Mozambique. Provided to China Daily Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, the parent company of China's biggest private commercial airline, said it is on course to fulfill its plan to help 1,000 cataract patients with eye surgery in Cambodia. The company has targeted helping the cataract suffers and last year launched the Cambodian program, aiming to treat the 1,000 patients between 2016 and 2018. The company said that since September its staff members have visited Cambodia three times, to date offering free treatment to 371 cataract patients. Hao Yansheng, a renowned ophthalmologist at Peking University Third Hospital, was invited to operate in Cambodia. A group of doctors, nurses and staff were responsible for the work of early screening and postoperative reviews. HNA, along with some international public welfare organizations, plans to continue to expand the program to Africa, to more cataract patients there in the coming years. The group will also support local hospitals with their equipment and with sustainable improvements to ophthalmology there. So far, the program has helped more than 6,500 impoverished cataract patients worldwide with eye surgery and the company has invested more than 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) in various corporate social responsibilities programs. HNA launched the program in 2004, to help cataract patients who live in inland China, including Qinghai and Sichuan provinces and Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang autonomous regions. In 2010, the group expanded the program to African countries, such as Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique. In Zimbabwe, people suffering from cataracts is a widespread affliction. The World Health Organization has estimated that there are 125,000 people with blindness in Zimbabwe, of whom 62,000 become blind as a result of cataracts. Zimbabwe has been estimated to have an annual cataract surgery backlog of 60,000 people, and there are only about 20 ophthalmologists in the country. Within a week of arriving in 2011, the Chinese team completed eye surgery on 514 cataract patients, who later recovered their sight. Zimbabwe's president said he felt grateful for China's help and said China not only relieved hundreds of people from blindness, but also helped bring advanced technologies and equipment to Zimbabwe. This, he said, was critical to improving local standards for eye surgery and would help the country with long-term prevention of the disease. zhuwenqian@chinadaily.com.cn The mutual trust and cooperation between Russia and China has reached its highest level in history, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, while expressing satisfaction toward the development of bilateral relations. Putin made the remarks while meeting with Li Zhanshu, director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, at the Kremlin in Moscow. Putin asked Li to extend his sincere greetings and best wishes to President Xi Jinping. The current Russia-China high-level exchanges are intensive, with steady progress of exchanges in all areas and enhanced cooperation in economy, trade, people-to-people and local-to-local areas, Putin said. The two countries have effectively communicated and coordinated on important global and regional affairs, he added. Commenting that Russia proactively echoes the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative, Putin said he was looking forward to attending the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be held in Beijing next month and meet with Xi during the event. Li, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, conveyed Xi's cordial greetings and good wishes to Putin. He said that comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between the two countries is the best its been in history and serves as an example of a new type of international relationship with win-win cooperation at its core. China-Russia relations are experiencing maturity, stability and developing at a high level, Li said. Regardless of fluctuations on the international stage, he said, China and Russia will not change their policy of cementing and deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership, their goals to realize common development and rejuvenation, and their determination to jointly safeguard international fairness and justice and secure global peace and stability. The cooperation mechanism between the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the Russian Presidential Executive Office is unique for both countries in dealing with foreign affairs, Li said. He added that this mechanism demonstrates the high level and distinctiveness of China-Russia relations. China is willing to work with Russia to further promote exchanges and cooperation between the two offices so that they can better serve the interactions between the two countries' leaders and the development of bilateral ties, Li said. China and Russia need to continue supporting each other on issues of core interests and major concerns, further deepen cooperation in various fields, implement big projects of strategic significance, and advance pragmatic cooperation to wider scope and a higher level. Also on Wednesday, Li met with Anton Vaino, chief of staff of the Russian Presidential Executive Office, and Sergei Ivanov, special presidential representative for environmental protection, ecology and transport. Mandan Police is asking for the public's help locating Jade Johnson, 14, of Mandan. She is described as a white female, 5 feet, 4 inches, 130 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing black leggings and a black hoodie and carrying an Under Armour bag. She may have also been carrying jeans. (Photo : Getty Images) China released never-before-seen video of its first nuclear submarine. Advertisement China's military officials have released last week a propaganda video of the country's nuclear ballistic missile submarines, believed to be the homegrown Type 092 vessels. According to Daily Mail, the footage that was aired on China's military channel Ba Yi TV captured soldiers carrying out some drills on the vessel and launching a ballistic missile from a submarine in an undated clip. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The video, aired on April 22, not only gave viewers a glimpse of the submarine's interior but also featured a fleet of submarines sailing in the sea during a naval review as soldiers were seen posing and holding weapons. The submarine featured is believed to be the Type 092 nuclear submarine, China's Shenzhen TV reported. According to public information, the vessel could carry 12 China-made Julang-1 ballistic missiles that could fire as far as 2,000 kilometers. China spent more than a decade and 298 million yuan ($43.25 million) to build the Type 092 submarine in the 1970s. It was also China's first indigenous nuclear submarine, measuring 120 meters long, 10 meters wide, and could dive to a maximum depth of 300 meters. It also displaces 6,500 tons of water when on the sea surface and 7,000 tons of water when submerged. It is thought that China has four types of nuclear submarines, namely, the Type 091, 092, 093, and 094. The Type 091 and 093 are nuclear attack submarines, while the Type 092 and 094 are nuclear missile submarines. Meanwhile, China's new submarine factory on the Yellow Sea will start producing nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) starting this year. China's only nuclear submarine maker, Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industrial Corporation, is just allegedly finalizing the new plant. Later this year, the plant will reportedly start the production of the first third generation Type 095 SSN that will feature a single/hybrid pressure hull, pumpjet propulsion, advanced nuclear reactor, vertical launch system cells, and other advanced sensors. Advertisement Tagsnuclear submarine, Type 092 submarine, china, Julang-1 ballistic missile (Photo : PLAN) J-15 fighters on the Liaoning. Advertisement The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) will massively increase its presence overseas with more far-sea patrols and the construction of more naval bases in friendly countries to protect China's burgeoning interests while keeping the United States at bay. The more aggressive role for the PLAN is made necessary by China's economic progress, which has expanded its economic influence to client states overseas. That influence must be protected and expanded, hence the PLAN's transformation from a coastal protection force to a power projection force similar to the role played by the U.S. Navy for over a century. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China's military strategy for the PLAN has changed and it must increase its presence overseas to meet the new requirements, said military expert Song Zhongping. China's two aircraft carriers -- CNS Liaoning (CV-16) and CNS Shandong (CV-17), which will join the fleet in 2020 -- is a signature achievement of the PLAN, said Song. China's new naval strategy is explained in "China's Military Strategy," a white paper released by the Information Office of the State Council in 2015. The white paper declared PLAN will shift its focus from "near-shore defense" to a combined strategy of "near-shore defense" and "open seas protection," while building a multi-functional and efficient marine combat force structure. PLAN will also enhance its capabilities for strategic deterrence and counterattack; maritime maneuvers; joint operations at sea; comprehensive defense and comprehensive support. Near-shore defense means defense in areas close to China's land borders like the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the Senkaku Islands, and to meet this requirement, PLAN has to gain an overwhelming advantage at least within the First Island Chain, contends Xu Guangyu, senior advisor to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association. Open seas protection means defending China's overseas interests, including Chinese personnel, projects, investment and trade routes. In recent years, PLAN has proven it can successfully execute overseas missions like anti-piracy protection in the Gulf of Aden and evacuations from Libya and Yemen. It's necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate with its national security and development interests; safeguard its national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests; protect the security of strategic sea lines of communication and overseas interests and participate in international maritime cooperation, so as to provide strategic support for building itself into a maritime power, said the white paper. Advertisement TagsPeople's Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, CNS Liaoning, CNS Shandong, China's Military Strategy, open seas protection, near-shore defense (Photo : USMC) An F-35B, the SVTOL variant Taiwan wants. Advertisement The Republic of China (Taiwan) in July will seek United States approval to buy an undetermined number of Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II stealth jets in an effort to gain air superiority over the numerically superior People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and its fourth generation jet fighters. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Taiwan appears confident the U.S. will accede to its request on account of the apparently warm relationship between U.S. president Donald Trump and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. China, however, will do all it can to sabotage the deal. "We will submit our request to the U.S. to purchase jets in July," said Wang Ting-yu, head of the Taiwanese legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee. "We hope the U.S. understands our needs. Our fighter jets really are too old." Taiwan specifically wants to purchase the F-35B, the version flown only by the U.S. Marine Corps. The F-35B is notable for its short/vertical take-off and landing (SVTOL) ability and its capability to land practically anywhere there's a flat land surface. Taiwan will include an offer to buy the fifth generation F-35B -- considered the best stealth jet in the world and superior to China's "stealth" fighters -- in the first weapons purchase it will submit to the Trump administration. "We hope we can get F-35s," said Wang. "We have been waiting for updated F-16s for too long. Their time has gone. If we buy them now, in 10 years' time they'll be no use." When it submits its request to buy the F-35Bs, Taiwan will drop a long-standing request for more advanced F-16s to replace its aging fleet, according to Wang. No U.S. president has sold advanced fighter jets to Taiwan since George H.W. Bush in 1992 so as not to irritate China. Former president Barack Obama in 2011 agreed upgrade the Republic of China Air Force's fleet of 140 General Dynamics F-16s Fighting Falcons, a decision that worsened relations with Beijing. The upgrade never occurred. This anti-Taiwan situation seems to have changed with the ascension of Trump to the U.S. presidency and his phone call to President Tsai in December 2016 before Trump was sworn in as U.S. President. The F-35s will be deployed by the Republic of China Air Force to support the Republic of China Army and the Republic of China Navy. Taiwan believes the F-35B, the STOVL variant, is necessary for rapid response to threats from the People's Liberation Army. The stealth fighters will be vital in adding more muscle to Taiwan's strategy of "double-level deterrence," which the defense ministry defines as a strategy of not just defense, but of rapid response to prevent an invasion. The defense ministry said China has not given up on its plans to invade Taiwan. Advertisement TagsRepublic of China, Taiwan, Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II, People's Liberation Army Air Force, donald trump, Tsai Ing-wen, Wang Ting-yu A Pentecostal pastor in Ugandas capital has reportedly torched thousands of Bibles because they were fake and demonic. Pastor Aloysius Bugingo of the House of Prayer Ministries in Kampala ordered the burning of the Good News Bible and the King James Version because they used the words Holy Ghost instead of Holy Spirit. The Easter Weekend action shocked and angered church leaders in the country, with many terming his actions an insult to Christianity. We condemn the act in the strongest terms possible, Bishop Herman Sentamu, leader of the Passover Harvest church, a large Pentecostal group in Uganda, said in a telephone interview Wednesday (April 26). Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit are interchangeable terms for the third entity of the Christian Trinity composed of God, Son and Holy Spirit. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the term Holy Spirit came into wider use and is now preferred by many Christians. The pastor had collected the Bibles from his 6,000-member congregation and set them on fire. He also charged that words fasting and Lent had been omitted from the books without explanation. The Good News Bible is a translation of the American Bible Society. Bugingo allegedly told his followers the Bibles in question were the handiwork of devil worshippers and should, therefore, not be allowed to confuse Christians. But the pastor denied burning the Bibles, alleging his enemies had organized the burning and used his voice. Still, he said he wants to start a publishing house to print correct versions of the Bible. On Sunday, a post on his church Facebook page said the church believed in the Holy Spirit but not the Holy Ghost. We shall speak the truth until the end of this world, the post says. Sentamu suggested the pastors actions stem from ignorance. The Bible Society of Uganda said it is looking for evidence and may seek legal action against the pastor. When you hear somebody has burnt Bibles, its like a funeral, Simon Mukhama, general secretary of the Bible Society of Uganda, told The Observer of Kampala. The person who did it must be brought to book immediately. Fredrick Nzwili is an RNS correspondent based in Nairobi Courtesy: Religion News Service Photo: This image of Bibles reportedly being burned at Pastor Aloysius Bugingos church has been circulating on social media Photo courtesy: Twitter Publication date: April 27, 2017 President Trumps executive order to prohibit sanctuary cities was blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday, temporarily nullifying Trumps threat to cut off federal funding to such jurisdictions. Trump had issued an executive order on January 25 allowing the attorney general to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities, as they are called, limit local police officers from cooperating with federal immigration officials. The cities of Santa Clara and San Francisco filed suit against the Trump administration, calling the executive order unconstitutional. San Franciscos lawyers argued that enforcement of the executive order could result in a loss of some $2 billion per year for the city. In his ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III placed an injunction against the executive order. The Constitution vests the spending power in Congress, not the President, said Judge Orrick, adding that the executive order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds. Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves, he stated. The Trump administration expressed it would appeal the decision, with Trump himself tweeting early on Wednesday morning, See you in the Supreme Court! This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge, the White House also said in a statement. Meanwhile, Dennis Herrera, the city attorney for San Francisco, called the executive order an overreach by the Trump administration. This is why we have courts to halt the overreach of a president and an attorney general who either dont understand the Constitution or chose to ignore it, Herrera said. Santa Claras Supervisor Cindy Chavez called the decision a win for the neediest people in our nation. Judge Orricks decision does not completely prohibit the federal government from denying funds to cities. Other than Trumps executive order, a law already exists prohibiting local governments from preventing law enforcement officers from providing status information of individuals to the federal government. Orrick wrote that the temporary ruling does not impact the Governments ability to use lawful means to enforce existing conditions of federal grants, and that it further does not restrict the Secretary from developing regulations or preparing guidance on designating a jurisdiction as a sanctuary jurisdiction. The Justice Department said in a statement that it would comply with all existing laws in regards to sanctuary cities. The first Christian governor of the Indonesian capital Jakarta conceded his loss to re-election after a majority of the votes were counted on April 19, which showed he was at least 10 percentage points behind his rival. In the count of some 80 percent of the votes, incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Purnama came in at 42 percent, trailing behind his rival Anies Baswedan at 58 percent. Purnama, who is a double minority as a Christian and an ethnic Chinese, said after the early vote count was completed that he will continue to invest his efforts on improving infrastructure and development in Jakarta. We have another six months, Purnama was quoted as saying by USA Today. We will work fast and well to accomplish our homework and our promises. Congratulations to Anies. Baswedan emphasized the need for unity in his statement, saying, We celebrate diversity We are all ready to work together again. Purnama is currently embroiled in a lawsuit, which experts say likely affected the election outcome. He was accused of blaspheming and insulting the Quran in a video that went viral. Purnama has repeatedly denied the allegations, and said the video was edited. While a conviction of blasphemy comes with a maximum sentence of five years in prison, on Thursday, prosecutors recommended two years probation instead. The official ruling against him comes in May, as do the official election results. According to a CBN report, Purnama has remained positive throughout the process, and has expressed hopes to return to Indonesian politics. Ahok is very positive, reported Lucille Talusan of CBN. He says that everything is in Gods hands and that everything has a purpose. Even if he is under trial for what is happening in his life, he believes that one day God is going to bring him back to his calling, Talusan added. The first thing in his heart is to serve his people in Indonesia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world, with a population of some 260 million Muslims making up almost 90 percent of the country. Baswedan will assume office in October. Move over Fitbits and Apple Watches. Technology is coming with radical implications for our physical bodies this century. The next frontier, the next real step-change in human history, is biological, said author Andy Crouch in an interview with CT last week. The next easy everywhere in the 21st century is about permanently modifying the conditions of human embodiment. Crouchs prediction isnt new. In fact, CT ran a major story announcing the upcoming arrival of the techno sapiens back in 2004. But for the most part, most Christians have paid scant attention to the implications of this technological revolutionand of the transhumanist ideology parallel to it, says Douglas Estes, a theology professor at South University with a lifelong interest in science. It seems to me that the biggest misunderstanding of Christians for transhumanism is that they think that its just science fiction, thats its some crazed scientist idea that is never going to happen. said Estes, pointing to Captain America as an example. I think that dismissing this issue would be a huge mistake for us because it would not allow Christians to engage in this issue. Estes joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor-in-chief Mark Galli on Quick to Listen to discuss just how fast technology is changing, why Christians may be willing to genetically modify their children, and the best way to understand transhumanism. What is Quick to Listen? Read more. You can subscribe to Quick to Listen on iTunes. Follow the podcast on Facebook and Twitter. Follow Morgan on Twitter Follow Douglas on Twitter Subscribe to Marks newsletter Quick ... 1 Todays post by Tish Harrison Warren launches a series on the state of womens discipleship in evangelical America. As evidenced by a recent Twitter discussion, the conversation continues to spread and split into what scientists call a dendritica series of branching pathways that resemble a tree or a nervous system. In this case, we have a series of interconnected (and very complicated) questions related to womens ministry, social media, platform, race and ethnicity, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and ecclesial authority and accountability. Rather than contain the conversation in one piece, were offering a multiplicity of voices on various topics that all intersect at the nexus point of womens discipleship and the church. Each piece will seek to illuminate the topic from a unique perspective and also interact with ideas posited by previous pieces (even in the form of hearty disagreement). We hope in sum that the series challenges, encourages, and inspires women to, in Warrens words, build and shape institutions larger than ourselves in light of the gospel. Were calling the series #AmplifyWomen: A New Conversation About Leadership and Discipleship. We invite you to weigh in with your suggestions and feedback using that hashtag. Find us on Twitter @CT_women or on our Facebook page.The editorsThe rise of the blogosphere in the early 2000s yielded the genre of the spiritual blogger. From the comfort of their living rooms, lay people suddenly became household names, wielding influence over tens of thousands of followers. A new kind of Christian celebrityand authoritywas born: the speaker and author who comes to us (often virtually) ... 1 61 New Scripture Translations Completed Last Year Contact: Gunnar Magi, Global Mission Team: Partnerships & Communications, United Bible Societies, 00-372-503-4980, gmagi@biblesocieties.org SWINDON, UK, April 27, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- In 2016, Bible Societies assisted in the completion of translations in 61 languages spoken by over 428 million people. 2016 was 'a first' for no fewer than 30 languages, spoken by over 95 million people. 17 communities now have their very first Bible, 6 have a New Testament and 7 communities have their first, or additional, portions of Scripture. Languages are constantly developing so Bible Societies are also committed to revising existing translations and providing new translations, when requested, to help as many people as possible engage with the message of the Bible today. In 2016, this resulted in a further 28 new translations and revisions plus 3 study editions with the potential to reach over 333 million people. Status of Bible translation at the end of 2016 The full Bible is now available in 648 languages spoken by nearly 5.16 billion people and a further 1,432 languages spoken by 657 million people have a New Testament. This leaves 434 million people with only some portions of the Bible and a further 253 million people with no Scripture translated in their language at all. Sign Languages Sign Languages are the first or 'heart' language for 70 million Deaf worldwide and there are over 400 unique sign languages. There are over 400 unique Sign Languages and yet the New Testament is only available in American Sign Language. Japan completed Leviticus 1-14 and Luke 1-6. Lithuania, Hungary and Thailand the teams continued releasing parts of Mark's Gospel. Cuba made progress with the first 11 chapters of Luke. Mexico published the DVD of John's Epistles. Scriptures in Braille 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide, of whom 40 million are blind. A Braille Bible usually consists of more than 40 bulky volumes, making the ranscription and production a significant undertaking. To date only 44 languages have a full Bible in Braille. In 2016, new Braille portions were made available in Spanish (Dios Habla Hoy), German, Kirundi. Electronic Scripture Access Growth Continues The Digital Bible Library (DBL) is central to our strategy to make the Bible as widely and easily accessible as possible. By the end of 2016, the DBL contained 1,474 Bibles, Testaments and portions in 1,134 languages. These languages are spoken by over 5.2 billion people. Significant progress was made last year in adding audio Scriptures, so there are now 403 audio Scriptures in 345 different languages. The DBL is owned and maintained by United Bible Societies in partnership with other Bible agencies and with the support of the Every Tribe Every Nation alliance. It makes the Bible accessible by providing Scripture texts to the public through partners such as BibleSearch and YouVersion. Full report The full report and the full list of translations completed in 2016 can be found here: www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/translation/global-scripture-access United Bible Societies: United Bible Societies is a global network of Bible Societies working in over 200 countries and territories across the world. Together, they are the worlds biggest translator, publisher and distributor of the Bible. Bible Societies are also active in areas such as HIV/AIDS prevention, trauma healing and literacy. Bible Societies work with all Christian Churches and many international non-governmental organisations. Read more: www.unitedbiblesocieties.org. Press Contact: Gunnar Magi Global Mission Team: Partnerships & Communications United Bible Societies Email: gmagi@biblesocieties.org home US Alabama Supreme Court upholds suspension of Roy Moore as chief justice over stance on gay marriage licenses Roy Moore will remain suspended from his position as chief justice following a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court that upheld a lower court decision that found him guilty of ethics violations over his 2016 memo regarding same-sex marriage licenses. On Wednesday, a special panel comprised of randomly-selected retired judges affirmed Moore's term-long suspension handed down by the state Court of the Judiciary (COJ) on Sept. 30, 2016. Moore decried the decision in a press conference and contended that he remains chief justice despite the suspension. "This was a politically motivated prosecution from the very beginning, from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Judicial Inquiry Commission, with certain transgender and homosexual groups to remove me from public office because of my stand on same-sex marriage," he said, according to Christian News Network. "I have done my duty under the laws of this state to stand for the undeniable truth that God ordained marriage as the union of one and one woman," he added. The 69-year-old chief justice was supposed to end his term in 2019, but he will not be able to run for the office again because of his age. According to AL.com, Moore will not be able to appeal the ruling to the federal courts because there are no federal issues. He said he would announce his decision next week whether or not he would run for the U.S. Senate. His suspension stems from a January 2016 memo that halted the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In March 2015, six of the nine judges of the Alabama Supreme Court released an order to stop issuing gay marriage licenses. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal nationwide three months later, Moore issued a memo advising that the full court's previous order remained in effect until it issued directives in light of the ruling by the nation's highest court. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint against Moore to the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) in May, and he was suspended as he faced a trial before the COJ. Moore argued during the trial that he did not issue any orders, but only a status update. However, the COJ found him guilty and suspended him for the remainder of his term. It was the second time he was removed from his position as Chief Justice. He was suspended in November 2003 when he refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building, but he was re-elected to the position in 2012. FARGO -- Theyre described as good kids who do dumb things out of anger, frustration and boredom, or because theyre testing their limits, as kids often do. Twice weekly in a conference room here, children and teens accused of shoplifting, vandalizing, egging a house or some other disorderly act sit before a jury of their peers to face the consequences. Youth Court is one of six youth intervention programs at Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota. Its an alternative to the formal juvenile court system, giving kids the chance to right their wrongs and keep their records clean. Brittney Engebretson, Youth Court coordinator, said shes passionate about keeping kids out of the court system. I want these kids to be held accountable and move on with their lives, she said. The program is open to juveniles in the Fargo-Moorhead area who are referred from East Central Juvenile Court, the Clay County Attorneys Office and local schools. Joel Friesz, director of youth interventions at LSS, said kids whove behaved badly shouldnt be labeled as criminals. We dont want a child to think that about themselves, because they may live up to that, he said. Friesz said most states have at least one similar program. Fargos is the only one in North Dakota. Its operated since 1999, but a lot of people arent aware of it. Its one of the things you dont know about unless you need it, he said. Lock them up Karen Kringlie, juvenile court director for the East Central Judicial District, said parents tend to beat themselves up when their child commits a crime, wondering where they went wrong. But brains of young adults arent fully developed until their mid-20s, she said, like having a fully built motor vehicle with no brakes. About once a month, she gets a call from a parent of a child in trouble, asking her to lock them up for the weekend to give them a scare. Not only cant Kringlie do that, she wouldnt do it, because in most cases, she said, it makes them worse. But she said any parent who thinks Youth Court is just a slap on the wrist is mistaken. Actually, holding them accountable is being tough, just in a smarter way because were more successful if we can get through to them the impact of their behavior, Kringlie said. Each day, her staff meets with kids and families to seek the best course of action based on their crime, whether its a diversion program like Youth Court or theft awareness class, an informal adjustment like probation or the more serious juvenile court. She said most first, second, even third-time offenders of a minor crime will be referred to a diversion program like Youth Court. Understanding the impact After someone is referred to Youth Court, they and their parent or guardian meet with Engebretson about program requirements. They can opt for a formal juvenile court hearing in front of a judge instead. However, few go that route. The focus is helping young defendants understand the impact of their behavior. In the case of a theft, how it affected the victim, the business and the childs parents. Its more than taking this object, Friesz said. It hurts people and relationships. At a Youth Court session, a peer jury hears the case and asks questions. Volunteer juror Jwan Al Selim, a junior at West Fargo High School, said the kids are often nervous but open up as time goes along. Its easier for them to talk to us because theyre about the same age, she said. Fellow juror Justin Penney, a sophomore at Sheyenne High School, said he learns from the experience, too. It definitely teaches me a lot on how I act in certain situations and with friends, to help them with stuff theyre going through, he said. Once the case is heard, the jury deliberates and decides the consequences. Jurors can direct the defendant to apologize to the victim, take educational programs, volunteer in the community, go to counseling or serve on a Youth Court jury. If the defendant follows through, thats the end of it. If they dont, their case goes back to the referral source for further action. All diversion cases, like Youth Court, are automatically shredded when a child turns 18. Few reoffend Fewer than 12 percent of the kids who complete Youth Court reoffend in the six months afterward, according to LSS statistics. Almost 90 percent of the kids are not seen again, Friesz said. Youth Court is run on a shoestring budget. Engebretson is the only full-time employee. The program saw 195 young defendants over the course of 2016, up 30 from 2014. That doesnt mean youth crime has gone up, however. In fact, Kringlie said juvenile arrests in Cass County have fallen steadily over the last 10 years, despite a growing population. The county had 1,719 juvenile delinquent or unruly referrals last year, compared with 2,689 in 2007. Instead, what the rising Youth Court numbers mean is that formal courts are partnering more with those diversion services to push kids and their developing brains onto the right path. Were utilizing these techniques because we know they work, Friesz said. Tips for parents Dont protect kids from natural consequences of their actions. It steals a childs opportunity to learn. Dont deny or diminish the intensity of their emotions. Its better to listen and support them. Be alert to changes in teenagers, and be awake when they come home. Consequences should be short and sweet. Explain that any punishment given is because you love them. Provide opportunities for safe risk-taking such as theater and sports. Eat evening meals together if possible, with no cellphones at the table. Source: East Central Judicial District Juvenile Court home US Armed Muslim who crashed private Christian conference charged as a terrorist The Muslim man who brandished his guns on social media after he was ejected from a Christian conference has been arrested on charges of terrorism threats. Authorities in South Dakota have arrested Ehab Jaber on Friday due to the threatening posts that he made on his Facebook page on April 9 during the Worldview Weekend Rally in Sioux Falls. The news came days after a Sioux Falls police spokesman said that Jaber would not be charged because he was just exercising his First and Second Amendment Rights and had "broken no laws." Jaber, a former resident of Saudi Arabia, reportedly had a handgun on his person while he was inside the Christian Worldview conference, according to Wold Net Daily. At that time, he was wearing a shirt that said, "I open carry. I conceal carry. I am an American. I am Muslim. I am only dangerous if you're stupid." After a security guard asked him to leave, Jaber made a second video in his car, showing his three handguns, two assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. As he displayed each gun and magazine, he made several comments including, "be scared, be very scared, be terrified." The Christian Worldview conference has been branded by a local newspaper as "anti-Islam," which prompted several dozen protesters to stand outside the hotel with signs denouncing the speakers as "intolerant" and "Islamophobic." Speakers at the event argued that their message had nothing to do with hatred for Muslims, but it warns against Islamic law, which they say would also affect moderate Muslims. On April 19, Jaber reportedly made another threatening post challenging Americans who oppose him to a "shoot out." After his Facebook video went viral, he made another video in which he tried to defend himself, saying he is not a threat. "I am not the threat. There is no news here. I don't give a [expletive] about what they tell you in mainstream media," he said. The 45-year-old Jaber has been charged with one count of terrorist threat, which is a class 5 felony that carries a punishment of up to five years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000. Brannon Howse, a radio host and one of the speakers at the conference, called for the resignation of the Sioux Falls Police Chief and Lincoln County State's Attorney Tom Wollman "for letting this man be on the street for 12 days when there was an abundance of evidence that this man was a threat to the public." home US Bott Radio Network pulls 'Bible Answer Man' show after host's conversion to Orthodoxy The Bott Radio Network (BRN) has reportedly pulled the "Bible Answer Man" show, following the conversion of the program's host, Hank Hanegraaff, to the Eastern Orthodox Church. BRN, which broadcasted the show since 1980s, before Hanegraaff joined the show in 1989, cited its concern about biblical accuracy in removing the show from its programming. "We want to make sure that our listeners know that the programming that we have on Bott Radio Network is thoroughly biblical," said BRN President Richard P. Bott II, a member of Lenexa Baptist Church in Lenexa, Kansas. The network announced that Hanegraaff's show will be replaced by new late-afternoon programming featuring evangelical pastors like Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas. Hanegraaff, who is also the president and chairman of the Christian Research Institute, joined the St. Niktarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, N.C. on Palm Sunday, April 9. He said that he was compelled to attend an Orthodox Church over two years ago after seeing how deeply in love Christians in China were with the Lord. He confirmed his conversion to Orthodoxy during a radio broadcast, but he claimed that his teachings remain unchanged and faithful to Scripture. "I am as deeply committed to championing 'mere Christianity' and the essentials of the historic Christian faith as I have ever been," the radio host said during his April 10 broadcast, according to the Baptist Press. "People are posting this notion that somehow or other I've walked away from the faith and am no longer a Christian. Look, my views have been codified in 20 books, and my views have not changed," Hanegraaff said in another broadcast. Despite his claims, several prominent evangelical figures have raised concerns about his decision to become a member of the Orthodox Church. R. Philip Roberts, director for international theological education with the Global Ministries Foundation in Tennessee, noted that "the roots of Eastern Orthodox theology go back centuries." However, he pointed out that there are problems with its teachings because there had been changes in its interpretations of biblical doctrines over the centuries. Roberts said that although it has its roots in the ancient church, its ceremonies and theology have developed gradually throughout the centuries. Other Christians welcomed the news of Hanegraaff's conversion to Orthodoxy. "The Benedict Option" author Rob Dreher, who converted to Orthodoxy from Roman Catholicism, congratulated the radio host, saying: "What astounding news! Many evangelicals seek the early church; well, here it is, in Orthodoxy." Despite its removal from the Bott Network, the "Bible Answer Man" broadcast is still available at equip.org. home US California university installs vending machine that dispenses contraceptives A university in California has generated controversy for installing a vending machine that dispenses Plan B emergency contraceptive pills on its campus. A study room at the University of California Davis is now equipped with a "Wellness To Go" vending machine that dispenses the Plan B pills, as well as pregnancy tests, condoms, pain relievers and tampons. Former student senator Parteek Singh had spent two years lobbying for the vending machine, which was installed in early April. "The more skeptical and negativity I got from other people like 'oh it's not gonna happen,' kind of pushed me more," Singh told KTXL. "I feel like every college should have this," he added. The machine generated mixed reactions from students, with one describing it as a "great thing for women." Another student expressed concern that the decision promotes recklessness and irresponsibility among UC Davis attendees. "It is promoting like oh hey, go and have unsafe sex because then you have a backup option and its gonna be cheaper," said UC Davis student Jordan Herrera. UC Davis is roughly one of four campuses across the United States that provide students with a similar method to access contraceptions. Evangelist Franklin Graham criticized the university on Facebook and accused it of "promoting sex." "They call it a "Wellness To Go" machine-I strongly disagree. There's nothing healthy about sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman as God created itain fact it's dangerous. It is very sad and concerning to see this type of thing embraced on a university campus," Graham wrote. Plan B became available for all women without prescription under the Obama Administration in 2013. In 2007, the Washington Pharmacy Commission issued an order requiring pharmacies to dispense abortion-inducing pills such as Plan B and ella, and make consciense-based referrals illegal. Greg Stormans, whose family operates a small grocery store and pharmacy, filed a lawsuit against the state in July 2007 to stop the enforcement of the regulation. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed a district court's decision to suspend the regulation in July 2015. The Stormans are still locked in a legal battle over the regulation. They said that their business saw a drop in sales by 30 percent because of the lawsuit, forcing them to take a pay cut and reduce staff by 10 percent. home World Catholic charity leads efforts in providing homes for Nepal quake victims A Catholic charity is leading the efforts in rebuilding the homes that were destroyed by the huge earthquakes that struck Nepal in 2015. Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) have teamed up with local masons to launch the Safer Homes Rebuilding project. Giovanna Reda, head of humanitarian programmes for Asia, Middle East and Latin America at CAFOD, said that the aid agency's efforts include supporting its local partners to run training workshops so that people from the affected communities can build houses that can withstand earthquakes. "Women were disproportionately affected by the impacts of the earthquake a many lost their husbands and homes a and these workshops have been a lifeline for the women involved, allowing them to learn new skills and earn a living from them," said Reda, according to ReliefWeb. "Progress is being made to rebuild and recover. We are thrilled to report that thousands of families across earthquake-affected areas have now received reconstruction grants and re-building is underway," he continued. The rebuilding efforts have faced several challenges over the last two years because of monsoon rains, fuel shortages, price hikes and delays in establishing the government's National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) that coordinates housing reconstruction. More than 3.9 million (US$5 million) have been donated by CAFOD supporters from England and Wales, enabling the charity to respond to the 15 of the worst-hit areas of Nepal. "The generosity and compassion shown by CAFOD's supporters has enabled our partners to restore dignity of the people affected and help those who survived the earthquakes to rebuild and prosper," Reda said. Apart from rebuilding homes, the charity also supported local partners to rebuild schools, repair damaged water systems, help communities restore their means of making a living and prepare for future disasters. The rebuilding efforts have been sluggish in some parts of Nepal. According to the NRA, less than 100,000 of the 525,000 houses required have been rebuilt or are under construction. The NRA expressed concern that many are flouting building codes introduced after the disaster, which could expose the residents to fresh risks. As a result, many of the eight million people affected by the earthquake are still living in temporary shelters in tarpaulin tents or bamboo huts in villages across the country. International donors have donated more than US$4 billion toward the estimated $9 billion required for the reconstruction efforts. Government officials said that they are on target to complete reconstruction by 2020, but another US$3 billion in donor aid is needed for the project. home World Chinese authorities detain Taiwanese pastor for singing 'Jesus Loves You' Chinese authorities have detained a Taiwanese pastor for singing the worship song "Jesus Loves You," which has been declared by officials as an illegal religious activity. According to a report from China Aid, the officials detained Pastor Xu Rongzhang on April 15 after he led Christians in Zhengzhou, Henan in singing "Jesus Loves You." Xu was released on the same day, but the officials held on to his identification documents and permit to travel to mainland China until April 17. A number of Christians in China have been arrested and sentenced to prison in recent months for participating in religious activities. In February, five Christians, including a pastor, were sentenced to between three to seven years in prison for purchasing and selling what the authorities said were "forbidden Christian devotional books." China Aid noted that most of the convicted Christians belong to a Korean ethnic minority group that resides within China, and all of them attend registered churches. The Communist Party has intensified its crackdown on Christian churches in recent months. In late March, officials in Zhejiang province carried out violent attacks against churches that refused to install surveillance cameras. Local government departments have distributed a notice from the Zhejiang provincial government to install cameras in the churches in order to monitor religious activities. The authorities reportedly threatened to forcibly install the cameras if the churches refused to do it voluntarily. Several churches in Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province, have confronted government officials, demanding to know the legal bases for the order. On March 23, the churches sent a joint petition to the authorities in protest of the mandate to install surveillance cameras. Despite the church members' insistence that the mandate has no legal precedent, authorities in Wenzhou's Tengqiao region forcibly carried out their threats. Officials stormed Anshan Church in Wenzhou on March 30 and reportedly used bulldozers and an ambulance to demolish the church's fence. An elderly Christian woman was admitted to the hospital due to injuries she sustained in the incident. Freedom House has recently released a report highlighting various religious freedom abuses that are occurring in China. In the report, the group warned that at least 100 million people, including Protestant Christians, are facing "high" or "very high" levels of persecution in the Communist country. "A Taoist disciple joins the order without knowing when he will be admitted to priesthood. Dozens of Christians are barred from celebrating Christmas together. Tibetan monks are forced to learn reinterpretations of Buddhist doctrine during a 'patriotic reeducation' session," the report stated. "A Uighur Muslim farmer is sentenced to nine years in prison for praying in a field. And a 45-year-old father in northeastern China dies in custody days after being detained for practicing Falun Gong," it continued. The report also accused President Xi Jinping of intensifying persecution and restrictions on religious believers since he became party leader in 2012. It also noted that believers have responded to the restrictions with a "surprising degree of resistance." home World Christian Governor loses Jakarta election amid blasphemy trial Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta's first Christian governor in half a century, has conceded defeat to his Muslim contender, Anies Baswedanand, and called on his supporters to move on from the election. The incumbent governor congratulated his rival and his running mate, Sandiaga Uno, in a news conference on Wednesday. "Congratulations to Anies and Sandiaga, their campaign team and supporters. We're actually the same, we want Jakarta to be better because it is our home," said the incumbent governor, according to The Jakarta Post. Purnama called on his supporters not to dwell on disappointment over the election, which has been seen by many as the most sectarian and divisive in the city's history. "Trust me. Power comes from God and it too can be taken by God. No one comes to power without God's permission. Don't be sad. God knows," he said. Baswedan, a former education minister, won the election with 58 percent of the votes against 42 percent for Purnama, based on an unofficial "quick count" by Indikator Politik. The official results will be announced by the national elections commission in early May, Reuters reported. The Christian governor is currently on trial for blasphemy over the comments he made last year which many considered to be an insult to Islam. Purnama faces up to five years in jail if he is convicted. Massive protests have been held against Purnama in recent months, but he was still able to rely on a strong support base. Baswedan's huge margin of victory came as a surprise to many because opinion polls leading up to the elections suggested a tight race. Purnama won a three-way race in the first round of voting in February. Keith Loveard, an analyst at Jakarta-based Concord Consulting and an author of books about Indonesian politics, said that many voters were reluctant to vote for Purnama due to their concerns about "five more years of protests on the streets by Muslim hard-liners." Baswedan's campaign ran on his promises to improve public education, provide no-deposit home loans for low-income groups, and oppose a proposal to build a seawall in Jakarta Bay that Purnama had supported. He denied allegations that he plans to implement Shariah in Jakarta if elected. Purnama vowed to help Baswedan in the transition process and said that he would accelerate his programs until the end of his term in October. "We still have six months (in office) until the new governor is inaugurated and we will finish up our homework," the incumbent governor said in a news conference. "We hope that in the future everyone can forget the campaign period," he added. home World Christian persecution watchdog group receives UN accreditation despite opposition Persecution watchdog group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) will now be able to attend meetings and conferences at the Human Rights Council after it received accreditation from the U.N. The 54 members of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted 28a9 with 12 abstentions on Wednesday to approve CSW, which has applied for accreditation since 2009. In February, the 19-member committee that accredits non-governmental organization voted 4a11 with one abstention to defer action on CSW's application, The Associated Press reported. The move prompted the British-based organization to launch a campaign to get ECOSOC, the committee's parent body, to overturn the decision. Prior to Wednesday's vote, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told ECOSOC that CSW has responded "fully and promptly" to more than 80 questions asked by the committee members, adding that the group has met all the requirements for accreditation. However, he noted that "there has been repeated discrimination against NGOs with a human rights focus in particular" by the committee. Rycroft pointed to letters of support for CSW from U.N. investigators and others on freedom of religion and freedom of expression. The permanent missions of the United States, Estonia (representing the European Union), Norway, and Australia also issued statements in support of the human rights group, which works in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. CSW has recently worked to support the rights of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar as well as the rights of civilians of all faiths caught in the battle in the Central African Republic. "This is a significant day for CSW. UN accreditation will enable us to advance our work of promoting the right to freedom of religion or belief across the UN system," said CSW Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas, according to Premier. "This vote is also a welcome acknowledgment of the importance of NGO contributions to the UN's work," he continued. Many of the countries that voted to reject CSW's application for accreditation, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Burkina Faso, said that the committee's vote to defer action should stand because the organization has not answered all the questions from members. Despite winning accreditation, Thomas said that the U.N. still must look into the issue of the committee's frequent denial of applications of human rights groups. "While we are pleased with the outcome of today's vote, the questions raised regarding the NGO Committee's tendency to repeatedly defer and deny the applications of human rights organisations need to be addressed," Thomas said. home World Evangelicals, Pentecostals more likely to experience persecution than other Christian groups, report reveals A new report has suggested that evangelicals and Pentecostals are more likely to suffer persecution compared to Christians of other denominations partly because of passion to share the Gospel. The findings of the study, titled "In Response to Persecution," revealed that evangelical and Pentecostal Christians tend to be targeted for persecution more intensely compared to mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or other Christians associated with ancient churches. The study, which was released on Thursday at the National Press Club, is part of the University of Notre Dame's "Under Caesar's Sword" project, a three-year research endeavor that is aimed at investigating how Christians respond to persecution. According to the report, evangelicals and Pentecostals are more likely than other Christians to have a "more antagonist relationship" with governments and social groups that tend to deny religious liberty. One potential reason for this pattern is that the two groups are comparatively recent arrivals in some countries and they have not established "patterns relating to surrounding populations and government to the same degree with churches with centuries of history in a given region." The support of like-minded believers in the West is believed to be another reason for the persecution of the two groups, the report noted. The final reason may be due to their understanding of evangelization and conversion. Pentecostals and evangelicals believe that evangelization and conversion is a "verbal, urgent, and sometimes dramatic processes" that they actually expect to suffer persecution. As a result, governments hostile to Christianity and non-state actors such as terrorist groups tend to view them as a potential threat. The report noted that the elements form a pattern but they are not an exact correlation as other churches also evangelize and evangelicals and Pentecostals sometimes form cooperative relationships with the state, but the trend is apparent in several nations. According to The Christian Post, the persecution of the two groups is particularly severe in Iran, where they have to be discreet about their faith, which they disguise in public with the aim of appearing not very different from the surrounding Muslim culture. Under Caesar's Sword, which is being supported by a grant from Templeton Religion Trust, will be publishing research-based educational resources, including lesson plans for churches, schools and nonprofit organizations beginning in summer 2017. The three-year research project is a collaboration of 17 scholars and academic centers including the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Religious Freedom Institute, and Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Research Project. home US Georgia college tries to dispel lawsuit of Christian student who was banned from preaching on campus Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) has attempted to dispel a lawsuit filed by a Christian student, who was reportedly prevented from sharing his faith on campus, by saying the student's preaching "rose to the level of 'fighting words.'" GGC was sued by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of student Chike Uzuegbunam in December after the school repeatedly prohibited the student from discussing his Christian faith on campus, even after he received permission to do so in one of the school's free speech zones. ADF noted that the two free-speech zones constitute "less than 0.0015 percent" of the campus and that it is open to students only for 18 hours a week. According to the lawsuit, Uzuegbunam had been informed by the school that he is not allowed to distribute religious pamphlets outside of the school's library because it was not a designated free-speech zone. When the student followed the proper procedures and reserved space in a free-speech zone, Uzuegbunam was told to stop because his speech had apparently "generated complaints" and constituted "disorderly conduct," Campus Reform reported. ADF Legal Counsel Travis Barnham remarked that the college touts its commitments to "diversity" and "open communications" while it confines the speech of the students to "two ridiculously small speech zones and then censors the speech that occurs in those areas." According to the ADF, the school has filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying Uzuegbunam's "open-air speaking" rose "to the level of 'fighting words.'" GGC cited two previous cases in which street preachers were found to have used fighting words by referring to people as "sinners." The college has argued that the Uzuegbunam "used contentious religious language that, when directed to a crowd, has a tendency to incite hostility." In response to GCC's argument, the ADF filed a brief on April 7 saying "identical bids to limit broad speech code language to fighting words have failed," and that the school's policies are an unconstitutional form of content-based restriction of speech. "Defendants' proposal would still give unbridled discretion, and viewpoint-based limits on fighting words are unconstitutional," the brief stated. "Defendants' speech code is the antithesis of 'precise and objective,' is viewpoint-based, and is thus illegal in any forum," it added. home US Gordon College denies reports that faculty senate resigned to show support to pro-gay professor A Christian college in Wenham, Massachusetts has dismissed reports suggesting that its entire faculty senate resigned because they wanted to show their support to a pro-gay professor who was denied promotion. Earlier this month all seven members of Gordon College's faculty senate issued a joint resignation letter, citing "divergent views" with the school's President, D. Michael Lindsay, and Provost, Janel Curry, regarding their decisions in the process of faculty promotion. The members of the senate are full professors elected to deal with faculty personnel issues, such as promotions, hiring, tenure, dismissals, and appeals. While the senate members did not mention any specific case or staff member, there had been some speculation that the resignation was prompted by the denial of assistant sociology professor Margaret DeWeese-Boyd's promotion to full professor, even though she was unanimously approved for promotion by the senate. DeWeese-Boyd, who has been a vocal advocate of LGBT students and staff, has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, claiming the school discriminated against her because of her work with the LGBT community. Following the resignation and the ensuing controversy surrounding the denial of DeWeese-Boyd's promotion, the college's media relations department released a fact page in an attempt to explain the issue. The college noted that the resignation came after the senate members had already fulfilled most of their duties for the school year and that "three of seven" were already ending their three-year terms this spring. "It was not expected, though they did first inform Provost Curry a few hours prior to the meeting, and it's an unusual step for senior faculty members to take," the fact sheet stated, according to The Christian Post. "In their verbal statement to faculty colleagues, the chairperson affirmed the authority and decision-making role of the administration but said she felt the senators could not reconcile divergent views with the provost and president on the process and how final decisions are made, and could no longer be effective in their roles," it continued. The school also noted that the senators did not mention any "specific decision," "faculty member," or any of the "broader college policies" in their resignation statement. The senate members clarified that their resignation letters would be the only public statement regarding the issue. The fact sheet noted that the faculty and the administration are both participating in an ongoing process that will focus on "bridging the differences" and "finding ways to work together." The husband of a woman charged in Canada with smuggling Nigerian nationals from western North Dakota across the Canadian border was charged in federal court Tuesday with transporting illegal aliens. Victor Omoruyi, 40, has been charged with knowingly transporting individuals who entered the United States illegally. If convicted, Omoruyi could face up to five years in federal prison and be subject to fines. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced human smuggling charges against 43-year-old Michelle Omoruyi of Regina, Sask., on April 19. Her husband, Victor Omoruyi, has been held in Grand Forks County Correctional Center after being arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol on April 14. Charging documents say Nigerian nationals allegedly paid the couple $2,000 per person to be smuggled into Canada where they sought asylum. Victor Omoruyi was arrested near the Northgate, N.D., port of entry in Burke County on April 14 along with Success Okundia, 33, and Tosin Freeman-Osho, 44, both of whom have been charged with entering the U.S. illegally in federal court. Authorities believe Okundia and Freeman-Osho entered the U.S. on April 14, when they say Victor Omoruyi brought nine people to a field on the border and Michelle Omoruyi picked them up upon entering Canada. Canadian charges against Michelle Omoruyi came after a four-month investigation by the Integrated Border Enforcement Team, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, according to a press release by the RCMP. Arrests Victor Omoruyi entered the U.S. at the Portal, N.D., port of entry at 2 p.m. April 14, according to a criminal complaint. He was driving a white Ford Explorer registered to Michelle Omoruyi and told officers at the border he planned to shop in Minot and return the next day. He had been flagged by law enforcement has a human smuggler believed to have transported people from Minot to the Canadian border who then entered Canada illegally. The Border Patrol placed a surveillance team on him to see if he attempted to smuggle people into Canada, court documents state. Agents followed Victor Omoruyi into Minot, where he drove to a Comfort Inn. Eventually, five adults and four children entered his vehicle. The group headed to the border. The Burke County Sheriff's Office observed the vehicle near the border about 2.5 miles west of the Northgate port of entry. Deputies say the saw the passengers exit the vehicle and walk toward Canada, where a vehicle was waiting for them. Deputies continued to follow Omoruyi, who drove to a grain elevator near Northgate where he met a white sedan. Border Patrol agents later pulled over Omoruyi, who had two passengers in his vehicle, Okundia and Freeman-Osho. Okundia "immediately stated that he was from Africa and was dropped off in a field," according to the complaint. Agents did not find a record of a legal entry for Okundia or Freeman-Osho. In an interview with agents, Omoruyi admitted both passengers in his car were coming from Canada, but denied transporting people from Minot to the border. Freeman-Osho told agents she was driven to the border from Regina by a white woman with short hair, and that she and Okundia were picked up by Victor Omoruyi. Victor Omoruyi asked to speak to his wife, Michelle Omoruyi. Border Patrol agents learned Michelle Omoruyi had been arrested by the RCMP after picking up the nine individuals who crossed into Canada. Okundia and Freeman-Osho were both ordered to be detained before their next hearing, which has yet to be set. Victor Omoruyis initial hearing in federal court has yet to be scheduled. Documents state he has has made several legal entries into the U.S. since May 2012. He was once refused admittance to the U.S. in February 2015 because of an expired passport. Michelle Omoruyi will appear in court in Canada on May 15 where she faces one count of human smuggling and one count of conspiracy to commit human smuggling. home World Indian parents condemn their own sons who left home to fight for ISIS Some Indian parents are condemning their own sons who left their homes to fight for the Islamic State in Afghanistan. According to The Washington Post, aspiring jihadists have left their homes and their jobs as doctors and businessmen in May last year, slipping away in twos and threes in order to avoid suspicion. Indian authorities believe that 19 adults and three children have settled in ISIS-held Nangahar province in Afghanistan, raising alarms about the terror group's reach in India as well as the rising extremism in the southern state of Kerala, which has deep ties to the Persian Gulf through migrant workers. Family members said that two Keralites have been killed by drones in Nangahar, including one on April 11. Thirteen Indian nationals are believed to be among the 94 people who died on April 13 when U.S. forces dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on a cave complex, which was believed to be the hiding place of militant commanders. While it is not known whether any of the victims were from the Kerala cell, some families have accepted that they will likely never see their relatives again. "Let them die in a bombing!" said Abdul Rahman Hamza, a father of a doctor and a school employee who took their families to the remote Afghan region. "What they are doing is not Islamic. The real Islam doesn't promote terrorism," the 66-year-old father added. Hamza's sons had attended Quran classes organized by Abdul Rashid Abdullah, a former engineer who had embraced a strict form of Islam called Salafism. K. Madhu, a civil police officer from Kerala who knows some of the families of the ISIS recruits, noted that those who joined the terror group did not do it for money. "All these people were very rich. They didn't need money. They were going to give up all material pleasures for a medieval lifestyle, to live like shepherds," the police officer said. At one point, Hamza, who owns a hotel and restaurant in Mumbai, castigated his nephew who also left home to join ISIS. When Hamza told the man not to bother coming home, the nephew responded with a photo of an AK-47. "We are not going to come back. We are devoted to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We'll meet again in paradise," the nephew told him in a text message. Hamza's wife, Hafsath, expressed her belief that the religious classes that their sons attended had taken them "to an extreme level." "I'm scared. I'm frightened. I'm also worried about the small children, their lives. I don't understand why they have chosen that place. I feel angry at times, but I still want them to come back," she said. Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, said that an estimated 100 Indians have left their homes to fight for the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Almost 70,000 Indian Muslim clerics have signed a fatwa against ISIS and other terror groups in 2015, saying their actions do not align with the teachings of Islam. Another 1.5 million Muslims from the Sufi Islam tradition have signed a petition against terror attacks. home US Indiana woman donates rare coin worth $300K to fund church building An anonymous woman from Indiana has donated an extremely rare coin to her church in Valparaiso earlier this year to help finance a new building for the congregation. The woman donated her rare 1866 proof Liberty Head double eagles coin to GracePoint Church, which has been using space at an elementary school for its gatherings since its founding in 2009. According to a news release from Texas-based Heritage Auctions, the coin, which features one of the earliest uses of the motto "In God We Trust," is one of only 10 survivors. "According to United States Mint records, only 30 proof Liberty double eagles were struck in 1866. Today we can track only ten known surviving specimens, and three of them are part of permanent collections, including one in The Smithsonian Institution," said Sarah Miller, Director of Numismatics at Dallas, Texas-based Heritage Auctions' New York office. The rare coin, which will be auctioned off on April 27, could sell for more than $300,000 because of its rarity and condition, officials said. GracePoint Pastor Ben Lamb said that $150,000 had already been wired by Heritage Auctions as advance payment toward the coin's final auction price. The payment allowed the church to begin construction on the new building, Indy Star reported. The Heritage Auctions news release noted that the church was able to avoid missing a crucial financial deadline for the project because of the woman's donation. The donation almost did not happen because someone tried to steal the rare coin from the woman's home four years ago. Lamb said that the woman described the coin as a "thorn in her side" after the attempted theft. The pastor, however, described it as an "incredible gift in God's story." "The widow told us the coin was rare, but we never dreamed how huge the true value was or the money it could ultimately bring for GracePoint Church. We were down to just a couple days to meet our financial deadline for our new building, and Heritage immediately wired GracePoint $150,000," the pastor said, according to Coin News. Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, one of the world's largest rare coin authentication companies, authenticated the coin as genuine in 1992 and graded it Proof 65, on a scale of one to 70. home World Irish Citizens' Assembly recommends full repeal of law banning abortions The Citizens' Assembly has voted to recommend a full repeal of Ireland's Eight Amendment, which gives equal rights to the mother and the unborn. The Assembly, a body of 99 randomly selected people who are tasked with examining the Eight Amendment, voted on a series of questions on April 23 and 24, Life Site News reported. In the first ballot, 87 percent voted to retain the amendment in full, while in the second ballot, 56 percent voted for the law to be amended or replaced. Fifty-seven percent voted in the third ballot to give the Oireachtas (Ireland's National Parliament) the power to legislate on abortion, compared to 43 percent advocating direct provision. Almost two thirds of the Assembly voted in favor of decriminalization of abortions. Forty-eight percent voted to allow abortion in all circumstances in the first three months of pregnancy, while 44 percent voted to extend the limit to 22 weeks. Eight percent were not in favor of any limits based on gestational age. Current law in Ireland prohibits abortions except in cases wherein the mother's life is at risk, including risk from suicide. In such cases, a three-person panel of doctors must determine whether the mother is really suicidal. According to Vice News, more than nine Irish women travel abroad each day to have abortions, with a majority going to the United Kingdom. Their expenses could be as high as $1,600, although there are clinics in Britain that offer discounts for women from Ireland. Pro-life groups said that the voting process was one sided, and was not reflective of the views of the majority of the Irish people. The group known as the Pro Life Campaign lamented that the way the Citizens' Assembly voted for abortion without any prior debate or seeking expert advice was "farcical and wholly unacceptable." Maria Madise, the international director of Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), described the voting results as "appalling but not surprising." "The process was flawed from the beginning, and was set up by the Irish Government to deliver a decision calling for a referendum on abortion but keeping the process at arms length from the government," said Madise. "The right-to-life is the most fundamental of all human rights and is recognised by international law. No state, no legislature, regardless of public opinion, can abrogate or deny fundamental human rights. Therefore, all calls to hold a referendum must be rejected by Irish lawmakers and by the Irish people, because the right-to-life is non-negotiable and can never be subject to a vote," she added. home World Irish Health Minister vows there will be no 'religious interference' at hospital on Catholic-owned land Nuns belonging to the Sisters of Charity are being asked to agree to contracts that would prevent them from "interfering" in the operations of the new National Maternity Hospital that would be built on the land owned by the religious order. The planned move of the National Maternity Hospital to a religiously-owned site in south Dublin has generated controversy since it was revealed that the facility will be owned by the Sisters of Charity. Thousands have signed a petition to oppose the decision due to allegations of child abuse by the order, as well as concerns that the nuns would not allow abortion and other practices contrary to Catholic teachings at the facility. The new hospital, which was scheduled to begin construction this year, will be run by a subsidiary company of St Vincent's Healthcare Group, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity, according to Irish Times. In response to the controversy, Irish Minister for Health Simon Harris promised that there will be key protections against "religious interference" before the move takes place. Harris said that he is trying to set three conditions, including that "the hospital must have clinical, operational and financial independence, with no question of religious interference." "The Minister for Health will have the power to guarantee this to ensure all relevant and legal healthcare must be available," he added. The health minister pointed out that St. Vincent's is making the land available to the State for free. He maintained that the religious order will not be profiting from the development of the hospital. Dr. Peter Boylan, a former Master at Holles Street Hospital, stated that it is "inappropriate for a hospital to have a strong religious influence, particularly from the Catholic Church." He questioned whether the nuns' religious beliefs would affect the hospital's ability to provide access to services, such as IVF, abortions, and gender realignment operations. In a statement to the Sunday Times, the bishop of Elphin said that the hospital that would be built on Catholic-owned land must operate by Catholic rules. "Public funding, while it brings with it other legal and moral obligations, does not change that responsibility," said Bishop Kevin Doran. Doran cited canon law which decrees that land owned by religious institutions is "ecclesiastical property" over which the Pope has "primacy of governance." St. Vincent's Healthcare Group said that it will review the status of the new hospital because of the controversy surrounding its ownership. home World ISIS claims responsibility for attack on police checkpoint near Sinai monastery The Islamic State has taken credit for the attack that killed one policeman and wounded four others at an Egyptian police checkpoint near the Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai on Tuesday. Tuesday's attack occurred at a checkpoint about 875 yards from the entrance to the monastery, which is considered as one of the world's most important Christian sites. The monastery is located in a remote desert and mountainous area in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula. The militants opened fire from an elevated hilltop overlooking the checkpoint, Egypt's Interior Ministry said in a statement. According to SITE Intelligence Group, which keeps track of the online activity of militants, announced the attack through the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency. This marks the first time ISIS carried out an attack on a monastery, according to The Associated Press. The monastery, which was built in the sixth century, is a popular site for tourists who are visiting the Red Sea resorts along Sinai's southern coast. Security has been put on high alert at tourist facilities across southern Sinai following the incident, Reuters reported. The attack came just after the Palm Sunday bombings that were carried out by suicide bombers on two churches in the Nile Delta city of Tanta and the coastal city of Alexandria. ISIS also claimed responsibility for the twin bombings that killed 45 people. The terror group has warned that there will be more attacks against Egypt's Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's population of over 90 million people. Following the twin bombings, the Egyptian government declared a three-month state of emergency and deployed armed forces to help police in guarding vital installations, including churches. Despite the state of emergency, militants were still able to carry out near-daily attacks against police and security forces in northern Sinai. The terror group had recently stepped up its attacks, moving its activities from Sinai to other parts of Egypt. Many Christian families and students fled from North Sinai in February due to a spate of targeted killings. Earlier this month, Israel barred its citizens from traveling to the Sinai Peninsula, saying the threat of attacks in the area inspired by ISIS and other jihadi groups was high. home World Marine Le Pen advances in French election after calling for ban of Islamic "preachers of hate" French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has advanced to the second round of the elections after calling for the expulsion of "Islamic preachers of hate" and the closure of their mosques. Le Pen, who is running for the French National Front political party, won Sunday's election with only two points behind centrist Emmanuel Macron, who was also declared the winner with around 23 percent, The Telegraph reported. The two candidates will be facing each other in the second round of the French elections on May 7. On Friday, Le Pen called for the expulsion of Islamic hate preachers and the closure of their mosques following the shooting of a police officer in Paris on Thursday. "Our country France has once again had the barbarity of a terrorist assault in the heart of our capital. Once again it was the police who were targeted and paid for the fight against radical Islam with their blood. It is a monstrous ideology which has declared war on our nation, on our reason, and on our civilization," the Front Nationalist leader said. "The Islamist, Salafist ideology has no right to be in France and should be banned. Preachers of hate should be expelled and their mosques closed," she added. Le Pen also recommended the expulsion of those with dual nationalities who are considered to be a terror risk and give "immediate administrative or criminal attention" to French citizens that are known to have expressed their support for an "enemy ideology." French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve denounced Le Pen's statements and accused her of exploiting the people's fear and emotion for her political ends. ISIS took credit for Thursday's attack that was carried out by 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi, who was previously convicted of attempted murder. Cheurfi, who carried a note defending ISIS in his pocket as well as addresses of police stations, was shot dead as he tried to escape. Telegraph reported that there had been a modest increase in support for Le Pen following the attack. U.S. President Donald Trump said that her chances of victory improved after the shooting because of her tough stance in securing France's borders. According to CNN, French authorities launched an investigation on Cheurfi last month after they learned about his attempts to contact an ISIS fighter in Syria and Iraq. President Francois Hollande condemned the attack as a "cowardly killing," adding that he was certain that it was an act of terror. "We shall be of the utmost vigilance, especially in relation to the election," the president said. home US Math teacher under fire for banning cross necklaces in classroom A math teacher at a public school in Tampa, Florida has come under fire for banning her students from wearing cross necklaces in the classroom. Lora Jane Riedas, a math teacher at Riverview High School, has reportedly prohibited as many as three students from wearing crosses in her classroom, claiming that they were "gang symbols." On Wednesday, the non-profit legal group Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to Superintendent Jeff Eakins of Hillsborough County Public Schools on behalf of a ninth-grade student who claimed that she has been asked to remove a cross during class. According to the letter, Riedas approached the student and asked her to remove her necklace with a cross pendant that was less than an inch long. When the student asked why, the teacher said that it was "disrespectful." "Our client did not want to be disrespectful, so she took it off, but she felt bad because she felt she was being forced to deny her faith. All of our clients are afraid to openly wear their cross necklaces in class any more," the letter stated, as reported by The Christian Post. Riedas, a lesbian who is said to be a member of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's (GLSEN) Leadership Institute, was also accused by Liberty Counsel of engaging in "political activism." The group pointed out that her classroom is "permanently decorated with LGBT political themes," including buttons on her desk facing the students saying, "I Love My LGBT Students" and "PROUD Public Employee." It also noted that the teacher placed LGBT rainbow stickers on her students' classroom folders without their permission. "One of our clients reports that after she removed the LGBT sticker, Ms. Riedas' behavior toward her changed markedly for the worse," the group said in the letter. Riedas was also accused of promoting GLSEN's "Day of Silence," an annual event organized in schools that intends to raising awareness about the "silencing effects of anti-LGBTQ name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools." Liberty Counsel argued that the teacher's political activism in the classroom violates school district policy, which prohibits teachers from campaigning on any political issue on school grounds during working hours. The group said that it would prefer for the school district to take action against the teacher, but it maintained that it is ready to file a federal lawsuit if needed "to vindicate the parental and student rights." Liberty Counsel asked the school district to prohibit Riedas from "interfering with student religious expression" and stop her from promoting "LGBT political activism" during instructional time. It also called on the school to force the teacher to remove pro-LGBT material from her classroom as well as the LGBT stickers on the students' folders. home US Missouri governor reverses law that prevents religious institutions from receiving state grants Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has reversed a state regulation that blocks grants to religious institutions as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a major case that was prompted by the policy. "We have hundreds of outstanding religious organizations ... doing great work on behalf of kids and families every single day. We should be encouraging that work. So, today we are changing that prejudiced policy," Greitens said on Thursday last week. Despite the reversal, the U.S. Supreme Court will still be hearing the Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer case, which will determine whether the state can fund religious institutions for non-religious programs. The case began when the state denied Trinity Lutheran's application for a program that recycles scrap rubber tires into rubber surfaces for playgrounds. Missouri's constitution prohibits the state from funding "any church, sect, or denomination of religion," according to The Stream. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Trinity Lutheran, argued that an institution cannot be denied access to a secular benefit just because of its religious background. The lawsuit made its way to the high court after it was dismissed by a district court judge. On Friday, the Supreme Court told lawyers from both sides to file letters on what the reversal means for the lawsuit. Both sides stated in their filings on Tuesday that the high court should move forward with the case. ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman said that the reversal of the policy "doesn't resolve the discriminatory actions," and he described the state's previous action as a "direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedent." The ADF also expressed its concern that the policy reversal might only be temporary and would not mean fair treatment for religious institutions in the long run. "A change in administration could readily lead to a resumption of the State's former policy of excluding churches from the Scrap Tire Program, or the governor could simply change his mind due to political pressure," said Cortman, according to Church Militant. Greitens agreed that his decision does not affect the case, but he noted that it ensures that "future groups will not be discriminated against based on religion again." Religious leaders in Missouri praised Greiten's decision, but the American Civil Liberties Union accused the governor of a "dangerous" blurring of church and state. home World Muslim artist inserts coded anti-Semitic, anti-Christian references in X-Men comic Marvel comics has pulled an issue of X-Men from circulation after it caused fan backlash due to the coded references that were perceived as anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. Indonesian Muslim artist Ardian Syaf reportedly included a coded reference to the hardline Islamist movement directed against Basuki "Ahok" Purnama Tjahaja, the Christian governor of Jakarta. In one of the panels of the newly released first issue of "X-Men Gold," Syaf referenced the number "212," which was often used to refer to the massive Muslim protest against Tjahaja on Dec. 2, 2016. According to Heat Street, the artist had posted an uncolored panel on his Facebook page to advertise the comic, but the post has since been taken down. "The number is a peace act, when a governor did blasphemy to our holy book," Syaf reportedly wrote in response to online criticism. "I don't hate Jews or Christians, I worked with them for 10 years. A lot of good friends too. For all that happened I apologise sincerely," he added. Another panel of the comic showed X-Man Colossus wearing a shirt that reads "QS 5:51," which reportedly refers to a Quranic passage that reads: "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you - then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." Following complaints from comic book readers, Marvel issued a statement, saying the artwork had been inserted "without knowledge behind its reported meanings." The comic book giant said that the artwork will be removed from subsequent printings, digital versions, and trade paperbacks. Marvel also noted that disciplinary action is being taken against Syaf, who freelances for the publication. David Gabriel, Marvel's Senior Vice President of sales and marketing, recently acknowledged that the publication has been struggling to sell comics due to its emphasis on diversity. The publication has introduced new iterations of old characters as part of its efforts to include more diverse and more female characters. Some of the changes include a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over as Iron Man; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man; and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenager who is the current Ms. Marvel. Speaking at the Marvel retailer summit, Gabriel said that retailers told him that fans are sticking to old favorites and that the comics focused on diversity and feminism were not selling. However, he clarified that Marvel will keep the new characters, and he suggested that the publication should keep introducing "unique" characters to its comics. home World New report highlights most effective ways to respond to Christian persecution Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have released a new report detailing the extent of Christian persecution around the world and the effective strategies believers employ to combat against violations of their religious freedom. The key findings of the report, titled "In Response to Persecution," was presented by several scholars at the National Press Club on Thursday. The study is part of the university's Under Caesar's Sword project, which is the first systematic and global investigation into the responses of Christian communities to persecution. Prior to the panel discussion of the report, Elizabeth H. Prodromou, a professor of conflict resolution at Tufts University, noted that Christians are in "danger of extinction" in the Middle East, in lands where Christianity originated. "The four ancient patriarchates, in Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem are examples of the deliberate, lethal, persecution and discrimination and repression that Christians in those parts of the world face," she said, according to The Christian Post. The study indicated that 43 percent of oppressed Christians respond to persecution primarily with what the researchers referred to as "strategies of survival," which includes adapting their lives to blend in with the community, going underground or fleeing the land altogether. Thirty-eight percent of persecuted believers employ "strategies of association," which focuses on building ties with other Christian communities, non-Christian religions, and secular figures to strengthen resilience. Only 19 percent of persecuted Christians respond with "strategies of confrontation," where they engage in direct confrontation with a repressive government or non-state entity like a terrorist group. Most of the confrontations are nonviolent, with very few exceptions. "While strategies of survival and association may not seem dramatic, we should not overlook the creativity, courage and theological conviction that often characterize them," Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at Notre Dame and one of the directors of the project, said. "Christian communities take up these short-term strategies with the long-term religious conviction that if they can hold out, a better day will arrive a not only in the life to come, but also perhaps in earthly time," he added. The researchers involved with the project have also seen some encouraging signs. Prodromou noted that the conflict in the Middle East has prompted Christians of every denomination to work together and get to know each other. She said that the repair of the fractured church is one of the positive things that is coming out of the conflict. The researchers will be publishing research-based educational resources, including lesson plans for use in churches, schools, and non-profit organizations, at the beginning of summer 2017. Under Caesar's Sword is a three-year research endeavor being funded by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The project involves 17 scholars and academic institutions, such as the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Religious Freedom Institute, and Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Research Project. home World Pakistani court may hear blasphemy trial of Christian mother in June The Supreme Court of Pakistan may hear the blasphemy case of Asia Bibi in June after it was postponed last year because one of the three judges decided to quit the bench. Bibi was sentenced to death by a court in the district of Nankana in 2010 after her Muslim co-workers accused her of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad back in 2009, The Christian Post reported. The Christian mother took her case to the country's Supreme Court after the two-member bench of Lahore High Court upheld the death sentence in 2014. Her appeal was postponed in October 2016 when Justice Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman retired from the case because he said he was also a part of the bench in the case of the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who was assassinated in 2011 for his support of Bibi. Saiful Malook, Bibi's lawyer, said that the "the request to reopen the hearing was submitted to the President of the Supreme Court of Pakistan last week" and that the case could resume in the first week of June. "The case continues to be postponed due to the problems of this country. We are in the midst of a continuing war between Islam and Kufr (infidels). But our hopes for her release are many," the lawyer added. David Curry, president and CEO for advocacy group Open Doors USA, said that Bibi has lived under daily threats from extremists, fellow prisoners, and even prison guards. Khalil Tahir Sandhu, one of Bibi's defense attorneys, said that her faith remains strong despite the threats. "Right now she is behind bars. She has not seen, unfortunately, the Sun or the Moon this year," Sandhu said, as reported by Christians In Pakistan. "She is very, very strong in her faith. There were so many attempts to convert her but she said 'no a I will remain faithful' and she has remained faithful," he narrated. Dozens of people have died in extrajudicial killings resulting from blasphemy cases in Pakistan since 1990. Although Pakistani law does not specifically define blasphemy, it stipulates that the punishment is death. Persecution watchdog groups have pointed to Bibi's case as "the best example" of how blasphemy laws can be abused and numerous organizations have launched campaigns calling for her freedom. In April, U.S. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Chris Coons (D-De.) introduced a joint resolution calling on the Pakistani government to release Bibi. home World Pastor claims lions saved him from being killed by terrorists A pastor who runs an underground ministry in the Middle East has claimed that a pride of lions prevented Islamic militants from attacking him and other believers. Pastor Paul Ciniraj, director of Bibles for Mideast, which distributes Scriptures and plants churches in the region, recounted that he was changing his clothes after conducting a baptism service about three weeks ago when the militants began stoning him and his group. He said he sustained severe injuries, so he was brought to the nearest hospital. According to the pastor, the militants who attacked them found out that he was being treated at a hospital, so he was transferred to another pastor's house in a nearby forested area. Ciniraj said he was secretly visited by other believers in the forest home, where he stayed in for three weeks. However, a group of militants armed with steel bars and other weapons was able to reach the house on Easter Sunday while the house owner, Pastor Ayoob, was leading a worship service. He said the militants were able to find the house after they noticed the people who visited him secretly. The people who were with him at the time was Ayoob, his 80-year-old mother, several children, and a woman who was seven months pregnant. Ciniraj said they lost all hope, and they thought it was their last moments on earth. They all joined hands in prayer and repeatedly praised Jesus. "O Lord Jesus! Praise His Holy Name. Completely unexpectedly, a lion ran from the forest, leapt towards the militants, and seized one by the neck," the pastor wrote on the group's website. "When other combatants tried to attack the lion, two other lions bounded towards them. The terrified militants fled the site, and the lions left us completely alone. Equally astonishing, records show no lions are supposed to live in that forest," he continued. The pastor said that they left the forest home due to pressure from some officials. Ciniraj, a convert from Islam, founded the ministry about four decades ago. He said that although Islam remains dominant in the Middle East, "thousands upon thousands of people now secretly believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior." His ministry establishes house churches in the region under the banner of the nondenominational Assembly of Loving God (ALG) Church. He said that over 3,000 former Muslims were baptized in many of the ministry's churches in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East during the 21 days of fasting and prayer organized by the ALG from March 13 to April 2. home World Pastor joins geneticist in a quest to find Jesus' DNA A pastor has teamed up with a geneticist in a "groundbreaking" search for Jesus' DNA to see if any of his living descendants can be found today. Pastor Joe Basile, a biblical scholar and lead pastor of Encounter Road Church in California, and George Busby, a geneticist from Oxford University, have traveled to places like Spain, Italy, Israel, and the Black Sea to find a strand of Jesus' DNA, The Daily Mail reported. Part of their quest has been featured on the History Channel in a two-hour documentary titled "The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA," which premiered on Easter Sunday. The team is analyzing DNA samples from the Shroud of Turin, an ancient cloth believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus, as well as the purported bones of John the Baptist, which were discovered in Bulgaria in 2010. The 2,000-year-old bones are considered by the researchers to be "hugely important" because he is believed to be a cousin of Jesus, as well as a disciple. "If we find other relics purported to be from John the Baptist, or a close relative of Jesus, then we could use genetics to compare the two to see if they are likely to have come from the same or related people," Busby explained. "Also, we have growing collections of DNA sampled from people around the world, which we can use to make a guess on the geographical origins of the relics," he added. Busby said he was skeptical about the discovery of the remains of John the Baptist at first because many people could have handled the bones and contaminated it with their DNA. However, he noted that researchers are now able to differentiate modern contamination from ancient genomes, which could lead them to the truth of who the bones really belong to. In their investigation of the Turin Shroud, the geneticist revealed that multiple people's DNA have been recently discovered in the relic. The mystery surrounding the shroud intensified in October 2015 when Italian researchers examining the object found DNA traces of plants from all around the world. Busby also revealed that they met an archaeologist in Israel who has several crucifixion nails in his possession. However, the geneticist said that they will not be able to extract DNA from rusty iron. He suggested that the world would have to face a very important question if DNA analysis could show evidence that the Shroud, the James Ossuary, and the bones found in Bulgaria are a familial match. "Could this then have been the DNA of Jesus and his family? To answer that, all you need is a little belief," said Busby. home World Pope draws criticism from Jews for comparing refugee centers to concentration camps A Jewish organization has criticized Pope Francis for his remarks comparing European refugee holding centers to concentration camps. The pope made the remarks during his visit to the Basilica of St. Bartholomew in Rome on Sunday, where he met migrants and told them about his trip to a camp on the Greek Island of Lesbos last year. Francis narrated his encounter with a Muslim refugee from the Middle East who told him how "terrorists came to our country." Islamists cut the throat of the man's Christian wife because she refused to follow their instruction to throw her crucifix to the ground, Reuters reported. "I don't know if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration (type) because of the great number of people left there inside them," the pope recounted. The pope referred to the slain woman as "another crown" among modern martyrs, and he used the occasion to draw attention to the squalid conditions in migrant reception centers where people fleeing from persecution and war wait for months for their asylum application to be processed. Following the pontiff's remarks, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a statement urging Francis to "to reconsider his regrettable choice of words." "The conditions in which migrants are currently living in some European countries may well be difficult, and deserve still greater international attention, but concentration camps they certainly are not," said David Harris, head of AJC, in the statement. "The Nazis and their allies erected and used concentration camps for slave labor and the extermination of millions of people during World War II. There is no comparison to the magnitude of that tragedy," he continued. The pope was not the first to compare the migrant centers to concentration camps. Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis once described the now-closed Idomeni camp, which housed 8,000 people in a Greek village on the northern border with Macedonia, as a "modern Dachau." During the visit to the basilica, Francis thanked countries that are helping refugees and urged people in northern Italy to take in more migrants. The pontiff noted that Italy had one of the world's lowest birth rates and said that it would be "suicide" for the country if it closes its doors to migrants. The basilica where Francis met with the migrants was home to a shrine for Christians who were killed for their faith in the 20th and 21st century. home World Pro-life MPs call for reform in UK's abortion law in light of new statistics on premature births Pro-life MPs are calling for a reform in UK's abortion law as new statistics reveal that more babies in England and Wales are surviving premature births at 23 weeks than in the past. According to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 33 percent of babies born at 23 weeks in 2014 reached their first birthday, compared to 23 percent in 2010 and 20 percent in 2011. The chances of survival for infants born at 24 weeks has also risen, The Daily Mail reported. The statistics show that 62 percent of babies born during this period of pregnancy lived for at least a year. Just over half of babies born in 2010 at the same period reached their first birthday. In light of the new data, pro-life MPs are calling into question UK's abortion limit, which currently allows pregnancies to be terminated at 24 weeks. Fiona Bruce, Tory MP for Congleton and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, said that the new statistics highlight "how shocking it is that our current law does not recognise the rights and immense value of a baby at that stage it its life." "In the rest of Europe, the term limit for abortions is generally around 12 weeks, apart from exceptional circumstances. So at 20 weeks, a baby in France or Germany has more rights than a baby in the UK. This is not right," she added. The new figures came just as pro-choice groups are pushing for the removal of criminal sanctions against illegal abortion, which effectively abolishes the 24-week limit. Leaders of the Royal College of Midwives are calling for decriminalization, which is also the campaign objective of abortion providers such as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Diana Johnson, Labour MP for Hull North, has put forward a bill that seeks to liberalize the current abortion law which she described as "Victorian." Jim Shannon, a Christian and Democratic Unionist MP for Strangford, noted that there will be a stronger demand for more abortion because of the general election that is scheduled to take place on June 8. However, he said that he will be one of many MPs who will advocate for pro-life values. Shannon, who also sits on the All Party Parliament Pro-Life group, noted that some of his colleagues are in favor of a 12-week abortion limit. He maintained that he has stricter pro-life values, but he said it would be a good start for the U.K. Robert Flello, pro-life Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, expressed his belief that the public supports a reduction in time limits. "I think the public is behind a reduction in time limits and not abortion up to birth, which obviously is what decriminalisation would open the door to," he said. "Those behind the move to decriminalise abortion are clear about their agenda a it is nothing to do with science, nothing to do with morality, it is simply a free-for-all," he added. home World Prosecutors seek lighter sentence in blasphemy case of Christian governor of Jakarta Indonesian prosecutors have reportedly dropped the blasphemy case against the Christian governor of Jakarta and are now calling on the court to sentence him to face two years' probation instead. Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who recently lost the gubernatorial election to his Muslim rival Anies Baswedan, had been facing a politically charged trial for allegedly insulting Islam after he quoted a Quranic verse during a campaign rally in September. During the hearing at the North Jakarta District Court on Thursday, the prosecutors decided to drop the blasphemy charges against him, but they recommended for Purnama to be sentenced to two years' probation if he is found guilty of Article 156 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on showing animosity toward others. "We demand the judges rule two years' probation and one year of imprisonment if the probation is broken," said prosecutor Ali Mukar-tono, according to The Jakarta Post. The prosecutors admitted on Thursday that they could not prove that Purnama had insulted Islam as a whole, but only individual Muslims. They decided to drop the accusations that the Christian governor had violated Article 156a of the KUHP, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The prosecutors noted that Purnama had been cooperative during the legal process. They also cited the governor's contributions to developing Indonesia's capital as a mitigating factor in calling for a reduced sentence for him. However, the prosecutors said that Purnama was guilty of showing animosity toward Muslims by quoting Surah Al Maidah 51, which was often used by Muslim political groups to tell Muslims not to vote for political candidates who adhere to other faiths. They contended that the Christian governor insulted Muslims because he acted as if he had the correct understanding of the verse, which they said had various interpretations, even among Muslims. "The defendant acted as if his interpretation is correct and said people who believe other interpretations were being tricked," said prosecutor Ardito Muwardi. The prosecutors further noted that Purnama was not the only one to blame in the case. They also cited Buni Yani, who is suspected of uploading an edited video of Purnama's speech with a misleading transcription. They said that the video led to the Purnama's blasphemy charges as well as the public uproar against the governor. Religious hardliners had gathered outside the court for months, calling for the Christian governor to be jailed. The protesters threw rocks at the police line on Thursday after the announcement of the prosecutor's sentencing demands. home World Russian court bans all Jehovah's Witnesses activities after labeling group as 'extremists' The Supreme Court in Russia has labeled Jehovah's Witnesses as an "extremist" group and has banned all of its activities in the country. Following six days of hearings, the court ruled on Thursday that the religious denomination's headquarters in St. Petersburg as well as its 395 churches could be seized and liquidated, The Washington Post reported. Under the ruling, members of the group are prohibited from distributing copies of the Watchtower tract, discussing their beliefs in public, and worshipping at a meeting hall. Svetlana Borisova, a lawyer for the Justice Ministry, told the court that the Jehovah's Witnesses "pose a threat to the rights of the citizens, public order and public security." The religious group launched a global letter-writing campaign and a lawsuit claiming political repression after the government suspended its activities last month. The Supreme Court decision has been described by Jehovah's Witnesses as "a black day for fundamental human freedoms in Russia." Viktor Zhenkov, a lawyer for the religious denomination, expressed plans to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court's appellate division. He said that the group will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France if the appeal fails. Although Jehovah's Witnesses has no record of any opposition toward Russian authorities, it has faced hostility from the administration of President Vladimir Putin, who has placed the Russian Orthodox Church at the center of his efforts to put the country forward as a great military and moral power. Jehovah's Witnesses, which has some 175,000 adherents in Russia, became an officially registered religious group in the country in 1991, and it was re-registered again in 1999. It became a target for official harassment in 2002 under an anti-extremism law, which makes it illegal for any group, other than the Orthodox Church and other traditional religious institutions, to claim to offer a true path to religious or political salvation. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has denounced Russia's ongoing crackdown against the religious group known for its door-to-door evangelism. "The treatment of the Jehovah's Witnesses reflects the Russian government's tendency to view all independent religious activity as a threat to its control and the country's political stability," it stated. "This approach dates back to the Soviet period and impacts other religious groups, including peaceful Christians and Muslims," it continued. Human Rights Watch described Thursday's ruling as a "terrible blow to freedom of religion and association in Russia." home World Suspect in lynching of Pakistani student claims university officials asked him to testify against victim A student who was suspected of being involved in the lynching of another student in a Pakistani university claimed that the school officials asked him to testify that the victim had committed blasphemy. The suspect, identified only as Wajahat, had admitted that he was part of the mob that lynched Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old student at the Abdul Wali Khan University in the city of Mardan. Khan, who was described by others as an intellectually curious student who openly professed devotion to Islam, was attacked by a mob last week after he was accused of committing blasphemy during a heated debate about religion with other students. Wajahat claimed that class representative Mudassir Bashir asked him to testify against Khan before the university administration. "Some 15 to 20 people, including university officials were present at the chairman's office," said Wajahat, according to the Pakistani news website Dawn. "The administration had convened the meeting to decide the case of Mashal Khan and Bashir had called me to be a witness regarding the blasphemous ideas of Mashal Khan," he added. The suspect insisted that Khan had committed blasphemy despite senior police officials saying they found no evidence to suggest that the victim had committed the act. Wajahat further claimed that Bilal Baksh, the university's head security officer, warned that those who defend Khan and his supporters will be dealt with "an iron hand." The suspect said that Baksh also threatened to kill Khan himself, which prompted the mob to rush towards the hostel where the victim was staying. Abdullah, another student who survived the mob beating, also claimed that he was asked to testify against Khan, but he refused. He had been accused of belonging to the Ahmadi faith and was forced to recite verses from the Quran before the mob started beating him. He was badly beaten before the police managed to rescue him from the attackers. Following the incident, a video has reportedly emerged showing the mob celebrating and congratulating each other for lynching Khan. A total of 32 suspects has been arrested for the lynching incident. Seven suspects have reportedly confessed to the murder on Wednesday before the police. Members of the business community in Khan's hometown of Swabi recently held a rally to protest the murder and demand justice against the perpetrators. home US There may be twice as many atheists in U.S. than previously reported, says new study A new study has suggested that many atheists in the U.S. are still in the closet, and there could be twice as many non-believers than what has been reported in previous studies. Polls conducted by Gallup, Pew, and Barna put the number of atheists in America between three and 10 percent. But a report by two University of Kentucky scholars has suggested that the actual number could be as high as 26 percent because many people are still embarrassed to admit their lack of belief in God. According to the study conducted by psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle, people are less likely to be truthful when answering a direct "yes or no" question about faith. "According to our samples, about 1 in 3 atheists in our country don't feel comfortable disclosing their lack of belief," Najle told Vox. The psychologists polled 2,000 Americans, asking how many of several statements were true about them, such as "I am a vegetarian," "I own a dog," and "I believe in God." The first group received questionnaires that did not ask about God, while the other group of 1,000 people got questionnaires that asked about their belief in God. Gervais and Najle compared the responses of the two groups while assuming that the group that was not asked about God would have the same number of non-believers as the group that was asked about God. Based on the results, the pair concluded that much more than 10 or 11 percent of Americans do not believe in God. "We can say with a 99 percent probability that it's higher than [11 percent]," said Gervais. While Gervais admitted that the method is not perfect and yields results with a wide margin of error, he and Najle believe that the results suggest that polling firms such as Gallup and Pew undercount atheists. Greg Smith, who directs Pew's polling efforts on religion, is not ready to make the same conclusions as Gervais and Najle. "I would be very reluctant to conclude that phone surveys like ours are underestimating the share the public who are atheists to that kind of magnitude," he said. Smith noted that Pew has conducted polls on religion both phone and online, but the polling firm did not find much of a difference in the results. He asserted that people who were unwilling to admit their lack of belief in God to a stranger on the phone will be slightly more likely to input it into a computer. Smith also pointed out a weird quirk in the researchers' date in which 34 percent agreed to the phrase: "I do not believe that 2 + 2 is less than 13." Gervais and Najle still believe that their study is valid, but they admitted that more research is needed. "In time, we'll hopefully be able to refine our methods and find other indirect measurement techniques," said Gervais. home World Turkish IMDB users try to flood 'The Promise' with negative reviews Turkish users of movie ratings site IMDB have reportedly attempted to flood the Armenian genocide film "The Promise" with bad reviews even before it was released. The movie, which was released on April 21, follows the fictional love triangle between an Armenian doctor, a lovely dancer, and an American journalist in the city of Constantinople during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. However, they had to set aside their romance after the Turkish government started its mass incarceration and execution of Armenian citizens. Users of a Turkish message board reportedly decided to flood the movie with bad ratings after they learned about its upcoming release. According to The Washington Post, the film has received more than 120,000 ratings, 62,000 of which were rated with the lowest ranking of one-star. One user's comment was roughly translated as saying, "Guys, Hollywood is filming a big movie about the so-called Armenian genocide and the trailer has already been watched 700k times. We need to do something urgently." An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the empire's final days, beginning in 1915. At least 26 countries have acknowledged the mass killings as genocide, but Turkey has long argued that the death toll has been inflated and that the casualties were victims of civil war and unrest. As of April 25, the movie had a 5.8 rating on IMDB, but at one point, it was rated 1.8 star, which places it in the 10 lowest-rated films on the entire website. More than 35,000 supporters of the film tried to counter the low ratings by giving it a 10-star rating. "All I know is that we were in about a 900-seat house with a real ovation at the end, and then you see almost 100,000 people who claim the movie isn't any good," producer Mike Medavoy lamented. Ralph Winter, one of the film's producers, encouraged Christians to see "The Promise" because it highlights the persecution that is still happening around the world today. "In the 20th century, this genocide of a million and a half people in Armenia is the most modern indicator that if we don't learn our lesson, if we don't pay attention, if we don't fight back against this, it's just going to continue to happen," he said. "The Promise" was directed by Terry George, and it stars Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, and Charlotte Le Bon. The film was released just days before the annual Armenian remembrance day of the mass killings, which was on Monday. home US 'X-Men' producer encourages Christians to see new Armenian genocide movie, 'The Promise' Hollywood producer Ralph Winter is encouraging Christians to watch the Armenian genocide film "The Promise" because it highlights the persecution that is still happening across the globe today. Winter, a devout Christian who has worked on Hollywood mega-blockbusters such as 1984's "Star Trek: The Search for Spock" and the "X-Men" franchise, says that he got involved with the film because he was captivated by the love story after he read the screenplay. The Hollywood producer has been vocal about his Christian faith, and he was also behind several faith-based films, including "Three," "House," and "Left Behind." He said that "The Promise" is an important story for the faith community because of its emphasis on persecution. "It's about persecution, and it's persecution that hasn't gone away and is still happening today," Winter said in an interview with The Gospel Herald. "In the 20th century, this genocide of a million and a half people in Armenia is the most modern indicator that if we don't learn our lesson, if we don't pay attention, if we don't fight back against this, it's just going to continue to happen," he added. The slaughter of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1922 has been described by Pope Francis as the first genocide of the 20th century. However, the Turkish government has refused to acknowledge that it ever occurred. Winter, whose birthday coincides with the day that commemorates the genocide, said that he had participated in genocide parades in Hollywood and Los Angeles. He is hoping that the film would help the Armenians "get the recognition they deserve." The film has been praised by several high-profile members of the Armenian community, but Winter says that the success of the movie depends on reaching a larger audience, so the film's producer is promoting it heavily on social media as well as traditional forms of advertisement. "The Promise" was directed by Terry George, and it stars Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, and Charlotte Le Bon. The film is scheduled to hit the theaters across the U.S. on April 21. The Hollywood premiere on Wednesday was attended by famous celebrities such as Cher, Sylvester Stallone, as well as the Kardashians, who have been vocal about their Armenian heritage. Cher, who is part Armenian, noted that the genocide is still happening around the world today. "It's a story that's happening in Syria. It's a story that keeps happening over and over," she said. A man plead guilty Wednesday to defrauding victims as part of an elaborate call center scam, according to acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez of the Southern District of Texas. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, 28, who resided in Austin, plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of the scheme. His sentencing is set for July 21, 2017. As part of his guilty plead, Chaudhari admitted that he and his co-conspirators participated in a scam where individuals from call centers located in India impersonated officials from the IRS or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to the statement from the U.S. Attorney's office. The call centers would target U.S. victims and threaten them with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay money reportedly owed to the government. Victims were instructed to pay by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, but upon payment the funds would be liquidated, the statement said. Chaudhari, worked as a member of a crew of runners since about April 2014 operating in Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and elsewhere across the country. He would drive around the country with other runners to purchase re-loadable cards registered with misappropriated personal identity information of U.S. citizens, the statement said. Once the victims paid, he would liquidate the proceeds on the cards and transfer the funds into money orders for deposit into various bank accounts, while keeping a percent of the profit for himself. He also shipped money orders with victim's payments to other U.S. based co-conspirators. Based on an indictment returned this past October by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas, 55 other individuals and five India-based call centers have been charged for their roles in the scheme. Chaudhari is the second defendant to plead guilty in the case. A Department of Justice website has been set-up to provide information on the case. Anyone who believes they may be a victim of this scam or other telefraud scams may contact the Federal Trade Commission via this website. Dear Abby: I'm 15. I lost my dad two months ago. I found him when I got out of the shower. He had overdosed on heroin. I know he's at peace now, but I still feel like it's my fault that he's dead because I took a shower and wasn't with him. I feel like it should have been me, not him. He had just gotten out of jail a month before he died. I can't keep crying myself to sleep. I need a way to cope, and right now I feel like I'm at rock bottom and can't return. Rock Bottom Teen Dear Rock Bottom: I am so sorry for what you have been going through. You are a normal teen, and in my opinion, you are much more resilient than you think you are. You have had a terrible shock, and in addition to the normal grieving process, you may be suffering from survivor guilt. Your father did not die because you took a shower. He died because he had a heroin addiction he couldn't conquer. It is very important that you talk with a grief counselor and possibly join a grief support group. If your family can't arrange counseling for you, please talk with a school counselor or someone in the clergy. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and you'll start seeing it once you get some professional help. Dear Abby: I've been reading your column for years but never thought I'd have to write to you. This year, my aunt hosted a family dinner and did a wonderful job - everything was delicious. There was only one problem. She was upset (everyone at the table could see it and feel the tension) because I ate "too much" meat and she didn't have leftovers. I did eat more than everyone else that night (doesn't happen often), but I say if the food is on the table, it's fair game. If you don't want people to eat it, don't serve it. I'm asking for an official ruling, please. Sated in Buffalo Dear Sated: A gracious host or hostess should not become upset if a guest eats the food that's presented. If the host or hostess doesn't want guests to polish off everything that has been prepared, the food should be plated in advance. DearAbby.comDear AbbyP.O. Box 69440Los Angeles, CA 90069Universal Press Syndicate Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo spoke vehemently against Senate Bill 4 Thursday afternoon, calling it a dangerous move by the state Legislature because it would redirect limited HPD resources from crime fighting efforts to an initiative that does not improve public safety. Acevedo did not share if HPD would alter its policies if SB 4 were to become law. However, he made it clear during the afternoon presser he would make public safety a priority over policies he believe are unrelated. MORE ON SB 4: House gives final approval to 'sanctuary cities' bill I am carrying out my sworn duty and moral duty to speak out on matters of public safety. And Im not here to keep a job to do it, he said. He said the message from City Hall has also been clear ... do whatever you need to do to make the city safe. Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later. The issue revolves around a provision in the bill that prevents departments from prohibiting their officers from asking about a person's immigration status. If made into law, the current HPD policy would be a violation. The Texas House gave final approval Thursday to the bill that would grant sweeping new powers to police officers in the state by allowing them to question a person's immigration status if they have been stopped with reasonable suspicion. The chamber passed Senate Bill 4, a priority item for Gov. Greg Abbott this session, on a party-line vote with 94 Republicans in support and 53 Democrats against. The legislation would force police to honor all federal requests to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally until federal authorities can investigate the person's status. It also would prohibit local jurisdictions from passing or enforcing an ordinance that prohibits police officers from inquiring about a detained person's immigration status, which would nullify the Houston Police Department's 1990 policy on the matter. If that language does not get removed were going to have some negative consequences, Acevedo said. TRUMP VS. SANCTUARY CITIES: Here's what could be next for Trump's sanctuary cities order Police departments across the state, including Houston, are understaffed, he said. And the bill would diminish those already limited resources, he added. Just this year Acevedo announced plans to target high-crime areas and violent documented gang members. He also announced a joint effort with the Texas Department of Public Safety to decrease violent crime in the area by creating two squad assigned to the initiative. However, he believes SB4 may affect those plans. We dont have the resources, nor do we have the bandwidth nor the desire to be ICE agents. If I wanted to work for ICE, I wouldve applied for ICE, he said. JUDGES VS. TRUMP: When a judge quotes Sean Spicer, it's not a good sign for the White House Acevedos worry is that a police officers duty and the proposed policy will create a divide among departments throughout the state. While police officers are sworn to protect, he says the bill could open the door for harassment. I will lose my ability and authority to direct (my officers) workflow, he said. ... And all of sudden Ill have a police officer that wants to go off and play ICE agent all day. He went on to add he hopes that isnt the case, but that perception would be damaging for Houston particularly on immigrant communities. A few weeks ago, Acevedo said the number of crimes reported by Hispanics decreased within the first three months of 2017. He said he believes the decrease is built on a perception that even a person who reports a crime is at risk of deportation. WHITE HOUSE: Officials in 'sanctuary cities' have 'the blood of dead Americans on their hands' That isnt good, he said. The perception were going to create is going to have a tremendously chilling effect on the immigrant community. If we create the perception or environment where people will not step forward, were in deep trouble. Lastly, Acevedo said the bill is forcing a mandate of police departments, which strays from law enforcement's main goal. "Police officers joined this noble profession ... because they wanted to make a difference. A difference in the lives of the people we serve. They can pass all these silly amendments (that try to turn) us into ICE agents, but cops aren't interested in that," he said. Reporter Bobby Cervantes contributed to this report. Sheriff's deputies are investigating a shooting in east Harris County late Wednesday that sent three people to the hospital. The shooting happened around 10 p.m. at an apartment complex in the 3200 block of Royal Avenue near Baytown. A group of men and women got in an argument in the parking lot of the complex and inside of one of the units, said officials with the Harris County Sheriff's Office. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York since 2009, will speak at the University of St. Thomas in Montroses May commencement ceremony despite student calls for the university to reconsider. Student concerns relate to his role in handling sexual abuse allegations and his reported remarks criticizing same-sex marriage. A petition calling for the university to cancel the speech brought 100 signatures in the last several days. University President Robert Ivany said Thursday morning that he does not believe the critical view reflects the general campus opinion. The university's governing board of directors selected Dolan to speak two years ago in a unanimous decision, he said. Ivany, who will step down after this semester, plans to meet with graduate student Christina Cochran on Monday to discuss her concerns, he said. A small group of students is "outraged" by the selection, Cochran said by phone Wednesday. "In my opinion, this student does not reflect in any way shape or form the attitude of the students of St. Thomas," he said. He said he will listen to her concerns but that Dolan will speak at commencement. Before taking his current position in New York, Dolan was archbishop of Milwaukee. There, priests accused of pedophilia were paid up to $20,000 for agreeing to be removed from the clergy under Dolans leadership. Was it a payoff, was it a settlement, was it an impetus, I wouldnt say that, nor would I say it was a normal practice, but it was done, he said in a 2012 deposition about the payments, which he later said were to help accused priests transition out of their roles and get medical insurance. He said that people in favor of same-sex marriage were bullying the church in a 2011 interview with the National Catholic Register, an arm of the Catholic Eternal Word Television Network. You think its going to stop with this? You think now bigamists are going to want their rights to marry? You think somebody that wants to marry his sister is going to now say I have a right? I mean, its the same principle, isnt it? Ordained to the priesthood in 1976, Dolan has served in Missouri, Washington, D.C. and Rome. He had a prominent role in President Donald Trumps inauguration, leading the nation in prayer from the Capitol moments before Trump took office. He was appointed to the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Dolan promoted a voluntary compensation program for priest abuse victims last year in an effort to bring healing and closure. The university announced Dolans speech, which will take place at NRG Arena on May 20, last week in a news release. He has brought the truth of the Gospel to countless men and women through his joyful personality, quick wit and his popular homilies at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, Ivany said in a statement. Cardinal Dolan's insights and enthusiasm for our faith and for the dignity of all will find an appreciative audience in our dedicated graduates. Dolan spoke at Le Moyne Colleges commencement in 2015 despite similar concerns. More than 750 people signed an online petition indicating their disapproval. FORT WORTH American Airlines said its first-quarter earnings fell 67 percent as higher costs, including labor and fuel, offset a positive trend in airfares. The company's shares slumped $2.95, or 6.4 percent, in morning trading. On the company's conference call with analysts, much of the discussion centered on American's announcement that it will raise pay for pilots and flight attendants about two years before negotiations on new contracts. The union employees have been complaining loudly that they are paid less than peers at Delta and United. Assuming that they approve the raises, pilots will get 8 percent more and flight attendants another 5 percent. American estimates the raises will cost the company $230 million this year and $350 million in 2018 and 2019. CEO Doug Parker told analysts that the out-of-contract raises "might surprise or even dismay some of you because it adds costs to the airline." Parker called the raises an investment in the company that will lead to better service by employees and, eventually, higher revenue. American's net income was $234 million, or 46 cents per share, down from $700 million, or $1.14 per share a year earlier. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company said adjusted for one-time gains and costs, earnings came to 61 cents per share. That exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 57 cents per share. The world's largest airline posted revenue of $9.62 billion in the period, up 2 percent and in line with Street forecasts. Revenue for each seat flown one mile by American, a proxy for average fares, rose 2 percent in the quarter. The increase in costs was an even sharper 11 percent, as American spent more on fuel, labor and maintenance. American is also offering raises to pilots and flight attendants "outside of contract negotiations," a move that should sit well with its unions but might be viewed negatively by investors. Shares fell nearly 5 percent in premarket trading. American Airlines Group Inc. shares have decreased almost 1 percent since the beginning of the year. The stock has increased 26 percent in the last 12 months. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two decades ago in Houston if you wanted to watch "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" it meant staying up until 2:40 a.m. or setting a VCR to watch it later. So, this week in 1997 O'Brien came to Houston to investigate just why that was, in the middle of a muggy Bayou City night. Think of it as a precursor to comedian Dave Attell's "Insomniac" episode shot in Houston just four years later. BILL WHO?: Late-night talk-show hosts you've already forgotten Since O'Brien took over the "Late Night" reins from David Letterman in 1993 his show had, of course, aired right after Jay Leno's "The Tonight Show" at 12:30 a.m. eastern time in most major markets, In Houston O'Brien wasn't seen until 2:40 a.m., long after most potential viewers were sleep. Rumor was ratings for the show weren't as good as episodes of "The Jenny Jones Show," "Ricki Lake," "Access Hollywood," and a rerun of KPRC-TV's 10 p.m. newscast, all of which aired before Conan. Those who watched him nightly were either bartenders, stuck in a guard shack, or unemployed. O'Brien and company drove around Houston to ask people still awake if they even knew who he was. Staff at a bail bonds office, a maintenance worker, strippers, Rice University kids, and hotel guests were all included. Most were clueless as to who he was. FUNDRAISING: Watch Conan O'Brien hit the streets of Mexico City to raise money for President Trump's border wall Finally O'Brien can be seen watching his own show on one of the Diamond Vision screens at the Astrodome, which he had all to himself. O'Brien got that cherry slot behind Leno in Houston, eight years later, in 2005. By this time his show had caught on across the country and he wasn't the (literal) redheaded stepchild of late-night TV. These days fans still see O'Brien and his sidekick Andy Richter nightly Monday through on TBS' "Conan" which airs at the sensible time of 10 p.m. The Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office is reviewing prices charged for non-consent tows in the county -- not because they are too high, but because a company complained they are too low. Local laws allow anyone to file a written request for a study of towing fees. That request is then presented to the commissioners court, which is not bound to proceed with it. Stanley Botten, underwent a surgery to repair a hiatal hernia in January 2017 only to return to the hospital to learn he'd been hit with his second pulmonary embolism. In 2015, Botten experienced his first pulmonary embolism, which is when one or more arteries in the lungs form a blood clot. Botten, 77, was appreciative of the technology, EkoSonic (Endovascular System) with Acoustic Pulse Thrombolysis, at Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital and to Dr. Khaled Khalaf. "I had the EKOS procedure on a Monday and was discharged by Wednesday," Botten said. "I was awake and alert the whole time, but the process itself was painless. Almost immediately my oxygen level increased and I was able to breathe much easier." The EkoSonic works by using ultrasound waves combined with medication delivered through a catheter directly to the clotted area, the treatment is a quick way to restore blood flow in attempt to resolve clots within a 24-hour period. "Although PE is a blood clot that travels to the lungs, your heart and lungs are attached like a plumbing system. The clot causes pressure overload on the right side of the heart. If not treated promptly, PEs can lead to permanent heart failure," Khalaf said. "Mr. Botten was already showing evidence of right-sided heart failure," Khalaf said. Khalaf is an interventional cardiologist with Vital Heart and Vein, which a collective team of cardiologists and vein specialists that work specifically in the Houston area to assist patients by using the latest technology. Botten has since fully recovered and said he remains to be active in his life who works as a consultant in the oil and gas industry. "Within two weeks I stopped oxygen therapy. The turnaround was immediate," Botten said. "I still monitor my oxygen level and take a blood thinner daily, but it was a fantastic experience." More than 200 students at an Humble ISD elementary school didn't make it to campus Thursday, after a flu-like illness swept the school on Wednesday. The school - Woodland Hills Elementary - has an enrollment of 581 students. Of those, 205 stayed home, plus five staff members. Parents may be keeping their students off the campus as a precaution. The half-empty campus comes after 78 students did not come to class and more were sent home on Wednesday, according to a letter from the school's principal. Their common symptoms were vomiting and diarrhea. As of Thursday morning, district officials did not know the cause of the illness. The city of Houston Health Department is investigating its cause, district spokeswoman Robin McAdams said. Students who mention any kind of discomfort will be sent home, even if they don't have a temperature, McAdams added. "Right now, if a child complains they're not feeling well, they're going home," McAdams said. The illness did not appear to have spread to other Humble ISD campuses, as of Thursday morning. The campus was sanitized on Wednesday night, and will continue to be sanitized every night until further notice, McAdams said. "As a precaution, Humble ISD custodial services are sanitizing the school and will conduct another thorough cleaning tonight," the principal wrote Wednesday. The classrooms, from the desks to the doorknobs, are being scoured by hand every night. Then, special equipment is used to fog the interior of the school and all buses that drop kids off at the campus with antibacterial mist, McAdams said. The Harris County Health Department also asked to speak to a small group of parents as they investigate and determine if additional steps are needed for prevention. The letter asked parents to keep children home if they exhibit symptoms of stomach ache or diarrhea. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The courtroom in the Harris County Jim Fonteno Courthouse Annex erupted into applause as Precinct 3, Place 1 Justice of the Peace Joe Stephens read the jury's "not guilty" verdict April 25. Tuesday night's court case was not a typical trial, as the roles traditionally held by adult professionals were instead carried out by North Shore Senior High School students as a part of the Teen Court program. "Like a regular court, the kids perform as the attorneys for the defense and for the plaintiff, or the state," said Desiree Delasbour, assistant chief clerk. "They also act as bailiffs and jurors. They perform in all of those capacities. The only role they do not do is the role of the judge." Crosby Independent School District has joined the ranks of districts like Galena Park ISD in the precinct's Teen Court program. During the 2016-2017 school year, a few Crosby ISD students had the opportunity to take part in Teen Court mock trials. Crosby High School student Yirish Abimeleck was one of the students who attended Tuesday's Teen Court proceeding. Although he sat in the audience this time, he looks forward to participating in the program and feels Teen Court offers useful experience for students. "It helps them understand what they need to do and how to win arguments; how to act in a court," Abimeleck said. Next school year, Crosby ISD plans to start participating in the program more regularly. "Teen Court is an opportunity for young people to not only learn the legal system and how our juries, lawyers and bailiffs work, but after they learn that whole process, then we in Crosby ISD can send some of our discipline cases to be heard there by Teen Court," said Patricia Kay, Crosby ISD assistant superintendent of instruction. The mock trials are simulation court cases in which students even play the roles of witnesses and defendants. However, starting next school year, the Teen Court will hear real cases as well. "These will be real cases with real kids who have (been found guilty of) shoplifting, assault, fighting in school - cases where the district files charges," Stephens said. "These students are still teenagers; they're not mature yet. Rather than them having a Class-C misdemeanor that they'll have to explain at 30 years old, we can avoid that by bringing the case to Teen Court." When such a case comes before the judge and the defendant is found guilty, Stephens will determine whether or not the case is a good candidate for Teen Court. If so, the juvenile is given the option of bringing the case to Teen Court, where a jury of their peers determines the punishment. Punishments could include community service, serving on a Teen Court jury, or possibly writing a letter of apology to whoever they wronged. "It won't work in all instances, but for the most part, we all did dumb stuff as kids. What's important is helping kids understand where they made a mistake and the importance of repenting," Stephens said. Judge Stephens' Teen Court initiative is inspired by former Judge Mike Parrott, who implemented a Teen Court program years ago. According to Delasbour, students who had participated in Parrott's Teen Court have gone on to become actual attorneys and judges. Some even return to help with youth outreach programs like Teen Court. "My goal is to introduce kids to the courtroom as a potential career option and not just a place to go when you're in trouble," Stephens said. "I think success for me is if in 10 years, a kid comes back and says, 'I'm an attorney, a DA, or a judge because of the program. Or, at the very least, I hope this instills an appreciation of the legal system." Participation in Teen Court will be open to Crosby ISD students in grades sixth through twelfth. "Judge Stephens is very supportive of our schools," Kay said. "Teen Court is a great learning tool. Students are not only learning about the court system, but they're trying real cases. It's a really, really good learning experience." For more information about Crosby ISD visit www.crosbyisd.org. Text goes here... The curvature of the lines, the geometric, inlaid details between stately columns - it has 1930s Art Deco written all over it. And even in 2017, there is nothing square or conventional about the Clear View High School campus, located at 400 South Walnut. Although one of the oldest school campuses in the Clear Creek Independent School District - built in 1939 first as Webster High School until undergoing a name-change in 1980 as Clear View High School - there is still something unmistakably timeless and modern about the campus's front facade. What happens to that facade is still up in the air as the district weighs options on how to both accommodate the needs of its students while respecting the building's place in the community's history. The district initially planned to demolish it and rebuild a new campus as part of its $487 million bond referendum up for approval in the May 6 election, but vocal opposition within the community has caused the district to press pause on those plans for now, with a final decision on what to do with the building to include input from the district, community and other groups further down the road. Those considerations, according to Clear View principal, Michael Houston, would include whether to incorporate aspects of the building's original architecture - such as the facade and other Art Deco elements - into a possible rebuild. "There are certain aspects of the building that we know the community (is attached to), and we've heard what they've said," Houston said. "We want to make sure that we work with the community and city and figure out the best option." As it currently stands, if voters approve the bond, the district would pour approximately $45 million into an extensive improvement and rebuild project at the campus, including to the building's drainage system, parking lot and foundation as well as the construction of a $21 million 82,000-square-foot high school on an adjacent property with a 350-student capacity, an expansion of the existing building's student capacity of 720. (Included in the $45 million is $879,676 to demolish the building.) "The new building would be built in a fashion so that we would be able to increase our enrollment," said Houston. The bond package is projected to result in a 3.7 cent tax rate increase, which would mean around $6 more monthly in taxes on a home with the median value of $223,635. When the campus was first constructed under the design of architect Rudolph G. Schneider, it was a bold take on the forward-thinking aesthetics of Art Deco, but 80 years later, the campus is in need of some major cosmetic and infrastructural work. David Bush, executive director of Preservation Houston, a group which advocates for the preservation of historic buildings and landmarks in and surrounding Houston, said he hasn't toured the inside of the campus, but did peek through its front windows and noted still-intact Art Deco flourishes in the school's front lobby. Art Deco, said Bush, "was the last style where there was real craftsmanship involved in these buildings and they really wanted to make a statement, not just about what the community was but what it hoped it would become." According to Bush, the building used to have two long streamlined wings on either side where the classrooms were as well as glass blocks. It's hard to tell - because of the additions and periodic cosmetic renovations throughout its history - how much of the original design is left behind the front concrete panels, although aerial shots from the 1960s and a search on Google Earth offer some clues. "It was a very impressive building and they just don't make buildings like that anymore," Bush said. The district doesn't discount the campus's architectural significance, but its priority is the current needs of its students, according to Houston. "Our concern is is to make sure we have a building that's suitable and safer for the kids here now and in the future," he said. The district will keep its options open while trying to find the most cost-effective and beneficial solution, said Elaina Polson, the district's spokesperson. "If the (original) building was in optimal shape we wouldn't be asking for voters to consider rebuilding it. The cost of repairing, renovating and bringing it up to code is frankly as practical as it is to rebuild the school," Polson said. There is the possibility that the front entranceway, facade, gym and other Art Deco features could be part of the school's future, she added. "We would be open to opportunities - where they may exist - to partner with another organization to somehow salvage (those features) or incorporate that in the rebuild of the campus," she said. "What we want the public to know is that this will be a community-wide discussion and decision." David Bush hopes the building will retain most of its Art Deco signatures. "For Webster it's about the last evidence of any sense of history for what Webster was," he said. Bush, whose group has shared its input about Clear View's future with CCISD and the Texas Historical Commission, admits that for preservationists, it's not always academic, but often about holding onto to a remnant of a time when buildings made grand statements. "Sometimes it's just really simple... like, 'Wow, that's cool'," he said. "They don't do things like that anymore." For more information on the 2017 CCISD bond, see http://bit.ly/2lQgkDu. A new wedding venue in Tomball is expecting to book its first ceremonies in the next 30 days, as the luxury facility nears completion. The Estates at Pecan Park, located at 22633 Park Road, can hold 290 guests and includes a wedding and reception space and a large covered patio overlooking a pecan orchard. 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. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A four-city FBI sweep targeted a Houston-based engineering firm and a slew of local government offices in Laredo with day-long raids in an investigation still shrouded in mystery. Federal agents spent most of Wednesday combing through the Houston, Laredo, San Antonio and McAllen offices of Dannenbaum Engineering, the Bayou City-based firm headed by prolific political donor and former University of Texas System Regent James Dannenbaum. The 77-year-old businessman, who was tied to a series of FBI raids in El Paso a decade ago, has a slew of ongoing contracts with Houston and Harris County. As the flurry of FBI activity continued into Wednesday afternoon, Dannenbaum Engineering's attorney said the firm had no idea what sparked the searches. "We are uncertain whether the inquiry is focused on the company's activities or those of its business competitors," attorney Joel Androphy said in the statement. "We intend to comment further when appropriate." LOST APPEAL: Court rejects claims by Texas death row inmate in murder-for-hire plot Sometime Wednesday morning, agents took control of Dannenbaum Engineering's building at 3100 West Alabama and told employees to leave. The FBI, aided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, similarly booted workers from the company's Embassy Oaks location in San Antonio and the West Nolana building in McAllen. Meanwhile in Laredo, law enforcement raided City Hall, the City Hall Annex, the Public Works Department, offices of Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales and Dannenbaum's McPherson Road location, where agents removed the building's front door. None of the raids netted any arrests by late Wednesday afternoon, and authorities did not release any information about what sparked the statewide federal scrutiny. "Once we're completed, I expect the business will go on as normal," FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said. Dannenbaum is one of the most prolific engineering firms in Houston and does extensive work with local government agencies, according to Jeff Nielsen, executive vice president of the Houston Contractors Association. "Dannenbaum has been a very reputable and well-regarded engineering firm," Nielsen said. The company has engineered storm sewer drainage projects for subdivisions across Harris County and has consulted on local flood prevention efforts. Dannenbaum won a $3 million terminal redevelopment contract for the Port of Houston in 2011, and in 2012, a former Dannenbaum CEO became executive director of the port. The firm has also engineered bridges, pumping stations and airport facilities, and in 2014 won a contract to renovate the AT&T building in Pasadena. City officials dropped that contract in 2017 after FEMA funding for the renovation, associated with Hurricane Ike damage, never materialized. Dannenbaum has received more than $3.5 million from the city of Houston for work since 2010, and has five current contracts with the city. Harris County engineer John Blount said that the county also has multiple active contracts with Dannenbaum, but he could not offer specifics. Harris County Toll Road Authority officials said they were working on reviewing their contracts with Dannenbaum in response to media inquiries, but could not provide details Wednesday. BIZARRE FIND: Woman found in wall at Heights home left behind self portrait The Houston engineer has been a longtime player in state politics, and has served on the Board of Visitors of MD Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Houston Medical School Development Board. Nielsen described Dannenbaum as "a leader in the engineering community" who is well-connected in business circles. The fifth-generation Texan has also consistently offered financial support for mostly Republican political causes, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into political races across the state during 2016 alone. In 2007, he was appointed to a six-year term on the University of Texas System Board of Regents. At the time, the move by Gov. Rick Perry sparked some controversy in light of the engineering firm's business dealings, questions surrounding a multimillion-dollar bridge project and an FBI corruption probe in El Paso County. Just months before Dannenbaum's appointment to the UT Regents was announced, federal agents in El Paso County raided the homes and offices of public officials who had been associated with Dannenbaum and his firm. Two of those officials - a county judge and commissioner - had accepted contributions from Dannenbaum earlier in the year. The investigation was focused on possible bribes disguised as campaign contributions, but neither Dannenbaum nor his company were charged. The firm was also embroiled in scandal over a bridge planned to span the Port of Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. Dannenbaum was hired for engineering and spent $15 million without ever building the bridge, which sparked lawsuits on both sides. County officials in Brownsville seized about $1 million from the Dannenbaum company there, and the firm was eventually cleared of wrongdoing. More recently, Dannenbaum has been mired in controversy in Laredo, where Mayor Pete Saenz contested a $1-million-plus contract awarded to Dannenbaum in 2014. Saenz said the city picked the firm without posting a request for other proposals in a water line project. The mayor sought to overturn the city council's contract decision, but council members overruled his veto and instead agreed to have an internal auditor review engineering and architectural contract awards over a five-year period. Dannenbaum Engineering currently has offices in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, as well as the locations targeted in Wednesday's raids. Mihir Zaveri, Mike Morris and the Laredo Morning Times contributed to this report. HPD Houston police are looking for a 12-year-old girl who was last seen earlier this month. Thalia Macias was last seen on April 9 in the 5200 block of Ratama. She was wearing a light blue jumpsuit and black dress shoes. AUSTIN The Daughters of the Republic of Texas are one step closer to losing ownership of yet another historic Texas landmark two years after the state revoked the group's 110-year custodianship of the Alamo. A House panel unanimously approved a measure Thursday that would transfer management of Austin's oldest building, the French Legation museum, to the Texas Historical Commission. The Legation is the only building still existing in Austin from when Texas was its own country. It was purchased by the state in 1949 and has been operated as a museum by the Daughters group since 1956. It resides in the Texas Facilities Commission inventory. The Chronicle first reported that the Legation was in financial trouble in May 2016. Betty Edwards, the president-general of the Daughters, estimated that the house needs about $1.9 million in renovations and repairs, and the Daughters group asked the state to pick up the tab. The Legation's operational budget also was cut last year from about $100,000 to just $22,000, and the Daughters quietly asked Martha George Withers, director of the French Legation, to resign. That no longer is the case, Edwards told the Chronicle Thursday. The French Legation is staffed and operating on a stable budget after the group and the Texas Land Office reached a settlement in their lawsuit over the ownership of the Alamo. "The Daughters wish to retain their custodianship," Edwards said. "We should be able to work with the Texas Historical Commission as equals." In May, the Chronicle obtained internal emails from Lucretia McReynolds, a district representative of the Daughters, who blamed the funding shortfall, in part, on the Daughters' continuing fight with the state over ownership of the Alamo Library and documents collection in San Antonio. Edwards estimates it took the group six months to restore the money lost from legal fees. Edwards said the group was not alerted by lawmakers about legislation this session that would remove them from custodianship of the Legation. "We only found out about those bills being filed at the very last minute," Edwards, who testified against the bills in House and Senate committee hearings, said. "We were just surprised that they wouldn't have the courtesy to talking to the Daughters before filing that legislation." House Bill 3810, authored by Rep. John Cyrier, R-Lockhart, has an identical bill in the Senate by Kirk Watson, D-Austin. Both bills have an $816,653 price tag for the 2018-2019 biennium. If passed, it's estimated that the French Legation would be closed beginning 2018 "for critical preservation renovations." The legislation would be implemented on Sept. 1, 2017. The bills have left the French Legation "in limbo," according to Edwards. She said Harvey Hilderbran, the executive director of the Texas Facilities Commission, wants to move the French Legation "out of his inventory." "If he had not wanted to do that, these two bills would not be in effect," Edwards said. "The Daughters did not ask to move. This is Hilderbran's deal." A spokeswoman for the Texas Facilities Commission said Friday that the commission did not request the filing of the legislation. She added that the commission believes the Legation "belongs on the inventory of an agency changed with the preservation of historic assets." The Texas Facilities Commission requested $1.57 million from the state this session for restoration of the French Legation in their appropriations request for the current session. Hilderbran told lawmakers in the House Committee on Culture, Recreation and Tourism on Tuesday that the budget appropriations request likely would not be met, so the commission made a $1.5 million request for emergency funding. "I know there's a lot of interest and support for that request, so we're hoping and expecting that it will be approved," Hilderbran said. Despite Edwards' outlook on the future of the site, Hilderbran told lawmakers Tuesday the Legation is in serious need of funding for renovation and restoration. There is still no director of the site, and operations are left to a handful of staff members and volunteers. "We've known for sometime that the decline, disrepair of the house of the French Legation has become such poor condition that it's now not stable," he said. Withers, the last director of the site, testified in support of the legislation that would transfer ownership to the Texas Historical Commission. "The Texas Historical Commission offers the best option for preserving the house. It is a historic gem and we want to take it into the future." The bill will now be sent to the full House. Its companion bill is still pending in Senate committee. 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 ST. CLOUD, Minn. The Minnesota Milk Producers Association says all 10 Minnesota dairy farms who lost contracts due to changes in pricing in Canada for ultrafiltered milk have found new processors to buy their milk. Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of Minnesota Milk Producers, says his association believes they have had contact with all of the Minnesota producers affected by Grasslands Dairy Products decision to stop taking milk from approximately 75 producers in Wisconsin and Minnesota effective May 1. As of April 26, the association believed all the producers had found new processors. The issues surrounding the loss of processing for dairy producers are complex matters, dealing with trade issues, new technologies and supply and demand. Marin Bozic, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesotas department of applied economics in the areas of agricultural policy, commodity marketing and finance, explains new technology in recent years allowed U.S. companies to offer ultrafiltered milk to fill the needs of Canadian processors. Because ultrafiltered milk is such a new product, it was not addressed in the North American Free Trade Agreement and was not a separately priced product under Canadas mandatory pricing schedule. Those factors made the U.S. ultrafiltered milk used in the making of other dairy products, like cheese cheaper for processors to buy than the same product from Canadian sources, Bozic explains. He says Canada has been working for the past year on new rules to allow for pricing of ultrafiltered milk as a separate product, which would allow Canadian producers to sell it cheaper. It wasnt really a surprise that this was coming, he says. When those new rules went into effect, the buyers in Canada could purchase domestic products cheaper than U.S. products, so processors like Grasslands lost Canadian business and, in turn, had less need for milk from the U.S. farmers with whom it contracted, Bozic says. For that to happen during the spring flush season of higher milk quantities has made it even harder, Bozic says. He says conditions should improve by this summer. Right now its very hard to find room for even a tanker load of milk, he says. Sjostrom says three processors found ways to take in more milk from the Minnesota producers who lost contracts. He says Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture worked behind the scenes to connect producers with processors, and he thanked U.S. Sen. Al Franken for holding a meeting April 21 on the issue. But most of all, we appreciate our processors for doing what they always do look for a way to help add value to our state farmers milk, he says. While the Minnesota dairy farms appear to be taken care of for the time being, both Bozic and Sjostrom think there will be long-term changes to the industry. People will be more careful who they contract their milk with and the nature of those contracts, Bozic says. He believes dairy farmers will be more likely to contract through cooperatives rather than private handlers, even if the private handlers offer a slightly higher premium, because they know their cooperatives, of which they are owners, wont dump them. He and Sjostrom also think dairy producers will be more likely to study marketing agreements and clauses regarding dissolution of contracts and insist on more warning for such moves. They also see continued consolidation and vertical integration as likely industry trends. Bozic says producers may buy into processing facilities as a way to hedge their interests, much like how some dairy farmers have purchased fields on which to produce feed and spread manure. He also thinks dairy farmers will be more amenable to supply limits going forward, as being told to produce 5 or 10 percent less would be markedly easier than having nowhere to sell their milk. While both Bozic and Sjostrom think expansion of processing capabilities in the region is possible, Sjostrom says there are factors that make that difficult. He believes processors would expand if they had clear signals from the market that it was a good idea. He says issues with health insurance, lack of demand and overregulation are keeping some processors from expanding. They also have to make sure there is no yo-yo effect if they do expand basically, moving from too much milk and too few processors to too many processors and not enough milk, Sjostrom says. And both processors and dairies need to find employees. Both our plants and our farms are really struggling to find reliable labor, he says. Bozic says the current issues in the dairy industry could lead to last generation dairies those without anyone to keep them going into the future selling out a little earlier than planned. However, he hopes none of the regions modern, efficient operations with bright futures close down because of the issues with processing capacity. That would be tragic, he says. The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from General Motors Co. seeking to block dozens of lawsuits over faulty ignition switches that one plaintiffs attorney said could expose the company to billions of dollars in additional claims. The justices without comment left in place a lower court ruling that said the automakers 2009 bankruptcy did not shield it from liability in the cases. An attorney representing hundreds of plaintiffs who are suing the company said it exposes GM to around 1,000 additional lawsuits and $5 billion to $10 billion in liabilities. GM said the cases will have to be tried on individual merits. A federal appeals court ruled last year that GM remains responsible for ignition-switch injuries and deaths that occurred pre-bankruptcy because the company knew about the problem for more than a decade but kept it secret from the bankruptcy court and owners of cars with the faulty switches. The decision also opens GM to claims that any of those cars sold by the company prior to bankruptcy lost value because of the ignition-switch scandal. The company had argued that well-established bankruptcy law allowed the newly reorganized GM to obtain the old companys assets free and clear of liabilities. GM recalled 2.6 million small cars worldwide in 2014 to replace defective switches that played a role in at least 124 deaths and 275 injuries, according to a victims fund set up by GM and administered by attorney Kenneth Feinberg. The switches could unexpectedly switch from the run position to off or accessory, shutting off the engine and knocking out air bags and the power-assisted steering and power brakes. The automaker has paid nearly $875 million to settle death and injury claims related to the switches. That includes $600 million from Feinbergs fund and $275 million to settle 1,385 separate claims. It also has paid $300 million to settle shareholder lawsuits. After it emerged from the government-funded bankruptcy, the company referred to as New GM was indemnified against most claims made against the pre-bankruptcy company, known as Old GM. A bankruptcy court sided with the company in 2015, ruling that most claims against Old GM could not be pursued against the new company. But the appeals court in Manhattan overturned most of that decision and said hundreds of pre-bankruptcy claims could go forward. Robert Hilliard, a Corpus Christi, Texas, lawyer who has about 300 pre-bankruptcy cases pending against GM, said the decision wrecks GMs strategy to settle the strongest post-bankruptcy cases and refuse to negotiate with pre-bankruptcy plaintiffs. This takes GM back to the starting line after four years, Hilliard said. They are now back to being responsible for terrible deaths. Hilliard said pretrial discovery and depositions on broader factual issues have been completed, so he would expect cases to go to trial shortly. But GM said in a statement the decision does not change the legal landscape much for the company. The high court did not make a decision on the merits of GMs legal arguments. Instead, those decisions will be made by lower courts, the company said. GM has a motion pending in federal court seeking to dismiss many of the pre-bankruptcy claims based on state liability laws governing liabilities against successor companies, spokesman Jim Cain said. The plaintiffs must still establish their right to assert successor liability claims, GM said. From there, they still have to prove those claims have merit. The company said the appeals court departed substantially from well-settled bankruptcy law. Plaintiffs have yet to win any so-called bellwether cases that have gone to trial, Cain said. The Supreme Court decision not to hear the appeal exposes GM to additional liability from the pre-bankruptcy cases, said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias. He expects many of those cases to be settled soon under pressure from a federal judge overseeing pretrial discovery in the cases. (Krisher reported from Detroit.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Pilot error, an air companys culture and its lack of a formal safety program were behind a fatal crash that killed nine people two years ago on sightseeing flight in Alaska, the National Transportation Safety Board determined Tuesday. A pilot and eight passengers died June 25, 2015, when a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter operated by Promech Air Inc. crashed into mountainous terrain about 24 miles from Ketchikan, a city near the south end of Alaskas Panhandle. The seaplane was returning from Misty Fjords National Monument, named for the low clouds that often cling to sheer cliffs rising from the fjords. The monument is a wilderness area of lakes, snowcapped peaks and glacier valleys. The eight passengers were on a side excursion from the Holland America Line cruise ship Westerdam. Promech officials after the crash said pilot Bryan Krill, 64, of Hope, Idaho, had 4,300 hours of flight experience, including about 1,700 hours piloting single-engine seaplanes. However, the NTSB said the pilot had less than two months experience flying air tours in southeast Alaska and had difficulty calibrating his own risk tolerance for flight tours in marginal weather. The day of the crash, the NTSB said, he continued to fly under visual flight rules when weather called for instrument flight rules. Evidence collected in the investigation, the NTSB said, supported a finding that the pilots decisions regarding his tour flights were influenced by schedule pressure, his attempt to emulate the behavior of other more experienced pilots, and Promechs organizational culture that tacitly endorsed flying in hazardous weather conditions. Lives depended on the pilots decision making, NTSB Acting Chairman Robert Sumwalt said in a news release. Pilot decisions are informed, for better or worse, by their companys culture. This company allowed competitive pressure to overwhelm the common-sense needs of passenger safety in its operations. Promechs culture tacitly condoned flying under visual flight rules in hazardous weather and the company failed to manage risk associated with competitive pressures, the NTSB said. Promech and at least one other operator that was willing to take more weather-related risks were able to fly more passengers than two more conservative operators who cancelled flights that day, the NTSB said. Promech assets were purchased last year by another Ketchikan air service company, Taquan Air. Taquan was one of the two operators who cancelled flights the day of the crash. In an email response to questions, the company said visibility and ceiling requirements did not meet internal protocol for flying. The passengers killed included Rowland Cheney, 71, and Mary Doucette, 59, of Lodi, California; Glenda Cambiaso, 31, of Montgomery County, Maryland, and her father, Hugo Cambiaso, 65; June Kranenburg, 73, and Leonard Kranenburg, 63, of Medford, Oregon; and Margie Apodaca, 63, and Raymond Apodaca, 70, of Sparks, Nevada. The head of Californias water agency on Tuesday repeated his assertion that an emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam worked, drawing an incredulous response from a state lawmaker who represents tens of thousands of people ordered to evacuate when it was feared erosion at the spillway could lead to catastrophic flooding. Bill Croyle, acting director of the Department of Water Resources, faced lawmakers for the first time since the evacuations in February. Authorities feared a concrete wall at the top of the emergency spillway was on the verge of collapsing and sending a wall of water rushing uncontrolled through downstream communities. In my opinion it didnt work at all, said Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Republican who represents many of the nearly 200,000 people who were ordered to evacuate. When it started flowing and we had that erosion cut back, to me thats a failure. It didnt work as designed. Croyle has controversially maintained since the days after the evacuation that the spillway did its job, though hes acknowledged that the erosion was more severe than anticipated. He told lawmakers that experts did not expect water to cut through rock. I believe the emergency spillway worked, Croyle said. It performed an emergency function with the broken (main) spillway. Water flowed over the emergency spillway for the first time after damage to the main chute caused officials to limit releases. That was followed by a ferocious storm that dumped far more water than forecast, filling the lake much faster than anticipated. Officials did not plan to use the emergency spillway but saw a surge of water rush into the lake over several hours. What we saw was not what was forecast, Croyle said. Lawmakers also questioned Croyle about details of the $275 million contract to shore up both the main and emergency spillway, including who negotiated it and what penalties or incentives it includes for the contractor. Croyle said he didnt know details of the contract but would provide them later. Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Agency, said after the hearing that the contract with Kiewit Corp. of Omaha, Nebraska covers work through January 2019. That should be enough time to repair the entire main spillway and shore up the emergency spillway, she said. By Nov. 1, officials plan to get the main spillway in strong enough condition to handle 100,000 cubic feet per second of water, with the ability to handle an additional 50,000 cfs in an emergency, Croyle said. It may take until next year to fully reconstruct the chute to handle its original maximum capacity of 270,000 cfs a flow that would destroy downstream levees and cause widespread flooding but would protect the dam during a catastrophe, Croyle said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Former Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley is vying to retake his old post as U.S. attorney for the District of North Dakota. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., confirmed Thursday afternoon that Wrigley contacted him about the job. Hoeven and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., previously told the Tribune they endorsed Chris Myers, the current U.S. attorney, to stay in his role through the Trump administration. Hoeven said Wrigley is willing to go through the formal appointment process, which involves congressional hearings, and could mean removal in a future administration. Myers would stay in the top job if he can remain as a court-appointed U.S. attorney, which would maintain his civil servant status, Hoeven said. "I think theyre both very qualified," Hoeven said. "The White House needs to decide which way they want to go." Myers and Wrigley did not respond to phone and email requests for comment. Julia Krieger, spokeswoman for Heitkamp, said the senator maintains her support for Myers. She said Wrigley did not contact Heitkamp's office regarding his interest in the job. Hoeven said a decision is likely within weeks. Wrigley was U.S. attorney from 2001 to 2009. Among his prominent cases was the death penalty case of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., convicted of abducting and murdering Dru Sjodin in 2003. He served as lieutenant governor from 2010 to 2016. He currently works at Sanford Health. Myers joined the U.S. attorney's office in 2002, according to his official biography. Before becoming the top prosecutor, he was the lead Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force prosecutor for 10 years. Prior to that, he was a prosecutor in Clay and Cass counties and a special agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigations. He has served in the role of U.S. attorney since Tim Purdon resigned in February 2015. Hoeven said Wrigley hired Myers at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Following is the transcript of a CNBC interview with Richard Solomons, CEO, of InterContinental Hotels Group. The interview was broadcast on CNBC on 26 April 2017. All references must be sourced to a "CNBC Interview". Interviewed by Bernie Lo, Anchor, CNBC. Bernie Lo: You must see a fable land in China to keep doing this, but I got to ask you Zhangjiakou, in 30 years I've never heard of it but you found it and decided to open up a hotel there. Why? Solomons: I did find it right, and I'm headed there after this interview. It's the site of the 2020 to Winter Olympics, and this is going to be the first international hotel open there, the Hualuxe which is our newest brand in China. So we're very excited about it. Bernie: That makes a lot of sense then. I mean you're planning way ahead of the legions and throngs of travelers that are going to be arriving there. But 300 hotels in an industry where the common complaint is we can't get enough talent, we can't find enough people. We can do the hardware; it's the software that's the hard part. How do you deal with that? Solomons: Well look Bernie, you talk about thinking ahead and planning ahead and you know we actually first came to China in 1984. That was our first hotel in Beijing by 2008. We got to 100 hotels by 2013. We were 200 and now just four years later we're at 300. So we're building the business planning a long way ahead. And as you say actually building the hotels the hardware is not easy but it's something we can do. On the software side, that's really where IHG comes in. That's why they want us to run the hotels, manage the hotels for them. And we have processes, we have procedures. But more importantly we have training and recruitment programs. And in China alone we have over 40 academies where we educate people into hospitality, offer them job opportunities and bring them into hotels. So you're right it's a really important piece. The experience is a really important piece, and it's something we're very, very focused on, and have been in all our time here in China. And I think it's been a big part of our success. Bernie: How many within the Internet, and now with you know with the 300 outlet in China that spans how many brands, I mean how many logos, how many brands are you are you managing across the China portfolio now? Solomons: Well it's really six brands in China. So with Intercontinental we have 40. We have just nearly 80 of Crowne Plaza, one of our upscale big meetings brand. Holiday Inn with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express we now between them have well over a 150 hotels. So we're quite concentrated. We don't believe in having too many brands. Some of our competitors have way more brands, but actually having scale in brands driving away in this driving preference, making sure that our customers know where those brands are, around the country is very important. So we have a relatively limited number and Hualuxe which is the one we're opening is our latest brand that we devised in China for Chinese travelers. So real consumer insight, real consumer understanding. We saw an opportunity for a new brand that really offer Chinese hospitality but with all the attributes of an international brand family. So it's a good portfolio we're very proud of. And not only do we open our 300 today but we have another 240 in our pipeline in which most are under construction. So a lot more growth opportunity. Bernie: And how are you going about marketing? You know all these new outlets and making sure that you're matching the traveler with what they're looking for. And we obviously in this day and age you can't just create a website, and you know as they say build a better mousetrap and hope that they come, you've got to be proactive you've got to get out there, you've got to deploy social media somehow. You got to get out there and do it. So what sort of a concerted campaign or what sort of a program do you have to make all that coming together? Solomons: No, it's a very good point, and clearly it's something that we focus a lot on as a big brand family. So we do an awful lot locally here in China. We may be a global business, but China is actually our second largest market our fastest growing market. So we have over 500 people in our office here in Shanghai and we have we have more people here in Beijing. And we market locally to local companies big corporate accounts. We run a lot of social campaigns over here. A lot of actually digital campaigns, we had a very successful one for four Crowne Plaza. And very importantly we have our loyalty program IHG Rewards Club. So globally we have over 100 million enrolled members, and we have many millions in Greater China alone, and that's a great way to interact with our customers. And indeed in China actually we have a very successful app, that we also have around the world, but we have the highest percentage of bookings on that app is in greater China compared to anywhere else in the world. So it's an array of things that you have to have to be as you point out where your customers want to be, and enable them to book how they want to book. WHEN: Today, Wednesday, April 26th WHERE: CNBC's "Closing Bell" Following is the unofficial transcript of a FIRST ON CNBC interview with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on CNBC's "Closing Bell" (M-F, 3PM-5PM ET) today, Wednesday, April 26th. Following is a link to the interview on CNBC.com: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000613533. All references must be sourced to CNBC. SARA EISEN: PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FCC CHAIRMAN PROPOSING A REVERSAL FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS TODAY CHANGING THEM FROM UTILITY LIKE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES TO INFORMATION SERVICE PROVIDERS. IT IS A CLASSIFICATION ISPS HAD TILL 2015 THE SWITCHBACK WOULD LEAVE ISPS WITH FEDERAL OVERSIGHT DESIGNED TO ENSURE THAT ALL ONLINE CONTENT IS TREATED THE SAME BY THE COMPANIES THAT DELIVER BROADBAND SERVICE TO AMERICANS. IT IS TECHINCAL. GRIFFETH: IT IS HIGHLY TECHINCAL BUT IT HAS BEEN VERY CONTENTIOUS AT THE SAME TIME AND JOINING US NOW IN A FIRST ON CNBC INTERVIEW WE WELCOME BACK FCC CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI. MR CHAIRMAN GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN WELCOME BACK. AJIT PAI: GREAT TO BE WITH YOU. GRIFFETH: I CAN IMAGINE, YOU'VE JUST BEEN WAITING, BIDING YOUR TIME UNTIL YOU COULD REVERSE THE NET NEUTRALITY RULES IMPOSED TWO YEARS AGO, YES? PAI: WELL, NOT SO MUCH BIDING MY TIME BUT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE RIGHT WAY FORWARD IS FOR AMERICANS ONLINE, AND TO ME, AT LEAST, IF WE WANT TO PRIORITIZE INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT, WE WANT MORE COMPETITION IN THE BROADBAND MARKETPLACE, IF WE WANT TO GIVE MORE CONSUMERS BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER INTERNET, GETTING RID OF THESE HEAVY-HANDED ECONOMIC REGULATIONS INSPIRED IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION IS THE WAY TO DO IT. EISEN: BUT AS CONSUMER WE ALSO DON'T WANT SOME OF THE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS, AT&T, OUR PARENT COMPANY COMCAST TO BLOCK WEB TRAFFIC OR SLOW IT DOWN OR CHARGE HIGHER RATES. SO HOW DO YOU ANSWER SOME OF THOSE CONSUMER CONCERNS THAT FELT PROTECTED BY THESE NET NEUTRALITY RULES? PAI: I COULDN'T AGREE WITH THEM MORE. THE BEST EVIDENCE THAT A LIGHT TOUCH REGULATORY FRAMEWORK THAT STARTED IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION WORKS IS THAT WE DIDN'T SEE COMPANIES BLOCKING ACCESS TO LAWFUL CONTENT IN THE 20 YEARS PRIOR TO THE FCC'S IMPOSITION OF THESE RULES IN 2015. GOING FORWARD, I HAVE LAID OUT AN AGGRESSIVE AGENDA FOR INCENTIVIZING MORE COMPETITORS, MORE SMALLER COMPANIES TO ENTER THE MARKETPLACE, TO DEPLOY INFRASTRUCTURE. THAT'S THE BEST WAY I THINK TO PROMOTE CONSUMER WELFARE, NOT PREEMPTIVE RULES THAT PRESUME EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS INCOMPETITIVE MONOPOLIST. SANTOLI: WHAT WOULD BE SOME OF THE EXAMPLES, IF YOU CAN GET SPECIFIC ABOUT WHAT YOU CONSIDER OUTDATED RULES THAT ARE CREATING THESE UNECONOMIC SITUATIONS WITH SOME OF THE COMPETITION HERE, AND IT IS RETARDING INNOVATION? A LOT OF PEOPLE SEE IT AS ALREADY BEING A BIT OF A FREE-FOR-ALL WITH SOME OF THE LEGACY COMPANIES FEELING THEY HAVE TO MOVE FAST TO KEEP UP. PAI: JUST GIVE YOU ONE EXAMPLE. THE FCC HAS A LOT OF RULES ON THE BOOKS THAT REQUIRE TELEPHONE COMPANIES TO MAINTAIN THEIR COPPER LINE NETWORKS ALMOST AT ALL COSTS. IT MAKES IT REALLY DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO UPGRADE. WHEN I TALK TO CONSUMERS THEY WANT MORE FIBER AND NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYED TO THEIR HOMES. BY DEFINITION, EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR THE COMPANY HAS TO SPEND MAINTAINING YESTERDAY'S FADING NETWORKS IS BY DEFINITION A DOLLAR THEY CAN'T SPEND LAYING FIBER AND TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGY. THAT'S ONE OF THE MANY EXAMPLES WE'RE TRYING TO ADDRESS DURING MY TIME AS CHAIRMAN. GRIFFETH: WHAT'S THE TIMELINE HERE? WHEN DO YOU HOPE, EXPECT TO BEGIN THE PROCESS OF ROLLING THAT BACK? PAI: WE WILL BE VOTING ON WHAT IS CALLED NOTICE OF RULE MAKING ON GET RID OF SO CALLED TITLE 2 ON MAY 18th. THEN IN THE COMING MONTH THE PUBLIC WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO COMMENT ON THE PROPOSAL, AND AT SOME POINT AFTER THAT WE WILL TAKE STOCK OF WHAT'S IN THE RECORD AND MAKE THE APPROPRIATE DECISION FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. EISEN: HAVE YOU TALKED TO FACEBOOK ABOUT THIS OR GOOGLE OR SOME OF THE OTHER BIG TECHNOLOGY INTERNET SITES THAT ARE ON THE OTHER END OF THIS? PAI: I HAVE. JUST LAST WEEK I WAS IN SILICON VALLEY, I SPOKE WITH FACEBOOK, A LOT OF INTERNET COMPANIES THAT ARE THE PRIDE AND JOY OF THE INTERNET ECONOMY, AND RIGHTLY SO. WHAT I TOLD THEM IS WHAT I'LL TELL YOU, IS THAT ALL OF US BELIEVE IN THE FREE AND OPEN INTERNET. IT HAS BEEN GOOD FOR EVERYBODY. THE INTERNET ECONOMY FROM ENTREPRENUERS TO CONSUMERS. WE DON'T WANT IS HEAVY-HANDED REGULATION STANDING IN THE WAY OF BUILDING NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS. HOW TO PRESERVE THOSE VALUES GOING FORWARD IS SOMETHING I'M GOING TO BE KEENLY FOCUS ON. GRIFFETH: SPEAKING OF FACEBOOK, ON ANOTHER TOPIC HERE, YOU KNOW, LATELY -- I MEAN WE ALL KNOW THAT LIVE VIDEO IS BECOMING VERY POPULAR AND IT IS A GROWTH AREA FOR A LOT OF THESE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES, BUT WE'VE SEEN SOME HORRIBLE THINGS ON THESE VIDEOS RECENTLY, MURDERS AND SUICIDES AND THINGS. DO YOU EVEN HAVE JURISDICTION OVER THAT? IF YOU DO, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THAT TO TRY TO CONTROL WHAT THESE LIVE VIDEOS THAT COME FROM THE GRASSROOTS? PAI: THESE ARE REALLY DISTRESSING CASES. JUST YESTERDAY I READ A STORY ABOUT A FATHER IN THAILAND WHO FILMED HIMSELF DROPPING HIS INFANT DAUGHTER FROM A MULTI-STORY BUILDING. IT WAS REALLY DISTRESSING. AS A REGULATOR WE DON'T HAVE JURISDICTION AT THE FCC TO TELL FACEBOOK WHAT IT CAN AND CAN'T BROADCAST. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S BEYOND THE SCOPE OF OUR AUTHORITY. EISEN: AND YOUR DEREGULATION PUSH, EVERYBODY IS WONDERING WHAT THE DEAL ENVIRONMENT WILL LOOK LIKE, THE SPECTRUM AUCTIONS ARE FINALLY UP, A DEADLINE FOR DEAL NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE TELECOM GIANTS CAN START THURSDAY EVENING. I KNOW YOU CAN'T COMMENT SPECIFICALLY ON THAT, BUT PART OF THE ASSUMPTION IS IT WILL BE A MUCH FRIENDLIER ADMINISTRATION WHEN IT COMES TO ALLOWING DEALS, ANTITRUST AND THE FCC IS THAT TRUE? PAI: I CAN'T TELL YOU THAT SPECULATION MIGHT BE OUT THERE. BUT WHAT I CAN TELL YOU IS THAT MY CONSISTENT VIEW HAS BEEN THAT THE FCC SHOULD EVALUATE ANY TRANSACTION THAT COMES BEFORE US BASED ON THE PUBLIC INTEREST STANDARD. IF IT IS GOOD FOR CONSUMERS AND COMPETITION, WE WILL APPROVE IT. IF IT IS NOT, WE WON'T. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT IS HIGHLY FACT SPECIFIC-- WE NEED TO SEE THE PAPERS IN FRONT OF US AND LOOK AT THE ECONOMICS AND THE LAW AND MAKE THE APPROPRIATE DECISION. HERE IN THE VACUUM I CAN'T TELL YOU ONE WAY OR THE OTHER HOW WE MIGHT COME OUT IN ANY GIVEN TRANSACTION OR SERIES OF DEALS THAT MIGHT BE PRESENTED. SANTOLI: WOULD A COMPANY, A BROADBAND PROVIDER THAT OWNED A CONTENT BUSINESS, WEIGHTING THAT PROPRIETARY CONTENT AT ZERO AND BEING GOOD FOR CUSTOMERS, IS THAT SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE ALONG THE LINES OF WHAT YOU THINK IS DESIRABLE? PAI: IT DEPENDS ON THE FACTS OF THE PARTICULAR CASE SO I CAN'T SPECULATE. AGAIN, IF I WERE PRESENTED WITH A TRANSACTION THAT INVOLVED QUESTIONS LIKE THAT, I TAKE A FAIR AND FULL VIEW OF THE ISSUE, LET THE RECORD DEVELOP, LET PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES HAVE THEIR INPUT AND THEN ADMINISTER THE LAW AS BEST I CAN. GRIFFETH: ALL RIGHT. MR. CHAIRMAN, GOOD TO SEE YOU. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. APPRECIATE IT VERY MUCH. PAI: THANKS FOR HAVING ME. About CNBC: With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 385 million homes worldwide, including more than 94 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries. CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV. Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc. For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com. Getty Images Gold resumed its downward slide from a five-month high in mid-April, giving up gains that came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced unfunded tax cuts, causing shares and U.S. bond yields to fall. Spot gold was down 0.28 percent to $1,265.10 per ounce. U.S. gold futures for June delivery inched up $1.70 to settle at $1,265.90 an ounce. Gold has fallen by 1.6 percent this week as it slips from an April 17 high of $1,295.42. "It's going through a phase of correction," said Ole Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank. watch now Hansen said that several broad factors driving up gold prices were fading. "We've seen a strong rally in stocks and U.S. bond yields move up again, and we have almost had a day without North Korea being mentioned," he said. Investors traditionally use gold as a hedge against political uncertainty, while rising stock prices and higher yields increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion. "The market is trying to establish where support is. We probably haven't found it yet," Hansen said. Analysts at Mitsubishi and MKS PAMP said that technical support would come in at about $1,257, the first Fibonacci retracement from a recent rally, and the 200-day moving average, currently $1,252.50. Hansen said that a long position by fund investors that has risen to its highest since November would be relatively resilient if gold prices remained above $1,240 an ounce. Gold was also under pressure from a stronger dollar that made bullion more expensive for holders of other currencies. The dollar rose after U.S. business investment accelerated in the first quarter and the euro fell after European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said policymakers had not discussed removing the bank's easing bias on monetary policy. Bullion has been supported by physical demand. Data on Thursday showed Swiss gold exports to Hong Kong, China and India rose in March, while Chinese gold production fell in the first quarter. But consumption in China and India traditionally declines in the second quarter, said Mitsubishi analyst Jonathan Butler, potentially pushing prices lower. watch now A croupier deals a card on a blackjack table inside the Venetian Macao resort and casino, operated by Sands China, in Macau, China. Las Vegas Sands Corp. late Wednesday reported first-quarter earnings ahead of expectations, reflecting strong Las Vegas operations and an improvement in the Macau market. Also, management was optimistic on the earnings call about the chances of getting approval to eventually open a casino resort in the Japanese market. Despite the beat, the stock dipped just over 1 percent in after-hours trading but started to recover after the call. "After a challenging period the Macau market is growing again and its growth rate has been accelerating for three consecutive quarters," said Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson on the company's earnings call. At the same time, the Las Vegas operations delivered its best quarter since 2008, Adelson said. The company's Venetian Las Vegas and Palazzo properties, including the Sands Expo and Convention Center, posted better results. Here's how the company did in the quarter compared with analysts' consensus estimates: EPS: 66 cents a share vs. 62 cents a share expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Net revenue : $3.11 billion, or generally inline with expectations. Adjusted EPS was up by 40 percent to 66 cents, while GAAP EPS grew by 50 percent to 60 cents a share. Revenue rose 14 percent. Overall, adjusted property EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, increased about 25 percent in the quarter compared with a year ago and were above Street consensus. By segment, the Macau operations grew adjusted property EBITDA by 20 percent on a year-on-year basis in the quarter. It was driven by 17 percent growth in mass gaming revenues. The Las Vegas operating properties showed adjusted property EBITDA up by 40 percent compared with the year-ago period. It said contributing to the strong results were the Venetian Las Vegas and Palazzo properties, as well as record convention and group meeting business. EBITDA is considered an important metric of operating profit performance for casino companies because it essentially neutralizes the impact of the company's capital structure and deducts interest expense, taxes and depreciation charges. Meantime, Adelson was asked on the earnings call about the U.S.-based casino giant's growth plans in the Asian market. Besides the company's Macau operations, it also has a presence already in the Singapore market. "Japan is what everybody is talking about," Adelson said. "We have been informed by people in the know in Japan that LVS (or Las Vegas Sands) is by far, not just marginally, but by far ahead of the other competition" to get the integrated resort approval. Last year, Japan took steps to legalize Las Vegas-style casino resort gaming, which could allow for casino and hotel space as well as convention facilities and retail space. The Japanese government hasn't formally selected the companies for casino development but Las Vegas Sands and its competitor MGM Resorts have openly indicated they are indeed interested. The casino mogul said there's a possibility the Japanese government could allow the company more than one so-called "integrated resort" property. To be clear, nothing is finalized and he questioned whether the Japanese would even allow a foreign entity to have two casino locations. As for other Asian markets, Adelson said the company is looking at Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea. He added that the South American market was attractive too. -Clarification: Beat on EPS based on adjusted earnings per diluted share of 66 cents, not the GAAP EPS figures reported. watch now BALI, Indonesia It's an industry valued at $120 billion this year, and it's growing rapidly. That juggernaut is the television & video industry in the Asia Pacific, which is being analyzed and dismantled at the APOS summit here in Bali. Wandering around among soothing waterfalls, and what feels like 100 percent humidity, are some of the industry's biggest players and disruptors. CNBC sat down with some of them to find out what is working, what's not, and why the race is on to serve consumers more for less. NBCUniversal International Chairman Kevin MacLellan told CNBC that his company is taking a different approach, investing $1.5 billion in digital businesses over the past 18 months. (Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of CNBC.) "We're not abandoning our current NBC brands at all. We continue to produce content for that, and at this point we're number one in just about any metric you can look at in the U.S. from the broadcast perspective or the cable perspective," he said. "It's been a really successful period for us, but at the same time we're turning the success into investments in adjacent businesses digitally not just the ones that we brand on our own." watch now That raises the question of the whether content is more important than distribution a contentious issue here at APOS. For MacLellan, it's one and the same: "From that perspective, marrying content and distribution is what the future looks like. You have to have one foot in each because no one is really quite sure what it's going to look like, or where the consumer is going to take us because at the end of the day they're in charge." Over The Top or OTT is the buzzword at APOS. That's companies like Netflix, Hulu, Singtel's Hooq, Malaysian service iflix and PCCW's Viu. Recent figures show those digital streaming platforms are gaining subscribers as the overall number of pay TV subscribers slips. Vivek Couto, executive director of Media Partners Asia, said that the market share of online video was only 3 percent in 2012. Today it has 30 percent of the pie. Free-to-air and pay TV have the rest. But most of the OTT platforms are not direct to consumer, which won't happen until the market develops, according to Fox Networks Group digital chief Brian Sullivan. "This is a market that's going from an old structure, and it's moving towards a new structure," Sullivan said. "Everybody's experimenting in that transition. Some of those experiments are successful some are failing. But really what you have is a lot of turmoil, and in that turmoil is where all the innovation comes." And it's not just about how consumers get their programming fix. It's also about the when. watch now "I think you've got to get to that point, the right tipping point, where enough consumers are consuming their television service and are used to switching onto an app rather than switching into a linear stream. Once that consumer behaviour reaches a tipping point then you know the gates swing wide open," said Mike Sneesby, CEO of Australian streaming service Stan. The Asia Pacific is a difficult area for the global players, largely because of fragmentation, cultural divides and language barriers. The Chinese market, in particular, has also been notoriously difficult to enter, with strict censorship requirements and data storage regulations. Still, perseverance may be the answer: Earlier this week Netflix announced a licencing deal with Baidu's iQiyi which has been a long time coming. In fact, at last year's APOS conference, CNBC asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings how the company was progressing with its push into China, and he responded that relationships were key. "I think it's building the relationships in the normal way, and we are making progress on that because we are patient. Because we are not trying to push for a certain date. We are just steadily building those relationships," Hastings said at the time. watch now Yesterday the Trump administration released its tax-reform plan, which the White House is calling the biggest individual and business tax cut in American history. Here is what you should know about the plan: What are the goals of the tax reform plan: The stated goals are to: Grow the economy and create millions of jobs Simplify our burdensome tax code Provide tax relief to American familiesespecially middle-income families Lower the business tax rate from one of the highest in the world to one of the lowest What are the objective for individual taxpayer reform? The plan promises: Tax relief for American families, especially middle-income families: Reducing the 7 tax brackets to 3 tax brackets of 10%, 25% and 35% Doubling the standard deduction Providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses Eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers Protect the home ownership and charitable gift tax deductions Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax Repeal the death tax Repeal the 3.8% Obamacare tax that hits small businesses and investment income How does the plan affect individual taxpayers? The effect on individual taxpayers would vary widely, depending on numerous factors. For example, the plan promises to reduce the tax brackets to 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, but doesnt say who would fall into those categories. When asked about it at the roll-out briefing, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn called such information a micro-detail. The standard deduction would double from $6,300 to $12,600 for single individuals and from $12,600 to $24,000 for married couples. The effect of this increase is unclear since it will be offset by a reduction in other tax deductions (deductions for home ownership, charitable giving, and retirement savings would remain while all other tax benefits would be eliminated). For example, if you live in a city or state with a high local or state tax youd no longer be able to deduct those taxes from your federal tax bill. But a married couple earning $24,000 would benefit the most since they would no longer pay not tax at all. While some people will benefit from the new standard deduction, other middle class taxpayers will end up paying more. As Forbes contributor Tony Nitti explains: [T]he plan would increase the standard deduction from $12,600 to $24,000 ($12,000 if single), and eliminate personal exemptions. So if youre scoring at home, a family of five that currently claims the standard deduction will actually lose deductions under the Trump plan. Under current law, they would be entitled to a $12,600 standard deduction and $20,250 of personal exemptions, for a total tax benefit of $32,850. Under this latest proposal, that would be replaced with a $24,000 standard deduction and no personal exemptions. Thats going to be a tough sell. Families are promised tax relief to help them with child and dependent care expenses. But no details have been released on that aspect of the proposal. The plan would also eliminate the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which affects high-income individuals and couples, and the estate tax, which affects only about 5,000 tax returns but generates $19.7 billion in taxes. Additionally, the plan would also repeal the 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on dividends and capital gains. What are the objective for business tax reform? The reform plan for businesses contains four elements: 15 percent business tax rate Territorial tax system to level the playing field for American companies One-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas Eliminate tax breaks for special interests How does the plan affect individual businesses? The plan would reduce the federal tax on all business income from 35 percent to 15 percent. This would affect not only corporations (C corporations) but also small businesses that are structured as partnerships or S Corporations. The plan also includes a one-time tax on overseas profits. This is estimated to bring in an additional one-time total of $250 billion, which the administration wants to use for its infrastructure spending. The other items are still too vague to know how they would affect businesses. Why are so few details listed in the plan? The plan is more of an outline with the details to be filled in at a later date. As the plan notes in the process section: Throughout the month of May, the Trump Administration will hold listening sessions with stakeholders to receive their input and will continue working with the House and Senate to develop the details of a plan that provides massive tax relief, creates jobs, and makes America more competitiveand can pass both chambers. How would this plan affect the deficit? Because this plan includes only tax cuts and no offsets in spending, the effect would be an estimated increase in the deficit of between $2-7 trillion over the next decade. How does this plan differ from the proposal outlined by President Trump during the campaign? The new plan includes five items that Trump promised on the campaign trail: reducing the tax brackets, increasing the standard deduction, reducing business tax to 15 percent, and eliminating the AMT and estate tax. However, Trumps campaign plan promised to be revenue neutral (i.e., would not increase the deficit), a claim which few economists outside of the White House believes is possible. What are the chances that this plan is fully implemented? Near zero. Many individual taxpayers will balk at the removal of their itemized deductions, and Republicans in Congress will not want to support a plan that leads to such substantial increases in the deficit. While Congress will likely pass some elements, there isnt much chance President Trump will be able to get all of the items on his tax reform wish list. The world's shipping players have a vested interest in preserving free global trade, and as they meet in Asia, they say they've grown unsettled by rising protectionism in Europe and the U.S. "If you hear the rhetoric of the Trump or the Brexit debate, it is completely contrary to the way we see growth and trade. They always talk about it as a zero-sum game as if everybody who was a winner was a winner at somebody else's expense," Paddy Rodgers, CEO of crude oil tanker operator Euronav, said on Tuesday at the Sea Asia conference in Singapore. "We see it as something mutually beneficial, but that's not the language that's being used by politicians," he said. His comments came as protectionist rhetoric has surged in the wake of the U.S. presidential election and the U.K.'s referendum to exit the European Union. Although U.S. President Donald Trump has since reneged on some of his protectionist campaign rhetoric, such as a vow to label China a currency manipulator on "day one," he has continued to target other U.S. trade partners. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Monday that anti-subsidy tariffs averaging around 20 percent would be imposed on imports of softwood lumber from Canada, Reuters reported. Despite indications earlier Wednesday to the contrary, President Donald Trump agreed not to terminate the NAFTA treaty "at this time" in afternoon phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, the White House said. Here's the readout from the White House: Late this afternoon, President Donald J. Trump spoke with both President Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada. Both conversations were pleasant and productive. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries. President Trump said, "it is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." Both the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso rose against the U.S. dollar after the release of the White House statement. The Trump administration had been mulling an executive order on withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the three-nation deal Trump repeatedly slammed on the campaign trail, Politico reported earlier, citing two White House officials. A draft version of the order had existed, Politico and NBC News reported. Politico reported that the order was in the "final stages of review" and could have been "unveiled late this week or early next week." Trump previously said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, arguing that the agreement has punished American workers and companies. The order, though, could be used as a negotiating tactic with Mexico and Canada, the other NAFTA parties. This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates. CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report With hard work, perseverance and luck, three men who started as janitors became self-made millionaires. Each of the men approached their success differently, but each, in his own way, did what it takes to succeed and amass wealth through savvy investing, seeking out opportunities and making every day count. Here are their inspiring stories. 1. Sean Conlon An immigrant from Ireland, Sean Conlon arrived in Chicago with $500 and started out as an assistant janitor. Back home, his family hadn't had much. Once, a bank had even tried to repossess his family house, which may have inspired Conlon to become a real estate mogul (and the star of CNBC's "The Deed: Chicago"). Conlon worked hard to save money, which he eventually used to buy his first apartment. He began selling real estate at night, and ultimately became one of the top real estate brokers in the country. Ideas floating around Washington for tax changes could serve as a major boon for activist investors like Starboard Value CEO Jeffrey Smith. In an interview Thursday morning, Smith said tax reform generally and giving companies breaks for profits earned overseas specifically are potentially important ingredients for the activist firm's success. "Tax reform can be a huge wind at the back, and there are other ways for us to be able to succeed," Smith told CNBC on the sidelines of the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit. Additionally, he said a proposal for "repatriation," or allowing companies to bring back overseas profits at sharply reduced rates, also has benefits. Plans for major changes in taxation, from the number of tiers that will be applied to individual earners to the top tax rates for companies, were unveiled by White House officials Wednesday. President Donald Trump has vowed to make tax reform a major priority of his administration. Without getting into deals of the Trump plan, Smith said changes like repatriation can help. "It's going to give additional flexibility. It's another tool," he said. "Companies that have extra cash have a job as board members and capital allocators to decide what to do with that cash. ... If there's more cash that they have available to them, that's more flexibility. Then, yes, there are more tools in the toolbox." The remarks came during a broader discussion of the approach Starboard has taken with various companies. The company has a well-performing stake in Marvell Technologies and is involved in the implementation of Verizon 's Yahoo takeover. Starboard also has taken a poorly performing stake in Macy's . "At the end of the day, you have to buy into good companies that have good core businesses so you can refocus on those core businesses and improve their operations," he said. "Sometimes you get them right, most of the times you get them right, every once in a while you might not get it as right." Larry Page, CEO of Google's parent, Alphabet. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Alphabet managed to buck backlash over its ad platform in the first quarter, reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue on Thursday. The company saw mobile search and ongoing strength in YouTube driving ad sales higher, while sales on Google Play, hardware and cloud grew substantially, said chief financial officer Ruth Porat. Shares rose more than 4 percent after hours, as executives said more consumers are turning to smartphones for content and for ads. Adjusted earnings post a healthy beat (for Class A shares) EPS: $7.73 vs. $7.39 a share expected, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate Revenue: $24.75 billion vs. $24.22 billion expected, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate That's up compared to a year ago, when the Google parent reported adjusted first-quarter earnings of $6.02 per share on $20.26 billion in revenue (That means revenue increased 22 percent over the past year.) Extremist content weighs on advertisers, even as stock climbs during 2017 Alphabet, the public holding company of Google, makes most of its money from advertising in its core search function and on YouTube. Advertising revenues rose to $21.4 billion during the quarter, up from a little over $18 billion a year ago. Net income was $5.43 billion, up from $4.21 billion a year ago. Those ads made headlines over the last two months after The Times of London's investigation found Google's YouTube video site ran ads for major brands next to neo-Nazi and jihadist videos. In response, major brands around the world like AT&T and Johnson & Johnson announced they would suspend some digital advertising as Google made changes to its system. Still, revenues grew from last year in every geography: the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and the other Americas. Alphabet shares are up more than 23.5 percent over the past year, and nearly 12.5 percent so far this year. Traffic acquisition costs in the Google network were $4.63 billion, slightly higher than the $4.41 billion expected by StreetAccount. Mobile is more expensive to support, Porat said. But revenue on Google properties, other revenue, and sales on the Google network all came in slightly above estimates. Alphabet's so-called Other Bets category which includes internet company Google Fiber, smart-home brand Nest, self-driving car company Waymo and divisions for life sciences and venture capital investing has been under pressure as the company streamlines its spending. watch now Other Bets made big gains on its revenue over the past year, hitting $244 million over the past quarter, up from $165 million a year ago. Porat has trimmed programs over the past few years: The company's modular phone, Project Ara, was scrapped, and smart-home unit Nest last year. More recently, Waymo has been engaged in a high-profile fight with Uber over . Still, in a shareholder letter on Thursday, Google co-founder Larry Page highlighted the strength of these moonshot programs. While some engineers have been moved away from Google Fiber, Google is still investing heavily in data centers, and hiring cloud engineers and product managers, Porat said. "We clearly continue to benefit from our ongoing investments in product innovation and have great momentum in our new businesses across Alphabet," Porat said in a statement. Watch: Alphabet reasonably valued relative to growth German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Britons on Thursday not to delude themselves that they would continue to enjoy EU rights after Brexit and insisted the bloc would only agree on future ties with London after they have nailed down a deal to leave. Striking a firm tone in a speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament before a weekend summit on Brexit, Merkel also said talks on Britain's financial obligations to the EU would have to be addressed early on in the talks. Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (L), attends a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 20, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. Adam Berry | Getty Images News | Getty Images "A third state, and that's what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights ... as members of the European Union," Merkel, the EU's most influential leader, told lawmakers. "I must say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain still have illusions - that would be wasted time," she said, to loud applause from lawmakers. Arguing that the Brexit talks would only really get going after Britain's June 8 parliamentary election, Merkel stressed several times that all 27 remaining EU members agreed that the divorce settlement must be sorted out first. "We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," she said. watch now Apple Music chief Jimmy Iovine was already an Apple veteran when he sold Beats for $3 billion in 2014. But Iovine approached Netflix as he mulled whether he could keep Beats as a stand-alone company, according to a profile in Bloomberg Businessweek published on Thursday. According to Bloomberg, Iovine realized he needed to raise money and dilute his stake in Beats because of the costs of keeping the brand afloat. But Netflix's content chief, Ted Sarandos, told Iovine the company wasn't ready for music. Iovine was a key player in Apple's release of iTunes and the iPod in the early 2000s before founding Beats. "I've always known in my heart that Beats belonged with Apple," Iovine had said in a statement after the acquisition. "The idea when we started the company was inspired by Apple's unmatched ability to marry culture and technology." However, some bitcoin investors are growing concerned. The buy and sell ratio for bitcoin is balanced almost evenly over the past 24 hours, albeit with slight more sells than buys, and currently there are around 6,000 more short positions than long positions on bitcoin, according to Bitfinex data. The cryptocurrency's price has risen around 4.5 percent since the start of the week, according to CoinDesk data and spiked yesterday to $1,306 on hopes that U.S. regulators would approve a key trading product for the digital currency. The price fell overnight but is back around $1,300, not far from its all-time high of $1,325, which it hit on March 10. The price for Bitcoin broke through $1,300 on Thursday, within spitting distance of its all-time high, but investors are growing cautious. These investors are cautious as the last few times bitcoin has tested these levels it led to sharp sell-offs. On March 10, bitcoin fell to $1,085. Later in March, the digital currency dropped from around $1,260 to $950 over the course of a few days. The reason for the recent climb in bitcoin prices is optimism after an announcement in the U.S. that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reviewing its decision to reject a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Last month, the SEC denied an application by the Winklevoss twins to list the ETF on the Bats BZX exchange. The price rose on hopes that the application will get another shot at approval once the decision is reviewed, but disappointment could bring bitcoin prices back down. However, others remain bullish. Pavel Matveev, co-CEO of blockchain personal finance platform Wirex, predicts the price of the cryptocurrency could reach as high as $3,000 this year. "Bitcoin has doubled in value in the past six months. The trend for financial regulation, which recognises bitcoin, is spreading across Asia-pacific, and we expect more and more countries to regulate virtual currencies. I believe the price will continue growing and reach as much as $2,000 to $3,000 by the end of the year," he told CNBC via email. Other factors will boost bitcoin, such as Japan's recent decision to recognize bitcoin as legal tender. "Bitcoin does face certain challenges such as negative perceptions stemming from past instances of hacking and other illegality. The Japanese financial system will also face a steep learning curve regarding how to report bitcoins in accounts, for example," he added. "At the same time bitcoin is rapidly integrating such challenges and is increasingly becoming more robust, as Japan's official recognition of the cryptocurrency suggests. Integration into the financial system means companies can now more easily develop products and services." - CNBC's Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Manatee Sighting Network is making the final push to secure a specialized license plate in the state of Alabama. The effort, started last year, is nearly 150 commitments away from the specialized plate becoming a reality. The revenue generated from the specialized manatee license plates will be used to support the Manatee Sighting Network's outreach and education, research, tagged manatee program and data sharing. "One of the most interesting things we've learned since we began tagging manatees in 2009 is that the same manatees come back to Alabama waters each year," said Elizabeth Hieb, the Manatee Sighting Network Manager. Hieb said this is the time of year that manatees migrate to the Northern Gulf of Mexico and she encourages boaters to keep an eye out, and report sightings to the Manatee Sighting Network. Sightings can be reported 24 hours a day in three ways: On-line: manatee.disl.org Call toll free: 1-866-493-5803 Email: manatee@disl.org Drivers interested in securing a specialized manatee license plate can do so online at precommit.mvtrip.alabama.gov. Everyone who commits will be sent a Manatee Sighting Network drink hugger as a thank you. Questions? Reach out to manatee@disl.org for more information. Also, check out our video. https://vimeo.com/215018885 South Korean Army K1A1 and U.S. Army M1A2 tanks fire live rounds during a U.S.-South Korea joint live-fire military exercise, at a training field, near the demilitarized zone, separating the two Koreas in Pocheon, South Korea April 21, 2017. Kim Hong-Ji | Reuters China has told the Trump administration it warned North Korea it would impose unilateral sanctions should Pyongyang carry out another nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, in possibly China's toughest threat yet against its defiant neighbor. Tillerson, speaking on Fox News, said China has asked North Korea not to conduct any more nuclear tests. He noted that major commemorations in North had passed in recent days without a feared nuclear test or test of any intercontinental ballistic missile. "And in fact we were told by the Chinese that they informed the regime that if they did conduct further nuclear tests, China would be taking sanctions actions on their own," Tillerson said, without specifying what sanctions he was referring to. Tillerson did not say when China made the threat and there was no immediate confirmation from Beijing. He is due to chair a meeting with U.N Security Council foreign ministers on Friday, where he said he would stress the need for members to fully implement existing sanctions as well as possible next steps. "We're going to be discussing what next steps may be necessary to increase the pressure on the regime," he said. watch now The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tillerson's comments suggest that President Donald Trump's administration, which held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping this month, believes its efforts may have yielded a stronger line by Beijing against the North. China banned imports of North Korean coal in February, cutting off its most important export, and Chinese media this month raised the possibility of restricting oil shipments to the North if it unleashed more provocations. China earlier on Thursday welcomed an apparently softer tone by the United States on the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis but stressed its opposition to a U.S. missile defence system being deployed in South Korea. China has long promoted dialogue to resolve the Korean nuclear issue as North Korea has repeatedly threatened to destroy the United States. Washington has in turn warned that "all options are on the table" in ending North Korean provocations. But Tillerson was quoted telling National Public Radio as saying the United States would favor direct talks with the North, if it has "the right agenda." On Fox News, Tillerson said U.S. intelligence reports suggest North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was "not crazy," indicating he might be a rational actor who could be negotiated with. "He may be ruthless, he may be a murderer. He may be someone who in many respects we would say by our standards is irrational. But he is not insane," Tillerson said. watch now North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat is a major security challenge confronting Trump, who has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile, a capability experts say Pyongyang could have some time after 2020. Trump's administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programmes, which are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure. Asked about the U.S. comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had noted that many U.S. officials had recently made such remarks. "We have noted these expressions, and have noted the message conveyed in these expressions hoping to resolve the Korean nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue and consultation," he said. "We believe this message is positive and should be affirmed." Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on North Korea and other countries on Thursday to avoid behavior or rhetoric that could increase tensions around Pyongyang's nuclear programme. South Korea and the United States agreed on Thursday on "swift punitive measures" against North Korea in the event of further provocation. The South also said the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defence system was moving ahead meffectively a day after angry protests by local residents against the battery and amid fierce opposition from China. South Korea on Wednesday moved parts of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to its deployment site on a golf course about 250 km (155 miles) south of the capital, Seoul, signalling faster installation. Several hundred villagers protested, hurling water bottles at vehicles moving the parts in. China again denounces THAAD The top U.S. Commander in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, said on Wednesday the THAAD system would be operational "in coming days," bolstering the ability to defend the U.S. ally and the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there. A photograph of the site showed a THAAD interceptor on a mobile launcher erected and pointed skywards on a green lawn as a military transport helicopter hovered nearby. watch now FULL-DAY EVENTS IN NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES Exclusive Evening Networking Events in Miami and Austin ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., April 27, 2017CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, and Inc, Media, the publisher of Inc. Magazine, today announced the iCONIC Tour 2017, focused on entrepreneurship and innovation. The tour will consist of full-day events in New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA and exclusive evening networking events with a featured speaker in Miami, FL and Austin, TX. In its third year, the conference series combines dynamic interviews, inspiring presentations and business advice from leaders who have achieved iconic status. T-Mobile is the founding sponsor of the iCONIC Tour for the third consecutive year. The first conference in 2017 is scheduled for Wednesday, June 7th in New York, NY, with the second full-day event scheduled for Wednesday, September 27th in Los Angeles, CA. The exclusive evening networking events will be held in Miami, FL in mid-July and Austin, TX in early December. In 2016, the iCONIC Tour traveled to Seattle, WA; Denver, CO; and Boston, MA. "CNBC is thrilled to once again partner with Inc. to support small businesses and entrepreneurship," said Jonathan Meyers, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Events, CNBC. "This unique event brings some of the brightest and most successful entrepreneurs in the world together in an intimate setting to impart their hard-earned lessons and success stories to hardworking, aspiring entrepreneurs across the country." "By combining forces with CNBC, we've been able to attract a wealth of marquee speakers to our iCONIC events," says Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief of Inc. Media. "This year, we're adding a new element to our star-studded programsa series of practical, hands-on workshops to help entrepreneurs master new skills and really take their businesses to the next level." "T-Mobile is known for breaking outdated rules and restrictions for customers and that's why it's teaming up with iCONIC to share unfiltered business advice, mobile solutions and best practices with entrepreneurs across the U.S.," said Mike Katz, Senior Vice President for T-Mobile @Work. At the full day events in New York and Los Angeles, attendees will be invited to participate in a custom social media marketing workshop hosted by T-Mobile, in collaboration with Facebook. The workshop will share key social media tips to help businesses grow their brands, including hands on, one-on-one sessions with select attendees. For more information about the iCONIC Tour go to: iconicconference.com. About CNBC: With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 385 million homes worldwide, including more than 94 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries. CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV. Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc. For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com. About Inc. Media: Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major media brand dedicated exclusively to owners of fast-growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012 and the Advertising Age Hot List in 2015. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 13,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com/. Following is the transcript of a CNBC interview with Franklin Tong Fuk-Kay, Chief Executive Officer of Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute. The interview was broadcast on CNBC on 27 April 2017 at 12:20PM SG/HK Time, during CNBC's "Hong Kong versus Singapore" theme week. All references must be sourced to a "CNBC Interview". Interviewed by Chery Kang, Correspondent, CNBC. Chery Kang: So when you heard first about this interview, the Hong Kong's strength as an innovation hub. What were some of the first ideas that came to your mind as a highlight and as a low light for Hong Kong? Franklin Tong Fuk-Kay: Well the highlights, there are many, many. You know, first of all we have the huge potentials coming up. You've probably heard about the greater Bay Area concept, you know, which just was launched several weeks ago by the - it's a part of the national strategy, the nine - The Greater Bay Area actually consists of nine plus two. The nine in Mainland cities plus Macau and Hong Kong. Now we are talking about 66 million populations and 1.39 trillion U.S. dollars and GDP combined. So you're talking huge, huge potential. You look at Hong Kong having the benefit of one country two systems, you know, we have the free flow of capital, the law of arbitration and so on. So Hong Kong will remain and will become the financial center of this entire region. And also, obviously, you know, because of the Hong Kong as a financial center and office, it becomes naturally, becomes the fintech center of the region, and perhaps of the nation. So there's a huge potential for Hong Kong. Chery: Let's pick up on that idea, fintech. You are working with Hong Kong Monetary Authority as well as other banks here in order to build the R&D laboratory center and all that. What would that look like when you get the results that you want, say in three years from now? Tong: Well it's huge. I'm seeing-again, I'm seeing huge potentials. We can do a lot right. So industry, we are doing, applying science and technology. So we are doing technology development and also with the aim of transferring the technologies to the industry that, in this particular case, we'd talked about the banks, the insurances, the futures, the securities and commodities, so on and so forth right. So we are, in Astri, we are based on four pillar technologies, basically, cybersecurity, block chains, big data analytics, and also the mobile platform, something related to your mobile phones. In all this, you know, the basics we talk about is encryption technologies, we're talking about artificial intelligence. So these are the engines behind the technologies we are building with the hope of transfer to the industry. Now with Astri being a government funded organization, so we hope to do few more things. On one hand we're doing the platform technologies. For example, the cybersecurity information sharing platform, that we offer the surfaces 256 banks in Hong Kong. They all enjoy that particular technologies that we built by Hong Kong by Astri, and so that's one of the platform technologies we have built. And we supplied support tailor-made technologies. For example, the mortgage blockchain that we gave to Bank of China in Hong Kong-that's another excellent example. They already launched last year and very good results. And the second part is that we're building a lot of infrastructure. The one you're seeing here is an example of infrastructures and the third thing's we're doing a lot of things on our talent training and we are working closely with the universities and try to bring up as many talents as possible. So there are many things we are doing. Chery: And so Hong Kong boasts both the infrastructure part, market sophistication part, but maybe it's not really about the infrastructure that we need or the funding that we need, because we are talking about Hong Kong cabs not taking credit cards and you were talking about smart city as one of your initiatives. So what are you trying to- maybe it's not really about the government procurement, it's really about the policy or the direction that we are actually willing to go in. Tong: In fact, we talk about entire ecosystems. Rather than just one policy and sorts. So when we talk about the ecosystems, do you know who are in the ecosystem? We talked about in the financial technology ecosystems, we probably have to involve the regulatory, you know, so if they are not involved, they don't understand what's going on. They will not proof the type of technologies want to deploy in Hong Kong. So we have the multinational companies here. We have these start-ups. We have the technology developers like us. We have the universities, you know, the whole entire eco-chain. The ecosystem has to promote it. So given time I think Hong Kong will rev very swiftly. You look at all the Hong Kong people, the spirit, you know, in the past. Following is the transcript of a CNBC interview with Isaac Ho, Chief Executive Officer of Venturecraft. The interview was broadcast on CNBC on 27 April 2017 at 12:40PM SG/HK Time, during CNBC's "Hong Kong versus Singapore" theme week. All references must be sourced to a "CNBC Interview". Interviewed by Dan Murphy, Correspondent, CNBC and Pauline Chiou, Anchor, CNBC. Dan Murphy: You are a Singaporean but you run a Hong Kong based VC firm. Now that's pretty interesting. Why is Hong Kong a better place for you to do business over Singapore? Isaac Ho: So I would say that we're a regional VC. So Singapore and Hong Kong have become the base. The reason is because a lot of our activities is actually bringing US-based technology companies through Singapore and go into Mainland China. So Hong Kong becomes a very natural base because the proximity is there. And also there's a lot of activities also when we want to connect from Hong Kong all the way up to China. Dan: So what cracks, what vulnerabilities do you see in the Singapore ecosystem that keep you out of this market? Ho: Right. I think first and foremost is Singapore is still a very young ecosystem at the moment, so we are also looking at how are we going to improve the number of deal flows. So for example for Venturecraft, we actually venture all the way to Boston and to San Francisco because while we concentrate and focus on medical technologies, we see that the origination of the source still remains in the States, and the states right now, many of the visits are also encouraging that their portfolio companies come to Asia, basically for revenues. And one of the biggest market that Venturecraft believes is actually the United States and also Mainland China. Dan: Okay. But there's still a little bit of competition out there. Let's bring in my colleague Pauline who also has a question for you. Pauline Chiou: Yeah, Isaac, great to see you. I want to ask you a little bit more about your investments in the medical tech and health industries. You say that Venturecraft is really meant to be a bridge between Singapore and the US and also China, but how do you operate in both markets which are so different, and you could argue, suspicious of each other, different markets with different regulations. Ho: I think one of the advantage we have is that we learn to localize. So for example when we work with the Americans, especially the Americans founders, one of the things that rely on Venturecraft is actually the localization expertise that we have. So for example we actually operate the incubator in Hang Zhou where it's in Zhejiang China. And over there, building where we bring companies over there, we actually help the assistance in the medical validations, even the regulations and also the teams' setups. So one of the greatest advantage that we see ourselves as Chinese and being bilingual is the ability to bridge that part between the Europeans and the US market, right into Asian market. So U.S. becomes one of the places for our deal origination whereas Hong Kong and Singapore becomes a jumping bridge for us to go into Southeast Asia and as well as Greater China. Pauline: Looking at the portfolio of your company is quite diverse, you have a fintech company, you also have an investment in a company that helps people apply to colleges overseas, you also have luxury e-commerce but a bulk is now in medical health so is that we're shifting your focus? Ho: Yes when we started investing, in our, back in 2014 our focus is actually working with the Singapore government and also Singapore MIT Alliance, to be looking at Singapore registered companies that have deep intellectual property. So when we ventured into this that was when we were operating five million small fund where we actually invest 500,000 and under, that's the part where we actually get our hands and understand that in Singapore we actually find great intellectual property companies that has good deep technology. So when we come into Venture Kraft 2 which is the 50 million, we begin to see a shift to where there is actually a gap in the later stage funding and many of the companies actually happens to be in the medical technology and life science there's where you actually can put in a one to 10 billion dollars in investment. So this becomes an opportunity for us. That's the reason why we actually from going from very early stage right now we are investing more into a late stage startup. Following is the transcript of a CNBC interview with Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder & CEO, of TransferWise. The interview was broadcast on CNBC on 27 April 2017 at 06:45AM SG/HK Time, during CNBC's "Hong Kong versus Singapore" theme week. All references must be sourced to a "CNBC Interview". Interviewed by Dan Murphy, Correspondent, CNBC. Dan Murphy: CEO Taavet Hinrikus joins us live this morning. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining us. First of all, you're making a pretty significant announcement today for the business. You're deciding to place the business into Singapore and use this hub as your APAC headquarters. Tell us why. Taavet Hinrikus: So we chose Singapore because we find it's a great place for conducting business. And also Singaporean authorities have been really friendly in terms of making this environment great and helping companies set up here, especially working with the regulator has been a great experience for us. They were very forward-looking and focused on innovation. Fintech is a big area of growth which regulators care about. And we're also very happy to launch TransferWise service in Singapore because there are millions of people who have the need to transfer money from here and are very excited to bring them TransferWise, and now they can do it in a very quick and easy way. Dan: So, what specifically led to this decision? What can Singapore offer you that other cities in APAC can't? Hinrikus: So we have our business open in Japan already, we have an office in Tokyo, we're opening in Australia and New Zealand with a little office in Sydney. But we were thinking about how do we make sure that we have a little bit more of a regional center around here to look at all the markets and then Singapore just makes best sense, for the business environment, for the location. So we decided to have our hub here and we'll have 30 people in the office by end of the year. Dan: Ok so you're employing locals as well. What type of support have you received from regulators like MAS in this decision? Hinrikus: MAS was really helpful in working with us. So we worked with them to make sure we can do online customer verification and we were among the first companies to be granted the right to do online customer verification in Singapore which means that people can use TransferWise now purely online on their smartphone. So they can do their verification on the phone without having to go to an office. So we were amongst the first to be granted this. And I believe we're the first one to launch with a fully online solution now. Dan: And everyone in the market also wants to know where your global headquarters are going to be. You've indicated in the past that post-Brexit, London might not be the best option. Tell me where you moving. Hinrikus: TransferWise is not moving anywhere. We are headquartered in London. We will be staying in London. Dan: Okay. So no decision to move at this point? You're not going to make a bigger move into Europe? Hinrikus: No. Headquarters will stay in London. However, if the business environment in Europe changes, and we lose right for passporting and it's pure business contingency for us to look at opening up a European headquarters on the European side. Dan: Okay so tell me about some of the other reasons behind your move into this part of the world. Obviously you have had somewhat of a presence here before, but you're going to be enhancing that presence. The core of the business model is to really undercut some of the traditional players, like the banks. How would you describe the competition landscape here? Hinrikus: So which is of no surprise, if we look at Singapore or Tokyo or Australia or anywhere in the world we're seeing the same thing. Banks are under serving the customers and overcharging them. So when we're launching in Singapore, now we're offering the service which is five to seven times cheaper than using your bank. And this is very much in line that we're seeing all around the world. Dan: And if you break the flows down, as I understand it, you're moving about 1.75 billion Singapore dollars a month, is that right? Hinrikus: Yes, which I believe makes us one of the biggest money movers online. Dan: And do you think you can grow on that in this region? Hinrikus: Absolutely. If you look at the demands that we have in this region, whether we're sending money inside the region, from Singapore to Indonesia, or from Singapore to Australia and back to the U.S. and Europe we're seeing huge demand both for consumers and small to medium businesses. Dan: What we also wanted to find out from you is some of the other advice that you would give to young entrepreneurs, young investors in this part of the world of course, you were one of the first employees of Skype and you had a leading role in growing and developing that business. What advice would you give to other young entrepreneurs who perhaps wanted to grow and expand in this space? Hinrikus: So first of all, it's also good to see that Singapore is a thriving tech ecosystem and we're seeing more and more start-up activity here which is helping other companies come here. But so, talking about advice for young companies. It really starts with choosing a big problem to solve. It's the way we solve the telecommunications Skype, the way we're looking at money transfer and TransferWise. Start with a very big problem to solve and send focus on putting together the best team which enables you to iterate as fast as possible while focusing on your customers. So being very customer centric, focused on our customers has been the key to a successful TransferWise in a very big way. Dan: Taavet, we're out of time we really appreciate you joining us on the program this morning. Best of luck here in Singapore. Thanks again. watch now Tidal waves of earnings continue to hit the market, and today, two massive players continued to impress Jim Cramer with their results: Amazon and Google parent Alphabet . Amazon saw a huge profit jump and beat the Street's earnings estimates by 40 cents while Alphabet's sales surged 22 percent, promising signs for both of the tech giants. The "Mad Money" host is confident the two can continue to outshine less favorable market trends like the decline of oil prices. "If oil goes down tomorrow, you will likely see these two buck the trend. In other words, Amazon goes up even if retailers were down, which they were, and Google goes up. Well, let's just say it looks like they just have increasing business in many different elements, not just search," Cramer said. A floorhand works on an oil rig in the Bakken shale formation outside Watford City, North Dakota. Getty Images But as the prices of other energy fuels rise, one electric utility CEO told Cramer on Thursday that the energy sector is not as bad as it appears to some on the Street. In reality, it is just evolving. "You're seeing a massive shift to a more balanced energy portfolio, so you're going to see natural gas continue to pick up because it's less carbon than coal, about half the emissions of carbon from coal, and then, as well, moving to renewables and other types of applications on the grid," Nick Akins, president, chairman and CEO of American Electric Power . With oil and gas extraction up 16 percent year over year, Akins said that there is little for investors to worry about when it comes to the health of the industrial sector, especially given the Trump administration's focus on building pipelines, creating jobs, and boosting the coal sector. "Transmission is a key optimizer, so you're going to see all those resources continue to branch out, and it'll reduce carbon emissions significantly," he told Cramer. Dan Schulman, president and chief executive officer of PayPal Pau Barrena | Bloomberg | Getty Images As the onslaught of earnings continues, Cramer turned to two tech players that reported after Wednesday's bell to analyze the possible winners of one of earnings season's busiest days. "When I look at ServiceNow , the cloud-based software company ... that's literally replacing outdated patterns of work, particularly involving crucial customer service or hard-to-manage but consistent problems of human resources, I can make a strong case that that won the night," the "Mad Money" host said. But ServiceNow had a formidable challenger. Online payment company PayPal delivered a stellar report, with 6 million new customers, bringing its total to over 203 million accounts. "That's PayPal's best organic growth in three years, showing a phenomenal acceleration in this hugely important key metric," Cramer said, adding that Venmo, PayPal's millennial-friendly peer-to-peer cash delivery app, saw a 114 percent increase in growth. To settle the debate, Cramer turned to ServiceNow President and CEO John Donahoe for some context on how the software player is growing and expanding beyond its original means. "Not only are we delivering an information technology, which has been our historical sweet spot, but increasingly, they're pulling our platform into other areas that cut across the enterprise," Donahoe told Cramer on Thursday. Other areas include security, customer support, and information technology service management. Donahoe said the company's ultimate aim is to "simplify, streamline, and automate" complex services for employees that take up time and money, like onboarding new hires. "I was able to onboard in less than half a day, all through self-service, and that's the kind of way ServiceNow is being pulled into some of these experiences that cut across multiple departments of a company," Donahoe said of his own experience at ServiceNow. Patrick Doyle, Domino's Pizza Scott Mlyn | CNBC A deal between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to avert a government shutdown is "pretty much done," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., told CNBC on Thursday. "They're putting pen to paper, and it's just a matter of how long it will take to get the deal kind of finalized," she said in an interview with "Power Lunch." Earlier Thursday, Sen. Mitch McConnell said the Senate expects to pass a short-term funding bill ahead of the late Friday deadline to keep the government open. Heitkamp said after a couple of big concessions were made, the path for a deal become clear. "Once the Democrats were willing to do more on defense and the Republicans were willing to fulfill the commitment under the Affordable Care Act and not waste money throwing something at a border-security provision that wasn't actually going to enhance security I think those were the two big things that needed to happen," she explained. On Wednesday, the Trump administration dropped its opposition to an Affordable Care Act subsidy for low-income people. The White House previously stopped insisting on funding for a wall on the southern border as part of a bill to keep the government funded. While the solution right now is expected to be a short-term extension, Heitkamp is optimistic about a long-term solution. "If we didn't think that we were there with a negotiated deal, I don't think we'd be agreeing on an extension. It's just a matter of getting the paperwork done so that all the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted," she said. CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report. President Donald Trump should release his tax returns on good faith, a Democratic leader told CNBC on Thursday. "I'm glad the president showed the courage to release his tax proposal. But not his taxes, unfortunately," said Rep. Joe Crowely , the House Democratic caucus chairman. "Because I think we need to know exactly how he will benefit from his proposal." The New York congressman spoke on "Squawk Box" a day after the Trump administration released an outline of its tax plan. The White House said it would be the "biggest tax cut" in U.S. history. Among other things, the plan would eliminate the inheritance tax and cut the top rate on "pass-through" businesses from 39.6 percent to 15 percent, which would benefit Trump personally. Crowely called the tax proposal a "gaping loophole" for the wealthy. At the briefing, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Trump has no intention to release his tax returns, even though Trump previously said he would do so after an IRS audit was complete. When White House spokesman Sean Spicer was asked last week if Trump would authorize the IRS to provide more details of the audit, the press secretary deflected. He said, "The president's view on this has been very clear" and "the American people understood it" when they elected him. Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people had marched in more than 150 cities across the country to demand Trump release his tax returns. The White House has said Trump has released plenty of information. CNBC's Christine Wang contributed to this report. Deutsche Bank shares dropped more than 3 percent on Thursday morning after reporting lower-than-expected revenue for its first quarter at a time when banking stocks have seen sharp gains after centrist Emmanuel Macron emerged as the winner in the first round of French presidential elections last week. Pre-tax profit of 878 million euro, up 52% year-on-year Revenue: 7.3 billion versus 8.05 billion euros expected by Reuters' analysts The bank's revenue stood at 7.3 billion euros, a 9 percent drop compared to this time last year. This missed Reuters estimate of 8.05 billion euros. The German lender said the first-quarter earnings were hit by a negative impact of credit spreads. It added however that without such impact, revenues would have been broadly flat on a yearly basis. Net income, however, doubled to 575 million euros in the first quarter, compared to 236 million a year ago. This was the first earnings report since the lender completed an 8.5 billion-euro capital increase earlier this month. Marcus Schenck, Deputy CEO and CFO of Deutsche Bank, told CNBC on Thursday that the first quarter was a "decent start" into 2017 and this year "isn't going to be a loss year". "Last year from a reported revenue point of view, we had a positive revenue as a consequence of our credit spreads widening. This quarter is the opposite. Our credit spreads, which is our wanted outcome, have come down substantially," he said. Though Doyle did not disclose specifics on how Domino's might spend the extra capital, he said one of his main priorities would be to reinvest in his fast-growing business. "Ultimately, that means that you're going to be generating a better return, that means your cost of capital goes down, that means you can make more investments in the business, so it's a positive overall," the CEO told " Mad Money " host Jim Cramer on Thursday. With Wall Street buzzing about the impact of federal tax cuts on business, Domino's Pizza CEO Patrick Doyle was certain a slash in the corporate tax rate would help his powerhouse company. "Nobody's ever given a special deal for pizza or restaurants," Doyle said. "Corporate tax rate goes down, then you're definitely going to see even more investment." Meanwhile, Domino's has seen consistently strengthening sales, delivering an earnings report that exceeded analyst expectations. Its stock has been climbing steadily of late, closing up over 2 percent Thursday after the market warmly welcomed its morning numbers. "As sales have been growing, that's been enabling more stores to be viable maybe in smaller areas than we might've been, in or smaller towns than we were in before, so that number keeps kind of going up," Doyle said. "And, you know, I think people forget the population in the U.S. continues to grow a little under 1 percent a year, so you're going to get some of that growth as well," the CEO added. Domino's has also seen burgeoning growth in unlikely areas like Vietnam, Mexico, and Malaysia. The company just opened its 14,000th store in Cyberjala, Malaysia, and Doyle has plans to add 1,000 more locations to the United States' 5,400. To add even more tech-savvy customer benefits, the company has also been testing a GPS-tracking service that will allow pizza lovers to see how far away their delivery driver is. "It's giving the customer information, but it is also potentially a way to be a little more efficient with how we're using the drivers, with the speed of delivery, [and] making sure that they're going where they should be when we want them to," Doyle said. With another deliciously strong quarter under his belt, Doyle told Cramer that they key to Domino's success has been its employees. "We've got fabulous people in Ann Arbor working on the business, but at the end of the day, it's about the franchisees, the managers, the drivers," the CEO said. "If you can get them excited about the business and they are that's going to drive a lot of momentum." 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 Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), speaks during the 2017 CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, Texas, on Thursday, March 9, 2017. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will not attend an Oklahoma Republican Party fundraising event over concerns the appearance would run afoul of a federal law. Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, had been slated to keynote the annual Oklahoma Republican Party Gala. The organizers billed the appearance as "a once in a lifetime event" to hear from the current EPA chief. On Tuesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said the language in the invitation amounted to "a brand of political promotion prohibited by the Hatch Act." On Tuesday, he filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel calling for the office to investigate whether Pruitt had violated the law. The Hatch Act prohibits executive branch employees from leveraging their authority or influence to affect elections, including by allowing their "official title to be used in connection with fundraising activities." OKGOP Gala event invitation Pruitt told Fox News Radio the EPA's ethics office had approved his participation at the event. He said the agency decided he should pull out after the event organizers released an invitation that contained problematic language, which played up his federal role. "What happened was the folks that invited me sent out an invitation, post that approval, that didn't comply with federal law and federal ethics law, so we're not going to be able to attend because of the invitation," Pruitt explained. The Oklahoma Republican Party did not immediately return a request for comment. On Thursday, Whitehouse indicated he would not drop his calls for an investigation. "This is the least he can do. But the Office of Special Counsel still must do a thorough investigation to determine whether Administrator Pruitt ran afoul of the Hatch Act," he said in a statement. Pruitt has become one of the most closely watched and highly divisive bureaucrats appointed by President Donald Trump. The pan-European Stoxx 600 ended down 0.24 percent with most sectors and major bourses in negative territory. Germany's DAX and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 both closed down around 0.2 percent while France's CAC dipped over 0.7 percent on Thursday. The ECB left its ultra-easy monetary policy stance unchanged on Thursday though Draghi surprised some investors by explicitly recognizing the bloc's economic recovery. The euro initially reached the day's peak of $1.0930 as Draghi struck an optimistic tone when answering questions from reporters. However, the single currency subsequently fell 0.4 percent to hit a session low after the ECB chief conceded policymakers had not discussed removing the bank's easing bias on monetary policy. Basic resources and media stocks were among the worst performers on Thursday. The former slumped over 2.7 percent as commodity prices edged lower and Chinese iron ore futures slipped for a third session out of four. Insurance stocks were also heading south on earnings and rating reviews. Credit Suisse amended its Legal & General rating to "under-performing" on Thursday and, as a result, the U.K.-based insurer's shares closed more than 5.4 percent lower. Looking at individual stocks, Neste shares ended over 4.2 percent lower after the Finnish oil refining firm reported weak margins in renewable and retail products. Technipfmc also closed near the bottom of the index after the French oil and gas company announced it had approved a capital allocation plan. Elsewhere, international private hospital group Mediclinic rose to the top of the benchmark, up by 17 percent. The London-based group could stand to benefit as the Abu Dhabi health authority scraps a 20 percent co-payment requirement at private hospitals. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average and broader S&P 500 both continued little changed on Thursday as investors evaluated President Trump's one-page tax plan, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed about a third of a percent to a fresh intraday record. Facebook and Google were the victims of an elaborate $100 million phishing attack, according to a Fortune report, with employees at both companies tricked into sending money to overseas bank accounts. In March, the Justice Department arrested Evaldas Rimasauskas, the man they believe is at the center of the cyber crime, the publication reported. However, the names of the companies at the center of the scam weren't initially disclosed in the indictment. Meanwhile, the accusedwho is being held in Lithuania pending extraditionhas denied the allegations. According to information obtained by Fortune, from 2013-2015 Rimasauskas allegedly impersonated Quanta Computer , a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, by sending phishing emails to staffers at both Google and Facebook that requested payment for goods and services. After the companies wired the money intended for Quanta, Rimasauskas was alleged to have moved the funds to different bank accounts around the world to places such as Latvia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, and Hong Kong. In order to obtain the transferred funds, he is said to have forged the signatures of Facebook and Google executives on invoices, contracts, and letters that he submitted to banks. Before getting caught, Rimasauskas allegedly received a total of $100 million in transfers from both Google and Facebook. Neither company reported the losses to the SEC as a 'material event', Fortune reported. Facebook told CNBC, the company "recovered the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation." A Google spokesperson told CNBC, "We detected this fraud against our vendor management team and promptly alerted the authorities. We recouped the funds and we're pleased this matter is resolved." Fortune's full article can be found on its website. Facebook and Alphabet -owned Google must accept that they are media, not technology companies, and deal with inappropriate content on their platforms, Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP told CNBC on Thursday, despite both U.S. firms trying to distance themselves from that label. The boss of the world's largest advertising firm was responding to questions about the "brand safety" issues seen on both Facebook and YouTube, such as ads being placed next to extremist content and problems with fake news. Speaking about his first quarter results released on Monday, Sorrell said that the company which represents around $75 billion globally of media placements saw clients continue to invest in advertising on Facebook, Google and newer entrants like Snap Inc's Snapchat. "So investment in digital continues but you're right, there are these issues like brand safety, like measurability, we've had Facebook admitting on three or four occasions recently that the statistics that they give for their audiences were inaccurate," Sorrell told CNBC in a TV interview. "And of course, if any traditional medium, just like CNBC did that, they probably would be under extreme pressure if not out of business. So there are some very big issues, Google and Facebook are 75 percent of the digital marketplace so they are very important and it is important that the data it shares in a more comprehensive way." Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., speaks during the F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 18, 2017. Facebook is pressing its enforcement against what it calls "information operations" bad actors who use the platform to spread fake news and false propaganda. The company said Thursday it's adding new technologies to find fake accounts and detect abuse on its platform. The company said it is combating "false amplifiers" of political stances which can include fake accounts or groups, coordinated attempts to share and like certain posts, online harassment or the creation of "inflammatory or racist" content. The company said it will expand security measures to protect against "more subtle and insidious forms of misuse," like the purposeful spread of misinformation to influence public sentiment. In particular, Facebook will improve security around data hacks and "fake amplification," instances when false accounts spread incorrect information in order to manipulate public opinion. Other previous improvements have allowed Facebook to take action against more than 30,000 fake accounts in France since April 13, the company said. "Supporting authentic conversations on our platform and helping build a more informed, civically engaged community are important to us," chief security officer Alex Stamos wrote on Facebook's website on Thursday. "But we also know that some groups and individuals have attempted to misuse Facebook in efforts to spread misinformation or to manipulate discussions." The company will also add customizable security and privacy features, including two-factor authentication to prevent hackers from getting personal information. It will also notify users if they have been targeted and people who may be at risk of being targeted and provide recommendations on what to do next. It will also work with governments to help educate individuals who may be at higher risk of a data breach. "Facebook is a place for people to communicate and engage authentically, including around political topics," the company wrote in a white paper on "information operations." "If legitimate voices are being drowned out by fake accounts, authentic conversation becomes very difficult." Social media has made it easier to share false propaganda on a global scale, the company noted. Some of the tactics include posting factually incorrect articles, using fake accounts to spread information and spreading "disinformation," manipulated or inaccurate facts to bolster a certain position. "The term 'fake news' has emerged as a catch-all phrase to refer to everything from news articles that are factually incorrect to opinion pieces, parodies and sarcasm, hoaxes, rumors, memes, online abuse, and factual misstatements by public figures that are reported in otherwise accurate news pieces," Facebook wrote in the white paper released Thursday. "The overuse and misuse of the term 'fake news' can be problematic because, without common definitions, we cannot understand or fully address these issues." An uproar that began with hate speech on YouTube was quelled only after a major charm offensive by Google . The Internet giant was forced to make an all-out public relations push in recent weeks to reassure big advertisers after some well-known brands had their ads placed next to objectionable content on its video service, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said late Thursday. In an effort led by chief business officer Phillip Schindler, the company reached out to calm "thousands and thousands" of YouTube clients nervous that their brands might be next to suffer the same embarrassment, Pichai said on a conference call with Wall Street analysts after the company's Q2 earnings report on Thursday. The effort came after a slew of well-known brands, including McDonald's, Audi and AT&T, said they would temporarily suspend advertising on YouTube after the Times of London discovered ads placed next to racist, sexist and xenophobic content. The uproar caused at least one financial analyst to downgrade the company's shares. While the ad boycott failed to dent the near-term business of Google parent Alphabet, which reported first-quarter sales and profit that topped Wall Street estimates, it took a lot of effort to quell. "I would estimate Phillip Schindler's team made literally thousands and thousands of calls...an in-person conversations," Pichai said in response to a question on the call. The end result for YouTube and Google is that "we're evolving overall to a better place," according to Pichai, adding that "the feedback from our partners was very positive and constructive." The top House tax writer said Thursday the chamber is on "80 percent common ground" with the White House on tax reform. Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, echoed House Speaker Paul Ryan in saying the House largely agrees with the Trump administration on aspects of what would be the first tax reform since 1986. The White House is negotiating with Congress to strike a consensus on taxes after Republicans' attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act failed last month in dramatic fashion. "We've got some differences on the rates, but only from the sense that we all want to go as low as we can," Brady told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday. On Wednesday, top White House officials outlined President Donald Trump's plan, a proposal they said would be the "biggest tax cut" in U.S. history. It largely echoes the proposal Trump outlined as a candidate and did not include some key details. Trump's plan calls for cutting income tax brackets from seven to three, with a top rate of 35 percent and lower rates of 25 percent and 10 percent. It pushes for a 15 percent business tax rate. The House's previous proposal aimed for a 20 percent corporate rate. The White House was also vague about how it would pay for the plan without busting the federal deficit, though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted economic growth and the closing of loopholes would make up for the lost revenue. The Trump administration signaled it will not support a border adjustment tax a controversial revenue-raising provision of the House plan as it currently stands. The White House said it will negotiate with Congress on that part of the plan, a strategy Brady supports. "There's a good reason to stay at the table, see if we can't come up with a good, smart solution," Brady said. Earlier Thursday, GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia told CNBC that he could not support a bill that includes border adjustment. Retailers and some lawmakers like Perdue have raised concerns that the plan, which would tax foreign-made product inputs, could pass costs along to consumers. Brady said he thinks "at the end of the day, it won't raise consumer prices." Obamacare repeal Brady also addressed the renewed Republican effort to replace Obamacare. The hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, which helped to sink Republicans' earlier attempt to revamp Obamacare last month, endorsed the changed proposal Wednesday. Brady said House Republicans are "making progress," adding that he thinks "it's a mistake to set a deadline" for bringing it to a vote. "Smart CEOs will find a personal connection with him and have a lot of influence through direct lobbying, because he does not come to the Oval Office with a lot of specific policy preferences," said Michael Cohen, interim director of the political management program at George Washington University. "It is in some ways dangerous politically for him because he finds himself changing his mind based on who he is talking with rather than a deep independent analysis of the positives and negatives of policy options." The businessman Trump has positioned his White House as uniquely business-friendly during his first 100 days in office, frequently showcasing meetings with executives as he aims to chop corporate tax rates and slash regulations. Trump's proximity to executives and his wish for splashy policy announcements have given major corporate CEOs a front seat to some policy decisions, experts said. It is not clear whether the pair discussed the Ex-Im Bank at that meeting or how much McNerney or GE CEO Jeff Immelt a member of a White House economic advisory group affected Trump's stance on the issue. But the episode underscores a pattern whereby Trump, whose policy views are notoriously flexible, often modifies his political positions after face time with high-level executives. The decision was a win for American industrial titans General Electric and Boeing , which have foreign customers that use the bank's loans to buy products. Just a day before Trump first announced he would fill vacancies on the Ex-Im Bank's board , the president met with former Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, who previously supported the bank in the face of conservative opposition on Capitol Hill. When President Donald Trump said he would revive the embattled Export-Import Bank this month, it marked an about-face on an institution that Trump once slammed as "featherbedding" for big corporations. resident Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order directing federal agencies to recommend changes to a temporary visa program used to bring foreign workers to the United States to fill high-skilled jobs during a visit to the world headquarters of Snap-On Inc, a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S., April 18, 2017. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story. It's normal for presidents to take input from key American executives. But Trump has gone "further than most in formalizing the role and setting up an advisory committee of billionaires and top CEOs," said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. One of the president's economic advisory councils, chaired by billionaire Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, features the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, Walt Disney and Wal-Mart, as well as McNerney. In recent months, Trump has held listening sessions with executives from the technology, health care and manufacturing industries, among others. The Ex-Im Bank is just one case in which Trump appeared to take feedback from CEOs into his policy decisions. West notes that Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa program used widely at Silicon Valley technology companies, rather than taking more drastic steps that may endanger the program, after he met and discussed immigration with executives from companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google parent Alphabet. Trump opposed the program on the campaign trail, saying it hurt American workers in favor of cheaper foreign workers. After meeting with pharmaceutical executives Trump dropped his support for a plan backed by Democrats that would let Medicare negotiate bulk discounts for prescription drugs. Trump's administration is in the process of making other major policy choices with corporate executives lobbying one way or another. Trump has yet to announce whether the United States will pull out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, which Trump pledged to "cancel" as a candidate. GE's Immelt and oil behemoth Exxon Mobil have spoken out in favor of upholding the deal. GE did not comment specifically on what Immelt has discussed with Trump in person. It pointed CNBC to a CNN interview in which Immelt said CEOs should largely "kind of keep their head down" but stand up to the president when they feel it is warranted. "So, I don't think it's something we should do every day, but I do think we're also stewards of our companies, we're representatives of the people that work with us, and I think we're cowards if we don't take a position occasionally on those things that are really consistent with what our mission is and where our people stand," Immelt said. Dow Chemical has also urged the Trump administration to "set aside" the findings of a scientific study that said a family of pesticides is harmful to roughly 1,800 threatened or endangered species. Dow CEO Andrew Liveris heads a Trump manufacturing working group, but it is unclear if he brought that issue up with the president personally. Dow did not respond to a request for comment on Liveris' conversations with Trump. He told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Thursday that he is "pleased to see" the policy changes Trump has pushed in the White House. "I am very much involved, of course, for the company in what's going on in the White House," he said. "And I'm very pleased to see the [regulatory] reform agenda; I'm pleased to see what's going on in workforce training and activities there. Both of those I'm heavily involved in with the manufacturing initiative, as are 30 other CEOs." Brookings' West said meeting with CEOs, who often consider their own companies before consumers, can create problems in economic policy. Trump has included some labor leaders, for example, in his policy meetings, but executives heavily outnumber them. The president "risks getting a one-sided view of policy" without more input from groups representing consumers or workers, he said. The White House and a spokesman for an organization where McNerney is a trustee did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Watch: Trump changes mind on leaving NAFTA Intel reported quarterly earnings that beat analysts' expectations on Thursday, but revenue for the quarter and its key data center group segment was below Wall Street projections. The technology company posted fourth-quarter earnings per share of 66 cents, compared to 54 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue for the quarter came in slightly below expectations at $14.8 billion, against the comparable year-ago figure of $13.8 billion. Intel shares fell over 3 percent in after-hours trading. Analysts expected the company to post earnings of 65 cents a share and $14.81 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. The company reported $4.2 billion in revenue for its data center group segment, missing analyst expectations of $4.349 billion, according to FactSet. Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich said he expected lower profit margins for the data center business at an investor meeting in February. The statement came a day after Krzanich was at the White House and announced a plan to invest $7 billion in an Arizona factory that will employ 3,000 people. During Thursday's earnings conference call, Krzanich said the first quarter "tends to be the lowest quarter in general...for overall revenue and output and growth in [the data center business]." Intel has shifted its focus to the "Internet of Things" and the data center group segment, which creates chips for large computers, to move away from its reliance on the declining PC business. The company recently announced an agreement to buy Mobileye for about $15.3 billion in cash for the Israeli technology company's computer vision expertise. Krzanich told CNBC in March he expects to see self-driving cars by 2023 or 2024. "Uniting these two technologies into one platform will make it easier for lawmakers to regulate the technology," Krzanich said then. Commerce Secretary told CNBC on Thursday that Chinese goods dumped in Mexico are finding their way to the United States. "Mexico's trade deficit with China is approximately equal to their trade surplus to us. It's not an accident," Ross said on "Squawk Box." "The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening," he added. "Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA." "It was a silly idea to let a lot of outside stuff in. The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside," he continued. "So there's a conceptual flaw in that, one of many conceptual flaws in NAFTA." Despite earlier indications, President Donald Trump, in separate Wednesday afternoon phone calls with Mexico and Canada, agreed not to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement "at this time." Ross told CNBC on Thursday that Canada and Mexico are ready to start renegotiating NAFTA. "If we could only get Congress to release the 90-day letter, we'll be going on our side as well," he added, referring to the 90 days notice that must be given before beginning formal talks on NAFTA. Trump also tweeted about the trade deal on Thursday morning. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate. I agreed.. ...subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good-deal very possible! Ross, a billionaire who made his fortune investing in distressed assets, told CNBC two days ago that the White House was putting Canada on notice with a new import tariff on what it calls Canadian subsidies for lumber and a warning on Canadian trade practices the U.S. claims hurts American dairy farmers. Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at a Gala Dinner at Deutsche Bank within the framework of the W20 summit on April 25, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. Ivanka Trump is being hissed from both sides after her visit to Berlin for the W20 conference. Having made some questionable comments about President Donald Trump's alleged advocacy for women and families, the first daughter later expressed sympathy for Syrian refugees, igniting the ire of her father's supporters. In an interview with NBC's chief white house correspondent, Hallie Jackson, Ivanka argued that she was not "a back channel" to her father for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as Jackson put it, but rather an ally "on many issues" such as refugees, apparently. "I think there is a global humanitarian crisis that's happening, and we have to come together. And we have to solve it," Ivanka said. More from Mic: Ivanka Trump is setting up an organization that looks exactly like the Clinton Foundation Evidence shows Assad forces used sarin gas in deadly attack, French official Why Donald Trump is planning an all-out blitz at the end of his first 100 days When asked if that included opening the borders to Syrian refugees in the U.S., Ivanka answered, "That has to be part of the discussion, but that's not going to be enough, in and of itself. Germany has spent billions taking in more than a million refugees. Under Trump, the United States has proved far less friendly: In keeping with his xenophobic campaign platform, the president has on two occasions attempted to ban immigrants from majority Muslim countries from entering the United States. Syria made the list both times. Trump fans weren't happy with Ivanka's position and jeered her on Twitter. @ruth_prodan: @IvankaTrump Ur dad PROMISED not 2 bring refugees into USA. We don't want them here! #DealBreaker #NoRefugees @PrisonPlanet: Ivanka Trump is a globalist or at best incredibly misinformed & naive. She should not be advising Trump. @cernovich: Let me think about that for a moment....No. Great discussion, thanks! Robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade, according to Kai-Fu Lee, founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures and a top voice on tech in China. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the wave of the future, the influential technologist told CNBC, calling it the "singular thing that will be larger than all of human tech revolutions added together, including electricity, [the] industrial revolution, internet, mobile internet because AI is pervasive." "It is the decision engine that will replace people," Lee said, adding that AI capabilities far exceed those of humanity. For example, he said, companies in which his firm has invested can accomplish feats such as recognizing 3 million faces at the same time, or dispersing loans in eight seconds. "These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50 percent of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said, later adding that he expected that displacement to occur in the next 10 years. Lee's views on technology are widely followed in part because he previously headed Google China before founding his venture capital firm. He has also held executive posts at many other major tech companies, including Apple and Microsoft, and he has celebrity status in the industry and in China with millions of social media followers on multiple platforms. Speaking with CNBC from the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Lee tackled the big question: Will human still have a place in the world as machines grow more intelligent? The answer, he said, is that nothing can replace human-to-human interaction. "Touching one's heart with your heart is something that machines, I believe, will never be good at," he said, explaining that service jobs should be considered "first-class" employment. And while all of this change is happening, traditional companies like banks, insurance firms and hospitals, are simply moving to slow, Lee said. And it's too bad, he added, because they "possess the biggest treasure" in the form of troves of data. "Because AI is about taking data into insight and decision, so I anticipate [the] internet sector, entrepreneurial sector, to continue to grow and in many cases displace and even wipe out traditional companies in China," he said. Chinese tech tycoons like Tencent and Alibaba , for instance, have forged the way in mobile payments it's become pervasive for consumers to pay for everything from rent to transportation through mobile wallets and transfers. Meanwhile, China's giant state-owned banks are just barely starting to catch on, Lee said. The Senate expects to pass a short-term funding bill ahead of the late Friday deadline to keep the government open, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. McConnell tweet: We expect to pass a short-term funding bill before Fri's deadline so a final draft can be shared w members prior to consideration next week Earlier on the Senate floor, he said he expected the chamber would pass the one-week funding bill introduced in the House on Wednesday. He added that lawmakers will pass the extension so they can see a final draft of a funding measure before they consider it next week. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that "under any circumstances" keeping the government open will require a short-term extension. He accused Democrats of "dragging their feet" on reaching a deal. Congress is scrambling to reach a deal to avert a government shutdown as new possible points of contention emerge. House Democratic Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer on Thursday said he would oppose a temporary funding measure and encourage his caucus to do so if House Republicans bring their amended Obamacare replacement plan to the floor by Saturday. "If Republicans pursue this partisan path of forcing Americans to pay more for less and destabilizing our [country's] health care system without even knowing how much their bill will cost Republicans should be prepared to pass a one-week Continuing Resolution on their own," he said in a statement. However, Ryan later signaled that he would not seek a vote this week. President Donald Trump had also threatened to hold up negotiations on keeping the government open this week. On Wednesday, the White House dropped its opposition to an Affordable Care Act subsidy for low-income people. The Trump administration previously stopped insisting on funding for a wall on the southern border as part of a bill to keep the government funded. Still, Trump could potentially disrupt a bipartisan consensus on sending Medicaid dollars to Puerto Rico as a condition of keeping the government open, The Wall Street Journal reported. Trump has accused Democrats of seeking a shutdown, something Hoyer disputed in a CNBC interview Thursday. Microsoft 's cloud business is likely to unlock a powerful profit stream for the business over the next few years, according to analyst Michael Nemeroff. Nemeroff, a banker at Credit Suisse, wrote that Microsoft is in the early innings of its commercial cloud business, while Office 365 also has the potential for revenue and profit growth. He wrote that he expects Microsoft's cloud to continue growing at a pace of more than 50 percent revenue growth until 2018, and over 30 percent revenue growth through 2019. Profit margins are expected to grow to 60 percent by 2019, Nemeroff estimated. Microsoft's cloud services, Azure, currently leads the market, beat only by Amazon's Web Services as far as revenue. But Microsoft is closing that gap, he wrote, setting it up for " significant earnings power potential over the next few years." Microsoft has some advantages, Nemeroff said: It meets high standards as far as government and industry regulations, and is available in 34 regions, more than other cloud providers. He set a target price of $80 a share for the stock, higher than the $70.55 average listed in FactSet. The research comes ahead of Microsoft's earnings report on Thursday after the bell, when analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report total revenue of $23.62 billion. Nearly $6.6 billion of that revenue is expected to come from "intelligent cloud," according to FactSet. Anand Eswaran, Microsoft's corporate vice president of services, told CNBC this week that Microsoft thinks about cloud differently than others in the industry, focusing on a complete pipeline that connects consumer products to businesses. For instance, he said, in collecting cloud data for a connected driving partnership with India's Tata Motors, Microsoft's salesforce found they were having trouble getting interest from millennials. As a result, they were able to incorporate Tata's brand into XBox games something Eswaran said no other company could have done. Salesforce is another "colossus of the cloud," Nemeroff wrote. The enterprise technology company is likely to gain share across multiple areas of the cloud business, according to Credit Suisse, thanks to cross-selling opportunities and keeping costs down. Microsoft just reported earnings for the quarter ended March 31, and the stock dipped about 1.5% on a slight revenue miss. The reason was a shortfall in the company's More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows and hardware like the Surface tablets, booked $8.84 billion in revenue well behind average expectations of $9.22 billion (according to StreetAccount), and down 7% from last year. Surface revenue dropped 26% to $831 million, its lowest figure in more than a year, in part because of more competition from other similar devices and ahead of expected new models expected out later this year. On a call with CNBC, Microsoft said the shortfall was specifically due to "lower than expected Surface Pro unit volume," but noted that one big reason for that product is to spur growth of similar "2-in-1" devices (combo tablet-laptops) across the entire industry. Microsoft said it was encouraged by sales of devices from other manufacturers revenue from sales of Windows to other manufacturers was up 5% in constant currency, ahead of the overall PC market. Operating expenses jumped 12% from last year's quarter, to $8.4 billion, due in large part to the acquisition of LinkedIn. This was the first full quarter in which LinkedIn was part of Microsoft, and it drove $965 million in operating expenses, including $153 million in amortization of intangibles a term that usually covers things like goodwill, trademarks, or brand value. The segment lost $386 million on $975 million in revenue during the quarter. Watch: LinkedIn brings $1B in revenue for MSFT It's time for Microsoft to launch the Surface Pro 5. just reported its earnings for the quarter ended March 31, and revealed a 26 percent drop in Surface revenue. Here are a few likely reasons why that happened. First, Microsoft's new Surface Book with Performance Base and Surface Studio, the latest products in its family of computers, are too expensive and cost at least a couple of thousand dollars. They're designed for professionals who are willing to spend a lot of money for a computer, not for the everyday user. It's the Surface Pro laptop/tablet hybrid that's most appealing to consumersor at least was most appealing. It's no wonder Microsoft blamed slower Surface sales on "lower than expected Surface Pro unit volume," on a call with CNBC. Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro 4, the latest model, back in October 2015. Consumers who might be interested in it are rightly choosing products from competitors, like HP, Dell, Samsung and others, who are selling thinner and lighter tablets with newer components. Microsoft needs to update the Surface Pro family with Intel's new seventh generation chip, which is available in computers made by nearly every other manufacturer at this point (with Apple being one holdout). Microsoft has an event in May where it will unveil new hardware, though the Surface Pro 5 isn't supposed to be on the docket. Instead, Microsoft's expected to introduce its new Windows 10 Cloud platform which will help it battle Google Chromebooks. It might be wise for Microsoft to unveil the Surface Pro 5 there, too. CNBC found that six of the 10 firms that delisted from the exchange this year are Chinese firms, compared to eight who did so the whole of last year. Chinese companies listed in Singapore , known as S-chips, led the local IPO market from 2005 to 2007 before such listings came to a halt in mid-2012. In recent months, those firms have left the SGX in greater numbers voluntarily or after failing to meet listing requirements, according to exchange filings compiled by CNBC. Among departures from the Singapore Exchange (SGX) over the past year, a number of companies stood out for these common characteristics: they come from China and were among mainland firms that contributed to the flurry of initial public offerings in the city state about a decade ago. Real estate developer China New Town Development , which delisted from SGX in February but remain listed in Hong Kong, said exiting Singapore will lead to savings in compliance costs and management resources. "A single listing may help to consolidate the trading of the shares and lead to further liquidity, which would broaden the shareholder base and enhance the attraction of the company as an investment target. Such liquidity is typically an important consideration for market indices in determining their constituent stocks," the firm said in a statement. Max Loh, EY managing partner for Asean and Singapore, said it makes sense for companies such as China New Town Development to build product and brand recognition closer to their home market. He also noted that S-chips may not have seen the interest they were seeking from investors in Singapore. "There is the perception that they are not garnering sufficient value and interest from investors on the SGX. In addition, the historical unfavorable experiences with certain S-chip companies continue to cast a pall over the entire slate of companies in this space," he said. Loh was referring to the accounting fraud and other corporate scandals among a few S-chips that rocked the Singapore stock market in the early 2010s, tarnishing the reputation of Chinese companies, which saw their share prices collapsing in the aftermath of the episode. Questionable corporate governance and accounting practices have since led to the SGX placing many S-chips on its watch list for close monitoring. Several firms were subsequently asked to delist after failing to meet listing requirements. "The exchange will take action if the company does not satisfy the minimum financial performance over a certain period of time In addition, since bearish market generally happens with poor economic performance, financial performance of these companies also will be poor. Thus, these companies may decide to delist and go private," said Sundaram Janakiramanan, a finance professor at Singapore University of Social Sciences. Several big multinational companies are reconsidering their involvement in an official campaign promoting Turkey as a business location that was conceived before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently tightened his grip on power. Switzerland's Nestle has indicated it could pull out of the international initiative, led by Turkey's economy ministry, to restore investor confidence in the country. "Our participation in the campaign is currently on hold and we will consider next steps in the near future," Nestle told the Financial Times. Swiss pharmaceuticals group Novartis also hinted its participation was under review. Joe Jimenez, chief executive, this week told journalists that the campaign's timing was "probably unfortunate". More from Financial Times: Trump decides not to withdraw from Nafta Angela Merkel warns Britain over Brexit 'illusions' Ireland urges EU to avoid talks 'cul-de-sac' over UK's Brexit bill The Basel-based group said Novartis was "still currently involved" but "we continue to watch events closely". The campaign, involving 17 global companies, was thought up by Nihat Zeybekci, Turkey's economy minister, who has led roadshows in the UK and other countries. It followed last year's spate of terrorist attacks, a quashed coup and the imposition of a state of emergency, which contributed to a slower economic growth of about 2.9 per cent, down from 6.5 per cent in 2015. Nestle has had a presence for more than a century in Turkey, where it employs more than 3,800 people. Novartis has operated in Turkey for more than 60 years and employs 2,300 in the country. The economy ministry directed questions about the campaign to the Turkish Exporters' Assembly, which said in a statement, "This is a global campaign which demonstrates our economy is standing still; our will and our state are even stronger . . . it has a neutral standpoint." The campaign includes posters and videos, usually half a minute long, of local representatives of global corporations describing their long history in the country, and inviting others to "Come to Turkey, and discover your own story". The Samsung representative talks about how safe he feels in Turkey. The Nestle representative talks about feeling at home there. Campaign organisers said they had recently sought to reconfirm approvals from the backers and that "most of the brands have already confirmed". However, the reservations expressed to the FT reflected private fears about the reputational damage for participating companies many of which have operated in Turkey for decades given the controversy of political situation in Turkey and its relations with the EU. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted on Tuesday to restart monitoring human rights conditions in Turkey after having suspended their review in 2004 as Turkey made reforms to join the European Union. Motor company Ford said that when it agreed to support the Turkish ad campaign last autumn "our sole intent was and remains to promote economic development and our proud business association in Turkey for more than 90 years. It was not our intention for this ad to be interpreted as anything else." The UK's Vodafone said it had not changed its position on Turkey but added: "Our commentary in the advertising campaign is focused on the Turkish economy and on our long-term commitment to support our customers, employees and business partners. We do not express a view on political matters." General Electric , which employees 2,000 in eight facilities in five Turkish cities, backed the initiative without qualification. "We are supportive of this campaign," it said in an emailed statement. Japanese carmaker Toyota also said it would carry on with the campaign, saying: "We will continue with our business in Turkey aiming for sustainable growth." OS candidates forum April 2017.JPG Ocean Springs Ward 4 Aldermen candidate Tom Reynolds Jr. (right) speaks, while opponents Elizabeth Feder-Hosey (left) and Ken Papania listen during Tuesday night's campaign forum at the Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center. (Warren Kulo/The Mississippi Press) OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- About the only thing they didn't do was join hands and sing "Kumbaya." If any of the nearly 200 people who attended Tuesday night's candidates' forum at the Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Arts Center in Ocean Springs did so in the hopes of hearing anything in the way of debate, an exchange of ideas, or plans for the community, they likely came away disappointed. There was little to no mention of the city's aging infrastructure, taxes, or the U.S. 90 widening project -- set to begin during the next four-year term and sure to be a logistical nightmare for officials and residents alike. Instead, the 16 candidates who participated in the event, sponsored by the League of Women's Voters, spoke largely of how wonderful Ocean Springs is, how wonderful the people are, what wonderful candidates they are and wouldn't it be wonderful if they could all be wonderful together? When Republican mayoral candidate Shea Dobson began to criticize incumbent Democrat Connie Moran over some of Moran's Facebook rants, he was quickly scolded by one of the League of Women Voters moderators. There were, however, some insightful moments. In the Ward 1 race, Republican challenger Bob Briggs spoke the city's financial struggles of late and brought up the Psycamore decision, one which he noted had been made against the advice of the city attorney and ultimately cost the city "more than $1 million." The Ward 1 incumbent, John Gill, touted his 32 years as a city alderman, numerous accomplishments during that time, including the improvements to recreation and public safety through the two percent F&B tax, upgrades to the water system and public works. "We are at a crucial point in Ocean Springs history," Gill said. The Democratic challenger in Ward 1, Roxanne Samies, said she was disturbed by what she perceived to be "in-fighting" among the city's elected officials over the past year. "We can't afford another year like we had last year," she said. The Ward 2 candidates, Republicans Rickey Authement and Heather Eason, spoke almost entirely of their qualifications and background, with Eason adding "If you are looking at someone to bring some excitement, some fresh ideas, I'm your girl." Ward 3 Republican incumbent Chic Cody spoke briefly of his 24 years service on the board of aldermen and his 48-years working at Ingalls Shipbuilding, but did not use all of his allotted three minutes. "I really enjoy working for you people," he said. His opponent, Republican Ken Foley urged the need for term limits, noting the current and past boards have not voted to institute those limits. "Maybe a new board would be willing to do that," he said. (Note: Term limits can only be enacted by the state legislature). Foley also said downtown Ocean Springs gets an "inordinate" amount of attention from city officials, although he said that attention is warranted, given the tax revenues downtown business generates. "I want to see Ward 3 get as much attention as downtown," he said. Ward 4 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Feder-Hosey was one of the few candidates to talk about the city's infrastructure issues, saying that the city's "financial woes" were a top priority. "We can't take care of our infrastructure and (city) employees until we first solve our financial issues," she said. Ward 4 Republican Ken Papania cited a lengthy list of work experience and community involvement, including president of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, president of the Ocean Springs Rotary Club, president of the Jackson County Homebuilders Association, eight years with the Pat Harrison Waterway District and his current work as a member of the board of directors for the Jackson County Utility Authority (JCUA). He ran out of time before he mentioned any issues. The third Ward 4 candidate, Republican Tom Reynolds Jr., noted he is a lifelong resident of Ocean Springs, a small business owner, has three kids and two grandchildren who were or are in the Ocean Springs school district. "I'm fully vested in this community," he said. "I'd like to be your voice." Ward 5 Republican candidate Rob Blackman said as a former employee of Compton Engineering, he had the opportunity to work on "many Ocean Springs projects" after Hurricane Katrina and later served as the city's Building Official. He also said he would work to encourage more development along the city's eastern U.S. 90 corridor. "Ocean Springs is sort of what I like to think is a crossroads," he said. "We have an opportunity what I call the eastern gateway to the city." Blackman also said he intends to work to solve the city's financial issues so as to pay city employees a wage comparable to other coast communities. "Too often we are losing quality employees to other cities," he said. Blackman's opponent, Democrat Matthew Pavlov, noted he is a lifelong resident of Ward 5. "Ward 5 is in my blood," he said. Pavlov, an attorney, said he would "fight to protect Ocean Springs' unique cultural and civic identity" and agreed with Blackman the city needs to encourage development along the eastern end of town. Incumbent alderman at-large Bobby Cox and Ward 6 alderman Mike Impey spoke together during the forum, with both running unopposed. Ward 2 candidate Matthew Pleasant and Ward III candidate Joey Bellman did not attend. Longtime aldermen Matt McDonnell (Ward 1), Greg Denyer (Ward 4) and Jerry Dalgo (Ward 5) are not seeking reelection. Mayoral candidates Dobson and Moran took to the stage last. While each of the alderman candidates were allotted just three minutes to speak, the two mayoral candidates were given three minutes for a statement, then two minutes for a follow-up or rebuttal to their opponent. Moran spoke first, saying she "could not think of a more gratifying occupation" than serving as mayor. She touted a list of accomplishments during her tenure, as well as the number of accolades Ocean Springs has received from various groups and publications as a top small town. "It's not just a job for me," she said. "It's my life's work. Please give me another four years." Despite his youth (30 years old) and inexperience in running for office, Dobson didn't shy away from going on the offensive, saying he sees Ocean Springs as "extremely divided. A lot of that is because of the current mayor. It's unfortunate." He reiterated his pledge to return transparency and honesty to city hall, including his desire to have all board meetings live streamed over the internet. Dobson also said the city must learn to stop being so reliant upon grant money and instead "keep our own house in order" financially. In her rebuttal, Moran addressed the transparency issue by noting the city didn't even have its own website until she took office and she hopes to restore the city's Public Information Officer position, which has remained vacant since Raven Floyd left for Pascagoula. She also said the city is in good financial shape. "We know what we're doing," Moran said. Primaries are set for next Tuesday. With no more than one Democrat in any race, there will be no Democratic primaries to decide, but there are Republican races in Wards 1-4. No Democrat is running in Ward 3, but with three candidates, there is a potential for a runoff if no candidate reaches the required 50 percent, plus one, to win outright. "It's very important to me," he said in a press conference. "But this isn't Donald Trump that divided a nation. We went eight years with President Obama, and we went many years before President Obama. We lived in a divided nation. And I'm gonna try, I will do everything within my power to fix that." He reiterated his goal to unite the nation in a February interview, but insisted the problem wasn't his fault. The nation is sharply split in its view of Trump, too. Nearly 100 days in, more Americans disapprove of the president's leadership than approve of it: The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 48 percent of Americans disapproving of his presidency, with 44 percent approving. 2. Promise: Unite a divided nation Status: No tangible progress or efforts Trump has not taken any direct action that we can evaluate here, and divisions he has decried a record-high 77 percent of Americans said in late November they see the nation as divided persist. His legislative attempts have yet to attract bipartisan support, and his executive orders rolling back protections for transgender students and women in workplaces have been criticized as divisive. What's more, Trump's anecdotal claims of success have repeatedly been found to be exaggerated or had been announced months and sometimes years ahead of his presidency, like when he touted 900 new or saved jobs in Michigan that were part of a larger effort that saw a net loss of 200 jobs, or when he boasted of saving a Ford plant in Indiana that was not up for relocation. Trump has been quick to take credit for the state of the economy, including claiming credit for job gains that came under President Barack Obama. He's also celebrated the very monthly jobs reports he had suggested were fraudulent under the Obama administration. The president also ordered a review of foreign-worker visa programs in hopes of encouraging domestic corporations to hire more Americans, though the details of implementation are unclear; effects on the H1-B visa program won't be immediately known, as this year's visa process won't be affected. He's blasted Canadian dairy farmers as a "disgrace" because their government-subsidized farms are charging low prices that undercut some American farmers, and he declared that the Canadian government's protection of its dairy industry through import tariffs and other measures is unfair. 1. Promise: Create 25 million jobs, rebuild industry Status: Some direct action, progress Job creators have applauded Trump's " pro business " policies, and he's taken some action aimed at job creation through executive orders. He rolled back regulations on the coal industry and ordered federal agencies to rescind regulations that "unduly burden" domestic energy development. Sources in the coal industry say the jobs are unlikely to come back, though his actions may stave off further losses. "He's issued executive orders in line with what he's said and appointments as well, but at the same time to a remarkable degree, he doesn't feel his previous statements bind him to anything," presidential historian Michael Beschloss told NBC News. But when it comes to the pledges that helped Trump get elected the big-ticket items that require Congressional input like reforming immigration and revamping health care the president has struggled to make a dent. "I don't think there's any question that the president has done a significant amount on the issues that he put forward in the campaign," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters ahead of the 100-day mark, touting "a record number" of executive orders. "We are very proud." Trump's tangible progress is mostly confined to headline-grabbing executive orders that tackle parts of his promises from the campaign by undertaking regulatory or administrative reviews, or green lighting permits. Of the 10 core goals for his presidency tracked by NBC News, Trump made progress on two, faltered on four, and did little or nothing on the rest. President Donald Trump has made little progress on some of his key campaign promises in his first 100 days as president. 3. Promise: Deport undocumented immigrants, build the wall Status: Limited direct action, some early progress Trump has made some progress but the results are mixed: Deportations are up and southern border crossings are down, but the oft-promised "big, beautiful wall" between the U.S. and Mexico lacks funding. Despite Trump's promises on the campaign trail, Mexico says IT will not pay. Trump signed an executive order authorizing construction to begin, but the government has just $20 million enough for about seven miles of the wall in its coffers, according to ProPublica. House Speaker Paul Ryan's budget doesn't include the money for it either, signaling that the president may struggle to get his own party on board. Meanwhile, border apprehensions are down an unprecedented 70 percent over two months, according to Homeland Secretary John Kelly, who credits Trump's tough rhetoric for adding "enough confusion" to slow crossings. "To a remarkable degree, [Trump] doesn't feel his previous statements bind him to anything" presidential historian Michael Beschloss Domestically, the administration is more aggressively deporting undocumented immigrants, with immigration arrests rising by a third in the first weeks of Trump's administration. While Trump promised that he'd focus on deporting criminals, the uptick in deportations is in part fueled by the removal of twice as many immigrants without criminal records as compared to last year, according to data obtained by the Washington Post. The president has not eliminated the deferred action programs for childhood arrivals and the parents of American citizens earning criticism from his supporters. Trump also used an executive order to block federal funds from going to cities that limit federal immigration enforcement in their jurisdictions in January, but a judge put a temporary stop to it in late April, saying the president had overstepped his power in the order. 4. Promise: Eradicate ISIS, make the U.S. safer Status: Some action, progress stalled or unknown During the campaign, Trump said a Muslim ban would make America safer from terrorist threats, later walking that back slightly before his election to be a ban on people traveling from certain countries. As president, he signed two executive orders temporarily banning refugees and citizens of several Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, but both orders were quickly challenged on legal grounds. The first order's immediate implementation resulted in chaos at the nation's airports and borders before being stopped by the courts, while the second order was blocked by the courts before implementation. Trump promised to "destroy" ISIS as a candidate, and his first public effort against the terror group was certainly a headline maker. The U.S.military dropped the so-called "Mother of All Bombs" in Afghanistan, where ISIS was believed to be establishing a new foothold in the border region near Pakistan. The impact on the terror group is still unknown. 5. Promise: Repeal and replace Obamacare Status: Stalled action Trump vowed a speedy repeal of his predecessor's signature health care law countless times during the campaign, promising to replace it with "something better" that would lower costs, wouldn't cut Medicaid or take away anyone's insurance. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and policy experts, the American Health Care Act, the House bill his Republican caucus proposed and Trump endorsed as a way to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act and replace it, would have broken all of those campaign promises. The CBO estimated that more people would lose their insurance under the GOP's proposed replacement than if the party simply repealed Obamacare, and moderate Republicans in the House refused to support it in part because the cuts to Medicaid were too deep. More conservative Republicans, meanwhile, were frustrated that it didn't repeal the law in its entirety. With Democrats united in their opposition and Republicans divided in their support, GOP leaders pulled the bill from consideration. Trump has said he's not done working to get a repeal bill he has gone as far as to threaten to deprive the the ACA of funding in order to tank the existing program and Republican members of Congress have publicly bounced around ideas for a compromise. Still, 100 days in, Obamacare remains law. 6. Promise: "Drain the swamp" Status: Some action, much of it potentially detrimental Trump promised that one of his first actions as president would be to propose a constitutional amendment imposing congressional term limits. He has failed to do so, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said it won't happen. The president used executive authority to institute some of the ethics reforms he promised from the campaign trail, imposing a lifetime ban on White House staffers lobbying for foreign governments and imposing a five-year ban on lobbying for domestic clients. But he also weakened an Obama-era lobbying restriction that barred lobbyists from taking a job within an agency they had tried to influence in the last two years, which gives lobbyists more power to take jobs in the Trump White House as soon as they quit from their lobbying roles. Meanwhile, the swamp has hardly vanished: Dozens of lobbyists were found in Trump administration hiring rolls by ProPublica, who also discovered three hires working on the issues they'd lobbied on previously, like Shahira Knight, a former Fidelity lobbyist who had lobbied on retirement and tax issues and now is the president's special assistant for tax and retirement policy. The White House may have given Knight a waiver, the investigative outlet reported, but there's no way to know because the administration has also ended the government's publication of those waivers through the Office of Government Ethics. 7. Promise: Rebuild America with $1 trillion infrastructure plan Status: Little action The White House has not yet rolled out a plan to rebuild what Trump calls America's "crumbling" infrastructure. The president appointed a special assistant of infrastructure with D.J. Gribbin, who has a history brokering deals between private investors and governments seeking infrastructure investment, the very kind of deal Trump says is key to funding reform without growing the deficit. Congressional leaders and infrastructure experts say they're unsure just how feasible such funding mechanisms are; domestically, the nation has seen both successes and failures arise from such partnerships. Trump's only action to date on an infrastructure project is his approval of permits for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. With that, Trump made good on one campaign promise while reneging on another: The Keystone XL pipeline won't have to use American steel in construction, despite a White House order mandating pipelines do so. 8. Promise: Cut better deals globally, regain respect Status: Little action Trump kept his campaign promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he said on the trail was badly negotiated and harmful to American workers. On the other global deals, he has accomplished few of his promises: He has not withdrawn the U.S. from the trade deal NAFTA, nor has he removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. His budget did, however, propose cancelling the billions of planned U.S. funding to United Nations climate change efforts, a step towards keeping that promise. On the matter of global adversaries, Trump vowed to be tough on Iran and has issued sanctions on the nation over some missile tests in February. Still, he has yet to make good on his promise to unravel the nuclear deal his predecessor struck with the country in Trump's eyes, "one of the worst deals I've ever seen." His administration said in mid-April that Iran was complying with the sanctions-relieving nuclear deal at present and subsequently continued the sanctions relief the president had condemned from the campaign trail. The White House said at the time they were reviewing the deal still, and Trump argued that Iran was violating the "spirit" of the deal, which may set the stage for future action. Meanwhile, after promising to label China a currency manipulator within his first 100 days, he reversed himself entirely in April. "They're not currency manipulators," Trump told the the Wall Street Journal. After an unorthodox call with the president of Taiwan in December and the suggestion that he might not abide by the One China policy, Trump agreed to honor it in February. The move came during a phone call with the Chinese president, who had reportedly only agreed to take if Trump publicly stated support for the One China policy. Early calls with global allies have also proved problematic: A phone call with one of America's top allies, Australia, saw the president reportedly berate the Australian prime minister over a refugee deal, boast over his election win, and end a scheduled hour-long call after just 25 minutes. They have since appeared to mend ways and the Australian Prime Minister plans to meet with Trump in New York City next month. 9. Promise: Reduce crime Status: No action There are few indicators that crime has moved one way or another in just a few months, and Trump declined to send federal agents to Chicago to combat crime as he suggested he might in January. What's more, law enforcement experts believe that the president's efforts on immigration could actually drive crime up, as communities close themselves off to police refusing to report, testify, or even acknowledge witnessing a crime or being a victim for fear of immigration enforcement. Trump took one direct action aimed at highlighting crimes, rather than preventing them. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE launched an office to support victims of crime perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. Critics, citing statistics that show American citizens are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants, say it's an effort to further demonize immigrants. 10. Promise: So much winning Status: Still looking for a big win As a candidate, the president promised big wins that would be so frequent America would get bored of it. Ahead of the 100 days benchmark, the president seemed in search of such a win, hurrying to launch his tax plan and resurrecting the health care effort just weeks after it failed spectacularly. "We are going to have a big win soon, because we are going to have health care and that's gonna happen. And there was no lose with health care, this is just a constant negotiation and the plan is getting better and better all the time," Trump told a Wisconsin television network in April. The president may also still be looking for a win in his approval ratings: Gallup said April 20 that Trump's average approval rating as is the lowest since the polling firm began its survey in 1953, though the latest NBC News poll saw his approval rating begin to creep back up. The U.S. statement on North Korea this week squarely put the pressure on China to act, or otherwise suffer on trade with the world's largest economy, some political analysts said. "Implicit in the statement is the assumption (correct, I think) that China is willing to tighten the screws more than the halfway steps they have done in the past, and that as a result, new pain will be inflicted on Pyongyang," Robert Manning, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in an email. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a joint statement Wednesday that "we are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on the DPRK," the official name for North Korea. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that a China trade deal with the U.S. will be better for Beijing if they act on North Korea. As recently as last Friday, Trump tweeted: Tweet Beijing does have economic leverage over North Korea as the rogue state's largest trading partner. For its part, China is the United States' largest trading partner the U.S. imports far more from China than it exports to the country, creating a $347 billion deficit last year. Trump has made narrowing that deficit a major goal of his presidency. Others in his administration have apparently embraced that view. Based on talks with "very good sources," Manning said that Trump's tweet "really does reflect the view widely held in the White House. They seem to think this is the 'Art of the Deal' and are very pleased with themselves. At the end of the day, I suspect that any trade stuff that does not pass the test of reciprocal access will eventually lead to actions to penalize China on trade." In Thursday's regular news conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang reiterated that China is committed to upholding U.N. sanctions on North Korea. As for trade with the U.S., he said, "The Chinese side is ready to work with the U.S. to push forward sustained, steady and sound development of the bilateral relationship on the basis of mutual respect and win-win cooperation." After a missile test this February, China suspended coal imports from North Korea for the rest of the year. Recent reports also show Beijing may also be closer to cutting oil exports to the rogue state, which would be crippling for North Korea. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller is encouraging investors to go abroad as U.S. stocks hit fresh record highs. The Yale economics professor argues that Europe offers the most upside for U.S. investors right now, and it could protect them from growing risks at home. "Europe should be a big thing in one's portfolio. Their price-to-earnings ratios are much lower," Shiller said Wednesday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "It looks bad because they've been through troubles recently. But people sometimes exaggerate those troubles." Those challenges include Brexit, the French election and a rise in terrorist attacks as well the debt crisis affecting countries such as Greece, Spain and Ireland. "We have a lot of bad narratives about Europe. But you have to think back at the long history. Europe has done quite well," added Shiller, who says it's hard to predict if U.S. stocks will continue to rally in the coming days or see a deep correction. "Most Americans are not well-diversified globally. When we're talking about the 'Trump effect,' that is primarily a U.S. effect. You can solve that problem by diversifying around the world," said Shiller. He's particularly concerned that the "Trump story" is overshadowing other news that could affect the stock market's path. He also cites the emerging threat of a war with North Korea as a risk. "We're living in very volatile times. We don't know what to expect," he said. Want to be a part of the Trading Nation? If you'd like to call into our live Wednesday show, email your name, number, and a question to TradingNation@cnbc.com Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said another direct phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump could take place again and she urged the self-ruled island's political rival China to step up to its global responsibility to keep the peace as a large nation. "We have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the U.S. government," Tsai told Reuters in an exclusive interview on Thursday. "We don't exclude the opportunity to call President Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the U.S. government's consideration of regional affairs." The interview was the first since Trump, as U.S. President-elect, took a congratulatory phone call from Tsai in early December. It was the first contact between a leader of Taiwan and an incumbent or incoming U.S. president in nearly four decades and Trump cast doubt on Washington's long-standing policy of acknowledging Beijing's "one China" policy, which claims Taiwan is a part of China. The call angered Beijing because it forbids contact between government heads and Taiwan's leader, for fear of such contacts would confer sovereignty on the island. Democratic Taiwan, self-ruled since 1949, has no interest in being ruled by autocratic China. However, Trump agreed to honour the "one China" policy in February and then hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort earlier this month. F-35 Request Despite this, Tsai said Taiwan's ties with the United States have been improving. She said Taiwan may need to buy from its sole arms supplier the most advanced stealth jet in the U.S. arsenal. "We don't rule out any items that would be meaningful to our defence and our defence strategy and the F-35 is one such item," said Tsai, in the first remarks by a top Taiwanese official on the matter. Taiwan will eventually have to submit a weapons purchase list during talks with Washington. Tsai said, however, senior officials were not yet in place in the Trump administration to handle the issue. China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it was resolutely opposed to any country selling arms to Taiwan. Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun made the comment at a monthly news briefing in Beijing when asked about the possible sale of F-35 fighter jets from the United States to Taiwan. Speaking from the Presidential Office as she nears her first year anniversary in office, Tsai urged Xi to act like a leader. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, and froze official communication channels with Taipei soon after Tsai and her independence-leaning party took power. Tsai has said she wants to maintain peace with China, but that her government won't bow to pressure from China. WHO Meeting China continues to pressure Taiwan, Tsai said, adding that the upcoming May meeting of the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) would be an important benchmark for relations between the two sides. Taiwan has said it is facing a more complicated task this year in securing an invitation for the meeting after Beijing last year warned that acceptance of the "one China" principle was a condition for Taiwan's attendance. Most major nations and multilateral organizations, like the WHO which falls under the United Nations, formally recognise China. When she first took office, China slammed Tsai's inaugural speech as offering an "incomplete answer" to what it called the exam on bilateral relations. Tsai said: "Why not say we both are facing a new exam. We also look forward to China using a different perspective to face this new exam." "China now needs to have its own sense of responsibility," Tsai said, adding that the world was changing and China must change too. "I hope Chairman Xi Jinping, as a leader of a large country and who sees himself as a leader, can show a pattern and flexibility, use a different angle to look at cross-Strait relations, and allow the future of cross-Strait ties to have a different kind of pattern." Recalling her historic call with Trump, Tsai talked about more possibilities. "My first feeling was that this is a new (Trump) government and perhaps under this new government there will be many different possibilities that appear," Tsai said. Tsai tweeted congratulations to Trump minutes after he took office in January, and when asked if she might tweet him again, Tsai said: "Might not be a bad idea. I'll give some thought to it." watch now In a span of less than four months, Tesla Motors founder and CEO Elon Musk has added $2.3 billion to his personal wealth. Musk is now worth more than $13 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, but it could have worked out very differently. In fact, a crucial decision Elon Musk was forced to make in 2010 when, by his own account, the billionaire was broke, is one of the reasons Musk has been able to cash in on Tesla's rapid share rise this year: Musk held on to shares at the very moment when a sale to raise cash would have made financial sense. Musk, who had $200 million in cash at one point, invested "his last cent in his businesses" and said in a 2010 divorce proceeding, "About four months ago, I ran out of cash." Musk told the New York Times' DealBook at that time, "I could have either done a rushed private stock sale or borrowed money from friends." It's a dilemma that many entrepreneurs face, but there is a big difference between the options available to Musk and the options available to most business owners. Musk was able to live on $200,000 a month in loans from billionaire friends while still flying in a private jet rather than sell any of his Tesla stake. Though the root of the problem is the same: intangible assets or, in other words, a business owner who is "asset rich" and "cash poor." And it can lead business owners to the most difficult decision of all: having to sell a piece or even all of their company. watch now This is not a problem limited to founders of technology start-ups based in California. "It's really one of those tough scenarios with no good answers," said Richard Stumpf, CFP and managing partner of Wichita, Kansas-based Financial Benefits. Stumpf has worked with farmers in this situation, and sometimes for reasons that are similar to what drove Musk to admit he was broke: divorce. "It happens all the time here," he said. "Farming 2,000 acres ... asset-rich, cash-poor. And the options are limited, quite frankly." Even if you have friends as nice as Elon's, borrowing money can cause problems. Years ago a friend of Stumpf's, who owned a heavy road construction company, got into a bind and borrowed money from buddies. He eventually paid them back, but got behind and risked ruining relationships. In the end the business survived better than his strained friendships. Even for business owners with collateral to back the loan, the cash flow needs to be coming in to meet debt payments. And in many cases lenders are picky about asset types they will accept. Intangible assets are not the type of collateral that a typical commercial lender will accept, said Andrew Sherman, partner at Seyfarth Shaw, who has worked with companies at all stages of development. "The bank is in the business of collecting interest, not foreclosing on collateral," Stumpf said. "Selling the business or some of the ground that you don't want to sell can be the only way to survive," he said. This can be a good problem for business owners who have contracts lined up that will create significant cash flow but for which expansion is first needed. But selling equity to fund expansion is often a dreaded decision and for good reason. "You don't want to go the way of angel investors, because you know you're giving away a whole lot more than you're getting," Stumpf said. "In a fast-growing business, you sell 10 percent for cash to make it continue to grow, but when you're growing 30 percent to 40 percent a year, that's a heck of a return on capital" being given to someone else. "It's a shame when that happens with a viable business," Stumpf added. In a fast-growing business, you sell 10 percent for cash to make it continue to grow, but when you're growing 30 percent to 40 percent a year, that's a heck of a return on capital. It's a shame when that happens with a viable business. Richard Stumpf managing partner of Financial Benefits Sherman said many entrepreneurs need to turn to the equity markets to solve cash flow problems, reaching out to angels, angel networks, online funding or private placements, especially when they lack real estate or inventory or equipment to pledge as collateral. In the short term it can be attractive, since it does not need to be paid back, but in the medium and long run it can be "a very costly source of capital" for a business that is growing and can expect its equity to increase in value, Sherman said. One hybrid strategy is to partner with an angel for a bank loan, where the angel provides a guaranty with its personal balance sheet to secure the loan and receives equity or warrants in return. The business owner is still giving up equity, but far less equity than in a straight sale, since the risk to the investor is much lower, Sherman said. There is an operating principle of entrepreneurship that makes it likely that business founders will face this situation at some point in a company's development. Owners plow profits back into a business, and the business itself is often 80 percent to 90 percent of their net worth, Stumpf estimated. In a fast-growth business, retained earnings should be low because the owner is reinvesting in the business. "They will do whatever they can to keep the business alive," Stumpf said. His prime example is himself. "What I took out of paycheck in the first few years was insignificant. I was buying new computers or subscribing to information services or doing marketing programs. I don't have a million dollars' worth of a factory behind me, but I was still doing same thing reinvesting in the business rather than taking big paychecks home." More from iCONIC: Jack Bogle's advice for millennials The business letters Warren Buffett loves to read America's most successful food trucks As CEO and co-founder of small-business finance company Biz2Credit, Rohit Arora has a lot of experience with business founders facing the decision to sell as a result of early success. Owners of quickly growing business are barely paying themselves and can only withstand so much of a lack of equity in the business before it becomes a cash flow challenge. "While you're doing great on paper, just to keep operating at the expanding scale, we have seen owners have to get an equity infusion," Arora said. Entrepreneurs can raise money in the debt market, but after a certain point debt gets very expensive. "It's a classic mousetrap," Arora said. "A growing business that looks good and there's lots of money going in and out, plenty of cash flow, but any time there is a hiccup, all the cash flow gets sucked up." One of Arora's clients, an entrepreneur in his 30s who rapidly grew a series of franchised smartphone stories in New York City, borrowed often from the Biz2Credit platform as the business grew to 50 stores over four years. The expansion was so swift that it turned into an asset-rich, cash-poor situation, with the entrepreneur needing more money to run the 50 stores, and for reasons from payroll to stocking expensive smartphones. The notorious Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fire recall put this owner in an immediate cash crunch he had to wait three to four months for compensation from Samsung. He really only had two options: Sell a stake or sell the entire operation. He ended up doing both, initially selling a stake but ultimately selling the entire business to a large distributor of phone accessories who was keen to reach customers directly. "I've seen it so many times," Arora said. "He needed to give up equity, and once he got it, it stabilized the company. But as an entrepreneur, it was difficult working for someone else. He decided it was better to get totally out." "In any high-growth business, I don't think you can do anything much different to avoid it," Arora said, though he does suggest that geographic expansion beyond an existing successful footprint be considered with caution. For entrepreneurs, the good news is that there's always another business to create with the proceeds from a sale. The smartphone store entrepreneur could have sold to a bigger chain or even at a higher price if his hand hadn't been forced, Arora said. But he made good money and is now back with several new businesses, including one in the smartphone accessories market. He took what he learned about selling accessories and doing smartphone repairs to the online world, where margins and volume are higher. And instead of lamenting the loss of physical stores, the entrepreneur has eliminated the risk of a cash crunch associated with retail locations. A job seeker fills out an application during the start of the HireLive career fair. You're dying to apply for a killer job you just found. It looks nearly perfect. But there's one tiny problemyou're underqualified. Do you go for it, or let it pass on by? It depends. And, while there's no perfect answer or formula for this, here are a few instances in which you should (and shouldn't) take a run at a job that looks amazing, even it feels slightly out of reach. Should: You're just a bit shy on years of experience The job description asks for seven to 10 years of experience. You have just under six, and a little more if you count the (entirely) relevant internship you took on while finishing your degree. Dear heavens, go for it. Now, you'll want to make sure and make it clear that you've got the knowledge, business acumen, and maturity of someone with that seven to 10 years of experience (your cover letter is a good place to strongly hint toward all these things), and you may want to include that internship (just in case they're officially doing the math), but don't let a small shortage scare you away. Shouldn't: You're not even in the ballpark Now, if you're only a year or two into your career, you may be wasting your time going after a role that requires several additional years. Is it impossible? Maybe not, but it's improbable, especially if you follow the "normal" application process of uploading your resume through an online portal. Instead, I'd consider working to uncover a similar, but maybe earlier stage opportunity at the same company or, if you are hell-bent on taking a run at it, find a direct "in" at that organization. You're going to need an opportunity to state your case directly with a human decision maker (because the resume scanning software will more than likely rule you out). Job seeker fills out an application for temp work at Careerxchange. Christian Science Monitor | Getty Images Should: You lack a degree, but it doesn't say "required" The education section of a job description is an important one to examine. Most companies are quite clear on their minimum requirements, as well as their stance on considering candidates with an equitable mix of education and experience. If the description doesn't say the degree is a must, then it's fair to assume that the potential employer will consider a highly-qualified candidate without it. Not sure? If you can uncover a contact at the company of interest (if no one's listed on the job description, start with their talent acquisition or HR team), you may want to do something many of your competitors won't pick up the phone and call. (Gasp!) "Hi. I see that you're looking for a Senior Project Manager. The job description suggests that you are considering highly qualified candidates that do not have a bachelor's degree. Can you confirm this?" Done. Shouldn't: The job description makes it clear that degree is mandatory Some companies have hard and fast minimum degree requirements. It's hard to get around this, and may be a waste of time if you apply to a blind mailbox (or through an online portal) without that piece of paper. Also, realize that a bunch of other candidates who apply will have the degree, so when a blob of resumes comes in through the system, whose do you think will be reviewed first? That's right, the ones with the mandatory degree. If you feel very strongly about making a case for yourself, you need to get directly to someone of influence on the inside and state your case, rather than relying on the scanning software. Should: You lack a preferred credential (or two), but have almost everything else You do realize that most job descriptions are giant wish lists, yes? Often, few people are going to match every single qualification. That'd be like making a list for Santa and waking on Christmas morning to discover every last item you requested under the tree. Right. That said, so long as you're at about an 80 percent match to the job requirements, in most instances you should take a run at it, especially if the ones you're lacking are listed under the "preferred" section (as opposed to the "required"). Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy famously started "Anna Karenina" with the bold statement that all happy families are alike. But do happy countries all tend to do better as stock investments as a result of similar traits? A recently released annual ranking of the world's happiest nations showed that Scandinavian nations continue to be among the world's happiest places. The saw Norway jump from fourth place in 2016 to first place this year, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland. A man hiking in Norway. Katja Kircher | Getty Images The rankings are based on annual surveys of citizens in each country, but researchers consider per-capita gross domestic product as one of the prime criteria for happiness, along with life expectancy, perceptions of corruption, support from relatives and friends, freedom to make life choices and charitable giving. "You have to look at causation," said Warren Cormier, CEO of Boston Research Technologies and co-founder of the RAND Behavioral Finance Forum. "Does money lead to happiness, or do happy people end up making more money?" He said both factors may be at play. "There is a link between happiness and stock market participation. Endorphins are released when people are happier, and this in turn leads among some people to an increased acceptance of risk," he said. Being happy doesn't necessarily make an individual more intuitive or skilled at investing, Cormier noted, but a country with a happier population could still see a boost in stock market performance due to the higher percentage of participation. The happiest countries and 5-year performance Norway: (5.87 percent) Denmark: 9.37 percent Switzerland: 5.88 percent Finland: 7.94 percent Netherlands: 10.41 percent Canada: (0.89 percent) New Zealand: 3.6 percent Australia: (0.16) percent Sweden: 4.21 percent United States: 11.34 percent (Source: World Happiness Report from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network in association with the United Nations; performance data from MSCI standard index series of large/mid-cap stock country markets, as of 4/25/2017. Data for No. 3 in ranking Iceland is not available from MSCI. U.S., No. 14 in the ranking, included for comparison purposes.) The United States scores in the top 10 percent among nations for happiness though it did not make the top 10 in the rankings, slipping to 14th place this year. But U.S. stocks have generally done well compared to other markets, with the S&P 500 up a healthy 14.6 percent for the year ending April 25, according to MSCI. Norway, the happiest country, is up roughly 6.6 percent in the past year. More from Trading the World: What to expect in buyback boom under Trump's tax reform Why millionaire investors don't care about Trump's time-traveling tax reform You may actually want to reject this investing advice from Bogle and Buffett ETFs targeting these countries can generate even better performance by concentrating stock picks to roughly 50 holdings or less. The Global X MSCI Norway Index (NORW) ETF specifically is up roughly 11.5 percent for the year through April 25, according to Morningstar, a big edge over the MSCI Norway Index. The iShares MSCI Denmark Capped Investable Market Index Fund (EDEN ) returned 4.69 percent for the past year, through April 25. That compares to a return for the MSCI Denmark Index of 7.43 percent. What happiness doesn't translate into is consistent performance, especially for countries where happiness and GDP are linked to natural-resource wealth, such as Norway and Canada. The impact of low oil prices in recent years has taken away as much as it gives to stock markets in these nations. watch now Wealth and happiness do often make a strong case for scouring investments around the world. Consider Chile. The happiest South American country (20th overall in the ranking) has also seen great market returns. Chile is the South American continent's richest nation per-capita. The iShares MSCI Chile Investable Capped ETF (ECH) returned 22 percent for the 12 months ending April 25. Brazil, the second happiest South American country (22nd overall), did even better the $5.7 billion iShares MSCI Brazil fund (EWZ) generated a return above 45 percent in the past year as the country recovered from a recession and political crisis. Famous investors often say the worst of times is the best time to buy think Warren Buffett and the "Be greedy when others are fearful" mantra. Brazilian stocks are an example of where longer-term happiness relative to other nations in its region met a short-term oversold opportunity in stocks. The happiest countries and 1-year performance Norway: 6.59 percent Denmark: (7.43 percent) Switzerland: 7.09 percent Finland: 14.26 percent Netherlands: 15.42 percent Canada: 6.97 percent New Zealand: 2.38 percent Australia: 10.88 percent Sweden: 10.03 percent United States: 14.61 percent (Source: World Happiness Report from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network in association with the United Nations; performance data from MSCI standard index series of large/mid-cap stock country markets, as of 4/25/2017. Data for No. 3 in ranking Iceland is not available from MSCI. U.S., No. 14 in the ranking, included for comparison purposes. ) In Asia the happiest country is Singapore (26th place), and it is soundly beating relatively unhappy Vietnam (94th place). The iShares MSCI Singapore Capped ETF (EWS) returned 7.4 percent in the past year, according to Morningstar data through April 25, and has posted positive performance over the past five years, at 1.4 percent, and 10 years, at 2.56 percent. That's much better than the return of VanEck's Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM), which has posted declines in the past one, three and five-year periods. It is taking part in the global equities boom this year, up more than 7 percent, but that's just half the year-to-date return of EWS. With GDP, corruption and life expectancy as criteria, it's no wonder that stable, relatively wealthy European countries dominate the top of the rankings. Outside that region, richer and more stable countries also score well. Examples: Israel (11th place) in the near-Middle East; Costa Rica (12th place) in Central America, and Singapore in Asia. "It has been my experience that when you look at a stock market in any country, prices are inevitably tied to profitability and economic growth of the companies in that country," said behavioral financial advisor and CFP Steve Kilpatrick, CEO of the investment management firm Kilpatrick Advisors. He said economic growth on a national level increases employment, adds to tax revenue and accelerates standards of living. "A sense of freedom, security, health and purpose are all basic qualities of happiness. Happiness measurements and equity market indexes could both be seen as an inevitable result of economic growth," Kilpatrick said. A sense of freedom, security, health and purpose are all basic qualities of happiness. Happiness measurements and equity market indexes could both be seen as an inevitable result of economic growth. Steve Kilpatrick behavioral financial advisor and CFP "While we recognize that we are in the late stages of an economic cycle, experience has taught us not to miss the end of an expansive period," the Third Point manager wrote in the letter obtained by CNBC on Thursday. "This is especially true following Trump's election. Animal spirits matter in markets and despite the obstacles that the new administration will face in passing legislation, the overall pro-business environment is in sharp contrast to the last 'you didn't build it' administration's attitude towards business, enterprise, and free markets." Activist hedge fund manager Dan Loeb , who's more than doubled the S&P 500's return over the last two decades, told investors he doesn't plan on missing out on the final portion of this eight-year bull market and economic expansion, which has been given new life by the euphoria surrounding President Donald Trump's election. The well known, swashbuckling activist said that opportunities were ripe for his style of investing, disclosing that the fund had made new investments in the financials, industrial and energy sectors last quarter. "We expect the favorable environment for our investing style to continue for three reasons: 1) Corporate activity should pick up as President Trump's tax plans are detailed and enacted; 2) Opportunities for activist and constructivist investing are robust; and 3) Combining security selection with a reasonable interpretation of the macro continues to be critical," the letter stated. A discussion of Honeywell in the letter garnered the most attention from the market, boosting the shares in extended trading. It was unclear from the letter if the fund's position was a friendly stake or the start of a battle with the industrial conglomerate. The latter may be inevitable unless management was already planning to spin off its aerospace division, something Loeb called for in the letter. "Third Point believes that a separation of the Aerospace unit via a spin off transaction would result in a sustained increase in shareholder value in excess of $20 billion," the letter stated. "Spinning off Aerospace would transform Honeywell into an industrial growth company with a focus on automation and productivity.' Third Point has substantially added to the 1.4 million-share Honeywell stake reported at the end of last year, a person familiar with the fund told CNBC. Honeywell is a top-five holding of Third Point's now, the person said. Loeb admitted that Trump is not actually at the center of his bullishness. It's actually global economic growth that's got him excited. The manager cited a Goldman Sachs forecast for global GDP growth to top 4 percent this year, double the pace of a year ago. Third Point reported meager returns in the letter that do not seem to match Loeb's enthusiasm. Third Point returned just 5.9 percent last quarter, slightly below the S&P 500's return. Loeb's short-term struggles mirror that of the rest of the hedge fund industry, but his long-term record stands out. Third Point returned 15.8 percent annualized since its inception in December 1996 through the end of this year's first quarter versus a 7.8 percent annual return for the S&P 500. The letter also discusses positions in undisclosed "frac sand miners, " German utility E.On and a rights issue of Italian bank UniCredit SpA. --With reporting by Scott Wapner Watch: Loeb bullish on Trump trade Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did not commit Thursday when asked if he could promise President Donald Trump's tax plan will not bust the federal deficit. In an interview Thursday on NBC's "TODAY," Mnuchin was asked if he could assure Americans that the White House's massive tax cut proposal will be "revenue neutral and deficit neutral." That means it would not change the amount of revenue the government takes in or change the federal budget deficit. Here's the exchange with host Matt Lauer: Today tweet Lauer: Would you be willing to raise your right hand and look at the American people and say, I, Steven Mnuchin, promise you that this will be revenue neutral and deficit neutral? Mnuchin: Again, our objective, Matt, is to pay for this with economic growth. So right now, we're working with the House and the Senate. This is now about taking the president's principles and turning them into a bill that we can get passed and the president can sign this year so we can create economic growth. And we're going to work closely with Congress to get this done. So Matt, yes, our principles are we want to pay for this with economic growth and with reducing lots and lots of special-interest deductions. Most independent analyses of Trump's campaign tax plan said it would balloon the budget deficit over time even after higher tax revenue from greater economic growth is factored in. Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more. The White House has not released enough details of President Donald Trump's tax reform package for individuals and corporations to forecast how it will impact the U.S. economy, leading economist Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC on Thursday. But one day after administration officials outlined the plan, El-Erian did say that one thing is for sure, "Tax reform and the tax plan in itself is not sufficient to deliver 3 percent growth," a baseline number the president and his economic advisors have said they at least want to achieve. "You need more," the Allianz chief economic advisor argued, citing what he believes would be a benefit of Trump's promised $1 trillion in spending to upgrade the nation's infrastructure systems. He said a boost in what's recently been historically low productivity also would help the economy. On tax cuts, El-Erian said, "The most important part is when do we get the details not just of the tax plan itself, but of how it's going to move through Congress and get implemented." "If you want to get it done by the end of the year, and that's what the administration has said over and over again, you're going to have to come up with details pretty quickly," he added. But the former Pimco co-CEO predicted that getting tax reform through the House and the Senate is not going to be easy. "I think we're going to see the details in the next few weeks," he said. "And then the market is going to be able to assess implementation risk." The stock market has been moving higher since the election on the hope that White House and Capitol Hill promises of tax cuts, a repeal of Obamacare and deregulation will happen, and jump-start economic growth. In the meantime, however, the economy seems to be losing steam. JPMorgan on Thursday pared its estimate on growth to a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter from a 0.4 percent pace, following weaker-than-expected data on durable goods orders and advance data on the goods trade balance in March. It's worth noting that CNBC's review of decades of gross domestic product data shows that first-quarter GDP growth has been routinely understated. The economy grew 1.6 percent for all of 2016, its worst performance since 2011, after expanding 2.6 percent in 2015. Reuters contributed to this report. that she is "trying to give people the choice" U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's decision to call a snap election on June 8 could spell disaster for the country's looming divorce talks with the European Union, argued one of the Brexit debate's key voices on CNBC's Squawk Box Thursday. "By calling this election (Theresa May is) going to put in her manifesto exactly what her approach to Brexit is going to be," pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller said. Miller is also the co-founder of investment firm SCM Private. "She's going to show all of her hand," Miller reasoned, deeming the surprise vote announced last week "ludicrous." Miller was on Squawk Box following the launch Wednesday of her latest Brexit-related campaign, Best for Britain, which advocates tactical voting in order to "stop Extreme Brexit," according to its crowdfunding page. When asked if she was trying to prevent Brexit, Miller explained that she is only trying to give people the choice. "If the only deals on the table are a bad deal or a no deal, that's not a real choice," she said. watch now According to Miller, MPs should be allowed to vote on an EU trading relationship which could end up in three scenarios: a "fantastic deal," World Trade Organisation rules or a bad deal for the U.K. Miller highlighted the option of staying in the bloc as a fourth scenario. "That is the only way that MPs get a meaningful vote," she said. The Best for Britain campaign will look at places where candidates in favor of choosing from an array of options on Brexit stand a good chance of winning a seat. Miller said that, "It's not against Brexit. It's about ensuring that the process is one that's transparent and democratic because if we have a huge landslide like some people are predicting, then the government can basically do whatever they want." watch now Miller, a Labour supporter, spoke of her anger at the party's perceived troubles, saying that they were in "disarray." "If the opposition are not going to do their job and stand up to government, then we've got to encourage other people to do that," she argued. She clarified that Best for Britain was not about picking a particular party, it was about "identifying" candidates. It also aims to encourage young people to vote. Miller said that her intention was to "narrow (a) Conservative victory," as she could not see the Tories losing. watch now The death of a giant rabbit on a United Airlines flight from London to Chicago focused the spotlight again on the carrier that has struggled with more than one-third of U.S. animal deaths aboard passenger flights during the last five years. United had 53 animals die on its flights from January 2012 through February 2017, the most recent month available, according to the Transportation Department's Air Travel Consumer Report. That compared with a total of 136 animals that died on all flights of airlines. In a statement, United said it was saddened by news of the death of Simon, a 3-foot Continental Giant rabbit, on the flight to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. More from USA Today: Scientists found a no-frills way to build on Mars How Trump's tax plan would affect households How I became a rocket scientist and Girl Scouts CEO: Sylvia Acevedo "The safety and well-being of all the animals that travel with us is of the utmost importance to United Airlines and our PetSafe team," United said in the statement. "We have been in contact with our customer and have offered assistance. We are reviewing this matter." The rabbit's breeder, Annette Edwards, said the animal had an exam three hours before the flight and was fit as a fiddle. The rabbit incident came after United was under scrutiny for dragging a passenger off a flight April 9 at O'Hare to make way for a crew member. The airline was also criticized for preventing two girls from boarding a flight from Denver to Minneapolis while wearing leggings considered inappropriate for using guess passes given to employees and their relatives. Onboard animal deaths don't necessarily mean an airline was negligent, as revealed in summaries of department investigations. Among the four deaths on United flights in January, a Jan. 28 incident involving Hope, a 9-year-old cat, was suspected as heart failure, according to the department. Rocco, a dog, died on a flight Jan. 21 from a cardiac abnormality due to congenital heart disease, according to the medical exam. Two geckos were found dead upon arriving at Raleigh-Durham airport on Jan. 12, but no medical exam was performed. The department requires passenger airlines to report any deaths, injuries or lost animals from flights with at least 60 seats. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz blamed the now infamous incident where passenger David Dao was dragged off a flight on "a system failure" even as he apologized for yet another embarrassing mishap, this time involving the death of a prized bunny rabbit. "It was a system failure across the board," Munoz said in an exclusive interview with NBC News' Lester Holt, adding that he had introduced changes at the company because "a circumstance like we've all witnessed should have never happened, never happened." Dao, a 69-year-old doctor, was caught on video being dragged out of his seat and off a flight at an airport in Chicago after he had been selected as one of four passengers to be removed off the plane to make room for airline staff who were heading to Louisville to be in place for a morning flight. More of NBC News' exclusive interview with United CEO Oscar Munoz will air on Thursday on TODAY and Nightly News with Lester Holt. Chicago Department of Aviation employees forcibly removed Dao from the plane, leaving him bloodied and with injuries that included two lost teeth, a broken nose and a "significant" concussion, according to Dao's attorney. At least four law enforcement officers have been placed on leave following the April 9 incident. More from NBC News: 'Just kill me': Police detail doctor's removal from United flight David Dao's lawyer is repping woman in American Airlines incident White House says United video Is 'troubling' as lawmakers question incident Meanwhile, United was reeling from another public image crisis on Wednesday after a valuable giant rabbit named Simon died while on the ground after a long flight from London. "We are deeply sorry for the loss of anything from your luggage to, of course, a loved pet," Munoz said, adding that they were continuing to fix any ongoing concerns with the airline. When asked if the incident with Dao had hurt the company's bottom line, Munoz claimed he had not yet checked on the numbers. "I haven't looked. And our team hasn't looked," he said. "And so we'll see. But that hasn't been a focus for me or for us during this period," he added. Shares of United Continental had slipped immediately following the Dao incident, but the company's quarterly earnings report slightly beat estimates later in the month. Munoz said that while some of the company's policies and procedures were "dated," they were still working to "put the customer at the center of everything we do." That includes customers who pay both high and low fares, he said. "We're going to teach and broaden sort of the cultural impact of respect and dignity, regardless of where you're sitting," he added. "And that's why we've said once you've boarded an aircraft, we're not going to take you off, except for safety and security." @SenateCommerce tweet Munoz also noted that United has implemented changes including requiring crew members to be booked on flights at least an hour before takeoff. And on Thursday United announced there will be additional training for front-line employees on how to deal with difficult situations and make on-the-spot decisions. The company also says they are setting up an automated system that will ask passengers at check-in if they would be willing to give up their seat with offers of up to $10,000 for the inconvenience. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi delivered his latest remarks at the central bank's April 2017 press conference, following the routine Governing Council meeting on monetary policy. During the conference, Draghi weighed in on issues such as the euro zone's economic outlook and inflation, as well as outlined political risks and its impact on the financial institution's strategy. The central bank chief echoed statements he'd made at previous meetings, saying that risks surrounding the euro area's growth outlook remained tilted towards the downside, but admitted that the economic expansion in the region had made these risks less severe. At its April meeting, the ECB held fire on raising its benchmark interest rate, and kept its monetary policy unchanged. It's that job interview question you'd love to dodge: What's your current, or most recent, salary? A low figure could limit your starting pay. A high number might make you seem expensive. Now, several states and cities are banning the question as part of efforts to ensure pay equity for women, but some companies say the new laws represent yet another intrusion into their businesses. This week, the city of Philadelphia said it would hold off on enforcing the legislation until a federal judge ruled on a petition to block it from the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. A federal court already had temporarily stayed the law, which was to take effect May 23. And Connecticut recently dropped the "salary history" prohibition from its bill to ensure gender pay equity. Philadelphia joins New York City and Massachusetts, where legislation was passed this month and last year, respectively, in barring employers from asking job candidates about their salary history or benefits. The laws are scheduled to take effect in New York later this year and in Massachusetts in July 2018. More from USAToday: The future of jobs: More men doing 'women's work' Yes, there's sexism in tech. Women should go into it anyway Low-paid workers are leading in wage gains At least eight other states are considering similar measures Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, according to law firm Fisher & Phillips. The bills are aimed at closing a long-standing gender-based pay gap that, according to the Census Bureau, has women earning about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. (Studies that compare men and women in similar occupations and control for other factors, such as experience, find much narrower pay disparities.) By basing future salaries on previous wages, employers can perpetuate the earnings divide, advocates for women say. "We know that when employers see some past salary, they're likely to take that into account" in setting the employee's starting pay, says Emily Martin, general counsel for the National Women's Law Center. As a result, "Too often, when women are paid less than men, that pay disparity can follow them from job to job." In fact, she says, the gender pay gap widens as women age, supporting the theory that employers are relying too heavily on previous salaries. The salary history bans generally are part of, or addenda to, broader laws that prevent employers from underpaying women. The legislation in Massachusetts and some other areas also prohibit employers from instructing employees not to discuss their wages. Such conversation is often needed so a female worker can file a challenge. Generally, the laws allow firms to rely on salary information if the job candidate volunteers it. More broadly, compensation experts say the measures also address the fundamental unfairness of shackling a new employee to a prior salary. "Our advice to organizations is that they should price the position, not price the person," says Lydia Frank, vice president of Payscale, a compensation consulting firm. "You're trying to fill a certain role. What you should be doing is understanding the market rate for that role." But Cheryl Behymer, a labor lawyer for Fisher & Phillips who represents employers, says many companies use salary history to set pay and manage their costs. "It's hard to figure out how to pay somebody a fair amount," she says. "You're looking at getting the best employee you can but there's nothing wrong with trying to save the company money." The prohibition against asking candidates for their prior salaries follows the passage of "ban the box" laws in nearly half the states barring employers from requiring job seekers to acknowledge on applications if they have a criminal record. "Here's another point where the government is dictating to an employer how to conduct its business and employers resent that," Behymer says of the new salary history laws. While both the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and Comcast, which is headquartered in the city, oppose the new law, neither would comment. But in a statement in January, chamber President Rob Wonderling said, "Tragically we are finding that when global enterprises are looking to locate their business in America, Philadelphia is quickly falling off the list." He said various new restraints are "having a negative impact on job growth." The chamber also argues the salary-history law violates companies' free speech rights, and there's no evidence it promotes wage equity At a city hearing, Wonderling said a prior salary provided an employer "a better understanding of whether a candidate is worth pursuing based on previous compensation levels as well as the market value or salaries for comparable positions." Michael Aitken, vice president of government affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management, says a current or previous salary can indicate whether a job candidate's currently high pay is above the employer's range, avoiding wasted time and resources. But he says firms can address that issue by including a salary range in a job posting or telling a job candidate early on. And while a salary history provides some companies a better understanding of pay for comparable positions, Aitken says many companies conduct their own market surveys anyway. Still, for small businesses that can't afford such surveys, the new laws pose a more formidable hurdle, he says. Aitken acknowledges some employers use a previous salary as a baseline to determine future pay, but he says that's typically within the salary range it already has established for the position. Firms that underpay employees are at risk of losing them to competitors, he says. SpenDifference, which provides procurement and other services to restaurant chains, asked job candidates for their salary history to help set starting pay until it hired Payscale a year ago, says Carla Williams, vice president of human resources. Now, it gains access a rich trove of market data. "Getting an employee at a bargain (didn't) feel great for us," she says, adding pay disparities between similar workers can hurt morale, prod employees to leave and open the company to charges of gender discrimination. Now, she says the company annually provides employees market-based salaries for jobs similar to their own to increase transparency, noting many mistakenly believe they're underpaid. "It's not that elephant in the room" anymore, she says. White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said Thursday the Trump administration meant to make the tax plan outline it released vague, and assessing its long-term effects is difficult at this point. The long-awaited proposal unveiled Wednesday did not include many key details, such as the tax rate for corporate cash repatriated from overseas. The White House was also vague about how it would pay for what it calls the biggest tax cut in U.S. history without busting the federal deficit, though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted economic growth and the closing of loopholes would make up for the lost revenue. Mulvaney, a budget hawk when he served in Congress, told CNBC on Thursday "there's no way to know" yet what effect the plan will have on the deficit. "There's no way to score what we put out yesterday. And we did it on purpose. Not to try and hide the numbers, but to say, 'Look, this is the first discussion,'" the Office of Management and Budget director told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Mulvaney said the White House "learned a lesson" from the failed first effort led by House Speaker Paul Ryan to replace the Affordable Care Act. The administration wanted to get involved in the discussion on tax reform "much earlier," he said. Trump's plan calls for cutting income tax brackets from seven to three, with a top rate of 35 percent and lower rates of 25 percent and 10 percent. Mulvaney said the White House is working with Congress to decide what income ranges will fall under those brackets. The White House has signaled it will not support a border adjustment tax, a controversial revenue-raising piece of the House tax plan, as it stands. Critics of Trump's tax plan have questioned what he would do to offset the lost revenue from massive tax cuts. Mulvaney said the White House is "looking at other ways," including the elimination of many deductions like those at the state and local level. President Donald Trump is set to sign a memo today, authorizing an investigation into whether a flood of aluminum imports from China and elsewhere jeopardize national security. The move is similar to one launched last week regarding steel. (CNBC) Despite earlier indications, Trump agreed in afternoon phone calls with Mexico and Canada not to terminate the NAFTA "at this time." Instead, the president said the U.S. would try to renegotiate the trade treaty. (CNBC) There's discussion about a possible health-care vote tomorrow, now that the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which helped to sink the GOP's earlier attempt to revamp Obamacare last month, endorsed an amended plan. (Axios & CNBC) The White House said it would continuing paying Obamacare subsidies, removing a government shutdown threat. Lawmakers are expected to pass a one-week funding extension as Friday night's deadline approaches. (CNBC) Trump is expected to take action tomorrow to open more offshore areas to oil and gas drilling, in part by reversing his predecessor's attempt to permanently protect large swaths of U.S. waters. (CNBC) Trump's tax proposal calls for deep reductions in business tax rates and major changes to the individual tax system. But the plan faces a narrow path to victory through Congress. (WSJ) More than 20 tech CEOs and executives meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to talk about innovation and job creation in America as well as tax policy and immigration reform. (Press Release) United (UAL) hopes up to $10,000 for volunteers, better training, and fewer oversold flights will help the airline avoid a repeat of the fiasco of a passenger being dragged off a flight earlier this month. (CNBC) United CEO Oscar Munoz blamed the forcible passenger removal on a "system failure", while apologizing for another mishap, this time involving the death of a prized rabbit. (NBC News) Buffalo Wild Wing's (BWLD) first-quarter earning miss could give activist hedge fund Marcato an advantage ahead of a June proxy vote. The restaurant chain also cut its annual earnings targets. (CNBC) Weight Watchers (WTW) named HSN chief executive Mindy Grossman as its new CEO. Grossman departs the shopping network on May 24, and then she's expected to join Weight Watchers in July. (CNBC) Paramount Pictures, owned by Viacom (VIAB) has revived its $1 billion deal to finance future movie projects with two Chinese media companies, which was presumed dead last month. (Variety) The Mexican law will have a beneficial impact on our work to stop dogfighters in the United States, where dogfighting is a felony in every state, and a federal felony. For years, American-based dogfighters have trekked to Mexico to avoid law enforcement in the United States. Photo by Meredith Lee/The HSUS 45.5K shares In a groundbreaking victory for countless dogs caught up in Mexicos animal fighting trade, the nations Senate has put the final stamp of approval on a comprehensive law that bans all dogfighting in the country and establishes tough penalties, including imprisonment and fines, for anyone involved in dogfighting activities like organizing fights, owning or trading a dog, and attending a fight as a spectator. The practice, put on display years ago in the movie Amores Perros whose leading actress, Vanessa Bauche, has supported our anti-dogfighting campaign has been a persistent and widespread animal welfare problem in Mexico, and this new national policy is a signature success for the burgeoning animal protection movement in one of the worlds largest nations and one of Americas biggest trading partners. The law will go into effect following publication in the countrys federal register. The move is historic in many ways: it is the first time that animal cruelty has been penalized in the Federal Criminal Code. Last year, soon after opening an office there and under the guidance of executive director Anton Aguilar of Humane Society International/Mexico, we launched a major anti-dogfighting campaign along with local animal protection organizations. The campaign included a petition for legislators to ban and penalize dogfighting, which was signed by more than 200,000 Mexicans eager to see an end to this scourge. We enlisted celebrities, mobilized our growing constituency there, and lobbied lawmakers about the evils and hazards of dogfighting. More than 40 local organizations helped us add and keep up the pressure through letters, tweetstorms, and calls. With their support, we reached out to the media, held six press conferences and dozens of interviews, wrote op-eds, and got hundreds of stories published on the importance of this reform. In December 2016, Mexicos House of Representatives passed a reform of the federal criminal code, penalizing various activities related to dogfighting, including organizing fights, owning or trading a fighting dog, possessing a property used to hold fights, and attending a fight as a spectator. In January, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies passed reforms to ban dogfighting and mandated the federation and states to impose penalties on dogfighters within a one-year timeframe. The final and key piece of getting dogfighting banned in Mexico was for the Senate to pass the reform to the federal criminal code so that dogfighting is effectively penalized, and that happened yesterday in a unanimous vote. Right now, many of Mexicos 31 states and Mexico City forbid dogfighting, but there had been no national policy. As a result, criminal rings that organize and participate in dogfighting have been left untouched by the legal system. Dogfighters sometimes kill the losing dogs, and even winners may die from their wounds. The criminals involved in these activities do not stop at hurting animals: police often discover drugs, guns, and even murders in connection with these spectacles of violence and voyeurism. The Mexican law will also have a beneficial impact on our work to stop dogfighters here, in the United States, where we have established a strong federal policy on animal fighting over the last 15 years. But for years, American-based dogfighters have trekked to Mexico to avoid law enforcement in the United States where, largely due to The HSUSs work, dogfighting is a felony in every state, and also a federal felony. Now therell be no refuge in Mexico for these lawbreakers. In coming days, HSI/Mexico will continue to work with states to reform their local criminal codes to penalize dogfighters, and assist authorities in their enforcement efforts through trainings and equipment donation. Mexicos lawmakers have sent a clear signal: its time to root out animal cruelty and violence from the country, and bring criminals who profit from animal abuse to justice. President Theodore Roosevelt invoked the Antiquities Act in 1906 to protect Devils Tower in Wyoming. In recent years, weve seen other extraordinary designations by our presidents. Photo by Avery Locklear/NPS 766 shares It is unsettling that President Trump has called for a review of protected areas established by his predecessors under the Antiquities Act. Set-asides of the last, best places in the United States, both terrestrial and marine environments, has been a legacy for both Republican and Democrat presidents, and the Antiquities Act has been a critical tool in saving these places from a range of threats. Theres no clear legal authority for a rescission of these past actions by our most recent presidents. But surely the review will shed light on the presidents ability to tamper with actions taken under the Antiquities Act, which, as recognized in the Executive Order, was meant to designate areas as a means of stewarding Americas natural resources, protecting Americas natural beauty, and preserving Americas historic places. Specifically, President Trump issued an Executive Order yesterday directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review national monument designations made since January 1, 1996, where the designation covers more than 100,000 acres, where the designation after expansion covers more than 100,000 acres, or where the secretary determines that designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders That review will allow for an examination of more than two dozen national monuments designated by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Our three most recent presidents have taken some of their most important actions under the Antiquities Act. In designating places for protection, theyve done more than preserve special lands and waters for animals and for our descendants. As a general principle, theyve helped deliver robust economic activity related to tourism and stewardship of lands to rural parts of the United States. Just last week, Secretary Zinke issued a report revealing that tourism associated with visiting units of the National Park Service generated $35 billion in economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs. It was, of course, President Theodore Roosevelt, in many ways so ahead of his time, who invoked the Antiquities Act in 1906, using it to protect Devils Tower in Wyoming. In recent years, as the public has come to understand the value of protected areas more keenly than ever, weve seen other extraordinary designations by our presidents, protecting our planet and its animals and generating jobs built around tourism and habitat management and care. In August 2016, for example, President Obama expanded the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument by 442,781 square miles, bringing the total protected area to 582,578 square miles making it the largest protected marine area on Earth. Papahanaumokuakea is home to more than 7,000 marine species, including sharks, whales, turtles, dolphins, monk seals, seabirds, thousands of fish species, and many other animals found nowhere else in the world. In taking this action, President Obama built on the outstanding work of President George W. Bush, who made the original designation of this marine national monument. In September 2016, President Obama created the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Encompassing two separate areas and totaling 4,913 square miles of the ocean, it is home to many important marine species such as sei, fin, and sperm whales, sea turtles, corals, and many fish species. These unique ecosystems of undersea mountains and canyons, rich with biodiversity, are a safe harbor for these creatures. On December 28, 2016, President Obama designated two new National Monuments: Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in southeastern Nevada. The Bears Ears National Monument encompasses 1.35 million acres of land and the Gold Butte National Monument covers 300,000 acres. Both contain land sacred to Native American tribes, cultural sites, and important wildlife habitat. Additionally, President Obama created a Bears Ears Commission comprised of tribal representatives to help provide recommendations for managing the monument. During his two terms, President Bill Clinton established 19 National Monuments under the Antiquities Act, including the Sonoran Desert National Monument, comprising nearly 500,000 acres of rich desert habitat in the North Maricopa Mountains, South Maricopa Mountains, and the Table Top Wildernesses. Its now up to Secretary Zinke to follow the presidents directive and examine the issue. But hed do best simply to affirm and celebrate the actions of the three prior Presidents and associate himself and President Trump with actions in the national interest. And in doing so, perhaps he can drive a stake in the heart of the archaic and false argument that preservation and protection are at odds with job creation and economic activity. Secretary Zinkes report on the contribution of national parks and other units of the National Park Service went a long way toward clinching that case last week. James Patterson In this Aug. 30, 2016, file photo, author James Patterson poses for a portrait in New York. Aaron Hernandez, the former NFL player and convicted murderer found hanging by a bedsheet in prison on April 19, 2017, will be the subject of an upcoming true crime book by Patterson. Little, Brown and Co. told The Associated Press on Thursday, April 27, 2017, that Patterson's book, not yet titled, is scheduled for early 2018. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File) James Patterson has announced the subject of his next book, a name known to many in New England: Aaron Hernandez. Patterson said in a statement that he was stunned by the death of the former New England Patriots player and wants to know "what went wrong." Hernandez was discovered by officers hanging by a bed sheet in his cell at 3:05 a.m. on April 19 at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Facility in Shirley. He was pronounced dead an hour later at UMass Memorial Health Alliance in Leominster. The former New England Patriots player was serving a life sentence without parole following his 2015 conviction for the murder of Odin Lloyd. He was acquitted just days before his death on double homicide charges in the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. Patterson told the Associated Press that the true crime book is scheduled for release in early 2018. Best known for his Alex Cross series, Patterson, 70, is one of the best-selling authors in America. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form The relationship between enterprise IT and service providers can be difficult. IT has frustrations in achieving optimal service levels. Service providers, as it turns out, have an equal number of bugaboos when it comes to their enterprise clients' readiness for and acceptance of provider intervention. We asked providers across a range of services what advice they can offer to smooth out some typical bumps in the road for their clients. Here's a look at what they had to say. 1. Focus on the business users' needs, not the technology. One of the biggest mistakes that enterprise IT makes when engaging a service provider is focusing too much on finding technology to solve the problem instead of fully understanding the problem that needs to be solved. Consider the problems that can arise if you take a "technology first" approach to data management. Stan Christiaens, CTO at service provider Collibra, which specializes in data governance, says focusing on the technology rather than the problem can create chaos, especially if different technologies are pieced together and critical information is siloed in different groups and departments within the organization. Such a hodgepodge strategy erodes user trust about the reliability of data. "There needs to be a much greater emphasis and focus on the business users and the processes and methods they use to find the data that's most important to them," Christiaens says. Once you understand that, he explains, IT can help create governance rules and policies accordingly, enabling business users and data scientists to find, understand and trust the data they need to fuel critical insights. 2. Don't get caught in the 'expert' trap. Companies must be careful to choose services that work for the whole company, not just one person. Catering to power users can get you into a heap of trouble. This is especially true when it comes to services that rely on certain skill sets. "Just because you have someone on your team who is an expert with a specific tool or programming language doesn't mean it is what's best for your specific enterprise system," says Steve Logue, senior business development manager at Surety Systems, which focuses on ERP systems. [ Further reading: How to get a job in financial IT ] Logue gives the example of a client, a women's apparel company, that had implemented a system primarily because it had an in-house developer who could build custom programs and outbound interfaces for the application. The developer subsequently left the company, making it difficult for the remaining users to "future-proof" the system, he says. For instance, that developer's custom-built programs might break if users installed patches that the software vendor had intended for the off-the-shelf version of its system, Logue explains. Companies should make sure that the services they choose will still work even if an expert user isn't around to maintain the system. Most providers nowadays have tools that need little customization and easily adapt to updates. 3. Know the problem you need to solve. "One of the most challenging things for solution providers is that the customer often doesn't have a complete understanding of the problem they're trying to solve," says Jeremy Larkin, CTO at Imgix, a provider of real-time image processing and delivery services. Therefore, service providers often spend a lot of time trying to understand the client's enterprise environment when the client should have had that information ready before the engagement began. Larkin acknowledges that "it kind of makes sense" that clients may not fully grasp their own problems, because "part of the reason they're outsourcing in the first place is they have something they don't know how to solve on their own." But it nonetheless "makes things very hard on us, because it means they often can't [provide answers] we need to structure the best solution for them," he adds. "At the worst, it could mean they end up buying something that doesn't actually solve their core issue." Carlos Melendez, COO at Wovenware, a software development and engineering company in Puerto Rico, agrees. "By providing more information to service providers, IT teams would help bring more value to the projects and to their own organizations," he says, adding that they could also "potentially save money." A good place to start is to know the requirements of the system you want to develop. Melendez encourages IT to work with end users to make sure they capture the correct requirements. Knowing the requirements in advance enables service providers "to efficiently develop a system that meets the company's needs," Melendez says, adding that it also enables them "to bid their project fees based on the actual requirements rather than factoring in potential scenarios." Part of the problem, according to Melendez, is that IT sometimes sees service provider relationships as opportunities to offload responsibility. "System development is a partnership. To get the greatest value, it shouldn't be about transferring responsibility from the IT team to the service provider, but rather about both strategically collaborating throughout the process," he says. 4. Be prepared to share details of your current IT infrastructure. Clients that aren't well acquainted with their own IT infrastructures create problems for service providers. "One of the biggest issues we face on a consistent basis is a lack of knowledge about the current IT infrastructure," says Emil Sayegh, CEO of Hostway, a global cloud and managed hosting provider. "So, before we can begin on transitioning to a public/private/hybrid cloud or dedicated infrastructure, it requires an assessment by one of our solution architects." When a service provider is forced to study a client's architecture, timelines are delayed, requirements must be revisited, and costs start to rise. "We run into situations where software is cobbled together running on multiple operating systems and on multiple generations of hardware and it's still on physical servers," Sayegh says. "It's much better if the customer has made some transition to virtual servers, which is a good steppingstone to the cloud." 5. Remember: Training isn't a one-time exercise. When engaging service providers, IT shops have been known to budget for initial training on the application but not for ongoing instruction. That's a big mistake, says Sarah Lahav, CEO of SysAid Technologies, a help desk and IT service management provider. "Things will change," she says. Additional training will be needed when new people join the IT team and new features are added to the system. Therefore, IT's contracts with service providers should allow for as-needed training. 6. Identify a point person to act as IT's sole liaison with the service provider. Service providers may have difficulty interacting with IT departments that have multiple silos, so it's important for IT to choose someone to act as a single point of contact. Nathan Ziege, director of application development at software development and technical services provider GlowTouch, says the client must appoint a technical liaison who can work across the entire enterprise IT team to gather specifications and resolve incidents. For instance, if Ziege's team is working on an API and runs into a problem downstream with a billing system, they want a champion on the client side who can bring in the person responsible for the billing system. "Whoever represents the enterprise IT team should be someone who can reach across the various departments within IT to get all the relevant teams on board and ready to participate," Ziege says. 7. Make sure your provider understands how you like to communicate. Communication can be a big hurdle for service provider-enterprise IT relationships. Service providers must know at the start how the client likes to communicate, including the key systems they use. "Working on an internal infosecurity team for a security service provider provides an interesting perspective on improving communication," says Katie Ledoux, an information security analyst at security provider Rapid7. "For both sides, whether you're on an internal IT team or a service provider, the first step must be setting expectations, defining goals and adapting to each other's communication styles." She emphasizes that knowing the specifics of a client's approach to communication "when to use email, phone, ticketing systems etc. versus more casual channels like Slack or other chat platforms" can help teams work together more effectively. "No one wants to disrupt another team's workflow," she says. "We know it's not effective." Make sure to stipulate in your contract the communications systems essential to enterprise IT's workflow. 8. Be as clear as possible about your expectations. Every business relationship involves certain expectations, but IT doesn't always make its expectations completely clear in contracts with service providers. One detail that's often overlooked is the metric IT will use to gauge whether its expectations have been fulfilled. "Trust can only be built and maintained on the basis of mutual clarity. Therefore, transparency of IT's priority measurements for each service provider relationship is foundational to success," says Michael Hubbard, global vice president of ServiceNow's Inspire advisory program. Enterprises must be clear from the outset which metrics, such as cost, quality, availability, value and adoption, they plan to use to judge how well the service provider met their needs. "Service providers can optimize their delivery in many ways, but don't make them guess on your priorities, nor on how you will measure their achievement," Hubbard says. He recommends an exercise where the enterprise envisions a future headline it would share in an internal memo defining the success of the engagement with the service provider. The headline would include quantifiable outcomes, such as cost savings, the project's deadline and projected ongoing returns on investment. Hubbard says this exercise helps everyone work toward the same goal. "Day in and day out, especially in times of crisis or tough decisions, this anchors the team," he says. "When weighing the options of going right versus left on a topic, asking which route best supports the outcome quickly drives to a preferred direction of action." [ Download this story, plus learn how to stay relevant in the face of IT's identity crisis and lots more in Computerworld's May digital magazine! ] SysAid's Lahav says enterprise IT should manage contracts by the "spirit of the agreement" rather than the "letter of the law." "Service providers rarely try to fail against contracted service levels it's bad business to do so," she says. So, while some type of remedial action may be necessary to address persistent failure, she suggest that, in general, if a service provider is working hard to meet tough service-level targets, it might be better to evaluate the provider's performance on a monthly basis, in the context of the full duration of the contract, rather than on short-term results. 9. Understand that service providers have been hired to help, not harm. Enterprise IT teams can be wary of working with third parties, especially if it wasn't their idea to hire a service provider. Therefore, service providers spend a lot of time sometimes too much time trying to convince IT that they are there to help. "As a service provider, we get to work with many different types of technologies across multiple industries, and that gives us a unique perspective on what works and what doesn't," says Eric Hobbs, CEO of Technology Associates, a managed IT services and support firm. "But in many cases, this can devolve into a competition that starts from a guilty until proven innocent standpoint where we spend more time convincing internal IT teams that we do indeed know what we're talking about and that proposed solutions deserve serious review as opposed to constant roadblocks." He adds that if a service provider has been engaged, it's normally because the status quo isn't delivering the results management wants. "Internal IT teams need to be open and willing to accept new ideas and new approaches versus seeing service providers as a threat," he says. "I wish enterprise IT teams knew we are here to help not to look good ourselves but to help the IT team look good." The latest Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) survey results show that Apples iPhone 7 series smartphones are doing almost as well as the previous generation, except in one key metric: Android users arent switching to them as frequently. Though they are still switching The statistics claim around 26 percent of iPhone 6S series smartphones switched over from Android last time round, but this has fallen to around 10 percent with Apples latest model. This might represent a cooling of interest in iPhones among curious Android users, but Id speculate it instead represents an intensification of interest in Apples next iPhone, given the hype surrounding the tenth-anniversary release. We see very strong iPhone loyalty, and conversely continued lower switching from Android phones, said CIRP co-founder, Josh Lowitz. With only 10 percent of 7 and 7 Plus buyers switching from an Android phone, now 3-6 months after the launch of those models in September 2016, we see how the premiere iPhone models sell mostly to the installed base of iPhone owners. "The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models have a higher percentage of Android switchers, and the entry level iPhone SE also brings in first-time smartphone buyers. This might provide a little reassurance to Android device manufacturers, who find it incredibly hard to make any money out of the millions of units they are shifting, and have scant after-sales service income to buoy their efforts. Apple, meanwhile, seems to be facing weakness in some markets (particularly China), but its services income and comfortable ASP means its business remains sustainable, reading between the lines of recent figures from Gfk, Canalsys and others. Some iPhone statistics Im not completely convinced by CIRPs data as its based on a survey across just 500 iPhone users, but I have seen the data as quite a good barometer of switching habits in previous years. With that caveat, CIRP makes some interesting claims: Apple is selling iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in around the same quantities. The two new models accounted for 68 percent of U.S. iPhone sales this for the April 1 quarter. Sales of older models accounted for the highest percentage of iPhone sales since 2014. 15 percent upgraded from iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. The research also claim 41 percent upgraded from the two-year-old iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (that contrasts to a 49 percent this time last year -- does this also mean people are hanging on for iPhone 8?) Anecdotal evidence that this may be the case came when Samsung beat Apple in sales. Apple intelligence Pointing out the success of the premium model, CIRP co-founder, Mike Levin said: Consumers have signaled a willingness to purchase a more expense, larger model, which also helps Apples iPhone average selling price (ASP). Ill add that if speculation Apple plans a $1,000 iPhone 8 is borne out, then we may well see a combination of interest, pent-up demand and brand loyalty make a success of the scheme. That interest is shifting to the next iPhone is confirmed by a few more data points. JP Morgan recently warned Apples June investor guidance may be below expectations as iPhone sales slow in anticipation of the next model, and this market flatness is likely to impact other smartphone vendors as they feel the impact of such consumer focus. If wishes were stars We dont know for sure if we have any better reason than usual to look forward to the next Apple release. With VR as the killer app, watching the ebb and flow in the sea of rumor, we might have two or three models to look forward to, may see the high-end device delayed for weeks, and may, or may not, see Apple introduce OLED screens, wireless charging, and a radical new design, including a hidden Home button, better cameras, much faster processor and much more. Apple must be hoping the new releases will stimulate interest in its now veteran iPhone products, while manufacturers from the Android assimilations will be hoping the company fails to live up to the hype. Expect a slow smartphone summer while we wait to see the impact of the new device. Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple? Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when fresh items are published here first on Computerworld. The University of California IT workers replaced by an offshore outsourcing firm intend to file a lawsuit challenging their dismissal. The lawsuit may be filed as early as next week. It will allege that the tech workers at the university's San Francisco campus were victims of age and national origin discrimination. The IT employees lost their jobs in February after the university hired India-based IT services firm HCL. Approximately 50 full-time university employees lost their jobs, but another 30 contractor positions were cut as well. [ Further reading: University IT employees fighting for jobs question security ] Replacing IT workers with offshore labor is common in the private sector, but almost unheard of at a state-supported, public institution. "To take a workforce that is overwhelmingly over the age of 40 and replace them with folks who are mainly in their 20s -- early 20s, in fact -- we think is age discrimination," said the IT employees' attorney, Randall Strauss, of Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli & Brewer. The national origin discrimination claim is the result of taking a workforce "that reflects the diversity of California" and is summarily let go and is "replaced with people who come from one particular part of the world," said Strauss. The lawsuit will be filed in Alameda County Superior Court. Only a few civil cases have alleged national origin discrimination in offshore outsourcing, but interest in raising this issue appears to be gaining ground. [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] The U.S. Department of Justice recently warned employers not to use H-1B visa workers to discriminate, a signal that it may be interested in bringing its own national origin discrimination case. A case brought by Disney IT workers, filed in December in federal court in Orlando, is making a similar allegation. Approximately 250 IT employees lost their jobs after the company hired offshore outsourcing firms to take over the work. Some workers complained of training H-1B-holding replacements. The complaint about UCSF's offshore outsourcing took an unexpected twist Wednesday. A California state auditor's report found that the university had failed to disclose some $175 million in funds in its budget. The university had argued that its outsourcing decisions will save it some $30 million over five years. J. Gary Gwilliam, the lead counsel for the university's IT workers, said, "It is unbelievable to me that a public university would ship good American jobs overseas by telling the fired workers, the Regents, the Legislature and public of a crying need to save money, while at the same time maintaining a secret slush fund of $175 million dollars which would more than cover the cost of keeping all these jobs in California, leaving more than enough money leftover to cover the needs of the University and its students," he said, in a statement. The Clackamas County Board of Commissioners voted Wednesday to approve findings affirming the designation of urban and rural reserves in the metro region. That approval includes an added reference to an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) being worked out between the county, Metro and the cities of West Linn, Tualatin and Lake Oswego. This approval followed a three-part public hearing on the findings, which began April 12, and continued April 19 and April 26. The action sets the stage for board action on an ordinance to formally affirm the reserves, tentatively scheduled for May 11. The Metro Council approved the reserve findings on April 13, and Multnomah County is tentatively scheduled to consider findings in May. Washington County's reserves were settled by the Oregon Legislature in 2014. The proposed findings were developed in response to a remand from the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Department of Land Conservation and Development regarding the Portland metropolitan area urban and rural reserves decision adopted regionally in 2010. The specific issue for Clackamas County relates to future transportation infrastructure in the unincorporated Stafford area, which was designated as urban reserve in 2010. The area is generally north of I-205, and surrounded by the cities of West Linn, Tualatin and Lake Oswego. Commission Chair Jim Bernard said that traffic issues related to I-205 are already a top priority, and that if and when the cities work with the community on concept planning, transportation infrastructure needs within the Stafford area would also be addressed. He noted that concept planning would have to happen before there could be any annexation or urban development. The May 11 business meeting will be held at 10 a.m. in the Board Hearing Room, fourth floor of the Public Services Building, 2051 Kaen Road in Oregon City. The board is also expected to act on the IGA with Metro and the three cities at the same meeting. The public will have the opportunity to comment at the meeting on both the remand and on the IGA. The findings proposed for adoption, as well as additional background information, are available for review on the county website at www.clackamas.us/planning/reserves.html. For more information, members of the public may contact Martha Fritzie at 503-742-4529. Indian-origin pro-Europe campaigner launches drive to avoid hard Brexit Gina Miller, an Indian-origin woman who had mounted a successful legal challenge to prevent United Kingdoms (UK) Prime Minister Theresa May from triggering Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) without Parliament's approval, launched her crowdfunded tactical voting drive to avert a hard Brexit yesterday. Gina Miller launched her Best for Britain campaign yesterday. Photo courtesy: Twitter@thatginamiller Born as Gina Nadira Singh in British Guiana (now Guyana) to Guyana's former Attorney-General Doodnauth Singh, she has raised 300,000 pounds through crowdfunding to launch her "Best for Britain" campaign. "Achieving what is best for Britain needs thoughtful responsible leadership from whoever is elected as Prime Minister and a strong effective parliament to hold that Prime Minister to account," the 51-year-old hedge fund manager said in her launch speech. "Only tactical voting in this election can ensure that Parliament plays its full role in the future of this country," she said. Gina Miller Launches Best for Britain campaign https://t.co/L1867rjlnI Steve Lawrence FRSA (@SteveLawrence_) April 26, 2017 Best for Britain will support the campaigns of pro-Europe candidates, as well as donating money directly, issuing tactical voting recommendations and using technology and social media to spread its message against a hard Brexit. "This is the most important election for a generation. It's crucial that people feel inspired to register and vote. It is especially important for young people to vote as they will be living with the consequences of the decisions taken in the next parliament for their entire lives," Miller said. See also: Indian-origin Brexit campaigner Gina Miller raises 100,000 pounds in one day for new Brexit campaign Miller said she would be touring marginal seats to ensure the next government has no mandate to "destroy rights" as Britain leaves the EU. "It's not about being 'in' or 'out' (of Europe). It's not about that binary choice. It's that the next government needs to connect with the people and do what's best for the country," she said. Miller, who has revealed she and her family received multiple death threats from pro-Brexiteers, has been dubbed as "chief Remoaner" by some sections of the British media. Britain will hold a general election on June 8 after PM May called for fresh polls to strengthen her hand on Brexit. Turkish President Erdogans advisors smooth bumps in the road ahead of his India visit With newly empowered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans visit looming, Turkish daily newspaper Sabahs Columnist Club organised a talk on India and Turkeys Place in the Rising World at the India International Centre Annexe on Wednesday evening. The seminar at the India International Centre Annexe. Photo: Connected to India Award-winning journalist and media mogul and current Senior Advisor to President Erdogan Ilnur Cevik headlined the seminar with a talk on India and Turkey: Rising stars of the 21st century. He was followed by Professor Kerem Alkin, a noted academician in Turkey and Professor at Istanbul Medipol Universitys Faculty of Business and Managerial Sciences and Dr Seref Oguz, a columnist for Sabah. The panel was introduced by Mehmet Akarca, the Director-General of Press and Information for Turkey. The panellists reiterated Turkeys determination to remain neutral in global politics and, in response to a question from Connected to India, said the Turkish government, which is a traditional ally of Pakistan, would not support either Pakistan or India on controversial issues like Kashmir. We dont oppose anybody, said Cevik. The Kashmir issue should be solved through dialogue. Thats what we are trying to do in Cyprus. The prospects of our growing relationship with India is totally independent of our relationship with Pakistan. Theyre our friends, but youre our friends as well. Cevik in his address touched upon the issue of the coup in Turkey last year and stated that the Turkish people were being punished by the European Union (EU) for stopping a coup. He was referring to the monitoring status that Turkey is facing after allegations that President Erdogan was trying to manipulate the referendum on Constitutional amendment in Turkey. The Fetullah Gulen Organisation had infiltrated our government, military and judiciary, and President Erdogan was very decisive in stopping this terrorist organisations actions. Now, the international community is against him and we hope India will stand with him. Erdogan was congratulated by only three heads of state after his Constitutional Amendment referendum ended in victory. He also touched on the issue of Turkeys dissatisfaction with the current United Nations Security Council, particularly their veto power, and called for it to be revoked. Prof Kerem Alkin. Photo: Connected to India Professor Alkin highlighted the economic development that Turkey has undergone in his presentation and showed the growth of Turkeys GDP despite the coup last year, especially in the Bosphorus Strait area. We have completed a USD2.3 billion project in the Bosphorus region. We have created a tunnel linking Asia and Europe under the Bosphorus Strait. We do this not just for us, but for the connection of the world, he said. What we can do together with India is look into a new resources strategy and energy policy. We can learn from Indias experiences in infrastructure development. Turkey and India can work together and there are huge opportunities to share technological and educational information to develop various sectors. Developing on the theme of economic cooperation, Dr Seref Oguz claimed that the Turkey-India Business Council, which last met in 2009, aims to improve bilateral trade. There are 14 Turkey-based companies operating in India with a total revenue of USD 212 million dollars. In Turkey, by 2013 there were 179 Indian companies operating in our nation. The presentations were followed by a discussion with the audience, where the speaker fielded questions on topics relevant to Turkey such as the Kurdish problem, NATO membership and alliance with Pakistans repercussions on its quest to make friends with India. To see all of our reports on shortlists, nominations and selections from the past few days, click here. Thanks to the help of many of our readers, ConservativeHome has been first for selection news, ahead of the national press. If you have any information to share on who is up for selection and where, please click here all our sources are strictly anonymous. After the early days of shortlisting, there was a rush of high-profile selection meetings last night. Plus, more shortlists and candidate renominations are coming out each day. Here is all the latest candidate news: Candidates selected Barrow and Furness (Labour majority 795): Simon Fell: Having previously run his own small business, Fell now works as director of a fraud-prevention not-for-profit. Born and raised in Lancashire, he contested the seat in 2015 and fell only a few hundred votes short of unseating John Woodcock. His mother, father and grandfather all worked at BAE, a major local employer. Fell was reselected unopposed last night. Bishop Auckland (Labour majority 3,508): Christopher Adams, who contested the seat in 2015, was reselected unopposed yesterday. He runs a technology business, and acted as Campaign Director for the pro-Union Day of Unity rallies ahead of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Brentford and Isleworth (Labour majority 465): Mary Macleod: The former MP for Brentford and Isleworth was a management consultant and adviser to the Queen before entering politics. Following her election defeat, she became a Special Adviser to David Mundell, Secretary of State for Scotland, and then pursued various business interests. She defeated James Cracknell and Christopher Salmon in last nights contested selection, winning in the first round of voting. Clwyd South (Labour majority 2,402): Simon Baynes: A former Partner at JP Morgan Cazenove, Baynes was a County Councillor in Powys from 2008-2012. He contested the Welsh Assembly constituency of Clwyd South in 2016, and previously fought Dwyfor Meirionnydd in 2010 as well as Montgomeryshire in 2005. He won a contested selection last night. Ealing Central and Acton (Labour majority 274): Cllr Joy Morrissey: A councillor in Ealing, representing Hanger Hill ward since 2014, Morrissey is the former shadow portfolio holder for health and adult social services. She currently works as Events and Network manager at the Centre for Social Justice, and is a former parliamentary assistant to Angie Bray, the ex-MP for the constituency. She was a list candidate in last years London Assembly elections, and won through against Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Group Leader Cllr Greg Smith in a selection meeting last night. Hornchurch and Upminster (Conservative majority 13,074): Cllr Julia Dockerill: A Conservative Councillor in Tower Hamlets since 2014, where she represents the ward of St Katharines and Wapping, Dockerill works in Parliament as Chief of Staff to Mark Field MP. Born and raised in Essex, she was co-author with Field of the books The Best of Times and Between the Crashes, and is currently working on a social and economic modern history of London called London in the Noughties. She saw off strong competition from Shaun Bailey AM and Simon Jones last night to win the selection on the first round of voting. Ilford North (Labour majority 589): Lee Scott, who held the seat from 2005 until being narrowly unseated in 2015, was unanimously reselected last night. He told his local paper that he hadnt intended to stand in the next General Election but had been persuaded to put his name forward after receiving over 200 messages from his former constituents urging him to do so. North East Derbyshire (Labour majority 1,883): Lee Rowley. A former Westminster City Councillor, Rowley contested this seat in 2015, cutting Natascha Engels majority. He formerly worked for the Centre for Social Justice, and was reselected by the local association last night. Nottingham South (Labour majority 6,396): Jane Hunt. Having fought Leicester East in 2010, and the Leicester South by-election in 2011, Hunt made the final in the Northampton South selection in 2013 before going on to stand in Nottingham South in the 2015 General Election. A former caseworker for Nicky Morgan, she has worked in the civil service, for a charity and in the private sector. She won a contested selection process last night, defeating Jack Tinley. Richmond Park (Lib Dem majority1,872): Zac Goldsmith. MP for the seat from 2010 until the 2016 by-election, when he stood as an independent and was defeated by the Liberal Democrats, Goldsmith is an outspoken opponent of Heathrow expansion, and former editor of The Ecologist. After his defeat in the London Mayoral election, the by-election added insult to injury, but he is now hoping to return to the fray in Westminster, having defeated Laura Farris and Luke Parker in the first round of voting last night. Tatton (Conservative majority 18,241): Esther McVey. The former Wirral West MP and Minister for Employment won the selection in George Osbornes former seat on the first round last night, winning through against Cllr Alex Williams and Katherine Fletcher. However, the seat could be abolished in a few years in the planned boundary reforms. Worsley and Eccles South (Labour majority 5,946): Cllr Iain Lindley. A councillor for Walkden South ward, in the constituency, on Salford Council, Lindley contested this seat in 2010 and 2015. He works for a housing association in Greater Manchester, and was reselected unopposed last night. Shortlists in key target seats Birmingham Edgbaston (Labour majority 2,706): This seat has the unusual distinction in British politics of being continuously represented by female MPs since 1953 most recently by prominent Labour Vote Leave supporter Gisela Stuart, who is standing down. Edgbaston voted 53 per cent Remain, and had a UKIP vote in 2015 larger than the Labour majority. The Conservative Association will select their candidate on Friday 28th April from the following shortlist: Dr Luke Evans: A GP and school governor, Evans contested the seat in 2015 and is seeking to be reselected. He was educated at Birmingham University. Cllr Reena Ranger: The founder and chair of Women Empowered, a social initiative engaging and encouraging women to make the most of their skills, Ranger is a Three Rivers District Councillor. She is also a director of a shipping company. Caroline Squire: A public affairs and communications consultant, Squire previously worked for the Conservatives in the House of Lords. She is the great, great grand-daughter of Joseph Chamberlain about whom she has written for ConservativeHome. Westmorland and Lonsdale (Lib Dem majority 8.949): Held since 2005 by Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, this seat would be a dream gain for the Conservatives. According to Chris Hanrettys estimates, the constituency probably voted 47 per cent Leave to 53 per cent Remain, so there ought to be a sizeable vote who dont share Farrons hope that Brexit will go away. The Conservative candidate will be selected tonight, Thursday 27th April, from the following shortlist of two: Cllr James Airey: Born and raised in the constituency, Airey is Leader of the Conservative Group on Cumbria County Council and a councillor on South Lakeland District Council. He is a sheep farmer. Tom Lowther: Also a sheep farmer, and a former county councillor, Lowther lives in nearby Eden Valley. Lowther is a former UKIP candidate (in Penrith and the Border back in 2001), who had become a Conservative by 2009, when he took a Cumbria County Council seat from the Lib Dems. Selecting tonight Chorley: shortlist and candidate biographies here. Enfield North: Nick de Bois uncontested, biography here. Harrow West: Hannah David uncontested, biography here. Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland: shortlist and candidate biographies here. Sedgefield: shortlist not yet disclosed. Westmorland and Lonsdale: shortlist and candidate biographies above. As Lord Faulks reminded us yesterday, this week marks the one year anniversary of Theresa Mays big intervention in the EU referendum debate. In it, to the undoubted horror of many on the Remain side, the then-Home Secretary argued that it was much more important for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and the jurisdiction of its court, than the European Union. This policy has vanished since May became Prime Minister, despite Faulks and Dominic Raab having been working on a consultation on the issue when she took office. Now todays papers report that it wont be in the manifesto. As Faulks concedes, there are plenty of reasons for the Government to file this problem away for the time being, not least the fact that Brexit is surely going to consume most of its constitutional attention over the next few years. The devolved issue is also likely looming larger in Mays mind than it did in his piece. Whilst it isnt true that either the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly depend on the Human Rights Act constitutionally, they will nonetheless be one of the biggest political hurdles to repealing it and the Prime Minister may have decided that this is too sensitive a moment for the Union to put any further strain on it. Even as a staunch supporter of what Faulks calls the full fat option full repeal of the HRA, withdrawal from the ECHR, and letting British law and institutions uphold our rights as they did before I think May has likely made the right call. But there are a few caveats. First, silence would be far preferable to any commitment not to withdraw. Although our relationship with the Court is currently peaceable Faulks is right to warn that it may flare up again especially if we deploy troops somewhere and such a promise to the electorate would rob the Government of important leverage. Second, if May is serious about getting this reform through at some point then she ought to at least start paving the way in this Parliament. That means tackling the heavily entrenched anti-Conservative majority in the House of Lords. An elected upper house remains as bad an idea as ever it was, but she should seek a way to reinforce the traditional operation of the Lords, restore the balance of power to the cross-benches, and penalise those peers who behave like partisan senators. Finally, its worth noting that this retreat on the ECHR fits into a pattern of stories that suggest indecision on the part of the leadership about the manifesto. The 0.7 per cent aid spending floor was going, then it wasnt. The papers thought the triple lock might go, but then they report it might be in after all. And thats notwithstanding Patrick McLoughlin opening fire on Philip Hammond in the middle of the campaign. Add too many such stories together and the impression is given of indecision and a lack of purpose. Despite the polls, this isnt an election the party can coast through: Tony Blair recognised that he needed to sprint to the finish in 1997, and if the Tories want their own 1997 they need to do the same. That means having a coherent, positive policy offering to supplement the Corbyn-bashing. Nick Timothy, at least, is not short of ideas for what Mayism could look like. Avoiding very difficult promises on the ECHR may be wise, but its no excuse for a timid manifesto. Not at this election. UPDATED Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has announced the agency will seek to undo recently enacted regulations on broadband service providers, a move that critics say will hamper the free flow of information on the internet and allow companies such as AT&T and Comcast to block or slow down some content and essentially police themselves. In a speech Wednesday at the Newseum in Washington, Pai, a Republican who was recently named the commissions chairman by President Donald Trump, framed the move as a stark choice between free-market principles and heavy-handed government overreach. Do we want the government to control the internet? Or do we want to embrace the light-touch approach established by President Clinton and a Republican Congress in 1996 and repeatedly reaffirmed by Democratic and Republican FCCs alike? he said. The FCC will release the full details of his plan tomorrow, via a formal notice of proposed rulemaking. That will be voted on at the commissions May 18 meeting. If approved, it will kick off a process of soliciting public feedback. Pai said he hopes to have his plan formally approved by the end of the calendar year. The centerpiece of the plan is undoing the FCCs 2015 decision to classify internet services providers as Title II telecommunications services, and going back to classifying them as a Title I information service. If approved, that would result in the FCC giving up much of the authority it claimed under previous chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, to regulate broadband providers. The commission has used that authority to ban practices such as blocking internet traffic and to investigate practices such as zero-rating, in which companies sought to exempt their own services from consumers data caps. Pais proposal would also result in responsibility for protecting Americans online privacy being sent back to the Federal Trade Commission. The benefits of adopting his approach, Pai maintained, would include better access to affordable high-speed internet for more Americans; greater investment in building new high-speed networks, resulting in more jobs; and more competition among broadband providers. Wednesdays announcement sets up a rematch of the high-stakes showdown that took place when the FCC initially took up the issue in 2014 and 2015, generating millions of online comments and huge push by open-internet advocates to ensure that all online content is treated equally. Now, ISPs and free-market Republicans are likely to support Pais plan, while tech companies and proponents of net neutrality are likely to be bitterly opposed. The latter argue that Title II classification and the related rules recently adopted by the FCC are necessary to prevent companies from creating internet fast lanes for their preferred content (or the content of those who are willing to pay extra), while relegating other content to so-called slow lanes. Thats a concern of some education, ed-tech, and civil rights groups, who worry that the online educational content increasingly used by schools could become harder to access. Thousands of school districts with little or no choice in the broadband marketplace would be at the mercy of companies who might choose to prioritize certain companies or types of content, they contend. Net Neutrality Rollback: Penalizing Students? Tracy Weeks, executive director of State Educational Technology Directors Association, worries that lessons requiring high bandwidthlike streaming education videos or using online interactive learning platformsmay no longer be possible with some content providers. The rollback will penalize students, Weeks said in an interview, for simply using the [the internet] the way that we hope that they would use it. Theres no guarantee that schools will be able to continue using preferred online resources with the same functionality, said Craig Aaron, CEO of Free Press, an open internet advocacy organization, in an interview. And for many schools, he said, switching internet providers will not be an option. As a public school educator, your school may have been wired by one of these companies as part of a deal with the district or the city, said Aaron. You probably only have one choice. Weeks hopes providers would prioritize providing educational content at high speeds, regardless of its source. Service providers have been deeply engaged, she said, with SETDA and other school technology advocacy organizations, like the Consortium for School Networking and ISTE. I would think that [service providers] would approach how they deal with bandwidth utilization differently with schools, but its going to require continued partnership and some advocacy work directly with those partners, said Weeks. I do have hopes that we could find ways to work together to ensure that our schools are protected from any sort of downsizing of the capacity for students to access the internet. In an interview earlier this month with Education Week, former FCC Chairman Wheeler warned of dire consequences if the effort to repeal net neutrality rules goes through. If you dont have a fast, fair and open Internet, how can you provide the kind of access to information that students need? Wheeler said. Innovative new services and ideas then have to compete against that which the network provider has already said its going to favor. And you cant have fair competition. Pai, however, has a dramatically different view. And he is now the person in charge. The internet has become the greatest free-market success story in history, he said, in large part because the government has used a light touch when regulating it. That changed under Wheeler, Pai maintained, because it was politically expedientnot because there was an actual problem in the marketplace. Did these fast lanes and slow lanes exist? No, Pai said on Wednesday. The truth of the matter is that we decided to abandon successful policies solely because of hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom. UPDATE: This post was updated by Sarah Schwartz with comments from Tracy Weeks, executive director of State Educational Technology Directors Association, and Craig Aaron, CEO of Free Press. See also: Two education-related briefs were cited by the federal district judge who blocked President Donald Trumps executive order that aims to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions"cities or other municipal governments that generally protect undocumented immigrants and decline to use their resources to help enforce federal immigration laws. U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick of San Francisco on Tuesday ruled in a challenge brought by San Francisco and Santa Clara counties in California to Trumps Jan. 25 executive order stating that sanctuary jurisdictions would not be eligible for federal funds. The judge referenced, among other filings, friend-of-the-court briefs filed in support of the counties by Californias chief state school officer and various school districts and education groups. The U.S. Department of Justice has threatened to withhold some funds from jurisdictions in California and elsewhere. The counties lawsuit challenged the presidents order on several federal constitutional grounds. The Trump administration defended the order before Orrick by saying it was an exercise of the presidents bully pulpit to highlight a change in immigration policy, while the actual threats to withhold funds were modest in scope. Orrick rejected that argument in his April 25 ruling in County of Santa Clara v. Trump . Although the defunding provision has not yet been enforced against any jurisdiction, governmental leaders have made numerous statements reaffirming the governments intent to enforce the order and to use the threat of withholding federal funds as a tool to coerce states and local jurisdictions to change their policies, he wrote. Orrick went on to say that the executive orders broad directive and unclear terms, and the presidents and attorney generals endorsement of them, has caused substantial confusion and justified fear among states and local jurisdictions that they will lose all federal grant funding at the very least. The judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the presidents order. Orrick cited friend-of-the-court briefs filed in support of the counties by California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and by several California school districts and education groups. In contrast to the orders assertion that sanctuary jurisdictions are a public safety threat, the counties contend that, in their judgment and experience, sanctuary policies make the community safer by fostering trust between residents and local law enforcement, the judge said. Such trust also improves schools ability to provide quality education to all children, he added. Torlakson, in his brief , said the presidents executive order threatens and undermines the stability of school children enrolled in Californias public schools. The order threatens some $8 billion in federal education aid to California by unconstitutionally seeking to have schools, districts, and county offices of education participate in federal education enforcement, the state superintendents brief says. Meanwhile, the brief of the San Francisco and Santa Clara school districts, along with other districts and education groups, says that by expansively targeting any state or political subdivision of a state, the executive order is causing fear in schools. Without the security of knowing whether they will be targeted at school because of their or their families actual or perceived immigration status, students are increasingly fearful to attend school, and family members are increasingly reluctant to engage with school staff, says the brief filed by the Orrick firm in San Francisco. (Orrick has had no relationship with the firm, which his grandfather co-founded and where his father was a partner.) Trump reacted by stating in several Twitter posts that opponents of his executive order were judge shopping by bringing their challenge in a jurisdiction within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, which has a terrible record of being overturned. (The 9th Circuit has a liberal reputation and is typically among the most overturned circuits by the Supreme Court, though it doesnt always rank first on that list.) See you in the Supreme Court! Trump tweeted. Others in his administration noted that, first, Orricks decision would be appealedto the 9th Circuit. Close The hit Netflix series "13 Reasons Why" has not only drawn a lot of praise but also stinging rebukes from mental health and suicide awareness advocacy groups on how they discussed these issues as the series progressed. Get more details, here. What Is The Series About? The series "13 Reasons Why" is a 2007 novel by Jay Asher and was produced as a television series for Netflix by Selena Gomez. Many critics have praised the production because it raises awareness on mental health issues and incites people to discuss things. The producers of the show hope they will be the voice of those who battle depression and those who are struggling with the thoughts of suicide, ABC News reported. These praises however have been overshadowed by harsh criticisms on the show a few weeks after it ended. Because "13 Reasons Why" talks about a whole host of sensitive issues like depression, self-harm and suicide, some actors and mental health advocacy groups have been quick to point out that there are a lot of scenes in the series that could trigger young people to commit suicide and should not be taken lightly, Mashable reported. Show Glamorized Suicide? They believe that "13 Reasons Why" shows detailed risky suicide content that could lead the impressionable to act on it. They also think the show is oversimplifying the mental health issues. Some have also pointed out that to have people who are having suicidal thoughts watch the show, they might get the wrong message that suicide is the only way to go. Such a thought is common among those who have tried, as they think that killing themselves not only is their only way out, but also a way to punish those who have hurt them and led them to do it. Experts are hoping that the people who have watched "13 Reasons Why" will talk about mental health issues and remove the stigma of having emotional disorders. They also hope that the young people who have watched the show will take action to help people in these kinds of situations. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Medical marijuana license applications are now available. The application is for growing, dispensaries, and processing the drug. There are several applicants coming in as the processing for license move along in Pennsylvania. Applications In Pennsylvania It is indicated that the program for medical marijuana in Pennsylvania goes on schedule, despite the pouring of applications for licenses. In fact, Health Secretary Karen Murphy shared that her office already received more than 500 packages. These packages contain applications for the license. The license can be to dispense process and grow medical marijuana according to The Morning Call. Murphy noted that the office is pleased with the response from the people regarding the program for the said drug. The team that processes the license for medical marijuana is trying to sort everything out and has a goal of until June to issue these licenses. It is reported that the licenses that will soon be released to the applicants will have six months to be up and running. In the meantime, the agency is targeting on giving out licenses to 12 growers and 27 dispensaries for medical marijuana. These dispensaries that will be given the license can operate of up to three locations. The agency further hopes to have the drug available in May 2018. Who Applied For A License? Meanwhile, the health department already released some of the names of the entities that applied for the medical marijuana license. They are the PA Harvest Company, Justice Grown, and Keystone Center of Integrative Wellness. The other names will be revealed once the permits have been issued, as reported by The Times-Tribune. It is also reported that the names of those companies that will be rejected for medical marijuana license will also be revealed. The addresses of these companies will not be released, as it is already a time-consuming activity for the agency. Medical marijuana will be made available soon for 17 health illnesses. Some of these include epilepsy, intractable seizures, and cancer. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Add Illinois lawmakers to the long list of people skeptical of standardized tests these days. Citing a teacher shortage plaguing rural parts of the state, State Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican from rural downstate Illinois, is co-sponsoring a bill to give teaching candidates a route into the classroom that bypasses some standardized tests. Righter cites a 2016 report from Teacher of Tomorrow , which found that Illinois schools have 6,381unfilled teaching positions, as a call to action. Currently, teacher-candidates must either pass the Test of Academic Proficiency (TAP)/Basic Skills test or score at least a 22 on the ACT test or a 1110 on the SAT test. Senate Bill 1123 would waive those testing requirements for students who have at least a 3.0 GPA in core education curriculum classes. A students body of work over the course of time at his or her university is a far better reflection of the students aptitude compared to standardized tests, Righter said in a statement . "[S]ome students, including those who demonstrate a natural and obvious skill in connecting with children in a way that would make them excellent teachers, arent the best standardized test-takers. Those tests shouldnt be the difference in allowing someone to achieve their career goal of teaching. This legislation addresses the teacher shortage throughout the state by recognizing the most important aspects of being a good teacher do not include mastering standardized tests. Many leaders at the states teacher-preparation programs agree with Righter. When we see those (students) who are excellent in classrooms and internships and just cant reach that test score, its really heartbreaking, Christie Magoulias, director of the School of Education at Millikin University, told the Herald & Review . Im really heartened to see that this topic is alive and people are talking about this. I think the basic skills test is one of the barriers for some of our students. But not everyone is on board. The Illinois State Board of Education has come out against the bill, the newspaper reports. A 3.0 GPA in one program does not correspond to the same mastery of skills as a 3.0 in a different program, board spokeswoman Jackie Matthews told the paper. While ISBE supports eliminating barriers to entering the profession where possible, ISBE opposes lowering standards. While the National Council on Teacher Quality shares the boards concerns, Elizabeth Ross, the organizations managing director of state policy, says there are ways to minimize downsides. These assessments provide important uniformity in the licensure process, said Ross. But one way to help mitigate the variability of using GPAs is working with an independent auditor who could validate the rigor of each preparation program to make sure that a 3.2 at one program is comparable to a 3.2 at another one. While teachers would still be required to pass content area tests for the subjects they will teach, Bill Curtin, an English and creative writing teacher at Carbondale Community High School in rural Southern Illinois and a Teach Plus Illinois teaching policy fellow, says SB 1123 will ultimately hurt students. While it is certainly true that teachers are needed, the shortage that exists is not due to excessive standardsthe passing scores for qualification tests now are quite reasonable, Curtin, a National Board Certified Teacher, said in an email. The shortage is due to a lack of funding to pay teachers a wage appropriate to their level of education. This proposal limits the GPA measurement to education classesmeaning [prospective teachers] do not need to demonstrate a broad knowledge base. This is critical when helping students see connections across subjects, or even within them. I cant teach Shakespeare well without explaining the history of the time period. While state policy watchers say the Illinois bill is unique, there has been pervasive pushback against requiring prospective teachers to pass a battery of tests before entering the profession. Just last month the New York Board of Regents voted to stop requiring new teachers to pass the Academic Literacy Skills Test . If you think raising teacher salaries is the way to attract talented young people into the profession, well, that sort of easy-fix, across-the-board solution to the teacher shortage problem will just not do, according to a new report. Such solutions, say the authors, dont take into account that shortages do not exist everywhere and in every field. There are, rather, isolated shortages in certain subject areas (like science, math, and special education) and in certain locales (like rural or high-needs schools), and these demand targeted solutions. You can read up on an earlier report examining the origins of the current teacher shortage and the issues exacerbating it here . The new report, Understanding and Addressing Teacher Shortages in the United States , homes in on strategies the authors say will increase the flow of teachers into areas where theyre in shortest supply. We really emphasize that the news articles on shortages tend not to be all that nuanced and the issue of shortage is a lot more nuanced than the public policy discussion, Dan Goldhaber told Education Week. He is director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington and a coauthor of the report along with Thomas S. Dee, the associate dean for faculty affairs at Stanford University. Its not the case that we have a nationwide shortage. It is the case that we have a shortage in particular schools and school systems. So if we try to apply a generic solution to what is a more nuanced problem, were not very likely to move the needle very much. Here are the suggestions the authors make to help school districts increase the supply of teachers in shortage areas. Give Higher Pay Only to Teachers in Shortage Areas Goldhaber said politicians are always looking to raise teacher salaries for the entire workforce when they should be targeting pay raises for teachers of shortage subjects, or for those willing to lead classrooms in rural or high-needs schools where shortages are severe and chronic. Policies that dont consider a districts specific staffing needs, say the authors, end up incurring unnecessary costs without moving any closer to a solution. For instance, in the 2011-2012 school year, about 20 percent of schools reported difficulties recruiting STEM and special education teachers, and practically no schools reported problems with hiring in other specializations. So if only 20 percent of schools are hard to staff, conclude the authors, then providing pay increases to teachers in all schools would be five times more costly than it needs to be. Matthew G. Springer, an expert on merit pay and an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, said the reports proposal for targeted financial incentives stands above the rest. The training, working conditions, and nonteaching opportunities for teachers differ significantly by teaching field and location, yet the salary schedule within a school district treats all teachers the same, regardless of field or location, he told Education Week. Until school systems begin to craft compensation systems that financially reward teachers in high-need subjects and in hard-to-staff schools, we will continue to face a teacher shortage. Recruit Early and Aggressively The research points in one direction: Districts need to be smarter about when and how they hire teachers, the authors say. Districts that start hiring late in the school year or after the new school year has begun are at a particular disadvantage . There are fewer teachers to choose from, and those who are hired late usually dont stay. Moreover, these teachers students perform worse on math and reading tests than students whose teachers were hired on time. Late hiring is prevalent among schools serving disadvantaged students, the same schools facing teacher shortages. The authors suggest districts rethink their old recruitment practices. Districts should recruit more broadly, by advertising on Twitter and Facebook and actively recruiting candidates in other states. Young teachers are more likely to use social media, so school districts have to be in that game if they want to do effective recruitment, said Goldhaber. But he also stressed the need for flexibility across state lines when it comes to teacher licenses. Otherwise, districts couldnt make full use of social medias ability to target teachers far and wide. Goldhaber pointed out in an interview that some states are producing more teacher candidates than they can hire. The report recommends that districts facing shortages form partnerships with these out-of-state education schools and recruit their graduates. Recruit Student Teachers With Needed Subject-Area Expertise Rather than waiting for teachers to retire before filling a position, districts should anticipate openings that will become available in the next school year. They should then bring in candidates who meet these anticipated needs to do their student teaching in the district. Goldhaber said school districts dont do this, even though there is evidence that candidates often end up working in the areas where they did their student teaching. This hiring strategy would also allow a school time to decide whether a teacher candidate is a good fit. Its an early two-way interview between the school district and the candidate, said Goldhaber. Student teaching allows candidates to get acculturated to the school and start to feel comfortable. The report goes on to make several more suggestions for addressing shortages. States should increase alternative pathways into the profession; work with other states to make it easier for teachers to cross state lines without burdensome and costly licensure requirements; and do a better job of informing teacher candidates about openings in particular fields. By Allison Riddle As an elementary teacher, I dont often get to see where my students end up in life. Colleagues teaching in high school watch their students climb the stage at graduation, winning scholarships and awards I rarely hear about. As my 11-year-olds leave, I can only predict the progress they may make, or challenges they may face in coming years. A few years ago I ran into the parents of a student I had taught some 15 years earlier. I remembered their daughter Amy Jo as a happy, active student with a blonde ponytail and beautiful blue eyes. When I asked what she was up to, her parents beamed. Shes a rocket scientist, her mom said. I admit that at first I thought they were kidding. She was serious. The adorable 10-year-old who loved softball and coloring pictures was now a rocket scientist working for a private company stationed at Hill Air Force Base. She shared with me that Amy Jo often credits our after school Young Astronauts program for launching her interest in space flight. That program is the reason she is a rocket scientist, her mom told me. The excitement she experienced never left her! I wouldnt want to be the one to have to tell Amy Jos parents that the kind of opportunity that fueled their daughters dream may not exist much longer in America. Educators across the country paused in a collective jaw drop last month when President Trumps proposed budget was released and it eliminated the 21st Century Community Learning Center program . The only source of federal funding for after-school programming, this cut will ultimately deprive students with the greatest needs of equitable access to meaningful after-school activities. For those who have seen the power of these programs, Trumps budget proposal is unacceptable. Beyond just helping with homework, after-school programs offer kids enriching experiences focused on science, math and the arts, as well as activities to build character, physical strength and leadership skills. After-school experiences provide much more than just a safe place to go; students have an extended opportunity to socialize with their peers and engage in problem-solving activities. Schools often use 21st-Century funds to host family math and literacy nights, where parents feel welcome in the school. There they engage in similar problem solving with their kids and take home resources to bridge the learning in their homes. Cutting federal funding for after-school programming sends an ugly message to Americans of all incomes. Its like saying that providing these experiences is not of benefit to our communities, and continued learning during the hours of 2 to 6 is valuable only to those of privilege. Even worse, it communicates the idea that we dont honor the work that educators do with our most vulnerable populations, when in fact, our afterschool programs are at the very heart of what we do in America. We believe every child has the right to engage in activities beyond school that provide meaningful struggle and will increase perseverance, something our kids with challenging lives desperately need to develop in order to succeed in life. Some may acknowledge that after-school programs can be useful, but believe they are a luxury taxpayers cannot afford. In reality, these programs are a worthy investment for the communities in which they reside. The lasting effects from the work that is done at these schools and community centers cannot easily be quantified with political rhetoric or test scores. We need to maintain 21st Century funding and take it off the political chopping block. Allison Riddle is the 2014 Utah Teacher of the Year and a member of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY). She is the Elementary Mentor Supervisor for Davis District in Northern Utah. Source: Image from Pixabay by Unsplash licensed under Creative Commons . As Jason Kilborn noted last month, the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) has formed a Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy. More information about the Commission is available on its web site including the unfortunate news that it got saddled with me as the reporter. We very much invite input and suggestions about the Commission's work. Right now is an especially good time to get involved as the Commission sets its agenda. The ABI has charged the Commission with "researching and recommending improvements to the consumer bankruptcy system that can be implemented within its existing structure. These changes might include amendments to the Bankruptcy Code, changes to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, administrative rules or actions, recommendations on proper interpretations of existing law and other best practices that judges, trustees and lawyers can implement." Mob of Over 40 Teens Rob Passengers on SF Bay Area Rapid Transit Over the weekend, a group of over 40 teens jumped the turnstiles at an Oakland, California, public transit station, boarded a commuter train, robbed seven individuals and left two people injured before leaving the train and station. It's possible that as many as 60 teens were involved. Witnesses described the situation as quickly shifting from what seemed like boisterous horseplay to confusion and violence as the large group of teens boarded and ransacked the train. While many passengers were left shook, police were able to identify some of the teenage suspects caught on the surveillance cameras, and are seeking arrest warrants. Crime Prevention on Public Transit The transit agency is viewing the matter as a learning experience, and is exploring ways to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future. Shockingly though, it was reported that only six out of nine of the train's passenger cars had working surveillance cameras. To temporarily alleviate fears, the transit agency has increased officer patrols at certain stations. The video has not been released publicly as there are protections from public disclosure for juvenile criminal matters under state law. Unfortunately, although officers were patrolling the station, in the minutes it took them to arrive, the mob of teens had come, gone, and dispersed. Flash Mob Criminal Conspiracy Since the rise in popularity of flash mobs several years ago, individuals have frequently wondered about the legality of their activity. Generally, so long as the mob is not organized for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity, any individual criminal acts will be charged against the specific individuals committing the acts. However, if a flash mob is organized to provide cover for criminal activity, or for the purpose of committing a crime, such as in a flash mob robbery, then there could be more criminal liability than just the underlying crime. Under most state's criminal laws, when two or more individuals plan a crime, it can be considered a criminal conspiracy, which is a separate crime on its own. For example, if the teen mob train robbery was organized for the purpose of committing the robbery, not only could the thefts be criminally punished, but the organizing of the group could be separately punished as a conspiracy. Related Resources: Networking News Comcast Touts New Wireless Service As Consumer Voice Revenues Fall Gina Narcisi Share this Following the broader industry trend, Comcast is bracing for the day that its customers give up their home phones for mobile devices. The cable giant unveiled its wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, earlier this month. The service will rely on a combination of Verizon's 4G LTE network and Comcast's 16 million Wi-Fi hotspots. The new wireless service comes as voice revenues continued its decline, falling 3.6 percent to $863 million in Q1 2017, down from $896 million in the year-ago quarter, the company reported Thursday morning. During Comcast's Q1 2017 earnings call, Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, said the new service would tap its existing customer base, who can bundle Xfinity Mobile with its cable, internet and landline voice services. [Related: Comcast Takes The Plunge Into Wireless With Launch Of Xfinity Mobile] "We believe including mobile in our bundles will help improve retention, and ultimately benefit lifetime customer economics," Roberts said. "We are taking a disciplined approach to the wireless business." Meanwhile, Comcast's cable communications division enjoyed healthy gains in Q1, driven by business services revenues that continue to climb each quarter. Business services revenues increased 13.6 percent to $1.49 billion during Q1 2017, compared to Q1 2016's $1.31 billion. Michael Cavanagh, Comcast's senior executive vice president and CFO, attributed the "double-digit" growth to an increase in small business customers, and "continued growth" in medium-sized business services. Once again, the small business segment accounted for about 70 percent of Comcast's business services revenue and about 60 percent of its revenue growth in overall business services. Comcast added 34,000 new business customer relationships during the first quarter, with most being small business customers, Cavanagh said. Roberts added that Comcast is at 40 percent market penetration in the small business space and has been actively working to grow its presence within the midmarket and enterprise. Midmarket penetration is at 10 percent, while enterprise is under 5 percent, he said. "We think [midmarket and enterprise] are good, sound areas to keep investing in," he said. "We like our growth but we will continue to invest to keep that going." Cable communications revenue saw an overall increase of 5.8 percent from $12.20 billion last year to $12.91 billion during the quarter thanks to growth in high-speed internet and video, in addition to business services, the Philadelphia-based company said. Comcast announced that its cable division would be under new leadership earlier this month. Dave Watson, Comcast's new president and CEO of Comcast Cable and senior executive vice president took over for Neil Smit as of April 1. Smit has transitioned to a new role as vice chairman of Comcast Corp., according to the cable giant. Comcast reported that Q1 2017 was its "fastest start" since 2012. The cable giant posted earnings of 53 cents per share on revenues of $20.46 billion, an 8.9 percent increase over Q1 2016's result of 43 cents per share and $18.79 billion in revenue. Net income saw a 20.2 percent increase to $2.57 billion in the first quarter, up from $2.13 billion in Q1 2016. Comcast's revenue exceeded Wall Street's estimates of 44 cents a share on $20.1 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters. Security News Webroot Update Crisis Gives MSPs A Chance To Step Up And Help Customers Sarah Kuranda Share this MSPs said they are stepping up to the plate after a Webroot update yesterday inadvertently flagged Windows system files as malware and marked several major websites as phishing sites. The Windows system files, marked as general malware, were then quarantined and left some applications unable to function. The error lasted 13 minutes, starting at 1:52 EST, according to a company forum on the issue. The update also caused many false positives, most notably marking multiple popular websites, including Facebook, as phishing sites. Users were prevented from visiting those sites. [Related: 2017 Security 100: 20 Coolest Endpoint Security Vendors] In a letter to MSP registered admins Monday, Executive Vice President of Product and Strategy Mike Malloy said Webroot is working to resolve the issue. He said the company is conducting a "thorough technical review" to understand what happened. "We recognize that we have not met the expectations of our customers, and are committed to resolving this complex issue as quickly as possible," Malloy said in the letter. "We apologize for the pain this has caused you and your customers. Webroot appreciates your business, and our entire team is dedicated to being your most trusted partner. We did not live up to that in this situation, but we are taking the actions to earn your trust going forward," he said. In a company forum, Webroot said the company had fixed the false positive issue. It said customers should check endpoints are turned on and connected to the internet to receive updates to resolve the issue. It advised customers not to uninstall the product or delete files from quarantine, as files will then be unrecoverable. In a statement to CRN, Malloy said the company has been working to keep partners up to date on the issue since it was discovered. Since this issue came to light, weve been in communication with our partners. We have an open and interactive online community of partners and customers who share ideas and collaborate on solutions. We started posting solutions in the community Monday afternoon. "Since then, weve been reaching out to partners via the phone and email to help with any issues theyre still seeing in their customer base and offering our ongoing support. For example, yesterday, we shared updates with our partners to use with their clients and today we communicated the instructions for a standalone streamlined fix," Malloy said. MSP partners reached by CRN said they were still dealing with the fallout from the update issue, with many voicing their concerns on Twitter. Chris Johnson, director of compliance and security services at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Wheelhouse IT, said his MSP business manages around 4,000 Webroot endpoints. He said around a dozen clients were impacted in a "serious" way. "Yesterday was crazy," Johnson said. "It was definitely crazy." However, Johnson said it was also an opportunity for his business to shine. He said help desk managers manually remediated the dozen or so clients affected, and the company did some preventative work on its remaining clients to prevent it from becoming a serious issue. He said Wheelhouse IT was able to be proactive with the issue by doing its own constant monitoring of deployed products. "We prevented what could have been a pretty big issue," Johnson said. "I think this was we took a few bruises on this one, but there were no life-threatening wounds inflicted." Johnson said he felt Webroot did a good job quickly communicating, taking responsibility and remediating the issue. He said it could happen to any vendor in the security space. "We were quite honestly impressed," Johnson said. "This is a vendor that genuinely cares about their partners and is quick to respond." Johnson said his business would do due diligence with all its vendors to make sure there is a disaster recovery plan for any problems that may arise in the future. "I think the kicker is using this as a teaching moment moving forward," Johnson said. "We can't just assume or rely on when a bad thing happens that a vendor is just going to be able to push a button and remediate. We have to proactively solve the problem." Pulled By Money, Tight Staffing Tight budgets and a lack of adequate skills and staffing continue to weigh heavily on midmarket companies in meeting the business demand for IT services, according to Gartner. But the research firm sees five technology trends that can help these companies as well as smaller firms get better at delivering IT. Those trends focus on emerging data center solutions; strategic and tactical use of cloud infrastructure and application services; better security; analytics; and digital enablement. "Given the pace of technology change and business demands," midmarket IT leaders can't afford to be slow and unresponsive, Gartner believes. Here's a rundown of the five trends, which Gartner analyst Mike Cisek will present Sunday at the Midsize Enterprise Summit East conference in Nashville, Tenn., hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company. Top 3 Advantages of Hiring Full-Time Employees 1. Loyalty 2. Power 3. Money Related Resources: You Dont Have To Solve This on Your Own Get a Lawyers Help Meeting with a lawyer can help you understand your options and how to best protect your rights. Visit our attorney directory to find a lawyer near you who can help. While the flashy pseudo-sharing economy start-ups like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and TaskRabbit are known for popularizing the building of empires off the exploitation of contractors, the current trend is pushing away from the contractor-based employment model. As many companies that utilize contractor based services have learned in the past, mischaracterizing employees as contractors can be a costly, multi-million dollar, mistake . Here are the top three advantages for businesses that choose to hire full time employees rather than rely on contractors.Regular full-time employees are generally going to be more loyal than contractors. Even though nearly all employment is "at-will" employment, full-time employees generally receive health care benefits, and other benefits, in addition to a sense of job security. These items allow employees to be free from many of the common stressors that can result in poor judgment, which can occur while working for your business.You can't control a contractor in the same way you can control a regular full-time employee. By definition, contractors are supposed to be independent, and should be allowed to exercise independent judgment on how to complete a project or task. The more control an employer attempts to exert control over a contractor, such as requiring specific methods for completion of a task, the less likely it is that the contractor designation would be deemed valid if challenged. Generally, employers are not supposed to be training contractors . If your employees can have an impact on the quality of your products or services, hiring regular employees is preferable as you'll have more power to control and manage how they work.While hiring full-time employees may be more costly upfront, it is known to lead to long term financial rewards. Happier workers are more profitable workers. A workforce that is incentivized to see the workplace succeed is more likely to be successful. Contractors are frequently left out of the success of the workplace by virtue of the fact that their success is not integral in the company's success. Additionally, a misclassification lawsuit, or federal or state action, could result in severe penalties, fines, or worse . If you haven't started your business yet, you can complete business formation documents from home with simple, DIY options customized for your state At least one of the major reasons for the ongoing exponential increase in ransomware as a criminal business model could be summed up with the iconic line from the prison boss in 1967s Cool Hand Luke: What we got here is a failure to communicate. That was a recurring theme from those on a Ransomware Panel Thursday at SOURCE Boston 2017, moderated by Paul Roberts, founder and editor in chief of The Security Ledger. The communication breakdown occurs at all levels, the panelists said, starting with victims. Frank McLaughlin, a Boston Police detective, said when a business gets hit with ransomware, the police are the last people they want to call, for obvious reasons. It becomes a public record. But even individual victims generally dont report it because they believe correctly in most cases that law enforcement cant help them, and they are desperate to get their files back. Indeed, Ryan Naraine, head of the Global Research & Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab, along with other panelists, said while the official stance of law enforcement and federal agencies like the FBI is never to pay a ransom demand, they tell victims privately that if there is no other way to get their files back, to pay it. That, they agreed, is why ransomware is so popular among criminals it is low-risk and high reward. There was also agreement that there needs to be more information sharing among those who investigate ransomware crimes. McLaughlin said it is improving. He said there is more communication among the various police districts in greater Boston, and also between his office and the local FBI, which has the potential to find connections among attacks that could point to many of them being controlled by a small number of criminal enterprises. But he acknowledged that the FBI generally doesnt get involved in cybercrime investigations unless they involve large amounts of money in the hundreds of thousands or millions. And as the panelists agreed and has been widely reported, most ransom demands dont come close to that amount. While it has been increasing Roberts noted that Symantec reported the average had jumped from $294 in 2015 to more than $1,000 in 2016 it still doesnt come close to the kind of serious money that would interest the FBI. Then there is media communication. McLaughlin noted that the media tend to cover violent crime, but nobody cares if somebody steals a million dollars. That is also changing to some extent, said Sumit Sehgal, CTO of healthcare at McAfee. He noted that the major news networks have stories on cybercrime much more frequently than five years ago. He said there is also more education at the K-12 level in public schools about bullying and cyber hygiene. And there is evangelism from companies like ours, he said. The resources are there platforms are getting better every day. But finally, there was also a plea from those in the audience for more security awareness training for the general public. To Naraines comment that average users bear some responsibility for falling victim to phishing or other social engineering, or failure to use two-factor authentication, one audience member called it, victim shaming, arguing that the average user, like her grandmother, cannot be expected to be savvy to the multiple kinds of attacks that can lead to ransomware. Panelists agreed in part, but said there are multiple initiatives to improve awareness. Its better than it was five years ago, Sehgal said. You get reminders from Facebook to change your password, or a notice that you signed in from China. McLaughlin said communities that focus on physical safety in their public service announcements should probably add messages regarding online security. But Naraine said people still need to take some responsibility for their own safety. Its like leaving your keys in your car dont do it, he said. Communicate your thoughts on our Facebook page. The U.S. military, which continues its interest in bug bounty programs as a way to improve cybersecurity, is launching a new contest next month. Called Hack the Air Force, the new program will put certain of the branchs Web sites up as targets for a set of international hackers who have been vetted by HackerOne, which is running the program. +More on Network World: IBM: Financial services industry bombarded by malware, security threats+ The new contest follows on the Hack the Pentagon program last year that netted 138 vulnerabilities, and Hack the Army, which netted 118. The new contest is open to researchers from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand who have been vetted by HackerOne. The countries make up the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that monitors communications worldwide. Registration starts May 15. We have malicious hackers trying to get into our systems every day, says Air Force Chief Information Security Officer Peter Kim. It will be nice to have friendly hackers taking a shot and, most importantly, showing us how to improve our cybersecurity and defense posture. In addition to these programs, the Department of Defense may launch another program that targets not Web sites but DoD infrastructure such as sensors in heating systems, according to Nextgov. This physical infrastructure can be exposed to the internet, which leaves it open to possible attacks. The possibility of a bounty program against these systems was raised this week by Daryl Haegley, who is the program manager for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment. He says he is trying to get senior officials to buy into such a plan, Nextgov says. Visits to 15 military sites found that 75% of devices in control systems run unsupported operating systems including Windows XP, Windows 98 and Windows 95, the report says. The Hack the Pentagon program paid out a total of $75,000 to researchers who discovered vulnerabilities, with the individual prizes ranging from $1 to $15,000. HackerOne hasnt announced what the prize range is for Hack the Air Force. This story, "U.S. military wants white-hat hackers to target its cyber security systems" was originally published by Network World . How to Minimize Inheritance Fights Between Relatives This post was updated on March 30, 2022 When there's a death in the family, the last thing anyone wants is a big fight over the deceased's property and assets. Unfortunately, relatives can quickly turn to bitter enemies when it comes to money and inheritances. However, there are few things you can do to potentially help stop relatives from spending the funeral and grieving period fighting over who gets what. Here are three tips on how to minimize inheritance fights between relatives. If this sounds like common sense to you, then you're right. Creating a will is not only an excellent way to take stock of what you have. It's a responsible thing to do for yourself and your loved ones. In your will, you can: List who gets what of your stuff Name a guardian for your minor children State that you do not want someone to inherit anything Donate a portion or all of your estate to charity If you prepare a clear document explaining what you want to happen with your property and assets, there will be less reason for relatives to fight. They will also have fewer legal grounds on which to stand if they are thinking of filing a lawsuit. Although it is just common sense to do so, many people avoid preparing a will their entire life and assume their spouse or children will inherit everything without event. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case, particularly when there have been multiple spouses and many children and grandchildren. There is no time like the present to create a will. You can do it from the comfort of home using FindLaw Legal Forms & Services. This advice doesn't just need to apply to a will and inheritance. By creating other estate planning documents like a financial power of attorney, health care directive, and living will, you can reduce the possibility of disputes arising amongst your loved ones while you are alive as well. 2. Don't Cut Anyone Out, List to Dismiss Frequently, challenges to inheritances come from relatives who were cut out, either intentionally or accidentally. Usually, a rightful heir, like a child or spouse, accidentally left off the will can successfully challenge an inheritance. However, individuals intentionally left out will generally have a much more difficult time challenging an inheritance. While it may seem counterintuitive, listing the names of persons who you specifically want to exclude from inheriting anything of yours can make it more difficult for those listed persons to challenge an inheritance. They will be unable to argue that you left them out accidentally. 3. Prepare at Least a Couple of Relatives for the Unknown Don't shock relatives and close family with a surprise revelation in your will. If possible, tell a few relatives about what and who you put in your will. This will prevent others from coming forward to claim the will is inaccurate or trying to produce a fake document that they say is your "real" will. If there is a secret child, former spouse, secret lover, or another person to who you wish to leave property, it's good to let someone know ahead of time. If a few relatives (or at least your executor) know about who these people are, it can help prevent disputes from arising due to the surprise. Just letting a lawyer know may be good enough for a court, but it might not help when it comes to fights between relatives. Related Resources: BRIDGEPORT - The American Red Cross is providing help to a family of seven, five adults and two children, affected by a fire on Maple Street on Tuesday, according to a press release. In an effort to help the family, the Red Cross will provide kits with some everyday supplies they probably did not have time to gather before leaving the house because of the fire. The kits contain items such as toothbrushes, shaving supplies and deodorant. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT Studies of watersheds displayed on high-tech smartboards were not what most amazed a group of Brazilian students who last week visited Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Magnet Schools. Fairchild has walls and classrooms. So many classrooms. The school that the eight students usually attend along the Amazon river on the outskirts of Para, Brazil is comprised of one open-air classroom. Their school, San Sebastian Community High School, is so small that its 105 students attend in shifts morning, afternoon and evening. To use the internet, students have to take a boat to Para. For the past week, Fairchild has hosted the students and their chaperones as they work collaboratively on environmental issues involving not just watersheds, but renewable energies, deforestation and climate change. We expect that all that they learn they are going to bring it to their community and share, Ney Souza, a Brazilian teacher traveling with the students said. He expects them to become role models back home. The trip is part of an exchange program that sent a group of Fairchild Biotech School students to Brazil last November and was made possible by a grant administered by the American Alliance of Museums. It involved the Norwalk-based Stepping Stones Museum for Children, the international cultural education organization Creative Connections, and the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. In Brazil, the Fairchild students spent two weeks collaborating with the students from San Sebastian Community School and journeying to the Ferreira Penna Scientific Research Station located in the Amazons Caxiuana National Forest. One of their primary purposes was to study the Amazon. Here, the Brazilian students are studying Long Island Sound ecosystem. Already the students have visited the Maritime Center where Alessandra dos Santos Caldeira said her favorite part was getting to feed the sharks. Her words were translated by Gabriela de Paula, a student at Fairchild who knows Portuguese. During their five day visit to Fairchild, the eight students were broken into four groups along with Fairchild students, including some who made the trip to Brazil and some who knew Portuguese. She says she really loves this opportunity and she loves the way she is being welcomed. at the school, Gabriela translated for Alessandra Cynthia Crudale, a Fairchild teacher said each group focused on a specific environmental issue and on Friday were to come together to present to each other, followed by a multicultural night. The group Crudale worked with was creating a model of the Long Island Sound using Styrofoam pallets. In another group working on a project involving solar panels, Fairchild student Giovanna Ferreira translated for Carlos Daniel de Freitas Caldeira, 14, the youngest student in the group. He says it is very different from where we live, very big, Giovanna, who lives in Bridgeport but has a Brazilian background, said. He says he is enchanted to be here. Selected based on grades and behavior, Carlos admitted math, not science, is his favorite subject. His big wish was to see the Statute of Liberty, something the group checked off last Sunday on a trip to New York. Jobson de Morales Flores, 17, with Giovanna providing translation, said she came because she wants to learn new things and bring them back to her community. She loved her first plane ride. Her only complaint is the cold weather. It should warm up a bit when the Brazilians return to New York City and a trip to the United Nations, before heading home May 2. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate President Trumps economic team unveiled its long-awaited tax reform package Wednesday, with a top corporate rate dramatically lowered from 35 percent to 15 percent. Its a great plan, Trump said. Its going to put people back to work. But for corporate America, is a 20-point drop too much of a good thing? Is 15 percent too much, too little or just right? Rep. Jim Himes, he of the Goldman Sachs financial-services background, is a Democrat who believes the top rate needs reduction to make America competitive on the world stage and ease the repatriation of cash parked overseas. But 15 percent is way too much, he says. Its hard to look at this plan and think its not for the benefit of corporations and wealthy taxpayers, Himes said. But it also may explode the deficit. Himes supports a tax rate somewhere in the 20-30 percent range, in line with the worldwide average of 22.5 percent. Running the numbers, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office likely will do, may show whether simplification of the tax code and a tax deduction reduction serve to keep U.S. Treasury coffers full while business growth skyrockets. Or is the classic Reagan-era Laffer Curve illusory, and the already-astronomical debt and deficit will continue to rise? The jury is out, but one thing seems certain: Trumps sales force knows how to whet the publics appetite, no matter the ultimate caloric or nutritional intake. Today the president is showing all of the desserts, but none of the vegetables, Himes said. Backing veterans America literally cannot get enough of its veterans, praising them at every turn, freebies at the ballpark, parades, salutes, and thank you for your service a virtual cliche. And lets be clear, theres good reason for that. These people sacrifice a lot to keep America safe, no matter the ultimate wisdom of the policymakers who send them into harms way. So Rep. Elizabeth Esty wasnt alone when Republicans announced a plan last week to withhold $100 a month from the paychecks of active-duty military personnel to pay for GI Bill benefits when they return to civilian life. But as a new member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and ranking Democrat on its Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs subcommittee, her whistle might have blown a little louder than most. This was definitely a not-ready-for-primetime proposal, said Esty, who added that $100 is a deep cut in a military salary that may amount to no more than $1,500 a month. It drew the wrath of most veterans organizations and was DOA with most Republicans as well as Democrats. Esty says funding the GI Bill is a legitimate concern, and so is making sure that veterans are getting what they deserve out of it. One pitfall is the preponderance of for-profit institutions that prey on the needs of veterans and deliver very little in the way of education and training, Esty said. There has to be recognition that these folks put their lives on the line, Esty said. Theyre certainly not in it for the money. Need a lawyer? You may know Sen. Richard Blumenthal as kind of a legal stuffed shirt, the man with the golden resume Harvard law, Supreme Court clerkship, U.S. attorney, Connecticut attorney general, all before his election to the Senate in 2010. Yes, hes at ease talking about stare decisis and rational basis test, to say nothing of the obvious influence his 20 years as state AG has had on his Senate career, particularly on consumer issues. But heres a news flash: In his heart of hearts, Blumenthal is something of an old-fashioned ambulance chaser. How do I know this? I had been on Capitol Hill at a Blumenthal-led combo news conference and pep rally on then-Supreme-Court-nominee Gorsuch and was heading to Union Station to take the DC metro back to my office. A car struck me in the rain while I was in a clearly marked pedestrian crosswalk. Long story short, I suffered a dislocated shoulder and some rotator-cuff damage (so forget the starting rotation for my childhood favorite N.Y. Mets!). With good ER care and follow up and also PT, I should make a full recovery. Once out of the woods and back at work, I received a return call from Blumenthal to talk about a story I was doing. He inquired as to my recovery and joked that hes there for me if I need a lawyer! I assured him I already had a lawyer on the case, but added that I nevertheless appreciated his offer. The Rohingya insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, has repeatedly denied claims that it targets civilians. Police Colonel Nay Thu Soe from the Rakhine State Information Committee under the State Counsellors Office said that 32 such collaborators have been murdered since the counter-insurgency crackdown was launched in northern Rakhine State last October. The terrorists have been killing Bengalis who are considered to be traitors as well as those who cooperate with the government, he said, referring to Rohingya by a name that many consider derogatory. The most recent victim of the attacks was identified as Armi Ali, 38, chief of Tat Oo Chaung Village Group in Maungdaw township. Ten unknown assailants wearing black masks attacked and killed him with knives at his home in Phway Yar Village on the night of April 17, according to police. We are still trying to identify who those masked terrorists were, said Pol Col Nay Thu Soe. We have arrested seven Bengalis on suspicions they were involved in the attack. We conducted an unexpected inspection in Western Indin Village, also known as Htone Sin Village, and arrested five people from this village. Another person from Thinbaw Kway Village and one person from Kyauk Pan Tu Village were also arrested on suspicion of having ties with bandit leader Abdula Kain. Abdula Kains group usually wears masks when they are active. Police patrols have been deployed in the area, and a phone number was given to residents so they could inform the military camps nearby of suspicious activity, he said. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formerly known as Harakah Al Yaqeen, has said on social media that it condemns the killings, and has denounced violence against unarmed civilians. We do not commit any form of terrorism against any civilian regardless of their religious and ethnic origin as we do not subscribe to the notion of committing terrorism for our legitimate cause, ARSA said in a March statement. Translated by Thida Linn Edited by Laignee Barron This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The opening salvos of a bitter contest for governor that is still 19 months away are being fired by budding rivals, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton and Rowland prosecutor Chris Mattei. It all started Tuesday when Mattei, the former head of the Financial Fraud and Public Corruption Unit in the U.S. Attorneys office for Connecticut, called on his competitors to sign a pledge refusing contributions from lobbyists. But there would be no gentlemans agreement between the Republican Boughton and Democrat Mattei, each of whom is exploring a run for governor. Boughton responded Wednesday by saying he was only open to such an agreement under several conditions, but not before accusing Mattei of pulling punches against fellow Democrats when he was a prosecutor. The three-time GOP gubernatorial hopeful cited the exoneration of former House Speaker Chris Donovan, D-Meriden, in a pay-to-play scandal that sent two of his aides to prison. Boughton further criticized the lack of a criminal indictment against top Democrats for circumventing a state contractor fundraising ban, which resulted in a record-setting $325,000 fine against the party by state elections enforcement last year. The facts are there, remarkably, where the Democrats and Democratic Party wouldnt get prosecuted, Boughton said. You have to ask the question, is that because he wanted to curry favor with certain groups and not get people upset? Mattei rejected the suggestion that he played favorites. During my time as chief public corruption prosecutor in the U.S. Attorneys office, I took on individuals, regardless of party affiliation, who were violating the public trust, Mattei said. On Matteis watch, eight people were convicted in a pay-to-play scheme by tobacco shop owners to try to kill a proposed tax on roll-your-own cigarettes. Among them were the campaign manager and finance director of Donovans 2012 congressional campaign, both of whom served prison time. Donovan was cleared in the case, but it doomed the Democrats Washington prospects. In 2015, Mattei helped send Thomaston Democrat David Bertnagel to prison for 30 months for embezzling $808,000 from the town of Plymouth, where he had been finance director. Matteis career-defining case came in 2014, when he won a jury conviction against former Republican Gov. John G. Rowland for working as on off-the-books campaign operative for congressional hopeful Lisa Wilson-Foley. In a letter to Mattei Wednesday, Boughton said he would refuse to accept lobbyist money if Mattei pledged not to raise taxes, to veto any unfunded mandates on localities, eliminate burdensome regulations and support law-abiding gun owners and the Second Amendment while in office. Mattei suggested that Boughton was balking at the pledge because he had already accepted lobbyist contributions. If the mayor really wants to shake things up, he would refuse money from lobbyists, Mattei said. Boughtons contributors include Michael Martone, a lobbyist from Wolcott and former political director for Rowland, who state election filings show gave $100 in December 2016 to the mayor. Former Danbury state Sen. David Cappiello, now a Newtown resident and lobbyist, also gave $100. Boughton said that he has accepted fewer than half-a-dozen checks from lobbyists for his exploratory committee. Listen, Id sign the pledge if he agrees to sign my pledge, and Id refund the money, Boughton said. On Thursday, Tim Herbst, Trumbulls first selectman and a GOP rival of Boughton, said he would not accept lobbyist money. I wont dance around this issue with gimmicks or distractions, Herbst said. nvigdor@hearstmediact.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate MILFORD Days after his arrest by Milford police on a charge of selling heroin, a Stratford man now faces federal charges. Anthony Lee Parowski, 29, of Marsh Way, Stratford, was charged with possession with the intent to distribute and distribution of heroin. He appeared Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam in federal court in New Haven, and the judge ordered him detained without bond. Parowski was being held in state custody on $100,000 bond, charged with the sale of narcotics. An investigation conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force and Milford police determined that Parowski was selling heroin out of a rented Milford motel room, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. Investigators said they twice made controlled purchases form him. Then on April 20 as Parowski was leaving the motel, he was approached by authorities, and dropped a cardbox and began throwing packets as he ran away, police said. Parowski was arrested, and police said they recovered 190 dose packets of heroin, 66 grams of heroin and packaging material ran. They then searched Parowskis home and seized $32,210 in cash, according the the prosecutors office. Cedar, the Milford departments narcotics dog, sniffed out the discarded packs, police said. The DEAs Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force includes members from the Bridgeport, Stamford, Stratford, Norwalk and Milford Police Departments, and the Connecticut State Police. The federal case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney U.S. Attorney Douglas P. Morabito. BRIDGEPORTA Monroe man pleaded guilty in a federal court Thursday to possession of illicit drugs with intent to sell. Dwight Jarvis, 28, had around 29 grams of cocaine (about a quarter of a cup), a similar weight of crack, 70 and items commonly used to distribute the drugs, according to court documents cited by the office of the U.S. Attorney General of Connecticut, Deirdre Daly. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SHELTON It took a fair amount of prodding for Beata Dobrzycki to coax her son Alex, 13, to the foot of the Shelton Intermediate School auditorium stage Thursday where she had just collected her naturalization documents. Come on, she waved, balancing a certificate and American flag in her hands. Alex was too busy snapping pictures with his cell phone and seemed reluctant to leave his classmates. He is an eighth grader at the school. Dobrzycki was one of 25 individuals from 16 countries to take the Oath of Allegiance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam in a morning ceremony. In the afternoon, another 36 individuals from 19 countries became citizens in front of students. This is an unprecedented event, Kenneth Saranich, principal of the school said. The ceremonies were arranged with the help of Reina Marasco, director of the Valley Regional Adult Education. Citizenship classes are among the courses offered through adult education. The idea, Saranich said, was to show students the diverse population that exists in the Valley and the country and also let students born in this country realize how lucky they are. Most of us take our citizenship for granted, he said. These people chose to be citizens. I never realized how in-depth the process is behind the curtain, Lia Fadiman, 14, student council president at the school said of the course and test and paperwork that must occur before the naturalization process is complete. During fiscal year 2016 even as U.S. immigration policy bubbled on the political front burner just over 750,000 people were naturalized as U.S citizens, a status that gives them all the benefits, rights and responsibilities as native-born U.S. citizens. Merriam called the nations diversity a strength, not a weakness. Ernestina Genova, a science curriculum leader at the school, told students many may consider being an immigrant a disadvantage, especially in todays political climate, but that she could not disagree more. Being an immigrant has made me the person I am today, said Genova, who immigrated from Cape Verdi as a young child 42 years ago and is now an American citizen. Her parents settled in the Hollow section of Bridgeport where they worked hard to instill their 10 children with a strong sense of values and education. My story is a story of American, Genova said. My relentless determination, my motivation to succeed, my optimistic outlook and my compassion for others all stem from my personal experiences as an immigrant. Dobrzycki immigrated from Poland 20 years ago and said taking the test was not too hard. For years she has helped Alex, and his older brother, with their U.S. history homework. It was more tough than easy, Alex said. Im proud of her. I thought it was a beautiful thing being able to witness something so gigantic in a persons life, Julia Zapadka. 13, an eighth grader, said. Its just amazing. Her parents are Polish and are working through the process toward citizenship. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On Saturday, thousands of scientists marched alongside concerned supporters, rallying against what they saw as an attack on science. SPACE CITY: Rice University grad Peggy Whitson breaks NASA astronaut record for most days in space Most signs protested the new administration, the lack of action against the changing climate and pollution. The march coincided with Earth Day, the 47th year for the holiday since it began in 1970. MELTING ICE: 30 terrifying before and after images of climate change One of the most notable persons in attendance at Washington, D.C.'s march was Bill Nye, who has long battled against climate change skepticism. "When you become scientifically literate, I claim, you become an environmentalist," Nye told The Washington Post. "Somewhere along the way, there has developed this idea that if you believe something hard enough, it's as true as things discovered through the process of science. And I will say that's objectively wrong." Marches took place outside the U.S., including Germany and Australia. Click through above to see some of the best protest signs from the March for Science. During a local consultation at the May Phone Moh Hotel in Kyauk Phyu on April 24, Wang Yajun, assistant minister of the CPC central committees international department, said, China is ready to implement this project. We will start as soon as Myanmar is ready. Myanmars giant neighbor has been pushing a slew of infrastructure projects after setbacks and suspensions of major deals like the stalled Myitsone hydropower dam in Kachin State. But the Kyauk Phyu SEZ has come under fire from international human rights groups related to land grab and livelihoods concerns. According to research by the International Commission of Jurists, 20,000 people in Kyauk Phyu township could lose their land if the project moves ahead as is. At the April 24 meeting, residents said they are already experiencing negative repercussions from other Chinese-backed projects in the state. Local residents discussed how they have already suffered a lot under the oil and natural pipeline [project] and how their voices were neglected by the Chinese company. They worry that the Kyauk Phyu Special Economic Zone will have similar problems and not bring benefits to the local residents, said U Tun Naing, one of the attendees at the April 24 meeting. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, President U Htin Kyaw officially launched the cross-border, crude oil pipeline into southeast China. The pipeline has been dogged by complaints over the land acquisition. U Tin Aung Soe, another local resident who attended the meeting, said the Kyauk Phyu-China Railway project was also discussed. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed for a railway project linking Kyauk Phyu and China. Questions were raised about the status of this project. The agreement was extended every year for four straight years but then it was cancelled in 2016. The CPCs assistant minister told us that they want to carry it out, said U Tin Aung Soe. Ko Tun Kyi, coordinator of Kyauk Phyu Rural Development Association, said Myanmars government must consider the ongoing conflict in the area before inking any further deals or moving ahead with any more of Chinas projects. The government should study the conflict issue first if it wants to carry out [these projects]. They do not need to consider the EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] and the SIA [Social Impact Assessment] yet. They just need to study the conflict, he said. If the government does as it pleases [without first doing these surveys] the SEZ may be a success for them but it will be a loss for the public. Ko Tun Kyi said that the new oil pipeline and its newly designated route for oil tankers has already caused a headache for fishermen. All the areas [around Made Island Port] where fishermen were working with cone-shaped fishing nets have been destroyed. Instead of taking responsibility for this issue, [the government] arrested the fishermen for working in this area illegally, he said. Oil and gas are being sent to China but Rakhine State doesnt receive any taxes. The Rakhine State government has no responsibility concerning management. It takes no responsibility and so has no accountability for land, workers right and womens rights issues. More problems will rise when the natural resources of a state are in the hands of a [foreign] country and the state resources are sapped without receiving any taxes or benefits in return. Translated by Thida Linn Edited by Laignee Barron Im following with personal interest about plans from Bridgeport students to travel to Cuba to interact with its people. This project brings to mind the Brigada Antonio Maceo, or Maceitos, as its known, due to the age of those targeted by the Cuban regime because of their youth and vulnerability for indoctrination. The main purpose of the Maceito organization is to turn the young of America against the U.S. Their recruitment camps were here and in Puerto Rico until the U.S. figured out their tactics. I have concerns about the mind set of these youngsters and their lack of knowledge about Cuba. Do they know that Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship with a horrendous human rights record? And do they know that they have zero chance to understand the reality of life in Cuba since all their interactions are going to be monitored by the Cuban government? Once Im sure that theyre aware of these truths, Ill be more than willing to donate to their endeavor. Orlando Ashah Stratford This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A man who took part in a $3-million heist of a Fairfield jewelry store in 2013 was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years behind bars. Jeffrey Houston, 30, of Allentown, Pa., was the latest sentencing of four men who participated in the April 11, 2013 robbery of Lenox Jewelers on Black Rock Turnpike. A fifth man Timothy Forbes, also of Allentown awaits sentencing. U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny in Hartford sentenced Houston to seven-and-a-half years behind bars, followed by three years of supervised release. The heist began around 9 p.m., when Houston, Kasam Hennix, William Davis and Christopher Gay, all wearing masks and two armed with handguns broke into a Meriden apartment. There, they bound four victims with duct tape and covered their heads with pillowcases, towels and jackets. Hennix, Davis, and Houston then forced two of the victims into a victims vehicle and drove to Lenox Jewelers in Fairfield, where the two victims worked. Forbes traveled to Fairfield in a separate vehicle, and Gay remained in the Meriden apartment to guard the two other victims. After Houston, Hennix and Davis arrived at the Fairfield store, they stole jewelry, watches and loose diamonds worth more than $3 million. They then fled in the victims car, leaving the two Lenox workers bound inside the store. Houston, Hennix and Davis abandoned the victims vehicle and got into Forbess vehicle. One of the three called Gay to advise him they had successfully carried out the robbery and he should leave the apartment. The defendants then fled out of Connecticut. Investigators determined that Forbes, Houston and Gay had traveled from Pennsylvania to Connecticut on several occasions in the weeks prior to the robbery in order to track the victims movements between Lenox Jewelers in Fairfield and their residence in Meriden. In addition, Forbes and Gay placed a GPS on one of the victims vehicles in an effort to make it easier to track him. The five jewel thieves were were arrested in May 2013. Houston; Forbes; Hennix, of Easton, Pa.; Davis, of Allentown; and Gay, of the Bronx, N.Y., had all previously pleaded guilty to federal charges. On April 17, 2015, Davis was sentenced to 176 months in prison; on January 27, 2016, Gay was sentenced to 102 months in prison, and, on Feb. 8, 2016, Hennix was sentenced to 171 months of imprisonment. Forbes is the last thief to be sentenced. The thieves have been ordered to pay restitution of more than $3.1 million, and have forfeited gemstones, jewelry, watches, a vehicle, and more than $127,000 in cash seized from them at the time of their arrests. International Community Demands an End to Military Bases in the World Submitted by: Juana Local international Politics and Government 04 / 26 / 2017 Representatives from Cuba and 25 countries will demand an end to military bases in the world as part of the 5th International Seminar on Peace and for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases. The forum will be held from May 4th to the 6th in the eastern province of Guantanamo where the US has the oldest military base in the world installed in Cuban territory since 1903 and where the US imposed a torture center in the illegally occupied territory. Silvio Platero Irola, president of the Cuban Movement for Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples (MovPaz) gave the press details of the program, which will gather over 200 representatives from all continents. According to Platero, this is the perfect moment to unite forces and voices against the proliferation of the militarization of the regions with high technology, intervention and deployment. According to statistics offered by Platero, there are currently one thousand installations of its type in the world, 852 managed by the US, country that together with Canada have most number of participants to the event. The President of MovPaz added that the representatives will discuss aspects related with the military occupation in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Latin America and the Caribbean, region where there are 76 military bases. Cultural activities and visits to neighborhoods will also take place in addition to an exhibition of audiovisual materials among them Todo Guantanamo es Nuestro (All of Guantanamo is Ours) that speaks on the opposition of the Cuban people and government to the illegally occupied US military base in that eastern region. The seminar gathers important international figures among them Brazilian Maria Do Socorro Gomes, President of the World Peace Council and Nicaraguan deputy to the Central American Parliament, Daniel Ortega Reyes. Platero also mentioned that the closing of the event will be held in the municipality of Caimanera, where the Final Declaration will be presented meters away from the US military base in Guantanamo. He program also includes a visit on May 7th to Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in the city of Santiago de Cuba to pay tribute to the leader of the Revolution Fidel Castro before the monument that holds his aches. The Seminar is sponsored by the World Peace Council, MovPaz, the Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), with the support of the Organization in Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Reflection Center. TASNEEM RAJAMother JonesApril 21, 2017Last week, an Indian American doctor was arrested in Michigan, charged with performing female genital cutting on two seven-year-old girls. As the story hit the local press and then the New York Times, and as it was shared by George Takei and Nicholas Kristof, my phone kept blowing up with breathless messages and links from childhood friends across the country."This story isn't going away," said one friend over the phone. We both grew up in the same controversial, secretive South Asian Muslim sect as the doctor, a 44-year-old emergency room physician named Jumana Nagarwala who was born in Washington, DC. "This time, the community can't just pretend it's not happening." Just today, two more followers of the sect were arrested in connection with the case.Our sect is known as the Dawoodi Bohras, a Shiite branch of Islam based in Gujarat, India, with an estimated 1.2 million followers around the world and thriving outposts across America. Some Bohras and others say the sect has veered toward a cult of personality and away from Islamic principles; it's ruled by a well-heeled clergy of "totalitarian kings" with unusually wide-reaching control over their followers. (The Bohra clergy did not respond to Mother Jones' request for comment.)Federal officials believe Nagarwala may have been clandestinely cutting girls since at least 2005. It's the first case of its kind in the United States, where female genital cutting is a criminal sexual act and has been illegal since 1996. The practice is widely seen as an attempt to curb women's sexuality by making sex less enjoyable, even painful.Nagarwala admits she performed a procedure on the two seven-year-old girls, but says she didn't cut themshe merely wiped away a mucous membrane and gave the gauze to the parents, who would bury it in keeping with Bohra tradition. She told investigators she's not aware of anyone in her community who practices cutting.As little girls, nearly all my female Bohra friends and I underwent khatna, the sect's term for this practice. None of us remember being "wiped." We were cut. Some of us bled and ached for days, and some walked away with lifelong physical damage. In interviews with investigators, one of the girls Nagarwala performed on said the procedure hurt so badly that she screamed in pain and "could barely walk afterward." She drew a picture of the room where it happened, and marked an "X" to show where she bled on an exam table. Medical examinations show that both girls' genitals have been altered.While news coverage and the federal case focus on Nagarwala, khatna has been a mandatory religious practice inflicted on Bohra girls all over the world for generations, often in knowing violation of local laws. Bohras are the only Muslims in India who enforce female genital cutting; it's not a common practice among South Asians or Muslims worldwide, and it's not mentioned in the Koran. Privately, many Bohras have been praying for the clergy to end this practice for years, even decades. More than one mother I know wept when she learned she was bearing a girl, dreading what she might have to do to her child."Maybe this is the case that finally scares them into stopping it," another friend messaged me. Her khatna happened during a family vacation in India. Mine took place in the bedroom of a family acquaintance in New Jersey in the late '80s.I buried the memory until I was 13, when my freshman year social-studies teacher put on a video about female genital mutilation in Africa. As I watched a young girl, dark-skinned like me, being prepared by village elders for her mutilation, I suddenly flashed back to a dim, chilly house my mother took me to when I was about seven. Two Indian aunties I had never seen before held me down on a mattress and pulled down my underwear as I squirmed to get free. One of them held a small pair of silver scissors, like the ones my dad used to keep his beard trimmed. Then, the sudden sensation of a tight, mean little pinch between my legs.The memory exploded in my head in the dark, quiet classroom, and suddenly, a recurring nightmare I'd had for years made sense. In those dreams, the lower half of my body was made of kid's construction toys, and pieces kept breaking off as I frantically tried to keep myself together. I began sobbing at my desk. The teacher kindly told me to catch my breath in the hallway; she thought I was upset over the images I was seeing in the video. Later, at lunch, my white girlfriends talked about being relieved that sort of thing doesn't happen in America.But it does. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that half a million girls in the United States were affected by or at risk for mutilation in 2012. I know of dozens of Bohra women whose parents had them cut in America over the last 30 years, from New York City to Houston to Chicago. Others were taken out of country to have the procedure done, a practice called "vacation cutting" that's now also illegal in the United States.We're the first generation of Bohras born in America. Our parents began settling here after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which brought a wave of South Asian engineers, doctors, and other professionals to America. In our teens and 20s, my friends and I who underwent khatna assured each other the practice would die out as Bohras assimilated. We're now in our 30s, and it hasn't stopped. Some women our age and younger are still arranging or considering khatna for their own daughters."Nothing is going to change," sighed the friend who called me to discuss the Nagarwala case. She spoke with a bitterness I could almost taste in my own mouth. "They'll use this one doctor as a scapegoat, let her take the heat, and pretend it never happened."In 2015, the Australian Supreme Court handed down the first-ever conviction for a Bohra engaged in khatna. Many Bohras opposed to the practice hoped this was finally khatna's death knell. The Bohra clergy takes pains to maintain good relations with political leaders around the world; a guilty verdict in an affluent, English-speaking country seemed disastrous, especially in an increasing atmosphere of global Islamophobia.Instead, the head cleric, Mufaddal Saifuddin, 70, seemed to double down on the practice during a cryptic sermon delivered last year in Mumbai. Congregations in the United States and elsewhere were sent letters instructing them to follow local laws, but some reading between the lines heard different instructions: Go underground, and don't get caught. The parents in the Michigan case traveled with their daughters from Minnesota in February; community members tell me it's become harderbut not impossibleto find Bohras willing to perform the procedure.The task of getting a young girl's khatna done falls on adult female relatives; men often don't know it's happening, or even that the practice exists at all. Girls are told to keep the procedure a secret after it's performed, and they usually do. "For the longest time, I didn't even know other people had this done, too," one friend from the community told me. "I thought it was something my mom only did to me, and I didn't know why."In the vacuum of secrecy, and with very little official guidance from Bohra leadership, there are wide variations in how khatna is performed. The seven-year-old girls in the Michigan case were allegedly cut by a licensed medical professional in an unnamed medical clinic. (Nagarwala's employer, Henry Ford Hospital, says it did not happen on their grounds.) In other cases, the cutting is performed by laypeople with no medical training in unhygienic conditions.There's also little consensus about how the actual procedure is supposed to work; it's often up to the interpretation of whoever is wielding the blade. In some cases, like mine, a " pinch of skin " from the clitoral hood is cut away, leaving no lasting physical trauma. Sometimes the entire clitoris is removed, or surrounding tissue is also damaged. Last year, writer Mariya Karimjee went on This American Life to tell the story of her cutting, which was performed in Pakistan and left her unable to have sex without unendurable pain.Bohras even disagree on why khatna is performed. The prevailing view is that it keeps girls and women from becoming sexually promiscuous. Others say it has something to do with "removing bad germs" and liken it to male circumcision, which is widely (though not universally) believed to have hygienic benefits. The World Health Organization says female genital mutilation has no known health benefits and "violates the rights to health, security and physical integrity of the person, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death."Despite the prevalence of khatna among generations of Bohra women around the world, there has been almost no public conversation about it until just a few years ago. Speaking out about any of the numerous issues the clergy has come under scrutiny forkhatna, multiple lawsuitsover alleged abuses of power, "big brother"-style surveillance of everyday Bohrasis seen as unacceptable. Dissidents can face excommunication and social boycott. The threat extends to family members, whose businesses often depend on Bohra financing, or who may not be allowed to marry within the community or be buried in a Bohra cemetery unless the rebellious relative is quieted.I'm already estranged from my family because of disagreements over Bohra customs. Like a few of my friends, I've tried to bring up khatna to my parents, mostly my mother, with little progress. As in many rigid orthodoxies, the burden of social policing in the Bohra community falls largely on women, who have the most to lose from rocking the boat and who are often suffering from unacknowledged personal trauma of their own.That's why it's remarkable that so many Bohra women have started speaking up over the last few years, from the explosive This American Life story to a documentary film, interviews with major news outlets in India and the United States, and a Change.org petition calling on the Bohra clergy to end the practice that's been signed by 150,000 supporters. In 2015, five young women started a Bohra anti-FGM group called Sahiyo (Gujarati for "friends") and conducted the first large-scale, global research study on the practice of khatna among Dawoodi Bohras. Nearly 400 Bohra women took the online survey, mostly from India and the United States and between the ages of 18 and 45. Eighty percent said they would like the practice of khatna to end.None of this has moved the clergy to unequivocally end it.One of the girls in the Nagarwala case in Michigan was temporarily taken away from her parents, an act that's sure to cause additional trauma. Nagarwala could be sentenced anywhere from five years to life in prison for the assortment of charges she faces, though she's just one of an untold number of khatna practitioners around the country. Bohras opposed to the practice now find themselves rooting against those who are arguably fellow victims."It's feels sick to be happy about all this punishment," said one of my friends the other night. "But I just don't know how else to make them listen." The Mro, or Mru, are thought to number only around 61,000 with a population of only about 28,000 in Myanmar in Chin and Rakhine states, according to the Joshua Project. In 1996, Dr Kenneth Edison from the Summer Institute of Language created a writing system for the Mro language because we didnt have our own alphabet back then. Sayar Kyaw Thar Aung, who is an Mro man, recorded 1,000 words with cassette tapes. They created orthography for the Mro language. Since then, Sayar Kyaw Thar Aung has developed Mro literature under these guidelines, said U Kyaw Mya, secretary of the Mro Literature and Culture Association. In February 1997, I worked together with Dr Hellakar, a German woman, and presented a primer to the public. The Mro people accepted it. We are now able to write down words we couldnt write in Burmese before. We are continuing to work on the [written] language invention. The writing system for the Mro language is based on the English alphabet. Trainings have been held since 2013 to help spread understanding of the relatively new writing system. Seventy-five attendees are participating in the ongoing April 19-30 training in Mrauk-U, according to U Kyaw Mya. We have taught summer classes in 100 villages since 2013. We have been cooperating with UNICEF and the Ministry of Educations Curriculum Committee since 2013 for establishing a KG curriculum. We were able to publish it in December last year, he said. The Mro Literature and Culture Association met with the Ethnic Literature and Culture Department in Nay Pyi Taw on March 23 and 24 to discuss teaching Mro literature to Mro children in summer sessions at state schools. U Kyaw Mya told Narinjara News that preserving Mro literature is essential for the continuation of the Mro peoples traditions. He said he fears that Mro heritage could become extinct if Mro literature is not in practice. Translated by Thida Linn Edited by Laignee The fighting occurred Near Old Phyu Village in Tanintharyi Region on April 22. The Karen National Liberation Armys Battalion 11 and troops from the KNUs Company 3 exchanged fire with the Tatmadaws 265th Light Infantry Battalion for a few minutes around 10am. Now, everything has settled down. I think the incident took place due to a misidentification, said Padoh Saw Beler, vice chair of the Tanintharyi Region Joint Monitoring Committee and a member of the KNUs Mergui-Tavoy District Committee. We will discuss why [the clash] happened at the upcoming JMC-S meeting, which will be held on April 28, he said. Padoh Saw Beler added that he visited the site of the incident to investigate why the skirmish broke out. A source close to the KNU and to the Tatmadaw said the skirmish was related due to a misunderstanding after local residents reported that outsiders had come to clear the forests near Old The Phyu Village. Members of the Tatmadaw light infantry battalion then went to the area to investigate the tip. KIC News received information about both sides sustaining injuries in the incident, but the reports were denied by the KNUs Mergui-Tavoy District Committee. The KNU signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement in October 2015. Translated by Thida Linn Edited by Laignee Barron His primary goal is to pay a goodwill visit to the Federal Republic of Germany with stopover in Austria. According to the various news reports, the Tatmadaw or the Military goodwill delegation also comprises Daw Kyu Kyu Hla, wife of the Senior General, Chief of the General Staff (Army, Navy and Air) General Mya Tun Oo and senior military officers of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army). Reportedly, according to the Commander-in-Chiefs Facebook, his delegation visited the Austria Army Museum in Vienna on April 23, followed by the visit of the Myanmar (Burma) embassy, where he stressed the gathering to welcome him to learn from the industrially developed Austria and applied it at home to help develop the country. The Austria Army Museum is a renowned museum of Austrian Armed Forces. Built on 15 April 1850, it was inaugurated in 1856. One of the oldest buildings of Austria, it exhibits the historical facts of the Austrian empire since 1867 (mid-19th century), arms and weapon invention and modernization programmes, the development of tanks, armored vehicles, naval vessels and aircraft, and the Austrian involvement in wars including the World War I and World War II sector wise. On April 24, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was accorded a guard-of-honor welcome by Chief of Defense Staff of the Austrian Armed Forces General Othmar Commenda at the Austrian Defense Ministry. During the call, the Senior General said the purpose of the tour was to promote ties between armed forces of the two countries and that the two armed forces could make cooperation in many areas, including promoting bilateral relations between the two countries. He stressed that successive Myanmar leaders had recognized European countries as friends and the Senior General invited his counterpart to pay an official goodwill visit to Myanmar. Likewise, Chief of Defense Staff of Austrian Armed Forces said that he took pride of the goodwill visit of the Senior General and expressed his firm belief that the goodwill visit would promote further relations and cooperation. Armed forces from the European Union countries wished to enhance friendly ties with Myanmar Tatmadaw. Strengthening friendly relations between Myanmar and Austrian armed forces would contribute much to relations between Myanmar Tatmadaw and other EU armed forces. He offered officers from Myanmar Tatmadaw to attend the military training courses in Austria. On the same day afternoon, the delegation visited the Diamond Aircraft Industry, where the Commander-in-Chief was flown around with a DA-62 type aircraft and the rest of the delegation members with other types of company produced aircraft around the city of Vienna. The delegation members were welcomed by Chief Executive Officer Mr. Christian Dries and officials of the Diamond Aircraft Industry and later in the evening were treated to a dinner. After the Austria visit, the delegation next stop will be Germany. Although no detailed agendas have been made known by the Tatmadaw or Burma Army, primarily it should be to promote the army-to-army relationship and cooperation between Germany and Burma. Speculation are that while the Commander-in-Chief would like to materialize his Standard Army ambition and not Professional Army, Germany could also be keen to reactivate its supplier-client relationship that goes all the way back into the early 1950s when Burma newly achieved independence from the British in 1948. German Industrial-equipment Company Fritz Werner (Fritz Werner Industrie-Ausrustungen GmbH), specializing in weapon production, has been doing business with Burma since early 1950s during the short parliamentary era and continued to be around even after the military takeover through the coup detat in 1962. The then military strongman General Ne Win was a close friend of the company and often visited the companys headquarters (Central) in Geisenheim, according to the report of Zeit Online, on April 11, 2013. The company helped Burma in manufacturing the G3 and G4 rifles all along, but had to draw back from military-to-military relationship, due to EUs ban on weapon export, including other type of sanctions, after the military crackdown in 1988 that killed demonstrators in hundreds. Since the Fritz Werner is owned by the German government, the good relationship has been unbroken, even during the Burmas military ruled period from 1962 until 2011. The military-to-military contact now seems to be picking up momentum, due to the lifting of various sanctions imposed by the West following democratization process of the country that is still in progress. But with the re-establishment of military attache office in Berlin in 2017 by Burma, employing a full General, the Commander-in-Chiefs Germany visit should become better said Khin Maung Saw, a former lecturer in Burma Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, according to the VOA report of April 23. He further said: Starting from one two years, EU countries regarding sanction issues, there were argument on whether or not to lift the sanction on weapon sale. If weapon sale sanction is kept, Burma could buy from Russia and China and would only profit them. If Burma would buy and we sell them wouldnt it be better? As we would be selling, we would have military-to-military contact which could lead to the training of their soldiers and officers. That discussion was during a little more than two years ago. He stressed: Now Burma has changed and if it would like to buy, they (EU countries) would also sell. He also speculated that the integration of the East Germanys army into the West Germanys Federal Army or Bundeswehr could also be the topic of discussion, probably to see if this could be applicable in resolving the integration and demobilization of the various ethnic armies that have been fighting against the government of Burma. But the BBC on April 24 reported that although there has been military-to-military contact between the EU, including Germany, with Burma, military observers said that it would not be easy to immediately lift the weapon embargo. Especially, with the recent international condemnation of the human rights violations committed by the Burma Army in Arakan, Shan and Kachin States, it is highly unlikely that the EU would come to the stage of lifting the weapon embargo altogether, according to the analysis. Reports concerning Min Aung Hlaings Germany visit would, more or less, be in the same tune like Austria, probably paying a visit to Fritz Werner Companys central or headquarters and perhaps discussion over German unification, from the point of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR), where the East Germanys National Peoples Army and West Germanys Federal Defense or Federal Armed Forces, is concerned. Perspective The prospect of Min Aung Hlaings visit to build better relation with the EU, especially with Germany, could be partly fulfilled. But buying armament and modern weapon technical knowledge transfer might have to wait a little, given the arm embargo is still being maintained. With the German experience of DDR/SSR, if ever there is any discussion on it, the benefit would be minimum, as the situation are quite different. The East and West Germans are the one and same nation and the crucial fact is that the East disintegrates on its own and generally, the West has to absorb all the East Germanys institutions, including the armed forces. But Burmas problem is rooted in ethnic conflict and it is not coming together of the same nation or ethnic group. And thus, its solution would be more of the SSR oriented implementation than just DDR, which in German experience seems to be the case. Germany, a highly industrialized country with deep-rooted democratic system, is aiming and structuring a modern, hi-tech army, where fewer troops are needed, unlike the armies in third world countries. Min Aung Hlaing according to his own conviction is to build a standard army and not professional army that takes order from the civilian government and subordinated to it, which he no-doubt means a Bamar-dominated army like it is now, which is materially better equipped and that would continue to call the shots in the countrys political decision-making process for sometimes to come until it decides to abdicate on its own timetable. This would mean keeping the military-drafted constitution in tact as it is and a hybrid, the two-tier administrative system of civilian-military rule. Lately, human-rights abuses in Burmas Arakan State have led to mounting international condemnation and called for a United Nations Commission of Inquiry, following the insistence of UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma. The Amnesty International annual report for 2016/17 wrote that formation of a new civilian-led government did not lead to significant improvements in the human rights situation. The persecuted Rohingya minority faced increased violence and discrimination. Religious intolerance and anti-Muslim sentiment intensified. Fighting between the army and ethnic armed groups escalated in northern Myanmar. The Human Rights Watch yearly report of 2016 wrote that Burmas new government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) took office in March 2016 after sweeping the November 2015 elections. Headed by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Htin Kyaw, the NLD controls a majority of both upper and lower house parliamentary seats in the countrys first democratically elected, civilian-led government since 1962. However, the new government inherited deep-rooted challenges, including constitutional empowerment of the military, repressive legislation, weak rule of law, and a corrupt judiciary. To sum up, constitutional empowerment of the military leads to suppression of the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) in various ethnic states, which in turn resulted in human rights violations of the ethnic peoples by the Military, depleting any trust that might have been achieved by the NLD regime. And without trust there could be no negotiation and without it, no political settlement could be reached. Thus, in the end, we have to come back to the amendment or rewriting of the constitution to end the hybrid two-tier administrative system that is not serving the interest of the country, so that the it could move forward. For now, the Commander-in-Chief and the Military are determined to only build a standard army and not the professional one, which means the Military has to be subordinated to the civilian government and not vice-versa as it is now the case. Min Aung Hlaings vague promises that only if the country is peaceful, will the Military go back to the barracks could be years to come and even more remote, if it is going to draw its own policies, especially where the peace process and ethnic issues are concerned, and execute them as it sees fit, implying that it is the sole responsible party with sole right and ownership of the countrys sovereignty and conducts military offensives in ethnic areas. It should be clear that the ethnic armed conflict today is rooted in the political dissatisfaction over the Bamar-dominated governments sole ownership claim of the sovereignty and forcefully holding it together with the military might. And way out is to correct this wrong conceptual thinking into a kind of shared-sovereignty that the ethnic nationalities are demanding and voluntary participation in forging a genuine national unity, not coercively with military might. Thus, if the Military would agree to become a professional army, the resolution of conflict could materialize in no time. But if not, the standard army ambition of Min Aung Hlaing, even if he is able to build one, would not benefit the peace process and national reconciliation. Vietnam's government today said Facebook has promised to work with the communist nation to prevent the publication and distribution of banned online content. From Reuters: In February, communist Vietnam complained about "toxic" anti-government and offensive content on Facebook and Google Inc.'s YouTube and pressured local companies to withdraw advertising until the social media firms found a solution. Facebook's commitment came during a meeting between its Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert and Vietnamese information and communication minister Truong Minh Tuan in Hanoi on Wednesday, a statement on the government's website said. "Facebook will set up a separate channel to directly coordinate with Vietnam's communication and information ministry to prioritize requests from the ministry and other competent authorities in the country," the statement said. The firm will also remove fake accounts and fake content about senior government officials, it said. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. Facebook's website says that governments sometimes ask for the removal of content that violates local laws but does not violate its own Community Standards. "If after careful legal review we find that the content is illegal under local law, then we may make it unavailable only in the relevant country or territory," it says. Photographer Harry Israelson has a long-running series of photo essays called For Pleasure. For a recent set, he headed to beautiful Covina, California for a Renaissance Faire. Pictured: Ye Olde ATM. Via It's Nice That: "As I made my way through the parking lot towards the entrance, I began to notice festival-goers puling on gauntlets and lacing up corsets; a Knight fishing his helmet out of the back of a banged up Honda Civic. The intersection between these mundane modern realities and the escapism of the past quickly emerged as my guiding theme for the day," explains the photographer. "So much care is put into separating the fair from the modern world, yet here was a squire on a Samsung Galaxy 7 (yes the exploding one). Once inside the Fair grounds, I came across a whole community of people, unabashedly being themselves, celebrating their idiosyncrasies, not specific to any one genre. There were wizards, pirates, Elizabethan duchesses, Celtic warriors, Commedia Dell'arte and one or two aliens. Although it felt like I was one of the only attendees without costume, I was still welcomed with the proverbial, 'Good day, Sire.'" Harry Israelson photographs a renaissance fair in sunny California (It's Nice That) For many years, it has been clear to almost everyone that the so-called Big Six energy companies have been treating their customers in the most rapacious and self-serving manner imaginable. When wholesale fuel costs go down, they are slow to pass on the benefits, if they do so at all. But when costs go up, they instantly slap on a hefty increase that is often significantly larger than their extra burden. Many have complained about such greedy and irresponsible behaviour the regulator Ofgem, Prime Ministers, the Opposition parties, most newspapers and, of course, the poor, much abused consumer, who is still being taken for a ride. Only last month the French-owned EDF hiked its electricity prices by 8.4 per cent Meanwhile, the energy companies continue to pretend that they are as honest as the day is long, while refusing to mend their ways. Average bills continue to shoot up, though wholesale fuel costs are still significantly lower than they were three years ago. Only last month the French-owned EDF hiked its electricity prices by 8.4 per cent as a prelude to putting them up by a further 9 per cent in June. It is pumping its customers for money as though they are some sort of cash cow. At last, thank goodness, these predatory companies are going to be punished. The forthcoming Tory Party manifesto will reportedly include a pledge to cap gas and electricity prices for the two-thirds of households that are on standard tariffs. The average saving to customers will be around 100 a year. Theresa May evidently believes she is fulfilling her pledge at the Conservative conference last October that the Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the rich and powerful but by the interests of ordinary, working-class families. Needless to say, the energy companies dont see it that way. They are up in arms. The perhaps appropriately named boss of Centrica, Iain Conn (whose annual pay package, it has just been revealed, has risen by 1 million to 4.2 million), has bleated that the cap could absolutely make his company, British Gas, unprofitable. Conn told BBC Radio 4: There are people at the heart of this Government who just dont believe in the free market. His hysterical response seems to be hugely over the top, and he is evidently oblivious to the excesses of the energy companies. Let us nonetheless do him the honour of taking him seriously. Might he have a point? Could it be that the cap will depress profits and deter investors and the poor old consumer will end up carrying the can? Indeed, the share prices of two of the Big Six companies have already slipped. I should say that, in normal circumstances, I would be on Conns side. I believe the free market is the most efficient method of delivering services or producing goods at the lowest possible price. The forthcoming Tory Party manifesto will reportedly include a pledge to cap gas and electricity prices for the two-thirds of households that are on standard tariffs And yet I find myself supporting the Governments proposed intervention because the big energy companies have blithely ignored all the justifiable complaints about their outrageous conduct, and shown themselves resistant to reasonable pressure. The truth is that the energy market isnt working. Compare it with another sector. It would obviously be absurd if a government penalised supermarkets for charging too much. Consumers fleeced by one shop simply make a beeline for another. There is lively competition between supermarkets, and a great deal of choice. But the energy market is not operating in the interests of the consumer. I dont accuse the Big Six of acting as a cartel such arrangements are illegal but they do appear to travel in convoy at roughly the same speed and more or less in the same direction. One reason for the relative absence of competition is the nature of the market. Once you are committed to one supplier, it can be a time-consuming and laborious process to switch to another. There is a similar disincentive to changing banks. As a result, we feel locked in to the particular bank that irritates us. Speaking for myself, I simply dont have the time or inclination to shop around on the internet for cheaper deals every few months, as we are sensibly encouraged to. Millions do, of course, and they are to be congratulated for their assiduousness. But should the rest of us be made to suffer for being human? And, of course, there are lots of people of more advanced years who may have more time on their hands but are forgivably not very adept when it comes to unearthing cheaper tariffs or trawling their way through comparison websites (which, anyway, are paid to promote deals that may not be the cheapest). As a result of all this, two-thirds of households are stuck on the standard rate, which is considerably more expensive than cheaper, fixed-term deals on offer. It is this tariff which the Tories, if re-elected, are proposing to cap. How much easier life would be if each energy company had only one charge. The fact is, though, that they use short-term, lower tariffs to hook customers in the hope that when their agreement expires, they will forget to switch from the higher standard tariff. A price cap is far preferable to the freeze dreamt up by Labours Ed Miliband in 2013 Something has to be done. An alternative to what is being proposed would be to impose a windfall tax on the energy companies by way of a penalty. The trouble is that the customer would not benefit. The Treasury would pocket the money, which it wouldnt be eager to redistribute. Another problem, of course, is that four of the Big Six are foreign-owned (two German, one French and one Spanish). They are consequently liable to have less care for the legitimate concerns of mistreated British consumers, as their headquarters and most of their shareholders are far from our shores. In an ideal world it would be preferable if all our utility companies were British-owned, since in that case they might display a greater sense of social responsibility. The French would never tolerate such a degree of foreign control as exists here. But what happened in this country during the feckless New Labour years cannot easily be undone. A cap is now the most practicable idea. The hope must be that, having ignored all previous pleas, the energy companies, foreign-owned or not, will finally wake up to the reality that their anti-social goings-on will no longer be tolerated. Moreover, a cap is far preferable to the freeze dreamt up by Labours Ed Miliband in 2013. Not long after he had revealed his brainwave, wholesale fuel prices began to plummet. If his policy had been adopted, the energy companies would have been able to maintain higher charges without passing on price cuts to consumers. For all that, it cant be denied that Theresa Mays proposed cap it unquestionably originates in No 10 constitutes a form of intervention in the market which will make some Tories uneasy. I hope that it doesnt mark a general return to the kind of government meddling which hamstrung British industry back in the Seventies. But the energy companies have behaved abominably. They must be taught a lesson, and pay a price. We should applaud Theresa May for doing what she can to protect the victims of these high-and-mighty rascals. Jimmy Wales doctored his own Wikipedia page to play down his previous links to the porn industry The BBC rolled out its proverbial red carpet this week to give Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the website Wikipedia, a high-profile platform to promote his latest pet project. In reverent tones more appropriate for an encounter with the Pope, the American entrepreneur was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme about a new media service to tackle 'fake news'. So-called 'fake news' is increasingly widespread, thanks to a proliferation of websites that publish stories they know to be false. It's also become a term of abuse against accurate articles which people dislike. According to Wales, his new venture, Wikitribune, aims to provide stories that are 'politically-neutral' and meticulously 'fact-checked'. How this will be achieved was left vague. Wales merely suggested the site's agenda overseen by a motley selection of right-on celebrity 'advisors' (including model-turned-actress Lily Cole) will be 'driven by readers'. By the rigorous standards of the Today programme, best known for John Humphrys' scrupulous interviews, the encounter saw Wales given a very easy time. Vulgar This was surprising at a time of concern about free speech and censorship online, and when the BBC is protective of its own reputation for political neutrality. Specifically, Wales was not asked two obvious questions. First: How can Wikipedia's creator preach about the dangers of fake news considering that the internet site is infamous for inaccuracies? It once claimed as 'fact' that Greek philosopher Plato was a Hawaiian surfer who discovered Florida. More recently, it gave the wrong name for the man who killed six people in the terror attack on London's Westminster Bridge. Second: having doctored his own Wikipedia page to play down his previous links to the porn industry, how can he complain about media manipulation? For back in the Nineties, Wales launched a dotcom firm called Bomis, which profited from ventures such as 'Bomis Babes', a search engine that let users trawl the internet for vulgar photos, and 'Nekkid', a website with degrading images of nude women. Mr Wales aims to pay for reporters by raising money from a crowd-funding campaign and says readers will check facts and sub-edit published articles Fast forward to 2005, and having achieved global fame, Wales edited his own Wikipedia page in an apparent attempt to erase unwholesome aspects of this episode. He made 18 changes, cutting references to 'Bomis Babes' and replacing the word 'pornography' with softer terms such as 'glamour photography'. However, the changes were spotted. Although Wales argued he'd merely been trying to correct factual errors and provide a more 'rounded' version of events, he apologised, admitting it's unethical to edit one's own page on the site. 'People shouldn't do it, including me,' he said. 'I wish I hadn't done it. It's in poor taste.' A fuller mention of 'Bomis Babes' returned to his Wikipedia page. Flagrant But how Wales now squares this episode with his opposition to 'fake news' is unclear. Then there's the issue of Wikipedia's attitude to fact-checking. Unlike mainstream news organisations, which operate under the law and have robust corrections policies (the Mail's is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation), Wikipedia sometimes refuses to remove flagrant inaccuracies from its site. A cynic might wonder if the BBC treats Wales so reverentially because he has impeccable liberal credentials: a campaigner against Brexit, who (until this week) sat on the board of the Guardian, and is married to Tony Blair's former diary secretary (Alastair Campbell played bagpipes at their wedding). Wales says he was inspired to launch 'politically-neutral' Wikitribune by the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, which left him with 'a feeling things have gone wrong'. Of course, Wales is perfectly entitled to be unhappy with both events. According to Wales, his new venture, Wikitribune, aims to provide stories that are 'politically-neutral' and meticulously 'fact-checked' However, if the basis for the creation of Wikitribune is that these two democratic decisions indicate 'things have gone wrong', then it suggests the site may not be 'neutral'. The BBC failed to confront Wales on this. What's more, his previous internet activities show what many would call 'form' for projecting liberal prejudice. In February, for example, he was behind a PR stunt in which Wikipedia, the world's sixth-most-popular website, decided the Daily Mail is too 'unreliable' to be included on its site. No statistics were offered to support this claim and it came shortly before the Mail was named Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards, the news industry's Oscars. Unsurprisingly, many therefore saw Wikipedia's ban as politically-motivated. Indeed, no other world news source has been censored in this way. And yet Wikipedia remains happy to publish information from state propaganda outlets of North Korea and Russia, and a host of Left-wing dictatorships. Wikipedia claimed the ban followed a ballot of the site's volunteer editors. But that was shall we say stretching the truth: for the vote took place in virtual secrecy and involved just 53 editors, a mere 0.00018 per cent of the 30 million total. One of the most vociferous advocates of Wikipedia's censorship of the Mail was a man from Bournemouth who was acquainted with Wales via the site's chat-rooms, where they had shared conversations. An investigation by the Mail subsequently revealed the man was a vile internet troll who'd shared Islamophobic, and potentially illegal material on his public Facebook page. One post stated: 'All Muslim men admitted to Paradise will have an ever-erect penis and they will each marry 70 wives, all with appetising vaginas.' Still more posts (on what is a social network accessible by children) contained pornographic images: two gay men performing a sex-act in public and bestiality between a man and a sheep. Yet rather than condemn this behaviour, Wales (who told his BBC interviewer that internet trolls and anti-Semites are 'banned almost instantly' from Wikipedia) defended it. Disastrous He used one of the site's chat-rooms to describe the Bournemouth activist as a harmless 'charity volunteer'. All of which suggests that Wales, this self-styled crusader against 'fake news', has been guilty of propagating something very similar. As to Wikitribune, its celebrity backers must hope that its future is more successful than Wales's last big venture, an 'ethical' mobile phone firm called The People's Operator. He joined as 250,000-a-year chairman in 2014, promoting it via interviews (including one on the BBC) in which he claimed the company could be worth 2 billion by 2018. It duly raised 20 million from investors to float on the stock market at 1.30 a share, but the share price nose-dived. By the time Wales quit in January this year, they were trading at 2.5p each. This disastrous episode is also almost entirely absent from his Wikipedia page. Above all, it's most odd that our national broadcaster should provide such a comfortable PR platform for this egregious Wiki-hypocrite. It's not just parents who see social media and 'online life' as the biggest threats to children's welfare. Now even the internet generation themselves are acutely uneasy over the monsters taking over their lives. A survey of 1,696 children by the NSPCC finds four in five think web giants do too little to protect them from online porn, self-harm websites and cyberbullying, with Facebook among the worst offenders. This week a Thai father hanged his 11-month-old and posted a live video of her murder on Facebook before killing himself Chiranut Trairat, whose husband hanged their 11-month-old baby on Facebook Live Indeed, hardly a day goes by without new concerns over the conduct of the arrogant, filth-peddling, tax-dodging internet giants. Yet the billionaires who control them shrug their shoulders, denying all responsibility for grotesque offences against civilised values committed on their websites. Take this week, when a Thai father hanged his 11-month-old and posted a live video of her murder on Facebook before killing himself. The gruesome four minutes of footage remained online for 24 hours, watched by hundreds of thousands. Or consider Twitter's decision to block UK security services from checking data to identify potential terror threats. The firm loftily declared it 'absolutely unacceptable' to allow governments access to information for 'surveillance' (though it has no such qualms about harvesting users' private details for commercial advantage). This paper accepts that the internet has brought myriad advantages to humanity. But with the spread of cyberfraud, fake news, terrorist training videos and ever more extreme pornography, it has also given rise to countless social ills. How much longer can firms that profit from it stay a law unto themselves, before they face the social responsibilities that go with their awesome power to harm? Patients locked out Confirming the deeply troubling findings of a Mail investigation, an all-party committee finds millions of patients are suffering because half the GPs' surgeries in England close for long lunches or afternoons off during the working week. Yes, many family doctors are hard-working, selfless professionals, dedicated to patients (though, as we reported this week, too many miss lethal cancers). But by routinely closing when people need them, they risk losing our support. Staying open will mean a change of culture among handsomely paid GPs. But other professions have adapted to the 24/7 economy. With lives at risk, so must they. MPs surgeries closing during the core hours leads to 'worse outcomes' for patients and overcrowding in casualty units (file photo) Don't bank on trust Lousy customer service, incompetent administration, rip-off charges, unscrupulous sales techniques, unclear or incorrect information. As complaints against banks and insurance companies top three million in just six months that's almost 17,000 a day the full scale of public anger is laid bare for the first time. Until now, firms were not required to report complaints to the City watchdog if they dealt with them by the next business day. But a change in the rules means they can no longer sweep grievances under the carpet. The truth emerges that those handling our money have a monumental crisis of confidence on their hands. In an industry that depends absolutely on trust, they must clean up their act without delay. WITH Michael Foot leading Labour, Arthur Scargill running the miners' strike and General Galtieri invading the Falklands, it was often said that Margaret Thatcher was fortunate in her enemies. Now that Jeremy Corbyn is Labour leader and smug tax-dodger Sir Richard Branson is bankrolling Gina Miller's creepy campaign to oust MPs who back Brexit the same can surely be said of Theresa May. The Foreign Secretary swaggered centre-stage, banging his Lambeg drum so hard he nearly put a hole in it Boris Johnson dived into the election campaign and it was boisterous, comical, judiciously chaotic the entrance of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, the arrival of a concert party at Mafeking. For days we had been subjected to Tories roboting that 'strong, stable leadership' slogan fed to them by their Australian campaign manager Sir Lynton Crosby. We had put up with beardie Corbyn saying the NHS was doomed, the BBC promoting tactical votes and little Tim Farron being mean to gay people. Another six weeks of this? Travel agencies filled with people enquiring about two-month breaks abroad. But at dawn yesterday, Boris burst through the French windows. The Foreign Secretary swaggered centre-stage, banging his Lambeg drum so hard he nearly put a hole in it. What ho, chaps! (Steps in paint tin.) Anything I can do to help? (Knocks over colleagues with ladder.) Crumbs. Cripes. Caramba. The day began with a newspaper article in which Boris referred to Jeremy Corbyn as 'a mutton-headed old mugwump'. No one was quite sure what it meant but it sounded amiably rude and, well, pretty accurate. Although voters might be tempted to see the Labour leader as 'an essentially benign Islingtonian herbivore', he was actually a serious danger because he did not believe in national defence, said Boris. Language, Boris! Ben Shephard gasped at the Foreign Secretary's description of the Labour leader Ben Shephard, of ITV's Good Morning Britain, gasped 'the language, Boris!' when Mr Johnson made his first appearance of the morning. 'I apologise,' said Boris, 'to mugwumps everywhere for inadvertently comparing them to Jeremy Corbyn.' Shephard's co-presenter Susanna Reid came over v. frosty. She tried to spear Boris on that old referendum dispute about an extra 350million a week of our money being available to the NHS rather than being controlled by the EU. Boris pretended to forget the name of Good Morning, Britain. Susanna didn't like that. Boris has charmed many women in his time but he may still have some work to do thawing the upper slopes of Mount Reid. 'Ah Foreign Secretary, what exactly is a mugwump?' Next stop: Radio 4's Today programme, where Labour MP John Healey took grave exception to the mugwump stuff. Mr Healey, not normally a humourless prude, accused Boris of demeaning his office. This was the 'name-calling of an Eton playground'. Boris happily noted that Mr Healey himself recently slagged off Corbyn for being useless. Exit one Healey, duly bogwashed. Today interviewer John Humphrys went on about the 350million thing for a bit. Yawneroo, said Boris, wondering if any listeners would be left. Humphrys next tried to get Boris to make a gaffe on the Brexit negotiations but Boris boxed pretty tight on this, apart from a swipe at Brussels for only being interested in money. Aware that they would be listening back at 10 Downing Street the PM's chiefs of staff crouching round a wireless, cracking their knuckles Boris repeatedly larded Mrs May with praise. The election was a choice between strong May and mugwump Corbyn. Amid the banter with Humphrys, Boris even managed to spit out the word 'stable', just to tame dingo Lynton. Boris flourished the English language with gusto. He took the rise out of his opponents, himself and even his interviewers The morning ended with a dash to Leicester Square to visit LBC Radio's Nick Ferrari. He, too, quizzed Boris hard about the 350million. Boris stood by it but feared listeners would by now be scooping their eyeballs out of their heads with boredom. Ferrari did well not to corpse at this felicitous image. By his own standards, Boris was heroically on-message. He was also fun, and that is what the Tories have lacked so far. They must be mad if they think Boris should be kept away from the campaign trail. One can only imagine that theory stems from envy on the part of careerist dullard Philip Hammond. Boris flourished the English language with gusto. He took the rise out of his opponents, himself and even his interviewers. Some Guardianistas tried to say his mugwump remark was 'a personal onslaught' on Corbyn but it was merely a genius distillation of what the country thinks. Magnificent. A mother-of-two has revealed how she was able to take her infant children to the toilet on time without using nappies from birth. Nicole Moore, who lives on the mid north coast of NSW, practiced the 'nappy free' method that involves observing her babies' movements and toileting demeanor. The 42-year-old said the 'gentle practice', known as elimination communication, is the 'most environmentally responsible way to deal with your baby's hygiene needs' and 'saving the planet'. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the mother opened up about why she opted for a nappy free lifestyle and how her children were able to communicate to her from 10 days old. Mother-of-two Nicole Moore (pictured) has revealed how she was able to take her infant children to the toilet on time without using nappies from birth 'The main reason why I did it is because it greatly reduces nappy rash and the ecological footprint of each child,' she said. Ms Moore said she started practicing from birth because there's a 'window of opportunity' between the ages of zero to six months. Ms Moore's husband (pictured with their baby) also practiced the nappy free method 'It's a good time to start because as the primary caregiver, life distractions are minimised and there's a lot of focus on your baby,' she said. 'You can still start practicing after six months but it will be a little bit trickier. 'Every baby is different. They develop cues and you respond to them and it creates a communication loop that strengthens each time you listen to them. 'The way to learn is to recognise what your baby does before they eliminate. Babies tend to wiggle, murmur, grunt or cry when they need to go.' 'Toilets, buckets, any vessel will do. They do it and when you get a chance you empty it. You might have a few vessels, a bucket near your feeding chair or by the bed,' Ms Moore told the Sunshine Coast Daily. 'I live in the bush so it was very easy for me, we just used a tree. 'When in public you just pick and choose your places. I can count on one hand the amount of people offended by it, had more people interested in what I was doing.' She told Daily Mail Australia the parenting technique creates a 'beautiful' symbiotic relationship between a baby and their caregiver. 'It enhances communication and one's parenting because it establishes a deeply respectful relationship of the baby's needs from the beginning,' Ms Moore said. 'This method of communicating with the baby around toileting needs proves that babies are more aware long before we give them credit for. 'Children are very clever. Almost like any relationship, it's something they can reinforce every time they communicate. So each time you hold them out in the same position, they would perpetuate a noise or movement as their sign.' WHAT IS NAPPY FREE? Nappy or diaper free, elimination communication, natural infant hygiene all names for a system of toileting so ancient that it probably precedes names altogether! This very natural, gentle, environmentally friendly way of dealing with your babies waste is based on the belief that babies are aware of their elimination processes from birth and are able to communicate this awareness, and that sphincter control is learnt from birth in a gradual process until full control is reached, somewhere between one and two-and-a-half years of age. Credit: Nicole Moore/Nappy Free Advertisement And not only did she adopt the method, but her husband was also on board when she told him about the nappy free technique. 'He loved it,' she said. 'He was able to communicate telepathically with the baby as much as I did - and that's the physical proof that he was getting the right message when the baby needed to go. 'It helps dad feel great about their role as a parent. It's a complimentary role to play because it gives them something they can't do - like breastfeed. It's a beautiful enhancement between a father-baby relationship.' She also suggested using any vessels, buckets and toilets would help with the method Any type of vessels, buckets and even toilets are perfect to practice the method (stock image) Despite the parenting method, Ms Moore said practicing 'nappy free' doesn't necessarily mean not using diapers altogether. 'Nappy free is about being free to choose how and when to use the nappy when you use them or as little - or none at all,' she said. 'There are different approaches but nappy free doesn't mean no nappies at all. It means when you use them and when you want to.' She admits she did use nappies when the family went on long car journeys, visiting the in-laws, grandparents, trips to the supermarkets and night times. And while her children are now aged 12 and 14, Ms Moore said she has been teaching fellow parents about the practice of going nappy free. The mother admitted she used nappies when the family went on long car journeys, visiting the in-laws, grandparents, trips to the supermarkets and night times (stock image) She said practicing 'nappy free' is about being free to choose how and when to use them Despite successfully practicing on her two children as infants, Ms Moore said the method is not designed for everyone. 'If mess is going to freak people out then it's best not to do the practice,' she said. 'When parents are stressed out by the method, don't do it. You need to be in a positive environment and if this is causing any dramas, it's only creating pressure that doesn't need to be there. 'The practice is not for everyone. Having a child is stressful enough so come back to it later when life is less stress. 'It's about enhancing one's relationship with their baby, not creating more stress. It's an experimental thing that builds when you progress. There's plenty of misses but it's important to be realistic. 'When you go down a rabbit hole, misses are opportunities for learning. Even if they can't talk, they are still communicating with us if we know how to listen.' Nicole Moore started a project when her eldest child was six months old - and her DVD Nappy Free! has been sold across Australia. For more information, please visit Nappy Free. Probably not much, as Brad Jones learned over Easter when a neighbor allegedly blasted his DJI Phantom. Even if his prime suspect confessed, there's not much precedent for prosecutions. The Federal Aviation Administration considers it akin to shooting at any aircraft, but there have been no federal prosecutions for drone-blasters, according to Ars Technica: While some on the ground may feel that their "airspace" has been invaded if a drone flies in or near their property, American law does not yet recognize the concept of aerial trespass. In fact, as the consumer drone age has taken flight, legal scholars have wondered about this exact situation. If a drone flies over private property, is it trespassing? The short answer is that American courts have not addressed the question adequately. The best case law on the issue dates back to 1946, long before inexpensive consumer drones were technically feasible. That year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case known as United States v. Causby that a farmer in North Carolina could assert property rights up to at least 83 feet in the air, and perhaps further. But he could not assert property rights indefinitely. As the Supreme Court ruled at the time: "We need not determine at this time what those precise limits are." The punishment for deliberately hooking a drone appears to be making the hooker a viral sensation. Caveat aviator. Man takes drone out for a sunset flight, drone gets shot down (Ars Technica) Sapiosexual is a new term that is rapidly gaining ground in the dating world. For those who identify as sapiosexual, they place a value on intelligence over all other qualities in a potential partner. Ask anyone what qualities they are searching for in a date, and it's almost guaranteed that many people will list 'intelligence' alongside traits like 'looks' and 'career.' Certainly gender plays a factor in many peoples' decisions, as well. But what if intellect was the sole quality that attracted you to someone else? For a sapiosexual person, that is supposedly the main focus of their 'orientation' - a concept that has drawn as much criticism as it has support. 'Talking about chemistry is the equivalent of talking dirty to me': Sapiosexuals are people who are attracted to intelligence above all else (stock image used) Sapiosexuality is a relatively new term - with records of its usage nowhere to be found prior to 2002, and even then it was mainly used on niche blogging sites. In recent years, it's become part of the vocabulary of young millennials exploring their sexual identities. As a result, the precise nuances of the term can be difficult to define. In an interview with Cosmopolitan, six anonymous, self-identifying sapiosexuals opened up about how they perceive the term. 'Sapiosexual just means sexually attracted to intelligence. I find smart, creative women extremely attractive, and the inability to converse in an intellectually stimulating way is a major turn-off,' said one man. One woman put her concept in slightly baser terms: 'I identify as a sapiosexual, because to me talking about chemistry is the equivalent of talking dirty to me.' All six interviewed said they would end a relationship - or not even begin one in the first place - if a potential partner did not meet their standards of intellect. Additionally, all agreed they would prefer to date others who identify as sapiosexual outright. Supposedly, those who identify as sapiosexual are attracted to intellect above all else - inclusive of gender, meaning that most sapiosexuals would be open to dating men or women. Yet suspiciously, all six of the individuals interviewed by Cosmopolitan expressed heterosexual dating tendencies. While certainly not representative of an entire community, this tendency points to an ongoing critique of the sapiosexual 'movement' as being an unnecessary one, particularly when it's listed alongside more recognizable (and marginalized) identities like homosexuality or bisexuality. Even one of the women interviewed by Cosmopolitan described her sapiosexuality as 'more of a fetish.' A sex writer interviewed for Dame describes herself as both bisexual and sapiosexual. Popular dating website OkCupid drew criticism when it began allowing its users to list their orientation as 'sapiosexual' in 2016. A spokesperson for the site assured Broadly that the move was not meant to be 'a lofty declaration of what we recognize as "official" orientations.' Thus, it seems that many who identify as sapiosexual don't use it to describe the whole of their sexual identity, which opens doors for others to critique why it is considered an identity in the first place. Many dissidents of the term equate it directly with a pretentious - or even ableist - attitude. Others agree that while you can be turned on sexually by intelligence, sapiosexuality describes more of a 'lifestyle' than an orientation. 'I've never met an actually-smart person who uses that term,' says one of the more damning critiques found on Reddit. 'Or an attractive one,' chimed in another user. 'I used to consider myself sapiosexual,' added another user. 'Of course, I was young and stupid once.' Yet those who presently identify with the term, such as the six from the Cosmopolitan interview, are holding fast to a concept they feel helps express their identity in ways no other term can. Fortunately, sapiosexuals seem to prefer to only date each other - so if the term is not your cup of tea, you're already in the clear. A mother-of-two is showing off her stunning physique in a series of enviable Instagram photos just a year after giving birth to twins. Sonya Davison Sanchez, a television host based in Singapore, recently posted a throwback photo of herself in a bikini the day before she gave birth alongside another snapshot of herself holding her sons Tristan and Raiden in the same swimsuit nearly a year later. 'The day before I gave birth vs today!' she wrote on Instagram. 'So amazed by what the human body is capable of.' Scroll down for video Transformation: Sonya Davison Sanchez recently posted a throwback photo of herself in a bikini the day before she gave birth alongside another snapshot of herself a year later Turn around: The mother-of-two said she lost the weight in three weeks because she stayed active and only gained what she needed to during her pregnancy. She is pictured in September The image on the left sees Sonya wearing aqua bikini bottms and a floral triangle top while she was 35-weeks pregnant, and she is modeling the same bikini in the new photo. But instead of flaunting her large baby bump, she is balancing her two boys, who are turning one on April 29. Sonya has more than 202,000 Instagram followers, and her feed is filled with stunning photos of herself showing off her trim figure in everything from workout gear to crop tops. Superhero family! Sonya and her husband are pictured with their boys Tristan and Raiden, who are turning one this week On the go: Sonya often shares photos of herself breastfeeding her boys, including this scenic snapshot Unsurprisingly, plenty of people questioned how Sonya was able to get her body back to the way it was after giving birth to twins, and even she admits she was surprised by her transformation. Sharing a bikini photo of herself last September, Sonya explained how she was able to bounce back so quickly after giving birth. 'A year ago, I made my husband promise to (pretend to) still love my body after I gave birth,' she wrote. 'During my pregnancy, I mentally prepared myself for a post-twins baby body. I had fully accepted it... No need to pretend: Sonya said that she made her husband promise to still love her body after she gave birth because she thought it would drastically different Nursing: The mom credits breastfeeding two boys to helping her lose weight postpartum 'I, (like many) thought that it wouldn't be possible to get my body back after pregnancy (especially after seeing my ginormous twin belly). I was wrong. 'I would come to realize that a combination of factors would lead to me losing my pregnancy weight within just three weeks of giving birth.' Sonya went on to share her secret, noting that before she got pregnant she had 'strong core muscles' from doing high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts out home. 'I only gained what I needed to,' she said of her pregnancy. 'You don't literally have to "eat for two" when you're pregnant. Owning it: Sonya showed off her 'tiger stripes' in a gray crop top back in March Secret trick: Although she lost the weight in just three weeks, Sonya said she lost all muscle in her stomach and relied on Spanx to suck everything in Feeding time: 'When you breastfeed your stomach contracts which helps your uterus shrink quicker,' she said 'I gained mostly on my tummy, so I only had to lose that extra weight, which is a whole lot easier than the whole body.' Sonya added that she walk for two to three hours ever other day to keep her metabolism up while she was pregnant and credits exclusively breastfeeds her boys to helping her reach her pre-pregnancy weight. 'When you breastfeed your stomach contracts which helps your uterus shrink quicker - times that by two (preemie babies that fed hourly) and you have the perfect storm,' she said. The mom often shares photos of herself nursing her boys, including one scenic shot that sees her nursing one of her sons at an outdoor restaurant in front of a pier. Keeping fit: Sonya said she does high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts out home About to pop: Sonya is pictured right before she gave birth to her baby boys New mom: Sonya welcomed her sons Tristan and Raiden into the world on April 29, 2016. She is pictured a few days after giving birth Sonya pointed out that 'every person's body is different but this is what worked for me.' The mother-of-two ended her candid post by saying that even though she lost weight that is only the first step because she also lost all the muscle tone in her stomach, noting that after one meal, 'it would all hang out again till the next morning'. Three months after she gave birth she said she started doing simple 20-minute HIIT workout routines at home, and a year after welcoming her twins into the world, it looks like the mom is back in fighting shape. Sonya has fulled embraced her postpartum body, and she proudly paid homage to the stretch marks on her stomach last month. 'Tiger stripes n all #mamabod,' she captioned the photo of herself in a crop top. Age discrimination in the Australian workforce is starting as early as 45 years old, a new study has found. Justine Irving, a researcher for older workers, retirement and ageism at the University of South Australia, and her team conducted a national survey of 2,100 men and women aged 45 years and over, and 100 telephone interviews. Their findings concluded that almost a third of Australians thought they received some form of age discrimination while employed or looking for work in the last 12 months. Older adults felt a 'subtle pressure from their colleagues and management to stop working in order to make room for the younger generation' (stock image) The most common form of discrimination workers received were negative assumptions about older workers skills, learning abilities or cognition, Mrs Irving wrote in The Conversation. 'Older adults in our study described a subtle pressure from their colleagues and management to stop working in order to make room for the younger generation",' she wrote. In order to avoid age discrimination, older workers would use 'strategies' such as minimising health conditions, concealing their age or maintaining a youthful appearance, Mrs Irving explained. Over two thirds of retirees interviewed said their retirement was due to 'involuntary factors' (stock image) The most common industries where age discrimination was rife included construction, administrative services, education, manufacturing, essential services, information technology and professional service industries. Over two thirds of retirees interviewed said their retirement was due to 'involuntary factors', including dismissal, redundancy and 'having no choice'. 'Our interviewees believed that younger managers can feel intimidated by older workers,' Mrs Irving said. Age discrimination in the Australian workforce is starting as early as 45-years-old, a new study has found (stock image) While older workers may feel undervalued in the workforce, they bring with them years of experience, reliability, loyalty, wisdom and maturity. The Australian Human Rights Commission survey on ageism also found that 27 per cent of Australians aged 50 years and over had recently experienced age discrimination in the workforce. Nearly three in five, or 58 per cent, of people who looked for work aged 50 and over experienced some form of age discrimination. Elly Bradshaw, from Perth, went to get her skin checked in January, 2016, after having concerns about an 'itchy' mole on her back. But doctors told her the mole was 'okay' and that removing it would leave 'too big a scar'. But just 11 months later, Ms Bradshaw, then 23, went back to the GP after her boyfriend noticed changes in her mole and was diagnosed with late stage three melanoma just days later. 'I had had the mole checked numerous times over the past three years and right before my boyfriend and I were due to head off on our four month holiday he mentioned that it was looking different and bigger,' Ms Bradshaw told Daily Mail Australia. Elly Bradshaw (pictured with her boyfriend), from Perth, went to get her skin checked in January, 2016, after having concerns about an 'itchy' mole on her back But doctors told her the mole (pictured) was 'okay' and that removing it would leave 'too big a scar' 'I booked into the GP immediately because I wanted it checked before we left to go. Four days later the doctor called me at work at told me I had stage three melanoma.' Ms Bradshaw had previously been told by doctors that the mole was completely fine and that she was not a 'high risk' patient as she had darker skin and had no family history of melanoma. 'I wanted it removed in January and told them that it was very itchy but the doctor said that was just because of where it was [near my bra strap] and prescribed me steroid cream,' she said. 'I came close to having it removed but at the last minute the doctor said she didn't want to scar me "unnecessarily".' 'I booked into the GP immediately because I wanted it checked before we left to go. Four days later the doctor called me at work at told me I had stage three melanoma,' she said What are the symptoms of skin cancer? * Any crusty, non-healing sores * Small lumps that are red, pale or pearly in colour * New spots, freckles or any moles changing in colour, thickness or shape over a period of weeks to months (especially those dark brown to black, red or blue-black in colour Advertisement Ms Bradshaw, who works at a radiological clinic as a medical receptionist, said the day she found out the news was a 'blur'. 'I was in such a state of shock that I just got on with it and the next day I was at the hospital having PET scands, ultrasounds and biopsies - it was such a whirlwind,' she said. 'It had spread to the lymph nodes in my arm pits and needed major surgery to remove it.' Ms Bradshaw found out she needed to have a wide local excision to her central back and had a bilateral axillary clearance as well due to the cancer spreading. 'I was in such a state of shock that I just got on with it and the next day I was at the hospital having PET scands, ultrasounds and biopsies - it was such a whirlwind,' she said After surgery, Ms Bradshaw remained in hospital for a week and was lucky to have her family and friends around her for support. 'It's all been removed now but the chances of it coming back are high - it's a hard cancer to remove,' Ms Bradshaw said. 'I will be having treatment until the end of January to reduce the chances of it returning but for now it's fine - though there are some areas of concern in scans.' Ms Bradshaw is sharing her story to raise awareness about melanoma and to encourage young people to have regular checks. Ms Bradshaw found out she needed to have a wide local excision to her central back and had a bilateral axillary clearance as well due to the cancer spreading 'I will be having treatment until the end of January to reduce the chances of it returning but for now it's fine - though there are some areas of concern in scans,' she said 'I've not spend a lot of time in the sun - no more so than regular Australians - and have always been very diligent with suncreen and had skin checks since I was 15,' she said. 'Most people don't realise that they need to be having skin checks regularly from this age and they are so important as melanoma has a 98 per cent cure rate if caught early. 'It's extremely important to raise awareness for this - not one of my friends had had skin checks before when I was diagnosed.' Ms Bradshaw also urges people to trust their instincts when it comes to their bodies. Ms Bradshaw also urges people to trust their instincts when it comes to their bodies Ms Bradshaw did the Melanoma March alongside her family and friends for MARCHING FOR A CURE 'I was unlucky my mole wasn't removed earlier - it probably would have been fine if it was,' she said. 'Trust your instincts. I thought I was being a hypochondriac and that it was fine because two doctors told me I was - of course I was going to listen to them. 'Listen to yourself and see your GP if you are concerned.' Despite the hurdles she has faced, Ms Bradshaw says the diagnosis has given her a whole take on life. 'This is the last thing I imagined was going to happen to me. The future that I had planned has already shifted. It's amazing how one piece of news can completely change your perspective on life,' she said in a speech. 'None of us here know how long we've got but when you are diagnosed with cancer, colors suddenly become more vivid and life becomes more precious. So, all I can encourage you to do is: live life in the NOW and live it well.' For support and/or resources about skin cancer, visit the Cancer Council Australia website. Advertisement Famed Australian fashion label, Camilla, unveiled its brand new collection on Thursday morning at their Bondi Beach boutique. The stunning new travel capsule collection is the result of a colourful partnership between the label and Dubai Tourism. Camilla Franks, 41, spoke to FEMAIL ahead of her sumptuous collection launch, as she explained how Dubai had 'always had a special place in my heart'. 'It took approximately three months to bring this collection to life,' the dedicated designer told Daily Mail Australia. Famed Australian fashion label, Camilla, unveiled its brand new collection on Thursday morning at their Bondi Beach boutique (pictured: Camilla Franks) The stunning new travel capsule collection is the result of a colourful partnership between the label and Dubai Tourism (pictured: some pieces from the collection) Camilla Franks, 41, spoke to FEMAIL ahead of her sumptuous collection launch, as she explained how Dubai had 'always had a special place in my heart' (Camilla pictured in Dubai) 'It took approximately three months to bring this collection to life,' the dedicated designer told Daily Mail Australia - the new collection is themed entirely around Dubai and it features pretty prints, dresses, tops and Camilla kaftans The new collection - which is entirely themed around Dubai - features pretty prints, an array of sundresses, tops, beach bags, scarves and the item which made Camilla famous, the kaftan: 'To me, the kaftan still represents effortless, beautiful and versatile style,' Camilla explained. 'The kaftan is like a canvas for me to sing the songs of my travels in vibrant colour, embellishment and print placement detail.' I was searching high and low for that Dubai vibe! The 41-year-old designer added that, while she regularly travels for 'printspiration' and often 'winds up in the most off-the-beaten-track spots... where there is an abundance of inspiration gold for me to absorb', her Dubai trip was a little different: 'At first, finding inspiration wasn't easy and I started to worry. I was searching high and low for that Dubai vibe,' she said, adding that instead she was mainly feeling inspired by Moroccan tile work, Iranian textiles and a fusion of Middle Eastern architecture. 'But after a long lunch in a beautiful open-aired ornate tile-clad restaurant - in which I was surrounded by a multitude of cultures and backdrops - it dawned on me that this was where the magic of Dubai lies. It's a melting pot of cultures,' Camilla said. 'The kaftan is like a canvas for me to sing the songs of my travels in vibrant colour, embellishment and print placement detail,' Camilla told FEMAIL Camilla went to Dubai (pictured) in search of 'printspiration' for her trip Camilla (pictured) confessed that finding inspiration in Dubai at first 'wasn't easy' 'I started to worry. I was searching high and low for that Dubai vibe,' she said 'But after a long lunch in a beautiful open-aired ornate restaurant - in which I was surrounded by a multitude of cultures and backdrops - it dawned on me that this was where the magic of Dubai lies. It's a melting pot of cultures,' Camilla said This 'melting pot of cultures' is visible throughout Camilla's debut travel collection (pictured: flat lay items) - which was showed off in the label's Bondi boutique The 'melting pot of cultures' is visible throughout Camilla's debut travel collection, showcased on Thursday morning. From the 'regal tile work and architecture' at her hotel to the 'jaw-dropping ceilings of the Al Farooq Omar Bin Al Khattab mosque', all of Camilla's inspiration is wound up in a pretty, bohemian collection that is true to the designer's inimitable personal sense of style: 'My time in Dubai was adventurous and eye opening,' Camilla said. 'I wanted to encompass these into a print and truly push the boundaries on people's perceptions of Dubai.' 'My time in Dubai was adventurous and eye opening,' Camilla said - 'I wanted to encompass these into a print and truly push the boundaries on people's perceptions of Dubai' All of Camilla's inspiration is wound up in a pretty, bohemian collection that is true to the designer's inimitable personal sense of style 'My time in Dubai was adventurous and eye opening,' Camilla said - I wanted to encompass these into a print and truly push the boundaries on people's perceptions of Dubai' nspired by the Arabian Desert and the bustling souks of inner city Dubai, the new CAMILLA capsule collection, My Dubai Dream, features the iconic kaftan and other fashion items Camilla Franks first visited Dubai in 2006 to showcase her designs with Harvey Nichols and AusTrade in a celebration of Australian fashion in the Middle East The trip in 2016 was a return to Dubai (pictured: Camilla) Camilla confessed her next 'full collection' will be inspired by 'Carmen Miranda so there are lots more fitted pieces like peplum tops and flared pants' - the current collection, however, is more flowing (pictured) For those wondering what's coming next from the acclaimed designer, there is much to be excited about but also a slight change in direction as to where she is headed: 'I try to steer clear of the mainstream trends as it's important that my collections stay true to my inspirations and creative feeling,' she said. 'My next full collection is inspired by Carmen Miranda so there are lots more fitted pieces like peplum tops and flared pants.' To visit the Camilla website and find out more, click here. The new collection is available in store from late April. You can also follow Camilla on Instagram here. Charlotte Halliday, 23, from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, gave birth to little Charlie on April 18th. The adorable little boy was born after a 'textbook perfect' pregnancy but shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with a severe cleft lip and palate - both of which were not picked up in scans. 'At first I didn't know anything was wrong. He was placed on me but I couldn't see his face as he was facing the other way,' Ms Halliday told Daily Mail Australia. Charlotte Halliday, 23, from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, gave birth to little Charlie on April 18th The little boy was born after a 'textbook perfect' pregnancy but shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with a severe cleft lip and palate (pictured with his mother and father) 'The look on everyone's faces told me something was wrong - I was so scared because I didn't know if it was to do with me or Charlie. 'It was terrifying.' Ms Halliday's mother told her that Charlie had a cleft palate and lip and two minutes later he was taken away to be checked on as his heart rate monitor was buzzing. 'I was devastated and terrified and just had so many mixed emotions - I was wondering how he was, whether he was going to be okay and whether he would be able to survive,' she said. 'The look on everyone's faces told me something was wrong - I was so scared because I didn't know if it was to do with me or Charlie,' she said Ms Halliday's mother told her that Charlie had a cleft palate and lip and two minutes later he was taken away to be checked on as his heart rate monitor was buzzing 'I was experiencing every single emotion at once. The pediatricians took him away and although he was breathing they had to take him away to check him over and I didn't see him for hours. It was so nerve-wracking because I was worried he wouldn't take a bottle. 'I had no idea if he was okay and doctors said we should expect to be in hospital for up to a month. Thankfully, except for the cleft lip and palate, he was perfectly healthy and happy and we were able to leave a few days later.' Ms Halliday and her partner Darren were thrilled to go home with their baby boy and were able to feed him using a specially designed bottle. 'It was so nerve-wracking at first because I was worried he wouldn't take a bottle or that I would hurt his mouth somehow,' Ms Halliday said. 'I was devastated and terrified and just had so many mixed emotions - I was wondering how he was, whether he was going to be okay and whether he would be able to survive,' she said Ms Halliday and her partner Darren were thrilled to go home with their baby boy and were able to feed him using a specially designed bottle What is a cleft lip and palate? Cleft lip and cleft palate describe an abnormal gap in either the upper lip or the roof of the mouth. It occurs when some parts of the mouth fail to join together during early pregnancy. The lip and palate develop separately, which means it is possible for a baby to be born with only a cleft lip, only a cleft palate, or a combination of both. Source: Royal Children's Hospital of Melbourne Advertisement 'But he was feeding perfectly and was able to suck so we were very lucky.' Ms Halliday posted about Charlie on Facebook to thank the hospital for all of their support. And after receiving hundreds of supportive comments and requests to follow Charlie's updates, Ms Halliday decided to start a Facebook page about their experience titled Charlie's Journey. 'Despite the shock he's absolutely beautiful and perfect in our eyes and he's such a fighter already,' Ms Halliday said. 'I was worried at first about how people would respond to Charlie but people have been so amazing - we have had an overwhelming amount of support. 'I haven't had a single negative comment and everyone has been just amazing. I wouldn't have been able to get through all of this without them.' 'Despite the shock he's absolutely beautiful and perfect in our eyes and he's such a fighter already,' Ms Halliday said (Charlie pictured with his aunty) 'I was worried at first about how people would respond to Charlie but people have been so amazing - we have had an overwhelming amount of support,' she said Charlie, who is a perfectly happy and content little boy, will have his first lip surgery at three or four months old and will have his lip taped down in May. He will then have another bigger surgery at eight or nine months on his palate and multiple surgeries down the track to fix complications involving his teeth and hearing. Ms Halliday, who has had the support of many parents in a similar situation, urges those who do have a child born with a cleft palate and/or lip to surround themselves with a support network. 'Expect the unexpected, thank God your baby is healthy and that nothing is seriously wrong,' she said. Updates on little Charlie's surgeries and his progress can be found on his Facebook page, Charlie's Journey. Beating odds of 100,000 to one, Simone Burstow, 33, welcomed identical twin girls on September 4 last year. She already had identical twin boys Oliver and Harrison, four. Coming from a family of four herself means the Brisbane-based mum is used to 'chaos' in her life, but she has taken some measures to ensure everyday life isn't too challenging. It is a bit of a military operation. I think it would be easier if we just stayed at home each day but we try to get out and do things all the time,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Simone and John have four children: Identical twin boys and identical twin girls 'It's nice to have a staggered start. We'll eat breakfast with the boys and then they might go off to kindy so we'll then get time with Evie and Georgia,' the mum-of-four said 'We don't want the boys to miss out and likewise we want Evie and Georgia to make lasting memories too.' In order to balance two separate napping schedules and daily routines, Simone finds it easier to get up before anyone else in the family. 'We're lucky our kids sleep really well. I get up at about 5.30am and try and do some exercise, at least three times a week, and prepare dinner. 'I find if I can chop up the veggies and have our night meal sorted that 5pm rush is slightly less crazy,' she said. 'If I go out to exercise I'm back by 6.30am ready for the first little ones to get up.' Evie and Georgia (pictured) dress similarly because it's easier for mum Simone to think about two outfits instead of four 'We've set ourselves a goal to go to Noosa before I go back to work. But we're going to have to drive because a plane with four little ones... it's a bit much right now,' she said Her boys, Harrison and Oliver, are normally the first to rise which means Simone and her husband John can spend time with their boys separately from the girls. 'It's nice to have a staggered start. We'll eat breakfast with the boys and then they might go off to kindy so we'll then get time with Evie and Georgia. 'We try to get one-on-one time with each child,' she said. Simone hasn't gone back to work yet but is looking to do so after the girls turn one. For now she's normally with the kids all day with help from her own family. 'We rely a fair bit on family support. Normally my mum will come around to help, particularly if my husband goes away for the night to work in Sydney. We're lucky to have aunties and uncles around us as well,' she said. Simone Burstow, 32, (pictured with husband John) welcomed identical twin girls on September 4 She said she and her husband had shared 'a bit of a joke' about what they'd do if they had twins again As far as dressing her children goes Simone is a keen fan of dressing up her twins wearing the same things. But it's for a very useful reason. 'Even though it does look cute it also means less deciding. Think about how long it takes you to decide what to wear in the morning and then multiply that by four... it's just easier to have two outfits to decide on then four,' she said. The family are looking to go on their first holiday together but have to plan carefully before the big day arrives. 'We've set ourselves a goal to go to Noosa before I go back to work. But we're going to have to drive because a plane with four little ones... it's a bit much right now. She said that this pregnancy was riskier than that she experienced with her twin boys 'It was harder. I was sicker and a lot more uncomfortable,' she said of the pregnancy. 'We'll certainly look like Packed to the Rafters driving with all of the prams and portable cots. I think we decided on going for at least a week to make all of the organising worth it,' she said. Simone has previously spoken of her 'very big shock' at discovering she was expecting a second set of twins. 'It was unexpected,' Simone told Daily Mail Australia. There had been no family history of twins. The 33-year-old discovered the incredible news during her 12 week scan and revealed that she and her husband John had shared 'a bit of a joke' about what they'd do if they had twins again - never expecting it to actually happen. The labour lasted less than four hours - with Evie born first weighing 2 kilos 'I could not believe it,' she said. 'His face was hilarious'. She said that this pregnancy was riskier than what she experienced with her twin boys, partly because she had previously suffered an ectopic pregnancy and partly because the girls shared a placenta, while her boys did not. 'It was harder. I was sicker and a lot more uncomfortable,' she said of the pregnancy. 'Towards the end, one of the girls' growth started to slow down. We ended up having them at 35 weeks.' Ms Burstow said that while the boys were a little unsure at first, they were 'really fascinated' by the girls. 'As they've spent more time together they've been really beautiful with them,' she said of her boys' reaction to their siblings. 'I was quite anxious because I knew they were going to be really small,' Ms Burstow said of her thoughts before the birth. Simone gave birth naturally but was induced and the labour lasted less than four hours. 'I was quite anxious because I knew they were going to be really small,' the mum-of-four said, explaining she was worried about what that meant. 'With the boys they were really good sizes but with the girls I knew it was going to be different. But they were so healthy. They were crying and doing all the right things, she said. The girls were in separate amniotic sacs and Evie was born first, weighing 2 kilos, while Georgia came out second, weighing 2.2 kilos. Simone said her first thought was 'Oh my goodness they look so perfect'. 'I got a cuddle straight away,' she said. 'I had Evie on my chest as I delivered Georgie so it was a really lovely experience.' You can follow Simone's journey on Instagram and Facebook. With two sets of identical twins now in the family, Ms Burstow said there was an art to telling them apart. Her rather famous ex has been putting on a series of very public displays of affection with his girlfriend in recent months. But Cressida Bonas appeared not to be giving Prince Harry a second thought when she stepped out in London with an old flame this week. The actress and socialite, who dated the redheaded royal for two years, was spotted cuddling up to boyfriend Harry Wentworth-Stanley in Notting Hill. The on-again off-again pair, who are believed to have reunited last year, looked loved-up as they strolled along trendy Westbourne Grove. Scroll down for video Cressida Bonas cuddles up to her on-again off-again boyfriend Harry Wentworth-Stanley in London's Notting Hill on Sunday. The actress famously dated Prince Harry for two years Cressida, 28, looked fresh-faced as she went makeup free in a pared-back denim ensemble teamed with platform trainers. Her 6ft 6in boyfriend, a chartered surveyor and former public schoolboy, was born in Hampshire but now lives in London. The pair are believed to have enjoyed a romance while studying together at Leeds University before briefly reuniting in 2015 - with the couple reportedly nicknamed 'Water-Cress' by friends. The Mulberry model subsequently dated Wolf Hall actor Edward Holcroft, but it seems she is now very much back on with Wentworth-Stanley. History: The pair enjoyed a romance while studying together at Leeds University before briefly reuniting in 2015 - with the couple affectionately named 'Water-Cress' by friends The pair, who are believed to have reunited last year, looked loved-up as they strolled from shop to shop. Cressida recently supported Harry's charity rowing challenge Harry recently completed a high-profile rowing challenge with three friends in memory of his older brother, James, who took his life in 2006. The group raised over half a million pounds. The Old Harrovian set up Team Row For James with school friends Sam Greenly, from Andover, Hampshire, and Toby Fenwicke-Clennell, from Essex, and Rory Buchannan, from London, whom he also met at Leeds. Ever the supportive girlfriend, Cressida shared a series of updates on their progress via Facebook while they completed the 3,000-mile row across the Atlantic in 60 days. Cressida was there to meet him at the finish line in Antigua, and Harry posted a picture of her on Instagram praising 'the weird and wonderful women in my life'. Queen Letizia matched her outfit to the moody Valencia skies as she attended an engagement in the city today. The Spanish Queen wore a woollen grey dress with a tie-belt and a matching coat to visit the Cardinal Herrera University. She was seen taking shelter beneath an umbrella as she arrived for the conference on rare diseases, but despite the less than spring-like conditions, her smile remained firmly in place. Queen Letizia's grey ensemble matched the moody skies in Valencia today, where she attended a talk on rare diseases at a university The Queen was seen taking cover under an umbrella as she arrived at the Cardinal Herrera University today The monarch's dress was cinched at the waist with a co-ordinating belt, trimmed with the same purple fabric that lined her coat. She teamed the outfit with a pair of sky high snakeskin stilettos, and finished her look with eye-catching drop earrings. The clutch bag tucked beneath her arm was grey to match her dress. Earlier this week the typically sleek Letizia experimented with a boho look, braiding her hair in festival-style to visit Tenerife with her husband King Felipe VI. But today her locks were loose in her signature style. Letizia wore a knee-length woolen dress tied with a matching belt with purple trim, and a co-ordinating coat over the top She strode into the university in Valencia today on a pair of teetering snakeskin stilettos Later the Queen slipped off her coat as she chatted with children at the event today Later the Queen slipped off her coat to reveal her sleeveless dress - and her impressively toned arms - to full effect. She visited the university in Valencia today for a talk on rare diseases at its Faculty of Health Sciences. She was seen chatting to children and greeting members of staff at the event. She made an emotional return to her roots this week, on an official visit to South Africa. And despite a whirlwind schedule, Princess Charlene looked the epitome of glamour in a floor length red dress as she gave a speech on water safety at a glittering gala in Johannesburg to celebrate the work of her charitable foundation. The mother-of-two, 39, looked ready for the red carpet in the chic number, accessorising with diamond pendant earrings and she allowed her natural glow to shine through by keeping her make-up minimal and natural. But home life was never far from her mind as she interrupted a chat with local celebrities when she got a call from her husband Prince Albert, saying: 'I have got to speak to the prince.' Her husband was no doubt calling with an update on their twins Jacques and Gabriella, two, who he is caring for at home. Princess Charlene of Monaco was resplendent in red as she gave an impassioned speech on water safety at a glittering gala in Johannesburg during her official visit to South Africa Charlene filmed an interview with presenter Jo-Ann Strauss for the TV show Top Billing in Johannesburg The royal, 39, is in South Africa promoting the work of The Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation, which teaches swimming and lifesaving skills. In an impassioned speech, she said: 'Every 85 seconds someone loses their life to drowning. Globally, it is the third leading cause of accidental death. 'Many of these deaths are preventable and I am determined to put a stop to this by educating children about water safety and teaching them to swim. 'Together we will save lives - one person, one family, one community at a time.' The princess shares a tender moment with a young royal fan at Turffontein Race Course Charlene looked chic in a black and white striped dress and a januty cap as she attended the races with her brother Sean While in Johannesburg she also recorded an interview with presenter Jo-Ann Strauss for the show, Top Billing, which will be broadcast this week. It's been a busy visit for the princess who dropped in on Gugulesizwe Primary School in Daveyton, Benoni close to where she grew up, where she gave students lessons in CPR and first aid. The former Charlene Wittistock was born in Zimbabwe, but relocated to South Africa with her family when she was 11. She also attended the Princess Charlene Empress Club Stake horse race at Turffontein Race Course with her brother Sean. The new Miss South Africa, Demi-Leigh Nel-Pieters poses with Princess Charlene of Monaco during the Princess Charlene Ladies Day at Turfontein Race course The race is held to raise money for Gugulesizwe Primary School, the Red Cross and Highveld Horse Care Unit. Charlene is visiting South Africa on behalf of the Red Cross and her own charitable foundation. The royal represented South Africa at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 in the 3 x 100m medley relay, the same year she met Prince Albert at a swimming competition in Monaco. She retired from competitive swimming in 2007 and set up her foundation in 2012. Her charity focuses on three key areas: learning to swim, water safety, and sport and education programs. Looking at the world through the eyes of the Web Starbucks might have made Instagram history with its highly social-media-worthy Unicorn Frappuccino - but the chain has apparently retained some commitment to proper coffee. The Seattle-based coffee giant announced on Wednesday it would open a glamorous new location on Chicago's upscale Magnificent Mile. Starbucks' new Reserve Roastery is set to open in 2019 on the busy retail corridor. It will be the second of its kind, since the chain opened its first Roastery in Seattle in December 2014. Gourmet: Starbucks announced Wednesday it will open an upscale location on Chicago's glamorous Magnificent Mile (pictured) focused on small-batch coffee Experience: The chain already has a similar location in Seattle (pictured) where customers can pick between various brewing methods after a chat with a 'coffee specialist' In lieu of the sugary Unicorn Frappuccino, the chain plans to dedicate the new location to custom-brewed coffee and has promised to partner with an Italian baker famed for his bread to provide freshly baked goods. The four-story, 43,000-square-foot Roastery, described by Starbucks as a 'fully sensorial coffee environment', will serve small-batch coffee that will be roasted, brewed and packaged on the premises. It will be located on North Michigan Avenue and Erie Street in the famous shopping area, where more than 460 retailers have settled. After a chat with a 'coffee specialist', customers will also be able to pick between various brewing methods, such as the siphon or the pour-over, as is currently the case at the Seattle location. Artisan: The Roastery, described by Starbucks as a 'fully sensorial coffee environment', will serve coffee that will be roasted, brewed and packaged on-site (pictured is the Seattle shop) Different: Starbucks' promises for its new promises seem to depart from the highly Instagram-worthy Unicorn Frappuccino, which didn't even contain coffee (pictured is the Seattle shop) Starbucks is also stepping up its food offerings by partnering with Italian baker Rocco Princi. The coffee chain invested in Princi's namesake company in July 2016, and he has now been tasked with providing on-site baking in all Roastery locations for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Howard Schultz, Starbucks' executive chairman, said Chicago was a 'very special city' for him because it's where the chain opened its first location outside of Seattle almost 30 years ago. Another Roastery is scheduled to open in 2018 in New York City, with plans to unveil more locations in Shanghai late this year, as well as in Milan and Tokyo in 2018. Ultimately, Starbucks is looking to open 20 to 30 Roastery locations around the world - a microscopic amount compared to its 24,000-plus regular coffee shops. In an incredible show of generosity, a New York mom and her six sons grew and donated an incredible 17 feet of hair to help children in need. Phoebe Kannisto and her boys signed up for the project together back in 2015, with the mom having been regularly donating her hair since she was teenager. She was spurred into action for this latest endeavor for a very personal reason, having had a good friend lose her young son to cancer. The boy was very similar in age to Phoebe's own identical twin sons Silas and Emerson, both now eight. A long road: Phoebe Kannisto of Cheektowaga, New York, and her six sons grew their hair out for two years to donate to children in need Body of work: Phoebe has been donating her hair since she was a teenager, but her sons began getting involved after one of her friend's lost a child to cancer Pretty impressive: All in all the seven family members were able to donate 17 feet of hair 'So on the first anniversary of his passing my three oldest sons donated their hair in his memory and thats kind of how it started,' Phoebe told ABC News. Along with the twins and Phoebe's oldest son Andre, 10, they also enlisted the help of their five-year-old fraternal triplet siblings Herbie, Reed and Dexter. Phoebe also has a two-year-old daughter Marah Taylor, but she of course was unable to participate due to her age. After two years of growth, Monday was finally the day that they decided their hair-growth journey had come to an end. New cuts: The mom and her six boys posed for before and after photos on the day of the cuts Commitment: Some of the boys were teased at school as they grew their hair, but stuck with it The seven members of the Kannisto family headed into the Hizair Hair Salon near their home in Cheektowaga and went under the scissors. All in all the stylists at the salon clipped 17 feet of hair from six boys and their mother, and were so moved by the gesture that they refused to take payment for the cuts. The hair was then delivered to the Children with Hair Loss organization, which helps create wigs and the like for kids with medically related hair loss. The big day: The whole family is already planning for their next donation, which will also include the help of two-year-old sister Marah Taylor The family later shared their achievement with pairs of before and after photos posted online. While the boys waited patiently for their locks to grow, some were bullied at school for their appearance, yet are apparently already keen on starting all over again for another donation. Taking to ABC, Phoebe confirmed the news, adding that toddler Marah Taylor is now also keen to join the unique family pastime. 'We promised her we'd all go again so she could do it with us,' Phoebe said. Forget about the snap General Election, Trumps presidency and a Gallic political wife old enough to be her husbands mother. Whats really left Britains middle classes reeling is the national hummus/houmous/humus (however you spell it) crisis. The Middle Eastern dip has become as much of a staple of our shopping baskets as wholemeal bread, semi-skimmed milk and perfectly ripened avocados. We eat 12,000 tonnes of the stuff a year, for goodness sake. Or we did, until consumers around the country described own-brand hummus in Waitrose, Sainsburys, Marks & Spencer and Tesco as tasting uncharacteristically metallic, fizzy and, well, really not nice. Crisis: The Middle Eastern dip has become as much of a staple of our shopping baskets as wholemeal bread, semi-skimmed milk and perfectly ripened avocados The major supermarkets immediately cleared their shelves, citing a production issue at their mutual supplier. Ever since, despondent hummus fans have been muttering in despair and, in some cases, even resorting to making their own at home with varying degrees of success. All of which might sound a bit over-dramatic to the uninitiated, to whom hummus might be just a smelly beige paste in a plastic pot languishing long past its sell-by date in the back of fridge. Here, we bring you everything youve ever wanted to know about our favourite superfood including its unexpected aphrodisiacal qualities that can add a surprising (albeit rather garlicky) va va voom in the bedroom . . . Consumers around the country described own-brand hummus in Waitrose, Sainsburys, Marks & Spencer and Tesco as tasting uncharacteristically metallic, fizzy EXOTIC ORIGINS Hummus is a 1,300-year-old peasant dish from the Middle East made of cooked and mashed chickpeas or other beans, sesame paste (tahini), lemon, garlic and salt. It is traditionally served on a large plate, drizzled with olive oil and herbs and accompanied by fresh pitta bread, tomato, onion, cucumber salad and maybe, for a flourish, some falafel (fried chickpea balls). HOW DO WE SPELL IT? There are five spellings in common use hummus, houmous, humus, hommus and hommos. The Oxford English Dictionary lists hummus first presumably because thats the Arabic word for chickpeas, but most supermarkets use houmous. You choose your favourite. Whats really left Britains middle classes reeling is the national hummus/houmous/humus (however you spell it) crisis A UK LOVE AFFAIR In 25 years, it has gone from an unusual vegetarian delicacy favoured by kaftan-wearing hippies, to a 70 million industry. Cookery guru Elizabeth David wrote about hummus back in 1955 in her book Mediterranean Food, but it was more recent celebrity chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Claudia Roden who helped to popularise it. Waitrose was the first supermarket to start stocking it in the late Eighties, followed by M&S in 1990 and Tesco and Sainsburys a few years later. Britain is the hummus capital of Europe, with an estimated 40 per cent of the population having pots of the stuff (however old) in the fridge. UPPER-CLASS TASTE It May be a fridge staple, but research shows that hummus consumption is still dominated by the upper and middle classes and tails off among the over-44s. WHO MAKES IT? While there are endless organic cottage industries churning out increasingly ambitious-sounding flavours, most of the Britains value hummus (regardless of supermarket chain) is made by just one now rather red-faced company, Bakkavor, which employs more than 18,000 people around the world in 43 facilities, including the UK. Last year, it was reported to be changing its British workers shift patterns in response to the growing demand for hummus. MIDDLE-CLASS CRISIS News of the hummus shortage caused uproar albeit tongue-in-cheek on social media. One disgruntled customer tweeted Sainsburys, writing: Well. Thats my Saturday night RUINED. Another said: Sainsburys this signals the end of the world! Two days no hummus . . . Its my staple! One made it political with: If the Lib Dems dont make the hummus crisis a centrepiece of the campaign, they dont really care about Remainers. And a far-seeing chap added: In future generations youll be able to tell your grandkids where you were during the great hummus shortage of 2017. News of the hummus shortage caused uproar albeit tongue-in-cheek on social media Social media was awash with jokes about the hummus shortage in supermarkts POTS OF HEALTH Hummus has a low GI (glycaemic index) value (meaning it wont send your blood sugar soaring) little saturated fat, tahini being a relatively healthy source of oil, and is so protein-rich it helps to improve bone, muscle, skin and blood health. The stuff is recommended by the NHS website for pregnant women ideally served with wholemeal pitta bread and carrot sticks. Its a protein-rich snack to fight hunger cravings, while its high iron content can help boost both energy and willingness to exercise. But it is also very salty and not particularly low-cal. Last year, campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health branded it a salt and fat trap. Each 100g serving contains around 280 calories, or about a sixth of a womans recommended daily intake. Marks & Spencers Caramelised Onion Houmous contained 1.53g salt per 100g the equivalent of more than four packets of ready salted crisps. Hummus has a low GI (glycaemic index) value (meaning it wont send your blood sugar soaring) SPICE IT UP If youre looking to perk things up a bit in the bedroom, swap oysters for a pot of hummus. According to chef Fed Federer, chickpeas are the Queen of Aphrodisiacs. As well as bursting with iron, magnesium, zinc and potassium all of which help in sexual function and boost energy they contain arginine, an amino acid that increases blood circulation and helps out in other areas. CHICKPEA WARS Over the years, everyone from the Egyptians to the Greeks to the Mediterranean countries have bickered over the right to claim hummus as their national dish. The major supermarkets immediately cleared their shelves, citing a production issue Unsurprisingly, Israel and Lebanon took things further. After endless rows about whod invented it, in October 2008 the latter tried unsuccessfully to sue Israel for stealing hummus, claiming Lebanon exported the first hummus dish in 1959 and petitioning the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade to request protected status from the European Commission for hummus as a uniquely Lebanese food. They didnt make much headway. One Israeli critic claimed that trying to make a copyright claim over hummus was like claiming for the rights to bread or wine. So instead, the Lebanese redoubled their efforts in the largest hummus batch in the world competition and, in 2010, 300 cooks in the village of Al-Fanar, near Beirut, set a new record for Lebanon with a 10,450kg hummus more than twice the size of Israels previous record-breaking attempt. HUMMUS HILARITY Did you hear about the vegetarian who died during dinner? Police are calling it a hummus side. What do you call hummus thats gone bad? Post-hummus. Whos the newest member on the evolutionary tree? Hummus-sapiens. Apparently Greece has reduced its exports of hummus and taramasalata. Theyre saying its a double-dip recession . . . SWEET OR SOUR? DIY RECIPE With shelves bare, the desperate can always make their own, with: 7oz canned chickpeas 2 crushed garlic cloves 100ml tahini 4 tbsp water 2 tbsp lemon juice 1 tsp ground cumin Rinse and drain chickpeas. Combine ingredients in a food processor, blend until creamy. Serve at room temperature with a dash of extra lemon juice, a pinch of salt to taste and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Advertisement Give or take an extra squeeze of lemon, the basic recipe chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice and salt remained sacred for 800 years. Until recently, when chefs, supermarkets and foodies started dreaming up increasingly hip and trendy and, some might say, deeply unappetising flavours. Peanut butter hummus, anyone? Or maybe beetroot, horseradish and sage; jalapeno, banana and cocoa; pizza; wasabi or chocolate mousse flavour. For the (slightly) less adventurous there is avocado hummus; lemon and coriander, caramelised onion or red pepper. All, naturally, at rather inflated prices. HOW TO EAT IT As a dip for vegetables and crisps, spread on pitta bread, slathered in sandwiches, or as a main course with falafel and salads. But according to Israeli-born British chef Yotam Ottolenghi, you must never, ever serve it straight from the fridge. It kills the flavour, he says. And when sharing hummus with friends, whatever you do, never double-dip your crudites. The Queen may rule over the people of Britain but her taste in food is refreshingly ordinary, it has been revealed. From spicy Tabasco sauce to a can of fizzy Coca-Cola, dozens of everyday, affordable brands that are stocked on supermarket shelves up and down the country have been granted a royal warrant by Her Majesty. A warrant from Queen Elizabeth II means that a company has supplied her and her household with some of its products for at least five years out of seven and is generally seen as a mark of excellence. Today, Walkers has been awarded its second seal of approval for the supply of shortbread to the Queen. But what are the other snacks and drinks that fill the kitchen shelves of Buckingham Palace? FEMAIL has rounded up the very normal foods and drinks that are thought to be a favourite of the 91-year-old monarch. CHOCOLATE Charbonnel et Walker - makers of luxury chocolates - have a royal warrant, as does Bendick's which is famous for its mint chocolate selection boxes The Queen's favourite chocolate brands Cadbury Prestat Charbonnel et Walker Nestle Bendicks Advertisement The Queen is certainly partial to a sweet treat - her favourite being a homemade chocolate biscuit cake made by her chefs which she has a piece of every day. But just like the rest of us, she likes to indulge in a chocolate bar now and again too. She favours luxury chocolate brands Prestat and Charbonnel et Walker - most famous for its pink Marc de Champagne truffles. But Her Majesty doesn't just favour posh chocolates. It's claimed that Cadbury makes her a special recipe dark chocolate bar every Christmas. The company holds a royal warrant so it's perceivable that's she's also partial to a bar of Dairy Milk and a mug of warming Cadbury hot chocolate too as the royal coat of arms are on both of these products. Nestle - the makers of Kit Kats, Quality Street and Rolos among others - also supplies the royal household. CHAMPAGNE Champagne Bollinger is one of seven Champagne brands that hold royal warrants and supply the Queen and her household It's the drink associated with luxury and refined society, so it's no wonder then that there are no fewer than seven champagne makers who have been given the seal of approval by the Queen's household. Bollinger has held a royal warrant since 1884, when it was awarded by Queen Victoria. And it's remained a staple of the royal household ever since. SOFT DRINKS Surprisingly, Coca-Cola holds a royal warrant - meaning that the Queen could well be partial to a fan of the fizzy drink The Queen's favourite soft drink brands Robinsons Lucozade Twinings (tea) Coca-Cola Schweppes Advertisement The Queen is reported to be a fan of gin and it's said she likes to drink it straight before lunch. But if she chooses to have it with tonic then she'll probably choose one made by Schweppes which holds a royal warrant. It also seems she and her household are partial to a fizzy drink as both Lucozade and Coca-Cola hold warrants too. We wonder what the Queen thinks of Lucozade's new recipe, which has seen its sugar slashed to less than 4.5g per 100ml. ALCOHOL Barcadi Martini is one of several alcoholic brands that the Queen's household favours The Queen's favourite tipples Tanqueray (gin) Taylor's (port) Pimm's Hine (cognac) Bulmer (cider) Barcadi Martini (vermouth) Angostura (bitters) Johnnie Walker (whiskey) Advertisement Aside from Champagne, the royal household has a few favourite tipples. It's been reported the Queen enjoys a glass of Dubonnet vermouth before lunch. Tanqueray Gordon & Co - which owns Gordon's as well as Tanqueray - makes Her Majesty's gins, though it's not confirmed if she prefers one brand over the other. The brands are all recognisable and sold on supermarket shelves up and down the country. CONDIMENTS Heinz holds a royal warrant, though it's not known which product in particular the Queen favours. Could it be the most famous and original Heinz product: tomato ketchup? The Queen's favourite condiment brands Tabasco Heinz Wilkin & Sons (Tiptree jams) Advertisement Heinz was first sold in the UK at Fortnum & Mason - greengrocer to the Queen - 145 years ago. So it's no surprise that the company holds a royal warrant - meaning the monarch could enjoy dipping her food into ketchup and even tucking into a late night beans on toast. It seems unlikely, but it is possible. BISCUITS, CAKES, AND CEREALS Today Walkers was granted a second seal of approval for the supply of its shortbread to the Queen after already being granted a warrant for the supply of oatcakes The Queen's favourite snack brands Walkers (shortbread and Scottish oatcakes) Kellogg's (especially Special K) Premier Foods (which owns Mr Kipling, Oxo, Lloyd Grossman sauces and Sharwood cooking sauces) Quaker Oats Jordans, Dorset Cereal and Ryvita United Biscuits (which owns McVitie's, Jacobs crackers and Twiglets) Weetabix Advertisement She spends every summer at Balmoral castle in Scotland so it's no surprise that Scottish family-run firm Walkers has been given the royal seal of approval for both its shortbread and its Scottish oatcakes. It's also been reported that the Queen starts her day with a bowl of Special K, as Kellogg's holds a royal warrant, but Weetabix is another option for Her Majesty. Premier Foods is yet another company given the thumbs up by the royal household. Mr Kipling made special cakes to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday last year, so it's a distinct possibility the monarch enjoys tucking into some of the company's cakes. The NHS trust at the heart of the ongoing baby death scandal has had to investigate 51 other 'serious incidents' over the past five years. A new freedom of information request has revealed the true scale of the crisis in maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust. Bosses at the trust have refused to disclose what the cases were, but some are believed to involve serious harm or even death. A new freedom of information request has revealed the true scale of the crisis in maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust - which runs Telford's Princess Royal Hospital and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (pictured) Earlier this month it was revealed that 15 babies had died while under the care of medics at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Seven of these tragic cases were deemed to be totally avoidable, inquests into their deaths claimed. Staff errors including failure to measure babies' heart rates and spot vital signs of infection are thought to be to blame. Rhiannon Stanton-Davies' daughter Kate passed away at the Trust in 2009 and she claims it has not learned from its past failures. She said: 'It's shocking that babies have continued to die needlessly despite everything the trust said it learned since Kate's death. 'You can't put this massive tragedy down to one thing. It's not one individual. It is that mistakes continue to happen, nothing is ever learned, and so more babies die. Rhiannon Stanton-Davies' daughter Kate (pictured) Kate died after midwives failed to notice Ms Stanton-Davies' risky pregnancy 'Even when the mistake are obvious, the trust has not learned from them. It's a toxic culture,' she told the Mirror. Kate died after midwives failed to notice Ms Stanton-Davies' risky pregnancy. At least four midwives are being investigated by the Nursing and Midwifery Trust. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered an investigation by two national NHS bodies into each of the deaths that occurred. The new investigation into the trust revealed that 23 serious incidents occurred in 2012/13. A further 14 happened the following year. Even when the mistake are obvious, the trust has not learned from them. It's a toxic culture Rhiannon Stanton-Davies However, it said national guidance on reporting these cases was different during this time, possibly explaining the high figures, the newspaper reported. It did accept the full blame for the 11 subsequent incidents that happened between 2014 and 2017, but it is unsure how this compares to other trusts across the country. Internal investigations were conducted on each of the cases as required by law. Mr Hunt's intervention comes little over a year after a report found its two hospitals were among 21 nationwide with an infant mortality rate more than 10 per cent higher than the average. The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust delivers about 4,700 babies each year, figures suggest. Its maternity services were severely criticised last year in an official report following the death of a baby in 2009. Simon Wright, chief executive of the trust, said last week: 'The death of a baby is the most tragic event imaginable and we again apologise unreservedly to the families involved. TRAGEDIES THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED Jenson Christopher Barnett (pictured with his parents Kate and Andrew) died after suffering brain damage in a botched forceps delivery in 2013 Jenson Christopher Barnett 2013. Died after suffering brain damage in a botched forceps delivery. Coroner said he should have had a caesarean. Ella and Lola Greene 2014. Stillborn twins after the Trust failed to properly read and interpret their heart rates. Oliver Smale 2015. Coroner said he would have survived if delivered earlier by caesarean section. Kye Hall 2015. His death was 'caused or contributed' to by the Trust, said the coroner, which failed to classify his mother as a high-risk pregnancy or listen to his heart beat. Graham Scott Holmes-Smith 2015. Died after a failure to properly monitor heart rate. Ivy Morris 2016. Ivy was born ten days after Graham but died four months later. The coroner ruled her death could have been prevented if appropriate monitoring of her heart rate had taken place during labour. Pippa Griffiths 2016. An inquest concluded an infection should have been spotted earlier. Jack Stephen Burn 2015. Died within days of Oliver Smale from group B Streptococcus infection. Sophiya Hotchkiss 2014. The family said no investigation was carried out. Advertisement 'The trust has carried out investigations into every case to ensure that lessons can be learned and apologise where feedback has been less than a family may wish.' It comes after the trust admitted that its medics ignored various warning signs that could have prevented twins from being stillborn. Kelly Jones, 31, delivered stillborn twins Ella and Lola in September 2014 after repeatedly telling staff she was in pain. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered an investigation by two national NHS bodies into each of the deaths that occurred Ms Jones, from Monkmoor, Shrewsbury, said she was ignored and became so worried she attempted to discharge herself from the Royal Shrewsbury. She told BBC News: 'The midwife came in crying, saying I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. My girls are gone because they couldn't be bothered doing their job.' An investigation revealed both babies died from oxygen starvation to the brain 'contributed to by delay in recognising deterioration in the foetal heart traces and the missed opportunities for earlier delivery'. In a letter to Ms Jones nine months after the twins' deaths, the Trust promised to improve the monitoring of baby's heart rates. Yet, just two months later, Kye Hall died at the Princess Royal Hospital aged just four days after staff failed to listen to his heart rate at two critical times. A monitor used in hospitals, called a cardiotocograph, indicates how the foetal heart rate is responding to the stress caused by the mother's contractions. The Trust says improvements have been made and mortality rates are now similar to the national average. The world's largest drug companies have threatened to abandon Britain unless the NHS gets an additional 20 billion a year. Financial limitiations imposed on the NHS may threaten all of Britains 30 billion life sciences sector as drug firms may reconsider working in the UK. Lisa Anson, president, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), said that the election is coming at a critical time and if politicians fail to prioritise health expenditure, Britain risks becoming 'a desert for healthcare innovation'. Medical research is a prime driver of economic growth, with each of the approximate 140,000 workers adding around 104,000 to Britain's economy - twice the UK average, ministers said. Patients and companies are suffering as treatment rationing means the NHS is no longer one of the top global healthcare systems, warns the ABPI. Drug firms threaten to abandon the UK unless an extra 20 billion a year is given to the NHS Is the NHS one step closer to privatisation? The NHS may borrow up to 10 billion from hedge funds to finance hospital repairs and increased GP care. If approved, the move will edge the health service one step closer to becoming private, experts claim. Its budget currently stands at around 120 million a year - with the additional funds giving it a boost of approximately eight per cent. Although this is not the first time the NHS has sought private investment, it appears to be the biggest sum ever requested. According to health chiefs, low interest rates give the NHS a 'golden opportunity' to raise money without relying on the minimal government funding. Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, has said billions of pounds are needed to help fund his vision of offering specialist tests and care at GP clinics. Advertisement Pharmaceutical companies will likely postpone launching their therapies in Britain as low spending means they may not be approved, said Ms Anson, The Times reported. Firms will also unlikely conduct clinical trials in the UK as new treatments are tested against the best existing therapies, which may not be available over here. Yet, certain Tory MPs have dismissed such claims as bluffing. The ABPI, which represents pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Novartis in the UK, says British health spending should match the G7 average of 11.3 per cent of its GDP, rather than its current 9.9 per cent. This additional 1.4 per cent equates to an increase of 20.8 million, on top of the current 120 billion annual NHS budget. Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, suggested last month that the development of new treatments will come second to investing in GPs and mental health services. Mr Stevens argued the NHS cannot afford to bankroll everything patients want. Limitations have also been enforced on treatments costing more than 20 million a year, even if they are believed to be good value. According to Ms Anson, pharmaceutical firms are open to discussions around paying greater taxes to fund NHS spending. This comes after GSK, Britains largest drugs company, announced an increase in first-quarter profits to 2 billion on revenues of 7.4 billion yesterday. Ms Anson said: 'Recent rationing signals are warning signs that we are eroding the industrial strategy, the research environment and access to new medicines by eroding the competitiveness of a key sector for a short-term affordability issue.' The life sciences sector covers genetics, reproduction, and the study of the cause of illnesses and their progression. Each of the UK's 140,000 medical workers adds around 104,000 to Britain's economy a year Ms Anson warned a lack of investment would force medical research to be refocused elsewhere in the world. Yet, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, argued that taxes have reached their maximum and firms arguing for greater investment must outline where cuts can be made. According to Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman, the Conservatives should commit to investing in healthcare. He said: 'It's deemed appropriate by the Conservatives to commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence yet they seem supremely relaxed about us spending less than other countries on health.' John Appleby, director of research and chief economist, the Nuffield Trust think tank, believes an additional 20 billion annual investment is not an unreasonable request, arguing it corresponds with what the NHS has previously received. A Conservative spokesman said: 'We can only continue to invest in our NHS, and maintain our world-leading position in life sciences, with strong and stable economic leadership and crucially, both depend on negotiating the good Brexit deal only Theresa May can achieve.' This comes after Labour's shadow health secretary pledged to pay nurses and doctors more, as well as increasing staff in hospitals, if they win the election. Jonathan Ashworth said a Labour government would scrap the 1 per cent cap on pay rises for NHS staff and ensure staffing levels were made safe by law. A couple have released photos of their newborn conjoined twins after defying doctors who advised they terminate the pregnancy. Chelsea Torres, 22, from Blackfoot, Idaho, gave birth to Callie and Carter at 37 weeks in January by cesarean section following a nerve-racking pregnancy. Doctors warned Ms Torres that the babies would unlikely survive beyond the 11-week pregnancy mark. Yet, Ms Torres and her husband Nick, 22, have been assured that the twins, weighing 4.5lb (2kg) each, are healthy. And despite seeking out the best surgeons in the country to separate the girls, they were told the girls are 'too healthy' to require separation. Between 40 and 60 percent of all conjoined twins are stillborn, with just over a third of those who do survive living less than a day, according to data from the University of Maryland. Conjoined twins Callie and Carter Torres are healthy and not in need of separation surgery Callie and Carter are omphalo-ischiopagus twins, which make up less than 5 percent of conjoined twins. This means they have just two legs and one pelvis between them, but have two separate torsos that face each other. Due to the type of condition the girls have, they do not share any vital organs. As omphalo-ischiopagus twins, Callie and Carter share the same pelvis and a set of legs, but each have their own vital organs, including a heart, liver, pancreas, digestive tract and lungs Their parents have adjusted to the challenge, ordering a custom made car seat and clothing Ms Torres said: 'I was extremely anxious my whole pregnancy. 'I had a planned a c-section and knowing the date I delivered was extremely hard. 'The labor was bad since I went for a planned c-section. CONJOINED TWINS: THE FACTS Births of conjoined twins, whose skin and internal organs are fused together, are rare. They are believed to occur just once in every 200,000 live births. Approximately 40 to 60 percent of conjoined twins arrive stillborn, and about 35 percent survive only one day. The overall survival rate of conjoined twins is somewhere between 5 percent and 25 percent. For some reason, female siblings seem to have a better shot at survival than their male counterparts. The reason for this is unknown. Omphalo-ischiopagus twins, like Callie and Carter Torres, make up less than five percent of all cases. The exact prevalence is unknown. Though rare for twins to refuse separation, it is not unheard of. In fact, this week the Daily Mail Online reported on Lupita and Carmen Andrade, 16, who insist they are happier together. The girls, from New Milford, Connecticut, are omphalopagus twins who share legs, ribs, a liver and their digestive, circulatory and reproductive systems. Separation surgery is thought to be risky because of the organs they share, but essential given that one spine is curving in such a way it is affecting their breathing. One of the first accounts of conjoined twins were Chang and Eng Bunker, who were born in 1811 in Siam (now Thailand) and toured the world together. Source: University of Maryland Advertisement 'They did the procedure and it felt really weird, but when they were here I was extremely happy. 'The first time I held them I was nervous because I had just had my c-section and they were so fragile to me.' Despite going against doctors orders, Ms Torres is relieved she continued with the pregnancy. She said: 'I'm so happy I didn't terminate Callie and Carter, they are amazing. 'I knew termination would not happen and I'm glad that little speck of thought I did have, I pushed away. Nick Torres, 22, and his wife Chelsea, also 22 (pictured with their three-year-old son Jaysin) defied doctors who advised an abortion after the conjoined twins were shown at an early scan 'My husband and I are very excited.' Ms Torres discovered she was pregnant with conjoined twins at her three-week scan. Despite being told the babies' survival chances were slim, they decided to continue with the pregnancy. Now three months old, the girls do not need separating. Ms Torres said: 'The doctors say because the girls are so healthy, they do not recommend separation.' Separating conjoined twins is a risky procedure and frequently results in the death of at least one of the individuals. Potential complications include blood clots, infections and heart problems. They were born by c-section after the family moved 1,400 miles nearer to a specialist hospital Doctors are often only willing to perform the operation if the twins' quality of life is so poor that it is worth taking the risk. Parents may also opt for the twins to remain conjoined rather than risk their death. The couple, who are also parents to three-year-old Jaysin, temporarily moved 1,400 miles to be closer to a specialist hospital in Houston, Texas. They have now resettled in their home in Idaho. Ms Torres said the past few months have been a huge adjustment. She added: 'Their clothing and car seats are completely different. We have to sew their clothing together and the car seat is custom made.' Ms Torres said some people stare at the twins, but people in their hometown are supportive Although some people stare at the family, Ms Torres adds that most are supportive. She said: 'Everyone in our hometown is supportive and knows our story. 'We get some people who stare and we get some people who say they have been following our journey.' In line with the exit poll predictions, BJP completed a spectacular victory in the civic polls, relegating AAP to a distant second. With the huge margin of victory, the party managed to reciprocate the embarrassment it had suffered at the hands of AAP in the Delhi assembly election. But how much was the victory the doing of BJP and how much were AAP and Arvind Kejriwal victims of their own failings? In line with the exit poll predictions, BJP completed a spectacular victory in the civic polls, relegating AAP to a distant second AAP rode to power in Delhi in 2015 with a massive mandate, winning 67 of the 70 seats, but in those two years, the party failed to deliver on several of its key promises, including action on the corruption front. Brand Modi at play Kejriwal, who had set new standards on campaigning methods and strategies, also fell behind to BJP as he made it a Kejriwal versus Narendra Modi battle in a civic poll and did not talk about local issues. There was always going to be only one winner in this face-off. Insiders said while the entire AAP leadership and the Delhi cabinet was busy electioneering in Punjab and Goa, the BJP made most use of the opportunity to make a dent into the middle-class voters, migrant population and the lower strata of society living in unauthorized colonies and slums. 'AAP's poll debacle in Punjab and Goa had dampened the spirit of party leaders. 'This was reflected in party's campaign which clearly lacked vigour,' an AAP leader said. Lost middle class The AAP also frequently blamed the Election Commission of India for its defeat in the assembly polls, which in turn projected the party as one incapable of humbly accepting defeat. Comparing both the elections, it is not difficult to understand why the middle-class of Delhi shifted its loyalty to the BJP. The reason behind the erosion of middle-class support is Kejriwal's failure to act against corruption, said sources. The party remained silent over Jan Lokpal. It failed to provide free wi-fi, CCTV cameras and new schools and colleges. Instead, the party was embroiled in a series of corruption charges and waste of public money. The Shunglu Committee report indicting the Delhi government just ahead of the polls was a severe blow. On the other hand, the BJP went to polls on three years of governance by the Modi government and also managed to nullify anti-incumbency factor by promoting all fresh faces. The BJP also highlighted the anti-corruption measures of the central government and its resolve to fight black money. Demonetisation and promoting digital modes of transaction were the biggest weapons of the BJP. Resurgence of Congress A rise in the fortunes of Congress also helped the BJP and hurt AAP. Congress, which was reduced to 9 per cent vote share in 2015 Assembly polls, has won more than 20 per cent votes in all the three corporations this time around. The rise in vote share has come at the expense of AAP as BJP too increased its vote share from 32 per cent in 2015 to 39 per cent now. Brand image is a powerful force in the car world. Ask someone if they'd rather own an Audi or a Skoda and the majority are likely to side with the former's more prestigious reputation. But the reality is there's very little difference between the two mechanically, as both are owned and manufactured by the VW Group. Car-maker Monopoly: The VW Group oversees 12 different vehicle brands currently, but do you know which ones they are? With powerhouse car companies monopolising today's market, we've created a quiz to see if you can match the correct vehicle brands to the group that owns them. Car dealer group Rybrook has compiled a list of parent companies that own different mainstream vehicle brands from around the world. And the information has had to be updated in the last few weeks following the PSA Group's decision to purchase Vauxhall in the UK (and the Opel brand in the rest of Europe) for 1.9billion in March. That deal has been agreed but is awaiting regulatory approval. It's a move that's become very common in recent years, with massive car groups looking to appeal to a variety of buyers who find different brands desirable, while keeping their manufacturing costs as low as possible. But now that overarching firms are gathering up a multitude of car badges, do you know who really owns who? Take our quiz below and test your brand-ownership knowledge. Let us know your score in the comments section below. If you're unable to see the quiz in the MailOnline app or in Facebook Instant Articles please click on the following link to view it on our website instead. You can see the full list of which groups own which car brands here. The Financial Conduct Authority estimates Coutts received around 15 complaints per 1,000 accounts The Queens banker Coutts & Co was Britains most complained about bank last year. The Financial Conduct Authority estimates the bank received around 15 complaints per 1,000 accounts. Since Coutts account holders are required to have around 500,000 in spare cash, its possible they feel entitled to a better class of service from their lender than most. Lloyds Banking Groups appointment of retired High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs, 66, to conduct a review into its toxic HBOS branch in Reading, will further enrage shareholders. What will Dame Lindas expertise be costing them, I wonder? When she prepared a report on disgraced BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall last year, she and co-author Dame Janet Smith shared fees of 724,000, if thats any guide. Star fund manager Terry Smith, 63, who recently moved to Mauritius to escape the noise of the UK investment sector, was back in the City yesterday for Frostrow Capitals spring investment seminar. He appeared uncharacteristically chirpy and relaxed as well as sporting a deep mahogany suntan. The paradise islands warm weather, sandy beaches and friendly 15 per cent tax rate is clearly doing wonders for the old cockney pugilist. Oddball ex-Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin's US Treasury team is enhanced by the arrival of former Blackrock executive Craig Phillips as an adviser. The Wall Street Journal describes Phillips, 62, as a brilliant financier and a volatile boss prone to dressing down subordinates with expletive-laced tongue-lashings. At Blackrock, colleagues says his blunt criticism would reduce quivering staff to tears. Sounds a proper charmer, doesnt he? Finally, my apologies to BBC economics editor Kamal Ahmed, whom I accused of passing off comments Philip Hammond made at a round table interview with journalists as though theyd been made to him personally. Kamal assures me the quotes used in his piece were from an interview he obtained with the Chancellor afterwards. I also erroneously put his age at 50. He is 49. Over my description of him as a snazzy boulevardier, however, I stand resolute. Have you any gossip for our City diary? Email: mrdeedes@dailymail.co.uk Brickmaker Ibstock was one of the days biggest losers after its largest shareholder sold their 25 per cent stake for more than 200 million. The Leicester-based construction firm edged down 2.4 per cent, or 5.4p, to 220.5p, after private equity firm Bain Capital declared that it wanted out. Despite initially planning to offload about half its shares, held through subsidiary Diamond, Bain decided to fully exit Ibstock following strong investor demand. Brickmaker Ibstock was one of the days biggest losers after its largest shareholder sold their 25 per cent stake for more than 200 million The sale raised more than 218 million after the 101.6 million shares were quickly snapped up by institutional investors at 215p each. Bain declined to comment last night, but it comes after the firm sold 10 per cent of its stake in Ibstock for 70.9 million in September. The FTSE 100 edged up 0.2 per cent, or 13.08 points, to 7288.72 as strong earnings updates from Standard Chartered (up 4 per cent) and Croda International (up 3.8 per cent) helped to offset losses in healthcare stocks. Nanotechnology firm Oxford Instruments was by far the biggest winner in the FTSE Small Cap index after offloading its industrial analysis business for 80 million. Oxford, which provides technology and systems for industry and research, sold the arm to software firm Hitachi, with the deal expected to complete next year. STOCK WATCH: Mariana Resources Mariana Resources advanced more than 60 per cent after announcing it will be bought for more than 84 per cent of its market value. The South America-focused gold miner will be bought for almost 167 million by precious metal financier Sandstorm Gold, which already owns a 7.6 per cent stake. Mariana shareholders will receive 28.8p in cash and 0.3 of a Sandstorm share for each Mariana share sold. Shares rose 61.3 per cent, or 36.5p, hitting a five-year high of 96p. Shares reached their highest level since July 2015, rising 11.8 per cent, or 100p, to 947.5p. Russian gold miner Petropavlovsk was also among the days winners after returning to profit last year following heavy losses in 2015. Its 2016 profit stood at 26.7 million, compared to a loss of 231.6 million in 2015, although revenue fell to 420.9 million from 467 million. Investor confidence was also buoyed by the firms claim it can cut debt to 467 million from 475 million by the end of the year. Shares jumped 3.7 per cent, or 0.27p, to 7.57p. Property developer U And I Group, on the other hand, had a nightmare as it became the latest firm to be hit by Brexit. Shares fell as the company revealed that development and trading gains for the year until February 28 were down to 35 million from 51.1 the previous year. Likewise, profit fell to 0.4 million from 25.8 million as the company struggled to generate interest in its portfolio of regeneration projects across London, Manchester and Dublin. Chief executive Matthew Weiner said it was hit by a slowdown in activity following last years referendum, which raised questions around valuations in the housing market. After a large initial drop, U And I finished down 1.8 per cent, or 3.5p, at 189p. Back-office software firm EG Solutions rose despite chief executive Elizabeth Gooch offloading a large chunk of shares for the third time in a month. Gooch sold 410,000 shares worth 250,000 as part of an agreement with shareholders to reduce her stake to improve the availability of the companys cash and assets. She still has more than 4 million shares, equal to a 17.8 per cent stake. Earlier in April she sold just over 793,000 shares worth 484,000. At the end of March she sold a 49,800 stake as the firm announced a 2.1 million contract with a leading global bank. Shares rose 1.5 per cent, or 1p, to 66.5p. Big data specialist Rosslyn Data Technologies saw 4.3 million wiped off its value after it announced that it will fund its 2.6 million acquisition of software firm Integritie with a share placing. The tech firm plans to raise around 4.5 million by placing 100 million shares at 4.5p each. The cash raised will be used to develop Rosslyns existing product range. Rosslyns shares sank 27 per cent, or 2.12p, to 5.75p. Chicken king Ranjit Boparan has bought a 29.9 per cent stake in butcher Crawshaw for 5.1 million MEAL DEAL Chicken king and Birmingham's first self-made billionaire Ranjit Boparan, who owns the 2 Sisters Food Group, has bought a 29.9 per cent stake in butcher Crawshaw for 5.1 million. PENSION PULLOUT Savers have now withdrawn more than 10 billion since pension freedom rules changed in April 2015, HMRC figures show. GOING UP Plane maker Boeing boasted a 19 per cent profit rise in the first three months of the year. TAPE MEASURES All traders conversations should be recorded to prevent illegal behaviour, according to new Bank of England rules. JUPITER RISING Investors ploughed more than 1.3 billion into fund manager Jupiter during the first three months of 2017. HBOS SCANDAL Retired High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs is to investigate claims of a cover-up over the HBOS fraud, in which bankers destroyed businesses and spent the assets on luxuries. CASH PLEA Lender Credit Suisse is seeking 3.1 billion from investors to shore up its financial position. HOT PROPERTY Demand for commercial property is growing as investors bet on the UKs prosperity, according to a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. GAS SALE Mining giant BHP Billiton said it might sell some of its US shale gas assets as it focuses on oil. WASTE BURNER Power station operator Drax has bought two US biomass pellet plants for 26.4 million. TOP SPOT Engineering group Assystem has appointed Sylvie Houliere Mayca as its second woman on its executive committee. JOB SWAP Paul McDade, the incoming boss of Tullow Oil has defended the companys plans to appoint outgoing chief executive Aidan Heavey as chairman. HEAVY METAL Miner Antofagasta saw gold production fall 41.5 per cent this quarter while copper fell 16.4 per cent, compared to the previous quarter. OIL WELL UK-focused oil and gas producer IGas said revenues climbed to 30.5 million last year and losses narrowed to 32.9 million. It produced an average of 2,355 barrels of oil per day in 2016 and expects that to rise to 2,500 this year. HOME HELP Homeware manufacturer Portmeirion has appointed Mike Raybould as finance director. Struggling Deutsche Bank has been attacked for threatening to pull 4,000 staff out of London as part of a German lobbying operation to hurt the City. The lender - which has close ties to Germanys Europhile government - said it could shift nearly half its 9,000 UK staff abroad because of Brexit. Chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat made the apocalyptic claim at a Frankfurt conference organised by a lobby group which exists to promote the city as a financial centre. Struggling Deutsche Bank has been attacked for threatening to pull 4,000 staff out of London as part of a German lobbying operation to hurt the City She said: For front office people, if you want to deal with an EU client, you need to be based in the EU. Does it mean I have to move all the front office people to Germany or not? Were speaking of 2,000 people. Another 2,000 roles in risk management could also be affected, she said. LSE MERGER HOPES London Stock Exchange boss Xavier Rolet has said he still has an appetite for deals despite the failed tie-up with the Germans. The chief executive who spearheaded a doomed 21 billion merger with rival Deutsche Boerse said he was actively engaged in a hunt for acquisitions. He also unveiled a 17 per cent rise in profits to 409.1 million, driven partly by the weaker pound. A big boost came from the firms clearing house LCH, which is Europes biggest centre for euro trading. The City welcomed the results, sending shares surging 1.2pc, or 41p, to an all-time high of 3348p. But experts poured scorn on her words, pointing out that last month the bank announced plans to move into a large office in the heart of London. Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, said: Deutsche Bank obviously has a strong relationship with the German government that it will want to protect, but it does a huge amount of business in London. It would be very odd to move into a new building and then not fill it. Veteran City commentator David Buik, of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said: Frankfurt is a perfectly pleasant city but theres no way that it has the infrastructure to house 4,000 investment bankers at the drop of a hat. This doesnt make the slightest bit of sense. Deutsche is in talks to take a 500,000 sq ft office in the heart of London, committing to a UK presence until at least 2048. Advertisement It was the historic Civil Rights march that brought Martin Luther King Jr. into the nations spotlight. But the tiny moments from the 1957 demonstration, Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, would have otherwise been overlooked had it not been for a novice freelance photographer who is exhibiting his pictures for the first time - 51 years after they were ignored. Lee Friedlander, now 82, documented the ordinary and intimate moments during the landmark event organized - during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement - to end segregation in public schools. Scroll down for video History in the making: Martin Luther King Jr., then 28 years old, delivered a rousing speech, Give us the Ballot, at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, organized on May 17 1957 to end segregation in public schools. Dressed in clergy robes, he is pictured on the podium while other Civil Rights leaders Bishop Sherman Lawrence Greene, Bishop William Jacob Walls, Roy Wilkins, and Asa Philip Randolph (last four on the first row, left to right) keenly look on. Walls and Greene spoke earlier but the last speech of the day had been reserved for Dr King, who addressed segregation, voting rights and the racial violence that was widespread in America at the time Working the crowd: 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, which was the first large-scale gathering of African Americans at the venue. Freelance photographer Lee Friedlander, then 22 years old, focused on capturing ordinary and intimate moments like this picture showing a father cradling his daughter. Such moments may have been overlooked since many photographers at the time just took pictures of the distinguished speakers Center of attention: The address cemented Dr King's status as the top Civil Rights orator. Two days after the speech, a crowd of close to 2,000 crammed into Philadelphias Zion Baptist Church to get a glimpse of the budding leader. Dr King is pictured here in the middle of a swarm of marchers and reporters and on his left in a dapper black coat is Elmer Carter, the chairman of New York's State Commission against Discrimination, an organization set up in 1945 to ensure companies didn't factor race, creed or religion when hiring On May 17, 25,000 marchers gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and heard Dr King address the nation for the first time. In his speech entitled Give Us the Ballot, the budding leader spoke about desegregating schools and public spaces, expanding voting rights for African Americans and ending the racial violence that ravaged America. The speech came just four months before nine Black students were prevented from attending Little Rock Central High School in Alabama, even though the Supreme Court had ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Dr Kings address compelled then-President Dwight K. Eisenhower to enforce the ruling and cemented his status as a poignant orator. A noted news editor at the time, James Hicks, even hailed him as the top Negro leader after the rousing address. La Tanta Autry, the curator of the exhibition called Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, says Dr Kings speech garnered the attention of many and was the stepping stone towards landmark government bills and resolutions. Dr King wasnt well known at the time and there were many people who hadnt heard him talk, she told DailyMail.com. He was different because he spoke in a lower tone - a very different approach from the leading Civil Rights figures at the time. People responded positively and later that year a Civil Rights Act of 1957 was ratified, a step towards the main Civil Rights Act of 1964. Rosa Parks, Sammy Davis Jr. and Harry Belafonte were among those in attendance but Friedlander also focused on those in the crowd who were ignored by other photographers at the time, eager to get perfect shots of the speakers and celebrities who had attended. The women in charge: Among those in attendance were prominent Civil Rights leaders Rosa Parks (center) and Ella Baker (right). Parks had become a prominent figure in 1955 after she was jailed for refusing to give up her seat in a public bus to a white bus rider in Montgomery, Alabama. While other African Americans had also defied the bus segregation rules, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - NAACP - deemed Parks as the one to rally behind because they claimed she was older and had a good reputation. On Parks's right is her mentor and one of the event's lead organizers, Ella Baker, who has been called the 'most influential woman in the Civil Rights Movement'. Once the highest ranking woman at the NAACP, she emphasized a grassroots approach to racial equality during her 50-year career A friend in deed: Harry Belafonte, pictured at the Prayer Pilgrimage with his wife Julie (center) and actress Ruby Dee (right), often used his celebrity to fundraise for the Civil Rights movement. He even raised $50,000 to bail Dr King in 1963 after he was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama. During this event, Belafonte apparently remarked to a friend, 'We play the hit and run game up here. We come down here like this and say our piece and then its all over. But the Rev. Martin Luther King has to go back and face it all over again' 'Queen of Gospel': Pictured in a floral hair band and a black cardigan, gospel artist Mahalia Jackson performed two solos at the Prayer Pilgrimage. Jackson - who has been hailed as the 'Queen of Gospel' - was a world renowned singer who would often sing before Dr King's speeches. Just a year before this event, her house was bombed after she performed before his address at the boycott of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Harry Belafonte (left) described Jackson as 'the single most powerful black woman in the United States' The then-22-year-old wove through the attendees at the march - the first large-scale gathering of African Americans at the Lincoln Memorial - photographing their facial expressions and body language and accurately highlighting the urgency of an event often unheralded in Americas history. The march fell on a Sunday and mimicked a church service because it featured spirituals, speeches from pastors and songs from notable gospel artists including Mahalia Jackson - the Queen of Gospel. During moving moments, the crowd would shout Yes Lord - a call and response tactic typical of traditional African American churches. The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was held on the third anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education, which had declared segregation in public schools illegal. But Eisenhower had initially been ambivalent about enforcing the ruling. They are not bad people, Eisenhower said of the southern officials resisting desegregation. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negro. Lost in thought: A pensive Sammy Davis Jr is pictured seated on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial. The highly popular singer, actor and activist was a significant financial contributor to the Civil Rights Movement and refused to perform at segregated events. Eugene T. Reed, a Long Island dentist and a leading organizer of Civil Rights marches, is seated on Davis's left and renowned actress and activist Ruby Dee is on the right. Six years after the Prayer Pilgrimage, Dee emceed the March on Washington, when Dr King delivered his historic 'I Have a Dream' speech Influential: Mordecai Johnson, pictured at the podium, also addressed marchers during the event. The prominent Civil Rights pastor often delivered speeches around the country and was the first Black president of Howard University. Seated behind him were Civil Rights leaders Bishop Walls, Roy Wilkins, Asa Philip Randolph (first row, left to right) and Jesse Tinsley (second row standing) Frustrated by the governments reluctance, Dr King had warned Eisenhower in February 1957 that he would organize a march if his administration did not fulfill its promise to desegregate public schools. We shall have to lead our people to you in the capitol in order to call the nations attention to the violence and organized terror directed toward [men], women, and children who merely seek freedom, a telegram sent from Dr King and members of his civil rights group stated. Dr King kept to his word three months later as a signal to Eisenhower and in December 1957 the United States Congress passed its first federal Civil Rights Bill since 1875. Just two years before, Dr King and other Civil Rights leaders organized a boycott of public buses after Rosa Parks was jailed because she did not give up her seat to a white bus rider. The boycott lasted 381 days, uniting Black people and propelling the Civil Rights movement to greater heights. The Pilgrimage Prayer for Freedom was also the precursor to the 1963 March on Washington, when Dr King delivered his speech entitled I Have a Dream - the historic address that swayed the government to make strides towards creating initiatives such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. What may have also hindered Friedlanders opportunity to get these photographs published at the time was his emphasis on the children at the march. The son of a demonstrator clutching the hand of his father as he listens to the speakers on stage is a moment Friedlander captured while another in his portfolio shows a girl nestling in her fathers arms. Friedlander, who rarely gives interviews, says he focused on photographing children because he saw their stories as central to the Civil Rights Movement. Confidence: Lee Friedlander, now 82, focused on photographing children because he believed they represented the 'real energy' of the movement. One of the more poignant photographs in Friedlander's portfolio shows a bold young Cub Scout - who was most likely attending a segregated school - scowling in front of a sea of Civil Rights demonstrators. The Boys' Scout of America - the largest youth organization in America - included both Black and White people but many branches followed the local segregation laws, which were widespread in the South Like father, like son: The son of a demonstrator clutching the hand of his father as he listens to the speakers on stage is another one of Friedlander's pictures. The freelance photographer struggled to get his work published mainly because he focused on capturing intimate moments shared by marchers rather than of the prestigious speakers. It would take more than 50 years for his work to be published Most of the other attendees were smartly dressed in their Sunday best and even risked ruining their outfits during the latter stages of the three-hour event by resting on newspapers laid on the floor. One image shows a defiant woman donning a flamboyant hat while confidently resting her hand on her waist and another is of a sharply dressed man in a suit and an off-kilter hat, with an acoustic guitar hanging over his shoulders. It wasnt until 2008 that these pictures documenting this landmark event were uncovered. Eakins Press Foundation decided to release the pictures after he showed the publishing company the 58 images he had captured at the Prayer Pilgrimage from his original 35-millimetre negatives. He recently donated the pictures to Yale University Art Gallery which is exhibiting his photos until July 9. Friedlander, who has now been heralded as one of the masters in his field, is expected to make a rare public appearance at Yale on May 11 to speak on his experience photographing the march. Lee Friedlanders photographs starkly and vividly capture the massive multigenerational and interracial, crowd of men and women who answered the call to join in a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., Mildred Bond Roxborough, Special Assistant to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said. This extraordinary photographic record serves to indelibly etch this Pilgrimage onto the fabric of the mind. Coming together: Friedlander was eventually heralded as a great photographer. Publishing company Eakins Press Foundation decided to release 58 of the images he had taken at the Prayer Pilgrimage from his original 35-millimetre negatives. Pictured here are those at the tail end of the march, which drew people from all walks of life and races, although the majority were African Americans who worked with labor unions All dressed up: The event fell on a Sunday and mimicked a church service. The attendees at the march - which featured spirituals, speeches from pastors and gospel songs - dressed and behaved as such. During moving moments, they would shout ' Yes Lord ', which are typical responses in African American congregations. Here, Friedlander snaps marchers standing at the far end of the march probably because there was a shortage of seats. The woman donning a dapper blazer and flamboyant hat while confidently resting her hand on her waist is a classic example of the thousands of marchers who showed up in their Sunday best Tired out: But some marchers - who had traveled from several states around the country - risked ruining their Sunday best during the three-hour event when they rested on newspaper pages laid on the ground. Their dedication is reminiscent of that showed by demonstrators at the March on Washington held at the same venue six years later. A total of 450 buses left New York City in the early hours of the morning from Harlem and hundreds of other buses in different states carried many of the demonstrators who totaled 250,000 Witnessing history: The Prayer Pilgrimage was held on the third anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education, which had declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. But then-President Dwight K. Eisenhower was not enforcing the ruling and even said of the southern leaders against desegregation: All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negro. While many were angered by the president's reluctance to enforce the law, the marchers still arrived at the event in high spirits. Here, Friedlander took a picture of sharply dressed marchers including a man in a suit and an off-kilter hat with an acoustic guitar hanging over his shoulders 'Free at last!': This is another one of Lee Friedlander's photos that captured the sentiment of the march. Following this large scale gathering, the US congress passed its first federal Civil Rights Act since 1875, which is now seen as a step towards the main Civil Rights Act of 1964, a historic law which prohibited discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race or religion Listening in: Friedlander's pictures are currently on exhibition at Yale University. The photographer is expected to make a rare public appearance at the university to speak about his experience photographing the Prayer Pilgrimage. This extraordinary photographic record serves to indelibly etch this Pilgrimage onto the fabric of the mind,' Mildred Bond Roxborough, Special Assistant to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said French presidential favourite Emmanuel Macron was driven to succeed by a burning and controversial love for the married drama teacher 24 years his senior who became his wife, according to a former professor. The 39-year-old Macron is still trying to prove his parents wrong and show his wife Brigitte Trogneux-Macron, 64, that she was right to turn her life 'upside down' for him, his former English professor Christian Monjou told MailOnline. In an exclusive interview, Prof Monjou told how the heartbroken teenager was exiled to Paris aged 17 by his parents who were furious at their son's scandalous affair and warned the mother-of-three to 'stay away' until he turned 18. Prof Monjou added: 'He wanted to prove to his parents that he had not made a mistake in falling in love with his teacher. 'And he wanted to prove to his now wife that she had made the right choice in turning her life upside down to be with him.' 'Great seducer': Emmanuel Macron is described as incredibly charismatic by his former teacher, who reveals that the presidential hopeful is driven by a desire to prove to his parents and wife that he was right to pursue the relationship against all the odds Luminous: Brigitte Trogneux, pictured as a young teacher above, was highly regarded for her well prepared and captivating lessons. The young Emmanuel Macron fell for her while they worked on a school drama together but his parents were upset by his infatuation So close: The couple are rarely now seen apart and Ms Trogneux-Macron is by his side at almost all campaign events. They have withstood criticism of the liaison but Ms Trogneux-Macron's three grown-up children are supportive of the marriage En Marche founder Macron is expected to be the next French President and swept through to the final round of voting this week on a wave of popular support for his centrist movement. But it is his love affair with the glamorous Brigitte, whom he fell in love with aged just 15 during drama classes at a private Catholic school in Amiens, northern France, that has captivated the world's imagination. Giving an insight into how and why the romantic liaison has succeeded against the odds, Prof Monjou, former English teacher at the Lycee Henri IV, told MailOnline: 'Emmanuel Macron had the determination to succeed because he had to fight for recognition.' A bright and intellectual student, Macron shunned the playground for the library during his down-time at La Providence, the private Jesuit-run secondary school he attended before being exiled to Paris. So it was little surprise that when inspirational drama teacher Brigitte Trogneux-Auziere complained there were not enough parts in a play for the class the teenage Macron suggested they co-write a new script. To start with the closeness of the attractive blonde teacher to the 'know-it-all' floppy-haired student did not trouble her husband Andre-Louis Auziere, an executive at the BCFE French international commerce bank. He was used to students coming over for dinner on a Friday night, bringing gifts of flowers and bottles of champagne. Destined: Emmanuel Macron, pictured centre in white jacket,'has a particular charm', according to his former English teacher. 'He displays a combination of brilliance and mystery that is almost irresistible' Fierce intellect: After Emmanuel's father, Jean-Michel, learned of his son's infatuation he exiled him to the Lycee-Henri IV, the top secondary school in France, to prepare for university entrance exams. Former teacher Monsieur Monjou told MailOnline: '[He wanted to] get him away from Amiens and the scandal of his love affair with his teacher' Clandestine love: Although the teacher and pupil Emmanuel, right, were friends, no one was aware at first of what was developing. 'We knew they were close,' said former classmate Antoine Joannes. 'I saw this fusion happening between them. But I imagined then that it was platonic love.' But when the teacher-student relationship burst into an affair, the scandal was talk of the town, which surrounded by the battlefields of the Sommes is more associated with the guns of war than the songs of love. 'It was a huge scandal at the time,' Benoit Delespierre, a local journalist who is close to the Trogneux family told MailOnline. 'People are opened-minded about love and sex in France. But still it was a big deal. She was married with three children and he was her pupil. You can imagine what the other parents made of it all.' It was a huge scandal at the time. People are opened-minded about love and sex in France. But still it was a big deal. She was married with three children and he was her pupil. You can imagine what the other parents made of it all. 'We knew they were close,' said former classmate Antoine Joannes. 'I saw this fusion happening between them. But I imagined then that it was platonic love.' The youngest of six children, Brigitte 'Bibi' was born into the Trogneux family, a pillar of the Amiens community who own a string of high-class chocolate and macaroon a kind of biscuit shops across northern France. 'It's true, my brothers and sisters went for me,' Brigitte told author Anne Fulda, whose book 'Emmanuel Macron: A Perfect Young Man' was published this month. Brigitte has refused to reveal when the unlikely pair first became intimate, proclaiming it 'our secret'. 'Nobody will ever know at what moment our story became a love story. That belongs to us. That is our secret,' she said. Brilliant: According to Emmanuel's former teacher, Brigitte Trogneaux, pictured above, 'is widely considered to have been a excellent teacher, both in terms of professional ability and in human terms' Sealed with a kiss: This was the moment the young Brigitte Trogneaux kissed her pupil, Macron, on the cheek after his impressive performance in the school play Smile of love: Emmanuel Macron beams as he receives a kiss from his drama teacher after a successful performance. 24 years later the two kissed on stage after Macron went through in the first round of presidential voting Scarecrow: Footage available on YouTube shows the 15-year-old Macron performing with intensity and commitment But Macron's parents, both doctors, were not impressed. However, they decided not to make a complaint of 'corruption of a minor' to the police. His mother Francoise said: 'We couldn't believe it. What is clear is that when Emmanuel met Brigitte, we couldn't just say, 'That's great!' She confronted Brigitte and begged her to leave her son alone, at least until he was 18. 'Brigitte said she couldn't promise her anything,' political writer Madame Fulda, who was given access to Macron, his wife and his parents for her book, told MailOnline. His mother said to her, she'd had her life, she had her children and she couldn't give him children. 'His mother said to her, she'd had her life, she had her children and she couldn't give him children. 'It must have been so hard for her to see her son with a woman almost her age. It is somewhat ironic to think that Emmanuel's parents got married the same year as Brigitte married the husband she left for their son. 'Any mother would have found that hard.' Macron's father, Jean-Michel, packed his son off the Lycee-Henri IV, the top secondary school in France, to prepare for university entrance exams. Prof Monjou told MailOnline: 'His father sent Emmanuel to the Henry IV school to get him away from Amiens and the scandal of his love affair with his teacher. Love story: Former classmate Cecile Falcon told MailOnline that Emmanuel and Brigitte's relationship is 'a wonderful love story.' She added: 'Emmanuel was brilliant in class. Good at literature and philosophy, very intellectual but also charming. He never went for another student in a nasty way during a debate'. Pictured: The couple on holiday in Biarritz in August 2016 Happy ever after: A video of the couple's marriage shows the whole family gathered in celebration of the union that had initially left his parents shocked and anxious Glamour couple: Macron and his wife Brigitte were pictured on holiday in the South of France in an image that showed a more relaxed side to the intense presidential hopeful 'His father contacted the head teacher directly and asked if he would accept his son so he would be separated from Madame Trogneux-Macron. 'The headteacher Patrice Corre was sympathetic and kept the family's secret.' For his part young Macron had made up his mind. Exiled to Paris he told Brigitte: 'It doesn't matter what you do. One day I will marry you.' And it was with the support of his beloved grandmother, Manette, that he managed to cope. It was to her to whom he turned when Brigitte accepted, age or not, that Macron had won her heart and she would leave her husband. 'It took a year to win the grandmother round,' said Ms Fulda who was given unprecedented access to the family when writing the book. The young Macron had always been close to her and had even asked to live with her when he was five years old. 'But of course that was not permitted,' the author told MailOnline. It was his mother, though, who finally approved the relationship. 'There was a child born a year before Emmanuel,' explained Ms Fulda. 'She died and it had a profound affect on his mother I think a depression. 'But she saw that what they had was very, very real [between Emmanuel and Brigitte] and she gave her blessing. Onwards! Emmanuel Macron kisses his wife his wife Ms Trogneux-Macron after the first round of the French presidential elections in Paris on 23 April 2017 Forbidden love: Macron's parents, both doctors, were not impressed with the relationship. They however decided not to make a complaint of 'corruption of a minor' to the police. Pictured: Macron far right as a young student Class of his own: Emanuel Macron was pictured among his classmates at the elite Nationale Ecole 'Both Emmanuel and Brigitte knew that if she hadn't it would be over. She was the most important woman in his life even before Brigitte. He spoke to her every night, no matter how late real conversations, long conversations.' Regarded by many as the best school in France, the teenage Macron worked hard at the Lycee Henri IV to fulfil his potential. Prof Monjou observed: 'He had a concentration that was unique among his contemporaries. 'But also there was a distance as if there was always something else on his mind. 'This is possibly due to the tension he was under because of his complicated love life. 'And I believe his political ambition is part of this ambition to prove that he has made the right choices in life. Macron's mother Francoise Nogues-Macron was initially concerned about the relationship but is now friends with her daughter in law. She recalled: 'With Brigitte, it's adoration.' 'Later he transferred this determination to succeed into his political life.' Described by a former classmate as 'handsome and charming', Macron made it clear that he was not available. Cecile Falcon told MailOnline: 'Emmanuel was brilliant in class. Good at literature and philosophy, very intellectual but also charming. He never went for another student in a nasty way during a debate. 'He was also handsome and charming but he was honest about his status, that he was with someone. 'He never told anyone about his affair with his former teacher, but somehow we all knew. He was very discreet but he was completely faithful to her, there were games of seduction. 'The pressure from his parents must have been terrible. 'Theirs really is a wonderful love story.' Returning to Amiens at weekends with his dirty laundry, Macron kept up his relationship with Brigitte, who struggled as the source of much amusement among the small-minded in the town. 'Knee deep in scandal', is how one French magazine described her life in the years after the affair became known. 'In all honesty the Trogneux family don't really like talking about Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron,' Monsieur Delespierre told MailOnline. Her husband Andre left the family home but her three children Sebastian, Laurence who had been in the same class as Emmanuel - and Tiphaine remained. Despite their best endeavours to be discreet one of her former students cried out 'Madame Auziere' in shock when she saw her walking arm in arm with Macron on the streets of Lille one afternoon. By his side: Despite the early controversy around their relationship, Brigitte Trogneux-Macron has been at his side throughout his career in politics. Pictured: Emmanuel Macron as French economy and industry minister in August 2016 Monsieur Delespierre continued: 'It was a huge embarrassment for Brigitte's family the Trogneux. 'They are one of the big names in Amiens. Her father Jean was furious. 'Brigitte is the youngest of six children. It is fair to say she was indulged as a child, spoilt even. 'Despite everything that has happened she has always had a very good relationship with her children. They are all very close. 'But the ex-husband left the family home. He worked at a bank. But really Brigitte's family are the one with the money, the connections, the reputation.' Monsieur Auziere could not be reached for comment by MailOnline. Despite his obvious ability, the young Macron failed to pass the exam to get into the Ecole Normale Superior (ENS), the equivalent to Oxford or Cambridge. Macron's former English professor Christian Monjou, pictured above, has told how the heart-broken teenager was exiled to Paris by parents who were furious at their son's scandalous affair Instead he went to the Ecole National d'Administration the breeding ground of government ministers and civil servants. Posted to Nigeria on a six-month university placement, Macron left with a solid token of Brigitte's love, the gold ring which he still wears on right hand. Macron's mother Francoise Nogues-Macron recalled: 'With Brigitte, it's adoration. 'I remember when he was at ENA [university] he left letters from young women he was training with unopened. '[Supermodel] Laetitia Casta could undress in front of him and he would do nothing. Because the love between Emmanuel and Brigitte is completely sealed.' Macron and Brigitte went on to set up homes in Paris and Le Touquet, the art-deco beach resort on the English Channel where the Trogneux family has property. Finally, 13 years after their controversial love affair began rising political star Emmanuel Macron and grandmother-of-seven Brigitte got married in the prestigious Westminster Hotel in Le Touquet. 'When he decided to marry my mother, because he told her he would marry her, he came to see us and told us that he wanted to marry our mother,' Madam Trogneux-Macron's daughter Tiphaine Auziere told BFMTV. 'It was a strong act because not everybody would have taken this precaution and had asked us before. He made sure to know if it would be something that her children would accept.' In his wedding speech in October 2007 speech the presidential candidate thanked his guests for being witness 'to the last 13 years'. A controversial new immigration-related hotline launched by President Donald Trump has been mercilessly trolled by people reporting UFOs and extraterrestrial sightings. The VOICE service started yesterday to enable victims of crimes committed by immigrants to contact government officials. But it has been heavily criticized, with opponents pointing out that studies show immigrants are actually far less likely to commit crimes than native-born US citizens. The new office, run by the Department of Homeland Security, promises to help 'victims and their families who have been impacted committed by removable criminal aliens'. The use of the word 'alien' in the Department of Homeland Security's aims has sparked widespread mockery TV alien Alf was among the characters who featured in memes and tweets mocking the new initiative The launch coincided with Alien Day, which marks the classic 1986 science fiction classic Alien, which starred Sigourney Weaver The VOICE service started yesterday to enable victims of crimes committed by immigrants to contact government officials People are being encouraged to report problems they suffer as a result of activity by 'removable criminal aliens' Jabba the Hutt, from Star Wars, was cited as an alien as the VOICE initiative was mocked on Twitter The new department has been trolled mercilessly by Twitter users over the use of the word 'alien' One Twitter user posted a picture of the Power Rangers to troll the VOICE initiative launched yesterday by President Donald Trump People have been encouraged to report activity by 'removable criminal aliens' The use of the word 'alien' prompted widespread mockery, with Twitter users and pranksters inundating the service with reports of menacing figures such as TV alien Alf, Star Wars characters and ET. The launch coincided with Alien Day, which marks the classic 1986 science fiction classic Alien, which starred Sigourney Weaver. Trump made great play of the issue during the campaign and highlighted the case of Jamiel Shaw Jr, 17, who was murdered in Los Angeles by Mexican illegal immigrant Pedro Espinoza in 2008. Espinoza, a gang member who targeted Jamiel simply for wearing the color red in Arlington Heights, had been released from prison rather than being deported. Kelly said the VOICE office would be used to keep victims informed of the immigration proceedings of suspects and generally walk them through the complicated and often drawn-out immigration court process. The office will be staffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees. Kelly said victims of immigrant crimes had historically been ignored by the federal government and left without answers about a suspect's immigration proceedings. He said the VOICE name is fitting because the government is giving 'for the first time a voice of their own to these victims.' But the ICE officials will also aid victims of crimes attributed to immigrants living in the United States legally, a group that could include permanent residents. During the election campaign Trump was supported by Jamiel Shaw Sr (pictured, left) whose 17-year-old son was shot dead by an illegal immigrant in Los Angeles in 2008 Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly (pictured) said the VOICE name is fitting because the government is giving 'for the first time a voice of their own to these victims' Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Missouri, said VOICE was a waste of money at a time when other threats face the country. 'Doing this not only ignores the vast majority of the crime, but stokes racist and xenophobic fears while dividing the country,' said Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. The Trump administration has frequently highlighted crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally and the cases receive widespread attention in pro-Trump news outlets, often more than comparable crimes committed by U.S. citizens. But the administration has not provided statistics about the crimes or countered studies indicating that immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes. When asked how many crimes have been attributed to immigrants, Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said 'too many.' Brent Wilkes, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the office appears to be little more than an extension of Trump's rhetoric against immigrants. 'It's pretty clear to me that the goal here is to do the kind of thing he did on the campaign trail,' Wilkes said. He added the office is unnecessary because ICE has long had the authority to keep crime victims informed. Trump announced plans for the office in February. The unveiling Wednesday came as he highlights accomplishments ahead of Saturday's 100th day of his presidency. Immigration was his core issue in the campaign, but he has faced repeated setbacks on the issue. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, right, accompanied by acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan, speaks during a news conference at ICE in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, to announce the opening of new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announces the opening of new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office yesterday Courts have blocked orders barring temporarily the admission of refugees and visitors from six Muslim-majority nations and stripping some federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities that the government says aren't cooperating with immigration authorities. Preliminary efforts to fund a border wall have encountered obstacles in Congress, and Trump backed away from his earlier insistence that a pending budget deal include more than $1 billion for a down payment on the wall. It's unclear how much information ICE will be able to provide to crime victims given privacy protections afforded to immigrants depending on the nature of their immigration status and the details of their case. The same executive order that called for creating VOICE also directed Homeland Security to overhaul its privacy policy and ensure that immigrants in the country illegally are not afforded the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens. The agency said its lawyers are still reviewing the policies. ICE already maintains a publicly accessible internet site to track an immigrant detainee's location, but the immigration court system, run by the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Reform, does not allow online access to case information. The court's records are only accessible by telephone and someone looking for information must have an immigrant's registration number. Zac Goldsmith is to ask the people of Richmond Park to vote for him for the third time in 13 months as he attempts to mount a political comeback as a Tory MP. Goldsmith lost his south west London seat to Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney in December 2016 when he forced a by-election over his opposition to Heathrow expansion. He ran as an independent, quitting the Conservatives, but the group re-selected him as their candidate for the 2017 election on Wednesday night. Goldsmith with his wife Alice after voting in the by-election which he lost to Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat The move comes despite no change in the Government's policy to back Heathrow. He says he will continue to oppose it. The news comes as Esther McVey also attempts a return to the House of Commons, standing for the former Chancellor's Cheshire seat. George Osborne resigned as an MP when the election was called, vacating his seat in Tatton for the editor's desk at the Evening Standard in London. Esther McVey, who was a minister of state for employment during her last stint as an MP He tweeted his congratulations as the former TV Presenter, and MP until 2015, Ms McVey was announced as his replacement PPC, calling her a 'one-woman Northern powerhouse.' Lib Dem Ms Olney won the Richmond Park seat in December in a campaign which focused on Brexit the Remain-supporting seat voting to oust Leave-supporting Mr Goldsmith. But Tories in Richmond insist Mr Goldsmith is not a 'hardened Brexiteer'. Constituency chairman Georgina Butler said: 'We are delighted that Zac Goldsmith has been reselected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond Park and North Kingston in the forthcoming General Election, and we look forward to having him back again as our representative in Parliament. 'After a resounding victory in the 2015 General Election, his absence from Parliament since last December has been a disappointment. He is widely regarded the best MP that Richmond Park and North Kingston has ever had, and we need him back to represent our residents effectively. 'Far from being a hardened Brexiteer as his opponents have painted him, he will fight for the best deal for Britain. He has led on guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and is a champion of strong protection for the environment. 'He will also continue to lead the fight against Heathrow expansion, an issue which continues to concern our residents.' George Osborne tweeted his congratulations to the new PPC, as he stepped down to focus on his other jobs, as a public speaker, and editor of the London Evening Standard Zac Goldsmith lost out in the Mayoral election in 2016 to Labour's Sadiq Khan, and was heavily criticised for his campaign The by-election defeat marked the second setback for Mr Goldsmith within months, after he lost to Sadiq Khan in the 2016 London mayoral election. That campaign was criticised, even within the Tory Party, for its negative messaging and focus on Mr Khan's Muslim background. Lib Dem chief whip Tom Brake said: 'By standing as a Conservative after resigning over Heathrow, Zac Goldsmith has just lost his last shred of credibility. Zac Goldsmith couldn't stand on a Conservative platform last time, so what's changed?' When Kendall Jenner walked through a crowd of protesters and handed an officer a can of Pepsi for a commercial, the backlash forced the company to pull the ad. Many thought the exchange was ridiculous, but comedian Vito Gesualdi decided to put the notion to the test. He went to Berkeley, California to see just what would happen in a similar scenario. Gesualdi recorded footage of him holding up a can of the soda during violent clashes between Pro-Trump supports and anti-fascist protesters. He uploaded the video on YouTube, and it has since gone viral. The majority of the video showed the comedian approaching police, protesters fighting and people who weren't paying attention to him. He held out the drink in his hand, hoping someone would take it. 'Somebody's gonna change somebody's mind today, for sure,' he said. It wasn't much of a true social experiment, but it drove the point home that civil disobedience is nothing to make light of. When comic Vito Gesualdi saw the ad where Kendall Jenner tried to calm a hostile interaction with Pepsi, he was inspired to try to do the same in Berkeley, California in April Kendall Jenner is shown here in the Pepsi ad which got pulled for backlash for its commercialization of civil unrest Jenner handed a can of Pepsi to an officer in the ad, which social media quickly attacked Gesualdi failed miserably at bridging any type of divide; this images shows the protest scene Gesualdi's video was filmed during the violent clashes over the April 14 weekend between supporters and detractors of Trump in downtown Berkeley. The anti-fascist protesters who were present are often referred to as 'antifa.' Once Gesualdi arrived at Berkeley with a backpack full of several 12-packs of Pepsi to try to 'bridge the divide,' he was immediately stopped by police officers from bringing them all in. Police informed him that soda cans had been used as projectiles in the past, and they were not taking that chance today with his backpack full of aluminum cans. Gesualdi accepted that and found another entry point where he brought in just five cans, only to have one quickly confiscated which left him with four sodas for his test. Right away he put one of his Pepsis down in the middle of the lawn and a man in a camouflage hat grabbed it Right away he put one of his Pepsis down in the middle of the lawn and a man in a camouflage hat grabbed it. Gesualdi approached him asking for a high five, but the man high-fived his friend in a red tee shirt instead of the 'social scientist.' The man in the red shirt then appeared on camera passing along the Pepsi to another man, but it wasn't clear whether they had opposing viewpoints. A man in the red shirt appeared on camera passing along the Pepsi from the lawn to another man, but it wasn't clear whether they had opposing viewpoints A ground fight broke out nearby and the comic said 'I gotta get in there, I gotta get in there.' He tried to reach in towards the scuffle with a cola, but his arm was pulled by back by someone off-camera. Then he just set the Pepsi down on the ground next to the men engaged in the brawl, specifically right next to one of their bare feet. Police were present initially in riot gear, and smoke bombs could be seen going off periodically throughout the video. But they apparently left the scene, at least briefly. 'The cops have now said, "F**k it," and the went back down to the safety zone,' Gesualdi said. He found one officer who stuck around and asked him whether he was a Pepsi or Coke drinker. 'Neither,' the officer said. 'Water.' 'Do you know anyone who would want a crisp, delicious Pepsi cola today?' Gesualdi asked. 'Nope,' the officer said. 'This is never gonna work,' Gesualdi said. 'I'm never gonna bring the country together.' People started moving away from the protest area out in to the street, so the comic followed the crowd sticking close to a dumpster that a group of people dressed in all black and gas masks were wheeling along. He set a Pepsi can down on the dumpster and a person could be heard saying, 'Oh, s**t!' before taking a beat, then grabbing the Pepsi and hurling it into the crowd, just as the police had been trying to avoid. The comic followed the crowd sticking close to a dumpster that a group of people dressed in all black and gas masks were wheeling along before setting a Pepsi down A man in a gas mask grabbed the Pepsi and hurled it into the crowd, just as the police had been trying to avoid Later Gesualdi handed another Pepsi to a man standing on a dumpster, masked and wrapped in American flag garb; The man danced provocatively with the can of cola for a moment before spiking it into the crowd People were hurling whatever they could get their hands on, including a traffic cone and bagels, back and forth among the various factions at the demonstration. Later Gesualdi handed another Pepsi to a man standing on a dumpster, masked and wrapped in American flag garb. The man danced provocatively with the can of cola for a moment before spiking it into the crowd. Gesualdi found where the can had landed and videoed it on the pavement before someone stomped on it. A little later the comedian found a case of Pepsi unattended and grabbed a few more to continue his social experiment, which was not going well The comic and a group of people fighting nearby got pepper sprayed by another civilian, so Gesualdi drank some of his own Pepsi to wash the chemical taste out of his mouth A little later the comedian found a case of Pepsi unattended. 'I did not bring those,' he said, as he panned the camera to the case before grabbing a few more to continue his social experiment, which was not going well. 'We got a 20 rack here. I gotta refill, I hope that's OK.' Shortly after, the comic and a group of people fighting nearby got pepper sprayed by another civilian, so Gesualdi drank some of his own Pepsi to wash the chemical taste out of his mouth. Later, the comic ran into another man handing out Pepsis, who was smiling and cheerful. This was right after someone got in the head with a Pepsi can that was thrown by another man in a gas mask, who acquired the can from Gesualdi. Later, the comic ran into another man handing out Pepsis, who was smiling and cheerful This was right after someone got in the head with a Pepsi can that was thrown by another man in a gas mask, who acquired the can from Gesualdi. Except for just one, every can of Pepsi he handed out was used as a weapon. Not a single police officer accepted a Pepsi from Gesualdi In fact, except for just one, every can of Pepsi he handed out was used as a weapon. 'In a way, I did not heal the divide, but instead widened it,' the comic said as he recapped his experience from the safety of his vehicle. Not a single police officer accepted a Pepsi from Gesualdi. The caption for Gesualdi's video read as follows: 'Vito brings the taste of a new generation to a violent protest. Can he bridge the divide and save our great nation!? '*DISCLAIMER* I am not affiliated with the alt-right / antifa / whatever. This video is not an endorsement of anyone or anything (except Pepsi) (though seriously f**k Pepsi for that dumb**s ad).' A onetime Sydney cafe owner charged over a 500 kilogram cocaine smuggling conspiracy cannot move into his bikini model ex-girlfriend's home after being denied bail. Darren Mohr had offered to lodge $1.8 million surety, wear an electronic tracking device which he would pay for himself and live with Krissy Marsh at Rose Bay, in Sydney's eastern suburbs. But Justice Elizabeth Fullerton denied Mohr bail in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday, citing the seriousness of the charge, the international reach of the alleged conspiracy and the 'considerable strength' of the Crown case. Accused cocaine smuggler Darren Mohr was in a one-year relationship with Krissy Marsh after being friends for eight years Darren Mohr, pictured reclining with a dog and macaw, regularly posted pictures of himself in exotic locations on social media Krissy Marsh, who has posed as a bikini model, offered to have her former lover live in her home Mohr, 42, is facing life in jail if convicted of conspiring to import a commercial quantity of cocaine between August 1 and November 5 last year. Justice Fullerton said Mohr was arrested on December 27 as part of a joint operation between Australian Federal Police and NSW Police targeting the activities of Joseph Pirrello and others. The group had allegedly been involved in five 'separate and distinct' conspiracies to import drugs using Australian-based boats to meet international vessels at sea. Mohr is accused of involvement in only one of those five conspiracies, described as 'Dalrymple 1', named after a trawler moored at the Sydney Fish Market and allegedly acquired by Pirrello in September last year. The Dalrymple 1 alleged conspirators are accused of planning to import 500 kilograms of cocaine from Chile but that operation was allegedly aborted on October 16 when the Dalrymple failed to meet a mothership. A later operation involving the Darlyrmple successfully landed the same amount of the same drug at Parsley Bay, on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, on Christmas Day. Those drugs were wrapped in plastic and falsely labelled 'Emporio Armani'. Mohr was arrested near his home at Rose two days after that cocaine was seized. Mohr was one of 15 men nabbed in the joint operation targeting conspiracies including the importation of 600 kilograms of cocaine which was intercepted in Tahiti in March last year. In total, 1.1 tonnes cocaine - worth an estimated $360 million - was seized, making it the second largest bust of the drug in Australian history. Justice Fullerton said 'a strong Crown case' against Mohr included him flying to Chile for a seven-day trip on August 31 last year and three trips to Thailand in the eight months before his arrest. Accused cocaine smuggler Darren Mohr and bikini model Krissy Marsh recently ended their relationship amiciably Former cafe owner Darren Mohr (pictured sitting) was arrested on December 27 last year near his home at Rose Bay Darren Mohr faces life imprisonment if convicted of consipiring to import a commercial quantity of cocaine The Crown alleges that while in Thailand Mohr met an international financier of the importation conspiracy known as 'Gutterball'. Following Mohr's arrest, pictures of his lavish lifestyle with girlfriend Ms Marsh emerged on social media accounts. The pair was pictured on a Gold Coast holiday, flying in a helicopter and poolside in Byron Bay. Mohr features in pictures tanning himself on remote beaches, wearing designer suits and attending a yacht club during the Grand Prix in Monaco. He has a penchant for expensive watches and motorcycles. Mohr at onetime owned Bondi Rescue HQ cafe, where lifeguards from the reality television show helped run and promote the business. He announced he was selling the venue in January last year. Former cafe owner Darren Mohr regularly posted pictures of himself sunbathing Police seized 500 kilograms of cocaine (pictured) at Parsley Bay, north of Sydney, on Christmas Day last year Darren Mohr shared pictures of himself cruising around Monaco harbour The former bodyguilder has uploaded pictures from beaches in Vietnam and Thailand, and has claimed to have ridden a motorcycle across India and the Himalayas last July. Ms Marsh, a mother of two, was pictured in front of a Rolls Royce before her sister's wedding on the Gold Coast in October last year. There is no suggestion that Ms Marsh was involved in any of the alleged conduct subject of the charges against Mohr. Ms Marsh posted a picture in Early December of a day the 'stars aligned' and the couple's eight-year friendship blossomed into the 'best relationship' she had ever had. 'You are my king...,' she wrote. '2017 is going to be so much fun.' Applying for bail on behalf of his client last week, Mohr's counsel Avni Djemal said the couple's relationship had recently ended amicably after one year. Former cafe owner Darren Mohr owned a cigarette boat which he regularly raced on Sydney Harbour Police allege the 500 kilograms of cocaine they seized last year was picked up from a mother ship by a trawler (pictured) Police seized 500 kilograms from a dinghy on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney Mr Djemal tendered an affidavit sworn by Ms Marsh in which she offered to share her Rose Bay home with Mohr if he was granted bail. 'They're still friends and he is welcome to live there,' Mr Djemal told Justice Fullerton. Mr Djemal said Mohr would offer as surety all his assets, along with assets of his family which totaled $1.8 million. He noted none of Mohr's assets had been seized as a result of his arrest. Justice Fullerton acknowledged Mohr had offered his 'relatively recently' acquired home as part of that surety but noted there was no evidence to account for the source of the purchase price. Mohr also offered to pay $23,000 up-front to have an electronic device attached to his ankle and monitored by the private company 3M for one year. The seized cocaine was wrapped in plastic and labeled 'Emporio Armani' A joint operation by officers from the Australian Federal Police, Australian Border Force and NSW Police seized 500 kilograms of cocaine Mohr and Ms Marsh smiled as they hovered over picturesque scenery during a helicopter tour and boasted no one 'had a better day than us' Mr Djemal said his client had strong community ties, had only a minor criminal record which included breaching a security licence and needed to be employed to fund his legal defence. 'It's a very complicated brief,' Mr Djemal said. 'We're not looking at a trial this year.' Mr Djemal said much of evidence against his client was hearsay. No undercover operative would claim to have met Mohr to discuss the alleged importation and Mohr's voice did not appear on telephone taps or listening devices. However, Justice Fullerton said there was evidence Mohr had used an encrypted BlackBerry device, had provided $45,000 cash towards fuel for the Dalrymple and had been seen at Sydney Fish Markets twice on the day before the trawler left port. Darren Mohr and Krissy Marsh pose in front of a Rolls Royce while attending her sister's wedding on the Gold Coast over Christmas Police who searched Mohr's boat (pictured) after his arrest found nothing incriminating The glamourous couple shows off their expensive watches during a trip to the Gold Coast Last week the court heard Mohr had met Pirrello at Steyne Park, at Double Bay, in Sydney's east, on September 1 last year, the day after he had flown back to Sydney from Chile. Mr Djemal said of that trip: 'There is no evidence of where he went, what he did, so it's a straight out trip to Chile.' Mohr is due to appear in Central Local Court on July 5. Convicted criminals are running drug operations and plotting criminal acts all from behind the walls of immigration detention centres, as they wait to be deported. In just one centre in Villawood, NSW, about 400 contraband items were found over the course of a nine month period, with inmates reportedly using smuggled mobile phones to run their criminal operations. Now an 'incredibly frustrated' Immigration Minister Peter Dutton wishes to reform the appeals process, as many inmates use delaying tactics to keep them in Australia longer, according to The Daily Telegraph. Convicted felons are running drug operations and plotting criminal acts from behind the walls of immigration detention centres (Pictured: Contraband being passed to a detainee) In just one centre in Villawood, NSW, about 400 contraband items were found over the course of a nine month period On average, detainees are kept at detention facilities for 315 days before being deported. 'The detainee population has changed significantly over the past 12 to 18 months, with more individuals entering immigration detention with significant criminal history and links to criminal associations, including OMCGs (outlaw motor cycle gangs),' ABF Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg told The Daily Telegraph. 'This has led to an increased risk of criminal and anti-social behaviour within immigration detention facilities.' In March at the Villawood detention centre, one detainee known to frequent with criminals was seen on CCTV calling his contacts on the outside to aid in his escape. His plan failed however and was caught days later. A toothbrush turned weapon was one piece of contraband seized by Australian Customs officials in Villawood Another piece of banned contraband seized by authorities at Villawood A guard walks inside the perimeter fence and razor wire that surround Villawood Detention Centre (stock image) There is evidence an unnamed bikie gang member at another facility used his mobile to order the murder of an inmate at a different facility, according to an ABF intelligence report. However, despite the worrying statistics, the number of violent altercations in centres has decreased over the last 18 months due to more raids by ABF officers. Social media went into meltdown after a woman shared an image of a supermarket that appeared to stock bottles of the iconic McDonald's Big Mac sauce. Australian burger lovers flocked to Coles supermarkets to buy a bottle of the beloved relish. The picture, shared by Melbourne woman Gemma Ryan, appeared show a display of McDonald's secret sauce bottles by the Kraft Heinz company sold in an Australian grocery store. Gemma Ryan shared an image of Big Mac and McChicken sauces stacked on a supermarket shelf - and Australia assumed it was from Coles But the collective hearts of Australia broke when McDonald's super fans realised something fishy about the bottles of Big Mac, McChicken and Filet-O-Fish sauce. Ms Ryan successfully trolled the entire country when the picture she shared from the supermarket shelf went viral. The picture was not from an Australian supermarket, but was from a retailer in Canada - the only place to stock the beloved special sauce. Ms Ryan posted a snap from an unknown supermarket with the beloved Big Mac sauce bottled and ready for retail consumption - and Australians assumed the burger relish had hit the shelves of Coles. Her post quickly spread like wildfire with dozens of media outlets taking Ms Ryan on her word and sharing the false news that Australians could soon add Big Mac sauce to their home-made sandwiches. However eagle-eyed fast food lovers-turned-detectives quickly noticed the sauce bottles had the word McChicken also written in French as MacPoulet, and Filet-O-Fish as Filet de poisson. McDonald's Canada had been selling the secret sauce on grocery shelves since March, and it took just over a month for Australians to wild over the possibility. Ms Ryan's original post amassed 17,000 likes, over 7,000 shares and 40,000 comments by thrilled Big Mac connoisseurs and skeptics alike. Upon closer inspection McDonald's super fans realised the sauce was only available in Canada 'Sorry for the let down Australia': The prankster originally thought the photo was real too Ms Ryan's post which told social media she had 'catfished' Australia gained 17,000 likes Several hours after the image went viral, the triumphant prankster took to Facebook to apologise for the 'classic stitch up'. 'In my defence I saw it on Facebook earlier today and thought it was real so I posted it... sorry for the let down Australia,' Ms Ryan wrote. Disappointed fans shared the news on social media as some blasted media outlets for not fact-checking before posting the news. One burger fan debunked the news on the Facebook group The Fatties Burger Appreciation Society - as commenters expressed their dismay. 'They probably just fell for it too. I called my local Coles and they didn't have it', one user wrote. 'Since when do we, as Australians, have English AND French on any of our labelling? I called it a bluff as soon as I saw it,' another person said. One burger fan even advised Facebook users on how to replicate the Big Mac sauce at home, using whole egg mayonnaise, American mustard, ketchup, onion powder, garlic powder, finely diced onion and finely diced pickles. A judge praised a young drug dealer for his business acumen as she spared him from serving any jail time for running a methamphetamine operation. Brodie Gary Satterley, 20, of Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, was engaged in low-level methamphetamine dealing for a month when he was 18. Brisbane Supreme Court heard on Wednesday that during that time, he ran a system where he charged interest on debts, provided price guides, discounts and refunds in response to complaints. He also sought feedback from customers, advertised that he was offering a high-quality product and conducted strategy meetings, the Sunshine Coast Daily reports. Justice Ann Lyons (pictured right) praised Brodie Gary Satterley (left) for his business acumen as she spared him from serving any jail time for running a methamphetamine operation Sentencing him to three years in jail with immediate parole, Justice Ann Lyons told Satterley that the way he ran his illegal operation showed he had 'quite good skills.' 'It obviously wasn't the best business, but it's a good business model,' she told him. She urged him to use his talent to run a legitimate business. 'You obviously could do very well in business because you clearly are quite intelligent,' she said. 'Can I say that if you actually did some more study you could really make something of yourself? So please don't come back to court again.' After the sentencing, Satterley took to Facebook to boast that it 'couldn't of gone any better [sic].' Satterley took to Facebook after his sentencing to say that it 'couldn't of gone any better [sic]' Brisbane Supreme Court (file photo) heard Brodie Gary Satterley ran a system where he charged interest on debts and provided price guides, discounts and refunds In court, Justice Lyons had also read out a letter from Satterley's mother which told of his difficult upbringing. He had grown up in poverty in Gympie, with a drug-addicted mother and alcoholic and violent father who spent any money they had to feed their habits. 'Brodie never had guidance from us both, he was never taught right from wrong,' his mother wrote in the letter. She added that he experienced things that no child should have to and must have memories that 'eat him up inside.' The court heard he first used methamphetamine at home with his mother's knowledge. But after leaving school after Year 10, he was always employed and described in a letter from his boss to the court as 'motivated, hard working, with great determination.' Satterley was busted in June 2015 after he was found inebriated by police in his parked car and officers then discovered drugs in the vehicle. Justice Lyons said although Satterley had been a user, she accepted his dealing was low-level and for financial gain. She added that Satterley's determination to turn his life around, coupled with his age, upbringing and lack of drug use or criminal activity in the two years since, were why she decided against jailing him. Turkey has the names of 420 suspected Australian jihadists believed to be travelling to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State. There were 90 suspected Australian jihadists on Turkey's 'no entry' list in 2014, but hundreds more have been added as the threat grows, a Turkish official told the ABC. Over the last two years, 21 suspected Australian foreign fighters have been deported from Turkey as a result of its 'no entry' list, the official said. Over the last two years, 21 suspected Australian foreign fighters have been deported from Turkey as a result of its 'no entry' list. Proceedings to extradite Neil Prakash have begun (Prakash's passport is pictured) Justice Minister Michael Keenan is pictured in February this year The list is formulated using intelligence shared between more than 100 countries to stop suspected foreign fighters from entering Turkey. Justice Minister Michael Keenan refused to comment on details of the list. 'If [the Turks] can stop any Australian from going to the conflict zone then that is obviously a good thing,' he told ABC radio on Thursday. A Turkish official told ABC proceedings to extradite notorious Islamic State recruiter Neil Prakash have begun. Prakash was captured at gunpoint in October last year while travelling on a false passport, months after a drone strike on his Iraqi hideout was thought to have killed him Prakash admitted to being a member of IS to Turkish investigators just hours after he was detained, the official said He is also being prosecuted in Turkey, but authorities would prefer him to face trial in Australia, ABC reports. Prakash was captured at gunpoint in October last year while travelling on a false passport, months after a drone strike on his Iraqi hideout was thought to have killed him. He admitted to being a member of IS to Turkish investigators just hours after he was detained, the official told ABC. He is being prosecuted in Turkey for being a member of a terrorist organisation. Australian authorities have accused him of violating counter-terror laws including 'membership of a terrorist organisation' and 'recruiting persons to join organisations engaged in hostile activities against foreign governments'. 'If [the Turks] can stop any Australian from going to the conflict zone then that is obviously a good thing,' Mr Keenan told ABC radio on Thursday A man who was allegedly driving erratically down a busy highway has had a lucky escape, after his car was reduced to a wreckage following a high-speed collision. Incredible footage of the moment the driver lost control of his vehicle and clipped a truck, before spinning out of control was captured on the semi-trailer's dash cam. The accident, which occurred on the Roe Highway in Perth, Western Australia, came after eyewitnesses reported seeing the Holden 'weaving in and out of traffic' down the packed highway. A man who was allegedly driving erratically down a busy highway has had a lucky escape after his car was reduced to a wreckage (pictured) following a high-speed collision in Perth, WA Beginning with the truck travelling across an overpass of Orrong Road the video at first seems innocuous, until a loud bang can be heard. Less than a second later the blue sedan comes flying past the front of the truck and spins out of control, bouncing off the safety barriers on both sides of the road. As it bounces like a pinball off concrete bollards and steel wires, the car leaves a trail of destruction and debris strewn across the road. For close to eight seconds the sedan spins out of control before it comes to a stop in an emergency lane, facing the wrong way. Incredible footage of the moment the driver lost control of his vehicle (pictured) and clipped a truck, before spinning out of control was captured on the semi-trailer's dash cam Bouncing like a pinball off concrete bollards and steel wires, the car left a trail of destruction and debris strewn across the road Clearly in shock, the truck driver can be heard exclaiming 'holy s***' and 'f***' as the car spins out of control. Posting the video to popular Facebook page Dash Cam Owners Australia, the truckie told how the car had been driving erratically 'for a while'. 'He was undertaking everyone and then when he came to overtake me, he got sideways and smashed into my front steerer and bullbar,' he said. The accident, which occurred in August 2016, has been viewed more than 290,000 times since being shared online. The controversial 457 visa for foreign workers allowed prostitutes to be brought into Australia under the guise of 'massage therapists,' according to secrets documents. On April 18, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the visa would be replaced by two stricter programs to bring skilled workers into the country with a list of over 650 jobs to be cut by 200. But on Thursday, secret documents revealed the government was 'aware' of the 457 visas being used to 'exploit people for prostitution for some time,' the Sunshine Coast Daily reported. 'While lodged nomination numbers are very low, they are increasing and it is considered that the Australian community would be very concerned about such positions being filled with overseas workers,' the document reportedly says. Scroll down for video On Thursday, secret documents revealed the government was 'aware' of the 457 visas being used to 'exploit people for prostitution for some time' after they worked as 'massage therapists' (stock image) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull replaced the abolished 457 visa with two stricter programs to bring skilled workers into Australia NEW VISAS SUMMARY The 457 visa will be replaced with two new ones Short term two-year one with shorter list of jobs Medium-term four-year visa for high-skilled workers on small list of 183 It can't lead to permanent residency Will need better English and labour market testing Both will need tough police checks and two years experience unlike the 457 visa requirements The short-term visa would cost $1,150 and medium-term $2,400 Advertisement The document is believed to reveal a rise in the number of foreign workers applying to be massage therapists in Australia and said the occupation was used in a 'prostitution setting'. Other concerning occupations in the document included hair salon managers who were working as beauty therapists and truck drivers working as importers, according to the Sunshine Coast Daily. Mr Turnbull announced the replacement of the 457 visa with two new programs last week in a video statement. 'It is focused, relentlessly, on ensuring that temporary migration visas are not a passport for foreigners to take up jobs that could and should be filled by Australians,' Mr Turnbull said. 'It will be manifestly, rigorously, resolutely conducted in the national interest to put Australians and Australian jobs first.' A short-term two-year visa with a smaller list of eligible jobs will essentially replace the 457, which has about 96,000 current holders in the country. Fewer occupations will be included for both visas and the length of stay slashed in half from the current four years, and would require two years work experience Other concerning occupations in the document included hair salon managers who were actually working as beauty therapists (stock image) The medium-term will be for four years and require a better standard of English and mandatory labour market testing. It will be of much shorter list of 183 occupations, mostly high-level professionals, but also nurses and some tradespeople. 'It will require a full - a proper police record, a criminal check, which is not the case at the moment,' Mr Turnbull said. He said the new visas would allow businesses to fill 'real skill gaps' with foreign workers but wherever Australians would be given jobs first. The government would establish a new training fund to help train Australians to fill skills gaps so fewer foreign workers would be necessary. The short-term visa would cost $1,150 and the medium-term one $2,400 - more than the $1,060 the 457 visa cost. Almost 1.3 million people have entered Australia in the past 20 years on 457 visa, with more than 120,000 applications approved on the busiest years. The IT industry was the biggest employer of workers on 457 visas Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said although 457s lasted for four years they were 'essentially open-ended. 'It results, in many cases, in a migration outcome, somebody going into permanent residency and becoming a citizen, which is a significant part of the attraction to using the 457 visa,' he said. More than 11,500 people applied for permanent residency in the 12 months to September 2016. He said the medium-term visa was aimed at higher skills with a 'much shorter skills list', but could be applied for in Australia instead of just overseas. A heightened global security network has prevented more than 20 suspected and known terrorists from applying for visas to enter Australia. The new enhanced screening system in Australia uses biometric data to match the applicants against a known/suspected terrorist watch list in the U.S. The applications were made by people seeking a combination of business and short-term holiday visas, reported The Australian. More than 20 suspected and known terrorists have recently been prevented from applying for visas in Australia as part of a heightened global security network (stock image) The cases include a Pakistani national who applied for a visitor visa and an African-born European and a Sudanese-born Bosnian national who both applied for business visitor visas. In a 2016 pilot run of the system 950 biometric referrals were sent to the U.S. which returned a 90 per cent match rate and identified 14 suspected or known terrorists attempting to come into Australia via a third country. The system uses intelligence from the Five Eyes countries - U.S, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and, for example, allows Australia to do real-time comparisons of U.S. data sets. People seeking to enter Australia as a refugee under the humanitarian program are all subject to biometric testing. A new enhanced screening system in Australia uses biometric data to match the applicants against a known/suspected terrorist watch list in the U.S. (stock image) In 2017, about 500 Iraqi and Sudanese refugees were denied entry to Australia under the humanitarian program after their names were discovered on watch lists, with at least 30 applicants also discovered to be on ASIO watch lists. A senior intelligence source told The Australian at the time the applicants were among family groups seeking refuge rather than individuals. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is due to meet U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly in Washington on Thursday to discuss Australia's border protection systems. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Department of Immigration and Border Protection for a comment. A grieving mother is using the heartbreak of her son dying from an accidental overdose to warn people about the danger of opioids. Sherri Kent, from Calgary, Canada, shared a picture of her holding her dying 22-year-old son - Michael - while he was in a hospital bed. Michael is seen in the harrowing photo with a tube in his mouth and he appears to be unconscious. Kent is holding the 22-year-old's hand. 'I just want everyone to know that my son Michael overdosed on Fentanyl,' she wrote on Facebook. Sherri Kent, from Calgary, Canada, shared a picture of her holding her dying 22-year-old son - Michael - laying in a hospital bed She also wrote this message about her son's overdose, and urged people to keep their children away from drugs 'My son was not an addict he made a mistake that cost him his life. I just want to make everyone aware of the epidemic that's goin (sic) on right now. 'It's out of control and there is no way to protect our children from this other than to warn them of the dangers of drug use today.' The emotional post continued: 'I've lost my son to this horrible tragedy and want to make parents aware that it can happen to anyone... Please share this with your family and friends to help prevent another tragedy.' Kent told CBC her son met up with a man to take drug one day after he had first been offered them while out with his sister in Kelowna - about 240 miles east of Vancouver. The 22-year-old turned the man down the first time, but a day later he contacted the dealer on March 14. The duo then took the drugs into a store bathroom where they used the substance. 'This gentleman had told my son he had some really strong heroin,' Kent told CBC. 'My son was not an addict he made a mistake that cost him his life. I just want to make everyone aware of the epidemic that's goin (sic) on right now,' Sherri Kent wrote on Facebook. Kent was unable to hold back tears when discussing her son's overdose during an interview with CBC 'The other man got all sketched out and messed up and left my son in the washroom. 'About 20 minutes later, he was too scared to go back and check on my son so he ran for the people who own the store to unlock the door and that's when they found him. 'He was already blue in the lips. By the time the ambulance got there he was in cardiac arrest.' Michael Kent was rushed to hospital and placed on life support. He died after the support was switched off on March 21. Michael Kent is seen in this picture from Facebook prior to his overdose and tragic death in March 'It's out of control and there is no way to protect our children from this other than to warn them of the dangers of drug use today,' Sherri Kent said. Her son, Michael, is pictured Kent said her son took drugs in a store bathroom with the man who he bought them from in Kelowna - about 240 miles east of Vancouver Fentanyl is a man-made opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine. It can be severely harmful, or even fatal, with death usually caused by respiratory failure. The drug is often sold in place of high-grade heroin. Roughly 20,000 US overdose deaths in 2015 involved heroin or synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to the CDC. The United Nations singled it out as one of the most dangerous drugs in the world last month, a move the organization hopes will help fight a wave of deaths being caused by the substance. Prince's death last year was caused by a opiod overdose. David Cameron has claimed credit for making the Conservatives the strongest party in western Europe. Despite being forced to resign after losing last years Brexit referendum, he boasted that his decision to call the vote had helped drain the poison from British politics. He said that while he regretted the personal consequences of June 23, the vote helped defeat populism, which led to a resurgence of the Tories under Theresa May. David Cameron has claimed credit for making the Conservatives the strongest party in western Europe I loved being prime minister, Mr Cameron told a tourism conference in Bangkok. I thought I was doing a reasonable job. But I think it was the right thing. The lack of a referendum was poisoning British politics and so I put that right. He added that the Tories were probably the most healthy mainstream political party anywhere in western Europe. The former prime minister sparked outrage by saying Britain must agree a divorce bill with the EU before trade talks begin. EU negotiators are demanding 50billion and insist those negotiations must be concluded before talks on trade begin. Mrs May has said the two issues should be discussed in parallel, but Mr Cameron appeared to side with Brussels, saying it was right to conclude discussions on money first. His remarks drew scorn from Eurosceptic MPs who pointed to his failed negotiation with the EU in the run-up to the referendum. Senior backbench Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said: Its no wonder David Camerons renegotiation was so hopeless and he came back with such thin gruel if his whole attitude is of giving in before you stand. There is also a convention that politicians do not go abroad and talk the country down. Im sorry to see hes doing that. Theresa May greets European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker at Downing Street before a 'working dinner' Last year, Mr Cameron failed to return home with anything like the concessions he had wanted on benefits for migrants. It led to many Tory MPs refusing to back his Remain campaign. Mr Camerons latest remarks came ahead of the first meeting between Mrs May and senior EU officials. The PM hosted Michel Barnier, the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker at Downing Street last night for a working dinner. It was expected to focus on the process of Brexit talks. Mr Barnier has insisted the UK must settle the accounts before talks on a future trading relationship. Answering questions at the conference, Mr Cameron seemed to back the EU stance, saying: I would hope we will be able to agree the first bits of divorce you have to deal with the money and then access to the children afterwards. He said he thought both sides could agree that we accept some liabilities for this membership weve had for 40 years, just as we have a claim on some of the assets that weve paid into. Michel Barnier, the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, has insisted the UK must settle the accounts before there are talks on a future trading relationship But senior Government figures have insisted Britain will not pay a bill of the scale suggested by Mr Juncker. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox branded the idea absurd. Mrs May has said she is ready to discuss a fair settlement of Britains obligations, which include pension liabilities for officials and funds for projects already commissioned. A report yesterday suggested Whitehall officials have drawn up plans for the UK to pay into the EU budget until 2020, when its seven-year framework ends. Brexit Secretary David Davis said yesterday that cool heads, strong leadership and traditional British resolve would be needed to secure a good deal with the EU. He told the Prosperity UK conference in London that Britain would have to make compromises, but insisted the country had very good reason to feel optimistic. On Saturday at a European Council summit, the leaders of the other 27 EU countries will discuss their draft guidelines for negotiations. Acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has called on the ABC to condemn Muslim activist and presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied, claiming she made it 'exceedingly difficult' to justify increased taxpayers' funding of the national broadcaster. Ms Abdel-Magied, who hosts the ABC's Australia Wide program, was slammed on Tuesday when she published a 'disrespectful' Anzac Day post on Facebook which said: 'Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine...)'. The post incited outrage from her followers and prompted calls by members of both major political parties to sack or censure the controversial presenter. Scroll down for video On Tuesday afternoon Ms Abdel-Magied wrote: 'Lest we forget Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine' Mr Joyce said on Wednesday night the ABC needed to immediately take action against Ms Abdel-Magied. 'You can't just sweep it under the carpet. It starts to become a sense that the culture of the ABC in some instances is at odds with the culture of Australia you can't just have one of your paid presenters making a statement like that,' he told The Australian. 'They make life exceedingly difficult for people like myself on the expenditure review committee when we're fighting for funds when issues such as this are brought up to us.' Mr Joyce (pictured) said on Wednesday night the ABC needed to immediately take action against Ms Abdel-Magied Ms Abdel-Magied, 25, also faced fierce criticism from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott said the ABC needed to support Australian values and was 'appalled' an ABC presenter would disrespect Anzac Day the way Ms Abdel-Magied did. 'There's nothing more sacred that the commemoration of Anzac Day,' he told radio 2GB. 'You've got to join team Australia, you've got to accept our core culture, you've got to accept our fundamental values, and this idea that Anzac Day should be turned into some kind of crass political stunt is just appalling.' Ms Abdel-Magied deleted her Anzac Day post soon after and issued an apology but it failed to deter the backlash Mr Abbott said the ABC needed to support Australian values and was 'appalled' an ABC presenter would disrespect Anzac Day the way Ms Abdel-Magied did There were also calls for the ABC presenter to be ditched from the Council for Australian-Arab Relations. Former Coalition minister Eric Abetz wrote to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and formally asked her to stand Ms Abdel-Magied down from her seat on the council. Senator Abetz said the presenter demonstrated she was 'unfit' and lacked the judgement to represent Australian interests on the board. Ms Abdel-Magied was appointed to the council board in 2015 and is paid to represent the board. Ms Abdel-Magied was appointed to the council board in 2015 and is paid to represent the board Former Coalition minister Eric Abetz wrote to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (pictured) and formally asked her to stand Ms Abdel-Magied down from her seat on the council One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Queensland Coalition MP George Christensen both called for Ms Abdel-Magied to be immediately sacked, with Ms Hanson labelling her post 'disgusting'. 'After a very special day yesterday I am disgusted to actually hear about Yassmin Abdel-Magied's comments on social media,' Ms Hanson said in a Facebook video. 'I just think she has no understanding, she has no idea, yet the federal government's paying her to travel the world to promote her book and she's been on the Australian 100-year commemoration to represent the youth she wouldn't have a clue.' Ms Hanson said she, along with other Australians, would not forget Ms Abdel-Magied's comments. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (left) and Queensland Coalition MP George Christensen (right) both called for Ms Abdel-Magied to be immediately sacked, with Ms Hanson labelling her post 'disgusting' The ABC stood by Ms Abdel-Magied on Wednesday and defended her right present on the ABC and to broadcast her personal views Others were more forgiving of the 25-year-old Sudanese born writer. Leader of the opposition Bill Shorten said her Anzac Day post was 'very insensitive' but said he did not think she should be sacked over them. The ABC stood by Ms Abdel-Magied on Wednesday and defended her right present on the ABC and to broadcast her personal views. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the ABC said Ms Abdel-Magied was a part-time presenter and was only required to uphold ABC values when presenting for the public broadcaster. When Daily Mail Australia reached out to the ABC for comment on Thursday it said it stood by its statement. The House of Commons can at its most raucous resemble a pack of wild animals. So one of its most colourful MPs will be delighted to hear of a rare white lion whose mane, observers say, bears a startling resemblance to his own famous locks. Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, is easily recognisable thanks to his blond mop. Five-year-old Shalom, the king lion of a South African sanctuary, is equally defined by his striking cream crop and has been likened to Conservative MP Michael Fabricant Mr Fabricant, 66, has previously insisted he does not wear a wig, saying: Its a lot more complicated than that' And five-year-old Shalom, the king lion of a South African sanctuary, is equally defined by his striking cream crop. Suzanne Scott, 48, who helps care for the GG Conservation Centres 73 lions, said: Shalom is a beautiful lion and he has so many fans.' She said: 'He has an amazing mane and hes a rare white lion his white coating and pale eyes are on show due to a recessive white gene which some lions carry. He eats 40kg of meat a week and looks just like a king lion. Mr Fabricant, 66, has previously insisted he does not wear a wig, saying: Its a lot more complicated than that. Wild lion numbers are rapidly declining in Africa due to loss of habitat, poaching, and diseases Pressed for details, the MP added: OK, all I will admit to is that there is some but only some enhancement of the follicular area. Wild lion numbers are rapidly declining in Africa due to loss of habitat, poaching, and diseases. Suzanne Scott, 48, who helps care for the lions, said: Shalom is a beautiful lion and he has so many fans. He has an amazing mane and hes a rare white lion, his white coating and pale eyes are on show due to a recessive white gene which some lions carry. He eats 40kg of meat a week and looks just like a king lion. Mr Fabricant, 66, insisted in 2014 that he does not wear a wig. Its a lot more complicated than that, he said. But pressed for details, he added: Okay, all I will admit to is that there is some but only some enhancement of the follicular area. Wild lion numbers are rapidly declining in Africa due to loss of habitat, poaching, and diseases. A Londoner who went missing for two years has resurfaced in Turkey, having 'settled' in Raqqa, the de Facto ISIS capital, with his British wife. Stefan Aristidou has been detained on the Turkish border having apparently living in the caliphate since going missing after he landed at Lanaca airport in Cyprus on April 5, 2015. His family back in Enfield, North London, issued desperate social media pleas and worked with missing persons charities in a bid to find the missing man. Stefan Aristidou has been detained on the Turkish border two years after he went missing when the flew to Lanaca airport More than two years on, he has been tracked, along with his wife, to the Turkish town of Kilis, three miles from the border and more than 40 miles from Aleppo. It comes amid reports of a mass exodus of ISIS fighters, with suggestions those who travelled to the caliphate are now trying to get back to the Turkish border. It is believed 850 British people have gone to the war zone, and that 200 of those have died. It is thought half of them returned to the UK. According to the Guardian, he had no plans to fight, but simple to settle in Raqqa, with his Bangladeshi-born British wife. A spokesman for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said: 'We are in contact with the Turkish authorities following the detention of a British man on the Turkey/Syria border.' He claims he was settling in Raqqa, not fighting, but it comes amid reports of a mass exodus of fighters from ISIS, desperately trying to cross the border He was detained alongside his wife, and American Kary Paul Kleman, from Florida. His wife is said to have been released, although could face charges, but the men may face sentences between seven and a half and 15 years. The paper reports that dozens of foreign fighters are leaving, as the group loses its hold in Syria and Iraq. Officials in Turkey and Europe say fighters who left have been contacting embassies, desperate to return home. The Guardian reports that neighbours saw Mr Aristidou, who lived with his parents and sister in a leafy suburb, dressing in Islamic clothing, a change from his usual Western style of jeans. His sister continued to post messages online about him being missing, and the family worked with the Lucie Blackman trust to trace him. However, the charity told the paper the appeal was taken down given the 'nature of the reports'. As lawmakers get closer to a funding deal for the government, which would prevent a shutdown on President Trump's 100th day, the White House has agreed to continue paying Obamacare subsidies. Politico reported that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi confirmed the news Wednesday afternoon, saying she had spoken on the phone with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus twice, and received a commitment. The administration had dangled the subsidies in front of Democrats, with Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney suggesting they would go bye, bye, if Democrats didn't approve funding for Trump's border wall or an uptick in military spending. Scroll down for video House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday afternoon that the Trump White House had committed to continuing to payout subsidies for Obamacare, which got lawmakers on both sides of the aisle closer to a funding deal House Speaker Paul Ryan says Capitol Hill appropriators and Trump's budget office are close to hashing out a deal. 'I think we're making really good progress,' he said at a Wednesday morning press conference The Trump White House agreed to continue paying Obamacare subsidies after initially making threats to Democrats to cut them in order to get funding for the president's controversial border wall, which is no longer in the funding bill However, by Wednesday morning, funding for Trump's wall had already been axed from the proposal to fund the government through the end of the year as Republican lawmakers tried to avoid another government shutdown. 'Our major concerns in these negotiations have been about funding for the wall and uncertainty about the CSR payments crucial to the stability of the marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act,' Pelosi said. 'Weve now made progress on both of these fronts,' she added. House Speaker Paul Ryan says Capitol Hill appropriators and Trump's budget office are close to hashing out a deal. 'I think we're making really good progress,' he said at a Wednesday morning press conference. Legislators must reach an agreement with the administration by Friday, when a continuing resolution that's been keeping the lights on since last calendar year runs out. The White House had asked for $1 billion in supplemental funding for the new president's border structure and $3 billion for border security generally. According to NBC, Trump will get the larger sum he asked for to hire more immigration agents and border patrol officers. His wall is being put off until at least September, however, when negotiations begin on his FY18 budget. The White House continued to push for an immediate start to the border wall's construction on Tuesday, even as it acknowledged in several settings that the funds were not likely to end up in the current spending bill. 'Building that wall and having it funded remains an important priority to him,' Kellyanne Conway said on Fox & Friends, 'but we also know that that can happen later this year and into next year.' Press Secretary Sean Spicer rebuffed a reporter Tuesday afternoon who characterized it as a 'delay.' 'No one said delayed,' he barked. 'There's two budget processes. Right now we're going to end FY17 this week. We hope to continue to get funding in that, as the President laid out, for both border security and homeland security and national defense, as we've always maintained.' Spicer said the executive branch would begin preparations for the wall, in either case. 'We will take the first steps now and then we will continue to seek funding through the FY18 and further budget to make sure that the actual -- that it is completed.' Trump insisted shortly after his press secretary's on-camera briefing that an impenetrable wall will 'soon' separate Mexico from the United States, even though he has chosen not to go to the mat to secure funding for the project during this week's high-stakes congressional budget battle. 'The wall's going to get built, folks,' Trump told White House pool reporters after he signed an executive order related to agriculture. 'In case anybody has any question, the wall's going to get built.' A former developer, Trump said his administration would lay the bureaucratic groundwork for the project, even if the actual spades don't touch the soil until later this year. 'We're already preparing. We're doing plans, we're doing specifications, we're doing a lot of work on the wall, and the wall gets built,' he declared. President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he's '100 per cent' committed to building a wall on America's southern border Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to the president, said Tuesday morning that the wall might be funded 'later on' in order to sidestep a showdown over the federal budget this week The president said the 'very important' wall will go up 'soon,' and then paused before answering a question about whether it will be completed before the end of his first term in office. 'Well, it's certainly going to yeah. Yeah. Sure,' Trump replied. 'We have plenty of time. We've got a lot of time.' Trump and his chief counselor Kellyanne Conway were intent on shredding doubts Tuesday that the president was serious about making one of his boldest campaign pledges a genuine policy centerpiece. Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh fretted that 'it looks like Trump is caving' over 'a measly $1 billion' 'Don't let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.,' the president tweeted. That came after Conway said Trump was no longer insisting Congress must pay for the start of his border wall immediately. She told a Fox News Channel audience that the administration could make its peace with 'funding and building the wall later on.' Stepping back from demanding a down payment for his wall this week will make it easier for Republicans to grease a must-pass spending bill through Congress, and remove a major obstacle to a bipartisan deal just days ahead of a government shutdown deadline. The potential for such a move was received in right-wing circles as less appealing than an abortion on tax-filing day. With Democrats cheering the news that Trump appeared to have blinked before their stare-off began, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh warned that 'it looks like, from here, right here, right now, it looks like President Trump is caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion in the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico.' 'The Democrats seem to have successfully used this stupid, silly threat of a government shutdown to get their way,' the tradio talker claimed. With a budget deadline looming, Trump has let up on pressuring congressional Democrats to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border The president tweeted on Tuesday that even if the timetable changes, he's not changing his position on building the wall between the U.S. and Mexico 'What Trump is saying is if we need to get this done, then I'll delay the spending on the wall until September. And it's just a measly billion dollars.' The president, though, was in salesman mode as shutters snapped and reporters shouted questions during the afternoon photo-op. 'The wall is going to stop drugs, and it's going to stop a lot of people from coming in that shouldn't be here,' he boomed. 'And it's going to have a huge effect on human trafficking.' He said Homeland Security Sectary John Kelly told him that 'we definitely, desperately need the wall.' 'And we're going to have the wall built. ... The wall gets built, 100 per cent,' Trump vowed. The media feeding frenzy began after the president told a gathering of around 20 conservative journalists on Monday night that he would be willing to return to the wall funding issue in September. The idea of a border wall hasn't been popular with large segments of the population and the idea that the US will have to pay for it is making the idea unpopular in Congress as well Immigrant-rights advocates protest near the U.S.-Mexico border wall over a visit to the border by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions Conway said on Tuesday that until the wall is built the White House will rely on 'other smart technology and other resources and tools being used toward border security.' 'Just since President Trump took office, illegal border crossings are down to a 17-year low,' she added. 'So it's his resolve plus the tools and resources.' Conway said that 'over 350 firms from 41 states so far have submitted proposals toward building the wall.' But without a check from Congress, the project is at a practical standstill. The funding project is fiercely opposed by Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass the government-wide spending legislation that comes due Friday at midnight. Cost estimates range past $20 billion and the White House had been seeking $1.4 billion as a first step in the spending bill. The wall is also unpopular with many Republicans, and GOP negotiators on Capitol Hill were uneasy about the clash over the wall potentially sparking a government shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has a key role providing Democratic votes to pass the legislation involving a down payment for the proposed border wall Illegal crossings from Mexico to the US have plummeted for the month of March, making some question whether a wall is needed - it is expected to cost about $20billion and even some GOP members are doubting whether Mexico will ever pay for it House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, 'The president's comments this evening are welcome news given the bipartisan opposition to the wall' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has a key role providing Democratic votes to pass the legislation, welcomed Trump's reported shift on the wall. 'It's good for the country that President Trump is taking the wall off the table in these negotiations,' Schumer said late Monday. 'Now the bipartisan and bicameral negotiators can continue working on the outstanding issues.' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, 'The president's comments this evening are welcome news given the bipartisan opposition to the wall, and the obstacle it has been to the continuing bipartisan negotiations in the appropriations committees.' The wall was the most pressing issue confronting lawmakers as they returned from a two-week spring recess to face a critical deadline. Congress must pass a $1 trillion catch-all spending bill to pay for all agencies of government or trigger a partial shutdown Saturday, which happens to coincide with the 100th day of Trump's presidency. 'I'm optimistic. I don't think anybody wants a shutdown,' Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said as he exited a meeting of GOP leadership. 'The White House and basically the minority leaders of the House and Senate have to have some level of agreement on the things that you're adding.' The negotiations over the spending bill took center stage Monday despite a separate White House push for fast action to revive health care legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. After signaling last week that they hoped for a vote as soon as this week on a rewritten health bill, White House officials softened their stance on that, too. Echoing the views of House GOP leaders, Spicer said there would be a vote on health care legislation when House leaders count the 216 votes needed to pass it. 'I think we want to make sure that we've got the votes and we're headed in the right direction before putting some artificial deadline,' Spicer said. President Donald Trump and the first lady recognized the National Teacher of the Year at the Oval Office on Wednesday. Sydney Chaffee, a humanities teacher at Codman Academy, a public charter school in Boston, received the honor for 2017 while among top educators from every US state and territory. Trump said it was 'really something special' that the winner was from a charter school, on the same day that he signed an Executive Order promising less federal regulation of education. The teachers visit coincided with Melania Trumps 47th birthday and she joined the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for the event. Scroll down for video President Donald Trump and the first lady recognized the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, Boston's Sydney Chaffee, at the Oval Office on Wednesday Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated, and Trump supports creating more of them. Nothing is more important than being a teacher, Trump said. 'It's my pleasure to welcome so many extraordinary teachers to the White House,' Trump said. 'Each of you has dedicated yourself to inspiring young minds and to putting our children on a path to happiness and success. 'There are 55 teachers of the year who are here with us, from every state in the union,' he said. Trump said it was 'really something special' that the winner was from a charter school, on the same day that he signed an Executive Order promising less federal regulation of education The guests apparently sang 'Happy Birthday' to the first lady, which Trump said was 'very nice' 'Today we honor one teacher, in particular. She is the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, Sydney Chaffee,' he said. 'Sydney is the first teacher from Massachusetts ever to win the award, and the first from a public charter school. That is really something special.' Trump concluded his remarks with a religious affirmation and a directive for the group. 'God bless you all,' he said. 'Go back and keep teaching those students.' The teachers apparently sang 'Happy Birthday' to the first lady. They were 'very nice' to do so, Trump said, who tweeted a birthday greeting to his wife early in the day. Also on Wednesday, Trump signed the Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Statutory Prohibitions on Federal Control of Education. This Executive Order will ensure 'State and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools, and school systems,' according the policy statement within its text. Critics of the order said it could lead to reintegration of religious teachings, unequal treatment of students with special needs and less rigorous standards for public education. If Trump continues as planned, he will have signed at least 30 Executive Orders during his first 100 days as president, according to ABC, which culminates on Saturday. An amateur actor thought to be the longest-performing panto dame has died, after 68 years in the role. When Roy Staniforth was 15, he cast himself as a dame in Robinson Crusoe and retired only in 2012. Mr Staniforth's debut show in 1944 had a cast mostly made up of refugees in Brighton. He then joined the Wales Methodist Panto Players in Rotherham. Long reign: Roy Staniforth, 89, was believed to be the world's longest performing dame Each year the group would tour Sheffield between Christmas and Easter, with audiences growing over the years. Away from the stage, Mr Staniforth, who was awarded an MBE in 1997, worked as a surveyor for the Duke of Norfolk. On retiring aged 83, he said: 'I will remember the happiness we have brought to people and the laughter we have had in rehearsals. It's been such a joy.' Mr Staniforth, who had Parkinson's disease, died in a care home in Killamarsh, near Sheffield, on April 18 aged 89. His career started when he was just 15 years old when he cast himself as a Dame in Robinson Crusoe and only finished in 2012 when he retired from the stage aged 83. Off-duty: Mr Staniforth, pictured above without the make-up which became the integral part of his act, was awarded an MBE in 1997 for his services to theatre He had no prior acting or writing experience - but his interest was piqued after seeing his first pantomime. His debut show in war-time Britain in 1944 - which was mostly made up with a cast of refugees from Brighton - was originally staged to raise money for the Red Cross, but was such a roaring success that the shows continued each year. He then joined the Wales Methodist Panto Players based in the village of Wales in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Each year the panto group would tour around Sheffield between Christmas and Easter, with the cast and audiences growing over the years. But Mr Staniforth, who was awarded an MBE for services to the communities of Wales and nearby Kiveton in 1997, was a quiet gentleman in real life who worked full-time as a surveyor for the Duke of Norfolk. Happily married: Mr Staniforth, pictured above with his wife, died in a care home in Killamarsh, near Sheffield, on April 18 aged 89 Mrs Habergham said: 'When he played a Dame it was the complete opposite of what he was. You expect a Dame to be flamboyant, larger-than-life and the centre of attention. He had a strong character but he was nothing like that.' By the time Mr Staniforth retired from Dameing in 2012 at the age of 83, he was already suffering with Parkinsons Disease. When he retired he said: 'I have enjoyed every minute, it's been a big part of my life. I will remember the happiness we have brought to people and the laughter we have had in rehearsals. It's been such a joy.' Over his 68-year illustrious career he has played Mrs Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe, Widow Twanky in Aladdin, Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittingham, Dame Trott in Jack and the Beanstalk and Baroness in Cindarella. Mrs Habergham said: 'Over the years some have been used more than others but Roy always played the Dame. 'In general he used traditional Dame names but one year he created a character called Penelope Plumtree after the sister of somebody on the pantomime because she sold 150 tickets.' Over his 68-year illustrious career he has played Mrs Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe, Widow Twanky in Aladdin, Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittingham, Dame Trott in Jack and the Beanstalk and Baroness in Cindarella And now the Wales Panto Players, which has seen four generations of families going through it, are in mourning at the loss of their founder. Mrs Habergham said: 'It has been a very tough week. We weren't expecting him to die. It is so very sad. But we will go on, we will go on for Roy. Although the company is connected to the church they have always said that anybody is welcome. Mrs Habergham said: 'Roy always said it was about the kids. We always included everybody and always embraced everybody's talents. If anybody had a talent, Roy wold write it into the show. He will be sadly missed. 'He was the centre of Wales Panto Players.' Mr Staniforth kept the script for every pantomime he has written since he first scripted Robinson Crusoe in 1944 in an old exercise book. He said: 'I have kept them all and I go back and re-write them, update them and use them again. 'Many of the classics survive, like: irate customer to shopkeeper: 'Don't you have any scruples?', 'No sir, but I can order you some'.' Downing Street last night accused Twitter of undermining the fight against terrorism after the social media giant blocked access to potentially crucial data. The government has complained to the US social media giant about the bar on access to vast pools of information about users which is collated by the site. Until recently it was analysed by police and the security services to search for potential terror plots. This has been blocked as Twitter said it would not allow 'surveillance' of users. However, the site continues to collate the data and sells it on to private companies for their commercial use. The government has complained to Twitter about the bar on access to vast pools of information about users which is collated by the site Last night officials said No10 was 'protesting' about the decision and was still in talks with Twitter. Theresa May's spokesman said: 'The fight against terrorism is not just one for the police and security services. Social media and its companies have a role to play too. 'We are protesting this decision in talks with Twitter on getting access to this information. 'There is ongoing conversation between the Home Office and Twitter.' Reports yesterday suggested a third-party company contracted by the Government to monitor activity on Twitter for terror-related chatter has been blocked from carrying out its work. The company has said it will not allow data from its platform to be used for 'surveillance', calling it 'absolutely unacceptable and prohibited'. However, the information is still used to allow firms to track Twitter users' views of their products. Last year MPs on the Home Affairs Committee accused other social networks including Facebook, pictured, of failing to stop jihadists using their sites Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, a former Army officer, questioned Twitter's policy. He told The Sun: 'Why is it okay to sell data to firms like Wonga and not the Home Office? 'It's a disgrace that an organisation as powerful as Twitter fails to accept it has a responsibility to help keep people safe, while it is using the very same data to make huge profits from them.' The development comes amid growing criticism of social media sites for allowing extremist and terror material on their sites. Last year MPs on the Home Affairs Committee accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of failing to stop jihadists using their sites to promote terrorism and killings calling them the 'lifeblood of Isis'. The report said they were putting lives at risk by allowing Islamist fanatics to radicalise the young and vulnerable by spouting hatred, extremism and murder. Google, pictured, also came under fire from MPs amid concerns over the use of the internet to promote terrorism and killings Last month in the wake of the Westminster terror attack - Home Secretary Amber Rudd warned Twitter and other sites they must do more to crack down on terrorist material online and hinted at legislation if they fail to comply. The decision on data was made last year. In November senior Twitter executive Chris Moody said the site would take 'appropriate action' including suspension and termination of access to its data products - if companies violated the policy. The firm's vice-president of data and solutions wrote that any third-party company offering data to paying government clients would be blocked if it was being used for surveillance. He said: 'Recent reports about Twitter data being used for surveillance ...have caused us great concern. Home Secretary Amber Rudd, pictured left, warned Twitter and other sites they must do more to crack down on terror material. Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, pictured right, questioned Twitter's policy, saying: 'Why is it okay to sell data to firms like Wonga and not the Home Office?' 'As a company, our commitment to social justice is core to our mission and well established. And our policies in this area are long-standing. 'Using Twitter's Public APIs or data products to track or profile protesters and activists is absolutely unacceptable and prohibited.' APIs, or application program interfaces, are functions and codes which allow developers to build apps for use within an existing platform like Twitter. A spokesman for Twitter pointed reporters to the blog post but declined to comment further. Parents are pulling their children out of school religious education lessons because they do not want them taught about Islam, the Church of England said yesterday. Some, Church officials said, hope to shield their children from learning about any faith but Christianity, and others have a particular intention to keep children from any knowledge of Islam. They pointed towards far right political groups and some minority faith sects as activists who are trying to exploit the legal right of parents to withdraw their children from school RE. Parents are pulling their children out of school religious education lessons because they do not want them taught about Islam, the Church of England said (file photo) CofE leaders called for the right of withdrawal to be repealed and for RE to become a compulsory part of school timetables to encourage pupils to learn to live with others from different backgrounds. The accusation against parents who remove children from RE classes comes against a background of intensifying arguments about the future of religious education teaching. The subject is not part of the compulsory National Curriculum, and is, alongside sex education, the only subject from which parents can withdraw pupils. CofE school inspection chief Derek Holloway said: Through RE teacher social media forums and feedback from our RE advisers I am aware that some parents have sought to exploit the right to withdraw children from RE lessons. This is seemingly because they do not want their children exposed to other faiths and world views, in particular Islam. Anecdotally, there have also been some cases in different parts of the country of parents with fundamentalist religious beliefs also taking a similar course. This is not confined to any one particular religion or area of the country. Mr Holloway added: To enable all to live well together there is a need for all pupils from all backgrounds to receive a broad and balanced curriculum that includes high quality RE. Sadly, and dangerously the right of withdrawal from RE is now being exploited by a range of interest groups often using a dubious interpretation of human rights legislation. The right of withdrawal from RE now gives comfort to those who are breaking the law and seeking to incite religious hatred. School RE lessons are supposed to teach children not just about Christianity but to give them a background on the beliefs and history of all the major faiths. Parents have a legal right to remove their children from RE under a 1998 education law. The CofE, which has 4,700 schools including 200 secondary schools, aims to promote deep respect for the integrity of other traditions in RE. Some parents hope to shield their children from learning about any faith but Christianity, and others have a particular intention to keep children from any knowledge of Islam (file photo) Mr Holloway said the subject does have a contribution to make to combatting extremism and to community cohesion, but these are not its core purpose nor its main aims. He said the teaching of RE should not be confused with the daily act of worship which schools are required to offer to pupils. In most schools this is a Christian assembly, and parents are entitled to withdraw their children from the act of worship. There are no figures on how many parents remove their children from RE classes, although CofE officials said the figure is thought to be small. The subject is popular at GCSE, with more than 250,000 children taking the exam at 16. Critics of religious education said parents should continue to be able to remove their children from classes. Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said: The fundamental problem is that RE is a confused subject area, still sometimes taught in a biased or partisan way. If the subject was reformed to be genuinely educational and non-partisan study of religious and non-religious worldviews, the right to withdraw may no longer be necessary. But until such time, the right of withdrawal is required to protect parental rights and freedoms. A shocking report claims Ivanka Trump's clothing line is made by staff in a Chinese factory who are being pair just $1 an hour and are forced to work up to 82 hours of overtime a month. The Washington Post reported that G-III Apparel Group, which has held the exclusive license to manufacture the first daughter's clothes since 2012, has its 80 workers in one China factory work almost 60 hours a week, for pay of $62, according to a factory audit. The outlet says that Ivanka's clothing is made primarily in the China G-III factories, though her firm also has factories in Vietnam, Bangladesh and South America. The worrying report was released at a time when Ivanka's clothing sales are booming, even though she has been dumped by major retailers, such as Nordstrom. Ivanka Trump brand merchandise has soared in sales since her father was elected president, despite Nordstrom dumping her line Ivanka Trump branded clothing is made exclusively by the G-III Apparel Group, which has factories mostly in China, where Ivanka's clothing is made Sales were up were up 332% in January and February compared to a year prior, according to CNN Money. The brand sold $100million in fiscal year 2015, according to Forbes. Net sales for her clothing collection soared by $17.9 million in the year that ended January 31, according to G-III data. A report by Fair Labor Association, an independent group that works to improve the conditions of factory workers around the globe, found that workers were routinely required to work 57 hours a week to hit production targets. The report did not specify which brands were being assembled at the time of a two-day inspection in October. They were also required to work 82 hours of overtime a month between September 2015 and August 2016, despite Chinese law setting a limit of 36 overtime hours a month. Employees earn roughly $255 to $283 a month, below minimum wage in some areas of China, and less than half of what the average manufacturing employee makes. Fewer than a third of the employees had any of China's mandated benefits, including pension and medical, maternity, unemployment or work-related injury insurance. Nor were the workers receiving any help with housing costs, as is required by Chinese law. G-III workers at a factory in China have been found to be working for at or below minimum wage and up to 82 hours a month of overtime, which is against Chinese law - above, a G-III shoe factory in Dongguan, where about 100,000 pairs of Ivanka Trump shoes were made They only received five days off a year and their only representative was factory-appointed. The group found there was also no training in terms of how to handle equipment or reduce injuries or factory-related diseases common to workers dealing with harsh chemicals. G-III factories have shipped more than 110 tons of Ivanka-brand blouses, skirts, dresses and other garments to the United States since October, according to the outlet. In 2012, G-III became the sole maker of Ivanka Trump brand clothing, and that year, Ivanka said the company was 'has distinguished itself as a trusted partner for some of the worlds finest and most visible brands.' Workers at a factory line in Dongguan, where Ivanka Trump shoes have been made Meanwhile, Ivanka has tried to position herself as a champion of the working woman, saying in an editorial in the Financial Times, 'We can add billions to the global economy by creating an enabling environment, increasing womens labour force participation and business ownership, and improving the productivity of their work.' Trump stepped down from a management role in her fashion line when she took an adviser role in the White House, but its assets are in a trust, valued at $50million, controlled by her husband Jared Kushner's family. Ivanka's father, president Donald Trump, has repeatedly touted his 'buy American, hire American' agenda. Last week, he signed an executive order that he said would 'ensure that American labor is hired.' Ivanka Trump's clothes are displayed at a Century 21 store in New York. Her critics have urged major retailers to boycott her line 'We're going to do everything in our power to make sure more products are stamped with those wonderful words 'Made in the USA,'' Trump said during the signing. 'For too long weve watched as our factories have been closed and our jobs have been sent to faraway lands.' Trump's licensed brand lines, which include apparel, accessories and household items, are made almost entirely in foreign factories, including China, Bangladesh, Honduras, Vietnam, South Korea and Mexico, according to a report by the Washington Post. Some components of Trump-branded furniture were made in Germany. Trump Vodka is made in Israel and the Netherlands. Trump's red MAGA hats, ubiquitous during the campaign, were made in a southern California factory. Trump bottled water was made in New York and Vermont. Britain will accept another 130 refugee children after an 'administrative error' led to a revision in figures, officials said (stock photo) Britain is to accept an extra 130 refugee children after the Government discovered places had been under-counted due to an 'administrative error'. Ministers faced a furious backlash in February when they announced that 350 unaccompanied minors would arrive from Europe through the scheme - well below the 3,000 campaigners had called for. Now the Home Office has announced that the total number of children resettled under the programme - known as a the Dubs Amendment after Labour peer Lord Dubs - will rise to 480. The figure is being increased after officials discovered scores of offers to provide support for youngsters from local councils were mistakenly missed off. Campaigners said they were 'shocked and disgusted' at the failure and demanded the scheme be reopened in full. They warned the embarrassing error showed effort to help refugee children had not been taken seriously. The gaffe was admitted yesterday by Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill, who announced in February the scheme would end with 350 places. After the error was uncovered, Mr Goodwill told MPs: 'The Government has very recently become aware that, due to an administrative error as part of collating the figures, one region pledged 130 places which were not accounted for in setting the specified number. 'In order to ensure the specified number of children to be transferred is a true reflection of the responses to that consultation, I am today announcing that ... the Government is increasing the specified number from 350 to 480. 'As outlined in my original statement, the specified number includes over 200 children already transferred from France as part of the Calais camp clearance.' Lord Dubs (left) said he was 'shocked and disgusted that the Government has made such a mess of this'. Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill (right) admitted the embarrassing gaffe to MPs last night Home Affairs committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper said the entire scheme should now be reopened to make sure all places were accounted for Mr Goodwill also stressed that no eligible child has been refused transfer to the UK as a result of the error. Home Office officials have met with counterparts in Europe to plan future transfers. WHAT IS THE DUBS AMENDMENT? The so-called 'Dubs Amendment' is a scheme pioneered by Labour peer Lord Alf Dubs. Lord Dubs, who as a child fled the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, demanded changes to the Immigration Act 2016 to require Britain to take in unaccompanied child refugees. He defeated the Government in the Lords on the issue but MPs over rode the vote repeatedly. Political pressure grew after a further defeat in the Lord ministers climbed down and accepted a slimmed down scheme that required them to consult councils on how many child refugees they could accommodate. Campaigners hoped this would provide homes for 3,000 children - but the Government said in February it had only received 350 offers and the scheme would close. The Home Office has now admitted counting wrongly and saying it had actually received offers of 480 places. Advertisement Home Affairs Committee chairman Yvette Cooper welcomed the news an extra 130 children would be helped. But she blasted: 'It beggars belief that these children weren't helped earlier because of a basic admin error. 'This shows a shameful failure by the Home Office to talk properly to local councils who were willing and able to help or to check they had counted the figures up right. 'This shows the Home Office simply hasn't taken this seriously enough.' Ms Cooper said her committee had heard repeated evidence from councils that more places were available. She said: 'Surely on something as important as this, when children are at risk of trafficking and prostitution, they would have checked the numbers were right. 'This revelation now casts further doubt on the whole consultation process - how many more places could be missing?' Lord Dubs, whose amendment gave the scheme its name, said he was 'shocked and disgusted' at ministers' carelessness. He said: 'I'm delighted for the sake of those 130 children but shocked and disgusted that the Government has made such a mess of this. 'I don't like the way they're doing it just before the election - the Government should be ashamed of themselves.' The Home Office has announced that the total number of children resettled under the programme - known as a the Dubs Amendment after Labour peer Lord Dubs - will rise to 480 (stock photo) He added: 'We have told them for a long time that local authorities have offered more places, they have known for ages and have only announced it now, right before the election. 'They have been told by us and by local authorities that some are willing to offer more places and they wouldn't listen.' Last October the Daily Mail gave support to a one-off amnesty - limited in number - for asylum to unaccompanied children in the Channel coast camps, recognising the harrowing conditions in which they were living simply could not be ignored. Hayley Cull of Unicef UK said: 'This will be a much-needed lifeline for these 130 children. It is vital they reach safety in the UK quickly, so they can be protected and start to rebuild their lives. 'But this Dubs lifeline will soon be gone for other children in danger. We still need a long-term plan so children never have to make dangerous journeys into and across Europe in order to reach safety.' British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland have been left in a 'morally indefensible limbo' by a controversial police investigation, a report found yesterday British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland have been left in a 'morally indefensible limbo' by a controversial police investigation, a report found yesterday. Up to 1,000 retired troops face becoming murder and manslaughter suspects over killings from the height of the IRA's terror campaign. In a scathing paper, a Westminster committee warned that if a line was not drawn 'urgently' under the witch-hunt it would 'grind on for many years'. The report says: 'It is morally indefensible for former service personnel to be caught in limbo with the threat of investigation hanging over them.' MPs said veterans in their sixties and seventies should be immune to investigation and prosecution four decades after they fought terrorism in the Troubles. In a decision that has sparked outrage, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is re-examining every Army killing in the fight against Irish terrorism. One dying veteran is already set to stand trial over the death of an IRA suspect nearly 43 years ago. Great-grandfather Dennis Hutchings, 75, is being hauled to court over the shooting of John Pat Cunningham, 27 who was later found to be innocent in Northern Ireland in June 1974. The Commons defence select committee has demanded an end to the 'vicious cycle of investigation and re-investigation that fails both former service personnel and the families of those who died'. It called on the Government to pass a statute of limitations to prevent veterans facing legal action over the killings. Great-grandfather Dennis Hutchings, 75, is being hauled to court over the shooting of John Pat Cunningham, 27 who was later found to be innocent in Northern Ireland in June 1974 This would effectively grant immunity to those who served in Ulster from 1969, when the Troubles began, to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Failure to act could lead to a repeat of the hounding of troops by the discredited Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), set up to probe war crimes accusations. The Mail has campaigned against the witch-hunt against troops. Tory MP Julian Lewis, chairman of the cross-party committee, said: 'To subject former soldiers to legal pursuit under the current arrangements is wholly oppressive and a denial of natural justice. 'Parliament has it within its power to enact a statute of limitations, which is the only way to avoid another IHAT debacle.' The report said: 'Unless a decision is taken to draw a line under all Troubles-related cases they will grind on for years, up to half a century after the incidents concerned.' MPs said the Government should 'not lose sight of its moral responsibility to those who served our country', but also called for bereaved families to be told what happened to their loved-ones. The PSNI's Legacy Investigation Branch is re-examining 302 deaths during the Troubles. Critics are angry that, although 90 per cent of the 3,500 killings in Northern Ireland were at the hands of terrorists, the investigation has focused on the actions of British forces. The committee found there were a 'disproportionately high' number of investigations focused on ex-soldiers some 30 per cent. Legal experts warned that if a statute of limitations only applied to former Army personnel, the Government could be accused for legislating for 'state impunity'. But the MPs do not recommend statute for all sides, leaving it 'for the next government to decide'. Democratic Unionist committee member Gavin Robinson said: 'The last 20 years have been marred by the completely imbalanced treatment of those who terrorised our society and brave service personnel who ensured they would never succeed.' But Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly, a convicted IRA terrorist, called the MPs' recommendation 'an insult'. A woman who is clinging onto life after being doused in petrol and set alight has been identified as 20-year-old Nicole Evans A woman who is clinging onto life after being doused in petrol and set alight has been identified as 20-year-old Nicole Evans. Miss Evans, from Hobart, is fighting for her life in hospital and police allege that her fiance Matthew John Davey, 34, set her on fire. Miss Evans was flown to the Alfred Hospital early on Tuesday morning after suffering severe burns to more than half of her body. She had surgery on Tuesday night and remains in a critical condition. According to The Mercury, police prosecutor Oliver Hinss told Hobart Magistrates Court that doctors 'have grave concerns as to whether she will in fact survive'. Police claim Davey - who was himself treated for minor burns - poured an accelerant over Miss Evans before setting her on fire, 'causing extensive injuries'. Davey is also charged with hitting Miss Evans in the face and throwing a can at her. Earlier in April he was also accused of assaulting Miss Evans and depriving her and her mother of their liberty in an alleged attack. Davey pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, including causing grievous bodily harm, as he appeared in court on Wednesday. He did not apply for bail. Miss Evans was flown to The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne late on Monday night after she was injured by fire in a backyard shed at a Chigwell home (Corranga Drive pictured) The case has been adjourned until June 13, when it will be heard in the Supreme Court. Earlier this week Detective Inspector Craig Joel said Miss Evans was in a 'grave' condition following the attack. He said an accelerant of some type, such as petrol, had been used in the alleged attack. National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero. Millions of shoppers who spend money on credit cards could be left thousands out of pounds out of pocket because of a loophole in the law. Anyone who makes a purchase with a credit card should be protected under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. This makes the retailer and the credit card company jointly liable to pay a refund if there is a fault with the product or if it is not delivered. It applies to purchases between 100 and 30,000. Anyone who makes a purchase with a credit card should be protected under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act Many people make big purchases on their credit card - such as a holiday or a car - precisely because it gives them peace of mind if something goes wrong. But a joint investigation by MoneySavingExpert and ITV's Good Morning Britain has found that apparently valid claims are being rejected, as companies rely on a little known exemption to wriggle off the hook. In one case a man paid for a family member's 6,000 breast surgery on an Amex credit card in order to qualify for Section 75 protection. He tried to seek a refund after the patient was unhappy with the work. Amex rejected the claim on the grounds that the payment to the surgeon was collected via a third party firm called iZettle. Technically, for Section 75 to apply there must be a direct link between the customer, the supplier and the credit card company. If the relationship is deemed to be broken by the involvement of an intermediary or third party, Section 75 protection will not apply. The exemption means millions of people who thought they were protected could be left hundreds or even thousands of pounds out of pocket. Dozens of specialist payment processing companies such as Paypal and Worldpay offer retailers the ability to accept online orders or provide card terminals to shop keepers. To add to the confusion the Financial Ombudsman, which deals with Section 75 disputes, is unable to provide clear guidance to customers when purchases will not be protected. It says each payment has to be fully investigated to establish how it is processed and whether Section 75 protection applies. The exemption means millions of people who thought they were protected could be left hundreds or even thousands of pounds out of pocket Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com said: 'If you're buying anything costing over 100, I've always suggested you pay for at least some of it on a credit card to get the hugely valuable Section 75 protection. 'Yet we now have the bizarre situation that if you pay on a company's website, or get given a machine in a shop, some hidden nebulous detail about the way it's done can invalidate your protection.' He added: 'We need clarity on this. Companies and payment processors should be made to clearly state when Section 75 doesn't apply. At the moment, not only do they not tell you, they don't even know themselves.' A Financial Ombusdman Service spokesman said: 'If someone has been turned down by their bank or credit card provider and are concerned they have been treated unfairly they can get in touch with the Financial Ombudsman Service and we'll look at the complaint independently to decide if something has gone wrong.' The Ministry of Defence has admitted carrying out a string of experiments at their top secret laboratories using the deadly VX nerve agent, which was used to kill the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Officials at the MoD say VX, one of the deadliest chemicals ever created, has recently been used in a series of animal experiments at their labs in Porton Down, near Salisbury. In total 54 guinea pigs were killed in experiments by the MoD as they attempted to study its effects and develop an antidote to VX, which the United Nations has classed as a weapon of mass destruction. The chemical came to public attention earlier this year when it was used to kill Kim Jong-nam, the elder half-brother of the North Korean despot MoD scientists killed 29 guinea pigs with the nerve agent in 2015 conducting a series of experiments into a possible antidote to the poison. Officials said the experiments had to be carried out on guinea pigs as it was impossible to have trials using the banned agent where humans were subjected to the poison. Then in 2016 another 25 animals were killed in tests using VX. A total of 12 died in tests used to assess the quality of an antidote and the remaining 13 were killed as scientists monitored whether the effects of VX tied in with computer models it held about how the chemical worked. Officials said that all the animals were exposed to the chemical by having it put onto their skin, and that blood and tissue samples were taken from the dead animals for biochemical analysis. The chemical came to public attention earlier this year when it was used to kill Kim Jong-nam, the elder half-brother of the North Korean despot. The victim was attacked in the Kuala Lumpur airport, in Malaysia, where his killers are believed to have touched his face with a tiny amount of the poison. Two women suspects have been charged with his murder, which many believe to be orchestrated by the North Korean authorities. They face the death penalty if convicted. Experts say that the oily poison was almost certainly produced in a sophisticated state weapons laboratory. Experts say VX attacks the body's nervous system and shuts it down, causing death. Victims are said to feel giddy or nauseous before their bodies begin to convulse and they stop breathing. Officials at the MoD say VX, one of the deadliest chemicals ever created, has recently been used in a series of animal experiments at their labs in Porton Down, near Salisbury (pictured) The agent is so toxic that a tiny amount, as little as 10mg, can be enough to kill a victim within 15 minutes. If applied quickly enough atropine is said to be an effective antidote to VX by freezing nerve receptors and stopping them from being overwhelmed by the toxin. In the past the MoD has admitted testing deadly chemicals such as Sarin and ricin on animals as well as killing them by exposing them to the ebola virus, at their labs in Porton Down. An MoD spokesman said: 'Our role in helping protect the UK and its Armed Forces requires us to answer questions and develop solutions to problems that cannot currently be addressed without the use of animals in research. 'VX has been used by terrorists to attack the public so it is important we continue researching ways to counter it. While we are taking steps to reduce the number of animals used, there is currently no other way of carrying out this potentially life-saving research.' Dr Julia Baines, Science Policy Adviser at the animal charity PETA, said: 'The Ministry of Defence is wasting precious time, resources, and lives by turning animals into casualties in the war on terrorism. 'Although guinea pigs feel pain and fear like we do, fundamental biological differences mean that they react differently from us to chemical agents and antidotes. 'So rather than poisoning these animals with the deadly VX nerve agent - which can cause bleeding in the lungs, hypothermia, and severe abdominal pain without providing any human-relevant information - the MoD must direct its efforts towards cutting-edge human-based methods in order to develop and test countermeasures for chemical and biological attacks.' Bachelor star Chris Soules has spoken out for the first time since he allegedly knocked down and killed his neighbor in Arlington, Iowa, early on Tuesday morning. Soules, 35, was arrested after allegedly calling 911 from the scene of the accident, then fleeing after he couldn't feel the pulse of Kenneth Mosher, 66. On Wednesday he spoke out, telling In Touch: 'My family and I are overwhelmed with this tragedy, but we are sticking together and we'll get through it.' Scroll down for video Chris Soules (left) said he was 'overwhelmed' with the tragedy of killing his neighbor Kenneth Mosher (right). Soules hit Mosher's tractor in Iowa on Monday, cops said TMZ reports that police have seized his cell phone and will be looking at call logs, messaging services, his pictures and social media to see whether he was distracted at the time of the accident. If it is determined that Soules was distracted then he could be charged with vehicular manslaughter, a class C felony that carries a maximum penalty of ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine. The crash occurred at around 8pm Monday, as Kenneth Mosher's tractor was rammed off the road and into a ditch. Soules was driving his pickup truck. A pair of 911 calls from the crash reveal how he called for help and tried to save the fellow farmer before fleeing in another driver's truck once police arrived. Soules was arrested at his home in Arlington about six miles from the scene of the crash, five hours after the crash on Monday night and was charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident, a class D felony. He was released from custody after posting a $10,000 bond on Tuesday and is expected to return to court on May 2. The former reality television star is being kept under tabs in case he attempts to flee, Us Weekly reported. 'Chris has a location-monitoring device on his leg and had to surrender his passport,' the magazine reports, citing a source close to the former Bachelor personality. He reportedly was forced to surrender his passport as he 'had plans to leave the country', the insider told the magazine. The magazine then quoted the source as saying: 'Chris hasn't left his house yet... His family has been by his side.' The calls were released on Wednesday and reveal that Soules tried to save Mosher's life and that there were others at the scene when the crash occurred. The pair were friendly with one another, In Touch reported. Soules, who starred in series 19 of The Bachelor and was preparing to film Bachelor in Paradise when the crash occurred, called 911 immediately. He told an operator through labored breathing: 'I just ran in to a guy in a tractor.' After admitting that he did not know how to perform CPR, he asked others there: 'Does anyone know CPR?' It was initially unclear whether or not he was alone at the time of the crash. As they waited for police and an ambulance, Soules checked Mosher's pulse. He remarked that it didn't look as though Mosher was breathing. 'I can't tell, he doesn't appear to be,' he said when asked. Later, he said: 'I feel like he's got a pulse.' Soules ended the call abruptly, telling the operator: 'Can I call you back real quick?' It's not clear exactly how much time passed before police arrived. A separate recording of their radio communication however captured the moment he allegedly fled in another person's truck. 'One of the subjects that was involved just took off northbound in a red Duramax truck. Do you have any available units?' one of the responding police officers is heard saying. Within seconds, another said: 'We believe the subject is going to be Chris Soules. That's the name of the subject who took off.' Kenneth Mosher (pictured with his family), a 66-year-old corn farmer and grandfather, died. His tractor was mowed off the road and in to a ditch 911 calls reveal how police arrived at the scene before Soules left. Officers were heard calling for back-up after he 'took off' in another person's truck Soules appeared in a court on Tuesday morning to be charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident. His mother posted his $10,000 bond later and was released Soules was eventually arrested five hours later at his house. Police searched his vehicle at the crash scene and found alcohol in it but there has not yet been any suggestion he was drunk at the time of the accident. Soules appeared on the 19th series of The Bachelor Soules was released from jail on Tuesday after his mother posted his $10,000 bond. His spokesman issued a statement on his behalf afterwards to say he was 'devastated' by the accident. 'Chris Soules was involved in an accident on Monday evening, April 24, in a rural part of Iowa near his home. 'He was devastated to learn that Kenneth Mosher, the other person in the accident, passed away. His thoughts and prayers are with Mr Mosher's family.' Police records show the star had at least 12 other run-ins with the law. Previous charges include driving under the influence, speeding, running a stop sign and driving with an open container of alcohol. He was charged with fleeing the scene of a previous accident in 2002 but it was reduced to defective brakes. Mosher, a father and grandfather, died after being taken to hospital by ambulance. He was a corn farmer. The victim's son-in-law relatives told People the crash was a 'freak accident'. Teen drinking, speeding and DUI: Chris Soules' rap sheet revealed Soules' criminal record has more than a dozen convictions from the time he was 16 years old Chris Soules, the dashing all-American gentleman farmer from Iowa who charmed his way into TV viewers' hearts on The Bachelor, had spent his late teens and 20s going in and out of courtrooms on more than a dozen charges, most of them related to driving violations and alcohol consumption. Records available on Iowa Courts' website detail Soules' vast history of run-ins with the law, which goes back 1998 and includes 13 guilty pleas on a slew of counts, ranging from registration violations to underage drinking and fighting. In 1998, Soules, then aged 16, was convicted for the first time of speeding six to 10 miles over a 55mph speed limit and was sentenced to a fine. In 2001, Soules was found guilty of underage drinking and failure to maintain control of a vehicle in two separate incidents. Both cases saw the future reality star get off with fines. In May and August of that year, Soules was convicted twice of possession of alcohols under age. In the latter incident, he was also found guilty of driving with an open container of alcohol, running a stop sign and speeding. Those cases also resulted in fines. In February 2002, Soules was convicted of fighting, and in March he was back in court on a charge of leaving the scene of an accident, which was later reduced to a count of defective brakes. Soules stayed out of trouble for four years until in 2006 he was convicted of his most serious charge - driving while intoxicated - and fined more than $500. His sentence also included a year of probation. In 2007, Soules was found guilty of speeding, and the same charge brought him back to court in 2009. Soules' final brush with the law before Monday's arrest occurred in 2010, when he was convicted and fined for a registration violation. Advertisement Angel Sanchez, 37, allegedly raped an intoxicated woman on March 30 while taking her home from a work event An Uber driver raped a drunk passenger after picking her up from a company event in an upmarket California neighborhood, prosecutors say. Angel Sanchez, 37, is facing up to eight years in jail after he allegedly attacked the woman while driving her from a venue in Newport Beach to her home in Santa Ana. Police say Sanchez picked the woman up on the evening of March 30. Her friends had requested the ride because she was intoxicated, the OC Register reports. Sanchez drove her close to her home before pulling the car over to the side of the road and attacking her, it is alleged. After the attack was over the woman fled from the vehicle and called police, who arrested Sanchez at his house the following day. He has been an Uber driver for more than a year, officers say. Uber spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said the company assisted law enforcement with the investigation. Police say Sanchez has been an Uber driver for more than a year, and are now asking other potential victims to come forward with information 'Nobody should have to go through what this woman reported to police,' Breeden added. Investigators are now appealing for other potential victims to come forward and speak with them. Sanchez has been booked into the Santa Ana Police Department jail on sexual assault charges and a $100,000 bond. He is scheduled for an initial court appearance next week. He has yet to enter a plea. Two teenage girls are missing in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Chloe Smith and Ellie Phelan, both 14-years-old, were last seen at a home in Raymond Terrace about 6.30pm on Wednesday night. Police say Chloe has a medical condition that requires her to have daily medication, which she did not take with her. Two teenage girls are missing in New South Wales. Pictured is one of the girls Chloe Smith, who has a medical condition requiring daily medication that she did not take with her Due to their age and vulnerability there are concerns for their welfare. Chloe is described as having an olive complexion, about 150cm tall with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing high-waisted black shorts with a grey singlet and pink thongs. Ellie is described as having an olive complexion, about 175cm tall with long brown hair, a nose and a tongue piecing. Ellie Phelan (pictured) is also missing. The two girls were last seen about 6.30pm on Wednesday night at a house in Raymond Terrace She was last seen wearing ripped light coloured denim jeans with a black shirt, black joggers and a grey bag. Anyone with information on the incident should call Raymond Terrace Police on (02) 4983 7511 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. School leavers can now earn up to $100,000 without a university degree, with many employers favouring 'life skills' over a qualification. From air-traffic controllers to operation and construction managers, many unskilled jobs are now just as financially profitable as those requiring a tertiary degree. According to a jobs experts, the decision by universities to enroll more students in courses than the number of jobs available once they graduate is making degrees obsolete - and increasing the financial worth of unskilled positions. Scroll down for video School leavers can earn up to $100,000 without a university degree, with many jobs such as Air Traffic Controllers (pictured) now regarding 'life skills' as more crucial than a qualification Professions such as radiation therapists (pictured) can earn close to $80,000 without a degree Raife Watson, the CEO of jobs vacancy website Adzuna, told the Today Show there are a number of positions with salaries of up to $100,000 that don't require degrees. Topping the list are Air Traffic Controllers, who have an average salary of more than $108,000. 'A high pressure job with minimal error to be had and they deserve every cent they can get,' Mr Watson said. Also high on the list of 'degree-free' positions are management roles for operations and distribution companies such as Amazon. COULD YOU DO ONE OF THESE TOP PAYING 'DEGREE-FREE' JOBS? Air Traffic Controller - $108,040 General and operations managers - $94,400 Construction manager - $83,860 Transportation and distribution manager - $80,210 Police supervisors and detectives - $78,260 Radiation therapist - $77,890 Nuclear power reactor operator - $75,650 Elevator installer - $70,910 Source: Raife Watson, Adzuna CEO Advertisement According to jobs expert Raife Watson (pictured) universities enrolling more students in courses than the number of jobs available once they graduate are making degrees obsolete Police sergeants and detectives are paid well, while construction roles are also among the top jobs with many building projects being launched across the country Construction roles are also among the highest paying, with many building projects being launched across the country. 'Think about what we need in Australia - more houses to bring down housing prices,' Mr Watson said. Rounding out the list were operating roles at power stations, radiation therapists and installing elevators, which all have salaries of more than $70,000. However the jobs expert said not going to university didn't mean people could only pursue a career in labouring or the like, with corporate positions readily available. Rounding out the list were operating roles at power stations and elevator installers which both have salaries of more than $70,000 According to Mr Watson, working in areas of personal interest are key to success. 'I think passion has got a lot to do with it, so pick a company you are really interested in or an industry, and try to get an entry level job in there. 'Once you are in you can start letting it be known that this is the type of job you want to do.' Delta is the latest airline to come under fire after video emerged showing a passenger being told he had to get off a plane because he used the bathroom during a tarmac delay. Kima Hamilton, a 39-year-old 'DJ and poet' was due to travel on Delta Airlines Flight 2035 from Atlanta to Milwaukee on April 18. Unfortunately for all aboard the flight, they were delayed while waiting on the tarmac for about 30 minutes. During that hold-up, Hamilton needed to go to the bathroom. At one point, he stood up from his seat and walked to the back of the plane, then asked a flight attendant if he could duck in and relieve himself, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. Scroll down for video Kima Hamilton was filmed being kicked off a Delta flight last month because he used the bathroom during a delay on the tarmac The attendant said no, telling the 39-year-old they would 'lose their place in line', if he did, according to the newspaper. Defeated and unrelieved, Hamilton returned to his seat. But as the delay continued and the plane remained stranded on the tarmac, Hamilton's need to go grew stronger. Fearing an 'accident' in his seat, the 39-year-old got back up and walked to the restroom at plane's rear. He went in, flushed, and returned to his seat in about a minute. But as Hamilton was sitting back down and buckling his seat belt, he claimed the flight crew made an announcement over the intercom. 'The pilot came on and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry for the inconvenience but we have to return to the gate and remove a passenger',' he told the Journal-Sentinel. Hamilton, a 39-year-old 'DJ and poet' was due to travel on Delta Airlines Flight 2035 from Atlanta to Milwaukee on April 18 when the incident took place The video started by showing Hamilton sat in his seat (left), before an official approached his and said he needed to leave 'It escalated to that point that fast.' Footage of what happened next was posted online by Krista Rosolino - another passenger who was sat across the aisle from Hamilton with her husband, Mike, and their infant daughter. In the first of two videos, Hamilton is heard saying to what appears to be an airline official: 'Can you help me understand why I need more information, I haven't done anything.' The official then says: 'We'll discuss this outside, not here. Come with me please. We're not going to discuss this here.' Hamilton continues: 'I'm not really clear I purchased this ticket, I had an emergency and needed to pee, I tried to hold it the first time and I absolutely couldn't, and now I'm being kicked off the plane? I haven't done anything hostile.' The back-and-forth continued for about three minutes, before the official walked down the aisle and exited the plane. Hamilton continued to press his case for staying on the plane to the official stood in the aisle (left), before the man eventually walked off the plane (right) A second official then came onto the plane and began talking to the 39-year-old in a softer manner (left). Hamilton appeared stunned and confused by the drama (right) 'I have done nothing,' Hamilton is heard saying, before another passenger was heard agreeing there was no need to boot him from the aircraft. But things took a turbulent turn from there. The second video shows another man on the plane, stood in the aisle talking to Hamilton. The 39-year-old continued to explain his desperate need to get to the bathroom, and that he needed to get to Milwaukee to help run a fieldtrip with '94 sixth graders'. The second official, who had kneeled down to listen to Hamilton, was seen laughing in a good natured manner at the comment, before nodding seemingly in an understanding manner. The official then is heard saying: 'Let me just explain, basically any time we are about to take off for your safety, and for everyone's safety we need you seated, that's the bottom line. 'I don't understand why I have to get off this plane though, I mean, I had to use the restroom?' Hamilton was heard asking the official 'I understand you had an emergency and I'm glad you were able to take care of that, however, there's always protocol. 'Because you were the person, I'm not saying who 'caused' the flight to lose its place in line, that's why we need to talk to you about it. 'This is not one of those scenarios where we are going to force you off the plane or anything, but because we are inconveniencing everyone right now, that's why someone came to ask you to leave, and I need you to follow me up to the front desk, that's all.' 'You're kicking me off the plane, I need you to be direct with that language, because this whole "let's get off and talk" thing isn't true,' Hamilton said back, before the official replied. 'I'm trying to be 100 per cent, I'm saying because we had to move the plane out of rotation and we need to head back to the gate, we need to see what the reason is more people are involved than just us right now,' he said. 'I don't understand why I have to get off this plane though, I mean, I had to use the restroom?' Hamilton then asked again. The incident took place aboard Delta flight 2035 that was traveling from Atlanta to Milwaukee on April 18 The man needed to use the bathroom while the plane was delayed on the tarmac, but would told he could because it was in the process of taking off 'We're not kicking you off, we need to remove you because we need to discuss this further,' the official replied. 'I'm just trying to help you man, so if you can follow me, get your things and whatever, then we can get you rebooked.' When he was eventually forced to leave the plane, Hamilton apologized to the man sitting next to him. But the fellow passenger was supportive, and said: 'You did nothing wrong.' Krista Rosolino then wrote about the incident in a lengthy 'open letter' to the airline that she posted online. 'I observed the most outrageous treatment of a paying customer that I have seen in my two decades of flying,' it read. 'I trust that you will investigate this matter and see that similar situations are handled better in the future. Not only did your staff truly harm and humiliate one person who was forced to pay hundreds of dollars for a new same-day flight, but you forced the rest of us passengers to endure a two hour saga of watching a man being targeted for having a bathroom emergency. 'I am disappointed and horrified at how Delta Airlines staff treated their customers/passengers.' In the letter, she went on to explain how eventually everyone was forced to get off the plane, and they were then allowed to reboard 'sans Hamilton'. The incident comes after an American Airlines flight attendant was caught on camera yanking a stroller away from a passenger and her baby last Friday. The passenger is picture crying Earlier this month, United Airlines was slammed after a passenger, Dr. David Dao (above), was dragged off an April 9 flight in Chicago to make room for crew members 'Delta, what was the nice gentleman supposed to do?' she asked to end the letter. 'Here are the options as I see it: 1) Urinate in his seat. This would be unpleasant for him, everyone around him, and the airline staff member who has to clean it up. 2) Urinate in a vomit bag or some type of device he could have possibly found. Again, same issue with being uncomfortable for him, those around him, and anyone cleaning up later. 'Or 3) Do what he didwait as long as humanly (remember, we are humans?) possible, and then go to the bathroom as quickly as possible. Yes, he may have broken the rules... however, the situation was resolved in the 1 minute he was out of his seat. I dont believe the plane moved an inch during that time. 'Why did Delta have to continue this saga by returning to the gate to remove him? What about him made you want to remove him from the plane?' Delta responded to the newspaper about the incident with a statement on Wednesday. 'Our flight crews are extensively trained to ensure the safety and security of all customers. It is imperative that passengers comply with crew instructions during all phases of flight, especially at the critical points of takeoff and landing,' it read. The incident is the latest in a string of dramas for airlines when trying to remove passengers in the last few weeks. Dr David Dao was filmed being bloodied and dragged from a United flight in Chicago, and then on Friday a flight attendant was caught on camera yanking a stroller away from a passenger and her baby. A witness caught the moment two couples with road rage got out of their cars and started brawling in the streets of San Diego last month. One of the women involved was left with a bloody face before the altercation was broken up by an off duty Chula Vista police officer. The video was originally posted to Facebook by witness to the incident, Cinthia Lara of San Diego. The video starts with a man and woman at the driver side of a dark grey car, appearing to argue with the man who was driving that car. A young woman then gets out of the passenger seat of the dark grey car and joins the other three by the driver's side door. The young woman positions herself behind the open driver's side door, next to the man who was driving her car. San Diego's Cinthia Lara caught the moment two couples got out of their cars and started brawling in the streets of Chula Vista on camera last month The video starts with a man and woman at the driver side of a dark grey car, appearing to argue with the man who was driving that car before the second young woman got out to join them It appears that the other woman reaches over the door and points in the face of the young woman. Then the taller of the two men puts his hands in the air as the young woman can be seen batting at the other woman, who seemed to be the initial physical aggressor. Soon after, the taller man grabs the driver of the grey car by the head and all four individuals begin kicking and punching each other, as well as grabbing at each other's hair. Soon after, the taller of the two men grabbed the driver of the grey car by the head and all four individuals begin kicking and punching each other, as well as grabbing at each other's hair Multiple vehicles were forced to stop for the fight taking up the roadway and at least two individuals got out of their cars to try to break up the fight One of the women involved was left with a bloody face before the altercation was broken up Multiple vehicles were forced to stop for the fight taking up the roadway and at least two individuals got out of their cars to try to break up the fight. The incident finally came to a halt when an off-duty police officer got out of his car with badge in hand and shouted for the four of them to stop. The brawl happened at 3rd Avenue and K Street on March 27, according to NBC. This was the second violent road rage incident reported recently in that area, Chula Vista Police Captain Fritz Reber said. In the last occurrence, a man was stabbed. None of the four individuals seen fighting in the video were charged with a crime in connection with this incident, NBC reported. The video, which was posted the same day, has since been viewed nearly one million times. Australia's Ten Network has admitted 'uncertainty' over its future, after announcing a massive half-year $232 million loss. Ten Network Holdings posted the multi-million dollar loss on Thursday and said its future success largely depended on securing another loan. The network currently has a $200 million financing package from Crown Resorts casino magnate James Packer, News Corp's Lachlan Murdoch and businessman Bruce Gordon, but it is due to expire in December. Ten Network Holdings posted the multi-million dollar loss on Thursday. Pictured: Ten's CEO Paul Anderson The network, which is Australia's third-ranked commercial TV broadcaster, said its future hung in the balance of securing another loan. 'The group is currently seeking to secure an amended or new borrowing facility with extended maturity and expanded size,' it said. 'As a result of the matters disclosed, there is a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the group's ability to continue as a going concern.' The network will need to demonstrate how it plans to improve its future earnings to ensure continued support from the three key shareholders, including Mr Packer. The network, which is Australia's third-ranked commercial TV broadcaster, announced it was actively seeking another loan to stay afloat. Pictured: CEO Paul Anderson Pictured: The Sydney Head Office of Channel 10 in Pyrmont, Sydney The network currently has a $200 million financing package from Crown Resorts casino magnate James Packer (pictured), News Corp's Lachlan Murdoch and businessman Bruce Gordon, but it is due to expire in December The company admitted the free-to-air advertising market was a challenge in Australian capital cities, but announced things were looking more positive. The network said the market increased by 2.3 percent in the first quarter of 2017. But the network said it expected to report an underlying loss of $25 million to $30 million for the financial year ending September 30 if the federal government did not cut the television licence fee. Ten's CEO Paul Anderson publicly asked the government in February to slash licence fees imposed on the network and reform media laws. The success of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! managed to capture Australia's attention with its diverse celebrity casting, which included sportsman Dane Swan (left), singer Casey Donnovan (centre) and pop-star Natalie Bassingthwaighte (right) TEN has been weathering the negative effects of changeable viewership thanks to The Biggest Loser: Transformed's poor ratings Ten has weathered the effects of poor ratings this year with the network's famed weight-loss reality show The Biggest Loser plummeting in the ratings. Its program I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here did well, but failed to save the network. An insider told TV Tonight in March Ten now relied on Masterchef to rescue ratings. 'Arguably it will need to do some heavy lifting off a very low lead in with Loser,' they said. Australia needs to 'get much more serious' about building a missile defence system to guard against North Korea's missile development, an expert has claimed. Kim Jong-un's regime has rapidly developed its missile technology so fast it has sometimes taken western analysts by surprise, says defence specialist Andrew Shearer, who worked for former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard. Mr Shearer told Fairfax Media Australia has to 'get much more serious, potentially quite quickly given the looming North Korea threat, about missile defence for deployed forces'. North Korea held a 'combined fire demonstration' on Wednesday Kim Jong-un watches a military drill marking the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army on Wednesday 'The problem is that North Korean and Chinese missile development has been accelerating very rapidly, particularly over the past few years, to the extent it has often taken western analysts by surprise,' said Mr Shearer, who is based at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Defence specialist Andrew Shearer A defence system to protect all of Australia would cost us billions. Mr Shearer suggested upgrading the navy's Air Warfare Destroyers so they could intercept missiles with SM-3 missiles, Fairfax Media reports. He said systems like South Korea's Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) or the U.S. PAC-3 Patriot should be considered. North Korea's army fired rockets and torpedoes at mock enemy warships in its 'largest ever' live-fire artillery drills on Wednesday. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pictured last Thursday at Parliament House in Canberra Hundreds of tanks were lined up along the eastern coastal town of Wonsan in a show of military strength to celebrate 85 years since the North Korean army was created. Kim saluted the military as he watched the exercises on Tuesday, which involved the firing of more than 300 large-calibre artillery pieces and included submarine torpedo-attacks. On Sunday, a North Korean ministry spokesman said Australia's allegiance with the U.S. was a 'suicidal act'. 'If Australia persists in following the U.S.'s moves to isolate and stifle North Korea ... this will be a suicidal act,' the spokesman said. The warning, published in the North Korea's official KCNA news agency, came after Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to 'think twice about the consequences'. A photograph released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday shows aircrafts flying during the combined fire demonstration in celebration of the army's 85th anniversary What the North Korean news agency called a 'combined fire demonstration' is pictured on Wednesday Mr Shearer said systems like South Korea's Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (left) could be considered. SM-3 missiles (a U.S. Navy Standard Missile-3 is pictured right) could intercept missiles A 49-year-old Alabama man live-streamed himself committing suicide on Facebook because he was distraught over a break-up, authorities say. James M. Jeffrey from Robertsdale was in the middle of a broadcast on Tuesday when he suddenly took his gun and shot himself in the head. Horrified viewers who were watching at the time then notified the police, according to AL.com. It is the latest in a string of horrifying acts that have been filmed and streamed live on social media. James M. Jeffrey (above), 49, began streaming himself live on Facebook Tuesday when he suddenly took his gun and shot himself in the head The Baldwin County Sheriff's Office reported that they had received a call from a woman who was concerned that Jeffrey, a resident of Robertsdale, had stopped responding to phone calls Jeffrey and the woman were reportedly in the process of breaking up The Baldwin County Sheriff's Office said they received a call from a woman who was concerned that Jeffrey had stopped responding to her phone calls. Jeffrey and the woman were reportedly in the process of breaking up. As sheriff's deputies headed to Jeffrey's home at approximately 11pm on Tuesday, 'the Sheriff's Office Communications Division received reports that Jeffrey committed suicide and filmed the event on Facebook Live.' The sheriff's office said that Jeffrey's suicide was viewed over 1,000 times before it was finally removed from Facebook two hours later. As sheriff's deputies were headed to Jeffrey's home at approximately 11pm on Tuesday, 'the Sheriff's Office Communications Division received reports that Jeffrey committed suicide and filmed the event on Facebook Live' Jeffrey is the latest person to use live-streaming to film a sickening act, a problem that has prompted a backlash against the tool. A Thai man filmed himself killing his 11-month-old daughter in two video clips posted on Facebook before committing suicide, police said Tuesday. People could access the videos of the child's murder on her father's Facebook page for roughly 24 hours, until they were taken down around 5pm Tuesday in Bangkok, or about a day after being uploaded. 'This is an appalling incident and our hearts go out to the family of the victim,' a Singapore-based Facebook spokesman said in an email to Reuters. 'There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed.' A Thai man filmed himself killing his 11-month-old daughter in two video clips posted on Facebook before committing suicide, police said Tuesday On April 16, Steve Stephens posted a video of himself shooting dead 74-year-old foundry worker Robert Godwin (above) in the street in Cleveland In a separate case on Monday, a Swedish court jailed two Afghan men, aged 21 and 18, and a Swedish 21-year-old for gang raping a woman and live-streaming the attack on Facebook. The men were arrested in the town of Uppsala northwest of Stockholm on January 22 after members of a closed Facebook group, which has 60,000 members, alerted police. The film has been removed from Facebook but it has been circulated on the internet. The US firm says it is finding ways for its review team, which employs thousands of people, to react quicker to such content. On April 16, Steve Stephens posted a video of himself shooting dead 74-year-old foundry worker Robert Godwin in the street in Cleveland. It could be viewed for two hours before being taken down. In early April, a 14-year-old boy was arrested over the sexual assault of a 15-year-old Chicago girl that was streamed live on Facebook. An Antarctic blast has smashed the nation overnight, with large swathes of Australia feeling the chill as temperatures plunged below zero. More than 5cm of snow fell in some areas as temperatures plummeted to -6C, with some towns hit by their lowest temperatures in eight years. Forecasters blamed the freezing conditions on an 'Antarctic blast' as a cold front from the South Pole crossed over south eastern Australia. The worst is yet to come, with temperatures expected to fall even further in Sydney and Canberra overnight and into Friday morning. An Antarctic blast has smashed the nation overnight, with large swathes of Australia feeling the chill as temperatures plunged below zero. Pictured, Perisher after snow fell More than 5cm of snow fell in some areas as temperatures plummeted to -6C, with some towns hit by their lowest temperatures in eight years. Pictured, Perisher after snow fell Forecasters blamed the freezing conditions on an 'Antarctic blast' as a cold front from the South Pole crossed over south eastern Australia. Pictured, Perisher after snow fell In the Snowy Mountains, 5cm of the white stuff fell in some areas, with both Perisher (pictured) and Thredbo getting a dusting Thredbo recorded the coldest temperature of the night as it hit -6.1C, but it is set to get even colder tonight. Pictured, Perisher after snow fell In Sydney temperatures dropped as low as 12C in the CBD but the mercury fell even lower in the suburbs, with 7C conditions in Campbelltown. In the Snowy Mountains, 5cm of the white stuff fell in some areas, with both Perisher and Thredbo getting a dusting. Thredbo recorded the coldest temperature of the night as it hit -6.1C, but it is set to get even colder tonight. Weatherzone senior meteorologist Brett Dutschke told Daily Mail Australia that an 'Antarctic blast' was to blame. 'We had a pretty intense bit of cold air that travelled up from Antartica way. The coldest of that mass of air is now out in the Tasman Sea. 'In Sydney it was 12C in the city but it was colder in the suburbs. It got as cold as 7C in Campbelltown. The cold air has now moved off Australia's east coast and into the Tasman Sea Weatherzone senior meteorologist Brett Dutschke told Daily Mail Australia that an 'Antarctic blast' was to blame Grab your coats! The cold weather is set to continue on Friday but warmth is on the way soon The weekend is expected to be much warmer as the cold air moves out towards New Zealand 'There's been about 5cm of snow across the main ski resorts. It got down to about -6C at the top of Thredbo and that's the coldest it's been there in April in eight years. 'Another standout was Hobart which was 3.3C early this morning - the coldest it's been in April in eight years.; Mr Dutschke warned that it is set to get even colder overnight and through to Friday morning. 'Some places will get even colder than last night because the wind is less. Right across south east Australia it will be a lot colder. 'Sydney will be a bit colder tonight and tomorrow morning than last night. It will be 10C in the city and 6C in the western suburbs. Canberra will get down to about zero.' The weekend is expected to be much warmer as the cold air moves out towards New Zealand. Thursday morning was the coldest morning so far this year for south east Australia. Pierside Cafe and Bar in Christchurch, New Zealand has come under fire and apologised after displaying this sign A New Zealand cafe and bar has come under fire after displaying a sign that customers have described as 'homophobic' and 'offensive to vegans'. Pierside Cafe and Bar in Christchurch recently put out a blackboard sign which said: 'Vegan buffet. Just kidding. Now get away from our sign you pansy'. There were complaints about the sign by people walking through New Brighton Mall where the business is located, reported the NZ Herald. The cafe and bar posted a status to its Facebook page on Tuesday night, apologising for the sign. 'We would like to publicly apologise for our recent sign on our board outside in regards to vegans,' the post read. 'We definitely did not put it out there to cause offensive and we are sorry that this has occurred.' The business (pictured) in New Brighton Mall was critcised for the sign, with customer labelling it as 'homophobic' and 'offensive to vegans' The apology attracted plenty of comments, with a mixture of support and anger at the offending sign. One woman wrote: 'I didn't see the sign but surely it's a 'tongue and cheek' moment.' Another said: 'Where has the humour in this world gone? It's a joke, not intended to offend, anyone with half a brain can see that!' But there were also plenty of people offended by the sign. One woman said: 'I'm a vegan and I'm pretty open minded... But I won't be having lunch in your establishment ever again.... Not a smart move to insult the biggest growing movement in NZ or indeed, the planet.' Another person said: 'Appreciate the apology. Not keen to spend money somewhere that finds humour in further marginalising minority groups.' Daily Mail Australia has contacted Pierside Cafe and Bar for a comment on the sign. The business posted an apology to Facebook on Tuesday apologising for offending customers Australians can now book non-stop flights to London for the first time, with return tickets going for as low as $2270. Flights for Qantas' Perth-London route will take to the air on 24 March 2018, leaving Western Australia at 6.50pm and land in Heathrow airport at 05:10 the next day. Air fares will start at $2270 for a return economy ticket, $4250 for premium economy and $9725 for business class. But Qantas says fares could drop below $2000 during sale periods. Australians can now book non-stop flights to London for the first time, with return tickets going for as low as $2270 Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said there had been global interest in the Perth-London flights since they were announced in December 2016. 'The Kangaroo Route has kept changing with new technology. It used to take four days and seven stops but now we're able to link Australia and UK in a single hop. It's a level of convenience Australians have never had before.' 'We're conscious that this is a long flight, but not much longer than our Sydney to Dallas service. 'It's the kind of route that the Dreamliner [Qantas new Boeing 787 aircraft] was created for, because of its built-in features to reduce jetlag and improve the overall travel experience.' The 14,498km flight will take approximately 17 hours and when it launches, its expected to be the third-longest passenger flight in the world. Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said there had been global interest in the Perth-London flights since they were announced in December 2016 Flights for Qantas' Perth-London route will take to the air on 24 March 2018, leaving Western Australia at 6.50pm and land in Heathrow airport (pictured) at 05:10 the next day The airline further announced that the long-haul flight to London will originate in Melbourne, replacing the current QF9 service to London via Dubai. This means passengers from the Victoria capital will have a quick stop in Perth before flying onwards to the UK. Jetsetters from other Australian cities will be able to connect to London via Perth, while inbound passengers will be able to transfer from the West Australian capital to onward destinations across the country. Fares from Perth to London on the current route which includes a stop over in Dubai are priced an estimated $1800, if you were to fly in June this year and return in July. The 14,498km flight will take approximately 17 hours and when it launches, its expected to be the third-longest passenger flight in the world Mr Joyce said the route makes Western Australia a new tourism gateway for Australia. 'We know from our research that theres a lot of appetite to explore the West, not just from British and European visitors but also from Aussies on their way to London. 'A lot of business travellers, particularly in the resources sector, will stop off in Perth on their way to the UK.' A Russian man who is gay and HIV-positive has been detained at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility for over a month. Denis Davydov, 30, has lived in the San Jose area since September 2014, when he entered the country legally. But he was taken into custody by ICE agents after they found out he had overstayed his visa. Davydov argued that he has applied for political asylum, insisting he would be at risk of imprisonment or even death if he returned to his native Russia. Denis Davydov, 30, above, was in the US Virgin Islands in March and when he tried to get back home, he was arrested by ICE In early March, he took a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. When he came back into the country, he encountered ICE agents. 'They checked his documents, and he said they were trying really hard to find something wrong,' Sergey Piskunov with RUSA LGBT, a group for Russian-speaking members of the LGBT community, told KRON-4. 'They put him on a plane to Miami and transported him to Florida.' 'Hes a gay man and HIV-positive,' Piskunov said. 'Russia is not the best place for either of those and hes a combination of both.' Davydov has been in the US from Russia since 2014, hoping to be granted asylum An ICE official confirmed to KRON that Davydov was arrested and is in custody at the Krome Detention Center in Miami. The TV station was not able to find out any more information about what is happening to Davydov or when he might be released. According to Piskunov, Davydov is receiving his daily HIV medication, but has been unable to see a doctor. 'This is one of the reasons we really want to get him out of there,' he said. Piskunov said a return to Russia will mean almost certain death. 'I believe hes not going to live too long,' he said. 'They have money for war in Ukraine, Crimea, Syria they have money for all these military expenses but they dont have money for the medical system. And they dont care.' Jack Jones' (pictured) execution on Monday night sparked controversy amid claims he 'gurgled' and moved his mouth several times during the killing Arkansas prison officials have defended how it carried out a double execution as part of an aggressive push to kill eight inmates over 11 days before the lethal injection drugs expire. The double execution, the first in the US in more than 16 years, saw convicted killers Jack Jones and Marcel Williams put to death. Jones' death sparked controversy after the prisoner's spiritual adviser said the 52-year-old was 'sort of gurgling' after being administered the drugs, before he eventually started snoring like he was in a 'deep, deep sleep'. Jeff Rosenzweig, a lawyer for death row inmates, later told a federal judge Jones' mouth moved several times during the execution. The comments were made during a conference call in which lawyers representing Williams attempted to have his killing delayed. US District Judge Kristine Baker did not grant a delay and the execution went ahead as scheduled. The complaint led to Marcel Williams temporarily being granted a stay, but it was only temporary. He was put to death later on Monday night It was originally reported prison officials spent 40 minutes placing IV lines in 46-year-old. It had been argued his weight of 400 pounds could complicate the execution procedure. The internal affairs log stated Williams was restrained in the death chamber at 9:30pm. It goes on to state officials began the process of inserting IV lines at 9:35 pm and it wasn't complete until 10:15pm. Witnesses were not allowed to view this part of the process. Williams was pronounced dead at 10:33pm. The executions have been carried out at the Cummins Unit prison (pictured) near Varner, Arkansas A spate of killings have been scheduled by the state before the end of the month - when its lethal execution drug, Midazolam (pictured), expires And a transcript from the call between lawyers and Baker has now revealed the court deemed there was no evidence to support the procedure going poorly. 'Based upon what the court has learned from the eyewitnesses in regard to the execution, the court finds no support for a claim and an allegation that the execution appeared to be torturous and inhumane,' Baker said, according to the transcript. Later on Wednesday, a new document stated officials spent less than 10 minutes inserting IV lines into Jones on Monday night. IVs are placed before the curtains are lifted in the death chamber, so witnesses are not allowed to see that part of the process. The log provided very few details about Jones' execution beyond the start and end times, including whether he showed any signs of distress. It comes as the Arkansas Supreme Court refused to stay the execution of a man scheduled to be killed on Thursday. Kenneth Williams (pictured) is the next man due to be killed by the state on Thursday night Death penalty protesters are pictured outside the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, ahead of the series of executions scheduled for this month Kenneth Williams, 38, was sentenced to death for killing Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a barrel of hog slop. Williams was initially serving a life term for killing a university cheerleader whose family he taunted when jurors spared his life. Unless a court intervenes, Williams will die in the same prison from where he escaped in 1999. Williams escaped from the prison less than three weeks into a life term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. A man is seen near Cummins Unit prison on Thursday, April 20, holding a sign calling for the death penalty to be abolished Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson (pictured) had set a series of double executions with the hope that eight death row inmates would die by lethal injection before Arkansas' supply of lethal injection drug midazolam expires TIMELINE OF JACK JONES' EXECUTION IN ARKANSAS 7.04pm: The curtains to the execution chamber opened. An intravenous line was placed prior to the curtains opening. Jones began a lengthy last statement 7.06pm: Jones finished his statement. Officials turned off the microphone inside the execution chamber and the lethal injection began. For about a minute, Jones' lips moved but nothing was audible from where the AP was seated 7.07pm: A man wearing a headset began touching Jones' face and put a tongue depressor in Jones' mouth 7.08pm: The official again placed a tongue depressor in Jones' mouth and placed his hands on Jones' mouth. Jones' chest was rising intermittently 7.09pm: Jones' chest was still rising. The tongue depressor was still in his mouth 7.10pm: Jones' chest was still rising 7.11pm: Jones' chest still appeared to be rising. The official opened Jones' eyelids and moved his head to check consciousness 7.12pm: The official rubbed Jones' sternum. There was no visible movement from Jones 7.13pm: No visible movement from Jones 7.17pm: The official opened Jones' eyelids again and touched his sternum 7.18pm: The official took off his headset and placed a stethoscope on Jones' chest 7.19pm: A man, believed to be a coroner, placed a stethoscope on Jones' chest 7.20pm: Jones was declared dead Advertisement At the conclusion of that trial, he taunted the young woman's family by turning to them after the sentence was announced and said: 'You thought I was going to die, didn't you?' He hid in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop being ferried from the prison kitchen to a feeding bay, then sneaked along a tree line until reaching Boren's house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren's truck and then drove away to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. At the time of Boren's death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction. Anti-death penalty supporter Randy Gardner, left, embraces Gina Grimm, daughter of inmate Jack Jones, outside the Varner Unit on Monday, April 24 Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before the end of April. Jason McGehee had been scheduled to die Thursday night, but a federal judge said he was entitled to a 30-day comment period after the state Parole Board recommended clemency. The state elected not to appeal. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson had set a series of double executions with the hope that eight death row inmates would die by lethal injection before Arkansas' supply of lethal injection drug midazolam expires Sunday. Donald Trump has reversed course and told Mexican and Canadian leaders he will not be pulling the US out of the NAFTA agreement. The White House made the surprise announcement in a read-out of calls Wednesday between the world leaders. It stated the president had: 'agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time'. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation' of the trade deal to 'the benefit of all three countries.' Donald Trump has told Mexican and Canadian leaders he will not be pulling the US out of the NAFTA agreement Trump has previously blamed NAFTA for American job losses, and regularly described it as a 'disaster' during his campaign. The decision to continue with the trade agreement came just hours after a senior official said Trump was considering issuing an executive order to pull out of it. The news, first reported by Politico rattled financial markets and caused the Mexican peso and Canadian dollar to spiral lower against the US dollar. The peso shed about 1.5 per cent in just over an hour, while Canadas 'loonie' lost about 0.45 per cent. The White House made the surprise announcement in a read-out of calls Wednesday between the world leaders. Trump (pictured with Mike Pence on Wednesday) regularly called NAFTA a 'disaster' during the campaign A disruption in trade between the three NAFTA partners could wreak havoc in the auto sector and other industries, hitting profits at companies that have benefited from zero-level tariffs and Mexico's relatively low labor costs. 'To totally abandon that agreement means that those gains are lost,' Royal Bank of Canada economist Paul Ferley said on Wednesday afternoon amid the fears. Scrapping NAFTA would also hit US farmers whose exports to Mexico have grown under NAFTA.Earlier this week, a business body representing several big North American multinationals accused Trump and the US government of not having a clear idea what the agreement covers. Trump told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (pictured on April 10) and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto he was sticking with the deal on Wednesday Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto (pictured) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation' of the trade deal to 'the benefit of all three countries', the White House said The Canadian American Business Council took umbrage at a comment by US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that NAFTA wasn't 'functioning properly,' allegedly because Canada was exporting subsidized lumber to the US and was preventing easy access to its market by American dairy farmers. 'It is important to understand that neither dairy nor lumber are covered by the NAFTA,' the CEO of the Washington-based council, Maryscott Greenwood, said in a statement. 'The fact that these two protected sectors are the subject of bilateral disputes in recent weeks is not evidence that NAFTA is failing.' The Canadian American Business Council covers 50 big corporations, including Coca-Cola, Facebook, Ford, Air Canada and Bombardier. Justin Trudeau is pictured with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 13, 2017, during a visit Police say a man beat an 86-year-old woman to death in a random attack as she walked around a high school track in Northern California. Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Tony Turnbull says the woman and a 61-year-old companion, who was only slightly injured, were walking on the track at Highlands High School in North Highlands when they were targeted early Wednesday by a short man in his mid-30s wearing sweats. The man punched and kicked the two women at around 6am local time, as another person at the track called police. When officers arrived, the older woman was already dead, and the suspect had fled. Officers searched the neighborhood, but could not find the man. Police say a man beat an 86-year-old woman to death in a random attack as she walked around a high school track in Northern California. Investigators are pictured at the scene of the horrifying attack Authorities have not released the names of the two women. 'It's just super upsetting,' one of the deceased woman's neighbors told KCRA-TV. 'Just super upsetting for no reason - she's taking a walk. She's my mom's age.' 'What did you get from it? What did you get from taking somebody's life? I mean she's gone.' Neighbors say the two women lived a few doors down from each other and would go for a walk almost every morning together. Authorities said the suspect was described by a witness as a 5-foot-6-inch black male with a medium complexion in his 30s Authorities said the suspect was described by a witness as a 5-foot-6-inch black male with a medium complexion in his 30s, according to Fox40. The suspect was also described as having curly hair. He was last seen wearing a burgundy shirt and black sweats. Detectives are asking anyone with information relating to this incident, to contact the Sheriff's Department at (916) 874-5115. An Iraqi refugee who lost control of his truck and crashed into peak hour traffic while speeding through a busy intersection in 2014, has been jailed for a minimum of three years. Sarmad Nisan, 42, left six people - including two police officers - in hospital when his 22-tonne truck became out-of-control while driving at up to 45km/h over the speed limit on Warringah Road at Dee Why, in Sydney's north. And now video footage has emerged of the moment Nisan ploughed into six cars at the lights, flipping his truck on its side and leaving one of the injured police officers with a brain injury, Nine News reports. Scroll down for video Sarmad Nisan (pictured), who lost control of his truck and crashed into peak hour traffic while speeding through a busy intersection in 2014, has been jailed for a minimum of three years The Iraqi refugee left six people - including two police officers - in hospital when his truck became out-of-control while driving at up to 45km/h over the speed limit in Sydney's north CCTV footage released of the accident shows Nisan's truck rounding a corner at speed, before it dangerously goes up onto two wheels. With Nisan helpless to correct the large vehicle and stop the pending accident, the truck flips onto its side and lands on top of a number of cars stopped at the lights. The impact of the crash sent cars flying and left Senior Constable Amy Champion with a broken shoulder and ribs, while she also suffered a brain injury. While previous references described Nisan as being of good character, he was found guilty of two counts of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm. Describing the toll of the accident on Snr Const Champion as 'truly terrible', Judge Deborah Payne sentenced Nisan to four years in jail on Thursday. 'This case is certainly not one of momentary inattention or misjudgement,' Judge Payne told the Parramatta District Court. CCTV footage released of the accident shows Nisan's truck rounding a corner at speed, before it goes up onto two wheels and flips onto its side, landing on top of a number of cars at the lights Describing the toll of the accident on Snr Const Champion as 'truly terrible', Judge Deborah Payne sentenced Nisan to four years in jail on Thursday 'I am firmly of the view all the circumstances demonstrate the abandonment of responsibility.' Having arrived in Australia in 2009, Nisan reportedly obtained a learner's permit soon after touching down and Due to be eligible for parole in 2020, Nisan will be disqualified from driving for two years upon his release. A suspected arsonist has been arrested after two separate fires broke out at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas yesterday, injuring one person. Clark County Fire Department said toasters and towels were used to ignite the fires at the hotel. One blaze was located in the women's restroom, on the pool deck level, and the other was in the hallway on the 17th floor. Scroll down for video A Las Vegas police squad car sits outside of the Trump International Hotel yesterday after two suspicious fires broke out at the hotel A Clark County Fire Department fire engine leaves the Trump International after two separate fires were started at the hotel in Las Vegas yesterday A hallway on the 17th floor was sealed off by police last night A county spokesman said a hotel security guard was injured when he tackled one of the blazes. Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant Steve Summers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal a man was in custody facing charges of first-degree arson and burglary. Lt Summers said last night the fire did not appear to be politically motivated 'on the surface' but he said it was too early to be sure and the investigation was ongoing. Fire Department spokesman John Steinbeck said 'multiple devices' were placed in various locations with deliberate intent to start fires. KTNV reporter Tom George tweeted a picture of the crime scene and wrote: 'Looked like man stuffed towels in toasters, first fire in women's bathroom at pooldeck, then another on 17th floor.' Las Vegas police gather outside of the Trump International after two separate fires were started at the hotel in Las Vegas yesterday A 70-year-old father-of-six has been jailed for five years and six months for attempting to kill his ice-addicted son by repeatedly striking his head with a hammer. Ronald James McDonald attacked his son, fracturing his skull as he slept on the sofa at his Perth home on the morning of August 15 last year. He was frustrated and depressed by the 23-year-old's ongoing drug dependence and the family turmoil caused by his aggression and abusiveness. Family members of Ronald McDonald leave a Perth court on Thursday. The 70-year-old has been jailed for five years and six months for attempting to kill his ice-addicted son by repeatedly striking his head with a hammer The Supreme Court of Western Australia heard McDonald was on good terms with his estranged wife, who lived with the victim. She called him for help that day because their son had been screaming and threatening to smash things. After pacing around outside thinking about what to do, McDonald went inside the house and hit his son on the temple with a claw hammer, before striking him three or four times more. 'You believed at the time that was the only option available to you and your family,' Justice Katrina Banks-Smith said in handing down her sentence on Thursday. 'You felt you could no longer deal with your son's erratic behaviour. You lost it.' The son woke up after the first blow but McDonald grabbed his jumper to prevent him escaping. He managed to break free and was rushed to hospital while McDonald almost immediately called authorities and made admissions. Justice Banks-Smith said McDonald's defence lawyer had eloquently described the case as the 'other side of the methamphetamine equation'. Court heard Mr McDonald was frustrated and depressed by his son's ongoing drug dependence and the family turmoil caused by his aggression and abusiveness (stock image) She said while there was room for significant sympathy and empathy for the father's predicament - in which he was not alone - violence was not the answer. Justice Banks-Smith took into account McDonald's depression - which impaired his ability to make rational decisions at the time of the offence - as well as his age, remorse and the risk of his re-offending being low. She also noted the violence was uncharacteristic and that he had empathy for the victim - who partly blamed himself for what happened. Justice Banks-Smith also mentioned a statement from a former employer, who described McDonald as a peacemaker. But the offending was aggravated by the fact the attack was on a defenceless victim, involved multiple blows and a degree of premeditation, and could have been fatal. 'You could have stopped during the attack but you did not,' she said. McDonald waved goodbye to his family, who were present to support him, as he was led out of the dock. He was made eligible for parole. A man caught the moment in slow motion video that a piece of glass known as the Prince Rupert's Drop withstood a bullet fired at close range. Destin Sandlin, an engineer who has a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day, likes to experiment with trying to destroy the almost indestructible (unless its tail breaks off) tadpole shaped glass piece known as the Prince Rupert's Drop. Because of the way tension is distributed throughout the glass, the head of it can withstand extremely high stresses, such as hammer blows or Hydraulic presses, while it will normally the entire glass shatter if the tail is broken, or even just wiggled. Scroll down for video Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day prepared to shoot his .22 Magnum at a Prince Rupert's Drop The drop is a miracle of physics wherein the way that pressure is arranged in the glass makes its head virtually indestructible - but the slightest touch of the tail can shatter the whole thing Sandlin points and shoots the first gun directly at the glass and makes a direct hit Sandlin decided to shoot two different sized bullets at the drop at close range - a .22 Magnum 'full metal jacket' bullet and a .38 Special. The .22 travels at 1,875 feet per second. Sandlin fires the .22 Magnum at the glass drop, which is tied to a post so it can't fly off. The bullet flies directly into the head of the glass but leaves it virtually unscathed 'What! What?' he yells at the bullet fails to even make much of a scratch on the head of the glass. Sandlin had torched off the drop's long curly tail which, normally if touched, will shatter the entire piece. 'They're tougher than I thought,' he says, as he watches the slow-mo playback of the glass head surviving a bullet. The engineer decides to up the ante by getting out a bigger gun and ammo, his .38 Special A slow-mo close up of the bullet hitting the glass dead on shows that while the bullet fragments, the glass is hardly affected HISTORY OF A PHYSICS PUZZLE Prince Rupert of Bavaria (1619-1682), grandson of James I , brought the glass teardrops to Charles II as a gift. Demonstrations of the stress of glass were introduced to England as a curious party trick. In 1661, King Charles asked his personal scientific society, which later evolved into the Royal Society, to investigate. No one could give Charles Il a satisfactory explanation of the extraordinary behaviour of how the trick worked. One of the scientists investigating was Robert Hooke, who became famous for Hooke's Law. It was not until 1994 that scientists at Cambridge University and Purdue University in Indiana solved the puzzle. Advertisement He then takes out the larger gun and ammo, a .38 Special. He shoots at the glass and as it flies off from the force of the bullet he yells, 'No way! No way! Shut up!' The spectacular slow-mo footage shows the bullet breaking upon impacting the glass head, but the glass head remaining perfectly intact. It doesn't even shatter when the force of the bullet sends the long tail wiggling. 'That's absolutely ridiculous,' he says. Sandlin speculates that perhaps this particular drop is even stronger than usual because there was no air bubble inside as their usually is. 'That's a special one,' he says of the indestructible piece of glass. The video, uploaded April 26, already has over 700,000 views. Gregory Floyd, 43, (pictured) gunned down his partner Ora Holt, 39, with a high-powered rifle on Tuesday afternoon after a five-hour siege at their Wangaratta home A man who lost his sister to family violence 30 years ago says people should hold their tongues rather than show sympathy to a Victorian husband who murdered his wife. Deer hunter and K-Mart worker Gregory Floyd, 43, gunned down Ora Holt, 39, following a terrifying five-hour siege in Wangaratta on Tuesday. Floyd let the couple's four children - aged between two and nine-years-old - escape. Then he shot himself dead. The apparent murder-suicide has sent shockwaves through the local community. And relatives and friends have since described Floyd as 'very caring', 'normal' and a 'loving father'. But domestic violence campaigner Phil Cleary said people shouldn't be speaking like that. 'Would we ever say that about a person who shot a stranger and then shot himself? Would we say it about a man who we claim was a terrorist and shot a policeman?' 'We wouldn't ever.' The couple's four children, aged 2 to 9, hid in the bedroom of the house before their father found them and allowed them to escape Domestic violence advocate Phil Cleary (pictured left) said people should 'hold their peace' and not publicly praise the killer. He lost his sister Vicki to family violence in 1987 (right) Mr Cleary said it was 'perfectly reasonable' for people to show compassion about death. 'However, this is not suicide. It is murder,' he said. 'If I were Ora's (sibling), I would be outraged at thought of someone praising him in the context of him murdering my sister. 'I would expect that people show far more constraint and understand that there is one primary victim here - the woman who is dead. 'She didn't choose to take her life. He chose to take her life.' He said there was 'bucketloads' of sympathy for violent men in Australia, something which has existed for generations. People also never know what's going on behind closed doors. But he asked people to put themselves in the shoes of the wife's family. The tragic incident is believed to have started after a heated argument between Floyd and Ms Holt at their home A neighbour breaking down after the tragedy in Wangaratta is pictured Pointing to a remembrance card laid out the front of the Wangaratta home which said 'RIP sorry mate', Mr Cleary said if it was addressed to Floyd, his response was: 'Sorry for what? 'Sorry that you're dead? Sorry you had to kill your wife? Sorry you couldn't control yourself? Sorry you couldn't just shoot yourself and not shoot your wife?' 'All those people who say that ought to put themselves in the shoes of the woman's family'. He said people should hold their peace instead. 'I need to say to people: you shouldn't be speaking like this. 'You should hold your peace. 'Let's just say to people hold your peace for fear of saying something inflammatory and genuinely hurtful to the family of the dead woman.' Police cordoned off the area and told neighbours to remain inside their houses with the doors locked during the siege Police were called to the Wangaratta property about 12.50pm on Tuesday after reports of a gunshot A neighbour earlier told 7 News: '(The family) were normal... outside, he was playing with the kids, we never saw him yell at them or anything.' After he allowed his children and the neighbours to escape, Floyd shot dead Ms Holt and then turned the rifle on himself. The incident is believed to have started after a heated argument between Floyd and Ms Holt at their home. His brother, Neville Floyd, described him as an 'incredible, loving' person who loved his family, according to the Herald Sun. 'He was a very caring father who loved his children and loved his partner. His kids were his whole life,' Mr Floyd said. He declined to comment to Daily Mail Australia. Ms Holt's former housemate, Luigi Bonacci, said Mr Floyd was a long-time retail worker and there had never been outward signs of trouble. 'He used to go deer hunting... as far as I know, he was a hard-working man. 'He'd been there (at K-Mart) a long time.' Police cordoned off the area and told nearby residents in Belle, Irwin and Garnet avenues and Appin Street to remain inside their homes Officers entered the Wangaratta property about 5.10pm on Tuesday and found the pair dead Ms Holt, originally from the town Bright in Victoria, was a keen volunteer at her children's school. 'A special thanks to Ora Holt and Kristie Meggs who have been there every Tuesday, rain hail or shine,' the school wrote in a recent newsletter. She grew up in Bright, where she would horse-ride and motor-bike ride with friends. Her parents owned a caravan park in nearby Freeburgh and her children went to school with the children of family friends. Floyd's sister Trudi wrote to Facebook that is was a 'sad day' to lose two of her family members. 'It is a very sad day for myself and my family to lose my brother and his partner may god give a strength to cope,' she said. More than $8000 has been raised by the local community for the parents' funerals. Counselling will be offered at a community gathering on Thursday. Homicide police have reportedly joined the investigation. Curled up together on the sofa as they pose for a set of cute snaps, Nicole Evans and fiance Matthew Davey look the picture of happiness. But just months after those photographs were taken, she is fighting for her life in hospital and he is accused of dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire. Miss Evans, 20, is clinging onto life after the horrific attack at a home in Hobart late on Monday night. Police claim Davey, who has pleaded not guilty to causing grievous bodily harm, poured an accelerant over Miss Evans before setting her alight, 'causing extensive injuries'. Curled up together on the sofa as they pose for a set of cute snaps, Nicole Evans and fiance Matthew John Davey look the picture of happiness Miss Evans, 20, is fighting for her life after she was doused in petrol and set on fire Injured: Miss Evans, 20, is clinging onto life after the horrific attack at a home in Hobart late on Monday night Miss Evans was flown to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne early on Tuesday morning after suffering severe burns to more than half of her body. She had surgery on Tuesday night and remains in a critical condition. According to The Mercury, police prosecutor Oliver Hinss told Hobart Magistrates Court that doctors 'have grave concerns as to whether she will in fact survive'. As well as being charged with setting his fiancee on fire, Davey, 34, is also accused of hitting Miss Evans in the face and throwing a can at her. Davey pleaded not guilty to all of the charges as he appeared in court on Wednesday. He did not apply for bail. As well as being charged with setting his fiancee on fire, Davey, 34, is also accused of hitting Miss Evans in the face and throwing a can at her Miss Evans is in a 'grave' condition following the attack, Detective Inspector Craig Joel said An interim family violence order and restraint order have been lodged with the court, Tasmania Police said. The case has been adjourned until June 13, when it will be heard in the Supreme Court. Earlier this week Detective Inspector Craig Joel said Miss Evans was in a 'grave' condition following the attack. He said an accelerant of some type, such as petrol, had been used in the alleged attack. National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero. A Royal Fusiliers wedding reception at the Tower of London was ruined when a fellow officer let off a fire extinguisher, punched a friend and was arrested. The Fusiliers have their headquarters at the Tower and are permitted to use the facilities for weddings and an annual summer cocktail party. But their privileged access could be in doubt following the alleged antics of Lieutenant Phil Roberts on Saturday evening. Lt Roberts squirted a water-based fire extinguisher at guests at historic the Trinity House, a protected building that dates back to 1796, allegedly spraying a 19th-century oil painting. Dominic Ward and Cherie Preston had their wedding at the Tower of London (pictured), but the day soon turned sour after a guest let off a fire extinguisher and punched a friend Guests at the wedding of Lieutenant Dominic Ward and Cherie Preston were swiftly escorted out of the building by staff and were forced to move to a nearby hotel bar. The couple exchanged their vows at the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the palace grounds before moving to the Grade I-listed rooms of Trinity House. Staff cut the celebrations short at about 11.15pm, however, fearing for the safety of the houses priceless paintings. He came running past the dance floor squirting the extinguisher, a source said. The wedding staff turned the music off and the lights on almost instantly, shouting at the guests to leave. The bride and groom were very understanding though. Lieutenant Dominic Ward and Cherie Preston's big day was ruined by the antics of Lieutenant Phil Roberts on Saturday evening A source close to Trinity House told the Times: For the bride and groom ... no-one wants to be asked to leave their own wedding reception but if an event goes in that direction, I think they understood. A friend led Lt Roberts back to his accommodation within the palace grounds but he then allegedly had a fight with the officer who had been escorting him, knocking out a cap from his teeth. An army source said a Beefeater saw the scuffle and called the armys quick reaction force as well as the police. Phil Roberts gets taken back to the Tower where he punched a Princess of Waless Royal Regiment officer, knocking out one of his front teeth, and the quick reaction force was crashed out from the Tower to resolve the situation, the source told the Times. The couple exchanged their vows at the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (pictured) within the palace grounds before moving to the Grade I-listed rooms of Trinity House Lt Roberts was arrested and led away by police, arrested on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly and was issued a fixed penalty notice. An email from a senior officer to the Fusiliers also describes how Lt Roberts was caught urinating against the front gates of the Tower before having a scrap with the bloke who is helping him. It is understood he met with his commanding officer the following day and offered to resign, but the offer was not accepted and the army is investigating. An army source told the Times that the officers repeated apologies had calmed tempers higher up the chain of command. A Metropolitan Police spokesman told the MailOnline: 'Police were called at 11.45pm to the Tower of London to a report of a suspected trespasser. 'Officers attended and accompanied the man off the premises. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly and taken to an east London police station. 'He was later issued with a Penalty Notice for disorder.' The Fusiliers are one of the armys oldest regiments and have been involved in every major conflict in the last 400 years. The name comes from King James II, who ordered Lord Dartmouth to form an ordnance regiment to guard the artillery in 1685, arming them with the fusil the most modern weapon at the time. The modern regiment was formed in 1968 and its headquarters remain in the Tower but they have a regular battalion based in Tidworth, Wiltshire, with reserve battalions based in Durham and Newcastle. A former Bandido bikie member, who's been given a six-year prison sentence over a violent 2013 rampage on the Gold Coast, is immediately eligible for parole. Leonard David Toalei, 29, was sentenced in the Southport District Court on Thursday after pleading guilty to 10 charges from the June 2013 incident that included unlawful entry of a motor vehicle with violence, serious assault and going armed to cause fear. Toalei had served three years in custody before Thursday's sentence and Judge David Kent ruled him eligible for parole based on that. Former Bandido bikie member, Leonard David Toalei, 29, (right) has been given a six-year jail sentence for undertaking a violent rampage on the Gold Coast in 2013 but is eligible for parole Toalei's solicitor Michael Gatenby said despite his client's criminal history, he was hopeful the parole board would release him to receive treatment for his mental health issues. 'He clearly is a person who needs the assistance of professionals,' Mr Gatenby told reporters outside court. 'Hopefully the parole board are sensible about it and let him get on with receiving treatment in the community.' Toalei had only just been paroled after being jailed for a serious assault at a Surfers Paradise unit when he carried out the crime spree at Southport. After firing a shotgun twice from the back seat of a taxi, Toalei dropped the weapon and then proceeded to try to steal a vehicle to flee. After stealing and crashing a milk truck, Toalei assaulted a bus driver and attempted to steal a car from a woman as she drove past. Police then confronted Toalei, with six officers and a police dog eventually subduing him with the aid of capsicum spray and a Taser. Bullet holes seen in the windscreen of a taxi after the 29-year-old fired a shotgun twice from the back seat Leonard Toalei being tasered by police in Surfers Paradise after a crime spree in which he fired a shotgun twice from the back seat of a taxi and stole and crashed a milk truck The 29-year-old pleaded guilty to 10 charges from the June 2013 incident that included unlawful entry of a motor vehicle with violence, serious assault and going armed to cause fear Judge Kent said in sentencing the New Zealand-born Toalei that his assault was a 'terrifying incident'. 'You are a large, powerful, extremely violent man,' Judge Kent told the court. 'You, Mr Toalei, unfortunately, represent a danger to the community.' Before the sentencing began, Toalei indicated to supporters in the gallery he was determined to change his criminal behaviour. Toalei's solicitor Michael Gatenby said despite his client's criminal history, he was hopeful the parole board would release him to receive treatment for his mental health issues 'My whole life I said when I grow up I wanted to be a gangster, now I just realise I wanted to be a man,' he said. Mr Gatenby said he was hopeful his client's desire to turn his life around was genuine. 'He's certainly told us he wants to start a family, start building a home and get on with life,' he said. 'He's indicated he wants to put his past behind him.' Australian television legend Bert Newton was rushed to hospital on Wednesday after another reported health scare. The 78-year-old former Good Morning Australia host reportedly spent seven hours in the emergency department at the Epworth Hospital in Melbourne. He reportedly then admitted to the Neurological ward. According to Woman's Day, Bert's wife Patti appeared to be stressed when she returned to the couple's family home on her own after Bert was admitted. Australian TV legend Bert Newton (pictured) was reportedly rushed to hospital in Melbourne on Wednesday after another health scare Patti, the couple's daughter Lauren, and their two grandchildren were pictured at the hospital visiting Bert on Thursday (pictured) Patti appeared to be in good spirits as she chatted with her daughter (pictured) Patti was very attentive to her grandchildren during the hospital visit (pictured) 'Patti definitely looked stressed, like something was really up,' a witness reportedly told the publication. 'She was far from her usual calm self.' Patti, the couple's daughter Lauren, and their two grandchildren were pictured at the hospital visiting Bert on Thursday. Bert's wife Patti appeared to be stressed when she returned to the couple's family home on her own after Bert was admitted (pictured together) Lauren (right) is a mother-of-four, who gave birth her son Monty last April In March this year Bert was hospitalised as he battled a bout of pneumonia Patti appeared to be in good spirits as she chatted with her daughter and packed the children's pram in the car. Lauren is a mother-of-four, who gave birth her son Monty last April. In March this year Bert was hospitalised as he battled a bout of pneumonia. Bert's health has been a concern since 2012 when he underwent a quadruple heart bypass. More to come The man kicked off a British Airways flight for 'demanding an upgrade' was a cancer and diabetes sufferer who claimed he wanted to stretch his legs in business class - and is now stranded on an island in the Atlantic. Kwame Bantu, 65, was an hour into the 14-hour flight to visit family in Jamaica when he began to feel dizzy and saw his leg swelling. He then tried to move into business class, where he says he was 'ambushed' by six members of staff who tied him up by his hands and feet before allegedly dragging him back to his seat in economy. 'I was just trying to get some room to stretch my leg,' he told MailOnline. 'But nobody was helping me. They refused to listen about my medical illness and what I was going through. I was treated like a slave.' Fellow passenger Joy Stoney, a businesswoman from Yorkshire, was thrown off the flight alongside the retired Jamaican man and abandoned on the Portuguese island of Terceira after trying to help him. Ms Stoney, who was wrongly reported as being Mr Bantu's partner, told MailOnline how stewards told him to 'defecate in his seat' when he told them he needed the toilet. British Airways told MailOnline that Mr Bantu refused to move from business class and verbally abused crew, so they 'helped him walk back to his original seat'. Neither of the passengers know where their baggage is or how they are to get home. The man kicked off a British Airways flight for 'demanding an upgrade' was cancer sufferer Kwame Bantu, above, who was tied up and left in his seat after asking to stretch his legs in business class Mr Bantu, from south London, went on: 'They ambushed me. They tied my feet, my shoulders and my arms and they left me in my seat. 'I was completely humiliated, my human rights had been taken away from me. I didn't even have the energy to fight them because my blood pressure would have gone even higher. 'I don't think I deserved that kind of behaviour. I can understand if they thought I was going to be violent but [the restraints] stopped my blood from circulating. 'It's when some of the other passengers expressed their concern for me that they stopped the plane and landed to kick us out.' Joy Stoney said she intervened after she saw staff members dragging Mr Bantu, who had inquired about how much a seat in business class costs, through the plane by his neck. 'The way they restrained him was absolutely preposterous,' Ms Stoney, 40, told MailOnline. 'They restrained him by his shoulders via his neck and hands with straps. His ankles were strapped and on top of everything, they handcuffed him. 'What alarmed me the most was when he wanted to urinate. I know from caring for my mother that if you restrain a diabetic like that, they're going to need the toilet. 'He was holding his crotch area for a while and it was horrible to see. I called the steward manager to come see me and told her I would escort him to the toilet myself. 'They said, "He needs to defecate himself in the chair", and I think that is utterly inhumane. Mr Bantu, from south London, says he was 'ambushed' by six members of staff who tied him up by his hands and feet before dragging him back to his seat in economy class Fellow passenger Joy Stoney, a businesswoman from Yorkshire, was thrown off the flight alongside retired Mr Bantu and abandoned on the Portuguese island of Terceira after trying to help him 'They refused to give him proper food. They only gave him a bread roll and a small cup of water. British Airways has become the latest airline to come under fire in recent weeks. Today US-based Delta Airlines was slammed for throwing passenger Kima Hamilton off a flight for using the toilet during a 30 minute delay when the plane was still on the tarmac. The airline came under further scrutiny this week following the death of a prized rabbit on a flight to London. And United Airlines caused mass outrage after footage showed bloodied passenger, Dr David Dao, being dragged from an overbooked flight. The latest incident occurred on flight BA2263 as it left Gatwick London for the Jamaican capital Kingston on Wednesday, military officials confirmed. An air force spokesman said someone had filmed the spat on a mobile phone and that pair escorted off the plane would be questioned by PSP civilian police in Terceira. British Airways told MailOnline in a statement: 'Caring for our customers is our highest priority and we continue to investigate all the circumstances surrounding this incident. 'We take great care to handle these difficult situations as sensitively as possible. Our cabin crew and one of our pilots repeatedly asked a customer to return to his booked seat in economy after he sat in our business class cabin without permission. 'He repeatedly refused, verbally abused crew members and disturbed other customers. The incident occurred on flight BA2263 as it left Gatwick London for the Jamaican capital Kingston on Wednesday, military officials confirmed Mr Bantu and Ms Stoney were stranded on the island of Terceira without their luggage and have received no help or advice from the British consulate about getting home 'As a last resort, our cabin crew felt they had no option but to restrain the customer in the interests of the safety of everyone on board and helped him walk back to his original seat.' MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office for comment. A spokesman for the PSP police on the island of Terceira said Mr Bantu and Ms Stoney were not arrested and the matter was closed as far as they were concerned. He said the civilian forces only involvement in the incident had been to answer a request to take the pair off the plane, adding: 'They left the plane without incident. 'They stayed on Terceira as far as I know last night but I dont know where and I dont have information on where they are now. 'They are free to do what they want as there is nothing preventing them from leaving the island at any time.' Flight-tracking data shows the plane left Gatwick for Kingston at 11.36am on Wednesday. However at about 3pm it started to divert from its intended flight path and double back for the island of Terceira. The plane then left the island at about 7.15pm, returning back to London at 10.36pm. It comes a week after British Airways was criticised by the new President of Ghana for the 'shoddy' way it treats customers. In a major embarrassment for the airline, the African country's leader criticised 'the quality of the planes and the service'. After landing in Terceira, the plane took off again at about 7.15pm, returning back to London at 10.36pm He even accused BA of 'taking us a little for granted'. The comments follow a barrage of complaints from travelers over poor service on BA flights. It has been criticised after it stopped providing free sandwiches, snacks and drinks on flights lasting less than five hours. The policy could now be extended to long-haul flights for passengers in economy class. The airline has also came under fire for plans to cut legroom from 30 inches to 29 on some of its planes an inch less than on RyanAir planes. Under-fire United Airlines will pay customers up to $10,000 if they give up seats on oversold flights, it has been announced, following outrage over the treatment of a doctor dragged off a plane. The airline has refused to reveal whether the number of bookings fell after footage of Dr David Dao being removed from a flight surfaced, but its CEO admitted it could be damaging. The airline has come under further scrutiny this week following the death of a prized rabbit on a flight to London, while chief executive Oscar Munoz has admitted the controversies are taking their toll. Scroll down for video Oscar Munoz has admitted the controversy over the video is taking its toll on the airline Footage of Dr Dao being dragged off the flight has proved damaging for the airline, the chief executive admitted Recounting the Dr. Dao incident, he told the Associated Press: 'I breached public trust with this event and how we responded. 'People are upset, and I suspect that there are a lot of people potentially thinking of not flying us.' Dao lost two teeth, suffered a broken nose and suffered concussion during the April 9 incident, his lawyers have said. In response United has now raised the limit on payments that will be awarded to customers to give up seats, and has said it will reduce overbooking. The current limit on awards to customers who give up their seats is $1,350. Staff will also be given additional training in de-escalating tense situations, the airline announced yesterday. It has also announced it will not call police to remove passengers when flights are overbooked, and has admitted failings in the Dao incident, including not offering enough money to encourage passengers to give up their seats. United Airlines will pay customers up to $10,000 if they voluntarily get off overbooked planes Prize rabbit Simon died on a United Airlines plane for unknown reasons, prompting an apology from the company boss Four crew members arrived on the flight late, a United Airlines report found, meaning four customers had to be removed from the flight. Munoz said: 'We could have spent a lot of $10,000s and made that thing right.' He defended the process of overbooking flights, claiming not doing so would mean empty seats and rising fares. Speaking to NBC News, Munoz also apologized for the death of the rabbit, named Simon, yesterday. The 'fit and healthy' pet died in the cargo section of a Boeing 767 on a plane destined to fly from London to Chicago. He said: 'We are deeply sorry for the loss of anything from your luggage to, of course, a loved pet.' Munoz branded the Dao controversy 'a system failure across the board', and admitted it should never have happened. Last year United involuntarily denied boarding to 3,765 customers across more than 86.8 million mainline passengers in the airline, Munoz told the US Senate Commerce Committee yesterday. The distraught Thai mother of a baby girl killed by her husband in a murder he broadcast on Facebook Live has described the harrowing moment she stumbled across the video and watched her daughter being hanged. The four-minute clip of Wuttisan Wongtalay, 20, killing his daughter Natalie and then himself was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of viewers on Monday evening. Jiranuch Trairat a 21-year-old from Phuket, was left devastated after watching her husband hang her their 11-month-old daughter Natalie from the side of an abandoned building before taking his own life. The killing evening caused revulsion both in Thailand and around the world, sparking renewed debate about what can be done by social media giants to more quickly remove live broadcasts of violent crimes, suicides and murders. Jiranuch Trairat, from Phuket, was left devastated after watching her husband hang her their 11-month-old daughter Natalie from the side of an abandoned building before taking his own life Jiranuch Trairat, whose husband hanged their 11-month-old baby on Facebook Live, has said she doesn't blame the social media site (pictured holding her daughter's body) The sickening four-minute clip of Wuttisan Wongtalay (left), 20, killing his daughter Natalie (pictured right, in her mother's arms) and then himself was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of viewers on Monday Using a mobile phone, Wuttisan had broadcast Natalie's murder on Facebook Live, a video that Jiranuch came across that evening. 'I was with my older brother and he was logging onto his Facebook,' she told AFP on Thursday from a Phuket temple where daily prayers were being held for Natalie ahead of her cremation on Saturday. 'He was scrolling down and suddenly we saw the live broadcast. I turned to take a look and saw him (Wuttisan) drop my daughter with the rope and I couldn't continue to watch.' The horrifying realisation of what was unfolding sparked a desperate search by relatives and police, with the bodies of Wuttisan and Natalie found just a few hours later. The murder video remained on Facebook for around 24 hours, prompting cries for the social network to move more swiftly to take down clips of grisly crimes and killings. Two video clips were accessible on the father's page for a day. The first clip was watched 112,000 times and the second 258,000 times. Jiranuch Trirat's family gather around her as she bids an emotional goodbye to her 11-month-old daughter Natalee The 21-year-old is comforted by her father following an emotional service at a temple in Phuket The mother stands next a decorated and framed picture of her little girl, at the child's funeral service Facebook admitted last week that it had 'to do better' to prevent such horror being uploaded after it took over two hours to delete footage of an American killing a stranger. The footage was also uploaded on to Facebook-owned YouTube, where it was watched 2,351 times. It was taken down within 15 minutes. It is understood the videos were removed after Thailand's ministry of digital economy contacted Facebook. But Jiranuch said she harboured no ill will towards Facebook. 'I don't blame Facebook. They are not part of the problem, we can choose to broadcast happiness or sadness,' she said. What prompted Wuttisan to take such a horrifying step remains a mystery. Police found the bodies of Wuttisan and the baby in an abandoned hotel in Phuket province after receiving reports of the video. Police colonel Jirasak Siemsak said Wuttisan and his wife had been arguing. Jiranuch said her husband had been abusive in the past and spent two years in prison before they started dating. Wongtalay killed himself and his daughter after a row with girlfriend Jiranuch Trirat Facebook admitted last week that it had 'to do better' to prevent such horror being uploaded after it took over two hours to delete footage of an American killing a stranger (pictured, founder Mark Zuckerberg) Local media reported that Wongtalay, suspected his wife Jiranuch Trirat, 21, of having an affair and had threatened to kill her in a jealous rage earlier that day. He is then said to have stormed out of the house with their baby, Natalie. Ms Trirat had previously told the Phuket News: 'At 3am yesterday he checked my phone and threatened to kill me. 'I was very afraid and ran away from the house and left Beta with him. 'I returned home late in the afternoon and they were not there. I called him to bring Beta back to the house, but I could not get in touch with him. That's when I saw the video clip and called the police.' Jiranuch said the two frequently argued, particularly over her ex-husband with whom she has a son nicknamed Sanook -- the Thai word for fun. Charge sheet against internet giant grows Steve Stephens posted a video of himself shooting dead 74-year-old foundry worker Robert Godwin Three men were sent to prison yesterday for gang-raping a woman in Sweden and broadcasting the attack over Facebook. Police were alerted after it was posted to a private group on the site with 60,000 members. In the US earlier this month, Steve Stephens posted a video of himself shooting dead 74-year-old foundry worker Robert Godwin in the street. It could be viewed for two hours before being taken down. The assault of a 15-year-old girl by six men was broadcast on Facebook Live last month with none of the 40 viewers reporting it to police. Officers learned of the attack on the girl, from Chicago, only when her mother went to a police station with images from the video. A man in Chicago was shown being tortured in January, with the 30-minute video viewed 16,000 times before it was taken down. Facebook has also been criticised for failing to remove images of child abuse, including a video appearing to show a young girl being sexually abused. Videos of public amputations and Islamic State propaganda can also be found on Facebook. One group with almost 4,000 followers showed a 30-minute video of mass executions. Advertisement 'He often abused my son Sanook,' she said. But Wuttisan had always been kind to their daughter Natalie, she added, looking after her in the day while she took classes at a nearby school. As for what her husband did, Jiranuch said: 'I forgive him because holding onto anger for a long time will not get my daughter back.' The killing was the latest gruesome act to be filmed and published on Facebook. Last week Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to address the issue after a man in the US state of Ohio broadcast footage of himself shooting a stranger dead. The killer went on to fatally shoot himself after a massive manhunt and police chase. In Thailand, the potential for problems with Facebook Live became an issue last May when local media used the platform to broadcast live video of a university lecturer who was locked in a six-hour stand-off with police who were seeking him over the shooting deaths of two colleagues. After negotiations for his surrender failed, he fatally shot himself, a moment that was shown live. For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch, or visit www.samaritans.org This is the terrifying moment an ISIS jihadist blew himself up along with three Iraqi police officers as they were going to arrest him in Mosul. Dramatic footage shows police closing in on an extremist lying in the furrow of a field to the south of the war-torn city of Mosul in northern Iraq. But before they could reach him, the fanatic detonated a suicide belt, with the force of the explosion sending the three officers flying. Footage captured the terrifying moment officers were blown up by a suicide bomber hiding in a field in Iraq. A policeman can be seen approaching the jihadist before the explosion As police approached to make an arrest, the jihadist detonated his suicide bomb, sending officers flying Explosion: The force of the deadly blast (pictured) sent three Iraqi police officers flying Seconds later gunfire can be heard as Iraqi forces attempted to secure the area. It is thought the incident happened as after group of about 10 assailants, including four suicide bombers, had infiltrate a Federal Police helicopter base in Al-Areej. Iraqi forces have taken much of Mosul from the militants who overran the city in June 2014. The military now controls the eastern districts and are making advances in the west. ISIS fighters, holding out in the Old City, are surrounded in the northwest and are using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire to defend themselves. It is thought the incident happened as after group of about 10 assailants, including four suicide bombers, had infiltrate a Federal Police helicopter base in Al-Areej Gunfire could be heard in the immediate aftermath of the explosion as police tried to secure the area Before police could reach the jihadist, he detonated a suicide belt, with the force of the explosion sending the three officers flying Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still trapped in western Mosul, where Iraqi forces are making slow progress against Islamic State in what is a labyrinth of narrow streets. As of April 20, some 503,000 people have been displaced from Mosul since October, according to government figures provided by the UN refugee agency UNHCR. The UN migration agency, the IOM, puts the displaced figure at 334,518 people as of April 23. A retired police detective has claimed that Madeleine McCann could be found using facial recognition technology on Facebook A retired police detective has claimed that Madeleine McCann could be found using facial recognition technology on Facebook. Madeleine vanished from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on May 3, 2007, when she was three years old with her mother Kate saying the 10th anniversary is a 'horrible marker of time, stolen time'. Former Scotland Yard detective chief inspector Mick Neville has revealed that the site's cutting-edge software could help find Maddie, who would now be 14 years old. When Facebook users upload an image the social media platform maps facial features and 'recognises' other users - making tagging easier. Mr Neville, a forensics expert, believes the state of the art technology could be used to trace Maddie because of a distinctive blemish in her right eye. He told The Sun: 'If she was still alive and there is no proof she is not then by using a combined tactic of technology and people with advanced facial recognition skills you could potentially find where Madeleine is today.' This would be particularly relevant in Madeleine's case because she has a distinctive 'coloboma' - a line running diagonally from the pupil across the iris - in her right eye. He said: 'If an image search was carried out for females in an age range of three to 15 with this eye marking then you may only have a few hundred in the UK and tens of thousands worldwide. 'It would be an easily manageable number to scan through.' He said: 'She would now be a girl of almost 14 years old. If she is being brought up by a childless couple then it is probable she uses Facebook or Snapchat, like all children of that age do. They are drawn to social media.' Earlier this week British detectives working on the Madeleine McCann case said they are still pursuing 'critical' leads as the 10th anniversary of her disappearance approaches. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said there are 'significant investigative avenues' that are of 'great interest' to both the UK and Portuguese teams. Kate and Gerry McCann. Madeleine vanished from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on May 3, 2007, when she was three years old Officers have sifted through some 40,000 documents and looked at more than 600 individuals since 2011 with Mr Rowley confirming that four people considered as possible suspects in 2013 have been ruled out. Kate and her husband Gerry McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have always vowed to never give up hope of finding their daughter. Asked if police were any closer to solving the case than they were six years ago when the UK investigation was launched, Mr Rowley said: 'I know we have a significant line of inquiry which is worth pursuing, and because it's worth pursuing it could provide an answer, but until we've gone through it I won't know whether we are going to get there or not. 'Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don't want to spoil it by putting titbits of information out publicly.' The apartment block in Luz in the Algarve, Portugal, where Madeleine McCann went missing Mr Rowley said they are no longer the subject of further investigation and have been ruled out of the inquiry. Meanwhile, police working on the case continue to receive information on a daily basis. He described the possibility of a 'burglary gone wrong' as a 'sensible hypothesis' which has not been 'entirely ruled out'. The senior officer was asked about the theory of a sex predator being responsible for Madeleine's disappearance. Mr Rowley said: 'That's been one key line of inquiry. The reality is in the modern world in any urban area if you cast your net widely you will find a whole pattern of offences. 'You will find sex offenders who live nearby. And those coincidences need to be sifted out, what's a coincidence and what may be linked to the investigation that you are currently doing. 'Offences which may be linked have to be looked at and either ruled in or ruled out.' Mr Rowley said there was still a 'lot unknown' in the case, adding: 'All the different hypotheses have to remain open.' Boris Johnson sparked a furious row yesterday by suggesting Britain could join the US in a missile attack on Syria without the approval of Parliament. The Foreign Secretary said there were circumstances in which Theresa May might bypass Parliament to order military action. In recent years it has become a convention for prime ministers to seek parliamentary approval before launching military action. Britain is ready to join military strikes against Bashar Assad's regime in Syria if the US requests our help, Boris Johnson (pictured on GMB today) has said Jeremy Corbyn, pictured on a visit to Harlow today, responded to Mr Johnson's comments by reiterating that he opposed all airstrikes In December 2015, MPs voted in favour of air strikes targeting so-called Islamic State in Syria following a debate in the Commons in which shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn spearheaded a show of defiance against Jeremy Corbyn. But Mr Johnson yesterday suggested MPs would not necessarily get a say if the US asked for help in responding to a new atrocity by Bashar al-Assad. The Foreign Secretary said it would be very difficult for us to say no to America. He added: How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the Government, for the Prime Minister. But if the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime, dont forget, it was Assad who unleashed murder upon his own citizens with weapons that were banned almost 100 years ago, if the Americans choose to act again and they ask us to help, as I say, I think it would be very difficult to say no. Britain is carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq against IS terrorists, but has taken no military action against Assad. Mr Johnson said the question of whether parliamentary approval would be needed for any military action needs to be tested. Pressed on whether the Government would have to bypass Parliament if there was a phone call in the night calling on the UK to support US action, he added: You are putting your finger on the issue. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it would be wrong for Mrs May to act without the approval of Parliament. We dont need unilateral action, he said. We need to work through the UN. But above all we need to bend ourselves totally to getting a political settlement in Syria and allow the inspectors space to work, allow them to make sure we know who did that terrible chemical weapons attack and also recognise that the inspectors there are already destroying any stocks of chemical weapons that they find. Mr Johnson has said there was no question that Assads regime was responsible for the gas attack on Khan Sheikhun on April 4 which killed more than 70 people, including dozens of children. Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Partys foreign affairs spokesman in Westminster, called for a motion on Syria to be debated in Parliament before it broke up for the election. Donald Trump retaliated against Bashar Assad (pictured) earlier this month, after an apparent sarin atrocity killed dozens of civilians Donald Trump launched missile strikes against Assad earlier this month after an apparent sarin atrocity killed dozens of civilians He said Mr Johnsons remarks were not only significant, they are also dangerous, and that the Government had no authority for military action against the regime. The Prime Minister played down the row last night. This is a hypothetical issue because there is no proposal on the table for further strikes in Syria, she said. n In a stark warning yesterday Mr Johnson said North Koreas leader Kim Jong Un is developing missiles to hit Britain. He said: If he keeps developing missiles in the way that he is doing, he could be a threat to Western Europe, including ourselves. He added he was not a fan of using military options to deal with the rogue state. The mystery of how a giant rabbit died in the care of United Airlines deepened today as the breeder demanded the body back and the airline said he was alive on board. Annette Edwards, 65, of Stoulton, Worcestershire, wants the corpse of the ten-month-old 3ft giant rabbit Simon returned to her after he died in the US. And United has now claimed he was alive when he was taken off the plane from London Heathrow - and died at a holding facility at Chicago O'Hare Airport. Annette Edwards, 65, of Stoulton, Worcestershire, wants the corpse of the ten-month-old 3ft giant rabbit Simon (whose father Darius, pictured, is the world's biggest rabbit) returned to her Mrs Edwards, 66, told The Sun: 'Where is his body? I can't get any answers. I want compensation. If I can get his body back I'll have a vet examine him to get answers.' United chief executive Oscar Munoz apologised last night on NBC, saying: 'We are deeply sorry for the loss of anything from your luggage to, of course, a loved pet.' It has also emerged Simon was bought by an investment manager for Steve Bruere, who owns a farm real estate firm and wanted to show him at the Iowa State Fair. The incident is the latest embarrassment to hit United after it sparked global outcry when a passenger was dragged off an overbooked plane earlier this month. Former Playboy model Mrs Edwards said a vet had checked Simon shortly before he was placed on the United flight on Wednesday last week and he 'was fit as a fiddle'. United said the rabbit was moving around in his crate and appeared healthy when taken off the plane in Chicago, waiting to be put on another flight to Kansas City. About half an hour later, at the company-run pet facility, Simon seemed to be asleep. Big future: Had he lived, Simon (pictured) was expected to outgrow the world's biggest rabbit - his 4ft 4in father Darius Shortly after that, a pet facility employee opened the cage and found the rabbit dead. The spokesman said the airline was reviewing its handling of the animal. United boss blames 'system failure' for passenger incident David Dao, dragged off the United plane The United Airlines boss has blamed the infamous incident where a passenger was dragged off a flight on 'a system failure across the board'. Oscar Munoz said last night he had since introduced changes at the company because 'a circumstance like we've all witnessed should have never happened, never happened'. Mr Munoz also told NBC that he had not looked at whether the incident involving passenger David Dao had damaged the company financially. Vietnamese-American doctor David Dao was dragged off by airport security officers on United Flight 3411 to make space for the four crew members on the flight. The 69-year-old passenger was taken to hospital and - according to his lawyer - lost two front teeth, broke his nose, and suffered a concussion, and will likely sue the airline. The flight from Chicago to Louisville on April 9 saw the four Republic Airlines crew members arrive at the gate around the time of boarding. United offered increased compensation for volunteers onboard due to the last minute nature of the request, Mr Munoz said in the letter to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. When the request for volunteers was unsuccessful, the United crew followed an 'involuntary denied boarding process,' he added. Four passengers were then selected to deboard the plane, with fare class and domestic itineraries as the deciding factors. Separately, United Airlines said it would offer passengers who volunteer to forfeit their seats on overbooked flights up to $10,000 (7,750) and limit the use of law enforcement to safety and security issues alone. The company also said travelling crews are to be booked onto a flight 60 minutes before departure. Advertisement 'We won't know the cause of death, because we offered to perform a necropsy free of charge - that's standard procedure - but the customer didn't want us to perform a necropsy, and we understand,' he said. The spokesman added that the airline offered compensation to the breeder but would not disclose the amount. Bryan Bergdale, a farmland investment manager, said he bought the rabbit for his boss, who had hoped to show him at the Iowa State Fair. He had driven from the Des Moines area to Kansas City and was nearing the airport last Thursday when United called with the bad news. At first, he didn't believe it. 'We'd built a pen and had toys all ready. It's sort of a sad deal,' he said. Mr Bergdale, 29, said he had tracked down the breeder and bought the rabbit for his boss, Steve Bruere, who owns a farm real estate company in the Des Moines suburb of Clive. Mr Bergdale said the rabbit cost 415 and the shipping was 1,400. He said the United representative didn't say anything about compensating him for the loss. 'We're still in the mourning process,' he said. 'We're not quite sure what we're going to do.' United had the second-highest level of animal deaths and injuries of any US airline last year, or 2.11 per 10,000 animals transported, according to the Department of Transportation. Only Hawaiian Airlines was worse at 3.99, the result of three deaths among the 7,518 animals it transported. United transported 109,149 animals last year, second only to Alaska Airlines with 112,281. United reported nine deaths and 14 injuries, the highest figures for each category among US carriers. Alaska reported two deaths and one injury. United said it works to protect the safety of animals through its PetSafe program, which is staffed 24 hours a day and allows pet owners to track their animals from point of origin to destination. 'Travel can be stressful for animals,' the spokesman said, adding that the carrier has plenty of tips for those who do decide to ship their animals. United is already working to repair its battered image after a passenger who refused to give up his seat on an overbooked flight was forcibly dragged from a plane at O'Hare Airport. Airport security officers removed David Dao, a 69-year-old from Kentucky, from the United Express flight. Images of his bloodied face were widely circulated online. Mrs Edwards, pictured with Simon's father Darius (right) and his wife Honey, said that Simon had been in rude health before the flight Mr Munoz was widely faulted for his early responses to the situation. He first blamed Dr Dao but later apologised repeatedly for United's handling of the situation. Two weeks earlier, United was criticised after a gate agent stopped two young girls from boarding a flight because they were wearing leggings. The airline said leggings violate the dress code of the United Pass programme, a benefit for employees and their dependants. The airline said Mr Munoz would not automatically become chairman of the carrier's parent company, United Continental Holdings, next year as originally planned. Had he lived Simon was expected to outgrow the world's biggest rabbit - his 4ft 4in father Darius. Simon's new owner is expected to sue because he paid 2,000 for Simon's flight, 85 vet bill and 300 for Simon himself. The incident comes just weeks after the besieged airline hit the headlines when a doctor was dragged off a plane by stewards at Chicago O'Hare Airport Mrs Edwards said: 'Something has gone wrong somewhere and I can't think for a moment what it might be because nothing like this has ever happened before. 'It's awful. I was devastated and for a couple of days I was feeling numb, just awful and feeling really bad and I think everybody concerned was very upset. 'The gentleman receiving Simon got the phone call when he was on his way to the airport to collect him to be told he had died.' She added: 'What I cannot understand is if he was alright when he landed in Chicago what has happened between then and them finding him dead after he'd been checked on a couple of times? 'I need some answers before we send anyone else on a plane again. I was going to keep Simon but because I've got such a good relationship with the buyer I knew he's going to have a good home so I was prepared to let Simon go. 'Simon was a stunning boy with black fur and blue eyes and the gentleman wanted a boy he could show off which was going to be so nice for Simon. Ms Edwards claims Simon was 'fit as a fiddle' and was in perfect health when he was checked by a vet three hours before his flight 'I took him for a full health check at the vets on the day of his flight on the 19th of April. He went for his health check at around 6.15pm. He left me around 9.15pm. 'He looked so happy at the vets, hopping about everywhere. He had his temperature taken, heart checked and a thorough going over which was all fine. 'He went from Heathrow to Canton and when he landed at Chicago he was checked and alright he was absolutely fine apparently he was left in a room for when they've got another flight to go. 'He was checked a couple of times and was alright but when they checked him for the next flight they found him dead.' Simon is the son of Annette's 4ft 4ins rabbit Darius, who holds the title of world's biggest rabbit. But he was expected to overtake Darius who weighs in at 2st 5lbs. Mrs Edwards said: 'It's just for the love of it Darius's babies that I sell them. It gives me great pleasure to share these wonderful with these creatures around the world but it's definitely not a business.' 'If one of Darius's babies is going abroad they have to be at least 14 to 16 weeks old to fly. This gentleman wanted one that wasn't very small but still getting bigger. 'I've sent quite a lot of animals abroad before but I'd never send them anywhere if I thought there was a risk of death so I need to know the results of the investigation. 'They're now looking at CCTV to find out what's gone wrong. At this stage we don't know what to do and I've told the gentleman to let me know how he wants to go forward. 'Out of all the animals that travel every day it's very rare for something like this to happen. Pets are transported all the time and not least in the army which is why I'm so shocked.' A 26-year-old Australian woman has died in Bali after police believe she fell from a scooter into a gutter on the popular tourist island in Indonesia. The woman has been identified as marketing representative Ella Knights, from Pyrmont, in inner Sydney. She was due home on Tuesday after spending a number of weeks travelling in Indonesia after visiting India, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Ms Knights was believed to have just qualified as a yoga teacher and was also a Lifeline crisis hotline volunteer. Police said a passer-by found Ms Knights lying face down in a gutter in Canggu, North Kuta about 3am on Thursday. Scroll down for video Sydney woman Ella Knights, 26, has died after police believe she fell from a scooter in Bali A Honda scooter was found lying on its side nearby, the engine still running. 'The distance between the bike and the woman was around two metres,' Badung Precinct Traffic Police Chief Raka Wiratma told AAP. Ms Knights was taken to a nearby medical clinic soon after police arrived but was pronounced dead shortly after and taken to hospital. 'According to several witnesses [she] was riding the bike alone and not wearing [a] helmet,' Mr Wiratma said. Chillingly, Ms Knights posted a video of herself riding on the back of a scooter in Bali just days before her fatal accident 'Sorry Mum, #nohelmet,' Ms Knights wrote on an Instagram post accompanying the video 'We suspect the victim was out of control.' The death has been reported to the Australian consulate. Police are waiting on an autopsy for a definite cause of death. Ms Knights suffered bruises and wounds all over her face, said Dr Ida Alit, head of forensics at Sanglah Hospital. Ms Knights (pictured) was travelling on the scooter about 3am on Thursday when the accident occurred Ms Knights (pictured) was found by a passer-by in Canggu, North Kuta and rushed to a nearby medical centre Chillingly, Ms Knights posted a video of herself riding on the back of a scooter in Bali just days before her fatal accident. 'Sorry Mum, #nohelmet,' Ms Knights wrote. Tributes have begun to flow for Ms Knights on her Instagram page. 'Rest in peace beautiful,' one person wrote. The Redfern Convenience Store also posted a touching tribute on their Instagram page. 'Heartbroken to hear the news about... Ella Knights,' the post read. 'Ella [has] been a customer at our store for more than 10 years, she is always happy and full of energy.' Ms Knight's death comes almost a year to the day after 16-year-old Australian Lochie Connaughton died when he lost control of a scooter in Kuta while driving out of the basement of the Marriot's Stone Hotel on April 28. A month later Victorian firefighter Adrian Newton, 42, was killed when police said his motorbike collided with a garbage truck on May 17 in Kuta. Commissioner Adjutant Wiratma urged tourists to drive safely and obey traffic rules. 'Please use a helmet, a driver licence and other necessities,' he told AAP. Police said according to witnesses Ms Knights was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident (stock image) 'Don't drive too fast if you don't know the area. 'It's such a pity when you're on holiday, but instead [of enjoying yourself] you get yourself into an accident.' The Australian government notes that a number of foreigners have been killed or seriously injured in Bali and that anyone seeking to hire a motorbike should ensure you have insurance cover. 'In the event of an accident, foreigners may be assumed to be at fault and expected to make financial restitution to all other parties,' it notes on its smart traveller website. Employees at high-end fashion label Kit and Ace have been fired via social media. As the company prepares to close its stores across Australia, staff were only notified of the changes through Instagram and Facebook on Thursday morning. 'Many woke up today, went to work just to find the doors were locked with a sign letting them know they were basically fired immediately,' wrote an employee in response to the company's Facebook post. Employees at high-end fashion label Kit and Ace have been fired via social media (Kit and Ace stock image) Australian staff were only made aware of the changes through Instagram and Facebook on Thursday morning (Instagram post pictured) Kit and Ace's original Facebook post: Australian staff woke up to this message on Thursday Kit and Ace's original post reads: 'From the start, Kit and Ace has been about innovation. As the retail landscape changes, we're changing the way we transform your wardrobe. 'Kit and Ace will be closing its showrooms in the United States, the UK and Australia. Our Canadian showrooms will remain open.' Australian staff were not made aware of the changes before the social media posts went out and were understandably shocked when they checked their phones on Thursday. Many employees, now out of a job, took to social media to express their frustration at the company's 'lack of integrity.' 'A real professional way of letting your Australian team they have NO JOBS today! Waking up to a post that says our store is closing! Zero care factor,' wrote one employee on Twitter. 'The way you have presumably treated your employees is shameful. People deserve respect, not an Instagram post to say they are out of a job,' said another social media user. High-end fashion label Kit and Ace has sparked outrage after firing thousands of employees via Instagram Australian staff were not made aware of the changes before the social media posts went out and were understandably shocked when they checked their phones on Thursday 'You should be ashamed': Kit and Ace notified their Australian staff of the closures via social media Many employees, now out of a job, took to social media to express their frustration at the company's 'lack of integrity' A sign in the window of the Martin Place outlet in Sydney notifying customers of store closures An employee from Kit and Ace's Brisbane store wrote: 'I work for the Brisbane store in Australia. Our team are so upset and angry with the way you went about this #nointegrity.' Deloitte Restructuring Services have been hired to handle the administration of the company's Australian arm as part of a global restructure. 'It is very early days as far as this appointment is concerned, but the stores will close immediately as they are not viable,' Richard Hughes of Deloitte Restructuring said in a statement. 'At this stage, we do not yet have an estimate of dividends, but will reported on this to creditors in coming weeks. Our expectation is that all affected employees will receive outstanding wages and relevant entitlements in coming days, which are being paid directly by the parent company.' The fashion retailer was founded in Canada in 2014 and operates seven outlets in Australia across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. As part of the administration process all Australian stores will close on May 4, leaving 65 local staff out of a job. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Kit and Ace for comment. The fashion retailer was founded in Canada in 2014 and operates seven outlets in Australia across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast (Martin Place, Sydney store pictured) A massive explosion struck near Damascus International Airport early today as Israel blew up an arms supply hub operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources said. They were reportedly targeting weapons sent from Iran via commercial and military cargo planes. Both Russia and Syria have condemned the attack, which Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for. But the country's intelligence minister Israel Katz, speaking from the United States to Israeli Army Radio, said: 'I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah in Iran. 'Naturally, I don't want to elaborate on this.' Scroll down for video Pictures began circulating on social media this morning of the 'huge' blast near Damascus airport, which was conducted by Israel's air force Israel is believed to have hit Damascus in December 2014, and Palmyra last month. Syria and Israel have long argued over the Golan Heights, territory to the southwest of Damascus which has been held by Israel since 1967 He added: 'The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act.' Syrian state media said Israeli missiles hit a military position southwest of the airport, but did not mention arms or fuel. It said 'Israeli aggression' had caused explosions and some material losses, but did not expand on the damage. Two senior rebel sources in the Damascus area, citing monitors in the eastern outskirts of the capital, said five strikes hit an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militias. Lebanon's al-Manar television, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, said early indications were that the strikes hit warehouses and fuel tanks. It said there no casualties. Rami Abdel Rahman from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast, pictured above, was 'huge' and that fires are still raging in the area Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) has previously said his country will act if it has intelligence of advanced weaponry being transferred to its enemy Hezbollah Russia criticised the strikes, saying Israel and other countries should avoid any action that heightens tension in the region. Asked about the Israeli strikes on a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Syria's sovereignty should be respected. Peskov said that the Russian and Israeli militaries were in constant contact. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman, meanwhile, told AFP the 'blast was huge'. Israel has not officially confirmed if it carried out the raid but intelligence minister Israel Katz said it 'corresponds' to the country's policy Israeli warplanes have hit the airport and other bases around the capital in the past, targeting what it said were weapons stockpiles of its Lebanese foe Hezbollah, which is allied with the Syrian government. The airport lies about 15 miles southeast of the capital. Israeli officials have previously said they view any movement of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah units in Syria as a 'red line' that would prompt it to carry out air strikes or artillery fire in the past. A senior regional intelligence source who requested anonymity said the targeted depot handles a significant volume of weapons sent by air Iran, a leading ally of Assad in the region. After Israel's raid on Palmyra last month, the Syrian government launched ground to air missiles in retaliation. Pictured above, this morning's explosion The source said many of the arms are destined for an array of Iran-backed militias, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in some of the toughest fronts against Syrian rebels. Speaking in Moscow on Wednesday, where he was attending a security conference, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman reiterated that Israel 'will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border'. During his visit, Lieberman held talks with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as part of efforts by Israel to coordinate with Moscow on actions in Syria and avoid the risk of confrontation. A statement from the Defence Ministry said Lieberman had expressed concern to the Russian ministers over 'Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon'. Al-Manar television said the air strike (pictured above) hit at dawn and caused only material damage after blowing up fuel tanks and a warehouse A Western diplomat said the airstrikes sent a clear political message to Iran, effectively saying it could no longer use Iraqi and Syrian airspace to resupply proxies with impunity. Rebel sources said the attack caused a fire with flames appearing to come from a closed military area of the sprawling complex they believed was used by Tehran to supply weapons to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside the Syrian army. It was hit by Israeli air strikes in December 2014, Syrian state media reported at the time. Israel does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid it carries out. But last month, it said it had carried out several strikes near the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, targeting what it said were 'advanced weapons' belonging to Hezbollah. The Syrian civil war has now lasted more than six years and claimed more than 300,000 lives. Pictured above, this morning's explosion near Damascus The strikes prompted Syria to launch retaliatory ground to air missiles, one of which was intercepted over Israeli territory in the most serious flare-up between the two neighbours since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to destroy Syrian air defence systems if they were used again. On January 13, Syria accused Israel of bombing Mazzeh air base in the western suburbs of the capital. There were several strikes near the same base last year. In April 2016, Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys in Syria that he said were transporting weapons destined for Hezbollah. Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the armistice line had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict began. Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating 34-day war in 2006 which killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is under political pressure to have embattled Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied sacked from a taxpayer-funded Arab relations board. Ms Abdel-Magied has travelled to repressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa as a member of the Council for Australian-Arab Relations, and is also an ABC television host. This included a stop last year in Saudi Arabia, where women are stoned for adultery under sharia law and are banned from driving. Scroll down for video Yassmin Abdel-Magied has travelled to the Middle East and North Africa as a member of the Council for Australian Arab Relations Liberal senator Eric Abetz (pictured) has asked Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to remove Yassmin Abdel-Magied from the Council for Australian Arab Relations Yassmin Abdel-Magied has been condemned for her offensive Anzac Day Facebook post Conservative Liberal senator Eric Abetz has written to Ms Bishop to demand the removal of the Sudanese-born woman from the taxpayer-funded board, which is administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 'I have written to Foreign Minister Bishop inviting her to terminate Ms Magied's appointment or membership of the Arab Australia Council: clearly unsuited to that,' he told Sky News on Wednesday night. Ms Abdel-Magied, a 26-year-old writer, is under fire for posting an offensive Facebook post on Anzac Day equating the sacrifice of diggers in war with asylum seekers and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 'Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Naura, Syria, Palestine ...),' she said before deleting the post. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has promised to consider Eric Abetz's request to remove Yassmin Abdel-Magied from the taxpayer-funded Arab relations council While she apologised for her 'disrespectful' Facebook post, conservative politicians, including Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce have strongly condemned her. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Nationals MP George Christensen have gone further and called for her to be sacked as host of the ABC's Australia Wide program. Senator Abetz, a cabinet minister in the Abbott government, said her Anzac Day post had made her an inappropriate choice to represent Australia. 'This lady is willing to denigrate Australian values and Australia,' he said. A spokeswoman for Ms Bishop said she would consider her Liberal colleague's request. 'The Foreign Minister will respond to Senator Abetz's letter in due course after careful consideration,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Senator Eric Abetz has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade if Yassmin Abdel-Magied has raised the issue of female genital mutilation during her Middle East trip Yassmin Abdel-Magied has travelled at taxpayer expense to the Middle East and North Africa Yassmin Abdel-Magied is on the board of the Council for Australian-Arab Relations Senator Abetz has previously asked foreign affairs officials if Ms Abdel-Magied had used her trips to Muslim-majority nations to pressure them over the death penalty and female genital mutilation. The Council for Australian-Arab Relations describes itself as a body to promote a 'greater understanding and acceptance of each others' cultures, values, beliefs and diversity'. In November last year, Ms Abdel-Magied wrote a blog on Facebook about visiting Kuwait, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. She also visited Sudan, where 90 per cent of women are victims of female genital mutilation. The founder of Youth Without Borders was the subject of controversy in February when she told the ABC's Q&A program Islam was the 'most feminist religion' She was also caught seeking advice on Facebook from Wassim Doureihi, a spokesman for Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is campaigning for a global Islamic caliphate based on sharia law. It's a legal system which secular Muslims reject. Daily Mail Australia contacted Ms Abdel-Magied for comment. A Moroccan held in a jihadist raid was stopped outside am Eagles of Death Metal concert in Barcelona almost a year after the Bataclan massacre at their Paris show. Police spotted the man, who has alleged links to terror cells involved with attacks in Brussels, and asked for his ID when they saw him lurking outside the Apolo concert hall in the Spanish city in September last year. On Tuesday, he was arrested in a sting in Catalonia along with nine others and detectives have said at least four of those detained were 'clearly members of Islamic State'. A man wearing jeans and running trainers and a jumper over his head is taken away by police in Catalonia Two forensic officers work outside the Bataclan concert theatre where two body bags lie on the pavement Wounded people flee the Bataclan in Paris, France, where ISIS gunmen opened fire, killing 90 Police said they arrested were one Spaniard and eight Moroccans living in Catalonia, all aged between 30 and 40 years old, linked with deadly attacks in Belgium and France. A regional police spokeswoman said at least four of the detained are suspected of being linked to people arrested following the 2016 Brussels airport and subway attacks that killed 32 people and wounded 300 others. One of the Moroccans was the man police saw seven months ago outside the concert hall. US rock group Eagles of Death Metal was in full swing at the Bataclan concert hall on November 13, 2015, when armed ISIS terrorists wearing explosive belts stormed in and killed 90 people. Close to a year later on September 10, the US rock group played at the Apolo concert hall in Barcelona. Under high alert, police stopped a Moroccan man in front of the hall and asked him for his ID, said a spokesman for police in the northeastern region of Catalonia where Barcelona is located. He said that on identifying him, police discovered alleged links to people involved in the Brussels airport and metro attacks last year that left 32 people dead and more than 320 wounded. The attacks were led by an Islamic State cell that was also responsible for the carnage in Paris in November 2015. American rock group Eagles of Death Metal perform on stage on November 13, 2015 at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, a few moments before four men armed with assault rifles and shouting 'Allahu akbar' stormed into the venue and gunned down 90 people A police spokesman said: 'He was put under surveillance, as was his entourage.' On Tuesday, he was arrested along with eight others in an anti-jihadist operation. It is not known why the suspect was in front of the Barcelona concert hall, or whether it was pure coincidence. But the police spokesman said authorities don't believe he was planning any kind of attack that night. The suspects arrested in Catalonia are due to be questioned by a judge in Madrid on Thursday. They are also being investigated for drug trafficking, robbery and other crimes. Armed police officers stand by as a man is taken away after being arrested in Barcelona, Spain Regional police spokesman Josep Lluis Trapero told TV3 regional television that four of the detained were clearly members the Islamic State group. He said the arrests could help solve investigations into attacks in France and Belgium. Mr Trapero said the group was also being investigated for drug trafficking and other crimes. A police statement said police made 12 raids in five Catalan towns including the regional capital, Barcelona. It said the arrests followed an eight-month investigation in coordination with Belgian police. Spanish police have arrested some 200 suspected jihadis since Spain raised its national security alert to one level below the maximum in 2015. She has stepped away from running her fashion brand to work as an adviser to her father. But it seems Ivanka Trump is still keen to make a style statement, which she has demonstrated on her first overseas trip in the role. The 35-year-old chose a pair of eye-catching mismatched earrings and an elegant white dress for a gala dinner at Deutsche Bank in Berlin on Tuesday. Ivanka Trump opted for a pair of deliberately mis-matched $600 earrings for her trip to a women's summit in Germany The $600 (492) asymmetrical earrings came from Italian luxury fashion label Marni. They tap into an increasingly popular trend among the fashion set for earrings that do not match. The larger of the two earrings, which are made from glass stone, brass and rhinestones, was over 4in long. Miss Trump, who is on her first trip to Germany as an official adviser to President Trump, earlier made her debut at a debate alongside a panel including chancellor Angela Merkel, IMF chief Christine Lagarde and Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland. At the dinner, President Trump's daughter sat next to chancellor Merkel, who was also wearing white, and the pair happily posed for photos. Outside the building, however, there was a peaceful protest against her father's policies and her appointment as adviser, with demonstrators carrying placards reading 'No to nepotism.' She was invited to Germany by chancellor Merkel to participate in the Women20 summit, an international event promoting economic empowerment for women. President Trump's daughter wore the eye-catching jewelry during a dinner at Deutsche Bank on Tuesday when she spoke with Chancellor Angela Merkel Business / Companies by Staff reporter KENYA Airways begins three weekly flights to Victoria Falls on Monday in another vote of confidence for the airport after undertaking a $150 million upgrade.The airline will fly on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.In a posting on its Facebook page, the carrier said: "From May 1, we will have direct flights to Victoria Falls. This is our second destination in the country of Zimbabwe. Talk about expanding our reach!"The Victoria Falls route will be linked to Cape Town. The Kenya Airways debut flight was supposed to be on May 18.It will be Kenya Airways' 53rd route. Victoria Falls Airport has been luring airlines after the upgrade, which has created a state-of-the-art international passenger terminal building and an aircraft parking area with a capacity to park three wide-bodied aircraft such as the Boeing 747 or equivalent. Its handling capacity has trebled to 1,5 million passengers per annum, up from 500 000. The upgrade created a new 4km-long by 60m-wide runway and associated taxiways, capable of landing long haul wide-bodied aircraft.South African Airways became the first airline to have a wide-bodied plane land at the airport with a 222-seater A330-200 on March 1.Other than luring wide-bodied planes, the airport also attracted Ethiopian Airlines which began three weekly flights on March 26. Riyad Hantouli, 39, was repeatedly arrested after he racially abused restaurant staff A Palestinian man who got asylum in Britain because of racial persecution in his home country ranted at foreign restaurant staff, calling them 'Iranian and Pakistani b*****ds and motherf***ers'. Riyad Hantouli, 39, who has avoided jail, was repeatedly arrested after he racially abused restaurant staff working at night near his flat in Manchester whenever he tried to get free food at their eateries. In one incident, Hantouli, who had been drinking, threatened to kill a waiter and spat in his face when he was refused a drink and later told another worker: 'You Iranian and Pakistanis are all the same.' A third worker was told: 'I'm your boss, I'm paying your money. I'm going to damage your car and set the takeaway on fire' - before unemployed Hantouli spat at him, missed and instead hit a member of the public standing nearby. On one occasion officers were called to arrest Hantouli after he tried to cadge a free lift in a taxi and had to struggle to detain him as he shouted: 'I am going to remember your face, I am going to shoot you.' Several of the sick outbursts took place whilst Hantouli was on bail. The father-of-one, who receives state benefits, has racked up a string of convictions since arriving in Britain in 2002, having claimed he was persecuted because of his colour and religion in his native Palestine. Two years ago he was caught looting bunches of flowers from a memorial to a teenager killed in a road crash and has a criminal record dating back to 2008 including a conviction for religiously aggravated harassment. In one incident, Hantouli threatened to kill a waiter and spat in his face when he was refused a drink and later told another worker: 'You Iranian and Pakistanis are all the same' At Manchester Magistrates' Court, Hantouli was convicted of offences of causing racially aggravated fear of violence, assault, theft and being drunk and disorderly. But he was given a 20-week jail term suspended for two years and told to complete 200 hours of unpaid work. He was also banned from three takeaway restaurants under the terms of a restraining order. District judge David Scanlon said he would have jailed Hantouli but had to let him go due to time he had already served on remand. He warned him he would go back to prison if he got into trouble again or refused to do unpaid work. The judge said: 'Something that comes out loud and clear in the report is you have an established pattern of what appears to be unprovoked, aggressive and abusive behaviour. 'It's not the first time you have been to court, my initial inclination would be to say the community should be protected to the standard I think they deserve which means you go out and go somewhere out of circulation. 'That would be a sentence you completely merit. But to some extent that's been taken away of any decision I can make because of the time you have spent in custody. 'I'm going to try and protect everybody in the best way I think I can. Take the assistance on offer and it might just keep you out from where you're standing at the moment.' The incidents occurred on various dates between January and February after Hantouli had been fired from his job at the Zouk Bar and Grill in Manchester. Hantouli's rap sheet 2008 - Driving with excess alcohol. 2009 - Drunk and disorderly Feb 2015 - Drunk and disorderly March 2015 - Theft of six bouquets of flowers from a memorial May 2015 - Drunk and disorderly Oct 2015 - Causing racial or religious harassment and common assault Advertisement Nicola Durham, prosecuting, said despite his dismissal, Hantouli would turn up at the bar, ask for drinks - then refuse to pay. Matters came to a head in January this year when a barman refused to serve him. Miss Durham said: 'He became angry and called him a "motherf***er", and said "I'll kill you". He continued to call him a "motherf***er" and spat straight into his face. 'The following day, the defendant saw the same man getting out of a taxi and approached him, began calling him a motherfucker and grabbed his clothing. 'He pushed his head into a wall and punched Mr Norbert's face with a closed fist. He then kicked him to the shin. 'As a result of the assault he suffered soreness and redness to his left cheek, a sore left shin and a lump to the right side of his head from the assault.' Eight days later, Hantouli went to Vanilla Fudge takeaway and asked for a chicken burger only to then claim his card was not working. The worker said he could pay next time but Hantouli then asked if he could be loaned 10 and when it was refused he ranted: 'Iranian b*****d, all you Iranian and Pakistanis are all the same. You are an Iranian b*****d you motherf***er. Iranians don't come into my shop'. Hantouli, of Manchester, was given a 20-week jail term suspended for two years Also that evening an Asian worker at the Spicy Delight called police after Hantouli got some beer only to then threaten him saying 'You motherf***er I'm your boss, I'm paying your money. I'm going to damage your car and set the takeaway on fire.' He then spat at the worker but missed and hit an unknown member of the public and police were called to the scene to detain him. But just days later, police had to arrest Hantouli again amid fears he was armed with a knife after a taxi driver said he threatened by him having refused to pay his fare. Hantouli overheard shouting: 'motherf***er' at the cabbie driver as he was led away. Then on February 28, officers were called out again when Hantouli refused to pay another taxi fare and he began spitting and swearing at them when was confronted. After being handcuffed and placed in the back of the van, he continued to spit and kick the door saying: 'I am going to remember you face, I am going to shoot you.' Harry Boodhoo, defending, said his client had begun drinking after losing his job. He added: 'He did start his own business in Bolton as well however because he has been in custody that has failed as well. Once he leaves custody he will probably have to be reliant on benefits on his release. 'He has been here for 14 years, is an asylum seeker who was persecuted in Palestine and he had his asylum approved to be in this country. He has expressed to me that he has issues with not just alcohol but also depression. 'He has clearly not behaved very well and is remorseful for his actions and he just wants to put things right as best he can. 'While he was at Zouk there was a dispute about work he had done and commitments that led to things falling apart and taking the wrong steps. He's confronted people and behaved in the wrong way.' Hantouli was also ordered to pay 165 compensation and costs of 515. In an earlier hearing he spoke through an interpreter and said: 'I admit I have done wrong and I will try my best to change the way I live my life. 'There was a problem with the police and I believe I was beaten up and I wasn't aware of what I was saying.' Karen Bennett was left fuming after she was wrongly slapped with a ticket by police who claimed she was driving without a seatbelt A hairdresser won a legal battle against police after cross-examining an officer in court with skills she'd learnt from watching television detective Miss Marple. Karen Bennett was left fuming after she was wrongly handed a ticket by police who claimed she was driving without a seatbelt in Colchester, Essex. But instead of accepting the offer of a 'driver awareness course' the mobile hairdresser ended up bravely fighting the case in court. The mother-of-two was called to appear before magistrates and chose to represent herself during the trial - providing crucial photographic evidence and even cross-examining a police officer. She relied on skills she picked up from watching Miss Marple, the long-running television drama based on one of Agatha Christie's most famous characters. Incredibly Mrs Bennett's efforts paid off with impressed magistrates taking just 10 minutes to clear her, meaning she walked free from court, avoiding a fine of up to 500. Impressed magistrates ruled Essex Police's case was inconclusive and praised the 56-year-old for her 'exceptional' evidence. Instead of accepting the offer of a 'driver awareness course' the hairdresser ended up in court. She used pictures including this one of evidence that she had been wearing a seatbelt She said: 'The only experience of a court I have got is television programmes like Miss Marple. 'I thought we would be in an office and police would read their statement out and then I would read mine. 'But it was in court and I had to cross-examine a policeman.' Before the case arrived at court sharp-minded Mrs Bennett tried to get footage from road-safety cameras to prove her innocence but was told this was unavailable. She added: 'It all came down to me to try to prove my innocence. Television detective Miss Marple (pictured left). Karen with her husband Graham (right). During cross-examination Mrs Bennett said the PC insisted she had not worn a seatbelt 'I wrote exactly what happened that day and took my own photographs of how I sat in the car.' During cross-examination Mrs Bennett said the officer on the day insisted she had not worn a seatbelt. 'I said to her 'could you tell me exactly where you were parked'? 'When she told me her position I knew 100 per cent she couldn't have seen me properly. 'The magistrates said the evidence was 'inconclusive' and the evidence I prepared for the court was exceptional and they completely cleared me. 'I can't tell you the relief - it has empowered me and I have never felt stronger. 'It was nerve-wracking. I have never had to go under oath or anything but I did it with conviction and I knew I was right. Before the case arrived at court sharp-minded Mrs Bennett tried to get footage from road-safety cameras to prove her innocence but was told this was unavailable Mrs Bennett, of North Weald, was one of 66 motorists pulled over by police during a 'Surround a Town' policing operation, designed to crackdown on rogue drivers last summer. She told sceptical officers her car sounds a continuous alarm if she does not wear the seatbelt. Her hair was also worn up at the time and she wore a pale pink top, which she said would have made it easy to spot if she was telling the truth. 'I don't know what the costs were to the Government, but what a waste of money. 'I felt it was randomly done to get the numbers up to get the revenue. 'There must have been several people caught who just paid up.' Mrs Bennett faced one charge of driving a motor vehicle whilst not wearing a seat belt - which carries a maximum penalty of a 500 fine. Mrs Bennett faced one charge of driving a motor vehicle whilst not wearing a seat belt - which carries a maximum penalty of a 500 fine After the case, held at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court, Essex Police refused to comment on Mrs Bennett's incredible legal victory. A spokesman said: 'Whilst we cannot comment on individual cases, it remains our responsibility to put all cases and associated evidence before the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision on whether charges will be brought. 'It is then for the courts to decide whether someone is guilty. 'Essex Police makes no apology for running operations around the county aimed at road safety.' Agatha Christies character Miss Marple appears in 12 crime novels. The TV series began in 1984 and repeats are still shown. A mother-of-three has accused Burger King of sexism after her Barbie-loving sons were handed toy cars with their meals 'because they are boys'. Gemma Green says she was stunned when her sons were given Hot Wheels cars at the branch in Halifax, Yorkshire. The mother-of-three said 'toys aren't played with genitals' and it should not matter what children choose to play with. The student midwife is now calling on the fast food giant to change its toy policy. Gemma and Paul Ditchburn, 30, had popped into Burger King as a treat with their three sons - twins Jack and Oliver, 3, and four-year-old Henry The mother-of-three said 'toys aren't played with genitals' and it should not matter what children choose to play with (pictured: the three boys watch a Barbie cartoon) Gemma, 31, said: 'I just think it's wrong that they expect children to only want a certain toy because of their gender. 'Why should it matter whether they have a car or a doll based on being a girl or a boy? It's just reinforcing gender stereotypes. 'As far I as I can recall we don't use our genitals to play with toys so why should it matter what sex the kids are?' Gemma and insurance claim handler partner Paul Ditchburn, 30, had popped into Burger King as a treat with their three sons - twins Jack and Oliver, 3, and four-year-old Henry. They ordered a Whopper Meal, burger and fries and three kids' meals at around 1.30pm. Paul took the children to find a table while Gemma waited for the order to be processed. Gemma claims a young female server was sorting the order and when she saw the children's meals asked whether they were for boys or girls. Gemma claims a young female server was sorting the order and when she saw the children's meals asked whether they were for boys or girls When she discovered they were for boys Gemma claims the server automatically reached out for the Hot Wheels cars and placed them on the tray. Gemma said: 'I didn't twig why she was asking so said "boys". When I confirmed they were for my sons she picked up three Hot Wheels cars and put them with each meal. 'It isn't right. As it turns out my boys like cars but the more I thought about it the more annoyed I got. 'What if they wanted a Barbie but felt they weren't allowed one because they are a boy and then worried about wanting something they 'shouldn't' have? The student midwife (pictured with Paul) is now calling on the fast food giant to change its toy policy 'She should have said "we have the Hot Wheels car or Barbie toy on offer - which would you like?". 'The boys love cars but they also play with some old Barbies of mine and my eldest enjoys watching the Barbie movies on the TV, he might well have wanted the Barbie toy with his meal. 'My neighbour's little girl is four. She doesn't want dolls or Barbies and she would probably have wanted the cars. 'Whether children want to play with cars, dolls or dinosaurs - it doesn't matter to me, the only thing that should matter is that they enjoy playing with it.' 'It's not just Burger King, I disagree with shops which have sections for boys and girls - I think that's wrong. 'Children should be allowed to play with the toys they enjoy.' Gemma said the incident won't stop them visiting the branch as a treat for the boys but argues that staff training should be updated. Gemma said: 'I just think they maybe need to look at staff training in that situation and be a bit more sensitive to the fact that they could affect a child who might want to play with the toy 'not meant for them'. 'They need to make their staff aware girls won't only want to play with dolls and the same with boys and cars.' Burger King have been approached for comment but have yet to respond. A 25-year-old gay man claims he was turned away from a New Zealand salon because of his gender after he asked to have his eyebrows shaped. Jason Lee said he went to O' La La Beauty in Whangarei on April 20 with his best friend for some pampering before a birthday party. But after asking for his eyebrows to be threaded, Mr Lee claims the salon owner told him men are not welcome in her shop. Jason Lee (pictured with his best friend Keely), 25, claims he was turned away from a beauty salon in Whangarei, New Zealand, last week after he asked to have his eyebrows threaded Mr Lee (pictured) said he was shocked when the shop owner asked him to leave because it 'was an environment for women to feel safe and men were not welcome' 'She asked me to leave as this was an environment for women to feel safe and men were not welcome,' Mr Lee told Daily Mail Australia. 'I had never had that reaction before! So I was very surprised! I have been to many salons, I have never been turned away before.' Mr Lee said the shop appeared to be empty and he didn't see any signs saying no men were allowed, the 25-year-old told the NZ Herald. 'I just wanted my eyebrows threaded because I'm all about my eyebrows,' he said. 'It annoyed me so much...I pretty much am a woman.' The salon's owner, Mel Taylor, told the NZ herald she didn't mean to offend or discriminate against Mr Lee. She said she created the salon to be a place for women to come and feel safe. 'A little oasis, so women can totally relax and just be themselves, say whatever they want, laugh or do silly girl things. That's all I wanted,' she told the publication. 'I just wanted my eyebrows threaded because I'm all about my eyebrows,' he said (pictured) Not long after the incident, Ms Taylor took to the salon's Facebook to apologise. 'I would like to sincerely and humbly apologize to Jason Lee for offending him in any way with regards to the appointment he sought last week. I work alone and for my own personal safety I prefer to work with women only, which is a practice I developed doing mobile beauty and not knowing what situation's I may encounter.' 'Again to Jason Lee I humbly apologize for causing him distress which no one should have to go through and perhaps it is time for a Policy Change.' A teenager has been crowned as having Britain's dirtiest student house after she was told to enter by her appalled father. Brittani Cooper, 19, who is ironically studying real estate at the University of the West of England, has scooped the dubious accolade. She submitted revolting photos to the competition after father saw how grim her kitchen was at her home in Filton, Bristol, and told her to enter. Brittani Cooper (left) has won the award for having Britain's filthiest student home (right) She submitted revolting photos to the competition after father saw how grim her kitchen was The winning pictures - the worst out of 982 entries - reveal stomach-churning scenes inside the flat she shares with five housemates. Bins are overflowing, piles of pizza boxes are stacked on top of bin bags, dirty plates tower next to the sink and black grease covers the hob. Despite bedding down in a filth-ridden flat, the brunette from Longlevens, Gloucestershire, still manages to look impeccable. Miss Cooper said: 'My dad saw that web-blinds.com had launched a campaign to find the UK's worst student digs on an online news site. Miss Cooper, 19, is ironically studying real estate at the University of the West of England Despite bedding down in a filth-ridden flat, the brunette still manages to look impeccable 'He sent me the link to the article as a joke because he knew that my housemates and I didn't exactly keep our flat the tidiest during the past year. Miss Cooper said her father wants to split the money, 'but that won't be happening' 'I decided it was worth entering with some images of our very messy kitchen, and now I'm so happy I did.' Miss Cooper has won 500 for coming first in the competition, run by web-blinds.com, the sister site of Hilarys. The first-year student said her father now wants a cut of the prize money - presumably to pay for a cleaner. She said: 'My dad is now saying he wants to share the money 50/50 with me, but that won't be happening. 'I'm going to use it towards decorating my new student house for my second year. I'm aiming to keep my new home a lot cleaner.' Kirsty O'Sullivan, spokesman for web-blinds.com, said: 'It was no easy task to pick just one winner from the students' submissions to our dirtiest digs competition. 'In fact, it was tough even looking at some of the pictures.' Are your student digs dirtier? Please email: mark.duell@mailonline.co.uk It was meant to be a trip they would never forget, but these newlyweds would prefer not to remember the nightmare of booking their honeymoon. The Melbourne couple married last February after booking a honeymoon trip in advance across Croatia, Montenegro and Albania next month. However they were left 'devastated' when Virgin Australia told them to fork out $8,500 to re-book their tickets because the bride took her husband's name. A newlywed Victorian couple were 'devastated' they were told to pay $8,500 to re-book their honeymoon tripbecause the bride took her husband's name The husband, who works as a loan provider, said they were expecting a small fee for changing the name on his wife's ticket. He was stunned when Virgin Australia's customer service team told them their only option was to cancel the reservation and re-book. 'We were also told that the availability of flights could not be guaranteed and that if we were to re-book, we would need to do so at the current rate 1,321,700 velocity points or $8,500,' the husband wrote in a post on Virgin Australia's Facebook. 'Furthermore, we were told that we would incur a cancellation fee.' His wife, an environmental scientist, told news.com it beggared belief the airline asked them to pay that fee. 'I honestly can't believe that it has come to this. It should not be on the customer to suffer at the expense of the airline because their system cannot do the simplest of tasks,' she said. Virgin Australia's customer service team told them their only option was to cancel the reservation and re-book After taking to social media to vent their outrage, Virgin re-booked the couple on another flight but still charged them $1000 in taxes. The couple were glad to resolve the issue but feared it would happen to other young holiday-goers like themselves. Virgin Australia said in a statement the International Air Transport Authority does not allow name changes for international flights. 'If you are cancelling and rebooking a frequent flyer program redemption ticket close to the date of travel, it is often the case that a redemption seat will not be available and therefore will incur a a greater cost to rebook.' Collapsing support for Ukip is shifting straight to the Tories and will hand Theresa May even more seats on June 8, Labour MPs fear. In the 2015 election the party secured almost 13 per cent of the national vote but polls suggest this has slumped by at least half. In a string of constituencies, a strong Ukip vote saw the party finish a strong second or third behind winning Labour candidates. Ukip leader Paul Nuttall had hoped to use the results as a platform to win dozens of seats but the aftermath of the Brexit referendum and the snap election suggest their voters are flocking to the Tories. Collapsing support for Paul Nuttall's Ukip is shifting straight to the Tories and will hand Theresa May even more seats on June 8, Labour MPs fear (Mr Nuttall is pictured on Monday) Polls carried during the general election campaign have seen Ukip mostly marooned in single figures, far below the 13 per cent share of the vote secured in 2015 The shift could hand seats such as Chester and Halifax to the Tories on June 9, analysis by the Daily Mirror revealed today. The impact could be even greater if reports Ukip will only field around 100 candidates for the 650 Commons seats prove to be true. Ukip is already short of high profile candidates after Nigel Farage and Arron Banks both ruled out standing. Leader Paul Nuttall insists he has not decided whether to run. Labour's most marginal seat is Chester, won by Christian Matheson by just 93 over the Tories. There were 4,148 Ukip voters last time. In Halifax, Holly Lynch beat the Tories by 428 votes - but 5,621 people backed Ukip. Similarly in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Paul Farrell is defending a majority of 650 in a constituency with 7,252 Ukip voters. In all three constituencies the switching of just 10 per cent of Ukip voters to the Tories would over come the majorities - even if the Labour vote holds up, which the national polls suggest is unlikely. Ukip leader Mr Nuttall (pictured at a disastrous press conference on Monday) has not decided if he will run himself on June 8 It was reported today Ukip could field as few as 100 candidates at the election, potentially sacrificing dozens of strong results from two years ago No Ukip candidate at all, which The Sun said today could be the case in hundreds of constituencies, will mean thousands of votes are up for grabs. A vulnerable Labour MP told the Mirror: 'We are seeing signs of this happening. 'There is without doubt a shift from UKIP to the Tories and the only question is quite how big. It is too early to judge that yet.' A Conservative MP told the paper even apparently safe Labour majorities could be vulnerable, highlighting Rachel Reeves' 10,727 majority in Leeds West. They said: 'There are 7,000 UKIP votes in Leeds West. 'If we pick up most of them, then it only takes a couple of thousand Labour voters to sit on their hands and we are there. Its hard to believe what is happening.' The latest poll, by YouGov for The Times, puts the Tories on 45 per cent, 16 points ahead of Labour on 29 per cent. Ukip are on just 7 per cent - barely half their support last time. A British tourist drowned on a Thai holiday island after walking into the sea while he was drunk, police said today. Scott Townsend, 37, was seen walking drunkenly on Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, last Friday at 8am. Locals fearing for his safety urged him not to go into the water and told him to return to his hotel. Scott Townsend (pictured right) drowned after walking into the water off Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, just one day before he was due to fly home to the Isle of Man Police were told by witnesses that Mr Townsend, 37, was seen drunk on Patong Beach (shown in a stock picture above) before he drowned in the sea But he ignored their advice and stayed on the beach - before later being seen disappearing beneath the water. Mike Exon said: 'It is sad as he was one of a few people who made me feel as I had known him a lifetime. 'I recently bought a phone off Scott as he advertised on Facebook. He was honest and offered the phone at a reasonable price. 'He was a pleasure to do business with and to be honest I had recommended him to others. The Kusoldharm Foundation, a local rescue group, said it worked hard to save Mr Townsend on Patong Beach (shown in a stock image above) but 'it was too late' 'Thinking of Scott's close friends and family. You are Heavens gain mate R.I.P.' Rescuers and police were called at 10am and spent 20 minutes searching for Mr Townsend before pulling his body from the sea some 10 to 15 metres from the shore. Police said that witnesses described him as being drunk and that he was due to fly back to his home on the Isle of Man the next day. The Kusoldharm Foundation, a rescue group, said they helped to retrieve the body with lifeguards but Mr Townsend was already dead. The gorgeous beach, which is on the island of Phuket, was devastated in 2005 after a tsunami. Shown above, a stock image of Patong Beach A spokesman said today: 'The victim's body was near the shore but he had drowned. We tried to save him but it was too late. 'CPR was attempted before the victim arrived at hospital. Doctors confirmed he had died.' Capt Yingyong from Patong police station said today that onlookers who had seen Scott before he entered the water believed he was 'an intoxicated person'. He said that the hospital had confirmed the death as drowning. Relatives in Scotland have been informed. 'Trivial' infractions could be used as an excuse to strip immigrants of their citizenship, the US Chief Justice has warned in a scathing criticism of the Trump administration. John Roberts warned that failure to declare speeding tickets could be used as an excuse to evict people from the US. His comments follow a ruling against Divna Maslenjak, a Serbian immigrant who is bidding to regain her US citizenship, which was revoked after she wrongly claimed her husband had not been part of the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s. Roberts, along with other Supreme Court judges, has indicated support for Maslenjak. US Chief Justice John Roberts has warned that failing to declare speeding tickets could be used as an excuse to evict people from the country The conservative chief justice said in the past he has exceeded the speed limit while driving, but warned that if immigrants fail to disclose similar offences when asked if they had ever broken the law, they could lose their citizenship. He asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Parker: 'Now you say that if I answer that question "no", 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, 'Guess what, you're not an American citizen after all?'' Roberts warned the government could likely find an excuse to deport most naturalized citizens, and warned this could lead to 'prosecutiorial abuse'. He observed: 'That to me is troublesome to give that extraordinary power, which, essentially, is unlimited power, at least in most cases, to the government.' Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally. Maslenjak entered the United States with her husband and two children in 2000, granted refugee status over a claimed fear of ethnic persecution in Bosnia at the hands of Muslims. They settled in Ohio. She became a US citizen in 2007, but concealed her husband Ratko's service in a Bosnian Serb Army brigade that participated in the notorious 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Maslenjak's citizenship was revoked, and she and her husband were deported to Serbia last October. Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer shared Roberts' concern, noting he had once walked into a government building with a pocketknife on his key chain in violation of the law. 'It's, to me, rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that Congress is interpreting this statute and wanted it interpreted in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalized citizens,' Breyer said. Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy also rebuked Parker, saying: 'It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship.' There are around 20 million naturalized US citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The legal question is whether Maslenjak's false statements had a material effect on the US decision to grant her refugee status. The government argued it only matters that she made a false statement, not whether it had any impact on its decision to grant refugee status. At a 2009 hearing to help her husband avoid deportation after he was convicted of making a false statement by concealing his military service, she admitted that when she had applied to be a refugee she had not revealed that from 1992 to 1997 the family lived in Bosnia and her husband served in the military. She was later convicted of lying on her citizenship application. This was the last oral argument of the court's current term. A ruling is due by the end of June. A couple on holiday 800 miles away caught a burglar after watching him enter their home on live CCTV footage streamed to a smartphone. Robert Vose, 62, and his wife Jane, 58, were in Andorra and watched in horror as Josh Barnes raided their property and began stealing jewellery. They immediately contacted neighbour Geoffrey Appleby, 76, who rushed over to their home in Curdridge near Winchester, Hampshire. The former magistrate, along with another man Mike Hughes, 61, caught the thief and sat on him until the police arrived to arrest the 22-year-old. Robert Vose (left) and his wife Jane (second left) were on holiday in Andorra when they noticed a thief enter their home. Mr Vose contacted his neighbour Geoffrey Appleby (far right) who went over and caught the thief with Mike Hughes (second right) Mr Appleby said Barnes was 'fairly violent' and used his teeth to bite his arm 'four times' while he was on the ground. A judge at Portsmouth Magistrates' Court praised the pensioner's bravery, saying he 'went over and above the call of duty' as he jailed Barnes for three years. It was the second time in 13 days that Barnes had attempted to burgle their home, but he failed on his first attempt after being confronted by Mr Vose himself. He was still at home on February 24 this year prior to travelling to Andorra with his wife Jane, and it meant Barnes left empty-handed. The court heard Mr Vose was viewing a live feed of the CCTV cameras on March 8 with his wife using his mobile phone when he spotted Barnes walking through the home. He called Mr Appleby, who raced round to his house to interrupt Barnes. Mr Appleby said: 'Barnes came to the door and said to me 'I'm the good guy, I'm trying to put it all back', he then disappeared back in to the house. 'He then came out on to the first floor balcony and jumped, but luckily for us he fell after landing - I think if he hadn't fallen over I would have let him run. 'I went with another neighbour to stop him and we sat on him to stop him getting away. 'We got him spread-eagled on the ground, but he objected to being sat on and being held down and he struggled. 'He was fairly violent, he was determined to get away. 'This was the unpleasant bit, because I was holding his hands, the only weapon he had was his teeth. He bit my arm and had four goes at it. 'I was shocked at getting bitten, I wasn't expecting it. It was a cold day, so I had been wearing an anorak but that didn't stop him from drawing blood while biting me.' The court heard Barnes broke a window to get into the house in the quiet village. A judge at Portsmouth Magistrates' Court praised the courage shown by Mr Appleby (right), saying he 'went over and above the call of duty' He was found to have taken several items of gold jewellery, which held a sentimental value to Mrs Vose. She told the court: 'The men managed to jump on top of him as he jumped off the first floor balcony and sat on him until the police came. 'Geoffrey did an amazing job of restraining and holding this chap down. One man has done so much to destroy our quality of life.' Barnes, of Swanmore, Hampshire, admitted burglary and common assault, and asked for a second burglary at nearby St. Peter's Church to be taken into consideration. He also admitted further thefts of bank cards and a watch from his grandmother, as well as criminal damage to his ex's home, breach of a conditional discharge, and two charges of breaching a restraining order by visiting his ex at work. Andrew Coley, defending, told the court: 'My client accepts he was utterly wrong.' Recorder Adam Feest QC praised Mr Appleby for his quick-thinking to stop Barnes from escaping. Speaking to Mrs Vose, the judge said: 'Can I extend through you my commendation to Mr Appleby who went over and above the call of duty.' News / Local by Staff Reporter Teachers have been urged to come up with new humane methods of disciplining students to replace corporal punishment which was banned by the High Court, Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta) chief executive officer, Sifiso Ndlovu has said.Ndlovu said Zimbabwe had no option, but to align itself to world conventions that call for humane methods of disciplining children."We should look at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, where we are saying, in terms of corporal punishment, the Zimbabwean teacher who goes to teach in South Africa should not be found on the wrong side of the law."We should shun justifying dehumanising means of behaviour control and we must find other alternative behaviour modification methods for our learners." In society in general, it is unfortunate that we have proponents for corporal punishment today, both at school level and at community level. My view, as a teacher is that, let us stop using that approach because it brings about violence, intolerance, hate and hurt to the pupils and it is very barbaric."The High Court ruling came after a parent complained that her child in grade one, a class for six-year-olds, had deep bruises after a beating by a teacher.Linah Pfungwa said her daughter had been punished for failing to have her reading book signed by guardians as proof she had done her homework. North Korea has warned of a nuclear holocaust if Southeast Asian countries do not join forces in the wake of US military drills in the region. In a letter to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' secretary general, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-Ho insisted the situation on the Korean Peninsula was 'reaching the brink of war' because of Washington's actions. He urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chief to inform the 10 countries' foreign ministers 'about the grave situation' on the peninsula 'and give them a proper proposal', and also heavily criticised US-South Korean military exercises. Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks in the wake of a series of North Korean missile tests and tough rhetoric from Washington on the isolated nation's rogue weapons programme. North Korean soldiers march with huge weapons as the country's foreign minister warns of war North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the Masikryong ski competition last year A still taken from a broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) as it transits the Philippine Sea while conducting a bilateral exercise with the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force in the Philippine Sea, the military exercises referred to by the North Korean ministry The North's letter, dated March 23, emerged ahead of the regional bloc's summit this week in Manila where delegates are expected to discuss the situation on the peninsula. It read: 'I express my expectations that ASEAN which attaches great importance to the regional peace and stability will make an issue of the US-South Korean joint military exercises at ASEAN conferences from the fair position and play an active role in safeguarding the peace and safety of Korean Peninsula.' A draft of ASEAN's end-of-summit chairman statement obtained this week had a portion on the Korean Peninsula still blank, meaning the leaders had yet to agree on what to say on the issue. North Korea is known to have close ties with some ASEAN members, including Cambodia and Laos. Kim Jong Nam, pictured, died earlier this year Pyongyang's diplomatic ties with Malaysia were disrupted after the assassination in Kuala Lumpur in February of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean lader Kim Jong-Un. South Korea has blamed Pyongyang for the killing, accusing its agents of using a banned nerve agent. Ri wrote in the letter that the annual US-South Korea military exercises justified Pyongyang's decision to develop its own nuclear weapons. 'It is a fact clear to everyone that when they deploy the means of nuclear strike that can drive the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear holocaust in just seconds - the nature of such exercises can in no way be defensive,' the letter said. Washington has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Korean peninsula amid signs the North could be preparing for a sixth nuclear test. Admiral Harry Harris, who heads the US Pacific Command, said in Washington this week the US Carl Vinson strike group was in the Philippine Sea just east of Okinawa, 'in striking range and power projection range of North Korea if called upon to do that'. A small group of mountaineers captured the dramatic moment a huge avalanche feel feet from their path. The group, from Spain, were visiting the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada, on April 21 when a river of snow came crashing down the mountain. Skier and mountaineer Jurek Ziemkiewicz captured the avalanche on camera. A group of mountaineers, from Spain, from Spain spotted a river snow rushing down the mountain towards them They ran to a safe location, just off the path, and filmed the torrent of snow race past them The footage shows the moment the group spot the snow approaching from above and race to get out of the way. They ran to a safe location, just off the path and right next to a sign stating: 'Expect the Unexpected'. After a few quiet moments, a torrent of snow and debris appears just a few feet away from the group, barreling down the mountain as they stand and watch in awe. The group were visiting the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada, on April 21 when they saw the avalanche Advertisement A poignant document charting the fate of the 19 Dambusters crews which highlights the cruel and random nature of the famous Second War Two raid has been unearthed. Flight Sergeant Leonard Sumpter, from Luton, Bedfordshire, got hold of a typed list of all the RAF bombers involved in Operation Chastise and ticked off the unfortunate crews who didn't make it back. Of the 19 Lancaster bombers, eight were shot down resulting in the deaths of 53 airmen. Two others had to return to England after developing faults. The next morning, Fl Sgt Sumpter 'marked up the score' on the crew list. Flight Sergeant Leonard Sumpter got hold of a typed list of all the RAF bombers involved in Operation Chastise and ticked off the crews who didn't make it back. He wrote the word 'OK' next to the nine crews who survived the daring raid to bomb three dams in 1943. He put a red tick next to eight that didn't make it and a red line through two that had to return to England Fl Sgt Sumpter took this photograph of a bomber aircraft in flight during the Dambusters raid of 1943. His document provides a stark reminder that, despite the raid being regarded as a success, nearly half the men who took part in it were killed A photo by Fl Sft Sumpter of a Lancaster bomber aircraft in flight over a reservoir. In the Dambusters raid, of the 19 bombers, eight were shot down resulting in the deaths of 53 airmen. Two others had to return to England after developing faults He simply wrote the word 'OK' next to the nine crews who survived the daring raid in May 1943. He put a red tick next to eight that didn't make it and a red line through the two that had to return. The document provides a stark reminder that, despite the Dambusters raid to bomb three dams in Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley being regarded as a success, nearly half the men who took part in it were killed. The piece of paper accompanied a letter Fl Sgt Sumpter wrote to a friend 40 years after the operation, which was famous for the use of the 'bouncing bomb' to breach the walls of the Mohne and Eder dams. In the letter the bomb aimer reflected on the good fortune he enjoyed to survive the mission. The piece of paper accompanied a letter (above) wbhich Fl Sgt Sumpter wrote to a friend called 'Derrick' 40 years after the operation, which was famous for the use of the 'bouncing bomb' to breach the walls of the Mohne and Eder dams. In the letter the bomb aimer reflected on the good fortune he enjoyed to survive the mission Fl Sgt Sumpter, from Luton, had served in the Grenadier Guards before transferring to the RAF in 1941. By the end of the war he had flown 35 operations. He died in 1993 He wrote: 'I have sent you the crew list on which I marked up the score next morning, OK's, losses and returns. '...on both Dams it was a case of hold your breath for about two or three minutes on the run in and you were either lucky or otherwise. I am glad I was there (and here!)' The fascinating document and three page letter has now been put up for auction by the original recipient with a pre-sale estimate of 800. Fl Sgt Sumpter's list references Wing Commander Guy Gibson's crew as one of the nine to return. The legendary pilot received the Victoria Cross for his part in the raid which included deliberately using his plane to draw anti-aircraft fire away from other crews. It also notes the loss of the crew led by Flight Lieutenant John 'Hoppy' Hopgood whose Lancaster crashed after being hit by anti-aircraft fire. And the bomber on which Flying Officer George 'Johnny' Johnson served as bomb aimer on is also checked with an 'OK'. Now aged 95, Mr Johnson is the last surviving member of not only the Dambusters raid but also 617 Squadron. The documents are being sold by Nottingham-based International Autograph Auctions on Saturday. Richard Davie, of IAA, said: 'The crew list is a very poignant and emotive item that gives the reader some immediacy to one of the most famous air operations of the Second World War. RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War: Guy Gibson (centre) with the air crews who took part in the raid on Cologne in 1942. The legendary pilot received the Victoria Cross for his part in the raid which included deliberately using his plane to draw anti-aircraft fire away from other crews The Dambusters, with Wing Commander Guy Gibson front row (centre). On the night of 16/17 May 1943 they engaged in one of the most legendary air raids of the war, using hydro-statically detonated bombs to devastate the German dams A Dambusters reunion at the home of RAF veteran Tony Iveson in Islington, North London.Holding the picture is Les Munro (left), the pilot of ED-921 'AJ-W' and Basil Feneron (right), the flight engineer on board ED-918 'AJ-F', of 617 Squadron A Dambusters reunion at their old billet, now the Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, in 1993.Members of the 617 Squadron include Mr Munro (fifth left) and Mr Feneron (fourth right) Guy Gibson and the legendary Dambusters On May 16, 1943, 19 aircraft set out to destroy three dams in the Ruhr valley - the Mohne, the Eder and the Sorpe. The idea was to damage a vital source of power to a key industrial area of Germany. Wing Commander Guy Gibson assembled the squadron with only 11 weeks to prepare for their mission - using special bouncing bombs, invented by Barnes Wallis. They were not told that they would be bombing the Ruhr valley until six hours before the raid began, after weeks of practice over Peak District reservoirs. On the night of Operation Chastise itself, the 113 crewmen took off in three waves along two different routes to bomb the dams. Gibson attacked first at the Mohne at 12.28am, but five bombs were dropped before it was breached. The first waves three remaining aircraft with bombs then attacked the Eder which finally collapsed at 1.52am. Aircraft from the other two waves bombed the Sorpe but it remained intact. Although the mission was hailed a success, eight aircraft and 53 crew were lost during the raids. Advertisement 'It is hard to imagine this man, having flown on this incredibly heroic and daring mission in which many of his friends and comrades were killed, sitting down the next morning at RAF Scampton and, being in a very tired and emotional state, ticking off those who had died. 'It must have been a very emotional exercise for him. I have never seen another document like it and this is the first time this one has been sold. 'No doubt all the crew members were given one of these lists at the time, but you have to remember that these men were still serving their country in the war, they weren't souvenir keepers or glory hunters. 'Most of them would have thrown them away. We expect it to exceed its pre-sale estimate.' Fl Sgt Sumpter had served in the Grenadier Guards before transferring to the RAF in 1941. After training in England and Canada, he was posted to 57 Squadron at Scampton, Lincolnshire, in 1942. He then flew as the bomb aimer on 13 operations in Lancasters in a crew which were later broken up. Fl Sgt Sumpter and his colleague, Flight Engineer Bob Henderson, then joined the crew of Flight Lieutenant David Shannon in 617 Squadron. During the Dams raid their Lancaster, call sign AG-L, hit their target of the Eder dam but their bombing failed to breach the wall. Fl Sgt Sumpter was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal the following year for his service in marking bombing targets while flying in Mosquito planes. By the end of the war he had flown 35 operations. He died in 1993. The Israeli-American teenager who is accused of launching an online campaign of terror that forced the closure of hundreds of schools in Australia and around the world has been arrested and charged. Michael Ron David Kadar, 18, who has dual citizenship and lives in Ashkelon in Israel, is believed to have made 591 bomb hoaxes to Australian schools and 240 calls to schools in American and Canada between 2015 and 2017 forcing thousands of students to evacuate. Mr Kadar, who is in police custody in Israel, allegedly earned $50,000 in bitcoins from students who wanted to avoid their exams. The teenager, who was arrested at his home on March 23, reportedly also targeted Jewish Centres, hospitals and airlines, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Michael Ron David Kadar (pictured), and 18-year-old Israeli-American who is accused of making 591 bomb hoaxes to Australian School from 2015 to 2017, has been arrested and charged Bomb threats made in February 2016 forced schools across New South Wales, Queensland (pictured) and the ACT into lockdown Hundreds of students were seen outside Sydney Girls High School after an evacuation in early 2016 He has been charged with making 2,000 hoax phone calls threatening a bomb or shooting to institutions in the U.S., Australia, Israel, Britain and New Zealand. The teenager is also accused of forcing several flights in Australia and overseas to be diverted - including one in Canada, during which passengers had to evacuate via the plane's emergency slides, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. He allegedly stored a log of calls on a flash drive and used technology to change his voice and location. U.S. and Israeli authorities have not offered a possible motive. Mr Kadar's defense lawyer in Israel has told reporters he has a high IQ but the emotional intelligence of a 5-year-old. Kadar (pictured), who has dual citizenship and lives in Israel, reportedly also targeted Jewish Centres, hospitals and airlines in the U.S., Australia, Israel, Britain and New Zealand The teen (pictured) allegedly stored a log of calls on a flash drive and used technology to change his voice and location At least one of the hoax threats made against Victoria schools came from Nossal High School near Melbourne, the principal of Berwick Lodge Primary said Mr Kadar's American-born mother said in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 that her son was home-schooled after he was unable to function in school due to a brain tumour. 'He's autistic,' she said. 'He can't control it. He can't think straight.' In the same interview, Kadar's father, who is Israeli, said: 'To all the Jews in America, I want to say clearly, we are very, very sorry, from the bottom of our hearts.' Kadar spontaneously told officers who arrested him at his house in Ashkelon, Israel, that he 'did not do it,' according to a complaint in Florida last week. When asked what he meant, he referred to the Jewish community centre threats, even though no officer had mentioned them, the complaint said. He has denied the charges. Police seen searching Townsville State High School last year as parents began arriving to check on their children Would you like home delivery with your next order of a Big Mac and fries? Starting from May, fast food fans will be able to order McDonald's through the UberEats app. The partnership between the two companies kicked-off in the U.S. state of Florida last December and after months of trialling the initiative, it is ready to be rolled-out across the U.S. U.S. residents will soon be able to order McDonald's through the UberEATS app (stock image) 'We are thrilled to partner with McDonald's to bring the ease and reliability of Uber's technology to deliver their classic flavours,' UberEverything head Jason Droege told AdNews. It will mean customers will simply need to click on the app from their mobile phone to order McDonald's, which can then be delivered to wherever a person desires, be it at home or a park. At present, UberEATS says food from restaurants already on their roster is delivered with 30 minutes on average. A new McDonald's app is also believed to be in the pipeline, which would enable customers to order and pay for their food via their mobile phones while waiting in one of the fast food chain's restaurants. But Daily Mail Australia understands there are no plans for this service to roll out Down Under. Boris Johnson, pictured on ITV's GMB today, has warned of the threat from North Korea Boris Johnson warned today that North Korea could pose a nuclear threat to Western Europe - but insisted military strikes against the regime are not the answer. The Foreign Secretary called for 'calm clear heads' amid escalating tensions with Pyongyang. Donald Trump has been ratcheting up pressure on Kim Jong Un and China, which has supported the dictator, amid fears the regime is on the verge of developing long-range ballistic missiles that could hit the US. Mr Trump has deployed an anti-missile system and sent American troops to participate in military exercises with South Korea. Yesterday he gathered all US senators at the White House for a classified security briefing on the threat from the North's weapons programme. The chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, told Congress: 'All options are on the table. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not to his knees.' Mr Johnson, who is travelling to New York today to discuss the nuclear crisis with United Nations Security Council counterparts, used a round of broadcast interviews to warn the regime was no longer 'comical'. Referring to the 2004 film Team America, which mocked former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Mr Johnson told LBC: 'North Korea was a kind of hilarious thing. It's not hilarious any more. It's not funny. This guy is a real threat to his neighbourhood.' He added: 'If he keeps developing missiles in the way that he is doing, he could be a threat to Western Europe, including ourselves.' Speaking to BBC1's Breakfast, Mr Johnson said the White House was 'entirely right' to escalate the issue. But he warned that military action could result in 'huge and hideous reprisals' against the South and insisted it was not 'likely' at this point. Instead, he called for economic pressure from the international community - particularly China - to persuade Kim to freeze or step down his nuclear programmes. 'The situation in North Korea has changed very substantially over the last few years. What people thought was an almost comical question - the North Korean nuclear threat - has become very real and very dangerous indeed,' said Mr Johnson. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has threatened nuclear retaliation if the regime is attacked Donald Trump has been ratcheting up pressure on Kim Jong Un and China, which has supported the dictator 'We need to address it. I think the White House are entirely right in escalating the seriousness of this question. All North Korea's neighbours feel this threat very intensely. 'To what extent is there a military solution? I have to say I am very, very sceptical and so are most of the experts that I've talked to. 'I think the military options are not good. The best way forward - and I think this is what the White House wants to pursue - is to keep a calm, clear head and to work particularly with Beijing to try to bring pressure on Pyongyang, try to get them to see that they could have a great economic future if they could agree not to be so threatening, if they could agree a freeze or to denuclearise. 'That's got to be the way forward, but as people can see, at the moment the situation is tense.' Asked repeatedly whether UK troops could be involved in any allied military action, Mr Johnson said: 'All the evidence I have seen suggests to me that the military options are very far from good. Don't forget that Seoul - the capital of South Korea - is only about 40 minutes from the border with North Korea. 'The risk of huge, hideous reprisals against South Korea as a result of any kind of attack on North Korea has got to be very, very severe. 'What we are working for in the UK Government, what we are urging, is co-operation between the US and Beijing and all the regional powers to try to get North Korea to see sense. 'Today I'm going to the United Nations Security Council in New York to see what we can do at the UN to try to build an international consensus. 'Military action against North Korea, in my honest opinion, is not a good idea at the moment and I certainly don't think it's likely.' Advertisement A restaurant owner has converted a shipping container into a luxury one-bedroom house for homeless people. The unique home comes complete with its own electricity, bed, toilet, en-suite shower room, kitchen and living area. Jasper Thompson, 58, wanted to 'do something more' for those who are less fortunate and created the new home in Bristol - which has been named 'Carl's Haven'. Although shipping containers have been used for trendy restaurants, hotels and extravagant and expensive homes, it is believed only a handful have transformed into living spaces for the homeless. The empty shipping container (pictured) was transformed into a luxurious and modern living space for homeless people in Bristol The container was originally blue before it was changed and transformed into a stunning one-bedroom home which has its own en-suite shower room Locals and professional tradesmen and women helped build the unique home after the scheme in Bristol was launched earlier this year Restaurant owner Jasper Thompson (left) showed Councillor Paul Smith (right) around the home after the work was completed After the successful completion of the container in Bristol, Mr Thompson now wants to expand the project by converting other containers into houses for homeless people around the city. Mr Thompson, who runs the Jamaican Diner in Bristol, said the key to his project - called Help Bristol's Homeless - was persuading homeless people to work together. But before he could get started, he had to get the permission of the owner to use the the largely empty site on Malago Road, Bristol - around five minutes from his restaurant. He then installed a donated caravan to house five homeless people and then worked with them - along with volunteers - to convert the shipping container into the modern living space, reports the Bristol Post. Mr Thompson told the newspaper: 'I've done fundraising, donated stuff and volunteered so this is not a fad. But I realised the way forward was shipping containers. 'I know a lot of people in Bristol and called in a lot of favours and tapped a lot of people up and the response in the last few months has been amazing.' The small home is fitted with modern appliances and includes a bar-style table and seat - big enough for a kettle and microwave The unique space was kitted out with a long mirror, a chair, lamp and artwork which was kindly donated to the public The home also has a toilet and an en-suite shower room and the man behind it is hoping to create more homes using old shipping containers This was the first converted shipping container to be transformed as part of the Help Bristol's Homeless campaign Mr Thompson launched the project and started converting the container so people could easily live in it. Skilled and professional tradesmen helped with the construction and fixtures, fittings and furniture - including artwork - were donated by the public. Mr Thompson added: 'They've been supervised by skilled tradesmen, we've had two lads working on this for the past 12 days. 'We've even got Mitsubishi on board now, and they are talking about installing solar panels on it to provide electricity. Bristol University want to get involved too. The shipping container was painted yellow and has been fitted with a new door and decking which leads up to the entrance Mr Thompson launched the project and started converting the container so people could easily live in it - and was helped by a number of others, including homeless people Skilled and professional tradesmen helped with the construction and fixtures, fittings and furniture - including artwork - were donated by the public 'It's been a whole community effort, and the most important thing is that the homeless people who are here are the ones leading the project. It's about everyone working together, learning trades and people pulling each other up. 'We're registering as a social enterprise, we'd love to see this work and roll more places out there. We've shown what can be done with a bit of energy and support. 'I want to get a really long shipping container and convert it into a kitchens and workshop, and that can be the base to do many more. 'The extent to this could be endless. It's easy, it's relatively cheap and it can make a difference.' Advertisement Fascinating retro-style Polaroids have emerged showing North Koreans going about their daily lives. French photographer Eric Lafforgue captured the stunning images in 2008 before Pyongyang officials banned him from travelling to Kim Jong-un's secretive state. They show male and female military officials, triplets at an orphanage, a pair of newly-weds and crowds visiting statues of the 'Dear Leaders'. Fascinating Polaroids have emerged showing North Koreans going about their daily lives. One picture (above) shows two North Korean guides in the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang. For two hours they explained to the photographer the 'glorious victories of North Korea against the American imperialists'. But when he suggested taking a picture, they became 'very shy and smiley' French photographer Eric Lafforgue captured the stunning images in 2008 before Pyongyang officials banned him from travelling to Kim Jong-un's secretive state. A newly-wed couple posed for pictures at Mansudea Hill to pay respect to the Dear Leaders statues in Pyongyang on the day of their marriage Many of those photographs asked if they could pose beneath pictures of the dictators that have ruled North Korea for decades Lafforgue managed to capture images of people gathering beneath statues of the country's founder Kim Il Sung in Mansudae hill The photographer also had the chance to meet some triplets (pictured) at the Nampho orphanage in North Korea. He took a Polaroid of these three children and asked for the home's director to send it to their parents The grainy images also show men, women and families posing for portraits in front of North Korean landmarks and cityscapes while another shows a young woman standing beneath pictures of the country's previous dictators. Lafforgue, 52, said he took the photos in a time before North Koreans had access to smart phones. 'I first thought about making Polaroids just as a kind of artistic work, to keep the dull colours of this country, but quickly I discovered this camera was the best way to make contacts with locals and to break the ice. 'Every time I took a Polaroid, I took another one that I offered to my North Korean 'model'. Lafforgue also captured pictures of female guards inside the Pyongyang subway, taking care of train arrivals and departures. He said that they acted 'like little robots' until the Polaroid photo shoot when they 'became humans' A North Korean colonel is pictured with a soldier on the Korean Demilitarised Zone at a section where it is possible to see South Korea through binoculars. They refused to pose for photos at first - only to change their minds on seeing another soldier's picture Lafforgue pictured a colonel at the Korean Demilitarised Zone who talked about peace and the 'oppression of the Americans'. He asked to have a photo taken in front of the South Korean building, to show his wife where he was working. The day after the photo was taken, North Korea carried out a nuclear test Women working in a Hhghway restaurant near Pyongyang held hands as they posed for photographs. It was the first time they had seen a Polaroid camera and Lafforgue gave them each a copy When Lafforgue visited the countryside he found only 'bikes and farms. No cars, nothing else'. The pictures captured everyday life in secretive North Korea in fascinating detail The photographer was also allowed to attend an accordion class In Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace, in Pyongyang - often part of the tourist itinerary in North Korea 'So many times, this allowed me to see North Koreans in a very different way, and to start some conversations, through my guide, of course. Something that was no allowed in 2008.' He said he particularly liked the pictures he took of soldiers at the Korean Demilitarised Zone. 'It was so funny to see them lose the stiff attitude they are supposed to keep every time,' he said. 'When visiting some houses, I asked the people where they wanted to stand for the picture - everybody answered "below the dear leaders' portraits". Once, I had to do the Polaroid again as the Leaders portraits were cut. Unacceptable.' He said many were surprised and delighted to watch the Polaroid photos being developed - especially in the countryside where only pictures of the country's ruling Kim dynasty were allowed. 'When I gave Polaroids to farmers, they were really happy. One of them even offered me one peach to thank me. In 2008, it was a very valuable gift for a North Korean. They were the first fruits i saw in my 15-day tour.' The owner of one restaurant (pictured) in Pyongyang asked for Lafforgue to take a Polaroid picture. She turned out to be the wife of a high-ranking North Korean official who had lived in New York for two years A female member of staff operates machinery at the Mineral water factory of Nampo. Lafforgue said the sound of the machines was 'incredibly loud and aggressive and everybody was sorry for the young worker' Lafforgue was also invited to a kindergarten in Hamhung. This picture shows a member of staff in the children's sleeping area A little North Korean girl is pictured with a nurse in Nampho orphanage - billed as a brand new facility filled with toys Lafforgue pictured a War Museum guide called Miss Kim (left) who claimed she had learnt French at Pyongyang University - but it later emerged that she had grown up in Algeria where her father was a diplomat. He also pictured a woman enjoying a day out in Pyongyang (right) He said that while he was in the capital Pyongyang, he took Polaroids of girls working in a restaurant. The owner then came and asked for one, in English and turned out to be the wife of a high-ranking North Korean diplomat who had lived in New York for two years. 'She found the Americans very fat, but nice people. She became very talkative as she was so happy with her picture.' Lafforgue also had the chance to meet triplets and twins at an orphanage. A flower seller poses for pictures at her workplace - the Leaders statues in Mansudae hill in Pyongyang. The bouquets cost three euros Gloomy: Pictures also show views from the Yanggakdo hotel in Pyongyang. Lafforgue said that in 2008 'you could sleep with the window open because there were no cars in town' A woman rides her bike in the countryside - a crucial means of transport considered few cars existed in rural areas at the time A cook poses for a Polaroid photo in a restaurant in Pyongyang with a 'Hello Kitty' apron. Lafforgue said she did not know about the character and believed it to be a North Korean invention Dividing line: A military official shows a map of North and South Korea at the Korean Demiliterised Zone between the two countries He said: 'The official reason is that parents cannot afford to raise two or three kids at same time. Some say that they represent a kind of magic for the Leaders and that the parents do not have the choice to keep them at home. 'I took a Polaroid of the triplets and asked the orphanage director to give the picture to the parents, but I understood they were living very far away and that there was little chance they could receive the picture of their children. 'For sure those Polaroids were precious for the North Koreans. Nowadays, mobile phones allow them to take pictures everywhere, all the time.' Pictures show some of the many statues in Pyongyang and the looming pyramid-shaped, 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in the background The photographer visited the North Korean side of the Korean Demilitarised Zone and pictured soldiers standing guard outside Formation: The North Korean Army Parade marches through Pyongyang during a rehearsal. The images were captured in 2008 The BBC admitted tonight it should have made clear a nurse interviewed on air about health policy was a pro-Corbyn supporter after it was accused of bias by a Tory MP. Danielle Tiplady took part in the BBC News Channel's 5pm bulletin last night and endorsed Labour's plan to end a 1 per cent cap on NHS pay rises. Presenter Huw Edwards introduced her as a 'community nurse from London' and described the Tory position but made no mention of her support for Jeremy Corbyn or Labour during a five minute interview. The broadcast was seized upon as an attempt by the BBC to promote Mr Corbyn and his policies. A BBC spokeswoman tonight told MailOnline: 'We should have established and made clear on air that the interviewee was a political activist. 'We are committed to fair and impartial coverage of the General Election and have taken steps to try to ensure this does not happen again during the campaign.' NHS community nurse Danielle Tiplady took part in the BBC News Channel's 5pm bulletin last night and condemned a 1 per cent cap on NHS payrises but the broadcaster failed to mention she has campaigned for Labour Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told MailOnline: 'The Conservative Party gave up expecting balance and impartiality from the BBC a long time ago. 'The fact is, however biased the BBC is, even they cannot possibly get Jeremy Corbyn across the line and into No 10.' Broadcasters are under strict impartiality rules during election periods. The interview was part of the BBC's coverage of Labour's health policies ahead of the June 8 general election. Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth had earlier unveiled a promise to scrap a 1 per cent pay cap on NHS, introduced by the Conservatives as an austerity measure. Jeremy Corbyn and Ms Tiplady were pictured together as the Labour leader promoted his policies on the health service The measure is deeply unpopular among NHS staff and Ms Tiplady told the BBC staff would leave the NHS 'if they pay cap is not lifted because people cannot afford to live'. She endorsed Labour's plan to scrap the cap as 'amazing'. The BBC News clip was used by Mr Corbyn on his Twitter account and has so far been retweeted almost 2,000 times. Ms Tiplady has previously written for the Morning Star newspaper, the left-wing Counterfire blog and is a leader of a campaign calling for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to be sacked. Last month she appeared at an NHS rally organised by Momentum, a campaign group formed out Mr Corbyn's leadership campaign. A spokesperson for the Royal College of Nursing said: 'Danielle Tiplady is a dedicated NHS campaigner who launched the petition and parliamentary debate against the Government's decision to remove support from student nurses. 'As a frontline nurse, she is well qualified to raise these issues and she should not be attacked for doing so.' MailOnline has asked the BBC for comment. China today presented its latest fighter jet to the world. The first twin-seat FC-1 Xiaolong completed its maiden flight at a Chinese air base, announced the state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). The light-weight multi-role aircraft is a variant from the original single-seat FC-1, which is jointly developed by China and Pakistan based on a country-level collaboration agreement in 1999. The two-seat FC-1 Xiaolong took off in China today as Beijing showed its new fighter jet The light-weight aircraft is capable of firing beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile, SD-10 FC-1 Xiaolong's full name is 'Fighter China-1 Fierce Dragon'. The jet is known in Pakistan as the JK-17 Thunder, or 'Joint Fighter-17 Thunder'. The new model took the maiden flight at an air base in Chengdu, south-west China, this morning local time. The aircraft is said to be a dedicated trainer jet. The news came one day after China launched its first ever self-built aircraft carrier in the port city of Dalian. The improved version of FC-1 Xiaolong is designed to serve the purposes of 'real-life combating and teaching', according to CCTV. The report also claimed that the model is one of the fighter jets that have the highest price-performance ratio in the world, and that it has 'a long visual range, excellent air-to-air combat abilities and great air-to-ground striking power'. It's reported to be China's third generation two-seat fighter jet. The newly unveiled fighter jet is taxiing at an air base in Chengdu during its first flight The aircraft is said to have excellent air-to-air and air-to-ground combat abilities The new version has two seats and is an upgrade from the original single-seat FC-1 Xiaolong THE ORIGINAL FC-1 XIAOLONG IN STATS Length: 49ft Height: 15.5ft Wingspan 31ft Empty Weight: 14,520lb Maximum take-off weight: 27,300lb Max Mach: 1.6 Maximum speed: 700 Knots IAS Service ceiling: 55,500 ft Source: Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Advertisement Like the original version, it's capable of firing beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile SD-10, which is known as PL-12 in China, reported Chinese news website Sina. Compared to the last model, its loaded weight has been increased by 25 per cent - from 3,600 kilograms (7,936 pounds) to 4,500 kilograms (9,920 pounds) - meaning it could carry more missile tubes. The Sina report also said the jet could fire air-to-ground missiles, anti-ship missiles and precision-guide weapons. The new FC-1 Xiaolong has reportedly received orders from oversea clients, but Chinese media didn't specify the identify of the buyers. FC-1 Xiaolong, or JF-17 Thunder, is jointly developed by China Aviation Industry Corporation and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex. The intended budget for the project was said to be 348 million ($450 million). The design of FC-1 Xialong was based on Chengdu J-7, another Chinese fighter jet which is a licensed copy of ex-Soviet's Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. The jet's sub-assembly ceremony (pictured) took place on April 26, 2016. The aircraft is jointly developed by China and Pakistan. It's known as JF-17 in Pakistan The new FC-1 (a model pictured) is reported to be China's third generation two-seat fighter jet According to previous reports, the original model was developed in China, but mostly built in Pakistan. According to Sina, the 50th FC-1 Xiaolong entered the production line in December, 2013; at the same time, the production of the improved FC-1 Xiaolong also began. Pakistan has more than 70 JF-17 Thunder jets as of February. It remains unclear how many FC-1 Xiaolong jets China has. Opinion / Columnist This one of those Ministers who is trying to endear himself to the South Africans by using Zimbabwean ex soldiers as scapegoats.These are unsubstantiated generalisations. This Minister must think before broadcasting such rubbish .If SA Police caught three or four ex Zimbabwean soldiers doing armed robbery, that does not mean that all ex-soldiers who are in SA are involved in the spate of armed robberies that are obtaining in SA.South Africa has a high crime rate and that is known universally.The statistics show that most perpetrators of armed robbery crimes, are committed by none other than the South African Police. Ironically, he is the Minister of that department.Instead of him introducing strict policies that would deter the SA Police officers from engaging in a spate of armed robberies that are taking place in SA, he shifts the blame to Zimbabwean ex soldiers. Thus using them as scapegoats.Zimbabwean soldiers are some of the most disciplined people in Africa. The fact that two or three were involved in the crimes of armed robbery in SA, does not mean all of them do that when they go to SA.Studies of crime in SA shows that crimes in SA are committed by SA people and other foreigners. There is no document that states that most crimes in SA are committed by Zimbabweans only.Of course, Zimbabweans also commit crimes in SA, but it would be wrong to blame them for all the crimes taking place in SA.We have Nigerians who sell drugs in SA, but they too work hand in glove with lazy SAs to commit those crimes.If you have lived or visited SA you will agree with me that this Minister is only trying to appease the SA people by publishing such kind of statements.That he claims those statements are not xenophobic, is not true, because some SA people might be motivated to kill or hate Zimbabweans with the assumption that they are the ones that are engaged in killing and robbing banks in SA.The media has great influence on society. It is part of what is called popular culture. What a person who is in the public domain says, people tend to take seriouslyBeing a criminal in SA, is something that the SA people are proud of. And the public does not hand over any criminal to the police. Instead they protect anyone who is a criminal.The SA Police are arguably the most corrupt Police Force in the world. Again, he is not aware of that as the Minister in charge of the Police in SA. An Ohio man called 911 requesting a police dog to help track down heroin he claimed was stolen from him. Joseph Murphy, 20, asked the dispatcher for a police dog in January and later pulled a 'brown waxy substance' from his pockets when responding police officers pressed him about the drug. Bath Police Chief Mike McNeely says it's among the most bizarre things he's heard in four decades of policing, News5 reported. Scroll down for videos Joseph Murphy, 20, called 911 requesting a police dog to help track down heroin that was allegedly stolen from him In the audio clip released this week, Murphy requested a police dog and said, 'She stole heroin from me,' when the dispatcher asked what was going on. Body cameras on the responding police officers showed Murphy trying to explain that a woman stole money from him. But when the police officers asked about the heroin he mentioned in the 911 call, Murphy mumbled inexplicably. He later pulled out a 'brown waxy substance', which was seized and sent to a lab for testing, police said. McNeely says Murphy, who was released pending the test results, is expected to face a drug charge. The 20-year-old was later arrested for operating a vehicle impaired after he crashed a Mercedes. His blood alcohol level was .121, police said - well over the limit of .08. Murphy was also accused of urinating on a Florida trooper's leg at the Walt Disney World Resort on January 2 after he was arrested for disorderly intoxication. A Republican candidate for the South Carolina congress has proposed removing a slave memorial if a Confederate monument is taken down. Sheri Few believes the Monument to South Carolina's Confederate Dead, located at the statehouse, is under threat after similar markers in New Orleans were removed. While she admits there are no current plans to take it down, she argues that if those proposals are brought forward, a slave memorial also located at the statehouse must go with it. Sheri Few, a Republican candidate for congress in South Carolina, has proposed removing a slave memorial in the grounds of the statehouse if a Confederate monument is moved Few points out that the slave memorial was put up as part of a 2001 compromise that saw the Confederate battle flag moved from the top of the statehouse to stand at the monument nearby. That flag was removed in 2015 after Dylan Roof shot nine black parishioners dead at a Charleston church in a racist killing. He posed with the flag ahead of the murders. Speaking to the Guardian, Few said: 'There's this huge monument to African Americans that is still on the statehouse grounds. 'And, you know, why hasn't anyone called for the removal of that? Because that was a part of the compromise. So that doesn't seem fair, does it?' In fact, a Change.org petition created two years ago did call on the state legislature to remove the slave memorial and attracted 43,000 signatures. The petition said the memorial 'serves to invoke in the white community feelings of shame, humiliation and offense.' Few says the slave memorial (pictured right) was put up as a compromise after a Confederate flag was moved from the statehouse roof, so its fate should be tied to the monument Few criticized a decision to remove the Confederate battle flag (pictured) from statehouse ground in 2015 after the racist murders of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church Few has previously said the aim of her candidacy is 'fighting the destruction of every bit of Confederate memorabilia in our country.' She opposed the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds after the Charleston shootings, and subsequently released a campaign video blasting 'weak politicians [who] are too quick to blame a horrible tragedy on a flag, a gun, or freedom of speech.' Few was widely condemned for the video, which features her holding an assault rifle and standing in front of an American flag. Rev Eric Manning, the pastor of Emanuel AME where Roof carried out his murders, said 'the events of a racist committing murder is something should never be utilized to advance someone's political career.' Current polls show Few in third place in her district, polling behind state representatives Tommy Pope and Ralph Norman. Both voted in favor of removing the Confederate flag in 2015. The Republican primary is on 2 May and the election will be held on 20 June. A man has been arrested on the Indonesian island of Bali after police allegedly found drugs in his iPad case. Darren Lee Wong, 35, from Sydney, was nabbed by police while sitting in his hotel room late on the night of April 21. Lombok police raided the room where Mr Wong had been staying at about 11.50pm, Newshub reported. Darren Lee Wong (at left) was arrested in Bali on the night of April 21 after police allegedly found a quantity of drugs in his iPad case Officers allegedly found a quantity of drugs while searching through Mr Wong's iPad case. Three packages of what is believed to be cocaine were allegedly uncovered, along with methamphetamine and MDMA. Police are reportedly still carrying out an investigation into the matter. Mr Wong was born in the southeast Auckland suburb of Otahuhu, on New Zealand's North Island but now resides in Sydney. Shequella Sheala Leonard, 30, allegedly sprayed her child's kindergarten teacher with lighter fluid and threatened to burn her A North Carolina woman has been arrested and accused by police of spraying a teacher with lighter fluid and threatening to burn her. Shequella Sheala Leonard, 30, went to Eno Valley Elementary School on Monday for a meeting with her child's kindergarten teacher, Megan Jones. Durham police said the woman became irate over accusations about her son's behavior and that the principal asked her to leave. Police said Leonard then took a container of lighter fluid from her purse and squirted it on Jones, splashing it in her face, arms and chest, reports ABC11. Jones suffered injuries to her eyes because of the incident. Medics subsequently arrived to treat the teacher. The incident took place during a parent-teacher meeting at Eno Valley Elementary in Durham Leonard appeared in court Wednesday (pictured), and is jailed on a $500,000 bond 'We are very grateful that the teacher affected by Mondays incident is all right. She returned to work Tuesday, and her school family has pulled together to support her. We ask that everyone respect her privacy,' said Durham Public Schools Superintendent Bert LHomme said in a written statement. Leonard was arrested Tuesday and faces several charges, including assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. She appeared in court Wednesday, and is jailed on a $500,000 bond. Her attorney requested a lower bond. A millionaire hedge fund boss smashed a glass over his arthritic wife's head during a campaign of 'systematic bullying' inside their 3.4million Knightsbridge mansion, a court heard today. Former Deutsche Bank derivatives expert Guy Mitchinson, 38, is accused of subjecting ex-Merrill Lynch trader Alicia Vidler, 37, to three assaults over a seven-month period. On one occasion Mitchinson allegedly beat her with a pillow as she rested at home and also shattered a glass over her head, Isleworth Crown Court heard. Ms Vidler, who ran Castilium Capital with her husband, also claims he forced her to take medication with extreme side effects and forced her to fly against her will. Describing one of the attacks Ms Vidler, whose arthritis means she uses crutches, a stick or a wheelchair, told a jury: 'He smashed a glass on my head and it smashed everywhere, it was the crown of my head and there was glass in my hair and I could feel blood on my head. In the dock: Former Deutsche Bank derivatives expert Guy Mitchinson, 38, left, is accused of attacking his wife and ex-Merrill Lynch trader Alicia Vidler, 37, right, including with a glass 'I made a run for it and got the front door open and saw the beautiful blue sky and houses, but he got me by the hand and swung me back into the house. 'I spent the next five hours trying to get past him, that's what I was fixated on. He said: "I'll not let you do this to our marriage. No one is coming to rescue you". 'I begged twenty or thirty times to go to hospital and thought about climbing out the bathroom window, but there is an eighteen foot drop.' Mitchinson is also accused of beating his wife with a pillow - but denies it She added: 'He'd tell me before business meetings: 'You're going to have to get through this. You're probably going to be crippled for life so you have to make this work. 'Guy did not like me being seen with crutches or a walking stick and I'd leave them at reception. Flying makes it much worse, it's very painful on the plane.' The couple married in 2014 - two years after they formed a lucrative business together. Alicia was an equity derivatives trader with Deutsche Bank in Sydney before moving to the UK, where she studied for a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College. Privately-educated Alicia, who attended Sydney's Ascham school, founded Mayfair's Castilium Capital on January 19, 2012, with Mitchinson and the couple shared a home in First Street. But Ms Vidler claims that after their marriage her husband became controlling and violent. She told her trial: 'He hated me seeing my friends. I realised in a couple of months he always had a reason for me not to see my friends. 'He started asking for the passwords to every electronic device I had. He'd literally take them of me. 'He smashed my iPad screen because he'd snatched it out of my hand because he thought I was fidgeting with it and not paying attention to what he was saying and my BlackBerry got dented because of all the grabbing. 'It terrified me, it gave me no privacy. I felt I was being monitored, my personal thoughts are on them, my bank account details. 'I couldn't get away from him, I couldn't think straight. It scared me in the end and made me feel incredibly stressed.' Prosecutor Miss Caroline Paul told the jury: 'This trial is about a man systematically bullying his wife in order to control her and he became more controlling and violent between January and July, last year. 'His wife became his virtual prisoner and he began to interfere with her medical care, forcing her into taking a course of medication when the the side effects were severe. 'He wanted her to put more hours into the business when she was sick and in a wheelchair and to travel abroad when unwell. 'He insisted on knowing her precise movements and would call her three to four times an hour to check in on her and insisted knowing all the passwords to her electronic devices.' Three of the attacks allegedly happened at their 3.4million Knightsbridge mansion and Ms Vidler said she considered jumping out of a window to escape Mitchinson claims her allegations are invented and simply a way of getting out of the marriage and failing business partnership. 'His aggressive behaviour started escalating and he would grab her wrists and ankles, causing great pain due to her arthritis,' explained Miss Paul. 'He would rip pillows and duvets away when she was trying to rest to cause her pain and to prevent her sleeping. She used the pillows to support her neck.' During one row she tried to leave, the jury were told. 'Mr. Mitchinson slammed the door with such force the handle detached and she was fearful and afraid for her safety. 'He pulled her back by her handbag strap, blocked the doorway and slammed her against the wall and repeatedly kicked her in the legs, causing bruising to her elbows and knees.' Alicia says the attack only halted when her husband was overcome with emotion. 'He broke down and threatened to kill himself,' said Miss Paul. There was another row before a matinee theatre trip with friends. 'Mr. Mitchinson jabbed her in the stomach with a dinner plate, grabbed her by the arm and pushed her against the wall screaming insults.' The row continued when they returned home the court heard: 'He attacked her with a pillow and she was in extreme pain and asked him to stop. 'She swung a glass at him and he struck her over the head with a tumbler, causing it to break and cut her head.' Alicia told her GP on July 23 and Mitchinson was arrested and questioned. 'He said she was intoxicated during the theatre outing and she threw the glass at him and he had to restrain her.' Miss Paul told the jury: 'He sought to control her whole life, her work, her sleep pattern her social life. She was, in effect, her husband's prisoner.' Mitchinson, of Holmdale Road, West Hampstead has pleaded not guilty to one count of controlling or coercive behaviour between January 1 and July 23, last year. He also denies three counts of assaulting Ms Vidler at their home address on dates between January 10 and July 16. He says the demise of Castilium prompted Alicia's police complaint, which is 'fabricated and exaggerated.' The trial continues. A video of a death-defying teenage daredevil in Egypt has gone viral - and enraged social media users. The short clip, filmed in the northern province of Dakahlia, shows a 14-year-old boy lying on the railway as a train roars past directly above him. His friends watch in amazement and quickly shower him with praise when he gets up, unable to believe that he's survived the stunt. The video was posted on social media and has since gone viral - but social media users have denounced the neglectful behavior, and say the teen should be found and charged. Commenting on the video on Facebook, Ramy Soliman said: 'Lord help us on our youth.' Adel Abou Al Seoud posted: 'Control your children, you are responsible for them.' Soofy Wadi commented: 'We should all advise and remind kids of the dangers of this kind of reckless, ignorant act. The 14-year old was dared by his friends to lie on the tracks as the train passed 'Most trains have bumpers in the front and it will be close to the earth, and there's also the danger of cables from underneath. 'Lord be with his mother and father.' According to Al Arabiya, the boy's family should be charged with gross negligence for almost killing their son. A Florida teen with a history of gun violence shot his 13-year-old sister in the back of the head moments after she hugged him on his 17th birthday, police say. Martaevious Santiago pointed a loaded semi-automatic handgun at his sister Tedra King as she turned away after a hug in the kitchen of the family's Florida City home, Miami-Dade police said. Then he pulled the trigger. Santiago told cops that the shooting was an accident. Authorities charged him with manslaughter, the Miami Herald reported. Martaevious Santiago, 17, was charged with manslaughter in the Tuesday night killing Santiago's family and friends have called the killing a freak accident. 'He said, "Daddy, I'm sorry. It was an accident. I'm sorry, Dad," his stepfather, Vernon Williams, told WSVN 7 News, adding: 'I can't fault anyone for this here. It happened.' Tedra King, 13, (left) was shot dead by her own brother after she hugged him on his birthday 'He didn't mean to kill his sister,' family friend Shamara Perpall told the station. The accused shooter's life had already been marred by gun violence even before the Tuesday night tragedy. He told the radio station WLRN, in a series on young gun violence survivors, that he himself had been to jail 18 times, mostly for robberies. In December, Santiago was shot in the leg in his driveway, the station reported. His friend was shot in the head and nearly died. Eleven months earlier, Santiago's younger brother Martwan was shot four times, according to the report. One bullet went through his spine and paralyzed him from the waist down. Video courtesy of Local 10 Local leaders ripped the killing as an example of why Florida should change its gun access laws. The Sunshine State had by far the highest number of people with concealed weapons carry permits, about 1.4 million, as of March 2015, Politifact reported. 'Criminally or accidentally, the carnage continues. A 13-year old middle schooler is latest victim of heartbreaking, reckless gun violence,' tweeted Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. 'Accidental but not acceptable. In the streets, at home, easy access to guns is, itself, indicting. How many more will it take?' he added, using the hashtag #EnoughCarnage. Alex Salmond is at war with Nicola Sturgeon over the General Election defying his party leader to insist it is about Scottish independence. Scotland's First Minister has tried to downplay the importance of the June 8 vote on her bid to break up the United Kingdom. But Mr Salmond set himself on a collision course with his leader by insisting that for Scottish voters the looming election is about the 'right of the Scottish parliament' to hold a second referendum. The SNP's Alex Salmond has defied his party leader Nicola Sturgeon to say that the General Election on June 8 is about Scottish independence And he left himself open to accusation he is out of touch after a bombshell poll released earlier this week found that support for independence had slumped to just 40 per cent. He told his LBC Radio show Scots 'will know that they are voting to support the right of the parliament to decide on the holding of the Scottish referendum'. He said that if the SNP get a big victory north of the border they will use it to demand a section 30 order which is needed to make a second referendum legally binding. He said: 'The path is that the parliament should have the right to hold a referendum through the section 30 order. Turning to Ms Sturgeon, he said: 'She's looking to get another election victory which will indicate and support the right of the parliament to decide these things.' The two senior SNP politicians, pictured together at a Scottish independence event in November 2013, are at odds over the party's tactics But his words are likely to enrage his party leader in Hollyrood, who has repeatedly said the election is not about Scottish independence. Speaking two days ago she said 'this election is not deciding whether or not Scotland is independent'. The SNP has renewed its attempt to break up the United Kingdom despite previously saying the 2014 referendum was a 'once in a generation' vote. Ms Sturgeon has said the historic Brexit vote gives her a fresh excuse to go the Scottish people again to demand independence. But Theresa May has faced down her demands, insisting that 'now is not the time' for another referendum. A Texas dentist will not face disciplinary action over the death of a 14-month-old girl who died after she was given six 'unnecessary' cavity fillings, according to her parents lawsuit. Daisy Lynn Torres died from anesthesia complications on March 29, 2016, after the procedure performed by Dr. Michael Melanson at the North Austin Medical Center. A lawsuit filed by her devastated parents Elizandro Torres and Betty Squier, claims that their daughter's autopsy showed no sign of decay and that the work was carried out for financial gain. Now a lawyer for Melanson confirmed that the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners had dismissed its investigation into his client last month. Texas dentist Dr. Michael Melanson (left) will not face disciplinary action over the death of Daisy Lynn Torres (right) who died after she was given six 'unnecessary' cavity fillings, according to her parents lawsuit 'The dental board looked at this very closely, they had their own independent experts look at it,' Michael Yanoff, a Dallas lawyer representing Melanson, told the Austin American-Statesman. 'They reviewed the evidence submitted by Dr. Melanson, and they came to a reasoned conclusion based on reviewing all of that evidence.' 'We are feeling numb and lost and pained,' Daisy's mother, Squier said following her daughter's death. 'You don't take your child into the dentist thinking it will be the last time you see them alive.' Daisy's parents have since filed a lawsuit claiming that the dental work was unnecessary and part of a 'scheme to bilk Medicaid of taxpayer dollars'. They cited forensic dentist Robert G. Williams who found that the baby root canals performed on Daisy were an 'unnecessary procedure' as the toddler's X-rays showed no sign of decay, according to the lawsuit. Daisy Lynn Torres (pictured) died from anesthesia complications on March 29, 2016, after the procedure performed by Dr. Michael Melanson at the North Austin Medical Center The suit states that the 'painful' work was 'performed just to line the pockets of Austin Children's Dentistry and its affiliates at taxpayer expense.' Daisy had been submitted to the center ostensibly to have six cavities filled, but but lost consciousness during the operation. She died in hospital two hours later - something later attributed to complications from administering anesthesia. After her death, dental pathologist Dr Williams, a contributor to her autopsy report, concluded that she had never even needed the work. 'One can only speculate as to why any treatment was performed considering no indication of dental disease or pathology,' he wrote in his report, adding that previous visits had shown no signs of decay. A lawyer for the dentist claimed in August that Williams had seen no evidence of decay because Melanson had already removed it. Lawsuit: Mom and dad Elizandro Torres and Betty Squier (pictured at Daisy's funeral) are suing Dr Michael Melanson, his former practice, and others, saying they were perpetrating a scam 'The problem is that around the country, Dentists and dental clinics are committing fraud - Medicaid fraud,' said Daisy's parents lawyer, Sean Breen. 'They're doing procedures that aren't necessary and they're collecting money from it. Not everyone dies from that, but Daisy Lynne Torres did.' The suit aims to address the alleged scamming, but it has another purpose, too, according to Daisy's father, Elizandro. 'This is to speak up for our daughter,' he said. 'There's procedures going on every single day and we don't want these parents to forget that they have rights. 'They can ask questions. They can get second opinions, third opinions... they can't ask too many questions.' Dr Williams, who questioned why the child was given the ultimately fatal dental work in her autopsy, was sued by Austin Children's Dentistry in September last year, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Sued: Austin Children's Dentistry sued the autopsy doctor, saying that he had agreed that his conclusion was wrong, but had then 'changed his mind' about altering his report The suit claims that 'Dr Williams agreed with the findings made by independent experts that justified the necessary and appropriate dental work planned and performed by Dr Michael Melanson.' WHY DO DENTISTS CARRY OUT BABY ROOT CANALS? A baby root canal or pulpotomy is carried out when the decay in a baby tooth is deep enough to have affected the nerve. Damage may have been caused by inadequate dental care, such as lack of brushing, or unhealthy eating habits such as drinking too much fizzy drinks. The procedure removes part of the nerve and a medicament, such as a crown, is placed over the remaining surface. The purpose of the procedure is to maintain the health of a baby tooth - but more importantly, the supporting gum tissue and bone, to prevent infection. It also very an important procedure to maintain the health of the mouth for developing adult teeth. Advertisement It says he had agreed to amend his report but medical examiner's officials later told the dentistry he had 'changed his mind.' Jason Ray, an attorney for Melanson, said last August that the autopsy found no defects because they had been removed before the child died. He added: 'the report reveals no surprises to us.' 'By the time the forensic odontologist evaluated Daisy, all evidence of dental disease had already been removed by the dentist, as expected,' he said, according to KXAN. 'A treating dentist always has the advantage of pre-treatment visual exams, clinical findings, and A-rays on the patient; as well as knowing the patient's dental history, unlike a forensic odontologist. 'The treating dentist in Daisy's case will present all of the evidence that justified Daisy's treatment if called on to do so.' Melanson is no longer employed by Austin Children's Dentistry. A lavish Washington mansion is believed to have been bought by Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump's closest advisers. Reports claim Conway purchased the $8million property in Massachusetts Avenue Heights earlier this month. Once the home of Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi, the former acting Prime Minister of Pakistan, it boasts more than half an acre of land, eight bedrooms, a pool cabana suite, and is described in its listing as 'ideal for family or diplomatic use'. If Kellyanne Conway is the buyer, her neighbors would include former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton Reports claim Conway purchased the $8million property in Massachusetts Avenue Heights earlier this month The mansion was once the home of Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi, the former acting Prime Minister of Pakistan, who died last year Kellyanne Conway is thought to be the buyer of the luxury home, which is in Washington DC A real-estate source - not directly involved in the sale - told The Washingtonian that Conway is thought to be the buyer. But it was unable to confirm Conway's involvement in the deal, as all parties are bound by confidentiality agreements. The Washingtonian does report that it is the only house on the secluded road to have sold recently. If she does move into the neighborhood, Conway will live just half a mile from Hillary Clinton, the former presidential candidate she helped defeat during the 2016 race for the White House. It is the only home on the secluded road to have sold recently, and all parties are bound by confidentially agreements A real estate source claims Conway is the buyer of the eight bedroom home in Washington DC This huge bedroom is one of eight in the luxury mansion in the plush neighborhood in DC The mansion was valued at $8million before its sale, but sources close to the deal have declined to comment Opinion / Columnist Many years ago we were discussing our future National Anthem in the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC. On invitation from President Mandela, Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo's proposed rendering of our new National Anthem had just been played to us.For me, it became very personal and deeply emotional when we reached the part of including the Afrikaans and English parts of the old apartheid regime anthem 'Die Stem van Suid-Afrika'. It took me straight back to when my first wife, Jansie, and I were in detention. Both of us were tortured, but as a young white Afrikaner woman subjected to the anger of the brutal white Afrikaner security police who were in a rage about our 'betrayal', Jansie was far more vulnerable. After many nights of sleep deprivation and abuse, they forced Jansie in a state of utter exhaustion to sing 'Die Stem' and recorded it.This recording of Jansie's crying voice stuttering through 'Die Stem', was played back to me in order to put more pressure on me to talk. It was this recording that finally pushed me to the breaking point when I tried to hang myself in my detention cell.Fortunately, that suicide attempt was not successful, and I am alive today to write this. I have written about this many years ago in my autobiography 'Om te Veg vir Hoop' (Fighting for Hope) which was published in 1993, but writing now again about it is still as raw and as painful as then. The same night after I had tried to kill myself, but pulled away from that final brink, the notorious Craig Williamson fat as the pig that he is and oozing with arrogance came into my cell. He laughed at my desperation and pointed to an empty cell across the dark corridor telling me that it was the cell where Ernest Moapi Dipale died. Roughly a year earlier comrade Ernest, on the 8th of August 1982, was found hanging from a strip of prison blanket in that cell. Williamson was the handler of the student security policy spy, Robert Whitecross, who exposed Jansie and my ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe underground activities. I think in a strange way, him having told me that Comrade Ernest died just across the corridor from me, saved my life. After Williamson had left my cell, I fell into a restless sleep and dreamt that Ernest rolled an orange from underneath his cell door to mine. I woke up just as I was reaching out for the orange. I felt a sense of solidarity that helped to carry me through the rest of that hellish period of torture and solitary confinement.I spoke about this in the NEC, explaining why I could not accept an Anthem that includes portions of 'Die Stem'. It was an emotive argument, and while I was speaking, I could feel the impact it was having on other NEC members who could identify with what I was saying from their own detention and prison experiences. I was arguing that we should only go with Nkosi Sikekel' iAfrika, and just as I thought those of us who felt like that were swaying the NEC to accept that, President Mandela suggested that we should have a tea break. As we were leaving the meeting room, Madiba called me aside. He told me that he understands my feelings, but that I of all people in the NEC should understand what he was trying to do (referring to me being of Afrikaans background), because he was trying to forge unifying national symbols that would reach out to the Afrikaners and include them as part of the new and united South African identity. He asked me when the meeting commences again not to continue opposing the inclusion of the portion of 'Die Stem'. In my heart I was not convinced, because I was not confident that the majority of Afrikaners were actually prepared to change their ways and be part of a united and non-racial South Africa. However, I also understood what Madiba was trying to do, and out of my huge respect for him and the noble effort he was making for reconciliation, I remained quiet and did not oppose that version of our National Anthem that we sing now any further.None the less I have to be perfectly honest, whenever I reach that last part of the National Anthem, I feel a lump in my throat, and the words can hardly come out. Images of detention, and Jansie's crying voice singing those words, every time come back.I have watched with irritation, and often anger, how mainly white crowds at rugby matches mumble and stumble their way through the Nkosi Sikekel' iAfrica part of the National Anthem, only to belt out the last part of 'Die Stem' with full abandon. I could not help a bitter guffaw of recognition when Esethu Hasane recently tweeted: "Why do y'all sing the loudest when you reach the OUR land part in the national anthem when you stole it"Yes, funny but also painfully true. The reality is that a very significant part of white South Africa do not have the foggiest idea about how deep the apartheid butcher's knife had literally cut into the heart of every black South African. Not a single black South African has or can escape the terrible harm and continuing consequences of apartheid up to this very day. I always think that the term 'born frees' for young black people who have been born after 1994 is a misnomer because not even they have escaped the consequences of our post-colonial apartheid past that still continues to loom so inescapably large in every facet of their lives and in our society in general. Nor, can any white person born before or after 1994 claim that they have not benefitted from apartheid.Black South Africans do not need to be convinced of this reality they live and suffer it every day. Sadly, however, far too many white South Africans are not prepared to get their heads around this reality. They have somehow convinced themselves that, either having accepted one-person-one-vote, and our new Constitution, they have managed to get rid of all the vestiges and consequences of apartheid and that they are now free from any responsibility for it (the better version of their myopic white entitlement syndrome), or perversely that they are now the 'victims of racism', because of the mild forms of Black Economic Empowerment that our ANC government until now implemented so unevenly (the darker side of that same white entitlement).The stark reality is: As long as the majority of white people in South Africa (not the exceptional few) behave like this, Madiba's dream of a united non-racial South Africa, or the populist 'Rainbow Nation' derivative that Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached about, is a fast disappearing mirage on our South African landscape.Seventeen years ago, on the 16th of December 2000, the Home for All Campaign was launched, which I co-chaired together with Mary Burton, the former President of the Black Sash. The message of that campaign was a watered down version of what I have just stated above. Bending over backwards in an effort to get as many white South Africans to recognise that they are the benefactors of apartheid, and to sign our Declaration, the rather mild Home for All Declaration simply acknowledged that all whites benefited from the discrimination against blacks in the apartheid system. "The damage caused by apartheid has not been overcome," it says. "Our failure to accept responsibility for apartheid has inhibited reconciliation and transformation. We deeply regret all of this." However, the reaction of most whites was not mild no they were mostly outraged, and declared that they would do no such thing! An article in the Time Magazine edition of the 15th of January 2001 under the headline, 'The trouble with Sorry' (http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2048073,00.html) summarised their rejection: Both FW de Klerk and Tony Leon (then leader of the DA) tried to out-arrogant each other in their self-righteous white anger against any apology. The Afrikaner poet, Breyten Breytenbach even stated that he had to go to the toilet to have 'a quiet puke' at the thought of having to apologise for anything. ln the end a measly 900 whites signed the Home for All Declaration, and the campaign died a quiet death, only to be read about now in newspaper archives.However, the reality of South Africa's apartheid era and it's undeniable consequences have not disappeared. In many ways it is now more evident than ever before since we as a nation had our first democratic elections on the 27th of April 1994. Sadly we are not a nation united in purpose or reality, we are a nation divided by race and an ever deepening chasm between the wealthy few and the vast majority of poor people. The folly of anyone thinking political power would suffice, without a fundamental change in the ownership patterns and power relations of our economy stands starkly exposed.Those whites who think it can still be 'business as usual', with White Monopoly Capital continuing to call the shots, and keeping black people happy with only the ballot box while they continue to own the land and the means of production, better wake up and smell the coffee. South Africa has reached the critical tipping point where the fault lines of this unacceptable status quo have reached a breaking point and a shift of major proportions is now unstoppable and inevitable.I do not think White Monopoly Capital, and its hangers-on are oblivious to this, and that is why they have responded with such venom against the ANC government's plan for Radical Economic Transformation. Let us not fool ourselves the massive amounts of money that they have ploughed into the so-called Save South Africa campaign and mainstream media attacks on President Zuma, and more specifically Radical Economic Transformation is an all out effort to sustain their grip on the South African economy. In many ways, President Zuma is simply the coincidental target of the moment and a figure against whom they believe they can mobilise a broad cross-section of South Africans but their main aim is to avoid any significant change in the oppressive and exploitative economic power dynamics of South Africa.If this was not the case would these people, who now present themselves as moral crusaders, not also have marched against: Race-based pay in companies? The currency manipulation scandal by major banks? Collusion among white monopoly companies? The construction, bank, bread and other cartels? The return of stolen land to black people?I am only mentioning a few major issues where whites were glaringly absent in any marches and displayed no moral outrage. However now that fundamental economic transformation is on the cards, and they fear that their own privileged existence is in danger, they protest and march with abandon. Even giving their workers paid leave to protest. The unions will tell us that this is unheard of, and never happened before!I started this article by writing about a very personal and painful experience that I had with regards to the efforts that we as progressive South Africans, and especially the ANC, made to forge a united South Africa. My experiences are not unique there are a whole array of ANC Leaders, including President Zuma and many other comrades in the National Executive Committee of the ANC, who have been detained, tortured and imprisoned. These experiences do not simply go and sit in your clothes like dust that have been cleaned out as if the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a dry-cleaner shop. For the sake of our Nation, I could still try to forgive Craig Williamson and Warrant Officer Nick Deetclefs who had beaten and tortured me to the point where both my eardrums were perforated, and I lost over 60% of my hearing. But the fact is that every day I am battling to hear I am reminded of that.The reality is that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission got some of us to recall these things but in a strange way because it was primarily a political process with an end goal to put a decent full stop behind the past and to get the country to move on and face the future it revealed and then repressed even more. "Now that you have stripped and showed us your wounds, put on your clothes and get moving; there is a lot to do" that kind of thingOn a national scale, this small personal experience of mine is magnified millions of times over-and-over by the pervasive poverty of people who have lost their land to white colonial thieves, and as a consequence have been doomed to an ever continuing cycle of poverty generation after generation.Many of us have tried to take the pain, to find some accommodation, for the sake of unity and peace, but our sacrifices have been thrown back into our faces by a majority of whites who are unrepentant and arrogant and abuse our magnanimity.The reality is that we have reached the end of that road. It is clear that only a concerted programme to radically change the oppressive economic power dynamics that we have inherited, and which too many whites see as their birthright and nothing wrong with, can now bring any hope for the majority of black (especially African) South Africans.Our message is simple but clear: You can try to call us names, you can try to discredit the terminology that we use, and insult us by saying that the term 'Radical Economic Transformation' was coined by some British PR Agency to counter Thuli Madonsela's poorly written and unsubstantiated 'State Capture Report', while we can actually trace it as far back as the Strategy and Tactics Document of the Morogoro Conference in 1969, and beyond.Yes, you can try and do all of this, but the fact of the matter is that we have compromised and bent over backwards for too long. We have been abused, used and exploited far too often!White South Africa, now you are either going to change your ways, and join us in the creation of a truly just society that is underpinned by economic justice, and that reflects the demography of our society, or we are going to proceed and do it despite you. This is not our first choice, but your intransigence made the choice for us.Sekunjalo! The time is now, and regardless of whatever you try to do to derail and frustrate us, we will proceed.*Carl Niehaus is a former member of the NEC of the ANC and MK veteran.All Carl's articles can also be found on his blog, Carl's Corner: www.carlniehaus.co.za A German army officer has been arrested for plotting a terror attack which he planned to pin on refugees. The lieutenant, 28, was arrested on suspicion of disguising himself as a Syrian migrant to commit a 'serious act of violence with xenophobic motives.' Some 16 addresses were raided in the German states of Hesse and Bavaria and in neighbouring Austria and France on Wednesday. A German army officer has been arrested for plotting a terror attack which he planned to pin on refugees (file picture) The soldier registered as a Syrian refugee in Giessen in December 2015 and applied for asylum at the beginning of 2016. Authorities awarded him asylum - despite his background and his total inability to speak Arabic. Investigators believe he went through the charade of registering as a refugee in case he was caught after the act and he was logged into the system as one of the migrants he despised. He was detained at Vienna airport earlier this year trying to conceal an illegal pistol police think he planned to use in his terror attack. The soldier registered as a Syrian refugee in Giessen in December 2015 and applied for asylum at the beginning of 2016. File picture shows a migrant centre is pictured on the outskirts of the town a year earlier But authorities there did not keep him in custody and he was arrested in southern Germany on Wednesday. Police said he lived a 'double life' - one where he masqueraded as a staunch defender of the German republic while secretly plotting to kill and maim its citizens. A 24-year-old student accomplice of the soldier was also arrested. Police said both men had a strong background in Germany's far-right scene. Walking free: Alexander Blackman - better known as Marine A - will be released from jail tonight, it was revealed today Alexander Blackman - better known as Marine A - will be released from jail tonight or early tomorrow, it was revealed today. Sgt Blackman will finally leave Erlestoke jail in Wiltshire and finally be reunited with his wife Claire, who has led his campaign for justice wince he was jailed in 2013. But the military police plan to take him away hidden in a car to stop the press capturing the moment he walks free, it has been claimed. Author Frederick Forsyth, who helped lead his campaign for freedom, admitted his secret release was like something from one of his spy novels. He told the Guardian: 'The establishment wants to spirit him out in the middle of the night to a secret location. If I wrote this in a book people would say thats just not the way things are done in Britain. But it is these days.' The former marine has offered his profound and heartfelt thanks to Daily Mail readers for their support. The Royal Marine declared himself stunned and overwhelmed with gratitude to those who had campaigned for justice after military top brass left him to rot in prison. Judges slashed his sentence for killing a Taliban fighter and as the momentous decision was announced, Sergeant Blackmans wife Claire shed tears of joy. Inside and outside court Royal Marines cheered and punched the air last month. Claire Blackman (centre), wife of jailed former British soldier Alexander Blackman, Marine A, reacts outside the The Royal Courts of Justice in London on March 28, 2017, after learning the result of her husband's reduced sentence It sealed a stunning victory for the campaign for justice for Sgt Blackman called Marine A during his military trial who was jailed for life in 2013 for killing the insurgent in Afghanistan in 2011. Daily Mail readers raised 810,000 to fund a fresh appeal that led to Sgt Blackmans conviction being reduced from murder to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. Five Appeal Court judges led by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, accepted he had been suffering from combat stress. They cut his sentence to seven years, of which he will serve half. As he has already served almost three and a half years and is to be released in the early hours of Friday morning. He was previously serving life with a minimum of eight years the equivalent of a 16-year sentence. Sgt Blackman, 42, said earlier this month: My profound and heartfelt thanks go to the Daily Mails readers. Without them we wouldnt be anywhere near this today. I am honestly struggling to find words of gratitude that are deep enough to describe the Mail readers who came to my aid. I am just stunned and overwhelmed by their generosity. I am so relieved and happy with the results. It could have been a lot worse, and I was braced for the worst. My heart sank when the judge started talking about my current sentence being the equivalent of 16 years, and I thought it was somehow leading to a larger sentence. I just felt a profound sense of relief when they said seven. Outside court, Mrs Blackman, 45, said: This is the moment that we have all been fighting hard for. Its hard to believe that this day is finally here. Supporters of former British soldier Alexander Blackman, who shot an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2011 Supporters of former British soldier Alexander Blackman, Marine A, react outside the The Royal Courts of Justice in London on March 28, 2017, after learning the result of his sentence A Mail investigation had revealed vital evidence was deliberately withheld from the court martial during Sgt Blackmans original trial. Thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, who was in court yesterday, said the villains who locked up Sgt Blackman should hang their heads in shame. As well as the murder stain being lifted from his character, Sgt Blackmans dismissal with disgrace from the Royal Marines which his wife had said was the most cruel part of his punishment has also been reduced to simply dismissal. The judges said Sgt Blackman who admits doing wrong still bore heavy responsibility for the killing in Helmand Province. But they found the incident was not a cold-blooded execution. The Commandant General of the Royal Marines, Major General Robert Magowan, said it was time to move forward from the Blackman episode. He said the Marines would continue to support Sgt Blackman and his wife. Two doctors and a woman have been indicted by a grand jury over the alleged brutal genital mutilation of two seven-year-old girls from Minnesota. Detroit-based doctors Jumana Nagarwala and Fakhruddin Attar, as well as Attar's wife Farida, have been charged with female genital mutilation and conspiracy. The two doctors are also charged with making false statements to investigators. Dr Nagarwala, 44, is accused of performing genital mutilation on the two young girls at a private Livonia clinic in Michigan after hours in February. The Burhani Medical Clinic is owned by Dr Attar. Detroit-based doctors Jumana Nagarwala (left) and Fakhruddin Attar (right), as well as Attar's wife Farida, have been charged with the female genital mutilation of two girls, 7, in February Dr Nagarwala, who is an emergency room doctor at Henry Ford Health System, denied the allegations last week and claimed she was performing a religious practice for families in a Muslim sect that did not involve cutting. Through her lawyer, Dr Nagarwala claims she scraped membrane from the girls' genitalia as part of the religious custom. But doctors reports obtained by the Detroit Free Press indicate the children suffered more severe injuries including scarring, a small tear, lacerations and what appeared to be the surgical removal of a portion of genitalia. Dr Attar's attorney says her client may have let Dr Nagarwala use his clinic but claims he had no knowledge of what procedures she was performing. Dr Nagarwala was arrested on April 12 while attempting to board a flight to Kenya to visit her daughter. Her arrest came just days after the two alleged victims identified her as the person who performed medical procedures on them. The girls had been brought into the clinic by their mothers but the parents have not been charged. FBI agents were pictured leaving Dr Attar's Burhani Clinic in Livonia, Michigan on Friday where Dr Nagarwala allegedly carried out the female genital mutilation on the two girls in February Authorities say Dr Nagarwala was never employed at the clinic where the alleged mutilation took place and that she was able to perform the procedures after hours. Dr Attar and his wife, who works at the clinic as an office manager, were arrested on Friday morning. They allegedly arranged and assisted in the genital mutilation procedures by Dr Nagarwala, police claim. All three are accused of trying to keep the practice secret within their Indian-Muslim community, according to the indictment. Authorities claim the trio have been part of a female genital mutilation scheme since 2005 and there could be a number of other young victims. The trio have denied any wrongdoing. They are all part of the Dawoodi Bohra community, which is a Gujarati-speaking Muslim sect concentrated mostly in India. The group has a mosque in suburban Detroit. President Donald Trump changed his mind about NATFA withdraw, but he could just as easily change it back, he warned Thursday, if he thinks the American worker is getting a raw deal. 'If I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot,' he said Thursday in the Oval Office. After the White House floated a proposal Wednesday to pull out of NAFTA entirely, the presidents of Mexico and Canada called Trump and asked him to reconsider. 'I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate,' he said this morning. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO President Donald Trump changed his mind about NATFA withdraw, but he could just as easily change it back, he warned Thursday, if he thinks the American worker is getting a raw deal 'If I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States... I will terminate NAFTA. But we're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot,' he said Thursday in the Oval Office at the top of a meeting with Argentinian President Mauricio Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada (left) and First Lady Melania Trump (right) Reporters clamor over one another to ask the president about NAFTA negotiations during the Oval Office meeting with Macri, his wife Juliana and the first lady, Melania A White House read out of the calls on Wednesday night said, 'President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time. The president explained a Thursday morning tweet that the pledge was 'subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA.' He told reporters clamoring over each other to ask for a status report that negotiations will 'start very soon.' 'It's actually starting today,' he said. Trump's spokesman said later, at his daily briefing, that the president wants to update the accord was signed 25 years ago to address imbalances and changes in the countries' trade portfolios since 1992. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said there are 'some areas that fall outside the scope of NAFTA as it was negotiated at the beginning that I think we want to look at.' 'The president made it clear that if the parties are unable to agree on a deal that is fair for American workers and companies after giving renegotiation a good shot, he will move forward with termination,' Spicer stressed. Trump is on a mission this week to make good on a number of promises he made in a campaign manifesto outlining his first 100 days in office. The businessman pledged that he would renegotiate or withdraw from NAFTA his first day in office. He has blamed NAFTA for American job losses and regularly describes it as a 'disaster' in his speeches. 'The fact is, NAFTA, whether its Mexico or Canada, is a disaster for our country. Its a disaster. Its a trading disaster,' the former businessman said last week. Trump told lawmakers the deal has been a 'catastrophe' in a February meeting, where he suggested that he could rip the current deal up and start all over again. A White House read out of the calls on Wednesday night said, 'President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time. The president explained a Thursday morning tweet that the pledge was subject to the US getting a fair deal 'I want to change it...and maybe we do a new NAFTA and we add an extra f in the term NAFTA,' he said. 'You know what the f is for right? Free and fair trade. Not just free trade. Free and fair trade. Because it's very unfair.' The president said then that he wanted a 'renovation of NAFTA or a brand new NAFTA.' He opined later in the day that 'a lot of people taking advantage of us, a lot of countries taking advantage of us, really terribly taking advantage of us.' A senior official said Wednesday that Trump was considering an executive order to pull out of it, according to Politico. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation' of the trade deal to 'the benefit of all three countries.' The US threat to leave the deal rattled financial markets and caused the Mexican peso and Canadian dollar to spiral lower against the dollar. The peso shed about 1.5 percent in just over an hour, while Canadas 'loonie' lost about 0.45 per cent. After a White House official floated a proposal Wednesday to pull out of NAFTA entirely, the presidents of Mexico and Canada called Trump and asked him to reconsider Trump told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto (right) he was sticking with the deal on Wednesday amid renegotiation talks The White House said in a late night statement that Trump had 'pleasant and productive' talks with his fellow North American leaders and directly quoted the president as saying it was a 'privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation.' 'It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better,' Trump said in the statement. Following the carrot with the stick, Trump said on his personal Twitter account early Thursday that he's still willing to pull out of the trade agreement. 'I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate. I agreed,' he said. 'Subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good-deal very possible!' A disruption in trade between the three NAFTA partners could wreak havoc in the auto sector and other industries, hitting profits at companies that have benefited from zero-level tariffs and Mexico's relatively low labor costs. 'To totally abandon that agreement means that those gains are lost,' Royal Bank of Canada economist Paul Ferley said on Wednesday afternoon amid the fears. WANNA MAKE A DEAL? Justin Trudeau is pictured with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 13, 2017, during a visit Scrapping NAFTA could also hurt US farmers, whose exports to Mexico have grown under the trade deal. Earlier this week, a body representing several big North American multinational businesses accused Trump and the US government of a lack of clarity about the agreement and what it covers. The Canadian American Business Council took umbrage at a comment from US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that NAFTA wasn't 'functioning properly' because Canada was exporting subsidized lumber and was preventing easy access to its market by American dairy farmers. 'It is important to understand that neither dairy nor lumber are covered by the NAFTA,' the CEO of the Washington-based council, Maryscott Greenwood, said in a statement. 'The fact that these two protected sectors are the subject of bilateral disputes in recent weeks is not evidence that NAFTA is failing.' The Canadian American Business Council covers 50 big corporations, including Coca-Cola, Facebook, Ford, Air Canada and Bombardier. Spicer explained Thursday that the administration thinks dairy should be included in NAFTA, and that's one of the reasons he wants to renegotiate the trade agreement. 'Part of this is to look at not just the existing agreement but areas and sectors and industries that have fallen outside or because over the last couple decades have not kept up with the promises and commitments that were made,' he added. A Muslim halal businessman says Yassmin Abdel-Magied's controversial Anzac Day post has highlighted how white, Christian Australians only care about the deaths of their own. Mohamed Elmouelhy has come to the defence of the Muslim youth activist following calls from conservative politicians for her to be sacked from the ABC and a taxpayer-funded Arab relations board. 'Yassmin Abdel-Magied should be given a medal,' he said on Facebook. 'It is a sad day when a Muslim woman reminds Christians of their religion.' Scroll down for video Halal Certification Authority boss Mohamed Elmouelhy has defended Yassmin Abdel-Magied Conservative politicians have called for Yassmin Abdel-Magied to be sacked from the ABC Mr Elmouelhy, the president of Halal Certification Authority company, said Ms Abdel-Magied's Anzac Day Facebook post highlighted how Australian Christians didn't care about the deaths of people from other faiths. 'Have the white Australians sank so low that they can only feel compassion for their dead but not the dead of others?' he asked. 'So much for wishing for your neighbour what you wish for yourself.' Ms Abdel-Magied, 26, has faced calls for her sacking from One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Nationals MP George Christensen and Shia imam Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi for her Anzac Day Facebook post. 'Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine ...),' she said on Tuesday. Yassmin Abdel-Magied's Facebook post likening Anzac Day to asylum seekers and the Israel-Palestine conflict One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has called for Yassmin Abdel-Magied to lose her ABC job Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (pictured left with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull) has been asked to remove Yassmin Abdel-Magied from the Council for Australian-Arab Relations She quickly deleted and apologised for the post, which equated Anzac Day with asylum seekers and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the controversy has continued with conservative Liberal senator Eric Abetz writing to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop asking for Ms Abdel-Magied to be removed from the board of the taxpayer-funded Council for Australian-Arab Relations. Mr Elmouelhy has joined left-wing feminist Clementine Ford in coming to the defence of Ms Abdel-Magied, a writer and former engineer who hosts the ABC's Australia Wide program. He used the occasion to criticise Israel, describing the democratic Jewish-majority nation as a place where 'apartheid is practised with immunity.' 'The European Jews decided to plant themselves there in the late 40s of the last century with the pretense that the Grand Realtor in the sky gave it to their ancestors thousands of years ago,' Mr Elmouelhy said. Adelaide Shia imam Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi has questioned the need for halal products and has also called for Yassmin Abdel-Magied's sacking from the ABC In another bizarre Facebook post earlier this week, Mr Elmouelhy mocked the Turnbull government's proposed citizenship test for prospective new migrants. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wants the test to include questions about child brides and female genital mutilation. Mr Elmouelhy equated those serious human rights abuse with bans on halal certification, which funds Islamic schools and mosques, and Senator Hanson's call for a royal commission into Islam. 'Under what circumstances it is appropriate to prohibit companies from acquiring halal certification?,' he asked on Facebook. 'Under what circumstances can bigoted senators have a parliamentary inquiry into Islam?' A federal parliamentary enquiry in 2015 found there was no link between the halal-certification industry and terrorism. However, secular and liberal Muslims, including Sheikh Tawhidi, have questioned why non-Muslims need to have halal-certified foods in major supermarkets. Mars Bars, Kellogg's breakfast cereals and Cadbury chocolates pay third-party halal businesses to certify their products contain no pork derivatives or alcohol. Mohamed Elmouelhy's Facebook post which argued Yassmin Abdel-Magied had highlighted how Christians only cared about the deaths of their own A wild animal sanctuary in Colorado has euthanized all its animals after a relocation dispute. The Lion's Gate Sanctuary put down its three lions, three tigers and five bears on April 20 after local county commissioners denied their request to move about 20 miles from its site southeast of Denver. Sanctuary owner and local psychologist, Dr. Joan Laub, said she had 'no other option' because the site had repeatedly flooded over the past two years making it impossible for them to care for the animals properly,Mercury News reports. Scroll down for video The Lion's Gate Sanctuary put down its three lions, three tigers and five bears on April 20 after a relocation dispute (pictured are just some of the stunning creatures that used to call the center home) Zuri the lion: One of the many former inhabitants of Lion's Gate Sanctuary before the mass euthanasia But Elbert County Commissioners said they were 'shocked' and 'saddened' by the decision after the said the sanctuary's owners had promised to continue to care for animals at the center if their proposal was turned down. 'The decision by the operators of Lion's Gate to euthanize all their animals comes as a total surprise,' they said in a statement. 'Only two weeks earlier, the operators of the facility assured the County in a public forum that if the application was denied, they would continue to operate at their current location as they had for the previous 10 years.' However, Laub strenuously denies ever giving such assurance calling the claim a 'blatant lie.' 'We want to be clear we did not put our animals down because we were denied by the Elbert County Commissioners,' she said in a statement to the DailyMail.com. 'We put our animals down because it was NO LONGER SAFE FOR THEM AND NOLONGER SAFE FOR THE PUBLIC. This was made abundantly clear to the Elbert County Commissioners. 'The commissioners were not concerned with the safety of residents around the Sanctuary only the residents at the re-location site.' The commissioners added that the nearby Keenesburg Wildlife Sanctuary, which is home to 450 animals, had publicly offered to care for the animals at their facility if Lion's Gate was unable to do so. Pat Craig, the founder and executive director of Keenesberg park told Denver7 that Lion's Gate had so few animals 'they would easily be able to place every animal with another wildlife sanctuary,' adding he was surprised the owners didn't try and find a new home for them. Sanctuary owner and local psychiatrist, Dr. Joan Laub (pictured), said she had 'not other option' because the site had repeatedly flooded over the past two years Laub and her partner Peter Winney were denied permission to move their sanctuary to a new site weeks before they decided to put down all 11 animals 'Given these facts, the news that Lion's Gate euthanized all 11 animals at the same time and so shortly after the decision to deny the move comes as a shock,' the county commissioners said. Dr Laub argued that she was not able to move the animals, some of which are endangered species, to another sanctuary because they were old and vulnerable. It is not clear why she believed the creatures would fare any better if moved to a new Lion's Gate location. 'We did think long and hard about relocating these animals,' she said. 'However, due to their ages and disabilities they would not have survived a move to a new facility. Our vet agreed.' Colorado Parks and Wildlife say they are aware of the mass euthanasia at Lion's Gate, which states on Facebook that its purpose was to 'rescue and protect exotic animals', but said that sanctuary owners are within their legal rights to work with their vets to decide if and when to put down animals. They do not require permission from authorities - even if the creatures in question are endangered. All 11 wild animals have since been buried. Empty: The barren enclosures at the Colorado animal sanctuary after the owners decided to put down all the inhabitants The sanctuary has been at its current site for more than ten years but its owners claim that the area often flooded The move has sparked fury among animal lovers who have questioned how a sanctuary set up to care for animals can justify killing them over a relocation dispute, with many saying the owners should be 'ashamed.' However, the Lion's Gate Sanctuary hit back at the criticism on its Facebook page, passing the blame to the Elbert County Commissioners. 'Danny Willcox, Chris Richardson, and Grant Thayer they were told over and over that the Agate facility was no longer safe for the animals or the public,' it said in a statement. 'They ignored the property rights of the owners and instead gave in to the hysterical ravings of the NIMBY. 'They were told that there were no other options they knew what the result would be and they didn't care. Do not be fooled if there was any way to save the animals it would have happened.' 'The commissioners knowingly sentence(d) the animals to death.' The statement added that the owners, Laub and her partner Peter Winney were 'completely devastated' to have had to put the lions, tigers and bears down. 'They are just as much victims of Elbert County,' it continued. The decision to put down the lions (pictured), tigers and bears has sparked outrage among animal lovers The loss of the majestic creatures (pictured) also came as a 'shock' the county commissioners Lion's Gate Sanctuary stated on social media that its purpose was to 'rescue and protect exotic animals', such as this bear. Sadly, all its exotic animals have now been killed Dailymail.com has reached out to Lion's Gate Sanctuary for comment. The dispute over relation has been running for years. Lion's Gate first requested permission to build a new sanctuary outside the flood zone more than a decade ago but the planning board rejected the request in 2006. More recently, Laub and Winney requested a Use by Special Review permit for a 45-acre property near Elizabeth to relocate their sanctuary away from the flood plain. But earlier this month, Elbert County commissioners unanimously voted to deny the request. 'This decision was based on concerns that the proposed plan for relocation of these animals was not adequately resourced, nor were exigency plans clearly defined which would ensure the safety of the animals and the surrounding residents,' the commissioners said in a statement. 'We would have loved to have seen these animals be allowed to live out their lives at the Elbert County location that had been their home for more than a decade,' added Commissioner Chris Richardson. Advertisement One hundred Amnesty activists, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, staged a protest outside the US embassy in London today as Donald Trump nears 100 days in the White House. The campaigners held lanterns and wore gowns and face paint to draw attention to 'human rights concerns' carried out in President Trump's first three months in office. The group gathered at the gates of the consulate in Grosvenor Square holding cards with the words 'No ban', 'No wall' and 'Refugees welcome'. The charity has been critical of several measures from the new US government, including the multi-country travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries. Scroll down for video One hundred activists from Amnesty dressed up as the Statue of Liberty to take part in a demonstration today outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, to mark the first 100 days in office of President Donald Trump The campaigners held lanterns and wore gowns and face paint to draw attention to 'human rights concerns' carried out in President Trump's first three months in office The group gathered at the gates of the consulate holding cards with the words 'No ban', 'No wall' and 'Refugees welcome' Trump is set to reach the 100 days mark this Saturday. The charity has been critical of several measures from the new US government, including the multi-country travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries As part of their protest, the activists stood in silence for half an hour It has also slammed the 120-day halt to the US refugee resettlement programme and plans for a wall on the Mexican border. Another group of campaigners gathered outside the US Consulate General in Belfast. As part of the protest, Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty's Northern Ireland programme director, hand delivered a dossier addressed to US Consul General Daniel Lawton. The document pointed out 100 ways 'in which President Trump has threatened human rights in his first 100 days in office'. The first 100 days in office is 'a major mark of what a president intends to do', said Amnesty's Kerry Moscogiuri Mr Corrigan said: 'In the space of just 100 days, time and time again President Trump has threatened and undermined human rights in the United States and around the world.' He added: 'The Statue of Liberty stands for American values of freedom and an age-old willingness to shelter people uprooted through war and persecution. 'We continue to stand for those values, even while President Trump has shown that he cares little for what this great symbol of America represents.' 'We think that the Statue of Liberty, were she real like me, would be crying today,' Kerry Moscogiuri added In a dossier handed to the US embassy in Belfast, the charity accused Trump of 35 potential human rights violations in immigration policies A 26-year-old father has been sentenced to 10 days in jail for leaving his nine-month-old baby in the car to go to the strip club. Auwin Dargin of Van Nuys, California pleaded no contest to a felony charge of child abuse in Los Angeles County Court on Wednesday. In addition to a short stint in jail, Dargin will also be on probation for five years. A judge ordered him to complete 52 weeks of parenting classes and 45 days of Caltrans service. A 26-year-old father was sentenced to 10 days in jail this week for leaving his nine-month-old baby in a car for 43 minutes so he could get lap dances at Synn's Gentleman's Club in North Hills, California (above) Dargin was arrested on March 9, 2016 when he left his baby girl in the car for about 43 minutes so he could get lap dances at Synn Gentleman's Club in North Hills. A waitress went outside around 2pm and heard the baby's cries. She found the baby inside the car sweating, with the window slightly cracked. Others helped unlock the car's door by pulling down the partially open window. Matthew Nadeau, the club's assistant manager, then went and located Dargin, who was in the middle of a lap dance. He stepped in and told him about his daughter, and Dargin got upset that his lap dance was being interrupted. 'Just give me my baby and I know I am messing up,' he reportedly said as he left the club. Police showed up before he could leave, and Dargin was arrested. Dargin originally pleaded not guilty to the child abuse charge. The felony count carries a maximum of six years in state prison. Advertisement The terror suspect who was detained with a 'rucksack full of knives' near Parliament square had been tracked on an intricate web of CCTV cameras by police and MI5. Armed police 'swarmed like bees' on the bearded man just before 2.30pm after his concerned family reportedly alerted security services. Witnesses said the man, who was wearing a tracksuit and trainers, was crossing Whitehall amid the usual crowds of tourists and political staff when a police car suddenly pulled up and officers confronted him, just five weeks after the Westminster terror attack killed that five people. But, unbeknown to him, the suspect had been tailed from the moment he got off the Underground at St James's Park - where he had travelled from east London - and headed towards Westminster. While covert teams trailed him on the ground, a live feed was being sent to control rooms in New Scotland Yard and the MI5's Thames House before they gave the order for them to swoop in. This is the face of a terror suspect tackled to the floor today in Whitehall, where knives were seen strewn across the floor Police say the man was detained after a stop and search in an 'ongoing operation'. The suspect is now being questioned Witnesses said the police appeared from nowhere and got the man on the ground. Armed officers stood guard as he was held At least three knives were seen laying on the floor after a team of officers swooped and tackled the man to the ground Pictures of forensics officers show at least three knives, a small flick knife, a large one on the ground and another being held Aerial photographs show police officers grappling with the suspect in the moments as they handcuff and arrest him The man is then led around to the other side of a waiting unmarked police car, in which he was driven to a nearby police station for questioning A large number of armed police then flooded the area as the suspect was pinned to the ground just yards from Downing Street. He was held against a wall of the Treasury before being taken away in a van to a police station. Security sources say police were tipped off by the man's family, which may have allowed officers the chance to detain him before they had to resort to opening fire. The suspect has not been named but is 27 years old and thought to be known to police, who kept tabs on him via surveillance cameras on the streets and on the Underground. It is believed that the suspect had been under round-the-clock surveillance and was tracked by two teams today with armed officers on standby, and that his phone and other means of communication were being monitored. Eyewitness Ian Grant was walking through the area when armed police rushed passed him and arrested the suspect, who is believed to have a British passport, but was not born here. The 56-year-old, from Poplar in the east of the capital, said: 'I came out of the tube station and saw a police car go flying by. Then all of a sudden it slowed down and two cops got out. 'Then an armed cop with a rifle came passed me, I thought it was just a drill at first. Then he shouted "Armed police, stop" and they got this guy down on the ground. 'When they shouted at him he didn't resist or say a word, he just put his hands up and stopped. Then they got the cuffs on him in the central reservation. 'First there was one, then two police officers, then they all came from nowhere like a swarm of bees. There was about a dozen cop cars. ' The area was sealed off as Scotland Yard's forensics experts scoured the scene, where at least three knives and a rucksack were seen laying on the ground on a central reservation. Police say the arrest was made following a 'stop and search' which was part on an ongoing operation. He is being questioned by anti-terror detectives at a south London police station. Mr Grant added: 'Before he was arrested he was just walk along normally, but he must have known they were after him because he didn't say anything when they stopped him. 'It was uncomfortable seeing that happen, it wasn't scary at first, it all happened so fast. But given what happen a month ago, it makes you really nervous.' The man was arrested just 350ft (116 yards) from where previous attacker Khalid Masood was shot 36 days ago. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: 'A man has been arrested in Whitehall this afternoon, at approximately 14:22, following a stop and search as part of an ongoing operation. 'The man, aged in his late twenties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. Knives have been recovered from him. The man was tackled on a traffic island before being held against the wall of the Treasury. The bearded suspect - dressed all in black - appeared to have a bandage on his right hand before he was taken away Police around the Houses of Parliament are on high alert after a terrorist killed five in a car and knife attack five weeks ago The arrest was made just 300ft from where 'lone wolf' attacker Khalid Masood unleashed his attack five weeks ago Dramatic photos taken by witnesses show the moment police arrested the suspect after a 'stop and search' check in Whitehall A witness tweeted this picture of the suspect being held on the ground on the traffic island surrounded by armed police A picture taken through a phone box shows the man being held against the wall of the Treasury on Whitehall after the arrest The 27-year-old man, who was wearing a black tracksuit, was ushered away by a team of police around half an hour later 'He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. 'Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat.' Were the Met and MI5 already shadowing the terror suspect? The terror suspect allegedly carrying at least three knives in his rucksack outside Parliament was arrested as part of an 'ongoing operation', Scotland Yard revealed today. It suggests that counter-terrorism officers and MI5 may have been following the 27-year-old before he was held this afternoon. Security sources have said that the suspect was known to the Met before he was pinned to the ground on Whitehall today. Scotland Yard confirmed that the incident was terror-related within minutes of the arrest. And the fact that he was stopped and searched also suggests that the arrest may have been pre-planned. The terror arrest came five weeks after Westminster was put on a heightened state of alert following a major terror attack just over a month ago. Advertisement A government spokesman for said Theresa May was not in Downing Street at the time of the incident. The Prime Minister paid tribute to the security services this afternoon. She said: 'I think it shows our police and intelligence and security services are on alert, as they always are, looking to keep us safe and secure. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. 'They are often unseen, unheard, yet the job they do, day in and day out, is really important and we should thank them for it.' Passer-by Jose Noronha, 47, from Southall, west London, saw the man get arrested by police. He said: 'I saw the cops arresting him as I walked towards the main road. People were everywhere watching and police cars and officers were everywhere. 'Forensic officers have been looking all over the scene now. It was a very scary situation.' Paul Morris, 29, who works in Westminster, was walking out of the Underground entrance next to where the man was stopped by police. He said: 'As I came out of the subway on the Downing Street side of Whitehall there was shouting. You could hear the police yell at the man to "get down". 'Officers with guns quickly herded people down the stairs into the underground station for safety. One man who came back down looked as white as a ghost, he was so shaken. 'There were armed police everywhere and crowds of tourists. It was really busy.' Forensics experts were seen working on the traffic island, where a bag laying on the ground next to at least two knives One of the knives is recovered from the scene by a forensic investigator as police officers combed the area for evidence A forensic investigator was pictured photographing a backpack and set of knives left sprawled on the floor shortly after a man was arrested Officers were seen piecing through the backpack - which was a cheap 'London' bag of the kind sold at tourist stalls in the area A rucksack emblazoned with a Union flag and the word 'London' is recovered from the scene by forensic investigators Forensics officers combed the scene this afternoon after Scotland Yard revealed the arrest was part of an ongoing operation Bus passenger Ian Moss said police 'looked like they were tending' to him, adding: 'He was arrested. He could walk so no idea if he was injured.' Asked if he was struggling while on the ground, Mr Moss said: 'No - not at all. He had police pointing arms at him though.' A builder working on the road across from the scene told MailOnline the incident was over very quickly. He said he saw the police officers wrestling the suspect, who he described as black, to the ground. The man did not shout and was calm, the witness said. Eyewitness Luke William said: 'Armed police in Westminster holding a man with a backpack with what appears to be knives falling out on the floor. Stay safe.' Journalist Helen Chandler-Wilde, 22, was near Westminster Abbey when the commotion unfolded just a few yards away. She said: 'There are loads of police, about 10 of them, as well as six police cars, and a forensic officer. 'We ran down from just behind Westminster Abbey to see what was going on, we're about 20 yards from the entrance to the Treasury. The traffic is still flowing, it's just a small bit of the road which is closed.' An employee at HMRC said the main entrance to their building at 100 Parliament Street has been closed. An photo taken from the air shows the location of the arrest, near the brightly-coloured bus. The man was detained at the southern end of Whitehall, where it opens onto Parliament Square The investigation took place within view of tourists and reporters at the south end of Whitehall this afternoon The dramatic arrest unfolded in one of Britain's best known streets, which was busy with tourists and government workers A police officer guards the scene this evening. The Prime Minister has paid tribute to police and security services The latest security incident comes after Westminster was put on a heightened state of alert following a major terror attack just over a month ago. Security in the area has been noticeably more high profile since Khalid Masood killed four people by ramming them with his car on Westminster Bridge before stabbing to death Pc Keith Palmer just inside the grounds of Parliament on March 22. Parliamentary authorities said they could not comment on what changes had been made to security measures at the Palace of Westminster since the March attack. In the aftermath of the assault, authorities have reviewed how to keep the area as safe as possible. Armed police officers have been more visible patrolling the Palace of Westminster since the attack, which also left Masood dead from gunshot injuries. I AM WAGING JIHAD IN REVENGE AGAINST THE WEST: MOTIVATION OF WESTMINSTER TERROR KILLER KHALID MASOOD IS REVEALED AS SPIES CRACK HIS WHATSAPP MESSAGE The last message sent by the Westminster terror attacker declared he wanted to wage jihad in revenge at military action in the Middle East, it has emerged. Khalid Masood was found to have been active on messaging service Whatsapp just two minutes before he carried out his fatal attack on March 22. But end-to-end encryption has meant authorities have struggled to find out what he sent before he careered his hired car into pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge before attempting to storm Parliament. However, the Independent has learnt that spies have managed to crack into the message, and revealed his motivation was revenge at western military action in the Middle East. The website reports the person who received the message was extensively questioned, but freed after the police and MI5 concluded that he was not part of a plot and had no prior knowledge of what happened. Masood killed five people and injured 50 during his rampage on Parliament last month. Among those were hero police officer Keith Palmer, who was stabbed outside the House of Commons as he acted as the last line of defence. Security sources have called getting into the message a result of 'human and technical intelligence'. The sources have not disclosed how they went about the task, but have confirmed the technical expertise now exists for any future replications. Masood's phone was recovered after he was shot dead by police in the capital. Advertisement 'We owe a huge debt of gratitude': Theresa May praises 'unseen, unheard' security services as Twitter swells with praise for police 'heroes' Praise: Theresa May has today paid tribute to the 'hero' police and spies behind the arrest of the Whitehall terror suspect Theresa May has paid tribute to the 'hero' police and 'unseen and unheard' spies behind the arrest of the Whitehall terror suspect today. The unnamed 27-year-old appears to have been trailed by Scotland Yard officers and MI5 before he was pinned to the ground for allegedly carrying a 'rucksuck' of knives. Scotland Yard has confirmed that the arrest was terror-related and part of an 'ongoing operation' and that nobody was injured. Theresa May and many others have praised the authorities for their intervention just yards from Downing Street. She said: 'I think it shows our police and intelligence and security services are on alert, as they always are, looking to keep us safe and secure. 'We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. They are often unseen, unheard, yet the job they do, day in and day out, is really important and we should thank them for it'. The Prime Minister was away from Number 10 on a campaign visit at the time of the incident, which did not disrupt work in Downing Street. Security in the area has been noticeably more high profile since Khalid Masood killed four people by ramming them with his car on Westminster Bridge before stabbing to death Pc Keith Palmer just inside the grounds of Parliament on March 22. In the aftermath of the assault, authorities have reviewed how to keep the area as safe as possible. Armed police officers have been more visible patrolling the Palace of Westminster since the attack, which also left Masood dead from gunshot injuries. Extra concrete barriers have also been installed to form a so-called ring of steel. Businessman Mark Woodcock jumped to his death from his own office window after being told he was being made redundant, an inquest has heard. The 43-year-old was a senior manager with pharmaceutical giant Bayer for ten years and was distraught when he discovered he was losing the prestigious position. A coroner heard that before his death, Mr Woodcock had told a member of the human resources department at Bayer that he was thinking of taking his own life, but nothing was done by the company to act on this threat. Mark Woodcock, pictured, jumped from the window of his office after HR managers at Bayer Pharmaceuticals said he was going to be made redundant from his job in Germany Before jumping from the window of his office on the morning of June 15 last year, he left handwritten notes to his family and colleagues on his desk. The inquest heard that after he was told that he was going to be made redundant, he began applying for different roles in the company. Mr Woodcock's wife, Dr Victoria Bamford, described him as a positive person who always had the solution to any problem he faced. 'He never at any point seemed like he was thinking of doing what he did', she told the inquest in Winchester, Hampshire. Dr Bamford explained that although her husband was disappointed with the redundancy, he really wanted to stay with the company and find another role with them in the UK. Bayer human resources manager, Rita Poole, told the inquest that Mr Woodcock applied for a number of different roles in the company in the months after being told that he was to be made redundant but did not manage to land any of them. In a feedback meeting relating to one of the failed applications, two months before his death, the disappointment felt by Mr Woodcock boiled over, and he broke down in front of Ms Poole and Diana Placido, Head of Sales and Marketing Operational Support at Bayer. Mr Woodcock, left, wrote a a letter apologising to his wife Dr Victoria Bamford, right The mid-Hampshire coroner Grahame Short heard that Mr Woodcock, who had been working at the Bayer offices in Leverkusen, Germany, told them: 'I don't have anything to live for anymore. I may as well throw myself off the nearest bridge.' Giving evidence about this threat, Ms Poole told the inquest: 'Mark was upset at the feedback. He was angry and he was emotional. I remember that he banged the table. He said it in an emotional way. 'I asked Diana to leave the room so I could talk to him. I had never seen him act like that before. I let him talk and I listened and he calmed down very quickly. I never imagined that there was any intent there to do what he was saying.' Ms Poole offered to refer Mr Woodcock to Bayer's Employment Assistance Programme, which gives workers the chance to speak on the phone with trained counsellors. The coroner heard that during those phone calls, two months before his death, Mr Woodcock told counsellors on the EAP that he was thinking of 'going to the garage with a rope' or 'jumping off a tall building'. However, these threats were not fed back to Bayer. During Mrs Poole's evidence, the inquest heard that there was no specific training in place at Bayer for HR personnel or managers to deal with threats of suicide from employees. Asked if there had been a change in training at Bayer in response to Mr Woodcock's death, Ms Poole said: 'The procedures remain unchanged. Bayer in 2017 will have a focus on mental health in line with other businesses but this hasn't been put in place because of Mark's situation.' Summing up the evidence, coroner Short said: 'Employers all have a duty of care to their employees, particularly to the handling of difficult decisions like redundancy. It is right that is recognised and that when an employee like Mark shows signs of stress then that should be noted and acted upon. 'He told colleagues that he had recently had the worst days of his life. However, I believe that he sheltered his wife and family members from all this and did not give them any indication of his intentions. 'He probably wrote the notes in his office that same day. He asked his wife for forgiveness and it was clear from the comments that he was contemplating taking his life.' The coroner suggested that Mr Woodcock, who lived in Earley, near Reading, Berkshire might have been suffering from undiagnosed depression but recorded his death as a suicide. Mr Woodcock's brother, Nigel, said: 'Mark was the most kind, caring, thoughtful and considerate brother, son and husband that we could wish for. 'While we know the was facing a challenging time at work, his death came as a complete shock to the family. 'This has been a very difficult time for us all and we ask for privacy as we continue to grieve.' A spokesman for Bayer told MailOnline: 'We were saddened by Mark's death and we send our deepest condolences to his family. Bayer has clearly documented processes to support our employees, which have been followed in the case of Mark including support for his redundancy. 'Bayer is recognised as a "good" employer and frequently reviews its employee policies to ensure we give the best and most appropriate support to colleagues in all situations.' Opinion / Religion Tendai Ruben Mbofana is Programmes Director at the Zimbabwe Network for Social Justice (ZimJustice), but writes in his personal capacity. Please call/WhatsApp: +263782283975, or email:tendaiandtinta.mbofana@gmail.com. Please 'Like' the ZimJustice page on Facebook. It never ceases to amaze me how Christians who refer to themselves as pastors, evangelists, prophets, apostles, and teachers - the so-called five fold ministery - have so callously managed to deceive the flock over the past centuries, as they proclaim to be in the same order as Levitical priests; and as such, worthy of receiving tithes.This could never be further from the truth, as this undoubtedly is the lie of all ages.These pastors, prophets, apostles and their ilk were never - will never be - classified as the same as Levitical priests.To begin with, the Bible never placed such a classification on these people as Levitical priests.In fact, even the Biblical apostles never had such a standing - as their calling merely entailed being 'messengers' or 'sent forth'.A closer analysis of the Biblical Epistles clearly shows that these apostles never considered themselves as Levitical priests - meaning they never felt entitled to tithes, which God commanded to be given to Levitical priests as they had no inheritence amongst the people of Israel (Numbers 18:24).These apostles just went about giving witness about Christ Jesus, as rightly they should have done as 'messengers' who had been sent forth.Interestingly, the apostle Paul mentioned several times in his epistles how he never saught to burden the congregation for his financial upkeep - as he took care of himself through the works of his own hands.In fact, he put it so aptly, 'for children ought not to lay up for their parents, but parents for their children' (2 Corinthians 12:14).Thus, Paul was gainfully self-employed as tent makers, and financially sustained himself (Acts 18:1-3).Another example of how God intended for for the relationship within His Kingdom is highlighted in Acts 4:32-37, whereby no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.'There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them...and distribution was made to each as had need'.These proceedings were not given to the apostles to possess, and enrich themselves as is witnessed in the church today.Unlike what Paul said, today's church is busy burdening the congregants - parents demanding that the children lay up for them.Is there ever a church today that can honestly and boldly claim to be cut from the same cloth as that of Acts?Whilst their pastors, apostles and prophets are topping the richest people list, their gullable followers are wallowing in poverty.These pastors, apostles, and prophets in our churches today are nothing but thieves who are driven by the love for money - and we all know what Jesus Christ said about lovers of money.'It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God'.They hide behind the Old Testament commandments over tithes that were to be given to Levitical priests, but a closer look at Hebrews 7 to 9, is very clear that the order of priests ended with the coming, crucifixion and ascension of Jesus Christ.Jesus Christ is the new Priest, and there are no longer any earthly priests.As a matter of fact, Hebrews 7:23, aptly refers to human priests as 'the former priests' - as Christians now have such a high priest who is holy, blameless, unstained, seperated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.'He has no need, like those high priests, to offfer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself', Hebrews 7:26,27.To seal this new covenant, the scriptures further state that the law appointed men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appointed a Son who has been made perfect for ever.Hebrews 7 makes it very clear that, the descendents of Levi who received the priestly office had a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people.However, it further proceeds to make it clear that, as there is a new High Priest in Jesus Christ, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.Therefore, there is no one who is still a Levitical priest - and as such, no one is still worthy to receive tithes - it ended over two thousand years ago.These so-called Christian leaders have been deceiving the church for the past several centuries, in order for self-aggrandisement.Christians should wake up to these facts, and learn to study the Bible for themselves - as the major reason for such deceipt is that most of us rely on these same people, who are stealing from us, to learn the Word of God.The apostle John wrote this: I write to you about those who would deceive you; but the anoiting (Holy Spirit) which you received from Him (Jesus Christ) abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as His anoiting teaches you about everything (1 John 2:26,27).No one who has truly received the Holy Spirit needs to be taught the Word of God by humans - as this not only is an insult to Him, but opens up to deception.These so-called pastors, apostles, and prophets are nothing more than conmen and conwomen who have found an easy opening to make a quick buck by stealing from God's children.Truly, the church has again become a den of thieves, as it was when Jesus drove out traders and money changers from the temple.They are merely serving their father the Devil, and all their miracles are from the Devil - as Christ Jesus says Satan can portray Himself as the Son of Light.Christ also warned that in the last days people will be lovers of money, and these false prophets will even perform wonderous acts and cast out demons in Jesus' name - but He (Christ) will say that He knew them not. A Hungarian man sexually assaulted elderly women during break-ins at their homes after getting into Britain despite having been deported from Canada for similar offences. Night prowler Zsolt Suhaj - branded 'every woman's worst nightmare' by a judge - carried out a string of sex attacks after moving to Nelson, Lancashire. The 25-year-old came to the UK from Hungary despite having been jailed in Toronto for similar crimes in 2012 and deported back to eastern Europe. Zsolt Suhaj carried out a string of sex attacks on women in the UK after coming to Britain from Hungary despite having been deported from Canada over similar crimes Suhaj had to be dragged from the dock today after being jailed for life at Burnley Crown Court, where he repeatedly banged his head against the glass partition. Earlier he was heard shouting 'I'm going to kill you' to his own lawyer as he was being held in the cells. Judge Sara Dodd told him: 'You are every woman's worst nightmare. In my judgment given your previous convictions you are clearly dangerous. The Canadian authorities described you as predatory and brazen that's an assessment which I agree. 'There's a clear pattern of you sexually offending against women. You targeted properties you thought women would be alone at their most vulnerable asleep in their beds. You took a knife with you when you raped one victim. A judge said she would be failing in her duty if she did not jail Suhaj for life 'Your previous convictions for sexual offending and a time in custody in Canada has not stopped your offending and you have no insight into your own deviance. You will continue to pose a significant risk of harm to women. 'I would be failing in my public duty if I didn't impose a life sentence. On all the information it's not possible to say when or if you will no longer pose a risk to women.' The court heard Suhaj was deported to Hungary after he served a year in jail following his conviction in 2012 for breaking and entering to commit sexual assault. It is believed he flew from his home country to the UK in January 2016 to join family members in East Lancashire. He was able to take advantage of EU freedom of movement rules to settle there. Just months later he began breaking into homes where he believed vulnerable women would be. Many of the properties were bungalows. Last May, he gained access to the Nelson home of a 70-year-old woman who woke to find Suhaj with his hand between her legs. The grandmother, whose husband was sleeping in another room, said she screamed and tried to push his face away and eventually he left the house. It also emerged that his first victim, a 69-year-old grandmother who was sexually assaulted, had told detectives that officers had not believed her account because she had just come out of hospital. 'They said, "Are you sure you weren't just having a nightmare?"' she said. 'I went through a traumatic experience and I still can't sleep because I'm scared.' Burnley Crown Court heard there were four more reports of women, aged between 22 and 84, waking to find Suhaj in their homes in July and August last year, before he fled, while another woman raised the alarm when the defendant tried to gain entry through her patio doors. His rape victim thought she was going to be murdered after Suhaj climbed through her bedroom window, placed his hands over her mouth, pushed her on to her bed and said: 'I love sex, I want sex. I am not going to hurt you but I want sex.' The dangerous sex offender banged his head against the glass dock at Burnley Crown Court Following the rape, detectives released CCTV images of the suspect and staff at a local takeaway recognised Suhaj and he was subsequently arrested. When interviewed, Suhaj admitted to being at the scene of the crimes, all but one were bungalows, but said he was there to steal money and gold for drugs and food. He then claimed at his trial that his rape victim had consented to sex after lying he had met up with her earlier in the day. Last month, Suhaj was found guilty of rape, sexual assault, trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence at five homes and attempting to trespass with intent at another home. Throughout the trial at Preston Crown Court, Suhaj laughed and joked - but became angry when the verdict was delivered. Lancashire Police last night said an internal investigation was underway into claims officers asked a victim if she had had a 'nightmare'. Currently, passports of EU nationals arriving in Britain are checked against a border agency 'watchlist'. But unless an offender is high-profile, the system is unlikely to note previous convictions. Andrew Stephenson, Conservative MP for Pendle, where the offences took place, said: 'The case shows why we need to get control back of our own borders.' A Florida middle school teacher may lose his job after he bullied and harassed students who raised livestock to be sold for slaughter at a local youth fair, authorities said. The firing of Thomas Roger Allison, Jr, 53, who teaches science at Horizon Academy at Marion Oaks near Ocala, was recommended Tuesday by Marion County Superintendent of Schools Heidi Maier. Allison has allegedly called the Future Farmers of America (FFA) students 'murderers' for participating in the program, Maier wrote in a letter documenting the case. Florida middle school science teacher Thomas Roger Allison, Jr, 53, was placed on unpaid leave earlier this week after allegedly calling Future Farmers of America students 'murderers' for raising livestock for slaughter 'When the animals throats are being slit, they are calling out your names, asking why you are not coming to save them,' Maier wrote that Allison said to students. '[Allison] has engaged in a repeated, egregious pattern of mistreating, ridiculing, insulting, intimidating, embarrassing, bullying and abusing FFA students, crushing their dreams and causing them to feel that they must discontinue FFA activities in order to enjoy a peaceful school environment,' the superintendent's written recommendation for termination read, according to the Ocala Star-Banner. Allison is also accused of harassing the group's teacher adviser and encouraging his honors science students to harass FAA members. An investigation began into Allison's behavior on March 28. It lasted 10 days and culminated in his termination recommendation. The resulting report included that Allison allegedly told students 'he is against animal slaughter and was kicked out of the Southeastern Youth Fair for protesting.' FFA students have allegedly come to Horizons agriculture teacher, Donna Lavery, crying, stating that Allison had called them murderers, the report said, quoting Lavery. Marion County Superintendent of Schools Heidi Maier recommended on Tuesday that Allison, who teaches science at Horizon Academy at Marion Oaks near Ocala, be fired Apparently when FFA students miss class for FFA-related field, Allison will not afford them the mandated time to make up missed work from his class, Lavery reported to the district. 'The FFA students are the only ones penalized in this manner,' the report stated. 'Every child who has been actively involved in an animal project since [Allison] has come here has had a hard time in his class,' according to the Ocala Star-Banner's account of a witness quoted in the report. 'In sum, Allison created a harmful educational environment, which created animosity among students, parents, other teachers and members of the community,' the report stated. 'Respondent additionally and intentionally exposed multiple students to unnecessary embarrassment in the presence of their peers.' Allison also allegedly videotaped and recorded students in the classroom, according to the Star-Banner, which is a violation of school board policy without prior consent. Allison has denied the allegations and said he'll fight for his job. He is on unpaid leave pending a school board hearing. Clearwater attorney Mark Herdman will reportedly represent Allison at the hearing. A message left for officials at Horizon Academy seeking the date of the hearing was not immediately returned. Three Australians fighting for Islamic State in the Middle East have reportedly been arrested in Lebanon. The men are believed to have been held at gunpoint in the country's capital Beirut after being captured during a Lebanese Army raid. The army this week also carried out several 'precision raids' along the Lebanon-Syria border, nabbing a number of Islamic State fighters in the process, The Daily Telegraph reported. Three Australians fighting for Islamic State have reportedly been arrested at gun point (pictured is a stock image) The three men are believed to have been taken to Beirut's Roumieh Prison (pictured) The trio - all dual Australian-Lebanese citizens - are now said to be languishing in Beirut's Roumieh Prison. Their arrest comes after a Syrian-born Islamic State jihadist, who was trapped last year, said he had worked with the trio. It is understood the trio do not want to come back to Australia but a source quoted by The Daily Telegraph said many other Australians fighting overseas were attempting to head home. Reports of the trio's arrest have also come to light at a time when Justice Minister Michael Keenan meets with his counterparts from Lebanon and Jordan about intelligence sharing. The trio's arrest comes after a Syrian-born Islamic State jihadist, who was trapped last year, said he had worked with the men (pictured is a stock image) 'The potential for Australians to exit the conflict zone is there, it could happen in Lebanon, it could happen in Jordan but what we know of the routes is that it is primarily Turkey,' Mr Keenan said. He declined to comment about the trio's arrest. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for comment. Advertisement Six protesters were arrested by police at the University of California, Berkeley, on Thursday during the start of what promises to be a tense day of protests at one of America's most liberal college campuses. A heavy police presence has been seen at Berkeley as officers look to head off violent clashes, according to Fox News. Berkeley, known as the home of the American free speech movement, was under heavy police watch on Thursday in advance of what is expected to be a large protest over a canceled appearance by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. The author said she was forced to cancel a speaking event at the University of California, Berkeley, although she added that she might still 'swing by to say hello' to her supporters, prompting police and university officials to brace for possible trouble. Coulter supporters said the university was attempting to silence their views. Scroll down for video Berkeley police are seen above arresting a demonstrator during protests on the campus one day after Ann Coulter's appearance was canceled A heavy police presence has been seen at Berkeley as officers look to head off violent clashes. A supporter of President Donald Trump is seen above at Berkeley Jim Gilles, a protester from Indiana, points during a rally at Berkeley. Gilles is wearing a T-shirt that reads, 'Allah is Satan' Demonstrators tape their hands in anticipation of street battles on Thursday in Berkeley, California Supporters of Ann Coulter hold signs and flags one day after the Berkeley campus canceled her appearance there for fear of violent protests Demonstrators are seen above equipping themselves as police and campus officials brace for possible violence The author (above) said she was forced to cancel a speaking event at the University of California, Berkeley, although she added that she might still 'swing by to say hello' to her supporters Coulter appeared on Fox News Channel on Wednesday and denounced the university for canceling her talk Dozens of police wearing flak jackets and carrying 40 mm launchers that shoot 'foam batons' flanked the university's main plaza while a small group of protesters condemning Coulter staged one of two earlier rallies outside campus. Officers also took selfies with students in an attempt to lighten the mood. Police erected barricades and refused to let participants enter the campus. Protesters from the International Socialist Organization held what they called n 'Alt Right Delete' rally with signs reading 'Refuse Fascism' and 'Fascist free campus.' The tension illustrates how Berkeley has emerged as a flashpoint for extreme left and right forces amid the debate over free speech. Pro-Trump supporters are seen above on Thursday A demonstrator raises a U.S. flag Thursday, April 27, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. Demonstrators gathered near the University of California, Berkeley campus amid a strong police presence and rallied to show support for free speech and condemn the views of Ann Coulter and her supporters. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) A biker and pro-Trump supporter sports a helmet with spikes during a demonstration at Berkeley's campus Daryl Tempesta is seen above wearing tape over his mouth with the word 'Berkeley' written over it to protest the university's decision to cancel an appearance by right-wing commentator Ann Coulter A man wearing a helmet holds a camera outfitted with spikes as he looks on during the protest Helmeted protesters wave a flag and chant slogans denouncing the university for its decision to cancel the Coulter talk A Trump supporter wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat holds a sign bearing the drawing of Pepe the frog, who has become a conservative symbol. The sign reads: 'Green Lives Matter' The group endorses free speech, and some members oppose the way Coulter and others have co-opted the free speech movement. 'I don't like Ann Coulter's views, but I don't think in this case the right move was to shut her down,' said graduate student Yevgeniy Melguy, 24, who held a sign that read 'Immigrants Are Welcome Here.' The tension illustrates how Berkeley has emerged as a flashpoint for extreme left and right forces amid the debate over free speech in a place where the 1960s US free speech movement began before it spread to college campuses across the nation. Berkeley student Joseph Pagadara, 19, said he is worried about violence and says the university is caught in the middle of the country's political divide. 'Both sides are so intolerant of each other. We are a divided country. We need to listen to each other but we're each caught in our own bubbles,' he said. As for Coulter, Pagadara said the university should have let her speak. 'Now she's making herself look like the victim and Berkeley like the bad guys,' he said. Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump 'Proud Boys,' said he will speak in the afternoon at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park and encouraged other groups to help make a large showing at the gathering, according to KCBS-TV. The group on its Facebook page calls itself a fraternal organization aimed at 'reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism.' It said it supports minimal government and is also 'anti-political correctness, anti-racial guilt, pro-gun rights, anti-Drug War, closed borders.' Another group called the Orange County Alt Right Group planned a rally in the same place. Members of a right-wing organization take part in a protest on the Berkeley campus Berkeley police officers arrest a man during a rally at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on April 27, 2017 in Berkeley, California A right wing activist holds a shield in the shape of a heart during a rally at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley on Thursday A protester holds a sign that reads 'Open dialogue, not heads' during a protest Gavin McInnes, a co-founder of Vice media and a right-wing provocateur, addresses protesters Protesters with opposing views argue during the rally on Thursday in Berkeley Police say they are preparing to monitor events through the evening in case protests deteriorate into violence Demonstrators shout slogans directed at Berkeley city hall during a rally for free speech Thursday Joey Gibson, seen above wearing a 'Trump Pence 2020' shirt, addresses protesters Police in riot gear stand at the ready as opposing factions gather over the cancelation of Coulter's speech In emails to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Coulter confirmed that her planned speech on illegal immigration, followed by a question-answer session, was canceled. But she remained coy about what she might do instead. 'I'm not speaking. But I'm going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country,' Coulter said in an email. 'I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment.' Officials at UC Berkeley said last week they feared renewed violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited 'very specific intelligence' of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum. Efforts by the university to cancel or delay the Coulter event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech. Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks sent a letter to the campus Wednesday saying the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students. 'This is a university, not a battlefield,' Dirks said in the letter. 'The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to Free Speech the other to the safety of our campus community.' Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists. In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans. The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that had helped book Coulter's campus speaking events, both pulled their support Tuesday citing fears of violence. They blamed the university for failing to ensure protection of conservative speakers. Anyone watching the election of the new president of the National Union of Students may have been surprised at the lack of applause for the winner. But in actual fact, the crowd at the NUS annual conference in Brighton welcomed the election of Shakira Martin through 'jazz hands' waving. The unique celebration has been used before by the NUS, who say clapping and cheering can be a 'trigger point' for anxiety and 'alienate' deaf people. The jazz hands celebration has divided opinion on social media, with some praising it as inclusive and others branding it childish. Students at the NUS annual conference in Brighton welcomed the election of new president Shakira Martin with a 'jazz hands' celebration, pictured The hand waving, pictured, was used instead of clapping, which the NUS has previously said can 'trigger anxiety in sufferers and alienate deaf people' Ms Martin said she was 'honoured and humbled' to have been elected as national president, after defeating controversial incumbent Malia Bouattia. The NUS previously asked for jazz hands to replace applause at the union's women's conference in 2015 in Solihull. NUS Women's Campaign tweeted at the time: 'Whooping is fun for some, but can be super inaccessible for others, so please try not to whoop! Jazz hands work just as well.' They followed that with: 'Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful! #nuswomen15'. But some on social media have ridiculed the action with one Twitter user branding the NUS 'supposedly adults'. Another said: 'Not been able to take the NUS seriously for years. Jazz hands, please!' But others have hit out at the criticism, calling it 'not valid' and accusing people of wanting to 'sneer at students'. An NUS spokesman said: 'The hand gesture used in the video is the sign used in the British Sign Language vocabulary for applause. It means more people can participate in our conference. 'We dont actively stop our members from clapping, they choose to be respectful and enable other people to get involved.' The NUS has previously asked the audience to use 'jazz hands' instead of clapping, such as at the 2015 Women's Conference, pictured The celebration has divided opinion on Twitter, with some saying it means the NUS 'cannot be taken seriously' Others say people are 'fixated' on the waving to 'sneer' at students rather than taking the issues seriously Ms Martin, formerly the union's vice president for education, said: 'I take this as a vote of trust that our members believe I can lead our national movement to be the fighting and campaigning organisation we need it to be, representing the breadth of our diverse membership. 'Further Education made me who I am today and I look forward to sharing stories of just how powerful all forms of education can be when we're all given access to it. During my term in office, I want to spend my time listening, learning and leading.' Last October, Ms Bouattia became the subject of a Commons home affairs committee, when she described Birmingham University as a 'Zionist outpost'. The committee concluded her comments smacked of 'outright racism'. Ms Martin, left, who had been the NUS vice president on further education and is now the new president, ousting Ms Bouattia, right In Ms Bouattia's year as president, 26 unions held votes to leave the NUS, with three voting out In scathing findings, the committee said that she did not appear to take the issue of campus anti-Semitism 'sufficiently seriously' and showed a 'worrying disregard' for her duty to represent all students and promote balanced and respectful debate. Ms Bouattia's statement in a co-authored 2011 blog that Birmingham 'has the largest Jsoc (Jewish Society) in the country whose leadership is dominated by Zionist activists' was condemned in the MPs' report as 'unacceptable, and even more so from a public figure such as the president of the NUS'. Ms Martin, who described herself as a 'black, working class single mother' according to the Guardian, promised to unite the fractured student movement. In the last year, 26 students' unions held votes to disassociate from the NUS, with three voting to leave. Ms Martin gained 402 votes, compared to 272 for Ms Bouattia. A third candidate, Tom Harwood, gained 35 votes. Firefighters battling a blaze at a house were faced with an unexpected threat: a monster pet crocodile in the backyard. The fire destroyed the two-story home in Darwin's upscale suburb of Fannie Bay, but did not harm the four-metre reptile, a female named Albert living in a backyard pond. The out-of-control fire is believed to to have been sparked by a clothes iron that was mistakenly left switched on. Scroll down for video Firefighters battling a blaze in a house were faced with a monster pet crocodile, Albert Firefighter Bill Gleeson told reporters there was no one in the house by the time firefighters arrived. He said Albert, 70, did not disrupt their operation and was happy to watch them fight the inferno. 'Thankfully the crocodile didn't affect our operations at all,' Mr Gleeson said. 'It's well contained and clearly unaffected by fire. He seemed quite happy to look at me as I was protecting the premises.' The fire destroyed the two-story house in Darwin's upscale suburb of Fannie Bay The out-of-control fire is believed to to have been sparked by a clothes iron The pet had been living at the property since before crocodiles became a protected species under federal law in the early 1970s. Authorities have yet to decide whether Albert will have to be moved. Albert was snared in a Northern Territory river in 1958 for someone who requested a crocodile at a party but a change of heart after sobering up. A father murdered his three-year-old son and dumped his body next to a river after being given an ultimatum by his girlfriend to either get rid of the toddler or lose her, prosecutors allege. David Creato, 23, is accused of killing his son Brendan in October, 2015. The toddler's body was found near the Cooper River in Haddon Township, New Jersey, less than a mile from his father's home. On Wednesday, prosecutors suggested that Creato murdered the boy to appease his teenage girlfriend, Julie Stensky, who they said didn't like the toddler. Creato denies murdering the boy and previously claimed he believed he was taken to the river by 'spirits' because it was a 'sacred place'. David Creato is accused of murdering his three-year-old son Brendan in October 2015 after being given an ultimatum by his teenage girlfriend who allegedly did not like the toddler Prosecutors say Julie Stensky, now 19 (left in a mugshot for a separate incident) told Creato (right in court on Tuesday) to choose between her and the boy Brendan's body was found by a sniffer dog partially submerged in water a few hours after his father reported him missing. An autopsy revealed he died of brain injuries which could have been caused by drowning, asphyxiation or blunt force trauma. Creato and Stensky, 19, were on the brink of breaking up when Brendan died, prosecutor Christine Shah told the court, according to NJ.com. He was allegedly jealous of the relationships she had with male college classmates at Manhattan's Pace University and she had an 'outspoken, strong dislike of children'. Brendan's body was found partially submerged in a river on October 13, 2015 The pair had been dating for just over a year after meeting on Tinder when she was 17. On October 12, shortly after dropping her off at the train station so she could return to school, Creato welcomed Brendan over for a sleepover. He claims he put the boy to sleep and went to bed himself at 10pm, waking up the next day to discover Brendan was gone. Prosecutors however say phone records show he was checking Stensky's Facebook and Snapchat accounts at 1.37am. At around 6am on October 13, Creato called 911 to report Brendan missing, telling an operator the boy 'must have' unlocked the front door and walked out of the house. In police interviews immediately afterwards, he told detectives that Stensky didn't like his son and that it had nearly caused them to break up. He nonetheless denied having any knowledge of what happened to the boy and told police he was his 'best friend'. Brendan's mother Samantha Denoto has not been vocal in her opinion of what may have killed her son. Brendan's mother, Samantha Denoto (left) said his father once told her he was drawn to the river by spirits Brendan died of brain injuries which a coroner said could have been caused by asphyxiation, drowning or blunt force trauma to the head Creato broke down as he was told his son had been found dead in a police interview room in October 2015 (above) She appeared as a witness for the prosecution and once recorded Creato with her cell phone at their request as he spoke about the case. During the conversation, Creato said he believed their son was drawn to the woods by spirits. 'We talked about what else could have happened to him. He had told me that maybe the spirits told him to walk down to the woods which is completely odd and unexplainable,' Denoto testified. The pair had been high school sweethearts but broke up after Brendan's birth in 2012. They were living near one another in Haddon Township when he died. The trial continues. Stensky is not facing any charges and has not appeared at the trial. A young Australian couple have told of being kidnapped, robbed and assaulted in the middle of the night while backpacking through the Central American jungle. Kirsten Smith and Jayson Peter Kelly, both aged 25, were on a shuttle bus in Guatemala when armed bandits took control of their vehicle. The couple, from Cairns in Queensland, have spoken out to warn other Australian tourists visiting the area. Kirsten Smith and Jayson Peter Kelly, both aged 25, were on a shuttle bus in Guatemala when armed bandits took control of their vehicle A young Australian couple have told of being kidnapped, robbed and assaulted in the middle of the night while backpacking through the Central American jungle (Kirsten Smith pictured) The couple, from Cairns in Queensland, have spoken out to warn other Australian tourists visiting the area (the couple are pictured in Guatemala) They were eight weeks into a nine-month backpacking adventure when the harrowing ordeal occurred on Saturday morning local time (the couple are pictured in Guatemala) They were eight weeks into a nine-month backpacking adventure when the harrowing ordeal occurred on Saturday morning local time. Mr Kelly, now safe in Costa Rica, said the couple were on a shuttle bus with 10 tourists, including two other Australians, organised by their hostel when they were shot at and their vehicle was hijacked by local 'cowboys'. 'We were on a shuttle that was going from Antigua, Guatemala to Leon in Nicaragua. The shuttle was fully organised and available to be booked through several hostels and legitimate shuttle companies,' he said. The shuttle set off at 2am on Saturday morning, but two hours into the trip three bandits shot at the van. They held a number of passengers, including Mr Kelly, hostage as they drove the vehicle through the bush. It was at this point Mr Kelly thought he was going to die. 'They commandeered our shuttle and jumped into the back and held a gun to my head they had been shooting at the van like cowboys and once that hot gun was at my head that was it,' he said. The pair were on a bus with ten other tourists, including two Australians, when it was hijacked During the horror trip both Mr Kelly and Ms Smith though they were going to die (the pair are pictured in Guatemala) 'I actually hoped they shot me in the head to make it quick and as painless as it could have been.' When the shuttle bus finally stopped, three men dragged all the tourists out, tied them up with their own shoelaces and robbed them at gunpoint. 'Kirsten also thought it was all over when we all got tied up. She thought that we were going to be shot one by one,' Mr Kelly said. 'She was actually tied up next to me and at one point looked at me and asked if we were going to be OK. I had no idea what to say back. I just told her I loved her.' The thieves took computers, cameras, phones, money, wallets and jewellery. Luckily the bandits threw all passports and identification on the ground, which the tourists were later able to recover. The female tourists, including Ms Smith, were then assaulted. Young couple Kirsten Smith and Jayson Peter Kelly were on a shuttle bus in Guatemala on Saturday when armed bandits took control of their vehicle (the pair are pictured in Guatemala) Mr Kelly said his girlfriend Ms Smith was 'indecently' assaulted by the armed bandits Ms Smith and Mr Kelly were eight weeks into a nine-month trip of a lifetime when the incident occurred (Ms Smith is pictured in Mexico) 'All of the females were touched indecently I was helpless and forced to endure this,' Mr Kelly said. After about two hours, as the sun started to rise, the bandits fled with the stolen goods. Ms Smith was able to loosen her shoelaces and untie the other tourists. Mr Kelly and another tourist ran out to the road to get help. The pair don't know why their vehicle was targeted, but feel it was not the first time something like this has happened. 'There's nothing that we know as to why the shuttle was targeted, however it was definitely not the first time they had done this,' Mr Kelly said. TRAVEL ADVICE FOR TOURISTS IN GUATEMALA DFAT's Smarttraveller advice website says to 'exercise a high degree of caution when travelling in Guatemala.' 'Exercise a high degree of caution in Guatemala because of the risk of serious criminal violence and incidents of local unrest,' the website warns. 'Guatemala has a high crime rate. Violent crime, often involving the use of firearms, is common throughout the country, including in tourist destinations.' 'Do not travel on passenger buses as armed robbery is common. Inter-city travel after dark is dangerous and should be avoided.' Advertisement 'The track they took us up into the bush leads one to assume it happens regularly.' Mr Kelly said they had been interviewed by Guatemalan police and gave a statement, but are concerned local authorities won't take action against the men responsible. In a brave decision the pair have decided to continue their trip and are safe in Costa Rica. In a statement the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) said: 'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade provided consular assistance to two Australians robbed in Guatemala, in accordance with the Consular Services Charter. 'Owing to privacy considerations, we will not provide further details.' DFAT's Smarttraveller advice website says to 'exercise a high degree of caution' when travelling in Guatemala.' 'Exercise a high degree of caution in Guatemala because of the risk of serious criminal violence and incidents of local unrest,' the website warns. 'Guatemala has a high crime rate. Violent crime, often involving the use of firearms, is common throughout the country, including in tourist destinations.' 'Do not travel on passenger buses as armed robbery is common. Inter-city travel after dark is dangerous and should be avoided.' The pair were travelling though Central America when the incident occurred DFAT's Smarttraveller advice website says to 'exercise a high degree of caution when travelling in Guatemala' (Ms Smith pictured) A man facing court for a minor traffic ticket ended up in handcuffs after accidentally dropping a bag of cocaine right in front of the judge. Lemar Reed, 39, fronted Lorain Municipal Court in Cleveland, Ohio last week to enter his plea on the traffic charge. But when Reed walked up to speak to the judge, he unknowingly dropped the drugs onto the floor. Scroll down for video Lemar Reed, 39, fronted Lorain Municipal Court in Cleveland, Ohio last week to enter his plea on a minor traffic charge before he accidentally dropped a bag of cocaine on the floor Security cameras from inside the courtroom captured Reed fidgeting with his hat as the judge sorted through his documents. As Reed flipped his hat and placed it under his arm, the small bag of cocaine could be seen tumbling to the ground. Soon after, an oblivious Reed left the courtroom with a fine. The cocaine remained on the floor for about an hour before the courtroom's security officer noticed the drugs. Security cameras from inside the courtroom captured Reed fidgeting with his hat as he stepped up to enter his traffic ticket plea As Reed flipped his hat and placed it under his arm, the small bag of cocaine could be seen tumbling to the ground (pictured at his feet) 'He picked it up, looked at it, and saw a white powdery substance. We had it field tested by the Lorain Police Department and it tested positive for cocaine,' Judge Mark Mihok told Fox8. Court officials reviewed the surveillance footage until they pinpointed the moment the drugs were dropped. A warrant was immediately put out of Reed's arrest. 'He was only here for a traffic ticket. He made a simple traffic ticket with only the penalty of a fine into a felony. So, not a good day for him,' Judge Mihok said. The parents of four young women who died in a limo crash while celebrating a friend's upcoming wedding in Long Island wine country were left disgusted on finding out that nobody would serve jail time in the horrific deaths. Steven Romeo, 57, struck a plea deal with prosecutors in Suffolk County, New York on Wednesday. His driver's license will be suspended for 90 days in the fatal 2015 crash, and he will pay a $500 fine. Romeo is the second driver in the fatal crash to escape jail time, after charges were dropped against the limo driver, 59-year-old Carlos Pino, whom prosecutors said made an illegal U-turn that was a primary cause of the crash. Killed in the July 2015 crash were Brittany Schulman, Lauren Baruch, Stephanie Belli and Amy Gribina, all between 23 and 24 years old. Four others, including the bride-to-be whose bachelorette party they were celebrating, were injured. Their parents shouted down Romeo's attorney in court at the Wednesday hearing, refusing to let him finish a statement of remorse on behalf of his client. Scroll down for videos Pleaded Out: Steven Romeo (center) struck a plea deal with prosecutors in the 2015 crash that killed four women in Long Island wine country. State experts said he couldn't avoid the wreck Crash Scene: Romeo's truck struck the limo after limo driver Carlos Pino made an illegal U-turn, prosecutors said. Though Romeo had been drinking he tested under the legal limit Victims: Stephanie Belli (left) and Brittany M Schulman (right) were both killed in the crash Victims: Lauren Baruch (left) and Amy R Grabina (right) were also killed in the crash Outraged: Parents of the dead young women struggled to compose themselves as they left court knowing that nobody would be jailed in the horrific crash The grieving parents of the dead young women left court in an outrage, struggling to compose themselves as they walked past news cameras. With emotions running high, the parents declined to comment on the case, saying they would offer a joint statement at a later date. Prosecutors reached the deal with Romeo after holes emerged in the DUI case they'd hoped to build against the man. When he was tested an hour and 40 minutes after the crash, Romeo's blood-alcohol level was 0.066, below the legal limit, although prosecutors argued it would have likely been above New York's 0.08 limit at the time of the crash. Ultimately, the state's own forensic reconstruction cast doubt on the prosecution's case. Authorities said the limousine, after leaving a nearby winery, was attempting to make a U-turn at an intersection along Route 48 in Cutchogue, when the pickup truck broadsided the limo full of women on July 18, 2015. 'Based upon the state police's very thorough reenactment' of the crash, said Assistant District Attorney John Scott Prudenti after the hearing, 'they concluded a sober driver could not have avoided this crash,' PIX11 reported. Steven Romeo (pictured left and right) could not have avoided hitting the limo even if he had not been drinking, state crash experts said The limo, which was leaving leaving a nearby winery, had attempted to make the U-turn at an intersection along Route 48 in Cutchogue 'A professional driver had put them in harms way by carelessly and negligently making that ill-advised turn into oncoming traffic,' the prosecutor acknowledged. Prudenti acknowledged the tragic nature of the case and was sympathetic toward the parents who felt outraged by the outcome in court. 'This is heartbreaking, this is a parents worst nightmare,' Prudenti told CBS New York. In October, a judge on dismissed the criminally negligent homicide and other charges against the limousine driver, Carlos Pino. State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho found there had been improper grand jury testimony in the case and dismissed the indictment against Pino. Limo driver Carlos Pino, 58, the limousine driver whose four passengers were killed in a crash in Long Island wine country has been indicted on criminally negligent homicide Pino, 59, had been awaiting trial on an array of charges, which included assault and reckless driving offenses. He refused to answer questions from reporters as he left the courthouse in October. Pino's attorney, Leonard Lato, said at the time that prosecutors 'knew all along that this was not a criminal case' but presented it to a grand jury 'rather than have the integrity and actually tell that to the families of these poor girls who died.' Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said he was disappointed with the judge's decision, saying the judge ignored 'critical and distinguishing facts.' 'Pino, an experienced professional limousine driver carrying eight passengers, turned blindly into a roadway when his view was completely blocked by another car,' Spota said in a statement. 'Pino was driving a vehicle he knew or should have known could never make a safe U-turn under the circumstances.' Lato had argued in court papers that Pino wasn't criminally responsible because he did nothing more than fail to perceive the proximity of an approaching truck as he made the turn. Where to find non-partisan ballot information Thank you for your non-biased bullet points explaining the three state ballot proposals in "A look at the three state... Kautman-Jones endorses Davis Please support Meredith Davis in her re-election to the Genesee County Board of Commissioners - 8th District. I have had... Sophie Taylor (pictured) died when her the BMW she was driving crashed into a wall in Cardiff, south Wales A jilted ex killed her love rival in a high-speed 'Fast and Furious-style' car chase after her victim called her a 'f****** s**t' online, a court heard. Sophie Taylor, 22, died when her BMW smashed into a wall when she was allegedly pursued by 'jealous' 23-year-old Melissa Pesticcio. A court was told Miss Taylor had just begun a relationship with Pesticcio's ex-boyfriend Michael Wheeler, 22. The new relationship led to 'prolonged hostility' between the two women, Cardiff Crown Court heard. Miss Taylor and Pesticcio then exchanged foul-mouthed messages after Wheeler dumped his former girlfriend for Sophie. It resulted in Miss Taylor calling Pesticcio a 'hoe' in Facebook messages between the pair and she would screenshot them and show her friends. In one message, she taunted Pesticcio with the chain of messages about losing her lover. The court heard she wrote: 'You little scab. You're a f***ing s**t, love. Let me tell you, it's never going to be you and him anymore. 'He doesn't like you. He doesn't love you. Why don't you just move on.' Christopher Rees, defending, said Pesticcio had been in a 'long-term relationship' with Wheeler, and was living with him at his parent's home when he began speaking to Miss Taylor. Georgia Flavin, Miss Taylor's best friend, agreed with Mr Rees that Sophie was 'no shrinking violet' and 'wasn't afraid about speaking her mind.' Mr Rees said: 'One of Sophie's issues in the July and August was the overlap with Pesticcio's relationship with Michael Wheeler.' Melissa Pesticcio (left), from Cardiff, denies causing death by dangerous. The court heard Miss Taylor (right) had just begun a relationship with Pesticcio's ex-boyfriend Miss Flavin said she was with Sophie on two occasions when Pesticcio tried to intimidate her friend. She told how Pesticcio pulled up in her car with Wheeler's sister and her children alongside Sophie and shouted abuse at her in the street. Miss Flavin said: 'There was shouting and Sophie just kept her mouth shut and said nothing. It was quite nasty. 'Pesticcio told me "she's lucky I've got kids in the car otherwise I would f***ing kill her".' Miss Flavin said she was also with Sophie when Pesticcio chased her out of a McDonald's car park five days before the fatal crash in her car. She added: 'We stopped at the lights. Pesticcio drove beside us, rolled down the windows and was just shouting things. Michael Wheeler (pictured) has admitted causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving 'When the lights went green Pesticcio drove forward and pulled in front and braked so we had to do an emergency stop so we didn't go into the back of her.' But Miss Taylor's relationship with Wheeler turned sour in a row over money - and a court heard their fallout led to the car chase ending in her tragic death. Miss Taylor died after her black BMW 1 series crashed into a house in Cardiff after she collided at high speed with Wheeler's Vauxhall Corsa. She was allegedly being pursued by Wheeler and Presticcio, who was driving her own BMW. Miss Taylor's passenger Joshua Deguara was seriously injured in the high speed smash last August. Wheeler has admitted causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Pesticcio, from Cardiff, denies causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving. She also denies two other charges of dangerous driving. The trial continues. A 16-month-old has been found dead inside a home just 30 hours after vanishing from her suburban Chicago yard. Toddler Semaj Crosby's mother, Sheri Gordon, reported her missing on Tuesday at about 6.30pm only a few hours after being visited by the Department of Child and Family Services. At the time, Gordon told authorities that her daughter had wandered away from the yard where she had been playing with her cousins, prompting an extensive search of the area that involved more than 100 cops, multiple bloodhounds, divers and volunteer searchers, NBC 5 reported. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO The body of 16-month-old Semaj Crosby was found by investigators 30 hours after her mother, Sheri Gordon, reported her missing from their Joliet Township, Illinois yard Thirty hours after her disappearance, Crosby's body was found by police in a house at the center of what had been the search area in Joliet Township, Illinois. The Will County Sheriff's Office stated that Gordon's attorney who she'd hired during the day helped authorities obtain consent to search the house at around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, an hour before Crosby's body was found inside. According to WGNTV, Crosby was found in the same home that she lived in with Gordon. On the day she was reported missing, NBC 5 said that Gordon and family members were seen going in and out of the house. Sheri Gordon said her daughter was in the yard playing with cousins when she wandered away, just three hours after they were visited by the Department of Child and Family Services Crosby was reportedly found inside her own home about 30 hours after she went missing Investigators found Crosby's body in the house that she reportedly lived in, after gaining permission to search it from the attorney who Gordon had hired that day The Department of Child and Family Services said Wednesday that Gordon was being investigated on an allegation of neglect. 'We have had prior contact with this family including four unfounded investigations for neglect and two prior pending investigation[s] for neglect opened in March 2017,' DCFS spokesperson Veronica Resa said in a statement, according to CBS Chicago. 'DCFS had been at the home on April 25 at approximately 3:20 p.m. and had seen all three of the mother's children including Semaj. There were no obvious hazards or safety concerns at that time.' Resa also stated that the DCFS had been working with Gordon and her children since September 2016. Crosby's autopsy is scheduled for today, to determine the cause of her death. A Palm Coast, Florida couple accused of sexually abusing children on their Skype calls with each other appeared in court on Wednesday for a hearing. Paul Dykes Jr., 20, and Erin Vickers, 22, are facing a combined 78 charges related to the alleged abuse. Prosecutors say they were a couple in March 2015, when cops raided Dykes' home and found a horrifying cache of child pornography on his laptop and cellphone. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, forensic analysts found more than 1,000 child porn pictures and videos on Dykes' laptop and pictures and videos on his cellphone showing him performing sexual acts on a two-year-old girl. Palm Coast, Florida couple Paul Dykes Jr., 20 (left), and Erin Vickers, 22 (right), face a combined 78 charges related to the sexual abuse of young children A few of the images recovered on his phone showed a woman performing sex acts on a one-year-old girl, who was later identified as Vickers. Cops then raided her home and found 64 similar images on her cellphone, 40 of which appeared to be duplicates. In court on Wednesday, Vickers' lawyer argued that her April 2015 interview with police not be admissible during the trial. The interview allegedly includes lurid details of how she sexually abused children during her Skype talks with Dykes. The couple have been held without bail since their arrest two years ago. Their separate trials could start as soon as June. Both face a count each of capital sexual battery, which carries a mandatory life in prison sentence if convicted. Dykes also faces 20 counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child, one count of sexual battery to a child under 12 by a perpetrator 18 or older, two counts of transmission of child pornography by electronic device or equipment and 10 counts of possession of child pornography. Vickers faces 20 counts each of transmission of material harmful to minors and promoting a sexual performance by a child, as well as one count of sexual battery to a victim under 12. Vickers faces two other felony counts related to a previous arrest for which she was still on parole. In 2013, Vickers was arrested in Polk County when she went with her then-boyfriend to meet a 14-year-old girl who ended up being an undercover deputy. Her lawyers want that arrest not to be mentioned during the trial. The image was cooked up to herald 68 years of the modern Chinese navy, which was created after Mao's communists defeated Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalists in 1949 China's defence ministry has been left red-faced after a poster celebrating the 68th birthday of the People's Liberation Army Navy was exposed as containing American ships and Russian planes. The poster showed an image of the Liaoning, the country's first aircraft carrier - which was itself built in the Soviet Union and bought from Russia - and declared: 'Happy birthday, People's Liberation Army Navy!' But military experts soon spotted that whoever had designed the poster had dropped several major clangers. The jet which appears to be taking off from the deck of the carrier is in fact a Russian MiG-35 fighter aircraft, not a Chinese plane. And worse still, considering the tensions between Beijing and Washington, the ships seen shadowing the Liaoning were US amphibious assault ships, not Chinese vessels. Even the three Chinese fighter jets at the top of the poster are wrong. They are J-10s, which are used by the air force, rather than J-15s which are designed to take off and land on carriers. Scroll down for video The image used China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, but a designer had Photoshopped in a Russian jet and two American ships instead of Chinese vessels The South China Morning Post reported the poster had been widely mocked by users of the social media site Weibo. One Weibo user wrote: 'The officials are wrong! Go die! We are so patriotic in vain!' 'This poster is the standard of a street photocopy shop,' said another. The Liaoning (pictured), the carrier which featured in the poster, was actually built in the Soviet Union and was known as the Varyag until it was sold to China in 1998 Ironically the botched poster, which appeared on the defence ministry's own blog, appeared only days before China launched its first home-grown aircraft carrier. The 50,000-ton carrier, based on a Soviet Kuznetsov class design, was towed from its dockyard in the northern port city of Dalian yesterday. But the unnamed carrier's launch was almost eclipsed by the fiasco over the poster. The row about the bungled poster almost overshadowed the launch yesterday of China's first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier. The ship (pictured), which has no name, is due to come into service in 2020 Defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said he was 'sincerely sorry' the image used was 'not meticulous'. 'The carelessness was with the editor, the responsibility is on the shoulders of the leadership,' he said ominously. Chinese media website Huanqiu said it was the first time the defence ministry had ever admitted such a mistake and the South China Morning Post even claimed they had managed to turn a PR disaster into a positive story. One Weibo user wrote: 'This is the right way to deal with the public. Refusing to admit a mistake or deleting messages are not as good as honestly admitting a mistake and bravely accepting responsibilityReally hope the government can understand this principle at all levels.' China will continue to conduct live fire drills and test new weapons to safeguard its national security, the country's defence ministry said on Thursday when asked about the deployment of the US anti-missile defence system THAAD in South Korea. Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun made the comment at a monthly news briefing in Beijing. 'The deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea damages the regional strategic balance and stability. The Chinese side is resolutely opposed to this,' Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters. 'Chinas military will continue to carry out live-fire military exercises and test new military equipment in order to firmly safeguard national security and regional peace and stability.' China's Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said that the deployment of the THAAD anti-missile in South Korea system threatens to damage 'strategic balance and stability' in the region The country's two-seat FC-1 Xiaolong took off on Thursday as Beijing showed its new fighter jet The jet's sub-assembly ceremony (pictured) took place on April 26, 2016. The aircraft is jointly developed by China and Pakistan. It's known as JF-17 in Pakistan China has long promoted dialogue to resolve the 'Korean nuclear issue' as North Korea has repeatedly threatened to destroy the United States which in turn has warned that 'all options are on the table' in ending North Korean provocations. The Trump administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programmes, which are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure. South Korea and the United States agreed on Thursday on 'swift punitive measures' against North Korea in the event of further provocation. The South also said the deployment of a US anti-missile defence system was moving ahead effectively a day after angry protests against the battery and fierce opposition from China. The top US Commander in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, said on Wednesday the THAAD system would be operational 'in coming days' bolstering the ability to defend the US ally and the 28,500 US troops stationed there. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system works by a network of radars picking up on any incoming threats. The command centre then sends a signal to the THAAD launcher which sends its own missile into the path of the threat. It intercepts any incoming rockets before it hits its intended target. A North Korean government official has vowed the country will 'never stop' nuclear and missile tests for as long as the US continues to show 'hostile acts' of aggression. 'The nuclear test is an important part of our continued efforts to strengthen our nuclear forces,' said Sok Chol Won, director of the North's Institute of Human Rights at the Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday. US Forces oversee trucks carrying parts required to set up the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system that had arrived at the Osan Air Base on March 6, 2017 in Pyeongtaek, South Korea The THAAD anti-missile defence system (pictured) was allegedly targeted by Chinese hackers 'As long as America continues its hostile acts of aggression, we will never stop nuclear and missile tests,' he warned. His comments come after North Korea conducted its biggest ever live-fire artillery exercise to mark the 85th anniversary of its military's creation on Tuesday. The government official also defended his country on the subject of human rights and its supreme leader Kim Jong-un. When asked about the statements made by defectors of the terrible conditions in North Korean prison camps, where thousands of men and children are believed to be held, Sok Chol Won said: 'Those people are criminals who ran away, they're paid to lie and encouraged by the US and their followers.' Meanwhile, China presented its latest fighter jet to the world on Thursday. The first twin-seat FC-1 Xiaolong completed its maiden flight at a Chinese air base, announced the state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). The light-weight multi-role aircraft is a variant from the original single-seat FC-1, which is jointly developed by China and Pakistan based on a country-level collaboration agreement in 1999. FC-1 Xiaolong's full name is 'Fighter China-1 Fierce Dragon'. The jet is known in Pakistan as the JK-17 Thunder, or 'Joint Fighter-17 Thunder'. The new model took the maiden flight at an air base in Chengdu, south-west China, this morning local time. The aircraft is said to be a dedicated trainer jet. The news came one day after China launched its first ever self-built aircraft carrier in the port city of Dalian. North Korea has warned of a nuclear holocaust if Southeast Asian countries do not join forces in the wake of US military drills in the region. A North Korean government official has vowed the country will 'never stop' nuclear and missile tests for as long as the US continues to show 'hostile acts' of aggression.. Pictured above, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday marking the 85th anniversary of the country's military's creation Fiery explosions are pictured during a military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) on Tuesday Hundreds of weapons were fired across the sea in North Korea, in the military demonstration on Tuesday. It was said to be a "Combined Fire Demonstration" held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan In a letter to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' secretary general, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-Ho insisted the situation on the Korean Peninsula was 'reaching the brink of war' because of Washington's actions. He urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chief to inform the 10 countries' foreign ministers 'about the grave situation' on the peninsula 'and give them a proper proposal', and also heavily criticised US-South Korean military exercises. Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks in the wake of a series of North Korean missile tests and tough rhetoric from Washington on the isolated nation's rogue weapons programme. The North's letter, dated March 23, emerged ahead of the regional bloc's summit this week in Manila where delegates are expected to discuss the situation on the peninsula. It read: 'I express my expectations that ASEAN which attaches great importance to the regional peace and stability will make an issue of the US-South Korean joint military exercises at ASEAN conferences from the fair position and play an active role in safeguarding the peace and safety of Korean Peninsula.' A draft of ASEAN's end-of-summit chairman statement obtained this week had a portion on the Korean Peninsula still blank, meaning the leaders had yet to agree on what to say on the issue. North Korea is known to have close ties with some ASEAN members, including Cambodia and Laos. Pyongyang's diplomatic ties with Malaysia were disrupted after the assassination in Kuala Lumpur in February of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to blame President Obama for the Mike Flynn fiasco Thursday by saying it was the prior administration that renewed Flynn's security clearance. Spicer brought up Obama who himself fired Flynn years ago hours after it was publicly revealed that a Pentagon inspector general is launching an investigation into Flynn, who served as one of Trump's key advisors during the campaign. Trump brought Flynn into the White House as his national security advisor despite public press reports before the election about a paid speech he made for the anniversary of Kremlin-backed Russia Today. He was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2015 event. Flynn traveled with Trump all over the country during the campaign, advising Trump and regularly tearing into Hillary Clinton at public rallies. Scroll down for video In the crosshairs: Michael Flynn was sacked by Trump in February and now faces the disclosure he may have broken federal law over his dinner attended by Vladimir Putin in 2015 'His clearance was last reissued by the Obama administration in 2016, with full knowledge of his activities that occurred in 2015,' Spicer said when pressed repeatedly about Flynn at the White House press briefing. Asked whether the White House had properly vetted Flynn before bringing him on, Spicer repeatedly returned to the process whereby career officials run background checks on high level officials. 'If you have a top security clearance, you fill out a form, there's an investigation done. You are reinvestigated every five years if you are able to maintain that clearance,' he said. 'All of that clearance was made during the Obama administration,' Spicer said, repeatedly bringing up the Obama administration. At one point, Spicer got personal with CNN's Jim Acosta, bringing up White House activities for a special day where people were encouraged to bring their kids to work. 'Calm down. The kids have gone,' Spicer said. Flynn resigned under pressure after it was revealed he hadn't disclosed to vice president Mike Pence that he had met with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Representative, Elijah Cummings (D-MD) accused the White House of 'covering up for Michael Flynn' Obama dismissed Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency after clashes over what Flynn believed to be his own tougher posture on battling Islamic extremism. Asked about Trump's decision to fire Flynn and about whether in hindsight it was a mistake to bring him in, Spicer said: 'The president made the right call at the right time and it's clearly paid off.' A Pentagon inspector general is launching its own investigation into whether Flynn took payments from foreign entities without approval, according to a letter released by House Democrats on Thursday. The inspector general of the Department of Defense is probing whether Flynn had 'failed to obtain required approval prior to receiving any emolument from a foreign government,' according to the April 11 letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Documents released by the IG reveal that when he left the Army, Flynn received a 'post-government employment' letter that advised him explicitly of the 'legal restrictions concerning foreign compensation and instructed to report any potential receipt of compensation in advance to the Department of the Army.' Flynn had been the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring in 2014. Nevertheless, the DIA 'did not locate any records' of Flynn 'seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source.' House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) slapped at the White House at a press conference where he released the documents, going after Press Secretary Sean Spicer for saying the White House had done what it could to comply with document requests. 'Come on, man,' he said. 'I honestly do not understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn, after the president fired him for lying,' Cummings said. The White House declined a request to turn over documents from Flynn's security clearance application. 'It makes the American people think the White House has something to hide. There is obviously a paper trail that the White House does not want our Committee to follow,' Cummings said. 'There is not one shred of evidence that Gen. Flynn got permission to receive this foreign money or that he acknowledged receipt of it,' Cummings said. 'These guys are playing games. And when you see Mr. Spicer you can tell him I said that todya.' Cummings noted that he and Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz had made a bipartisan document request, and said he didn't think Chaffetz' departure for foot surgery would slow down further requests. Verdict: Democrat Elijah Cummings (left) and Republican Jason Chaffetz (right), the leaders of the oversight committee, said there was no evidence Flynn complied with federal law Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, responded in a statement, 'We respectfully disagree with Representative Cummings' characterization of the April 7, 2017 letter from DIA to the Committee. DIA's letter actually confirms, in a terse section that is partly redacted, that General Flynn provided information and documents on a thumb drive to the Department of Defense concerning the RT speaking event in Moscow, including documents reflecting that he was using a speakers' bureau for the event.' According to a statement from Cummings's office: 'The new DIA letter counters the suggestion by Flynn's attorney on Tuesday that Flynn followed appropriate procedures for accepting foreign funds for his trip to Moscow in December 2015 when he dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin.' If no other documents turn up, that would mean Flynn did not get advance permission to accept $45,000 from Kremlin-backed Russia Today for a 2015 appearance in Moscow where he was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the DIA, the Army wrote that it 'had located no records pertaining to a possible violation of the Emoluments Clause' by Flynn. The White House had distanced itself on Tuesday from allegations of illegal conduct against Flynn. Senior members of Congress on the House Oversight Committee say classified military documents show Flynn did not ask permission for or inform the U.S. government about payments he received for appearances before Russian organizations in 2015 and for lobbying that helped Turkey's government. Flynn's failure to obtain permission from military authorities for the payments raises concern whether the retired general violated a constitutional ban on foreign payments to retired military officers. Scroll down for video Handshake: Flynn was paid $45,000 for the speech at this dinner which saw him shake hands with Russian president Vladimir Putin Republican Congressman from Utah Jason Chaffetz (R) and Democratic Congressman from Maryland Elijah Cummings (L), both with the House Oversight Committee, announce that President Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did not disclose payments from Russia for a 2015 speech The two leaders of the oversight committee said there was no evidence Flynn complied with federal law. They said Flynn could be criminally prosecuted, and they said Flynn should surrender the money he was paid. The Kremlin TV channel RT paid Flynn $45,000 to give a speech in Moscow at a dinner celebrating its tenth anniversary. He sat beside Vladimir Putin for the dinner, and was photographed shaking the Russian strongman's hand. The White House has been accused of refusing to provide lawmakers with information and documents related to Flynn's security clearance and payments from organizations tied to the Russian and Turkish governments. The committee made six requests, and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them. Trump's spokesman said 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had complied with Congress to the best of its ability at a Tuesday briefing. 'The documents in question the Department of Defense possessed and sent over to them. The documents that occurred before he worked here, it will be up to him to turn over,' Sean Spicer said. Of their requests for White House records, he contended, 'Every document that they asked for, my understanding is that they've gotten.' The only ask they made that the White House did not cooperate with was a request for 'every call and contact that he made - which is an extraordinary number.' 'That's a very unwieldy request,' he contended. Trump has said he fired Flynn because of misleading comments he made to the vice president about his discussions with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Flynn is among the Trump associates being investigated by Congress and the FBI for possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Former acting attorney general Sally Yates is scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing next month on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yates is to appear May 8 along with James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence. The hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee was announced Tuesday morning. It will mark her first appearance on Capitol Hill since she was fired in late January after refusing to defend President Donald Trump's travel ban. The hearings are part of an overlapping series of investigations being held by the House and Senate. Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress refused Democrats' calls for a special prosecutor or select committee to investigate possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including possible links between Trump's campaign and Moscow, saying investigations by congressional committees are sufficient. Inner sanctum: Flynn was a key member of Trump's team in his first days in office as National Security Advisor until he was sacked for lying Question time: James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, is to given evidence to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday about questions over Putin's interference in the election U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Putin had ordered hacking of the computers of the Democratic National Committee as well as the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign in order to influence the election on Trump's behalf. Russia has denied this. Clinton has claimed it was part of the reason she lost. The Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department all launched investigations into the matter under President Barack Obama. The following are some of the ways congressional committees, whose investigations are expected to last for many months, are looking into the matter: The House Oversight Committee made six requests for documents on Michael Flynn and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them Marc Short responded to the requests saying Flynn's activities and payments in question 'predate' the former national security adviser's service at the White House, therefore they could not accommodate the requests HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence began its investigation of potential Russian influence on the 2016 presidential race before Trump took office on Jan. 20. The panel's chairman, Republican Representative Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally, recused himself from the investigation last month. Before he stepped aside, Democrats had questioned whether the committee could conduct a credible investigation after Nunes received information at the White House about surveillance and discussed it with Trump before briefing Democrats on the committee. Nunes was replaced as leader of the House investigation by Republican Representative Mike Conaway, an intelligence panel member. The committee held a high-profile public hearing on March 20 with testimony by FBI Director James Comey and NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers. But Nunes canceled another planned public hearing, with former Obama administration officials James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and ex-CIA Director James Brennan, causing committee Democrats to accuse him of political motivations. The two parties reached a solution last week, announcing a closed hearing with Comey and Rogers for May 2, and a public one with the Obama administration officials for an as-yet-to-be-determined date. SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is conducting its own investigation, which also started before Trump took office. Staffers have begun interviewing intelligence analysts involved in the report announced in January that charged Russia with seeking to influence the election on Trump's behalf. Its chairman, Senator Richard Burr, was re-elected in November in the Republican sweep that carried Trump into office and preserved Republican control of Congress. He and Senator Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, have pledged that their investigation would be bipartisan despite questions over Burr's close ties to the White House. But far fewer staff members have been assigned to the panel's investigation than previous high-profile intelligence probes in Congress, according to sources and a Reuters review of public records. Witness: Sally Yates, ousted deputy attorney general, will testify to the judiciary committee on Wednesday SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the panel's subcommittee on crime and terrorism, and Sheldon Whitehouse, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, are looking into Russian attempts to influence the election. The subcommittee announced on Tuesday that it would hold a public hearing on May 8 with testimony by Yates and Clapper. Its chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, and top Democrat Dianne Feinstein also have had officials brief panel members. SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE The Appropriations subcommittee that oversees U.S. government spending for the State Department and Foreign Operations, which is also chaired by Senator Graham, has also held hearings on Russian attempts to influence elections. HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE Representative Jason Chaffetz, the committee's Republican chairman, has resisted calls to investigate the Trump administration. After Flynn resigned as Trump's national security adviser because of his calls to Russia's ambassador, Chaffetz said his panel would not look into the issue. Chaffetz announced last week that he would not run for re-election in 2018, and said he might leave office even before the end of his term. German police have shot a man wielding a gun at a Berlin hospital after he refused to surrender, it has emerged. Armed officers were called in amid reports of a 'threat situation' at the medical centre in the German capital's neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. After repeated warnings from police, a marksman opened fire shooting the suspect in the thigh in the car park of the Urbankrankenhaus. Scroll down for video German police have shot a man wielding a gun at a Berlin hospital after he refused to surrender, it has emerged . Police are pictured at the scene this afternoon A large area has been cordoned off around the hospital as investigations get underway. Reports suggest officers acted out of 'self-defence' after the man threatened police with a gun. The man's injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. A large area has been cordoned off around the hospital as investigations get underway After repeated warnings from police, a marksman opened fire shooting the suspect in the thigh in the car park of the Urbankrankenhaus Further details of the incident have yet to be released by police. Germany remains on high alert following a string of terror attacks on the country. In December, an ISIS fanatic drove a lorry through crowds of revellers killing 12 at a Christmas market in Berlin. Pope Francis has asked his Christian followers to pray for him as he heads to Egypt as a 'pilgrim of peace' tomorrow. The head of the Catholic church made the plea on Twitter as a Vatican spokesman confirmed the pontiff would not be using an armoured car as his predecessors did for foreign trips. His move is especially bold given it comes just weeks after two Palm Sunday suicide bombings on Egyptian churches that killed at least 45 people. Scroll down for video Pope Francis, pictured above at the Vatican yesterday, has asked his followers to pray for him as he heads to Egypt tomorrow His bold trip comes just weeks after 45 people were killed in two suicide bombings on churches in Tanta and Alexandria in the Middle Eastern country Pope Francis is facing a religious and diplomatic balancing act as he heads to the Middle East, where he is hoping to comfort the Christian community after a spate of Islamic attacks while seeking to improve relations with Muslim leaders. Security has been tightened, with shops ordered closed and police conducting door-to-door checks in the upscale Cairo neighborhood where Francis will stay Friday night. His only public Mass is being held at a military-run stadium. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis wasn't overly concerned and wouldn't be riding in a protected car. Pope Francis tweeted to his 10.6 million followers today to ask them to pray for his journey of peace to Egypt Unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis has said he will not ride in an armoured car - meaning he is unlikely to be seen riding in his bullet-proof popemobile St Mark's Coptic Cathedral in Alexandria was one of the Christian holy places targeted on April 9. Pictured above, a frame from a video showing the moment the bomb was detonated Pope Francis's spokesman Greg Burke said the terror attacks in Egypt earlier this month represent the world of the 'new normal' Francis insisted on going ahead with the trip even after the bombings in Tanta and Alexandria as well as the subsequent attack at the famed St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai. 'We're in the world of "new normal",' Burke said. 'But we go forward with serenity.' The highlight of the two-day trip will be Francis' visit Friday to Al-Azhar, the revered 1,000-year-old seat of learning in Sunni Islam. There, he will meet privately with grand imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, and participate in an international peace conference. Egyptian Jesuit the Rev Henri Boulad told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that there is 'a problem within Islam', showing a divide between the Pope and his fellow Christians in the Middle East. Above, Christians mourn the dead one day after the twin attacks on Palm Sunday Francis has insisted that Christian-Muslim dialogue is the only way to overcome Islamic extremism of the kind that has targeted Christians and driven them from their 2,000-year-old communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. While condemning extremist attacks against Christians, he has said he is traveling to Egypt as a messenger of peace at a time when the world is 'torn by blind violence.' But his message of dialogue and tolerance has been rejected as naive by even some of his fellow Jesuits, for whom Islam remains 'a religion of the sword' that has failed to modernize. Even ordinary Egyptian Christians see his visit as a nice gesture but one that ultimately won't change their reality. The Pope has worked hard to restore relations between the Catholic church and Egypt's revered Al-Azar institution 'He has been saying the same words for years, which is all about love and tolerance, but political Islam ruined the world and the most important change should come from Al-Azhar,' said John, a 24-year-old Coptic Christian student from Cairo who declined to give his last name because he feared reprisals. The visit, though, marks a diplomatic breakthrough for Rome after Al-Azhar severed relations with the Vatican in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI demanded Egypt better protect its Christian minority following a New Year's Eve church bombing that killed more than 20 people. Francis has spent the better part of his four-year papacy seeking to mend the ties, and last year hosted el-Tayeb at the Vatican. His reciprocal visit will cement the renewed relationship and should help el-Tayeb as he confronts an unprecedented campaign in Egypt's pro-government media accusing Al-Azhar of failing to do enough to combat Islamic extremism. Women weep during the funerals of those killed on Palm Sunday While Al-Azhar has been increasingly vocal in denouncing attacks and trying to spread an image of moderation, 'it is considered by some in Egyptian society to be fundamentally incapable of reforming the religious discourse,' said Michele Brignone, managing editor of Oasis, the Italian journal of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher on religious freedoms at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, concurred. 'There is a difference between the statements released by the institution and its conduct on the ground,' he said. For el-Tayeb, the pope's visit is a timely godsend, showing him as a promoter of Christian-Muslim dialogue who not only scored a visit by Francis, leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, but also Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. Pope Francis is heading to Egypt as a 'pilgrim of peace' after years of violence towards the Coptic minority, which makes up about 10 per cent of the country's population. Above, a man cries on a coffin after the double attack on April 9 Both men are scheduled to participate in Friday's peace conference. The pope's visit will also help Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi bolster his image as a global statesman fighting religious militancy and advocating for interfaith dialogue. The pope's visit, following el-Sissi's recent reception at the White House, will crown the time and effort he has invested in shaking off the international isolation he suffered after his 2013 ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 92 million people, have been strong backers of el-Sissi even after the recent attacks and amid mounting international criticism of human rights violations by his government. Burke, the Vatican spokesman, acknowledged that the pope could be used by leaders for their political ends during his foreign trips. But he insisted Francis has an agenda of his own: to minister to Egypt's tiny Catholic community, express solidarity with the broader Christian community and improve ties with Muslims. Pope Francis will be staying in Cairo during his two-day trip to Egypt That said, even some of Francis' own Jesuit confreres caution that the pope is naive in trying to hold dialogue with Al-Azhar and an Islamic tradition that they say remains stuck in the Middle Ages. The Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, one of the foremost Jesuit experts on Islam, has written extensively about what he considers the fundamental problems of Islam and its failure to modernize, and told Francis his thoughts when they met last June. Another Egyptian Jesuit, the Rev. Henri Boulad, told the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that the ideology presented in Islam's educational books and sermons preached by its imams served as 'continual incitement' for the young. 'This is a problem within Islam, which does not offer responses to the questions of modern life and finds itself facing the need to reform itself,' the Vatican newspaper quoted him as saying. Two US service members were killed during a raid against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. The service members were killed in action in the Achin District of Nangarhar during an operation against ISIS Khorasan, the terror group's affiliate in Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis confirmed. The two, said to be Special Operations Forces soldiers, were medevaced from the scene and later died. Another soldier was wounded, although the injuries are not considered life threatening. The service members were killed in action during an operation against ISIS Khorasan in Afghanistan. Pictured, file photo of US soldiers in Achin earlier this month The troops were on a joint operation conducted by the US and Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in the Achin District, where the US dropped the 'mother of all bombs' two weeks ago. 'Their identities, service, and unit affiliations are being withheld pending next of kin notification,' said Davis. He did not provide additional details about the operation. 'The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice,' said Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. 'On behalf of all U.S. Forces and our coalition partners, I offer our deepest sympathies to the families, friends, and fellow service members of our fallen comrades.' The two deaths came less than three weeks after Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, was killed fighting ISIS-K during another operation in Nangahar, the Pentagon said. It marked the first combat death in Afghanistan this year. The soldiers were on a joint operation in the Achin District, where the US targeted an IS tunnel complex with the 'mother of all bombs' two weeks ago. The region is a hotbed of IS militancy Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, is a hotbed of ISIS militancy. US forces have conducted a number of air strikes on jihadist bases in the area since August last year. ISIS, notorious for its reign of terror in Syria and Iraq, has been making inroads into Afghanistan in recent years, attracting disaffected members of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban as well as Uzbek Islamists. But the group has been steadily losing territory in the face of heavy pressure both from US air strikes and a ground offensive led by Afghan forces. The Islamic State group's strength in Afghanistan has fallen to 600 to 800 fighters from 3,000 in early 2016, NATO has said, adding that it killed the top 12 IS commanders in the country last year. General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, pledged to eliminate ISIS-K from Afghanistan this year. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will increase the US military presence in the country. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis traveled to Afghanistan earlier this week and said: 'We are under no illusions about the challenges associated with this mission.' Jeffrey Merfeld, 50, pleaded not guilty to charges he padlocked a weighted chain around his 14-year-old nephew's waist to prevent him from running away An Iowa man accused of padlocking a weighted chain around his 14-year-old nephew's waist to prevent him from running away has pleaded not guilty. Jeffrey Merfeld, 50, and the boy's parents, Michael and Cynthia Kobusch, both 49, are charged with child endangerment causing injury, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald reports. Merfeld's plea was submitted Tuesday. Court records don't show whether the couple has submitted pleas. The records don't list an attorney who could comment on their behalf. All three defendants live in Peosta, 180 miles northeast of Des Moines. Cynthia Kobusch told an investigator that she had been searching for a way to attach a GPS to her son - a frequent runaway - and had asked her brother to 'make a chain' and fashion it so the boy couldn't cut it off, according to court documents. Court documents said Merfeld acknowledged putting the chain around the boy. The unidentified boy was reported missing December 30, and when he was found January 11 he had a handwritten account of what he said was abuse by Merfeld and healing blood blisters he had gotten from the chain. The boy's parents, Michael and Cynthia Kobusch, both 49, are also charged with child endangerment causing injury. She told her brother to chain the boy so he couldn't run away Two unidentified witnesses back up the boy's claims. A neighbor with the last name Hermsen told ABC 9 that he saw the boy walking around with a four-foot black chain with weights on the end. He had run away in October and, after he was found November 8, was taken to his uncle's by his older brother because their parents were in South Carolina, KWWL reports. Before his parents returned November 12, the boy said Merfeld padlocked a chain around his waist and attached a five-to-seven-pound weight at his repair shop located off Highway 20. The boy was allegedly chained at Merfeld's repair shop (above) and forced to work there wearing only the weighted chain and a towel around his waist Merfeld allegedly forced the boy to work in the shop wearing only a chain and towel around his waist. The court documents provide various assessments of the heft of the chain and weight, but don't describe how much they restricted his mobility. The boy said his parents left the chain on for two days after they returned to Peosta. Merfeld, who was arrested last week, told The Associated Press at the time that the allegations were 'not true at all', but declined to comment further. Organizations with employees who derive value from AI are 5.9 times more likely to see financial benefits from it A warden is being investigated for murder after a boy who had his legs amputated after an alleged beating at a school in Malaysia died from his injuries. Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi, 11, was in an induced coma for a month at the High Dependency Ward in the Sultan Ismail Hospital before he passed away. Police say the boy and 14 others were lashed with a water hose because they made a noise in the school's Islamic assembly building. Officers detained the suspect at his house in Felda Lok Heng Barat as an investigation was launched into alleged abuse at the school. Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi in his hospital bed just days before he died of his injuries The boy died yesterday with his father Mohd Ghadiffi Mat Karim, 43, and his mother Felda Wani Ahmad by his side. Mr Karim said the family had accepted his son's death as fate. The local force said Thaqif had been beaten multiple times by an assistant warden at his school's hostel, the latest being on March 24. Officers obtained a four-day remand order on the 29-year-old suspected attacker, who has served a two-year jail sentence in the past and has a criminal record for theft. The boy's auntie Nurul Nabilah Ahmad, 30, said he was taken to hospital after suffering severe pain which emerged days after it is thought he was beaten at the religious school in Kota Tinggi. Doctors were monitoring a blood clot in his left shoulder and were planning to operate this morning. Sadly, the boy's condition was never stable enough to take him into surgery and he died hours later. Thaqif's legs were amputated on Friday to stop infection spreading and he had undergone surgery a day after he was admitted to treat congealed blood in one of his hands. A Spanish teacher in Alabama is in hot water after authorities say she hosted a boozy post-prom bash for underage students at her home last month. Kimberly Smith, who teaches at Spanish Fort High School, and her husband David were arrested Wednesday on charges of hosting an open house party after the school's prom on March 17. Students admitted to investigators with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office that Smith and her husband set up a bar in their home and served beer and hard alcohol, AL.com reported. Teacher Kimberly Smith (left) and husband David Smith (right) are accused of hosting a booze-filled party for underage students The teacher hoped to keep the party secret, and took measures to stop students from driving drunk. She implored them to 'give her their car keys and phones so they would not drink and drive or post images on social media,' police said. 'Do not tell anyone,' cops say Smith told students, as she 'did not want to get in trouble or lose her job.' The sheriff's office first got wind of the party Friday. Investigators grilled students at the school earlier this week. Smith and her husband turned themselves in and were released after posting $500 bond, court records state. They could face jail time of up to six months in the jail and a fine of $3,000 on the misdemeanor charge. Smith, who has worked at the school since 2005, was placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a human resources probe. This is the homemade bomb allegedly made by an ISIS-inspired jihadi that could have killed and maimed Tube passengers had it gone off, a court heard. Passengers on the London Underground were saved from a shrapnel bomb attack when the initiator in the improvised device failed, jurors were told. Pictures of the device were shown to jurors, revealing a battery and a wall clock with a nail driven through the clock face at number two. Student Damon Smith allegedly left the device on a Jubilee line train at North Greenwich station in South East London before heading to his morning lecture. Forensic investigators found a device with a battery and a wall clock with a nail driven through the clock face at number two The minute hand would come into contact at the 'ten past' position and completed the electrical circuit Student Damon Smith, who is on trial at the Old Bailey, claims the device he planted on the Tube train was only a smoke bomb Smith, 20, who has Asperger's syndrome, was obsessed with weapons and had pictures of Islamic State fighters on his computer, the Old Bailey was told. He allegedly stood in front of the TV to take a photo of himself with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Islamic terrorist killed in a raid after the Paris attacks in 2015. Smith, of Bermondsey, claims the device he planted was only a smoke bomb - and he used ball bearings just to make it look 'real' for a prank. Forensic investigators found some of the tape wrapped round the device was singed - indicating it may have partially functioned, the court was told. The initiator - the component designed to set off the main charge - comprised a modified fairy light with the glass bulb broken coated with the accelerant power from matches The main charge was made up of 152.8g of the explosive material found in sparklers contained in a silver metal flask Images of the device were shown to jurors, revealing a battery and a wall clock with a nail driven through the clock face at number two. The minute hand would come into contact at the 'ten past' position and complete the electrical circuit. The initiator - the component designed to set off the main charge - comprised a modified fairy light with the glass bulb broken coated with the accelerant power from matches. The main charge was made up of 152.8g of the explosive material found in sparklers contained in a silver metal flask. A pound of ball bearings had been stuck to the device using PVA glue. Had it detonated the ball bearings and shards of metal from the flask would have been projected through the train, causing serious injury to anyone it came into contact with. Explosives expert Lorna Philp said that the device was viable but the initiator may not have been powerful enough to ignite the powder from the sparklers. 'It would have been capable of setting off the material contained in this devices - namely the sparkler charge. But sparklers have quite a high ignition temperature. Explosives expert Lorna Philp said that the device, pictured, was viable but the initiator may not have been powerful enough to ignite the powder from the sparklers The court heard that sparkler composition, pictured, does not really produce smoke and is not usually used in any smoke producing device The device had a battery, pictured, attached to a wall clock. These pictures were shown to the court Another battery component that was part of the device is pictured in images released by Metropolitan Police Smith grew up in Devon but had moved with his mother Antonitza (pictured together) after being offered a place at London Metropolitan University to study computer forensics 'Anyone who has ever used a sparkler knows that you might have to hold it in the flame for quite a while before it ignites. 'It's my opinion that this flash of flame [from the initiator] was not sufficient to cause the sparkler composition to ignite in this device.' The court heard that the chemical scraped from the sparklers was still in lumps, but had it been ground up and more tightly packed it would have been much more explosive. 'Had it ignited in this type of metal container it can be made to explode,' said Ms Philp. 'The metal fragments would have the potential to cause injury to persons and damage to property in close proximity to the device.' She described the ball bearings as an 'an attempt to increase the damage that this device would cause if this device had functioned'. A flask with ball bearings and glue inside, in this photograph released by the Met Police The court heard that the chemical scraped from the sparklers was still in lumps, pictured, but had it been ground up and more tightly packed it would have been much more explosive The court heard that sparkler composition does not really produce smoke and is not usually used in any smoke producing device. 'The ball bearings can only be there to cause additional fragments and cause injury and damage - you would not find them in a smoke producing device.' 'Smoke producing devices will generally have a hole or a vent to allow the smoke to escape when the explosive substance is burning. 'There was no vent within the sealed metal flask in this device.' Had it functioned, she said the metal fragments would have been projected at least tens of meters, reaching the end of the carriage and potentially causing injury to any persons on board. On the morning of October 20, Smith caught the train from Surrey Quays - an Overground station close to his home in Rotherhithe - at around 10.30am with the device in a black Adidas holdall. At Canada Water he boarded a Jubilee Line train and changed at Southwark to go in the opposite direction, the Old Bailey heard. He primed the timer mechanism on the device on the train by inserting batteries into the clock and then left the bag on the train between Southwark and London Bridge. Two members of the public spotted it and alerted the driver at North Greenwich station. But the driver thought it was lost property and took it with him into his cab. As he headed on towards North Greenwich, he looked inside and was horrified to see wires protruding from the back of the clock. Both the train and platform at North Greenwich were evacuated and the device was then made safe by a cutting wire. Had the device detonated as planned it would have gone off just as passengers were leaving the platform, the court heard. The weapons-obsessed teenager wanted to cause carnage in the capital, his trial heard Smith was caught on CCTV exiting London Bridge and heading for a Starbucks on Borough High Street where he took off the hoodie he was wearing and left without buying anything. He was then tracked making his way to his university campus in Holloway, North London. From about 11.30pm onwards Smith began carrying out Google searches to try and find news about the terror attack. He allegedly stood in front of the TV to take a photo of himself with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the terrorist killed after the 2015 Paris attacks Jurors heard Smith suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, meaning he has difficulty with social interaction and can become fixated on certain activities. Jonathan Rees QC said: 'What is plain from the evidence you will hear is that the defendant had a keen interest in guns and other weapons. This particular interest may have been a function of his Autism Spectrum Disorder.' Smith grew up in Newton Abbot in Devon but had moved to South London with his mother after being offered a place at London Metropolitan University to study computer forensics. He told officers that he had been brought up a Christian but thought Islam was 'more true' because the Koran predicted scientific facts such as fingerprints. Police found a blank-firing, self-loading pistol at his address and discovered that he had uploaded a video of him firing the gun to YouTube, the court heard. He also had a carbon-dioxide powered revolver designed to fire ball bearings and a sheath knife which had also featured in YouTube videos. An image of a handgun labelled '2016 Islamic State fighter' was found on his university computer, and he was found to have 'liked' various videos of explosions. Police found a blank-firing, self-loading pistol at his home (pictured) in Bermondsey and discovered he had uploaded a video of him firing the gun to YouTube Forensic investigators pieced together pages printed from Al Qaeda magazine Inspire found in a shredder, revealing instructions for a pipe bomb called 'Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom'. A torn up shopping list was also found with a hand-drawn diagram of an electrical circuit and a shopping list of the ingredients needed for a bomb. He had also listed the ingredients needed for a pressure cooker bomb in the 'Notes' app of his mother's iPad, jurors heard, and he had also written 'Face paint to blend into the LGBT crowd'. The list ended with the phrase 'And keep this a secret between me and Allah InspireTheBelievers'. Smith is alleged to have made or acquired a substance between October 18 and October 21, contrary to section 3(1)(b) of the Explosive Substances Act 1883. He denies possession of an explosive substance with intention to endanger life and cause serious injury. The trial continues. The bodies of two sisters who died when their car plummeted into a river have been found in Virginia. Michaela Woodson, 16, was driving her sister Tyauna to school when the tragedy happened in Cumberland County. Michaela, who had recently got her driving license, was at the wheel when the vehicle rode off the road and into the Willis River. Michaela Woodson (left) and her sister Tyauna (right) were killed in yesterday's tragedy in Cumberland County Two sisters died in yesterday's tragedy, which saw their car crash into a river in Virginia Because the river level was high, the car was not seen, and it was only when the teenagers did not arrive at school that they were reported missing, WTVR reports. Tara Rice, whose son knew Michaela and Tyauna, told the network: 'They were beautiful inside and out.' A statement from Cumberland County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Chip Jones said: 'These two beautiful young ladies were a big part of the Cumberland County Public Schools family as they excelled in academics and participated in extracurricular activities such as softball and cheerleading.' The teenagers' bodies were found inside the vehicle, Virginia State Police confirmed. As North Koreans face petrol restrictions, Chinese-made electric vehicles in the country have been spotted sporting roof-mounted solar panels. Last week, a number of drivers in Pyongyang scrambled to fill up their vehicles as petrol stations began limiting services or even closing amid concerns of a spreading shortage. Since the shortage began, two cars in Pyongsong - about 22miles from Pyongyang - were reportedly seen with solar panels affixed to their roofs as a way to create energy. Two Chinese-made electric cars in Pyongsong - about 22miles from Pyongyang, North Korea - were seen with solar panels affixed to their roofs after a petrol shortage was announced in the country Recharging electric vehicles with solar power could reduce the current load on North Koreas electricity power grid. One of the cars pictured featured a sticker bearing logo of Chinese automaker JAC, even though the company does not seem to have solar cars in development. It does, however, have a series of electric-powered cars. The car with the sticker, however, most notably resembled a 2013 update of the Cherry QQ minicar, which is sold as an all-electric vehicle in China. 'These cars were scattered on almost every corner in Pyongsong,' Rowan Beard, a tour guide with the China-based Young Pioneer Tours travel agency told NK News. 'I saw about 30 of them and didn't hear an engine running like a standard motor.' 'I asked a (local) Korean if they're completely reliable on solar and she said they also have charging stations,' he continued. 'So, hybrid electric and solar.' A sign outside one petrol station in the North Korean capital earlier this month said sales were being restricted to diplomats or vehicles used by international organizations, while others were closed or turning away local residents. Drivers in Pyongyang were scrambling to fill up their vehicles earlier this month as petrol stations began limiting services or even closing amid concerns of a spreading shortage (file photo) Lines at other stations were much longer than usual and prices appeared to be rising significantly. The cause of the restrictions or how long they might last were not immediately known. North Korea relies heavily on China for its fuel supply and Beijing has reportedly been tightening its enforcement of international sanctions aimed at getting Pyongyang to abandon its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The issue was raised at a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry news conference in Beijing last week after a Chinese media outlet, Global Times, reported gas stations were restricting service and charging higher prices. But spokesman Lu Kang gave an ambiguous response when asked if China was restricting fuel deliveries. 'As for what kind of policy China is taking, I think you should listen to the authoritative remarks or statements of the Chinese government,' he said, without elaborating on what those remarks or statements are. 'For the remarks made by certain people or circulated online, it is up to you if you want to take them as references.' North Korea relies heavily on China for its fuel supply and Beijing has reportedly been tightening its enforcement of international sanctions aimed at getting Pyongyang to abandon its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Pictured above, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un One of China's top North Korea scholars, Kim Dong-jil, director of the Center for Korean Peninsula Studies of Peking University, said he had not heard of new restrictions on fuel to pressure Pyongyang, but said they are considered to be an option. China's Ministry of Commerce had no immediate comment. It comes as the docking of six North Korean ships at a port in northern China raised questions over a Chinese ban on coal imports. The vessels docked last week in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing, and were loaded with anthracite coal, according to a docking plan published on the port of Jintang's website,CNN reports. Three of the ships had reportedly been due to dock since February, when China announced that in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution it was halting all coal imports from North Korea for 2017. Gasoline was selling at $1.25 per kilogram at one station, up from the previous 70-80 cents. According to a sign outside a station where ordinary North Korean vehicles were being turned away, the restrictions took effect on Wednesday. Gasoline is sold in North Korea by the kilogram, roughly equivalent to a liter (0.26 gallon). A customer talks to a petrol station attendant in Pyongyang, North Korea, last year (file photo) When buying gas in North Korea, customers usually first purchase coupons at a cashier's booth for the amount of fuel they want. After filling up the tank, leftover coupons can be used on later visits until their expiration date. A common amount for the coupons is 15 kilograms (19.65 liters or 5.2 US gallons). Supply is controlled by the state. The military, state ministries and priority projects have the best access. Several chains of gas stations are operated under different state-run enterprises - for example, Air Koryo, the national flagship airline, operates gas stations as well. Prices can vary from one station to another. Traffic in Pyongyang has gotten heavier than in past years, when visitors were often struck by the lack of cars on the capital's broad avenues. The greater number of cars, including swelling fleets of taxis, has been an indication of greater economic activity, as many are used for business purposes, such as transporting people or goods. Andrew Brown (pictured), ex-governor of an exclusive public school, claimed vile child sex abuse images found on his electrical devices were planted by a burglar. He has been sentenced to two years in jail The ex-governor of an exclusive public school who claimed vile child sex abuse images found on his electrical devices were planted by a burglar has been jailed. Ex-music teacher Andrew Brown, 61, claimed a man who burgled his house placed the images on devices he had stolen in order to blackmail him. However, a jury convicted him of downloading more than 600 images and 14 movies of child pornography involving victims as young as three. A court heard how the images showed children being tied, beaten and raped. Brown, who was the former chair of governors at The King's School in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, was heavily involved in the Girl Guides movement, and was also a former music examiner. A judge at Peterborough Crown Court described him as 'very damaged' as he jailed him for two years yesterday. The court heard officers found the pornography on a memory stick, computer and laptop after his home was burgled on October 24, 2015. Brown (above outside court), 61, of Peterborough, Cambs, downloaded more than 600 images and 14 movies of child pornography involving victims as young as three. Peterborough Crown Court heard how the images showed children being tied, beaten and raped But thief Ryan Penfold, who later admitted the burglary, told an associate, 'I do not want these, they contain child pornography, you can have them back.' During the trial, Brown claimed Penfold had planted the images in a bid to blackmail him. Judge Jonathan Cooper told him: 'Your view of children is an utterly repugnant one. 'When you saw these images, you were not repulsed by them, you were attracted by them. 'You are clearly a very damaged man with a warped view of how children in our society should be treated and the appropriate relationship between adults and children. 'You are clearly in other circumstances a talented engaging and committed individual - however, you were a relentless seeker in sadistic material of children. 'As a music teacher yourself, it is all the more sinister that you were searching for imagery of children being abused by their music teacher. 'A child beaten over 100 times as she cried out - these were children who were utterly powerless, humiliated and indeed that was probably your attraction to them. 'Ages down to three or four years and children in a state of quite obvious utter vulnerability. 'You were living in a house where your wife ran a creche where you were actively involved in child care. Brown, who was the former chair of governors at The King's School (above) in Peterborough, was heavily involved in the Girl Guides movement, and was also a former music examiner 'It is noted that your internet activity is very closely associated with contact with children at your house. 'Any sentence that I pass needs to reflect the public interest in protecting children from further such abuse and to punish you for your behaviour. 'Even when it became clear that certain of your devices were used for searches only when you had exclusive access to them, including for example your iPhone when you were abroad conducting music exams, you claimed then that there must have been undetected burglaries when burglars had planted materials on your computers. 'There's been no element of remorse at any stage of proceedings thus far.' Judge Cooper also commended the work of the 'diligent' forensic team who brought him to justice despite Brown installing specialist software to hide his child pornography. The judge said Brown had also 'encouraged' family members by conducting internet searches on his electric devices at times he was downloading child pornographic to give him a false alibi. Along with the jail term, Brown was also banned from working with children, ordered to sign the sex offenders' register for 10 years, and ordered to pay court costs of 2,000. Brown was found guilty of three counts of possessing indecent images of children, two counts of making indecent images of children, and one count of possessing a prohibited image of a child. He was found not guilty of two counts of possessing extreme pornographic images. Defence counsel Barnaby Shaw presented 14 character references supporting his client to the judge. He said Brown would appeal the conviction after 'he lost everything' when he was found guilty of the offences on March 31. Brown, of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, was chair of governors at the King's School in Peterborough between September 2014 and November 2015. He also also worked as a cover supervisor at King's between 2010 and 2014 but no longer has any involvement at the school. Detective Sergeant James Weston, from the Paedophile Online Investigation Team (POLIT), said: 'I am pleased with the decision from the court today - this was a complicated investigation with increased risk because of the defendant's position of trust. 'His denial throughout the investigation regarding the possession of indecent images of children, extreme and prohibited images resulted in extensive digital forensic investigation work and analysis. 'We remain committed to safeguarding the most vulnerable and will take positive action to protect those at risk of significant harm.' In a statement, Darren Ayling, head teacher at The King's School, previously said: 'The school has been assured by Cambridgeshire police that these charges do not relate to any former or current pupils from The King's School.' Mexican villagers believe their crucified Christ statue moved its head during mass. The rare phenomenon is said to have taken place in the church of Santa Ana in Tepetitlan, in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. A video recorded by a devoted person present at the mass during Easter celebrations recorded the moment the Christ figure located in a cross allegedly moves its head. The video has gone viral and the story of this 'miracle', as some villagers have described it, has made national headlines. Estela Gomez, one of the witnesses of this rare phenomenon, told local media: 'He wants to tell us something, he wants something from us' and another villager claimed: 'This could be a miracle'. However, Juan Antonio Guerra Lule, the priest, does not believe it is a miracle, but 'something beautiful that happened during the Seven World sermon during mass.' He thinks that the head of the 300-year-old Christ, that is usually inside a glass coffin and was put on the cross as the tradition says during the Saint Friday celebration mass, collapsed as the fur ropes holding it to the cross were not able to hold it up properly. The crucifix, pictured at the far right of both pictures, can be seen to tilt its head ever so slightly in front of the priest 'It is a natural movement, it is normal', he added. The priest said that he had not called church authorities but he hoped that they would consider it as an unusual event. Mohamed Amrani, pictured outside the Old Bailey, is on trial for sexually assaulting five women in hospitals An internationally respected heart surgeon has been found guilty of molesting two women. Mohamed Amrani, 53, who worked at the Harefield Hospital in west London, is on trial at the Old Bailey over accusations from five women between 2001 and 2014. The consultant, of Harrow, west London, denied all the claims against him. A jury deliberated for 20 hours to find him guilty of twice indecently assaulting a woman by groping her breasts through her clothes between 2003 and 2004 and sexually assaulting another woman in 2014. The court had heard how one victim had complained to the hospital about being indecently assaulted and was allegedly told 'just ignore him, he does it to everyone'. Her husband described it as 'a pretty devastating event' in her life. He told the court she came home and was 'very very upset', adding: 'My wife told me she had been groped and I understood that to be touching her over her clothing in a sexual manner.' Amrani was acquitted of four counts of indecent assault, two of assault by penetration and one of sexual assault. The jury were still deliberating on a charge of rape and were later sent home to resume on Friday morning. The consultant has performed a string of life-saving operations around the world and hit the headlines in 2007 when he performed the UK's first double heart valve replacement using keyhole surgery. An openly anti-Semitic politician tried to trick his opponents into funding his campaign after setting up a fake GoFundMe page. Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a Democrat who is running for City Council in New York, announced on Tuesday that his campaign is aimed at stopping 'greedy Jewish landlords' from 'ethnic cleansing' of black people. Amid an outcry over the pledge, which was announced in a tweet, a GoFundMe appeal started called 'Stop Thomas Lopez-Pierre Hate Campaign' and received almost $6,000 in donations. Scroll down for video Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a Democrat who is running for City Council in New York, caused outrage earlier this week with a series of tweets attacking 'greedy Jewish landlords' The the midst of public outcry this GoFundMe campaign appeared, though Lopez-Pierre has since bragged that he started it himself, calling it 'a bait and switch' But the page was actually being run by Lopez-Pierre himself, who attempted to take the money and spend it on campaign advertising. Lopez-Pierre told the New York Post: 'I call it bait and switch. 'I intend to use the money to pay for my marketing expenses. The people who are doing this oppose me. I thank them for their support.' However, GoFundMe told Mail Online that the funds have been placed on hold after the campaign was deleted by the organizer. The spokesman said the money will remain on hold pending further investigations and will be returned to the donors if it turns out the campaign was fraudulent. While Lopez-Pierre claims he will be using the money to buy advertising, GoFundMe says the money is being held while an investigation is carried out Lopez-Pierre is trying to win a council primary election for a seat in upper Manhattan that is held by heavily favored incumbent Mark Levine, who is Jewish. Mr Levine said: 'I absolutely believe he should be removed from the [Democratic] party. We dont want someone in our party who is an anti-Semite, misogynist and homophobe. He branded the appeal 'a pretty clear case of fraud.' Democrat officials say an investigation into Lopez-Pierre's conduct has been launched, and they are seeking ways to remove him. A teenager allegedly bashed her grandfather to death with a frying pan after he criticised her mothers parenting skills on Anzac Day. Tayla Perkin, 18, is accused of bludgeoned her war veteran grandfather Lyall Ellis, 89, after a verbal argument turned physical in his Esperance home in Western Australia. Footage shows the teen boarding a plane under police guard as she is flown to Kalgoorlie prison before her next court appearance, reports The West. Tayla Perkin (pictured), 18, boards a plane under police guard after being charged with murdering her grandfather Ms Perkin, who was living with her grandfather at the time of the alleged attack, reportedly flew into a rage during the row. Mr Ellis was rushed to Esperance Hospital - only a one minute drive away - but died on Tuesday night. Major Crime Squad officers from Perth established a crime scene outside the home. It is understood Ms Perkins younger brother, a toddler, was also home during the incident. Ms Perkin was initially charged with grievous bodily harm on Wednesday, but the charges were upgraded to murder on Thursday. The 18-year-old wept in court, where she was supported by her mother and a friend. The teenager (pictured) allegedly bashed her grandfather to death with a frying pan after he criticised her mothers parenting skills Major Crime Squad officers from Perth established a crime scene outside the home (pictured) The Islamist terror group responsible for the deadly Bali bombings has regained its strength in Indonesia and is training the next generation of extremists, a think tank says. Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was responsible for the October 2002 atrocity in the Kuta nightclub district which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and 28 Britons. The al-Qaeda-linked group was behind the two bombs that killed tourists from 21 countries at Paddy's Irish Bar and the nearby Sari Club. Jemaah Islamiah was responsible for the October 2002 Bali bombing which killed 88 Australians The terror group was behind the car bomb attack in Kuta that killed 202 people from 21 nations A breakaway faction led by Noordin Top plotted the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta and the second set of Bali bombings in 2005, which killed four Australians. Now, a new report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) said Jemaah Islamiyah was set to become more militant as young recruits pushed for violent jihad. 'That makes JI's military wing particularly problematic, because young men given training, however rudimentary, for jihad are likely to be impatient to test their skills,' the report said. The think tank said militant wings had split off from JI throughout its history and this was set to happen again, as younger recruits challenged the existing leadership's rejection of violence. The Bali bombings killed 88 Australians, who were among the 202 victims in October 2002 A breakaway group led by Noordin Top was behind two simultaneous Bali bombings in 2005 JI is also building a clandestine military wing in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, which could lead to the emergence of a more militant faction. 'The current JI could give rise to a more militant splinter that could be more professional in its organisation, training and recruitment than anything Indonesian extremism has to offer today,' said the IPAC report headed by veteran security analyst Sidney Jones. JI was founded by a handful of exiled Indonesian militants in Malaysia in the 1980s, and grew to include cells across Southeast Asia. The 2002 Bali bombings led to a crackdown on Jemaah Islamiyah by Indonesian authorities Firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was a spiritual leader of the Bali bombers, including Amrozi who is pictured behind him The 2002 Bali bombings prompted Indonesian security forces to mount a sustained crackdown that was credited with almost wiping out JI. However since 2010 JI has been regaining strength, and recent arrests of members suggest it should still be considered a danger, said IPAC. JI's leaders are strongly opposed to the Islamic State (IS) group. IS has in recent years been a major problem for Indonesia, with hundreds of radicals flocking to fight with the jihadists. A deadly attack in Jakarta last year was claimed by the group. Theresa May and many others have paid tribute to the 'hero' police and 'unseen and unheard' spies behind the arrest of the Whitehall terror suspect today. The unnamed 27-year-old appears to have been trailed by Scotland Yard officers and MI5 before he was pinned to the ground for allegedly carrying a 'rucksuck' of knives. Scotland Yard has confirmed that the arrest was terror-related and part of an 'ongoing operation' and that nobody was injured. The Prime Minister and members of the public have thanked the officers involved in the high profile operation just five weeks after Khalid Masood's murderous attack on Westminster Bridge and on PC Keith Palmer in the shadow of Big Ben. Praise: Theresa May has today paid tribute to the 'hero' police and spies behind the arrest of the Whitehall terror suspect This is the face of a terror suspect tackled to the floor today in Whitehall, where knives were seen strewn across the floor At least three knives were seen laying on the floor after a team of officers swooped and tackled the man to the ground Witnesses described seeing the bearded man being stopped and searched when officers jumped out of a car in front of him yards from Parliament Square. Armed police in around a dozen unmarked cars then surrounded him 'like a swarm of bees' and held him to the ground at gunpoint. Theresa May and many others have praised the authorities for their intervention just yards from Downing Street. She said: 'I think it shows our police and intelligence and security services are on alert, as they always are, looking to keep us safe and secure. 'We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. They are often unseen, unheard, yet the job they do, day in and day out, is really important and we should thank them for it'. The Prime Minister was away from Number 10 on a campaign visit at the time of the incident, which did not disrupt work in Downing Street. The suspect was held yards from the scene of last month's terror attack by Khalid Masood. The bearded suspect, who was dressed in dark clothing, was wrestled to the ground on a traffic island at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall, close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. Images from the scene showed three knives and what appeared to be a mobile on the ground close to a brown rucksack. Support: The public and the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan have also rushed to praise the police and security services today An officer in forensic overalls could be seen taking photographs of the knives. The suspect was detained at the scene for several minutes within view of journalists and passers by before he was eventually taken away in a police vehicle. Recruiters Harry Peasnell, 27, and Andy Burnage, 22, were leaving the adjacent building which houses various Government offices after a meeting with officials when they were told over the tannoy the usual entrance on to Whitehall was closed. As they made their way back towards Parliament from the alternative House Guards Road entrance they said they were pushed back up Great George Street by several plain clothes police officers. They then made their way to Parliament Square where they said they saw a man in his 20s or 30s, who they thought was the suspect, being spoken to by police next to the wall of the offices. Mr Peasnell, who says he regularly has meetings in Westminster, said police were 'quick on the scene' and that he was not worried like he was during the terror attack in the area just weeks ago. 'Last time all the buildings were on lockdown and no one was allowed to leave,' he said. The wife of the Tennessee teacher who went on the run with his 15-year-old student claims he admitted he's slept with the teen and begged her forgiveness after he was caught. Jill Cummins, who filed for divorce from Tad Cummins after he ran off with Elizabeth Thomas five weeks ago, said her husband made the confession during a phone call from jail. Mrs Cummins told Inside Edition she had asked him straight out; 'did you sleep with her?' 'Yes I did,' he replied, according to his wife who said she hadn't wanted to hear any details of their relationship, but she had already known the truth. 'I just wanted to hear it from him to me.' Jill Cummins, the wife of Tad Cummins, who went on the run with his 15-year-old student claims he admitted he's slept with the teen and begged her forgiveness after he was caught Tad Cummins, 50, (left) disappeared with 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas (right) last month and was on the run for 39 days before police caught up with them in a California cabin The disgraced teacher had tried to beg his wife for forgiveness but Mrs Cummins said it was too late. 'I won't let him hurt me like that again,' she said, adding that Tad keeps calling her from jail but she refuses to pick up. 'I will not let him betray me like that again. I won't give him the opportunity, ever again.' He pretty much just over and over said, "I'm sorry" Tad Cummins, 50, was arrested last week in northern California in a cabin near Cecilville, California, where he was hiding out with 15-year-old Thomas after the pair vanished from their hometown of Columbia, Tennessee, on March 13. Their disappearance sparked a nationwide manhunt and Amber Alerts in several states before they were finally tracked down on April 20. His wife, a grandmother and mother-of-two, spent the weekend being comforted by daughter Erika, 29, and son-in-law Blake, a Christian music producer, after the arrest. She did not attend her local church in Columbia, Tennessee, where she and her husband would sometimes take Thomas, whom she regarded as a 'third daughter.' According to court papers, Mrs Cummins first learned of her husband's disappearance when she came home on March 13 to find a note saying he was 'traveling to Virginia Beach or the D.C. area to clear his mind.' Mrs Cummins issued a statement saying she was glad the teenager was safe after the pair were found but made no mention of her husband. Elizabeth was taken to a safe house to be reunited with relatives last week after being found. Jill Cummins (pictured on Monday) filed for divorce from Tad Cummins after he ran off with Elizabeth Thomas five weeks ago A few days after his arrest, Mrs Cummins got the call from jail. 'It was very hard to hear his voice after all this time not knowing if I was going to hear it again,' she said. 'But he told me he was sorry. He told me he loved me and to please forgive him.' But she could not bring herself to say 'I love you' back. 'I of course went into a rage of, 'Do you know what you've done to me? Do you know what you've done to your girls and your grandchildren?' He pretty much just over and over said, 'I'm sorry,' she said. In the weeks before she vanished, Mrs Cummins had updated her social media profiles to describe herself as a 'wife' and referred several times to a 'mission' that was 'almost complete'. 'As far as Jill was concerned their marriage was rock solid,' a friend said. 'But there's no coming back from the hurt and humiliation he's put her through. It was the ultimate betrayal.' Jill Cummins' full interview with Inside Edition will air tonight and Friday. Her husband remains in custody where he faces up to life in jail for one federal count of transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity across state lines. The pair were caught on store surveillance footage in Tennessee the days after they vanished having both dyed their hair The pair disappeared from Columbia, Tennessee, on March 13. They traveled to Alabama the next day then on to Oklahoma where they were spotted on March 15 before dropping off the radar until April 20 when they were found in a cabin in northern California Prosecutors in Sacramento claimed on Monday that Tad Cummins changed his license plates, paid in cash and even planned to take a boat from San Diego to Mexico, to keep one step ahead of the police. Once across the border, he may have been planning to take her even further in to South America, they said. The documents, filed in federal court on Monday morning ahead of his first hearing so claim he admitted to switching license plates on his car several times and disabling its GPS system to avoid being caught. He paid for essentials, including chocolate for the teenager, with cash and only took back roads to avoid roadside surveillance, they claim. 'The defendant had plans to attempt to escape across the United States border to Mexico. He then planned to seek passage to countries further south of Mexico. 'In furtherance of this plan, the defendant procured a small watercraft and conducted a test run to cross into Mexico across the water from San Diego. 'The defendant also considered the feasibility of a land crossing into Mexico,' they said. Cummins spoke only briefly in court to confirm his identity, and agreed to be returned to Tennessee to face trial there, according to WAAY TV. Authorities found the pair in this remote cabin in Cecilville, California Judge Kendall Newman agreed that Cummins should not be allowed any release terms after being told by the prosecution's claims that he had played a 'cat and mouse game' with officers who were hunting him. Assistant US attorney Jason Hitt added that Cummins had used 'his position of trust as a school teacher' to commit the alleged crime. That - and Cummins allegedly having two guns in the vehicle when he and the missing girl were found Thursday - make him a danger, he said. He also had at least seven pills of erectile dysfunction drug Cialis, they said. 'During his flight, the defendant engaged in a daring cat-and-mouse run from law enforcement in order to further his own prurient desires while engaging in a number of sophisticated maneuvers to avoid being caught,' prosecutors said in the documents. 'His actions in evasion were criminal.' Cummins appeared in court for his first hearing on Monday. According to the prosecutors, he planned to take Thomas to Mexico, and then on to countries further south 'This level of sophistication demonstrates that he cannot be trusted with conditions, or any combination of conditions, of release while awaiting trial in the Middle District of Tennessee.' Cummins and Thomas were found last Thursday after a nationwide manhunt which lasted five weeks. Police were pointed to them by the caretaker of the cabin. A SWAT team broke in on them in a 4am raid, arresting Cummins and taking Elizabeth to safety. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued an Amber Alert for the schoolgirl in March when she failed to come home after being dropped off at a restaurant. As their hunt for the pair intensified, sickening details of her relationship with the teacher, a grandfather and self-described 'Jesus freak', emerged. The pair left emails for one another on his classroom computer and were seen by other students at the school where he taught kissing in front of his grandson. Bosses suspended Cummins after police launched an investigation into the claims. The day before they vanished, he was seen on surveillance footage buying women's hair dye. Police say Cummins (left) switched the license plates on his car several times and disabled its GPS system to avoid detection as he fled with Thomas (right) Once on the run, they were spotted again in store surveillance footage in Alabama and then in Oklahoma having both changed their hair and clothes. Numerous reported sightings of the pair were made across the country for weeks as police hunted them. They included reports that the duo were in Corpus Christi, a border town on Texas's south east coast. Police eventually tracked them down on April 20 in a cabin in Siskiyou County, a rural area north of the city of Redding, in California. Cummins' sister spoke out on Monday to say that he believed he had done nothing wrong. 'He's done this horrible thing, that he has to pay for. But he's still my brother and I love him,' Daphne Quinn told the Today show. 'The answer he gave me was that she wanted to run away and that she wanted to leave and he didn't want her to go alone and so he went with her so that he knew she would be safe,' she added. Theresa May last night appealed to Labour supporters to lend me your vote to deliver Brexit as the Tories launched a ruthless campaign to target their opponents Northern heartlands. The Prime Minister used a campaign speech in Leeds to roll out a new campaign slogan, aimed squarely at Labour Brexit supporters who are disillusioned with Jeremy Corbyn and his partys dithering over the issue. At a rally in the Labour-held city, she said the need to deliver a good Brexit deal made the June poll the most important election this country has faced in my lifetime. She warned that a vote for Labour would leave Britain with a weak leader negotiating Brexit, adding: Everyone in our country has a positive reason to lend me their vote. This election is not about who you may have voted for in the past. It is about voting in the national interest voting for the future. Theresa May launched a raid deep into Labour territory tonight as she appealed for people to 'lend' their votes to the Tories so she can push through Brexit And every vote cast for me through my local Conservative candidates in cities like Leeds, and in towns and cities across the UK, will strengthen my hand when I negotiate with the prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of Europe. Mrs May said Angela Merkels hard line on Brexit yesterday in which the German chancellor said it was an illusion to think the UK could get a good deal showed how tough those negotiations are going to be at times. She added: I know this city is one of the places that people call a traditional Labour area. But here, and in every constituency across the country, it may say Labour on the ballot, but its Jeremy Corbyn that gets the vote. Tory strategists believe Brexit could help break down traditional party loyalties which have made some Northern cities virtual no-go areas for Conservative candidates. Insiders think they could pick up a string of traditionally Labour seats in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and the North East. The Prime Minister staged a rally in Leeds as she looked to pick off what have traditionally been ultra-safe seats Targets include seats with Labour majorities below 8,000 including Leeds North East, Huddersfield and Wakefield. But strategists believe that, if things go well, they could even dislodge some big-name Labour MPs with larger majorities. These include Mr Corbyns deputy Tom Watson, who has a majority of almost 10,000 in West Bromwich East, former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, who has a majority of almost 9,000 in Derby South, and ex-frontbencher Rachel Reeves, who is defending a majority of almost 11,000 in Leeds West. A senior Tory source said: There are many parts of the country, like Leeds, that the Labour Party has taken for granted for decades. They have just assumed people will vote Labour regardless of how incoherent their policies or how incompetent their leader. Theresa May wore her favourite Vivienne Westwood checked jacket for the factory tour One Labour MP defending a five-figure majority in West Yorkshire said: People talk about this as a safe seat, but I could lose. Im losing votes to the Lib Dems, Im losing some votes straight to the Tories and the Ukip vote is going straight to the Tories as well. Couple that to the fact that some of my supporters are just not going to turn out because they wont vote for Corbyn, and suddenly Im in trouble. But Andrew Gwynne MP, Labours election co-ordinator, dismissed Mrs Mays drive yesterday, saying: The people of Leeds wont be fooled. The only party of working people is the Labour Party. The scale of the Labour implosion, as the Tories pick up votes from struggling Ukip, has thrown constituencies into play on June 8 that were previously rock solid This is the dramatic moment a British cancer and diabetes sufferer was thrown off a BA flight by police after trying to stretch his legs in business class. Kwame Bantu, 65, was an hour into the 14-hour flight to visit family in Jamaica when he began to feel dizzy and saw his leg swelling. He then tried to move into business class, where he says he was 'ambushed' by six members of staff who tied him up by his hands and feet before allegedly dragging him back to his seat in economy. Footage obtained by MailOnline shows uniformed police surrounding him after the plane diverted course and landed on the Portuguese island of Terceira. 'I'm going to go with you,' he can be heard telling the officers. Dramatic footage shows the moment British cancer and diabetes sufferer Kwame Bantu, pictured, was thrown off a BA flight by police after trying to stretch his legs in business class The footage also features Joy Stoney, right, a businesswoman from Yorkshire who was thrown off the flight alongside Mr Bantu, left, after trying to help him It was initially reported that Mr Bantu, who is still stranded on the remote island of Terceira, was kicked off the jet for refusing to leave the business class section. 'I was just trying to get some room to stretch my leg,' he told MailOnline. 'But nobody was helping me. They refused to listen about my medical illness and what I was going through. I was treated like a slave.' The new footage also features Joy Stoney, a businesswoman from Yorkshire who was thrown off the flight alongside Mr Bantu after trying to help him. A hysterical Ms Stoney can be heard screaming: 'I didn't touch his straps.' The entrepreneur, who was wrongly reported as being Mr Bantu's partner, told MailOnline how stewards told him to 'defecate in his seat' when he told them he needed the toilet. British Airways told MailOnline that Mr Bantu refused to move from business class and verbally abused crew, so they 'helped him walk back to his original seat'. Neither of the passengers know where their baggage is or how they are to get home. Mr Bantu, from south London, went on: 'They ambushed me. They tied my feet, my shoulders and my arms and they left me in my seat. 'I was completely humiliated, my human rights had been taken away from me. I didn't even have the energy to fight them because my blood pressure would have gone even higher. Kwame Bantu, above, 65, was an hour into the 14-hour flight to visit family in Jamaica when he began to feel dizzy and saw his leg swelling. Pictured: Mr Bantu being restrained in his seat by plane staff Mr Bantu, from south London, says he was 'ambushed' by six members of staff who tied him up by his hands and feet before dragging him back to his seat in economy class 'I don't think I deserved that kind of behaviour. I can understand if they thought I was going to be violent but [the restraints] stopped my blood from circulating. 'It's when some of the other passengers expressed their concern for me that they stopped the plane and landed to kick us out.' Joy Stoney said she intervened after she saw staff members dragging Mr Bantu, who had inquired about how much a seat in business class costs, through the plane by his neck. 'The way they restrained him was absolutely preposterous,' Ms Stoney, 40, told MailOnline. 'They restrained him by his shoulders via his neck and hands with straps. His ankles were strapped and on top of everything, they handcuffed him. 'What alarmed me the most was when he wanted to urinate. I know from caring for my mother that if you restrain a diabetic like that, they're going to need the toilet. 'He was holding his crotch area for a while and it was horrible to see. I called the steward manager to come see me and told her I would escort him to the toilet myself. 'They said, "He needs to defecate himself in the chair", and I think that is utterly inhumane. 'They refused to give him proper food. They only gave him a bread roll and a small cup of water. Fellow passenger Joy Stoney, a businesswoman from Yorkshire, was thrown off the flight alongside retired Mr Bantu and abandoned on the Portuguese island of Terceira after trying to help him British Airways has become the latest airline to come under fire in recent weeks. Today US-based Delta Airlines was slammed for throwing passenger Kima Hamilton off a flight for using the toilet during a 30 minute delay when the plan was still on the tarmac. The airline came under further scrutiny this week following the death of a prized rabbit on a flight to London. And United Airlines caused mass outrage after footage showed bloodied passenger, Dr David Dao, being dragged from an overbooked flight. The latest incident occurred on flight BA2263 as it left Gatwick London for the Jamaican capital Kingston on Wednesday, military officials confirmed. An air force spokesman said someone had filmed the spat on a mobile phone and that pair escorted off the plane would be questioned by PSP civilian police in Terceira. British Airways told MailOnline in a statement: 'Caring for our customers is our highest priority and we continue to investigate all the circumstances surrounding this incident. 'We take great care to handle these difficult situations as sensitively as possible. Our cabin crew and one of our pilots repeatedly asked a customer to return to his booked seat in economy after he sat in our business class cabin without permission. 'He repeatedly refused, verbally abused crew members and disturbed other customers. The incident occurred on flight BA2263 as it left Gatwick London for the Jamaican capital Kingston on Wednesday, military officials confirmed Mr Bantu and Ms Stoney were stranded on the island of Terceira without their luggage and have received no help or advice from the British consulate about getting home 'As a last resort, our cabin crew felt they had no option but to restrain the customer in the interests of the safety of everyone on board and helped him walk back to his original seat.' MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office for comment. A spokesman for the PSP police on the island of Terceira said Mr Bantu and Ms Stoney were not arrested and the matter was closed as far as they were concerned. He said the civilian forces only involvement in the incident had been to answer a request to take the pair off the plane, adding: 'They left the plane without incident. 'They stayed on Terceira as far as I know last night but I dont know where and I dont have information on where they are now. 'They are free to do what they want as there is nothing preventing them from leaving the island at any time.' Flight-tracking data shows the plane left Gatwick for Kingston at 11.36am on Wednesday. However at about 3pm it started to divert from its intended flight path and double back for the island of Terceira. The plane then left the island at about 7.15pm, returning back to London at 10.36pm. It comes a week after British Airways was criticised by the new President of Ghana for the 'shoddy' way it treats customers. In a major embarrassment for the airline, the African country's leader criticised 'the quality of the planes and the service'. After landing in Terceira, the plane took off again at about 7.15pm, returning back to London at 10.36pm He even accused BA of 'taking us a little for granted'. The comments follow a barrage of complaints from travelers over poor service on BA flights. It has been criticised after it stopped providing free sandwiches, snacks and drinks on flights lasting less than five hours. The policy could now be extended to long-haul flights for passengers in economy class. The airline has also came under fire for plans to cut legroom from 30 inches to 29 on some of its planes an inch less than on RyanAir planes. A South Dakota man who claims to have found a dead mouse in a can of soda is suing Coca-Cola. Duane Putzier is saying that he missed 60 hours of work and accumulated $1,000 in medical bills after becoming ill from the allegedly mouse-infested 16-ounce can of Coke he consumed on June 7, 2016. He claims he felt an object 'shift toward the opening' of the can as he was finishing the drink, the Grand Forks Herald reported. Duane Putzier of Mitchell, South Dakota claims he found a dead mouse in his can of Coca-Cola last June. He said he felt an object shift toward his lips as he was finishing the drink James Taylor, left, is representing Duane Putzier in his case. Putzier is asking for $2,026 plus any general damages In court documents, attorneys for Coca-Cola disputed that there was proof that the mouse ended up in the can during bottling. The company said the mouse would have been in a more advanced stage of decomposition and the can would have been compromised by consequent gases, The Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, reported. Brian Johnson, an attorney for the Atlanta-based company, told the Republic: 'It had fur. It had blood on its nose. It's limbs were intact. There was very minor decomposition.' Six weeks had passed between bottling and when Putzier opened the can on June 7. Johnson said during a motions hearing Tuesday that he anticipates testimony from a veterinary pathologist, who will analyze the mouse's decomposition. The defense also hopes to get testimony from the quality assurance manager and line supervisor of the Portland, Indiana, plant where the can was bottled. Coca-Cola is alleging that if the mouse were in fact bottled inside the can, which was consumed by Putzier six weeks after bottling, then it would have been in a more advanced stage of decomposition Putzier is seeking $2,026, plus any general damages proven at trial, with interest. He is represented by James Taylor. He sued under a new South Dakota law that allows certain cases to be handled more quickly, called expedited civil action. Under the law, each side is restricted to one witness and six hours. But Johnson asked Judge Patrick Smith to change those limits for the case. Smith approved three experts for each party and agreed to lengthen the time limit for the trial. Johnson asked for four days, though the trial could take longer. 'Coca-Cola is faced with a claim that's really an attack on its brand,' Johnson said. 'Coca-Cola takes these cases extremely seriously and tries them all.' A farmer who was cleared of shooting a suspected thief of his land has had his legal bills paid by nearly 1,000 people to contributed to a crowdfunding appeal. Kenneth Hugill was cleared of grievous bodily harm in just 24 minutes by a jury at Hull Crown Court. Lawyer Nick Freeman set up a fundraising page to cover his legal fees after reading his story and hundreds of people came to his aid. Nick Freeman, left, and Kenneth Hugill, right, who met after the lawyer raised enough money to cover the farmer's huge legal bill Mr Freeman is also campaigning to change the law, a change he calls Hugill's Law, so people are not left in the position Mr Hugill was when he was looking at paying back a five-figure sum over 20 to 30 years. The pair met for the first time in Leeds on Thursday so the lawyer could hand over the 21,257.88 his campaign has raised. Mr Hugill said he was 'absolutely thrilled to bits'. The farmer said: 'I was more than surprised. People from all over the country wrote to us. Richard Stables, who Mr Hugill shot in the foot when he believed he was intruding on his farm in the middle of the night 'We've had at least 70 letters, private letters just wishing us good luck, pleased we've got away and all that. 'It's been overwhelming.' He said: 'I think it's absolutely marvellous that somebody like Nick has done that. 'Somebody I don't know, who doesn't know you, is prepared to go to all that bother.' Mr Hugill shot Richard Stables in the foot when he fired his shotgun in the dark towards a car he believed was going to run him over on his isolated farm in Wilberfoss, East Yorkshire. Mr Freeman said he was outraged when he read about Mr Hugill's trial. He said: 'Here's an 83-year-old man who's never been in trouble, never had a parking ticket, a speeding endorsement, anything of the sort. 'He's on his own property, he's defending it by confronting two people who are arguably career criminals. 'He does what any reasonable person would have done in his circumstances. 'He's then charged by the police who turn up 15 hours later and treat it as a hostage situation. 'But, at the end of all that, after his acquittal, he's then landed with this legal bill.' Mr Hugill, 83, was cleared by a jury in Hull Crown Court in just 24 minutes after he was charged with grievous bodily harm - but his legal bill was 21,000 Mr Freeman said the fact an innocent person cannot recover their legal costs is an 'outrage' and is now fighting for a change in the law The lawyer said: 'You're presumed to be innocent in English law. 'How can it be fair if you're presumed to be innocent, if you're acquitted, that you don't recover your reasonable legal costs? 'It's an outrage, it's an injustice.' Mr Freeman, nicknamed Mr Loophole after he represented a string of celebrity names in driving cases, said the law should revert to what it was before a 2012 change. He said that would mean defendants who were acquitted could recover their 'reasonable legal costs'. 'I just felt outraged at his situation and outraged with the Government because this happens on a daily basis,' he said. Mr Freeman said most lawyers support his campaign for Hugill's Law. He also questioned why Mr Hugill was charged in the first place and why the two people he found on his property were not. He said: 'Why are the perpetrators allowed to get away with it and somebody of exemplary character is dragged through the court system and then left with this massive bill? Hundreds of people donated to the fund to make sure My Hugill did not have pay his costs, a bill that could have taken decades to clear 'How's that justice? What are we doing as a country and what's our legal system doing about this?' He said: 'I'm pleased to say we've recovered every single penny that he's incurred through his legal costs.' Mr Hugill's family has described how police took 15 hours to respond to a call he made and arrived at the farm with armed colleagues, forensic officers, a helicopter and an ambulance, saying they were looking for hostages. Mr Hugill and his son were arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, had DNA samples taken and were locked in police cells for three to four hours. Mr Stables gave three different accounts about how he received his injuries and, when interviewed by police, said he had been out lamping with a friend and had stopped at Mr Hugill's farm to let the dog out. Rebecca Tiffin is suing Surrey Police, claiming she was discriminated against because of her disability A policewoman who gained weight because she had a under-active thyroid claims she was forced to resign following pressure placed on her to pass the 'bleep test' fitness exam. Detective constable Rebecca Tiffin is suing Surrey Police for disability and sex discrimination, saying she felt she was 'over-scrutinised'. She told an employment tribunal that she was put under huge pressure to pass the timed fitness test, which she repeatedly avoided due to health or childcare issues, or failed. The detective, who was referred to by her colleagues as 'Blue Moon' because she was so rarely at work, was put onto a running programme and told to use her meal breaks to go to the gym, but she told the panel she felt 'singled out'. Mrs Tiffin, who became a police constable in 2001, told the tribunal that she had an under-active thyroid gland which caused her to pile on the pounds. She told the tribunal in Reading, Berkshire, that she found it increasingly hard to work after developing various medical problems which included anxiety, post-natal depression and the underactive thyroid which affects 15 in every 1,000 women in the UK. Mrs Tiffin, of Tolworth, Kingston, told the hearing: 'I have had a longstanding history of depression, stress and anxiety conditions dating back to 2007 and more recently in 2013. I have developed an underactive thyroid which is a lifelong condition.' In 2012, Detective Inspector Rebecca Molyneux joined the unit where Mrs Tiffin worked and became her line manager. Around the same time, Ms Molyneux required all officers to do conflict training, part of which was a bleep test - a timed fitness test all police officers have to pass. Mrs Tiffin was due to take the test on June 29 but requested to change the date because of child care issues. However in an email Ms Molyneaux said that 'was not good enough' and she had to come up with a solution. After completing part of the conflict training on June 29, Mrs Tiffin did not do the bleep test, saying she had a sinus infection, the panel was told. In July, Ms Molyneaux reportedly informed Mrs Tiffin that missing the bleep test in June counted as a failure, and under force policy she had four months to pass it. 'I failed the bleep test again on October 29,' said Mrs Tiffin. 'I had been trying to improve my fitness following a running plan but I struggled with the speed side of things,' she told the panel. After a number of failed attempts to pass the test, she was made subject to an 'Unsatisfactory Performance Procedure' or UPP, which can eventually lead to an officer being dismissed from the force. She repeatedly failed or avoided taking the bleep test, a fitness test all officers must pass, and was put on an 'Unsatisfactory Performance Procedure' which can lead to an officer being dismissed Mrs Tiffin told the panel that she felt she was being discriminated against on the grounds of her disability. 'My conditions are mental and physical impairments which have a substantial and long-term adverse effect on my ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities,' she said. However, a lawyer representing Surrey Police at the tribunal said that the bleep tests had been introduced to ensure officers were fit to perform the role they were employed to do and that it applied to everyone.' The panel heard that Surrey Police also argued that they had tried to accommodate Mrs Tiffin in being able to train for the test. 'We agreed to support Rebecca by giving her time to attend Surrey police headquarters in Guildford so she could take practice bleep tests,' said Ms Molyneaux. 'Rebecca was encouraged to use her meal breaks to go to the gym but if this took longer than her meal breaks, I told her it didn't matter,' she said in a statement. However, from 2012 Mrs Tiffin said there were a series of events which made her feel as if she was being 'overly-scrutinised' and treated differently. She said she felt singled out for not completing paperwork which she claimed other officers had also not done. Her colleagues referred to her as 'Blue Moon' due to the absences from work she was taking as a result of her medical condition. In January 2013, Mrs Tiffin said she had a meeting with Det. Insp. Molyneaux and a detective sergeant in which she was told she 'was not seen as a team player or pulling her weight.' She said she was 'crushed' by these comments and was left in the office in tears. Dety. Insp. Molyneaux said: 'Around January 2013 I had an informal chat with Rebecca about how others, mainly her team members, perceived her performance. 'At the time of the conversation with Rebecca I was not aware that she was upset by what I had said to her. I made it clear to her that if what l said had upset her, that was not its purpose and apologised for this.' Surrey Police also claimed that Mrs Tiffin had not initially made it clear to them that her inability to pass the bleep test was due to her disabilities. At the time of the first of several tests, the Surrey Police's lawyer claimed Mrs Tiffin had not mentioned depression. 'You had not mentioned your thyroid as a problem in completing your bleep test,' he put to her at the tribunal. However, Mrs Tiffin replied: 'I had previously made my thyroid issue clear in my discussions with Ms Molyneaux.' She added: 'I had been breaking down in tears at work. While I did not say I was depressed I had been referred to occupational health.' Mrs Tiffin said that it was in part the constant pressure and stress of having to pass the bleep test that led her to resign from the force. The tribunal which was expected to last nine days, continues. President Trump sent out a flurry of tweets aimed at Democrats on Capitol Hill who he claimed were gunning for a government shutdown. 'The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!' Trump said Thursday. Democrats have been pushing to help Puerto Rico, but on Thursday their primary concern was preventing the Republicans from bringing a new Obamacare repeal bill to the floor. Scroll down for video President Trump sent out a flurry of tweets aimed at Democrats on Capitol Hill who he claimed were gunning for a government shutdown On Thursday morning, President Trump again tweeted about the Democrats wanting to 'bail out' Puerto Rico, using a government funding bill President Trump blasted Democrats Wednesday night, saying they were prioritizing Puerto Rico and Obamacare over getting a funding deal done 'If Republicans announce their intention to bring their harmful TrumpCare bill to the House Floor tomorrow or Saturday, I will oppose a one-week Continuing Resolution and will advise House Democrats to oppose it as well,' said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, R-Md., said in a statement Thursday afternoon. As of Thursday afternoon, Republicans didn't have the votes and the White House said President Trump wants a vote when they know they'll win. As for funding the government, negotiations seem to have been proceeding better 24 hours before, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., confirmed to reporters Wednesday that the White House had committed to not cut Obamacare subsidies. Previously, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney had made that threat. But then President Trump woke up Thursday morning and started to tweet, echoing complaints he had made the night before about Democrats meddling with the continuing resolution by bringing up Puerto Rico. Several hours later, Trump was at it again. President Trump pointed fingers at Democrats Thursday, with his press secretary saying they were 'moving the goal posts' on a potential funding deal President Trump sent out a bevvy of tweets knocking Democrats for dragging their feet on a funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown 'I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare,' Trump wrote. 'I promise to rebuild our military and secure our border. Democrats want to shut down the government. Politics!' he continued. 'What's more important? Rebuilding our military - or bailing out insurance companies? Ask the Democrats,' the president said. 'Democrats jeopardizing the safety of our troops to bail out their donors from insurance companies. It is time to put #AmericaFirst,' Trump went on. 'Democrats used to support border security now they want illegals to pour through our borders,' Trump said. And finally, realizing that a government shutdown could kill off summer fun as well, the president wrote, 'As families prepare for summer vacations in our National Parks - Democrats threaten to close them and shut down the government. Terrible!' Pelosi responded, at least to the miners allegation, by tweeting a photo of herself with miners Thursday afternoon. When Press Secretary Sean Spicer briefed reporters Thursday afternoon, he tabled the Puerto Rico issue, saying it could be settled by Congress in another bill, and blamed Democrats for dragging their feet over the finish line. 'The Democrats at the last minute have come in and thrown a lot of monkey wrenches into the ability for this to get done, despite the president doing everything that he can to show good faith to keep this going,' Spicer said. 'They keep moving the goal posts and the issue right now is to make sure we do what's in the best interest of this country by keeping the government open,' the press secretary added. Ivanka Trump writes in her new memoir that it had been her lifelong dream to be a developer but that with her father in office, she is now committed to 'working harder than ever' to help unleash the 'full power' of women and girls. The unpaid White House advisor fills the preface with expressions of awe at her unique opportunity and gratitude to the American people following her father's election as president, but doesn't tease any substantive policy prescriptions. 'I recognize the privilege and responsibility I have to use my voice to make positive impact where I can. I am committed to working harder than ever to help unleash the full power of women and girls to accelerate the pace of progress both in our country and around the worldand I look forward to furthering the cause together,' the president's daughter writes in the premise to her new book. The book, 'Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success,' goes on sale next week. Ivanka Trump says in the preface to her book that she is 'committed to working harder than ever to help unleash the full power of women and girls' Trump wrote the preface, which was published in Politico Thursday, just days before her father took the Oval Office and after his victory in a controversial and closely fought election against Hillary Clinton, who would have been the first woman president. 'At the time I was writing this book, my father was running for president of the United States. My manuscript was completed before we knew the results of the election. As I write this preface, my fathers inauguration is only days away,' she writes. Ivanka is sometimes portrayed as a moderating influence on her father, recently weighing in on Syrian refugees, while pushing back in an interview against German media accounts that she was an 'accomplice' to her father. 'These last nineteen months have been an amazing journeyand its just getting started. Inspiring and empowering women who workat all aspects of their liveshas been my mission throughout my entire career,' Trump writes. Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, is seen on stage of the W20 conference on April 25, 2017 in Berlin, Germany TAKE YOUR DAUGHTER TO WORK YEAR: President Donald Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka Trump, talks via video conference with International Space Station Commander Peggy Whitson on the International Space Station from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington 'Today, I have the opportunity to take that work to new heights and advocate for change on a far greater scale than Id ever imagined,' Trump, 35, writes. 'Over the last year and a half, Ive had the honor of traveling across our country, meeting the men and women of our great nation and listening to their hopes and dreams, their challenges and concerns. I have grown tremendously as a person, and the experience has been life changing.' The expresses thanks for the 'overwhelming amount of outreach' she has gotten about issues she cares about: 'including the education and economic empowerment of women and girls; leveling the playing field for female entrepreneurs and job creators; and advancing the potential of women in our economy.' Her book is being published May 2, and is selling for $14.56 in hardcover on Amazon. The online retailer says an LLC will contribute all future royalties through 2022, as well as at least $425,000 to the Ivanka Trump Charitable Fund and amount it says is the 'unpaid portion of the advance, net of expenses' for the book. On her first overseas trip since her father took office, Ivanka was subjected to some jeers and boos during a panel discussion with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. On Wednesday, Axios reported that Trump would head an initiative to fund women entrepreneurship on a global basis. Sources later said the World Bank would administer the program, which was still being defined, Bloomberg reported. Trump, who was an executive in her father's real estate empire, spends some of the preface talking about her own feelings during the days before her father took office. 'When my father takes office as our nations forty-fifth president, I will take a formal leave of absence from both The Trump Organization and my apparel and accessories brand. On paper, this separation is straightforward, but emotionally, this was not an easy decision for me to make. I have known since I was a child that I wanted to be a developer and an entrepreneur,' she writes. At the time, all that was known about her plans is that she would step back from the company and move to Washington. 'It is difficult to step away from businesses that I have worked hard to build and that I believe in so fully, but the potential to improve the lives of countless women and girls has caused me to fundamentally consider where my work will do the greatest good,' she writes. United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit. Mark Moore Plaintiff - Appellant Michael Harrod; William Chris Johnson Plaintiffs v. Mark Martin, in his official capacity as Secretary of State for the State of Arkansas Defendant - Appellee No. 15-3558 Decided: April 26, 2017 Before WOLLMAN, SMITH,1 and BENTON, Circuit Judges. This appeal concerns certain Arkansas statutes that set the filing deadline for individuals who wish to appear on the general election ballot as independent candidates. Mark Moore, along with two other individuals, filed suit in federal district court against Mark Martin, in his official capacity as Arkansas Secretary of State, seeking a declaratory judgment that the filing deadline is unnecessarily early and thus violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. 1983. The suit seeks to enjoin Martin from enforcing this deadline against Moore. Moore appeals from the district court's orders that denied his motion for summary judgment, granted Martin's motion for summary judgment, and denied Moore's motion for reconsideration. We affirm in part and reverse in part. I. Background Under Arkansas law, a person seeking to include his or her name on the general election ballot as an independent candidate for any office other than President or Vice President of the United States must submit a petition to the Arkansas Secretary of State. Ark. Code Ann. 7-7-103(a)(1). Petitions for statewide office must be signed by the lesser of three percent of the qualified electors of the state or ten thousand qualified electors. Id. 7-7-103(b)(1)(B). Independent candidate petitions must be submitted during the same period as political party candidate petitions. This party filing period begins one week prior to the first day in March and ends the first day in March. Id. 7-7-103(a)(1), 7-7-203(c)(1). Petitions may not be circulated for signatures earlier than ninety days prior to the March 1 deadline. Id. 7-7-103(b)(3)(B). The general election is held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Id. 7-5-102. For political party candidates, the general primary election is held on the second Tuesday in June and the preferential primary election is held three weeks earlier. Id. 7-7-203(a)-(b). The Secretary and county clerks must certify to the county boards of election commissioners the names of all candidates to be placed on the general election ballot not less than seventy-five days before the general election. Id. 7-5-203. Upon timely request, states must transmit absentee ballots to absent military voters and overseas voters at least forty-five days before an election for federal office. 52 U.S.C. 20302(a)(8). The Secretary must also process requests for inclusion on the ballot for nonpartisan offices, including judges and prosecuting attorneys. The general election for nonpartisan offices is held on the same day as the preferential primary election for partisan offices, and any runoff election is held on the same day as the November general election. Ark. Code Ann. 7-10-102. A person may have his or her name placed on the ballot for nonpartisan office by paying a filing fee during the party filing period or by submitting a petition, signed by a requisite number of electors, during a period beginning fifty-three days before the first day of the party filing period and ending forty-six days before the first day of the party filing period. Id. 7-10-103(a)-(c). The Secretary must verify the sufficiency of a petition for nonpartisan office within forty-five days of its filing. Id. 7-10-103(c)(1)(C). Additionally, Arkansas election officials must process petitions for ballot initiatives. Eight percent of the qualified electors in Arkansas may propose a law, and ten percent may propose an amendment to the state's constitution. Ark. Const. art. V, 1. To appear on the November general election ballot, an initiative petition signed by the requisite number of voters must be filed with the Secretary not less than four months before the general election is to be held. Id. The Secretary must verify the sufficiency of an initiative petition within thirty days after it is filed and may contract with county clerks for assistance in verifying the petition signatures. Ark. Code. Ann. 7-9-111(a). If the Secretary finds a petition insufficient, within thirty days the petition sponsors must cure the deficiency (by gathering additional signatures, proving the validity of rejected signatures, or making the petition more definite) and submit a supplemental petition, the sufficiency of which the Secretary must verify within thirty days. Id. 7-9-111(d). The Secretary must certify each verified initiative proposal to the county boards of election commissioners for inclusion on the ballot not less than seventy-five days before the general election. Id. 7-5-204(a). If the Secretary has not verified the sufficiency of an initiative petition at least seventy-five days before the general election, or if an initiative petition is legally challenged, the Secretary must nevertheless transmit it to the county boards of election commissioners for inclusion on the ballot. Id. 7-5-204(c)(1). If the Secretary subsequently declares the petition insufficient or if the initiative proposal is held to be legally invalid, no votes regarding the initiative proposal are counted or certified. Id. 7-5-204(c)(2). Moore is a registered Arkansas voter and claims that he was an independent candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas in the 2014 election. He sued Martin, alleging, as mentioned above, that the filing deadline for independent candidates violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The district court granted Martin's motion and denied Moore's motion. It rejected Martin's arguments that the case was moot or unripe for review and that Moore lacked standing. It found that the March deadline for filing as an independent candidate placed a substantial burden on Moore's rights; that Arkansas has a compelling interest in timely certifying candidates and initiatives to the general election ballot; and that the March deadline is narrowly tailored to serve this interest. In determining that the March deadline is narrowly tailored, the court relied on an affidavit submitted by the Arkansas Director of Elections, which states that the increased number of initiative petitions and candidates petitioning for inclusion on the ballot for nonpartisan office leaves Arkansas election officials with insufficient time to process the petitions using the previous May 1 submission deadline. II. Discussion We review de novo the district court's order granting Martin's motion for summary judgment and denying Moore's motion for summary judgment. See Green Party of Ark. v. Martin, 649 F.3d 675, 679 (8th Cir. 2011). The court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 56(a). The party moving for summary judgment bears the initial burden to bring up the fact that the record does not contain a genuine dispute of material fact and to identify that part of the record which bears out his assertion. Counts v. MK-Ferguson Co., 862 F.2d 1338, 1339 (8th Cir. 1988) (quoting City of Mt. Pleasant v. Associated Elec. Coop., 838 F.2d 268, 273-74 (8th Cir. 1988)). [I]f the record in fact bears out the claim that no genuine dispute exists on any material fact, it is then the respondent's burden to set forth affirmative evidence, specific facts, showing that there is a genuine dispute on that issue. Id. A party asserting that a fact cannot be or is genuinely disputed must support the assertion by either citing to particular parts of materials in the record or showing that the materials cited do not establish the absence or presence of a genuine dispute, or that an adverse party cannot produce admissible evidence to support the fact. Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 56(c)(1). Ballot access restrictions implicate not only the rights of potential candidates for public office, but also the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of voters to cast their ballots for a candidate of their choice and to associate for the purpose of advancing their political beliefs. Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 786-88 (1983). Constitutional challenges to specific provisions of a State's election laws [ ] cannot be resolved by any litmus-paper test that will separate valid from invalid restrictions. Id. at 789 (quoting Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974)). Instead, we must first consider the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate, then we must identify and evaluate the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule, determining not only the legitimacy and strength of each of those interests but also the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights. Id. [W]e review the statute under a form of strict scrutiny referred to as the compelling state interest test by first determining whether the challenged statute causes a burden of some substance on a plaintiff's rights, and if so, upholding the statute only if it is narrowly drawn to serve a compelling state interest. Libertarian Party of N.D. v. Jaeger, 659 F.3d 687, 693 (8th Cir. 2011) (quoting McLain v. Meier, 851 F.2d 1045, 1049 (8th Cir. 1988)). In such cases, the State bears the burden of showing that the challenged statute is narrowly drawn to serve the State's compelling interest. See Eu v. S.F. Cty. Democratic Cent. Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 222 (1989). Arkansas's ballot access requirements for independent candidates have been repeatedly challenged. In Lendall v. Bryant, 387 F. Supp. 397, 400-03 (E.D. Ark. 1975) (per curiam) (Lendall I), a three-judge district court held unconstitutional the combined requirements that an independent candidate's petition be filed by the first Tuesday in April, which was also the filing deadline for political party candidate petitions, and be signed by fifteen percent of the qualified electors for the office. After Arkansas reduced that requirement to ten percent, and not more than two thousand signatures for district office or ten thousand signatures for statewide office, a three-judge district court held that the filing deadline, still the first Tuesday in April, was unconstitutional standing on its own. Lendall v. Jernigan, No. LR-76-C-184 (E.D. Ark. Aug. 20, 1976), aff'd mem., 433 U.S. 901 (1977) (Lendall II). Then in Lendall v. Jernigan, 424 F. Supp. 951, 958 (E.D. Ark. 1977) (Lendall III), the district court held that the petition requirement of ten percent of qualified electors, standing alone, was unconstitutional. In Lendall v. McCuen, No. LR-C-88-311 (E.D. Ark. Aug. 16, 1988) (Lendall IV), the court held that a one-time January 5 filing deadline, which accompanied a one-time March 8 date for the preferential primary, was unconstitutional in light of Lendall II's disapproval of an April deadline. Finally, in Langguth v. McCuen, 30 F.3d 138 (unpublished table decision), No. 93-3413, 1994 WL 411736, at *1-2 (8th Cir. Aug. 9, 1994) (unpublished per curiam), our court upheld a deadline that required filing thirty days before the primary election, a signature requirement for statewide office of the lesser of three percent of qualified electors or ten thousand signatures, and a sixty-day period in which to gather signatures. Although we are mindful that these cases do not provide a litmus-paper test, Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789, we note that a filing deadline earlier than the first Tuesday in April would require additional justifications to distinguish this case from Lendall II. The district court correctly noted that the March 1 filing deadline for independent candidates imposes a burden of some substance on Moore's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and that Arkansas has a compelling interest in timely certifying independent candidates for inclusion on the general election ballot. We believe that the district court erred, however, in concluding that there was no genuine dispute of material fact whether the March 1 deadline is narrowly drawn to serve that compelling interest. The district court reasoned: [I]n light of the increase in [candidates for nonpartisan offices] (mostly judges) filing petitions instead of paying filing fees as before and the increased number of initiative petitions[,] there is simply not enough time to process all of the petitions within the May 1st deadline. This fact coupled with the time consumed by ever increasing litigation over petitions has necessitated the [advancement] of the deadline to March 1st. Secretary Martin's evidence shows an increase in the number of candidates who petitioned for inclusion on the ballot for nonpartisan offices, resulting in an increase in the number of signatures that required verification. Those signatures were required to be verified by the end of February: in 2014, the deadline for submission of signature petitions for nonpartisan office was January 9, and thus, presumably, these petitions were verified by February 24, 2014. See Ark. Code Ann. 7-10-103(c)(1)(C) (forty-five-day deadline for Secretary's verification of signature petitions for nonpartisan office). Although advancing the deadline from May 1 to March 1 gives the Secretary two additional months in which to review independent candidate petitions, we question whether the increase in the number of nonpartisan petitions necessitated that change in dates in light of the fact that the Secretary is statutorily required to verify the nonpartisan petitions prior to the independent candidate petitions' due date. The increase in nonpartisan petitions may have resulted in an increase in litigation regarding those petitions, which might interfere with the processing of independent candidate petitions, but the record is unclear as to any such effect. Accordingly, the increase in the number of nonpartisan petitions does not by itself establish the existence of a compelling interest that the March 1 deadline is narrowly tailored to serve. Stronger evidence exists to suggest that the processing of initiative petition signatures might conflict with the processing of independent candidate petition signatures. The Director of Elections' affidavit states, in part: The deadlines for filing petition signatures [for candidates for nonpartisan offices, independent candidates, and new political parties] [were] moved up on the calendarto earlier in the yearin order to facilitate election administration necessities, including the processing of so many initiative petition signatures during the 2012 election cycle that it was nearly impossible to finish the process within the statutory and constitutional guidelines, resulting in preliminary certification of [initiative petitions] that were later determined to be stricken from the ballot for one reason or another (after considerable litigation). Given the constitutional deadline for submission of initiative petition signatures, and the necessities of UOCAVA and MOVE compliance,9 all other petition signature requirements were advanced to earlier in the year so as to clear the calendar of petition signature processing and subsequent litigation, in advance of the constitutional initiative petition signature deadlines (which normally fall just before or just after the July 4 holiday). Arkansas Code Annotated 7-9-111 allows thirty days for the Secretary to verify initiative petitions, thirty days for petition sponsors to cure any deficiencies, and thirty days for the Secretary to review a thus-cured petition. Martin argues that the thirty-day cure period for defective petitions during which his office is required to meet the deadline for sending absentee ballots in practice means that he is left with only a week to ten days to evaluate every single petition that comes in, many of them 50 or 60 or 70,000 signatures, which becomes nearly impossible, [as] it was in 2012. Moore contends that because independent candidates do not appear on the ballot until the November general election and because there are relatively few independent candidates, the former May 1 deadline did not create conflicts between the processing of independent candidate petitions and other signature petitions. He also argues that even if Arkansas were required to hire additional election workers to meet the statutory deadline, the cost increase would not justify the burden on independent candidates' and voters' constitutional rights. See Tashjian v. Republican Party of Conn., 479 U.S. 208, 218 (1986) (holding that the possibility of increased administrative costs would not justify a statute prohibiting a political party from opening its primary to voting by independents). Notwithstanding the district court's and the parties' description of the issue for decision as being purely legal, we conclude that there exists a genuine factual dispute whether the verification of independent candidate petitions would conflict with the processing of other signature petitions under the former May 1 deadline. As mentioned earlier, it appears that the processing of nonpartisan-office petitions would not conflict with the processing of independent candidate petitions because the nonpartisan-office petition signatures are statutorily required to be verified before the end of February. The Director of Elections' affidavit establishes that the processing of initiative petitions consumes a great deal of time between early July and late August. But on this record a number of other relevant facts are unclear. The record does not establish what periods of time, between the former May 1 deadline for independent candidate petitions and the early July deadline for initiative petitions, were available for the state to process independent candidate petitions. It does not establish when independent candidate petitions were in fact processed in the past, nor does it reveal whether during the 2014 election, following the move of the deadline from May 1 to March 1, independent candidate petitions were processed between those two dates. Also unclear are the amount of time required to process independent candidate petitions and the feasibility of temporarily hiring additional election workers. We conclude that the lack of a record establishing such underlying facts demonstrates the existence of a genuine dispute of material fact that precluded summary judgment. Accordingly, the district court erred in granting Martin's motion for summary judgment. It did not err in denying Moore's motion for summary judgment, however, because of the existence of a factual dispute, which renders moot Moore's motion for reconsideration. We thus affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with the views set forth in this opinion. I respectfully dissent. Arkansas's election scheme requires independent candidates to file for candidacy at the same time political parties are required to file to be included in the general election. Ark. Code Ann. 7-7-103(a)(1). Because the party-filing deadline shifts at the discretion of the General Assembly, the independent-candidate filing deadline shifts accordingly. For example, in 2014, this filing date was March 3, 2014246 days before the general election. In 2016, this filing date was November 9, 2015365 days before the general election. In McLain, we were troubled by a third-party filing deadline more than 200 days before the November election. 851 F.2d at 1049. The deadline here246 to 365 days before the general electionis even more troubling. The Constitution requires that the access requirements as to both party-backed and independent candidates be reasonable. McLain v. Meier, 637 F.2d 1159, 1165 (8th Cir. 1980). Restrictions on ballot access may not go beyond what the state's compelling interests actually require, id. at 1163, and must be narrowly drawn to serve [that] compelling state interest, Jaeger, 659 F.3d at 693 (quoting McLain, 851 F.2d at 1049). The Arkansas independent-candidate filing deadline fails to meet these constitutional standardsit is neither actually required nor narrowly drawn. Secretary Martin contends that this filing deadline is actually required because his office gets overwhelmed with the number of petitions for nonpartisan candidates and ballot initiatives. Yet, the nonpartisan petitions are certified in February, and the ballot initiatives are not due until July. Five months for certifying independent candidates is a substantial time period. The record reflects that no more than two independent candidates ran for state-wide office in Arkansas per election cycle in recent years. Using the former May 1 deadline, Secretary Martin would have two full months to process at most 20,000 signatures for independent candidates. See Ark. Code Ann. 7-7-103(b)(1). Because the record does not demonstrate a legitimate conflict in the months of May and June for processing independent-candidate filings and other petitions, Secretary Martin has not shown that such an early filing deadline is actually required. Additionally, Secretary Martin has not demonstrated how attaching the independent-candidate filing deadline to the party-filing deadline is narrowly drawn. See Jaeger, 659 F.3d at 693. In Council of Alternative Political Parties v. Hooks, the Third Circuit rejected a less-restrictive scheme in New Jersey that required third-party and independent candidates to file candidacy petitions in early Aprilthe same day as the party-affiliated candidates. 121 F.3d 876, 879 (3d Cir. 1997). Alternative candidates had to file up to 800 signatures seven months before the general election. Id. at 87879. In balancing the interests, the court determined that requiring [independent candidates] to file their nominating petitions at the same early date as Democratic and Republican candidates was unjustified. Id. at 881. Requiring party candidates to comply with a March filing deadline permits a reasonable time for processing the documents submitted by candidates and preparing the ballot for a June primary. [But] [n]either the administrative justification nor the benefit of an early filing deadline is applicable to an independent candidate. Wood v. Meadows, 207 F.3d 708, 711 (4th Cir. 2000) (citations omitted) (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 800). [A]lthough such laws appear to treat independent and party candidates similarly, they actually disadvantage independent candidates. Id. Secretary Martin presents no justification for statutorily attaching the independent-candidate filing deadline to that of the political parties. Thus, this connection fails to be narrowly drawn. The majority holds that we must remand because there is insufficient evidence regarding Secretary Martin's inability to process independent-candidate petitions concurrently with the ballot initiatives. On summary judgment, however, if the nonmoving party fails to make a sufficient showing of an element of his case that he has the burden of proving, then the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). Secretary Martin had the burden of proving a genuine conflict existed between the processing of independent-candidate petitions and petitions for ballot initiatives. Because no evidence exists on the record that such an early deadline is necessary to process the independent-candidate petitions, Moore is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Gometz v. Culwell, 850 F.2d 461, 464 (8th Cir. 1988). I respectfully dissent. FOOTNOTES . Plaintiff William Chris Johnson was voluntarily dismissed from the case, and Plaintiff Michael Harrod did not appeal from the district court's judgment. . Prior to being amended in 2013, section 7-7-103(b)(1)(A) provided a May 1 deadline for an independent candidate to submit a petition with the requisite number of signatures. H.R. 2036, 89th Gen. Assemb., Gen. Sess., 2013 Ark. Acts 1356. . Prior to being amended in 2013, 7-10-103(c) provided a later period for filing of petitions for nonpartisan officebeginning forty-six days before the first day of the party filing period and ending thirty-two days before the first day of the party filing periodand provided that the Secretary of State, or the county clerk, as the case may be, must verify the sufficiency of a petition for nonpartisan office within thirty days of its filing. H.R. 2065, 89th Gen. Assemb., Gen. Sess., 2013 Ark. Acts 1286. . Moore also alleged, in his affidavit opposing Martin's motion for summary judgment, that he intends to run for Lieutenant Governor as an independent candidate in the 2018 general election. . We confine our analysis to Moore's First Amendment rights and due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and do not separately consider his claim of an equal protection violation. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 786 n.7 (1983). . The court also discussed the requirement that the signatures be gathered within a sixty-day period, but did not appear to base its holding on this requirement. Lendallv. Jernigan, 424 F. Supp. 951, 958 (E.D. Ark. 1977) (Lendall III). . Similarly, we perceive no error in the fact that the district court's order did not mention the affidavit of Moore's purported expert witness, Richard Winger, which detailed the history and judicial treatment of ballot access requirements for independent candidates and new political parties, because it would not have informed the district court's analysis in weighing Arkansas's interests against the burden on Moore's rights. . This refers to the earlier-mentioned requirement, upon timely request, to transmit absentee ballots to absent military voters and overseas voters at least forty-five days before an election. 52 U.S.C. 20302(a)(8). . Martin and the district court noted that Moore presented no affirmative evidence to persuade the district court of his position. Because the record did not in fact bear[ ] out [Martin's] claim that no genuine dispute exist[ed], however, Moore was not required to provide affirmative evidence. See Counts v. MK-Ferguson Co., 862 F.2d 1338, 1339 (8th Cir. 1988) (quoting City of Mt. Pleasant v. Associated Elec.Coop., 838 F.2d 268, 273-74 (8th Cir. 1988)). . The evidence on the record suggests that Secretary Martin's office is more than capable of handling such a task. In 2014, Secretary Martin processed 92 nonpartisan candidate petitions, containing 103,578 signatures, before the end of February. Further, Arkansas ballot initiatives must be processed within a period of 30 days, and these petitions can include up to 70,000 signatures. WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge. Meghan McInnis-Dominguez claimed her brother, Clay McInnis III (pictured), 38, was denied admission to a Delaware hospital one day before hanging himself, in a negligence lawsuit filed Tuesday; His body was found hanging from a tree across the street from the facility in Stanton the next morning, with a belt wrapped around his throat The sister of a man who hanged himself outside a Delaware psychiatric hospital says in a lawsuit that the hospital had turned him away one day earlier. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Meghan McInnis-Dominguez, claimed Clay McInnis III, 38, was denied admission to the Rockford Center on March 28, 2016, according to USA Today's The News Journal. His body was found hanging from a tree across the street from the facility in Stanton the next morning, with a belt wrapped around his throat. McInnis allegedly never saw the psychiatrist on duty at the 24-hour hospital that night, Ayesha Silman, before being told to leave. McInnis had a history of bipolar disorder and suicide attempts. The lawsuit said McInnis had signed a hospital registration form stating he was a 'danger to self/others.' 'It was a breach in the standard of care for failing to either admit Mr. McInnis for in-patient care or to transfer him to another hospital for in-patient care,' the lawsuit stated. 'We are filing the lawsuit because we want to know what happened,' McInnis-Dominguez said in an interview quoted by The News Journal. 'You don't want any other family to go through this,' she said. McInnis allegedly never saw the psychiatrist on duty at the 24-hour hospital (pictured) that night, Ayesha Silman, before being told to leave The suit claimed the intake staffer's notes from that day said, 'there were "reasons to doubt patient's credibility and reliability."' Hospital staff allegedly told McInnis to return the next day to begin an outpatient program. This McInnis was dropped off at the hospital in the afternoon of March 28, 2016 because it was 'overwhelmingly obvious that he was in distress' by Mike Vanscoy, who The News Journal interviewed last year about the apparent suicide. The family wants to know why McInnis wasn't admitted, their attorney, Randall Robbins, said. The suit seeks unspecified wrongful death damages from Rockford's owner, Universal Health Services (UHS). UHS is one of the largest behavioral health operators in the nation. Its facilities are known to have a history of violence, sexual assaults, inadequate security and patient deaths, according to reports in the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and other news outlets, as reported by The News Journal. Previously, state police had concluded there was no foul play in McInnis's death. Shortly after, state and federal health officials also ruled that there was no evidence of regulatory breaches at Rockford pertaining to the death. A hospital spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit. Samaritans can be contacted by phone on 08457 909090 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK, or call 1 (800) 273-TALK in the US Austria's left-leaning president Alexander Van Der Bellen has suggested all women must one day wear headscarves to combat Islamophobia. The green-backed independent triumphed over his populist right-wing rival Norbert Hofer in December after an unprecedented repeat vote. His comments come after the Austrian government banned the full-face veil in public spaces in January, as part of an attempt to counter the rise of the far-right Freedom Party. During a talk to students Mr Van der Bellen suggested all women should wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslims. Speaking at The House of the European Union in Vienna, he said: 'It is the right of a woman - do men wear headscarves too? - to dress herself however she wants. That is my opinion about it. 'Besides that, not only Muslim women. Every woman can wear a headscarf. And if it goes on - and I am already on the next question - with actual rampant Islamophobia, the day will come that we must ask all women to wear a headscarf. 'All out of solidarity with those who have to on religious grounds.' Mr Van der Bellen suggested all women should wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslims Austria banned the burqa, niqab and other face-covering veils earlier this year. The measure was introduced by the ruling Social Democratic party (SPO) and the centre-right Austrian Peoples party (OVP) to prevent the collapse of their coalition government. By doing so, they followed in the footsteps of France, which became the first European country to ban the full-face veil officially in 2010. Bans are also in place in Belgium and some parts of Switzerland. Mr Van der Bellen had outlined a vision markedly different from that offered during campaigning by his right-wing rival Mr Hofer, who he defeated in December. Hofer had campaigned on a law-and-order platform in line with his Freedom Party's opposition to Muslim immigration, its focus on Austrians first and its depiction of the European Union as an out-of-touch institutio. In contrast, the left-leaning Van der Bellen rejected nationalism in favour of a 'common Europe as a project of peace.' He urged equal treatment for all Austrians, whether 'their families live here for generations or not...whether they love men or women, and whether they are men or women.' The presidency is a largely symbolic post. But Van der Bellen's victory was welcomed by established European political parties fearful of another populist victory after Donald Trump's shock presidential win in the US. A 28-year-old man suspected of killing his father and leaving the body in a freezer has now been arrested. Kenneth Alleman Midgley Jr. was taken into custody after he landed at the Dallas Forth Worth International Airport on Tuesday nearly two weeks after his sister called the police. Police found a note in the Plano, Texas, home that read 'It's in the freezer', and the 50-year-old Kenneth Midgley Sr. was found inside, wrapped up in a blue tarp, according to an affidavit cited by FOX4. Kenneth Alleman Midgley Jr. (pictured) is suspected of killing his father and leaving the body in a freezer. He was arrested on Tuesday at the Dallas Forth Worth International Airport Midgley Jr. was charged with one count of murder. He was booked into the Collin County Jail, where he is being held on $500,000 bail. Police had been searching for the 28-year-old since his sister called the police on April 15, reporting she hadn't heard from her father in a few days. According to her, the 28-year-old told their mother: 'You cant talk to Dad because hes not alive.' Police arrived at the home in the 4700 block of Nocona Drive and found a note signed by 'Kenny' saying something bad had happened. It also said the 50-year-old had been hit by a steel rod, and included the line: 'It's in the freezer'. There were signs of a struggle, and the bloody rod was found inside the home, according to an affidavit. Police also said Midgley Sr. died from blunt-force trauma. Midgley Jr. was seen crossing the border into Mexico last week, border patrol said. He was taken into custody at the airport, but it remains unclear where he was flying in from. The EU has started airbrushing the UK out of maps of the European Union two years before we formally leave. The move was hailed by Brexiteer Jacob Rees Mogg who said he was delighted Brussels had finally realised Brexit is actually happening. The maps, produced by the European Commission, shows employment rates across the bloc, but has faded the UK out to grey. The European Commission map has airbrushed the UK out depite Britain not leaving the bloc until March 2019 Brexit-backing Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg said he was delighted at the maps Mr Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP for North East Somerset, told the Mail Online Brussels should give Britain some of its money back as it clearly thinks Brexit has already happeed. He said: I think they are brilliant, I am absolutely delighted that officials in the European Union have recognised that we are leaving and are speeding the process along. But perhaps they would like to give us a discount on our bills if they have decided we have left already. I thought we would win the Brexit vote, but if you had asked me just before the 2015 election if I thought the EU would be painting us out of its maps I would have been astonished. Mr Rees-Mogg, pictured last April, said Brussels should hand Britain back some of its cash as it thinks Britain has already departed from the bloc I think it is good news they are recognising reality rather than trying to keep us in. But of course as we leave their figures get worse, because our economy is strong and we flatter the EU statistics. Their statistics will take a bit of a tumble with us airbrushed out. Theresa May triggered Article 50 in March starting the two-year clock on Britain leaving the EU. This means that Britain will not formally leave the EU until March 2019. Advertisement Vladimir Putin has called on countries to 'refrain from military rhetoric' over North Korea as his armoured divisions rolled through the streets of Moscow and St.Petersburg before their Victory Day Parade. The Russian President has warned the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear programme is deepening, and claimed Russia and Japan believe the situation has 'seriously deteriorated'. Putin made the comments during a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where he also urged countries involved in the crisis to use peaceful dialogue. While the Russian Premier appealed for calm, his armed forces displayed their might as they rehearsed for celebrations on May 9, which mark 72 years since the victory in the Second World War. Tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles on transports trucks made their way along city streets as troops marched in formation behind. Vladimir Putin showed off his military might as his armies prepared for their Victory Parade celebrations in the Russian city of St Petersburg Pictured: Russian artillery vehicles, covered with arctic camouflage, move through the streets of Moscow Pictured: A Russian honour guard soldier warms up prior a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade in St Petersburg Pictured, Stern-faced Russian military cadets march on Dvortsovaya Square in St. Petersburg, holding red military flags Pictured: An RS-24 Yars mobile intercontinental ballistic missile moves through St Petersburg as military hardware heads for Moscow's Red Square for a night rehearsal of the Victory Day parade Pictured: A soldier sits onboard an Tigr-M all-terrain infantry mobility vehicle during a rehearsal for the Victory Day parade Pictured: Tourists and passersby stop to take pictures as a tank drives past during a rehearsal for the Victory Day celebrations Solemn-faced cadets and saluting soldiers in red berets paraded through St Petersburg and Moscow with brass bands rehearsing military tunes for the eagerly-anticipated event. The grandiose parade was first held on Stalin's orders after victory in Europe and is now one of the most sacred days in the Russian calendar, remembering the 24 million civilian and military casualties during killed in the war. This was about 50 times greater than the losses incurred by Great Britain. But as his armies prepare for their celebration, Putin has called for the revival of six-party talks between Russia, the USA, South Korea, Japan and China. Pictured: Russian military cadets practice their marching during the parade rehearsal in St Petersburg today Pictured: Soldiers salute as their tanks roll through the streets in preparation for the parade celebrating Russia's victory over Nazi Germany Pictured: Russian soldiers march on Dvortsovaya Square in St. Petersburg. The victory parade was first held on Stalin's orders after victory in Europe and is now one of the most sacred days in the Russian calendar Pictured: A ballistic missile launching vehicle moves through the streets of Moscow during the parade rehearsal Pictured: A soldier salutes while riding a tank through the streets. The Victory Day parade is regarded as one of the most sacred days in the Russian calendar Pictured: An officer installs a red flag on his T-72 tank during preparations for the celebrations on May 9. The parade remembers the 24 million Russian civilian and military casualties during killed during the Second World War Bloomberg reported that Prime Minister Abe said he and Putin spent a long time discussing North Korea during their meeting - which also involved settling a dispute over four islands seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Earlier this week, Russia warned the Korean peninsula is on the brink of war. The two leaders did not discuss further sanctions against North Korea, but it is believed the issue might be raised betweet Russia and Japan's foreign ministries. The Russian leader's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov added that Mr Putin and Mr Abe did not discuss what could be done to get North Korea to drop its nuclear programme. Pictured: Russian soldiers chant as they march through the streets in preparation for the parade that will take place in Dvortsovaya Square Pictured: Russia's Koalitsiya-SV and Msta-S self-propelled howitzers and other military vehicles move along Moscow's streets Pictured: A Russian honour guard soldier stands guard during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade Pictured: Tanks stand near the sculpture of Atlas at the State Hermitage museum prior to the rehearsal for the Victory Day in St Petersburg Putin and Abe have come one step closer to signing a peace treaty today, after discussing joint economic projects on the four disputed islands. Japan and Russia both claim four islands north of Japan's island of Hokkaido which came under Russian control at the end of the Second World War. Thursday's meeting in Moscow is the third between the leaders in the past seven months; Mr Putin made a state visit to Japan in December, while Mr Abe met Putin in Russia's Far East in September. The recent meetings are widely regarded as a sign that both Moscow and Tokyo are eager to settle the dispute over the Kuril islands and sign a peace treaty which the then-Soviet Union and Japan never managed to negotiate. Mr Putin and Mr Abe said after the talks at the Kremlin that a group of Japanese officials and businessmen would travel to the Kurils next month to examine opportunities for Japanese investment. Vladimir Putin and Shinzo Abe shake hands as they meet in the Kremlin, as they get closer to being able to sign a peace treaty in a decades-old dispute The two leaders also discussed the situation in North Korea, which they warned is getting worse, and urged for peaceful dialogue between states dealing with the isolationist country Mr Abe added that he read out to Mr Putin during his visit in December letters from Japanese people who grew up in the Kurils and wanted to visit the graves of their loved ones. Mr Putin said he would send a plane to Japan to take those who want to visit the graves, a move he hopes 'will contribute to creating an atmosphere of trust and understanding between our nations'. Neither Mr Putin nor Mr Abe, however, indicated any progress on the talks to sign the peace treaty. Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said 'the territorial dispute needs to be settled somehow in a way that it will be suitable both for Moscow and Tokyo', but added that Russia and Japan would be working to boost economic co-operation no matter when the treaty is signed. The countries also discussed the joint development of fisheries, tourism and other areas which might help bridge the gap. Toyota is recalling nearly a quarter million small pickup trucks in the US over fears that their rear wheels could lock up and cause drivers to lose control of their vehicles. The safety recall affects certain Tacoma trucks from the 2016 and 2017 model years, Toyota said in an announcement today, estimating that 228,000 are involved. Toyota says oil can leak from the rear differentials of the recalled trucks, noting that if the trucks are continuously driven in that condition, the rear differential could become damaged, possibly resulting in noise and reduced movement. Toyota is recalling about 228,000 model year 2016 and 2017 Tacoma pickup trucks because the rear wheels have the potential to lock up, causing drivers to lose control of the vehicles In the announcement, the car manufacturer also warned that in certain cases, 'the rear differential could seize, resulting in a loss of control of the vehicle and increasing the risk of a crash.' A differential allows the wheels to travel at different speeds while a vehicle is turning a corner. Toyota would not say if the problem has caused any crashes or injuries to date. Toyota dealers will inspect the recalled trucks' rear differentials for oil leaks. In certain cases, the car manufacturer also warned continued driving of a car that's sprung a rear differential oil leak could result 'resulting in a loss of control' and increase risk of a crash Toyota dealers will inspect the recalled trucks and provide necessary repairs free of charge If no leaks are found, fasteners will be tightened. If there's a leak, the rear differential gasket will be replaced and new fasteners installed. Toyota will also replace any damaged differential parts with a brand new carrier assembly. All work will be done free of cost to truck owners. Known owners of the impacted Tacoma truck models will be notified of the recall by mail starting in mid-June. A jealous wife has been arrested after cutting off her husband's penis - with a pair of scissors. Liezel Betitta, 32, was convinced that husband 'Mark' was having an affair with a friend's wife at a building firm where he worked in Iloilo City, the Philippines. Mark went out drinking with friends after work and fell asleep at a friend's house - before his furious wife stormed round and found him. He woke up in agony after Liezel grabbed his manhood and sliced it off two inches from the base at around 10.30pm on April 22. Defiant Liezel - who fled the scene - was later arrested and told police she had no regrets about her butchery. Liezel Betitta, 32, was convinced that husband 'Mark' was having an affair with a friend's wife at a building firm where he worked in Iloilo City, the Philippines Mark went out drinking with friends after work and fell asleep at a friend's house - before his furious wife stormed round and found him She said: 'I don't regret cutting off his penis. It's his punishment for being a womanizer. I am ready to face the consequences of my action. 'I am tired of his womanizing. He got a new girlfriend lately.' Frantic friends helped Mark as blood poured from his wound. They took him to the Jesus Colmenares Memorial Hospital in the Balasan Town district, several miles away. Pals told police that the couple, who have 11-year-old twins and an eight-year-old daughter, were often arguing. Mark was later transferred to the Western Visayas Medical Center in Iloilo City where surgeons attempted unsuccessfully to reattach his penis. Mark was later transferred to the Western Visayas Medical Center in Iloilo City where surgeons attempted unsuccessfully to reattach his penis Physicians said that because the major nerve had already been severed there was little they could do. Tissue from the part cut off had also already died. Investigator Alexis Bataga from the Carles Police said that Mark wanted to press charges against his wife. He said officers were investigating the incident and have remanded Liezel in custody. He added: 'We could not yet ascertain what drove her to harm her husband. 'The last time I talked to his family, they told me that he was recovering.' Bernie Ecclestone, chairman emeritus of the Formula One Group, pictured earlier this month in Bahrain. Damian Collins MP has asked for a deal between F1 and the FIA to be probed An MP has asked the Serious Fraud office to look into a Formula One deal, after confidential documents revealed details of an agreement between the racing body and its regulator which could amount to bribery. ITV News has seen a secret copy of the Concorde Implementation Agreement in July 2013, between Formula One and the governing body Federation Internationale d'Automobile (FIA), which was controversial when it was agreed because it greatly increased the power they held, while reducing the influence of the sport's other four smaller racing teams. Since then, two of those four smaller teams have gone bust. According to ITV, there were two elements of the deal that appeared questionable - that the FIA was granted and chose to accept a $5 million (3.9m) lump sum for entering into the agreement and that it took a one per cent stake in Formula 1 for $460,000 (358,800) - a tiny fraction of the market value. Jonathan Fisher QC, a barrister who specialises in corporate and financial crime, told ITV News that the deal has potentially breached sections 1, 2 and 7 of The Bribery Act. After the agreement was shown to Damian Collins, the MP who chairs the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, he wrote to the Serious Fraud Office to ask it to assess whether the agreement amounted to a bribe. Damian Collins, the MP who chairs the Culture, Media and Sport committee, wrote to the Serious Fraud office after seeing the confidential documents As the governing body of motor sport, the FIA is supposed to act independently and in the sport's best interests. Some believe there is a strong argument that the Concorde Implementation Agreement between F1 and the FIA may have broken the law. The agreement was put in place to run from 2013 until 2020, but the FIA's investment in F1 wasn't revealed until last year, when Liberty Media took over F1. In theory the FIA had the power to block the Liberty Media takeover, but the FIA approved the transaction in January and went on to cash in its shares in return for $80 million (62.4m). The FIA says the Concorde Implementation Agreement ensured that the FIA is 'properly remunerated for its regulatory role'. It said the $5 million (3.9m) was 'properly accounted for' although it refused to give ITV a copy of its accounts. The FIA insists 'no individual received any payment out of this sum'. Bernie Ecclestone was the CEO who signed the agreement on behalf of Formula One but he told ITV News that he was not involved with the negotiation of the deal and recommended we contact Donald MacKenzie, chairman of CVC Capital Partners. Mr Ecclestone is now the chairman emeritus of Formula One, following the takeover. CVC was the controlling shareholder of Formula One for more than ten years and made several billion pounds from the sport which, for much of that time, thrived under its ownership. Bernie Ecclestone, above, told ITV he wasn't involved in the talks that led to the deal, and a spokesman he referred the reporter to, said the agreement did not breach the Bribery Act Donald MacKenzie is understood to have led the talks with the FIA. Mr MacKenzie declined to speak with ITV. A spokesman for CVC told ITV News: 'The agreement does not breach the Bribery Act, and any suggestion to the contrary can only be based on a misunderstanding of the facts and is false. We have recently confirmed this with our outside legal advisers. 'Any suggestion that CVC or Mr MacKenzie was involved in bribery, whether through these arrangements between F1 and the FIA or otherwise, would be baseless and wrong.' Tonight the Serious Fraud Office told ITV News that it has received Damian Green's letter and that its Intelligence Unit is 'reviewing material in its possession'. A pre-investigation process is underway although the SFO added that it 'does not comment on the progress of such assessments'. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1987 the SFO has Section 2 powers to compel companies to hand over emails, bank records and other documents it deems necessary. The Intelligence Unit then assesses the evidence before deciding whether to launch a formal investigation. A female prison guard is dead in a brutal attack, with the investigation focusing on a convicted murderer serving a life sentence for his previous crimes. Inmate Craig Wissink, convicted of murder in 2004, is suspected in the Wednesday slaying of Sergeant Meggan Lee Callahan at Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor, North Carolina. Callahan, a 29-year-old with four years on the job, was assaulted around 5.30pm and died less than an hour later, despite lifesaving measures by fellow corrections officers, officials said. Scroll down for video Sgt Meggan Lee Callahan (right) was assaulted Wednesday around 5.30pm and died less than an hour later, despite lifesaving measures by fellow corrections officers, officials said Craig Wissink, convicted of murder in 2004 and serving a life sentence, is suspected in Callahan's death. The inmate has a string of infractions behind bars, including fighting Callahan had been promoted to sergeant in February 2016 after joining the North Carolina Department of Public Safety in 2012. Friends described her as an upbeat woman who was devoted to her job. 'She was a very sweet lady,' Ricky Nixon, a landlord who owned the where she lived, told the News&Observer. 'Her personality was very jolly.' Callahan 'was always smiling', but she lived alone and put in long hours at the prison, Nixon said. 'She worked all the time,' he said. Wissink, 35, is serving a life sentence without parole in a 2000 home-invasion robbery that left one man dead of a shotgun blast to the chest, court records show. He has had six prison infractions since 2013, including fighting, interfering with staff, substance possession and possession of banned electronic device, according to prison records. The violent convict has also spent time practicing his artistic talents behind bars, winning first place in a 2008 drawing competition for inmates hosted by Vance Granville Community College. Excessive fat from an 'overly obese' corpse that was being cremated has caused a funeral home to go up in flames. The Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati was damaged by the fire on Wednesday night following the freak accident. Owner Don Catchen said the fire being used to cremate the corpse suddenly became too hot due to the fat and caused the flames to spread to nearby containers. Scroll down for video The Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati was damaged by fire on Wednesday night when excessive fat from an 'overly obese' corpse caused flames to spread to nearby containers 'My operator was in the process of cremating remains and (the body) was overly obese and apparently it got a little hotter than the unit is supposed to get,' Catchen told WCPO Cincinnati. 'One of the cremation containers that we had close (by) caught on fire and that's what burnt.' Fire crews battled the flames for two hours before they were able to get it under control. 'The containers that we use - that we have to place the remains in to cremate them - that's the only thing that's burnt,' Catchen said. The fire being used to cremate the corpse suddenly became too hot due to the excessive fat and caused the flames to spread The Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati (above) was damaged by the fire on Wednesday night following the freak accident No other bodies at the funeral home were damaged by the fire. Cincinnati Fire Chief Michael Washington said the fire appeared to start with a routine cremation. 'We believe there were some combustible storage boxes that were too close to the ovens,' Washington said. A crematorium in Richmond, Virginia went up in flames in 2014 when an 800 pound body caused the roof to catch fire. The the large amount of fat on the body created excessive heat and oil once the cremation process had started. Aaron Hernandez's fiancee could sell their mini-mansion for $1.2million on Thursday, a sale which would replenish his empty estate. A superior court judge has allowed Shayanna Jenkins to take over the family estate and close a deal to sell the home in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. The sale could happen some time on Friday, according to court records. The offer amount has not been disclosed but the 15-room property was listed for $1.2million before Hernandez's suicide at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center last week. It would bring cash into his depleted estate which lawyers stands at $0.00. Shayanna Jenkins (left with her daughter at Hernandez's funeral last week) has until Thursday night to accept or refuse an offer on the late star's Massachusetts home But even if the sale goes through, Jenkins and her four-year-old daughter Avielle may never see a penny of the proceeds. The cash has already been allocated to settle an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit filed against Hernandez by the family of his 2013 murder victim Odin Lloyd. Hernandez was serving life without parole for killing Lloyd when he died. Lloyd's mother Ursula Ward was suing him for wrongful death and the pair were reportedly close to reaching a settlement. Ward wants $6million and has appealed to the New England Patriots, Hernandez's former team, to give it to her. The families of the two victims from Hernandez's second trial could also file wrongful death suits against him despite his acquittal. Hernandez's suicide came just a week after he was cleared of killing Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu in 2012. Neither of the victims' families has yet filed civil lawsuits against the late star or his estate. Hernandez listed the home in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, for $1.2million He had been trying to sell the 15-room property when he committed suicide last week After initially listing the spacious home for $1.3million, Hernandez lowered the asking price by $100,000 It is not clear how much the offer Jenkins received this week was. Jenkins has not been living in the home Any money from the sale of the house will be used to settle a wrongful death lawsuit launched by Ursula Ward (left) before Hernandez killed himself. He was serving life without parole for murdering Ward's son Odin Lloyd (right) in 2013 The families of Safiro Furtado (left) and Daniel de Abreu (right) may also file lawsuits against Hernandez despite him being cleared of their deaths Hernandez died without leaving a will and with no money left to give them. His lawyer told The Boston Herald his estate was valued at $0.00 when he died and he had no other assets to sell. In 2012, Hernandez signed with the Patriots on a $40million contract. He is believed to have been given promised around $10million at the time. When he was arrested for Lloyd's murder, the club halted $5million of his pay. They have still never given it to him but could be forced to if Hernandez's lawyers manage to vacate his conviction posthumously. Under Massachusetts law, a person can have their record vacated if they die before their appeal is heard. Hernandez left no will but the burden of his estate falls on Jenkins (above with the pair's four-year-old daughter Avielle at his trial) Hernandez signed with the Patriots for $40million in 2012 but only ever saw a fraction of the money Hernandez's appeal had not yet gone before a court and his lawyers believe he may be eligible to have his slate wiped clean posthumously. If this happens, the Patriots may be obliged to posthumously award his estate the money it withheld when he was arrested and convicted. It is not exactly clear what the star, who was 27 when he died, spent his fortune on however lawyers fees for both murder trials likely contributed. Hernandez was represented at his second trial by Jose Baez, who shot to notoriety when he helped get Casey Anthony acquitted of murdering her daughter in 2011. Baez has not disclosed exactly how much he was paid by the star. Advertisement Thousands attended the funeral of a New York City firefighter who died last week after falling five stories while battling a blaze in Queens. Firefighters from around the country lined the streets outside of St Martin of Tours in Bethpage, New York, on Monday morning to honor 42-year-old William 'Billy' Tolley. A solemn procession to the church concluded with Tolley's casket being unloaded from a New York Fire Department truck, NBC 4 New York reports. Scroll down for video Isabella Tolley, 8 (center), holding a blanket with a picture of her father, her mother, Marie Tolley (center left), and other family and friends watch as William Tolley's casket is loaded onto a truck at his funeral in Bethpage, New York, Thursday Hundreds gathered inside St Martin of Tours to hear the service presided over by Father Patrick Woods, who recalled a conversation he had with Tolley's daughter, Isabella, after her father's death. 'As courageous and as brave as any firefighter who rushed into a burning building, Marie, a loving mother carrying her own crushing grief, gently tells Bella that Billy has gone home to God,' said Woods. 'And Bella, as wise as any ancient philosopher, says, "Mommy, Daddy's too young to die." And Bella, as vulnerable as any innocent eight-year-old girl can be on the eve of her first Holy Communion, says, "I have no daddy."' Woods told Isabella that her father loved helping people and asked her what activities she enjoyed doing with him. Isabella said she liked playing drums and eating chocolate ice cream with him. Tolley, a 14-year veteran of the FDNY, played drums in the death metal band Internal Bleeding he co-founded 25 years ago with friend Chris Pervelis. Jarrett Kotarski, a member of Tolley's firehouse, recalled his surprise at finding out that his colleague was a drummer in such a band. William Tolley's casket is carried out of St Martin of Tours in Bethpage, New York, Thursday during his funeral. The 42-year-old Tolley was on the roof of an apartment building in Queens during a fire when he fell last week 'Billy was kind of a squared-away guy, always had his hair cut the right away, uniform proper, the guy drove a Honda Accord with his volley license plates and yet he's this famous drummer in this insane metal band,' Kotarski said. Kotarski said Tolley was a proud father who would hang Isabella's artwork on his locker and ask his colleagues for their opinion on Disney princess dresses. 'Billy, we're your brother and just like in the firehouse, we got you,' he said in tears. 'Bella's our little girl now, and we're gonna take good care of her for you.' Tolley's older brother, Robert, remembered how he wanted to be a firefighter even as a child. 'The day he called me to let me know how his number had been called up by the department, up until that point, was the greatest day in his life,' he said. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told Isabella that Tolley was a hero. In the days following Tolley's death, tributes have been placed outside of his firehouse, Ladder 135. On Monday, the Stephen Siller Tunnels to Tower Foundation announced that it intends to pay off the mortgage of Tolley's family home on Long Island. Tolley was on the roof of an apartment building during a fire when he fell last Thursday. Investigators are still trying to determine what caused Tolley to fall to his death, which had nothing to do with the fire Firefighters stand at attention as the funeral procession for Tolley arrives at the church in Bethpage, New York, Thursday Firefighters gather for the funeral of William 'Billy' Tolley, a 14-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department Tolley was working to ventilate the building after a fire on the second story of the house had already been contained Witnesses said it appeared Tolley misstepped while trying to move from the bucket attached to his fire truck's ladder to the roof, and fell five stories Tolley was rushed to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn after the fall, but later died from injuries sustained in the fall Many gathered at the hospital, including Tolley's wife Marie, their daughter, firefighters and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio He leaves behind a wife Marie and an eight-year-old daughter, Isabella. Speaking publicly for the first time, Marie Tolley, of Bethpage, says that she is grateful for the foundation's support and for the support of the New York City fire department, adding that her husband would be proud, as well. Investigators are still trying to determine what caused Tolley to fall to his death. Tolley was part of the crew that responded to a call to put out a small fire at a Queens home last Thursday afternoon. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called Tolley a hero Witnesses said it appeared Tolley, of Bethpage, Long Island, misstepped while trying to move from the bucket attached to his fire truck's ladder to the roof, and fell five stories at around 2.40pm Eastern. The fire the team was battling occurred on the second floor of a multi-family home located at 1615 Putnam Avenue in Ridgewood, according to the FDNY. The fire had already been contained when Tolley fell, CBS 2 New York reported. One witness described what he saw to a CBS reporter. 'I seen the fireman go up the ladder, go in the white thing the bucket and then the ladder shakes. I dont know why it jerks or why it shakes. After it shakes, then he fell out,' Michael Lewis, a construction worker, said. 'He was already up there on top of the roof in the bucket. There was like two or three firemen already on the roof, and then it shakes, and he fell out.' It's standard procedure for firefighters to ventilate a burning building by going to the roof and opening doors, as part of efforts to save individuals who may be trapped above a fire, said New York City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. 'The fire was on the second floor. Firefighter Tolley was operating on the roof. That was his position as the outside ventilation firefighter, operating around the area where Ladder 135s bucket was located,' Nigro said. 'Firefighter Tolley fell five stories from the roof and he perished about 20 minutes into fighting that fire. The circumstances of the tragedy and the fall are right now under investigation.' Family members of Tolley, a New York City firefighter from Ladder 135 Engine 286, react during a ceremony at his firehouse An unidentified woman reacts after leaving flowers in front of the firehouse following a memorial ceremony in Queens Members of the FDNY stand during a ceremonial draping of purple and black bunting on the exterior of Tolley's firehouse Members of the FDNY who belong to the same firehouse where Tolley was based react after a ceremony following his death The actual fire had nothing to do with Tolley's fall and eventual death, Nigro said. 'It was really in the operation that he was performing on the roof which is a routine operation for us, and somehow he fell from the roof,' he said. Two other people were injured in events related to the fire, authorities said. A second firefighter, while alert, was placed in an ambulance. That firefighter may have been the operator of the ladder truck from which Tolley fell, according to statements made by witnesses to CBS. Tolley was rushed to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn after the fall, but to no avail. Many gathered at the hospital, including Tolley's family, firefighters, the FDNY Chaplain and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Tolley was the 1,147th FDNY member to die in the line of duty in the department's history. Advertisement Pictured edging out of her dry dock at Barrow-in-Furness, today preparations began to get the Royal Navy's latest submarine water-ready ahead of its first trip in the sea. She has been ten years in the making but now the 318ft long, 7,400 tonne nuclear-powered HMS Audacious took her first trip in water on Friday, April 28, during a floating out ceremony in Cumbria. She will then start her testing program, before leaving Barrow for sea trials next year. Part of a 1billion project, Audacious is the fourth out of seven astute class submarines commissioned by the Government to set a new standard in weapons. When armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, she will be capable of striking targets up to 750 miles from the coast with pinpoint accuracy. Easy does it! The hugely-proportioned HMS Audacious was taken out of its indoor ship building complex at BAE Systems today Powerful: The 318ft long, 7,400 tonne nuclear-powered HMS Audacious has cost taxpayers more than 1billion but along with her sisters, sets a new standard in weapons load and stealth Audacious in numbers: The giant ship is capable of striking targets with pinpoint accuracy from 750 miles away - the equivalent of aiming for a target in Spain from Plymouth, Devon Despite global tensions and displays of military prowess, a spokesman for manufactures BAE Systems' Submarines said tomorrow's exercise was a planned procedure. A spokesman said: This is just a part of its schedule and isnt reactionary. It takes nearly ten years to build so its flouting out is just a very gradual launch but has been planned for some time. The floating out stage is described as a huge milestone in the submarines timeline as the ship has just finished her manufacturing stage. The spokesman said: First she will go in the water for the first time, then she will take her first dive. BAE Systems manages the sea trials before the Navy takes the submarine into service The next big milestone will be when she leaves Barrow which we expect will be in around a year. HMS Audacious is taken out of it's indoor ship building complex at BAE Systems, Burrow-in-Furness, and placed on the water for the first time in a huge milestone A spokesman for the Military of Defence told MailOnline he couldn't comment on the ship's activities. HMS Audacious is the fourth submarine in the Astute class of ten warships. She was officially named during a ceremony at BAE Systems Submarines site in Cumbria, back in December. Lady Jones, Audacious' sponsor and wife of Admiral Sir Phillip Jones, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, chose the name. In keeping with tradition, Lady Jones then smashed a bottle of locally brewed beer against her hull. HMS Audacious is the fourth submarine in Astute Class fleet, as well as the largest and most advanced attack submarine in service with the Royal Navy. And her sister Artful, who was completed in May 2014, got her toes wet for the first time almost exactly three years ago to the date at the same dock. Artful emerged from the Devonshire Dock Hall in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, after almost a decade in the making. She was officially named by Amanda, Lady Zambellas, wife of the Royal Navys First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas. The Tomahawk cruise missiles she carries are claimed to have an accuracy of just a few metres over a range of within 1,240km, giving Artful the ability to support ground forces anywhere in the world. More than 39,000 acoustic tiles mask the vessel's sonar signature, meaning she slips through the seas with less noise than a baby dolphin. Yet her sonar is said to be so powerful it can detect ships leaving harbour in New York City from a listening point below the waters of the English Channel, 3,000 nautical miles away. Sister act: HMS Audacious' sibling Artful is one of eleven warships designed and manufactured by BAE Systems for the Royal Navy as a part of a military program rolled out by the Government A former Miss Italy finalist has arrived at court for the trial of her ex-boyfriend who 'threw acid in her face' a day after she bravely shared pictures on Instagram of her horrific injuries. Gessica Notaro, 27, was left with life-changing injuries after her jilted ex Jorge Edson Tavares allegedly hurled acid at her. He is currently in custody but denies any involvement in the January 10 attack. Former Miss Italy Gessica Notaro appeared in court today for the trial of her ex-boyfriend Jorge Edson Tavares, who is accused of throwing acid in her face The former model was attacked in the Italian seaside resort of Rimini in January and remains in danger of losing the sight in her left eye Tavares was reportedly a model boyfriend when the pair were together, but became obsessive when Miss Notaro ended the relationship Miss Notaro, from Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, worked as a sea-lion trainer at a dolfinarium. She spent two months in hospital after the attack and is in danger of losing sight in one eye. She shared her first selfie on social media yesterday after revealing her scars in an emotional TV interview last week. The image has received more than 30,000 'likes' and the former model was flooded with supportive comments. In her TV appearance last week she had a scarf covering her face, but decided to remove it saying: 'I want you to see what he did to me. This isn't love.' Gessica Notaro, 27, shared her first selfie since an acid attack, allegedly carried out by her jilted ex, which left her horrifically scarred Miss Notaro at the dolphin aquarium where she worked before the attack. She can't return to work as she's unable to go in the water because of her injuries She was on national TV after spending two months 'imprisoned' in her hospital room being treated for her life-changing injuries. She met boyfriend Jorge Edson Tavares three years ago when they working at the dolphin aquarium. After they broke up in August, he became jealous and started stalking her. She said: 'As soon as I broke up with him, he freaked. He immediately got jealous. He knew my work schedule and tracked my movements. If I was two minutes late from work, he would message me: "What are you going? Why are you still in there? Who are you with?" 'I wanted to get on with my life', she added. 'But I couldn't go out with anyone out of fear. 'He followed me everywhere I went, threatened me and never left me alone. He even staged a fake suicide, trying to appeal to my sensitivity. He came to my house with a rope and pretended to hang himself from the gate in my front yard.' Tavares also allegedly threatened to throw acid over her prior to the attack. She eventually went to the police and provided them with evidence, including WhatsApp messages from Tavares threatening to 'ruin' her life, but they merely ordered him to stay away from her. Bodyguard Jorge Edson Tavares allegedly became jealous and started stalking Miss Notaro after they broke up in August last year Speaking last week on her return from hospital, Miss Notaro told MailOnline: 'I did my own two months of prison. I can't live life as I used to. I can't go out in the sun, I am constantly trapped in this mask and my face hurts all the time. 'I have to spend all my money on medication every half hour I need eye drops and I have to moisturise my skin constantly. I cannot do my job because I can't go in the water. 'Even when I'm better, I will have scars on the inside for the rest of my life. I will always be scared to get out of my car and walk home because I will relive that scene again and again.' She added: 'While the acid ate away at my face I was on my knees praying. I prayed to God: take away my beauty but at least leave me with my sight.' The 27-year-old spent two months in hospital and was only allowed to speak to visitors through a glass window because of the risk of infection Miss Notaro with her lawyer Fiorenzo Alessi. Her ex is currently awaiting trial but he denies throwing acid in her face Miss Notaro faces a year-long wait until she is well enough for plastic surgery, spending 600 a month on medication, eye drops and lotions, to subdue her pain. She now hopes to start a singing career with the launch of an album. 'I risked losing it as the acid ended up in my mouth, but I was alert enough to spit it out', she added. For Italians, the attack has hallmarks of the case involving lawyer Lucia Annibali. Her face was scarred when her ex-boyfriend paid two men in 2013 to throw acid in her face. The former beauty queen revealed her scars on Italian TV last week, saying she wanted the world to see what had happened to her The model and TV presenter was desperate for her vocal cords not to be damaged so she could still speak and sing Miss Notaro claims Tavares had threatened to throw acid over her prior to the attack A Tennessee boy's family wants $4.5 million after a married female janitor allegedly sexually assaulted him during school hours. Jessica Galyon, 29, was busted in February on charges that she pulled the 16-year-old boy into a room at Midway High School and raped him. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports the boy's family is now suing the school district and the contractor that employed Galyon as a janitor. Jessica Galyon allegedly pulled the boy into a room at the school and raped him The suit alleges that the school and company were 'negligent' in allowing the attack to happen. The boy dropped out of school as a result of the attack, the suit alleges. Galyon (above in her mugshot) is charged with sexual battery by an authority figure, aggravated statutory rape and statutory rape by an authority figure According to court papers, Galyon aggressively courted the boy after meeting him in August, asking for his number and to 'friend' him on Facebook. She began sending him 'flirtatious and sexual messages' even after the boy told her to stop, the suit claims. She allegedly invited him to a hotel room, but he refused. The suit alleges that when the boy confronted Galyon, she took him into a room and raped him during school hours. 'This was the first ever sexual encounter of any kind that (the boy) had ever had in his life,' the lawsuit says. The boy's classmates and teachers learned of the harassment and teased him by calling Galyon his 'girlfriend,' the suit claims. A month after the alleged rape, a faculty member alerted a supervisor, court papers say. Galyon was arrested on on charges of sexual battery by an authority figure, aggravated statutory rape and statutory rape by an authority figure. Officials at Midway High School in Tennessee are accused of 'negligence' Laith Waleed Alebbini, 26, was arrested on Wednesday night An Ohio man was arrested in Kentucky on Wednesday as he tried to leave the country to allegedly join ISIS in Syria. Laith Waleed Alebbini, 26, was stopped from boarding his flight at Cincinatti-Northern Kentucky International Airport. FBI agents say the man, who is a Jordanian native, intended to board a plane bound for either Jordan and Turkey and that he intended to slip in to Syria from there. In January, Alebbini was arrested for trying to enter the Turkish embassy illegally. He was also stopped from trying to fly from Turkey on his expired Jordanian passport. Afterwards, he said he was the terrorist group's 'perfect recruit' but that he did not support them and had no plans to join its jihadists overseas, Cincinnati.com reports. FBI agents honed in on him after he posted ISIS propaganda on Facebook. They believe he intended to fly to Syria to join the organization in its fight against the country's president Bashar al-Assad. He was arrested in January after trying to gain access to the Turkish embassy in Washington. Alebbini claimed he was trying to meet with the ambassador to discuss the ongoing problems in the Middle East and bizarrely told FBI agents who questioned him: 'If I had on bomb on me, I swear to God, three embassies would have gone down.' He then tried to travel to Turkey via Amsterdam but was not allowed because his Jordanian passport had expired. He was trying to board a flight bound for either Jordan or Turkey out of Cincinatti-Northern Kentucky International Airport when FBI agents picked him up Immigration records show him arriving in the US in 2011 and becoming a resident in 2014. In March, he moved to Dayton to begin living with a woman he claimed was his wife but within days he came across a confidential informant for the FBI. The bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force launched an investigation into him afterwards. Agents claim that the he was recorded telling the source that ISIS was the 'best choice' for the Middle East. 'The best choice is the Islamic State, best choice for the Muslims,' he allegedly said, later telling him he wanted to join the fight in Syria. On April 15, he contacted the FBI to ask if he was allowed to travel because of his previous arrests. The confidential source bought him and his wife tickets to travel to Jordan and Turkey. He was arrested on Wednesday before he was able to enter the security line at the Kentucky airport. It is not clear whether or not his wife has been arrested or if she faces charges. He was due to appear in court in Ohio on Thursday afternoon. After a leisurely three month vacation, Michelle Obama has made her first public appearance since the inauguration. Looking refreshed and relaxed after her three-month vacation, the former first lady greeted the audience with a smile and a wave at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2017 in Florida on Thursday. Obama was the keynote speaker at the event, organized by the American Institute of Architects, where she spoke about her time as Chicago's assistant commissioner of planning and development. After a leisurely three month vacation, Michelle Obama has made her first public appearance since the inauguration Looking refreshed and relaxed after her three-month vacation, the former first lady greeted the audience with a smile and a wave at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2017 on Thursday The former first lady wore a long black, white and beige dress which showed off her toned arms at the event as she also discussed her tenure as the executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies. The program is aimed at helping talented young people get into politics or professional industries. Her address, Obama's first public appearance since leaving the White House, comes just days after her husband made a speech at Chicago University. The Obamas have mostly kept to themselves since leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on the heels of President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20. Michelle and Barack have spent the past three months quietly recuperating on vacation, and only returned from their latest exotic getaway to the French Polynesian islands this week. Obama was in good spirits as she addressed the crowd at the University of Chicago Obama was the keynote speaker at the event, organized by the American Institute of Architects, where she spoke about her time as Chicago's assistant commissioner of planning and development The former first lady wore a long black, white and beige dress which showed off her toned arms at the event Her address, Obama's first public appearance since leaving the White House, comes just days after her husband made a speech at Chicago University The former president and first lady were staying at the exclusive Brando resort, after a whirlwind trip around the Caribbean in January where the couple spent time with Sir Richard Branson on Necker Island. Aside from a handful of visits to New York City, where their eldest daughter Malia, 18, is taking part in a film production internship at The Weinstein Company, the Obamas have largely been out of the country since January 21 when they officially handed over the White House to Donald and Melania Trump. The former president is expected to have used the downtime to begin work on his memoir. The couple signed a joint multi-million dollar book deal with Penguin. They have also spent time in Hawaii and Palm Springs which was their first port of call on January 21. While Malia carries on with her internship in New York before beginning classes at Harvard in the fall, Sasha, 15, is still in school in Washington DC. The Obamas technically live in Washington, D.C. still, having decided to remain in the capital city until their younger daughter finishes high school. Former President Obama take a holiday snap of his wife Michelle, on one of the final days of the vacation on a yacht in the South Pacific Barack Obama acknowledged their absence from public life on Monday as he convened a panel of students and recent college graduates at the University of Chicago - his first event in the return to public life They are expected to return to Chicago after that. Obama's library is being built on Chicago's South Side and is scheduled to open in 2020. Barack Obama acknowledged their absence from public life on Monday as he convened a panel of students and recent college graduates at the University of Chicago - his first event in the return to public life. He asked to laughter at the top of the event, 'So what's been going on while I've been gone?' 'It is wonderful to be home,' he added. 'It is wonderful to be at the university of Chicago. It is wonderful to be on the south side of Chicago,' he told his audience Monday. Now that he's out of the White House, Obama said he's pursuing his next job. 'And what i'm convinced is that although there are all kinds of issues that I care about and all kinds of issues that I intend to work on,' he said. Obama said he's realized 'the single most important thing' he can do in his post-presidency is to 'prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world.' The White House is preparing to go to battle over the president's tax plan, which it laid out in broad strokes on Wednesday and plans to develop in detail over the summer. A proposal to eliminate nearly every individual deduction, except for the ones pertaining to mortgage and charitable giving, has already emerged as a hurdle. The administration's claims that sweeping tax cuts will be offset by growth is also raising red flags with deficit hawks who it will cost north of $5 trillion Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted today that talks with Congress are moving in the right direction and mechanisms to pay for the bill are being refined. 'We'll do battle with whoever we have to to achieve a greater outcome for Americans and American workers,' he told a reporter who pointed out that the package like the one Trump wants will infuriate a plethora of special interest groups. Scroll down for video The White House is preparing to go to battle over the president's tax plan, which it laid out in broad strokes on Wednesday and plans to develop in detail over the summer The Trump administration proposed an overhaul of the tax code on Wednesday that could allow many Americans to file their annual tax returns on a single sheet of paper and cuts their taxes, eliminating them entirely on the first $24,000 of income earned by a married couple. Overall, the Trump plan seeks a reduction in the number of income brackets, eliminates the death tax and slashes the corporate tax rate. A childcare tax credit the president's daughter Ivanka has been pushing is also on Trump's list of priorities, as was a pledge to get rid of almost every personal deduction. Fitting on a single page itself, the proposal was lacking in details, including how it would be paid, aside from an assumed 3 percent increase in economic growth. 'There's a lot of pay-fors, as they call them...in this proposal that will continue to be refined as we move forward... and negotiated with Congress,' Spicer said. The Trump spokesman did not say what those were. A senior administration official told DailyMail.com after the briefing that the White House wasn't ready to discuss what those might be. A leading suggestion is a border-adjustment tax, however, that is being pursued by congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin promised 'massive reform and simplification' on Wednesday, including cuts for corporations that are intended to spur economic growth OUTLINE: The White House distributed this overview of the tax plan to reporters on Wednesday Ryan and Kevin Brady, chairman of the House's Ways and Means Committee, would pay for a 20 percent slash in the corporate income tax rate with a 20 percent tax on imported goods. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Wednesday that the administration would continue to have discussions with Republican leaders in the House about the BAT, but it was not part of the administration's plan at present. 'We don't think it works in its current form,' Mnuchin said. The administration had not signaled prior to Thursday that it intended to levy new fees or taxes at all to make up for government revenue that would be lost once individuals and businesses start paying less in taxes. 'This will pay for itself with growth and with reduced -- reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes,' Mnuchin said Wednesday afternoon at the White House. The United States must achieve 3 percent sustained economic growth for that to happen. 'That's very achievable,' Mnuchin said Wednesday morning. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Tuesday that he thinks GDP could clock in higher, once Trump's trade and regulatory reforms kick in. 'I would hope that the growth could over time get to be better than that,' he told reporters attending the White House's daily briefing. 'President Obama's the only president in many, many, many, many that didn't have one year of at least 3 percent growth.' TRUMP TAX REFORM AT A GLANCE Trump wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent Administration is billing it as a tax cut that will help small businesses List of priorities includes a childcare tax credit, as well but doesn't say how much or who it would affect Treasury Secretary says Trump plan will simplify taxes for middle class Cuts are paid for by assumed 3 percent economic growth Proposal gets rid of the death tax It collapses income tax brackets into 3 - 10%, 25% and 35% Doubles the standard deduction to $24,000 for married couples Repeals a 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on small businesses Asks for a one-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas Advertisement A document distributed by the White House on Wednesday called for three tax brackets of 10, 25 and 35 per cent. Trump reduces the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent from 35 percent. Democrats immediately cast the proposal as 'self-serving' because the corporate tax cut and death tax eliminations would benefit Trump's family and business. Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said on Twitter, 'The Trump tax plan stacks the deck even more in favor of the super wealthy and companies like his.' The White House said Thursday that it thought most Americans cared about how the tax plan would affect them. 'They're worried about their job. They're worried about whether their company's growing and expanding. They're worried about whether or not they're saving enough money and how much they're paying in taxes,' he said. Mnuchin, appearing on the morning shows Thursday, also brushed off questions related to how Trump might benefit from the tax breaks, as the American public hasn't seen his tax returns. 'This is not about the president's taxes,' Mnuchin told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. 'This is about what's good for the American public. And let me assure you, what the American public cares about is creating jobs and economic growth.' Cleaning up a mess that Mnuchin and National Economic Director Gary Cohn when they spoke to reporters on Wednesday and could name a way Trump's tax plan would help average Americans, Spicer went on to say, 'The goal of this thing -- of this president's tax plan is to provide them and lower-income people with more money in their pocket and a tax cut.' Outlining the tax plan from the podium, Cohn acknowledged there would be some push back on the plan. 'This isn't going to be easy,' he cautioned. 'Doing big things never is.' 'We will be attacked from the left and we'll be attacked from the right, but one thing is certain: I would never, ever bet against this president. He will get this done for the American people.' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., chastised former President Obama for inking a $400,000 deal to speak at a Wall Street firm. 'I was troubled by that,' the progressive senator said on SiriusXM's Alter Family Politics, according to the New York Post. Warren sat down for the interview promoting her new book, 'This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class.' 'One of the things I talk about in the book is the influence of money,' Warren continued. 'I describe it as a snake that slithers through Washington. And that is shows up in so many different ways here in Washington.' Scroll down for video Obama inked a deal that will bank him $400,000 to speak at a health care conference being run by Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP. The amount equals the salary Obama earned for an entire year as president. It also puts him on the payroll of an industry he previously derided as being comprised of 'fat cats,' after stressing elements of his own biography like his time as a community organizer in Chicago. The former president will be the keynote speaker at a luncheon at a health care conference in September, Fox Business reported, citing sources at the firm. The network reported that Obama has signed the contract, but some details were still being worked out. President Barack Obama will deliver a $400,000 speech to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, Fox Business reported 'I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,' Obama said in 2009, while the country was still in the grip of a financial crisis that many blame in part on Wall Street's own freewheeling practices. Obama is following in the path of several other recent presidents who found they were able to easily monetize the experiences they gained in the world's most powerful elected position. Politico reported two years ago that George W. Bush commands up to $175,000 a speech, delivering in excess of 200 paid speeches. Hillary Clinton took heat throughout her primary battle against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for her own paid speeches, which included talks to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. As former secretary of state and a possible future candidate, Hillary Clinton commanded about the same amount for speeches to business and association groups. President Obama said he didn't run for office to help a bunch of 'fat cat bankers' Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gives an acceptance speech after accepting the Trailblazer Award during the LGBT Community Center Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street on Thursday, April 20, 2017, in New York President Bill Clinton gives a farewell address at the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting at Sheraton New York Times Square on September 21, 2016 in New York City Sanders repeatedly demanded that Clinton release the remarks she made to the firm. Clinton delivered final paid speech before her campaign to the American Camp Association in March of 2015, banking $260,000. Word of Obama's speech comes just after he made his return to public life with an event at the University of Chicago Monday. The event was billed as a 'conversation on community organizing and civic engagement,' and Obama was able to draw attention without even mentioning Donald Trump's name at the event. A man accused of keeping a 30-year-old woman captive in a small pit underneath his shed is being held on $1million bond. Dennis Dunn, 45, was arrested at his home in Blanchester, Ohio, around 8am on Wednesday, hours after a neighbor heard cries coming from the shed in his backyard. Jennifer Elliott, who was reported missing at 1.30am, was found trapped in the pit, which was covered with a wooden board pinned down by heavy objects, police said. Dunn, who suffers from mental health problems, had previously harassed Elliott with phone calls and messages in October 2016, according to police. Sherri Pettigrew, who knows both Dunn and Elliott, told WLWT: 'They don't have a relationship, but he keeps in his head that they do.' Dennis Dunn (pictured left in his mugshot, and right, being arrested on Wednesday) is accused of kidnapping a woman who was trapped in a small pit in his backyard, police said Jennifer Elliott, was trapped in a pit under the floor of Dunn's backyard shed (pictured). The hole measured about two feet squared and 40 inches deep Elliott's mother reported her missing from a home on the same street hours before Dunn's neighbor heard crying from the shed and called the police (pictured, Dunn's house in Ohio) A municipal court judge in Wilmington set bond for Dunn, who participated via video from jail on Thursday. He was arrested around 8am on Wednesday after he emerged from his house at 113 Central Avenue 'like he was going for a stroll', seemingly unaware that the police had been staked outside for hours. Elliott's mother reported her missing early Wednesday night after she was 'inexplicably absent' from her home just a few doors down. Hours later, Dunn's neighbor heard cries emerging from the shed in his backyard and called the police. The responding officer found Elliott trapped in a pit measuring about two feet squared and 40 inches deep, WLWT reported. A wooden board covered the opening, with a lawn mower deliberately placed on top to make it impossible for Elliott to escape, police said. Elliott, said to be epileptic, was apparently suffering a seizure when she was found. She was taken to the hospital and released. Pictured, the 30-year-old returning home after the ordeal It remains unclear how Elliott ended up in the pit, where she was trapped for about four hours, officials said. Elliott was suffering a seizure when she was found, police said. But she did not show signs of physical trauma and has since been released from the hospital. She was pictured wearing a grey hoodie as she returned home after the ordeal. The 30-year-old had been harassed by Dunn in October 2016, but decided not to press charges against him, Police Chief Scott Reinbolt told FOX19. Police said Dunn suffers from mental health issues. Elliott had received harassing phone calls and messages from Dunn in October 2016, but decided not to press charges against him Police said Dunn, who was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of marijuana earlier this month, suffers from mental health issues. Dunn called the police several times saying people were trying to break into his home, the Wilmington News Journal reported. He also reportedly heard voices, but responding police did not find any evidence of intruders. When a cop arrived at his home in response to his fourth call, Dunn said he smoked and grew marijuana, which he thought was legal in Ohio. Several plants were seized from his home. Dunn called the police again the next day, and was found holding a gun before he dropped it and underwent a psychiatric evaluation at the hospital. He was released shortly after although Reinbolt later said: 'Dunn appeared to be in need of inpatient mental health treatment.' Dunn was arrested and charged with kidnapping after 8.15am on Wednesday. He was taken to the Clinton Memorial Hospital and police say he suffers from mental health problems Earlier this month, Dunn called the police several times saying people were trying to break into his home, but police found no evidence of intruders. Pictured, investigators at the scene Emily Noe, who identified herself as Dunn's best friend, was shocked the 45-year-old was capable of kidnapping someone. 'It's just a shock. A complete shock. He was a good guy....It's just really scary knowing that I've known somebody for five years and wouldn't see something like that in somebody,' she said. Teresa Baker, who lives down the street from Dunn, told WLWT: 'It's really scary, it's a big eye-opener. 'If he would have actually bound her, nobody would even know she was there until too late.' Ambassador Mark Regev, who took up his post last year, was invited by the Jewish Society at SOAS to share his view on the conflict in the Middle East Student protests flared in central London tonight as the Israeli ambassador gave a speech to SOAS students for the first time in 20 years. Anti-Israel activists billed the protests as the 'battle of Thornhaugh Street' in advertisements circulated on social media in advance. About 500 anti-Israel demonstrators took to the streets in protest against the ambassador, Mark Regev, being given a platform, chanting 'free, free Palestine'. They were opposed by a smaller number of Israel supporters who held flags and placards and played music. The demonstrations were policed by just a handful of officers, raising fears that violence could easily be sparked. Inside the university, security was heightened with specialist police and dogs patrolling the corridors as well as plainclothes security personnel. Nory, a student, told MailOnline: 'I support Palestine. I am against the occupation and the oppression. In 2017, a country like Israel should be ashamed. I hope there is not violence here today but if there is, I could maybe understand it. 'I'm a Malcolm X supporter. I believe that in certain circumstances, violence is justified. A revolution never happened without violence.' Another Palestinian activist, who declined to be named, said: 'This is about freedom from colonialism and freedom from abuse. 'What happens in Palestine should be a scar on all of our consciences. It is our duty to make our voices heard.' About 500 anti-Israel demonstrators, pictured, took to the streets in protest against the ambassador, Mark Regev, being given a platform, chanting 'free, free Palestine' The demonstrations, pictured, were policed by just a handful of officers, raising fears that violence could easily be sparked The protesters were opposed by a smaller number of Israel supporters who held flags and placards and played music Joseph Cohen, a pro-Israel activist who was wearing a hoodie with the word 'Zionist' on it, disagreed. 'This is completely anti-democratic,' he said. 'They are trying to shut down the voice of an ambassador of one of our democratic allies. If we can't discuss challenging ideas on campus, there is no hope.' He added: 'I would love it if each of these protestors would attend the talk and engage in debate rather than standing outside trying to disrupt it. Although it is known as one of the world's foremost universities specialising in the Middle East, Israel's perspective is rarely represented A long list of radical Muslim figures have addressed students at the university, where numerous departments and positions are funded by Arab and Gulf states 'Jewish students here are scared to walk past without removing their skullcaps. It's terrifying.' Ben Paul, 46, a former Jewish Society president, was wearing an Israeli flag around his shoulders. 'I'm here with my flag saying talk to me,' he said. 'I don't care what side you're on, talk to me. 'I've had a few people bump into me quite hard. I get it, I'm wearing an Israeli flag. But I hope it doesn't get any worse than that.' In the minutes before the ambassador took the floor, protesters struck up a chant of 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' suggesting that Israel should cease to exist Nory, a student at the protest, told MailOnline: 'I support Palestine. I am against the occupation and the oppression. In 2017, a country like Israel should be ashamed' This year, Ambassador Regev, pictured has peacefully visited a number of universities. No violent protests have been reported Ambassador Regev, pictured,said: 'Open discussion is crucial for understanding and peace' SOAS, pictured, has long been known as a hotbed of radical, anti-Israel sentiment SOAS, part of the University of London, has long been known as a hotbed of radical, anti-Israel sentiment. Although it is known as one of the world's foremost universities specialising in the Middle East, Israel's perspective is rarely represented. By contrast, a long list of radical Muslim figures have addressed students at the university, where numerous departments and positions are funded by Arab and Gulf states. Ambassador Regev, who took up his post last year, was invited by the Jewish Society to share his view on the conflict in the Middle East. He was interviewed by Professor Eric Heinze from Queen Mary University. Ambassador Regev said: 'Open discussion is crucial for understanding and peace.' A spokesperson for the university's Jewish Society added: 'Do we actually care about free speech or do we only care about hearing those that agree with us? '[Trying to ban the Israeli ambassador] is double standards. We should pride ourselves on free speech for all, not selective hate speech.' This year, Ambassador Regev has peacefully visited a number of universities including Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, UCL, Queen Mary, and Birmingham. No violent protests have been reported. Many other foreign officials speak at SOAS as a matter of routine, including the Syrian Ambassador, Iraqi officials, the South African Honorary Consul and others. In the minutes before the ambassador took the floor, protesters struck up a chant of 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' suggesting that Israel should cease to exist. A 17-year-old boy has been charged after allegedly making 74 hoax bomb threats to schools across Victoria, NSW and South Australia. The hoax threats were believed to have been made over the phone and email between May 2016 and April 2017. The Victorian teenager was charged on Thursday with 74 separate offences as part of a joint operation between police in Victoria, NSW and South Australia. Boy, 17, has been charged after allegedly making 74 hoax bomb threats to schools across Australia forcing thousands of students to evacuate (Pictured: Students at Bentleigh High School were evacuated last year after bomb threat) The hoax threats were believed to have been made over the phone and email between May 2016 and April 2017 (stock image) Schools across Australia were evacuated last year after several phone calls were made threats regarding an explosive device. Schools in Traralgon, Ballarat, Bendigo and Horsham in Victoria were affected, according to Nine News. Primary schools, senior schools and TAFE colleges in Adelaide also evacuated in February after a bomb threat was issued via email. It is unclear whether the boys charges relate to these specific incidents. An investigation by Victoria Police's e-crime squad detectives, NSW Police's fraud and cybercrime squad, and detectives from South Australia's electronic crime section let to the teenager's arrest. Schools across Australia were evacuated last year after several phone calls were made threats regarding an explosive device An investigation by Victoria Police's e-crime squad detectives, NSW Police's fraud and cybercrime squad, and detectives from South Australia's electronic crime section let to the teenager's arrest The teen's electronic devices were seized during his arrest. The boy was charged with nine counts of making a bomb hoax in Victoria, 13 counts of using a carriage service to make a hoax threat in NSW and 49 counts of the same charge in South Australia. The boy appeared in thr Childrens Court of Victoriaon Thursday afternoon and was bailed until June 26. Jailed marine Sgt Alexander Blackman has finally been freed from prison. The 42-year-old commando left HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire in the backseat of an Audi just after 12.30am, having spent 1,277 days behind bars. Sgt Blackman, known as Marine A in his military trial, had his sentence for killing a Taliban fighter slashed by the Appeal Court last month. His wife Claire said she felt 'like a child waiting for Christmas' as she prepared for his release. Ride to freedom: Sgt Alexander Blackman leaves HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire in the backseat of a car as he is freed from jail after 1,277 days behind bars Pictured: Sgt Blackman had a bad of belongings next to him when he was reunited with his family and wife Claire Sgt Blackman's conviction was reduced from murder to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility as he had been suffering combat stress. Pictured, he leaves jail Walking free: Claire Blackman (left) is 'like a child for Christmas' waiting for Sgt Blackman - better known as Marine A - was released from jail this morning Victory: Claire Blackman celebrates with a veteran outside court after Sgt Blackman's sentence was reduced on appeal Five judges reduced Sgt Blackman's conviction from murder to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility as he had been suffering combat stress. And they cut his sentence to seven years, paving the way for his release having served half that time. Mrs Blackman, who has campaigned tirelessly since her husband was jailed in 2013, said last night: I havent slept all week. I feel like a child waiting for Christmas. We have had so many setbacks over the years that I almost cannot believe it is really going to happen this time. I cant wait to see him and spend some quality time together. Sergeant Blackmans release is a magnificent moment for Daily Mail readers, who raised 810,000 to fund a fresh appeal after the veteran commando was left to rot in jail by the Establishment. He has offered his profound and heartfelt thanks to Mail readers for their support. Sgt Blackmans life sentence was the first time a soldier had been convicted of murder for shooting an enemy on the battlefield. Claire Blackman (centre), wife of jailed former British soldier Alexander Blackman, Marine A, reacts outside the The Royal Courts of Justice in London on March 28, 2017, after learning the result of her husband's reduced sentence Supporters of former British soldier Alexander Blackman, who shot an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2011 He killed the armed insurgent, who had already been mortally wounded, in Afghanistans Helmand Province in September 2011. His previous sentence was life with a minimum of eight years equal to a 16-year sentence. The campaign for justice was led by Mrs Blackman, 45, of Somerset, and supported by MPs including ex-Army officer Richard Drax. The Tory MP, who led the campaign in the Commons, said: Al Blackmans release is the result of a wonderful team effort by those who wanted justice for a Royal Marine caught up in extraordinary circumstances, while fighting in some of the toughest conditions imaginable against a ruthless and determined enemy. While Mr Blackmans exemplary military record was brought into question on one occasion, there is no doubt in my mind that he is a good man who found himself at the end of his tether. He is now reunited with his loyal wife, Claire, who has stood by her husband throughout the whole ordeal with great dignity and courage. For me, personally, this was a fight I was proud to be part of and my thoughts and best wishes are now with Al and Claire as they start a new life together following what must have been a nightmare. Sgt Blackmans lawyer Jonathan Goldberg QC suggested the story could be turned into a Hollywood movie, and revealed filmmakers had already been in touch. He said: Ive had several expressions of interest. There are discussions about books too. It will all be discussed with Alexander and his wife Claire on his release. They will go away to a secret location for him to decompress and possibly some bottles of Champagne will be opened. Thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, who helped lead the campaign, said the way Sgt Blackman was being released was like the plot of one of his spy novels. He said: The Establishment wants to spirit him out in the middle of the night to a secret location. If I wrote this in a book people would say thats just not the way things are done in Britain. But it is these days. Sgt Blackman served his country for 15 years, including six tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Appeal Court judges heard his undermanned unit had to patrol the most dangerous square mile on earth twice a day along explosive-infested paths in 50C (122F) heat. Thomas Quinn, 25, who served under Sgt Blackman, said: I would follow him to hell and back without any questions. Vauxhall has been accused of showing a reckless disregard for safety by allowing customers to drive family cars which they knew could catch fire. MPs said the car giant put profits and the desire to protect its reputation first. The Commons transport committee called that unacceptable and morally reprehensible, while criticising the Governments Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency for being too slow to act. A Vauxhall Zafira B car on fire. Many of the models suffered similar issues due to heating and ventilation problems Vauxhall finally recalled more than 234,000 of its popular Zafira B people carriers after dozens of reports of them catching fire because of problems with the heating and ventilation systems. Bosses later admitted to MPs that the first suspected fire relating to this flaw, which affected vehicles sold between 2005 and 2014, occurred in 2008. But it was not until seven years later, after a major Facebook campaign by drivers whose own cars caught fire, that it began investigating the problem. In December 2015, the DVSA finally asked Vauxhall to recall all the vehicles so the problem could be fixed. Bosses at Vauxhall blamed improper repairs to the people carriers blower motor resistor. But independent forensic investigators concluded in April last year that the fires were caused by corroded blower motors and that the design of the vehicles made the blower motor particularly susceptible to corrosion. A second recall began in August last year after Vauxhall was told that a recalled vehicle which had had its blower motor resistor replaced had caught fire. The investigation by the committee established there was a two-week delay before the car manufacturer alerted the DVSA. In its report, the committee said there was no reasonable explanation for that and described Vauxhalls response as pedestrian. The report said: In the absence of any explanation for its tardy response from the witnesses that appeared before us we can only conclude that commercial considerations and the need to avoid reputational damage were put ahead of safety: this is unacceptable and morally reprehensible. Louise Ellman, Labour chairman of the committee, was among those to criticise the fires Campaigners say there have been reports of more than 300 Zafira cars catching fire. But Vauxhall told MPs it was aware of 59 fires in vehicles after they were brought into garages following the first recall. Of those, 39 related to heating and ventilation systems. Louise Ellman, Labour chairman of the committee, said: Vehicle fires are terrifying for their occupants and other road users. In this inquiry, we heard how one car manufacturer was too slow to acknowledge drivers concerns, too slow to begin an investigation, too slow to address the causes and too slow to alert drivers of real safety concerns. Drivers and their families were needlessly put at risk. She added that despite Vauxhall blaming bad repairs by garages, no effort was made to find out where this may have taken place. The committee urged the Government to give the DVSA stronger enforcement powers to force car manufacturers to recall faulty vehicles. At the moment the recall system is voluntary. Vauxhall bosses claimed it was often difficult to establish the cause of the fires because many of the vehicles had been destroyed. Last night a Vauxhall spokesman said: We apologise to anyone who has experienced distress as a result of this. Nothing is more important to us than safety. We have made changes to the way we investigate cases of vehicle fire and improvements to our recall process to ensure we complete recalls swiftly and minimise customer inconvenience. The 20-year-old Muslim woman shot by police as they foiled an 'active terror plot' was taken away on a stretcher in her blood-soaked burka yelling: 'Don't touch my body'. The suspect screamed 'get off - do not touch me' as they tried to strip off her clothes and treat her wounds after the raid in Willesden, north London, at 7pm last night. Dramatic video footage shows the moment elite Met officers smashed through the door, ran up to the first floor flat and then threw in CS canisters before 'at least six' shots rang out including two that shattered an upstairs window. Neighbours heard a woman 'screaming' inside before the young suspect lay on the pavement bleeding from her arm and stomach while still wearing her burka. One said: 'Doctors were trying to help her. She was shouting: "Do not touch me, do not touch my body".' Another witness who saw the raid's aftermath said: 'They brought down a lady in a black burka. She had been shot the paramedics stripped off her clothing to get access to the wounded areas.' The woman - believed to be the first female terror suspect in UK history to be shot by police - was rushed to hospital where she remains in a serious but stable condition and is too unwell to be arrested under the terrorism act. Pictured: This is the moment the 20-year-old woman shot by police was taken away on a paramedic's gurney covered in blood and still wearing her burka Row: Witnesses said she screamed 'get off - don't touch me' as they tried to strip off her clothes and treat her wounds Drama: This is when officers holding machine guns and wearing bullet-proof vests, helmets and gas masks went in Raid: This is the moment anti-terror police stormed a house and shot a woman in her 20s in Willesden north London last night Bullet holes in the upstairs window of a property in Willesden, North London which was raided by anti-terror police yesterday In a separate raid a woman, also in a burka, was wrestled by police in Willesden High Street Daily arrests across Britain as police foil attack after attack Counter-terrorism units have been making arrests on a near daily basis amid a huge effort to contain the threat to the UK. Activity by police and security services has been running at a high level for a number of years as they attempt to defend Britain against dangers ranging from lone wolf strikes to complex, mass-casualty plots. Figures show there were 260 arrests for terrorism-related offences last year. This was a slight fall compared to the previous year, but the number remained high compared with other recent years. In March it was revealed authorities have thwarted 13 potential attacks in less than four years. The official threat level for international terrorism has been at severe, indicating an attack is "highly likely", since 2014. While Islamic State remains a major focus of the work of police and intelligence agencies, security officials have repeatedly stressed that the threat posed from al Qaida remains. Counter-terrorism authorities are also handling a rising number of cases of far-right extremism. Although the pace of activity has been constant, Thursday's operations stood out from the relatively constant stream of arrests in recent years for different reasons. Firstly, because of the location of the swoop in which a man was held in Whitehall. He was arrested just yards from the scene of last month's deadly attack by Khalid Masood in Westminster. Then in an unconnected operation armed officers launched a raid on an address in north London in which a woman was shot. Although police conduct thousands of firearms operations every year, incidents in which officers discharge their weapons are extremely rare. Advertisement Five people linked to the flat including a 16-year-old boy and a couple, both 28, have been held over alleged terror offences. A woman, 43, was held in Kent. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Neil Basu said today that the raids meant an 'active' terror plot had been foiled - but had nothing to with the arrest of a 27-year-old with a 'rucksack of knives' grabbed on Whitehall yesterday. Residents of Harlesden Road say that the property was being watched on the morning of the raid and MI5 were also 'heavily' involved in the operation, a security source told MailOnline. A 16-year-old boy and and a 20-year-old woman were arrested inside the Willesden house and a man, 20, was arrested nearby. A couple, both 28, were held last night as they arrived home. Simultaneously a woman, 43, was arrested at an address in Kent. All were held on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorist acts - but the shot woman is currently too ill to be arrested. Ruth Haile 40, who has lived in the area for nine years, said: 'I heard a shot and I looked out my window and there were dozens of police. 'The woman was being arrested, she was on the floor wearing an long dress and covered in a head scarf. 'She was shouting, 'Do not touch me, do not touch my body.' 'She was injured, she had a wound on her right side and doctors were trying to help her. There was a bandage on the wound. 'She was lying in the street and there were about five or six police around her, some of them were carrying guns. 'She was shouting 'No, no, no', she was shouting with an accent. 'Police were cutting her dress and she was shouting at them, shouting 'No, no, no'. 'That was the first time I had seen her, you could see through the front door and there was blood everywhere.' Maxine McKenzie, who lives up the road from where the swoop took place, described hearing 'gunshots' and saw a woman being taken away in an ambulance. The 48-year-old said: 'I saw lots of police officers, different kinds of police officers... a lot of frenetic police activity and then they very quickly put the cordon up and then very quickly after that an ambulance arrived. 'A woman was being led away so she was led down the street... she was then restrained - they put restraints on her behind her back - and took her off. Then we saw the injured person being taken out of the house on a stretcher and being put into an ambulance. She was sitting upright and had oxygen on - I couldn't tell if she was conscious or unconscious.' Armed police guarded the terror suspect as she was placed on a stretcher and was followed out of the house by police in gas masks Witnesses said police fired guns and threw in CS gas and may have been shot in an upstairs bedroom The Metropolitan Police said four people were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorist acts - three in Willesden and another in Kent Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu today confirmed that they had thwarted two 'active' terror plots Another neighbour Tom O'Connor, 33, said: 'We were watching TV and I heard we heard some noises and it slowly dawned on me that they were gunshots. 'Then we saw undercover armed police running past the window and then we saw heavily armed guards. 'We then heard smash, smash, smash. 'About ten minutes later there were a few screams and I saw some people in stab vests, who I think might be interpreters. 'There were about seven or ten armed officers and loads more undercover. I've heard the house has been under surveillance for a while now.' The dramatic raid came hours after a 27-year-old man was arrested with a 'bag full of knives' in Whitehall, but Scotland Yard has said they are not linked. Deputy assistant commissioner Neil Basu, senior national co-ordinator for counter terrorism policing, said: 'Due to these arrests that have been made yesterday, in both cases I believe that we have contained the threats that they pose.' Pressed by reporters on whether they had foiled an active plot, Mr Basu replied: 'Yes.' Mr Basu said that, with last month's Westminster attack 'so fresh in people's minds', he wanted to reassure the public that officers were working around the clock to identify would-be terrorists. He went on: 'There are constant acts of immense bravery by officers, armed and unarmed - those that the public see, where our officers run towards danger just as you saw yesterday, but a huge amount of unseen work that the public will never see behind the scenes.' Thanking the public for their 'continued help and support', he added: 'No matter how hard we try, it is communities that will defeat terrorism and we rely on your vigilance'. Police have sealed off Harlesden Road and are searching the upstairs flat and two other related properties Dozens of uniformed officers are guarding the property and patrolling the area to reassure the public Armed police stormed a North London property last night as part of an anti-terror raid and it was captured by passing locals Police also swooped on an address in Willesden High Road (pictured) last night and interviewed a woman in a burka - it is not clear if any arrests were made there Police also swooped on an address in Willesden High Road (pictured) last night - it is not clear if any arrests were made there Dozens of specialist officers covering their faces and witnesses said that some were wearing gas masks Probe: Armed police swooped on the property in north London - the address and persons connected with it had been under observation by counter terrorism officers The six arrested in Willesden and Kent had been under observation by counter terrorism officers as part of an ongoing intelligence led operation. Searches at the address and two others in London are continuing today. A mother-of-one who lived next door to the raided house, who gave her name only as Alexandra, said she heard a woman 'screaming' shortly after the armed police arrived. She said she thought the police were coming through her door, and saw officers with 'gas masks and snipers'. 'We were just about to go shopping until we heard 'bang, bang, bang, bang', went to the window and just saw a number of armed police just there with their guns pointing at our next-door neighbour's window. 'We were really worried - I was screaming to my partner 'Armed police is here, oh my god, armed police' and then again we heard extra bangs, more bangs, so we assumed that's when they were breaking the doors or something. 'They were in the garden - they were everywhere. They swarmed the whole house practically. I wasn't even allowed in my garden - they were telling me '(There's) armed police, go inside'. Alex Paton, 50, who also lives in Harlesden Road, said: 'Five minutes after it happened I saw the ambulance take off and stuff and wondered what the hell it was.' He said he saw a woman 'getting all cuffed up and put in a white suit', and described seeing 'all sorts of people running around - there was coppers and masked men with guns and there was a guy running down the road with a gas mask and a machine gun'. 'It was like 'Whoa - this is serious'.' Mr Paton added: 'It was pretty scary ... I walked out to talk to a copper and I just got shouted at 'Get back in, get back in'.' This is the face of a terror suspect tackled to the floor in Whitehall, where knives were seen strewn across the floor. He is believed to be Mohammed Khalid Omar Ali At least three knives were seen laying on the floor after a team of officers swooped and tackled the man to the ground Video posted on Twitter showed police wearing balaclavas at a property on Willesden High Road, just over half a mile from Harlesden Road. A witness tweeted: '#womanindoorway held by anti-terrorism police on Willesden high road #Willesdengreen while detective searches her bags #harlesden #willesden'. This incident is not connected to the arrest in Whitehall earlier the same day, the Met Police said. The arrests came just hours after heavily armed officers arrested a suspected Islamic extremist as he crossed Whitehall, just yards from Downing Street and Parliament. Armed police 'swarmed like bees' on the bearded man just before 2.30pm after his concerned family reportedly alerted security services. Witnesses said the man, who was wearing a tracksuit and trainers, was crossing Whitehall amid the usual crowds of tourists and political staff when a police car suddenly pulled up and officers confronted him, just five weeks after the Westminster terror attack killed that five people. But, unbeknown to him, the suspect had been tailed from the moment he got off the Underground at St James's Park - where he had travelled from east London - and headed towards Westminster. While covert teams trailed him on the ground, a live feed was being sent to control rooms in New Scotland Yard and the MI5's Thames House before they gave the order for them to swoop in. A large number of armed police then flooded the area as the suspect was pinned to the ground just yards from Downing Street. He was held against a wall of the Treasury before being taken away in a van to a police station. Security sources say police were tipped off by the man's family, which may have allowed officers the chance to detain him before they had to resort to opening fire. The suspect has not been named but is 27 years old and thought to be known to police, who kept tabs on him via surveillance cameras on the streets and on the Underground. It is believed that the suspect had been under round-the-clock surveillance and was tracked by two teams with armed officers on standby, and that his phone and other means of communication were being monitored. Met chief says London arrests have 'contained' imminent terror threat Met deputy assistant commissioner Neil Basu said today that he believed police had 'contained' the threat from both the Willesden incident and the earlier terror arrest in Westminster. Speaking outside Scotland Yard he said armed counter-terrorism officers using CS gas stormed a house in the Willesden area of the capital on Thursday evening which had been under surveillance, shooting a woman in her 20s In a separate incident on Thursday, a man was arrested carrying knives near Prime Minister Theresa May's office in Westminster and he remains in police custody, Basu said. His statement said: 'Yesterday was an extraordinary day in London so I wanted to update you on the two separate unconnected and ongoing counter terrorism investigations that happened in the last 24 hours. 'Given the horrors in London of a few short weeks ago - and our thoughts are still with the victims and survivors of that dreadful day 'I wanted to reassure the public that our increased activity to combat terrorism over the last two years continues - both by police and security services 'Activity continues around the clock to identify and stop these threats and we are making arrests on a near daily basis. 'I want to pay tribute to the bravery of my uniform and detective colleagues who are doing that work to keep us safe. 'So - to yesterday's events: In Whitehall, a 27-year-old man was arrested by armed officers from the Met's Specialist Firearms Command, who stopped and searched him as part of an ongoing counter terrorism investigation. 'He remains in our custody having been arrested for Terrorism Act Offences and possession of offensive weapons and there are two ongoing searches at addresses in London as part of that investigation. 'In our second and unrelated investigation, last night at just before 19:00hrs, our highly trained firearms officers carried out a specialist entry into an address in Harlesden Road that we had under observation as part of a current Counter Terrorism investigation. 'An armed entry was necessary due to the nature of the intelligence that we were dealing with, and involved armed officers firing CS into the address. 'During the course of that operation one of the subjects of that operation - a woman - was shot by police - she remains in hospital. Her condition is serious but stable. Because of her condition she has not yet been arrested. We are monitoring her condition closely. 'As is routine we have informed the Independent Police Complaints Commission. 'In total six people have now been arrested in connection with that investigation - five at or near the address and one in Kent. 'The two further arrests were made when a man and a woman - both aged 28 - returned to the address later last night. 'Searches are ongoing at three London addresses - including Harlesden Road - as part of this investigation. 'Due to these arrests that we have made, I believe that we have contained the threats that they posed. 'With the attack in Westminster on 22 March so fresh in people's minds, I would like to reassure everyone that across the country officers are working round the clock to identify those people who intend to commit acts of terror. 'After that attack, we increased the number of officers on duty patrolling at key locations - and that continues as we police against the backdrop of a severe terrorist threat. 'There are constant acts of immense bravery by officers - armed and unarmed - those that the public see when our officers run towards danger, just like yesterday, but a huge amount of unseen work that the public will never know about from us and our brilliant security services. 'I would also like to thank the public for their continued help and support. No matter how hard we try it is communities that will defeat terrorism and we rely on your vigilance. Please continue to let us know of any suspicions or concerns you may have. No call is ever a waste of our time and every call is treated seriously and confidentially and investigated. 'We will continue to work with all communities to defeat terrorists together - we will not allow common criminals to spread discord and fear. And lastly can I thank the public for their bravery and help; for remaining calm and tolerant and being a fantastic advert worldwide for democracy, diversity and freedom.' Advertisement EXCLUSIVE: Dramatic moment burka-wearing woman screams as anti-terror police drag her off a bus and bundle her into a doorway in raid linked to arrests that foiled active plot in north London By MARTIN ROBINSON, UK CHIEF REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE and JOSH WHITE and REBECCA CAMBER FOR THE DAILY MAIL This is the moment a woman in a burka was dragged off a packed bus by undercover police in the same operation that led to another young female Muslim being shot streets away. Exclusive MailOnline footage shows the bus passenger in Muslim dress, believed to be in her early 20s, screaming as at least five officers snatched her off public transport on Willesden High Road last night. She was bundled into a doorway next to a convenience store, forced to lower her veil to show her face and had her bags searched after being trailed by undercover police. Scotland Yard told MailOnline that she has not been arrested - but it is understood that she was grabbed while with a 20-year-old man who was. Video of the bus raid shows it was pre-planned with more than a dozen officers grabbing and swamping the woman, including some who were travelling on public transport with her. The man also on board is understood to have run off but was quickly arrested by more police nearby. Drama: This is the moment a woman in a burka was dragged off a packed bus by undercover police in synchronised terror raids Exclusive MailOnline footage shows the bus passenger in Muslim dress, believed to be in her early 20s, screaming and resisting police Orders: Undercover police in balaclavas flooded Willesden High Road and moved the bus the woman was on away In a separate raid a woman, also in a burka, was wrestled by police in Willesden High Street She had got off the 266 bus, which was quickly waved on by counter-terror officers at the scene. Officers went through her bags but she was released after being 'spoken to', the Met said. Witness Eddie, who filmed the arrest, said: 'They pulled her off the 98 bus, it comes from Oxford Street. 'They were searching her bags. They made her take the veil off while they searched her in a doorway. 'As she came off more police came off directly behind her. About five minutes before a guy was standing directly next to the bus stop with an ear piece. 'I thought he was lost but he was obviously orchestrating the entire operation.' Robert Murphy, 43, a bookmaker said the cops had suddenly put balaclava masks on moments before detaining the suspect. He said: 'I was outside the pub having a cigarette and it was obvious that something was going to happen. 'The police were dressed like normal fellas and then all of a sudden they put on balaclavas and they rushed at the woman. 'They kicked the door in and burst inside with her. 'They wouldn't let any busses stop afterwards, the woman was being searched for about half an hour. 'Then a black Range Rover pulled up and they put her inside and took her away.' Several people filmed the operation in Willesden High Road (pictured) last night - but the woman pictured was not arrested Officers went through her bags (pictured) but she was released after being 'spoken to', the Met said Police sent in this black Range Rover and the woman was put in the back and swept her away Half a mile away in a near-simultaneous raid more elite Met officers smashed through the door, ran up to the first floor flat and then threw in CS canisters before 'at least six' shots rang out including two that shattered an upstairs window. The 20-year-old Muslim woman shot by police as they foiled an 'active terror plot' was taken away on a stretcher in her blood-soaked burka yelling: 'Don't touch my body'. The suspect screamed 'get off - do not touch me' as they tried to strip off her clothes and treat her wounds after the raid in Willesden, north London, at 7pm last night. Neighbours heard a woman 'screaming' inside before the young suspect lay on the pavement bleeding from her arm and stomach while still wearing her burka. One said: 'Doctors were trying to help her. She was shouting: "Do not touch me, do not touch my body".' Another witness who saw the raid's aftermath said: 'They brought down a lady in a black burka. She had been shot the paramedics stripped off her clothing to get access to the wounded areas.' Pictured: This is the moment the 20-year-old woman shot by police was taken away on a paramedic's gurney covered in blood and still wearing her burka Raid: This is the moment anti-terror police stormed a house and shot a woman in her 20s in Willesden north London last night Bullet holes in the upstairs window of a property in Willesden, North London which was raided by anti-terror police yesterday The woman - believed to be the first female terror suspect in UK history to be shot by police - was rushed to hospital where she remains in a serious but stable condition and is too unwell to be arrested under the terrorism act. A 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old woman were arrested inside the Willesden house and a man, 20, was arrested nearby. A couple, both 28, were held last night as they arrived home. Simultaneously a woman, 43, was arrested at an address in Kent. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Neil Basu said today that the raids meant an 'active' terror plot had been foiled - but had nothing to with the arrest of a 27-year-old with a 'rucksack of knives' grabbed on Whitehall yesterday. Residents of Harlesden Road say that the property was being watched on the morning of the raid and MI5 were also 'heavily' involved in the operation, a security source told MailOnline. A 16-year-old boy and and a 20-year-old woman were arrested inside the Willesden house and a man, 20, was arrested nearby. A couple, both 28, were held last night as they arrived home. Simultaneously a woman, 43, was arrested at an address in Kent. All were held on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorist acts - but the shot woman is currently too ill to be arrested. Michigan was the latest stop for Mark Zuckerberg as he follows through on his pledge to visit and meet people in each U.S. state by the end of the year. The Facebook CEO kicked off his tour of the Midwestern state with a stop at Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit. The trip marks his first visit to the Great Lakes state. Zuckerberg started by joining workers on the assembly line of new Ford F-150 trucks. Scroll down for video Mark Zuckerberg, pictured working on a Ford F-150, visited the Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, where he joined workers on the assembly line The Facebook CEO, pictured with Ford workers, has pledged to visit and meet people in every U.S. state this year His day in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, marked his first visit to the Midwestern state He also signed an inspection sticker on one vehicle. The billionaire then sat down to chat over what appear to be doughnut holes with plant workers, which he said was 'the most interesting part' of his visit. He wrote on Facebook: 'Working on the line at an assembly plant is physically hard, and the people I met talked about how tiring it is and how worn down you get. 'Each person told me separately how important it is to have good shoes because you're essentially walking on a treadmill for 10 hours a day. 'Every 52 seconds, you have to go through your set of tasks -- 650 times a day. 'You have to be perfect, but the biggest challenge is having the focus to do the same thing over and over again. 'The people I met are so good they keep the line running at full speed and listen to audio books or music in one earbud to stay engaged.' Zuckerberg later met with plant workers to discuss their jobs (pictured). He said: 'Working on the line at an assembly plant is physically hard, and the people I met talked about how tiring it is and how worn down you get' The Facebook CEO even signed an inspection sticker on one of the vehicles he worked on (pictured) Zuckerberg, pictured signing a Ford F-150 owner's manual, also said: 'Most of the workers I met had been at the plant for at least a decade, and a lot of them have kids and friends who work there, too' The Harvard dropout added: 'Working at Ford is a long term thing. 'Most of the workers I met had been at the plant for at least a decade, and a lot of them have kids and friends who work there, too. 'Someone told me that when you spend 11 hours a day, four days a week together, you end up becoming family and friends outside of work, too.' He ended his post by thanking Bill Ford and and the line workers with whom he worked and spoke. Ford, the company's executive chairman, gave Zuckerberg a tour of the truck plant, the Detroit Free Press reported. Zuckerberg kicked off his New Year's Resolution to visit and talk to people in every state during a February road trip through the American South with his wife, Priscilla Chan. The pair first stopped in Alabama, where they visited Bayou La Batre, which is featured in the Tom Hanks movie 'Forrest Gump,' and the city of Mobile. He said he met local fishermen, oyster farmers, worshipers and members of a women's organization. He later visited Mississippi and has also been to North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Washington in 2017. He lives in California, where Facebook is headquartered. A caretaker at an in-home day care center was shot and killed Thursday in what Little Rock police are calling a case of mistaken identity. Shirley Jackson, 60, was gunned down in front of her home by a driver, who opened fire while children were still inside, KATV reported. Authorities say at least nine children and three adults were at the day care when the shooting took place. A woman employed as a caretaker at an in-home day care center (above) was shot and killed Thursday in what Little Rock police are calling a case of mistaken identity Police say that the victim has been identified as 60-year-old Shirley Jackson. An officer speaks to reporters at the scene in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Thursday Police believe the intended target was down the road. Investigators at the scene found over 32 shell casings in front of the home. Authorities said a silver car was seen speeding away in the moments after the shooting. The shooting took place at around the same time that police were responding to a report of another shooting across town. One man suffered at least one gunshot wound to his back. He is expected to recover. Another man was shot in the second incident, though there is no word as to the extent of his injuries. Lynx deodorant has become Britains fastest-growing brand after ditching its laddish advertising campaigns Lynx deodorant has become Britains fastest-growing brand after ditching its laddish advertising campaigns. Industry analysts claim that the brands value has surged by more than 90 per cent in just a year, to be worth 2.1billion. The deodorant initially enjoyed huge success from its controversial Lynx Effect campaigns usually showing women chasing a man who had used Lynx. However, the ads were lambasted as sexist, and in 2011 the Advertising Standards Authority banned commercials featuring glamour model Lucy Pinder because they were degrading to women. Last year Unilever, which owns the brand, announced a move away from sexist advertising across all its products from Lynx to Magnum ice cream, Persil detergent and Knorr stock cubes. The new adverts for the deodorant under the slogan Find Your Magic are rather more politically correct. An analysis of the financial value of the nations biggest brands makes clear this approach has worked for Lynx. Consultants Brand Finance produces an annual list of the monetary value of brands based on measures such as global appeal, reputation and good will. A Brand Finance spokesman said: Lynx is Britains fastest growing brand, up 91 per cent to 2.1billion. Unilever decided to ditch the increasingly anachronistic Lynx Effect campaign that was seen to be out of touch with the modern male. 'It has performed an almost complete reversal of its previous identity, with a series of new campaigns designed to portray a radical and progressive view on masculinity. Despite initial cynicism from marketing pundits, the approach appears to be paying off. The Brand Finance list puts Shell at number one with a 16 per cent rise in value in the past year to 28.2billion. Vodafone ranks second on 16.8billion ahead of HSBC at 15.9billion, and BP at 14.5billion. Industry analysts claim that the brands value has surged by more than 90 per cent in just a year, to be worth 2.1billion BT, which was fourth on last years list, has slipped to seventh after its value plummeted from 12.2billion to 8.8billion. Other major fallers in the list include the banks, such as Barclays, Lloyds, retailers including Next and Morrisons, and British Airways. On the up were brands including Boots, 3 mobile, Mini, Dove, Burberry and Virgin Media. Not only has 60-year-old Xi Tiangen learnt to handle life without legs, he's also managed to be the sole income provider for his family for years. Xi Tiangen has made a living by working on his farm using his bare hands for over four decades. The farmer lost his legs in an accident when he was just 19 years old, according to a People's Daily post on its social media account. Dedicated: 60-year-old Xi Tangren has been working on his farm for around four decades Making food: When his father died, Xi took responsibility for cooking and working on the farm Incredible: Following the accident, Xi learnt how to walk using his hands and gloves Following the accident, Xi felt like the simplest of tasks, such ass getting out of bed and going to the toilet, were impossible. However he was determined to move around freely once more, wearing a pair of gloves to help him move around on the floor, walking with his hands. But in 1986 heart-break struck his family once more when Xi's father died, leaving Xi responsible for his mother and his mentally ill brother who was unable to work. They counted on him to earn money to keep them together in their home. Xi works in the fields hoeing and cutting the wheat to provide an income The man has been praised for his dedication and optimism on social media site Weibo Heartbreaking: Xi's mother passed away in 2006 and his brother died nine years later Xi took on more farm work including hoeing the fields and cutting the wheat - jobs his mother had become too frail to do. While at home, he was responsible for cooking and doing the laundry. Xi's mother passed away in 2006 and his brother died nine years later. Following their deaths, Xi was invited to stay with his cousin however he prefers living on his own and enjoys his freedom. Xi was invited to live with his cousin however he prefers to have his own freedom and space The man uses his hands to walk around wearing them down over time Following the accident which occurred when he was 20, Xi has had to rebuild his life Many people on Chinese social media site Weibo have praised the man for his positive attitude. One user wrote: 'Can the government not give him a higher subsidy?' While another said: 'I see this old man and I realise we have no reason not to work hard.' And another commented: 'How can we complain about life?' More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment if they could. At least 20 per cent already pretty much do so, according to new research. The study, which was conducted in 13 European countries, the United States and Australia, also found that in many places where cash is most used, people are among the keenest to ditch it. Overall, 34 per cent of respondents in Europe and 38 per cent in the United States said they would be willing to go cash-free. Scroll down for video The survey found 34 per cent of respondents in Europe and 38 per cent in the United States said they would be willing to go cash-free (stock image) WHAT DID THEY FIND? More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment. Twenty-one per cent and 34 per cent in Europe and the United States, respectively, said they already rarely use cash. Germany is one of the countries that uses cash the most. Only 10 per cent of Germans saying they rarely use cash, compared, for example, with 33 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, in neighbours Poland and France. Advertisement Twenty-one per cent and 34 per cent in Europe and the United States, respectively said they already rarely use cash, according to the survey conducted by Ipsos for the ING bank website eZonomics. The trend was also clear. More than half of the European respondents said they had used less cash in the past 12 months than previously and 78 per cent said they expected to use it even less over the coming 12 months. Payment systems such as contactless cards and mobile-phone digital wallets have become so prevalent the issue has become political in some countries. Cash-loving Germans, for example, have been concerned that a move by the European Central Bank to phase out the 500 euro note by the end of next year is the start of a slippery slope. Germany is one of the countries that uses cash the most. The ING survey showed only 10 per cent of Germans saying they rarely use cash, compared, for example, with 33 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, in neighbours Poland and France. The survey also showed that, in general, countries where cash is much in use were most likely to want to go cashless. Only 10 per cent of Germans saying they rarely use cash, compared, for example, with 33 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, in neighbours Poland and France (stock image) Only 19 per cent of Italians said they rarely used cash but 41 per cent said they would be willing to go cash. There was a similar trend in Turkey, Romania, the Czech Republic, Spain and even Germany. ING senior economist Ian Bright said: 'For many, cash is no longer king. The days of rushing to the ATM so you have enough money for the weekend are long gone. 'Card and even mobile phone payments are increasingly being seen as safe substitutes', he said. 'Despite this, cash is not likely to die out soon. Four in five consumers say they have used cash in the last three days. Many would not want to go completely cashless and some prefer the privacy and physical sensation of cold hard cash.' Advertisement Artist and author Hannah Rothstein has created a series of posters showing how climate change will affect America's National Parks in the year 2050 She based the posters on classic, retro National Parks posters produced between 1938 and 1941. By doing this, she hopes to make climate change feel closer to home and hard to ignore. Scroll down for video The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, is a landscape that encompasses forests, streams, rivers and waterfalls. The print projection of the park in 2050 (pictured right) shows the park in flames due to wildfires The series, entitled National Parks 2050, includes seven posters that show American National Parks in poor condition. Rothstein wrote on her website that people have the ability to outsmart the issues highlighted by the series, but that action must be taken now. 'From Franklin to Fuller, America has been made its greatest by embracing ingenuity and innovation. 'If we dive headfirst into inventing for a brighter future, we can prevent National Parks 2050 from becoming a reality'. Rothstein is selling both the original and new prints on her website and donating 25 per cent of the proceeds to climate-related causes. One of the posters shows the Great Smoky Mountains up in flames as a projection of climate-change induced wildfires. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, is a landscape that encompasses forests, streams, rivers and waterfalls. Rothstein's print reads 'So that you make enjoy the great smokies all the more,' followed by a list of scenarios that could ensue: Extreme weather events, species die-off and wildfires. This print pictured right shows Yellowstone National Park with a starving, thin bear walking across its landscape. The print reads: 'Disappearing geysers, warming rivers, dying trout, starving grizzlies and pine beetle infestations' Another print in the series shows Yellowstone National Park with a starving, thin bear walking across its landscape. Yellowstone National Park is located in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Its known for its wildlife and geothermal features, including Old Faithful geyser. A geyser is a vent in Earth's surface that periodically ejects hot columns of water and steam. In contrast to the original poster, you can see that Rothstein's print doesn't show Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser erupting. Rothstein's print reads: 'Disappearing geysers, warming rivers, dying trout, starving grizzlies and pine beetle infestations'. The bottom right of the projected 2050 scene (pictured right) reads 'Prairie Creek Visitor Center - Closed Due To Fire in 2048,' projecting that the visitor center will have burned down soon before 2050 A print of the Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) shows California's famous redwood trees burned down. The bottom right of the print reads 'Prairie Creek Visitor Center - Closed Due To Fire in 2048,' projecting that the visitor center will have burned down soon before 2050. Redwood trees are the tallest species of tree in the world, and the oldest know redwood is about 2,200 years old. When Redwood National Park was created in 1968, nearly 90 per cent of the original redwood trees had been logged. The RNSP preserves threatened species such as Chinook salmon and Steller's sea lion. The top of Rothstein's poster (pictured right) reads 'Ranger Naturalist Service In a Rising Seas Wilderness,' with a description top left saying 'Visit dying mangroves, coastal flooding erosion, lost alligator habitat, dead freshwater pines, extinct tropical orchids and scare drinking water' The Everglades National Park is a 1.5-million-acre wetland preserve at the southern tip of Florida. It's made up of coastal mangroves, sawgrass marshes pine flatwoods that host a diversity of wildlife including alligators, leatherback turtles and West Indian manatees. Rothstein's print of the Everglades National Park in Florida is in significant contrast with the original poster promoting the park. The original print shows herons and alligators roaming its lush swamps, while Rothstein's print shows swamps devoid of wildlife and trees. The top of Rothstein's poster reads 'Ranger Naturalist Service In a Rising Seas Wilderness,' with a description top left saying 'Visit dying mangroves, coastal flooding erosion, lost alligator habitat, dead freshwater pines, extinct tropical orchids and scare drinking water.' Of her series, Rothstein wrote: 'I hope the series inspires everyone, from every day citizens to policy makers, to acknowledge the issues ahead, admit that climate stewardship is a non-partisan issue, and work together to find the solutions I know were capable of creating.' A stunning timelapse reveals the night sky from a pilots perspective. While traveling from Europe to South America, Sales Wick shot the mesmerising flight highlighting glowing cities and the glittering Milky Way. The 5,000 mile (8,000km) journey was shot using a Sony a7S camera from the cockpit of a Boeing 777 passenger flying at 500mph (800kph). Scroll down for video A stunning timelapse reveals the night sky from a pilots perspective. The 5,000 mile (8,000km) journey was shot using a Sony a7S camera from the cockpit of a Boeing 777 passenger flying at 500mph (800kph) BEYOND THE CLOUDS The 5,000 mile (8,000km) journey was shot using a Sony a7S camera from the cockpit of a Boeing 777 passenger flying at 500mph (800kph). The project, called 'Beyond the Clouds', is a timelapse of a flight that left Zurich, Switzerland at 9:50PM BST (4:50PM ET) and arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil 4:35AM BST (11:35PM ET). It highlights the glowing cities, the flashes of passing planes as well as the glittering Milky Way. Advertisement The project, called 'Beyond the Clouds', is a timelapse of a flight that left Zurich, Switzerland at 9:50PM BST (4:50PM ET) and arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil 4:35AM BST (11:35PM ET). Flying through the night, while the world beneath us is at sleep, is a pretty common thing as a long haul pilot, Mr Wick wrote on his website. The latter is the case for my flight today across the Atlantic Ocean to South America. Our flight is packed and some 340 passengers are settling in for a long night flight. The plane first headed westbound along the clearly visible Alps that sat at the left of the plane. Just before reaching Geneva and the western tip of Switzerland we are making a shallow left turn to join the Rhone valley leading us to Marseille and onward onto the Mediterranean Sea, Mr Wick wrote. Our routing will bring us towards Algeria and on across the northwestern part of the vast Sahara. We will be flying past Dakar in Senegal where we will be heading out onto the Atlantic Ocean. Our south-westerly course will get us across the wide blue in fact it was pitch-black during the night to the north eastern shore of Brazil. The pilot lists major cities and landmarks as he flew by, like the Sahara in Africa or the city of Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands in Spain Landfall is expected just north of Rio de Janeiro and the remaining few hundred miles will get us straight towards Sao Paolo. Our landing is expected around 6am local time, still before the sun will rise. The video highlights a stunning show on the ground as the plane passes over brightly lit cities but the real show is above. Viewers are transported to the front seat of the plane where they can witness the Milky Way in all of its glory as if they were actually in the air flying. Other planes can be seen fly by and every once in a while, a shooting star soars through the night sky. As the timelapse continues, you can see clouds whiz by, hinting at just how fast the plane is actually moving. But what really delights the eyes are the thousands of stars that light up the blackness of space. Other major cities, such as Dakar - capital and largest city of Senegal - are also seen. As the timelapse continues, you can see clouds whizz by, hinting at just how fast the plane is moving. But what really delights the eyes are the thousands of stars that light up the blackness of space Several planes can be seen shooting past the cockpit in a flash of light during the timelapse footage, such as the one pictured here as a streak toward the centre of the image Just as the bright city lights are vanishing behind us, the Milky way starts to become clearly visible up ahead, shared Wick. Its now us, pacing at almost the speed of sound along the invisible highway and the pitch-black night sky above this surreal landscape FOLLOW SALES WICK FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM Advertisement Just as the bright city lights are vanishing behind us, the Milky way starts to become clearly visible up ahead, shared Wick. Its now us, pacing at almost the speed of sound along the invisible highway and the pitch-black night sky above this surreal landscape. Ahead of us are another eight hours flight time, but we already stopped counting the shooting stars. And we got already to a few hundred. Another of the passing planes seen during the timelapse is shown in this image The project, called 'Beyond the Clouds', is a timelapse of a flight that left Zurich, Switzerland at 9:50PM BST (4:50PM ET) and arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil 4:35AM BST (11:35PM ET) A dangerous security problem in Microsoft Word took so long to fix that hackers were able to use it to spy on millions of people. While Microsoft struggled to come up with a fix, hackers used the bug to take control of computers and send spying and banking-fraud software. Criminals even used the bug to spy on the computers of soldiers in Russia and Ukraine, it was revealed today. Scroll down for video A dangerous security problem in Microsoft Word took so long to fix that hackers were able to use to spy on millions of people (stock image) TIMELINE OF EVENTS July 2016: Ryan Hanson, a 2010 Idaho State University graduate and consultant at boutique security firm Optiv Inc in Boise, found a weakness in the way that Microsoft Word processes documents from another format. October 2016: Mr Hanson told Microsoft about the threat. But the company fail to act to remove the bug. January 2017: Hackers discover the flaw and cyber attacks begin. The first known victims were sent emails enticing them to click on a link to documents in Russian about military issues, researchers said. Their computers were then infected with eavesdropping software made by Gamma Group, a private company that sells to agencies of many governments. March 2017: Hackers start using the bug to send financial hacking software to a small number of computers. April 7: Security firm McAfee notice the problem and raise the alarm on a blog post. But their post alerts many more hackers to the deadly security flaw. April 8: Attacks go mainstream. Someone used the bug to send documents booby-trapped with banking-fraud software to millions of computers in Australia. April 11: Microsoft finally release a patch to fix the bug in a security update. It is unclear how many people were ultimately infected or how much money was stolen. Advertisement The bug allowed a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with little trace. It was finally fixed on April 11 after nine months of inaction from the tech giant, which cyber security experts say is an unusually long time. Google's security researchers, for example, give vendors just 90 days' warning before publishing flaws they find. Microsoft declined to say how long it usually takes to patch a flaw. While Microsoft investigated, hackers found the flaw and manipulated the software to spy on unknown Russian speakers, possibly in Ukraine. And a group of thieves used it to bolster their efforts to steal from millions of online bank accounts in Australia and other countries. Last July, Ryan Hanson, a 2010 Idaho State University graduate and consultant at boutique security firm Optiv Inc in Boise, found a weakness in the way that Microsoft Word processes documents from another format. That allowed him to insert a link to a malicious programme that would take control of a computer. Hanson spent some months combining his find with other flaws to make it more deadly, he said on Twitter. Then in October he told Microsoft. The company often pays a modest bounty of a few thousands dollars for the identification of security risks. Soon after that point six months ago, Microsoft could have fixed the problem, the company acknowledged. But it was not that simple. A quick change in the settings on Word by customers would do the trick, but if Microsoft notified customers about the bug and the recommended changes, it would also be telling hackers about how to break in. Alternatively, Microsoft could have created a patch that would be distributed as part of its monthly software updates. But the company did not patch immediately and instead dug deeper. It was not aware that anyone was using Hanson's method, and it wanted to be sure it had a comprehensive solution. A previously undiscovered exploit in Microsoft Word is being used to spread trojan software called Dridex. Victims gets an email which appears to be from a reputable bank or financial firm with an infected Word document attached (pictured) 'We performed an investigation to identify other potentially similar methods and ensure that our fix addresses more than just the issue reported,' Microsoft said through a spokesman, who answered emailed questions on the condition of anonymity. 'This was a complex investigation.' Hanson declined interview requests. The saga shows that Microsoft's progress on security issues, as well as that of the software industry as a whole, remains uneven in an era when the stakes are growing dramatically. The United States has accused Russia of hacking political party emails to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, a charge Russia denies. The flaw allows cyber criminals to insert hidden malicious code into the body of a document. By clicking on a pop-up (pictured) to accept additional data being imported into the document, the HTML-based malware is able to infect your computer While shadowy hacker groups opposed to the U.S. government have been publishing hacking tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. It is unclear how the unknown hackers initially found Hanson's bug. WHAT IS DRIDEX? Dridex is an online banking malware that steals personal information by attaching HTML coding to innocuous looking documents. The victim gets an email with a Microsoft Word or Excel document attached. The attacks lure the victims to open the attachment by using the names of legitimate companies. Some of the emails refer to an 'attached invoice', stating it comes from a software company, online retailer or bank. In the past, it has mainly targeted customers of financial and banking institutions based in Europe, according to computer security firm Symantec. Advertisement It could have been through simultaneous discovery, a leak in the patching process, or even hacking against Optiv or Microsoft. In January, as Microsoft worked on a solution, the attacks began. The first known victims were sent emails enticing them to click on a link to documents in Russian about military issues in Russia and areas held by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, researchers said. Their computers were then infected with eavesdropping software made by Gamma Group, a private company that sells to agencies of many governments. The best guess of cyber security experts is that one of Gamma's customers was trying to get inside the computers of soldiers or political figures in Ukraine or Russia. Either of those countries, or any of their neighbors or allies, could have been responsible. The initial attacks were carefully aimed at a small number of targets and so stayed below the radar. But in March, security researchers at FireEye Inc noticed that a notorious piece of financial hacking software known as Latenbot was being distributed using the same Microsoft bug. FireEye probed further, found the earlier Russian-language attacks, and warned Microsoft. The company, which confirmed it was first warned of active attacks in March, got on track for an April 11 patch. Then, what counts as disaster in the world of bug-fixers struck. Another security firm, McAfee, saw some attacks using the Microsoft Word flaw on April 6. After what it described as 'quick but in-depth research,' it established that the flaw had not been patched, contacted Microsoft, and then blogged about its discovery on April 7. The blog post contained enough detail that other hackers could mimic the attacks. Other software security professionals were aghast that McAfee did not wait, as Optiv and FireEye were doing, until the patch came out. McAfee Vice President Vincent Weafer blamed 'a glitch in our communications with our partner Microsoft' for the timing. He did not elaborate. By April 9, a programme to exploit the flaw was on sale on underground markets for criminal hackers, said FireEye researcher John Hultquist. The next day, attacks were mainstream. Someone used it to send documents booby-trapped with Dridex banking-fraud software to millions of computers in Australia. Finally, on the Tuesday, about six months after hearing from Hanson, Microsoft made the patch available. As always, some computer owners are lagging behind and have not installed it. Ben-Gurion University employees in Israel were hacked, after the patch, by attackers linked to Iran who took over their email accounts and sent infected documents to their contacts, said cyber security firm Morphisec. When Microsoft patched, it thanked Hanson, a FireEye researcher and its own staff. A six-month delay is bad but not unheard of, said Marten Mickos, chief executive of HackerOne, which coordinates patching efforts between researchers and vendors. 'Normal fixing times are a matter of weeks,' Mickos said. It is unclear how many people were ultimately infected or how much money was stolen. Elon Musk has likened future versions of Tesla's Model 3 production line to an 'alien dreadnaught' - and now, the first pictures of that vision have emerged. A Reddit user claiming to work for robot making company Kuka posted the images of what he says are 467 robots being delivered to the car-making firm's California HQ. The photos show a large shipment of unmounted robots that will form part of the ambitious production line. Scroll down for video A Reddit user claiming to work for robot making company Kuka posted the images of 467 robots being delivered to the car-making firm. SoutheastTraders forum user Mac11FA, via the Tesla subreddit, said he is a Field Service Engineer for Kuka Robotics. The robots captured in the photos appear to be largely manufactured by Augsburg, Germany-based Kuka robotics, according to Teslarati. The robots, each costing anywhere between $50k to as much as $500k can manage multiple tasks by switching adapters and moving across multiple axes. 'Kuka is the world's leading provider of production systems in the automotive industry,' the firm boasts on its website. 'With years of experience, we are the master in the design of flexible and efficient production processes.' The robots, each costing anywhere between $50k to as much as $500k can manage multiple tasks by switching adapters and moving across multiple axes. Mac11FA claims he is onsite at the Tesla factory for the next 7 weeks to 'help set up and commission 467 robots and 21 KL slides'. Tesla owners that were touring the factory over the past week have reported seeing the robots . According to Teslarati, one owner from the Tesla Motors Club (Engle) said, 'You can't take photographs, but I can tell everyone that there is an enormous area of the factory where the Model 3 assembly line is being built. 'There are Kuka robots all over the place waiting to be installed. It's a beautiful thing.' Elon Musk has boasted the firm's production facility for its much anticipated Model 3 will look like an 'alien dreadnought'. Elon Musk has boasted the firm's production facility for its much anticipated Model 3 will look like an 'alien dreadnought'. Musk has said the facility, which is separate from the firm's 'Gigafactory', will be 'the machine that makes the machine,' and told analysts it will stun people. 'It's like, 'What the hell is that?'' said Musk. Musk revealed the in-house term for the manufacturing advancement he hopes to introduce is 'alien dreadnought.' 'The point at which that's what the factory looks like, that's when you know you've won.' He also revealed the line will evolve in stages. 'By version 3, it won't look like anything else,' he said. KUKA'S ROBOT ARM RANGE The German firm offers dozens of different robots for sale, from arms capable of inserting screws to giant arms capable of lifting an entire engine block. It already works with dozens of major motor manufacturers to automate their production lines. It's heavy duty version, called the KR 1000 titan, is 'the first six-axis robot with an open kinematic system and an unparalleled payload capacity.' KUKA offers a range of different arms, from small units for delicate work to its TITAN that is capable of picking up and entire car. It can handle of heavy loads over distances of up to 6.5 meters, carrying engine blocks, stones, glass, steel beams, components for ships and aircraft, marble blocks, and even precast concrete parts. firm even programmed one of its arms to take on table tennis player Timo Boll for a recent TV spot. Advertisement 'You can't have people in the production line itself, otherwise you drop to people speed. 'So there will be no people in production process itself. 'People will maintain the machines, upgrade them, and deal with anomalies.' However, there will still be people working in the factory, though, mostly overseeing the robots and making sure everything is running at peak efficiency. Most automakers test a new model's production line by building vehicles with relatively cheap, prototype tools designed to be scrapped once they deliver doors that fit, body panels with the right shape and dashboards that don't have gaps or seams. Tesla shut down production at its California assembly plant for a week this month to prepare for production of its high-volume Model 3 sedan. Elon Musk has boasted the firm's production facility for its much anticipated Model 3 will look like an 'alien dreadnought'. Tesla, however, is skipping that preliminary step and ordering permanent, more expensive equipment as it races to launch its Model 3 sedan by a self-imposed volume production deadline of September, Musk told investors last month. Musks decision underscores his high-risk tolerance and willingness to forego long-held industry norms that has helped Tesla upend the traditional auto industry. While Tesla is not the first automaker to try to accelerate production on the factory floor, no other rival is putting this much faith in the production strategy succeeding. Musk expects the Model 3 rollout to help Telsa deliver five times its current annual sales volume, a key target in the automaker's efforts to stop burning cash. 'He's pushing the envelope to see how much time and cost he can take out of the process,' said Ron Harbour, a manufacturing consultant at Oliver Wyman. Investors are already counting on Teslas factory floor success, with shares soaring 39 percent since January as it makes the leap from niche producer to mass producer in far less time than rivals. There are caution signs, however. The production equipment designed to produce millions of cars is expensive to fix or replace if it doesn't work, industry experts say. Tesla has encountered quality problems on its existing low-volume cars, and the Model 3 is designed to sell in numbers as high as 500,000 vehicles a year, raising the potential cost of recalls or warranty repairs. 'It's an experiment, certainly,' said Consumer Reports' Jake Fisher, who has done extensive testing of Tesla's previous Models S and X. Tesla could possibly fix errors quicker, speeding up the process, 'or it could be they have unsuspected problems they'll have a hard time dealing with.' Musk discussed the decision to skip what he referred to as 'beta' production testing during a call last month with an invited group of investors. Details were published on Reddit by an investor on the call. He also said that 'advanced analytical techniques' - code word for computer simulations - would help Tesla in advancing straight to production tooling. Tesla declined to confirm details of the call or comment on its production strategy. The auto industry's incumbents have not been standing still. Volkswagen AG's Audi division launched production of a new plant in Mexico using computer simulations of production tools - and indeed the entire assembly line and factory - that Audi said it believed to be an industry first. That process allowed the plant to launch production 30 percent faster than usual, Audi said. An Audi executive involved in the Mexican plant launch, Peter Hochholdinger, is now Tesla's vice president of production. Typically, automakers test their design with limited production using lower grade equipment that can be modified slightly to address problems. When most of the kinks are worked out, they order the final equipment. Musk has said the facility, which is separate from the firm's 'Gigafactory', will be 'the machine that makes the machine,' Teslas decision to move directly to the final tools is in part because lower grade, disposable equipment known as 'soft tooling' ended up complicating the debut of the problem-plagued Model X SUV in 2015, according to a person familiar with the decision and Teslas assembly line planning. Working on a tight deadline, Tesla had no time to incorporate lessons learned from soft tooling before having to order the permanent production tooling, making the former's value negligible, the source said. 'Soft tooling did very little for the program and arguably hurt things,' said the person. In addition, Tesla has learned to better modify final production tools, and its 2015 purchase of a Michigan tooling company means it can make major equipment 30 percent faster than before, and more cheaply as well, the source said. But there are limits to what technology can do in the heavily regulated car business. For example, Tesla will still have to use real cars in crash tests required by the U.S. government, because federal rules do not allow simulated crash results to substitute for data from a real car. China's talking robot Jia Jia had a dismal first interview in English where she forgot where the Great Wall of China was. The mechanical marvel has been sent back to humanoid school to hone her skills after stumbling over basic words and phrases during the Skype interview. Jia Jia was unable to respond to basic questions about the number of letters in the alphabet or describe the American journalist she was talking to. Scroll down for video Chinese robot Jia Jia (right) was interviewed by Kevin Kelly (left) co-founder of Wired magazine over Skype but the mechanical marvel's conversation was not coherent TECHNOLOGY BEHIND JIA JIA It took the team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner. The humanoid is programmed to recognise human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology. This humanoid has natural eye movement, speech that is in sync with its lip movement and refers to its male creators as 'lords'. Advertisement The humanoid robot was interviewed at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, by Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine. Although Jia Jia could smile and blink like a human, her conversation was less than intelligible and she answered questions after long delays or failed to answer them at all. When asked where the Great Wall of China was she replied 'China'. She also could not answer how many letters there were in the English alphabet. Kelly, an authority on robotics and artificial intelligence, asked Jia Jia if she could talk about him. The robotic reply was unintelligible. Researchers at the Hefei university spent about three years developing the robot in a bid to give her the ability to interact with humans as well as understand languages. However, Jia Jias head developer Chen Xiaoping said although his robot failed at some of the 'challenging' questions she still had 'good answers'. 'There were some delays due to the (Skype) network. Apart from that, I think the conversation was successful,' he said. Although Jia Jia (pictured) could smile and blink like a human her conversation was less than intelligible and she answered questions after long delays or failed to answer them at all Yet observers watching the conversation on a live stream expressed disappointment and said that she was not as good as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa. 'It does not work!' one commented, while another said: 'It needs some major revamping.' Jia Jia also conversed with Xinhua reporter Xiong Maoling. Answering a question about whether or not she is the most beautiful person in the world, she answered: 'Maybe, I'm not sure.' It took the team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner And when asked about her age, Jia Jia moved her head back and forth slowly, before answering like a true female: 'It's a secret.' Jia Jia's 'brain', is essentially a huge online database, is connected to a cloud computing platform that allows her to enhance her ability to process emotions and speech as new data is uploaded. She can hold conversations with those who ask her questions and is meant to be able to respond in less than a second. The humanoid is programmed to recognize human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology. She can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner. When asked where the Great Wall of China was Jia Jia (pictured) replied 'China'. She also could not answer how many letters there were in the English alphabet Advertisement Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has sent back stunning images from its descent down a mysterious gap between Saturn and its rings. The images provide 'our closest look ever at Saturn's atmosphere and giant hurricane,' Nasa said. The spacecraft executed the daredevil plunge yesterday in the build up to its final 'death dive' in September. Communications with the spacecraft went dark during the dive, but Nasa announced today that it has picked up radio signals from Cassini. Nasa's 70m-wide Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna at Goldstone, California, managed to re-establish communications just after 08:00 BST (03:00 EST) today, and stunning images are already flooding in. Scroll down for video Communications with the spacecraft went dark during the dive, but Nasa has today announced that it has picked up radio signals from Cassini. This image shows a swirling storm at the centre of the hexagonal vortex at Saturn's northern pole. Experts have previously suggested that this huge vortex is caused by shallow jets of air at the cloud-level WHAT DO THE NEW IMAGES SHOW? The first few images sent back to Earth from Cassini are unprocessed. Nasa has simply said that they show features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. One of the new images shows a swirling storm at the centre of the hexagonal vortex at Saturn's northern pole. Experts have previously suggested that this huge vortex is caused by shallow jets of air at the cloud-level. Another image captures a close-up of the gaseous planet's surface dotted with bright marks. These could be localised circular mini-storms that change the composition of the atmosphere's gases. This change can alter the colour of spots on the planet's surface, which look small in the images but are in fact hundreds of kilometres across. Advertisement Nasa announced the news on Twitter, writing: 'We did it! Cassini is in contact with Earth and sending back data after a successful dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings.' Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at Nasa Headquarters in Washington, said: 'In the grandest tradition of exploration, Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare.' Yesterday, Cassini performed the first of 22 dives through an unexplored gap, and has beamed back stunning images from the voyage. 'No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like,' said Earl Maize, Cassini Project Manager. 'I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape.' The gap between the rings and the top of Saturn's atmosphere is about 1,500 miles (2,000 kilometres) wide. The spacecraft zipped through this region at speeds of about 77,000 mph (124,000 kph), so small particles hitting a sensitive area could potentially have disabled the spacecraft. As a protective measure, it used its large, dish-shaped high-gain antenna as a shield, orienting it in the direction of oncoming ring particles. This explained why the spacecraft was out of contact with Earth during the ring-plane crossing. This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before, with details as small as 150 metres captured during the flyby. The image captures a close-up of the gaseous planet's surface dotted with white blemishes, which are likely localised circular mini-storms that change the composition of the atmosphere's gases The first few images sent back to Earth from Cassini are unprocessed, and it is unclear what they show. Nasa has simply said that they show features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The craft's arsenal of cameras capture images at several wavelengths of light and until Nasa confirms which camera was used we cannot know what the photos show The first of the spaceship's 22 deep dives between Saturn and its innermost ring was performed yesterday at 10am BST (5am ET). Communications with the spacecraft went dark during the dive but have now returned Cassini was programmed to collect data while close to the planet and turn toward Earth to make contact about 20 hours after the crossing. The images it has collected so far are unprocessed and Nasa has simply said that they show features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. One of the new images shows a swirling storm at the centre of the hexagonal vortex at Saturn's northern pole, which experts have previously suggested is caused by shallow jets of air at the planet's cloud-level. Another image captures a close-up of the gaseous planet's surface dotted with bright marks. These marks could be localised circular mini-storms that change the composition of the atmosphere's gases and thus alters the colour of spots on the planet's surface. THE 'GRAND FINALE' Cassini has circled Saturn for 13 years since reaching its orbit in 2004, spearheading remarkable discoveries about the ringed planet and its icy moons but now, it's running low on fuel. On April 22 the spacecraft began to transition into its grand finale orbits, taking one last close flyby of Saturn's massive moon Titan. Titan's gravity bent Cassini's flight path, causing the orbit to shrink until it was on course to pass between Saturn and the inner edges of its rings. Yesterday, Cassini begun the first of 22 dives through an unexplored gap before it ultimately plunges through the skies of Saturn to end its mission as 'part of the planet itself.' Cassini's mission will officially terminate on September 15, after a planned plummet through Saturn's atmosphere. And, all the while, it will transmit data from several instruments until the signal is finally lost. Advertisement While these spots look small in the images they are in fact hundreds of kilometres across. But no one can know for certain what the images show until Nasa has processed them. 'The processing will allow Nasa to distinguish between real data and "noise" in the images,' Dr Ingo Mueller-Wodarg, a planetary scientist at Imperial College London, told MailOnline. 'Pictures taken at similar time intervals can also be combined to build a better picture. 'Nasa then need to analyse the wavelength of light in the images to decipher what a bright or dark feature is.' Cassini's next dive through the gap is scheduled for May 2. The spacecraft is a 20-year-old joint mission of Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. This graphic shows Cassini's final orbits alongside the Ring-Grazing orbits the craft has undergone over the past 13 years. The orbit of Titan, one of Saturn's moons, is shown in dark green and the direction of Earth is shown in white The 22-foot-tall (6.7 metre) spacecraft launched in 1997 and began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But the craft is now running low on fuel, and will make a death plunge into Saturn's surface on September 15. Earlier this week the craft made its final flyby of Saturn's massive moon Titan, collecting data on the hydrocarbon lakes and haze-enshrouded surface of the alien world. It made its closest approach to Titan at a speed of about 13,000 miles per hour (21,000 kph), marking the beginning of its 'Grand Finale.' This encounter caused Titan's gravity to bend Cassini's orbit, pulling it slightly in so that it could begin its final set of 22 dives between Saturn and its rings, before plunging into the planet on Sept 15. This artist's concept shows an over-the-shoulder view of what Cassini will see when it makes one of its Grand Finale dives over Saturn The spacecraft made its 127th and final close approach to Titan on April 21, passing at an altitude of about 608 miles (979 kilometers) above the moon's surface. Cassini transmitted its images and other data to Earth following the encounter. Scientists, with Cassini's radar investigation, will be looking this week at their final set of new radar images of the hydrocarbon seas and lakes that spread across Titan's north polar region. 'Cassini's up-close exploration of Titan is now behind us, but the rich volume of data the spacecraft has collected will fuel scientific study for decades to come,' said Linda Spilker, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It marked the beginning of the 'thrilling final chapter' of Cassini's life, twenty years after it left Earth. Animation showing a side view of Cassini's final 22 orbits of Saturn and its rings - the mission's grand finale. Credit: Nasa/JPL WHAT TO EXPECT AS CASSINI DIVES TOWARDS SATURN In this artist's illustration the spacecraft is shown breaking apart after entering Saturn's atmosphere. The planned end of Cassini will occur on September 15, 2017 Cassini has begun a series of orbits, known as death dives, between Saturn and its rings. No other spacecraft has taken this journey before and it is believed to be perilous. Cassini will have to dodge floating debris and rocks in order to get close to Saturn's rings. But if it succeeds, scientists will finally be able to take magnetic and gravitational measurements that will help them figure out the mass of Saturn and its rings. Nasa already knows the total mass of Saturn and its rings combined, but is yet to decipher the planet's mass on its own. Getting closer to Saturn will allow Cassini to make observations about its mass without having to factor in its wings. Understanding the mass of Saturn will help Nasa figure out how the planet's rings were first formed. This information could even help us figure out how all of the solar system's planets formed from rings of material circulating the sun. Cassini's orbits will also let us capture images showing our closest ever view of Saturn's clouds. The spacecraft will keep taking measurements and snapping pictures to send back to Earth until just hours before its final plunge on September 15, 2017. Cassini will then plunge into Saturn's thick gaseous atmosphere and likely break apart as it collides with icy ring material at around 70,000 mph (113,000 km/h). Advertisement The craft has circled Saturn for 13 years since reaching its orbit in 2004, spearheading remarkable discoveries about the ringed planet and its icy moons but now, it's running low on fuel. 'With this flyby we're committed to the Grand Finale,' said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. 'The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path, so that even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15 no matter what.' This diagram created by Cassini mission planners illustrates the close approaches of the spacecraft during its Grand Finale orbits between Saturn's innermost (D) ring and the giant planet's atmosphere In a captivating video released earlier this month, the space agency revealed a glimpse at Cassini's 'grand finale.' Today Cassini will make the first of 22 dives through an unexplored gap before it ultimately plunges through the skies of Saturn to end its mission as 'part of the planet itself.' And, all the while, it will transmit data from several instruments until the signal is finally lost. A diagram of Saturn and all of its moons. Of particular interest to scientists is Enceladus (pictured sixth from left), which was recently found to have hydrothermal vents THE CASSINI MISSION: WHAT IT HAS FOUND Since it left earth in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004, Cassini has been touring the system with an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons. The spacecraft discovered that a selection of Saturn's moons are among the most likely places in the solar system to host alien life. Just two weeks ago Cassini detected chemical readings under the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, listing it as a prime target in the search for life. During its journey, Cassini has made several other dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean within Enceladus and liquid methane seas on Titan. Before Nasa's Cassini probe captured the most detailed images of Saturn ever seen, it dropped its companion Huygens on the planet's largest moon, Titan. The mission found that Titan has many Earth-like features such as wind, rain and seas. After nearly 20 years in space, the Cassini mission is drawing near its end because the spacecraft is running low on fuel. After nearly 20 years in space, the mission is drawing near its end because the spacecraft is running low on fuel. Cassini's mission will officially terminate on September 15, after a planned plummet through Saturn's atmosphere Advertisement A diagram showing the main parts of the Cassini spacecraft. On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn's atmosphere but its monitors will keep sending back data until the very end In the months leading up to this dramatic conclusion, though, the craft will carry out a plan that is 'in many ways, like a whole new mission,' according to NASA. Cassini will dive through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) gap between Saturn and its rings. '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. 'What we learn from Cassini's daring final orbits will further our understanding of how giant planets, and planetary systems everywhere, form and evolve. 'This is truly discovery in action to the very end.' Researchers first decided the craft would terminate its mission in this way back in 2010. Its terminal orbits over the next five months will bring it closer to Saturn than ever before. As the craft 'repeatedly braves this unexplored region,' it will investigate the origins of the rings and the nature of the planet's interior, the video explains. Cassini will dive through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) gap between Saturn and its rings. NASA/ JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute A timeline of Cassini's 20-year journey. The craft launched in October 1997 and took seven years to reach Saturn, flying by Venus, Earth and Jupiter on its trip. Once at Saturn it performed flybys of Saturnian moons Titan and Dione and released probes to study their atmosphere. Despite completing its primary mission in 2008, Cassini has continued to take readings '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. 'Cassini will make some of its most extraordinary observations at the end of its long life.' According to NASA, the researchers hope to collect the first-ever samples of Saturn's atmosphere and particles coming from the main rings. Artist's illustration handed out by Nasa depicts the Cassini unmanned spacecraft hovering above Saturn's rings before it takes its final dive Twenty years after leaving Earth, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is set to embark on the 'thrilling final chapter' of its life. The craft has circled Saturn for 13 years but now, it's running low on fuel On top of this, the craft will obtain the closest views yet of Saturn's clouds and inner rings. Scientists made the final checks on the space probe's command list ahead of its finale, and uploaded them on April 11. 'Based on our best models, we expect the gap to be clear of particles large enough to damage the spacecraft,' said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. 'But we're also being cautious by using our large antenna as a shield on the first pass, as we determine whether it's safe to expose the science instruments to that environment on future passes. Lost in the vastness of space, the Earth, circled in red, appears as a pinprick of light between Saturn's rings. Cassini captured this extraordinary photo on April 12 at a distance of 870 million miles (1,400km) from Earth. In this blown-up version of the image the moon can be seen to the left of Earth Yesterday the craft made its final flyby of Saturn's massive moon Titan, collecting data on the hydrocarbon lakes and haze-enshrouded surface of the alien world. Pictured is one of the last images of Titan taken by the craft TITAN: EARTH'S 'TOXIC TWIN' Aside from Earth, Titan is the only place in the solar system known to have rivers, rainfall and seas - and possibly even waterfalls. Of course, in the case of Titan these are liquid methane rather than water on Earth. Regular Earth-water, H2O, would be frozen solid on Titan where the surface temperature is -180C (-292F). Titan is the only place in the solar system known to have rivers, rainfall and seas - and possibly even waterfalls. Two images taken by Cassini of Titan (pictured) on April 18, 2017 With its thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere. Because Titan is smaller than Earth, its gravity does not hold onto its gaseous envelope as tightly, so the atmosphere extends 370 miles (595km) into space. With Titan's low gravity and dense atmosphere, methane raindrops could grow twice as large as Earth's raindrops. This unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Titan was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its final close flyby of the hazy, planet-sized moon on April 21, 2017 Advertisement 'Certainly there are some unknowns, but that's one of the reasons we're doing this kind of daring exploration at the end of the mission.' On April 22, the spacecraft transitioned into its grand finale orbits, taking one last close flyby of Saturn's massive moon Titan. Then, Titan's gravity bent Cassini's flight path, causing the orbit to shrink until it passed between the planet and the inner edges of its rings. NASA's Cassini spacecraft made a close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan, collecting data on the hydrocarbon lakes and haze-enshrouded surface of the alien world. And, this will be its last As the spacecraft plummets into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, it will keep its antennas firing toward Earth as long as possible, sending back important data. 'Cassini's grand finale is so much more than a final plunge,' said Spilker. 'It's a thrilling final chapter for our intrepid spacecraft, and so scientifically rich that it was the clear and obvious choice for how to end the mission.' Cassini made its closest approach to Titan at a speed of about 13,000 miles per hour (21,000 kph), marking the beginning of its 'Grand Finale'. Its final flyby of Titan , in which this image was taken, bent the craft's orbit and directed it towards the gap between Saturn and its rings The first humans to live on Mars will have brick houses made from the red planets own distinct soil, according to new research. And the pioneers wont even have to take an oven or any extra building materials to create the Martian masonry. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil that is already there - the equivalent of a blow from a hammer, the study found. Scroll down for video Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet's red soil into bricks without the need to even use an oven THE TECHNIQUE The technique relies on two key steps. Firstly, enclosing the soil in a flexible container in this case, a rubber tube, and secondly compacting the soil at a high enough pressure. The amount of pressure needed for a small sample is roughly the equivalent of someone dropping a 4.5 kg (10 pound) hammer from a height of one metre, the researchers said. The process produces small round soil pallets, about an inch tall, that could then be cut into brick shapes. The researchers believe that the iron oxide, which gives Martian soil its distinctive red colour, acts as a binding agent. Using various scanning tools, the researchers found that the tiny iron particles coat the simulant's bigger rocky basalt particles. Because the iron particles are clean and flat, they can easily bind to one another under pressrure. Advertisement The Martian brick-making technique was developed by researchers from the University of California, San Diego. Using soil that mirrors that found on Mars, they were able to form a brick at ambient temperature that was similar to dense rock, and stronger than steel enforced concrete. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, follows a US Congress bill signed by Donald Trump last month directing NASA to send a manned mission to the Red Planet in 2033. Professor Yu Qiao, lead author of the study, said: 'The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave. 'They will be pioneers. And I would be honored to be their brick maker.' This isn't the first time that people have suggested using Martian soil to build habitats on Mars. Previous plans included nuclear-powered brick ovens, or using complex chemistry to turn organics compounds found on Mars into binding polymers. But this is the first time that shows that astronauts would need minimal resources to do so. The researchers stumbled upon the technique when trying to cut down on the amount of polymers needed to shape Martian soil into bricks. Their technique relies on two key steps. Their technique relies on two key steps. Firstly, enclosing the soil in a flexible container in this case, a rubber tube, and secondly compacting the soil at a high enough pressure. Pictured is the small, round soil pallet created by this technique Firstly, enclosing the soil in a flexible container in this case, a rubber tube, and secondly compacting the soil at a high enough pressure. The amount of pressure needed for a small sample is roughly the equivalent of someone dropping a 4.5 kg (10 pound) hammer from a height of one metre, the researchers said. The process produced small round soil pallets, about an inch tall, that could then be cut into brick shapes. Using various scanning tools, the researchers found that the tiny iron particles coat the simulant's bigger rocky basalt particles. Because the iron particles are clean and flat, they can easily bind to one another under pressrure The researchers believe that the iron oxide, which gives Martian soil its distinctive red colour, acts as a binding agent. Using various scanning tools, the researchers found that the tiny iron particles coat the simulant's bigger rocky basalt particles. Because the iron particles are clean and flat, they can easily bind to one another under pressure. The next step for the researchers is increasing the size of the bricks. Once this is done, the bricks could be used to build up a structure such as houses on Mars When testing the bricks' strength, the researchers found that even without reinforcement, they were stronger than steel-reinforced concreted When testing the bricks' strength, the researchers found that even without reinforcement, they were stronger than steel-reinforced concrete. The next step for the researchers is increasing the size of the bricks. Once this is done, the bricks could be used to build up a structure such as houses on Mars. The idea of bringing people back from the dead by transplanting their brains into donor bodies may sound like science fiction. But the bizarre vision could be a reality within three years, according to a controversial Italian surgeon. Professor Sergio Canavero is famed for his plans to carry out the first human head transplant next year, and says that he will then focus on brain transplants. Scroll down for video Professor Sergio Canavero is famed for his plans to carry out the first human head transplant next year, and says that he will then focus on brain transplants WHAT CRITICS SAY Critics say Professor Canavero's plans are 'pure fantasy'. The Italian has been compared to the fictional gothic-horror character Dr Frankenstein and Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, has described Dr Canavero as 'nuts'. On his head transplant plans, Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, told CNN: 'I would not wish this on anyone. I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death.' Advertisement Professor Canavero is Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, and is aiming to carry out the world's first human head transplant next year. In a new interview with Ooom magazine, he has outlined his next plan, which involves thawing frozen brains and inserting them into donor body. While many experts are sceptical that complex organs like the brain can be thawed without damage, Professor Canavero believes the first frozen brain could soon be awoken. He plans to awaken patients frozen by the Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Professor Canavero told Ooom: 'We will try to bring the first of the company's patients back to life, not in 100 years. While many experts are sceptical that complex organs like the brain can be thawed without damage, Professor Canavero believes the first frozen brain could soon be awoken WHAT IS CRYOPRESERVATION? WHAT IS CRYOPRESERVATION? The deep freezing of a body to - 196C (-321F). Anti-freeze compounds are injected into the corpse to stop cells being damaged. The hope is that medical science will advance enough to bring the patient back to life. Two main US organisations carry out 'cryonics' Alcor, in Arizona, and Cryonics Institute, Michigan. HOW IS IT MEANT TO WORK? The process can only take place once the body is legally dead. Ideally, it begins within two minutes of the heart stopping and no more than 15. The body must be packed in ice and injected with chemicals to reduce blood clotting. At the cryonics facility, it is cooled to just above OC and the blood is replaced with a solution to preserve organs. The body is injected with another solution to stop ice crystals forming in organs and tissues, then cooled to - 130C. The final step is to place the body into a container which is lowered into a tank of liquid nitrogen at - 196C. WHAT'S THE CHANCE OF SUCCESS? Many experts say there is none. Organs such as the heart and kidneys have never been successfully frozen and thawed, so it is even less likely a whole body and the brain could be without irreversible damage. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Charges at the Cryonics Institute, start at around $35,000 (28,000) to 'members' for whole-body cryopreservation. The girl was charged 37,000, which may include costs such as transportation. Rival group Alcor charges $200,000 (161,000) for whole-body preservation. HOW LONG BEFORE PEOPLE CAN BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE? Cryonics organisations claim it could be decades or even centuries. However Medical experts say once cells are damaged during freezing and turned to 'mush' they cannot be converted back to living tissue, any more than you can turn a scrambled egg back into a raw egg. Advertisement 'As soon as the first human head transplant has taken place, i.e. no later than 2018, we will be able to attempt to reawaken the first frozen head. 'We are currently planning the world's first brain transplant, and I consider it realistic that we will be ready in three years at the latest. 'A brain transplant has many advantages. First, there is barely any immune reaction, which means the problem of rejection does not exist. 'The brain is, in a manner of speaking, a neutral organ. If you transplant a head with vessels, nerves, tendons and muscles, rejection can pose a massive problem. This is not the case with the brain.' While he is optimistic about the plans, he did admit that there could be physical and psychological issues after putting a brain in a different body. He said: 'What may be problematic, is that no aspect of your original external body remains the same. 'Your head is no longer there; your brain is transplanted into an entirely different skull. 'It creates a new situation that will certainly not be easy.' Earlier this year, the High Court ruled that a teenage girl could be cryogenically preserved, and scientists expressed their concerns. Martin Ingvar, a cognitive neuroscientist at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said the cryogenic process was bound to fail and accused its practitioners of charlatanism. Valery Spiridonov, a Russian computer scientist volunteered to be the first head transplant patient 'When you look at the brain, with 100 billion cells and 10,000 links between these and other cells... there's no way in hell you can restore the function in that,' he said. Professor Canavero is working with a team of doctors from the Harbin Medical Centre in China, led by Dr Xiaoping Ren. While the team believes that the technology to carry out the world's first head transplant will be in place by the end of the year, they are still seeking a suitable donor body. Valery Spiridonov, a Russian computer scientist volunteered to be the first head transplant patient. Last year, Professor Canavero claimed scientists in China had performed a head transplant on a monkey where they connected up the blood supply between the head and the new body. They did not, however, reconnect the spinal cord and the animal was unable to regain movement But he has been turned down by the researchers, who said the first trial is likely to be carried out on someone who is Chinese, because the chance of a Chinese donor body will be higher. Last year, Professor Canavero claimed scientists in China had performed a head transplant on a monkey where they connected up the blood supply between the head and the new body. They did not, however, reconnect the spinal cord and the animal was unable to regain movement. More than 100 ancient Irish sculptures of women brazenly baring their genitals have been plotted on an interactive map. The bizarre sculptures, found in medieval tower-houses, church sites and holy wells, have puzzled historians for decades. Researchers have suggested the stone carvings, known as the Sheela-na-gigs, may represent fertility - or could even depict the wife of St Patrick. More than 100 ancient Irish sculptures of women brazenly baring their genitals (pictured) have been plotted on an interactive map WHAT ARE SHEELA-NA-GIGS? Sheela-na-gigs are carvings of naked, old women exposing an exaggerated vulva. More than 110 have been found in Ireland. They are normally found in medieval tower-houses and churches. Researchers have suggested the stone carvings, known as the Sheela-na-gigs, may represent fertility - or could even depict the wife of St Patrick. However, no one is sure of their exact meaning or what they were used for. Until recently they were seen as figures representing the evils of lust or as ways of averting the evil eye. Some researchers say they belong to the realm of vernacular folk deities associated with the life-giving powers of birth and death. Advertisement Sheela-na-gigs are carvings of naked, old women exposing an exaggerated vulva. More than 110 Sheela-na-gigs have been found in Ireland. Some experts believe the mysterious stone carvings represent the wife of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Folklorist Shane Lehane, from the University College of Cork, said: 'Perhaps the key to understanding the inherited notion that St Patrick had a wife, Sheela, is to explore the hugely interesting archaeological manifestation that also bears her name: the Sheela-na-Gig'. 'In Ireland, there are over 110 examples of these, oft misunderstood, medieval stone carvings of naked, old women exposing their genitalia. The strange carvings are often found in medieval tower-houses, medieval church sites and holy wells. 'Up to recently these were seen as figures representing the evils of lust or as ways of averting the 'evil eye,' added Dr Lehane. The medieval sculptures (pictured) have been found allover Ireland. They are normally found in medieval tower-houses and churches Some experts believe the mysterious stone carvings (pictured) represent the wife of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland 'More convincing reassessments have reinterpreted the Sheela-na-gig, in line with the Cailleach, as belonging to the realm of vernacular folk deities associated with the life-giving powers of birth and death. 'Placed with the cycles of both the natural and agricultural year and the human life cycle, she can be regarded as the embodiment of the cycle of fertility that overarches natural, agricultural and human procreation and death'. Other experts support the idea that the carvings represent fertility. Researchers have suggested the stone carvings (pictured), known as the Seela-na-Gigs, may represent fertility Until recently the sculptures (pictured) were seen as figures representing the evils of lust or as ways of averting the evil eye Beatrice Kelly, Heritage Council Head of Policy & Research, said: 'Sheela-na-Gigs are very evocative symbols of the feminine in old Irish culture and their prominent positions in medieval churches and castles attests to the importance of the female in Irish society. 'As modern Ireland strives for equality in all aspects of life this map can help us all to understand the important place women have traditionally held within our culture and society.' Heritage Ireland mapped the location of every sculpture in the country using National Monument data. Michael Starrett, Heritage Council Chief Executive, said: 'HeritageMaps.ie a fantastic tool for learning, discussion and interpretation, making cultural data available to everyone. 'We can all learn from it and in many ways explode myths that have grown up and allow contemporary and very enlightened debate to occur. 'Our Sheela-na-Gig's deserve no less.' Heritage Ireland has now mapped the location of every sculpture in the country. The bizarre statues are also found in the UK Explaining how the map was created, Pat Reid of HeritageMaps.ie, said: 'We used publically available National Monuments Service open-data to create the base for this map. 'We augmented this with images and information gathered from the museum sector and Sheela-na-Gig academics and enthusiasts. 'This Sheela-na-Gig dataset is just one of many bespoke datasets we hope to provide in this manner. 'Our aim is to create interest and awareness, and to facilitate further research, in the varied and diverse elements of our cultural heritage.' Californians have reported more close encounters with the third kind than any other state in the US, new research has shown. A recently published book found that of the more than 120,000 reports of unidentified objects seen from 2001 to 2015, 16,000 of the sightings originated in the The Golden State. The authors of the book 'UFO Sightings Desk Reference', have suggested that the warm weather could have something to do with it people spend more time outside, which provides them with more chances to spot a UFO. Scroll down for video A recently published book has revealed that out of more than 120,000 reports of unidentified objects seen from 2001 to 2015, 16,000 of the sightings originated in the The Golden. Pictured is an alien rock sculpture built in Romoland, California TOP 10 STATES TO SPOT A UFO 1. California 2. Florida 3. Texas 4. Washington 5. Pennsylvania 6. New York 7. Arizona 8. Illinois 9. Michigan 10. Ohio Advertisement 'Since 1969 the government has claimed no interest in the subject, and the press and media either ignore or ridicule any mention of UFOs,' reads the book's synopsis. 'Yet citizen scientists and non-governmental organizations have continued to this day the research into this important subject: this book seeks to make the hardest data available accessible to the general public, as well as other UFO researchers.' Although California reigns supreme in sightings, the book highlights that people have claimed to have spotted 'alien spacecraft' all over the US. 'We found that UFOs were sighted in every county in the United States,' explained 'UFO Sightings Desk Reference' co-author Cheryl Costa, who is a former military technician and aerospace analyst, told CBS in an interview. 'Every county had at least one sighting sometime in the past 15 years.' 'We think a great deal of it has to do with California's weather,' said Costa. Costa explained that people spend a lot of time outdoors because of the mild climate, which gives them more opportunities to see 'UFOs'. From 2001 to 2015, Californians reported 15,836 sightings and a majority of them were in the Bay Area: 159 in Marin County, 327 in San Francisco County, 188 in San Mateoo County, 518 in Alameda County and 569 in Santa Clara County CALIFORNIANS MISTAKE NAVY MISSILE TEST FOR UFO The Navy conducted missile tests off the coast on February 14, 2017, leading Californians who spotted the mysterious white light in the sky to believe they had seen a UFO. Several people from the Bay Area down to Los Angeles spotted the light and captured the incident in photographs and videos that were later circulated online. But the Navy issued a statement revealing they had conducted two missile tests off the coast of California early that Tuesday morning, ABC reported. Videos of the missile test, many of which were filmed on the road, show a bright point in the sky with a beam of light radiating below it. In one video, a woman could be heard exclaiming 'It's E.T!' while others took to social media to declare they had seen an alien spaceship. But the Navy issued a statement saying two Trident II D-5 missile test flights were launched at sea at 3.30am PST and 6.20am, CBS reported. All missile test flights were conducted from sea, flew over the sea, and landed in the sea. At no time did the missiles fly over land,' the statement said. 'All missiles are tracked from multiple sources from launch until final impact in the ocean. The missiles were not armed.' Advertisement Costa and her wife Linda Miller Costa, who is a librarian at Le Moyne College and a former librarian at the National Academy of Sciences, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and she also co-wrote UFO Sightings Desk Reference, gathered data from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and the National UFO Reporting Center for the book both sites let users share their alleged extraterrestrial sightings. The book is a collection of incidents from real witnesses who claimed the truth is out there and the duo has added research to back up their beliefs. The authors of the book 'UFO Sightings Desk Reference', have suggested that the warm weather could have something to do with it people spend more time outside, which provides them with more chances to spot a UFO. From 2001 to 2015, Californians reported 15,836 sightings and a majority of them were in the Bay Area: 159 in Marin County, 327 in San Francisco County, 188 in San Mateoo County, 518 in Alameda County and 569 in Santa Clara County. In New York County, the authors reported 426 sightings from 2001 to 2015, which came second to Suffolk County with 554, The NY Times reported. Interestingly enough, The District of Columbia was found to have 154 incidents and Wyoming, which only has 5.8 people per square mile, had 337. And some of the sightings were not UFOs but fireballs falling from the sky, which made up nearly 8 percent of Indiana's 230 sightings and less than 5 percent of Colorado's 157. But the duo found that Los Angeles County in California had more sightings than 40 other US states combined. Altogether, the Costas collected '121,036 eyewitness reports from the two combined national data bases,' they wrote in the book. Every year, the worldwide wine industry suffers losses of more than $10 billion due to extreme weather events and natural disasters such as frost, hail, drought and forest fires. Scientists investigated the extent to which 7,500 wine regions in 131 countries are affected by these events and how climate change affects the wine industry. They've release a global risk index map for wine regions, and found that the wine regions of Mendoza and San Juan in Argentina are exposed to the highest risks worldwide. Map showing a global risk index for wine regions. The wine regions of Mendoza and San Juan in Argentina are exposed to the highest risks worldwide THE BIGGEST LOSERS The regions facing the biggest losses are: Mendoza, Argentina and San Juan, Argentina Kakheti and Racha, Georgia Cahul (Southern), Moldova Slovenia (Primorje - West) Yaraqui Valley, Ecuador Nagano, Japan Advertisement A multidisciplinary European-Australian team of researchers led by Dr James Daniell of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) conducted the study and presented their global risk index map for wine regions at the 2017 Annual Conference of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna. Early results of their study reveal that after Mendoza and San Juan in Argentina, the wine regions at highest risk due to extreme weather events are Kakheti and Racha in Georgia, followed by Southern Cahul in Moldova (number 3), Northwest Slovenia (number 4), and Yaruqui in Ecuador and Nagano in Japan (number 5). The hail losses from 2012 to 2016 in some vineyards totaled 50 to 90 per cent of the value of the crop and caused long-term damage to many old vines According to the researchers, there is no wine region in the world that is not exposed to extreme weather or natural disasters. Events such as frost, hail, forest fires and earthquakes make the worldwide wine industry lose more than $10 billion every year according to conservative estimations. 'Cold waves and frost have a large impact,' said Dr Daniell. He said that hailstorms are one of the largest yearly natural threats to European winemakers, and traditional wine countries like France and Italy have seen huge losses in the past five years due to hail and frost, with many losses being recorded in the regions of Burgundy and Piedmont. Traditional wine countries like France and Italy have seen huge losses in the past five years due to hail and frost, with many losses being recorded in the regions of Burgundy and Piedmont While frost is considered harmful to wine grapes, a type of wine called 'ice wine' relies on frozen grapes to achieve its sweet flavor. Pictured are red grapes covered by frost in Moravia, Czech Republic THE WINNERS Researchers say wine producers in the English, Canadian, and Northern China regions stand to benefit most from global warming Advertisement The hail losses from 2012 to 2016 in some vineyards totaled 50 to 90 per cent of the value of the crop and caused long-term damage to many old vines. But it's not just Europe that is affected by hail - all over the world, wine-growing regions are affected by at least one hail event per year. According to Dr Daniell, hail nets can save the crops in most cases. 'Cost-benefit analyses generally show that the premium wines should be the ones covered by hail nets, with insurance or other cheaper methods used for other wines,' he said. Earthquakes too can have a major impact and knock out the infrastructure of entire wine regions. The top five wine countries/states at risk of earthquakes are: California, Chile, Japan, Turkey, and Greece and Albania The top five wine countries/states at risk of earthquakes are: California, Chile, Japan, Turkey, and Greece and Albania. For example, over 125 million liters of wine were lost in Chile in 2010, mainly due to the failure of steel tanks. 'Earthquake-resistant design could have saved many millions of liters,' Dr Daniell said. A few dollars investment in stabilization mechanisms such as quake wax, which is used to non-permanently stick down small objects to down objects to prevent them from falling during an earthquake, can often save millions of dollars worth of losses. The top five broad wine regions affected by bushfires are: South Africa (Orange River, Olifants River), Portugal (Alentejo, Alto Tras-os-Montes), Chile (Valparaiso, Bio-Bio). Australia (Tumbarumba, Yarra Valley), and Kazakhstan (South) and Moldova Climate change will also have both positive and negative effects on wine industry, according to the study. Researchers expect a shift of wine-growing regions southward and northward, while some regions close to the equator may be lost. 'The English, Canadian, and Northern China wine regions will likely increase production markedly and continue to improve their market share and quality of production,' said Dr Daniell. The researchers expect that many wineries will master climate changes by changing grape varieties and using innovative technologies to improve production and reduce damage due to pathogens and extreme weather events. Map showing grape wine production in liters per year. The countries that product the largest volumes of wine include France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the US, Chile, China and Australia THE GLOBAL THREATS TO WINE The top 5 biggest wine producers and their main threats: Italy - 4.9 billion liters - hail, frost and earthquake (although volcano, flash flood, flood and climatic effects also can play a role). France - 4.2 billion liters - Frost, hail, storm Spain 3.8 billion liters NW Hail, Frost, Heat United States 2.25 billion liters (2016, OIV) Frost, Earthquake, Storm Australia 1.25 billion liters Frost, Storm, Hail, Bushfire Advertisement The researchers also studied other risks facing the wine industry, such as bushfires, which cause smoke to taint vines, and they're exploring the effects of floods too. The top five broad wine regions affected by bushfires are: South Africa (Orange River, Olifants River), Portugal (Alentejo, Alto Tras-os-Montes), Chile (Valparaiso, Bio-Bio). Australia (Tumbarumba, Yarra Valley), and Kazakhstan (South) and Moldova. They said that the major volcanic eruption would likely cause the largest global impact to the wine industry. 'Through detailed natural hazard analysis, research can help winemakers and governments alike to prepare adequately for the natural hazards that they face and to reduce losses,' Dr Daniell said. Over the last few years, the internet persona of dogs has undergone a dramatic change and now, as youve probably noticed, dogs are no longer just dogs. They might be doggos or puppers, and make all sorts of sounds and gestures, from bork to mlem. And, you cant forget about all those 'h*ckin good boys'. While it may seem bizarre to those who arent caught up in the trend, experts in internet linguistics say it isnt all that surprising, as doggo-speak offers a way to make a subject that people were already used to using cutesy words for, even cuter. While it may seem bizarre to those who arent caught up in the trend, experts in internet linguistics say it isnt all that surprising, as doggo-speak offers a way to make a subject that people were already used to using cutesy words for, even cuter 'DOGGO-SPEAK' 101 The dictionary of doggo-speak is seemingly endless;. Adult dogs may be doggos; puppies are puppers. And, there are pupperinos, corgos, loaf, floofs, woofers, and long bois, among the many others. If they bark, its a bork. And, depending on what their tongue is doing, you may find yourself with a mlem, blep, or blop. Along with this, the rampant use of censored words that arent particularly offensive to begin with, like h*ck, has exploded into existence. Advertisement DoggoLingo has exploded in popularity over the last few years, especially with the rise of pages like Dogspotting and WeRateDogs. WeRateDogs is known for its use of ratings that exceed 10, which has grown to be another thriving facet of the trend, and, it wouldnt be uncommon to find a 12/10 doggo on the Twitter page. The highest so far has been a 14, and these would be the above and beyond animals that you might even call heroic, creator Matt Nelson told Dailymail.com. Nelson, a student at Campbell University in North Carolina, didnt invent doggo or pupper, but after realizing how much better his posts fared when the captions included these words, he took that and ran with it. Not many people dont like humor, and not many people dont like dogs, so the combination is hard not to like, Nelson told Dailymail.com. Doggo-speak is almost always spoken by humans to describe their furry companions, as opposed to meme characters like doge and snek, which do much of the talking themselves, NPR points out. And with it, the rampant use of censored words that arent particularly offensive to begin with, like h*ck, has exploded into existence. While it may have circulated elsewhere on the internet beyond his knowledge, Nelson admits his account has certainly pioneered the use of h*ck. It was a hit from the first time he censored it, Nelson told Dailymail.com, most likely because it fit in with the whole pure, innocent, fun feel of the account. WeRateDogs is known for its use of ratings that exceed 10, which has grown to be another thriving facet of the trend, and, it wouldnt be uncommon to find a 12/10 doggo on the Twitter page The dictionary of doggo-speak is seemingly endless; beyond being doggos or pupperinos, there are corgos, floofs, and long bois, among the many others. If they bark, its a bork. And, depending on what their tongue is doing, you may find yourself with a mlem, blep, or blop The idea of wholesome content has become increasingly popular on social media, and doggo-speak fits right in. The language seems to be quite lexical, there are a lot of distinctive words that are used, Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch told NPR. Its cutesier than others, too. Doggo, woofer, pupper, pupperino, fluffer those have all got an extra suffix on the end to make them cuter. The dictionary of doggo-speak is seemingly endless; beyond being doggos or pupperinos, there are corgos, floofs, waggy wags and long bois, among the many others. The idea of wholesome content has become increasingly popular on social media, and doggo-speak fits right in. The language seems to be quite lexical, there are a lot of distinctive words that are used, Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch says A look at Google trends reveals just how much these terms have grown on the internet in just the last three years. Doggo and pupper are shown above If they bark, its a bork. And, depending on what their tongue is doing, you may find yourself with a mlem, blep, or blop. A look at Google trends reveals just how much these terms have grown on the internet in just the last three years. According to NPR, the word doggo may have originated in the Dogspotting Facebook page. When the site first became popular, it particularly exploded in Australia, where its common to add -o to the end of words, McCulloch explained. For many, the silly language may also be a break from all the negativity online. When Nelson started WeRateDogs about a year-and-a-half ago, Twitter was such a dark place, he told Dailymail.com And it still is. So I think my account is really a sanctuary away' Users may simply have taken this and turned it viral. A new cutesy word for a thing youre already used to using cutesy words for? Thats such an easy entry to vocabulary, McCulloch told NPR. For many, the silly language may also be a break from all the negativity online. When Nelson started WeRateDogs about a year-and-a-half ago, Twitter was such a dark place, he told Dailymail.com And it still is. So I think my account is really a sanctuary away from political things, not-fun things. I guess people come to it for a dose of positivity. Advertisement From rocky ridges forming bizarre patterns on the planet's crust to snowy mountain peaks peeping through the clouds, these airplane photographs reveal other-worldly landscapes from above. Thousands of plane passengers have shared images of their sky-high journeys on Twitter and Instagram, with some truly breathtaking sights surfacing on the web. Some took their shots in the daytime, with the sunlight illuminating different features below, while others snapped away from their window seats at night, capturing city lights illuminating the inky-black skies beyond. MailOnline Travel has put together a gallery of plane views as captured by travellers, showing a slice of what the earth looks like from the air. Standout images include a shot of the blood red-coloured Lake Urmia in Iran taken The Dusty Compass blogger Danny, as he flew from Japan to the U.S. via Qatar. Another impressive photo shows the snowy summit of Mount Erciyes in Turkey, shrouded in a thick cape of clouds. So scroll down to see a bird's eye view of some of the most remote and beautiful spots scattered across the map... Bizarre patterns: Twitter user @angrylambie took this photo during a flight with Southwest airlines in America, there is no indication as to where exactly the shot was taken Bright city lights: Twitter user @VanessaCarlotta took this night shot while hovering above Buenos Aires in Argentina Natural wonder: This image of the blood red-coloured Lake Urmia in Iran was taken The Dusty Compass blogger Danny, as he flew from Japan to the U.S. via Qatar earlier this year Deep gorges: Twitter user @finsty took this incredible shot while flying in the U.S., close to a number of geographical landmarks including Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon Desert blush: This other shot taken by @finsty shows the red coloured earth, peppered with rocky outcrops The views are all white: Twitter user @sev_ram took this impressive photo showing the snowy summit of Mount Erciyes in Turkey, shrouded in a thick cape of clouds Captivated: This stunning view of the snowy Alps mountain range in Europe was captured by Twitter user @ellisoconnor1 Fields of gold: A flight from Toronto from Calgary in Canada blessed Twitter user @robwhughes with this rural view, left. The image on the right shows the jutting edges of the Grand Canyon, captured from above by Twitter user @martheleneTwitt Rolling pastures: A flight over Bogota in Columbia greeted Twitter user @Seba_Nurse with these grassy views, left. This black-and-white shot, right, uploaded to Twitter by @alliewanders, shows the lights of Boston at night Hills in a fine haze: The rocky landscapes of Alicante in Spain left Instagram user @damedecaroo in awe Stranded: This forested island was captured by Instagrammer @maevahenin during a flight over Phuket in Thailand Have you ever dreamed of saving the day, stepping into the shoes of your favourite action hero? Well, now a theme park in Japan is running an immersive experience where guests can demonstrate their heroicness in a bid to impress others. At Hirakata Park in Osaka you can book actors to start a 'fight', so you can swing a punch or crush them with a defiant glare. Scroll down for video In the name of fun: Hirakata Park in Osaka, Japan, has a new attraction where actors pretend to start a fight Getting into character: A tongue-in-cheek YouTube video shows a couple being approached by two 'thugs' looking for trouble A tongue-in-cheek YouTube video shows how the stunt will work. A couple appear to be on a date, before two 'thugs' - played by actors - approach them looking for trouble. One of the men grabs the woman roughly by the shoulder and tells her she's 'looking fine', before the boyfriend tells him to get off. The thug then prepares to throw a punch but he is stopped in his tracks. After being put in their place, the two 'bullies' run off, while the doe-eyed girlfriend looks on at her 'brave' boyfriend. 'Ive fallen head over heels for him all over again,' she muses as the video ends. One of the men grabs the woman roughly by the shoulder and tells her she's 'looking fine', before the boyfriend tells him to get off The thug then prepares to throw a punch but he is stopped in his tracks. The two 'bullies' then run off, while the doe-eyed girlfriend looks on at her 'brave' boyfriend Park-goers can also choose other options from the 'hero menu' if they're not in the mood for a fight. Alternative strength-testing scenarios include donating blood to save someone from death or stopping a bomb from exploding. The experiences are apparently meant to be a bit of fun rather than taken seriously. They are free to take part in and included in the 30 park entrance fee but those interested must book ahead. The immersive experiences are being offered on weekends in May and June, with a start time of 1pm. Lauren Pope will make an explosive return to TOWIE as she reveals she enjoyed a fling with Kate Wright's ex Dan Edgar. The 34-year-old insists she is 'very excited' to be back after taking a two year break from the TOWIE spotlight in 2015. Ahead of her return for the show's finale next month, the reality star made the confession she had a brief romance with Essex heartthrob Dan, 26, and vows to be 'open and honest' on the show. Scroll down for video Blast from the past! Lauren Pope is going to return for the TOWIE finale in May after leaving the show two years ago in 2015 Speaking about their romance, she said: 'You cant deny that Dan Edgar is still stunningly beautiful. 'We had a little fling, if you can call it that, but it fizzled out when I moved away from Essex. We left it on really good terms. Hes nice and chilled out.' Lauren was at the forefront of the drama during her five year stint on the ITVBe programme. Confession: The 34-year-old admitted she enjoyed a brief romance with Essex heartthrob Dan Edgar, 26 Heartache: Dan split up with former flame Kate Wright (pictured together in London, January 2016) for good earlier this year after dating on/off for six years The blonde is hopeful she can put the past behind her and start with a 'clean slate', but welcomes any new drama that is on the horizon. She explained: 'I feel like it [the drama] follows me whether I want it or not. The people that I had the drama with last time round arent there now so hopefully Ill find it more enjoyable which is why Im more excited to go back. 'Its a fresh, clean slate and that old drama wont be dragged up again.' Drama queen: Lauren was brought into the show as the love interest of original Kirk Norcross (above with the first line-up of TOWIE girls) Revealed: The beauty is excited to be returning to the show and hopes to rekindle old friendships (pictured with Chloe Sims and Ferne McCann in 2015) The model hopes to rekindle her close friendship with Chloe who she has missed since leaving the show. Meanwhile, the businesswoman has kept herself busy with developing her global hair extension business in Devon. But now the entrepreneur has achieved what she wanted, Lauren is ready to slip back into the spotlight. Lauren teased how long she would be on the show, asking people to 'watch this space'. The TOWIE finale will air on ITVBe at 10pm on Wednesday May 3. New Voice contestant Brittania Clifford-Pugh has opened up about her Islamic faith and her aim to 'diversify the industry' as the first veiled Muslim contestant on the reality series. The 17-year-old spoke with Today hosts Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic on Thursday, with Karl questioning if her faith limited her song choices for the show. Describing the experience as 'a little bit overwhelming and surreal', the eloquent teenager was asked by Lisa about her 'powerful message to break stereotypes'. Scroll down for video Inspiring: Brittania Clifford-Pugh spoke with Today hosts Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic on Thursday about her positive message for young people and hopes for the show 'I was a little bit concerned, because there is a prejudice that exists and that was definitely in the back of my mind,' she answered. 'But this message, and breaking stereotypes, and diversifying the industry, is something that's really important to me,' she continued. 'It reminded me of that great Bill Murray film from a couple of years ago, Rock The Kasbah,' Karl randomly offered, referencing the 2015 comedy starring Bill Murray. 'But this message, and breaking stereotypes, and diversifying the industry, is something that's really important to me,' she continued 'I don't know if you've seen that?' he asked. 'No, no,' Brittania replied with an awkward laugh. 'It's worth watching,' he persisted. 'Just the breaking down of some of those barriers.' Ambitious: The Toowoomba teenager has opened up about her Islamic faith and her aim to 'diversify the industry' as the first veiled Muslim contestant on the reality series He then asked the Toowoomba-based talent if it had been difficult for her 'to leap across' barriers inside her own community. 'I count myself really lucky, because I come from a great community that's culturally diverse and they tend to be inclusive and have understanding,' she explained. When asked if she will be limited in what she can sing on the show due to 'subject matter', she replied: 'No, I don't think so.' 'I count myself really lucky, because I come from a great community that's culturally diverse and they tend to be inclusive and have understanding,' she explained Karl continued with the questions, adding 'there's a couple of Beyonce songs' that might be off-limits for her. Brittania impressed judge Boy George on the show with her rendition of The Civil Wars featuring Taylor Swift's 'Safe & Sound', which included her playing a ukulele. 'As a Buddhist, I can kind of hide a little bit, but when you're wearing the hijab, you're making a very powerful statement and I'm very happy to support that,' he observed. She's been married to fellow journalist Peter FitzSimons for 25 years. And on Thursday's Today show, co-host Lisa Wilkinson revealed her partner's decision to refrain from drinking alcohol has improved their relationship. 'He's never been more fun,' the 57-year-old shared live on-air. Scroll down for video 'He's never been more fun': Lisa Wilkinson (centre) 57, revealed on Thursday's Today show how her husband Peter FitzSimons' decision to cut out alcohol, has improved their marriage 'My husband gave up drinking three years ago and he has never been more fun to be married to,' Lisa said of her husband Peter, 55. The comments were in relation to Australia's drinking culture. Lisa's guests on the program delved into current figures which on one hand suggest we, as a nation, are drinking excessively in the duration of a week, while other figures suggest we aren't. Opening up: This is not the first time that Lisa has opened up about her husband's drinking. In the December 2016 issue of the Australian's Women Weekly , the television personality candidly discussed the issues that had once cast a shadow over their marriage Candidly speaking: 'He stopped caring when he had alcohol. He wouldn't care too much what he'd say to me, he'd be careless he might upset me - and it actually takes a lot to upset me,' Lisa told the publication This is not the first time that Lisa has opened up about her husband's drinking. In the December 2016 issue of the Australian's Women Weekly, the television personality candidly discussed the issues that had once cast a shadow over their marriage. 'He stopped caring when he had alcohol. He wouldn't care too much what he'd say to me, he'd be careless he might upset me - and it actually takes a lot to upset me,' Lisa told the publication. Marriage struggles: The Channel Nine star even admitted to the title, that at one stage, Peter's demeanour completely changed: 'He just wasn't the man I married. We were missing out on time spent together, which we love,' Lisa said The Channel Nine star even admitted to the title, that at one stage, Peter's demeanour completely changed. 'He just wasn't the man I married. We were missing out on time spent together, which we love,' Lisa said. However it was a friend's comment that inevitably led to Peter making a change for the better. After noticing that he was the only one to polish off a bottle of wine at lunch, he began the process of losing 40kg and cutting out alcohol. 'I feel like I have my husband back,' Lisa told the magazine. Overhaul: However it was a friend's comment that inevitably led to Peter making a change for the better. After noticing that he was the only one to polish off a bottle of wine at lunch, he began the process of losing 40kg and cutting out alcohol She's made headlines after she lashed out at Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Wednesday. And shortly after, Real Housewives of Sydney star Lisa Oldfield appeared to be a little nostalgic, taking to Instagram to share a shot of herself from her debutante when she was just 16-years-old. The 42-year-old looks almost unrecognisable in the snap, which she captioned in part: 'I wish I was as ugly and fat as I was then as I am now!' Scroll down for video Looking back: RHOS star Lisa Oldfield appeared to be a little nostalgic on Thursday evening, taking to Instagram to share a shot of herself from her debutante aged 16 'Throwback Thursday to my #debutante #ball with the #dreamiest #boy in #school,' part of the caption read. In the snap, Lisa wears a billowing silk dress with long white gloves, with her gown featuring an off-the-shoulder design. Lisa has short dark hair and holds a bunch of flowers, presumably from her date. Controversial: She made headlines after she lashed out at Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Wednesday It's not the first time she has shared throwback images of herself. Two weeks ago, Lisa shared an Instagram image of herself with husband David Oldfield, on their wedding day. The pair married in 2001. Lisa is currently making headlines, after she appeared on Sky News on Wednesday. Lisa slammed Muslin activist Yassmin Abdel-Madied, calling her offensive and a 'b**ch' for her 'disrespectful' comments about Anzac Day. Another throwback! Two weeks ago, Lisa shared on Instagram an image of herself and husband David Oldfield, on their wedding day Speaking up: Lisa slammed Muslin activist Yassmin Abdel-Madied, calling her offensive and a 'b**ch' for her 'disrespectful' comments about Anzac Day 'It wasn't ignorant, she was just being a b****,' she said. 'At the end of the day, I don't like what she said, I was offended by what she said, but I still support her right to freedom of speech, and my right to be able to turn around and say Lest We Forget Yassmin, that you are brown, you are Muslim and you are a girl and it's the only reason you have a job at the ABC.' Two online petitions with more than 20,000 signatures are calling for Ms Abdel-Magied, 26, to be sacked from her role with ABC after she took to Facebook on Tuesday to post : 'Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine).' Politicians, fellow broadcasters and the public have also slammed Ms Abdel-Magied for being 'un-Australian.' Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino has revealed being '100 percent' sober for the past 18 months. The 34-year-old reality star discussed his battle with drug abuse in the latest edition of People. The former Jersey Shore star checked into rehab again after being prescribed painkillers after cracking his ribs in June 2015 at the gym. Sober star: Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino, shown in May 2015 in West Hollywood, revealed that he's been sober for the past 18 months after a second stint in rehab He had been coping with the stress of his pending trial on tax fraud charges by working out when the injury occurred. 'From there it was just a spiral,' said Sorrentino who called painkillers his 'drug of choice' over alcohol. Sorrentino previously underwent a 60-day stint in rehab in 2012 after abusing oxycodone. The reality star said during his most recent struggle that he grew distant from fiancee Lauren Pesce. Going strong: The reality star is shown with fiancee Lauren Pesce in May 2015 at the premiere of Marriage Bootcamp: Reality Stars 'Your emotions are blocked. So you really ruin relationships with everyone in your life,' Sorrentino said. Sorrentino and Pesce appeared on Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars in 2015. He's returning to reality TV on the upcoming Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars - Family Edition. Reality star: The Situation is shown in July 2012 while filming MTV's Jersey Shore The show will focus on his issues with older brothers Frank Jr, 40, and Marc, 36. Michael and Mark both face federal tax fraud charges. They both pleaded not guilty earlier this month to additional charges. Tax case: Marc Sorrentino and Michael, shown in February 2012 in Las Vegas, have been charged by federal prosecutors in a tax fraud case The brothers pleaded not guilty in 2014 to charges they filed bogus tax returns on nearly $9 million and claimed millions in personal expenses as business expenses. Michael Sorrentino was indicted this month on charges including tax evasion, structuring bank deposits to avoid reporting requirements and falsifying records. Marc Sorrentino was charged with falsifying records to obstruct a grand jury investigation. Prosecutors allege Michael Sorrentino didn't pay federal income tax owed on the $8.9 million he earned from 2010 to 2012, failed to file a personal tax return for 2011 and filed fake corporate returns for one of the companies the brothers set up after he gained fame on the show. Prosecutors say he also made a series of bank deposits of under $10,000 to avoid bank reporting requirements. At court: Michael and Lauren are shown in October 2014 at his arraignment on tax fraud charges at a federal courthouse in Newark, New Jersey After the brothers were served with grand jury subpoenas seeking records from their companies, prosecutors allege Marc Sorrentino falsified records to reclassify taxable payments to himself as nontaxable payments and business deductions. Prosecutors previously have said Michael could face up to 10 years in prison for each count of false reporting, if convicted; while Marc could face up to 20 years if convicted of obstruction charges. 'The Situation' appeared on all six seasons of the MTV reality show, which followed the lives of rowdy housemates on New Jersey's famed Atlantic shore and ran from 2009 to 2012. Federal case: Prosecutors have said Michael, shown with Marc in October 2010 in Los Angeles, could face up to 10 years in prison for each count of false reporting if convicted Sorrentino told People in the issue on newsstands Friday that he's leaning on support from Pesce and communicating more with his brothers since Boot Camp. 'Its my life, and I have to take care of it,' he said of staying sober. 'If Im not healthy mentally and physically, Im not going to make it,' he added. Marriage Boot Cam: Reality Stars - Family Edition will premiere Friday on WEtv. They rubbed shoulders on last year's series of Strictly Come Dancing. And on Wednesday evening, Daisy Lowe and Claudia Winkleman were leading the style stakes as they reunited at the launch of The Ned - a new luxury hotel and members' club. Proving her sartorial credentials, all eyes were on model Daisy, 28, as she arrived at the bash in the City of London - making a statement while wearing a Hollywood red lipstick across her lips. Scroll down for video Making a statement: Daisy Lowe, 28, stepped out sporting a bold red lip as she ventured to the launch of The Ned in the City of London on Wednesday evening The catwalk star looked sensational for the evening's festivities as she teamed her dramatic lip colour with a figure hugging floral printed dress. Her black frock that boasted a glittering gold design perfectly fell over Daisy's curves and cinched in at the waist to accentuate her model figure. She teamed it with a pair of suede court heels, that buckled together at the ankle, and layered two gold necklaces around her neck. Daisy kept her trademark raven-hued tresses down in tousled waves and was seen sporting a minuscule gold handbag over one shoulder. Having fun? The model was seen serving up food to her pal and Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw Service was a hit: And he appeared to be enjoying Daisy efforts as he flashed a grin while sat at his table As she got herself acquainted with the new London hotspot, the beauty was more than happy to flash a smile in the direction of waiting photographs and was later seen serving up food to her pal and Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw. Daisy no doubt also enjoyed a reunion with Strictly co-host Claudia Winkleman, 45, who had also been in attendance. She had starred on the 2016 series of the BBC dancing competition with dancing professional Aljaz Skorjanec. They were sent home during week eight of the show. Claudia, meanwhile, turned heads in her chic ensemble as she donned a glamorous little back dress that emphasised her more than ample cleavage thanks to its low-cut wrap over design. Flaunting her assets: Claudia Winkleman, meanwhile, turned heads in her tailored wrap dress that featured a plunging neckline Strike a pose: She was more than happy to pose for photographers as she gave fellow party-goers a look at her more than ample cleavage Sporting a similar colour theme to Daisy, the TV presenter teamed her plunging tailored frock with a pillar box red manicure and matching pointed heels. She wore her shoulder-length tresses down in soft curls and opted for a heavy make-up look around her eyes - as they boasted lashings of kohl liner. Other stars among the guest-list included model Poppy Delevingne who cut an edgy figure in a printed cape-style blazer and dark jeans, as well as Eddie Redmayne and his wife Hannah Bagshawe. Model behaviour: Poppy Delevingne cut an edgy figure in a patterned cape-style blazer and dark skinny jeans All smiles: Eddie Redmayne and his wife Hannah Bagshawe were among the list of star-studded guests at the launch Affectionate display: Broadchurch star Jodie Whittaker was seen cuddling up to her spouse Christian Contreras inside the new haunt Broadchurch actress Jodie Whittaker made a chic appearance in a tailored grey jumpsuit. She sported a sleek blonde bob for her locks and cuddled up to her husband Christian Contreras as he joined her on their evening out. Former Dr Who star Jenna Coleman, meanwhile, dazzled in a floor length floral dress and striped blazer jacket. The Duchess of York and her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie had also stopped by the launch in the capital. Stunning: Jenna Coleman, meanwhile, dazzled in a floor length floral dress and striped blazer jacket A royal affair: The Duchess of York and her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie had also stopped by the launch High spirits: Daisy was seen catching up with Laura Jackson (left) while Sadie Frost posed alongside Darren Strowger (right) Oozing glamour: Nancy Dell'Olio looked sensational in a figure hugging black jumpsuit that featured a gold zip running down the front The Ned is a partnership between Soho House & Co and Sydell Group, with 252 bedrooms, nine restaurants, spa and social and fitness membership. The evening started with drinks, followed by dinner in a selection of the restaurants on the ground floor; Cecconis City of London, Millies Lounge, Malibu Kitchen, Kaia, Zoblers Delicatessen and Cafe Sou. After dinner, Gareth Malone led a choir onstage in the Nickel Bar and got the whole party singing along, followed by performances from Tinie Tempah, Gary Barlow and Paloma Faith. After dinner, Nick Grimshaw took to the decks in The Vault bar & lounge, and continued the party into the small hours. Set in the former Midland Bank building, The Ned was designed by Sir Edwin 'Ned' Lutyens in 1924. Rubbing shoulders: Nick Grimshaw was beaming from ear-to-ear as she struck up a pose alongside actor Douglas Booth Colourful delight: Paloma Faith (left) wowed in an all-red outfit while millionaire India Rose James (right) kept things casual with her pink tresses in a sleek and straight style Smile! Couples Gary Kemp and wife Lauren (left) and Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her partner Richard Jones came together for a photograph as the launch party got underway Taking some time out: emima Khan (L) and Martha Ward (R) were seen stealing a chat as they perched on top of a plush seating area A touch of A-list: Hollywood stars Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson and Matthew Freud (L-R) paid a visit to The Ned on Wednesday evening Cheeky: Jack Fox (left) and Britain's Got Talent judge David Walliams were seen playing up to the cameras together Denim dream: Kirsty Gallacher (left) cut a stylish figure in a fitted denim dress and leather peep-toe boots while posing alongside Sarah-Jane Mee (right) Happy couple: Actor Simon Pegg was also in attendance with his wife Maureen Sharing a drink together: Alexander Armstrong (left) was spotted catching up with Lock Stock star Dexter Fletcher She is a former leader of the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party and shared a platform last year with Labours Jeremy Corbyn at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally. But it doesnt prevent screen siren Dame Vanessa Redgrave from enjoying the trappings of wealth. In the latest Country Life, she will raise eyebrows among her comrades-in-arms after singling out a 31,000 watch as one of my favourite things. She is a former leader of the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party but it doesnt prevent screen siren Dame Vanessa Redgrave from enjoying the trappings of wealth In the latest Country Life, she will raise eyebrows among her comrades-in-arms after singling out a 31,000 watch as one of my favourite things Im a stickler for time-keeping and being on time, she says. I have a habit of losing watches, as I usually have to take them on and off for different parts and costume changes, so I wont be letting this new IWC Da Vinci out of my sight. The red gold timepiece encrusted with diamonds comes from high-end Swiss brand the International Watch Company Schaffhausen, which describes itself as a leader in luxury watchmaking since 1868. Redgrave, 80, is billed as a friend of IWC on the company website and attended one of its corporate events in January. Not that the Oscar-winner discloses this in Country Life. A spokesman for IWC tells me: Vanessa Redgrave attended a gala dinner in Geneva as a guest of IWC Schaffhausen earlier this year and is a Fellow of the British Film Institute, one of IWCs key film partners. The actress daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave is an alumna of Queens Gate school in South Kensington, West London, alma mater of the Duchess of Cornwall. Over the years she has supported the Workers Revolutionary Party standing for the far-Left group in two general elections the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the defence of an IRA bomber. When Corbyn became Labour leader in September 2012, she hailed his victory as the English Spring in reference to the series of anti-government uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, which were dubbed the Arab Spring. Its the English version and its greatly to be welcomed, she said. Ive known him for years and hes a thoroughly honest man of huge integrity. Its pretty great to have a politician rise to prominence who has integrity. Now she can add luxury watchmaker IWC to her list of worthy causes. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, is a supporter of York City, but will not be praying for the team ahead of their FA Trophy final at Wembley against Macclesfield Town next month. We may not be in the Premier League, yet, but what we may lack in world-class skill, we make up for with enthusiasm and perseverance, he says. I cant really pray for my side to win for that would imply, wrongly, that God has favourites. Emilia and her girl are Foxy ladies If its good enough for Mummy . . . Silent Witness star Emilia Fox, 42, so likes her 350 Miranda Dunn pink faux fur coat with her surname emblazoned on the back that she commissioned a matching one for her six-year-old daughter, Rose. Emilia says she often gets stopped at the school gates by other mothers asking about it. The actress who is divorced from late actor Richard Harriss son Jared and estranged from Roses dad, actor Jeremy Gilley captions the snap: Fox and Cub in Happy coats. So gorgeous! Silent Witness star Emilia Fox, 42, so likes her 350 Miranda Dunn pink faux fur coat with her surname emblazoned on the back that she commissioned a matching one for her six-year-old daughter, Rose Is BBC2 controller Patrick Holland bitter that BBC1 has nabbed his hit shows Line Of Duty and The Real Marigold Hotel? I simply wouldnt be human if I didnt look wistfully at how those shows are performing at their new home, he admits after a BBC party honouring the Corporations Bafta nominees. Talking to the talent, I did feel slightly like a boyfriend whose partner has gone off with someone else. They have been the subject of persistent break-up rumours for months. And it appears that the Logies may not have been the happiest occasion for Richie Strahan and Alex Nation on Sunday night. Along with the headline 'boozy bust-ups', OK! magazine claims the couple 'declined interviews' at the glittering awards ceremony before Alex 'ditched' her partner and was spotted dancing up a storm in the venue's lobby. Scroll down for video Belle of the ball! The Bachelor's Alex Nation is pictured having a ball at the Logies after party over the weekend Party time! Indeed Alex looked like she was having fun at the event, dancing at the Logies after party with male friends, including Channel 10 publicist and weather presenter Tim Bailey According to the publication, Alex was seen carving up the dance floor and showed off some sexy moves alongside Bachelor winner Sam Frost and Bondi Rescue's Harrison Reid. Meanwhile, the magazine claims Richie, 32, was seen returning to the blonde beauty, who later 'earned herself a stern talking to.' Daily Mail Australia has reached out to the couple for comment. Letting her hair down: The mother-of-one was seen drinking a clear liquid with a lemon from a tall glass as she showed off her moves on the dance floor Coming to the rescue: The Channel 10 publicist was seen helping her with her dress during the dance session Indeed Alex looked like she was having a ball at the event, dancing at the Logies after party during the early hours of Monday morning. The blonde beauty was seen grooving along with other attendees, including fellow Channel 10 talent and weather presenter Tim Bailey, and a Channel Ten publicist, who had his arm around her. The mother-of-one was seen drinking a clear liquid with lemon from a tall glass as she showed off her moves on the dance floor. Night out: Alex certainly appeared to be enjoying her night out Just for laughs: Alex and Tim shared a few laughs as they caught up at the event Giggles: The mother-of-one also shared a giggle with a female attendee She was then seen flailing her arms in the air as a DJ played to the packed crowd of attendees. Earlier in the night, Alex and Richie appeared somewhat awkward on the red carpet as they posed for photographers. But by the end of the evening, Richie was seen at times with his arm around his partner. No thanks? OK! magazine also claims the couple 'declined interviews' at the awards ceremony Social media time: The pair were seen engaged on their iPhones as they walked the red carpet The lovebirds, who got together in the controversial finale of the show's last season, made a dashing pair for their debut at the exclusive awards ceremony. Alex wore a Georgia Young gown in blushing pink and dark mulberry tones, while Richie donned a navy suit with a black bow tie.. The couple has been the subject of persistent breakup rumours in recent months due to their absence on each other's social media accounts. All smiles: Despite persistent reports that she and Richie are on the rocks, Alex was smiling for most of the night out Attractive duo: The lovebirds, who got together in the finale of the show's last season, made a dashing pair for their debut at the exclusive awards ceremony Alex posted a shot of the twosome to her Instagram after the Logies ceremony where she gushed over her boyfriend's support. 'Thank you for holding my hand the whole way through, calming my nerves with your dorky jokes, making sure I didn't go a** over t*** up that ginormous stair case and for being on high train alert, what a guy!' she wrote. Pals: Alex and Richie were seen arriving at the party with Australian wheelchair basketballer Dylan Alcott Whispers: The couple has been the subject of persistent breakup rumours in recent months due to their absence on each other's social media accounts She received backlash online after announcing last year that her daughter Violet, three, was looked after by her grandmother Irena from Friday to Sunday each week. And on Thursday's The Morning Show, Rachael Finch addressed the controversy surrounding her parenting methods. 'There's always so much more to someone's life than what meets the eye,' the 28-year-old said of her social media posts. Scroll down for video 'There's more to what meets the eye': Rachael Finch, 28, hit back at social media controversy on Thursday's The Morning Show, after being criticised for her parenting method 'I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion,' Rachael began. 'I think when you see someone's image or a glimpse of someone's life from the outside, it's easy to judge. 'I don't think anyone will ever understand the complexity of someone else's life. There's always so much more to someone's life than what meets the eye,' the Myer ambassador continued. Viewpoint: 'I don't think anyone will ever understand the complexity of someone else's life,' the model explained, before adding, 'there's always so much more to someone's life than what meets the eye' Last year, Rachael fired back at detractors who labelled her decision to 'part-time parent' her daughter as being 'selfish'. After announcing that her daughter Violet, three, was looked after by her grandmother Irena from Friday to Sunday every week, fans were swift and savage with their assessment. 'Tbh I couldn't spend more than a few hours from my children. They are my blood, my love, my life. I don't understand why you do what you do,' one critic wrote underneath a picture on Rachael's Instagram page shared last year. Criticism: After announcing last year that daughter Violet, three, was looked after by her grandmother Irena from Friday to Sunday every week, fans were swift and savage with their assessment, some labelling her as 'selfish' Hitting back: Rachael insisted that critics 'don't understand the intricacies' of her relationship with husband Michael Miziner and denied that she doesn't spend enough time with her kids Another added: 'Why did she have a child if she's not going to be a full-time parent? The odd night babysitting is great but every weekend, well that's just selfish.' Rachael insisted that critics 'don't understand the intricacies' of her relationship with husband Michael Miziner and denied that she doesn't spend enough time with her kids. The television personality met husband Michael on reality series Dancing with the Stars in 2010, later tying the knot in 2013. Rachael welcomed the couple's second child, son Dominic, eight weeks ago. Love story: The television personality met husband Michael on reality series Dancing with the Stars in 2010, later tying the knot in 2013. That same year Rachael welcomed their first child, daughter Violet When it comes to fashion, she's always a cut above the rest. And Cate Blanchett, 47, exhibited her uniquely polished style at a Tribeca Film Festival screening of her film Manifesto Wednesday. The tall, blonde talent was effortlessly graceful wearing a longsleeved Valentino gown in black, white and pink hues. Pleats to see you! Cate Blanchett was elegant as she arrived on the red carpet in a striking black, white and pink dress by Valentino On the red carpet, the Australian born beauty wowed in a high necked, floor-sweeping frock. The long sleeved gown contrasted a patterned black and white fabric with dashes of pink within creative pleating. Not diverting attention from her stylish frock, the two time Academy award winner opted for black stiletto shoes. Way to glow: The Academy Award winner's skin was glowing, showing off a radiant flush beneath fluttering lashes Classic: Simple, clean makeup complimented the Carol star's elegant attire Cate pinned her golden locks up elegantly, not to distract from her artfully simple makeup. The Carol lead glowed, flaunting a perfect flush on her high cheek bones with fluttering eyelashes. A simple balm left her lips looking natural and hydrated - the perfect compliment to a dazzling white smile. Tonight was a special screening for the star and artist Julian Rosefeldt, who worked closely together on Manifesto. She's got range! The Australian beauty was attending a special screening for the art project Manifesto, a video art installation by artist Julian Rosfeldt where she plays 13 different characters The project is far more than a film, actually a multi-screen art installation where Miss Blanchett plays 13 different roles orating 13 different manifestos. The project, which first premiered in abridged form this year's Sundance, was described like 'entering a strange world where you are both lost and found' by one critic. 'Blanchett's role in it, is a remarkable exploration of cultural and cinematic tropes and expectations, as well as the jarring, dislocating effect of context on content,' gushed another. More information about Manifesto and Julian Rosefeldt can be found here. She's the 27-year-old ex-girlfriend of Geoffrey Edelsten, 73, who proudly announced her new identity as a 'fembot' earlier this year. And Gabi Grecko has certainly embraced her new aesthetic, having taken to Instagram on Thursday with a bizarre video of herself dancing topless on the roof of a high-rise building. Swashing herself with soapy water and undulating in a robotic fashion, the quirky performance art-enthusiast left viewers lost for words as she performed the strange routine. Scroll down for video. Gird your loins! Gabi Grecko has certainly embraced her new 'fembot' aesthetic, having taken to Instagram with a bizarre video of herself dancing topless on the roof of a high-rise building The former New York prostitute donned a 70's-inspired mini-dress complete an open panel that allowed her ample breasts to burst through. She added a pair of thigh-high latex boots in fluorescent yellow, a pair of yellow-lens aviator sunglasses, a chunky gold neck-piece and a bouffant blonde wig. During the unique performance, Gabi slowly gyrated and in front of the camera while scrubbing her torso with a wash-cloth. What is going on here? Swashing herself with soapy water and undulating in a robotic fashion, the quirky performance art-enthusiast left viewers lost for words as she performed the strange routine Yellow isn't always mellow! The former New York prostitute donned a 70's-inspired mini-dress complete an open panel that allowed her ample breasts to burst through She then leaned in toward the camera while adjusting her top so as to ensure her modesty was obscured from view. Never one to leave her fans without a grade finale, Gabi finished the routine by dramatically kicking a plastic container and wash-cloth toward the camera. Allowing her viewers to decipher the meaning of her post for themselves, Gabi simply captioned the post with: 'Happy days #russmeyer #fembot #avantvamp #gabigrecko.' 'This is kind of the style I've been vibing with this year': Last month, Gabi proudly revealed to fans that she has embarked upon a 'new life as a fembot' while announcing her plans to release a fashion collection inspired by the Russ Meyer aesthetic Last month, Gabi proudly revealed to fans that she has embarked upon a 'new life as a fembot' while announcing her plans to release a fashion collection inspired by the Russ Meyer aesthetic. 'This is kind of the style I've been vibing with this year, been working my little a*** off on several things, can't wait to visit Australia and the United Kingdom this year as well,' she wrote on Instagram. Meanwhile, Gabi has vowed to dedicate 2017 to the creation of 'art' rather than sharing near-naked photos of herself on Instagram. It's unclear as to whether her latest video belongs to the former or latter category. On Wednesday, Lily Collins rocked leather pants and red lips for a cocktail party at Hollywood hotspot NeueHouse in honor of this Thursday's WE Day California event. The 28-year-old Golden Globe nominee sported a scrunched-sleeve blazer over a colorful palm-print shirt and periwinkle suede pumps selected by stylist duo Rob Zangardi & Mariel Haenn. 15K 'young change-makers' reportedly attended WE Day Seattle last Friday, which featured Lily as an inspirational speaker. Scroll down for video Pre-bash: On Wednesday, Lily Collins rocked leather pants and red lips for a cocktail party at Hollywood hotspot NeueHouse in honor of this Thursday's WE Day California event Suited: The 28-year-old Golden Globe nominee sported a blazer over a colorful palm-print shirt and periwinkle suede pumps selected by stylist duo Rob Zangardi & Mariel Haenn The Unfiltered author even surprised local Skyview Junior High School students with a copy of her literary effort backstage. Collins shed 22lbs with the help of an on-set nutritionist to better play anorexic teen Ellen in the Netflix original film To the Bone. 'It was kind of nerve-wracking. You're doing it for a part, but it's something so close to you,' the former bulimic admitted to Elle.com last week. 'We did it in the most healthy way possible. I had a lot of people to be accountable for how I was doing it, and I had check-ups all the time.' Lancome model: 15K 'young change-makers' reportedly attended WE Day Seattle last Friday, which featured Lily as an inspirational speaker 'Thanks for helping spread #Unfiltered with me!' The Unfiltered author even surprised local Skyview Junior High School students with a copy of her literary effort backstage The purple one! Jessie J stunned in a slinky dress The Marti Noxon dramedy - premiering July 14 - also features Keanu Reeves, Lili Taylor, and Brooke Smith. Speaking of the streaming service, Lily's other Netflix film Okja will have its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 17-28 in France. The Rules Don't Apply starlet - who boasts 10.3M social media followers - gushed: 'Couldn't be more excited to share my first festival experience with director Bong Joon-Ho!' 'It was kind of nerve-wracking': Collins shed 22lbs with the help of an on-set nutritionist to better play anorexic teen Ellen in the Netflix original film To the Bone Premiering July 14! The Marti Noxon dramedy also features Keanu Reeves (L), Lili Taylor, and Brooke Smith The Korean filmmaker's sci-fi fantasy - which streams June 28 - also features Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Steven Yeun, and Giancarlo Esposito. The Guildford-born, Beverly Hills-raised millennial is the nepotistically-privileged daughter of Phil Collins, who divorced her mother Jill Tavelman in 1996 following a 12-year marriage. The 66-year-old Oscar winner later dedicated his 1999 song You'll Be In My Heart to his strong-browed princess. 'Couldn't be more excited!' Speaking of the streaming service, Lily's other Netflix film Okja will have its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival Meet Red: The Korean filmmaker's sci-fi fantasy - which streams June 28 - also features Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Steven Yeun, and Giancarlo Esposito She was recently named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2017. And after attending the Time 100 Gala in New York City on Tuesday, Margot Robbie flew into Los Angeles on Wednesday with husband Tom Ackerley. The 26-year-old and her spouse, who also doubles as her partner in their production company Lucky Chap, were spotted as they touched down at LAX airport. Scroll down for video Jet-setter: After attending the Time 100 Gala in New York City on Tuesday, Margot Robbie flew into Los Angeles on Wednesday with husband Tom Ackerley The Hollywood starlet was dressed for unpredictable weather in a Storets crushed red velvet mini paired with a white collared shirt and winter coat. She showed off her trim pins in the skirt and her patent leather brogues and wore her shoulder-length mane straight with a middle part. Tom wore a similarly casual outfit featuring a hooded denim jacket, a grey buttoned shirt and black jeans with camel-coloured boots. Frequent flyers: The 26-year-old and her spouse, who also doubles as her partner in their production company Lucky Chap, were spotted as they touched down at Los Angeles Airport He carried a protective suit bag, which possibly contained his attire from the gala the previous night. Margot joined a list of A-list talent, including Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and James Corden, as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People for the year. The Queensland-born glamour was honoured in the magazine by Martin Scorsese, who directed her in The Wolf Of Wall Street, which was to become her breakout role. Stylish: The Hollywood starlet was dressed for unpredictable weather in a Storets crushed red velvet mini paired with a white collared shirt and winter coat Casual: She showed off her trim pins in her mini and patent leather brogues and wore her shoulder-length mane straight with a middle part 'Margot is stunning in all she is and all she does, and she will astonish us forever,' he wrote in his tribute. He described her as having 'the comedic genius of Carole Lombard' and the 'grounded, hardscrabble toughness' of Joan Crawford. 'Margot has all this in addition to a unique audacity that surprises and challenges and just burns like a brand into every character she plays,' the filmmaker continued. It's been three months since Janet Jackson separated from her billionare third husband Wissam Al Mana, and so far they've managed to amicably co-parent their newborn son Eissa. 'They are very disciplined and the baby is already on a strict schedule,' a family friend told People on Wednesday. 'Janet really trusts Wissam and he trusts her. They have a strong friendship. There is no fighting between them.' Scroll down for video Pictured in 2014: It's been three months since Janet Jackson separated from her billionare third husband Wissam Al Mana, and so far they've managed to amicably co-parent their newborn son Eissa A family friend told People on Wednesday: 'They are very disciplined and the baby is already on a strict schedule. Janet really trusts Wissam and he trusts her. They have a strong friendship. There is no fighting between them' 'I love you!' This, after the 42-year-old Qatari businessman penned a post-split message on his website calling the 50-year-old pop diva 'the most beautiful person in the world' This, after the 42-year-old Qatari businessman penned a post-split message on his website calling the 50-year-old pop diva 'the most beautiful person in the world.' 'Thank you for your divine love, your eternal support and for being my best friend. I love you so much, inshallah we will be together in the Great Forever,' Wissam gushed. By contrast, Radar Online reported Wednesday that Jackson has been 'pushing everyone away for months' and her family is 'desperately worried about her' isolating herself in London. Janet's 19-year-old niece Paris allegedly 'even offered to move in and help with the baby' despite her acting and modeling career gaining serious steam. Fake news? By contrast, Radar Online reported Wednesday that Jackson has been 'pushing everyone away for months' and her family is 'desperately worried about her' isolating herself in London Pictured in 2009: Janet's 19-year-old niece Paris allegedly 'even offered to move in and help with the baby' despite her acting and modeling career gaining serious steam Divorce dollars: Page Six reported the the No Sleeep songstress will likely receive a $200M settlement since their prenup outlined $100M for five years of marriage and another $100M for having a child Page Six reported the the No Sleeep songstress will likely receive a $200M settlement since their prenup outlined $100M for five years of marriage and another $100M for having a child. According to The Sun, the five-time Grammy winner will begin rehearsals this summer for her State Of The World Tour kicking off October in North America. Last year, Janet abruptly canceled 75 concerts during her Unbreakable World Tour in order to focus on marriage and motherhood. Back to work! According to The Sun, the five-time Grammy winner will begin rehearsals this summer for her State Of The World Tour kicking off October in North America Cindy Crawford and husband Rande Gerber proved they are as loved up as ever as they headed out on a date night on Wednesday night. The power couple, who have been married for 19 years, linked arms as they headed to Craig's restaurant in LA. Cindy, 51, looked incredible wearing spray-on jeans with a pretty blouse as she enjoyed some quality time with her man. Power couple: Supermodel Cindy Crawford, 51, wore spray-on jeans as she linked arms with husband Rande Gerber, 55, on date night at Craig's Younger than her years: Cindy looked sensational in a pretty blouse and spray-on jeans Earlier on, the starlet stepped out to celebrate with chef Wolfgang Puck, who earned a brand new star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. The Illinois-born beauty was effortlessly elegant at the chef's Spago eatery. Cindy was as beautiful as ever at the Beverly Hills restaurant, where adorned handsome blouse with a statement belt and metal feather earrings. Cute: She and Randy have been married for 19 years but still appear to be very much in the honeymoon period Her guy: Husband Rande Gerber was dressed down but dapper in a corduroy button up and dark jacket Husband Rande Gerber was dressed down but dapper in a corduroy button up and dark jacket. The photogenic couple posed with the man of the evening Wolfgang Puck, 67, who was joined by wife Gelila Assegfa. The restaurant kept simple in a black suit while his other half donned a glamorous gold leopard print jacket and pleated skirt. The Ethiopian fashion designer amped up the glamour with an embellished top and bold lip color. Supportive stars! Cindy and hubby Rande stepped out to celebrate with chef Wolfgang Puck's star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame earlier in the evening Couple couture: The 51-year-old stunner looked sharp in a semi sheer blouse and leather pants while husband Rande opted for a cool button up and light jacket. Wolfgang (far right) donned a classic suit while wife Gelila wore a gilded leopard jacket and pleated skirt A star: Wolfgang and his food have been a Hollywood mainstay for years. The celeb chef has over 30 upscale eateries and is the official caterer for the Academy Awards Governors Ball Wolfgang's star is a well deserved honor for the Hollywood chef and culinary bigwig. The Austrian born artist and his food have been a Southern California mainstay since his celeb beloved restaurant Spago first opened in 1982. Since then, he's expanded his food empire to over 30 restaurants worldwide and has the honor of being the official caterer for the Academy Awards Governors Ball. Mr. Puck's star can be found outside of Hollywood and Highlands Dolby Theatre. She regularly flaunts her exquisite jewellery collection on social media. And Roxy Jacenko is apparently happy to share her love for expensive jewels with her fans. The 36-year-old took to Instagram ahead of Friday's 'In Conversation With' seminar in Sydney to reveal one lucky attendee will win a diamond ring worth over $13,000. Scroll down for video Sparkler: Roxy Jacenko to gift sparkling 3.13 carat DIAMOND ring valued at over $13,000 for one of her Sydney seminar guests 'to go home with' She uploaded an image of the sparkler in its simple black case along with its certificate of authenticity. With a $13,800 price tag attached, the impressive piece of jewellery has been provided for the event by local designer and her personal favourite, Nicholas Haywood. 'For one of my guests to go home with tomorrow,' the Sweaty Betty PR founder tagged the photo, describing the ring as being 3.13 carats Favourite: With a $13,800 price tag attached, the impressive piece of jewellery has been provided for the event by local designer and her personal favourite, Nicholas Haywood Fans of the busy mother of two flocked to the capture's comments section to ogle over the prize. 'Wish I could afford to go to you seminar,' wrote one. 'Next year I'm definitely going!' 'I've never been so jealous to go to an event in my life,' gushed another. Held at the prestigious Westin Hotel, this will be Roxy's third sold-out 'In Conversation With' seminar. The public relations maestro will 'share her insights on using PR and social media to build both personal and business brands' with her audience. She posted another shot to Instagram only hours earlier of her own blinged-out wristwear, which included Hermes bracelets worth upwards of $50,000. The next EnVision Bus Read more [...] They are the UK 80s chart toppers who haven't set foot in Australia since 1988. Well fear no more, pop fans, because Bros are heading back to our shores for a one off Sydney show later this year. Speaking to news.com.au, twin brothers Matt and Luke Goss said they couldn't wait to get back to one of their biggest markets and that it was a social media push from Australian fans that had spurred the reunion that will see them play two shows at London's O2 Arena and another at Manchester Arena. Pop rewind: Brothers Matt (left) and Luke Goss are heading back to Australia for a special one-off show next month 'The Australian movement is one of the reasons we decided to take this tour to other countries. They came up with the hashtag #brostralia which we loved. They were relentless in the best way possible,' Matt told the publication. When Bros burst onto the scene in the late 1980s with the track I Owe U Nothing, Australia was one of the first countries to cotton on to their youthful brand of pop, with the single peaking at number 4 on the national charts. However, their native England took a little while to catch up, with the single only managing a number 88 chart position. Australia bound:'The Australian movement is one of the reasons we decided to take this tour to other countries,' Luke Goss told news.com.au Things changed quickly, though, with the release of their iconic follow-up When Will I Be Famous , which launched the, then, three-piece into the global pop stratosphere, with the song giving them a number one in Ireland, a number 5 in Australia, a number 10 on the Billboard dance charts, and top-ten spots in 11 countries. The subsequent album Push, was certified platinum four times in the UK and double platinum in Australia - spurred on by the aforementioned singles and third chart-topper Drop The Boy. At the height of their fame, third member Craig Logan (who won't be joining the boys for the show) quit the band and went on to manage the likes of Pink, while also being romantically linked to Australia's Dannii Minogue. 80s Style: When Bros burst onto the scene in the late 1980s with the track I Owe U Nothing, Australia was one of the first countries to cotton on to their youthful brand of pop Matt and Luke pushed on with two more albums, before calling it a day in 1992. Matt forged a solo career, performing a six-year run at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, while Luke moved into acting, starring in such films as Hellboy 2, Blade 2 and Tekken. However, as the pair revealed to news.com.au, the lure of Bros was too great to ignore. At the height of their fame, third member Craig Logan (left) quit the band and went on to manage the likes of Pink, while also being romantically linked to Australia's Dannii Minogue 'We know were playing some big venues but me and Matt still play video games at night, we have still that connection outside the band, were brothers who cant wait to get back on stage.' Bros will play Qudos Bank Arena on November 4. She's has conquered the fashion industry since being discovered by Tyra Banks. And Winnie Harlow sizzled with retro glamour as she joined fellow models Adriana Lima, Adwoa Aboah and Slick Woods for a bold new LOVE magazine shoot. The trio of cover girls, who were captured by celebrated British photographer Alasdair McLellan for the publication's new 17.5 issue, formed a striking group as they posed, red-lipped, in slinky black swimsuits. Scroll down for video Red hot: Winnie Harlow, 22, sizzled in a bright cherry cutout dress as she posed for a bold new shoot for LOVE magazine shoot Winnie oozed confidence and sex appeal as she struck a dancing-style pose in a bright cherry leather cut-out dress by Proenza Schouler. LOVE created a unique look - pulled off with aplomb by the inspirational model - by teaming the America's Next Top Model star's racy frock with a retro red velvet bucket hat by Stephen Jones for Marc Jacobs. The Canadian-born model wore an assortment of edgy jewellery with the simple, two-toned ensemble, including bold gold bracelets and complementary chunky rings by Tiffany T in 18k gold. While Winnie was the star of the show, equally stunning trio Adriana, Adwoa and Slick made the issue's cover. Powerful: Swimsuit-clad Slick Woods, Adriana Lima and Adwoa Aboah featured on the cover of he publication's new 17.5 issue, shot by celebrated British photographer Alasdair McLellan The Brazilian bombshell, 35, and London-born model Adwoa, 23, joined rising star Slick Woods, 20, in donning simple black one-pieces and pulling striking poses. The trio looked powerful as they grouped together for the shot - composed by the sought-after, norm-challenging photographer - with Adriana holding a protective arm over her younger colleague. Winnie recently spoke about being discovered by supermodel, entrepreneur and America's Next Top Model guru Tyra. She revealed: 'When America's Next Top Model was casting for the new season I asked all my fans online to tag Tyra Banks so she could see my photos - and they did!' 'My little sister started a Facebook page for me and one of the producers from the show sent a message showing interest. Struggles: Adwoa opened up about how her struggle with 'self hatred' drove her to drugs and made her attempt suicide Gorgeous: Rowan Blanchard also stars in the issue after jumping at the chance to work with the acclaimed photographer 'Initially I didn't believe it but I followed through and ended up being on the show for season 21. After Tyra gave me that opportunity it was my time.' Having been bullied at school for her vitiligo, Winnie added that she never expected to be the darling of the fashion industry. In the new issue of LOVE, both Slick and Adwoa talk about their journey from addiction and to stardom. Slick, who was also homeless, opens up about how Kanye West, Rihanna and Marc Jacobs helped her turn her life around. Amazing journey: Slick, who was also homeless, opens up about how Kanye, Rihanna and Marc Jacobs helped her turn her life around While Adwoa recently opened up about how her struggle with 'self hatred' drove her to drugs and made her attempt suicide. The model, who spoke out to help others suffering with mental health issues, attempted to kill herself with an overdose in October last year. But after undergoing several rounds of rehab Adwoa, who counts fellow model Cara Delevingne as a close friend, was able to overcome her addictions. In a moving and revealing clip, the former Vogue cover model discussed her body and personal insecurities in a bid to prove that style is really about being comfortable in your own skin. See the full shoot in LOVE 17.5, Alasdair's Girls, on sale May 10 He seduced viewers around the globe with his hilarious performance as rum-swigging pirate Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. And Johnny Depp, 53, dressed in full costume to reprise the character, much to the surprise of delighted day-trippers at Disneyland in California, on Wednesday. The A-list star, who first appeared in The Curse of the Black Pearl back in 2003, looked as though nothing had changed, as riders exclaimed: 'Oh my god, it's really him!' Scroll down for video He's back! Johnny Depp, 53, appeared in his full costume for hordes of delighted day-trippers on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on Wednesday Videos captured as the ride's wooden boats sailed slowly past the A-list actor showed him reciting lines from the films and brandishing a realistic sword. The fan favourite even chatted with excited theme park visitors as they drifted by. One clip posted on social media shows the star saying: 'Hello, this is the safe zone, I plan on, I plan on..' Before giving up and adding: 'Just come on over here.' One of the lucky fans, Janine, wrote on Twitter: 'I seriously cannot believe I saw Johnny Depp at Disneyland tonight!! Best night ever!! #Disneyland #JohnnyDepp #PiratesoftheCaribbean' In action: Videos captured as the ride's wooden boats sailed slowly past the A-list actor showed him reciting lines from the films and brandishing a realistic sword While another, called Megan, commented: 'Life just made: Johnny Depp at Disneyland.' One fan appeared to be severely disappointed at missing the actor on the ride. Jordan wrote on Twitter: 'Johnny depp is at Disneyland acting like jack sparrow why am I not there my heart is so sad.' Another lucky visitor told E! News: 'Everyone was surprised, shocked and excited to see him. He acted exactly like his character in the movies.' Excited fans: Fans were thrilled to see their hero in real life, snapping pictures of him throughout the ride - with one who missed out saying his heart was 'so sad' And another confirmed it was their family's favourite Disneyland experience ever, saying: 'It was a surreal moment for everyone on our boat! Crazy experience. Best Disneyland experience our family has ever been a part of.' The actor built excitement with his surprise appearance ahead of the imminent US release of the fifth installment of the multi million dollar franchise. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will star Bond baddie Javier Bardem as an equally terrifying foe for Captain Jack in the eerie epic. While British star Kaya Scodelario, 25, who initially shot to fame in Skins, will appear as Depp's sidekick - just as Keira Knightley, 32, did back in 2003. Happy: One fan confirmed it was their family's favourite Disneyland experience ever, saying: 'It was a surreal moment for everyone on our boat! Crazy experience. Best Disneyland experience our family has ever been a part of.' Returning soon: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will star Bond baddie Javier Bardem as an equally terrifying foe for Captain Jack in the eerie epic She never fails to dazzle in her striking red carpet appearances. And Halle Berry proved she looks just as gorgeous make-up free as she stepped out for a lunch date in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. Showcasing her naturally beautiful features, the actress, 50, was positively glowing as she revealed her perfect complexion. Scroll down for video Natural beauty: Halle Berry proved she looks just as gorgeous make-up free as she stepped out for a lunch date in Beverly Hills on Wednesday Wearing a grey Fedora and ripped mom jeans that gave a glimpse of her slender legs, the star looked cheerful as she went about her day. The mother-of-two looked effortlessly chic as she paired her jeans with tan studded loafers and a loose fitting black top. Halle wore her gold-flecked brunette tresses in natural curls, and shielded her eyes with a pair of aviator sunglasses as she left her lunch spot. The former Bond girl clutched her ullu Premium Leather iPhone 7 Piggyback Case in Knight Rider in her hand, and appeared to be in high spirits as she ambled along the road. Keeping it casual: Wearing a grey Fedora and ripped mom jeans that gave a glimpse of her slender legs, the star looked cheerful as she went about her day No wonder she's smiling! Showcasing her naturally beautiful features, the actress, 50, was positively glowing as she revealed her perfect complexion The beauty's fresh faced appearance and casual chic outfit was in contrast to the high glamour she brings to the red carpet - though she still looked just as fabulous for her lunch date outing. The successful actress won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball, making her the only black woman to have won an Academy Award for this category to date. Halle has a starring role in new film Kidnap, which will be released later this year. The film will follow the story of a mother who stops at nothing to save her kidnapped son. Screen siren: The beauty's fresh faced appearance and casual chic outfit was in contrast to the high glamour she brings to the red carpet The screen siren has also received acclaim for her sultry performances in Catwoman and James Bond movie Die Another Day. Halle divorced her second husband Oliver Martinez in November 2015, with whom she shares son Maceo Robert Martinez, three, after two years of marriage. The actress is also mother to nine-year-old daughter Nahla Ariela Aubry from her first marriage to Calvin Klein model Gabriel Aubry. She shot to fame as Matt Smith's assistant in Doctor Who back in 2010 - and now Karen Gillan is delighting fans on the silver screen. The Guardians Of The Galaxy star, 29, dazzled as she arrived on the red carpet for the premiere of her new movie, The Circle, at the Tribeca Film Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Centre in New York on Wednesday night. Making the most of her moment in the spotlight, the actress looked exquisite in a unique ensemble, featuring a crop top embellished with a giant scarlet satin bow. Scroll down for video Exquisite: Karen Gillan dazzled at the premiere of her new movie, The Circle, at the Tribeca Film Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Centre in New York on Wednesday night The Scottish beauty sported a bright red lip to match her statement bow, but otherwise went for pared-back make-up with just a slick of mascara. Karen flaunted her toned arms and midriff in the two-piece outfit, which cinched at her tiny waist. And the actress let her unique outfit do the talking as she accessorised with just a pair of chunky golden bracelets completing the look. Karen plays Annie Allerton in the new movie alongside fellow British beauty Emma Watson, 27, who joined her on the red carpet alongside other high-profile A-listers. Dressed to impress: Making the most of her moment in the spotlight, the actress looked exquisite in a unique ensemble, featuring a crop top embellished with a giant scarlet satin bow Natural beauty: The Scottish beauty sported a bright red lip to match her statement bow, but otherwise went for pared-back make-up with just a slick of mascara Emma has just starred in Beauty and the Beast, which netted more than $1 billion worldwide on release. The acclaimed actress was sizzling in a white hot off-the-shoulder gown, with a daring thigh split, at she joined co-star Tom Hanks. Based on the novel by Dave Eggers, The Circle boasts a stellar cast consisting of Emma, Tom and Karen, in addition to Star Wars hit John Boyega and the late Bill Paxton. Stellar cast: Karen's The Circle co-star Emma Watson has just starred in Beauty and the Beast - which netted more than $1 billion worldwide on release Gorgeous: Emma, 27, was sizzling in a white hot off-the-shoulder gown, with a daring thigh split at the premiere The movie premiered to lukewarm reviews. The Wrap slammed the British star's performance, saying she was 'unable to make the various changes that happen to Mae convincing'. Though Variety praised the offering as a 'rare conversation-piece thriller'. Two-time Academy Award winner Tom - who previously collaborated with the novelist to bring his A Hologram for the King to the silver screen in 2016 - arrived hand-in-hand with his wife Rita Wilson, 60, who looked stunning as ever in all-black. Big hitters: Based on the novel by Dave Eggers, The Circle boasts a stellar cast consisting of Emma, Tom and Karen in addition to Star Wars hit John Boyega and the late Bill Paxton She's the younger sister of world-famous supermodel Kate Moss, 43. And Lottie Moss, 19, demonstrated that she is following exactly in her big sister's footsteps as she stormed the catwalk for the Samantha Thavasa Millennials Stars show in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday. The fledgling supermodel looked sensational as she strutted the catwalk in an edgy ensemble that showed off her lithe legs. Scroll down for video Model behaviour: Lottie Moss, 19, demonstrated that she is following exactly in her big sis's footsteps as she stormed the catwalk for the Samantha Thavasa Millennials Stars show in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday With a glint of determination in her eyes, Lottie showed exactly what she was made of as she sashayed down the runway. The fledgling model wore a black chiffon mini dress with a teal leather jacket slung over her shoulders, and added height to her 5 foot 5 frame with a pair of clumpy black shoes. The blonde bombshell let her curled locks free over her shoulders, and sported dewy make up that made her complexion glow. A pink chain handbag worn over her shoulder completed the look. Show em what you got!The fledgling model wore a black chiffon mini dress with a teal leather jacket slung over her shoulders, and added height to her 5 foot 5 frame with a pair of clumpy black shoes Best buds: Lottie was all smiles as she cuddled up to fellow model Sofia Richie, 18, who is the daughter of musical legend Lionel It girls: Also walking for the brand were millennial models Kenya Kinski Jones, 24, who is the daughter of producer Quincy Jones and German model-actress Nastassja Kinski, and Sarah Snyder, 21, who is the ex-girlfriend of Jaden Smith Lottie was all smiles as she cuddled up to fellow model Sofia Richie, 18, who is the daughter of musical legend Lionel. Sofia also wowed onlookers with her hair styled into an edgy half-up bun and a pretty blush tiered midi skirt. With a cropped white shirt and metallic rucksack rounding off the ensemble, Sofia looked cute as a button as she represented the Japanese accessories brand. Super cute! Each model was styled to perfection as they represented the Japanese accessories brand (L-R Sofia Richie, Lottie Moss, Kenya Kinski Jones, Sarah Snyder) Also walking for the brand were millennial models Kenya Kinski Jones, 24, who is the daughter of producer Quincy Jones and German model-actress Nastassja Kinski, and Sarah Snyder, 21, who is the ex-girlfriend of Jaden Smith. Lottie's modelling career has gone from strength to strength since she was singed to Storm Model Management - the same agency that launched Kate Moss's career - aged 13. Her first magazine cover was for Teen Vogue in 2014, and her first campaign was for Calvin Klein in 2014. She is now dating Made In Chelsea star Alex Mytton, whom she has been linked to since October 2016. High five to that! Lottie's modelling career has gone from strength to strength since she was singed to Storm Model Management - the same agency that launched Kate Moss's career - aged 13 All change: Lottie later swapped her catwalk look for a black lace-up top and olive green jacket and trousers Promo girl: The model showed off her skills by posing with a cute and colourful bag Strike a pose: Lottie looked sensational in her second outfit of the event Girl squad: The ladies looked right at home as they posed on the famous Harajuku street in Tokyo Sofia Vergara made a rare wardrobe switch-up on Wednesday in Beverly Hills. Normally known for her figure hugging, skin bearing ensembles, the Modern Family actress opted for comfort on her trip to Thibiant Spa which offers Botox, fillers and laser treatments. The 44-year-old stunner wore a long black dress that featured a floral print throughout. Fluent in floral: Sofia Vergara made a visit to the Thibiant Spa in Beverly Hills on Wednesday The off-the-shoulder maxi dress was the perfect pick for springtime in Los Angeles. A cross-body gold bag could be seen as her purse for the day, and she was also seen carrying a shopping bag. Staying true to her usual fashion, the Fading Gigolo actress wore towering platform heels for her Wednesday stroll. Blinding bling: Her seven carat rock from husband Joe Manganiello could be seen on her left hand Her massive seven carat rock from husband Joe Manganiello could be seen on her left hand, as well as a few silver and gold bracelets upon her wrist. Based off of her Wednesday outfit and a photo she posted to Instagram the day prior, Sofia appears to be on a floral kick. The Hot Pursuit actress posed in between two new art additions to her home by Brazillian artist Francisco Valle. Spring has sprung: The actress wore a floral print top in this picture she shared on Tuesday Both framed prints featured skulls with flowers and butterflies bursting from within them. As she presented the prints to her 12.3 million Instagram followers, she wore a top with white flowers on the sleeves. Her ripped jeans showed a hint of skin as she sat on her leather couch. More like it: She is known for cleavage-bearing outfits like this tank top, which she posted a photo in last Friday The busy Mrs Manganiello is making the most of her time off from Modern Family. Her Emmy-winning show has wrapped shooting on season eight and Sofia has been working on her movie career during the break. She flew to Rome to shoot a part in her film Bent with Andy Garcia earlier in the month. It was also announced she would be playing the flamenco dancer emoji in the upcoming Emoji Movie. Elyse Knowles could be a celebrity contender on the next series of the hit Channel Nine renovation show The Block. The Daily Telegraph claims the Aussie model and her boyfriend Josh Barker may 'ruffle some feathers' as a source says the pair 'could be given special treatment'. The publication went on to speculate that the pair would not be living with other contestants. Elyse Knowles (pictured) could be a celebrity contender on the next series of Channel Nine renovation show The Block, The Daily Telegraph reports Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Elyse for comment. Speaking to the publication, host Scott Cam divulged some details of the upcoming series. 'There could have been 50 town houses on this block, so the residents I think are well behind us,' he said. 'Because we are putting five homes there.' Controversy: The Daily Telegraph claims the Instagram star and partner Josh Barker may 'ruffle some feathers' as an unnamed source said the pair 'could be given special treatment' The 2016 iteration of the popular reality show was taken out by couple Will Bethune and Karlie Cicero. The speculation comes after the stunning model announced she is lending her star power to back a charity campaign aimed at protecting Great Barrier Reef. The 24-year-old environmentalist will join forces with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, lifestyle retailer YOOX and label We Are Handsome to raise money for the charity. Winners: The 2016 iteration of the popular reality show was taken out by couple Will Bethune and Karlie Cicero Model with a mission: Model Elyse Knowles is lending her star power to back a charity campaign aimed at protecting Great Barrier Reef 'Growing up l was very much an outdoors kid, camping every summer, motorbike riding and skating,' she told The Daily Telegraph. 'I take pride in my country and want to do everything l can help sustain it.' The gig comes as Elyse recently travelled to the Victorian border town Torrumbarry over Easter. A good cause: The 24-year-old environmentalist will join forces with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, lifestyle retailer YOOX and label We Are Handsome to raise money for the charity Environmentalist: 'Growing up l was very much an outdoors kid, camping every summer, motorbike riding and skating,' she told The Daily Telegraph They were eliminated in the semi-final of the current season of My Kitchen Rules. But missing out on the $250,000 prize money hasn't stopped Betty Banks and 'bestie' David Vu from following their culinary dreams with the pair announcing plans for a series of monthly pop-up restaurants throughout the Western Sydney region. Speaking to News Corp, the pair revealed plans for a series of Asian-themed pop-ups, with the publication reporting the first could spring up 'in Bankstown as early as June' Scroll down for video Hashtag yum: Betty Banks and 'bestie' David Vu have announced plans for a series of monthly pop-up restaurants throughout the Western Sydney region 'We want to bring a kick back into Asian cuisine,' Betty said. ' We look up to restaurants like Holy Basil and Fat Panda and wed love to bring something like that to the Bankstown and Fairfield area.' News Corp went on to report that Betty is working with a friend to release some fashion pieces in conjunction with the first pop-up launch. David and Betty failed to make the grand final on Tuesday and were eliminated, after a sudden-death cook off with Amy and Tyson. 'We want to bring a kick back into Asian cuisine,' Betty told News Corp. The social media enthusiasts lost the battle by just two points, and after hearing the news they were going home, said they were 'hashtag disappointed.' Betty added: 'Hashtag you beat us this time angry, angry man.' About the measly two points, David remarked to camera: 'It's so close, but so far. I think they just scraped through by the skin of their teeth!' Eliminated: on the show on Tuesday, David and Betty failed to make the grand final and were eliminated, after a sudden-death cook off with Amy and Tyson Judge Manu Feildel made the pair laugh as he commented: 'I'm really, so, so, sorry...you guys put in an incredible effort, hashtag respect.' David and Betty served an entree of Vietnamese sugarcane prawns, a main of twice cooked pork belly with pumpkin puree and nashi pear, and a dessert of mango sorbet with sticky rice. Grand final: Amy and Tyson went straight through to the grand final, scoring 51 points, while David and Betty finished on 49 points Amy and Tyson meanwhile, cooked an entree of squab with kale, almonds, and onion cream, a main of duck and turnips, and a dessert of Pimm's and ginger jelly with cucumber sorbet and pickled cucumber. Amy and Tyson went straight through to the grand final, scoring 51 points, while David and Betty finished on 49 points. Performed well: David and Betty were told by Judges Manu, Pete Evans, Colin Fassnidge, Guy Grossi, Karen Martini, and Liz Egan that they did well with their dishes David and Betty were told by Judges Manu, Pete Evans, Colin Fassnidge, Guy Grossi, Karen Martini, and Liz Egan that they did well with their dishes. Karen loved their prawn entree, saying it was a delight, literally straight off the streets of Vietnam,' while Colin said it was 'dish of the day' for him. However they fell short with their pork main, with Colin said it was cooked on the 'borderline.' Disappointed: The social media enthusiasts lost the battle by just two points, and after hearing the news they were going home, said they were 'hashtag disappointed' 'You dropped the ball a bit on the main course,' he added. However they did well with their dessert. Guy said it was 'one of my favourite dishes off the night.' Amy and Tyson were told that their duck main should of just been the duck leg, rather than duck leg and breast. Their dessert was called 'perfect,' but fell short thanks to the pickled cucumber. However they scored highly for their creativity and the complexity of their dishes. She is the fifth most popular celebrity on Instagram with almost 100 million followers, just behind Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. But unairbrushed pictures of Kim Kardashian in her bikini may cost the social media queen her mighty online presence as 100,000 fans have unfollowed her on the picture-sharing site. Many claim that the unflattering paparazzi snaps are proof that Kim, 36, has been Photoshopping her Instagram images for years. Scroll down for video Backlash: Kim Kardashian has lost 100,000 Instagram followers after paparazzi pictures of her natural backside led fans to accuse the mum-of-two of turning to surgery and Photoshop to maintain the social media image of her flawless body Kim was enjoying a girls' holiday in Mexico to celebrate her sister Kourtney Kardashian's birthday this week when photographers snapped her in a variety of skimpy bikinis. The pictures showed off Kim's natural figure and revealed her curvaceous behind which was a little dimpled with cellulite. But fans have seized on the difference between the paparazzi pictures and the snaps Kim posts on social media herself, claiming that Photoshop and even plastic surgery are behind the difference. The mum-of-two was blasted on Twitter and Instagram with former fans declaring her 'fake'. Photoshop? Kim pioneered the 'belfie', a bum selfie, but now fans are accusing her of turning to photoshop to get that luscious derriere One Instagram user told Kim that there was 'nothing real' about her. Geegeelove1 wrote: 'Kim you make me feel sick talking about your flawless body when you run to the plastic surgeon for everything. There is nothing real about you.' Another joined in the chorus of criticism writing: 'Nothing natural about years of botox'. While one former fan, whose handle on Instagram is christian.telleria, wrote: 'Your body is completely fake'. Another user, Hey_Kendi, commented underneath a picture of Kim with sister Kourtney: 'The natural one. Kimmy would look that good too if she stayed away from all that plastic surgery. Injections, implants, shots; just say no.' Undeniable difference: Kim's backside certainly does look smoother in her own Instagram snaps Another fan blamed Kim for allegedly airbrushing her photographs. Ray Sanders tweeted: 'Absolutely unbelievable. Wake up and face reality. Photoshop is your best friend @KimKardashian.' Some fans came to Kim's defense with Susanna Reid arguing with Good Morning Britain co-host Piers Morgan about the pictures. Piers said: 'The air brushing is in your face... This is what she really looks like.' But Susanna declared that Kim 'looks fantastic' and 'very slim'. Kim is famous for thrilling fans with bikini selfies and is even partial to the odd nude shot. Infamous: Kim famously caused a controversy when she posted a naked selfie of herself with the caption: 'When you're like I have nothing to wear LOL' She famously courted controversy when she shared a naked selfie with the caption: 'When you're like I have nothing to wear LOL'. And now fans are claiming that Kim's body is very different from the perfectly voluptuous one she has revealed to fans on Instagram. However Kim clearly didn't give a jot about the backlash and firmly reminded her critics that she was the one with the 'flawless' figure, luxuriating on a beach in Mexico. The beauty tweeted on Wednesday: 'Oh and as for me you ask? ...I'm just sitting here on the beach with my flawless body.' She's no stranger when it comes to flashing the flesh. And Katie Salmon put on another a titillating display as she headed out in her hometown of Liverpool on Thursday night to attend the LIV Organic's VIP launch party. The Love Island star put her enviable figure on display in a figure-hugging white pencil dress that struggled to contain her more than ample assets. Scroll down for video Eye-popping display: Katie Salmon flaunted her more than ample assets in a slinky white pencil dress while out in Liverpool on Thursday night Katie no doubt stopped other party-goers in their tracks, as she looked sensational in her slinky number and threw a denim jacket over her revealing ensemble. But choosing to let her slender frame steal the show, the reality beauty shrugged her jacket off to one shoulder as she shot a smouldering look in the direction of photographers. She sported a pair of lace up heels on her feet and chose to keep her blonde tresses pinned back in a slick low ponytail. Dazzling on the beauty front, the starlet - who found fame on the second series of Love Island - stepped out sporting a flawless make-up look that she finished off with vibrant eye-shadow and a nude shade on her lips. Peachy: The reality star's frock was the perfect number to highlight her enviable figure - she teamed it with a distressed denim jacket and her blonde tresses slicked back into a ponytail Demure appearance: Charlotte Dawson, meanwhile, kept things covered up in a flared two-piece as she joined Katie for the LIV Organic's VIP launch party She had been joined by a slew of her reality pals for the launch - including Ex On The Beach star Charlotte Dawson. The daughter of late comedian Les Dawson cut a more demure figure alongside Katie, as she covered up in a stylish top and trouser combo. Her flared trousers drew attention to her lengthy pins and Charlotte opted to wear her fiery red tresses down in a sleek and straight style. She had clearly been excited to reunite with her girl pal and was seen preempting another raucous night out with Katie. Ex On The Beach beauty: Charlotte teamed her all-white attire with sleek and straight locks and flawlessly applied make-up Katie had tweeted: 'Coffee needed before meeting miss Dawson. I need all the caffein I can get for tonight. Excited,' prompting Charlotte to reply: 'Oh darlinggggg you need more than a coffee.' The girls were also joined by former Big Brother star Sallie Axl and Amanda Harrington - of Desperate Scousewives fame - for the evening. While Sallie left little to the imagination in a daring denim dress, Amanda favoured a racy pair of leather lace-up trousers. Reality pals: She and Love Island's Katie were joined by former Big Brother contestant Sallie Axl Lover of leather: Amanda Harrington - of Desperate Scousewives fame - stepped out in a racy pair of leather slacks Flaunting her assets: Sallie, meanwhile, left little to the imagination in her acid wash denim dress that put both her cleavage and her pins on display Outfit number two: Charlotte slipped into something a little more daring as she continued her night at the Manchester heat of Miss Swimsuit UK Strike a pose: She was seen posing with a bottle of champers as she reclined back on a sofa in her scarlet red blazer dress Little too revealing: Her plunging number teased a look at Charlotte's chest while its hemline grazed her thighs, leaving a little too much on show as she crossed her legs Charlotte, meanwhile, later slipped into a scarlet red mini dress as she made her way to the Manchester heat of Miss Swimsuit UK. Her double breasted blazer dress grazed her thighs and teased a look at her chest thanks to its plunging neckline. Her appearance at the contest comes after Charotte's pal Katie caught attention by flashing her peachy posterior on Instagram. She left fans a little hot under the collar after posing in just her lingerie while applying her make-up. Katie wore her hair in bunches and was caught pouting in the reflection of her mirror as she kept her back turned to the camera to catch her desirable behind in all its glory. Pert: Katie left her followers hot under the collar by sharing this sultry shot of her desirable bum 'Pretty booty': She was inundated with compliments about her behind Overlooking her pert display, she decided to nonchalantly comment about how good the 'lighting' on her mirror had been. Her snap didn't go unnoticed by her 208k followers, however, and they made sure to comment on her 'pretty booty'. One fan gushed: 'Oh girl stop.' Although one Instagram user appeared to be irked by her revealing snap and penned: 'If you're promoting a mirror then why not just take a picture of the mirror? Why have a picture with you showing your arse cheeks?' Another cheekily replied: 'I'm not complaining,' while another added: 'Because her a**e looks better.' They've both splashed out thousands of pounds on cosmetic surgery. So Chloe Khan, 25, and Rodrigo Alves, 33, no doubt had plenty to talk about as they featured as guest judges at the MissMotors event in London on Thursday. But rather than discuss their shared interests, the pair put their plumped-up pouts to another use, sharing a smooch as they left the party. Scroll down for video Plastic fantastic! They've both splashed out thousands of pounds on cosmetic surgery. So Chloe Khan, 25, and Rodrigo Alves, 33, no doubt had plenty to talk about as they attended the MissMotors event in London on Thursday Showing off the results of her 32HH breast augmentation, Playboy bunny Chloe - who often refers to herself as Barbie - donned a scoop neck peach gown adorned with white lace that clung to her hourglass curves. Featuring a thigh high split, the racy garment also offered a look at her tanned and toned pins, which were boosted by a pair of patent nude heels. Sweeping her raven coloured locks in a half up style, she showed off her plump pout as she posed for the cameras whilst blowing kisses. Loving life: Chloe lead the glamour on the evening and ensured she posed up a storm Pucker up! Rather than discuss their shared interests, the pair put their plumped-up pouts to another use, sharing a smooch as they left the party Something caught your eye? Chloe seemed momentarily distracted as they locked lips Chloe has been open about her love of plastic surgery, and recently revealed she has splashed out roughly 50,000 on cosmetic procedures. Speaking to new! magazine, the Playboy playmate explained: 'In my circles, surgery isnt weird. Its like going for dinner! 'I love looking like a Barbie and being out of proportion.' She added: 'Ive spent about 20,000 on my boobs, 9,000 on my nose, 8,500 on veneers, and my lips were another 10,000 - so about 50,000 in total.' Peachy keen: Showing off the results of her 32HH breast augmentation, Playboy bunny Chloe donned a scoop neck peach gown adorned with white lace that clung to her hourglass curves Leggy lady! Featuring a thigh high split, the racy garment also offered a look at her tanned and toned pins, which were boosted by a pair of patent nude heels Dazzling: The backless gown offered a look at her tanned and toned complexion Brunette bombshell: Sweeping her raven coloured locks in a half up style, she showed off her plump pout as she posed for the cameras whilst blowing kisses Someone who could relate to her would be Rodrigo - known widely as the Human Ken Doll. The Brazilian socialite and TV personality has spent 400,000 on plastic surgery in recent years, and accentuated his enhanced features with a heavy application of make-up for his night out. Rodrigo, who was joined by Big Brother's Chelsea Singh and Hollyoaks star Fabrizio Santino on the night, ensured he would stand out at the bash as he donned a pure gold jacket with black lapels and Cristian Louboutin loafers. Turning heads: Someone who could relate to her would be Rodrigo - known widely as the Human Ken Doll Dressed to impress: The Brazilian socialite and TV personality has spent nearly 400,000 on plastic surgery in recent years, and accentuated his enhanced features with a heavy application of make-up Turning heads: Rodrigo, who was joined by Big Brother's Chelsea Singh and Hollyoaks star Fabrizio Santino on the night, ensured he would stand out at the bash in a gold brocade jacket Loving life: The trio tuned heads as they strode down the street and headed home Big spender: Chloe has been open about her love of plastic surgery, and recently revealed she has splashed out roughly 50,000 on cosmetic procedures Quest for perfection: Rodrigo is known for his love of extreme surgeries and in the past has indulged in liposuction, fillers, eight nose jobs and chest silicone implants All together now: The trio seemed in great spirits on the evening Making moves: There was no stopping the group as they stormed down the street Loving it: The trio were happy to pose for snaps on their way home Off they go: The group certainly made an impression on the evening Strutting their stuff: The trio looked like models on the catwalk Rodrigo is known for his love of extreme surgeries and in the past has indulged in liposuction, fillers, eight nose jobs and chest silicone implants as well as stem cell injections into his face and hair. The star, who has been under the knife 57 times, will jet to India next to have his eye colour permanently changed in a risky operation. He will be forced to travel abroad for the procedure as doctors in the UK and USA will not perform it for solely cosmetic reasons. They say the best gifts are the ones you make yourself. Which must have been what Elon Musk had in mind when he attempted to woo Amber Heard with a Tesla. The multi-billionaire gifted one of his fancy electric cars to the 31-year-old during a months-long campaign to win her affections, it has been claimed. Got her: Elon Musk had been pursuing Amber heard for a long time, according to one of his friends A friend of the inventor told Us Weekly: 'Elon has been pursuing Amber... But she wouldnt go out with him for a long time.' 'She finally gave in,' the insider added. 'He even got her a Tesla!' The actress only confirmed her relationship with the 45-year-old father of five on Sunday when she posted an Instagram snap of a dinner date between them, featuring a telltale lipstick mark of his cheek. The couple were first linked last summer, after being spotted together on several occasions both in London and Miami. Handmade gift: The multi-billionaire even gave the actress a Tesla (the new Model 3 pictured) Musk reportedly 'became infatuated' with Amber after the two appeared in the 2013 film Machete Kills, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Although the pair did not get a chance to meet on set, he is said to have emailed director Robert Rodriguez repeatedly in the hope that he could set up a meeting between himself and the actress - despite the fact that she was still with Johnny Depp at the time. Heard and Depp met on the set of The Rum Diary in 2011, were married in 2014 and separated in 2016. Overlap: Musk reportedly 'became infatuated' with Amber after the two appeared in the 2013 film Machete Kills, while she was still with Johnny Depp Elon is also recently out of a relationship as he was granted his second divorce from Talulah Riley in November of last year. It was their second split: they were married for two years before divorcing in 2012. Musk is worth a reported $14.9 billion according to Forbes. On screen she appears to be the picture of good health and bright as a button. But Davina McCall has spoken of her fears she could have early-onset Alzheimers disease. The 49-year-old presenter, whose father and grandmother both have dementia, revealed she has twice broken down and telephoned her GP to raise her concerns. Afraid: Television presenter Davina McCall has spoken of her fears she could have early-onset Alzheimers disease Family affair: Davina, pictured above with her beloved grandmother, described the affects the disease had had on her family Her doctor, however, has put her short-term memory losses down to cognitive overload a condition more normally seen in schoolchildren. Miss McCall told Good Housekeeping magazine: My dads positive attitude is quite extraordinary. In certain aspects he is getting worse his short-term memory is really a struggle. My lovely granny is very confused now, but she is happy. They are both pretty inspirational. She said: [But] I have called my doctor twice, in floods of tears saying, Ive definitely got Alzheimers disease. She is so nice to me and says, If you had Alzheimers, you wouldnt be calling me about it. She has told me Im only forgetful because my inbox is full and I have cognitive overload. I dont drink, I dont smoke and I am in good health. If I get ill, I get ill its a lottery. None of us knows whats going to happen around the corner. You just have to enjoy life. Miss McCalls father, Andrew, was diagnosed with Alzheimers last year while her 97-year-old paternal grandmother is understood to have been suffering with dementia for the past two years. Miss McCall has described her grandmother, Pippy who brought her up in Surrey from the age of three after her parents split up as an inspiration and the matriarch of the family. Best known for presenting Big Brother and The Jump, mother-of-three Miss McCall has become a campaigner, regularly raising awareness for the Alzheimers Society. Miss McCalls father, Andrew, was diagnosed with Alzheimers last year while her 97-year-old paternal grandmother is understood to have been suffering with dementia for the past two years Cover girl: Miss McCall is on the front of June's edition of Good Housekeeping magazine Last night Dr James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimers Society, said: As we age, there can be natural changes in thinking and memory skills. Memory problems, like going upstairs and forgetting what you went up for, can be just a slip rather than a sign of something more serious. But sometimes they can be an early sign of a medical condition like dementia. When these problems start to affect everyday life and close relationships its important to seek help. Anyone worried about their memory should not delay a visit to their GP for advice, guidance and referrals to a specialist. In the past, stigma around people visiting the doctor to discuss dementia has delayed a diagnosis for months or even years. But speaking to a GP can provide reassurance, and rule out other causes of memory problems. Cognitive overload is a term coined in the 1980s by Australian psychologist John Sweller. It refers to the theory that the brain can cope with only so much information at any time before effectively shutting down and being unable to process new memories. It is often seen in children or the elderly and is thought to have grown more common with the rise in smartphones and tablets bombarding us with information. Talking about her determination to stay positive, Miss McCall said: Its so important for women to be out there showing other women that it doesnt all end at a certain age. It keeps going on as long as we keep going on. The full interview appears in the June issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale next Wednesday. Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) visit the site of Turkish airstrikes near northeastern Syrian Kurdish town of Al-Malikiyah on April 25, 2017 The toll in Turkish air raids on Kurdish positions in northeastern Syria rose to 28 killed, a monitor said Wednesday, a day after Ankara said it had targeted "terrorist havens" near its border. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of those killed were members of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which is battling the Islamic State group in northern Syria. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said 19 others were wounded in the Tuesday raids on a media centre and other buildings in Al-Malikiyah, a town in Hasakeh province. Abdel Rahman said a female Kurdish fighter was among the dead. The YPG gave its own toll on Tuesday of 20 fighters killed and 18 wounded. The US State Department said it was "deeply concerned" that the strikes were conducted "without proper coordination either with the United States or the broader global coalition" that is fighting IS in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. Turkey, which backs Syrian rebel groups and which launched a ground operation in northern Syria last year, vowed to continue acting against groups it links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It also killed six Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq on Tuesday in an apparent accident. Syria's foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned the air strikes, describing them as "a flagrant aggression by (President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan's regime on Syrian territory". Once allied, Damascus and Ankara have become bitter adversaries since the eruption of Syria's conflict in 2011, which saw Turkey side with anti-government rebels. And while Turkey's government sees the YPG as "terrorists," the Syrian regime has maintained cool ties with them, mostly in parts of northeast Syria where they share territory. Turkey's strikes have underlined the complexities of the battlefields in Iraq and Syria, where twin US-backed offensives are seeking to dislodge IS from its last major urban strongholds. They could also exacerbate tensions between Ankara and its NATO ally Washington, which sees the Kurds as instrumental in the fight against IS. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces -- which are dominated by the YPG -- are waging a five-month-old offensive for IS's Syria stronghold Raqa. The SDF accused Turkey of carrying out the strikes "to obstruct the progress of our campaign for Raqa". "We call on the international community to intervene to put an end to these ongoing attacks on our territory," the SDF said in a statement published late Tuesday. Samsung says its net profit for the first quarter of the year amounted to 7.68 trillion won ($6.7 billion), up 46 percent from a year ago South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted its biggest quarterly net profit for more than three years Thursday after shrugging off the fallout from the exploding Galaxy Note 7 battery debacle. The results, driven by strong demand for its memory chips, represented the company's second-largest ever quarterly profit. Shares in the firm -- the flagship subsidiary of the sprawling Samsung Group -- have climbed in recent months as rising expectations overcame the smartphone recall last year and its vice-chairman going on trial for bribery. It also formally dropped a reform plan Thursday that would have seen it split in two and could have made the group's opaque structure more transparent. Net profit for the January-March period amounted to 7.68 trillion won ($6.7 billion), up 46 percent from a year ago, Samsung Electronics said in a statement. It was its biggest quarterly net profit since the record third quarter of 2013. Operating profit jumped 48 percent from a year ago to 9.89 trillion won -- also the biggest since the third quarter of 2013. Lee Jae-Yong, the heir to the Samsung group, has been held in custody and is on trial for bribery A breakdown of the figures showed the firm's semiconductor business made its largest-ever operating profit of 6.3 trillion won. Samsung -- the world's largest maker of both mobile phones and memory chips -- provides its chips to other companies including archrival Apple. "The first quarter earnings were bolstered by solid performance of our component-making business that enjoyed strong sales thanks to favourable memory chip and display panel prices," the firm said in a statement. But the firm's mobile business saw sales and profit slow, with operating profits of 2.07 trillion won, down by 47 percent from a year ago. Samsung suffered an embarrassing recall last year of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone over exploding batteries, which cost the firm billions of dollars and dealt a blow to its reputation. It has just launched a new flagship device, the S8 smartphone, to positive reviews and strong orders. Shares in Samsung Electronics -- South Korea's largest firm by value -- rose as much as 2.8 percent to 2.2 million won in morning trade on the Seoul stock market. - Complex web - But the company has come under pressure on other fronts. Vice-chairman Lee Jae-Yong, the heir to the Samsung group, has been held in custody and is on trial for bribery, with other key executives, in connection with the sprawling corruption scandal that brought down South Korean president Park Geun-Hye. The firm has also come under growing pressure from investors to overhaul its byzantine ownership structure, which enables the founding Lee family to control the vast Samsung empire with complex web of cross-holdings across dozens of group units. Investors have called for more transparency in the group's decision-making process, with US hedge fund Elliott suggesting splitting Samsung Electronics into a holdings firm and an operating unit. Samsung earlier considered the proposal, but said Thursday it had officially dropped the plan, citing regulatory hurdles and potential risks to its business. "Samsung concluded the risks and the challenging environment surrounding a change in the corporate structure would not be beneficial for enhancing shareholder value and sustaining long-term business growth," it said in a statement. Lee Jae-Yong is accused of bribing Park and her secret confidante at the heart of the scandal millions of dollars in a bid to seek policy favour from Park. He has effectively been at the helm of the group since his father suffered a heart attack in 2014. His indictment in February sent shockwaves through the firm and triggered the announcement of a major reform of its top-down management style. The scandal shed light on the cosy and corrupt ties between the country's officials and the powerful family-run business groups, called chaebol, that have endured for decades. Pope Francis welcomes Egyptian Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed al-Tayeb, during a private audience at the Vatican When Pope Francis visits Egypt's Al-Azhar this week, he will find support for his message of peace in the venerable Islamic authority praised as a bulwark against extremism. But his visit comes as Al-Azhar, which runs one of the world's oldest universities, is under fire from critics within Egypt who say the Sunni Muslim institution has itself become part of the problem. Al-Azhar had been at the centre of a messy collision between politics and theology since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi began campaigning for religious reforms, with profound implications for Islamic doctrine. A former army chief who overthrew his Islamist predecessor in 2013, Sisi believes that Islamist extremists have not been properly challenged on theological grounds. "He thinks that extremist ideas have thoroughly infiltrated Muslim societies and they are latent" but could set off "a tidal wave of devastation," said a member of a foreign delegation that met Sisi. Al-Azhar and its Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb have warily endorsed Sisi's call for reforms. Worshippers sit, pray and read from the Koran inside the 10th century historic al-Azhar mosque in the Egyptian capital Cairo's Islamic quarter Dating back almost 1,000 years, the prestigious institution runs a university and schools across the country, and thousands of international students from as far as China come to study religion and return home as clerics. The clergy of the traditional Sunni bastion loathes the theology of jihadists inspired by the puritan Salafism dominant in Saudi Arabia. - Resisting interference - Privately, however, many of Al-Azhar's clergy and professors resent the former army officer's attempt to reshape Islamic thought. The manner in which he pushed for the reforms further scandalised some clerics, especially when he suggested that he would complain about them to God if his call went unheeded. "By God, I will contest you before God on the Day of Judgement," Sisi told the clerics in a 2015 speech outlining the need for religious reforms. "The religious establishment - not all of it but most of it - is pretty resistant to the idea of somebody from outside interfering or stipulating how religion and religious discourse should function," said H.A. Hellyer, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. The leader of Egypt's Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria delivers a speech during a conference titled ''Freedom and citizenship'' hosted by Al-Azhar, one of the leading Sunni Muslim authorities based in Cairo, on February 28, 2017 In a meeting with another foreign delegation, "Tayeb openly scoffed at the idea for religious reform that Sisi has promoted," a delegation member told AFP, saying "the problem is unemployment and inequality." Members of both delegations requested anonymity because they were discussing comments made in private. Sisi's calls for reforms emboldened secular and modernist critics of Al-Azhar as well as clerics seeking influence with the president. One such cleric, endowments minister Mokhtar Gomaa who runs the country's mosques, decided to impose a written Friday prayer sermon on all preachers to weed out extremist rhetoric, which Sisi had demanded. Al-Azhar mutinied, forcing Gomaa to back down, and Sisi distanced himself from the attempt. "Whenever I see the Imam, I say your excellency the Imam, you're torturing me," Sisi said in a speech attended by Tayeb after the controversy. "He says to me: 'Do you love me or what?' I say: 'Your excellency the Imam, I love you.'" - 'Under attack' - Secular and reformist critics of Al-Azhar also felt encouraged by Sisi. One, Islam el-Behairy, went so far as to attack canonical Sunni books as inspirations for extremism. Behairy and other critics pointed to classical manuals of Islamic jurisprudence taught at Al-Azhar that contained antiquated rulings on slavery, women and non-Muslims that may be jarring to a modern reader. The institution's professors say their students understand that those texts were written in a different age and not all their content applies in a modern context. After an uproar by Al-Azhar, Behairy ended up serving a prison sentence for "insulting religion". "Many of my colleagues and students feel we are under attack, starting with Behairy," said one professor at Al-Azhar, referring to criticism of the institution. The tensions mounted when Sisi demanded in January that the clerics look into amending divorce procedures to invalidate the Islamic practice of verbal divorces. Al-Azhar's top body, the Council of Senior Scholars, flatly refused. "It was a consensus vote," a cleric who sits on the council told AFP. Following three Islamic State group suicide bombings of churches that killed dozens of Coptic Christians in December and April, the pressure doubled on Al-Azhar. Critics lambasted Al-Azhar and Tayeb in talk shows and newspapers for failing to counter the extremists and not reforming its university and high school curriculums. Mohamed Abu Hamed, a lawmaker, introduced a bill to reform the institution, which the constitution empowers as Egypt's authority on "Islamic affairs." The bill includes term limits for the Grand Imam, who currently can serve as long as he wants. "We found that the curriculum of Al-Azhar and its institutions contains many ideas that lead to violence or even incite violence," Abu Hamed told AFP. Al-Azhar rejects the accusations, pointing out the conferences it has organised to counter extremism and a monitoring group it set up to challenge their ideology. "The criminals who commit these crimes do not include a single suicide bomber who studied even for a single day in Al-Azhar," Tayeb's deputy Abbas Shoman said in a newspaper interview. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, pictured with Donald Trump in 2016 when Trump was a presidential candidate President Donald Trump hedged his agreement to renegotiate -- rather than exit NAFTA -- with a warning to Canada and Mexico Thursday that the US will jettison the trade accord if there is no "fair deal." Trump's unrelenting back-and-forth seemed certain to keep Washington's two closest trade partners on edge as they move to revamp one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The Republican billionaire had threatened to scrap NAFTA altogether during his presidential campaign, and has kept his partners guessing about his intentions ever since. While most of his fire has been directed at Mexico, Trump abruptly shifted course this week to pick fights with Ottawa over softwood lumber and dairy products. US media reported on Wednesday that he was likely to give formal notice of pulling the United States out of NAFTA -- and then came the White House announcement that the US would renegotiate the agreement after all. In phone calls Wednesday to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the White House said, Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time." On Thursday, Trump confirmed that was the case, but added a twist in a pair of early morning tweets. "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate," the president said. "I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible!" - A fixture since 1994 - North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA has been a fixture in US relations with its two neighbors since it went into effect January 1, 1994 under president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The US trade deficit in goods and services last year with Mexico was $62 billion, but with Canada the US had a surplus of $8 billion. The news from Washington soothed fears of a possible trade war and sent most Asian markets up Thursday. In Mexico, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Thursday that Trump's threat to withdraw from NAFTA had been "a real possibility." "We've confirmed it was something under consideration," he told Mexico's Radio Formula. But Videgaray saw it as directed at the US Congress, where he said "there has been a significant delay in starting the process that would enable a renegotiation." Trump's nominee for US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate. President Donald Trump blames NAFTA for the loss of millions of US industrial jobs, mostly to Mexico In its statement, the White House said the leaders of the three countries had "agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures." "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," it quoted Trump as saying. During the US presidential campaign, Trump had called NAFTA "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed" and a "disaster" that had cost the United States millions of jobs as companies moved plants to Mexico. Just last week, he said it was "very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all." - 'Rumor' of US exit - Two White House officials had told the Politico news website that a draft executive order for the US exit from NAFTA was in the final stages of review, and could be unveiled within a week or two. A senior administration official told The New York Times that Trump was likely to sign the order. But late Wednesday Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross brushed off the reports as "rumor." US President Donald Trump (R) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pictured in February 2017 The administration's talk of leaving NAFTA has run into opposition from several prominent Republican lawmakers, including border senators John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, Politico reported. McCain told Politico he'd welcome a renegotiation, but a withdrawal would "be disgraceful and a disaster." The Trump administration has slapped tariffs in recent days on some imports of Canadian timber and threatened to retaliate against Canadian moves that harm US dairy farmers. Timber and milk, however, are not covered by NAFTA. The timber dispute between Washington and Ottawa goes back at least 35 years, with US producers accusing Canada of exporting lumber at unfairly subsidized prices. Canada's dairy sector is protected by tariffs on imports and controls on domestic production as a way to support prices for the country's farmers. The latest row was triggered when Canada extended those policies to apply to ultrafiltered milk, a product used in cheese production and at the center of a thriving US export business. Director/writer/producer Alexandre Amiel attends the Colcoa French Film Festival opening night, in Los Angeles, California, on April 24, 2017 Alexandre Amiel was alarmed when his 11-year-old son asked the day after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris: "Why do they hate us?" The veteran filmmaker's answer is an unflinching exploration of racism in France at a time when the nationalist politics of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen have become part of the political mainstream, and racially-motivated attacks are on the rise. "Why Do They Hate Us?" ("Pourquoi nous detestent-ils?"), which gets its US premiere on Sunday as part of the Colcoa festival of French film in Los Angeles, is a documentary with a difference. Like a non-fiction version of Mathieu Kassovitz's groundbreaking 1995 movie "La Haine," Amiel's three part documentary is told from his own perspective as a Jew but also through the eyes of a black man and Arab woman. "We did three stories with people who are not especially victims of racism, but are going to take the audience by the hand and bring them a narration with two sides," says Amiel, 43. "First, it's your own story and then it's an investigation of what racism is today." Part one was made by Lucien Jean-Baptiste, whose comedy "La premiere etoile" (2009) was nominated for best first film at the Cesars, France's equivalent of the Oscars. The filmmaker, who has Caribbean roots, investigates how blacks are represented in French society with right wing radio host Henry de Lesquen, who wants to ban what he calls "negro music." - 'Purge' - Actress Svena Alviti (L) and director Alexandre Amiel attend Colcoa French Film Festival, in Los Angeles, California, on April 26, 2017 In part two, comedian Amelle Chahbi, who is of Moroccan descent, looks at the Maghrebian community in Paris to see if integration is working, and confronts a fascist at a march. She asks the activist how he would keep Muslim numbers down and he replies, chillingly: "We need a president leading France who is a real nationalist, who will carry out a purge." In part three Amiel meets Jerome Bourbon, the publisher of anti-Semitic newspaper Rivarol, who asserts, matter-of-factly: "Before, when we were a Catholic country, we wouldn't have had a Jew at the table." Amiel -- a "cultural but not practicing Jew" and a highly-regarded former TV reporter -- originally made "Why Do They Hate Us?" as a trilogy of television documentaries shown in France last year. Clips of the filmmakers' exchanges with extremists were viewed online nearly 20 million times, prompting their theatrical release as one two-hour movie. France's National Human Rights Commission, which produces an annual report on racism, found last year that attitudes to immigration have been softening since the dark days of the global financial crisis. Half of French nationals claimed not to be remotely racist compared with 43 percent in 2014, while just eight percent believed that some races were superior to others. But these surveyed attitudes fly in the face of a darker reality -- that hate crimes against minorities are rocketing, up 22.4 percent in just one year to 2,034 incidents in 2015, with anti-Muslim hate crimes more than doubling. - 'Outsider' - French director/writer/producer Alexandre Amiel calls himself a 'cultural but not practicing Jew' Meanwhile French Jews, the largest community outside of the United States and Israel, have been fleeing at a steady pace since the mid-2000s. Anti-Semitic hate acts actually fell slightly from 2014 to 2015, but Jews are still the target of more than 20 percent of France's total incidents despite making up less than one percent of the population. On Sunday it had emerged that pro-European centrist and self-proclaimed political "outsider" Emmanuel Macron would stand against the Front National's Le Pen in a run-off for the French presidency, with the mainstream parties dealt a historic snub. Macron, the favorite, is campaigning hard for the Jewish vote while Le Pen -- who wants to eliminate dual citizenship for French Israelis -- is hoping her open hostility to Muslims will help gloss over her toxic family history of anti-Semitism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Macron is the candidate Amiel, a liberal on the left of the political spectrum, says he "dislikes the least." "Here, Trump was elected. In England, we didn't believe that they would leave Europe and they did. Maybe we learned a little bit from what happened elsewhere, we showed that we can sometimes be more intelligent. It doesn't happen often," he told AFP in Los Angeles. "We'll see in two weeks but everything is in a good way. Trying to be optimistic doesn't make you more clever but it makes you more happy I think." A photo taken from the rebel-held town of Douma shows flames rising in the distance which are believed to be coming from Damascus International Airport following an explosion early in the morning of April 27, 2017 Syria accused Israel of firing several missiles Thursday at a military position near Damascus airport, triggering a huge explosion and prompting a call from regime ally Russia for restraint. The Israeli military later said it shot down "a target" over the occupied Golan Heights neighbouring Syria, although it was unclear whether the two incidents were linked. Israel has carried out multiple air strikes in Syria since the country's civil war erupted in 2011, most of which it has said targeted arms convoys or warehouses of its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, which is a key supporter of the Syrian regime. In line with its usual practice, Israel's military declined to comment on the airport blast. But Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said it was consistent with his government's policy to prevent arms transfers to Hezbollah, while stopping short of confirming his country was behind any attack. Syria's state news agency SANA said several Israeli missiles hit near the airport causing material damage. "A military position southwest of Damascus International Airport was targeted at dawn today by an Israeli aggression using several missiles fired from occupied territory, sparking explosions in the area," SANA said, citing a military source. The source did not specify whether the military position belonged to the Syrian army or one its allies. - 'Huge fireball' - Earlier, Hezbollah said the blast was "probably" the result of an Israeli air strike. Syria The militia's Al-Manar television said the raid hit a warehouse and fuel tanks, also without specifying whether they were its own or belonged to the Syrian army or another of its allies. Al-Manar said preliminary reports suggested the blast caused only material damage and no casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the warehouse was largely empty and "probably" Hezbollah's. A resident of the Dawwar al-Baytara neighbourhood in the southeast of the capital, who lives in a tower block that looks towards the airport area, said he had seen an immense fireball. "Around 4:00 am (0100 GMT), I heard an enormous explosion," Maytham, 47, told AFP. "I ran to the balcony and looking towards the south, in the direction of the airport, I saw a huge fireball." - Kremlin calls for restraint - The Kremlin called for restraint and Russia's foreign ministry condemned the attack. "We continue to consider that all countries need to refrain from any kind of actions that lead to an increase in tension in this already restive region and call for respect of the sovereignty of Syria," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Peskov did not confirm if Israel had warned Moscow of the strike, saying only their defence ministries "are in constant dialogue". Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova later said: "Gross violations of Syrian sovereignty -- no matter how they are justified -- are unacceptable." Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, shown in a file picture taken on January 18, 2014, said Damascus is negotiating with ally Moscow to purchase the latest anti-missile system President Bashar al-Assad, quoted on Thursday by SANA, said Damascus was negotiating with Moscow to buy the latest anti-missile system to repel Israeli and American attacks. "It is natural for us to negotiate with the Russians now with a view to strengthening (our) systems, whether to face any Israeli threats from the air or the threats of American missiles," he said. The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base overnight on April 6-7 following a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province that left 87 dead, including many children. In Israel, the army said Thursday its "Patriot Aerial Defence System intercepted a target above the Golan Heights", without elaborating. A military spokeswoman refused to comment on Israeli media reports that the object was a drone. Israeli warplanes have hit Damascus airport and other bases around the Syrian capital in the past, targeting what it said were weapons stockpiles destined for Hezbollah. The airport, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) southeast of the city centre, was hit by Israeli air strikes in December 2014, Syrian state media reported at the time. Israel does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid it carries out. But last month, it said it had conducted several strikes near the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, targeting what it said were "advanced weapons" belonging to Hezbollah. The strikes prompted Syria to launch ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted over Israeli territory in the most serious flare-up between the two neighbours since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. On January 13, Syria accused Israel of bombing Mazzeh airbase in the western suburbs of the capital. There were several strikes near the same base last year. Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the armistice line on the Golan Heights had remained largely quiet for decades until the Syrian conflict began. Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen routinely hucks insults at the United States and jumps on any opportunity to point out hypocrisy in American foreign policy Cambodian leader Hun Sen called on the United States Thursday to stop forcibly deporting convicts with Cambodian heritage to the Southeast Asian nation, saying they should revise a policy that splits up families. More than 500 felons have been sent to Cambodia through a repatriation deal, though many were raised in the US and arrive in the country having never visited and unable to speak the language. "America is very smart...they keep only good people while they deport prisoners out of their country back to us," said Hun Sen, the strongman premier who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades. "I hope the father of human rights which is America...will accept the proposal to amend the agreement to offer convicted Cambodians a chance to stay in the US with their families," he added. The prime minister's comments come after Cambodia's foreign ministry said earlier this week it wanted to renegotiate the 15-year-old agreement allowing both nations to deport criminals with ties to the other country. The foreign ministry spokesman said the deal had been "criticised by both Cambodians here and Cambodian communities in the US" as a form of "double punishment" for those who are deported against their will. A spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh told AFP they had been informed of Cambodia's desire to amend the agreement. Hun Sen routinely hurls insults at the United States and jumps on any opportunity to point out hypocrisy in American foreign policy. Washington secretly bombed Cambodia during the Indochina wars but went on to be a major donor as the country emerged from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge genocide, pouring billions in aid into the country. It also took in tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Yet relations between the two nations have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, a period that has seen Cambodia grow closer to regional superpower Beijing. China has lavished the poverty-stricken country with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans over the past few decades. Unlike aid from the US, Beijing's support comes without pressure to address rights abuses or strengthen the country's fragile democracy. A Bahraini protester wearing a shirt showing jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja takes part in an anti-government protest on September 5, 2014 west of Manama A prominent Bahraini activist jailed for life for his role in anti-regime protests has been on hunger strike for two weeks to protest the treatment of prisoners, campaigners said Thursday. Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who also holds Danish citizenship, is an outspoken critic of Bahrain's Al-Khalifa monarchy, which has ruled the tiny Gulf archipelago for more than two centuries. Khawaja began the hunger strike on April 12 in a Manama prison to protest the "arbitrary detention and degrading treatment of prisoners in Bahrain," the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) said in a statement. It is the fifth such protest in six years by Khawaja, who was given a life sentence in June 2011 after being convicted of plotting to topple the monarchy. Sunni-ruled Bahrain, home to a majority Shiite population, has witnessed sporadic unrest since early 2011, when long-running demands for political reform intensified with nationwide demonstrations calling for an elected government. Authorities have since tightened their grip on Shiite-led dissent, jailing hundreds of protesters and stripping activists and clerics of citizenship. The GCHR also called for the medical evacuation of Khawaja and fellow rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who is behind bars while on trial for charges of insulting the state. Rajab, one of the most high-profile activists in Bahrain, underwent minor surgery earlier this month. His family has however said they remain concerned about his health. The UN is scheduled to hold a human rights review session on Bahrain in Geneva on May 1. Thousands of people joined protests that erupted in several parts of Ethiopia in 2015, triggering a state of emergency The United States issued a warning Thursday to its citizens about travelling to a popular tourist region in Ethiopia after a string of grenade attacks targeting hotels and homes. The US embassy in Addis Ababa said there had been four grenade blasts this month in Gondar, a city in the north known for its ancient castles. A popular stop on Ethiopia's tourist circuit, Gondar was also the scene of anti-government protests last year that led to the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency. "The embassy recommends US citizens carefully consider whether travel to Gondar is necessary at this time," the embassy said in a statement. A spokesman for Ethiopia's government had no immediate comment. While Ethiopia has enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years and falling poverty rates, protests erupted in 2015 by communities disenchanted with the government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Human rights groups say hundreds of people were killed and thousands arrested when security forces cracked down on the demonstrations. The unrest erupted in the central Oromo region near the capital and then spread to Amhara in the north, including Gondar. State-run Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported this month that Ethiopia's human rights commission had submitted a report to parliament saying 669 people were killed in last year's protests, along with 63 security officers. The unrest led parliament to declare a six-month state of emergency in October 2016, which was extended for another four months in March. Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan blames Barack Obama for his 2015 election defeat Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan has blamed Barack Obama for his 2015 presidential election defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, alleging the former US president headed a global conspiracy to get rid of him. Jonathan made the allegations in a new book out on Friday called "Against The Run of Play", which documents how he became the first Nigerian incumbent head of state to lose an election. He said Obama and his officials "made it very clear to me by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and were ready to do anything to achieve that purpose". "They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the election," he was quoted as saying in the 204-page book, by journalist Olusegun Adeniyi. Jonathan won widespread praise for conceding to Buhari before the final results were announced, preventing deadly violence that blighted previous elections in Africa's most populous nation. But he alleged Obama influenced Britain's former prime minister David Cameron and the current French president Francois Hollande to work against him. "I got on well with... Cameron but at some point, I noticed that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had to join them against me," he said. "But I didn't realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until France caved in to the pressure from America." Jonathan said he had a good relationship with Hollande, who was his first point of contact whenever there were difficulties with neighbouring Cameroon over the Boko Haram insurgency. In the wake of the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok, Hollande organised a security summit in Paris involving Nigeria and its neighbours. The talks were instrumental in the creation of a regional fighting force, which has been key to weakening the Islamic State group affiliate. "But weeks to the election, he had also joined the Americans in supporting the opposition against me," he added, according to an advance copy of the book seen by AFP. - Corruption claims - Jonathan attributed opposition to his re-election to claims by Buhari's All Progressives Congress (APC) party that he was not doing enough to fight corruption. "That was the same thing I kept hearing from the Americans without specific allegations," he added, rejecting claims he had done nothing to tackle the problem. Buhari has accused Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of leaving his government with a "virtually empty" treasury and said "mind-boggling" amounts of public money were stolen. Many senior figures in the PDP and Jonathan's administration, as well as his family members, are currently facing trial for corruption. Buhari, who led a military government in the 1980s, has been successful in operations against Boko Haram, whose insurgency has left at least 20,000 people dead in Nigeria alone. Jonathan, whose administration was accused of failing to properly equip and support the military against Boko Haram, again claimed Obama's administration undermined Nigeria's response. Nigeria's ambassador to Washington in 2014 publicly criticised the United States for refusing to sell it attack helicopters on human rights grounds. Jonathan said US laws prohibiting arms sales to countries with poor rights records "made the war against Boko Haram very difficult". A US embassy official in Abuja said in a statement it was "surprising" Jonathan appeared to be reconsidering his view of the election. Washington's policy before the vote was for a free, fair and transparent process, he said, adding the United States believed the result was "an expression of the will of the Nigerian people". Britain echoed the view, and called the vote "a credit to the Nigerian people and a truly historic moment for Nigerian democracy". It pointed to the assessment of independent observers, including the European Union, that there was "no evidence of systemic manipulation of the process". China and the Philippines have had a long-running dispute over competing claims in the South China Sea Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday there was no point protesting Chinese artificial island building in disputed areas of the South China Sea because it could not be stopped. Duterte made the comments ahead of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit this week, and he confirmed he would not use the event to pressure China on its expansionism in the strategically vital waters. "It cannot be an issue anymore. It's already there. What would be the purpose also of discussing it if you cannot do anything," Duterte told reporters. China has been turning reefs and shoals in areas of the sea claimed by the Philippines and other nations into artificial islands, and installing military facilities there. The United States has criticised the construction work, warning against militarisation in the waterway where $5 trillion in annual trade passes. China's reclamation has also rattled other claimants, which include ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino, had challenged China by asking a UN-backed tribunal to outlaw Beijing's sweeping claims to the sea and its reclamation work. The tribunal last year ruled largely in the Philippines' favour. However Duterte, who came to office shortly before the ruling was issued, adopted a pragmatic approach to dealing with China in a bid to win billions of dollars worth of trade and aid. - 'US to blame' - Duterte, who has also sought to loosen the Philippines' long-standing alliance with the United States, on Thursday blamed the superpower for failing to stop China's reclamation activities. "Who can stop that? Us? It's only America. But how come they allowed that to happen," Duterte said, adding the United States could have used its navy to stop the reclamation work years ago. Duterte said he would not raise the ruling during the ASEAN events this week, with the bloc's foreign ministers meeting on Friday and the leaders convening on Saturday. "I will skip the arbitral ruling. It is not an issue here in the ASEAN," he said. "It's only between China and the Philippines so I will skip that." Duterte said he preferred to discuss a code of conduct on the South China Sea. Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines has sought to loosen the Philippines' long-standing alliance with the United States Philippine diplomats have said a "framework" code of conduct might be completed by June. Duterte expressed optimism a code of conduct would ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the waters. "The code of conduct at sea is another story. It must be taken up," Duterte said referring to the ASEAN summit. Analysts have cautioned that China has been delaying negotiations on a code since it was proposed 15 years ago, and used that time to build its artificial islands and take control of other contested features. The ASEAN leaders will on Saturday express concern about events in the sea but will be less direct about island building, according to a draft of a chairman's statement to be released at the end of the summit. "We shared the serious concerns expressed by some leaders over recent developments and escalation of activities in the area which may further raise tensions and erode trust and confidence in the region," the statement said. However it did not mention China directly, nor the international tribunal's ruling. A Saudi border guard looks through binoculars at a post on the Saudi-Yemeni border, in southwestern Saudi Arabia on April 6, 2015 Two Saudi soldiers were killed Thursday in a rocket attack near the border with war-torn Yemen, the interior ministry said. They died in a simultaneous landmine explosion and rocket attack while on duty patrolling the border around Jazan, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. Saudi Arabia leads a Gulf coalition that has battled Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen for two years. The coalition is allied with forces loyal to internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi's forces have struggled to wrench control of large swathes of Yemeni territory from the Huthis, who control the capital Sanaa, much of the northern highlands and key ports on the Red Sea coast. On Wednesday Riyadh said it had intercepted a Yemeni rebel boat rigged with explosives headed for an Aramco oil distribution platform in the southwestern Jazan region. The United Nations estimates that more than 7,700 people have been killed in Yemen and millions displaced since 2015. Around two-thirds of the country's population faces the threat of famine this year. More than 140 Saudis, including soldiers and civilians, have been killed since Riyadh intervened in the Yemen war, many of them in cross-border shelling. Chad's ex-president Hissene Habre in 1983 subjected his country to an eight-year reign of terror A desert warfare specialist, Chad's Hissene Habre seized power in 1982 and quickly embraced the role of ruthless dictator, with brutal atrocities the hallmark of his eight-year reign of terror. Often dressed in combat fatigues that complemented his "desert fighter" nickname, Habre fled to Senegal after he was ousted by current Chadian President Idriss Deby in 1990. Habre will now serve the rest of his life behind bars after judges in Dakar Thursday upheld his sentence for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture, quashing the appeal attempt by his court-appointed lawyers, though a rape conviction was overturned. Habre was first sentenced by the Extraordinary African Chambers in May last year, setting a global precedent for the first time a country had prosecuted a former leader of another nation for rights abuses. The legal body created by Senegal and the African Union further ordered him in July to pay compensation to each victim who suffered rape, arbitrary detention and imprisonment during his rule, as well as to their relatives, a decision also upheld on Thursday. Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer who has worked closely with Habre's victims to secure the conviction, said the final verdict would "go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," all of whom have waited a quarter century for justice. - Kadhafi critic - The 74-year-old's rule was marked by fierce crackdowns on dissent, including alleged torture and executions of opponents, earning him comparisons to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Investigators found that more than 40,000 people were killed during his rule. The son of a farmer, Habre was born in Faya-Largeau, northern Chad, and grew up among nomads in the Djourab desert. His intelligence landed him a job as a local official before he left for Paris in 1963 to study law and attend Sciences-Po, the prestigious political science school. One of his influences at the time was Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Habre joined the Chad National Liberation Front a year after returning home in 1971 and became its leader, before breaking away to form another rebel group, the Northern Armed Forces (FAN). He made headlines in 1974 when he kidnapped a French ethnologist who was held for three years before France agreed to terms for her release. A staunch nationalist, Habre then served as prime minister in the government of president Felix Malloum and as defence minister under his sometime ally Goukouni Weddeye who later became president. Unlike Weddeye, Habre was an outspoken opponent of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and the relationship did not last. Habre broke from his Tripoli-backed ally just months after the formation of Weddeye's 1979 government, triggering violence in Chad's capital, N'Djamena. He fled the city for eastern Chad in 1980, but returned to fight his way to power in 1982. - Two decades in Dakar - During his rule, opponents -- real or imagined -- were arrested, tortured and often executed by the dreaded Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), Chad's secret police. Habre's reign ended as dramatically as it had begun when Deby, formerly a loyal general, led a rebel force that drove him from power and into exile in Senegal. Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre lived freely in Dakar for two decades before his arrest The former dictator lived freely for more than 20 years in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children, swapping his military garb for billowing white robes and a cap. Habre was considered a discreet, generous neighbour and a pious Muslim who helped finance the construction of several mosques. The AU mandated Senegal to try Habre in July 2006, but then president Abdoulaye Wade delayed the process for years despite an agreement to create a special court for the trial. Belgium also sought Habre's arrest over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity after three Belgian nationals of Chadian origin filed a suit in 2000 for mass murder, arbitrary arrest and torture during his regime. Brussels issued an arrest warrant for him in September 2005, and he was arrested in Senegal shortly after, but the African country said its courts did not have the jurisdiction to rule on a Belgian extradition request. Habre was arrested again in Dakar on June 30, 2013, and the AU decided his trial should take place there, a world first. Now a convicted war criminal Habre will serve his sentence in Senegal or another African Union country. burs-jom/boc South Sudanese refugees collect aid food at a "Refugee Waiting Centre" in Al-Eligat area along the border in Sudan's White Nile state on February 27, 2017 More than 95,000 South Sudanese have entered Sudan so far this year, the UN said Thursday, as thousands continue to flee war and famine in the world's youngest nation. South Sudan, which split from the north in 2011, has declared famine in parts of the country, saying a million people are on the brink of starvation. The number of South Sudanese refugees arriving in Sudan has surpassed 95,000 since the start of 2017, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Office, or OCHA, said in its latest bulletin. This brings the total number of South Sudanese refugees taking shelter in Sudan since a brutal civil war erupted in their country in December 2013 to nearly 390,000. OCHA said that, as of April 15, Sudan was hosting about a quarter of the estimated 1.6 million South Sudanese refugees in the region. UN aid agencies anticipate a continuous influx of South Sudanese refugees throughout this year. Khartoum has opened a new "humanitarian corridor" for delivering relief items to people affected by famine in South Sudan's Bahr El Ghazal state, a top UN aid official said in a separate statement on Thursday. This is the second road route opened by Khartoum within a month for delivering aid to the South Sudanese people. It will transport aid from El Obeid in central Sudan to the city of Aweil in Bahr El Ghazal. "This new road corridor, opened by the government of Sudan... will help bring much needed relief to thousands of South Sudanese who are affected by the famine," said UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Marta Ruedas. The World Food Programme will deliver about 7,000 tones of sorghum to about 540,000 South Sudanese through this route. South Sudan's leaders fought for decades for independence from the north, but an internal civil war erupted in 2013 out of a power struggle between President Salwa Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. Aid groups have denounced a "man-made" famine caused by the conflict in South Sudan that has forced at least 1.7 million people to flee the country, disrupted agriculture, sent prices soaring and cut off aid agencies from some of the worst-hit areas. At least 7.5 million people across South Sudan, about two-thirds of its population, need humanitarian assistance, the UN says. A Palestinian woman helps her son study, by candlelight, at their makeshift home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on April 19, 2017 An Israeli rights group warned Thursday that cutting power to the Gaza Strip would have "catastrophic consequences" after Israel said the Palestinian Authority was refusing to pay the bill. Hit by the bitter rivalry between the strip's Islamist Hamas rulers and the rival Palestinian Authority (PA), Gaza's only power plant shut down this month for lack of fuel, caused by a payment dispute. Gazans are now getting at best only a few hours of electricity each day. Things got bleaker still on Thursday when the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for the Palestinian territories said it had been notified by the West Bank-based PA that it would no longer pick up the bill for electricity streamed to Gaza directly from Israel. "The Palestinian Authority informed the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) that it would stop paying for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, with immediate effect," COGAT said in a statement. It did not say that as a consequence it would pull the plug, but the possibility alarmed Israeli rights group Gisha. "Residents of Gaza cannot endure an interruption of the electricity supply from Israel and cuts of the kinds discussed would have catastrophic consequences," it said in a statement. "Reducing the volume of electricity supplied by Israel to the Strip is a red line that cannot be crossed." In its Ramallah headquarters, the PA refused to comment on the COGAT statement. If confirmed, the move by the PA could be a sign of renewed confrontation with Hamas, which violently ousted it from Gaza in 2007 and has blocked its attempts to regain influence there. On April 4 the PA, headed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, announced it would temporarily cut stipends to its Gaza civil servants thrown out of their jobs in the Hamas takeover. The PA said it was forced into cutbacks by falling foreign aid. But others said it could be politically motivated, to stir up discontent in Gaza and destabilise the Hamas administration there. Gisha said that with the shutdown of the Gaza power plant, the 120 megawatts of electricity flowing through cables from Israel accounts for more than 80 percent of the power currently available to Gaza. Egypt, which borders Gaza, also helps. UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, Robert Piper, called on Thursday for all sides, and the international community, to work together to halt the decline. "With power outages at 20 hours a day and emergency fuel supplies running out, basic services are grinding to a halt," he said in a statement. "According to the Gaza ministry of health, fuel to power back-up generators at seven out of 13 hospitals in Gaza is expected to run out within three days," he said, adding his agency was allocating $500,000 to buy emergency fuel supplies. US agricultural exports currently travel duty-free to Mexico and to Canada, with the notable exceptions of dairy and poultry goods President Donald Trump's threat to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement has US farmers worried their access to prime Canadian and Mexican export markets could shrink. The US neighbors are the second and third-largest importers of American agricultural goods, after China. And US agricultural exports to those countries have risen far faster than to other destinations since NAFTA took effect 23 years ago -- nearly quadrupling with Canada and quintupling with Mexico. But Trump has ceaselessly hammered the regional treaty, calling it a "disaster" for the United States. In tweet on Thursday he renewed his threat to "terminate NAFTA" if renegotiation efforts fail to achieve "a fair deal for all." For the farming industry, this is a non-starter and lobbyists in Washington have taken up the charge. "We do not want to go backwards with Canada or Mexico," said David Salmonsen, senior director for congressional relations at the American Farm Bureau. "We do not want to see anybody imposing tariffs or any new non-tariff barrier." US agricultural exports currently travel duty-free to Mexico and to Canada, with the notable exceptions of dairy and poultry goods, which are the subject of perennial disputes with the northern neighbor. In 2016, the US exported more than $20.5 billion in agricultural goods to Canada, or 15 percent of all American farm exports, with prepared foods first among them, followed by fruits and vegetables. - Preserve what's working - Mexico imported $17.9 billion worth of US agricultural goods in 2016, or about 13 percent of US farm exports Before talks have even started, which can only happen after the White House notifies Congress, Trump raised the temperature this week by slapping import duties on Canadian softwood lumber, part of a 35-year-old trade dispute. Relations between Washington and Ottawa were further strained when the US president promised to defend American dairy producers against the export barriers he says they face in selling their goods in Canada. Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, said, "It's important that we fix what's not working -- dairy trade with Canada -- and preserve what is working -- our relationship with Mexico." He noted that US dairy exports to Mexico totaled $1.2 billion "amounting to nearly one fourth of all US exports." The group "has insisted and will continue to insist that any renegotiation of NAFTA preserves this vital trade relationship," he said in an email. Mexico imported $17.9 billion worth of US agricultural goods in 2016, or about 13 percent of US farm exports. Relations between Mexico City and Washington have suffered in the Trump era due to the US president's hostile remarks on immigration and plans to build a border wall. Corn growers are most concerned for the future of NAFTA. Mexico is their largest export market, where the grain is mostly used as cattle feed. "We want to do everything we can to keep that market open to us," said Kurt Hora, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. Yet Mexico already has reached out to suppliers in countries like Argentina or Brazil, hoping to add leverage when it arrives at the bargaining table. The US farming industry is firmly opposed to exiting NAFTA but ideally would like to see the trade pact modernized in order to advance some of their own claims, such as even greater access to the Canadian market or harmonizing certain standards. The now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which all the NAFTA members were party, addressed those and other issues. But Trump rose to power in no small part by campaigning against that agreement, helping seal its fate. US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan leaves after a press conference following the Republican Conference meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 26, 2017 The top US Republican in Congress claimed progress Thursday on a new effort to repeal the Obamacare health law, but he signaled a vote was unlikely this week. President Donald Trump has been pressuring his party's lawmakers for a major legislative victory to attach to his 100th day in office, which falls on Saturday. In that vein, Republicans this week introduced an amendment to the health care reform legislation that collapsed last month, in the hopes of bringing together several moderates and conservatives who opposed the original bill. "We continue to make real progress in our work to repeal and replace Obamacare," House Speaker Paul Ryan said, citing the amendment put forward by Congressman Tom MacArthur, co-chair of the Tuesday Group of House Republican moderates. Seeing that Democrats will almost certainly unite against the plan, any health care deal would have to play the tricky game of winning over both conservatives and moderates in the Republican Party to surpass the 50 percent threshold of 216 votes in the House of Representatives. Ryan said he believed the two GOP factions would be "coalescing" around the amendment. But despite his optimism, the speaker declined to name a date for a vote on the measure. "We've not yet made any decisions on a vote," he told reporters. "We're going to go when we have the votes." Several conservatives wanted to see the bill lift burdensome and costly regulations that require insurance companies to keep a standard package of "essential health benefits" -- such as maternity care and hospitalization -- as part of their base coverage. The new amendment controversially would allow states to opt out of including the benefits. They could also choose not to provide the so-called community rating provision, which requires insurers to charge the same for people regardless of their health status. The revision gained momentum Wednesday, when the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives that spearheaded opposition to Trump's initial plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gave its approval to the new version. Some moderate Republicans remained skeptical, including another Tuesday Group co-chair, Charlie Dent. "The members of our group who were previously opposed to the underlying bill are probably still opposed based on the amendment," Dent said. Dent expressed concern that the Obamacare subsidies that help lower and moderate income people buy insurance have been reduced too dramatically in the new legislation. A non-partisan congressional review last month predicted that under the Republican plan, 24 million more people would be uninsured by 2026 than under the current law. The revised bill has been savaged by Democrats. "This version is worse," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, citing a provision that would allow states to decide whether or not insurers have to cover Americans with preexisting conditions. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, argues for pressure on Russia to end sieges in Syria US Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the UN Security Council on Thursday to ratchet up pressure on Russia to end sieges in Syria and help advance peace talks. "All eyes and all pressure now need to go to Russia, because they are the ones who could stop this if they wanted to," Haley told a council meeting on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria. Haley argued that years of appeals to Bashar al-Assad to allow aid deliveries to reach civilians in besieged areas had failed and that the focus must now squarely be on the Syrian president's main ally. "Who's the one member-state who continues to protect the regime that is keeping this humanitarian assistance from going through?" asked Haley. "Russia must live up to its promise to deliver real peace talks and a real political solution," said the US envoy. "The sieges of the Syrian people must be lifted. The war profiteering and the theft of medical supplies must be stopped." The council heard a report from UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien who said the humanitarian crisis was worsening in Syria, now in its seventh year of war. O'Brien called for a pause in fighting in eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, where he said some 400,000 civilians remain trapped, under siege by government forces. UN aid convoys have been unable to reach eastern Ghouta since October. Russia's envoy challenged the UN assessment of the humanitarian crisis, saying a cessation of hostilities was holding "in Syria, as a whole" and that access to besieged areas required "painstaking work." Petr Iliichev, the Russian charge d'affaires, stressed that Russia, Turkey and Iran were working to uphold a ceasefire. "Neither you nor your western colleagues have said a word about how you are putting pressure to bear," Iliichev told Haley. Describing the humanitarian crisis in Syria as a "catastrophe," French Ambassador Francois Delattre said a ceasefire and access for aid deliveries were needed to pave the way to credible peace talks. The United Nations hopes to bring the Syrian government and the opposition back to Geneva next month for a new round of talks on ending the war despite little progress in previous negotiations. Delattre said political talks can succeed with "much stronger pressure from Russia on the Syrian regime and a clear political re-engagement of the United States." More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria's six-year conflict, which has drawn in Russia and Iran in support of the government, while Turkey, Western countries and Gulf states have backed opposition forces. Donald Trump was hosting Argentine President Mauricio Macri as Venezuela's leftist president prepares to withdraw from the Organization of American States US President Donald Trump said Thursday he was saddened by the crisis in Venezuela, where waves of anti-government unrest has claimed the lives of 28 people. "Venezuela is a mess," Trump said in response to a reporter's question as he received Argentine President Mauricio Macri to the White House. "I'm very sad for Venezuela, very sad to see what's happened in Venezuela," he said. "Venezuela is a very sad situation." His comments come as the government of leftist President Nicolas Maduro prepares to withdraw from the Organization of American States, a Washington-based regional grouping that encompasses all countries in the western hemisphere but Cuba. The Maduro government charges that a group of countries led by the United States is using the OAS to try to force him from office. Venezuela, a major oil producer on the brink of economic collapse, has been hit by waves of anti-government protests in response to deteriorating living conditions and a deepening political impasse. Caracas announced it was withdrawing from the OAS after the group called a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the crisis. Venezuela is expected to submit a letter of complaint later Thursday, formally setting in motion its withdrawal from the organization, a process that takes 24 months. According to the official Israeli army Twitter account "The Patriot Aerial Defence System intercepted a target above the Golan Heights" Israel shot down what it identified only as "a target" over the occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, hours after Syria accused it of hitting a military position near Damascus airport. "The Patriot Aerial Defence System intercepted a target above the Golan Heights," the official Israeli army Twitter account said, without elaborating. A military spokeswoman refused to comment on Israeli media reports that the object was a drone. Syria's state news agency SANA said earlier that several Israeli missiles hit near Damascus airport at dawn. Israel has not confirmed or denied the reported Damascus attack. But Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said it was consistent with Israel's policy to prevent arms transfers through to Hezbollah, while stopping short of confirming his country was behind the incident. "We are acting to prevent the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon by Iran," Katz told army radio. "When we receive serious information about the intention to transfer weapons to Hezbollah, we will act. This incident is totally consistent with this policy." In Moscow, the Kremlin called for restraint and the foreign ministry condemned the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not say if Israel had warned Moscow of the strike, saying only that their defence ministries "are in constant dialogue". In Moscow, visiting Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu that the Jewish state would not allow "concentration of Iranian or Hezbollah forces on the Golan border," Liebermans office said. Israel has conducted multiple air strikes in Syria since that country's civil war erupted in 2011, most of which it has said targeted arms convoys or warehouses of its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, which is a key supporter of the Syrian regime. Last month, it said it had carried out several strikes near the Syrian desert city of Palmyra, targeting what it said were "advanced weapons" belonging to Hezbollah. The strikes prompted Syria to launch ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted over Israeli territory in the most serious flare-up between the two neighbours since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. Around 510 square kilometres of the Golan are under Syrian control. The two countries are still technically at war, although the border remained largely quiet for decades until 2011, when the Syrian conflict broke out. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders issued a joint statement to fight "terrorism" and "foreign interference" across the region Gulf Arab states pledged Thursday to fight "terrorism" and "foreign interference" across the region. In a joint statement following a summit in Riyadh, interior ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said they were determined to prevent "harm to their national unity, the provoking of sectarian tensions and support for terrorist groups." The GCC states regularly accuse Iran of interfering in their internal affairs, particularly of stirring unrest in Bahrain and supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen -- charges Iran denies. They said GCC states had shown determination to build bridges of cooperation with other states in the region. "The biggest challenge facing any state in the modern world is preserving its national unity against foreign and domestic threats," said Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammad bin Naif, who chaired the summit. The GCC states "continue to face dangerous challenges emanating from Iranian and Iraqi soil," he said. The GCC was formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution and includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. Sunni-ruled Bahrain has been the scene of frequent protests and clashes with police since security forces quelled Shiite-led nationwide protests in 2011 that called for political reforms. Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab coalition that in March 2015 launched a military campaign against Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Arkansas set off a legal battle when it announced plans to execute eight death row inmates, pictured here, in 11 days. Kenneth Williams, bottom row, third from the left, is slated to be executed Thursday Arkansas was set to execute another inmate on Thursday, the last in a series of lethal injections that the state has squeezed into a compressed timeline, even as the daughter of one of his victims appealed for clemency. A plan by the conservative southern state to execute eight prisoners in 11 days -- before its stock of a drug used in legal injections expires -- set off a huge legal battle. It was challenged not only by lawyers for the condemned men but also pharmaceutical companies opposed to their products being used to put people to death. Four of the inmates won reprieves, but the state carried out its first execution since 2005 last Thursday, putting convicted murderer Ledell Lee to death at its Cummins Unit, near Varner, Arksansas. Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, convicted separately of rape and murder in the 1990s, were executed on Monday in the nation's first double execution in nearly 17 years. Kenneth Williams, 38, will be the fourth inmate put to death in Arkansas in a span of eight days if his execution Thursday night goes ahead as scheduled. His lawyers have argued, among other things, that Williams should be spared because he is intellectually disabled. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson has said the accelerated execution timetable was necessary because the state's stock of a sedative, midazolam, used in lethal injections will expire at the end of the month. Many of the legal clashes focus on midazolam, which is meant to render a condemned person unconscious before other drugs induce death. Critics say it does not always adequately sedate prisoners, potentially causing undue suffering. - 'Additional suffering' - Williams was serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of 19-year-old student and cheerleader Dominique Hurd when he escaped the penitentiary on October 3, 1999 by hiding in a tank used to carry kitchen scraps. He came upon Cecil Boren, 57, on his farm not far from the prison, shot and killed the man and stole his truck. Williams drove north to Missouri, where he led police on a chase that caused the death of 24-year-old delivery driver Michael Greenwood. Hours ahead of the execution, Greenwood's daughter sent a letter to Hutchinson asking the governor to spare the life of her father's killer. "We are in no way asking you to ignore the pain felt by the victims of Mr Williams' other crimes. We know what they are going through but ours is a pain that we have decided not to try and cure by seeking an execution," Kayla Greenwood wrote. "His execution will not bring my father back or return to us what has been taken, but it will cause additional suffering." She said her family, upon learning that Williams has a daughter as well as a granddaughter whom he's never met, bought the pair plane tickets to Arkansas so they could visit him one last time. They even picked up the woman and child at the airport and drove them to the prison. Meanwhile, the Boren family said it would be relieved to know Williams had been put to death. "We've been waiting a long, long time for this," Boren's widow Genie told local news station Fox 16. "People have to be punished for things they've done." Former US President Barack Obama excoriated "Wall Street fat cats" during his presidency, boosting criticism that his huge speaking deal amounts to cashing in after eight years on the federal pay roll Barack Obama faced criticism Thursday from his fellow Democrat, the firebrand Senator Elizabeth Warren, who expressed concern about reports that the former US president will receive a $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street investment firm. "Well, I was troubled by that," Warren said on the Sirius XM radio show "Alter Family Politics" when asked about Obama receiving in a day the same amount as his annual presidential salary. President Donald Trump's predecessor has agreed to speak at a Wall Street health care conference hosted in September by the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, according to Fox Business. Warren is widely seen as a potential 2020 presidential candidate. The 67-year-old has been an outspoken critic of Wall Street for years and has railed against the influence of big money in politics. "I describe it as a snake that slithers through Washington," she said. "I think it ultimately threatens democracy." The reported $400,000 figure is substantially higher than the $225,000 Hillary Clinton received in 2013, when last year's presidential hopeful addressed a Goldman Sachs conference, one in a series of Wall Street speeches she delivered. Obama excoriated "Wall Street fat cats" during his presidency, boosting current criticism that his huge speaking deal amounts to cashing in after eight years on the federal pay roll. But he is hardly the first former president to pad his personal wealth with speaking engagements after leaving stepping down, and Obama adviser Eric Schultz sought to knock back the criticism. "In 2008, Barack Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history, and still went on to successfully pass and implement the toughest reforms on Wall Street" in 60 years, he said in a statement. "While he'll continue to give speeches from time to time, he'll spend most of his time writing his book and, as he said in Chicago this week, focusing his post-presidency work on training and elevating a new generation of political leaders in America." Obama returned to the public spotlight Monday, addressing a University of Chicago forum where he discussed the need for greater civic engagement among young people. Barack and former first lady Michelle Obama have signed a deal to publish their memoirs reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. Supporters of the Western Sahara's Polisario Front shout slogans during a demonstration outside the court in Sale on March 13, 2017 The UN Security Council on Thursday postponed voting on a draft resolution on the Western Sahara conflict amid signs the Polisario Front independence movement was preparing a pullback from a tense zone of the contested territory, a council diplomat said. The US-drafted text included a strong appeal to the Polisario Front to immediately withdraw from the Guerguerat strip, which has become a potential flashpoint between the independence fighters and Moroccan troops. "The council wants to see if there is any significant development on the ground in these hours," said a council diplomat who asked not to be named. "We heard that there might be some," he added, referring to the UN demand for the Polisario to withdraw. The council is now expected to vote Friday on the measure that would endorse a fresh UN initiative to restart talks between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario on settling the decades-old conflict. France, which has friendly ties with Morocco, had insisted on a pullback from the Guerguerat post near the Mauritanian border after Morocco withdrew its forces in February. "It is indeed time to look ahead and to relaunch negotiations, that is what we want," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters on Tuesday. "There is one issue we need to solve and that is Guerguerat," he said. Morocco and the Polisario fought for control of Western Sahara from 1974 to 1991, when Rabat took over the desert territory before the signing of a UN-brokered ceasefire. Rabat, which considers Western Sahara an integral part of Morocco, proposes autonomy for the resource-rich territory, but the Polisario Front insists on a UN referendum on independence. The council diplomat said a withdrawal from the buffer strip would lead to changes in the resolution and pave the way to the appointment of a new UN peace envoy who would shepherd the talks. The long-serving previous UN envoy, Christopher Ross, resigned last month after Morocco accused him of bias in favor of the Polisario. Former German president Horst Kohler has been tipped to replace him. The Polisario moved forces in Guerguerat last year in response to Morocco's decision to build a road in a zone it considers "liberated territory." SAO PAULO (AP) - Twelve men suspected of taking part in a dramatic, multimillion-dollar theft from an armored car company in a Paraguayan border city have been arrested in Brazil, officials in the Brazilian Federal Police said Tuesday. The men are thought to be among roughly 50 men who used explosives to blast into the vault of the Prosegur company in Ciudad del Este, then escaped into Brazil, Federal Police Inspector Fabiano Bordignon said. Paraguay's Interior Ministry later said three presumed members of the gang had been killed in a shootout with Brazilian federal agents in Brazil, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Ciudad del Este. It did not provide more details. Guards and police inspect a vault that the assailants blew up early morning in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, Monday, April 24, 2017. Dozens of attackers armed with assault rifles used explosives to blast open the vault of an armored car company early Monday and apparently escaped by boat into Brazil with a haul of cash, authorities said. (Mariana Ladaga/Diario ABC Color via AP) Juan Cocci, Prosegur's president for Latin America, told Radio Mitre in Argentina, that in the multi-stage attack, gunmen with assault rifles attacked a police station at 2 a.m. Monday, killing one officer and wounding four people. The gang also torched about 16 vehicles and set off grenades in three locations near the company's headquarters, in what Cocci said was part of a plan "to distract" authorities before attacking the building and blasting into the vault. Cocci said about $8 million was missing from the vault, which he said held $49 million before the assault. Brazil's Federal Police Department said law enforcement agents had so far recovered the equivalent of nearly $1.5 million in Brazilian reals, Paraguayan guaranis and American dollars. Anibal Lima, police spokesman for Paraguay's Alto Parana Department, where Ciudad del Este is located, said the attackers are believed to belong to Brazilian organized crime groups like Sao Paulo's First Capital Command or Rio de Janeiro's Red Command. Paraguay's national police said it had relieved Ciudad del Este's four top police commanders "to optimize police services in the region." Ciudad del Este sits in the "Triple Border" region, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet and where contraband electronics, drugs and arms flow across porous borders. The partly demolished building of the armored car company Prosegur is seen after assailants blew it up, in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, Monday, April 24, 2017. A gang of over 50 armed bandits stole several million dollars from a vault in the company, in what local officials are dubbing the "robbery of the century". The culprits, who police said were from Brazil, killed one police officer during the Monday raid. (Roberto Zarza/Diario ABC Color via AP) SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - President Donald Trump is lashing out at a judge's ruling blocking his attempt to strip funds from "sanctuary cities" that don't cooperate with U.S. immigration authorities, calling it "ridiculous" and vowing to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the third Trump executive order on immigration to be thwarted by the federal courts. Here is a look at Tuesday's ruling and what lies ahead: City Attorney Dennis Herrera talks about a federal judge's order blocking any attempt by the Trump administration to withhold money from "sanctuary cities "during a news conference at City Hall Tuesday, April 25, 2017, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) ___ WHAT DID THE FEDERAL JUDGE SAY ABOUT THE SANCTUARY CITIES ORDER? U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said the president has no authority to attach new conditions of his own to spending that was approved by Congress. The judge further ruled that Trump's order threatened a wide swath of funding - not the relatively small amount the Justice Department claimed - and that the government cannot cut off funding if there is no clear connection between the money and the policy at issue. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said late Wednesday the president was well within his power to issue the executive order and the DOJ would continue to fight the cases in court. It was not clear, however, whether he planned to appeal Orrick's ruling. WHAT COULD TRUMP DO NEXT? Trump could appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But that was the court that blocked the president's first travel ban against seven Muslim countries. Eighteen of the 25 active judges on the court were appointed by Democrats. Trump has said he wants to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have the final say if it decided to take up the case. Trump could also revise his executive order to explicitly tie it to the three relatively modest Justice Department and Homeland Security grants that the administration argued were at stake. Orrick said his ruling does not affect the administration's ability to enforce existing conditions on federal grants. WHAT ELSE COULD THE ADMINISTRATION DO? Trump could push Congress to pass a law giving him clear authority to revoke certain funding, said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor and former head of civil rights at Homeland Security during the Obama administration. But Schlanger said whatever action is taken may not survive court scrutiny if it's seen as unduly coercive. "Suppose you said you can't have any money at all unless you participate fully in immigration arrests," she said. "That would be so big it would be coercive." Additionally, for the law to survive, there must be a connection between the money at stake and the immigration policy the president is seeking to enforce, Schlanger said. It is not clear how close that link has to be, but Trump presumably would not be allowed to withdraw funding for, say, highway construction to force a city to stop protecting immigrants from deportation. WHAT OTHER CHALLENGES LIE AHEAD FOR THE SANCTUARY CITIES ORDER? Orrick ruled on two cases brought by the city of San Francisco and California's Santa Clara County. Seattle and two cities in Massachusetts, Lawrence and Chelsea, have also sued. WHAT WAS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S STAND ON FUNDING FOR SANCTUARY CITIES? Last year, the Justice Department notified recipients of criminal justice grants that they must obey a federal law that says local governments cannot forbid their employees from cooperating with U.S. immigration authorities. Recipients were reminded that that they could face penalties, such as the loss of grants, for not complying. An inspector general's memo from last year said authorities were unaware of any legal action taken by the Obama administration to compel states or local governments to cooperate. ___ Tucker reported from Washington. City Attorney Dennis Herrera, at podium, with his staff beside him, talks about a federal judge's order blocking any attempt by the Trump administration to withhold money from "sanctuary cities" during a news conference at City Hall Tuesday, April 25, 2017, in San Francisco. A federal judge on Tuesday said the president has no authority to attach new conditions to federal spending. U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the preliminary injunction in two lawsuits, one brought by the city of San Francisco, the other by Santa Clara County, against an executive order targeting communities that protect immigrants from deportation. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) DENVER (AP) - Deep snow is melting into Western mountain streams, but some farmers and ranchers on the high plains are struggling amid a lengthy dry spell and the aftermath of destructive wildfires. A swath of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas has been in a drought or near-drought condition for six months, putting some of the winter wheat crop in doubt. The March fires burned nearly 2,100 square miles (5,400 square kilometers) in the four states. Six people died. Agriculture officials say the fires also killed more than 20,000 cattle and pigs and damaged or destroyed about $55 million worth of fences. FILE - In this March 22, 2017 file photo, Kansas State student Reagan Butler and others from a Manhattan youth group help remove damaged fencing over thousands of acres in fire-ravaged Clark County, Ark. The Western mountains are flush with snow and California has canceled its drought emergency, but some farmers and ranchers on the high plains are struggling amid a lengthy dry spell and the aftermath of destructive wildfires. (Michael Pearce/The Wichita Eagle via AP, File) "The first word you think of is devastating, financially," said David Clawson, a farmer and rancher in southwestern Kansas who lost 40 head of cattle to the fires. "But it's hard to really quantify yet. We're just 30 days into it." The governors of Kansas and Texas have signed disaster declarations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture hasn't calculated the total damages, but Texas alone estimated the cost to farmers and ranchers to be $25.1 million. "That first week, we were in shock," said Clawson, who is also president of the Kansas Livestock Association. April rains on parts of the high plains have eased the drought and helped the grassland recover, but it could be weeks or longer before cattle can be turned out to graze, leaving some ranchers a choice of buying costlier feed or culling their herds. "Some of the ground will not be grazed this year at all to let it recover," said Oklahoma Agriculture Commissioner Jim Reese. The U.S. Drought Monitor, operated by federal weather and agricultural agencies, showed much of the area either abnormally dry or in a moderate drought on April 18. The outlook through June was for drought to persist in a crescent-shaped area from northeastern Colorado, across southwestern Kansas and into central Oklahoma. Drought could worsen in the Texas Panhandle, the outlook said. Drought is a constant threat in this semi-arid region, which saw the worst devastation from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Scant precipitation last fall left newly planted winter wheat struggling to take hold in many areas. "It needs to germinate and emerge to hold the ground from erosion," Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Brown said. Farmers won't know how healthy the wheat crop will be for a month or so. "We just don't know if we've got enough green growth and root strength," Brown said. Crops and grassland across the high plains thrived last year after a far worse drought from about 2010 to 2015. Some ranchers had just begun to rebuild their herds after cutting back during the earlier drought, when grazing was poor. Stanley Barby, a lifelong rancher in the Oklahoma Panhandle, said he had been adding to his herd slowly to protect the recuperating grassland. "We were trying to let that grass recover from the drought and so we didn't overgraze," he said. "We stocked really slow." But the thicker grass turned into fuel for last month's wind-driven wildfire. "That's why the fire was so hot, why it did so much more damage than usual," he said. Barby said his ranch is 65 to 70 square miles (160 to 180 square kilometers), and fire charred about 50 square miles (130 square kilometers). He lost nearly 50 cattle, three houses and more than 150 miles (240 kilometers) of fence. "We just put our heads down and go to work," he said. Barby, Clawson and other farmers and ranchers said they were overwhelmed by a flood of donations from farmers, ranchers and others who offered feed, fencing materials and cash. Students and 4-H members helped clean up. "They're just showing up, not asking for anything," Clawson said. "We're just very grateful for all the support that we've gotten, and the thing is, none of us know how to say thank you, or in the right way," he said. ___ Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP. His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/dan%20elliott. FILE - In this March 7, 2017 file photo, a lone cow wanders charred prairie following devastating wildfires in Clark County, Ark. The Western mountains are flush with snow and California has canceled its drought emergency, but some farmers and ranchers on the high plains are struggling amid a lengthy dry spell and the aftermath of destructive wildfires. (Michale Pearce/The Wichita Eagle via AP) ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - The Latest on mass detentions in Turkey related to last year's failed coup (all times local): 10:40 p.m. Turkey's state-run news agency says more than 9,000 personnel from the country's police force have been temporarily suspended while they are investigated for suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for last summer's failed coup attempt. Anadolu Agency said that the police personnel were removed from duty on Wednesday hours after Turkey launched nationwide operations, detaining 1,120 people with alleged ties to Gulen's movement. It was not immediately clear if the suspensions were directly connected to the detention of the suspects whom Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu described as "secret imams" who had allegedly infiltrated the police force. More than 100,000 people, including police, military personnel and teachers, have been purged from the civil service as part of the crackdown on Gulen's movement since the coup. ___ 5 p.m. The German government has criticized the detention of more than 1,000 people in Turkey as part of the probe into last year's coup attempt. A Foreign Ministry spokesman says that Germany believes the failed coup needs to be fully investigated "but the measures must adhere to the rule of law." Sebastian Fischer told reporters in Berlin that "we don't believe arresting 1,000 people so long after the putsch is really proportionate." Turkish police launched simultaneous operations across the country, detaining people with suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Relations between Berlin and Ankara have worsened in recent years amid a number of spats, including the arrest of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel in Istanbul. ___ 9:55 a.m. Turkey's state-run news agency says police have launched simultaneous operations across the country, detaining hundreds of people with suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Anadolu Agency says as many as 803 people were detained in raids conducted in all of Turkey's 81 provinces early on Wednesday. The suspects are allegedly Gulen operatives who directed followers within the police force. Some 8,500 police officers participated in the operation, Anadolu said. The detentions are part of a widespread crackdown in the wake of last summer's failed coup attempt, which Turkey says was orchestrated by Gulen's movement. More than 47,000 people have been arrested since the coup, Turkey's interior minister has said, including some 10,700 police officers and 7,400 military personnel. Gulen has denied orchestrating the coup. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Samsung Electronics reported its best quarterly profit in more than three years Thursday and forecast improvement for the full year as its semiconductor division posted its highest income ever. The South Korean company's stellar financial results beat expectations and reflect its ability to overcome the fiasco over its Galaxy Note 7s, which it pulled from the market when its batteries were found to be prone to overheating. That cost Samsung at least $5 billion. The secrets to its crisis-defying performance: microchips. Visitors try out Samsung Electronics Galaxy S8 Plus smartphones at its shop in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 27, 2017. Samsung Electronics said Thursday its first-quarter profit surged to the highest level in more than three years as its semiconductor division posted the highest income in the company's history. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) "The semiconductor business will continue to see a boom for at least a year ahead and its earnings result is on a roll," said Park Ju-gun, chief executive at CEO Score, a private corporate watchdog. Samsung Electronics is the world's largest memory chipmaker and second-largest semiconductor company after Intel. Its semiconductor department generated 6.3 trillion won ($5.6 billion) in operating income during the first three months of this year, more than double a year earlier. So nearly two-thirds of Samsung's operating income during the first quarter was generated by its semiconductor business. The first quarter is typically a slow season for chipmakers but market circumstances were especially favorable for companies like Samsung that are positioned to quickly and efficiently mass produce microchips. Global supplies were tight and consumer demand for more sophisticated and high-density mobile devices that can quickly multitask and process more images, videos and other data was strong. Data centers around the world are also handling growing amounts of data, with more and more gadgets connected to the internet. The tight supplies and solid demand, pushed prices for Samsung's key microchip products called NAND and DRAM up sharply, giving it fat margins. Such market conditions are unlikely to change in coming months, so analysts expect Samsung to rake in its best ever earnings in 2017. For the January-March period, Samsung's profit jumped 46 percent over a year earlier to 7.7 trillion won ($6.8 billion), compared with 5.3 trillion won a year earlier. According to data provider FactSet, analysts had expected a net income of 7.1 trillion won. Sales rose just 2 percent over a year earlier while operating profit surged 48 percent to 9.9 trillion won ($8.7 billion). For the full year, Samsung said its components business such as memory chips and mobile-phone screens known as OLED will drive profits. Samsung is betting on the Galaxy S8 smartphone, which uses curved OLED screens that wrap around its corners. The S8 and S8 Plus with larger screens went on sale last week with strong pre-orders. Samsung is still facing some acute headaches. Five of its top executives, including Lee Jae-yong, the de-facto leader and the only son of its chairman, were indicted on corruption charges in a political scandal that brought on months of public protests and resulted in the ouster of the South Korean president. The trial is expected to continue for several months. The Galaxy S8 smartphones has gotten favorable initial reviews, though some consumers complained that the screen appeared to have a pink hue. Samsung said it was not a product quality issue and it will release a software update to allow subtle adjustments of screen colors. Apart from its earnings, Samsung announced that after months of review it would not change the company's structure into a holding company. It said such a change carried more risks than benefits. That may disappoint investors who had thought such a change could boost share prices and increase transparency in dozens of Samsung businesses that are controlled by the Lee family despite owning only small stakes in each company, thanks to a web of complicated cross-shareholdings. Concern over transparency in the chaebol, as big South Korean family-controlled businesses are known, has intensified with the scandal over political donations that resulted in the indictments of Lee and other top executives. In a separate announcement, Samsung said that it would cancel treasury shares valued more than 40 trillion won ($35 billion). That will improve share prices and ease worries that those shares might have been used for the benefit of the Lee family, rather than for all shareholders. Middle school students try out a Samsung Electronics Galaxy S8 Plus smartphone at its shop in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 27, 2017. Samsung Electronics said Thursday its first-quarter profit surged to the highest level in more than three years as its semiconductor division posted the highest income in the company's history. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) The corporate logo of Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its shop in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 27, 2017. Samsung Electronics said Thursday its first-quarter profit surged to the highest level in more than three years as its semiconductor division posted the highest income in the company's history. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) Middle school students try out a Samsung Electronics Galaxy S8 Plus smartphone at its shop in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 27, 2017. Samsung Electronics said Thursday its first-quarter profit surged to the highest level in more than three years as its semiconductor division posted the highest income in the company's history. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) CHICAGO (AP) - The Billboard chart-topping rapper Kevin Gates has been sentenced to 30 months in an Illinois prison after pleading guilty to a gun charge. The 31-year-old Gates - whose legal name is Kevin Jerome Gilyard - of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was sentenced after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. According to court records, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Neil Linehan gave Gilyard credit for 34 days already spent in jail in the case. The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday (http://trib.in/2q7SchU) that Gates was arrested in Chicago and charged in October 2013. He avoided custody until March. Gates came to prominence in 2013 and his studio album "Isiah" reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 last year. NEW YORK (AP) - Giving workers a raise, investing in new machinery. Small business owners have long wish lists to choose from if the Trump administration's plan to lower tax rates becomes law - but most don't expect to go on a hiring binge. Some owners and small business groups hoped the dramatic cuts in corporate and personal taxes proposed Wednesday could mean more savings to invest in their businesses and more revenue coming in from consumers and businesses with some extra money to spend. Brian Hart, the sole owner of a public relations company in Philadelphia, said he would reinvest any tax savings into Flackable, but doesn't expect to have enough to hire employees. But lower tax rates could give his small business clients more money to spend on marketing, and that could mean expanding his staff down the road. Rick McVey, owner of Dilly Lily, poses for a photo at his shop Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in Chicago. If the Trump administration's plan to lower tax rates becomes law, it will likely benefit McVey. The florist has a range of possibilities, not just from the prospect of lower taxes, but that he'd get more business from customers who have more money to spend. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford) "It could ease the tax burden on the companies we work with so they could hire a company like hours," Hart said. Under President Donald Trump's proposal, small businesses owners who pay their business taxes at personal tax rates would see their top rate go from 39.6 percent to the proposed corporate tax rate of 15 percent. Those owners are sole proprietors, partners or shareholders in what are called S corporations, or pass-through entities, which under the tax laws are intended to be small or mid-sized companies. Nearly 80 percent of businesses are pass-through entities, a survey by the National Small Business Association advocacy group found this year. The remaining companies also stand to get a break on their rates, which would fall to 15 percent from 35 percent. There are still many unknowns about the Trump proposal, in particular, what changes Congress might make to offset the drop in tax revenue that lower rates would likely bring. And owners aren't guaranteed a windfall. For one thing, many aren't earning enough to get a tax break of $30,000 to $50,000, enough to perhaps hire a new staffer. Many also are likely already at the lower tax rates, which means they may not benefit from the proposal, said Emilio Escandon, a certified public accountant with the firm MBAF in New York. He notes, for example, that the 15 percent rate applies to couples whose taxable income - after all deductions and exemptions have been taken - is $75,900, an amount that owners of very small companies typically might earn. A tax savings will help companies' cash flow, and some will indeed have money to put toward expansion, whether that means hiring workers or investing in equipment, Escandon said. Some owners might decide to pay down their companies' debt or put the money toward personal uses like funding children's college education, he said. Florist Rick McVey has a range of possibilities, not just from the prospect of lower taxes, but because he might get more business from customers who have more money. McVey, owner of Dilly Lily in Chicago, is considering paying his staff more, but might also put it back into the business. "I may be able to invest the money to buy some capital equipment," he said. Donna Sebusch, owner of Cookie Creations of Atlanta, was pondering similar options, saying lower taxes could give her the opportunity over time to perhaps buy more machines that she needs for the shop, hire more people, or give her staff raises. Dan Golden doesn't expect lower tax rates to dramatically change his company; he's focused on profits, not spending. "I honestly don't think we would do anything different in terms of hiring," says Golden, whose Chicago-based company, Be Found Online, helps businesses use internet searches and other online strategies to increase their sales. But Golden did say that some of any potential savings could go toward bigger bonuses for the company's 60 staffers. Some small business advocacy groups hoped the proposed changes bring relief to owners in the upper brackets, and in turn help their companies and the economy. "The general trend seems to be trying to lower the rates significantly to get business owners spending and buying again," said Brad Close, senior vice president for public policy with the National Federation of Independent Business. The National Small Business Association also liked the proposal but was wary about what will happen when it reaches Capitol Hill. "Look at what happened with the health care bill," said Molly Day, a spokeswoman for the group. "I don't know that there's going to be a lot of optimism that this is going to get done." Mark Tuscherer, whose company designs websites and apps, would like to use possible tax savings for a hire, but plans to wait and see how his business is doing if and when lower rates take effect. "It really depends on how busy we are and what our year is looking like," says Tuscherer, co-owner of Geeks Chicago. "It would be a big benefit, but I couldn't just jump in." ___ Associated Press reporters Teresa Crawford in Chicago and Johnny Clark in Atlanta contributed to this report. _____ Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter.com/JoyceMRosenberg . Her work can be found here: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joyce-m-rosenberg MILFORD, Pa. (AP) - A gunman condemned to die for a 2014 sniper attack that killed a Pennsylvania trooper and injured a second arrived at the courthouse Thursday for his formal sentencing, one of his last stops before heading to the state's crowded death row. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary convicted of the late-night ambush attack at the troopers' barracks, was sentenced to death Wednesday by the same jury that previously convicted him of murder of a law enforcement officer, terrorism and other offenses. A judge is scheduled to formally impose the sentence Thursday afternoon. Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Tyree Blocker talks with reporters after cop killer Eric Frein was sentenced to death late Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pa.. Standing at right is former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Prosecutors said Frein, 33, was hoping to start an uprising against the government when he opened fire on the Blooming Grove barracks in the Pocono Mountains on Sept. 12, 2014. Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and Trooper Alex Douglass was critically wounded. Frein led police on a 48-day manhunt after the ambush, and for a time, he was among America's most wanted criminals. Prosecutors portrayed him as a remorseless killer who attacked troopers at random in hopes of fomenting rebellion. The defense had asked the jury to spare Frein's life, arguing he'd been raised in a dysfunctional home. The jurors rejected his upbringing as a mitigating factor that would point them toward a sentence of life in prison without parole. Frein's lawyers promised to tie up his case in appeals. There are 171 people on death row in Pennsylvania, which hasn't carried out an execution since 1999 and only three since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty more than 40 years ago. A statewide moratorium on executions has been imposed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. FILE - In this May 5, 2015 file photo, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Alex Douglass of Olyphant, Pa., shares a smile with Tiffany Dickson of Dunmore, Pa., during the conclusion of the annual Pennsylvania State Police Memorial honoring all members of Troop R past and present at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Dunmore, Pa. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday, April 26, 2017. Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and Trooper Douglass was critically wounded. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP, File) Eugene Michael Frein and his wife Deborah, parents of Eric Frein, who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, walk to the offices of defense attorney Michael Weinstein, next to the Pike County Courthouse on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in Milford, Pa. Frein was later sentenced to death for the killing of Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, and severely injuring Trooper Alex Douglass on Sept. 12, 2014, during a sniper attack on the Blooming Grove barracks. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Brian K. Dickson, father of slain Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, walks to an attorney's office next to the Pike County Courthouse on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in Milford, Pa. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday. Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and Trooper Alex Douglass was critically wounded. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Bill Ruzzo, defense attorney for cop killer Eric Frein, leaves the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pa., on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, during a break in the sentencing of Frein. Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Tyree Blocker talks with reporters after the verdict of death for convicted cop killer Eric Frein late Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pa.. Standing at left is former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Tyree Blocker, right, and former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan embrace after convicted cop killer Eric Frein was sentenced to death late Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pa. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) Pennsylvania State Police Lieutenant Brian Vennie is embraced by a friend during sentencing for convicted cop killer Eric Frein on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pa. Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP) FILE - In this May 3, 2015 file photo, parents Bryon Dickson, left, and his wife Darla Dickson, center, speak about their son, Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, with David Crosby Jr., pastor of Community Church during a service in Tobyhanna, Pa. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday, April 26, 2017. Cpl. Dickson II, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and Trooper Alex Douglass was critically wounded. (AP Photo/Michael Rubinkam, File) CAIRO (AP) - On a scaffold several stories high beneath the dome of a Cairo church, Ayman William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. And William, 41, who has painted murals in churches as far away as Kuwait and California, is happy to help. "God gave me talent and I must make use of it to serve him," said William, who was mostly self-taught and says he has drawn inspiration from the Bible during his 15 years in the profession, which he began learning after discovering an affinity for painting icons and murals with childhood friends. In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian Ayman William paints a scene of Samson at Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Dozens of characters leap out from the dome around him - Adam, Eve, Moses and Samson, as well as New Testament figures such as St. Mark, considered the founder of Egypt's Coptic Church. He's been working on it for nearly six months, and expects to finish in a few weeks. William has an assistant hoist his paintbrush, tools and palette to the upper levels of the scaffolding before he climbs up on a giant ladder. For many of the images, he uses models dressed up in period clothing to help him depict biblical scenes. "I have to make studies using the Bible in each drawing in order to get the specific description," he said. "Besides working for payment, I believe that what I am doing is a service to the church." Pope Francis will visit Egypt this weekend on a trip aimed at lifting the spirits of Christians in the Middle East, whose numbers have rapidly dwindled in recent decades due to war, displacement and emigration. Egypt's Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, marked a solemn Easter earlier this month, after suicide bombers attacked two churches in separate cities, killing dozens of worshippers on Palm Sunday. Last December a suicide bomber killed 30 people at Cairo's Coptic Cathedral. An Islamic State affiliate claimed all three attacks, and militant attacks on Christians in the northern Sinai Peninsula earlier this year forced hundreds of people to flee to safer parts of the country. Nevertheless, Coptic church attendance remains high in the wake of the attacks. Many, like William, are determined to go about their lives despite the violence. "Terrorism exists everywhere," he said. "Not just in Egypt, but also in places like Iraq, Syria and even France. But the places I go to for work are good places, safe places." In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian Ayman William paints a mural depicting Samson at Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, the shadow of Coptic Christian Ayman William is reflected on a dome where he is painting a biblical scene of Samson, at Mar Girgis Church in Zawiya al-Hamra, in Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian Osama Fawzy, an assistant to painter Ayman William, touches up a mural of St. Mark the Evangelist, at Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian painter, Ayman William stands in front of Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian Ayman William stands on scaffolding inside Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo, Coptic Christian painter, Ayman William, climbs scaffolding while working in Mar Girgis Church, in the Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. William paints for the glory of God, unfazed by recent attacks against his fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt. The church, deep within the dusty alleyways of one of the many "informal" neighborhoods that have sprung up to accommodate the capital's surging population, is building a new extension. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump, still chafing over rulings blocking his travel ban early this year, says he's considered breaking up the West Coast-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Asked during a White House interview by the Washington Examiner if he'd thought about proposals to break up the court, Trump replied, "Absolutely, I have." He added that "there are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous." The comments echoed his Twitter criticism of the court Wednesday morning. President Donald Trump pauses while speaking before signing the Education Federalism Executive Order, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Trump called U.S. District Judge William Orrick's preliminary injunction against his order stripping money from sanctuary cities "ridiculous" on Twitter. He said that he planned to take that case to the Supreme Court. But an administration appeal of the district court's decision would go first to the 9th Circuit. ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - Some visitors to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at California's Disneyland got a surprise: Captain Jack Sparrow himself. Johnny Depp donned the getup of his swashbuckling alter ego and interacted with riders on Wednesday. Videos taken by park goers and shared on social media show Depp chatting with fans as they passed by on the ride's boats. He also spoke to a crowd outside. Depp returns to the big screen as Sparrow next month in the fifth film based on the ride. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" opens May 26, after premiering at Shanghai Disneyland on May 11. WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is once again taking aim at a federal appeals court district that covers Western states, saying he is considering breaking up a circuit that is a longtime target of Republicans and is where his first travel ban was halted. Yet it would take congressional action to break up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans have introduced bills this year to do just that. Asked Wednesday during a White House interview by the Washington Examiner if he'd thought about proposals to break up the court, Trump replied, "Absolutely, I have." "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous," he told the Examiner. He accused critics of appealing to the 9th "because they know that's like, semi-automatic." The comments echoed his Twitter criticism of the court Wednesday morning. Democratic Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan and Jerrold Nadler of New York, members of the House Judiciary Committee, responded in a statement Thursday that Trump would "rather attack the judiciary than defend his inhumane and unconstitutional executive orders." "The Muslim ban is unconstitutional, the so-called 'sanctuary cities' order is unlawful, and the path forward on these issues does not involve recycling a tired proposal to dismantle the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals," the congressmen said. Trump called U.S. District Judge William Orrick's preliminary injunction against his order stripping money from so-called sanctuary cities "ridiculous" on Twitter. He said he planned to take that case to the Supreme Court. However, an administration appeal of the district court's decision must go first to the 9th Circuit. Republicans have talked for years about splitting the circuit into two appellate courts, but earlier legislative proposals have failed, most recently in 2005. Those battles have often pitted lawmakers from California against members from smaller, more conservative states. Critics say the court has a liberal slant, a high caseload and distances that are too far for judges to travel. The circuit is the largest of the federal appellate courts, representing 20 percent of the U.S. population. It includes California, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The circuit has 29 judicial positions, many more than the 5th, which is the next largest circuit with 17. The 9th Circuit was created in 1891 when the American West was much less populated. Democrats have opposed the split. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California was a leading opponent in the 2005 push, which she said was politically motivated. She has suggested adding judges to the court instead. In March, 9th Circuit judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents told lawmakers that breaking up the court was a bad idea. The 9th Circuit in February refused to immediately reinstate Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, prompting the administration to release a new, narrower ban. That also has been held up by the courts. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency presented its 2017-18 hunting seasons' proposals to its commission Wednesday, offering few recommended changes to its regulations. Members of the TWRA Wildlife and Forestry Division made the presentations in regard to deer, turkey, and bear seasons. In addition, a history of the TWRAs elk restoration efforts was presented for benefit of the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commissions recently appointed five commissioners. After hearing the proposals, the TFWC discussed the definition of an antlered deer. At last years season setting, the definition of what qualified as an antlered deer was changed to having any antler protruding above the hairline, rather than antlers above three inches in length. The commission will continue the discussion at its May meeting when the 2017-18 seasons are set. The commission also plans to continue discussion on turkey bag limits at the next meeting. While there were no changes recommended for the bear hunting seasons, it was proposed to implement standardized opening dates for the various bear seasons and hunt zones. TWRA has standardized opening dates for many other game species seasons. Various changes were recommended on wildlife management areas, public hunting areas, and national wildlife refuges. A public comment period on the proposals will be open until May 15, and a link to the proposed changes will be available for viewing soon on the TWRA website. During the deer season proposals, Assistant Chief of Wildlife Chuck Yoest shared the results of the most recent deer season. The total statewide reported deer harvest was 157,702 for 2016-17, with 86,007 bucks and 71,695 does taken by hunters. This was a six percent decrease from the previous year. Results show a continued positive trend in an increased age structure of harvested bucks. Bucks 2.5-3.5 years old comprised the greatest proportion (57 percent) of those sampled by staff, an all-time high. Additionally, the proportion of fawns in the buck harvest continues to decline over time, and to a lesser extent yearling harvest is declining. Mr. Yoest also presented information on the basics of chronic wasting disease (CWD). He detailed the distribution of the disease, reasons why hunters and the Agency do not want it in Tennessee, risk factors, and TWRAs response plan if it were to ever be discovered in the state. The Tennessee Wildlife Federation presented a resolution at the TFWC March meeting regarding strategic planning for white-tailed deer management. Yoest shared a vision for the program and an approach to inclusively involve partners and other stakeholders, and develop a plan comprehensively informing the agency and the commission on activities regarding the deer program. Before the meeting adjourned, TWRA Assistant Executive Director Barry Sumners was recognized for his service. He is retiring, effective April 28. Mr. Sumners joined the agency in 1979 as wildlife officer. He later became a wildlife manager before becoming the TWRAs Chief of Planning and Federal Aid. He moved into his current position in 2013 and coordinated all staff operations while continuing the duties of coordinating the agencys federal aid programs. The TFWC will establish the hunting seasons at its next meeting to be held May 23-24 on the campus of Bryan College in Dayton. RENO, Nev. (AP) - The star witness who helped convict the triggerman who killed a high-ranking Hells Angels' boss at a Nevada casino in 2011 says he was lying when he testified that the shooting was an assassination plot orchestrated by a rival motorcycle gang, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Prosecutors think the recantation is a lie, but it could make it more difficult to get another murder conviction against Ernesto Gonzalez, a former Vagos gang member. He's scheduled to be tried again in August after the Nevada Supreme Court threw out the conviction because of improper jury instructions. Legal scholars say it's hard to predict jurors' reaction to recanted testimony, but it raises questions about the claims of suspects who make deals with prosecutors to take the stand in exchange for more lenient sentences, as Gary "Jabbers" Rudnick did. FILE - In this Nov. 17, 2011, file photo, Vagos motorcycle gang member Ernesto Gonzalez is led from district court in Reno, Nev., after pleading guilty in the shooting death of Hells Angels member Jeffrey Pettigrew. Gary Rudnick, the star witness who helped convict the triggerman, Gonzalez, who killed a high-ranking Hells Angels' boss at a Nevada casino in 2011 said he was lying when he testified that the shooting was an assassination plot orchestrated by a rival motorcycle gang, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Gonzalez is scheduled to be tried again in August 2017 after his conviction was tossed on a technicality. (David B.Parker/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, Pool, File) His testimony helped put Gonzalez in prison for life for carrying out an organized hit on Jeffrey Pettigrew during a brawl on a crowded casino floor in Sparks that sent gamblers diving for cover under blackjack tables. Gonzalez, 59, insists there was no plot. He said he opened fire because Pettigrew and another Hells Angel were kicking his partner so hard he thought they would kill him. The only witness who claimed personal knowledge of the conspiracy was Rudnick, an ex-Vagos vice president from Los Angeles who provoked Pettigrew into fighting. He was released from prison in 2016 after serving two years for conspiracy to commit murder. Rudnick testified that the Vagos international president gave Gonzalez the "green light" for the killing as the gangs feuded over turf in San Jose, where Pettigrew was the Hells Angels chapter president. In new court filings, Rudnick claims he fabricated that story under pressure from prosecutors to get a plea deal that he thought would keep him out of prison and put him in the federal witness protection program. His declaration is not dated, but Gonzalez's lawyer, David Houston, told the AP it was signed May 17, 2016, in Las Vegas. "He states that he lied and there was never any conspiracy or meeting to 'green light' a hit," Houston said. "He says he was told he'd get probation if he testified the way the state wanted him to." In a handwritten note riddled with misspellings, Rudnick said "there was no conspiracy" to kill Pettigrew. "It was just a fight between me and him," he wrote in the document signed by two witnesses, including a private investigator hired by Houston. Rudnick says the prosecutor, Karl Hall, now Reno's city attorney, didn't believe his original account. "He told me ... what he wanted me to change to lie for him," Rudnick wrote, suggesting he had no choice but to comply. "I was looking at 25 years in prison." Hall declined to comment. Sean O'Brien, a professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Law School, said plea deals with co-conspirators raise questions about testimony that's later withdrawn. "There are incentives," O'Brien said of agreements providing leniency. "It is bought-and-paid-for testimony." Houston, Gonzalez's lawyer, said Rudnick's reversal is significant because he apparently committed perjury and it's unclear if he would show up if prosecutors tried to force him to take the stand again. Houston declined to comment on where Rudnick is now, and prosecutors would not say if they know his whereabouts, intend to subpoena him to testify or might charge him with perjury. Typically, in such situations - or when a witness dies - previous testimony can be re-entered into the record. But that's not necessarily the case if there's reason to believe it was false. It's a point of contention set for court hearings in May ahead of Gonzalez's new trial. "It is more likely that the recanting statement is false," Washoe County Deputy District Attorney Amos Stege wrote this month. He declined further comment. "Regarding the defense counsel's questionably timed 'affidavit,' courts across the nation universally regard post-conviction recantations with extreme suspicion," district attorney spokeswoman Michelle Bays said in an email. "The Vagos criminal enterprise is vast and they are known for violence, intimidation and extortion." Houston is trying to compel Rudnick's public defender to testify about the plea agreement at Gonzalez's new trial and bar the earlier testimony unless he reappears. "If the sworn declaration is to be believed, the state would propose to obtain a conviction against Mr. Gonzalez based on perjured testimony," Houston wrote in court documents last week. "Simply reading Mr. Rudnick's testimony in, when we all know it was false ... invites a second reversal on this case." O'Brien said judges should be "very cautious of this type of evidence no matter who is using it." "But to me, it's sort of counterintuitive when the prosecution says the testimony that we bought and paid for is more reliable than this gratuitous recantation," the professor said. O'Brien said former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Wolff put it best: "The only thing we really know about these people is they are liars." FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2011, file photo murder defendant Gary Rudnick enters the courtroom in Washoe District Court in Reno, Nev. Rudnick, the star witness who helped convict the triggerman, Ernesto Gonzalez, who killed a high-ranking Hells Angels' boss at a Nevada casino in 2011 said he was lying when he testified that the shooting was an assassination plot orchestrated by a rival motorcycle gang, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. (Marilyn Newton/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, Pool, File) FILE - In this July 22, 2013, file photo, Ernesto Gonzalez, followed by his attorney David Houston, enters Washoe District Court in Reno, Nev., for Washoe County Courthouse the start of his murder trial. Gary Rudnick, the star witness who helped convict the triggerman, Gonzalez, who killed a high-ranking Hells Angels' boss at a Nevada casino in 2011 said he was lying when he testified that the shooting was an assassination plot orchestrated by a rival motorcycle gang, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Gonzalez is scheduled to be tried again in August 2017 after his conviction was tossed on a technicality. (Marilyn Newton/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, Pool, File) LONDON (AP) - A British teenager accused of planning a bombing in London pleaded guilty Thursday to preparing terrorist acts. Prosecutors say Haroon Syed tried to buy weapons and explosives online from an extremist named "Abu Yusuf." The contact was actually a series of British intelligence agents. The 19-year-old told his contact he needed a machine gun and an explosive vest so he could "after some damage with machine gun do martyrdom." He said he was considering targeting London's busy Oxford Street and searched online for potential locations, including an Elton John concert in Hyde Park on Sept. 11, 2016 - the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Syed was arrested Sept 8. When police asked for the password to unlock his phone, Syed said: "Yeah, I.S.I.S. You like that?" Syed's elder brother, Nadir Syed, was sentenced last year to a minimum of 15 years in prison for plotting an Islamic State-group-inspired beheading to coincide with Remembrance Sunday war commemorations. Defense lawyers claimed Haroon Syed was a vulnerable young man who was groomed by radicals online but never intended to carry out an attack. His lawyer, Mark Summers, had asked for the case to be thrown out, saying authorities should have enrolled Syed in a counter-radicalization program "to steer him away from the path it was feared he was going down, rather than guiding him down it." Judge Michael Topolski refused to throw out the case, and Syed pleaded guilty at London's Central Criminal Court. He will be sentenced June 8. NEW YORK (AP) - On a plain, overcast day in Poland, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter walks toward the Nazi concentration camp Majdanek. He stands in the railway car that delivered him and his family to the camp. He walks to the gas chamber and the showers. Some rooms he can't bear to go in. He shares his recollections and tries to remember what he can of his family. All he can really visualize of his sister is the fleeting image of her golden braid of her hair. Walking with Gutter in Majdanek is an undeniably powerful way to make the Holocaust tangible, and to see it through a survivor's eyes. Now, being Gutter's companion as he revisits his painful past is an experience anyone can have just by putting on a headset. This image released by the Tribeca Film Festival shows a scene from the VR film, "The Last Goodbye," being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. A number of high-profile projects unveiled at the Tribeca Film Festival show the young medium pushing forward to unlock VR's power to create empathy, whether it's a Holocaust survivor or a crow voiced by John Legend. (Tribeca Film festival via AP) The virtual reality piece "The Last Goodbye," made from 3-D video and thousands of photographs at Majdanek, is being billed as the first Holocaust survivor testimony in room-scale VR. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where the medium's growing ambitions have been on display over the past week. What "The Last Goodbye" and other works show is that virtual reality, while still very much in its early days, has a potent ability to foster empathy. In transporting you to an intimate space with someone, it gives that old expression, "walk in my shoes," a new, high-tech, physical dimension. That's literally the concept behind Katheryn Bigelow and Imraan Ismail's "The Protectors: Walk in the Ranger's Shoes," an 8-minute, 360-degree visit with the Garamba National Park rangers. They defend the Democratic Republic of the Congo park from waves of poachers. Ismail, whose earlier, award-winning VR experience, "The Displaced," followed three child refugees, says of virtual reality: "It enables empathy because it enables a kind of presence in someone else's space. And breaking through apathy." "For me, it's exactly that. It's empathy," says Bigelow. "Here are these individuals who put their lives on the line in order to thwart the problem. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. In order to be able to help, you have to be very well informed." Big names filmmakers and actors are increasingly experimenting in VR, a fast-growing new media landscape that the investment bank Citi last fall forecast will be a trillion-dollar industry by the year 2035. Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") and Justin Lin ("Fast & Furious") have tried their hand in it, and in May, "Birdman" director Alejandro Inarritu will premiere a virtual reality project at the Cannes Film Festival. He has called it an effort to "allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants' feet, under their skin, and into their hearts." Jennifer Brea turned to VR for an accompanying experience to her Sundance entry film, "Unrest," about her battle with chronic fatigue syndrome. In the VR experience, the viewer feels what it's like to be bedridden in her room. Brea calls virtual reality "an engine of empathy." A sense of growth was palpable at Tribeca, which increased the size of its VR arcade this year. Loren Hammonds, a film and experiential programmer at Tribeca, sees a rapidly progressing medium where artists are continually reexamining their notions of how to orient the viewer. "The rules are being broken," says Hammonds. "There are constantly these sets of rules that keep being presented to creators: you can't move the camera or you can't cut. And the minute someone breaks it and it works, well, no more rule." Creators, many eyeing the neighboring booths in the Tribeca arcade, acknowledge there's a competitive atmosphere in VR that can feel like a land rush. Technology is one race, and all agree virtual reality is going to get exponentially smoother and crisper. "The Last Goodbye" has been "future-proofed," meaning that more detailed photography and video has been set aside for when the tech catches up, says Patrick Milling Smith, chief executive of VR production company Here Be Dragons. But storytelling is a race of its own in VR, a medium many call a combination of cinema and gaming. Should the viewer have agency to move and shape their experience? If so, to what degree? How do you guide them? For inspiration, Baobab Studios co-founder Eric Darnell, an animation veteran who co-directed the "Madagascar" films, has studied how magicians manipulate the eyes of their audiences. Baobab's first VR work, "Invasion!" supplied the viewer a partner - a little white bunny - for an alien arrival. "Now everyone is doing that," says Maureen Fan, chief executive of Baobab. "But a lot of people debated us on that. We felt that as a user, why are you there if you're a fly (on the wall) verses if you're a bunny? If you have a role to play, how much more do you feel for that character and feel immersed in that world?" At Tribeca, Baobab premiered the first chapter of an ambitious multi-part series, "Rainbow Crow," in which John Legend voices a mythical, sonorous bird forever changed by a cosmic adventure. "It's about love. It's about inclusion. It's about community," says Legend. The creators of the choose-your-own-adventure, live-action "Broken Night" wanted to take go further. In it, Emily Mortimer plays a woman with a hazy memory recounting a violent encounter with an intruder in her home. At various points in the story, viewers are given a choice to follow different paths in the story, which they select by looking to one side of the action or the other. "The problem with live-action VR today is it's not interactive," says co-director Tal Zubalsky. "Kind of the whole promise of VR is to get you to a different place. But if you get there only as an observer and not as a participant, then you're not really there." ___ Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP This image released by the Tribeca Film Festival shows a scene from the VR film, "The Last Goodbye," being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. A number of high-profile projects unveiled at the Tribeca Film Festival show the young medium pushing forward to unlock VR's power to create empathy, whether it's a Holocaust survivor or a crow voiced by John Legend. (Tribeca Film festival via AP) TORONTO (AP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he told Donald Trump that canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement would cause a lot of disruption, swaying the U.S. president to shift his stance on the trade agreement. Trudeau said the pair had a good conversation Wednesday night and that Trump said he was seriously considering withdrawing from the 23-year-old pact. But after their chat, the leaders agreed to improve the trade agreement to benefit the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Trump tweeted Thursday that the U.S. will remain in the trade agreement after calls he received from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trudeau. The White House released a statement late Wednesday saying only that Trump had assured the two leaders that the U.S. would not withdraw from NAFTA at this time. DAY 25 - In this Feb. 13, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump smiles during a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) In his Twitter post, Trump called America's relationships with the two hemispheric neighbors "very good" and said the prospects of a renegotiated deal are "very possible." But he also said that his consent to remaining is "subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA." Trump also said Thursday that he didn't announce the cancellation of NAFTA this week because he likes his North American counterparts - a comment that made his Trudeau chuckle when asked about it during a press conference in Saskatchewan. The phone chats came after U.S. administration officials said Trump was considering a draft executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the deal - though administration officials cautioned it was just one of a number of options being discussed by the president and his staff. "I'm happy to engage with the president regularly," Trudeau said. "What we've talked about over the last couple of days is trade and I've been emphasizing that NAFTA has been improved a dozen times over the last 20 years." "We're happy to sit down and talk about how it can be improved now for our citizens and improved economic growth for our countries and we will continue to amplify the impact and strength of the North American economy." Trudeau said he reminded Trump they both were elected on a similar platform of helping people find and keep jobs. "Canceling NAFTA, even if theoretically it might lead to better outcomes, would cause a lot of short- and medium-term pain for an awful lot of families," said the Liberal Party leader. Trump railed against the decades-old trade deal during his campaign, describing it as a "disaster." Reworking the agreement had been one of Trump's key campaign promises, but it's up against a clock. The U.S. Congress has yet to authorize negotiations and there might be less than a year to get a deal before the Mexican presidential election. Some analysts watching events this week believe there's a simpler explanation for what's been going on: Trump wants to flex some muscle entering the negotiations and the threat to pull out is his strongest lever. "I think the draft (executive order) was a negotiating ploy. True to Trump's style. The only surprise was the quick reversal," said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and a top U.S. NAFTA expert. Trump has recently been bearing down on Canada. This week the US administration announced it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada. Trump has also been railing against changes in Canadian milk product pricing that he says are hurting the American dairy industry. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is opposed to a push to help Puerto Rico resolve its $70 billion debt load as the U.S. territory faces looming austerity measures amid a deep economic crisis. Trump issued a Twitter blast aimed at efforts to help the island cover its Medicaid costs - an issue that's entangled in Puerto Rico's last-minute debt negotiations. "The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!" he tweeted. Trump was referring to negotiations over a huge, government-wide spending bill that includes myriad elements, including abortion-related issues and Obama-era regulations on the environment on regulating Wall Street. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said at a news conference on Thursday that Puerto Rico remains one of several "outstanding areas of concern." Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby legislators for relief from a decade-long economic crisis that is blamed partly on previous administrations in the territory that borrowed billions of dollars to cover budget deficits. Rossello repeated requests that Puerto Rico receive the same amount of Medicaid funding that U.S. states do. It currently receives lower Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements compared with U.S. states, forcing it to spend more than $1 billion a year in Medicaid alone above what it would face if it were a state. Nearly half of the island's 3.4 million inhabitants rely on Medicaid. "Democrats are trying to bail out insurance companies from disastrous #ObamaCare, and Puerto Rico with your tax dollars. Sad!" Trump wrote. Rossello replied in a tweet: "The American citizens of Puerto Rico deserve to be treated fairly. Health and civil rights are not partisan issues." Rossello's spokeswoman issued a press release on Thursday stating that Trump's statements "do not reflect the overall sentiment regarding the discussion and analysis going on in Congress on this issue." Puerto Rico faces a May 1 deadline to either reach a deal with bondholders to restructure a portion of its debt or embrace a bankruptcy-like process. The local government has been negotiating with bondholders since last week. Puerto Rico legislators on Wednesday alleged that some Republicans were leading efforts to force Puerto Rico to delay implementation of a bankruptcy-like process in exchange for an increase in Medicaid funds. Puerto Rico expects to have completely spent its $6.4 billion worth of supplemental Medicaid funding by December 2017. That means the island would face an additional $850 million in health care spending by next fiscal year if Congress takes no action. A federal control board overseeing Puerto Rico's finances warned this week that without additional Medicaid funds, the island could either drop hundreds of thousands of Medicaid recipients or redirect money originally set aside to pay creditors and fund public services. The crisis has prompted thousands of unionized government workers to go on strike this week to protest upcoming austerity measures, and tens of thousands of students at Puerto Rico's largest public university have been on strike since early this month to protest millions of dollars of looming cuts. ___ Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report. WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump has signed a memo ordering an expedited investigation into whether aluminum imports are jeopardizing U.S. national security. Trump says aluminum is "critical" for national defense. He says the U.S. can't afford to become dependent on foreign imports in dangerous times. High-purity aluminum is used for a number of defense purposes, including in military planes and in the armor-plating of military vehicles. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Wednesday that there is only one American smelter still in operation that produces high-purity, aerospace-quality aluminum. Trump says he assured the CEO of Century Aluminum that the administration will bring back jobs for workers the company recently had to lay off. Trump signed a similar measure investigating steel imports last week. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency chief on Thursday pulled out of a Republican fundraiser after a Democratic senator raised ethics concerns. A spokesman for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he would not be attending next week's Oklahoma Republican Party gala. Pruitt, who previously served as Oklahoma's elected attorney general, had been scheduled as the keynote speaker. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse filed an ethics complaint against Pruitt on Tuesday. The Rhode Island Democrat says Pruitt's participation would violate the Hatch Act, which limits political activity by executive branch employees. FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2017, file photo, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks to employees of the EPA in Washington. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse filed an ethics complaint on April 25 against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt over a planned May 5 appearance as the keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Republican Party's annual gala dinner. The Rhode Island Democrat says that would violate the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of executive branch employees. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) The invitation for the May 5 fundraiser sent out by the state GOP specifically praised Pruitt's support for cutting federal regulations limiting planet-warming carbon emissions. Before joining the Trump administration, Pruitt often raised campaign money from fossil-fuel companies and their executives. "You do not want to miss Pruitt at this year's OKGOP Gala, as he discusses his plans to slash regulations, bring back jobs to Oklahoma, and decrease the size of EPA!" said a flyer for the event sent out by the state party. "Make sure to purchase your Gala tickets so you don't miss out on Administrator Pruitt's future plans and how he will continue to Drain the Swamp!" EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said the agency did not approve of the legally questionable wording on the flyer. "We worked closely with our ethics counsel to ensure compliance, and when we received the invitation, we understood immediately that it did not conform to our rules and acted accordingly," Freire said. The Hatch Act prohibits executive branch employees from using their government position or tittle "while participating in a political activity" or "in connection with fundraising activities." Sponsorship levels for the upcoming GOP gala range from $2,000 to $5,000. Individual tickets for the dinner cost $100, with special "VIP" access available for another $50. In his complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, Whitehouse said the GOP's invitation promoting Pruitt's appearance constitutes a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act. The senator said Thursday a "thorough investigation" should go forward even though Pruitt is no longer going. "Scott Pruitt has a long record of dark money fundraising and cozy relationships with big, fossil-fuel political donors," said Whitehouse, who is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "The American people need to know whether he is using his position at EPA to promote the political actors who support him." ___ Follow Associated Press environmental writer Michael Biesecker at www.Twitter.com/mbieseck MANTOLOKING, N.J. (AP) - One of the biggest obstacles to public beach access in New Jersey may be coming to an end. A Jersey shore community that was devastated by Superstorm Sandy may drop drastic limitations on street parking that had the effect of making it difficult if not impossible for outsiders to use its beaches. Mantoloking proposes dropping its longstanding law limiting parking to no more than two hours because the federal government is insisting on more parking as a condition of spending tens of millions of dollars on a beach replenishment project in town. The protective work is badly needed in Mantoloking, where virtually every one of the 521 buildings that existed before the October 2012 storm was damaged or destroyed by it. Borough Councilman Chris Nelson said the change is being made at the behest of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "Part of the deal with the Corps is increased access," Nelson said Thursday. "In Mantoloking, a lot of things have to change. That's part of the requirement from the Army Corps." In response, the borough proposed a new parking ordinance Tuesday that will extend the two-hour limit to four hours. It also will allow parking along the shoulder of Route 35, which was forbidden before, and parking will be unlimited on the street closest to the ocean and some of its side streets. Mantoloking's onerous parking restrictions were among the most discouraging to public beach access in New Jersey, but they were far from unique. Other towns also restrict parking near the beach, do not provide public restrooms nearby and prohibit beachgoers from bringing food and drinks other than plastic water bottles onto the sand. "Wow! I'm in shock," said Ralph Coscia, president of Citizens Right To Access Beaches, who has long criticized Mantoloking's parking restrictions. "This is a good sign. We hope other towns follow suit. We're glad they finally realized that access is an important component of beach replenishment, and parking is a big part of access." Steve Rochette, a spokesman for the Army Corps, said the agency insisted on adequate public access and parking as a condition for doing the beach work, a standard that will continue to be applied to future projects in New Jersey and elsewhere. "There does have to be sufficient parking," he said. The former policy was so restrictive it allowed motorists to park for only two hours anywhere in town within a 24-hour span. Those who moved their car to a different spot on the same street or even to a different street still were subject to being ticketed. The new policy would permit motorists to move to a different spot on the same street after four hours. The ordinance will be the subject of a preliminary vote May 16, with a public hearing and final vote scheduled for June 20. ___ Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC HONOLULU (AP) - The parents of a Hawaii six-year-old boy who disappeared 20 years ago had long been suspects, but without a body, there never has been any concrete confirmation that the child known as "Peter Boy" was dead until his mother pleaded guilty to manslaughter last year and agreed to testify against her husband. The boy hasn't been found, but authorities now know where his father says he dumped his remains. That development was spurred by Jaylin Kema accepting a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter, agreeing in court to facts a prosecutor laid out about abuse suffered by the boy, her failure to get him medical treatment and his eventual death. Her plea deal called for a one-year jail sentence, with credit for time served. This undated photo released by the Hawaii Department of Public Safety shows Jaylin Kema. The mother of a Hawaii boy who disappeared 20 years ago was released from jail Thursday, April 27, 2017, after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the 6-year-old's death. (Hawaii Department of Public Safety via AP) A judge granted her supervised release on Thursday, the day that marked one year of incarceration. She was allowed to leave the Hawaii Community Correctional Center soon after returning from a court hearing, said state Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Toni Schwartz. When she pleaded guilty, she agreed to waive her marital privilege and testify against her husband, Peter Kema Sr. But instead of going to trial, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this month in a deal with prosecutors requiring him to reveal where Peter Boy's remains are in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence. On Sunday, while shackled and accompanied by his defense attorney, he rode in a van with police and prosecutors and guided them to a site in the Big Island's rural Puna district where he says he disposed of the remains, said Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth, who declined to disclose specifics about the location. Police will need help from outside agencies to try to find the remains, Roth said. Roth and police accompanied Peter Boy's siblings, grandfather and an aunt to the site Wednesday, where the family said prayers, lit a candle and carried a lei for Peter Boy. On the drive there it suddenly rained, Roth recalled after the outing. "We talked about it being tears from heaven. It was like Peter Boy crying, 'they're finally coming for me,'" Roth said. "When we got to the scene, not a drop of rain. The sun came out." Family members collected some soil from the area, Roth said. After Peter Boy vanished in 1997, he became the face of a Hawaii campaign for missing and abused children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Posters and bumper stickers asked, "So where's Peter?" Prosecutors believe the boy died of septic shock from not getting medical care for an arm injury. Despite having health insurance, his mother did not get her son medical treatment and did not report the abuse because she was afraid of her husband, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rick Damerville said after her plea hearing. She is scheduled to be sentenced on June 13. Her plea agreement calls for 10 years of probation and the year she has already served in jail. Her release before sentencing is contingent on her undergoing drug testing, not leaving the Big Island and having no contact with her children, Damerville said. She plans to return to the Puna home where she lived when she was arrested on welfare fraud charges, said her court-appointed attorney, Brian De Lima. The Kemas were separated at the time, he said. Keeping them apart during their incarceration was key to the case because prosecuting them without a body would be difficult, Roth said. Peter Kema had long ago told authorities that he took his son from the Big Island to Oahu and gave him to someone named "Aunty Rose Makuakane" in an informal adoption. Police could not find a woman as described by Kema or airline records that indicated he had flown there. If Peter Boy's remains can't be recovered, Kema must pass a polygraph test. Roth said it seems like Kema is being truthful about the location. "However, they lied for 20 years, so I'm cautiously optimistic," he said. File - This June 6, 2016 file photo taken in Honolulu shows a bumper sticker Hawaii officials distributed in a campaign for a Hawaii boy who disappeared 20 years ago. The child, known as "Peter Boy," became the face of missing and abused children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The father of a Hawaii boy who went missing 20 years ago has led police to the site Sunday, April 23, 2017, where he disposed his son's remains. Peter Kema Sr. is providing information about the location of the boy's body as part of a plea deal reached earlier this month. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, File) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on tensions on the Korean Peninsula (all times local): 6:35 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says China has asked North Korea to conduct no further nuclear tests. FILE - In this Saturday, April 15, 2017, file photo, commandoes march across the Kim Il Sung Square during a military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, to celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung, the country's late founder and grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong Un. North Korea observers have long marveled at the ability of a small, impoverished, autocratic nation to go toe-to-toe with the world's superpowers. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File) Tillerson says China also told the U.S. that it had informed North Korea "that if they did conduct further nuclear tests, China would be taking sanctions actions on their own." The top U.S. diplomat made the remarks in an interview Thursday on Fox News Channel. Tillerson adds that the U.S. is not seeking regime change in North Korea. He says, "What we are seeking is the same thing China has said they seek - a full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." ___ 11:15 a.m. With international support, the Trump administration wants to exert a "burst" of economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea that yields results within months to push the communist government to change course from developing nuclear weapons. Susan Thornton, the acting top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, says there's debate about whether Pyongyang is willing to give up its weapons programs. She says the U.S. wants "to test that hypothesis to the maximum extent we can" for a peaceful resolution. But signaling that military action remains possible, Thornton has told a Washington think tank that the administration treats North Korea as its primary security challenge and is serious that "all options are on the table." Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will chair a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday to galvanize international action. ____ 10:32 a.m. The senior U.S. Navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific says the crisis with North Korea is at the worst point he's ever seen. But he declined to compare the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis decades ago. Adm. Harry Harris Jr. is commander of U.S. Pacific Command. He tells a Senate committee, "It's real." Harris says he has no doubt North Korea intends to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States. The admiral says there's uncertainty within U.S. intelligence agencies over how far along North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are. But Harris says it's not a matter of if, but when. Harris also says he doubts the North Korean people will rise up to topple North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Boaters may have noticed recently that there is a large number of fish dying along the shoreline throughout Kentucky and Barkley lakes, an occurrence that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is aware of and investigating. The dead fish are silver carp, an invasive species that can negatively impact native fish and recreational boating. Because of these threats, the TWRA has been working to stem their expansion into new waters. While we are trying to learn how to slow or stop their expansion, the recent die-off of thousands of fish for whatever reason has occurred naturally, said Frank Fiss, chief of TWRAs Fisheries Division. We have collected samples of the dead fish and sent them to a lab to identify the cause of the disease. This type of analysis is not always conclusive, but we are trying to gather as much information as possible. Silver carp and bighead carp are among a family of invasive Asian carp that were imported to the USA in the early 1970s. They escaped into the Mississippi River decades ago and have steadily spread into numerous bodies of waters, including rivers in Tennessee. Growing numbers of carp are a threat to native species because Asian carp rely primarily on plankton as a food source, which is an also important source of food for native species, especially at smaller sizes. Silver carp can also pose dangers to boaters as they often respond to motor vibration or noise by leaping as boats approach or pass through schooling fish that can weigh 30 to 40 pounds. Most of the dead fish that we have seen have been two years old but there are a lot of dead fish, and we are probably only seeing a tiny percentage of what actually inhabits the reservoir, said Mr. Fiss. The widespread die off does not seem to be impacting other fish species, which is good news for game fish and anglers said Mr. Fiss. We appreciate all the reports we have received, and we want everyone to know we are aware of the die off and are monitoring it. Rail workers from across the country have staged a protest outside Parliament as part of a long-running campaign against controversial changes to the role of guards. They held up banners which read Safety Before Profit and Keep The Guard On The Train as disputes continued to rage at three train companies. The Rail, Maritime and Transport union said a 24-hour strike on Arriva Rail North will go ahead on Friday after a meeting failed to break the deadlock over driver-controlled operation for new trains, while talks with Southern will resume next week. The protest marked a year since the start of the dispute on Southern, which has seen RMT members take 31 days of strike action. RMT general secretary Mick Cash accused the Government of causing the disputes and of tying the hands of companies over staffing of the railways. He said Arriva had rejected a proposal to invite the Transport Department to join talks aimed at finding a solution. (Victoria Jones/PA) The public, who support RMTs campaign for a guarantee of a guard on their trains, will be appalled that Arriva Rail North have failed yet again to offer any kind of progress whatsoever in the talks and have instead opted to try and bulldoze through their plans regardless. It is that flagrant disregard for the safety issues at the heart of the dispute which leaves us with no option but to press ahead with the campaign of strike action. Richard Allan, deputy managing director of Arriva Rail North, said: It is disappointing that RMT was unwilling to move from its current position during our talks. (Phil Noble/PA) Our employees want us to talk about changes we need to make to the on-board role as we modernise our railway. We believe we would keep a second person on many of our services and, at some locations, we may choose to staff the station to give better support to customers. In addition to protecting jobs and current pay, we are also willing to offer future, annual pay reviews for existing conductors if we can agree a deal with RMT. It is hugely disappointing that RMT is making demands rather than working with us to develop our plans. There is so much to discuss and we urge them to get back round the table. Andy Murray has been given a walkover into the third round of the Barcelona Open after Bernard Tomic pulled out with a back problem. Murray had been due to face the Australian on Wednesday lunchtime having been given a bye in the first round. No match for Andy Murray today. Given a walkover by Bernard Tomic, who has a back injury https://t.co/4HUqRR04ia Eleanor Crooks (@EleanorcrooksPA) April 26, 2017 But shortly before the start of play the tournament announced that Tomic, who defeated Dustin Brown in three sets in the first round, had withdrawn. Although it is positive news on the surface for Murray, the world number one entered the tournament to get more matches under his belt as he works his way back from an elbow injury. The Scot returned to action last week in Monte Carlo after more than a month on the sidelines but, having beaten Gilles Muller in his opening match, lost to Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Bernard Tomic has a back injury (Steve Paston/PA) Murray will play the winner of a clash between Spaniards Albert Montanes and Feliciano Lopez in the third round. British number three Dan Evans is also through to the third round after picking up his first ATP Tour wins on clay and will face fourth seed Dominic Thiem on Thursday. The Trump administration has said it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme. The news came as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action against an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous US adversary. President Donald Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defence secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. Police officers stand guard as buses with Senators aboard depart Capitol Hill in Washington headed to the White House to get a briefing on North Korea (Susan Walsh/AP) The same team was also meeting with House members in the Capitol to outline the Norths escalating nuclear capabilities and US response options to what they called an urgent national security threat. After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Mr Trumps approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners. It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the US would defend itself and friends. READ: Joes statement after North Korea briefing at the White House. https://t.co/HhAp98fkab pic.twitter.com/t3JTUlC9I6 Archive: Senator Joe Donnelly (@SenDonnelly) April 26, 2017 The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Koreas progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the US mainland. A flurry of military activity, by North Korea and the US and its partners on and around the divided Korean Peninsula, has added to the worlds sense of alert. While tensions have increased since Mr Trump took office, they have escalated dramatically in recent weeks as American and other intelligence agencies suggested the North was readying for a possible nuclear test. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, foreground, transits the Philippine Sea (Sean M. Castellano/US Navy via AP) Although such an explosion has not yet occurred, Mr Trump has sent high-powered US military vessels and an aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while the North conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, earlier this week. On Wednesday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious US missile defence system that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns. Americas Pacific forces commander Admiral Harry Harris Jr told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational within days. Admiral Harry Harris Jr testifies on Capitol in Washington (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) He said any North Korean missile fired at US forces would be destroyed. If it flies, it will die, Admiral Harris said. The Trump administration has said all options, including a military strike, are on the table. But the administrations statement after briefing senators all 100 members were invited outlined a similar approach to the Obama administrations focus on pressuring Pyongyang to return to long-stalled denuclearisation talks. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford, right, talks with Defence Secretary Jim Mattis as they emerge from an all Senators briefing on the situation in the Koreas at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington (Carolyn Kaster/AP) Mr Trumps top national security advisers said they were open to negotiations with the North, though they gave no indication of when or under what circumstances. The strategy hinges greatly on the co-operation of China, North Koreas main trading partner. Among the options are returning North Korea to the US state sponsor of terrorism blacklist, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week was under consideration. His spokesman, Mark Toner, said on Wednesday that another tactic is getting nations around the world to close down North Korean embassies and consulates, or suspending them from international organizations. But sanctions will be the greatest tool at the Trump administrations disposal. Mugwump its an insult that perhaps only Boris Johnson would use, and it appears that even he did not know exactly where it came from. Quizzed on TV about his description of Jeremy Corbyn as a mutton-headed old mugwump, the Foreign Secretary said he had borrowed it from author Roald Dahls childrens classic Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. (Ben Birchall/PA) In fact, the word appears not in that book but in the much-loved story-tellers 1972 follow-up, Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator, in which Willy Wonka refers to Mrs Bucket as my dear old muddle-headed mugwump. But Dahl himself was borrowing from earlier sources when he used the term, which has made a surprising number of appearances in popular culture with a series of entirely different meanings. 'I apologise to mugwumps everywhere' - @BorisJohnson has little regret about his verbal mud-slinging at Jeremy Corbyn Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 27, 2017 Explaining where he had found it, Mr Johnson told ITV1s Good Morning Britain: Its a long time since I read it, but I think its in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. I think Willy Wonka says it either to the parents of Violet Beauregarde or Augustus Gloop. In fact, mugwump was initially a native American term for a war leader, which was taken up in the 1880s to describe members of the US Republican party who switched to support Democrat presidential candidate Grover Cleveland. "Mugwump" - that would be Boris Johnson who's own "Mutton head" has been put in charge of the Foreign Office by "Strong Leader" Theresa May! Ian Mearns MP for Gateshead (@IanMearnsMP) April 27, 2017 For some time afterwards, the word was used in the US to describe a political turncoat. More recently, mugwumps featured in the graphic and surrealistic 1959 novel Naked Lunch by Beat Generation writer William Burroughs filmed by David Cronenberg in 1991 as a bizarre and reptilian alien species. The term also appeared in the best-selling Harry Potter series to describe members of the International Confederation of Wizards, of which the character Albus Dumbledore was appointed Supreme Mugwump. Mugwumps even entered the UK pop charts in 1994 when they were mentioned in the chorus of Bomb The Bass hit Bug Powder Dust, a homage to the Burroughs book. Here is a timeline of the key events leading up to and during Donald Trumps first 100 days as US president. 2016 Billionaire businessman Donald J Trump is elected as president of the United States, beating the Democrat candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. The property tycoon announces he will voluntarily hand over control of his business empire to his two sons Donald Jr and Eric. Im honored & humbled to be officially elected today as the next Vice President of the United States of America by the Electoral College. Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) December 19, 2016 Mr Trump surpasses 270 votes in the US Electoral College to formally win the presidency, despite protests and pressure from thousands of voters to abandon him. 2017 After meeting with intelligence officials, the president-elect says that alleged hacking by Russia had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the US election. Boris Johnson (Victoria Jones/PA) Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson flies to New York for talks with key members of Mr Trumps team. US media report on the circulation among top officials of a dossier containing lurid allegations about Mr Trump. The document was compiled by a British former MI6 agent and denounced on Twitter by the then president-elect as FAKE NEWS. Large crowds watch as the reality TV star is sworn in as the 45th president before he delivers an inauguration speech in which he says the date will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. About the size of the inauguration crowd: Here are @AP images made just before noon (the time when oath is taken) at 2009 and 2017 events. pic.twitter.com/HjD5xmZuJi Mike Sisak (@mikesisak) January 21, 2017 Mr Trump accuses the media of lying about the size of the Inauguration Day crowd, which he said was up to half a million and backed up to the Washington Monument. Photos and public transport data suggest otherwise. The president signs executive actions to advance the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, which opponents claimed could undercut a global climate change deal and affect drinking water and Native American cultural sites. 'People want protection and a wall protects. All you have to do is ask Israel...' @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/QeTbiJpaDY President Trump 45 Archived (@POTUS45) January 27, 2017 Mr Trump signs immigration actions to build a border wall, saying: Weve been talking about this right from the beginning. Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto cancels a trip to Washington and a few hours later Mr Trump calls for a 20% tax on imports from Mexico to pay for the southern border wall. Theresa May meets Donald Trump (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Prime Minister Theresa May becomes the first foreign leader to meet the president for talks just a week after his inauguration. In a joint press conference at the White House, the pair hail the US-UK special relationship and Mrs May says Mr Trump has accepted an invitation from the Queen for the president to make a state visit to Britain later this year. Just hours later, the president signs an executive order for new vetting measures, barring those fleeing from Syria indefinitely and imposing a 90-day ban on entry to the US for people from seven Muslim-majority nations. He says the decision is to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the country. Mrs Mays spokesman says she does not agree with the refugee ban and will make representations if it affects Britons. A petition calling for Mr Trumps state visit to the UK to be cancelled reaches one million signatures. Mrs May responds that the Government looks forward to hosting him. The US state department is forced to reverse visa cancellations for up to 60,000 foreigners after a federal judge blocks Mr Trumps travel ban. The Justice Department appeals against a court ruling blocking Mr Trumps travel ban, with the president saying aliens have no constitutional rights to enter the US. Speaker Bercow just cancelled Trump visit to parliament. A proud moment for Commons. Racism and sexism not welcome here. Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) February 6, 2017 Commons Speaker John Bercow tells MPs the travel ban has made him even more strongly opposed to President Trump addressing both Houses of Parliament during his state visit, saying it is not an automatic right, it is an earned honour. A US appeals court refuses to reinstate the ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations. The president tweets: SEE YOU IN COURT. The Trump administration says it will revise its travel ban order, and will not pursue an appeals court review. A judge in Hawaii puts the revised federal travel ban, which lifted restrictions on Iraqi citizens, on hold. Sean Spicer (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeats allegations made by a former judge on Fox News TV that former president Barack Obama used Britains surveillance agency GCHQ to spy on Mr Trump before he became president. In a break with convention, the listening post dismissed the claims as nonsense and utterly ridiculous. White House assures UK Government allegations that GCHQ spied on Donald Trump will not be repeated pic.twitter.com/WT8nDOaLDq Richard Woodward (@WoodwardRJ) March 17, 2017 The White House assures the UK Government that allegations that GCHQ spied on Mr Trump will not be repeated. FBI director James Comey confirms the agency is investigating possible co-ordination between President Trumps associates and Russia. Mr Trump signs an executive order rolling back Mr Obamas efforts to combat climate change. A US judge rules the president must pay 25 million dollars (20 million) to settle lawsuits over Trump University, ending years of litigation. Bashar Assad (SANA via AP) President Trump blames Syrian president Bashar Assads regime for a chemical attack which left nearly 90 people dead, including civilians, in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria. The president orders a barrage of 59 cruise missiles targeting an airbase on Syria in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack. The British Government says it fully supports the US action, which it says is intended to deter further attacks. Mrs May telephones Mr Trump and is thanked for her support over the air strikes. The leaders agree a window of opportunity now exists in which to persuade Russia to abandon Assad. Russia vetoes a UN resolution condemning the chemical weapons attack and calling for an international probe. Mr Trump says the US is not getting along with Russia at all, and relations are at an all-time low. The president also says in a television interview that he made the decision to launch the retaliatory air strikes while eating the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake as he dined with Chinas president Xi Jinping. Afghans wear masks of President Trump and others as they carry a model of the "Mother of all bombs" during a demonstration in Kabul (Massoud Hossaini/AP) The largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the US military, known as a massive ordnance air blast (MOAB) weapon and dubbed the mother of all bombs, is dropped on IS caves in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan. Mr Trump warns North Korea it has gotta behave a day after the isolated nations failed medium-range missile test. His intervention came after a North Korean ambassador accused the US of creating a scenario in which thermonuclear war may break out at any moment. Briton Jolyon Palmer has described Formula Ones move to improve cockpit safety as unnecessary. The sports governing body, the FIA, are keen to increase driver head protection and a meeting of the Strategy Group in Geneva on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to develop the so-called shield. The shield, a transparent screen which sits in front of the driver, was presented at the Chinese Grand Prix earlier this month, and it has now surpassed the halo, a device which was trialled last year but attracted criticism for its ugly appearance, as the FIAs preferred option. But Palmer, who was also critical of the halo, is against its introduction. I am pleased that the halo is not coming, but I dont want the shield either, Palmer, now in his second season in the sport, said. My views have not changed. Ferrari were one of the teams to trial the halo device last year (David Davies/PA) Formula One is safe enough as it is. Drivers would not be racing in it if they were worried for their own safety. Everyone is still racing and Fernando Alonso is going to race in Indy 500 which is way more dangerous. I prefer the shield to the halo as it is less offensive visually, but it is still not necessary. It goes halfway. It can maybe stop some things, but not others. It is not as good looking as just a normal Formula One car and I prefer normal Formula One. The drivers had been asked to vote on the halo ahead of the new season, but their feedback was mixed. And the shield has also caused division in the paddock. Sebastian Vettel, Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas are among those in favour, but Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean joined Palmer in their opposition. #FIA - The @F1 Strategy Group and Commission met today and agreed changes which will now be passed to the WMSC #F1 https://t.co/MZ9124YQmT FIA (@fia) April 25, 2017 However, Lewis Hamilton, who had described the halo as the worst-looking modification in Formula One history, and labelled the canopy another concept trialled last year as a bloody riot shield, is more sympathetic towards the shield. I quite like it, Hamilton, 32, said. It is pretty cool and definitely better than all the other options that have come to light so far, but whether they can make it work we shall see. The FIA are keen to improve cockpit safety following a number of high-profile incidents in recent years. Henry Surtees the son of former world champion John Surtees was killed in a Formula Two race at Brands Hatch in 2009 after he was struck by a tyre. British driver Justin Wilson died at an IndyCar event in 2015 when he was hit on the crash helmet by flying debris. BMC Racing rider Stefan Kung secured a second straight victory for home Swiss fans to celebrate following a breakaway finish on stage two of the Tour de Romandie which was again dogged by poor conditions. The start of the scheduled 161 kilometres leg had been moved 22km from Champery to Aigle because of concerns over snow and low temperatures, while torrential rain and sleet troubled the riders as they closed in on the finish. Having formed part of a four-man group heading on towards Bulle, it ended up being a final sprint between Kung and Andriy Grivko of Astana after they pulled clear of Lotto-Soudals Sander Armee and Frederik Veuchelen of Wanty-Groupe Gobert. Stefan Kueng from Switzerland of team BMC Racing (Jean Christophe Bott/AP) The Swiss rider then got himself into a defendable lead on the race to the line to follow up Michael Albasinis victory on Wednesday. Italian Sonny Colbrelli of Bahrain-Merida claimed the bunch finish for third. Prologue winner Fabio Felline retained the overall leaders yellow jersey for Trek-Segafredo, keeping his eight seconds advantage over Maximilian Schachmann, the German Quick-Step Floors rider, and Movistars Jesus Herrada. The peloton cross the line in Bulle for the first time. Conditions still very poor. 2'28" gap with 20km left. Viviani distanced #TDR2017 pic.twitter.com/9xWu5o08zE INEOS Grenadiers (@INEOSGrenadiers) April 27, 2017 Britains Chris Froome remains 29 seconds off the pace as the Team Sky rider finished in a frozen peloton, with Simon Yates for Orica-Scott 18 seconds behind Felline in the general classification standings. Fridays third stage is schedule to run over 187km starting and finishing in Payerne. Theresa May has dismissed as hypothetical a suggestion from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that it would be difficult to say No to supporting further US air strikes against Bashar Assads regime. The Prime Minister stressed the importance of finding a solution with a political transition away from president Assad. Mr Johnson had suggested it would be hard to turn down a request to support Donald Trump if he sought to launch further strikes in response to any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. And the Foreign Secretary indicated that the Prime Minister might not seek MPs approval in a parliamentary vote before British forces were deployed. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson arriving at at interview with LBC (Yui Mok/PA) Mrs May sought to play down the prospect of military action, saying: This is a hypothetical issue because there is no proposal on the table for further strikes in Syria. What is important is that we look to see how we can bring about a solution in Syria that is going to lead to a strong and stable Syria. That means a political transition, it means political transition away from president Assad. On a campaign visit in Chesterfield she said the UK had been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to say to the Syrian regimes backers, including Russia, that now is the time to stop president Assad from bombing his own people. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said it was critical for ministers to obtain Parliaments consent before taking action, and warned Mrs May not to do so under cover of the election period, when there were no MPs in place. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Government should focus on securing a political settlement in Syria, rather than taking unilateral action. Mr Johnson called for a move away from Bashar Assad's regime (Sana via AP) Mr Johnson said there was no question that Assads regime was responsible for the sarin gas attack earlier this month which prompted a US retaliatory cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base. Asked whether Britain would be ready to join the US in similar action if the chemical assault was repeated, Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: I think it would be very difficult for us to say no. How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the Government, for the Prime Minister. But if the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime dont forget, it was Assad who unleashed murder upon his own citizens with weapons that were banned almost 100 years ago if the Americans choose to act again and they ask us to help, as I say, I think it would be very difficult to say no. Britain is carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq against terrorists of the so-called Islamic State (IS), but has taken no military action against the Assad regime. Protests were held against the 2015 air strikes (Yui Mok/PA) MPs backed the action against IS in a December 2015 Commons vote but rejected strikes against the Syrian government in 2013. Mr Johnson said that the question of whether parliamentary approval would be needed for any military action needs to be tested. Pressed on whether the Government would have to bypass Parliament if there was a phone call in the night calling on the UK to support US action, he told LBC radio: You are putting your finger on the issue. There is no legal requirement on the Government to seek parliamentary approval before ordering military action but it has become convention to consult MPs, except in the event of an emergency. The senior US Navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific has said the crisis with North Korea is at the worst point he has ever seen. Admiral Harry Harris Jr, commander of US Pacific Command, declined to compare the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but told a US senate committee: Its real. Admiral Harris said he has no doubt North Korea intends to develop a nuclear missile capable of striking the United States. We have to deal with the Kim Jong-un that is #AdmHarris before Senate Armed Services Committee and @SenJohnMcCain #SASC pic.twitter.com/TRPo5KBanK U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (@INDOPACOM) April 27, 2017 He said there is uncertainty within US intelligence agencies over how far along North Koreas nuclear and missile programmes are, but added that it is not a matter of if, but when. He also said he doubts the North Korean people will rise up to topple their leader, Kim Jong Un. The Trump administration has declared that all options, including a targeted military strike, are on the table to block North Korea from carrying out threats against the United States and its allies in the region. Kim Jong Un during a ceremony in North Korea (AP) However, a pre-emptive attack is unlikely, US officials have said, and the administration is pursuing a strategy of putting pressure on Pyongyang with assistance from China, North Koreas main trading partner and the countrys economic lifeline. With international support, the Trump administration said it wants to exert a burst of economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea that yields results within months to push the communist government to change course from developing nuclear weapons. Susan Thornton, the acting top US diplomat for East Asia, said there is debate about whether Pyongyang is willing to give up its weapons programmes. She said the US wants to test that hypothesis to the maximum extent we can for a peaceful resolution. Thornton: Sanctions definitely one aspect of the toolkit to address #NorthKorea problem @FollowFDD @USAsiaPacific pic.twitter.com/FsLEJhKHnj Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (@USAsiaPacific) April 27, 2017 Signalling that military action remains possible, Ms Thornton told an event hosted by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a right-leaning Washington think tank, that the administration treats North Korea as its primary security challenge and is serious when it says all options are on the table. After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, Donald Trumps national security team held a briefing on North Koreas advancing nuclear capabilities which served to damp down talk of military action amid alarm over Pyongyangs atomic and missile testing. A joint statement from the agency heads made no specific mention of military options, though it said the US would defend itself and its allies. Allies and partners in the #IndoAsiaPacific look to America as the region's security partner of choice. #SASC pic.twitter.com/h2IpKOU9mq U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (@INDOPACOM) April 27, 2017 Admiral Harris told the committee that the financial sanctions imposed against the North Korean regime by the US and other countries have done nothing to slow North Koreas quest for weapons of mass destruction. He also said he has been sceptical of Chinas willingness to exert its influence over North Korea and convince Pyongyang to pull back from the brink. But Admiral Harris said he has become cautiously optimistic following recent talks between Mr Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping. Substitute Wissam Ben Yedder scored three minutes after coming on as Sevilla moved level on points with third-placed Atletico Madrid with a 2-1 win at home to 10-man Celta Vigo. The Frenchman stabbed home a low cross from the left at the near post to settle Sevilla nerves in the 79th minute. Joaquin Correa had put the hosts in front four minutes after the break when a hopeful ball lumped forward was headed into his path on the right of the area. Joaquin Correa scored the first goal (Nigel French/Empics) He took the ball in his stride as he burst into the area and slammed a shot high into the net. Iago Aspas levelled from the spot four minutes later, the penalty awarded for holding on Guidetti and the decision hotly contested by Sevilla players. Aspas coolly slotted his effort low down the middle as Sergio Rico dived to his right. The mid-table visitors lost Pablo Hernandez to a second yellow card in the 56th minute, but they continued to frustrate Sevilla until Ben Yedders poachers finish. Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander on Wednesday made the following statement on the Trump Administration executive order ensuring faithful implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act the new education law that Alexander sponsored to restore local control of classrooms: In 2015, there was a consensus that No Child Left Behind needed to be fixed and, remarkably, there was a consensus on how to fix it: Continue the laws important measurements of academic progress of students but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student achievement, Senator Alexander said. Parents and teachers should welcome the presidents commitment to ensuring that the Education Department is faithfully executing the education law as Congress wrote it putting states and local communities back in charge of their classrooms. The Trump Administration executive order issued Wednesday instructs Secretary DeVos to ensure strict compliance with laws passed by Congress related to K-12 education that prohibit Federal interference with State and local control over education including statutory provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As a result of ESSA and other federal education laws, the federal government is specifically prohibited from interfering with: State standards; State assessments; Curricula or programs of instruction; How state or local educational resources are allocated; Weights of indicators in State accountability systems; How to identify and fix low-performing schools; State goals for student achievement and graduation rates; and Teacher evaluation systems. The directive also instructs Secretary DeVos to review all regulations and guidance documents related to K-12 education and ensure those regulations or documents comply with the laws passed by Congress. BRATISLAVA, April 26 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Slovak financial markets on Wednesday. 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================================ BANKS: The Slovak central bank decided on Tuesday to maintain a countercyclical capital buffer for banks at a rate of 0.5 percent. Story: Related stories: CURRENT ACCOUNT: Slovakia's current account showed a surplus of 56 million euros ($61.00 million) in February after a deficit of 87 million euros in January, the central bank said on Tuesday. Story: Related stories: 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 (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) By Tim Weiner April 26 (Reuters) - Admit nothing. "Youre the puppet!" Deny everything. "Trump Russia story is a hoax!" Make counteraccusations. "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process." Thats Donald Trump reacting to the Kremlins malevolent meddling in the 2016 election. The net effect of these comments can be summarized by one word: stonewalling, the tactic of the Confederate Civil War General Stonewall Jackson, whose motto was "mystify, mislead, and surprise." Jackson died after he was shot accidentally by his own troops - and Trump needs to watch his right flank in days to come. His allies in Congress have tried to defuse the explosive Russia affair, and to confuse the citizenry with wild charges. That tactic isnt working. Some Republicans now want a hearing in the Senate. The congressional intelligence committees cannot stay silent. The Federal Bureau of Investigation will not retreat. The stone wall surrounding the White House may not stand. Whether Americans conspired with Russian spies to disrupt democracy is one of the thorniest questions the FBI ever has confronted. Its investigation will hover over the White House for many months. Two weeks before Trump was inaugurated, the leaders of every major U.S. intelligence service told him they had concluded that his election had been supported by the Kremlin. Russia worked to damage Hillary Clinton and help Trump - in part by purloining Democratic party emails and weaponizing them through WikiLeaks, a publisher of stolen secrets. "I love WikiLeaks!" candidate Trump had proclaimed when his opponent was wounded. But WikiLeaks was a "hostile intelligence service" abetted by Russian spies, who used it "to release data of U.S. victims...obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee," Trumps CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said on April 13. He added: "Russias primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks." Love WikiLeaks or hate it, Russia used it to great effect, injecting poison pills into the American mainstream. Was Trumps campaign allied in any way with this warfare? Trump himself egged on Russias hacking. He praised President Vladimir Putin while Putin was making war on the American political system. His first campaign manager, Paul Manafort, lost his job for longstanding ties to Russian-aligned oligarchs; these included a political consultancy intended to "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, served as a paid mouthpiece for RT, then was fired for lying to his superiors about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. The FBI is following a trail in cyberspace. It will seek evidence of ties - personal, political, financial - between members of Team Putin and Team Trump. Farther down that path, the FBI may reach a crossroads. Will its counterintelligence case, the pursuit of spies, evolve into a criminal case, with charges presented for prosecution? Will Trump himself become a subject of the investigation? A sitting president cannot be indicted, but he can, as Richard M. Nixon was, be named as an unindicted co-conspirator by a federal grand jury. He can also, in the Nixon tradition, cloud the political landscape with lies and inventions. "President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!" Trump proclaimed in an early-morning tweetstorm last month. "This is Nixon/Watergate." It was, but only in the sense that the president was blowing smoke in the eyes of the American people. This particular falsehood set the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes of California, careening down a blind alley. He cancelled scheduled committee hearings while setting off in futile search of evidence to support the presidents lie. He made a dead-of-night trip to obtain secret documents from two National Security Council staffers (one his former aide, the other Flynns hand-picked intelligence officer). He proclaimed they showed that Team Trump was wrongly targeted by Obamas spies - a charge as baseless as Trumps tweet. This bizarre charade forced him to recuse himself from the investigation of the case. He is now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for his conduct. Nunes cancelled House Intelligence Committee hearings and knocked his committee out of business for five weeks. On May 2, it restarts - in a closed-door hearing - to learn more from FBI Director James Comey, who gave reticent but resonant testimony on camera in March, when he confirmed that the FBI was on the case. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been seemingly somnolent since shortly after Trumps inauguration. Behind closed doors, its unusually small staff is reviewing top-secret documents that led the American intelligence establishment to conclude that Russia was disrupting democracy. The American public knows next to nothing about these records. The committee clearly intends to summon Flynn. But Flynns failure to disclose payments from RT has left him in legal jeopardy, and he wants immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Whether the Senate committee can compel his appearance is dubious. So is its immediate future: it has issued no subpoenas, scheduled no public hearings, and set no scope for its inquiry. But the secrecy of the intelligence committees soon will be pierced. News broke Tuesday that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing - entitled "Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election" - on May 8. Two crucial figures will appear. Both were set to testify at the House hearings before Nunes went off the reservation. They are the former National Intelligence Director James Clapper - the top American spymaster under Obama - and the former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Remember Sally Yates? She was running the Justice Department when Trump fired her in January. She had warned the Trump White House that Mike Flynns deceptions about his talks with Putins ambassador made him vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Her successor, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself from the Russia affair due to his own undisclosed chats with Moscows envoy. Someone at the Justice Department has to oversee the FBI investigation - but exactly who is an open question. Someone in Congress has to carry out public hearings - but the will to do so has wavered in past weeks. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people want someone to get to the bottom of this mess. Public trust in government being what it is, those same polls show a desire for a politically independent inquiry. Expect a social-media groundswell to erupt next month: Sally Yates for special prosecutor. Stranger things have happened in this epic spy story. (By Tim Weiner) ASUNCION, April 26 (Reuters) - Paraguay's lower house of Congress on Wednesday rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed for presidential re-election, ending a month-long political crisis that aroused violent protests. Under the measure, center-right President Horacio Cartes could have sought re-election in 2018. But last week, the former soft drinks and tobacco mogul who took office in 2013 said he would not run regardless of whether the amendment was approved. Protesters set fire to Congress on March 31 after the Senate secretly voted in favor of the amendment. Police later stormed an opposition political party's headquarters and killed a protester. Re-election is a sensitive subject in Paraguay, a landlocked South American country where memories still abound of a brutal 35-year dictatorship that fell in 1989. The constitution has prohibited re-election since it was passed in 1992. "We have lost interest in continuing to push for this due to our candidate's decision," said Hugo Velazquez, a member of the lower house and member of Cartes' Colorado Party. The lower house's move was also a blow to former leftist President Fernando Lugo, whom lawmakers ousted in 2012. Several of his congressional allies had supported the proposed amendment in the hopes he would run again in 2018. Investors favor Cartes' low-tax policies and credit him with spurring growth in Paraguay, the world's No. 4 soy exporter and long one of South America's poorest countries. But business groups had urged him not to seek another term, in order to avoid more riots. (Reporting by Mariel Cristaldo and Daniela Desantis; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Peter Cooney) BUCHAREST, April 27 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Thursday. DEBT ISSUANCE Romanian debt managers may release May debt issuance data. In April, they sold 4.39 billion lei worth of leu currency bills and bonds. BANCA TRANSILVANIA Romanian lender Banca Transilvania recorded a net profit of 246.17 million lei ($59.56 million) in the first quarter, up 7.7 percent on the year. MONEY SUPPLY Romanian M3 money supply rose 12.2 percent on the year to 315.14 billion lei ($75.93 billion) at the end of March and was up 0.9 percent on the month, central bank data showed on Wednesday. PETROM Romania's top oil and gas firm OMV Petrom, controlled by Austria's OMV said on Wednesday shareholders had agreed to distribute dividends of 0.015 lei per share share for 2016. The total gross value of the dividends totalled roughly 850 million lei ($204.49 million). DIGI Cable and internet provider DIGI Communications N.V. said it expected the share price for its initial public offering on the Bucharest Stock Exchange to range between 38 and 56 lei per share. At top price, the IPO could be worth 1.22 billion lei ($293.62 million). CEZ BULGARIA CEZ has received several offers for its Bulgarian assets, a company spokesman said on Wednesday, the next step in the Czech utility's push to offload its Balkan assets. Four Bulgarian, one Czech and one Romanian company made bids to acquire the Bulgarian assets in a deal estimated at up to 400 million euros ($435 million), the source said. CEE MARKETS Polish equities climbed to their highest since mid-2015 on Wednesday as attention turned to local news in Central European markets and away from the risks related to France's elections. For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on For other related news, double click on: --------------------------------------------------------------- Romanian equities RO-E E.Europe equities .CEE Romanian money RO-M Romanian debt RO-D Eastern Europe EEU All emerging markets EMRG Hot stocks HOT Stock markets STX Market debt news DBT Forex news FRX For real-time index quotes, double click on: Bucharest BETI Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX -------------------------------------------------------- By Thin Lei Win BANGKOK, April 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Two years after powerful twin earthquakes in Nepal killed thousands of people and displaced millions, the slow pace of reconstruction offers an opportunity for the Himalayan nation to change its economic model, which leans heavily on remittances from Nepali migrant workers abroad, labour rights groups say. Less than a fifth of destroyed homes have been rebuilt, according to media reports - a rate of progress that has attracted criticism. But this presents "a unique moment" for Nepal to create jobs that protect workers' rights, pay fair wages and boost the economic status of its citizens, according to a new report by U.S.-based groups Solidarity Center and JustJobs Network. A lack of employment opportunities - linked to years of political instability following a Maoist insurgency - pushed around half a million people from the South Asian nation of some 26.5 million to leave home in 2014 for low-paid, often risky work abroad, government figures show. "The disaster is a wake-up call," said Gregory Randolph, executive vice president of JustJobs Network and the report's lead author, referring to the quakes that hit Nepal in April and May 2015. "It is an opportunity for Nepal's leaders to pivot from an unsustainable trajectory of dependence on labour migration toward domestic job creation and a more inclusive vision of economic growth," he added. The report urges the government to invest in repairing and building infrastructure such as highways, irrigation and power systems to create direct employment, encourage foreign investment and facilitate trade networks. For example, agricultural products like cardamom, ginger and vegetables from quake-hit communities could be processed and packaged in the southern plains where a majority of migrants originate and border links with India make exports easy. The report also recommends setting up a portal to connect graduates of government training programmes in masonry, plumbing and electrics with employment on construction sites, including those where homes are being rebuilt after the quake disaster. In addition, disaster recovery centres for businesses could help incubate job-creating enterprises, and programmes launched that certify skills returning migrants have acquired abroad. The report proposes that Nepal's government negotiate with international aid donors to free up quake recovery funds for measures to stimulate the local economy. LOW-PAID AND EXPLOITED Nepal, home to Mount Everest, is one of the world's poorest countries. Its economy relies on labour migration rather than jobs that keep its workers in the country, aid agencies said. Migration is not new for Nepal, but between 2008 and 2012, the government introduced legal reforms and regulations to make it safer and more formal, which appears to have stoked the recent wave of departures. Between 2008-09 and 2014-15, the number of annual registered migrants from Nepal more than doubled - to nearly half a million from fewer than 220,000, the report said. Remittances are now equivalent to 32.1 percent of the country's GDP, up from 10.9 percent in 2004, it added. Migrants are mainly men who labour in manufacturing and construction, and increasingly women doing domestic work. For many, pay is low and some are subjected to physical abuse and forced labour, studies have shown. Malaysia is the top destination, closely followed by Gulf nations such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to the International Labour Organization. "Today, every second household in the country has at least one family member working in a foreign country," the report said. Aid workers say this has profound effects on family life. "Once women migrate, the children become vulnerable, and often families are compelled to separate," said Madhuwanti Tuladhar, child protection coordinator with aid agency Plan International in Nepal. "If we can create jobs within the country, the ties of families will be stronger and our economy will be vibrant." The 2015 earthquakes also caused migration inside Nepal. More than four out of five people displaced by the disaster in the 14 most-affected districts have moved to different villages, the United Nations said. (Reporting by Thin Lei Win, editing by Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) COPENHAGEN, April 27 (Reuters) - Danish energy group DONG Energy posted first quarter profit below analyst expectations on Thursday, with the lack of any wind farm divestments so far this year proving a drag. The Danish company, whose listing in Copenhagen in June was one of the biggest globally last year, has profited from being a pioneer in offshore wind for two decades and has build more than a quarter of the world's wind farms at sea. However, its wind division lagged expectations as its operating profit declined by 26 percent to 2.14 billion in the first three months of the year from 2.9 billion in 2016. "It looks dramatic but it has nothing to do with the operations. It is about when you realise your incomes," Sydbank analyst Morten Imsgard told Reuters. With the upcoming 50 percent divestment of its Walney Extension wind farm in the Irish Sea and the construction of its Race Bank farm off the east coast of England, DONG said partnership incomes would feed through later in the year "All in all the partnership gains will exceed what we've seen in 2016 so it's just a matter of timing," said Chief Financial Officer Marianne Wiinholt. That figure was 1.6 billion crowns last year. The shares fell 2.7 percent to 265.60 crowns by 0740 GMT, compared with a flotation price of 258 crowns. DONG Energy, the biggest owner of offshore wind power in Europe followed by Sweden's Vattenfall, has a strategy of farming down, or selling off, stakes in wind farms in order to use the capital to invest in new projects. But over the past year, prices for new projects were pushed to record lows by companies eager to establish a foothold in the market, which could mark an end to high returns in the industry. The firm reported earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 3.3 billion crowns, compared with 4.04 billion crowns seen in a Reuters analyst survey. DONG, which is still aiming to sell its oil and gas business this year, maintained its expectations for EBITDA for continuing operations of 15-17 billion crowns this year and investments of 18-20 billion crowns. (Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard, additional reporting by Jule Astrid Thomsen, writing by Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Keith Weir) By Dominique Vidalon and Pascale Denis PARIS, April 27 (Reuters) - Hermes said sales growth accelerated in the first quarter, beating expectations, as more Asian and American shoppers bought its Constance and Lindy bags, adding to evidence of a recovery in the luxury goods industry. The French luxury goods group, also known for its $10,000 Birkin bags and $400 printed silk scarves, joined larger rivals LVMH and Kering - owner of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent - in reporting strong quarterly sales. Chief Executive Axel Dumas said that while all regions achieved good growth, Asia did "particularly well" thanks to stronger demand in mainland China. The U.S. business also performed strongly. Hermes struck a cautious note over its outlook, saying that the growth seen at the end of March would not necessarily continue over the full year. Hermes reported an 11.2 percent rise in revenue at constant exchange rates to 1.352 billion euros ($1.47 billion) compared with 6.6 percent growth in the last quarter of 2016. This was above analysts' expectations of 8.8 percent growth. BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca, who has a "sell" rating given Hermes' high valuation, said the performance was beyond expectations but not on the scale of that delivered by Kering and LVMH. By 0733 GMT, Hermes shares were up 0.69 percent at 435.7 euros. Hermes shares rose 25 percent last year, and are up nearly 11 percent since the start of 2017, after hitting a record high of 468.3 euros on April 24. The first quarter increase was led by a 15 percent jump in sales at its leather goods division, which makes up half of group sales, and by a 16 percent rise in Asian sales. Echoing its peers, Hermes said the improvement was driven by most regions and by a pickup in demand from Asian customers, notably Chinese, both locally and abroad. . "In China, there is an acceleration with a growing appetite for consumption following a government stimulus package launched in 2016," Dumas told a conference call with journalists. "Hong Kong and Macau are also back to a positive momentum. Overall the dynamism of mainland China drives the whole region." The luxury industry has suffered in the past couple of years as demand in China slowed and attacks in France deterred some tourists from travelling to Europe. Asked about news this week that the family of French billionaire Bernard Arnault plans to sell its Hermes shares as part of a move to simplify its business interests, Dumas said: "The impact will eventually be favourable on the liquidity of the Hermes shares." Arnault's family company is offering to pay for the buyout of minority shareholders in the Dior holding company partly with shares in Hermes, it which it still has an 8 percent stake. ($1 = 0.9173 euros) (Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Andrew Callus and Adrian Croft) By Krisztina Than BUDAPEST, April 27 (Reuters) - Hungarian businessman Tamas Szemerey plans to boost his stake in MKB Bank and is looking at more acquisitions in the sector after taking a 20.2 percent indirect stake in MKB, he told newspaper Magyar Idok on Thursday. State-owned MKB, Hungary's fifth-largest lender by assets, was privatised last year after its distressed assets had been spun off under a restructuring plan approved by the European Commission. The bank said on Wednesday that Szemerey bought a 20.2 percent indirect stake in MKB via his company BanKonzult, while MKB Bank Chief Executive Adam Balog took a 9.8 percent indirect stake via his company Promid Invest. Szemerey and Balog invested in MKB by buying the owner of a Luxembourg-based fund called Blue Robin Investments SCA which bought 45 percent of MKB from the state last year. The bank's sale last year was managed by the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) -- the central bank -- which took control of MKB after Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government bought it from Germany's BayernLB in 2014. The purchase of MKB was a key plank in Orban's strategy to have more than half of the country's banks in Hungarian ownership. The two new investors have links to his government. Szemerey is a cousin of National Bank Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy, one of Orban's strongest allies. Balog, a former state secretary at the Economy Ministry under Matolcsy, was also a deputy governor under Matolcsy at the central bank, before taking over at MKB as the central bank wrapped up MKB's resolution. Szemerey also owns small Novekedesi Hitel Bank. He told Magyar Idok that he had not asked for information about MKB from his cousin, Matolcsy, before he decided to buy a stake. "My relationship with Gyorgy Matolcsy is of a family nature. I have never asked for any information with relation to MKB Bank from him, and I'm sure that he would not have given any such information anyway," Szemerey said. Szemerey said it was conceivable that either alone, or with other banks or investors, he would bid for further stakes in other local banks in the future. "Now I am mostly preoccupied with the possibility of acquiring a further stake in MKB, but this is not a goal that we want to achieve at all costs," he said. The National Bank of Hungary declined comment. A Hungarian private equity fund called Metis owns 45 percent of MKB, while Hungarian pension fund Pannonia owns 10 percent. The ownership structure of Metis is not known. Hungary's top three banks are OTP, K&H Bank and Italian-owned Unicredit. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Keith Weir) DAKAR, April 27 (Reuters) - An appeals court has upheld the life sentence for Chad's former President Hissene Habre, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the final decision of a landmark case, a judge presiding over the court in Senegal said on Thursday. Habre, 74, an ally of the West during the Cold War, was sentenced last year to life in prison for rape and ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule. His lawyers had appealed the decision, saying the sentence was too severe. The final verdict marks the end of a 17-year battle by victims and rights groups to bring the former strong man to justice. (Reporting by Diadie Ba; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Richard Lough) HELSINKI, April 27 (Reuters) - Finnish pulp, paper and packaging board maker Stora Enso scrapped plans to expand its paperboard mill in Poland because of an over-supplied market as it delivered a weak profit forecast on Thursday. Stora announced the investment in the mill in Ostroleka, Poland last year, estimating the project's costs in the region of 350-400 million euros. Presenting its interim report on Thursday, the company said that there were several new paperboard projects in the pipeline in Europe at the moment that will affect the product's market balance. "We can not meet our capital return targets if we go ahead with that (expansion plan)," chief executive Karl Sundstrom told a news conference. In January, Stora Enso said it would also likely scrap its plan to build a 700-800 million euro pulp mill in China, where it is currently ramping up a paperboard mill. Analyst Antti Viljakainen from Inderes Equity Research welcomed both cancellations, saying the projects had looked uncertain. "They are still ramping up the paperboard mill in China, so it is not at all necessary to jump into a large growth project right now... Also, both Poland expansion and China pulp plant looked questionable," he said, adding that Stora will likely look to boost its paperboard capacity in China in the coming years. Stora's first quarter core profit, 215 million euros, came in slightly above market expectations, but it forecast a similar second-quarter profit which disappointed investors. Shares in the company fell 4.5 percent by 1104 GMT. In the past decade, Stora Enso has shifted towards packaging board from graphic papers - such as newsprint and magazine paper - which have faced falling demand as publishing moves online. (Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle) In its annual recognition of companies that are exemplifying practices that result in manufacturing excellence, the Tennessee Association of Manufacturers (TAM) has named Roadtec, Inc., headquartered in Chattanooga, as the winner of the Company of the Year Excellence Award. We are very proud to have been selected for this prestigious honor, which underscores the Astec Core Values that all of us here live each day, said John J. Irvine III, president of Roadtec. This truly is an honor that all at Roadtec have earned and can share, because we all work to a common goal of serving our customers. Mr. Irvine went on to point out that the companys commitment to product quality is interwoven with its safety practices and being good stewards of the community and environment. It all fits together and contributes to this achievement, he said. The award not only recognizes Roadtecs current employees commitment, but those of the past also. The qualifications that must be met for this manufacturing excellence award is a process and a commitment that takes years to implement and sustain. To win the award, Roadtec needed to excel in the following categories and criteria: Shows a strong corporate commitment to safety Displays evidence of a solid environmental program with improvement as a target Displays evidence of energy-reduction process improvements as a target Displays evidence of quality improvements in the overall manufacturing process with the aim to provide the customer with zero defective products Shows evidence of continuous improvement in manufacturing methods Displays evidence of sound practices in business operations Shows evidence of employee engagement Employee appreciation is apparent Displays evidence of community involvement Site is clean, safe and well organized The Tennessee Association of Manufacturers hosted its annual Manufacturers Excellence Awards Luncheon where Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander delivered the keynote address. The Manufacturers Excellence Awards are presented in the categories of Energy, Environment, Safety and Company of the Year, and serve to distinguish entire organizations for their overall achievements and positive impacts. In addition to Roadtec, award finalists included AdTech Ceramics, Astec, Inc., Chattanooga Labeling, EPB, Koch Foods, Lectrus, Miller Industries, Siskin Steel, and Tennessee American Water Company. Tim Lewis, director of operations for Roadtec said, Winning such a wonderful award not only makes us feel good, but motivates us to continue making Roadtec a safe environment to work in and a producer of high quality equipment which is an exceptional value to our customers. By Igor Ilic ZAGREB, April 27 (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic fired three cabinet ministers from his junior coalition partner on Thursday in a row that will force him to patch together a new majority or call an early election. Plenkovic ordered the dismissal of the ministers from the centre-right Most (Bridge) party after they failed to support Finance Minister Zdravko Maric in his handling of a corporate crisis. A previous coalition between the two parties fell apart last year after just six months, triggering a snap election as recently as September. A second one could hold up government reforms aimed at improving the business climate and boosting growth prospects in one of the European Union's weakest economies. Plenkovic, from the conservative HDZ party, said he had sacked the Most ministers because they had damaged confidence among members of the cabinet. "The HDZ will ensure there is a parliamentary majority to continue the work of the government. We will make sure political stability remains," he told a news conference. "You will see soon who will support the HDZ-led parliamentary majority." However, after meeting his party leadership, he also said the HDZ was ready for fresh snap polls if it proved impossible in the coming days to form a new majority. The HDZ has 58 seats in the 151-member parliament, so needs another 18 for a majority, but might be able to team up with a scattering of smaller parties. "Plenkovic has either already secured support in parliament from someone else and will maybe even seek to form a minority government, or otherwise we face snap polls again," said political analyst Davor Gjenero. The opposition, led by the Social Democrats, had demanded the finance minister step down due to what it called a lack of credibility in his handling of a financial crisis at Croatia's biggest private firm, Agrokor. The government rejected the opposition's demand at a cabinet session on Thursday, but the Most ministers - in charge of internal affairs, the judiciary and energy and environment policy - dissented. Most rejected the sackings as unconstitutional and said it may appeal to the country's top court. Its ministers will remain in place until replacements are appointed. "Plenkovic wants to remove three successful ministers who are getting results and keep a minister who objectively cannot remain in his position," the Most leader and speaker of parliament, Bozo Petrov, told reporters. Croatia is set to hold municipal elections in late May which, according to some analysts, may also be a reason for fresh tensions between HDZ and Most. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) VIENNA, April 27 (Reuters) - Austrian energy and petrol station group OMV is to buy a 40-percent stake in Smatrics, a company that provides charging points for electric cars, owned by hydropower firm Verbund and Germany's Siemens, the Austrian companies said on Thursday. Smatrics manages around 400 charging points in Austria, which Verbund supplies with green power. It also handles the construction and management of charging points at petrol stations, for private households and companies such as retailers Ikea and Rewe, hotels and transport companies. "Verbund has green power. OMV has a lot of infrastructure. It basically is a logical combination to try to contribute a little to the reduction of CO2," OMV's downstream chief Manfred Leitner told reporters. Smatrics' priority is to expand in Austria and Germany while considering a push into the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary at a later date, the companies said. The aim is to increase the number and quality of so-called swift charging stations so that electric cars would be able to drive 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour after five minutes of charging, Verbund chief Wolfgang Anzengruber said. The companies did not disclose the purchase price for the 40-percent stake, which OMV will pay for in cash. Ultimately, OMV and Verbund will each hold 40-percent of Smatrics and Siemens the rest. There were 13,000 electronic vehicles in use in Austria at the end of 2016, Leitner said. In terms of newly registered private cars, Anzengruber said there was a 74-percent rise between the first quarter of last year and this year. In the commercial sector, the numbers more than doubled since 2015, he said. "Admittedly this is coming from a low level, but there is something developing here," Anzengruber said. "Austria expects its market to include 175,000 electric cars by 2020 and the European Union has defined a 30-percent stake of new registrations for electric mobility by 2030." Smatrics revenues were in the small million-euro-range at present, Anzengruber said. He said investments financed by the company along with European and Austrian subsidies would reach two-digit million euro amounts over the coming years. Siemens and Verbund, together with Austrian steel maker Voestalpine, are also planning to build a plant in Austria to make green hydrogen more suitable for industrial use. OMV and Verbund are also evaluating cooperation in hydrogen projects. (Reporting By Shadia Nasralla. Editing by Jane Merriman) By Tristan Martin and Faye Planer FRANCIA SIRPI, Nicaragua, April 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - R onald Maclovio takes off his t-shirt to show the scars ten bullets left on his chest. In June 2015, he says, illegal settlers shot him and attacked his community of Francia Sirpi, an indigenous Miskito village on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua also known as the Mosquito Coast. "They did it just for the fun of it," he says. Maclovio is not alone: many Miskito people report unprovoked attacks by non-indigenous settlers and tensions flare over land. The worst of this conflict has unfolded far from the single, unpaved road that connects the region to the rest of Nicaragua. Dominated by pine forests, this sparsely populated, remote coastal plain has become the most violently contested territory in the country. The Miskito, the largest indigenous group on the Caribbean coast, with a population of up to 300,000, blame the attacks on "settlers" coming from other parts of the country and occupying their ancestral territories. According to CEJUDHCAN, a human rights organisation that works with indigenous communities, conflict over land has left 32 Miskito dead and 66 missing or injured since 2012. However mounting evidence of unscrupulous land sales by Miskito leaders themselves suggest a more complex root to the escalating violence. Throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Miskito were allied to the British, whose navy provided them with weapons, and encouraged them to launch raids on neighbouring Spanish bases. Their land, which stretched from what is now Honduras in the north, almost to Costa Rica in the south, became an informal British protectorate. After decades of modern day, peaceful co-existence, relations between the Miskito, Nicaragua's largest indigenous group and non-indigenous settlers have been souring. "We don't want to see a single chicken, pig, or cow of theirs. We want complete eviction," said Virgilio Thomas Moore, Francia Sirpi's judge, elected by the Miskito. The new settlers, say activists, come in search of cheap, fertile land, timber and gold. While no data has been collected on the deaths and injuries to this group, witness testimonies suggest that both sides have engaged in violence. The problem is exacerbated, they add, by the Nicaraguan government's lack of action to mediate and resolve the land dispute. This has led to many Miskito taking the law into their own hands to clear the settlers themselves. Judge Thomas Moore says the communities are on the brink of war. "We're not going to solve this over a coffee. Only a coffee of blood, because that's the way they think," he said. Carlos Aleman, governor of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region did not respond to requests for comment. The office of Nicaragua's Attorney General, Hernan Estrada, did not respond to questions by phone and email. SELL IT CHEAP, SELL IT TWICE Farming settlers have migrated from the interior and the Pacific coast of Nicaragua to the far northeast of the country for decades. A prolonged drought and concern over a proposed inter-oceanic canal project which is likely to affect thousands of Nicaraguan farmers has seen a significant increase in migration into Miskito land over the last few years. Despite a law that bans the sale of indigenous land in the region, it has been widely reported that some indigenous leaders have granted "permits" to the settlers effectively handing tracts of land over for long term use. Narcisa Davila is one such settler now living in the remote coastal plain of Sahsa some 90 km (55 miles) from the regional capital, Puerto Cabezas. She says that problems began for her family soon after they bought land from a fellow settler deep in indigenous territory. One morning in May 2012, Davila's brother was sowing maize on their recently cleared plot when he was surrounded by men in military uniforms. He was shot three times and died several hours later, along with another farm labourer. Davila said she believed the killing was ordered by Miskito leaders who wanted to reclaim the land and sell it. "First they sell the land and then they send people to kill the Mestizo settler in order to take back the land and sell it for a higher price," Davila told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It's not just my brother who has died, there are lots of Mestizo (settlers) who have died in those hills, just fighting for land." The Tasba Pri Association for Farmers, an organisation that advocates for settlers in land disputes, said the killing was not an isolated incident. Jose Boanerges, vice president of the association and a 35- year-old farmer who came to the region 15 years ago, believes communal property laws are being used to discriminate against non-indigenous settlers. Nicaragua has been a world leader in the granting of land rights to native peoples. Indigenous communities gained autonomy in 1987 over their ancestral lands and "Law 445" was introduced in 2003 to allow indigenous people to apply for land titles. "They created the law and now they themselves violate it," he said. "The community that doesn't want to sell their land should be respected. But if they've sold it, they should respect the rights of the person who bought it. He's a Nicaraguan too." COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES According to Selmira Flores, the director of a research unit at the Universidad Centroamericana de Nicaragua, the two groups have different philosophies on land ownership. She said settlers are steeped in notions of private property and legal ownership backed by documentation while the Miskito see the land as a shared asset for 'community use'. "Those who come from outside have a logic of private property over the land, and here it's a communal property logic," she said. The only legal way for newcomers to settle in the territory requires the approval of representatives of the whole Miskito community, she said. This would ideally result in the granting of temporary farming leases for the settlers. But a non-indigenous settler is unlikely to discuss the issue with the entire community: "They'll talk to an individual and sign a document," she said. "For a Mestizo (settler) having that paper where it says the other has accepted this quantity of money for this bit of land is all that counts." The settlers then believe that it is theirs, she added, and they can re-sell it as they wish. "IT'S WAR" Law 445 places the onus on government to clear indigenous territories of non indigenous settlers where proper land title has not been granted. The Miskito say they want the government to uphold their legal obligation to clear the land of illegal settlers. But with little action, the concept of "autosaneamiento" or "self-clearing" by the community is gaining popular support. Judge Thomas Moore in Francia Sirpi said the time had come for the community to take matters into their own hands. "We'll give them six months, no more," he said. "If the government doesn't want to take them out, we'll do the clearing ourselves. We'll go and invade those hills." Several miles away, lying in a hammock on his cattle farm, settler Boanerges considers this possibility. "They want to do `autosaneamiento. But they also have to respect everything that they have sold," he said. "And if they don't respect it, it's war." (Reporting by Tristan Martin and Faye Planer, Editing by Paola Totaro and Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) By Diadie Ba DAKAR, April 27 (Reuters) - A special tribunal upheld the life sentence for Chad's former President Hissene Habre for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the final decision of a landmark case, a judge presiding over the court in Senegal said on Thursday. Habre, 74, an ally of the West during the Cold War, was sentenced last year to life in prison for rape and ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule. His lawyers had appealed the decision, saying the sentence was too severe. The appeal court's final verdict marks the end of a 17-year battle by victims and rights groups to bring the former leader to justice. About a dozen victims present in courtroom in Dakar jumped up and cried, "We won!" when judge Wafi Ougadeye announced the verdict. "Our patience has paid off. Never again will a dictator... be permitted to do horrible things and escape justice," said Clement Abaifouta, one of the Chadian victims. The trial was conducted by the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC), a tribunal created in 2013 by Senegal and the African Union for human rights crimes committed during Habre's rule. Habre fled to Senegal after being ousted in a 1990 coup. The EAC appeals chamber on Thursday acquitted Habre of rape but affirmed his conviction for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. Habre's lawyer Francois Serres said the trial was politically motivated. "Africa cannot be proud of this trial. It was unfair from beginning to end," he said. So far, the court has only tried Habre and the case marks a milestone for African justice. It is the first time in modern history that one country's domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges. "Today will go down in history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors finally prevailed over their dictator," said Reed Brody, an American lawyer who has worked with Habre's victims since 1999. (Reporting by Diadie Ba; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Richard Lough and Pritha Sarkar) By Tim Hepher and Kirsti Knolle PARIS/VIENNA, April 27 (Reuters) - A heated row broke out between Austria and Europe's largest aerospace company on Thursday as Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders accused Vienna of playing politics with a fraud investigation and the government told him to calm down. The exchange came 24 hours after Reuters first reported that Vienna prosecutors had opened a fraud investigation into German-born Enders, based on earlier complaints from the defence ministry over a $2 billion fighter deal in 2003. In an emailed statement, Enders called the handling of allegations a "politically-motivated abuse of the legal system" and accused Austria's centrist coalition of using Airbus as an electoral "punching bag". Vienna prosecutors launched the probe into Enders and other individuals as part of an investigation into whether Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium misled Austria about the price, deliverability and equipment of the 2003 deal. The Eurofighter consortium comprises Airbus, Britain's BAE Systems and Italy's Leonardo, and all the companies have denied wrongdoing. "I want to clearly reiterate: from our point of view these allegations are unfounded and unsubstantiated," Enders said. "The legal authorities will also come to this conclusion, but certainly only after the elections. Until then, this posturing will go on, because that is what it is all about: distracting the public until election day." The centrist coalition government's term runs until autumn 2018 and Chancellor Christian Kern, a Social Democrat, has said he expects it to continue its work until then. But speculation persists that a snap election may be called beforehand. LESS EMOTION The defence ministry said Airbus should react less emotionally. "The legal steps taken by the Austrian ministry of defence against Airbus are serious and have been substantiated by facts. Now it is solely for the independent judiciary to decide," a spokesman said. "Airbus would be well advised not to fall back into past mistakes and to contribute to the clearing of the allegations with more seriousness and less emotion," he added. Asked what mistakes he was referring to, he said the government had not received the impression that current Airbus management was interested in addressing the corruption claims. Enders has launched a company-wide compliance drive that led to British and French bribery probes into its passenger jet sales and has pledged to continue the campaign. Even after a decade, the fighter deal remains a politically sensitive subject in Austria, a neutral country with limited arms budget, and has drawn in all the main political parties. A coalition of Austria's conservative People's Party and the far-right Freedom Party picked Eurofighter in 2003 over rival offers from Saab and Lockheed Martin, stressing the value of industrial deals for Austrian firms. The Social Democrats, who had always criticised the deal, took control of the government in 2007 and a parliamentary inquiry was set up to determine whether bribes were paid to win the contract, while cutting it to 15 jets from 18. Enders, 58, has clashed with European governments, notably Germany, over defence issues in the past, but the latest row marks an unusually direct confrontation with a state customer. Calling the claims "cheap election rhetoric," he said: "We will not let part of the Austrian government use us as a punching bag that it can beat to score cheap political points". The remarks appeared aimed at Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil, who made headlines in 2015 when as Burgenland police chief he handled the first big wave of Middle East refugees, and is now tipped by some to become the province's governor. Defence industry officials accuse him of making capital out of the Airbus case to promote his political career. But Austrian officials insist the full story on the deal has yet to come out and are planning a second parliamentary probe within weeks. (Additional reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Mark Potter) WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - Two U.S. service members were killed during an operation against Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan overnight on Wednesday, U.S. officials said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration looks to craft a strategy in the war-torn country. U.S. forces in Afghanistan said in a statement that a third U.S. service member was wounded in the raid, carried out with Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) against the militants. A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Captain William Salvin said the deaths occurred in the same valley where the United States had dropped a massive bomb on a complex of fortified tunnel being used by the Islamic State. Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb was dropped from an American MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan. The incident comes just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan and U.S. troops are battling suspected Islamic State militants in Nangarhar province. In this raid, Afghan commandos and coalition forces killed some 40 Islamic State fighters during a joint operation, said Attahullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Nangarhar governor. Khogyani said the raid was carried out against an Islamic State hideout in Achin district and some 13 militants were taken alive. Another U.S. soldier was killed earlier in April while carrying out operations against Islamic State in the same province. The Islamic State's offshoot in Afghanistan, known as the Sunni jihadist group's so-called Khorasan Province, is suspected of carrying out several attacks on minority Shi'ite Muslim targets. U.S. officials say intelligence suggests Islamic State is based overwhelmingly in Nangarhar and neighboring Kunar province. Estimates of its strength in Afghanistan vary. U.S. officials have said they believe the movement has only 700 fighters but Afghan officials estimate it has about 1,500. (Reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington and Josh Smith in Kabul. Additional reporting by James Mackenzie and Hamid Shalizi.; Editing by Bernadette Baum) By Saud Mehsud DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan, April 27 (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, one militant commander and multiple intelligence sources said on Thursday. If confirmed, the air strike, which happened on Wednesday, would only be the second drone attack inside the nuclear-armed nation since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. But one regional Pakistani official disputed the location, saying it was inside Afghanistan. Abdullah Wazirstani, spokesman for North Waziristan Taliban, a group linked to the Pakistani Taliban, said the strike killed three civilian "labourers" and seven militants from the Pakistani Taliban, which is also known as TTP. Malik Waheedullah, a local tribal leader, told Reuters he saw two missiles strike a mountain home which caught fire. "I drove away as fast as I could," he said. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. One Pakistani intelligence official and government source said they believed the strike to be a U.S. drone attack. Multiple other Pakistani intelligence and military sources, as well as those from Islamist groups, told Reuters the drone attack occurred inside Pakistan, close to to the Afghanistan border. But Kamran Afridi, who holds the post of 'political agent' in North Waziristan, disputed the location of the attack. "It was not on our soil," said Afridi. North Waziristan was a Taliban stronghold until 2014, when Pakistan's military launched a major offensive against the group and pushed many of its fighters across the border into Afghanistan. Sources from the TTP identified one of the dead militants as Abdur Rahman, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban. U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan have become rare over the past few years. In its last high-profile attack inside Pakistan, the United States last May killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. (Additional reporting by Javed Hussain, Jibran Ahmad and Haji Mujataba; writing by Drazen Jorgic; editing by Saad Sayeed and Ralph Boulton) By Fabian Cambero SANTIAGO, April 27 (Reuters) - BHP Billiton is advancing with the sale of its small Cerro Colorado copper mine in Chile and there are a number of interested parties, although finalizing the deal will likely take some months, the mine's union said on Thursday. BHP management updated union leaders on the planned sale of the mine this week, ahead of planned visits to the deposit by potential buyers, union leader Marcelo Franco said in an interview. BHP declined to comment. Cerro Colorado produced 74,000 tonnes of copper last year out of top exporter Chile's total 5.5 million. Located in the extreme north of the country's copper belt, it has permission to operate until 2023 but that could be extended. "(The sale) is already pretty well advanced, but they said it could last some months," said Franco. Franco said he did not know the identity of the interested parties. Traders have mentioned Chile's Empresas Copec SA , a conglomerate that has voiced interest in diversifying into copper, and Canadian companies such as Lundin Mining Corp, as possible buyers. He said the union had a positive attitude toward a future deal as workers' benefits were legally assured and it felt BHP was more focused on its larger Chilean assets, Spence and Escondida - the world's biggest copper mine. (Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Matthew Lewis) By Andrea Shalal BERLIN, April 27 (Reuters) - Germany's top cyber official on Thursday confirmed said his agency was aware of computer attacks on two foundations tied to Germany's ruling coalition parties for some time, and was helping the think tanks analyse what happened. Arne Schoenbohm, president of the BSI federal cyber security agency, did not comment on security firm Trend Micro's claim that the attacks were carried out by "Pawn Storm," the same Russian hacking group linked to attacks on French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron or the U.S. election. Other experts have said the group, also known as "Fancy Bear" or "APT 28," is linked to GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate. German officials and lawmakers say the attacks are the latest in a series aimed at disrupting German elections and damaging Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed to maintain sanctions on Russia over its actions in eastern Ukraine. Germany's intelligence agencies issued unusually frank warnings late last year about what they called Moscow's "aggressive" cyber spying and disinformation campaigns . Russia has denied any involvement in the cyber attacks. Trend Micro said the hacker group used email phishing tricks to try to install malicious software at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, and at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), junior partner in the ruling coalition. A KAS spokesman said BSI warned the foundation in early March of "peculiarities", but that a subsequent network scan by the government cyber security agency found "nothing suspicious". A FES spokeswoman confirmed that the think tank had also registered an attack but said its networks had been successfully defended. She said the group was working closely with the BSI, but declined to give any further details. Schoenbohm said the BSI was working hard to bolster Germany's ability to resist cyber attacks and offered consulting services and other solutions to government, private industry and other societal groups. "Cyber espionage is a widespread phenomenon. One challenge in evaluating such cases is that attacks aimed at extracting information cannot necessarily be differentiated from attacks aimed at influencing public opinion," he said in a statement. He said the agency was working closely with the two foundations and supporting them in matters related to the security of their information technology systems. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal, editing by Larry King) By Katy Migiro NAIROBI, April 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Tens of thousands of South Sudanese have fled their homes and are now trapped under intense sun without food, water or medical care, aid agencies said on Thursday after fierce fighting forced them to pull out of the region. Almost 40,000 thirsty people are camped out in temperatures of about 40 degrees centigrade in Aburoc village, near the border with Sudan, said Marcus Bachmann, South Sudan head of mission for the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). "The quantity of water is not enough to survive in this environment," he told a news briefing via Skype from Juba. "With so many people squeezed in one place, the risk of an outbreak of cholera is extremely high. It puts the exhausted population at highest risk of death." South Sudan descended into civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir fired his deputy, unleashing a conflict that has spawned armed factions which often follow ethnic lines. The United Nations (U.N.) has raised fears of a possible genocide as millions have fled their homes, the economy is in a tailspin, harvests are devastated by drought and millions of people face famine. A government offensive in two parts of Upper Nile State, near the border with Sudan, forced 32 humanitarian staff to be relocated on Monday to the capital, Juba, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The displaced population in and around Aburoc is likely to hit 50,000 in the coming days, it said in a statement, and people are also reported to be crossing into Sudan for safety. "People fleeing... to Aburoc are undertaking long and treacherous journeys - some travelling eight days by foot without access to water and food," it said. MSF's Bachmann said water trucks could not reach Aburoc, and it suspended its hospital operations there on Thursday morning. People are sleeping in the open without mosquito nets to protect against malaria and he said there have been reports of cholera in the area in recent months. Government forces are in control of nearby Kodok town after fighting ended there on Wednesday, Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) deputy spokesman Colonel Santo Domic Chol said. "The SPLA is calling on their citizens to come back to their houses," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via phone, declining to give casualty figures. "War is war and war is ugly in any capacity... there must be refugees and there must be those caught in the crossfire." (Reporting by Katy Migiro @katymigiro; Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.) Whitewater recreation on the Ocoee River is set to continue well into the future under a new partnership between the Ocoee River Outfitter Association, State of Tennessee, US Forest Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority.Key to the successful partnership was leadership from the State of Tennessee to establish the Ocoee River Recreational and Economic Development Fund. The initiative supports a new direction in Ocoee River management, marked by new interagency agreements and a commercial-use permitting program administered by Tennessee State Parks.This partnership recognizes that the Ocoee region is a major destination for river rafters and outdoor enthusiasts from around the world, serving as an economic engine for the region, said Brock Hill, TDEC Deputy Commissioner for Parks and Conservation.Securing the future of Ocoee River recreation provides a valuable return on investment both for the Ocoee River region and the State.The Ocoee whitewater industry contributes an estimated 600 jobs, and $3.57 million annually in state, federal and local taxes per year, according to a University of Tennessee 2012 study. Visitor spending related to whitewater rafting trips on the Ocoee River generated about $44 million in economic activity, the study showed.Under the plan established by the Ocoee River Recreational and Economic Development Fund, the State will provide regulation and oversight of commercial outfitters use of the river, and services such as daily site maintenance, emergency first response, law enforcement, and traffic management.Commercial outfitters will pay a portion of revenues generated by rafting activities into the Ocoee River Recreational and Development Fund to help cover the States expenses for providing these services. The State will provide these services on lands made available under easements and management agreements through TVA and USFS. TVA also provides the scheduled flows on the Ocoee to create the whitewater conditions.The Ocoee, which was the kayaking venue for the 1996 Summer Olympics, is internationally recognized as one of the most popular family whitewater rafting adventures in the world.It has taken a lot of hard work to build this industry from a few hundred rafters in the 80s to now more than 250,000 visitors each year, said Keith Jenkins, vice president of the Ocoee River Outfitters Association. We are looking forward to enhancing our partnerships to preserve the Ocoee rafting experience, manage costs, and help us remain the worlds premier whitewater destination.The new plan will replace the current Ocoee River whitewater program contracts which expire at the end of the 2018 recreation season. In addition to establishment of the Ocoee River Recreational and Development Fund, the parties also recently signed a formal Letter of Intent outlining the new whitewater management program which will begin in 2019.Over the next 12 to 18 months, TVA will lead an environmental review which will include opportunities for public input and comment.TVA understands the importance of the Ocoee River and how much it contributes to the economic prosperity of the region, said Joe Hoagland, TVA vice president for Enterprise Relations & Innovation. We are grateful to the partners for their teamwork and determination to reach an arrangement that will benefit everyone involved. April 27 (Reuters) - Airbus is involved in a furious row with Austria over a fraud investigation in connection with a $2 billion fighter jet deal. The Eurofighter jet order dates back about 14 years and the country's leading political parties have been involved in the deal's long and controversial history. Airbus and other partners in Eurofighter - Britain's BAE Systems and Italy's Leonardo - and the consortium itself have denied any wrongdoing. Here are some details on more than a decade of wrangling over neutral Austria's biggest ever arms purchase. 2003 PURCHASE The initial contract was first agreed under a coalition between the conservative People's Party and the far-right Freedom party in 2003. Austria, led by conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, ordered 18 Eurofighter jets for 1.96 billion euros. The contract hinged on so-called offset deals, which were meant to provide work to local businesses, worth 4 billion euros, or 204 percent of the purchase price. It called for the offset deals to be completed by 2018. The circumstances of the order were obscure because influential government members, who initially opposed it, suddenly threw their weight behind the deal. Critics claimed that competing offers from SAAB and Lockheed Martin were cheaper. Austrian media and opposition politicians voiced speculation about bribery payments, which led to criminal investigations (see below). 2006 PARLIAMENT INQUIRY A first parliamentary inquiry, set up after a shift in power under Social Democratic Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer in 2006, looked into potentially cancelling the contract. 2007 SETTLEMENT Defence Minister Norbert Darabos, also a Social Democrat, agreed on a settlement with Eurofighter to reduce the order to 15 jets from 18 and the volume of offset or side deals to 3.5 billion euros from 4 billion euros. The parliamentary inquiry was terminated shortly after the settlement. 2011 CRIMINAL PROBES German and Austrian prosecutors started in 2011 investigating bribery allegations in connection with the Eurofighter deal. Munich prosecutors have said they expect to complete preliminary investigations by mid year. Vienna prosecutors have said they cannot estimate how long it will take to complete their investigations. 2012 TASK FORCE The Austrian defence ministry created a special task force in 2012 to review the offset deals. 2014 WARNING The defence ministry said in 2014 it was still an option to exit the Eurofighter contract. 2017 FRAUD PROBE In February 2017, the task force published its findings. Based on these, Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil filed a complaint against Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium alleging wilful deception and fraud linked to the deal. Vienna prosecutors launched a formal criminal investigation against Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium based on the defence ministry's complaint. On April 26, Vienna prosecutors disclosed they had opened an investigation into suspected fraud by 16 individuals including Airbus CEO Thomas Enders, confirming correspondence seen by Reuters. Airbus called the accusations unsubstantiated and Enders accused the Austrian government of playing politics. 2017 NEW PARLIAMENT INQUIRY Austrian Greens and the Freedom Party started setting up a second parliamentary inquiry in March. The probe is set to start in early summer and will seek to determine whether money was paid to win the contract and to identify any officials who might have profited. (Reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Tim Hepher and Mark Potter) WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - A Singaporean man was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months in a U.S. prison for his role in exporting to Iran radio frequency modules, some of which were later found in bombs in Iraq, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Lim Yong Nam, also known as Steven Lim, 43, pleaded guilty in December to illegally exporting the modules through Singapore, and later to Iran, knowing that the export of U.S. goods to Iran was a violation of U.S. law, the statement said. (Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh) BERLIN, April 27 (Reuters) - Prosecutors investigating the driver of a car that ran over and fatally injured an Egyptian woman in eastern Germany say they are also now pursuing a man who witnesses say hurled racial abuse at the victim after the accident. The 22-year-old student, identified only as Shaden M., died in hospital on April 18, three days after the accident in the city of Cottbus, and the driver is being investigated for possibly causing death by negligence, Horst Nothbaum, spokesman for the prosecutor's office, said. Two witnesses came forward 10 days after the accident to say that they had heard a passenger in the car that struck the woman yelling insults afterwards, including: "Go back to where you came from, then you won't get run over. Damn refugees." Nothbaum said a new investigation of possible incitement to racial hatred was launched on Wednesday. Germany has seen a sharp increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric after the influx of over a million migrants over the past two years, and officials say the growing right-wing extremist scene is also increasingly willing to commit violence. Nothbaum said there was no suggestion that the car had deliberately run over the woman. He said witnesses to the accident said it happened when she stepped off a curb into traffic in the center of the town, near a streetcar stop. Martina Muench, education minister in the state of Brandenburg that includes Cottbus, welcomed the investigation, and said foreign students, teachers and researchers helped strengthen the competitiveness of the state. "It would be a shame if these allegations are proven true," Muench said in a statement. "It is unfathomable and appalling that a young, fatally injured woman would be insulted in such a racist and xenophobic way in the middle of Cottbus." The state education ministry said international students accounted for about 7,800, or just over 16 percent, of the state's 48,000 students, and around 620 of the state's academic staff came from overseas. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) By Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - The United States issued about 40 percent fewer temporary visas in March to citizens of seven countries covered by President Donald Trump's temporary travel bans than it did in an average month last year, according to a Reuters analysis of preliminary government data released on Thursday. At the same time, the data showed that the total of U.S. non-immigrant visas issued to people from all countries was up by nearly 5 percent in March compared to the 2016 monthly average. Citizens of the seven Muslim-majority nations under the bans - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - received about 3,200 non-immigrant visas in March 2017, compared to about 5,700 on average per month during the 2016 fiscal year and more than 6,000 on average per month in 2015 and 2014. Trump's travel bans were later blocked by the courts. The State Department released the data to comply with a directive from Trump asking it to publish monthly breakdowns of the number of visas issued around the world. The department did not release data on the total number of all types of visa applications, so it is unclear whether the lower number of temporary visas for citizens of the seven countries is because of a higher rate of rejections or other factors, such as fewer applicants or slower processing times. A State Department official noted that "visa demand is cyclical, not uniform throughout the year, and affected by various factors at the local and international level. Visa issuance numbers tend to increase during peak travel seasons, such as during the summer and the winter holidays." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. March is neither a busy nor slow time for temporary visa issuances to people from the seven countries, several immigration lawyers said. Therefore, the significant drops are notable, they said. The data is preliminary and numbers could be subject to minor revision, the State Department said. Previously, such data was only available in aggregate by fiscal year, and the department declined to break out March visa data from previous years. Nevertheless, some immigration attorneys said the numbers released on Thursday provide a glimpse into how Trump's policies are affecting visa decisions. "Either there are many fewer people applying because they believe they will be denied, or a much higher rate of denials is already happening even though the executive orders have been blocked," said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. EXECUTIVE ORDERS Trump, who has said the travel bans were intended to make Americans safer from attacks by terrorists, signed an executive order on Jan. 27 barring people from the seven countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order was blocked by federal courts and the Trump administration replaced it with a revised, narrower travel ban effective March 16 which dropped Iraq from the list. Courts have also halted parts of the second order. The number of non-immigrant visas issued to Iranians dropped to 1,572 in March from 2,450 per month on average in 2016 according to the data. Iraqis received 684 such visas in March, compared to nearly twice that number per month on average in 2016, the data showed. Iranians also received fewer immigrant visas, which are granted to family members of U.S. citizens or those with jobs in the United States, than the average in previous years - 393 received immigrant visas in March, compared to 644 on average per month in 2016 and nearly 600 on average per month in 2015 and 2014. Although visitor visas were down across the board for the seven targeted countries, two of them saw the number of immigrant visas issued tick up slightly. Forty-one Libyans received immigrant visas in March, compared to 32 per month on average in 2016. Somalians received 171 visas in March compared to 150 on average in 2016. Immigration lawyers said that although the travel bans have been halted by courts for now, the administration's vow to put stricter controls on immigration is likely to have changed how U.S. consulates evaluate visa applicants. Stephen Pattison, a former State Department consular official now working as an immigration attorney, said consulates "are going to probably err more on the side of denying some people that they'd be on the fence about." Anecdotally, several U.S.-based lawyers with Iranian clients say their visa applications are taking longer to process and are being rejected more often since Trump took office on Jan. 20. They cite shortages of interview appointments for Iranians, interviews cancelled at the last minute and longer "administrative processing" periods than they are accustomed to. "If you can't get an interview, you can't get a visa," said Babak Yousefzadeh, a San Francisco-based attorney and member of the board of directors of the Iranian American Bar Association. Some Iranians have decided that for now, it is not worth it to risk the expense and time of making U.S. visa applications, said Kiyanoush Razaghi, a Maryland-based immigration attorney. In addition to paying a standard $160 visa application fee, Iranians must typically travel to Turkey, Armenia or the United Arab Emirates for their interviews, since there is no U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran. "That's a fundamental change that I am seeing, at least in the community and among the clients that I have," Razaghi said. "They have a general feeling that now is not a good time to apply for a visa." (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool) By Phil Stewart and Yara Bayoumy WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - When U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis greeted Saudi Arabia's foreign minister at the Pentagon last month, the first thing he did was joke about the time "the Iranians tried to murder you." Mattis' reference to a foiled 2011 plot, denied by Iran, was a telling sign of how much more aligned President Donald Trump's administration is with Gulf allies about what they perceive to be the Iranian threat, a shift that seems to be setting the stage for greater U.S. involvement in Yemen, in particular. After long seeking to distance itself from Yemen's brutal civil war, the United States under Trump now appears increasingly to see the conflict through the Gulf's prism of Iranian meddling, even as Washington prioritizes a parallel fight against al Qaeda. Detailed discussions are under way within the Trump administration that would offer greater aid to Gulf allies fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. Officials say that could included expanded sharing of U.S. intelligence. In Saudi Arabia last week, Mattis compared Tehran's backing for the Houthis to its support for Shi'ite ally Lebanese Hezbollah, a view long espoused by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states who see links between the two groups. "Everywhere you look, if there is trouble in the region, you find Iran," Mattis told reporters in Riyadh. Iran rejects Saudi accusations that it is giving financial and military support to the Houthis in the struggle for Yemen. Cooperation between the United States and the Gulf is already on the rise in the fight against America's top priority there: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. officials see that broader civil war as an obstacle to a sustained military campaign against the militants, as well as a threat to the Bab al-Mandab strait, a strategic waterway. IRAN MUSCLES INTO YEMEN For many U.S. and Gulf observers, the role of Iran is clear in the increasing sophistication of Houthi forces. The United States launched cruise missiles at Houthi targets last year after a U.S. warship came under fire off Yemen, and a remote-controlled boat laden with explosives rammed a Saudi frigate on Jan. 30, the first known strike by a "drone" vessel. "These weapons didn't exist ... before the war. There was no explosive boat that existed in the Yemeni inventory," Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan told Reuters in an interview. Donegan, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, also said ballistic missiles fired into Saudi Arabia had several times the range of missiles the Yemenis had before the conflict. "When you have a non-nation-state with nation-state-like weapons that can reach into the maritime (area), it has my attention," Donegan said. A senior UAE official also compared the Houthis to Hezbollah, and said growing Iranian support had helped shield them from pressure to enter political talks. "We are seeing UAVs, anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, as well as land and sea mines," the official told Reuters. Mattis has publicly backed a political solution to the conflict. But U.S. officials have also acknowledged that Saudi-led coalition military pressure could help create the conditions for that negotiated solution. Still, the Yemeni government and the Gulf-led coalition have been preparing for a possible assault on Hodeidah port, the entry point for nearly 80 percent of Yemen's food imports, because they say the Houthis use it to smuggle weapons and ammunition. The Yemeni government has proposed to the United Nations that it monitor Hodeidah. Trump administration officials have not ruled out U.S. assistance should the coalition move ahead, but U.S. officials said Washington is not considering strikes on Houthi targets or deploying ground forces. Eric Pelofsky, who helped craft Yemen policy for Obama, warned an assault risks tipping Yemen into a terrible famine and has proposed that coalition forces perhaps instead strengthen their offensive near Kitaf to increase pressure on the Houthis. AQAP FIGHT The United States has carried out more air strikes this year in Yemen than in all of 2016, in a clear sign of growing U.S. concern and focus on AQAP and deepening involvement in Yemen. Largely unseen, however, is the partnership with the United Arab Emirates that is helping guide that increased activity. UAE-backed forces have captured al Qaeda operatives, and while a January raid in Yemen was Trump's first and so far only one since he took office, UAE-trained local Yemeni forces have carried out more than 250 raids in and around Aden, a senior coalition military commander told Reuters. The port of Mukallah was similarly retaken last year with 10,000 troops, largely Yemenis trained by the coalition. "We are encouraged by U.S. support and the change from a drone policy to greater engagement. We can't really defeat and dislodge al Qaeda with a drone policy," the senior UAE official said. Intelligence gleaned from UAE-backed operations has been shared with the United States, which is rebuilding its knowledge about the group since the war forced the pullout of its personnel in 2015. "In terms of the U.S. supporting us or the coalition supporting the U.S., its really mutual," the senior coalition military commander said, adding that the coalition has strong human intelligence, complemented by Washington's strong intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities. Still, U.S. officials acknowledge there is a lot they don't know. Even the presumption about AQAP's size, seen in the low thousands, is a very low-confidence estimate. Beyond things like increasing intelligence sharing, U.S. officials are moving closer to approving a sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia blocked under Obama. A recent meeting between Trump and Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was dubbed a turning point in relations which had been frosty under Barack Obama, but some cautioned against too cozy a relationship. Anne Patterson, former deputy assistant secretary of state for near east affairs under Obama, and who advocated selling the munitions, said the United States should also help Riyadh improve its targeting. But some have expressed caution. "It makes the U.S. complicit again in Saudi actions that are causing great suffering over which we have insufficient control," said Tom Malinowski, the state department's top human rights official during the Obama administration. (Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Editing by James Dalgleish) The cabinet had approved the proposal made by Megapolis and Western Development Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka to expand the Priority Bus Lane concept further and to take action to attract the middle class to use public transport services. Cabinet co-spokesman Gayantha Karunathilaka told the weekly Cabinet Briefing that the Cabinet proposal had made to implement Bus Priority Lanes in Moratuwa-Ratmalana, Wellawatte-Kollupitiya on the Galle Road and from Parliament Junction to Rajagiriya, Borella, Maradana, Pettah and Colombo Fort along the Parliament Road. It also had proposed that the concept should be put into practice from roundabout in Chittampalam A. Gardiner Mawatha to Pettah, the Thummulla Junction to the Museum Junction and the Eye Hospital Roundabout to the Thummulla Junction during busy hours. The Cabinet proposal also suggested to promote importation of Low Floor air-conditioned buses through concessionary loan schemes, prepare a common ticketing system with electronic card payment facilities and to improve three-wheeler and taxi parking facilities. The Minister said Cabinet approval was granted as the pilot project implemented along the Parliament Road between 12 and 23 of March with the assistance of Korean International Cooperation Agency had showed positive outcome. (Ajith Siriwardana) A Federal Union of Ceylon would have allowed the Sinhala South to take their destiny into their own hands, in their own regions We must ask, why Federalism to Tamils? Why not to the Sinhalese in the South? We need Federalism for South because centralised power from 1947 Parliament to 2017, for 70 years, have failed to develop the rural Sinhala society said Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, Minister of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine of this Unity Government delivering the keynote address at the S.J.V. Chelvanayagam commemoration on Wednesday 26 April (2017) at the Kathiresan Hall, Bambalapitiya. Organised by the Illankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) the party founded by Chelvanayagam in 1950 after he broke off from the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), the event was presided by TNA Jaffna District MP M. A. Sumanthiran and was also addressed by the Leader of the Opposition and the TNA Leader R. Sampanthan, MP. Speaking on Federalism, Minister Senaratne said, it was politically wrong to interpret Federalism as an opening for Separation. Federalism is the most democratic form of power sharing within a single united country, he said. Minister Senaratnes explanation on Federalism was simple. It allows people in different regions to take care of their day to day responsibilities including their cultural life, while politically acting together as a single Nation State. He is certainly right. If Federalism leads to separation, Velupillai Prabhakaran would have first negotiated for a Federal System. He would have been the hard line campaigner to have the Oslo Declaration signed in December, 2002 to be enforced without delay. The Norwegian facilitated peace deal was declared as signed between the GoSL and the LTTE on 05 December with Anton Balasingham, the chief negotiator for the LTTE announcing- That is what we decided, that we will opt for a Federal model. This Federal model will be within united Sri Lanka which will be appreciated by the Sinhalese people I suppose. If Prabhakaran was as convinced as the Sinhala extremists that Federalism leads to a separate State, he would have been the first to demand a Federal System. That it doesnt and accepting a Federal model would derail his armed campaign for a separate State was why Prabhakaran never pursued the Oslo Declaration. But why Chelvanayagam wanted a Federal State was for simple reasons, Minister Senaratne explained. That was to take care of their day to day responsibilities including their cultural life in the North-East, while acting together as a single Nation State. As the first National Convention of the ITAK in 1951 resolved, ..It is their (Sinhala and Tamil) common motherland and with a view to promoting and maintaining national goodwill and close co-operation with the Sinhalese people. The common motherland that Thanthai Chelva stood for and believed would be best served as a Federal Union of Ceylon, would not have allowed Prabhakaran his dream of an Eelam State. A Federal Union of Ceylon instead would have allowed the Sinhala South to take their destiny into their own hands, in their own regions. Continuous centralisation of power in Colombo for 70 years since the first Parliament was elected in 1947, denied this opportunity to the Sinhala South, was what Minister Senaratne stressed upon. The Sinhala South has failed to learn that lesson, despite the tragedies the South had to live with and is living with. Centralised power in Colombo even before this free market economy left the Southern districts too poor and lacking in socioeconomic development. In just 20 years since independence, the Sinhala youth in rural South decided to rebel against the State, for a better future. The JVP began organising their armed insurrection from 1968. It was the marginalised rural poor that served as recruits for the 1971 insurgency. After the economy was completely liberalised in 1978, majority Sinhala Districts outside the Western Province could only supply cheap labour to heavily exploiting export manufacturing sector and soldiers to a war that was not theirs. War brought sealed coffins to villages and robbed youth in their prime as missing in action. Yet others continued to join the army to be sent to the battle front. They had no other choice. Two years after liberalising of the economy, the Jayewardene Government made into law the Foreign Employment Agency by an Act and after years repealed it to establish the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment by another Act. These legal provisions were basically to export semi-skilled and largely unskilled labour from the rural society, who could not be gainfully employed in their own villages and districts. Young mothers, about a 100,000 every year, leave as house maids to the Middle East, quite conscious of the fact that many of those who had gone earlier had been nailed, stoned, whipped, physically and sexually abused having gone as house maids. The Sinhala South has never asked themselves, why they should leave their districts in search of jobs that are nothing but menial-jobs that only or mostly provide temporary living and no secure future. They dont ask why only exploitative manufacturing factories come to rural towns and not modern private hospitals, high-end shopping complexes, condominiums and jogging paths. There isnt any cash flow in these rural areas for those investments to go rural. Theres only cheap labour. Thats what the Sinhala South is beneath the consumerised culture that lives with money. The Sinhala rural South only have the apparel and export manufacturing sector labour and the housemaids gone to an alien soil to toil and the soldiers. Their money can only sustain small groceries, communication centres, three-wheelers and fried rice, kotthu boutiques. Forty years of free market with centralised power in Colombo has left nothing more for rural life. Sadly, this is not being challenged for many reasons. First and most importantly, it is the social psyche in the South that panders to the centralised power in social life. The Sinhala South needs powerful centres. Their fancy for kings even in modern politics, says it all. That Sinhala psyche allows political parties to be heavily centralised. Almost 30 years since Provincial Councils were established, no political party has structured its organisation in line with Provincial Powers. There are no provincial conventions to elect their provincial party leadership and adopt their provincial programme. It is the Colombo leadership that decides candidates even for Tissamaharama Pradeshiya Sabha elections. In India, even for their Lok Sabha elections, Congress candidates for Tamil Nadu are decided by the TN Congress in Chennai and not in New Delhi. Trade union leaders are no different. The leaders dont want to let go of their importance and power in Colombo. Most primitive in that sense are the teachers trade union leaders and the GMOA leaders. They represent two subject areas that are most devolved under the Provincial Council system. Yet, there are no provincial council unions that take up even basic issues of their service like transfers. The Colombo leaders would not allow such provincial power. In the teaching profession with 217,000 in Government schools, there are no Provincial Teachers Unions functioning. So is the media here in the Sinhala South. Everything national and means Colombo centred. There are no provincial newspapers, no provincial FM stations, even if one argues it would not be feasible to run Provincial TV stations the way they are perceived here in Colombo. Even the provincial Sinhala businessmen dont think it would be profitable for them on the long run, to invest in a provincial newspaper. If they wish to learn about provincial newspapers running with decent profits, they only have to turn to Jaffna. There are at least two Tamil provincial newspapers that are very popular in the North. South, Wayamba and Uva could easily have one newspaper each at a profit. Its the Sinhala psyche that allows political power to reside in Colombo. And it is Colombo that develops and nurtures Sinhala racist ideology to herd the Southern Sinhala voter into their ranks. It is on this Sinhala politics the mainstream political leaderships compete for votes. That has not come to an end, despite the claim the two major political rivals forming a Unity Government brings a national consensus on power sharing. First is the fact that out of the present 95 MPs in the SLFP led UPFA, 52 MPs dont abide by the SLFP leadership of President Sirisena. It is therefore no unity between the two main Southern parties. It is just a one and a half party alliance. Second is the fact, this Unity has not brought about any consensus on the ethnic issue and power sharing. They are toeing the same Rajapaksa line cementing further the Sinhala racist sentiments with daily trips to the Chief prelates, promising war heroes with every State patronage possible and making statements they feel would provide them with a larger Sinhala Buddhist vote bank, than what Rajapaksa could command. South therefore needs a Sinhala Thanthai Chelva to campaign for a Federal Union of Sri Lanka that can for sure lift the rural poor into a decent and democratic life, with political power closer home. I doubt Minister Senaratne could live up to that challenge despite his political understanding of what Sri Lanka needs for future development and inclusive living. The misery of the South is that we lack political leaders who could live up to what they publicly say. But the fact remains, Sinhala South will have to leave aside the model of centralised power proved a failure during 70 years and move to the next option, that of power sharing. Attorney and Actvist Nuwan Bopage When the issue connected with the Kollonnawa-Meethotamulla garbage dump was getting dragged on without any solution, the anger of the residents directed towards the authorities led to the formation of a Peoples Movement Against the Meethotamulla Garbage Dump in 2011. This movement was in the forefront of several public agitations facing suppressions from the past and the present governments. The peoples retaliation was led by activist and attorney-at-law Nuwan Bopage. In an interview on this burning issue, Bopage charged that the garbage dump was a gold mine for the authorities of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) and a number of local politicians in the area. Excerpts: Q How did this issue of the Meetotamulla garbage dump come about. About 30 years ago there was a beautiful paddy land known as Pothuvil Kumbura. In the canals that bordered it people even used to bathe. In 1989 under the land reclamation policy, this land was filled up. Afterwards towards 2000-2001 this paddy land was further filled up by soil and garbage. This was done with the intention of some development activity. Around 2008-2009 garbage collected from Colombo was dumped at Bloemendhal dumping yard. There was a fire in that dump yard and people filed an action.The Chief Justice at that time Sarath. N. Silva decreed by an interim injunction, to dump garbage at the Meethotamulla filled up land in two acres of land, without making a scientific appraisal. This order was made in 2009 and the CJ further ordered that anyone opposing the dumping of garbage in Meethotamulla would be charged for contempt of court. This order also violated the peoples right to engage in protests. Even though the court order said to dump the garbage only in 2 acres of land, in due course it extended up to a land in extent of 20 acres with the daily dumping of garbage amounting to 1200 tonnes. QWhen did the residents of Meethotamulla organize themselves against this dumping of garbage. By 2011 people began to feel this issue. First it was the temporary closure of Meethotamulla Rahula College which was about 75 years old. A row of houses built with planks got destroyed. We organized this peoples movement towards the end of 2011 against this garbage dump. Our first protest was held in January 2012. The former DIG Anura Senanayake and the former Municipal Commissioner Bhadrani Jayawardene who visited the scene assured us that this issue would be resolved within three months. It did not happen that way. In April 2012 we organized a massive protest by blocking the road for 3 days and not allowing the garbage carrying trucks to enter the site. The officers went to courts and obtained a court order against me, Keerthirathne and Hemapala. We declined to accept the court order and continued with the protest. A large convoy of troops then arrived at the site and after assaulting the protesters they made way for the trucks to move in. The court case against us continued and protests were launched in December 2012 and in January and August in 2013. We continued with the protests. In 2014 we held a decisive protest where we were baton charged, but however we got an opportunity to discuss this issue with Gotabaya Rajapaksa. QWhat happened at the discussions? Gotabaya Rajapaksa assured us that within six months he would resolve this matter. But as there was no solution even after six months, we launched another protest in August 2014. QWith the change of government in January 2015, how did you draw the attention of the rulers to this issue? With a view of creating an awareness of the new government we staged a protest in February 2015, by blocking the roads. The yahapalanaya government as its first offensive used water cannons on us. Few of us including me were hospitalized. We then got the opportunity of discussing this matter with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in March the same year. At this discussion the Premier appointed a committee headed by the chairman of the UDA. Advertisements appeared in the papers calling for interested parties for projects. Sixty companies presented their projects and an assurance was given that the issue would be solved within six months. But nothing did take place. We sought court action to prevent the dumping of garbage in Meethotamulla. We filed two cases seeking an interim injunction. The cases kept on dragging. When there was no solution from the Legislator and the Executive, we went before the Judiciary hoping for relief, but it is a pity that even the judiciary failed to see justice been meted out. Q What was the impact on the residents at that time? By that time the issue had spread like an epidemic. There were thirty deaths recorded owing to the effects of this garbage mountain as a result of various sicknesses caused by the garbage. In a survey conducted by the GMOA at that time it was revealed that 60% of children in the vicinity are suffering from mental disorders owing to the influence of the garbage dump and 65% have contacted skin diseases. It became very difficult for people to live there. QHad anyone foreseen that this garbage mountain could collapse at that time? No one had said so, but some environmentalists and a Professor of the Peradeniya University had said that the mountain can collapse. But the government failed to pay any heed and never made any warnings. Cracks appeared in walls and in some houses. Some obtained compensation, but our prolonged agitations did not bring any results, and as there was no alternative people became used to living here. When 60 companies presented project plans, the Colombo Municipality in some way or another blocked them. Some companies were willing to pay Rs.1000 to the CMC for every tonne of garbage. This revenue would alone have helped the CMC to maintain itself. The CMC did not allow any of these projects to be undertaken. There was a reason for this, because the tender of the garbage was a gold mine for CMC staff. A former council member filed action in the Supreme Court charging that this entire tender procedure was a fraud. It was apparent that some of the former Mayors and Municipal commissioners had been thriving on this tenders given to some companies. While this was going on the former chairman of the Kolonnawa UC, its Vice Chairman and certain Opposition Council members had formed companies and started to transport garbage to Meetotamulla. Not stopping at that, their brothers and relatives were used to collect the discarded bottles from the dump and using the environment around this dump yard a racket in propagating drugs, which continued without any obstacles. So the garbage dump became a safe haven for these Councillors and their henchman and an ideal site for their filthy lucre. In December 2015 when we again launched a massive protest, the former Chairman Ravindra Udayashantha came with a group of about twenty persons at about 10pm and mercilessly assaulted the protesters. An hour earlier to this incident the police who were at the site were stealthily removed. As a result of this attack Keerthirathne suffered a broken finger and was warded at the hospital. All governments whether SLFP or UNP thrived on commissions paid by the companies and were never interested in solving this issue. In March this year we organized another protest. Few days earlier MP Marikkar and UNP Councillors of Kotikawatte and Mulleriyawa Pradeshiya Sabhas got together with about 200 people staged a false protest, giving media coverage. Marikkar need not involve in protest as he had been sent to the Parliament by the people. It is the UNP government that is in power and the CMC is also under the UNP. What he did was staging media shows and disrupting the protests by people who are really victimized. We expected that something serious would happen if the issue is not settled timely. People never realized and they were also not warned on time. On two earlier occasions some were informed to vacate the area. About three hundred houses were vacated as Rs 1.5 million were paid to them. Most of them were unauthorized settlers. But those who lost houses in the recent collapse of the dump are permanent settlers and their houses are worth Rs. 8 to 9 million. They were promised as compensation Rs. 1.5 million, therefore there is a reluctance on their part to vacate. (Courtesy irida Lankadeepa) The resolution submitted by a group of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) saying that the GSP+ should not be granted to Sri Lanka, was defeated by an overwhelming majority of votes in the European Parliament in Belgium today. Speaking to the Daily Mirror from Brussels, Belgium, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Harsha De Silva said 436 members voted against the resolution while 119 voted in favour. Twenty two members abstained from voting on the resolution. We are very happy and its all done now. All voting sessions are over. We successfully defeated the resolution which was presented against granting us the GSP+ tariff concession, Dr. De Silva said. He said the next level of regaining GSP+ was the consent of the European Council of the Ministers which is a procedural step. We expect there will be no objection at the Council of Ministers. Once they give approval, a gazette will be issued making it the law, he said. He said the process of regaining the concession will go through the Council of Ministers around May 11. The group of MEPs tabled the resolution in the European Parliament against granting the GSP+ tariff concession to Sri Lanka citing concerns over key issues like human rights. The resolution cited the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sri Lanka issued on February 10, 2017 has concluded that the measures taken by Sri Lanka since October 2015 have been inadequate to ensure real progress, and the fulfilment of commitments has been "worryingly slow. (Lahiru Pothmulla) The two Members of the European Parliament (MEP) who visited Sri Lanka between April 10 and 12 to look into the possibility of Sri Lanka regaining GSP+, had recommended the European Commissioner on Trade Cecilia Malmstrom to grant the concession only under the strict condition of Sri Lanka implementing pledges made with regard to labour rights. In a letter addressed to Ministers Kabir Hashim, John Seneviratne and Board of Investment (BOI) Chairman Upul Jayasuriya, the two members said they believe that serious reforms are urgently needed to improve labour rights. The two MEPs; Anne-Marie Mineur and Lola Sanchez Caldentey, commended the government for ratifying all the UN, International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions on core human and labour rights. However, they said they are worried about the enforcement of workers right to join or form a union of their choosing, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. Also the fact that labour inspectors and union leaders cannot visit all working sites, in particular the Free Trade Zones, without advance notification, undermines the essence of inspections. Unions cannot currently access the courts for complaints of unfair labour practices and/or anti-union discrimination, the MEPs said in their letter. They said their findings during the visit confirm reports by the UN Human Rights Commissioner as well as the ILO Committee of Experts. Both institutions have also reported shortcomings on the enforcement of labour rights issues as well as other human rights issues, in particular the use of torture, the rights of minorities and the rights of LGBTI people. While not all of these issues were the focus of our mission, we fully support their purport, the MEPs said. Because of these facts, the duo said they have tabled a resolution to the plenary assembly of the European Parliament to be voted on by April 27, in which they object to the renewed entry into force of the GSP+ system. In response to their findings, the MEPs said they equally detected a cooperative attitude and a willingness to address these concerns from the Sri Lankan government. Minister Kabir Hashim agreed to include trade unions in the monitoring mechanism of the GSP+ in case it would be granted. Minister John Seneviratne stated that 50% of the benefits of the GSP+ system should be shared by the workers, they said. Meanwhile, Mr. Jayasuriya has agreed to allow labour inspectors and labour leaders to freely enter any work place under the purview of the BOI, including the FTZs We are impressed by the decisiveness and the sense of entrepreneurship that we have encountered both in the labour unions and in the government. However, we see too little guarantees to ensure the successful implementation reforms. Therefore, we recommend to Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom that once these commitments have been implemented, and only under this strict condition, she does grant Sri Lanka GSP+, the duo concluded in their letter. Students and workers at UT Chattanooga are set to attend a forum on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in the University Centers Ocoee Room regarding the Governors campaign to outsource facilities workers across the state. Community members are also invited to attend. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and share concerns with two members of UTCs administration, Executive Vice Chancellor of Finance and Operations Dr. Richard Brown and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Operations Tom Ellis. Ellie Newell, a senior at UTC and the co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, hopes that administrators will see that students care about the campus community. I think that campus workers play a huge role on our campus, and they do a lot that we take for granted most of the time. If their jobs are outsourced, then from past experience we know the workers arent treated as well, and the quality of service goes down because the company is focused on making a profit. "This comes on the tail of a series of events that demonstrate the Governors outsourcing team is pursuing a hard sell on campuses across the state. Last Friday, the outsourcing team met behind closed doors with Chancellor Angle, and Ms. Newell and several other students confronted Terry Cowles, the director of the Office of Customer Focused Government, with questions and concerns about the potential for outsourcing. On Monday, another organization, Student Activists for Equality, rolled out several banners on UTCs campus in opposition to outsourcing," officials said. "Opposition and criticism continues to grow across the state. As of this release, a majority of members of the House of Representatives and a near majority of Senators have signed a letter calling for a halt to the contract, including Representatives JoAnne Favors, Gerald McCormick, Marc Gravitt, and Mike Carter. Workers continue to organize and unite in opposition to this plan. A majority of Tennesseans remain opposed to the very idea. It remains unclear to the general public just how much opposition is needed to oppose a strong-headed term limited governor with nothing to lose." REUTERS, 26th APRIL, 2017 Islamic State militants have developed an improvised explosive device (IED) that can be launched from rifles or dropped from an aerial drone, an arms monitoring group said on Wednesday. Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said the Sunni militant group was promoting the development of own-brand weapons to provide its insurgents with otherwise unavailable armaments. The (IED) can be thrown, launched from an improvised rifle attachment, or in its most recent phases of development, dropped from a commercial, off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone, CAR said in a report following visits to Mosul in November, February and March. Iraqi military and elite counter-terrorism forces launched a sweeping, U.S.-backed offensive in October to retake the city, Islamic States last major urban stronghold in Iraq seized in a lightning offensive in 2014. They have retaken most of Mosul, including its half east of the Tigris River, and surrounded the militants in its northwest quarter including the Old City, home to the Grand al-Nuri mosque where IS declared a caliphate over parts of Iraq and Syria. The main suspect in the murder of a Police SI in Maspotha in Kurunegala in 2016, was killed and two other Police officers were injured during a shootout in Hambantota this afternoon, the Police said. The suspect, D.K. Chaminda alias Matara Roshan, was wanted in connection with the murder of Police SI in Maspotha in Kurunegala in 2016. They said the suspect had fired at the special Police team that had been deployed from Colombo to arrest him. The two injured Police officers were admitted to the Hambantota Base Hospital. Video by Roshan Gunasekera SEOUL AFP April 26, 2017-North Korea on Wednesday hailed its largest-ever firing drill, overseen by leader Kim Jong-Un to mark a key military anniversary amid high tensions in the region. Speculation had mounted that the North could carry out a sixth nuclear test or another missile launch to mark the 85 years since the founding of its army on Tuesday. Instead, the Norths state-run KCNA news agency said the Korean Peoples Army marked the anniversary with a successful largest-ever artillery drill under the orders of Supreme Commander Kim in the eastern port city of Wonsan. Submarines rapidly submerged to make torpedo-attacks at the enemy warships while aircraft dropped bombs. The brave artillerymen are mercilessly striking the targets, the way they fire is liberating and their shots are very accurate, KCNA cited Kim as saying. After the drill, the troops pledged their loyalty to Kim, vowing to turn into 10 million guns and 10 million bombs to defend him. Pyongyangs rhetoric always intensifies in the spring, when Seoul and Washington hold joint military drills which it sees as rehearsals for an invasion. The Rodong Sinmun -- the official mouthpiece of the ruling Workers Party of Korea -- carried several photos of the drill in a three-page spread. The front page showed Kim arriving at the site in his black Mercedes Benz with hundreds of tanks lined up. More than 30 pictures showed the drill in detail with Kim roaring with laughter as he watched artillery fire. How the International Workers Day fizzled into squabbles over petty issues ignoring the real issues The May Day rallies in Sri Lanka had been shrouded with such trivial rivalries Political parties distanced from real issues of the working masses Parties have a history of suppression of workers rights, whenever they are in power. May Day or the International Workers Day has long lost its purpose and spirit. However, in Sri Lanka the first of May is still a general holiday and political parties using it to boost their images by showcasing their strength by gathering as much supporters as possible to a place to hold processions and rallies. This year the May Day has been a talking point, especially after the loyalists of the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who call themselves the Joint Opposition have been given the massive Galle Face Green for their May Day rally by the authorities. This is the first time authorities have given the Galle Face Green to an Opposition group to hold its May Day rally. In early nineties the ruling United National Party had held its May Day rallies in the esplanade. The Joint Opposition had requested the Galle Face esplanade for the purpose in last February and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) is said to have refused to grant it. However, towards the end of the March, the SLPA had changed its earlier decision and granted permission to the Joint Opposition to hold its May Day rally there. Coinciding with this permission Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had instructed the authorities to provide all necessary facilities including security for the Joint Oppositions May Day rally at the Galle Face Green. This might have given rise to suppositions among many people that it was at the instance of the Prime Minister that the SLPA had given the ground to the Joint Opposition. Whatever it was, it is clear that the United National Party (UNP) is happy that the Joint Opposition had gained the beachfront Green as it would further worsen the relationship between the two factions of the SLFP, the traditional rival of the party. Since the day the SLFP was split after Maithripala Sirisena left the party to become the common opposition candidate at the 2015 Presidential election, the two factions of the SLFP led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena have been vying to gain the upper hand within the party, especially by claiming the majority support within the party. They have been using various public meetings and gatherings to prove their point. Especially the Mahinda loyalists had held public meetings with massive publicity campaigns in Nugegoda, the Hyde Park and in various other towns in the country under the slogan Rise with Mahinda and last year they conducted a Pada Yathra from Kandy to Colombo. They claimed that more than two million people, one tenth of the entire population of the country had participated in that walk. Last year the two factions used their May Day rallies again to showcase their strength with President Sirisenas faction selecting Galle as their venue, while the former President has preferred to stay put in Colombo. The Joint Opposition held their May Day rally at the Lalith Athulathmudali Ground in Kirulapone, a small ground. This time the Joint Opposition might have requested the Galle Face Green assuming that the authorities would reject their request, a situation that could be projected as their strength as well as the weakness of the two main parties in the Government, the UNP and the Maithri faction. Their request would have been an indication of their strength to hold a rally at the massive five hectare (12 acre) ground, while the Governments refusal to grant permission could also be portrayed as the Governments fear of their strength being displayed. But, probably to their surprise and disgust they now have got the largest ground in Colombo for their rally. Unless they could mobilise the masses to come in hundreds of thousands to fill at least a fraction of the ground it would be taken as a ridiculous flop. This was indicated by a speech made by the former President at a felicitation ceremony of a Provincial Councilor last Sunday in the Gampaha District. Having applied for the Galle Face Green the Kurunegala District MP said that Government had given them the ground presuming that the meeting would be an utter failure, but the Joint Opposition must show the Government its strength. UNP leadership, especially the Prime Minister might have expected a twofold advantage by providing the Galle Face Green to the Mahinda faction of the SLFP. The Premiers friendly gesture towards the Joint Opposition would lead to a situation where the Maithri faction would accuse that their rivals have struck a deal with the UNP leadership. Already there are allegations written on walls in Colombo and the suburbs that Basil Rajapaksa, the brother of former President was having a deal with the Prime Minister. On the other hand having obtained the Galle Face Green for the May Day rally, the Joint Opposition is under pressure to bring large crowds to Colombo for the May Day and this would compel them to trespass into the Maithri camp in the SLFP, which might ultimately create a tense situation between the two factions. Further divisions among the grassroots level SLFP members would be advantageous to the UNP at the Local Government elections that have to be held in the near future. The UNP leadership has acted in a similar manner in the late eighties soon after the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leaders including Rohana Wijeweera, who had been incarcerated following their first rebellion in 1971, were released from the jails in mid-1977. The first May Day rally after his release held at the Colombo Town Hall Grounds was a massive show of strength and they had held their 1978 May Day rally also at the same venue with the similar show. The SLFP led by Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike also had requested the same ground but the Colombo Municipal Council had given it to the JVP on the grounds that the former rebels were the first to apply. In the following year also the JVP managed to secure the Town Hall Grounds leading to a situation where all Opposition parties accused that the UNP Government was helping the JVP. The SLFP went down in history as the first political party that had held the May Day rally on May 7. This fight for the ground was helpful to the UNP as it somewhat prevented the Opposition parties from teaming up against the Government. The May Day rallies in Sri Lanka in the recent past had been shrouded with such trivial rivalries that had further distanced the political parties from real issues of the working masses, whose problems are supposed to be highlighted during the May Day rallies. The term working class is not even mentioned at many rallies, especially those held by the two main parties. Besides, the two main parties and the so-called Leftist parties that have had coalitions with the main parties have a history of suppression of workers rights, whenever they are in power. Hence most of the May Day rallies in the country have been pointless, aimless and against the very original spirit of the May Day concept. The "liberals" have welcomed the Supreme Court order of April 19, 2017, directing "revival" of conspiracy charges against LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati et al, and imposing a timeline of two years for the Lucknow district court to decide on the same, along with pending criminal cases on the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992. During culmination of proceedings, senior advocate KK Venugopal - doyen of the bar - remarked Your lordships use of Article 142 should be in accordance with law and due process of law as guaranteed in Article 21. Your recent order on the highway liquor ban has rendered lakhs jobless. He was reacting strongly to the proposal by a Bench of Justices PC Ghose and Rohinton Nariman to employ its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to order a joint trial of the two Babri Masjid demolition cases pending for the past 25 years. Excuse me for putting it bluntly, but Article 142 is not a source of unlimited power for you to go so far ahead. There should be self-restraint, he submitted. It is this very Article 142 that the top court has tucked into for its pronouncement. Time to stop and stare at what this "plenary" power enjoyed by the Supreme Court is and what our forefathers thought of this provision when they put it there in the first place - during the Constituent Assembly debates. It is a given that the apex court is the "most powerful institution of its kind" (late Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States). But does even this most powerful institution have a limit on its remit? Yes, it does. The Supreme Court is perceived as infallible - but only because it is last. Who then is to tell them like it is? Venugopal has made a start, and lets see why there is a lot more to what he said than meets the eye of the ordinary Indian. For a start - there is pregnant silence in the Constituent Assembly debates in 1949 on the power of the Supreme Court to "do complete justice". The Constituent Assembly debates are always referred to as to understand the contours of the power vested in a court under any Article. The exchange involving Pandit Thakurdas Bhargava (A Gujarati lawyer of influence who got the "cow ban" introduced as a Directive Principle) and Alladi Krishnaswami Aiyar, while debating on the contours of "complete justice", referred to the power enjoyed by the Privy Council - under British Dominion - ought to be enjoyed by the Supreme Court also in our Republic. Responding, Alladi said, "... If only we realise the plenitude of the jurisdiction if only, as I have no doubt, the Supreme Court is able to develop its own jurisprudence according to its own light, suited to the conditions of the country, there is nothing preventing the Supreme Court from developing its own jurisprudence in such a way that it could do complete justice in every kind of cause or matter. Other than this brief exchange, it is revealing that the debates in the Constituent Assembly are totally silent as to the powers vested in the Supreme Court to do "complete justice". Interestingly, intervening in this brief exchange, Babasaheb Ambedkar observed that the principle to vest the top court with such extraordinary powers was a "procedural" necessity, much like the powers of a civil court under civil procedure code - when they were handicapped by the absence of any specific provision to tide over a difficulty. A careful reading of this exchange - nuanced in legal theorising - the answer would be evident that the power to do "complete justice" was bestowed on the Supreme Court not as a "substantive" power but as a "procedural" staircase to clean ticklish cobwebs. This historical and constitutional foundation appears to have been long forgotten and that is what the legendary Venugopal was constrained to comment on. He could not have put it more bluntly with his age, experience and authority. What of us ordinary mortals? Would we be heard at all, leave alone listened to? More importantly, what has the Supreme Court itself said on the amplitude to do "complete justice" or its limiting remit over the years? In Prem Chand Garg (1962), the top court was alive to the "limits" on its constitutional power to do "complete justice", as not contemplating doing justice to one party by ignoring mandatory statutory provisions and thereby doing complete injustice to the other party by depriving such party of the benefit of the mandatory statutory provisions. This view, followed in Naresh Shridhar (1966) and AR Antulay (1988), was given a forced burial after the Delhi Judicial Service Association case (1991) leading to the Union Carbide (1991) verdict: "This court's power under Article 142 (1) to do 'complete justice' is entirely of a different level and of a different quality. Any prohibition or restriction contained in ordinary laws cannot act as a limitation on the constitutional power of this court - (when Union of India foisted a settlement on Bhopal Gas tragedy victims as constituting complete justice)." But then, in VC Mishra, Bar Council of India chairmans contempt case (1995), the initial bravado of the Supreme Court to strip him of his attorney licence gave way to "reasoned realisation that such power to do complete justice was after all not untrammelled" in the Supreme Court Bar Association case (1998) . The apex court sounded a cautionary note to itself, which alas in subsequent decisions they have chosen to disregard with impunity. The earlier self-imposed "limit to the remit" embargo has been consigned to the dustbin of constitutional history and today it is Article 142 that gives the Supreme Court its "aura of invincibility" against all comers. Our forefathers may be wriggling in their graves as to what has come of their debates. Yes, there may be no two opinions that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was a dastardly attack on religious sentiments. If there was a "criminal conspiracy" to pull down the structure, then the conspirators may deserve to be in the dock. But then, law is not all ends. Can "complete justice" be seen to be done "in spite of law"? What was the message the Supreme Court was sending? Overreaching judicial overreach even if the "intent" be commendable, if foul of law, deserves to be flagged off - which is the duty of men of the calibre of Venugopal. The issue is not whether Advani & Co deserved to be hauled up before law but whether law can be trampled with, in doing so? If Advani & Co had been "discharged" in accordance with law, do they not deserve to face the music of law by grammatically correct anthems and not jarring ones? It is true that in ESP Rajaram (2001), Anjana Kishore (2002), Aditi Vivek Kumar Wadhera (2016), Nikhil Kumar (2016), Asha Ranjan (2017) et al - the Supreme Court has trashed all "limits to the remit" to do "complete justice" and therefore had a free run on this occasion too. But is it legal? All for a good cause? Should ends justify the means? In Gian Singh in 2010, Markandey Katju J referred the issue on amplitude of power of Supreme Court to do "complete justice to a larger bench" - which remains unanswered till date. Be it the order of the Supreme Court on March 31, 2017 - clarifying that the ban on liquor vending on highways would include "bars/restaurants" too or the April 19, 2017, order to revive the conspiracy charge against Advani & Co to do "complete justice", it seems like a case of "complete injustice" to the Constitution that Alladi and Bhargava debated on. As part of the ongoing Art Wise Distinguished Speakers Series, the Hunter Museum of American Art announces artist Maria Brito on Thursday, May 11 at 6 p.m. Ms. Brito is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist who will discuss her process as well as the installation piece included in the Hunters current special exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.Our America presents works in all media by nearly 70 leading modern and contemporary artists. Drawn entirely from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this exhibition showcases artists of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican descent, as well as other Latin American groups with deep roots in the United States.The exhibition explores how Latino artists shaped the artistic movements of their day and recalibrated key themes in American art and culture.Ms. Brito was born in Havana, Cuba and came to the United States in 1960. She holds B.E. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Miami and B.F.A. and M.S. degrees from Florida International University in Miami. Ms. Brito is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grants, a Joan Mitchell Grant, a South Florida Consortium Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work is in the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seoul, Korea; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; Art in Public Places in Metro-Dade Center, Miami, Fl.; Oscar B. Cintas Foundation in New York, NY, among others.Art Wise events occur multiple times a year at the Hunter Museum, often coinciding with special exhibitions, and feature nationally and globally recognized speakers from the art community. Past speakers include Lalla Essaydi, Lynsey Addario, and Albert Paley. The Art Wise series is sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee Community Trust. Media support provided is by Brewer Media.Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Support for the exhibition has been provided by Altria Group, the Honorable Aida M. Alvarez, Judah Best, The James F. Dicke Family Endowment, Sheila Duignan and Mike Wilkins, Tania and Tom Evans, Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino, The Michael A. and the Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello Endowment, Henry R. Munoz III, Wells Fargo and Zions Bank. Additional significant support was provided by The Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Support for Treasures to Go, the museums traveling exhibition program, comes from The C.F. Foundation, Atlanta. New York Community Bancorp, Inc. is the bank holding company for New York Community Bank. New York Community Bank is the nations 47th-largest financial institution and its largest thrift. As a thrift, the bank specializes in real estate and consumer accounts specifically real estate loans and savings accounts and has limited exposure to other forms of business banking. Among the benefits to consumers are interest-bearing checking and saving accounts that come with higher-than-average interest rates. New York Community Bank was founded in 1859 to serve Queens County, New York. It operated under that name, growing all the while, until 2000 when it changed its name to better reflect the business. The company IPOd in 1993 and has made multiple acquisitions in the time since. As of 6/30/2022, the bank had $63.1 billion in assets and $41.2 billion in deposits. New York Community Bank operates in greater New York City, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona. The company provides deposit products ranging from interest-bearing checking and money market accounts to savings accounts, IRAs, and CDs. Brands under the companys umbrella include AmTrust in Florida and Arizona, Ohio Savings Bank, Garden State Savings Bank, and Atlantic Bank. The bank offers a wide range of real-estate-related loans including but not limited to multi-family loans, commercial real estate loans, construction loans, and consumer loans and mortgages. Investment products include annuities, mutual funds, and life insurance. Customers include individuals, small businesses, and organizations and are served through a network of more than 230 branches, and 300 ATMs, online, mobile, and by phone. Many of the locations are open 24 hours and 6 days a week although those hours are not available at all branches. Clients can access their accounts digitally 24/7. New York Community Bancorp and its underlying business carry investment-grade credit ratings from all the major rating agencies. The credit outlook in the 4th quarter of 2022 was stable as it had been for some time. In New York, it is a leader in the multi-family market specializing in lower-cost housing in rent-controlled areas. As of June 30, 2022, the multi-family loan portfolio accounted for more than 75% of all investments. The company has a stock purchase and dividend reinvestment plan that help to sustain a high level of ownership. Kilroy Realty Corporation (NYSE: KRC, the company, KRC) is a leading West Coast landlord and developer, with a major presence in San Diego, Greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Pacific Northwest. The company has earned global recognition for sustainability, building operations, innovation and design. As pioneers and innovators in the creation of a more sustainable real estate industry, the company's approach to modern business environments helps drive creativity, productivity and employee retention for some of the world's leading technology, entertainment, life science and business services companies. KRC is a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) and member of the S&P MidCap 400 Index with more than seven decades of experience developing, acquiring and managing office and mixed-use projects. As of September 30, 2020, KRC's stabilized portfolio totaled approximately 14.3 million square feet of primarily office and life science space that was 92.2% occupied and 95.5% leased. The company also had 808 residential units in Hollywood and San Diego, which had a quarterly average occupancy of 85.0% and 37.5%, respectively. In addition, KRC had seven in-process development projects with an estimated total investment of $1.9 billion, totaling approximately 2.3 million square feet of office and life science space. The office and life science space was 90% leased. The City of Chickamauga and the downtown merchants will be hosting First Fridays featuring Common Ground. Common Ground is a north Georgia based cover band that performs songs from the 1950s to current hit music. "Strong vocals and solid musical skills drive this musically diverse band," officials said. Gordon Street will be closed at 5:30 p.m. and the show will begin at 6 p.m. Merchants will remain open for the crowds and will have giveaways. "Please bring a chair and be prepared to have a great time," officials said. For more information look to City Of Chickamauga Facebook or www.cityofchickamauga.org, or email fanci@cityofchickamauga.org. Watts Water Technologies, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells products, solution, and systems that manage and conserve the flow of fluids and energy into, through and out of buildings in the commercial and residential markets in the Americas, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. The company offers residential and commercial flow control products, including backflow preventers, water pressure regulators, temperature and pressure relief valves, and thermostatic mixing valves. It also provides heating, ventilation, and air conditioning and gas products, such as boilers, water heaters, custom heat, and hot water solutions; hydronic and electric heating systems for under-floor radiant applications; custom heat and hot water solutions; hydronic pump groups for boiler manufacturers and alternative energy control packages; and flexible stainless steel connectors for natural and liquid propane gas in commercial food service and residential applications. In addition, the company offers drainage and water re-use products comprising drainage products and engineered rain water harvesting solutions for commercial, industrial, marine, and residential applications; and water quality products that include point-of-use and point-of-entry water filtration, conditioning, and scale prevention systems for commercial and residential applications. Further, it provides smart mixing system under the IntelliStation name. The company sells its products to plumbing, heating, and mechanical wholesale distributors and dealers, as well as original equipment manufacturers, specialty product distributors, do-it-yourself chains, and retail chains; and directly to wholesalers and private label accounts. Watts Water Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1874 and is headquartered in North Andover, Massachusetts. The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface. Read More 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. United Technologies Corporation provides technology products and services to building systems and aerospace industries worldwide. Its Otis segment designs, manufactures, sells, and installs passenger and freight elevators, escalators, and moving walkways; and offers modernization products to upgrade elevators and escalators, as well as maintenance and repair services. The company's Carrier segment provides heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration, fire, security, and building automation products, solutions, and services for commercial, government, infrastructure, residential, and refrigeration and transportation applications. This segment also offers building services, including audit, design, installation, system integration, repair, maintenance, and monitoring. Its Pratt & Whitney segment supplies aircraft engines for commercial, military, business jet, and general aviation markets; and provides aftermarket maintenance, repair, and overhaul, as well as fleet management services. The company's Collins Aerospace Systems segment provides electric power generation, power management, and distribution systems; air data and aircraft sensing systems; engine control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; engine components; environmental control systems; fire and ice detection, and protection systems; propeller systems; engine nacelle systems; aircraft lighting, seating, and cargo systems; actuation and landing systems; space products and subsystems; avionics systems; flight controls, communications, navigation, oxygen, and training systems; food and beverage preparation, and storage and galley systems; and lavatory and wastewater management systems. The company offers its services through manufacturers' representatives, distributors, wholesalers, dealers, retail outlets, and sales representatives, as well as directly to customers. United Technologies Corporation was founded in 1934 and is headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut. On Sunday, May 21, portions of the bicycle route for Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga will go through Walker County and the City of Chickamauga. In order to cause minimal impact on the public and provide safety for all, law enforcement officers will be located at all major intersections beginning at 8 a.m. and will remain until the conclusion of the race. Cyclists will abide by Georgia bicycle laws while traveling on Georgia roads unless otherwise directed by officers. The event will be open course; there will be no road closures along county roads, however Gordon Street in Chickamauga will be closed for spectators. Expect delays along the race route; alternate routes are recommended. For more information, visit http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman-70.3/chattanooga/race-info/course.aspx#axzz4fN997ToS. Job seekers in the LaFayette area will have the opportunity to meet with about 30 employers with positions to fill during the job fair held in Rock Spring in May. The job fair is being co-sponsored by the Georgia Department of Labors (GDOL) LaFayette Career Center, along with the Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties chambers of commerce. The job fair will be held on Thursday, May 11, from 3-7 p.m. at the Walker County Civic Center located at 10052 U.S. Highway 27 in Rock Spring. Employers who have registered and offer a variety of jobs include: Amedisys Home Health and Hospice Care, Audia Plastics, Clumpies Ice Cream, Coca Cola, Dixie Collision, Dollar General, EnviroGuard, Hammer Down OC, Hayes State Prison, Jimmy Simpson Foundation, Komatsu America Corporation, Lake Winnepesaukah and Lookout Mountain Community Services. Along with Mohawk Industries, Primary Health Care Centers, Quality Machine, Rock City, Roper Corporation, Ruby Falls, Sprint, Shaw Industries, Vanguard National Trailer Corporation, Victory Sign Industries, LTD., Walker County Emergency Services, Walker County Sheriff Department, Walker State Prison and Walmart. For more information about the jobs, or to apply online, visit employgeorgia.com to create an account and upload, or prepare, a resume. Having an Employ Georgia account expedites the interview process. Applicants are encouraged to bring a resume and dress appropriately to improve their opportunities for jobs. For more information about the job fair, contact the GDOLs LaFayette Career Center at (706) 638-5525. The career center, at 200 West Villanow St., is open to serve the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Visit dol.georgia.gov to learn more about career opportunities, Employ Georgia and other GDOL services for job seekers and employers, and to connect with them on social media. TUES/2 Member Orientation 8-9:30 a.m. Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce: 811 Broad St Join us to learn more about your member benefits and what's going on at the Chamber! Light breakfast is served. Please RSVP to Anne McNutt, AMcNutt@ChattanoogaChamber.com . TUES/2 "How To Get a Job 101" Free Sessions 8:30-4:30 p.m. The Brainerd Crossroads (BX): 4011 Austin Street Human resources directors from local business and industry will present information on topics ranging from resume writing and online applications to interviewing and appropriate follow-up. Session One: 8:30-11:30 a.m. Session Two: 1:30-4:30 p.m. Register at careercenterinfo@sedev.org For more information visit chattanoogachamber.com. TUES/2 North Chattanooga Council Meeting 11:30-1:00 p.m. The INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd. $10. WED/3 AM Networking sponsored by The Chattanooga Zoo 8-9 a.m. Chattanooga Zoo: 301 N Holtzclaw Ave Held the first Wednesday of every month, AM Networking brings an average of 100 business people together for networking and hot coffee. month will be sponsored and hosted by The Chattanooga Zoo. Register at chattzoo.com WED/3 Create a Business Facebook Page Workshop 10:45 a.m.-12 p.m. BrightBridge Inc: 535 Chestnut St., Suite 161 When you leave class, you will have created a Facebook business page. Training will cover the basics of a creating a Facebook business page. Required materials include: 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. Speaker: Emily Pilkington, BrightBridge Womens Business Center 535 Chestnut St., Suite 161 Reserve your free seat visit: https://www.brightbridgewbc.or g/event/createfbpage5-3/ THUR/4 Downtown Council Meeting 7:30-9 a.m. Bessie Smith Hall: 200 E M L King Blvd Networking and breakfast will take place from 7:30 8 a.m. Speaker: Judge Neil Thomas-Interstate Art Project $15 THUR/4 East Ridge Council Meeting 11:45-1 p.m. East Ridge Community Center: 1517 Tombras Ave. Speaker: Doug Smith, BCBST $10. THUR/4 How to Find a Business Mentor 5:30-6:30 p.m. BrightBridge Inc: 535 Chestnut St., Suite 161 This session allows attendees to identify what they think a mentor is and then narrow in on their own circle of influence to find people they may already know who can become their mentors. Speaker: Linda Murray Bullard, LSMB Business Solutions and BrightBridge Womens Business Center To reserve your free seat visit: https://www.brightbridgewbc.or g/event/mentor5-4/ FRI/5 Ooltewah/Collegedale Council Coffee 8:30-9:30 a.m. Wired Coffee Bar: 5707 Main Street Consider attending this monthly networking event in Ooltewah to catch up with the best business connections around. Residents and associates at Life Care Center of Collegedale are in for a lot of fun during National Nursing Home Week, May 14-20, officials said. "This years national theme is 'The Spirit of America.' Each day will feature a different theme and multiple activities. " The week will kick off on Sunday, May 14, with a Mothers Day social for residents and their families. Monday, May 15, will include a balloon release outside the entrance at 10:30 a.m., followed by patriotic music at noon. At 2 p.m., residents will get to make homemade ice cream.On Tuesday, May 16, Jala West, director of social work at Life Care Center of Collegedale, will bring her Arabian horse that she has taught to dance, and the residents will get to watch its tricks at 2:30 p.m. Residents and their families will also enjoy a family dinner at the center that evening.Wednesday, May 17, will be a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s. Butch Reeves will perform music from these decades at 2:30 p.m.Associates will enjoy a cookout on Thursday, May 18, and residents will play carnival games that afternoon.The week will close out on Friday, May 19, with a farm theme. A banjo and fiddle player will entertain the residents during lunch, and at 2:30 p.m., residents can visit animals at a petting zoo set up outside.For more details about the events planned for National Nursing Home Week, call the facility at 423-396-2182. Picture this: a room filled with a dozen people, in lines and in step to the music. Since the room is at the Senior Center, it might not surprise you that the average participant is older than 60. What might surprise you is that one of these line dancers is a 20-year-old college student, having the time of her life, dancing with her adopted grandmother. Line dancing is one of the many ways students involved with the Adopt-A-Grandparent program at the University of Virginias Madison House interact with seniors. The mission of the program, according to its website, is to create meaningful, one-to-one relationships with seniors in the Charlottesville community that will improve the quality of life of participants, both seniors and volunteers. Students visit a variety of sites in Charlottesville, including JABA, the Mary Williams Community Center and Our Lady of Peace. They dedicate an hour or two each week to spending time with seniors, either one-on-one or in groups. That these young people volunteer is not unusual; young people do. According to the U.S. Department of Labors 2015 Report on Volunteering, 26.4 percent of teens between the ages of 16 and 19 and 18.4 percent of young people between 20 and 24 give their time to volunteer programs. Many schools require a certain number of hours of community service for graduation. The question is: Why work with seniors? Amanda Tomlinson thinks she has the answer. A fourth-year UVa student double majoring in biology and history and preparing for medical school, Tomlinson still finds time to serve as one of the directors of the Adopt-A-Grandparent program, which currently has more than 200 volunteers and is the second-largest program at Madison House. A lot of students enjoy getting out of the UVa bubble, said Tomlinson, who added that for students whose grandparents live far away, the program provides an opportunity to build a relationship with a senior often one who may not have many family members or friends left. And many of the young people in this program end up in very close relationships with the seniors they meet. They exchange letters and postcards, play games and dance. Tomlinson recalls that the first time she and two other volunteers tried line dancing, they were all reluctant and terrible at it. Everyone was having so much fun that it was OK that we were terrible, she laughed. They were willing to teach us. We all left with wide smiles, just glowing because of how much fun we had. Clearly it isnt just the seniors who benefit from the time together with these young people. Seniors make an impact on the lives of the students, Tomlinson pointed out. One volunteer told her that she has become more confident in conversation, thanks to the need to talk to someone so much older than she is and from a different background. And students can see their stereotypes about seniors shattered by a little close contact. Several volunteers play Scrabble every week with a group at the Senior Center and they never win. If the students walk away abashed at losing once again to their adopted grandparents, they still feel good about what they are doing. I never consider my time with them as an obligation, Tomlinson said, and a lot of volunteers feel the same way its the relationship they care about. Caroline Hickey may not be competing at the Scrabble table or dancing at the Senior Center, but she too chooses to dedicate herself to volunteering with seniors, thanks to a relationship one in her own family. When Hickeys grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers 10 years ago, Hickey began to see firsthand what the disease can do both to the person affected and to loved ones. It was only when she began volunteering for the Alzheimers Association while in high school, however, that she came to see how devastating the disease can be for families who are not as fortunate financially as her own, and she made up her mind to get involved. After coming to UVa, the Long Island, New York, native joined Hoos for Memory and began helping to raise money and awareness for Alzheimers. She also offered her computer skills to the local chapter of the Alzheimers Association, where she now volunteers every month. Like the students who adopt grandparents, Hickey feels a strong commitment to what she does. Volunteering should be personal, she said. If you find any connection, thats what you want. Its rewarding giving back to someone or something you care about. Even if you come in just once a month to do something small, it always makes a difference. Hickeys grandmother no longer speaks and may never be aware of her granddaughters commitment, but Hickeys reward is feeling that she is supporting the cause. I would love for there to be a cure for Alzheimers, she said. And she is doing what she can to help. So, why do young people volunteer to work with seniors? Yes, it looks good on a resume. Maybe they will network, and the experience might help them get a job someday. But for Hickey and Tomlinson, and for many others, its not about the resume or the job. Its personal. Its about relationship. And they love it. Judith Gardner is member and guest relations coordinator at the Senior Center. Erlanger North Hospital, in partnership with the Hamilton County Health Department, is now offering a Living Well workshop to help individuals manage chronic conditions and improve overall health."Chronic diseases are any disease or condition that persists over a long period of time. These diseases can lead to pain, discomfort, daily challenges, and financial hardship," officials said."Living Well is designed to provide participants with techniques to self-manage a variety of chronic health conditions, including heart and lung disease, obesity, arthritis, chronic fatigue, depression, and more.Participants will learn to manage chronic conditions through workshops focused on the benefits of physical activity, healthy eating, problem solving, breathing techniques, sleeping, and weight management."This free six-week course will be held at Red Bank Community Center, 3620 Tom Weathers Dr. from 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. beginning May 3. In order to gain the benefits of this program, participants are strongly encouraged to attend all six sessions.For more information or to register for any of the Living Well workshops, visit www.erlanger.org/livingwell or call 423-778-LINK (5465). The two candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination for the 57th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates agreed on several key issues in a forum Wednesday night at the University of Virginia, but they offered different visions to the audience. House Minority Leader David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, presented a vision of Democrats across the state working together to gain more of a presence in the General Assembly. Ross Mittiga, a political researcher and instructor at the University of Virginia, pushed for Democrats to adopt a more progressive approach. The forum was hosted by the University Democrats and the Charlottesville Democratic Party at UVas Nau Hall. Both candidates agreed on the surface on a number of issues, such as transportation and infrastructure, criminal justice reform, affordability of higher education and renewable energy. But Toscano and Mittigas responses became tenser as the night went on. The two differed on some specific issues and details, including the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The controversial pipeline came up a few times during the forum, and it was brought up several more times by students during the open question portion. Many students challenged Toscanos stance on the pipeline. Mittiga has said he opposes the proposed 600-mile natural gas pipeline. He said his stance to is a key issue that distinguishes him from Toscano. Toscano, who is running for his seventh term in the House of Delegates, has repeatedly said he cannot vote for or against the pipeline, and he would not directly answer yes or no when asked by an audience member if he would support it. Both candidates stressed the importance of strengthening the Democratic Party in Virginia, but they differed on how to do so. Toscano stressed party unity, pointing out 17 state districts that he believes have a chance of electing Democrat in the next election. Mittiga questioned what it means to be a Democrat today, proffering that moving forward in future elections would require being bold and progressive. Speaking to a crowd made up mostly of students, Toscano and Mittiga also discussed the cost of college and student debt. Mittiga touted his plan to levy luxury taxes in order to make tuition at universities and colleges in Virginia free for families making less than $125,000 a year. Toscano again pushed to the importance of flipping control in the state legislature to the Democrats who would increase education funding. Brett Curtis, president of the University Democrats, said the forum sparked a lot of interest at the event and on Facebook Live. The group will host a forum between Democratic gubernatorial candidates Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam and former Rep. Tom Perriello on May 13. The Democratic primary is June 13. Both candidates agreed during the forum that the winner of the primary race in June will likely be the next delegate for the 57th District. No other opponents have entered the race. According to the Virginia Department of Elections, a Democrat has won and held the 57th race for the past few decades. Most of the voters who cast a ballot for President Donald Trump still support him, according to a nationwide poll commissioned by University of Virginias Center for Politics. Trumps approval rating with those voters is 93 percent, with 42 percent saying they strongly approve and 51 percent saying they somewhat approve of him. The poll, conducted by the research group Public Opinion Strategies, surveyed 1,000 Trump voters online earlier this month. The estimated margin of error is 3 percentage points. Public Opinion Strategies also conducted a series of in-person focus groups with Trump supporters, Republicans and independents who voted for Hillary Clinton or a third-party candidate. Highlights of the poll include: Two-thirds of respondents said the country has been improving since Trump took office. About 70 percent of them said they believe the country is headed in the right direction, while 22 percent said its on the wrong track. About 72 percent of respondents said building a wall on the Mexican border is at least somewhat important to them. When given the choice between building the wall or fixing health care, about two-thirds of them said theyd rather spend the money on health care. Roughly 57 percent said they voted for Trump more because they supported him, and less because they disliked Clinton. The full report is available at centerforpolitics.org. The Chattanooga Bach Choir, conducted by artistic director David Long, continues its Barnett & Company Cantata Series on Sunday, April 30 at 4 p.m. at Christ Church Episcopal, 663 Douglas St. There is a suggested donation of $15 at the door; students are free. For more information, visit www.chattanoogabachchoir.org. The program features two choral works: Johann Sebastian Bachs cantata, BWV 104, Du Hirte Israel, Hore (O Shepherd of Israel, Hear Us) and a motet by Josquin des Prez, Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo (I shall sing the mercies of the Lord forever), as well as an organ prelude from Bachs Leipzig Chorales, Allein Gott, in der Hoh sei Ehr (Glory be to God on High), BWV 662, performed by the Bach Choirs organist, Karla Fowkes. Joining the Bach Choir are guest soloists tenor James Harr and bass Zachary James Cavan. David Long, artistic director said, The works chosen for this program are appropriate for the 2nd Sunday after Easter, also known as Misericordias Domini Sunday. The psalm for this day is Psalm 23, the Shepherds psalm; and Bachs pastoral cantata, filled with lilting triplet rhythms and mellow woodwind solos, conveys the message of a happy flock, a protective Shepherd, a wilderness separate from the Shepherd, and a pasture in eternity with the Shepherd. The music of Josquin des Prez, one of the great choral masters of the high Renaissance, influenced the music of Martin Luther, who began the reformation 500 years ago, in 1517. We are presenting Josquins motet written for this Sunday in the Liturgical Church calendar. The organ prelude from the Leipzig Chorales, based on the melody heard in the final chorale of the Bach cantata we are singing, continues the pastoral theme of this program. The final concert in the Barnett & Company Cantata Series takes place on May 21 featuring BWV 86 Wahrlich, Wahrlich, Ich Sage Euch (Truly, truly I say to you). These concerts take place at Christ Episcopal Church. The outdoors is worth big money, to the companies who sponsor outdoor activities, to federal and state governments and to the local communities such as Greene County that surround national parks. Shenandoah National Park on Monday was the site of the inaugural outdoor recreation industry roundtable made up of representatives from some of the largest outdoor recreation companies in the United States, as well as those in the Department of Interior and those in the National Park Service itself. We often refer to Skyland as the centerpiece of Shenandoah, for really good reasons, said Claire Comer, interpretive specialist with Shenandoah National Park. George Freeman Pollack became entranced with the area in 1884 while visiting land his family owned. He began holding camping parties there and some of the cabins and the conference center at Skyland are still standing today. It was under his leadership, in partnership with some of his investors, that Shenandoah National Park came to existence. Jennifer Flynn, Shenandoah National Park new superintendent, said the park welcomed 1.45 million visitors in 2016, which was an 8 percent bump over the previous year, though she noted it could be because of the park service centennial. Our numbers have not slid backward, Flynn said. By every objective measure we were up last year: campground stays were up, entrance fee revenues were up, concession revenues were up. The impact of Shenandoah, looking at the spending in a 50-mile radius to the park, was $96.2 million in the surrounding communities. Nationally, the Outdoor Industry Association announced on April 25 that outdoor recreation added up to $887 billion in consumer spending, 7.6 million jobs, $65.3 billion in federal tax revenue, $59.2 billion in state tax revenue and $650 million in federal duties. Amy Roberts, executive director of the association, said the sample size is 70 percent larger than the 2012 report. State level data will be available this summer and congressional district level data will be available later this year or early 2018, she said. Frank Hugelmeyer, president of the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, told the group, The roundtable is an unprecedented coalition of Americas leading outdoor recreation. This group has really never come together before in the way that we have today. Hugelmeyer said the focus for the roundtable is policy and legislative reforms that are needed to help grow outdoor recreation. Until now there hasnt been a coordinated, comprehensive all-sector effort to partner with an administration or with Congress to establish an outdoor recreation business growth agenda for the country, he said. This is a historic gathering and an unpresented opportunity for the Trump administration. National Park Service Acting Director Michael Reynolds said one thing to explore is the public/private partnerships that could help alleviate the deficits in maintenance and infrastructure throughout the park service. One of our top priorities is infrastructure; $12 million doesnt go away on its own. I would really like in our dialogue about how we can work in a public/private way to address these backlogs and how to make it sustainable, Reynolds said. One thing we dont want to do is invest in things that continue to add to the backlog as well. In some cases there are old parks like Shenandoah that have things we have to bring up to a certain standard, but remember for better or worse there are a lot of new parks coming online, he said. Some are tiny little national monuments but some are like Catoctin Mountain in Maine that very much has a whole mixed land-use approach in its early development, including snowmobiling and hunting industries. Reynolds said the service is in a kind-of holding pattern as new administration appointments are made through Congress. Right now Im telling our teams to focus on what I call Park Service 101, Reynolds said. Just the basics right now outstanding service and really sprucing up our places. The secretary [of the interior] is doing that. He told me the other day he likes to go back and see how the garbage is being handled at our facilities, Reynolds said. Hes really focused a lot on how were dealing with people and customer service and being open to everybody. Were focused a lot on our people this year. Two U.S. service members died during operations against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Thursday. A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said the deaths occurred overnight in Afghanistan's Nangahar province, where a small but virulent Islamic State cell poses a threat for Afghan and U.S. coalition forces. It was the third time this year that a member of the U.S. military has died in combat in Afghanistan. On April 8, Army Staff Sgt. Mark De Alencar, 37, was mortally wounded by small-arms fire, also in Nangahar. The deaths come just days after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan to assess the security situation and advance deliberations about the Trump administration's strategy for America's longest war. The commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, has called for thousands of additional troops to help prop up the Afghan military, which is struggling to hold off the Taliban and an array of other militant groups. A local branch of the Islamic State, comprised mainly of militants pulled from other groups, has emerged as an increasing focus for U.S. forces remaining in Afghanistan. While military officials say the group is far smaller than it was at its height in 2015, an estimated 600 to 800 militants located mainly in remote mountainous areas have proven to be a deadly adversary. Fighting has been fierce as U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces, backed by hundreds of airstrikes, have sought to advance against militant strongholds in recent months. Earlier this month, U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped a 22,000-pound guided bomb called a GBU-43 on an Islamic State tunnel complex in Nangahar, the first use of a weapon of its kind. While Afghan officials said between 36 and roughly 100 Islamic State fighters were killed in the strike, the U.S. military has not announced what exactly the massive bomb accomplished. Local media reports indicate that fighting around the blast site continues, and it was not immediately clear whether Thursday's casualties occurred near that location. One of the most curious aspects of President Donald Trumps foreign policy has been his absence of a clearly articulated viewmuch less a strategyon Afghanistan, where 8,400 U.S. troops are still helping fight a war. Before and during his campaign, Trump hardly spoke about what has become the United States longest conflict, except to denounce Pakistan for its role in supporting the Taliban and to deride U.S. attempts at nation-building in one of the worlds least developed countries. This month, the president authorized the dropping of the worlds biggest nonnuclear bomb in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan even though he had yet to decide whether and how the United States would remain engaged in the country. Now the administration appears to be moving toward filling this glaring gap. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Kabul this week, following a trip by national security adviser H.R. McMaster; a policy review is said to be near completion. A recommendation is pending from the U.S. commander in the theater, Gen. John Nicholson, to send 3,000 or more additional U.S. troops to the country in an attempt to break the momentum of the Taliban, which has been slowly taking ground from the Afghan government and inflicting unsustainable casualties on its security forces. Trump should approve the increase along with other military measures that could turn the tide. But he should also drop his resistance to U.S. programs to bolster the Afghan economy and political system and to fight corruption. Without them, the war will never be won. The military problems plaguing the government of President Ashraf Ghani were tragically exemplified last week when a Taliban attack on an army base killed more than 160 soldiersmany of them raw recruits. The skillful operation by militants disguised as soldiers was attributed by some U.S. officials to the Haqqani network, which continues to find safe harbor in Pakistan. Meanwhile, administration officials say Russia and Iran have begun supplying weapons to other Taliban factions in a clear attempt to undermine the U.S. and NATO forces backing the Ghani government. At least 6,700 of the more than 300,000 Afghan security forces were reportedly killed last year as the Taliban gained territory across the country. That was partly because many Afghan units remain poorly trained, but also because they lack adequate air support in battle, due to tight restrictions on U.S. operations imposed by President Barack Obama. Trump should address both problems by dispatching additional U.S. trainers and Special Operations forces and by allowing American planes and drones to operate with the same freedom against the enemy that they have in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Mr. Trump should back a parallel effort to bolster Ghanis government, which has been hamstrung by political infighting and continued corruption. Reading inspectors generals reports about how billions in U.S. and other international development aid have been squandered, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the West should abandon Afghan nation-building. Yet progress has been madethe countrys gross domestic product has doubled, and education levels, including for women, have risen sharply. Sustaining that development, even if it is slow and painful, is as important as turning back the Taliban. Townsend Atelier announces that visiting artist, author, and expert on human anatomy, Roberto Osti, will be giving a lecture at their Southside studio and school, 301 East 11th St., on Friday, May 26 from 6-7:30 p.m. "Artists, art lovers, students, collectors and just the plain curious, are encouraged to attend," officials said. "The event is open to the public free of charge. "Mr. Osti, an expert on anatomy and figurative art, will discuss how the knowledge of anatomy, or the lack of it, has influenced the way artists have represented the human body in art during the millennia. "Mr. Osti will explain the evolution of the body in art from the poised and controlled human figures of the Classical period to the Hellenistic bodies animated and contorted by overwhelming passions; from the codified images of the Byzantine period to the bodies of the upward reaching gothic figures; and the Renaissance revolution and how it revived anatomy both for art and science. The Baroque, Neoclassical and Romantic periods will also be discussed and the effect that Science and Pseudoscience had on the Arts and Culture of specific Historical times. The talk will be supported by a Powerpoint presentation." Immediately following the lecture, Mr. Osti will be available to sign his newly published book, Basic Anatomy: An Essential Guide for Artists. About Roberto Osti Originally from Italy and now living in New Jersey, Roberto Osti studied figurative art at the New York Art Students League, and has an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, New York, NY. He has a degree in Anatomical and Surgical Drawing with honors from University of Bologna, in Bologna, Italy and has also studied with acclaimed British painter, Jenny Saville. His illustrations have appeared in such publications as Scientific American Magazine, Scientific American Mind, Scientific American Explorations, Scientific American Books, Natural History Magazine, New York Times-Science Times, and the Italian magazine Salve. In October 2016, Roberto presented his newly published book, Basic Human Anatomy: An Essential Visual Guide for Artists, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in conjunction with his talk about anatomy, The Site of the Soul. Nearly 1,800 students will participate at Red Bank High School and Ooltewah High School on Thursday, May 11 and Friday, May 12 to compete in the 28th Annual Elementary Track and Field Meets. The rain dates for the events will be Monday, May 15 and Tuesday, May 16.Students will compete in seven events including a 100-, 200- and 400-meter dash, standing long jump, running long jump, shot-put, and 4 x 100 relays.The track meet culminates the years physical education curriculum.Participating students will be awarded first through sixth place ribbons based on their performance. Students not placing will receive a participation ribbon. Students were selected to participate based on tryouts and positive behavior at their school.The events begin at approximately 10 a.m. and conclude before 1 p.m. on both days. The fifth annual Chattabrewga returns May 13, from noon to 5 p.m. at the First Tennessee Pavilion. Chattabrewga is Chattanoogas premier special-release and rare-beer festival. General Admission tickets are $50 and include unlimited craft beer samples, no tokens required. 50 VIP tickets are available for $80 and include access to the Terminal Brewhouse VIP Food Pairing Lounge. Chattabrewga (formerly the Chattanooga Craft Beer Festival) is presented by Terminal Brewhouse and Rhizome Productions. Chattabrewga is supported locally by Imbibe Chattanooga and Staybridge Suites. A portion of net proceeds supports the Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition. Gates open at noon and the festival ends at 5 p.m., with the last call at 4:45 p.m. VIP guests get early access at 11:30 a,m. This is a 21+ event and guests must present a valid ID to enter. And as much as we love kids and dogs, please, no children or pets will be permitted. Also, please no large bags or backpacks. The event goes on rain or shine. But if it rains, there is ample protection from the elements in the First Tennessee Pavilion. Inside the pavilion, music will be provided by Ashevilles DJ Jut Rut and food trucks will be available if anyone gets hungry. The thing about Chattabrewga that set us apart from other area beer festivals is one price gets you in and covers the beer. Theres no extra tokens to deal with. Also, were proud to support the Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition and have raised $10,000 for the great work they do, said Matt Leff, founder of Rhizome Productions. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and Rep. Phil Roe on Thursday introduced the Tennessee Wilderness Act. I grew up hiking the mountains of East Tennessee and conserving some of the most beautiful areas in our state gives future generations of Tennesseans the same sort of opportunity, Senator Alexander said. Tennessee is full of history, and this legislation would help protect our states heritage while giving the millions of people who visit the state every year an additional reason to come and enjoy the great outdoors. Senator Alexander is a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He is also chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy & Water Development. Millions of people visit Tennessee each year to experience our incredible God-given outdoor amenities, and its important that the Cherokee National Forest be preserved for future generations of Americans to enjoy, said Senator Corker. I thank Senator Alexander and Representative Roe for their commitment to protecting our wilderness, and I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation. "As an avid outdoorsman, I strongly believe we must protect the beautiful lands were fortunate to have in East Tennessee. Though these particular lands have been treated as wilderness for more than a decade, its important to officially protect them, Rep. Roe said. I believe its also important that we continue to allow permit holders the ability to hunt and fish on the land, which is why the bill includes specific language to protect these privileges. Im proud to join Senators Alexander and Corker in this important effort, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to keep Tennessee beautiful for years and generations to come. The Senate version of the Tennessee Wilderness Act would designate nearly 20,000 acres of the Cherokee National Forest as wilderness area. The legislation would create one new wilderness area and expand the boundaries of five existing wilderness areas within the Cherokee National Forest. Designation as a wilderness area is the highest level of conservation protection to preserve federal land. Senators Alexander and Corker introduced this legislation in the last four Congresses. Creating and expanding these wilderness areas would have no effect on privately owned land, and these lands have been managed as wilderness areas since 2004. The legislation would preserve access to federally owned land that has already been made part of existing Wilderness Study Areas by the U.S. Forest Service and will not increase costs for taxpayers. The bill also ensures the state of Tennessee continues to exercise jurisdiction over the fish and wildlife management of the land, protecting permit holders ability to hunt and fish. The Senate version of the Tennessee Wilderness Act would: Create the 9,038 acre Upper Bald River Wilderness (Monroe County) Add 348 acres to the Big Frog Wilderness (Polk County) Add 966 acres to the Little Frog Mountain Wilderness (Polk County) Add 2,922 acres to the Sampson Mountain Wilderness (Washington and Unicoi County) Add 4,446 acres to the Big Laurel Branch Wilderness (Carter and Johnson County) Add 1,836 acres to the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness (Monroe County) Rep. Roe introduced the Tennessee Wilderness Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, and that legislation would designate nearly 7,500 acres in Tennessees First Congressional District as wilderness area. Bengaluru: Karnataka Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda today said "Big Basket," an online grocery store, had expressed interest in collaborating with 2 organic farmers' federations to supply and procure organic produce. The proposal is to supply and procure organic products including millets of approximately 800 metric tonnes, valued at Rs 14.50 crore from the two federations, he said. "Big Basket and Davangere and Chitradurga District Organic Farmers Federations have expressed interest in collaborating for supply and procurement of millets of approximately 500 metric tonnes, valued at Rs 2.50 crore," he told PTI in an interview here. Uttara Kannada District Organic Farmers Federation had expressed an intent to establish linkages with "Big Basket" for supply and procurement of approximately 300 metric tonnes of organic spices valued at Rs 12 crore, the Minister added. The linkages would benefit the farmers group to obtain a price gain to the tune of 15-20 per cent over and above the prevalent market prices, Byre Gowda said. He said "Big Basket" intends to train farmer groups on grading, packing and quality aspects. "The intention is also to enable farmers sell produce directly to consumers. Hence, both sides will explore options for co-branding as well. This is a big step towards "from-farmers-to-consumers" direct linkage," he added. Other companies have also shown interest to tie up directly with farmer groups for procurement, Byre Gowda said. "Not only has a big online grocery retailer like "Big Basket" shown interest, small Rs 100-crore companies also are keen to procure organic produce from farmers. There are many names, but I wouldn't like to divulge them now. Will do so when deals materialise," he said. The Minister said the collaboration is a win-win proposition for both sides, as this would help overcome the problem of middlemen, which would benefit farmers and consumers. "Farmers will get good remuneration from online grocery retailers. The retailers will sell the produce at cheaper rates. We see this as a promising way forward," he added. He said the government is also trying to woo Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, who haven't been doing any business in organic produce. "FMCG companies ITC and MTR have shown keen interest in doing business in organic products, especially millets. They had attended an interactive session with government officials recently," he said. Their participation will bolster efforts to popularise millets and other organic produce, the Minister said. "Our intention is to expose small and marginal farmers to national level markets, and that is also the intention of grocery retailers and companies,' he said. New Delhi: Search engine giant Google India has been named as the country's most attractive employer brand, followed by Mercedes Benz India at the second place, a survey says. The sectoral specific winners for the most attractive employers this year are Amazon India for e-commerce, ITC Ltd for FMCG and Philips India for consumer and healthcare. According to the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2017, competitive salary and employee benefits continue to be the top priority among the Indian workforce while choosing an employer, followed by good work-life balance and job security. However, for the IT professionals, good work-life balance emerged as the top priority while choosing an employer. "Employer branding continues to be of strategic importance influencing the talent agenda, particularly so in an economy that's driven by knowledge workers," Randstad India MD and CEO Moorthy K Uppaluri said. According to the survey results, large and multinational corporations emerge as the preferred workplace for employees across all profiles. However, IT professionals indicated that they would rather work in the dynamic start-up ecosystem over the SME sector. On the other hand, engineering talent prefer working in start-ups over the public sector companies, reveals the survey. Sectorwise, Indian workforce prefers to work for companies operating in sectors like IT, followed by BFSI and retail & FMCG. "Organisations have come to realise the value of employer branding and the return from such investments, both in terms of attracting new talent and retaining," Uppaluri added. The survey further noted that 31 per cent of employees, said they are not loyal to any one industry or sector and are open to shift industries and compensation remains a key driver in determining employee loyalty to a sector. The Randstad Award, instituted globally by Randstad, is hosted each year to encourage best practices for talent attraction and to identify the best 'Employer Brand' in the country based on perceived awareness and attractiveness of a company. In India this year, the Randstad Employer Brand Research captured the views of around 3,500 respondents, who chose the nation's most attractive employer brand for 2017. United Airlines Settles With Doctor Who Was Bloodied & Dragged Off Flight By Stephen Gossett in News on Apr 27, 2017 7:40PM The doctor whose violent dragging from a United airlines flight triggered international outrage has settled with the airline for his injuries. A provision in the settlement, which was reached on Thursday, specifies that the terms of the amount be kept confidential, according to a press release sent to Chicagoist from Dao's legal counsel. If we had to guess a figure, we'd guess pretty highand then go higher. Thomas Demetrio, who along with attorney Stephen L. Golan represented Dr. David Dao, had all kind words for United and the company's ever-beleaguered CEO, Oscar Munoz, on Thursday afternoon amid the reached agreement. Demetrio said in the release: Mr. Munoz said he was going to do the right thing, and he has. In addition, United has taken full responsibility for what happened on Flight 3411, without attempting to blame others, including the City of Chicago. For this acceptance of corporate accountability, United is to be applauded." Dao was dragged down the aisle by Chicago aviation officers, who were called by airline staff. Three officers remain on leave pending an investigation by the Chicago Department of Aviation. Demetrio noted that the settlement agreement arrives the same day that United unveiled a host of new operating proceduresincluding the announcement that the airline would pay up to $10,000 to bump a passenger. "Dr. Dao has become the unintended champion for the adoption of changes which will certainly help improve the lives of literally millions of travelers," Demetrio added. "I sincerely hope that all other airlines make similar changes and follow Uniteds lead in helping to improve the passenger flying experience with an emphasis on empathy, patience, respect and dignity." Dao, a 69-year-old Kentucky doctor, suffered a broken nose and concussion and lost two front teeth in the infamous dragging incident, according to Demetrio. Dao, who said he had patients to treat the next day, refused to be bumped from his fully booked flight in order to make space for airline staff. The fiasco, you'll surely recall, launched a public-relations nightmareand subsequent ongoing triagefor United airlines. This post will be updated as necessary. Amaravati: The Seoul-based Kia Motors Corporation today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Andhra Pradesh government for setting up a car manufacturing plant in Anantapuramu district. The tie-up is expected to give a major boost to the state's efforts to emerge as an industrial manufacturing hub. The plant, to come up on a 600-acre site at Penukonda, about 75 km from Anantapuramu, will be the South Korean company's first unit in India and the seventh in the world. Kia Motors President Han-Woo Park signed and exchanged the MoU with AP Industries Secretary Solomon Arokia Raj in the presence of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Industries Minister N Amarnath Reddy. Kia will invest USD 2 billion on this plant which will have a capacity to manufacture 3 lakh cars per annum. "This is an exciting and mutually-beneficial project and a next major step in Kia's global expansion plans," Park said on the occasion. The work on the plant would commence in September and the production of cars would start in the second half of 2019, he said. The company currently had a presence in 80 markets worldwide. "Kia will be a strong new force in the Indian automobile market. It will be a strong boost to the Indian automobile industry," Park remarked. "This is a significant step in my effort to turn Andhra Pradesh into an automobile manufacturing hub," the chief minister said. "It's a historic day today and the strong bond between AP and Kia will endure," Chandrababu said. Kia would provide direct employment to nearly 10,000 people once the plant becomes fully operational. The company plans to produce a 'strategic' compact sedan and a compact SUV, especially for the Indian market, at the new plant. The state government will provide training through the Skill Development Corporation to create the required human resources for the plant. Kia is the second big ticket investment in AP in the last three years in the automobile manufacturing sector after the Hero Motors plant in Chittoor district. Isuzu, another car maker, also has its production unit in Chittoor district of the state. Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday flagged stronger earnings and announced a cancellation of treasury shares after posting a solid first-quarter profit boosted by the memory chip business, sending its shares to a new high. The South Korean tech giant also decided not to adopt a holding company structure, rejecting a call from US activist hedge fund Elliott Management to split itself in two. It did however accept part of Elliott's proposal, revealing plans to cancel its existing treasury shares worth over $35 billion to enhance shareholder value by 2018. It also announced a share buyback worth 2.3 trillion won. Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.5 per cent at a record high while the wider market was down 0.3 per cent. "The cancellation of the entire existing shares held by the company was unexpected, and helped boost Samsung Electronics' share price along with its positive earnings outlook," fund manger Park Jung-hoon at HDC Asset Management said. While the first quarter was a torrid time for Samsung as chief Jay Y. Lee was swept up in a political corruption scandal, the world's top maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions still managed to book a profit that supports expectations for record earnings in 2017. First-quarter operating profit for Asia's most valuable company by market capitalization was 9.9 trillion won ($8.75 billion), matching Samsung's earlier guidance. Revenue rose 2 per cent to 50.5 trillion won. A memory chip super-cycle and the revival of the mobile business - damaged by the costly failure and fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 last year - look set to underpin profitability after the best quarterly result since 2013. "Looking ahead to the second quarter, the company expects to achieve growth on the back of continued robust memory performance together with improved earnings from the mobile business" following the global rollout of the new Galaxy S8 smartphone, Samsung said in a statement. CHIPS SIZZLE Samsung's chip business remained the top earner with a record 6.3 trillion won operating profit, buoyed by price gains for both DRAM and NAND memory chips as supply growth constraints and demand for more firepower on devices such as smartphones and servers boosted margins. The Apple Inc competitor's mobile division reported January-March operating profit of 2.07 trillion won, down from 3.89 trillion won a year earlier. Samsung had no new premium product generate meaningful sales in the January-March period. Pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 launched in April were better than many analysts had expected, raising hopes the new flagship handset will make up for the failure of Note 7s. Recent complaints about red-tinted screens and spotty Wi-fi connection on the S8 would not have a major impact on the bottom line, analysts said. US-based Elliott in October called for Samsung Electronics to adopt a holding company structure by splitting itself in two, and to pay out a 30 trillion won a special dividend. But Samsung said on Thursday that it had decided to reject the proposal. "Samsung concluded the risks and the challenging environment surrounding a change in the corporate structure would not be beneficial for enhancing shareholder value and sustaining long-term business growth," it said in a statement. SpiceJet flies to 46 destinations, including 7 international ones, and operates an average of 342 flights every day. New Delhi: No-frills airline SpiceJet will provide visa services for Indian passengers travelling to Dubai on its flights. All Indian passport holders travelling to Dubai on SpiceJet and holding valid round trip tickets can avail the visa service. It would be available for 14 days as well as 30 days tourist visas. "The visa service is available at a competitive rate starting from Rs 5,412 per passenger," the airline said in a release today. The airline in association with Cozmo Travel World Pvt Ltd would help passengers with their UAE visa application. SpiceJet operates ten daily flights to Dubai. According to the release, the visa processing fee for the facility is non-refundable and passengers have to comply with all the requirements of the UAE visa authorities. About the new initiative, SpiceJet's Senior Vice President (Commercial) Shilpa Bhatia said it would help the airline "get closer towards establishing a one Stop Shop citizen-centric service delivery model while enhancing the customer's travel experience". SpiceJet flies to 46 destinations, including 7 international ones, and operates an average of 342 flights every day. New Delhi: The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal will hear on May 4 maintainability of ousted Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry's petition alleging "mismanagement and oppression of minority" at Tata Sons, along with waiver of shareholding requirement rules. During the hearing today, the counsel representing the Mistry camp informed the NCLAT that they will file another appeal against the order of the National Company Law Tribunal rejecting their waiver application on April 17. Senior lawyer C A Sundaram said they are in the process of doing so, following which the NCLAT bench headed by Justice S J Mukhopadhyay adjourned the matter to May 4. The appellate tribunal was hearing the matter in which the Mumbai bench of the NCLT had dismissed the maintainability of the petition from two investment firms backed by the Mistry family. On April 17, the NCLT had rejected the waiver plea while on March 6, it had set aside the one over maintainability. UDAN is a first of its kind scheme in the wolrd and in post-independent India. Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated world's cheapest domestic air travel scheme UDAN that encourages every Indian to fly on discounted air fares within the country limits. Three initial flights were launched in the routes Shimla-Delhi, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad. "We had the opportunity to frame a civil aviation policy, which caters to aspirations of the people of India," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said. Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju at its launch had said that the centre-piece of the policy is to make regional air connectivity a reality. He said that the policy aims to take flying to the masses by making it affordable and convenient. Source: Twitter @narendramodi Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik or UDAN launched by Modi is part of government's efforts to enhance air connectivity in country and boost tourism. Here are things that you should know what UDAN offers to air travelers. 1) UDAN was conceptualised by the Civil Aviation Ministry under its Regional Connectivity initiative brought under the purview of National Civil Aviation Policy unveiled in June last year. 2) For smooth transition to UDAN, government earmarked an indicative cost of Rs 50 crore - Rs 100 crore for revival of airstrips/airports as no-frills airports. 3) The three initial flights that were inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi were launched in the routes of Shimla-Delhi, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad. 4) "Airfare for a 1-hour journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30-minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs 2,500," the PMO said. 5) Seating capacity of airlines under UDAN scheme will range from 19 to 78, and 50 per cent of seats in every flight will have a fare cap of Rs 2,500 per seat per hour, a report in Times of India said. 6) Airports Authority of India has approved 27 proposals which will see 27 airports which are presently served, 12 presently underserved airports and 31 unserved airports (for a total of 70 airports) connected. 7) Government has extended Viability Gap Funding for making UDAN a reality. Funds under VGF are meant for government projects or initiatives that are economically viable but financially are not feasible. VGF is a sort of subsidy. Beijing: The New Development Bank, jointly founded by the BRICS countries, and the Brazilian Development Bank have decided to give a loan of USD 300 million to develop the South American country's renewable energy sector. The loan agreement was signed by Xian Zhu, vice president and chief operations officer of the NDB and Marcelo Siqueira, legal director of Brazilian Development Bank. K V Kamath, the president of the NDB, was among those present on the occasion. The loan has been sanctioned to facilitate sustainable development of energy infrastructure of Brazil through investments in at least five renewable energy and associated transmission projects. A part of the loan has also been earmarked for the purpose of on-lending by BNDES to projects by way of debentures, a statement by the NDB said. This would assist BNDES in its efforts to develop an alternative financing source for renewable energy projects and facilitate in further development of secondary market for infrastructure financial instruments. It is estimated that the loan will enable investments that will add around 600 MW to the Brazilian power generation capacity. "Today's signing is another milestone in the history of the Bank. In collaboration with our member countries and development partners, the NDB is supporting clean energy projects. These projects fill critical infrastructure gaps and contribute to sustainable development. This partnership with BNDES will also, I believe, support Brazil's sustainable development," Kamath said. Jointly founded by the BRICS -- Brazil, India, China and South Africa -- and headquartered in Shanghai, NDB was formally opened in July last year. The Bank supports the efforts of other financial institutions and establish a network of global, regional and local partnerships with multilateral and national development banks as well as other institutions and market players, the statement said. Ahmedabad: The Gujarat government will hold a special one-day session of the state assembly on May 9 to ratify the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, 2017, a state minister said today. "Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has decided to call a one-day session of Gujarat assembly on May 9 to discuss and pass the GST Bill," Minister of State for Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, Pradeepsinh Jadeja, said. "To implement the GST in the state from July 1, we have decided to call this special session to pass the Bill," the minister added. As the budget session of the state assembly held in February-March (this year), was not pronounced as concluded by the Speaker, this special sitting would be considered as a continuation of the budget session, he said in a statement. On April 6, the parliament passed four legislations to pave the way for roll out GST from July. According to the last World Bank report 2017, India's ranking improved by just one notch to 130 from a revised rank of 131 previous year. New Delhi: The commerce and industry ministry today discussed with the World Bank officials its concerns over the methodology used for ranking countries in terms of ease of doing business. Senior officials of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and World Bank representatives deliberated on the issue. "Detailed interaction with world bank doing biz team in Washington DC have resulted in much better awareness of our reforms," DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said in a tweet. "The bank team also sensitised on our various concerns on methodological and other issues. All depts/agencies made excellent presentations," he further said. The World Bank carries out this exercise ever year for the purpose of ranking countries on their ease of doing business, from 1-190. India has time and again raised its concerns over the methodology used by the World Bank to rank the country in terms of ease of doing business. According to the last World Bank report 2017, India's ranking improved by just one notch to 130 from a revised rank of 131 previous year. The Indian pharmaceutical sector, which is dependent on import of crucial items such as APIs, is planning to manufacture a few of the top 100 molecules that are currently being imported. Hyderabad: The Indian pharmaceutical sector, which is dependent on import of crucial items such as APIs, is planning to manufacture a few of the top 100 molecules that are currently being imported, Pharmexcil chairman and Aurobindo Pharma director Madan Mohan Reddy said here on Thursday. Speaking to the media at IPHEX 2017, Mr Reddy said, Pharmexcil is in talks with the government and the industry to manufacture some of the top 100 molecules that are currently being imported to help reduce the dependency on imports. Despite India being the pharma factory for the world, Indian pharma firms of late have become dependent on China for APIs due to the low cost offered by the neighbouring country. Recently, the Central government expressed concern about Indian pharma companies dependence on China. This government step would support the country in reducing its dependence on China for sourcing some essential APIs, said Mansukh L Mandaviya, minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers, in the Rajya Sabha. When pressed about the types of molecules that are being discussed, Mr Reddy said, While the compilation of data and feasibility study is yet to be done but the fermentation-based molecules are being looked at as a possible option. It would take about six months for the study. Mr Reddy said that two bodies one from the government and the other from industry would be set up to decide on which firms would manufacture the molecules but hinted that most of the big firms are interested in manufacturing these drugs, if there is some support from the government. Most firms dont have a proper R&D centre and the big firms that do have an R&D, such as ourselves, have different priorities. Moreover, most fermentation-based molecules require around 3-4 year and this is where a bit of support (from the government) is required, Mr Reddy said. In another development, Pharmexcil vice-chairman and CEO of Nectar Life Sciences Dinesh Dua said that India is looking at harmonisation of rules for Pharma exports. Mr Dua said,The US and EU are actively looking to harmonise their norms and India too is actively working towards it. He added, There are various levels of harmonisation such as good manufacturing practices, reciprocal inspections which would help save money and manpower. New Delhi: The Sahara boss Subrata Roy on Thursday escaped from being sent to jail as the Supreme Court accepted his undertaking to make an initial payment of Rs 1,500 crore by June 15 and Rs 552 crore by July 15. A three-judge Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi and A.K. Sikri, however, warned Mr Roy, who was present in the court, that he will have to go to Tihar jail if the post-dated cheque issued for Rs 1,500 crore is not realised on the due date. The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on June 19 when it would be known whether the amount has been realised in favour of Sebi-Sahara repayment account or not. With Sahara failing to deposit Rs 5,100 crore, the Supreme Court had appointed official liquidator of the Bombay High Court to auction the Aamby Valley property near Pune in Maharashtra to realise the dues from Mr Roy. During the resumed hearing, the official liquidator submitted a report indicating the value of the properties at Rs 37,392 crore and how he is going to sell them. In its order the bench said on behalf of Sebi it was submitted that Sahara owed approximately Rs 11,169 crore towards the principal and that is required to be paid. As the affidavit would show, the first cheque is for Rs 1500 crore dated 15.6.2017 and the second cheque is dated 15.7.2017 for a sum of Rs 552 crore. Missing 1-Year-Old Girl Found Dead In Joliet Township Home By Stephen Gossett in News on Apr 27, 2017 2:33PM Semaj Crosby (Will County Sheriff's Office) Update, 2:00 p.m.: Police are investigating the death of 1-year-old Semaj Crosby as a "suspicious death," Will County Sheriffs office Deputy chief Rick Ackerson said on Thursday, although no imminent arrests are expected, according to reports. According to the Tribune, police said that Semaj was found inside a home in which she lived that was in "deplorable condition." As many as five to 15 people were living at the home at a given timesome family, some "squatters," as the family's attorney described them, according to Ackerson. According to ABC7, deputies searched the home "seeing if they could find her in obvious places," Ackerson said, not long after Crosby was initially reported missing. But she wasn't located until police and FBI again searched "with the assistance of the attorney" for the family of the child, late on Wednesday night. Original: A scary situation in Will County has taken an even more tragic turn. A 1-year-old girl who had been missing for several hours was found dead inside a Joliet Township home early on Thursday. At around 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, police from from the Will County Sheriffs Office, along with FBI, searched a home in the 300 block of Louis Rd., "with the assistance of the attorney" for the family of the child. Authorities found the body of 16-month-old Semaj Crosby at around midnight, according to a statement from the Sheriff's Office. The county coroner's office has pronounced Crosby deceased, according to Will County Sheriff's Office. An autopsy to determine the cause of death is scheduled to be completed later on Thursday. Crosby was reported missing on Tuesday evening, at around 6:30 p.m. by her family. She was found early Thursday morning at a residence "right in the center" of what had been an extensive 30-hour search, which included a dive team and dozens of volunteers, according to NBC. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services officials were at the home just a few hours before the girl was reported missing on a pending investigation of neglect. DCFS said they found no signs of harm. DCFS said: We have had prior contact with this family including four unfounded investigations for neglect and two prior pending investigation for neglect opened in March 2017. DCFS had been at the home on April 25 at approximately 3:20 p.m. and had seen all three of the mothers children including Semaj. There were no obvious hazards or safety concerns at that time. DCFS has been working with the family, offering services since September 2016." Police are expected to release more information at a press conference later on Thursday. Mumbai: Breaking the 3-day rally, markets took a breather today as the Sensex lost about 104 points to come off its life high, hurt by rush to book profits, coupled with a mixed trend in global markets. Investors remained cautions in the face of expiry of April series contracts in the derivatives segment, which also weighed. Global cues were also muted as a long-awaited US tax plan unveiled by Donald Trump yesterday failed to cheer investors. The Sensex after resuming higher advanced to hit a fresh lifetime high of 30,184.22 at the outset on sustained buying by participants, including foreign funds. But investors preferred to lock in gains, with the benchmark settling at 30,029.74, down 103.61 points, or 0.34 per cent. Yesterday, the 30-share bluechip index had ended at its all-time closing high of 30,133.35 and gained 768.05 points in the previous three sessions. Sectors like metal, FMCG, healthcare and auto saw fresh spell of selling. Realty, IT, oil and gas continued to witness buying enquiries on encouraging quarterly earnings. Likewise, the 50-stock NSE barometer Nifty finished 9.70 points, or 0.10 per cent, down at 9,342.15 after hitting yet another new high of 9,367.15 (intra-day), surpassing its previous record of 9,367, reached yesterday. It had gained 232.45 points in the past three days. New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday exempted actor Akshay Kumar from personal appearance before a trial court in a defamation case filed by Bata footwear company which had objected to a dialogue in his film 'Jolly LLB 2'. "Till the next date of hearing the petitioner (Kumar) is exempted from personal appearance before trial court," Justice Mukta Gupta said and fixed the matter for hearing on May 23. The judge further said the actor can be represented through his counsel. Kumar had moved the high court against the summons issued against him by the trial court on February 8 and sought quashing of the complaint lodged against him and others - actor Annu Kapoor, director Subhash Kapoor and film producer Fox Star Studios India Pvt Ltd. Bata India Limited, in its complaint, had alleged that "disparaging comments and defamatory reference" were made against Bata as a brand in the main trailer of the motion picture. Mumbai: Veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who was battling cancer, took his last breath on Thursday at 11.20am, at Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. He was admitted to the hospital earlier this month. His co-actors and celebrities reacted on Twitter mourning their grief over his death. Rajinikanth took the medium of Twitter to grieve over the actors demise. He wrote, My dear friend Vinod Khanna will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family. (sic) Actor Rishi Kapoor, who has worked in films like Amar Akbar Anthony with Vinod Khanna, shared a picture of the films poster and tweeted, Will miss you Amar R.I.P. (sic) An emotional Rishi changed his display picture on Twitter with Vinod Khanna's picture and further tweeted: Amitabh Bachchan who was also a part of the same film, left his promotional interview of Sarkar 3 mid-way, as soon as he learned the news of the veterans death. Vinod jis Mere Apne co-actor Shatrughan Sinha posted the news of formers death on Twitter. He tweeted, Vinod Khanna, truly Mere Apne, one of my most admired and loved personalities, the supremely handsome & talented superstar is no more.. (sic) Filmmaker Subhash Ghai shared his last meeting with the lovable actor and said, I met him last year at convocation of whistling woods film school when he was honoured with a maestro award by students for his outstanding contribution. A real handsome man on and off screen both. Celebrated his life with love n dignity n compassion for others n in service to his nation as mp. He will always live in my heart n mind. Good bye vinod RiP. (sic) Akshay Kumar also passed his condolences to the charismatic actor's family. Anupam Kher also expressed his grief. He said that he will miss the actor's larger than life performances. Hema Malini, who has worked in many films with Vinod Khanna, and has an unreleased film 'Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi' with him, too expressed her grief. Noting Vinod Khanna as the best actor of his era, and considering it as a huge loss to the film industry, Lata Mangeshkar tweeted: Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, who worked as a production manager in Vinod Khanna's 'Mera Gaon Mera Desh', is deeply saddened by this news and shared a throwback picture. Mukesh Bhatt, who was very close to the actor revealed to a daily, "He was suffering from cancer for the past couple of years. He seemed to have recovered at one point, but then he suffered a relapse. The last time I met him was about six months back." Anil Kapoor shared a picture of the late actor with his sons and passed his condolences to the family. Taken aback by this news, Sanjay Dutt said, "It is saddening to hear of the demise of Vinod Khanna ji. I have watched him as a child and throughout my life was always fascinated by his style and charisma. He was always a thorough gentleman. A big loss to the fraternity. He is and always will be family to the Dutts. May his soul rest in peace. My deepest condolences to Kavita Bhabhi, Akshay, Rahul and Sakshi." A post shared by Ajay Devgn reads: Remembering Vinod ji, Kajol wrote: Irrfan Khan and Riteish Deshmukh shared a picture of the legend and expressed their sadness. From the younger troop, Varun Dhawan, Sonakshi Sinha and Anushka Sharma tweeted about Vinod ji's demise. Saddened by the news, Sidharth Malhotra and Bhumi Pednekar also tweeted about it. Vivek Oberoi passed his condolences to the late actors family and wrote, An icon passes on but his legend remains in r hearts & minds! RIP #VinodKhanna ji u will be missed, Heartfelt Condolences @R_Khanna & Akshay! (sic) Mumbai: On Wednesday, Priyanka Chopra appeared in a jovial mood at the press conference of her Hollywood film Baywatch. After completing season two of the Quantico series, the sexy siren has taken a break from Hollywood and has landed in Mumbai. Since it was after a long break, that PeeCee was interacting with the Indian media, her answers were as candid as she was at the meet. Now that Priyanka has absorbed the Hollywood arena, we were too eager to know, were Indians or browns being welcomed warmly and accepted by Hollywood. To which, the ever-so-humble diva replied, "You can't be so entitled as being from Hindi film industry. We can't say that if we are stars in India we will be stars everywhere. I am okay to walk into a room and introduce myself as, 'Hello, I am Priyanka Chopra. I am an Indian actor.' There's nothing small about it; our achievements are quite big. Of course, people didn't know me then. I never thought they were mean except a few. Priyanka also made it to the most popular talk shows in America, and therefore while sharing her experiences with the American press, she admitted, I think American press was wonderfully accepting of me. In fact, I haven't seen them being that good to any other Indian actor. They have been loving, friendly and encouraging of me. Well, we all know that Priyankas contemporary Deepika Padukone, too made her Hollywood debut with xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, opposite Vin Diesel. And reportedly there have been instances where Deepika was mistaken for Priyanka by the American press. By saying that she doesnt think she has seen the press in Hollywood being good to any other Indian actor; did Priyanka slyly take a dig at Deepika? The actor breathed his last at HN Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre at Charni Road. Chennai: Actor Rajinikanth today condoled the death of veteran actor Vinod Khanna, and described him as his "dear friend." "My dear friend Vinod Khanna... will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family," he tweeted. On Thursday morning, veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna passed away at the age of 70 due to cancer in Mumbai. He will be cremated at Worli crematorium at 5 pm. The actor breathed his last at HN Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre at Charni Road. "Veteran actor and Member of Parliament Mr. Vinod Khanna, who was admitted to the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital breathed his last at 11.20 am due to advanced bladder carcinoma," the spokesperson of the hospital said in an official statement. On March 31, the ailing actor was rushed to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital with difficulties emerging due to severe dehydration. The actor remained hospitalised for close to a month. Mumbai: If you have missed Deepika Padukones bold & sexy avatar from Cocktail, then this song will give you all the reasons to cheer up. First, a high slit gown on a pair of never-ending legs. Secondly, Deepikas smouldering eyes! Set at a party, with two parted lovers longing for one another, Deepika preaches the nuances of the emotion of love in a seductive way. This song, which is a recreated version of the original track Raabta is composed by Pritam, written by Irshad Kamil and Amitabh Bhattacharya and sung by Nikhita Gandhi & Arijit Singh, works well with the premise solely for its soothing tone and well-engineered beats. Yes, the lyrics may be along the same lines of Agent Vinod track with the same name but a sensuous take on the revamped version has made it refreshing and, unlike other reprised songs, is bearable. Debutant director Dinesh Vijan, who considers Deepika his lucky mascot, said in an earlier interview, Deepika gives attention to small details and that makes all the difference. She sat with me for some time to understand the nuances and mood of the song. After that it was a swift shoot. He further adds "I am glad she shot for the title track of my film. I believe she is lucky for me. Inspite of a chaotic schedule, the leggy actress shot the song in one night. When Dinesh Vijan messaged to ask her if she could shoot the title track for his film, she instantly agreed. The ace actress worked around her schedule and flew down to Budapest to shoot the song. Raabta, which means connection in Urdu, stars Kriti Sanon-Sushant Singh Rajput- Jim Sarbh and is slated to release on June 9. Watch the video here: Mumbai: Clash of superstars is a common occurrence in the showbiz business and Shah Rukh Khan and Ajay Devgn are no exception. After sharing the same release date back in 2012, when both SRKs Jab Tak Hai Jaan and Ajays Son of Sardaar released on November 13- the actors relationship was believed to have turned sour. But the news is that King Khan and Ajay have agreed to release their trailers together, attached to Salman Khans Tubelight. The alleged tiff happened five years ago and the duo seems to have moved on since. The latest buzz is that Salmans production house was approached by both the stars and trailers of their respective films, SRKs The Ring opposite Anushka Sharma and Ajays Baadshaho with Esha Gupta, are mostly likely to get attached to Salmans Tubelight. In fact, CEO of Salmans production house, Amar Butala, has confirmed this news. While Shah Rukhs trailer will be ready by the time Salman releases his, director of Baadshaho Milan Lutharia still has a lot of shooting left. A source told Mid-day, Imtiazs trailer will be ready but Milan Lutharia still has a massive chunk of his film to shoot before a trailer can be cut. We will attach the trailer we recieve first. The source further added, Tubelight is a big holiday release. It is customary to attach multiple trailers with such films. We will be to accomodate both (trailers) if the stars agree with the arrangement. Whether the trailer bit happens or not, these superstars burying the hatchet is big news in itself. Salman Khans Tubelight is slated to release on June 23. Mumbai: Karan Johar and SS Rajamouli had planned for a grand premiere for their film Baahubali 2: The Conclusion on Thursday evening. However, the news of veteran actor Vinod Khannas demise left the entire industry grieving. As a mark of respect to the actor, Karan and SS Rajamouli decided to cancel the premiere, for which they had built a huge and lavish set a suburban theatre. Take a look at the set built for the premiere: He had earlier tweeted in the day, As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight... Speaking about taking this decision, filmmaker Karan Johar said, Had my father (Yash Johar) been alive, he would have done the same thing. Thats very thoughtful and respectful of the makers to take such a decision. The actor was all set to be seen in a film with actress Hema Malini. Mumbai: On Thursday morning, veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna passed away at the age of 70 due to cancer in Mumbai. He will be cremated at Worli crematorium at 5 pm. The actor breathed his last at HN Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre at Charni Road. "Veteran actor and Member of Parliament Mr. Vinod Khanna, who was admitted to the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital breathed his last at 11.20 am due to advanced bladder carcinoma," the spokesperson of the hospital said in an official statement. On March 31, the ailing actor was rushed to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital with difficulties emerging due to severe dehydration. The actor remained hospitalised for close to a month. In between, the actor had responded positively to the treatment and was stable for a while. A picture was leaked from the hospital, which left his fans extremely worried for his health. Soon after, rumours of him being diagnosed with bladder cancer started floating around. However, later the hospital and his sons, Akshay Khanna and Rahul Khanna, refused to comment on the cancer rumours and had said that Vinod Khanna was stable and making a steady recovery. Vinod Khanna was all set to be seen with actress Hema Malini in film 'Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi', which was scheduled for release this week. Incidentally, Vinod's famed 'Qurbaani' co-star Feroz Khan, had passed away on the same day eight years ago, on April 27, 2009. Born on October 6, 1946, he was seen in 141 films as one of the most prominent and celebrated stars of Bollywood. In 1982, at the peak of his career, the actor briefly quit the industry to follow spiritual Guru Osho Rajneesh. Khanna joined politics in the year 1997 and also became the union minister of external affairs in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Khanna was also a sitting BJP MP from Punjabs Gurdaspur district. His sons Akshay and Rahul also had prominent Bollywood careers, while his youngest son, Sakshi Khanna is on the brink of his Bollywood debut. Mumbai: Vinod Khanna had been one of the most celebrated faces the industry has seen till date. He was also one of the most, unintentionally or otherwise, maverick ones. The actor had a flourishing career, which had peaked by the early 80s, but at the zenith of it, he decided to give it all away, and follow the path of spirituality. In 1982, an alarmingly composed Vinod Khanna had called a press conference, alongside wife Geetanjali and sons Akshay and Rahul, who themselves would later go on to embrace careers in Bollywood. He had announced to an astonished cluster of journalists that he was quitting the industry to join spiritual Guru Osho Rajneesh as his disciple. In later years, even after his comeback to films, the actor, who had rechristened himself Swami Vinod Bharti during the period, the actor would reiterate that he had never stopped following Osho, making his comeback only to assure financial security. However, the love for him never deteriorated, in despite of the indefinite and potentially career-drubbing break that he had taken. This very love explains the deep sorrow that industry insiders and fans ubiquitously are experiencing, now that the actor has finally lost his battle to bladder carcinoma, and succumbed to his ailment at the age of 70. But live through his films, he shall. And live in our hearts, he will. Nursing-Home Workers Announce Massive Strike Plan For Fair Contract, Better Staffing By Stephen Gossett in News on Apr 27, 2017 4:40PM Greg Kelley (Photo: SEIU Healthcare) Thousands of nursing home workers in the Chicagoland area will go on strike within a week as they seek to shore up a fair wage, equitable on-the-job treatment, better staffing to support patient care and a permanent contract. The strikewhich would see some 5,000 workers walk off, affecting more than 50 nursing-home facilities, according to SEIU Healthcare Illinoiswould be largest, most wide-ranging of its kind, union representatives said. Greg Kelley, President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday morning that nursing-home workers have been working in excess of a year without a contract, but negotiations have still yet to produce results. "Were declaring that enough is enough," Kelley said. He said that nursing-home owners want to operate a payment structure that can leave workersthe majority of whom are women of colorwith sub-minimum wages. Workers will strike on May 4 unless an agreement is reached prior to that date. "This is not a veiled threat. We will strike," Kelley said. Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union, joined other the officials and nursing-home workers "in solidarity." "Less than minimum wage is not fair. Less than $15/hour is not fair," she said. Lewis, of course, is battle-tested in the ways of labor demands, having gone toe-to-toe with the mayor in contract negotiations for the teachers union. Workers say that wages have remained stagnant even as the owners net windfall profits, more than $1 billion per year, SEIU argues. Nursing-home worker Francine Rico said she still makes less than $15/hour even after 19 years on the job. "A decent day of work deserves a decent day of pay," she said. Worker Marilou Garcia said she has trouble making ends meet despite working two jobs and holding three certifications. Earlier this month, State Sen. Daniel Biss, a candidate for Illinois governor, penned a Sun-Times opinion arguing for better wages and against the current nursing-home revenue model. He wrote in part: "Most nursing homes are for-profit companies, and their profit comes from taxpayers. More than half of their revenue comes from Medicaid and Medicare. But because their business model includes paying workers so little that they depend on public assistance to get by, the public is subsidizing these companies twice." Francine Rico (Photo: SEIU Healthcare) Mumbai: After a long battle with cancer, yesteryear actor and politician Vindo Khanna breathed his last this afternoon at 11.20am, at Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. The entire film fraternity is deeply saddened by the loss of this gem of an actor. Producer-director Karan Johar has released a statement informing that the premiere event for Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, which was supposed to be held today, has been cancelled as a mark of respect to the late actor. He said: We are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved, the legendary Vinod Khanna. The demise has come as a huge shock to all of us. As a mark of respect for our dearly departed, the premiere event of Baahubali : The Conclusion is now cancelled. Love and remembrance, Karan Johar, SS Rajamouli and the entire team of Baahubali. Starring Prabhas, Anushka Shetty, Rana Daggubatti, Sathyaraj and Tammanaah Bhatiah, the magnum opus is slated to release on April 28. Zeenat Aman Ill always remember Vinod as a thorough gentleman cultured, polite and someone who knew how to conduct himself with the ladies. With him, things were always proper on the sets. He would come on time, say his polite hello, shoot and leave. There was never any question of unpleasantness. The first film we did together was Bombay 405 Miles. We then came together for the Feroz Khan-starrer blockbuster Qurbani. We would come on the sets, do our work and go away. There were never any fireworks or excitement when we were shooting together. We didnt meet in recent years he had his own life and I had mine. And now we shall never meet. Subhash Ghai I met Vinod Khanna last year at the convocation of Whistling Woods film school, when he was honoured with a Maestro Award by the students for his outstanding contribution to films. A real handsome man both on and off screen. He celebrated his life with love, dignity and compassion for others in service to his nation as MP. He will always live on in my heart and mind. Randhir Kapoor Its a big loss to the industry of course, and a personal loss to me because he was a very dear friend of mine. We worked together, but I knew him since our college days. He was a fine gentleman, a good-looking actor and above all, a great human being. I shall miss him. Kamal Haasan Achanak is a film that changed my life. When I saw it at 18 for the first time, I was encouraged to become a director. This man didnt know it at that time. But Vinod Khanna was a precursor Stallone in First Blood. Its the story of a betrayed commando who goes on a rampage. Sylvester Stallone did it many years ago. Now I want to see where I can take this character as I am all set to remake the movie. Hema Malini Our last film together, Ek Rani Aisi Bhi, was released a few days ago. And now, hes gone! Vinod Khanna was a very fine gentleman, educated, articulate and well-informed. I have had the opportunity to work with him in several capacities. In Gulzar Saabs Meera, he brought such calm and understanding to his role. He was like that in real life too. On the sets, I would spend a lot of time discussing Acharya Rajneesh with him. I wanted to understand what it was about that man that made Vinod leave his career and join him in Oregon for five years. I came into politics because of Vinod Khanna; he insisted. Thats how my career in politics started. Its sad that he is no more! Multi-talented Priyanka Chopra, who is on cloud nine after her Marathi film Ventilator bagged a National Award, may come on board for Rajesh Mapuskars next film as well. Rajesh confirmed that the two are indeed contemplating a partnership. Yes, I am in talks with Priyanka Chopra for another Marathi film and she might come on board for my next film as a producer. Right now, its too early to give out any details, though, he said. The director also commended the actress on broadening her language horizons. It takes courage to do what Priyanka is doing. She can easily produce a Bollwyood film but she chooses to tell different stories in different languages. Its very overwhelming and encouraging to see somebody from Bollywood who has so much power, still want to do something unconventional, he added. Mapuskar who had earlier directed the Hindi film Ferrari Ki Sawari, says he would love to work with Priyanka on a Hindi project, but she is not keen to produce Hindi films right now. He says, I would love to collaborate with her for Hindi films but Priyanka is very clear that she doesnt want to produce Hindi films right now. She wants to focus on regional films only. The Baahubali fever has started running high in Chennai! With an unprecedented craze for the second installment of the franchise, fans have already queued up in front of multiplexes and other single screens, since early morning, as bookings opened on Wednesday in some of the suburban theatres and later at night, in Inox. On the other hand, as feared, the makers are also facing piracy issues as some of the crucial scenes and images from the Tamil version have been leaked online! Though producer Shobu appealed to fans not to believe such speculations as they had screened only to the various censor boards across countries and did not have a special screening, it is learnt that the scenes were leaked from the Dubai premiere on Wednesday. Reportedly, the pirated DVD screen prints are also available in the market and those who watched them, proudly claim that they know the answer for the most-asked question in 2015: why did Kattappa kill Baahubali? So, here is the answer to the query, which fans all over have been hung up on, since by the time you read this the film would have already made its way to screens on special early morning shows. The real reason as narrated by those who watched the pirated version goes like this: Kattappa stabbed Baahubali to protect him from the curse of the Goddess Maheshwari to turn into a stone statue in the battlefield. But he is still alive! How? The source did not reveal it fully as he said, its a suspense. Watch it to experience the drama. Meanwhile, in another alarming incident, producer Shobu posted on his social media handle all about the harassment his team faced on the Emirates flight while returning to Hyderabad from Dubai Flying to Hyd on @emirates EK526. Airline staff at gate B4 were very rude n harassed our team unnecessarily! Bad attitude n service! I think one of the @emirates staff was being a racist. I fly @emirates regularly n this is 1st time I have come across this kind of attitude. (sic) The airlines in turn reacted to these tweets from Shobu and requested him to send the flight ticket details so that they could look into it. When we got in touch with actor Vishal, TFPC President and Nadigar Sangam Secretary, who is constantly voicing out to curb piracy, he said, Once the film gets released, we will know from the DVD print, as to where or which theatre they have pirated the movie from. Even if its from a screen abroad, we will stop selling films to that particular theatre. Mumbai: Adam Levine paid tributes to former The Voice contestant Christina Grimmie with a touching performance on the popular singing reality show. The 38-year-old Maroon 5 frontman, who is also one of the judges on the The Voice, performed 'Hey Jude' with his team to honour the late songstress, reported AceShowbiz. "God, I loved her so much. I am talking to you guys specifically. I'm talking to everybody. I miss her. It is unfair she is not here. We are going to sing a little song. I am going to be singing every word to her in her honour. Thank you for being here. Christina, we love you," Levine said. Grimmie was gunned down at the Plaza Live theatre in Orlando on June 10, 2016 by an obsessed fan, Kevin Loibl. She was 22. Allu Aravind had purchased the remake rights of Kannada film Bahaddhur during its 2014 release. Now, nearly three years later, it looks like work on the film will finally begin with actor Ram Charan, the nephew of the producer, set to play the lead role. While a source reveals that Allu Arjun could give a voiceover in the film, we hear that the details of the project will be finalised only after Ram Charan finishes work on his present project with director Sukumar, which is being shot in various locales in the Godavari belt. Bahaddhur, starring Dhruva Sarja as the male lead was a blockbuster in Kannada and had Puneeth Rajkumars voiceover. Bengaluru: Having sweets sold at just Re 1 a piece proved costly for the sweet toothed residents of Sanjay Gandhi Nagar slum in Srirampura, as 20 people, including four adults, fell ill after consuming them. They had consumed Haal Kova (a sweet prepared from milk) sold by a woman in their locality. She used to sell sweets leftover from functions organised at a convention centre. Eighteen people, including fourteen children, were admitted to KC General Hospital. The patients complained of nausea and began vomiting and also suffered diarrhoea. "Manjula, a resident of the same locality sold sweets which the children consumed. They had the sweets around 6 pm on Tuesday and by 8 pm they began to vomit. We had to rush them to the hospital," recalls Mamatha, a relative of a four-year-old admitted to KC General Hospital. Mamatha said Manjula was working as a cleaner at a convention centre and used to sell leftover food. She used to sell us boondi (fried gram flour mixture) and sweets, she added. The mother of one-and-a-half-year-old Nafia said that she fell ill after consuming sweets that she ate while playing near her house. All those admitted are said to be stable and undergoing treatment. Dr H Ravikumar, medical superintendent, K C General Hospital said, "The investigations have been done. Since two children were serious, they have to be sent to Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH). The food sample has been sent Food Safety Authority for examination." The condition of children is also reportedly stable. Hyderabad: A 22-year-old youth who hurt religious sentiments by posting derogatory comments on social media was arrested by Pahadishareef police on Thursday. Sandeep Bandari shared the post on Wednesday. Police said that Sandeep, a welder from Shastripuram area, posted the derogatory post on his Facebook page. This was seen by some people from the Jalpally area. After receiving a complaint from one Syed Babar Shah, police registered a case for engaging in malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings. Sandeep was arrested and remanded police said. The paper audit trail machine or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was first introduced by the Commission in 2013 in order to enhance transparency in the polls process. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared the Election Commission (EC) proposal to buy new Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)-enabled EVM machines. The Cabinet had earlier allotted money twice for the Election Commission to buy new voting machines. Since June 2014, the Commission has given at least 11 reminders to the government seeking funds for VVPAT machines. Last year, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi drawing his attention to the funds needed for the machines. The Supreme Court has asked the Commission to give a tentative time frame by which it can use VVPAT machines in all polling stations. The Bahujan Samaj Party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress had attacked the Election Commission for allegedly using "tampered" EVMs, which they claimed was responsible for the BJPs stupendous win in the Uttar Pradesh polls. VVPAT is a machine which dispenses a slip with the symbol of the party for which a person has voted for. The slip drops in a box but the voter cannot take it home. The voters see voter-verifiable paper audit trail slip for seven seconds, which would be an acknowledgement receipt for the party they voted for in the election. Lt Gen J S Sandhu said the army was fully geared to stop infiltration on the LoC. (Photo: PTI/File) Baramulla (Kashmir): About 150 militants are waiting near the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to sneak into the Valley, a top army official said on Wednesday with an assertion that the attempts would be foiled. Lt Gen J S Sandhu, Commander of Srinagar-based 15 Corps which is responsible for security of the Kashmir valley, said there would be more militants at the launching pads in PoK in the areas facing Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu province. "According to an estimate, in our area 15 Corps, there are about 150 militants at present. There would be some more near Poonch-Rajouri areas (in Jammu region) as well," he said. He was speaking to the reporters at the end of a two-day youth festival 'Jashn-e-Baramulla', organized by the army in the north Kashmir town. The army commander said the infiltration from PoK across the LoC has been low this year compared to the last year. "Last year, the infiltration from across was high. This year, till now, we have been able to stop them (infiltrators)," Lt Gen Sandhu said. "Snow has also helped us as more snow this year has made it difficult for them to infiltrate. We will continue to stop them so that there is no increase in the militancy," he added. He said the army was fully geared to stop infiltration on the LoC. Chinese authorities Thursday released information on 22 corruption suspects who have fled overseas, including their possible current whereabouts. The information includes the name, gender, ID card number, former title, suspected crime, date of arrival in the current country and travel document number of each suspect, according to a statement from an office in charge of fugitive repatriation and asset recovery under the Central Anti-corruption Coordination Group. The whereabouts are as specific as the streets and communities where the fugitives are believed to live. Of the 22, 10 are thought to be in the United States, five in Canada, four in New Zealand, and one each in Australia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and the United Kingdom. Their ages range from 33 to 75 years old. The first to flee left in 1998, according to a report posted on the website of the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). This is the first time China's anti-graft authorities have issued a notice giving such specific information about overseas fugitives, said Gao Bo, a CCDI official. "All 22 suspects are on the '100 most-wanted' Interpol red notice. Issuing the notice means their last hope to escape will be lost." In the case of Wang Liming, former head of the Hainan branch of the Bank of China, who was suspected of malpractice, the possible location of his current residence is "Voltaire Drive, Riverside, Los Angles, California, USA," according to the notice. He allegedly took advantage of his position to collude with others and illegally issue letters of credit backed with no real trading or guarantees, resulting in huge losses of state assets. In a separate case, Cheng Muyang, former chairman of Hong Kong Jiadali Investment Co., Ltd. and former manager of the Beijing subsidiary of Beifang International Advertisement Company, was suspected of embezzlement and concealment of illegal gains. He is believed to be living in "Oak Ridge Community, Vancouver, Canada," according to the notice. Compared with other fugitives on the Interpol red notice, capturing these 22 is more difficult, said Liu Jianchao, deputy director of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention. "Some cases are at a crucial stage for breaking them, and we need to put more pressure on the suspects," said Liu. As of March 31, 365 suspects in duty-related crimes such as embezzlement and bribery were known to be at large overseas and another 581 were unaccounted for, the statement said. Some of the fugitives have changed their identities since the Interpol red notice was released. Some are struggling to decide whether to turn themselves in, while others continue to evade authorities, said the statement. The information released was based on tips from members of the public and cooperation with other authorities. When receiving further tips, the watchdog guarantees to protect informers' rights and interests. Further information on more fugitives will be released at an appropriate time, the statement continued. "We hope overseas Chinese, foreign citizens of Chinese origin and international friends will help identify these fugitives... and give them no place to hide," said the statement. It said the public can report relevant information to the Chinese authorities via the website http://www.12388.gov.cn/ztzz/. Countries involved should abide by international conventions and cooperate in law enforcement. They should support China's anti-corruption drive by not sheltering fugitives nor allowing them to transfer illegally attained assets, the statement said. "China respects the laws of other countries and is ready to cooperate with them. We urge specific countries not to pursue their own economic interests by issuing passports and visas through investment immigration schemes when applicants are suspected of corruption," it said. "Passports and visas that have already been issued should be revoked as soon as possible." The statement also offered leniency for fugitives who voluntarily return to China to surrender and confess their crimes. By reaching out to international society, the notice clearly demonstrates China's refusal to tolerate corruption and shows willingness to cooperate with law enforcement agencies and judiciaries overseas. By releasing specific information, authorities expect increased support from media, police and from local residents who may be unaware of the suspects' backgrounds, said Wang Wenhua, deputy dean of the law school at Beijing Foreign Studies University. By pursuing corrupt officials, from high-ranking "tigers" to low-level "flies," within China and through operations such as "Sky Net" and "Fox Hunt" overseas, the campaign has drawn the net ever tighter in the past five years and there is now almost no chance of escape, according to the statement. As of March 31, China had captured 2,873 fugitives from more than 90 countries and regions and recovered 8.99 billion yuan (130 million U.S. dollars), of which 476 were former officials and about 40 were on the Interpol red notice list. In a report posted Tuesday on its website, the CCDI said 19 fugitive suspects fled China last year, compared with 31 in 2015 and 101 in 2014. The sharp decrease in numbers indicates that important progress has been made to return corrupt fugitives and their illicit gains from overseas, the report said. Chennai: A Tamil Nadu minister on Thursday described his party as one "without father and mother," and said people's aspirations for unity in the now divided AIADMK was being reflected among the leaders in both camps. Cooperation Minister Sellur K Raju said 'works' for holding the keenly anticipated merger talks between the two factions, led by Chief Minister K Palanisamy and his predecessor O Panneerselvam, respectively, were on. "AIADMK is a movement without father and mother. Our Amma (mother-Jayalalithaa) is no more," he said. "People and supporters want the party, which Amma built through her hard work, to be united. This aspiration is reflected among the leaders of both factions," he told reporters. The senior leader exuded confidence that the AIADMK government will not only complete its term of five years but also retain power in the 2021 Assembly polls. Asked whether the faction will follow suit on removing posters of AIADMK chief VK Sasikala from the party's district offices also, Raju said a panel has been formed to go into the matter. Banners featuring Sasikala had been pulled down from the AIADMK headquarters in Chennai on Wednesday, a demand made by the rival Panneerselvam faction on Tuesday. However, the AIADMK (Amma) faction said the banners were pulled in lines with a decision taken earlier and that it had nothing to do with Panneerselvam camp leader E Madusudanan's demand in this regard. Meanwhile, Finance Minister D Jayakumar said the Amma faction was ready for the merger talks with the Panneerselvam camp. "As mentioned earlier, the doors are open ..if they come for talks we are ready (to hold discussions)", he said. Kolkata: BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday described Bengal as the "most poverty-stricken state" in the country and said once his party came to power in the state, it would "flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat". "Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," he told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers in Kolkata while winding up his three-day visit to the state. Shah said under BJP rule in West Bengal, no one would have to "approach the court" for the immersion of Durga idols and the people would be free to observe religious festivals such as Saraswati puja. In February, a section of students in a school on the outskirts of Kolkata had objected to Saraswati puja celebrations, triggering a controversy. Asserting that Bengal was "next" on the (BJP's) radar, Shah said he had coined a slogan, 'Ebar Bangla' (this time, Bengal) for the purpose. "I witnessed massive enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win (elections) in Bengal," he added. Shah said the BJP wanted a government in the state which would provide employment, check cross-border infiltration and build a "sonar Bangla". "Only the BJP under (Narendra) Modi's leadership can provide such a government. No one else can," he claimed, adding, "Bengal will flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat." The BJP chief also accused the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". Earlier, the BJP chief visited three houses at Gouranganagar, on the outskirts of the city, as part of a mass contact programme aimed at expanding the saffron party's base in the state. The residents greeted him by blowing conch shells and offered him sweets. Shah had on Wednesday visited a slum in Banerjee's Bhawanipur Assembly constituency. On the first day of his visit, he'd had a meal at a Dalit home at Naxalbari in north Bengal. The BJP chief on Thursday also paid a visit to Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's residence at Bhawanipur in the city. New Delhi: There is no justification for keeping the anti-corruption Lokpal on hold, the Supreme Court told the Narendra Modi government on Thursday. The Supreme Court made the ruling based on a petition that stated that the process has been delayed for three years, said an NDTV report. The law to appoint a Lokpal was passed in Parliament in 2013 by the UPA government, following an agitation by activist Anna Hazare, which saw mass support. In March, the government told the apex court that the Lokpal cannot be appointed for now as important changes to a committee which will select its members have yet to be cleared by Parliament. The important changes refer to redefining Leader of the Opposition, to enable him or her to be a part of the Lokpal selection panel. The change is necessitated because the Congress, with just 44 seats in the Lok Sabha following the 2014 elections, failed to qualify for the post of Leader of Opposition. "The judiciary must respect separation of powers and can't direct parliament to pass amendments. It is the wisdom of the parliament to pass it," the government's top lawyer Mukul Rohatgi was quoted as saying, in his argument that the change has to be cleared in Parliament. After Modi government came to power in 2014, it said the place of the Opposition Leader in the Lokpal panel would stay vacant. But in a reversal, it later allowed the Congress to be part of selection panels in Lokpal, Central Vigilance Commission and CBI. Other members of the Lokpal selection panel are the Prime Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge, and an eminent jurist. A group of NGOs and activists have asked the top court to step in as it has been three years since the Lokpal law was passed but an ombudsman has not been appointed. Senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan has been especially scathing in his attack on the Modi government, said the report. New Delhi: A Delhi Police team, probing the Election Commission bribery case, will travel to Tamil Nadu with arrested AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran and his aide to gather details about "illegal channels" used for transferring money from Chennai to Delhi. The Crime Branch team is likely to leave for Chennai on Thursday along with Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna, who were arrested on Tuesday night. The police secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residents of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK faction keep the 'Two Leaves' symbol. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister EK Palanisamy and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dhinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dhinakaran as a condition for merger talks. Chennai: AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran was on Thursday afternoon brought to Chennai by the Delhi police, two days after he was arrested by them in connection with an alleged bribery case. A Delhi police team probing the Election Commission (EC) bribery case brought Dhinakaran and his friend Mallikarjuna by flight from the national capital and they arrived a little after 1 PM. Dhinakaran's supporters Pugazhenthi and Nanchil Sambath were at the airport when Dhinakaran arrived. The police had secured warrants from a Delhi court to search the Chennai residences of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting the duo along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK (Amma)faction keep the 'Two Leaves' symbol. Chandrasekar had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, police had said. Police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any EC official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by jailed AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, had earlier faced a revolt by some of the Ministers, even as efforts are on for the merger of the rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister EK Palanisamy and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. Srinagar: An Army captain and two soldiers were on Thursday killed when militants carried out a Fidayeen attack on an army camp in Kupwara in north Kashmir. The Army officer killed was identified as Captain Ayush, official sources said. At least 5 more jawans were injured, said reports. One civilian was killed due to bullet injury near army camp, which was attacked by terrorists in Kupwara in Kashmir, police told PTI. Meanwhile, Army said at least two terrorists have been killed, and a search is underway for a third one. "Identity of terrorists being ascertained; material found points likely towards foreign terrorists," Army told ANI. The incident took place at Panjgaon at Chowkibal when militants, suspected to be of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad stormed the battalion camp which is in-charge of road opening duties on the crucial roads in this area. Two militants were killed as army foiled their attack, the sources said. However, a hunt is on to ascertain if any militant sneaked into the camp under the cover of darkness. New Delhi: External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay on Thursday said that retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhavs mother and father who want to see their son as also file an appeal in person for his release. They have applied for the visa in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, he said. Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale had also handed over to the Pakistan foreign secretary an appeal by Jadhav's mother as well as a petition by her seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Meanwhile, India has demanded from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the external affairs ministry said on Thursday. Baglay also said the government is yet to receive a copy of any charge sheet against Jadhav, and did not even know who had defended him in the military court that sentenced him the death sentence. Maintaining that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India, Baglay said, "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked the Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our high commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request for providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response." Yesterday, the Indian government had made a request for the 16th time to Pakistan for consular access to Jadhav, the spokesperson said. "We wanted to get out on 0," he said when asked if India would be scoring a 100 in requests in seeking consular access. The Indian envoy had also met the Pakistani foreign secretary on April 14 and expressed India's concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told media after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authenticated copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence on the charge of "espionage" by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Baglay was asked about a "confessional" video released by the Pakistan army yesterday of former Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan in which he has said that the Taliban militants were in touch with the Afghan intelligence agency and India's Research and Analyst Wing (RAW) which provided funds and set targets inside Pakistan for attacks. To this, the MEA spokesperson replied, "We know the value of such coerced confessions. All that they reflect is a mindset on the part of those who put out such coerced confessions, which believes that others in the world also do what they do." Body of the civilian, who was killed in Army firing at Chowkibal in Kupwara district. (Photo: DC) Srinagar: An Army officer and two soldiers were killed in a pre-dawn militant fidayeen attack at an artillery base of the Army in Panzgam area of Jammu and Kashmirs frontier Kupwara district on Thursday. Two militants also died in the troops retaliatory fire, the Army and police officials said in Srinagar. Soon after the attack, protests by locals were held in nearby villages of Panzgam and Kralapora, reports received here said. The officials said that a slogan chanting mob hurled stones at the Army and other security personnel just outside the Panzgam village, about a few kilometres from the Army base. The troops opened fire on the mob which, the Army said, had tried to disturb movement of its men. One person identified as Muhammad Yusuf Bhatt, 45, a resident of Panzgam, was killed and ten others were wounded, the reports said. Bhatt, the reports added, was hit by a bullet in the neck and died on way to hospital. The locals said that a group of Panzgman residents relocated near the Army base demanded that the corpses of the slain militants be handed over to them so that they could be given decent Islamic funeral. SSP Kupwara Shamsher Hussain while confirming it said that the troops opened fire on a "violent mob". Defence spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia said that a heavily armed group of militants tried to storm the artillery headquarters of the 155 Field Regiment at Panzgam, about 80-km northwest of Srinagar, but the alert jawans foiled their attempt. In the ensuing fire fight, three soldiers including a Captain and a Non- Commissioned Officer laid down their lives. "Two terrorists were also killed. The operation is still underway," the spokesperson said. The police and Army sources said that five jawans were injured who have been airlifted to Srinagar and admitted to Army's 92-Base Hospital at Badami Bagh Cantonment. The sources said that the militants opened fire from their AK 47 assault rifles and also lobbed a few grenades at the camp. The attack at the Army base, took place at 4.30 am at Panzgam which is located close to the Line of Control (LoC), according to sources. "It is not yet clear if the terrorists were already present in the area or had just sneaked in from across the LoC to target the Army base," an Army officer said. The defence spokesman confirmed that it was a fidayeen attack which has been "repulsed". Police sources said that the militants could be members of Jaish-e-Muhammad or Lashkar-e-Taiba. This is the first major attack at an Army base in the frontier region of Kashmir Valley after 19 soldiers were killed in a similar attack carried out by militants at the 12 Infantry Brigade headquarters at Uri in neighbouring Baramulla district on September 18, 2016. The relations between India and Pakistan have been deeply strained since the attack, which marked the highest casualty suffered by the Army in years. Days after the Uri terror attack, the Army carried out surgical strikes in PoKand and took out several militant launch pads. Islamabad, however, denied any Indian strike on its territory. The Uri attack was followed by another attack at an Army camp at Nagrota along the Srinagar-Jammu highway in which seven soldiers including two majors were killed. The attack at Panzgam base comes a day after the Army had said that around 150 militants are waiting just across the LoC in PoK to sneak into Jammu and Kashmir. Lt Gen J S Sandhu, the GoC-in-Chief of Srinagar-based 15 (Chinar) Corps, had on the sidelines of a function held in Baramulla, said that there would be more militants at the launching pads in PoK in the areas facing Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu region of the State. The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces and in the run-up to the Srinagar by-polls on April 9. (Photo: Representational/PTI) Kupwara (Jammu and Kashmir): Stone pelting returned to haunt the Valley on Thursday, as a mob was seen hurling stones and bricks at Army personnel near the site of the terror attack in Kupwara. At least three soldiers including an Army officer lost their lives in the attack on an Army camp Thursday morning. The injured soldiers were airlifted to Army's 92 Base Hospital here for treatment. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were launched to ensure no untoward elements were left in the vicinity. The stone pelting began a few kilometers away from the Army camp in Kupwara where the terror attack took place at 4:30 am. The protesters were trying to disturb movement of the Army convoy by pelting stones on the security forces. The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces and in the run-up to the Srinagar by-polls on April 9. The People's Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state had on Wednesday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. Tension in Kashmir over the past few months has escalated immensely and several terror modules have been identified in the process. More than 100 soldiers have been killed in the Valley since the beginning of 2016, and the number tally has been rising rapidly as these attacks have become more frequent in recent times. Not only soldiers but the number of civilian causalities in the region has also witnessed a sharp rise after the sentiment of dissent among the people of the region increased last year. Driven by separatist, a large section of the people residing in the Valley resorted to protests against the army after popular Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was encountered last year. This led to a sharp escalation of tension in the region, fuelled by stone-pelting by the residents. When the army retaliated with pellets, several innocents suffered permanent injuries and a large number of people succumbed to injuries. When the first by-polls were attempted in the Valley earlier this month, there was a large-scale violence in specific regions, with Anantnag witnessing violence and bloodshed. More than three hundred people suffered injuries and around eight men were killed in the middle of retaliatory gunfire and stone-pelting. The Mehbooba Mufti government has made several attempts to scale down the violence in the terror-trotted Valley, but has failed miserably. Yet the soldiers and the civilians in the region continue to be victims of major attacks originating from across the border. This attack comes days after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had a discussion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to improve the situation in the Valley. New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday night said it was in the process of procuring nearly 250 bullet and mine protected vehicles for use by the security forces engaged in anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh. It also said 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen were deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. Reacting to media reports, the Home Ministry said in a statement that it is factually not correct to observe that lack of financial resources is a reason for casualty of valuable lives of police and CRPF personnel in the battle against Left-wing extremism. The funds released for Security Related Expenditure Scheme have increased from Rs 575 crore in 2011-12, 2012-2013, 2013-2014 to Rs 675 crore in 2014-15, 2015-2016, 2016-2017. The above increase is in spite of the fact that states now get a greater share (42 per cent) of the Centre's tax resources. Earlier this used to be only 32 per cent. The statement said it was incorrect to say that Chhattisgarh Police is in shambles. In addition to 45,000 central forces personnel, over 20,000 state police personnel are posted in Bastar region. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. 42 bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet- protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Referring to the recruitment process of security personnel, the home ministry said it was an ongoing and a continuous one. For a force of 70,000, about 3,000 policemen retire every year and there is always a pipeline of 6,000 people under recruitment, it said. Chhattisgarh Police force is well equipped and a Bastar package for police was introduced in 2015. There is complete coordination between the Centre and state forces. In fact 2016 has been the most successful year in anti-LWE operation, it said. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016 which is three times the number of police personnel killed. Even this year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far which is more than the average annual killings of Naxals before 2015. It is wrong to say that 72 CRPF personnel have sacrificed their lives in 2017. As a matter of fact 38 CRPF personnel have been killed in Chhattisgarh in 2017. These figures clearly indicate that anti-Naxal operations are achieving success, the statement said. The central government's policy has been very helpful and has substantially brought down the violence figures in the state. There has been 7 per cent decline in overall violent incidents since 2013. The LWE cadres are in fact in retreat and resorting to desperate attacks. A Bastaria Battalion has been sanctioned recently with a strength of around 750 to be recruited from the local tribals. Similarly 10 Special India Reserve Battalions (SIRB) and 56 India Reserve Battalions are being raised in the LWE areas. On the development front various initiatives have been taken recently such as sanction of a 5,412 km road project at a cost of Rs 11,725 crore, inclusion of all 35 worst-affected LWE districts in the skill development programme, providing Navodaya and Kendriya Vidyalayas, banks, ATMs and post offices in these districts. On the health front, the statement said, the flagship NHRM programme is followed up by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on a constant basis and a super speciality hospital has been approved recently at Jagdalpur by way of upgrading of Jadgalpur Medical College. The next of kin of the soldiers killed currently get around Rs 84 lakhs as assistance. There were no directions by the home ministry regarding not showing grieving widows on TV channels. It was a suggestion verbally made keeping in mind the sensitivities of the bereaved families and the fundamental decency of not intruding to the privacy of the grieving families, it said. Bengaluru: Hours after attacking BJP Karnataka president BS Yeddyurappa over his "unilateral" style of functioning and saying the "dictatorial attitude" won't work, senior leader KS Eshwarappa clarified that there is no infighting within the party. No infighting, fighting only to save organisation and confident about succeeding. BS Yeddyurappa is CM candidate for assembly polls, Eshwarappa told ANI on Thursday. Eshwarappa earlier on Thursday held a convention to "save" the party in defiance of its state president BS Yeddyurappa's warning against it. At the convention, he questioned why Yeddyurappa did not call meeting of 'disgruntled' party leaders as directed by BJP national president Amit Shah. "...you call us anti-party or whatever you want, but our blood won't change... we will not go to any one at any cost, we will not join another party or form another party," he said adding that those who had gone out of the party are now warning of action. The remarks were aimed at Yeddyurappa who had quit the BJP and formed Karnataka Janata Paksha which fared badly in the 2013 polls. Later, he had returned to the BJP. Rejecting Eshwarappa's claims that Amit Shah had not opposed today's meeting, Yeddurappa said that on instructions from the national general secretary in-charge Muralidhar Rao, state general secretary N Ravikumar had made a?statement asking party men to refrain from attending the meeting. "How can a party's national general secretary give such instructions without Amit Shah's consent...as a disciplined party worker, I feel that our party leadership will take appropriate decision," he said. The fissures within the Karnataka unit have cropped up as a matter of concern among the central leadership, which is hoping for the revival of the party's fortunes in the assembly polls early next year to see BJP's return to power. Forming the first-ever government in the South, the BJP had ruled the state from 2008 to 2013 which had seen three chief ministers taking over the the reign one after another amid the factional wars and corruption charges leading to the Congress return to power. To reciprocate the help given by Indian fishermen in saving two PMSA commandos, the PMSA later released the captured fishermen. (Photo: AFP) Ahmedabad: The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) on Thursday apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized their four boats off the Gujarat coast, an official of Porbandar-based National Fishworkers' Forum (NFF) said. These fishermen had sailed from Porbandar a few days ago and were apprehended by the PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line (IMBL), NFF secretary Manish Lodhari said. "We have learnt that at least 23 fishermen on four boats were apprehended by the PMSA near Jakhau and they were being taken to Karachi," Lodhari added. On April 9, four PMSA commandos drowned while two others were saved by Indian fishermen after a boat of the Pakistani agency capsized near the IMBL while allegedly trying to capture around 40 fishermen on seven boats in Indian waters. To reciprocate the help given by Indian fishermen, the PMSA had later released the captured fishermen. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday told Sahara chief Subrata Roy that he will have to return to jail if he does not deposit Rs 2,052.22 crores by July 15. According to NDTV, the Sahara chief, who was present in court and told judges that he would furnish two cheques for the same amount. In response, the judges said, We are warning you - if the cheques are not realized, we will send you to Tihar Jail directly from court. Subrata Roy also promised in SC to deposit Rs 1,500 crore in SEBI-Sahara account on or before June 15, said PTI. He furnished a post-dated cheque of Rs 552.22 crore to be realised by July 15. The Supreme Court subsequently extended the Sahara chiefs parole till June 19, and directed him to be present in court on that date. However, the apex court rejected a request by Roys lawyer Kapil Sibal to reconsider the auction of Saharas lavish Aamby Valley near Lonavala. It is estimated to be worth Rs 34,000 crore. The Supreme Court is trying to recover Rs 24,000 crore from Sahara that were collected through a savings deposit scheme which was declared illegal by market regulator SEBI. The conglomerate has so far paid Rs 12,000 crore, and has missed several deadlines to pay the balance. The apex court has repeatedly told Sahara to deposit Rs 5,000 crore urgently, of which Rs 2,550 crore must now be paid by June 15, said the report. Hyderabad: Union minister and BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya on Thursday said the results of Delhi civic polls reflected the good performance of the Modi government across the country and asked the AAP to stop criticising the prime minister. "The AAP should at least now realise that delivery of goods is important. Performance is primary. Arvind Kejriwal (AAP Convener and Delhi CM) should immediately stop the criticism (of Prime Minister) Narendra Modi," he said in a statement in Hyderabad. The Delhi civic poll results are a reflection of the success of the Modi government across the country, he said. "The empty promises of Aam Aadmi Party like free power etc which are impractical have been rejected by the people of Delhi," the Union Minister of State for Labour said. The BJP on Thursday scored a hat trick in the Delhi civic polls as it comfortably retained control of the three municipal corporations, dealing a severe blow to the AAP and dashing the Congress' hope of a revival. Winning 181 out of the 270 wards where elections were held, the saffron party added muscle to its decade-long domination of the corporations, effortlessly bucking anti-incumbency by riding on the popularity of Modi. Chennai: AIADMK Amma camp senior leader R Vaithilingam today declined to comment on the arrest of party deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran on charges of attempting to bribe Election Commission officials. Vaithilingam, who is steering the negotiations with O Panneerselvam-led side to facilitate the merger of the two rival factions, declined to answer when reporters sought his reaction to the arrest of Dhinakaran by Delhi police. The camp led by Chief Minister K Palanisamy has recently revolted against Dhinakaran and party chief VK Sasikala and decided to keep them away from the party. C Ponnaiyan of Panneerselvam camp, which has been demanding expulsion of Sasikala and Dhinakaran, said the arrest was the prize given by "justice" for adopting a "wrong, illegal approach." Amma camp leader and Dhinakaran loyalist Nanjil Sampath said "we guessed that Dhinakaran will be arrested the moment Panneerselvam said that a good ambience was evolving for holding talks." Tamil Nadu Congress Committee Su Thirunavukkarasu said it was not known why Dhinakaran was being interrogated (for days together by Delhi police) as if he had been involved in a "big allegation like one related to a conspiracy against the country." BJP Tamil Nadu unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan said in her party's regime anybody who was accused of wrongdoing will be brought to book irrespective of whether he was a politician or an official. Jaipur: A day after tendering an apology over his comments on BR Ambedkar, Rajasthan BJP MLA Vijay Bansal has kicked up yet another controversy after reportedly using derogatory language against the media. An audio of the Bharatpur MLA using foul language against journalists has gone viral on social media. Bansal, in a conversation with Dalit Sena chief Mahendra Kumar, can be heard blaming the media for the controversy over his remarks on Ambedkar on April 14. "The media should be beaten up...they are hellbent on maligning me...," he said in the audio. On being asked about the latest round of controversy surrounding him, the BJP MLA said, "I never had such a talk with anyone. It is an attempt to malign my image. The audio is fake. The legislator added that he was open for a probe into the audio in question. "I am open to get the audio investigated," he said. Meanwhile, many journalists have decided to stage a protest at Statue Circle in the city against the BJP MLA's "bitter" remarks. The BJP MLA had kicked up a storm recently when he stated that "B R Ambedkar was not the architect of the Indian Constitution". The comments had evoked sharp reactions from both BJP and Congress. The Shiv Sena further took a jibe at the Centre's claim that demonetisation would curb terrorism and said that post the currency swap, terrorist attacks seemed to have increased. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Venting their anger against the Centre in wake of the Sukma attack, the Shiv Sena on Thursday castigated the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Government for not being able to chalk out a strong anti-terror policy. Shiv Sena in its Saamna editorial blatantly attacked Prime Minister Modi over his comment post Sukma naxal attack and asserted that by making mere statements to avenge the death of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel would not solve the propose. "All attacks by terrorists are cowardly acts, but it is the security personnel whose lives are being sacrificed. The Chhattisgarh attack claimed 26 lives. Our home minister says that they will not tolerate such attacks. But the truth is in past one month, 100 CRPF jawans have sacrificed their lives. By just saying that 'we will not let the sacrifices of CRPF jawans go in vein' is not enough. Why are we not able to combat the aggravating situation?" the Saamna editorial cited. Drawing an analogue between the vulnerable situation in Kashmir and Chhattisgarh, the Shiv Sena averred that the President's rule should be imposed. Chiding the dispensation at the Centre for siphoning political benefits out of the sacrifices of security personnel, the Shiv Sena questioned until when the BJP would run its government by taking lives of soldiers of the nation. "The situation in Kashmir is volatile. Now, even women have picked up stones there and are attacking soldiers. The President's rule should be imposed in Kashmir to pacify the situation and the same treatment should be given to Chhattisgarh," the editorial read. The Shiv Sena further took a jibe at the Centre's claim that demonetisation would curb terrorism and said that post the currency swap, terrorist attacks seemed to have increased. "At the time of bringing demonetisation, it was being asserted that the banning of high denomination notes will curb terrorism. But on the contrary terrorist attacks seemed to have increased. The incident in Chhattisgarh is a testimony that the BJP's claims of combating terrorism have failed," the Saamna editorial said. At least three soldiers including an Army officer lost their lives in the attack. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: With the nation in mourning the death of three Indian Army soldiers, killed in a terrorist attack on an Army camp in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir, Congress vice-president on Thursday called for a 'strategic and decisive action' to meet with such repeated attacks. Taking to the twitter, Gandhi said, "Repeated terrorist attacks, esp on army camps is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic & decisive action. My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack." Meanwhile, reports of stone pelting have emerged from locations close to the site of the Army camp attack. At least three soldiers including an Army officer lost their lives in the attack. The injured soldiers were airlifted to Army's 92 Base Hospital for treatment. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were launched to ensure no untoward elements were left in the vicinity. The political fraternity has come together in condemning the attack and paying tribute to the slain soldiers. New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal on Thursday issued contempt notice to the Art of Living foundation's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on a plea against him for blaming the Centre and the panel for damaging Yamuna floodplains by allowing his NGO to hold a cultural extravaganza. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar issued notice to Ravi Shankar while seeking his reply before May 9, the next date of hearing. The plea filed by activist Manoj Misra has sought action against Ravi Shankar and said his remarks interfered with with free and fair dispensation of justice. In a statement published on the AOL's website, Ravi Shankar had blamed the government and the NGT for permitting AOL to hold the function and said his foundation had obtained all necessary permissions, including from the green panel, and the event could have been stopped in the beginning itself if the river was so "fragile and pure". In the plea filed through advocates Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, Misra said the AOL head was "in the habit" of making statements to "denigrate the dignity and status of this tribunal, which was an interference in the fair dispensation of justice", that is the bedrock of the rule of law. Hyderabad: The Centre will not come to the rescue of chilli farmers in state, who are facing a crisis due to over production and declining prices. The TS government had written to the Centre on April 1 seeking its intervention to stabilise prices and help farmers. However, the Centre turned down the request. Marketing minister T. Harish Rao had sought the Centres intervention and support in the crisis faced by the States chilli farmers due to over production leading to prices crashing. However, the Centre conveyed to the government that it cannot extend financial assistance to the state since several other states too are facing a similar problem due to over production and it has to bear heavy burden to cover all the states. Mr Harish Rao had brought to the notice of Centre that chilli output in state went up by 14 per cent this year due to good rains, which resulted in prices dropping down by almost 50 per cent to Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,000 per quintal, as against Rs 10,000 last year. The estimated production is over 6,98,353 MTs this year in Telangana, leading to a glut in the state. Mr Harish Rao requested the Centre to extend 50 per cent Central assistance to TS under Market Intervention Fund, which could help the chilli farmers get a reasonable price. The fund infusion is expected to stabilise prices for farmers. The state government requires over Rs 500 crore to come to the rescue of farmers by ensuring remunerative prices. We are already offering Rs 6,000 per quintal to farmers, which is the highest in the country. The government is already bearing a burden of `400 crore on its own. We want Centre to bear another 50 per cent burden by giving Rs 500 crore, Mr Harish Rao said. On behalf of the Centre the Attorney General said the government would soon bring a framework for protection of privacy of Whatsapp, Facebook and messages communicated in the social media. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday said it will formulate on May 15 the questions regarding law on WhatsApp privacy issues to be adjudicated and in the meanwhile asked the parties to submit their brief propositions. A five-judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.K. Sikri, Amitav Roy, A.M. Khanwilkar and M.M. Shantanagouder, told counsel for paties that after formulation of the questions, the court will fix the dates for hearing during the summer vacation. The bench was hearing petitions which said that privacy of citizens has been infringed by WhatsApp and Facebook, which amounted to infringement of Articles 19 (Freedom of Speech and Expression) and 21 (Right to Life) of the Constitution. They said the social networking sites compromised the privacy of interpersonal communication of over 150 million people in the country. On behalf of the Centre the Attorney General said the government would soon bring a framework for protection of privacy of Whatsapp, Facebook and messages communicated in the social media. Warangal: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti proved its strength in the state with a massive public meeting at Prakashreddypet in Warangal on Thursday, where an estimated 15 lakh people had turned up. The occasion was the TRS partys 16th formation day. This is the first such public meeting the TRS has held after coming to power. Party supremo and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will be more than satisfied with the response. Though he made no new announcements, his speech gave a fillip to party workers preparing for the 2019 elections. The Chief Minister said several people obstructed the development of Telangana in united Andhra Pradesh and they are still trying to obstruct development today. We must unite to fight them and achieve Bangaru Telangana we all dream of, he said. He said that no one believed in the party when it was created 16 years ago, but it has achieved its target of creating a separate state of Telangana and is running the government for three years now. KCR takes a dig at his detractors All the elections conducted after the formation of Telangana have been in our favour, and 2019 will not be any different, TRS chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao told the huge crowd. He made fun of those who say the TRS was losing public support. TRS leaders and workers reach the public meeting venue in tractors decorated in party colours on Thursday. (Photo: Deccan chronicle) During the GHMC elections, CPI leader K Narayana said he would cut his ear if the TRS won the elections. We all know what happened. Some other person is growing his beard saying he will shave only after the TRS rule is completed. All these people can cut or grow whatever they want after the election results in 2019, he said. Mr Rao said he was happy at the response of the people who turned up for the meeting and said it was because of them that the TRS was in this position today. He dared other parties in TS to conduct a public meeting of these proportions. Mr Rao urged farmers to come together and form committees at each and every level and create a strong community that has the power to decide the price of the produce they have worked hard for. The CM claimed the state had struggled to rid the people of problems with electricity, irrigation and drinking water. He said the welfare schemes being implemented give power to the common man in creating a stronger state. Until the last drop of my blood, I will fight to achieve Bangaru Telangana, he declared. Mr Rao also accused the Congress of not caring for the people when in power, but now trying to put hurdles in the governments efforts to build irrigation projects for the people. Sidelights Flowery welcome Flowers were sprinkled through motorised paragliders on people reaching the TRS public meeting venue at Prakashreddypet in Hanamkonda. Warangal West MLA Dasyam Vinay Bhaskar said the flowers were sprinkled on the orders of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. KCR told us that giving a proper reception to guests is part of Telanganas culture. Respect guests, he told us. Thats why are showering people with flowers, he said. Colour me pink It was pink all the way, with supporters making their way to the public meeting venue on vehicles decorated with flowers and TRS flags. Bicycles, tractors, trucks, cars, bikes, autos, even trains, had a touch of pink as the guests braved the hot sun and turned up in lakhs. Anything goes Several leaders joined their supporters and came on tractors and buses. Ministers Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Jupalli Krishna Rao, Laxma Reddy and others came on tractors with supporters from their respective constituencies. Leaders in a jam Traffic came to a standstill for several km on the Hyderabad-Warangal and Karimnagar-Warangal roads. Traffic jams spread to several km. Minister Etala Rajender, MP B. Vinod and other TRS leaders were among those who were stuck in traffic for hours. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life. (Representational Image: Pixabay) New Delhi: A suspected burglar has died after the police shot at him, and then donated blood to save his life. The Delhi police spotted Nitin, alias Sonu (24), and Salman when they were allegedly attempting a burglary in the Prashant Vihar area of Rohini early on Wednesday. The police said Sonu opened fire at the police party and in retaliation, the police fired at him. Salman managed to flee, but Sonu fell when he was hit by five bullets. He had bullet injuries on his leg, lower back and arms. Sonu was taken to a hospital where four policemen of the Prashant Vihar police station donated blood to save his life. But Sonu died on Wednesday night, DCP (Rohini) Rishi Pal said. Doctors at the hospital said that he required four units of blood, which were provided by the four policemen, including the SHO of Prashant Vihar SS Rathee and constable Ashok, who took part in the shootout. Pal said that the policemen told him that while firing at the suspect was a part of their duty, donating blood was a "humanitarian duty". Referring to the proposed privatisation, CM told Modi that the move has caused lot of apprehension and dismay amongst the people of the state. (Photo: File) Chennai: Tamil Nadu government has opposed move to privatise the Salem Steel Plant, saying such a proposal would cause "considerable unrest" among the people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister E Palanisamy said the plant had acquired a global reputation for its high quality steel and "is an iconic symbol" for Tamil Nadu. The people of the state have a deep sense of pride and attachment to the public sector plant, he said in the letter dated April 26, which was officially released on Thursday. Palanisamy said the state government had acquired about 15.5 sq.km of land in 9 villages more than four decades ago at the foot hills of Kanjamalai in Salem for the plant. "It was possible to undertake such extensive land acquisition mainly because of the public sector character of the plant. Today, any proposal to privatise the Salem Steel Plant would cause considerable unrest amongst people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired," he said. Palanisamy said land was "perhaps" the most valuable and sought after asset in the possession of the steel plant on Thursday. It was providing employment to about 2000 persons while many ancillary and subsidiary units also depended on it, he added. Tamil Nadu government had supported the Rs 2005 crore expansion project of the plant with a "structured package" of incentives in the form of capital subsidy, soft loan, electricity tax exemption and environmental protection subsidy, he said. Highlighting these, Palanisamy said the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Salem Steel Plant have received much support from the state government as well as the people, "primarily on account of its public sector character." Referring to the proposed privatisation, he told Modi that the move "has caused lot of apprehension and dismay amongst the people of the state." He said public sector undertakings were capable of performing very well provided they were given the right support and direction in the dynamic economic scenario. "The causes for the company's recent losses must be studied and Salem Steel Plant must be given a chance to improve its efficiency and make a turn around," he said. If that was done, he said the plant will transform once again into a profit making company. "I therefore request you to kindly intervene in the matter urgently and advise the Ministry of Steel and the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) to reconsider any proposal that they may have of privatising the Salem Steel Plant," he told Modi. The Centre had last month approved outright sale of state-owned SAIL's three special steel units, including Salem and Alloy Steel plants. The initiative comes after the ATS recently arrested four suspected terrorists from the ISIS Khorasan module and came across posts, likes and remarks of these youths on social media. (Photo: Representational Image/File) Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has initiated a "ghar wapsi" campaign to de-radicalise "misguided" persons and 25 youth from various districts are being counselled after a tab was kept on their online activities. The initiative comes after the ATS recently arrested four suspected terrorists from the ISIS Khorasan module and came across posts, likes and remarks of these youths on social media which showed that they were being radicalised. Keeping in mind the influence of ISIS sympathisers on youth, the ATS has unveiled a 12-point strategy for the Ghar wapsi programme and also announced a helpline number for parents and families who suspect their children or people known to them are getting radicalised online. Security forces have noticed that terror operatives are targeting youngsters between 15 and 25 years of age by inciting communal passions. "The initiative aims at helping families in de-radicalising youngsters, who are often targeted by terror operatives who radicalise them online and use them in carrying out terror activities. We will lend support to such families as part of our de-radicalisation programme," an ATS official said. Two control room numbers of ATS - 0522-2304588 and 9792103156 - have also been set up which people can contact for help and the families have been assured that the identities of such youths and their families will be kept a secret. The IG ATS said police will take the help of not only clerics, parents, family members but also friends of such youths and make them understand religion in the right perspective. The youth going for the de-radicalisation programme of ATS, will be engaged in an interaction with police to gain their confidence and the process will be last over one year. Surprise visits have also been planned for such youths to check their activity and the ATS will also help in education and employment of the youth by recommending their names under various government schemes. "As there is no guarantee that the youth may not be radicalised again, the ATS will keep their details with and keep checking their activities randomly," they said. They said the focus of the programme is to target the terror mindset. "The programme aims to show the right path to the misguided youngsters through counselling," the UP ATS said. "Presently ghar-wapsi or de-radicalisation of at least 25 youth from various districts of Uttar Pradesh is already on," IG ATS, Asim Arun said, adding these youths belong to seven districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bijnor and Muzaffarnagar. "The ATS is keeping a tab on online activities and some families would be approached for the de-radicalisation process, if required," he said. "Keeping in mind that they were being influenced by radical propaganda, efforts are being made with the help of their families for their de-radicalisation," a senior ATS official said. The UP ATS had seized some important documents after the March 7 encounter in Lucknow in which a suspected terrorist belonging to an ISIS module was killed. Following this, the probe was expanded to five states. The ATS had received information that the ISIS had been expanding its network in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Bihar and some youth from these states had joined the terror organisation. Six others were detained for questioning and during interrogation, it was revealed that their role is negligible and in the absence of adequate proof they were not arrested, they said. The arrested persons had tried to brain wash and subsequently push them on the path of terror. "Many a time, some families feel that one of their members has tread the wrong path and may subsequently opt for the terror route. But they feel helpless. Hence, the families are advised to approach the ATS Control Room at the earliest. The UP government and UP Police stand with them," an ATS statement said. The programme includes involving misguided youngsters' friend and religious head during the counselling. Efforts will also be made to keep the identity of the misguided youngster a secret and also the counselling process. The programme will be considered to be over after the marriage of the misguided youngster or when his employment has been ensured. "These youngsters will never be used for gathering intelligence or trapping terrorists," the ATS said. The UP ATS had on April 20 arrested four persons -- Mufti Faizan and Tanveer, who are connected with the ISIS and were arrested from Bijnor district. Nazim Shamshad Ahmed (26), who hails from Bijnor, was nabbed from Thane district adjoining Mumbai and Muzammil from Punjab in a joint operation with others states. It has detained six youths, who were later handed over to their families to facilitate their "de-radicalisation". Adityanath also asked the officials concerned to ensure laying of 4-lane road connecting famous temples for the convenience of visitors. (Photo:PTI) Lucknow: Amid Intelligence warning that an ISI-trained group in the garb of Hindu seers might strike prominent religious sites in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has called for construction of boundary walls around the holy spots. The priest-turned-politician also asked the officials concerned to ensure laying of 4-lane road connecting famous temples for the convenience of visitors. Adityanath, the Hindu hardline leader who took over as chief minister of the most populous state over a month ago, gave the directive at a presentation of Religious Endowment Department here late Wednesday night. Assistant Superintendent of Police (Security), Mathura, Siddharth Verma said they had received information that terrorists dressed as 'sadhus' could enter the state to carry out attacks. The pilgrim town of Mathura is a sensitive area as it is situated along the state's border with Rajasthan and Haryana, prompting police to instal metal detectors, X-ray machines and CCTV cameras at vantage places, as well as carry out surprise checks at night shelters, guest houses and hotels. "Checking is being done daily and undercover police personnel are keeping a watch at public areas after reports that a group of 20-25 men dressed as seers are planning to attack important places, especially pilgrim centres, in Uttar Pradesh," Verma said. The group, allegedly trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been directed to target Ayodhya, Varanasi, Vrindavan, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, he said. "All district police chiefs and Railway superintendents of police have been informed about the threat. We are coordinating with other agencies to thwart such attempts," UP anti-terror squad Inspector General Asim Arun said. Central Intelligence agencies have been sharing inputs with the UP Police since February about increased activity of terrorists in the state. According to the latest alert, the ISI is planning to launch attacks in the northern state under the code name 'Operation Krishna India'. "The agency (ISI) has reportedly trained the group for months to familiarise them with Hindu religious practices. Members of the module are planning to enter UP through the Nepal border in the guise of seers," the reports said. In February, Intelligence agencies in the state were tipped off about four dozen terrorists sneaking into UP through the porous border with Nepal. Uttar Pradesh shares a 599.3 km open border with Nepal touching seven districts - Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Sravasti, Balrampur, Sidhharthnagar and Maharajganj. "As per the Intelligence inputs, the group has also been trained by Pakistan's ISI in Hindu religious practices, and might try to blend with the local populace before carrying out deadly strikes at prominent religious sites and other sensitive spots," police said. The Intelligence agencies had picked up intercepts through electronic surveillance in which youths were heard discussing the deaths of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) men in Telangana as well as IS suspect Saifullah in Lucknow. A Khurasan module was busted after Saifullah's death last month. Recently, some self-radicalised youths were also arrested by the UP Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). In 2016, eight suspected members of SIMI had tried to evade the police by adornig saffron robes in Madhya Pradesh. The men were later killed in a police encounter. Thiruvananthapuram: It was a trip down memory lane when the Assembly met at the old hall on Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of the first sitting of the Kerala Assembly. While many senior members revelled in nostalgic memories, the juniors took it as a matter of pride to be part of history. The old hall with its cramped ambience and humid atmosphere was in sharp contrast to the air-conditioned and spacious comfort of the new Assembly hall. Senior members, including Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, were the first to reach the hall around 8 a.m. The narrow passages between seats and rows made it difficult for MLAs like P.C. George, Vijayan Pillai and Transport Minister Thomas Chandy to move around easily. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan arrive to the session on Thursday. (Photo: PEETHAMBARAN PAYYERI) For Mr M.K. Muneer, who was recently made IUML parliamentary party leader, it was a rare occasion as he could sit on the same seat in which his father C.H. Mohammed Koya sat as IUML leader. Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan arranged a photo session after the sitting considering the wish of many members to get their photograph in the historic Assembly hall. Many MLAs hailed the speaker for holding the sitting there. Mr. Oommen Chandy and Mr C. Divakaran even suggested that sittings may be held occasionally in the old hall. The chief minister, who spoke, recalled that many laws initiated by the state Assembly had become models for the centre. Even if many issues come up in the House, more importance should be given for legislation, he said. Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala said that the political parties should change according to time. CPM leader V.S. Achuthanandan arrive to the session on Thursday. The speaker said that even as the state had made much progress over 60 years, the police force was still remaining as people-unfriendly. While Mr. Oommen Chandy said that the government should take the initiative for a consensus with the Opposition for the states development initiatives, Mr. Achuthanandan lamented that the Assembly was not being convened even for one-third of a year these days. BJP MLA O. Rajagopal used the occasion to target the chief minister for a recent remark in the House accusing the RSS of being responsible for Mahatma Gandhis death. He said that it was unfortunate to make such baseless allegations misusing the privileges of the House. Though the House witnessed heated arguments between the Opposition and treasury benches, there was no walkout or boycott during the day. Bengaluru: Disturbed by the growing discontent in the Karnataka BJP and the 'BJP Bachao' meeting planned by the rebels in Bengaluru on April 27, party national president, Amit Shah plans to visit the city either in the last week of May or early June to sort out matters, according to party sources. Mr Shah reportedly hopes to hold a dialogue with the warring factions before the situation gets out of control. On hearing about the BJP Bachao meet, he recently held an impromptu meeting with some leaders to discuss it, sources revealed. "Mr Shah is likely to take some drastic steps in the Karnataka unit in the party's interests and everyone will have to fall in line," they added, explaining that the BJP president was currently busy with the coming Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and would come to Bengaluru after he completes this work. Besides sorting out the problems in the state unit, he is expected to select candidates for the 2018 Assembly polls without entrusting the entire responsibility to state party chief, B S Yeddyurappa. Seeing Karnataka as an important state and eyeing a BJP win here, Mr Shah is reportedly ready to spend several days in the city to make sure the ticket distribution process is free of hiccups. "All contentious issues between the factions will also be sorted during his visit to Karnataka," sources said. Rebel leader meets Joshi to discuss crisis Former state BJP president and Dharwad Lok Sabha member Prahlad Joshi had a dinner meeting with Mr Sogadu Shivanna, one of the organisers of Wednesday's meeting, in Tumakuru. Mr Shivanna is learnt to have told Mr Joshi how loyal party leaders were suffering at the hands of Mr Yeddyurappa in the last one year and requested him to bring their plight to the notice of party national president Mr Amit Shah. It is not known how Mr Joshi responded to the plea . Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to clear appointments for vacant gubernatorial posts before he leaves on May 12 on a visit to Sri Lanka. Sources indicate he will also take up the much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle in the first week of May. At present, there are four vacancies for governors posts for Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. There will soon also be a vacancy in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan demits office on May 2 after completing a five-year term for the second time. However, he will continue for a few more days till his successor takes office as per constitutional provisions under Article 156 (3). Sources said the PM is keen to use the services of Mr Narasimhan for another assignment other than that of the Governor. Mr Narasimhan was appointed Governor for Andhra Pradesh and after the state bifurcation in 2014, was given additional charge as Telangana Governor. It is being said that the new incumbent will be appointed on similar lines, to look after both states as there are no separate Raj Bhavans in Hyderabad and Amaravati for two Governors to function independently. Section 8 of the AP Reorganisation Act gives special powers to the Governor to oversee issues concerning safety and security of people living in the common capital area of Hyderabad. The Act did not specify the Governor of which state will be responsible, meaning there will only be one Governor for the two states. Mr Narasimhan has been the senior most Governor in the country since 2007 and is followed by Jammu-Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra. According to sources, Union home minister Rajnath Singh has not yet spoken to the Chief Ministers of AP and TS regarding the new appointment. It is the practice for the Union home minister to inform the concerned Chief Minister about this appointment. As far as vacancies at other Raj Bhavans go, Madhya Pradesh is being looked after by Gujarat Governor O.P. Kohli, Tamil Nadu by Maharashtra Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao, Arunachal Pradesh by Nagaland Governor Padmanabha Acharya and Meghalaya by Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit. Telugu Desam senior leader Motkupalli Narasimhulu is being tipped as the new Governor for Meghalaya. Bengaluru: He has been facing rumblings within the party for months, but on Thursday state BJP chief, B S Yeddyurappa came up against outright rebellion as disgruntled partymen, who included the state unit's vice-president, Bhanuprakash and his long time rival, K S Eshwarappa, gave him until May 10 to resolve all issues worrying them, warning they could hold another mammoth rally on May 20 if he did not meet their deadline. Ruling out any further talks with him, they said they would in future negotiate with only a four-member committee headed by BJP Karnataka in-charge, Muralidhar Rao. Yeddyurappa's troubles seem to be growing as present at the "Save Organisation" meeting held at the sprawling Palace Grounds here were several prominent leaders of the party like Somanna Bevinamarad, Siddaramaiah, Siddaraju, and Shivayogi Swamy, besides all former MLCs and several former MLAs. While the leaders stopped short of insisting that he be replaced as the party's Chief Ministerial candidate or party president, they made it clear he could not appoint his cronies to all party posts and ignore the "loyal workers." Leading the attack, Eshwarappa said his "dictatorial" attitude would no longer be tolerated. Claiming that he was surrounded by psychophants interested in only furthering their own interests, he said they could end up becoming ministers in the Yeddyurappa Cabinet while the rest were ignored. "We are not going to allow any individual to destroy the party. The purpose of holding today's meeting is to save the party from the clutches of some individuals. I don't care if they call us dissidents, miscreants or anti-party activists as we are committed to protecting our party and bringing it to power in the state. They can't bully us by threatening to take disciplinary action either," he declared. Insisting that those at the meeting had no intention of joining any other party or launching a new political outfit, he asserted, "We are born BJP men and will remain so until we die unlike other turncoats. The decision to hold the meeting was taken only after waiting for three months for the party's core committee to examine our demands." In an obvious attempt to belittle the Lingayat strongman, Eshwarappa recalled that the Karnataka Janata Party he floated after quitting the BJP in a huff, won only six seats while the BJP bagged 40 in the assembly elections that followed. Bhanuprakash clarified they were not demanding tickets to contest the coming Assembly polls or party posts but only appointment of the right people for the right posts. " Our demand is not removal of Yeddyurappa as party president. We waited for a year in the hope that he would change his style of functioning but nothing happened," he added. Former minister, Sogadu Shivanna said if Yeddyurappa gave them responsibility in the party, they would work to make him Chief Minister. BJP Legislators want KS Eshwarappa out BJP legislators cutting across caste lines have demanded stringent action against K.S. Eshwarappa, hours after he attended the 'Save Organisation convention on Thursday. Party legislators Y.A. Narayanaswamy, Dr C.N. Ashwathanarayana, Muniraju, Lehar Singh and party MP and BJP vice president P.C. Mohan addressed a press conference and said he had crossed the limits. "He has indulged in anti-party activity by organising this meeting in the name of dissatisfied workers. Eshwarappa, who lost the last election was made a MLC. The party also made him opposition leader in the Council. Instead of being grateful, he is making efforts to hurt the party's prospects which is nothing but a crime," Mr Mohan said. Rebels plan to meet Shah Former ministers Sogadu Shivanna and A. Ravindra said they have plans to meet party national president Amit Shah to explain to him recent developments in the BJP state unit. Speaking to reporters here after the 'Save Organisation' meeting held on Thursday, they ruled out any talks with BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa and said they would discuss their grievances only with Mr Shah. "If needed, we are planning to take a delegation to Delhi to meet our national president." Resolutions of Save Organisation meeting North Korea celebrated the 85th anniversary of the foundation of its Korean Peoples Army earlier this week, on Tuesday. Usually, it has marked important events in the past by launching missiles or conducting nuclear tests. As the American aircraft-carrier strike group led by USS Carl Vinson sped to the region and US officials warned that all options are on the table, there were fears that the North Korea might use this day for its sixth nuclear test. In the event, there has been much sabre-rattling on both sides, but no nuclear test. North Korea conducted live-fire drills involving 300-400 artillery pieces. The US nuclear-powered submarine USS Michigan reached the South Korean port of Busan on Tuesday for exercises with the Japanese and South Korean navies. As three Americans were taken as hostages in North Korea, US defence sources are talking about North Korea developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the American mainland, and contemplating the need for a pre-emptive strike. US expert Jonathan Pollack has warned that loose talk of pre-emptive strikes could lead to North Korean retaliation, so that the US could stumble needlessly into what would be the biggest crisis in East Asia since the United States intervened in the Korean War in 1950. The last two weeks have seen increasingly shrill rhetoric from North Korea, provocative tests of missiles, and US and South Korean military manoeuvres. The latter have evoked harsher North Korean warnings: its state media have threatened to deliver the most ruthless blow if there is even the smallest provocation from the United States, and that the United States and South Korea could be completely destroyed in an instant if North Korea were to launch a pre-emptive strike. North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests since 2006, the last in September last year. It also has conducted numerous medium- and long-range missile tests since Kim Jong-un took power in 2011. It is against this fraught background that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Washington on April 6-7. China is North Koreas principal ally, accounts for 90 per cent of its trade and is the main source of the countrys food and energy. But despite US President Donald Trumps anti-China remarks during the 2016 US election campaign, the most interesting outcome of this interaction was Chinas support for the United States on the North Korean issue. On April 17, the US state department said that China had sent the Trump administration positive signals that it would increase economic sanctions to pressure North Korea to abandon its development of nuclear weapons and missiles. Later, a day after North Koreas vice-foreign minister said and use nuclear weapons if threatened, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Beijing was about North Koreas recent nuclear and missile activities. At the same press conference, spokesman Lu Kang praised recent US statements on the North Korean issue: American officials did make some positive and constructive remarks... such as using whatever peaceful means possible to resolve the (Korean) Peninsula nuclear issue. China is also showing some new toughness towards North Korea: it banned imports of North Korean coal in February and has reduced fuel sales to North Korea.This has evoked some harsh words from Pyongyang, including the warning that China should get itself ready to face the catastrophic consequences to its relations with the DPRK. Global Times, a Chinese state-run paper, said in a recent editorial that China could enforce stricter measures aganst North Korea, including a ban on oil exports, or join a US-led effort to block the Norths access to international financial markets. However, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi refused to confirm these initiatives. While China is pursuing a balanced approach at present between the US and North Korea, Chinas interests differ from those of the US in crucial areas. China on its part is wary of efforts to pressure the North Korean regime militarily, being concerned about an unpredictable North Korean retaliation should the regime in Pyongyang fear collapse, the attendant regionwide political turmoil and the influx of refugees into China itself. China also views negatively the possible reunification of the Koreas under a South Korean government closely allied to the United States, since that would expand US influence at its borders. More immediately,China sees with great disfavour the US militarys increasing presence in South Korea, specifically the US move to deploy elements of its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defence system. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has said THAAD is not a simple technical issue, but an out-and-out strategic one. Countering a powerful missile defence system means more advanced Chinese missiles, with more aggressive deployment. Security affairs commentator Ian Armstrong has noted that China is not so much concerned about the interception capabilities of THAAD, but another major THAAD component the radar, which identifies and communicates the location of missile targets to the interceptor. Though the US and South Korea have repeatedly said THAAD will be directed only at North Korean missiles, the Chinese know that THAADs radar can be easily switched into a long-range mode that would give the US an early warning of Chinese missile launches. Chinese commentators see this as evidence of US reluctance to work with China on promoting regional stability and see no alternative to pursuing their own missile programmes to counter the American strategic advantage in the region. The latter could include hypersonic glide vehicles and multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicles. MIRVs are difficult to detect and would thus effectively counter the strategic advantages provided by THAAD. On Wednesday, South Korea triumphantly announced that unspecified parts of THAAD had been installed. These are said to include two or three launchers, intercept missiles and a radar. China sees this as an ill-timed provocation. Finance minister Arun Jaitleys categorical declaration that the Central government has no plans to tax agricultural income is due to the sensitivity of a proposal that has been toyed with at various times by the bureaucracy to widen the tax net. The political class is scared of even speaking about this, fearing they would be seen as anti-farmer. In a nation known for being lackadaisical about tax compliance, there is an urgent need to increase tax collections by including more classes of people who earn well above what average citizens get to keep after paying taxes most of their working life. The latest proposal came from Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy, and was quickly shot down as his personal view, than that of the planning body or the government. It was also strenuously noted that a reference in the three-year draft action agenda document was only about the need to scrutinise entities evading taxes by misusing exemptions, and that taxing agriculture was a state than a Central subject. The prompt denial was to scotch the perception that the government was thinking of taxing farmers incomes, after the Opposition periodically roasted it for being anti-farmer. The BJP has in fact gone the extra mile to acquire a pro-farmer image by waiving off `35,000 crore in Uttar Pradeshs farmers loans. In a particularly distressful year for agriculture, it wanted to ensure no wrong signals went out. But it is also true that the blanket exemption for agricultural incomes has led to devious practices, making it a conduit to avoid taxes. It is well known that politicians, filmstars and sportsmen often use this provision to avoid paying tax. To justify the exemption isnt easy, specially when richer farmers are known to drive around in Mercedes-Benz, BMWs and Hummers bought with tax-free incomes. The argument that in an equitable society prosperous farmers should also pay their fair share of taxes doesnt negate the logic that farmers need all the help that they can be given in subsidies for inputs and a good support price regime, besides access to free markets to derive the best price for their produce. Taxpayers account for just about one per cent of the population about 1.25 crore people out of 123 crore in the 2013 assessment year, according to government data. The receipts from personal income-tax serve only to keep the collection machinery in place, though the figures of taxpayers have been going up in recent years. Taxing rich farmers would be a good signal that all earners are equal in the eyes of the law, and must share the national burden of paying taxes. But the question is which government will dare to imposes taxes on farmers? Therein lies one of Indias several inequities. Analysing a tragedy for whatever reasons must begin with an expression of regret. Thats exactly how I look at the situation where the nation has been left frustrated yet again with a heavy loss in the security domain. Losing 25 police personnel in circumstances much like in the past inspires little confidence in the ability of Central armed police forces and of the intelligence agencies that support them in the Red Corridor. Amid all the patriotic fervor that accompanies the loss of uniformed personnel, the public also deserves to know why this happens so often. While doing so the colour of the uniform one has worn must not be evident; only then will justice be done. To make this into an us versus them affair within the uniformed services would be inherently unfair. Even as I write an encounter is in progress in Kupwara where the Army has suffered losses. Such losses in the administrative realm, of camps and perhaps convoys, doesnt absolve the Army and Central forces in Kashmir from the many blunders which have occurred in the recent past. Sukma is nothing short of a tragedy. I insist on calling it that since innocent policemen doing their job and being martyred as they were not trained adequately to do that job is indeed a tragedy. Citing former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfield, the phrase known knowns is most applicable here. Almost everything which goes into making such a repeated tragedy is a known in terms of past analyses, and we are fully aware that it is a known. There are some knowns that cant and wont change unless transformational decisions are taken, but its important to keep the public informed. The Central Reserve Police Force has been delineated as the core or lead force to take charge of counter-insurgency operations (CI ops) across the country. Was this Union Cabinet decision, based on the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee and Group of Ministers, correct? Is it something that should be reviewed? Analysts are far happier quoting the decision than questioning its wisdom, or the absence of implementation. When such decisions are taken, they should be based on the capability of a force or its potential. If the latter, then the means to acquire that capability must also be delineated and orders issued. By merely recommending the CRPF as the lead force for CI ops without examining its structure, manning pattern and command and control, the Kargil Review Committee perhaps erred substantially. However, the purpose is not to assign blame; a decade and a half down the road experience itself would have repeatedly shown that in its current format and makeup it is unfair to give the CRPF such a responsibility. The known knowns of the force mentioned by every analyst in the past three days needs a brief recount. Chasing nimble tribal guerrillas armed to the teeth who are fighting a son of the soil insurgency in a terrain they know like the back of their palms isnt really a joke. CRPF jawans are often 50-60 years old as the retirement age in the force is 60. It will be unfair to question it as I am unaware if the force has laid down an age limit for deployment of personnel in the Red Corridor. If not, then it is essential, and units must be restructured as Red Corridor units. The Armys Rashtriya Rifles is a fine model of a CI force to examine and improve upon. The manning pattern, under which senior CRPF positions are occupied by Indian Police Service officers is too flogged an issue to repeat. The point to emphasise is that institutional awareness of weaknesses in the operational realm cant be expected from a hierarchy completely inexperienced in training, planning or execution of such operations anytime in their service. To be parachuted into one or more star ranks and suddenly bearing operational responsibility and the lives of so many personnel under care is inherently unfair both on the IPS officers and the CRPF. Harping on this is like begging the question, as nothing is likely to change. It is best to work around it and look at other ways of potential optimisation. Leadership, training and equipment are the three areas which need to be reviewed, other than the senior leadership question. Most fighting entities will inform you that the best welfare for warriors is to ensure they are fully enabled in their quest to inflict maximum casualties on the adversary, and prevent casualties unto themselves. This is best done through training and professional stocktaking. Some Red Corridor forces like the Andhra Pradesh Greyhounds have proved their capability beyond doubt, but such excellence is a drop in the ocean compared to the magnitude of the problem. The Armys Para SF units, particularly the ones that have operated in Sri Lanka and the Northeast, have institutional experience and strength. There are enough veteran officers and men who could be tapped professionally to impart their knowledge. Institutions like the National Police Academy are centres of excellence which must be involved in analysis and lesson-learning in a substantive way. The plethora of experience that the CRPF and state police forces possess is itself not little. The circumstances surrounding the Sukma event, however, do not inspire any confidence on the basics that those involved in such operations must have. Everything here is supposed to be tactical, including having meals. Troops deployed on operations do not eat at the same time, and not without establishing security through observation posts, sentries and the like. There is obviously a real need to return to the basics, and to do so repeatedly. Red Corridor forces have mostly suffered when they encounter large groups of insurgents. Obviously, one of the banes of such operations is contact-based command and control and getting the sub-unit to respond beyond just returning fire. I am not sure whether training on this is ever carried out. CRPF units are most usedly to platoon-based functioning. Even the best Army units may find it difficult to have a full company-based response in the face of such situations. The fact that a full company can come under enemy action at a single time is itself a reflection of questionable field tactics. If this is to improve, egos must be shed. Smaller teams can train with Greyhounds and other successful police outfits, but if a full sub-unit response is necessary, it should imbibe the Armys functional culture. The immediate upgrading of equipment is vital. The Union home ministry has a very efficient procurement machinery. It must look at rotary aviation resources for recce and response. The Mine-Protected Vehicle is an imperative, and funds cant be the reason for not provisioning this. While the intelligence services have secured India quite well over the last many years, tactical-level intelligence in the Red Corridor still seems to be highly questionable. I laud the BSFs concept of G sections of its units. In all my experience, I have not found more competent intelligence personnel at the tactical level. This is something that the CRPF should examine closely. For decades man-made junk is cluttering up Earths orbit, forming a ring around the planet. The debris orbiting around the blue planet pose threats to spaceflight and the satellites used for global communication, weather reports and navigation. More than 75,000 fragments larger than a centimetre are believed to orbit Earth, and a cascading reaction is expected. Debris experts at the European Space Agency (ESA) fear a chain reactionwhere objects take part into collision and fragments go on to smash into other objects creating more debris. Since the launch of first satellite Sputnik1 by Soviet in 1957, over 100 million pieces are estimated to be in orbit. Space agencies like Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had tried to pull junk out of orbit around Earth but unfortunately in early 2017 'space junk' collector ran into trouble. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The United States government does not allow companies to disclose the exact number of requests they receive, but only certain ranges. Microsoft has revealed in a statement that they provided wrong figures earlier this month when it revealed an increase in the number of US government surveillance requests in the first six months of 2016. The software giant explained that theres actually no increase in the number of requests. It also stated that it received between 0 and 499 requests, just like in the same period the year before (between January and June 2015). However, Microsoft had earlier said it received between 1,000 and 1,4999 US surveillance orders as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The United States government does not allow companies to disclose the exact number of requests they receive, but only certain ranges. In a statement released Microsoft has stated that the wrong data was published because of human error, promising to perform additional checks in the future to make sure this never happens. Our latest U.S. National Security Orders Report and accompanying blog post contained an error, reporting that from Jan. 1 June 30, 2016 Microsoft received 1,000 1,499 FISA orders seeking disclosure of customer content. The correct range is 0 499 FISA orders seeking disclosure of customer content. All the other data disclosed in the National Security Orders Report was correct, Microsoft explains. Microsoft corrected the mistake as soon as we realized it was made to ensure the accuracy of our reporting. We've put additional safeguards in place to ensure the numbers we report are correct. We apologize for the error. This month, Microsoft also published the contents of a National Security Letter (NSL) sent by the FBI in 2014 as part of a request for user information. The letter also included a gag order that didnt allow the company to even discuss the letter due to a number of factors, including national security, as the bureau itself explains. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. In a recent argument, Bose was at the centre of focus for allegedly spying on its users conversations via their headphones. The claim by lawyers stated that Bose was secretly collecting information about what the users are listening to when they are using the Bose Bluetooth headphones. However, it seems that its not the headphones, but the installed app that was the culprit. Kyle Zak from Illinois claimed that his Bose headphones were collecting information without his knowledge every time he used the Bose companion app Bose Connect on his smartphone. The app allows Boses customers to interact with the headphones update software and also manage the devices connected with it at the time. If the user is listening to something, the details of the same were shown up on the app. This information is collected by Bose and sent to third party companies, including Segment, who facilitate data collection from web and mobile apps for further analysis. This could force action against Bose for illegal wire tapping. However, Bose denied any such allegations and pointed out that the privacy policy in the Connect App states that it collects de-identified data for Boses use only and does not sell the data to any other companies, including advertising. Bose also stressed that the information on the app is only visible to Bose and only if the customer has the app open and running. You'll find that the Connect App collects standard things to make your experience, and our products, better like device information, app performance, and app and product usage. That includes information about songs playing on the device, the volume they're played at and other usage data, stated Bose on its website. Well, this is only a recent case with Bose and its Connect app. However, there are several apps that you already have installed that are probably collecting data about you, with or without your consent. While most of the data from these apps are usually sent back to the parent company for analysis and further development and improvement of their services, some may likely sell the data out to third-party companies for various reasons. Developers of apps use this data information for many purposes. Tracking of data helps them analyse how many users are using it daily or monthly, how long they use it, what are they doing with it, and even how many dont like using it and why. This can help developers know if their apps have issues, need additional features and helps with further app developments and incremental bug fixes and alike. Bigger tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and a few others are also collecting similar data from users under an anonymous tag. While the data would be used for advertising purposes, it is mostly used for other services such as personalisation, and for various other analysis needs. While privacy statements with all apps that one installs do state most of what the app does in the background, it is not enough and clear. Each app developer should make sure that the app pops up on screen each time (or the first time) and inform the user about what data it will collect, what information it will store, what it will send back to servers in the cloud, who will use the data, and for what purposes, and finally who all the data will additionally be shared with. Some app developers dont feature the entire T&C and Privacy Statements and make the user head to their website to read them, which is even more confusing, boring to read and especially, to long and legally challenging. A survey research done by Pew Research Center a few years ago stated that most people, as much as 50 per cent, dont even know what the privacy statements mean. And most of us will agree that whenever we install any software or app, or even fill up online or physical forms, we tend to ignore the fine prints that are supplied. In short, we simply write-off and sign that that we have understood the disclaimer, terms and conditions and privacy policy stated under. While times are soon changing, we are seeing companies now more aggressive in protecting the privacy of their customers rather than customers from themselves, and also from law enforcement agencies, secret services and governments. With inputs from The Conversation Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Nairobi: A spokesman for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders says at least 25,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the South Sudan town of Kodok. The top United Nations official in South Sudan also warned of a government offensive on the town. Phillippe Carr said that the fighting has caused a reduction in humanitarian services and there is a shortage of water for the displaced. He said civilians are fleeing to the nearby South Sudan town of Aburoc. After reports of shelling on Tuesday, the town was feared deserted on Wednesday. South Sudan's government troops were on an offensive in Kodok and the Upper Nile region, head of the UN mission in South Sudan David Shearer told members of the Security Council on Tuesday. United Nations: India has strongly objected to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a UN General Assembly session here, asserting that it is a bilateral matter which should not be brought up in the UN forum. Minister in Pakistan's Permanent Mission to the UN Masood Anwar raised the Kashmir issue in his statement to the UN General Assembly session of the Committee on Information on April 25. He said Pakistan appreciates the efforts by the UNs Department of Public Information in arranging coverage of events related to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. "We would urge you to do the same for the people of Kashmir who continue to suffer under foreign occupation, Anwar said. As soon as these remarks were made, Minister in Indias Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad interrupted Anwars speech and strongly raised objections to the mention of Kashmir by the Pakistani delegate. "It is a bilateral issue which should not be brought here, Prasad told the Chair of the session. Pakistans Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, also present during the session, was heard prodding Anwar to "carry on" speaking even as Prasad raised his objections with the session's Chair. Later, before delivering India's statement at the session, Prasad said the Kashmir issue was totally unrelated to the forum. "Before I begin my statement, I would like to thank the Chair for its deft handling and not allowing the elaboration of a subject which is totally unrelated to this forum as was tried by a member state," Prasad said. The Committee on Information is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly established to deal with questions relating to public information. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the Department of Public Information and for providing it with guidance on policies, programmes and activities of the Department. Nikki Haley met Akbaruddin at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN here on Wednesday. (Photo: Twitter) New York: The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley discussed with her Indian counterpart Syed Akbaruddin the economic and anti-corruption reforms undertaken by India to spur growth and measures to strengthen Indo-US partnership at the world body. Haley met Akbaruddin at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN here on Wednesday. "They discussed peacekeeping reform and India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth,according to a statement issued by the US Mission to the UN. The two ambassadors also discussed the "close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the United Nations. Akbaruddin said that "we shared perspectives on how to work together at UN in line with growing India-US ties." Indian-American Haley, who was the Governor of South Carolina before being appointed by President Donald Trump as Washingtons envoy to the UN, has quickly garnered a reputation at the world body for being tough-talking and blunt. Earlier this month, Haley had said that the US would try and "find its place" in efforts to de-escalate Indo-Pak tensions and that Trump could play a role in such endeavours. India had swiftly rejected any US role in resolving Indo-Pak issues, saying the overnment's position for "bilateral redressal of all India-Pakistan issues in an environment free of terror and violence hasn't changed". New York: A grand jury in the US on Wednesday, indicted an India-born doctor and his wife along with another Indian-origin woman doctor in a first-of-its kind federal prosecution involving female genital mutilation (FGM) of two minor girls. Unless they work out a plea deal, the two doctors and the wife of one of the physicians are headed to trial now, Detroit Free Press reported. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both from Michigan state, were charged with conspiring to perform female genital mutilations (FGM) on minor girls out of Fakhruddin Attar's medical clinic in Livonia. The Attars were arrested on April 21. They were charged with helping another Indian-origin doctor Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Michigan, perform FGM on minor girls. According to the indictment handed up in US District Court, Jumana cut the genitals of two girls from Minnesota with the help of another doctor who let her use his Livonia clinic to carry out the procedure and helped coordinate the girls' trip to Michigan, the report said. The federal indictment alleged that the three persons tried to obstruct the investigation by telling other people to make false statement to authorities. The doctors are also accused of lying to investigators. Nagarwala, Fakhruddin and Farida are believed to be the first people charged under federal US law, which criminalises FGM. According to an online physician directory, Fakhruddin graduated from the Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India in 1988. The charges say that Nagarwala used to perform the medical procedure on minor girls at Burhani Medical Clinic (BMC) in Michigan that was owned and operated by Fakhruddin. Fakhruddin's wife was employed at BMC as an officer manager. The compliant against the Attars said that the couple arranged and assisted in the female genital mutilation of minor females performed by Nagarwala. While they allowed their clinic to be used by Nagarwala to perform the procedures, Farida assisted Nagarwala during the female genital mutilation procedures. Fakhruddin told federal agents this month that he has known Nagarwala and she occasionally saw patients at his clinic even though she was not employed there. He said Nagarwala only saw the patients at BMC when the clinic was closed and that Farida used to be present in the examining room while Nagarwala treated the minor girls. The investigation revealed that several minor girls informed forensic personnel that Nagarwala had performed procedures on their genitals and one minor girl said Farida had been present when Nagarwala did the FGM procedures. According to the complaint, some of the minor victims travelled interstate to have the procedure performed. The complaint alleges that the FGM procedure was performed on girls who were approximately six to eight years old. The number of girls under 18 at risk for FGM in the US has quadrupled since 1997. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 513,000 women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US. FGM has been a crime under federal law since 1996 and is punishable by up to five years in prison. However FGM is not a crime in 26 US states, including Michigan. The complaint filed against Nagarwala last week had said federal agents reviewed her telephone records and further investigation revealed that parents of two minor girls had travelled to Michigan. The girls were later interviewed by a forensic expert and one of the girls said she was told she was coming to Detroit for a "special" girls trip, but after arriving at the hotel, she learned that she and the other girl had to go to the doctor because "our tummies hurt." The girls had been taken to Nagarwala, who performed the procedure on the girls. The World Health Organisation said female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. WHO said FGM, which is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. A freight train from Yiwu City in east China's Zhejiang Province, arrives in Barking, east London, Britain, on Jan. 18, 2017. After its 18-day journey, the first freight train from China to Britain arrived in London on Wednesday. [Xinhua file photo] No one in Britain can really deny that the status of the U.K. in the modern world is not what it used to be. Yet, it retains some important cards, principally permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council. It is also true, though less so than formerly, that Britain's closeness to the U.S. enables her to act in some sense as an intermediary when American relations with other countries reach an impasse. Now, impeding exit from the E.U. means it must cultivate friendships and partnerships elsewhere. It was in this spirit that China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his British counterpart Boris Johnson, remembered in China for his appearance as Mayor of London at the 2008 Olympic closing ceremony, held a lengthy telephone conversation last week to discuss issues of common interest. The subsequent communique revealed the principal topic of conversation involved the most acute security issues currently facing the world the situation in Syria and the problems concerning China's neighbor, the North Korea. In addition, both ministers expressed their desire for a deepening of bilateral relations, being accorded the status of a "global comprehensive strategic partnership" against a backdrop of the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1972. Such warm words will have been most welcome to the British side. On both the aforementioned topics, U.S. President Trump has expressed a wish for decisive action, to the extent of launching an air strike on a Syrian air base to coincide exactly with his meeting in Florida with President Xi Jinping. Britain's traditional role at times of international tension has been to try to exert a calming influence on American pursuit of an energetic foreign policy, and, at this precise moment, this coincides exactly with China's wish to avoid a heightening of rhetoric. In particular, the heightening of tension as a result of Pyongyang's recent attempts at missile tests and the exchange of threats between the North Korea and the U.S., need to be addressed. The two Ministers have so far established a harmonious relationship. They met at the G20 Foreign Ministers' meeting in Bonn in February, agreeing to develop a multi-faceted relationship and enhance the "Golden Era" of Sino-U.K. relations announced by President Xi in 2015. Both sides will respect the other's "core interests" the British committed itself to continued upholding of the one-China policy and the "One Country, Two System" policy regarding Hong Kong. Johnson made it clear that, despite a considerable degree of political uncertainty regarding the future direction of the U.K., there would be no movement on the central pillars of the U.K.-China relationship. Britain really cannot afford more uncertainty, especially in relations with a major power. Flagship cooperation projects, such as the proposed Chinese financing for the Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Plant, will be proactively advanced. Both Britain and China remain committed to safeguarding the global free trade system and to building an open world economy. It is clear that Britain greatly values her greatly improved relationship with China. The interesting question is to what extent, given Britain's reduced circumstances, it will be able to give any real practical help on the security front in the world's principal trouble spots. The telephone conservation last week indicates Britain can be relied on to do what she can to keep the peace and bring about a more interlocked world structured around mutual benefits rather than rivalry. Yet, how much will that be in practice? Firstly, the presence of another Permanent Member of the UN Security Council prepared to work alongside China to reduce tensions in Syria and the Korean peninsula, both potentially leading to disastrous great-power confrontations, cannot but be of assistance. Britain may lack hard power, but the soft power of influence and a network of relationships deriving from decades of active and assiduous diplomacy still count for something. Secondly, Britain is one of the leading supporters of the new style of Chinese economic diplomacy, involving the furthering of solid infrastructural links along which mutually beneficial trade and investment can flow to an increasingly interlinked world. The vote in favor of "Brexit" last June requires the U.K. to re-orientate her economic policy along her traditional maritime lines, and to activate her traditional worldwide trade routes, a policy creating a perfect fit with China's current approach. Therefore, Britain, while recognizing it is no longer a world power, believes it can still play a useful part in safeguarding the peace and prosperity of the world, in partnership with the growing power of China, thus "punching above its weight," as the old phrase states. 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. New York: A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, who most recently resided in Texas pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. His sentencing is set for July 2017. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres. Till date, Chaudhari, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October. According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Chaudhari and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme. Individuals from call centres located in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They then defrauded victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government. Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds. According to his plea, since about April 2014, Chaudhari worked as a member of a crew of runners operating in Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and elsewhere throughout the country. At the direction of both US and India-based co-conspirators, often via electronic text communications, Chaudhari admitted to driving around the country with other runners to purchase re-loadable cards identifying information of US citizens. Once victim scam proceeds were loaded onto those cards, Chaudhari admitted that he liquidated the proceeds on the cards and transferred the funds into money orders for deposit into various bank accounts while keeping a percentage of the victim funds for himself. Chaudhari also admitted to shipping money orders purchased with victim funds to other US based co-conspirators, receiving fake identification documents from an India-based co-conspirator and using those documents to receive victim scam payments via wire transfers. He is the second Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam. Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme. Kanwal Khurana and his wife, who live is Cleveland were, were victims of a hate crime in February. Go back to your own country, someone shouted at them when they were parking their car. The next morning someone had slashed all four of the car's tires. Mr Khurana, 63, is a retired man and his wife is a homemaker. They had to come up with $500 to have their car towed and repaired, plus the fee to rent a car in the meantime, The New York Times reported. When the Khuranas asked the city officials for help paying their bills, they discovered that getting financial assistance for hate crimes wasnt always easy. While victims can sue perpetrators for damages they first they need lawyers. There are hotlines which help the victims find legal help but beyond that there is no real comprehensive network around the country to connect victims of hate crimes or harassment with lawyers, said Betsy Shuman-Moore, director of the Hate Crime Project at Chicago. Some US states have funds to help crime victims pay the expenses. Mr Khurana wrote to the Cleveland mayor seeking help. The mayors office suggested he contact the Ohio attorney generals office. The office maintains a victims compensation fund, but Mr Khurana was told he was not eligible for compensation because he had not been physically injured. Mrs Khurana finally had to sell off her jewellery to pay for their expenses. Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Britain on Thursday not to have any "illusions" that it would have the same rights as an EU member after it leaves the bloc. "A third-party state will not have the same rights or even superior rights to a member state," Merkel said ahead of a Brussels summit on Brexit on Saturday. "This may sound self-evident, but I have to say this clearly because some in Britain seem to have illusions on this point," she told the German parliament. "That would be a waste of time." Merkel said that talks from the very start must include Britain's financial obligations, including after Brexit. She also said that the conditions of Britain's EU exit must be resolved first in a "satisfactory" way before negotiations turn to its future relations with the bloc -- a sequence Merkel called "irreversible". The leaders of the other 27 EU nations will meet on April 29 to set down the bloc's "red lines", although the talks will not begin until June. "The negotiations will be very demanding, without doubt," said Merkel, the leader of the biggest EU economy. The EU has toughened its strategy, making new demands over financial services, immigration and the bills Britain must settle before ending its 44-year-old membership of the bloc. The EU's latest draft negotiating guidelines, agreed on Monday, point to months of difficult talks ahead as Brussels seeks to ensure Britain does not get a better deal outside the bloc than inside. According to the document seen by AFP, the other EU countries will seek to hold Britain liable for the bloc's costs for at least a year after it leaves in 2019 -- longer than was previously proposed. Earlier this week, a German senior finance official pointed to some of the "tough issues" ahead, in an interview with AFP. "What won't work is having access to the internal market without freedom of movement" for EU citizens, said Jens Spahn, state secretary at the finance ministry in Berlin. "Or access for UK financial institutions to the European financial market if at the same time there is rampant deregulation in London. "You can have either one thing, or the other. These things must be clarified." A Russian navy ship collided with another vessel off the Turkish coast in the Black Sea, Russia's defence ministry said, adding that its crew was trying to keep it afloat (Photo: AFP) Moscow: A Russian navy ship collided with another vessel off the Turkish coast in the Black Sea Thursday, Russia's defence ministry said, adding that its crew was trying to keep it afloat. The research ship Liman "sustained a hull breach due to a collision" with the ship Ashot-7, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of the Bosphorus Strait, the ministry said in a statement carried by Russian agencies. The statement said the crew was not harmed but is "fighting to keep the ship" afloat and that other Russian navy ships and a plane have been dispatched to the scene. The Russian military said it is trying to identify the owner of the Ashot-7 ship. The Liman is a former research vessel that the Russian navy has retro-fitted into a reconnaissance ship. In February, military sources told Russian media that it would be observing NATO's Sea Shield exercise in the Black Sea. The defence minister said cooperation among major powers to reclaim territories from ISIS in the Middle East can become a template for similar steps elsewhere. (Photo: File) Moscow: India on Wednesday, pitched for united global action in strongly resisting "opportunistic" efforts of some countries which are supporting, financing and providing safe havens to terror groups for "limited" objectives. Addressing the Moscow Security Conference in Moscow, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said terrorism is being "reinvented" in newer and even more dangerous manifestations and all major players must come together to deal with the challenge. Seen as a reference to Pakistan, he said terrorism will "recoil" on those who nurture it, asserting that India will steadfastly partner all friendly countries which are confronted with the challenge of terror groups. Jaitley also said India supports a greater role for Russia in international affairs as well as in "our shared neighbourhood" to effectively deal with major challenges. The defence minister said cooperation among major powers to reclaim territories from ISIS in the Middle East can become a template for similar steps elsewhere. He, however, did not elaborate further. In an oblique reference to China's growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, Jaitley said resurgence of territorial disputes in the maritime domain is a serious challenge, adding India is for ensuring rights of freedom of navigation and over-flight as well as unimpeded commerce. Jaitley also came down hard on those who still seek to make distinctions between good and bad terrorists, despite all the evidence and experience to the contrary. He said manipulation of young minds by fundamentalist groups using new technologies and social media have a serious impact. "We should also resolutely resist opportunistic efforts by some states to support terrorist proxies by training, funding or providing safe havens to such groups for their limited objectives," he said at the sixth Moscow conference on international security. On the positive side, Jaitley said, the territory acquired by ISIS in the Middle East has begun to be effectively challenged by several countries. "It is reassuring and should be taken to its logical conclusion. Cooperation between major powers in this effort can become a template for similar steps elsewhere," he said. At the same time, he said even work is on to eliminate the breeding grounds of terrorism in the Middle East, the dangers of such elements returning to their home countries has become a major challenge. "We need to encourage closer information exchanges and intelligence cooperation to address this threat," he said. Referring to the situation in Afghanistan, Jaitley said a policy of zero tolerance towards violence and terrorism and continued efforts to consolidate the capacity of the Afghan government to deal with violence are essential. The minister said the scourge of terrorism remains the primary security challenge for all peaceful countries. "We have successfully addressed this threat for over three decades. We will continue to strengthen ongoing cooperation in counter-terrorism with our partners," he said. Talking about maritime issues, he said maritime territorial disputes are particularly complex and need to be managed effectively, lest they undermine the regional order as well as structures and processes that help maintain peace and stability. He said there is a need to ensure continued prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. "India believes that the rights of freedom of navigation and over-flight as well as unimpeded commerce should be ensured. These are vital to India's own economic engagement with the Indo-Pacific region," he said. In the course of his address, Jaitley also referred to the terror attack in St Petersburg and said the global nature of this menace and the need for a coherent and sustained international response to it is now widely acknowledged. Fourteen people were killed when a blast ripped through a train carriage on the St Petersburg metro early this month. "The manipulation of young minds by fundamentalist groups using new technologies and social media has already caused long-term damage to our societies. One manifestation of this is the recent string of lone-wolf attacks in many countries," he said. The minister also talked about escalation of tensions in the Korean peninsula saying it is a matter of concern. "The linkages between proliferation in that region with the deterioration of India's own security environment are widely known. Addressing the current situation should acknowledge this aspect," he said. Jaitley also spoke about non-traditional threats to security and said effective management of cyber-space has emerged as a key national security challenge for many countries. On situation in Afghanistan, he said it continues to be challenging. "Facile assessments that imply there is a choice between the evil forces at play in that country are endangering the gains made by the brave Afghan people with the support of the international community over the past decade and more," he said. He said India believes that a secure, stable and peaceful Afghanistan is achievable with the continued commitment of the international community. "India has provided assistance and support to the friendly people of Afghanistan. We will continue to do as much as we can. We also look forward to working in tandem with all parties that share similar objectives in Afghanistan," he said. London: London police say they have arrested a man for possession of weapons near Britain's Houses of Parliament. The Metropolitan Police force said the incident that unfolded Thursday is over and no one has been injured. Witnesses reported seeing armed police blocking off Whitehall, a street lined with government buildings, and a man on the ground. Security has been increased around Parliament after an attacker drove an SUV into pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge on March 22 before stabbing a police officer to death inside the gates of Parliament. The attacker was shot dead by police. Thursday is Parliament's last sitting day before Britain's June 8 election. Three soldiers, including an officer, and two unidentified fidayeen (suicide) militants were killed in a pre-dawn attack by terrorists close to the heavily militarized Line of Control in north Kashmirs Kupwara district during wee hours of Thursday. Sources said that atleast three heavily armed fidayeen militants in a pre-dawn attack entered the Armys 155 Field Regiment in Panzgam Kupwara at about 4.30 am. Defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said Tthe militants used guns and grenades to target soldiers. "They (fidayeen) tried to force their entry into the camp which was foiled" he said adding that Army lost a captain and two other soldiers. Two militants were also killed in the gunfight, he added. The slain officer has been identified as Capt Ayush but the names of the two soldiers were not immediately known. Sources said five soldiers were also injured in the gun battle who were shifted to Armys Base hospital in Srinagar. Army was scanning the cantonment to flush out one to two surviving fidayeen believed to be hiding there. The Army was moving slowly inside the area where militants are believed to be hiding to avoid any collateral damage on their side, they said. It was not immediately known how the terrorists managed to reach to the highly-fortified premises. Earlier on September 18 last year in a similar attack, four fidayeen militants of Jaish-e-Muhammad had stormed Brigade headquarters near the LoC in Uri area of north Kashmir killing 19 soldiers besides wounding 18 others.11-days later, Indian commandos in retaliation to Uri attack carried surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. While no militant organization had so far claimed responsibility for the latest attack, police sources said, Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based terror outfit led by Masood Azhar, is believed to be the prime suspect. India has been making attempts to Azhar him declared as an international terrorist by the UN. However, Indian attempts have been so far thwarted by China. The National Green Tribunal today issued contempt notice to the Art of Living foundation's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on a plea against him for blaming the Centre and the panel for damaging Yamuna floodplains by allowing his NGO to hold a cultural extravaganza. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar issued notice to Ravi Shankar while seeking his reply before May 9, the next date of hearing. The plea filed by activist Manoj Misra has sought action against Ravi Shankar and said his remarks interfered with with free and fair dispensation of justice. In a statement published on the AOL's website, Ravi Shankar had blamed the government and the NGT for permitting AOL to hold the function and said his foundation had obtained all necessary permissions, including from the green panel, and the event could have been stopped in the beginning itself if the river was so "fragile and pure". In the plea filed through advocates Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, Misra said the AOL head was "in the habit" of making statements to "denigrate the dignity and status of this tribunal, which was an interference in the fair dispensation of justice", that is the bedrock of the rule of law. Three Nagaland government officials, including a woman Joint Director, have been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on charges of handing over public fund to the banned NSCN(Khaplang). Joint Director in Social Welfare Department Tulula Pongen, Joint Director in Department of Land Resources Alienba Pangjung Jamir and Cashier in Department of Land Resources K Lashito Sheqi were arrested on Tuesday in Kohima following investigations into a case registered by the NIA in August last year. The accused were produced in the Special NIA Court in Dimapur. The court granted five days police remand for Jamir and Sheqi while Pongen was sent to hospital, as she has reported sick. After taking over the case from state police, the NIA was investigating the charges of "large scale extortion and illegal tax collection" by NSCN (K) from various government organisations and others by cadres of NSCN (K) in Dimapur and Kohima. The investigators claimed it was carried out under the direction of self-styled Brigadier Isac Sumi of NSCN (K) and other senior leaders. Those arrested "in their official capacity provided substantial amount to NSCN (K) by way of contributing government funds to the banned outfit, thereby supporting NSCN (K) in furtherance of its unlawful activities", the NIA said in a statement on Wednesday. "The government officers were arrested on the basis of their alleged involvement in paying huge amount of money to various UG factions such as NSCN (K), NSCN (R), FGN, NNC and others," it said. This came to light during the scrutiny of documents, including demand letters and payment receipts which were seized during the search operation carried out by the NIA in 13 government offices on January 18, it said. Earlier, two NSCN(K) cadres S Khetoshe Sumi and Victo Swu were arrested in this case. The documents seized from the accused and their interrogation revealed the involvement of the government officers in paying large sum of money to the tune of crores of rupees to various underground factions. Flash An unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile was launched during an operational test from an air base in California just after midnight on Wednesday morning amid growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a single test re-entry vehicle was launched at 12:03 am PDT (8:03 am GMT) by a combined team of U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command Airmen. By all accounts the launch was a success. According to U.S. Air Force, the ICBM's re-entry vehicle, which contained a telemetry package used for operational testing, traveled to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, approximately 4,200 miles away from the launch site. The ICBM test launch program demonstrates the operational credibility of the Minuteman III and ensures the United States' ability to maintain a strong, credible nuclear deterrent as a key element of U.S. national security and the security of U.S. allies and partners. The Minuteman III is one of three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, which is also comprised of strategic bombers such as the B-52 Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit, as well as submarine launched ballistic missions, provided by Navy submarines. Though U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command routinely conducts ICBM test launches from Vandenberg, the latest is still a great concern amid heightened tensions between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Vandenberg will be one of two bases in the U.S. to conduct a large-scale test in May. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, criticized on Monday the timing of the launch and "the U.S. is operating with a clear double standard." "It views its own tests as justified and useful, while it views the tests of North Korea as threatening and destabilizing," said David Krieger, President of the foundation in a statement. North Korea has agreed to host a UN rights expert for the first time, granting access next week to the special rapporteur on disabled people's rights, the world body said today. Catalina Devandas-Aguilar is scheduled to arrive in the isolated nation on Wednesday following an invitation from Pyongyang, the UN rights office said in a statement. Her visit "will be the first ever to the country by an independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council," the statement said. The rights council has accused North Korea of committing crimes against humanity and detaining up to 120,000 people in brutal prison camps. The North Korean regime last month boycotted a rights council session scrutinising its record, branding the body's work a "mere political attack". Devandas-Aguilar said the upcoming visit marked a important chance to study the situation in the country, with a particular focus on children living with disabilities. "My upcoming visit to DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) represents a key opportunity to learn firsthand about national realities, laws, policies and programmes concerning people with disabilities," she said in the statement. Pyongyang last December ratified an international convention on the rights of disabled people. Devandas-Aguilar said she would explore the challenges and opportunities the government faced in implementing that pact. During her six-day mission, the expert will visit Pyongyang and the South Hwanghae Province, followed by a press conference in the capital on the final day, the UN said. The Supreme Court today extended till June 19 the parole of Sahara chief Subrata Roy with a warning that failure to meet the deadline of June 15 for the payment of Rs 1,500 crore would land him in prison once again. Roy, who in compliance with the last order appeared before the court, was told by the apex court that he has to frequently make the payment as per the roadmap approved by the court or face further imprisonment. The Sahara chief gave an undertaking to a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that he would deposit Rs 1,500 crore by June 15 and another payment of Rs 552.22 crore by July 15 in the SEBI-Sahara account and filed an affidavit. The apex court warned Roy that he may be sent to jail again if amount is not paid. The bench, which also comprised Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, also ordered the arrest of Chennai-based Prakash Swamy, who failed to deposit Rs 10 crore as per the last order. He will serve one month-jail for contempt of court. Swamy had filed an affidavit on behalf a foreign firm expressing his intent to buy Sahara's New York-based hotel. He had failed to comply with the apex court's direction to show his bonafide by depositing the amount in court to establish his intention to buy the property. The bench allowed the Sahara group to make electronic payment through RTGS in the Sebi-Sahara account on or before June 15. The apex court also asked Roy to remain personally present on June 19, the next date of hearing. It asked the Official Liquidator of Bombay High Court to prepare terms and conditions for auctioning the Aamby Valley property for its approval on June 19. Pakistan today stuck to its stand on Kulbhushan Jadhav's sentencing, saying the military court's ruling was based on specific evidence and the trial was conducted in a "transparent" manner. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of retired Indian Navy officer Jadhav, sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria claimed that Jadhav has been tried for espionage according to the law of the land in a "transparent manner". Jadhav's sentencing was based on specific evidence as well as his "confessional statement" that also led to the dismantling of the terror network in the country, Zakaria was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan. Zakaria's remarks at a briefing came a day after the appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given to Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua by Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale, who also handed over a petition by Jadhav's mother seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Jadhav was given death sentence earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Zakaria, during his briefing, also claimed that there was "irrefutable proof" that India was not only "perpetrating terrorism" but also using the Afghan soil to destabilise it. Zakaria said that India's role in "sponsoring terrorism" in Pakistan was "fully exposed" in light of the statements of Jadhav and former Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. "The revelations made by former spokesperson of TTP Ehsansullah Ehsan and the confessional statement of Kulbhushan Jadhav are irrefutable proofs against India," he said. Zakaria claimed that India was not only sending spies inside Pakistan to "perpetrate terrorism" but also using the Afghan soil to "destabilise" the country. He also claimed that as many as 13 Indian "RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agents" were killed in the 'mother of all bombs' attack carried out by the US in Afghanistan earlier this month. He said this had vindicated Pakistan's claims. Zakaria said that Ehsan has stated that Jamaat-ul Ahrar terror group was working on Indian agenda to destabilise Pakistan. Zakaria, in his briefing, also slammed the clampdown on internet in Kashmir and claimed that India had banned it to "hide grave human rights violations". He also criticised the alleged arrest of Kashmiri leaders. On the disappearance of retired Pakistani colonel Habib Zahir in Nepal, the spokesperson said Pakistan's mission in the country was closely looking into the matter. He said it was a case of entrapment and the involvement of India cannot be ruled out. The CRPF is set to overhaul its anti-Naxal operations in the south Bastar region of Chhattisgarh in the aftermath of one of the biggest attacks on the force in the state on Monday and a fresh offensive is expected to launched soon. Twenty-five jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were slaughtered near Burkapal village of Sukma district in the ambush by Naxals on April 24 while 12 men of the para-military force were killed in an earlier attack near Bheji village in the same district on March 11. Two days after the Monday attack, the Centre is reported to have asked security forces on the ground to go on an "all- out offensive" against the Maoists and "show results in the next few weeks." Acting Director General (DG) of the CRPF, Sudeep Lakhtakia said today that the latest attack has "naturally called for the revision of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)" in the naxal-hit areas. He said the force has decided to undertake new measures as it will continue to secure the road construction work that helps to bring development to the remote areas of central India. "We have decided to change the strategy. We have learnt some lessons. While I cannot go into the details, I can tell you that we will undertake re-deployment of our forces and will also enhance the quantity and quality of special counter-insurgency operations," Lakhtakia told PTI, a day after he visited the ambush site in Sukma's Burkapal. The force will have to ensure that the enemy does not attempt any surprises on it. "We track and engage them well before," he said. So, while half of the personnel will do road construction security and other similar tasks, the other half will do special counter-insurgency operations, the acting DG said. He said the new action plan of the force will be to effectively dominate the area. Lakhtakia, however, said in such operations where the troops have to be out in the open for long and the terrain is treacherous, the SOPs and strategies have to be "revised as and when required" and that is what they were doing. CRPF has deployed a total of 28 battalions in Chhattisgarh with ten of those in the Bastar region alone. A regular CRPF battalion comprises about 1,000 personnel. Lakhtakia said a preliminary analysis of the April 24 ambush spot indicated that the four sections of the CRPF men were separated by a distance of about 600-750 metres with bullets flying around. "The Naxals were tracking the troops... They attacked the men after deciding the time and place of the attack. They used human shields of local villagers," he said, adding apparently the personnel were having their lunch when the first assault took place. "The sequence of the events will take some time to construct... An inquiry is already in progress and that will tell us more," he said. Establishing if any violation of SOPs took place or any other lapses occurred will only come up after the inquiry is completed, he said. Lakhtakia said the reports of possible mutilation of bodies of some jawans is yet to be ascertained. Senior officials engaged in anti-Naxal fight, meanwhile, said some special operations, under the command of the elite jungle warfare unit of the CRPF -- CoBRA -- will soon be launched in the south Bastar region including Sukma, Dantewada, Kondagaon, Bijapur and Jagdalpur areas. The troops will be serviced with a dedicated air support of at least four choppers based in the vicinity of these areas and a fleet of three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs undertake long haul sorties from their base in Bhilai in the state over the forests of Bastar and around the southern tip of the state that borders Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The Centre has released an amount of Rs 19,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000 crore development package for Jammu and Kashmir announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was disclosed at a high-level inter-ministerial meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh here today, Home Ministry officials said. Singh reviewed the progress in implementation of the mega package and works of various development initiatives announced for Jammu and Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest lately. It was conveyed in the meeting that 25 per cent of funds from the total package, around Rs 19,000 crore, has been released so far and related works were going on, an official said. The meeting was attended by representatives from various central ministries and departments, and the state government. The successful implementation of the mega package is key to assuage the feeling of alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed violence during the April 9 bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seats in which eight people lost their lives in more than 200 incidents. There have been protests by students in the Valley last fortnight against alleged police excesses. Students, including girls, were seen pelting stones on security personnel in these incidents. Massive protests erupted in Kashmir after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year which continued for nearly four months. More than 90 people lost their lives, while scores of security personnel and civilians were injured. The Rs 80,000-crore package for Jammu and Kashmir was announced by the prime minister in November, 2015. So far, Rs 17,000 crore has been released to the state government by the Centre. Around Rs 40,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore package have been earmarked for improving road infrastructure, including semi-ring roads in Jammu and Srinagar, upgradation of important highways besides others. An amount of Rs 7,854 crore has been earmarked for flood relief, reconstruction and flood management. A total of Rs 2,241 crore is meant for promoting tourism by developing new projects and tourist circuits, and setting up of 50 tourist villages. In addition, Rs 11,708 crore is for power, new and renewable energy. This includes augmentation of power infrastructure and distribution systems, solar power, and small hydro projects. Rs 4,900 crore has been earmarked for improving healthcare facilities in the state which includes creation of two AIIMS-like institutions in both major cities of the state, and support for creation of infrastructure in hospitals and primary health centres. A civilian was killed and over 10 others injured on Thursday when security forces opened fire on stone-pelting protesters in north Kashmirs Kupwara district, who were demanding the bodies of the militants killed in the fidayeen attack be returned to their families. SSP Kupwara Shamsher Hussain said that security forces opened fire on a mob demanding the mortal remains of two militants killed in the fidayeen attack on an army camp in Panzgam. Earlier, three soldiers, including an officer, and two unidentified fidayeen (suicide) militants were killed while five troopers were injured, when ultras launched a pre-dawn attack on an army installation in Panzgam, Kupwara. Sources said that atleast three heavily armed fidayeen militants attacked the Armys 155 Field Regiment in Panzgam, Kupwara close to the heavily militarized Line of Control (LoC) at around 4.30 am. The fidayeen taking advantage of darkness and cut through the two-layered barbed wire fencing of the firing range of the camp, after which they lobbed hand grenades and fired indiscriminately. The quick reaction team (QRT) of the Army reached the spot immediately and confronted the fidayeen, they said. Defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said the militants used guns and grenades to target soldiers. "They (fidayeen) tried to force their entry into the camp which was foiled" he said adding that Army lost a captain and two other soldiers. Two militants were also killed in the gunfight, he added. Sources said the slain militants were Pakistanis and belonged to banned Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit. The dead soldiers have been identified as 26-year-old Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The five soldiers, who were also injured in the gun battle, were shifted to Armys Base hospital in Srinagar. It was not known how the terrorists managed to reach the highly-fortified premises, but sources didnt rule out that fidayeen might have infiltrated from across the LoC the previous night. They said one to two fidayeen managed to escape from the encounter spot under the cover of darkness. The Army has launched a manhunt in the vicinity to nab the fidayeen who escaped, sources added. Three AK-47 series rifles, nine magazines, 156 rounds of AK-47, one Chinese pistol, one pistol magazine, one UBGL and three grenades, three matrix sheets, two GPS, one smartphone and one radio set were recovered from the possession of the slain militants. Earlier on September 18 last year in a similar attack, four fidayeen militants of Jaish-e-Muhammad had stormed Brigade headquarters near the LoC in Uri sector of north Kashmir killing 19 soldiers besides wounding 18 others. 11-days later, Indian commandos in retaliation to Uri attack carried surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. While no militant organization had so far claimed responsibility for the latest attack, police sources said, Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based terror outfit led by Masood Azhar, is believed to be the prime suspect. India has been making attempts to declare Azhar as an international terrorist by the UN. However, Indian attempts have been so far thwarted by China. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today pitched for adopting bio-toilets and asked the industry to come forward to maintain them at railway stations. Prabhu was speaking at the ISC-FICCI Sanitation Awards and India Sanitation Conclave, jointly organised by FICCI and India Sanitation Coalition (ISC). The minister said industry should apply their business minds to develop water-less, odour-less and vacuum toilets to further the Swachch Bharat Mission. Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan initiated at the behest of the prime minister is progressing speedily with state governments vying with one-another to achieve an open defecation free (ODF) status, he said. Hindustan Unilever CEO Sanjiv Mehta said India needs to create awareness on sanitation, besides building infrastructure. Mehta said HUL recently built a first-of-its-kind urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centre in Azad Nagar, Ghatkopar, one of the largest slums in Mumbai. The centre, named Suvidha, provides toilets, hand washing facilities with soap, clean showers, safe drinking water and laundry operations at an affordable cost. The government's aim to achieve the Swachch Bharat mission by October 2, 2019 cannot be accomplished in isolation, Mehta said. "It is imperative for all stakeholders to join hands and build partnerships to create a positive impact," he added. India has demanded from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the external affairs ministry said today. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay also said the government is yet to receive a copy of any charge sheet against Jadhav, and did not even know who had defended him in the military court that sentenced him the death sentence. Maintaining that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India, Baglay said, "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked the Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our high commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request for providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response." Yesterday, the Indian government had made a request for the 16th time to Pakistan for consular access to Jadhav, the spokesperson said. "We wanted to get out on 0," he said when asked if India would be scoring a 100 in requests in seeking consular access. Baglay also hoped that Pakistan would expedite the visa for Jadhav's mother and father who want to see their son as also file an appeal in person, if required. They have applied for the visa in the Pakistan High Commission here, he said. Bambawale had also handed over to the Pakistan foreign secretary an appeal by Jadhav's mother as well as a petition by her seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. The Indian envoy had also met the Pakistani foreign secretary on April 14 and expressed India's concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told media after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authenticated copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence on the charge of "espionage" by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Baglay was asked about a "confessional" video released by the Pakistan army yesterday of former Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan in which he has said that the Taliban militants were in touch with the Afghan intelligence agency and India's Research and Analyst Wing (RAW) which provided funds and set targets inside Pakistan for attacks. To this, the MEA spokesperson replied,"We know the value of such coerced confessions. All that they reflect is a mindset on the part of those who put out such coerced confessions, which believes that others in the world also do what they do." Flash Photo taken on Nov. 29, 2016 shows the new protective cover over the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor No.4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 110 kilometers north of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. [Photo/Xinhua] A new protective cover over the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor No.4, which was erected in November 2016, will be put into operation this year, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced on Wednesday. "We plan to start exploitation of the confinement in November this year," Poroshenko said during the commemorative event to mark the 31st anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The Ukrainian president expressed thanks to the international donors for granting financial assistance to construct the shelter which costs 1.6 billion U.S. dollars, saying it was vital to protect humanity from the nuclear threat. "It guarantees a minimum of 100 years of safety -- it will protect us, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren," Poroshenko said. The Chernobyl disaster, one of the worst nuclear accidents in human history, happened on April 26, 1986, when a series of explosions ripped through the nuclear power plant located 110 kilometers north of the capital Kiev. The blasts resulted in the demolition of the No.4 reactor and the spread of radiation across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other European countries. Last year, Ukraine completed the four-year construction project of the arch-shaped 110-meter-tall, 257-meter-wide and 164-meter-long metal sarcophagus over the destroyed reactor. The project, which was funded by 40 international donors, is aimed at preventing further leakage of radiation from the unit. Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi on Thursday alleged that Lalu Prasad obtained huge immoveable property from Kanti Singh in lieu of making her Union Minister from the RJD quota during the UPA-I regime. Substantiating his claim with documentary evidence, Modi said Kanti Singh, who was Union Minister of State for HRD in the Manmohan Singh Government, gave her land (around one acre) to Lalus wife Rabri Devi on March 13, 2006. This deal, Modi said, was executed to ensure that Kanti continued as a Union Minister. Lalu, who was then Railway Minister, was also the RJD president and, as such, decided who all from his party would join the Manmohan Singh government in 2004-2009. Kanti Singh is the second RJD leader after Raghunath Jha, who, Modi alleged, became minister in UPA-I after Lalu obtained their immoveable assets as gift/sale/lease to either Rabri or their sons Tej Pratap and Tejaswi Yadav. On Wednesday, the BJP leader had alleged how Raghunath Jha in 2005 had gifted six kathas of land, along with a three-storeyed building, in Gopalganj to Lalus sons Tej Pratap and Tejaswi in lieu of getting a ministerial berth. After the deal, Raghunath was eventually sworn in as Union Minister of State for Heavy Industries. The RJD admitted that Raghunath had gifted his land and other immoveable property to Lalus sons but asked Modi not to rake up issues which are already in public domain. Why Modi is making so much hue and cry over such property gift. In India, anyone can gift his or her property to any person, said RJD national spokesperson Manoj Jha. He, however, remained evasive when asked why all the RJD leaders transferred their property to either Lalu or his family members. Modi said the property usurped by Lalu (in the name of making RJD leaders as Union ministers) was a classic case of corruption by a man who is already convicted in fodder scam. We demand a thorough probe when Lalu was Railway Minister from 2004 to 2009. Besides, Lalu should come out clean on property obtained from others. Earlier, I had already given proof how Lalu usurped the property of three businessmen. Neither the RJD nor Lalu and his family members have ever contradicted my charges, said Modi, who was instrumental in exposing Lalu during fodder scam in mid-90s. A 19-year-old Islamic State terrorist group inspired suspect today admitted to plotting attacks on the iconic Buckingham Palace and an Elton John concert on the anniversary of 9/11, among other potential London targets. Haroon Syed, who was in court, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey court in London to "researching, planning and attempting to source" materials for homemade explosive devices for use in the attacks. Syed, warned by the judge that a life sentence is likely to be handed down, will be sentenced in June after a probation and psychiatric report. The Londoner pleaded guilty to a plot running from April to September 2016 to get materials for a bomb to stage attacks. The Elton John concert researched by him fell on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US. He was arrested in September 2016 after he told an undercover officer of his desire to get bomb-making material and chatted online with undercover British agents. Frequent terror strikes in Jammu and Kashmir have put a question mark over the claims of the government and the security agencies that militants were on run. The revival of militancy, and especially home grown terror, is making security agencies nervous, locals fearful, separatists excited and early morning headlines ominously gloomy. According to the unofficial figures, there are 400-450 militants active in the state and 70 percent of them are locals. Militants currently active in the state have managed to carry out multiple attacks in J&K. Nearly 100 boys have joined militancy since July last year when Burhan Wani was killed and most of them are in south Kashmir districts of Kulgam, Shopian, Anatnag and Pulwama, sources said and added that in the last three years local militants have outnumbered foreigners. Here is a list of some of major terror attacks since January 2016: Pathankot: 2 January 2016 In a pre-dawn attack, a group of heavily-armed terrorists attacked the Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab. Six terrorists, believed to owe allegiance to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, were gunned down by the security forces after a four-day gun battle. Seven security personnel also lost their lives. Pampore: 25 June 2016 In a daring attack militants ambushed CRPF convoy on Srinagar-Jammu national highway near Pampore on city outskirts killing eight paramilitary personnel and injuring more than 20. Two terrorists were also killed in the attack. Uri: 17 September 2016 In one of the worst causalities suffered by the Army in peacetime operations, 19 troopers were killed and 18 others injured as a group of fidayeen militants stormed a strategic military base in north Kashmirs Uri. Four terrorists were killed in retaliatory action by the army. Kupwara: 6 October 2016 Three heavily-armed militants were killed in an encounter that erupted after they attacked an army installation in north Kashmirs frontier Kupwara district. Kupwara, 22 November 2016 Three Indian soldiers killed in Pakistan BAT attack in Machhal sector of Kupwara district along the LoC, with body of one decapitated. Nagrota: 29 November 2016 Seven soldiers, including two officers, and three unidentified fidayeen militants were killed in a fierce gun-battle after terrorists stormed an Army installation in Nagrota on the outskirts of Jammu city. Three terrorists also killed by the BSF along the IB in Samba. Kupwara: 27 April 2017 Three soldiers, including an officer, and two unidentified fidayeen (suicide) militants killed while five troopers injured, when ultras launched a pre-dawn attack on an army installation in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. Around 150 artists from all over Rajasthan including Padma Awardees staged a protested against the Rajasthan government for unlawfully altering the constitution of Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK) the art and Culture centre of Jaipur, Rajasthan. Artists hailing from all genres staged a protest by performing poetry, sketching, clay modelling, nukkad natak and and raised slogans outside the Jawahar Kala Kendra. Led by Rajasthan's Padma awardees Shakir Ali and Tilak Gitai and Padma Shree Arjun Prajapati, the artists aimed to highlight the neglect of Rajasthan's own art forms and artists by the management of JKK. The primary concerns of the protesting artists was the unlawful alteration done to the original constitution of JKK, the state's foremost art center to accommodate unqualified members and neglect of state government and JKK's management towards its architecture by tampering it. Shakir Ali, Padam Shri recepient in the field of miniature told DH, "JKK is one of the master pieces of architecture which was designed by famous architect Charles Correa. The design of this art institution is taught in the best Architecture colleges but the management of JKK has ruined it by making use of glass and plastic, materials discarded by its architect Correa." At the protest site, Jaipur's theatre artist Himanshu Jhankal presented a small skit based on the altered constitution of JKK, whose governing council is headed by Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. Speaking to DH, Ranvir Sinh, National President of IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association) explained, "As per the original constitution of JKK, there is a clause for a General Council which clearly states that the centre should have heads of three academies (music, art and literature) and national and international scholars of eight art disciplines as its members. But it has been badly quashed and the new governing council list is dominated by industrialists instead of artists who are least concerned about art forms and are mostly forthcoming in money generation." Another Padam Shri artist Arjun Prajapati who made a folk portrait in clay to highlight the neglect of Rajasthan's own artists lamented, "Jawahar Kala Kendra was known for guiding the artists but now from last couple of years it has become mere an event company. Its new Director General and her staff are exhausting funds to organise lavish events instead of honing the local talent." Memorandum to Chief Minister Artists also gave a collective memorandum to Additional Director General of JKK which was addressed to Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who heads the governing council. Memorandum also shares an instance in which the architect Charles Correa's expressed displeasure over the tampering done with JKK, months before he passed away in 2015. It also raises concern over government's alleged privatisation plans of the city's old theatre Ravindra Manch and non-appointment of committees of various academies in Rajasthan. In November 2015, when JKK was caught in controversy when attempts were made to form a new governing council. Within a week of its formation the governing council was quashed as it had inducted British sculptor Anish Kapoor who had criticized Prime Narendra Modi openly and commented that India is being ruled by a Hindu Taliban. In a bizarre diktat, a private school in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut town, about 450 kilometres from here, has asked its students to follow UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath's hair style triggering resentment among the parents and students. The school management has also directed the students not to bring non-vegetarian food items in the institution and warned of stern action if such items were found in their tiffin boxes. According to the parents of some students, the management of Rishabh Academy School, situated in Sadar area of the town, directed the students to get their hair cut in Yogi's style. Angry parents held a demonstration before the school on Thursday in protest against the alleged diktat and demanded action against the management. ''Short hair is all right but to have the head shaved is completely different,'' said one of the parents. Some students alleged that they were beaten by the teachers for not following the diktat. Ranjit Jain, the manager of the school, however, denied the allegations but said that the students had been asked to have ''military style'' hair cut. ''It is part of discipline...we do not want our students to have long hairs,'' he remarked. He admitted that the management had asked the students not to bring items like eggs and mutton to the school. Police said that they had been approached by some parents with a complaint. ''We are looking into the matter and will take appropriate action,'' said a senior district police official in Meerut. The parents were also contemplating to move the court against the school's diktat, according to sources. The Centres plan to hold a common entrance test to engineering colleges seems to have hit a roadblock. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), clearing the Centres proposal, had last month formulated a regulation for holding a nationwide test for entrance to all engineering colleges from 2018. However, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has put the plan on hold for evolving a consensus among the states. The common entrance test plan has been put on hold for now as its successful implementation would require a consensus among the states, an AICTE official told DH. A consensus is required to bring in clear provisions for common counselling. This is necessary to ensure that engineering colleges offer seats only on the basis of all India merit list of the candidates, the official said. The ministry initiated the move to hold a common test for entrance to engineering colleges, taking a cue from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical and dental colleges introduced last year. TheCBSE conducted NEET following a Supreme Court order. Under NEET, there is no clear provision for medical colleges to offer seats on the basis of all India merit list. This leaves scope for the colleges to continue with their past practice of admitting students on the basis of their capacity to pay for the seat, the AICTE official said. The ministry does not want to roll out its plan for holding a common entrance with such a loophole. It wants to start holding a common entrance test with a clear provision which makes it compulsory for all engineering colleges to offer seats to candidates as per their rank in the all India merit list. Otherwise, the purpose of holding such a test will remain unfulfilled. This is possible only when the states come on board. We are holding a consultation with the states, the official said. Escaping death twice, he displayed exemplary bravery as he prevented three terrorists from causing greater damage after they stormed an army camp in Kupwara today. Gunner Rishi Kumar stopped the advancing terrorists, who had already killed a Captain and two other soldiers, from penetrating deeper into the camp which is located about 100 kms from here. Kumar, who was on sentry duty, was hit by a bullet in the head but escaped death because of his protective gear. Undeterred, the gunner of the Field Artillery Regiment, engaged the terrorists, killing two of them before he was injured by the third one who fled afterwards. "Gunner Rishi Kumar was on sentry duty when the fire fight (with militants) started. He observed the terrorists approach and waited for them to come within close range," the spokesman said while giving details of the 35-minute encounter this morning. "He then engaged them and was hit on his head but was saved by bullet proof patka," the spokesman said here. However, the whiplash of the impact caused the soldier to fall down, he said. "He immediately recovered and fired back to kill the two terrorists. Running out of ammunition, he moved out of his bunker and tried to pick the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third, who fired and injured him, thus managing to escape," the spokesman said. "During the incident, Rishi Kumar has shown the indomitable spirit of Indian soldier," he added. Interacting with media persons from his hospital bed here, Kumar said, "When I saw the terrorists approaching me while firing, I took position, fired at them and killed two terrorists." Kumar, who hails from Ara in Bihar, has eight years of service in the army. In the attack, Captain Ayush Yadav and two soldiers were killed while five other soldiers were injured. American Automobile Giant GM, which had announced its intent to close down its Halol unit in Gujarat two years ago, will finally down shutters at its unit on Friday. The auto major had announced its plans to consolidate its production by shutting down its oldest facility in the country at Halol and move production to its facility at Talegaon in Maharashtra. GM had earlier suspended production of its sedan Cruze at Halol some time ago, and is slated to stop manufacturing of its utility vehicle Tavera from Friday. The closure comes amidst stand-off with its employees over remuneration. Over 600 workers, employed at Halol, have been demanding higher remuneration under the voluntary separation scheme (VSS). Though the management had earlier said that it would support smooth transition, it is yet to reach a final settlement. You are here: Home Flash NATO launched a large-scale cyber defense exercise this week in Tallinn, Estonia, the security organization said Wednesday. Locked Shields 2017, involves around 800 personnel from 25 nations, including Estonia, Britain, the United States, Finland and Sweden. It is "the largest and most advanced cyber defense exercise in the world", according to NATO's statement. Participants include security experts, policy officers and legal advisers from NATO allies and partners. During the exercise, more than 2500 cyber-attacks will be simulated targeting a military air base of a fictitious country. Experts will defend national IT systems against cyber-attacks targeting the base's electric power grid system, drones, military command and control systems and other infrastructure. Locked Shields exercise has been organized by NATO's cooperative cyber defense center of excellence since 2010. Magsaysay award winner Dr Harish Hande urged youths to get rid of the obsession for social networking sites and indulge in field works to achieve self-reliance in rural India in terms of solar energy. Delivering keynote address at a programme organised to declare Amasebailu Gram Panchayat declared as the Solar Gram Panchayat, he said Karnataka is a role model for evolving into a solar energy state as the project is meticulously executed in a phase-wise manner to promote solar energy. Fieldwork He said the youths should walk into the field as Google search and Facebook would not develop rural India and solve the problems in the country. The energy independence should be taken up in the form of a revolution which ensured the independence for the country in 1947. Thirty crore of the total Indian population live without electricity even after 70 years of independence. By 2020, the country should be energy independent, he said. Hande said power shortage is not something to be blamed against the government. It is the result of exhaustion of the available capacity to generate power. Solar energy cannot be controlled by anyone and is available for 12 hours, which can be used as a form of renewable energy extensively. Karnataka model is an appropriate model of solar energy. The model should be replicated all over India, he said. He added that state has a sturdy foundation through support from various financial institutions like Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Programme (SKDRDP). SKRDP is the single largest institute to finance the solar energy in the country. In the past 20 years nearly 10 lakh students have read under solar lights and have pursued higher studies, he added. Other states Hande said the process began in 1994. States like Odisha, Meghalaya and Chattisgarh should follow the model. But Karnataka has failed to market the model. At least two to three students from various universities in UK and USA submit their doctoral thesis on solar energy model adopted by Karnataka, he said. Speaking after inaugurating the programme, District In-Charge Minister Pramodh Madhwaraj said the Congress-led state government has extensively promoted generation of solar energy. In the past four years, the government has supported the generation of 710 MW of solar energy which is released to the grid. Measures have been taken to at least generate 2000 MW of solar energy and supply it to the grid in the next one year . The government has put a strong base as in next two to three years the state would achieve cent percent power self-sufficiency. Amasebailu Gram Panchayat should be taken up as the role model elsewhere in Karnataka. There is no dearth of funds and the government is encouraging each household to generate solar energy for self-use, he added. The works on Yettinahole project will be completed in one-and-a-half-years, said Chikkaballapur MP and former chief minister Veerappa Moily. Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, Moily said, Major hurdles to Yettinahole project are cleared. The project will criss cross Cauvery and Krishna river basins. Yettinahole is a unique and very well conceptualised project. There is no doubt about the parched districts - Tumakuru, Kolar, Chitradurga, Bengaluru Rural and Chikkaballapur - getting 24 tmcft of water from Yettinahole project. Already Rs 3,500 crore has been spent on the project. The state has made a budgetary allocation of Rs 4,000 crore, this year, Moily said. He said that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has instructed Visvesvaraya Jala Nigama Ltd to convince the farmers to part with their land for building aqueduct. Water will be drawn to Vani Vilas Sagar by December-end. Water will be taken to other districts after the completion of canal works. At a few places, water will be drawn through gravitational force, Moily explained. Project will not harm DK Taking a dig at a section of people and the elected representatives for opposing the proposed Yettinahole project, Moily said, When MRPL Special Economic Zone project was sanctioned, the so-called experts and ecologists had opposed saying that fish and fishermen will die. Now, the project has been implemented. Nothing has happened. Vested interests create fear among the people when a pro-people project is brought. Yettinahole project will not harm Dakshina Kannada. Yettinahole project is not Netravathi river diversion and the proposed project will not have any adverse effect on the eco-diversity of Dakshina Kannada, Moily said. About 600 tmcft of water from Karwar to Ullal in Dakshina Kannada is drained into sea. The project aims to tap just 24 tmcft of water. Moreover, the project aims to tap Kumaradhara river water and not Netravathi or its tributaries, he said. In most parts of central districts, the incidence of fluoride is high in water. Many children are suffering from fluorosis and other ailments due to consumption of fluoride-mixed water. There is no drinking water problem in Mangaluru, the former chief minister said. The Kupwara attack on Thursday, the fourth terror attack on an armed force establishment in 16 months, has exposed several chinks in the protective armour of the military stations. The defence ministry sources said the government did little to implement measures to improve the perimeter security of the military installation around the country as suggested by an expert committee. Headed by former Army Vice Chief Lt Gen Philip Campose, the panel was set up in the wake of the January 2016 terror strike on the Pathankot air base. Other members of the panel were Maj Gen Vijay Singh, Rear Admiral Mukul Asthana and Air Vice Marshal D S Rawat three retired officers who examined the boundary security of several units. It had submitted its report to the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar in May 2016. The report recommended several protective measures including installation of technology-based security infrastructure, positioning of well-trained and armed quick reaction teams at high threat, high priority military bases, besides conducting periodic security audits. Sources said the ministry forwarded only the guidelines for security of defence installations to the services headquarters nearly six months after the report was presented. But other recommendations have not been addressed so far. Incidentally, the three page draft guideline were issued to the army, air force and navy, a day before the audacious strike on an army camp in Nagrota on November 28. It was preceded by another strike in the garrison town of Uri, on September 18, where four heavily armed militants killed 17 men in a military camp. This led to the surgical strike on the terror camps across the Line of Control, 10 days later. From Pathankot to Uri, Nagrota and now Kupwara, as many as four times terrorists from across the border, could breach the perimeter security of the military installations, which are safeguarded more than the civilian enclosures. A day after the Jammu and Kashmir government imposed one-month ban on social media, Opposition parties on Thursday termed the decision repressive and undemocratic. On one side, the BJP government claims to make India digital, and on the other, a ban has been imposed social media which belies their claims, state Congress chief G A Mir said. He said the ban will incur economic losses to the state as young entrepreneurs were using social media for their businesses. National Conference leader Nasir Wani said, Instead of using such repressive method, the state government should reach out to the people, and push the Centre to start a political dialogue on Kashmir. AICC general secretary Gurudas Kamat on Thursday once again appealed to party president Sonia Gandhi to relieve him of all responsibilities. Kamat wrote to Sonia a day after the Congress made it clear that the former Union minister continued to be AICC general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan. Sonia had appointed former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot as AICC general secretary in-charge of Gujarat, a post that was held by Kamat. Sixty two-year-old Kamat had put in his papers on February 3, the day Congress announced the list of candidates for the Mumbai civic polls, in which his arch rival and Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam was given a free hand. (I) am truly grateful, but surprised that the AICC spokesperson yesterday announced that I continue to be general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan. I had written to you my heart is not in the job anymore, hence please relieve me from Rajasthan and other positions also, Kamat said in his letter to Sonia. Kamat also dismissed reports in a section of the media that he was planning to join the BJP. The veteran Mumbai leader had resigned from active politics in June last year apparently irked by his partys refusal to let him have a say in the party affairs in the city. Kamat had a running battle with Nirupam and AICC general secretary in-charge of Maharashtra Mohan Prakash, and demanded their ouster from the party posts. Two days after he was arrested in the national capital in connection with a bribery case, the Delhi Crime Branch Police on Thursday brought AIADMK (Amma) deputy secretary T T V Dhinakaran to Chennai for further interrogation. The police team from Delhi arrived in Chennai by a private airliner, along with Dhinakaran and his close aide Mallikarjuna, to gather more information related to the illegal transfer of money from Tamil Nadu to Delhi. Police sources here said Dhinakaran was grilled for about three hours at the Central government office in Rajaji Bhavan. He was also taken to his residence for further questioning. Authorities attached to the anti-corruption wing helped the police in the interrogation. The investigation team also quizzed Dhinakarans wife Anuradha. They (Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna) will be taken to some more places in Chennai for further investigation, a senior police official seeking anonymity said. Equipped with search warrants obtained from a local court in Delhi, the probe team is expected to conduct raids at the residences of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna shortly. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek Turkeys endorsement for Indias bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) when he meets Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New Delhi on Monday. Though Turkey has been supportive of Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, Modi will put forward Indias position on the dispute and convey its concern over terrorism emanating from the neighbouring country. The two leaders will also discuss ways to step up counter-terror cooperation with focus on sharing of intelligence. Erdogan will commence a two-day visit to India on April 30. This will be his first foreign visit after winning a referendum on an amendment in the constitution that significantly increased his power. He will meet President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari before holding a meeting with Modi at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi on May 1. Modi and Erdogan will discuss the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. India and Turkey set up a joint study group in 2010 in order to explore the feasibility and possibility of concluding such an agreement. India is Turkeys second largest trading partner in the Asia-Pacific region. Turkish exports to India increased by almost 69% from January 2016 to March 2017. We are aware of the strong relations between Turkey and Pakistan. This is a bilateral matter between them. Our ties with Turkey stand on its own footing, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists in New Delhi. The Supreme Court on Thursday sent a former journalist to one month in jail after he went back on an offer that he made on behalf of a US-based company to buy a Sahara group hotel. You are a small man but tried to become big. Temptation sometimes lands a man into confinement. You now have to suffer the consequences, a three-judge bench, presided over by Justice Dipak Misra, told Prakash Swamy, who held the power of attorney for the US-based MG Capital. The court ordered the police to take Swamy into custody, rejecting his plea for clemency. The court had taken a strong stance on Swamys failure to prove a bona fide in buying Saharas Plaza Hotel for Rs 4,000 crore. He was later asked to deposit Rs 750 crore in the apex courts registry. When he failed to do so, the court, on April 17, asked for Swamys personal presence for the hearing on Thursday, asking him to deposit an amount of Rs 10 crore within 10 days in the Sahara-Sebi refund account. The court had said the money will be forfeited towards costs. On Thursday, Swamy failed to deposit the money and his counsel senior advocate Mohan Parasaran sought his discharge, adding that if anyone must be held responsible, it is the principal (company). No no, why should we go after principal? He (Swamy) was before us and filed an affidavit on behalf of the company. The question of sympathy and exoneration does not arise. He can be given 30 minutes time to deposit 10 crore or he will go to jail, the bench, also comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, said. Swamy broke down in court and said he was a journalist for 35 years, and also worked with the United Nations, and is now retired. He said the US company asked him to submit an affidavit for buying the New York-based hotel and he did so. That is the biggest mistake of my life, he said. We are not prepared to hear stories, the bench said. Amicus curiae Shekhar Naphade also urged the court to show leniency to Swamy but the court was unmoved. He is in violation of the order passed by this court. Having heard his explanation, which is not satisfactory, we hold him guilty of contempt of this court and convict him accordingly, the bench said. The court also warned Sahara chief Subrata Roy, who was present in the court, that if the cheques he issued for payment of Rs 1,500 crore, dated June 15, and Rs 522 crore, dated July 15, to the Sahara-Sebi account do not get cleared, he will be sent back to jail. Roys parole was extended till June 19, the date of the next hearing. Flash The relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are at their lowest level since the end of the Cold War, but Moscow is ready to repair them, the country's military chief said here Wednesday. "We are open to the resumption of a full-scale dialogue and interaction with NATO. The main thing is that this process should take place on an equal, trusting and constructive basis," Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said at the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security. He said NATO accuses Russia of being the main source of military threats, while the alliance itself is increasing the scale of military activities in countries near Russia, such as the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. NATO's eastward expansion and deployment of a missile defense system in Europe break the balance of power in the region and increase the risk of military incidents, Gerasimov said. To make it worse, the European countries are furnishing Kiev with military assistance, provoking it to continue armed confrontation in southeastern Ukraine, the Russian general said. "The trust between Russia and the West is catastrophically decreasing as a result," Gerasimov said. In his view, the lack of close cooperation between Russia and the West on anti-terrorism creates favorable conditions for the Islamic State. A new and mutually beneficial system for European security can be formed only through joint efforts with the participation of all European states, Gerasimov said. In his speech, the general said he sees two prospects for European security. The first would be that Russia-NATO conflicts would persist, and the U.S.-led alliance would keep expanding and practicing large-scale military activities on its eastern flank. "In this case, Russia will be forced to respond adequately and carry out necessary deterrence measures, while European security will only worsen," Gerasimov said. The second scenario would see the West and Russia beginning to understand each other's interests and concerns, establish dialogue on a pragmatic basis, and gradually strengthen mutual trust. "I am confident that the development of events precisely in this scenario will improve security and stability in Europe," Gerasimov said. The First Moscow Conference on International Security was held in 2012, gathering representatives from countries worldwide to discuss global and regional security issues. A BJP legislator held a bank manager hostage after the officer refused to waive the loan of his supporter in Bareilly district. Harish Singh, the manager of UP Gramin Bank at Dalrer Nagar in Bareilly has lodged a complaint in this respect. He said that Kesar Singh, the legislator from Nawabganj, and his supporters kidnapped him on Wednesday. The MLAs supporter had taken a loan a year ago. He has not paid even a single instalment. The legislator wanted me to immediately write off the loan, the manager said. Signed blank papers They dragged me to a vehicle, took me to an unknown spot where I was kept hostage for several hours and was thrashed. I was made to sign blank papers before being released, he said. However, the MLA has denied the allegations. The police said a complaint had been lodged and action will be taken after investigation. In another incident in Saharanpur, Priyanaka Rawat, the BJP MP from Barabanki reportedly threatened a senior police officer. I will have his (the officers) skin peeled off if he does not mend his ways, Priyanka said while talking to reporters on Wednesday. Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister H K Patil on Thursday said a new law would be framed to prevent incidents of children falling into defunct borewells. The minister told reporters in Bengaluru that companies which drill borewells and also owners of borewells would be made responsible for closing their defunct borewells. Once a borewell is defunct, the owner/company should submit records pertaining to the same to gram panchayats, in case they want to drill a new borewell. The minister said an ordinance would be promulgated to give effect to the new law. To a question, he said his department is making preparations for taking up cloud seeding. It is not right to say cloud seeding is of no use, he opined. Referring to reports that the government would be taking up Paathala Gange project to draw underground water by digging 10,000 ft deep, Patil said the government would be entering into a pact with Waterquest Hydroresources company of the US in this regard. The company would be paid only if the project yields water. The state Cabinets approval would be sought for the project, he added. He claimed that the proposed project would do no harm to the environment. The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the central government can go ahead with the appointment of the Lokpal even in the absence of the Leader of the Opposition. A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha maintained there was no requirement for the government to wait for the laws to change. According to the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha will be part of the Lokpal selection panel. At present, there is no Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House. The government had earlier said the appointment could not be made pending amendments as the position of the Leader of the Opposition in the selection committee had to be substituted by the leader of the single largest party in the Opposition. The (Lokpal) Act as it stands today is an eminently workable piece of legislation and there is no justification to keep the enforcement of the Act under suspension till the amendments, as proposed, are carried out, the court said, referring to its judgement on a batch of PILs filed by NGO Common Cause and others. The court relied upon Section 4(2) of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, which lays down that the appointment of the Lokpal and other members would not become invalid due to vacancy of any member in the selection committee. If, at present, the Leader of the Opposition is not available, surely, the chairperson and the other two members of the selection committee, namely, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India or his nominee may proceed to appoint an eminent jurist as a member of the selection committee under Section 4(1)(e) of the Act, the bench held. Under the Act, the selection committee comprises the Prime Minister, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Chief Justice of India or his nominee, an eminent jurist and the Leader of the Opposition. However, as the Congress does not have 10% seats of the total strength of the Lok Sabha, it was denied the status of the Leader of the Opposition, stalling the appointment of the ombudsman. The petitioners had claimed that the government has shown no interest to appoint the Lokpal in the absence of the Leader of the Opposition, though it has amended various other statutes, including those for the selection of the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, CBI chief and Chief Information Commissioner. In a separate judgement, the court dismissed a plea by an NGO for according primacy to the opinion of the CJI in the selection committee. Nearly six months after two stunt actors drowned in the Thippagondanahalli reservoir during the shooting of Kannada film Maastigudi, police have formally charged the producer, director, stunt director and three others. The jurisdictional Taverekere police filed a 400-page charge sheet before the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court in Magadi, about 50 kilometres west of Bengaluru, earlier this week. The film is scheduled for release on Friday. Criminal negligence was found on the part of the films producer Sundar P Gowdru, director Nagshekar, stunt director Ravi Verma, assistant director Siddarth, unit manager Bharath and the pilot of the helicopter Prakash Biradar. The charge sheet has fixed culpability on each accused according to the roles and responsibilities assigned to them. The charge sheet lists 78 witnesses, including several BWSSB officials who stated that the films crew violated the conditional permission given for the shoot, local residents who came to watch the shoot and rescue workers who fished out the bodies after a 48-hour search. The charge sheet states that the deceased actors Anil Kumar (37) and Raghavendra Uday (31) were bare-chested and didnt wear any life jackets, while the lead actor, Duniya Vijay, had worn one, which saved him from drowning. Shortly before the shoot, the deceased actors had given interviews to news channels and expressed fears about their lack of expertise in swimming. Kumar and Uday known for portraying negative roles on-screen had jumped off the helicopter along with Vijay from a height of about 60 feet on November 7, 2016. Moments later, the two actors began to drown in the 40-foot-deep lake but Vijay managed to swim to safety. A motorboat kept on standby to deal with any emergency could not start because of a technical snag and failed to rescue the actors. Vijay has been made a witness. The complainant in the case is the Assistant Executive Engineer of the TG Halli reservoir. The accused were booked under IPC 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) which attracts imprisonment up to 10 years. The accused were arrested but released on bail later. The investigating officer is Anil Kumar, police inspector from the district crime branch. The e-Lost and Found Report app launched by the Bengaluru police to help people file complaints of lost items without having to go to the police station seems to be fulfilling its purpose. It has clocked up more than one lakh downloads and complaints in less than a year of its launch. A total of 1,09,384 complaints of lost items have been reported on the app since its launch on July 15, 2016. More than 44,000 incidents were reported on the mobile app while the website accounts for over 65,000 filings, said M G Nagendra Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Command Centre). The loss of 1,31,757 items and documents has been reported to the app. Some individuals have reported losing more than one item or document, he added. We have saved valuable time of our personnel as well as people who would otherwise have to visit the police station to file complaints, he said. The app helps avert possible harassment of people by police. Mobile phones, laptops, iPads, tablets and cameras are the most common items whose loss is reported on the app. Members of the public have also reported losing firearm licences, passports, driving licences, Aadhaar/ATM/credit/ration/admit/voter ID cards, educational certificates, demand drafts, cheques, fixed deposit papers, bank passbooks, air, railway and bus tickets, etc. Driving licence is the most lost document, as per the app. As of April 20, 2017, a total of 14,005 complaints about the loss of DL have been filed on the app. Police, however, take the complaints about the loss of driving licence with a pinch of salt. We suspect people are making mischief. They could be reporting the loss of DL when the traffic police confiscate it. We will intimate the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) to examine such cases in detail before issuing duplicate driving licences, Kumar said. After downloading the app, one has to register and then report a lost item/document. Complainants will get a digitally signed acknowledgment by SMS and e-mail. The acknowledgment can be used to get duplicate documents from the authorities concerned, the DCP said. The app has a Found Report option, too, which people can use to report finding any lost item or document. Police get an intimation if any person files a Found Report. The city police will enforce the following traffic and parking curbs on Friday to ensure smooth movement of vehicles towards city railway station and Kempegowda bus terminal. The police anticipate heavy rush on these routes in the wake of holiday season. Parking of private vehicles is banned on Dhanvanthri Road, Railway Station Road, Tank Bund Road, Platform Road and Khodays junction. Buses towards Mysuru, Kodagu and Kerala will start from Mysuru Road Bus Terminal. Buses towards Tamil Nadu will start from Shanthinagar Bus Terminal while those towards Davangere will leave from Chikka Lalbagh Bus Terminal. Road users should avoid KG Road, Goods Shed Road, Sheshadri Road, SC Road, Platform Road and Krishna Flour Mill Road between 4 pm and 11 pm. A 28-year-old woman was arrested for hitting an assistant traffic sub-inspector (ASI) with her helmet at a busy junction in Indiranagar on Wednesday. A bystander who supported her and abused the policemen was also arrested. The woman scooterist, identified as Arika Borse, was intercepted by the policemen when she jumped a signal. Borse is a resident of KR Puram and a native of Hyderabad. The bystander was identified as Pradeep, 30, of Banaswadi. The incident occurred at the KFC Junction where the ASI, identified as Prabhu Ratnakar, and constable Chandru, of the Indiranagar traffic police station, were on duty. Around 10.45 am, Arika, who works for a private firm and was riding a Honda Activa to work, jumped the signal. Ratnakar intercepted her and asked her to come to the pavement so that he could issue a penalty challan. But Arika shouted at Ratnakar, saying she did not jump any signal and that the policemen were harassing her. When Ratnakar insisted in a stern voice that she cooperate with the police, Arika took off her helmet and hit the ASI with it. a Pradeep, the bystander, came to Arikas support and abused the policemen. The traffic policemen informed their law and order police, who rushed to the spot and took the two to the station. A case was registered against Arika and Pradeep for assaulting a police officer and obstructing public servants from discharging their duties, respectively. The two managed to secure bail. Bangalore University would provide an additional Rs 2 crore for the establishment of Bangalore University North and Bangalore University Central as the 53-year-old varsity is set to be trifurcated. The state government did not make any specific allocation in the 2017-18 budget for the universitys trifurcation. Hence, funds for establishing the new universities would have to come from the parent varsity, officials said. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, K N Ninge Gowda, Registrar (Administration), BU, said Rs 1 crore was previously released for the trifurcation. In order to initiate the process of trifurcation and provide essential facilities for the new universities, the government had formed a committee under Prof S A Kori, Executive Director, Karnataka State Higher Education Council. The committee has recommended allocating Rs 100 crore for establishing Bangalore University Central and Rs 250 crore for Bangalore University North. Meanwhile, BUs Local Inspection Committees have begun visiting the 684 colleges for renewing their affiliation. Twenty-five teams comprising Syndicate members have been established for the purpose. The university has received 64 applications for new colleges. BU will crack down on students who have submitted fake National Institute of Open Schooling certificates while enrolling for undergraduate or postgraduate courses at the university or affiliated colleges. The university will ask them to submit the documents afresh for verification. B K Ravi, Professor and Co-ordinator, Department of Communication, BU, will replace Prof K N Ninge Gowda as the universitys registrar (administration). The HAL police on Thursday arrested three frauds who cheated people of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of getting them jobs in reputed IT companies. The three have been identified as Harish Kumar, Anoop Kumar and Prem Kumar, all residents of Kadugodi. Prime accused Harish Kumar used to run a job consultancy firm where he was the administrator, while Anoop Kumar was the chief operating officer and Prem Kumar was looking after finance. The trio used to target job aspirants who applied through various portals and would contact them from their official email IDs from Bengaluru. Aspirants from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal applied to their company. They claimed to offer training before job placements and used to collect lakhs of rupees from them. According to the police, they had collected around Rs 25 lakh from them. The aspirants were puzzled when the company did not offer them any placements even after training. They then found the company locked last week and the trio missing. After their arrest, the suspects reportedly told the police that they were expecting a few projects which did not materialise. BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa on Thursday blamed RSS functionary B L Santhosh for masterminding the rift in the party. The day also witnessed Yeddyurappas supporters grouping together and seeking disciplinary action against senior leader K S Eshwarappa, including his expulsion. Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, Yeddyurappa said most of the supporters of Eshwarappa are close to Santosh. Santosh is behind all these....and the party central leadership is watching. Yeddyurappa said that Eshwarappa is working against the interests of the party. If there are any issues, Eshwarappa could have discussed it with me. But, Eshwarappa & Co began indulging in anti-party activities. People are watching.... His conduct is only helping the Congress, Yeddyurappa said. Yeddyurappas supporters, who held a press conference soon after the conclusion of a convention by the Eshwarappa camp, sought Eshwarappas expulsion from the party. MLAs from Bengaluru city C N Ashwath Narayan, Y A Narayanaswamy, Muniraju, M Krishnappa, Ravi Subramanya, B N Vijay Kumar and S Vishwanath were present at the press meet. They pointed out that party president Amit Shah had issued strict instructions that party functionaries should not associate themselves with the Sangolli Rayanna Brigade. They said Eshwarappas conduct had brought disrepute to the party. Narayanaswamy said Eshwarappa had secured the fourth place and lost his deposit in the 2013 Assembly polls. However, the party had rehabilitated him by making him an MLC and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council. Central leadership The MLAs later called on Yeddyurappa at his Dollars Colony residence and assured him of their support. Yeddyurappa is likely to leave for New Delhi on Friday where he is expected to call on the central leadership in the next two days. Details of the speech made by Eshwarappa and others at the convention have been despatched to the central leadership. Who is Santosh? B L Santosh is at present BJP national joint general secretary (Organisation). A full- time RSS pracharak, Santosh is on deputation to the BJP. He served as state general secretary (Organisations) when B S Yeddyurappa was the chief minister. The position gave him access to all levels at the party. Santhosh fell out with Yeddyurappa after the latter decided to form the KJP. According to BJP sources, Santosh is against Yeddyurappas domination in the party and is keen on cutting him down to size. The 48-year-old Santosh is an engineer who has turned into a full-time RSS functionary. He is unmarried and hails from Udupi. When his reaction was sought to Yeddyurappas outburst, Santosh said, People who matter are watching the developments. Let him comment. I have nothing to say. A 45-year-old realtor was hacked to death by an armed gang near AGS Layout on Ittamadu Main road in Subramanyapura, south Bengaluru, on Wednesday night. The police suspect rivalry and financial dispute could have led to the killing. The police said the victim, Wilson, was a resident of Channasandra in Rajarajeshwari Nagar. He had his office in Banashankari and was returning home after visiting a friend in Ittamadu. Around 10 pm, five to six men on three bikes stopped Wilson's car. They dragged him out and attacked him with machetes and swords. Sensing the danger, Wilsons driver fled the scene. He returned a few minutes later and saw Wilson lying in a pool of blood. The driver and a few others rushed Wilson to a private hospital where he was declared brought dead. Inquiries by the police revealed that Wilson had had an altercation with some people over a financial issue when he had visited his friend's house. The police suspect this could have led to the murder. The police suspect a gang, whose three members were identified as Sunil, Ravi and Dinesh, could have murdered Wilson. The police said Wilson was acquitted in a murder case in 2006. Driver held for killing wife The Kumaraswamy Layout police on Thursday arrested the driver of a BBMP garbage vehicle on charges of murdering his wife Hemavathi over a domestic row, just hours after the crime, on Wednesday. Police said the accused, Vijay, suspected the fidelity of Hemavathi, the victim, and quarreled with her often. Vijay, an alcoholic, also used to harass her for money. On Wednesday, at around 1.30 pm, Vijay barged into the house when Hemavathi had gone for a bath. He pulled her out of the bathroom and stabbed her repeatedly with a kitchen knife. Hemavathis mother Parvathamma, who was sitting outside the house, heard her cries and rushed inside. Vijay slashed Parvathammas hand too and escaped. A few neighbours rushed in and shifted them to hospital where Hemavathi was declared brought dead. The Kumaraswamy Layout police managed to arrest Vijay when he was trying to escape from the city. The suspect was booked for murder and attempt to murder and has been remanded in judicial custody. Four adults who were admitted to K C General Hospital on Wednesday with severe food-poisoning, have been discharged. However, 15 children continue to be under observation. Dr H Ravikumar, medical superintendent, K C General Hospital said all children are stable and have recovered considerably. We will keep them under observation for another day. At least 13 would be discharged on Friday, he added. Late on Wednesday night, 20 people from Sanjay Gandhi Nagar slum near Sheshadripuram were rushed to different hospitals in the city after they consumed leftover haal khovas (sweets made of milk) sold by a woman. The woman, who worked at a convention hall as a cleaner, would bring leftover food and sell it to slum-dwellers. Dr Ravikumar said the reports of the food samples that were sent for examination to the Food Safety Department are still awaited. A 25-year-old woman who was brutally assaulted by her husband with a flat griddle pan almost rendering her blind with grievous head injuries, succumbed to injuries on Thursday at Baptist Hospital. Tikina Radha, a native of Podrah in Odisha, came to the city a fortnight ago with her husband Prahlad Ojha to work as construction labourers. The couple were living in a rented house in Nagenahalli in Kothanur. Ojha suspected his wifes fidelity and used to quarrel with her. On Wednesday, Prahlad attacked her with the pan accusing her of talking to men. She sustained severe injuries in her eyes and head due to multiple blows to her head. She was rushed to a private hospital where she succumbed in the wee hours of Thursday, police said. Kothanur police said a case of murder has been registered and efforts are on to nab Prahlad. Samsung expects to achieve stronger growth in Q2 mostly driven by the sales of its flagship S8 and S8+ smartphones Samsung announced strong growth in its first-quarter, after it was boosted by the sales of memory chips and the revival of its mobile business. In line with the previously announced guidance, Samsung Electronics' Q1 operating profit came in at 9.9 trillion won ($8.75 billion) while revenues grew by 2 percent to 50.5 trillion won. Ahead of the quarter result announcement, Samsung had forecasted 50 percent operating profit growth. For Samsung, the chip business continues to be the top earner with a record operating profit of 6.31 trillion won in the first quarter. The strong demand for both DRAM and NAND memory chips boosted Samsung's margins this quarter. The components business, which includes displays and memory, is set to grow for the next quarter, but the overall supply is likely to remain tight. Samsung's mobile division saw a decline in operating profit due to lack of a premium flagship smartphone. The profits came in at 2.07 trillion won, down from 3.89 trillion won reported during the same period last year. However, Samsung is upbeat about the next quarter, which will include the sales of its latest flagships, Galaxy S8 and S8+. "Looking ahead to the second quarter, the company expects to achieve growth on the back of continued robust memory performance together with improved earnings from the mobile business," Samsung said in a statement. Samsung also confirmed that it won't be splitting itself into two entities, but announced plans to cancel treasury shares worth over $35 billion by 2018. There has been a growing demand among investors to split the organisation into two separate entities after the arrest of its chief, Jay Lee. For the year ahead, Samsung hopes to continue the growth momentum and deliver strong result backed by stronger demand for semiconductor chipsets and mobile devices. The company also confirmed its plan to announce its second flagship later this year, but didn't confirm whether it will continue with the Note branding. An alleged image of the OnePlus 5 has been doing the rounds on the interwebs, thanks to an India Today article claiming that the image of the device was sourced from people who have seen the phone and have possibly worked on the OnePlus 5. To anyone who reads this statement, it is quite clear that the supposed image of the upcoming OnePlus flagship is not a render, but an original image of the OnePlus 5 sourced from people who have seen it or worked on it. Below is the image in question, taken from the India Today website. After establishing the fact that the article claims this to be an image of the actual OnePlus 5 device, we got to work trying to confirm its authenticity. The obvious first thing to do was to contact OnePlus for a comment to confirm or deny the same. In the usual fashion of how these queries go, OnePlus told Digit that the company does not comment on leaks and rumours. Fair enough. Next, we looked to the web to figure out if any of our peers in the tech industry questioned the authenticity of this leaked image of the OnePlus 5. Thankfully enough, someone did. Android Authority (AA) scrutinised the image in their own way. The publication pitted the image against the first image that shows up in Google Search when you search for OnePlus 3 black. The results showed striking similarities between the shape of the OnePlus 3 and the alleged OnePlus 5. This could indicate that someone took an image of the OP3 and doctored it to create a fake OnePlus 5 image (so says AA). The publication also punched up the contrast/lighting settings of the leaked pic to bring up the details. Below is the result of the basic edit they performed on the image. Android Authority image edit Another noticeable detail that emerges from this simple change of contrast and brightness is the antenna line at the bottom of the device. The image posted by India Today looks to have a seamless back without antenna lines and the publication notes this as well - its rear cover looks seamless. However, as you can see in the Android Authority edit above, there does seem to be an antenna line at the bottom of the alleged OnePlus 5 image and a change in brightness highlights it further. Error Level Analysis (ELA) Thanks to technology, we have various tools available online to analyse images for their authenticity. One of these methods is Error Level Analysis. ELA is a technique that can help in identifying manipulations to compressed images by detecting the distribution of error introduced after resaving the image at a specific compression rate. Areas within an image that are at different compression levels can easily be identified with this method. It is important to note that while this technique has been criticised by some as non-scientific, experts also believe that It is up to the user to interpret the results. The publisher of the method, N Krawetz from Hacker Factor, himself calls this method experimental. Nevertheless, here's an example of how it works. Observe the two images below Fake Image on left, ELA analysis on right Original Image on left, ELA analysis on right The first image has an obvious third eye added to the face of the subject. It was created using GIMP. As you can see, the error level on the fake eye is higher than the rest of the image. While in the original image, you dont see any such anomalies. We applied the same method to the alleged image of the OnePlus 5 and below are the results We also used a different free tool available online called Fotoforensics to apply the same method. As you can see in the above results, certain areas in the image of the OnePlus 5 show obvious high error levels. The same can be observed on the watermark logo, the dual-rear cameras and even the edges of the device. While the watermark is an obvious addition to the image and shows a very high error level, the cameras and edges should not have registered such levels. That is if the method has to be trusted. An actual image of the device should have created an ELA similar to the analysis of an original image of the OnePlus 3T clicked by us. Notice how the solid colours are uniform all along the image. That is an indicator of an original image. Looking beyond ELA There are other tools also available on the web to analyse images for manipulations. A web tool called Izitru claims to analyse 6 different aspects of an image to determine its authentic nature. This is what happened when we used the tool on the OnePlus 5 image. Izitru image Imageedited.com also came to a similar conclusion. In fact, according to the results presented by the web tool, the images authenticity is questionable and the same was edited using GD, an open source code library for the creation of images by programmers; commonly used to generate charts, graphics, thumbnails, etc. In conclusion, the alleged OnePlus 5 image is definitely fishy and not to be trusted. Some amount of manipulation is evident on the image and most tools out there on the web seem to figure so. However, readers should note these results are not professionally backed. You did learn about various ways to identify fake images online though, didnt you? Lastly, it is highly unlikely that OnePlus will stick to the same design as the OnePlus 3 or the 3T for its next flagship device, as the company does have a history of making noticeable changes with each generation of flagship smartphones. 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 NEW YORK (AP) Stock indexes wobbled between modest gains and losses Wednesday, as the White House unveiled broad outlines of its plan to slash tax rates but left many of the details to be determined. Anticipation for a big tax cut, along with looser regulations on businesses, have been two of the main drivers behind the stock market's surge since November, when Republicans swept into Washington. The White House delivered a big number Wednesday, when officials said they hope to cut the top corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent. . . . Subscriber content preview A new state agency would contract with health care providers such as doctors and hospitals, and pay the bills for everyone. By JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. A proposal considered by California lawmakers would substantially remake the health care system of the nation's most populous state by eliminating insurance companies and guaranteeing coverage for everyone. The idea known as single-payer health care has long been popular on the left and is getting a new look in California as President Donald Trump struggles to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law. . . . Subscriber content preview TIRANA, Albania (AP) Albania's parliament has given its approval for negotiations with a Dubai company to build a 1,148-foot-tall tower in the capital, Tirana. The parliament's vote didn't make it clear when the government would start negotiations with Al Habtoor Investment LLC on the $250 million Tirana Iconic Tower project. . . . KKR and Japan Industrial Partners to buy Hitachi Kokusai Electric for $2.3 bn US private equity firm KKR & Co has teamed up with investment fund Japan Industrial Partners Inc (JIP) to buy Hitachi Ltd's electronic equipment subsidiary, in a deal valuing the unit at 257 billion yen ($2.3 billion). The acquisition comes three months after KKR purchased Hitachi's power tools unit, Hitachi Koki Co Ltd, for about $1.3 billion. (See: KKR to buy Hitachi's power tools unit for $1.3 bn) Under the latest deal, KKR and JIP will pay 2,503 for each Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc share, a 6.4 per cent discount from Wednesday's close. Upon closing, Hitachi Ltd, the largest shareholder in Hitachi Kokusai, will retain 20-per cent stake in the company. Hitachi Kokusai is a leading manufacturer of broadcasting systems, security and surveillance systems, wireless communications, information systems, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The Tokyo-based company operates two business segments: a video and communication solutions business engaged in video security, IoT high-reliability wireless, and railroad solutions, and a thin-film process solutions business focusing on semiconductor manufacturing equipment as well as systems maintenance and sales of parts and used equipment. Hiro Hirano, member of KKR and CEO of KKR Japan, said, "Hitachi Kokusai is a world-class provider of video and communications equipment and semiconductor manufacturing solutions and is part of an industry that is set to benefit from the proliferation of three-dimensional NAND flash memory." "Hitachi Kokusai's Video and Communication Solutions business has a strong track record of sales of communications and wireless equipment to local municipalities and government agencies in Japan," said, Hidemi Moue, CEO of JIP. The impact of Brexit on the agricultural sector will mean the same of all Irish farmers from Burt to west Cork according to the chairman of the Donegal IFA. Chairman of the Donegal branch, Michael Chance, travelled to Goff in Co. Kildare on Monday, along with a bus load of branch members to take part in a major conference for the agricultural sector on the possible impact of Brexit. He said he is still highly cautious of the pending move by the UK to leave the European Union but he is also more hopeful after the event. He said much of how the Brexit process unfolds depends on the forthcoming UK elections and who will appointed to the next Government Cabinet table. He said they would be hoping that after the election there would be new ministerial appointments to the Government with views moving away from a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is going to be interesting times and it is going to be long and drawn out. It is going to take, I suspect, five to ten years. You dont just do trade deals in a year or two. You would just hope they would pull back from the brink. The general impression from the first session at the conference was that they were going to see sense. The people in the evening session were a little more cautious, he stated. Border He said some of the local branch members did ask questions in relation to the border areas but he added that the largely the issues of concern affected all Irish farmers. We are more aware of the border area but the reality is that doesnt matter whether you are in Burt or west Cork, at the end of the day the effects are the same, he added. Among the speakers at the event were EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed and IFA President Joe Healy. The conference was streamed live. 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. Often called the biggest little festival in Ireland, the Cup of Tae in many respects is like a fleadh with the fun, humour and atmosphere, but without the pressure of competition. Like the famous Christy Moore song, you never know who'd be hanging about. You could meet anyone from the world of music at the Cup of Tae Festival. A wonderful festival not to be missed, the Cup of Tae runs from tomorrow, Friday, 28th April to 1st May. The festival started back in 2001 when some people felt that the whole ethos of south Donegal fiddle playing was at risk, hence the much emphasis on the schools of music at the Cup of Tae Festival, and this year one of Donegal's great young fiddle tutors and players Ciaran O'Maonaigh is taking the master class, ably accompanied by this year's special guest Martin McGinley, one of the best known musicians of his time. This is really a great opportunity for anyone interested in fiddle playing to come along to be taught by these great masters of the fiddle. Also this year, Donna Harkin will take charge of classes in other instruments as usual. 100th birthday This year we celebrate the 100th birthday of Packie Manus Byrne (That distinctive photo on the front of the Donegal Democrat's book, "Yesteryears", is a photo of Packie taken by Anne McMenamin). Although Packie is no longer with us, his friend James Keeney will present a show in The Corner House Bar in his memory on Saturday evening with many of Packie's friends and fellow musicians participating. This is followed at 9pm by an excellent concert in the Beehive Bar with Ciaran O'Maonaigh and friends, and this show just is a must for lovers of traditional music. This year also, many of the recitals in The Heritage Centre at 1pm Saturday and Sunday will be given by a group of excellent musicians from Cavan called Caioramh. They will be joined by local and excellent fiddle player Michael O'Rourke who will also talk about the making of fiddles. Caioramh will also perform on the street, weather permitting. There is a wonderful selection of sheet music organised for each pub during The Cup of Tae festival weekend, well worth visiting to see and hear the best. The concerts of the weekend are always a must, with the opening concert honouring Martin McGinley at 8pm on the Friday night in The Heritage Centre. There is a huge array of top musicians performing at this concert, so space is limited and priority to be there in time. The Saturday night has two concerts, The Packie Manus and The Ciaran O'Maonaigh concerts. The fiddle concert, the ever popular John The Tae concert, is on The Heritage Centre on Sunday night at 8.30pm, where all our young musicians, our guest of honour and the cream of the crop will perform. Moving his business downtown has been a decision years in the making, but if you ask Bob Woodall Air Care Systems owner Bob Woodall, its been a lifetime in the making. Woodall Air Care Systems has recently completed the first phase of its relocation to the downtown area, setting up shop in the old Mayer Electric Building on North Foster Street. The business is moving from an 8,000-square-foot facility to a 28,000-square-foot facility that takes up an entire city block. While the business offices will be temporarily located in one part of the building, another part will be completely renovated to later serve as the offices. Once the renovation is complete, the offices will move into the renovated area and the other portion will be leased out for other tenants. The back portion of the building is serving as warehouse space and as a staging area, complete with a drive through garage where employees can drive in, pick up materials and supplies and drive out of the other end of the warehouse. Once the former Woodall location leases or sells, Woodall said theyll begin on the renovation of the former Mayer showroom that will serves as the permanent office space. Woodall said he grew up loving the downtown area, and shortly after becoming business partners 11 years ago with Cal Turner, Woodall said he shared his desire to move the business downtown. (As) our company started growing, we realized we needed to have a larger location. We only had 8,000 square feet at our location on Ross Clark Circle, Woodall said. We could either add on or go in to some industrial park somewhere or we could take a look downtown. The downtown relocation almost never happened if not for the Dothan Downtown Redevelopment Authority expressing their interest the building, which had been sitting vacant for about five years. Mayer Electric Company, which still owned the property, was in talks to have the building demolished. After speaking to the company, the building was deeded to the DDRA in exchange for a tax deduction. Were very thankful for the leadership at Mayer Electric for the kind donation of the property, said DDRA Executive Director Jansen Tidmore. The building was later used by Houston County to temporarily house county offices while their current space was renovated. In fact, Woodall and the county were looking at the property simultaneously. A deal was worked out that whatever renovations made to the building while the county occupied the building would later be reimbursed by Woodall. It worked out as a win, win, win. A win for the county, Mayer and our company, Woodall said. Once the county moved out, Tidmore said they began the lease agreement with Woodall. Its an investment, Woodall said. Its an opportunity to save a building downtown We feel really good about what were doing. However, the decision to move didnt come too easily, Woodall said. His father, who passed away last year, started the business in 1967 at its Ross Clark Circle location and deciding to move away from that was a struggle, but in the end the move is something he said his father would have been very proud of. Along with the business comes its 50 employees relocating downtown, which Tidmore said will only help bring more traffic and business to the downtown area. One of the things were excited about is the people they employ, which brings a concentrated mass to downtown, Tidmore said. Its all about population density and this helps us to our goal of a 24/7 downtown. Tidmore calls this move and the recent move of Delectable Edibles downtown, successes for the DDRA and the downtown area. Weve made a lot of progress over the past several years. (The businesses) see (downtown) as a viable place, he said. We hope its a trend that continues. When one thinks of evergreen political issues for Alabama lawmakers, a handful of matters come to mind immediately. Prison overcrowding. The education budget. Medicaid funding. The gaping chasm between revenue and expenditures. These seemingly intractable challenges should get top priority every session until theyve been solved. But theyre never solved; they get a lick and a promise, a bit of duct tape and baling wire, and lawmakers end the session hoping the budget holds together until the next year. Meanwhile, there are other evergreen issues that manage to get lawmakers attention regularly and those matters manage to spur action. Gambling manages to find its way onto the calendar in one form or another. Occasionally those pushing to expand gambling in our state have a measure of success but not as much as theyd like. Abortion comes up with surprising regularity considering its out of the hands of states unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. And then theres the matter of guns, and the Alabama Legislatures continuing desire to tweak laws to provide more freedom for gun owners. In 2009, lawmakers pursued a measure that would shield information on the pistol permit, which had been a public record. Proponents argued that having the information public would expose gun owners to would-be thieves, who could determine who owned weapons by accessing the public record. In 2013, lawmakers changed the language in the pistol permit law to require sheriffs offices to issue a permit or state why they would not. They also determined that employers cannot prohibit workers from having weapons locked in their vehicles on the employers property. In 2017, lawmakers are working to eliminate the permit requirement for concealed weapons altogether, despite strong opposition from the states law enforcement community. The measure has passed the Senate and heads for the House of Representatives The gun debate is among a handful of questions that will always be controversial, and never resolved to the satisfaction of everyone involved. The pistol permit issue has long rankled many gun rights supporters, who may argue that it provides no useful purpose beyond providing a revenue stream for law enforcement. Law enforcement personnel argue that the concealed carry permit is a necessary tool that helps them get illegitimate weapons off the streets. From our perspective, the permit requirement is, at its worst, a minor annoyance and expense for law-abiding gun owners who want to carry their weapon in a concealed fashion. Current law allows for open-carry without a license, but its unusual to see such in public. Law-abiding gun owners are likely carrying concealed weapons all around us without our knowledge. The majority of those who wish to do so are willing to file the necessary documents and pay the necessary fees. The only significant beneficiary of the legislatures removal of license requirement for concealed-carry is the person whose nefarious intent requires anonymity. The House should kill this measure. Louth Deputy Gerry Adams has described recent figures on IDA jobs created in Louth and the Border Region as deeply depressing. Speaking today, Adams said: Border counties fare particularly badly in the provision of IDA supported jobs and with the Brexit already having an adverse impact on the economy, that situation could get worse without proper planning and funding by government. Those living in the six border region counties, including Louth, are between two and five times worse off than areas like Dublin and Cork. The disparity for Monaghan is 1 job for every 447 people. For Donegal it is 1 job 52 people. Cavan is 1 job 63 people. Louth is 1 job for 35 people. Sligo is 1 job for every 28 people and Monaghan is 1 job for every 447 people. In Dublin, 9,000 new jobs were added in 2016, but in Louth the figure was 453. In Sligo the net gain was 190. In Cavan it was 41. In Leitrim it was 3. In Donegal it was 145. While in Monaghan the number of IDA jobs created in 2016 was 7. That means the six acknowledged border counties secured a miserly net gain of 839 IDA supported jobs in the border county out of 18,627 IDA backed jobs across the state in 2016. The IDA does huge work in creating new jobs. Over the decades it has proven itself to be an invaluable agency in attracting investment into the state. However, there is a huge imbalance in the distribution of these jobs across the state." Writing in his weekly column for the Belfast Media Group, Sinn Fein President and Louth TD Gerry Adams outlines the background and context of the killing of Garda Officer, Tony Golden; the grievous wounding of Siobhan Phillips, and the suicide of Crevan Mackin in October 2015. The Sinn Fein leader describes how he received anonymously to my office in the Dail a copy of the Statement of Charges relating to the arrest in January of that year of Mackin. The detail contained within the document raised serious and fundamental questions about the role of elements of An Garda Siochana in the circumstances surrounding Mackins arrest in January 2015, their relationship with him subsequently, and the multiple shooting in Omeath. Gerry Adams immediately contacted the office of the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, and then wrote to both her and An Taoiseach providing them with a copy of the Book of Statements and setting out his concerns. He describes the response of both as unsatisfactory. I have never received any indication that the government was taking this matter seriously. Since October 2015, Gerry Adams has written to the Minister for Justice eight times and to the Taoiseach four times. He also handed over all of the information to the Garda Officer in charge of the investigation. And when it appeared that the government was not taking this matter seriously he made a formal complaint to the Garda Ombudsman. Writing in his column, Mr. Adams says: Crevan Mackin was an individual with known serious mental health issues. Despite having admitted possession of weapons and explosives he was not charged with these but with membership an accusation he consistently denied. All of the available information indicates that some in the Gardai in particular the Special Detective Unit - were aware that Mackin was still in possession of other handguns, including two Glock handguns. It was a Glock that Mackin used in the Omeath shooting. The Louth TD also raises the treatment by An Garda Siochana of Siobhan Phillips a victim of serious and repeated physical abuse by her partner. When the family sought to make a complaint at Dundalk station they were refused. Why? What protocols are in place with An Garda Siochana for dealing with victims of domestic violence? Clearly the treatment of Siobhan Phillips is evidence that any protocols that might exist are inadequate. It is worth noting in this regard that only two weeks ago the Garda Commissioner was forced to admit that the Gardas statistics on murder and domestic violence may be wrong and that it is now re-examining all of its statistics. Speaking this morning following publication of his column, Gerry Adams said: The family of Siobhan Phillips have called for an independent inquiry to examine all of the facts around this case. I support them in this. In light of the attitude of An Garda Siochana when Siobhan Phillips presented to them the evidence of her abuse there is also a need for an urgent review of Garda protocols for dealing with domestic violence, the treatment officers receive and the resources available to them. The sales profession is undergoing a big cull with over 20% of sales roles expected to be cut by 2020 according to some analysts[1]. There are three macro shifts responsible for this rather ominous reality. Firstly, buyers are more discerning than ever before as they turn online for identifying and acquiring products and services without the need for human interaction. Secondly, technology is facilitating automation and self-service transaction, removing buyers reliance on sales people and cutting out the middleman in many instances all together. And thirdly, cost optimisation in order to remain competitive means vendors have to lower the cost of customer acquisition and are turning to more flexible and cost-effective sales alternatives, such as engaging professionals on a contract basis. These landscape changes leave the sales person under more pressure than ever before to deliver results and to deliver them quickly. Where sales used to be fun, now its a real grind. Where the sales person used to feel respected, now they feel rejected. One of the greatest failings of the sales profession is that there is very little attention devoted to career development and long-term career goals instead, it is plagued with the pressure to meet short-term targets. So while the high level of scrutiny on the sales person brings great rewards for high performers (A-Graders), for the increasing number who are now failing to meet quota expectations this exposure creates massive stress and pressure. The problem is that the short-term focus makes it very difficult for sales people to focus on their long-term career path. Its difficult for them to think about where they want to be in the next three to five years and plot out a plan to reach that goal when they need to meet this weeks targets. So how can sales people transition from a month-to-month mindset to a mindset that looks six, twelve and twenty-four months into the future? Over the next two weeks, I will run through five steps to help the B2B sales person shift their focus, to set them on the path towards becoming an A-Grader. 1. Reconcile your conflicting priorities The first step is to recognise that shifting your focus to the long term is critical to your survival in this profession. Unfortunately, if you only focus on meeting your immediate targets, youll never be able to direct your career. Youll never make the time to educate yourself, to develop specialist knowledge and commercial insights, to build your personal brand or to connect with your customers. The end result will be that you will continue to be indistinguishable from all of the other sales people on the market, and your customers (and employers) will move on as soon as a better offer comes along. By contrast, when you shift to a long-term focus, the benefits will come back ten-fold. The simplest way to do this is to take the pressure off your immediate targets. First, consider your existing prospects and past customers. Is there any low-hanging fruit you can pick to keep your numbers up in the short term? Who do you know who is already in a purchasing window? The second option to consider is coasting. How long could you get away with not making (or barely making) your quota? One month? Three months? If you can maintain your current numbers, or close to them, without all of the extra hustling, coasting can be an effective way to get back some time to focus on your development. Remember, your career now depends on your ability to break away from the monthly grind to start developing your career plan. The third option is speaking to your manager. Short-termism is usually a company-wide problem, so addressing the short-term mindset requires the involvement of all key stakeholders. If you can engage your manager about the benefits of focusing on long-term career development, you will have a powerful ally who can make the case for any investments of your time and company money in areas that may not look like they will deliver an immediate return. The average tenure for B2B sales people is at an all-time low, sitting at 16.8 months.[1] In order to attract the best sales talent, a company must now demonstrate a whole lot more than just a nice compensation plan. Salespeople who have failed to develop deep domain expertise and knowledge are often viewed as generalists who add little value to the buying process. Treating sales people as robots, sending them out into the field to harass and cajole customers into buying something, is now so last century. Buyers expect a salesperson to be able to educate them, and if an employer fails to provide this type of specialised learning and development program they will not only find their own business suffering, but they will fail to attract savvy sales personnel who are now acutely aware of their needs for on-going career development. To be clear, all salespeople are now being required to re-skill around some type of specialisation in order to survive into the future. Employers who fail to offer their salespeople career development and advancement will continue to see a revolving door of poor performing salespeople.and that is just really bad for business. 2. Set your long-term goal Now that youve taken the pressure off your short-term targets, its important to define your long- term goals. Setting clear goals, and committing them to writing, has a range of benefits. First, setting goals forces you to clarify what you want. Without committing to a specific goal, you could potentially do anything. This leads to a lot of unfocused activity, hoping that something will work, or, more often than not, no activity at all. By contrast, when you have a clear goal, not only does it help guide what you should do, but it helps you figure out which activities are superfluous. This then allows you to use your time, and your resources, more effectively. Second, having a clear goal is the first step towards figuring out how to achieve it. To continue the previous point, not having a goal leads to unfocused activity. Setting a clear goal, on the other hand, gives you a destination to work towards, and the ability to plot a course between where you are now and where you want to be. Third, goals are motivating. They create a purpose for your day-to-day activities, making it easier to do the things you dont enjoy because you know what the ultimate payoff will be. Breaking your bigger goals into milestones increases that motivation by giving you a chance to appreciate and celebrate the initial results of your efforts, which motivates you to do more. Finally, clear goals allow you to measure your progress. If you only have a vague idea of what you want, how will you know when youve achieved it? If you add clear metrics to your goals deadlines, dollars, percentages, feedback, and so on you can easily see whether youre moving closer to your goal over time, and know when you ultimately reach it. Next week I will take you through the remaining three steps (assess your current position, analyse the gap and educate yourself) to assist you in becoming an A-Grader sales person in the ever-competitive B2B sales landscape. About the author Graham Hawkins, co-founder of SalesTribe, has more than twenty-eight years of business experience in executive B2B sales and sales leadership roles. Graham is a highly experienced and versatile business executive with proven strengths in strategic business development, go-to-market planning, and sales and marketing. Graham has worked in the UK, Australia and across Asia Pacific as a representative of some of the worlds most innovative IT, telecommunications, finance and media organisations. [1] Hoar, Andy. Forrester Research, Inc. Death of a (B2B) Salesman, Cambridge, MA. 2015, 7 A heavily bleeding and agitated man flagged down a Madison school bus for help Tuesday afternoon, sparking a police response and requiring a second bus and a social worker to help several young students from Nuestro Mundo Community School get home safely. The guy was acting kind of irrational, Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said, noting the 31-year-old man had been hit on the head with a beer bottle in a domestic dispute. It probably was kind of scary for the kids, DeSpain said. In an email to parents, school principal Joshua Forehand said a delay in bus departures Tuesday at the kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school at 902 Nichols Road was tied to the incident, which occurred near Rimrock and Moorland roads on the citys South Side when the injured man, who police said had no permanent address, approached the school bus as it drove by him. This individual boarded the bus seeking medical assistance (and) 911 was called, Forehand said. Another bus was then sent to the location for the students to switch to and continue home. School social worker Maestra Sandra joined the students on the first bus while they were waiting and rode with them on the second bus to support any students who needed it, Forehand said. DeSpain said at least two officers responded to the scene and took the man to the hospital. The second officer arrived at 3:40 p.m. to find vehicles backed up behind a Badger school bus, described as being parked askew and partially blocking the entrance to the 500 block of Moorland Road, DeSpain said. The injured man was sitting on the steps leading into the bus, bleeding heavily from the face, according to a police report. The man was injured in a fight with a 25-year-old woman, DeSpain said. Police were looking to arrest her Wednesday on a tentative charge of substantial battery. Officers also found three broken pieces of a glass beer bottle, a significant spattering of blood and a black mace container nearby on the sidewalk, DeSpain said. Cable TV has been facing mounting attacks from new technologies and new competitors. C Spire recently joined the action, announcing plans to enter the pay-TV space. Its not yet clear what C Spire TV will be, or how it will impact the marketplace. Well have to wait for C Spire to spell that out in the coming weeks. What we know so far is that C Spire is a regional player in Mississippi, so the service wont be available throughout the United States. Also, this pay-TV platform appears to have been developed by MobiTV, which is interesting. The television industry is ripe for growth, with new competitors and innovation from IPTV, satellite TV and wireless TV. This is fertile ground, and I expect to see an ever-increasing number of competitive moves going forward. C Spire sees a growth opportunity in television. I think this new C Spire TV service will be wireline, and available only to customers of the companys ultra-fast Internet service. Since C Spire started out as a wireless company, it would be great if it could deliver this television service wirelessly over its own network, like AT&T does with its DirecTV mobile television offering. Will this be part of C Spires offering? C Spire has been expanding its market footprint in recent years. It started with wireless, then offered an ultra-fast, wireline Internet service in a few cities. While this television offering will have a limited marketplace, it has a good potential for growth where it is available, because it can be part of a three-legged stool. Plethora of Pay-TV Choices Many others also see a rising opportunity as they move into this space. I believe there will be an increasing number of choices for pay-TV in the next few years. It started a decade ago with AT&T U-verse, Verizon FiOS and CenturyLink Prism, which are all IPTV. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and many others also entered the picture. Then AT&T acquired DirecTV and started to innovate, creating DirecTV Now and wireless TV. AT&Ts success in television has prodded other competitors that have innovation in mind. It sent Comcast back to the drawing board to try to come up with a competitive answer to mobile TV. It also spurred Verizon to consider ways to enter the television space to compete not only with DirecTV Now, but also with mobile TV offerings. MobiTVs Growth Opportunity The growing and changing pay-TV space represents a huge opportunity for companies like MobiTV. The more companies that want to enter the television space, the bigger the opportunity for MobiTV and others to help them do that. After all, television is a complicated industry. The non-TV companies that want a slice of the pie will need help. These activities are a threat to the traditional cable television industry. For quite a while, TV has been equated with cable TV. However, as cable TV becomes less important and moves to the falling side of the growth wave, we will start thinking of this space as pay-TV. Will cable TV companies be able to redefine the space? Or will they have simply have to deal with others changing their world around them? Pay-TV is the new world of television going forward. Its IPTV, which is like cable TV over the Internet, and it will allow companies to provide much more to customers going forward. That means wireless TV or mobile TV letting users watch television on their smartphones and tablets anywhere in the country, not just on their couch at home. Congratulations to C Spire TV for taking advantage of this growing opportunity. This is yet another wake-up call for investors, competitors and workers in the changing pay-TV space. Now is the time to find companies that are on the growth side of the wave, not the shrinking side. As pay-TV changes, companies that use IPTV, wireless TV and especially, those that innovate like crazy will be the winners. I dont know about you but I cant seem to get out of my head the image of that poor Asian doctor who, seemingly unconscious, was dragged off that United flight. The fact that the airline did that to a 69-year-old doctor just so it could save money moving employees around is nearly as unbelievable as the initialtone-deaf response from Uniteds CEO, who blamed the passenger. (It was only after a tremendous backlash that the CEO offered an actual apology.) While the United debacle was going on, I happened to be reviewing Qualcomms counterclaim against Apple, and holy crap. It alleges that Apple crippled the modems in some iPhones to cover up its use of cheap parts, and that it aggressively acted to prevent anyone, particularly Qualcomm, from pointing it out. I have the view that if you pay for a thing, you should get that thing and Apple customers, according to Qualcomm, are getting screwed. Given how we depend on our phones, my guess is that if this is true, it wont end well for Apple. Ill share some thoughts on customer abuse and then close with my product of the week: the Netgear Arlo Security Camera system (again). Customer Abuse I often wonder if top executives and boards have some weird undiagnosed disease that causes them, from time to time, to do something so incredibly stupid you have to wonder if someone snuck up on a bunch of them and hit them with a stupid stick. I recall having a discussion with an IBM exec I reported to back in the early 1990s about the companys practice of intentionally creating buggy products and then charging customers to fix the problems it had created. I asked why we were doing something that seemed insane, only to be told, effectively, that since the customer had no choice, IBM could do what it wanted to them and they would pay whatever IBM charged. It was like selling air. It remains one of the most idiotic responses Ive ever heard, and shortly after I left the firm that entire executive team was canned. (Apparently the newly hired CEO, Louis Gerstner, agreed with my assessment.) Microsoft had a group of executives who covered up that Office 98 wasnt backward-compatible, and a different group covered up the issues with Windows Vista that should have prevented its release. Those issues created massive problems with customers, and most of the folks responsible lost their jobs as a result. To hit aggressive price points with lithium-ion batteries in the early 2000s, Sony covered up that they hadnt updated their lines to prevent metal contamination. The batteries became contaminated and caught fire, forcing massive recalls and pretty much wiping out Sonys lithium-ion battery business. Those batteries could have resulted in an impressive number of deaths had one of them gone up next to a better fuel source on a plane. The lithium-ion coverup followed Sonys institution of a program to put rootkits on PCs in an attempt to combat piracy, which opened those PCs to hacking and put customers at risk. The backlash over that helped wipe out Sonys Walkman business and opened the door to the iPod. Takata covered up that their airbags were not aging well and actually could kill drivers when they deployed. It apparently did not do anything to address the problem, which eventually was discovered and resulted in the biggest automotive recall in history. It still might put the company out of business. It appears that Samsung cut short quality testing to get the Galaxy Note7 out quickly only to find out it was catching fire. In an effort to address that problem quickly, it guessed wrong about the cause, and replacement phones caught fire too. To recover some of the costs associated with its massive recall, Samsung decided to sell refurbished Galaxy Note7s, and I doubt thatll end well. I think Samsung has a death wish. It really seems like an epidemic of stupid at times Uniteds Disastrous Decision There were two paths that United could have taken to move employees to another location without causing an uproar. One was to increase the voucher amount offered to passengers to a point where it was cheaper to charter a plane to move the employees, or simply to have in place what many non-airline companies use, a fleet of smaller planes for employees use. What is particularly scary about the method that United chose is that it didnt factor in why people werent taking a US$1,000 voucher to change flights. Its method for choosing which passengers to bump only focuses on connections, so those who were ending up at the destination airport were prioritized for bumping. What if someones job depended on getting to a location on time? What if someone had a dying relative, a wedding or funeral to attend? What if someone were a doctor who needed to get to a critical patent? None of those possibilities was been taken into account, and the poor guy who was beaten up was in fact a doctor. Uniteds decision has cost it millions in brand damage, and because the passenger looked as though he might have been Chinese, China is treating this like a racial attack on its people, which could result in sanctions. I bet that before this is over, Congress might put a law on the books addressing it. Id name it The United CEO Is An Idiot Law. (By the way, PRWeekwants its award back. Suddenly this is an Oscar 2017-like event.) It may even cost the CEO his job all because it didnt have a better way to move employees around, which is kind of sadly ironic given it is in the transportation business. At the end of that last linked article, the author asks why it took so long for United even to understand this was a problem. It was because, in the minds of its executives, customers had stopped being people and had become an exploitable resource instead. That attitude generally is considered a company and career killer. Apples Secret War on Customers Between Apple and Samsung, Im not sure which has the stronger tendency for suicidal policies. Apple clearly has a problem, because it is a firm that is valued largely for its innovation, and that is one word that largely has been used in the past tense since Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs. While the iPhone has done well particularly this last quarter, thanks to Samsungs suicidal moves nothing else has risen to diversify Apples revenue or offset a trend of increasing margin pressure. As a result, Apple has moved to a strategy of aggressively cutting costs. That sets a foundation for the kind of problem that I mentioned earlier in this column. You see, Apple customers effectively are locked in to Apple services which would be OK, as long as Apple didnt see it as an opportunity to mine them, and could grow its revenue and margins by creating more and more compelling products. However, Apple hasnt done that. The Apple Watch has languished, the iPad is in decline, and the iPad Pro has been a disappointment. MacBooks, Macs and iMacs have been cash cows for so long that reviving them seems increasingly unlikely, and is driving the company go cheap on components while considering charging more and more for iPhones. The Qualcomm filing basically just says Apple is an assh*le, which is far from an uncommon position from any Apple supplier. It gets interesting on page 46 of the whopping 130-page document. It alleges that Apple not only has been using sub-optimal (read cheap) parts, but also has been threatening to retaliate should anyone point that out. Point 4 on page 46, basically says there are two iPhones in market sold as the same phone: one with cheap parts, and one with good parts but that Apple is crippling so that people cant tell the difference (and thereby avoid the bad phone). However, Apple cant cripple it enough, so people are barred from pointing out that the crippled phone is still better. WTF!?! Here is the thing: Increasingly we live on our cellphones. We depend on them to work if there is an emergency. Our lives increasingly literally depend on them, and folks think that by buying Apple they are getting the best. However, if Qualcomm is correct, they either are getting a substandard phone or worse, an intentionally crippled product. The potential consequences range from poor performance to bad connectivity, which could leave users with a phone that doesnt work when they most need it. Cutting quality while raising prices and aggressively covering that up only works temporarily. Eventually people figure it out and that didnt end well for IBM or for the CEO that shortly thereafter was fired. Like all of the other examples Ive cited here, Apples alleged action is customer abuse. If it turns out to be true, then it means that the only difference between Apple and all the rest of these bad examples is that Apple has taken more money from its customers. I expect that as a reason to buy from a company, that likely falls pretty low on anyones list. Ill add one other element that I think is very similar to the old IBM and the new Apple. Both companies enjoyed and still enjoy phenomenal customer loyalty. Even though IBMs behavior had been going on for years, most customers seemed to give IBM the benefit of the doubt. As a result, when the problem became pronounced it went to nuclear unbelievably fast. Certainly, it was way too fast for the existing management team to respond, and the result was a purge. It eventually saved the company, but it was a very close thing. Apples loyalty is, if anything, greater than IBMs was and todays consumer market certainly can move a ton faster than enterprise computing did back in the 1980s and early 1990s. What this means is that if this alleged anti-customer behavior is left in place too long, the backlash on Apple could be unrecoverable particularly if Google further reduces the migration pain to Android. Given that many of you have huge investments in Apple, Im suggesting you might not want to have all those eggs in that same troubled basket. Diversification may save your ass. Wrapping Up There are times when I wonder if boards and CEOs either are mentally challenged or suicidal. From Samsung, to United, to Apple, this year has been an increasingly ugly example of executives behaving badly. I know I missed the chapter in management school that suggested screwing customers was a great business practice, but I seriously think those pages should be torn into little bitty pieces and tossed out, along with the idiots who adhere to this strategy. In any case, this month has provided a strong teachable moment. Lets hope a lot of executives learn by watching rather than doing. It is never OK to abuse customers. When companies do, they have translated customers into things. We really dont like being mistreated as things. When I last wrote about this product, Id installed two cameras and was impressed that the batteries had lasted a couple weeks. Well, its been over a month, and Im now up to 10 cameras. Ive had to recharge only two batteries, both of which had more than half their battery life left even though they were in very high traffic areas, which suggests these puppies could last for months in low-traffic areas. Weve caught stray dogs wondering in our yard, the gate left open and our dogs sneaking in and out of it, delivery people who have lied about deliveries, pet sitters who werent doing what they said they were doing, and a herd of deer wandering in to munch on our newly planted flowers. This system is AWESOME! Netgear Arlo Pro The Netgear Arlo is my third camera system, and it was by far the easiest to set up. The lack of wiring means I can put the cameras anyplace I want, and I can install a ton of them. My dogs and cats each have their own tracking camera, but my wife had me move the one that was on her. (Thatll teach me to tell her, huh?) I did figure out one thing: It is cheaper to buy the cameras in the bundle then one by one. You can get an Arlo system with four cameras for $350 if you shop around, while the cameras individually cost around $150. Sadly, I didnt figure this out until after Id purchased an additional eight cameras. Further, you get up to five cameras with the free service, but if you want to go to 10 it will set you back $99 a year. However, you then get 30 days of storage for up to 10 GB of data. For 15 cameras, its $149 a year and you get 60 days storage for up to 100 GB. Arlo just launched a $450 camera, and what makes it different is that it has local storage, a 3G/4G connection, and a massive battery. Sadly, this is only available to large companies or the government, and we know they would never use them to spy on you It has been a long time since I was this excited about a product, and that is why the Netgear Arlo is my product of the week again! You could call this the iPod of security camera systems. 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At the rebellious age of 14, he has given a Ted Talk and spoken twice at major United Nations forums. President Obama awarded him the Youth Change Maker of the Year Award and he is a member of the Presidential Youth Council to advise the president on youth views and policy. Xiuhtezcatl is mobilizing youth in 25 countries to demand greener policies from our worlds leaders. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation is temporarily closing all its vertical wells across northeast Colorado following a massive house explosion and fire in the town of Firestone last week that killed two people. The Woodlands, Texas-based oil and gas giant said in press release it was shutting more than 3,000 producing vertical wells, which produce about 13,000 barrels of oil per day, in an abundance of caution. Mark Martinez and his brother-in-law Joseph William Irwin III, both 42, were killed in the April 17 explosion. Marks wife, Erin Martinez, was injured as well her 11-year-old son. A GoFundMe page is currently raising funds for the family. In its statement, Anadarko acknowledged that the blast occurred approximately 200 feet from the familys recently built two-story home on Twilight Ave., where the company operates an older vertical well drilled by a previous operator. The tragedy has sparked concerns from local anti-fracking activists over the risks of oil and gas production in Colorado and are calling for a statewide emergency moratorium as officials and regulators investigate the cause of the explosion. The Frederick-Firestone Fire Protection District and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) are involved with the investigation. While the well in the vicinity is one aspect of the investigation, this is a complex investigation and the origin and cause of the fire have not been determined, Frederick-Firestone Fire Protection District Chief Theodore Poszywak said. The Colorado Independent reported on the possible link between the Anadarko-operated gas well and the Firestone house explosion: A source has told The Independent that personnel and trucks bearing Anadarkos logo responded soon after the explosion, and that company personnel at and near the scene over the following days came in unmarked vehicles and clothes. They were apparently paying special attention to a feeder line that may have been severed near the home. Furthermore News stories after the explosion reported that Irwin, a master plumber, was helping Mark Martinez install a hot water heater, apparently at or near the time of the explosion. The insinuation was that their work may have led to their deaths. But that narrative sounded immediately curious to those who knew Irwin and his work, and became less plausible when Colorados Public Utilities Commission passed the investigation on to the COGCC, which regulates the oil and gas industry. Anadarko spokesman John Christiansen would not respond to the Independents report or questions about the companys possible involvement. Anadarko is one of the worlds largest private oil and natural gas exploration and production companies and the largest oil and gas producer in Colorado. The state is the seventh-largest oil and gas producing state in the country. Our teams will remain actively engaged with residents in the Firestone community, said Brad Holly, Anadarko senior vice president of U.S. Onshore Exploration and Production. Colorado residents must feel safe in their own homes, and I want to be clear that we are committed to understanding all that we can about this tragedy as we work with each investigating agency until causes can be determined. In response to the incident, Boulder, Colorado-based climate change activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is calling for immediate halt on drilling activity. Our thoughts and best wishes go to Martinez and Irwin families, no one should have to lose a family member before their time, Martinez, who is the youth director of Earth Guardians, told EcoWatch. We must fight to make sure that Anadarko is held accountable, if its shown their reckless behavior played a part in their deaths, so we can ensure this is the last time a tragedy like this occurs. Unfortunately this is likely the result of a state that has completely failed to protect its citizens from the impacts of fracking, Martinez added. Based on the explosive danger coming from this industry and the proximity to homes, schools and hospitals we are calling for a statewide emergency moratorium, until it can be demonstrated that fracking can be done safely. In March, the Colorado Court of Appeals sided with Martinez and other youth plaintiffs that the Oil and Gas Conservation Act required it to strike a balance between the regulation of oil and gas operations and protecting public health, the environment and wildlife resources. Martinez said that the appellate courts decision clearly states that health and safety must be prioritized with regards to oil and gas industry in the state. Based on that decision and [the Firestone house explosion] its clear that all drilling activity should be halted immediately and the danger of fracking should be investigated in full, Martinez said. A source pointed out to EcoWatch that Fractivist Shane Davis, a biologist who started the fracking resistance in Colorado several years ago, happened to live in Firestone and literally moved out of the town for this very reason. Incidentally, Davis detailed in a January blog post about the dangers of living nearby drilling operations. One landowners decision to lease their minerals to the fracking industry can place hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people at risk from the dangers of the fracking industrys toxic air, groundwater contamination, fugitive emissions, failed equipment, human error, and even a blowout which is the most dangerous to communities that are close by, Davis wrote on Fractivist.org. Anadarko said the wells will remain shut in until the companys field personnel can conduct additional inspections and testing of the associated equipment, such as facilities and underground lines associated with each wellhead. The wells will not be restarted until each has undergone and passed these additional inspections. Anadarko currently anticipates the process will take two to four weeks. Grizzly bears venturing from dens in search of food this spring will face landscapes dominated by mines, roads, pipelines, clearcuts and ever-expanding towns and cities. As in years past, theyll also face the possibility of painful death at the hands of trophy hunters. British Columbias spring bear hunt just opened. Hunters are fanning across the provinces mountains, grasslands, forests and coastline, armed with high-powered rifles and the desire to bag a grizzly bear, just to put its head on a wall or its pelt on the floor as a trophy. According to BC government statistics, they will kill about 300 of these majestic animals by the end of the spring and fall hunts. If this year follows previous patterns, about 30 percent of the slaughter will be femalesthe reproductive engines of grizzly populations. Many grizzlies will likely be killed within BCs renowned provincial parks and protected areas, where trophy hunting is legal. Government records obtained by the David Suzuki Foundation in 2008 show trophy hunters have shot dozens of grizzly bears in places we would expect wildlife to be protected. We dont know the exact number of bears killed in BCs parks since 2008 because, in contravention of a BCs privacy commissioners ruling, the government refuses to disclose recent spatial data showing where bears have been killed. Much of this killing has occurred in northern wilderness parks, such as Height of the Rockies Provincial Park, Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park and Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park. Tatshenshini-Alsek Park forms a massive transboundary conservation zone with federal protected areas in the Yukon (Kluane National Park and Reserve) and Alaska (Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve). Trophy hunting is prohibited in most U.S. national parks and all Canadian national parks, but not in BCs provincial parks. Wild animals dont heed political boundaries. Wide-ranging species like grizzly bears move in and out of neighboring jurisdictions. If a grizzly bear in Montana wanders a few kilometers north in search of a mate, it goes from being protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act to being a possible trophy hunter target in BC. But now, in response to intense pressure from the trophy hunting industry, the U.S. administration wants to strip grizzly bears of federal protection. President Trump also recently signed into law rules allowing trophy hunters to target grizzly bears around bait stations and from aircraft and to kill grizzly mothers and their cubs in Alaskas national wildlife refuges, where theyve been protected from these unethical hunting practices. Grizzly bears face an ominous political climate under the Trump administration, along with growing human threats across their North American range, from trophy hunting to habitat destruction, precipitous declines in food sources like salmon and whitebark pine nuts and climate change impacts. In parts of Canada, mainly in sparsely populated areas of northern BC and the territories, grizzly bear numbers are stable. But in the Interior and southern BC and Alberta, grizzlies have been relegated to a ragged patchwork of small, isolated and highly threatened habitatsa vestige of the forests and grasslands they once dominated. The BC government has ended grizzly hunting among highly threatened sub-populations in the Interior and southern parts of the province and, in response to pressure from local First Nations, has promised to do the same in the Great Bear Rainforest. But the slaughter of BCs great bears continues everywhere else. That this years spring hunt coincides with a BC election could bring hope for grizzlies, possibly catalyzing the first change in government wildlife policy in close to two decades. The May 9 election will give BC residents the opportunity to ask candidates if they will end the grizzly hunt if elected. So far, the BC New Democratic Party and Green Party say they would ban grizzly trophy hunting (but allow grizzly hunting for food), whereas the BC Liberals continue to defend and promote the trophy hunt as well-managed, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. The fate of BCs grizzlies is too important to be a partisan issue. All politicians should support protection. Rough-and-tumble politics this election season might finally end BCs cruel and unsustainable grizzly bear trophy hunt. Its time to stop this grisly business. By Kelly Levin Thousands of people are expected to attend the Peoples Climate Movement march in Washington, DC and sister cities around the world this coming weekend. They are marching because actions taken to date by governments and others are not commensurate with the scale of climate impactsboth those already borne and those projected in the years to come. Its a good moment to reflect on the facts. What do we know about global climate change and what impacts can we expect in the future? The following graphics speak volumes. 1. What is Climate Change? Climate change is a long-term change in Earths weather patterns or average climate, including temperature and precipitation. While the climate has changed in the past, we are now seeing it change at an unprecedented rate. As a result of the build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmospheredue to our burning of fossil fuels, cutting down trees and other activitiesglobal average temperature is now changing at a faster rate than at least over the past 1,000 years. NASA 2. Whats Causing Climate Change? When models only include natural drivers of climate change, such as natural variability and volcanic eruptions, they cannot reproduce the recent increase in temperature. Only when models include the increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities can they replicate the observed changes. U.S. Enviromental Protection Agency, adapted from Huber and Knutti, 2012 3. How Have Global Emissions Changed? Emissions have been climbing since the Industrial Revolution, but the rate of annual emissions increase during the first 10 years of this century was almost double the rate between 1970 and 2000. Global Carbon Project Emissions from fossil fuels and industry have seen a staggering increase in recent years63 percent since 1990. 4. Who Are the Biggest Emitters? From 1850 to 2011, the five major emittersthe U.S., European Union, China, Russian Federation and Japan together contributed two-thirds of the worlds CO2 emissions. Now, China has emerged as the top emitter and China, the EU and the U.S. are the worlds top three emitters. Together they emit more than half of total global greenhouse gases. In contrast, the 100 smallest-emitting countries collectively add up to only 3.5 percent of global emissions. Almost three-quarters of global emissions come from only 10 countries. 5. How Much Should We Limit Global Warming? The Paris agreement on climate change sets a target for countries to collectively limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), with a goal of sticking to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) in order to prevent some of the worst effects of climate change. The amount of carbon emissions we can emit while still having a likely chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees is known as the carbon budget. As of 2011, the world had already blown through nearly two-thirds of the carbon budget and is on track to exceed it by 2033 if emissions continue unabated. 6. Where is the Temperature Headed? In the absence of countries recent emissions-reduction commitments, known as intended nationally determined contributions or INDCs, we would see 4-5 degrees C of warming. Even if these INDCs are fully implemented, the average global temperature is still on track to increase 2.7-3.7 degrees C by 2100, according to a range of studies. Thats far short of the global goal to limit warming to 1.5- 2 degrees C. 7. What Have Been Some of the Impacts of Climate Change to Date? The impacts of climate change are already occurring and occurring everywhere. For example, climate change has already led to: more negative than positive impacts to crops, such as wheat and maize; coral bleaching and species range shifts; more frequent heat waves; coastal flooding; increased tree die-off in various regions; and a significant loss of ice mass in places like Greenland and Antarctica. For example, as a result of ice melting on land, such as from glaciers and ice sheets, as well as thermal expansion of the ocean, we have seen sea level rise 3.4 millimeters per year from 1993-2015, which puts coastal communities at risk of flooding and infrastructure damage. 8. What Impacts Do We Expect in the Future? The impacts we see in the future will be determined by our emissions pathway and resultant level of temperature increase. The warmer it gets, the greater the impactsand the lower our ability to adapt. 9. Are There Signs of Progress? Recently, weve seen signs of decoupling. According to the International Energy Agency, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions stayed flat for three years in a row even as the global economy grew. This flattening of emissions was due to the growth of renewable power generation, fuel switching from coal to natural gas and energy efficiency gains, among other changes. This decoupling can also be seen at the country level in 21 nations from 2000-2014. Whether these are indicative of long-term shifts remains to be seen. We will need to see a deep decline if we are to limit dangerous climate change and even with existing emissions-reduction commitments, global emissions are not expected to decline until at least after 2030. 20. Are We Investing in Solutions? Global investments in renewable energy have been growing in recent years to an all-time high of $285.9 billion in 2015, a 5 percent rise compared to the previous year. In 2015, renewable energy (excluding large hydro) made up the bulk (54.6 percent) of new installed generating capacity for the first time. REN21 Renewables 2016 Global Status Report That being said, we need to shift away from fossil fuels much more quickly if we are to have a fighting chance of limiting warming to 1.5-2 degrees C. Marching for Action Lets hope that as people take to the streets, it will wake leaders up to the scale of the climate change challenge and the task ahead. Avoiding the most dangerous of climate change impactswhich necessitates phasing out emissions in the second half of the centurywill require sustained action well beyond this weekends activities. A group of 250 faith leaders from around the world, including the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, signed an Interfaith Climate Statement, urging nations to sign on to the Paris climate agreement and called for scaling up ambition to combat climate change. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dalai Lama were among 250 faith leaders that signed an Interfaith Climate Statement, urging nations to sign on to the Paris climate agreement. Leaders belonging to the Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim faith have signed on, We as faith communities recognize that we must begin a transition away from polluting fossil fuels and towards clean renewable energy sources, the leaders said in the statement. For a deeper dive: Climate Home, ThinkProgress, Economic Times For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Bill Nye vs. Sarah Palin on Climate Change: Who Do You Believe? Scientists Start to Look at Ground Beneath Their Feet for Solution to Climate Change March 2016 Was Hottest on Record by Greatest Margin Yet Seen for Any Month Al Gore and Neil deGrasse Tyson Talk the Future of Our Planet Colorado had quite a year in 2013. Aside from record setting forest fires, warming temperatures and continued pine beetle infestations, Colorado had a storm in September, typically our dryest month of the year, that has been referred to as a 100 year to a 500 year to even a thousand year flood. Whatever the case, it was a big, big flood with lots and lots of rain, around 17 inches of rain equivalent to around 20 feet of snow. A drilling rig in Weld County inundated by flood waters near a residential home on September 13, 2013. Photo credit: The Denver Channel Shane Davis, a person who feels strongly about fracking and flooding, took some time out of his busy day to talk with me for this EcoWatch exclusive interview. For all of you who dont know Shane Davis, let me introduce him to you. He is an interesting guy. For starters, his boyhood found him living on the border of Canada and northern Idaho. This put him into the natural world from the very beginning. Hed say hes been an activist concerned for the environment since the age of seven or eight when he became fully aware of the environment. He had an innate response to the environment. Davis comes equipped with much experience. He was a park ranger for many years, helping create stewards of the natural world as an interpreter naturalist. He worked for the Colorado State Parks, Department of Natural Resources and in the South Pacific as a marine biologist for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Davis is a biologist by training. He is a guy with a vast yearning for discovery. He initially focused on biology in college and then switched to molecular genetics, being a National Science Foundation grant recipient in this area. He also received a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) medal for his work oversees managing an environmental safety and security pilot program. Davis became interested in fracking more than four years ago while living in Firestone, CO. He helped start the first grassroots organization for anti-fracking in Colorado in mid 2010, and created the website Fractivist.com that he maintains with a Facebook counterpart. He is currently the Oil and Research Manager at Sierra Clubs Rocky Mountain Chapter and the regional campaign director for Gasland. In September, Davis took all kinds of peopleseveral dozenfrom places like CNN, NBC, NPR, New York Times into the field during and after the flooding via five flights over the heavily affected areas and on the ground dozens of times surveying the damage. Map of Weld County and neighboring Larimer, Boulder, Broomfield counties showing fracking directional wells. Fracking is a practice that has been used by the oil and gas industry for quite sometime. However its use has been becoming much more sophisticated and escalating at a significant proportion in recent times as oil and gas deposits have been getting scarcer and the exemptions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act kicked in. Fracking releases oil and gas deposits by drilling down often to depths of two miles or greater and then, in more recent times, horizontally. In Colorados Wattenberg oil field in the Denver-Julesburg Basin the current target depths are 7,000 to deeper than 8,000 feet. Injecting water and chemicals at pressure creates a multitude of fractures in the surrounding rock releasing the trapped oil and gas. For a typical well two to four million gallons of water is used. Four to five, or even up to nine, million gallons of water can be used in a horizontal well. The wastewater mixed with toxic chemicals gets pumped out and often injected into auxiliary holding wells and capped. The oil and gas is released and moves up the well. Many people living near the well sites voice concern and examples of harm to their health, while the general industry stance appears to say that the fracking process is entirely safe and free of harm to people and the environment. There are about 51,000 active gas wells in Colorado, and 79,000 inactive wells50-55 percent of these are awaiting the new fracking technology. So approximately 130,000 completed wells exist in Colorado. Weld County amazingly has about 21,000 active wells, more than in any other Colorado county or any other county in the U.S. MS: Is fracking safe? SD: Absolutely not. It never will be. MS: Is using our water worth it for going after oil and gas? SD: I am absolutely appalled that the oil and gas industry is using our most valuable resourcewaterto mine for something far less valuable. MS: Why are you passionate about preventing fracking? SD: I think, number one, is to protect the health and safety and welfare of the environment and citizens from the adverse impactsthe very harmful impacts of the fracking process and the drilling just everything the oil and gas extraction industry encompasses. But I think even more so, we are so much more smarter, yet extracting yet another fossil fuel. I firmly believe we are going down, backwards. We need to go forward, and have research and development that focuses solely on healthy energies that allows the U.S. to have healthy energy democracy not an extractive oligarchic sort of energy island. Seriously, an oil-garchy is what we call it. We are just going in the wrong direction to serious consequences. MS: Why should we be concerned about fracking? SD: Well I think in short why the citizens of America or the globe should be concerned about fracking is that its a largely unregulated industry that is not for the benefit of energy democracy in America or the health and welfare of the people, and its for the less than 1 percent, and its extremely damaging, its environmental catastrophe waiting to happen decades from now and human health catastrophe. Damage in the flood plain. Flood water flowed forcefully through this oil and gas structure. Photo credit: Shane Davis A tremendous amount of rain fell down upon Colorado the week of Sept. 9. On Sept. 16, Boulder County gauged a record setting 17 inches of rain. The average yearly precipitation for this county is 20.7 inches and for the month of September 1.7 inches. It is the heaviest recorded rainfall Colorado has seen. If snow fell instead of rain, the Front Range would have been buried by some 20 feet of snow. While the rain that is responsible for the Big Thompson Canyon flood of 1976 was extremely localized and a rapid downpour, where eight inches fell in the first hour and 12 inches total in the first three hours, Colorados September flood waters spread over a vast 2,000 square mile area affecting 17 counties from north to south along the Front Range. Flying over the flood plain on Sept. 18, 2013. Photo credit: Denver Post At Governor Hickenloopers request, President Obama, on Sept. 12, declared a state of emergency in Boulder, El Paso and Larimer counties, and 12 more counties were added Sept. 16 (Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Fremont, Jefferson, Morgan, Logan, Pueblo, Washington and Weld). According to COGCC (Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission), 1,970 active wells were affected by the flood waters with drums tipped over, failure of oil lines and containment facilities, and other equipment damaged. As of the latest Nov. 26 report, 14 confirmed spills occurred spilling 48,250 gallons of oil and indicating the release of 43,479 gallons of produced water (basically toxic liquid industrial waste). COGCC has admitted that historically 43 percent of oil and gas well spills prior to the flood, in Weld County, resulted in groundwater contamination. Produced water is exposed in open pits and mix readily with the flood waters. Much concern has been raised over the safety of such drilling operations in flood situations. Fracking and operating oil and gas facilities in flood plains is extremely risky, said Clean Water Actions Gary Wockner. Flood waters can topple facilities and spread oil, gas and cancer-causing fracking chemicals across vast landscapes making contamination and clean-up efforts exponentially worse and more complicated. As reported by the Daily Camera, Lafayette-based anti-fracking activist Clif Willmeng said he spent two days zig-zagging across Weld and Boulder counties documenting flooded drilling sites, mostly along the drainage-way of the St. Vrain River. He observed hundreds of wells that were inundated. He also saw many condensate tanks that hold waste materials from fracking at odd angles or even over turned. Signs of common damage in the flood plain, an example of the many over turned condensate tanks. Photo credit: Shane Davis MS: What happened during the flood? SD: The flood in September was a shocker, not just to Colorado, but the United States and the world that Colorado had its first tropical rainstorm. About 1,970, according to the state, active oil and gas well pads were negatively impacted by the flood as well. The amount of rain that fell was unprecedented. It was an epic flood of epic proportions. And it paved its way through the highest density of active producing well pads in Colorado and the United States. So, it was a shock to the industry and to the people. There were so many people that lost their homes, which is the saddest part of all. So, what we saw here were worst case scenarios, which the state and industry were not prepared for. MS: Could you tell me what you did during/shortly after the flooding? SD: I went up into the air five times. I flew over the flood plain from Boulder to nearly the Nebraska border five separate times. I took up CNN, NBC, NPR, New York Times, all kinds of people out into the field, on the ground and in the air. Took several thousand photographs of the well pads that were impacted negatively where you could see the condensate or crude oil tanks or produced water tanks flipped over, pipes broken. So basically what I did was taking maybe three or four dozen people out on the ground and up in the air to show the leading media across the nation what really happened. MS: What would you say was the most common damage? SD: I think the most common damage people saw on the surface, was the tanks listing or flipped over on their sides or floating down this new epic river. But one thing I tried to show case was the subsurface infrastructure. The industry and the state were only talking about the equipment that was on top of the ground. And I know being on the ground the floods were so strong they washed away three and four and five feet of top soil in many areas along the riverthe South Platte and St. Vrain River. And so what I looked at was these subsurface infrastructure to include flow lines, gathering lines, all the plastic pipelines that carry the petrochemicals to and from the production sites to the gathering stations to the refineries. Just like the Titanic, the Titanic was not sunk from the tip on the iceberg. It was the subsurface infrastructure that caused the most amount of damage. So that was my talking point because the industry can say we sucked up this amount of crude oil, this amount of produced water on the surface that spilled but what they are not telling us is what they dont know which lies beneath the surface. They dont know how much of those chemicals are still leaking because theyll have to inspect every inch of those flow lines and those gathering lines all across the flood plain. MS: And what would you say are the main types of contamination that especially youre most concerned about that was released? SD: Well all of it. Obviously crude oil which is also considered condensate. Its crude oil but it has a number of other fluids, toxic or endocrine disrupting chemicals that would be mixed in with it until it would be refined or before it was refined. Also, any of the fracking fluid constituents to include naturally occurring radioactive materials that come up from the well bore that are stored in the produced water vaults. So I think its everything. I dont have one in particular. Anything that is not naturally on the surface that is a product of oil and gas that spills on the surface that contaminates the surface is a problem. A lot of these chemicals people need to know are endocrine disrupting chemicals that are so damaging to our reproductive systems, short term, long term and forever. Any and all of these chemicals that were released is a problem. The oil and gas industry is saying, well there is only a small amount of these chemicals released. That is the problem. And again the industry is saying, dilution is the solution to pollution. Well they cant have that as a best management practice. And thats what they are relying on all the time when you say, dilution is the solution to pollution. For example, basically these open evaporation pits on western slope like in Garfield County where hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic industrial liquid waste are being evaporated into the air from the industrys backyard to your backyard. And the same thing applies when you have huge spills like this, well it spilled into the water so it was diluted. This is our water. These waters of the state. The peoples water. This should never happen. The industry should be held extremely accountable for their actions. Davis clarified at another point in this interview that the main contaminants to be especially concerned about are Benzene, Ethylbenzene, Toluene and Zylene, which are called BTEX chemicals. There is also Methyl Chloride (extremely dangerous), Cyclopentane and dozens of other chemicals released. A common batch of fracking fluid could hold 500 or more different ingredients that is currently not required to be disclosed to the general public or the government. MS: What should we do in the future with fracking? SD: Well outside of banning it completely, I think that in the interim while we can figure how to ban it there should be an enormous severance tax to research and development for the state in which its conducted. I also believe money should be set aside, millions and millions of dollars for environmental remediation and any associated health impacts. They have a bond. Every operator has a surface bond and a surface agreement, a land use agreement, with the private land owner or state or federal mineral holder rights. But their bond is anywhere from two to 25 thousand dollars. And just simple remediation of a well padlets say there was a thousand barrels of oil that spilled on the surface, just the remediation if that was in an agricultural area which 90 percent of all oil and gas wells are in Weld County, they are right in the center of an Agriculture areathe bond they put up, the two to 25 thousand dollars, doesnt even begin to start the remediation. So, the fines and the bonds are so outdated that they dont cover actual/factual costs. We need to envision something that is going to remediate the damage that the oil and gas industry imposes on our ways of life. And let us not forget that the federal exemptions, that the oil and gas industry currently lavishes in, strips our civil rights and protections. Now the citizens, free citizens of America cannot protect themselves from the adverse impacts of the fracking processesto include the development, the drilling, the fracking, the production, the transportation. Active wells are supposed to get inspected every year, and inactive every five years. Thats the rules and regulations right now. But the inactive are as problematic as the active if not more so. I absolutely believe the abandoned wells should be inspected (if they are not) twice per year especially in the winter [they experience a lot of contraction and expansion]. Colorado has 13 field inspectors and about four that sit at a desk directing the field inspectors. These people are staffed through COGCC, which is state funded. Colorado drilling pads eight days after the rain stopped, Sept. 24, 2013. Photo credit: Lee Buchsbaum (LMB Photography) There has been a lot of activity, especially in local Colorado communities, fighting for a ban on fracking. Longmont voted for a ban in 2012 that was challenged by the oil and gas industry organization (COGA) and the state (COGCC). In the Nov. 5 election, Fort Collins, Boulder, Lafayette and Broomfield had moratorium/banning initiatives on their ballots. Its amazing, every time there is a public meeting, more people show up than the last time, said Russell Mendell, state organizer for Frack Free Colorado in The Daily Camera. And it just seems like people are starting to be educated on the issue, and more and more people are showing they are passionate about protecting the community from the impacts of fracking. It represents the citizen movement that has been really sort of spreading across Colorado and across the country as well, as people learn about the health impacts of fracking, the impacts on home values, the impacts to so many different elements of peoples lives including the economy, and the tourism economy and to local business. MS: Could you give me an update on the local initiatives of the last election and the US House legislation vote? SD: Fort Collins has a five year moratorium [passed with 55 percent]. Longmont we know they are obviously being sued. They had a 60 to 40 [passed] initiative which is a ban on fracking. Boulder has a five year moratorium in which more than 70 percent voted in favor of it. Lafayette has [by 58 percent] a Community Bill of Rights ban which is extremely unique in that the Community Bill of Rights ban is just not for fracking but trumps corporate rights. It says, Community rights now preempt corporate rights. That one is extremely symbolic for Colorado. And Broomfield just recently passed their moratorium with [17] votes Loveland was going to be number five that took a really weird turn. Loveland was set to have a two year moratorium put on the ballot and this city council found a loophole in their local policy that stripped the voters rights to be able to put the two year moratorium on the ballot. Protesters, both young and old, gather in front of the old Boulder County Courthouse. Photo credit: Frack Free Colorado MS: How would you interpret the results in what happened with Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins, Lafayette, Longmont and regards to the U.S. House/FRAC Act related voting? SD: I interpret the results as the voice or courts of public opinion. Colorado people have spoken. Theyre concerned citizens for the health and welfare of their families and the environment. What youre seeing is this is a civil rights movement right now. Its no longer truly just about hydraulic fracturing. Its taking on this new life of civil rights movement because right now Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), is now suing Longmont, theyre suing Fort Collins and theyre suing Lafayette, and theyll probably sue Broomfield as well. But suing because we enacted and demonstrated our democratic vote tells me that there is something substantially wrong with our political environment today. If COGA, the oil and gas industrys mouthpiece, is suing to take away our democracy and our votes, thats absolutely unconstitutional and a violation of our civil rights. So, I think what youre seeing is the general public becoming more aware not just of the hazards of hydraulic fracturing but how the industry, the oil and gas industry, is marginalizing and suing to take away our rights. Shane Davis with the plane he used to survey the damage from the flood. MS: Still on the horizon is the FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act), which has been reintroduced each Congress since 2008 by Diana DeGette (D-CO). Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has co-sponsored with DeGette and more recently Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO). In 2013, for the first time, the bill was introduced as a bipartisan measure with Chris Gibson (R-NY). Nevertheless, the U.S. House knocked out the FRAC Act once again during this Congressional session. The FRAC Act establishes common sense safeguards to protect groundwater, requires disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking fluids and removes the oil and gas industrys exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the provision added to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The lobbying group Energy in Depth said the FRAC Act is an unnecessary financial burden on a single small-business industry, American oil and natural gas producers, and claims enacting new regulation could result in half of the U.S. oil wells and one third of the gas wells being closed. Congressman Hinchey said, We need to know exactly what chemicals are being injected into the ground and we must ensure that the industry is not exempt from basic environmental safeguards like the Safe Drinking Water Act. Can you share your thoughts on the FRAC Act? SD: Its gaining a lot more nationwide illumination. And the activists around the nation are trying to rally around the FRAC Act, the Breather Act. Those are to essentially overturn the federal exemptions in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. The industry is exempt as you know from key provisions in those federal laws. And so Jared and Diana DeGettes FRAC Act would actually overturn those exemptions for water. Right now the water and chemicals the industry are putting down the bore hole are not considered hazardous materialsthats their exemption. I dont know where it stands now but I know they are fighting tooth and nail. Diane DeGette is a champion for us. But she really has to continue through. I know its a good act, that needs to happen. Like all the 2005 Energy Policy Act exemptions for the industry, all of them need to be overturned. And so the FRAC Act and Breather Act are parts and pieces of the whole that we need to pursue. The anti-fracking successes in the last local election in Colorado and the continued, now bipartisan, efforts to pass the FRAC Act are signs of how the fight against fracking is trending in Colorado and elsewhere. However, former Republican Colorado State House Rep. B.J. Nikkel is quoted as saying about the Colorado election results: This is round one of a much longer match. The oil and gas industry is likely to do similar things as they did in Longmont. This stems from interpreting the current rules overseeing fracking as placing the authority at the state level. The argument can be had that local municipalities do not have the right to govern the banning of fracking. Pro-fracking advocate Tisha Schuller, president of the COGA, argues that the Boulder and Lafayette bans are merely symbolic because Lafayettes last new well permit was in the early 1990s and Boulders last oil and gas well was plugged in 1999. It appears likely that COGA will go after the Fort Collins and Broomfield with their more heavily producing areas in similar fashion (and perhaps Lafayette) as how theyre suing to stop the Longmont ban. Overall Davis thinks the recent election shows a hopeful sign that the escalating use of fracking will slow and be subjected to more thoughtful watchful scrutiny and regulation. Nikkel sees things differently, saying As the debate moves from places like Boulder and Lafayettewhich come with highly Democratic constituenciesto purple Colorado, youre going to see a different outcome. Davis is hopeful that the state of Colorado will be able to generate a fund (perhaps in the likes of a Superfund that handles hazardous waste sites) to help inspect, monitor and remediate active and closed oil and gas wells. He is hopeful that the State will get more than the 13 field and four office inspectors that they currently have to inspect the some 51,000 active wells in Colorado and nearly 79,000 abandoned/inactive wells. Michael Sobczak is a writer living in Boulder, CO at the base of the Rocky Mountains with a strong interest in environmental issues both locally and those surrounding us. Visit EcoWatchs FRACKING page for more related news on this topic. By Courtney St. John In case anyone doubts the death of coal, experts just issued the autopsy. A new report from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University looks at exactly whats causing coals demise. It finds that cheap natural gas is responsible for roughly half the decline in U.S. coal consumption. Falling demand for electricity and cheap wind and solar account for most of the rest. Adding insult to mortal injury, falling demand for coal from China put a dent in U.S. exports. Environmental regulationsa frequent scapegoat of coal companiesdid accelerate coal plant retirements, but the effect was small. Overall, the report finds that President Trumps efforts to roll back environmental protections will do little for coal country. Employment across the coal sector has declined. Today, coal employs just 160,000 workers nationwide while the solar industry employs some 375,000. Even in the heart of Appalachia, businesses are turning away from coal. This week, Charleston, West Virginia-based utility Appalachian Power said that it wont be building any new coal plants and will instead look at building out solar and wind to bring companies like Amazon and Google to West Virginiacompanies that want to source their power from renewables. And in an ironic twist, the Kentucky Coal Museum is going solar to save money on power. While there is little that the president or lawmakers can do to rescue the coal industry, they can throw a lifeline to coal workers. Congress has until the end of the week to ensure that more than 22,000 retired miners continue to have access to federally funded healthcare. Coal companies that declared bankruptcy in recent years were relieved from contributing to the fund. Coal is on its deathbed. And while Washington cant revive the industry, it can revive Appalachia. Reposted with permission from our media associate Nexus Media. By Jonathan Hahn On President Trumps first Earth Day in the White House, he declared on Twitter that we celebrate our beautiful forests, lakes and landsan amiable if blase arm-punch to the planet from the leader of the free world. Until a few hours later that is, when the president resorted to his usual right cross. I am committed to keeping our air and water clean, he tweeted, but always remember that economic growth enhances environmental protection. Jobs matter! Rarely does President Trump or his surrogates miss an opportunity to propound that jobs matter when it comes to the nations environmental policiesespecially where climate change is concerned. This binary logicenvironmental protection equals job killeris deeply woven into their world view. Trump has repeatedly called Obama-era initiatives like the Clean Power Plan job killers and vowed to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions, including the Climate Action Plan. The delegation of fishermen that set sail Wednesday from a marina in Solomons, Maryland, would beg to differ. The only job destroyer for them is climate change. Concerned about the threat global warming poses to their livelihoods, a crew of sustainable ocean farmers began a three-day journey theyre calling the Climate March by Sea. At the tiller of the small commercial fishing boat is Bren Smith, owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm and the executive director of GreenWave. Theyre heading south down the Chesapeake before they plan to turn north up the Potomac on their way to Washington, DC. Their final destination: the Peoples Climate March, when thousands of people, including indigenous, civic, social justice, business and environmental advocacy groups are set to take to the streets of the nations capital to demand action on climate, jobs and justice. Climate change was supposed to be a slow lobster boil, Smith said in an interview before casting off. For me, it arrived 100 years earlier than expected. We fishermen are the citizen scientists reporting that water temperatures are going up, species are moving north, the weather is becoming more extreme. We can see it with our own eyes. Were way beyond the idea of climate denial. When it comes to environmental policy, the job killer argument is a red herring. According to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project, two-tenths of one percent of layoffs are caused by government regulations of any kind, including environmental regulations. Layoffs are caused far more often by corporate buyouts, technological advances and lower overseas labor costs. For fishermen, the real crisis isnt government regulation, but the threats climate change poses to healthy oceans and seas. Marine and coastal fisheries contribute more than $200 billion in economic activity and 1.8 million jobs in the U.S. each year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The World Wildlife Fund reports that marine populations are in catastrophic decline, plunging by 49 percent between 1970 and 2012, thanks in part to ocean acidification caused by warming waters, rising sea levels and extreme weather. Meanwhile, more than 40 percent of fisheries have crashed due to overfishing, resulting in upward of $50 billion in economic losses, the California Environmental Associates assessed in its Charting a Course to Sustainable Fisheries report. One out of four marine species is threatened as a result of overfishing and climate change, among other factors, with 37 out of 1,288 bony fish species facing extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Natures Red List of Threatened Species. The Climate March by Sea will cover 150 miles over three days, making occasional stops to pick up supporters. The crew of ocean farmers and commercial fishermen will be posting and live tweeting along the way on GreenWaves Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages with the hashtag #climatemarchbysea. They hope the voyage will help adrenalize public discourse about solutions to the climate crisis in the days leading up to the Peoples Climate March this Saturday. An eclectic medley of individual, advocacy and corporate partners have come together to sponsor the journey, including celebrity chefs Rene Redzepi and David Chang, Patagonia, Ben and Jerrys, Dr. Bronners, 350.org, Bioneers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana and the Sierra Club, among others. The trips organizers are also raising individual donations to help pay for supplies and to sponsor more fishermen. During the voyage, the crew will cowrite a letter, addressed to President Trump, in which they intend to make clear that climate change itself, not the policies devised to combat it, threatens the economy, their jobs and their way of life. They will also demand an end to the planned cuts to agencies like NOAA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Smith plans to reaffirm in the letter what has become his most ardent message: There will be no jobs on a dead planet. Climate change is an economic issue, not just an environmental issue, he said. Its not just about the birds and the bees. Its also about how do I run a small business and make a living in an era of extreme weather? Were heading to DC to send that messagethat our livelihoods depend on a healthy ecosystem. That for those of us who care about building domestic employment, we have to mitigate climate change and protect our water. For Smith, the Climate March by Sea is the latest in a multi-decade career during which he witnessed the ramifications of overfishing and extreme weather firsthand. A high school dropout who grew up in a fishing village, Smith first cast out to learn how to fish when he was 14. He started working on the Bering Sea as a fisherman at the height of industrialized fishing, catching fish that mostly went to companies like McDonalds for fish sandwiches. We were tearing up entire ecosystems with our trawls, producing some of the unhealthiest food, he said. Later, after hed set up his own oyster farm, two hurricanes in a row wiped him out: Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Irene. Smith lost 90 percent of his crops, he said. Most of his gear washed out to sea. When he began the process of rebuilding, he took an interest in extreme weather and what was causing it. He quickly became disillusioned. Smith developed an innovative form of marine polyculture featuring a mix of shellfish and seaweed, which he calls 3-D farming. Seaweed soaks up five times as much carbon as land-based plants and is rich in omega-3s, vitamins and minerals. It also serves as storm-surge protectors. So you can see this nexus of new environmentalism, which isnt just about conservation, he said, its about jobs, environmental protection and addressing food security all at once. I think were at that sweet spot. Since then, Smith has also created GreenWave, a nonprofit, to open-source his model of sustainable ocean farming for other fishermen and to engage in policy work and research around ocean planning, such as developing new mobile hatcheries. He also runs Seagreen Farms, which is a for-profit in the early stages of building seafood hubs in poor neighborhoods. Im not really an environmentalist per se, he said. My journey has been trying to figure out how to spend my life working on the water. This jobs-versus-environment choice that the administration keeps telling us, whether were coal miners or fishermen, is a false choice. Environmentalism and the future of the new economy are inextricably linked. The Climate March by Sea will dock at the Washington Marina in Georgetown on Friday morning, where the crew will hold a press conference at 10:00 a.m. Theyll host an event that night at Patagonia, where they will be shucking oysters, serving beer and making signs as they prepare for the Peoples Climate March the following day. The Peoples Climate March represents to me the future of environmentalism, he said. Its also time to push back. We need to defend our ground, our waters, our funding. We need to drive home that there is a whole generation of blue collar people that believe in climate change and demand that it be addressed now. Reposted with permission from our media associate SIERRA Magazine. (Photo: Marianne Ejdersten / WCC)World Council of Churches general secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit and Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo Egypt at an April 26, 2017 meeting in Cairo, Egypt. One of the world's leading Islamic scholars based in Egypt has met in Cairo with one of Christianity's top leaders on the eve of an international peace conference and the visit to the North African country by Pope Francis. Following that meeting delegations from the World Council of Churches and the Muslim Council of Elders issued a joint statement on April 27 stressing the importance of valuing diversity, assuring equal rights, and of being able to build mutual relationships with others. "There were difficulties in our respective past, and sometimes mutual misunderstanding in our present, but these should not stop people of good will from working together for a peaceful future," they said in the statement. "Religious leaders should promote this concept of citizenship for the benefit of all communities. We may be diverse in a number of ways, but this diversity is something to be valued and to be offered for the positive building up of our societies," they added. The second meeting of a delegation of the Muslim Council of Elders led by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, and a delegation of the World Council of Churches led by Dr. Agnes Abuom, WCC moderator and Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, the general secretary, had taken place at Al Azhar, Cairo, on April 26. Tveit noted that, together, Christians and Muslims represent about half the world's population. "So as we are here, we are not talking about only ourselves." He said, "We are talking about humanity in many ways. We should address these questions from a basic theological perspective. What does it mean to believe today in one God that created the one humanity?" Also present were Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, and Dr. Heidi Hadsell, president of Hartford Seminary, Connecticut in the United States. Tveit emphasized that, because human beings are accountable to God, they have to see how that leads to an accountability to every human being. "This is our mutual accountability to one another, to every human being, whatever belief or non-belief we have," he said. "I think this is a very important reflection, working jointly toward equal citizenship. It is not only a political or a legal principle; it is also a principle that expresses our deepest faith in one God creating the one humanity." Al Tayyeb said "Citizenship and peaceful co-existence are the greatest challenges that have to be focused on and built upon to counter fanaticism, terrorism and baseless theological claims and conceptualizations. He added "Citizenship is the major guarantee for achieving absolute equality in rights and duties." GRAND IMAN Al-Tayyeb was chosen as Grand Imam of the Al Azhar mosque in Cairo 2010 and is an outspoken advocate for religious dialogue and peace as well as a strong critic of religious extremism. Bishop Angaelos observed that there is a difference between reactive and proactive leadership. "We ourselves are being very reactive," he said, "and reactive leadership is good in times of crisis. It is good to solve problems: we have a crisis, we have an attack, we try to solve it. But what we need is a proactive leadership - a leadership that looks beyond the problem and tries to address the future." Angaelos asked, "Where would we like to be in five years, 10 years, the next generation? Let us address the whole world together instead of just speaking to ourselves." Hadsell discussed ways leaders can promote citizenship and co-existence from a Christian perspective. "God's vision of what should be in our human social world has been described and understood in many ways," she said. "The moral nature of the vision includes a shared sense of the dignity of every being; just relations within communities and between communities and peoples; the recognition of the intrinsic worth of every human being so that all human beings are viewed as ends in themselves, created by God, and not as means to an end." The capacity to cross borders and boundaries, including especially the boundaries of religious communities, has been one of the most important attributes of leadership in the histories of our communities and remains so today, she continued. "For without the capacity to see commonalities in the other, and to cross boundaries to build relationships with the other, one cannot construct peaceful interactions and co-existence between peoples of different communities." More than 400 Muslim, Christian and political scholars and leaders were invited to the two-day event by al-Tayyeb. Chosen as Grand Imam of Al Azhar in 2010, Dr al-Tayyeb is an outspoken advocate for interreligious dialogue and peace, as well as a strong critic of religious extremism. In his presentation to the conference, Tveit said "We believe in one God that has created one humanity to live together with its diversity and differences. We are here to share our reflections and commitment to show together what we believe this means in practice." He noted, "Together we should call for the care of the life of everybody created by God. We are accountable to the Creator when we meet one another as God's creation." "As religious leaders we have a special responsibility to elevate the sanctity of the life of all human beings created by the Holy God. As communities of faith we are called to show this as love to one another, in relations of respect and care to everybody," Tveit reflected. He said, "Violence in the name of religion cannot be done without violating the values of religion. Violence in the name of God towards those who are created in the image of God becomes violence against God. We are from the beginning to the end accountable to God." A new report, based on the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, reveals some good news for Australian education. The report titled: Students Well-Being 2015: PISA Results was based on a survey of 540,000 students in 72 participating countries and economies who also completed the main OECD PISA 2015 test on science, mathematics and reading. It found that while students in Finland out-perform Australian students academically and report greater well-being, Australian students were shown to surpass their Finnish counterparts in three key areas. Australian teens were more likely to report that they intended to go to university, more likely to be ambitious to top their class and three times more likely to have a paid job outside school than students in Finland. The report also showed that Australian students rank well above the OECD average in these areas. However, 47% of Australian students reported feeling very tense when they study, significantly higher than the OECD average of 37%. Students with a higher frequency of bullying reported lower levels of satisfaction. Peter Goss, school education program director at the Grattan Institute, told The Educator that Australian students aspirations to go to university was understandable given that a degree is a requirement for many jobs. Australian students who complete a university degree earn much more than those who complete no study after they finish school on average $600,000 dollars more over their lifetime, Goss said. Combined with the fact that it is getting harder to get a job without a degree, it makes sense that many Australian students expect to go to university. Goss said that in turn, this may help explain why many Australian students aspire to good grades. A high ATAR score is needed to get into a prestigious university degree like engineering, medicine or law, where the returns are highest, he said. NSW Secondary Principals Council (NSWSPC) president, Chris Presland, said an ongoing challenge for all countries is to maintain high academic standards without sacrificing the mental and physical health of students. The OECD study shows that PISA success comes at a cost and I believe Australia needs to be careful to avoid taking the East Asian approach, Presland said in a statement on Wednesday. We are producing knowledgeable and adaptable students ready to engage in the world around us and this is something that should be celebrated rather than forgotten in the pursuit of academic success measured by test results. Trevor Cobbold, national convenor of public school advocate group, Save Our Schools (SOS) agreed. High education success has its costs and Australia must be careful to avoid taking the East Asian route, Cobbold said in a statement. The challenge is to combine good learning outcomes for all students, irrespective of family background, with highly satisfied, healthy students. Key points: 54% of Australian students expect to undertake a university degree, compared with an OECD average of 44%; More than 74% say they aim to be one of the best students in class, compared to an OECD average of 59%; Nearly 35% of Australian students work while they are at school, compared with an OECD average of about 23% Vietnam tries to repair damaged image of its pangasius in Europe Vietnam hopes that its participation in the 25th Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, Belgium, held April 25-27, will somehow repair the damaged image of Vietnamese pangasius in Europe. At the exhibition, the Vietnamese pavilion, with the theme "Vietnam--Asia's Home of Seafood", displayed products of 25 seafood companies including processors o pangasius, shrimp, tuna, tilapia, octopus and squid. The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development held a press conference at the exhibition in an effort to provide clear information about Vietnamese pangasius processing and exports to European partners. Vietnamese pangasius has suffered a backlash in Spain following a damaging expose that aired on Spanish television last January, and the Carrefour supermarket chain has ceased selling Vietnamese pangasius. According to VASEP General Secretary Truong Dinh Hoe, the press conference also aimed to help increase the export of Vietnamese aquatic and seafood products to Europe. Vietnam also held other trade promotion activities at the Brussels event, including a dialogue for shrimp value chains and a programme for visitors to try Vietnamese seafood. Alfons van Duijvenbode, a Dutch consultant, said that European consumers had a bad impression of Vietnamese pangasius due to what he said was wrong information in social media. He suggested that the Vietnamese aquaculture industry interact more with consumers to provide them with exact information about the products' quality. China to import genetic material from 'Norwegian Red' breed cattle Norway and China have signed a protocol to regulate quarantines and health requirements for the export of genetic material from the "Norwegian Red" breed of dairy cattle. The protocol signing last week would pave the way for Chinese children to drink milk from cows bred from Norwegian Red stock, according to the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The project to export genetic material of cattle to China was initiated in 2008. China has established a goal of increasing production of fresh milk for children. In 2015, China's agricultural product exports to Norway amounted to around NOK1.6 billion (US$186.64 million), while Norway exported agricultural products worth NOK110 million ($12.82 million) to China, which included processed foods. In future negotiations with China, Norway's interests will involve access to the Chinese market for dairy products and other genetic materials, among others, said the agriculture and food ministry. 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Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome! An American businesswoman was sentenced for roughly four years in jail and deportation. Apparently, the Chinese court found her guilty of spying. In March 2015, a Houston resident Sandy Phan-Gillis was arrested with officials from Texas while on a business trip. Shang Boujon, the convict's lawyer, said she was charged guilty to espionage. The court hearing took place in Nanning, a southern city in China. However, the length of her stay in Chinese detention is still unknown prior to her deportation. Prior to being charged, Sandy's husband Jeff Gillis insisted that she was innocent. However, he kept quiet at first, thinking that his wife's case will not push through as the charges were unsupported. However, after realizing that the Chinese government would not back down, he continued fighting for Sandy's freedom. He has even campaigned for her release, saying that she's in the US in 1990, the time when she was accused of spying the American government based in China. However, the businesswoman has secured an earlier release, as CNN reported, by pleading guilty. "She's supposed to serve the sentence in China," Sandy's lawyer explained. "But maybe there's a condition based on which she can be deported to the U.S. before the imprisonment. We hope she can return to the U.S. as soon as possible." The lawyer, Shang, has kept his mouth shut from revealing further details sans official's consent as it involves the national security. On the other hand, China has kept the details of the allegations against Sandy in private. However, it was said that the accusations involved Sandy doing harmful activities to the national security of China. Meanwhile, the case of the American entrepreneur was repeatedly raised by the U.S. State Department in China. However, the U.S. government located in Guangzhou has not responded about the issue. Ten days and three acts of vigilantism the murder of Mashal Khan in Mardan, three burqa clad sisters gunning down a man accused of blasphemy in Sialkot, and Shehbaz shooting three friends on the assumption that one of them was romancing his sister in Rawalpindi. This climate of vigilantism isn't new. It is a reflection of the displacement of culpability by the state, which blames people for taking law into their own hands, and by citizens, who justify their actions on state inaction. Whether localized or spontaneous, vigilante killings are far from recent. The assassination of Salman Taseer, murder of Aabid Mehmood, fishing expedition of Asia Bibi, honour-killing of Qandeel Baloch and the mob 'justice' of Mashal Khan are only a handful of cases which have been brought to the limelight. In each case, the killers' were motivated by the mindset that it was their 'duty' to remove those they believed had off-set the morality discourse in society. The mob that witnessed and participated in Mashal's death was brainwashed using new media platforms. By reaffirming one another's beliefs on social media, their moral conscience allowed them to watch a young man be tortured to death, and subsequently take a vow of silence. In their minds, they were just being vigilant. As a society, our first mistake is attempting to justify vigilantism as vigilance. Culprits of heinous crimes like Mashal's murder often find refuge in the abuse of our laws, blasphemy or otherwise, to find justification for what they perceive to be vigilance. The burqa avengers held a grudge against a man accused of blasphemy 13 years prior and executed a premeditated plan to eliminate him. Their defense? They were vigilant they served 'instant' justice to a man that our Courts were unable to. In such cases, society forgets that the reason law is meant to be defended is because the requirement of intent and burden of proof allows for an impartial conclusion of guilt. Attempting to punish alleged criminals based on one's own policing of 'morality,' without involving the law is not filling a gap in the justice system. Rather, it is using loopholes in implementation for self-serving 'heroic' rhetoric. Vigilante killings can be attributed to two longstanding problems the state's inadequate response to societal disorder, and its inability to aggressively prosecute those involved in vigilante killings. The Courts infamous tactics to feast on technicalities, suppressing evidence or using their discretion to determine liability tend to undermine the criminal justice system's credibility. Political authority, religious discourse and implementation weaknesses' challenge the Courts ability to harness forces of social influence and societal norms into crime-control instruments. These structural shortcomings are further challenged by an upsurge in access to new media. The internet has the ability to immediately circulate both information and misinformation. This web of internet access, often shrouded behind the veil of anonymous social media handles, has enabled self-justified internet vigilantes to incite hatred and violence that more often than not translate into physical, calculated attacks. The gap between the pace at which society verifies information and the pace at which information is shared using new media platforms is where vigilantism finds refuge. Social media users fuel their pedals with vigilance, as they race against traditional media to break news, shed light on criminal activity, and flaunt conspiracy theories. Society's second mistake is staying quiet. Vigilantism blurs the concept of guilt and innocence and escapes any easy definition of moral culpability. Authorities and law-abiding citizens are allowing it to fester nation-wide for fear of being caught in the cross-fire. It is common to opt out of speaking against these acts, in case their words are construed as being supportive of 'criminals'. Courts are either reluctant to try vigilantes if the nature of their act is premised on religious or moral controversies, or engage in prosecutorial overcharging in attempt to make up for past judicial failures. Vigilantes pick and choose aspects of legislation which serve their purpose. By picking the criminal act and the corresponding punishment for that act, they take it upon themselves to bypass the implementing procedures that allow one to proceed from 'criminal act' to 'punishment'. It has become a convenient tool to silence political and intellectual dissent. Mashal Khan was accused of posting blasphemous content on social media defaming Islam. He was stripped naked, beaten and tortured by a violent mob which ultimately led to his death. Investigations found no concrete evidence to register a case of blasphemy or launch legal action against Mashal. The vigilante's tried to prove Mashal's guilt after his death by fabricating evidence, abusing the very law they claimed to defend. Please note that the views in this publication do not reflect those of the Jinnah Institute, its Board of Directors, Board of Advisors or management. Unless noted otherwise, all material is property of the Institute. Copyright Jinnah Institute 2017. Cyber crime seems to evolve and innovate as much as the tech industry it seeks to exploit. In recent times, ransomware has become an especially potent tool of cyber criminals looking to exploit compan... Turkeys recent referendum gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan immense new powers he will rule uncontested, appointing senior officials, judges, and members of his cabinet with almost no oversight by weakened parliament. The office of prime minister will not exist anymore and the presidential elections will take place at the same time as the parliamentary ones. Moreover, presidents tenure will be limited to two terms unless parliament cuts short the second, which will allow Mr. Erdogan to stay in office until 2029 and possibly up to 2034. Even before all the votes had been tallied, Mr. Erdogan claimed victory, declaring that my nation stood upright and undivided. The reaction of European leaders to the referendum has been rather lukewarm and guarded, although some senior EU officials said that the country had essentially ended its 10-year old attempt to join the bloc. For example, the Austrian chancellor, Christian Kern, commented that with what happened yesterday (16 April), [Turkeys] membership prospects are buried, in practical terms, adding that we are entering a new era. Berlin, Paris and Brussels have all voiced serious concerns about the implications of the referendum. Moreover, Germany said that if Turkey were to bring back the death penalty as Mr. Erdogan promised, it would mean the resolute end of the European dream. Germanys foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel also said that any decision [about joining the EU] will not be on the agenda anytime soon. At any rate, joining would not work right now. The president of the European commission, Jean ClaudeJuncker, moreover called for the Turkish authorities to seek the broadest possible national consensus when making the changes to the constitution, pointing out to the tightness of the poll, in which 51.4% of the voters supported the expansion of the powers, while 48.6% of them were against. The narrow result of the vote shows how deeply split the Turkish society is, Angela Merkel concluded. Russia is taking advantage of the divisions of the EU in Libya and the lack of interest of the United States, according to analysts and observers. The German Marshall Fund of the United States organized an event in Brussels on Wednesday (26 April) to discuss the situation in North Africa. The major conclusion of the event was the fact that the European Union lacks partners in Libya the country that is responsible for the vast majority of the launches of migrant crossings through the Mediterranean. The problems with keeping control of the Tamanhent air base 30 kilometers northeast of Sabha might evolve into the first major confrontation between forces linked to the Government of National Accord (GNA) and Khalifa Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA). Khalifa Haftar is aligned with an eastern government that has rejected the GNA since it arrived in Tripoli. His forces have been continuously controlling most of Libyas coastline extending also to the desert regions of Jufra and Sabha. However, according to Pavel K. Baev, an Oslo-based senior fellow from the Centre on the United States and Europe, the Libyan account of the meeting between EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov has it that the Kremlin denies the obvious about the Russian presence and Moscows rising influence in the country and broader region. Libya has a strategic importance for Russia. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin seeks to present Russia as a champion against the imported Arab Spring revolutions, but on the other, he also wants to win another strategic victory in the region following Russias role in the Syrian war. As to the EU, its response to the developments in the country has been continuous and many EU members have acted individually. While the Italians are mostly interested in the migration issues, the French have helped Khalifa Haftar while the British have officially supported GNA without actually intervening much. Written by ACM *Strasbourg/CoE/Angelo Marcopolo/- The young King of Spain, addressing CoE's Parliamentary Assembly, launched a Call for European Politicians to Try to Help Peace in the Countries of Origin of most Mass Asylum Seekers/Irregular Migrants (f.ex. Syria, etc), in order to Facilitate their Return in normal conditions. Unexpectedly, this Natural move came in the middle of an Exceptional,Unprecedented "Hot" Context inside the CoE, about Other (but Indirectly Inter-Related) Issues (See Infra). - "Europe has nowadays a responsibility to deal with Huge Displacements of persons, Refugees and Migrants who Flee War, Terrorism and Extreme Poverty, as far as our means allow", he observed from the outset. => Therefore, we Must Do whatever we can, in order to Prepare the Conditions that would Allow them to Return to their Homelands", he urged. - "This passes by putting an End to the Conflicts and by Setting the Bases for the Military Clashes to be transformed into Political processes opening a way towards Democratic and Inclusive Societies, which do Not harm Life and/or Freedom", he concluded on this crucial point. But, while the Young Spanish King was Warmly Welcome in Strasbourg, both by MEPs and by All the Leadership of the CoE, (as their Massive Presence, f.ex., at a Social Event organized here just after that Plenary Session, (Comp. relevant Photo), on the Contrary, an apparently Different, but eventualy interlinked, Exceptional Incident, which suddenly Surfaced this Week in Strasbourg, raised various related Questions : - CoE Assembly's President, Pedro Agramunt, who is a Senator from Spain, has just been strongly Accused, by a number of various Other MEPs, after he Met with Syrian President Bashar Assad recently. In an Unprecedented, Hasty Move, a lot of Heavy Pressure was put on him, reportedly, to "Resign", many among those MEPs feeling unsatisfied by Formal and Public Excuses by PACE's President, who was obliged to call that move as a "Mistake". The formal Point seems tp be not so much that Agramunt met Assad, but that he allegedly did so withOut having, previously, Informed the Other Top Members of the Assembly, (from times to times meeting in a Closed Doors format called "Bureau"), and, according to some sources, not even clearly and promptly enough, afterwards, until several among them heard about in the Press. Several Critics appeared Upset also by the Fact that such a Meeting with Assad reportedly took place thanks to a Russian Military Airplane. Such Critics want for CoE Assembly's President to immediately Resign, in order for them to Appoint a Vice-President as acting Chairman-in-office for the Following Months, until a New President may be regularly Elected by CoE's Plenary Assembly, as normaly foreseen, on January 2018. Now this obviously raises Questions at least as far as COE's traditional and official pro-Peace stance and principles are concerned : Particularly "Dialogue" and "Political Discussions", instead of Violent and too often Deadly Armed Conflict, is, notoriously, routinely supported by the CoE, as a matter of General Principle. So that it shouldn't be so much the mere Fact of Meeting Assad, which makes problem, since the Quest for Peace in Syria should, normaly not only Excuse, but even Stimulate for such Moves, interpreted as Atempts to Help Poliical Dialogue, instead of the pursuit of Deadly Armed Conflict, should be at the Heart of CoE's Diplomacy. This Strange Issue hasn't, no more, any real relation to the Controversial circumstances of the Tragedy which reportedly Killed Dozens of People, including many Children, near the Islamist Rebel-held Syrian City of Idlib, at the Beginning of April 2017, for which some notoriously Accused the Syrian Army to have thrown a Deadly Chemical Gas, which is strictly Prohibited, while others replied that Syrian Airplanes had just hit a Factory of the Islamist Rebels/Terrorists stocking Chemical Gas used for Bombs in Syria and Iraq, whose dispersion may have provoked Deaths. A Brief Report reportedly presented by unnamed Security "Inteligence" to the White House for New US President Don Trump, (who, Shocked by the Horrible spectacle of Dead Kids, notoriously ordered a Massive Towhawk Missiles' strike againts a key Syrian Government Military Airport immediately), as published, Later-on, by "New York Times", does not seem so clear, nor sufficiently convincing, and has been rapidly Contested by various Critics throughout the World, including a Senior American Scientist, specialist and Professor at M.I.T., who replied by a Detailed, Facts-Based Counter-Report Denouncing many concrete Shortcomings, judged "Surprizing" and Unacceptable Errors or Ommissions. Nevertheless, that Tragedy was notoriously Exploited to Accuse, Slander and Strike against Syria even without real Proof (Comp. Supra), while, on the Contrary, the reported Mass Killing of More than 100 Civilians (and 2 Times More Children than the previous incident !), Traped and Massacrated by Islamist Terrorists inside Busses used for Exchange of Populations between isolated Villages from each side, just a few Days Later-on, did not, apparently, trigger protests among those same circles... But, at any case, that CoE-related, Controversial Meeting, had, reportedly, taken Place already Before April, (in fact on March 2017), so that the Idlib tragic incident was Totaly Unknown and Non-Existant at the Moment that Agramunt met Assad. And concerning the Different Point about, allegedly, Not Informing previously, and/or not suficiently or adequately even even afterwards, Agramunt reportedly Replied that he had simply Participated in a National Delegation of Spanish Senators invited by their Russian counterparts, and Not as the President of CoE's Assembly as such. - However, if you are elected by a Collective CoE's body in order to represent it as its President, then, you are Always expected to do so in any Political Meetings, at any circumstances, (except only Private dealings, f.ex. a Birthday Anniversary, etc), and, then, you have to Inform adequately and Timely the Assembly, told "Eurofora" CoE Assembly's President of the "Euro-Left" Group of MEPs, Dutch Senator Tom Cox, dismissing as irrelevant the Fact that CoE Assembly's Members - Contrary to EU Parliament's MEPs - are Also National Representatives of their Country's National Assembly or Senate, at the Same Time, i.e. holding a "Double" Mandate, in parallel. + Nevertheless, given also the Fact that the Next CoE Assembly's President (Comp. Supra) is expected to be (from January 2018) a Socialist, according to a Traditional Agreement among the Political Groups, while, on the Contrary, it's "Not Certain" yet who -and/or from Which Political Group - might be that Vice-President who could, Eventualy, replace the Christian-Democrat/EPP current President Agramunt, IF he Accepts, perhaps, to Resign immediately Now, (as Chairman Cox explained to "Eurofora"), then, obvious Questions about any possible Political Motivations, at least of Some among the Critics, emerge : - Independently of any eventual afterthought, of some, perhaps about Boosting War-Mongering and Blocking any Attempts to seek Dialogue for a Political Solution of the bloody Conflicts in Syria, (which, Obviously, canNot be Excluded a priori Entirely), recent Facts indicate that there Might be even More : >>> Indeed, as "Eurofora" learned Yesterday, by the President of CoE Assembly's Social Affairs Committee, a New, Important Report about the Highly Controversial issue of "Human Genetics", has just been Adopted by that Committee, on Tuesday, in Strasbourg, and is due to be Debated in Public for Final Adoption by Vote of CoE Assembly's Plenary Session of the Summer, "on June" 2017. ++ In Addition, also anOther Topical Report on BioEthics, about "Artificial Intelligence" New Technologies, has already been scheduled for Public Debate and Final Vote by the present CoE Assembly's Plenary "Spring 2017" Session, Tomorrow, Friday, April 28, in the Morning, after 10 a.m. But, Agramunt's surprizing immediate "Resignation" is reportedly demanded by Critics, already for even Earlier than that : I.e. at a "Bureau" Meeting, Tomorrow Morning, from 8.30 a.m.!... In pure Legal terms, the current President of the Assembly is Not Obliged to Resign, but an eventual "Lack of Confidence by the Assembly"s Majority (as Chairman Cox and Others said) might Push Hard, in real Practice. => So that an eventual political Elimination of the currently Elected ChristianDemocrat/EPP President of CoE's Assembly, Pedro Agramunt, could Abandon the Way to Handle 2 Highly Controversial Issues nowadays on "BioEthics" ("Artificial Intelligence" and "Human Genetics": Comp.Supra) to... 3 Socialist Rapporteurs (2 for "AI"e and 1 for Genetics), in Addition to, perhaps, even anOther Socialist (or Liberal, or Leftist, of RINO-Pseudo "Conservative") Vice-President for an "Interim" Acting Chairman-in-office to replace Agramunt, (Comp.Supra), Resultinng, may be at ... Four (4) Socialists (or Socialist-leaning) MEPs, with a quasi-Total Exclusion of any Important Player from the ChristianDemocrat/EPP Group ! As Other Experienced CoE's Officers had also told "Eurofora" earlier, at least that Second, "Human Genetics" Report seems to provoke Stronger and "Hotter" Debates in the Next Session of June, even More than Tomorrow's "ArtificialI " Draft. Thus, regarding at least Both these 2 "Hot" BioEthical Issues coming, and Peace or War-mongering or Peace-seeking in Syria, etc. (Comp. Supra), apparently, an eventualy Imposed "Resignation" of the incubent CoE Assembly's President, Experienced ChristianDemocrat/EPP Spanish MEP, Pedro Agramunt, immediately now, cumulates Too Much of Strange Factual"Coincidences", that an eventual Political Exploitation, Dangerous for Peace and/or Human Rights, does Not yet seem to be Totaly Excluded a priori... ...unless an adequate compromise Solution is found Early Tomorrow Morning (Comp.Supra). Views and Recommendations from the ELN Caucus Political events across Europe and beyond in 2016 gave Europeans much needed impetus to examine and engage with the issues threatening the security and defence of Europe from within and outwith the continent. Even though the sense of urgency has increased in parallel with the developing threats and dangers, the way forward remains unclear. Questions about the role of the two main security stakeholders in Europe, the European Union (EU) and NATO, have been at the forefront of policy discussions, alongside such issues as the division of labour between the two organisations and the various priorities of individual member states and Allies. To obtain a better understanding of the key dynamics, the European Leadership Network contacted some of its members former, present and emerging political, military, and diplomatic leaders from the Euro-Atlantic area to seek out their opinions about the future of the European defence project. The 45 respondents, the ELN Caucus, shared their views on the main actionable points under consideration since the publication of the EU Global Strategy, the complementary European Defence Action Plan and the EU-NATO declaration. The conclusions of the Caucus, presented in this report, reveal a wide diversity of opinion among Europeans on several issues: There is no common view on the greatest threats facing Europe; Disagreement persists over the level of ambition for EU-NATO relations and the meaning of EU strategic autonomy. At the same time, we found greater convergence of views on a number of topics: There is significant backing for the increases in national defence investment and closer collaboration on military-related research and development; The Caucus sends a clear message of support for better EU-NATO coordination; A clear majority supports the EU developing limited capabilities for external crisis management, while relying on NATO and national militaries for defence; and Strong support exists across the entire continent for Theresa Mays vision of a deep and special security and defence relationship between the UK and the EU after Brexit. The results of the Caucus confirm that there are no simple solutions for improving Europes security and defence. However, there is clear support for doing more, individually and collectively, and doing better within the already agreed parameters. 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. The BBC German Service was set up in 1938 at the time of the Munich crisis when another world war became increasingly likely. BBC broadcast information about Britains military setbacks to win hearts and minds in Germany during World War II The BBC transmitted news about Britains military setbacks during World War II to Germany as part of a sophisticated operation to win hearts and minds and combat Nazi propaganda, new research shows. The commitment to make the broadcasters German language service a trusted source of objective and independent information meant even defeats were truthfully reported, official archives have revealed. For instance, on 27 November 1942 the service reported on the bombing of Toulon by the Germans and the scuttling of the French fleet by Allied forces to avoid capture by the Nazis. The invasion of Norway was covered with similar attention to detail. On 6 April 1940, days before the invasion the BBC German Service accordingly told listeners that the German navy had sunk 52 Norwegian ships causing the death of 392 people. The BBC German Service was set up in 1938 at the time of the Munich crisis when another world war became increasingly likely. In spite of Nazi attempts to jam programmes and harshly punish listeners in Germany for tuning in to so-called enemy broadcasts, it soon became the most significant source of information for people living under Nazi rule. Dr Vike Martina Plock from the Department of English at the University of Exeter has been examining official records in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, which outline how the London-based service was run. At first, German-language broadcasting was limited, but the number of programmes transmitted to Germany grew dramatically during World War II to include news bulletins, features, political satire, songs and music as well as specialist programmes for the navy, for women, for the army or for workers. One show pitted Hitler against Hitler, playing recordings of his speeches highlighting how he regularly contradicted himself. In another feature a housewife with a broad Berlin or lower-class accent told listeners some home truths about everyday life in Germany. By using this character, BBC producers could subtly criticise Nazi leaders in a manner that was relevant to ordinary families in Germany. Later in the war, German PoWs could send greetings to their family and tell them they were safe. Although the broadcaster used a number of famous German intellectuals such as Alfred Kerr, the father of the childrens book author Judith Kerr, who were living in exile in Britain as feature writers and translators, the German news presenters were almost exclusively British. It was feared that the objectivity and neutrality of the programmes would be compromised if individuals who were known Nazi objectors or political refugees were given access to the BBC microphones and spoke directly to listeners in Germany. There is no way of knowing for sure how many people in Nazi Germany listened to the BBC German Service during the war, but German prisoners of war confirmed the popularity of programmes. The BBC also monitored reports in German newspapers and radio broadcasts that directly responded to BBC news bulletins and publicized reports about people who were prosecuted and punished for listening to enemy broadcasts. Dr Plock, whose research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, said: It is fascinating to see how the BBC provided the German public with accurate information during the war and thereby began to re-educate individuals who had been living, willingly or unwillingly, with twelve years of Nazi propaganda. To be effective in exposing Nazi propaganda as lies and teach German listeners to become responsible citizen of a peaceful, unified Europe, the BBC German Service had to first gain their trust. Offering impartial news was therefore very important, even if it meant broadcasting information about Britains military setbacks. Listeners who heard these news bulletins were inclined to believe in Britains superior military strength. If the Allies could openly admit defeats in the manner, it was believed, they must be extremely confident, convinced of their eventual victory over Nazi Germany. The service very effectively used humour and satire to undermine Nazi propaganda. The programmes were very sophisticated and archival research shows that a great deal of thought was put into their development and delivery. The BBC systematically set up other foreign-language services during World War II and by 1943 the broadcaster transmitted programmes in fifty-four languages. Germany also broadcast English-language programmes to the UK to undermine morale, including those presented by the notorious Lord Haw Haw. After the war ended, the first head of the BBC German Service, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, brother of the novelist Graham Greene, was sent to Germany to set up public service broadcasting in the British zone. While the BBC German Service discontinued its programmes in 1999, the BBCs commitment to truthful and objective news broadcasting remains one of the most significant legacies of the British occupation, fundamentally influencing post-war public service broadcasting in Germany. The number of people moving to work in New Zealand is not sustainable, it is claimed, as the country recorded yet another year of record levels of arrivals.In the 12 months to March 2027 some 129,500 overseas workers moved to New Zealand, a new annual record according to the data from Statistics New Zealand. Population statistics senior manager Peter Dolan said it was mainly due to the rising number of migrant arrivals to New Zealand while fewer people leaving also contributed to the overall increase.The data also shows that almost three quarters of all arrivals in the past five years were citizens from other countries, led by the UK and India, both with 10%, and China with 9%.Most of the arrivals were coming to work with 43,700 visas for employment granted, a rise of 5,100 while student visas as 23,900 were down by 3,800 and residency visas as 16,800 were up by 2,000.We've never had such numbers before. I don't think it's sustainable, the numbers are just too high, said Paul Spoonley, a sociologist and immigration expert from Massey University in Palmerston North.He had expected numbers to fall when changes were made which suspended parent visas and increased the points needed for other visas. Some new changes have just been announced including new salary thresholds meaning that skilled visa applicants will need to be earning a minimum of $49,000.Spoonley is calling for an informed debate on immigration and believes that such high levels are causing anxiety. He believes that the changes will adversely affect certain sectors where overseas workers are needed such as tourism, hospitality, healthcare and even education.There are also concerns that most of the newcomers settle in Auckland, the countrys biggest city and this is causing house prices to rise and stretching education and health services.New Zealand's economy is currently one of the fastest growing in the world with annual growth of around 3% in recent years and the country is relatively removed from the terrorism that is currently affecting many countries in Europe.Because of our relatively unique positive outlook, people just keep turning up. Our real challenge is responding to that growth and investing to support it, so that people can have the quality of life here that they come for, said New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English.There is unlikely to be a let up in number as the latest analysis from ASB Bank economists shows that they expect immigration levels to remain elevated for some time to come, putting New Zealand's population on track to reach five million in 2019, up from the current 4.7 million.The figures from Statistics New Zealand also show that visitor arrivals also reached a new high in the 12 months to March, up 9% year on year with 36% coming from Australia, 12% from China and 11% from the United States. WARSAW, Poland Poland has signed its first deal to purchase liquefied natural gas from a U.S. supplier, a step that will help the countrys efforts to cut its dependence on deliveries from Russia, officials said Thursday. The head of Polish gas giant PGNiG, Piotr Wozniak, called it a historic moment for the company which is gaining a new partner in LNG trade in North America and becoming a gateway that opens for U.S. gas in northern Europe. His deputy in charge of trade, Maciej Wozniak, said the one-time delivery will arrive at the Baltic Sea port of Swinoujscie in early June from the Sabine Pass terminal located on the border between Texas and Louisiana. It will be the first U.S. LNG delivery to northern Europe. Maciej Wozniak would not reveal the size of the delivery or the price of the with Houston-based Cheniere Energy Inc. He only said the price was good and attractive. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said the deal helps Poland cut its dependence on deliveries from Russia. The country has been seeking to reduce its reliance on Moscow, which has used fuel as a tool to pressure some countries in the region in the past. Among the steps was the opening last year of the Swinoujscie LNG port which is to supply Poland and others in the region. Poland also started importing gas from the Middle East, especially Qatar, and from Norway. The U.S. is rich in shale gas, which has made it a significant exporter of the fuel. Among others, it has been exporting to southern European nations like Spain and Turkey, but not yet to the north of the continent. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Heavy pounds the head that wears the crown of the Court of Insane Privilege after a night of Fiesta revelry. So Jeffrey James (AKA: King Anchovy LII) prepped Tuesday afternoon for his six-shows-over-three-nights run leading Cornyation by getting an intravenous infusion of electrolytes and B vitamins. The IV drip, administered by Jackie Bowers of Alamo IV, left James feeling really good, he said, even after doing a pair of opening night shows. Im 50 years old and was out until 2 in the morning, he said Wednesday. And yes, we did some drinking. But Im still feeling refreshed and have plenty of energy. The IV drips, similar to those used in hospitals and clinics, help keep the body hydrated, so it can more easily shake off a hangover from too much drinking, according to Bowers, who launched the company a year ago. When you use an IV, she explained, you speed the absorption rate, so instead of having a full stomach like when you drink (water), you get fully hydrated organs and muscles. Although Alamo IV is a year-round business, Bowers has been especially this week, hydrating Fiesta royalty, bartenders and others who are putting in long hours, eating poorly and are chronically dehydrated because theyre not drinking enough nonalcoholic fluids. Bowers said her clients include Rico Torres and Diego Galicia from the Mexican restaurant Mixtli, Spurs Jesus, bandleader Doc Watson of Jazz TX and Bohanans Prime Steaks and Seafood bar manager Jordan Corney. While some get their IV prophylactically before heading out to NIOSA, the Oyster Bake, Cornyation or any other alcohol-drenched Fiesta event others, eschewing the hair of the dog, come in the next day to speed their recovery. You come in with a hangover, and I guarantee that within 10 minutes youll be feeling 100 percent better, said Bowers. Youll get your day back. Corney took a seat at Bar du Mon Ami in Alamo Heights Wednesday for a 30-minute revival infusion to get himself ready for a busy Fiesta night. His last treatment was in January, during the San Antonio Cocktail Conferences four 16- to 18-hour days of classes and tasting events. It used to take me a full week to recover, he said Wednesday. But this year I had more energy, I made it to all the events I had to go to, on time, and I felt the least (expletive) when it was over than I ever felt before. Using IV fluids to prevent or treat hangovers isnt accepted medical practice, however, according to Dr. David Gude, chief medical officer for Texas MedClinic, who objects to the treatment because it seems to be encouraging bad behavior. Gude also notes that, as innocuous as getting an IV infusion might seem to anyone who has ever watched a TV medical drama, no medical treatment is risk-free. Yes, youre cleaning the skin and using a sterile solution, but theres no guarantee you wont get an infection, he said. Better to rehydrate orally by drinking fluids. In addition to stopping a hangover in its tracks, Bowers said IVs can also prevent migraine headaches and help athletes recover faster from strenuous workouts or competitions. Alamo IV offers infusions for $155 and B-12 shots for $20. New clients first must chat online with a physician who reviews their medical history and clears them for treatment. Medical clearances are good for one year. rmarini@express-news.net Twitter: @RichardMarini WASHINGTON President Donald Trump and his top national security advisers briefed senators Wednesday at the White House on what a senior aide called the very grave threat posed by North Korea, as the administration continued to develop a range of economic and military measures to pressure Pyongyang. Nothing is risk-free. This situation is not risk-free, the senior administration official told reporters in the White House briefing room as the meeting with the senators was underway at a secured location next door at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. But the team has done everything we can try to anticipate reactions and mitigate the risk. Trump offered to play host to the meeting open to all 100 senators, who arrived on a large white bus as a courtesy after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked for the briefing in the wake of increased tension on the Korean Peninsula, officials said. The meeting came as the U.S. military had redirected the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group toward the region in response to a failed North Korean missile test last week. Senators departing the briefing expressed frustration that the administration shared few details of its current policy on North Korea and its plans to deal with that country as it continues developing its nuclear weapons program. Theyre trying to do the right thing, said one Republican senator, but members of both parties left frustrated that they were given very few details about what has changed. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence briefly addressed the senators at the beginning of the meeting. When the pair left, senators heard from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, national intelligence director Daniel Coats and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a joint statement, Tillerson, Mattis and Coats called North Koreas pursuit of nuclear weapons an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority. They said Trumps approach aimed to tighten economic sanctions and pursue diplomatic measures with allies and partners. The goal is to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to a path of dialogue toward peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, they said. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies. The Republican senator said that the basic gist of it at the beginning was that were going to get more aggressive, weve waited and theyve continued to be bad actors. Weve reached a point where things are getting pretty dire and getting to the point where weve got to get more aggressive. From then on, what we all wanted to know is, what does that mean? the senator added. What is it that we should be looking for as the trigger that something is about to happen and that wed end up taking some kind of kinetic action? Thats where things got a little elliptical. Several senators said that while the briefing was sobering, it was not revelatory. There was very little, if anything new, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. I remain mystified about why the entire Senate had to be taken over to the White House rather than conducting it here. Earlier in the day, the top U.S. military officer in the Pacific said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is clearly in a position to threaten Hawaii today with a ballistic missile attack and that the Pentagon should consider adding new ballistic missile interceptors and defensive radar there to counter that possibility. Adm. Harry Harris, the chief of U.S. Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee there are already sufficient ballistic missile interceptors protecting the United States at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But he added there is a possibility that not every missile would be stopped in an attack. Hawaii, about 2,500 miles to Californias southwest, could benefit from having new equipment to protect itself, he said. I believe that our ballistic missile architecture is sufficient to protect Hawaii today, but it can be overwhelmed, Harris said. Somewhere, we would have to make a decision about which missiles to take out, and thats a hard decision. Harris said that the United States wants to bring the North Korean leader to his senses, but not to his knees and is unclear on whether North Korea would launch a preemptive attack against the United States, South Korea or other allies. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The general ran his hand over the horses charcoal-black mane, which was clipped short with military precision. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan grew up on horseback, but he never rode horses as large as Preston, an 11-year-old Percheron whose muscle-bound legs cart the funeral caissons at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Buchanan will ride Preston in Fridays Battle of Flowers Parade, making him the first general on horseback in the 126-year-old event since Gen. John Pershing in 1917, a festival spokesman said. Since February, Buchanan has been training to ride a horse like Preston. Twice a week, he comes to the stables at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, where eight soldiers of the Caisson Section wearing cowboy hats and Wrangler jeans prep the horses for military funerals and ceremonies. Buchanan learned how to ride on quarter horses, which are much smaller than Percherons, which typically stand more than 6 feet tall and weigh more than a ton. The draft horses were originally bred to serve in war. Much of the generals training meant learning how to lead a creature as big and independent as Preston, said his trainer, Jon Deely. He and his crew in the Caisson Section have done thousands of funeral missions, sometimes two or three a day. A horse will figure you out in a couple minutes, what you know and what you dont know, and theyll take advantage of you, Deely said. Youre in control. Once you lose that control, someones gonna get hurt. At one point, Preston, his lips quivering, began chomping at another horse, in an effort to establish dominance. Buchanan placed one hand on the horses head to calm it while his other hand gripped the rope pulling Preston away. Ive got to respect what he wants as well, Buchanan said. When he does what Im asking, Ive got to give him some freedom back. Buchanan mounted Preston and strode out for a few laps among the stables. A few puckered sounds from his lips and a nudge from his heels, and the horse ambled forward. A soft woah, and Preston skidded to a stop. Im not going to overpower a guy like that, said Buchanan, who took command of U.S. Army North in August. So what Ive got to do is get him to want to follow me. Preston will trot through 15,000 paper blossoms in Fridays parade. Buchanan will be joined by his wife, Laura, who will ride Gates, another Percheron in the Caisson Section and also named after one of the 15 sergeants major of the Army. Parade spokesman John Bloodsworth III said that in all the records that I have, there has never been a general that has ridden a horse in the parade since Pershing was grand marshal. Pershings appearance at the parade came after his excursion into Mexico in search of Pancho Villa and before his journey to Europe to command U.S. troops in World War I. Buchanan, who lives in Pershings old home, will metaphorically sit in Pershings saddle a century later. It was a chance, the low-key general said, to do something thats kinda historic. jlawrence@express-news.net Along with long rifles that gave Alamo defenders more long-range accuracy than muskets carried by a much larger Mexican force, the former mission also was equipped with 21 mounted cannons that played a key role in the 13-day siege and battle for Texas independence in 1836. Today, several cannons believed to have been fired during the siege, as delegates gathered 100 miles to the east to declare independence from Mexico, are on display at the state-owned Alamo complex. One was reportedly melted decades later into a bell for a nearby church downtown. Another was sent to Boston and recast into replicas. In books and even movies that have retold the tale of the famous Alamo siege, the firing of cannons on either side punctuated dramatic moments during the siege and were used to torment the opposition often with deadly results. The siege began with a cannon shot, fired under orders from Alamo commander William Barret Travis, across the river toward the village of San Antonio de Bejar, in response to a red flag of no quarter over San Fernando Church, author Stephen L. Hardin wrote in his book, Texian Iliad. Travis informed the enemy courier that a response would be forthcoming. And it was a single shot hurled from the eighteen-pounder. There could be no mistaking the meaning of such a succinct reply, Hardin wrote. The next day, in his famous Victory or Death letter, Travis himself wrote, I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. On the eve of the early morning battle, ending in the deaths at least 189 known Alamo defenders, the Texian and Tejanos would notice a decrease in shelling from the Mexican troops, who had gradually moved their cannons closer each day, coming within 200 yards of the mission fortress, Walter Lord recounted in A Time to Stand. The Mexican fire tapered off sharply in the late afternoon, and at 5 p.m. the Texans puzzled over the sight of several columns of troops filing out of the town, Lord wrote. William R. Chemerka, a New Jersey resident and founder of the Alamo Society, an international group of Alamo enthusiasts, said he marvels at the number of cannons the defenders had, and how hard it must have been to defend the 3-acre compound, even with estimates there could have been up to 250 men or more inside the walls, including up to 60 not listed on muster rolls. The most interesting thing about it is the number of guns that they had, the minimum number of men needed to fire them, and as a result the few number of riflemen there must have been at the Alamo, Chemerka said. It took at least four men to load and fire, or three in an emergency, leaving up to 84 men on cannons when the Alamo was under attack, he said. The most definitive source today on use of the Alamo cannons in the siege and battle is The Illustrated Alamo 1836, by Georgia artist Mark Lemon, Chemerka said. The best current research on how the cannons got to the Alamo and where they are now has been done by James Woodrick of Austin, author of Cannons of the Texas Revolution, Chemerka added. Woodrick, who presented his work at the Alamo Societys annual symposium in March, wrote in a recent article in the groups newsletter that the famous iron eighteen-pounder used to deliver the defiant opening volley of the siege and denoted by the weight of the ball or canister it typically fired arrived in San Antonio in late 1835, likely after the Texans won the Battle of Bejar, seizing the Alamo in a Mexican surrender. By the end of December, there were 32 cannons in San Antonio in the Texans possession. Eight soon ended up in Goliad or Gonzales. Three others were not mounted at the Alamo for the siege and battle, according to Woodrick. In 1852, 13 cannons were found near todays Houston and Alamo streets, as workmen dug a trench for a fence on property owned by Samuel Augustus Maverick, a prominent businessman and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. All of them had been rendered inoperable, likely by Mexican troops who drove a spike into the touch hole at the rear of the gun, used to ignite it. They also typically broke off the cascabel, a rear protruding knob, and short side axles, known as trunnions, used to aim the weapon. In 1858, the celebrated eighteen-pound cannon was unearthed, near its 1836 location at the southwest corner of the Alamo compound, and was moved around 1870 to San Pedro Park, where it was on public display at least until 1917, Woodrick wrote in his book. Some have speculated that it was melted down as scrap iron in World War I, or buried in the park. Five more cannons were initially discovered during excavation for an office building in 1889, just east of the 1852 site. In the mid-1880s, two swivel guns were found in the yard of a residence in the area of todays Emily Morgan Hotel. Alamo cannons on outdoor display today at the battle site include an iron sixteen-pounder, measuring more than 8 feet; an iron twelve-pound gunade; and an iron four-pounder and two iron three-pounders among the 13 guns found in 1852, according to Woodrick. Two identical iron nine-pounders are on display in La Villita. Another one is owned by local businessman B.J. Red McCombs. One of four bronze guns found in 1852, possibly a six-pounder, was donated by Mary Maverick in 1874 to St. Marks Episcopal Church, then recast as a bell, weighing 526 pounds, that still hangs in the church belfry, according to Woodrick. Another of the bronze guns found on the Maverick property was sent to Boston and turned into three replicas. In 2010, the San Antonio Express-News reported the return to the Alamo of a four-pound bronze cannon, also found on the Maverick site. It had been sent in the 1880s to Philadelphia as debt payment, and displayed for decades as the Alamo cannon on the front yard of a family estate, according to news archives. Collector J.P. Bryan of Houston bought the nearly 400-pound piece in 1986 and shipped it to Texas. Bryan later sold the cannon at an auction to John Alexander McRae, who kept it on his family farm north of Dallas. After McRae died in 2000, Alamo researcher Rick Range of Dallas discovered the cannon. Sue McRae Stover, in keeping with her fathers wishes, donated it to the Alamo. The San Jacinto Battleground Conservancy raised $5,000 to restore the cannon, which had been badly weathered and oxidized. With services donated by Texas A&M Universitys Conservation Research Laboratory, which treated the cannon for two years in a vat of base solution, and the labor and support of volunteers, it was returned to the Alamo. The cannon, bearing a Spanish royal crest, was dedicated in a 2015 ceremony at the Texas shrine. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate LAREDO The FBI carried out raids across the state Wednesday, including at the San Antonio offices of a major engineering firm, as part of a public corruption probe centered on Webb County and its seat, Laredo. The investigation appears to focus on Dannenbaum Engineering, a firm that has managed a number of major public works projects across South Texas. The searches shut down business at Laredos City Hall, as employees were told to leave their work stations. Along with City Hall, agents searched three other municipal buildings, four county offices, including those of Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales, and the offices of Dannenbaum Engineering in San Antonio, Laredo, Houston and McAllen. In Laredo, agents removed the front door of Dannenbaums office. We are aware of multiple Webb County and city of Laredo offices that have been visited by federal authorities, Canales said in a statement. We have limited information at this time but will cooperate in the investigation if necessary. In the meantime, we will continue working for our hardworking community residents of Precinct 4. In an emailed statement, Dannenbaum Engineerings Houston lawyer, Joel Androphy, said: Dannenbaum Engineering, one of the states premier firms for infrastructure planning and design, is cooperating with federal authorities regarding government requests for information. Company management is investigating the basis of the government requests. We are uncertain whether the inquiry is focused on the companys activities or those of its business competitors. We intend to comment further when appropriate. FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee would not give details about the bureaus investigations but confirmed the locations where agents served search warrants. No one was arrested as part of the raids, Lee said. While we cant discuss the nature of the work we are doing, there is no public safety threat at the locations where we are present, she wrote in an email. The public buildings in the Laredo area were not being evacuated, as some concerned citizens may have reported; rather, employees working in certain areas were asked to leave. Standing outside the courthouse Wednesday morning, Webb County Commissioner John Galo said the raids did not surprise him. Corruption in Webb County has been going on for too long, he said. Dannenbaum, which served as the project manager for construction of the border fence in Hidalgo County 10 years ago and recently put forward a $378.9 million proposal for building additional walls on the countys flood control levees, has received several major contracts in the Laredo area, including joint road projects between Laredo and Webb counties. On Wednesday, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina said the engineering firm consults with the county on any projects involving Loop 20, which bypasses the city to the east. Both the county and the city have funded expansions of the road in recent years. Dannenbaum is involved in planning a road project connecting Interstate 35 to an industrial area north of Laredo. In 2014, Mayor Pete Saenz protested a $1 million contract to design a water pipeline that was part of the road project. Saenz said the city selected Dannenbaum without posting a request for others to submit their proposals for the design of a 24-inch water line. Saenz tried exercising his veto power to rescind a prior City Council action to award the contract to Dannenbaum, but a majority of council members voted to overrule his veto. Council members agreed, however, to direct the internal auditor to prepare a report concerning contracts awarded to engineering/architectural firms over the past five years. It is embarrassing, but we welcome this investigation, Saenz said Wednesday afternoon. Obviously, theres issues, possibly, with the entire structure of the city, since the FBI is investigating the various departments. Executives at Dannenbaum and their family members have donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of San Antonio mayoral candidates Ivy Taylor and Ron Nirenberg since last summer, campaign filings show. James Dannenbaum, president and CEO of Dannenbaum Engineering, and his wife, Shirley, each donated $1,000 to Taylor last fall. Five other Dannenbaum executives gave a total of $2,500 to Nirenberg in August. James Dannenbaum is on the board of directors of the Remember the Alamo Foundation, a nonprofit set up in 2015 to raise money for the Alamo, along with Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and prominent San Antonio businessmen Gene Powell of the Powell Companies development firm, B.J. Red McCombs of McCombs Enterprises and Lew Moorman, former president of Rackspace. In 2007, then-Gov. Rick Perry appointed Dannenbaum to a six-year term on the University of Texas System board of regents. Bexar County has hired Dannenbaum Engineering to work on several infrastructure projects during the past few years, according to its website. In 2012, the company filed a conflict of interest questionnaire with the city of San Antonio, indicating that it was doing business with the city. jbuch@express-news.net Twitter: @jlbuch Staff Writer Richard Webner contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON President Donald Trump started his campaign in 2015 with a warning about rapists and other criminals crossing the border: When Mexico sends its people, he said, theyre not sending their best. On Wednesday he made good on a promise he made to a Houston couple last year when they sought his help to aid the victims of criminals living in the U.S. illegally. Tim Lyng and wife Maria Espinoza, founders of the Houston-based Remembrance Project, looked on as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced the launch of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), billed as an office to assist victims of criminal aliens. A host of immigrant-rights organizations immediately denounced the project as a dangerous effort to stigmatize immigrants as criminals to justify the administrations aggressive new deportation policies, which have swept up a growing number of immigrants with no criminal records. While the Trump initiative is aimed nationwide, the launch has deep roots in Houston, where it could have future political ramifications. Espinoza, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant who came the right way, is considering another Republican primary challenge to Houston U.S. Rep. John Culberson, architect of Trumps sanctuary cities crackdown that was blocked Tuesday by a federal judge. Its still there, Espinoza said of a potential sequel to her unsuccessful 2016 run. So, well just see what happens. In a three-way race, she came in third with nearly 18 percent of the vote. Kelly, who a week ago said critics of Trumps forceful immigration policies should shut up and get behind law enforcement, used Wednesdays launch to blast what he called the past Obama administrations politically correct approach to public safety. The rollout came as the Trump administration has struggled to get Congress to appropriate money for the massive border wall he promised during his campaign. Amid growing opposition among administration critics to Trumps hard line on border security and immigration, Kelly sought to put a humanitarian face on the new initiative for crime victims. Were giving people who were victimized by illegal aliens, for the first time, a voice of their own, Kelly said. Civil rights activists argue that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans and that the VOICE initiative has more to do with the nativist theme of Trumps presidential campaign than any humanitarian impulse. It couldnt be more obnoxious, said Frank Sharry, executive director of Americas Voice Education Fund. Its the kind of thing you see in totalitarian societies when theyre trying to define a group in order to set up further persecution. Other critics termed it an effort to scapegoat immigrants by playing on natural human sympathy. While we hold sympathy for all victims of crime and their families, especially when theres been a loss of life, the agenda of the VOICE office established by President Trump is unduly selective in its focus, misleading in its framing of information, and, sadly, designed to stir up animus against the immigrant population, said Ronald Newman, director of strategic initiatives for the American Civil Liberties Union. Giving it a humanitarian frame is giving it too much credit. Courtesy A purported regional leader of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club has been arrested on federal drug charges after San Antonio police found more than a kilogram of methamphetamines, and some cocaine, in his West Side home this week. Eddie Martinez, 62, who is also known as Eddie Flames, is known to police as the president of the Bandidos Northwest San Antonio chapter, according to a criminal complaint affidavit filed in federal court. According to numbers compiled and published by Agri-Pulse, the Washington, D.C.-based ag news service, the top bosses at ag-centered commodity groups and federally-chartered checkoff agencies had far better recent years than the farmers and ranchers they claim to serve. For example, Agri-Pulses annual compensation report published last September noted that Steve Censky, chief executive officer of the American Soybean Association, received $341,663 in total compensation in 2015. If that sounds like a lot of dough for a commodity organization to shell out for a hired hand, its peanuts compared to other soybean group CEOs. Jim Sutter, the chief of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, took home $435,944 in total compensation in 2014, the latest available numbers. John Becherer, the CEO of the United Soybean Board, the operational arm of the mandatory, non-refundable soybean checkoff, did even better; he earned $464,208 in 2015. The bean bosses, however, were pikers compared to the livestock boys. For instance, in 2014, Tom Gallagher, CEO of Dairy Management, the operating structure over most of the dairy checkoff, was paid $618,910 in salary alone. Salaries By contrast, Polly Ruhland, boss at the beef checkoffs Cattlemens Beef Promotion and Research Board, earned a skinny $287,500 in 2015. Meanwhile, the former boss of the almost totally checkoff-dependent National Cattlemens Beef Association (NCBA), Forrest Roberts, took home nearly twice as much as Ruhland, $548,993, in total compensation in 2014, the year before he rode off into a comfortable sunset. Also, Phil Seng, the longtime president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, which receives hefty funding from several livestock checkoffs, earned $461,630 in total pay that same year. By contrast, Wayne Pacelle, the top dog at Humane Society of the U.S. that most livestock groups love to kick, earned but $425,283 in 2015. The pork checkoffs National Pork Board paid Bill Even, its new CEO, $400,000 in total 2016 compensation last year even though, as Agri-Pulse reported, he worked but a partial year. And, two years ago again, the latest data available Neil Dierks, CEO of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), received $304,384 in total compensation. Similar story If all these commodity and checkoff organizations, titles, and salaries appear the same, its only because these groups structure, pay, and locations have grown to be oddly similar. For example, it could be just an interesting coincidence that the National Pork Board (the checkoff) and porks most powerful lobbying group, the NPPC, are located just two miles or six minutes by car apart on the western edge of Des Moines. It could be coincidence, right? Then again, when you Google NPPC, you discover that the group is Based in Washington, D.C., not Iowa. Reinforcing that confusion, NPPCs Facebook and Twitter profiles list Washington, D.C. as its headquarters, not metro Des Moines. The pork boys arent the only neighborly ag groups in America. The United Soybean Board (the checkoff) is located just one floor from one of its key contractors, the U.S. Soybean Export Council, in the same suburban St. Louis, MO office building. The cowboys are only slightly different. The beef checkoffs office, in Centennial, Colorado is separated from its largest contractor, the NCBA, by one street. Google maps estimates the walk between the two groups offices at a barnyard-ambling three minutes or 175 yards and thats if you take the long way, the sidewalks, and not the backyard-to-backyard lawn. Declining salaries At one time, coincidences like these mattered. Now, however, todays cross-pollination of mandatory commodity checkoffs, with voluntary commodity groups, often works more to promote each others livelihood and six-figure staff salaries than your livelihood and declining salaries. The proof is in the numbers. As CEO compensation continues to climb upward, noted the headline on the Agri-Pulse compensation report, U.S. net farm income continued to tumble from $124 billion in 2013 to a forecasted $62 billion in 2017. Thats a 50 percent crash; just to put a number on it. I must again open with an apology for lack of recent columns, but medical problems and other things here at home have absorbed a lot of my time and energy. I decided I would reprise some earlier work on the steam engine, a form of which is the star of most of our shows. Very early years The history of steam engines as we know them begins in the mid-1600s, which appears to be an interesting period both politically and scientifically. The scientists of the day Englishman Isaac Newton; Denis Papin, French Huguenot; Christiaan Huygens, Dutch; Rene Descartes, French mathematician; Robert Boyle, English scientist; and the Italian Galileo seemed to communicate a lot with each other and travel freely to each others countries. Hugyens seems to have proposed the cylinder and piston idea, which led to the production of such a device in 1690 by Papin, and soon after on a workable scale by Thomas Newcomen in England as a mine pump. Papin, who lived and worked mostly in Germany and England, also built a steam digester, which was a type of pressure cooker, and he gets credit for the invention of the safety valve. Giant leap At this point, we take a great leap to the development of the steam engine as we know it, with the invention of the crankshaft, valving setups, and James Watts double-acting cylinder. Newcomens engine or pump was a walking beam structure, slow and massive, often six strokes a minute. Its motive force was atmospheric air pressure with the steam creating a partial vacuum under the piston by condensation. It was massively inefficient, but it did the job required, so was a copied success. Cheap coal was a big factor in its success. Thank you, James Watt. Perhaps the biggest contribution the engine made was when a model given to James Watt failed to perform. Watt must have had good powers of observation and an analytical mind and was among the forefront of those who were coming to understand the true nature of heat as energy. He diagnosed the problem as the need to alternately heat, then cool, the cylinder and invented the separate condenser a separate cold cylinder connected by a valve to the hot or power cylinder. This saved enormous amounts of the heat needed, but they were still using only two or three pounds steam pressure. I have never read what caused Watt to decry higher pressures, but perhaps an unrecorded accident was involved. Certainly, lots of tragic failures happened. Someone else had a patent on the simple crank, so Watts solution was the sun and planet gear arrangement. He also closed the top of the cylinder so the steam pushed the piston both ways, getting something like double the work from the machinery. The great improvement in efficiency and saving of coal allowed the Watt design to drive Newcomen engines out of the market. His business partner, Matthew Boulton helped to set up to manufacture and install engines. Their success is probably one reason Watt is so well remembered today as the primary inventor of the steam engine. Next steps Enter two engineers who used higher pressures of the order of 50 PSI the Englishman Richard Trevithick and the American millwright Oliver Evans. It appears that they had correspondence, but not enough of it survives to credit the correct inventor for some of their ideas. Both made engines powerful enough and small enough to be portable, in carriages for Trevithick and boats for Evans. Now we are up to the point that steam power could be applied to most any field where a prime mover was needed, including agriculture. Single cylinder machines mounted on their own boiler were put on wheels and made portable. As they got bigger and heavier, the idea of making them self-moving gave rise to our favorite toy the steam traction engine. Actually, Trevithick built a couple self-propelling carriages, including one on rails, but they were not agricultural machines and their development was a dead end. Amphibious dredge Evans contribution was a self-propelled steam dredge he called Orukter Amphilobus. It was truly amphibious, as it moved on the street and launched itself into the river and kept on going. It was also a dead-end project, though some of Evans steamboats traveled some of the rivers around Pittsburgh. Since the technology was new, at least one blew a boiler because the operator didnt know he had to keep enough water in the boiler. Some barn steam engines were used in England for stationary threshing, but the portable engine was a later development in the mid-1800s when early threshers were also on wheels. Some early attempts at self-propulsion involved chain drive, but it was rarely a great success and soon gear arrangements were being designed. Short-lived designs One early setup was a bevel gear on the crankshaft driving a slanting shaft to the rear wheels. It was built by license by Russell, Aultman-Taylor and others. Russell appears to have used it for only a couple years, but Aultman-Taylor used it for quite a few years and some of them are still around at shows. Regular gear and clutch arrangements soon became the normal setup and were built roughly from 1890 to 1925. Most traction engines depended on the boiler as the frame for all the machinery, but a few like Frick had an actual frame separate from the boiler. Also, the double under-mounted engines like Avery and Twentieth Century had frames as the boiler was on top. Odd man out Most companies had their specialty or oddity. For instance, Huber engines always used return flue boilers and most other companies like Minneapolis, Russell, Avery and a few more made some return flue engines along with standard style. It seems strange to me, but in England, it appears no traction engines were built that way even though large Cornish and Lancaster boilers with as many as three tubular furnaces were common in factories and larger ships. A few traction engines and numerous small tandem rollers used vertical boilers with fire tubes, but they had to be handled carefully to keep water from rising into the engine. A couple oddities arise here, namely Westinghouse, with a cross water tube boiler very similar in construction to the boilers in Sentinel steam lorries or trucks in England built by Alley & McKlellen. Engine features Now we need to talk about the actual mechanical features of the engines. We have mentioned single cylinder engines as being the most common type, their only drawback being the dead centers at each end of the stroke. It doesnt matter how much pressure the boiler sends to the cylinder, if there is no angularity to the crankshaft to cause torque or turning force it will not run. This is most commonly remedied by using two cylinders working on cranks at 90 degrees to each other so that when one is on dead center the other one is at maximum torque position. Plain D slide valves are the most common, but with higher steam pressures they consume an excessive amount of power to run the valve. This is mostly taken care of by using some sort of balanced valve which takes some of the pressure off the back of the D. The ultimate answer here is the piston valve where the D becomes a spool and there is no unbalanced pressure on the valve at all. But they are more complicated to make and machine so a lot of plain valves were used right up to the end. In the USA, only Reeves advertised the compound style of engine where a small high-pressure cylinder exhausts in a larger low-pressure cylinder double expansion gets more work out of the steam. Cross compounds Cross compound engines had the cylinders parallel to each other, but Port Huron, Russell and Minneapolis and a few others used tandem compounds with both pistons on one rod, one ahead of the other. Cross compounds were common in England and Europe where efficiency was more important. They are easy to spot on films showing two different diameter cylinder heads or covers. Most of the British companies made them, along with singles. A different development here was Burrells single crank compound, which was accomplished by connecting both piston rods to one crosshead casting from which a single connecting rod goes to the crankshaft. We are all in it together, even though we have separate businesses we are still all there for each other. It is an exciting time for WA and the State is just learning the full potential of what it can be as a beef producing State, in the pastoral region. The result is that our hybrids in each herbicide tolerance group continue to demonstrate some of the highest adult resistance ratings possible in the industry, and this is a major credit to our diligent and focused research team. Those that are thinking outside the box and going that extra mile for their client and the wool industry are the ones that, in my experience, have been rewarded through this award, Mr Tilbrook said. 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 In an effort to reduce the lines at the Prince William landfill and compost facility, now that both are closed on Sundays, the county is encouraging residents who regularly visit such faciliti De Rijp, March 1654 Midnight Blue The funeral was a week ago and I still feel more relieved than anything else. I know thats indefen-sible, that I should be grieving, but its impossible. I stand with my arms folded, gazing out of the top half of the kitchen door at the fields and meadows surrounding the farm, but dont really see them. It should never have come to this. Looking back, I cant understand what came over me that night. For years Id thought of Govert as just another man from the village, not someone I paid any particular attention to. I never gave him much thought at all. Not that he wasnt an attractive man, in a certain way he was. The first time I noticed him was at the village fair, when he pulled me up to dance and held me to him. Id been drinking, of course I had been drinking, but not so much that I couldnt hear his heavy breathing or feel his body pressing against mine, his muscular arms clasping me so tentatively. With every turn our hips brushed and the grip with which he steered me through the other dancing couples tightened. It was an exciting feeling. I realised he was in love with me. The off-putting way he stared at me when- ever we passed one another, with that furrowed brow of his, had been an expression of desire rather than disap- proval. Did I feel flattered by his attention? Had I turned down too many potential suitors in the hope of something better? Was I afraid of being a spinster all my days? Or was I in love at that moment? When he took my hand in his and led me outside to a quiet corner of the orchard I didnt protest. Govert was happy when I finally told him, four months later, that I was pregnant, all set to marry me and start a family. As a widower of around forty and not without means, he was a fair prospect, even if he wasnt what Id pictured. Not that there was much choice. One moment of madness at the fair, one moment of total lunacy, and my future was set. Gone was the chance to someday leave the village and begin a new life, gone were my dreams. The worst thing was that I wondered what Id even seen in him that night. Whatever it had been, the next morning it was gone too. We were married a month later, and six weeks after that my pregnancy ended in a premature birth. The child, a boy, was stillborn. That was over a year ago too. And now Govert himself is lying beneath the cold, dark earth. The only mirror in the house is turned to the wall and the shutters have been closed for weeks. Today Im opening them again. I let the morning light stream in with a feeling of utter pleasure. The living room, which was packed with visitors for days, is eerily quiet. Ive lived in De Rijp all my life, and the support of relatives, neighbours and friends is heart-warming. My in-laws were notably absent. They probably find it hard to accept that Im about to inherit all of Goverts property after one year of marriage. Its understandable, but theres nothing I can do about it. And God knows I earned that inheritance. I allow my gaze to wander around the room, from the round table next to the window to the fireplace and the furniture I painted myself. Sunlight falls on the flagstone floor and brings a little warmth. Not much, its only the beginning of March. The smoke drifts along the beams hung with sausages and bacon and up into the loft, which is still half full of winter stores. Its strange to have the house to myself, but I have no time to take it in. Theres work to be done and now that Goverts gone theres even more than usual. Although I have a maid and a farmhand, theres plenty left for me to do. Every days the same. I milk the cows, feed the pigs and chickens, tend the vegetable patch, churn the butter and make the cheese. I use the remaining time to wash and mend clothes, spin and weave and, very occasionally, to paint. Now and then, when I glance at the shiny surface of a copper kettle, I catch a glimpse of my mother, her braided hair under a white cap. Shes always busy, always tired. Im twenty-five but I feel much older. Just keep going, I think as I head to the barn to check on the animals. The mourning period is only six weeks, not so long. Jacob, the farmhand, has already started the milking. He greets me with a slight tilt of his chin. I nod by way of an answer. I might be able to go and work for Abraham Goen, he says as I sit down on my stool. Thats good. Now its only Jannet who has to find a job. Itll all work out. If theres nothing for her here, shell find something in Graft. When are you leaving? Jacob asks. As soon as everythings sold. The auctions next week. Jacob nods. Jannet would like to take the churn. Then she can make her own butter. I cant give it to her. Ive promised it to my mother. Oh. Thats a shame. Jacob pulls the full pail out from under the cow and stands up. The way he stands there makes me think he has something else to say, and I look at him expectantly. About the boss . . . Yes? His brothers been telling tales around the village. I stop milking. What kind of tales? He hesitates. What is it, Jacob? I say, a little too sharply, sounding impatient. I think you know, he says, and walks away. Yesterday I made buttermilk curds. Today, for lunch, I smear some of the sour leftovers onto a slice of rye bread. Jacob and Jannet are sitting at the table too. We dont say much, all three of us are deep in thought. After the meal, I leave the work to them. I pull on a pair of clogs and set off along the dyke towards De Rijp. The farm backs onto the circular canal around the Beemster polder, which is surrounded by marshy lowlands. My parents farm is on the far side of the village, and the quickest way there is to walk through it. I walk along Kralingergracht and onto the main street, where the shabby buildings give way to grand homes with green and red painted gables. Closer to the centre of the village there are even a few stone houses with stepped gables, which look like theyve been left here by accident. On the way, I say hello to people I know, who reply somewhat reluctantly. Are they avoiding me? Are people staring at me? By the time I get to the Kleine Dam and the bustle around the weighing-house, I can no longer dismiss my concerns. People are throwing curious glances my way and whispering behind my back. Only one person comes up to ask how I am and whether its true that Im leaving. The people here are proud of their village, their fami- lies have lived here for generations. Leaving is unheard of, practically a betrayal. But the villagers always thought I was a bit odd, so my plans should come as no surprise. Are you getting rid of that dresser as well? The one you painted so nicely? says Sybrigh the wholesaler. Id be happy to take that off your hands. The auctions next week, I answer, and keep on walking with an apologetic smile. I turn into narrow Church Street and leave the village. I can see my parents farm in the distance. When I reach the muddy track that will take me there, I quicken my pace. Mart was just here. My mother is rinsing out milk churns under the pump. In the pale winter light her face looks thin and old, and when she straightens she presses a hand to her back. He came to speak to you but he was yelling so much that I sent him away. I grab a milk churn and shove it under the pump. Hed heard you were leaving. He was furious, Catrin. Why? Isnt that up to me? Of course, but now? So soon after the funeral? Lots of people find it strange. Youve got a farm, cattle, everything, and its all yours now. Men are lining up for you. Take Gerrit, if you got together youd both be rich. Im moving to the city. To go and work as a housekeeper. Even though here youre completely free. I sigh. Weve been over this so many times, Mother. Im not planning to be a housekeeper forever. I want to save up, remarry and make a new life in town. Yes, I suppose that is what youve always wanted. As a little girl, you were always desperate to come along when we took the cheese to market. I never understood why; the others werent like that. Four hours on a barge to get to town and another four back. Crying because I wanted to stay. We look at each other and smile. Well, you should do what you want to do. Youre not a little girl any more, I cant stop you, my mother says after a short pause. Its just . . . In the silence that follows, I study her expression. What is it? People are talking. People in villages always talk, thats another reason I want to leave. Ive had more than enough of all the gossiping and meddling. A look of resignation appears on my mothers face. Ill miss you, she says. But maybe it is better that you go. by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Jude Law will "meet J.K. Rowling" to discuss his role as Dumbledore in 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2'. Jude Law The 44-year-old actor has been cast as the young version of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the sequel to the 'Harry Potter' spin-off, and has said he wants to meet with the author - who penned the 'Harry Potter' series - to talk about her "vision" for the character before he gets into costume. Speaking to BBC London, Jude said: "My first port of call I hope is to meet J.K. Rowling and to talk exactly about that and who [Dumbledore] is and who she wants him to be and learn a little bit more about her vision of this great man as a young man." Jude was announced for the role - which was played by the late Richard Harris and then later by Michael Gambon in the original film series - last month, after director David Yates dubbed him as a "phenomenally talented actor". He said: "Jude Law is a phenomenally talented actor whose work I have long admired, and I'm looking forward to finally having the opportunity to work with him. I know he will brilliantly capture all the unexpected facets of Albus Dumbledore as J.K. Rowling reveals this very different time in his life." Jude will appear alongside Eddie Redmayne, who plays lead role Newt Scamander, Johnny Depp as dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, and Zoe Kravitz as Leta Lestrange. Also recently rumoured to be joining the cast is 'Glue' actor Callum Turner, who is believed to be playing Newt's brother Theseus Scamander. Little else is known about the film, which is the second out of five planned movies, but it was revealed it will be based in Paris. The films follow Magizoologist Newt, who travels the world protecting endangered magical creatures and to document them. 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2' is scheduled for release in 2018. Prince Albert of Monaco has shared parenting tips for George Clooney. Princess Charlene and Prince Albert The 'Oceans Eleven' actor is due to welcome twins with his wife Amal later this year, and the 59-year-old royal - who has two-year-old twins Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques with his wife Princess Charlene - has revealed the secret to successfully parenting twins is to have "a good cup of coffee". He said: "Strong coffee and easy reading. George should pour himself a good cup of coffee each morning. I know that sounds pretty standard but it's really, really important." And Prince Albert also recommends the father-to-be reads up on his role before the birth, citing Joe Rawlinson's 'A Dad's Guide To Twins' as "really helpful" reading material. He added: "There's actually a very good little book on being the father of twins. [The book] was really helpful. It has some sound advice and is pretty easy to read." The Prince went on to highlight the importance of sleep, and says that even two years on from their birth, there are still nights when his twins keep him awake. He said: "[George should get] some sleep stored away before the babies are born. "Fortunately for Charlene and for me, that was never really an issue. Gabriella and Jacques were relatively good sleepers from the start. Of course, there were - still are - nights where they have to be in the bedroom with us. "I know it seems very common sense, but having a separate room - in our case a nursery - or even a separate area prepared makes it easier for both parents to get some sleep in turns." And Albert insists he had no difficulty telling his children apart when they were younger, and says it's "less of an issue" than people might think. He told People magazine: "That's actually less of an issue than you might think. They're different from one another, they move differently -- and in our case, Jacques was much smaller than his sister when they were born, it was pretty easy to pick him out." Princess Charlene of Monaco has returned to South Africa in aid of her charitable Foundation. Princess Charlene of Monaco The 39-year-old former Olympic swimmer - who is the wife of Prince Albert of Monaco - has visited the country where she was raised as part of her work with the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation, which aims to raise awareness for water safety and teach children how to swim. Speaking on behalf of her Foundation at an event in aid of water safety and drowning prevention, Charlene said: "Here in South Africa, drowning is the second leading cause of accidental death after road accidents. We can save so many lives, simply by teaching people essential water safety skills and how to swim and by focusing on one person, one family, one community at a time." During her trip to South Africa the Princess - who is mother to two-year-old twins Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques - visited Gugulesizwe Primary School and supervised a first aid and CPR training session for the teachers and the children as part of her role as patron of the South African Red Cross. Also during her visit, Charlene attended the inaugural 'Princess Charlene Ladies Day', a charity race day created to support three organisations - the Red Cross, Gugulisizwe Primary School and the Highveld Horse Care Unit. Charlene's visit to South Africa comes after she recently revealed she "can't wait" to bring her two young children to the country to teach them about their "heritage". She said: "I am African and this is my heritage. It will always be. It's in my heart and in my veins. I can't wait for them to come here. I can't wait for them to be introduced to Africa." Previously, Charlene said she was focused on raising her children and educating them on the "responsibility" of royal life. She said: "For now, I'm a full time mum. I don't know how long that will be for. But yes, it is quite a difficult situation in comparison to the normal folk. We do have responsibilities and duties, and of course my son and my daughter are born into our responsibility. So it's quite something for me to accept that and to educate them." Georgina Francis was nicknamed Britains Biggest Bridezilla by the UK press after having 99 wedding rehearsals around the world to ensure her big budget wedding really IS the best day of her life. Weddings on Female First Georgina is having her 100th and final wedding rehearsal in front of 400 people at the Underbelly on 20th May and you are invited. Georgina explains why she thinks its ok to expect perfection on your wedding day. Like every woman, Ive been planning my wedding since being in the womb. This year, Ive finally achieved my major life goal and will be marrying Conservative Politician, Simon Hamilton. After turning down 645 venues (including The Vatican and the Taj Mahal), we settled upon the perfect venue for our huge number of VIP guests: Wembley Arena. When I released my YouTube wedding blogs, documenting the lead up to my big day, they went viral (obviously) and the UK press were quick to call me Britains Biggest Bridezilla. Yes my budget is in excess of 1 million, Ive tried on hundreds of dresses, auditioned my bridesmaids, sacked three best men and organised my fiances stag night - but wouldnt YOU if you were planning THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE? Maybe YOU too have been called a Bridezilla just for striving for perfection. Let the haters hate they are just jealous because they are probably single, ugly or divorced! I like to think of a wedding day as a film production. YOU are the leading lady. No-one cares about the Groom or what hes wearing. Its essential that you create a five star film you are the Director, the Producer, and the star of the show. So yes you should make sure its the best it can be, even if that means quitting your job to hire an office and 50 staff to work on it, losing friends because you think their plus-ones are too ugly to attend, putting your bridesmaids on a pregnancy ban and spending 10,000 on cosmetic surgery to ensure you photograph well. Youre also entitled to as many wedding rehearsals as possible, even if everyone tells you thats excessive. What if something goes wrong on the day? You shouldnt just have one chance to get it right. You should have as many as possible! You are probably not as important as me so you wont need 100, but you will need at least 10. Ive had 99 wedding rehearsals around the world so far because Im an icon to women everywhere. I really do have it all. Im engaged before 30, Im facially blessed, Ive never eaten a chip and Ive got no sweat glands. Ive got one last chance to get it right. Ill be having my 100th and final wedding rehearsal on Saturday 20th May at the Underbelly Festival, London and YOU are invited. Nothing will get in the way, of MY perfect day. Dont. Be. Late! Rieter, the worlds leading supplier of systems for short-staple fibre spinning, has announced that the company has completed 20 years of launching Com4 yarn. Com4 stands for yarns in superior and consistent quality, spun with the four Rieter spinning technologies. Today, more than 130 licensees supply Com4 yarns to weavers and knitters worldwide.20 years ago, Rieter celebrated the market launch of its compact spinning technology. The yarn produced on these machines has very high strength and low hairiness. This is something that weavers and knitters greatly value. Fabrics made from this compact yarn impress by their clear structure and delicate sheen. For this special yarn, Rieter created the trademark Com4. Rieter, the world's leading supplier of systems for short-staple fibre spinning, has announced that the company has completed 20 years of launching Com4 yarn. Com4 stands for yarns in superior and consistent quality, spun with the four Rieter spinning technologies. Today, more than 130 licensees supply Com4 yarns to weavers and knitters worldwide.# Rieter is the only supplier of all four spinning technologies: ring, compact, rotor, and air-jet. All produce yarn with superior and consistent quality. For this reason, several years ago, Rieter extended the brand Com4.Customers with Rieter spinning machines can apply for a Com4 license. Rieter supports the licensees with various marketing activities, for instance the company promotes the licensees yarns at leading trade fairs in Paris, Shanghai, and Mumbai. Also in numerous articles in the trade press, Com4 takes the centre stage. Every year, training courses are held worldwide. Rieter employees explain to yarn traders the influence exerted by the yarns on downstream processing and the end product, using many practical examples as illustration.Weavers and knitters have high demands and they make no compromises. They want yarns with consistent quality yarns that can also be faultlessly processed, because the end products must always have the same high standard: the Com4 yarns from Rieter fulfil all these requirements. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India We all have watched the dubbed versions of English movies into Hindi and laughed at certain areas where it just sounds too hilarious when compared to the real version. It's one thing to watch the trailer of Baywatch in its pure form in English and another thing to watch it in the dubbed version in Hindi. The meaning of the words get changed from time to time and the Baywatch Hindi trailer has made everyone laugh out loud. Priyanka Chopra is all classy in the Baywatch English trailer were she coolly says to the always tantrum throwing Zac Efron "Easy Britney" and walks away. The funny part in the Hindi trailer is that Priyanka Chopra is heard saying 'Chal na Katrina' to the tantrum throwing Zac Efron instead of 'Easy Britney' and that has made people laugh out loud. Chal Na Katrina The Hindi version trailer of Baywatch is quite hilarious were Priyanka Chopra is seen saying to Zac Efron, "Chal na Katrina". Easy Britney Priyanka Chopra's line in Baywatch English to Zac Efron is "Easy Britney." Hindi Vs English The Hindi version of Baywatch is quite hilarious as certain words sound so different and funny. PeeCee Priyanka Chopra is slowly yet steadily making her name in Hollywood. Worldwide Release Priyanka Chopra and Dwayne Johnson starrer Baywatch is al lset to release worldwide in May 2017. Baddie Priyanka Chopra plays the role of a baddie in the upcoming movie Baywatch. Check out the Baywatch trailer in Hindi below! It's truly hilarious! Check out these funny tweets on the 'Chal Na Katrina' version! @priyankachopra Hahaha Chal na Katrina is epic Hindi translation of "easy Britney" #Baywatch Super Trooper (@PC_SuperTrooper) April 26, 2017 @priyankachopra Oh my God..! This is hilarious..! :D #ChalNaKatrina was the best part..!!!! :D :D Way to go Victoria..! Richa Ranjan (@RichaSaysHi) April 27, 2017 #Baywatch hindi trailer is hilarious from dil toh bachha hai jee to chal na Katrina SambiT (@TheSambitsamal) April 26, 2017 #Baywatch Hindi trailer is hilarious Chal na Katrina #FAN (@Sarcastic_Raj) April 26, 2017 @priyankachopra Loved it even more in Hindi! Planning to watch it both in English and Hindi!!! #Baywatch Bhupendra Singh (@ibhupendra) April 26, 2017 'Kuch Toh Hai Tujhse Raabta'...this song from Saif Ali Khan-Kareena Kapoor Khan starrer Agent Vinod left the entire nation love-smitten. Years later, Deepika Padukone has given a sultry twist to this iconic song. While we got to see some impeccable chemistry between Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon in the trailer of Raabta, this time the focus is solely on Deepika Padukone as her stunning presence will leave you charmed. The video begins with Kriti and Jim Sarbh walking into a party where she encounters Sushant. Meanwhile, Dippy adds oodles of charm to the party and croons Raabta. Did you mention that we are already in love with her thigh high-slit black gown? Check out the track here- Earlier while talking about Deepika's special song, director Dinesh Vijan had said, ""Deepika Padukone is very lucky for me. I asked her, if she could do a song for me. She came down to Budapest and we shot it." Meanwhile folks, what's your take on this recreated version? Did Dippy manage to steal away your hearts? In one of the most shocking turn of events, veteran actor Vinod Khanna succumbed to cancer of the urinary bladder this morning in a Mumbai hospital. The actor had been suffering from a bout of ill health and had been hospitalised since 31st March 2017. His son Rahul Khanna had held a press conference and informed back then that the yesteryear screen icon had been admitted after suffering from severe dehydration and added that doctors hoped to discharge Khanna senior soon. An image of a frail-looking Vinod Khanna had earlier gone viral and sparked widespread concern about his heath. Unfortunately this morning, Khanna finally lost his battle with the life-threatening disease. The news has left everyone in complete shock. A Hindustan Times report quoted a source from the hospital saying, "Doctors and family were expecting a recovery but somehow his condition escalated and he succumbed today afternoon." His 'Amar Akbar Anthony' co-star Rishi Kapoor took to his Twitter handle to express his condolences- Will miss you Amar. RIP. pic.twitter.com/WC0zt71R4J Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 Other B-town celebrities too mourned the loss of one of the most talented actors of Bollywood. Here's what some of them had to say... Karan Johar His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... Akshay Kumar Sad to learn about the passing away of #VinodKhanna Sir,one of the most charismatic actors...truly end of an era.Condolences to the family Varun Dhawan #Vinodkhanna will always remain the coolest and most good looking actor to grace the Indian screens.The industry has lost a legend today. Anupam Kher Will remember #VinodKhanna ji for his larger than life performances & his graciousness. There r very few people like him. Will miss u Sir. Richa Chadha RIP #VinodKhanna sir. You were the fantasy of most women in the northern India through the 1980s. You shall be missed by one and all Evelyn Sharma Sad to hear about the demise of #VinodKhanna ..Sending lots of love and prayers to his family... The veteran actor was a sitting MP from Gurdaspur. He is survived by his wife Khanna and sons Akshaye and Rahul. Bollywood has lost one of its most 'shining' stars! We will miss you, Vinodji! Comrade In America - CIA, the upcoming film of Dulquer Salmaan, directed by Amal Neerad, is gearing up for a big release on May 5, 2017. Reportedly, the film will have a big release in Kerala and the film would surely eye to break many records. Malayalam film audiences would be eager to watch the movie on the very first day of its release and now, two prominent celebrities have reportedly, grabbed the first tickets of Comrade In America - CIA. Actors Sunny Wayne & Jacob Gregory, two of the best friends of Dulquer Salmaan are those lucky ones. Reportedly, both of them have grabbed the tickets for the fans show in Trivandrum. Sunny Wayne took to Facebook to send out an interesting post regarding the same. Take a look at the Facebook post of Sunny Wayne.. Reportedly, Comrade In America - CIA will be releasing in above 200 screens in Kerala alone. Already, the songs and teasers of the film have emerged as big hits on social media. Apart from Dulquer Salmaan, the film also features Karthika Muralidharan, Soubin Shahir, Jinu Jose, Siddique etc., in prominent roles. Comrade In America - CIA is expected to give Dulquer Salmaan another big hit. Parth Tweeted A few days ago, Parth had tweeted, "So Mr.Vikas gupta is back with his antiques ...I wonder how jobless he must be to plan and plot all this... keep it up man ." Parths Media Statement Read: "I am in constant touch with my legal team and I have already initiated legal proceedings, wherein the Court has granted me ad-interim reliefs." Parth Filing Complaint Against Vikas & The Girl Who Made Allegations "Meanwhile, I am in the process of filing a complaint against Mr. Vikas Gupta and the girl who has made allegations against me, after a span of 3.5 years from the date of the alleged incident and in furtherance, she has also manipulated her age to gain an advantage and sympathy of the Court." Truth Will Soon Prevail "But the truth will soon prevail and come out in open. I request the media to refrain from publishing any information about the present highly sensitive matter and act in accordance with law." Parth Requests Media To Verify The Facts "If the media wishes to print anything in respect of the present matter, I request it to verify the facts and any act in pursuance thereof will be at its sole risk and responsibility." Parth, Gauri Arora & Vikas Gupta Controversy It has to be recalled that Gauri had accused Parth Samthaan of molesting her. She had also said in a police complaint that he broke her heart. But, she suddenly changed side, and started supporting Parth. She alleged the producer (Vikas Gupta) of forcing her to file the case against Parth! Now, Gauris Apology Note Now, Gauri has apologised to Vikas. She shared an apology note on her Instagram account. She wrote, "This is Gauri official statement, "There was a press conference that I was made to do with mr Subhash Singh and parth. I made a mistake by doing that and listening to people. We all make mistake." Gauri Apologises To Vikas "I have already apologised to vikas for the same because of what I did to help Parth i ended up really hurting someone else's reputation. I do not wish to visit the past again." "With the recent truths that have come out about parth I do not endorse them or are a part of them. I am not standing by anyone in this case and as suggested to the media by mr Subhash Singh. I am not filing any case against vikas gupta." Vikas Is Not Filing A Case! "I am thankful that what all he has been subjected to because of us. He is not filing a case against us. I would like to also tell parth to be please aware of mr Subhash Singh." "While u make mistakes friends help u to rectify them and not instigate you to keep on making more mistakes to hide previous ones." Veteran actor Vinod Khanna passed away today (April 27) at 70, after battling with cancer. Not many might be aware that the late actor was also a part of TV show Mere Apne. Apparently, the actor made his television debut in the year of 2007. He was seen in the show Mere Apne, which used to air on 9X. The show was produced by Smriti Irani. The serial was aired for just one year and for four days a week. The show premiered on November 12, 2007 and ended in the year 2008. The show was a family saga. It was a story which showed a family that stayed together against all odds. Vinod Khanna, who played the role of Kashinath, headed the family, while Smriti Irani essayed the role of his wife. Vinod Khanna's sudden demise has shocked everyone. Smriti Irani took to social media to express her condolence. She also said she is honoured to produce a series with him. Smriti wrote, "Heard about the sad demise of Vinod Khannaji. Kind, considerate, a legend in his own right. Had the honour of producing a series with him." She further wrote, "My condolences to his loved ones and prayers so that his soul rests in peace. Vinod ji will truly be missed. Om Shanti !" The actor turned politician was known for his unique style and persona. He had featured in 100 films in a career spanning over five decades. In the beginning of his career he played supporting or villainous characters in films. Hugo Pinto, WARC Innovation judge Amanda Benfell PR Manager, WARC Email: amanda.benfell@warc.com Tel: +44 20 7467 8125 LONDON, Apr 27, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - The winners of the global WARC Innovation Awards, recognising innovative thinking that delivers tangible results, are revealed with Saatchi & Saatchi Australia taking top honours by winning both the Grand Prix and the Product Innovation Special Award for Toyota Land Cruiser.Their 'Emergency Network' campaign for car manufacturer Toyota brought emergency communications to the 5.3 million square kilometres of Australia's landmass that currently receives no mobile signal, by installing signal-providing devices in its LandCruiser models.WARC Innovation judge Hugo Pinto - Innovation Services Leader EMEA, IBM Interactive Experience, described why this innovation on the part of Toyota was such a stand-out case study: "There is nothing like this particular car to get you through rough terrain. Toyota is leveraging an asset here, creating a crowdsourced emergency network, where every Toyota LandCruiser owner can sign up to do their fair share and give back to their communities. This shows people that they can have a much bigger impact because they own a specific vehicle. It blurs the boundaries between personal and professional. This will be the next stage of sharing economy."In addition to the Grand Prix, the 25-strong eminent judging panel of client- and agency-side experts, chaired by Dana Anderson, Senior VP and CMO for Mondelez International and soon to be CMO of MediaLink, also awarded six Golds, four Silvers, three Bronzes and four more Special Awards recognising specific areas of excellence.The winners are:Grand Prix + Special Award for Product InnovationSaatchi & Saatchi, Australia, Toyota, LandCruiser Emergency Network (L.E.N.)Gold- McCann, Australia, Vision Australia, Free Puppies Forever + Special Award for Non-for-Profit- Kindred, UK, Penguin Random House, Tim Weaver's MISSING + Special Award for Channel Innovation- J. Walter Thompson Beirut, Lebanon, Bou Khalil Supermarche, The Good Note- AMV BBDO / Blue 449, UK, Currys PC World, Drop A Hint + Special Award for Co-Created Content- DigitasLBi, USA, Whirlpool, Care Counts- AMV BBDO, UK, Bodyform, No Blood Should Hold Us Back + Special Award for Category InnovationSilver- Formitas BBDO, Slovenia, Spar Interspar, Start It Up Slovenia- BBDO Bangkok, Thailand, Helpmet - Thai Health Promotion Foundation, Injury Detecting Helmet- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup), UAE, NHI-Daman, Giving People Vitamin D- FP7/CAI, Egypt, Baheya Cancer Hospital, The Sweet DonationBronze- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup) / MediaVest Spark , UAE, Emirates NBD, The A/C Vests- Livity, UK, Dyson, Rethinking Recruitment- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup), UAE, MasterCard, 'A Priceless Delivery'The winners of the WARC Innovation 2017 Grand Prix and Special Awards share a $10,000 prize fund.View the case studies of all the winners at www.warc.com/InnovationAwards.prizeshortlist.About WARC- advertising evidence, insights and best practicewarc.com is an online service offering advertising best practice, evidence and insights from the world's leading brands. WARC helps clients grow their businesses by using proven approaches to maximise advertising effectiveness. WARC's clients include the world's largest advertising and media agencies, research companies, universities and advertisers.WARC hosts four global and two regional case study competitions: WARC Awards, WARC Innovation Awards, WARC Media Awards, The Admap prize, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy and WARC Prize for MENA Strategy.WARC also publishes leading journals including Admap, Market Leader, the Journal of Advertising Research and the International Journal of the Market Research Society. In addition to its own content, WARC features advertising case studies and best practices from more than 50 respected industry sources, including: ARF, Effies, Cannes Lions, ESOMAR and IPA.Founded in 1985, WARC is privately owned and has offices in the UK, U.S. and Singapore.Source: WARCContact:Copyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. SANDY SPRINGS (dpa-AFX) - United Parcel Service Co., (UPS) was awarded a five-year $2.35 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, fixed-price next generation delivery service contract, the U.S. Department of Defense said. The contract provides express small package delivery services for international shipments and express and ground small package delivery services for domestic shipments. Service shall be provided for the federal government, contractors who have a cost-reimbursable contract line item number under another government contract which includes transportation of small packages, and other authorized users. Services required include time-definite, door-to-door pickup and delivery, transportation, timely and accurate in-transit visibility, and customs clearance processing (if applicable). This contract may include shipments of foreign military sales. Work will be performed internationally and domestically, with an expected completion date of September 30, 2022. Fiscal 2017 transportation working capital funds in the amount of $1,500 are being obligated at time of award as a minimum guarantee per awardee; remaining funds will be obligated on individual task orders. This contract was a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Separately, the U.S. Department of Defense said that Federal Express Corp. was awarded a five-year $2.35 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, fixed-price next generation delivery service contract. This contract provides express small package delivery services for international shipments and express and ground small package delivery services for domestic shipments. 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. DUBAI, UAE, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hosted at the Music Hall in Zabeel Saray, Dubai, the winners of the Festival of Media MENA Awards were revealed this evening. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/494659/Festival_of_Media_MENA_Logo.jpg ) Starcom was crowned Agency Network of the Year after collecting nine trophies across its UAE and Egyptian offices in categories that included Best Use of Video and Best Use of Gamification, while Agency of the Year was awarded to OMD UAE, who collected a total of 11 awards including gold for Best Use of Traditional Media and Best Use of Technology. The other big Grand Prix winner on the night was MEC MENA who took home the trophy for Campaign of the Year for its 'MAGGIE Diaries - The Power to Make a Difference' project. The judging was divided into two groups and chaired by Asad Rehman, director of media MENA, Unilever and Nick Graham, global digital marketing and media director, Huawei respectively. Other judges on the panel included influential media minds from Visa; Unilever; General Motors; Ferrero; McDonald's and Nestle. On judging Rehman said: "It is a privilege and a great responsibility to be asked to chair such a prestigious awards ceremony as the Festival of Media MENA. Too often we are in the office with our heads down, but judging allows us the opportunity to open the windows and see what else is happening in the region." The Festival of Media MENA Awards, which is run in partnership with Mediaquest, is dedicated to the evolution of media, celebrating the best in media thinking and communications across the region. Judged by a senior panel of global and regional brand marketers, the programme is a prestigious event rewarding the very best work. All winning campaigns can be seen on http://www.creamglobal.com/ About C Squared C Squared launched the Festival of Media in Venice in 2007 and the brand now has four major events across the world, attended by 4,000 senior delegates and receiving over 3,000 Awards entries. In 2009, C Squared acquired the leading brand M&M Global along with the M&M Global Awards. The company also owns Creamglobal which has now become the world's largest database of media innovation and its bespoke technology serves many of the leading global agency groups and multinational advertisers. More information is available at: http://www.csquared.cc. Festival of Media Awards contact: Christina Liessem, head of awards, email: Christina.Liessem@csquared.cc t: +44(0)20-7367-6979 Espoo, Finland, 2017-04-27 08:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aspocomp Group Plc, Interim Report, April 27, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. Key figures 1-3/2017 in brief - Net sales: EUR 5.7 million (EUR 4.1 million 1-3/2016) - Operating result before depreciation (EBITDA): EUR 0.5 million (-0.2) - Operating result: EUR 0.2 million (-0.4) - Earnings per share (EPS): EUR 0.03 (-0.07) - Operational cash flow: EUR 0.7 million (-0.6) - Order book at the end of period: EUR 2.2 million (1.4) The company's full-year guidance remains unchanged. In 2017, net sales are expected to grow approximately 10 percent and the operating margin to be better than in 2016. In 2016, net sales amounted to EUR 21.6 million and the operating result was 3 percent of net sales. CEO'S REVIEW "Growth continued to be strong in the first quarter, partly due to the weak comparison period a year ago. Net sales amounted to EUR 5.7 million (EUR 4.1 million 1-3/2016), representing a year-on-year increase of EUR 1.5 million or 37 percent. Demand for printed circuit boards decreased compared to the end of the previous year in line with typical seasonal variation. Demand slowdown was particularly evident in the telecommunication infrastructure and industrial electronics customer segments. The company's order book developed positively, growing by EUR 0.8 million from the previous year. The order book amounted to EUR 2.2 million (EUR 1.4 million) at the end of the review period. The order book has grown in step with the growth in volume production. Operating result improved and amounted to EUR 0.2 million (EUR -0.4 million), a year-on-year increase of EUR 0.6 million or 3 percent of net sales. The increase in profitability was due to the significantly higher net sales compared to the comparison period a year ago. Cash flow from operations was EUR 0.7 million in the black, a year-on-year improvement of EUR 1.3 million. Overall, the year has started in line with expectations. At the Capital Market Day in March, we announced our intention to expand our business into new geographic areas and new customer segments. One key objective is to shift the main focus of the company from products and technology to customer-centered service. According to the full-year guidance for 2017, net sales are expected to grow by approximately 10 percent and the operating margin to be better than last year." THE GROUP'S KEY FIGURES 1-3/17 1-3/16 Change 1-12/16 Net sales, M 5.7 4.1 37 % 21.6 EBITDA, M 0.5 -0.2 0.6 M 1.8 Operating result excluding non-recurring 0.9 items % of net sales 4% Operating result, M 0.2 -0.4 0.6 M 0.7 % of net sales 3% -11% 14.0 ppts 3% Pre-tax profit/loss, M 0.2 -0.5 0.6 M 0.6 % of net sales 3% -11% 14 ppts 3% Profit/loss for the period, M 0.2 -0.5 0.6 M 1.0 % of net sales 3% -11% 14 ppts 5% Earnings per share, 0.03 -0.07 0.10 0.00 Investments, M 0.1 0.0 0.1 M 0.5 % of net sales 3% 1% 1.7 ppts 2% Cash, end of the period 0.5 0.3 0.2 M 0.3 Equity / share, 1.67 1.41 0.26 1.48 Equity ratio, % 70% 66% 4 ppts 69% Gearing, % 6% 18% -13 ppts 11% Personnel, end of the period 106 104 2 persons 106 NET SALES AND EARNINGS January-March, 2017 First-quarter net sales amounted to EUR 5.7 million (EUR 4.1 million 1-3/2016), a year-on-year increase of 37 percent. Demand weakened during the first quarter compared to the previous quarter, as expected due to seasonal fluctuations. A slowdown in demand was particularly evident in the telecommunication infrastructure and industrial electronics customer segments. The five largest customers accounted for 52 percent of net sales (51% 1-3/2016). In geographical terms, 98 percent of net sales were generated in Europe (88%), 1 percent in Asia (6%) and 1 percent in North America (6%). The operating result for the first quarter amounted to EUR 0.2 million (EUR -0.4 million 1-3/2016). Growth in net sales resulted in a better operating result. Net financial expenses for the review period amounted to EUR 0.0 million (EUR 0.0 million). Earnings per share were EUR 0.03 (EUR -0.07). OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE A major share of Aspocomp's net sales is generated by quick-turn deliveries and R&D series, and thus the company's order book is short. The company's aim is to systematically expand its services to cover the PCB needs of customers over the entire life cycle and thereby balance out variations in demand and the order book. The company's full-year guidance remains unchanged. In 2017, net sales are expected to grow approximately 10 percent and the operating margin to be better than in 2016. In 2016, net sales amounted to EUR 21.6 million and the operating result was 3 percent of net sales. PUBLICATION OF FINANCIAL RELEASES This stock exchange release is a summary of the Aspocomp Group's Interim Report January 1 - March 31, 2017 and includes the most relevant information of the report. The complete report is attached to this release as a pdf file and is also available on the company's website at www.aspocomp.com. ASPOCOMP GROUP PLC Board of Directors For further information, please contact Mikko Montonen, CEO, tel. +358 20 775 6860, mikko.montonen(at)aspocomp.com. Aspocomp - a service company specializing in PCB technologies Aspocomp specializes in demanding PCB technologies, serving its customers throughout the entire life cycle of a product. Aspocomp sells and manufactures PCBs and also provides related design and logistics services as well as technology solutions. Aspocomp creates value for its customers with unique products and solutions, strong manufacturing and technology expertise, as well as fast and reliable deliveries. A wide network of expert partners together with Aspocomp's own manufacturing enables its customers to cost-effectively buy their PCBs from a single provider over the entire life cycle of a product. A printed circuit board (PCB) is the principal interconnection method in electronic devices. PCBs are used for electrical interconnection and as a component assembly platform in most electronic applications. Aspocomp's customers are companies that design and manufacture telecom systems and equipment, automotive and industrial electronics, security technology and semiconductor testing systems. Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=627647 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Regulatory News: Total (Paris:FP) (LSE:TTA) (NYSE:TOT) has sanctioned the development of the first phase of the operated Aguada Pichana Este license in the giant Vaca Muerta shale play in Argentina. Moreover, the Group will also increase its interest in the license from 27.27% to 41%. Gas production from the project will be treated at the existing Aguada Pichana gas plant which will thus reach its full capacity of 16 million cubic meters per day (100,000 barrels equivalent per day). "Launching this project is a key milestone in the development of the giant Vaca Muerta shale play. Total is also increasing its interest in the East part of the Aguada Pichana concession where the results of pilot wells drilled to date have been excellent. The development will benefit from the use of existing facilities, enabling the production of shale gas at a very competitive cost," said Arnaud Breuillac, President Exploration Production. "This is one of the ten major projects that Exploration Production plans to sanction in 2017-2018, taking advantage of the favorable low cost environment, which is now approved and will contribute to the Group's production growth beyond 2020." Total's decision follows the announcement by the Argentine Ministry of Energy and Mines of the "Program for Stimulation of Unconventional Gas Developments" which guarantees gas prices until 2021. As part of the project, the Aguada Pichana partners (Total Austral S.A. 27.27%, YPF S.A. 27.27%, Wintershall Energia S.A. 27.27% and Panamerican Energy LLC 18.18%) have entered into a memorandum of understanding that includes an increase of Total's participation to 41% in the Aguada Pichana Este project being developed. The agreement remains subject to the approval of Neuquen Province authorities. Total Exploration Production in Argentina Total is a long-standing partner of Argentina. The Group has been present in the country for nearly 40 years and operates around 30% of the domestic gas production. In 2016, the Group's share of production in Argentina was 78,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. On the CMA-1 concession in Tierra del Fuego, Total operates the onshore Ara and Canadon Alfa fields and the offshore Hidra, Carina and Aries fields. In February 2016, Total has started up production at the offshore Vega Pleyade gas and condensate field situated on the concession. Total is also planning to sanction the Fenix development before end 2018. In the onshore Neuquen basin, the Group holds equity interests in ten blocks, spanning more than 300,000 net acres, of which six are operated, including the Aguada Pichana and San Roque producing fields. Total is currently conducting a pilot project on its operated Rincon la Ceniza license, which lies in the Vaca Muerta wet gas window, with very encouraging results so far. An appraisal well drilled in 2016 on the nearby operated La Escalonada block to test the oil window has also shown excellent productivity. About Total Total is a global integrated energy producer and provider, a leading international oil and gas company, and a major player in solar energy with SunPower and Total Solar. Our 98,000 employees are committed to better energy that is safer, cleaner, more efficient, more innovative and accessible to as many people as possible. As a responsible corporate citizen, we focus on ensuring that our operations in more than 130 countries worldwide consistently deliver economic, social and environmental benefits. total.com Cautionary note This press release, from which no legal consequences may be drawn, is for information purposes only. The entities in which TOTAL S.A. directly or indirectly owns investments are separate legal entities. TOTAL S.A. has no liability for their acts or omissions. In this document, the terms "Total" and "Total Group" are sometimes used for convenience where general references are made to TOTAL S.A. and/or its subsidiaries. Likewise, the words "we", "us" and "our" may also be used to refer to subsidiaries in general or to those who work for them. This document may contain forward-looking information and statements that are based on a number of economic data and assumptions made in a given economic, competitive and regulatory environment. They may prove to be inaccurate in the future and are subject to a number of risk factors. Neither TOTAL S.A. nor any of its subsidiaries assumes any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information or statement, objectives or trends contained in this document whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170426006950/en/ Contacts: Total Mike SANGSTER Nicolas FUMEX Kim HOUSEGO Romain RICHEMONT Tel.: 44 (0)207 719 7962 Fax: 44 (0)207 719 7959 or Robert HAMMOND (U.S.) Tel.: +1 713-483-5070 Fax : +1 713-483-5629 LONDON (dpa-AFX) - British drug giant AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L, AZN) reported Thursday that its first-quarter profit before tax declined to $582 million from last year's $723 million last year. Profit attributable to owners of the Parent was $537 million, down from $646 million a year ago. Earnings per share dropped 17 percent to $0.42 from $0.51 a year ago. Core earnings per share increased 4% to $0.99. Total revenue declined 12 percent to $5.41 billion from last year's $6.12 billion. At constant rates, revenues fell 10 percent. The Product Sales declined as performance mainly reflected the residual impact of the US Crestor patent expiry. Further, the company confirmed its financial guidance for 2017. The company continues to expect total revenue to decline a low to mid single-digit percentage and core earnings per share to decline a low to mid teens percentage for the full 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. Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-04-27 08:48 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The resolutions of the General Shareholders Meeting of INVL Technology (identification code 300893533, the registered address Gyneju str. 16 Vilnius, Lithuania) what was held on 27 April 2017: 1. Presentation of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology annual report. Shareholders of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology are presented with the annual report of INVL Technology (enclosed) (There is no voting on this issue of agenda). 2. Presentation of the independent auditor's report on the financial statements of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology. Shareholders of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology are presented with the independent auditor's report on the financial statements of INVL Technology (There is no voting on this issue of agenda). 3. On the approval of the financial statements for 2016 of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology. To approve the financial statements for 2016 of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology. 4. Regarding the distribution of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology profit (loss). To distribute the profit (loss) of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology as follows: Article (thousand EUR) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Retained earnings (loss) at the beginning of the financial year of 2,290 the reporting period -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net profit (loss) for the financial year (4,515) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Profit (loss) not recognized in the income statement of the - reporting financial year -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transfers from reserves 2,225 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shareholders contributions to cover loss -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributable profit (loss) in total -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Profit distribution: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Profit transfers to the legal reserves -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Profit transfers to the reserves for own shares acquisition -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Profit transfers to other reserves -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Profit to be paid as dividends -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Profit to be paid as annual payments (bonus) and for other purposes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Retained earnings (loss) at the end of the financial year -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Approval of the regulations of the Audit Committee. To approve the regulations of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology (enclosed). 6. Regarding election of the Audit Committee members. To cancel Danute Kadanaite and Thomas Bubinas from INVL Technology audit committee members. To elect Dangute Pranckeniene (independent member) and Tomas Bubinas (independent member) to the Audit Committee of INVL Technology for the 4 (four) years term of office. 7. Regarding approval of the remuneration for the Audit Committee members. For a work in the Audit Committee of INVL Technology, to set a rate not higher than EUR 145 per hour. To delegate to the Management company of INVL Technology to determine the remuneration payment procedure for the Audit Committee members. 8. Changing registered address of the special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology. To change the Company registered address to Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius. 9. Approval of the Amendment of the Services Agreement of special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology with AB SEB bank. According to the agreement on a 0.04 percentage point lower depository fee, approve the Amendment of the Services Agreement of special closed-ended type private capital investment company INVL Technology with AB SEB bank (enclosed as an annex to this notification "Amendment of the Agreement No. 1"). The person authorized to provide additional information: Kazimieras Tonkunas INVL Technology Managing Partner e-mail k.tonkunas@invltechnology.lt Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=627500 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de LA DEFENSE (dpa-AFX) - Energy giant Total SA (TOT, TTA.L) reported Thursday that its first-quarter net income group share was $2.85 billion, 77 percent higher than last year's $1.61 billion. Adjusted net income was $2.6 billion or $1.01 per share, compared to $1.6 billion or $0.68 per share a year ago. On average, four analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.96 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Revenues from sales increased to $36.09 billion from last year's $27.52 billion. Analysts were looking for revenues of $35.79 billion. Hydrocarbon production was 2,569 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day or kboe/d in the first quarter, up 4 percent from last year. Average Hydrocarbon price grew 44 percent. Average liquids price climbed 59 percent and average gas price grew 18 percent. The company announced interim dividend of 0.62 euros per share payable in October 2017. Looking ahead, Total said it continues to reduce its breakeven by cutting costs in line with the $3.5 billion savings target for the year and benefiting from project start-ups. Total is launching new projects in a favorable cost environment and acquiring resources under attractive conditions, as demonstrated recently in Brazil and Uganda. In the Upstream, the company maintains its production growth objective of more than 4% in 2017. In the Downstream, refining margins remain favorable going into the second quarter. 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. STOCKHOLM, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The residential team of investment manager Catella Real Estate has acquired a residential property portfolio with ten German portfolio properties for its Catella Wohnen Europa fund for a purchase price of EUR118 million. The acquired portfolio has properties in the metropolitan regions of Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Frankfurt, as well as in Gottingen and Reutlingen. The portfolio's diversified nature across primary cities, university cities and major regional centres is the reason for its attractiveness. "This acquisition is very important, because it increases the assets under management of Catella Wohnen Europa fund to approximately EUR450 million after only one year. It also gives the fund a large proportion of portfolio properties in Germany and this will help stabilise the fund's performance and provide room for further international expansion," says Xavier Jongen, head of Catella's initiative in residential property funds. Occupancy across all properties stands at 99%, reflecting the portfolio's positive aspects. The ten properties consists of 1,041 residential and 14 commercial units, comprising in total more than 62,000 m. All the buildings in the portfolio are in good to very good condition. "We have acquired an established portfolio with a stable cash return in one of the most attractive property segments. By making more than EUR100 million available for this project, our investors have shown immense trust in our work," explains Markus Wiegleb, portfolio manager at Catella. For more information, please contact: Xavier Jongen Head of Residential Funds +49-89-189-16-65-37 xavier.jongen@catella.de Press contact: Ann Charlotte Svensson Head of Group Communications +46-8-463-32-55, +46-72-510-11-61 anncharlotte.svensson@catella.se This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/catella---property-investment-management/r/catella-wohnen-europa-fund-acquires-ten-german-portfolio-properties-for-eur-118-million,c2251980 The following files are available for download: Westinghouse Electric Company announced today that its Westinghouse Springfields site was named the recipient of the company's inaugural Quest for Zero award. The company's Quest for Zero safety initiative was introduced in August 2016 to challenge all Westinghouse locations and employees to implement proactive safety activities and reinforce proper safety behaviors. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005477/en/ VP Managing Director, UK and Middle East Region Mick Gornall accepts the Quest for ZERO award from Interim President and CEO Jose Emeterio Gutierrez. (Photo: Business Wire) "Springfields' participation in the Quest for Zero and drive to reduce risks and eliminate hazards has been extraordinary," said Jose Emeterio Gutierrez, interim president and chief executive officer, in presenting the award on April 25. "Their efforts toward continual risk identification and hazard elimination have led to more than 2.3 million hours worked without a Westinghouse recordable injury." The site shares lessons learned companywide and also integrates them into daily operations. This is one of the many characteristics that led to the facility's recommendation for ISO 14001:2015 certification, making Springfields the first Westinghouse site to achieve this status. Additionally, employees at Springfields were recently honored for their safety efforts by RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Springfields has been recognized 17 years in succession by RoSPA, receiving the prestigious Order of Distinction this year after receiving 16 consecutive Gold Awards from the organization. To learn more about Westinghouse Electric Company and our vision to be the first to innovate the next technology, practice or solution that helps our customers generate safer, cleaner, more reliable energy visit www.westinghousenuclear.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005477/en/ Contacts: Westinghouse Electric Company Sarah Cassella, +1 412-374-4744 Manager, External Communications cassels@westinghouse.com PGIM Real Estate has completed a capital raise exceeding 1 billion for PRECap VI (Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI), surpassing its fundraising target. PRECap VI is the largest fund in a series dedicated to investing in private real estate debt in Europe. PGIM Real Estate is the real estate investment business of PGIM, the global investment management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU). With more than $1 in trillion assets under management, PGIM is a top 10 global money manager and is the largest worldwide institutional real estate manager* with $154 billion net assets under management in debt, equity and securities as of December 31, 2016. PGIM Real Estate raised more than 80 percent of the capital for PRECap VI during the nine months following the U.K.'s European Union referendum. Investors in the closed-end discretionary fund include prominent public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance companies from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Investors were attracted to the fund's income-driven real estate debt strategy, which targets double-digit returns, while providing downside protection. "We are delighted with the strength of investor participation, particularly after the Brexit vote," said Andrew Radkiewicz, global head of debt strategies for PGIM Real Estate. "We saw a fundamental increase in commitments from institutional investors' real estate, private credit and alternative fixed income allocations, due to the sustainable risk adjusted returns offered by this asset class." PRECap VI will follow a strategy consistent with its five predecessor European debt strategies. The fund will provide alternative finance across the capital stack, in the form of whole loans, mezzanine and preferred equity, targeting predictable income returns combined with capital upside through profit participation. It will consider investments ranging from about 10 million to over 100 million, working with experienced real estate sponsors across western Europe in specialized sectors for which PRECap's funding structures work particularly well. Examples include real estate that requires development finance funding, repositioning or other value-add initiatives. "The demand for alternative funding sources continues to grow," explained Andrew Macland, head of PGIM Real Estate's U.K. business and European Debt. "The scale of our capital raise provides much needed liquidity in a financing market that is increasingly restricted by regulatory and structural change. As a funding partner, we offer certainty and continuity to investors, developers and operators of real estate in Europe in this changing environment." In 2009, PGIM Real Estate was a first mover to identify private real estate debt as an alternative investment opportunity. Since 2010, and testament to its fully integrated private equity and debt platform in Europe, PGIM Real Estate has raised and deployed more than 2 billion in European private real estate debt over 60 transactions throughout Western Europe, assisting owners and operators to finance real estate with an underlying asset value of more than 10 billion. About PGIM Real Estate PGIM Real Estate is the real estate investment business of PGIM, Inc., the global investment management businesses of Prudential Financial, Inc. ("PFI") (NYSE:PRU). Redefining the real estate investing landscape since 1970, PGIM Real Estate has professionals in 18 cities in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific with deep local knowledge and expertise, and gross assets under management of $66.0 billion ($47.6 billion net) as of Dec. 31, 2016. PGIM Real Estate's tenured team offers to its global client base a broad range of real estate investment vehicles that span the risk-return spectrum across core, core plus, value-add, debt, securities, and specialized investment strategies. For more information, visit www.pgimrealestate.com. About PGIM With 14 consecutive years of positive third-party institutional net flows, PGIM, the global asset management businesses of PFI (NYSE: PRU), ranks among the top 10 largest asset managers in the world with more than $1 trillion in assets under management as of Mar. 31, 2017. PGIM's businesses offer a range of investment solutions for retail and institutional investors around the world across a broad range of asset classes, including fundamental equity, quantitative equity, public fixed income, private fixed income, real estate and commercial mortgages. Its businesses have offices in 16 countries across five continents. PFI's additional businesses offer a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities and retirement-related services. For more information about PGIM, please visit http://www.pgim.com. For more information about PFI, please visit www.news.prudential.com. 2017 PGIM is the primary asset management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. (PFI). PGIM Real Estate is PGIM's real estate investment advisory business and operates through PGIM, Inc., a registered investment advisor. Prudential, Pramerica, PGIM, their respective logos as well as the Rock symbol are service marks of PFI and its related entities, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. PFI of the United States is not affiliated with Prudential plc, a company headquartered in the United Kingdom. Ref: 17BDUFF-ALMQY9 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005558/en/ Contacts: Media: PGIM Brendan Duffy, 973-802-5711 brendan.duffy@prudential.com Draft decisions of the ordinary shareholders meeting of AUGA group, AB (code 126264360, address: Konstitucijos ave. 21C, Vilnius) which will take place on April 28, 2017: 1. Consolidated annual report of the Company for the year 2016 and report of the Auditor: - Taken for the information. 2. Approval of consolidated annual financial statements of the Company for the year 2016. Draft decision: - To approve consolidated annual financial statements for the year 2016. 3. Approval of the profit (loss) appropriation of the Company for the year 2016. Draft decision: - To leave inappropriated the result of the Company for the year 2016 as indicated in the consolidated Financial Statements of the Company for the year 2016. 4. Election of the auditor of the Company. Draft decision: -To elect UAB "PricewaterhouseCoopers" (code 111473315) as the Company's audit enterprise to perform the audit of the Group financial statements (including - consolidated) for the 2017 financial year. To authorize the Company's general manager or any member of the Board to conclude the agreement for audit services, establishing the payment for services as agreed between the parties but in any case, not more than 50 000 EUR (fifty thousand euros) (VAT excluded) per year for the audit of the Company's financial statements (including - consolidated). All documents possessed by the Company related to the agenda of the Meeting, are available at the headquarters of AUGA group, AB, Konstitucijos ave.21C, Vilnius, Lithuania (tel. +370 5 233 53 40) and also available online at www.auga.lt Attached: 1. Consolidated annual financial statements for the year 2016 and consolidated annual report of the Company. Independent Auditor's report. 2. General voting ballot. General Manager Linas Bulzgys +370 5 233 5340 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=627752 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Energijos Skirstymo Operatorius AB (hereinafter - the Company), identification code 304151376, registered office placed at Aguonu str. 24, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania. The total number of registered ordinary shares issued by company is 894 630 333; ISIN code LT0000130023. The Company informs that on 26 April, 2017 the Supervisory Board of the Company adopted a decision to elect Saulius Vaicekauskas as the new member of the Board in charge of the area of network operations from the end of the meeting of the Supervisory Board of the Company that elected him until the end of the term of office of the current Board of Directors. The newly elected member of the Board will take the office of the Director of Network Operations Division. "I am glad that I will be able to contribute to a safer and more reliable energy supply to the customers. I am ready to continue work, search and install advanced electricity and natural gas distribution network technological solutions enabling to increase the operating efficiency of the distribution networks", - said S. Vaicekauskas. S. Vaicekauskas has accumulated 14 years of management experience in the field of energy. Since the establishment of ESO in 1 January, 2016 he led Company's Metering Management department. Until then for nearly five years he led LESTO Operations department, during 2003-2010 he managed Electricity Supply and Accounting unit of Vakaru Skirstomieji tinklai (VST), worked in other positions. S. Vaicekauskas graduated from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) and holds a master's degree of International Trade and bachelor's degree of Electricity Engineering. Besides S. Vaicekauskas the Board of the Company consists of Dalia Andrulioniene (Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Company), Augustas Dragunas (Director of Finance and Administration Division), Rytis Borkys (Director of Network Development Division) and Ignas Pranskevicius (Director of Services Division). Representative for Public Relations Martynas Burba, tel. (8~5) 2514516. Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Meggitt plc (MGGT.L) reported that its trading during the first quarter has been in line with expectations, with reported revenue growth of 9% including the effects of foreign exchange and the disposal of Meggitt Target Systems. On an organic basis, revenue declined by 1%, consistent with the Group's expectation that revenue and earnings will be weighted towards the second half of the year. Looking forward, the Group continues to expect 2-4% organic revenue growth for the year, in line with guidance issued with the 2016 full-year results in February. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. The PSA Group publishes its 2016 CSR Report The members of the Executive Committee give a video presentation to show the positive outcomes of the Group's CSR policy for its stakeholders. For the PSA Group, a high-performance CSR policy is a guarantee of trust Regulatory News: The Corporate Social Responsibility Report presents the methods used by the PSA Group (Paris:UG) to put its values and skills to work for a sustainable economic model, one that creates shared and long-lasting value. This document brings together the Group's positions, operations and trajectories on environmental, social and societal issues. Its production involves a network of experts in the Group's different business lines and constitutes a reference work. Over the last three years, the PSA Group was rated number one in the ranking of the CFIE (Centre Francais d'Information sur les Entreprises, the French Center for Enterprise information), which evaluates the quality of the responses provided by the company to meet the requirements of their stakeholders. This first place rating recognises the transparency of the Group's social and environmental information, based on the two criteria compiled: the exhaustive nature of information, and that information's precision. In addition, the United Nations Global Compact awarded its "Advanced" level to the PSA Group for two years running. It recognises companies that make an effort to be the most transparent in terms of reporting and succeed in displaying exemplary practices in terms of governance and management of sustainable development. Karine Hillaireau, Head of Sustainability for the PSA Group explained: The reliability of the information published by the Group in its CSR Report is essential for maintaining a relationship of confidence with its stakeholders. We must be able to provide all our stakeholders with the most representative and relevant elements so that they can make well-informed decisions in terms of purchasing, collaboration and investment." Media contact: 33 1 40 66 42 00 psa-presse@mpsa.com About Groupe PSA With sales and revenue of 54 billion in 2016, the Groupe PSA designs unique automotive experiences and delivers mobility solutions that provide freedom and enjoyment to customers around the world. The Group has three car brands, Peugeot, Citroen and DS, as well as a wide array of mobility and smart services under its Free2Move brand, to meet the evolving needs and expectations of automobile users. The automobile manufacturer PSA is the European leader in terms of CO 2 emissions, with average emissions of 102.4 grams per kilometre in 2016, and an early innovator in the field of autonomous and connected cars, with 2.3 million such vehicles worldwide. It is also involved in financing activities through Banque PSA Finance and in automotive equipment via Faurecia. Find out more at groupe-psa.com/en. Media library: https://medialibrary.groupe-psa.com// Twitter: @GroupePSA View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005647/en/ Contacts: PSA Group Communications Division www.groupe-psa.com +33 (0)1 40 66 42 00 @GroupePSA PRESS RELEASE 27 April 2017, at 11:00 a.m. eQ Asset Management has a long and successful track record investing in European private equity markets. Now eQ has established its first private credit fund raising 90 million euros in a first and final closing on March 31, 2017. eQ Private Credit Fund has 38 limited partners. The fund invests in debt capital instruments issued by private equity sponsored European unlisted companies. A minimum of 75 percent of investments will consist of senior loans with best priority on collateral alongside bank loans. In addition, a maximum 25 percent can be invested in junior loans. The portfolio will consist of 25-40 floating rate loans with a net target return of 6-7 percent per annum. "eQ analyzed the European private credit market for a long time before launching its first fund. Experience and risk management are crucial qualities in credit markets. Therefore, we decided to partner with London based MV Credit Partners with an outstanding long track record", says Staffan Jafs, Head of Private Equity at eQ. "eQ Private Credit fits well into the fixed income portfolios of our clients and adds diversification to their alternative investments. The first loans are already being negotiated and we aim to be fully invested within 18 months. We recently strengthened our internal credit resources by hiring Anne Riekki to take charge of private credit. Many of our clients build their private equity programs with us long term. With the new fund we can now also build private credit programs for our clients", concludes Jafs. Furthermore, eQ's latest US private equity fund, eQ PE IX US, held its second closing on 27 April, 2017 with almost 82 million USD of commitments and 41 limited partners. The fund will continue raising capital until the final closing to be held in June. "We raised our first US private equity fund in 2015 with 80 million USD of commitments. Our second US fund has exceeded that amount already in its second closing. The cooperation with our partner RCP Advisors is running extremely well. Our first US fund was fully invested in two years with eleven funds in USA and Canada. The first commitment for fund IX has already been made and we aim to select 10-12 funds before the end of 2018", comments Jafs. Helsinki 27 April 2017 eQ Asset Management Ltd For further information: Staffan Jafs, Head of Private Equity, eQ Asset Management Ltd +358 (9) 6817 8736, staffan.jafs@eQ.fi eQ Group is a Finnish group of companies specialising in asset management and corporate finance business. eQ Asset Management offers a wide range of asset management services (including private equity funds and real estate asset management) for institutions and individuals. The assets managed by the Group total approximately EUR 8.8 billion. Advium Corporate Finance, which is part of the Group, offers services related to mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions and equity capital markets. More information about the Group is available on our website at www.eQ.fi. Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de -- Companies work together to provide affordable, clean energy to off-grid communities in the developing world via Aeris IoT solutions -- Aeris SIM cards to be installed directly at the point of manufacture, reducing supply chain costs and solution deployment time for BBOXX -- Multiple network connectivity enables BBOXX to deploy solutions to remote locations worldwide SANTA CLARA, Calif. and LONDON, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BBOXX, an innovative solar solutions company, and Aeris, a pioneer and leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced they are collaborating to deliver clean energy to millions of people living in off-grid communities in the developing world. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f22fba3e-085c-4da4-9663-f98e6 85f4d2c BBOXX, a venture-backed company, will provide 20 million people with electricity by 2020. By satisfying the energy needs of individuals and families from home lighting to phone charging, the company helps the developing world to climb the "energy ladder." With BBOXX products, customers gain the ability to access energy, even in off-grid or remote areas. BBOXX designs, manufactures, distributes and finances innovative plug and play solar systems to improve access to energy across Africa and the developing world. Through a vast network of retail shops and outlets, BBOXX focuses on providing people access to electricity, while offering superior customer service. Its core products are a range of solar powered "battery boxes" that sit in an individual's home and allows the user to power small appliances, from lights and mobile phones to refrigerators and computers. The collaboration between Aeris and BBOXX ensures that BBOXX devices have reliable IoT connectivity no matter where in the world they are deployed; that they can be remotely monitored; and that the deployment time of products is expedited. Aeris offers IoT network connectivity in East and Central Africa, the principal areas in which BBOXX deploys, ensuring that each device has reliable IoT connectivity, which enables the company to monitor its devices remotely. Aeris' global support of major cellular technology standards, such as GSM, CDMA and LTE, also ensures that BBOXX will be able to deploy its devices across the world as it looks to expand globally. BBOXX will install the Aeris global subscriber identity module (SIM) at the point of manufacture, reducing both supply-chain costs and deployment time. By utilizing Aeris' single global access point name (APN), the BBOXX solar system can also be deployed anywhere in the world, even in the most remote locations on a simple plug-and-play basis, removing the necessity to configure local network settings. By utilizing Aeris AerPort, Aeris' connectivity management platform for IoT devices, BBOXX is also able to have real-time access to data usage, alert management and device- connectivity management over the Aeris SIM life cycle. CLICK TO TWEET: .@BBOXX_HQ, @AerisM2M collaborate to deliver cleanenergy to millions of people. | IoT solar AerisM2M http://www.aeris.com/news/ Supporting Quotes -- Christopher Baker-Brian, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, BBOXX "By working together we can ensure that our solutions have optimum reliability and our customers can be sure their devices possess a reliable connection, at all times, no matter where in the world they are deployed. Aeris' high-quality service and IoT expertise ensure that we can offer the best clean energy solutions to off-grid communities worldwide. Additionally, Aeris' pricing structure enables us to pass these savings onto our customers, allowing us to be more competitive in our target markets. We are delighted to be working with the Aeris team, and by working collaboratively we will be able to deliver clean energy to millions of people." -- Mohsen Mohseninia, Vice President for Europe, Aeris "Aeris' ability to offer high-quality Internet of Things connectivity at the most optimized total cost of ownership ensures that BBOXX's solar systems are operational and reliable no matter where in the world they are deployed. Aeris' SIMs can also be installed at the point of manufacture, ensuring supply-chain costs are reduced and BBOXX solutions can be deployed without the need for time-consuming local network configuration. We look forward to helping BBOXX expand their capabilities and deliver clean energy to people throughout the world." Digital Assets -- [Photo] Christopher Baker-Brian -- [Photo] Mohsen Mohseninia -- [Image] Aeris logo Supporting Resources -- Read about BBOXX. -- Read about Aeris. -- Read about Mohsen Mohseninia. -- Read and subscribe to Aeris Blog and Neo Blog. -- Read Aeris news releases. -- Read about the Internet of Things FAQ. -- For more information about Aeris' news and activities, follow the company via Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. About BBOXX BBOXX is a venture-backed company developing solutions to provide affordable, clean energy to off-grid communities in the developing world. We are fully vertically integrated, controlling every part of our customer experience. Our market-leading products and appliances coupled with our SMART Solar platform bring machine-learning and customer experience optimisation to rural Africa. Our ground-breaking financing structure has brought off-grid solar into the world's financial markets. With more than 80,000 systems deployed so far; 300 staff across five offices in China, the UK and East Africa are waking up every morning to work with BBOXX to electrify 20 million people by 2020. About Aeris Aeris is a pioneer and leader in the market of the Internet of Things - as an operator of end-to-end IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) services and as a technology provider enabling other operators to build profitable IoT businesses. Among our customers are the most demanding users of IoT services today, including Hyundai, Acura, Rand McNally, Leica, and Sprint. Through our technology platform and dedicated IoT and M2M services, we strive to fundamentally improve their businesses - by dramatically reducing costs, improving operational efficiency, reducing time-to-market, and enabling new revenue streams. For more information, contact: Veronica Bolton-Smith BBOXX +44 208 987 3195 v.boltonsmith@bboxx.co.uk Kevin Petschow Aeris +1.312.985.9182 Kevin.Petschow@aeris.net Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - German banking giant Deutsche Bank AG (DB) reported Thursday significantly higher profit in its first quarter, mainly reflecting lower expenses and provision for credit losses. Meanwhile, net revenues declined with lower net interest income and weak global markets revenues. Deutsche Bank shares were losing around 3 percent in the morning trading in Germany. John Cryan, Chief Executive Officer, said, 'I am pleased with the start we have made to 2017. Client engagement is strong, asset flows are returning across the bank and activity is picking up. Our cost-cutting efforts are starting to pay off, while we have reduced complexity significantly. We have laid firm foundations upon which Deutsche Bank can once again deliver good results.' For the first quarter, net income attributable to shareholders surged 167 percent to 571 million euros from 214 million euros last year. Earnings per share grew 153 percent to 0.38 euros from 0.15 euros last year. Pre-tax profit of 878 million euros climbed 52 percent year-on-year. Total net revenues, meanwhile, dropped 9 percent to 7.35 billion euros from 8.07 billion euros last year. The decline was predominantly due to a negative swing of 0.7 billion euros year-on-year resulting mainly from the development of Deutsche Bank's credit spreads. Adjusted for this effect, revenues would have been broadly flat year-on-year. Provision for credit losses of 133 million euros was down 56 percent year-on-year, primarily due to improved performance in the metals and mining and oil and gas portfolios. In the quarter, net interest income fell 22 percent from last year to 3.07 billion euros. Net interest income after provision for credit losses fell 19 percent to 2.93 billion euros. Commissions and fee income grew 2 percent to 2.94 billion euros. Total noninterest income was 4.28 billion euros, up 3 percent from the previous year. In the quarter, Global Markets net revenues were hurt by a negative impact of 239 million euros from Credit, Debit and Funding valuation adjustments. Corporate & Investment Banking revenues were broadly unchanged, while net revenues in Private, Wealth & Commercial Clients increased 11 percent. Postbank net revenues decreased 10 percent and Deutsche Asset Management net revenues fell 12 percent. Noninterest expenses of 6.3 billion were down 12 percent and adjusted costs were down 5 percent year-on-year, reflecting restructuring progress and closure of Non-Core Operations Unit at the end of 2016. In Germany, Deutsche Bank shares were trading at 16.75 euros, down 3.37 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de LONDON (dpa-AFX) - ITV Plc. (ITV.L) Wednesday reported that its first-half profit before tax declined 16 percent to 259 million pounds from last year's 309 million pounds. Earnings per share fell to 5.1 pence from 6.1 pence last year. Adjusted profit before tax was 381 million pounds, compared to last year's 425 million pounds. Adjusted earnings per share were 7.7 pence, compared to 8.5 pence last year. Adjusted EBITA was down 8% to 403 million euros. Group EBITA margin was 28%, lower than 29% last year. Total external revenue fell 3% to 1.46 billion pounds from 1.50 billion pounds a year ago, with the decline in NAR partly offset by continued good growth in non-advertising revenues. ITV Studios total revenues grew 7% to 697 million pounds including currency benefit. Online, Pay & Interactive revenues went up 5%. Further, the Board has declared an interim dividend of 2.52p, an increase of 5%, reflecting its confidence in the underlying strength of the business. ITV said its performance in the first six months of the year was very much as anticipated and its guidance for the full year remains unchanged. Peter Bazalgette, ITV Executive Chairman, said, 'ITV Studios has already secured 85% of expected full year revenues, over 100m more than this time last year and is firmly on track to deliver good organic revenue growth. ITV Studios adjusted EBITA will be broadly flat year on year impacted by continued investment and the timing of programme deliveries.' 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, 2017-04-27 11:24 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Annual General Meeting of APRANGA APB (hereinafter "Company") shareholders held on 27 April 2017 has resolved the following: 1. Consolidated annual report on the activities of the Company in 2016. Resolution: Taken for the information consolidated annual report of the Company for the year 2016, prepared by the Company, assessed by the auditors and approved by the Board. 2. Auditor's report on the Company's financial statements and annual report. Resolution: Taken for the information. 3. Approval of the Consolidated and Company's financial statements for the year 2016. Resolution: Approve the annual Consolidated and Company's financial statements for the year 2016 (Annex 1). 4. Company's profit (loss) allocation for the year 2016. Resolution: Approve the Company's profit allocation for the year 2016 (Annex 2). 5. Election of firm of auditors and establishment of the terms of remuneration for audit services. Resolution: 1) Elect UAB "ERNST & YOUNG BALTIC" as APB APRANGA firm of auditors for the year 2017. 2) Set the amount of the fee payable for audit services for the year 2017 - not more than EUR 23 000 (twenty three thousand euros) plus VAT. 3) Authorize the Company's CEO to sign the audit services agreement with firm of auditors. 6. Approval of Charter of the Audit Committee and approval of composition of the Audit Committee, withdrawal and election of members of the Audit committee, approval of remuneration of the members of the Audit committee. Resolution: 1) Approve the Charter of the Audit Committee (Annex 3). Repeal internal rules of the Audit Committee which were approved by General Shareholder Meeting of APB APRANGA on April 30th, 2009. 2) Accept the decision of Company's board to withdraw member Rasa Ruleviciute from the Audit committee. Withdraw member Daiva Paulaviciene from the Audit committee. 3) Approve composition of the Audit Committee of 3 (three) members elected for a term of 4 (four) years: elect Rasa Ruleviciute, Justina Rasimaviciute (independent member) as members of the Audit committee, elect Daiva Paulaviciene (independent member) as Chairwoman of the Audit committee. Remuneration for performance of duties of members of Audit committee shall not be designated. ENCLOSED: Annex No.1. Consolidated and Company's financial statements for the year 2016; Annex No.2. Company's profit allocation for the year 2016; Annex No.3. Charter of the Audit Committee. Rimantas Perveneckas Apranga Group Director General +370 5 2390801 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=627850 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de HELSINKI (dpa-AFX) - Finland's consumer confidence declined in April after strengthening in the previous month, figures from Statistics Finland showed Thursday. The consumer sentiment index fell to 21.5 in April from 22.9 in March, which was the highest reading since September 2010. Households' expectations regarding their own financial situation for the next year worsened in April. The corresponding index dropped to 10.0 from 12.4 in the prior month. At the same time, the index measuring general economic situation of the country for the next twelve months rose to 21.1 in April from 17.9 in the prior month. The survey revealed that altogether 45 percent of consumers thought in April that unemployment would decrease over the year, while 19 percent of them believed it would increase. Consumers predicted in April that consumer prices would go up by 1.6 percent over the next 12 months. The survey was conducted among 1,199 households between April 3 and 18. Another survey report released by the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK showed that business confidence of Finnish manufacturing companies was unchanged in April. The business confidence indicator held steady at 5.0 in April and remained above its long-term average of 1.0. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de AerCap Holdings N.V. ("AerCap") (NYSE: AER) has announced it has signed a lease agreement with Spanish carrier, Wamos Air. The 2003 vintage Airbus A330-200, powered by Rolls-Royce engines, will deliver to Wamos in June 2017. AerCap President and Chief Commercial Officer Philip Scruggs said, "We are delighted to welcome Wamos Air as an AerCap customer. Wamos is a highly respected operator in the ACMI and charter market and the addition of this A330 aircraft will support the airline's growth ambition while providing enhanced operational efficiency and passenger comfort. Used A330-200s continue to provide exceptional value to our airline customers." About AerCap AerCap is the global leader in aircraft leasing with, as of March 31, 2017, 1,541 owned, managed or on order aircraft in its portfolio. AerCap has one of the most attractive order books in the industry. AerCap serves approximately 200 customers in approximately 80 countries with comprehensive fleet solutions. AerCap is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (AER) and has its headquarters in Dublin with offices in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Shannon, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Singapore, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Seattle and Toulouse. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain statements, estimates and forecasts with respect to future performance and events. These statements, estimates and forecasts are "forward-looking statements". In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "might," "should," "expect," "plan," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "predict," "potential" or "continue" or the negatives thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements and are based on various underlying assumptions and expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity performance or achievements to differ materially from the results, level of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate or correct. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the future performance or events described in the forward-looking statements in this press release might not occur. Accordingly, you should not rely upon forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results and we do not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable law, we do not undertake any obligation to, and will not, update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For more information regarding AerCap and to be added to our email distribution list, please visit www.aercap.com and follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/aercapnv. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005772/en/ Contacts: AerCap Holdings N.V. Media Relations: Gillian Culhane, +353 1 636 0945 Vice President Corporate Communications gculhane@aercap.com or Investor Relations: Brian Canniffe, +353 1 418 0461 Head of Investor Relations bcanniffe@aercap.com First quarter revenue of $538.5 million First quarter net loss attributable to Intelsat S.A. of $34.6 million First quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $409.8 million or 76 percent of revenue $8.5 billion contracted backlog Intelsat reaffirms 2017 Guidance Exchange Offers and Consent Solicitations launched in March 2017 pursuant to Conditional Merger with OneWeb Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I), operator of the world's first Globalized Network and leader in integrated satellite communications, today announced financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Intelsat reported total revenue of $538.5 million and net loss attributable to Intelsat S.A. of $34.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Intelsat reported EBITDA1, or earnings before net interest, gain on early extinguishment of debt, taxes and depreciation and amortization, of $398.1 million and Adjusted EBITDA1 of $409.8 million, or 76 percent of revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Intelsat's Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Spengler, said, "Revenue of $538 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $410 million for the first quarter reflect our continuing business transition as we continue to make progress on the initiatives that will enable new services and create top line growth for our company. Over the course of the first quarter, Intelsat 33e and Intelsat 32e entered into service. Our managed services, IntelsatOneFlex, are attracting new customers and will begin to generate incremental revenues as these networks activate over the course of 2017." Mr. Spengler continued, "Growth in our media business was driven by the two fully-committed satellites placed into service in 2016. While we continue to work through some near-term headwinds, our network services and government businesses are leveraging the higher performance services available from the Intelsat EpicNG network, which is now available on five continents. Backlog as of March 31, 2017 was $8.5 billion." Mr. Spengler concluded, "Our proposed conditional merger with OneWeb, which was announced on 28 February, is pending completion of our announced debt exchange transactions and receipt of certain other approvals. We believe the transaction creates a company with greater growth opportunities and a strong financial foundation. Importantly, we will be better positioned to achieve our shared mission to unlock new applications for satellite-based solutions, connecting people and devices everywhere." First Quarter 2017 Business Highlights Intelsat provides critical communications infrastructure to customers in the network services, media and government sectors. Our customers use our services for broadband connectivity to deliver fixed and mobile telecommunications, enterprise, video distribution and fixed and mobile government applications. For additional details regarding the performance of our customer sets, see our Quarterly Commentary. Network Services Network services revenue was $212.9 million (or 39 percent of Intelsat's total revenue) for the three months ended March 31, 2017, a decrease of 7 percent compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. Media Media revenue was $225.1 million (or 42 percent of Intelsat's total revenue) for the three months ended March 31, 2017, an increase of 6 percent compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. Government Government revenue was $91.9 million (or 17 percent of Intelsat's total revenue) for the three months ended March 31, 2017, a decline of 11 percent compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. Average Fill Rate Intelsat's average fill rate on our approximately 2,050 station-kept wide-beam transponders was 78 percent at March 31, 2017, compared to 77 percent as of December 31, 2016. Note that Intelsat 31, an in-orbit spare satellite, is not included in the station-kept transponder count. Separately, our fleet includes approximately 650 36MHz units of high-throughput Intelsat EpicNG capacity. Satellite Launches Intelsat 32e, the Intelsat EpicNG Ku-band payload, was successfully launched on February 14, 2017 and entered service on March 30, 2017. The company has two additional satellite launches scheduled for 2017: Intelsat 35e in late June 2017 on a SpaceX, Falcon 9 rocket; and Intelsat 37e in the third quarter of 2017 on an Arianespace, Ariane 5 rocket. Contracted Backlog At March 31, 2017, Intelsat's contracted backlog, representing expected future revenue under existing contracts with customers, was $8.5 billion, as compared to $8.7 billion at December 31, 2016. Conditional Combination Agreement with WorldVu Satellites Limited ("OneWeb") Intelsat and OneWeb announced on February 28, 2017 that they had entered into a conditional combination agreement (the "Combination Agreement"), pursuant to and subject to the terms and conditions of which, OneWeb, the builder of a new Low Earth Orbit ("LEO") global communications system, will merge with and into Intelsat to create a next-generation communications company (the "Merger"). In addition, subject to the terms and conditions of a share purchase agreement between Intelsat and SoftBank Group Corp. ("SoftBank"), which currently owns equity in OneWeb and has additional investments in OneWeb pending subject to certain conditions, SoftBank is expected to invest an additional $1.7 billion in newly issued common and preferred equity of the combined company (the "SoftBank Investment") to support the acceleration of the combined company's growth strategies and strengthen Intelsat's capital structure. The Merger and the SoftBank Investment are expected to be completed late in the third quarter of 2017, and are conditioned upon the consummation of certain Intelsat debt exchange offers, the receipt of certain regulatory approvals, and the consent and approval by both Intelsat and OneWeb shareholders, as well as other customary closing conditions. Further details on the status of the exchange offers are provided below. There can be no assurance that the Merger or the SoftBank Investment will be completed, or whether the terms will be amended from those described above. Capital Structure Activities In January 2017, Intelsat (Luxembourg) S.A. completed an exchange offer whereby it exchanged $403.3 million aggregate principal amount of its 6 % Senior Notes due 2018 (the "2018 Lux Notes") for an equal aggregate principal amount of its newly issued 12.5% Senior Notes due 2024 (the "2024 Lux Notes"). This exchange consisted of the tender of $377.6 million aggregate principal amount of 2018 Lux Notes held by Intelsat Connect Finance S.A. which it acquired as a result of exchange transactions completed in December 2016, together with $25 million aggregate principal amount of 2018 Lux Notes that Intelsat (Luxembourg) S.A. repurchased in the first quarter of 2015. On March 24, 2017, Intelsat S.A. announced that its indirect wholly-owned subsidiaries, Intelsat Jackson Holdings S.A. ("Intelsat Jackson"), Intelsat Connect Finance S.A. ("ICF"), and Intelsat (Luxembourg) S.A. ("Intelsat Luxembourg" and, together with Intelsat Jackson and ICF, the "Issuers") each had commenced an offer or offers to exchange (collectively, the "Exchange Offers") certain of their respective outstanding senior unsecured notes (the "Existing Notes") for new Exchange Notes. The Exchange Offers and related Consent Solicitations are being conducted pursuant to the Combination Agreement. The Exchange Offers are subject to certain conditions precedent, including, among others, the tender of a minimum of 85% of the aggregate outstanding principal amount of each series of Existing Notes. On April 21, 2017, Intelsat announced that the deadline for tenders in the Exchange Offers had been extended to May 10, 2017. Financial Results for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 On-Network revenues generally include revenue from any services delivered via our satellite or ground network. On-Network services also include revenues from our channel services product, which are not detailed here as they are immaterial in size and we no longer actively market these services. Off-Network and Other Revenues generally include revenue from transponder services, Mobile Satellite Services ("MSS") and other satellite-based transmission services using capacity procured from other operators, often in frequencies not available on our network. Off-Network and Other Revenues also include revenue from consulting and other services and sales of customer premises equipment. Total On-Network Revenues reported a decline of $2.4 million to $491.4 million as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016: Transponder services reported an aggregate decrease of $1.5 million, primarily due to a $19.3 million decrease in revenue from network services customers, partially offset by a $17.8 million increase from media customers. The network services decline was mainly due to previously noted lower pricing on renewing wide-beam services for enterprise and wireless infrastructure related to activity in Africa, and non-renewals of point-to-point services from customers operating in Africa and Latin America. The network services decline was also due to non-renewals of services related to the challenging economic environment in Russia. The media increase resulted primarily from growth in direct-to-home television services in the Latin America, Caribbean and Africa regions, partially offset by declines in the Asia-Pacific and North America regions. reported an aggregate decrease of $1.5 million, primarily due to a $19.3 million decrease in revenue from network services customers, partially offset by a $17.8 million increase from media customers. The network services decline was mainly due to previously noted lower pricing on renewing wide-beam services for enterprise and wireless infrastructure related to activity in Africa, and non-renewals of point-to-point services from customers operating in Africa and Latin America. The network services decline was also due to non-renewals of services related to the challenging economic environment in Russia. The media increase resulted primarily from growth in direct-to-home television services in the Latin America, Caribbean and Africa regions, partially offset by declines in the Asia-Pacific and North America regions. Managed services reported an aggregate increase of $0.3 million, largely due to a net increase of $8.1 million in revenue from network services customers for broadband services for primarily air and maritime mobility applications, largely offset by declines in revenue of $2.2 million from network services customers for point-to-point trunking applications, which are switching to fiber alternatives, and a $1.7 million decrease from media customers for occasional video solutions. Total Off-Network and Other Revenues reported an aggregate decline of $11.8 million, or a decrease of 20 percent, to $47.0 million, as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016: Transponder, MSS and other Off-Network services reported an aggregate decrease of $10.8 million, primarily due to reduced sales of customer premises equipment and decreases in services for government applications, largely related to sales of Off-Network managed services. reported an aggregate decrease of $10.8 million, primarily due to reduced sales of customer premises equipment and decreases in services for government applications, largely related to sales of Off-Network managed services. Satellite-related services reported a slight aggregate decrease of $1.0 million, primarily due to decreased revenue from professional services supporting third-party satellites. For the three months ended March 31, 2017, changes in operating expenses, interest expense, net, and other significant income statement items are described below. Direct costs of revenue (excluding depreciation and amortization) decreased by $3.0 million, or 3 percent, to $84.5 million, as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. This reflects a decrease of $8.4 million largely due to lower cost of sales for customer premise equipment related to our government customer set and declines in cost of Off-Network fixed satellite services and managed services capacity purchased in support of our government business. This was partially offset by an increase of $1.8 million in staff-related expenses in relation to the company's managed services strategy, an increase of $1.4 million in satellite-related insurance costs due to recent launches and a $1.2 million increase in licenses and fees. Selling, general and administrative expenses remained consistent at $57.3 million, as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. A $6.4 million increase in professional services fees were substantially offset by a $6.6 million decline in bad debt expense from the Latin America region. Depreciation and amortization expense increased by $10.3 million, or 6 percent, to $179.1 million, as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016. Interest expense, net consists of the interest expense we incur offset by interest income earned and the amount of interest we capitalize related to assets under construction. Interest expense, net increased by $29.3 million, or 14 percent, to $246.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, as compared to $216.9 million in the three months ended March 31, 2016. This was principally due to a net increase of $18.1 million in interest expense primarily driven by new debt issuances in 2016, which was offset by certain discounted debt repurchases and exchanges in 2016, and an increase of $10.4 million from lower capitalized interest for the three months ended March 31, 2017, primarily resulting from a decreased number of satellites and related assets under construction. The non-cash portion of total interest expense, net was $11.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, due to the amortization of deferred financing fees and the accretion and amortization of discounts and premiums. Other income, net was $1.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, as compared to other expense, net of $0.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016. The increase of $1.9 million was primarily due to a $2.0 million increase in income related to our business conducted in Brazilian reais Provision for income taxes was $6.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, as compared to $5.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016. The increase was principally due to higher income for our U.S. subsidiaries for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Cash paid for income taxes net of refunds, totaled $16.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, as compared to $11.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Net Income, Net Income per Diluted Common Share attributable to Intelsat S.A., EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Net loss attributable to Intelsat S.A. was $34.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, compared to net income attributable to Intelsat S.A. of $15.3 million for the same period in 2016. Net loss per diluted common share attributable to Intelsat S.A. was $0.29 for the three months ended March 31, 2017, compared to net income per diluted common share of $0.13 for the same period in 2016. EBITDA was $398.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, compared to $407.5 million for the same period in 2016. Adjusted EBITDA was $409.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, or 76 percent of revenue, compared to $417.7 million, or 76 percent of revenue, for the same period in 2016. Intelsat management has reviewed the data pertaining to the use of the Intelsat network, and is providing revenue information with respect to that use by customer set and service type in the following tables. Intelsat management believes this provides a useful perspective on the changes in revenue and customer trends over time. By Customer Set Three Months Ended March 31, Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 2017 Network Services 227,687 41 212,933 39 Media 212,138 38 225,054 42 Government 103,532 19 91,919 17 Other 9,286 2 8,578 2 552,643 100 538,484 100 By Service Type Three Months Ended March 31, Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 2017 On-Network Revenues Transponder services 390,374 71 388,878 72 Managed services 100,614 18 100,917 19 Channel services 2,837 1 1,640 0 Total on-network revenues 493,825 89 491,435 91 Off-Network and Other Revenues Transponder, MSS and other off-network services 46,217 8 35,439 7 Satellite-related services 12,601 2 11,610 2 Total off-network and other revenues 58,818 11 47,049 9 Total 552,643 100 538,484 100 Free Cash Flow Used in Operations Net cash provided by operating activities was $178.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, and free cash flow used in operations1was $18.4 million for the same period. Free cash flow from (used in) operations is defined as net cash provided by operating activities, less payments for satellites and other property and equipment (including capitalized interest) and other payments for satellites from financing activities. Payments for satellites and other property and equipment from investing activities during the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $178.5 million. Financial Outlook 2017 Today, Intelsat reaffirmed its 2017 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance issued on February 28, 2017, in which the company expects the following: Revenue: Intelsat forecasts full-year 2017 revenue to be in a range of $2.180 billion to $2.225 billion. Adjusted EBITDA: Intelsat forecasts Adjusted EBITDA performance for the full-year 2017 to be in a range of $1.655 billion to $1.700 billion. Capital Expenditures: As disclosed on February 28, 2017, in light of the proposed Merger with OneWeb, we will defer providing guidance on capital expenditures prior to the completion of the transaction. Once the Merger is completed, the results of a thorough technical and business evaluation will be quantified to produce a combined capital expenditure plan. 1In this release, financial measures are presented both in accordance with U.S. GAAP and also on a non-U.S. GAAP basis. EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA (or "AEBITDA"), free cash flow from (used in) operations and related margins included in this release are non-U.S. GAAP financial measures. Please see the consolidated financial information below for information reconciling non-U.S. GAAP financial measures to comparable U.S. GAAP financial measures. Q1 2017 Quarterly Commentary Intelsat provides a detailed quarterly commentary on the Company's business trends and performance. Please visit www.intelsat.com/investors for management's commentary on the Company's progress against its operational priorities and financial outlook. Conference Call Information Intelsat management will hold a public conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, April 27, 2017 to discuss the Company's first quarter financial results for the period ended March 31, 2017. Access to the live conference call will also be available via the Internet at www.intelsat.com/investors. To participate on the live call, participants should dial +1 844-834-1428 from North America, and +1 920-663-6274 from all other locations. The participant pass code is 92095288. Participants will have access to a replay of the conference call through May 4, 2017. The replay number for North America is +1 855-859-2056, and for all other locations is +1 404-537-3406. The participant pass code for the replay is 92095288. About Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I) operates the world's first Globalized Network, delivering high-quality, cost-effective video and broadband services anywhere in the world. Intelsat's Globalized Network combines the world's largest satellite backbone with terrestrial infrastructure, managed services and an open, interoperable architecture to enable customers to drive revenue and reach through a new generation of network services. Thousands of organizations serving billions of people worldwide rely on Intelsat to provide ubiquitous broadband connectivity, multi-format video broadcasting, secure satellite communications and seamless mobility services. The end result is an entirely new world, one that allows us to envision the impossible, connect without boundaries and transform the ways in which we live. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com. Intelsat Safe Harbor Statement: Some of the information and statements contained in this earnings release and certain oral statements made from time to time by representatives of Intelsat constitute "forward-looking statements" that do not directly or exclusively relate to historical facts. When used in this earnings release, the words "may," "will," "might," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "project," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "intend," "potential," "outlook," and "continue," and the negative of these terms, and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. Forward-looking statements include: our statements regarding certain plans, expectations, goals, projections, and beliefs about the benefits of the proposed merger and investment transactions, the transactions parties' plans, objectives, expectations and intentions, and the expected timing of completion of the proposed transactions; our expectation that the launches of our satellites in the future will position us for growth; our plans for satellite launches in the near to mid-term; our guidance regarding our expectations for our revenue performance and Adjusted EBITDA performance; our capital expenditure guidance over the next several years; our belief that the scale of our fleet can reduce the financial impact of satellite or launch failures and protect against service interruptions; our belief that the diversity of our revenue and customer base allow us to recognize trends across regions and capture new growth opportunities; our expectation that developing differentiated services and investing in new technology will allow us to unlock essential opportunities; our expectations as to the increased number of transponder equivalents on our fleet over the next several years; and our expectations as to the level of our cash tax payments in the future. The forward-looking statements reflect Intelsat's intentions, plans, expectations, anticipations, projections, estimations, predictions, outlook, assumptions and beliefs about future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of Intelsat's control. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements include known and unknown risks. Some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from historical results or those anticipated or predicted by these forward-looking statements include: risks associated with operating our in-orbit satellites; satellite anomalies, launch failures, satellite launch and construction delays and in-orbit failures or reduced performance; potential changes in the number of companies offering commercial satellite launch services and the number of commercial satellite launch opportunities available in any given time period that could impact our ability to timely schedule future launches and the prices we pay for such launches; our ability to obtain new satellite insurance policies with financially viable insurance carriers on commercially reasonable terms or at all, as well as the ability of our insurance carriers to fulfill their obligations; possible future losses on satellites that are not adequately covered by insurance; U.S. and other government regulation; changes in our contracted backlog or expected contracted backlog for future services; pricing pressure and overcapacity in the markets in which we compete; our ability to access capital markets for debt or equity; the competitive environment in which we operate; customer defaults on their obligations to us; our international operations and other uncertainties associated with doing business internationally; the possibility that the proposed Merger and SoftBank Investment do not close when expected or at all; potential adverse reactions or changes to business or employee relationships, including those resulting from the announcement or completion of the proposed Merger and SoftBank Investment; competitive responses to the proposed Merger and SoftBank Investment; the possibility that the anticipated benefits of the Merger and SoftBank Investment are not realized when expected or at all, including as a result of the impact of, or problems arising from, the integration of the two companies, or conditions imposed in order to obtain regulatory approvals to complete the Merger and SoftBank Investment; the possibility that the proposed Merger and SoftBank Investment may be more expensive to complete than anticipated, including as a result of unexpected factors or events; diversion of management's attention from ongoing business operations and opportunities; the possibility that the condition to the Merger and SoftBank Investment relating to the completion of exchange offers may not be satisfied, or may be satisfied on different terms than currently proposed; and litigation. Known risks include, among others, the risks described in Intelsat's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2016, and its other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the political, economic and legal conditions in the markets we are targeting for communications services or in which we operate and other risks and uncertainties inherent in the telecommunications business in general and the satellite communications business in particular. Because actual results could differ materially from Intelsat's intentions, plans, expectations, anticipations, projections, estimations, predictions, outlook, assumptions and beliefs about the future, you are urged to view all forward-looking statements with caution. Intelsat does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. INTELSAT S.A. UNAUDITED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS ($ in thousands, except per share amounts) Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Revenue 552,643 538,484 Operating expenses: Direct costs of revenue (excluding depreciation and amortization) 87,460 84,461 Selling, general and administrative 57,130 57,295 Depreciation and amortization 168,880 179,132 Total operating expenses 313,470 320,888 Income from operations 239,173 217,596 Interest expense, net 216,910 246,246 Gain on early extinguishment of debt 504 Other income (expense), net (582 1,344 Income (loss) before income taxes 21,681 (26,802 Provision for income taxes 5,389 6,840 Net income (loss) 16,292 (33,642 Net income attributable to noncontrolling interest (966 (928 Net income (loss) attributable to Intelsat S.A. 15,326 (34,570 Net income (loss) per common share attributable to Intelsat S.A.: Basic 0.14 (0.29 Diluted 0.13 (0.29 INTELSAT S.A. UNAUDITED RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME/(LOSS) TO EBITDA ($ in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Net income (loss) 16,292 (33,642 Add (Subtract): Interest expense, net 216,910 246,246 Gain on early extinguishment of debt (504 Provision for income taxes 5,389 6,840 Depreciation and amortization 168,880 179,132 EBITDA 407,471 398,072 EBITDA Margin 74 74 Note: Intelsat calculates a measure called EBITDA to assess the operating performance of Intelsat S.A. EBITDA consists of earnings before net interest, gain on early extinguishment of debt, taxes and depreciation and amortization. Given our high level of leverage, refinancing activities are a frequent part of our efforts to manage our costs of borrowing. Accordingly, we consider gain on early extinguishment of debt an element of interest expense. EBITDA is a measure commonly used in the Fixed Satellite Services ("FSS") sector, and we present EBITDA to enhance the understanding of our operating performance. We use EBITDA as one criterion for evaluating our performance relative to that of our peers. We believe that EBITDA is an operating performance measure, and not a liquidity measure, that provides investors and financial analysts with a measure of operating results unaffected by differences in capital structures, capital investment cycles and ages of related assets among otherwise comparable companies. EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under U.S. GAAP, and our EBITDA may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to operating income (loss) or net income (loss), determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of our operating performance, or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities, determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of cash flows, or as a measure of liquidity. INTELSAT S.A. UNAUDITED RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME/(LOSS) TO ADJUSTED EBITDA ($ in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Net income (loss) 16,292 (33,642 Add (Subtract): Interest expense, net 216,910 246,246 Gain on early extinguishment of debt (504 Provision for income taxes 5,389 6,840 Depreciation and amortization 168,880 179,132 EBITDA 407,471 398,072 Add: Compensation and benefits 7,669 4,902 Non-recurring and other non-cash items 2,530 6,864 Adjusted EBITDA 417,670 409,838 Adjusted EBITDA Margin 76 76 Note: Intelsat calculates a measure called Adjusted EBITDA to assess the operating performance of Intelsat S.A. Adjusted EBITDA consists of EBITDA as adjusted to exclude or include certain unusual items, certain other operating expense items and certain other adjustments as described in the table above. Our management believes that the presentation of Adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to investors, lenders and financial analysts regarding our financial condition and results of operations, because it permits clearer comparability of our operating performance between periods. By excluding the potential volatility related to the timing and extent of non-operating activities, our management believes that Adjusted EBITDA provides a useful means of evaluating the success of our operating activities. We also use Adjusted EBITDA, together with other appropriate metrics, to set goals for and measure the operating performance of our business, and it is one of the principal measures we use to evaluate our management's performance in determining compensation under our incentive compensation plans. Adjusted EBITDA measures have been used historically by investors, lenders and financial analysts to estimate the value of a company, to make informed investment decisions and to evaluate performance. Our management believes that the inclusion of Adjusted EBITDA facilitates comparison of our results with those of companies having different capital structures. Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under U.S. GAAP, and our Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to operating income (loss) or net income (loss), determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of our operating performance, or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities, determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of cash flows, or as a measure of liquidity. INTELSAT S.A. CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS ($ in thousands, except per share amounts) As of December 31, 2016 As of March 31, 2017 (unaudited) ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents 666,024 622,675 Receivables, net of allowance of $54,744 in 2016 and $52,481 in 2017 203,036 197,555 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 55,908 57,203 Total current assets 924,968 877,433 Satellites and other property and equipment, net 6,185,842 6,189,773 Goodwill 2,620,627 2,620,627 Non-amortizable intangible assets 2,452,900 2,452,900 Amortizable intangible assets, net 391,838 381,274 Other assets 365,834 389,896 Total assets 12,942,009 12,911,903 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' DEFICIT Current liabilities: Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 215,987 157,503 Taxes payable 16,733 7,544 Employee related liabilities 50,178 28,248 Accrued interest payable 204,840 289,918 Deferred satellite performance incentives 23,455 28,738 Deferred revenue 157,684 161,935 Other current liabilities 64,786 50,743 Total current liabilities 733,663 724,629 Long-term debt, net of current portion 14,198,084 14,209,427 Deferred satellite performance incentives, net of current portion 210,706 228,195 Deferred revenue, net of current portion 906,744 892,608 Deferred income taxes 168,445 172,177 Accrued retirement benefits 186,284 183,178 Other long-term liabilities 148,081 141,221 Shareholders' deficit: Common shares; nominal value $0.01 per share 1,180 1,188 Paid-in capital 2,156,911 2,161,947 Accumulated deficit (5,715,931 (5,750,501 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (76,305 (74,741 Total Intelsat S.A. shareholders' deficit (3,634,145 (3,662,107 Noncontrolling interest 24,147 22,575 Total liabilities and shareholders' deficit 12,942,009 12,911,903 INTELSAT S.A. UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS ($ in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Cash flows from operating activities: Net income (loss) 16,292 (33,642 Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 168,880 179,132 Provision for doubtful accounts 6,258 (329 Foreign currency transaction gain (1,710 (1,539 Loss on disposal of assets 24 Share-based compensation 7,669 4,902 Deferred income taxes (2,422 (1,325 Amortization of discount, premium, issuance costs and related costs 5,066 11,812 Gain on early extinguishment of debt (504 Unrealized gains on derivative financial instruments (764 Amortization of actuarial loss and prior service credits for retirement benefits 840 893 Other non-cash items 1,191 18 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Receivables 5,476 6,653 Prepaid expenses and other assets (11,840 (6,433 Accounts payable and accrued liabilities (15,046 (39,932 Accrued interest payable 150,094 85,078 Deferred revenue 25,477 (23,408 Accrued retirement benefits (2,413 (3,106 Other long-term liabilities 90 70 Net cash provided by operating activities 353,138 178,364 Cash flows from investing activities: Payments for satellites and other property and equipment (including capitalized interest) (227,176 (178,473 Purchase of cost method investments (4,000 (16,000 Capital contributions to unconsolidated affiliates (456 (3,022 Net cash used in investing activities (231,632 (197,495 Cash flows from financing activities: Proceeds from issuance of long-term debt 1,250,000 Debt issuance costs (19,200 Payments on debt exchange (14 Dividends paid to preferred shareholders (2,480 Other payments for satellites (18,333 Principal payments on deferred satellite performance incentives (3,971 (4,570 Dividends paid to noncontrolling interest (2,310 (2,500 Other financing activities 503 Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities 1,222,039 (24,914 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 237 696 Net change in cash and cash equivalents 1,343,782 (43,349 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 171,541 666,024 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period 1,515,323 622,675 Supplemental cash flow information: Interest paid, net of amounts capitalized 61,925 149,724 Income taxes paid, net of refunds 11,630 16,489 Supplemental disclosure of non-cash investing activities: Accrued capital expenditures 98,090 46,775 Capitalization of deferred satellite performance incentives 31,600 27,325 INTELSAT S.A. UNAUDITED RECONCILIATION OF NET CASH PROVIDED BY OPERATING ACTIVITIES TO FREE CASH FLOW FROM (USED IN) OPERATIONS ($ in thousands) Three Months Ended March 31, Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 2017 Net cash provided by operating activities 353,138 178,364 Payments for satellites and other property and equipment (including capitalized interest) (227,176 (178,473 Other payments for satellites from financing activities (18,333 Free cash flow from (used in) operations 125,962 (18,442 Note: Free cash flow from (used in) operations consists of net cash provided by operating activities, less payments for satellites and other property and equipment (including capitalized interest) from investing activities and other payment for satellites from financing activities. Free cash flow from (used in) operations is not a measurement of cash flow under U.S. GAAP. Intelsat believes free cash flow from (used in) operations is a useful measure of financial performance that shows a company's ability to fund its operations. Free cash flow from (used in) operations is used by Intelsat in comparing its performance to that of its peers and is commonly used by financial analysts and investors in assessing performance. Free cash flow from (used in) operations does not give effect to cash used for debt service requirements and thus does not reflect funds available for investment or other discretionary uses. Free cash flow from (used in) operations is not a measure of financial performance under U.S. GAAP, and free cash flow from (used in) operations may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. You should not consider free cash flow from (used in) operations as an alternative to operating income (loss) or net income (loss), determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of Intelsat's operating performance, or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities, determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of cash flows, or as a measure of liquidity. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005347/en/ Contacts: Intelsat Dianne VanBeber Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications +1 703-559-7406 dianne.vanbeber@intelsat.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - REIT Iron Mountain Inc. (IRM) reported Thursday that its first-quarter funds from operations or FFO Normalized per share of $0.48, down from $0.54 in 2016. Adjusted FFO was $170.9 million for the first quarter, compared with $167.6 million in 2016. Net income for the first quarter was $59 million, compared with $63 million in 2016. Earnings per share were $0.22, down from $0.30 last year. Adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter were $0.24, compared to $0.33 last year. The results were impacted by increased depreciation and amortization expenses resulting from the Recall acquisition, the company noted. Total reported revenues for the first quarter were $939 million, higher than $751 million last year. On a constant dollar basis, total Revenue growth was 25.2% for the quarter, primarily driven by the Recall acquisition, which closed on May 2, 2016. On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.26 per share on revenues of $928.63 million for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $293 million, compared with $235 million in 2016. Further, the company maintained its 2017 full year guidance. The Company expects, on constant dollar basis, revenue growth of 8% to 10%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 16% to 19% and AFFO growth of 8% to 15% for full year 2017. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Highlights: -- Successful infill drilling at Akwasiso increases Indicated Resources by 79% to 6.72 million tonnes at 1.49 g/t for 322,500 contained ounces of gold. -- 62% increase in Mineral Reserves to 3.83 million tonnes at 1.74 g/t, (+26% increase in grade) for 214,500 contained ounces of gold. Mineral Reserves delineated at US$12 per Reserve ounce. -- Updated Mineral Resource Estimate signed off by CSA Global (UK) Ltd. -- Phase 1 and 2 drilling programs executed at a very low discovery cost of US$8 per Resource ounce. -- Akwasiso Environmental Invoice received, Environmental Permit expected shortly. Asanko Gold Inc. ("Asanko" or the "Company") (TSX: AKG)(NYSE MKT: AKG) is pleased to announce an updated Mineral Resource and Reserve Estimate for the Akwasiso deposit, part of the Asanko Gold Mine located in Ghana, West Africa, following the successful completion of the infill drilling campaign to upgrade previously reported Inferred Resources into the Indicated category. Compared to the December 31, 2016 Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE"), the updated Akwasiso MRE has increased Indicated Resources by 79% to 6.72 million tonnes at 1.49 g/t for 322,500 contained gold ounces (refer to Table 1). The Resource grades have improved significantly by 24% from 1.20 g/t to 1.49 g/t. The updated MRE has been signed off by CSA Global (UK) Ltd. The design of the open pit has been revised on the basis of the updated MRE and geological model, resulting in a 62% increase in Mineral Reserves (compared to December 2016), which now total 3.83 million tonnes at 1.74 g/t for 214,500 contained gold ounces (refer to Table 2). Grades have also increased by 26% compared to the December 2016 Reserve Estimate of 1.38 g/t. Akwasiso is now the largest satellite deposit within the Asanko Gold Mine multi-pit complex and scheduled to commence mining in Q1 2018. Akwasiso is located approximately three kilometres north east of the processing facility, which is being upgraded to five million tonnes per annum, and will provide incremental at surface ounces that have lower mining and processing costs than the current Nkran operations. The deposit is located on the existing Abirem Mining Licence, which has enabled the supplementary permitting application for mining to be fast tracked. The Environmental Invoice has been received from the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency, which is the precursor to the final Environmental Permit which is expected shortly. Peter Breese, President and CEO, commented, "It is pleasing to note that the prospectivity of our large scale tenement package in Ghana continues to deliver significant low cost ounces. Since acquiring the deposit in mid-2016, we have spent just $8 per Resource ounce on the drilling program at Akwasiso and added significant reserves at quality grades, all within a short trucking distance of our processing plant. The significant increase in Akwasiso's reserves further boosts the near-term, near mine ore inventory available to support the increased mill throughput to 5Mtpa. With ore containing more than 166,000 ounces already pre-developed at Nkran, which don't require any further capital development to access, 130,000 ounces of at surface reserves at Dynamite Hill and 214,000 ounces of reserves at Akwasiso, we have more than sufficient ore inventory to maintain our 2017 production profile and to support the expanded production profile of the Asanko Gold Mine in 2018 and 2019 whilst we build the conveyor and bring Esaase into production. With the significant contribution from at surface ounces, we expect to benefit from both an increase in production as well as the corresponding decrease in costs over this period." Table 1: Updated Akwasiso Mineral Resource Estimate ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 2017 December 2016 Comparison ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Grade Moz Tonnes Grade Moz Tonnes Grade Moz Mt g/t Au Mt g/t Au Mt g/t Au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Measured - - - - - - - - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 6.72 1.49 0.32 4.61 1.20 0.18 2.11 0.29 0.14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total M&I 6.72 1.49 0.32 4.61 1.20 0.18 46% 24% 79% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: Resources compiled using a US$2,000/oz pit shell and a 0.5 g/t cut- off. All figures are rounded to reflect appropriate levels of confidence. Apparent differences may occur due to rounding. Resource estimate signed off by CSA Global (UK) Ltd. ----------------------------------------------------- April 2017 ----------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Grade Moz Mt g/t Au ----------------------------------------------------- Inferred 0.13 1.06 0.004 ----------------------------------------------------- Table 2: Updated Akwasiso Mineral Reserve Estimate ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 2017 December 2016 Comparison ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Grade Moz Tonnes Grade Moz Tonnes Grade Moz Mt g/t Au Mt g/t Au Mt g/t Au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proven - - - - - - - - - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Probable 3.83 1.74 0.21 3.03 1.38 0.13 0.8 0.36 0.08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total P&P 3.83 1.74 0.21 3.03 1.38 0.13 26% 26% 62% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: Using a US$1,300/oz pit shell and a 0.8 g/t cut-off. All figures are rounded to reflect appropriate levels of confidence. Apparent differences may occur due to rounding. Only Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources were converted to Mineral Reserves. The Akwasiso deposit shows similar geological characteristics to Nkran, with at least three mineralized structures within a sandstone-siltstone sequence and an intrusive granite which hosts shallow dipping quartz veining. The infill drilling program totaled 5,147 metres of combined reverse circulation and diamond core drilling which has enabled further refinement of the geological model for the deposit. The program also provided orientated core to assist structural and grade distribution trend measurements. As a consequence, the MRE methodology previously adopted for Akwasiso in December 2016 has been refined. The grade shells in the previous estimate were derived from an Indicated Kriging ("IK") and Ordinary Kriging ("OK") approach. In the April 2017 MRE, the grade shells have now been redefined by physical wireframing of the grade shells to constrain volume (and tonnage), followed by an OK grade estimation within a given grade shell. Qualified Persons Statements Phil Bentley, Asanko Executive: Geology and Resources (Pr. Sci. Nat.) is the Asanko Qualified Person under NI 43-101 guidelines who assumes technical responsibility for the Mineral Resource contents of this news release. The April 2017 MRE for Akwasiso was prepared by Kathleen Hansmann (Pr. Sci. Nat.) Asanko Mineral Resource Manager. The MRE has been overseen and signed off by Malcolm Titley, Principal Consultant, CSA Global (UK) Ltd. The MRE is reported in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101 requirements and the South African Code of Reporting of Exploration Results (SAMREC), which is consistent with the CIM Estimation Best Practice Guidelines in Canada. The Mineral Reserve Statement was prepared by Frederik Fourie, Asanko Senior Mining Engineer (Pr.Eng.) who is the Asanko Qualified Person under NI 43-101 who assumes responsibility for the Mineral Reserve contents of this news release. The Reserve is reported in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101 requirements, which is consistent with the CIM Estimation Best Practice Guidelines in Canada. Enquiries: For further information please visit: www.asanko.com, email: info@asanko.com. About Asanko Gold Inc. Asanko's vision is to become a mid-tier gold mining company that maximizes value for all its stakeholders. The Company's flagship project is the multi-million ounce Asanko Gold Mine located in Ghana, West Africa. The mine is being developed in phases. Phase 1 commenced gold production in January 2016 and declared commercial production on April 1, 2016. Ramp-up to steady state production was achieved in Q2 2016. Asanko is managed by highly skilled and successful technical, operational and financial professionals. The Company is strongly committed to the highest standards for environmental management, social responsibility, and health and safety for its employees and neighbouring communities. Forward-Looking and other Cautionary Information This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address estimated resource quantities, grades and contained metals, possible future mining, exploration and development activities, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements should not be in any way construed as guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices for metals, the conclusions of detailed feasibility and technical analyses, the timely renewal of key permits, lower than expected grades and quantities of resources, mining rates and recovery rates and the lack of availability of necessary capital, which may not be available to the Company on terms acceptable to it or at all. The Company is subject to the specific risks inherent in the mining business as well as general economic and business conditions. For more information on the Company, Investors should review the Company's Annual Form 40-F filing with the United States Securities Commission and its home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com. Neither Toronto Stock Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Note to US Investors Regarding Mineral Reporting Standards: Asanko has prepared its disclosure in accordance with the requirements of securities laws in effect in Canada, which differ from the requirements of US securities laws. Terms relating to mineral resources in this press release are defined in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects under the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves. The Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") permits mining companies, in their filings with the SEC, to disclose only those mineral deposits that a company can economically and legally extract or produce. Asanko uses certain terms, such as, "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources", "inferred mineral resources" and "probable mineral reserves", that the SEC does not recognize (these terms may be used in this press release and are included in the public filings of Asanko which have been filed with securities commissions or similar authorities in Canada). Contacts: Asanko Gold Inc. info@asanko.com www.asanko.com Alex Buck Manager, Investor and Media Relations Toll-Free (N.America): 1-855-246-7341 +44-7932-740-452 alex.buck@asanko.com Ryan Walchuck VP Corporate Development and Investor Relations +1 778 986-2000 ryan.walchuck@asanko.com MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Lumenpulse Inc. (TSX: LMP) ("Lumenpulse" or the "Company"), the parent company of Lumenpulse Group, a leading manufacturer of high performance, specification-grade LED lighting solutions, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an arrangement agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") pursuant to which a group led by Mr. Francois-Xavier Souvay, the Founder, President and CEO of Lumenpulse, several other existing shareholders of the Company and Power Energy Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada (collectively, the "Consortium"), will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Lumenpulse by way of a plan of arrangement for $21.25 per share in cash. The consideration offered to Lumenpulse shareholders represents a premium of 85.8% to the April 26, 2017 closing price of Lumenpulse shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange and a premium of 44.8% to the 90-day volume weighted average price of Lumenpulse shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange from December 15, 2016 to April 26, 2017. The transaction has been approved unanimously by the Lumenpulse Board of Directors (with interested and non-independent directors abstaining) following receipt of the unanimous recommendation by a Special Committee of Lumenpulse composed entirely of independent directors (the "Special Committee"). "This transaction is another important step for Lumenpulse, its shareholders, employees, agents and valued business partners," said Mr. Souvay. "As a private company, we will have the resources and flexibility to continue our growth, increase our focus on innovation and the development of new products, and take another giant step towards becoming a true global leader in the high performance architectural specification grade lighting sector." "Power Corporation is pleased to be associating itself with Francois-Xavier Souvay. We have great confidence in his leadership. As the founder and CEO, Francois-Xavier and his talented entrepreneurial management team have grown this Montreal-based company into an important global player. Their philosophy is truly aligned with our long-term value creation model," said Mr. Olivier Desmarais, Chairman of Power Energy and Senior Vice-President of Power Corporation of Canada. Pierre Larochelle, CEO of Power Energy, said, "LED technologies have fundamentally changed the lighting industry, creating new global opportunities for innovators like Lumenpulse. This investment aligns with our strategic focus on sustainable technologies and is a natural fit for Power Energy." "Continuity was very important to me. As the founder and CEO of Lumenpulse, I am excited and motivated to continue to lead this great organization. We are still full of energy and ideas and together with our new partner Power Energy, we are ready to take the company to the next level," said Mr. Souvay. He added, "We are extremely honored to have Power Energy as a partner going forward. They are a knowledgeable, long-term investor that shares our passion for innovation in sustainable lighting technology." Independent Valuation Process The Special Committee is comprised of the following independent directors: Pierre Fitzgibbon, Francois Cote and Josee Perreault. The Special Committee retained CIBC Capital Markets ("CIBC") as financial advisor and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ("PwC") as independent valuator. In arriving at its unanimous recommendation in favour of the transaction, the Special Committee considered several factors which will be outlined in public filings to be made in connection therewith. These include a formal valuation report by PwC and fairness opinions by PwC and CIBC. PwC provided the Special Committee with a formal valuation, completed under the Special Committee's supervision, which reflected the determination that, as at April 26, 2017, subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications contained therein, the fair market value of the shares of the Company was between $20.00 and $23.00 per share. Each of PwC and CIBC provided an opinion to the effect that, as at April 26, 2017, subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications contained therein, the consideration to be received by the disinterested shareholders pursuant to the Arrangement Agreement is fair, from a financial point of view, to such shareholders. Copies of the PwC valuation report and the PwC and CIBC fairness opinions and other relevant background information will be included in the management proxy circular that will be mailed to Lumenpulse shareholders for the special meeting of shareholders anticipated to be held in June 2017 to approve the proposed transaction. Mr. Souvay, Nicolas Belanger and Michel Ringuet, each of whom are Lumenpulse directors and members of the Consortium, as well as Mr. Larochelle, who also serves as a Lumenpulse director, did not participate in the deliberations of the Lumenpulse Board in relation to the evaluation of the proposed transaction led by the Special Committee. Messrs. Souvay, Belanger and Ringuet as well as the other existing shareholders who are members of the Consortium (collectively, the "Rollover Shareholders") collectively hold approximately 40% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company. Such Rollover Shareholders have indicated that they are only prepared to partner with Power Energy and that they are not prepared to pursue any other transaction. Accordingly, they have entered into irrevocable support and voting agreements and have agreed to vote in favour and support the completion of the proposed transaction for a period of 12 months following today's date. Additional Transaction Details To be implemented, the proposed transaction requires approval of at least 66 2/3% of the votes cast by all holders of Lumenpulse shares. The proposed transaction will also require approval by a simple majority of votes cast by disinterested holders of Lumenpulse shares (excluding for purposes of such vote the Rollover Shareholders). The plan of arrangement is also subject to court approval and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions, including receipts of regulatory approvals. The Arrangement Agreement contains a non-solicitation covenant on the part of the Company, subject to the customary "fiduciary out" provisions. A termination fee of $8 million would be payable to the Consortium in certain circumstances, including in the context of a superior proposal supported by the Company. The Company would also be entitled to a reverse termination fee of $8 million if the transaction is not completed in certain circumstances. Further details regarding the applicable voting requirements and court and regulatory approvals to be obtained will be contained in the management proxy circular to be mailed to shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. The management proxy circular as well as the Arrangement Agreement will be made available under the profile of the Company at www.sedar.com. Mr. Souvay will be the President and Chief Executive Officer of the private company and will remain involved in all aspects of the business and operations. The transaction values the Company at approximately $600 million. Advisors CIBC Capital Markets acts as financial advisor and Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP serves as legal counsel to the Lumenpulse Special Committee. Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP serves as legal counsel to the Company. National Bank Financial Inc. is the financial advisor to the Consortium and Stikeman Elliott LLP acts as its legal counsel. About Lumenpulse Group Founded in 2006, the Lumenpulse Group designs, develops, manufactures and sells a wide range of high performance and sustainable specification-grade LED lighting solutions for commercial, institutional and urban environments. The Lumenpulse Group is a leading pure-play specification-grade LED lighting solutions provider and has earned many awards and recognitions, including several Product Innovation Awards (PIA), three Next Generation Luminaires Design Awards, two Red Dot Product Design Awards, a Lightfair Innovation Award, and an iF Design Award. The Lumenpulse Group now has 670 employees worldwide, with corporate headquarters in Montreal, Canada, and offices in Vancouver, Quebec City, Boston, Paris, Florence, London and Manchester. Lumenpulse Inc., the parent company of the Lumenpulse Group, is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LMP. For more information, visit www.lumenpulsegroup.com. About Power Energy Power Energy Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada established in 2012, with an objective to invest in the sustainable and renewable energy sector. Power Energy invests in and develops companies that can provide stable and growing long-term recurring cash flows. Power Energy currently holds investments in two companies: Potentia Renewables Inc., a renewable energy power producer active in North America, and Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, a U.S.-based owner and operator of hydropower facilities. Forward-Looking Information This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information is identified by the use of terms and phrases such as "may", "would", "should", "could", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "outlook", "target", "goal", "guidance", "anticipate", "plan", "foresee", "believe", or "continue", the negative of these terms and similar terminology, including references to assumptions, although not all forward-looking information contains these terms and phrases. Such forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements relating to the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction for the Company, the Consortium and their respective shareholders, regulatory, court and shareholder approvals and the anticipated timing of the special meeting of shareholders of the Company and of the completion of the proposed transaction. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the failure of the parties to obtain the necessary shareholder, regulatory and court approvals or to otherwise satisfy the conditions to the completion of the transaction; failure of the parties to obtain such approvals or satisfy such conditions in a timely manner; significant transaction costs or unknown liabilities; failure to realize the expected benefits of the transaction; and general economic conditions. Failure to obtain the necessary shareholder, regulatory and court approvals, or the failure of the parties to otherwise satisfy the conditions to the completion of the transaction or to complete the transaction, may result in the transaction not being completed on the proposed terms, or at all. In addition, if the transaction is not completed, and the Company continues as a publicly-traded entity, there are risks that the announcement of the proposed transaction and the dedication of substantial resources of the Company to the completion of the transaction could have an impact on its business and strategic relationships (including with future and prospective employees, customers, suppliers and partners), operating results and activities in general, and could have a material adverse effect on its current and future operations, financial condition and prospects. Furthermore, the failure of the Company to comply with the terms of the Arrangement Agreement may, in certain circumstances, result in it being required to pay a fee to the Consortium, the result of which could have a material adverse effect on its financial position and results of operations and its ability to fund growth prospects and current operations. Consequently, all of the forward-looking information contained herein is qualified by the foregoing cautionary statements, and there can be no guarantee that the results or developments that we anticipate will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences or effects on our business, financial condition or results of operation. Unless otherwise noted or the context otherwise indicates, the forward-looking information contained herein is provided as of the date hereof, and we do not undertake to update or amend such forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable law. No Offer or Solicitation This announcement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell Lumenpulse common shares. Contacts: David Ryan Edelman Canada david.ryan@edelman.com 416-455-1927 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - LendingTree, Inc. (TREE) released a profit for its first quarter that advanced from last year. The company said its bottom line totaled $11.5 million, or $0.85 per share. This was higher than $8.6 million, or $0.67 per share, in last year's first quarter. The company said revenue for the quarter rose 39.9% to $132.5 million. This was up from $94.7 million last year. LendingTree, Inc. earnings at a glance: -Earnings (Q1): $11.5 Mln. vs. $8.6 Mln. last year. -Earnings Growth (Y-o-Y): 33.7% -EPS (Q1): $0.85 vs. $0.67 last year. -EPS Growth (Y-o-Y): 26.9% -Revenue (Q1): $132.5 Mln vs. $94.7 Mln last year. -Revenue Change (Y-o-Y): 39.9% -Guidance : Next quarter revenue guidance: $133 - $137 Mln Full year revenue guidance: $535 - $545 Mln 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. MOSCOW, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile TeleSystems PJSC ("MTS" or the "Company" - NYSE: MBT; MOEX: MTSS), the leading telecommunications provider in Russia and the CIS, announces that it has filed its annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The document can also be found at http://www.mtsgsm.com/resources/annual_reports/ of the Investor Relations section. Hard copies of the document with the Company's complete audited financial statements will be available free of charge to shareholders upon request. For further information, please contact in Moscow: Joshua B. Tulgan Director, Department of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Mobile TeleSystems PJSC Tel: +7-495-223-2025 E-mail: ir@mts.ru Learn more about MTS. Visit the official blog of the Investor Relations Department at www.mtsgsm.com/blog/ * * * Mobile TeleSystems PJSC ("MTS" - NYSE:MBT; MOEX:MTSS) is the leading telecommunications group in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe. We provide wireless Internet access and fixed voice, broadband and pay-TV to over 100 million customers who value high quality of service at a competitive price. Our wireless and fixed-line networks deliver best-in-class speeds and coverage throughout Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. To keep pace with evolving customer demand, we continue to grow through innovative products, investments in our market-leading retail platform, mobile payment services, e-commerce and IT solutions. For more information, please visit: www.mtsgsm.com. * * * Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of MTS, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify forward looking statements by terms such as "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "will," "could," "may" or "might," and the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. We wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We do not undertake or intend to update these statements to reflect events and circumstances occurring after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. We refer you to the documents MTS files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the Company's most recent Form 20-F. These documents contain and identify important factors, including those contained in the section captioned "Risk Factors" that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements, including, among others, the severity and duration of current economic and financial conditions, including volatility in interest and exchange rates, commodity and equity prices and the value of financial assets; the impact of Russian, U.S. and other foreign government programs to restore liquidity and stimulate national and global economies, our ability to maintain our current credit rating and the impact on our funding costs and competitive position if we do not do so, strategic actions, including acquisitions and dispositions and our success in integrating acquired businesses, potential fluctuations in quarterly results, our competitive environment, dependence on new service development and tariff structures, rapid technological and market change, acquisition strategy, risks associated with telecommunications infrastructure, governmental regulation of the telecommunications industries and other risks associated with operating in Russia and the CIS, volatility of stock price, financial risk management and future growth subject to risks. GE Worked with Pilot Customer Stadtwerke Rosenheim to Develop Next Evolution of Its Jenbacher J920 FleXtra Gas Engine New Offering from GE Helps Promote Germany's Energy Transition Plan and Energy Security in Europe Modification and Upgrade Increases Number of European Homes that Can be Served by Existing Engine from 18,500 to More than 20,000 As Germany transitions to greater energy efficiency through its Energy Transition plan, it looks to increase the use of natural gas to enable renewable energy and reduce emissions. Helping to promote energy security in Europe, GE's Distributed Power (NYSE:GE) today announced it has worked with pilot customer Stadtwerke Rosenheim to develop a modification and upgrade for its Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engine that increases the power output of the engine by nearly 10 percent-an increase from 9.5 megawatts (MW) to 10.38 MW for the 50-hertz unit. The power boost of more than 0.8 MW electrical output has increased the number of European homes that can be served with power from 18,500 homes to more than 20,000, and this additional output comes from the existing engine, which has been upgraded. The modified and upgraded pilot engine already contributed reliably to the power and heat supply of the city of Rosenheim last winter. "A macrotrend in power generation is the growing need for grid stability, creating demand for more flexible power using multiple smaller power generation units as an addition to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar," said Dr. Gotz Bruhl, CEO of Stadtwerke Rosenheim. "With the modification and upgrade, we can produce more power and heat for our customers from our existing J920 FleXtra gas engine, providing an even more cost-effective, value-added solution in the same footprint." GE's Jenbacher 50-hertz J920 FleXtra gas engine breaks the 10-MW threshold. Illustrated by the example of a 100-MW power plant where it can now meet the net power output with one less engine. The gas engine is Ecomagination qualified, and with the highly efficient 10-MW gas engine platform, a European facility could reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions by as much as 78,000 metric tons for a 100-MW power plant over the course of a year, which is equivalent to the CO 2 emissions from more than 41,000 cars on European roads. The natural gas-fired Jenbacher J920 FleXtra combined heat and power system (CHP) provides electricity and thermal power (hot water) for local residents and industrial customers with a lower carbon footprint compared to conventional power plants, supporting Germany's effort to reduce greenhouse emissions by 40 percent by 2020. Also, the Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engine's short startup time increases Stadtwerke Rosenheim's operational flexibility to overcome the challenges of intermittency associated with adding more wind, solar and other renewable energy supplies. "European customers are searching for cost-effective solutions to cover their energy demands, and regulations require high total energy efficiency and low emissions. Using a Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engine for CHP applications and reaching a total energy efficiency of 90 percent and more is a very attractive option for municipality customers, as it can provide an environment-friendly, reliable and economical solution to meeting the region's energy demand," said Niall Prendiville, general manager, J920 FleXtra product line for GE's Distributed Power. "GE and Stadtwerke Rosenheim share more than a decade of gas engine innovation, which made the company an excellent associate to work with to develop this modification and upgrade that will help it provide more flexible power and heat to its business and residential customers." The modification and upgrade is part of the planned evolution of the Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engine. Two-stage turbo charging with higher boost pressure is the enabler for such upgrades and increasing power output. The Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engine is now a 10.38-MW engine manufactured in the company's Jenbach, Austria, facility. The new 10.38-MW offering is for 50-hertz applications, while the 9.34-MW offering is for 60-hertz applications. To view images that accompany this release, please click here. About GE's Distributed Power GE's Distributed Power is a leading provider of engines, power equipment and services focused on power generation and gas compression at or near the point of use. Distributed Power offers a diverse product portfolio that includes highly efficient, fuel-flexible, industrial gas engines generating 100 kW to 10 MW of power for numerous industries globally. In addition, the business provides life cycle support for more than 35,000 gas engines worldwide to help you meet your business challenges and success metrics-anywhere and anytime. Backed by our service providers in more than 150 countries, GE's global service network connects with you locally for rapid response to your service needs. GE's Distributed Power is headquartered in Jenbach, Austria. About GE Power GE Power is a world leader in power generation with deep domain expertise to help customers deliver electricity from a wide spectrum of fuel sources. We are transforming the electricity industry with the digital power plant, the world's largest and most efficient gas turbine, full balance of plant, upgrade and service solutions as well as our data-leveraging software. Our innovative technologies and digital offerings help make power more affordable, reliable, accessible and sustainable. For more information, visit the company's website at www.gepower.com. Follow GE Power on Twitter @GE_Power and on LinkedIn at GE Power. About GE GE (NYSE: GE) is the world's Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. www.ge.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005072/en/ Contacts: GE's Distributed Power Susanne Reichelt, +43 664 80833 2382 susanne.reichelt@ge.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Ceylon Graphite Corp. ("Ceylon") (TSX VENTURE: CYL)(OTC PINK: CYLYF)(FRANKFURT: CCY) announces that it has commenced drilling at its K1 site, which is a past producing graphite mine. Drilling at K1 will initially focus on the area identified during VLF mapping around the old mine site. The K1 site is currently the highest priority grid that has been identified by the local geological team. Bharat Parashar, Chief Executive Officer, said: "The intent is to initially drill in the vicinity of the old shaft and then the remainder of the grid up to depths of at least 300 meters to be able to ascertain the exact location of the highest quality graphite vein. This will be done by taking soil samples at different depths and then sending these samples to various laboratories to test for the quality of the graphite." About Ceylon Graphite Corp. Ceylon Graphite Corp is a public company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE: CYL), that is in the business of exploring for and development of graphite mines in Sri Lanka. The Government of Sri Lanka has granted the company exploration rights in a land package of over 100km2. These exploration grids cover all relevant areas that had historical graphite production during the early twentieth century representing the majority of the known graphite occurrence in Sri Lanka. Ceylon's graphite is the purest in the world, and currently accounts for less than 1% of the world graphite production. "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." FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking information as such term is defined in applicable securities laws, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. The forward-looking information includes statements about the Company's expected increase in global exposure and anticipated investment from European investors. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company including the assumption that trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange will increase the Company's profile to European investors. Investors are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. Risk factors that could cause cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking information include, among other things, a general economic downturn. The Company cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com). Further information regarding the Company is available at www.ceylongraphite.com. Contacts: Bharat Parashar Chairman & Chief Executive Officer info@ceylongraphite.com Corporate Communications (604) 559-8051 www.ceylongraphite.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Corvus Gold Inc. ("Corvus" or the "Company") - (TSX: KOR)(OTCQX: CORVF) announces the initial results from testing the Atmospheric Alkaline Oxidation ("AAO") method of oxidizing sulfide mineralization for low cost cyanide gold extraction (Figure 1). Initial results of the AAO method for oxidizing sulfide material resulted in overall gold recoveries of approximately 93% from milled material in the Sierra Blanca tuff (largest host unit), which is comparable to oxidized milled material recoveries in the current production plan. Results for the remaining three units are pending. Estimated additional operational cost to the mill material for the AAO process would raise the mill cutoff grade to approximately 0.65 g/t. The current North Bullfrog model has several areas below the current designed pit bottom that could be mined at above the projected sulfide mill cutoff grade. Further test work is on going for both mill material as well as heap leach testing of lower grade material using the AAO process. To view the figure associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/corvu0426.pdf The AAO process has been extensively tested at the Hycroft project in northern Nevada where a pilot scale demonstration plant has been operated as well as test heap leach pads confirming the effectiveness of the processing technique. The AAO process has been included in the recent feasibility study done for the Hycroft project for commercial application. Jeff Pontius, President and CEO of Corvus said, "The encouraging results from the application of the AAO process to North Bullfrog sulfide material could be a bonus to the project which already hosts a large oxide resource. In addition to the higher-grade, millable sulfide material, Corvus is conducting heap leach applications of AAO similar to the test work conducted at the Hycroft Mine which if positive, could amplify its impact on the project. The current oxide deposit in our PEA study is underlain by an extensive sulfide zone that if amenable to this new low-cost method of extraction could change the way we approach exploration and expansion of the North Bullfrog project and district." AAO Sulfide Oxidation Process Test work The test work conducted by Hazen Research, Inc. on North Bullfrog sulfide material is testing the four rock types which host nearly all of the known sulfide mineralization on the project (Table 1). The current test results are from the Sierra Blanca unit, which hosts about 50% of the currently known sulfide mineralization on the North Bullfrog property. The test work conducted standard flotation concentration of the sulfide material which produced a high-quality concentrate that averaged 92% gold in just 12% of the original materials (9:1 concentration ratio) for the Sierra Blanca rock unit. That concentrate was then mixed with a sodium carbonate reagent (Soda Ash) in a reaction tank with oxygen introduced for a period of 72 hours at which point there was no sulfide sulfur remaining in the concentrate. That material was then leached using cyanide in a process similar to that which is proposed for North Bullfrog mill facility. As a control, an unoxidized (no AAO treatment) concentrate sample was cyanide leached which recovered only 12% of the gold. Results for the remaining three units are pending. The key additional cost elements in adding the AAO process to the existing North Bullfrog mill flow sheet are: a flotation circuit, a fine grinding circuit, AAO reaction tankage; and an oxygen system. These added costs and reagents are currently projected to increase the mill cutoff grade for sulfide material to approximately 0.65 g/t Au. Corvus has identified a number of potential cost saving opportunities for the system that will also be explored in the coming months. The current North Bullfrog project has a number of areas that host sulfide mineralization of sufficient grade to be processed using the AAO system, as well as a local source for soda ash, which is a key reagent. Corvus will report additional results for the other host units and heap leach tests as data becomes available. Table 1 North Bullfrog Mill Concentrate AAO Testing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overall Gold Concentration Post AAO CN Recovery Gold Recovery Ratio (ore to Gold Recovery (from ore Sample Unit to Concentrate concentrate) (from con) tonne) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sierra Blanca 94% 9:1 99% 93% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pioneer Tuff 94% 14:1 Pending Pending ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rhyolite 89% 14:1 Pending Pending ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dacite 88% 5:1 Pending Pending ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Corvus Gold is also conducting column leach tests patterned after those used at the Hycroft project that were scaled up to two, successful 5,000 t test pads. These column tests use the highly reactive sodium carbonate material as an additive to the leach material in place of the standard lime addition. If the heap leach test work is successful, it would lower the cut-off grade required and expand the potential material that could be economically processed. About the North Bullfrog Project, Nevada Corvus controls 100% of its North Bullfrog Project, which covers approximately 72 km2 in southern Nevada. The property package is made up of a number of private mineral leases of patented federal mining claims and 865 federal unpatented mining claims. The project has excellent infrastructure, being adjacent to a major highway and power corridor as well as a large water right. The North Bullfrog project includes numerous prospective gold targets at various stages of exploration with four having NI 43-101 mineral resources (Sierra Blanca, Jolly Jane, Mayflower and YellowJacket). The project contains a measured mineral resource of 3.86 Mt at an average grade of 2.55 g/t gold and 19.70 g/t silver, containing 316.5k ounces of gold and 2,445k ounces of silver, an indicated mineral resource of 1.81 Mt at an average grade of 1.53 g/t gold, and 10.20 g/t silver, containing 89.1k ounces of gold and 593.6k ounces of silver and an inferred resource of 1.48 Mt at an average grade of 0.83 g/t gold and 4.26 g/t silver, containing 39.5k ounces of gold and 202.7k ounces of silver for oxide mill processing. The mineral resource for the mill process was defined by Whittle optimization using all cost and recovery data and a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.52 g/t gold. In addition, the project contains a measured mineral resource of 0.3 Mt at an average grade of 0.25 g/t gold and 2.76 g/t silver, containing 2.4k ounces of gold and 26.6k ounces of silver, an indicated mineral resource of 22.86 Mt at an average grade of 0.30 g/t gold and 0.43 g/t silver, containing 220.5k ounces of gold and 316.1k ounces of silver and an inferred mineral resource of 176.3 Mt at an average grade of 0.19 g/t gold and 0.67 g/t silver, containing 1,077.4k ounces of gold and 3,799.2k ounces of silver for oxide, heap leach processing. The mineral resource for heap leach processing was defined by Whittle optimization using all cost and recovery data and a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.15 g/t. Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance Jeffrey A. Pontius (CPG 11044), a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), has supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Pontius is not independent of Corvus, as he is the CEO & President and holds common shares and incentive stock options. Carl E. Brechtel, (Nevada PE 008744 and Registered Member 353000 of SME), a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, has coordinated execution of the work outlined in this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Brechtel is not independent of Corvus, as he is the COO and holds common shares and incentive stock options. The work program at North Bullfrog was designed and supervised by Mark Reischman, Corvus Gold's Nevada Exploration Manager, who is responsible for all aspects of the work, including the quality control/quality assurance program. On-site personnel at the project log and track all samples prior to sealing and shipping. Quality control is monitored by the insertion of blind certified standard reference materials and blanks into each sample shipment. All resource sample shipments are sealed and shipped to ALS Chemex in Reno, Nevada, for preparation and then on to ALS Chemex in Reno, Nevada, or Vancouver, B.C., for assaying. ALS Chemex's quality system complies with the requirements for the International Standards ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 17025:1999. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material and replicate samples. Finally, representative blind duplicate samples are forwarded to ALS Chemex and an ISO compliant third party laboratory for additional quality control. For additional information on the North Bullfrog project, including information relating to exploration, data verification and the mineral resource estimates, see "Technical Report and Preliminary Economic Assessment for Combined Mill and Heap Leach Processing at the North Bullfrog Project, Bullfrog Mining District, NYE County, Nevada" dated June 16, 2015 as amended and restated May 18, 2016 which is available under Corvus' SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. About Corvus Gold Inc. Corvus Gold Inc. is a North American gold exploration and development company, focused on its near-term gold-silver mining project at the North Bullfrog and Motherlode Districts in Nevada. In addition, the Company controls a number of royalties on other North American exploration properties representing a spectrum of gold, silver and copper projects. Corvus is committed to building shareholder value through new discoveries and the expansion of its projects to maximize share price leverage in a recovering gold and silver market. On behalf of Corvus Gold Inc. Jeffrey A. Pontius, President & Chief Executive Officer Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the anticipated costs to adopt AAO; potential for new deposits and expected increases in a system's potential; anticipated content, commencement and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves, the potential to develop multiple YellowJacket style high-grade zones, the Company's belief that the parameters used in the Whittle pit optimization process are realistic and reasonable, the potential to discover additional high grade veins or additional deposits, the potential to expand the existing estimated resource at the North Bullfrog project, the potential for any mining or production at North Bullfrog, are forward-looking statements. Information concerning mineral resource estimates may be deemed to be forward-looking statements in that it reflects a prediction of the mineralization that would be encountered if a mineral deposit were developed and mined. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the Company's inability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the Company's inability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's 2014 Annual Information Form and latest interim Management Discussion and Analysis filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's most recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings in Canada may be accessed via www.sedar.com and filings with the SEC may be accessed via www.sec.gov and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties. Cautionary Note Regarding References to Resources and Reserves NI 43-101 is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource estimates contained in or incorporated by reference in this press release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the "CIM") Standards on Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council on May 10, 2014 (the "CIM Standards") as they may be amended from time to time by the CIM. United States investors are cautioned that the requirements and terminology of NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards differ significantly from the requirements and terminology of the SEC set forth in the SEC's Industry Guide 7 ("SEC Industry Guide 7"). Accordingly, the Company's disclosures regarding mineralization may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Without limiting the foregoing, while the terms "mineral resources", "inferred mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "measured mineral resources" are recognized and required by NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards, they are not recognized by the SEC and are not permitted to be used in documents filed with the SEC by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and US investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a mineral resource will ever be converted into reserves. Further, inferred resources have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of the inferred resources will ever be upgraded to a higher resource category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of a feasibility study or prefeasibility study, except in rare cases. The SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute SEC Industry Guide 7 compliant "reserves" as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit amounts. The term "contained ounces" is not permitted under the rules of SEC Industry Guide 7. In addition, the NI 43-101 and CIM Standards definition of a "reserve" differs from the definition in SEC Industry Guide 7. In SEC Industry Guide 7, a mineral reserve is defined as a part of a mineral deposit which could be economically and legally extracted or produced at the time the mineral reserve determination is made, and a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis of designated reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. U.S. investors are urged to consider closely the disclosure in our latest reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. You can review and obtain copies of these filings at http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. U.S. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any defined resource will ever be converted into SEC Industry Guide 7 compliant reserves. This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States. Contacts: Corvus Gold Inc. Ryan Ko Investor Relations 1-844-638-3246 (toll free) or (604) 638-3246 info@corvusgold.com 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. Global money transfer and payments specialist hosts 16 UK RegTech leaders during FinTech Week NYC The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a leader in global money transfer and payments services, is teaming up with the Department for International Trade (DIT) to host 16 'RegTech' industry leaders in a 'RegTech' Lunch and Learn session in New York. The unique session will provide a platform for collaborative discussion on the advancement of trade, the changing regulatory environment, and the role of compliance in international business. It is part of a week-long DIT trade mission, the first of its kind, to New York's Empire Start-ups FinTech Week and forms part of the UK Government's 'Innovation is GREAT' campaign. The campaign aims to inspire more global businesses to take advantage of the UK's leading capabilities in the technology and innovation sector. 'RegTech', which refers to a group of companies that use technology to help businesses comply with regulations, has been on the increase in the years since the 2008 financial crisis as more technology-driven products to enhance the customer experience and engagement are sought after by financial institutions. International Trade Minister, Mark Garnier, said: "UK firms are leading the way in finding innovative technology solutions to help businesses comply with regulation. Following hot on the heels of the UK-India FinTech conference in Mumbai and the International FinTech conference in London, my department is working with Western Union to ensure the UK is well represented at RegTech in New York and together we will ensure UK tech companies take advantage of the global opportunities in this growing sector." The collaboration comes at a time when regulation, compliance and global trade are of a key focus for small to medium businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. The recent Western Union International Trade Monitor* revealed nearly a third (30%) of UK SMEs, and nearly a fifth (18%) of US SMEs are concerned about the impact of changing international regulation and compliance. The research also highlighted that in light of the EU referendum, while businesses showed little sign of increasing their company's international operations, over 80% of UK SMEs are placing an increased focus on international vendors and supply chains, emphasizing the shift towards global trade partnerships rather than a direct physical presence abroad. Kerry Agiasotis, President at Western Union Business Solutions said, "In an ever changing regulatory landscape, the role of compliance has never been more important. As world leaders in technology and innovation, this trade mission is a fantastic opportunity for US firms to learn from some of the UK RegTech industry's brightest minds. This initiative, in addition to our new 'WU EDGE' platform, demonstrates our dedication to providing SMEs with the tools necessary to engage with global trade." Western Union Business Solutions is one of several other financial companies including the five major banks Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Santander, and four consultancies EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC, who are all helping potential exporters make the most of international trade opportunities through a partnership with the Department for International Trade. Notes to Editors: The 16 RegTech companies on the Department for International Trade mission are: Ancoa, ClauseMatch, ComplyAdvantage, CoVi Analytics, Encompass Corporation, Enforcd, FSCom Ltd, FundApps, Funds-Axis, Novastone Media, Onfido, Percentile, Privitar, Suade, Sybenetix, Trading Hub *Methodology The fieldwork for the fifth round of the USA International Trade Monitor was independently conducted by East and Partners among 1,107 US SME businesses over a five week period ending 26 August 2016. Research and analysis for the UK International Trade Monitor was independently conducted by East and Partners among 1,113 UK SME businesses over a seven week period up to 26 August 2016. About Western Union The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) is a leader in global payment services. Together with its Vigo, Orlandi Valuta, Pago Facil and Western Union Business Solutions branded payment services, Western Union provides consumers and businesses with fast, reliable and convenient ways to send and receive money around the world, to send payments and to purchase money orders. As of December 31, 2016, the Western Union, Vigo and Orlandi Valuta branded services were offered through a combined network of over 550,000 Agent locations in 200 countries and territories and over 100,000 ATMs and kiosks, and included the capability to send money to billions of accounts. In 2016, The Western Union Company completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, moving $80 billion of principal between consumers, and 523 million business payments. For more information, visit www.westernunion.com. About Western Union Business Solutions Western Union Business Solutions enables companies of all sizes to send and receive international payments and manage global cash flow, creating unique solutions tailored to suit their individual needs. It is a business unit of The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a leading nonbank provider of cross border payments, which offers Business Solutions services in over 30 countries. Clients are supported by a network of trading offices, strategic banking relationships and a global clearing network and can send cross-border foreign exchange payments in more than 130 currencies. About the Department for International Trade The Department for International Trade has overall responsibility for promoting UK trade across the world and attracting foreign investment to our shores. www.great.gov.uk is the new single digital destination for trade and investment, bringing together and connecting UK businesses, international buyers and international investors. Whether businesses are new, occasional or frequent exporters, they will be able to take advantage of the new suite of tools and exclusive deals on fees or commissions with some of world's leading online marketplaces. By registering with the find a buyer service, businesses will become part of a brand new searchable directory of UK exporters which government will use to match their products and services with worldwide demand. A new tool on great.gov.uk will help businesses access the best e-commerce opportunities via preferential deals with the world's largest online marketplaces. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005403/en/ Contacts: Western Union Liesl Smith Phone: +44 (0)208 563 6347 Mobile: +44 (0) 7710 185864 Liesl.smith@westernunion.com or FleishmanHillard Fishburn Ludo Baynham-Herd Phone: +44 (0)208 618 2897 Mobile: +44 (0)77523 120 702 ludo.baynham-herd@fhflondon.co.uk TOKYO, Apr 27, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Summary: March 2017Domestic ProductionMarch 2017- Eleventh consecutive monthly year-on-year decrease since April, 2016 (87.8% year-on-year)Overseas ProductionMarch 2017- Fourth consecutive monthly year-on-year increase since November, 2016 (112.3% year-on-year)Total ProductionMarch 2017- Second consecutive monthly year-on-year decrease since January, 2017 (98.1% year-on-year)Domestic SalesMarch 2017- Third consecutive monthly year-on-year decrease since December, 2016 (94.2% year-on-year)ExportsMarch 2017- Eleventh consecutive monthly year-on-year decrease since April, 2016 (85.1% year-on-year)Supplemental InformationOverseas Production- Asia (56,647 units: 111.3% year-on-year)Exports- Asia (1,252 units: 31.0% year-on-year)- North America (6,984 units: 101.0% year-on-year)- Europe (10,859 units: 76.4% year-on-year)Summary: Fiscal Year 2016 (April 2016 - March 2017)Domestic ProductionFiscal Year 2016- First year-on-year decrease in four years since 2012 fiscal year (81.4% year-on-year)Overseas ProductionFiscal Year 2016- Third consecutive year-on-year decrease since 2013 fiscal year (98.7% year-on-year)Total ProductionFiscal Year 2016- First consecutive year-on-year decrease since 2015 fiscal year (89.4% year-on-year)Domestic SalesFiscal Year 2016- Second consecutive year-on-year decrease since 2014 fiscal year (78.3% year-on-year)ExportsFiscal Year 2016- Second consecutive year-on-year decrease since 2014 fiscal year (87.8% year-on-year)Supplemental InformationOverseas Production- Asia (532,875 units: 108.8% year-on-year)Exports- Asia (17,057 units: 55.5% year-on-year)- North America (100,339 units: 144.7% year-on-year)Europe (123,581 units: 83.9% year-on-year)About Mitsubishi MotorsMitsubishi Motors Corporation is the fifth largest automaker in Japan and the fifteenth largest in the world by global unit sales. It is part of the Mitsubishi keiretsu, formerly the biggest industrial group in Japan, and was formed in 1970 from the automotive division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.Throughout its history it has courted alliances with foreign partners, a strategy pioneered by their first president Tomio Kubo to encourage expansion, and continued by his successors. A significant stake was sold to Chrysler Corporation in 1971 which it held for 22 years, while DaimlerChrysler was a controlling shareholder between 2000 and 2005. Long term joint manufacturing and technology licencing deals with the Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea and Proton in Malaysia were also forged, while in Europe the company co-owned the largest automobile manufacturing plant in the Netherlands with Volvo for ten years in the 1990s, before taking sole ownership in 2001.Source: Mitsubishi MotorsContact:Copyright 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. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Terex Corp. (TEX) revealed a profit for second quarter that fell from last year. The company said its bottom line declined to $49.6 million, or $0.51 per share. This was down from $60.6 million, or $0.55 per share, in last year's second quarter. The company said revenue for the quarter fell 9.2% to $1.18 billion. This was down from $1.30 billion last year. Terex Corp. earnings at a glance: -Earnings (Q2): $49.6 Mln. vs. $60.6 Mln. last year. -Earnings Decline (Y-o-Y): -18.2% -EPS (Q2): $0.51 vs. $0.55 last year. -EPS Decline (Y-o-Y): -7.3% -Revenue (Q2): $1.18 Bln vs. $1.30 Bln last year. -Revenue Change (Y-o-Y): -9.2% -Guidance : Full year EPS guidance: $1.05 - $1.15 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. IRVING (dpa-AFX) - Oil major Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) reported a 50 percent increase in profit for the third quarter from last year, while Chevron Corp. (CVX) reported a 52 percent increase in profit. The results, which reflect higher crude oil prices as well as improved refining margins, beat analysts' expectations. Exxon Mobil said its profit rose as commodity prices improved and performance in its upstream as well as downstream segments strengthened. The company's third-quarter net income was $3.97 billion or $0.93 per share, up from $2.65 billion or $0.63 per share in the prior-year quarter. On average, 22 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.86 per share. Analysts' estimates typically exclude one-time items. Exxon Mobil noted that impacts related to Hurricane Harvey reduced earnings by an estimated $0.04 per share. Total revenues and other income for the quarter grew 12.8 percent to $66.17 billion from $58.68 billion last year. Analysts were looking for revenue of $63.39 billion. Oil-equivalent production for the quarter was 3.88 million barrels per day, up 2 percent from the prior year. Excluding entitlement effects and divestments, oil-equivalent production remained at 2 percent higher than the prior year. Exxon Mobil's upstream, or exploration and production earnings for the quarter more than doubled from the prior-year period to $1.57 billion, primarily reflecting higher liquids and gas realizations. Meanwhile, the company's downstream, or refining and marketing earnings grew 25 percent from last year to $1.53 billion, reflecting higher refining margins. Chemical segment earnings declined nearly 7 percent from last year to $1.09 billion, reflecting weaker margins, partially offset by volume growth. Meanwhile, Chevron's third-quarter profit rose from last year, reflecting a gain on asset sales, in addition to higher crude oil prices and refining margins. Chevron's third-quarter net income was $1.95 billion or $1.03 per share, up from $1.28 billion or $0.68 per share in the prior-year quarter. The latest quarter's results include gain on an asset sale of $675 million and an asset write-off of $220 million. Total revenues and other income for the quarter grew 20 percent to $36.21 billion from $30.14 billion in the same quarter last year. Analysts expected the company to earn $0.98 per share on revenues of $30.14 billion. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Sales and other operating revenues increased 16 percent to $33.89 billion from $29.16 billion in the prior-year quarter. Chevron's worldwide net oil-equivalent production was 2.72 million barrels per day in the quarter, up from 2.51 million barrels per day in the year-ago period. Chevron's upstream segment's earnings rose 8 percent from last year to $489 million as higher crude oil and natural realizations more than offset higher depreciation expense. Meanwhile, downstream earnings grew 69 percent to $1.81 billion, reflecting higher margins on refined product sales and higher gains on asset sales. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Corporate Communications Division Mazda Motor Corporation, Japan +81-3-3508-5056 [Tokyo] +81-82-282-5253 [Hiroshima] mailto: media@mazda.co.jp TOKYO, Apr 27, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Mazda Motor Corporation's production and sales results for March 2017 and for April 2016 through March 2017 are summarized below.I. Production1. Domestic Production(1) March 2017Mazda's domestic production volume in March 2017 increased 7.3% year on year due to increased production of passenger vehicles.Domestic production of key models in March 2017CX-5: 37,200 units (up 18.3% year on year)Mazda3 (Axela): 19,927 units (up 8.9% year on year)CX-3: 12,813 units (up 11.0% year on year)(2) April 2016 through March 2017Mazda's total domestic production volume in the period from April 2016 through March 2017 decreased 2.5% year on year due to decreased production of passenger and commercial vehicles.Domestic production of key models in the period from April 2016 through March 2017CX-5: 324,085 units (up 0.8% year on year)Mazda3 (Axela): 206,253 units (down 4.1% year on year)Mazda6 (Atenza): 122,231 units (down 12.2% year on year)2. Overseas Production(1) March 2017Mazda's overseas production volume in March 2017 increased 21.8% year on year due to increased production of passenger and commercial vehicles.Overseas production of key models in March 2017Mazda3: 25,069 units (up 8.4% year on year)Mazda2: 12,156 units (up 17.1% year on year)CX-4: 8,047 units (up 80370.0% year on year)(2) April 2016 through March 2017Mazda's total overseas production volume in the period from April 2016 through March 2017 increased 7.8% year on year due to increased production of passenger vehicles.Overseas production of key models in the period from April 2016 through March 2017Mazda3: 260,109 units (up 3.0% year on year)Mazda2: 99,730 units (down 14.4% year on year)CX-4: 60,001 units (up 599910.0% year on year)II. Domestic sales(1) March 2017Mazda's domestic sales volume in March 2017 increased 28.3% year on year due to increased sales of passenger and commercial vehicles. Mazda's registered vehicle market share was 6.2% (up 1.0 points year on year), with a 2.3% share of the micro-mini segment (up 0.1 points year on year) and a 4.9% total market share (up 0.8 points year on year).Domestic sales of key models in March 2017CX-5: 9,668 units (up 223.3% year on year)Mazda2 (Demio): 7,081 units (down 6.8% year on year)Mazda3 (Axela): 4,108 units (up 33.0% year on year)(2) April 2016 through March 2017Mazda's total domestic sales volume in the period from April 2016 through March 2017 decreased 12.8% year on year due to decreased sales of passenger vehicles. Mazda's registered vehicle market share was 4.9% (down 1.2 points year on year), with a 2.2% share of the micro-mini segment (down 0.1 points year on year) and a 4.0% total market share (down 0.7 points year on year).Domestic sales of key models in the period from April 2016 through March 2017Mazda2 (Demio): 53,318 units (down 19.4% year on year)Mazda3 (Axela): 28,745 units (up 22.4% year on year)CX-5: 27,167 units (up 2.3% year on year)III. Exports(1) March 2017Mazda's export volume in March 2017 increased 22.4% year on year due to increased shipments to Europe and other regions.Exports of key models in March 2017CX-5: 27,716 units (up 8.7% year on year)Mazda3: 15,974 units (up 4.1% year on year)CX-3: 13,979 units (up 115.9% year on year)(2) April 2016 through March 2017Mazda's total export volume in the period April 2016 through March 2017 increased 2.7% year on year due to increased shipments to Europe and other regions.Exports of key models in the period April 2016 through March 2017CX-5: 298,830 units (up 1.6% year on year)Mazda3: 176,494 units (down 7.9% year on year)Mazda6: 114,455 units (down 10.9% year on year)About MazdaMazda Motor Corporation (TSE: 7261) started manufacturing tools in 1929 and soon branched out into production of trucks for commercial use. In the early 1960s, Mazda launched its first passenger car models and began developing rotary engines. Still headquartered in Hiroshima in western Japan, Mazda today ranks as one of Japan's leading automakers, and exports cars to the United States and Europe for over 30 years. For more information, please visit www.mazda.comSource: MazdaContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - BP plc. (BP.L, BP_UN.TO, BP) on Thursday announced that it has agreed to sell its 50% stake in the Shanghai SECCO Petrochemical Company Limited or SECCO to a unit of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP) or Sinopec for a total consideration of $1.68 billion. BP will sell the stake to Gaoqiao Petrochemical Co Ltd, a unit of Sinopec, BP's joint venture partner. The sale is subject to a number of regulatory approvals and other conditions, subject to which, it is currently anticipated to complete before the end of the year with the consideration payable in instalments. SECCO is currently owned by BP with 50% stake, Sinopec with 30% stake and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited with 20%. Sinopec holds a majority interest in Sinopec Shanghai. Based in Shanghai, SECCO is a major producer of olefins - ethylene and propylene - together with polymers and other derivatives including polyethylene, polypropylene, acrylonitrile styrene, polystyrene, butadiene and other products. Rita Griffin, Chief Operating Officer, BP Global Petrochemicals, said, 'This decision aligns our petrochemicals business in China with our global focus on areas where BP has leading proprietary technologies and competitive advantage. China is a key region for our chemicals business and BP will continue to look for opportunities to build on our position in the country.' BP said it intends to use the proceeds from the disposal, most if not all of which are anticipated to be received in 2017, for general corporate purposes. In London, BP shares were trading at 447.50 pence, down 1.36 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. Burlington, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 27, 2017) - GTA Resources and Mining Inc. (TSXV: GTA) is pleased to provide an update on its recent exploration program at its wholly-owned Burnt Pond base metal VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) project in Newfoundland. GTA completed an 874 metre (m), three hole, drill program on its Burnt Pond Zinc-Silver project (the "Burnt Pond Project") located along strike from Teck Resources Ltd.'s past-producing Duck Pond copper-zinc mine in central Newfoundland. This first phase of drilling was directed at two of the numerous base metal VMS targets identified in the 2016 ground geophysics, litho-geochemistry and compilation program on the 114 claim project. This initial stage of drilling has extended the Burnt Pond base metal horizon (the "Burnt Pond Horizon") an additional 250 m to the northeast and had a best intersection of 0.7% zinc and 5.1 grams of silver per tonne ("g/t") over 4.2 m. A summary of the three holes includes: BP-17-01 - this hole tested the South Moose B target (an untested electromagnetic conductor) and intersected a graphitic horizon as the source of the conductor; BP-17-02 - a 250 m step-out from historic drilling on the Burnt Pond Project intersected a 150 m wide package of altered felsic fragmented rocks with anomalous base metals (the Burnt Pond Horizon), including 0.7% zinc and 5.1 g/t silver over 4.2 m near the top of the altered package; BP-17-03 - an additional 200 m step-out from hole 17-02, this hole intersected a sediment package, which management interprets to be a hanging wall of the Burnt Pond Horizon. This initial drill program was successful in confirming the Burnt Pond Horizon is hosted by a thick sequence of highly altered felsic fragmented rocks, which is characteristic of the Duck Pond Mine, which had a pre-mining resource of 6 million tonnes grading approximately 3% Cu, 6% Zn, 60.0 g/t Ag and 0.09 g/t Au from two deposits. These deposits tend to be thick lenses with limited strike and plunge dimensions within the volcanic pile. Drilling to date on the Burnt Pond Project has identified a host stratigraphy, similar to the Duck Pond stratigraphy, with potential to host significant lenses of massive sulphide. Grade potential has been demonstrated at the Burnt Pond Project with historic, third party intersections up to 25.8% zinc, 24.0% lead, 0.8% copper, 791.1 g/t silver and 1.6 g/t gold over 0.37 m within a wider 12 m zone of semi-massive sulphides. Additional drilling is being planned to further test the Burnt Pond Horizon and other similar looking targets within the Burnt Pond Project area. GTA gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the JEA Program, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. QA/QC - Wayne Reid, P. Geo., VP Exploration for GTA and a qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for this release. He has extensive experience in the exploration for base metals in the Central Newfoundland Mineral Belt and was part of the original team that explored the Duck Pond Belt. ABOUT GTA RESOURCES - GTA is a publicly traded mineral exploration company. It is led by an experienced and successful management team and is focused on exploring for gold and zinc in Canada. GTA is a tightly held company having 42,026,855 shares outstanding, with its Northshore JV partner Balmoral Resources Inc. holding a roughly 6% interest. The Company's shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "GTA." The Company currently has two projects located in northern Ontario: the 54% owned Northshore Gold Project, near Schreiber and the 100% owned Auden Project near Hearst. GTA also owns a 100% interest in the Burnt Pond Zinc-Silver Project in central Newfoundland, along strike from Teck Resources Limited's past-producing Duck Pond Mine. On behalf of the board of directors, GTA Resources and Mining Inc. "James Macintosh" President and CEO 416-862-7003 For more information, please visit the corporate website at www.gtaresources.com. 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 press release. This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement, duration and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves, the timing of the receipt of assay results, and business and financing plans and trends, are forward-looking statements.Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions or are those which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include those related to weather, equipment and staff availability; performance of third parties; risks related to the exploration stage of the Company's projects; market fluctuations in prices for securities of exploration stage companies and in commodity prices; and uncertainties about the availability of additional financing; risks related to the Company's ability to identify one or more economic deposits on the properties, and variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located on the properties; risks related to the Company's ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities on the properties; and risks related to the Company's ability to produce minerals from the properties successfully or profitably. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. All of the Company's public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties. This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States. REDONDO BEACH, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- SECFilings.com, a leading financial news and information portal offering free real-time public company filing alerts, announces the publication of an article and executive interview discussing the Grosso Group and how its experience in Argentina is helping to ensure the success of Golden Arrow Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: GRG) (OTCQB: GARWF). In the interview, Golden Arrow's VP of Exploration and Development, Brian McEwen, talks about the company's recent developments and the direction forward. A History of Success The Grosso Group is a private management company that has become a leading pioneer of mineral exploration. Since 1993, the group has discovered three multi-million ounce precious metal deposits and partnered with industry majors. The group's president, Joseph Grosso, was also named Argentina's Mining Man of the Year in 2005. The Grosso Group was founded by Joseph Grosso, a respected entrepreneur with extensive international business experience in South America, Europe, and Asia. In addition to promoting good mining practices, Mr. Grosso is fluent in Italian, English, and Spanish and lived in Argentina, where he acquired a very deep appreciation for Latin culture and successfully developed a vast network of contacts. During a family visit to Argentina in 1993, Mr. Grosso met the ex-chief geologist for the government who explained the early-stage opportunities in Argentina. The two formed Minas Argentina S.A. and eventually discovered the Gualcamayo gold project, which Yamana has in production, along with the world's largest primary silver deposit, Navidad, which Pan American Silver is planning on bringing into production After advancing the Gualcamayo discovery through various stages of development, the project and company were sold to Yamana Gold Inc. -- a $2.5 billion industry major. Experienced Management Team Grosso Group founder Joseph Grosso is joined by a team of experienced professionals in both finance and mining. Darren Urquhart is a chartered accountant with more than 10 years of experience working in both public practice and industry. Over the years, Mr. Urquhart has offered Chief Financial Officer and accounting services to numerous TSX Venture-listed exploration companies in the Vancouver area. These qualifications make him perfect for helping keep public companies in Grosso Group's portfolio on track in terms of finances and capital raising. VP of Business Development, Mr. Nikolaos Cacos, MIM, BSc, has over 24 years of management experience in the mineral exploration industry, including the administration and strategic planning for public companies. He currently serves as an officer and director on several TSX Venture-listed companies, while his extensive experience helps companies in Grosso Group's portfolio remain on track with their operational goals. VP of Exploration and Development, Brian McEwen, is a professional geologist with more than 30 years of exploration and production experience in open pit and underground mining projects and operations. Throughout his career, Mr. McEwen has managed numerous projects in Canada, the United States, Asia, Africa, and Latin America with roles including project management, reserve calculations, and others. Golden Arrow Resources recently announced its joint venture with Silver Standard Resources -- a $1.3 billion industry major in the silver space. In addition to a $15 million payment on May 30, representing its share of profits from the Pirquitas silver mine since October 2015, the company will receive a 25% stake in Silver Standard's Pirquitas mine and have a clear path forward for its Chinchillas project. Under the terms of the deal, Silver Standard will receive access to Golden Arrow's Chinchillas project that's about 42 kilometers away from its open pit Pirquitas mine that's rapidly running out of ore. The Chinchillas project will have convenient access to the mill, processing plant, and other equipment to keep production costs low. Golden Arrow will also benefit from ongoing revenue sharing without the full cost of developing the mine on its own. Please follow the link to read the full article and see the interview: http://analysis.secfilings.com/articles/163-grosso-group-brings-decades-of-experience-to-golden-arrow-resources About SECFilings.com Founded in 2004, SECFilings.com provides free real-time filing alerts to over 600,000 registered members and offers services to help public companies grow their audience of interested investors. Disclaimer Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns SECFilings.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://secfilings.com/Disclaimer.aspx. SECFilings.com Paul Archie 406-862-2242 parchie@secfilings.com BURNABY, BRITISH COLUMBIA and SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- PerfectMind, makers of innovative membership management and facility booking software, and the City of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada's third-largest metro area with a population of 517,887, announced today that they are working together to offer a user-friendly new platform to connect members of the Surrey community with parks, recreation and culture services. City of Surrey citizens will be able to more easily engage in wellness, fitness and cultural activities in their community by using the flexible, personalized PerfectMind platform to sign up for programs, reserve and pay for facilities and equipment, and purchase tickets to events online. The partnership advances the City of Surrey's commitment to continuously improve digital services for its diverse, tech-savvy community. PerfectMind's unique platform has been deployed by major city governments throughout Canada and the United States. Offered on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) basis, PerfectMind makes it simple for cities to improve digital access to popular services that encourage healthier living by connecting citizens across all demographics to the parks, recreation and cultural events their regions offer - embodying user-centric, tech-forward values that are shared by the City of Surrey. PerfectMind improves the customer experience significantly by making it easy to find, reserve and pay for equipment, facilities, services and events using desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Digital access is a key priority for the City of Surrey, which is home to one of the youngest and most diverse populations in Canada. A fast-growing region with abundant jobs, natural resources and cultural assets, the City of Surrey government is committed to building a healthy, sustainable, vibrant community. That commitment is evident in the City's "Innovation Boulevard" economic development zone as well as rapid transit initiatives and efforts to promote medical research, with a goal of creating a fully sustainable City that continues to attract new residents and businesses. The PerfectMind platform, which integrates easily with consumer technology and is intuitive to use, fits in with the City's overall vision of using digital services to improve the customer experience. "We're excited about deploying a future-proof platform that more easily connects our community with the many parks and reactional programs and cultural amenities the City offers," said Jason Boyes, Digital Services Manager, IT Division. "As our population changes and expectations about how to access services shift, we're responding with a platform that can expand and grow along with the City, and PerfectMind's PaaS approach provides the flexibility we need to move forward, ensuring a world-class customer experience for the population we serve. In addition, the data and tools we require on the backend are sufficient so our staff can continue to respond to growth and change efficiently and effectively." "The City of Surrey's top priority in this upgrade project is to deliver a platform that is easy and intuitive for people to use so citizens can connect with community programming such as sport and fitness services quickly and access cultural enrichment opportunities easily," said PerfectMind CEO, Farid Dordar. "The PerfectMind platform makes it simple for citizens of all ages and abilities to connect with City parks and recreation services as well as cultural events. It also streamlines operations for City staff, providing the data employees require for planning as well as the communication tools activity leaders can use to stay in touch with members and expand awareness of programs and activities." For cities and municipalities that require the flexibility to quickly handle changes and continuously improve their community's access to parks and recreation services, PerfectMind's membership management solutions are a perfect fit. Learn more at parks.perfectmind.com. Discover more about the City of Surrey's parks, recreation, arts and heritage programs and events at www.surrey.ca/city-government/3078.aspx. About the City of Surrey Spanning more than 300,000 square kilometres with a population of 517,887, the City of Surrey is located in the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia and is one of the fastest growing, culturally diverse cities in Canada. Comprised of urban neighbourhoods, suburban communities, agricultural land and more than 200 parks, Surrey has been named a Top 7 Intelligent Community by the Intelligent City Forum (ICF) two years in a row and is globally recognized for its dedication to building vibrant, sustainable communities through technology and innovation. For more information visit www.surrey.ca. About PerfectMind PerfectMind software is used by more than 5,000 organizations in 21 countries. The company's innovative platform empowers cities, parks and recreation organizations, higher education and health and wellness businesses of all sizes to better connect with their communities. PerfectMind has twice been listed on the Profit100 list of fastest growing companies in Canada and has been selected by city leaders throughout Canada and the United States to enhance increasingly diverse and mobile populations' access to city programs and facilities to support healthy, active lifestyles. Find out more at www.perfectmind.com. Contacts: Flory Huang 1.877.737.8030 ext. 6811 flory.huang@perfectmind.com www.perfectmind.com Galatea Designated as Premier Partner by American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery LEXINGTON, Massachusetts, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Galatea Surgical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tepha Inc., announced today the FDA 510k clearance of its GalaFORM' 3D Surgical Scaffold ("GalaFORM 3D") for use in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Based on Tepha's proprietary P4HB' bioresorbable polymer technology, GalaFORM 3D is the only 3-dimensionally contoured, surgical scaffold with a reinforcing rim, designed to uplift the body's natural shape, provide easier placement and reduce procedure time. Galatea is a Premier Partner of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), and will commercially launch GalaFORM 3D at the upcoming 50th Anniversary meeting of ASAPS in San Diego, California. Andy Joiner, President and CEO of Tepha commented, "One of the cornerstones of Galatea is our commitment to surgeon and patient education. We are honored to be a Premier Partner of ASAPS, an organization that is focused on providing its members with access to state-of-the-art educational and practice development programs. Innovation is an important driver of what we do at Galatea, and we are pleased to be launching GalaFORM 3D, a first of its kind resorbable scaffold, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of ASAPS.Galatea is committed to engineering innovative new products that offer significant surgeon and patient benefits and providing access to this new technology to ASAPS and its membership." GalaFORM 3D is 510(k) cleared by the FDA and is indicated for soft tissue support and to repair, elevate, and reinforce soft tissue where weakness or voids exist.Galatea has been a technology leader and innovator in the field of surgical scaffolds for plastic and reconstructive surgery since commencing the clinical evaluation of its GalaFLEX flat mesh in 2011.The launch of the rimmed GalaFORM 3D Surgical Scaffold follows the launch earlier this year of GalaSHAPE 3D, the market's first 3D surgical scaffold for plastic and reconstructive surgery. Galatea Surgical is committed to both innovation and careful clinical evaluation in order to meet the needs of plastic surgeons and their patients. William P. Adams, a Dallas based board certified plastic surgeon commented, "Scaffolds play an important role in aesthetic surgery, where we deal with rejuvenating weakened tissue. We have studied soft-tissue support products through the years, but they are much different; they don't add long-term tissue strength and aren't as biocompatible. Galatea scaffolds are made of an easily absorbable monofilament, rather than a multifilament, which reduces infection. GalaFORM 3D is a novel scaffold with out-of-the-box shape to better fit the patient's natural curves.I'm looking forward to using this game-changing 3D scaffold in my patients that require soft tissue support." ABOUT TEPHA INC: Tepha Inc., founded in 1998 and headquartered in Lexington, MA, is a supplier of medical devices focused on the BioMaterials market. Tepha's products are designed and developed to elevate, support and reinforce areas of soft tissue weakness as well as to promote improved healing responses. To date, Tepha and its partners have received 23 510(k) clearances for devices marketed in the US as well as five CE Marks for products sold in Europe. Commercial products based on Tepha's resorbable P4HB polymer technology include:high tensile strength sutures for orthopedic soft tissue repair; mesh constructs for ventral and inguinal hernia repair; monofilament sutures for abdominal wall closure and plastic surgery; patches for tendon and ligament repairs; and mesh constructs used in face and breast lifts. To date, products made from P4HB have been successfully used in more than 1,000,000 surgical procedures worldwide, and have been the subject of over 30 published clinical and scientific papers. ABOUT ASAPS: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), is recognized as the world's leading organization devoted entirely to aesthetic plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine of the face and body. ASAPS is comprised of over 2,600 Plastic Surgeons; Active Members are certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (USA) or by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and have extensive training in the complete spectrum of surgical and nonsurgical aesthetic procedures. International Active Members are certified by equivalent boards of their respective countries. All members worldwide adhere to a strict Code of Ethics and must meet stringent membership requirements. For more information visit: www.Tepha.com or by contacting: Veronica Welch at 1-508-643-8000 ronnie@cwrpartners.com CAMBRIDGE, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Zagster, the nation's leading provider of public and public/private bike share systems, today announced the release of a new mobile app that simplifies and improves the overall user experience for the company's 80,000 riders nationwide. Available now for Apple, and soon for Android, the free app features one-touch Bluetooth unlocking; new mapping technology that provides point-by-point directions to the nearest docking station; a streamlined process to create a new Zagster account; and easy access to rider support. Collectively, the new features make it easier than ever to join, ride and enjoy Zagster. "The new app not only makes the member experience easier and more enjoyable, it also enables Zagster to continue to deploy and manage our national network of shared bikes more efficiently," said Tim Ericson, CEO of Zagster. "Our hybrid model, which blends dockless locking for mid-trip stops with fixed station locations for beginning and ending rides, offers the most flexible and reliable service in the industry today." With just the single touch of a button in the new Zagster app, riders can control a Bluetooth-enabled locking system that features two points of security. A ring lock prevents the rear wheel from spinning or being removed, and two sturdy cables -- one at each station dock, and one on each bike -- connect to the ring lock, allowing riders to either tether bikes to Zagster stations at the end of their trips, or to public bike racks for mid-ride stops. Enabling mid-ride stops is key to Zagster's rapid success across the country because it allows users to plan their trips around their destinations -- and not around station locations. The vast majority of Zagster's more than 150 programs are located on university campuses, in small cities and suburbs, and at apartments and corporate complexes. Riders in these environments are more likely to use Zagster for non-commute trips in which mid-ride locking is vital. And indeed, a majority of all Zagster riders regularly use this functionality, according to a recent nationwide survey of more than 3,500 users. Moreover, according to the survey, over 60 percent of respondents said that Zagster has increased their physical activity, and 60 percent said that they ride just for fun. More than two-thirds also highlighted the fact that Zagster makes it easier to enjoy parks, nature and greenspace, and more than 50 percent said Zagster is their only access to a bike. Meanwhile, an impressive 92 said bike sharing was a good investment in their community, while 62 percent said Zagster improved their overall quality of life. About Zagster Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Zagster is the largest and fastest-growing bike-share provider in the United States. Zagster works directly with more than 150 communities in more than 30 states across North America to make bike sharing available in areas where traditional bike-share providers can't reach. Unlike other programs in which riders must drop off bikes at designated stations for every stop, Zagster's programs give users the freedom to ride as long as they want, wherever they want. And because Zagster manages all aspects of its programs -- from bikes and technology, to maintenance and marketing -- Zagster partners can create and deploy scalable bike-share systems that best suit their needs and work within their budgets. More information about Zagster and its programs can be found at www.zagster.com Media contact for Zagster Jon Terbush Zagster communications manager 617.681.4914 Email Contact REDONDO BEACH, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- SECFilings.com, a leading financial news and information portal offering free real time public company filing alerts, announces the publication of an article covering the top three best performing stock of the past year. Companies discussed are AXIM Biotechnologies (OTCQB: AXIM), Supreme Pharmaceuticals, and American Cannabis. #1: AXIM Biotech (+2,445.61%) AXIM Biotechnologies Inc. (OTCQB: AXIM) is focused on developing a portfolio of over 20 cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals along with 17 patents and 20 trademarks. The company's flagship products utilize its proprietary chewing gum-based delivery system to provide consumers with superior bioavailability without the negative side effects or stigma of smoking cannabis or taking consuming edibles. In recent months, the company began early-stage clinical trials of its CanChew Plus for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome ("IBS"), as well as CanChew Rx for treatment of pain and spasticity in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients which is projected to reach a market size of $20 billion by 2024. In addition to those programs, AXIM recently announced a partnership with a US API company to develop an alternative generic version of FDA-approved Marinol as reported by Forbes. These clinical programs represent multi-billion dollar markets where cannabinoids could prove beneficial in providing patients with much-needed relief. #2: Supreme Pharmaceuticals (+286.44%) Supreme Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a one of about 40 licensed producers of medical marijuana under Health Canada's Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations -- or ACMPR. The company's 7-acre -- 342,000 square foot -- hybrid greenhouse combines the best practices of indoor cultivation with the cost structure of a greenhouse to produce high-quality marijuana at a low cost. Unlike many other licensed producers, the company is focusing exclusively on the business-to-business market where it will employ a wholesale business model. The company anticipates that the greenhouse will be capable of producing over 50 million grams of cannabis per year at full capacity. Its next buildout will bring on an additional 80,000 square feet of production space in addition to the 40,000 square feet that's already operational. #3: American Cannabis (+173.5%) American Cannabis Co. is a business-to-business consulting firm and distributor of ancillary products and services to the cannabis industry. The company offers turnkey end-to-end solutions to existing and aspiring businesses in the cannabis industry by leveraging its hands-on experience and knowledge to provide business planning, license procurement, and operational best practices. Recently, the company announced that it secured its first retainer client in the State of Louisiana. CB Medical LLC engaged the company's services as an applicant of the LSU-sponsored medical marijuana program. The two companies aim to design and operate a medical marijuana program for patients in Louisiana in partnership with the state's leading university -- complete with an indoor cultivation center and laboratory. Please follow the link to read the full article: http://analysis.secfilings.com/articles/164-top-3-best-performing-cannabis-stocks About SECFilings.com Founded in 2004, SECFilings.com provides free real time filing alerts to over 600,000 registered members and offers services to help public companies grow their audience of interested investors. Disclaimer: Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns SECFilings.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://secfilings.com/Disclaimer.aspx. SECFilings.com Paul Archie 406-862-2242 parchie@secfilings.com SCHLIEREN, SWITZERLAND--(Marketwired - April 27, 2017) - InSphero AG, the leading supplier of assay-ready 3D cell culture models for accelerating drug discovery and development, has entered into an agreement with Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), one of the world's premier biopharmaceutical companies, to develop a novel predictive toxicology assay using InSphero 3D InSight' Human Liver Microtissues. This novel mechanistic in vitro assay will aim to leverage the enhanced sensitivity and longevity of InSphero 3D liver models, which may allow for the multiplexing of several endpoints to help detect and predict mechanisms of drug toxicity. InSphero CEO and co-founder, Dr. Jan Lichtenberg, says, "Our 3D liver models enable researchers to better predict potential toxicity and side-effects using more biologically relevant cell based assays. These models may also help reduce dependency on animal models, which add significant cost, delay time to market, and often fail to accurately reflect how humans will respond to a drug. We already have a long-standing relationship with Pfizer and this new agreement will enable the development of assays with potentially even greater utility and predictive power for Pfizer's early drug development." Dr. Simon Messner, who will lead the project for InSphero adds, "The longevity and organotypic nature of 3D InSight' Human Liver Microtissues highly correlates to that of native liver, exhibiting appropriate cellular organization, cytochrome P450 enzyme responsiveness, and metabolic functionality. Using this 3D model could result in improved accuracy and precision by which certain DILI mechanisms are predicted in vitro." The agreement commences in April 2017 and involves InSphero scientists in the USA (Brunswick, ME) and Schlieren (Switzerland) facilities, with input from Pfizer scientists. For more information about InSphero, visit www.insphero.com. About InSphero InSphero sets the standard for in vitro testing of novel drugs in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry with comprehensive solutions that provide greater confidence in decision making. Its robust and highly physiologically relevant suite of 3D InSight' Microtissues and Services are used by major pharmaceutical companies worldwide to increase efficiency in drug discovery and safety testing. InSphero patent-pending technologies and methods enable large-scale, reproducible production of scaffold-free 3D microtissues driven solely by cellular self-assembly. The company specializes in delivering assay-ready and custom 3D models derived from liver, pancreas, and tumor tissues, to provide unrivalled biological insight into liver toxicology, metabolic diseases (e.g., diabetes and liver diseases), and oncology (with a focus on immuno-oncology). All InSphero microtissues are thoroughly validated to ensure the highest quality, certified for use in a variety of assays, and shipped globally to customers in a patented, easy-to-use spheroid-optimized platform, ready for research. Field application scientists and research staff with expertise in working with 3D models help ensure efficient integration and onsite training as needed. For customers who prefer an outsourcing strategy with fast turnaround, InSphero also offers contract research services utilizing their 3D microtissue models. InSphero 3D InSight' solutions drive significant findings in peer-reviewed journals, through collaborative industry initiatives such as EU-ToxRisk and HeCaToS, and have gained validation in the world's largest government institutions and pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetics companies. Founded in 2009, the privately held company is headquartered in Switzerland, with subsidiaries in the United States and Germany. It has been recognized for its scientific and commercial achievements with several national and international awards. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/27/11G137148/Images/InSphero_Liver_Microtissue-efcf36f4ca6ba804a9d82ecf66634458.jpg InSphero contacts Dr. Randy Strube Director of Global Marketing Phone +1 800-779-7558 ext. 102 randy.strube@insphero.com Dr. Jan Lichtenberg Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder Phone +41 44 5150490 jan.lichtenberg@insphero.com Alkion Terminals (Alkion) and LBC Tank Terminals (LBC) today announced the signing of an agreement in which Alkion will acquire the 50% shareholding of LBC in LBC Sogestrol and the full ownership of 4 tank terminals in France (Bayonne, Le Havre, Marseille, Nantes), 2 tank terminals in Spain (Cartagena, Santander) and 1 tank terminal in Portugal (Lisbon). In parallel, Alkion and Sogestran today announced the signing of an agreement in which Alkion will acquire the 50% shareholding of Sogestran in LBC Sogestrol. Following the concomitant completion of the transactions, Alkion will be the sole owner and operator of LBC Sogestrol, a world-class tank terminal in Le Havre, France. Established in 2016 as a new independent tank terminal operator focusing in Western Europe, Alkion is creating a network of tank terminals that perform a primary role in the hydrocarbon downstream value chain. Currently Alkion owns a tank terminal in Amsterdam. Post completion of the transactions with LBC and Sogestran Alkion will be operating well over 1 million cubic meter of tank capacity at 9 terminals in 4 countries. The eight new terminal additions to the Alkion portfolio are located in key locations offering high quality service to an extensive portfolio of long term customers based on an excellent reputation. Alkion Terminals intends to invest further in improving and expanding the assets to provide its existing and new customers a world-class service. The transactions are subject to customary regulatory approvals. Rutger van Thiel, CEO at Alkion Terminals and Partner at Coloured Finches, stated: "We are delighted to welcome the customers and terminal staff to Alkion Terminals. We look forward to continue serving the European petroleum and chemical industry at our nine Alkion terminals and to pursue our ambition to further expand the Alkion network into Europe. Vincent Levita, Founder and CEO of InfraVia, declared: "The acquisitions are a true milestone in building Alkion into a European wide provider of independent tank storage services to the petroleum and chemical industry. We are excited to take over these high quality assets and we look forward to supporting the further growth of the platform". Walter Wattenbergh, Group CEO of LBC Tank Terminals says: "I Congratulate Alkion and Infravia with the expansion of their business. We are very happy to know our staff and terminals in France, Spain and Portugal are in good hands with Alkion. With the support of our Shareholders LBC Tank Terminals will further focus on our hub terminal strategy which we are confident will ensure a sustainable future for LBC and all its employees. As one team we will continue to ensure that there is no such thing as a dangerous product, as long as it is under our care!". Advisors DC Advisory (financing), Herbert Smith Freehills (legal), KPMG (tax accounting) and Nexant (commercial) advised Alkion Terminals on the transaction. Lazard (financing) and Linklaters (legal) advised LBC on the transaction. Sekri Valentin Zerrouk (legal) advised Sogestran. About Alkion Terminals Alkion Terminals is a partnership between infrastructure investor InfraVia Capital Partners and Dutch energy expert Coloured Finches. Established in 2016 Alkion Terminals combines the tank storage industry expertise and hands-on operational expertise of Coloured Finches with the dry powder and financing expertise of InfraVia to acquire, upgrade and optimize liquid bulk terminals in Europe. Following the completion of the transactions Alkion Terminals will be owning and operating 9 terminals in the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal. www.alkion.com About LBC Tank Terminals LBC Tank Terminals is one of the largest global operators of bulk liquid storage facilities for chemical petroleum products and base oil products. LBC owns and operates a global network of terminals at key locations in the United States, Europe and China, while offering loading / unloading services for all modes of transportation. More information is available at www.lbctt.com About InfraVia Capital Partners InfraVia Capital Partners is an investment manager dedicated to the infrastructure sector. InfraVia Capital Partners manages 1.7 billion of assets through three infrastructure funds, which are all positioned as long term investors across the infrastructure sectors in Europe. www.infraviacapital.com About Coloured Finches Coloured Finches is a Dutch company established by former CEOs from the oil downstream industry. The independent group is active in the integrated downstream business and has extensive knowledge and experience in owning and operating storage terminals. www.colouredfinches.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005951/en/ Contacts: PRESS CONTACTS ALKION TERMINALS Rutger VAN THIEL, +31 (0)6 83 59 06 76 CEO rvthiel@alkion.com or INFRAVIA Vincent LEVITA, +33 (0)1 40 68 17 38 Founder CEO vlevita@infraviacapital.com or Feten BEN HARIZ +33 (0)1 44 82 66 77 fbenhariz@agencefargo.com or LBC TANK TERMINALS Christina Schosser, +32 (0)15 28 73 10 c-schosser@lbctt.com or SOGESTRAN Francois HAAS, +33 2 32 79 26 58 Sogestran Board member President of Sogestrol Francois.haas@sogestran.fr The Board of AB Kauno Energija (hereinafter - the Company) (code - 235014830) assessed results of Company's business activity of the 1 half of the year 2017 and financial state as at 30 June 2017 and approved AB Kauno Energija consolidated and Company's non-audited results of the 1 half of the year 2017. The result of Company's activities of the 1 half of the year 2017 according to the International Financial Reporting Standards is profit in amount of EUR 6,177 thousand (result of the 1 half of the year 2016 was amounted to EUR 7,017 thousand), turnover from sales is EUR 35,321 thousand (in the 1 half of the year 2016 it was amounted to EUR 36,189 thousand). The result of activities of the Group which consists of AB Kauno Energija and its' subsidiaries UAB Kauno Energija NT (code - 303042623) and UAB Petrasiunu Katiline (code 304217723) of the 1 half of the year 2017 is profit in amount of EUR 6,160 thousand (the result of the 1 half of the year 2016 - EUR 7,185 thousand), turnover from sales is amounted to EUR 35,313 thousand (turnover from sales of the 1 half of the year 2016 is amounted to EUR 36,184 thousand). As at the end of reporting period (30 June 2017) the rate of critical liquidity of the Company that makes comparison between short term assets without stocks and short term liabilities, increased from 1.44 to 1.85 during the period from the end of the year 2016 (the rate of the Group increased from 1.14 to 1.39). The EBITDA of the Company of the 1 half of the year 2017 is EUR 9,723 thousand (EBITDA of the 1 half of the year 2016 was EUR 10,520 thousand), and EBITDA of the Group is EUR 10,089 thousand (EBITDA of the 1 half of the year 2016 was EUR 10,667 thousand). We hereby present an Interim unaudited Financial Statements of the 1 half of the year 2017 together with confirmation of responsible persons. Agne Sermuksniene, Project Manager of the Economics and Planning Department, tel. +370 37 305 602 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=639643 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de FRANKFURT, Germany, September 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- More functionality, emotion and freedom of design in interiors Yanfeng Automotive Interiors (YFAI), the global leader in automotive interiors, is a pioneer in the development of new materials for vehicle interiors. At the IAA, with the activeSkin concept, the company presents its vision of integrating intuitive controls into vehicle interiors, which blur the boundaries between the digital and analog worlds. This new development concept enables the display of data on soft surfaces. Functional and decorative surfaces in vehicle interiors will increasingly merge in the future. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/554187/Yanfeng_Active_Skin.jpg ) "The future generation of surface is more intelligent than ever. We can simply move our hands over a fabric-covered surface in the car and an interactive surface or dynamic ambient decorative lighting appears. The surfaces interact with us," said Han Hendriks, Chief Technology Officer for YFAI. "This is impressive technology." activeSkin from YFAI maximizes freedom of design New levels of design freedom for interiors can be realized with activeSkin. The old design principle "form follows function" will be completely redefined with this new concept development. In the future, car interiors will increasingly have the atmosphere of a Next Living Space, with surfaces which are not only decorative and have a pleasant feel, but are also fully interactive. "We offer functionality on demand, which is only visible when it is needed. With this, we have the possibility of personalization functions into interior surfaces," said Hendriks. The activeSkin technology enables a freedom on interaction design. The quality and elegance with which the imaging and data transfer is implemented is convincing. "With activeSkin, we can achieve a 3D effect with a surprising sense of depth," explained Hendriks. What was recently a vision for the future could become part of our mobile reality by 2022. The detailed press text is available in our Media Center at http://www.yfai.com. Please visit our IAA microsite or follow us online: http://www.yfai.com/the-next-living-space YFAI Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YFautointeriors About Yanfeng Automotive Interiors: Yanfeng Automotive Interiors (YFAI) is the global leader in automotive interiors. YFAI is redefining how people relax, work and play in their vehicle interiors today and decades from now. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company has approximately 110 manufacturing plants and technical centers in 20 countries and more than 33,000 employees globally. They design, develop and manufacture interior components for all automakers. Established in 2015, Yanfeng Automotive Interiors is a joint venture between Yanfeng, one of the largest automotive suppliers in China and Adient, the global leader in automotive seating. For more information, please visit http://www.YFAI.com. For more information please contact: Yanfeng Automotive Interiors Jagenbergstrae 1 41468 Neuss Germany Astrid Schafmeister Tel.: +49 2131 609-3028 E-Mail: astrid.schafmeister@yfai.com Internet: http://www.YFAI.com VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 17, 2017 / David H. Brett, President & CEO, EnGold Mines Ltd. (TSXV: EGM) ("EnGold" or the "Company"), reports assay results from two holes within the step-out drilling program designed to follow-up the previously announced copper, gold, silver, magnetite discovery drill hole G16-01. The area is located 1.8 km south of the Spout Skarn Deposit at the Company's 100% owned Lac La Hache Property in the Cariboo region of British Columbia (the "Property"). Drill holes G17-07 & G17-08 targeted intercepts 50 metres south of holes G17-03 & G17-04 respectively. Hole G17-07 intercepted 6.05 metres (m) from 351.25 to 357.3 m downhole grading 1.01 % copper, 0.18 grams per tonne (gpt) gold and 8.02 gpt silver, including 3.15 metres grading 1.43 % copper, 0.31 gpt gold, and 12.6 gpt silver. Hole G17-08 intercepted 7.08 m from 335.83 to 342.9 m downhole grading 0.39% copper, 0.10 gpt gold, and 3.33 gpt silver, including 3.77 m grading 0.74 % copper, 0.13 gpt gold, and 4.57 gpt silver. Assays are pending from holes G17-09 & G17-10, which targeted intercepts 50 metres west and east of holes G17-04 & G17-03, respectively, and encountered mineralization over significantly narrower widths than holes G16-01, G17-03, & G17-04. An approximately 11 metre intercept from hole G17-11, located 50 metres north of hole G16-01, is now being prepared for assay. Holes G17-12 & G17-13 are still underway. "It's evident that the mineralization in this location appears to be narrowing to the south, east and west, as indicated by the local magnetic and gravity geophysical anomalies in this discovery area. The anomalies define a trend extending to the north of the discovery hole, where we will continue to test potential extension of the zone," said EnGold VP of Exploration, Rob Shives, P.Geo. "The sub-horizontal stratigraphy which hosts the mineralization has a very predictable attitude in all drilling to date and this offers excellent initial targeting strategy. Although skarn-style mineralization typically presents continuity challenges, we intend to use the combined magnetic and gravity patterns to significantly improve our drill targeting, both locally and regionally along the 5.5 kilometre anomalous trend of anomalies currently indicated." Following a break in the ground gravity survey program, the geophysical crew has returned to the project to continue measurements required to in-fill and extend existing anomalies. In addition, gravity surveying will focus along the large aeromagnetic total field high that forms a large arc, extending west and north from the Spout Deposits. A second gravity survey crew may be added to accelerate this work. "Earlier this year, EnGold's interpretation of gravity and magnetic geophysical data led to a drill hole that discovered a thick zone of significant mineralization," said EnGold President & CEO, David Brett. "That data indicates potential for mineralization with considerable size potential, and EnGold will be persistent in its exploration efforts in this exciting new area." Quality Control/Quality Assurance Program EnGold Mines Ltd follows procedures which ensure sample security, chain of custody and Quality Assurance/Quality Control for all drilling and geochemical sampling, conforming to industry practices defined by Canadian Institute for Mining, Metallurgy (CIMM) standards, and required for TSX-listed companies by National Instrument 43-101. All core was logged and photographed. Sampled intervals were sawed in half, bagged, sealed, and sent securely to ALS Canada Ltd for analyses. Half-gram samples were digested with aqua regia acid then analysed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) for 35 elements (ME-ICP41). A 30 gram split is analyzed for gold by fire assay with a gravimetric finish (ME-GRA21). Copper values exceeding 1 percent were analyzed using aqua regia digestion with an ICP-AES finish (ME-OG46) to improve accuracy and precision at higher grades. As part of our comprehensive QA/QC program, one standard, one blank and one in-line replicate were inserted into the sample stream in each group of approximately 20 samples in each analytical batch. About EnGold EnGold is focused on exploring its 100% owned mineral property located near the town of Lac La Hache in BC's prolific Cariboo mining region. EnGold's corporate philosophy rests on three interdependent pillars: Environment, Engagement and Gold. Through sound environmental stewardship, commitment to transparent engagement with local communities, the Company is dedicated to driving exceptional shareholder and stakeholder value by discovering and developing mineral resources. About the Lac La Hache Property The property lies within BC's Quesnel Trough mineral belt, which hosts several past and currently producing copper/gold/silver mines, including nearby Imperial Metals' Mount Polley copper-gold mine and New Gold Inc.'s New Afton copper-gold mine. The Company has drilled numerous prospects on the property, including Spout copper-magnetite-gold-silver deposit (for which a resource calculation has been reported and supported by an NI43-101 Technical Report), the gold-rich Aurizon gold-copper-silver prospect and recent new discoveries with porphyry and skarn copper/gold potential. Supported by significant local infrastructure including powerlines, all season road access, rail and other amenities, the Lac La Hache project demonstrates excellent logistics. Rob Shives, P.Geo., VP Exploration and a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content of this release. Engold Mines Ltd. Per/ David Brett, MBA President & CEO For further info contact David Brett, 604-682-2421 or david@engold.ca This news release may contain "forward-looking statements." Readers are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual development or results may vary materially from those in these "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. SOURCE: EnGold Mines Ltd. ZWANENBURG, Netherlands, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Compact and flexible UPS for critical applications from 30 to 200 kVA Completing AEG PS range of UPS oriented to Data & IT and general purpose applications AEG Power Solutions, a global provider of power electronic systems and solutions for industrial power supplies and renewable energy applications, today announced Protect Plus S500, its new transformer-less UPS that combines high efficiency values with a compact footprint and flexible configurations. Reducing overall cost of ownership, this latest addition to AEG PS range is the system of choice to protect critical loads for small and medium applications where low power consumption, ease of maintenance and space are important considerations. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/495167/Protect_Plus_S500.jpg ) With Protect Plus S500 AEG Power Solutions is completing its transformer-less UPS range, protecting mission critical applications from 400 VA to 4 MVA, thus providing Data &IT or industrial players the solution of choice they need to secure power and ultimately data, infrastructure or people. The Protect Plus S500 is a double conversion UPS (VFI SS 111). Its Eco mode allows secured operation up to 99%, thus reducing the utility costs associated with operating a device of this type. Moreover, it produces less heat waste resulting in minimized air conditioning costs. System AC/AC efficiency is up to 95.5%. Primarily designed for high availability ease of maintenance is an integrated design factor for the Protect Plus S500 which includes removal able internal modules contributing to low MTTR (mean time to Repair). The hot connection and disconnection of parallel units and the CAN bus based distributed control systems, ensures optimum load sharing and allows the system to be easily expanded up to six units, both in power parallel or N+x redundancy. The wide range of options available makes this UPS ready for all the business critical applications. "Since over two years now, AEG Power Solutions has built momentum in bringing to Data & It processes the power protection they need. The company has proven tracked records in the toughest and most complex industrial environments, from off-shore Oil platform to nuclear power plants," explains Alessandro Nalbone, product manager Data & IT UPS. "We are happy to serve now Data &IT applications with our expertise and an extensive three phase UPS range from 10 to 4000 kVA." Protect Plus S500 is already available and can be ordered from any AEG Power Solutions sales office or distributor. About AEG Power Solutions AEG Power Solutions (AEG PS) Group is a global provider of power electronics systems and solutions for all industrial and demanding commercial power requirements offering one of the most comprehensive product and service portfolios in the area of uninterruptible power supply and power management. Thanks to its distinctive expertise bridging both AC and DC power technologies and spanning the worlds of both conventional and renewable energy, the company creates innovative solutions for next generation distributed power generation. AEG Power Solutions Group is the sole subsidiary of the holding company 3W Power S.A. (WKN A114Z9) / ISINLU1072910919), based in Luxembourg. The Group is headquartered in Zwanenburg in the Netherlands. The shares of 3W Power are admitted to trading on Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: 3W9K). For more information, visit http://www.aegps.com. This communication does not constitute an offer or the solicitation of an offer to buy, sell or exchange any securities of 3W Power. This communication contains forward-looking statements which include, inter alia, statements expressing our expectations, intentions, projections, estimates, and assumptions. These forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable evaluation and opinion of the management but are subject to risks and uncertainties which are beyond the control of 3W Power and, as a general rule, difficult to predict. The management and the company cannot and do not, under any circumstances, guarantee future results or performance of 3W Power and the actual results of 3W Power may materially differ from the information expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, investors are cautioned against relying on the forward-looking statements contained herein as a basis for their investment decisions regarding 3W Power. 3W Power undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement contained herein. A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B+ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bbb-" of ARABIA Insurance Company Jordan (AIC-J) (Jordan). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings reflect the company's adequate level of risk-adjusted capitalisation and track record of operating profits. Offsetting rating factors include the company's modest business profile, weak underwriting performance and concentrated exposure to country risk in Jordan. AIC-J's ratings receive enhancement from its parent company, ARABIA Insurance Company s.a.l. (AIC), due to its strategic importance and integration within the group. AIC has a 51% stake in AIC-J and provides support to the company in areas such as governance, risk management, reinsurance purchasing and technical expertise. AIC-J's risk-adjusted capitalisation remains adequate for the rating level, benefiting from unrealised gains on real estate holdings, although growth in capital has been limited by the company's low level of profit retention. Shareholders' equity has grown at an average rate of 1.6% per annum over the past five years (2012-2016). Prospective capital adequacy will be driven by the company's ability to generate and retain sufficient capital to support its strategic initiatives. The company has a modest business profile in Jordan's domestic insurance market and controls a small market share of approximately 3.3%. Total gross written premiums grew by 10% in 2016 to JOD 20.2 million (USD 28.7 million), attributable primarily to motor comprehensive and marine business lines, offsetting a small drop in life premium revenue. Whilst AIC-J has a track record of generating positive operating earnings, the company's technical returns have experienced volatility. In 2016, the company generated a profit after tax of JOD 620,000 (USD 878,000), a material improvement on the breakeven result delivered in 2015. The increases in operating income was driven by a decline in the non-life combined ratio, which dropped to 96.8% in 2016 from 103.8% in 2015, due to an improvement in the motor business portfolio. Profit has historically been weighted towards investment income, which has been stable in recent years. Technical margins are likely to remain slim due to stiff levels of competition in Jordan's insurance market, which directly impacts the company as a result of its modest business profile. AIC-J remains exposed to the heightened levels of economic, political, and financial system risk associated with operating in Jordan. Despite the company's track record of successfully navigating these challenging conditions, A.M. Best continues to monitor the impact these external factors may have on the company. 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/20170427005986/en/ Contacts: A.M. Best Thomas Bateman, +44 20 7397 0329 Financial Analyst thomas.bateman@ambest.com or Salman Siddiqui, ACA, +44 20 7397 0311 Senior Financial Analyst salman.siddiqui@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 SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- CFN Media Group ("CFN Media", "CannabisFN"), the leading agency and digital media network dedicated to the North American cannabis industry, today announced that Nutritional High International Inc. (CNSX: EAT) (OTCQB: SPLIF) has engaged CFN Media to conduct a 3-month investor and market visibility program beginning on April 27th, 2017. "We are excited to be working with Nutritional High once again," said Frank Lane, President of CFN Media. "The company provides investors with rare exposure to the THC and CBD edibles space with a presence in multiple U.S. states and growing. CEO Jim Frazier has an extensive background in the chocolate confection industry and with assets and investments, the company is well-positioned to take edibles mainstream and develop a premium brand around their proprietary extraction process." Jim Frazier, CEO of Nutritional high, commented: "We're pleased to work with CFN media once again. The management team has worked hard to build value through accelerating business roll-out and pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy and we look forward to displaying the milestones that Nutritional High has accomplished." CFN Media will leverage its extensive reach and presence with mainstream and cannabis-focused investors, markets and media across North America to elevate Nutritional High's brand and attract high-quality long-term investors. Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company/ Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8 Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com About CFN Media CFN Media (CannabisFN), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to the worldwide cannabis industry, helps marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and publicity. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed. The company launched in June of 2013 to initially serve the growing universe of publicly traded marijuana companies across North America. Today, CFN Media is also the digital media choice for the emerging brands in the space. About Nutritional High International Inc. Nutritional High is focused on developing, manufacturing and distributing products and nationally recognized brands in the hemp and marijuana-infused products industries, including edibles and oil extracts for nutritional, medical and adult recreational use. The Company works exclusively through licensed facilities in jurisdictions where such activity is permitted and regulated by state law. For updates on the Company's activities and highlights of the Company's press releases and other media coverage, please follow Nutritional High on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ or visit www.nutritionalhigh.com. CFN Media Frank Lane 206-369-7050 flane@cannabisfn.com PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Fulcrum Partners LLC executive benefits advisory is celebrating its 10-year anniversary, and honoring its nationwide team of managing directors. Although the organization is reaching its first decade, its leadership averages 30+ years of experience in executive compensation and benefits, including the nearly 40-year partnership of Gus Comiskey Jr. and Stephen M. Kaufman, founders of Fulcrum Partners Houston. Both Gus and Stephen are native Houstonians and second-generation insurance industry professionals. "Our fathers," said Stephen Kaufman, "competed with each other in the general insurance business. Gus and I competed some, in the early days, then decided to partner to work together in what was at that time a new business, that of designing supplemental executive benefits and using special insurance products to finance those liabilities. That was in February 1978. Next year we'll celebrate 40 years of partnership." Gus Comiskey added, "As founding members of M Financial, we were pioneers in the early days of the executive benefits business. We built Comiskey Kaufman, Inc. into the Southwest's leading executive benefits consulting firm, reaching a peak of 41 employees. We sold CKI to Clark Consulting in 2002, joining the company as managing directors of the company's Southwest Region. When Clark ceased being in the business, we joined Fulcrum Partners, along with the other Clark consultants." Today, Fulcrum Partners LLC has thirteen offices located coast to coast, from Washington D.C. to Hawaii. You can learn more about the services provided by Fulcrum Partners Houston by contacting 713-623-8700, or find out more about the entire Fulcrum Partners team at www.fulcrumpartnersllc.com/team. About Fulcrum Partners LLC: Fulcrum Partners LLC (www.fulcrumpartnersllc.com) is one of the nation's leading and largest executive benefits consultancies. Fulcrum Partners is a wholly independent, member-owned firm dedicated to helping organizations enhance their Total Rewards Strategy. Founded in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL in 2007, the company has offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Charleston, South Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Delray Beach, Florida; Honolulu, Hawaii; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Newport Beach, California; Orlando, Florida; Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida; Portland, Oregon; and Washington D.C. Securities offered through Registered Representatives of ValMark Securities, Inc. Member FINRA, SIPC, 130 Springside Drive, Suite 300, Akron, OH 44333-2431, 1-800-765-5201.Investment Advisory Services offered through ValMark Advisers, Inc., which is a SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Fulcrum Partners LLC is a separate entity from ValMark Securities, Inc. and ValMark Advisers, Inc. CONTACT: Bruce Brownell 904.296.2563 press@fulcrumpartnersllc.com Demand for outsourced security services grows amid shift to cloud and hybrid environments ANN ARBOR, Michchigan, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Cloud-based Trusted Access provider Duo Security today announced the launch of Duo Managed Service Provider (MSP), a program to give MSPs the tools to better protect their customers from data breaches in a rapidly changing world of cloud applications and mobile devices. Duo helps ensure only trusted users and devices have access to sensitive on-premises or cloud-based business applications. Duo's Managed Service Provider program comes to market as deployment, integration and product management difficulties continue to hamper MSPs ability to provide important security solutions, such as multi-factor authentication, to their customers. "Two factor authentication is one of the simple yet vital tools Duo offers to help MSPs make sure their customers are properly protected," said Matt Smith, Duo Vice President of Worldwide Channels. "One of the most common challenges we hear from the MSP community today is the requirement to deliver more with less. MSPs don't have time to deal with complicated deployments or an overwhelming amount of help desk requests. With Duo's services, they won't have to." With Duo's tailored program, MSPs will be able to: Easily implement and manage the company's Trusted Access product suite, including Duo's patented Push two-factor authentication technology across their growing customer base, with no physical devices to deploy. Utilize pay-as-you-go pricing and avoid complex pricing tiers, making it easy for MSPs to offer customers flexibility without assuming risk - a pricing structure opposite conventional security vendors. Improve their customers' endpoint security by ensuring devices are up-to-date and providing the ability to monitor and set access policies. Quickly roll out Duo in their customers' environments within minutes with more than 200 native application integrations. "Traditional security products make it difficult and costly for MSPs to have visibility and set policies across all their customers' endpoints," said Smith. "We strive to make it fast and simple for MSPs to protect their customers and their end users." "Duo's ease of use and implementation, combined with providing trusted access for users, are the biggest takeaways we've seen since we deployed it across our customer base," said Mark Coriaty, Chief Strategy Officer, Eze Castle Integration. "Our customers and their end users are able to quickly and securely access the applications they need without hampering their productivity. The product adds another essential layer of protection that is demanded by our clients in today's security-focused environment." "The ease and efficiency of deploying Duo's two-factor authentication to our customers is in sharp contrast to the hassles we have experienced with other vendors," said Alexa Kruse, Director of Network and Security Operations Center at Cal Net Technology Group. "Our customers and their end users have appreciated Duo's ease of use since we implemented it." Please visit Duo's Managed Service Provider homepage for more information. About Duo Security Duo Security is a cloud-based Trusted Access provider protecting thousands of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations, including Dresser-Rand Group, Etsy, Facebook, K-Swiss, Paramount Pictures, Random House, SuddenLink, Toyota, Twitter, Yelp, Zillow and more. Duo Security's innovative and easy-to-use technology can be quickly deployed to protect users, data and applications from breaches, credential theft and account takeover. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company also has offices in San Mateo, California; Austin, Texas and London. Duo Security is backed by Benchmark, Google Ventures, Radar Partners, Redpoint Ventures and True Ventures. Try it for free at www.duo.com. Events in London and Barcelona Showcase Learning and Careers in Technology The GSMA today celebrated the annual ITU Girls in ICT Day with students from The Bridge Academy in Hackney, highlighting the exciting learning and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas. The group of Year 8 (12-13 year-old) schoolgirls from The Bridge Academy spent the day at Wayra, Telefonica's start-up accelerator, where they worked with developers to create a virtual reality (VR) experience, heard success stories from young entrepreneurs from Acorn Aspirations, and learned more about careers experiences from a number of female executives. "We are thrilled to again be participating in the ITU's Girls in ICT Day," said Michel O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. "Mobile technology has become central in the everyday lives of billions of people around the world and this will only increase in the years ahead, as nearly everyone and everything is connected by mobile. We want to ensure that young women are preparing themselves to take a leading role in this mobile-first future, by focusing on STEM subjects in their education and then pursuing and advancing in careers in technology." Speakers for the London Girls in ICT Day programme included: Elena Sinel, Founder and CEO, Acorn Aspirations Georgie Barrat, Technology Journalist and Broadcaster, and Presenter on Channel 5's 'The Gadget Show' Roisin Hartshorn, Research and Programme Manager, GSMA Natasha Rooney, Internet Engineering Director, GSMA Ramat Tejani, Advocacy Marketing Manager, GSMA Peter Falcone, Google Expeditions Rukshan Mehra, TMT Strategy Consultant, RedShift Strategy Ada Rose Edwards, Senior Engineer Web Developer/Advocate, Samsung Anthea Greco, Head of Partnerships, Wayra A major highlight of the day was the virtual reality experience led by Ada Rose Edwards of Samsung, where the students had the opportunity to do some basic programming and to edit a VR environment using the Google Cardboard viewer, mobile devices and laptops. The girls later put their VR experiences to use with an immersive virtual tour from Google Expeditions. GSMA Hosts Girls in ICT Day Programme in Barcelona In addition to the activities in London, the GSMA also hosted a group of girls at the Mobile World Center in Barcelona, where speakers from the GSMA, HP and Telefonica showcased the impact of technology and mobile. "Following on the Women for Tech programme and the Youth Mobile Festival, both launched at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Girls in ICT Day offers another opportunity for us to highlight the importance of technology in education and careers for young women in Barcelona," said Therese Jamaa, General Manager, Mobile World Capital, GSMA. "We also want to help young women understand the breadth of careers available to them in the technology industry, from engineering and technical roles, to marketing and sales, and more. The possibilities are endless!" Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals Participation in initiatives such as the Girls in ICT Day underlines the mobile industry's commitment to helping to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). In 2016, the mobile industry became the first sector as a whole to commit to the SDGs, with mobile already contributing against all 17 SDGs. The GSMA and its members are focused on accelerating and amplifying mobile's impact on the SDGs, to connect everyone and everything to a better future. -ENDS- About the GSMA The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with almost 300 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Mobile World Congress Americas and the Mobile 360 Series of conferences. For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com. Follow the GSMA on Twitter: @GSMA. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427005737/en/ Contacts: For the GSMA Laura Scott +44 777 353 5972 Laura.Scott@webershandwick.com GSMA Press Office pressoffice@gsma.com LAVAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Savaria Corporation ("Savaria") (TSX: SIS), one of North America's leaders in the accessibility industry, will release its 2017 first quarter results after market hours on May 11th, 2017. Savaria Corporation (savaria.com) is one of North America's leaders in the accessibility industry. It provides accessibility solutions for the elderly and physically challenged to increase their mobility and independence. The diversity of its product line is one of the most comprehensive on the market. Savaria designs, manufactures, distributes and installs accessibility equipment, such as stairlifts for straight and curved stairs, vertical and inclined wheelchair lifts, as well as elevators for home and commercial use. In addition, it converts and adapts vehicles to be wheelchair accessible. It also operates a network of franchisees and corporate stores through which new and recycled accessibility equipment is sold, as well as vehicle conversion in certain locations. Savaria operates a plant located in Huizhou (China), which increases its competitive edge. The Corporation records more than 60% of its revenue outside Canada, primarily in the United States. It operates a sales network of some 400 retailers and affiliates in North America and employs some 500 people. Its principal places of business are located in Laval (Quebec), Brampton (Ontario) and Huizhou (China). Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savariabettermobility Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mobilityforlife Contacts: Helene Bernier, CPA, CA Vice-President, Finance 1-800-931-5655, ext. 248 helene.bernier@savaria.com Marcel Bourassa President and Chief Executive Officer 1-800-661-5112 marcel.bourassa@savaria.com www.savaria.com New service will enable Salvadorans and Guatemalans abroad to send money to Tigo Money users instantly from their phones Leading digital money transfer service WorldRemit announced today it has partnered with Millicom's subsidiaries Tigo Money to open up new remittance routes to El Salvador and Guatemala, enabling Salvadorans and Guatemalans abroad to send money transfers instantly to more than one and a half million Tigo Money users in those countries, directly from the WorldRemit app. Tigo Money is a leading provider of mobile financial services for customers across Latin America and is today the largest bill payments platform in El Salvador. There is one Tigo Money transaction per second in El Salvador, of which international remittances make a significant contribution. In Guatemala, Tigo Money covers 92% of the total territory, becoming the second largest physical distribution network in the country. WorldRemit users abroad will now be able to make secure, instant money transfers back home from their mobile phone to any Tigo Money user in El Salvador and Guatemala, who, no matter where they are, will have instant availability and capacity to resend money domestically, buy top ups, pay bills, or simply have the possibility to cash out partially or totally their money in Tigo Money's extensive agent network. Tigo Money is the only mobile money provider in El Salvador and Guatemala currently receiving international remittances from WorldRemit, reaching more customers with mobile phones. Remittances play a very important role in El Salvador's and Guatemala's economies -receiving almost $4.1 billion $7.1 billions in remittances respectively in 2016 according to the local Central Banks in both countries, primarily from the United States and Canada. With WorldRemit, people in more than 50 countries can send instant, secure transfers to more than 140 destinations. Known for its mobile-first approach, WorldRemit makes sending money as easy as sending an instant message. More than 70% of the international remittances sent to mobile money accounts in December 2016 were sent via WorldRemit, according to the latest data published by the GSMA. Ismail Ahmed, founder and CEO at WorldRemit, comments:"Our partnership with Tigo Money in Central America will give more choice to millions of Salvadorans and Guatemalas living and working abroad, giving them a simple, safe way to support their friends and family without having to wait in line at a money transfer agent. Offering our customers the option to send to Tigo Money accounts supports the transition from costly offline remittances via high street agents, to faster, safer and lower cost online transfer methods". Ronald Alvarenga, Director of Mobile Financial Services for Millicom says: "The Alliance with WorldRemit is one of our first 100% digital alliances. It responds to our focus of placing our customers in the center of all our services, providing the best customer experience they can get through their mobile phones. This will benefit our Salvadoran and Guatemalan community abroad as well as their relatives who live and receive remittances in El Salvador and Guatemala. We are connecting lives in a digital world, offering a convenient, fast, secure and affordable way for customers to receive their money." WorldRemit customers currently send over 600,000 transfers every month. For more information on how to send money to El Salvador and Guatemala please visit https://www.worldremit.com/en/El-Salvador and https://www.worldremit.com/en/Guatemala ABOUT WORLDREMIT WorldRemit is changing the way people send money. It's easy just open the app or visit the website no more agents. Transfers to most countries are instant send money like an instant message. More ways to receive (Mobile Money, bank transfer, cash pickup, and mobile airtime top-up). Available in over 50 countries and 140+ destinations. Backed by Accel Partners and TCV investors in Facebook, Spotify, Netflix and Slack. WorldRemit's global headquarters are in London, UK with regional offices in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006025/en/ Contacts: WorldRemit Lucas Germanos media@worldremit.com CAMBRIDGE, England, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Published a Final Appraisal Determination (FAD) in a Single Technology Appraisal Reviewing BLINCYTO (blinatumomab) FAD Reinforces Significant Need for Innovative Treatment Options for Patients With Relapsed or Refractory Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) Blinatumomab is the First-and-Only Approved Bispecific CD19-Directed CD3 T Cell Engager (BiTE) Immunotherapy Today the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published its Final Appraisal Determination (FAD) recommending BLINCYTO (blinatumomab) as an option for treating adults with Philadelphia-chromosome-negative (Ph-) relapsed or refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), on the basis of the discount agreed in the patient access scheme. NICE reviewed the data available on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of blinatumomab. Having considered evidence on the nature of the disease and the value placed on the benefits of blinatumomab by people with the condition, those who represent them, and clinical experts, NICE concluded that it is a cost-effective use of NHS resources under the end-of-life criteria.[1] (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/475485/Amgen_Logo.jpg ) "Living with ALL, particularly when first line treatment has failed, can have a profound impact on the person's physical and psychological wellbeing. It can also place a big emotional strain on their families and friends," said Zack Pemberton-Whiteley from Leukaemia CARE. "For patients, the knowledge that there are alternative treatments available can provide some relief. We are pleased that NICE has recommended blinatumomab to be made routinely available to patients in England and Wales. This is consistent with a previous decision from the Scottish Medicines Consortium, ending the variations in access between England and Scotland." Blinatumomab is a bispecific CD19-directed CD3 T cell engager (BiTE) antibody construct. It is the first bispecific antibody construct fromAmgen'sBiTEplatform, which helps the body's immune system target cancer cells and represents an entirely new area of authorised oncology therapeutics. BiTEantibody constructs are currently being investigated for their potential to treat a wide variety of cancers. "I am absolutely delighted that blinatumomab will be available for this population of patients with ALL. It's a step-change in how we deliver therapies in this area; a new approach that activates a patient's own immune system which is both more effective and less toxic than standard chemotherapy," said Professor Adele Fielding, Professor of Haematology, University College London. "I am proud that the UK was able to play a key role in the international Phase 2 and 3 studies that led to this approval; and of NICE for evaluating the clinical evidence that is generated by such trials, for their transparent, rational and fair approach to decision making." The clinical evidence assessed by NICE focused on the Phase 3 TOWER study and Phase 2 MT 103-211 study. Results from the TOWER study showed that median overall survival (OS) was 7.7 months (95 percent CI: 5.6, 9.6) for blinatumomab versus 4.0 months (95 percent CI: 2.9, 5.3) for standard of care chemotherapy (hazard ratio [HR] for death=0.71;p=0.01).[2] "Amgen is committed to ensuring patients in the UK get access to effective therapies for hard-to-treat cancers like ALL. Patients with relapsed or refractory ALL have an extremely poor prognosis and we are pleased that NICE has recommended blinatumomab for routine use on the NHS, giving patients and their physicians a novel option to help manage their disease," said Tony Patrikios, Executive Medical Director, Amgen UK and Ireland. ALL is a rare and rapidly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow, with around 760 new cases in the UK a year.[3] Currently, there is no broadly accepted standard treatment regimen for adult patients with relapsed or refractory ALL beyond chemotherapy.[4] In adults, approximately 75 percent is B-cell precursor ALL, of which 75-80 percent are Philadelphia-chromosome-negative, and roughly half will be refractory to treatment or experience relapse.[5] In England, blinatumomab is available with immediate effect via interim funding arrangements. In Wales, medicines recommended by NICE will be made available within two months of the publication of the Final Appraisal Determination. Subject to NICE issuing positive Final Guidance, interim funding for blinatunomab in England will be available until 90 days after NICE Final Guidance is issued, whereupon funding will switch permanently to baseline commissioning budgets. This guidance is contingent upon Amgen UK providing blinatumomab to the NHS within the terms of an agreed patient access scheme. Please refer to the Summary of Product Characteristics for full European prescribing information: https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/31231 About BLINCYTO(blinatumomab) Blinatumomab is a bispecific CD19-directed CD3 T cell engager (BiTE) antibody construct that binds specifically to CD19 expressed on the surface of cells of B-lineage origin and CD3 expressed on the surface of T cells. In November 2015, BLINCYTO was granted conditional marketing authorisation in the EU for the treatment adults with Philadelphia chromosome negative relapsed or refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). Important EU Product Safety Information This product is subject to additional monitoring in the EU and EEA. All suspected adverse reactions should be reported in accordance with the national reporting system. The adverse reactions described in this section were identified in the Phase 2 MT 103-211 study (N=189).The most serious adverse reactions that may occur during blinatumomab treatment include: infections (31.7%), neurologic events (16.4%), neutropenia/febrile neutropenia (15.3%) cytokine release syndrome (0.5%), and tumor lysis syndrome (0.5%). The most common adverse reactions were: infusion-related reactions (67.2%), infections (63.0%), pyrexia (59.8%), headache (34.4%), febrile neutropenia (28%), peripheral edema (25.9%), nausea (24.3%), hypokalemia (23.8%), constipation (20.6%), anemia (20.1%), cough (18.5%), diarrhea (18.0%), tremor (17.5%), neutropenia (17.5%), abdominal pain (16.9%), insomnia (15.3%), fatigue (15.3%), and chills (15.3%). About BiTE Technology Bispecific T cell engager (BiTE) antibody constructs are a type of immunotherapy being investigated for fighting cancer by helping the body's immune system to detect and target malignant cells. The modified antibodies are designed to engage two different targets simultaneously, thereby juxtaposing T cells (a type of white blood cell capable of killing other cells perceived as threats) to cancer cells. BiTE antibody constructs help place the T cells within reach of the targeted cell, with the intent of allowing T cells to inject toxins and trigger the cancer cell to die (apoptosis). BiTE antibody constructs are currently being investigated for their potential to treat a wide variety of cancers. AboutAmgen Amgenis committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology. Amgenfocuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980,Amgenhas grown to be one of the world's leading independent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential. For more information, visithttp://www.amgen.co.uk. References: 1. NICE Final Appraisal Documentation Blinatumomab for previously treated Philadelphia-chromosome-negative acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Available from: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/gid-ta10093/documents/final-appraisal-determination-document (Last Accessed April 2017) 2. Topp M, et al. Blinatumomab versus Chemotherapy for Advanced Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. N Engl J Med 2017; 376:836-847 3. Cancer Research UK Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) incidence. Available from: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/leukaemia-allheading-Zero (Last Accessed April 2017) 4. Davis T, Farag SS.Treating relapsed or refractor Philedelphia chromosome-negative actuve lymphoblastic leukemia: liposome-encapsulated vincristine. Int J Nanomedicine. 2013;8:3479-88 5. Katz AJ, et al. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia: an assessment of international incidence, survival, and disease burden. Cancer Causes Control. 2015 Nov;26(11):1627-42 MAHWAH, NJ and HERZLIYA, ISRAEL -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- TopSpin Security, Inc., the leader in intelligent deception and detection solutions, today announced that John Cebulski, Senior Enterprise Sales Engineer, has been selected to present "Using Deception to Hunt Cyber-Attackers" at the 2017 Financial Services ISAC (FS-ISAC) Annual Summit, being held April 30 - May 3 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Mr. Cebulski will discuss an emerging approach in fighting cybercrime -- intelligent deception security, which is a proactive detection technology allowing organizations to turn the tables on attackers and expose data breaches quickly and accurately. It helps keep attackers away from organizations' real data and facilitates detection mechanisms that identify an attack in progress with a high degree of certainty. The presentation, which is part of the Silver Solutions Showcase, is scheduled from 5 pm EDT - 6 pm EDT, on Monday, May 1, in the Atlantic B conference room. During the summit, TopSpin will also demonstrate its DECOYnet Intelligent Deception and Detection Platform, which is the industry's only intelligent deception solution that offers a built-in traffic and security analysis engine -- enabling highly accurate placement of mini-traps and decoys, an additional security layer through analysis and threat detection, and adaptive and flexible deception that evolves with changing network conditions. With DECOYnet, TopSpin continues to perfect its asset profiling capabilities, uniquely mapping the network by every asset and subnet to build a comprehensive deception layer for each individual network. By constantly breathing the network traffic, DECOYnet actively adapts to dynamic network conditions, including new assets and applications introduced, so the deception layer is always optimized. DECOYnet interacts with any existing security tool, helping organizations manage and correlate security activities across multiple platforms, systems and applications. It alerts organizations when third-party tools and service pose risks, for example if they perform scans or exfiltrate private data to an unauthorized external location. DECOYnet also enhances threat intelligence by combining data from decoys, traps, and internal and egress traffic monitors; and correlating it into single, actionable incidents. About John Cebulski John Cebulski joined TopSpin in early 2016 to lead the company's sales engineering efforts in North America. Mr. Cebulski's experience in the cyber-security market spans more than two decades, in which he led security engineering, deployment and consulting projects for leading companies including IBM-Trusteer, Symantec, Itegralis (now NTT Security), CheckPoint, and more. About TopSpin Security A 2017 Gartner Cool Vendor, TopSpin Security is the leader in intelligent deception and detection technologies which allow organizations to quickly and accurately detect breaches, engage attackers and neutralize advanced cyber-attacks. Its technology is based on a network of decoys that lure attackers by mirroring valuable network assets and are fully adaptive to organizations' changing environments. Its unique traffic analysis engine and integration into organizations' existing security infrastructure deliver the industry's only deception solution that provides for strategic placement of traps and decoys; added security and internal correlation; and operational advantages such as automated, point-and-click configuration. Once engaged, the decoys interact with attackers, deceiving them and slowing their advances, while providing accurate, actionable alerts and forensics trails. TopSpin's DECOYnet is already deployed by leading Global 2000 companies. The company's U.S. operations are headquartered in Mahwah, N.J., with its R&D center in Herzliya, Israel. Learn more at https://www.topspinsec.com. All brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Contact: Dan Spalding Email Contact (408) 960-9297 SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- This May, medical website design and SEO firm Rosemont Media will be joining leading eye care professionals from around the country at the ASCRS-ASOA Symposium & Congress -- an annual meeting presented by both the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) and the American Society of Ophthalmic Administrators (ASOA). This year's event will take place in Los Angeles from May 5-9, and will be a joint meeting with the Asia-Pacific Association of Cataract & Refractive Surgeons. The conference will feature educational presentations and exhibitions from renowned physicians, as well as experts in related fields. This will be Rosemont Media's third consecutive year attending the meeting, and the company will be exhibiting examples of its work at booth #655 on May 6, 7, and 8 from 9:00am-5:00pm. The SEO agency's Director of Medical Consulting, Brian Lyle, will be present to answer questions and share information about available services, including responsive website design, social media marketing, reputation management, and more. Consultant Amy McDowell and Ophthalmology Business Development Specialist Todd Olvis will also be at the booth to showcase examples of Rosemont Media's products and provide helpful information. Outgoing ASCRS president Dr. Robert Cionni is a current client of Rosemont Media and has worked with the agency since 2008. "We are incredibly proud to have the honor and privilege of working with distinguished physicians such as Dr. Cionni," says Rosemont Media's CEO, Keith Humes. "This year, we are looking forward to establishing new relationships and helping even more eye care professionals learn how digital marketing can positively impact their practices." About Rosemont Media Led by CEO Keith Humes, a 16-year veteran in medical marketing, Rosemont Media is a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in online strategies for elective healthcare practices. Some of the customized services offered by the San Diego-based firm include link building, search engine optimization (SEO), media buying, and content marketing. Offering clients a strict exclusivity clause, the web design company is committed to working with only one practice per specialty in each market. Rosemont Media has a long history of providing Internet marketing solutions to some of the most respected ophthalmologists, LASIK surgeons, and cataract surgeons in the country. To view the original source of this press release, click here: https://www.rosemontmedia.com/surgeons-blog/ascrs-2017-los-angeles-rosemont-media-a-modern-ad-agency-for-healthcare-to-exhibit/ Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3133478 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3133481 Rosemont Media Keith Humes Email Contact (858) 200-0044 ROSEMONT, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- The keynote presentation at the 2017 ASSEMBLY Show will feature Derek Harper of Faurecia North America who will discuss Industry 4.0 and the digital factory of the future, a hot topic in manufacturing. Harper is the VP of Information Technology at Faurecia North America based in Auburn Hills MI. The ASSEMBLY Show will take place October 24-26 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. "We are excited to have Derek Harper speak at The ASSEMBLY Show this year. We look forward to him providing our attendees an insight into Industry 4.0 and the digital factory," said Thomas A. Esposito, Publisher, Assembly Magazine, producers of the event. "We recently featured Faurecia's Factory of the Future in Assembly Magazine where we talk about how industry 4.0 technology promises to transform plant floors during the next two decades and will change the way that engineers and assemblers interact with machines." Faurecia is a $23 billion Tier One supplier based in France that operates more than 70 global facilities. The company specializes in automotive seating, interior systems and emissions control technologies. Its customers include automakers, such as FCA, Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Nissan, in addition to diesel engine manufacturers, such as Cummins Inc. and Deere & Co. The ASSEMBLY Show will offer three days of educational sessions, hundreds of exhibiting companies, thousands of industry professionals including buyers and users of assembly equipment, products or services in manufacturing plants, a dynamic keynote speaker and two exciting networking receptions. Registration for the 5th annual event is now open, click here. The show floor will feature hundreds of exhibiting companies including Gold Sponsor Promess, Silver Sponsors FESTO and Schunk and Bronze Sponsors Kistler, Orbitform and Schmidt Technology. Manufacturing engineers and managers responsible for the assembly process for automobiles, consumer products, electronics, medical devices, machinery, appliances, and more attend the event to see the latest products and services for assembly manufacturing. In addition, The ASSEMBLY Show has launched the new and improved interactive floor plan for attendees to find the list of exhibiting companies and more about the products they will showcase. The ASSEMBLY Show is sponsored by ASSEMBLY (www.assemblymag.com), a monthly trade magazine read by 56,000 engineers and managers responsible for manufacturing and designing cars, computers, catheters, coffee makers, etc. ASSEMBLY covers the processes, technologies and strategies for joining discrete parts into finished products. The event is produced by BNP Media (www.bnpmedia.com), one of the country's leading business-to-business media companies serving professionals across 50+ industries. For more information, visit www.theassemblyshow.com For Further Information, Contact: Amy Riemer Media Relations Representative 978-475-4441 (office) 978-502-4895 (cell) Email Contact A recently created Energy Commission has advised the Danish government to phase-out incentives for renewables, at the same rate as the technology becomes competitive with other energy sources. Meanwhile, Denmark has added only 3.7 MW of PV so far this year.Denmark's Minister for Energy, Utilities and Climate, Lars Chr. Lillehol announced the creation of a new Energy Commission to analyze recent developments in the energy sector and make recommendations for the country's future energy policies in April 2016. The commission has now provided a series of recommendations, which will be included in Denmark's future energy strategy by 2030, and comprise the request to phase-out renewable energy incentives at the same rate as clean power sources become competitively viable. The authority stressed that a complete change in energy policy is needed, and that the country's future energy sector should be more market-based. "Concluding the work of the Energy Commission," said Chairman Niels B. Christiansen, "it is obvious to us that an ambitious energy policy starting as early as 2020 is mandatory if we are to meet our long-term objective ... 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. A seminar on the outlook for the U.K.'s energy storage market that took place this week in London highlighted the vibrant activity taking place in the sector, but was unable to answer when or if government can come up with a meaningful policy.The UK's energy sector is eagerly anticipating the government's response on the recent call for evidence (CfE) asking for views on how to enable a smarter and flexible energy system. The CfE was a joint move between the government and the country's energy regulator Ofgem that concluded on 12th January. Since then, the sector has waited patiently for the government's conclusions. It appears they will need to wait for at least two more months. Deidre Bell, senior manager at Ofgem, told the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum (WEETF) that took place in London on Tuesday that the CfE received a total of 240 responses, of which approximately 150 responses mentioned energy storage specifically. Bell said that an initial analysis of the feedback shows that the CfE has identified the correct barriers, while some additional barriers were raised in the responses, such as the ability of energy storage investors to stack revenues. Overall, Bell added, there is an agreement among the CfE respondents that for more clarity on the regulatory treatment of storage, (licensing options) are needed and that a definition of energy storage is required. Ofgem and the government ... Den vollstandigen Artikel lesen ... Munich (ots/PRNewswire) -- ENVISAGE-TAVI AF is the first study to evaluate the effects of a novel oral anticoagulant on clinical outcomes exclusively in atrial fibrillation patients following successful transcatheter aortic valve implantation - Study adds to the growing Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme (ECRP) evaluating its use in a broad range of cardiovascular conditions, patient types and clinical settingsDaiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH (hereafter, "Daiichi Sankyo") today announced that the first patient has been enrolled into the ENVISAGE-TAVI AF study. The multinational, randomised phase 3b study will evaluate a treatment regimen based on the company's oral, once-daily direct factor Xa-inhibitor edoxaban (known by the brand name LIXIANA outside the US and SAVAYSA in the US) against a vitamin K antagonist based regimen, with or without antiplatelet therapy, in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) following successful transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). The study will investigate the incidence of net adverse clinical events (NACE), including the composite of all-cause death, myocardial infarction (MI), ischaemic stroke, systemic thromboembolism (SEE), valve thrombosis, and major bleeding (International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis [ISTH] definition). Approximately 1,400 patients will be enrolled in ENVISAGE-TAVI AF from 200 clinical sites across Europe, the United States and Canada.[1]"ENVISAGE-TAVI AF is a very important study because it will provide the first clinical evidence comparing the safety and efficacy of an edoxaban-based versus a VKA-based regimen in non-valvular AF patients with indication for chronic oral anticoagulation after successful TAVI in a sufficiently powered study. In this study, edoxaban will be used with the approved dosage regimen for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation," said George Dangas, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and co-principal study investigator.Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has become an increasingly frequent procedure to treat aortic stenosis.[2] Aortic stenosis is a progressing disease, and may turn into a life threatening condition.[3] In patients undergoing a TAVI procedure, AF is a frequent comorbidity which requires chronic oral anticoagulation therapy.[4],[5]"At present, ENVISAGE-TAVI AF is the only study of patients undergoing TAVI designed to compare exclusively non-valvular AF patients on a novel oral anticoagulant regimen against a VKA-based regimen," said Nicolas M. van Mieghem, MD, PhD, Erasmus University of Rotterdam and co-principal investigator."ENVISAGE-TAVI AF will add to the growing body of evidence in the Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme, providing unique insights into the potential benefit of edoxaban in atrial fibrillation patients undergoing TAVI procedures, a high-risk population," said Hans J. Lanz, MD, Executive Director, Global Medical Affairs, Daiichi Sankyo.To access the latest news, media backgrounders, images, and videos please visit http://pressportal.lixiana.com/. Please note that the press portal is not intended for UK media.About ENVISAGE-TAVI AFEdoxabaN Versus standard of care and theIr effectS on clinical outcomes in pAtients havinG undergonE Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation - in Atrial Fibrillation (ENVISAGE-TAVI AF) is a prospective, randomised, open-label, blinded endpoint evaluation, parallel-group phase 3b study, evaluating the efficacy and safety of once-daily edoxaban against a regimen of a vitamin K antagonist, with or without antiplatelet therapy, in AF patients following successful transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). The primary efficacy endpoint is incidence of net adverse clinical events (NACE), i.e., the composite of all-cause death, MI, ischemic stroke, SEE, valve thrombosis, and major bleeding (International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis [ISTH] definition). The primary safety endpoint is major bleeding (ISTH definition). Approximately 1,400 patients will be enrolled in ENVISAGE-TAVI AF from 200 clinical sites across Europe, the United States and Canada. Edoxaban will be used with the approved dosage regimen for stroke prevention in AF in each country.[1]For more information, please visit: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02943785.About Atrial FibrillationAF is a condition where the heart beats irregularly and rapidly. When this happens, blood can pool and thicken in the chambers of the heart causing an increased risk of blood clots. These blood clots can break off and travel through the blood stream to the brain (or sometimes to another part of the body), where they have the potential to cause a stroke.[6]AF is the most common type of heart rhythm disorder, and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality.[7] An estimated 8.8 million Europeans suffered from AF in 2010, and this figure is expected to at least double over the next 50 years.[8] Compared to those without AF, people with the arrhythmia have a 3-5 times higher risk of stroke.[9] One in five of all strokes are as a result of AF.[5]About EdoxabanEdoxaban is an oral, once-daily, direct factor Xa (pronounced "Ten A") inhibitor. Factor Xa is one of the key components responsible for blood clotting, so inhibiting this makes the blood thin and less prone to clotting. Edoxaban is currently marketed in Japan, the U.S., South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Switzerland, the U.K., Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, and other European countries.The edoxaban Summary of Product Characteristics can be viewed here:http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/EPAR_-_Produc t_Information/human/002629/WC500189045.pdf.About Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme (ECRP)Daiichi Sankyo is committed to expanding scientific knowledge about edoxaban, as demonstrated through our research programmes evaluating its use in a broad range of cardiovascular conditions, patient types and clinical settings in atrial fibrillation (AF) and venous thromboembolism (VTE). The Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme includes multiple RCTs (randomised, controlled trials), registries and non-interventional studies, with the goal of generating new clinical and real-world-data regarding its use in AF and VTE populations. Daiichi Sankyo expects that more than 100,000 patients will participate in the Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme, including completed, ongoing and future research.The RCTs include:- ENSURE-AF (EdoxabaN vs. warfarin in subjectS UndeRgoing cardiovErsion of Atrial Fibrillation), in AF patients undergoing electrical cardioversion - ENTRUST-AF PCI (EdoxabaN TReatment versUS VKA in paTients with AF undergoing PCI), in AF patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention - Hokusai-VTE Cancer (Edoxaban in Venous Thromboembolism Associated with Cancer), in patients with cancer and an acute VTE event - ELDERCARE-AF (Edoxaban Low-Dose for EldeR CARE AF patients), in elderly AF patients in Japan - ELIMINATE-AF (EvaLuatIon of edoxaban coMpared with VKA IN subjects undergoing cAThEter ablation of non-valvular Atrial Fibrillation) - ENVISAGE-TAVI AF (EdoxabaN Versus standard of care and theIr effectS on clinical outcomes in pAtients havinG undergonE Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) - Atrial Fibrillation)In addition, global and regional registry studies will provide important real-world data about the use of edoxaban and other oral anticoagulants in everyday practice, and include:- ETNA-AF (Edoxaban Treatment in routiNe clinical prActice in patients with non valvular Atrial Fibrillation) - ETNA-VTE (Edoxaban Treatment in routiNe clinical prActice in patients with Venous ThromboEmbolism) - EMIT-AF/VTE (Edoxaban Management In diagnostic and Therapeutic procedures-AF/VTE) - Prolongation PREFER in AF (PREvention oF thromboembolic events - European Registry) in patients with AF - ANAFIE (All Nippon AF In Elderly) Registry in Japan - Cancer-VTE Registry in JapanWe are committed to adding to the scientific body of knowledge around edoxaban in a variety of AF and VTE patients, including those who are vulnerable.Daiichi Sankyo Fights ThrombosisDaiichi Sankyo is your partner in antithrombotic therapy with the discovery and development of innovative products, to help patients with a wide range of cardiovascular conditions. These include EFIENT (prasugrel) for acute coronary syndromes and LIXIANA (edoxaban) for non-valvular atrial fibrillation, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Daiichi Sankyo's ongoing commitment in this field is demonstrated by their continued investment into patient-relevant clinical development activities that aim to advance the care and improve the lives of people suffering with these diseases. For more information, please visit: http://www.daiichi-sankyo.eu.About Daiichi SankyoDaiichi Sankyo Group is dedicated to the creation and supply of innovative pharmaceutical products to address diversified, unmet medical needs of patients in both mature and emerging markets. With over 100 years of scientific expertise and a presence in more than 20 countries, Daiichi Sankyo and its 16,000 employees around the world draw upon a rich legacy of innovation and a robust pipeline of promising new medicines to help people. In addition to a strong portfolio of medicines for hypertension and thrombotic disorders, under the Group's 2025 Vision to become a "Global Pharma Innovator with Competitive Advantage in Oncology," Daiichi Sankyo research and development is primarily focused on bringing forth novel therapies in oncology, including immuno-oncology, with additional focus on new horizon areas, such as pain management, neurodegenerative diseases, heart and kidney diseases, and other rare diseases. For more information, please visit: http://www.daiichisankyo.com.Forward-looking statementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements and information about future developments in the sector, and the legal and business conditions of DAIICHI SANKYO Co., Ltd. Such forward-looking statements are uncertain and are subject at all times to the risks of change, particularly to the usual risks faced by a global pharmaceutical company, including the impact of the prices for products and raw materials, medication safety, changes in exchange rates, government regulations, employee relations, taxes, political instability and terrorism as well as the results of independent demands and governmental inquiries that affect the affairs of the company. All forward-looking statements contained in this release hold true as of the date of publication. They do not represent any guarantee of future performance. Actual events and developments could differ materially from the forward-looking statements that are explicitly expressed or implied in these statements. DAIICHI SANKYO Co., Ltd. assume no responsibility for the updating of such forward-looking statements about future developments of the sector, legal and business conditions and the company.References1. Clinicaltrials.gov. Edoxaban Compared to Standard Care After Heart Valve Replacement Using a Catheter in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation (ENVISAGE-TAVI AF). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02943785. [Last accessed: April 2017]. 2. Webb J, Cribier A. Percutaneous transarterial aortic valve implantation: what do we know? Eur Heart J. 2011;32(2):140-7. 3. Otto CM, Prendergast B. Aortic-valve stenosis- from patients at risk to severe valve ablation. N Engl J Med. 2104;371(8):744-56. 4. Biviano AB, et al. Atrial fibrillation is associated with increased mortality in patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement: insights from the placement of aortic transcatheter valve (PARTNER) trial. Circ Cardiovasc Interv. 2016;9(1):e002766. doi:10.1161/CIRCINTERVENTIONS. 115.002766. 5. Kirchhof P, et al. 2016 ESC Guidelines for the management of atrial fibrillation developed in collaboration with EACTS. Eur Heart J. 2016;37(38):2893-2962. 6. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute - What is Atrial Fibrillation. Available at: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/af/af_diagnosis.html . [Last accessed: April 2017]. 7. Iqbal MB, et al. Recent developments in atrial fibrillation. BMJ. 2005;330(7485):238-43. 8. Krijthe BP, et al. Projections on the number of individuals with atrial fibrillation in the European Union, from 2000 to 2060. Eur Heart J. 2013;34(35):2746-2751. 9. Ball J, et al. Atrial fibrillation: Profile and burden of an evolving epidemic in the 21st century. Int J Card. 2013;167:1807-1824.ContactLydia Worms (Europe)Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbHEdoxaban Communications & Product PR Europe+49-(89)-7808751ots Originaltext: Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de PHOENIX, AZ -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- NOHO, Inc. (OTC PINK: DRNK), a Wyoming corporation (the "Company"), announced the following: The Company has signed a letter of intent with DMR Biologic, LLC, of Schonfield, Wisconsin, to acquire the rights to market and sell its homeopathic OTC drug registered with the FDA. This new formulation is taken via a patented, gel-based delivery method contained in a small stick pack. The product is taken sublingually (under the tongue), offering fast and effective relief from Hangover pain and headache. In bypassing the digestive system, the product is absorbed much faster than liquid or pill-based formulas and has no contraindicated drug interactions. The product's effectiveness is confirmed by multiple Double-blind/Placebo controlled clinical trials. Developed as a drug to treat migraine headaches, under the proposed deal, NOHO would have exclusive rights to the product in the Hangover market and register the new brand with the FDA and obtain a National Drug Code number. The proposed terms also include distribution for a re-branded migraine product which NOHO would market and sell through its new distributor, BNG Enterprises. David Mersky, NOHO's CEO, stated, "In keeping with our strategy of pursuing undervalued assets like our 2oz Shot and Gold can products when we came into NOHO, we have once again found a great opportunity to bring an FDA compliant product to the Hangover market. As an OTC drug, this new formulation will make NOHO the market leader in the Hangover space, as none of the competition has clinically tested data to be able to make specific drug claims." Negotiations also involve NOHO working to re-launch a new iteration of the original migraine drug, called Lipigesic. Mersky continued, "I believe this is a great product that wasn't properly packaged and didn't have the appropriate marketing to support it. The test results are terrific and the migraine market is huge at around 50 million people. We're really good at identifying these hidden gems that require a dust-off and some re-branding. All the time, hard work and cost of the trials and FDA registration is already done." In addition to the current formulation, the parties are discussing a hemp infused product for NOHO to bring to market. "We have identified a path to infuse Hemp, as a legal food product, into the formula. A Hemp-infused Hangover drug will fly off the shelves through our targeted distribution in smoke shops and vape stores," said NOHO's CEO David Mersky. For additional information on NOHO please visit www.nohodrink.com and our full product site at www.imbutek.com and at www.instagram.com/nohodrink, as well as at www.twitter.com/nohodrink Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements. This press release contains statements that constitute 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. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the Noho, Inc. (the "Company"), its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's ability to control, and actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements as a result of various factors. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations include, but are not limited to, those factors that are disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in documents filed by the company from time to time with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities. Investor/Media Contact: NOHO, Inc. info@nohodrink.com Conversational interface product receives its second Gold Stevie Award this year, having been honored by the American Business Awards in May Astute Solutions' chatbot product, Astute Bot, was recently named the winner of a Gold StevieAward in the Best New Software Product category in the 14th Annual International Business Awards. The International Business Awards are the world's premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small are eligible to submit nominations. The 2017 IBAs received entries from more than 60 nations and territories. A record total of more than 3,900 nominations from organizations of all sizes and across many industries were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories. Astute Bot won the Gold Stevie Award, the top honor in its category. Other International Business Awards winners this year include Cisco Systems, Deutch Telekom, 3M, Domino's Turkey, Verint, and Telkom Indonesia. Winners will be honored at a gala event on October 21, 2017, in Barcelona, Spain. Astute's latest offering, Astute Bot, is a conversational interface driven by natural language processing and narrow AI. It allows consumers to have conversations with brands to complete a variety of interactions across many devices and channels, including web chat, messaging apps, and voice-based virtual assistants. According to one of the Stevie Awards judges for the category, "The relationship between a positive customer experience and brand loyalty is well established, and Astute Bot is perfecting this for their customers." "It is a great honor for Astute Bot to be recognized alongside so many other exceptional products from around the world," said Alex George, Chief Technology Officer at Astute Solutions. "Congratulations to all those nominated. Receiving another Gold Award for our Astute Bot product - especially in an international program validates the hard work our teams are doing to deliver exceptional customer experiences for the brands we serve." Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 200 executives worldwide who participated on 12 juries. "The IBA judges from across the world were highly impressed with the nominations they reviewed this year. With the level of achievement documented in the nominations from 60 nations, the Stevie Awards are proud to honor organizations that demonstrate a high level of achievement in a variety of industries," said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards. "We look forward to sharing many of these stories with people around the world over the coming months, through the Stevie Awards blog and social media channels, with the hope to inspire others to high achievement." Details about the International Business Awards and the lists of Stevie Award winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/IBA. About Astute Solutions Astute Solutions builds intelligent software solutions for the world's best brands, enhancing engagement with their customer communities by contextually blending human and artificial intelligence. Astute's technology enables companies to provide more efficient customer service, protect their brands, and increase customer loyalty. See how at AstuteSolutions.com. About the Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers and the Stevie Awards for Sales Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 10,000 nominations each year from organizations in more than 60 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.StevieAwards.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170815005789/en/ Contacts: Astute Solutions Natalie Skarzynski press@astutesolutions.com COLUMBUS Goodwill is known for its thrift store. But there is more to the organization than accepting and selling donated items. Goodwill Industries also provides services to help people with mental health disorders and employment opportunities. The nonprofit announced those community support services will be offered in Columbus starting Monday. Goodwill has been providing similar services across greater Nebraska dating back 24 years. Our experienced and highly qualified clinical supervisor will oversee the hiring and training of staff, said Tammy Slater, CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Nebraska. Mental health, substance abuse and emergency support services will be offered along with day rehabilitation and support services and employment assistance. Office space inside Columbus Family Resource Center, 3020 18th St., will be the hub for services delivered to the Region IV Behavioral Health System area, which includes Platte, Boone, Colfax and Nance counties. A new provider for local mental health services was sought by Region IV after Catholic Charities moved out of the resource center and closed its residential treatment facility in Columbus in late 2016. Rainbow Center, a mental health and day rehabilitation facility in Columbus, also announced it was closing earlier this year. Kim Buschkoetter, vice president of compliance and mission marketing for Goodwill, said services could be expanded in the future, but for now there will be one employment specialist, two community support workers and four recovery specialists in Columbus. Community support and day services are available to individuals with a mental illness or substance abuse disorder who meet eligibility requirements. The day rehabilitation program will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Employment services help job seekers who experience mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse and other addictive disorders by supporting their recovery effort during the employment process. An open house for the new office is being planned for this summer. We so very appreciate the kindness from the community to date and look forward to taking an active role in the Columbus community, Slater said. Funding for the services comes from sales at Goodwill retail stores and state and federal grants. The store in Columbus is located at 4330 23rd St. Regulatory News: The Annual General Meeting of Pixium Vision (Paris:PIX), a company developing innovative bionic vision systems to allow patients who have lost their sight to lead more independent lives, was held in Paris on June 27, 2017 and adopted all the proposed resolutions. The Annual General Meeting has, in particular, renewed for 3 years the terms of office of Mr Bernard Gilly, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr Khalid Ishaque, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr Robert J. W.Ten Hoedt, independent Director. The Annual General Meeting has also approved the appointments of Sofinnova Partners, who recently step down from its directorship, Mr Timothy J. Haines, whose term of office has expired, and Kreos Capital V (Expert Fund) LTD. as observers for 3 years. The Board of Directors of Pixium Vision is now composed of the following members: Mr Bernard Gilly, Chairman of the Board Mr Khalid Ishaque, Chief Executive Officer BPIfrance Participations, represented by Mrs Mailys Ferrere, Director BPIfrance Investissement, represented by Mrs Chahra Louafi, Director Mr. James Reinstein, Independent Director Robert J. W. Ten Hoedt, Independent Director Sofinnova Partners, represented by Mr Antoine Papiernik, Observer Mr Timothy J. Haines, Observer Kreos Capital V (Expert Fund) LTD, represented by Mr Aris Constantidines, Observer The Board of Directors, meeting at the end of the General Meeting, renewed Mr Bernard Gilly, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Mr Khalid Ishaque, Chief Executive Officer, in their duties. ABOUT PIXIUM VISION Pixium Vision's Mission is to create a world of bionic vision for those who have lost their sight, enabling them to regain partial visual perception and greater autonomy. Pixium Vision's bionic vision systems are associated with a surgical intervention as well as a rehabilitation period. The company is developing two bionic retinal implant systems. IRISII, the company first bionic system, obtained CE mark in July 2016. In parallel, Pixium Vision has recently completed the pre-clinical study phases for PRIMA, a sub-retinal miniaturized wireless photovoltaic implant platform, and is planning to initiate first-in-human trials. Pixium Vision collaborates closely with academic and research partners spanning across the prestigious Vision research institutions including the Institut de la Vision in Paris, the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford University, and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The company is EN ISO 13485 certified. For more information, please visit: www.pixium-vision.com; And follow us on: Twitter @PixiumVision; Facebook www.facebook.com/pixiumvision LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/pixium-vision Pixium Vision is listed on Euronext Paris (Compartment C). Pixium Vision shares are eligible for the French tax incentivized PEA-PME and FCPI investment vehicles. Pixium Vision is included in the Euronext CAC All Shares index Euronext ticker: PIX ISIN: FR0011950641 Reuters: PIX.PA Bloomberg: PIX:FP Disclaimer: This press release may expressly or implicitly contain forward-looking statements relating to Pixium Vision and its activity. Such statements are related to known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could lead actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements to differ materially from Vision Pixium results, financial conditions, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Pixium Vision provides this press release as of the aforementioned date and does not commit to update forward looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For a description of risks and uncertainties which could lead to discrepancies between actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements and those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to Chapter 4 "Risk Factors" of the company's Registration Document filed with the AMF under number R16-033 on April 28, 2016 which can be found on the websites of the AMF AMF (www.amf-france.org) and of Pixium Vision (www.pixium-vision.com IRIS is a trademark of Pixium-Vision SA View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170627006276/en/ Contacts: Pixium Vision Didier Laurens, CFO, +33 1 76 21 47 68 investors@pixium-vision.com @PixiumVision or MediaRelations Newcap Media Annie-Florence Loyer, +33 1 44 71 00 12 +33 6 88 20 35 59 afloyer@newcap.fr or Lea Jacquin, +33 1 44 71 94 94 ljacquin@newcap.fr Moon rover Audi lunar quattro will be featured in 20th Century Fox's movie "Alien: Covenant" Automobile manufacturer develops parts and the power unit for the rover Audi lunar quattro is expected to embark on a real mission to the Moon The Moon rover Audi lunar quattro celebrates its film debut in Ridley Scott's sci-fi blockbuster "Alien: Covenant" which premieres worldwide this May. Audi experts have developed the Moon rover in cooperation with the German start-up "Part-Time Scientists." The rover is expected to embark on a future mission to space. Director Ridley Scott has integrated the Audi lunar quattro into "Alien: Covenant," a new chapter in his groundbreaking "Alien" franchise. The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imaginations, they must attempt a harrowing escape. In its film debut, the Audi lunar quattro is an integral part of the Covenant mission and is deployed to help Faris (Amy Seimetz) navigate and assess the challenging, unknown terrain of a new planet. Incorporating the Audi lunar quattro into the film is part of the collaboration between Twentieth Century Fox and Audi. "The 'Alien' franchise is the best way for us to garner suitable attention for the Moon rover developed by Audi, and to showcase Audi's intelligent technologies in a visionary environment," explains Giovanni Perosino, Vice President International Marketing Communication at Audi. "Fox's partnership with Audi on 'Alien: Covenant' is an opportunity to bring to the forefront the innovative work Audi is doing in exploration," said Zachary Eller, Senior Vice President Marketing Partnerships at 20th Century Fox. "We're happy to continue our long relationship with Audi that has allowed our filmmakers to incorporate authentic, leading-edge technology into their futuristic worlds." As part of the collaboration, a short film created by Twentieth Century Fox, 3AM and Audi was captured on one of the movie's biggest sets. It shows the Audi lunar quattro patrolling the Terraforming Bay when it detects an unidentified lifeform and goes to investigate what lurks in the dark. Watch "Alien: Covenant x Audi lunar quattro" here: http://youtu.be/5fEmCnStgac Please read the full press release here: https://media.audiusa.com/en-us/releases/163 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006278/en/ Contacts: Audi Bianca Bucciarelli, 310-664-4963 Manager, Lifestyle Communications bianca.bucciarelli@audi.com www.media.audiusa.com BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss stock market ended Thursday's session with a small increase, adding to the gains of the previous three sessions. The market got off to a weak start Thursday, but climbed gradually throughout the trading day. The market climbed into positive territory in the afternoon and the small gain pushed it to a new high for the year. Investors were largely unimpressed by the big newsworthy events that they were looking forward to this week. Traders had a muted reaction to President Trump's US tax reform plan earlier this week and the European Central Bank again left its monetary policy unchanged when it concluded its meeting today. The Swiss Market Index increased by 0.16 percent Thursday and finished at 8,844.78. The Swiss Leader Index dropped 0.10 percent, but the Swiss Performance Index gained 0.24 percent. The solid performance of the pharmaceutical heavyweights provided support to the overall market Thursday. Roche and Novartis increased by 1.0 percent each. Roche reported quarter earnings that exceeded expectations. Meanwhile, Nestle finished with a loss of 0.1 percent. Clariant was the top performing stock of the session, with a gain of 4.3 percent. The specialty chemicals manufacturer reported better than expected sales and operating profit for the quarter. Galenica advanced 1.6 percent. SGS climbed 0.9 percent, while ABB and Kuehne + Nagel added 0.5 percent each. LafargeHolcim weakened by 0.7 percent after Bernstein confirmed its 'Market Perform' rating on the stock. Bank stocks were under pressure following the weak results reported by German rival Deutsche Bank. Credit Suisse dropped 2.9 percent and UBS lost 0.2 percent. Credit Suisse will hold its Annual General Meeting on Friday. In the broad market, shares of dental implants manufacturer Straumann jumped 5.4 percent after a strong first quarter. 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. ATLANTA, GA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/10/17 -- Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software announced today at Sage Summit US 2017 a new wave of cloud accounting and ERP solutions designed to support and champion businesses of all sizes. These products bring Sage one step closer to delivering on its vision of a world powered by "invisible admin" by 2020. "We are laser-focused on delivering a suite of professional products that bring our customers even closer to the reality of admin-free accounting and business management," said Nick Goode, EVP of Product Management at Sage. "Businesses face substantially different challenges depending on their size. At Sage we're committed to solving problems for companies at every stage of growth. The result is that Sage is the only cloud accounting and business management software suite that can grow right alongside your business, from start-up all the way to enterprise." Start Up with Sage Sage One with Pegg: The world's first accounting chatbot accessed by 20,000 users around the globe is now linked directly to Sage One. Pegg acts as a smart assistant, enabling users to track expenses and manage finances through popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Slack. Scale Up with Sage Sage 50c - Sage's trusted accounting solution now gives customers greater flexibility and power with the integration with Microsoft Office 365. This new version is designed to give Sage 50 customers complete control over their accounts. Following the launch in the UK, this product is now available in US, Canada, France, Spain and Germany. Sage Live: A customizable and cost-effective cloud accounting solution, built on the Salesforce Lightning user interface, enables customers to manage multiple locations and currencies all in the palm of their hand. Available now on both iOS and Android operating systems in US, Canada, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Sage Enterprise Sage X3 - A business management solution tailored to the needs of demanding, growing businesses. The latest iteration of this cost-effective ERP solution which changes how midsize businesses and enterprises compete and grow is now available in US, Canada, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Sage Accountants Sage Accountant Cloud - a brand new connected platform that brings together a portfolio of cloud applications to provide an overall view of their firm. This allows accountants to manage their practice and their clients more efficiently than before and provide additional enhanced services, from one central point. Available in the UK in the summer and in the US in the fall of 2017. Sage will be delivering ideas, inspiration and insight as well as showcasing its full suite of business management solutions at Sage Summit and Sage Summit Tour events running across 2017. Click here for more details About Sage Sage is the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of entrepreneurs and business builders. Today, business builders measure success in strong relationships, partnerships, and communities. It's why Sage helps drive today's business builders with the most intelligent and flexible cloud-enabled software, support and advice to manage everything from money to people. Daily, more than 13,000 Sage colleagues in 23 countries work with a thriving global community of over 3 million entrepreneurs, business owners, tradespeople, accountants, partners and developers to champion the success of business builders everywhere. And as a FTSE 100 business, we are passionate about doing business the right way, supporting our local communities through the Sage Foundation. Sage -- the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, powered by the cloud and supporting the ambition of the world's entrepreneurs and business builders. Because when business builders do well, we all do. Press contact: Victoria Borges PR Manager, North America Sage Office: 470-447-4086 Email Contact MIAMI, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Grand Havana, Inc. (OTC: JKDG) today hosted its Meeting of Shareholders, with new partners, shareholders, invited guests and board members in attendance. Robert Rico, C.E.O. of Grand Havana, honored the accomplishments of the company in delivering record results of 3.5 million cups of espresso sold and introduced the company's next level of social impact initiatives. Grand Havana's Growth Agenda Outlined and Launch of New Product. Steven Haas, Member of the Board of Directors, highlighted Grand Havana's approach to elevating the brand across retail, channel development and digital through new innovation, reaching new customers and creating new occasions for customer visits. "Focusing on connecting with customers and delivering experiences across our retail, channel development, and new digital businesses continues to elevate the Grand Havana brand," said Mr. Steven Haas. "This is a tribute to the 3,500,000 served cups of espresso to our customers in 70 locations around South Florida. This focus and hard work has enabled us to deliver record results and significant value for our shareholders." New Product Development. Grand Havana, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with EBEAUTY.com to develop a line of Organic Ground Coffee and an Artisan Loose Leaf Tea collection under the Grand Havana Pink Beauty label. The initial focus of the collaboration will be the launch of Pink Beauty Coffee and Tea online. The second phase is to make Pink Beauty Coffee & Teas available throughout all our distribution outlets and finally to brand Pink Beauty Coffee & Teas as an on menu product. Grand Havana is committed to giving back to the world. We are proud to help fuel the fight against cancer by joining forces with EBeauty.com, a non-profit organization that supports women undergoing treatment for cancer through the EBEAUTY community and their wig exchange program. With every purchase of a one pound bag of Grand Havana Pink Beauty Organic Coffee we will donate $2 of the proceeds back to EBeauty.com. Carolyn Keller, founder and executive director of EBeauty Community Inc., stated: "My husband and I founded EBeauty six years ago as a non-for-profit 501c (3) organization to enhance and strengthen the education, charitable and community support network for women undergoing treatment for cancer. One of our most successful projects is our wig exchange program where one woman donates her wig upon completion of her treatment to another woman who is just starting her treatment. Women Helping Women. In the past 6 years over 15,000 wigs have been donating and distributed. The major expense of this program is the cleaning and refurbishing of the wigs, approximately $10 per wig. We are honored to have the generous support of Grand Havana who will offset this cost by $2 per bag of Pink Beauty sold. With every five bags of Pink Beauty sold Grand Havana and EBeauty are able to support one woman on her journey. This promises to be an amazing partnership between Grand Havana and www.EBeauty.com." Lucy Clarkson, Brand Ambassador for Grand Havana Pink Beauty, further states, "I am proud to have my name and likeness associated with a brand like Grand Havana and EBEAUTY. The social goodness and the way our collaboration was structured are for the benefit of women first. I firmly stand behind this endorsement and I will do all I can in the fight against cancer. Empowering women is something we all need to be involved with. It can be your mother, your sister, your wife, friend or daughter." Tanya Bredemeier, founding partner and chairwoman of Grand Havana, Inc. states, "I always dreamed of being able to help and give back to the world. Meeting EBEAUTY and partnering up with Lucy Clarkson has enabled Grand Havana to connect with a foundation that we feel good about. Grand Havana Pink Beauty Coffee is masterfully blended from select organic coffee beans from around the world. Pink Beauty Coffee & Artisan Loose Leaf Teas will be available online for June 2017 but you may pre-order online at www.Grandhavanacoffee.com using the promotional code for Beauty without Boundaries (BWB10), and you will receive a 10 percent discount on your first order. I would like to thank everyone for buying Grand Havana Pink Beauty Coffee & Teas. You will not only enjoy the best cup of coffee and tea, you will be helping a woman through her journey in her fight against cancer." About Grand Havana Coffee Company Grand Havana Coffee is a Miami-based specialty coffee retailer and wholesaler. GH specializes in the small-batch roasting of Cuban style espresso coffee beans, masterfully blended by legendary roaster, Luis Bustelo, the original master blender of the Cuban espresso. The company focuses on taking the product mainstream following the massive popular demand for our specialized roasting blend, with over 3.5 million cups of espresso served. Grand Havana Coffee is the consumer's brand of choice for delving into the essence, allure and nostalgia of old Havana, with all its coffee products roasted and packaged in Miami, Florida, USA. Safe Harbor Statement: The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, and various other factors beyond the Company's control. Contact Info: Robert Rico CEO Robert@grandhavanacoffee.com 305-542-5932 MUMBAI, May 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Qure.ai (http://www.qure.ai), a healthcare AI subsidiary of Fractal Analytics, today announced that it is one of ten 2017 Netexplo award winners for developing an artificial intelligence technology that automates diagnosis and reporting of CT Scans, MRIs and X-Rays. Qure.ai was selected from nearly 2,000 technology initiatives. "Every year Netexplo awards 10of the most promising digital initiatives globally, selected for their innovative use of technology and potential social impact.Qure.ai is an innovation that deserves to be showcased - an Indian company, pioneering the use of AI in a way that is likely to create far-reaching impact for healthcare," said Marcus Goddard, Partner, Intelligence at Netexplo. Qure.ai team received the award at the 10th annual Netexplo forum on April 27, 2017 at UNESCO House in Paris, where entrepreneurs, researchers, philosophers, sociologists, journalists and executives explain and analyze how digital tech is shaping our world."We are honored to be an award winner at Netexplo. Qure.ai has the potential to significantly improve healthcare outcomes globally by increasing the reach of specialist diagnostic capabilities through AI," said Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai. About Qure.ai Qure.ai's mission is to make healthcare affordable and accessible using the power of artificial intelligence. Qure.ai's deep neural networks can understand and interpret medical images with unprecedented accuracy and enable machines to perform routine diagnostics, thus improving healthcare outcomes and costs. Qure.ai was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of Fractal Analytics and has a team comprising computer scientists, deep learning experts, medical practitioners and bioinformaticians. About Fractal Analytics Founded in 2000, Fractal Analytics is a strategic analytics partner to the most admired Fortune 500 companies globally and helps them power every human decision in the enterprise by bringing analytics and AI to the decision. Fractal Analytics has a 1000+ member team across 12 global locations including the United States, UK and India and has been recently featured as a 'Hot Artificial Intelligence (AI)' company by Forbes. Fractal has also been recognized as 'Cool Vendor in Analytics' and a 'Vendor to Watch' by Gartner. STOCKHOLM - May 24, 2017. At the Annual General Meeting of Karolinska Development AB held May 24, 2017, the following resolutions were passed: Profit and loss statement and the balance sheet: It was resolved to adopt the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet and the consolidated profit and loss statement and the consolidated balance sheet. Appropriation of the company's result: It was resolved to approve the allocation of the result, proposed by the board and the CEO, in total SEK -12 406 768 be allocated as follows: To be carried forward SEK -12 406 768. Discharge from liability of the directors and the CEO: It was resolved to grant the directors and the CEO discharge from liability for the financial year 2016. Resolution regarding the number of directors and auditors and deputy auditors to be appointed: It was resolved that the number of directors shall be seven without deputies and that the number of auditors shall be one. No deputy auditor shall be appointed. Resolution in respect of the fees for the board of directors and for the auditor: It was resolved that the chairman will be paid a fixed amount of SEK 400,000, that all other directors will be paid a fixed amount of SEK 200,000, that the auditor will be paid as per invoice. Election of chairman of the board of directors, directors and auditors and deputy auditors: It was resolved to re-elect the directors Tse Ping, Niclas Adler, Vlad Artamonov and Hans Wigzell; to elect Hans-Olov Olsson, Anders Harfstrand and Magnus Persson; to elect Niclas Adler as Chairman of the Board of Directors. It was resolved to elect Ernst & Young AB as auditor, currently with Bjorn Ohlsson as auditor in charge, for the time until the end of the 2018 Annual General Meeting. Principles for appointing members of the nomination committee: It was resolved, that the Nomination Committee shall have five members of which the five largest owners (voting power, as set forth in the share register kept by Euroclear Sweden AB as of 31 August 2017) shall appoint one member each. The chairman of the Board of Directors shall convene the first meeting. If a shareholder does not exercise its right to appoint a member, the shareholder next in order of voting power, who has not already appointed a member or has a right to appoint a member, shall have the right to appoint a member to the Nominating Committee. The members of the Nomination Committee shall be made public as soon as the members have been appointed, and in no case later than six months prior to Annual General Meeting 2018. The members shall among themselves appoint the chairman of the committee. If a member resigns or is prevented from pursuing his/her assignment, the shareholder that has appointed such member shall appoint a new member. In the event that the shareholding in the Company is materially changed, before the Nomination Committee has completed its assignment, the Nomination Committee may decide to change the composition of the Nomination Committee, as determined by the Nomination Committee (considering the principles applicable for the appointment of the Nomination Committee). Any change in the composition of the Nomination Committee shall be announced as soon as possible. No fees shall be paid to the members of the Nomination Committee. Out of pocket expenses shall be reimbursed by the Company. The mandate of the committee shall be until the members of the succeeding committee have been announced. The Nomination Committee shall carry out the tasks that, according to the Swedish Corporate Governance Code, are the responsibility of the Nomination Committee. The board of directors' proposal regarding principles for remuneration to executive management: it was resolved to approve the proposal by the board of directors regarding principles for remuneration to executive management. The Board of Directors' proposal regarding authorization for the Board of Directors to resolve on transfer of own shares: It was resolved to authorize the board of directors to decide, on one or several occasions and until the next Annual General Meeting, to transfer earlier acquired shares of series B amounting to 244,285 to cover charges in the form of social security fees in PSP 2014 and PSP 2015. Transfer of the Company's shares may be carried out with or without deviation from the shareholders' preferential rights. Transfers shall be made on Nasdaq Stockholm. Transfers can only be made at a price within the price interval registered at each time for the share. The board of directors' proposal regarding authorisation for the board of directors to resolve on new issues of shares: It was resolved to authorize the board of directors for the period up to the next Annual General Meeting to resolve, whether on one or several occasions, with or without deviation from the shareholders' priority rights, and for payment in cash, by set-off or in kind, to issue new shares of series B up to a number that, at the time of the first resolution under this authorization, corresponds to ten (10) per cent of the total share capital; provided however that any such issue must not result in the Company's share capital exceeding the Company's maximum allowed share capital as set out in the articles of association. The Board of Directors' proposal regarding approval of issue of warrants to employees in subsidiaries: It was resolved to approve, in accordance with Chapter 16 of the Swedish Companies Act, a new issue of warrants by Umecrine Cognition AB directed to Umectine Cognition personnel. The Board of Directors' proposal for an incentive program for the company's employees by way of a (A) directed issue of warrants and (B) approval of transfer of warrants: It was resolved to approve the proposal by the board of directors regarding a directed issue of warrants and transfer of warrants The Board of Directors' proposal regarding resolution on (A) amendment of the company's articles of association and (B) reduction of the share capital: It was resolved to approve the proposal by the board of directors regarding amendment of the company's articles of association and reduction of the share capital. Complete information regarding each resolution of the Annual General Meeting can be found on www.karolinskadevelopment.com. For further information, please contact: Jim Van heusden, CEO, Karolinska Development AB Phone: +46 72 858 32 09 (#), e-mail: jim.van.heusden@karolinskadevelopment.com Ulf Richenberg, General Counsel, Karolinska Development AB Phone: +46 70 29 860 25, e-mail: ulf.richenberg@karolinskadevelopment.com David Dible/Mark Swallow/Pip Batty, Citigate Dewe Rogerson Phone: +44 20 7638 9571 (#); e-mail: KDev@citigatedr.co.uk TO THE EDITORS About Karolinska Development AB Karolinska Development AB (Nasdaq Stockholm: KDEV) is a Nordic life sciences investment company. The company focuses on identifying breakthrough medical innovations in the Nordic region that are developed by entrepreneurs and leadership teams. The Company invests in the creation and growth of companies that advance these assets into commercial products that are designed to make a difference to patients' lives while providing an attractive return on investment to shareholders. Karolinska Development has access to world-class medical innovations at the Karolinska Institutet and other leading universities and research institutes in the Nordic region. The Company aims to build companies around scientists who are leaders in their fields, supported by experienced management teams and advisers, and co-funded by specialist international investors, to provide the greatest chance of success. Karolinska Development has established a portfolio of nine companies targeting opportunities in innovative treatment for life-threatening or serious debilitating diseases. The Company is led by an entrepreneurial team of investment professionals with a proven track record as company builders and with access to a strong global network.. For more information, please visit www.karolinskadevelopment.com (http://www.karolinskadevelopment.com) The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of Jim Van heusden, at 20.00 CET on May 24, 2017. PR post AGM eng (http://hugin.info/143071/R/2107311/800275.pdf) 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: Karolinska Development AB (publ) via Globenewswire OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- The announcement today that the federal government will reallocate $140 million over two years to ensure federal employees affected by the Phoenix payroll system are properly paid is a welcome, if long overdue, commitment to fix Phoenix once and for all, says the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC). "We advocated for a special $75 million reserve fund in the current budget, so this shows the government is finally taking the severity of our members' concerns seriously," said PIPSC President Debi Daviau. "We're also gratified to see that the government has agreed to reimburse charges for tax advisory services incurred by members due to Phoenix problems. This, after all, is only fair," Daviau added. "It remains to be seen, however, how effective the government will be in controlling payroll errors in the future," she added. "We've argued for a long time that overreliance on outsourced services - including introduction of the Phoenix payroll software and continued reliance on IBM - programs government functions to fail. We hope the ministerial working group also announced today takes these concerns seriously." PIPSC represents some 55,000 public-sector professionals across the country, most of them employed by the federal government. Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter (@pipsc_ipfpc) Contacts: Johanne Fillion (613) 228-6310 ext 2303 (office) (613) 883-4900 (cell.) jfillion@pipsc.ca CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Marina Biotech, Inc. (OTCQB: MRNA), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics for disease intersections of arthritis, hypertension and cancer, announced today that Joseph Ramelli, Chief Executive Officer, will present at Joseph Gunnar's Pioneers 2017 Conference to be held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City on Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 2:30 pm ET. Investors attending the conference who wish to meet with management for a one-on-one meeting should notify their appropriate contact or e-mail conference@jgunnar.com. For more information and registration, please visit the conference website. About Marina Biotech Marina Biotech is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics for disease intersections of arthritis, hypertension, and cancer. Our pipeline includes combination therapies of oligonucleotide-based therapeutics and small molecules. The Marina Biotech pipeline currently includes a clinical program in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (a precancerous syndrome). By its merger with IthenaPharma, Marina Biotech recently acquired IT-102/IT-103 - next generation celecoxib - which will be developed together with CEQ508 as a therapeutic enhancer for therapies against FAP and CRC. IT-102/IT-103 are also being developed for the treatment of combined arthritis/ hypertension and treatment of pain requiring high dose of celecoxib. Additional information about Marina Biotech is available at http://www.marinabio.com. Investor Contact Garth Russell / Allison Soss KCSA Strategic Communications Phone: (212) 896-1250 / (212) 896-1267 Email: Email Contact / Email Contact Entries showcased artificial intelligence, the internet-of-things and blockchain Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet-of-things and blockchain were prominently featured among the winners of the second annual Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance awards announced in London. Aimed at showcasing the best examples of insurance technology innovations in multiple categories, the awards this year attracted nearly 220 entries from nearly 150 institutions in 38 countries. Piercarlo Gera, senior managing director, Financial Services, Accenture Distribution Marketing, said, "This year's entries truly set a new benchmark for innovation in insurance. It was clear from the diverse range of submissions that insurers around the world are acting with urgency to innovate for their customers and capitalize on emerging new technologies like artificial intelligence, the internet-of-things and blockchain." Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A. ("Generali") Generali Italy received the 2017 Global Innovator of the Year award. The company was recognized by a panel of independent judges for its strong focus on innovation in all submissions, including its work on crowd sourcing, incubation initiatives, collaboration with startups and partnerships with global organizations. Moshe Tamir, global head of Digital Transformation, Generali, said, "We're delighted that our commitment to innovation around the world has been recognized. The insurance landscape is changing fast and digital transformation is at the center of this change. At Generali, we see new technology as instrumental in creating an even stronger relationship with our clients and distributors, and further shaping our business for the future." Second place in the Global Innovator of the Year category went to Tokio Marine Nichido Fire (Japan), while AXA Group (Italy) completed the top three. Four other category winners were announced at the awards show in London: Connected Insurance Ecosystems Tokio Marine Nichido Fire (Japan) won in this category for its 'Sharing Medical Information on Blockchain' offering. By sharing patients' medical information between relevant parties using a blockchain platform, the submission noted that the number of unnecessary medical examinations fell, administrative costs declined and the quality of service improved. Europ Assistance Group in Italy and Belgium-based Qover were runners-up. Tokio Marine Nichido Fire (Japan) won in this category for its 'Sharing Medical Information on Blockchain' offering. By sharing patients' medical information between relevant parties using a blockchain platform, the submission noted that the number of unnecessary medical examinations fell, administrative costs declined and the quality of service improved. Europ Assistance Group in Italy and Belgium-based Qover were runners-up. Customer Experience Engagement 'AXA Sure' from AXA Group (France) prevailed in this category with an app that allows information on household contents to be digitized and stored. Users benefit from policy transparency and faster processing in the event of a claim. Second place went to 'MyAngel' from Italy-based Groupama Assicurazioni, and third place went to 'Consultation through Telemedicine' from Bradesco Seguros in Brazil. 'AXA Sure' from AXA Group (France) prevailed in this category with an app that allows information on household contents to be digitized and stored. Users benefit from policy transparency and faster processing in the event of a claim. Second place went to 'MyAngel' from Italy-based Groupama Assicurazioni, and third place went to 'Consultation through Telemedicine' from Bradesco Seguros in Brazil. Intelligent Automation The winning submission in the Intelligent Automation category was 'Allianz AI Sales Smart Mentoring' from Allianz (France) a smart mentoring solution that provides real-time analysis and diagnosis for salesforces to harness the full potential of their commercial relationship skills. 'Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Claim Document Recognition System' from Tokio Marine Nichido Fire (Japan) came in second place, with U.S.-based Safeco, a Liberty Mutual company, placing third. The winning submission in the Intelligent Automation category was 'Allianz AI Sales Smart Mentoring' from Allianz (France) a smart mentoring solution that provides real-time analysis and diagnosis for salesforces to harness the full potential of their commercial relationship skills. 'Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Claim Document Recognition System' from Tokio Marine Nichido Fire (Japan) came in second place, with U.S.-based Safeco, a Liberty Mutual company, placing third. Best Disruptive Product or Service This category went to Medis (Portugal) for its 'Enhancing Omni Channel by Adding Interactive TV Commerce' initiative, which was chosen at the evening awards ceremony, with Slice (USA) and InsureApp (Netherlands) completing the top three. Vincent Bastid, CEO of Efma, said, "Not only are these awards the perfect way to showcase the industry's spirit of innovation, they provide an opportunity for insurers to come together and learn about new best practices. On behalf of the awards committee, I'd like to congratulate all our entrants and the ultimate winners on their breakthrough innovations over the last year." To learn more about the award-winning innovations, please visit: www.efma.com/innovationininsurance. About Efma A global non-profit organization, established in 1971 by banks and insurance companies, Efma facilitates networking between decision-makers. It provides quality insights to help banks and insurance companies make the right decisions to foster innovation and drive their transformation. Over 3,300 brands in 130 countries are Efma members. Headquarters in Paris. Offices in London, Brussels, Barcelona, Stockholm, Bratislava, Dubai, Mumbai and Singapore. Learn more at www.efma.com About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions underpinned by the world's largest delivery network Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 401,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006503/en/ Contacts: Accenture James Murphy, 1-917-452-0588 james.p.murphy@accenture.com or Efma Alys Singh, 33 1 47 42 67 71 alys.pr@efma.com Former VP of Network Visibility Products from Ixia to head up product management at Endace AUCKLAND, New Zealand, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Endace, a world leader in high-speed network recording and network history playback, announced today that Cary Wright will join Endace as the company's new VP of Product Management. Wright comes to Endace from Ixia, where he held the role of VP Product Development for Ixia's Network Visibility Products. At Ixia, he was responsible for breakthrough network security and visibility products deployed at many Fortune 1000 enterprises and global service providers. Wright joined Ixia following Ixia's acquisition of Agilent Technologies in 2009, and was previously Agilent's CTO and Director of Engineering. Endace CEO, Stuart Wilson, says Wright couldn't be better suited to the role at Endace. "Cary has more than 25 years' experience in the telecommunications and networking industries, and has been pivotal in creating market-defining products first at Agilent and then at Ixia. Cary is extremely familiar with our customers, and will be invaluable in continuing the evolution of our Network Recording and Playback solutions and driving the growth of our Fusion Partner program. I am thrilled to have him on the team at Endace." "Security breaches are a daily occurrence at large enterprises and service providers, and Endace solutions enable the rapid incident response and resolution needed to respond to these threats and to protect business reputation," says Wright. "Endace has a talented team, unique products, and a strong history of innovation. I'm looking forward to bringing my experience to bear in helping Endace further accelerate the growth it has been experiencing." Wright starts at Endace in early May, based in Endace's Melbourne office. About Endace Endace's 100% accurate, Network History Recording and Playback provides definitive, packet-level evidence for investigating cybersecurity threats, quantifying data breaches and troubleshooting network or application performance problems. Playback integrates with commercial, open-source or custom analytics applications to streamline and automate issue investigation. Network History can be played back through hosted or external analytics solutions for automated, back-in-time investigations. Global customers include banks, hospitals, telcos, broadcasters, retailers, web giants, governments and military. www.endace.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/371135/endace_logo_logo_Logo.jpg AMITYVILLE, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Iconic Brands, Inc. (OTC PINK: ICNB) today further clarified the definitive settlement terms representing over 80% of the company's debt, as well announced the company expects the balance to be settled shortly. Under the prior terms, the company's existing debt could have converted into an unknown and potentially exorbitant amount of common shares and interest would have continued to accrue at a relatively rapid rate. This coupled with the potential to disrupt the daily flow of the market for the Company's shares has now been eliminated. Under the agreement, the Company negotiated a final conversion into a fixed number of shares totaling four hundred and eighty two million compared to what could have potentially been billions of shares, as well received concessions of close to one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars tendered by the note holders, and all interest has ceased. This will eliminate over one million dollars in debt from the company balance sheet. Importantly, the agreement further stipulates that all shares be placed with a professional institutional broker, where using their exclusive discretion, a maximum aggregate of ten percent of the daily volume can never be exceeded. This agreement brings finality to the ongoing discussions with these Holders and additional certainty to the capital structure such that the Company can now consolidate all assets under Iconic Brands. The Company can now more confidently negotiate any future transactions, be it mergers, acquisitions, or development of future brands and be in an easier position to become audited and fully reporting. Mr. Richard DeCicco stated, "I am pleased to have reached a definitive and final agreement and compromise with the majority of our debt holders; it is their confidence in the longer-term value of Iconic Brands that allowed us to finalize this transaction and move forward. Corporately we have amazing developments forthcoming in the days, weeks and months ahead that I'm confident will add great value to our company." Please visit our website and join the mailing list at and see our product availability map: Christie's appearance schedule which we will continue to update, and great new recipes; also follow us on twitter at @BellissimabyCB. Please visit our website www.bivivodka.com to learn about the finest Sicilian Craft Vodka on the market today. Please watch the great videos with Chazz Palminteri to learn about our brand and see the map for our list of current retailers. About Iconic Brands, Inc. Iconic Brands Inc. ("Iconic") is a beverage company with the highest expertise of developing, from inception to completion, alcoholic beverages for itself and third parties. Iconic Brands markets and places products into national distribution through long standing industry relationships. Iconic is also a leader in "Celebrity Branding" of beverages, procuring superior and unique products from around the world and branding its products with internationally recognized celebrities. Currently offering Bivi Vodka, www.BiviVodka.com and Bellissima Prosecco, www.BellissimaProsecco.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "could", "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential" and the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business, actual results will almost always vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections, assumptions or other future performance suggested in this report. Except as required by applicable law, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements so as to conform these statements to actual results. Investors should refer to the risks disclosed in the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. Iconic Brands, Inc. Info@IconicBrandsUSA.com LEXINGTON, KY -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Rhino Resource Partners LP (OTCQB: RHNO) ("Rhino" or the "Partnership") today announced that it plans to release its 2017 first quarter financial results on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, before the market opens. The Partnership will not host a conference call this quarter and any inquiries can be made to Rhino's investor relations department. About Rhino Resource Partners LP Rhino Resource Partners LP is a diversified energy limited partnership that is focused on coal and energy related assets and activities, including energy infrastructure investments. Rhino produces metallurgical and steam coal in a variety of basins throughout the United States. Additional information regarding Rhino is available at its web site - RhinoLP.com. Investor Contact: Scott Morris +1 859.519.3622 smorris@rhinolp.com MobileIron leverages its own expertise, as well as a carefully crafted ecosystem of technology partners, to stay at the forefront of innovation SANTA CLARA, California, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Based on its recent analysis of the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes MobileIron with the 2017 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Line Strategy Leadership. MobileIron has harnessed its innovation, expertise, and a rich partner ecosystem to create an EMM product line and security architecture that expertly aids customers' mobility and Internet of Things (IoT) journey. Photo -https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/492416/Frost_And_Sullivan_MobileIron_Award.jpg The EMM market itself has evolved from standalone point solutions to encompass integrated and more strategic EMM suites. The sector is now transitioning to unified endpoint management by adding management of desktop computers, wearables, and select IoT devices. MobileIron is at the forefront of this effort, viewing its mission as "providing security wherever data flows." "Being a standalone EMM vendor, MobileIron is not compelled to support a parent company's infrastructure; it has the flexibility and independence to resolve a customer's needs in the best possible manner," said Frost & Sullivan Mobile and Wireless Industry Director Jeanine Sterling. "It also offers customers numerous choices, including type of delivery system (cloud or premise), types of operating systems, and a range of trusted channel partners (carriers, value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators)." The MobileIron portfolio reflects the high priority given to technology innovation. MobileIron is the first vendor to earn the Common Criteria certification, which is especially valued by high-security customers such as government departments or financial services organizations. The company also has 46 modern EMM patents granted in the areas of analytics, architecture, and data/app security. Partnerships are key, with MobileIron leveraging both its own expertise and a carefully crafted ecosystem of technology partners. "MobileIron has achieved a number of firsts in areas as diverse as enterprise app store, jailbreak detection, selective wipe, and mobile certificate management," noted Sterling. "The company's wide range of products and outstanding quality, price, and flexibility benefits continue to impress enterprise customers across a range of verticals." MobileIron offers customers a variety of EMM price and functionality levels. Its solution is sold in three tiered EMM bundles, with a choice of subscription pricing models available. This ability to satisfy customer needs in the areas of flexibility, choice, security certificates, and collaboration has resulted in an impressive and consistent renewal rate. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a comprehensive product line that caters to the breadth of the market it serves. The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, the overall impact it has in terms of customer value, as well as increased market share. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About MobileIron MobileIron provides the secure foundation for companies around the world to transform into Mobile First organizations. For more information, please visit www.mobileiron.com. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact: Chiara Carella P: +44 (0) 207.343.8314 F: 210.348.1003 E: chiara.carella@frost.com Regulatory News: International Flavors Fragrances Inc. (NYSE:IFF) (Euronext Paris:IFF), a leading innovator of sensory experiences that move the world, announced that Andrew Winston, author of The Big Pivot: Radically Practical Strategies for a Hotter, Scarcer, and More Open World and founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, was appointed to the Company's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Led by Dr. Gregory Yep, Executive Vice President, Chief Global Scientific Sustainability Officer, the SAB brings together world class, multi-disciplinary, external views to enhance IFF's R&D programs and further its innovation strategy. "As pioneers of the senses, our focus on forging new possibilities for a regenerative, healthy and abundant world and our commitment to innovation as an accelerator of business growth are critical to our success," said Andreas Fibig, Chairman and CEO. "We're delighted to welcome Andrew to IFF's SAB. His experience in corporate sustainability and strategies for business resiliency in a complex world will complement the dynamic strength of our SAB and provide a tremendous value to our organization." Mr. Winston is the author of three business books, including Green to Gold and Green Recovery. He is a globally recognized expert on how business can navigate and profit by solving the world's biggest challenges, a TED speaker, and regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and the Huffington Post. He has extensive experience with serving on sustainability advisory boards for multinationals such as Unilever, and he serves as a Sustainability Advisor to PwC. Meet IFF International Flavors Fragrances Inc. (NYSE:IFF) (Euronext Paris:IFF) is a leading innovator of sensorial experiences that move the world. At the heart of our company, we are fueled by a sense of discovery, constantly asking "what if?". That passion for exploration drives us to co-create unique products that consumers taste, smell, or feel in fine fragrances and beauty, detergents and household goods, as well as beloved foods and beverages. Our 7,300 team members globally take advantage of leading consumer insights, research and development, creative expertise, and customer intimacy to develop differentiated offerings for consumer products. Learn more at www.iff.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006571/en/ Contacts: International Flavors Fragrances Inc. Michael DeVeau, 212-708-7164 VP, Global Corporate Communications Investor Relations Michael.DeVeau@iff.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Capstone Mining Corp. ("Capstone") (TSX: CS) today announced the voting results from its 2017 Annual General and Special Meeting held April 26, 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia. A total of 278,882,105 common shares were voted at the meeting, representing 71.27% of the votes attached to all outstanding common shares. Shareholders voted in favour of all items of business before the meeting, as follows: % of Votes in Favour % of Votes Withheld Director Nominees George L. Brack 97.89% 2.11% Robert J. Gallagher 98.81% 1.19% Jill V. Gardiner 98.85% 1.15% Soon Jin Kwon 99.79% 0.21% Kalidas Madhavpeddi 99.80% 0.20% Dale C. Peniuk 98.32% 1.68% Darren M. Pylot 99.84% 0.16% Richard N. Zimmer 99.76% 0.24% In Favour Against Incentive Stock Option and Bonus Share Plan 92.30% 7.70% Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation 85.87% 14.13% The resolution to set the number of directors at eight was approved by 99.87% of the votes cast for the resolution. Deloitte LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants were reappointed Capstone's auditors for the ensuing year by 85.41% of the votes cast. Detailed voting results for the 2017 Annual General Meeting are available on SEDAR athttp://www.sedar.com. About Capstone Mining Corp. Capstone Mining Corp. is a Canadian base metals mining company, focused on copper. We are committed to the responsible development of our assets and the environments in which we operate. Our three producing mines are the Pinto Valley copper mine located in Arizona, US, the Cozamin polymetallic mine in Zacatecas State, Mexico and the Minto copper mine in Yukon, Canada. In addition, Capstone has two development projects; the large scale 70% owned copper-iron Santo Domingo project in Region III, Chile, in partnership with Korea Resources Corporation, and the 100% owned Kutcho copper-zinc project in British Columbia, Canada, as well as exploration properties in Chile and US. Capstone's strategy is to focus on the optimization of operations and assets in politically stable, mining-friendly regions, centred in the Americas. Our headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and we are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Further information is available athttp://www.capstonemining.com. Cindy Burnett, VP, Investor Relations and Communications, +1-604-637-8157, cburnett@capstonemining.com BEDFORD, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) and The MITRE Corporation are collaborating to host MIN98, an IoT-focused startup showcase and networking event, on Wednesday, May 10th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The event will be held at MITRE's Massachusetts headquarters, 202 Burlington Road, Bedford, MA. "Mass Innovation Nights 98 will be our third event with MITRE, and we appreciate their commitment to supporting the local innovation community," said Bobbie Carlton, the founder of Innovation Nights, and Innovation Women. "MITRE continues to demonstrate this commitment to innovation in the Boston region." "We continue to see value in supporting local entrepreneurship events," said Pete Sherlock, MITRE senior vice president and chief operating officer. "Engaging with the innovation community is essential to our public interest mission. We're addressing complex challenges of national and global significance and access to local startups is a key part of that. Our role for our government sponsors is to be a bridge for innovation." Mass Innovation Nights #98 features experts, networking, tabletop presentations with new local products and presentations from the winners of online voting. The event is open to the public and free to attend. Two student-founded startups from Bentley University, Sales Sparks and Sooshay, will also present. Guests are encouraged to use hashtag MIN98 and @MassInno to share their photos and commentary. Companies showcasing new products at MIN98 include: AndrosRobotics blink'r Blustream Cimetrics CrowdComfort Kuvee MedKit Senter SiteSage Tive WatchRX There will also be experts from: MITRE Iotopia PTC Swiss Re Management Corp. BIBSMA ProperOrange Mass Innovation Nights gatherings typically generate hundreds of Tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and videos, and are key visibility drivers for the launching companies. To attend, please RSVP by May 2, 2017. About Mass Innovation Nights Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) offers an opportunity for people interested in innovative new products to connect live and online. Each month, different companies launch new products with Innovation Nights and the social media community helps spread the word. The popular product launch party and networking event draws attendees from the entire region. Over the past 8 years, it has launched almost 1000 new products which have collectively received more than $1.3 billion in funding. Follow MIN on Twitter or visit the website at mass.innovationnights.com/. About MITRE MITRE is a not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government. Learn more. Media Contact: Kristen Avini Kristen@innovationnights.com 510-221-8122 Mass Innovation Nights TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- ZoomerMedia Limited (TSX VENTURE: ZUM) (the "Company"), the leader in serving the interests of the 45+ "Zoomer" market in Canada, today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended February 28, 2017. Consolidated Results For the three months ended February 28, 2017 the Company had revenues of $11.8 million, operating expenses of $12.6 million and negative EBITDA of $0.8 million. Net loss for the three months ended February 28, 2017 was $1.0 million. For the comparative three months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $11.2 million, operating expenses of $11.4 million and negative EBITDA of $0.2 million. Net loss for the three months ended February 29, 2016 was $0.8 million. For the six months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $26.1 million, operating expenses of $24.8 million and EBITDA of $1.3 million. Net income for the six months ended February 28, 2017 was $0.2 million. For the comparative six months ended February 29, 2016 the Company had revenues of $26.5 million, operating expenses of $23.4 million and EBITDA of $3.1 million. Net income for the six months ended February 29, 2016 was $0.9 million. EBITDA is a non-IFRS earnings measure which does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to EBITDA presented by other companies. EBITDA represents earnings before interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization. This measure is important to management since it is used by potential investors to evaluate the Company's operating performance and ability to incur and service debt, and as a valuation metric. Investors are cautioned that this non-IFRS financial measure should not be construed as an alternative to other measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with IFRS. Additional Information Detailed financial information and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three and six months ended February 28, 2017 can be found on SEDAR's website at www.sedar.com. The financial information included in this release is qualified in its entirety and should be read together with the interim consolidated financial statements for the three and six months ended February 28, 2017, including the notes thereto. About ZoomerMedia Limited ZoomerMedia is a multimedia company that serves the 45plus "Zoomer" demographic through television, radio, magazine, internet and trade shows. ZoomerMedia's television properties include; Vision TV, Canada's only multi-faith specialty television service; ONE: Get Fit, offering programs on exercise, meditation, yoga, natural health and living a planet-friendly lifestyle; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley, and HOPETV, a lifestyle television service out of Winnipeg devoted to broadcasting Christian programming and is available in approximately 6 million Canadian homes. ZoomerMedia's radio properties include CFMZ-FM Toronto - The New Classical 96.3FM, CFMX-FM Cobourg - The New Classical 103.1FM, CFMO-FM - Collingwood - The New Classical 102.9FM, Canada's only commercial classical music radio stations serving the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), eastern Ontario and Collingwood, CFZM-AM 740 Toronto and CFZM-FM 96.7FM Toronto - Zoomer Radio, Toronto's "Timeless Hits" Station. ZoomerMedia also publishes ZOOMER Magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market. ZoomerMedia is Canada's leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus age group through many properties, the key one being www.EverythingZoomer.com. ZoomerMedia also has trade show and conference divisions that produce the ZoomerShows, annual consumer shows directed to the Zoomer demographic and ideaCity, an annual Canadian conference also known as 'Canada's Premiere Meeting of the Minds'. Cautionary note on forward looking statements The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. Certain statements made in this report are 'forward-looking statements' which may include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future results, performance or achievements, and may contain the words 'believe', 'anticipate', 'expect', 'estimate', 'project', 'will be', 'will continue', 'will likely result' or similar words or phrases. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in filings by ZoomerMedia Limited with provincial securities commissions. New risk factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors, nor can it assess the impact of all such risk factors on the Company's business 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. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, the following: -- the risks inherent in magazine publishing; -- the risks inherent in the operation of Internet media properties; -- the risks inherent in the operation of television broadcast properties; -- the risks inherent in the operation of radio broadcast properties; -- the risks inherent in the operations of affinity partners with respect to royalty revenue; -- the risks inherent in the operation of consumer shows generally, -- the competition within the media industry for the baby boomer generation's business; -- the risks associated with governmental regulation of the publishing, internet, radio broadcasting and television broadcasting businesses; -- the results of legal claims made by or against the Company; -- the dependence of the business on the continuing operation of its computer systems; and -- the dependence of the business on key personnel. Given these risks, and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. ZoomerMedia Limited does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Contacts: ZoomerMedia Limited David Vickers Chief Financial Officer +1 416-607-7704 d.vickers@zoomermedia.ca ZoomerMedia Limited Leanne Wright Vice President Communications +1 416-886-6873 leanne@zoomer.ca TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Zoompass Holdings Inc. ("Zoompass" or the "Company") (OTCQB: ZPAS) is pleased to announce the following update on the Company's business and information objectives going forward. Zoompass is pleased to announce, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, has agreed to an exclusive partnership with Canadian based UVend Group of Companies (UVG) to place UVG Digital Self-Serve Kiosk solutions with mobility cell phones and accessories into key markets and high volume retail locations. The partnership follows Zoompass's strategy of being a unique integrated fintech company by bridging mobility with a global mobile money platform. The company is well positioned to use UVG's tech savvy self-serve solutions within a global reach by leveraging its existing relationships and network within the national retailer, airport and mall channels. The offering will leverage an "easy to purchase solution" where consumers can use their credit card / debit card through a UVG self-serve digital kiosk to purchase mobility devices and accessories for $250 or less. This will include prepaid SIM cards, gift cards and much more. These solutions are currently being used to increase cost savings while also being effective in reducing shrinkage and labour costs at any location. "UVG is very excited that Zoompass has selected us as their Self-Serve Digital Kiosk partner. The concept will allow our technology to retail Zoompass and partner devices / accessories in high volume locations and on a global basis," says Paul Neelin, Founder of Burlington, Ontario based UVG. Zoompass President Steve Roberts echoed this sentiment, "UVend Group of Companies is Canadian based and is definitely the 'best of breed' when it comes to next generation Digital, self-serve kiosks for the resale of devices and accessories. It follows the trend for retailers' needs of reducing staff costs as well as reducing overall theft of mobility devices and products as a whole. We look forward to working with UVG on an international basis in both traditional and non-traditional locations." Private placements Zoompass is also pleased to announce that during April it has completed several private placements which have raised approximately C$538,000 in gross proceeds through the issuance of 276,720 non-registered shares in the common stock of the Company. About Zoompass Zoompass Inc. is a leading financial services technology company with a unique place in the Fintech space as both a financial platform provider with divisions in physical prepaid cards, financing enablement, and mobility products. Zoompass provides businesses and government tailored solutions to help digitize their financial transactions. In the card sector, Zoompass offers complete program management services for a wide range of open loop Visa and MasterCard prepaid and virtual card accounts. Zoompass enables businesses to provide their customers with a number of open loop card choices including, gift card, incentive cards, check replacement cards and online virtual card accounts. The company also provides advanced mobile technology, enabling businesses to provide their customers with a white label mobile wallet solution, like Zoompass, with the ability to manage their card balances, bill pay, transfer funds and perform card to card money transfers in real time using their mobile devices. Zoompass's mobile device division helps carriers and mobile device manufacturers integrate the financial platform technology into their offerings. For more information about Zoompass, visit www.zoompass.com. About UVend Group of Companies: UVend Group of Companies (UVG) is a digital and hardware innovator and media distributor that provides leading edge marketing solutions through digital self-serve kiosks and digital Grab N Go merchandisers. UVG has developed a unique mobile "bricks and clicks" platform that addresses and solves the delivery of engaged impressions that is currently eroding through traditional advertising. The model has enhanced profitability, customer engagement, and customer data collection with national brands and professional sport leagues throughout Canada and Latin America. www.uvendgroup.com Safe Harbor: From time to time, the Company may issue news releases that contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. This material may contain statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. For those statements, the Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statement provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any amendments thereto. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, goals, assumptions, or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." "Forward-looking statements" are based upon expectations, estimates and projections at the time the statements are made that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated. Contacts: Zoompass Inc. Rob Lee, Steve Roberts, Brian Morales 1-888-966-6246 www.zoompass.com NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Brookfield Investment Management Inc. has announced webcasts for the Brookfield Investment Funds. Fund Date Time Registration and Webcast Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brookfield Real May 4, 2017 4.30pm ET http://services.choruscall.ca/Di Assets Securities amondPassRegistration/register?c Fund onfirmationNumber=10002875&linkS ecurityString=1cb167476 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brookfield Global May 17, 2017 4.30pm ET http://services.choruscall.ca/Di Listed Real Estate amondPassRegistration/register?c Fund / Brookfield onfirmationNumber=10002885&linkS U.S. Listed Real ecurityString=1cfdba0b2 Estate Fund ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brookfield Global May 18, 2017 4.30pm ET http://services.choruscall.ca/Di Listed amondPassRegistration/register?c Infrastructure Fund onfirmationNumber=10002891&linkS ecurityString=1cf431123 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note - Links will not be live until day of webcast. Each Funds' investment team will provide an update on the Fund and general market conditions. There will be an opportunity to ask questions about the Fund during each call. Questions may also be submitted ahead of each call by sending an e-mail to funds@brookfield.com. Replays will be available via the above links shortly following each webcast until June 19, 2017. Access to audio only: 800-319-4610 A transcript of each call will also be available by calling 855-777-8001 or emailing funds@brookfield.com. 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 $14 billion of assets under management as of March 31, 2017, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. The Firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $250 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. Brookfield Investment Funds 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 is routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfield.com. A fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus contains this and other important information about the investment company, and it may be obtained by calling 855.244.4859 or visiting brookfield.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Mutual fund investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. Brookfield investment Funds are distributed by Quasar Distributors, LLC. Contacts: COMPANY CONTACT Brookfield Place 250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10281-1023 (855) 777-8001 funds@brookfield.com COLUMBUS Trey Stempek is still in elementary school, but he is already looking forward to high school so he can get his hands on the machines inside the new STEM Academy. I like STEM. You get to make cool things, the 11-year-old said Tuesday night while touring the academy at Columbus High School with his mother Shelley Stempek. About 50 children and adults got an up-close look at the equipment and classrooms in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics area. The STEM Academy was selected as one of more than 100 sites for the Nebraska Science Festival, an event presented by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In its fifth year, the weeklong festival was created to spread science literacy statewide and make the topic accessible to all ages, said Kacie Baum, UNMC's events and science outreach coordinator. This is the first time Columbus has been part of the festival. Baum said she wanted CHS on the list of stops because of its role in providing hands-on learning opportunities for students. She also wants others in Nebraska to know about the new facility. Heidi Elliott, the STEM career coordinator at CHS, appreciates the acknowledgment. Its very powerful that we are getting recognition from the state, that they see us as a leader in the area of science, technology, engineering and math. We are really happy to be a part of that, she said. Tours highlighted the mechatronics/robotic, design technology, welding, construction technology and automotive areas. Teachers were also on hand for demonstrations and questions. Don Daugaard came to the event with his 14-year-old daughter Amanda, who is considering an engineering career. He said the academy will give local students a leg up when they graduate from high school. I think it is a great opportunity for the kids. If someone is going into something like this, they will have a great head start, he said. The academy is backed by local businesses that donated money for equipment. Local commitments and grants raised about $1.7 million for the project. Hopes are that students who go through the STEM program will become the skilled workforce those businesses need. The academy's role as a pipeline for local employers isnt that far away, Elliott said. I think the impact will be gradual, but also be pretty quick, she said. Community partnerships will help make that happen, according to Elliott, who cited a basic welding class currently offered free of charge to eligible people ages 18 and older through a collaboration with Central Community College-Columbus. I have helped several students already fill out applications who want to be part of the program because of the financial burden of going to a full program, she said. TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) President Chris Buckley is calling the provincial budget a somewhat positive news story for Ontario families, but raised concerns that the needs of Ontario workers are still not being addressed. "It is not possible to build a strong economy without first addressing the growth in insecure work," said Buckley. "If the government is committed to making life fairer for working people, it must introduce a $15 minimum wage and legislative changes immediately." Buckley called the budget a missed opportunity to raise the floor for Ontario workers by introducing a higher minimum wage. A higher minimum wage is a fundamental issue of equity - it is women, racialized workers, immigrants and young people who are most likely to earn low wages and be stuck in precarious work, he said. The OFL was pleased to see the reference to the Changing Workplaces Review, but is concerned about the lengthy delays in the process which has meant workers continue to suffer with woefully outdated laws. Buckley pressed on the need for the government to introduce and pass legislation this year. Buckley said that the announcements around pharmacare, childcare and healthcare were heartening, in that the deficit can no longer be used as an excuse not to invest in stronger public services and bold new ideas to help Ontarians. "Pharmacare for children and young people will help many families who struggle without workplace benefit plans," said Buckley. "This is an important first step in introducing a plan that could cover all Ontarians - which ultimately should be the end goal." Buckley said that the universal pharmacare plan proposed by the Ontario NDP earlier this week would go much farther though in helping Ontarians, in that the plan introduced today would still exclude a sizable portion of the population - adults between 25 to 64 years old. Buckley also welcomed the new investment of $200 million for child care spaces. "Ontario parents desperately need more quality, affordable child care options," said Buckley. "Even with these changes, Ontario parents will still pay the highest child care fees in the country." "It is encouraging to see the government listening to parents and advocates with the introduction of subsidized child care spaces. But subsidized spaces don't replace the need for a universal, affordable, public child care system." The dearth of child care options continues to be a barrier to women in the workforce, as recognized by the Gender Wage Gap Review in 2016. Investment in child care must also translate to good jobs for early childhood educators, Buckley said. More than 20 per cent of registered early childhood educators and more than two-thirds of other program staff make less than $15 an hour. Similarly, the new investment in health care of an additional $7 billion over the next three years is positive news for Ontarians but must translate to a longer-term commitment to health care services and an investment in more front line workers and better conditions for patients and staff. Buckley raised concern that the government has wrongheadedly remained steadfast in its commitment to privatize public assets, including Hydro One. "This could have been an opportunity to correct a past mistake," said Buckley, calling the decision to sell-off Hydro One "wildly unpopular." The OFL represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario. For information, visit http://www.OFL.ca and follow @OFLabour on Facebook and Twitter Contacts: Shannon Devine OFL Assistant to the Officers Cell - 416-302-1699 Sdevine@ofl.ca TechnipFMC (NYSE and Euronext: FTI) (iSIN:GB00BDSFG982) has been awarded by Zakum Development Company (ZADCO) an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract (EPC3 project) for a sulfate reduction plant on West Island located offshore Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The objective of the EPC3 project is the installation of a sulfate reduction plant module (SRP) along with new installations and tie-in to existing facilities in West Island. The SRP module incorporates cutting edge water treatment technologies with advanced filtration and nano-filtration systems. These systems are used for water injection into Upper Zakum western areas reservoir tight structure, which requires high quality water with less sulfate content and particle size. Nello Uccelletti, President of TechnipFMC's Onshore/Offshore business, commented: "We are extremely proud of this award which demonstrates our long standing commitment to ADNOC as well as our sustainable development strategy in line with the UAE vision to maximize national content. This EPC award is one of the strategic "early engagement" achievement, following the successful completion by TechnipFMC of the Concept and FEED studies for the full UZFD* project, including the SRP. *Upper Zakum Field Development About TechnipFMC TechnipFMC is a global leader in subsea, onshore/offshore, and surface projects. With our proprietary technologies and production systems, integrated expertise, and comprehensive solutions, we are transforming our clients' project economics. We are uniquely positioned to deliver greater efficiency across project lifecycles from concept to project delivery and beyond. Through innovative technologies and improved efficiencies, our offering unlocks new possibilities for our clients in developing their oil and gas resources. Each of our more than 40,000 employees is driven by a steady commitment to clients and a culture of purposeful innovation, challenging industry conventions, and rethinking how the best results are achieved. To learn more about us and how we are enhancing the performance of the world's energy industry, go to TechnipFMC.com and follow us on Twitter @TechnipFMC. Important Information for Investors and Securityholders Forward-Looking Statement This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The words "scheduled," "estimated," "aimed" and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which are generally not historical in nature. Such forward-looking statements involve significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from our historical experience and our present expectations or projections. Known material factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements include the Company's ability to successfully deliver, and Zadco's acceptance of, the EPC products ordered. For additional information regarding known material factors that could cause actual results to differ from projected results, please see our risk factors set forth in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which include our Registration Statement on Form S-4, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. We caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any of our forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170427006849/en/ Contacts: Investor relations Matt Seinsheimer Vice President Investor Relations Tel: +1 281 260 3665 Email: Matt Seinsheimer or James Davis Senior Manager Investor Relations Tel: +1 281 260 3665 Email: James Davis or Media relations Christophe Belorgeot Vice President Corporate Communications Tel: +33 1 47 78 39 92 Email: Christophe Belorgeot or Delphine Nayral Corporate Public Relations Tel: +33 1 47 78 34 83 Email: Delphine Nayral or Lisa Adams Senior Manager Digital Communications Tel: +1 281 405 4659 Email: Lisa Adams CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Total Energy Services Inc. ("Total Energy") (TSX: TOT) announced today that it has taken-up an additional 3,178,051 common shares ("Savanna Common Shares") of Savanna Energy Services Corp. ("Savanna") under Total Energy's offer to purchase all of the outstanding Savanna Common Shares (the "Offer"), representing 2.7% of the total number of issued and outstanding Savanna Common Shares. In accordance with the terms of the Offer, Total Energy has provided Computershare Investor Services Inc. (the "Depositary"), the depositary for the Offer, with 413,147 common shares of Total Energy ("Total Common Shares"), representing the share consideration payable under the Offer by Total Energy for the additional Savanna Common Shares taken-up by it, and the cash consideration payable by Total Energy for those Savanna Common Shares. Total Energy also announced that the Offer has now expired. Total Energy acquired an aggregate of 99,772,765 Savanna Common Shares under the Offer, representing approximately 84.4% of the total number of outstanding Savanna Common Shares. In addition, Total Energy acquired an aggregate of 1,800,000 Savanna Common Shares in market transactions during the currency of the Offer. As such, Total Energy owns approximately 86% of the total number of issued and outstanding Savanna Common Shares. Total Energy currently intends to effect a subsequent acquisition transaction to acquire the Savanna Common Shares not tendered to the Offer. Following the completion of such subsequent acquisition transaction, Total Energy intends to cause Savanna to apply to the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") to delist the Savanna Common Shares from the TSX and, if permitted by applicable law, cause Savanna to cease to be a reporting issuer (or equivalent) under applicable Canadian securities laws. Non-Canadian Savanna shareholders who reside in certain U.S. states(1) or in Puerto Rico and who are not "exempt institutional investors" under the laws of their jurisdiction of residence ("Non-Exempt Shareholders") are not entitled to receive Total Common Shares as partial consideration for the Savanna Common Shares tendered by them to the Offer. Arrangements have been made for the Depositary, as agent for such Non-Exempt Shareholders, to sell, or cause to be sold (through a broker in Canada and on the Toronto Stock Exchange) the Total Common Shares that would otherwise be issuable to such Non-Exempt Shareholders. After completion of such sales, the Depositary will distribute the aggregate net proceeds of sale, after expenses, commissions and applicable withholding taxes, pro rata, among the Non-Exempt Shareholders. Any sales of Total Common Shares on behalf of Non-Exempt Shareholders will be completed as soon as practicable after the date on which Total Energy pays for the Savanna Common Shares of the Non-Exempt Shareholders under the Offer and will be done in a manner intended to maximize consideration to be received from the sale of Total Common Shares and to minimize any adverse impact of the sale on the market for the Total Common Shares. (1) Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia or Wyoming. Copies of Total Energy's early warning reports filed for the take-up of Savanna Common Shares may be obtained from Cam Danyluk, Vice President, Legal, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Total Energy at Total Energy's head office located at Suite 2550, 300 - 5th Avenue S.W., Calgary, Alberta T2P 3C4. About Total Energy Total Energy is a growth oriented energy services corporation involved in contract drilling services (Chinook Drilling), rentals and transportation services (Total Oilfield Rentals) and the fabrication, sale, rental and servicing of natural gas compression (Bidell Gas Compression) and process equipment (Spectrum Process Systems). The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved of the information contained herein. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of the applicable securities in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. Forward-Looking Information Cautionary Statement This news release contains certain forward-looking information (referred to herein as "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "scheduled", "intend", "objective", "continuous", "ongoing", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", or similar words suggesting future events, circumstances or outcomes. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information concerning information concerning the arrangements for the sale of Total Common Shares on behalf of Non-Exempt Shareholders under the Offer and Total Energy's intentions with respect to Savanna and any Savanna Common Shares not tendered to the Offer. Forward-looking statements are based upon the opinions and expectations of management of Total Energy as at the effective date of such statements. Although Total Energy believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or outcomes to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, such things as fluctuations in market prices for the publicly traded securities of Total Energy and Savanna and new laws and regulations (domestic and foreign). Having regard to the various risk factors, readers should not place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and such forward-looking statements should not be interpreted or regarded as guarantees of future outcomes. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and Total Energy does not undertake any obligation to update or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws in force in Canada. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Contacts: Total Energy Services Inc. (403) 216-3939 (403) 234-8731 www.totalenergy.ca VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Entree Gold Inc. (TSX: ETG)(NYSE MKT: EGI)(FRANKFURT: EKA) ("Entree" or the "Company") has today filed its interim operational and financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. All numbers are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Q1 2017 HIGHLIGHTS Entree/Oyu Tolgoi Joint Venture Property, Mongolia As reported by Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. ("Turquoise Hill"), major underground development programs currently underway at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia ("OT") include underground lateral development, sinking of Shafts 2 and 5, support infrastructure, and the convey-to-surface system. Entree has a unique carried joint venture interest in a substantial prospective land package in Mongolia (the "Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property"), which includes two of the world class OT copper-gold deposits, Hugo North Extension and Heruga. The resources at Hugo North Extension include a Probable reserve, which is included in the fully financed $4.4 billion underground block cave currently under construction. Rio Tinto is the project operator for the entire OT project, including the underground block cave mine. Turquoise Hill expects production from the first underground draw bell in mid-2020 and first sustainable production beginning in early 2021. Corporate In January 2017, the Company closed a non-brokered private placement of 18,529,484 units of the Company at a price of C$0.41 per unit for gross proceeds of approximately C$7.6 million. Each unit consists of one common share and one-half of one transferable common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at a price of C$0.65 per share for a period of 5 years following the date of issuance. On February 28, 2017, the Company announced that its Board of Directors (the "Board") had unanimously approved a strategic reorganization of Entree's business. Entree's U.S. based assets, the Ann Mason and Lordsburg projects, will be transferred to a newly incorporated company, Mason Resources Corp. ("Mason Resources"). The strategic reorganization is expected to result in two separate and focused, well-capitalized, debt-free entities, each with a high quality advanced project providing new and existing shareholders with optionality as to investment strategy and risk profile. As at March 31, 2017, the Company's cash balance was $17.6 million. Of that, it is expected that $8.75 million will be transferred to Mason Resources as part of the strategic reorganization. For the first quarter of 2017, the Company's net loss was $1.3 million (March 31, 2016 - $1.6 million) which was a reduction of 23% from the comparative period of 2016. STRATEGIC REORGANIZATION The Company announced on February 28, 2017 a strategic reorganization of its business (the "Arrangement"). Pursuant to the Arrangement, Entree's Ann Mason and Lordsburg projects (the "U.S. Projects") will be transferred to Mason Resources. Shareholders of Entree will receive common shares in Mason Resources ("Mason Common Shares") in proportion to their shareholdings in Entree. There will be no change to shareholders' existing interests in Entree. It is intended that, as part of the Arrangement, Entree shareholders will receive Mason Common Shares by way of a share exchange, pursuant to which each existing share of Entree is exchanged for one "new" share of Entree and 0.45 of a Mason Common Share (the "Consideration"). Optionholders and warrantholders of Entree will receive replacement options and warrants of Entree and options and warrants of Mason Resources which are proportionate to, and reflective of the terms of, their existing options and warrants of Entree. The reorganization will be effected by way of a plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) (the "Plan of Arrangement") and must be approved by the Supreme Court of British Columbia (the "Court") and by the affirmative vote of 66 2/3% of Entree shareholders, as well as Entree shareholders, optionholders and warrantholders (collectively, the "Securityholders") voting together as a single class. An Annual General and Special Meeting of Securityholders to approve, among other things, the Arrangement, will be held on May 1, 2017 (the "Meeting"). Once the Arrangement becomes effective, the result is expected to be two separate and focused, well-capitalized, debt-free entities, each with a high quality advanced project providing new and existing shareholders with optionality as to investment strategy and risk profile. As at March 31, 2017, Entree has a treasury of approximately $17.6 million, of which $8.75 million is expected to be transferred to Mason Resources as part of the Arrangement. In the event that all outstanding warrants are exercised following the Arrangement, the two companies would receive up to an additional approximately C$6 million in the aggregate. Entree is undertaking the Arrangement in order to focus on its unique carried interest in the Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property. The Arrangement is also expected to give scope to potential value accretive and synergistic acquisitions by each entity, and to maximize shareholder value by allowing the market to value Entree's Mongolian assets independently of the U.S. Projects. It is expected that transferring the U.S. Projects from Entree to Mason Resources will help accelerate development of the U.S. Projects. On April 25, 2017, the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") conditionally approved the listing of the Mason Common Shares. Mason Resources does not have any of its securities listed or quoted, and has not applied to list or quote any of its securities, on a U.S. marketplace. Mason Resources will be managed by Entree's current team of officers. Its board will initially consist of four directors who also currently sit on the Entree Board, as well as one new director who is independent of Entree. On March 24, 2017, the Company filed and mailed its Information Circular (the "Circular") and other materials for the Meeting, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.entreegold.com. The Circular contains, among other things, details concerning the Arrangement, reasons the Board has recommended the Arrangement, requirements for completion of the Arrangement, the procedure for receiving the Consideration under the Arrangement, how registered shareholders may exercise their dissent rights, procedures for voting at the Meeting and other matters. Securityholders are urged to carefully review the Circular and accompanying materials as they contain important information regarding the Arrangement and its consequences to Securityholders. Subject to receipt of all required Securityholder, Court and regulatory approvals, the Arrangement is expected to become effective on or about May 9, 2017. OUTLOOK AND STRATEGY Both Entree and Mason Resources will be managed by Entree's current team of officers and employees for the 2017 year. The companies will utilize a share service model to allocate administrative costs proportionately to each company based on a ratio to be determined prior to closing of the Arrangement, and annually thereafter. It is expected that there will be some additional costs associated with the operation of Mason Resources as a separate publicly traded company, such as listing fees, marketing costs and some additional board related costs. Concurrently, the Company will continue to remain prudent with its expenditures. The combination of Entree and Mason Resources expects to spend between $3.0 million and $3.4 million for the 2017 year (2016 year - $4.0 million) on exploration and general administration costs which are discussed below. For the 2017 year, Entree and Mason Resources are expected to share the general administration costs equally once the Arrangement is complete. The Company expects to release an updated technical report for the Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property and Shivee West in mid-2017, based on the data used by Turquoise Hill for its 2016 Oyu Tolgoi Technical Report ("2016 OTTR") filed on October 21, 2016. The Company estimates the cost to prepare this report to be approximately $0.5 million. The Company anticipates the one time cost to complete the Arrangement to be between $0.3 million and $0.4 million. Corporate The Company has focused, and will continue to focus its efforts on conserving cash reserves. Corporate objectives for 2017 include maximizing the market value of the Company's assets through restructuring, increasing investor awareness and cash conservation. Total corporate costs, which include marketing and compliance costs, remain estimated to be between $2.0 million and $2.2 million for the 2017 year including an additional $0.2 million of annual public filing costs at Mason Resources for the 2017 year. Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property With the release of 2016 OTTR, the Company intends to develop a complementary PEA for Entree's interest in the second lift of the Hugo North (including Hugo North Extension) block cave and the Heruga deposit and file these as part of an updated NI 43-101 technical report. The Company anticipates commencing this process in the second quarter of 2017 and estimates the cost to be approximately $0.5 million to complete and publish the report. Development of the OT project continues to advance with a number of positive milestones achieved in 2016. As part of the Company's corporate restructuring initiative, management commenced a market awareness program in late 2016 and will continue through 2017 to improve the investment community's understanding of Entree's interest in the Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property, including its potential value as compared with the interests of other OT project stakeholders. The Company maintains an office and administration in Mongolia. Excluding the costs associated with the preparation of an updated NI 43-101 technical report referenced above, the Company remains on target to spend approximately $0.2 million for the 2017 year on legal costs and general administration in Mongolia. Ann Mason Project The Company continues to target expenditures, including claim filing fees, site maintenance and local administration costs for its Ann Mason project in Nevada (the "Ann Mason Project"), of between $0.7 million and $0.9 million for the 2017 year. The Company does not intend to implement any significant new work programs at present and will focus on identifying strategic development partners prior to implementing any potential programs to advance the Ann Mason Project into its next phase of development. Upon completion of the Arrangement, these costs will be assumed in Mason Resources. Other Properties Costs associated with all of the Company's other non-material assets have been minimized while management evaluates the best alternatives for each asset in the future. Expenditures for 2017 are for license fees and local administration costs. The Company expects to spend approximately $0.1 million for the 2017 year. FIRST QUARTER 2017 FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tabled amounts below in USD 000s YTD 2017 Q4 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exploration $ (259) $ (540) General and administration (926) (911) Depreciation (8) (7) Foreign exchange gain 18 54 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loss from operations (1,175) (1,404) Interest expense and equity investee loss (80) (116) Income tax recovery - 553 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net loss (1,255) (967) Foreign currency translation adjustment 96 (460) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comprehensive loss $ (1,159) $ (1,427) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash flows from operating activities before changes in working capital $ (1,265) $ 998 Decrease (increase) in receivables, prepaids and other assets 41 (33) Increase in accounts payables and accruals 62 219 Cash receipts from issuance of capital stock 5,179 - Cash receipts from issuance of capital stock - stock option 39 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash balance at end of period $ 17,550 $ 13,391 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Company's Interim Financial Statements and accompanying Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 are available on the Company website at www.entreegold.com, SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. QUALIFIED PERSON Robert Cinits, P.Geo., Entree's Vice President, Corporate Development, a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, has approved the technical information in this release. For further information on the Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property, see the Company's technical report, titled "Lookout Hill Feasibility Study Update", with an effective date of March 29, 2016, available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. For further information on the Ann Mason Project, see the Company's technical report, titled "2017 Updated Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Ann Mason Project, Nevada, U.S.A.", with an effective date of March 3, 2017, available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. ABOUT ENTREE GOLD INC. Entree Gold Inc. is a Canadian mineral exploration company balancing opportunity and risk with key assets in Mongolia and Nevada. As a joint venture partner with a unique carried interest on a significant portion of the Oyu Tolgoi mining project in Mongolia, Entree has a singular opportunity to participate in one of the world's largest copper-gold projects managed by one of the premier mining companies - Rio Tinto. Oyu Tolgoi, with its series of deposits containing copper, gold and molybdenum, has been under exploration and development since the late 1990s. Additionally, Entree has also been advancing its Ann Mason Project in one of the world's most favourable mining jurisdictions, Nevada. The Ann Mason Project hosts the Ann Mason copper-molybdenum deposit as well as the Blue Hill copper deposit within the rejuvenated Yerington copper camp. Sandstorm Gold, Rio Tinto and Turquoise Hill Resources are major shareholders, holding approximately 14%, 10% and 8% of issued and outstanding shares, respectively. This News Release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 with respect to corporate strategies and plans; requirements for additional capital; uses of funds; the value and potential value of assets and the ability of Entree to maximize returns to shareholders; potential financial and other benefits of spinning-out the U.S. Projects; timing and approval for a spin-out of the U.S. Projects; the future prices of copper, gold, molybdenum and silver; the estimation of mineral reserves and resources; the realization of mineral reserve and resource estimates; anticipated future production, capital and operating costs, cash flows and mine life; capital, financing and project development risk; completion of an updated technical on Entree's interest in the Entree/Oyu Tolgoi JV Property; a potential strategic development partner for Ann Mason; the potential impact of future exploration results on Ann Mason mine design and economics; the potential development of Ann Mason; potential types of mining operations; construction and continued development of the Oyu Tolgoi underground mine; potential size of a mineralized zone; potential expansion of mineralization; potential discovery of new mineralized zones; potential metallurgical recoveries and grades; plans for future exploration and/or development programs and budgets; permitting time lines; anticipated business activities; proposed acquisitions and dispositions of assets; and future financial performance. While the Company has based these forward-looking statements on its expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee of Entree's future performance and are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies, local and global economic conditions, legal proceedings and negotiations and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, including the status of the Company's relationship and interaction with the Government of Mongolia, Oyu Tolgoi LLC, Rio Tinto and Turquoise Hill. With respect to the construction and continued development of the Oyu Tolgoi underground mine, important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and information include, amongst others, the timing and cost of the construction and expansion of mining and processing facilities; the timing and availability of a long term power source for the Oyu Tolgoi underground mine; the ability of Oyu Tolgoi LLC to draw down on the supplemental debt under the Oyu Tolgoi project finance facility and the availability of additional financing on terms reasonably acceptable to Oyu Tolgoi LLC, Turquoise Hill and Rio Tinto to further develop Oyu Tolgoi; delays, and the costs which would result from delays, in the development of the underground mine; projected copper, gold and silver prices and demand; and production estimates and the anticipated yearly production of copper, gold and silver at the Oyu Tolgoi underground mine. Other uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by forward-looking statements and information include, amongst others, Entree not obtaining all necessary shareholder, Securityholder, Court and regulatory approvals of a spin-out of its U.S. Projects into Mason Resources; the market valuing Entree and Mason Resources in a manner not anticipated by Entree; unanticipated costs, expenses or liabilities; all conditions precedent to the Plan of Arrangement not being satisfied or waived and the Plan of Arrangement not becoming effective; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; the size, grade and continuity of deposits not being interpreted correctly from exploration results; the results of preliminary test work not being indicative of the results of future test work; fluctuations in commodity prices and demand; changing foreign exchange rates; actions by Rio Tinto, Turquoise Hill and/or Oyu Tolgoi LLC and by government authorities including the Government of Mongolia; the availability of funding on reasonable terms; the impact of changes in interpretation to or changes in enforcement of, laws, regulations and government practices, including laws, regulations and government practices with respect to mining, foreign investment, royalties and taxation; the terms and timing of obtaining necessary environmental and other government approvals, consents and permits; the availability and cost of necessary items such as power, water, skilled labour, transportation and appropriate smelting and refining arrangements; and misjudgements in the course of preparing forward-looking statements. In addition, there are also known and unknown risk factors which may cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Entree to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements and information. Such factors include, among others, risks related to international operations, including legal and political risk in Mongolia; risks associated with changes in the attitudes of governments to foreign investment; risks associated with the conduct of joint ventures; discrepancies between actual and anticipated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; global financial conditions; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; inability to upgrade Inferred mineral resources to Indicated or Measured mineral resources; inability to convert mineral resources to mineral reserves; conclusions of economic evaluations; future prices of copper, gold, silver and molybdenum; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining government approvals, permits or licences or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities; environmental risks; title disputes; limitations on insurance coverage; as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Risk" in Entree's most recently filed Management's Discussion & Analysis and in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Entree's Annual Information Form for the financial year ended December 31, 2016, dated March 10, 2017 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available at www.sedar.com. Although the Company 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. The Company is under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. Contacts: Entree Gold Inc. Monica Hamm, Senior Manager, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications 604-687-4777 or Toll Free: 866-368-7330 604-687-4770 (FAX) mhamm@entreegold.com www.entreegold.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- "This year's budget continues to provide the people of Ontario with steady investments in public infrastructure to keep our economy moving," said Patrick Dillon, Business Manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario. "The government's commitments to invest $156 billion over the next decade, supporting an average of 125,000 jobs per year to build and replenish our highways, transit systems, schools and hospitals sends a very strong signal to the construction industry and to those willing to enter it, that lots of work lies ahead. With investments like these, Ontario is committed to creating jobs for the future, and it's those jobs which give the construction industry confidence that we can train the future workforce." "In the face of a changing economy, threatened by precariousness in the workplace, Ontarians are looking for opportunities to upgrade their skills and realize their career goals. These investments will help them do that," Dillon pointed out. The 2017 budget document also pledges to "support workers and businesses by advocating for continued free trade with the United States." Ontario exports to the U.S. account for the equivalent of one-fifth of the province's GDP, or $166 billion. "Standing up to protectionist sentiment south of the border, as recently shown by New York State's unsuccessful attempt to enact a 'Buy American' clause goes hand-in-hand with standing up for Ontario workers," said Dillon. On the social policy front, the budget commits funding towards 100,000 new child care spots, free tuition for students from working-class families, and free drug coverage for people aged 24 and under. "By helping working families cope with cost pressures, Ontario is affirming its progressive heritage and its commitment to a shared prosperity," concluded Dillon. The Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario represents 150,000 trades workers throughout the province. Contacts: Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario Patrick Dillon (416) 347-8245 patrick@ontariobuildingtrades.com SALABERRY-DE-VALLEYFIELD, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Noranda Income Fund (TSX: NIF.UN) (the "Fund") today reported its financial results for the three month period ended March 31, 2017. All amounts are in Canadian currency unless otherwise stated. Q1 2017 Financial and Operating Highlights -- Glencore Canada and the Fund reached an agreement whereby Glencore will supply all of the Fund's zinc concentrate requirements for its processing facility located in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec (the "Processing Facility") and will purchase all the zinc metal production for the 12-month period ending April 30, 2018. -- On February 12, 2017, unionized workers initiated a strike at the Processing Facility. In response, management secured operations and resumed partial production with eligible staff. The production of zinc metal is currently at 50% to 60% of normal operating levels. -- Adjusted Net Revenues(1) were $43.9 million, down 45% from $80.4 million in Q1 2016. -- Earnings before income taxes were $5.4 million, up 23% from $4.4 million in Q1 2016. -- Zinc metal production decreased 26% to 50,048 tonnes from 67,627 tonnes in Q1 2016. -- Zinc metal sales totaled 49,516 tonnes, down 32% from 72,639 tonnes in Q1 2016. -- By product revenue from the sale of copper in cake and sulphuric acid was $2.3 million, down from $6.3 million for Q1 2016. -- Production costs before changes in inventory declined 16% to $39.7 million. -- Non-cash working capital grew by $64.3 million as a result of increased inventory and a reduction in accounts payable. (1) Adjusted Net Revenues means revenues less raw material purchase costs ("Net Revenues") excluding unrealized concentrate settlement adjustments and after foreign currency gain/loss and derivative financial instruments gain/loss. Adjusted Net Revenues is reconciled to Net Revenues below. CEO Commentary "In a few days, we will begin to purchase concentrate on market terms. This transition requires that we operate as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible in light of tight zinc concentrate supply conditions and low treatment charges," said Ms. Eva Carissimi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Electrolytic Zinc Limited. "Within this context, we are disappointed that we have been unable to settle the dispute with the unionized employees." Ms. Carissimi added, "Our Q1 financial and operating results were impacted by the effects of the strike initiated by unionized workers at our Processing Facility. We are very happy to report that staff have sustained an operating rate of 60% of normal levels in March and that we have been able to re-establish the supply of metal to customers." Q1 2017 Financial and Operating Results The Fund reported earnings before income taxes of $5.4 million in Q1 2017, up from $4.4 million for Q1 2016. The year-over-year increase was largely due to higher processing fees, reduced production costs, the impact of inventory margin during the quarter and lower depreciation costs. These gains were partially offset, however, by lower sales volumes, lower by-product revenue and by the impact of a stronger average Canadian dollar compared to the US dollar. In Q1 2017, realized zinc prices were US$1.33 per pound and zinc premiums were US$0.07 per pound. These compare to US$0.83 and US$0.07, respectively, for Q1 2016. Through its Processing Facility, the Fund produces refined zinc metal and various by-products from zinc concentrates purchased from mining operations and sells refined zinc products to customers in the open market. The Fund earns a processing fee from transforming zinc concentrate into zinc metal and earns additional revenue from premiums, by-product sales and metal gains. Production costs before changes in inventory for Q1 2017 were $39.7 million, down 16%, or $7.6 million, from the $47.3 million recorded in the same period of 2016. The decrease was due to a number of factors, including lower labour, energy and supplies costs, as well as the lower zinc metal production volumes in the quarter. Adjusted Net Revenues(2) for Q1 2017 were $43.9 million, down 45% from $80.4 million for the comparative period of 2016. The decline was due to a number of factors, including lower sales volumes and the impact of inventory margin during the quarter. Zinc metal production in Q1 2017 declined 26% to 50,048 tonnes from 67,627 tonnes in Q1 2016. The reduced metal production was due to the strike initiated by unionized workers at the Fund's Processing Facility. Partial production resumed once the Processing Facility was secured, and production has since been stabilized at 50% to 60% of normal operating levels. Zinc metal sales in Q1 2017 were 49,516 tonnes, down 32% from 72,639 tonnes in Q1 2016. The lower sales totals were consistent with reduced production totals for the quarter. Cash used in operating activities totalled $62.7 million and included a $64.3 million increase in non-working capital due to an increase in inventories and a decrease in accounts payables. In Q1 2016, cash provided by operating activities totalled $69.4 million. Cash used in operating activities in Q1 2017 was funded by the Fund's asset-backed credit facility. The Fund declared cash distributions of $0.9 million in Q1 2017 or $0.025 per unit. In Q1 2016, the Fund declared distributions of $4.7 million or $0.125 per unit. In light of prevailing market conditions and the need to be prudent with cash reserves, the Fund's Board of Trustees suspended monthly distributions to unitholders following the distribution paid on February 27, 2017. There is no assurance that monthly distributions will resume in the future. As at March 31, 2017, the Fund's debt was $129.5 million, up from $64.0 million as at December 31, 2016. The Fund's cash as at March 31, 2017 decreased to $0.5 million from $2.6 million as at December 31, 2016. The Fund's debt increased primarily as a result of the increase in working capital during the period. Zinc metal inventory will be sold to Glencore Canada under the one year contract that comes into effect on May 1, 2017. Outlook for the Fund The main challenge facing the Fund is the ability for the Processing Facility to continue to operate profitably once the fixed processing fee available during the initial term of the Supply and Processing Agreement ends on May 2, 2017 and the Fund is required to purchase concentrates on market terms. The Fund's results after May 2, 2017 will be impacted by market treatment charges, as well as greater sensitivity to zinc price and the Canadian exchange rate, resulting in more variable operating results. In light of the strike by unionized workers at the Fund's Processing Facility and the uncertainty about its duration, the Fund has deferred providing guidance for zinc metal production and sales targets for 2017 until an appropriate time. First Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call: When: April 28, 2017 at 8:30 a.m. E.T Dial in number: 647-788-4919 or Toll-free North American number: 1-877-291-4570 To access the webcast and view the slide presentation from the Noranda Income Fund website: http://www.norandaincomefund.com/investor/conference.html or click on this link: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/brftjcsu. Conference Call Replay: Dial in number: 416-621-4642 or Toll-free North American number: 1-800-585-8367 The conference ID is 9088200 and you will be prompted to provide your name and company. The recording will be available until midnight on May 12, 2017. A full version of the Fund's Q1 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) and unaudited Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements will be posted on http://www.sedar.com and on the Fund's website at http://www.norandaincomefund.com/investor/financials.html later today. Readers should be advised that the summarized communication presented in this press release is limited in its disclosure. It is not a suitable source of information for readers who are unfamiliar with the Fund, and it is not in any way a substitute for reading the unaudited Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements and MD&A because a reader relying on this summary alone might overlook decision critical information. Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information and statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual events, results or performance to be materially different from any future events, results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, and as a result, the Fund cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statements or information will materialize. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effect of general business and economic conditions, the Fund's ability to operate at normal production levels, the demand and price for zinc concentrate, zinc metal, sulphuric acid and copper in cake, the dependence upon continuing supply of zinc concentrate and the terms of that supply, the Fund's capital expenditure requirements and other general risks and uncertainties set out in the Fund's continuous disclosure documents on available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information contained in this press release is based on, among other things, management's current estimates, expectations, assumptions, plans and intentions, which management believes are reasonable as of the current date, and which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Except as required by law, the Fund does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements or information, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the Fund or on the Fund's behalf. Noranda Income Fund is an income trust whose units trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "NIF.UN". Noranda Income Fund owns the electrolytic zinc processing facility and ancillary assets (the "Processing Facility") located in Salaberry de-Valleyfield, Quebec. The Processing Facility is the second-largest zinc processing facility in North America and the largest zinc processing facility in eastern North America, where the majority of zinc customers are located. It produces refined zinc metal and various by-products from sourced zinc concentrates. The Processing Facility is operated and managed by Canadian Electrolytic Zinc Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Glencore Canada Corporation. Except where otherwise indicated, all amounts in this press release are expressed in Canadian dollars. Further information about Noranda Income Fund can be found at www.norandaincomefund.com Key Performance Drivers The following table provides a summary of the performance of the Fund's key drivers: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended March 31 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc concentrate processed (tonnes) 117,892 135,727 Zinc secondary feed processed (tonnes) 4,165 1,237 Zinc grade (%) 52.1 51.6 Zinc recovery (%) 96.9 97.5 Zinc metal production (tonnes) 50,048 67,627 Zinc metal sales (tonnes) 49,516 72,639 Processing fee (cents/pound) 41.4 41.0 Realized zinc price (US$/pound) 1.33 0.83 Average LME zinc price (US$/pound) 1.26 0.76 By-product revenues ($ millions) 2.3 6.3 Copper in cake production (tonnes) 494 702 Copper in cake sales (tonnes) 328 796 Sulphuric acid production (tonnes) 98,066 111,925 Sulphuric acid sales (tonnes) 94,427 105,978 Average LME copper price (US$/pound) 2.65 2.12 Sulphuric acid netback (US$/tonne) 7 28 Average US/Cdn. exchange rate 1.32 1.37 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) 1 tonne = 2,204.62 pounds SELECTED FINANCIAL AND OPERATING INFORMATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended March 31, ($ thousands) 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statements of Comprehensive Income Information Revenues 181,989 172,581 Raw material purchase costs 134,374 112,541 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues less raw material purchase costs 47,615 60,040 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other expenses: Production 30,143 49,510 Selling and administration 8,180 6,264 Foreign currency gain (1,502) (13,452) Derivative financial instruments (gain) loss (1,327) 4,188 Depreciation of property, plant and equipment 5,282 7,580 Rehabilitation expense 122 590 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earnings before finance costs and income taxes 6,717 5,360 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finance costs, net 1,363 1,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earnings before income taxes 5,354 4,360 Current and deferred income tax expense 1,599 473 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earnings attributable to Unitholders and Non-controlling interest 3,755 3,887 Distributions to Unitholders 937 4,687 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Increase (decrease) in net assets attributable to Unitholders and Non-controlling interest 2,818 (800) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other comprehensive loss (15) (3,955) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comprehensive income (loss) 2,803 (4,755) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statements of Financial Position Information March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash 494 2,567 Inventories 284,112 242,585 Accounts receivable 93,054 103,280 Income taxes receivable 6,206 5,000 Property, plant and equipment 133,181 138,309 Total assets 542,057 516,014 Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 133,702 175,521 ABL revolving facility 129,523 63,987 Total liabilities excluding net assets attributable to Unitholders 302,781 279,541 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three months ended March 31, Statements of Cash Flows Information 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash provided by operating activities before cash distributions and net change in non-cash working capital items 2,608 28,106 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash distributions (937) (4,687) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net change in non-cash working capital items (64,328) 45,999 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash (used in) provided by operating activities (62,657) 69,418 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash used in investing activities (4,952) (3,916) Cash provided by (used in) financing activities 65,536 (64,663) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net (decrease) increase in cash (2,073) 839 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contacts: Michael Boone, Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of Canadian Electrolytic Zinc Limited Noranda Income Fund's Manager 416-775-1561 info@norandaincomefund.com MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/27/17 -- Osisko Mining Inc. (TSX: OSK) ("Osisko" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce, further to its announcement on March 15, 2017, that it has acquired an additional land package in the area of Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Quebec (the "Additional Quevillon Claims") from Deloitte Restructuring Inc., acting as trustee in bankruptcy for the assets, undertakings and properties of Maudore Minerals Ltd. With the acquisition of the Additional Quevillon Claims, Osisko now holds a total of 4,150 claims covering a 216,000 hectare (2,160 square kilometres) land package (the "Quevillon Project"). The Quevillon Project includes approximately 30 known gold showings as well as the historical Osbell gold deposit, which is located 17 kilometres northwest of the town of Lebel-sur-Quevillon and 112 kilometres west of the Windfall Lake gold deposit. The Osbell deposit has been the object of significant historical drilling over the past fifteen years, and will be the focus of new drilling and resource re-evaluation by Osisko. Osisko acquired the Additional Quevillon Claims in exchange for $1 million in cash and 100,000 common shares of the Corporation payable to FBC Holdings SARL, the secured creditor over the Additional Quevillon Claims. The listing of the common shares of the Corporation to FBC Holdings SARL remains subject to the final approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange, and such shares will be subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from the date hereof. Qualified Person The scientific and technical content of this press release has been reviewed by Mr. Robert Wares, P.Geo. Executive Vice President Exploration for Osisko Mining Inc., a "qualified person" as defined by National Instruments 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About Osisko Mining Inc. Osisko is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of precious metal resource properties in Canada. Osisko holds a 100% in the high-grade Windfall Lake gold deposit located between Val-d'Or and Chibougamau in Quebec and holds a 100% undivided interest in a large area of claims in the surrounding Urban Barry area (82,400 hectares), a 100% interest in the Marban project located in the heart of Quebec's prolific Abitibi gold mining district, and properties in the Larder Lake Mining Division in northeast Ontario, including the Jonpol and Garrcon deposits on the Garrison property, the Buffonta past producing mine and the Gold Pike mine property. The Corporation also holds interests and options in a number of additional properties in northern Ontario. Osisko continues to be well financed with approximately $195 million in cash and investments (after giving effect to the closing of the offering announced earlier today by the Corporation). Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation that is based on expectations, estimates, projections and interpretations as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, interpretations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "interpreted", "management's view", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information and are intended to identify forward-looking information. This forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Corporation, at the time it was made, involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Osisko to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, risks relating to the timing and ability, if at all, to transfer the Additional Quevillon Claims to Osisko; the timing and ability, if at all, to obtain final listing approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange for the issuance of 100,000 common shares of the Corporation to FBC Holdings SARL; the potential, if any, of the Additional Quevillon Claims; the prospectivity and potential of the regional land package in the area of Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Quebec; the Additional Quevillon Claims being a high-potential gold target in the immediate area of the historical Osbell deposit; the ability of Osisko to complete further exploration activities, including drilling; property interests in Quebec; the ability of the Corporation to obtain required approvals and complete transactions on terms announced; the results of exploration activities; risks relating to mining activities; the global economic climate; metal prices; dilution; environmental risks; and community and non-governmental actions. Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based upon what management believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, Osisko cannot assure shareholders and prospective purchasers of securities of the Corporation that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, and neither Osisko nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any such forward-looking information. Osisko does not undertake, and assumes no obligation, to update or revise any such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information contained herein to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by law. Contacts: Osisko Mining Inc. John Burzynski President & Chief Executive Officer (416) 363-8653 Congenica, a Cambridge, England, UK-based provider of clinical genomics software for inherited diseases, completed its Series B funding round of undisclosed amount. Additional investments came from BGI Genomics (BGI), Healthlink Capital (Healthlink), another China-based life-science investor and Future Planet Capital, a global innovation fund. Alongside investing, BGI Genomics and UniteGen, Healthlinks associated clinical diagnostic lab, have signed commercial contracts to use Congenicas proprietary enterprise software, Sapientia to support their operations in China. Led by Tom Weaver, CEO, Congenica has developed Sapientia is a clinical genome analysis software platform that analyzes genome-scale DNA data to produce a comprehensive diagnostic report that can be linked to patients symptoms, supporting clinical decision-making about rare genetic disease. The platform is based on research from the UKs Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, NHS clinicians and regional genetic testing laboratories, and its underlying technology has been validated by leading independent institutes and clinicians, including Genomics England Ltd. Sapientia is also being used in the advancement of personalised medicine by the global pharmaceutical industry to create disease registries, identify patient populations for clinical studies, and support the discovery of novel drug targets and biomarkers. FinSMEs 27/04/2017 Origin Ventures, a Chicago, IL-based venture capital firm, closed its fourth fund, at $80M. This latest fund brings total assets under management to more than $135M. Founded in 1999 by Steve Miller and Bruce Barron and also led by Jason Heltzer and Brent Hill, Origin Ventures is an early-stage technology investor focused on high-growth software, marketplace, and content businesses. The firm expects to continue to invest and support entrepreneurship throughout the United States and Canada, and expand the Origin Ventures Network (OVeN), a collaboration platform launched in 2015 which offers portfolio companies such resources as a portfolio-wide chat platform, function-specific online roundtables, benchmarking data, and in-person summits. Hill will be based in the new office in Salt Lake City to better support the firms portfolio companies and investment activity in the Rocky Mountain and west coast regions. Since the funds initial closing in 2016, the firm has invested in five companies: Tock, a reservations and operations software platform used by restaurants including Alinea, French Laundry, and Eleven Madison Park. Tovala, a smart table-top convection oven that is paired with a food service. AppDetex, which allows companies to manage their portfolio of web domains and mobile applications to identify and eliminate fraudulent use. Kidizen, an online marketplace that allows parents to buy and sell used childrens apparel. Avant, an online consumer lender, using data and machine learning algorithms to improve underwriting decisions. Previous investments include Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB), iNest, DialogTech, Apptentive, and Teem. FinSMEs 27/04/2017 Medical emergencies at times like guests come unannounced. Even if the sickness has been lingering around for a while, it always cost you money to treat it. If you have personal or employee medical insurance, the medical expense may not burn a hole in your pocket. But, if you don't have the medical insurance, there is a way where you can pay your medical bill. For treating the ailment, you can even tap into your EPF (employee provident fund) corpus. Of course, there are some conditions attached before you make an attempt to use the retirement fund for medical treatment. The fresh amendment to the EPF rule allows you to withdraw funds for your own treatment or for any of your family member. For that, you will need to provide Certificate C that is signed by both, your employer as well as your doctor. This certificate is available on the EPFO website. You can withdraw money for medical treatment under the following conditions. EPF withdrawal is allowed in case of major surgical operation or with the hospitalisation for one month or more, if necessary. In case of treatment of T.B., leprosy, paralysis or cancer, retirement funds is allowed to withdraw. The EPFO funds can also be withdrawn in case of treatment of heart ailment or mental derangement. For medical treatment purpose, one can withdraw money irrespective of how long you have had an EPFO account. If you need to withdraw money for medical reasons, you can do so in the above-mentioned three situations. Sadly, the amount you are permitted to withdraw isn't too large. The amount is 6 months basic wages and DA (dearness allowance) or employee share with interest whichever is least. None the less, it's your money and it's partially available, even if not fully. Another important thing to keep in mind is that you are permitted to make the withdrawal only if Employee's State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) facility is not provided by your employer. The first flight under the governments UDAN scheme from Shimla to Delhi was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi this morning. With this, the stated aim of the NDA government to enable anyone wearing a hawai chappal to be able to board a hawai jahaj is being realized as fares are capped at Rs 2,500 per hour of flying on these select routes. Simultaneously, Modi will also flag off the inaugural UDAN flights on KadapaHyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors. The UDAN scheme is important from the air connectivity point of view its stated aim is to get the aam aadmi to fly and in doing this, to get unserved and underserved airports to become better utilized. Take the case of the Shimla flight, which will be operated five days a week by Air India subsidiary Allaince Air. It will offer 35 seats on the Delhi-Shimla leg and only 15 on the return journey due to restrictions at Shimla airport though the aircraft is a 48-seater ATR, an Air India spokesperson told Firstpost. Of the 25 seats on the Delhi-Shimla leg, 24 will be priced at a flat price of Rs 2,036. Which means, if you buy the ticket early enough, flying to and from Shimla will cut the travel time significantly besides costing you a little more than a train journey. It anyway cuts the travel time and the hassle of alighting at Kalka station and then looking for an alternate mode of transport to Shimla. Remember, the train facility is only till Kalka from Delhi and from there one has to either book a seat on the toy train or go by road. This morning, a one-way executive class fare on Kalka-Shatabdi for 1 May from New Delhi on the IRCTC website was available at Rs 1,265. From Kalka, the Shivalik Delux to Shimla showed up at Rs 415. The Delhi-Shimla flight also marks the restarting of operations at the Shimla airport, which has been an unserved airport since 2012 when operating airlines withdrew citing non-viability. So why is Air India now re-launching operations to Shimla, knowing the skewed route economics? Under the new UDAN scheme, the state government and the centre are committed to providing subsidy as per a pre-decided formula which will perhaps help Air India not book interminable losses on this sector. The economics of this flight makes for interesting reading. The Air India spokesperson said that the subsidy amount for this flight is Rs 3,340 per seat. He also explained that only 35 of the 48 seats on this ATR aircraft can be filled on the Delhi-Shimla leg due to airport restrictions whereas on the return journey, only 15 seats can be filled. What is evident from this is that 11 seats on the Delhi-Shimla leg will be priced much higher than the flat Rs 2,036 fare for the first 24 seats. Some news reports have suggested that the price for these 11 seats could go up to Rs 20,000 since they will not be covered under the subsidy math, but the spokesperson did not confirm this. On the Shimla-Delhi leg, he said each seat will be priced at Rs 2,036. UDAN is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism. Under this scheme, routes and networks were awarded to bidders who submitted valid proposals and quoted the lowest viability gap funding (VGF) from the government for such routes and network. The Airports Authority of India (AAI), the implementing agency, issued Letter of Awards for 27 such earlier this year. The UDAN scheme will connect 27 currently served airports, 12 underserved airports (which do not service a flight a day presently) and 31 unserved airports (which do not handle a single flight). Under UDAN, the largest number of airports served at 24 will be in the western region; 17 in north, 11 in south, 12 in east and 6 in north-eastern regions. As of now, the government has awarded 16 proposals for single routes (connecting two cities) and 11 for networks (connecting three or more cities). Six proposals have been bid with zero viability gap funding (VGF), which means on these routes no subsidy amount would be given. So, on a net outflow of 200 crore as VGF, 6.5 lakh subsidized seats would be offered by participating airlines on routes which were otherwise lying unused or were rarely connected. After the first round of bidding for routes under the UDAN scheme was concluded last month, Air Odisha Aviation emerged as the airline connecting the maximum number of unserved airports in India - it proposes to connect 14 such airports which do not service even a single flight as of now. Some of the unserved airports which could again see flights under UDAN include Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Jamshedpur, Jalgaon, Akola, Kandla, Puducherry, Bhatinda, Cooch Behar and Bilaspur, besides Shimla. The UDAN scheme offers subsidy for 50 percent of the seats on these routes, exclusive route monopoly for three years and a host of other concessions at the landing airports. In turn, it expects the airlines to cap fares at Rs 2,500 per seat per hour rate on regional flights. Alliance Air CEO C S Subbiah had said earlier. He expected break even on each such ATR-72 flight in a month as 60-70 per cent load factor (which denotes percentage of occupied seats) should be enough for the airline to recover costs. Air Odisha CEO Sanjay Arya had said it would take about three months for his 18-20 seater aircraft to break even on the regional routes. After the first round of bidding airlines had to bid for the viability gap funding or subsidy they need for each route five airlines qualified. These include Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, Air Odisha, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and SpiceJet. So the big boys of aviation not only stayed away from the first round of bidding, they are also waging a battle against a levy on metro flights which is being used to fund such regional connectivity. IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir and Jet Airways have gone to court against the levy imposed by the government on each flight taking off from a metro airport, and some of these airlines have yet not paid the sum accrued from this levy. Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey had said earlier the levy actually works out to just Rs 50 per metro passenger and should not be hard to bear. Besides the reluctance of the big domestic airlines to mount flights on these routes, among those airlines that have come forward, some have a previous history in the industry which is not all praiseworthy. It remains to be seen if other than Air India and its subsidiaries, many newcomers in the UDAN scheme are able to make ends meet despite the subsidy and a host of concessions at landing airports. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch on Thursday the 'Udan' scheme which is aimed at boosting regional connectivity with low-cost flights. He will flag off a flight on Shimla-Delhi sector as also on Kadapa-Hyderabad and the Nanded-Hyderabad sectors, the PMO said on Wednesday. Modi will launch the scheme from Shimla. Udan ('Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik') is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism, the PMO said in a tweet. "To make air travel accessible to citizens in regionally important areas, the Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik RCS (regional connectivity scheme) was launched in October, 2016," it added. The Udan Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15, 2016. "Airfare for a 1-hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500," the PMO said. "This with proportionate pricing for routes of different stage lengths and flight duration," it said. Under the scheme, five airlines will operate on 128 routes connecting 70 airports, including 31 unserved and 12 under-served ones. The operators are Air India's subsidiary Airline Allied Services, SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Air Odisha and Turbo Megha. They would be operating 19-78 seater aircraft. These flights would connect airports spread across over 20 states and union territories including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The airports that would be connected under UDAN include Bhatinda, Shimla, Bilaspur, Neyveli, Cooch Behar, Nanded and Kadapa. On each flight, 50 percent of the seats would have a cap of Rs 2,500 per seat/hour. Airline Allied Services would operate on 15 routes, SpiceJet 11, Turbo Megha Airways 18, Air Deccan 34 and Air Odisha Aviation 50. Under Udan, the operators would be extended viability gap funding -- for which money is partly raised through a levy of up to Rs 8,500 on flights operating in major routes like Delhi and Mumbai. The viability gap funding amount is estimated to be around Rs 205 crore per annum for the operators chosen in the first round of bidding. The viability gap funding would be in place for three years for the airlines concerned from the date of starting operations in a particular Udan route. The scheme also provides for various benefits including no airport charges and three-year exclusivity on the routes. Amber Dubey, Partner and Head of Aerospace and Defence at KPMG in India said timely payment of viability gap funding to the operators would be key to sustainable operations. "AAI must install fool-proof monitoring mechanism to ensure no undue delays happen," he said. While in Shimla, the Prime Minister will also address a rally at the historic Ridge Maidan. This will be his first visit to Shimla after becoming the Prime Minister. He had visited the capital of Himachal Pradesh last in 2003 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. However, it is his second visit to the state. Last year, he had addressed a BJP rally at Mandi. Modi was in-charge of organisational affairs of Himachal Pradesh for eight years till 2002. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will next week hold a review meeting with the revenue department to take stock of the anti-black money drive post note ban and tax collected thereof, as also steps taken for the GST rollout. The 2 May meeting has been convened to review the work of revenue department under the finance ministry, with specific focus on taxation matters and initiatives against black money, official sources said. The meet, they said, will discuss disclosures made in the tax amnesty scheme announced after junking of old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in November last year. The revenue department would present a report card on not just the black money disclosed and tax collected thereof but also the ill-gotten wealth seized during searches and raids across the country. An update on notices sent to unusual bank deposits made post demonetisation would also be given, sources said, adding the meeting would review progress made in the anti-black money drive, called Operation Clean Money, and the tax amnesty scheme Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY). The meeting would also discuss the measures being planned by the tax department against tax evaders. The review meeting follows tax, penalty and surcharge worth Rs 2,300 crore being collected via the tax amnesty scheme floated post demonetisation. The scheme, PMGKY, provided for payment of 50 percent tax and penalty on unaccounted cash deposited in bank accounts post note ban. While, under the Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS) - the first domestic black money disclosure scheme last year - Rs 12,700 crore tax has been collected. Sources said the meeting would also review direct and indirect tax collection targets and steps to augment collections. The Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is expected to be rolled out from 1 July, is also likely to be discussed at the meeting, they said. The GST Council, headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his stat counterparts, has held 13 meetings and decided on the four-tier tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent. The crucial fitment of goods and services in the tax brackets is yet to be decided. The council will meet on 18-19 May and work out on the fitment. Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday said that it will soon issue new Rs 10 and Rs 5 coins in circulation. According to the RBI, the central government has minted new Rs 5 coins to commemorate the "150th Anniversary of Allahabad High Court" and Rs 10 coins on the occasion of "One Hundred Twenty-fifth Year of National Archives of India". Besides, the Reserve Bank said that the existing Rs 5 and Rs 10 coins shall continue to be legal tender even after the issue of new coins. The apex bank said that the reverse side of the Rs 5 coin shall bear the image depicting "Centre facade of Allahabad High Court Building emerging from the book". "The year 1866-2016 in English numerals shall be written at the bottom of the image," the RBI said in a statement. It said that Rs 10 coins' reverse side shall bear the image of "National Archives Building" in the centre. "A logo of 125th Anniversary Celebration shall exist at the centre and above the image of 'National Archives Building'. The year 1916 and 2016 in international numerals shall be written respectively on left and right top of the image," the statement said. The Supreme Court on Thursday granted relief to Subrata Roy of the Sahara group after he gave an undertaking in the court to pay Rs 1,500 crore in SEBI-Sahara account on or before 15 June. Roy, according to a PTI report, furnished a post-dated cheque of Rs 552 crore to be realised by 15 July. The court, which extended Roy's parole until 19 June, has warned the embattled businessman that if the cheque is not realised, he will be sent back to the Tihar Jail. The court also asked the Bombay High Court's official liquidator to prepare terms for auctioning Aamby Valley for its approval on 19 June. The bench also asked Subrata Roy to be present in the court on 19 June, the next date of hearing. Meanwhile, the court on Thursday sent one Prakash Swamy -- the power of attorney holder for a US-based company that had shown interest in buying Sahara's New York-located Hotel Plaza -- to jail for one month for not depositing Rs 10 crore fine ordered by the court for backing out and misleading the court. The bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice A.K. Sikri sent Swamy to jail after the court was informed that he has not deposited Rs 10 crore, as ordered by the court during the last hearing. Swamy had earlier told the court that US-based MG Holding was buying Sahara's Plaza Hotel, following which the court has asked him to deposit Rs 750 crore in Sahara-SEBI account to prove their bona fides. However, in the next hearing, the court was informed that the US company had withdrawn the offer after doing due diligence of the property it was planning to buy. On 17 April, the court had ordered the auctioning of the Rs 34,000 crore worth properties of the Sahara Group at the Aamby Valley. "As no amount has been deposited by the contemnor (Roy), we are inclined to go ahead with auction for the Aamby Valley City near Lonavala, Maharashtra," the bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had said. The Sebi has alleged conempt of court by the Sahara group and Roy for not submitting the money to be refunded to the investors. The court had in 2012 ordered the Sahara group to pay back Rs 25,000 crore along with interest to investors from whom two Sahara entities had raised funds using illegal optionally fully convertible debentures. After waiting for so many years, the court finally decided to auction the Amby Valley property to raise the amount to be repaid to the investors. It directed the apex court registry to send a copy of its order to the OL, who, in turn, "must complete the exercise of valuation within ten days and send a report to this court". "Arvind P Datar, senior counsel being assisted by Pratap Venugopal, counsel appearing for SEBI, shall provide necessary details of the said property to the OL (official liquidator), who with his team, shall make the valuation and proceed with the auction. "Counsel appearing for the contemnor (Roy) shall provide all necessary details of the property also to the OL within 48 hours," the bench had said on 17 April. Taking serious note of Roy's parole extension, it said he should have been taken into custody after conducting last rites of his mother and "indulgence" was granted for repayment of money in the SEBI-Sahara account. With PTI, IANS inputs The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked why there was no objection from lawmakers on the governments decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making permanent account number (PAN) cards, a move which was given effect by the latest budget from 1 July. 542 persons are sitting in Parliament, why do they not object to it? If they are not objecting, why should we go into it, a Bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. When it was told that the Centre has earlier made a statement in the apex court that it would not make Aadhaar mandatory, the Bench said, They cannot be bound by it. It cannot preclude Parliament from enacting a statutory provision. The court was hearing three petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act. Section 139AA, introduced through the latest Budget and the Finance Act, 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of I-T returns and making application for allotment of PAN with effect from July 1, 2017. The Bench also observed that tax evasion existed in India and it was a shame that citizens do not want to pay taxes. The court said there was no doubt that Aadhaar should be voluntary and observed since tax evasion existed, the government could bring in new statute to stop such leakage. Defending the Centres stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi referred to around 10 lakh fake PAN cards and said Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. We have reached to 99 percent of population. We are not at a nascent stage, he said and questioned the maintainability of these writ petitions saying they had not raised the issue of violation of privacy. Senior Advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for a petitioner, said section 139AA was not part of the original Finance Bill and was introduced at the last moment. He referred to the Aadhaar Act and said there was not a single word saying the intention behind the statute was to check black money and weed out fake PAN cards. To this, the Bench said, The purpose of the Aadhaar Act is different from that of section 139AA of the I-T Act. Therefore, the validity of section 139AA cannot be seen at the touchstone of what is there in the Aadhaar Act. It would again hear the arguments on Thursday. During the hearing, the apex court, on a lighter vein, observed that when a man is getting married, he has the best income and once a maintenance petition is filed, he becomes a pauper. However, Datar said when Aadhaar has not been made mandatory in the Aadhaar Act, the government cannot make it complusory in the IT Act and the Centre had earlier given an undertaking before the court that except for social welfare schemes, they would not make it mandatory. "The Supreme Court had directed them that they cannot make it mandatory. The mandate of the Supreme Court can not be undone. My right of not to have a Aadhaar can not be taken away indirectly," he said. He also argued that the "dangerous" thing was that as per proviso of section 139AA of the IT Act, if someone does not quote his Aadhaar number while filing IT return, his PAN card will be deemed invalid. When the bench asked whether section 139AA would also apply to non-natural persons like a company, Datar said. "No. It is applicable to individuals only." He said that section 139AA discriminated between firms and individuals and forces a person to quote his Aadhaar for PAN and it was "virtually like a civil death". When the petitioners said they were not raising the issue of privacy in the matter, the bench asked, "the entire thinking change the moment you exclude the privacy part." "We are going into the validity of a Parliamentary legislation. Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided that Aadhaar should be made mandatory for PAN....It is not for this court to say that PAN was not working, so this is good. That is not permissible. We cannot question the wisdom of Parliament like this," the bench observed. However, the Attorney General countered the petitioner's submission and said, "10 lakh PAN cards have been found to be fake. Are they propagating a general public interest or propagating the fraud (fake PANs) which is going in". Rohatgi also clarified that nowhere in section 139AA of IT Act, was it mentioned that it would be effective with retrospective effect. However, Datar said that in Delhi, for 100 persons, 132 Aadhaar cards have been issued and 34,000 private enrollment agencies have been blacklisted. To this, the Attorney General said in Delhi, there were migrants and the government cannot destroy the Aadhaar cards of people after their death. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for two other petitioners, also questioned the government's move and said no one can be compelled to have a Aadhaar card just because section 139AA says so. He also said the biometric system in Aadhaar was not fool proof and there were instances where data has been leaked. "These are issues of public interest. It is like an electronic leash and people do not want to live with it. People cannot be compelled to part away with their vital details to private enrollment agencies," he said. The Centre had earlier faced searching questions from the apex court for making Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards, despite its order that it should be optional. The government had earlier said that fake PAN cards were being used to "divert funds" to shell firms. The Centre on Wednesday categorically ruled out imposition of tax on agricultural income after NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy kicked up a storm by suggesting that farm income should be brought under the tax net. As per the constitutional allocation of powers, the central government has no jurisdiction to impose tax on agricultural income, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is currently on an official visit to Moscow. "I categorically state that the central government has no plan to impose any tax on agriculture income," he said in a statement. NITI Aayog, the government's premier think-tank, too issued a press statement, distancing itself from Debroy's statement, saying the views expressed by him were "personal". "The NITI Aayog categorically states that this is neither the view of the Aayog nor is such a recommendation made anywhere in the Draft Action Agenda document as circulated to the Governing Council at the meeting on April 23, 2017," the statement said. Debroy, a noted economist, had yesterday said taxes should be imposed on farm income above a certain threshold to expand the tax base. "On expanding the base on the personal income tax side, other than elimination of exemptions, is to also tax rural sector, including agriculture income above certain threshold," Debroy had said. Taxing agricultural income is a politically-sensitive issue and successive governments have refrained from doing so. Meanwhile, a source in the Aayog said the three-year Draft Action Agenda talks about only scrutinising entities which evade taxes by misusing the exemption given on farm income. The paper suggests that non-farm entities which try to evade taxes by camouflaging their income as agriculture income should be brought under the tax net. It's not official yet but word is that 13 Reasons Why, Netflix's adaption of the bestselling 2007 YA book by Jay Asher, will be renewed for a second season soon, reports Deadline. The series got its Season 2 writers room going a few weeks ago, reports The Hollywood Reporter. That wouldn't be a surprise executive-produced by Selena Gomez, 13 Reasons Why has been well received by critics and has created buzz on social media, quickly developing a following. There had been talks about how to extend the premise beyond Season 1. The series follows teenager Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) as he returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker ( Katherine Langford) his classmate and crush who tragically committed suicide two weeks earlier. On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Will Clay be one of them? If he listens, he'll find out how and why he made the list. The series has sparked debate following its arrival on the streaming service last month. Mental health organisations criticised its inclusion of a graphic suicide while officials at some schools in the US have sent out letters to parents warning them about the show's content. New Zealand has ruled that teens cannot watch the series unless they are supervised by an adult. The show's writer, Nic Sheff, penned an open letter in response to the negative publicity explaining the decision to show Baker's suicide in graphic detail. Agriculture groups sounded a warning Wednesday after learning President Donald Trump is contemplating a first step toward the United States leaving the North American Free Trade Agreement. This dangerous move could cost Nebraska farmers and ranchers more than $2.6 billion per year in agricultural exports. Such a loss couldnt come at a worse time as farm and ranch families already face significantly lower prices for virtually every agricultural commodity produced, Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson said Wednesday in a prepared statement. Mexico was Nebraskas largest export market in 2016, buying $1.46 billion worth of goods, and Canada was second at $1.21 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Trump is considering an executive action that would notify Canada and Mexico he intends to begin a six-month process of withdrawal from the three-nation trade agreement, according to senior administration officials. The notification would not require Trump to ultimately withdraw, but it is a required step if he plans to eventually exit the 23-year-old trade pact. The sources said Trump had not made a final decision on the notification, but it could come within days. Trump, who frequently criticized NAFTA during his campaign, is also expected to pursue a parallel track in which he issues a separate order notifying Congress of his intent to renegotiate the free-trade agreement. By signing an intent to renegotiate and an intent to withdraw, the White House can attempt to leverage new concessions from Mexico and Canada while still maintaining a credible threat to leave the agreement entirely. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, called the prospect of leaving NAFTA and risking a trade war reckless. "Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," Sasse said. "Yes, there are places where our agreements could be modernized but here's the bottom line: trade lowers prices for American consumers and it expands markets for American goods." Talk of leaving NAFTA also caused alarm among U.S. crop and meat producers. Abandoning NAFTA and going back to pre-NAFTA tariffs would be financially devastating to U.S. pork producers. Tens of thousands of U.S. jobs dependent on those exports would be lost, said Ken Maschhoff, president of the National Pork Processors Council. Mexico is the second-largest market for United States' pork and Canada is number four. Even a short-term interruption in trade could have serious ramifications for pork producers. "Were all for modernizing NAFTA, but we cannot support efforts that would undermine the livelihoods of Americas 60,000 pork producers, Maschhoff said. National Corn Growers Association President Wesley Spurlock said the farmers who helped elect Trump are now calling on him to stay in NAFTA. "Mexico is the top export market for corn. Canada is also a top market for corn and ethanol. With a farm economy that is already weak, losing access to these markets will be a huge blow that will be felt throughout the ag value chain, Spurlock said. Exiting NAFTA would be a major break from decades of U.S. trade policy, and it's unclear whether the order would be a serious threat to leave the pact or simply an effort to put the country's neighbors on notice that Trump intends to rewrite the rules of North American trade. Even threatening to withdraw from NAFTA could heighten tensions with Mexico and Canada, close allies and trading partners. Trump railed against Mexico repeatedly during his campaign, saying that its trade practices are ripping off U.S. workers and luring away U.S. jobs -- adding to tensions over Trump's proposed border wall and his remarks about Mexican immigrants. In recent days, however, he has taken a harder line with Canada, blasting a recent change in the dairy pricing policy there. And Monday, the Commerce Department said it would begin charging a tariff on the import of softwood lumber from Canada into the United States, alleging Canada was improperly subsidizing its domestic timber firms. Chennai: Actor Rana Daggubati says that his Baahubali co-star Prabhas deserves more credit than anyone for his involvement because what he has done for the film is greater than any other individuals contribution. "What Prabhas has done for the film and what he has given is far greater than any of us could have done," Rana told IANS, heaping praise on his co-star with whom he locks horns in the film. In the film, Prabhas and Rana play warring brothers who fight over the ownership of an ancient kingdom. Asked about the debate on who is the real hero of Baahubali on social media, he said, "This is a franchise-based film and it's not driven by just one character. If you look at the franchise, each character is important from the perspective of the story. It's the content that even drives all the actors but not any individual's stardom." He also went on to add that both their characters are equally important. "We are like Ram and Raavan. Without these two characters, there's no Ramayana. Similarly, without Prabhas and I, there's no Baahubali. We complement each other as characters and we need each other," he said. Directed by SS Rajamouli, the film also stars Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia, Sathyaraj and Ramya Krishnan. It is produced by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni's Arka Media Works. It will be released simultaneously in four languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Its Hindi release is being marketed and distributed by Karan Johar's Dharma Productions. The second part in the franchise, that started with Baahubali: The Beginning, is slated to release this Friday on 28 April. However, its premiere in Mumbai stands cancelled owing to the demise of veteran actor Vinod Khanna. With inputs from IANS. Actor and producer John Abraham recently spoke about his upcoming projects, how he picks films and the non-commercial films he has starred in. In an interview to Mumbai Mirror, the actor spoke about Force 2, the second installment in the Force series, which released a week after the demonitisation of Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes. The film suffered its after-effects. John Abraham spoke about how he contemplated shifting the release date of Force 2, but the studio did not want to lose any money. He added that work on the third installment will begin at the end of 2017, and that he will reprise his role as ACP Yashvardhan. "Force is all about body, action and plot; well keep that intact. We already have a plot which is close to my heart. Its one of the best true stories to come out of India," said the actor. Force 3 will be produced by the actor himself and Vipul Shah, and will be directed by Abhinay Deo. Before the release of Force 3, another of his productions is lined up to open on 8 December, 2017. He chose this date because it falls in a clear two-week window period and is not willing to budge when it comes to this decision. He says that 26 January would have been an ideal release date for the project, but that two other films are already releasing on that day, including Akshay Kumar's 2.0. This untitled project is based on the successful Indian nuclear test in Pokhran, which was carried out in 1998. He said that he took the idea from Tere Bin Laden director Abhishek Sharma and his production house was developing it in-house. The film will not be "artsy" or "preachy" and it will speak to the youth of India and attempt to explain that this story is what makes the country "cool". Veteran actor and politician Vinod Khanna passed away on 27 April 2017, in Mumbai. He was 70. The hospital where Khanna had been undergoing treatment issued a statement that read: "Veteran actor and Member of Parliament Mr Vinod Khanna, who was admitted to the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, breathed his last at 11.20 am due to advanced bladder carcinoma." Khanna had been hospitalised since Friday, 31 March. At this time his son Rahul Khanna had told the press that the yesteryear screen icon had been admitted after suffering from severe dehydration and added that doctors hoped to discharge Khanna senior soon. RIP Vinod Khanna: Five films that we will remember the flamboyant, versatile actor for However, an image purportedly from Vinod Khannas hospital room that showed him looking frail and emaciated, was widely circulated on WhatsApp groups and sparked widespread concerns about his health. Unconfirmed reports claimed that the actor was possibly undergoing treatment for cancer. Khanna was the sitting MP from Gurdaspur. But while he did navigate a fairly successful innings in politics, the success he attained in his film career remained unsurpassed. From the time he made his debut in 1968, he appeared in over 140 films and even had a supporting role in the 2015 Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol starred Dilwale. Khanna typified the term matinee idol and with his suave, urbane appearance, he was widely considered among the most handsome actors of the Hindi film industry. His onscreen presence, however, went beyond his appearance, and Khanna made a mark be it in commercial capers like Amar Akbar Anthony and Qurbani, or the more critically acclaimed Achanak. Khannas sons Akshaye and Rahul, from his first marriage (to Geetanjali Khanna) followed him into show business. Khanna also has two children, a son Saakshi and daughter Shraddha, from his second marriage (to Kavita Khanna). Mumbai: Vinod Khanna has been hospitalised due to "severe dehydration". Khanna was hospitalised in HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Girgaum on Friday night. His son, Rahul, says the doctors are looking to discharge him soon. "Dad was hospitalised on Friday for severe dehydration. The situation was quickly brought under control, hes doing much better and the doctors are looking to discharge him soon," Rahul told PTI. "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," he adds. Hospital sources also confirmed that the actor is recovering well and is much better. Since he was hospitalised, he could not attend the trailer launch of his next, Gulbahar Singh's period drama Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi. As a mark of respect to veteran actor Vinod Khanna, filmmaker Karan Johar and the entire team of Telugu filmmaker SS Rajamouli's upcoming war epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion have mutually decided to call off the star-studded premiere of their long-awaited film, that was scheduled to take place on 27 April in Mumbai. Johar's banner Dharma Productions has purchased the Hindi version of the film and is also responsible for its marketing and distribution just like it was for the first part, Rajamouli's 2015 blockbuster Baahubali: The Beginning. Johar, Rajamouli and the entire team of the film have issued a join statement saying: "We are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved, the legendary Vinod Khanna. The demise has come as a huge shock to all of us. As a mark of respect for our dearly departed, the premiere event of Baahubali: The Conclusion is now cancelled." Khanna had been hospitalised since Friday, 31 March. At this time his son Rahul Khanna had told the press that the yesteryear screen icon had been admitted after suffering from severe dehydration and added that doctors hoped to discharge Khanna senior soon. The hospital where Khanna had been undergoing treatment issued a statement that read: "Veteran actor and Member of Parliament Mr Vinod Khanna, who was admitted to the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, breathed his last at 11.20 am due to advanced bladder carcinoma." Johar also tweeted a condolence message for Khanna saying, "His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP # VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers...." His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 27, 2017 Moments later, he also tweeted about the cancellation of the premiere of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. "As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight," his tweet read. Veteran actor and politician Vinod Khanna passed away on 27 April 2017, in Mumbai. He was 70. Khanna had been suffering from a bout of ill health and had been hospitalised since Friday, 31 March. At this time his son Rahul Khanna had told the press that the yesteryear screen icon had been admitted after suffering from severe dehydration and added that doctors hoped to discharge Khanna senior soon. As soon as the news broke online, Twitter has gone into an overdrive with tributes, pictures, updates, statuses with their love for the veteran actor. Do read our pick of his best films here. Here are some of the tributes on Twitter: Charming. Talented. Humble... RIP #VinodKhanna... End of an era... You will be missed, Sir... Heartfelt condolences. taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) April 27, 2017 Condolences on sad demise of veteran actor & BJP MP Shri #VinodKhanna ji, may God render peace to the departed soul & solace to his family. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 27, 2017 27April 2009 we lost #FerozKhan & 27April 2017 his Qurbani, Dayavan partner, #VinodKhanna .True legends.. Very sad news #ripvinodkhanna Sophie Choudry (@Sophie_Choudry) April 27, 2017 Will remember #VinodKhanna ji for his larger than life performances & his graciousness. There r very few people like him. Will miss u Sir. Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna ji had a magnetic charm & persona. Both on & off screen. He was kind, affectionate & helpful. Loved his panther like walk. pic.twitter.com/q01Hmqxbdp Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) April 27, 2017 Starstruck in 1987 meeting #VinodKhanna on sets of 'Dayavan' in Madras. He had just beat the crap out of Amrish Puri's character. RIP, sir. pic.twitter.com/6lWVb7jmQf Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) April 27, 2017 Show me one guy in #Bollywood today who looks like this. Na koi hai, na koi tha, zindage mein tumharay siwa.. #VinodKhanna passes away. #RIP pic.twitter.com/fKVwdZfXNr Mehreen Zahra-Malik (@mehreenzahra) April 27, 2017 Heartfelt condolences on the passing away of one of the most charismatic actors #VinodKhanna ji. Om Shanti ! Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) April 27, 2017 Appeal to all to please not run pics of #VinodKhanna from the hospital. He's no more, lets show him not at his weakest but in his full glory Arunoday Mukharji (@ArunodayM) April 27, 2017 Sad to know that veteran actor and one of the most handsome personality in film industry #VinodKhanna is no more.May his soul rest in peace. Rajeev Shukla (@ShuklaRajiv) April 27, 2017 Born in Peshawar, made it in Mumbai, served as MP from Gurdaspur. What a journey. Man who started as villian, ended up as hero. #VinodKhanna Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) April 27, 2017 RIP! #vinodkhanna. You will always be remembered as one of the best in #Bollywood. pic.twitter.com/HJLx9ae4I6 dinesh akula (@dineshakula) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna was the real Legend of Bollywood. From Purab Paschim to Dabbangg his presence made the scripts alive. May you find peace. SarDoNic (@DaddyAdd) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna was always very poised. And had such control on screen. Had a great career. And, some stellar roles. Rest in peace, sir. Sorabh Pant (@hankypanty) April 27, 2017 #RIP #VinodKhanna what an actor you were , original style icon of bollywood pic.twitter.com/ZJq5p8nTWf He10 (@Hiten_Bathia) April 27, 2017 Four years after the release of his last film The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson has announced the release date and cast of his next project Isle of Dogs. Coming to theatres April 20, 2018 #IsleofDogs pic.twitter.com/YQlZJsBhM2 Isle of Dogs (@isleofdogsmovie) April 25, 2017 A poster of the film was released on the film's official Twitter account. In it, a boy wearing a space suit seems to have landed on an island inhabited by dogs using a parachute. Isle of Dogs tells the story of a young Japanese boy who embarks on a journey to search for his lost pet dog. The cast of the film is star-studded and includes Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Greta Gerwig, Harvey Keitel, Liev Shreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Yoko Ono. This film marks the return of the director to stop-motion animation after nearly a decade; his last stop-motion film was Fantastic Mr. Fox, which released in 2009. Wes Anderson has revealed that this film is inspired by the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who directed classics such as Seven Samurai and Rashomon, as well as the stop-motion animation cartoons he watched in his childhood. In the past, Wes Anderson has directed films such as Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore. Isle of Dogs is set to release on 20 April, 2018. Hindi cinema was on the verge of its 100th anniversary when reputed Odissi dancer wrote the autobiography of her mother titled, Zohra Sehgal: Fatty. Zohra, who passed away a couple of years later, was 102. Despite the fact that her birth took place prior to the advent of Hindi cinema, it is safe to say that Zohra was born an actor. A famous choreographer, she had acted in Hollywood films, television shows and theatre. But she will always be widely known for her short yet impressionable roles in Hindi cinema. On this week's Throwback Thursday, Firstpost recalls five films that she stood out in: Dil Se.. Just like in Karan Johar's 2001 family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, she played Shah Rukh Khan's grandmother in this 1998 Mani Ratnam thriller. While she had her fair share of one liners accompanied by winks, she stole the show when she displayed some of her classical dance moves, even if barely for seconds, on AR Rahman-composed 'Jiya Jale'. Chalo Ishq Ladaaye If Rekha played Super Nani onscreen, Zohra played 'Super Dadi', just far more convincingly. At 90, she played Govinda's grandmother, beat up the bad guys and rode a motor bike with elan. Her comic timing was also spot on, probably feeding on the energy of her reel grandson. Veer-Zara The adorable biji of Preity Zint, Yash Chopra cast Zohra for the short yet crucial cameo not only because of her evergreen effervescence but also because the theme of the film borrowed a chapter from her life. Born in a traditional Muslim household in Uttar Pradesh, she went on to marry Kameshwar Sehgal, a Hindu, much to the sheer dismay of her conservative parents. Mistress of Spices Zohra had already made a crossover to Hollywood decades before Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the lead actor of this film, followed suit in early 2000s. She had done over half a dozen Hollywood films and TV series including Dr Who. Zohra was fluent in English and her age could tone down neither her accent nor her zest. Cheeni Kum A role custom-made for the veteran actor, Zohra played Amitabh Bachchan's mother in this romantic drama. However, R Balki ensured that their relationship was anything but melodramatic. A relief from all the Nirupa Roys of Hindi cinema, Zohra did not think twice before commenting on the sex life of her son, with a hint of concern and dollops of sarcasm. Her last film was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya but it was rather tough to digest that a lady so full of life could ever breathe her last. She is still fondly remembered as narrating Hafeez Jullundhri's poem, 'Abhi Toh Main Jawan Hoon', as was the custom after her regular poetry recital 'An Evening with Zohra'. LONDON Ten Iranian border guards were killed by Sunni militants in a cross-border raid on the frontier with Pakistan on Wednesday, Tasnim news agency reported. The militant group called Jaish al Adl has claimed responsibility, the report said. Sistan-Baluchestan province in southeastern Iran has long been plagued by unrest from both drug smuggling gangs and separatist militants. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, editing by Larry King) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By John O'Donnell and Anjuli Davies | FRANKFURT/LONDON FRANKFURT/LONDON As Britain prepares to negotiate its EU departure, a number of banks are likely to decide within two months where to set up new continental bases to make sure they can keep serving clients in the bloc after Brexit.The European Central Bank said it will host a meeting of banks on May 4 at its offices in Frankfurt. It will spell out in detail what those moving some of their operations out of London must do to apply successfully for a licence.Talks with financial authorities have been underway for several months but the banks are expected to make up their minds imminently on where to move staff and operations."We are in the hot phase. In the next six to eight weeks there will be a series of decisions," Felix Hufeld, head of Germany's Bafin financial regulator, told Reuters.Ireland's central bank will hold a similar gathering next month to advise groups considering a move to Dublin, which along with Frankfurt, Paris and other centres is competing to offer the banks a second base that remains in the European Union.A spokeswoman for the Irish central bank added that it had regular contact with the industry concerning "the potential consequences of Brexit".Authorities expect potentially dozens of international banking groups, currently operating their euro zone business out of London, to move some operations and staff to the 19-member euro zone.They are likely to shift several thousand staff out of London, as banks based in Europe's biggest financial centre will lose automatic "passporting" rights to sell services across the EU when Britain is no longer a member state.Hufeld predicted Frankfurt would play an "important role" in this process, although he said other cities would also gain.Bankers also say Frankfurt is set to win the most business following a discreet but concerted German campaign to promote the financial centre of Europe's biggest economy. German politicians have been reluctant to lobby publicly for big global banks to move to the country. Federal elections will be held in September and some voters remain suspicious of the financial industry after several German banks were forced to seek taxpayer-funded bailouts during the global crisis.However, they have held a series of meetings with bank executives. Finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and politicians from the state of Hesse, home to Frankfurt, have met Wall Street powerbrokers in the United States and Germany in recent months, according to several sources familiar with the matter.As far back as October, Schaeuble met Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in Berlin and discussed its post-Brexit plans, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Goldman Sachs is considering moving some operations to Frankfurt.James Gorman, the chief executive of one of the world's biggest banks, Morgan Stanley, recently visited Frankfurt where he met local regulators, one person familiar with the matter said.Morgan Stanley intends to move jobs from London to cities such as Frankfurt, people involved in the process have said. A spokesman for Schaeuble declined to comment, as did both banks.France is still pushing for banks to move to Paris and HSBC (HSBA.L) has a big presence in the city. But many of its peers are reluctant to move to the city, where rents are high and they would face a special tax on wages in the financial sector.GERMAN DRIVE Hufeld's comments and the regulators' meetings show how banks are rapidly advancing towards a move. Last month Prime Minister Theresa May formally declared Britain's intention to leave the EU, opening a two-year period for both side to negotiate the divorce. Talks are expected to begin in June, although May's surprise calling of an election for June 8 has added to the uncertainty. Given the tight Brexit timetable, bankers are keen to get cracking. "March 2019 is not far away and we are running out of time," said Lutz Raettig, president of Frankfurt Main Finance, a group that promotes the city."The time for making decisions is soon. People want to know for sure what direction they are taking by the summer," said Raettig, who is also chairman of Morgan Stanley's supervisory board in Germany. "They can wait a little longer but not much more."The ECB, which takes the final decision on granting a bank licence, has said they should allow at least six months to get one. [nL9N13C01Q]However, Barclays (BARC.L) Chief Executive Jes Staley said on Wednesday that obtaining a licence to trade on the continent and changing financial contracts to another jurisdiction takes a year to 18 months. [nL8N1HY2YV]Initially, banks had hoped that the immediate impact of Brexit would be softened by a so-called transition arrangement to delay the full effect.But Hufeld, who also sits on the ECB's supervisory board, said this offered little consolation. "Even if there were to be transition arrangements, they would come at such short notice," he said. "If they come four weeks ahead of time, then that does nothing for you."Despite the high prize in terms of jobs and tax revenue, many country regulators are treading carefully for fear of getting lumbered with high risks. This is particularly the case in Ireland, which had to seek an international bailout in 2010 due to the huge cost of bailing out its banks.The ECB is likely to caution banks against relying on 'shell companies', with operations effectively run by people still in London but the responsibility for handling any mishaps lying with continental authorities."If it's high-risk and low value-added, then you don't want it," said one person familiar with the thinking among the Irish authorities. "Let Frankfurt have it." (editing by David Stamp) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Saud Mehsud | DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan A suspected U.S. drone strike killed several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, a regional government official and an Islamist militant said on Thursday, in a rare strike on Pakistani soil.If confirmed, the air strike, which happened on Wednesday, would be only the second drone attack inside the nuclear-armed nation since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.Kamran Afridi, a a senior regional official in the tribal region of North Waziristan, told Reuters in a text message a "drone strike" had struck Pakistani Taliban militants close to the Afghanistan border and killed seven fighters.Afridi, who holds the post of 'political agent' in North Waziristanl, identified one of the dead militants as Abdur Rahman, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban. Several other militant sources said Rahman was killed. Abdullah Wazirstani, spokesman for North Waziristan Taliban, a group linked to the Pakistani Taliban, said the strike killed three civilian "labourers" and seven militants from the Pakistani Taliban, which is also known as TTP.Malik Waheedullah, a local tribal leader, told Reuters he saw two missiles strike a mountain home which caught fire. "I drove away as fast as I could," he said. One Pakistani intelligence official and government source said they believed the strike to be a U.S. drone attack.U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. North Waziristan was a Taliban stronghold until 2014, when Pakistan's military launched a major offensive against the group and pushed many of its fighters across the border into Afghanistan.U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan have become rare over the past few years. In its last high-profile attack inside Pakistan, the United States last May killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. (Additional reporting by Javed Hussain, Jibran Ahmad and Haji Mujataba; writing by Drazen Jorgic; editing by Saad Sayeed and Ralph Boulton) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. A 26-year-old woman in Gurugram's Manesar area was allegedly gang-raped by seven men on Tuesday, reports quoted police as saying. Reportedly, she was duped by an acquaintance on the promise of getting her a better job, India Today TV reported. All seven accused have been held, the police was quoted as saying by the media. The woman, who was working as a domestic help in Gurugram, said in her complaint that one her acquaintance called her to Manesar on the pretext of getting her a better job at around 7.30 pm on Tuesday. He then left the woman with another person, who apparently posed as the supervisor of the company, where the woman was promised a job. The 'supervisor' then took her to a room in Shankar Ki Dhani village near Bilaspur, where she said six men raped her, through Tuesday night, according to a report in The Times of India. The report further said that the woman was able to flee early on Wednesday morning, when the men were asleep. She later lodged a complaint, following which the police has arrested all seven accused, including the woman's acquaintance. This is not the first such instance in the National Capital Region. In January this year, two women were allegedly gang-raped inside a poultry farm in Mandpura, Pataudi area of Gurugram. Six men had barged into the farm where they looted the residents and gangraped two women there, according to a report in The New Indian Express. AIADMK deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran has revealed during questioning that it was sheer desperation to win the party symbol of 'two leaves' and the burning desire to become Tamil Nadu Chief Minister that drove him to try and bribe the Election Commission officials, according to media reports. A report in DNA stated that Dinakaran believed that with his aunt VK Sasikala lodged in jail for seven year, it was his best and the only chance to become the state's chief minister; it was this desperation that drove him to take the step. The story unfurled on Monday night, when the arrest of an alleged conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar from a Delhi hotel opened a can of worms. He was already battling a corruption lawsuit, warding off charges of bribing voters in the recently canned RK Nagar bypolls, and facing tough political resistance from the O Panneerselvam faction of the AIADMK, all at the same time. However, Chandrasekhar's arrest brought in fresh troubles for Dinakaran as the former claimed he was in touch with the AIADMK leader, who had asked him to bribe EC officials for a favourable ruling in the AIADMK symbol row case. The controversial AIADMK leader, however, was not aware of middleman Chandrasekhar's true identity and was under the impression that he was a high court judge who could help him win the party symbol, as the latter assured him that he had contacts with Election Commission officials, he told the police. The disgraced AIADMK leader had maintained earlier that he did not know Chandrasekar at all. He, however, succumbed to the excessive grilling and ended up giving contradictory answers. The police then confronted him with substantial evidence, following which he confessed to having paid Chandrasekhar Rs 10 Crore in first installment and route the remaining Rs 50 crore through hawala channels, The Times of India reported. The police said the accused were in touch with Kochi- and Old Delhi-based hawala operators who transferred the money to Chandrasekhar. Dinakaran's personnel assistant Janardhanan was also questioned and asked if he knew Chandrasekhar. The police is now trying to verify whether money actually changed hands between the conman and poll panel officials. A team of Delhi cops will also travel to Chennai with the accused, where the police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar and unearth the money trail used for the transactions. The DNA report quoted earlier also stated that Chennai based businessmen have already confessed to investigating agency that they have been working with Dinakaran for a long time. In this case, the money was routed to Chandrasekhar via a Chennai based businessman on Dinakaran's aide, Mallikarjun's insistence. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest last week. Dinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister EK Palaniswamy and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dinakaran as a condition for merger talks. With inputs from agencies If you have not noticed the big hoardings announcing the coming back of Arnab Goswami then you probably live under a rock. On Tuesday, the journalist held an AMA on Reddit doing what he does the best answering pertinent questions from an inquisitive nation. The nation really did want to know, is our guess. From nationalism to journalism, Goswami answered a wide set of questions. On Republic TV "I am very proud of all my partners. Each one of them believes in my journalism. I am proud of the investment we have received from Asianet News. It is India's oldest private news channel. Rajeev is a nationalist and we share a great rapport." He also said, "We believe that journalists need to set the agenda for politicians. Not just their soundbites and debate it. That's what we will do on Republic. I trust this will set a new benchmark and we need your support." On Nationalism "There can never be enough nationalism. More the better. We have forces that are trying to divide and break India from within. No nation can be soft on anti-nationals. My position remains the same that I took when a bunch of anti nationals tried to make the breakup of India into a slogan on the JNU campus. I took them on, even though the Lutyens media and cocktail activists didn't." On the role of media and his political affiliation "We have had historians who had the temerity to classify Bhagat Singh as a terrorist. These people must be brought off their pulpits. These people have had a disproportionate share of voice (sic) because a large section of the traditional legacy media has co-opted them and given them space in editorial pages and TV. I am trying to change that. We need a fresh new group of people who lead opinion in India. They need to be from across India, not a 5x5 kilometre zone from Malcha Marg to the JNU campus. Trust me, we will make that happen with Republic." On what is the most absurd thing somebody said on his television show "That I was paid to be pro-LGBT rights hahahahaha." On freedom of press "Freedom for a reporter is in his mind. I broke many scams and many more are to come. Nobody threatened me. Threats should be water off a ducks back, for journalists." On Kashmir "I feel the Army and paramilitary needs to be given greater powers in Kashmir. The state government must empower the J&K Police. Before every election in the state, the party in power softens versus the separatists. I am appalled at the pictures of Kashmiris assaulting a soldier. That soldier must be decorated for his restraint and each of those goons rounded up. People have questioned why a Kashmiri was put in front of an army jeep. If that is the only way to stop an attack on our soldiers, I see no problem with it. No man in an Indian uniform can become prey to the cowards who shoot in stealth. I wish the legacy Indian media saw the reality." On his role model "No particular role model. But I liked Vinod Mehta a lot. He was free spirited and wrote very well. Always miss him on my shows." Munnar, arguably the most important tourist destination in 'Gods own Country' could well be restored to its old days of pristine natural beauty as the National Green Tribunal (NGT) makes its foray into the hill station with renewed force. The NGT has registered a suo motu case against the state government for not taking enough action to evict illegal encroachments and constructions in the hill station. From the chief secretary, the district revenue officials and the Electricity Department, to the Munnar Grama Panchayat, the National Highways, the Department of Mining and Geology to the Pollution Control Board, everyone has been put on notice. The move comes after the much-hyped Munnar Mission 2 launched by the Left government in Kerala a month ago became a damp squib with the ruling party bowing to political pressure from within. Although the states revenue minister EM Chandrasekharan, a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) has openly said that evictions would go on despite opposition, the judiciary does not seem to believe the government and that too for obvious reasons. At the centre of the controversy are the vested interests of CPIs big brother in the coalition, the CPM whose local leaders and the notoriously-loose tongued minister from Munnars own pastures MM Mani that has been spending sleepless nights to overrun the mission of the government. Environmental activists are finally heaving a sign of relief as the NGT steps in and hope that the Munnar evictions might finally start in right earnest. "This intervention of the NGT will help the officials in Munnar to get over the blockade and threat caused by the local politicians of the Left in the area led by the minister (Mani) himself. If there is more resistance, we will soon bring it to the notice of the judiciary and the government will then have to pay a very heavy price for its stand," Harish Vasudevan, top environmental activist and lawyer told Firstpost from Kochi. It certainly had been a tough time for the district and revenue officials who had been heckled and harassed not only by the local leaders of the CPM, but also the chief minister who at one point of time questioned their actions. But it is now clear that it was the affidavit submitted by the state government before the NGT in October 2015 that clearly mentioned that the Devikulam sub-collector is the nodal officer for implementing the orders of the NGT in Munnar. This is why Sriram Venkitaraman, the present Devikulam sub-collector has been on a one-man mission to clear encroachments in Munnar despite stiff opposition. The present suo motu case had been taken by the NGT in light of a news item that had appeared in a local daily, where the land revenue commissioner had openly admitted that the pressure created by Mani and his party cadres is what is preventing officials from doing their job. If sources are to be believed, Venkitaraman is most likely to approach the NGT in days to come if this resistance continues this could bring the state government in direct conflict with the judiciary. For a chief minister who is yet to recover from the shock treatment given by the Supreme Court in reinstating his much-loathed director-general of police TP Senkumar, any more embarrassment would be too difficult to handle. On 26 August, 2015, following the NGTs intervention, the government had assured that a nodal officer had been appointed for the purpose of eviction and that the government would continue to protect the flora and fauna of Munnar. With this revelation, the arguments posed by Mani that were then agreed upon and substantiated by the chief minister himself come out of either sheer ignorance of the existing mandate given by the NGT or a deliberate repudiation of the issue. Can NGT turn the tide? The NGT might have pressed the red button. But not all those connected with Munnar are sure about things changing on the ground. K Suresh Kumar is a civil servant who had taken voluntary retirement, but more significantly he was among the 'top cats' that former Left chief minister VS Achuthanandan had sent to Munnar with a lot of pomp to evict encroachers in 2007. Kumar today takes every action at Munnar with a pinch of salt. Speaking to Firstpost from his Thiruvananthapuram residence, Kumar went to on to say how in spite of huge political will and even a cabinet decision in 2007, the first Munnar Mission was derailed by politicians from inside the government itself. "This time not only there is no cabinet decision, there seems to be no consensus on the ground between the coalition partners. Even the chief minister is outright abusing the collector and sub-collector for doing their job. Every day, the CPM and CPI are at loggerheads on the issue in the public domain. Let me tell you these people will find a way to get around the NGT too," Kumar told Firstpost. Kumar does have a point in what he says. While the revenue minister might have at least shown the will to go all the way by asking officers to be stringent with encroachers, the picture on the ground is different. In Munnar, the CPM and its commander-in-chief Mani rule the roost. His latest attempts to stay in the limelight by first calling the Devikulam sub-collector "a mad man who needs to be send to the asylum" for acting strongly against encroachers and his verbal abuse against women of the organisation Penpilai Urumayi is seen by many here as an attempt to divert attention from the real issue at hand in Munnar. High stakes for CPM in Munnar In a recently-concluded meeting on Munnar, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is said to have been fuming at how the district revenue officials have handled the eviction. Many believe that in an attempt to bell the cat and ensure that the partys interest in the land mafia in Munnar is protected, Vijayan had given directions to the revenue officials to act only in consultation with Mani. "How can revenue officials listen to Mani and do their job? What role does Mani, who is the power minister, have here? So it just shows that the political will is only to protect Mani and his interests because only that will hold the party together in that place," added Kumar. Saramma is an Adivasi leader who has been on a hunger strike for the past seven days in front of the Devikulam RDOs office in Munnar. Her demand is a long-pending one that the 'land patta' which was promised to the Adivasis for almost two decades now be given to them at the earliest. Saramma says that all the political parties especially the CPM had been taking the Adivasis for a ride. Although in 2002, the Congress-led UDF government had allotted 1,490 acres of government land for the Adivasis, only 668 acres were distributed among the 560-odd families. The rest of the 822 acres were never even claimed by the government. From then on, both the LDF governments that came to power had turned a blind eye; so much so that in time, even the remaining pieces of land were taken away by the land mafia in connivance with the local CPM leaders. "We were left without even a place to sleep. I was allotted a piece of land for a house. The tribal mission gave me Rs 50,000 as a grant for building my home. But they then told me the condition is 'You can take the money and vacate the land; otherwise you wont get the money'. Here, the officers, comrades and land mafia are all hand-in-hand," Saramma told Firstpost. Saramma adds that many of the Adivasis who held the patta to their lands might have been coerced or allured with small amounts of money to give up their land. Some 390 of them fled from the area fearing the land mafia and the party goons, she added. Pinarayi suddenly turns pious Activists say that another subplot in the attempted derailment of the mission in Munnar is when the chief minister suddenly turned upset on seeing the cross planted by a dubious organisation called Spirit in Jesus uprooted by revenue officials. While no mainstream Christian organisation including the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) the body with the largest denomination of the community in the state even lifted a finger, Vijayan was seen hurrying to a conclusion that it should not have happened. Local environmentalists in Munnar say that the Vellomkkunel family based out of Kottayam that had started the Spirit in Jesus are among the the worst encroachers in the state. A crime branch investigation against them is also pending. In fact, the planting of the cross was an attempt to legitimise an illegal occupation of around 300 acres of government land in the name of religion. That the chief minister could not see through it is viewed by many as another attempt to divert attention in Munnar and derail the present mission. "It baffles us when you see a Left governments chief minister going overboard with his emotions because an illegitimate act in the garb of a religious symbol is opposed by officials. So the issue is not that. Here, the chief minister is playing into the hands of the local CPM leadership in Idukki as its only representative Mani has so much at stake here if eviction happens in the right earnest," said Manoj V Nair, an environmental activist based in Munnar. It should be kept in mind that the second Munnar mission was never an agenda set by the Left government. It is a continuation of the process set in motion by the NGT in 2015. It was an NGO (Munnar Restoration Society Mankulam) and a few other activists that had gone to the NGT with a petition to bring Munnar back to its pristine glory. The big question now is whether the NGT will bare its teeth and restore order in beautiful Munnar. The news from Sukma continues to disturb and depress. Reports indicate that six of the 25 bodies of CRPF jawans, who were martyred in the 24 April encounter with the Maoists in Sukma district, were mutilated by the rebels. The act points to what the Maoists really are. Or rather, are not. They certainly are not Gandhians with Guns, as celebrated author Arundhati Roy described them in 2010. To call them so would be abusing the Mahatma and what he stood for. It would also be abusing the gun because even the weapon has a particular dharma and grammar of its own. It kills. Only cowards mutilate. The fallout of Sukma is that Chhattisgarh could soon degenerate into a theatre of bestiality. Monday's encounter could well mark a turning point in the battle between the state government and the outlaws and it will be an ugly picture. The reprehensible act will only spur the angry forces to reply in kind. The Maoists have shown themselves to be criminals, wearing the cloak of outdated ideology and 24 April may well prove to be the day from when the war in the jungles of Bastar will follow no rules. I asked well-known human rights activist VS Krishna, who is an authority on left-wing extremism, if he thought the state will reply in kind. Krishna asked a rhetorical question : "What makes you think they are not doing so already?" Krishna's position is that while what the Maoists did was terrible, it flows from the free rein that has been given to security forces over the past many years. "Will they carpet bomb these areas? Every human rights activist has been driven out of Chhattisgarh. No fact-finding mission is possible. The state has to address the material deprivation and deal with it in a manner that adheres to the rule of law. Unarmed civilians are bearing the brunt of this security-centric approach,'' said Krishna. Krishna is both right and wrong. He is right because under Mission 2016 unleashed by the former IG of Chhattisgarh police, SR Kalluri, the attempt was to account for each Maoist's head. He wanted to wage a war without witnesses against the Reds which is why vigilante groups encouraged by the police were let loose after human rights activists, lawyers and journalists who dared to write the truth. Many were hounded out of the state, some were arrested. Kalluri's Mission 2016 was a bombastic idea because with some 2,5000 Maoists in the seven districts of southern Chhattisgarh, according to police estimates, his mission would have taken a few years. Krishna is wrong because no country can afford to have a huge hole in its heart. A zone where its writ does not run. A patch that is called India only on paper. Where Red militia have held hostage lakhs of tribals by using a combination of fear of the gun and a Robinhood approach. Any deviant behaviour is punished in kangaroo courts while also behaving like a benevolent dictator. Over the years, the Stockholm syndrome has worked for the outlaws, with the tribals willing to be their spies and couriers. Like on 24 April near Chintagufa. Not that Chhattisgarh is taking the road less travelled. It is basically following the then united Andhra Pradesh model, which focused on two areas, first under Chandrababu Naidu and then YS Rajasekhara Reddy. The emphasis right through the late 90s was on laying black tops that led inside naxal territory. The intention was to hit them psychologically that the state is at their doorstep. It pushed them deeper inside the jungles and they would get exposed the moment they stepped out. Chhattisgarh is doing the same, trying to connect Sukma with Jagargunda. The challenge, however, is that the road isn't easy. Areas like Chintalnar and Chintagufa, that fall on this route are Maoist hotbeds and entering the Red patch is playing with life. The brutality of the Maoists in the Sukma encounter is a warning to India. What Chhattisgarh has to do is not to take two years and more to carpet this stretch but take it up on priority, engaging the best technology and putting more boots on the ground equipped with sophisticated drones to keep an eye on the rebels and to guard the work. The more important tool used in Andhra was to go aggressive with installing mobile phone towers. This helped them track naxals who ended up using mobile phones carelessly instead of PCO booths or couriers to pass on messages. The same effort has been lethargic in Chhattisgarh. In June last year, BSNL said it will erect 2000 mobile towers in Chhattisgarh over two years. At the moment, you slip out of digital India the moment you cross the Andhra border into Chhattisgarh at Konta. The third strategy employed by YSR was to engage with the Maoists politically, inviting them for peace talks. It proved to be a masterstroke because he nudged their leaders to come out of the forest, providing the intelligence wing of the Andhra police with a wealth of information about them. But the talks were destined to fail with YSR letting loose his Greyhounds, the elite anti-naxal commando force, after them. The policy of going for the top leadership of the Maoists ensured the movement was left rudderless in Andhra, forcing the few leftovers to leave the Telangana battlefield and move into Chhattisgarh and Odisha. In comparison, the Raman Singh sarkar does not exist if you move 10 km either side of National Highway 30. The Maoists even have the audacity to declare Chintalnar as the capital of Dandakaranya, pretty much their area of operational control. With Chhattisgarh vowing to fight to the finish, it is possible that the Kalluri template will be seen as the more effective approach. The IPS officer took over in mid-2014 and under his watch in 2015 and 2016, 77 security personnel were killed. He was shunted out in the first week of February after serious charges of human rights violations against him. Now his backers point out that just in the first four months of 2017, 72 men in uniform have lost their life. Another statistic in Kalluri's favour is that 2016 saw 133 Maoists being eliminated, the highest so far in a year. In April 2010, travelling through south Chhattisgarh, I was listening to Nalin Prabhat, then CRPF DIG, addressing his men in Sukma. "Fighting the Maoists is a battle of wits, it is not rocket science. You have to out-think the Maoist, not outgun him. You need to know the food, the land, the terrain, the vegetation with each changing season. Because the Maoist knows it as well, if not better than you," said Prabhat. This, to my mind, is the crux of India's battle against the Maoists, fronted by its paramilitary might. But the response to the Chintagufa bloodbath on Monday is unlikely to incorporate any of the officer's mantras. The jawans will be egged on by the public, media and the political establishment to show results, to avenge the deaths of their fellow soldiers. The mutilation of the bodies of their brethren will mean it will be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth in Chhattisgarh. India's war with India will have no winners. Only mutilated trophies. New Delhi: A high-level inter-ministerial team on Thursday reviewed the progress in implementation of the Rs 80,000 crore development package for Jammu and Kashmir announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Home Minister Rajnath Singh took stock of the progress of various development initiatives announced for the state, which has witnessed unrest in recent times. The meeting was attended by representatives from various central ministries and departments, and the state government, official sources said. The successful implementation of the mega package is key to assuage the feeling of alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, they said. The Rs 80,000-crore package for Jammu and Kashmir was announced by the prime minister in November, 2015. So far, Rs 17,000 crore has been released to the state government by the Centre. Around Rs 40,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore package has been earmarked for improving road infrastructure, including semi-ring roads in Jammu and Srinagar, upgradation of important highways besides others. An amount of Rs 7,854 crore has been earmarked for flood relief, reconstruction and flood management. A total of Rs 2,241 crore is meant for promoting tourism by developing new projects and tourist circuits, and setting up of 50 tourist villages. In addition, Rs 11,708 crore is for power, new and renewable energy. This includes augmentation of power infrastructure and distribution systems, solar power, and small hydro projects. Rs 4,900 crore has been earmarked for improving healthcare facilities in the state which includes creation of two AIIMS-like institutions in both major cities of the state, and support for creation of infrastructure in hospitals and primary health centres. Chetan Bhagat's bestselling novel 'Five Point Someone' was recently included into the proposed syllabus for English literature syllabus in the University of Delhi and this has sparked a debate among the DU students, faculty members and the academia. The latest addition to the many voices being raised on the issue comes from DU professor Sachin Nirmala Narayanan who took to decrypt the confused debate around the book's inclusion in the syllabus. The debate which has made it's way to classrooms has been criticised for it's 'elitist' take on English literature. While some students are decried teaching Bhagat's work alongside that of authors like Agatha Christie, Louisa M Alcott, and JK Rowling, others feel that this would be an exercise in identifying what makes popular literature popular. Addressing this issue, Narayanan, who is also an elected member of the Academic Council of the Delhi University, wrote a post on Facebook giving a balanced take on the ongoing events. In the post titled, 'A Six Point Note To Everyone Thinking of Chetan Bhagat in terms of his "inclusion" in Delhi University syllabus' Narayanan first clarified the distinction between the proposed syllabus and an adopted one. He explained how the proposal (which according to him emerged from a limited exercise without adequate consultation with teachers) would become a part of the teaching-learning process only after its adoption in the Academic Council and the Executive Council. The proposal which was made in relative secrecy, "lacked a framework," according to the professor. He says, "You can include 'Mein Kampf' as part of a paper on Autobiography or Fascism or, if you go by the current trend, Nationalism but you have to provide a justification, propose a methodology of analysis/study." Defending the stance of academics, who are not against 'popular literature', he says, "As a teacher I am extremely concerned with 'popular' to understand how one is popular while something else is not is popular the same as best seller?, what is pulp and what is commercial literature? all the while engrossed in critically expanding the limits of 'literature'." Narayanan explains that while Bhagat's book becomes part of an important exercise in differentiating between 'popular literature' and 'literature', it is not mandatory to have it on the syllabus. He writes that academics don't fail to ponder on the starkness between the works of Chetan Bhagat and Amitav Ghosh, but to have a book like 'Five Point Someone' on the syllabus means to ensure thousands of students read and study the book which can then go on to become part of the 'Guide Notes' industry. He writes, "I bring him to my classroom without having his book prescribed in my syllabus; I subject him not to the scorn of the elite but of the educated (here, I don't mean 'university educated' but, if I may say so, socially-politically educated). His 'acceptance' speech after the 'inclusion' in the syllabus self-congratulatory, scornful and imbecile is familiar to me due to the classroom vivisection of 'popular', 'literature' and 'popular literature I am habituated to'." The professor concludes the note stating that he is not against Bhagat's inclusion in DU syllabus, but with "institutional responsibility, procedure, transparency and democracy." Read the full post here: New Delhi: CRPF personnel deployed for long stints in the Maoist hotbed of Sukma in Chhattisgarh are showing signs of fatigue, according to officials. Home Ministry officials, who visited Chhattisgarh after the massacre of 25 CRPF men by Maoists, have found that the majority of 45,000 paramilitary personnel undertaking the high-risk anti-Maoist operations in Bastar region have been posted there for over three years. "Fatigue has been noticed in jawans as many of them have been posted in Sukma for last five years even though normally they should be there for three years," an official said, adding that there is a decline in motivation due to their long deployment in the area. Being posted continuously in Bastar is very stressful and the jawans prefer to join counter-insurgency operations elsewhere including in Kashmir, even though they face militant attacks and stone pelting mobs regularly there. This year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far while the CRPF has lost 38 personnel in Chhattisgarh, the official said. Anti-Naxal operations take a toll on security personnel as they face guerrilla warfare in hot and humid conditions and treacherous terrain. The home ministry officials indicated that the 100-strong CRPF personnel, who were attacked by the Naxals on Monday, seemed to have not been sufficiently vigilant leading to such high casualties. The central government has been trying to boost the morale of the forces by providing them necessary infrastructure and logistics for anti-Naxal operations, they said. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. Around 42 bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet-protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Around 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen have been deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016, three times the number of police personnel who lost their lives. Jaipur: Sixty-nine-year-old Dalit writer Kusum Meghwal has alleged threat to her life over objection by a few groups on her new book on Rajput warrior Maharana Pratap. According to the complaint filed by the writer at Ambamata police station in Udaipur, she had been receiving threat calls from a few fringe groups since the past week over her portrayal of the Rajput warrior in her book 'Maharana Pratap Bhil Rajputra The - Kshatriya Ya Rajput Nahi'. The book claims that Maharana Pratap belonged to the Bhil community and was elevated as Rana of Mewar later. Meghwal claimed that she was also being bullied on social media for raising a fresh debate on the warrior. "The writer had lodged a complaint following which I have asked the police official concerned to investigate the matter. She has given us the phone numbers and a probe is underway," SP Udaipur, Rajendra Prasad told the source. An author of over 65 books, Meghwal alleged that she had received calls from individuals claiming themselves to be Thakurs and from Karni Sena. "I have been getting calls from unknown numbers who are threatening to kill me for writing the book. Some of the callers claim they are from the Karni Sena while others say they are Thakurs. I have not ventured out from my house in the last seven days, she said in her complaint. The Ambedkarite writer further stated that the word 'Bhil' comes from Sanskrit word 'Bhilla', which means brave and martial. The Bhil community has traditionally been spread all over Mewar and known for their martial prowess. The BJP-led Rajasthan government had earlier raked up controversy while stating that Maharana Pratap had won the famous battle of Haldighati, contrary to conventional wisdom that his adversary Mughal emperor Akbar was the winner. Mumbai: A team of doctors from Abu Dhabi visited the Saifee hospital in Mumbai to meet Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed, who is being treated for obesity at the medical facility. The doctors from VPS Healthcare hospital in Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday, visited the hospital in south Mumbai where the staff cooperated with them, Doctor Aparna Bhaskar, one of the specialists in the team treating Eman, said on Thursday. The team shared all of Eman's medical reports with the visiting doctors. They met the patient while she was undergoing physiotherapy sessions, she said. The Abu Dhabi doctors visited Eman upon her sister Shaimaa Selim's request. Eman weighed around 500 kg when she was brought to Mumbai in February. Selim had recently alleged that the doctors at Saifee hospital made "false claims" about Eman's weight loss of 262 kg from 500 kg. Refuting the allegations, Bhaskar said on Tuesday that Selim may be criticising the doctors to extend her sister's stay at the hospital. In a video posted online, Selim recently said that Doctor Muffazal Lakdawala, the bariatric surgeon who is leading the team of doctors treating Eman, has made "false claims" about her complete recovery and weight loss. Lakdawala had on 11 April said that Eman has so far lost 262 kg during the treatment. Eman's sister is said to be planning to shift her out of India for a "better" treatment. A member of the patient coordination team of Lakdawala also confirmed the visit of doctors from Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile, the Saifee hospital has also invited a team of experts from various medical fields to visit Eman on Thursday and review her health condition. The doctors at Saifee want a third party opinion on Eman's health condition as her sister's allegations have upset many from the team of experts treating her. Selim has lately been criticising Lakdawala's team and the hospital for allegedly not treating her sister properly. Lakdawala, however, refuted the allegations earlier and stated that in his capacity as a bariatric surgeon he had done his job properly. "The efficiency of Eman's body parts has been increased from 5 per cent to over 70 per cent," he had said. He also said that her neurological problems were being addressed by specialists. Last month, Eman underwent her first bariatric surgery in which doctors reduced two-third of her stomach size. Her genetic tests show she has a rare gene mutation that cannot be cured through surgery. New Delhi: A Delhi police team probing the Election Commission bribery case will travel to TamilNadu on Thursday with arrested AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dinakaran and his aide to gather details about "illegal channels" used for transferring money from Chennai to Delhi. The Crime Branch team will leave for Chennai along with Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna. The police had secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residents of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK faction keep the "two leaves" symbol. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on 16 April. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said deputy commissioner of police (crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by AIADMK chief VK Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister EK Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dhinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dhinakaran as a condition for merger talks. New Delhi: India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the External Affairs Ministry said on Thursday. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India as the former Indian Navy officer has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year on charges of espionage. "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our High Commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request on providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response," Baglay said. New Delhi: The Election Commission has sought an unprecedented 74,000 paramilitary personnel from the Centre for deployment during the bypoll to the Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency on 25 May. The EC has conveyed to the Home Ministry that 740 companies of paramilitary forces should be put at its disposal by 12 May, official sources said. A company comprises around 100 paramilitary personnel. The demand seemed unprecedented as the poll body had sought 70,000 paramilitary forces for deployment in the recently concluded Assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh which has 403 Assembly constituencies and 80 Lok Sabha seats. Earlier, the EC had sought 30,000 paramilitary personnel for the bypoll to Srinagar and Anantnag Lok Sabha seats. While polling in Srinagar was held on 9 April amidst massive violence, polling for Anantnag, which was scheduled for 12 April, was postponed till 25 May. Official sources said that in normal circumstances around 10 companies (1,000 personnel) are deployed in a parliamentary seat during polling. The Home Ministry is likely to tell the EC that it would be difficult to arrange such a large number of security personnel in a short span of time and it may seek more time. At present, it is in a position to provide around 150 companies (15,000 personnel). There are around 10 lakh paramilitary personnel under the Home Ministry's command, but it is difficult to assemble them from different parts of the country in such a short notice, a source said. The PDP, Jammu and Kashmir's ruling coalition partner, has urged the EC to defer indefinitely the bypoll to the Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency in the wake of the "volatile situation" prevailing there. Had Captain Ayush Yadav not taken on three militants, who were trying to enter a compound of the Armys 68 Brigade in Panzgam village, 25 kilometres from Kupwara town in north Kashmir during a pre-dawn attack, the attackers would have inflicted serious damage. The attacked garrison is an artillery base. Yadav, 26, a resident of Defence colony in Jalmau area of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, was killed when he along with a few other soldiers blocked the entry of militants pushing them to the front side gate of the Brigade. He was killed on the spot in the encounter that took place at 4:30 am in the morning. The captain was martyred when he tried to stop the terrorists from moving towards a particular residential area inside the garrison, Col Saruv Joshi, an officer of the Indian Army, told reporters outside the garrison which was attacked by the militants on Thursday morning. Two to three terrorists were seen cutting the perimeter fence of the garrison. Our patrol team immediately challenged and fired upon the terrorists. The terrorists fired back and started running towards the living area of one of the garrison unit, Joshi said. Sources in the Army said the three militants had crossed the Line of Control on Thursday morning and tried to enter the camp from the rear side which is a few dozen metres from the front side of the Brigade. We chased them from the rear side to the front gate, Joshi, the officer who briefed the media outside the camp, said. Throughout the period no terrorist was allowed to enter the residential areas by accurate and heavy firing from all directions, Joshi added. Three army soldiers, including the captain, were killed in the gunfight that lasted for 37 minutes in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. The Army killed two militants but a third, who was hit by a bullet, managed to escape from the site leaving his weapon inside the camp. The other two soldiers who were killed were identified as Bhoop Singh Gujjar, 46, president of Malawa, Rajasthan and Bhoota Venkata Ramanna, 38, a resident of Arivanipallam village in Andhra Pradesh. Five soldiers were also injured and rushed to Armys 92 base hospital in Srinagar for specialised treatment. Some of the soldiers are said to be critical. As the search and sanitation operation were being carried out in the area for the third terrorist, hundreds of villagers and students took to the streets and threw stones at the forces. One person was killed and several others sustained injuries after forces fired at protesters in Panzgam village. The locals were protesting outside the camp and were demanding the body of the slain militants. Reports said that the Army fired at the protesting crowd resulting in the killing of one person and injuring many others. The slain villager has been identified as Ghulam Hassan Bhat from Panzgam village. Bhat was hit by a bullet in the neck and succumbed to his injury on the way to the hospital. The Army had maintained restraint since the morning after hundreds of villagers gathered outside the camp demanding the militant's body and shouting pro-freedom slogans. On Tuesday, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, during a meeting of Unified Headquarters, a body represented by all security wings active in the state, has asked security forces to avoid collateral damage during anti-militancy operations in J&K. Georgetown Universitys Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs conducted a case study on how Kashmirs religious diversity turned into the religious militancy. Highlighting the valleys shift from religious pluralism to radicalism and sectarian discord, it concluded that religion has become increasingly important as a central marker of identity and a flashpoint for conflict in Kashmir. It reads: "Religious pluralism and religious tolerance have ebbed over the past two decades, making Kashmir a major element in a wider set of sectarian divides. For instance, events within India like the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 by Hindu extremists (and the deadly riots that followed) heightened tensions within Kashmir and outraged the international community." The traditions of religious pluralism have deep roots in the history of Kashmir valley. Even when the entire country was afflicted with the partition on the religious lines, the Kashmiris were basking in the glory of its marvelous communal harmony and interfaith diversity. At a time when the Islamist nationalism was on the march in Pakistan in 1970s and Hindu nationalism was taking roots in India in 1980s, Kashmirs syncretism still flourished by leaps and bounds. Though a few hardcore religionists in the valley sought to sabotage the valleys distinct moderate religious precepts and practices, the common Kashmiris have been imbued with the pluralist Rishi-Sufi tradition. Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir have been known for their wide embrace of the Hindu and Buddhist cultural practices. This is why their version of Sufism is distinctly known as Rishi-Sufism. The Dargah of Hazratbal in Srinagar has been the most visited religious place in the entire valley. But what has catapulted Kashmir from being the bastion of religious plurality into a battleground of the radicalism and militancy? This question is exponentially arising, more relevantly now when a top army official in Kashmir, Lt Gen JS Sadhu acknowledges the disturbing growth of religious radicalisation among the Kashmiri youth. He has recently stated that the "public support to terrorists, their glorification and increased radicalisation are issues of concern, as reported in The Indian Express. This reinforces the point that the practical solution to the countrys gravest tragedy does not lie in a military crackdown, but rather in a dialogue-based ideological discourse. It cannot be denied that the separatist leaders have cunningly propelled their political ambition into a religiously inspired and ideologically motivated cause. What was known as an independence movement of the Kashmiri militants over the past three decades, is now being shaped and intensified as a religious conflict. This is precisely why the militant ideologues have successfully swayed a vulnerable section of the Kashmiri Muslim youth. Regrettably, this is the worst time in the valleys history when the religious antagonists have smartly played into the local politics. In many earlier incidents, they tried hard to further this nefarious end, but to no avail. Remember the attacks on the Kashmiri pundits on one hand, and the militant-led siege of the Sufi shrine Charar-e-Sharif in 1995, on the other. Both were viciously planned to disturb the religious harmony in the valley. But the valley's Hindus and Muslims in general and the Rishi-Sufi followers, in particular, responded in a mature manner. They did not react with any violent outburst even though they were shocked by the destruction of the Sufi shrine. Thus, they sabotaged the religious fanatics ferocious designs to fan the fire of communal disturbance and resultant destabilisation in Jammu and Kashmir. But later, separatist ideologies thrived in the fanatic religious indoctrination catching the imagination of the gullible Kashmiri youth, students and children with impressionable minds. Pakistani jihadist ideologues preached the narrative of political Islamism which disassociated the Kashmiri Muslims from their local harmonious practices and syncretic culture. They emboldened the separatist leaders and strengthened their political appeals among the gullible Kashmiri youths. The above-mentioned research study held by Georgetown University also underpins this point: "Just as the Pakistani government supported religious militants in Afghanistan to further its own interests, it has pursued a similar strategy in Kashmir. Jihadist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed were a useful tool for the Pakistani government: they effectively challenged Indian control of Kashmir, provoked harsh repressive measures from the Indian military, and allowed the regular Pakistani military to gain distance from frontline hostilities." Now, the most precarious thing that the religious zealots seem to have spread in the valley is the narrative of victimhood and the psyche of retaliation among the angry Kashmiri youths. Consequently, todays generation in Kashmir is going haywire, protesting, hitting the streets, injuring and killing the police personnel and getting themselves injured and killed and thus shaking the state administration, day in and day out. Most deplorably, a few misguided youths are waving the Islamic State flags and chanting pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans in valley. Thus, things have turned the worst. In this grim situation, while the Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti appears to be helpless, the army takes a fresh pledge to fight the militants. A top commander is reported to have said that "the army will have to kill militants and will do so but there is no intent to harm civilians". But the question is: how can the army fight the ideological indoctrination in the valley through the military crackdowns? The militants have been waging their 'battle of faith' on the social media and messaging apps, circulating the provocative videos and fabricated texts. Recently, the Chief Minister Mufti has expressed concern over the videos of militants being circulated on the social media, which result into the growing militancy in the Valley. In her meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she said that social media, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp have been widely used to create more and more stone pelters in the valley, as reported in the Urdu daily Inquilab on 25 April. An editorial in the leading Urdu newspaper in the valley, Kashmir Uzma noted that certain WhatsApp groups based in Kashmir have whipped up the provocative passions in the entire Indian Muslim community. Clearly, this situation compelled the Jammu and Kashmir government to order the suspension of internet services in the valley for a period of one month or till further orders, as Firstpost reported. However, the close observers of Kashmir do not view these oft-repeated and run-of-the-mill moves as practical solution to the valleys grim situation. Neither military crackdowns nor suspension of internet services can take Kashmir out of the deepening ideological crisis. In fact, the current state of affairs in the valley is symptomatic of the same ideological stimulus which was behind the creation of Pakistan in pursuit of the Islamic system of governance. It is patently clear that azaadi (freedom) in Kashmir is no longer a geopolitical issue. It has become a pan-Islamist mission for the whole new generation of the separatist flag bearers. They have succumbed to the exclusivist Islamist slogan: "Yahan kya chalega, nizam-e-mustafa" (only Islamic Sharia will rule in the Kashmir valley). This slogan has been vociferously raised in various parts of Kashmir. It was being raised even on the eve of the Independence Day, by a sloganeering bout at the Srinagar airport, as a reported in The Times of India on 15 August 2016. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw a sharp contrast between the stone pelters and the hardworking stone-cutters in Kashmir. Addressing a public rally at Udhampur after inaugurating India's longest road tunnel at Nashiri, Modi said, according to Kashmir Observer: "You have two paths to choose from which will decide your future: Tourism and terrorism" .... "The bloodshed has not benefited anyone after 40 years. But if tourism had been promoted in these 40 years, Kashmir would have been number one tourist destination in the world." https://kashmirobserver.net/2017/local-news/modi-kashmiri-youth-choose-between-tourism-terrorism-16237 While Modis silence over what he feels about the common sufferers of the daily bloodshed in Kashmir is deafening, his appeal to the Kashmiri youth to choose between tourism and terrorism ignited hope for many Muslim thinkers. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, a noted Islamic scholar known for his peace activism in the valley, took the PMs piece of suggestion as applicable to the entire country, not only to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. He commented on this in his article for Times of India: "Indias Muslims often speak out against discrimination, but this movement of theirs has not yielded even one person of the likes of A P J Abdul Kalam. Similarly, Dalit leaders have initiated a movement for putting an end to discrimination against Dalits, yet they have not produced even one person of the stature of B R Ambedkar. These facts are a wake-up call to rethink our position. Now it is time for all communities to centre their activities on availing of the numerous opportunities open to them rather than on voicing grievances." Modi has also invoked the former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his vow to take Kashmir to the new heights of development by follow the three principles: 'insaniyat' (humanity), Kashmiriyat (pluralistic culture) and 'jamuriyat' (democracy). But one wonders if all these tall claims will remain hollow and a sheer rhetoric. Merely casting spell through speeches will not work for the Kashmirs painful problems. The Modi government will have to sincerely adopt Atal Bihari Vajpayees policy of dialogue in the truest sense. After all, the mainstream Kashmiris, from Jammu to Kargil and Leh to Ladakh, are historically imbued in the Indian pluralistic and democratic ethos. While the Kashmiri youth choose between terrorism and tourism, the governments job is to address their ideological predicament. This may be too gigantic a task to be achieved, but it should be given paramount importance. Merely making plans to create education and employment opportunities for the Kashmiri youths will not hamper the ideological onslaught on them. A coherent and consistent programme of deradicalisation needs to be scaled up with the cooperation of the moderate Islamic thinkers in restoring peace and religious pluralism in Kashmir. Mosques and religious seminaries of the valley have to be approached with the progressive Islamic literature. In this direction, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has been working for many years from the late 1960s onwards. In his writings, Maulana preaches that the violent extremism of Islamist outfits in the valley has no legitimacy in Islamic jurisprudence. He expounds that guerrilla war, engaged in by non-state actors such as the present-day terrorist groups, is brazenly un-Islamic. In his Urdu book Subh-e-Kashmir ('Dawn Over Kashmir'), Maulana writes: "Proxy wars, such as the war being pursued by Pakistan-backed terror groups in Kashmir are also forbidden in Islam." He calls for "neo-Gandhism", a technique based on education and non-militancy which he has conceived in his writings meant for the Kashmiri readers. This writer inquired about his experience in de-radicalising the valleys misguided youths. In response, Maulana's daughter, Farida Khanam, a professor in Islamic studies, told Firstpost that the progressive literature has been distributed on a large scale, both in the valley and Jammu. "Many Kashmiris who earlier supported militancy due to the twisted beliefs, were convinced that they were following the right path of Islam. So they were laying down their life out of conviction. But after our literature was distributed to them, their religious conviction in militancy has got lessened. That is why the militants are involving children now because the elders are increasingly taking cognisance of this futile exercise," she said. "In some areas in the valley, the literature has been distributed on a larger scale. When I went to those places some years ago, many people said: "maulana ne hamari jan bachai hai" (Maulana has rescued our life)," Khanam said. The author is a scholar of classical Islamic studies, cultural analyst and researcher in media and communication studies. He tweets at @GRDehlvi and can be contacted at grdehlavi@gmail.com Militants on Thursday attacked an army camp in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir. An army captain and two soldiers were killed in the attack. The army officer killed was identified as Captain Ayush, official sources told PTI. It was earlier incorrectly reported on television that five army personnel had been killed in the attack. Officials said five other soldiers were also injured in the attack. The injured soldiers were airlifted to Army's 92 base hospital in Srinagar for treatment. According to a report in the IANS, the assault on the army camp, which is 120 kilometres from Srinagar, was a fidayeen or a suicide attack. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the Line of Control (LoC) (at) around 4.30 am," Defence Ministry Spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. Militants, suspected to be of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad, stormed the battalion camp which is in-charge of road opening duties on the crucial roads in this area. A hunt is on to ascertain if any militant sneaked into the camp under the cover of darkness. According to CNN-News18, the terrorists were using three AK-47s, two GPS devices and one mobile phone. A Chinese pistol and a grenade launcher were also found at the site, according to CNN-News18. The combing operations were later interrupted as locals pelted stones at Indian Army personnel at the site, reported CNN-News18. Reports also said that Home Minister Rajnath Singh will chair a meeting on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and top officials from the home ministry will be present at the meeting. PTI said that separatist leader Asiya Andrabi has also been arrested in the state. This attack comes just days after the central government said it is extending all support for tackling the terror menace and development to the Kashmir government, which should take all steps to counter terror and separatist activities. "I don't want to make any comments and complicate the situation. Jammu and Kashmir government has to take all the steps to effectively counter all the terrorist and separatist activities and also anti-national activities inspired by our neighbour," Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu had told reporters in New Delhi. The minister was responding to a query over Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday and whether the state government was doing enough to counter terrorism. Naidu said the Union government is extending all support to the state both for development as well as for tackling the terrorist menace. Kashmir is in the grip of violence since the April 9 bypoll for the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency. The security forces are under intense pressure as they are faced with almost daily protests and stone-pelting. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday expressed concern over the attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday morning, and said such attacks must be met with strategic and decisive action. "Repeated terrorist attacks, especially on army camps, is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic and decisive action," Gandhi tweeted. "My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack," he added. Three soldiers and two suicide attackers were killed on Thursday in a 'fidayeen' attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. Seven other soldiers were injured in the assault. The dead included 26-year-old captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik BV Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment, Defence Ministry sources said. Reports said two of the injured soldiers were in critical condition. Army officials in Delhi said the militants cut through the two-layered barbed wire fencing of the firing range of the camp, after which they lobbed hand grenades and fired indiscriminately. Shimla: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked the people of Himachal Pradesh to vote for change like in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi as the hill state was looking for an honest era. "Waqt badal chuka hai. Ab UP, Uttarakhand ki hawa Himachal mein aa rahi hai aur Delhi ki taza-taza hawa bhi to aa rahi hai (Times have changed. Now the winds of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand are entering Himachal Pradesh and the fresh winds from Delhi are also coming this way," he said at a public rally in Shimla. "Himachal is looking for an honest era," he said, in an indirect appeal to vote out the present Congress government in the coming elections slated in November. Without naming Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who is facing probe in connection with a money laundering case, the Prime Minister said: "One Chief Minister is spending much of his time with advocates. How he will work for the people. "And you people know his name." Before addressing the rally, Modi flagged off the first regional flight under the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN)' scheme between Shimla and Delhi from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2,196 metre above sea-level and some 22 km from Shimla. Calling the hill state 'dev bhoomi' or abode of gods as well as 'veer bhoomi' or abode of warriors, he said the state has enormous tourism potential. "The central government is giving impetus to infrastructure. Be it roads, railways or airways, we want this region to grow. Today airways has got a big boost in Himachal Pradesh. "I urge everyone to undertake less cash and encourage more digital transactions. BHIM app can transform the way we transact," he said. "Tier-II and Tier-III cities are becoming growth engines. Today airways have got a big boost in Himachal Pradesh." Donning a maroon Himachal cap with dry flowers atop, Modi, who flanked by two-time former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, said the fruit growers of this state would be immensely benefited with the government asking the multinational beverage companies to mix fruit juice in the soft drinks. "Our sole aim is farmer welfare. Our government has brought the most comprehensive Fasal Bima Yojana for farmers," he said. Modi also said the government would continue to undertake steps to curb corruption. "We will continue taking steps to curb corruption. Those who have looted the poor will not be spared." In his 40-minute address in Hindi, Modi also recalled his association with Shimla, recalling his early years spent in Shimla, especially at the Indian Coffee House on The Mall with his journalist friends. "You might be surprised to know that in those days I had never paid from my pocket for a cup of coffee. My journalist friends used to pay for my coffee," he said. Page Content Statement by the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Markku Markkula, on the outcome of General Affairs Council (GAC) held on 25 April, Luxembourg. As the EU's assembly of regional and local political representatives we are pleased to see that EU ministers made clear commitments in favour of cohesion policy as an investment lifeline for many regions and cities. If implemented effectively and in synergy with other public and private funding, this investment will contribute to achieving economic, social and territorial cohesion. It will continue to spark innovation, create jobs and prosperity, support social integration and tackle regional disparities. More importantly, it directly benefits citizens' lives showing that the EU does matter. The future of Europe now needs a stronger, simpler and more effective cohesion policy. Local and regional authorities know how cohesion funds can best serve their communities so their role must be strengthened to make this cornerstone of EU policy fit for the future. For European regions and cities the conclusions by the General Affairs Council is therefore a concrete commitment that the forthcoming discussions on the EU budget post 2020 will take into account the crucial role of cohesion policy. This was the political message we shared in an open letter on cohesion policy addressed to the Maltese EU Presidency and shared with all 28 Ministers. Led by Michael Schneider (EPP/DE), the European Committee of the Regions will adopt its opinion during our plenary on 11-12 May. This is part of our roadmap on cohesion policy during the discussions on the current and future EU budget. We fully support statement made by Ian Borg, Parliamentary Secretary for EU funds of Malta, who stressed the need for the EU to step-up its efforts to increase visibility of the positive impact of cohesion policy which is why it is a core theme in our communication with citizens . Note for the editor The European Committee of the Regions will be the first EU institution to adopt a formal position on the future of the EU's cohesion policy during its plenary on 11 and 12 May . Local and regional leaders from all across Europe will be joined by the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, the European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen and EU Budget Commissioner Gunther Oettinger. The Committee has also stepped-up its work to increase the visibility of cohesion policy including through the organisation of a series of open debates with citizens in towns, cities and regions . Open letter by President Markkula to the Maltese EU Presidency on cohesion policy The Future of Cohesion Policy beyond 2020 - CoR draft opinion, rapporteur Michael Schneider (EPP/DE), State Secretary, Representative of the Land of Saxony-Anhalt to the Federal Government. Contact: Pierluigi Boda Tel: +32 2 282 2461 Mobile: +32 473 85 17 43 pierluigi.boda@cor.europa.eu Ahmedabad: The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) has apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized their four boats off the Gujarat coast, according to an official of the National Fishworkers' Forum. The fishermen had sailed from Porbandar a few days ago and were apprehended by the PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line (IMBL), Forum secretary Manish Lodhari told PTI. "We have learnt that at least 23 fishermen on four boats were apprehended by the PMSA near Jakhau and they were being taken to Karachi," Lodhari said. Porbandar-based National Fishworkers' Forum (NFF) is the only national federation of small and traditional fishworkers unions in India. On 9 April, four PMSA commandos had drowned while two others were saved by Indian fishermen after a boat of the Pakistani agency capsized near the IMBL while allegedly trying to capture around 40 fishermen on seven boats in Indian waters. The PMSA had later released the captured fishermen. Sadhvi Pragya Thakur Singh, one of the prime accused in the Malegaon blasts case, addressed the media in Bhopal on Thursday for the first time after getting bail two days back. "I have struggled to fight against Congress' conspiracy for nine long years. I am glad the court ensured justice even if it is after nine years and has helped me to avail treatment for my ailment. The media and society at large have been unfair to me to the extent of calling me a terrorist but I understand that they were influenced by Congress' conspiracy," Sadhvi said, according to Times Now. She also paid tribute to all the victims of terror attacks. I am a victim of Congress's conspiracy, nine years of injustice: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur after she was released on bail. pic.twitter.com/8bnUWl2R0l ANI (@ANI_news) April 27, 2017 Sadhvi Pragya Thakur addresses press conference in Bhopal, begins by paying tribute to CRPF jawans killed in Sukma https://t.co/JQJlKYWHWM pic.twitter.com/QzjPwQaC7k ABP News (@abpnewstv) April 27, 2017 "Now, we have a government that at least tries for justice. Previously, my case was pending in court for many years until the ruling party took note of it," she added. According to India Today, the saffron-clad Sadhvi got bail from the Bombay High Court after spending nine years in jail though she was moved to a Madhya Pradesh hospital recently for cancer treatment. Co-accused Lt Colonel Shrikant Purohit, however, did not get relief. The two moved the HC after a trial court rejected their bail applications last year. Six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon town of Nashik district, about 270 km from here, on 29 September, 2008. Sadhvi Pragya, 44 , was arrested in October that year and Purohit, 44 , the next month and both were charged for plotting the blasts as part of what the prosecution said a plan by Hindu Right-wing group Abhinav Bharat. Nine others were also arrested and are behind bars. With inputs from PTI Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday arrested separatist leader Asiya Andrabi under the Public Safety Act. She was arrested in the morning from her residence, sources said. She is alleged to be the main separatist leader who incites women in the valley to pelt stones at security forces and disrupt normal life. The Jammu and Kashmir government has directed service providers in the Valley to block 22 websites, including popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to contain the rising student unrest. Firstpost had reported exclusively about the state government's plans of banning Facebook and WhatsApp on 18 April, purportedly to stop videos and pictures showing security forces allegedly committing atrocities from going viral. Sources have said that chief minister Mehbooba Mufti was advised to block social media by the security agencies, including the Indian Army, in a unified command meeting that took place on Tuesday. The meeting was called to discuss rising violence and street protests that have rocked the Valley. The ban on the social networks will be implemented for a period of one month, or until further orders. In an order issued by the state's home department headed by Mehbooba Mufti herself, all internet service providers have been asked to immediately suspend social networking sites in the Kashmir Valley for a period of one month or till further orders. As per the directive, the sites that will be suspended include Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, QQ, WeChat, Ozone, Tumblr, Google+, Baidu, Skype, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Pinterest, Telegram, Reditt, Snapfish, YouTube (Upload), Vine, Xanga and Flickr. The state government, which invoked Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, with Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Rules, 2007, said that it has been observed that some elements are transmitting objectionable content to spread "disaffection" among the public at large, to create sentiment against the state administration and the security forces with a view to inciting them to commit various offences at a large scale, cause damage to life and property, and disturb peace and tranquility. "It was also observed during law and order disturbances of 2016 in the Kashmir Valley that anti-national and subversive elements, inter-alia, extensively misused social media sites and instant messaging services for vitiating peace and instigating violence, which caused large scale damage to life and property," the order said. Internet services in the Valley have been often cut to stop the mobilisation of people and spreading of rumours, and authorities have snapped the services 28 times over the past five years. In 2016, the government had blocked internet signal for five months. "This is as bad as North Korea," Anjum Ahmad, a resident of Srinagar, wrote on her Facebook wall before it stopped working late on Wednesday evening. The decision to block social networking sites has come under sharp criticism from every section of the society. Everyday Kashmiri citizens, students, and the Valley's business community have all reacted starkly to the ban, saying they've been left in the lurch because of this. Muzaffar Sadiq, owner of a century-old handicraft shop, The Suffering Moses, on the Bund in Srinagar, told Firstpost that he would not only incur financial losses but also suffer a barrier that would come up between him and his customers. "After losses due to last year's uprising, we were hoping for good business this year. A few days ago, we started utilising Facebook and WhatsApp for business promotion, to connect with customers in Europe and North America, but this social media ban will affect us heavily," Sadiq told Firstpost outside his showroom. A few metres from his shop, Mujtaba Rizvi, artist and owner of a popular cafe Goodfellas, said the internet is a major communication tool for promoting local businesses. The ban, he said, would impact the economy which was already suffering because of last year's attack. He said the business community was slowly recovering, but banning mobile internet and social media will undo the recovery. "It is a communication problem, an economic problem, and a problem of freedom of expression. I don't think this is justified, nor will it do any good," Rizvi, a graduate from London's Goldsmith College, who returned to open a cafe in Srinagar, said. "We have seen the internet being banned many times in the past as well, but that hasn't influenced the situation in Kashmir. Protests happen, people manage to somehow spread the message, and they congregate on the streets, so I don't know how this ban on social media will help the government," he added. Students, who have been spearheading ongoing protests against the state government, say the ban is an attack on freedom of speech, which has been a causality since the conflict began in the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. "It's better if someone wants to vent anger on Facebook instead of throwing stones on the streets," Suhail Ahmad Khan, a student of SP College in Srinagar, said. "The government has an internet phobia. Every time something happens in Kashmir, it quickly bans internet, which worsens things on the ground." Former chief minister and sitting MP from Srinagar constituency, Farooq Abdullah, said the ban will "play havoc" with the state's economy. Especially new start-ups in the e-commerce sector that depend primarily on internet accessibility and penetration will be impacted by the ban, he said. "These are the same individuals who used to talk about providing all possible digital platforms and communication opportunities to the youth to help them in the pursuit of their career and entrepreneurial aspirations. But this government has resorted to tactics that are regressive, and are making it hard for our young businessmen and students to achieve their goals," Abdullah said. This is the first time the state government has passed orders to curb a wave of protests against recent clashes between forces and students in a college in south Kashmir and other parts of the Valley. "The government may have their own interests in banning the internet, but at the ground level, we are suffering. You are banning social media now, but how will you keep in touch with friends and family? They are throwing us back into the Stone Age for our political belies," Khan added. Editor's note: Firstpost will cover various aspects of the near-calamitous situation in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This is the sixth article from a nine-part series of ground reports on the ongoing water crisis in south India. In this piece, the author writes about how the shortage of water is pushing people from rural Karnataka towards towns and cities for work. Ratnavva Rathod, around 60 years old, dressed in her traditional Lambani attire at her home in Bairapur tanda (hamlet) of Gajendragad taluk, Gadag district is feeling distressed and lonely. Five members of my family including my husband and children migrated to Maharashtra for work a few months back since they dont have any work in our village, she said. The condition is terrible in many tandas as we dont have proper drinking water, no jobs and have to trek at least 3-4 kilometres to fetch a pot of water, she said. Rathods plight is not uncommon in these parts of Karnataka. Another woman in Bairapur said that she is taking care of her two grandchildren at home while their parents have migrated to Miraj in search of work. I went to Ichalkaranji to work in a bamboo unit as a daily wage labourer and I returned to my tanda to attend a village fair. I will migrate to Maharashtra next week with my wife and children. There is no point in staying in villages, said another villager indicating the miseries of rural life in drought-hit Karnataka. Houses in tandas such as Bairapur, Nagarashikoppa, Nellur, Sarjapur, Vageri, Mataraggi, Amargatti, Nakalkacchi are locked as most of the families have left for Chikamagaluru, Miraj, Pune, Mangaluru, Bengaluru and other cities in search of jobs. Usually, such migration takes place in the months of August and September, but severe drought has forced them to leave their tandas in January itself. Migration of villagers is a common phenomenon in the districts of north Karnataka. This year though, the situation has aggravated due to severe drought conditions. Drinking water shortage and not lack of work is forcing people to desert their villages and head to towns and cities, where water is more easily available. While people from the six districts of the Hyderabad-Karnataka region are migrating to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune, those from the six districts of the Mumbai-Karnataka region are migrating to Goa, Kolhapur, Ichalkaranji, Pune and Mumbai. Gajendragad in Gadag district is only the tip of the iceberg. Most villages which are habitats of the Lambani community are either deserted or only the aged remain. Those who remain allege that the state government has failed to take up works under MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) to help them stay back. Officials In Denial Officials of the Karnataka Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) Department though deny that such migrations are taking place. MV Challageri, Ron taluk executive officer claimed that he had not come across any case of migration from tandas. I will visit at least two to three tandas soon to review the situation. If tanda people have migrated, then, I will definitely create job opportunities for tanda people under MGNREGS. We have already created several job facilities under this scheme in several villages, he told Firstpost. But the Ganjendragad bus stand is evidence enough. It teems with villagers awaiting buses for their journey to Goa and Mangaluru. Hundreds of people from various villages of Gajendragad, Ron and Gadag taluk are migrating. Almost all buses bound for Mangaluru, even from Raichur, Sindhanur, Kustagi, Ron, Kalaburgi, which pass through Gajendragad, are packed with people migrating to cities. ML Patil, a bus conductor on the Gajendragad-Panaji route said that every day there is a rush of people heading to Goa. Earlier it was just 20-25 people daily but now as many as 50-60 people are migrating from here, he observed. Almost all Mangaluru-bound buses are full and we are operating more than 16 buses. In addition to this, private buses are also doing business on this score, concurred T Basavaraj, conductor of a Mangaluru-bound bus. Water crisis is so severe that it has even taken off daily bathing from our list of daily chores. Many of us, particularly menfolk skip daily bathing due to water shortage and in summer, bathing everyday is a luxury, said Shantkumar, a youth working in the fields of Ron town. It has become tough to meet the drinking water demands of livestock, particularly bullocks, which they have not sent to cattle camps as they are needed to till the lands on a daily basis. Water shortage has badly affected the health of lactating mothers and newborn babies who need daily bath after oil massage, he added. All the borewells dug by the RDPR department in many villages in the region have either gone dry due to depletion of water table or not yielded any water. Three to four tankers daily sent by the department, along with another one or two tankers of Filtered water supplied by an NGO to each of the bigger village in Gadag district, the native town of RDPR minister HK Patil, have only slightly eased the situation, say villagers. But it is not at all enough to meet our daily requirements, said Ramappa, a villager in Gadag taluk. Kalaburagi zilla parishad CEO and deputy commissioner in-charge of the Zilla Parishad Hipshiba Rani Korlapati told Firstpost that as far as her district is concerned, drinking water situation is being managed and all measures have been taken to supply water to villages where water sources have either dried up or become scarce. With regard to migration, there may be instances of people migrating to bigger cities and towns in search of work, but district administration has ensured that there is no shortage of work in villages by making it compulsory for the gram panchayats to take up at least one community work in a week or month to provide work to people under MGNREGS, she said. She also added that at present there is no shortage of funds with the district administration to meet the drinking water or work demand of the people. Part 1: Five states face severe water crisis made worse by the onset of summer Part 2: Chennai slum dwellers forced to beg for water, authorities remain helpless Part 3: Parched lands in Nagapattinam lead to distress migration Part 4: Water crisis in Tamil Nadu is a manifestation of climate change, say experts Part 5: As Karnataka reels under severe water crisis, residents brace unofficial rationing New Delhi: The CRPF has decided to enhance the number of lethal counter-insurgency operations in the worst Naxal hit south Bastar region of Chhattisgarh after its 37 men were killed in recent Naxal attacks in the Sukma district. Acting Director General (DG) of the CRPF, Sudeep Lakhtakia said the ambush has "naturally called for the revision of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)" in these areas. He said the force has decided to undertake these new measures as it will continue to secure the road construction work that helps to bring development to these remote areas of central India. "We have decided to change the strategy. We have learnt some lessons. While I cannot go into the details, I can tell you that we will undertake re-deployment of our forces and will also enhance the quantity and quality of special counter-insurgency operations," the DG told PTI, a day after he visited the ambush site in Sukma's Burkapal. The force will have to ensure that the enemy does not attempt any surprises on it. "We track and engage them well before," he said. So, while half of the personnel will do road construction security and other similar tasks, the other half will do special counter-insurgency operations, the acting DG said. The director general of the CRPF, which has deployed a total of 28 battalions in Chhattisgarh with ten being only in the Bastar region, said the new action plan of the force will be to effectively dominate the area. A regular Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) battalion comprises of about 1,000 personnel. Lakhtakia, however, said in such operations where the troops have to be out in open for long and the terrain is treacherous, the SOPs and strategies have to be "revised as and when required" and that is what they were doing. He said a preliminary analysis of the ambush spot, where 25 men were killed on April 24, indicates that four sections of the CRPF men were separated by a distance of about 600-750 metres with bullets flying around. "The Naxals were tracking the troops... They attacked the men after deciding the time and place of the attack. They used human shields of local villagers," the DG said, adding it apparently the personnel were having their lunch when the first assault took place. "The sequence of the events will take some time to construct... An inquiry is already in progress and that will tell us more," he said. Establishing if any violation of SOPs took place or any other lapses occurred will only come forth after the inquiry completes, he said. Lakhtakia said the reports of possible mutilation of bodies of some jawans is yet to be ascertained. Meanwhile, senior officials engaged in anti-Naxal operations said some special operations, under the command of the elite jungle warfare unit of the CRPF CoBRA will soon be launched in the south Bastar region including Sukma, Dantewada, Kondagaon, Bijapur and Jagdalpur areas. The troops will be serviced with a dedicated air support of at least four choppers based in the vicinity of these areas and a fleet of three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs undertake long haul sorties from their base in Bhilai in the state over the forests of Bastar and around the southern tip of the state that borders Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. While the ambush on 24 April had claimed 25 lives of the CRPF, the one on March 11 in the same district near Bheji had killed 12 CRPF men, apart from the Naxals looting a huge cache of arms, ammunition and communication gadgets from the slain men. Early this week, around 100 jawans who were protecting the road construction workers in Sukma district, in the red corridor in Chattisgarh, found themselves surrounded by 300 Naxals including women cadres spraying bullets at them leading to the death of 25 paramilitary troopers. Just a few weeks back, 12 CRPF jawans were killed in another ambush since 2011 when 76 CRPF jawans were killed by the Naxals. In the last 50 years, since the inception of the Naxal movement, India has witnessed several stories of their barbarianism and unjustified violence which can put the characters of Games of Throne to shame. Just to illustrate, picture this. In May 2013, Naxals killed 27 Congress leaders in one of the most barbarous attacks in the modern history of humanity, in Darbha valley of Sukma district in the Red Corridor. Many top Congress leaders including former minister and Salwa Judum founder and an aggressive anti-Naxal activist, Mahendra Karma, Congress chief, Nand Kumar Patel, Vidya Charan Shukla, a veteran Congress leader, prominent woman tribal leader Phulo Devi Netam were travelling through thick jungles of Darbha Valley in a convoy of 25 vehicles when they found the road blocked by trees, felled by Naxals. When the cars stopped, the Naxals triggered an IED blast damaging a vehicle completely while creating a five-meter crater on the ground. In a panic to escape, many vehicles of the convoy collided with each other. The Maoists who had positioned themselves on nearby hilltops soon started firing on the pinned down convoy and leter mercilessly killed Karma, Patel and fatally injured Shukla among others. The veteran Congress leader succumbed to his injuries days later. A four-page statement was issued by the Naxals, taking full responsibility for the attack and justified it as the punishment for the Salwa Judum founder. I remember an incident narrated by IG, Bastar SRP Kalluri. In one of the cruelest displays of barbarism, Naxals beat up a four-month-old child to death, with rods and sticks, and then buried the body in front of the baby's mother in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh. This was a revenge killing as the childs father Tati Aayatu, along with his wife, daughter and kid, who were kidnapped by the Naxals, managed to escape. The Naxals were furious and when they found Tati and instead of taking revenge with him they chose to snatch the four-month-old child from the mothers lap and threw him on the ground and started hitting him until his head, chest and gut broke open. They forced the hapless parents to watch the child being smashed in front of them. What was the fault of those CRPF jawans who lost their lives on Monday? Their fault was that they were protecting the 'Right To Development' and 'Right to Life' of tribals in Bastar. In my recent visit to Bastar, a representative of Citizens for Human Rights of Security Forces, told me that the Naxals, who are projected as Robin Hoods by urban intellectuals despite the fact that the Naxals operate to stall development of the tribals. They do not let the government agencies construct roads, schools and hospitals and thats why they attack the security forces who do both developmental and military operations simultaneously. During Salwa Judum, when the tribals raised counter against Naxals, Naxals cut out motorabale roads, demolished bridges and secured isolated area for themselves by ensuring that there is no road connectivity to their safe zones. Using this age-old war tactic, they have isolated themselves from the mainstream of communication. Similarly, they do not want children of tribals to go to school as they do not get recruitment for their dalams (smallest unit of Naxal Armed cadre) if the Adivasi children get empowered. Naxals burn equipment of road contractors and also threaten labourers, who run away fearing their lives, hence stalling or delaying the road construction at most of the locations as no contractors are ready to work in these areas despite double remuneration. Ironically, there many in the mainstream in the form of intellectuals and activists who don't allow this pathetic reality of Bastar to come out. Since 2014, the new government at the Centre has pushed the development work in this area, considering it as the best remedy to this malaise, focussing on the connectivity of roads and mobile towers for communication. This approach of the government has made the Naxals feel the heat. The Injiram-Bhejji Road (where 12 jawans were martyred on 11 March 2017), the Doranapal-Jagargonda Road (where the ambush happened on Monday) are key to access the deep Naxal territory. The villagers from interior areas, who can be accessed only through these routes, are literally captives of Naxals. They cannot even go to the market or avail any government facility without the permission of the Naxals. The Naxals fear that television, mobile phones and roads will open up the Adivasis to the world and their false narrative will get exposed. "These two roads, once constructed, will help the locals, solve their problems of basic needs such as education, medical facilities, food etc. Similarly, these two axes will also strengthen the position of security forces by enabling them access to Naxal strongholds. The construction of these roads and many such roads in Bijapur district is a nightmare for the Naxals. The Naxals are counting their last days as this development is also going to affect their recruitment," a senior social worker informs me. Interestingly, not a single human rights activist, including National Human Rights Commission which even with its suo motu powers, does take cognisance of such cases where the Adivasis' 'Right to Development is grossly violated. CRPF jawans provide protection to the contractors' equipment, labourers and also ensure that IEDs on these roads are diffused so that the contractors can work smoothly. The road opening party does this exercise every day for more than 12 hours. No development can happen in this area without the protection from security forces. Have you ever thought why is that the people who control the Naxal narrative like some media organisations and activists never speak about security forces' Right to Life? Why is it that extreme intellectuals like Nandini Sunder and Arundhati Roy are lauded as champions of Adivasis cause? Because they are the alleged Front Organisers of the Naxal movement, playing to the script which dreams of climaxing with overthrowing the democratic state with an armed struggle by 2025. No wonder, since the cruel killing of 25 jawans, some are trying hard to change the narrative in the favour of the Maoists. But this time they are not succeeding like they did in earlier days. The public mood is different this time. Its going to be an interesting battle of nerves and tactics from all sides, but it will cost us many more innocent lives if we do not expose the sinister politics and barbarian tactics of the Naxals and their supporters. We lost 25 brave hearts again protecting 'Right to Development' and 'Right to Life' of the Adivasis. Let us bow to the spirit of security forces, who sacrificed their own human rights to protect human rights of others. This nation owes a lot to these unsung heroes in uniform. The administrations, both at the Centre and state, have come under a lot of flak following the Maoist ambush on CRPF's 75th battalion in Chattisgarh's Sukma district on Monday that left 26 jawans martyred and a nation outraged. When it comes to left-wing violence, the template reaction to a tragedy of such magnitude has always been finding fault with the government for the bloodshed. This is not to say that the government has not been lax or complacent in its duties or to absolve the lack of professionalism in our security forces. Reports have emerged how the CRPF has been functioning without a chief for the last two months. There have also been reports, contested by the CRPF, that paramilitary jawans have deviated from their standard operating procedure when they came under attack in Burkapal. Experts in the field such as Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain have long called for better inter-forces coordination in sharing intelligence and expertise by surmounting ego barriers. In the fight against Maoist insurgency, the CRPF is always at a disadvantage due to its lack of terrain knowledge. The maps that cops and paramilitary jawans use are outdated. The left-wing terrorists, who have a far better knowledge of the forest routes and superior local intelligence, can exploit these to create mayhem of the kind we have repeatedly experienced in Sukma. In his piece for Swarajyamag, Hasnain, former GOC of Indias Srinagar based 15 Corps, writes: "Unfortunately, in India, inter-force lesson learning is a rarity due to the king-sized egos of senior officers. I never hesitate to state that the BSF and sometimes the Special Operations Group of the Jammu and Kashmir Police have taught me lessons I could never learn elsewhere. It is the disdain for each other's effectiveness that acts as the obstacle towards learning, and it goes right up to the level of ministries." However, to say that the CRPF got ambushed just because it was functioning without a chief is simplistic and misleading. Sure, there are procedural and institutional lacunae but the contention here is that we are losing the war against left-wing extremism due to lack of political will. This a party-agnostic condition cutting across all political divide. In this, the Narendra Modi government has been as guilty as the previous Manmohan Singh government. To tackle Maoist insurgency, the first step is to remove the mental cobwebs. The government must admit that it is at war against some of its own citizens. Whether or not the State is responsible for this war is a moot question. The need of the hour is to recognise the threat. This is a simple, yet crucial, step because often in the past Indian State has suffered from a denial when it comes to acknowledging the threat of home-grown, left-wing extremism. For any government, tackling threats posed by external sources is perhaps easier. The moral force in such a war lies firmly with the State. It is easier to justify neutralising of Pakistan-sponsored terror modules than it is to justify a surgical strike against Maoists because the latter carries a heavy moral burden. It is also galling for the government to admit that it has no writ over a large swathe of its own citizens. It is this moral burden that Maoist sympathisers in India's intellectual establishment has exploited to the hilt. While the left-wing extremists, for decades, have made wanton, indiscriminate violence their calling card, kept some of India's poorest subjugated by violence, denied them fruits of socio-economic advancement and thrown a challenge at the state's writ, India's Left-leaning intelligentsia a tightly-controlled, entrenched, elitist-clique with outsized influence over policymaking and narrative-building have used as beating stick a moral opprobrium that a government "can't go to war against its own citizens." For any government, this moral opprobrium is a red zone because governments in democracies function on popular sanction. A democratic state must not only be guided by a strict ethical code in its actions, it must also be seen to be ethical. Hence, the fight against left-wing extremism becomes difficult and assumes asymmetric proportions. It hands Maoists a decisive advantage. While the terrorists may go on killing people, waging a war against the state using any tools at disposal, the State must respond with caution and keep in mind all rights violations in launching counter-insurgency operations. This is a self-defeating paradigm for any government and an unfair hand for security forces. Little wonder that the Indian State has been bleeding for decades while operating under this framework. To begin with, this perverse paradigm must be challenged. It has been thrust upon the State by a left-liberal ecosystem that forms the first and the most important front of left-wing terror. It is in the interest of these leftist doctrinaires embedded among India's academia, media and civil society to perpetuate a state of perennial tension within the confines of our border that may fuel civil war and create the perfect modus operandi for their actions. This elitist clique which has so far dominated all policy-making, has been successful in addressing the fault lines of our civil society and keeping the embers of insurgency burning that threatens India's sovereignty and national integrity. It is here that the NDA government must deviate from earlier regimes and launch, if needed, a limited military operation against left-wing terror operatives. There is simply no other way to effectively counter the threat. So far, the NDA has shown a marked lack of political will to do so. As we have seen in Kashmir, the Modi government has been too mindful of criticisms of rights violations to launch effective counter-insurgency operations. It is almost to suggest that members of Indian security forces have lesser human rights than their Maoist or Kashmiri jihadist counterparts and have even lesser right to live. Terrible pictures emerging from #Sukma site: private parts of several jawans severed. Have seen the pictures myself + Rahul Pandita (@rahulpandita) April 26, 2017 In initiating a military operation against left-wing terrorists, the government must not be swayed by criticisms from the leftist propaganda machinery. The moral opprobrium that they bring to the table is a false one because these terrorists neither recognize the sovereignty of the Indian state, nor do they abide by any rules of warfare. Even if we argue that their ambush of security forces is a part of guerilla tactic, nothing exemplifies their moral depravity clearer than their subjugation of civilian population in some of India's poorest areas whom they have forcibly kept cut off from civilisation. Violence against civilians in the hamlets along Red Corridor have increased in proportion with government's efforts to bring these places within development loop. Maoist insurgency grew in the dark decades following Independence in the forgotten and marginalized areas of India. But while that was a reactionary movement against the State's failure to recognize own citizens and its apathy in co-opting them into the civilisational sphere, in recent years that has been replaced with a desperate attempt to keep these regions segregated from the rest of the country so that these terrorists may continue their rent-seeking. If they had been driven by ideology and a moral force in their movement earlier, that has now been replaced by naked greed and immorality. The government knows this. Its own website on left-wing extremism mentions the crux of the problem. "Maoists do not want root causes like underdevelopment to be addressed in a meaningful manner since they resort to targeting school buildings, roads, railways, bridges, health infrastructure, communication facilities etc in a major way. They wish to keep the population in their areas of influence marginalised to perpetuate their outdated ideology. Consequently, the process of development has been set back by decades in many parts of the country under LWE influence." No matter what the leftist propagandists say, the government need not suffer from a moral burden in carrying out a military operation against an adversary this depraved. The Modi government enjoys unprecedented political capital that was denied to most earlier regimes. It must now show political will. Last April, I was witness to an agitation, that had been staged the classical Gandhian way for over three months. Women from both Kerala and Tamil Nadu were jointly opposing TASMAC (Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation, owned by the state government that has a monopoly over the liquor trade) shop number 2222 in Anaikatty in Coimbatore district. The shop was located a stone's throw away from the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, which made it a favourite haunt for tribal men from Kerala where partial prohibition has been in force. Over 60 percent of the shop's sales were to tipplers from Kerala. Forcing the government to shut shop wasn't easy because, with liquor sales between Rs 3 to 4 lakh everyday, it was one of the highest revenue generators in Tamil Nadu. But women on both sides of the border saw it as the villain in their life. Though shopkeepers in the market place were unhappy about a footfall drop in Anaikatty after the shop's closure, women power finally won the day. Political parties realised the disgust among women for Tamil Nadu's aggressive liquor policy where IAS officers are routinely given targets to achieve maximum sales and are under constant pressure to sell more. But though total prohibition was promised by all parties except AIADMK in the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu last year, Jayalalithaa returned to power. What she did, however, was to promise to shut shops in a phased manner. Of the 283 liquor shops in Coimbatore for instance, 16 were terminated this February. So far, 1,000 of the 6,700 shops have been shut in Tamil Nadu. But subsequent to the Supreme court ban on the sale of liquor in a shop, located less than 500 from a National Highway, the attempt by the state government to circumvent it by allowing shops to shift to residential areas has meant women in Tamil Nadu no longer have the appetite for Gandhian methods. Over the past few days, protesters have vandalised and broken liquor bottles to force the outlets to abandon their plans. And these protests aren't limited to a particular district. Though from a political point of view, it will worry the ruling party as the majority of the protests are in the western part of the state, the Kongu belt that sent 47 of the 136 AIADMK MLAs to the Tamil Nadu Assembly. On 23 April, a group of 28 people, including 17 women vandalised a newly-opened TASMAC shop in Mecheri in Salem, Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswamy's home district. For a week, they had been protesting against the move to shift location after the court order. When the shop was opened despite the peaceful agitation, they turned into vandals, damaging property worth Rs 1.24 lakh. All the protesters were arrested. This Wednesday, a larger crowd of about one thousand people brought down a TASMAC outlet in Tiruppur district. The textile hometown of Tamil Nadu had witnessed trouble on 12 April as well when a senior cop assaulted a woman protester leading to stone-pelting at police vehicles and the police resorting to lathicharge in retaliation. Protests have been reported also from Sulur in Coimbatore and Kancheerpuram and Thiruvallur near Chennai. The anger is directed at the Tamil Nadu government which clearly does not wish to give up on the Rs 26,000 crore annual revenue from TASMAC. The people are also aware that bigwigs in both the AIADMK and DMK leaders have their hands in the alcohol business which explains the desperation to let the liquor flow. The government has tried to help open the closed liquor outlets on Highways by denotifying them as municipal and corporation roads. The only relief for the protesters has come by way of a Madras High court order that has asked the government not to open the shops on Highways for the next three months. The development could not have come at a worse time for the Tamil Nadu government, already struggling on various fronts. With 30 percent of the state's revenue coming from the liquor business, closure of 3,300 of the 5,700 has meant more than 50 percent of the existing revenue has disappeared into thin air. This means the government will no longer have the funds to buy power during the peak summer season, continue with its social welfare schemes, recruit more staff and more. All this when the industrial climate and the realty sector in Tamil Nadu are hardly looking up, with the worst drought in 140 years bringing in misery to people in the countryside. But it is not as if protests did not take place earlier. Anti-substance abuse activist A Narayanan who documented about 200 protests in his petition before the court in 2013 says the difference is that the protests have become more aggressive. "Earlier since Jayalalithaa was seen as a tough chief minister who would use the police, the protests were muted. Now with no government practically in the state, the people's anger is coming to the fore,'' says Narayanan. What this will mean is that the Tamil Nadu establishment will have to tighten its belt, be frugal in its expenditure and eschew the freebie culture. In a nutshell, Tamil Nadu's finances are in deep trouble. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of political uncertainty has meant no thought has gone into how Tamil Nadu can get out of this hand to mouth existence without taking some hard decisions. The state has to urgently look at other avenues for raising revenues. With an estimated Rs 3.14 lakh crore debt by 2017-18, it cannot get more critical for Tamil Nadu. Will the protests against liquor outlets gradually turn Tamil Nadu into a partially dry state? Given the unprecedented manner in which people came out on the streets for Jallikattu and assorted issues in Chennai in January, Tamil Nadu in its re-discovered avatar is one state best not to predict. The crucial Assembly elections of five states are over and with just three months left in President Pranab Mukherjee's term in office, guessing game over who will be the next President of India is already on. With an unstoppable year, as far as elections go, the BJP and the saffron brigade is all set to name it's pick for the chief of State. The elections will be held in July this year, however, let's take a quick look at how the President of India is elected and who are the key contenders for the post. How is the President of India elected? The President of India is elected by the voting by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament, the elected members of the Legislative assemblies of the 29 states and the elected members of the legislative assemblies of the Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry. However, the values of the votes cast are all not equal and various formulae are used to ensure parity of the votes by MLAs and MPs. As of now, the electoral college comprises of 776 MPs and 4120 MLAs. The total strength of electoral college is 10,98,882 votes, wherein the halfway mark is at 5,49,442 votes. After the landslide wins in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and BJP's new found claim on Manipur and Assam, the National Democratic Alliance is short of only 20054 votes. And the gap is easily bridgeable, given the fact that various smaller parties and individual legislators have hinted at supporting BJP veterans like Sumitra Mahajan and Lal Krishna Advani as the Presidential pick. Also, a lot depends on how the political turmoil unfolds in Tamil Nadu, if O Panneerselvam is successful in reinstating himself as the state's chief minister, or at least wield considerable say in the post-merger AIADMK, the AIADMK is likely to back BJP's choice. All in all, chances are slim that a BJP nominee is defeated in the presidential elections 2017. Biju Janata Dal is also likely to extend support to BJP's presidential candidate, notwithstanding that the NDA needs support of only one of the two aforementioned regional parties. Who will be India's next president? Initial discussions within the saffron party swirled up a few names in the fray. Going by past experiences on how things work in the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, will be most likely be entrusted with the job of picking the next President. However, the BJP is spoilt for choice. Here is a look at the top names the buzz around whom is up and around. Lal Krishna Advani Advani's name first cropped up as speculations did rounds that Modi would allow the veteran leader to have a poignant exit from his longstanding career in public life, by escalalting him to the top most Constitutional post in India. Advani was not only one of the founding members of the BJP as we know it today, but is also the senior most leader in active politics with Vajpayee indisposed to shoulder any public responsibility. Besides this, one would also recall that he was the one man who stood by Modi just after the Godhra riots in 2002, when Vajpayee wanted the former to quit as Gujarat chief minister on the grounds of moral responsibility. That Advani later fell out of favours in the Modi government, and was sidelined to the margdarshak mandal is quite another matter. Surprisingly, staunch BJP opposers, such as Mamata Banarjee had also espoused Advani as the presidential pick, in case BJP decides to go with him. However, the factor that is working against him is the recent Supreme Court order to try the veteran Hindu-right wing leader for criminal conspiracy in the Babri Mosque demolition case. The court has ordered to finish the trial in a time bound manner within two months, and a president's term spans over five years. In case he gets convicted in the case, it will only mar the Modi government's image and that's too much of a risk for him to take. Another factor that works against him is his advancing age. Advani will turn 90 in November this year. Murli Manohar Joshi Another BJP stalwart, the 83-year-old leader relinquished the Varanasi seat in 2014 to make way for Modi. A well-known face in Uttar Pradesh politics, he could be rewarded for his long stint with the BJP. He also has vast administrative experience in previous BJP governments and is largely popular within the ranks of BJP and RSS alike. However, like Advani, he too is named in the Babri Mosque demolition case and that might affect his chances to enter the race. Mohan Bhagwat Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief's name entered the fray when Shiv Sena batted for his candidature in the presidential elections. The party said that since India is known as a Hindu country Bhagwat is the best choice for the president's post. And given the fact that in the last two Presidential elections, Shiv Sena voted for a Congress candidate, it will be interesting to see how the BJP reacts to it's ally's demands this time. Meanwhile, the right wing Hindu-outfit's leader has distanced himself from this race, stating that he is not interested in holding any posts. ""We close all doors before coming here. When we work in the Sangh, we don't go there (to such high posts). There are many Swayamsevaks up there and they know it well.... Even if in an impossible situation my name is nominated, we will not accept it," he said. Sumitra Mahajan The Lok Sabha Speaker's name is also in the fray, and leaders like Mamata Banerjee have announced their support for her, in case the BJP chooses her to be it's presidential candidate. The soft spoken leader is a veteran parliamentarian and enjoys a good rapport with Modi and Shah, and also the opposition parties. She could be relieved of her present responsibilities and nominated as the President of India. Sushma Swaraj One of the most popular leaders in the Modi cabinet, Swaraj is known for her efficacy and prompt responses as the Minister of External Affairs. However, recently concerns about her health has given rise to speculations that naming her as the president will be an apt way to reward her for her contribution to the party and the Modi government while also ensuring a less active role for her in public life. Swaraj only recently suffered from renal failure after which she had to undergo a surgery. Page Content The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) called on 27 April for the national governments of the 43 members of the Union of the Mediterranean to give local authorities in the Mediterranean region "a clear role in all bodies responsible for planning and managing river basin districts". The CoR, the EU's assembly for local and regional authorities, also pressed water ministers from the Union of the Mediterranean to create a "consultative body to improve the governance of water resources" in the Mediterranean. Speaking at a meeting in Malta of ministers and representatives from the Union of the Mediterranean's 28 EU and 15 non-EU members, CoR President Markku Markkula (FI/EPP) said: "Infrastructure and regulatory measures may often fall within the remit of national governments, but fundamentally local and regional authorities are responsible for managing water and climate change adaptation, access to safe drinking water and sanitation, water demand management at local level, education etc. The only solution is local. Building resilience and managing the impact of climate change which has direct consequences for the future of our water supply is at the top of the agenda for cities and regions across the world." The Committee of the Regions has had a working relationship with local and regional authorities from non-EU countries in the Mediterranean region since 2010, when it established the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) . One of its earliest results of the cooperation was a set of recommendations, produced in 2011, on local water management in the Mediterranean. "The impact of climate change and its effects on water poverty does not end at national borders," President Markkula said. "Only through using the best knowledge and cooperating, learning and listening across borders can we find sustainable long-term solutions to ensure the flow of water to our homes, businesses, industries services and communities." President Markkula also used the ministerial meeting in Malta to welcome the EU's approval, on 26 April , of an initiative aimed at developing water provision and agro-food projects in the Mediterranean region. To date, 11 EU and eight non-EU countries have agreed to pool funds and expertise for the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA) . PRIMA, which will be launched in 2018, was presented to ARLEM members in 2016 in Murcia, where innovative solutions for food systems and water resources were showcased Contact: Andrew Gardner Tel. +32 2 282 24 29 andrew.gardner@cor.europa.eu Just a day after Aam Aadmi Party suffered a huge setback in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections winning in just 45 wards out of the total 272 and finishing a far second behind the BJP, Punjab unit chief and one of the top AAP leaders Sanjay Singh tendered his resignation to party convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday. "I have handed my resignation to Kejriwal," Singh was quoted as saying on Thursday morning. Citing the recent drubbing that the party received in both, the state Assembly election in Punjab and the civic body elections in Delhi, Singh told CNN-News18 that dismal show in elections is the reason behind the resignation. Another leader, Durgesh Pathak, has also resigned as co-observer in Punjab. "I was waiting for the MCD election results even though Punjab poll results have been known to us for a while. But we have lost even in Punjab and I cannot continue as the state unit chief (sic)," Singh told CNN-News18 when he was asked why quit now. Even though it is above the Congress when it comes to vote share and number of wards, AAP could not win a majority in any of the three corporations. The party's vote share also halved, plunging from 54 percent to 26.23 percent in the MCD. Singh's resignation comes a day after the AAPs Delhi unit convener Dilip Pandey also stepped down citing moral responsibility for the defeat. AAP on Wednesday had raised allegations of EVM tampering after the results showed that the BJP won with a record mandate. Hindustan Times reported that daggers were out in the Punjab unit of AAP over Wednesday's MCD election results where the party received a massive drubbing. Party's Dhaka MLA and Punjab leader of opposition HS Phoolka said that AAP leadership needs to "introspect" instead of covering up the failures. Singh's offer to resign is many in the list of rash resignations that came after the civic body results were announced on Wednesday. The resignation phase started with AAP convenor Dilip Pandey resigning following the election results. The AAP members have blamed the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) malpractice for its defeat. AAP MLA Alka Lamba also offered to resign from her post and relinquish all positions in the party taking "responsibility" for the defeat of AAP candidates in her constituency on Wednesday. "I take personal responsibility for the party's defeat in all three wards in my constituency and offer to resign from all party posts and as MLA," Lamba, who represents the Chandni Chowk constituency, tweeted. Lamba said she will continue to support and "provide strength" to Kejriwal. However, Lamba does not hold any important post in the party. She was removed from the panel of its official spokespersons last year. Following the BJP's victory in the MCD polls, Congress leaders like Ajay Maken, Gurudas Kamat and PC Chacko also announced their resignations from their posts. With inputs from agencies Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday advised AAP's newly elected councillors to maintain their faith in the party's founding principles. Kejriwal told the winners of the elections for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that honesty remains paramount in the party's fundamental principles of serving people. Taking a dig at his opponents, Kejriwal said that in other political parties people had to buy their candidature for such polls, which they later recover from public money by indulging in corruption. He said that since the AAP councillors didn't have to pay anyone, they could practice honesty if they wanted to. He also stressed that AAP councillors are likely to face unwarranted duress as and when they will uncover corruption, but he advised them to stay strong and pursue the party's anti-corruption agenda relentlessly. He said that the AAP councillors must stay ready to resist temptations as their opponents will try to buy their silence. He asked the newly elected council members to take an oath to never betray the party and the people they were sworn to serve. Kejriwal insisted that the councillors must never ignore the pleas of a common party volunteer as it was the ground cadre who had made promises to the people while asking for their votes. Seeking to keep the flock together, Kejriwal urged the newly elected members to stick together as a family and stay united with the party's common workers. Kejriwal, addressing the 42 councillors of the party, reminded them of the core principles of the party that was a byproduct of the famous India Against Corruption movement, that saw millions of youth mobilised against corruption in politics. The nascent party shot to fame instantly with promising poll performance in the subsequent Delhi Assembly elections. However, the verdict of the local body polls this time was nowhere near satisfactory, with the AAP standing a distant second on its home turf, just when it is hoping to expand its base beyond Delhi. The slip for the party was steep this time as in comparison to the 2015 assembly poll as the vote share of the AAP decreased almost by half from 54.3 percent to 26.21 percent in the recently concluded MCD polls. Chennai: A Tamil Nadu minister on Thursday described his party as one "without father and mother," and said people's aspirations for unity in the now divided AIADMK was being reflected among the leaders in both camps. Cooperation Minister Sellur K Raju said 'works' for holding the keenly anticipated merger talks between the two factions, led by Chief Minister K Palaniswamy and his predecessor O Panneerselvam, respectively, were on. "AIADMK is a movement without father and mother. Our Amma (mother-Jayalalithaa) is no more," he said. "People and supporters want the party, which Amma built through her hard work, to be united. This aspiration is reflected among the leaders of both factions," he told reporters. The senior leader exuded confidence that the AIADMK government will not only complete its term of five years but also retain power in the 2021 Assembly polls. Asked whether the faction will follow suit on removing posters of AIADMK chief VK Sasikala from the party's district offices also, Raju said a panel has been formed to go into the matter. Banners featuring Sasikala had been pulled down from the AIADMK headquarters on Wednesday, a demand made by the rival Panneerselvam faction on Tuesday. However, the AIADMK (Amma) faction said the banners were pulled in lines with a decision taken earlier and that it had nothing to do with Panneerselvam camp leader E Madusudanan's demand in this regard. Meanwhile, Finance Minister D Jayakumar said the Amma faction was ready for the merger talks with the Panneerselvam camp. "As mentioned earlier, the doors are open .. if they come for talks we are ready (to hold discussions)", he said. The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, now in its seventh week, may have given rise to a new work culture as far as working hours and pace of decision-making are concerned, but it has also given the much-needed pep to the Samajwadi Party and its leaders. Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav was in his elements in Lucknow during his interaction with the media on two consecutive days. While on the first day, he lost his cool on seeing a mediaperson sporting a saffron shirt and also on being repeatedly asked about the continuing conflict in the Yadav family, on the second day, he aggressively tried to corner the government on recent incidents in Saharanpur and Meerut. It is remarkable that in the early days after Adityanath took over as chief minister, Akhilesh had said that he would watch the governments performance for six months and not comment on its actions. However, reports of over-enthusiastic legislators and MPs of the BJP clashing with police and administration have apparently made Akhilesh change his mind. Poor crime control and failure to maintain law and order across the state was a major reason behind the widespread resentment among people against the Samajwadi Party. Adityanath seemed to have sensed this as he had cautioned partymen and leaders to desist from making unreasonable demands and maintain discipline. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had warned party MPs from Uttar Pradesh to stay away from trouble. But recent incidents involving cow protection squads, protest demonstrations and rallies, and clashes with police especially in western UP seem to suggest that the warnings have fallen on deaf ears. The BJP MPs in Agra, Saharanpur and Barabanki, besides leaders at the district-level, have been caught in controversies related to threatening and intimidating police personnel. While such incidents have given an opportunity to Leaders of Opposition parties, especially the SP, to corner the BJP over the issue of law and order, these have also emerged as a cause of concern for the chief minister. According to BJP sources, the appointment of new Director-General of Police Sulkhan Singh and the latest reshuffle of police superintendents in several districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Noida, Bareilly and Saharanpur, is aimed at tightening the grip over the law and order situation. But the over-enthusiasm of supporters and other elements who feel now it is their turn to break the law much in the same manner as SP sympathisers did for over four years is making BJP spokespersons a little jittery. The filing of an FIR against Raghav Lakhanpal, the BJP MP from Saharanpur, in the case involving a mob attack on the residence of the Saharanpur superintendent of police is cited by a BJP spokesperson as an example of the quick action taken in the case. In similar attacks on police stations led by SP leaders in the past years, the police did not dare name the SP leaders, leave alone filing a case against them, said a BJP spokesperson. But the SP has apparently got the boost it had been looking for over the past four weeks when Adityanath's decisions dominated the news space. Even though the Saharanpur incident was contained well in time and did not lead to serious rioting or casualties, the SP sent a five-member team to probe the incident involving clashes between two groups over taking out Ambedkar Shobha yatra rally. Even though Akhilesh has been trying to make it into a big issue, the Adityanath government is going ahead with the inquiry into various projects launched or commissioned during the former regime. It has withdrawn the highly unpopular decision to allow large-scale commercial activities in residential colonies in Lucknow and crack down on illegal construction patronised by SP leaders. Besides, the case against former minister Gayatri Prajapati has also been strengthened and inquiry into the Gomti riverfront project and the ambitious signature building Jayaprakash Narayan International Convention Centre is continuing. The much-hyped Samajwadi Pension Scheme and the free smartphone distribution scheme have also been put on hold. It is likely that names of officers and political persons might come up as the inquiries progress, which may be embarrassing for the former ruling party and its leaders. This could explain the sudden belligerence of the SP on Saharanpur, Meerut and the so-called saffron attacks on police. The fact that the conflict within the party and the family shows no signs of abating is also not helping much. Kolkata: BJP chief Amit Shah, on Thursday, described Bengal as the "most poverty-stricken state" in the country and said once his party came to power in the state, it would "flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat". "Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," he told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers here while winding up his three-day visit to the state. Shah said under BJP rule in West Bengal, no one would have to "approach the court" for the immersion of Durga idols and the people would be free to observe religious festivals such as Saraswati puja. In February, a section of students in a school on the outskirts of Kolkata had objected to Saraswati puja celebrations, triggering a controversy. Asserting that Bengal was "next" on the (BJP's) radar, Shah said he had coined a slogan, 'Ebar Bangla' (this time, Bengal) for the purpose. "I witnessed massive enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win (elections) in Bengal," he added. Shah said the BJP wanted a government in the state which would provide employment, check cross-border infiltration and build a "sonar Bangla". "Only the BJP under (Narendra) Modi's leadership can provide such a government. No one else can," he claimed, adding, "Bengal will flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat." The BJP chief also accused the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". Earlier, the BJP chief visited three houses at Gouranganagar, on the outskirts of the city, as part of a mass contact programme aimed at expanding the saffron party's base in the state. The residents greeted him by blowing conch shells and offered him sweets. Shah had yesterday visited a slum in Banerjee's Bhawanipur Assembly constituency. On the first day of his visit, he'd had a meal at a Dalit home at Naxalbari in north Bengal. The BJP chief today also paid a visit to Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's residence at Bhawanipur in the city. Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will move the Allahabad High Court to seek cancellation of bail granted to former minister Gayatri Prajapati by a special court in a rape case, a top law officer said on Thursday, indicating fresh trouble for him. "The government is currently examining all relevant papers before challenging the bail order given by a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court in the case," Advocate General Raghavendra Singh said. Prajapati and two of his alleged accomplices were on Tuesday granted bail by special judge of POCSO court Om Prakash Mishra here in connection with the rape case that had rocked the state some months back during the Samajwadi Party rule. However, his reprieve proved to be shortlived as a local court on Wednesday remanded him in judicial custody in two separate cases even before he could walk out of jail. Prajapati was sent back to Gosainganj prison here after getting bail in the rape case the previous day. The city police dug out old cases and convinced the court of chief judicial magistrate to send Prajapati back to judicial custody. They produced case diaries of two FIRs registered at Gautampalli and Gomtinagar police stations here against Prajapati in order to convince the court that letting him out on bail can jeopardise the ongoing investigations in the two criminal cases. A woman from Chitrakoot had approached Gautampalli police station on 17 February alleging that she was gang-raped by Prajapati and two more men forcibly for several months before she alerted the police. She also alleged that the three had also sexually assaulted her minor daughter at Prajapati's residence. Chief Judicial Magistrate Sandhya Srivastava said on sent the ex-minister to judicial custody in connection with the case lodged by social activist Nutan Thakur, wife of senior IPS officer Amitabh Thakur. Nutan had lodged the FIR on 20 June 2015 at Gomtinagar police station in which she alleged that Prajapati had used his undue political and administrative clout to conspire with the then chairperson of state women commission Zarina Usmani and others to frame her and her husband in "completely false" rape charges and other allegations. Police initially did not take action claiming that it was a false case intending to malign the minister. But subsequently, it was reopened on the orders of the chief judicial magistrate, Lucknow in September 2015. The CJM court remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days till 10 May for interrogation. In the third case, Meerut resident Rakesh Prajapati had lodged an FIR against Prajapati on 21 March 2107 alleging that he had given Rs 6 Lakh to him for procuring government service for his brother-in-law. But, when he did not get a job, he asked Prajapati to return his money. At this, Prajapati abused him and also threatened him to implicate him in false case. The case is registered for the offences of cheating and threat to life and investigation is going on. On an application moved before Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ritish Sachdeva by Gautampalli police, the court accepted the request sending him to judicial custody in the case till May 9 for the purpose of interrogation. Prajapati will now have to obtain bail in these two cases also for securing his release from jail. An FIR was registered against 49-year-old Prajapati and six others on 17 February on a Supreme Court directive. Prajapati was then a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh. After being on the run for nearly a month, Prajapati was arrested from the Aashiyana area here on 15 March and was sent to jail for allegedly raping the woman and attempting to rape her minor daughter in 2014. The six others had been arrested earlier. Prajapati had approached the Supreme Court to get a stay on his arrest. But the apex court asked him to approach the court concerned. At the time of his arrest, Prajapati had claimed that he was innocent and the charges were a conspiracy to malign him. The allegations against Prajapati were raked up by the BJP during the state Assembly elections to attack the then Akhilesh government. The BJP had accused Akhilesh of shielding his tainted minister, a charge refuted by the Samajwadi Party. Ever since the video of a Kashmiri man, who was allegedly tied to the front of a jeep by the Indian Army, went viral, fitful protests have been haunting the Kashmir Valley. The incident brought back the horrors of the time when Kashmir was reeling under protests over Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani's killing in July last year. Apart from the spate of protests, the incident has also brought political crisis back to the state, at a time when senior leaders of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) aren't entirely satisfied with the way chief minister Mehbooba Mufti is running the state. The video was reportedly shot in the Beerwah area of Budgam district, where miscreants disrupted polling during Sunday's bypoll to Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency. The video has been shared widely on social media in Kashmir, and is drawing condemnation. In the clip, an army soldier could be heard saying, "Those who throw stones will meet the same fate." The video shows the jeep moving ahead of an army patrol, while some villagers could be overheard that the youth had been picked up by the army. The incident, coupled with fervent protests across the Valley, unleashed a second round of political instability in the state, especially with senior BJP leaders also speaking in favour of the Indian Army. BJP national general secretary and the party's in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Ram Madhav, justified the controversial video. "I compliment the major for not allowing both these things to happen If I were to blame anybody for that scenario, it would be those responsible for failing to send reinforcements when the situation was critical and it was informed to the seniors." Madhav told CNN-News18. As protests raged, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti turned to ally BJP, and reached New Delhi to meet the central government's top three Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah to discuss future course of action. On 24 April, Mufti (before meeting the top BJP leadership) invoked former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and suggested "talks with all shareholders" is the only way to "move forward". The suggestion was rebuffed by the BJP leadership. According to The Indian Express, Mufti's suggestion has not only threatened the BJP-PDP alliance, there is also a rebellion within her own party. Ever since she became chief minister in March 2016, Mufti's tenure has been marred by vicious protests and political instability. Mufti met Modi in New Delhi earlier this week to review the worsening security situation, as speculations gained momentum about the possibility of Governor's Rule in the state amid allegations that the PDP-BJP coalition has failed to control law and order in the Valley. "We had talks during Vajpayee regime. We need to move forward from where Atalji had left. Until then, there is no chance of the situation improving," Mufti said, responding to reporters over possibility of talks with Hurriyat leaders. "We need dialogue. We can't be confronting our own people for too long. We cannot hold talks when stones are being thrown from one side, and bullets are fired from the other," she said. Mufti added that Modi has vowed to work on Vajpayee's lines, whose policy was of reconciliation and not confrontation. "Modiji has an intention of holding talks but before that a conducive atmosphere needs to be created," she told reporters after the meeting the prime minister at his 7 Lok Kalyan Marg residence. "Everything is possible if the atmosphere is conducive, and there is no way forward without talks." The PDP chief said that after Vajpayee's initiatives, the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road was reopened, talks began with the Hurriyat and ceasefire on the Line of Control came into force. "Something happened while Atalji was there. That is the reason why the people of Kashmir still remember Atalji. Due to this policy, there is an alliance between BJP and PDP," she said. Rising tensions between the coalition partners over the handling of the security situation in Kashmir also came up at the meeting. The coalition came under strain when the PDP lost one seat in the recently held MLC polls, when an independent MLA voted in favour of BJP candidate Vikram Randhawa, leading to his victory. "Whatever happened should not have taken place. But this is an internal matter and we will resolve it with the BJP," she said. The BJP has also denied any rift in the coalition and assured the Mehbooba Mufti-led government of its continued support. "There is no rift in the BJP-PDP alliance," Madhav told reporters. Speaking to The Indian Express, a PDP leader said the current situation in Kashmir will only impact the PDP. "The BJP isnt affected. In fact, they want harsher measures to control the situation because that suits them politically," the leader said, adding "we are in serious trouble". Top PDP leaders also believe the situation has deteriorated because of the alliance with BJP, although there are some who feel "hobnobbing" with the BJP to break the party but continue with the alliance. According to the sources, "the old guard (of the PDP) feel peeved because they feel a few youngsters are running the party". Kashmir has been rocked by massive street protests in recent months, especially after eight people were killed during an assembly election bypoll in Srinagar that saw the lowest turnout in decades. Several PDP leaders have expressed fear that their base in Kashmir is fast eroding because of the partys alliance with BJP and its stance on the protests. The attack on the PDP leader came on the day fresh clashes broke out between protesters and security forces at SP College in Srinagar, police said. No casualties were reported in the incident. New Delhi: Regional parties such as the BSP and the SP managed to make their presence felt in the high-stakes MCD polls while Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) failed to open its account. The Mayawati-led party won three wards, two in east Delhi Gharoli and Seelampur and one in north Delhi Rohini C. Samajwadi Party candidate Deepak Mehra won the Ghuman Hera ward in the SDMC. INLD's Neelam won from Dichaon Kalan in South Delhi. The JD(U), which had entered the fray with much fanfare banking on the Purvanchali vote bank, suffered a humiliating loss as 94 of its candidates today lost deposit. The party had fronted the Bihar chief minister in its campaigns with Kumar holding two back-to-back rallies besides a roadshow early this month. The BJP on Wednesday steamrolled the opposition and the AAP was reduced to a distant second, while the Congress was relegated to a poor third. The saffron party bagged an impressive number of 181 wards. The municipal polls in Delhi were held on 23 April for 270 of 272 wards. Elections in the other two wards have been postponed due to the death of two SP candidates. Exit polls conducted after polling concluded on Sunday evening predicted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would win in excess of 200 seats in a 272-seat Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The only surprise on results day is that the exit polls may have been a bit charitable to the saffron party, which ended up with 181. BJP juggernaut rolls into Delhi The BJP had been decimated in Delhi Assembly elections a little over two years ago, and as party president Amit Shah said, victory in the Delhi civic polls could be considered a win for the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. "MCD election results have carried forward the victory chariot of BJP forward. People of Delhi have proved that the people of this country won't support any kind of negative politics," he had said, adding that this was a vote in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three years in power and a vote against the "negative politics" of the AAP. Cleanliness agenda The party's Delhi chief Manoj Tiwari said the BJP, which has already been in power in MCD for 10 years, will take upon an agenda of cleanliness after securing victory. "We will make Delhi a clean city in the next four months. It will be a hygienic, dirt-free and disease-free city," Tiwari promised. Tiwari also said the heavy defeat his party handed down to the AAP should mean chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is asked to step down. "The AAP has failed the people of Delhi. People are facing a lot of difficulties. Kejriwal must resign. People want him to resign," Tiwari said. "We had been saying this earlier also, that MCD polls will be a referendum on Kejriwal government. Arvind Kejriwal used to advocate Right to Recall and it seems now that Delhi people have used the right on him," he added. Win dedicated to slain CRPF jawans Tiwari said the party would be dedicating its win to the victims of the ambush in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, whereby 25 jawans were killed on Monday. "Every heart is filled with grief over the killing of 25 CRPF men in Sukma", Tiwari said, adding that the party will not celebrate the victory. "But for the Sukma incident, we would be on the streets celebrating this massive victory. We dedicate this win in the feet of Sukma martyrs," he said. Win marred by EVM tampering charges Although the BJP won over two-thirds of the seats, it had to face allegations of EVM tampering from other parties, most notably the AAP. AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said it was "inexplicable" that a machine can behave in such a manner that helps only the BJP. "There are lot of other countries, far more advanced technologically, that have developed a lot of software. But they like France, the US, Netherlands, Japan and England use paper ballots. Some of them used EVMs earlier, but after finding that they could be rigged, they later shifted to paper ballots. India imported this technology from those countries that have rejected EVMs, and is now claiming it to be fool-proof. This is a vulnerable technology. Despite making repeated complaints, EVMs are being used. I think this is a big conspiracy that is happening with the democracy of India," he had said. Modi expresses gratitude for win Modi expressed gratitude to the people of Delhi by reposing faith in the BJP and ensuring its resounding victory in MCD polls. "Grateful to the people of Delhi for the faith in BJP. I laud the hardwork of team @BJP4Delhi which made the resounding MCD win possible," he said on Twitter. Grateful to the people of Delhi for the faith in BJP. I laud the hardwork of team @BJP4Delhi which made the resounding MCD win possible. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 26, 2017 With inputs from agencies Not much was expected from the Congress party going into the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) election, but even that ultimately proved too much to ask for. Among the three major parties contesting the MCD elections BJP and AAP being the others Congress finished with the worst votes tally, winning just 30 seats. It won 15 seats in north Delhi, 12 in south Delhi and could manage just three in the 64-seat East Delhi Municipal Corporation. Sheila Dikshit blames faulty campaigning Sheila Dikshit, who had three successive terms as Chief Minister of Delhi, should know a thing or two about the minds of Delhi voters. But she said the Congress party didn't invite her to campaign ahead of polling. "We are going through a bad time. Congress did not campaign in an aggressive way. It did not do what it should have done to win the Delhi civic polls," Dikshit told media persons in Delhi on Wednesday. Asked why she didn't campaign for Congress candidates, Dikshit said, "I was not invited for any of the campaign programmes. If I would have been informed I would have certainly done." But she did have encouraging words for the party, saying it could bounce back. "The Congress is going through a bad phase. The BJP also did for a long time. We will also come back. Congress' soul resides in India, people will understand," she added. Ajay Maken resigns Congress Delhi unit chief Ajay Maken offered to resign from his post, taking responsibility for the defeat. "I will submit my resignation to the Congress president and vice-president shortly," Maken said, adding that he will no longer hold any posts in the party for at least a year and work with the party cadres to strengthen the organisation at the grassroots. However, he tried to appear optimistic stating that the Congress' performance was not that bad. "It is a reasonable revival of the Congress but I had hoped for something better than this. I had expected to perform a little better. We have fought the election on positive issues. We are satisfied that we raised reasonable issues in the election. I was given a free hand during my two-year tenure as Delhi Congress president in organisational appointments," he said. PC Chacko follows suit Soon after Maken, Congress was dealt another major blow, as PC Chacko, the party's in-charge for Delhi, also tendered his resignation. "We (Chacko and Ajay Maken) were given a free hand by Congress, so it's our responsibility. We'll have to push back to recover our voteshare that has gone to the AAP. We need one more election," he said. However, he insisted that the BJP's victory had come despite the party's poor performance as the incumbent in charge of the Delhi civic body. "The BJP didnt fight on civic issues. The Modi factor made it into a general election. The BJP was a miserable failure in the three corporations it controlled all these years," he said. Looks for new allies to form anti-BJP front One day after the results were announced, the Congress stepped up its efforts to form an anti-BJP 'mahagathbandhan', and asked regional parties to come together to this end. "Hope all regional parties will now realise that blind anti-Congressism is not the way. Country must come first in battle of ideologies," senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala was quoted as saying by NDTV. With inputs from agencies Ever since trends and results for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections began rolling in on Wednesday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been in denial mode. None among the top leadership has been ready to believe that the party has been routed in the very land in which it was born and was crowned the undisputed king only two years ago. Of course, the Assembly elections and those to the municipal corporation are two different things, yet, the fact remains that there is unanimous agreement on the MCD result being a pointer of the public mood towards AAP. Why has the same public that voted it to an unprecedented victory in the Delhi Assembly election in 2015 giving it 67 out of the 70 seats suddenly decided to not vote for it? The top AAP leadership believes it has nothing to do with the electorate but with the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) technology. After the MCD election result was announced, Saurabh Bharadwaj, one of the better-known AAP MLAs and secretary, AAP Delhi in an exclusive interview to Firstpost at the party headquarters on Rouse Avenue, called the defeat the result of a big conspiracy. Why did AAP lose the MCD election? Ever since the Punjab election, we have been claiming that there is a high possibility of EVMs being rigged. Earlier, people didnt believe us and laughed at us. The stance of the Election Commission (EC) is that EVMs cant be tampered with, that they are tamper-proof and the technology is such that nobody on earth can tamper with EVMs. But people saw on TV channels that during polling at Dhaulpur (Rajasthan) and Bhind (Madhya Pradesh) in the presence of polling officers and returning officers when any button was pressed on a machine, the vote went only to one party, the BJP. Every time an EVM button was pressed, the slip coming out was that of the BJP. AAP asked the EC and BJP government at the Centre to explain this phenomenon and whether it was a technical problem or something else. It is inexplicable that a machine can behave in such a manner that helps only the BJP. There are lot of other countries, far more advanced technologically, that have developed a lot of software. But they like France, the US, Netherlands, Japan and England use paper ballots. Some of them used EVMs earlier, but after finding that they could be rigged, they later shifted to paper ballots. India imported this technology from those countries that have rejected EVMs, and is now claiming it to be fool-proof. This is a vulnerable technology. Despite making repeated complaints, EVMs are being used. I think this is a big conspiracy that is happening with the democracy of India. Is that the only reason for the loss? I am sure that AAP wont claim that out of 272 seats, we were winning 269 like the Delhi Assembly election when we bagged 67 out of 70 seats. There is always a factor of anti-incumbency. Even during Sheila Dikshits tenure as Delhi chief minister, the Congress had lost the MCD elections in 2007 and 2012. However, the MLAs know the ground situation and can also estimate approximately how many votes they would get. Every party has some knowledge about the ground situation and they also conduct internal surveys, and know the position of their party in terms of votes they would get. So do we. But this result is totally unacceptable and it is not at all resonating with the mood of the people of Delhi. Almost every person in the National Capital blamed the BJP for its 10 years of corruption and mis-governance in the city's three civic bodies, but Wednesdays result tells a different story. Thats why we are blaming EVMs. We are sure if the EC agrees to give us even a single machine for 24 hours, we are ready to prove in front of TV cameras and show the world how EVMs can be tampered with. But the EC is so arrogant that its running away from its responsibility. The Delhi High Court said categorically that EVMs are not tamper-proof. Even the Supreme Court has agreed. So, whats the option? The best option is to go for a paper ballot. Or else to repose the faith of voters in the EVMs and ensure that the machines come with a paper trail. With this, a voter gets a slip after pressing a button and finds out whether or not the vote has gone to the candidate and the party of his/her choosing. Although such machines are available in India, they were discarded and were not used in the election. Instead, old machines from Rajasthan were brought to manipulate the whole voting process. Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken has offered his resignation, taking responsibility for the defeat. Is anyone from AAP going to do so by taking the responsibility of this routing? The Opposition has demanded that Arvind Kejriwal should step down... Had BJP lost, would Prime Minister Narendra Modi have resigned? So why should Kejriwal resign for AAP losing the MCD polls? As AAPs Delhi secretary, I should have done it, but these are all dramatics. You have seen how Sanjay Nirupam tendered his resignation after Congress lost the BMC election, but after two days, he retracted. It was all drama. Considering the relationship Maken has with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, his offer to resign also seems to be pure drama. There is also a rumour that Maken had some kind of secret meeting with BJP president Amit Shah. It could be possible that Maken is creating a platform for himself to move to the BJP. (Note: AAPs Delhi convener Dilip Pandey has tendered his resignation) Having performed so badly, after the Punjab and Goa elections, is the end nearing for AAP? I think a section of the media and the Opposition have written our obituary as they did after the Lok Sabha election in 2014, during the Delhi Assembly election in 2015 and then after we lost in Punjab and Goa. Were a very small player and ruling a 'half state'. The media shouldnt be so concerned or desperate to show the end of AAP. We came for a movement and we dont care whether we stay on as a political party or not, but well always stand up for the right cause. So, whats the next move? The next war is a war for credibility of the election process of this country. If credibility of electoral system is lost, no councillor, MLA or MP will work in his or her constituency as he/she knows that after five years of working, its the EVMs that will decide the winner or loser. It is a dangerous situation. Perhaps everyone is looking at the Aam Aadmi Party by juxtaposing it to the giant killer it was when it won 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi state Assembly. But that would be unkind as no party can ever hope or even dream to live up to those electoral standards. Having said that, it is a fact that over time Arvind Kejriwal came to be not just its mascot and leader but turned into its very identity. That, as the media portrayed it, was unsavoury and the man did precious little to even blur the edges. He has been a difficult person to deal with by the other party seniors like Prashant Bhushan or Yogendra Yadav, people who, if they hadnt had to leave the AAP would have been of immense use to it. It showed that aam aadmis can have differences on principles. However, when AAP contested the Delhi Assembly polls for the second time and became a monolith within it, every political party without exception tried to smear him and the party. It seemed media worked hand-in-glove with vested interests. It was hard for anyone who was not used to a maverick party to swallow the details as they appeared. When I tried to shine the light on some of them here on Firstpost, I was trolled as an 'AAPtard' in a binary world of black and white. I had appeared on two television channels asking that a party be shown some fairness. It did not mean I was a AAP follower or even sympathiser but was only trying to level the field. The two mainline political parties, despite the claims or wails of the Congress, and the well-endowed BJP, did everything to smear AAP, rather successfully. And yet, AAP scored unprecedentedly and spectacularly. That neednt have persuaded AAP to believe that it could be a giant killer every time it had candidates on the ballot, like it believed would happen in Punjab and Goa. Now, it was no match to BJP in Delhi civic polls. It has not been analysed by any political pundit as to why AAP came a cropper with just about six percent vote share in Goa, a state less complex and smaller than the state of Delhi. The Economist had once described how Delhis chief minister is, in effect, the citys mayor. Also, that municipalities have mayors, but they have no real power. He chaffed at the limitations or absence of power the chief minister, the state, and its Assembly had when overseen by the Lt. Governor who under statute could be a painful intrusion. He wasnt alone. Congress Sheila Dikshit, his predecessor had complained at the lack of powers, so had BJPs Sahib Singh Verma. Kejriwal went about seeking a change more aggressively than the predecessors had been. That and the anti-corruption plank, the support to the Lok Pal movement made him a different leader of a different kind of political party. The other nervy parties had to ensure the demise of his politics. Narendra Modis status as an outlier enabled him to win votes almost everywhere he sought them, but Kejriwal, a man from out of the system fighting the system has been given a coldest shoulder in a part of the area where three years ago had the unbelievably massive electoral support. How Kejriwal and the AAP reboots itself can be a matter of speculation but it would have to work harder than ever to secure a mandate in the state of Delhi in the next round. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi results show that the leader has to change his ways because perception is more important than the reality. The stronger and bolder platform that Indian Administrative Service (IAS) provides was the motivation Sriram Venkitaraman felt when he decided to drop a lucrative medical career and opt for the civil services. The courage he has shown in taking on the land mafia which has grabbed large tracts of land in ecologically fragile Munnar in the hill district of Idukki in his role as Devikulam sub-collector has stirred a hornets nest in his home state of Kerala. While local leaders of Communist Party of India (Marxist), which leads the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), tried to physically block him and his team from clearing the encroachments and hurled abuses at him, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan restrained him from going ahead with the mission. However, this has not deterred the 31-year-old IAS officer, who made the state proud by securing second rank in the civil services examination in 2013. He told Firstpost that he has nothing to fear as long as he was implementing the law of the land. But he must not realise that the law of the land in Idukki is the CPI(M) strongman and Electricity Minister MM Mani, who wanted Venkitaraman to be sent to a mental asylum. Mani, who took on the young officer after the chief minister directed the Idukki district administration to consult him before evicting any further encroachments, does not view encroachment as a serious issue in Idukki. Manis party men had tried to foil the eviction drive from the very beginning by staging agitations and preventing the officials from removing the encroachments. The demolition of a cross erected by a Christian evangelical group on encroached land at Chinnakkanal near Munnar two weeks ago came handy to them in implementing their agenda. The chief minister backed his party men by directing the district administration to halt eviction until an all-party meeting considered the issue. However, Vijayan has not made any attempt to convene the meeting so far. On the contrary, he has made it clear that the government will not allow any official to act according to their whims and fancies. Officials are supposed to implement the government decisions. Those who are not ready to abide by the government orders will have no place in the government service, he told the State Assembly on Wednesday. Environmentalists view this as a strong signal for the Idukki district administration to stop the eviction. Venkitaraman, however, has dismissed this as media interpretation. He said that he had not received any written communication from the government in this regard. I have a direct line of communication with the chief minister. He has not told me anything, he said. Venkitaraman indicated that he will go ahead with the mission within the framework of the law and as per directions of the government. He said that as a government servant he is bound to go by the directions of the government adding that he has no issue with that. He is apparently confident that the government cannot give him a written order to stop the eviction as it is against the law. When reminded about the fate of senior officer Raju Narayanaswamy, who was shunted to insignificant positions after he waged a war against corruption, Venkitaraman said that he was ready to accept any responsibility that the government give him. Transfers are part of the government service. I am not afraid of them. I believe that every role offers scope to government servants to work according to their convictions, Venkitaraman said while referring to 20 transfers faced by IAS topper of 1991 Rajunarayanaswamy, within a span of 22 years. I am not personally affected by the current controversy. I am very much comfortable with the situation in which I function. I dont feel any pressure. I dont have to feel so, since the Constitution has safeguards to protect the officers who act in good faith, he added. The young IAS officer said that he had anticipated obstacles when he launched the eviction drive. It is an organised activity going on unhindered in Idukki district for a long time. People encroach on the land and legalise it by managing survey number and other documents. It is not easy to evict them, he said. Noted environmentalist Advocate Harish Vasudevan, who had several interactions with the young officer, said Venkitaraman was capable of clearing the mess in Munnar. He told Firstpost that he could sense his courage in several reports he filed in the high court against the encroachments. The high court had rejected the pleas against evictions because of these reports. Venkitaraman means business. He has not even spared the local MP, who was elected to the Lok Sabha with the CPI(M) support. The notice he served to the MP Joyce George too has rattled the party, Harish said. Bureaucrat-turned politician Alphonse Kannamthanam, who razed thousands of illegal constructions in New Delhi while working as commissioner of Delhi Development Authority, has a piece of advice for the young IAS officer. Dont bend your backbone. You should not allow cheap politicians to use you as their doormat. The civil service was created by the Constitution to fulfill the aspirations of the people after the Independence, said Alphonse, who got the nickname Demolition Man after the Delhi eviction drive. Venkitaraman, who cleared the civil service examination in his second attempt, had no plan to join IAS while he was studying in the school and later in Trivandrum Medical College for MBBS. The idea dawned upon him after a conversation on Facebook with an old school friend, who prepared for the UPSC examination. He cleared the examination while he was pursuing MD in Shri Ramachandra Bhanj Medical College in Cuttack, Orissa. He dropped the course and went to Mussorie for the training. In an interview to Rediff.com after clearing the examination, he said that his biggest concern was increasing corruption, bad governance, lack of transparency and social apathy. His family lives in Kochi. His father, Dr P R Venkitaraman, is a professor of zoology and mother Rajam Ramamoorthy works in a bank. His sister Lakshmi is pursuing a medical internship at Amala Medical College, Thrissur. Lucknow: Stopped abruptly several years ago, the traditional Ramleela will return to the Ayodhya stage during Dussehra celebrations this year on the directions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Raaslila in Mathura and Bhajan sandhya programme will also be conducted in Chitrakoot. During a presentation by the religious endowment department in Lucknow on Wednesday, the chief minister told officials that the traditional Ram Lila, which was stopped in Ayodhya, should be resumed, an official said on Thursday. Ramleela is a dramatic enactment of the life of Lord Rama based on the epic Ramayana. The staging of the traditional Ramleela in Ayodhya was stopped several years ago, the official said. Similarly, the staging of Raaslila, a folk art depicting the life of Lord Krishna in the form of dance drama in Mathura, and bhajan sandhya (devotional songs) programme in Chitrakoot should also be started and carried out in a proper manner, the chief minister stressed. The chief minister also asked officials to ensure starting of e-puja and e-donation in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, online application system for Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and Sindhu Yatra and e-district portal website in 15 days. He also asked officials of the department to ensure laying of four-lane approach roads to famous temples. The chief minister has set a deadline of June 2018 for completion of the Rs 14.77 crore bhajan sandhya venue in Ayodhya and an early completion of the Rs 13.75 crore bhajan sandhya and parikrama venue at Chitrakoot. Officials have been directed to develop Braj Chaurasi Kosi Parikrama and provide public amenities along the route. Kolkata: BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday said the Centre offered enough financial assistance to West Bengal but there was no development in the state, and asked the Mamata Banerjee government to answer where the money has gone. Hitting out at the Trinamool Congress over Narada and Sarada scams, Shah said he is worried about the development and progress of West Bengal. "You all know about issues like Narada, Sarada scandals and law and order problems. But there remains another issue where has the fund allocated to the state by the Centre gone?" he asked. "While the 13th Finance Commission had allocated Rs 1,3,585 crore to Bengal in five years, you will be happy to note the Narendra Modi government gave Rs 2,82,942 crore to Bengal. Where has this money gone?" he asked the crowd at a 'Vikas Sabha' of the party. "There has been no development in the state no roads, poor electrification in rural areas. Can Mamataji tell the people of the state where the money went," Shah said. He also took a swipe at Banerjee for protesting demonetisation and said, "While the entire world has been praising the note ban, only Didi (Mamata) was crying hoarse." The BJP president exhorted the people of Bengal to give his party a chance "since you have already tried the the Congress, the Left and the TMC". Three leaders including former Congress leader Kanak Debnath, former AICC member Manoj Pandey and former TMC leader Anupam Dutta joined the BJP at the programme. Some intellectuals including a popular Bengali writer, including actor-turned BJP MP Roopa Ganguly were also present on the occasion at Mahajati Sadan. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has called for wider and more active use of social and new media for publicising work being done by the central and the state government, an official said on Thursday. The chief minister gave the direction during a late night review of the working of the Department of Information and Public Relations. He said with changing times, the governments also needed to change old and traditional styles of working so as to ensure that people were made aware of the work being done for their welfare. Asking officials of the department to effectively develop and use social and new media, Adityanath said that a strategy be stitched up to use mediums like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the schemes and policies of the government. This, he added, would enable the people to know what all was being done for their welfare. Adding that the credo of the state government was 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas', the chief minister asked the Information Department to play its role well in this regard and make Uttar Pradesh a front-ranking state in the country. He also directed the department to prepare a statewide action plan on occasion of the birth centenary of Jan Sangh ideologue Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to inform people on various projects, schemes and programs being undertaken by the state and the Centre. Yogi Adityanath also called for special steps to take these schemes to the Dalits, poor, marginalised and the oppressed. He also called for work in the direction of taking forward the "Swacchta Mission" (Cleanliness mission) and cashless economy. Stressing on the need of better coordination between information and other departments, the Chief Minister said the latest technology should be used by the department and for it, arrangements should be made to train the personnel. Data was never so fun - 100 ways to measure 100 days of Trump which falls on Saturday, April 29. One is the fake news way where they keep Trump in the firing line (unfair!) and ask people bad questions like Do you think the Trump administration regularly makes false claims, or not?, the other way is to change the dartboard altogether - what about 100 days of Trump versus Congress - the enemy within? Trumps fav rag Breitbart has done precisely that - and come up with happy tidings basis a Gallup poll. A new Gallup poll shows Trumps favorable rating stands at 40 percent, one percentage point above 39 percent for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumers favorable rating is eight percentage points lower than Ryans at 31 percent. But the honor for having the lowest rating goes to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), which stands at 27 percent. Heres a digest of all the cribs, hymns and takeoffs around the Trump 100 day milestone. The Simpsons drollery is trending at #2, says Youtube - a savage commentary which begins with Trumps press secretary throwing in the towel. Expectedly, The New Yorker magazine takes a sledgehammer to the 100 day copy - Editor David Remick demolishes Trumps young presidency in a scathing five pager. Sample how the piece begins: For most people, the luxury of living in a relatively stable democracy is the luxury of not following politics with a nerve-racked constancy. Trump does not afford this. His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite. The hundred-day marker is never an entirely reliable indicator of a four-year term, but its worth remembering that Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama were among those who came to office at a moment of national crisis and had the discipline, the preparation, and the rigor to set an entirely new course. Impulsive, egocentric, and mendacious, Trump has, in the same span, set fire to the integrity of his office. No surprises on which telly channel got the prize catch - Fox of course, eyeing ratings heaven. Martha Maccallum will interview Trump on the final edition of 'The First 100 Days' at Friday, 7 pm ET. No topic will be off-limits, as Martha presses the president on topics like North Korea, health care, the border wall, his clashes with the courts and his never-ending battles with what he calls "the dishonest media, says a Fox News statement. Nick Bryant of the BBC says the Democrats think of the new president as a national embarrassment and his supporters continue to view him as a potential national saviour. One hundred days into a presidency the like of which this country has never seen before, the state of the union is disunion, writes the Beebs man in New York. Since taking office, Trump has railed at mainstream media often but this one tweet got them all into bundled into the same one pile: "The FAKE NEWS media (@nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! Many of these fake news outlets are dishing out their own polls first among them is the ABC / Washington Post poll coinciding with the 100 days of Trump weekend titled Lies, Damn Lies and the Deep State tells sums it up this way : Nearly half of Americans think theres a deep state in this country, just more than half think the mainstream media regularly report false stories and six in 10 say the Trump administration regularly makes false claims. Just another day in the world of alleged sneaky stuff. Trumps lies are working brilliantly. This new poll proves it, concludes Washington Post on the ABC poll. Deep state is defined in the poll as military, intelligence and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government policy. Nearly half of those polled - 48 percent - think the deep state exists, 35 percent call it a conspiracy theory the rest are unsure. This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone April 17-20, 2017, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,004 adults. Sampling error is 3.5 points, partisan divisions are 31-24-36 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Jerusalem: Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said a massive explosion near Damascus International Airport on Thursday was consistent with Israel's policy, but stopped short of confirming his country was behind it. Israeli warplanes have hit the airport and other bases around the Syrian capital in the past, targeting what it said were weapons stockpiles of its Lebanese foe Hezbollah, which is allied with the Syrian government. "We are acting to prevent the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon by Iran," Katz told army radio. "When we receive serious information about the intention to transfer weapons to Hezbollah, we will act. This incident is totally consistent with this policy." In line with its usual practice, Israel's military has declined to comment on the incident. Israel has sought to avoid being dragged into the six- year civil war in Syria, but acknowledges carrying out air strikes there to stop what it says are deliveries of advanced weapons to Hezbollah. Last month, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syria conflict began, Israeli warplanes struck several targets , drawing retaliatory missile fire. Israel used its Arrow interceptor to destroy what was believed to have been a Russian-made SA-5 missile, and Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to destroy Syria's air defence systems "without the slightest hesitation" if it happened again. Israel fought a devastating war against Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah in 2006. Berlin: Britain must answer questions about its plans to exit the European Union before negotiations on the split can begin, and can't be under any illusions that it will retain the same rights and privileges as a member of the bloc, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. Speaking to German lawmakers ahead of a weekend summit in Brussels to discuss the so-called Brexit, Merkel said in unusually frank language that she had "the feeling that some in Britain still have illusions, and that is a waste of time." While Europe still envisions Britain as a close partner, Merkel said once it leaves the EU it will be an outsider and as such "can and will not have the same rights or be in a better position than a member of the European Union." "All of the 27 members of the European Union and European institutions are agreed upon that," she said, to applause. Britain has two years to complete its deal to leave the 28-nation European Union but is currently preoccupied with a snap election taking place in early June. Before the negotiations can even begin, Merkel said Britain must engage in "constructive dialogue" with the EU to answer open questions. "Without progress on the many open questions of the exit, including the financial questions, it makes no sense to have parallel negotiations over the future relationship," the chancellor said. "We need to know how Britain sees its future relations with us," she added. She said Germany will push for the impact of Brexit on Germans and other European Union citizens living in Britain to be as minimal as possible, and for cooperation on security issues, like fighting organised crime and terrorism, to remain close. "Let there be no doubt: Brexit negotiations will demand a lot from Britain and Europe," she said. She added that Germany and other EU countries need to define their own "interests and goals," and that she expects EU nations to emerge from the Brussels summit with a "strong signal of unity." "There is now a great deal of agreement between the 27 nations and EU institutions about our joint negotiating line with Britain," she said. Paris: After "the battle of Whirlpool," when Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron both went hunting for France's blue-collar vote at a threatened home appliance factory, the presidential candidates clashed over fish in a return to more traditional campaigning on Thursday. The anti-European Union far-right populist Le Pen was up before dawn to cruise aboard a fishing trawler on the Mediterranean. The sea trip was her latest television-friendly effort to portray herself as the candidate of France's workers against the centrist former banker and finance minister Macron, whom she paints as the candidate of the financial, political and pro-EU elite. Macron had a scheduled television appearance on Thursday evening. "My grandfather was a fisherman, so I am in my element," Le Pen said after her pre-dawn voyage aboard the "Grace of God 2" trawler. She said France will take back control of its maritime policies if she is elected in the second-round vote on 7 May. She again tore into Macron's more economically liberal programme. Macron fired back on Twitter, saying her proposals to take France out of the EU would sink France's fishing industry. "Have a nice trip. Europe's exit she proposes, it's the end of French fishing. Think about it," he tweeted. Madame le pen se promene a la peche. Bonne promenade. La sortie de l Europe qu elle propose c est la fin de la peche francaise. Pensez y. EM Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 27, 2017 With her sea voyage, Le Pen continued to hammer home the blue-collar theme she sought ownership of Wednesday with her surprise visit to the threatened Whirlpool clothes-dryer factory in northern France. That wily campaign maneuver put Macron on the defensive and prompted him to also meet angry Whirlpool workers later that same day. On Thursday, newspapers and commentators debated which of the two candidates scored the most points in the remarkable Whirlpool drama that highlighted their clash of styles and was broadcast live on French news channels. "War is declared," ran the front-page headline Thursday of the daily Liberation. Former presidential candidate Francois Bayrou a Macron ally awarded victory to the centrist, saying Macron showed courage by spending over an hour trying to reason with workers at the plant in Amiens. Bayrou, speaking Thursday on BFM television, said Macron's impromptu visit his attempt to take back the initiative after Le Pen stole his thunder by popping up before him earlier in the day at the Whirlpool factory gates could have been "very bad for him." Macron was whistled and booed when he first arrived, in chaotic scenes. But he stood his ground, patiently and at times passionately debating workers in often heated exchanges about how to stop French jobs from moving abroad. "Arriving to whistles, he (Macron) left shaking hands" and showed his character, Bayrou said. Beirut: A massive explosion hit near the Damascus International Airport on Thursday, a monitoring group said, without specifying the cause. "The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Damascus International Airport lies about 25 kilometres southeast of Syria's capital. The Britain-based Observatory, which gathers information from sources across war-ravaged Syria, said it had confirmed the explosion had not taken place inside the airport itself. "It's unclear what caused the explosion, but there fires raging at the site," Abdel Rahman told AFP. More than 320,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in 2011 with widespread anti-government protests. While Damascus has remained relatively insulated from the violence, fierce fighting has raged on the outskirts of the capital in recent months between rebel groups and government forces. New York: The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, discussed with her Indian counterpart Syed Akbaruddin the economic and anti-corruption reforms undertaken by India to spur growth and measures to strengthen Indo-US partnership at the world body. Haley met Akbaruddin at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN on Wednesday. "They discussed peacekeeping reform and India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth," according to a statement issued by the US Mission to the UN. The two ambassadors also discussed the "close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the United Nations". Akbaruddin told PTI that "we shared perspectives on how to work together at UN in line with growing India-US ties". Indian-American Haley, who was the Governor of South Carolina before being appointed by President Donald Trump as Washington's envoy to the UN, has quickly garnered a reputation at the world body for being tough-talking and blunt. Earlier this month, Haley had said that the US would try and "find its place" in efforts to de-escalate Indo-Pak tensions and that Trump could play a role in such endeavours. India had swiftly rejected any US role in resolving Indo-Pak issues, saying the government's position for "bilateral redressal of all India-Pakistan issues in an environment free of terror and violence hasn't changed". Islamabad: The decision to provide consular access to alleged India 'spy' Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been awarded death sentence in Pakistan, will be taken on merit, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media that Jadhav was prosecuted as per Pakistani law and his statements helped in intercepting a terrorist network in the country. "We already have evidence in the Jadhav case," Geo TV quoted Zakaria as saying. Jadhav, whose family stays in Mumbai and who was reportedly arrested in Balochistan, has been charged with espionage and waging war against Pakistan. India says he was abducted from Tehran, Iran. The Foreign Office spokesman said former Tehreek-e-Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan in a recent confession video "has disclosed the presence of Research and Analysis Wing's (RAW) presence" in Pakistan. Urging the international community to take notice of Ehsan's confessional video, Zakaria told the media that the former TTP spokesman's "statement exposed the real face of India". He claimed that Ehsan's confession about TTP commander Khalid Khorasani's treatment in India is a proof that the TTP is assisted by RAW. He said that Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies were "involved in sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan". Warsaw: Poland on Thursday assured India of its support to New Delhi's bid for membership in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. This was conveyed by Polish Prime Minister Beata Syzdlo to Vice President Hamid Ansari when the two leaders met here to discuss issues of bilateral and mutual interests. The two countries signed an agreement in the agriculture sector and agreed that there was much scope to increase cooperation in railway and defence sectors as well as in areas like food processing, solar energy, clean coal, treatment of solid waste. The agreement was signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh and Polish Agriculture Minister Krzystof Jurgiel in presence of Ansari and Syzdlo. Ansari thanked Polish leadership for its support to India's bid for NSG membership, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) issue and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. "We are happy to have Poland's support for India's claim for permanent membership of an expanded UN security council," Ansari said as he appreciated the support extended by Poland to India's membership of the MTCR. Poland is a member of the 48-nation NSG, a group of nuclear supplier countries that seek to prevent proliferation by controlling the export of materials, equipment and technology that can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. "For past few decades, India and Poland relations are growing with a good pace. Today my talks with the prime minister of Poland was very productive and we discussed entire gamuts of our relationships," said Ansari. Ansari said there was much scope to increase the bilateral cooperation especially in areas like mining, agriculture, civil aviation, food processing, solar energy, clean coal and other field. The two sides can also cooperate in railway and defence sectors, he added. "As vibrant democracies, we also share views on the need to adopt a comprehensive and principled stance against the scourge of terrorism. We agree on the need for the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN," the vice president said. Ansari said that Indian cultural festivals would be organised in various cities of Poland. Polish Prime Minister Sysdlo appreciated India's growing influence and the progress made by it. "We can expand our trade relation in various sector. We hope to export apples to India and increase our cooperation in agriculture field," she said. India has close economic ties with Poland. Indian investments in Poland amount to around USD 3 billion and Polish investments in India are of about 600 million USD. "Our cooperation will be mutually beneficial. We hope to expand our cooperation in mining sector. We have rich experience in mining sector in cutting edge technology," the Polish prime minister said. "We also hope to cooperate in civil aviation and defence sector," she said. By Andrew Osborn | MOSCOW MOSCOW Russia accused French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign team of discriminating against its media on Thursday, saying it had trampled on the freedom of the press by banning Russian news outlets from its events.The Kremlin has been irritated by accusations from the Macron camp that its campaign's networks, databases and sites have come under attack from locations inside Russia, fuelling suspicions that Russia is trying to undermine Macron's campaign to help Marine Le Pen, his rival. Moscow has rejected allegations of meddling, and on Thursday Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told a news briefing that the Macron campaign had refused to accredit the Sputnik news agency, the RT TV channel, and the Ruptly video agency for the first round of the French election, meaning they were unable to get proper access to Macron campaign events.Sputnik and RT receive Russian state funding. RT is Ruptly's parent company. Calling the move "outrageous", Zakharova said Moscow viewed the ban as "deliberate and bare-faced discrimination against Russian media by the presidential candidate of a state that has historically been vigilant when it comes to free speech."She called on the relevant French authorities and international organisations to ensure that freedom of the press was upheld in the second round of the presidential election, which is scheduled for May 7. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, said on social media the Macron campaign was refusing to accredit her organisation and the others for the second round as well however."So this is how gracelessly freedom of speech ends in a country which prides itself on its freedoms almost more than it prides itself on its Camembert and Brie cheeses," said Simonyan. President Vladimir Putin granted an audience to Le Pen in the Kremlin last month, bestowing a level of international recognition that had until then eluded her in the countdown to the election.Le Pen has said she admires Putin and backs the lifting of the European Union's economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict.The Kremlin says it is not backing any candidate in the election, which it says is purely a matter for the French people. (Editing by Vladimir Soldatkin) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. WASHINGTON A Singaporean man was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months in a U.S. prison for his role in exporting to Iran radio frequency modules, some of which were later found in bombs in Iraq, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.Lim Yong Nam, also known as Steven Lim, 43, pleaded guilty in December to illegally exporting the modules through Singapore, and later to Iran, knowing that the export of U.S. goods to Iran was a violation of U.S. law, the statement said. Of the 6,000 modules that Lim and others routed from the United States to Iran in 2007 and 2008, 14 were later recovered in Iraq being used to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices, it said. Lim was extradited in 2016 from Indonesia, the department said. (Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. EDINBURGH Three suspicious packages containing "white powder type substances" were sent to political offices between April 25 and 26, the Scottish parliament said in a statement.Separately, on Thursday two suspicious packages were also intercepted at police offices. One, in Glasgow was still being investigated. The second, in Fife, was not a threat, Police Scotland said in a statement. It was not clear if the political security incidents earlier in the week were related and officials at Police Scotland were not available to comment. The Scottish parliament said packages were sent to an elected official, a political party headquarters and a local council building. Police were investigating and further advice has been issued to elected representatives across Scotland, the devolved assembly said.On Tuesday, police had said they were investigating a suspicious package sent to the East Dunbartonshire office of lawmaker John Nicolson, who represents the Scottish National Party at Britain's parliament in London. Local media reported one package was sent to the SNP's headquarters in Edinburgh and another to a local council building in the Scottish town of Forfar.Officials at the SNP declined to comment. Separately, Labour Party lawmaker Peter Hain, who represents an area in Wales, confirmed via text to Reuters a report in the Guardian newspaper that police were investigating a letter sent to him containing white powder. Police were not immediately available to comment.Britain will hold a national election on June 8, and earlier on Thursday police said a man carrying knives had been arrested not far from Prime Minister Theresa May's Downing Street office.Last month, a British-born convert to Islam ploughed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament . (Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary, editing by Larry King; editing by Estelle Shirbon) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. EDINBURGH Three suspicious packages containing "white powder type substances" were sent to political offices between April 25 and 26, the Scottish parliament said in a statement on Thursday.The packages were sent to an elected official, a political party headquarters and a local council building. Police were investigating and further advice has been issued to elected representatives across Scotland, the devolved assembly said. Separately Labour Party lawmaker Peter Hain, who represents an area in Wales, confirmed via text to Reuters a Guardian newspaper report that police were investigating a letter sent to him containing white powder. Police were not immediately available to comment. Britain is holding a national election on June 8 and earlier on Thursday police said a man carrying knives had been arrested not far from Prime Minister Theresa May's Downing Street office. Last month a British-born convert to Islam ploughed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.Police on Tuesday had said they were investigating a suspicious package sent to the East Dunbartonshire office of lawmaker John Nicolson, who represents the Scottish National Party at Britain's parliament in London. (Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary; editing by Estelle Shirbon) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. New Delhi: In the face of India's bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council, a senior Turkish official has said that his country wanted the five permanent members of the world body to give up their veto powers. "Turkey wants the United Nations Security Council members to rescind their veto powers," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said at a meeting on "India and Turkey's Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. "This kind of veto power is blocking international justice," Cevik said. Turkey is a member of the group called Uniting for Consensus (UfC) that is opposed to expansion of permanent seats in the UN Security Council. Other members of the group include Italy, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, Malta, Costa Rica, Colombia and San Marino. Cevik said that instead of a country trying to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, "this veto thing should be eliminated so that countries get a fair share, fair result of the Security Council". President Erdogan is set to come on a bilateral visit to India from 30 April. New Delhi: Strategic issues, including India's NSG membership bid and ways to strengthen cooperation in counter-terrorism and trade, are expected to be discussed during the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's from 30 April. The overnight visit comes barely days after a referendum in Turkey on 16 April on whether to change the country from a parliamentary democracy to an executive structure led by the president. The Turkish president will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 May on key bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. With Turkey being a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the issue of India's membership bid of the elite group is likely to figure during the talks between the two leaders. When asked whether the issue of NSG will figure during the talks, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the external affairs ministry did not give a direct answer and said, "We remain engaged with Turkey." Turkey is not opposed to India's NSG membership but has been maintaining that the powerful bloc should come out with a system to consider entry of the countries which are not signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), diplomatic sources said. China has been opposing India's membership of the NSG on the ground that it is not a signatory to the NPT. Enhancing anti-terror cooperation will be among the focus areas during the Erdogen-Modi talks. Ghanashyam said both countries have been victims of terrorism and are battling it. After a failed coup in July last year to topple Erdogan, Turkey had blamed Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation (FETO) for it and said the outfit has "infiltrated" India. Turkey had also asked India to take action against the organisation. Asked about the action taken by India so far, she said Turkey had raised it with the government, which has noted their concern. Calling the FETO is "secretive transnational criminal network" with presence around the world, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, during a visit here last year, had said, "Unfortunately, the FETO has also infiltrated India through associations and schools." Asked if the timing of the Turkish president's visit, which immediately comes after the ongoing trip of the Cyprus president, was part of India's balancing act, MEA Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the timings were based on the convenience of the leaders. Issues relating to regional security, situation in the Middle East, particularly Syria, are likely to figure during talks between Modi and Erdogan. Lupin warns of more pricing pressure as fourth-quarter profit halves | Reuters By Zeba Siddiqui | MUMBAI MUMBAI Indian drugmaker Lupin Ltd expects to launch over 30 products in the United States this year, but warned revenue growth would remain muted due to growing pricing pressure and competition in the world's largest healthcare market."We've talked about medium single digits of price erosion in the past and I think we are now (seeing) high single digits," Managing Director Nilesh Gupta told Reuters after Lupin reported a quarterly profit that halved from a year earlier.The country's third-largest drugmaker has been working on building a pipeline of high-value complex generic drugs in the United States to offset growing competition in plain generics. But a consolidation among drug distributors has hit generic companies' ability to negotiate on prices, and price hikes have also become harder to justify amid regulatory scrutiny."Competition is increasing and (distributors) are getting more powerful than ever before," Gupta said. The company expects to launch more than 30 drugs this year, most of which would be small to medium-sized opportunities, with bigger, more lucrative launches planned for 2019, he added U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has proposed to reverse the net neutrality rules that prohibits Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against web sites and online content. In 2015 under Obama administration, FCC had classified fixed and mobile Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. According to Pai high-speed internet providers should no longer be treated like a public utility with strict rules. They were favored by websites who said they would guarantee equal access to the internet to all but opposed by internet service providers, who said they could eventually result in rate regulation, inhibit innovation and make it harder to manage traffic. Many Internet companies and online rights groups say the rules are critical for protecting innovation and free expression. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement, First, we are proposing to return the classification of broadband service from a Title II telecommunications service to a Title I information servicethat is, light-touch regulation drawn from the Clinton Administration. As I mentioned earlier, this Title I classification was expressly upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005, and its more consistent with the facts and the law. Second, we are proposing to eliminate the so-called Internet conduct standard. This 2015 rule gives the FCC a roving mandate to micromanage the InternetAnd third, we are seeking comment on how we should approach the so-called bright-line rules adopted in 2015. Meanwhile, Comcast, Verizon and AT&T said they are supporting net neutrality. Verizons deputy general counsel, Kathy Grillo said, Verizon supports net neutrality. Weve long said that our customers should be able to access internet content and services of their choice. Thats been our belief for many years and nothing has changed. Most importantly, it is what our customers want, and it is vital to the success of our business. Pai said his proposal will face an initial vote on May 18. The Internet Association, a group that represents more than 40 top internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and Netflix, said there was no reason to change the rules. Source | Via Metsa Board announced the startup of its new extrusion coating line at its Husum mill in Sweden. The new state-of the-art coating line has an annual capacity of about 100,000 tonnes and represented an investment of EUR 38 million. At the same site Metsa Board operates a 270,000 tonnes efficient linerboard machine and Europes most modern folding boxboard machine, which started production at the beginning of 2016 with yearly capacity of 400,000 tonnes. The new extrusion coating line is now producing first orders and it will serve the global food service market and offer improved availability and competitive products. Metsa Boards PE coated paperboards respond to the tight requirements of the food service market by providing product safety, purity and protection. The paperboards are made of pure and renewable fresh fibres and are a preferred alternative to plastics for cups, plates and other takeaway packaging as well as for frozen food packaging. The paperboards also offer great value for other consumer goods and food service packaging. Currently PE is the most common barrier against moisture and water for food and food service packaging. In developing the new PE coated grades we have utilised our longstanding board making expertise combined with the latest technology. We have an integrated facility at Husum which is a clear advantage. We are sourcing wood close to the mill and producing pulp, board and extrusion-coated board in the same facility with an excellent location near the harbour. This enables us to minimise transport and improve the efficiency and sustainability of the supply chain which is important to us and our customers, states CEO Mika Joukio. Metsa Board is continuing development work on other innovative barrier solutions including the use of bio-based materials. A motorcycle group led by a South Carolina chainsaw artist is ready to take action on the University of California Berkeley after conservative commentator Ann Coulter cancelled her speech on the campus Thursday. "We are certainly not looking for a fight... We are here on the defense, not the offense," Chris Cox, Bikers for Trump founder told the FOX Business Network's Stuart Varney. The motorcycle enthusiast, who also assisted during inauguration day protests, met with police and local law enforcement this morning to discuss their plan of action going forward, he said. "From what I understand, any rumors that they've been told to stand down will be squashed today. They are not going to allow this disobedience, they are not going to allow the ski masks we've been seeing around the country, so we still have a presence here at Berkeley today," he said. Despite this, Cox doesnt expect protests to get out of hand. "We don't want to do anything that is going to give us a public relations black eye. We've stayed within the framework of the law and I intend that [protesters] will continue to stay within the framework of the law," he said. Boxed, a relative newcomer to the retail industry, announced Thursday it will fully automate one of its four fulfillment centers in the U.S. But, at odds with recent trends in the retail industry which has seen a slew of job cuts and store closures this year, this plan doesnat come alongside blueprints for layoffs. The online wholesale retailer that targets the millennial generation will transition its Union, New Jersey fulfillment center to a fully automated operation. Rather than laying off its staff who facilitate the day-to-day operations at that location, CEO Chieh Huang has vowed to reintegrate those employees to various positions within the company from logistics to customer service. aWhat weare trying to do is retrain those folks on different parts of the supply chain and go from having unskilled positions [that require workers to] push carts around the fulfillment center to having some of those people work with cutting edge robotics and learn how to troubleshoot and service a lot of this machinery,a Huang said in an interview with FOX Business. For Boxed, a nearly 3-1/2 year old privately held company that saw sales of more than $100 million last year, the decision to automate its fulfillment center wasnat completely motivated by cost cutting, although the company sees it as an added benefit. Instead, it was an idea more born out of necessity. Huang said about 94% of customers who place an order on Boxed.com get their packages within two days or fewer a no membership fee required. But the clock doesnat begin to tick down on that two-day timer until an order is on the truck. As the business grew, Huang noticed the pressure to fulfil orders on time also swelled. aOftentimes we couldnat even meet the demand we had to get all the packages on the truck between five and seven p.m. So, that was a huge motivation for us,a Huang said. With the new multi-million dollar system fully up and running next month, Boxed employees who remain at the fulfillment center will no longer have to hunt and collect items themselves before packing each individual order. Instead, robots will fetch the items and send them along a system of conveyor belts through the warehouse to workers who will then pack boxes and assist in getting them out to the trucks on time. Boxed not only developed the software that guides employees to pack boxes in the most efficient way possible, but also the tech that powers the fulfillment centeras automation processes a another way, Huang points out, the company is able to save on costs while innovating at the same time. aWe are a retailer from a consumer mindset, but internally, our biggest department is our engineering department,a he said, adding that while he absolutely worries about heightened competition from the likes of established big-box wholesale retailers like Samas Club (NYSE:WMT) and Costco (NASDAQ:COST) a which recently announced a bigger focus on the e-commerce portion of its business, Boxedas focus on technology and employee satisfaction in addition to giving consumers the best possible price is what sets it apart from the competition. aYou have to be paranoid. In our industry, youare not in the ring with some of the largest retailers in the world, youare in the ring with some of the largest companies period in the world. So, weare always pushing the envelope forward: Whether itas building out our business-to-business operations or whether itas our private brand where we see a significant part of our sales, weare constantly thinking about that,a Huang said. aYou have to be paranoid. In our industry, youare not in the ring with some of the largest retailers in the world, youare in the ring with some of the largest companies period in the world." - Boxed CEO Chieh Huang To drive customers to its platform and keep employees within the companyas ranks, Boxed has lowered prices on some of its goods to combat the so-called apink taxa or price premium placed on goods targeted at female shoppers a everything from razors and deodorant to feminine-care products. Huang has also made it a priority to fund college tuition for his employeesa children, and help shoulder the cost burden of his staffas life events. While few companies followed in Boxedas footsteps on the pink-tax rebate, Huang hopes more will consider following his model of streamlining corporate efficiency but not at the cost of employees. aI hope when management teams and board rooms consider the impacts and benefits of automating a warehouse environment, theyall also at least think a little bit a even if itsa a split second a about the human impact such a decision has,a he said, adding that his model may also appeal to shoppers who take into consideration a companyas values when deciding where to spend their money a a growing trend among younger demographics. Nine Republican members of Congress have urged President Trump to revise conditions of the Paris Agreement ahead of his planned meeting with his top advisors to discuss the issue Thursday. As you know, President Obama pledged a 26 to 28% reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emission by 2025, compared to a 2005 baseline, the Congress members wrote in a letter addressed to Trump. This target would cause irreparable harm to our economy, particularly our manufacturing and energy sectors, and should be rejected. The group adds that a recent report by the American Council for Capital Formation, for example, found achieving this pledge would reduce our gross domestic product by $250 billion by 2025 and reduce economy-wide employment by 2.7 million jobs. More on this... Team Trump Debating Next Steps on Paris Climate Agreement They say the U.S. should instead present a new pledge that doesnt harm our economy but instead showcases plans to drive technological innovation to help ensure a future for fossil fuels within the context of the global climate agenda. Additionally, they advise Trump to not make any additional transfers to the Green Climate Fund, saying the Obama administration already gave $1 billion to the fund, including a $500 million payment shortly before your inauguration. The letter comes as Trumps top advisors are already split on the issue. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said earlier this week that he is for the U.S. remaining as part of the 194-nation agreement, but also thinks it should be reworked. EPA chief Scott Pruitt and Trumps senior strategist, Steve Bannon, have been very vocal about wanting out of the pledge, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trumps son-in-law and daughter Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are reportedly urging the president to remain committed to the agreement. Representatives Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Larry Bucshon (R-IN), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Billy Long (R-MO), Chris Collins (R-NY), Gregg Harper (R-MS), and Earl L. Buddy Carter (R-GA) all signed the letter. President Donald Trumps top aides are meeting Thursday to debate whether or not the U.S. should pull out of the Paris climate accorda global pact aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The White House confirmed to FOX Business that the meeting is set for 1:30pm ET. It is likely to be a fiery powwow, considering Trumps most trusted advisors are split on the issue. Earlier this week, Trumps Energy Secretary Rick Perry said that while he is for the U.S. remaining as part of the 194-nation agreement, he thinks it should be reworked. Im not going to tell the president of the United States to walk away from the Paris accord, the former Texas governor said on Tuesday. I will say that we need to renegotiate it. His comments come as some of Trumps top advisors remain split on the issue. EPA chief Scott Pruitt and Trumps senior strategist, Stephen K. Bannon want to back out of the pledge, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trumps son-in-law and daughter--Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trumpare reportedly urging the president to remain committed to the agreement. Pruitt told Fox News earlier this month that in his opinion, the U.S. should exit the accord as soon as possible. Its a bad deal for America. It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India has no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We front-loaded all our costs, Pruitt said. On the other hand, Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, supported the deal during his confirmation testimony in January, saying, Were better served by being at that table than by leaving that table. Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell and BP also have endorsed the pact. And while Trumps daughter Ivanka has yet to offer a concrete public statement on her thoughts around climate change, Politico has reported that she wants to become an ambassador for the cause. She has reportedly met with former Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore and climate change activist and actor Leonardo DiCaprio privately to discuss the issue. The international agreementwhich is non-bindingwas forged in Paris in December 2015 and officially went into effect last November. Under the agreement, more than 195 countries pledged to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 by 26 to 28 percent, which would be a reduction of about 1.6 billion tons of annual emissions. Earlier this week, Gore teamed up with a group made up of energy executives, activist leaders and investment bankers who have pledged to fight rising temperatures across the globe. The group called Energy Transitions Commissions (ETC) is calling for countries to spend up to $600 billion a year over the next two decades to boost green energy deployment and energy efficiency equipment. Ed Russo, president and CEO of ER Advisors, who previously worked for the Trump Organization for 17 years and was in charge of all environmental affairs for the resorts, says while he doesnt think its a good idea for the U.S. to leave the Paris accord, the overall agreement does have some shortfalls. "I would not recommend that the United States disengage from the Paris Climate Summit at this time. However, it must be clearly understood that the covenants of the summit fall short of addressing serious air and water pollution problems worldwide. A much greater effort must be focused on existing pollution problems and processes that continue to pollute our planet. "It has been frustrating to observe this overwhelming concern regarding carbon while methane and other pollutants continue to be discharged into our atmosphere, Russo tells FOX Business. Andrew Light, former senior climate change advisor at the State Department, tells FOX Business that if Trump decides to leave the agreement, it will have a ripple effect that will go way beyond climate change. If President Trump now decides to leave the Paris Agreement, he will be answering for that decision on issues that go well beyond climate, finding it difficult if not impossible to get his agenda across to a world stunned by this decision, starting at the G7 Summit in May, Light says. Other environmentalists argue the accord, as is, can help Trump deliver on another campaign promise: creating jobs. Why would President Trump walk away from a deal that brings jobs, security and prosperity for Americans? The United States economic and national security interests are best served by staying in the Paris Agreement. But if the U.S. withdraws from its Paris commitments, it would be left out and left behind at a time when countries around the world are seizing the huge opportunities from taking action, David Waskow, director at the International Climate Initiative tells FOX Business. While Trump promised during the campaign to cancel the Paris agreement, shortly after winning the election he told the New York Times that he had an "open mind" regarding the 195-country pact. And last month, after meeting with Trump, Gore told The Washington Post that he thinks there is a realistic chance Trump will opt to keep the United States as a participant in the agreement. I do believe there is an ongoing deliberation in the White House about what to do with respect to the Paris agreement, Gore told The Washington Post. I will simply express the hope that there is a realistic chance that the president will ultimately decide that the cost to the United States and to his presidency of withdrawing from the Paris agreement would far outweigh any quote-unquote benefits from withdrawing. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has told reporters that the president will make up his mind on the Paris agreement before a summit of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations in Taormina, Italy in late May. President Donald Trump is set on lowering the corporate tax rates, and if he's successful -- no easy task -- it will probably improve the bottom line of most of the stocks in your portfolio. Naturally a more favorable corporate tax rate won't provide a boost to all companies the same way. Companies that have substantial tax-loss carryforwards, are in industries that don't pay much in taxes, or make most of their money overseas won't see the same benefit as traditional U.S. companies. Let's take a look at all three scenarios. Image source: Carnival. Black Diamond (NASDAQ:BDE) The silver lining for companies that have posted heady losses in recent years is that those deficits can help offset the tax liability on future gains. Naturally you also need to be on the cusp of turning the corner of profitability to cash in on those tax-loss carryforwards, and that's where Black Diamond is right now. Black Diamond specializes in gear and apparel for extreme outdoor enthusiasts. It's been toiling away in red ink in recent years. You have to go all the way back to 2009 to find the last time that it had a meaningful effective tax rate. Analysts see Black Diamond posting more losses through the first half of the year, but then they see it returning to profitability during the latter half of 2017. Other companies paying a lower corporate tax rate won't have a direct impact on Black Diamond, but it will make comparisons more level when pitted against companies that don't have tax-loss carryforwards to gnaw away at pre-tax profits. Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE:CCL) (NYSE:CUK) There's a lot of money being made on cruise ships as well-heeled passengers pay up for cabins, shore excursions, and gambling losses. The money is mostly made on international waters, and even stateside cruise lines sail most of their vessels under foreign flags to skirt regulations, labor laws, and most importantly taxes. The "flag of convenience" business practice is controversial, but at the end of the day most of the pre-tax profits a cruise line makes trickles down to the bottom line.Carnival is the world's largest cruise line, and its effective tax rate over the past three fiscal years has clocked in at 0.7%, 2.3%, and 1.7%, respectively. China Mobile (NYSE:CHL) It goes without saying that an international company that generates the lion's share of its money outside of the U.S. isn't going to be able to cash in on a more favorable corporate tax rate policy. China Mobile is the undisputed giant in the world's most populous nation with 849 million mobile customers. China Mobile joins many Chinese stocks in paying reasonably low tax rates. China Mobile's effective rate has clocked in just shy of 25% for years, and that's not going to change just because it may happen stateside. The relative improvement may shift telco investors to U.S names, and that is ultimately the real reason to worry about the stocks that won't be cashing in on potentially relaxed tax policy. 10 stocks we like better than China Mobile When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and China Mobile 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 Rick Munarriz has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Carnival. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. An anti-Airbnb television ad has sparked a wild battle between the San Francisco-based home-sharing platform and a grassroots political organization. Share Better D.C., a coalition that includes politicians and the hotel industry, released an ad depicting a woman who describes herself as a long-time Washington D.C. resident, upset at the real estate landlords who are purchasing low-income housing and renting them out on the home-sharing site. In an interview with FOX Business Networks Liz Claman, D.C. Working Families Senior Advisor Valerie Ervin explained the problems renters and residents are facing. What weve seen in D.C. and other markets like D.C. is that the commercialization of whole buildings and more than one home is actually having an impact on the ability for D.C. residents to remain in their homes and have it be affordable, she said. The ad hit the airwaves ahead of a hearing Wednesday to debate a plan that would impose limits on the way property owners in the nations capital can profit from Airbnb. Airbnbs head of Global Policy Chris Lehane said Share Better is running a duplicitous and deceptive ad because the woman featured is an actress who lives in New York City and not in the Southeast part of D.C. as suggested. Lehane also noted that the political organization is hurting hundreds of middle-class working families who rely on making their homes available as hosts to earn a living. I am just very surprised that someone who is representing working families is actually aligning themselves with the hotel industry against everyday people, Lehane said. Ervin said the home-sharing company is buying up low-income buildings and leasing out the rooms. Airbnb is coming into the city and they are buying up entire buildings, for example, rent control buildings which were put there for home owners who are having trouble affording a home, she said. Lehane refuted Ervins claims saying Airbnb is very transparent in how it conducts its business. We are a platform that is helping everyday people use their house to make ends meet, he said. Additionally a company spokesperson tells FOX Business, We don't own the buildings where we have listings. This is a fundamental misstatement of our business model. *Updated to reflect additional Airbnb comment. American Airlines Group Inc. was downgraded at J.P. Morgan Thursday, which had been bullish on the air carrier since at least December 2013, saying the wage increases being implemented is a "worrying precedent" for both American and the industry. Analyst Jamie Baker cut his rating to neutral from overweight. He slashed his stock price target to $52, which is 12% above Wednesday's closing price of $46.40, from $59. The stock slumped 4.6% in premarket trade, after the company reported first-quarter earnings, and said it would raise the base pay for flight attendants and pilots, outside of contract negotiations, to industry highs. "We are troubled by [American's] wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups," Baker wrote in a note to clients. "In our minds, this is a seminal event, and represents the first, credible potential blow to our long-held 'it's different this time' investment thesis." Among other airline stocks, Delta Air Lines Inc. slid 2.2% premarket and United Continental Holdings Inc. shed 1.9%. American's stock has soared 26% over the past 12 months, while the NYSE Arca Airline Index has rallied 25% and the S&P 500 has gained 14%. Copyright 2017 MarketWatch, Inc. Both of their company names appear on gas station signs around the country, but that's where the similarities between energy companiesSunoco LP(NYSE: SUN) andConocoPhillips(NYSE: COP) pretty much end. Conoco spun off its retail operations in 2012 to focus exclusively on oil and gas exploration and production, while Sunoco -- now a limited partnership controlled byEnergy Transfer Partners(NYSE: ETP) -- has moved exclusively into downstream operations, selling wholesale and retail gasoline. Oh, there's one more similarity, too: Both stocks have been hit hard by current weak oil prices. So, let's see which one of these stocks looks like the better bargain today. ConocoPhillips spun off its retail fuel business in 2012. Sunoco still has its retail business...for now. Image source: Getty Images. Dividend yield While oil prices -- and energy sector stocks -- are down, a robust dividend can reward patient investors until the market starts to rebound. And it doesn't get more robust than Sunoco's incredible 10.9% current yield. That tops most companies in the sector, including the integrated majors, for whichRoyal Dutch Shell's current 7.2% dividend yield is best in class. It also absolutely blows away poor Conoco's lackluster 2.1% dividend yield, but it wasn't always that way. At the beginning of 2015, the companies' dividend yields were nearly identical, at 4.1%. But in 2016, with its debt load rising and oil prices slumping, Conoco slashed its quarterly dividend from $0.74/share to just $0.25/share.Sunoco held its dividend steady, even in the face of mounting debt. We'll look at how that debt is affecting Sunoco, but with a yield more than five times higher than that of its competitor, Sunoco clearly comes out on top by this metric. Winner: Sunoco Debt load Neither company's balance sheet is pristine, and that's hardly a surprise in this weak oil market. Even the largest integrated oil companies likeExxonMobil and Shell have seen their debt loads rise as oil prices wreaked havoc on their bottom lines.But the question is how well the companies are managing the debt they've had to take on. Sunoco's dividend yield isn't the only number that's much higher than Conoco's. Its debt-to-equity ratio is nearly 1.5, compared to Conoco's 0.4. Even for an energy company, that's astronomical. Sunoco has so much debt, in fact, that S&P Global downgraded it to a BB- rating in January before its creditors finally stepped in and forced it to accept a debt reduction plan. That plan, which only calls for the company to reduce its debt to 5.5 times its equity (down from 6.5 times equity in Q4 2016), is being augmented by a $300 million infusion of liquidity by Energy Transfer Equity, one of the other partnerships in the Energy Transfer family, and by the recent sale of 1,110 of Sunoco's convenience stores to 7-Eleven for $3.3 billion. Management expects that this transaction will bring total debt down to about 4.5 to 4.75 times equity. That may be enough to satisfy the company's creditors, but it's still a lot of debt. Conoco's balance sheet seems downright tame by comparison. Winner: ConocoPhillips A path forward Dividends and current debt loads only tell us about where a company is today. Of more interest to investors should be where a company is going. And right now, these companies have charted very similar paths forward: trimming the fat. For ConocoPhillips, that means focusing on oil drilling projects with a low breakeven point. The breakeven point for an oil producer is the price per barrel above which the company makes a profit. With oil prices hovering just above $50/barrel, that means companies are trying to invest in projects with breakeven points well below that threshold. ConocoPhillips has done a pretty good job of this recently. It's begun getting out of the risky and expensive business of deepwater exploration. It's also cutting costs and has promised to trim its capital budget by 4% this year.In its Q4 earnings call, Executive Vice President Don Wallette suggested that the company's breakeven would be in the "high 40s" moving forward. Sunoco, as I mentioned, has sold off 1,110 of its convenience stores to 7-Eleven, and it has plans to sell another 207, which would get it out of the convenience store business entirely, with the exception of a handful of high-margin Aloha Petroleum stores in Hawaii.However, it's received a15-year, fixed-rate take-or-pay fuel supply agreement from 7-Eleven as part of the deal. The agreement includes required growth components to deliver expanding volumes in future years, and it requires current Sunoco-branded stations to retain branded Sunoco fuel offerings. This will make 7-Eleven the company's largest wholesale fuel customer, with 29% of overall wholesale volume. It also reduces Sunoco's capital needs and simplifies its business model. But even big positive changes are still big changes and inject a certain amount of risk into the business. It's a close call, but ConocoPhillips seems to have the clearer path forward at the moment. Winner: ConocoPhillips Investor takeaway While Sunoco has a mouth-watering dividend and has taken some concrete steps to reduce its debt, the big changes it's making to its business and the fact that the debt is nowhere near eliminated make it a risky play at the moment. That's why ConocoPhillips, despite its smaller dividend and balance sheet problems of its own, is the better buy. However, smart investors should keep an eye on Sunoco as it transitions to a leaner business model. If Sunoco can manage the transition effectively, ConocoPhillips may not come out on top next time. 10 stocks we like better than SunocoWhen 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 Sunoco 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. John Bromels has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of ExxonMobil. The Motley Fool recommends Royal Dutch Shell B. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explained to FOX Business whether technology will continue to see growth in the health care industry. Ballmer said the health care industry needs to keep developing new ideas, similar to the tech sector. Some of the tech that exists today will become obsolete. But therell be new technology that will replace them. Im a great believer in all aspects of technology and economy that, while things do change and thats disrupted, for every door that closes, another door opens. And the world grows and progresses and things improve, he said in an interview on FOX Business' Wall Street Week. Ballmer explained why despite the growing investment in medical technology, the average human lifespan has not grown significantly. Theres not the same kind of capitalistic pressure in the healthcare industry to improve products at the right price. The technology is about improving the product as opposed to looking at price value, Ballmer said. The former leader of the tech giant thinks the biggest problem when it comes to medical technology is the cost. The government structures the industry. It regulates the industry. And its the biggest payer in the industry with Medicare, Medicaid, and a bunch of other government programs. I think, in the healthcare industry, the problem isnt new technology; the problem is, can we deliver new technology and new treatments at costs that are sustainable over time? The outline of Donald Trump's proposed tax plan, released by the White House on Wednesday, bodes well for Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). The nation's second biggest bank by assets paid $7.3 billion in corporate income taxes in 2016 at an effective tax rate of 29%. If Trump's plan to lower the rate on corporations to 15% comes to fruition, Bank of America could redirect billions of dollars to dividends and share buybacks, both of which the North Carolina-based bank is inclined to do. Bank of America Tower (center) in New York City. Image source: Getty Images. According to my math, Bank of America's tax liability would be cut nearly in half under the White House's proposed plan. It would have shaved approximately $3.5 billion off its tax bill last year, which, holding all else equal, would have equated to a roughly 19% increase in Bank of America's bottom line. But as with most good things, there's a catch. Bank of America currently has $19 billion worth of net deferred tax assets sitting on its balance sheet. These stem from, among other things, past net operating losses the bank hasn't been able to claim yet, as well as tax credit carry-forwards that can be used to reduce its future tax liability. The catch is that the value of these assets is correlated to the corporate income-tax rate. If rates are lowered, so, too, will the value of Bank of America's deferred tax assets. Under a high tax rate, deferred tax assets are more valuable because there's more tax to offset. Because these assets expire after a set number of years, moreover, it's also possible that a lower tax rate would leave a portion of Bank of America's $19 billion net deferred tax assets unused. At a 15% rate, it wouldn't be able to claim the entire amount before the expiration date. Image source: Getty Images. Bank of America hasn't said how much a lower tax rate would affect the value of its deferred tax assets, noting in its latest 10-K: Bank of America's stance aside, estimates put the figure at $4.4 billion, which would presumably be realized by the $2.2 trillion bank over the course of a year. A write-down this big obviously makes a tax cut less attractive from Bank of America's perspective. Yet it would still be a boon to the bank, as it would shave billions of dollars off its annual tax liability on an ongoing basis. 10 stocks we like better than Bank of AmericaWhen 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 Bank of America 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 John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. U.S. President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that he will not terminate the NAFTA treaty at this stage, but will move quickly to begin renegotiating it with them, a White House said. The announcement came after White House officials disclosed that Trump and his advisers had been considering issuing an executive order to withdraw the United States from the trade pact with Canada and Mexico, one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The White House said Trump spoke by telephone with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and that he would hold back from a speedy termination of NAFTA, in what was described as a "pleasant and productive" conversation. "President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," a White House statement said. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," Trump was quoted as saying in the statement. The Mexican and Canadian currencies rebounded in Asian trading after Trump said the U.S. would stay in NAFTA for now. The U.S. dollar dropped 0.6 percent on its Canadian counterpart and 1 percent on the peso. The White House had been considering an executive order exiting NAFTA as early as Trump's 100th day in office on Saturday, but there was a split among his top advisers over whether to take the step. During his election campaign Trump threatened to renegotiate NAFTA and in the past week complained bitterly about Canadian trade practices. It was under an executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 23 that the United States pulled out of the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. News of the potential presidential action to withdraw from NAFTA earlier drove the Mexican and Canadian currencies lower. NAFTA TRADE HAVOC * A disruption in trade between the three NAFTA partnerscould wreak havoc in the auto sector and other industries,hitting profits at companies that have benefited from zero-leveltariffs and Mexico's relatively low labor costs. It would alsohit U.S. agricultural exports hard. "To totally abandon that agreement means that those gains are lost," said Paul Ferley, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Trump has repeatedly vowed to pull out from the 23-year-old trade pact if he is unable to renegotiate it with better terms for America. He has long accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs. The United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Details about the draft executive order on NAFTA were not immediately available. Trump has faced some setbacks since he took office in January, including a move by courts to block parts of his orders to limit immigration. Withdrawing from NAFTA would enable him to say he delivered on one of his key campaign promises, but it could also hurt him in states that voted for him in the election. "Mr. President, America's corn farmers helped elect you, the National Corn Growers Association said in a statement. "Withdrawing from NAFTA would be disastrous for American agriculture." DIVERGING OPINIONS The first administration source told Reuters that there were diverging opinions within the U.S. government about how to proceed and it was possible that Trump could sign the executive order before the 100-day mark of his presidency. The source noted that the administration wanted to tread carefully. There is talk about what steps we can take to start the process of renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA, this source said. Mexico had expected to start NAFTA renegotiations in August but the possible executive order could add urgency to the timeline. The Mexican government had no comment on the draft order. The country's foreign minister said on Tuesday that Mexico would walk away from the negotiating table rather than accept a bad deal. Trump recently ramped up his criticism of Canada and this week ordered 20 percent tariffs on imports of Canadian softwood lumber, setting a tense tone as the three countries prepared to renegotiate the pact. Canada said it was ready to come to talks on renewing NAFTA at any time. "At this moment NAFTA negotiations have not started. Canada is ready to come to the table at any time," said Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto, David Ljunggren in Ottawa,; Rodrigo Campos in New York and Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Writing by Jason Lange; Editing by Tom Brown, Bill Rigby and Michael Perry) President Trump took another step to revive U.S. manufacturing, and protect national security, by greenlighting an investigation into aluminum imports. Speaking at the White House, Trump surrounded by a group of aluminum executives from companies such as Alcoa (NYSE:AA), noted the U.S. now produces less of the industrial metal than it did in 1952. He is now tasking Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has added aluminum to his hit list, to investigate potential bad actors importing the industrial metal. Ticker Security Last Change Change % AA ALCOA CORP. 43.23 +1.72 +4.14% CENX CENTURY ALUMINUM CO. 7.88 +0.60 +8.24% KALU KAISER ALUMINUM CORP. 84.72 +1.22 +1.46% CSTM CONSTELLIUM 11.34 -0.13 -1.13% Imports have been flooding in to the aluminum industry, said Ross, during a briefing with reporters, confirming the basis for an investigation that began on April 26. He also cautioned that a class of the high-quality silver metal is used in several defense jets including Lockheed Martins (NYSE:LMT) F-35, and Boeings F-18 and C-17 (NYSE:BA). It is also used in armor plating of military vehicles and combat vessels. The investigation is ongoing and has not reached a conclusion, he said. Ross noted that there is just one U.S. smelter plant that can produce high-quality aluminum for the defense industry. It is very, very dangerous to have one [high-quality] supplier of critical material he noted. Along with national security concerns, Ross said imports have, in part, crippled the U.S. aluminum industry which has seen at least eight smelter plants either close or dial back production since 2015. The secretary also called out Chinas rising dominance of global aluminum market share. Canada, Russia and the United Arab Emirates are also big suppliers to the U.S. Mining giant Rio Tinto, which is one of several companies that imports aluminum to the U.S., is open to a review of practices and contends the U.S. and Canada have a solid working relationship. We are confident that the national security review of aluminum imports will recognize the exceptional role that cost-competitive, high quality and readily available aluminum from Canada plays as a key input for U.S. manufacturers including in the defense sector, a spokesperson tells FOX Business. Earlier this week Ross lowered the boom on Canada in an attempt to level the playing field on lumber and dairy trade. The way it works in Canada is that the provinces own the standing timber and they charge very, very low, way below market fees for whats called stumpage, mainly the right to cut the trees down," Ross told the FOX Business Network's Lou Dobbs on Tuesday. "That in turn lets the Canadians ship lumber into the U.S. at a subsidized price. Now, the U.S. wants payback. The preliminary finding was a fine of $1 billion per year, and since we are imposing it retroactively for 90 days, when we put them on notice that will be an extra one-time $250 million and they began paying those fines today, said Ross. Ross is also investigating all foreign steel imports, a promise he made after being confirmed, as reported by FOX Business. The Commerce Department is conducting these steel and aluminum probes also known as 232 investigations - by dusting off a rarely used portion of an old trade law. When asked about the connection to these recent trade crackdowns and the future of NAFTA he said, This is about aluminum, not NAFTA. Suzanne OHalloran is Managing Editor of FOXBusiness.com and a graduate of Boston College. Follow her on @suzohalloran.A. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, discussed Wednesday the importance of the administrations tax reform bill and why both political parties should support it. This is important because you want to go bold and you want to go very courageous The tax burdens, we spend billions of hours and billions of dollars a year just trying to comply with this tax code, she said during an interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight. The old saying, go bold or go home has some resonance but, Im telling the Republicans today and the Democrats frankly, if you go bold on tax reform, you are able to go home because you have a great story to tell. Conway, the former campaign manager to President Trump, also expressed great interest in seeing Democratic support for the bill. We used to have Boll weevil Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats, fiscally conservative Democrats. Where are they? This party has been pulled pretty, very far to the left, but we would love to have Democratic support on fundamental, historic tax reform, she said. Diesel is falling out of favor in many regions, including in Europe where the fuel sells at a significant discount to gasoline and has been the preferred choice of buyers for decades. Automakers, too, are looking more towards electrification to improve efficiency rather than diesel technology, brought about by a combination of stricter emissions regulations and the fallout of the Volkswagen Groups diesel scandal. Perhaps, then, BMWs 3.0-liter quad-turbocharged inline-6 thats just been fitted to the 2018 M550d is the last hurrah for diesel technology, at least as far as cars are concerned. The engine delivers 394 horsepower and 560 pound-feet of torque and made its debut last year in a 750d. Neither model is destined for sale in the United States so dont bother getting your hopes up. The engine utilizes two low-pressure turbos and two high-pressure turbos. It might seem like overkill, but according to BMW this arrangement enables boost pressure to be built up quickly at low rpm and maintained throughout the rev range. For example, theres already 332 lb-ft of torque at just 1,000 rpm, and the 560 lb-ft peak arrives only 1,000 revs later and is maintained up to 3,000 rpm. The peak power is generated at 4,400 rpm. Note, the engine relies fully on normal exhaust-driven compressors. This is in contrast to Audi's latest diesel engine which relies on an electric compressor for low-rpm boost. In the M550d xDrive, the quad-turbocharged engine is mated to an 8-speed automatic and all-wheel-drive system as standard. With the sedan youre looking at 0-62 mph in about 4.4 seconds. Opt for the wagon and the time drops to 4.6 seconds. Top speed is limited to 155 mph on both. BMW quotes fuel economy of 39.9 mpg for the sedan and 37.9 mpg for the wagon. However, these are calculated on the European cycle which is more lenient than EPA tests. EPA ratings would likely show a few mpg less for each figure, assuming the engine would even pass emissions regs here. Like the M550i gasoline model headed here, the M550d is part of the M Performance range. This means it gets plenty of M Performance goodies like sport-tuned suspension, 19-inch light alloys, uprated brakes, and an aerodynamics package. Inside, you get sport seats with Alcantara trim, custom treadplates with M550d logos, and a steering wheel and foot pedals from the BMW M parts bin. As mentioned, the M550d isnt headed to the U.S. If you happen to have a penchant for quad-turbocharged engines, you could always pick up a Bugatti Chiron... MORE AUTO NEWS FROM MOTOR AUTHORITY 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. CBS This Morning is creeping up on the Today show and even Good Morning America. According to the latest Nielsen data, released following the week of April 10, GMA remains at the top of the network morning-show heap with 4.29 million total viewers, ahead of Today at 4.01 million and CBS This Morning at 3.64 million. Five years ago, ABCs GMA climbed into first place, ending Todays 16-year run as the most-watched morning show. And GMA is still No. 1 today, with a 5-percent lead over its NBC rival, though Today is still tops in the highly sought after 25-54 year old demo. Still, both shows are losing viewers. GMA fell 9 percent in total viewers and 11 percent in the demo last year, while Today tumbled 12 percent in viewers and 16 percent in the coveted 25-54 age demo. CBS This Morning, meanwhile, is up 42 percent in viewers and 2 percent in the demo. TJ Walker, president of Media Training Worldwide, credits CBS This Mornings success to co-hosts Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Norah ODonnell. CBS is catching up to the Today Show because CBS made the daring gamble to be a little different, Walker said. Selecting an old-timer like Charlie Rose and doing long-format interviews arent what typically works in morning TV. But CBS has shown that not only is it OK to be different, it pays to be different if you want to distinguish yourself in a marketplace where most network news shows all look and sound alike. ABCs ratings release for the week of April 17 showed that GMAs lead over Today increased 55 percent over the week before. NBC did not return requests for comment, and CBS directed inquirers to a TVNewser article that highlighted the network's recent high ratings for "CBS This Morning." Lana Wood became Hollywood royalty when she starred as sizzling Bond Girl Plenty OToole opposite Sean Connery in 1971s Diamonds Are Forever but now, the sister of late actress Natalie Wood is homeless. Inside Edition reported that the 71-year-old is staying in a motel room outside of Los Angeles with her daughter Evan, her son-in-law, three grandchildren and two dogs while struggling to make ends meet. Its been very difficult for the kids, said Wood to the televised news magazine. They feel like they have no privacy. BEFORE & AFTER: CELEBS' MOST DRAMATIC TRANSFORMATIONS Wood, who once wore glamorous gowns for a living and enjoyed fine dining in Hollywood, now shops for bargains at Goodwill and can only fit water and a few snacks in a makeshift kitchen. While Wood previously lived with Evan and their grandchildren in a rented home in California for several years, they had to move out when they couldnt afford the rent. And with no one willing to take them in, the family faced homelessness. But the challenges didnt end there. The site added that Evan battled Hodgkins lymphoma and her radiation treatments permanently scarred her lungs. She breathes through an oxygen compressor and her cancer has since returned. The familys financial crisis has worsened with the growing medical bills. Wood also needs two knee replacement surgeries. You live in a snow globe and the world is upside down, emotional, explained Wood. Its like the rugs have been pulled out from under you. And its just difficult to cope with. I dont know how much more we can take. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO NATALIE WOOD? When asked what happened, Wood responded real life. But just six years ago, Woods life was completely different. At the time, she was living in a two-story California home and was pressing her late sisters husband, actor Robert Wagner, for answers about Natalies sudden death in 1981 from a mysterious drowning. Authorities have since said Wagner is not a suspect and he denies any involvement in her passing. Wagner previously spoke to Fox News about his love for Natalie. Natalie was such a special, marvelous woman and we found each other twice in our lives how lucky I was, he explained. I just had such wonderful times with her she was just a marvelous, marvelous light. My light and the light for our children. She was just such a special person. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Wood revealed that if her beloved sibling were alive today, she would be devastated and "fix" the problems shes now faced with. Woods friend Gregor Gillespie has recently set up a GoFundMe page in hopes of raising funds for the fallen star. Lana is currently packing rapidly and trying to get her belongings out of the property before the sheriff locks her out, he wrote. She also does not have the money to put down for another house everything is on her shoulders at the minute and nobody at Lanas age should be stuck in this position, especially after what shes been through. The stress of this for her is what worries me more than anything. Gillespie also added that he set a goal of raising $10,000 as a means to help Lana obtain a new home for her and her family. So far, the page has raised $7,045. Nicole Curtis's custody battle with ex-boyfriend Shane Maguire is far from over. In court documents obtained by In Touch Magazine, Maguire demanded the 40-year-old star of Rehab Addict to see their 22-month-old son Harper. The publication reported that Maguire alleged that the reality TV personality has prevented him from exercising his court-ordered parenting time. NICOLE CURTIS DETAILS PERSONAL TROUBLES, EXPLAINS 'REHAB ADDICT' DELAY He is now demanding that Curtis provides 10 consecutive days of make-up time with Harper at his home in Minnesota in addition to his regularly scheduled time. He also asked the judge to prohibit Curtis from posting disparaging comments about him on social media. Country Living previously reported that Curtis has been in and out of court since 2015 due to several legal issues including a protective order filed by her own mother, Joan Curtis. The star's mom claimed she was being harassed with threatening calls and texts by her famous daughter. Her father had reportedly threatened in the past to go to the press with information about his daughter. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Our situation is absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking, Curtis told the magazine. I cant say anymore to that. In addition to her messy custody battle over Harper, she was also recently sued by the city of Minneapolis over claims she failed to redevelop a property she purchased for $2. Curtis has said she was "threatened and harassed" during the back-and-forth with the city. Kerry Turman, a longtime bassist for The Temptations, has died after a performance in Missouri. He was 59. The coroner in Cape Girardeau County says Turman was found dead at a local hotel early Sunday, shortly after performing Saturday night in Cape Girardeau. The vocal group is currently touring with the Beach Boys. Turman had performed with The Temptations since the 1980s. The group had several hits in the 1960s and '70s, including No. 1 song "My Girl." Coroner John Clifton says an initial autopsy indicates Turman died of natural causes. The full autopsy report won't be available for several weeks. The group announced Turman's death on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, saying: "The Temptations lost a dear member of our family. ... Rest In Peace, much love, much respect." A group of graffiti artists from Brooklyn, N.Y. is suing McDonald's over the alleged unauthorized use of their work in a Dutch ad for a new burger with a Big Apple theme. According to a press release provided to Fox News by the law firm Kushnirsky Gerber, six artistsDon Rimx, Beau Stanton, Virus, NDA, Atomik, and Himbadare pursuing legal action against the fast-food corporation for copyright infringement and false endorsement, with others poised to follow suit. As initially reported by Artnet, the artists will seek compensation for damages to their work and reputation, plus profits derived from McDonalds unauthorized use of their artwork to promote the "New York Bagel Supreme" burger overseas. MCDONALD'S MANAGER ARRESTED FOR $3,800 BIG MAC REFUND SCAM To promote the new sandwich, the fast food chain reportedly hired half a dozen street artists from the Brooklyn-based non-profit mural project Bushwish Collective to paint versions of their new sandwich on billboards in the Netherlands. They also released a four-minute documentary-style videoincluding the work of the artists Kushnirsky Gerber representsfeaturing many of the murals from the Brooklyn neighborhood, entitled McDonalds presents The vibe of Bushwick NY. The artists attorney Andrew Gerber notes in the relase that Many of the artists whose work appears in the adincluding the artists threatening legal actiondid not give permission for their work to be featured, and some have no affiliation at all with Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn Graffiti Artists Claim McDonalds Stole Their Work to Sell Burgers https://t.co/PmXyFRgAIV pic.twitter.com/HUWwhmpk4h Hospitality Cleaning (@HClean101) April 26, 2017 Text included in the video advertisement states that all of the featured murals are painted with permission of the owners, suggesting that although McDonalds did not seek permission from numerous artists to feature their work, it did contact the owners of dozens of Bushwick buildings to confirm that all murals had been commissioned legally, the release continues. NDA, one of the artists participating in the suit, told The Daily Beast, If youre going to use our work to bolster your street cred, you should at least ask for permission. Im not interested in doing free work for a giant, multi-national corporation, he said. The promotional video has since been scrubbed from McDonalds YouTube channel, but street art blog Vandalog has preserved it on their Facebook page, stating, Because McDonald's removed this video from their YouTube account before everyone who wanted to see it could take a look, we thought we would repost it here. We don't own the rights to this video, but we are preserving it online for the purposes of criticism and news reporting. According to Gerber, This is the second time in six months that McDonalds has faced charges of infringing street art. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Its frustrating that it should still be a novel issue that posing in front of an artwork for a commercial product is unlawful, Gerber told Artnet, which pointed out that publicly displayed artwork isnt automatically fair game. If anything, we should be strengthening legal protections for artists in order to encourage public artworks. This isnt the first time the golden arches chain has been accused of ripping off street art to appear edgier. In October 2016, the estate of late street artist Dash Snow filed a suit against McDonalds claiming that they used several of Snows designs as fake graffiti in various locations. The suit claimed that Snows family had asked McDonalds to remove the graffiti months earlier, but the behemoth arrogantly refused to comply. A representative for McDonald's was not immediately available for comment. The only thing better than an ice cream cone on a warm spring afternoon is a free ice cream cone on a warm spring afternoon. Today, Carvel locations across the country are giving customers just that a complimentary junior soft-serve cone to mark the official start of ice cream season, Carvel president Scott Colwell stated. The free cones will only be available between 38 p.m. at participating shops on April 27. Customers will also be able to choose from three flavors: chocolate, vanilla, or Carvels new limited-time-only Cookie Butter, a flavor inspired by the spiced, crunchy speculoos cookies (think Lotus Biscoff cookies) eaten around the holidays in some European countries. YEUNGLING CREATES 'BUTTERBEER' ICE CREAM FOR HARRY POTTER FANS In addition to providing ice cream lovers with a free frozen treat, Carvels Free Cone Day will be donating funds to aid in disaster relief efforts. For the sixth straight year, the company has partnered with the Red Cross to support the charitable organizations annual Giving Day. So, while supplies last, Carvel will be offering customers special coupon books with a total value of over $20 for just $1 apiece, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross. Free Cone Day is much more than just a freebie day, said Colwell. Its a special day for us to show genuine gratitude to our loyal guests while coming together to raise funds for a very worthy cause. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS One of Carvels biggest competitors, Ben & Jerrys, offered a similar deal earlier this month on April 4, although they didnt directly partner with any charities to raise funds. Instead, the company took the opportunity to tout its equal rights and climate justice initiatives. For more details on Carvels Free Cone Day, visit Carvel.com. Not long ago, after a trip to Paris, I set up a butter tasting for a man with a very sophisticated palate. (Because thats what you do, right?) Alongside the Bordier and the Beillevaire and a slab from Normandy that Id cadged from the chef at Papillon, I snuck in a ringer. Something Id just bought in New Jersey for $4.99. A butter that took second place, after Bordier. Reader, it was from Trader Joes. Granted, TJ's imports its cultured salted butter from Brittany. But, having also done a tasting of American artisanal butters (Yes, Im accepting applications for new best friends), I can say with full-fat authority that even the best American butterthat would still be Vermont Creamerycant compare to even the supermarket French stuff. Perhaps its the quality of the French cultures that are added to the cream that unleash its deep potential. Maybe its the fact that the countrys year-round rain and more temperate climate makes for better grass, and, therefore, richer cream. Or, I dunno, maybe its because the French have centuries more experience, and they really care. So this Trader Jacque's cultured salted butter: Its what you want slathered on your toast, melting on your veg, smeared across the tip of a breakfast radish. Anywhere you want to taste that profound, slightly tangy flavor with just the right amount of salt. Sometimes you get a little flakethats fun. Right now, at my house, its getting melted to pour over springy steamed asparagus and to fill a ramekin for artichoke dipping. And you know whats even better than Nutella buttercream frosting for a birthday cake? Fancy (yet weirdly affordable, in true TJ's style) French butter Nutella buttercream frosting. One day, when I muster the courage to try to be Claire Saffitz, I will use it to makeGod help mekouign-amann, Brittanys most deadly/delicious pastry. How TJs continues to divine Americans next collective craving before they know it is beyond me. On my last visit, I was like, coffee flour? Coffee MOCHI?! Get out of my head! As I was stocking up on their cultured French butter, bypassing the gold bars that were my baking go-to for years, a new package caught my eye: water-buffalo butter from the Himalayas. All I can say is: Stay tuned. A Michigan community is reeling over the sudden death of a middle school student who became ill after competing in a 400-meter dash during a track and field meet on Tuesday night. Jasmin Torres, 13, was tended to immediately after falling ill by a nearby physician before being transported to a hospital in Adrian where she later died, The Detroit Free Press reported. Jasmin was always smiling, positive, friendly and outgoing, Richard Carsten, Ida Public Schools superintendent told The Detroit Free Press. As a result, she had a large friendship group. Certainly she will be missed. Her friends valued their relationship with her because of who she was. HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL STAR COLLAPSES, DIES AFTER OPEN GYM SESSION Officials have yet to release a cause of death for the three-sport athlete, but Carsten said she had been feeling better before leaving by ambulance. Honestly, we thought things would be fine, but Jasmin passed away shorty after in the hospital, he told The Detroit Free Press. Students gathered Wednesday to remember Torres and craft messages to send to her family. BEER CAN INTERFERE WITH YOUR HEART'S RHYTHM Our biggest memory of her will be the fact that we saw her smile daily and hourly, and thats what stands out to me, Carsten told the news outlet. Passing her in the hallway or seeing in the classroom, she always had a big smile. Counselors were made available to students and staff. Essential oils are one of the many buzzed-about products in the alternative medicine community today. Depending on the type, the oils are thought to reduce stress, improve mood, and increase concentration, among other touted benefits. But one woman saw a dramatically different effect after oiling up during a hot yoga class third-degree chemical burns and now, shes trying to prevent the same thing from happening to other people. 4 NATURAL REMEDIES FOR WEIGHT LOSS In a viral Facebook post, Elise Nguyen shared several photos of scorched and blistered skin on her wrists and neck, which she claims she suffered after applying the oil to her body then stepping into a tanning bed in late March. In her April 16 post, she recounts how she went to the tanning bed one hour after practicing yoga to prepare for an upcoming wedding in Jamaica. The next day, Nguyen writes, she realized something was terribly wrong. I noticed irritation where I applied the oil. Initially I thought it was a reaction to a new laundry detergent, she writes. Well over the next couple of days, I developed nasty blisters due to a chemical burn. Nguyen points out that, after the fact, she spotted a tiny label on the oil bottles, which were made by the company Doterra, cautioning against going into UV rays or sunlight for up to 12 hours after application. THE 6 BEST WAYS TO GET RID OF AGE SPOTS Currently, I'm on day 22 of this burn, she writes in the post. I still have open areas and they still hurt if I hit them wrong. Nguyen specifies she doesnt blame the company for her injuries, but she urges other yogis not to make the same mistake. Seeing as essential oils are commonly used in yoga classes on participants necks and wrists, her warning isnt unwarranted. Every yogi that I've talked to has no clue that this could have happened, she writes. So as summer is getting closer, and the weather is getting nicer, I just want everyone to be aware of this. Please, please read the bottles of anything you put on your skin. I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone else. It's been hell. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Since being shared on Facebook, Nguyens images had received nearly 136,000 shares and 40,000 reactions as of Thursday afternoon. Ann Coulter's canceled Berkeley speech has set off a delightful firestorm, and now we are in the midst of an absurd free speech debate that's opened an oozing chasm on the left. The recent protests on college campuses from Berkeley to NYU have shown that loud lefties are using fascism to curtail free speech. Violence has erupted to squash words, so sticks and stones may break your bones, and they may be used to forcefully silence unpopular ideas. You know it's an interesting debate when Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders and Bill Maher are, for once, on the right side of it However, the left is not in lockstep, as a New York Times oped from NYU comparative literature professor Ulrich Baer shows some commies are more than happy to force their enemies into silence. He writes: "Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute." Yes it is. He continues The recent student demonstrations...should be understood as an attempt to ensure conditions of free speech for a greater group of people rather than censorship" He goes on to say when monsters like Milo & Ann Coulter step foot on a safe space haven, their mere presence and thoughts aggrieve the oppressed. Writing: "When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict a public good." So essentially, speech, and opinion in particular, is a zero sum proposition. If someone like Ann Coulter releases her ideas in Professor Baer's hack vacuum, it chokes off anyone else's ideas, experiences and humanity because in his subjective fantasyland only one of these things can exist at a time. He goes on: "The idea of free speech does not mean blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks." Yes it does, unless the thinker is directly inciting violence. "it means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can fully participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community" That is a hot pile of malarkey on so many levels. 1) there is no such obligation for balance. Period. 2) who ensures "full participation", and what if the community is overbooked, does someone get dragged off the community plane? And 3), most importantly, under Fuehrer Ulrich Baer's new guidelines, who decides? Free speech can be boorish, offensive, inconvenient and worthless, but sorry, Sunshine. Even with your gilded gavel in your ivory tower and your dumb, self-gratifying subjectivism, it's all protected. Last weekend, The New York Times published a long piece about the effect the FBI had on the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. As we all know, Donald Trump won a comfortable victory in the Electoral College while falling about 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. I believe that Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate who failed to energize the Democratic Party base and who failed to deliver to the electorate a principled reason to vote for her. Yet when the Times reporters asked her why she believes she lost the race, she gave several answers, the first of which was the involvement of the FBI. She may be right. Here is the back story. In 2015, a committee of the House of Representatives that was investigating the deaths of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, learned that the State Department had no copies of any emails sent or received by Clinton during her four years as secretary of state. When committee investigators pursued this -- at the same time that attorneys involved with civil lawsuits brought against the State Department seeking the Clinton emails were pursuing it -- it was revealed that Clinton had used her own home servers for her emails and bypassed the State Department servers. Because many of her emails obviously contained government secrets and because the removal of government secrets to any non-secure venue constitutes espionage, the House Select Committee on Benghazi sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, which passed it on to the FBI. A congressionally issued criminal referral means that some members of Congress who have seen some evidence think that some crime may have been committed. The DOJ is free to reject the referral, yet it accepted this one. It directed the FBI to investigate the facts in the referral and to refer to the investigation as a matter, not as a criminal investigation. The FBI cringed a bit, but Director James Comey followed orders and used the word "matter." This led to some agents mockingly referring to him as the director of the Federal Bureau of Matters. It would not be the last time agents mocked or derided him in the Clinton investigation. He should not have referred to it by any name, because under DOJ and FBI regulations, the existence of an FBI investigation should not be revealed publicly unless and until it results in some public courtroom activity, such as the release of an indictment. These rules and procedures have been in place for generations to protect those never charged. Because of the role that the FBI has played in our law enforcement history -- articulated in books and movies and manifested in our culture -- many folks assume that if a person is being investigated by the FBI, she must have done something wrong. In early July 2016, Clinton was personally interviewed in secret for about four hours by a team of FBI agents who had been working on her case for a year. During that interview, she professed great memory loss and blamed it on a head injury she said she had suffered in her Washington, D.C., home. Some of the agents who interrogated her disbelieved her testimony about the injury and, over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, asked Comey for permission to subpoena her medical records. When Comey denied his agents the permission they sought, some of them attempted to obtain the records from the intelligence community. Because Clintons medical records had been digitally recorded by her physicians and because the FBI agents knew that the National Security Agency has digital copies of all keystrokes on all computers used in the U.S. since 2005, they sought Clintons records from their NSA colleagues. Lying to the FBI is a felony, and these agents believed they had just witnessed a series of lies. When Comey learned what his creative agents were up to, he jumped the gun by holding a news conference on July 5, 2016, during which he announced that the FBI was recommending to the DOJ that it not seek Clintons indictment because no reasonable prosecutor" would take the case. He then did the unthinkable. He outlined all of the damning evidence of guilt that the FBI had amassed against her. This double-edged sword -- we wont charge her, but we have much evidence of her guilt -- was unprecedented and unheard of in the midst of a presidential election campaign. Both Republicans and Democrats found some joy in Comeys words. Yet his many agents who believed that Clinton was guilty of both espionage and lying were furious -- furious that Comey had revealed so much, furious that he had demeaned their work, furious that he had stopped an investigation before it was completed. While all this was going on, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clintons closest aide, Huma Abedin, was being investigated for using a computer to send sexually explicit materials to a minor. When the FBI asked for his computer -- he had shared it with his wife -- he surrendered it. When FBI agents examined the Weiner/Abedin laptop, they found about 650,000 stored emails, many from Clinton to Abedin, that they thought they had not seen before. Rather than silently examine the laptop, Comey again violated DOJ and FBI regulations by announcing publicly the discovery of the laptop and revealing that his team suspected that it contained hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails; and he announced the reopening of the Clinton investigation. This announcement was made two weeks before Election Day and was greeted by the Trump campaign with great glee. A week later, Comey announced that the laptop was fruitless, and the investigation was closed, again. At about the same time that the House Benghazi Committee sent its criminal referral to the DOJ, American and British intelligence became interested in a potential connection between the Trump presidential campaign and intelligence agents of the Russian government. This interest resulted in the now infamous year-plus-long electronic surveillance of Trump and many of his associates and colleagues. This also produced a criminal referral from the intelligence community to the DOJ, which sent it to the FBI. Yet this referral and the existence of this investigation was kept -- quite properly -- from the press and the public. When Comey was asked about it, he -- quite properly -- declined to answer. When he was asked under oath whether he knew of any surveillance of Trump before Trump became president, Comey denied that he knew of it. What was going on with the FBI? How could Comey justify the public revelation of a criminal investigation and a summary of evidence of guilt about one candidate for president and remain silent about the existence of a criminal investigation of the campaign of another? How could he deny knowledge of surveillance that was well-known in the intelligence community, even among his own agents? Why would the FBI director inject his agents, who have prided themselves on professional political neutrality, into a bitterly contested campaign having been warned it might affect the outcome? Why did he reject the laws just commands of silence in favor of putting his thumb on political scales? I dont know the answers to those questions. But the American public, and Hillary Clinton, is entitled to them. I am a chicken farmer in West Virginia. Ive been a farmer all my life and have raised chickens for almost 15 years under contract. I am writing this open letter to you because farmers and ranchers need your help badly. I voted for you and supported your campaign. I know several of my friends and neighboring farmers did the same. In your campaign you said you would work to support hard working, independent American businesses, and that you would listen to what rural Americans really need. This week, you expressed support for American dairy farmers and criticized Canadian trade practices that hurt thempoultry farmers need the same focus, and swift action. Right now, we need your help. Earlier this month, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) dealt a crippling blow to small American farmers by delaying the implementation of its Farmer Fair Practice Rules by 180 days. These rules, if implemented on schedule, would have helped independent farmers like me and my friends challenge the abusive and unfair contracts imposed by industrial poultry companies. As farmers, with families who depend on us, we are dismayed by the move and were calling on President Trump to make good on his campaign pledgeto drain the swamp of Big meat lobbyists who continue to cut bad deals that hurt rural economies and families. In our industry, multi-national corporations are routinely taking advantage of hard working American farmers. Companies use unfair pay systems like tournament payment, which works like a rigged lottery, forcing farmers to ruthlessly compete against each other for part of a fixed pool of money. Under this system farmers have to pay for the companys mistakes, such as providing low-quality feed or chicks. Corporations also force farmers to make expensive upgrades when theyre already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, by threatening to take away their contract if they dont comply. Corporate lawyers argue that farmers should not even be able to defend themselves in court. In other industries, if someone fraudulently causes you tens of thousands of dollars in damages, you can take them to court and get a fair trial. But in our industry, we would not only have to prove that they harmed our business, but we have to prove that what they did to us impacted competition in the entire industry and every other poultry grower nationwide. In other words it sets an impossible burden of proof, which means we cant hold companies accountable for abusing independent farmers. As far back as 1984 and before, farmers and ranchers have been meeting with USDA and Congress seeking fair treatment by the poultry integrators and meat packers, grain buyers and dairy coops to no avail. Due to the unbridled influence of Big Ag on Capitol Hill and USDA for the past 30+ years, all of the issues those farmers back then were working to change remain the same today. The system is very unfairly weighted in favor of the giant multi-national corporations that control agriculture in this country and the world. In 2010 we had great hopes as USDA and Department of Justice (DOJ) had organized what they called workshops around the country on beef, grain, poultry, and most agriculture production. The last one was held in Washington D.C. being on competition in agriculture and the farmer share of the food dollar. Emphasis was placed on contract production and vertical integration of the various agricultural sectors as well as the farmer share of the food dollar. In part as a result of those meetings, and following an unprecedented outpouring of over 60,000 comments that USDA received on the original rules, the new Farmer Fair Practice Rules were put out by the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) at the end of 2016. They were intended to level the playing field for farmers and essentially force the companies to treat farmers and ranchers as the true partners in agricultural production that they indeed are or at least should be. As farmers we arent looking to be made millionaires or force companies into unreasonable obligations, we are just looking for honesty and fair treatment. But after all the work that has been done, and all the farmers who have spoken out for over 15 years, nothing has changed. Mr. President, farmers need the same attention and focus youve shown to coal miners and factory workers. We are asking you to take this opportunity to listen to American farmers and not just the Big Ag lobbyists. USDA needs to implement the Farmer Fair Practice Rules, which are common sense regulations and protections all Americans want when dealing with multi-national corporations. Farmers and ranchers need and deserve these protections under the law because the companies have demonstrated that they will continue their abuse until you take a stand. If you care about your food being produced by an American family farmer, a farmer who cares about what he produces and has a true affinity for the land and animals and crops he raises, then you have a responsibility to do the right thing and implement the Farmer Fair Practice Rules. Eight years ago, Charles Krauthammer assessed Americas future and famously wrote, Decline is a choice. Decline or continued ascendancy is in our hands. For the eight years that followed, under the administration of Barack Obama, decline was our chosen destination. Over the first 100 days of Donald Trumps presidency, America is choosing to ascend again. Obamas presidency was defined by the expansion of government at home and appeasement and retreat abroad. Justly so, President Trumps mission to correct our course has involved a wholesale rejection of his predecessors approach to government and view of the world. Unlike Obama, President Trump has surrounded himself with men and women from the private sector who, like him, understand how businesses are run, jobs are created, and pay checks are grown. Those of his appointees with public service backgrounds, like Vice President Mike Pence, are principled conservatives who want to empower those outside of Washington, not in it. Obama pledged to fundamentally transform the United States and tried many methods to do so. Changing the dominant judicial philosophy of the Supreme Court would have meant changing the very character of our country, but thanks to a major promise kept, that will not be happening anytime soon. Simply put, President Trump saved the high court from a hostile liberal takeover. The importance of this victory for the cause of limited Constitutional government and the rule of law cannot be overstated. The rewards of replacing Antonin Scalia with another originalist like Neil Gorsuch will be realized for decades. On everything from First and Second Amendment rights to the many debates centered on federalism, this can only be seen as a major conservative achievement. Ironically, the same pen used by Obama to enact much of his agenda is now being wielded by his successor to undo it. With each pillar of the Obama legacy he pulls down, President Trump is effectively unleashing our economy and setting America in a more dynamic direction. President Trump understands that one of the greatest impediments to economic growth has been excessive red tape imposed by Washington. That is why in January he signed a monumental executive order requiring that for every new regulation written by federal agencies, two existing regulations must be cut. The Obama years saw overregulation reach a record high with more than 20,000 new rules that collectively cost our economy more than $100 billion. The Trump years are already promising the opposite. By utilizing the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the president has signed more bills to repeal more regulations in his first 100 days than any president before him. According to the American Action Forum, through the CRA and separate executive actions, President Trumps regulatory rollback will save Americans more than $60 billion and more than 56 million hours of paperwork. He is succeeding in getting government out of the private sectors way and protecting taxpayers in ways until recently unthinkable. Once targets of frustrating political obstruction, the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines have now been approved for construction and completion. Once a cornerstone of liberal climate policy, the war on coal is now over. With the abolition of the EPAs Clean Power Plan and Waters of the United Sates rule, an industry that employs thousands and provides affordable electricity to millions will no longer be strangled by smug federal bureaucrats. Even on the matter of defending the unborn, President Trump affirmed his administrations pro-life convictions early on when he reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which protects taxpayer dollars from funding abortion overseas. Other areas of domestic policy have also been addressed by President Trumps multitude of executive orders. With each action, he has commanded the federal government to ease burdens on the American people and set the stage for larger projects, such as the repeal and replacement of Obamacare and pro-growth tax reform. In the global arena, America is undeniably leading with strength and confidence again. No better snapshot of our rediscovered spine was seen than when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad once again attacked his own people with chemical weapons. When this line was crossed in 2013, Obama publicly dithered for weeks and ultimately failed to enforce his own threat. This time, President Trump responded decisively within days and sent 59 Tomahawk missiles to destroy the airbase from where the gas attack was launched. Our retaliation sent a simple yet unmistakable message to the entire world, friend and foe alike: We are a mighty superpower to trust, fear, and respect again. Above all, we are an America that respects itself again. Think about it: 100 days ago, we had a president who actually scolded us not to get on our high horse when criticizing radical Islam because of actions by Christians during the Crusades and slavery. Now, we have a president unafraid to use both his inaugural address and a primetime speech to Congress to call our enemy by its name, condemn ISIS as a network of lawless savages, and declare it our wars goal to extinguish this vile enemy from our planet. As President Trump put it before the election: We will stop apologizing for America, and we will start celebrating America. This renewed confidence in our righteousness was felt as we dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in combat history on an ISIS cave in Afghanistan. It is why our Guantanamo Bay naval base is no longer at risk of being closed for ridiculous symbolic reasons. Where there were apologies, there is now pride. Where there was indecision, there is now resolution. Where there was moral relativism, there is once again American exceptionalism. Instead of a lecturer as president, we now have a leader. No presidents agenda has ever or will ever be completed in 100 days or even a year. There is still much work to be done and many promises to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that our trajectory of weakness has been stopped and reversed. As President Trump visits Pennsylvania this Saturday, those of us welcoming him will celebrate the beginning of an era in which the worlds greatest republic rejected decline and instead chose to reaffirm its strength, its principles, its potential, and yes, its greatness. We are at a huge turning point when it comes to freedom of speech in the United States of America, and it is time to take a stand against liberal fascists out to silence conservative voices. Violent, radical snowflake liberals at University of California Berkeley have succeeded, at least for now, in shutting down another conservative speaker. Ann Coulter was supposed to give a speech on that campus tonight, but the threat of violence has scuttled those plans. Berkeley, which in the 1960s, fashioned itself as the home of free speech, is now the home of fascistic intellectual intolerance. The idea that the alt-left is tolerant and inclusive is a big myth and lie. In fact, the First Amendment means nothing to these people. It's just a yellowed parchment they care nothing about. Their goal is simple: Shut down every conservative voice in America, by any means necessary. Ann Coulter is only the latest target this week. Liberal fascists are carrying out a well-funded and carefully orchestrated smear campaign to try and take down President Trump and anybody and everybody that supports him and his policies. I've also become a target, as the alt-left media repeats lies about me even though the original liar has since recanted. Why fact check when it might get in the way of ruining my career? They want to destroy me and get me off the air, once and for all. Its not just about me, but by fighting back, I am hoping to use my case to expose what's really happening. In case you dont know, heres what happened. Six days ago, just two days after Bill O'Reilly parted ways with the Fox News Channel, an individual with serious and glaring credibility issues fabricated completely untrue, ridiculous claims about me that go back more than a decade. The alt-left press could easily have checked this person out and learned it wasnt the first groundless attack against me. But that could have gotten in the way of their agenda. They ran with it. "Sean Hannity denies right-wing blogger's sex harassment claim," was NBC News headline. "Is Hannity next to fall? Fox guest says the anchor tried to pressure her into hotel room sex," was the headline on a website called Raw Story, and by the way, the individual didnt even say that in the first place. So far, none of these outlets have updated their headlines to correct the story and tell their viewers or their readers that this highly questionable individual has since recanted these completely false claims. I have hired a killer team of lawyers and investigators, and we are laying out a war strategy that's going to hold accountable every media outlet that smears me with lies. Im told that these media outlets have a basic, fundamental obligation to do rudimentary fact-checking instead of just taking the word of one individual. In my case, they went for the cheap headline without even doing a simple Google search which would have undermined the entire story. I may end up suing some of these outlets because I have had enough. These attempts to destroy and silence conservative voices need to stop or Fox News Channel, as the only news network that gives President Trump a fair shake, goes away. Your favorite talk show hosts go away. Talk radio goes away. Im fighting back. And I hope by doing so, I show others that we dont have to rollover for the liberal fascists and dishonest media that are out to silence free speech in America. Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," April 26, 2017 INTreasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that President Trump's tax reform plan would amount to a "middle-income tax cut" and would "make business competitive." "This is about massive reductions in business rates for corporations and for small businesses, and many studies show that 70 percent of the tax burden falls on American workers," Mnuchin told host Tucker Carlson. "So, by cutting business taxes, this will increase wages for American workers and create more jobs." TRUMP TEAM PROPOSES 'MASSIVE' TAX CUTS IN NEW REFORM PLAN Trump's plan would slash the top tax rate for corporations and small businesses to 15 percent, collapse the tax system to three brackets from the current seven, and double the standard deduction for individuals and couples filing jointly. Mnuchin denied that the revised tax system would favor wealthy Americans, telling Carlson that the proposed elimination of non-mortgage, non-charitable deductions would ensure that "the effective tax rate will not be a deduction for the rich." "I don't think it will be a [tax] rise, but it won't be a reduction," the treasury secretary said. Mnuchin expressed hope that the plan could win support from some Democrats in Congress, saying, "this is all about middle-income tax cuts and putting people back to work and making business competitive, so we hope that there are Democrats that cross the aisle and support this. This is good for America, good for the economy." Before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, medical professionals participated in an estimated 96 percent of deliveries in the Middle Eastern country. But as the more than six-year-long civil war drags on, with scores of hospitals having been blown to bits and doctors having died or fled, Syrias unborn babies are the conflicts unseen victims. "Most female doctors have had to leave the country. There is a fear of coming to the hospital, and transportation to even get to one is very difficult," Syrian doctor Khaled Almilaji, who is raising funds to build an underground medical facility, known as Avicenna Women and Children's Hospital, in Idlib, told Fox News. "Most of the attention goes always to the victims and affected people who are luckily caught by media. Unfortunately, these fetuses can't even be seen. And they will still suffer and cause suffering to their moms as long as not enough care is delivered." Opposition activists claim that pediatric and maternity hospitals have been especially targeted throughout the conflict. After three airstrikes reduced such a facility to rubble in rebel-held Idlib earlier this month, Dr. Mounir Hakimi, chairman of Syria Relief, said that the "sickening" nature of these attacks amounts to war crimes. Because choosing to have a baby in a hospital or medical facility exposes mother and baby to death or injury from attacks by the regime or its allies, women do their best to plan their babies births. At least 40 percent of births in Syria are by cesarean section, according to an estimate by Doctors Without Borders. Thats three to five times higher than prewar figures. C-sections in Syria are performed in often primitive conditions. When asked what they needed most, one Syrian doctor told Fox News flashlights," as they were attempting to deliver babies in the dark to avoid detection and aerial bombardment. Even if a medical facility is not bombed while a mother is birthing, and the medical staff has flashlights, she is often subject to a horrendous level of pain. In rebel-held regions like Idlib and areas of Homs, there isn't enough anesthesia for those who have lost limbs let alone for women giving birth. One young father in a rebel-controlled village in Homs, who requested only to be identified by his first name of Mahmoud, told Fox News that not only has he heard the animalistic cries of friends undergoing amputations without pain medicines, but the screams of women in labor are just as excruciating. "We used to have two gynecologists here in our village. One remains and the other was arrested by the regime, he said. The wars effect on pregnant women and their babies extends beyond Syria. In neighboring Lebanon, for example, it is estimated that C-sections have risen to as high as 50 percent of all live births. Thats largely because pregnant Syrian refugees remain consumed by the fear of having a natural, unscheduled birth. But C-sections carry their own risks, the World Health Organization says. Those risks chief among which is infection -- are especially high among women who have endured poor sanitary conditions or a lack of prenatal care. SYRIA'S SECRET CAVES SERVE AS HOSPITALS IN FINAL LIFELINE TO SAVE VICTIMS FRENCH OFFICIAL SAYS SARIN GAS USED IN SYRIA ATTACK On top of the medical risks of unnecessary C-sections is the financial drain of the procedure that patients and their families must endure. A Syrian grandmother living in the squalid confines of a large refugee camp in northern Iraq told Fox News that her daughter-in-law, who was pregnant when the whole family fled on foot in 2015, went "weeks past" her expected due date. "The baby was stuck and we had no money to go to a hospital," the grandmother said. "But we walked around to the tents and sold what we had -- our refrigerator, our gold and our food -- so she could go to a private hospital and the little boy was born healthy. Besides a spike in C-sections, the alleged targeting of medical facilities has also triggered a spike in home births, sometimes with attendants who are not properly trained. While there is not sufficient data on mortality rates, several doctors and humanitarian organizations said that this has led to a spike in medical complications during deliveries and deaths of mothers and babies. Then there are the increased premature births and miscarriages, the direct result of the war-generated fear and trauma. We are seeing an increase in complicated deliveries, miscarriages and unwanted pregnancies," Sabine Baunach, reproductive health adviser at Save the Children, said. "And low birth weights, pre-term deliveries and increased morbidity and mortality for mother and child." Save the Children provides essential healthcare at eight facilities in northwestern Syria, with a focus on reproductive health and vaccination, she said. But it is proving to be more and more challenging by the day. Add to all of the above consequences of Syrias war for mothers and babies, Baunach said, There is also an increase in women suffering sexual violence as a result of the conflict. Finally, there is the alternative of abortion for pregnant war victims. Women near or far from the battlefield are all too aware of their likely inability to adequately care for their babies, post-partum. Because of the costs and illegality of abortions in Syria, some mothers have sought often-dangerous methods of terminating their pregnancies. The WHO has reported a rise in "incomplete abortions," in which women take pills or try other potentially fatal means to induce an abortion. In 2012, the second year of the bloody conflict, the U.N. Population Fund was able to distribute some 1.5 million family planning pills, 21,000 condoms and almost 100,000 other means of female birth control to Syrians affected by fighting. However, the shipments became increasingly sporadic and as the war went on, it became harder for outside organizations to reach those in need. Mahmoud, whose own two toddlers were born during the war, explained that "newborns do not have the most basic elements like diapers and formula," and that mothers are often too malnourished to provide satisfactory breastmilk if they can lactate at all. "And my children are suffering now," he said. Still, he added, "we consider ourselves the lucky ones." A 12-cent gas tax hike recently approved by California's Democratic leaders has prompted a huge backlash on the right, with a grassroots coalition vowing to ensure it never takes effect. A combination of AM-radio talk show hosts, a consumer advocacy group and a GOP assemblywoman have joined forces to battle the measure set to kick in this November that would give California the dubious honor of the second-highest gas tax in the nation at 73.2 cents per gallon. Only Pennsylvania residents will pay more, with a 77.7-cent tax. California isn't alone in the gas tax money grab. The Institute for Energy Research says a dozen states are considering similar hikes. On Jan. 1, another seven states saw an increase: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana and Florida. The California tax which also increases yearly vehicle registration fees was pushed along by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise an additional $52 billion for road repairs from a newly created fund. The tax does not have a ceiling and could skyrocket from there, said Republican state Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez. And critics question the benefit complaining the taxes currently go into the general fund, which has backed questionable items like a $100 billion high-speed rail project in the desert. We are building a broad-based coalition, people are just fed up, said former San Diego city councilman and GOP political activist Carl DeMaio, who hosts a local radio show. This is rushed through and will hit working families pretty hard. It will cost an extra $300 to $500 per driver every year This is the final straw. DeMaio has joined forces with talk show hosts John and Ken on Los Angeles' KFI. The duo was instrumental in recalling former Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 over several issues, including tripling the car tax and giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. The three hosts plan on using their public platform to try recalling Orange County Democratic Sen. Josh Newman, who was elected to his first term last year by a narrow margin. He helped pass the gas tax, which was approved by state lawmakers with the exact number of votes required. Newman is seen as the most vulnerable target in a bid to roll back the plan. Once he is recalled, we will issue an ultimatum: either you rescind the tax or we will go after you, DeMaio said. Newman's office verified that he had been served last week with a recall notice. Other foes include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which led a successful 1978 ballot measure to cap property tax increases, and Melendez, who says she has been overwhelmed with bipartisan complaints from her Southern California constituents. The Howard Jarvis group is looking at a ballot measure for next year that would restrict gas price increases beyond the national average, said organization president Jon Coupal. He complained that only 20 cents of every gas tax dollar goes toward repairing the state's crumbling roads and bridges, while the other 80 cents goes to the general fund to pay for California's skyrocketing pension system. You can call it a transportation tax, education tax or health care tax. At end of day the money will find its way into public employee compensation, Coupal said. Melendez is working the legal channel. She has accused Gov. Brown of offering to dole out transportation dollars to legislators who voted for the measure which passed the Legislature along party lines on April 6 with the exception of one Republican, Sen. Anthony Cannella of Northern California. Melendez was incensed to learn that Cannella and three other lawmakers will receive millions for projects in their districts. One of the companion bills reviewed by Fox News is dated Jan. 11 and shows an amendment on April 5 to include language devoting funds to Cannella's district. Melendez has asked Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, to conduct "an investigation of apparent quid pro quo-inspired vote trading. Her letter named Brown and two other legislators as ringleaders without specifying the lawmakers who benefitted. She later pointed to Cannella and three Democrats. Cannella, though, has admitted to lobbying for the funds and says he didn't do anything wrong. Fox News requested comment and was sent a press release discussing the gas tax as a solution for repairing roads. While Brown hasn't announced when he will sign the bill and the amendments, he is one of the backers and his signature is guaranteed, Melendez said. Brown did not agree to an interview for this story; however, spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman provided Fox News with recent comments the governor made on the bribery allegations, which he called "preposterous." "When somebody says, here, here's $10,000, I want your vote, youve got bribery, it's illegal," Brown said. "When someone says, you know, I think this bill would be better if you include these projects or these ideas or these rules, we listen. That's democracy, that's openness and that is the compromise spirit that makes democracies work." House lawmakers have filed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown this weekend, as lawmakers juggle talks on a longer-term budget deal and a potential revival of ObamaCare replacement legislation. The short-term continuing resolution would fund the government through May 5, under current funding levels. I am optimistic that a final funding package will be completed soon. It is time that this essential work is completed so that critical programs and activities including national defense are properly and adequately funded for the year, House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., said in a statement, as he introduced the stopgap overnight ahead of a Friday-at-midnight deadline. The White House and Congress continue to debate the particulars of a broader deal, with President Trump on Thursday taking to Twitter to air his concerns. The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO! he tweeted. The tweet was a reference to a Democratic push to help Puerto Rico fund its Medicaid program, and to keep funding payments under Obamacare that go to reimburse health insurers for reducing deductibles and co-payments for lower-income people. Trump didnt stop there, as he continued to accuse Democrats of wanting to shut down the government, in a mid-morning tweet-storm. I promise to rebuild our military and secure our border. Democrats want to shut down the government. Politics! he wrote. Democrats jeopardizing the safety of our troops to bail out their donors from insurance companies. It is time to put #AmericaFirst Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017 Despite the warnings, the White House earlier dropped a separate demand for money for Trumps promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, helping clear the way, eventually, for a broader deal. At the same time, House Republicans had a breakthrough on health care legislation as a key group of conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, announced it would support a revised version of the bill. Freedom Caucus opposition fueled the legislations collapse a month ago, a humiliating episode for Republicans that called into question their ability to govern given that they've been promising for seven years to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Yet whether the Freedom Caucus support would be enough remained uncertain, amid concerns from moderates and uncertainty over any bills prospects in the Senate. The changes in the bill would let states escape requirements under Obama's health care law that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates, and cover a list of specified services like maternity care. Conservatives embraced the revisions as a way to lower people's health care expenses, but moderates saw them as diminishing coverage. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of the Freedom Caucus, backed the proposal in an interview with Fox News Americas Newsroom. This bill doesnt fully repeal ObamaCare and thats a problem but it at least gives the states that option to get that waiver, he said, while vowing to continue to work for a full repeal. With Trumps 100-days marker hitting this Saturday, GOP lawmakers could try to move on the health care plan by the end of the week. But the timing is fluid, and it could slip. Fox News Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report. It will take military force to stop North Koreas nuclear weapons program, a majority of voters believe -- and they tend to favor the U.S. taking that action. Thats according to the latest national Fox News Poll of registered voters. Fifty-one percent say that U.S. military action will be required to keep the rogue nation from continuing its nuclear weapons program, while 36 percent think diplomacy alone can stop it. By a 53-39 percent margin, voters favor the U.S. using military force to keep North Korea from making further advancements on nukes. CLICK HERE TO READ THE RESULTS OF THE FOX NEWS POLL North Korea is seen as the greatest immediate threat to the United States. Some 38 percent feel that way, while 25 percent think ISIS is the biggest threat and 18 percent say Russia. Five percent think China poses the biggest risk and just four percent say Iran. Meanwhile, 42 percent of voters oppose the Iran nuclear agreement, 35 percent support it and 23 percent are unable to give an opinion. The agreement eases U.S. sanctions for 10 years in exchange for Iran stopping its nuclear program over that time period. In September 2015, when the deal was first made, 56 percent opposed it. Voters give President Trump mixed marks for his handling of North Korea: 45 percent approve vs. 47 percent disapprove. His ratings are a bit better on handling China (49-40 percent) and Syria (48-45 percent), and a bit worse on Iran (43-44 percent). Trumps worst marks are on Russia (40-52 percent). Forty-three percent of voters approve of the presidents handling of foreign policy in general (49 percent disapprove). Overall, 45 percent approve of the job Trumps doing as president, while 48 percent disapprove. Views among partisans Across the board, voters think North Korea poses the greatest danger to the country today. ISIS comes in second among Republicans and independents, while Democrats put Russia above ISIS on the threat list. Democrats are more likely to think diplomacy alone will work with North Korea (by 13 points). Republicans (by 46 points) and independents (by 21 points) say force will be necessary to stop their nuclear weapons program. In addition, Republicans (73 percent) are twice as likely as Democrats (36 percent) to favor the U.S. taking military action to prevent North Korea from continuing work on nukes. Fifty-one percent of independents favor using force. The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,009 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 23-25, 2017. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters. The Defense Department inspector general has launched a probe into whether former national security adviser Michael Flynn failed to obtain prior approval for foreign payments he received as new documents indicate he was warned about such arrangements. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., top Democrat on the House oversight committee, released new documents relating to the controversy surrounding President Trumps fired security adviser. One was an October 2014 letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency Office of General Counsel warning Flynn he was barred from taking payments from foreign sources without permission. Flynn later earned tens of thousands of dollars from Russia's state-sponsored RT television network and from a Turkish businessman linked to Turkey's government. Cummings also released a letter from the inspector general confirming the launch of its investigation. A spokesman for the IG confirmed the probe in a brief statement, saying, "On April 4, the DoD OIG initiated an investigation to determine if Lieutenant General (Retired) Flynn accepted payments in violation of the Emoluments Clause, implementing laws, or Department of Defense regulations." Cummings claimed Thursday hes seen no evidence that Flynn got the necessary permission. These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, he said in a statement. Flynn's lawyer said in a statement earlier this week that Flynn disclosed the Russia trip in conversations with the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was its former director. "As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of (the Defense Department), extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings," attorney Robert Kelner said. But Cummings said a recent DIA letter shows they did not find records regarding that money. Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Cummings both want the Army to rule on whether Flynn informed and asked permission for the payments from Russian and Turkish entities. Cummings also accused the White House of covering up for Flynn, who was dismissed after allegedly misleading Vice President Pence about past contact with the Russian ambassador. There is a paper trail that the WH does not want our committee to follow. But let it be known that we will follow it, Cummings said. The White House rejects any assertions that its not cooperating. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Why is there suddenly so much media hostility toward Ivanka Trump? Her visit to Germany has unleashed a wave of insults and snarkiness that seems wildly out of proportion to what actually happened on the trip. The short answer, of course, is that she is a target of animosity that is really aimed at her father. But it goes deeper than that. Some pundits seem to blame her for not transforming the presidents policies, despite the fact that hes the one who got elected. Even more strangely, some blame her for not speaking out against her dad. During the campaign, when I happened to chat with her a few times, Ivanka was getting pretty good press. And why not? She is a poised and accomplished entrepreneur who handles herself with grace. I get that its strange for Ivanka Trump to be a top White House aide, and that some people cant accept that. She originally just wanted to be an informal adviser. But with critics raising conflict questions about her business, Ivanka decided to relinquish that role and take an office in the White House, working with her husband, Jared Kushner, whose role in the administration keeps expanding. (Neither is drawing a salary.) I understand that her detractors say Ivanka owes her business opportunities, and now her political opportunity, to her dad. Fine. The president knew he would face nepotism charges when he made the appointments. And she had to know she was putting herself in the line of fire when she took an official title. But compare this to the situation faced by every first ladyand its an apt analogy because Ivankas high profile is partially due to Melanias low-key role as she remains, for now, in New York. Each first lady gets a government staff and an international platform, simply by virtue of the fact that her husband won high office. And every first lady is widely admired, although there has been criticism of some (especially Hillary Clinton, who later sought the top job) for wading too deeply into policy. So is a first daughter really that different from a first lady? When Ivanka, noting that the president has employed thousands of women, drew some boos on the Berlin stage with Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde, that opened the floodgates. Asked by NBCs Hallie Jackson how she feels about being called an accomplice to her father, Ivanka said she didnt like the word. I think one of the things I value about my father as first a businessman and now as a leader of the country, is that he creates ideas and he likes to hear from people with divergent viewpoints. And thats not always true in politics. Still, were seeing headlines like this one in the liberal Huffington Post: Trumps White House Family Affair Looks A Lot Like The Most Corrupt Nations In The World. CNN commentator and former Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter said that when I see Ivanka taking on this role, I really see her becoming like Hillary Clinton in the worst ways. Shes sort of becoming increasingly unlikable. Shes trying to get these jobs shes not qualified for based on family connections. MSNBCs Chris Matthews compared the Trumps to the Romanovs, saying the president envisions a royal family and it is un-American. It is untraditional. Its somewhat weird. Matthews wrote a book about JFK, who of course named his brother attorney general. Times have changed, but its not like Ivanka is running a major department. When Joe Scarborough brought up Bobby Kennedy and Mika Brzezinski asked whether he was comparing RFK to Ivanka, he accused her of being snotty and taking a cheap shot. The Guardian ran a snarky column saying that Trump invoked her own impressive achievements as an example of her fathers commitment to equality. ..Trump is, indeed, a wonderful example of what women can achieve with just perseverance, tenacity and millions of inherited dollars. Some of this is so personal that its obviously not really about Ivanka. She is clearly more moderate than her father and has been an advocate for womens rights, family leave and child care. Yet her detractors had unrealistic expectations about her role and insist on holding her accountable for his past Access Hollywood-type comments about women. Maybe a truly feminist approach would be to judge Ivanka Trump on what she actually does in the White House, not on their distaste for her dad. The senior U.S. Navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific region told lawmakers Thursday that the North Korean crisis is the worst hes seen -- testifying that it's only a matter of time before Kim Jong Un has the capability of launching a nuclear warhead toward the United States. The crisis on the Korean peninsula is realthe worst Ive seen, said Commander of U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. There is some doubt within the intelligence community whether Kim Jong Un has that capability today or whether he will soon, but I have to assume he has it, the capability is real, and that hes moving towards it. Harris spoke to the Senate Armed Services Committee a day after all 100 U.S. senators were invited to White House grounds for a North Korea briefing. Harris declined to compare the current situation to that of the Cuban Missile Crisis decades ago, but said he has no doubt the country intends to develop nuclear missiles that could be aimed toward South Korea and the U.S. Harris said he believes "America's future is linked" to the Pacific, even noting a possible migration of Islamic State militants back to the region as U.S. forces push to regain former ISIS territory in the Middle East. But Harris said that North Korea remains "the most immediate threat" to U.S. security, as they "vigorously" pursue strikes and launches intended to target Australia, South Korea, and the U.S. "Kim Jong Un is making progress and all nations need to take this seriously because their missiles point in all directions," Harris said. "If left unchecked, they will match the capability of his hostile rhetoric." Harris underscored the importance of what he referred to as a shift in Kim Jong Uns rhetoric, after threatening nations like Australia and the U.S. by name this week. His rhetoric is going in one direction and his capabilities are approaching the lines of his rhetoric, Harris said. Where those lines cross, I believe we are at an inflection point and we wake up to a new world. Despite the gravity of the threat North Korea continues to pose, Harris voiced confidence in U.S. defense plans, and said President Trump and Defense Secretary Mattis have made it clear that "all options are on the table." "We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses -- not to his knees," Harris said. "I have the forces in place to fight tonight if necessary. Harris pushed, throughout the hearing, the need to repeal the sequester and for Congress to pass a budget that would provide the Department of Defense with more resources, saying that additional materials are needed in the long-run. Harris told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that the U.S.delivered THAAD anti-ballistic missile system being installed in South Korea would be operational in a couple of days. THAAD allows us intercept capability to shoot down, at the high altitude level, ballistic missiles that go from North Korea to South Korea, Harris explained. THAAD is a system that would give an umbrella to protect South Korea. Harris said that China is as responsible for where North Korea is today, but seemed to applaud Trump for his efforts to win cooperation from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Were seeing more activitypositive activityfrom China in this case than weve seen in a long time, Harris said. He said he remains cautiously optimistic, but hopeful and said it was too early to tell. Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah says he needs immediate foot surgery and will be out of Washington for three to four weeks, missing a key vote on a spending bill to keep the government open. Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, surprised the political world last week by announcing he will not seek re-election. He said in an Instagram post Wednesday he needs surgery to remove screws and pins from a foot he shattered 12 years ago. Chaffetz posted X-ray images showing the 14 screws and a metal plate in his foot. He said he injured his foot during a fall from a ladder at his home. He said he was "sorry to miss the important work we are doing in Washington ... but medical emergencies are never convenient." Chaffetz, 50, has not announced his future plans, although he says he's considering private sector jobs. He is a possible candidate for Utah governor in 2020. The Senate confirmed Alex Acosta Thursday as secretary of labor, filling out President Donald Trump's cabinet as he approaches his 100th day in office. The 60-38 vote confirmed Acosta to the post. Once sworn as the nation's 27th secretary of labor, the son of Cuban immigrants and first Latino member of Trump's cabinet will lead an a sprawling agency that enforces more than 180 federal laws covering about 10 million employers and 125 million workers. Acosta has been a federal prosecutor, a civil rights chief at the Justice Department and a member of the National Labor Relations Board. He will arrive at the top post with relatively little clear record on some of the top issues facing the administration over key pocketbook issues, such as whether to expand the pool of American workers eligible for overtime pay. Acosta however wasn't Trump's first choice for the job. Former fast food CEO Andrew Puzder withdrew his name from consideration last month, on the eve of his confirmation vote, after becoming a political headache for the new administration. Puzder acknowledged having hired a housekeeper not authorized to work in the U.S. and paying the related taxes years later -- after Trump nominated him -- and came under fire from Democrats for other issues related to his company and his private life. Acosta's ascension would come at a key moment for Trump, just two days before he reaches the symbolic, 100-day mile marker. The White House has sought to cross the threshold with its own list of Trump's accomplishments. Labor secretary is the last Cabinet post for Trump to fill. Trump's choice for U.S. trade representative, a job considered Cabinet-level, is awaiting a Senate vote. From the beginning, Acosta's was a quiet march to confirmation that stood out because it didn't attract the deep partisan battles faced by some of Trump's other nominees, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Justice Neil Gorsuch's nomination provoked such a fight that majority Senate Republicans used the "nuclear option" to remove the 60-vote filibuster barrier for Supreme Court picks. Thursday's vote marks the fourth time Acosta has been confirmed for the Senate. Democrats and most labor groups were mostly muted in their response to Acosta's nomination. At his confirmation hearing, Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington State and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts hammered Acosta for answers on a selection of issues important to labor and whether Acosta would cave to political pressure from Trump. Acosta refused to answer the policy questions until he's confirmed, and he vowed to be an independent and fair voice for workers. Both senators said they had great concerns, and both were expected to vote no. "Our standard can't be `not Puzder,"' Murray said Wednesday on the Senate floor. Meanwhile, the Labor Department's landing page bears a glimpse of Acosta's policy priorities: "Buy American, Hire American." That's the title of Trump's executive order this week directing the secretaries of labor and other agencies to issue guidance within 60 days on policies that would "ensure that, to the extent permitted by law" federal aid "maximize the use of materials produced in the United States, including manufactured products; components of manufactured products; and materials such as steel, iron, aluminum, and cement." The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Canada agreed Wednesday to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the White House said though Trump warned Thursday hed be willing to terminate the pact if they cant strike a fair deal. "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a statement late Wednesday. "It is an honor to deal with both [Mexican] President [Enrique] Pena Nieto and [Canadian] Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." The White House added that Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time" and that all three leaders ""agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation" of the trade deal to "the benefit of all three countries." But Trump tweeted early Thursday that his cooperation is contingent on a fair deal being reached. "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate. I agreed," he tweeted. "... subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good-deal very possible!" The Mexican government confirmed the conversation in a statement issued late Wednesday. "The leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining the North American Free Trade Agreement and working together with Canada to carry out a successful renegotiation for the benefit of all three countries," the statement read. Trump repeatedly railed against the two-decade-old trade agreement on the campaign trail, describing it repeatedly as a "disaster." Earlier Wednesday, sources told Fox News that the White House had drafted a notification signaling the United States' intention to withdraw from NAFTA. The document would have given the leaders of Canada and Mexico six months' notice of the administration's intention to exit from the agreement. On Monday, the administration announced it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada. Trump has also been railing against changes in Canadian milk product pricing that he says are hurting the American dairy industry. Trump told The Associated Press in an interview last week that he plans to either renegotiate or terminate NAFTA, which he and other critics blame for wiping out U.S. manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico to take advantage of low-wage labor. "I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States, trading agreement for the United States. It hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico," he said. The Trump administration last month submitted a vague set of guidelines to Congress for renegotiating NAFTA, disappointing those who were expecting Trump to demand a major overhaul. In an eight-page draft letter to Congress, acting U.S. Trade Representative Stephen Vaughn wrote that the administration intended to start talking with Mexico and Canada about making changes to the pact, which took effect in 1994. The letter spelled out few details and stuck with broad principles. But it appeared to keep much of the existing agreement in place, including private tribunals that allow companies to challenge national laws on the grounds that they inhibit trade a provision that critics say allows companies to get around environmental and labor laws. Reports Wednesday of the possible move drew objections from some in Congress, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy," he tweeted. "@POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement." Fox News' John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Trump upped his battle with the federal appeals court potentially standing in the way of his agenda, saying Wednesday he absolutely has considered proposals to break up the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit. Trump made the comments in an interview with The Washington Examiner. His complaints came on the heels of the appeals court earlier this year helping block his controversial travel ban and a federal District Court judge in northern California on Tuesday blocking his bid to cut off sanctuary city funding. That judge, William Orrick, is not on the 9th Circuit bench, but the case could hit that court if appealed. Trump accused his opponents of judge shopping, and told the Examiner they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. And he gave a nod to congressional proposals to split up the appeals court into smaller parts. "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous," Trump said. Republicans have long complained that the 9th Circuit is not only liberal-leaning but far too big covering a sprawling amount of territory. GOP Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona introduced legislation earlier this year to carve six states out of the court circuit and create a brand new 12th Circuit. If they succeed, only California, Oregon, Hawaii and two island districts would remain in the 9th. Under Flakes bill, the new circuit would cover Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Alaska. Congress created the court in 1891. At the time, the area was sparsely inhabited only 4 percent of the U.S. population lived in the area compared to todays 20 percent. In 1998, Congress appointed a commission to re-examine the federal appeals courts structure. The commission ultimately recommended against splitting the 9th Circuit. But carving up the large circuit isnt out of the realm of possibility. In 1929, Congress split the 8th Circuit to accommodate a population boom and increased caseloads. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is preparing to fight the latest sanctuary city ruling. The Department of Justice cannot accept such a result, and as the president has made clear, we will continue to litigate this case to vindicate the rule of law, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement, citing the need to deport criminal illegal immigrants. This is the Trump era. Progress is being made daily, and it will continue. This will be the administration that fully enforces our nations immigration laws. Orricks ruling to halt Trumps order on sanctuary cities criticized the plan as too broad, saying it potentially threatens to cut off a wide range of federal grants to targeted cities. "And if there was doubt about the scope of the order, the president and attorney general have erased it with their public comments," he wrote. Fox News Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report. While President Trump overcame deep Democratic resistance to install his Cabinet picks in his first 100 days, the former executive has struggled to fill hundreds of other administration posts -- and the vacancies could pose a mounting challenge as his presidency moves into the next phase. Trump has been historically slow in naming people to non-Cabinet posts requiring Senate confirmation. Overall, he's had the fewest nominations and confirmations in his first 100 days of any president in the last 40 years. According to Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that tracks presidential appointments, there are approximately 556 key administration positions that require presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Of those, 468 are missing a full-time replacement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., claimed this was just another example of an unsuccessful first 100 days. Because of the White Houses glacial pace, there are hundreds and hundreds of Senate confirmable positions without any pending nominee from the administration, and just 7 pending nominees before the Senate, Schumer said. Instead of pointing fingers of blame, the administration ought to roll up their sleeves and send qualified nominees to the Senate. The White House did not respond to Fox News request for comment on the delay in announcing nominees, but just this week, the president told the Associated Press he just never realized how big it was. This is thousands of times bigger, the United States, than the biggest company in the worldthe second-largest company in the world is the Defense Department, the third-largest company in the world is Social Security, Trump told the Associated Press. Its massive, every agency is, like, bigger than any companyso, you know, I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. By the 100th day of Barack Obamas first term, he had 69 positions filled and confirmed. As of today, Trump has 25. He's made another 35 nominations; some vacancies are currently being filled by officials serving in an acting capacity. Despite the delay for mid-level posts, Trump just about has his Cabinet in place. This week, Sonny Perdue and Alexander Acosta were confirmed as Agriculture secretary and Labor secretary, respectively. Trump is now waiting only on Robert Lighthizer's confirmation as trade represenative. Trump also was decisive with his February appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch to take late-Justice Antonin Scalias seat on the bench of the Supreme Court. Democrats attempted to block Gorsuch, which pushed Republicans to go nuclear and change Senate precedent to secure confirmation earlier this month. But among the hundreds of vacancies are 93 unfilled U.S. attorneys posts, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions request for the resignation of holdover U.S. attorneys in March. Sessions told Fox News last week that U.S. attorney nominations and confirmations typically follow other critical appointments. Just this week, Sessions saw his first Senate-confirmed member of the DOJ, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The new No. 2 is a longtime federal prosecutor and will oversee the federal probe into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election after Sessions recused himself. Congress is always slowwe are not behind on U.S. attorneysthey have, and always have been late summer, early fall, Sessions told Fox News' "Happening Now." We are moving forward with some really great nomineesU.S. attorneys are critical law enforcement officersthey work with federal agencies, all the state agencies and they provide leadership and drive for those prosecutionswe need great U.S. attorneys. But the responsibility to nominate these attorneys and other key posts falls to the president. Its hard to point the finger at Senate Democrats when there arent very many names before them, Max Stier, CEO of Partnership for Public Service, told Fox News. The Trump team has fallen behind on an essential aspect of running the most complicated, important, diverse organization on the planet and you cant do it properly if you dont have the right people put in place. Stier did, however, sympathize with the president's situation, saying there are too many political appointees and no one has done this process right. If you dont have your top people confirmed quickly, then you cant select people downstream from there, Stier said. Former chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush and former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu gave the Trump administration the school-grade of a C in terms of putting their team in place. They need to be more aggressive on getting their appointments through, even to the point of trying to figure out how to name acting people in the agencies in order to get their policies implemented, Sununu told "America's Newsroom." Bring people up from the bottom of the ranks that they trust, and put them in an acting position and start making the changes that will force the Democrats to start doing the approvals in the Senate. President Trumps executive order on Wednesday for the Department of the Interior to review two dozen national monuments created by several of his predecessors has garnered widespread praise from many western state lawmakers, anger from conservationists and Native American groups and raised the question of whether one executive has the power undo the decisions of a previous White House. Speaking during a signing ceremony at the Interior Department, Trump derided the national monument protection efforts of the last three presidents. He called them a massive federal land grab, while specifically criticizing President Obamas use of the Antiquities Act as a way to unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control. The 1906 Antiquities Act authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use, but Republican lawmakers in western states like Utah have been hostile to the use of the act by Presidents Obama, Clinton and George W. Bush claiming the designations stymie economic growth by shutting off areas to commercial and energy development. Obamas designation in the waning days if his presidency of Bears Ears and Gold Butte as national monuments was widely panned by Republican lawmakers, ranchers and those in the oil and gas industries as midnight monuments that do not represent the interests of the people in those states and will in time do more harm than good to the environment. The move especially angered Utahns still annoyed at President Bill Clintons order in 1996 to create the 1.8 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. While economic growth spurred on by tourism has cooled some tempers, Clintons and now Obamas moves still dont sit well with many in the Beehive State. When President Obama designated the Bears Ears monument in December, he did so ignoring the voices of Utah leaders who were united in opposition, and even more importantly, ignoring the voices of the local Utahns most affected by this massive land grab, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said last week. Hatchs sentiment was echoed the Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who on Wednesday praised Trump for restoring the Antiquities Act to its proper scope and use. We know firsthand what happens when the law is abused for unworthy political purposes, Herbert said in a statement. The Grand Staircase Escalante designation and the recent controversial Bears Ears designation are key examples of this, and I am confident that the upcoming review will lead to positive outcomes for Utah and for those who call the beautiful Bears Ears area home. Herbert added: It is time for a course correction. Trumps order may enjoy broad support among Utahs lawmakers, but numerous Democrats condemned the move. A group of 31 Western Democratic senators sent a letter on Wednesday to Trump asking the president to uphold his campaign promise to protect public lands. During your campaign and during [Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes] confirmation hearing, your administration promised to emulate President Teddy Roosevelt and his vision for conserving public lands, the lawmakers, led by New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, said in the letter. We urge you to honor your promises and not alter the protections that previous presidents have put in place to safeguard these national monuments. Environmental groups and members of a coalition of Western Native American tribes also expressed their outrage at Trumps move to review what they say was a carefully vetted decision by the last presidents administration. "Once it's designated, it's designated. He should just honor our past leaders and those who were before him," said Davis Filfred, the Navajo Nation representative on the coalition. "He's disregarding the Native Americans, the first people of this nation. This is sacred land." Filfred added that he and the coalition won't stand by idly if Zinke tries to undo the designation. "He's going to be in for a fight. We're not going to let this down easy." Wednesday's order will cover the several dozen monuments across the country designated since 1996 that total 100,000 acres or more. Zinke was directed to produce an interim report in 45 days and make a recommendation on Bears Ears, and then issue a final report within 120 days. Congressional leaders and courts have in the past contested many national monument designations Franklin D. Roosevelt took heat for Jackson Hole National Monument, which later became Grand Teton National Park, and George W. Bush was criticized for the designation of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument northwest of Hawaii. Some monuments have also been scaled down, or enlarged, over the years by presidential orders or by Congress, but no president has ever attempted to eliminate his predecessors monument and if Trump tries to do so, the matter will most likely end up in court. Its really unclear what powers the president has to abolish these monuments, James Morton Turner, an associate professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, told Fox News. A legal analysis commissioned by the National Parks Conservation Association asserts that the president cannot abolish a monument - pointing to a 1938 opinion by then-Attorney General Homer Cummings that a monument designation has the force of law and can be reversed only by Congress. A House report accompanying the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 agrees. To abolish the monuments or the Antiquities Act altogether Republicans in Congress would need to pass legislation in both houses. That would require 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster and in recent years the Senate has tended to avoid any legislation until they get 60 votes. The conservative American Enterprise Institute, however, released a study in March that argues that when Congress authorizes the executive branch to write regulations, the power to repeal them generally can be assumed. That's especially so, it says, when a president is correcting a predecessor's act that exceeded what a law intended. Any move to abolish the national monuments will have to wait until Zinke hands in his report, but experts say that even if the Interior Secretary recommends doing away with any of the 24 monuments, it will not be quick task. Change will not come easily, Turner said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. There is perhaps no group that has suffered more from the wrath of ISIS than Iraq's Yazidi community. In early August 2014 ISIS attacked their centuries-old homeland surrounding the city of Sinjar (Shingal). Thousands were slaughtered, thousands were captured and thousands had nowhere to go but to the top of Mount Sinjar where thousands died of starvation and dehydration. But in the early hours of Tuesday morning, many of those genocide survivors -- living in squalid ripped tents with little aid, electricity or medical care -- again fled for their lives, this time running down the mountain as Turkish warplanes struck in and around the mountain top for almost an hour. "The Yazidis of Mountain Shingal are terrified. They feel threatened and unsafe. They thought ISIS days were almost done and they can return to their villages and towns, but now they face a bigger problem," Yakhi Hamza, country director of the 1st New Allied Expeditionary Force, a humanitarian nonprofit delivering medical help to the most vulnerable Yazidis, told Fox News after inspecting the damage. "Turkey is a more dangerous threat than ISIS and attacking Yazidis from above." Among the twice-displaced Yazidis now huddling in tents at the foot of the mountain are sex slave survivors and the elderly. The strikes are reported to have killed at least 70 people in the Iraq/Syria border area, with one bomb hitting a Kurdish Peshmerga post on Mount Sinjar, killing at least five and critically wounding several more. A missile also struck a communications tower in the area, destroying a key lifeline to the outside world for the destitute and traumatized Yazidi community. Before these strikes, the mountain itself was a haunting place, littered with burned vehicles and strewn with belongings from the day of the ISIS rampage. The farming community left languishing there survived scorching summers and bitter snow-struck winters with next to no outside assistance. Their only medical facility near the mountain peak also became a casualty in this weeks Turkish assault. "The strikes hit the only civilian clinic on the Mountain Shingal," Hamza said. "The clinic was run by a volunteer, Dr. Khansa, who was selflessly serving displaced Yazidi community on the mountain from Day One." Before being bombed the clinic, previously visited by Fox News, was a makeshift room with six beds and a handful of medications run by a 36-year-old woman the locals lovingly call "Hero Doctor Khansa." She is, in fact, not a doctor but a nurse from Rojava and a refugee herself -- fleeing neighboring Syria after ISIS attacked in 2014. Nurse Khansa Ali told Fox News she simply started trying to help those in need by visiting other displacement tents until early 2015 when she was able to set up the small clinic. "I stay here and I work 24 hours if I have to, whenever someone walks in," Khansa told Fox News from the clinic late one night last November. "People have many problems, skin diseases, pregnancy complications. The hardest part to help is with the psychological illnesses. The children suffer the worst." Sheer luck kept Khansa alive. She awoke to loud noises and the sound of a hovering warplane. Quickly she awakened her patients. Together they ran out just in time to miss the Turkish bombs that leveled the clinic and claimed the lives of many of Khansa's Peshmerga companions. As of Wednesday the stretch of road to the bombing location remained closed. Sinjar remains a contested area between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish capital of Erbil. Iraq's foreign ministry has condemned the Turkish attacks as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and major political parties in the Kurdistan Regional Government also condemned the fatal attacks. However, Turkish officials justified Tuesday's attack as necessary for decimating "terror hubs" and stopping militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party, also known as the PKK, from transporting terrorists and arms into Turkey to attack Turks. But the U.S. State Department has expressed "deep concern" over the strikes, with spokesperson Mark Toner implying that Turkey cannot pursue its grievances against the PKK at the expense of the fight against ISIS. The U.S.-led coalition is said to have received a one-hour warning prior to the attack. The Americans requested that Turkey not conduct the attack due to concerns over coordination. However, the NATO ally proceeded, targeting positions of the predominantly Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, also known as YPG, as well as PKK positions around Mount Sinjar. The YPG is the primary ground force supported by the U.S. in the fight against ISIS in Syria. The YPG is closely affiliated with the PKK, which has for decades fought for Kurdish independence from Turkey. It is the PKKs fight against Turkey that has caused the group to be designated a terrorist organization in the United States. "Turkey is a more dangerous threat than ISIS [which is] attacking Yazidis from above." Humanitarian worker While it is hardly unusual for Turkish planes to bomb the mountainous region between Iraq and Turkey, some 70 miles from Sinjar and where the PKK is mostly situated, this week's air assault into Iraq and Syria has been met with anger and suggests tensions within NATO are inflaming. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed not to let Sinjar become a PKK base and cautioned that the strikes will continue. "Everyone is scared. But they knew straight away that this was Turkey. The threats had been coming," one Yazidi from Sinjar, who requested he not be named, told Fox News. "If someone doesn't do something, it will happen again. Yazidis don't want this war." PKK groups remain scattered around Sinjar and its surrounding villages and are viewed by some Yazidis as crucial protectors after the Peshmerga and Iraqi Army withdrew from their positions on the morning ISIS marched in, a withdrawal that enabled the ISIS slaughter of Yazidis who did not escape in time. Since then many Yazidis have told Fox News that the PKK militia came to their defense -- fighting back against ISIS and rescuing vulnerable women and children. Meanwhile, a YPG solider on the Syrian Rojava side said the Turkish attack flattened their media center. The following day, evacuations of their area continued and many of their medical personnel treating the wounded were also in hiding. By weeks end YPG personnel were still counting their dead. A leader of ISIS' affiliate in Saudi Arabia was designated as a terrorist on Thursday, according to the State Department. Mubarak Mohammad A Alotaibi, a 31-year-old Saudi citizen, was added as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" (SDGT), which imposes sanctions on foreigners determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals, national security, foreign policy or the economy of the United States. Alotaibi is based in Syria, and is believed to be second in line to lead ISIS affiliate in Saudi Arabia. According to the State Department, the action freezes any U.S.-based assets Alotaibi may have, and bans Americans from engaging in any transactions or dealings with him. Todays action notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Alotaibi has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism. US State Department Todays action notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Alotaibi has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism, the State Department said Thursday. Designations of terrorist individuals and groups expose and isolate organizations and individuals, and result in denial of access to the U.S. financial system. The State Department not only runs a list of individual terrorists, but also tracks countries considered State Sponsors of Terrorism. Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Trump administration was considering adding North Korea to that list. The Bush administration had removed North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism in 2008. A State Department official familiar with terrorism designations told Fox News that the department consistently reviews information and intelligence on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, calling it an ongoing process. Even without being designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, North Korea remains among the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, a State Department official told Fox News. It is subject to a wide array of unilateral sanctions based on its announced nuclear detonations, ballistic missile activity, proliferation activities, human rights violations, and status as a communist state. Last month, the House of Representatives passed legislation, with overwhelming support, that would require Tillerson to review North Koreas status. Currently, only Iran, Syria, and Sudan have been designated by the State Department as State Sponsors of Terrorism. For some architects, building on land just isnt enough of a challenge anymore, so theyve taken their design skills to the water. These astonishing floating structures can be found everywhere from Thailand to Nigeria and contain movie theaters, schools, housing, and offices. Many of the designs include sustainable elements including solar panels and locally-sourced or biodegradable materials. But beyond their environmental benefits, these examples of floating architecture offer a unique way to experience their settings, whether its a canal in Amsterdam or a river in South Korea. Browse these beautiful and innovative structures from around the world. After all, with sea levels rising, these designs just might be the wave of the future. Devised by 2014 Architectural Digest Innovator Ole Scheeren, the Archipelago Cinema is an outdoor movie theater surrounded by the towering rocks, lush vegetation, and crystal-clear water of Thailands Kudu Island. The architect designed the structure in collaboration with the annual Film on the Rocks Yao Noi Festival, which is curated by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and British actress Tilda Swinton. Scheeren modeled the structure after the areas floating lobster farms, using a series of modular platforms to form the main seating section. This residential community was commissioned by a group of water-loving families in the Netherlands. Drijf in Lelystad, which translates to Float in Lelystad, was designed by the Amsterdam-based firm Attika Architekten. Construction took place roughly 25 miles outside of the city, and the completed structures, built on concrete caissons, were towed over water to their destination. In total, eight timber-frame homesall custom made to fit the requirements of each familywere erected for the project. More: Take an Exclusive Look at Mexico's Overwater Bungalows Located in Seoul, South Korea, Floating Island was conceived as part of the Han River Renaissancea municipal campaign to revitalize an often overlooked area of the city. A collaboration between H Architecture in New York and Haeahn Architecture in Seoul, the complex consists of three structures, representing the three stages of a blooming flower: seed, bud, and blossom. Formed from glass, wood, and steel, the islandlike buildings house shops, restaurants, and a number of venue spaces that host festivals, performances, and exhibitions throughout the year. Makoko Floating School in Lagos, Nigeria, was conceived by the architecture studio NLE as a prototype for buildings that could be moved around coastal regions prone to flooding. Fashioned on a floating base, the three-story school, made from locally sourced bamboo and wood, includes an assembly area, four classrooms, and a workshop. Whats more, the A-frame structure has the capacity to support hundreds of residents in case of emergency. Londons Camley Street Natural Park was built on top of a deserted coal yard along Regents Canal in 1984. Today, the park is a sanctuary for the citys wildlife and home to Viewpoint Pavilion, a floating platform where visitors can observe nature directly from the canal. Devised by Finnish firm AOR in 2014, the structure was inspired by traditional Scandinavian laavus, primitive shelters that blend into their natural surroundings. The London Wildlife Trust often hosts educational programs at the pavilion. When designing an office for a company responsible for cleaning and maintaining Amsterdams waterways, Attika Architekten knew sustainability was paramount. Located in the northern part of the old city harbor, the floating office of Waternet has a timber frame and a thatched-reed facade, both of which are fully reusable and biodegradable if disassembled. Work spaces and a cafeteria are found on the upper levels, while a concrete caisson that sits below the water contains employee locker rooms. At a sprawling 9,418 square feet, the office is the largest floating building in the Netherlands. Slatted-timber siding covers the exterior of Framework Architecten and Studio Prototypes Water Villa, a house that rests in a canal southwest of Amsterdams city center, close to the stadium built for the 1928 Summer Olympics. The three-level residence encompasses 2,690 square feet, and the interior features sleek hallways, an all-white kitchen, and a spacious living area. Sunlight streams into the home through the exterior slats and a skylight above the atrium. The design allows the homeowners to enjoy all the natural elements that surround Water Villa. We all know the old its not a bug; its a feature joke, but the observation sometimes extends to security issues. Security researchers have discovered an admittedly mild vulnerability on a Samsung Smart TV that could let an intruder access the TV set over Wi-Fi. But according to the researchers, rather than issue a software fix or suggest a workaround, the South Korean electronics giant instead shrugged its metaphorical shoulders and explained that everything is working as intended. Your Samsung Smart TV probably isnt at a huge risk, but the flaw is something you should at least be aware of. Fortunately, the workaround to avoid attacks stemming from this vulnerability is pretty simple. Neseso , an online security consulting firm, last week released an advisory discussing a newfound flaw in the Samsung UN32J5500, a 32-inch Tizen-based smart TV first released as part of the 2015 model year and still being sold in North America. The TV can use Wi-Fi Direct, a convenient protocol that allows two or more devices to connect directly to each other wirelessly without going through a router. (Think about a TV that wirelessly connects to your smartphone so that you can use the phone as a remote, for example.) Most Wi-Fi Direct devices ask users to provide a password or PIN when connecting, in order to prevent unwanted intrusions. The UN32J5500, on the other hand, simply cross-references a device attempting to connect against a whitelist of devices that the user has already pre-authorized. Devices are identified according to their MAC addresses, which are unique IDs assigned to every network port on every networked device. In theory, this means that only devices that the user has personally authorized can connect to the TV. In practice, its not that hard to spoof a MAC address. If an attacker happened to know the MAC address of your smartphone's Wi-Fi chip, for example, he or she could stand outside your house with his or her own laptop or smartphone, replicate your smartphone's MAC address and get control of your smart TV. After Neseso reported its findings to the manufacturer last month, Samsung investigated the issue and apparently told the researchers that it was not a security threat. On the other hand, while this exploit seems very easy to pull off, it might be of limited benefit to a potential cybercriminal. While a Wi-Fi Direct connection could let an attacker take over your TV, they couldnt do much with it other than change the channel or enable screen mirroring. Furthermore, Wi-Fi Direct doesnt work across long distances, so this attacker would have to be willing to be in close proximity to your TV. In theory, a very savvy hacker could use other vulnerabilities in the Samsung Smart TV platform and, according to a different researcher, there are indeed a whole bunch of Samsung Smart TV security flaws to rig up some way to extract your home Wi-Fi networks name and access password, but the Wi-Fi Direct flaw itself provides no simple way to do so. How to protect your Samsung Smart TV Neseso recommended that users "remove all whitelisted devices" from the TV's settings, but did not discuss exactly how this is done, suggesting only that users contact Samsung for an exact method. (It will probably be somewhere in the Network menu under Settings. If you've whitelisted any devices, you should be able to go back in and delete devices.) Without any whitelisted MAC address, an attacker will have no MAC addresses to spoof, and hence no avenue of attack. If you want to play it extremely safe, you could disable the Wi-Fi on your TV, which appears to be the only way to disable Wi-Fi Direct. However, doing so will also prevent you from using all the other smart-TV features for which you paid good money. While Samsungs shoulder-shrugging at the issue is disappointing for owners of UN32J5500 models (as well as those of other Samsung Smart TVs that run similar firmware; Neseso hypothesized that other models could share this vulnerability, but didn't test any), its understandable that the company might not want to divert resources to patching a mild issue for a two-year-old TV. Our best advice would be to not sweat it, but if someone starts messing with your channels, call the police, disable the Wi-Fi, and buy a cheap streaming media player instead. Tom's Guide has reached out to Samsung for comment, and we will update this story when the company replies. Scientists have extracted DNA from the skeletal remains of several 19th-century sailors who died during the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, whose goal was to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage. With a new genetic database of 24 expedition members, researchers hope they'll be able to identify some of the bodies scattered in the Canadian Arctic, 170 years after one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration. The results were published April 20 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. A doomed voyage Led by Sir John Franklin, a British Royal Navy captain, the 129-member crew embarked in 1845 in search of a sea route that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The sailors were doomed after their ships became trapped in thick sea ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1846. [In Photos: Arctic Shipwreck Solves 170-Year-Old Mystery] The last communication, a short note from April 25, 1848, indicated that the surviving men were abandoning their ships the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror just off King William Island and embarking on a harsh journey south toward a trading post on the mainland. None of them seems to have made it even a fifth of the way there. Over more than a century, search parties and scientists have discovered the remains of several Franklin sailors in boats and makeshift campsites scattered along this route. The bones bear scars of diseases like scurvy. Some even have the signatures of cannibalism, according to one recent study that confirmed the 19th-century reports of Inuit witnesses who had described piles of fractured human bones. Several artifacts from the HMS Erebus, including a medicine bottle and tunic buttons, as well as the ship's bronze bell , have also been uncovered. In the latest look at the array of bones, a team led by Douglas Stenton of Nunavut's Department of Culture and Heritage, a territory in northern Canada, conducted the first genetic tests on members of the expedition who died following the desertion of the ships. Stenton and his colleagues were able to get DNA from 37 bone and tooth samples found at eight different sites around King William Island, and they established the presence of at least 24 different members of the expedition. Twenty-one of these individuals had been found at locations around Canada's Erebus Bay, "confirming it as a location of some importance following the desertion of Erebus and Terror," Stenton told Live Science. The researchers say their results offer a more accurate count of the number of expedition members who died at different locations. A few of the early fatalities were buried at Beechey Island and their frozen remains, which were exhumed by archaeologists in the 1980s, were eerily well-preserved. The bones of the sailors who died after abandoning the ships, however, were much more scattered, dispersed by animal scavenging and human activity. Stenton said that, in one case, bones from the same individual were found at two different sites about a mile from each other. The researchers think that an 1879 search party most likely found some of the bones, and then carried them to the new site and reburied them. Stenton and colleagues hope they will eventually be able to use the database to identify the crew members and better reconstruct what happened in the final months of the expedition. "We have been in touch with several descendants who have expressed interest in participating in further research," Stenton said. "We hope that the publication of our initial study will encourage other descendants to also consider participating." Women among the dead? Four samples in the study were identified as female, which doesn't fit with the picture of an all-male expedition crew. The authors ruled out the possibility that these samples came from Inuit women because the genetic and archaeological evidence associated with these four individuals also suggests they were European. [Tales of the 9 Craziest Ocean Voyages] "We were surprised by the results for those samples because in planning the analysis it hadn't occurred to us that there might have been women on board," Stenton told Live Science. Stenton and his colleagues think the most likely explanation for this discrepancy is that ancient DNA studies commonly fail to amplify the Y chromosome (the male sex chromosome) due to insufficient quantity or quality of DNA, which can result in false female identifications of the dead. However, the researchers noted that it wasn't unheard of for women to serve in disguise in the Royal Navy. "Some of these women were smuggled onboard [the] ship, and others disguised themselves as men and worked alongside the crew for months or years before being detected or intentionally revealing themselves to be female," the authors wrote. They cited cases such as Mary Anne Talbot, who served on two Navy ships during the Napoleonic wars of the 18th century before being found out after being wounded. Unfortunately, Stenton said he doesn't think it will be possible to definitively say whether the four Franklin samples are really just false results, but his team concluded that it would have been very unlikely for so many women to be serving secretly on this voyage. Original article on Live Science. Google Assistant can now lend a hand in the kitchen, assuming that's where you've placed your Google Home speaker. An update rolling out to all users this week will give the digital voice assistant access to more than 5 million recipes from Bon Appetit, The New York Times, Food Network, and other sources, and it can read them all back to you step by step. If you want to search through all 5 million, you'll first want to select a recipe via web search on your iOS or Android device, or via the Google Assistant if your phone has it built in. Once you've found the one you want, tap the "Send to Google Home" button so it knows what you want to cook. You can also ask Google Home for some recipes directly, such as "Ok Google, let's make macaroons." Once you've got all the ingredients ready, you can say "Ok, Google, start cooking." You can then ask Google Home to move on to the next step in the recipe, or to repeat the instructions for a specific step. In between, you can set timers with your voice and also ask all manner of questions that an experienced assistant should know the answer to, such as how many ounces are in a cup. Of course, given a choice between cooking dinner with Google Home tonight or seeing the hit musical Hamilton, it's a safe bet that most people would chose the latter. And while asking Google Home for tickets isn't likely to work, the company on Wednesday made available a deluge of historical information about Alexander Hamilton's life to beef up your historical knowledge in case you do get to see the musical. The collection, curated by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, includes six virtual reality tours of locations where the founding father spent his time, from his home in Manhattan to the site of the duel in Weehawken, N.J. where he died. The VR tours are available to students using VR headsets on the Google Expeditions platform, but the Institute has also uploaded much of its Hamilton collection for anyone to explore. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has sent back stunning images from its historic dive between Saturn and its rings. Cassini is the first spacecraft to explore the 1,500-mile gap between Saturn and its rings. The orbiter used its dish-shaped high-gain antenna, which measures 13 feet across, as a protective shield during Wednesdays dive. NASA explained that its Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California's Mojave Desert picked up Cassinis signal at 2:56 a.m. EDT on Thursday and data began flowing from the probe four minutes later. TRUMP MAKES SPACE CALL TO RECORD-BREAKING NASA ASTRONAUT PEGGY WHITSON "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement. The spacecraft came within about 1,900 miles of Saturns cloud tops during its epic dive and within about 200 miles of the innermost visible edge of the rings, according to NASA. Cassini will make a total of 22 dives between Saturn and its rings as part of the orbiter's so-called "Grand Finale." Its next dive is scheduled for May 2. NASA FINDS HIGHEST PEAK ON SATURN'S LARGEST MOON TITAN The spacecraft has generated a trove of scientific data on Saturn and its moons during its mission. Earlier this month, for example, NASA announced that Saturns moon Enceladus could support life thanks to the discovery of hydrogen. After almost two decades in space, the orbiters mission will end on Sept. 15 2017 when Cassini is scheduled to crash into Saturn. The Cassini mission began on Oct. 15 1997 when the spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket. Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency on the Cassini-Huygens mission. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of Caltech, manages the mission for NASAs Science Mission Directorate. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers While tourists can occasionally be an annoyance to some U.S. residents during the busy summer months in metropolises like New York City and Los Angeles, the revenue they bring in on a local and national level is enormous. Some nearly 13 million international tourists spend on average four times the amount that U.S. tourists do during trips to New York City, said NYC & Company, the city's official tourism board, in a statement to Travel + Leisure. On any given day, New York City welcomes 175,000-180,000 visitors, according to Chris Heywood, SVP of global communications for NYC & Company. Brazilian and Australian tourists were the top spenders, dropping some $2 billion and $1.87 billion in New York City in 2015 respectively. Europeans rounded out the top five highest spenders, with British travelers to the Big Apple on average spending about $1.6 billion in 2015; French travelers spending $1.11 billion; and Germans $1.1 billion. Nine out of 10 foreign visitors go shopping, compared to fewer than three domestic visitors, Quartz reported, and it is the top activity for international tourists even ahead of sightseeing and museums. New York City is bracing for a dip in revenue, however, as the destination revised down its 2017 forecast and is expecting to see 300,000 fewer international visitors than in 2016. Industry leaders have pointed to heightened restrictions on entering the U.S., particularly after Trump instated a series of executive orders that limited travel from several majority Muslim countries. The data are all showing a pretty dramatic shift in behavior and interest, Adam Sacks, president of travel forecasting company Tourism Economics, told The New York Times. That certainly accelerated since the executive order. A recent report released by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) revealed that Mexico has surpassed Turkey as the eighth most popular tourist destination in the world. According to MexicoNewsDaily.com, Mexico welcomed 35 million visitors last year, with a nine percent increase in foreign tourists arriving in the country. Due to political unrest and security concerns, Turkey welcomed 28.3 million visitors last year. Mexico had dropped in the UNWTO rankings to 15th in 2013 but has since climbed back to ninth due to improved security and a steadily recovering tourism industry in certain regions. The country finished eighth for last year, with only 600,000 fewer visitors than the seventh-place United Kingdom. Tourism revenue was also up in Mexico, climbing to $19.6 billion. Tourism officials in Mexico believe the country will enter the top five in the UNWTO rankings soon due to the 50 percent increase in visitor numbers since 2012. Mexicos Tourism Secretariat also said the nation is working to provide more activities and attractions to entice travelers to stay longer when visiting. Despite remaining concerns about crime in certain areas of the country, a recent survey of travel agents saw business to the country increase, including 45 percent who reported an increase in Mexican vacation sales by more than five percent. In terms of specific markets that have performed the best over the last year, the Riviera Maya, Cancun, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit were all considered the most desirable destinations in Mexico. After decades of free admissions for both tourists and locals, the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the city government are considering charging admission for the first time in the museum's nearly 125-year history. On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed the idea of having the Met charge admission for visitors from outside of New York City, reports The New York Times. Im a big fan of Russian oligarchs paying more to get into the Met, de Blasio said during a press conference. The museum, a taxpayer-supported institution established in 1893, currently has a "suggested" entrance fee of $25 for adult visitors. According to the New York Times, entrance fees generated about $39 million last year 13 percent of the museums total revenue. The museum has previously been in talks with de Blasio's administration on how to close the museum's current budget deficit of $15 million. A mandatory entrance fee could raise tens of millions of dollars annually. Even with mandatory tickets, de Blasio said the move shouldnt be seen as a replacement for any funding the city currently provides to the museum. The museum receives $26 million a year from the city, which owns the Met's buildings. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS I dont think we have an assumption about city funding, de Blasio said. Its about them being able to sustain their operations long term and would actually mean they wouldnt need additional city funding, in theory. But no, the real issue is just to allow them to defray some of their costs in a way thats fair to city residents. Currently, 63 percent of the Met's 7 million annual visitors come from outside New York state. City officials are still calculating how a fee might affect visiting touristsi.e. whether a prohibitively expensive entrance fee might deter millions of art-lovers who would otherwise flock to the museum. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Theyre not loving it. North Koreas sole airline serves a lone in-flight meal that is almost as bizarre as the Hermit Kingdom itself a stone-cold burger made with mystery meat and served on a paper doily that many passengers say had them reaching for the barf bag. The Air Koryo burger was the worst example of soft power Ive ever tasted, Beijing-based writer Alec Ash told the LA Times. The state-run Air Koryos signature Koryo burger comes on a stale bun, and is topped with processed cheese, a sad sprinkling of cabbage or a lone lettuce leaf and a runny sauce that is as mysterious as the patty, according to those whod sampled it. An equally mysterious thin red sauce, which appeared when the meat was squeezed but was thankfully far too watery to be blood, added to the sense of confusion that was intensified by the bizarre war-themed propaganda films on the TV screens, said writer Jamie Fullerton in a review for Vice. Koryo is ranked as the worlds worst airline by review site Skytrax, where users also often weigh in on the room-temperature snack. This article originally appeared in the New York Post. Following in the footsteps of fellow low-cost competitor JetBlue, Southwest Airlines said Thursday it will no longer overbook flights. Gary Kelly, CEO of the Dallas-based carrier told CNBC, Ive made the decision the companys made the decision that well cease to overbook going forward. He added Were in the customer service business. The last thing that we wanna do is deny a customer their flight, so were gonna work very hard to eliminate as many pain points to travel as possible. BUMPED FROM A FLIGHT? HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Though the CEO did not give a specific timeline for when Southwest plans to stop the practice of overbooking entirely, Kelly indicated that they will be implementing the move shortly. The moves comes as airlines face renewed scrutiny over the routine practice of overbooking. The practice isn't illegal and many carriers routinely do it in order maximize the profits on each trip. Carrier expect that a certain percentage of fliers will cancel travel or decide not to show at the last minute. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS According to the DOT, When an oversale occurs, the Department of Transportation (DOT) requires airlines to ask people who aren't in a hurry to give up their seats voluntarily, in exchange for compensation. Those passengers bumped against their will are, with a few exceptions, entitled to compensation. The Internet is still reeling from the unexplained death of Simon, a giant rabbit reportedly destined to be the world's largest, after he was flown from London to Chicago on a United Airlines flight. Simon, a three-foot continental rabbit was reported to be in good health before the journey but died on the way to his new owner int he U.S. The incident has prompted outrage at United Airlines from animal lovers on social media, and renewed the debate surrounding animal air transport safety. According to data collected by the Department of Transportation, United Airlines had the worst record with pet injuries or deaths in 2016. Nine pets died while being transported by the legacy carrier and another 14 were injured last year. The closest any other airline came to Uniteds record was Delta, which suffered five pet deaths and five injuries the same year. SCORPION STINGS MAN ABOARD UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT United transported 109,149 animals in 2016-- far more than almost every other carrier in the DOT's report the lone exception being Alaskan Airlines, which transported 112,281 animals. Alaskan, on the other hand, only had two pet deaths and one injury. MarketWatch crunched the numbers to determine the number of incidents per every 10,000 pets flown, and Uniteds average, at 2.11 incidents per 10,000 animals, paled in comparison to Hawaiian Airlines average of 3.99 per every 10,000 animals. (Hawaiian had three animal deaths but only transported 7,518 in 2016.) Nevertheless, many Twitter users arent about to let United off the hook. I just fell in love with #simontherabbit thru imgur and now #unitedAIRLINES has killed him Kay M (@hard__honey) April 26, 2017 Healthy #SimonTheRabbit dies on @United flight. #United has the second highest U.S. airlines death rate for transported #animals. Kyle Rooster (@Kyle_Rooster) April 26, 2017 The only thing worse than an airline that beats its customers is one that murders small animals too. #unitedAIRLINES #simontherabbit Mr. Riley (@Llexemic_Llama) April 26, 2017 Ambrose is rattled by the United news. Safe to say we will not be flying with them #SimonTheRabbit Kyle Johnston (@Kyle_Johnston27) April 26, 2017 Inga Fricke, director of pet retention programs at the Humane Society of the United States, does not claim to know why certain airlines fair worse when it comes to these incidents, but she does know that cargo holds are never the safest way to transport pets. Flying with any pet in a cargo hold is something we caution pet owners against, Fricke tells Fox News. Things could potentially go wrong. According to Fricke, cargo holds can pose several problems for pets, including mishandling, exposure to extreme temperatures and poor ventilation. We know that most airlines try to take the utmost precautions, Fricke says. But even under the best circumstances, something could potentially go wrong. In the case of Simon the rabbit, United is still unclear as to what caused the animals death. We were saddened to hear this news, they said in a statement, and have announced a thorough investigation. The safety and wellbeing of all the animals that travel with us is of the utmost importance to United Airlines and our PetSafe team. We have been in contact with our customer and have offered assistance. We are reviewing this matter." The airline told Chicagoist that Simon was actually alive after landing in Chicago and showed no signs of distress, but died shortly after being transferred to the airlines PetSafe kennel facility. But Simon's story is strikingly similar to that of a Michigan woman who blamed United for the death of her golden retriever in February. The dog, which was reportedly in good health before he flew, reportedly experienced distress, mishandling or improper feeding on the flight, and died hours after the cross-country trip. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Uniteds latest incident comes amid a major public relations crisis for the carrier. Earlier this month, officers at OHare International Airport forcibly and violently removed a 69-year-old passenger from a United flight to make room for airline crewmembers. And just last month, the airline came under fire for barring teen girls wearing leggings from boarding an aircraft. But while United conducts their latest investigation into Simons death, Fricke believes theres a simple way to reduce, or even eliminate, these kinds of tragedies. We certainly encourage airlines to open up the option for in-cabin transport, eliminating the need to put animals in the cargo hold in the first place, she says. We encourage them to treat our four-legged friends like our two-legged ones. A representative for United Airlines was not immediately available for comment. Fox News has learned that Dr. David Dao, the man who was forcibly removed from his seat and dragged off a United Airlines flight, has settled with the carrier for an undisclosed amount. United spokesman Jonathan Guerin sent the following statement to Fox News Thursday afternoon: "We are pleased to report that United and Dr. Dao have reached an amicable resolution of the unfortunate incident that occurred aboard flight 3411. We look forward to implementing the improvements we have announced, which will put our customers at the center of everything we do." DO AIRLINES HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMOVE SEATED PASSENGERS FROM PLANES? On April 9, Dao boarded a a plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport bound for Louisville, Ky. He had already boarded and was seated when the airline told passengers that a few fliers would have to give up their seats to make room for four crew members who needed to fly to Kentucky for work. Dao refused multiple times, at which point officers from the Chicago Department of Aviation forcefully pulled the 69-year-old doctor from his seat and dragged him down the aisle of the aircraft. The incident sparked widespread outrage and has prompted calls for change in how airlines handle overbooking situations. United CEO Oscar Munoz has since announced several airline policy changes, including a $10,000 incentive for voluntarily bumped passengers on overbooked flights, new time restrictions for when crew members must arrive in order to bump passengers and a promise to reduce the amount of overbooking on flights. This story is developing. Federal agents descended on the North Texas headquarters of television evangelist Benny Hinn and took boxes out of the offices. The search began about 9 a.m. Wednesday at Hinn's headquarters in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine, near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. According to Hinn's website, he was in Paris. Lisa Slimak, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Dallas, said she was unable to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. A message sent to Bennie Hinn Ministries went unanswered. Hinn was one of six television evangelists investigated by the Senate Finance Committee in 2007. Three years later, the six were cleared of any wrongdoing. The Latest on the case against suspect in Fresno murder rampage (all times local): 6:00 p.m. The lawyer for a black man who allegedly shot three people to death in a racially motivated shooting in Fresno says his client may not be mentally competent to stand trial. Kori Muhammad's defense lawyer, Eric Christensen, says he has asked the court for a psychological evaluation. Christensen says he expects the court to address the issue during Muhammad's arraignment on Thursday. Muhammad was charged Wednesday with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of white men he targeted randomly on the street. Fresno District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said in a statement that if convicted, he faces a death sentence or life in prison. ___ 3:53 p.m. The black suspect in a racially motivated shooting in Fresno has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of white men targeted randomly on the street. Prosecutors say Kori Ali Muhammad also was charged Wednesday with three counts of attempted murder for those he shot at but didn't hit, one count of shooting at an occupied vehicle and possession of a firearm. He's already been charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of a white motel security guard days before the rampage. Police say the 39-year-old told investigators he wanted to kill as many white people as possible, laughing as he explained his actions. Fresno District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp says Muhammad faces a death sentence or life in prison if convicted. A man was arrested Wednesday afternoon after showing up to Dallas PD Southwest patrol with a mask, guns and drugs in his vehicle and threatening to shoot. In the mans car was a mask in the style worn by the group Anonymous, multiple guns and marijuana. A Dallas police major tweeted a photo of the items. #DPD officers continue working hard. 1 guy arrested at SW with this. Unrelated SE Officers now searching woods for possible robbery suspects pic.twitter.com/OBN0DE9EwS Maj. Max Geron (@MaxDPD) April 26, 2017 Police officers said the Hispanic man was in his 20s and was stopped by officers at the front entrance. Police said he asked questions and made statements that resulted in officers taking him into custody for a mental health evaluation. Police said the man was still being questioned as of Wednesday evening with charges pending for possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of marijuana. Read more from FOX 4 News. The majority of murders in the U.S. occur in only a small percentage of counties across the country. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said in a new report that there is a geographical concentration of murders, with 68 percent of killings occurring in just 5 percent of the nations counties. The homicides also tend to be concentrated to relatively small pockets of those counties, the report said. It is stunning how concentrated murders are in the U.S., John Lott, president of the CPRC said to Fox News. And we show that even within these counties, with all these high rates, murders are very concentrated. These high [rate] counties have very large areas where there are no murders. In 2014, the U.S. murder rate was 4.4 per 100,000 people, according to the data of the report. If the deadliest 5 percent of the counties were removed, the U.S. murder rate would be 2.56 per 100,000 people, the report showed. More than half of last years murders occurred in only 2 percent of the nations counties. Looking at the historical data, the CPRC said that murders were even more geographically concentrated in decades past. On average, 73 percent of counties in any given year had zero murders from 1977 to 2000. Take for example Los Angeles County, which had 526 murders in 2014 -- the most of any other county in the U.S. But parts of L.A. County, including Beverly Hills, Hawthorne and Van Nuys, had virtually no murders that year. Indianapolis, Indiana had 135 murders but only four occurred outside of the 465 highway loop that encircles the downtown area. Washington, D.C. has large swaths without a single recorded murder. The study found that murders were overwhelmingly limited to the eastern half of Washington, D.C. One of the most interesting findings in the report is that areas with the highest gun ownership rates have low murder rates. While many factors explain these concentrated murders, it is also striking that the counties with zero murders are the counties with by far the highest gun ownership rates, Lott said. The reports authors also looked at numbers from a 2013 REW Research Center survey, which found that the household gun ownership rate in rural areas was over two times greater than in urban areas. That study also found that suburban homeowners are 28 percent more likely to own guns than urban dwellers. The Pentagon says two U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan overnight Wednesday. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis says they were killed during an operation against the Afghanistan-based Islamic State group in Nangahar Province in the eastern part of the country. He says the U.S. is gathering further details. The U.S. has been battling the Islamic State Khorasan group in Afghanistan for months. About two weeks ago, the U.S. dropped what's called the "mother of all bombs" on an IS complex in Nangahar Province, just days after a U.S. Army special forces soldier was killed in the region. The bomb is the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S., and killed several dozen militants. The U.S. estimates that the group has about 800 fighters in Afghanistan. The quick thinking and bravery of an 11-year-old Arizona boy may have saved his five-year-old sister from a kidnapping attempt Wednesday afternoon. The incident took place before 2:00 p.m. in Chandler. The two were getting off a school bus when police said a man wearing a mask approached and got out of a black van or SUV, and allegedly grabbed the girl's backpack. PHARMACY TECH CHARGED WITH 20 COUNTS OF IDENTITY THEFT According to police, the boy quickly reacted by punching the suspect's hand, causing the suspect to let go. The two then ran away, and were not hurt. Area residents said they have never heard of anything like this before. "Shocked. It's a crazy world," said one resident. "You just hope our kids are safe and that everybody watches out". The male suspect is described as possibly being 5' 10" to 5' 11". Anyone with information should call Chandler Police. Click for more from Fox 10. A prominent Atlanta attorney has been indicted on charges including murder in the fatal shooting of his wife last year. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Thursday that Claud "Tex" McIver faces charges including malice murder and influencing witnesses. McIver has said the Sept. 25 shooting of his wife, business executive Diane McIver, was an accident. Stephen Maples, a lawyer for McIver, did not immediately respond to an email and a phone message seeking comment. Local media report McIver has been in jail since Wednesday when his bond was revoked after authorities found a gun in his home. Atlanta police have said McIver was riding in a rear seat of an SUV late Sept. 25 when a gun he was holding fired and the bullet hit his wife. Hundreds of people gathered Thursday near the University of California, Berkeley campus to protest a canceled appearance by conservative speaker Ann Coulter, with at least 6 arrests reported so far. University police erected barricades and refused to let any protesters enter the campus. At least 6 people were arrested one for obstructing an officer and wearing a mask to evade police, and another for possessing a knife, Berkeley police Officer Byron White told the Associated Press. Police in riot gear had prepared for possible violence between supporters and opponents of Coulter, but there were no major confrontations as the raucous rally wrapped up in the late afternoon. Coulter told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Thursday that Berkeley claimed the threat of violence is what led to the cancellation, but she's not buying it. "There are ways of dealing with violence," Coulter said. "We do have a police force." Several hundred people gathered for the afternoon event supporting Coulter at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley. Berkeley, as you know all along, theyve been changing their position every five minutes, Coulter said to Fox News on Wednesday. Its like a game of musical chairs and whenever the music stops the answer is, no, she cant speak. My allies whom I love are on the same side, they ran away, they gave in. And then there was nothing I could do. ANN COULTER CANCELS HER SPEECH AT BERKELEY AMID SAFETY DISPUTE School officials said that the concerns of potential riots had to be taken into consideration. This is a university, not a battlefield, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks said in a letter sent to campus on Wednesday. Berkeley student Joseph Pagadara, 19, told the AP he had been worried about violence and added that the university is caught in the middle of the country's political divide. "Both sides are so intolerant of each other. We are a divided country. We need to listen to each other but we're each caught in our own bubbles," he said. While the afternoon rally ended without serious conflict, police at one point formed a human wall in the street separating anti-Trump protesters from the park where pro-Trump groups were gathered. Anti-Coulter protesters at the park held a banner that read: "It's not about 'free speech,' it's about bigots trying to normalize hate." Earlier in the day, dozens of police wearing flak jackets and carrying 40 mm launchers that shoot "foam batons" flanked Sproul Plaza while a small group of protesters condemning Coulter staged a small rally outside campus. Officers took selfies with students in an attempt to lighten the mood. Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media and founder of the pro-Trump "Proud Boys," spoke at the park gathering later in the day. He said America doesn't have an obligation to take people from other countries. "We are here because Ann Coulter got canceled," he said. "She is one of the most inspiring writers in America today. She is an American hero." Wilson Grafstrom, an 18-year-old high school student from Menlo Park, said it was "a shame" she couldn't speak in the home of the free speech movement. He wore a military grade helmet with a "Make America Great Again" sticker across the back, goggles, gas mask and knee pads. He blamed Coulter opponents for forcing him to gear up for problems. Many at the park rally about a mile from the university's main Sproul Plaza also wore military grade helmets and body armor. Some had "Build That Wall" or Trump stickers across their headgear. One man had duct tape reading "Berkeley" over his mouth. Protesters from the International Socialist Organization held what they called n "Alt Right Delete" rally with signs reading "Refuse Fascism" and "Fascist free campus." The group endorses free speech, and some members oppose the way Coulter and others have co-opted the free speech movement. "I don't like Ann Coulter's views, but I don't think in this case the right move was to shut her down," graduate student Yevgeniy Melguy told the Associated Press, who held a sign that read "Immigrants Are Welcome Here." Although the school is committed to defending free speech, Dirks said, they also need to protect students. The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to Free Speech the other to the safety of our campus community. Berkeley officials had previously cited very specific intelligence that Coulter and students could be endangered. Im not just some homeless person wondering onto the square, but Id be allowed to speak then too, Coulter said. They (Berkeley) are really outside the mainstream, they are publicly funded, forget this is where free speech movement started, the amount of money they get from the state and federal government. All of the people who should have been standing up for the First Amendment here, all ran away with their tails tucked between their legs. ANN COULTERS BACKERS AT UC BERKELEY FILE SUIT Officials at UC Berkeley said last week they feared renewed violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited "very specific intelligence" of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum. Efforts by the university to cancel or delay the Coulter event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech. Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists. In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans. The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that had helped book Coulter's campus speaking events, both pulled their support Tuesday citing fears of violence. They blamed the university for failing to ensure protection of conservative speakers. Read more from KTVU. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Canadian man has been sentenced to 15 months in a U.S. prison nearly 20 years after he smuggled immigrants across the Detroit River. Justice moved slowly in the case of Thanh Nguyen because he fled home to Ontario, Canada, and didn't appear for his sentence in 2000. Nguyen, now 42 years old, was arrested last summer in Windsor, Ontario, a city across the river from Detroit. He was sentenced Thursday for smuggling immigrants on a boat back in 1999. Nguyen apologized to a judge, saying he was immature at the time. It's unclear why it took so long to find him. Defense attorney Marshall Goldberg says Nguyen wasn't "living in the shadows." He had a driver's license and operated businesses in the Windsor area. The man who shot and killed a Delaware trooper was killed Thursday morning in a gunbattle with law enforcement after a standoff at his home that stretched on for more than 12 hours, state police confirmed. After police closed in on Burgon Sealy, Jr.'s house in Middletown with an armored bulldozer, the 26-year-old burst out of the home around 9:17 a.m. and started firing, State Police Superintendent Nathaniel McQueen said. Police returned fire, and Sealy was pronounced dead some 12 minutes later. The killer had fired at officers trying to negotiate a surrender outside his home around 4 a.m., Fox 29 reported. It was not known what type of weapon he was using. There were no reported injuries; people living in the area had evacuated but were later allowed back into their homes. During gunfights overnight police in Delaware appear to have blown apart every window&door of wanted trooper killer's home @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/VJ9MEBlQEr Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) April 27, 2017 ERIC FREIN TRIAL: JURY SENTENCES PENNSYLVANIA TROOPER'S AMBUSH KILLER The standoff unfolded after the man gunned down a state trooper in a Wawa parking lot Wednesday in Bear, a Wilmington suburb about 20 minutes from Middletown. McQueen told reporters Thursday that shortly after the shooting, Sealy had contacted family members to alert them that he shot an officer, who in turn relayed the news to police. With that information, McQueen said, investigators were able to track down Sealy at the home. MASKED MAN WITH MULTIPLE GUNS ARRESTED OUTSIDE DALLAS POLICE STATION Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, 32, had approached a "suspicious vehicle" with two men inside that had been parked outside the Wawa store for an extended period of time, investigators said. A struggle ensued and the one of the men shot the trooper multiple times before escaping, McQueen added. Police arrested the second man at the scene of the shooting. As of Thursday afternoon, police have not yet revealed why the vehicle was investigated or the motive behind the shooting. The home where Sealy barricaded himself is registered to his father. Records show Sealy had been arrested in 2013 on gun and drug charges. A childhood friend, Scott Adkins, says Sealy was fond of guns as early as middle school. Delaware State police marked armored bulldozer just drove past us to home of gunman, there may be concern home boobyttapped @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/xpQRMHckZc Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) April 27, 2017 Photos and video showed extensive damage to the killer's home, with the windows and doors blown out. Police said they used an explosive device to blow open the front door Wednesday night but did not enter. Ballard had been on the force for more than eight years, according to state police spokesman Sgt. Richard Bratz. Ballard went to work every day putting his life on the line to protect the rest of us, Gov. John Carney said Thursday. My heart is with Corporal Ballard's family today and all the officers on his shift and the Delaware State Police who serve beside him," he added. Sarah Adkins, 18, who lives with her parents on the same street where the killer was barricaded, said that shortly after arriving home early Thursday afternoon, she started hearing sporadic gunfire that lasted for about an hour and resumed at other intervals. Adkins said the man believed to be the suspect went to school with her brothers, and has always seemed friendly, smiling and waving at her when she last saw him a couple of weeks ago. Click for more from Fox 29. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, killing one of them, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday. The jury's decision that Frein should die by lethal injection brought a shouted "yes!" from a gallery that included high-ranking state police brass, the murdered officer's mother and the trooper who suffered debilitating injuries after Frein shot him with a high-powered rifle. Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, a Marine veteran and married father of two, was killed, and Trooper Alex Douglass was critically wounded. DELAWARE TROOPER'S KILLER SHOT DEAD MORE THAN 12 HOURS AFTER STANDOFF Prosecutors said Frein was hoping to start an uprising against the government when he opened fire on the Blooming Grove barracks in the Pocono Mountains on Sept. 12, 2014. Frein led police on a 48-day manhunt after the ambush, and for a time he was among America's most wanted criminals. "Jurors have delivered full justice in this case and issued the penalty that is so richly deserved by Eric Frein," District Attorney Ray Tonkin said. Frein, 33, did not react visibly to the sentence. MASKED MAN WITH MULTIPLE GUNS ARRESTED OUTSIDE DALLAS POLICE STATION Minutes after the jury issued it, a Pike County's sheriff climbed the courthouse cupola and rang the bell eight times, following a tradition that dates to the 19th century. It last rang out to indicate the fate of a condemned killer in the 1980s. The jury of eight women and four men from Chester County deliberated for about 5 hours, Fox 43 reported. The gunman likely won't face execution for decades, if ever. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, and Pennsylvania's last execution took place in 1999. The state has executed only three people since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. Prosecutors portrayed him as a remorseless killer who attacked troopers at random in hopes of fomenting rebellion. Frein kept a journal in which he coolly described shooting Dickson twice and watching him fall "still and quiet." In a letter to his parents, written while he was on the run but never sent, he complained about lost liberties, spoke of revolution and said, "The time seems right for a spark to ignite a fire in the hearts of men." Frein showed "wickedness of heart" when he "made a choice to pull that cold trigger again, again, again and again," Tonkin said in his closing argument Wednesday. Frein's lawyers promised to tie up his case in appeals. Defense lawyer Bill Ruzzo told reporters he was disappointed by the death sentence, and surprised the jury failed to find a single mitigating circumstance that would point to a sentence of life without parole. His lawyers had urged jurors to spare Frein's life, telling them he'd grown up in a dysfunctional home. Click for more from Fox 43. The Associated Press contributed to this report. How can you keep your child from losing faith during his or her college years -- and well beyond that time period? A new book takes on the pressing issues of faith, practicing that faith, and today's millennials. LAWSUIT SPARKS DEBATE ON WEST VIRGINIA PUBLIC SCHOOL BIBLE CLASSES In the book, "Abandoned Faith: Why Millennials Are Walking Away and How You Can Lead Them Home," co-authors Alex McFarland and Jason Jimenez cite a disturbing study from LifeWay Research and Fuller Youth Institute. The study estimated that more than half of high school graduates will leave the church and become disengaged in their faith. "This is alarming because many emerging adults are making big decisions that affect more than just their own lives -- and they are making those decisions without faith in God," the authors write. OPINION: MESSAGE FOR CHECK-BOX CHRISTIANS "Many, many parents I meet want desperately to see their children stay close to God and the faith taught in their home and church," McFarland told LifeZette. "But as cultural influences, friends, media and host of other pressures inundate them, it sometimes can be difficult to stay true, especially for young people who are questioning their futures." McFarland, based in Greenville, South Carolina, is a religion and culture expert, national talk show host, speaker and author of 18 books, of which "Abandoned Faith" is his latest. He also serves as director for Christian Worldview and Apologetics at the Christian Worldview Center of North Greenville University in Greenville. He also spent 20-plus years training teens and adults in the biblical worldview, including as teen apologetics director at Focus on the Family. He is a regular contributor to LifeZette as well. Loss of faith among the younger generation might be an issue -- but what can be done to change it? "From speaking with tens of thousands of young people over the years, I have learned that if they have just a few adults who will come alongside them and encourage them to grow in their faith, there's a much better chance they will remain in the church and rooted in Jesus long into adulthood," he said. "One or two positive influences can make a world of difference in the faith -- and life -- of a young person." "There are many reasons why young people may become disillusioned with church, religious organizations or faith in general, such as mistrust, skepticism, rebelling against a negative experience, pressure from atheist or agnostic friends, or a variety of other influences," explained McFarland. Click for more from LifeZette. A FBI forensic team will join Hawaii Island police in the search for the body of a 6-year-old boy who went missing more than two decades ago, Fox News said Thursday. Peter Boy Kema Jr. became the subject of one of most well-known missing child cases in the states history. The childs father, Peter Kema Sr., has a long record of abuse against the child from the time he was just weeks old. However, until recently Kema adamantly denied killing his son or knowing of his whereabouts. Prosecutors said that, after enduring years of suffering from severe neglect and horrific mental and physical abuse, Peter Boy ultimately died of septic shock. The consistent physical abuse and neglect that Kema and his wife, Jaylin Kema, put their tiny son through and that ultimately led to his death, sparked outrage throughout the state. The Kemas retained parental rights, despite 2,000 pages of Child Protective Services records documenting the abuse and warnings from other family members about the safety and well-being of Peter Boy and his three siblings. After the child went missing, the community rallied and put bumper stickers on their cars, asking Wheres Peter Boy. Peter Boy became a symbol for critics who called for reform of the states child care services. In April 2016 Kema and his wife were indicted by a Hilo grand jury on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of their son. On Dec. 1, 2016, the mother confessed that she and her husband didnt seek medical attention for the child when had a severe wound in his arm. She was let out of prison Thursday on supervised release. Then earlier this month, as part of a plea deal to avoid a sentence of life in prison, the childs father pleaded guilty to manslaughter in his sons death. As part of the deal, he agreed to show authorities where he had dumped his sons body. On Sunday he took police to a remote area on the island of Hawaii in the Puna district where he says he left his sons body. However, the childs body has yet to be found. The prosecutor told Fox News on Thursday that a forensic team from California would join the search for the child's body. Everyone has asked for so long Where is Peter Boy? said Hawaii Island Prosecutor Mitch Roth, who promised when elected in 2012 that hed make solving this cold case a priority. We are still searching for him and doing what we need to do to find his body. On Wednesday, Peter Boys siblings, his grandfather and his aunt, were escorted by police and Roth to the location where Kema Sr. said he left Peter Boy. Peter Boys grandfather had made a pledge to his wife on her deathbed that hed never give up looking for their grandchild. On Wednesday, he said a prayer in front on the family and told his wife hed kept his promise. We gave the family a chance to view the scene and have that private time together with Peter Boy, Roth said in an interview with Fox News. They put leis out, lit candles and said prayers. They were finally able to get closure, and a sense of relief, that was a long time coming. It was such a good feeling for him to have this burden lifted off his shoulders. He felt like he lived up to his promise, Roth said of the grandfather. Peter Boy disappeared from his Hawaii Island home in June 1997. The Kemas did not report him missing for several months after he was last seen alive, and only then after a social worker alerted police. Kema Sr. told authorities hed taken the child to another island, Oahu, and turned him over to a family friend whom he did not know how to reach. Police were unable to locate this family friend or even confirm her existence. Peter Boys three living siblings agree that although they were all abused by their parents, Peter Boy bore the brunt of the abuse. It was first documented when he was just 3- months old and brought into Hilo Hospital with new and old fractures. In 1998, the siblings told authorities that Peter Boy Jr. endured frequent beatings, was rarely fed and forced to eat off the floor. He was made to sleep either tied to the bed, on the bathroom or closet floor or outside without bedding, and was often left handcuffed or tied up with rope, they said. During family outings Peter Boy was forced to stay in their car trunk covered with a blanket in extremely hot weather. It was just absolutely horrifying the torture this child was subjected to, said Meaghan Good, founder and editor of The Charley Project, a website that is tracking unsolved murder cases. In the wake of Peter Boy Jr.'s disappearance, records surfaced showing how time and again, Child Protective Service officials missed or ignored signs the boys was being abused. At one point the agency intervened, placing the Kema children with Jaylins parents, where they began to thrive. But the agency and courts later returned the kids to their parents. Michael W. Perry, one of Hawaiis most famous radio and television personalities, said the Peter Boy story made Hawaii people angry and frustrated. This is one of Hawaii's most infamous news stories of the last half-century...and the only thing that will bring any closure or relief to any of us is finding Peter Boy's remains. It's not over 'til it's over, Perry said, thanking police and prosecutors for not letting go of this for two decades. Nothing will bring back Peter Boy, but getting closure for this high-profile case is satisfying. One of two Georgia police officers captured on video kicking and hitting a man during a traffic stop turned himself in Thursday as officials gave the other just a few more hours to surrender. Sgt. Mike Bongiovanni walked into the Gwinnett County Jail Thursday morning on charges of battery and violation of oath of office a felony alongside his wife and lawyer, local media reported. Bongiovanni and Master Police Officer Robert McDonald, who faces the same charges, were fired following the April 12 traffic stop incident in which videos showed the pair kicking and punching Demetrius Hollins after pulling him out of a car and handcuffing him. DELAWARE STANDOFF OVER: TROOPER'S KILLER SHOT DEAD AFTER BARRICADING HIMSELF IN HOME Both face a total bond of $15,000 and McDonald has yet to turn himself in despite authorities setting a Thursday deadline, WXIA reported. The police department and its employees will continue to serve the citizens while maintaining our core values and highest level of professionalism," Gwinnett Police Chief Butch Ayers said, according to Fox 5. A police incident report viewed by ABC News said Hollins was driving without a license plate and had a brake light out. MURDERED DELAWARE TROOPER SERVED THE FORCE FOR NEARLY A DECADE Mike Puglise, a lawyer for Bongiovanni, said his client maintains his innocence and is disappointed by the charges. "He's in a fight for his life and he plans to vigorously defend himself," Puglise said. He has previously said Bongiovanni was following procedure and using an elbow strike, a defensive tactic taught by the FBI. Puglise said last week that Bongiovanni has asked the police human resources department to reinstate him. Gwinnett County Solicitor-General Rosanna Szabo, whose office prosecutes misdemeanor and traffic offenses in the county, on April 14 dismissed 89 cases in which either McDonald or Bongiovanni was the main officer or a necessary witness. "The actions of these officers completely undermine their credibility and they cannot be relied upon as witnesses in any pending prosecution," Szabo said in a news release. McDonald, who was hired by the department in August 2013 and graduated from the police academy in March 2014, had reached the rank of master police officer. Bongiovanni, a sergeant, was hired in September 1998 and graduated from the academy in February 1999. Police earlier this month released the two former officers' personnel files. Bongiovanni's last two annual evaluations, filed in June 2016 and June 2015, describe a well-liked supervisor with good management skills who kept his cool in stressful situations and cared about his officers. He received a rating of "often exceeds expectations" in nearly every category. He's received numerous honors and commendations during his nearly two years with the department, including good conduct awards and sharing officer of the month honors for January of this year. But disciplinary records show he was nearly demoted in 2014 for leaving his highway interdiction team unsupervised several times a week to go exercise while on duty. According to an evaluation from June 2014, he also left to visit his wife and go home early while his officers were on an active narcotics detail. His supervisor said he did not provide proper direction or a good example to his team. Over nearly two decades with the department, Bongiovanni had 67 use-of-force reports in his file. Bongiovanni wrote McDonald's evaluation last June. In it, he described McDonald as "an excellent example of a team player with a strong work ethic" who completed his work on time, was always willing to help others and was courteous and professional with the public. Bongiovanni gave McDonald a rating of "often exceeds expectations" in many categories and no rating lower than "generally meets expectations." McDonald received a three-year good conduct ribbon in August. He and several other officers were named officer of the month for November 2015. He had three use-of-force reports in his file. McDonald faced a disciplinary loss of his good driving record after he rear-ended another car in his patrol car in June 2015. But the officer who responded to the accident said in a letter to the department's safety review committee that it would have been very difficult for McDonald to avoid the wreck. Click for more from Fox 5. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Pittsburgh-area insurance agent has pleaded guilty in a promissory note scam that federal prosecutors say defrauded customers out of $8.2 million since 2002. John Hogan pleaded guilty Thursday to five counts of mail fraud. He was a licensed insurance agent in Swissvale who also claimed to be a financial planner, though he wasn't licensed to sell investment products. Prosecutors say the 77-year-old sold whole life insurance policies to some 80 investors, then persuaded them to draw out the cash value of those policies so he could lend their money to other clients. Hogan promised they'd get at least a 10 percent return, but prosecutors say he used the cash to pay off business loans. Sentencing is Aug. 30. Prosecutors are expected to seek at least five years in prison. A judge ordered a mental evaluation of a black man charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of white men randomly targeted on the street of Fresno. KFSN-TV in Fresno reported Thursday (http://abc30.tv/2qc0OqE ) that a judge suspended the criminal case of Kori Ali Muhammad for the doctor's evaluation. He's charged in total with killing four men, including an unarmed motel security guard days before the April 18 shooting rampage. Police have said that 39-year-old Muhammad told investigators he wanted to kill as many white people as possible, laughing as he explained his actions. Prosecutors say that if he's convicted, Muhammad could face life in prison or the death sentence. Muhammad's attorney Eric Christensen could not be immediately reached to comment on the case. ___ Information from: KFSN-TV. A 16-month-old girl reported missing Tuesday from her home in a Chicago suburb was found dead in the house -- reportedly inside a couch. The Will County Sheriffs Office and FBI executed a search warrant late Wednesday at the home in Joliet Township and found Semaj Crosby dead. The house was in deplorable condition and as many as 15 people were living there at any given time, Deputy Chief Richard Ackerson with the Will County Sheriffs Office said. He added that a family attorney referred to them as squatters. NORTH CAROLINA MAN ACCUSED OF LEAVING CHILD IN CAR ALONE AGAIN, POLICE SAY Investigators removed the couch Thursday, WBBM reported. The girl was last seen Tuesday evening outside her home. Earlier that day, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services officials had been at the house investigating an allegation of neglect against the victims mother, according to statement from the agency. The agency officials said they saw all three of the mothers children, including Semaj, and observed no obvious hazards or safety concerns. Semaj's body was found after the mothers lawyer gave the sheriff's office consent for the house to be searched Wednesday night, Ackerson said. He called Semajs death suspicious, but not necessarily a homicide. An autopsy will determine the cause of death. The Department of Child Services had been working with the family since September 2016, with four unfounded investigations for neglect, and two other pending investigations for neglect opened in March 2017, agency officials said. A top U.S. commander in the Pacific on Wednesday said he believes Hawaii needs more missile interceptors in response to the growing threat on North Korea and Pyongyangs capability to launch a rocket. Adm. Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee that Hawaiis defenses were sufficient for now, but could one day be overwhelmed in an onslaught. He could not comment on the precise capability of the U.S.' defenses, but he said, "I do believe that the numbers could be improved. In other words, we need more interceptors." (WATCH HARRIS TALK ON NORTH KOREA IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE LIVE AT 9:30 AM ET ON FOXNEWS.COM) LET'S MAKE A DEAL President Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Canada agreed Wednesday to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the White House said Wednesday night. "it is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a statement. The White House added that Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time" and that all three leaders ""agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation" of the trade deal to "the benefit of all three countries." 'TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT' MNUCHIN EXPLAINS TRUMP'S TAX PLAN UNITED TRIES TO MAKE IT RIGHT United Airlines issued a report Thursday addressing the April 9 incident where a 69-year-old passenger was dragged off a plane after refusing to give up his seat for airline crew members. United laid out a series of changes that include increased training for employees, a $10,000 incentive for voluntarily bumped passengers on overbooked flights and a promise to reduce the amount of overbooking on flights. 'HANNITY' Ann Coulter said universities like Berkeley, where she planned to speak before the event was canceled, are generally "radical." She said that progressives on campus want to "destroy and squelch" conservatives' free speech. (WATCH FULL INTERVIEW) FOX NEWS OPINION Andrew Napolitano writes about Hillary Clinton and the FBI COMING UP ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL 10 AM ET: UN Security Council Meeting on the Middle East and Syria. Watch live on FoxNews.com 1 PM ET: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer holds press conference 4:45 PM: President Trump gives remarks and signs an Executive Order on Improving Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, Department of Veterans Affairs. Watch live on Fox News Channel and FoxNews.com COMING UP ON FOX BUSINESS 9 AM ET: Rep. Pete Roskam, R-Ill, a member of the House's tax policy subcommittee, to appear on "Varney & Company" 9:15 AM ET: Tom Price, the head of HHS, appears on "Varney & Company" 10 AM ET: Linda McMahon, the Small Business Administration chief, appears on "Varney & Company" 6 PM ET: Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, will be a guest on "Making Money with Charles Payne" A man charged last month after leaving his child in his truck for more than an hour has been accused of committing the same crime, this time at a different location, police said. Investigators arrested the man on Tuesday but they said a judge let him go before the second warrant could be served. The Salisbury Police Department said theyre looking into how the miscommunication occurred in court and are working to track down the father who they said left his daughter alone in a car next to a filthy mess. Keiyenne Mynx Hijin, who also goes by the name Geoffrey Roberson, left his 1-year-old child in the car while he went to go work out at Planet Fitness on February 3. On Tuesday, investigators said someone recognized Hijin at Cloninger Ford on Jake Alexander Blvd. and they called police. Detectives said when they arrived on scene they found Hijins daughter in the car, which was running with the windows down, sitting next to a toddler toilet that had waste in it. READ MORE FROM FOX 46 CHARLOTTE. A top U.S. commander in the Pacific on Wednesday said he believes Hawaii needs more missile interceptors in response to the growing threat on North Korea and Pyongyangs capability to launch a rocket. Adm. Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee that Hawaiis defenses were sufficient for now, but could one day be overwhelmed in an onslaught. "I don't share your confidence that North Korea is not going to attack either South Korea, or Japan, or the United States ... once they have the capability," Harris said. He could not comment on the precise capability of the U.S.' defenses, but he said, "I do believe that the numbers could be improved. In other words, we need more interceptors." Hawaii lawmakers have already been scrambling to come up with emergency plans in event of a North Korean attack. The Hawaii House Public Safety Committee called for the states defense agency to repair its hundreds of Cold War-era fallout shelters. They were tasked with restocking them with medical supplies, food and water. The states emergency plans have not been updated since the 1980s. The admirals comments came shortly before the Trump administration held a closed-door briefing with senators on North Korea. President Trump's secretary of state, defense secretary, top general and national intelligence director were on hand to lay out the Norths escalating nuclear capabilities. Past efforts have failed to halt North Korea's unlawful weapons programs and nuclear and ballistic missile tests, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a joint statement. With each provocation, North Korea jeopardizes stability in Northeast Asia and poses a growing threat to our allies and the U.S. homeland. Click for more from Reuters. A not-guilty plea has been entered for a Detroit-area doctor charged with performing genital mutilation on two Minnesota girls in a first-of-its-kind case in the United States. Dr. Jumana Nagarwala appeared in Detroit federal court Thursday, a day after being indicted. She's charged with six crimes, including conspiracy to bring the girls across state lines. It carries a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. Nagarwala is charged with performing genital mutilation on the two 7-year-old girls in February at a suburban Detroit clinic owned by another doctor, who also is charged. Nagarwala and the Minnesota girls' families belong to a Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra. Defense attorney Shannon Smith says she performed a religious ritual, not genital mutilation. Separately, Henry Ford Hospital says Nagarwala has been fired. An Ohio man was arrested for attempting travel to Syria to fight with ISIS on Wednesday night at a Cincinnati- area airport, according to the FBI. According to the official complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Laith Waleed Alebbini, 26, was taken into custody by the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force. Alebbini is a legal permanent resident of the United States, and a citizen of Jordan. Immigration records indicated that Alebbini arrived in the United States from Jordan in July 2011. Alebbini left the U.S. for a period of time, and returned in 2014. Dayton man arrested by FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for attempting to provide material support to designated terrorist organization ISIS pic.twitter.com/pa2VeIyAMU FBI Cincinnati (@FBICincinnati) April 27, 2017 Alebbini, who resided in Dayton, was first arrested in January for unlawful entry into the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C. The charges were dismissed, but according to the complaint, Alebbini told law enforcement officials You are going to regret this when being escorted from the property. Days later, Alebbini attempted to travel to Turkey, but was denied entry due to an expired passport. He then returned to the U.S. In an interview with the FBI in January regarding his alleged break-in to the Turkish embassy, Alebbini admitted to posting pro-ISIS videos on his social media page, and claimed he was the perfect recruiter for ISIS, but said he did not agree with their violence. According to the complaint, Alebbini said the security at the Embassy was very lax and that If I had a bomb on me, I swear to God, three embassies would have gone down. On April 15, Alebbini contacted the FBI to ask if he was able to travel overseas during the investigation. According to the complaint, the FBI told him the Turkish embassy investigation did not ban him from traveling outside the U.S. Alebbini and his female partner purchased tickers from Cincinnati to Chicago, then onto Turkey and Jordan, according to court documents. The FBI said they learned Alebbini had purchased his tickets on Monday. He was arrested before he entered the TSA security lines at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Alebbini appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Newman on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Dayton. Fox News Matthew Dean contributed to this report A man from Dayton, Ohio was arrested at Cincinnati/Kentucky International Airport after attempting to fly to the Middle East to fight with the Islamic State. FBI agents took Laith Waleed Alebbini, 26, into custody Wednesday afternoon almost immediately after he obtained his boarding pass for a flight to Chicago O'Hare. Alebbini admitted he intended to travel to Turkey and join the fight for ISIS, court records show. Alebbini was arrested in January for unlawfully entering a Turkish embassy in Washington D.C., according to a 20-page affidavit filed in federal court. He said he wanted to speak with the Turkish ambassador about conflict in the Middle East. The charges were dropped. During an interview with federal agents shortly after the incident, Alebbini criticized the embassy's security for being lax saying, "If I had a bomb on me, I swear to God, three embassies would have gone down." While being interviewed by authorities, Alebbini admitted to supporting ISIS's desire for a united Middle East, but disagreed with their violent tactics, according to the affidavit. He also told agents he read ISIS magazines and posted ISIS propaganda on his Facebook page before it was taken down. Court documents show Alebbini allegedly watches ISIS videos "all the time" and that the he believed the right place to be, from a religious point of view, was with the Islamic State. Authorities say Alebbini destroyed anti-ISIS literature that was being handed out at a mosque. The FBI let Alebbini go and continued to surveil him via a paid informant that met with Alebbini on the regular basis. Read more from FOX 19. An investigation is underway after a woman was found shot to death in a ditch and her truck was reportedly stolen in Anderson County, according to Deputy Coroner Charlie Boseman. Boseman said 39-year-old Crystal Marie Kuykendall of Pelzer was shot at the intersection of Level Land Road and Wright School Road sometime before 3 a.m. Thursday. Deputies wearing tactical gear were later seen investigating along Scott Road in Anderson County. Deputies on scene said the investigation was connected to the suspect in the deadly shooting. SLED confirmed that one of their dog teams was sent to assist Anderson County deputies in the investigation. Boseman said the victim was reportedly driving a truck with another woman and a man inside, according to the female passenger, who was still at the scene when investigators arrived. The female passenger told deputies the man shot the driver and then took off in the truck. The suspect has been identified as 33-year-old Zachary Earl Powell, who has been charged with murder in connection with Kuykendall's death. Sheriff Chad McBride said the suspect and victim appear to be acquaintances. Read more from FOX Carolina. A Texas mayors remark that a lack of faith in God causes poverty has brought widespread outrage after the video of the comment went viral. A video of the comments made earlier this month by Ivy Taylor, the first-term Democratic mayor of Texas second-largest city, in reply to a question about poverty that was asked during a forum, has caused deep resentments among her constituents. "I'll go ahead and put it out there," Taylor said, in response to the question on poverty raised by the director of the San Antonio Christian Resource Center. To me, it's broken people . . . people not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore not being in a good relationship with their families and their communities . . . and not being productive members of society. Despite Taylors words reflecting one of the central tenets of normative, historic Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- that all humanitys problems are consequences of the biblical event of Adam and Eve not obeying God -- her comments quickly drew the ire of many non-Christians, including the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which penned a letter to her that said "as mayor, you represent a diverse population that consists of not only Christians, but also atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims and Hindus." The letter continued: "Nationally, about 35 percent of millennials are nonreligious. Imagine for a moment a mayoral candidate making such undeserved and broad accusations against Jews or Muslims instead of nonbelievers. The outcry would properly be swift and severe. It should be no different for nonbelievers." The San Antonio mayor, who is running for re-election in a city where nearly 15 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, fired back that her comments were taken out of context and the viral video was meant to mislead voters about her record on combating poverty. The video clip that surfaced on social media this weekend is a dishonest, politically motivated misrepresentation of my record on combating poverty, Taylor said on Facebook. It was intentionally edited to mislead viewers. Taylor added: I have devoted my life to breaking the chains of generational poverty -- as an urban planner, the District 2 Councilwoman, and now Mayor. Ive done so because of my faith in God and my belief in Jesuss ministry on Earth. I believe we are all called on to help lift our brothers and sisters out of poverty. While Taylor admits that she could have expressed herself better, she reaffirms that Original Sin means that all humans are broken until they forge a relationship with our Maker. This is not the first time that Taylors religious views have gotten her into political hot water. In 2013, while serving as a councilwoman, Taylor used the reasoning that people shouldn't be forced to treat everyone equally if it goes against their faith or "moral values when she voted against a nondiscrimination ordinance that would protect LGBT peoples from being discriminated against by public and private business owners. North Korea is flexing its military muscles again this week, but a closer look at images of the Hermit Kingdom's soldiers reveals that the fighting force may be better suited for propaganda than actual battle. On Tuesday, the South Korean military reportedly confirmed that Pyongyang was conducting a massive live-fire artillery drill. A top North Korean official warned that a "brutal punishment" awaits the so-called "warmongers" in the U.S. and elsewhere. The bluster is not new, but this time, it is compounded by rising international tensions. North Korea typically puts on its more headline-grabbing displays to mark some sort of anniversary, and Tuesday was no exception. The artillery drills come on the 85th anniversary of the founding of the nation's military. Less than two weeks ago, North Korea mounted both a failed ballistic missile test and a large military parade to mark the 105th birthday of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung. North Korea put a variety of new missiles on display during the April 15 parade, and while at least one of them was reportedly a prototype, some experts thought they spotted actual fakes. A closer look at some of the soldiers in that parade suggests those missiles may not have been the only things that weren't quite battle ready. This was more about sending a message than being combat effective, said Michael Pregent, a former Army Intelligence Officer with over 28 years of experience working conflicts around the world and now an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. Pregent took a look at several photos of North Korean soldiers from the April 15 parade and immediately began poking holes in them. Below are some of the takeaways he shared with Foxs Investigative Unit. Commandos or caricatures? Some of the most memorable images to emerge from North Koreas dramatic parade featured the special operations commandos who were carrying what appeared to be AK-47s with grenade-launching capabilities. It turns out that what many people believed to be grenade launchers are actually what's known as "helical" magazines, a piece of equipment that organizes rounds in a spiral shape to maximize capacity and that is notorious for jamming, according to Pregent. Pregent adds that not only do these types of magazines have a high-failure rate, there is still the question of whether any of these rifles are actually loaded, as ammunition manufacturing is considered a serious issue for the isolated regime. Its not just the weapons those commandos are holding that raise questions, Pregent claims, and it seems some of the equipment on display would make for a better fashion show than a foxhole. Pregent claims that the type of sunglasses being worn by those same troops looks like a flat-face frame, and thats not ballistic. That would wraparound and would also protect your eyes. Even the fingerless gloves being sported by some of those soldiers are more for show, according to Pregent. Some of our guys do have them, but most guys go all the way with full gloves based on the heat of the barrel from a round, not to mention theyre fire resistant if you need to pick up something. "Fake projectiles" Some of the other eye-drawing items in the North Korean parade, items that may have zero combat application, are the seemingly oversized projectiles affixed to the end of some of those soldiers rifles. And while they apparently come in a variety of shapes and colors, Pregent calls them laughable. If you look, you can see the plastic is over the muzzle, Pregent said. And while he admits that some of the North Korean RPG capabilities could be real, the projectiles themselves would have to be fake because Kim Jong Un doesnt want them to launch one at the viewing stand, whether by accident or on purpose. Also fake, Pregent believes, are what appear to be silver-plated rifles being held by some of the soldiers who seem more front-and-center than the others. Saddam had gold plated handguns, and even he wouldnt give them to his troops, so these are most likely painted, Pregent said. Despite the fakes, a reason to fear There may be questions about North Koreas capabilities when it comes to effectiveness on the ground, ballistic missiles and even nuclear capabilities, but experts agree that the artillery units being tested this week present a clear and present danger to our allies. George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures, told Tucker Carlson recently that given those heavily-fortified and strategically placed artillery units, "if they open fire on [Seoul,] there is going to be a holocaust." He added that taking out all of those units is not going to be an easy job. That's not going to be a one-day strike." Pregent agrees, and raises an important point: They have a legitimate military capability with their artillery why pretend in other spaces? A man suspected of links to radical Islam and of glorifying terrorism shot two police officers on the French island of Reunion during an arrest Thursday -- and police found bomb-making materials at his home, officials said. Officers detained the unnamed suspect and his mother. Police also found weapons in his apartment in the town of Saint Benoit de la Reunion, according to the Interior Ministry. TEN ARRESTED IN PARIS ATTACK INVESTIGATION The two officers, from a special national police intervention force, were hospitalized but were expected to survive. The man was wanted for "glorifying terrorism," the ministry said in a statement, without elaborating. The shooting came just a week after a police officer was killed in Paris in an attack claimed by the Islamic State terror group. Antiterrorism prosecutors have taken over the investigation because the man was suspected of links to radical Islam, Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre told The Associated Press. The suspect, in his 20s, opened fire with a shotgun as a special police squad arrived to raid his home, the BBC reported. LE PEN UPSTAGES MACRON IN BATTLE FOR BLUE-COLLAR VOTES The man appeared to be acting alone, according to a local Reunion official who was not authorized to be publicly named. France is under a state of emergency after multiple Islamic extremist attacks. Extremists have notably targeted French security forces, seen as representing the reviled state. One of France's biggest overseas territories and located east of Madagascar, Reunion is an ethnically diverse island with a mix of religions at the crossroads of historic sea trading routes between Africa, Asia and the Arab world. French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen have both visited the island during the campaign. They meet in a tense runoff election May 7. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Berlin police have shot a man who threatened an officer outside a hospital in the German capital. Police spokeswoman Konstanze Dassler says the incident occurred at the Urban Hospital in the city's Kreuzberg district shortly after 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) Thursday. Dassler says that for reasons still unknown, the 27-year-old man pointed a firearm at a female officer who had been called to another incident. A colleague shot the man in the leg. Dassler says the man is receiving medical treatment and his condition is not life threatening. She says police are examining the firearm to determine whether it is a real gun. Christine Levinson the wife of a former FBI agent who disappeared on an Iranian island has waited 10 years, one month and 20 days, through three presidential administrations, for someone to help her bring Bob Levinson home. In President Trump, she believes she may have found a partner. ISRAEL STRIKES ARMS DEPOT NEAR SYRIA'S CAPITAL I know that President Trump is a deal maker, Christine told Fox & Friends on Thursday. He can get the job done. All we need for him now is for him to talk to the Iranian government and figure out what needs to be done to get Bob home safely. In the nearly 4,000 days since Levinson vanished on March 9, 2007 on Irans Kish Island, Christine has received scant proof of life evidence, and there has been no public acknowledgement from the U.S. about who exactly is holding Bob, or if hes even still alive. HARD-LINE IRANIAN CANDIDATE SAYS UNITED STATES SHOULD FEAR IRAN I havent heard anything one way or the other, she said. As far as the FBI, what theyve told me, they believe hes alive. There is no information to indicate anything else. Still, in the absence of information, Christine believes Bobs freedom can be won through negotiating. I hope that the United States government has the ability to put pressure on them, she said. We just need them talking and to resolve this. Its far too long. For years, U.S. officials would only say that Levinson, a meticulous FBI investigator credited with busting Russian and Italian mobsters, was working for a private firm on his 2007 trip to Iran. But in December 2013, The Associated Press revealed Levinson in fact had been on a mission for CIA analysts who had no authority to run spy operations. Its widely believed the Iranian government held or continues to hold Levinson captive. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Cyprus police spokesman says an arrest warrant has been issued for the Norwegian father of a 4-year-old girl who was snatched outside a Nicosia daycare. Andreas Angelides says the 49-year-old Norwegian, who is divorced from the girl's Cypriot mother, is sought on suspicion of kidnapping, abduction and assault. Angelides says police are on alert at all the island's exit points, including crossings into the ethnically divided island's breakaway Turkish Cypriot north. Police say Marie Eleni Grimsrud was taken when her mother dropped her off at the daycare. Two hooded men grabbed the girl and put her in a black Range Rover before speeding off. A third man was at the wheel. Police say the girl may have been the target of another kidnapping attempt last year. The Philippine president says he will not raise his country's arbitration victory against China's territorial claims in the South China Sea during a Southeast Asian summit he hosts this weekend, a stance that critics say is subservient to Beijing. President Rodrigo Duterte told reporters Thursday that last year's arbitration ruling is an issue between China and the Philippines and does not concern other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He hosts a summit of ASEAN leaders in Manila on Saturday. Critics say Duterte should address the ruling, which invalidated China's historic claims to the disputed waters, during the summit to pressure Beijing to comply with it and recognize the rule of law. Several other ASEAN members also claim parts of the South China Sea. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 The Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights organization, is debating new Hungarian laws which critics say seek to limit academic rights and intimidate civic groups. Recent amendments to the law on higher education could force Central European University, founded by billionaire George Soros, to close or leave Budapest. Also, draft legislation being considered in Hungary would force civic groups to declare foreign funding exceeding $25,000 a year or face fines or closure. Mogens Jensen, a Danish lawmaker who prepared the report on Hungary being debated Thursday in Strasbourg, France, says Hungary should suspend applying the university law and wait to approve the law on civic groups until experts from the council's advisory Venice Commission has a chance to assess the legislation's compatibility with the council's standards. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 France is furiously debating who out of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron won "the battle of Whirlpool" the remarkable clash of styles on Wednesday when both presidential candidates stumped for blue-collar votes at a closure-threatened appliance factory in northern France. Former presidential candidate Francois Bayrou a Macron ally is awarding victory to the centrist former economy minister, saying Macron showed courage by spending over an hour trying to talk with angry workers at the Whirlpool plant in Amiens. He was dismissive of Le Pen's much shorter visit, saying: "She stayed 10 minutes, with selfies and smiles, and that's not a presidential campaign." Increasing numbers of foreign fighters seem to be giving up on the Islamic State as U.S.-backed troops seize more of the terror group's land in Iraq and Syria. Among the expats escaping to Turkey: a man from Florida, The Guardian reported. Kary Paul Klemen of Florida, Stefan Aristidou of London and his British wife all surrendered to border police in Turkey last week after spending more than two years in areas controlled by ISIS, according to the newspaper. ISIS MOVES ITS CAPITAL IN SYRIA All three reportedly surrendered at the Kilis crossing in southern Turkey. The 46-year-old Kleman arrived at the border with a Syrian wife and two Egyptian women whose spouses had been killed in Syria or Iraq, Turkish officials said. His recent whereabouts aren't exactly known. 2 U.S. SERVICE MEMBERS KILLED FIGHTING ISIS IN AFGHANISTAN Kleman had converted to Islam following a divorce from his first wife, then remarried and traveled to Syria with his new family in 2015, The Guardian reported. Kleman said he planned to assist with humanitarian work but upon arriving discovered that information that had led him to the country was all a scam, his mother said. His family later alerted the FBI he could be in danger. Since reaching Turkeys border, the American has been in contact with U.S. officials there and planned to reach the American embassy before coming home to the U.S., his family said. But dozens of other foreign fighters also have escaped the region recently, many of whom were caught trying to cross the border. Some fighters were thought to have eluded capture and may have made it into Turkey anyway. According to officials in Turkey and Europe, more and more ISIS operatives that joined the group since 2013 are now reaching out to their embassies and looking to come home. Other fighters reportedly have plotted to head to Europe, ratcheting up security risks for those countries. Overall, 30,000 foreign fighters were believed to have originally crossed into Syria to fight with ISIS. Around 25,000 of them have since been killed, according to the U.S. ISIS sources have admitted that the groups numbers have dropped as a ground offensive has proceeded toward Raqqa, the groups detoriating former stronghold in Syria. Now we know how ISIS built such an extensive network of tunnels beneath Mosul to hide and store munitions. The terror network managed to make its own tunnel-boring machine (see photo above), a hideous but effective part of the group's arsenal. The discovery of the ISIS machine is credited to the Iraqi Armys 9th Division, after which Devin Morrow, a technical adviser with Conflict Armament Research, analyzed the machine. Most days Morrow dons a bulletproof vest and ventures to the front line of Iraq's battle against ISIS to inspect the latest spoils of a grinding and bloody war. The 30-year-old Canadian woman is tasked with analyzing seized weaponry from ISIS -- piece by piece -- and uncovering its source and pathway to the terrorist network. Much of the illegally traded weapons are small arms but some -- like the ISIS-made tunnel machine -- demonstrate a level of sophistication never seen before by such a group, according to Morrow. "It's quite unprecedented, the level at which ISIS is able to create its own ammunition and weaponry," Morrow told Fox News. "We don't see this quality of production in other conflict zones," said Morrow, whose U.K.-based company traces and documents illegally diverted weapons in conflict zones like Iraq, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, Libya and Yemen. Once a weapon is captured from ISIS, Morrow and her team begin their investigation -- snapping photographs of the items and examining each weapon's markings and serial number. "We dont rely on secondary information. We spend a lot of time out in the field," she said. "It does get scary. Anything can happen at any time and it's important to remember that." Hundreds of seized weapons are variants of the AK-47, which Morrow described as highly versatile and easily trafficked. "They last a long time. Theyre very durable," she said of the high-powered assault rifles. "Variants of the AK-47 are very widely used in the Middle East. The main producers are former Soviet countries and Russia. They have been around for decades and they're everywhere." Some of the ISIS items discovered by Morrow are old -- including ammunition found in northern Iraq in 2014 that was made in Nazi Germany. "It just shows you how far that ammunition can go," she said. Other weapons and equipment are more recently produced, including those made by the terror network itself. Among such findings are ISIS-made mortars and IEDs. Morrow and her team have also uncovered a "suicide vehicle" she referred to as the "SVBIED." ISIS fighters, she explained, are taking civilian cars and SUVs, loading them with explosives and then covering the vehicles with heavy metal plates that help them get close to the front lines. "Theyre taking these regular cars and trucks from civilian people in Mosul and doing extensive modifications on them to make them into suicide vehicles," she said. The terror group also is using tunnel-boring machines to dig extensive tunnel systems between houses and underneath roads to confuse coalition forces, according to Morrow. "They built that machine themselves," she said of the tunnel machine found in Hamdaniyah late last year. The Battle of Mosul is a joint offensive by Iraqi government forces with allied militias, the Kurdistan Regional Government and international forces to retake the northern Iraqi city from the Islamic State. The offensive began in October 2016. For Morrow, the tracking of illegal weapons is only one part albeit a critical one in defeating the enemy on the ground. "Our group actively tries to document individual items. Thats the first step in decreasing the proliferation of illegal weapons," she said. "By creating this database and by understanding corridors and trafficking among regions where the weak parts are around the world then we can create more robust and responsible international arms policies." Morrow a Western woman in Iraq in a male-dominated field said there is no other work she would rather be doing. "It can be trying if youre working with a bunch of guys it can be a little bit stressful but I feel very well respected and no one has ever questioned my role and my experience being there," she said. "My team is incredibly supportive." Cristina Corbin is a Fox News reporter based in New York. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaCorbin. Israeli on Thursday defended its decision to attack an arms depot near the Damascus airport saying it was compatible with Israels policy. Israeli Intelligence minister Yisrael Katz, speaking on the Israeli Army radio, would not comment on the strike but said it did not violate protocol. Reuters reported early Thursday that five strikes hit an ammunition depot that was known to be used by Iranian-backed militias. It absolutely matches our declared policy, he told the radio station, a policy that we also implement." Israel has largely stayed out of the fighting in Syria, though it has carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected Iranian weapons shipments it believed were bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Iran and Hezbollah, both bitter enemies of Israel, along with Russia have sent forces to support President Assad. In a visit to Moscow on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel "will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border." Lieberman, who is attending a security conference in the Russian capital, met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday. A statement issued by the Defense Ministry said Lieberman discussed the situation in Syria with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday. All three were in the Russian capital attending a security conference. "Defense Minister Lieberman expressed concern over Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon," the statement said. On Tuesday, a senior Israeli officer said that the Israel Air Force has destroyed about 100 Syrian missiles, many of which were due to be delivered to Hezbollah, in an attack last month. It was a rare admission on Israels part to admit they took military action in Syria. Israel has repeatedly warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah from Syria, which along with Iran supports the militant group. Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets on Israel in the 2006 war. This weeks explosion was heard across the Syrian capital, jolting residents awake, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said. Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war. It has also carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected weapon convoys it believed were destined for Hezbollah. The Associated Press contributed to this report A missile from Israel's Patriot Aerial Defense System knocked down a drone that was about to enter Israeli airspace from Syria Thursday, military officials said. The incident happened on shortly before 8 p.m. local time. No damage or injuries were reported. ISRAEL STRIKES ARMS DEPOT NEAR SYRIA'S CAPITAL It happened hours after an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iranian weapons that were stored in the Damascus airport, but it was not clear whether the two incidents are connected. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday while on a visit to Moscow that Israel "will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border." Lieberman, who is attending a security conference in the Russian capital, met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday. Lieberman discussed the crisis in Syria and the continued coordination between the Israeli and the Russian armies with the Russian officails, according to a statement from Israel's Ministry of Defense. It added that Lieberman "expressed concern over Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon." A senior Israeli officer said Tuesday the nation's air force destroyed around 100 Syrian missiles, many of which were due to be delivered to Hezbollah, in an attack last month. This was a rare admission that Israel had taken military action in Syria. Last month, several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following another Israeli airstrike. The Arrow aerial defense system intercepted one of those missiles. The Latest on Turkey's referendum on boosting presidential powers (all times local): 9 p.m. Turkey's electoral authority has released the official tally of the referendum on expanding presidential powers, confirming a narrow win for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "yes" camp. Sadi Guven, the head of the High Electoral Board, told reporters that the "yes" side received 51.41 percent of the votes in the April 16 referendum, while the "no" votes garnered 48. 59 percent. Guven said: "our board declares that the constitutional amendments have been accepted." The opposition contested the April 16 referendum on the grounds that the decision to count ballots without the official stamps was illegal and allowed for fraud. ___ 8:45 p.m. Turkey's electoral authority has justified its decision to validate unstamped ballots cast during the country's referendum on boosting presidential powers, citing a duty to protect citizens' right to vote. The opposition contested the April 16 referendum which gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "yes" camp a narrow victory, on grounds that the decision to count ballots without the official stamps was illegal and allowed for fraud. The High Electoral Board rejected the opposition appeal last week. In its formal justification released Thursday, it said the decision was taken to ensure that voters' ballots were not invalidated due to polling clerks' mistakes. It said there was no evidence of fraud and rejected claims that the decision was illegal. Turkey's main opposition party will take its appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. ___ 2:10 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that Germany is closely watching to see how Turkey will respond to reports from international election monitors who noted a series of irregularities in a referendum to increase powers for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors found many votes could have been manipulated in the close vote that went in Erdogan's favor, and Merkel told Parliament the Turkish government "must answer the questions" raised. Merkel says that "we will follow very closely how Turkey deals with the reports." She also accused Turkey of holding journalists without grounds, including German-Turkish reporter Deniz Yucel, who was detained earlier this year. Merkel says that Germany will talk with EU partners about "which precise consequences are appropriate and at what time." A Taiwanese couple who disappeared while trekking in Nepal were found after 47 daysbut it was three days too late for one of them. Liang Sheng-yueh, 21, is being treated in a Kathmandu hospital after being found on a ledge under a waterfall in the remote Dhading region, AFP reports. He told rescuers he had been trapped there for more than a month with 19-year-old girlfriend Liu Chen-chun, who died 44 days into their ordeal. Rescuers say the couple became lost during a snowstorm on the lightly traveled Ganesh Himal trail. They tried to find a village by following a river, but one of the rescuers tells the BBC the two may have "slid off a slippery trail while making an ascent ... and got trapped in a cave-like formation"; they were apparently unable to climb up or down. After they vanished, the couple's parents flew to Nepal, with Liang's father engaging a helicopter and hiring Sherpa guides to search for them, Taiwan News reports. Local people eventually spotted the couple's red tent. Liang told rescuers they had survived on the food in their backpacks, mostly potatoes and noodles, for two weeks before supplies ran out, leaving them only with salt and water. Click for more from Newser. Several protesters broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonia's parliament Thursday, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government. The protesters, many wearing masks, stormed parliament after the country's opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker. While shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked lawmakers, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who television footage showed bleeding from the forehead. Television footage showed Zaev and other Social Democrat lawmakers surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting "traitors" and refusing to allow them to leave. Police fired flash grenades and clashed with protesters gathered in front of the country's parliament, leaving several people injured. Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's conservative party won elections, but without enough votes to form a government. The U.S. Embassy in Macedonia condemned the violence, saying in a statement the assault "is not consistent with democracy and is not an acceptable way to resolve differences." Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonia's population is ethnic Albanian. Zaev has been seeking a mandate to form a government for months, after reaching an agreement with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, to form a coalition government. However, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate. The Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, as the Balkan nation's parliament is known, has been deadlocked for three weeks over electing a new speaker. Zaev had suggested earlier Thursday that one could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup. Zaev went ahead with the vote, and a majority in parliament elected Talat Xhaferi, a former defense minister and member of the Democratic Union for Integration. Police said about 10 officers were injured during the melee and that reinforcements have been sent to assist those inside the parliament building. DUI party spokesman Artan Grubi told Telma TV in a telephone interview that Zaev and three other lawmakers had been injured. "This is a sad day for Macedonia," Grubi said. The protesters who stormed parliament Thursday night were among a group of demonstrators who have been holding protest rallies nightly for the past two months in the streets of Skopje and other cities in the country over the political situation. Many are supporters of Gruevski. European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemned Thursday's violence, saying in a tweet that "Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course." Sweden's ambassador to Macedonia, Mats Staffansson, speaking on behalf of other European diplomats, reminded the country's politicians of the need for dialogue and said "it is the responsibility of the police of this country to make sure that this kind of violence does not happen." The Associated Press contributed to this report. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Macedonian opposition leader has called for an end to a political deadlock that has left parliament unable to elect a speaker for three weeks. Zoran Zaev suggested a new speaker could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup. Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's conservative party won elections, but without enough votes to form a government. Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. A quarter of Macedonia's population is ethnic Albanian. Zaev secured the cooperation of another ethnic Albanian party, giving him 69 of parliament's 120 seats. But President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate to form a government. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Britain must engage in "constructive dialogue" with the European Union before negotiations can begin on its departure from the bloc. "We need to know how Britain sees its future relations with us," Merkel told the German parliament Thursday. "Let there be no doubt: Brexit negotiations will demand a lot from Britain and Europe." Britain has two years to complete its deal to leave the 28-nation European Union but is currently preoccupied with a snap election taking place in early June. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Just days after President Donald Trump said he had joked with Italy's prime minister about increasing defense spending, the head of NATO is acknowledging that Italy has kept a commitment to do just that. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a joint press conference with Premier Paolo Gentiloni in Rome on Thursday that "I welcome that Italy has increased its defense spending last year, and we are following up on a pledge you made in 2014 to stop the cuts." Italy last year spent $21.9 billion on defense, or about 1.1 percent of its GDP and up from $19.5 billion in 2015. It spent $24.5 billion in 2014, when NATO set a target of 2 percent of GDP by 2024. Gentiloni met with Trump last week in Washington. There is no doubt serious tensions between the world and North Korea. In the midst of this, North Korea made the following statement, which adds to fears of a nuclear conflict on the Korean peninsula. Well be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, says Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-you. He says all-out war would result if the US took military action. NORTH KOREAN CRISIS 'WORST IVE SEEN,' TOP NAVY OFFICER WARNS The Rodong Sinmunthe official newspaper of the Norths ruling Workers Partydid not mince its words. "In the case of our super-mighty preemptive strike being launched, it will completely and immediately wipe out not only US imperialists invasion forces in South Korea and its surrounding areas but the US mainland and reduce them to ashes." North Korea is blatantly stating that they are not concerned with world opinion. North Korea is an antagonist rogue state and a scourge on the world. VIDEO: PENTAGON CONCERNED BY THREAT NORTH KOREA COULD POSE TO HAWAII The countries around North Korea are concerned about the flood of refugees in the event of full-scale war and the collapse of Kims regime. Video footage has emerged showing Chinese tanks rolling toward North Korea. Although China is trying to broker an agreement where North Korea backs away from the path of nuclear weapons, China is not so naive as to be caught unprepared should military action take place. It has been reported that China has deployed a mass of troops to the North Korean border, additionally, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy has claimed 25,000 more troops are being sent to the border after all Chinese forces were placed on nationwide alert. A statement from the Global Times, used by the Chinese military, warned of war with North Korea. The statement reads: "China has a bottom line it will protect at all coststhat is the security and stability of northeast China. If the bottom line is touched, China will employ all means available, including the military, to strike back. By the time the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army launch attacks on DPRK nuclear facilities, China will have protected their own." Just this week, Japan discussed the possibility of evacuating tens of thousands of Japanese citizens from South Korea. The Japanese government, although restricted constitutionally from taking aggressive military actions against another country (as stated in Article 9 of their constitution) is free to defend itself against attack. Article 9 is a clause in the National Constitution of Japan outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state. The constitution came into effect on May 3, 1947, following World War II. Should a military conflict take place, Japan will be one of several jumping-off points for US operations. Japan is also strengthening its missile defense, as it is in range of North Korean missiles and would be a likely target. Click for more from OpsLens. Police are raiding the Moscow office of a charity foundation bankrolled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a top foe of President Vladimir Putin. The foundation, Open Russia, said on its website on Thursday that police arrived at the office in early afternoon and were searching it without providing any explanation. The search comes two days before the foundation was going to hold protest rallies against Putin. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, spent 10 years in prison on what was widely described as politicized charges before he was pardoned in December 2013 and fled abroad. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that authorities would react "within the framework of the law" if the unsanctioned rallies go ahead on Saturday. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Pope Francis is facing a religious and diplomatic balancing act as he heads to Egypt this weekend, hoping to comfort its Christian community after a spate of Islamic attacks while seeking to improve relations with Egypt's Muslim leaders. Security has been tightened, with shops ordered closed and police conducting door-to-door checks in the upscale Cairo neighborhood where Francis will stay Friday night. His only public Mass is being held at a military-run stadium. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis wasn't overly concerned and wouldn't use an armored car, as his predecessors did on foreign trips. Francis insisted on going ahead with the trip even after twin Palm Sunday church bombings killed at least 45 people and a subsequent attack at the famed St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai. "We're in the world of 'new normal,'" Burke said. "But we go forward with serenity." The highlight of the two-day trip will be Francis' visit Friday to Al-Azhar, the revered 1,000-year-old seat of learning in Sunni Islam. There, he will meet privately with grand imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, and participate in an international peace conference. Francis has insisted that Christian-Muslim dialogue is the only way to overcome Islamic extremism of the kind that has targeted Christians and driven them from their 2,000-year-old communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. While condemning extremist attacks against Christians, he has said he is traveling to Egypt as a messenger of peace at a time when the world is "torn by blind violence." But his message of dialogue and tolerance has been rejected as naive by even some of his fellow Jesuits, for whom Islam remains "a religion of the sword" that has failed to modernize. Even ordinary Egyptian Christians see his visit as a nice gesture but one that ultimately won't change their reality. "He has been saying the same words for years, which is all about love and tolerance, but political Islam ruined the world and the most important change should come from Al-Azhar," said John, a 24-year-old Coptic Christian student from Cairo who declined to give his last name because he feared reprisals. The visit, though, marks a diplomatic breakthrough for Rome after Al-Azhar severed relations with the Vatican in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI demanded Egypt better protect its Christian minority following a New Year's Eve church bombing that killed more than 20 people. Francis has spent the better part of his four-year papacy seeking to mend the ties, and last year hosted el-Tayeb at the Vatican. His reciprocal visit will cement the renewed relationship and should help el-Tayeb as he confronts an unprecedented campaign in Egypt's pro-government media accusing Al-Azhar of failing to do enough to combat Islamic extremism. While Al-Azhar has been increasingly vocal in denouncing attacks and trying to spread an image of moderation, "it is considered by some in Egyptian society to be fundamentally incapable of reforming the religious discourse," said Michele Brignone, managing editor of Oasis, the Italian journal of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher on religious freedoms at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, concurred. "There is a difference between the statements released by the institution and its conduct on the ground," he said. For el-Tayeb, then, the pope's visit is a timely godsend, showing him as a promoter of Christian-Muslim dialogue who not only scored a visit by Francis, leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, but also Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. Both men are scheduled to participate in Friday's peace conference. The pope's visit will also help Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi bolster his image as a global statesman fighting religious militancy and advocating for interfaith dialogue. The pope's visit, following el-Sissi's recent reception at the White House, will crown the time and effort he has invested in shaking off the international isolation he suffered after his 2013 ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 92 million people, have been strong backers of el-Sissi even after the recent attacks and amid mounting international criticism of human rights violations by his government. Burke, the Vatican spokesman, acknowledged that the pope could be used by leaders for their political ends during his foreign trips. But he insisted Francis has an agenda of his own: to minister to Egypt's tiny Catholic community, express solidarity with the broader Christian community and improve ties with Muslims. That said, even some of Francis' own Jesuit confreres caution that the pope is naive in trying to hold dialogue with Al-Azhar and an Islamic tradition that they say remains stuck in the Middle Ages. The Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, one of the foremost Jesuit experts on Islam, has written extensively about what he considers the fundamental problems of Islam and its failure to modernize, and told Francis his thoughts when they met last June. Another Egyptian Jesuit, the Rev. Henri Boulad, told the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that the ideology presented in Islam's educational books and sermons preached by its imams served as "continual incitement" for the young. "This is a problem within Islam, which does not offer responses to the questions of modern life and finds itself facing the need to reform itself," the Vatican newspaper quoted him as saying. ___ AP reporters Hamza Hendawi and Meena Zaki contributed to this report from Cairo. ___ Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 London police say they have arrested a man for possession of weapons near Britain's Houses of Parliament. The Metropolitan Police force said the incident that unfolded Thursday is over and no one has been injured. Witnesses reported seeing armed police blocking off Whitehall, a street lined with government buildings, and a man on the ground. Security has been increased around Parliament after an attacker drove an SUV into pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge on March 22 before stabbing a police officer to death inside the gates of Parliament. The attacker was shot dead by police. Thursday is Parliament's last sitting day before Britain's June 8 election. A U.S. Navy helicopter crashed in the Pacific Ocean Thursday while conducting flight operations just 24 miles east off the coast of Guam. The entire crew, which included two pilots and one air crewman, was safely recovered by USS Dewey after their MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter went down. The crew did not sustain any serious injuries in the crash. It is not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to crash. There is an investigation underway. The incident comes less than a week after a Navy F/A-1 Super Hornet crashed while attempting to land aboard USS Carl Vinson while heading north to waters off the Korean Peninsula. The pilot of that jet suffered only minor injuries. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this story. Lightbridge Academy Aims to Bring Unrivaled Early Education Child Care Centers to Northern Virginia With locations throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Lightbridge Academy is looking to expand its reach. April 27, 2017 // Franchising.com // Most companies have a philosophy, vision, mission and core values. But very few actually foster and reinforce them on a daily basis. Since 1997, thats exactly what has made Lightbridge Academy different from the rest - theyre not just in the day care, child care or preschool business. They are in the trust business. Today, Lightbridge Academy has become a place where parents, children, staff members, the community and franchise owners come together as a family to create a truly caring educational environment. Because of the nurturing culture, Lightbridge Academy has become a beloved staple throughout their home state of New Jersey. Now, based on their ongoing success throughout the Northeast, the brand is targeting Northern Virginias wide open territory to reach more families than ever before. To help raise awareness about the brands expansion efforts in the region, on April 8 and 9, 2017, Lightbridge Academy will be attending the annual franchise expo at the Dulles Expo Center. Franchisees interested in developing the brand throughout Northern Virginia will have the chance to learn more about the opportunity in a no pressure environment. Busy working parents in the DC metro and Northern Virginia areas share the same high level of stress found in New York/New Jersey market. Lightbridge Academy is known as The Solution for Working Parents and we believe that our programs and services will be a perfect fit for parents needing support for themselves while also desiring a high quality of care and education for their children, said Guy Falzarano, the founder and CEO of Lightbridge Academy. So far, the brand has already made significant headway expanding, including new foothold locations in eastern Pennsylvania, the boroughs of New York and suburbs of Washington D.C. In fact, in 2016, Lightbridge Academy celebrated the opening of new centers in three states, and franchise agreements were signed in four mid-Atlantic states. In addition to its 13 company owned centers, the brand has sold 86 franchises. A total of 25 centers are open, and by the end of 2017, the brand expects to have nearly 40 centers up and running. And those successful development efforts arent random - this past year, Lightbridge Academy expanded in key markets within Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York. We hit tremendous milestones in 2016. Between opening up our first center in New York to securing leases in Virginia, were seeing healthy growth in attractive markets across our entire franchise system. Franchising has helped us rapidly grow our brand into attractive new territories, said Mark Mele, Lightbridge Academys senior vice president of franchise sales. Mele has every reason to believe that Lightbridge Academy will only continue to grow in the years ahead, too: demand for child care centers is booming. Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of parents reporting child care as a necessity rose from 49 percent to 57 percent. To date, an estimated 14.5 million children in the U.S. are in some form of child care arrangement. This puts Lightbridge Academy in the position of providing an always-in-demand service, meaning that there is - and will always be - a constantly renewing consumer base. This impressive growth is the culmination of 19 successful years in business, extensive planning and testing our franchise model to build a strong franchise system. Our regional expansion was a strategic decision to grow out from our core in New Jersey while establishing a network to offer superior support to our franchisees, Falzarano added. Our Circle of Care philosophy balances the importance of each and every member of the Lightbridge Academy family - our parents, staff, communities we serve and our hand-picked franchise owners are interconnected and equally important in ensuring that every child receives the highest quality of care and education. Northern Virginia serves as a natural extension for the growing company. With a total state population of eight million, of which 509,665 are under the age of five, Virginia has many developing and underserved markets in need of quality child care. Washington D.C. Metro, Richmond Metro and Virginia Beach Metro are three key areas that Lightbridge Academy is targeting. From Fairfax County to Prince William and Loudon counties, these areas are diverse, affluent with high numbers of young families and are expected to continue to grow - attributes that go hand-in-hand with the need for quality child care. As Lightbridge Academy continues to expand their unique child care franchise concept, the company is looking for franchisees who not only will embrace the companys core values but also possess strong leadership and business acumen, believe in the brand and demonstrate the desire to follow a proven system. The total investment for new franchisees ranges from $502,750 to $686,250, depending on the size of the facility. We are seeking purpose-driven franchise owners who have a personal mission and a higher aim than just making a profit. The franchisees that thrive with Lightbridge Academy are those who are looking for more than the corporate grind - they want to make a good living while also making a difference. They have true compassion and a deep understanding of the stresses that busy parents experience. They have a genuine passion for early education and the well-being of children, Mele said. By finding those franchise owners who truly embody and live out the Lightbridge Academy culture and values, well continue to successfully expand throughout Northern Virginia - and beyond. About Lightbridge Academy For more information about Lightbridge Academy, franchise opportunities in the expansion markets, or to connect with Lightbridge Academy, visit http://www.LightbridgeAcademyFranchise.com, or contact Mark Mele, Sr. VP of Franchising at (732) 980-1900. Media Contact: Megan Ferringer Editor No Limit Agency +1 (312) 526-3996 SOURCE Lightbridge Academy ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Going green has gotten a little more affordable in Fredericksburg. City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to give people who have certified solar energy equipment installed on their residential or commercial property in the city a property tax exemption and credit for five years. A second and final vote will be taken at City Councils May 9 meeting. It positions the city well to represent itself as a green-friendly environment, Richard Finkelstein, a University of Mary Washington dean and leader in the regions Climate, Environment Action Readiness plan, told council members. All kinds of studies show that cities and counties, and communities in general, which position themselves in this way do well at attracting new businesses. He said that CLEAR has seen tremendous interest in solar energy, especially among city residents. More than 100 have attended CLEAR meetings, and a couple dozen are moving forward with acquiring solar energy equipment. Thirteen building permits have been issued for the installation of solar energy equipment in the city since the beginning of 2015. The idea for the tax exemption and credit originated with the citys Clean and Green Commission, which has worked with city staff on it since August, Commission Chairman Robert Courtenage told City Council. He said that it fits with the citys commitment to advancing renewable energy and support of the CLEAR Plan and will hopefully encourage residents to invest in solar. It also offers tremendous opportunities for the citys workforce since solar energy is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country. The property tax exemption and credit would equal the total assessed value of the property times the tax rate minus the value of the solar energy equipment times the tax rate. City Attorney Kathleen Dooley said that the savings could be as high as $100. Courtenage added that the commission, Greater Fredericksburg Habitat for Humanity and GRID Alternatives, a Washington-based nonprofit that helps make renewable energy technology and job training accessible to underserved communities, are working together to provide solar panels to houses that Habitat has built or is building. The Department of Energy has provided a grant for the project. City Council also voted unanimously to increase planning and land development fees at Tuesdays meeting, but was divided when it came to voting on lowering the $35 fee for the cost of conducting the background investigation for concealed carry handgun permits. It is one part of the current $50 fee for the permit. Councilman Brad Ellis had asked to make the background investigation fee equal to the citys cost, which is $25, but Councilman Billy Withers said that he wasnt comfortable lowering that fee when the council had just raised other fees. Several council members said that they didnt want to dissect every single fee, but Councilman Matt Kelly said that the city owes it to residents to provide services at the lowest possible cost. Withers countered that the $25 for the background check only covered a city policemans pay, not retirement or benefits. The measure failed on a 52 vote. Ellis and Kelly were the only members to vote in favor of it. In other business, City Council voted unanimously to: Increase fees on the first of two readings before changes are enacted for fireworks sales, displays and re-inspections. This is the first time theyve been increased since 2007, and brings them more in line with what Spotsylvania County. The fee for fireworks sales, for example, will go from $50 to $250, which is what Spotsylvania County charges. Stafford County charges four times as much. Amend its Unified Development Ordinance to permit Dominion Virginia Power to rebuild a high-voltage transmission line in the city. It would be part of a line that will extend approximately 34 miles from the Four Rivers substation in Hanover County through Caroline and Spotsylvania counties to the Fredericksburg substation. Preliminary work is expected to begin early in 2018, with construction beginning in March and ending by Memorial Day. Dominion will be required to hold a public information meeting during the six-month period prior to construction. Adopt a $25 license fee for small-volume vendors who sell goods, wares, and merchandise at organized events such as Art in the Park and the Farmers Market. Currently such merchants can either obtain a $200 annual license, which does not limit when or where they do business in the city, or they pay a fee to the organizer of an event who gets an umbrella license. The idea for the tax exemption and credit originated with the citys Clean and Green Commission. ONE NIGHT a few years ago, I took a relative who was having chest pains and nausea to the hospital shortly after 11. The elderly woman had begun feeling bad about 9 p.m., but believing that something she ate was causing her discomfort, she was not immediately concerned. It was about 11:30 when we got to the emergency room and, it being a slow night, she was able to see a doctor rather quickly. After about an hour, the doctor on duty said that it could possibly be the womans heart giving her trouble and that she might be better off in a larger hospital about 40 miles away. Im going to call for a helicopter and have her flown there, the doctor said. Is a helicopter really necessary? I asked. I can drive her there in an hour. If she is having chest pains, we need to have her in a cardiac facility within two hours of when the pain starts, the doctor said. But the pain started almost four hours ago, I replied. The doctor paid no attention to me and summoned a helicopter, which took 15 minutes to arrive. It took another five minutes to get my relative loaded and almost 20 minutes to make the trip to the larger hospital. The problem turned out that the womans gallbladder, which required surgery a few days later. And the situation was not so critical that a helicopter was needed to move her. After all was said and done, the relative got a $14,000 bill for the 20-minute helicopter ride. I could have driven her to the larger hospital for $5 in gas. This helicopter business seems to be getting out of hand. Yes, I know that this method of travel is quick, provides some medical services and sometimes saves lives. But I think were getting to the point when helicopters are being used unnecessarily. I use the above case as one example, but there are more. About 10 years ago, a friend had just left a Fairfax doctors office with his son, who was having a problem with seizures. Five miles from the hospital, the child had another seizure and my friend call 911. Some responder determined that the child should be flown to the hospital five miles away. Five miles? The rescue squador the parentcould have had the child there before the helicopter arrived. The cost of the five-mile flight? Twelve-thousand dollars. Even rogue taxi drivers dont charge that much. Six or seven years ago, a child was bitten on the arm by a dog a few miles from where I live. The child was airlifted to a hospital. Last year, another friend was having seizure-like symptoms at work and was taken to a hospital to be checked out. Although he began feeling better, he was talked into being airlifted to a larger hospital at a cost of $16,000. Again, it was nothing serious; just a precaution. This man did not have insurance and was soon being hounded for payment that he did not have. He wasnt having a stroke when he was airlifted, but the hounding about the bill worried him into having one later. With 20-minute helicopter rides costing as much as $16,000, it is no wonder that health insurance rates continue to soar. Yes, I know that a medical helicopter is an expensive machine and those who man it have to be paid. Still, we seem to be getting to the point where these conveyances are being used when much cheaper ground transport would be just as effective. Herein lies the vicious cycle of medical care. In order to remain available, these helicopters must be utilized. Like any other business, they must make money. Since they dont get used that often, they must charge high prices, which the insurance companiesor patientsare expected to pay. So, insurance premiums go up to compensate. In their defense, it should be noted that medical helicopters dont show up unless they are summoned, Still, they seem to be summoned more and more in non-critical situations. And this is costing patients big bucks. As I jokingly told my relative when she started screaming about her $14,000 helicopter ride: Hey, I would have driven you up there for $7,000. Medical helicopters are a good thing, but Americans always seem to run a good thing into the ground. This is not Korea in 1953. Patients with the equivalent of flesh wounds dont need to be flown to the nearest MASH unit. We have roads and ambulances. Save the medical helicopters for the truly critical situations. State Del. Bobby Orrock got an unexpected call Tuesday night asking if he could attend an event at the White House the next day. Republican President Donald Trump would be there. Im kind of like, um yeah, Orrock, a Caroline County Republican, recalled with a laugh. So on Wednesday, he drove to Washington to watch Trump sign an executive order that aims to reduce the federal governments role in K12 education. Orrock, who is also a part-time agriculture teacher at Spotsylvania High School, said he received the invite from a White House staffer who worked on House Speaker Bill Howells GOP primary campaign two years ago. The White House was looking for teachers and state politicians and got both with Orrock. An Associated Press photo shows Orrock standing practically side by side with Trump as U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivers remarks to a small gathering of educators, governors and congressmen in the Roosevelt Room. But Orrock said he did not have a chance to talk with Trump, or even shake his hand. He was hustled in and hustled out, he said of the president. Orrocks campaign sent a news release Wednesday about the delegates visit to the White House. He stated in the release that it is a refreshing change of pace, both as a Delegate and as a teacher, to see an administration seeking to return power to the states, local school boards, and ultimately, parents. Trumps order directs DeVos to identify areas where Washington has overstepped its legal authority in education, and modify and repeal regulations and guidance from her department, if necessary, according to the AP. Orrock said the U.S. government is within its right to require schools to meet certain objectives in exchange for federal money. But the government should not dictate how schools meet those goals, he said. Let us have the flexibility to address the needs of our students and achieve your end, Orrock said. It marked his second invitation to the White House in nearly three decades. In 1989, then-President George H.W. Bush invited Republican General Assembly membersand candidatesto the White House to pose for pictures. Orrock, who was a first-time candidate at the time, jumped at what he called a purely political opportunity. He said he used the picture with Bush in campaign materials that year and again two years later in his first re-election bid. And Orrock, who faces a GOP primary challenge June 13 from Nick Ignacio, said he may take advantage of his picture with Trump in this years campaign. Thats such a rare experience, he said. Visitors crossing the bridge over the Potomac River into Dahlgren via U.S. 301 have a new place to take a break, grab a snack and use the restrooms. In the process, they may even learn a little about the nearby naval base. The Dahlgren Heritage Museum is officially the newest visitor center for the Commonwealth of Virginia. An opening ceremony held on Saturday celebrated the museums recent accreditation as an official Tourist Information Center. Cloudy skies and rain put a slight damper on the festivities, so there will likely be another celebration this summer. Ed Jones, president of the nonprofit Dahlgren Heritage Foundation, said the center will function as both a tourism support site and living museum with a robust array of programs that help tell the story of the Navy base at Dahlgren. Merging the roles of museum and visitor center provides visitors with the opportunity to learn about the history of Dahlgren while gaining information on popular tourist destinations nearby, Jones explained. Wearing both hats just makes sense. The new designation has its perks. The highway signs alerting motorists to the centers presence have already resulted in an uptick of traffic to the historic site. Visitors who come in just looking for a restroom sometimes end up spending a considerable amount of time perusing the exhibits and learning from the museum staff. Dont overestimate the dramatic pull of bathrooms, Jones chuckled. Many of the people who travel back and forth over the bridge pass the military base and never learn anything about it, Jones said. When visitors first enter through the doors, they are often pleasantly surprised to see all the exhibits, and they leave with a taste of the history of the military base. The museum has all these nifty exhibits about what is right across the road behind the barbed wire fence, and very few transient folks ever learn about it, he explained. Now, they get to learn about that base and the remarkable history it hasand so they are exposed to the story of Dahlgren, which is our core mission as a museum. Jones said the dual roles of the center may serve as a model for other museums. He believes the combination of the museum and visitor center reflects a larger trend in the region and across the state. This has been the case in Fredericksburg. City Council officials have discussed relocating the Visitor Center from the city-owned building on Caroline Street to the Fredericksburg Area Museum & Cultural Center on Princess Anne Street. The Caroline County museum, just off of I-95, combines visitor and museum roles as well, Jones said. At a time when many museums are losing ground to other attractions, theres a complementary way to merge museum and tourism functions that becomes a win/win solution, he said. Thats the direction we hope to be heading. The museum, which opened in October 2013, aims to preserve the story of Dahlgren through exhibits and special programs. In an increasingly virtual world in which smartphones are becoming ubiquitousgiving people instant access to a wealth of informationthe value of museums can easily be forgotten. Jones said those who look up the museum on an Internet search are missing out on the personal connection and stories offered by the museum and its staff. The museums goal isnt to be a collection of artifactsits to establish enduring ties between the community and Dahlgrens past. Almost everyone working at the museum has some connection to the base, and knows not only how to welcome visitors but also how to provide them with a peek into history. The museums staff is not just good at telling people about history or attractions, they are people who lived that history, Jones said. The museum also fosters that connection to the community through forums. Some have attracted as many as 200 people, which Jones explained is quite a turn-out for a small community. The forums include not only discussions and lecture, but also a segment of time during which the audience can share personal anecdotes of their time at Dahlgren. Many members of the community have ties to the military base. A common refrain heard among those commenting at the forums is that they came to Dahlgren anxious about living in the middle of nowhere, but ended up spending their entire careers on the base because of the tight-knit community. It is almost like a family homecoming, Jones said. We realize the role of a museum is bigger than just having artifacts and exhibits. It has to be a living museum and it has to have a personal touchthat is what really connects us to the community. Jones said the key function that unites the two roles is storytelling, and, at a time when many museums are struggling to find their niche, wearing multiple hats makes a big difference in staying relevant. In both cases, the key mission is to tell stories, he said. It may be stories about various attractions within easy reach in King George County or it may be the story of how what was a marshy bit of farmland a hundred years ago became one of Navys crown jewels of national defense. It is a pretty good story. He asked no questions, passed no judgment, just gave unconditional love. These poignant words penned by a domestic violence survivor in a letter dated April 2012 describe an employee of the Stafford County Commonwealths Attorneys Office. Although this employeeKahnwears a badge like other employees, he is a little different from the others. He has four legs, a black fur coat and is paid in treats, not dollars. Kahn is a male Labrador retriever who assists the countys Victim/Witness Assistance Program by providing comfort and emotional support to children and adult victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, elder abuse and other violent crimes. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This time of year gives county staff and officials the opportunity to reflect on the important work they are doing, and it serves as a reminder of their gratitude for Kahn. The countys Victim/Witness Assistance Office received Kahn in February 2012 from Canine Companions for Independence. CCI is a nonprofit organization that trains canine companions, service dogs, hearing dogs and facility dogs. There is no charge for the dog, and CCI covers all of the costs associated with breeding, raising and training. Jessica Reiss, participant program manager for CCI, said facility dogs like Kahn are not the same as therapy dogs. These dogs are professionally trained and placed with a professional that works in a setting involving a large group of people, such as a hospital, school or courthouse. Facility dogs have a lot more training, Reiss explained. Its like a professional version of a therapy dog. Stafford Commonwealths Attorney Eric Olsen said in the five years Kahn has been with the county, he has built quite a track record. When I was elected commonwealths attorney, one of the first things I did was apply for a courthouse dog, he said. The purpose of Kahn is to make our office and the courtroom a less scary place so victims can tell their stories and there can be justice. Kahns job is to sit and provide comfort to victims during interviews both before and after court testimony. Olsen explained that when Kahn is present in the office or courtroom, victims tend to feel less anxious, which makes it easier for them to speak about their experiences. As an icebreaker, Kahns handlerJuanita Maley of the Victim/Witness Assistance Programwill often throw a small object on the floor, such as car keys, and the dog will pick it up. Adults and children alike also find it calming to pet the dog as they talk about the details of their case. Prior to coming to Stafford, Kahn underwent rigorous training through CCI, Reiss explained. CCI breeds all of their own assistance dogs, and when the puppies are about 8 weeks old, they are matched with a trainer who cares for them and teaches basic commands for the first 18 months of their lives. When they are about a year and a half old, the dogs are sent to a training facility where the organizations professional trainers teach them advanced skills that build upon what they learned in their puppy homes, Reiss said. This includes opening doors, pulling a manual wheelchair, taking off shoes and flipping light switches on and off. Once the dogs are fully trained, they are matched with handlers who must attend a two-week team training event at one of CCIs training facilities. Here, the handler learns everything they need to knowincluding grooming, commanding and feeding, among other things. This ensures that that handler feels fully prepared when they go back to work in the public, Reiss said. Maley said she went into training thinking it would be fairly easy, especially because she has no handicap or disability. But, it was overwhelmingshe spent long hours going on field trips, taking classes and doing homework. At the end of the two weeks, she had to pass a written exam and ADA test. But she said it was all worth it. In addition to making friends that she still keeps in touch with, she was matched with Kahn. He is such a perfect matchthey could not have done a better job, Maley said. I am very connected to Kahn, but I also try to maintain some distance because he is not here for me. He is here for the victims and our office. But, at the end of the day when his vest comes off, he comes home with me and sleeps on the bed, she added. All CCIs dogs are trained the same, and are chosen for a particular service based on personality. Maley said Kahns puppy raiser was a school teacher in Richmond, which meant he was often around children. So it makes sense that he thrives in an environment that requires helping child abuse victims. Olsen said children are often scared when they arrive at the office or in the courtroom and Kahn helps alleviate the tension and make them comfortable. Sometimes the children will sit on a small bean bag chair by Kahns bed so they can be close to the dog and pet him. It has worked out just about as well as it possibly canhe is a great comfort to adults and kids, Olsen said. You can see the tension wash away when we introduce Kahn into this alien environment of our office or courthouse. Maley recalled one time when she received a call from a prosecutor meeting with a victim. When she and Kahn arrived, they saw that the victim was completely manic and couldnt articulate what had happened to her. Kahn ran right up to her and she immediately calmed down. It turns out the victim had dogs herself. Eventually, she was able to share what happened, and they were able to help her and her dogs get out of the house where the crime occurred. Kahn has a sense about who needs him, Maley said. I can take him into a room and he gravitates to the victim. I dont tell him. I dont do anything. There is a sense, almost an energy. Kahn is now 8 and seems to be fully enjoying his life as a facility dog. Maley said they will discuss retirement when he begins to show signs of being tired of working, such as no longer following commands. For now, he is loved by all and county staff and officials look forward to the days they get to see Maley and Kahn walk through the doors. Olsen said Kahn has been a tremendous asset to the program and other areas have noticed. Stafford was the first jurisdiction in the state to get a courthouse dog, and, today, there are eight or nine across Virginia. This is just the beginning. Olsen said a common misconception is that facility dogs are only a comfort to children, but the reality is that adults and children alike benefit from Kahns reassuring presence. We are at beginning of significant movement in criminal justice system, he said. One day, dogs will become ubiquitous in the courthouse. POPE FRANCIS used a world forum dedicated to promoting cutting-edge ideas to spread his own revolutionary message this week: Inclusion. When there is an us, there begins a revolution, the worlds most powerful religious leader told the room of scientists, academics, tech innovators and investors in a surprise videotaped message at the international TED conference in Vancouver on Tuesday. Keeping with the intent of the weeklong conference to share strategies to make the world better, the popes contribution was to urge people to use their influence and power to care for others. How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion, he said. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us. When Francis appeared on screen, the room erupted in applause, and one woman exclaimed, No way. Though he wasnt standing center stage in front of TEDs signature red-block letters, but rather seated at a desk at the Vatican, his speech had all the hallmarks of a TED Talk. His began with a personal narrative and wove in big ideas around hope, inclusion and starting a revolution of tenderness. He shared that he often wonders why them and not me? when he travels the world meeting with the poor and the sicksocietys discarded people. That question drives his belief that it is the responsibility of the fortunate to take care of those who are less so. First and foremost, I would love it if this meeting could help to remind us that we all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent I, separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone, the pope said. Peoples paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves respectable, of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road. Pope Francis has gained fans even among the nonreligious for speaking out on issues like poverty, immigration and the environment. According to a Pew Research Center poll, more than 70 percent of people without a religious affiliation view him favorably. Hes also known for his media savvy: he has 10 million followers on Twitter alone, and regularly records videos for specific audiences. But the TED world, with its heavy focus on science and technology, is an interesting choice and signals his willingness to spread his message far and wide. Bruno Giussani, TEDs international curator who organized the popes talk, said it took more than a year of asking and several trips to Rome to make it come to fruition. In this complicated and often confusing world, Pope Francis has become possibly the only moral voice capable of reaching people across boundaries and providing clarity and a compelling message of hope, Giussani said. The popes TED talk dovetailed with another religious leader who spoke here. Earlier, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggested substituting the word self with the word other. Instead of self-help, other-help. Instead of self-esteem, other-esteem, he said. We can face any future without fear so long as we know that we wont face it alone. The pope told the TED conference goers, many of them founders of major companies or start-ups, that the future of humankind isnt exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a you and themselves as part of an us. This theme of inclusion comes at a time when politicians all over the world are promoting insulation and fear of the other. As is his style, Francis referenced what is going on in the world, but with subtlety. Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts, he said. But he also did not shy away from criticizing techno-economic systems, which he said, are now putting products at their core, instead of people. Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly, he said to more applause. If you dont, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other. The pope said, The future of humankind isnt exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a you and themselves as part of an us. Colby Itkowitz anchors the Inspired Life blog and has covered national politics and the U.S. government. The Washington Posts Sarah Pulliam Bailey contributed to this report. DOES money talk? And does it matter where it came from? In Prince William County earlier this month, campaign cash had a case of laryngitisRepublican Jackson H. Miller, the Virginia House of Delegates majority whip, lost in his bid to be the countys clerk of court. Democrat Jackie Smith, who raised $36,000 to Millers $235,000 in political contributions, won the April 18 election by 54 percent to 46 percent. What normally would have been a race of little interest outside the county has been hyped by Democrats as a rejection of everything Trump, while the Republicans say its a wake-up call. It should be noted that, as is often the case in special elections, the turnout was smallabout 10 percent of registered voters. Still, with a new administration in Washington and with the Democrats trying to recuperate from last Novembers wounds, the Prince William election got peoples attention everywhere. Smith said, at her victory party, It means that money isnt everything in an election. That may be so in a local contest, but not so much in some other upcoming elections and primaries around the nation. House Speaker Paul Ryans super PAC poured millions into last weeks House of Representatives special election, boosting Republicans chances of holding onto a seat in Georgias June 20 runoff between the GOPs Karen Handel and upstart Democrat Jon Ossoff, who has been the beneficiary of Democratic campaign largesse. The same thing is happening in the campaigns for statewide office in Virginia this yearnone more so than the nomination contests for governor. The first hurdle for the field of candidates is the June 13 Republican and Democratic primaries. Two of the hopefuls, Democrat Tom Perriello and Republican Ed Gillespie, have drawn heavily from out-of-state sources for their support. Perriello, trying to win the nomination from the establishment favorite, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, has raised $2.2 million since he entered the race in January. More than half of it came from outside the state. Hedge-fund billionaire George Soros and his son contributed $375,000, and the activist group Avaaz, which supports progressive causes around the planet, gave $230,000. (Perriello is a co-founder of Avaaz.) Meanwhile, about 90 percent of Northams money in the last quarter was from in-state sources. On the other side of the aisle, Republican hopeful Gillespie, the favorite son of his partys establishment, raised $1.9 million last quarter. That sum included $25,000 each from former President George W. Bush, for whom Gillespie was an adviser, and from former White House aide Karl Rove. Gillespie, who has a 71 edge in fundraising over his rivals for the GOP nomination, has been drawing on national sources for support, much as he did in his unsuccessful bid to defeat Sen. Mark Warner in 2014. Will money carry the day? Will it matter where it comes from? It seemed to matter in the 2013 gubernatorial election. In one day late in the campaign, Democrat Terry McAuliffe reported $510,000 in contributions. Republican Ken Cuccinelli reported $12,000. Overall, McAuliffe nearly doubled Cuccinellis total. Donating to candidates is often more about pragmatism and political philosophy. When the result seems inevitable, big-money donors want to back a winner, who, it is hoped, will return the love. But as in life, everythings harder without money. McAuliffe was able to outspend Cuccinelli on TV ads by more than 4-to-1 in one week in late October. Perhaps, as was the case in Prince William, cash will not carry the day. Just ask Hillary Clinton, whose campaign contributions almost doubled those of the man who defeated her for the presidency. With the kind of media campaigns that will be bombarding us between now and November, though, the smart money is almost always on the money. Dominion should value people over profits Virginians should not have to worry about the safety of their water, but if we continue to be subservient to Dominion that could become the reality for many. A federal judge recently ruled that Dominions Chesapeake Energy Center, containing millions of tons of coal ash, violated the law by releasing deadly arsenic into the Elizabeth River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Dominion seeks to leave the waste in place to avoid a hefty charge, but that will come at the expense of residents who will continue to have their water poisoned. This area, like all of Virginia, should be safe for recreation and free of contaminants, which degrade our riparian and coastal communities, but it never will be unless the power company is held accountable. Dominion had requested a permit to leave million of tons of coal ash in the ground at Possum Point on the Potomac River in Prince William County. But its own monitoring data shows decades of groundwater contamination by noxious metals from the pond it proposed to cap in place. [Editors note: Dominion is now studying how to contain potential pollution from its ponds. Gov. Terry McAuliffe has signed a bill this year revising coal ash solid-waste permits.] The companys operations span Virginia, so where else is it leaking harmful toxins? A recent report from American Rivers says that fracking, in which Dominion is actively involved, threatens the Rappahannock River and puts our local waters at risk. If Dominion has a history of poisoning Virginians groundwater and waterways, why does it continue to operate as a monopoly in our commonwealth? Access to clean water is an inherent right that crosses all political lines, and communities should never feel helpless against powerful groups that endanger their health. Dominion must clean up its toxic mess and value the health of people over profits. We have a voice and we should all be saying unanimously that we need to protect our water. Christian Meoli Fredericksburg Stimpson seeks support from UMW College Republicans Susan Stimpson, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegatess 28th District, recently met with the College Republicans at the University of Mary Washington, her alma mater. She spoke about leadership and her story as an elected official, Marine wife, mother and community leader. She is running for the seat held by a 30-year incumbent, House Speaker Bill Howell. She will have big shoes to fill, but her choice of striking red heels and heartwarming words assured the students that she would have no problem doing so. Her track record is more than substantial. As a member of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors from 2010 to 2014, as well as board chairman from 2012 to 2014, Stimpson helped to cut taxes and voted on numerous proposals that continue to positively affect our area. She was on the board for only one term, yet accomplished much. She stressed the importance of turnover in elected government to bring innovative ideas to the table. The UMW students she spoke to found her to be relatable and real. Being a member of the growing UMW community added to her values and warm personality. I was awestruck by her ability to connect with the students, exhibiting her honesty and commitment to the community. She would be a fresh voice in the House with strong principles of justice and humility. Stephen Lamm Mechanicsburg, Pa. The writer, a sophomore and political science major, is president of the UMW College Republicans. Free Freightnet Membership List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours. 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." Livestock auction markets in England and Wales handled almost 1.7bn worth of stock in 2016. About 11.5 million cattle, sheep, pigs and calves passed through the auction market system last year. The figures showed a dynamic and profitable industry, despite difficult trading conditions, said Livestock Auctioneers Association (LAA) secretary Chris Dodds. Live markets account for more than half (55-56%) of slaughter lamb sales, which is as good a level as it has been for 20 years, said Mr Dodds. In the 1990s the level was more than 60%. See also: 10 ways to avoid injury while filling silage clamps In 2016, the overall number of store and breeding stock sold in markets rose by more than 70,000 on 2015 figures. Slaughter stock figures also held up well the total of 5.72 million head in England represented a 2% drop on the previous year. Auction markets Total value of stock through English and Welsh markets in 2016 was 1.682bn (1.710bn in 2015) Rising number of forward stores going through cattle rings but finished cattle numbers still falling The Livestock Auctioneers Association has 82 market members holding regular sales in England and 34 sites in Wales In 1995 there were 210 sites holding regular markets in England and Wales The first registered auction market was held at Hawick in the Scottish Borders, in 1817 While slaughter cattle numbers fell by about 13,000, store cattle numbers rose by 30,000, likely to have been prompted by changes to abattoir grids and producer reluctance to risk penalties for finished stock. Live markets now sell only 15% of finished cattle, down from about 20% five years ago and about 50% 15 years ago. Although pig numbers rose in 2016, this was from a small base. Wales saw a 50% increase, to 3,000. Dairy cattle numbers rose substantially in 2016, to 53,500 head sold for an average of 942 a head through English markets. This compares with 41,000 head in 2015 at an average of 1,072. TB markets As for many farmers, TB raises logistical and cost issues for markets in holding separate red markets for slaughter cattle only, where stock must move direct to slaughter and sheep or goats cannot be sold from the same premises on that day. Business rates Auction markets face an average business rates rise of 88% and the LAA is collecting evidence to challenge the new rates. The Valuations Office Agency (VOA) has agreed to consider the LAA material and to amend the increases if the evidence shows the formula used by the VOA is unfair or not correct. The LAA argues turnover is a poor base for assessing rental values turnover may rise but so do costs and so a business may be taking in more cash but profit may be lower. In addition, there were very few rented markets on which to base comparisons to arrive at a valuation, said LAA chairman John Brereton of Jones Peckover (St Asaph market) and Oswestry market. Brexit Trade and access to foreign labour are big concerns for markets as well as for farmers. Following last years EU referendum, the LAA initiated the UK Livestock Brexit Group to help provide a robust framework for the future of the industry, through a collaborative approach between the sector and the UK and devolved governments. Story Highlights 56% say Trump is performing about as they expected Nearly one in four say he is doing worse than they expected More think he will improve than worsen on the job WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As President Donald Trump nears his 100th day in office, a slight majority of Americans (56%) say his performance in office so far has been about what they expected. The rest are closely split between saying he has done worse (23%) versus better (19%) than they expected. Majority in U.S. Say Trump Performing About as They Expected Overall, has Donald Trump done better than you expected as president, worse than you expected or about as you expected? Better than expected Worse than expected As expected Other/No opinion % % % % U.S. adults 19 23 56 3 Republicans 37 5 57 1 Independents 18 25 53 4 Democrats 4 38 57 1 Gallup, April 21-22, 2017 Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents say that Trump is meeting their expectations -- although that is clearly not a positive statement from Democrats, most of whom disapprove of the job Trump is doing. There is a strong relationship between Americans' views of Trump's overall job performance as president and whether he is meeting their expectations. Most of those who approve of Trump's handling of his job as president say he is doing about as they expected (56%) or better (41%). Only 2% say he is doing worse. Most of those who disapprove of Trump's job performance say he is doing about as they expected (54%) or worse (41%). Four percent of this group say he is doing better. Majorities of Those Who Approve vs. Disapprove of Trump Also Say He's Meeting Their Expectations Approve Disapprove % % Better than expected 41 4 About as expected 56 54 Worse than expected 2 41 No opinion 1 1 Gallup, April 21-22, 2017 These findings are based on a Gallup poll conducted April 21-22. Americans' broad evaluation of Trump's presidency is in line with how they viewed Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at the 100-day mark in their first term. Majorities of Americans said each of these then-new presidents were performing about as they thought they would. On the margins, Americans' 100-day assessment of Obama tilted positive, with 24% saying he was doing a better job than they anticipated and only 13% saying worse. Ratings of Clinton split evenly at 12% better and 14% worse. More Americans today say Trump is doing worse than they expected (23%) than said this for either Obama (13%) or Clinton (14%). Public Expects Trump's Effectiveness to Change Americans offer a bit more positive forecast for Trump's future performance. Thirty-nine percent predict Trump will become more effective in office than he is now, whereas 34% think he will become less effective. Just under a quarter think his effectiveness will remain the same. Working in Trump's favor -- and perhaps reflecting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's view that Trump is "learning the job" -- 74% of Republicans believe Trump will become more effective. That slightly eclipses the 65% of Democrats who think he will become less effective. Also, independents offer a net-positive outlook, with 37% predicting he will become more effective and 31% less effective. Americans' Outlook for Trump's Job Performance Looking ahead, do you think Donald Trump will become -- [a more effective president than he has been so far, remain about as effective as he is now or will he become a less effective president than he has been so far]? More effective Remain as now Less effective No opinion % % % % U.S. adults 39 22 34 5 Republicans 74 17 8 2 Independents 37 24 31 7 Democrats 11 21 65 3 Gallup, April 21-22, 2017 Two in Three Accept Trump as Legitimate Trump's job approval rating has been net-negative since day one. In Gallup's latest three-day rolling average, 56% disapprove and 39% approve of the overall job he is doing. Despite majority disapproval, 66% of Americans say they accept Trump as a legitimate president, while 32% do not. Some have questioned Trump's legitimacy due to his loss to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote, questions about Russian interference in the campaign and his personal temperament. Those who don't consider Trump a legitimate president are split in their reasoning: 38% say it's because of who Trump is as a person, whereas 33% say it's because of how Trump won the election. Another 24% of his detractors say both factors contribute to their opinion. Americans' Views of Trump as Legitimate President Do you accept Donald Trump as a legitimate president, or not? Yes, accept No, not accept No opinion % % % U.S. adults 66 32 2 Republicans 93 6 1 Independents 68 30 2 Democrats 41 56 3 Gallup, April 21-22, 2017 Bottom Line Trump's performance as president is not surprising to the majority of Americans. For better or worse, the majority are getting what they expected. And that is similar to reactions to the past two presidents at this point in their presidency. These views are highly partisan, however, so saying Trump is meeting expectations is far from an endorsement across all parties. Americans are a bit more hopeful about Trump's future leadership, mainly because a small percentage of Democrats are willing to join most Republicans in saying Trump's effectiveness will improve as he spends more time in office. Trump recently called the 100-day marker a "ridiculous standard" for judging presidents, suggesting he, too, believes his presidency will get better. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. 'Kingdom Hearts III' 2017 Release Date Unlikely Happening, Says Square Enix Despite speculations that "Kingdom Hearts III" might see a late 2017 release, it appears fans might have to wait a little bit longer than that. It has been reported that Square Enix recently shared some investor's documents that detail their active projects. The document was reportedly posted by users in NeoGAF. Based on the information from the internal papers, it seems that the third installment of the crossover RPG is scheduled for a 2018 launch. The revelation will certainly disappoint fans who have patiently waited for more than a decade for "Kingdom Hearts III". On the other hand, sources claim that Square Enix is still set to showcase some more of its gameplay and features this year. It is also suspected that the company will have more footage and information about the RPG at E3 2017 this June. However, if it won't happen during E3, then it might be safe to assume that it will most likely pop up during this year's Tokyo Game Show, reports Game Rant. Meanwhile, the shared document also showcases other titles aside from "Kingdom Hearts III". Some of these games are some high-profile games from Square Enix like "Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age" and "Dragon Quest XI", which are scheduled to come out this year. However, the RPG together with other highly-anticipated games were shown under the schedule 2018 and beyond. Another sought-after game that was listed by the documents together with "Kingdom Hearts III" was "Final Fantasy VII Remake". Moreover, the unnamed Avengers game was also listed to be released sometime in 2018 or longer. Fans eager to hear any possibility of these games releasing this year will surely be disappointed. At least it is good to know that Square Enix is not rushing the development of these top-shelf titles. Analysts also agree with Square Enix's decision not to rush the release of "Kingdom Hearts III". The company recently released remasters of the older "kingdom Hearts" games reportedly still had the same bugs that plagued the original title, reports Gamenguide. On The Water: You might need a bigger boat for Transpac 2023 One world premiere can be memorable. But on Friday night, attendees at "The Majestic Eight" can witness the premiere of eight original plays by Oregon writers. The 10-minute plays are the winning submissions in a statewide competition presented by the Majestic Playwright's Lab. Writers were invited to enter their scripts for a chance to see them performed on the Majestic Theatre's main stage in the new "Majestic Eight" festival. The eight winning scripts were submitted by writers from Corvallis, Lebanon, Eugene, Ashland, and Portland. The plays, directed by Leigh Matthews Bock and Laura Blackwell, will be performed in a reader's theatre style in which the actors have the scripts in hand. Theatre supervisor Jimbo Ivy suggested four 10-minute plays would make for a good first act, followed by four more after intermission, said Cristina L. White, head of the Majestic Playwright's Lab. Bock and Blackwell decided the best way to handle the production was to direct four plays each. "For this first voyage, Leigh and I got to co-direct our own casts. The playwrights were told no more than five characters," Blackwell said. The directors got five actors each of their choosing. The featured cast members are Robert Best, Rebecca Douglas, Kim Garwood, Danita Hamel, Timothy Kelley, Shauna Kiefiuk, Catherine Polan Orzech, Steve Sellin, Alice Tucker and Joshua Winter. Two of the plays Bock is directing are by Portland playwrights, and both are set in that city. "Portland," by Marj O'Neill Butler, is a comedy in which the main character is immediately embarrassed by her mother, who comes to visit from Florida. The other play, "PDX," by Audrey Block, centers on two workers as they remove the airport's famed carpet at 5:30 a.m. "There's not really a lot of action. It's just really about the funny dialogue and us getting to peek into two guys' lives," Bock said. Bock didn't want to reveal too much about the drama "Saturn's Child," by Nancy West of Eugene. The play is about a woman walking into a coffee shop to confront a man who has been speaking to her teenage daughter. The director reached out to Ashland playwright Carolina Stevens to better understand the inspiration for her play "Buck." "It's a great story about situations that each person is going to confront with an aging parent. What do you do?" she said. Blackwell said she chose to direct four of the more metaphorical style of plays, and really enjoyed the challenges they presented. Two of the plays are by Corvallis-based playwrights and feature gangster themes. "Dirty Deeds," by Brian Bogges, is about a man who hires another man to do a very dirty job. "It's fun with a good twist at the end," Blackwell said. "Montebello Monster," by Colby Wooten, follows the members of a Chicago family who see their father die. His daughter, Natalie, believes the death is murder and gets to have a conversation with the man she suspects. "Mind Your Own Abyssness," by Nancy Hopps of Eugene, is one of those metaphorical plays, Blackwell said. It follows a man who sees a crack in his life that he must cross without hurting himself. "The Bickerton Sisters Remember," by Lebanon playwright Genny Lynch was difficult for Blackwell to describe without giving away "everything." The comedy is about two sisters who remember important pieces of their love lives, she said. To prepare for Friday's performances the cast has had one read through and six rehearsals, Bock said. Because this was the first time the Majestic Playwright's Lab held this competition, organizers the playwrights to include the phrase the "first time" in one line of their dialogue, White said. "It didn't have to be a first time theme, but it had to include that phrase somewhere that made sense in the dialogue," she said. Bock said going from larger productions to 10-minute plays, has been a good challenge as director, though she's found it hard to say goodbye to the characters that she's met in these short plays. "If you really love the characters you want to spend more time with them and want to get to know them more," she said. White has enjoyed the experience. "I've just been bowled over by how good the feeling is around this production," she said. Organizers are interested in doing "The Majestic Eight" in the future, but alternating between mid-valley and statewide competitions. "Even years we will aim for a production from local playwrights, and odd years we'll do the statewide competition," White said. The Majestic Eight will include a brief awards ceremony, as well as a question-and-answer session with the playwrights, directors and actors. "These are stories that have never been seen on a stage and are from people all around Oregon," Blackwell said. Nov. 24, 1921 April 16, 2017 The soul of Helen Dirrett was called by her Savior to be with him in heaven on Easter Sunday 2017. Helen was a brave and strong woman who faced many challenges during her life. She met them head on with no thought of surrender. Despite her many challenges, she was concerned about others and their problems. Here sense of humor was always with her. We will miss you greatly, Helen, but take solace in the fact that you are with Jesus in heaven. Helen was born at home on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1921. Her parents were John and Caroline (Luther) Morgan. They owned a hop farm north of Albany. Helen attended North Albany Grade School and Central Junior High School, graduating from Albany High School in 1939. She played saxophone in the high school band and was a state champion. Helens parents introduced her to the First United Methodist Church of Albany. She was baptized in the church at the age of 12 and remained a lifelong member. In 1944, she married Roy Dirrett after he returned home from the war in the Pacific. Roy remained in the Navy for two more years after they married and was stationed in Florida and to Navy bases on the east coast. In 1946, they returned to Albany, where Roy started Albany Roofing Company, which was later sold to Scharpfs Builders. Roy passed away in 2001. Helen worked for US National Bank, Pacific Power and Light, and the American Red Cross before taking a job with the U.S. Bureau of Mines, where she worked until retirement. Helen and Roy nad no children of their own. Helen is survived by nephew William Dirrett; niece Kimberly Dirrett; and great-nephew Beau Baxter. There will be a graveside service at 11 a.m. on May 9 at the Riverside Cemetery in Albany. April 10, 1921 April 21, 2107 Veronica C. E. Sitton of Corvallis died on April 24, 2017 at 6:30 a.m.as a result of a stroke. She was 96 years of age. She was born in Mitchell, Queensland, Australia, to T. L. Wilton O'Brien and his wife, Emily Isabel Munro O'Brien, of Walgrove Station near Yeulba. She was educated, both academically and musically, by the Sisters of Mercy in Mitchell, Toowoomba and Brisbane. After graduating from the Queensland Teachers College, Brisbane, which is now part of Queensland University of Technology, she was taught in Rockhampton. That is where she met her future husband, Lieutenant Gordon Sitton of the United States Army, when he was stationed there between campaigns in the Pacific Theater. Veronica and Gordon were married at St. Stephens Cathedral in Brisbane, Queensland, on January 12, 1944. After Gordons return from Japan and Veronicas arrival from Australia on the Matson liner, Mariposa, they began their life together in May 1946 in San Francisco. Many people were not optimistic about wartime marriages but this couple enjoyed fifty-one years of happiness together. They both came from pioneer families on the land and had backgrounds in education. While her husband worked on his doctorate at Stanford University, Veronica was employed at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford as an editor. Her whole life was interwoven with education. As a child, her grandmother told her she should learn something new every day or she might as well be dead. She followed this advice and had a fascinating life. She travelled extensively, worldwide, spending thirty years in countries other than the United States. She promoted international goodwill and understanding whether she was in a primitive hut, a palace or a head hunters longhouse. Many of her interests coincided with her husband's. As a professor of agricultural economics, he worked to improve the world's food supply, an interest she shared. When Dr. Sitton became the first Director of International Education at Oregon State University, from 1963 to 1976, Veronica found joy in welcoming and entertaining people from all over the world. She regarded them as members of the same human family that she belonged to. Wherever she was, her faith was an integral part of her life. In Corvallis, she was a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church and worked for many years to establish the OSU Newman Center. She believed strongly in exercising her right to vote, which her ancestors had fought and died to obtain. She never failed to vote in an election and took an active part in civic affairs. She came from a country where people were fined for not voting. She recently counted and found that she had played one hundred roles during her life. Chief among them, after wife and mother, were pianist, violinist, conductor, teacher, and author. She did many years of worldwide, historical research and wrote several books and articles about history and the biographies of pioneers in Australia and Oregon. She was dearly loved by her family and many others who met her. She will be missed deeply. She was preceded in death by her husband, Gordon, who died in 1995; brother Patrick Brian OBrien; sister Colleen Moira OBrien Kamber. She is survived by daughter Ruth Sitton De Maio (Michael) of Corvallis; and son, Patrick Sitton of Corvallis; three grandchildren, Father Dominic De Maio, O.P., Emily Sitton De Maio Fromm (Stephen) of Eugene, Christina Sitton De Maio Leitz (Jay) of Hammond, Louisiana; two great-grandchildren Lucy Mae Fromm and Michael August Fromm; niece Jacqueline Kamber Hosford (Christopher); and nephews Roland and Pierre Kamber. There will a vigil at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 1 at McHenry Funeral Home, 206 NW 5th St, Corvallis. There will be a funeral Mass at 10 a.m. on May 2 at St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St, Corvallis followed by a reception. Burial will be at 2:30 p.m. on May 2 at McBride Cemetery, Carlton, followed by a supper. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Talking Book Services for the Blind, Oregon State Library, Salem, care of McHenry Funeral Home, 206 N. W. Fifth Street, Corvallis, OR 97330. The Corvallis School Board has five open seats that will be decided in the May election, and the Gazette-Times is running Q&As with candidates for all positions. Presented below are the questions and responses we received for the candidates for Position 1 on the board. Sami Al-AbdRabbuh Age: 30 Occupation: Graduate student in engineering at Oregon State University Q: Why are you running for the board? A: I'm passionate about the potential public education can offer to our children. Since joining the board in January, I've seen the great impact our decisions as board members can make. We have the opportunity to help all of our students graduate with skills that make them ready for college. We can help our kids gain hands-on skills and navigate pathways for vocational jobs if they choose to take a trade. Public schools, in my view, are the cornerstone of a functioning democracy because they help our citizens to be critical thinkers. Q: What are your qualifications for the board? A: I'm an engineer with experience in using strategic and systems thinking to solve complex problems. I served on many boards including Corvallis School Board, school district budget committee, Memorial Union Board, and I previously served in OSU student government as both senator and representative. I also currently serve on the Leadership Council for Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice at OSU. This board should reflect the needs of all of our students. And I think I can bring that to the board. I believe that I bring diversity of ideas, experiences, and perspectives to the board. Q: What two specific issues would be your priorities if elected? A: One, support the district in accomplishing its primary three initiatives: one, all students show growth; two, every student a graduate; and three, close the opportunity gap between students. We are on the right path through the district's work in instructional leadership, innovation in education, and focus on equity as a driving value to all of our decisions. Two, I do prioritize the most critical basic needs of our kid's safety and well-being. That is why I will continue supporting access to free lunch programs, homeless children's support, mental health support, and suicide prevention. Q: Corvallis School District is considering asking voters to approve a building bond next year and some decisions in the proposal may be controversial, specifically closing or consolidating schools or asking for higher tax rates than the current bond. How do you think the board should handle its bond proposal? A: I will continue supporting taking community input and relying heavily on the recommendations of The Long Range Facility Master Plan (LRFMP) Committee. Any decisions about facilities should focus on supporting the districts goals. Programs that efficiently contribute to these objectives are the highest priority of what will stay in the budget. If these priorities become in jeopardy, I will advocate for a higher tax rate than the current bond to keep our children in safe buildings and in a supportive learning environment. I will also keep pressuring the state legislators to increase revenue and fund the needs of K-12 education. Brandy Barrett Barrett told the Gazette-Times she has decided to not campaign for the position on the board. Al Hutchinson Age: 70 Occupation: Owner and operator of a car dealership Q: Why are you running for the board? A: I care about the youth of Corvallis, they are the future of our community. 509J does a great job preparing most students for college. However, there are approximately 30 percent of our students, that for a variety of reasons, do not go on to college. We have an obligation to prepare them for a productive future. I will advocate to reinstate vocational education opportunities in partnership with local businesses so that we can provide options for all of our youth. Education is not a one size fits all proposition. Q: What are your qualifications for the board? A: I have served on over 25 Corvallis nonprofit boards. I have a 40-year history of providing leadership for programs that benefit the youth of Corvallis. I am a past president and have been a member of the Rotary Club of Greater Corvallis for 37 years. I am a life-long resident of Corvallis and benefited from my K-12 education, which prepared me to graduate from OSU. My children and stepchildren have attended six schools in this district including traditional, alternative and a school of choice, so I recognize the value of all types of education. Q: What two specific issues would be your priorities if elected? A: To provide vocational education for the 30 percent of youth who will not go on to higher education. I believe that this can be done in a cost-effective manner by supporting our educators to create partnerships with local businesses, trade unions and community colleges. 509J has excellent alternative educational options for our students. We need to expand opportunities to assist students who are not able to enter programs such as College Hill. I want to assure that none of our students are deprived of the ability to graduate due to lack of opportunity. Q: Corvallis School District is considering asking voters to approve a building bond next year. How do you think the board should handle its bond proposal? A: The board will need to carefully review all options and opportunities regarding each line item in the budget. Once this is done the board can confidently make a recommendation that will be in the best interest of the students of 509J. If, as a board, we decide to endorse a bond measure; it will be critical to show taxpayers that we have cut excess spending and will be good stewards of the funds entrusted to the district. For nearly 12 years the Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center has occupied a rare niche in the community. The center, at 128 NW Ninth Street on the extreme east end of the Oregon State University campus, offers language classes, citizenship training, tutoring and other cultural and educational programs. We really care about this building, said Dee Curwen, the centers coordinator since its inception. There is nothing else really like this in Oregon. This is a special place. The building, however, is on land owned by the university, which in January announced plans to use the space in the Lower Campus area between Madison and Monroe avenues and Ninth and 11th streets to build housing for upper-division students. The literacy center's lease on the spacious 1910-era house runs through March 2018. The center pays OSU $1 per year in rent. The university has given the center a September deadline should center officials choose to move the building itself to another location. There is a strong possibility that the Multicultural Literacy Center will have to move from that location, said Steve Clark, OSUs vice president for marketing and university relations. We also strongly understand the importance of a nonprofit providing literacy services, particularly given the universitys changing enrollment and diversity. We are very supportive of the Multicultural Literacy Center. Clark said the university will continue to work with the center on possible alternative locations on campus with the same lease terms. The issue has become more visible in recent weeks. Community backers of the center have testified during the community comments section of the past two Corvallis City Council meetings. In addition, meetings have taken place involving the university, city officials and the Central Park Neighborhood Association. The neighborhood association "has not yet taken a position on whether to get involved in the CMLCs future, nor on support for a particular solution, said Courtney Cloyd, president of the association. Possible approaches, Cloyd said, would be to work with the center on finding an easily accessible off-campus location or to urge OSU to issue a new 10-year lease as a gesture of good-will in support of its interests in being an open, inclusive community. Corvallis Mayor Biff Traber and Ward 1 Councilor Penny York met with center officials and urged them, Traber said, to consider alternatives to simply insisting on staying in place. York, during the April 3 council appearance of center backer Genevieve Prentice, said she was very concerned' about the issue. But she also noted that adding student housing is something weve been encouraging (OSU) to do. At the April 17 meeting Prentice spoke again and was joined by Sebastian Wayne and Joan Gross, an OSU anthropology professor. In addition, more than 20 people in the audience stood in a show of support for the center. Its an amazing resource for the city of Corvallis, Gross said. Can this be adequately communicated so that plans to raze or move the building can be halted? Buzzing with activity On a recent Wednesday, the center was buzzing with activity. Corvallis School District officials were on hand to work with the center on assessments of kindergartners and their families. We love the Multicultural Literacy Center, said Marcianne Koetje, an equity coordinator with the district. Its great having a place where our families can come and feel so welcome. Its a great way to build connectedness and ensure students are successful. The building also is home to the Fiesta Mexicana 4-H dance group and Casa Latinos Unidos de Benton County. We complement each other on services, said Yazmin Brambila of Casa Latinos Unidos. The center also offers citizenship training: A woman from Mongolia recently became the 32nd person (from 14 different countries) to become a U.S. citizen through the center's programs. Elsewhere in the center, an English language class was being taught by Annie Recker to students whose native languages include Farsi, Arabic and Spanish. The message with this days lesson clearly involves coping skills: Among the phrases being worked on are "get a speeding ticket," "run out of gas" and "have a flat tire." There is more than 3,000 square feet of space in the house, with room after room devoted to conversation spaces, cultural kits, music, meditation and child care for families involved in the kindergarten assessments. In addition, the walls are covered with textiles that are part of an exhibit that runs through May 31. What happens here depends on what you would like to do, Curwen said. Curwen and the center staff and volunteers would like to stay where they are. Curwen noted that the location is in a perfect transition space between the university and the city. Its close to transportation and other services. But, she added, "were working to explore other possibilities," while noting that moving the building would require finding a piece of open land. And affording a piece of land would be a difficult challenge for a nonprofit accustomed to paying $1 per month in rent. There is no way you can replace so many of these things, but we have to be practical," she said. But she admitted to a bias: "Im not objective about this space at all. Washington Federal will recognize its 100th anniversary with a celebration at its Corvallis bank branch from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday. The branch, 1111 A N.W. Ninth St., will provide punch, cupcakes and a drawing for gift baskets. This event is our chance to say thank you to the community for their support and trust, said Inge King, branch manager. Washington Federal started 100 years ago in Seattles Ballard neighborhood. Oregon State University unveiled its new logo this week, part of a major OSU effort to improve its branding throughout the state, nation and world, and you probably noticed that the announcement did not trigger spontaneous demonstrations of joy throughout Corvallis. In fact, you might well have been among those people who saw the new logo and were, frankly, underwhelmed: "Eh," you might have said, "seems a little busy." We share that assessment: It seems as if OSU officials and focus groups and designers and everyone else who had a role in what was a lengthy design process lobbied over the years to be sure that their particular area of interest was pictured somewhere in the new logo. So the finished design, a shield-like academic crest, includes a mountain range, ocean waves, the sun and stars to represent OSU's status as just one of two institutions in the nation as a Land, Sea, Sun and Space Grant university. As far as that goes, that's OK. But, as they say on late-night TV ads, there's more: The logo also features the date 1868 (the university's founding date), along with a fir tree and an open book. The three stars on the logo do double duty: Not only are they meant to represent the Space Grant status, but OSU's three campuses as well. Resting atop the shield is a beaver: Presumably the critter had to crawl out on top just to find some leg room. The logo designers did manage to restrain themselves by not including a word balloon over the beaver to allow it to say "First down, OSU." Despite our initial complaints, the acid test for a logo like this isn't what we think about it in the first days after it's unveiled, but how it weathers the next couple of decades. And let's be honest: Regardless of our initial reservations, this logo is a considerable improvement over its predecessor, the simple OSU letterform emblem that has served as the university's logo since 2003. That logo commits even a worse sin than busyness: It doesn't say anything other than the letters "OSU," crammed together as if they were sharing a studio apartment. And that all-letter logo over the years has been confused with other institutions that share OSU's initials Oklahoma State University, for example, which also shares Oregon State's colors, to add to the confusion. Oregon State officials said that the new logo will be part of a larger branding campaign meant to help the school differentiate itself in a crowded higher education marketplace. With competition certain to increase for students and grant money, that seems smart. And Steve Clark, the university's vice president for marketing and university relations, said something interesting this week about the campaign: "We will no longer wear our humility on our sleeve." We hear some of you snorting at the idea of OSU being humble, but hear us out. Clark's comment illuminates something interesting that has been happening at the university over the last decade or so: OSU slowly has been shaking off what we'll call, for lack of a better term, a bit of an inferiority complex. It's worth remembering, for example, that OSU didn't launch a university-wide comprehensive fundraising effort until The Campaign for OSU had its public kickoff in 2007. At that point, the university was more than 125 years old, but you can't rush these things. The initial goal of the campaign was $625 million; it eventually raised more than $1.1 billion. That campaign undoubtedly opened some eyes on campus and throughout the state. In some ways, you could argue, it paved the way for this week's announcement, complete with that beaver resting atop the shield. If the designers had thought to include a word balloon for the beaver, it could have been saying "How you like me now?" (mm) Four candidates filed for the desire to fill Position 3 on the Philomath School Board the incumbent Tom Klipfel along with challengers Greg Gerding, Wendy Kincade and Camille Storch. Gerding is a U.S. Navy veteran who is three years into retirement after serving as a fiscal director with Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services. Past governmental experience includes serving as a program analyst on the assistant secretary of the Navys staff in research, development and acquisition (1989-92) and intelligence enterprise integration manager with the Defense Information System Agencys headquarters staff (1992-95). Gerding, a Philomath High graduate, earned a professional certificate in systems engineering from the University of California-San Diego, a bachelor of science degree in marketing from Oregon State University, a master of business administration degree in finance from Golden Gate University and a master of science in computer systems from the Naval Postgraduate School. Kincade has been self-employed as a conflict resolution professional at BlueSkyMorning since 2005, has volunteered for Neighbor to Neighbor Mediation since 2011 and has volunteered as a board member for Whiteside Theatre since 2014. Her educational background includes an associate of science degree in block transfer from Southwestern Oregon Community College, a bachelor of science degree in business management from Linfield College and a master of science degree in conflict resolution from the University of Oregon. Klipfel works for Hewlett Packard as a supply chain manager for its Page Wide Web Press Division. Klipfel has worked in several capacities for HP since 1993. Prior governmental experience includes a budget committee member for the city of Philomath (1998-09), and for the Philomath School District as a middle school site council member (2006-13), long-range facilities planning committee member (2007), bond oversight committee member and secretary (2010-13), budget committee member (since 2008) and school board member (since 2007). His educational background includes bachelor of science degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering from the University of California-Davis and a master of science degree in operations management from Purdue University. Storch is self-employed with Old Blue Raw Honey in processing and sales. She is a Philomath High graduate and attended Linn-Benton Community College in general education and earned a bachelor of arts degree from Oregon State University in geography. 1. What priorities would you emphasize if you are elected to the school board? GERDING: I would have four priorities: 1), Increase two-way communication between the school board and the community-at-large. Listen to all points of view. 2), Revitalize faith and trust in the school boards decision-making ability that they are acting in all students best interests. 3), Build a sustainable long-term budget for the Philomath School District. 4), Maintain educational excellence in all PSD endeavors. KINCADE: My interest in serving as one of five directors on the Philomath School District Board is based on a strong desire to help the Philomath community work collaboratively to solve its problems and provide a healthy environment for everyone who lives, works and visits here. My wish is to be a part of building an environment where all voices are heard; where protecting the rights and meeting the needs of all individuals is a priority; and where the impacts of mistakes are corrected through accountability and the restoration of people and relationships. If elected, my primary focus will be to bring: better informed decision-making; an emphasis on the appropriate use of power; forums where all perspectives are heard and have weight; and most importantly, I will bring a willingness to see the human in all people. KLIPFEL: Philomath has a healthy 90 percent graduation rate, but with 1,400 students in our schools, that is 140 kids who will not graduate. Last year, I led the school board to set the vision to graduate every student and transition each into a job, training or college. That is my No. 1 priority and to achieve that goal I would make sure we (1), monitor kids against graduation-progress indicators at all grades, (2), provide appropriate programs for any kid who falls behind and (3), continue to offer a diversity of activities (sports, music, etc.) to keep kids engaged. There are schools in Oregon with nearly 100 percent graduation rates. I am committed to making Philomath one of them. STORCH: Studies as well as common sense show that student success is directly tied to the quality of the teachers in the classroom, so recruiting and retaining the most qualified, highly skilled educators and staff is at the top of my priority list. Beyond that, I will step into the role of school board director with an open mind and without a concrete agenda. 2. If budget cuts out of Salem for the next biennium become a reality and the school district cannot find relief, what would you fight to save and in what areas would you consider cutting? GERDING: Solving our budget crisis shouldnt come at the expense of students. We should do everything we can to protect the student learning opportunities and experiences. Likewise we cannot solve it through teacher sacrifices alone either. First do minimal harm to students. Save: Student programs/services to the maximum extent possible. The majority of most school district budgets are personnel-based and Philomaths appears no different. Anytime one is looking for budget reductions, the initial place to look is personnel since that is where the majority of the budget is expended. Consider for cutting: 1), Administration/staff office spending. 2), Review all noninstructional positions for savings. Can services/positions be shared? Eliminate ancillary positions where able. 3), Look for greater efficiencies in overhead. 4), Freeze new hires/impose hiring delays. 5), Cut days from the work-year for all PSD employees. Maximize cut days on days when students would not be in class. 6), These steps will undoubtedly not get us the budget we need; then we need to look at student program cuts which translates to teacher cuts and reduced class offerings. We, the PSD community, must work closely together, considering all inputs, on passing an operating levy next year or there will be dire budget consequences. KINCADE: Making important decisions about services and supports, whether cutting things out or adding things in, should be done collectively and collaboratively by all of those who will be impacted by the outcome of said decisions. I support using a respectfully facilitated public process for all major decision-making and will support the outcomes that result from such a process. KLIPFEL: As a school board member, I have managed through two substantial budget reductions. What I have learned is better times eventually replace down times and once you cut a program, it rarely comes back. Therefore, this is my approach on necessary budget cuts: (1), eliminate inefficiencies, (2). avoid replacing retiring or departing staff wherever possible, (3), slow down replacement purchases (technology, textbooks) and (4), spend some of the reserve. Given the health of Philomaths budget, these actions can bridge the gap to the next stronger cycle and avoid cutting valued programs that hard to bring back later. STORCH: Basic facilities maintenance is critical. Deferring maintenance is almost always more expensive in the long run. We are legally mandated to offer quality, engaging curriculum for special needs children, and we cant let them down. If at all possible, we need to maintain or improve current teaching staff levels and work with the teachers union to ensure members feel adequately supported by the district. School is often the safest, healthiest and most positively stimulating place for many vulnerable or disadvantaged students. We have a moral obligation to provide the services they need to learn and behave appropriately in the classroom. Because of budget shortfalls, state officials are discussing major cuts to social service programs, increasing food and housing insecurity for families in our community, so support services in school will be more important than ever. Many discretionary programs have benefited from generous support of community organizations and local businesses. I would work to strengthen and expand those relationships so that we can continue to offer a broad range of top-tier programs to all students. Making budgets cuts that will negatively impact students and teachers is incredibly difficult, and I will not take those decisions lightly. Cuts will hit close to home for me, personally, because my own children and their classmates will face the consequences of any and all program reductions for the next decade. 3. What lessons should the school board and community take away from the hazing incident, and what do you feel went right and what couldve been done better? GERDING: The necessity for open, two-way communications, as permitted by law, after such an incident is critical. It appears the board could have turned outward to involve the community more as to the probable process, status and progress of the investigation, while still ensuring the rights and safety of all students/personnel. The incident took the board and community by surprise, but a well thought-out, forward-looking communications plan with the goal of keeping the community informed and united could have been very beneficial to all. Lack of information flow leads to misinformation, innuendo and mistrust. Trusted communications by the board and the community is essential. The school board is responsible for establishing policy and providing governance. Just establishing policy is not enough; there must be follow-through with appropriate governance. The board had an established hazing policy, but was appropriate hazing orientation/training provided to students? Was it addressed adequately in student handbooks? Proper governance should ensure that policies that require action are in fact followed and acted upon. This was a horrible incident that ideally never should have happened. The board dealt with an extremely trying and difficult situation. KINCADE: The main thing I hope the Philomath school board, administration and community have learned from the school administrations response to the occurrence at Camp Rilea last summer is that emphasizing punishment for those who have done harm, and providing little to no direct support to those who have been harmed, is an ineffective and harmful way of responding. I hope the school board and school administration are able to develop a system and embrace a philosophy that allows for open dissent and respectful input by staff, students, parents and concerned community members, and that future responses to harm emphasize accountability by offenders, needed services to victims and the restoration of people and relationships. The Philomath School Districts current disciplinary system is based on what I believe to be an outdated retributive philosophy of justice where the emphasis is on punishing offenders and ignoring victims. I propose a complete review and revamping of this system and support the development and implementation of a restorative system a system that includes accountability by offenders with an emphasis on making things right for victims and an overall philosophy of repairing relationships and restoring community peace. KLIPFEL: As a parent, the hazing incident was truly heartbreaking. As school board chair, it has caused me more stress than I can possibly describe. We as a community need to continue teaching our children to always treat each other with love and kindness and that making others feel harassed or bullied is never acceptable. As to how the school board handled the incident, regrettably, there was no good way; there was only the legal way as outlined by school policy and the law. Some people wanted more open communication and the court of public opinion to determine the consequences of those involved, but since we were dealing with minors, that would have been nothing less than unethical and illegal. What happened at Camp Rilea was very serious. Anyone who believes otherwise does not have a full understanding of the events. The boys involved deserve forgiveness and they have mine. However, our actions must have consequences. As a board member, I had to decide on consequences for boys I have known for more than 10 years in order to stand up for 11 boys whose names I did not even know. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life, but that is what every board member must do be fair and unbiased regardless of who is involved. Knowing what I do about this very difficult situation, I stand by my decisions. STORCH: ASB president, Christopher McMorran, put it well, I really would encourage the community, and our school board and everyone in Philomath to please be a better example of love and forgiveness during this time. I would add that as adults, we have to be better role models of civility and community mindedness in our words and our actions. I am an informed community member, but Im not privy to the exact facts and details that the administration, the current school board and some more closely involved individuals had last fall nor will I ever be in a position to re-adjudicate this particular incident. Without that information, I cant know for certain if the decisions made were completely fair or appropriate. That said, I do believe that the administration and the board made those decisions in good faith and on the advice of counsel without a personal sense of spite or greed as some have suggested. 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. Gboard for Android gets Indian languages support, text editing tool and more News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Gboard for Android gets updated. Google has rolled out a new update to the Gboard for Android app. This update adds many new changes to the keyboard app such as new languages and text editing tool. The update also brings about improvements in the functioning of the app. When it comes to the new languages, the Gboard for Android gets support for 22 Indian regional languages with transliteration. Some supported languages include Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, and Urdu. On the whole, Gboard can suggest in over 185 language varieties. The update also adds support for Waray and Kinyarwanda. Android Gboard update suggests emojis and GIF to users Via the official Google blog post, Google has stated that they have worked closely with the native speakers of these languages across India to collect information to train their advanced machine learning models. This way, they have made sure users can easily start texting in their own native script. The Gboard for Android app gets a new text editing mode that has buttons for easy cursor control as well as the ability to select, cut, copy, and paste text. This feature can be accessed by selecting the Text Edition icon included in the quick features menu that appears on pressing the G button placed in the suggestion strip. Gboard gets upgraded with draggable keyboard Lastly, the update also lets users resize the keyboard and move it to a position of their choice in order to improve their typing speed. This can be done by going to the quick feature menu and clicking on More. There will be a one-handed mode button to adjust the size and position of the keyboard on the screen. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Top 10 Vivo 4G smartphones to buy in India Features oi -Harish Kumar Best Vivo 4G smartphones in India. Vivo is all set to unveil the Vivo V5s selfie-centric smartphone in India today at an event to be held in New Delhi. The brand is coming across many smartphones in the country and is a successful Chinese brand. Vivo is one of the Chinese manufacturers with a good reputation in the Indian market. The reason is the reasonably priced smartphones those are released by the company in the market. Lately, Vivo and Reliance Jio joined hands to offer a huge amount of 4G data for free for the Vivo smartphone users who have subscribed to the Jio service. 10 best smartphones available on exchange offer worth Rs 10,000 With the boom in 4G usage, many companies have started introducing attractively priced smartphones with the 4G LTE connectivity support. As Vivo is one of the great Chinese brands in India, we have listed some of the best Vivo 4G smartphones that one can buy in India right now. Best Mobiles in India Moto G4 Play Android Nougat update is coming soon News oi -Samden Sherpa With the software update, Moto G4 Play will receive several new features and upgrades. If you recall, the Moto G4 series smartphones, the Moto G4 and G4 Plus started receiving the Android Nougat update last month in March. However, there was still one smartphone in the series, the Moto G4 Play that was due to receive the update. Going by the company's history, Motorola usually schedules the update release for the latest flagship releases in this case the Moto G5 and G5 Plus. But considering that the G4 series models are very similar to the new smartphones in terms of specs we were hoping that the update would be rolled out for all the device at once. That was not the case though. SEE ALSO: Moto Earbuds-2 in-ear headphones launched at Rs. 799 While the update seems to have different timings for the release now a Lenovo representative has confirmed that the owners of the Moto G4 Play smartphones will also receive the update in the month of June. Android Authority also reports that the update might be first rolled out to U.S. consumers. We should know about the global rollout in the coming days. Moto X (2017) hands-on images leaked: Reveals design, specs and more In any case, this is indeed a good news for Moto G4 Play owners. And this news also helps to answer the typical question, "When will my smartphone get the update?" Further, now that the manufacturer has revealed the time of Moto G4 Play update, users don't have keep wondering about the update. The users should see a notification pop up for the update in the said month. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Nokia reports 6% decline in network sales News oi -Priyanka A drop in the first quarter was primarily due to IP/Optical Networks and Fixed Networks, with approximately flat net sales in Mobile Networks and Applications & Analytics. Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia today said that its sales in the first three months of the year slowed to 5.4 billion. A drop in the first quarter was primarily due to IP/Optical Networks and Fixed Networks, with approximately flat net sales in Mobile Networks and Applications & Analytics. Overall, networks sales were down 6 percent to 4.9 billion in the first three months of the year. Meanwhile, another Swedish-based telecom equipment maker Ericsson posted an operating loss of 12.3 billion. Everything about Reliance Jio's achievements and future plans Nokia chief executive Rajeev Suri said, "Nokias first quarter 2017 results demonstrated our improving business momentum, even if some challenges remain." He said, "we slowed the rate of topline decline and generated healthy orders in what is typically a seasonally weak quarter for us. We also continued to see the expansion of cross-selling across our full portfolio, delivered excellent gross margins and improved group-level profitability." He added we saw encouraging stabilization in Mobile Networks topline, our strategy to build a strong software business gained momentum in Applications & Analytics, and Nokia Technologies saw significant year-on-year improvement in sales. This progress offset relative weakness in Fixed Networks and IP/Optical Networks, and allowed us to maintain Networks strong gross margin - which was among the strongest Networks has ever delivered for a Q1 The company said that "Comptel is a long-time Nokia partner and in 2016, Comptels net sales were EUR 100 million with an 11% operating margin." The companys major sites are in Finland, Bulgaria, Malaysia, India, the United Kingdom and Norway. Best Mobiles in India Almost bezel-less, 6.4-inch display According to the render, the Galaxy Note 8 is expected to sport a 6.4-inch QHD+ infinity display, contradicting previous rumors which suggested it would ship with a 4K display. As you can see, there are minimal bezels on the sides, while the top and bottom ones have been trimmed to some extent as well. Surprisingly, the display is not as curved at the edges as that of the Galaxy S8. Optics Their Samsung Galaxy Note 8 concept features two 13MP front facing cameras with a light sensor and an iris scanner. There is also a vertically arranged, rear dual-camera setup with LED flash, which consists of two 16MP shooters. Yes, you guessed it right, it is identical to the design on the Galaxy S8 Plus prototype that emerged following the official launch. Fingerprint Scanner repositioned Many people complained about the fingerprint scanner placement on the Galaxy S8. So, the fingerprint scanner on Galaxy Note 8 is placed below the LED flash and laser module, which in turn lies under the rear dual cameras. Thanks to the new position, people won't be forced to stretch in order to reach it. Impressive specs The render further reveals that the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will be water and dust-proof with IP-68 certification. In terms of the storage, the phablet will have 128 GB of internal storage (expandable through a microSD card), along with 6GB of RAM. Keeping the lights on is a large 4000mAh battery with fast charge support under its hood. On the software front, the device is said to run Android 8.0 operating system. Motion Eye camera system The XZ Premium comes with a new Motion Eye camera system and also it is said to be the first smartphone to have a memory stacked Exmor RS sensor. Also Read: Sony Xperia XZ and Xperia X Performance Android Nougat 7.1.1 update released With a 19-megapixel rear camera, it supports Super slow motion 960fps video capture, Predictive Capture, Ant-distortion shutter, Triple image sensing technology, predictive Hybrid Autofocus, 5-axis stabilization and 4K video recording. On the other hand, the front cam has a 13-megapixel Exmor RS which can be used as a mobile image sensor and has 22mm wide angle lens, ISO6400 and aperture f/2.2. Key Specs This premium phone will have a 5.5-inch 4K HDR Triluminous display with X-Reality mobile picture engine and dynamic contrast enhancement. It is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on both the front and back panel. The XZ Premium is equipped with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with the Adreno 540 GPU. Also Read: Sony announces Xperia XZ Premium in Bronze Pink Color The device is coupled with a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of inbuilt storage which can be expanded up to 256 through microSD card slot. Other features Other features include a latest Android 7.0 Nougat Operating system on which this phone runs out of the box and a battery of 3230mAh capacity with Smart Stamina mode and Qnovo adaptive charging support. The phone also supports Sony's native DSEE HX technology and one can also play PlayStation 4 console games on it. Appeared in Bronze Pink color When this XZ Premium was unveiled at MWC, it was shown only in two color variants- Deepsea Black and Luminous Chrome. Just a few days back, the company launched a Bronze Pink color variant of the same phone with same specs and design. Also Read: Sony A9 full-frame mirrorless camera launched: Price, features and more So, Bronze Pink will be the third color announced by Sony for its premium phone. We have to wait till June to grab this Pink phone. Price and Availability Recently, the XZ Premium was available for pre-orders in the UK. The Amazon UK website displayed a price tag of 649 which comes to approximately Rs. 53,615. China convicts detained American woman with espionage Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 2:33PM An American businesswoman from Houston, Texas, has been sentenced in China to three and half years in prison and deportation on spying charges. The sentence against Sandy Phan-Gillis was issued after a closed-door trial at Nanning Intermediate People's Court in the southern province of Guangxi on Tuesday. Phan-Gillis, a 57-year-old naturalized US citizen of both Vietnamese and Chinese descent, was detained in March 2015 at the Macau border after her trip to mainland China with a trade delegation from Houston. She was accused of espionage and stealing state secrets and allegedly passing them to a third party. Her lawyer Shang Baojun has confirmed the sentencing and said he expected a written verdict against her client within five days. "The court order for deportation suggests that she could be credited with having already served more than half of her sentence, making her eligible for parole," Shang said. A US-based rights group has also expressed satisfaction with the ruling, calling it a reflection of improving ties between Beijing and Washington. "I think she will be released and she will be back in the US fairly soon," said John Kamm, a human rights activist in China who has worked on the case and heads the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco, California. Last year, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention denounced China's handling of the case, saying it had not observed "international norms relating to the right to a fair trial." The group criticized Beijing for "holding the accused at a secret location and putting her in solitary confinement." Phan-Gillis is currently being held in a detention center and not a prison and did not plan to appeal, her lawyer reported. The US and China have become increasingly suspicious of each other's espionage activities. The US government has routinely accused China of state-sponsored hacking of industrial secrets. In a letter transcribed by a US consular official in 2016, Phan-Gillis had said that her detention was because of politics and not for any crime. "I am accused of being a spy for the US government. I have never been a spy." Meanwhile, a US embassy spokeswoman said Washington "remained concerned" about the case and was in contact with "high level" Chinese government officials. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Military Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 26, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 23 strikes consisting of 69 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. U.S. Central Command continues to work with partner nations to conduct targeted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of the comprehensive strategy to degrade and defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 14 strikes consisting of 22 engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Abu Kamal, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, seven strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed eight ISIS wellheads, five oil processing equipment items, two ISIS barges and two fighting positions. -- Near Tabqah, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units and destroyed four fighting positions and a fuel truck. Additionally, four strikes were conducted from April 24 that have closed within the last 24 hours. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed three barges. -- On April 24, near Raqqa, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three ISIS vehicles. -- On April 24, near Tabqah, two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions and a rocket-propelled grenade team. Strikes in Iraq In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 47 engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Kirkuk, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a command-and-control node. -- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units and a sniper and destroyed eight weapons caches, three mortar systems, two fighting positions, an ISIS vehicle, a rocket system, a front-end loader and a vehicle-borne bomb. -- Near Rawah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit; and destroyed a tactical vehicle and a weapons cache. -- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed eight vehicle-borne-bomb storage areas. 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 North Korea Threatens Indo-Asia-Pacific Region, Harris Tells Legislators By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, April 26, 2017 North Korea remains the most immediate threat to the security of the United States and its allies in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee today. Addressing security challenges in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, the commander noted how North Korea threatened Australia in the past week with a nuclear strike. "[It's] a powerful reminder to the entire international community that North Korea's missiles point in every direction," Harris said. "The only nation to have tested nuclear devices in this century, North Korea has vigorously pursued an aggressive weapons test schedule with more than 60 listed missile events in recent years." Sense of Urgency With every test, Kim Jong Un moves closer to his stated goal of a pre-emptive nuclear strike capability against American cities, and he's not afraid to fail in public, the admiral said. "Defending our homeland is my top priority, so I must assume that Kim Jong Un's nuclear claims are true; I know his aspirations certainly are. And that should provide all of us a sense of urgency to ensure Pacom and U.S. Forces Korea are prepared to fight tonight with the best technology on the planet," he said. Threats from North Korea are why the United States has deployed its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to South Korea, put the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group back on patrol in Northeast Asia and introduced the newest and best military platforms in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, the admiral said. And they are also why the U.S. is emphasizing trilateral cooperation between Japan, South Korea and calling on China to exert its "considerable economic influence to stop Pyongyang's unprecedented weapons testing," Harris said. "As [President Donald J. Trump] and [Defense Secretary Jim Mattis] have made clear, all options are on the table. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not to his knees," the commander said. Advancing Partnerships The admiral named Russia, China and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as the other global and regional threats, but emphasized U.S. regional partnerships. "We've strengthened America's network of alliances and partnerships, working with like-minded partners on shared security threats like North Korea and ISIS. It's a key component to our regional strategy," he said. Harris said he continues to rely on Australia for its advanced military capabilities and global operations leadership, and noted that last week's trips by Vice President Mike Pence and Mattis to Northeast Asia emphasized U.S. alliances with South Korea and Japan. The United States has also advanced its partnerships with regional powers such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, Harris said. Such partnerships, he said, reinforce "the rules-based security order that has helped underwrite peace and prosperity throughout the region for decades." Confronting Challenges But more work remains to be done, he cautioned. "We must be ready to confront all challenges from a position of strength and with credible combat power," Harris told legislators. He added, "So I ask this committee to support continued investment to improve our military capabilities. I need weapons systems of increased lethality, precision, speed and range that are networked and cost-effective [without] restricting ourselves with funding uncertainties [that] reduce our warfighting readiness. So I urge the congress to repeal sequestration and improve the proposed Defense Department budget." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address National Guard More Relevant, Ready to Face New Threats, Chief Says By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, April 26, 2017 Given the uncertain nature of the world today, the National Guard motto "Always Ready, Always There" is even more important than in the past, Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel told the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee this morning. Lengyel, the chief of the National Guard Bureau and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the guard is evolving quickly to meet the challenges posed by state actors, terror groups and natural or man-made disasters. "The National Guard is more resilient, relevant and ready than ever before," he said. More Than a Reserve Force The guard is no longer simply a reserve force. Rather, it is a force that combatant commanders depend on to accomplish their missions. "Our security environment is more dynamic and complex and our nation places greater reliance on its National Guard," the general said in prepared remarks. "This is why my focus every day is to ensure we are ready and we have the resources to accomplish our three core missions -- fighting America's wars, securing the homeland and building enduring partnerships at the local, state, federal and international levels," Lengyel said. The attacks of 9/11 transformed the National Guard, he said. "Since then, guard members have deployed more than 850,000 times to locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, the Balkans, Guantanamo Bay and the Sinai," the general said. "On any given day, the National Guard has approximately 18,000 soldiers and airmen mobilized in support of combatant command missions overseas." Guard members fold seamlessly into the joint force when called upon, Lengyel said. "Our interoperability with the joint force will deepen and evolve as we confront future threats -- threats that are now global, emanate from all domains, and are adaptable and multi-functional in their forms," he said. "Only a well-integrated and well-trained force will keep our nation safe and secure our national interests." Homeland Defense Guardsmen are also integral to homeland defense, he said. They train constantly to respond to natural or manmade disasters, the general said. The guard plays a part in defending against cyber assaults and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. The guard often provides the logistic support and communications to tie operations together and to get people and supplies where they are urgently needed, he said. On average, more than 4,000 guard members conduct operations here in the United States on any given day, Lengyel said. In today's interconnected world, guardsmen must develop contacts and partnerships within the military, within the local, state and federal government and within the international community, the general said. He cited the Guard's State Partnership Program which pairs guard units in various states with units in nations around the world. The program now has 79 partners. "The SPP allows us to partner with nations around the globe to realize mutual understanding, friendship and security cooperation," he said. "This low-cost, high-leverage program has built enduring partnerships and bonds of trust with approximately one-third of the nations in the world -- relationships that assure our allies, deter our foes, and support the transition of many nations from security consumers to global security providers." Lengyel said he is as concerned about readiness as other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Readiness begins with our force structure," the general said. "I am working with the Army and Air Force to have a balanced array of combat and enabling forces that largely mirrors the active component and is modernized concurrently. We must prepare by providing high-level collective training opportunities such as Combat Training Center rotations and Red Flag exercises. Realistic training improves the readiness of the National Guard and develops leaders that are able to support joint force requirements." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Secretary General meets Maltese Prime Minister in Valletta NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 26 Apr. 2017 - 27 Apr. 2017 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Maltese Prime Minister Dr. Joseph Muscat on Wednesday (26 April 2017) in Valletta, kicking off a two-day visit to Malta. The meeting was the first ever between a NATO Secretary General and a Prime Minister of Malta. The Secretary General and Prime Minister Muscat discussed NATO's relations with Malta and security challenges of mutual concern, including maritime security. Mr. Stoltenberg stressed NATO's full respect for Malta's policy of neutrality. He also thanked the Maltese government for their work, as holder of the EU Presidency, to strengthen NATO-EU relations. Malta's Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Vella, and the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security, Carmelo Abela, also participated in the meeting. On Thursday, the Secretary General will participate in an informal meeting of European Union Defence Ministers in Valletta, before departing on an official visit to Italy. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address DR Congo: UN seeks $64 million to tackle humanitarian crisis in Kasai region 26 April 2017 The United Nations has appealed for $64.5 million to respond to the urgent needs of 731,000 people over the next six months in the Kasai region, the latest "humanitarian hotspot" in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "The Kasai crisis is an acute crisis of massive proportions in a country that is already going through one of the world's most relentlessly acute humanitarian emergencies," the Humanitarian Coordinator in DRC, Mamadou Diallo, said in Kinshasa. "We are facing a new challenge that requires additional resources to respond to the needs of thousands of displaced people and host families as our current capacities are being outstripped," he added. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than one million people are estimated to be currently displaced as the violence started in Kasai Central and rippled across neighboring Kasai, Kasai Oriental, Lomami and Sankuru provinces. Currently some 40 national and international humanitarian organizations are working across the five provinces to respond to the crisis, which was borne out of armed clashes that erupted in August 2016 between the Congolese army and a local militia group. The appeal launched today will provide water, food, medicines and health services, basic household items, and provide protection services, among others, to minors, women who have suffered sexual violence, and other civilians who have been victim of violence. In Kasai Central province alone, the current humanitarian needs are 400 per cent above what humanitarian actors had planned for earlier this year. "An effective response requires that new and fresh funding be allocated as humanitarian actors cannot afford to take away from their current operations in the eastern provinces to support the Kasai crisis," Mr. Diallo said. More than four months into the year, the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan only received $66 million, or less than 10 per cent of the overall $748 million appeal. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Barred Food Trucks for Burundi Return to Rwandan Capital By Eloge Willy Kaneza April 26, 2017 Ten trucks carrying much-needed food for Burundi are back in Rwanda's capital after authorities denied entry at the border, citing security concerns. The World Food Program in Burundi says the trucks, carrying 300 tons of beans to feed Congolese refugees and other WFP recipients, were stopped at the border last Friday and returned Tuesday to the Rwandan capital, Kigali. Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye defended the decision to deny entry, saying Rwanda has been the source of crime and "insecurity" for Burundi since 2015. "If today, there are objects or people coming from the same area, we must take every necessary measure to protect the population," he told VOA's Central Africa Service. Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for and won a controversial third term in 2015. Low crop yields and high food prices have made hundreds of thousands dependent on international food aid. The head of WFP in Burundi, Nicole Jacquet, says the hardship prompted the agency to buy food in Rwanda, where more goods could be purchased at lower cost. She told VOA that if Burundian officials will not let food enter the country through Rwanda, the trucks will have to drive south and enter through Tanzania. She said the detour will cost the agency $35,000. "This is a huge amount of money," she said. "Our objective is to spend less money and provide more goods to the beneficiaries." Jacquet said WFP is seeking clarification from Burundian officials on whether the route through Rwanda is permanently closed. "If we have to buy less food, with higher costs, we penalize beneficiaries who are the most vulnerable people in Burundi at this moment," she said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Partnerships to Counter Transnational Crime By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity COZUMEL, Mexico, April 25, 2017 The U.S. military is looking for ways to enhance cooperation with its Mexican and Central American partners to address the security challenges that threaten the stability in the region, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said here today. The issues of concern in Central America include migration and countering transnational organized crime, Air Force Gen. Lori J. Robinson said in closing remarks at the two-day Central America Security Conference. "At U.S. Northern Command, we recognize that transnational organized crime does pose a challenge to stability of all the countries in the region," she said, adding that her command is working closely with Mexico and U.S. Southern Command to counter the challenges. The conference, co-hosted by the United States and Mexico, provided a forum for Central American, Mexican and U.S. officials to examine ways to boost cooperation to address the evolving, multidomain threats. 'Collective Willingness' to Address Challenges Robinson urged the countries represented at the conference to continue to collaborate and pursue the ideas that emerged from this year's talks. "I appreciated hearing a collective willingness to work together for stronger partnerships in the region," she told the forum, saying she looks forward to working with the partners to advance efforts for security. Robinson thanked Mexico for its role in hosting the 12th iteration of the conference, which marked the first time the session was held outside Central America. Next year's forum is slated to take place in El Salvador. The conference brought together chiefs of defense and ministers of defense from Central America, plus observers from Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Great Britain. Panama and Costa Rica sent public security representatives. Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, the Southcom commander, addressed the forum yesterday. He highlighted the need for a unified approach in confronting the threats in Central America that are "adaptive and dynamic, constantly reacting." Transnational Organized Crime is 'Common Enemy' According to the Mexican military hosts, the participants reached consensus on greater integration to make their regional security structures more efficient. A joint news release from Mexico's National Defense and Navy secretariats said the countries stressed that transnational crime threatens all nations in the region. "Participant countries remarked that our common enemy is transnational organized crime, which respects no border and it is towards this objective that all our efforts must be focused, with an absolute respect of human rights," the news release said. After the conference, the participating countries hold multilateral and bilateral discussions to define specific steps to achieve the objectives defined in the conference, Southcom spokesman Jose Ruiz said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Top U.S. General in Europe Concludes Counter-Violent Extremist Conference U.S. European Command WIESBADEN, Germany, April 26, 2017 Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. European Command, hosted chiefs of defense from all over Europe here today to discuss how to counter violent extremist organizations. Dozens of senior leaders from NATO and European Union nations attended the conference to discuss how to better counter the threat posed by terrorism. Scaparrotti also serves as NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe. "Terrorism is a transregional problem and presents a clear and present danger to us all," Scaparrotti said. "It is only with the dedication and resolve of allies and partners that we can confront and defeat this transregional threat. No nation stands alone and no nation is immune to the threat of violence posed by terror. Let me re-emphasize, we are stronger together when we're working together." Conference Focused on Five Areas The chiefs of defense conference focused on five areas: -- Developing a shared understanding of the threat; -- Strengthening partnerships; -- Opening new avenues for information sharing; -- Identifying opportunities to enhance the military network; and -- Building better connectivity among the military network, European intelligence and law enforcement agencies. "This fight against terror and violent extremists will not be easy, nor will it be fast," Scaparrotti said. "It is not a war of choice. It will take resources, determination and resolve to see the end of terror in Europe." Scaparrotti said today's conference was a continuation of a similar forum hosted in October by Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "This event was tremendously important to Europe as we continue to exchange views on future military cooperation," he added. The defense chiefs listened, learned, shared and offered insight, Scaparotti said, and all came together on areas in which they can cooperate. "We had an honest and candid discussion regarding the issues and challenges we face here in Europe," he said. "We discussed ways to strengthen the alliance and discussed a whole-of-government approach, because it's not just the military or police that should combat this threat. Our focus here was to develop a shared understand of the threat, strengthen our partnerships, open new avenues for information sharing, identify opportunities to enhance the military network, and build connectivity between our military network, European Intelligence and law enforcement agencies." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China launches second aircraft carrier People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:12, April 26, 2017 DALIAN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- China launched its second aircraft carrier Wednesday morning in a Dalian shipyard in Liaoning Province, northeast China. The new carrier, the first developed and built by China, was transferred from a dry dock into water at a launch ceremony that started at about 9 a.m. in Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. It is China's second aircraft carrier, coming after the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet Union-made carrier that was put into commission in the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in 2012. China began building its second carrier in November 2013. Dock construction started in March 2015. The main body of the carrier has been completed, with equipment of major systems including propulsion and electricity installed. Putting the carrier into water marks progress in China's efforts to design and build a domestic aircraft carrier. After the launch, the new carrier will undergo equipment debugging, outfitting and comprehensive mooring trials. The launch ceremony, including a performance of the national anthem, ribbon cutting, breaking of a champagne bottle on the bow, and steam whistles from ships nearby, was attended by Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, as well as leaders of the PLA Navy and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China Issues Ban on Many Muslim Names in Xinjiang By Joyce Huang April 26, 2017 China has released new restrictions on the naming of children in the far western and mostly Muslim region of Xinjiang, banning ethnic minority Uighur parents from naming their newborns "Muhammad" or names that authorities say have "extremely religious" meanings. The move is the latest in sweeping controls instituted in Xinjiang that authorities say are aimed at keeping the spread of religious extremism in check. Analysts, however, say the hardline approach towards Muslims is not only fueling opposition in Xinjiang, but also stirring ethnic hatred nationwide. Tainted identity Local governments recently rolled out a list of banned ethnic minority names that forbids dozens of religious names, such as "Jihad," "Medina" and even "Yultuzay," a reference to the star and moon symbol of the Islamic faith. All in all, nearly 30 names have been banned according to documents provided to VOA by overseas Uighur activists. According to the regulations and accounts of the new rules circulating online, individuals who violate the restrictions will be denied a hukou, or household registration, which grants citizens access to social benefits, health care and education in China. Complaints among Uighurs are growing and the ban is but the latest restriction. Michael Clarke, an associate professor at Australian National University's National Security College, told VOA in an emailed reply that through the ban and other earlier measures to enhance surveillance of Uighurs, China is seeking to determine which aspects of the Uighur identity will be considered acceptable. And that is making the party-state the arbiter of what he called acceptable "Uighur-ness." Such policies "actively contribute to the further alienation of many Uighurs from Han Chinese and provides fertile ground for the Islamic radicalism that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] fears in Xinjiang." Xinjiang is home to more than 10 million Uighurs, a largely Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic minority. And all this, he said, "acts to construct elements of Uighur identity, such as the practice of Islam, as potentially deviant and dangerous to the security" in China. Rising resentment On April 1, a new set of rules was implemented along with the ban. Those rules also prohibit so-called "abnormal" beards, the wearing of veils in public places and the refusal to watch state television. "All this time, we've [received] lots of complaints directly or indirectly. The situation has gotten worse particularly in the region's south, such as Kashgar, Hotan and Aksu," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Germany-headquartered World Uyghur Congress. "The resentment there has been indirectly substantiated, which is [a] quite worrying [sign]," he said. "I'm afraid that it may trigger even more radical resistance from Uighurs, who find it too much to bear, if the condition continues." The rights activist urged authorities in China to stop suppressing traditional and normal Uighur culture and religious belief in the name of combating Islamic extremists, whom China blames for terrorist attacks and separatist movements. He said China's repressive controls are the real cause of violence and unrest in Xinjiang. China has strongly denied of any abuses there and insisted the legal, cultural and religious rights Uighurs are fully protected. Social stigma Still, following years of China's forceful attempts to integrate Xinjiang and crackdown on Islamic extremists, the social stigma attached to Uighurs is growing a divide and misunderstanding, said Chang Chung-fu, an associate professor of National Chengchi University's ethnology department in Taipei. "I've seen quite a lot of acts of stigmatizing people in Xinjiang and Uighurs. Many generalize conclusions such as 'people in Xinjiang are violent terrorists' or 'you Uighurs are foolish religious followers,'" Chang said. "I find the spread of such [misleading] sentiment an adverse impact on the Mainland's pursuit of so-called Chinese dreams or peaceful rise," he added. And perhaps that is why there has been a prevailing stream of nationalistic response to the rules on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging platform. On social media, most voiced their support for the regulations and even urged the central government to roll out the Xinjiang-oriented anti-Muslim extremist campaign nationwide to areas including Ningxia, Qinghai and even Shaanxi. "In China, the state has to be put before any ethnic groups," a Weibo user wrote in late March, calling Islamic extremists "malignant tumors," which should be removed to "revive the Han Chinese culture." Only a few users questioned the campaign's legitimacy, with one arguing that the rules "infringe on people's freedom of speech and is thus unconstitutional." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Strike on North Korea Could Put Seoul in Jeopardy By Brian Padden April 26, 2017 Thousands of North Korean artillery shells raining down on Seoul. Hundreds of tons of high explosives detonating in the densely populated South Korean capital. Missile strikes as far away as Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam. These are just some of the possible consequences U.S. and South Korean military planners must take into account as they consider a pre-emptive strike to halt Pyongyang's steady advances toward developing an offensive nuclear capability. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has repeatedly said it is finished with its predecessor's policy of "strategic patience" toward North Korea, suggesting the possibility of military action to prevent the North from developing a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the U.S. mainland. Adding military muscle to the rhetoric, a U.S. submarine designed to carry 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles entered a South Korean port on Tuesday. The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group is also heading to the region and conducting naval exercises with Japan and South Korea. And the United States this week began to move part of the THAAD missile defense system to its deployment site 250 kilometers south of Seoul. Rain of fire But analysts say there are high risks associated with any U.S. first strike. A surgical U.S. missile strike to take out one or multiple nuclear or missile sites would likely not be sufficient to destroy or degrade North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals, which are reportedly in numerous fortified underground sites across the country. But a U.S. preventive strike would almost certainly trigger an immediate North Korean retaliation against South Korea. "It might involve artillery attacks on Seoul or elsewhere along the demilitarized zone [DMZ.] It might involve covert operations, but they have several levels of escalation to go before they get to nuclear or even chemical weapons," said John Schilling, a missile technology specialist with 38 North, a North Korea monitoring website run by Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington. North Korea has more than 21,000 artillery weapons, positioned mostly along the inter-Korean border, that could put in jeopardy the lives of 25 million people that live in and around Seoul, the South Korean capital located 56 kilometers south of the border. An assessment of North Korean military capabilities by Strafor, an intelligence analysis organization in Texas, notes the North's artillery arsenal includes 300mm multiple rocket launcher systems that can "rain fire across" Seoul and beyond. "A single volley," a Strafor report said, "could deliver more than 350 metric tons of explosives across the South Korean capital, roughly the same amount of ordnance dropped by 11 B-52 bombers." Nuclear missiles North Korea has more than one thousand ballistic missiles that could strike across South Korea, Japan and possibly as far away as U.S. military bases in Guam. While the North has not yet demonstrated it can successfully mount a miniaturized nuclear warhead on a missile, U.S. and South Korean officials have said they believe Pyongyang has a nuclear Nodong missile that can fire a one ton warhead a distance of up to two thousand kilometers, which would put all of South Korea, most of Japan and parts of Russia and China in range. "I think the majority of people now believe they can put a warhead on top of a missile that can hit targets in Northeast Asia. But when you get to the much longer range they need, such as hitting the United States, I think, we don't know for sure. But most people would believe that it is a work in progress," said Joel Wit, the co-founder of 38 North and a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. In addition to the 10 to 20 nuclear warheads North Korea is believed to have, its missiles could also be armed with deadly chemical weapons from suspected stockpiles of sarin nerve gas. A Nodong is a single stage liquid fuel rocket based on scud missiles developed by the former Soviet Union. Some of North Korea's most recent tests were solid fuel Musudan missiles that have an estimated maximum range of three thousand kilometers, which could potentially reach targets in Japan and as far away as U.S. military bases in Guam. If left unchecked, analysts say, North Korea is on track to develop an ICBM by 2020 that could reach the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang is also developing a submarine launch ballistic missile (SLBM) capability. The more than 28,000 U.S. forces in Korea and 50,000 troops in Japan would also be possible targets for any North Korea retaliatory strikes. Analysts say any North Korean counter strike would draw a quick response from the United States, South Korea and Japan that could further escalate the conflict, draw in China, and lead to a second Korean war. Youmi Kim contributed to this report NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Lawmakers Briefed on North Korea Threat By Steve Herman April 26, 2017 Lawmakers from both the Senate and the House of Representatives received separate extraordinary classified briefings by the administration of President Donald Trump Wednesday. Those attending were able to ask questions of the president's national security team and learn about the "broad range of options to remove this threat" from North Korea, which a senior administration official also described as "very grave" posed by the brutal and unpredictable Kim Jong Un regime. All 100 senators gathered at midafternoon in an auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, for the briefing led by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford. President Trump also was in attendance for a brief time, calling it a "very important" event. "It was a sobering briefing in which it was clear just how much thought and planning is going into planning military options if called for, and a diplomatic strategy that strike me as clear eyed and well proportioned to the threat," Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters afterward. Before the briefers subsequently headed to Capitol Hill for a similar discussion, to which all the 431 current House members were invited, a joint statement issued by Tillerson and Coats warned that "we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies" if diplomacy fails to de-escalate North Korea's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said North Korea's unpredictability prompted him to ask the president to brief the full Senate. Trump "has made clear that a North Korea that is armed with a nuclear missile, a capability they have yet to test, is unacceptable to us and threatens our vital national security interests," McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican John McCain, made similar remarks, describing a nuclear capable North Korea as a threat of historic proportions. "I think the situation in one respect is as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis was," he told VOA's Serbian Service. "But there's also another aspect to this, and that is that China can restrain North Korea. In other words, this is not just a question of confrontation between the United States and North Korea. The Chinese can controland do controlthe economy of North Korea. President Trump has established a relationship with the Chinese leader, and so one can at least know that that option is there." Meanwhile, a U.S. Navy strike force, led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, is approaching the east coast of the Korean peninsula. A Navy nuclear submarine armed with guided missiles, the USS Michigan, also has made a call to the port of Busan in South Korea, as an additional show of force to North Korea. Trump and U.S. officials have repeatedly said all options remain "on the table" to deal with further North Korean provocations. A long-awaited U.S. missile defense system will be operational in South Korea within a matter of days to protect the country from a possible strike by North Korea. The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific region gave the assurance on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, also known as THAAD, Wednesday during an appearance before the House Armed Services Committee. "It will be operational in the coming days and able to better defend South Korea," Pacific Command Commander Adm. Harry Harris told U.S. lawmakers, warning the threat from Pyongyang is not limited to the Korean Peninsula. "With every test, (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un moves closer to his stated goal of a preemptive nuclear strike capability against American cities," Harris added. He also urged lawmakers to consider placing additional missile defense systems in Hawaii. In a repeat of often-heard rhetoric, North Korea's foreign ministry issued a fresh warning that "in case a war breaks out on the peninsula, the U.S. will be held wholly accountable for causing trouble after bringing lots of strategic assets and special warfare means." North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, characterized current joint drills between the U.S. and South Korean navies as a prelude to an invasion. Trump has said Chinese President Xi Jinping is applying pressure on North Korea to not engage in further provocations. It is speculated by analysts in Washington and Beijing that China is threatening to cut crude oil supplies to its impoverished neighbor should it conduct another nuclear test. "I'm reasonably optimistic now that China is having an influenceworking in the right direction," Admiral Harris said. "And I believe Kim Jong Un has noticed that there's a change afoot with regard to China." VOA's Michael Bowman, Katherine Gypson, Pete Heinlein and Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Araqchi: US still complying with commitments under JCPOA IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Vienna, April 26, IRNA -- Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday although the US has officially announced that it is reviewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it is still complying with its JCPOA commitments during the procedure. He made the remarks at the end of the Seventh Joint Meeting on JCPOA in Vienna in response to a question on his evaluation of US stance regarding the landmark nuclear deal which was signed between Iran and the G5+1 (US, Britain, Russia, France and China plus Germany) in July 2015. The deal official implementation started on January 20, 2016. Noting that that the session of the joint commission was good, Araqchi said the significant message of the session was the fact that all participants stressed they would fulfill their commitments based on the nuclear deal. So far, the US position regarding the JCPOA is to remain committed to the deal, however, there are some "negative statements" off and then which are far from the positive ambience required for implementation of the international nuclear deal, Araqchi said noting that participants of the session discussed those negative statements during the meeting. The 7th Iran-G5+1 Joint Commission session ended in Vienna after three hours of discussion on controversial issues, including disloyalty of the US and Iran's purchase of 950 tons of yellow cake. Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi and Deputy Foreign Minister for Euro-American Affairs Majid Takht-Ravanchi as well as Helga Schmid, the Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), were present in the Tuesday meeting. That was the first session of the commission since the new US administration assumed office. 8072**1394 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address JCPOA commission underlines full implementation of nuclear deal IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, April 26, IRNA -- All participants of the nuclear deal joint commission noted their continued adherence to Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action commitments and stressed the need to ensure its full and effective implementation, European External Action Service Secretary General Helga Schmid said in a statement. According to the official website of European External Action Service, a meeting of the joint commission of the JCPOA was held on 25 April 2017 in Vienna. This was the 5th meeting of the joint commission since JCPOA Implementation Day. Under the terms of the JCPOA, the joint commission is responsible for overseeing implementation of the nuclear deal. The joint commission was chaired, on behalf of EU High Representative Mogherini, by EEAS Secretary-General Helga Schmid and was attended by the E3+3 (China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) and Iran at the level of political directors or deputy foreign ministers. The meeting provided the opportunity to address the implementation of the JCPOA with regard to nuclear and sanctions related commitments. The joint commission particularly welcomed the important progress made on the Arak modernization project, where Chinese and Iranian companies signed the first consultancy services contract on Sunday, 23 April, in Vienna. Participants discussed importance of implementation of Annex III of the JCPOA on civil nuclear cooperation, and welcomed in this context the recent EU-Iran high-level seminar on international nuclear cooperation. 9191**1771 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran's FM calls on US to live up to its JCPOA commitments Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:18PM Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has called on the US to honor is obligations under Iran's historic nuclear deal with world powers. "No amount of reported 'imposed' negative spin can hide fact that US admitted Iran's adherence to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) onus on US to live up to its part," tweeted Zarif on his official account on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Zarif brushed off US President Donald Trump's remarks that Washington may not remain in the nuclear deal. "Do not pay much attention to Trump's words," said Zarif after addressing a cabinet session. Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iran is sticking to the terms of the JCPOA. However, he accused Iran of supporting terrorism and questioned whether sanctions should keep being lifted. He added that Trump's administration was reviewing the lifting of sanctions against Iran, leveling the allegation that Tehran remains a sponsor of terrorism. Following Tillerson's remarks, Trump claimed that Iran was "not living up to the spirit" of the nuclear agreement. Zarif had earlier slammed the US claims against Iran as "worn-out accusations" that cannot mask Washington's "admission of Iran's compliance" with the nuclear agreement. Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Economy top on agenda of Iranian presidential candidates Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:30PM Iranian presidential hopefuls talk about economic challenges facing the country amid a heated race for the May election. Mostafa Aqa-Mirsalim, who is a member of the Expediency Council, said on Wednesday that economic issues were his top priority and underscored the need for focusing on resilient economy. He said that Iran needed to rely on an economy not dependent on oil revenues. "We will make efforts to facilitate the country's economic growth in practice. The growth we see now is made from the oil sale, which I do not agree with at all," he added. He said that creating jobs was necessary but stressed that curbing economic stagnation in the short run was an urgent matter. Meanwhile, Es'haq Jahangiri, the first vice president, said that the current Iranian administration had taken big steps towards improving conditions in the country by relying on national capacities, and said further measures needed to be taken to that effect. Jahangiri pointed to the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and the 5+1 group of countries and said the deal had opened new opportunities for economic development. He also described unemployment as a major challenge in the country, describing domestic production and investment in the economic sector as the only way to create jobs in the country. Jahangiri said that the banking system and foreign resources could be employed to boost investment in the country. Earlier this week, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, also underlined the need for relying on domestic capabilities to develop the country's economy. Qalibaf, who was addressing a campaign in the holy city of Qom on Monday, said Iran enjoyed great economic resources and capacities, citing the country's ranking in terms of oil and gas reserves. The Tehran mayor also blamed officials' mismanagement for unemployment, stagnation and high cost of living in the country. Iranians will go the polls on May 19 to elect the country's 12th president out of six candidates. Three other candidates are incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, former vice president and minister Mostafa Hashemi-Taba and Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi, the current custodian of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza (PBUH) in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi forces retake Hatra city from Daesh Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 12:45PM Iraqi forces have liberated the ancient city of Hatra in Nineveh province from the control of the Daesh terrorist group. According to al-Sumaria news website, Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Hashd al-Sha'abi, said in a statement on Wednesday that its fighters took control of the city, which lies to the south of Mosul, after fierce clashes with the Daesh terrorists. Iraqi forces launched an operation to liberate the city and its surrounding areas on Tuesday. Hatra is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site of the same name that was destroyed by Daesh. The city lies in the northern province of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. Iraqi army soldiers and pro-government popular fighters have made sweeping gains against Takfiri elements since launching an operation to retake Mosul. Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Six months into battle for Mosul, water, trauma care are key UN and partner priorities 26 April 2017 Safe drinking water is a major concern in Mosul, where a battle has been underway for the past six months to retake the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the United Nations humanitarian arm has said. Some 450,000 people are currently displaced and the number continues "to increase rapidly," the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Iraq said. Humanitarian partners are trucking water to eastern Mosul at a rate of 2.3 million litres every day. Nearly 28 neighbourhoods now have access to clean drinking water in the east. However, "in newly retaken areas of western Mosul city, water trucking has already begun on a small scale, but significant increase in scale is required," OCHA said. The UN is also working with partners to re-establish a functioning city-wide water network. In addition to water, emergency food and hygiene supplies are being distributed to families close to the front lines. More than 2.1 million people received urgent aid since October. As the fighting rages, ensuring that trauma casualties receive the specialized treatment they need in a timely manner remains a high priority, UN and humanitarian partners have said. Since mid-October, more than 8,100 people have been referred to hospitals in Mosul and surrounding areas. New field hospitals have also been created, one for emergency reproductive and obstetric healthcare. In addition, the UN and its partners are working to house families and provide protection, particularly to women and children. More funding is needed. The 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan for Iraq requesting $985 million is currently 17 per cent funded, according to OCHA. About $331 million of that is sought for the Mosul operation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ex-Pakistan Taliban Spokesman Claims India, Afghanistan Targeting Pakistan By Ayaz Gul April 26, 2017 A central leader and ex-spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, has alleged Afghan security forces and their intelligence agency, NDS, together with the Indian spy agency are supporting cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistan. The militant leader in a video confessional statement released by the Pakistan Army, said he was also participating in anti-state activities from sanctuaries on the Afghan side of the border and surrendered himself "voluntarily" to Pakistan army. There was no immediate reaction from the Afghan government and Indian officials to the allegation leveled by Ehsan against them, though both Kabul and New Delhi have previously denied Islamabad's allegations of funding terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. When Pakistani security forces unleashed counter-militancy operations in the border region of North Waziristan (in June, 2014), Ehsan said militants fled to neighboring Afghanistan where they established contacts with the Afghan intelligence agency, NDS (National Directorate of Security), and through them with operatives of the Indian spy agency, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing). "They supported them (Pakistani Taliban), funded them, and even assigned possible targets [for attacks in Pakistan]," Eshan asserted, adding that anti-Pakistan militants have established their "special committees" in Afghanistan for maintaining contacts with the NDS. He went on to allege that the Afghan spy agency also issued national identification cards, called 'tazkira,' to members of the Pakistani Taliban to facilitate their infiltration into Pakistan to undertake subversive activities in the country. A Pakistan military spokesman announced last week that Ehsan surrendered himself to security forces but would not say where and how they got hold of the militant leader. Pakistani officials have described his arrest/surrender as a major success in counter terrorism operations and hope information gleaned from Ehsan will help further degrade Pakistani Taliban's activities in the country. Before surrendering to authorities, Ehsan was mainly acting as spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistan Taliban. He claimed responsibility on behalf of his group for a number of deadly attacks in Pakistan, including an Easter suicide bombing of a crowded park in Lahore that killed killed at least 70 people, including Christians and Muslims. It was not clear from the video whether Ehsan was speaking under duress. The United States last year designated Jamaat-ul-Ahrar as a terrorist group for claiming responsibility for attacking a U.S. diplomatic mission in northwestern Pakistan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address French Intelligence Blames Assad For Chemical Deaths In Khan Sheikhun RFE/RL April 26, 2017 A French intelligence report has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve-gas attack earlier this month in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his closest entourage ordered the strike. "There is no doubt that sarin gas was used" in the suspected attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told the media after presenting the report on April 26. "There is also no doubt about the responsibility of the Syrian regime, given the way that the sarin used was produced," Ayrault said. At least 87 people were killed in the suspected attack, which prompted the United States to respond with a cruise-missile strike on a Syrian air base -- its first assault on Assad's government in the six-year-old conflict. The declassified six-page report -- put together by France's military and foreign intelligence services -- said it reached its conclusion based on samples obtained from the impact strike on the ground, and a blood sample from a victim. The document said that among the elements found in the samples was hexamine, a hallmark of sarin produced by the Syrian government. "The French intelligence services consider that only Bashar al-Assad and some of his most influential entourage can give the order to use chemical weapons," the report said. It added that militant groups in the area did not have the capacity to develop and launch such an attack and that the extremist group Islamic State (IS) was not in the region. The report also said that Assad's claim to the AFP news agency on April 13 that the attack was fabricated was "not credible" given the mass flows of casualties in a short space of time arriving in Syrian and Turkish hospitals. Russia, which has backed Assad throughout the six-year-old war in Syria, said the French report was not enough to prove who was behind the suspected attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 26 that Moscow's position on the attack was "unchanged" and "that the only way to establish the truth about what happened in Khan Sheikhun is an impartial international investigation." Russia has said that the attack could have been staged, or that Syrian government bombs could have hit a rebel-held chemical-weapons facility -- claims that the United States and other Western government say are not credible. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which examines chemical attacks but does not place blame, said on April 19 that samples from victims showed that sarin or a similar substance was used. On April 20, the OPCW rejected a Russian-Iranian move to launch a new investigation, with Western diplomats saying Moscow's aim was to get its own investigators or those of an allied country involved. The United States and other countries have voiced support for the existing OPCW investigative mechanism. With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/syria-france-report-blames- assad-chemical-strike/28452985.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 Syria: UN aid officials urge end to airstrikes on hospitals 26 April 2017 Following reports of airstrikes that damaged hospitals in northern Syria, two senior United Nations humanitarian officials today called for an end to such attacks. In a joint statement, Kevin Kennedy, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, said that "it is completely unacceptable that facilities and people who are trying to save lives are being bombed." "The persistent and unceasing attacks on hospitals and medical facilities are one of the most egregious features of this war and have taken the lives of hundreds of medical personnel and deprived people in need of their most fundamental human right- the right to life. It must stop," he added. Ali Al-Za'tari, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, called for "the parties to the conflict to abide by their obligation under international humanitarian and human rights law to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals." The UN community is appalled by the ongoing damage and destruction of medical facilities in northern Syria depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, they said. According to the statement, on 25 April at dawn, the Shahid Wasim Husseini hospital in Kafr Takharim city was reportedly hit by airstrikes, putting it out of service. On 22 April, airstrikes in the area of Abdin in Idleb Governorate reportedly hit an underground field hospital and reportedly killed four civilians. Four other airstrikes impacting medical facilities were reported in April alone in this region, including a hospital specializing in maternal and child care. Almost all facilities were rendered out of service as a result. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ankara says military had informed Washington, Moscow of air raid Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 1:32PM Turkish officials say the United States and Russia were informed in advance of a recent airstrike carried out on the positions of suspected Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday that the Turkish military had informed Washington and Moscow on the attack a day earlier that targeted Kurdish-dominated areas in Syria and neighboring Iraq. "Two hours before this operation, we shared information with the US and Russia that we would undertake an operation," Cavusoglu said, adding that Ankara had also told Washington in the "last few weeks" that such military operations would be carried out. Turkey claims 70 suspected Kurdish militants were killed in the attack on what it has described as "terrorist havens" in Syria and Iraq. Sources on the ground, however, say more than two dozen were killed in the air raid, which faced swift ire in Washington. The US Department of State said it was "deeply concerned" the strike was conducted "without proper coordination" either with the US military or commanders within a broader international coalition, which claims to be fighting Daesh Takfiri terrorists in Iraq and Syria. Cavusoglu, however, who was speaking to reporters in Uzbekistan, said Ankara had nothing to hide and that it was entitled to "a legitimate right" to intervene militarily in Syria and Iraq to repel threats. The top diplomat said the air raids were not necessarily a violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria. "There are terrorists that enter Turkey via different paths," he said, adding, "Turkey acts transparently on all issues. We have no secret agenda... We respect Syria and Iraq's territorial integrity." Both Iraq and Syria have repeatedly criticized Turkey for attacks and deployments of troops in the two countries. The Iraqi government condemned the recent air raid, saying it violated the Arab country's sovereignty. The Kurdistan regional government also denounced as "unacceptable" Turkey's airstrike, which killed at least six peshmerga Kurdish fighters. Turkey has defended its intervention in Iraq and Syria, claiming it seeks to prevent a potential spillover of the conflict into its territory. In a new development on Wednesday, the Turkish military said it had retaliated in kind against a mortar attack from the Syrian territories under the control of the government. There was no comment from Damascus. Turkey has also been at odds with the United States over military action in Syria, which Washington says is mainly aimed at countering the rising influence of Kurdish fighters in the country. Ankara says Kurdish militants fighting Daesh in Syria are an extension of outlawed Kurdish groups in Turkey. The US has supported Syrian Kurds and claims they could finally recapture the city of Raqqah, the de facto capital of Daesh in Syria. A monitoring group said on Wednesday that the death toll from Turkish raids north of Syria had reached 28. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead belonged to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the main Syrian Kurdish militia group fighting Daesh. The observatory said 19 people were also injured in the raids, adding that a major media center in the border province of Hasakah was also targeted in the attacks. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey Arrests 1,000 in Sped-up Anti-Gulen Crackdown By Ken Schwartz April 26, 2017 Turkish authorities say they have arrested more than 1,000 people and suspended 9,100 policemen in an accelerated crackdown on alleged supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen. The government blames the exiled cleric for orchestrating last year's failed military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Officials said Wednesday 1,009 "secret imams" who infiltrated the police and other state-run agencies were arrested. More than 9,100 police personnel suspected of being Gulen backers were suspended. "In Turkey, there was an attempted coup with a goal of toppling the government and destroying the state," Erdogan told the Reuters News Agency. "We are trying to cleanse members of FETO inside the armed forces, inside the judiciary, and inside the police," he said using the government's acronym for the Gulen group. Turkey has arrested or fired more than 160,000 alleged coup organizers and participants since last July. Gulen, who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, denies playing any part in the coup. The State Department has balked at Turkey's demand for his extradition, citing a lack of concrete evidence. The latest arrests come a little more than a week after Turkish voters narrowly approved a referendum to expand Erdogan's presidential powers and weaken parliament a move the opposition says could destroy Turkish democracy and secular traditions. Supporters say it will bring stability to Turkey after years of political uncertainty that came with power-sharing coalition governments. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Air Force test-launches nuclear-capable ballistic missile Iran Press TV Wed Apr 26, 2017 5:15PM The US Air Force has test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads, a move that is expected to escalate simmering tensions with North Korea over its development of missiles and nuclear weapons. The unarmed Minuteman III missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles, California, and successfully hit the target near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test was aimed at assessing the effectiveness, readiness, and accuracy of the missile system, the USAF said. Colonel John Moss, the commander of the 30th Space Wing, said the Minuteman missiles need to be tested on a regular basis to ensure their reliability and to demonstrate the national nuclear capabilities. The timing of the test was questioned by peace groups, with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation calling it a "double standard" in the wake of rising tensions with Pyongyang. "When it comes to missile testing, the US is operating with a clear double standard: It views its own tests as justified and useful, while it views the tests of North Korea as threatening and destabilizing," the foundation's president David Krieger said in a statement on Tuesday. "What is needed is diplomacy rather than military provocations. Threats, whether in the form of tweets, nuclear-capable aircraft carrier groups, or nuclear-capable missile launches, only increase the dangers to us all." Washington has warned Pyongyang of a military confrontation if it does not stop its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The US has recently deployed a naval strike group to waters off the Korean Peninsula. A nuclear submarine is slated to join the strike group, which is currently carrying out joint drills with Japanese forces. The North has so far conducted five confirmed nuclear tests and numerous missile test-launches, and it is believed to be preparing for a sixth nuclear weapons test. Earlier on Wednesday, the Pentagon began transporting parts of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to a planned deployment site in South Korea. Seoul and Washington reached an agreement over the THAAD's deployment in July last year, declaring that the objective is to protect South Korea against the North's alleged missile threats, a move that has been criticized by Russia and China. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss the latest local news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will fork out wages of up to 58,000 a year for a new employee tasked with freeing up beds at the countys hospitals. The high-pressure roles healthy salary is offset by the prospect of the successful candidate having to make tough decisions to free up some of the 960 beds at the major hospitals in Cheltenham and Gloucester. National media and Wales Online reported one patient with a serious mental health condition spent almost four years (1,338 days) in a Welsh hospital, despite being declared fit for discharge. Bed-blocking is one the NHS most pressing issues and the new Head of Capacity and Patient Flow will have to address this daily, at one of the largest hospital Trusts in England. Gloucestershire Hospitals have a 500m annual operating income, more than 125,000 emergency attendances and nearly 800,000 outpatient appointments each year. As part of a workforce of at least 8,000 staff, the person taking the new job will make beds available for patients by effective leadership of the site management team, discharge teams and the transport co-ordinator. Safe patient flow throughout the Trust is also a key element of the job at Gloucester Royal and Cheltenham General, optimising their experience and minimising clinical risk. An advert on the NHS Jobs site says the role requires someone who can cope with conflicting pressures, and will go the extra mile in order to achieve what is best for our services. The countys health service is currently working through a five year masterplan to transform its health services. As reported by Gloucestershire Live earlier this month, NHS England plans to introduce 150 urgent treatment centres to take pressure off A and E departments, extend GP services on evenings and weekends, save an extra 5,000 lives a year through improved cancer care and increase beds in mental health services for young people. The news followed a report by Healthwatch Gloucestershire which found that while many patients do not experience problems leaving hospital, others encountered significant problems with the process. The independent champion for health and social care issues asked for more work to be done on the issue, including communication with patients and their families and carers, arrangements for medication, non-emergency transport and care at home. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss the latest local news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter A man in his 20s has been arrested for terror offences following an incident yards from Downing Street. Armed police flooded Whitehall after reports a man with a backpack full of knives has been arrested yards from Downing Street. Security services were already on a state of high alert after last month's attack on Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament by Khalid Masood, the Mirror Online reports. A number of the countys MPs who were in Parliament at the time spoke of their shock after a car was seen driven at pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. Scotland Yard has just issued a statement confirming a man has been arrested in Whitehall this afternoon. In a statement it said the man was held at approximately 2:22pm following a stop and search as part of an ongoing operation. It continues: The man was arrested in Parliament Street, junction with Parliament Square, by armed officers from the Mets Specialist Firearms Command. The man, aged in his late twenties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.Knives have been recovered from him. He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat. What appears to be a carving knife of at least ten inches in length has been spotted in the hand of a police forensics officer. The item is among of a number seized after the incident in Whitehall where one man has been arrested. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss the latest local news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter A concerned member of the public who spotted a child left alone in a car for 20 minutes told police - some 10 hours after the incident had happened. A child of around three to four-years-old was seen left alone in the car in the Tesco car park in Stratford Road, Stroud on Saturday, April 22. That was between 9.15am and 9.35am and the child was apparently seen alone in the car. To the person 'looking after' a child approximately 3-4 years old, who left them alone in a locked car (no open windows) for more than 20mins playing on a tablet this morning at Tesco, Stroud, Stratford road (09:15-09:35), was posted anonymously on public Facebook page Spotted: Stroud/Stonehouse at 12.19am on Sunday, April 24. When I left you still had not returned to that car, police have your details and pictures. This is child endangerment and neglect. A police spokesman confirmed that the matter was reported to them 10 hours after it was alleged to have happened. It was reported to police at 7.30pm on 22 April, said a police spokesman. The caller reported having seen a child alone in a car for about 20 minutes at 9.15am that morning in the Tesco car park, Stratford Road, Stroud. She said that initial inquiries found there was no reason to suggest further concerns for the child. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss the latest local news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter A pensioner who was found dead on a railway line between Gloucester and Bristol had been in contact with police before his death, it has emerged. Geoffrey Arthur Ernest Leyland died on March 20 in a collision with a train near Cam and Dursley station. Before the collision, he had been in contact with police and the Gloucestershire force confirmed that it referred the 75-year-olds death to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Mr Leyland, from Wotton-under-Edge, died when he was in a collision with a train just before 8pm on Monday, March 20. Gloucestershire police would not reveal the nature of what contact they had with Mr Leyland before his death but said they had referred the matter to the IPCC, and the IPCC said it had handed the case back. As part of a mandatory requirement in the case of the death or serious injury of a person following police contact, Gloucestershire Constabulary referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in relation to a man who died on a railway line near Stroud on 20 March, said a Gloucestershire police spokesman. The IPCC has deemed the matter suitable for local investigation by Gloucestershire police. It would be inappropriate to comment further while this process is ongoing. An Independent Police Complaints Commission spokesman confirmed that the death of Mr Leyland had been referred to it by Gloucestershire Constabulary but it had handed the matter back to the force. The cause of Mr Leylands death is not being treated as suspicious, British Transport Police confirmed. An inquest in to his death was opened and adjourned on March 29, and a full inquest hearing is expected to take place on August 10. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Never miss the latest local news again by signing up to our Daily Newsletter An extra set of traffic lights on a Cheltenham road already inundated with them will be removed by the end of next week. They were placed outside the old Travis Perkins site on Gloucester Road at the start of the week, as work continues to make it fit for building 107 homes. From the turning opposite the Shell garage, off the A40, motorists encounter five sets of permanent traffic lights, up to where the road meets the A4019 near Tesco. With Cheltenham Spa station on the route, along with shops and Gloucester Road Primary School, it can get very congested in rush hour- and the temporary lights only worsen the problem. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, because they should be removed by the end of next week. Taylor Wimpey will begin building on the site at the end of May. Demolition of the components belonging to building merchants Travis Perkins, who moved to a new 100,000sq ft Tewkesbury Road store, was finished three weeks ago. In their place will be over 100 homes, access areas, car parking and landscaping. Planning permission was granted by Cheltenham Borough Council in July 2015 and the development was tested against several key criteria including its design, sustainable living and affordable housing. Taylor Wimpey estimate forming the official entrance to the site will take three to four months. We are very excited about the launch of our Taylors Yard development in Cheltenham, a spokesman said. We will be opening a sales information centre with two showhomes at the development in autumn this year, but prospective purchasers can register their interest now by visiting the website. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get our weekly round-up of the best things to do and see with What's On in Gloucestershire The lovely Will Young is in town, soaking up the atmosphere of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. His gig at the Town Hall on Friday might be sold out but we think youve got a good chance of bumping into the original Pop Idol around town. Hes also just been confirmed as one of the DJs at the hottest party of the festival the 131 Ultimate House Party on Saturday night. We know Will was at the Town Hall last night watching Laura Mvula open the festival and we know he popped into the Daffodil as well for an impromptu performance. These are some other places we have a feeling he might visit. Ella and Fleur Hot Yoga in Pittville Street Will is already signed up for mindfulness masterclasses at Soul Circus, the lifestyle festival part hosted by the yoga studio in the summer. We wouldnt be surprised if he pops into a class. James of Montpellier Will is a seriously stylish chap these days, the boutiques of Montpellier might tempt him Kindness and Co as one of the nicest men in pop how will he be able to resist this friendly and healthy cafe in Clarence Street. Danville Community College students headed to the courthouse Wednesday morning as they conducted a mock murder trial and received praise for their efforts from Danville Circuit Court Judge Joseph Milam. I wish our lawyers would be so direct in their arguments, Milam told the students after the trial. Its refreshing. DCC Professor John Wilts law class conducted a mock trial Wednesday at the Danville Courthouse. DCC students played the prosecuting and defense attorneys, as well as several witnesses in the faux murder case of the Commonwealth of Virginia v. Britt Reynolds. Milam began the proceedings by allowing prosecutor Chris Chandler and defense attorney Essense Price to give their opening statements. Chandler said he hoped to prove Reynolds was guilty of first-degree murder of her school friend, Ann Marcus, and robbery. I hope to prove that my client Britt Reynolds is not guilty of these charges and this was just a horrible accident, Price responded. The two attorneys then presented evidence by calling various witnesses to the stand, such as Reynolds friends, the coroner, police officers and others. Chandler presented evidence suggesting Reynolds murdered her friend by striking her with a rock in the fictional Sandlewood Canyon after the victim threatened to reveal that Reynolds cheated in class, while Price presented the event as a rock climbing accident that led to the victims death. A major point of contention against Reynolds was she knew about Marcus head wound even though she claimed to not be present during the death a detail Chandler hammered home in his cross examination. Milam said he was impressed with how Chandler focused on the detail. Price finished off her witness interviews with a former coroner, who said the wounds on the victim were consistent with a fall, not blunt force trauma. Milam approved of her choice to interview the coroner last. Its always important to finish strong, whether youre the prosecution or defense, Milam said. He also liked how focused Chandler was in questioning the defendant. Theres no need to provide them with self-serving testimony, Milam said. Hit them with what hurts them and move on. Ultimately, Milam said that he thought there was not enough evidence for a jury to convict Reynolds of either of her fictitious charges. These facts come down to a critical principle, Milam said, In our system of justice, proof has to be beyond possible and beyond very possible. Wilt said he also was impressed with his students, and hoped some of them would consider a future in the criminal justice system. Its a great opportunity to get into the circuit court, he said. Pittsylvania County taxpayers will now have another way to pay their tax bills by going to American National Bank. Due to construction at the Pittsylvania County Courthouse to make it more secure, there have been questions raised about how those with physical limitations will be able to best pay their bills. A pilot program was conceived by the treasurers office to make paying taxes easier this year. The new security entrance is going to place yet another obstacle before the taxpayer to get into our office, so we were looking for more ways to branch out into the community, Treasurer Vincent Shorter said. They [American National Bank] already have the county accounts and it makes for an easier transition. American National was chosen because it has the largest number of banks throughout the county and county accounts were already in use. From a security standpoint, its better, because we dont have to transport money physically to a bank, Shorter said. Its beneficial to the bank that the deposits are being made in real time. This was a natural progression to take the next step to be more customer friendly. Taxpayers do not have to be customers at American National, they just have to bring the coupon portion at the bottom of any bill sent directly from the county into one of the branches offering this service. The participating branches are: Main (Danville), NorDan, Airport, Piedmont Drive, Chatham, Gretna, South Boston, Martinsville, Collinsville, Ridgeway and South Lake. There is no extra fee for this service for either the county or the taxpayer. However, the bank employees will not be able to answer questions about the bills being paid. People with questions should direct those to the Treasurers Office in the Pittsylvania County Courthouse. The proposed increase in Danvilles real estate tax rate is a little too steep and could hurt recent gains in the local housing market, said the president of the Dan River Region Association of Realtors. Seven and a half cents is rather high for Danville at this point in time, said Kelli Hauser, owner and broker-in-charge at Hauser Manasco Realty Group. Any increase in the tax rate will negatively affect the local housing market, Hauser said. Though president of the association, Hauser said she was not speaking on behalf of the group. The housing market in the Dan River Region is recovering from the Great Recession; sales are up 28 percent from last year in Danville and Pittsylvania County, Hauser said. A 7-cent increase could reverse some of that gain, she said. It could have a negative effect on people buying houses and the momentum we have been seeing in the last year, Hauser said. The real estate tax rate is the first item potential homebuyers ask about to make sure they can afford their payments, since many owners pay their real estate tax as part of their monthly house payments, she said. Hauser pointed out that she does not know the ins and outs of the citys overall proposed $288 million 2017-18 budget, which was proposed by City Manager Ken Larking last month. It includes tax hikes and increased funding for three priority areas: crime reduction, public schools and projects designed to grow Danville. Larking originally proposed raising the real estate tax rate from 73 cents to 88 cents per $100 of assessed value, but councilmen inquired about alternatives to the 15-cent increase to raise revenue and the city has advertised raising it to 80 cents, instead. A homeowner with a house valued at $75,000 would pay an additional $52.50 per year or $4.38 per month under an 80-cent rate, according to the city. Jim Houser, senior Realtor with ERA Holley and Gibson Realty Inc., said no one likes tax increases, but if you expect the community to provide good services, those services have to be paid for. The original 15-cent proposal was very unfair, but the 7-cent increase is more reasonable, Houser said. It seems like every time a tax increase is proposed, they want to hit homeowners, he said. Its good to look at whats fair for everybody, what it is that everybody pays, said Houser, who serves on the associations board of directors. Everybody pays sales tax even travelers passing through the city or a meals tax or gas tax, he said. Sales tax would be a better option since everyone pays it, Houser said. Just zeroing in on the homeowner all the time with a high tax is not a good thing, Houser said. The city proposes an increase in the meals tax from 6 to 7 percent. Also, the proposed hotel/motel lodging tax has been advertised at 7 percent. The current tax is 6 percent. The region is coming out of one of the worst disasters for the market were slowly recovering from that, Houser said. When potential buyers in New England are looking at property in the region, the low real estate tax is attractive to them, Houser said. Keeping the real estate tax down is important, he said. Housing is a key indicator of the overall economy, he said. When housing is doing well, its likely the rest of the economy is performing strongly, too, he said. If people are not making money, theyre not spending money, and theyre not looking for a new home, Houser said. If taxes and house payments are too high, theyll be tempted to rent instead of buy, he said. Hampton Wilkins, vice president of the association and broker/owner at Wilkins & Co. Realtors, said Danville has been blessed with favorable tax rates compared to other parts of the state. If the tax increase affects their bottom line of investors who own apartments, we could see an increase in rents, Wilkins said. Danville has the second-lowest real estate tax rate among cities in Virginia, second only to Williamsburg. Wilkins said he understands the city needs to fund improvements in education and provide services, but he doesnt want all of the burden to fall on real estate. He said he was much more in favor of the 7-cent increase than the original 15-cent proposal. Wilkins said he was not speaking on behalf of the association. City Council has a tough decision to make, and Wilkins said he hopes city leaders will make the appropriate choices. Laurie Moran, president of the Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber has not discussed nor taken a position on the revenue streams currently being discussed by Danville City Council to fund their 2017-18 budget. We do strongly support the priorities that City Council has identified and recognize that those priorities will require appropriate resources, Moran said. We are encouraging our members to contact City Council members if they have specific views on the budget or any of the specific areas of the budget. The city will also advertise a 50-cent increase in the personal property tax rate and a 60-cent increase in the airplane personal property tax rate. City Council also has the option of choosing lower rates for these revenue sources. In addition, the proposed budget sets aside funds for an average 2 percent pay-for-performance raise for city employees. The personal property tax rate to be advertised is $3.50 per $100 in value. The current rate is $3 per $100 in value. The airplane personal property tax rate to be advertised is 90 cents per $100 in value. The current rate is 30 cents per $100 in value. Utility rates will remain unchanged, with the exception of the rate for streetlights, most of which is paid for with funds from the Virginia Department of Transportation. There will be public hearings on the proposed tax increases during Danville City Councils meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday. The Apple Cup of women's rowing is on tap this Saturday, April 29, as Washington heads to the Snake River to face Washington State in the annual dual regatta. Racing begins at 9:00 a.m. PT.The Huskies, who remain at No. 1 in the most recent CRCA/USRowing polls, went two-for-four in races at the 106annual Cal Dual this past weekend on the Montlake Cut. Washington won the varsity four and the second varsity eight races, but fell to California in the third and first varsity eights.This weekend, the Washington women look to take home their seventh Apple Cup in a row, as they have won the varsity eight race the previous six seasons. Last year Washington won all four races at home.The No. 1 Huskies will race the No. 14 Cougars in the three NCAA events, plus an additional third, fourth, and fifth varsity eight race. Here is a look at Saturday's racing schedule:SATURDAY'S SCHEDULE9:00 a.m. PT Women's Fifth Varsity 8+9:15 a.m. PT Women's Fourth Varsity 8+/Freshman 8+9:30 a.m. PT Women's Third Varsity 8+9:45 a.m. PT Women's Varsity 4+10:00 a.m. PT Women's Second Varsity 8+10:15 a.m. PT Women's Varsity 8+(NOTE: Event order may change pending conditions on race day)There will be no live stats available in real time, however, results will be posted to Twitter (@UW_Rowing) and Facebook following the races.Washington will host the Windermere Cup/Opening Day Regatta on May 6th on the Montlake Cut for their last race before post-season. The UW men and women will be competing against crews from Shanghai, China. TSX: ELD NYSE: EGO VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - Eldorado Gold Corp., ("Eldorado" or "the Company") today reported the Company's financial and operational results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. First Quarter Financial and Operational Highlights Profit of $3.8 million ($0.01 per share), compared to a loss of $2.5 million or $0.00 per share in the first quarter of 2016. Adjusted net earnings of $8.0 million ($0.01 per share) compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ($0.00 per share) in the first quarter 2016. Gold production of 75,172 ounces, compared to 79,892 ounces from continuing operations. Gold revenues of $90.5 million on sales of 74,068 ounces of gold at an average realized gold price of $1,222 per ounce. All-in sustaining cash costs averaged $791 per ounce; considerably lower than 2017 guidance of all-in sustaining costs of $845-875 per ounce. Cash operating costs averaged $466 per ounce; lower than 2017 guidance of $484-535 per ounce. Total liquidity of approximately $1.1 billion, including $873.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits, and $250 million in undrawn lines of credit at quarter end. Olympias Phase II began commissioning in the first quarter 2017. Announced receipt of multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced for beyond 2017 at Olympias Phase II. Construction at Skouries continued on track for anticipated 2019 start-up. George Burns set to take on role of President & Chief Executive Officer on April 28, 2017. "We have had a very successful first quarter of the year, with progress made at all of our development projects," said Paul Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Commissioning is underway at Olympias Phase II in Greece and we remain on track for declaring commercial production in the third quarter of this year. At Skouries, work continued during the quarter and we are still aiming for production in 2019. Both Tocantinzinho and Certej are progressing with engineering optimizations. As I leave my current role, I am confident that the incoming President & CEO, George Burns, and the Eldorado team are well positioned to continue to grow our company in a manner that provides significant additional value for shareholders." Throughout this press release we use cash operating cost per ounce, total cash costs per ounce, all-in sustaining cost per ounce, gross profit from gold mining operations, adjusted net earnings and cash flow from operating activities before changes in non-cash working capital as additional measures of Company performance. These are non IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these non IFRS measures. All dollar amounts in US$, unless stated otherwise. Financial Results ($ millions except as noted) Continuing Operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 2016 Kisladag Ounces produced 52,644 52,376 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 446 536 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 464 552 Sustaining capex 5.1 7.0 Efemcukuru Ounces produced 22,528 27,516 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 515 478 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 531 500 Sustaining capex 3.8 4.8 Olympias Ounces produced (1) 0 2,774 Sustaining capex 0 n/a Subtotal: Continuing Operations Ounces produced 75,172 79,892 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 466 519 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 483 536 Sustaining capex 8.9 11.8 (1) Includes production from tailings retreatment in 2016. Review of Quarterly Financial Results Profit attributable to shareholders of the Company was $3.8 million, or $0.01 per share, compared to a loss of $2.5 million, or $0.00 per share in 2016. Adjusted net earnings were $8.0 million ($0.01 per share) as compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ($0.00 per share) for the first quarter of 2016. The main difference between profit and adjusted earnings in the first quarter of 2017 was a $3.0 million adjustment related to closing cash / working capital recorded on finalization of the sale of the Company's Chinese assets (see the MD&A for a reconciliation of profit to adjusted earnings). Gold sales of 74,068 ounces from continuing operations were consistent year over year, while gross profit from continuing gold mining operations increased $4.9 million due to higher gold prices and lower cash operating costs. General and administrative expenses increased $2.1 million year over year due to reorganization costs in Vancouver and Turkey. Exploration expense increased $3.2 million including $0.9 million related to development of an exploration drift at Stratoni. Mine standby costs of $1.0 million were recorded in the first quarter 2017 related to Vila Nova and Perama Hill (2016: $9.6 million mainly related to the temporary suspension of the Skouries development from January to May 2016). The effective tax rate of 80% was higher than an expected rate of 20%-30% due to withholding tax accruals in Turkey, foreign exchange effects on the local tax basis in Greece, and unrecognized losses in Canada and Greece. The relative impact of these factors was approximately equal. First Quarter Review and 2017 Outlook TURKEY Kisladag Kisladag reported gold production of 52,644 ounces for the quarter, in-line with production in the prior year. There was a reduction in ore tonnes to the leach pad year over year as low grade run-of-mine ore is no longer being placed on the pad. Average treated head grade and tonnes mined were higher year over year as the mine accessed higher grade ore at the bottom of the current cut back. Cash operating costs of $446 per ounce improved over 2016 due to higher average treated head grade, and reduced operating costs realized in labour and major consumables through operational improvements. Sustaining capital expenditures of $5.1 million were lower year over year due to reduced project work. Efemcukuru Gold production of 22,528 ounces for the quarter was slightly lower than 2016 due to the lower average treated head grade and slightly lower tonnes milled. Cash operating costs of $515 per ounce were higher year on year due to lower grade. Capital expenditures of $3.8 million included underground development, mine equipment overhauls, and process and waste rock/tailings facilities construction projects. GREECE Stratoni Concentrate production for the first quarter was significantly higher year on year due to higher ore tonnes processed and higher zinc head grade. The mine and plant operated largely as planned in comparison to 2016 when operations were disrupted by a suspension of activities, with only two scheduled production days lost due to adverse winter weather conditions in January. Development of the hangingwall exploration drift progressed according to plan and diamond drilling commenced from the first drill station. Extension of the main footwall access ramp below +117m level to open up future production areas commenced in earnest in January. Olympias Development of Olympias Phase II made significant progress during the quarter. The majority of installation work in the process plant, including piping and cabling, was completed and commissioning work commenced in late March. Ore mining and processing began in April. Commercial production is expected by the beginning of the third quarter. Capital spending for the first quarter at Olympias was $37.1 million, with the majority deployed for continued underground development and rehabilitation in the Olympias underground, construction of the Phase II plant, and construction works in the Kokkinolakas tailings management facility. During the quarter, the Company also announced that it had received multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced beyond 2017. This is primarily due to the treatment of higher grade material resulting in better grades in concentrate produced. Under the new sales terms, gold payability rates have increased from 58% up to a maximum of 71%, which is expected to result in an increase of approximately 15,000 ounces of payable gold production per year. Annual Phase II production is now estimated to be approximately 85,000 ounces of gold (from 72,000 ounces per year previously) plus approximately 55,000 ounces of gold equivalent production. Skouries Work was restricted in the first quarter due to adverse winter weather. Earthworks, building erection and site clearing all progressed as weather allowed during the quarter. Targeted work included tailings thickener foundations and stockpile dome embankments. Engineering continued for the integrated waste management facility and the filter plant. Equipment selection for the main pressure filters for the filter plant was completed during the quarter. Total capital expenditure for the quarter was $14.0 million. Perama Hill The project remains on care and maintenance pending receipt of the Environmental Impact Study permit. BRAZIL Tocantinzinho Installation licenses for the site, road and power line were under review by the Para State government during the first quarter. Basic engineering was nearly completed for the process plant. Detailed infrastructure engineering was ongoing and is expected to be completed during the second quarter. The installation license was received post quarter end, however the tailings and solution ponds permits remain outstanding and are expected later this year. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. ROMANIA Certej Optimization studies continued during the quarter on the metallurgical process, water and waste management and site infrastructure to support the ongoing permitting activities. These optimizations are required for the oxidative process and the optimizations of waste and tailings material generated. Permitting for offsite infrastructure continued with work progressing on main power line, water tanks and mine access roads and water supply pipelines. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. Exploration Review Exploration activities during the quarter included reconnaissance-stage programs, drillhole targeting and drilling programs at our projects in Greece, Turkey, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. A total of 13,600 metres of exploration drilling was completed. In Greece, the Company completed the drill-testing of the Fisoka porphyry prospect, and initiated drilling at the Tsikara porphyry prospect near Skouries. The underground resource drilling program at Mavres Petres commenced late in the quarter, targeting previously untested down-dip and along-strike projections of the orebody. In Romania, drilling was conducted on the Certej North and Bolcana licenses, targeting the Bolcana porphyry system and related epithermal prospects on its periphery. In Brazil, drilling programs tested both the Vulture and Parnamirim target areas within the Borborema project area in Pernambuco state. Regional geochemical sampling continued over the large Borborema project area, while at the Nazareno project, work focused on infill soil sampling, mapping, and geophysical surveys to refine targets for drilling during the second half of the year. 2017 Outlook In 2017 Eldorado expects to produce 365,000-400,000 ounces of gold, including pre-commercial ounces from Olympias Phase II. Cash costs are forecasted at $485-535 per ounce, with all-in sustaining cash costs expected to range from $845-875 per ounce. The Company's balance sheet remains one of the strongest in its peer group, with approximately $874 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits and $250 million in undrawn credit lines. Sustaining capital for gold mining operations in 2017 is estimated to be approximately $70 million. Planned expenditures for mining development total $345 million. Exploration expenditures in 2017 are budgeted at $35 million (65% expensed and 35% capitalized), with a balanced focus on resource delineation and brownfield drilling at existing operations, advancing early-stage projects, and project generation. Depreciation, depletion and amortization expense is expected to be approximately $335 per ounce of gold sold. General and administrative expense is expected to be approximately $45 million. Corporate In December 2016, the Company announced that Paul Wright, Eldorado's current President and Chief Executive Officer, will retire from this role after the Annual General Meeting on April 27, 2017. Mr. Wright will be succeeded by Mr. George Burns, who will also join Eldorado's Board of Directors. Mr. Wright will continue as a member of Eldorado's Board of Directors, taking on the position of Vice-Chairman. Mr. Ross Cory did not stand for re-election as a Director at the Company's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Mr. Cory served on the Board for over 13 years and the Company would like to thank him for his many years of service and dedication. Conference Call A conference call to discuss the details of the Company's 2017 First Quarter Results will be held by senior management on April 28, 2017 at 8:30 AM PT (11:30 AM ET). The call will be webcast and can be accessed at Eldorado Gold's website: www.eldoradogold.com Conference Call Details Replay (available until May 12, 2017) Date: Friday April 28, 2017 Toronto: 416 849 0833 Time: 8:30 am PT (11:30 am ET) Toll Free: 855 859 2056 Dial in: 647 427 7450 Pass code: 9264 4727 Toll free: 888 231 8191 About Eldorado Gold Eldorado is a leading low cost gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a low cost strategy, a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO). Cautionary Note about Forward-looking Statements and Information Certain of the statements made and information provided in this press release are forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Often, these forward-looking statements and forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "continue", "projected", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negatives thereof or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements or information contained in this release include, but are not limited to the Company's 2017 First Quarter Financial and Operational Results, including statements or information with respect to: our guidance and outlook, including expected production, projected cash cost, planned capital and exploration expenditures for 2017; our expectation as to our future financial and operating performance, including future cash flow, estimated cash costs, expected metallurgical recoveries, gold price outlook; and our strategy, plans and goals, including our proposed exploration, development, construction, permitting and operating plans and priorities, and related timelines. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information by their nature are based on assumptions and 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 such forward-looking statements or information. We have made certain assumptions about the forward-looking statements and information, including assumptions about the geopolitical, economic, permitting and legal climate that we operate in; the future price of gold and other commodities; exchange rates; anticipated costs and expenses; production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries, the impact of acquisitions, dispositions, suspensions or delays on our business and the ability to achieve our goals. In particular, except where otherwise stated, we have assumed a continuation of existing business operations on substantially the same basis as exists at the time of this release. Even though our management believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statement or information will prove to be accurate. Many assumptions may be difficult to predict and are beyond our control. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements or information. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others, the following: geopolitical and economic climate (global and local), risks related to mineral tenure and permits; gold and other metal price volatility; mining operational and development risk; foreign country operational risks; risks of sovereign investment; regulatory environment and restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; risks related to impact of the sale of our Chinese assets on the Company's operations; additional funding requirements; currency fluctuations; litigation risks; community and non-governmental organization actions; speculative nature of gold exploration; dilution; share price volatility; competition; loss of key employees; and defective title to mineral claims or property, as well as those factors discussed in the sections entitled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk factors in our business" in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form & Form 40-F. The reader is directed to carefully review the detailed risk discussion in our most recent Annual Information Form filed on SEDAR under our Company name, which discussion is incorporated by reference in this release, for a fuller understanding of the risks and uncertainties that affect the Company's business and operations. Forward-looking statements and information is designed to help you understand management's current views of our near and longer term prospects, and it may not be appropriate for other purposes. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Except as required by law, we do not expect to update forward-looking statements and information continually as conditions change and you are referred to the full discussion of the Company's business contained in the Company's reports filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S. Financial Information and condensed statements contained herein or attached hereto may not be suitable for readers that are unfamiliar with the Company and is not a substitute for reading the full annual financial statements and related MD&A available on our website and on SEDAR under our Company name. The reader is directed to carefully review such document for a full understanding of the financial information summarized herein. Except as otherwise noted, scientific and technical information contained in this press release was reviewed and approved by Paul Skayman, FAusIMM, Chief Operating Officer for Eldorado Gold Corp., and a "qualified person" as defined by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). Gold Production Highlights (in US$) First Quarter 2017 First Quarter 2016 Full Year 2016 2017 Outlook5 Gold Production Ounces Sold 74,068 133,467 483,461 n/a Ounces Produced1 75,172 140,989 486,025 365,000 to 400,000 Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)2,4 466 603 579 485 to 535 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 483 658 621 n/a Realized Price ($/oz - sold) 1,222 1,198 1,253 n/a Ki?lada? Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 52,783 52,679 211,284 n/a Ounces Produced 52,644 52,376 211,161 230,000 to 245,000 Tonnes to Pad 3,227,406 4,046,896 16,565,254 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 1.13 0.73 0.80 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 446 536 474 500 to 550 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 464 552 488 n/a Efemcukuru Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 21,285 22,304 99,744 n/a Ounces Produced 22,528 27,516 98,364 95,000 to 105,000 Tonnes Milled 115,794 116,487 476,528 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 6.77 7.96 7.4 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 515 478 514 525 to 575 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 531 500 530 n/a Tanjianshan Mine, China Ounces Sold - 14,053 49,266 n/a Ounces Produced - 14,053 49,266 n/a Tonnes Milled - 268,615 869,964 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 1.84 1.90 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - 852 819 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - 1,083 970 n/a Jinfeng Mine, China Ounces Sold - 26,096 66,902 n/a Ounces Produced - 25,935 68,195 n/a Tonnes Milled - 305,484 766,697 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.26 3.32 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 726 705 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 807 791 n/a White Mountain Mine, China Ounces Sold - 18,335 56,265 n/a Ounces Produced - 18,335 56,265 n/a Tonnes Milled - 206,090 717,145 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.25 2.78 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 582 731 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 620 773 n/a Olympias, Greece Ounces Sold - - - n/a Ounces Produced1 - 2,774 2,774 40,000 to 50,000 Tonnes Milled - 87,350 87,350 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 2.47 2.47 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - - - n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - - - n/a 1 Ounces produced include production from tailings retreatment at Olympias. 2 Cost figures calculated in accordance with the Gold Institute Standard. 3 Cash operating costs, plus royalties and the cost of off-site administration. 4 Cash operating costs and total cash costs are non-IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these. 5 Outlook assumes the following metal prices: Gold $1,150 per ounce; Silver $20 per ounce. Eldorado Gold Corp. Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) Note March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 ASSETS $ $ Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 642,618 883,171 Term deposits 231,258 5,292 Restricted cash 244 240 Marketable securities 45,191 28,327 Accounts receivable and other 52,121 54,315 Inventories 126,913 120,830 1,098,345 1,092,175 Other assets 11,938 48,297 Defined benefit pension plan 12,739 11,620 Property, plant and equipment 3,698,141 3,645,827 4,821,163 4,797,919 LIABILITIES & EQUITY Current liabilities Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 104,397 90,705 104,397 90,705 Debt 5 591,845 591,589 Defined benefit pension plan 10,928 10,882 Asset retirement obligations 89,710 89,778 Deferred income tax liabilities 442,933 443,501 1,239,813 1,226,455 Equity Share capital 2,819,821 2,819,101 Treasury stock (8,000) (7,794) Contributed surplus 2,609,055 2,606,567 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) 7,653 (7,172) Deficit (1,934,800) (1,928,024) Total equity attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,493,729 3,482,678 Attributable to non-controlling interests 87,621 88,786 3,581,350 3,571,464 4,821,163 4,797,919 Approved on behalf of the Board of Directors (Signed) John Webster Director (Signed) Paul N. Wright Director Eldorado Gold Corp. Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Income Statements (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars except per share amounts) For the quarter ended March 31 Note 2017 2016 $ $ (restated)* Revenue Metal sales 111,880 94,693 Cost of sales Production costs 50,688 45,207 Inventory write-down - 1,346 Depreciation and amortization 18,064 18,968 68,752 65,521 Gross profit 43,128 29,172 Exploration expenses 5,247 1,961 Mine standby costs 1,031 9,558 Other operating items 2,133 - General and administrative expenses 11,614 9,467 Defined benefit pension plan expense 831 283 Share based payments 7 5,128 3,701 Other write-down of assets 1,054 - Foreign exchange loss (gain) 88 (3,440) Operating profit 16,002 7,642 Loss on disposal of assets 307 289 Loss (gain) on marketable securities and other investments (34) 4,317 Other expense (income) (2,349) 1,695 Asset retirement obligation accretion 523 449 Interest and financing costs 1,110 5,695 Profit (loss) from continuing operations before income tax 16,445 (4,803) Income tax expense 10,776 4,795 Profit (loss) from continuing operations 5,669 (9,598) Profit (loss) from discontinued operations 4 (3,000) 5,705 Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Attributable to: Shareholders of the Company 3,834 (2,478) Non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Profit (loss) attributable to shareholders of the Company Continuing operations 6,834 (7,938) Discontinued operations (3,000) 5,460 3,834 (2,478) Weighted average number of shares outstanding (thousands) Basic 716,600 716,583 Diluted 717,283 716,583 Profit (loss) per share attributable to shareholders of the Company: Basic profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.00) Diluted profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.00) Profit (loss) per share attributable to shareholders of the Company - continuing operations: Basic profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.01) Diluted profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.01) Eldorado Gold Corp. Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31 2017 2016 $ $ Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Other comprehensive income (loss): Change in fair value of available-for-sale financial assets, net of income 14,720 9,689 tax of $2,144 and $nil Transfer of realized loss on disposal of availabe-for-sale financial assets - 4,336 Actuarial gains (losses) on defined benefit pension plans 105 (122) Total other comprehensive income for the period 14,825 13,903 Total comprehensive income for the period 17,494 10,010 Attributable to: Shareholders of the Company 18,659 11,425 Non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) 17,494 10,010 Eldorado Gold Corp. Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31 Note 2017 2016 $ $ (restated)* Cash flows generated from (used in): Operating activities Profit (loss) for the period from continuing operations 5,669 (9,598) Items not affecting cash: Asset retirement obligation accretion 523 449 Depreciation and amortization 18,064 18,968 Unrealized foreign exchange loss (74) (647) Deferred income tax expense (recovery) (2,713) (9,234) Loss on disposal of assets 307 289 Other write-down of assets 1,054 - Loss (gain) on marketable securities and other investments (34) 4,317 Share based payments 5,128 3,701 Defined benefit pension plan expense 831 283 28,755 8,528 Property reclamation payments (591) (80) Changes in non-cash working capital 9 19,610 (15,315) Net cash provided (used) by operating activities of continuing operations 47,774 (6,867) Net cash provided by operating activities of discontinued operations - 14,368 Investing activities Purchase of property, plant and equipment (73,837) (59,320) Proceeds from the sale of property, plant and equipment 1 384 Proceeds on production of tailings retreatment - 3,878 Purchase of marketable securities - (1,834) Proceeds from the sale of marketable securities - 3,287 Value added taxes related to mineral property expenditures, net 23,584 (5,059) Investment in term deposits (225,966) (913) Decrease in restricted cash (4) (14) Net cash used by investing activities of continuing operations (276,222) (59,591) Net cash used by investing activities of discontinued operations - (5,141) Financing activities Issuance of common shares for cash 554 - Dividend paid to shareholders (10,610) - Purchase of treasury stock (2,049) - Net cash used by financing activities of continuing operations (12,105) - Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (240,553) (57,231) Cash and cash equivalents - beginning of period 883,171 288,189 Cash and cash equivalents - end of period 642,618 230,958 Eldorado Gold Corp. Consolidated Statements of Changes in Equity (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31, 2017 2016 $ $ Share capital Balance beginning of period 2,819,101 5,319,101 Shares issued upon exercise of share options, for cash 554 - Transfer of contributed surplus on exercise of options 166 - Balance end of period 2,819,821 5,319,101 Treasury stock Balance beginning of period (7,794) (10,211) Purchase of treasury stock (2,049) - Shares redeemed upon exercise of restricted share units 1,843 2,196 Balance end of period (8,000) (8,015) Contributed surplus Balance beginning of period 2,606,567 47,236 Share based payments 4,497 3,134 Shares redeemed upon exercise of restricted share units (1,843) (2,196) Recognition of other non-current liability and related costs - (1,416) Transfer to share capital on exercise of options (166) - Balance end of period 2,609,055 46,758 Accumulated other comprehensive loss Balance beginning of period (7,172) (20,572) Other comprehensive income for the period 14,825 13,903 Balance end of period 7,653 (6,669) Deficit Balance beginning of period (1,928,024) (1,583,873) Dividends paid (10,610) - Profit (loss) attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,834 (2,478) Balance end of period (1,934,800) (1,586,351) Total equity attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,493,729 3,764,824 Non-controlling interests Balance beginning of period 88,786 169,755 Profit (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) Balance end of period 87,621 168,340 Total equity 3,581,350 3,933,164 SOURCE Eldorado Gold Corp. Vancouver, British Colimbia (FSCwire) - Vangold Resources Ltd., Vancouver, BC ("Vangold") (TSX:VAN) (OTC:VNGRF) is pleased to announce the closing of its acquisition of a 100% interest in the El Pinguico Property and historic mine located 10 km from the City of Guanajuato, Mexico (the "Acquisition") see news release dated January 05, 2017. Under the terms of the acquisition, Vangold has acquired 100% ownership of rights and title to the El Pinguico mining claims #166665 and #165491, totaling 71 hectares. Pursuant to the Acquisition, the Company has paid US$100,000 and issued 5,000,000 common shares to the vendors, Exploraciones Mineras Del Bajio, SA de CV (EMDB) and will issue 662,500 common shares as a finder fee. All securities issued will be subject to a hold period expiring August 27, 2017 Cameron King, President and CEO of Vangold said, "I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank EMDB for their continuous support in working towards the closing and bringing this valuable asset into Vangold. Our shareholders have also provided the Company great support and confidence in our corporate strategy of purchasing undervalued silver and gold properties with a focus of unlocking the true potential of these assets through continuous exploration and mine development." ABOUT EL PINGUICO MINE Once one of Mexicos most prolific silver and gold mines with grades over 9 g/t Au and over 900 g/t Ag, with a 15 g/t Au eq. cutoff grade, as documented assays found in the detailed mine development plans performed between 1906 to 1910. Technical reports issued in 1907 by experts in the different areas (geology, mining, metallurgy and finance) provide documented evidence of the once profitable producer. [Prof. Robert T. Hill, 1910, Report upon the Properties of The Pinguico Mines Company, The Securities Corporation Ltd. NY, NY]. In 1913, due to the Mexican Revolution, the El Pinguico Mine ceased operations, leaving behind several hundred thousand tons of broken ore in the underground stopes and the unmined vein system continuing at depth and length. Through several gold and silver cycles since the turn of the Century, The Pinguico mine has been a point of discussion to be put back into production. In 1959, an extensive geological assessment was undertaken, assays grade average of 2.72 g/t Au and 251 g/t Ag were reported, with various samples throughout the underground stock pile showing grades over 5 g/t Au and 500 g/t Ag. (CRM Mexican Geological Survey 1959, ESTUDIO GEOLOGICO MINERO DE LA ZONA "EL PINGUICO" DISTRITO MINERO DE GUANAJUATO, GTO, Authors: Ing. Edgardo Meave T., Ing. Juan M Gomez, Ing. Jose Nava Arrieta) Not until 2012, was there additional work conducted in the mine, a sizeable assay program and mine plan development was led by Exploraciones Mineras Del Bajio and undertaken by Servicio Geologico Mexicano - SGM (Mexican Geological Survey), showing a potential underground broken ore with average grades of 1.6 g/t of Au and 143 g/t of Ag. [SGM, 2012, Certificacion de Reservas Mineral Quebrado en la mina El Carmen-El Pinguico Municipio de Guanajuato, Gto. For qualifications and key assumptions, see the Companys news release dated January 5, 2017]. In February 2017, Vangold performed a similar assay program under 43-101 protocols, realized an 8% improvement in grade at 1.75g/t Au and 184 g/t Ag. Of specific interest, assays from the north end trench samples F-001 to F-005, of the underground stock pile, report a range of 3.78 g/t Au and 558 g/t Ag to 15.70 g/t Au and 1,475 g/t Ag. These results are attributed to fines falling from the exposed Dos Estrellas vein stope onto the stock pile. (Vangold 43-101 Report Feb. 28, 2017, Carlos Cham QP, filed on SEDAR April 27, 2017) Table 1 Assay Results for 2017 Trench Samples (Samples Collected by the Author) from El Pinguico Underground Stockpile GENERAL MIDDLE VALUES OF THE EL PINGUICO STOCKPILE MIDDLE VALUES PER TRENCH TRENCH SAMPLE WIDTH (m) Au (gr/ton) Ag (gr/ton) WIDTH (m) Au (gr/ton) Ag (gr/ton) 1 F-052 4.00 1.145 20 12.00 1.14 60.10 STANDARD F-054 4.00 1.005 27.3 F-055 4.00 1.27 133 2 F-049 3.50 0.672 49 10.50 0.63 66.97 F-050 3.50 0.304 32.9 F-051 3.50 0.902 119 3 F-046 2.50 2.45 226 7.50 2.08 194.33 F-047 2.50 1.855 182 F-048 2.50 1.93 175 4 F-041 3.50 0.816 87.4 14.00 1.57 147.08 F-042 3.50 1.965 185 BLANK F-044 3.50 2.66 242 F-045 3.50 0.832 73.9 6 F-038 2.20 3.21 270 6.60 1.63 135.13 F-039 2.20 0.662 60.5 F-040 2.20 1.02 74.9 7 F-036 1.60 0.531 61.5 3.20 0.84 102.75 F-037 1.60 1.14 144 8 F-034 1.30 1.895 153 2.60 1.57 116.25 F-035 1.30 1.24 79.5 9 F-029 1.75 0.648 48.8 7.00 1.71 121.23 F-030 1.75 0.736 70.1 F-031 1.75 1.65 144 F-032 1.75 3.79 222 STANDARD 10 F-025 2.20 0.214 20.4 8.80 0.42 47.55 F-026 2.20 0.403 30.5 F-027 2.20 0.596 73.5 F-028 2.20 0.451 65.8 11 F-022 2.00 1.08 207 6.00 1.21 173.67 F-023 2.00 1.48 174 F-024 2.00 1.055 140 13 F-014 3.00 1.895 186 9.00 1.16 108.20 F-015 3.00 1.105 94.8 F-016 3.00 0.476 43.8 14 F-012 2.50 1.3 146 5.00 1.32 132.50 F-013 2.50 1.345 119 15 F-009 3.75 1.015 118 7.50 1.00 100.55 F-010 3.75 0.978 83.1 BLANK 16 F-007 2.00 0.657 49.4 4.00 0.34 25.75 F-008 2.00 0.021 2.1 17 F-005 2.75 3.78 558 5.50 2.93 452.00 F-006 2.75 2.08 346 18 F-003 2.00 15.7 1475 4.00 10.73 1042.00 F-004 2.00 5.75 609 19 F-001 2.00 4.83 466 4.00 5.68 709.00 F-002 2.00 6.52 952 16-A F-064 1.57 2.2 255 4.71 1.72 250.00 F-065 1.57 1.47 216 F-066 1.57 1.495 279 17-A F-062 2.00 1.24 383 2.00 1.24 383.00 F-063 STD 0.992 66.1 18-A F-060 2.20 1.135 131 4.40 1.95 194.50 F-061 2.20 2.76 258 The potential of el Pinguico claims is important, where the main targets are to explore the lower Pinguico vein below the existing old workings. Also, the potential intersection of the Pinguico vein with the Mother Vein, which has been the most important ore source of the area, producing over a billion ounces of silver since 1500s. In addition of these 2 main targets, the exploration and understanding of the existing exposed veins such as the San Jose vein, Pachuca vein, el Pirul vein, La Joya vein and el Pino vein have been targeted for immediate exploration programs. ABOUT VANGOLD MINING Vangold is a development stage silver and gold company focused on production in Mexico. Vangold is aggressively pursuing its business plan of becoming a producer through the development of its existing mineral property assets and the pursuit through acquisition of additional mineral assets which contribute to Vangold achieving its aggressive corporate growth objectives. Qualified Persons The disclosure of historical, scientific or technical information regarding the Property in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. Hernan Dorado Smith, Director. Mr. Dorado is a Qualified Person (QP) by the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America (MMSA) as defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the contents of the news releases. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF VANGOLD RESOURCES LTD. Cameron King, President & CEO Contact Information: Vangold Resources Ltd. 1400-1111 West Georgia Street, Vancouver BC, V6E 4M3 E: cking@vangold.ca T: +1 604 499 6545 W: www.vangold.ca SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This news release includes certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target", "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions, identify forward-looking statements or information. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements or information. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law. None of the securities anticipated to be issued pursuant to the Arrangement have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and any securities issued in the Arrangement are anticipated to be issued in reliance upon available exemptions from registration requirements pursuant to Section 3(a) (10) of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable exemptions under state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/Vangold04272017_0.pdfSource: Vangold Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:VAN, OTC Bulletin Board:VNGRF) To follow Vangold Resources Ltd. on your favorite social media platform or financial websites, please click on the icons below. Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 Filing Services Canada Inc. Mechanicsburg Police are searching for the man who robbed a bank Wednesday afternoon. Police said it was dispatched for a robbery at Orrstown Bank, 1110 E. Simpson St., Mechanicsburg, at 2:07 p.m. Wednesday. A white man wearing a cloth mask entered the bank and demanded cash. The tellers provided an undetermined amount of cash, and the man fled the scene, according to police. Mechanicsburg Police was assisted by police from Hampden, Lower Allen, Silver Spring and Upper Allen townships, as well as the Cumberland County District Attorneys Office, but the robber is still at large. The same bank was robbed on April 6 by a man also described as white and wearing a beige knit mask. He fled with an undetermined amount of cash, and police have not arrested anyone in connection with the robbery. Mechanicsburg police Thursday morning said they are not sure if the two robberies are connected. Police ask anyone with information to contact them at 717-691-3309. As John M. Richardson, a pioneer in the study of system dynamics, once put it, "When it comes to the future, there are three types of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened."That's as good a way as any to describe what has befallen so many of our state and local government pensions systems, now facing a collective funding shortfall of $5 trillion: legislative bodies that let it happen by creating unsustainable pensions, policymakers who perpetuated the problem by not fully funding their plans, and retirees who have been blindsided, wondering what happened, when their pensions have been slashed.Consider, for example, the nearly 200 retirees of California's now-defunct East San Gabriel Valley Human Services Consortium, an employment and job-training agency known as LA Works, who just had their pensions cut by as much as 63 percent. Who's to blame? Policy leaders who set up the risky pension structure; city governments that didn't keep up with pension payments; and the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which did not alert the workers that their employers had fallen behind on their pension payments until this January, just two months before slashing their pensions. It's hardly surprising that the affected employees are questioning how, after paying into the pension fund for 25-plus years, this could have come to pass.What's happening with LA Works' retirees isn't a unique situation. CalPERS, whose pension debt stands at $170 billion, just last year drastically cut pension benefits for retirees who worked for the city of Loyalton. Many other cities, and several states, are struggling to keep their heads above water in the face of runaway pension costs.Think it can't happen to your city? Think again. Detroit, Mich., and Central Falls, R.I., are polar opposites in many ways, but they have one thing in common: Both slashed their retirees' pensions when the cities filed for bankruptcy.Detroit's was the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history. After the city filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013, thousands of retirees saw their pensions cut by 4.5 percent, their cost-of-living allowances eliminated and their health-care benefits reduced. Just this past October, after much legal back-and-forth, a federal appeals court rejected the retirees' challenge to reinstate their full pensions.Central Falls cut pensions for its 133 retirees by as much as 55 percent when the city filed for bankruptcy in 2011 (although the state later eased the pain by reducing the cuts to 25 percent for the first five years). At the time of its bankruptcy, Central Fall's pension plan was a staggering $80 million in debt. Retirees who had saved for their entire careers and assumed their pensions were secure suddenly found themselves forced back into the workforce to make ends meet.The only truly secure guarantee that a public employee has is a fully funded pension system. But that's a guarantee that's likely to become rarer as cities face mounting fiscal strains. Of the nation's 89,000 local governments, some 11,000 have defaulted on bonds at some point in our history. As pension costs continue to escalate, it's nearly certain that the number of defaults will rise. How lucky do you feel? Will your city run out of money?All public-sector retirees deserve safe and secure futures, not to be reduced to poverty when their pension plans fail them. Retirement benefits should be sustainable and predictable for current and future public employees. To live up to this expectation, governments need to fully fund their plans.Today's pension crisis may be due to policy decisions made years ago, but it's incumbent upon current policymakers to turn the tide and make their systems sustainable. Public employees and retirees didn't create this mess, and they shouldn't be left wondering what happened when the money runs out. Suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore said Wednesday said he will seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, sounding themes of social conservatism and originalism he has struck for years."As United State Senator, I will continue to stand for rights and liberties not only of this state, but of the people as well," Moore said in a brief announcement and the Alabama State Capitol steps Wednesday.Moore's brief kick-off speech sounded like many speeches Moore has delivered over the past 20 years, blending strong opinions against abortion and LGBT rights with a detailed and sometimes minute discussion of constitutional issues. But he added a new ingredient to his speech: President Donald Trump."I know I share the vision of our President Donald Trump to make America great again," he said. "Before we can America great again, we've got to make America good."Rich Hobson, a longtime aide to Moore, said after the speech that Moore had submitted his retirement papers as chief justice, allowing him to run. Age limits prevent Moore from seeking another position on the bench.Moore's strong stands on religion and against LGBT rights have earned him a devoted following within the Republican Party. But they have also made him a divisive figure who often struggles to reach voters beyond his base.The chief justice, 70, first vaulted into the spotlight when, as an Etowah County Circuit Judge, he hung the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, bringing legal challenges. Elected state's chief justice in 2000, he installed a granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments in the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery. The move led to controversies and additional legal action. When U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered the monument removed, Moore refused to obey. That led to charges against Moore and, eventually, his removal from the bench in 2003.After two unsuccessful campaigns for governor, Moore won re-election as chief justice in 2012. In Jan. 2016, Moore circulated an order telling probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The order, largely ignored, flew in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges striking down state bans on same-sex marriage.Following complaints, the Judicial Inquiry Commission filed charges against Moore last May, leading to his automatic suspension from the bench. Moore accused LGBT groups of conspiring to remove him, but his attorneys in court took a more moderate tone, arguing Moore's order was meant as guidance and did not change the status quo on same-sex marriage. The Court of the Judiciary disagreed, and suspended Moore for the remainder of his term in September.After the sentence was affirmed last week, Moore accused "certain transgender and homosexual groups" of conspiring against him. Wednesday he said he had no regrets, saying "what I did I did for the people of Alabama.""I stood up for God," he said. "The great majority of people in this state believe in God . . . unless you understand what God has to do with the Constitution, you don't understand the Constitution."Moore reiterated his commitment to state powers against federal powers, saying education from that level was "indoctrination.""When we see education continually being pushed on the state in what we teach our children, it's absolute phenomenal to think the people of Alabama can't teach their children," he said.On other issues, Moore breaks with Republican orthodoxy. As chief justice, Moore penned two opinions opposing arbitration rulings, which earned him the lasting enmity of the Business Council of Alabama. The BCA's political action committee supported Moore's bid for chief justice in 2000 but sat on its hands in 2012, when Moore faced a strong challenge from Jefferson County Circuit Judge Bob Vance, a Democrat.Moore has also shown an interest in sentencing reform, and been critical of the state's habitual offender act. During a meeting of the Alabama Prison Reofrm Task Force in 2015, the chief justice joined with more liberal members of the panel in pushing for studies of the impact of the law on prison overcrowding, saying not doing so was like "putting a Band-Aid on a major injury.""There's a lot of people in there serving 99 years and life for sentences that two or three years in prison might address," Moore said at the time.But Moore has always defined himself first and foremost as a social conservative. In a statement distributed after his public remarks Wednesday, Moore said the United States was "founded on the firm rock of conservative Christian values.""Those values are worth fighting and sacrificing for, and no judge or government can take them from us," the statement said.Moore's release also outlined a conservative platform that called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act; a national sales tax to replace the income tax and a call to allow states to enforce laws against undocumented immigrants. It also reaffirmed his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.The GOP Senate field includes incumbent Luther Strange; Rep. Ed Henry, R-Hartselle and former Christian Coalition of Alabama chairman Randy Brinson. Other Republicans are likely to jump in. Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said Tuesday he had "made his decision" about the race, but was not ready to announce it.U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville and Sens. Slade Blackwell, R-Montevallo and Trip Pittman, R-Montrose are also considering the race. Moore has higher name recognition than most of his opponents, but historically has struggled to raise money or attract more moderate Republicans to his banner. Despite leading early polls, Moore finished a distant second to Gov. Bob Riley in the 2006 GOP primary for governor. He finished fourth in the 2010 GOP primary, a race eventually won by Robert Bentley.Henry said in a phone interview he welcomed Moore's entry into the race."I believe it's a better day for Alabama, the more choices they have to represent them in DC," he said.Ron Crumpton, a medical marijuana advocate and the only Democrat to declare his candidacy, blasted Moore's campaign in an email relased shortly after Moore's announcement."Moore's views on Christianity are unconstitutional," the statement said. "The Constitution expressly prohibits the making of laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion."The primary for the U.S. Senate seat is Aug. 15. Runoffs would take place Sept. 26, with the general election Dec. 12. Description GIS - 27 April 2017: The outcome of the first session of the Joint Permanent Commission Mauritius-Comoros at Ministerial level was the focus of a joint press conference in Reduit yesterday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Mr Seetanah Lutchmeenaraidoo, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Union of Comoros, Mr Mohamed Bacar Dossar. Minister Lutchmeenaraidoo pointed out that the foundation of the common destiny that both countries share has been laid adding that existing cooperation ties are expected to reach new heights in favourable conditions and in mutual interest. On the economic front, the Minister recalled that the creation in Moroni, Comoros of a Special Economic Zone will require considerable investments, along with the appropriate market study, and development of infrastructure. With regard to air connectivity which is a key area to further deepen cooperation, Mr Lutchmeenaraidoo spoke of the commitment for the inaugural return flight Mauritius-Comoros within a delay of six months. For his part, Minister Mohamed Bacar Dossar stated that Comoros has a lot to learn from Mauritius in the economic and enterprise development sectors. He expressed gratitude that Mauritius has extended support to enable Comoros benefit from the Mauritian expertise and know-how. Joint Permanent Commission Within the Joint Permanent Commission, Mauritius and Comoros have established a series of joint projects based on South-South cooperation in mutual respect and in a win-win situation. Projects include extending a proposal for Comoros to join Mauritius within the Economic Partnership Agreement configuration; exchange of information (covering piracy, illegal fishing and drug trafficking as well as disaster management); and blue economy. Several other fields of cooperation have been examined, within the scope of the joint commission, to advance Mauritius-Comoros ties in terms of trade exchanges; cross-border investment; fisheries; health; tourism; and maritime security. T he Mauritius-Comoros Ministerial meeting was co-chaired on 26 April 2017 by Minister Lutchmeenaraidoo, and his Comorian counterpart. It was attended by the Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Mr Soomilduth Bholah; and the Minister of Ocean Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries and Shipping, Mr Premdut Koonjoo. The first session of the Mauritius-Comoros Joint Permanent Commission at senior officials level was held on 25 April 2017 in Port Louis. The Mauritius-Comoros Joint Permanent Commission is in line with the strategy of opening markets to the region and mainland Africa. The Africa strategy forms part of the three main pillars of the new economic architecture and thus constitutes a major focus for the new economic diplomacy. The Pennsylvania Senate Finance Committee voted to forward a bill Wednesday morning aimed at severely limiting public funding for Planned Parenthood services even though the bills sponsor admitted I dont know what Planned Parenthood provides when asked about sexual education. Senate Bill 300 is sponsored by Republican Sen. John Eichelberger, who represents part of western Cumberland County. It creates a priority funding system for state dollars that are being used to reimburse health care providers. The bill puts any provider who performs abortions that are not federally qualified for Medicaid dollars at the back of the line for funding, even if they provide other services that are Medicaid-qualified. The bill would also prohibit the state from entering into any new contract or grant agreement with an entity that maintains any facilities that provide nonqualified abortions, even if those entities provide other qualified services. While Planned Parenthood and organizations like it do not receive state or federal reimbursements for abortions, they do receive funding for services such as cancer screenings, STD treatment and others. They also receive state funding for sexual education classes and other public programs. Eichelbergers response came after he was questioned by Democratic Sen. Vincent Hughes about whether other health providers and educators would be able to fill the gap if Planned Parenthood is last in line for funding. So do any of these other facilities youre speaking of provide the level of education, especially around sexual education, that Planned Parenthood currently provides? Hughes asked. I dont know what Planned Parenthood provides, Eichelberger answered. SB 300 mirrors a fiscal concept also being used by GOP legislators at the national level. State and federal funds to reimburse for Medicaid and other government-sponsored health services can only go toward services that are federally qualified. This generally does not include abortions. Recently, Republican legislators have sought to expand the concept so that any organization that provides nonqualified abortions is deprioritized for funding, even for those qualified services that they do provide to Medicaid patients and others. Eichelbergers argument, made before his committee colleagues, was that organizations like Planned Parenthood provide a more limited scope of services than some other providers who accept Medicaid reimbursements. Thus, it would be more efficient to push patients toward those wider-ranging providers. We get then to some nonpublic health providers that have very few services they provide for womens health, so it would be incumbent upon us for fiscal reasons as well as for the health of women in Pennsylvania to direct the money where its most effective, Eichelberger said. Its a pretty direct bill that sets the priorities based on effectiveness. Out of a list of 13 essential service areas identified for federally qualified health clinics, Planned Parenthood is able to provide three, Eichelberger said. But Eichelbergers Democratic colleagues pressed him for evidence that other community health centers would be able to pick up the slack if and when Planned Parenthood scaled back its services due to a lack of Medicaid customers and program grants. The expectation that [services] will be picked up somewhere else is simply not going to happen, Sen. Jay Costa said. Costa said Planned Parenthood performs 270,000 pap smears and 360,000 breast exams annually, on average. Access to these cancer screenings would be lost if patients did not have access to another health center that accepted Medicaid. Where do you anticipate these folks are going to go? Costa asked. Eichelberger was unable to provide any projections, but later asserted that weve heard numbers about some isolated services that Planned Parenthood provides but that they dont do lots of things that families need. If patients wish to go to Planned Parenthood for services, even though they dont offer all 13 of the federally identified service areas, that should be a choice they are allowed to make, Sen. Art Haywood said. Im uncomfortable with limiting the choice of individuals, Haywood said. Is there something that has happened that tells us we now want to take away that core freedom of choice for everyday citizens to choose the doctor or nurse they want? The difference is its not a consumer, its a person who is getting a free service from the government, from the taxpayer, Eichelberger responded. Democrats made a number of attempts to indicate that Eichelbergers proposal was not fiscal since it would theoretically have no impact on the amount of medical reimbursements paid by the state but rather was a punitive measure against people who chose to use their benefits at an organization to which Eichelberger is ideologically opposed. If the issue was truly with the scope of services, then theres no reason to base the bill on an abortion disqualifier, Democrats said. If Planned Parenthood were to provide those additional services, would this still be an issue? Hughes hypothesized. No, as long as they dont provide abortion services at that facility, Eichelberger responded. When pressed on the link between abortion and the quality of a providers other Medicaid services, Eichelberger asserted that Planned Parenthood would push people toward abortion services. That seems to be where their profit center is. But when queried by Haywood earlier in the meeting on any medical studies about Planned Parenthoods quality of care, Eichelberger had said, I dont have those available. Costa motioned to table the bill until more information could be received on the level of service cuts, and asserted that the bill should have come through the Health and Human Services Committee. Last time I checked resources from Pennsylvania were not provided [for abortions], so we have conflicting answers as to why this legislation is necessary, Costa said. The motion to table failed, and SB 300 received enough votes to advance to the full Senate. All but one of the committees Republicans, Sen. Patrick Browne, voted in favor. Gov. Tom Wolf has already stated that he would veto the bill if it were to pass the Legislature. Description GIS 27 April, 2017: The European Union (EU) and Mauritius have reached a provisional agreement on a new Protocol for Sustainable Fisheries that opens a new era in the relations between the EU and Mauritius. The protocol makes provision for a global budget of some Rs 150 million spanning over 4 years. This statement was made yesterday by the Minister of Ocean Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries and Shipping, Mr Premdut Koonjoo, during a press conference at the LIC Building, Port Louis. It was in the context of the closing ceremony of the third round of negotiations for the renewal of the fisheries partnership between the EU and Mauritius. Minister Koonjoo highlighted that regarding the catch of tuna in the region, the fishing opportunities proposed to the European fleet are realistic. The value of their right of access to Mauritius waters, he pointed out, is consistent with the value of the catches, and the contribution of ship owners to this right of access has increased significantly. The EU and Mauritius will ensure regular joint monitoring of catch data using up-to-date technologies, underscored the Minister. He added that these fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance methods, which are also applied to other domestic and foreign fleets, will eventually deter illicit unreported and unregulated fishing activities. Furthermore, good fisheries governance and the sustainable development of the sector will continue to be supported through sectorial support on behalf of the EU, but specific support will now be given to cooperation for sustainable exploitation of the sector and the development of the blue economy, stated Mr Koonjoo. The New Protocol This protocol, which will be effective by the end of 2017, includes a contribution from the EU and ship owners. Part of the Rs 150 million will be allocated to support the Mauritian fisheries sector, in addition of a specific contribution earmarked to promote the development of the blue economy. As soon as the new protocol is implemented, the European fleet will be authorised to carry out its fishing activities in Mauritian waters. Moreover, Mauritian authorities will receive in real time the satellite positions of European vessels operating in its waters. The electronic catch reporting system will be automatically transmitted to the Albion Fisheries Monitoring Center in the near future. The state of Kansas has chosen PayIt , a home-grown startup, to help it beef up the digital services it offers to citizens.The company, based on the Kansas side of Kansas City, actually operates in a model similar to the one that made another company from the same area famous NIC. Both companies build digital services for governments without charging the agencies any money, opting instead to collect revenue through charges whenever a citizen uses those services to pay the government.But its the younger PayIt, about four years old, that will be delivering those services for the state of Kansas through the new multi-year contract.There is an aggressive innovation road map that well be tackling together, PayIt CEO John Thomson toldThomson is mum on the details of what, exactly, his company will be working on through the contract so far. But in an interview at the 2017 NASCIO Midyear conference in Arlington, Va., Kansas CIO Phil Wittmer said that the partnership would serve the states goals of becoming more transparent.According to Thomson, the new work will fit inside the existing platform PayIt provides. That platform, built on Amazon Web Services GovCloud, is a service layer sitting on top of the available systems. Its structured around configuration as opposed to customization.We innovate inside the platform versus inside custom software. Were not custom software developers, Thomson said.That approach allows the company to deploy things quickly within a span of weeks, Thomson said when serving new government clients. It also means that it will be making the things it builds in Kansas available for other governments once theyre set up.PayIt closed on a $4.5 million Series A fundraising round in January 2016. (Techwire) -- Plans to create a statewide water data platform for California are coming into focus.This spring the Department of Water Resources (DWR), the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) jointly submitted a budget proposal that would put $2.9 million in fiscal year 2017-18 and more than $2 million each year thereafter toward the platform's development and maintenance.The proposal includes support for eight staff, purchasing of technology solutions and vendor resources.The plan said it's "critical" that the state of California hire outside professional services to work on the project."Developing in-house technical expertise will be a key goal in the long term and will be incorporated in the scopes of work for any IT development contracts. In the first two years of implementation, however, professional services must be retained to support successful implementation and ongoing operation and maintenance of a statewide integrated water data platform," the proposal said.Legislation signed in 2016, the Open and Transparent Water Data Act, requires the creation of the data platform."AB 1755 creates a statewide water data information system to integrate critical water data in a user-friendly, publicly accessible website," said the bill's author, state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa.The bill stipulates the data platform will be in operation by September 2019. With that in mind, the state plans to develop Request for Proposals (RFPs) during the 2017-18 year, and release the bid proposals by April 2018 for a competitive selection process.The legislation also calls for a provision that "information technology tools and applications developed and gathered using state funds should be made publicly accessible" and that open source tools could avoid the need to build an "expensive" new centralized database.The system will integrate multiple databases managed independently by federal, state, and local agencies and academia "using consistent and standardized formats," AB 1755 says. The system will present data sets such as State Water Project or Central Valley Project operations information, groundwater use, groundwater levels, urban water use and land use; data on water rights, water diversions and water quality; and many others.The drought has exposed the need for a modern water information system to address the states water supply, Dodd said in a press release. California does not suffer from a lack of water data, but from a lack of usable water data needed to make smart decisions. This bill will create instant and accessible water information that will better enable water managers to cope with future drought conditions.Dodd noted that AB 1755 is supported by the the Association of California Water Agencies, Metropolitan Water District, the Environmental Defense Fund and the California Chamber of Commerce, among other groups. (TNS) - Nueces County, Texas officials hope a major hurricane like Katrina never hits the Coastal Bend, but they are preparing a plan to be ready just in case.Nueces County, Agua Dulce, Corpus Christi, Petronila, Port Aransas, Robstown and the Port of Corpus Christi Authority have worked together for about a year to develop the 800-page FEMA Hazard Mitigation Action Plan or Nueces County Multi-Jursidictional Plan by recording, summarizing and analyzing past incidents in the area.The plan is still in a draft phase, but is open for public review, comment and suggestions until May 5 at the county courthouse. All comments will be considered for inclusion in the plan before it's finalized."It's necessary for us to be in long-term planning for our county, and we chose to do this together and have worked through this planning process on a very accelerated style," said Christopher Boyce, Nueces County emergency management coordinator. "It's a living, breathing document, and it's not just going to sit on a shelf. The planning process we have developed and the partnerships we've had across different jurisdictions mean we will look at this annually."The new plan is due this September, Boyce said in January. National engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam, Inc. has been hired to compile it.Under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, the plan is used to prevent and reduce future losses to lives and property, to identify cost-effective ways to get an area back to normal, to build partnerships by involving stakeholders and the public, and to leverage more FEMA funding, Project Manager Janine E. Ellington said in January."Basically, we know South Texas (has a problem) with water whether we have enough or not enough of it," Boyce said.The plan only will identify natural hazards like floods, hurricanes/tropical storms, wildlife, tornadoes, drought, coastal erosion, earthquake, hailstorms, lightning and dam/levee failure. Natural hazards are the only ones recognized by FEMA, Ellington said, but other hazards can be planned for, including pipeline rupture, chemical spills, cyber attack or the effects of climate change."This is a history of all the bad things that have happened because of nature in Nueces County, and it summarizes what has happened to us," Boyce said. "It shows where we have vested interest in critical facilities, or where we know growth will happen and what we can do to ensure that, based on what we've learned from the past, those things will not happen again here."The emergency management office also will monitor population growth and migration and change the document to fit. It needs to be thoroughly updated every five years, but can be changed any time. Changes also can happen if state or federal law changes.According to state law, County Judge Loyd Neal is the county's emergency management coordinator, which means the commissioners court has authority to activate certain mitigation plans to avoid disaster."This gives us a good road map, but hopefully we'll never have to use it," Neal said. "But if we do, we'll have a place to go."2017 the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, Texas)Visit the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, Texas) at www.caller.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. (TNS) -- Tuesday's summit on Baton Rouge traffic was split roughly in half: For the first two hours, local, state and federal officials bemoaned the poor decisions and lack of foresight by their predecessors. Afterward, they shared big dreams but offered little in the way of concrete policies or specific designs.Though the event was billed as an opportunity to discuss "future Mississippi River bridge access" and alternatives to the interstate, neither the state Department of Transportation and Development nor the city-parish shared actionable solutions.Many presenters spoke of a need to build "complete streets" that promote bicycle, foot and public transportation; however, when audience members asked about particular bike paths or bus routes, organizers told them to hold on to their questions so they could be addressed at a later meeting.In her closing remarks, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome thanked the government officials and contractors for their input, saying leaders need to form a transportation plan the community can rally behind. She made passing reference to Phase Two of the Green Light Plan, which voters last year chose not to support with a property tax. Broome implied a future proposal will need to be palatable to taxpayers, since any initiative "will involve some dollars."Metro Councilwoman Donna Collins-Lewis suggested the Green Light Plan failed because people only thought about the effects in their own neighborhoods rather than looking at the big picture."We're all fighting over the same dollars," she said.Several speakers talked about nascent efforts to control traffic in Baton Rouge through the city's "smart city" committee, which includes academics, technology professionals and politicians who are trying to collect data to better inform policy decisions. The work won't directly build a new road, but participants hope that by collecting information from traffic apps, future road sensors and cameras they can take steps to synchronize traffic signals, coordinate public transportation or possibly make a compelling case for new infrastructure.More broadly, planners need to account for changes in the way people get around, said Jim Barbaresso, vice president of engineering and planning consulting firm HNTB. In the years to come, vehicles will become more automated, connected, electric and shared."That's your transportation future," he said. "Data is really the currency of this century. We've got to start planning now for these smart cities."Last year, the city-parish entered into a contract with Waze, a Google-owned traffic app, and Congressman Garrett Graves, R-Baton Rouge, said he hopes the data culled from the partnership can inform where to build new roads by showing underdeveloped routes.Smart City efforts won't build another bridge on their own, city-parish IT director Eric Romero said in an interview, but the group can provide a different, data-driven perspective to justify spending when money does become available for transportation.The problem is that Louisiana has fallen behind due to "30 years of disinvestment," said state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson. Since the state passed its gas tax in 1989, some 44 states have increased their infrastructure spending, he said.As a result, the Bayou State falls toward the back of the pack in metrics from asphalt quality to road fatalities."I'm not proud," Wilson said. "We get what we pay for here in Louisiana."He recommended that as the state looks to increase its transportation spending, leaders should specify that any new money cannot be spent on salaries whether in his department or in other agencies, like the State Police, which have had transportation money sent to their coffers.Others also emphasized the need to invest in transportation, which Broome said is in need of "vast and consistent improvement."Congressman Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, pleaded with Democrats and Republicans to put their partisan differences behind them for the good of commuters."Our needs are so great and our capacity is so little," he said. "Our infrastructure is deplorable." (TNS) -- While Fiat Chrysler is charging ahead with a deeper partnership with Google's Waymo, that's not the company's only self-driving strategy.Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told Wall Street analysts in a conference call Wednesday that the automaker has the capability to produce the Chrysler Portal a semi-autonomous electric minivan it revealed in January within the next two years.The automaker's futuristic Portal, which was unveiled as a concept vehicle at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, would be an ambitious effort to capture a slice of the emerging autonomous vehicle.Marchionne agreed that the vehicle could be released in the next year or two and touted the automaker's other major autonomous driving effort, its partnership with Waymo, formerly known as Google's self-driving car project.Both efforts are big steps for a company often tagged as a laggard in the connected and autonomous vehicle race.Marchionne said he was very encouraged by Waymo's program to put consumers in the Phoenix area in self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrids to try out the vehicles under everyday driving conditions.The automaker said Tuesday it would produce 500 additional Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans for Waymo. Waymo said those minivans will be used for the early-rider program.Marchionne was willing to enter into a partnership with Waymo even though a number of other automakers passed on the chance to form a partnership with the company."Because what I think Waymo is capable of doing is leaning on all the work that Goole has done on autonomous vehicles," Marchionne said. "I think they are going to be substantially ahead of everyone else out there.Marchionne also touted the potential of Google Waymo partnership."This is the kind of exploration that needs to go on. Theres going to be no ready-made solution in the next three years that will effectively exhaust all possible optionalities in this, so we need to play," he said. "And the more we can play, the better were going to feel at the end of the day."He also said the industry would be better off sticking to viable autonomous vehicles rather than flying taxis, a reference to reports that flying taxis could be a reality in the next few years.But Marchionne noted that the automaker can't totally depend on its partnership with Waymo as the industry works developing autonomous vehicles, saying the Portal offers another option."I think banking all of our solutions on one possible outcome is going to be disastrous," he said.The company says the Portal was created by millennials for millennials, touting it as a vehicle that can be upgraded as their lives change and that millennials "expect seamless integration of technology in and out of the vehicle, including to home and other devices.""Millennials have become the largest demographic. In the next 10-plus years, most will be at a point intheir life where they will begin to start or will have started a family; 75% of all children will have amillennial parent, and there will be four million more children than today," the release said.The Portal would offer a "third space," which would be a "open and serene atmosphere to bridge work and home." It would get more than 250 miles on a full charge, offer semi self-driving features that would be upgradable as technology progresses, and include seats mounted to tracks so they could move the full length of the vehicle and even be removed. Thanks for sticking with us! FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is speaking out against new efforts to gut the net neutrality rules that protect the free and open internet. Posted by Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 https://www.facebook.com/energyandcommercedemocrats/videos/651743278363527/ .@FCCs planned rollback of this critical safeguard would threaten an open and free internet and should concern all internet users https://t.co/V3eSoPKuS4 Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) April 26, 2017 .@FCC @AjitPaiFCC Let me be very clear: getting rid of #NetNeutrality would destroy the internet as we know it. I plan to fight @FCC @AjitPaiFCC's proposal. Sen. Al Franken (@SenFranken) April 26, 2017 GOP attempt to undo #NetNeutrality is an assault on our democracy. #OpenInternet shouldnt be up for debate! https://t.co/E4hv1Ua48G Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) April 26, 2017 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency would consider reversing several Obama-era regulations aimed at protecting net neutrality and a free and open Internet.In a speech on April 26 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Pai announced the beginning of the formal rulemaking process that would undo the FCCs 2015 decision to regulate the high-speed Internet industry like a public utility, while providing more comprehensive government oversight.The plan, outlined by the chairman, would specifically undo the FCC action that went into effect on June 12, 2015. The provisions began to treat Internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II, or a more strict public authority and were dubbed, "Bright Line Rules."These rules include:: Broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.: Broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.: Broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also banned ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates.The action was pushed by former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and endorsed by President Obama.At the event, hosted by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council and FreedomWorks, the libertarian advocacy group with ties to the Tea Party movement, Pai accused the FCCs 2015 actions of being politically motivated. It was all about politics, he said. [The rules were created] days after a disappointing 2014 midterm election, and in order to energize a dispirited base.Pai argued that the regulations were passed because of the myth that ISPs were throttling Internet service. The truth of the matter is that we decided to abandon successful policies solely because of hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom. We were not living in some digital dystopia before the partisan imposition of a massive plan, hatched in Washington, saved all of us.However, several ISPs have been caught throttling service. In 2008, the FCC ruled that Comcasts throttling of BitTorrent traffic was unlawful. And in 2014, the agency warned Verizon to abandon a program that would slow data speeds of customers with unlimited data plans after they reached a certain usage level each month. Verizon subsequently discontinued the practice.Pai also argued that the increased regulatory environment stymied innovation and investment by telecoms. Its basic economics: The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it youre likely to get, he said. The chairman cited that between 2014 and 2016, domestic broadband capital expenditures from the 12 largest ISPs declined by 5.6 percent. However, according to a flier (PDF) handed out by the open Internet-advocacy group Free Press , expenditures rose 5.3 percent from 2013/14 to 2015/16.Throughout his speech, Pai argued that the Internet and its providers had flourished due to a light regulatory touch. Under this framework, Americas Internet economy produced the worlds most successful online companies: Google, Facebook and Netflix, just to name a few.Netflix, Facebook and Google have all been strong proponents of a free and open Internet. The Internet Association, whose members include the aforementioned companies, as well as other Internet giants like Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft and many others, released a statement condemning the proposed changes.The existing 2015 Open Internet Order protects consumers from ISPs looking to play gatekeeper or prioritize their own content at the expense of competition online, the letter reads. Rolling back these rules or reducing the legal sustainability of the Order will result in a worse internet for consumers and less innovation online.Members of Congress have also come out against the proposal. Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee livestreamed a press conference opposing the rule change.In a follow-up statement, Congresswoman Doris Matsui said, The effort announced by Chairman Pai today is nothing but another Republican attempt to create fast lanes and slow lanes on the internet, which will undermine peoples access to information and their ability to participate in the innovation economy.Other members of Congress chimed in on Twitter, denouncing the changes:This is Pais second controversial action after repealing privacy protections that barred ISPs from selling user browsing data. Although it garnered some backlash, it was ultimately passed through the agency and through Congress. Pai is hopeful these regulations will be adopted as well.Make no mistake about it," Paid said, "this is a fight that we intend to wage, and it is a fight that we are going to win. In 2016, targeted cyberattacks pivoted away from economic espionage to politically focused subversion, which may not sound immediately alarming to public agencies at all levels but in their tactics, criminals showed an increased reliance on emails and common IT tools, a new report reveals.The Symantec 2017 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) released on Wednesday, April 26, draws the eye back to a year punctuated by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, attempts to subvert the American electoral process, multimillion-dollar bank heists, a rise in ransomware predations and the revealing of cracks in the cloud environment. The report has been produced for 22 years.None of this is good news for state and local governments. But as a representative of the leading cybersecurity company told, public officials can help preserve residents confidential data and maintain their own online architecture by strictly following a series of best practices that sound like old news and perhaps should be but still are not universally followed.Cyberattacks, particularly against the Democrats, were one of the major stories in the 2016 presidential election but contrary perhaps to the image of sophisticated hackers that presents, attackers increasingly lived off the land, using tools already installed on users systems to reach personal data.I think whether its our government, someone elses government, the state government, were all susceptible to these same groups, and thats why the trends are so important because youve got to know how to defend yourself, Jennifer Nowell, national director for state and local government and education at Symantec, toldArguably the hallmark of attackers simplicity was a marked return to email as their weapon of choice, with one in 131 emails sent last year containing a malicious link or attachment up from one in 220 in 2015. Thats a nearly 68 percent increase.Spam rates held constant at 53 percent of emails sent, but the phishing rate bounded upward from one in 1,846 in 2015 to one in 2,596 last year. Thats an increase of nearly 41 percent.Ransomware was its own story, with the number of detections jumping about 36 percent from 340,665 in 2015 to 463,841 and its one with which public agencies can increasingly relate. In late November, attackers demanded 100 bitcoin, then worth about $70,000, to release San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SF Muni) machines from encryption.It was some evidence, Symantec authors wrote, that ransomware attackers have begun tailoring their ransom demands on the basis of the type and volume of data they have encrypted.The temporary standoff meant free rides for some customers, but the predators lost. SF Muni restored its own data from a backup which the security company said is the single most effective way to fight ransomware.The average ransom amount jumped from $294 in 2015 to $1,077 last year.Elsewhere in 2016, attackers demonstrated an alarming ability to live off the land, using OS features, legitimate tools and cloud services to infiltrate networks. The malicious use of legitimate tools is harder to spot, researchers pointed out.Mimikatz, a tool that can change privileges, export security certificates and recover Windows passwords was criminals most popular choice for subversion with 4.6 million instances of usage, followed by the Microsoft Sysinternals tool PsExec at 3.2 million, and Windows Credential Editor at 2 million. Malicious PowerShell scripts have also been widely used in targeted attacks, the reports authors wrote.But the even simpler construct of social engineering remains too and was the root cause behind the spear-phishing email sent last year to Democratic campaign chairman John Podesta suggesting his Gmail account had been breached and asking him to reset his password.You know, human nature is for us to be helpful. And so we want to say, Let me give you my date of birth, let me give you my Social Security number,' Nowell said. With use of these easier tools in combination, they get what they need.Identity thefts and data breaches were two areas where the United States was especially hard-hit in 2016. The nation ranked No. 1 of 10 countries in data breaches (1,023) and stolen identities (more than 791 million).In the U.S., transportation and public utilities ranked fifth of 10 sectors with data breaches, by number of incidents, at 75 last year. The public administration sector ranked ninth with just six incidents. But Nowell said resolving the issue can be a relatively direct way for governments to save taxpayer dollars.Here as elsewhere in the report, the best practices listed may sound familiar, including backing up files; keeping security software and OS and system software up-to-date and patched; deleting suspicious email; keeping passwords strong; and being wary of Microsoft Office email attachments asking the user to enable macros to view content.But Nowell said security awareness and education, as well as communication, are key. She pointed to the Ohio Attorney Generals office as an example of an agency that has created awareness around security, even reaching the states smaller businesses to let them know what they should be doing.I think were seeing really positive momentum in the state around training and awareness and making sure they are communicating this as effectively as they can, Nowell said, adding that states generally lead lower-level agencies on cybersecurity and best practices, with CIOs learning from each other.At an informal session about hacktivism and cybersecurity on April 25 at the 2017 NASCIO Midyear conference in Arlington, Va., Andre McGregor, director of security at Tanium , discussed the hacking of the now-defunct leo.gov (PDF) and the always-present human element in hacking attempts.Back in November 2015, a hacktivist sent multiple emails to law enforcement employees in an attempt to gain access to the portal which gives an official with one username and one password access to many different services and sources of information within the FBIs Law Enforcement Online Enterprise Portal (now available on cjis.gov ).In this attempt, the hacktivist received multiple out-of-office automatic replies, McGregor said, so he masked himself as one of these out-of-office employees and essentially got access to leo.gov by communicating with another person within the agency.The human is still the weakest link, McGregor said, and how do we mitigate against that?The weakest link in the Internet of Things (IoT), which includes outmoded routers and Internet-connected cameras, is usually their security which may be non-existent or lacking an update.One of the biggest IoT breach stories last year was the series of attacks by the Mirai-infected botnet of devices. In September, IoT devices primarily driven by the Mirai zombie army, as Symantec referred to it, led the largest DDoS attack ever against French hosting company OVH.Nowell acknowledged the challenge posed by the millions of legacy IoT devices already released, but said companies that build Internet-enabled devices need to either include security or bolt it on afterward.As old as that is to say, youre only as strong as your weakest link, she added.Not surprisingly, as agencies of varying sizes contemplate moving operations to the cloud, it, too has security issues, Symantec researchers found, noting that cloud attacks are still in their infancy.The companys analysis that produced this years ISTR report which is based on data from Symantecs Global Intelligence Network that includes more than 2 billion emails and 2.4 billion Web requests processed daily found that most CIOs think their organizations use only around 30 to 40 apps in the cloud despite most enterprises having adopted an average of 928. That, Symantec noted, is a difference of more than 2,000 percent.In October, an IoT attack on domain name servers provider Dyn primarily through Chinese-produced webcams highlighted how one such incident could affect other Web services from providers like Amazon Web Services, SoundCloud, Spotify and others.In another case from early 2016, Symantec noted that a California company whose entire operation was run through a managed cloud solutions provider lost access to more than 4,000 files in the cloud after an employee opened a spam email.The human element, Nowell said, means that while many cloud apps are sanctioned and allowed, others that arent allowed are still used.You still have to provide the same level of security and it really should still be transparent to the user, she said of providers. We should be able to provide the transparency to users. And give them the flexibility they need to do their job. Video backlash Bond controversy (TNS) The Albuquerque Police Department is taking the unusual step of using its official Facebook page to criticize local judges and the news media because, officials said, the police are too often blamed for crime in the city.The department in recent months has started to use its online page, which is operated by the departments public information officers, as the primary means of communicating with the public and local media.But some posts target specific actions by judges and the media, criticizing them and attracting hundreds of harsh comments from the public. In some cases, those comments have called for violence against judges or accused reporters of crimes.APD says that unless a comment contains profanity, the department has no plans to delete it. In one post that has remained since February, a department Facebook follower wrote: I would most definitely punch this judge in the face. Another follower from earlier this month crowed: I hope the next victim is a member of the judges family.APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza said, We have to tell the whole story of whats happening in our community. There are a lot of fingers pointed at APD, APD, APD, crime rates, crime rates, statistics, statistics, data. What is the entire encompassing story behind all of those things?Last week, Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden seemed to echo that sentiment in a luncheon speech to the Greater Albuquerque Innkeepers Association. He said the department will try to raise awareness about the judges it thinks are soft on criminals.I know it sounds like Im blaming it all on the judges, he said about crime in the city, because I am.The talk covered security at the coming Gathering of Nations Powwow, but the chief digressed into other topics, including frustration with some judges and the media.He said media coverage of police that is critical of officers is preventing him from fully staffing the department.Thereviewed Facebook pages for other law enforcement agencies in the state including the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office and police departments in Farmington, Santa Fe and Las Cruces and couldnt find a post that was critical of a judge or a news media outlet.One of APDs posts that took aim at the media came after last weeks tragic collision involving a cruiser driven by an officer responding to a report of a violent crime in progress and a vehicle containing a mother and two children.The department in a Facebook post accused KOB-TV of refusing to give investigators video of the crash it had obtained from a nearby business. KOB alerted police to the existence of the video, and the stations news director said she would have provided police with the video if they had asked her for it. APD has since taken the post down.In another Facebook post, followers are offered a link to an APD news release that says police were frustrated with a local judges decision to release, without bond, a woman accused of a violent felony. Neither entry mentioned the judges seven-page explanation for doing so, which included that she was following the recommendation of Pretrial Services, the alleged victim and the Children, Youth and Families Department.Espinoza acknowledged that the posts dont always include all the facts. But she said the media can dig further into the cases.Thats the role of the media, Espinoza said. Thats why we put these things out there. Youll see that the public will research, that people will look into these cases, reporters at your outlet look into these cases and are able to determine more information and look into it further.Espinoza said that because APD gets so much criticism for criminal justice issues in Albuquerque, the department will continue to highlight other parts of the system, such as judges.After thecalled City Hall late Friday afternoon to ask for Mayor Richard Berrys opinion of the departments Facebook posts, APD spokesman Fred Duran provided thewith a statement that said, In the midst of a tragic event this past week, our staff used social media in an editorial manner. This is not the highest and best use of social media and we understand that.Court officials also declined to comment last week.Early on the evening of April 17, an Albuquerque police officer driving north on Eubank in response to a 911 call collided with an SUV as it was turning east from Eubank onto Indian School.Joel Anthony Suina, 6, later died, and his 9-year-old sister, Ariana, and mother, Antoinette, were injured. The officer suffered injuries to his leg and remained in the hospital late last week, according to police.Jen French, an investigative reporter with KOB, obtained a video recording of the crash from a local business. She dropped it off at the news station and went to the hospital to work the story from there, said Michelle Donaldson, the news director.Albuquerque police posted on Facebook later that night that KOB refused to provide Albuquerque police a copy of the video and that the station was irresponsible.That post was then followed with more than a hundred comments, many of which said KOB and other local media were vermin and called for reporters to be charged with crimes.Donaldson said her office received several threatening phone calls and messages after the Facebook post.We live in this time right now where there is so much us versus them when it comes to the media, she said. Its unfortunate people are at that point.Donaldson said the station would have made law enforcement a copy of the video had officials asked for one. She said APD never asked the station for a copy of the surveillance video.Espinoza said investigators approached Caleb James, another KOB reporter, at the scene of the accident and asked him for the video. But Donaldson said James didnt have it.Police were able to get a copy, and they provided it to all the local media outlets.Espinoza said police officials met with KOB last week and the department decided to take down the post. But she said the department stands by the message.When we have an investigation that is of this standard, you have a family that is in dire condition, we have an officer that is in critical condition and we have an investigation that needs to be thoroughly put together, Espinoza said. There was a key piece of evidence that it seemed was more important to get out on TV as opposed to allowing investigators to view it and gather evidence from it. What is the role there?Heath Haussamen, a board member of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, said APDs comments about KOB were another example of an Albuquerque police trend of criticizing the media.KOB obtained the video legitimately and had every right to use it, he said in a statement. The police department has a lot of gall to ask for what amounts to a favor from the media after consistently showing so much disrespect for our critical role in society and for the people were working to inform and educate. The video showed a crash involving a public employee that led to serious injuries. Broadcasting such a video is in the public interest.He also said the SPJ chapter opposes the Police Departments use of social media as its main medium for distributing information and its practice of often refusing to answer reporters follow-up questions.The APD is free to tweet and post whatever they like, but resorting to social media and bypassing journalists is a practice our chapter opposes because it cuts out the role of journalists who are stand-ins for the public to ask questions of powerful officials about policies, news, etc., he said. (APDs use of Facebook is) propaganda, not transparency.Another recent APD Facebook post that generated public outcry involved an attempted murder charge against Violet Andrews, 43.The post contained a link to the citys website that included details about the case and the judges decision. Court filings show the police left vital information about the charge out of their Facebook post and the online news release.Andrews shot her husband, Robert Salinas, in the stomach at a Central Avenue motel in July last year. Both Andrews and Salinas said the shooting was unintentional, and she wasnt charged with a crime at the time.But a detective last month interviewed the couples 6- and 9-year-old children. He reported the children said their parents were fighting and heard Andrews say, I hope this gun is loaded before they heard a gunshot, according to a criminal complaint.Andrews was arrested earlier this month, and prosecutors moved to have her held without bail. A judge denied the request.We have also learned she is trying to get her children back from CYFD custody, the Police Departments online news release said about the judges decision. This is not the person that we want on the streets of Albuquerque or to be around children. Detectives did an outstanding job with this investigation and show frustration when violent offenders like this are released from custody.But Salinas, the victim, had filed an affidavit saying the shooting was an accident. He said he and Andrews have been in a relationship for 19 years and Andrews has been his primary caretaker since he was shot.I depend on Violet for a large number of medical and daily life tasks, Salinas said in the affidavit. Violet Andrews is not a danger to me and I am not afraid of her.And Pretrial Services had recommended that Andrews be released on her own recognizance because she scored a zero when she was analyzed using a pretrial risk assessment instrument, which ranks defendants on a scale of zero to 15, with zero being the lowest risk.CYFD records also show that the agency is planning to reunite the family. Andrews has been complying with CYFDs treatment plan, which includes weekly drug tests, according to District Judge Cindy Leos order denying detention for Andrews.Max Pines, Andrews attorney, said Andrews clearly was a good candidate for conditions of release, as she has been living with and caring for the alleged victim for the past nine months.I think (the case) is an abuse of power, he said.Espinoza said Albuquerque police made the post about Andrews so that people will learn more about the case against her. She said the department is not trying to put political pressure on judges.Thats a woman that shot her husband in front of their children, Espinoza said. The post is simply there so people can look further into these cases and find that information and make their decisions.After the post, the departments Facebook followers misidentified the judge who made the decision and then started rallying for the wrong judge to be voted off the bench.APD did not correct the misinformation.In previous cases in which police have questioned judges decisions, APDs Facebook followers have made veiled threats against the judges.Espinoza said the department will take down comments if people use profanity.Because its a public page, if we start picking and choosing what goes up and what comes down and what is said and what isnt said thats not the role of this page, Espinoza said. Its a public forum. Technology has mutually improved and damaged the way information travels through the modern world. While some online sources are trusted and worth listening to, others leave you with more questions than answers. But when disaster strikes, the exchange of accurate and timely information is essential for public safety.This inarguable premise that people will continue to seek information however credible online is the logic behind a recently announced partnership between the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) and the neighborhood-based social network Nextdoor.Through the free Nextdoor for Public Agency platform, agencies are offered a direct connection to the user neighborhoods within their respective jurisdictions.As MEMA Digital Engagement Coordinator Emily Allen explained to, the cooperative agreement will allow the emergency management team the flexibility to target specific jurisdictions or the entire state with vital information.For example, in areas prone to flooding or mudslides, the information distributed might be tailored to preparing for the worst-case scenario or how to better protect homes from damage. During an emergency event, the agency could push targeted information to residents detailing evacuation plans.MEMA's partnership with Nextdoor will allow us to target messages into specific regions of the state, such as individual neighborhoods, cities, or counties, or into specific geographies such as flood zones or hazard zones, Allen said via email.Whats more, the new capabilities allow direct interaction with Nextdoor users, who can then serve as ad hoc first responders during crisis situations.Neighbors often serve as each others' first responders during an emergency, so the more neighbors who know and are able to communicate with each other, the better," she said. "Nextdoor provides us with direct access to residents at a hyper-local level, making it a powerful tool to increase resiliency across Maryland."But the channel into the Nextdoor environment isnt a replacement for the more traditional communication methods; Allen describes it as another great tool in the emergency management tool box.Nextdoor Senior City Strategist Joseph Porcelli said he hopes to see more state emergency service agencies adopting the free service. Though MEMA is the first agency of its kind to sign on, Porcelli said he doesnt believe it will be the last.Other platforms dont allow folks to post messages into specific geographies, he said. Not only can they get the information out and target it to the people that really need that information, because Nextdoor is a community building platform, they can also invite neighbors to take action that will increase the preparedness and resilience of their fellow neighbors.According to the senior city strategist, there are approximately 2,700 Nextdoor networks in the state of Maryland. Nextdoor is a local program, where neighbors expect to see things about their neighborhood The benefits extend beyond just getting valuable information out to the right people in a timely manner. Porcelli said it also promotes more resilient and connected communities. There is a ton of research out there that basically states those areas and communities that had stronger ties, as in more connections with their neighbors, were more resilient and were more able to quickly recover from disasters. A former F1 chief has questioned McLaren's decision to tackle the Indy 500 with Fernando Alonso next month. For many years, Haug was the head of Mercedes' F1 programme, including in 2007 when Alonso raced for the works team McLaren. So as McLaren and Alonso now head to Indianapolis amid the deep Honda crisis, he said: "My experience is that homemade problems are not remedied by the construction of a new one. "Without experience, to make your Indycar debut on the high speed oval I think is a suboptimal idea," said Haug. "Ok, a rookie won there last year and perhaps Alonso will too -- but will he then return to formula one more motivated than before, to run at the back again? "For Indy, Alonso's start is a coup, but at 35 with no oval experience and 385kph, I think it's not the best and safest winning combination. I keep my fingers crossed," he added. McLaren team figures have suggested Alonso needed the Indy 500 challenge to keep his competitive fire alive, but others think the Spaniard could still quit F1 at the end of the year. "I don't think so," Haug said. "Alonso is a racer through and through, but he was often at the wrong team at the wrong time, as he is now with McLaren-Honda while his former team Ferrari wins. "He has made mistakes," he concluded. (GMM) IT : 50 ; The cast and crew of the Broadway show, "Disneys The Lion King," made a special visit to Bonne Terre on Monday to experience freshwater diving in The Mine. The musical is being performed at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis through May 7. Owners of The Mine at Bonne Terre, Doug and Catherine Goergens, made special arrangements for the cast and crew to scuba dive Monday morning during the business' off season. We normally dont dive during the weekdays, Doug said. So we made a special exception for them, as we have done in the past for people who play at the Muny and at the Fox when they come in. Normally on the weekdays is when we get celebrities and athletes or anyone noteworthy who comes in. Doug said they normally come in during the week so they dont draw a lot of attention. They ended up doing three dives in tracts one, two and three, Doug said. They loved it and had a great time. Our staff had a great day of diving with the members of 'The Lion King' crew. We did some modified trails for them and they were amazed. They said they were definitely coming back with or without the show. "Disneys The Lion King" Assistant Electrician Steve Leach said he has 490 dives under his belt and his first dive was in 1982, but this is the first time he has ever dived in an underground cavern. I have never dove in a facility like this before, said Leach. I have dove in caves that I have encountered in Mexico and Hawaii. I have swam through some great barrier reefs, but in a facility like this, its my first time. Leach said he was a little intimidated at first because of the water being 58 degrees, but with the additional equipment the mine provided them, it was just the first initial shock of the temperature then everything was fine. The tranquility of the place and the visibility of everything is awesome, its really nice, said Leach. The crew here is really involved and there were three divers to our group of four. So we had really good support from them, but the facility itself is just amazing. There were areas I could see down there and I had to fight back the urge to go down in there to see what it was because they said dont go down there, it goes forever. Leach added the guides kept them at a pretty good depth so they didnt have to worry about decompression. We are having a short surfacing and then we are going to go for another dive and I am really looking forward to that, said Leach. We saw what they call the opera window and it was close to a spiritual experience. We dove through and everything got really dark. We turned our lights off and we had to just sit there and watch it form. Leach explained it quickly became a different experience. He said as they sat there their eyes were adjusting and all of sudden there were things popping up they could see. You can start to see the light patterns start to shift and I was right up on the very edge, said Leach. I felt very alone and very calm. I was really into it and thought this is really cool, I just want to sit here for a while and stare at this. It was the highlight of that dive. Leach said there was a lot of mining equipment. They saw the old ore carts and the areas were people went up and down. There was something here that I have never seen before because I am mostly a saltwater diver. they described it as the smoke, said Leach. Its the iron rusting and its off casting. Its something you would not see in the ocean because its so disturbed, but here it is so still, they were highlighting from the side and they said no two smokes are alike. You can see each individual one and that was from the ore cars. Leach described the ore cars as being like the ones in the Indiana Jones movie and they were filled with the mining equipment that had been abandoned over the years. A lot of the gear and instruments they used are still down there, recalled Leach. They are spread out and the guides were very good about pointing out the different veins of not only lead, but the quartz and different minerals. Leach said he read about the mine in National Geographic about three or four years ago and has seen it on different dive sites. We are only town for three weeks and we have one day a week off, said Leach. They were kind enough to open the facility up to us to dive today and apparently they dont do that during the winter hours. We have people who wouldnt come because they were afraid of the temperature, so there is going to be a lot of jealousy when we get back to the theatre, laughed Leach. Id come back next Monday to dive again if they would open it up to us again. While the cast and crew was on their scuba adventure, approximately 150 kids from the Ladue School District were enjoying the boat and walking tour. The kids were excited when they spotted air bubbles and the divers beneath the water. The Mine at Bonne Terre, formerly known as the Bonne Terre Mine, will be open seven days a week starting May 15. This is their busy season with kids from all over coming to Bonne Terre to explore the mine on their end-of-the-year field trips. Students at Special Acres School in Park Hills will be enjoying a whole new way of learning thanks to the recent gift of a smart board donated by Mineral Area Community Elks Lodge 2583 in Desloge. According to Building Administrator Jessica Wright, the state school has been in existence since the 1970s and serves students with severe developmental disabilities that are referred there by the Farmington, Central, West County, Bismarck, Marquand and Fredericktown school districts. "There's 34 state schools across Missouri," she said. "This school has 26 students between the ages of 5 and 21 years of age, four classrooms and four teachers. Each room has a teacher and two aides. We also have a P.E. teacher here and a nurse." The smart board, with a list price of more than $3,000, was installed earlier this month on a day the students were enjoying a vacation day from school. The teachers were on hand, however, and they excitedly congregated in intermediate teacher Kelly Sellinger's classroom where Schiller's Audio Visual Technician Dave Jones was installing the board and began instructing her in the basics of its use. Asked if she was excited about having the board placed in her room, Sellinger exclaimed, "Oh, gosh, yes!" Standing off to one side of the classroom watching everything unfold with a wide grin on his face was MAC Elks member Jim Hahn who put in a lot of time and effort into getting a smart board for the school. "We were contacted by Special Acres about the possibility of looking into a smart board concept for the students," he said. "Because of their challenges in life, they just haven't been introduced to today's technology. It was our goal through our Elks National Foundation program to go out and see if we could get a Beacon Grant to help meet their needs with the smart board technology. "Obviously, what we want to do is bring these students into today's world through this technology. These students, despite their disabilities, are able to interact with today's technology by use of touchscreen and so forth. This gives them a step into the future that they haven't had before." Wright heartily agreed that the smart board would open a new world of opportunity to the students. "It's really going to be helpful because we have a lot of students that have mobility issues they have vision issues too and every kid loves technology," she said. "This is going to be a great way to incorporate interactive lessons into our day." Hahn said that providing Special Acres School with a smart board is just one example of how the Elks organization seeks to help out local communities. "Over the last several years, we've been involved with the backpack program at North County, we did emergency clothes for kids at West County and Central last year, and now we've provided this smart board. This is just part of what we do as an Elks organization to get out and provide where we can for the community's needs. That's what we're all about and we're just tickled to death to be able to do this for the Special Acres School." Wright expressed appreciation for the MAC Elks' generosity to the school. "We appreciate the Elks working with us," she said. "Everyone in the school is so excited to get in here and start working with the students. We're all thrilled that the Elks chose us. The smart board makes a great addition to our school." Hahn added that Special Acres has a very special place in the hearts of the MAC Elks Lodge membership. "The first school that came to the special prom we put on each year was Special Acres School," he explained. "We brought the students in and our wives did the young ladies' hair and we dressed the boys up in suits and ties. That was around 37 years ago. We're going to be holding another one again next month. It's a wonderful night and we love doing it." Hyundai Mobis integrated the converter and the battery systemformerly applied separatelyinto one system. The company not only reduced the weight, volume and cost of the system but also improved cooling efficiency. Automotive supplier Hyundai Mobis has developed the core technologies of a compact, integrated 48V mild hybrid system. Hyundai Mobis developed the converter integrated 48V battery system on its own and it is making the final preparations for mass-production scheduled for next year. The Hyundai Mobis 48V system meets ECE-R100 (Economic Commission of Europe Regulation 100) requirements. R100 addresses the safety requirements specific to the electric power train of on-road vehicles including rechargeable battery systems. In addition to the converter integrated battery system, Hyundai Mobis developed the inverter integrated starter & generator, which is the driving component of 48V; MDPS (Motor-Driven Power Steering); iMEB (Integrated Mobis Electronic Brake); and the electric compressor, and it is now verifying the performance through ongoing tests. Unlike more powerful high-voltage hybrid vehicles with a separate drive motor, the 48V Mild HEV can improve fuel efficiency by more than 15% by simply replacing the starter & generator of the existing internal combustion engine vehicle. It is attributable to its simple power assistance, and the improvements made by the regenerative braking and ISG (Idle Stop & Go) function. Swiss investment company UBS forecasts that t478V mild hybrid systems will account for about 10% of all vehicles sold in 2025. Hyundai Mobis is a global Tier-1 automotive supplier. It was established in 1977, and is headquartered in Seoul, Korea. R&D headquarters are in Korea and the company has 4 technical centers worldwide: in Germany, China, India and the US. Panasonic has provided automotive lithium-ion batteries to a number of auto manufacturers on a global basisnotably Teslaand currently leads the automotive battery market. In response to further increase in the demand of high-performance automotive lithium-ion batteries, Panasonic not only increased production at Japanese sites but will also start automotive battery cell production in the United States in 2017. The newly constructed factory in China is a new production facility of Panasonic Automotive Energy Dalian Co., Ltd., an automotive battery joint venture established between Panasonic and Dalian Levear Electric Co., Ltd. in February 2016. Panasonic is targeting 2 trillion (US$18 billion) in sales for the overall automotive business, including infotainment systems and industrial devices, in the fiscal year 2019 (ending 31 March 2019) which marks the 100th anniversary of the companys founding. Panasonic will develop the new factory into a core manufacturing site in China, and further strengthen its automotive battery business. Castle Rock Hospital Districts financial health continues to improve, with the district $150,000 higher than it was at this time last year. Were doing well by any measure, Chief Financial Officer Todd Toolson said during the district board of trustees meeting Tuesday night. Toolson said the hospital districts days of cash on hand, a measure of funding reserves calculating how long the district could survive without any income, are expected to be at 67 days by the end of April, the districts slowest month. The district recently started using the same formula used by Memor... Voucher from Kolbs business approved A county voucher approved to pay a company owned and operated by a Sweetwater County Commissioner illustrates how a politicians personal business can get involved with the politicians public office. Last week, the commissioners voted to approve a voucher submitted by Alpha Petroleum, a company owned and operated by Commissioner John Kolb, for $967.83. The voucher was approved with a 4-0 vote, with Kolb abstaining. Kolbs company specializes in petroleum contracting work. According to Gene Legerski, public works director for the county, the work involved the replacement of an inspect... Daggett County Sheriff Jerry Jorgensen resigned from his post Sunday after an investigation into allegations of prisoner mistreatment at the Daggett County Jail. According to a media release from the Daggett County Sheriffs Office, Jorgensens resignation was voluntary. Sheriff Jorgensens resignation was completely voluntary. It came because of his desire to help the county move forward in the process with Utah Department of Corrections to return inmates to the Daggett County Jail, the release stated. He felt a clean break with a new sheriff would facilitate that more quic... Lavanetta (Neta) Forbes Waters, 78, of Rock Springs, passed away April 17, 2017, at the University of Utah Medical Center. A lifelong resident of Rock Springs, Waters had been in ill health the past three months. She was born on Nov. 13, 1938, in Rock Springs, the daughter of Jackson R. and Kathryn "Katie" Medill Forbes. Waters attended school in Rock Springs and was a 1957 graduate of the Rock Springs High School. She went on to college and obtained her bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Wyoming. She also attended Nichols State University and Colorado State University.... Dear Editor, Are you aware that the proposed federal budget calls for the elimination of the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP)? This is the program that keeps many Wyoming residents warm in the winter. Earlier this year, the State of Wyoming legislature eliminated its usual additional funding for this program. Between the federal and state budget cuts, this translates to zero help for people in need of winter home heating assistance. I recently spoke with Brenda Ilg about this issue. Ms. Ilg is the LIEAP program manager for the State of Wyoming. She said she has no... Great ideas tend to come out of nowhere. Theyre the sort of inspirations that strike like lightening and linger on afterward. Recently, an idea came to our attention that could be something the local chambers of commerce, Sweetwater County Travel and Tourism and maybe both cities should look into. Certain regions of the U.S. are known for large gatherings where people cook a local specialty. New England is known for its clam bake and some locations in Alaska host a salmon bake. Green River even hosts is own cajun shrimp boil during the annual River Festival. These events are huge gatheri... The Jackson Elementary School gym was lined with students dressed like historical Wyoming figures. The fourth-grade students, who were portraying the historical figures, were not moving because they were pretending to be made out of wax. Next to the students, were posters filled with information about the person, place, animal or thing they were dressed up to be. Fourth-grade teachers Maria Anderson, Amy Gilmore, Joe Morgheim, Sarah Wright instructed their students look through their Wyoming history textbooks to pick out something they were interested in. "This project gives students the op... 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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 Quick reactions to the news: The administration rolled out the barest outline of a plan to make sure that Donald Trump and members of his family never pay federal taxes again, thanks largely to the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax. So what if it will add trillions to the deficit if it directly benefits Trump? Only stupid people pay taxes. This is another reason why he'll never release his tax returns. While Trump certainly will do well, his Treasury secretary today says he can't guarantee that the middle class won't end up paying more. Again, so what? The new swamp is for millionaires and billionaires. If you're wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and jaywalk across the street, a motorist in a pickup truck sporting a Rebel flag bumper sticker could deliberately run you down and get away with it if this bill passes. That's not the intent of the bill, but I'm just saying. Guilford County Democrats must have no ambition of regaining a majority on the Board of Commissioners. Appointing Skip Alston, one of the county's most polarizing political figures, to fill Ray Trapp's seat gives voters more of a reason to elect Republicans to minimize Alston's influence. The leaders of Canada and Mexico apparently talked Trump out of trying to revoke NAFTA yesterday, but they might not have fully explained the agreement. He was back on Twitter this morning threatening that "if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA." I wonder if he could explain what exactly is unfair about NAFTA, but I doubt it. Also on Twitter, Trump criticized the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, noting its "terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%)." As the old saying goes, figures lie and liars figure. No circuit court has most of its rulings overturned simply because the Supreme Court only reviews a small number of cases from the lower courts. When it does agree to hear a case, which requires the agreement of four justices, the chances of overturning are high because there's little reason to hear a ruling that's likely to be upheld. At any rate, the vast majority of decisions from the 9th and all other circuit courts are never overturned. The Obamacare replacement bill is back and uglier than before to suit the House Freedom Caucus. This version would let states do away with the requirement that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions. There's no doubt that the North Carolina legislature would jump at that opportunity. GREENSBORO - Greensboro College presents "Tonin," an original musical that celebrates Manhattan Transfer. In the genre of the Broadway musicals Come Fly Away and Movin Out, created by Twyla Tharpe, this original production was conceived, directed and choreographed by Ashley Hyers, assistant professor of theater and dance of Greensboro College, and Perry Morgan-Hall, assistant professor of theater at Greensboro College and director of the theater departments musical theater concentration. The production is a musical dance and movement piece using the music of the Grammy Award-winning group Manhattan Transfer as they collaborate with musical guests including B.B. King, Bette Midler, James Taylor, Chaka Khan, Phil Collins, Smokey Robinson and Frankie Valli. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center in the Odell Building on the Greensboro College campus at 815 W. Market St. Tickets are $8-$10. Call 336-217-7102, Ext. 5242. By day, Bo (Jacob Latimore) is a street magician, wowing passersby with truly impressive sleight of hand for tips. By night, he slings party drugs in the clubs and on the streets of L.A. But all the time, hes the protective guardian of his sister, Tina (Storm Reid), just two orphaned siblings against the world. In Sleight, co-writer/director J.D. Dillard and co-writer/producer Alex Theurer have created an unlikely superhero origin story, executed with the style, themes and budget of independent cinema. The central conflict of Sleight revolves around Bos competing livelihoods. Magic is his passion, a calling so strong that he has subjected himself to physical extremes. Inspired by a Venice Beach illusionist he encountered as a kid who had carved a hole in his hand for an illusion, Bo believes that anyone can do a trick, but the person wholl do anything is the true magician. A Houdini poster illustrates his inspiration to push himself to the limit for his craft. But selling drugs pays the bills for Bo and Tina, a side hustle that has sucked him in far deeper than he ever imagined. His boss, Angelo (Dule Hill), has started to rely on him in ways that test Bos morality and identity, and going against the boss is far more dangerous than even Bo wagers. Also, Bos recently met cute community college student/cupcake salesgirl Holly (Seychelle Gabriel), and he doesnt suspect she wants to date the local drug dealer. The magic is the setting and the soul of Sleight, while the drugs offer stakes and danger to the story. At times, the drug subplot can feel a bit overwrought and inauthentic; as committed as Hill is, its hard to buy him as the ruthless and cold-blooded Angelo, and the budget limitations are a bit clearer during those scenes. But Dillard and Theurer pull off the most important thing in the film the character and his journey. Latimore shines in this lead role, and Sleight is a star-making performance for this on-the-rise actor. The high stakes of his entanglement with Angelo force Bo out of his comfort zone, and he relies on his skill with magic to slide out of some sticky situations. However, it becomes far more than just an optical illusion, and as Bo pushes himself to the limit, he makes a breakthrough from the kind of sleight of hand magic to what seems to almost be real magic. The film leaves the supernatural elements just ambiguous enough, only hinting around the edges at the possibilities of what could be. Its a smart move for a film thats grounded in a gritty reality about a kid struggling to make ends meet in a tough world that hasnt been fair to him. But the wisps of real magic that dance around the edges of Sleight imbue the film with a fresh, exciting dynamic. In their feature film debut, Dillard and Theurer have efficiently used their resources to demonstrate a deft control of character and tone that leaves you wanting more from Bos story, and curious about what the filmmakers could do with a bigger project. Sleight fuses superhero story with a tough coming-of-age tale, and it enlivens and elevates both genres into something new and different, while heralding the arrival of Latimore as a star. RALEIGH The N.C. House of Representatives narrowly rejected a proposal Thursday to let city councils and citizen review boards scrutinize footage from the cameras worn by police officers without prior court approval. But the House approved expanding the list of reviewers to city and county managers. State Rep. John Faircloth (R-High Point) sponsored the proposed changes to body-worn camera rules enacted last year in order to govern taped recordings of encounters between police and members of the public. Representatives on Thursday agreed to add city and county managers to the list of approved viewers and made several other minor changes to the new law by a vote of 110-6. Before that, they voted 59-57 to exclude elected city and county officials as well as citizen review boards from that list. The measure now moves to the state Senate for further consideration. Current law limits the use of that footage to law enforcement authorities for investigation, prosecution and training purposes unless a Superior Court judge authorizes wider distribution. Such video and who can view it have become controversial after racially charged incidents in Greensboro, Charlotte and other communities where critics contend that police officers mistreated people they were questioning or overstepped their authority. Faircloth said the proposed changes would provide a little more availability to city, town or county officials to see police video, but only after they have signed a written statement agreeing to maintain the confidentiality of the recording. The High Point legislator said that city and county managers clearly should be added to the list of approved viewers as they often are the chief executives who supervise police chiefs and other law enforcement leaders. State Rep. William Brawley (R-Matthews) proposed the successful amendment dropping city council, county commission and review board officials from the expanded for fear that they would not honor their confidentiality pledge. But that would not preclude those officials from petitioning a judge to see a particular video, said Brawley, a four-term legislator from Mecklenburg County. Supporters of letting council, commission and review board members view police footage said they need to see such video to help them deal with protests and other fallout from clashes between the police and those they encounter. A former teacher at Henrico Countys Deep Run High School who is accused of sex crimes involving a minor has been arrested. Benjamin Clark Brittain, a 28-year-old resident of Greensboro, N.C., was arrested Tuesday on two charges of exposing himself to a minor while in a custodial role. Hes also facing two charges of using a communications system to undertake sex crimes involving a minor who was at least 15 years old. The charges involve alleged conduct in January and February last year, according to arrest warrants. Brittain was a teacher at Deep Run from August 2013 until June 2016, said Andy Jenks, a Henrico schools spokesman. Jenks wouldnt comment on whether the allegations involve any student at the high school. A juvenile went to police on Jan. 18 this year and said she had received inappropriate communications from Brittain, said Henrico police Lt. Chris Garrett. Ed Riley, Brittains attorney, said he couldnt comment on the specifics of the allegations, noting that he was still familiarizing himself with the case. Brittain, who is being held in the county jail, was arraigned on the charges Wednesday. But Riley emphasized that prior to these charges, Brittain had never been in trouble and had nothing on his record, adding that his client had lived an exemplary life. Brittain, who attained the rank of Eagle Scout, was attending law school at Elon University at the time of his arrest, Riley said. Riley said he was hoping to get Brittain released from jail on bond, so they could explore the charges further. With a few shovels of sand and a truckload of faith, the official ground breaking for the citys new downtown arts center went on as scheduled Wednesday afternoon. There were smiles and speeches and handshakes all around. Gov. Roy Cooper even came by to offer his congratulations and well wishes. But no contract to allow construction work to begin. The city has not yet settled on a formal agreement on what the guaranteed maximum price of the project will be. Greensboro Coliseum Managing Director Matt Brown is still negotiating with the company that will oversee construction, Skanska Rentenbach. Brown joked to the big crowd that hed had better luck convincing The Almighty to provide sunshine and cool breezes after days of constant rain, just in time for the ceremony. At some point we expect the $78.1 million Tanger Center for the Performing Arts will be completed and well worth the wait. Thats why the City Council approved the unfinished contract anyway, by an 8-1 vote during a special meeting Tuesday night. But the path along the way has had its share of potholes and puddles. Even former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye, who led a citizen task force on the project, rhymed in a playful reference to the center, And I hope that in my lifetime, and in my childrens, Ill be able to enter. If it were easy everybody would be doing it, City Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann said Tuesday night, not joking. It hasnt been easy. And if the council had not said yes to a contract that is still being negotiated, the grading and excavation of the site could have fallen even further behind schedule. The ceremonial turning of the dirt symbolizes that the initiative is moving ahead, slowly but surely. Thats not to say we shouldnt be proud of whats been accomplished so far. The $40 million in private money raised for the joint project between the city and community donors (400 and counting) is unprecedented. The lead fundraiser, volunteer Kathy Manning, has done extraordinary work. The 82-person citizen task force that debated the need for the facility and the shape it should take, and purposely included skeptics. Finally, the Tanger Center will be light years removed from its creaky forebear. Beyond its bad acoustics and flawed design, old War Memorial Auditorium suffered from decades of wear and neglect. Among the many other promising aspects of the Tanger Center is its downtown location, which had not been a foregone conclusion. In the heart of the city, it will be easily accessible to the whole community and a catalyst for activity. Also heartening is the buildings mission to accommodate local arts performances as well as touring productions. Whats left, of course, is that contract. And the construction. And the challenge of booking and filling the center once it opens in 2019. And the fact that its not clear yet how transparent the facilitys board of directors will be. Given the taxpayers stake in the Tanger Center, it should conduct itself like a public body. For now, why not celebrate? As Mayor Nancy Vaughan quipped on Wednesday, Some days are better than others to be mayor. And today is a very good day. A perfect day for a curtain call. Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle Retirees blasted General Electric and CEO Jeff Immelt this week at the companys annual meeting in Asheville, N.C., over changes to the companys retiree health plans, according to local media reports. Retirees, including thousands who live in southwestern Connecticut, in 2015 were moved off company-sponsored health plans and instead told to purchase coverage through an exchange, for which they were provided a $1,000 annual supplement. Many retirees say the coverage has suffered and become much more complicated with the change. Fine jewelry designer and piercing expert Maria Tash has something in common with Saks Fifth Avenue: Theyre both expanding their brick-and-mortar footprints in metro New York City while many retail brands look to shrink theirs. I have a theory on this, Tash said Thursday, during an interview at her pop-up shop at Saks contemporary fashion store The Collective on Greenwich Avenue. You cant replicate us on Amazon, she said, referring to her own brand carrying her name. Were an experience, plus a product plus styling. You cant get pierced, styled or fitted on Amazon. In the last year, Saks has established itself as the largest single-brand presence in downtown Greenwich with its openings of the Saks Shops at Greenwich. Its also invested in stores in New Jersey and Manhattan. Meanwhile, Tash owns two Manhattan stores and is in the process of more than doubling her flagship store at 653 Broadway. The designer hopes she will have even more in common with Saks in the coming months. Her four-day pop up in Greenwich, followed by a 10-day pop up at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, will serve as a trial run to prove herself, she said. If all goes well, it could lead to Saks parent Hudson Bay Company choosing to carry her at stores around the world. A similar arrangement at Liberty of London, where Tash proved herself through a successful pop-up shop, turned into her first boutique outside the U.S. Tash began her Greenwich Avenue pop-up shop Thursday and it will run through Sunday. It includes a number of her jewelry styles and on-site piercing availability. This is the culmination of something we talked about 20 years ago, Tash said while sitting in The Collective next to her high school best friend Lily Lin. Over the course of their friendship and Tashs more than 20-year career, shes achieved many of the things the two dreamed up years ago, along with some things she couldnt have such as piercings for a slew of famous names who have dropped into her boutique or invited her to their hotels and houses. From Christina Aguilera, the Olsen twins, Britney Spears and Jessica Alba, Tasha jokes its pointless to be depressed when you never know what can happen in your day. Its amazing what people have entrusted me to do. With her tall figure and long black hair, the Long Island native is a striking figure. Her ears are lined with piercings, most of them done herself in her youth, she said, cringing and adding I probably wouldnt do that now. Id have my staff do it, and itd be more accurate and faster emphasis on the faster. A purple shirt with sheer sleeves reveals tattoos on her arms. She offers tattooing services at only one of her boutiques and it shouldnt be considered married to piercing, she said. Ive always seen tattooing and piercing as separate things. When Tash gets started on a rant about piercing methods she does forward-facing rather than perpendicular or how to do it hygienically and the craftsmanship that goes into making jewelry that fits clients properly and wont irritate their skin, its evident how shes made it so far. She fuses lessons in the science of metals and business smarts that has culminated in her brand really taking off within the last five years. Ive always had a belief that this would work, she said. Maybe its stupidity or like one of those cheesy billboards of the Field of Dreams where if you build it, they will come. I knew I had to do whatever it took, and I never really believed it could fail. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD Royal Bank of Scotland plans to lay off 22 employees in June, the latest in a series of cuts affecting hundreds of positions in the past two years. Reported by RBS last week to the state Department of Labor, the new reductions at RBS Americas headquarters at 600 Washington Blvd. affect positions in several departments including banking, operations and IT. The layoffs comprise the latest round of a 2015 downsizing plan. Since the beginning of 2015, RBS has eliminated nearly 600 Stamford positions. We anticipate additional terminations throughout 2017, RBS Americas human resources head Ronni Greenberg wrote in an April 20 letter to the Labor Department. RBS officials declined to comment Thursday on the layoffs. They have also declined to comment on the companys current number of employees in Stamford. Despite the ongoing layoffs, RBS officials have said in earlier statements that they plan to maintain the Stamford offices. In an interview Thursday, Stamford Mayor David Martin said he did not think the layoffs suggested that RBS would soon leave the city. I am hopeful that they will continue to keep a presence in Stamford, he said. Known as one of the United Kingdoms big four banks, the Edinburgh-headquartered RBS has struggled in recent years. Struck by billions in legal and conduct charges, it took a $8.7 billion loss in 2016. In line with the strategy to make RBS stronger, simpler and more sustainable, we are reducing the size of the bank to focus on our core customers, products and locations, RBS officials said in a statement last year. This includes our trading and sales hub in Stamford. Another European banking giant, UBS, has also reduced its presence in Stamford. Throughout last year, it moved its employees from an approximately 700,000-square-foot complex across the street on Washington Boulevard to offices that it leases within RBS building. About 900 UBS employees remain in Stamford. The 677 Washington Blvd. complex that UBS formerly occupied now stands vacant. A Beverly Hills, Calif. investment firm bought the propertys mortgage earlier this month for about $54 million. Lenders backing the loan took an approximately $100 million hit on the deal. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott Josh Goodman was on a problem-solving quest. Pushing 30, he had lost his enthusiasm for his career in IT staffing and was looking for business ideas. One night, he met some friends at a crowded bar in Baltimore but couldnt get a beer. It happened again the next time they went out. And again. Goodman thought, Theres got to be a better way to get a drink. He envisioned a simple solution: a self-serve beer tap system, where customers could fill up a debit card, pour their own drinks and be charged by the ounce. Like an ATM, but for beer. This was 2007. I thought Id be sipping mojitos on an island in the Caribbean by 2013 or 14, he says. And the entrepreneurial gods laughed and laughed. What followed was a 10-year odyssey of malfunctioning tech, unreliable partners and cruel breaks, culminating in the lesson all company founders must eventually learn: Even the simplest ideas can be maddeningly complex, and only the most persistent entrepreneurs survive. Related: 7 Challenges That Will Make You More Successful Goodmans journey unfolded in phases. During phase one, he heard about a small company in Atlanta that built a similar system to what hed envisioned. He started a firm called Innovative Tap Solutions and struck a deal to sell its technology. The upside of this was that Goodman got practice convincing skittish local authorities that the product wouldnt result in mayhem. (The system cut off after five beers and required drinkers to go to a bar employee to reactivate it, making it no different from ordering a pitcher of beer.) The downside was that in order to install it, bar owners had to rip up their floors to run tap lines, an outlay of time and money no one was willing to make for an unproven technology. He went 0 for 150. On to phase two. Goodman sunk $10,000 of his own money into developing a mobile draft table, a self-contained unit on wheels that required no renovations. But as he was looking for manufacturing partners, he heard about an Irish company, Ellickson, that was looking to sell its own mobile draft table in the U.S. It had a deal with beverage giant Diageo, which gave the product credibility. Goodman ditched his own table, got in touch with Ellickson in 2009, flew to Ireland and wound up launching its U.S. operations. His small team sold 174 units, but the product was plagued by technical problems. For lack of a better word, it sucked, he says. Ellickson shut down the division in 2012. Phase three! Fed up with working for someone else, Goodman restarted his company and named it PourMyBeer. He partnered with a number of small firms around the world -- in California, Austria, China -- that wanted to sell their self-serve beer systems in the U.S. Anticipating that the American market could become crowded soon, he invested heavily in SEO so hed top the rankings when people searched self-serve beer. Related: The 12 Covenants of Success For a while, things looked pretty good. PourMyBeer landed dozens of clients, including some big ones like MGM, Aria and Caesars Palace casinos. It even wound up on the widely watched reality show Bar Rescue. There was only one problem: The technology from California and China consistently failed, Goodman says. Worse, their units were badly engineered and their tech support was nil, forcing Goodmans small team to service the things themselves. By 2014, PourMyBeer was on the brink. Goodmans business partner quit for a job that could actually pay him. Goodman sunk into depression. Why is this happening? he wondered. Im not a bad person. Still, he kept at it. You dont lose faith for two reasons, he says now. Number one: You believe in your idea. And number two: You bet your entire life savings on it, so you dont want to think it could be a bad choice. Which brings us to phase four. Goodman considered what hed learned. He had a good idea and a track record of promoting and selling it. He dominated in SEO. He knew how to win over regulators. The problem throughout had been the technology. So he decided to develop his own. It would have to be clean, simple, affordable, durable and so easy to install, a child could do it. He also realized he needed to stop thinking of his product as disruptive to bars, and start thinking about it as disruptive anywhere people want a drink. During his visits to Vegas, Goodman had learned that virtually anything -- coffee, cocktails, kombucha -- could be served through a keg-based system. So he partnered with his only reliable vendor from the previous debacle, an Austrian company, Redl Gastrosystems, to develop this new product. When it was done, he made a video of his 6-year-old installing one. PourMyBeers new unit hit the market in the spring of 2015 and did $650,000 in sales that year. In 2016, it hit $1.2 million. Goodman estimates hes on track to hit $4 to $5 million this year. Customer acquisitions are up 400 percent; distributors have signed on in Argentina, the Netherlands, Brazil and other countries; and the company is getting 50 leads a week. PourMyBeer has landed major restaurant groups, Thomson Cruise Lines, Marriott Hotels and the U.S. Marine base at Okinawa -- all through its website. (That SEO work paid off.) And each installation brought more referrals. A contact at Aria moved over to hospitality Goliath HMS Host and got PourMyBeer into Chicago and Milwaukee airports. We get emails from people as theyre sitting there using our system, saying, This is phenomenal. I want to bring it back to our area. Call me, Goodman says. Related: How Hard Do You Need to Work to Reach Success? Its the tipping point, he continues. Weve crossed the chasm. So does that mean its finally time for those mojitos on the beach? Not quite. I dont feel like I deserve a pat on my back yet, he says. I feel like Im just getting started. Related: How Patience, Grit and Beer Helped This Entrepreneur Finally Find Success 5 B2B Growth Hacking Tools for Your Business To Be Successful, You Must Pursue Learning Relentlessly Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved STAMFORD-City police are investigating the abduction of a 10-year-old girl, believed to have been taken from a West Side home Wednesday afternoon by a family relative. Lt. Diedrich Hohn said the search resulted from a complaint called in to police at about 3 p.m. by the childs guardian, who reported the child missing, Hohn said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD A colonial on Westover Road is one of many that had a past life as a 1950s-style ranch. The house was converted, gaining a second floor and attic, in the early 2000s as homeowners in Westover shed the midcentury ranch trend. But by the time Stephen Pakuta and Estela Pucheta stumbled upon the home in 2008, it had already begun to fall out of style. This house was definitely not love at first sight for me, Pucheta said. Things were just outdatedeverything was gold and there were all of these brown tiles in the bathroom. It was not my style. It was her husband, Pakuta, who pushed to buy the house, because he was enamored with the backyard and pool. I agreed, as long as I could make all the changes I wanted on the inside of the house, Pucheta said. Over the last nine years at 410 Westover Rd., Pucheta has transformed each room of the house, sometimes with a simple change of wall color like the formerly port-wine-red dining room thats now a mellow eggshell white. She put in darker hardwood floors to bring out the white mill work in the foyer, added built-ins to a room off the living room to create a study, and replaced all of the gold trim with more modern metallic. I would just change things little by little, she said. I always had a project going. Her biggest project was the basement, which used to be a dark room with low ceilings. She hired builders to lift the ceilings, install french doors leading out to the patio and pool deck and craft a restaurant-quality bar. This is my favorite place in the house, Pucheta said standing behind the bar, which is equipped with kegerators, a sink, a dishwasher and even a classic bar mirror. The gathering house During a tour this week, Pucheta was joined by her sister Cecilia Schmitke and her dog Lola. Schmitke, who lives in Darien, said she visits Puchetas Westover home almost every day. The sisters emigrated from Argentina in the 1990s. Their older brother also lives nearby in Shippan. This house is always filled with family, said Pucheta, who has three boysages 17, 15 and 9 with Pakuta. Aside from her sisters daily visits, Pucheta also hosts her Argentinian parents and their siblings every six months. Even though we all live near each other, when family comes to visit we are all here, Pucheta said. This is the gathering house. She even installed a retractable awning over the patio next to the pool to accommodate the card games her parents like to play when they visit. Pucheta also throws a big themed party for friends, family and neighbors at the end of every summer. Shes featured themes like casino night and fire and ice. Those parties are the best, said Schmitke. People dress up and Estela goes all out with food, ice sculptures and lots of decorations. A new project Pucheta flipped through some before-and-after photos, marveling at what 410 Westover Road looked like before she and her family moved in. Its not even the same house anymore, she said, pointing to a picture of tiny windows in the basement that she replaced with the French doors. She never expected to enjoy home improvement projects when she and her husband bought the home in 2008. In fact, she dreaded it. I really wanted a house that we could just move into, she said. Shes flipped on that opinion. With her oldest son heading off to college in the fall, Pucheta is taking the downsizing opportunity to look for a new project house this time with a little more property. The 5,070-square-foot, 4-bedroom Westover home is listed with Berkshire Hathaway New England Properties for $1.59 million. Id like something a little more woodsy, she said. And I want something that will take a lot of work ... I need a new project. nnaughton@stamfordadvocate.com; @noranaughton Te Company is something like a tiny sanctuary in the middle of Greenwich Village. Photo: Tirzah Brott/New York Magazine New York has clearly benefited from the third-wave coffee boom its hard to walk two blocks without finding amazing lattes, for example and now, the specialty-tea movement is gaining momentum. A few businesses that started by selling their tea to luxury restaurants (Te Company, Kettl) have recently opened brick-and-mortar spaces, where you can taste their niche offerings, find peace and comfort away from the hustle and bustle of New York, and maybe learn a thing or two, as well. At its best, sitting down for tea can feel like a luxurious (yet affordable) escape, and these are the places in New York that get it right. The Absolute Best 1. Te Company 163 W. 10th St., nr. Seventh Ave.; 929-335-3168 Theres a reason why Te Company regulars treat this tearoom like their second home; husband-and-wife owners Elena Liao and Frederico Ribeiro are incredibly kind, nurturing, and attentive. Theyre also total pros: Liao sources semi-oxidized, loose-leaf oolong teas directly from Taiwan (where she grew up), and her 30-or-so options include everyday oolongs and reserve teas, like the popular, citrusy Oriental Beauty. Ribeiro, who used to work as a sous-chef at Per Se, makes a few beautiful dishes a perfect, melting Spanish tortilla (sometimes with uni or shaved truffles); asparagus and bottarga with a six-minute egg; the freshest bread; and superb chocolate cake. No detail gets overlooked in this small, serene space (which used to house Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks); there are beautiful clay teapots, floral china, and Wi-Fi (but on weekends, no computers are allowed). Plus, the pricing scheme is flexible; you can order a cup to go starting at $4.50, a pot ($9 to $14), or schedule a tea tasting with Liao herself for $48. While theres a casual elegance extended to every experience here, its never stiff nor formal. Even if its your first time visiting, youll be treated with the same warmth and generosity that Liao and Ribeiro extend to the adoring faces they see daily. 2. Tea & Sympathy 108 Greenwich Ave., nr. 13th St.; 212-989 -9735 Considering this British restaurant and adjoining takeout tea shop opened in 1991, its amazing that its retained its charm without succumbing to modern trends. Heinz baked beans are still on the menu! Theres so much going on here towering coronation-chicken sandwiches, fluffy scones with clotted cream, Queen Elizabeth tchotchkes, floral tablecloths, Alice in Wonderland teapots that its easy to overlook the actual tea itself. You can order a pot of PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea, of course, but there are also lovely loose teas standouts include the rose-petal, vanilla, and chamomile-lavender. This isnt fancy, pretentious tea; its delicious and comforting (especially with milk and honey), not to mention affordable. Afternoon tea for one costs $35, and you can also order pots a la carte. Time slows down here, making it truly feel like youve stepped inside a fairy tale. 3. NIKAI by Kettl 150 Ainslie St., nr. Lorimer St., second fl., Williamsburg; no phone Directly above the Japanese breakfast haven thats Okonomi, theres a tiny, quiet studio where some of Japans best teas are sold. Youll find Kettls founder, Zach Mangan, along with a wooden table, handmade ceramics for sale, and a built-in stove where hell brew you soba cha (buckwheat tea thats naturally sweet), competition-grade gyokuro (a shaded green tea thats even a rarity in Japan), and four kinds of matcha. Mangan worked for years to form relationships with Japanese tea farmers as the most coveted teas rarely leave the country which is why youll find Kettl tea at so many top restaurants, including Per Se, Mission Chinese Food, and Sqirl. The teas are expensive ($25 to $42 for 20 grams of different matchas, $24 for 200 grams of that soba cha, and at least $15 for 100 grams of sencha), but the relaxed feel of the intimate space, and Mangans casual, friendly demeanor, make this advanced tea feel easy and accessible. 4. Ippodo 125 E. 39th St., nr. Lexington Ave.; 212-370-0609 This three-centuries-old Japanese tea company only has three locations in the world: Kyoto, Tokyo, and New York. Theres no place to sit its a small but elegant to-go counter surrounded by ceramics and take-home tea boxes for sale but its a dreamy place to linger, learn, and feel totally immersed in Japanese culture. (The expertise of the staff is at the level of the Kyoto flagship.) Matcha is the focus here start with the thick koicha variety ($5.75), which is a great way to taste matcha in its purest, vegetal form; then graduate to the sweetened matcha latte, which is one of the few in town that isnt too sugary. Its meditative to watch the staff heat water in an iron kettle, and then peacefully whisk the matcha. And if you ask, theyll happily let you sample the rarer matchas they have for sale in bulk (like the kuon, which is exclusive to the New York location and retails for $42 for 20 grams). Think of it this way; a trip here is the closest youll come to feeling like youre in Japan. 5. Cha-An Teahouse 230 E. 9th St., nr. Second Ave., second fl.; 212-228-8030 On the second floor of a bustling East Village block, youll find a haven dedicated to Japanese tea and home-style cooking. Theres plenty of matcha and sencha, of course, but Cha-An also sources teas from all over the world (black teas from India, oolongs from Taiwan). Youre best off sticking to the green teas the uji kabusecha green tea ($7), roasted genmaicha ($7), or classic matcha ($12) which pair nicely with Cha-Ans excellent desserts (black-sesame creme brulee, mochi with hojicha ice cream). Its quiet here during the day, but its also a perfect place to meet a friend at night, if youre looking for an alternative to a bar. Honorable Mentions Chalait Various locations If its a matcha latte youre after, Chalait, with locations in NoMad and Chelsea Market, is the place. Yes, they have some menu items that purists might scoff at, like a matcha smoothie bowl, and a matcha hot chocolate, but they also use high-quality matcha and offer several kinds of milk, including housemade almond-cashew milk. Physical Graffitea 96 St. Marks Pl., nr. First Avenue; 212-477-7334 Housed in a basement at an iconic East Village address, Physical Graffitea is really more of a neighborhood spot than a destination tearoom, but it does a great job. Its a cute and colorful space with a friendly staff and R&B music playing, and the massive list includes a little bit of everything including yerba mate, medicinal herbal blends, and milky chai lattes complete with helpful descriptions. Almost all cups cost under $10, and they pair nicely with housemade matcha and halva cookies. Tea Drunk 123 E. 7th St., nr, Ave. A; 917-573-9936 If youre looking for a serious tea experience, this traditional Chinese tearoom is the place. The staff isnt very welcoming dismissive if you dare to ask for a cup but the menu is impressive, and includes helpful descriptions like, toastily warm with edgy floral finnish and salty sweet like morning dew. Pots start at $15, tastings range from $27 to $79, and youll receive a beautiful (yet slightly uncomfortable) presentation, complete with your choice of a tea pet. Overall, its an austere but educational experience. T Shop 247 Elizabeth St., nr. Houston St.; 646-726-4086 This gem is hidden on Elizabeth Street; theres barely any signage, and you have to walk through a corridor to access what looks like a small studio apartment. The pricing scheme matches the shabby-chic feel and the wooden stools; you can order a cuppa tea for $5, a pot for $20, or an appointment-only tea journey for $50. The options are well-curated a few Taiwanese oolongs, black teas, one pu-erh, one white, one Japanese green and theyre mostly mild and earthy. Theres even one snack a classic, prepackaged Taiwanese pineapple cake. The BlackBerry Keyone will be launched in the United States on May 31 - both GSM and CDMA unlocked variants will go on sale on that date. The information came courtesy of a press release which also said that the phone will come to "additional carriers including Sprint later this summer." The handset's Canadian availability details have also been announced. The phone is expected to go on sale in the country sometime late next month as the press release mentions that pre-orders will begin May 18 onwards. "BlackBerry Keyone will officially be on-sale in Canada next month at Bell, Bell MTS, Rogers, SaskTel and TELUS Business starting at $199 CAD on a two year term," the press release says. In a related news, over in the UK, Vodafone has confirmed that it will be carrying the Keyone - the device is listed as "coming soon" on the carrier's UK website. Carphone Warehouse has already started accepting pre-orders for the phone in the UK, and is promising delivery by May 5. Via | Vodafone UK If you haven't placed your Google Home in the kitchen, you may reconsider after you read this. Today Google has announced that the Assistant inside the Home is going to learn 5 million recipes over the coming week. Once this rollout is complete, the device will be able to help you cook, by giving you instructions for any of those recipes. To use the functionality, go to Google Assistant on your Android phone or use Google search to find a recipe. Pick what you like and hit the "Send to Google Home" button. Then, once you're ready to cook, tell your Home: "OK Google, start cooking" or "start recipe". It will answer with the list of ingredients to gather, and then walk you through the entire recipe. If you aren't sure about something, you can always ask it to repeat. While you're following the recipe, you can have it play music, ask it about conversions, or tell it to set a timer. Source These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. Today Sony detailed the availability of its new Xperia XZ Premium flagship in Europe and there is a nice surprise. The smartphone will go on pre-order next week, but it will be a gradual roll-out so some-markets will start taking reservations before others. Actual units will ship at the end of May or beginning of June in another step-by-step expansion. Pricing will be between 749 and 769 depending on where exactly you live. Now, for the good news - the first pre-orders will get a free pair of the MBR-100ABN wireless noise-cancelling headphones. Those normally cost upwards of 300 so they add a lot of value to the deal. The not so great bit is that despite the Quick charge 3.0 support, Sony Xperia XZ Premium wont ship with a quick charger in the box in all regions. The Nordic countries will get a fast charger, but some other markets will miss on that. 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Slight chance of a rain shower. High 79F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies in the evening, then becoming cloudy overnight. Low 62F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Haiti - FLASH : Individuals shoot at Red Cross vehicle Wednesday, the Haitian Red Cross was the victim of a criminal act perpetrated a few meters from the entrance of the institution. Around 10:30 am, a vehicle bearing the emblem of the Haitian Red Cross (HRC) was attacked by unidentified armed individuals who fired at passengers at point-blank range, severely wounding one of the HRC's executives. Dr. Guiteau Jean-Pierre, the President of the CRH, said in a note "This act testifies to a lack of knowledge by these individuals of the role of the National Society of the Haitian Red Cross, a neutral and apolitical humanitarian institution whose main mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The Haitian Red Cross strongly condemns this attack and recalls that humanitarian staff should not be targeted in the exercise of their functions. Everyone is therefore required to respect the emblem and logo of the Haitian Red Cross so that the National Society can exercise its humanitarian mandate with the most vulnerable in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of the Movement." HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - DR : First official bilateral meeting of the two Chancellors Foreign ministers Antonio Rodrigue (Haiti) and Miguel Vargas (Dominican Republic) will meet this Thursday (April 27th) at the Dominican Chancellery in Santo Domingo to discuss key issues such as immigration, trade and Bilateral cooperation between the two Governments. This is the first official bilateral meeting between the two Chancellors after their meeting last month on the sidelines of the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) in Kingston, Jamaica. The two Chancelleries stress the importance of this meeting for the consolidation and expansion of relations between the two countries, which could generate initiatives that would benefit the development of the border by increasing the chances of attracting investment, infrastructure development and the formalization of trade, with significant job creation and improvement of the quality of life of people living in the area on both sides of the border. SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - FLASH : 6 teenagers bullet-riddled (Carrefour) Tuesday night at Brochette 95 (Carrefour Commune), 6 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 16 were bullet-riddled on Savannah Street, by two unidentified individuals for an unknown reason while sitting quietly. 5 of these young people died on the spot and the sixth was injured and rushed to the hospital, chief inspector Gary Desrosiers, deputy spokesperson for the Haitian National Police (PNH), confirmed Wednesday. The police arrived on the spot after the tragedy and could only make the findings of uses and gather testimonies, the murderers having fled after their crimes without being worried... Residents are shocked and do not understand this tragic aggression, while the victims were known to be students who led a quiet, apparently trouble-free life. "This is incomprehensible and inconceivable," said the brother of one of victims severely tested. Poor families, ask the authorities to help them organize the funeral. PI/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Herby Widmaier passed away Herby Widmaier passed away. Founder of Radio Metropole in March 1970, with the help of his wife Micheline Widmaier, Roland Dupoux and Bob Lemoine, Herby Widmaier was a legendary figure of radio in Haiti. As a musician, composer and arranger, he began recording the most important musical groups of the time and is the source of many innovations in radio programs. That his soul rests in peace. Venezuela withdraws from the OAS On Wednesday, April 26, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez announced that Venezuela is withdrawing from the Organization of American States (OAS), that President Nicolas Maduro has accused of interfering "tomorrow Thursday we will present a complaint to the OAS and we will launch the process of withdrawal that takes 24 months, to bring the South American country out of this regional organization " said Delcy Rodriguez. Electricity, Haiti 110th out of 111 countries On Wednesday, during the hearing in the Senate of Fritz Caillot, the Minister of Public Works and Herve Pierre-Louis, the Director General of Electricity of Haiti (EDH), Youri Latortue, the President of the Senate considered it unacceptable that Haiti should be ranked second last among 111 countries with a rating of 11 out of 100 for access to energy, 14 out of 100 for energy efficiency and 5 out of 100 for renewable energies and asked for explanations and solutions to remedy this situation. Note that only 35% of Haiti's population has access to electricity (11% in rural areas). The cost of electricity in Haiti is the highest in the Caribbean region. By comparison, electricity consumption per capita in Haiti is only 2% of that per capita in the Dominican Republic. Visit of Miss Universe Miss Universe 2016 Iris Mittenaere and the first Haitian runner-up Raquel Pelissier will be in Cap-Haitien next week as part of a mission to help children born with split lips in the North. Filing of the bill modifying the code of criminal investigation On Tuesday, Heidi Fortune, the Minister of Justice, tabled in the Senate's office the draft law amending the code of criminal investigation which provides answers to the main dysfunctions of justice, according to the Minister. Youri Latortue, the President of the Senate, handed the document to Jean-Renel Senatus, President of the Justice Commission, who will now study with his colleagues the 1,363 articles distributed in six volumes before submitting proposals to the Assembly with his favorable recommendations or not. Martine Moise at the launch of the vaccination week Wednesday, at the Municipal Palace of Delmas, the First Lady of the Republic Martine Moise participated in the launching of the week of immunization of the Americas in the company of Dr Marie Greta Roy Clement, the Minister of Public Health and Haiti's international partners in the field of health. An initiative of the Ministry that plans to vaccinate 300,000 children from zero to 23 months against diphtheria and tetanus. Martine Moise, who was attending the ceremony, encouraged parents to have their children immunized so they could grow up healthy. HL/ HaitiLibre By Lily Lee | Published on 2017/04/26 These talented actors and actresses weren't always in or for some, even yearning to be in the acting career. Once upon a time, they were regular people, who were striving for other dreams and participated in different fields. Advertisement Lee Si-young Lee Si-young graduated from Dongduk Women's University majoring in fashion design. Once she graduated, she used her skills in a fabric design company. One day, she wanted to pursue her dream of being an actress and quit her job. She's gone through numerous auditions but failed so many of them. Meanwhile, she helped her mom out in the market section in a sauna. It is said that the market in this sauna have become so popular due to her beauty. Even through her trials, she never gave up on her dream to be an actress and finally debuted in 2008. Song Joong-ki Song Joong-ki was famous even before he debuted as an actor due to his good looks and being an elite of Sungkyunkwan University Business major. He was so popular within the campus where all the girls had crush on him. His profession before he became an actor was a short track speed skater. His athlete path lasted about 10 years before he gave up his dream of being a national skater due to his knee injury. After he gave up his dream, Song Joong-ki focused on his academics and was able to attend one of the best prestigious school in South Korea. Once he debuted, he was able to re-live his dream for just a bit by acting as a short track speed skater in a drama, "Triple". Han Suk-kyu Han Suk-kyu also have a unique resume. Before he debuted as an actor, he was a voice actor in 1990. The reason why he became a voice actor was because of his back injury he got in the army. He prepared his acting career since he was studying film & theater in Dongguk University, but his back injury was taking longer than expected to heal completely. For plan B, he decided to become a voice actor instead. (Which, I think it is also perfect. He have a voice of a morning coffee.) Fortunately, once his body was healed, he was able to debut as an actor. Kang Ji-hwan Before he became an actor, he was working for an international venture. He actively searched for a job, and even wrote a personal email to the CEO. When he was finally hired, he faced few struggles since the company was an international venture but he couldn't speak English. Kang Ji-hwan was able to overcome his struggles and weaknesses by pushing his other good quality into work and became one of the best employee of the company. He worked in this company for a while but in 1999, quit his job and started walking the path of an actor. By. Lily Lee He has been cited by Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, featured at Real Clear Politics and Lucianne.com and interviewed on radio, TV and in social media. Inducted into the Philadelphia Public Relations Hall of Fame, for many years he served as a Lecturer in Corporate Communication at Penn State University. A former President of the Philadelphia Public Relations Association (PPRA) he has lectured at Rowan University, Temple University, The College of New Jersey and Arcadia University. He has conducted workshops on public relations for thousands of participants throughout the nation and has taught countless others the art of public speaking. He has also advised numerous lawyers, judges, public officials and political candidates. Cirucci is a prolific writer and his op-ed pieces have appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier-Post and other publications. A native of Camden NJ, Cirucci is a former President of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. Cirucci served as Associate Executive Director of the Philadelphia Bar Association for nearly 30 years. He served as Chair of Penn State University's Professional Advisory Board for the Corporate Communication major at Penn State Abington and on the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Judicial Selection Commission. He received his MA degree from Rowan University and his BA from Villanova University. He has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rowan's public relations program and received the E. A. "Wally" Richter Leadership Award, the highest honor from the National Association of Bar Executives' Communications Section. He has also been honored by numerous other local, state and national groups. Cirucci's passions include politics, the popular culture, books and authors, art, communication, music, theatre, movies, dining and travel. In his hometown of Camden, Cirucci taught fifth grade at the Ulysses Wiggins Elementary School named for the founder of the Camden NAACP. There he was one of the first teachers in the country to teach African-American history to inner city students. He later served as editor of a local weekly newspaper, as Assistant to the Township Manager of Cherry Hill Township and as Associate Director of Communications at the New Jersey State Bar Association. He's Dan Cirucci, the founder and editor-in chief of the Dan Cirucci Blog, Matt Rooney's sidekick on Save Jersey's videocasts and one of the most widely honored public relations professionals in his field. He's also been a public relations consultant to numerous organizations and individuals and hosted The Advocates on RVN-TV. OHA hires new Chief Financial Officer News Release from OHA HONOLULU (April 26, 2017) The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) today named David K. Laeha as the agencys new Chief Financial Officer and Resource Management Director. He will start on May 16. Laehas primary responsibility will be to assist the OHA Board of Trustees and Administration in managing OHAs Native Hawaiian Trust Fund, currently valued at $348 million. He will oversee OHAs fiscal and investment infrastructures as well as its grants, loans and scholarship programs. As the director of OHAs Resource Management-Financial Assets Line of Business, Laeha will manage a total of 33 staff. Laeha brings more than 25 years of accounting and financial management experience. He is a licensed CPA with a bachelors degree in finance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and masters degree in accounting from the University of Southern California. He previously worked for Fortune 500 firms such as GTE and IBM. He also has served in senior financial management positions in local entities such as Palama Holdings LLC, Hawaiian Natural Water Company and Hawaii Community Foundation Inc. Since 2002, he has operated his own consulting firm, CFO Hawaii LLC, which provides interim CFO services to high-growth businesses. We are excited to welcome David to the OHA ohana, said Kamanaopono M. Crabbe, OHAs Chief Executive Officer/Ka Pouhana. His considerable experience with both for-profit entities and mission-driven organizations is a perfect fit for OHA. He comes to OHA at a critical moment in our agencys history as we move forward with long-term financial planning to ensure that OHAs trust funds will fully serve multiple generations of future beneficiaries. I am humbled to be able to use my skills and experience to help improve the lives of Native Hawaiians, said Laeha. I look forward to working with our Board, administrative leadership and community to ensure a strong financial foundation for the agency. Laeha currently lives with his wife in Maunawili. He has two adult children, one living in New York and another here in Hawaii. In his free time he enjoys ikebana, bodysurfing and reading. New OHA CFO David Laeha HOW TO CREATE A FUMISH CULTURE Dwaine Richardson outlines his three Es: Education Weve all heard the anecdote about the CFO who says to the CEO, What happens if we train them and they leave? And the CEO responds with, What if we dont train them and they stay? Thats what the education component is about. The more you do this, the better employees feel about the organisation, and the more positive the culture is. Engagement This is around people getting to know each other and appreciating and understanding each other. Knowing who they are, not just for the position they hold within the organisation. Whether youre the CEO or the check-out operator at the supermarket, at the end of the day youre both individuals and youve both got your own stories to tell. Environment This encapsulates the two items above. Dont just sit in a boring square room to deliver a personal development session. Create an environment that will get the most out of people. Its the physical as much as the mindset environment. Show that the organisation cares about individuals Foster inclusion Create a sense of team camaraderie Bolster engagement Create a sense of fun Produce significant flow-on effects, for example, greater collaboration across divisions WORKPLACE CULTURE MONTH For the month of April, Corporate Challenge Events is spreading best-practice tips and guidance about how to create a positive workplace culture. Dwaine Richardson explains: When we looked into it, we were surprised that we couldnt find anything like this anywhere in the world. Our plan is to put the spotlight on the importance of culture for the entire month of April not only how important it is but how simple it is to create a positive culture. Ill be releasing an ebook with some simple tips on creating a positive team culture, and well also be hosting a number of events in Australia and New Zealand and using our social media platform to showcase how other companies are enhancing their culture. Were also encouraging people to use the hashtag #workplaceculturemonth to highlight what theyre doing in their organisation. CORPORATE CHALLENGE EVENTS Corporate Challenge Events is a leading corporate training, team building and conference planning provider with offices across Australia and New Zealand. Its vision is to help clients achieve a positive fun team culture by delivering unique and rewarding team events, corporate training and staff experiences that leave a lasting happiness. Website: www.corporatechallenge.com.au Email: [email protected] Head Office: +61 3 9753 2562 Corporate Challenge Events is a leading corporate training, team building and conference planning provider with offices across Australia and New Zealand. Its vision is to help clients achieve a positive fun team culture by delivering unique and rewarding team events, corporate training and staff experiences that leave a lasting happiness.+61 3 9753 2562 >A positive corporate culture is one that fosters respect and creativity and invites everyone to participate on an even ground. HRD outlines how you too can create a FUMISH cultureCulture is the glue that binds our communities, organisations, groups and families together. A culture can be positive, toxic or somewhere in-between but its obvious that employers that aim towards a positive culture reap significant benefits. While positive may seem like a subjective term to use after all one persons idea of a perfect company may vary depending on age, circumstance, even gender there are some defining traits of a positive culture.For Dwain Richardson, managing director of Corporate Challenge Events, a positive culture is the feeling you get when you visit a workplace. Its that initial vibe but its also carried throughout your entire experience with the company. Not only do your staff feel this but so do your clients.Richardson sums up the key characteristics of a positive culture with an acronym: FUMISH, which stands for: friendly, uplifting, motivating, inviting, supportive and happy.However, theres a potential problem: times are tough, budgets are tight, and people are stretched. Richardson hastens to add that theres a key difference between staying positive all the time and having a positive culture.Life is tough, business is tough and there will be times that are tough. But if you have a FUMISH culture then those times when things do get tight will be easier, he says.The term the fish rots from the head down places organisational leaders as key players in any effort to create a FUMISH culture.I think its well and truly shown that the best leaders recognise the importance of culture, says Richardson. Im a big believer in leaders setting the example. Since I founded Corporate Challenge Events, whenever Ive had a meeting with managers around doing team events and the managers have said they wont be involved, my comment is always, If you want to get the best out of this program, Id suggest you get involved. Dont separate yourself out from your team.In Richardsons experience there are typically two roadblocks to establishing a positive culture: time and commitment.Its not that time or commitment should be a barrier, but those two become the barrier. In terms of the time barrier, I use the example comparing it to everyones excuse for not exercising: I dont have time. But we all know if we do exercise well be more efficient and well have more time. Its the same here: we know that a positive culture will create a better organisation for us but we cant because we make excuses like, Ive got to respond to this email and, Ive got these KPIs I must meet.Similarly, in terms of commitment, Richardson says he will often be asked about organising a three-hour The Amazing Racestyle team event on behalf of a client, and the client will then outline a multitude of issues or challenges they are trying to resolve in the organisation. I say, Were not going to solve it in three hours. You need to now put a plan together and commit to an ongoing desire to change the culture in your workplace.Helping with the plan are service providers like Corporate Challenge Events. Richardson says his company can help as much or as little as a client needs. Some organisations with large HR teams might require Richardson and his team to assist only with single components of their predetermined culture-building plan. Others might require assistance in designing an entire culture-change program.In relation to Richardsons three Es, Corporate Challenge Events provides services that touch on education, engagement and environment. For example, in the education space are the companys corporate training services. This training typically covers cultural change areas like behavioural profiling, working with teams on clarity of values, vision and mission, or sessions on how to build resilience.Under the environment banner are the companys conferences and events services.Our team will help with the event logistics, whether a conference or a team meeting, and they also advise on how you create an environment that is more conducive to getting the most from your people, Richardson says.Under engagement is the team-building arm of the business. Richardson says that after 23 years of experience in the field, this is the companys bread and butter.Team building has come a long way since the days of group hugs and the trust fall from days gone by. Today, Richardson says team building has become more creative. For example, one popular option is tying CSR programs into a team-building exercise. Corporate Challenge Events most popular program over the past three years has been bikes for tykes, whereby a team or groups of teams undertake a series of activities and then collaborate with each other to build flatpack bicycles, which are then given to kids with serious medical conditions.Another popular option is cooking classes. However, rather than cooking for cookings sake, teams will make tasty dishes and donate the food to a kitchen that helps the homeless.Theres also a merging of team building and events occurring.What were finding is a willingness for organisations to understand its more important to break up a one-day or two-day conference with something else, perhaps something light-hearted, Richardson says. That comes back to the environment piece create an environment where people are not sitting in a seat for two days straight and not really taking it all in. By throwing something different in midway, you break it up and help to raise peoples concentration levels.For example, an The Amazing Race-style team-building event might be worked into the event. This is particularly effective if people have travelled to another city for a conference. The clue-hunting team-building exercise is used to explore the city.The Corporate Challenge Event website lists plenty of other examples, and Richardson says it really depends on the style of the conference or event and the amount of time delegates have.It could be anything from an outdoor two- or three-hour survivor program onsite, or an amazing race offsite. Or you could even put a socially responsible program in place where the kids are brought out to the venue. Richardson adds that the key to a successful team-building event is making sure that whichever provider is chosen understands the outcomes youre hoping to achieve. Secondly, it must be delivered in a non-threatening way.The perception of team building has changed, says Richardson. Today, its perceived as being a recreational fun day where people turn up and the barriers fall between the CEO and the people on the front line. Its about appreciating the person for who they are, not appreciating them for their job title. So it needs to be non-threatening and inclusive so everyone can take part.Richardson has no doubt that team building in particular can help build positive cultures. Among the benefits are six key points to remember. Team building can:The more people understand each other the more likely they are to work more effectively with you, says Richardson. I dont have to be the same as you but if I can understand you I can then get to know you better. Ill know how to work with you and communicate with you more effectively. These are all offshoots of effective team building, and its something positive cultures excel at. perform better on 46 out of 47 leadership competencies are 17% more effective at supporting diversity and inclusiveness are 27% more effective at leading teams are 25% more effective at coaching others Research also shows that Behavioural perform better on 14 core workplace competencies are 27% more effective at managing conflict are 26% more likely to positively influence others are 22% more likely to express opinions in an effective way Image Do you dress to please yourself or meet others expectations? Presentation Do you communicate in a way that is easiest for you or focus on making it easier for the listener? Competence Do you focus on your objectives or on helping others achieve theirs? Feedback Is your view the right one or do you try to understand theirs? Do your programs contain a multi-rater assessment of Behavioural Versatility? Do your programs focus 75% of their time on showing people how to profile others and teaching them how to be Versatile (as opposed to focusing on understanding their own styles)? The Social Intelligence Group is the Master Trainer and Distributor for Tracom in Australia and New Zealand. They certify trainers to deliver the Tracom Social Intelligence Programs and provide the program materials. Luke Ross is a Registered Psychologist and the Director of the Social Intelligence Group. outlines why the development of Behavioural Versatility is so vital to workplace relationships and organisational successResearch shows that behavioural styles will generally fall into four categories, and this means that 75% of behavioural styles will be different to yours. Effective navigation of these differences in the workplace through Behavioural Versatility is the key to success, yet Behavioural Versatility receives very little attention in most interpersonal effectiveness programs. Instead, most programs focus on helping the individual understand themselves.Behavioural Versatility is the ability to accept, accommodate and support the behavioural preferences of other people. It is a measure of interpersonal effectiveness and indicates a persons ability to interact effectively and gain the support of co-workers, regardless of differences in behavioural style.Individuals who have high Behavioural Versatility focus on getting the best out of others by supporting the other persons behavioural preferences. They make other people comfortable by managing interpersonal tension effectively.People with low Behavioural Versatility expect others to behave just like them. They often make others uncomfortable and create unproductive tension in the workplace.Research shows that Behavioural Versatility has a significant impact on leadership performance, and leaders with higher Behavioural Versatility:Versatility has a significant impact on nonleader performance. Non-leaders with higher Behavioural Versatility:The good news is, Behavioural Versatility is a learned skill. It is not a stable personality trait and is a function of the behavioural decisions you make as you interact with co-workers across these four domains:Developing Versatility starts with a multi-rater assessment. Research consistently shows that we are a very poor judge of our Behavioural Versatility, and specifically Tracom research shows that people with low Versatility (as seen by others) have an artificially high view of their own Versatility.Next, a training program will show people how to be Versatile. The most effective way to do this is to ensure the program shows individuals how to profile others so that they can predict and accept behaviour different to their own. Additionally, it needs to teach individuals how to accurately adjust their image, presentation, competence and feedback to suit others.The following two questions are a useful way to evaluate your organisations approach to developing interpersonal effectiveness:If you would like more information on a Behavioural Versatility Program that has been used by 3,282,503 individuals in 18 languages and with 32 country norms Social Style & Versatility please visit the team at www.socialintelligence.com.au. Australian Olympic Committee chief John Coates has been accused of writing in an email that a female employee should "get out in the real world" and that he was not running a "sheltered workshop". The woman was being treated for cancer at the time, according to her superior, the former chief executive Fiona de Jong. She also said Coates knew of the womans cancer because he had sent flowers to the hospital. Coates' comments were allegedly in response to a request by de Jong for him to show more sensitivity towards employees. Naturally she was most upset, primarily at the misunderstanding of her actions, but also the public manner in which your opinions were expressed, de Jong wrote. Coates wrote back the following: If shes offended its probably time for her to get out in the real world, he wrote back. Ours is not a sheltered workshop. The Australian Paralympic Committee chief executive Lynne Anderson said she was upset that Coates would use language that stigmatised people with disabilities. Quite simply, we object to any language that portrays disability in a negative light, she said. Moreover, Coates ally, the media director Mike Tancred, has been stood down from all AOC duties until bullying allegations against him were resolved. Tancred was also accused of bullying and intimidation by de Jong and other members of staff. De Jong, who left the AOC in December last year, said she had made a formal complaint to Coates about Tancred four months ago. Tancred is also facing allegations he harassed another former employee for taking two days off during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 due to a miscarriage. However, he has denied any wrongdoing. The allegations come amidst a bitter election campaign for the AOC presidency, with Coates being challenged for the first time since he took the role 27 years ago. HC contacted the AOC for comment and they said in a statement that the AOC Executive met last night to discuss the complaint made by de Jong regarding the alleged conduct of Tancred. The Executive took legal advice to assess the complaint and on the appropriate course of action. In December 2016, upon receipt of the initial complaint, it was immediately referred by the President to the AOCs lawyers in accordance with the AOCs current policies and procedures, and they have been managing the complaint since. After considering the legal advice and all the relevant circumstances, the AOC Executive made the following resolutions: It agreed to delegate the determination of the complaint to an independent committee with appropriate experience and ability, and the committee will comprise three senior counsel or retired judges, including at least one female within its membership, said the statement. The committee will proceed to determine the complaint in their sole and absolute discretion on such material and in such manner as they see fit, subject to affording the parties natural justice. The committee will be asked to inform the Executive of their determination within one month of their appointment. The Executive expressed confidence that the current AOC proper processes were followed in respect of the complaint by Ms de Jong. Further, the AOC will commission an independent review, overseen by the incoming CEO, into workplace practices to ensure the best possible environment for our staff. The AOC supports an environment free from discrimination, harassment and bullying and will not tolerate behaviours that differ from this standard. Everything now hinges on what kind of a growth path were on. You can summarise that our ability to cope and succeed in the latter half of the [electoral] term hinges on how much the gross domestic product will grow this year, next year and in 2019, he stated on Tuesday. Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre) has reminded that economic growth is a prerequisite for reversing the debt trajectory of Finland. The Finnish Government is seeking to halt the increase in its debt burden by 2021. The projections published after the mid-term review session on Tuesday, however, indicate that country will take on 3.6 billion euros in new debt in 2021. The projections take into account the first tranche of the proposed acquisition of a new fighter jet fleet in 2021. Sipila revealed that preliminary calculations indicate that a growth rate of two per cent would suffice to reverse the debt trajectory by 2021. The latest economic forecasts indicate that the growth rate is likely to fall short of the two per cent mark. The Bank of Finland, for example, has forecast that the national economy will expand by 1.6 per cent in 2017, by 1.5 per cent in 2018 and by 1.3 per cent in 2019. Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of Finance, similarly estimated that economic growth is not yet on a sustainable footing, admitting that the looming round of sector-specific collective bargaining talks is a particular concern. The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland has announced that it will seek wage increases in excess of two per cent in the negotiations scheduled for this autumn. Wage increases are an objective also for the Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland (TEK), while the Finnish Forest Industries is reportedly considering offering wage increases in exchange for revisions to collective agreements. Orpo flinched at the prospect of a two per cent increase in wages. Id say that what we need now is moderation. Wages are certainly determined in the labour markets, and we have no plans of stepping in, but I have a message to the talks: moderation, moderation, he said in a press conference on Tuesday. The competitiveness pact has allowed us to find solutions to improve the competitiveness of export-oriented industries. Were catching up with our rival countries in a significant way. All we need now is moderation to really be able to eliminate the difference and boost our exports. For the sake of employment, continue the moderation, he pleaded. He refused to speculate on whether or not the possible failure of labour markets to continue the moderation would prompt the central administration to reconsider the tax concessions it is expected to introduce in 2018. I dont want to set any conditions or make any edicts, said Orpo. The Government adopted income tax concessions worth a total of 515 million euros at the beginning of the year to offset the effects of the competitiveness pact on the purchasing power of employees. It is expected to make a decision on additional concessions for the years to come in in the second half of the year. Both Orpo and Sipila also underscored that improving the employment situation will be key for the efforts to boost economic growth and reverse the debt trajectory. The objective laid out in the government programme is to raise the employment rate to 72 per cent by 2021. Statistics Finland has reported that the employment rate crept up to 68.7 per cent in 2016. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy expects the rate to improve by 0.4 percentage points in 2017 and by 0.5 percentage points in 2018. Raising the employment rate to 72 per cent would require that 110,000 people join the ranks of the employed. The Government has conceded that the objective seems increasingly elusive. Thats why we have to introduce more measures such as the ones we laid out [in the mid-term session], removing inactivity traps, encouraging economic growth and job seekers to accept job offers to improve the employment situation and stop living on debt, stated Orpo. The measures to remove inactivity traps are expected to raise the number of the employed by 5,000. The Ministry of Finance has emphasised that further measures to balance public finances are needed urgently in light of the projected changes in the demographics of Finland. The greatest challenge well face in the 2020s will be the challenge of population ageing. We have to create economic growth and balance the public economy before that to make sure we get by and are on the right track, said Orpo. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Antti Aimo-Koivisto Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi 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. A young mother who shouted abuse at gardai and resisted arrest has since been grieving the death of her partner's father, who was stabbed to death, a court has heard. Kim Dodd (23) had tried to stop a garda from placing her in the back of a patrol car. She has had a difficult time because her partner's father was killed at his home in Artane last month, her solicitor said. Judge David McHugh imposed a two-month suspended sentence. The defendant, of Aylward Green, Cappagh Road, Finglas, admitted charges of threatening and abusive behaviour and resisting arrest. The incident took place near her home shortly after 11pm last November 3. Gda Louise O'Sullivan told Blanchardstown District Court that Dodd was verbally abusive and aggressive towards gardai. She was arrested and she tried to resist being placed in the back of a patrol car. The court heard the defendant has 30 previous convictions, including 16 for public order matters. Poverty Defence solicitor Simon Fleming said Dodd's last conviction was in 2012, and the majority of her convictions occurred when she was a juvenile. Mr Fleming said Dodd was in the care of the State as a child as her mother was a heroin addict. He said she had a difficult childhood, spending time in different foster homes around the country. Mr Fleming said the defendant managed to "pull herself out of the cycle of poverty", had been doing well and had not been in trouble for five years. The court heard Dodd's father is dead and her mother is still an addict. Mr Fleming asked the judge to be as lenient as possible, saying Dodd has had a difficult time recently as her partner's father, Mark Richardson, was stabbed to death in front of her in last month. He said the defendant, a mother-of-one, realises she is "responsible for her own destiny". Mr Fleming said Dodd also wished to apologise to the court for her behaviour. Judge McHugh suspended the sentence for 18 months. The controversial plan to build a new 300m National Maternity Hospital, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity, has been re-endorsed by the board of Holles Street. The majority decision to back the proposal, despite strong public opposition and heated debate, was taken at a four-hour board meeting last night. Former master and board member Dr Peter Boylan, who earlier this week was asked by text message to resign over his criticism of the project, did not step down. No request was made by other members of the board to ask him to resign at the meeting. Dr Boylan was one of three members, along with Dublin Lord Mayor Brendan Carr and Sinn Fein councillor Michael Mac Donncha, to vote against the re-endorsement. The new maternity hospital is due to be built at the St Vincent's Hospital campus at Elm Park on a site owned by the Sisters of Charity, which controls the St Vincent's Healthcare Group. The Holles Street board's deputy chairman, Nicholas Kearns, flanked by hospital master Dr Rhona Mahony, said after the meeting that the board welcomed the statement from St Vincent's Healthcare Group on Tuesday, saying all services that are legal would be available in the new hospital. It said the agreement between the hospitals "provides that the clinical, financial and operational independence of the new national maternity hospital at Elm Park shall be enshrined in its memorandum and articles of association and all related legal agreements". Disappointed The board of St Vincent's Healthcare Group will meet today to review its involvement but it is highly unlikely to pull out of the deal. "I didn't support the statement," Mr Carr, a Labour councillor, said after last night's meeting. "I was very disappointed that they didn't seem to be cognisant of the serious concerns the people have, serious concerns of 300m of public money being put into the development. "There didn't seem to be any attempt or any willingness at all for the majority of the members of the board to try and take that on board. "This was all about reaffirming a decision that was made last November which has caused this problem in the first place," he added. Councillor Mac Donncha said it was a lengthy meeting and a "very intense" discussion was had on the situation in terms of the agreement and where that stood. "I voted against that re-endorsement because I still have concerns, particularly because of major developments in the past week," he said. "The issue of ownership, which is of huge public concern, was not addressed." He called on Health Minister Simon Harris to consider a compulsory purchase order for the site. The trial of a young Irishman languishing in an Egyptian jail for nearly four years has been delayed for the 22nd time. Ibrahim Halawa (21) has been held in a crowded Cairo prison for 44 months. He was jailed after being arrested during Muslim Brotherhood protests in the Egyptian capital. A mass trial involving Ibrahim and hundreds of other alleged conspirators has been repeatedly adjourned. Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan's department has been trying to secure his release so he might return to his family in Dublin. He has now spent 1,348 days in prison. Ibrahim is the son of prominent Dublin-based Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa. Tortured The student was imprisoned after being detained in a mosque near Cairo's Ramses Square during protests over the removal of elected president Mohamed Morsi. He claims to have been tortured and has gone on hunger strikes during his imprisonment, and his family fear for his health. Earlier this week, Ibrahim wrote an impassioned letter to Taoiseach Enda Kenny begging for his release after he watched another inmate - Egyptian-US citizen and co-founder of the Belady Foundation for Street Children Aya Hegazy - being freed. Amnesty International has said Ibrahim's innocence has "been further vindicated" by Egypt's own legal system. It said a court-appointed technical committee reviewed audio-video material presented in the case and found no evidence against him. However, the committee's report, which was ordered after almost three years of detention, does not even mention Ibrahim. Amnesty Ireland director Colm O'Gorman said his ordeal had been "nothing short of horrific". He said an independent review had found "that he was arrested solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of assembly and expression". "Amnesty researchers in Cairo on the night of his arrest confirm that he was sheltering in the Al Fath mosque and could not have committed the violent acts he's been charged with," he said. Amnesty is "gravely concerned for Ibrahim's physical and mental well-being" and has urged the Irish government to continue to work for his release. Incumbents appear to be re-elected to school board The three incumbents seeking re-election to the Washington County Board of Education had substantial leads with Tuesday's election results reported. 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/ The animating impulse of Indian politics, pundits of all stripes insist, is youthful aspiration: fearless young people throwing off the shackles of caste and class to Whatsapp their way to what the Prime Minister likes to call vikas. Parties like the Bharatiya Janta Party understand this, the argument goes, and are handsomely rewarded; the opposition doesnt, and is doomed to failure. But a recent CSDS-KAS survey paints a rather different picture: Young Indians arent hanging out in caffeinated incubators plotting their next startup; they are living with their parents (65%), and swotting for the next round of government recruitments (65%). Only 19% want to start their own business. The youth arent breaking social taboos of caste, class and gender either, they are praying to god (78%), and preparing for an arranged marriage (84%) with an obedient wife(51%) from the same caste (36%). And they are anxious about everything: the health of their parents, family problems, maintaining their tradition and culture, their jobs and their looks. The survey found 55% of youth to be highly anxious, and 26% to be moderately so. These numbers have profound implications for the future of Indian democracy. The engine of Indian politics isnt aspiration, it is anxiety and no one recognizes this better than Narendra Modi, who has understood that his followers dont want a Ceo-in-Chief to lead them; they want a parent, or better still, a priest. The Uttar Pradesh elections are a vivid illustration of this trend. Analysts have argued, including in these pages, that the result is a vindication of the so-called 60-percent formula: where the BJP focused Non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBC), non-Jatav Dalits, and the usual constellation of upper castes, and ignored the Muslim and Jatavs who make up close to 40% of the state electorate. It is possible that the BJP reached out to this particular caste-spectrum, but to what end? Why do these social groups want a stake in the state particularly a state like ours, which is incapable of providing jobs, a school education for children, or healthcare for elderly parents something that 87% of young Indians apparently worry about. It turns out, one arm of the Indian state is yet to wither away: its coercive arm remains robust, and whats better has jobs to offer. From 2003 to 2007, the ruling Samajwadi Party recruited 22,500 police constables to stuff local police stations with their supporters. When the Bahujan Samaj Party won the following election in 2007, Mayawati cancelled 17,400 of these posts. When the SP returned in 2012, they reinstated all posts, and announced plans to recruit another 41,160 constables and firemen. Yogi Adityanath, UPs newest Chief Minister, is yet to recruit any policemen, but then he already has his own personal vigilante force, which has assumed policing powers. And lets not forget the anti-Romeo squads. Ultimately it is hard to escape the conclusion that the problem actually lies in the Indian family a regressive and patriarchal construct that oppresses women and turns the young into an exaggeration of their parents worst traits. It hence no surprise that our current political climate continually reinforces the importance of family values. Perhaps path to a new politics is to draw the youth out of the stifling embrace of their homes and seek out a world of their own. Bhopal: Amid ongoing debate over cow protection and controversies over cow vigilantes a cow ambulance service is being started by the authorities in Madhya Pradesh. The initiative has been taken by Khargone district administration, which has decided to start the ambulance for cows injured in road accidents and ailing bovines that need emergency medical care. Cows getting injured or killed in road accidents has been a major concern in the state. Many times, if the cow or cows die in the absence of prompt medical attention, it leads to major tension and even violence by locals and cow vigilantes. Last year in August, a truck driver and helper jumped into Barna River in Raisen district after they ran over three cows on Jaipur-Jabalpur national highway to escape the angry mob. Later the body of the driver was found downstream. Wilson Dawar, deputy director animal husbandry Khargone said, A large number of cows are injured in road accidents. Though we have a veterinary hospital, the transportation of the injured cow is a big issue. How to lift and transport an injured cow to the veterinary hospital becomes a major stumbling block in saving it. Many cows die because they cant be easily lifted and transported from the road to the hospital, he said. Dawar said under district Gau Samiti the collector earmarked Rs 10 lakh for buying a specially designed Gau-ambulance. The ambulance will be fitted with a hydraulic lift powered lifting machine by which the injured cows would be lifted and ferried safely to the veterinary hospital. The cows would be lifted with ease no matter how heavy they are, he said. Dawar said the district administration was in touch with an Ahmedabad-based agency that will fit the hydraulic lift equipment on the vehicle which will be provided to them. We will send a vehicle to Ahmedabad where the hydraulic lift will be fitted. It will be ready in a month and delivered to us, he said. On how they thought of starting the Gau-ambulance service, Dawar said owners of some cow shelters informed them that a similar Gau-ambulance service was operating in Haridwar. Taking a cue from this input, we sought detailed information and came to know about this company in Ahmedabad. After that we set the process in motion to get the special hydraulic lift fitted ambulance, he said. Such ambulances have also been started in other states earlier. In 2015, a Jharkhand-based industrialist-cum-social worker RK Agarwal had also come up with an ambulance service for bovines, with specially designed ten ambulances. MP has the highest cattle population in the country, with 1.96 crore cows according to 2012 livestock census. Authorities and right wing activists are also worried over the decline in the population of cows here. In 2007, the population of cows in MP was 2.19 crore which came down to 1.96 crore in 2012. Earlier this month MP cabinet approved a proposal to ban Cow-killer polythene bags in the state from May 1. Spokesperson of the state government and parliamentary affairs minister, Narottam Mishra said a large number of cows were dying due to polythene bags, prompting the state government to ban them. Mumbai Actor Vinod Khanna, known for his performances in films like Mere Apne and Qurbani, died at the age of 70. He was suffering from advanced bladder carcinoma and was being treated at the HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai. A fortnight ago, photographs of a frail-looking Khanna went viral on the internet, after which his family released a statement that he was on recovering. Khanna was born on October 6, 1946 in Peshawar. After the Partition, his father Kishinchand Khanna moved to Mumbai. Later, his family moved to Delhi, but Khanna did a major part of his schooling in Nashik. He studied in Sydenham College in Mumbai. The actor made his debut with Mann Ka Meet in 1968. Although earlier known for his villainous roles, Khanna soon made his way into peoples hearts with his performances in films like Muqaddar ka Sikandar and Amar Akbar Anthony. His chiselled face and strong physique made him stand out among his contemporaries and soon made him a superstar. In a career spanning more than five decades, Khanna acted in 146 films. At the peak of his career in 1982, Khanna quit movies and joined spiritual leader Osho Rajneesh. While there were rumours that Khanna was attracted to the rebellious lifestyle the ashram was associated with, it later came to light the change was a result of the death of two of his family members. He made a comeback in films five years later, and delivered back-to-back hits like Insaaf, Dayavaan, etc. In the late 1990s, Khanna joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and contested and won elections from the Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab in the Lok Sabha polls in 1998. He was appointed the Union minister of culture and tourism in July 2002. In the same year, he was moved to the ministry of external affairs (MEA) as the minister of state. In 2014 general elections, he was won back the Gurdaspur constituency. While he was busy with his political career, he was seen in fewer films. Recently, he was seen in important roles in films like Wanted, Dabangg and Dilwale, which is the last film he was seen in. Khanna married Geetanjali in 1971 and had two sons Rahul Khanna and Akshaye Khanna. In 1980, Khanna moved to Rajneesh Ashram, where he stayed for five years. The move led to differences with his wife, and they got divorced in 1985. After five years, he married Kavita with whom he had two children Sakshi and Shraddha. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Deepika Padukones first look from her special song in Raabta is revealed. The short video, shared by the official Twitter handle of the upcoming film on Wednesday, features the actor swinging to the soft beats of the song. Deepika is seen wearing a gorgeous black dress with cutwork and embellishments. She compliments it with her thick wavy hair and heavily kohled eyes. The actor will performs to a new version of the track Raabta, from Saif Ali Khan-Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer Agent Vinod, for the Dinesh Vijan film. The entire song will be revealed at 1pm on Thursday. Dinesh, who makes his directorial debut with Raabta, said, Deepika Padukone is very lucky for me. I asked her, if she could do a song for me. She came down to Budapest and we shot it. He was speaking at the trailer launch of Raabta. Dinesh has produced Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail and Finding Fanny, where Deepika played lead roles. Raabta, a tale of reincarnation, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon, is slated for a June 9 release. Follow @htshowbiz for more Its a known fact that Varun Dhawans father, David Dhawan has been a prolific film director since 1989 (when he directed Taaqatwar). His elder brother Rohit Dhawan, too, has directed a couple of films Desi Boyz (2011) followed by Dishoom (2016). However, the actor has no plans to work behind the camera at least as of now. I dont know [if I want to direct]; not right now, for sure. At least, I am not thinking about this (direction) for the next decade. I dont think I have it in me now, but maybe, I might [direct] one day in life. I think most actors want to direct one day. Har actor ko ek film ka keeda hota hai (smiles), says Varun. Varun Dhawan was last seen in Badrinath Ki Dulhania, alongside Alia Bhatt. But even if he decides to direct films it wont come as a surprise. Yes, I am aware but there is still time to think about it. I dont think my father wants me to direct a film and even I dont want to. Im happy being his kid and I am also working with some wonderful people and learning a lot, he says with a smile. Till today I didn't know there were two of us #rajaandprem A post shared by Varun Dhawan (@varundvn) on Apr 23, 2017 at 10:30pm PDT At the same time, Varun credits his knowledge of cinema to his father. I cant take that away from him. In fact, I give him a lot of credit, and especially now, with Rohit being a director as well. Eventually, a director makes the film and whenever I get the chance, one thing that I really love is to hang out with a senior, says the actor, adding that he loves to hear about what their experiences have been and how they made their films. Keep on spinning. Try this at home and see if you can beat my time A post shared by Varun Dhawan (@varundvn) on Apr 27, 2017 at 12:02am PDT In the same vein, the Badrinath Ki Dulhania actor recounts his meeting with Neerja (2016) director Ram Madhvani. I watched Neerja in Abu Dhabi (UAE) and loved the way Ram made it. It shook me, so when I came back, I called up Ram, says Varun, who met the director and spent some time with him. Follow the oh so beautiful #katrinakaif on Instagram. Instagram just got insta @katrinakaif A post shared by Varun Dhawan (@varundvn) on Apr 27, 2017 at 4:37am PDT I asked him how you did what you did [in the film] and I was really fascinated to learn the process of making Neerja. It was a very enriching experience. I learnt a lot during the 50 to 55 minutes that I spent with him. Spending time with film-makers is one of the best and inspiring things, says the actor. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Actor Vinod Khanna, the original dashing hero of Bollywood, died at the age of 70 on Thursday. The actor was suffering from bladder cancer and was admitted to Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai. A few weeks ago, the actors pictures, in which he looked frail, went viral on social media and his family requested that they be given privacy. In his career, spanning over 45 years, the actor worked in films such as Purab Aur Paschim (1970), Reshma Aur Shera (1971), Parichay (1972), Hera Pheri (1976), Parvarish (1977), The Burning Train (1980), Muqaddar Ka Badshaah (1990), Wanted (2009), Dabangg (2010), Dilwale (2015) The official statement from the hospital stated: Veteran actor and Member of Parliament Mr. Vinod Khanna, who was admitted to the Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital breathed his last at 11.20 am due to advanced bladder carcinoma. Ever since the news broke, industry colleagues have been expressing grief over the actors demise and remembering him. Those were the days my friend... We thought they'd never end... We would sing & dance forever & EVER !!! pic.twitter.com/nWMd9mveEB Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) April 27, 2017 RIP Vinod Khanna-ji. The world has lost another talented soul. You will live on in our memories. Our sincerest condolences to his family. Madhuri Dixit-Nene (@MadhuriDixit) April 27, 2017 My heartfelt condolences to the whole Khanna family... He will live on through his legacy & in our hearts... #VinodKhanna you will be missed pic.twitter.com/O9IqvJn0qL Anil Kapoor (@AnilKapoor) April 27, 2017 Even in brief greetings he never failed 2touch ur heart. Admired n looked up to him since I ws a kid. True legend. RIP Vinod khanna Hrithik Roshan (@iHrithik) April 27, 2017 Was blessed to share screen space with the legend. Will miss u sir. Rip#VinodKhannaji pic.twitter.com/DRFclKOxYK sonu sood (@SonuSood) April 27, 2017 Remembering the good times with you,Vinod. Thank you for being my friend. pic.twitter.com/hvZoYeQMEF Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna ji had a magnetic charm & persona. Both on & off screen. He was kind, affectionate & helpful. Loved his panther like walk. pic.twitter.com/q01Hmqxbdp Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) April 27, 2017 #VinodKhanna, my friend from films in 1970s to recent Dilwale, from spiritual chats in America to my MP from Gurdaspur. You were great, pal! pic.twitter.com/WG4mi8nw9n KABIR BEDI (@iKabirBedi) April 27, 2017 Was One of the most amazingly Handsome men in the film industry,down to earth warm magnanimous.we lost this superstar today .. RIP Vinodji. Raveena Tandon (@TandonRaveena) April 27, 2017 Vinod Khanna, truly "Mere Apne", one of my most admired and loved personalities, the supremely handsome & talented superstar is no more..1>2 Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) April 27, 2017 Remembering d glorious achievements & contribution of Vinod KhannaJI in cinema& his inspirational contribution as a human being in life RIP Anushka Sharma (@AnushkaSharma) April 27, 2017 Sad to learn about the passing away of #VinodKhanna Sir,one of the most charismatic actors...truly end of an era.Condolences to the family Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) April 27, 2017 RIP Vinod uncle . The original panther stride man! They truly don't make em like that anymore. Kajol (@KajolAtUN) April 27, 2017 R.I.P. VINODJI..thanks for your contribution to mainstream cinema..thanks for all the memories of cinema magic.. #VinodKhanna AMAR HAI.. pic.twitter.com/ytXOXxazQc Sajid Khan (@SimplySajidK) April 27, 2017 your charisma and charm will always be unmatchable..will miss your flamboyant walk on the https://t.co/Eb2o7TSFLQ in peace sir.#VinodKhanna Manoj Bajpayee (@BajpayeeManoj) April 27, 2017 RIP #VinodKhanna ... Indian cinema just lost one of its coolest . Energy and prayers to the loved ones. #Legend Neha Dhupia (@NehaDhupia) April 27, 2017 What a man he was! Now he's gone. R.I.P. Vinodji . I will treasure the time we spent together. Condolences to the family Ronit Roy (@RonitBoseRoy) April 27, 2017 As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight... Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 27, 2017 His screen presence is unparalleled even today...his super star swag is what we grew up on....RIP #VinodKhanna ...thoughts and prayers.... Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 27, 2017 the most dynamic & good looking actor, your charm worked on earth, it'll work in heaven as well RIP #VinodKhanna Baba Sehgal (@OnlyBabaSehgal) April 27, 2017 An incredible journey of a super star ends today..thank you for your unparalleled contribution to the indian cinema #RIP #VinodKhanna pic.twitter.com/hrszJMeRIz Rithvik Dhanjani (@rithvik_RD) April 27, 2017 Loved every punch he threw, every dialogue he delivered- RIP - #VinodKhanna rahul dholakia (@rahuldholakia) April 27, 2017 Those were the days my friend... We thought they'd never end... We would sing & dance forever & EVER !!! pic.twitter.com/nWMd9mveEB Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) April 27, 2017 The original Greek god of Indian cinema. Charismatic actor and super human being. Will miss you #VinodKhanna uncle #RIPvinodkhanna #RIP pic.twitter.com/5x1eMa50Mx Ashmit Patel (@AshmitPatel) April 27, 2017 The most handsome actor of his time... That smile... RIP #VinodKhanna Condolence to the family! Sumona Chakravarti (@sumona24) April 27, 2017 My dear friend Vinod Khanna... will miss you, RIP. My heartfelt condolences to the family. Rajinikanth (@superstarrajini) April 27, 2017 Vinod khanna sir gave heroism a whole new meaning.legend gone.may ur soul rest in peace.#VinodKhanna . Arjun Bijlani (@Thearjunbijlani) April 27, 2017 So sad to hear of the passing of veteran actor Vinod Khanna.. RIP to a truly wonderful man who warmed our hearts for generations. PALLAVI SHARDA (@pallavisharda) April 27, 2017 Very sad to hear abt #VinodKhanna ... Will always be his fan .. RIP one of the most handsome and talented actor Bollywood will ever c Nigaar Z. Khan (@NigaarZKhan) April 27, 2017 Remembering my buddy #VinodKhanna, led many lives in one lifetime, films spirituality politics, always following his heart. Salute you! pic.twitter.com/6jE4wmnPdo KABIR BEDI (@iKabirBedi) April 27, 2017 The most handsome man of the Bollywood film industry Mr. Vinod Khanna has sadly passed away. May God bless his soul and he rest in peace.. pic.twitter.com/BI5EKxbFaK King Mika Singh (@MikaSingh) April 27, 2017 Strange coincidence. Friends Vinod Khanna and Feroz Khan die the same day 27th April. Khan sahab passed away 27th April 2009 Bangalore. Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 The astonishing charisma... Incredible body of work... You will be missed Sir.. #VinodKhanna #RIPvinodkhanna Mugdha Veira Godse (@mugdhagodse267) April 27, 2017 Last of the actors born in 1946,Peshawar,then British India,leaves us-Vinod Khanna. Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) April 27, 2017 Follow @htshowbiz for more It was not unexpected. Photos showing an ailing Vinod Khanna - a pale shadow of his dashing former self had insensitively been circulated on the social media a few weeks ago. And now he is gone. Farooq [Sheikh], Om Puri , Vinod three co-actors with whom I worked a lot have passed away in quick succession. Makes me come to terms with my own mortality. I first worked with Vinod in Aruna Vikass Shaque. I remember being terrified because Aruna and Vikas who were married then and co-directing the film, demonstrated how they wanted a particularly intimate scene to be done. I was awkward and very embarrassed. Vinod , who sensed this came to my rescue. When we started rehearsing he put his arm around me and asked the directors, If I hold her in this position will I miss the camera? Would it be better if I hold her arm higher? Suddenly I felt oh this is such a technical thing, there is no need to be embarrassed and I started breathing again. I will always be thankful to him for this. He was a big star and I, a rank newcomer,if he had asked me to relax I would have got even more tense... What a considerate thing to do. Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna breathed his last today at Mumbai. The actor was suffering from advanced bladder carcinoma. We did many films together.He was different from most movie stars.On outdoor schedules its common to have fans shower hospitality on stars, bring home-cooked food and generally be at the stars beck and call etc.We are happy to partake of their hospitality but avoid their phone calls when they come to our city. Vinod would not only be accessible, he would also invite them on the sets and be extremely courteous. It was a rare quality. I did a whole gamut of films with Vinod from Shaque to Khoon Ki Pukar and particularly enjoyed doing Parvarish with him. One day Manmohan Desai turned up at a studio I was shooting in and said in his inimitable manner, Im producing a film for the first time. Its called Amar Akbar Anthony and I want you to be a part of it. Frankly theres no role for you but woh Vinod meri jaan kha jayega that Amitabh and Rishi have heroines opposite them I need one too! I was utterly disarmed and said yes right away. Ive watched Vinod through various phases in his life. His Rajneesh phase in the prime of his stardom. He had lost his mother and a close cousin almost simultaneously and was battling metaphysical questions about life and death. He felt cut off and disconnected with every thing and everybody. Rajneesh aka Osho gave him the solace he was seeking.He became the butt of ridicule in whispers around the film industry. Such a handsome successful star..whats wrong with him? Sab kuch toh hai kyun panga lena ? tittered an Industry unused to people who didnt conform. And then one day he just left for Oregon, leaving behind angry producers with some incomplete films.I wonder if anybody other than Mahesh Bhatt and Jhonny Bakshi understood the turmoil Vinod was going through. He came back some five years or so later and the film industry opened its arms to him once again. He did some substantial work but he needed to do more than just be a Hindi film actor. Inevitably he joined politics and was overwhelmed by the huge mandate he got... He gave himself wholeheartedly to politics - even became a Minister of State for External Affairs. I had political differences with him but we continued to be fond of each other. I learned he often enquired after me from common friends but we lost touch. And now he is gone. I regret not going to see him after I learned about his illness. Perhaps because I want to remember him as he was - handsome, warm and considerate. Follow @htshowbiz for more I had seen his films but never him in person. I always wondered why my father kept saying that Vinod Khanna would have replaced Amitabh Bachchan as the industrys reigning superstar if he hadnt left Bollywood for five years in the early 80s. And then one day I saw him. He had come to canvass for his political party before the 1998 parliamentary elections in Delhi. It was a sight to behold. With a soothing smile, flowing kurta, a shawl draped around his nack and long tilak, he looked like a quintessential filmy neta, rather raajneta. Nobody can close to Vinod Khanna in the cops role. He had this air of supremacy, authority and control. Probably his dominating personality appealed to my father and his generation. Despite folded hands, he looked every bit the royalty Indian masses have always been in awe of. It was in great contrast to the idea of democracy where most leaders try to look like commoners. His appearance probably won half the battle for himself. This is why a recent picture, purportedly of Khanna, that went viral on social media shocked us. How could this happen to a good-looking person like Vinod Khanna, we wondered, though we were fully aware of what cancer can do to its victims. He wasnt the finest actor among his contemporaries, but he had a certain weight. When he says in Haath Ki Safai, Bachche tum jis school se padh kea aye ho, hum uske principal reh chuke hain, (Kid, I have been the principal of the school you went to), we know he means it. That twitching smirk was worth a thousand dialogues. Vinod Khanna and Pran in a still from Amar Akbar Antony. Other than actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Iftekhar and Jagdish Raj, Vinod Khanna was the one who glorified cops in Hindi films. From his initial films like Mastana and Sachcha Jhutha (1970) to Jaane Anjaane (1971) and Gaddar (1973), only a couple of years in the industry had made him one of the most recognisable faces. Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Dharmendra were the only ones to brave the Amitabh Bachchan wave during the 70s. Thanks to a series of mardangi se bharpoor roles in Reshma Aur Shera, Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971), Achanak (1973), Shaque and Hera Pheri (1976), Muqaddar Ka Sikander (1978), Lahu Ke Do Rang (1979), Qurbani (1980) and many other films, he ruled the roost for good 7-8 years. Had it not been for Osho, he would have kept playing the morally uptight Thakur or the dreaded inspector in many other films. Dayavan (1988) was, in a way, the beginning of his second innings. Nobody cared about the age of Vinod Khanna (46) when he rolled on the floor with Madhuri Dixit (21) in the song Aaj fir tum pe. He was the guy Indian audiences always wanted as their hero. Tall, well built, aloof and somewhat cynical. Vinod Khanna with Meenakshi Seshadri in Mahadev. (HT Photo) But he was ageing, gracefully. Later he started playing father to Sonam Kapoor (Players, 2012) and Salman Khan (Wanted and Dabangg), but even the simplest of roles couldnt conceal his magnetism. There would invariably a scene or two in which the audience will get a chance to witness his old charm. Cancer is ruthless. Its all powerful, but even with all its might, it can never erase the craze that Vinod Khanna once generated. Heres to Vinod Khanna: Maine jab se hosh sambhala hai, khilauno ki jagah maut se khelta aaya hoon (Qurbani). Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Throughout his film career Vinod Khanna was overshadowed by another 6-ft something actor. But in his parliamentary career, the four-time Lok Sabha MP from Punjabs Gurudaspur left Amitabh Bachchan miles behind. Bachchans tryst with politics was a pure misadventure that ended miserably, damaging permanently his ties with the Nehru-Gandhi family. Khanna had admirers across political lines, kept low profile and went on winning four consecutive Lok Sabha polls. During Vajpayees regime, Khanna was picked first as the junior minister for tourism and culture. After a year, he was made the junior minister for external affairs. He would diligently come to office and work till late in the evening. He never missed a question hour, and enjoyed both Vajpayees and LK Advanis patronage. But by any standard, Vinod Khanna was prossibly not an active Parliamentarian. He only asked 22 questions in the last two Lok Sabhas (2004-2014) and never cared to bring a private member bill, which MPs use to push policy changes in their own ways. In the last three years, Khanna took part in seven debates and made three special mentions. He was more in his elements when he went to his constituency. People loved him and he was keen to develop the place as a tourist destination. He once told this correspondent, Atalji called me and said you have to contest election. I only told him that please give me a ticket from Punjab as I would be comfortable there. At the beginning of his political life, Khanna used to drive his own cara blue SUVthrough the villages of his constituency and patiently listen to the problems of people. It didnt take too long for Khanna to understand that the rural public, smitten by his charisma and reel personality, are ready to be mere apne. One of the everlasting images of the tall, handsome Parliamentarian was when he came to meet the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for some work. Mukherjee was returning to his room in Parliament. Khanna introduced himself: Sir, I am Vinod Khanna. Mukherjee, who hardly watched Hindi movie, completely ignored him and continued to walk briskly. Sir, I am Vinod Khanna, Member of Parliament, the familiar voice said, in desperation. Oh! Please come, please come, MP ji. What can I do for you, Mukherjee greeted him warmly. Finally, in Parliament Khanna found someone oblivious of his star status. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Actor Deepika Padukone is one friend that everyone would love to have in Bollywood, and filmmaker Dinesh Vijan would definitely vouch for it. Their friendship goes back to Imtiaz Alis Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Homi Adajanias Cocktail (2012), both of which were produced by Dinesh (along with actor Saif Ali Khan). As the producer is making his directorial debut this year with the film, Raabta, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon, he said he couldnt do without having Deepika in it. Weve known each other for quite a few years now. More than a friend, shes family and I couldnt possibly think of doing my first film without at least a glimpse of her in it. Shes lucky for me, says Dinesh. Deepika, too, has always maintained that Dinesh is a friend she can always count on. Thats why, when Dinesh called her to shoot for the title track of his film, in spite of her chaotic schedule, she instantly agreed. Sources say that the actor, who was shooting in the US for xXx: Return of Xander Cage, had to travel 22 hours, changing three flights to reach Budapest, the night before the shoot. Deepika landed and came straight to the sets to meet Dinesh. She spent time with the team and then left for her costume trials and choreography sessions. It was like a homecoming for her, says the source. Keeping his promise, Dinesh finished her shoot in one night, so that she could fly back to the US. Follow @htshowbiz for more Search engine giant Google India has been named as the countrys most attractive employer brand, followed by Mercedes Benz India at the second place, a survey says. The sectoral specific winners for the most attractive employers this year are Amazon India for e-commerce, ITC Ltd for FMCG and Philips India for consumer and healthcare. According to the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2017, competitive salary and employee benefits continue to be the top priority among the Indian workforce while choosing an employer, followed by good work-life balance and job security. However, for the IT professionals, good work-life balance emerged as the top priority while choosing an employer. Employer branding continues to be of strategic importance influencing the talent agenda, particularly so in an economy thats driven by knowledge workers, Randstad India MD and CEO Moorthy K Uppaluri said. According to the survey results, large and multinational corporations emerge as the preferred workplace for employees across all profiles. However, IT professionals indicated that they would rather work in the dynamic start-up ecosystem over the SME sector. On the other hand, engineering talent prefer working in start-ups over the public sector companies, reveals the survey. Sectorwise, Indian workforce prefers to work for companies operating in sectors like IT, followed by BFSI and retail & FMCG. Organisations have come to realise the value of employer branding and the return from such investments, both in terms of attracting new talent and retaining, Uppaluri added. The survey further noted that 31 per cent of employees, said they are not loyal to any one industry or sector and are open to shift industries and compensation remains a key driver in determining employee loyalty to a sector. The Randstad Award, instituted globally by Randstad, is hosted each year to encourage best practices for talent attraction and to identify the best Employer Brand in the country based on perceived awareness and attractiveness of a company. In India this year, the Randstad Employer Brand Research captured the views of around 3,500 respondents, who chose the nations most attractive employer brand for 2017. Multiplex chain PVR Ltd. on Wednesday signed an agreement with IMAX Corporation to add five more IMAX theatres in the Indian market. Through this rollout, PVR cinemas will reach a count of 10 IMAX screens and retain its position as the largest IMAX partner in India. The new IMAX theatres, which are planned to be located in Delhi and other major metropolitan markets and will comprise a combination of new and existing PVR cinemas, are slated to begin opening this year, with all theatres expected to launch by the end of 2019. With IMAX anchoring our most important locations, we look forward to further strengthening our presence in India by offering our patrons the most technologically advanced movie going experience available, said Ajay Bijli, Chairman and Managing Director, PVR Ltd. PVRs IMAX theatres feature IMAXs cutting-edge projection system that delivers crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAXs customised theatre geometry and powerful digital sound system. Weve been trying to develop the Indian market for 15 years, and now finally have the momentum to build out our brand nationwide and release Indian films. Our 26 theatres in India, signed or open, and our 10 signings in the last year show that India is becoming a very important market for us, said Richard L. Gelfond, CEO, IMAX. PVR Cinemas currently operates a cinema circuit of 579 screens at 126 properties in 50cities with 4 IMAX screens in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Noida. Since April 2016, IMAX has signed 10 theatre agreements in India - the highest number of signings in India in a single year in the companys history. The latest deal with PVR Cinemas marks one of the largest single theatre signings for IMAX in the country, bringing the total number of IMAX theatres to 26, with 11 currently open and 15 contracted to open. Auto industry body Siam on Thursday requested the Supreme Court to review its March 29 judgement banning the sale of Bharat Stage III vehicles April 1, 2017 onwards. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) filed a review petition in the apex court on Thursday, in which it said it has pointed out on certain facts that were not covered in the judgment, which go to the root of the matter and had influenced the honourable court to pass such an order. The Supreme Court on March 29 had ordered a ban on sale of Bharat Stage III vehicles from April 1, 2017, when the BS-IV emission norms came into force. The ban forced dealers across the country to clear the BS-III stocks with them latest by March 31, offering heavy discounts, express bookings and registrations. According to a Siam statement,the honourable court has erroneously construed an office memorandum from ministry of road transport and highways dated March 3, 2017 to be an office memorandum dated March 3, 2015, i.e. two years earlier in holding that the government had sent a clear message to the manufacturers to stop production of BS-III vehicles before April 1, 17. Whereas this was a government assurance given three weeks before the judgement, that unsold stocks of BS-III vehicles which were in the pipeline, would be permitted to be sold and registered even after April 1, 2017, as has been done even when BS-II and BS-III were implemented. Acting on the governments clarification issued as late as in March 2017, the manufacturers had a reasonable and legitimate expectation that unsold inventories of BS-III stocks could be sold even after 1st April, 2017 and until such stocks were exhausted, the Siam said in its petition. Siam also said the staggered phase-in of BS-IV vehicles was to ensure adequate supplies of the BS-IV compliant fuel across the country, not to help the auto industry as mentioned in the judgement. Siam also said the gradual extension of BS-IV to different areas of the country was entirely dependent on the nations capacity and ability to provide BS-IV fuel. The petition also pointed out it is not true that automakers knew of the BS-IV implementation roadmap from 2010. This presents the auto industry in a wrong light, the Siam said. Siam also highlighted that the court has further based its judgement on an assumption that there will be 80% reduction in emissions of particulate matter between BS-III and BS-IV standards. Though it may be true for only heavy vehicles, but such reduction is much less in other categories of vehicles, the industry body said. In the petition, Siam also stated that the auto industry too had invested Rs 25,000 crore to upgrade vehicle technologies to BS-IV level progressively and was therefore an equal contributor in ensuring the improvement in the environment. On March 29, the automakers had told the court they had 800,000 unsold two-wheelers, commercial vehicles (both small and large), passenger vehicles and three-wheelers compliant with BS-III norms. Though many automakers recalled or bought back unsold units from dealers back, around Rs 1,200 crore were lost, Siam had said in its last months sales review. Of the 800,000 unsold vehicles on March 29, around 100,000 were commercial vehicles while around 670,000 were scooters and motorcycles. Tata Motors had 15,000 unsold commercial vehicles, Ashok Leyland had around 10,664 vehicles, while Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles said it had a stock of 1,500 vehicles, the Mint reported earlier this week. U.S. President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that he will not terminate the NAFTA treaty at this stage, but will move quickly to begin renegotiating it with them, a White House said. The announcement came after White House officials disclosed that Trump and his advisers had been considering issuing an executive order to withdraw the United States from the trade pact with Canada and Mexico, one of the worlds biggest trading blocs. The White House said Trump spoke by telephone with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and that he would hold back from a speedy termination of NAFTA, in what was described as a pleasant and productive conversation. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries, a White House statement said. It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better, Trump was quoted as saying in the statement. The Mexican and Canadian currencies rebounded in Asian trading after Trump said the U.S. would stay in NAFTA for now. The U.S. dollar dropped 0.6 percent on its Canadian counterpart and 1 percent on the peso. The White House had been considering an executive order exiting NAFTA as early as Trumps 100th day in office on Saturday, but there was a split among his top advisers over whether to take the step. During his election campaign Trump threatened to renegotiate NAFTA and in the past week complained bitterly about Canadian trade practices. It was under an executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 23 that the United States pulled out of the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. News of the potential presidential action to withdraw from NAFTA earlier drove the Mexican and Canadian currencies lower. NAFTA TRADE HAVOC A disruption in trade between the three NAFTA partners could wreak havoc in the auto sector and other industries, hitting profits at companies that have benefited from zero-level tariffs and Mexicos relatively low labor costs. It would also hit U.S. agricultural exports hard. To totally abandon that agreement means that those gains are lost, said Paul Ferley, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Trump has repeatedly vowed to pull out from the 23-year-old trade pact if he is unable to renegotiate it with better terms for America. He has long accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs. The United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Details about the draft executive order on NAFTA were not immediately available. Trump has faced some setbacks since he took office in January, including a move by courts to block parts of his orders to limit immigration. Withdrawing from NAFTA would enable him to say he delivered on one of his key campaign promises, but it could also hurt him in states that voted for him in the election. Mr. President, Americas corn farmers helped elect you, the National Corn Growers Association said in a statement. Withdrawing from NAFTA would be disastrous for American agriculture. DIVERGING OPINIONS The first administration source told Reuters that there were diverging opinions within the U.S. government about how to proceed and it was possible that Trump could sign the executive order before the 100-day mark of his presidency. The source noted that the administration wanted to tread carefully. There is talk about what steps we can take to start the process of renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA, this source said. Mexico had expected to start NAFTA renegotiations in August but the possible executive order could add urgency to the timeline. The Mexican government had no comment on the draft order. The countrys foreign minister said on Tuesday that Mexico would walk away from the negotiating table rather than accept a bad deal. Trump recently ramped up his criticism of Canada and this week ordered 20 percent tariffs on imports of Canadian softwood lumber, setting a tense tone as the three countries prepared to renegotiate the pact. Canada said it was ready to come to talks on renewing NAFTA at any time. At this moment NAFTA negotiations have not started. Canada is ready to come to the table at any time, said Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. Noted industrialist Rahul Bajaj today voiced concern over weakening of institutions like Parliament and the judiciary that he feels is holding back the countrys progress. A major reason holding back our country in my view is the weakening of credible institutions from smaller to the biggest like Parliament and the judiciary itself. In the 1950s and 1960s, we built some (institutions), Bajaj said during his address at an award function here. He observed that the country has seen weakening of some of these institutions in the past 50 years. Later, on the sidelines of the event, the former Rajya Sabha member told PTI: I have seen what happens in Parliament. It depends on the kind of people we elect, it depends on the government. He received the Lifetime Achievement award from President Pranab Mukherjee at the event organised by CII here. The President also felicitated three grassroots women leaders with the CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Award 2017 for their extraordinary contribution to society. Jayamma Bandari, Manika Majumdar and Kamal Kumbhar were conferred the awards in education, health and micro- enterprise, respectively. Poverty forced Jayamma to drop out of school. Later, domestic violence made her turn to sex work to earn a living. She fought against all odds to set up Chaithanya Mahila Mandali (CMM), an NGO dedicated to empower women and protect children of sex workers from harassment, trafficking and sexual abuse and ensures their formal education. Despite poverty, family violence and discontinued education, Manika became West Bengals first trained barefoot community mental health counsellor. In partnership with local urban bodies, she and her team from Anjali, a Kolkata-based NGO, runs a community mental health kiosk to provide de- stigmatised, accessible and affordable mental health care to marginalised individuals and families. Daughter of a daily-wage labourer, Kamal walked out of poverty and a failed marriage to set up Kamal Poultry and Ekta Sakhi Producer Company. Her ventures have enabled 3,000 women to run successful poultry farms, doubling their households incomes in the drought-prone region of Osmanabad, Maharashtra. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Wednesday announced sweeping changes in norms relating to mutual funds, public issues, capital raising and commodity derivatives after its board met for the first time under new chairman Ajay Tyagi. Sebi allowed new investment and redemption routes in mutual funds; tightened initial public offering (IPO) norms to ensure that funds raised are not misused; eased existing capital-raising norms to help banks deal with rising bad loans; and announced changes in securities contracts norms for better integration of the commodity derivatives market with the securities market. Investors can instantly redeem liquid mutual funds up to Rs 50,000 a day, or 90% of the folio value, whichever is lower. Currently, money from redeeming a mutual fund gets credited to a customers account only on the next working day or two days after the request if it is not done through the immediate payment service (IMPS), placing liquid funds at a disadvantage to bank fixed deposits. While some funds already provide this instant redemption facility, Sebi has capped the limit at Rs 50,000. Sebi also allowed investors to use e-wallets to buy mutual funds of up to Rs 50,000 per financial year. This move could potentially increase inflows into Indias Rs 18 lakh-crore mutual funds market. However, redemptions of such investments will flow back to the bank account of the unit holder. The regulator said e-wallet issuers must not offer any incentive such as cash-back payments. It also stipulated that only e-wallet balance loaded through cash or debit card or net banking (and not credit cards) could be used for such investments. This is an enabling provision and will help the industry in on-boarding new investors, said A Balasubramanian, MD and CEO of Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company. Sebi also gave the green signal for options contracts in commodity derivatives, and integrated broking activities in equity markets and commodity derivatives markets under a single entity. These two issues were highlighted by finance minister Arun Jaitley in the last two budgets. For options trading, Sebi is proposing to amend the Securities Contracts (Regulation) (Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations) Regulations, 2012. This will allow commodity exchanges to launch options products that can be settled by converting them to futures a day before the expiry of the contract. Options would complement existing futures contracts. Options would attract domestic hedgers to hedge on exchanges, said Mrugank Paranjape, MD and CEO, Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. The detailed guidelines for trading in options on commodity derivatives exchange will be issued by Sebi, the market regulator in a statement. Sebi will also amend stock brokers regulation so that it can integrate stock brokers in equity and commodity derivative markets. This will enable the same entity to operate in both markets. This step will reduce costs for financial intermediaries and give them more opportunities since it will be easier to approach equity (and commodity) clients, said Chintan Modi, executive V-P at securities house IIFL. Sebi also made it compulsory for companies to appoint a monitoring agency if their capital market issue size (excluding offer-for-sale component) is more than Rs 100 crore. Earlier, the floor was Rs 500 crore. Monitoring agencies will have to submit their report every quarter now (from half-yearly earlier) and companies will have to publish this report on their websites besides sending to stock exchanges, Sebi said. On the day the exit polls for the Delhi municipal elections were predicting a BJP landslide, AAP spokespersons were in a defiant mood, blaming the EVMs for a looming defeat. But how can you blame an exit poll for potential tampering of an EVM since the pollster is sampling voters, not the machine, I asked? The AAP representative paused and then blurted out: Sab mile hue hai. Conspiracy theories abound in India but by blaming EVMs for their debacle, AAP runs the risk of deepening its credibility crisis. Truth is, rather than throw up unproven EVM conspiracy theories, the AAP leadership needs a reality check: Why is the middle class in particular feeling let down by a party it supported so overwhelmingly just two years ago? If even the extravagant promise of waiving house tax didnt cut ice with the voter in middle-income colonies, then it clearly suggests a widening trust deficit. It was the middle class, after all, that had embraced AAP in its original avatar as an offshoot of the Lokpal movement, as an idealistic force driven by moral power. When Arvind Kejriwal was given a second chance by the Delhi electorate in 2015 it was premised on the hope that he would genuinely provide an alternative political culture to the corrupted mainstream national parties and their powerful backers. Hope is an idea that stitches together dreams: For the salaried middle class, hope makes life worth living. When hope is killed, it translates, first into disappointment, and then anger. Instead of providing wholesome governance, AAP saw its USP in confronting the Narendra Modi government and Modi in particular, a kind of David versus Goliath battle, which AAP as the quintessential outsider revelled in. While the Centre has been openly and often unjustly hostile to AAPs emergence, when a combative attitude becomes an end in itself, it only breeds negativism. You can be anti-establishment as an oppositional, activist force challenging the status quo; you cant survive on accusatory politics once in government. While efforts like the mohalla clinics and school education reforms were welcome steps in the right direction, the good work being done was overshadowed by the noise created over Kejriwals repeated run-ins with the L-G, the Centre, and former colleagues Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. The optics were clearly wrong: Far from building a bottom-up political structure based on a spirit of voluntarism, Kejriwal was perceived as being his own high command: A small coterie seemed to replace the thousands of volunteers who had helped create the AAP phenomenon in the first place. The raw courage Kejriwal had shown in taking on traditional elites was now seen as self-righteous conceit and the same media which had once glorified him was now looking to pull him down. Perhaps the scale of AAPs victory in 2015 along with the failure of the Opposition to throw up a strong alternative to Modi, convinced Kejriwal that he could fill the national leadership vacuum. In the process, he made the strategic mistake of many an ambitious start-up: Attempting to expand without consolidating first. The move into Punjab and Goa only sent out the message that AAP was taking its Delhi voters for granted. By contrast, the BJP seemed to sense the voter mood astutely. Corruption has been endemic to civic bodies with many councillors becoming crorepatis overnight: For 10 years, the BJP was seen to have presided over an ineffectual and corrupt local body. But by denying tickets to all its sitting councillors and revolving the campaign around Brand Modi, the BJP changed the narrative. The promise of a new BJP was seductive to urban voters still mesmerised by the Modi charisma. The same middle class that cheered Kejriwal when he exposed the Congress appeared reluctant to endorse him when he challenged Modi, a leader who has cleverly appropriated the pro-poor, anti-corruption plank post-demonetisation. Ironically, it is the BJPs obsessive Modi-centric approach that provides parties like AAP another opportunity for course correction. The opportunity lies in raising citizens issues even where the electoral benefit may not be immediately apparent but where a sense of people connect is restored. The next time, for example, there is a dengue or chikungunya outbreak, AAP must offer an imaginative alternative solution rather than cruelly blame divine intervention and the BJP for the mosquito menace. Why not spearhead a volunteer-driven mass awareness campaign on the state of public health and sanitation in the capital? To rediscover itself, AAP must go back to its original identity built during the anti-corruption Anna agitation: A public spirited movement that becomes the voice of those who feel desperately powerless in the India of today. Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and an author The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Preparations are in full swing in Uttarakhands Chardham in view of President Pranab Mukherjees visit to Badrinath on May 6, which will be preceded by Prime Minister Narendra Modis trip to Kedarnath, officials said. Chardham includes four shrines -- Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Mukherjee will attend the ceremonial reopening of the portals of the Badrinath shrine. Modi will visit Kedarnath on May 3 to attend the ceremony to mark the opening of the shrine gates. On Wednesday, Garhwal commissioner Vinod Sharma and deputy inspector general (DIG) Pushpak Jyoti visited Badrinath and reviewed preparations for the Presidents visit. Sharma directed officials to remain vigilant so that preparations were foolproof. He asked them to ensure that pilgrims visiting Badrinath were not inconvenienced while participating in the ceremonial reopening of the shrine gates. Sharma inspected VIP guesthouses run by Badri-Kedar Temple Committee (BKTC) and directed its officials to ensure high-level arrangements in view of the VIP visit, an official note said. Sharma also reviewed the arrangements for the Chardham yatra (pilgrimage) that starts from May 3. The arrangements include maintenance of roads, water, power and food supplies, health facilities and amenities that will help maintain hygiene. He directed officials to initiate action within 10 minutes of the Chardham roads getting blocked by rain-induced landslides or snowfall. Officials were asked to ensure alternative arrangements in case of power failure during the presidential visit. They were also directed to ensure that the route between the army helipad and the Badrinath shrine is in sound condition. Officials at Kedarnath said preparations for the Prime Ministers visit were almost complete. Arrangements relating to the helipad where the chopper carrying Modi would land had been put in place, they said. The road from the helipad to the Kedarnath shrine where the Prime Minister will attend the ceremonial reopening of its gates is perfectly in order, an official told HT on condition of anonymity. The temple premises and the area around it were being spruced up, officials said. The 16-km trek between Kedarnath and Sonprayag was in sound condition after repair works at some places were carried out and the snow was removed, they said. Besides, bio digester toilets and other hygiene-related arrangements had been put in place along the trekking route, the official said. Officials refused to disclose details relating to security arrangements being put in place in the twin shrine towns. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Congress on Thursday asked the Uttarakhand government to provide proper treatment to an Almora-based family whose three members had died due to an extremely rare neurological disorder. The plight of the family in Khajurani village came to light recently after BJP legislator Mahesh Negi wrote to chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. The MLA claimed that 17-year-old Sarita Bisht of the family had died due to starvation. The district administration, however, blamed the neuro disease for her death. Addressing a press conference in Dehradun, Congress state unit chief Kishore Upadhyaya said the familys three members Lal Singh Bisht, his son Khushal and Khushals daughter Sarita had due to the disease. He said the government should admit remaining members of the family to AIIMS in Delhi or any other top hospital. Lal Singhs second son Arjun and his another granddaughter Nitu are suffering from the disease. Imagine a situation where the family is living in the fear that someone will die owing to the disease in coming days, he said. The state government has provided them food but the family is yet to get needed medical, said Upadhyay. If the state government is unable to provide required medical help to them, it must allow us to take up the task. The Congress will make necessary arrangements for their treatment, he said. Thirty students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) will be questioned by the Delhi Police special cell in connection with a sedition case. In connection with the same case, former JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and two ex-members of Democratic Students Union (DSU) Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested and later bailed out. Investigating officer Umesh Barthwal has sent a notice to JNU vice chancellor, asking him to direct the 30 students of the varsity to join the probe. In the notice that was served under Section 160 of CrPC, Barthwal asked the VC to direct the students, whose names were listed in the notice, to remain present at the administrative block on the campus on any of the three days Thursday, Friday or Saturday afternoon onwards. The name of the daughter of a Communist Party of India (CPI) leader also figures in the list, sources said. On Thursday, nobody turned up for questioning. On February 9, 2016, a group of JNU students led by Kanhaiya, Umar, and Anirban organised an event on the campus, during which they allegedly shouted anti-India slogans to protest the hanging of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. The event was attended by some outsiders as well, a few of who were from other universities and colleges in Delhi. Two days later, a sedition case was registered at the Vasant Kunj police station after a video footage of the event was telecast by a Hindi news channel and police took a suo motu cognizance on the footage they got from the news channel. A senior special cell officer privy to the case said all the students named in the notice were present at the event and their questioning is required in the probe. We will record their statements that will be corroborated by the statements of other students, teachers and security personnel, which we have already recorded. Our objective is to question everybody who was there at the venue, said the officer. Asked if any of the 30 students was involved in raising anti-national slogans, the officer said a confirmation on that can only be given after completion of the probe as role of all suspects and witnesses is verified and cross-verified. If found guilty, some of them will be chargesheeted in the case. We will use a few of them as witnesses in the case, the officer said. The JNU Students Union criticised the police notice for interrogation and said that certain students named in the list were not even present on that day. Some who are not students now, and some others who cant even be identified, are asked to come for an interrogation. We want to ask, what is this interrogation all about? Why were these names suddenly called? What is the basis of such a list? What is the connection between the names listed with the mentioned date? What are the charges after all? We see this as another attempt to target and threaten students and ultimately to fulfill Sanghs criminal agenda of destroying a university, where the battle of ideas and critical thinking are a well-cherished practice, said a statement from JNUSU. ANOTHER COMPLAINT Meanwhile, JNUSU president, Mohit Kumar Pandey, on Thursday approached the police to allege that some websites were mischievously circulating old photographs of JNU students to give false impressions that they were celebrating the recent killing of CRPF men in Sukma. At least two such photos of JNU students, bearing false captions about them celebrating the Sukma killings, are doing the rounds on social media sites. Pandey, in his complaint submitted to SHO of Vasant Kunj (north) police station, alleged that some specific websites were the source of these photographs. In reality, one of the photos was captured in September 2015 after the JNUSU polls result was announced, he said. The other photo was taken after former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was granted bail in the sedition case against him. A senior police officer confirmed receiving the complaint and said the allegations would be probed. No FIR was registered in this connection. Parents of a rape survivor have alleged that a private school in Delhi, where their child was studying, asked them not to send her to school as it would tarnish the name of the institute. The Delhi Commission for Women has issued a notice to the education department based on a complaint of the parents, who approached the agency. Parents of the Class 10 student alleged that the school administration has shown gross insensitivity towards the girl. In their accusation, the parents said the school has laid a condition that the victim will be promoted to Class 11 only if she stops coming to school. The commission did not reveal the name of the school to protect the identity of the girl. Hindustan Times could not, therefore, get a reaction from the school. Read: Lets Talk About Rape The school administration feels that the name of their school will be spoiled if the victim comes to school everyday. The school also said that the administration would not take any responsibility for the girls safety, the parents said in their complaint to the DCW. The girl was kidnapped, raped and then thrown out of a moving car. The school administration has been harassing the girl so that she quits on her own, the parents alleged, claiming that the principal is not allowing the rape victims friends to sit next to her. They have reported that the principal said they should remove their daughter from the school and enrol her in a new one, saying the girl is bringing a bad name to the school, the DCW officials said. The parents also alleged that the school is not allowing the girl to use the school bus service that she was earlier using. The parents have to pick and drop their daughter from the school themselves now, the officials said. The DCW chairperson Swati Maliwal maintained that it is a serious matter. The girl is being punished for no fault of hers. This is a very embarrassing and unacceptable matter in todays world, she said. The DCW has sought a report from DOE within five days. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Perhaps the mother knows all is not well with her new born. A desperate-looking Sheeba is kissing Momo all over her little body. For the last few days, the infant Momo is unable to walk on her all fours. When she tries, her hind legs drag behind her as if they are paralysed. We are watching the mother-and-child intimacy in Nizamuddin East the well-heeled central Delhi neighbourhood whose wild feral cats were immortalized in author Nilanjana Roys novel The Wildings. Sheeba and Momo, however, are not homeless. They dont have to inhabit Nizamuddins wilds. They live in an artsy park-facing apartment in C-Block. Sheeba can easily see Humayuns Tomb from her roof but monuments do not seem to excite her. Sheeba continues to kiss her kittens face, eyes, feet, and stomach. She protectively circles the child within her legs. Momo closes her eyes and seems at perfect peace she is so small, so fragile that one fears she might dissolve on mere touch. Before she became a mother, Sheeba spent hours lounging on her drawing room sofa. She also liked leaping up to the top of the lamps. She always managed to find her way through the bookshelves (stacked with lots of books by Khushwant Singh and Ghalib). Her flatmate, a woman the legal owner of the apartment says that Sheeba used to be a wild girl and often left the house in the afternoons for you know what. One day she became pregnant. Sheeba gave birth to two kittens a month ago. Momo survived. The thoughtful flatmate turned her old suitcase, which was gathering dust in the guestroom, into Momos crib. As a new mother, Sheeba has not abandoned all the free habits of her former days such as sitting on the sofa and prancing around the lamps. Even so, she frequently runs back into the guestroom to check on her child and to feed her. It is still not clear how Momos hind legs lost their movement the vet has ruled out a fracture. It could be a more serious nerve problem, according to him. It is possible that Momos legs might never regain movement Sheebas flatmate tells us in a low voice. One has no idea if Sheeba herself realizes the seriousness of her childs situation. The other day she picked up Momo by her teeth and took her up on the roof and hid her inside a narrow gap between two water pipes. Perhaps that was her way to keep her child safe, says the flatmate, sadly. She offers Sheeba a bowl of milk. Momo, too, dips her mouth in the milk. Sheeba leaves the entire bowl to her child. A few minutes later the flatmate prepares to take Momo to the vet in Jangpura for another round of check up. Sheeba refuses to let go of the kitten. The flatmate gently takes away the baby from her mother, putting her into a basket. Sheeba jumps into it. The flatmate takes her out, and gently says, We are taking your child to the doctor. He will give her medicines and injections so that she recovers quickly. We shall soon be back. The baby is gone. Sheeba sits quietly in front of the door, probably waiting for her kitten to return. Modi wave getting stronger BJP effectively beat 10-year-old anti-incumbency riding on the Narendra Modi wave by winning 181 wards out of the 270 in the three municipal corporations. Though chief minister Arvind Kejriwal promised that he will closely monitor the MCDs, voters were driven by the Modi factor to believe that the PM will be able to make a difference. Instead of criticising rivals the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress the state leadership used Modi to seek votes. His images along with that of party president Amit Shah and local unit chief Manoj Tiwari were placed on all posters and banners across the city. To overcome anti-incumbency, the party made a smart move by not giving tickets to any of the sitting councillors and instead fielded new faces. In the last municipal elections, BJP won 138 seats. Later, a few independents and councillors of other parties joined the BJP, which took its tally to 153. The MCD elections showed that Modi and Shah are still ahead of the curve in terms of election management, and that Modis popularity is enough to woo voters despite a decade of anti-incumbency. Gujarat and beyond a distant dream for AAP The AAP ministers failed to lead the partys civic poll campaign in the wards in their own constituencies, putting spanner in its dream to become a national party. After losing in Punjab and Goa, AAP had hoped to shore up Delhi before taking on Modi in home state of Gujarat. The party had also planned to go to other Congress vs BJP states. But, even at home, the rug is being pulled from under AAPs feet. This is clear from how some of its top leaders are losing ground. In Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodias constituency Patparganj, AAP won only one out of four wards and the rest three went to BJP. The three wards in Power minister Satyendar Jains constituency Shakur Basti went to BJP. Similarly, in water minister Kapil Mishras constituency Karawal Nagar, two of the five wards were won by AAP. Labour minister Gopal Rai managed to win two out of four wards. In south Delhi, former law minister and Malviya Nagar MLA Somnath Bharti also failed to make a mark as all three wards in his area went to the BJP. Vidhan Sabha speaker Ram Niwas Goels constituency completely rejected the AAP in all four wards falling under his leadership. After the partys Delhi unit convener Dilip Pandey sent his resignation to party chief Arvind Kejriwal and MLA Alka Lamba offered to resign over poor performance in MCD polls, another leader, Sanjay Singh, resigned as party in-charge in Punjab. With its clout diminishing, the party will now have to focus on Delhi rather than looking expanding in other states. Fault lines in the EVM debate The AAP has been running a campaign against faulty EVMs with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday calling EVM manipulation a bitter truth of the countrys democracy. Sisodia said that people can crack jokes at the party, but they cannot prevent it from speaking the truth. However, the party seemed divided on the issue with water minister Kapil Mishra saying the blame cant be pinned only on EVMs and the party needs to introspect and find the reasons behind its rout in the civic polls. Strangely though, Kejriwal in his official reaction to the results refrained from commenting on EVMs. With the Congress and other parties such as BSP who had blamed EVMs in the past keeping quiet, AAP is getting isolated on this issue. Kejriwal had said on Monday that he would launch a movement against EVMs if the exit polls favouring BJP were proven right. He will now have to plot his next move carefully. TINA factor: Rise of the NOTA votes There were 2,516 candidates in the fray during the Delhi municipal corporation elections 2017 but for more than 49,000 voters, none of them were good enough to vote for. Many people who did not want to vote for BJP chose to either not vote at all, or press the None Of The Above button. This shows the inability of the opposition to offer a strong alternative, even though the combined voting percentage of the Others was far beyond BJPs 36 per cent vote share. As per the Delhi State Election Commission 49,235 electorates voted for None of the Above (NOTA). The figure comprised of the 0.69% of the total ballots cast in Delhi. This is the first municipal election when the NOTA option has been introduced in the voting machines. Out of the total, 10,283 voters used NOTA in East; 19, 637 voters in North and 19, 169 voters in South MCD. Congress decline, blame game continues As soon as the results were announced, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken announced his resignation and later Congress in-charge of Delhi affairs PC Chacko also resigned. Maken said he will not take up any post in the party for a year and will perform his duty as an ordinary worker, while Chacko called for introspection to ascertain the reasons for its defeat in Delhi and redefine its future strategy. Makens resignation came even as former chief minister Sheila Dikshit said the Congress should have campaigned aggressively to challenge the BJP. The Congress, which ruled Delhi for over 15 years under Dikshit, is continuing to lose its support base, though the party did better in the MCD elections than it had in the 2015 assembly. However, like in several other states, there seems no clear action plan and leadership strategy on how the Congress can revive in Delhi. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON From forcing two main national parties to a corner in 2015, to questions being raised over its own political existence, the slide for the Aam Aadmi Party has been steep over the past two years. While the AAP won with a brute majority in 2015 assembly elections, the AAP emerged distant second in the municipal elections. The result will force the Aam Aadmi Party, especially its chief Arvind Kejriwal, who was positioning himself as a challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by taking him on in public discourse, to ask some uncomfortable questions. Kejriwal will need to figure how a city he had mesmerised in 2015, had since so decisively swung away from him and his anti-politics plank. AAPs rout in the MCD polls is also being seen as a personal setback to Kejriwal as the party had put forth a clash between brand Kejriwal versus brand Modi, describing the Prime Minister as the only lifeline for the BJPs alleged misrule in the MCD. What would haunt the Kejriwal-led party more is that unlike the 2015 Assembly elections, when Modi led the BJPs campaign from the front, the Prime Minister didnt speak a word in the run-up to the campaign this time even as his party leaders on the ground sought votes in his name. While several BJPs posters had pictures of the national and state president, Amit Shah and Manoj Tiwari respectively, on them, only Kejriwal dawned in all the AAP hoardings plastered across the city. Even the partys name was missing from some hoardings, putting a premium on Kejriwals goodwill. In comparison to 2015 assembly polls, the vote share of the AAP decreased almost by half from 54.3% to 26.21% in the 2017 municipal polls. Experts, however, said that the party must not lose hope as 26% was a good number for any political party. In a way, the party has received almost one of every four votes in this elections. It appears bad only when compared to its vote share in the previous election. All the party needs to do is focus on delivery, said Sanjay Kumar of CSDS. Toeing the line it took after the Punjab assembly elections, the AAP said the margin of loss in the MCD polls was indicative of the fact that the EVMs used in the poll was rigged. Sources within the party, however, said not many within the party were buying the official line. Only investigations will prove if there was any tampering. But the fact remains that the AAP on the ground on Sunday was not the same as it was in 2013 or 2015. Booth management is key for winning any election. Unlike in 2015, when energetic AAP volunteers dominated almost all the booths, the number of volunteers at polling booths this time was far lesser than the BJP and Congress, said an office bearer of AAP. Party leaders said several party volunteers stopped working on the ground after distribution of tickets, which became one of the reasons for AAPs poor performance. Some volunteers felt cheated as allegations of outsiders, or those who recently joined the party, being given tickets was rife. Many volunteers stayed with the partys decision but chose to work in other constituencies and not in their wards, hence proving ineffective, a party leader said. The fact that the rank and file was unhappy with the partys decisions and strategies was also reflected by the open rebellion by legislators and senior party leaders. AAPs Bawana legislator Ved Parkash quit the party and the Delhi Assembly days ahead of the polls and joined the BJP. Janakpuri MLA Rajesh Rishi also went public warning Kejriwal of saving the party from heading towards defeat as he was surrounded by a coterie which was not giving him the right feedback. Senior AAP leader Kumar Vishwas had also criticised the party and stayed away from campaigning despite being on the star campaigners list of the party. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Delhi labour minister Gopal Rai is likely to be the next convener of Aam Aadmi Party in the Capital. Party sources said the decision was taken at a review meeting of AAP called by chief minister at his residence on Thursday, following partys rout in the MCD elections. Incumbent AAP Delhi convener, Dilip Pandey, had resigned from the post on Wednesday evening, which was accepted by Kejriwal, partys national convener. Party sources said the decision to appoint Rai will be finalised in a meeting of the Political Affairs Committee, which is likely to be held later in the day. Earlier in the day, AAPs Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh and co-observer Durgesh Pathak also announced that they were giving up the posts in a string of resignations after AAP was rejected in the MCD elections. AAP, which had won 67 out of the 70 seats during the 2015 Assembly elections, managed to win only 48 seats out of the 270 in the municipal elections. Its vote share fell from 54 per cent in the 2015 assembly elections to 26 per cent. Kejriwal called a meeting of all MLAs on Thursday to discuss partys performance in polls, including issues such as EVM tampering. The party arrived at a conclusion that all legislators will go back to people and try to gauge public opinion. They will have to seek feedback on what went wrong, said AAP MLA Vishesh Ravi. The EVM issue also came up for discussion. The party will decide on its future course of action. Currently, related evidences are being gathered for the purpose, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday directed his cabinet colleagues and party legislators to move ahead from the municipal poll debacle and start working in a co-ordinated manner, as the party introspected its drubbing. On Wednesday, the party leadership had blamed tampered EVMs for their huge loss to the BJP in the civic polls. However, sources said, when AAPs legislature committee met at chief minister Arvind Kejriwals residence on Thursday, the focal point of discussion was the disconnect of party legislators with ministers and the party organisation, winning over disenchanted volunteers and making efforts towards rebuilding their connection with people. The chief minister directed the ministers to be accessible to the party legislators and work in close co-ordination with them. The ministers were also directed to be seen more on the ground, a party legislator, who attended the meeting, said. Sources said the legislators raised the issue of accessibility and lack of frequent consultations in organisational matters during the meeting. Party leaders said the issue of ticket distribution and AAPs campaign strategy was also raised in the meeting, as there was a feeling that the party had failed to drive home the message about the governments achievements. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Karol Bagh legislator Visheash Ravi said the party leadership decided to let bygones be bygones and start working on the ground. The party arrived at a conclusion that all legislators will go back to people and try to gauge public opinion. It was important to seek public feedback about what went wrong despite the government performing well, Ravi said. On the issue of EVM tampering, Ravi said the party will decide on its future course of action. Currently, related evidences are being gathered for the purpose, he said. Last week, Delhiites followed the old adage, where there is a will, there is a way to the T, when MCD elections hit the Capital. As per rules, last Wednesday was a dry day and the next weekend followed suit. However, this didnt stop Delhis jugaad junta from doing their own car-o-bar (drinking in the car). HT City in a report had brought you a first-person account of how the city survived the dry day. Now, we tell you what the law says about drinking in public places. Consumption of Alcohol in Public Places The Law (in Delhi): Section 40 of the Delhi Excise Act, 2009 says that if a person is found to (a) consume liquor in a public place; (b) consume liquor in public place and creates nuisance; and/or (c) permits drunkenness or allows assembly of unsocial elements on the premises of liquor establishment; shall be punishable under law. 1) In case of an offence falling under clause(a), a fine, which may extend to Rs 5000, may be levied. 2) In case of an offence falling under clause(b), imprisonment for a term which may extend to three months and fine that may extend to Rs1000 may be levied. 3) In case of an offence falling under clause(c), imprisonment for a term that may extend to six months and a fine up to Rs 50,000 may be levied. Supreme Court judgement on Alcohol Consumption Commenting on the consumption of alcohol in public places (specifically in respect of drunken driving), the Supreme Court in the case of State v. Sanjeev Nanda, (2012) 8 SCC 450 observed as under: 86. Drunken driving has become a menace to our society. Every day, drunken driving results in accidents and several human lives are lost, pedestrians in many of our cities are not safe. Late night parties among urban elites have now become a way of life followed by drunken driving. Alcohol consumption impairs consciousness and vision and it becomes impossible to judge accurately how far away the objects are. When depth perception deteriorates, eye muscles lose their precision causing inability to focus on the objects. Further, in more unfavourable conditions like fog, mist, rain, whether it is night or day, it can reduce the visibility of an object to the point of being below the limit of discernibility. In short, alcohol leads to loss of coordination, poor judgment, slowing down of reflexes and distortion of vision. The Lawyers Opinion: There is some ambiguity on what constitutes a public place. Thus the issue is complex. If a two friends decide to have a picnic in a public park on a sunny winter afternoon and want to drink a beer, how does that become a nuisance or threat to society? Who decides what is nuisance and how is it caused? The law has been passed to ensure that people, under the influence of alcohol, do not become a menace to the surroundings in a public place, and one should abide by the rules laid by the court. Arnav Narain, advocate practising in the Supreme Court of India and an expert on International Human Rights SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Despite facing the worst neglect from the BJP-ruled municipal corporations, residents under the East Delhi Municipal Corporation jurisdiction helped BJP claim its strongest victory in the area. With five strikes by sanitation workers in the past three years leading to heaps of garbage spread everywhere, a deficit of Rs 2,041 crore and residents left wanting for basic amenities such as good roads and drainage system, East Delhi remained the most neglected area under the BJP-ruled corporations. However, the MCD election results showed that the saffron party gave its best performance here winning 47 out of 63 seats, a whopping 75% strike rate. Residents of East Delhi said that while both Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and BJP have failed to live up to their expectations, they backed BJP as they hope Prime Minister Narendra Modi will clear the mess and financial crisis in the civic body. In unauthorised colonies such as Chilla Village, Azad Nagar and New Ashok Nagar, people said they backed BJP because the partys face in Delhi was a poorvanchali Manoj Tiwari. East Delhi has several unauthorized colonies and slum clusters that have sizable purvanchali population. Satish Chandra Singh, a trader in Sonia Vihar, said: The AAP MLA has done good work here. He got the drains built. But when it came to civic elections, we decided to back BJP as there is so much work to be done here, which can only be addressed if the corporation receives funds from the centre. Though, BJP has failed to live up to our expectations we expect that under the close supervision of Narendra Modi, the corporation will fare better, he said. In East Delhis Karawal Nagar, Anish Shashwat, said, There was resentment against the party as our areas were especially neglected with drains overflowing and most roads not being built. But after BJP changed all its candidates, there was a feeling that this is a new party in which you perform or you perish. Sohan Tanveer, a shopkeeper in New Ashok Nagar, said: It is people of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who decided the fate of the area. They are more than 50% here. They supported BJP to back Manoj Tiwari even though BJP had not done anything here and most people benefited through AAPs waiver of electricity and water bills. Look at the wires hanging dangerously here, in promoting the regional politics, the agenda of development got lost, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A beginning of a new financial year for appraisals in the private sector. Now the Rajasthan government seems to be following suit. On Wednesday, the BJP government increased the salary and allowances of the chief minister, ministers, legislators as well as the pension for former lawmakers after the assembly passed the Rajasthan Ministers Salaries (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017. The proposed increase in salaries is estimated to involve a recurring expenditure of about Rs 1.55 crore per annum. The basic salary of an MLA has been increased from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000; travel allowance from Rs 1.5 lakh (annually) to Rs 2 lakh; secretarial allowance from Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000; daily allowance from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500; sumptuary (in other words, food) allowance from Rs 30,000 to Rs 45,000; and vehicle allowance from Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000. Looking to the present level of prices, the existing salary and sumptuary allowance payable appears to be inadequate. Under these circumstances, it has been considered expedite to increase the salary and sumptuary allowance, chief minister Vasundhara Raje said. Even if we take these as modest raises, what is absolutely galling is what the state has decided to give former chief ministers: They will get for the remainder of their lives a government residence, a car that members of his or her family can also use, a telephone, and a staff of 10, including a driver. These facilities are available to former chief ministers, but through executive orders. But now they have got constitutional sanctity. In no other country do public representatives get perks in perpetuity. In India, of course, the scene is different: Lawmakers are entitled to houses in the toniest of localities, vehicles and personal staff, free travel and telephone calls. This sense of entitlement is so deep that some lawmakers --- and their families after their deaths --- refuse to leave their official accommodation or give up other perks. This penchant for squatting in government bungalows has also started afflicting bureaucrats. In 2014, the government had to disconnect power and water connections to the houses of around 30 former MPs and cabinet ministers who refused to vacate their plush bungalows in spite of several eviction notices. There is nothing wrong in paying lawmakers well according to market rates, but there should be no perks in perpetuity for them. Data on JEE Main 2017, Indias largest exam which opens doors to well known engineering colleges around the country, released by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), has interesting stories to tell. Of the 11.86 lakh candidates who registered for JEE Main 2017, three were transgenders. About 72.2% boys and 27.8% girls registered for the exam, both in the offline and offline mode. When the final results were declared, 79.2% boys cleared the exam as against 20.8% girls. Among the successful candidates, 93.2% boys made it to the top 1000 versus 6.8% girls and 90.7% boys were in the top 5000 as against just 9.3% girls. About 9.56 lakh candidates appeared for the offline exam and among them 6.92 lakh were boys and 2.64 lakh were girls. Of the 1.65 lakh candidates who appeared for the online exam, 1.25 lakh were boys and 40,385 were girls. Just 2.21 lakh candidates were successful, the boys at 1.75 lakh (79.2%) far ahead of the 46,160 (20.8%) girl candidates Two transgenders registered for the offline exam and one for the online test, of which only two appeared for the two test formats. No one qualified. Boys overall put in a good performance, with the three toppers Kalpit Veerwal (rank 1) scoring 360, Vasu Jain (rank 2) scoring 350 and Ananye Agarwal (rank 3), scoring 350. Among the girls, Vrunda Nandkumar Rathi (rank 1) scored 321 and stood 71 in the overall rankings, Poorva Garg (rank 2) scored 319, standing 96 overall. Narayana Jeevana Reddy (rank 3) scored 318, and stood 102 in the overall rankings. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Results of JEE Main 2017 are released on jeemain.nic.in. Candidates can check their JEE (Main) Paper 1 score and rank at jeemain.nic.in and cbseresults.nic.in find out if they are eligible for JEE (Advanced). Conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), JEE Main 2017 was held on April 2 (offline) and April 8 and 9 (online). It is the largest undergraduate engineering entrance test in the country for admissions to the UG engineering/architecture courses at the NITs, IIITs and government-funded technical institutes (GFTIs). Step-by-step guide To check your results, click on jeemain.nic.in and cbseresults.nic.in Enter your roll number/ registration number in the space provided Click to submit and get your results Important things to note Candidates will get marks for Paper 1 and status of candidates qualifying for JEE (Advanced). The rank will comprise All India Rank (AIR) and All India category rank. Score or rank card will be not be sent personally to candidates. Oval, pear or heart -- diamond shapes are many and so are the personalities of the ones who wear them. Diamonds can give a peek into your personality, say experts. Jewellery designer Anushka Jain, brand Vararoha, and jewellery designer Pooja Juneja share a list of diamond shapes and personalities of the wearer: Oval Like an oval diamond ring? Then, you are bold and creative sort. (Shutterstock) It has a lengthening affect that gives a longer illusion to the hand, resulting in more slender-looking fingers. Personality: Creative, bold and innovative Pear The beautiful fluidity of the pear shaped diamond evokes delicate calm with elegant sophistication. Personality: Fun and adventurous Marquise Choice of a Marquise-shaped diamond shows you are innovative. (Shutterstock) The long shape of the diamond allows for fingers to look leaner. Personality: Extrovert, innovative, ambitious and passionate at confronting challenges of life. Heart You are quite a romantic actually! (Shutterstock) The symbolic shape of the heart diamond instantly evokes the innocence and purity of love. Personality: Sentimental, sensitive and romantic Round cut In most cases, the first solitaire purchased is the round shape, classic, contemporary and timeless. Women who flaunt it dont want to go wrong when spending on diamonds. It is also one of the most expensive shapes. Personality: They are well researched and well informed, though they are not the very experimental ones and want to play safe. Princess cut The princess cut -- square or in a trapezoid shape -- is the second most popular after the classic round. Personality: She is more experimental and wants to prove herself. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more In order to make the Northern Peripheral Road (NPR) operational and connect both NPR and the Southern Peripheral Road (SPR) with national highway (NH) 8 near the Kherki Daula toll plaza, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) will hold a meeting with NHAI chairman YS Malik soon. Huda administrator Yashpal Yadav said that making the NPR operational is the top priority of his department. He is likely to meet the NHAI chairman next week to discuss NPR and construction of a cloverleaf flyover on NH8. The NHAI was handed the NPR project in October last year. The NPR is a 27-km-long road of which 18km falls in Gurgaon. The Huda built nearly 15km of this portion, but work on the remaining three km has been delayed due to land-related litigation. My purpose of meeting the NHAI chairman is to apprise him of the traffic problem and related issues that can be resolved by making NPR operational at the earliest and by constructing the cloverleaf flyover, said Yadav. We held a meeting with NHAIs local officials two days ago. After that meeting, we decided to hold another round of meetings at the level of the NHAI chairman with regards to connecting NPR with NH8 and construction of the cloverleaf, he added. Read I Gurgaon: Huda hears owners plea on NPR plot return On April 15, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had visited Gurgaon and inspected the entire city right from the SPR to NPR and all four bottlenecks on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. He had instructed Huda to expedite the work to make NPR and SPR operational and link them together in coordination with the highways authority. However, a senior NHAI official said the NPR cannot be linked with NH8 near Kherki Daula as it would create problems for the toll operator. Three years ago, Huda had tried to connect NPR with NH8, which created problems for the toll operator. It is possible only after permission from top NHAI officials and the Union road transport ministry. As far as construction of the cloverleaf flyover is concerned, NHAIs detailed project report (DPR) in this regard is at an advanced stage, said the official. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Rao Inderjit Singh, Union minister of state for urban development, housing, and poverty alleviation, took stock of the progress of work of underpasses and flyovers at three traffic junctions on Delhi-Gurgaon expressway. He also met residents of Manesar and listened to their demands including construction of an elevated road. Rao, who is also the Gurgaon MP, asked the officials of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to complete the projects at Rajiv Chowk, Signature Tower Chowk, and Iffco Chowk within stipulated time frames. The officials responded positively and informed that 33% of the work has been completed in last four months and the projects would be over within the stipulated time. Underpasses and flyovers at a cost of 1,000 crore are being constructed at the three main intersections with an aim of reducing traffic congestion. I will meet Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and apprise him of the progress on these projects, the minister said. He is likely to meet Gadkari on May 1. He said that the NHAI officials have assured completion of the projects, including those at Maharana Pratap Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk before August this year. The officials were directed to ensure safety of the public at the construction sites. The minister also asked the officials to ensure there is no waterlogging at Hero Honda Chowk this year. AK Sharma, NHAI project director, assured the minister that there will be no complaints of waterlogging at the chowk this year. He elaborated that the size of the culvert under the national highway has been increased to clear more water from the road. Yashpal Yadav, Huda administrator, told the minister that the Badshahpur drain is being widened and deepened for carrying more flood water and reduce waterlogging on the critical stretch. At Manesar, the residents urged the minister to ensure construction of an elevated road from IMT Chowk to NSG campus so that they could cross the highway easily. The residents told the minister that several accidents have taken place, as the highway divides Manesar town in two parts. Rao assured the residents that he would take up the matter with the Centre. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Johnny Depps former business team is calling the star a habitual liar after Depp said in an interview that his one-time managers clearly let him down. Depp sued The Management Group in January for more than $25 million, charging fraud and negligence. The Management Group countersued, saying Depp spent lavishly on homes, private jets, art and memorabilia in spite of its warnings. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal , Depp questioned why he wasnt dropped as a client by the group over his spending. David Shane, a spokesman for The Management Group, responded Wednesday, telling The Associated Press in a statement that Depp is a habitual liar who denies responsibility for his own outrageous conduct and coerces others to lie for him. Johnny Depp's lavish spending -- including $3 million to blast author Hunter S. Thompson's ashes from a cannon -- led him to the brink of financial ruin, according to an explosive lawsuit filed February 1, 2017. Over the best part of two decades, the 53-year-old actor has been spending $2 million a month, according to The Management Group (TMG), which is suing the star in Los Angeles for an unpaid loan. (AFP) Johnny Depp and his sister were involved in every significant business decision during the 17 years TMG represented him, Shane said. Depp now admits to his extravagant spending but blames TMG for not dropping him as a client. In its countersuit, The Management Group alleged Depps lifestyle was costing more than $2 million a month to maintain. The lawsuit said Depp paid more than $75 million to buy and maintain 14 homes, including a French chateau and a chain of islands in the Bahamas. Depp responded to the claim by telling the Journal its my money. If I want to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, its my thing, he added. Actor Johnny Depp attends an event to promote the movie Alice in Wonderland in Tokyo March 22, 2010. Depp also took legal action against The Management Group on Tuesday. The Journal reports his lawyers said in filings in Los Angeles Superior court that they have significant new information, including documents and testimony from a former Management Group employee concerning misconduct in managing Mr. Depps affairs. Depps lawyers were responding to The Management Groups effort to keep the employees testimony out of court. The business teams spokesman says Depp relying on dishonest, discredited statements from a vindictive former TMG employee who was fired seven years ago_at which time the employee vowed to get TMG back. The Management Group is run by brothers Joel and Rob Mandel. Follow @htshowbiz for more Praising his Baywatch co-star Priyanka Chopra, Hollywood actor Dwayne Johnson said that every superhero movie needs a villain and the Priyanka is the perfect adversary in Baywatch. Through a video message at a press conference held in Mumbai, Dwayne said, This is very special message to the country of India for someone who is very important to me, very special to me. Someone, who is incredibly talented. She is kind of attractive and the best part about this woman is that she is so good at being bad. While apologising that he could not come to India, Dwayne added, I wish I could have joined her this time for the press conference. I love working with Priyanka, who is truly the best. Directed by Seth Gordon, the movie also stars Zac Efron, Kelly Rohrbach, Alexandra Daddario, with cameos from the original television cast members including Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff. Follow @htshowbiz for more Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson says he cannot wait to come to India and express his gratitude to his fans who have been loving him over the years. Priyanka Chopra today launched a brand new poster of her upcoming Hollywood project Baywatch, which stars Johnson. In a special video message, which was played during the event, the Hollywood star said he would love to visit the country. I am so sorry I couldnt be there with you. Priyanka and I had talked about this for months. Coming to India wouldve been my first time. I cannot wait to come. I wish I couldve joined you this time, he said. The actor, popularly known as The Rock, said he had a great time working with Priyanka, who will be seen in the role of antagonist, Victoria Leeds, in her Hollywood debut. Ive been told this video is going to play in a very big press conference, based around someone who is very important and special to me. Someone who is incredibly talented... Priyanka Chopra. Youre the best, I love you. I am sure I am making you blush, he said. The actor said he has been loved by fans right from his WWE days. Over the years, whether it was my WWE or movie career, you have shown such incredible love and support to me. Thank you so much. I look forward to one day coming to your great country and saying hello and sharing my gratitude in person, he said. The movie, also starring Zac Efron and Alexandra Daddario, is set to release on May 25. Follow @htshowbiz for more M Night Shyamalan has revealed that the long-anticipated sequel to his 2000 superhero thriller Unbreakable is in the pipeline with a twist. Announcing the news on Twitter, the Indian-American film director and screenwriter also unveiled that the Unbreakable sequel will be set in the same universe as his latest movie Split, which starred James McAvoy as a kidnapper with multiple personalities. Okay. Here we go. Finished the new script. M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 Its taken 17 years but I can finally answer the #1 question I get, "Are you making a f#&@ing sequel to Unbreakable or what?" M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 My new film is the sequel to #Unbreakable AND #Split. It was always my dream to have both films collide in this third film. M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 The iconic Bruce Willis returns as David Dunn M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 The incomparable @SamuelLJackson will return as Elijah Price/Mr. Glass M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 The virtuoso #JamesMcAvoy returns as Kevin Wendell Crumb, Patricia, Dennis, Hedwig, Barry, Jade, Orwell, The Beast, Heinrich, Norma, Pol- M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 Im reteaming with my partners @jason_blum and @Universalpics for this crazy comic book thriller. M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 And the film is called GLASS M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 Universal Pictures will release #Glass on January 18, 2019 all over the world. Hows that for not keeping a secret! M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017 Both Bruce Willis and McAvoy will return to reprise their roles in the respective movies for the combined sequel (Willis as David Dunn), with Samuel L Jackson also on board to reprise his Elijah Price character in Unbreakable also known by his alter ego Mr Glass along with Split actor Anya Taylor-Joy. The sequel has been dubbed Glass, with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse producing and a preliminary release date set for January 18, 2019 (via Variety). Follow @htshowbiz for more A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, who most recently resided in Texas pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. His sentencing is set for July 2017. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres. Till date, Chaudhari, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October. According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Chaudhari and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centres located in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government. Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of runners based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds. According to his plea, since about April 2014, Chaudhari worked as a member of a crew of runners operating in Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and elsewhere throughout the country. At the direction of both US and India-based co-conspirators, often via electronic text communications, Chaudhari admitted to driving around the country with other runners to purchase re-loadable cards identifying information of US citizens. Once victim scam proceeds were loaded onto those cards, Chaudhari admitted that he liquidated the proceeds on the cards and transferred the funds into money orders for deposit into various bank accounts while keeping a percentage of the victim funds for himself. Chaudhari also admitted to shipping money orders purchased with victim funds to other US based co-conspirators, receiving fake identification documents from an India-based co-conspirator and using those documents to receive victim scam payments via wire transfers. He is the second Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam. Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme. A Delhi Police team brought a visibly tired and weary AIADMK (Amma) deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran to Chennai to trace out the money trail that ended up with the middleman Sukesh Chandrashekhar as advance, and grilled him for many hours at Rajaji Bhavan, the complex that houses many union government offices. Police later took him to his residence in Adyar in south Chennai. According to sources, the sleuths also questioned his wife Anuradha as well at his residence. Police had also brought Dinakarans aide Mallikarjuna to Chennai but questioned him separately at a different location. What the police team is looking for is concrete material evidence that will strengthen the case. They reportedly questioned Dinakaran and his friend about the source of the funds Rs 1.3 crore that was seized from Chandrashekhar in Delhi. Police questioned as to how Dinakaran got the money and how it was sent to Delhi. According to allegations, hawala operators were used to send money to Delhi for payment as bribe to an Election Commission official for securing the two leaves symbol for Dinakarans faction. Barring a handful of party workers who got into a scuffle with policemen at Rajaji Bhavan, not many AIADMK workers or Dinakarans supporters were seen either at the airport or Rajaji Bhavan or at his Adyar residence, indicating how the party was slowly distancing itself from the Sasikala-Dinakaran combine that is controlling the party with an iron hand. However, Dinakaran may not go down without a fight. His closest supporter and MLA Nanjil Sampath dismissed the case as a false and foisted one, and is a normal for politicians. Dinakaran will come out clean from the case, he said. It is Delhi which is behind the entire political vendetta, the Dinakaran supporter said. We are not against the merger, he said, adding some (people) need be thrown out. OPS and Ma Foi Pandiarajan must be kept out, said Nanjil Sampath, claiming that 87 MLAs were with them (Dinakarans faction). But no action can be taken on the party issue without the signature of general secretary VK Sasikala, he said. The main condition of the O Panneerselvam camp to begin merger talks is the removal of Sasikala and Dinakaran from the party. Panneerselvam also wants a probe into the death of then chief minister J Jayalalithaa, without which his faction will not even sit for discussions. Panneerselvam on Thursday reiterated that the two demands were not negotiable. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A group of computer scientists, engineers and security technologists have asked the Election Commission to allow them to perform actions that might be performed by an insider in the process, or a criminal, to be able to get a technical perspective, to understand what kind of tampering is possible before it sets out the open challenge to hack its electronic voting machines (EVMs). The poll panel will hold a hacking challenge in May, putting out EVMs that were used in the recent elections and some which will be used in the upcoming ones for the challenge. The move comes in the wake of the opposition rallying together to demand a scrutiny of the machines, alleging that the voting machines could have been manipulated to favour the ruling BJP. In a letter to chief election commissioner Nasim Zaidi, the group has asked for design documents, test descriptions and results, as well as information about the security procedures in place, for each generation of EVM currently in use. It includes a professor from University of British Columbia, a senior principal software engineer at the New York Genome Center and a professor at the New York University (Brooklyn). Electronic devices cannot be guaranteed to be immune from tampering when there is a large number of insiders with access and non-insiders with mal-intent, attempting to subvert the devices functioning. These include everyone who may have access to the EVM over the cycle of design, manufacture, testing, storage, maintenance, calibration and deployment, the group has written. Though the commission will lay down a set of rules such as not allowing the machines to be taken out of the premises or physically ripping them apart, the group has insisted that should the EC not allow physical tampering, then it must explain why an insider or a criminal would not have that kind of access to tamper the machines. A team of experts should be tasked with preparing recommendations to address each important security vulnerability discovered during the challenge and the longer-term testing; their report and the decisions of the EC regarding a timeline for addressing each issue should be made public, the group has written. In 2009, when a similar exercise was carried out by the poll panel it had refused to let the challengers take the machines apart. The group said it was aware that the previous challenge could not show how the machines can be tampered with and pointed out, electronic devices can be designed to detect when they are being tested, and it is practically impossible to test for every possible configuration and scenario. Hence, if the EVM challenge does not detect a problem, this does not mean that election outcomes are guaranteed to be secure in the future. They have also added a rider that it is virtually impossible, whatever the qualification of the individual examining the EVM, to determine with certainty that EVMs are tamper-proof. AAP leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, an IIT alumnus told a television channel recently that there are 10 ways to hack the machines. Though he clarified that he does not know how to tamper one, he said the manufacturers of the computer chip in the machines could add a code, virus or a bug. His claims have been dissed by the poll panel. An all-party meeting will take place and the commission will announce the dos and donts for the competition, before the hacking challenge. The commissions guidelines will have to be followed, an EC source said. The commission has doggedly denied that the machines that have been in use since the 2004 general elections and in over 30 elections to state assemblies during the last 5 years can be tampered with. It has, however, agreed to the challenge that will span from seven to 10 days at the EC headquarters in the Capital to put speculation about the efficiency of the machines to rest and assert their imperviousness to manipulation. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The son of Pehlu Khan, a Muslim man killed by cow vigilantes this April in Alwar, has been acquitted of cattle-smuggling charges by two courts, an HT investigation revealed, contrary to the Rajasthan home ministers remarks implicating the family. Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said in the state assembly on Monday that Khan belonged to a family of cow smugglers, and he cited two closed cases against his son to assert his point. But Khans eldest son Irshad has been acquitted in both cases, filed by gau rakshaks or self-styled protectors of cows, which are sacred to Hindus. The first case was registered in Nuh, the second in Rohtak, Haryana, in 2011. Police officers in Nuh and Rohtak said the cases against Irshad were more of cruelty to animals and less of transporting cows for slaughter. In Nuh, he was booked for cruelty. An additional section of transporting cows for slaughter was added later to the case in Rohtak. Irshad said he was acquitted in both cases in 2015. His 55-year-old father had no cases against him. Khan was waylaid by a mob on April 1 when he was transporting cows for his small dairy farm, beaten up mercilessly, and he died of his wounds two days later. The death triggered national outrage and a demand to rein in right-wing vigilante groups, whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi had blamed last August for fomenting social tension and called for action against them. Irshad said he was falsely implicated in Nuhs Tawdu village when police caught a man for transporting cattle. The man was asked about the cattles owner and he gave Irshads name. On basis of his statement, a case under the cow slaughter act of animal cruelty was registered against Irshad. In Rohtak, Khans 24-year-old son was arrested with 50 people after buying bullocks at a local cattle fair in Rohtak. When we were bringing the bullocks along with several people from our village, men from Hindu outfits attacked us and police were informed. Police registered cases of animal cruelty against 51 of us, citing that we were walking the bullocks, Irshad said. A local court declared Irshad a proclaimed person in the case who could not be produced even after repeated warrants. Others accused in the case pleaded guilty for animal cruelty and they were released on probation after furnishing bonds of Rs 30,000 each. For slaughter, punishment under the cow protection act is jail and fine of up to five years and Rs 5,000. Police in Nuh and Rohtak said the cases were registered on complaints of cow vigilante groups. Acharya Yogendra Arya, the president of a group in Haryana, blamed police inaction for letting the culprits off the hook. Nothing happened in the case. The Rajasthan home ministers statement on Khans criminal antecedent was from a report by Alwar police, which are investigating his death. Katarias remarks came under fire from the Opposition, which said the BJP government was trying to turn the case against the victim, instead of catching the real culprits. Police have not been able to arrest any of the six men named by Khan in his dying declaration. However, those identified from a video of the assault that went viral have been arrested. CM Vasundhara Raje said on Tuesday that such incidents will not be tolerated and police were investigating the case. She did not respond to Katarias statement in the House. (With inputs from Hardik Anand in Rohtak) A BJP MLAs sister who is married to an IAS officer, her elder sister and three others have been arrested by Arunachal Pradesh police on charges of illegally confining children to allegedly perform black magic. The East Siang district police arrested Osor Tayeng, wife of state education secretary Bidol Tayeng, Cinthina Moyong (Osors elder sister), Maksup Yomso, Aido Moyong and Kadum Moyong on Wednesday. Osor and Cinthina are sisters of sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Pasighat East, Kaling Moyong. The MLA told HT on Thursday, The law should take its course. East Siang superintendent of police Pranav Tayal said, We got a complaint from a local youth organisation that the education secretarys wife had confined two girls related to the family and was using them to practice black magic. Based on the complaint, a police team was sent to (Osor) Tayengs house in Pasighat and the two girls who are sisters one of them a minor were rescued. Police arrested five persons in the case. Osor and the other accused were allegedly using the girls to ward off evil spirits for the last two to three months. The matter came to public eye after a video of a woman hitting two girls spread across the social media recently. According to the complaint, Osor and the other accused performed occult practices on the two sisters to get information about Cinthinas former husband. Police have sent the two rescued sisters to their homes and registered a case against the accused under Indian Penal Code sections related to wrongful confinement to extort confession, and assault to woman to outrage her modesty. A court has remanded the five accused to police custody till April 28. The police are on the lookout for another accused, Lisa Apong, (daughter-in-law of former chief minister Gegong Apong), who is believed to be in Delhi. Asked about his wifes arrest, the state education secretary said, There is an ongoing family dispute and the present case is an outcome of that. Incidentally, police also conducted a search at the IAS officers house in Itanagar on Wednesday following a complaint by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) that three minors were illegally confined there and being used as child labour. Though the police were not able to locate any minors kept illegally at the house, the CWC filed a case and urged the police to find the three children. There was information that (IAS officer) Tayengs family had confined three minors who were being used as child labour, CWC chairperson Kani Nada Maling told HT. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If the Bhutanese can do it for a yeti, a mythical Himalayan monster, Indians can do it for the endangered red panda. Almost 14 years after Bhutan created the 750 sq.km Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary for the yet-to-be-sighted migoi, huge ape-like hairy yeti, a Buddhist monastery in Arunachal Pradeshs West Kameng district has declared its forest as a biodiversity conservation zone. The 7th century Lhagyala, among the oldest monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh, owns large swathes of a forest whose western boundary is along Bhutans yeti domain. On Wednesday, the monastery officially declared about 85 sq.km of this forest as the Mon-Lhagyala Community Conservation Area (MLCCA). Millo Tasser, the divisional forest officer of the area, said the local Mon-Lhagyala Buddhist Cultural Society and the Kalaktang Tsokpa, a confederation of more than 20 Monpa villages, authorised the monastery to mark MLCCA for biodiversity conservation. The society is entrusted with managing the community conservation area where hunting and commercial extraction of forest resources are banned. The official announcement means anyone violating the ban order will be punished under the provisions of customary laws of the Tsokpa besides Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972. The focus of MLCCA, covering temperate and sub-alpine biomes, is on conserving the habitat of the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), alpine musk deer (Moschus chrysogater) and high-altitude pheasants, Kamal Medhi of WWF-India told Hindustan Times. The red panda, not as celebrated as the giant panda, is listed as vulnerable in the International Union for Conservation of Natures list of threatened species and also under the Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972. Found only in the eastern Himalayas, the red panda lives in deciduous and conifer forests mixed with bamboo undergrowth at an altitude of 2,200-4,800 metres. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has trouble brewing in her backyard a resurgent BJP. BJP chief Amit Shah spent the last two days in Bengal reaching out to voters in Bhabanipur and Naxalbari, the birthplace of Left-wing extremism in India. Bhabanipur is Banerjees assembly constituency. Bengal symbolises unemployment, violence and appeasement politics, Shah said after lunch at the house of a tribal registered as a voter in Naxalbari. The BJP is different. Shah has his eye set on Bengal and other coastal states where the BJP wants to expand, which he hopes will give the party even more seats in 2019 than it had managed in 2014. BJPs hopes in Bengal are based on two counts. First, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains a popular figure across the country. It helped the BJP secure 17% votes in 2014. The party expects the pro-poor schemes of the Modi government to lay the roads for BJPs entry in the eastern state that lags behind on many indicators of development. Second, the decline of Left forces in Bengal and little sign of revival of Congress fortunes makes it all the more exciting for the BJP. With a section of Banerjee loyalists sulking and some prominent faces of the Trinamool Congress behind bars, the BJP finds the West Bengal chief minister a much easier challenge to handle than what she was in 2016. And Shah wants the BJP to capitalise on the weakness of rivals. We may not win Bengal in 2021, but there are bright chances to emerge as the number two party, if we play our cards well, a BJP general secretary said. The BJP polled over 10% vote in the 2016 assembly elections and picked 3 seats in North Bengal. In 2011, it polled just 4% votes and did not win even a single seat. Now, the strategy: create buzz with high-profile visit to places of significance, appear taking Mamata head on and build a robust organisation. The BJP boasts of a 43-lakh strong cadre base in Bengal, much bigger than 1.25 lakh workers it had till 2015. Its cadre size now covers 60,000 plus booths out of total 77,000 in Bengal. We are in the process of strengthening our booth committees in Bengal, another BJP leader said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Doctors bodies in Bihar appear to be gearing up to resist last weeks express directive of the Medical Council of India (MCI) to all registered medical practitioners, asking them to prescribe drugs in their generic names only, or risk disciplinary action. The MCIs directive came just days after prime minister Narendra Modi spoke of putting in place a legal framework to ensure that doctors prescribed low-cost generic medicines to patients. However, functionaries of the Bihar Council of Medical Registration (BCMR) and state unit of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), are not convinced that the MCI directive is legally tenable. As such, they want to obtain legal opinion on this issue. We will follow the MCIs rules but we also want to obtain legal opinion on this directive, said Dr Sahjanand Prasad Singh, registrar of the BCMR, the regulatory body on medical registration in Bihar. The doubt expressed by the BCMR official, regarding the legal tenability of the MCI directive, is significant in that it is the BCMR, which has been asked by the MCI to take suitable disciplinary against the doctors, who violate the directive. The Bihar branch of the IMA, too, seemed in no hurry to comply with the MCI directive. Its senior vice-president Dr Ajay Kumar said, We will write both, names of branded drugs, as well a, their generic names, in our prescriptions. The IMA too, would take legal opinion on the tenability of the vague MCI directive, he added. Principal of Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH) Dr SN Sinha, however, said he would enforce the MCI order. I am calling a meeting of our clinicians to apprise them about contents of the councils letter, which I have received earlier this week, he said. Quoting the amended clause 1.5 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, the MCI, on April 21, 2017, issued a circular directing every physician to prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters. The circular also said, he or she would ensure that there was a rational prescription and use of drugs. All registered medical practitioners under the IMC Act are directed to comply with the aforesaid provisions of the regulations without fail, the circular further said. The circular said suitable disciplinary action would be taken by the concerned state medical council/MCI against any doctor found violating clause 1.5 of ethics regulation. The MCI move is intended to ensure medicines to patients at cheaper prices, in line with the intent expressed by the prime minister. The MCI directive is significant also because the central government is reported to be in the process of revising the National List of Essential Medicines of 2015 to include more medicines. The Jan Aushadhi programme, under which the government provides essential medicines at reasonable rates, at specially established shops, is also said to be in the process of being reinforced. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat has drawn up ambitious plans to win 150 of the 182 assembly seats in state elections scheduled this year-end, emboldened by sweeping victories in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. Codenamed Mission 150, the plan centres around Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected to visit his home state at least once every month till the elections. Also in focus is micro-level planning down to the grassroots level. Modi, the states chief minister till he became the prime minister, drew rapturous crowds during a road show in Surant earlier this month, reaffirming his unmatched crowd-pulling ability. We hope to ride the Modi magic, said a top BJP functionary in the state. The BJP, which has continually been in power in Gujarat since 1995, expects the next elections to be a cakewalk with the Opposition in total disarray. Recent electoral setbacks for Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) first in Punjab and in New Delhi - have emboldened the ruling party further, emboldening it to set a higher target for itself. The BJPs best performance was in 2002 when it won 127 seats. Party insiders say Amit Shah, the BJP national president and Modis trusted lieutenant, has already set into motion elaborate plans to realise the revised target, including extensive travel plans for the top leadership over the next 200 days. Leaders such as Shah himself and current chief minister Vijay Rupani will focus more on the booths, the lowest rung on the party organization, during their whirlwind trips across the state. The party hopes to enlist more members at the lowest level and reinvigorate existing members. Be it new concepts like Vistarak Yojana (expansion scheme) or Karyakarta Pravas (worker travel), everything from now on will be focused on strengthening the party structure at booths, said BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya. Micro planning 33 district executive meets by April 30 Over 240 taluka executive meets by May 7 Vistarak Yojana from May 28 to June 4 Top leaders to travel to assigned areas for booth strengthening programmes Public events to mark three years of the Narendra Modi government in May Reaching out to farmers through month-long Krishi Mohatsav (agriculture fair) Amitbhais message in recently concluded state executive meet was loud and clear - Congress-mukt booths, Pandya added. Under Vistarak Yojana, 550 party leaders will for the six months nurture areas assigned to them. During this period, they will reach out to every influential voter, identify former Jan Sangh and BJP workers and try to make them active, and also contact holy men of the area. Even Shah is expected to spend three days in a tribal area under the programme. Chief minister Rupani has also been entrusted with the task of monitoring Page Presidents persons in-charge of every page of the electoral roll. Electoral rolls every booth run into 48 pages and the 48 people will aim to personally contact each of the voters listed on the page they are assigned. Gujarat has a total of 47,000 polling booths. Boasting of 1.10 crore registered members, the BJP will send its MPs, MLAs and office-bearers to their respective areas to strengthen booth-level organizations. The micro-level planning is to negate any anti-incumbency that the party is likely to have accrued over the years. The work on the ground, leaders say, will also blunt the offensive that Patidar leader Hardik Patel is expected to launch closer to the elections. Patidars account for 12% of Gujarats 6 crore population and are generally believed to be upset with the state government for its indifference to their demand for job reservations. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON China on Wednesday launched its first locally-built aircraft carrier, less than four years after the construction of the 70,000 tonne warship began at the Dalian shipyard. The Type 001A carrier is expected to be commissioned into the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in two years as Beijing seeks to aggressively project its maritime power thousands of miles away from its shores. The Chinese carrier has been launched at a time when India is still struggling to build its first indigenous carrier Vikrant, being constructed at the state-owned Cochin Shipyard Limited. China's first domestically built aircraft carrier. (Reuters Photo) The construction of the Indian carrier began in 2009 and it was launched in 2013. The Indian Navy said the carrier would be commissioned in 2018 but a report by the national auditor contradicted the claim, stating that the project is years behind schedule. The Indian Navy has been operating aircraft carriers for several decades. INS Vikrant, bought from the UK, was commissioned as the Indian Navys first carrier in 1961. It was retired in 1997. India retired its second aircraft carrier INS Viraat earlier this year. The second-hand British warship was inducted in 1987. China had no aircraft carrier till 2012. The Chinese navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier Liaoning -- a discarded vessel bought from Ukraine five years ago after extensive refits. Liaoning is a Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class carrier and the new carrier is reportedly based on the same design. The newly-built aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock into the water at a launch ceremony at a shipyard in Dalian. (AP Photo) However, China is now swiftly catching up and may also streak ahead of India in the coming years but Beijing is yet to catch up to Delhi in operating these complex floating airfields. The Gorakhpur administration has set up a two-room office at the Gorakhnath Temple headed by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to address complaints by people following a large number of applications seeking redressal of public grievances. Adityanath used to hear public grievances at his office at the temple before moving to Lucknow. Adityanath is the head priest of the centuries-old Gorakhnath temple, a Hindu shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva. The new office has been set up on the directive of chief development officer Mannan Akhtar, who also visited the temple and received complaints from visitors. An office to redress public grievances has been opened adjacent to the temple office inside the temple campus. Officials have been assigned duty from 9am to 11am, Akhtar said. Since Yogiji became the CM, the number of applicants at the temple office has increased manifold. The temple officials used to coordinate with administrative officials concerned to resolve the issues. Now, things will be easier as the office will run inside the temple, he added. He said district social welfare officer Sunil Kumar will be available in the office on Mondays, assistant commissioner Sunil Kumar Gupta will be there on Tuesdays and block development officer (Bathat) Amit Singh will be present on Wednesdays. Jungle Koudia BDO Awdhesh Kumar will be available on Thursdays, Sahjanwa BDO Gyanendra Singh on Fridays and Campierganj BDO Sandeep Singh on Saturdays. They will hear public complaints and communicate them to the officials concerned, the chief development officer said. Devika Tiwari, a temple official, said a wide range of complaints reach the temple regularly and pertain to land dispute, financial help among others. The Narendra Modi government is discussing revival of a policy to incentivise job creation in the Himalayan states and the Northeast. The policy will also apply to Jammu and Kashmir, which continues to be a cause of concern for the political leadership in New Delhi. A team of Niti Aayog and department of industrial policy and promotion members has prepared a report that is currently being discussed within the government. It shall be announced soon, a source said. Commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed the move, saying the Northeast and Himalayan states have been demanding such a policy. We recognise this as a way out to push industrialisation in these states, she said. We are keen to do something meaningful for the states. The then Atal Bihari government had announced a special package to provide fiscal incentive to new industrial units and substantial expansion of existing units in J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. A package of fiscal incentives and other concessions, named the North East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (NEIIPP), was also approved in 2007. These came to an end on March 31 this year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Centre is set to raise an women India Reserve (IR) battalion consisting of around 1,000 personnel in Jammu and Kashmir. The battalion will assist the state police and will primarily deal with incidents like stone pelting. The decision was taken in the Kashmir review meeting chaired by Union home minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on Thursday. The policewomen will be part of the five India Reserved Battalions (IRBs), the central government has already sanctioned. The battalions are tasked by the state but a major chunk of expenditure is borne by the Centre. The Centre has now told the state government to make one among the five an all-women battalion, said a home ministry official privy to the decision. The recruitment for the five battalions is already on and as many as 1,40,000 youths in Jammu and Kashmir have applied for 5,000 posts. Around 6000 applications were received from women. Therefore, it was decided to raise one battalion only from women applicants. The decision is in line with the Centres directive to increase representation of women in security forces to 33 percent in future, said the official. The official said the meeting also reviewed 63 developmental projects from 15 central ministries that are part of the Rs 80,000 crore package for Jammu and Kashmir announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November, 2015. Another session of the meeting will be held on Thursday evening, to discuss the implementation of the development package for the state announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the continuous unrest in the valley. The valley has witnessed unprecedented demonstrations led by students, including women, who were protesting against an alleged security clampdown on students in south Kashmir. Student protests have become a new challenge for the administration in Kashmir where the law and order situation has gone downhill after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in July 2016. The situation has become tenser after several video clips, widely circulated on social media, showed alleged human rights violation by the armed forces. We need to find ways to break the cycle of violence in the valley. Once the cycle of protests, deaths and further protests is broken, the situation can be brought to normalcy in far more easily, said a security official. The official added that if the violence continues, it is going to be really hot summer in the valley. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON It was supposed to be a regular felicitation ceremony where Prime Minister Narendra Modi honours freedom fighters and buoys the BJPs nationalism agenda in Odisha. Instead, the event has turned into a public relations nightmare for the saffron party and given a chance to the ruling Biju Janata Dal, still smarting from recent reverses in rural polls, to hit back. On April 16 during a visit to Bhubaneswar, Modi felicitated the family members of Laxmi Indira Panda, a noted freedom fighter from the coastal state who joined Netaji Subhas Chandra Boses Indian National Army in the 1930s. The BJP was hoping to get a good bump from the event as Panda, also known as the Iron Lady of Koraput, died in 2008 in penury, waiting for a government pension. Pandas family was called to Bhubaneswar, along with kin of 15 other heroes who were a part of the 1817 Paika rebellion against British forces. But the plans started unraveling soon after. First, a relative of Panda, Bulu Sahoo, left Bhubaneswar in a huff after not being allowed to be a part of the ceremony. Then, Pandas daughter-in-law Sujata accidentally boarded a wrong train at Bhubaneswar railway station and didnt reach her home in Jeypore. The 57-year-old accidentally boarded the Haridwar-bound Utkal Express and was forced to get down at Balasore railway station by the ticket examiner as she was travelling ticketless. She was later rescued by some local youth in Balasore. Sujatas husband Surendra Panda too said he had a tough time reaching his home as he boarded a train till Vizianagaram and then took a ride in a truck to Jeypore. On top of that, Sujatas son Babula has gone missing. The BJD has lost no time in capitalizing on the situation and has blamed the saffron party of paying lip service to freedom fighters, pointing out that the plaque honouring Panda has no mention of her role in the INA. The BJP had forgotten its duty and did not take care to send them back to their homes with dignity, alleged BJD spokesman Pratap Deb. Apart from asking the Balasore district administration to send the 57-year-old woman to her home in Jeypore, chief minister Naveen Patnaik also felicitated the youth who rescued the woman. Former BJD minister and partys senior leader in Koraput Rabi Nanda too gave Rs 50000 to the Panda family. The Congress has also jumped into the fray, lodging an FIR against Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan at Bhubaneswars Capital Police Station for insulting the family of a freedom fighter. The BJP has now accused Rabi Nanda and state energy minister Pranab Prakash Das for having a hand in Babula not being found. An intolerant BJD is now trying to hide Babula to defame BJP. Government should order a probe and call records of these leaders should be verified, said BJP MLA Pradip Purohit. He also alleged that there is a threat to Babulas life. BJP Odisha vice-president Samir Mohanty asked: Is it a crime to honour the family members who had sacrificed a lot for the country? To make the matter murkier, Odisha Director General of Police KB Singh has said Babula had criminal antecedents and was in touch with his family. We are tracking his mobile phone. During our investigation we came to know that he has talked to a woman and we are interrogating her to reach Babula, said Singh. From preliminary investigation we came to know that there was a quarrel between Babula and his brother over his absence at the railway station. I think this is the main issue (behind his hiding) and he was upset over this, said the DGP. The public-sector unit Nalco, which was asked to look after Pandas family, said it extended all facilities for their boarding and lodging at its guesthouse. Though we had wanted to tansport them by our own vehicle, the Pandas wanted to travel by train ad were given Rs 6000 as travel and food expenses. After taking lunch at the guest house, they had left the place around 4 pm to go to visit some other places in Bhubaneswar and then proceed to the railway station to board the Hirakhand Express to Jeypore, Nalco said. Meanwhile, the BJD has again tried to embarrass the BJP by alleging that three of the 16 martyrs families were fake. Former BJD minister Surya Patro alleged that the family members of Jayee Rajguru of Puri district, Chakara Bisoyee of Ganjam district and Rendo Majhi of Kalahandi district were not their real inheritors. It is an unfortunate incident. How come the so-called nationalist party failed to recognise the real family members of the martyrs? Above all, the three martyrs were unmarried, Patro said. India has sought from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the external affairs ministry said on Thursday. Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said that the well being and state of Jadhavs health is a matter of great concern to India as the former Indian Navy officer has been in Pakistans custody for more than a year on charges of espionage. We havent seen, we havent met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistans custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. We have asked Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our High Commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request on providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistans response, Baglay said. Pakistan on Thursday stuck to its stand on Jadhavs sentencing, saying the military courts ruling was based on specific evidence and the trial was conducted in a transparent manner. Pakistans assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of retired Indian Navy officer Jadhav, sentenced to death by the field general court martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria claimed that Jadhav has been tried for espionage according to the law of the land in a transparent manner. Jadhavs sentencing was based on specific evidence as well as his confessional statement that also led to the dismantling of the terror network in the country, Zakaria was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan. Zakarias remarks at a briefing came a day after the appeal on behalf of Jadhav was given to Pakistans foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua by Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale, who also handed over a petition by Jadhavs mother seeking the Pakistan governments intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Jadhav was given death sentence earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the pre- meditated murder was carried out. Zakaria, during his briefing, also claimed that there was irrefutable proof that India was not only perpetrating terrorism but also using the Afghan soil to destabilise it. Zakaria said that Indias role in sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan was fully exposed in light of the statements of Jadhav and former Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. The revelations made by former spokesperson of TTP Ehsansullah Ehsan and the confessional statement of Kulbhushan Jadhav are irrefutable proofs against India, he said. Zakaria claimed that India was not only sending spies inside Pakistan to perpetrate terrorism but also using the Afghan soil to destabilise the country. He also claimed that as many as 13 Indian RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agents were killed in the mother of all bombs attack carried out by the US in Afghanistan earlier this month. He said this had vindicated Pakistans claims. Zakaria said that Ehsan has stated that Jamaat-ul Ahrar terror group was working on Indian agenda to destabilise Pakistan. Zakaria, in his briefing, also slammed the clampdown on internet in Kashmir and claimed that India had banned it to hide grave human rights violations. He also criticised the alleged arrest of Kashmiri leaders. On the disappearance of retired Pakistani colonel Habib Zahir in Nepal, the spokesperson said Pakistans mission in the country was closely looking into the matter. He said it was a case of entrapment and the involvement of India cannot be ruled out. Indian steel magnate Sajjan Jindal met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Murree on Wednesday, sparking speculation that he may have been involved in efforts to revive the stalled dialogue between the two countries. The visit came against the backdrop of unabated violence in Jammu and Kashmir, which prompted chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting on Monday to talk to the Hurriyat and other stakeholders. She also referred to former premier AB Vajpayees Kashmir peace push and noted that Modi had repeatedly said he would follow Vajpayees footsteps, whose policy is of reconciliation not confrontation. Jindal, who flew into the Rawalpindi airport in a private aircraft with a small delegation, was received by Sharifs son Hussain Nawaz and Raheel Munir, a businessman who is the husband of Sharifs granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa. The Indian delegation then travelled to the Prime Ministers House in the capital for a meeting, sources in Islamabad told Hindustan Times. Later, Jindal and his delegation were driven to the resort of Murree, about 40 km from Islamabad, for a meeting with Sharif. Confirmation of the contact came from Maryam Nawaz, the premiers daughter who dismissed suggestions the meetings were secret in nature. Maryam, seen as Sharifs heir, tweeted: Mr. Jindal is an old friend of the Prime Minister. Nothing secret about the meeting & should not be blown out of proportion. Thank you. Mr. Jindal is an old friend of the Prime Minister. Nothing 'secret' about the meeting & should not be blown out of proportion. Thank you. Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) April 27, 2017 External affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said he had no information on the meeting. There was no official word from the Pakistan government or Jindal on the meetings, and reports in the Pakistani media suggested the businessman had carried a message for Sharif from Modi. There was also speculation that the message could have referred to Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Indian Navy officer sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for alleged spying. India on Wednesday launched an appeal against the verdict. Modi and Sharif could meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting to be held in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana in June even though both countries are yet to confirm such a meeting. Reports in the Pakistani media said Jindal, the brother of former Congress MP Naveen Jindal, flew to Rawalpindi from Kabul. A source in the JSW Group told HT that the Jindal and Sharif families have known each other for decades and this was a personal visit by the magnate. When Nawaz Sharif last visited India for the oath-taking ceremony of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014, even then the Pakistani prime minister had dropped by to see the Jindals in New Delhi, the source said. Like the Jindal family, the Sharif family too has interests in the steel business. Jindal was in Lahore in December 2015 when Modi made a surprise trip to the eastern Pakistani city while returning from an official visit to Afghanistan to wish Sharif on his birthday and to participate in events before the marriage of Mehr-un-Nisa, the daughter of Maryam Nawaz, and Raheel Munir. Raheel Munir, the son of prominent businessman Chaudhry Munir, is also related to ISI chief Naveed Mukhtar, sources said. Jindal reportedly played a key role in facilitating an hour-long secret meeting between Modi and Sharif on the sidelines of the Saarc Summit in Nepal in 2014, journalist Barkha Dutt revealed in her book, This Unquiet Land Stories from Indias Fault Lines. Dutt described Jindal as an informal messenger serving as a covert bridge between the two leaders and keeping them connected even when things got difficult. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has asked security agencies to reach out to the families of local Kashmiri militants in an attempt to influence them to give up arms and return to the mainstream. Chairing a Unified Command meet held to review the security situation in the Valley on Tuesday, the chief minister also asked forces to ensure that the families of Kashmiri militants were not harassed, sources said. Intelligence sources privy to the details of the meeting told Hindustan Times that all security agencies, especially the state police, were directed to take families of local militants in confidence a step which the chief minister believes could help in the mainstreaming of local militants. According to a senior security official, at present 20 local militants were operating in north Kashmir alone. In the southern part of the Valley, the number of locals who joined militant ranks in 2016-17 increased to the extent that they formed the majority of over 100 militants operating in the region. Official sources said the option of offering incentives to local militants as well as their families was also discussed during the meet, which was attended by senior bureaucrats, officials of army, intelligence, police and other security agencies. The CM was clear on the fact that the families of local recruits should be taken into confidence. The families can encourage their wards to return to the mainstream and if incentives are something which can speed up the process, the state government is willing to offer it as well, said a senior intelligence official who attended the meet. Clarifying security personnels stand, an official said the forces followed a general policy of not harassing the families of militants, adding that amid a worsening security situation in the Valley, it was even more important for forces to maintain their standards. The Valley has been rocked by violent protests following civilian killings since the Srinagar by-elections, which saw one of the worst turnouts in the states history. The situation took a turn for the worse when a video showing a Kashmiri youth being used as a human shield by the armed forces surfaced on social media earlier in April. The Valley also witnessed demonstrations led by students, including women, who were protesting against an alleged security clampdown on students in south Kashmir. During the meeting, the officials also discussed the misuse of social media by anti-national elements and argued that it was being used to spread dissatisfaction against administration and security forces. A direct offshoot of the discussion could be the state governments decision to suspend social media sites and mobile applications, including Facebook,Twitter and Whatsapp, from Wednesday. The recent attack on a nomad family in the Reasi district was also discussed during the meeting and the chief minister, according to officials, directed police to bring the perpetrators to justice. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi was arrested in Srinagar late on Wednesday night. A heavy contingent of police, along with the SHO, arrested Andrabi from her residence in Soura at 11:30 pm on Wednesday. Andrabi is the founder of a separatist organisation Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) and a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The DeM is known issuing diktats in Kashmir on things Andrabi and Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed consider un-Islamic. Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader who is currently in jail. According to reports, a few captured militants have confessed that videos of her speeches are shown at terror training camps across the Line of Control. In 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir Police had arrested Andrabi from her residence in Soura in connection with two cases registered against her -- for waving Pakistani flag and for addressing a rally by Hafiz Saeed via phone in Pakistan. The separatist leaders arrest comes shortly before militants stormed into an army camp in Kashmirs Kupwara district and killed three soldiers. An officer was among the three army men who were killed in the attack, apart from the two militants. This the second major attack on Indian forces in a week. Twenty five CRPF personnel were killed in an encounter with Maoists in Chhattisgarhs Sukma district on Monday. Officer among 3 soldiers killed in militant attack on army camp in Kashmirs Kupwara Three soldiers including an army captain were killed on Thursday when a group of militants stormed a garrison in south Kashmirs Kupwara, a defence official said. Two militants were also killed in the attack at the Panzgam area of Chowkibal, the army spokesperson said, adding, Search ops (operations are) in progress. Sources said five injured soldiers have been shifted to a hospital in Srinagar. The attackers, suspected to be fidayeen militants, sneaked into the camp before sunrise at around 4. Sources said the group of four militants are believed to have had crossed over from Pakistan. Read the story here. Thou shalt not spit: Govt issues new commandment to technical institute students Thou shalt not spit and dirty thine surroundings. This is the new commandment the government wants college-goers to obey as part of its flagship Swachh Bharat programme. A circular issued by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has asked all engineering, professional and technical institutions under it to launch a campaign aimed at discouraging students from spitting on campus. The institutions were told to involve voluntary groups such as the National Services Scheme (NSS) and National Cadet Corps (NCC) in enforcing the rule. Read the story here. Ghaziabad: 70-year-old grandmom beaten for standing up to molesters, dies A 70-year-old woman succumbed to injuries at GTB Hospital in Delhi on Tuesday after she was allegedly beaten by her neighbours for objecting to their comments about her 17-year-old granddaughter. The incident took place in an area under Murad Nagar police station on April 23. According to the victims family, their neighbours and locals in the area had passed lewd comments and used obscene language while addressing the girl on the evening of April 21. The matter was sorted out between the elders of the two families. Two days later, when we all were sitting at home, several men from the same family who had harassed the girl entered our house with rods and sticks and started attacking our family. They hit everyone brutally and did not spare even the women and children, said Mohammad Salahuddin, the girls uncle. Read the story here. PM in Himachal, to launch low-cost regional air connectivity scheme Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a one-day visit to Himachal Pradesh where he will launch a regional air connectivity scheme through which the fares of flights will be capped at Rs 2500 per seat per hour. The PM will flag off a flight from Shimla to Delhi to launch the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme which is aimed at boosting regional connectivity. He will also lay the foundation stone of a hydro engineering college at Bandla, besides addressing a BJP rally. Its war! Mumbai resident sips chai atop rubble to hit out at BMC Tired of groaning and grumbling and seeing nothing change, Genesia Alves decided to do something fun with the pile of rubble that had been sitting outside her Bandra home since February. Early on Tuesday, Alves teamed up with her 16-year-old daughter Amaia and recreated an iconic World War II photograph, by posing on top of the heap of rubble on St Pauls Road. When I first saw the iconic photo of a woman drinking tea in the aftermath of the 1940 London Blitz, the image stayed with me, especially that look of calm in the chaos, says Alves, a freelance journalist. Finally, last morning, when the ever mounting pile reached the right height, I told my family, Thats it. Im going to recreate the picture because that heaps almost asking for it. Read the story here. China launches first home-grown aircraft carrier, catching up with India in naval power China on Wednesday launched its first locally-built aircraft carrier, less than four years after the construction of the 70,000 tonne warship began at the Dalian shipyard. The Type 001A carrier is expected to be commissioned into the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in two years as Beijing seeks to aggressively project its maritime power thousands of miles away from its shores. The Chinese carrier has been launched at a time when India is still struggling to build its first indigenous carrier. The construction of the Indian carrier began in 2009 and it was launched in 2013. The Indian Navy said the carrier would be commissioned in 2018 but a report by the national auditor contradicted the claim, stating that the project is years behind schedule. Read the story here. Thai woman who saw her babys murder broadcast on Facebook Live says she forgives father The distraught Thai mother of a baby girl killed by her boyfriend in a murder he broadcast on Facebook Live has described the harrowing moment she stumbled across the video and rushed to alert police. The killing on Monday evening caused revulsion both in Thailand and around the world, sparking renewed debate about what can be done by social media giants to more quickly remove live broadcasts of violent crimes, suicides and murders. Read the story here. Kashmir separatist leader Asiya Andrabi arrested Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi was arrested in Srinagar late on Wednesday night. A heavy contingent of police, along with the SHO, arrested Andrabi from her residence in Soura at 11:30 pm on Wednesday. Andrabi is the founder of a separatist organisation Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) and a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader who is currently in jail. Read the story here. Modi factor, fresh faces in Delhi: Five reasons why BJP won MCD elections Prime Minister Narendra Modis BJP swept the municipal corporation polls in Delhi, a remarkable comeback from its poor show in the 2015 assembly election. The BJP had then won only three out of 70 assembly segments, but its Wednesday tally stood at 180 out of 270 corporation seats. Its victory rate jumped from about 4% in 20015 to nearly 65% in 2017. Here are four reasons that led to such a massive swing. Read the story here. Huge explosion near Damascus airport in Syria, says monitor A massive explosion hit near the Damascus International Airport in the early hours of Thursday morning, a monitoring group said, without specifying the cause. The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Damascus International Airport lies about 25 kilometres southeast of Syrias capital. The Britain-based Observatory, which gathers information from sources across war-ravaged Syria, said it had confirmed the explosion had not taken place inside the airport itself. Its unclear what caused the explosion, but there fires raging at the site, Rahman said. Read the story here. Militants stormed an army garrison in north Kashmirs Kupwara on Thursday, killing an army officer and two soldiers before two of them were gunned down by a lone gunner. Shortly after the attack, a civilian was shot dead when forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters amassed outside the camp demanding the bodies of the attackers be handed over. Mohammad Yusuf, 50, died and four others were injured in the army firing. Five soldiers were injured in the morning attack and have been shifted to a hospital in Srinagar. The deceased soldiers have been identified as officer as Captain Ayush Yadav, Nayak BV Ramana and Subedar Bhoop Singh Gujjar . The attacks, and the following demonstration in support of the attackers, underscore the volatility in the Valley where street protests have flared and a recent by-election saw one of the worst turnouts the region has seen. According to officials, militants attacked the installation early in the morning and opened fire indiscriminately. Gunner Rishi Kumar, officials said, engaged the gunmen and killed two of them before running out of ammunition. He moved out of his bunker and tried to pick up the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third. The third terrorist fired, an army spokesperson said. Col Saurab Joshi told reporters that two bodies have been found, and combing operations went on for hours after the roughly 30-minute gunfight. Some of the deadliest militant attacks on security forces in J-K November 29, 2016 Casualty: Seven soldiers, including two Majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in Nagrota Location: Nagrota (Jammu) September 18, 2016 Casualty: Total 19 soldiers and four militants killed Location: Uri Army base, north Kashmir June 25, 2016 Casualty: 8 CRPF personnel killed, 20 others injured as militants attacked their convoy Location: Near Pampore in Srinagar on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway. December 5, 2014 Casualty: 8 soldiers, 3 policemen, 6 militants Location: Uri June 24, 2013 Casualty: 10 armymen Location: Hyderpora, outskirts of Srinagar Seven soldiers, including two Majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in NagrotaNagrota (Jammu)Total 19 soldiers and four militants killedUri Army base, north Kashmir8 CRPF personnel killed, 20 others injured as militants attacked their convoyNear Pampore in Srinagar on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway.8 soldiers, 3 policemen, 6 militantsUri10 armymenHyderpora, outskirts of Srinagar July 19, 2008 Casualty: 10 armymen Location: IED blast at Narbal Crossing, outskirts of Srinagar June 24, 2005 Casualty: Nine soldiers killed, and 21 others injuried Location: Rashtriya Rifles convoy targeted along the Dal Lake, Srinagar May 23, 2004 Casualty: At least 30 people, including 19 BSF personnel, killed Location: IED explosion at Lower Munda, near Qazigund, on the Srinagar-Jammu highway June 28, 2003 Casualty: 12 soldiers killed Location: Suicide attack on army installation at the Dogra Regiment camp in Sunjwan, on the outskirts of Jammu May 14, 2002 Casualty: 34 people, including 22 army men, killed Location: Militants stormed an army camp and attacked families of soldiers at Kaluchak, about 10 km from Jammu 10 armymenIED blast at Narbal Crossing, outskirts of SrinagarNine soldiers killed, and 21 others injuriedRashtriya Rifles convoy targeted along the Dal Lake, SrinagarAt least 30 people, including 19 BSF personnel, killedIED explosion at Lower Munda, near Qazigund, on the Srinagar-Jammu highway12 soldiers killedSuicide attack on army installation at the Dogra Regiment camp in Sunjwan, on the outskirts of Jammu34 people, including 22 army men, killedMilitants stormed an army camp and attacked families of soldiers at Kaluchak, about 10 km from Jammu Tension is running high across the Valley since April 9, when eight people including seven students were killed by police and paramilitary forces during the bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency. Earlier this week, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti told reporters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was amenable to talks with all stakeholders to restore peace in the region but that no dialogue was possible in the face of bullets and stones. The incident is also likely to further strain Indias relations with Pakistan, whom New Delhi accuses of sheltering and supporting militant outfits targeting security personnel in Kashmir. The strikes followed a string of attacks on defence installions and army camps including one at Uri which had left 19 Indian soldiers dead in September last year. Weeks later, seven soldiers, including two majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed another military camp in Jammu and Kashmirs Nagrota. On Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered internet service providers to block Facebook, Twitter and 20 other social media sites and online applications for one month in the interest of maintenance of public order. The move came after after several videos and photos depicting alleged abuses of Kashmiris by Indian security forces sparked outrage and fuelled protests. Students across Kashmir have been rallying this month at anti-India demonstrations, facing off against heavily armed riot police and paramilitary soldiers. (With agency inputs) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first Rs 2,500-an-hour flight from Shimla as part of an UDAN scheme that makes air travel accessible to lower middle class families. It also plans to enhance connectivity with more airports in the country. The first regional flight under the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2,196 metres above sea level and 22 km from Shimla. During his day-long visit to the Queen of Hills, which saw mild showers in the morning, Modi underscored the thrust on keeping the air fares within the reach of the middle class. Here are live updates: 1.50 pm: The previous government made mockery of OROP. We implemented it after coming to power and several ex-servicemen have benefitted, says Modi. 1.45 pm: It is a delight that several households in the rural areas have been benefitted through the Ujjwala Yojana, says Modi. I urge everyone to use less cash and encourage digital transactions. BHIM app can transform the way we transact. 1.40 pm: Our sole aim is farmers welfare. Our government has brought the most comprehensive Fasal Bima Yojana for the farmers, says Modi. We keep the aspirations of poor and youth in mind while formulating every policy. Every section of the society must grow. 1.35 pm: After Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi, now Himachal Pradesh awaits Imandari Ka Yug. We will continue to take steps to curb corruption. Those who have looted the poor, will not be spared, says Modi in Shimla. Today, India has emerged as one of the fastest growing nations. Our Government is devoted to take the country to new heights. We want our youth to get jobs, children must have access to good education, elderly must get affordable healthcare. 1.30 pm: The lives of the middle class are being transformed and their aspirations are increasing and given the right chance they can do wonders. Earlier aviation was considered as a domain for select few. But whichever facilities the rich have, poor also must have access to them, says Modi. My dream was to see a person who wears a hawai chappal to fly on the hawai jahaz or plane, he said 1.25 pm: This land is a Dev Bhoomi as well as Veer Bhoomi. I salute their bravery and pay respects to their families. HP has potential for tourism. We are giving impetus to infrastructure. Be it roads, railways or airways, we want this region to grow. Himachal has potential for tourism. We are giving impetus to infrastructure. Be it roads, railways or airways, we want this region to grow. 1.20 pm: PM Narendra Modi begins his public address in Shimla. I had the opportunity to visit this land of Shimla 20 years ago when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. A group of suspected militants attacked an army camp in Chowkibals Panzgam area in Kupwara district of Kashmir on Thursday. Firing is still on. The attack has claimed the lives of three soldiers while two militants have been killed by the forces. Live updates: Civilian killed as army opens fire in Kupwara, three injured. The protestors were demanding the bodies of the militants for burial. Finance minister Arun Jaitley condoles the attack and says: My thoughts and prayers are with families of three martyred soldiers. I pray for speedy recovery of the injured soldiers. The search operation is over and it appears that, contrary to reports, no other militants are inside the army camp. Army spokesperson Col. Rajesh Kalia says the militants used guns and grenades to target soldiers northwest of Srinagar, the Associated Press reports. The militants are believed to have crossed over from Pakistan and the army has cordoned off the entire area, including a nearby forest, as bodies of the two militants have been retrieved. The attack took place at 4am on Thursday The army officer killed in the attack has been identified as Captain Ayush, PTI quotes official sources as saying. Army spokesperson confirms three soldiers, including an officer, have been killed in the Kupwara attack. Terrorist attack on army garrison in Panzgam . Two terrorists have been killed. Three soldiers, including an officer, have been martyred. Search ops are in progress. Intermittent gunshot sounds can be heard from the army camp. A combing operation is on at the encounter site. The battalion camp under attack is incharge of road-opening duties on the crucial roads in this area. Five army jawans who were injured in the attack have been airlifted to armys 92 base hospital in Srinagar for treatment. The attack is suspected to be carried out by terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad. However, there was no independent confirmation of the incident and no rebel group has issued any statement so far. In November last year, seven soldiers were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed a military camp in Jammu and Kashmirs Nagrota. The brazen attack was the second in as many months since the siege of another army base at Uri left 19 Indian soldiers dead, spiking tensions between India and Pakistan. Militants had carried out another audacious strike on the Pathankot air force base in the border state of Punjab on January 2, 2016. The attack left seven security personnel dead and it took the forces three days to secure the airbase. India blames Pakistan-based militants of targeting security personnel and civilians in the state, a charge Islamabad denies. (With inputs from agencies) The United Nations is the preeminent institution of multilateralism. It provides a forum where countries can come together to share burdens, address common problems, and seize common opportunities. The UN helps establish the norms that many countries -- including the United States -- would like everyone to live by. Throughout its history, the United States has seen the advantages of living in a world organized according to laws, values, and principles; in fact, the republic was not yet 30 years old when it first went to war in defense of international law (attacking the Barbary pirates in 1804), and it has done so multiple times since, including in the first Gulf War. The UN, for all its imperfections -- real and perceived -- reflects this American preference for an ordered world. The United States is not an island unto itself. Whether we like to admit it or not we depend on many other nations--for many different reasons. We care what happens in our backyard. We are affected by the decisions made by other nations and in times of crisis we need each other. Global challenges also require global solutions, and few indeed are the situations in which the United States or any other country can act completely alone. Who supported us in every war? Who shares intelligence with us? Who contributed to our devastation after Katrina? Who includes us in medical updates? Ebola, Zika, influenza and communicable diseases like measles, mumps, pertussis. AND who stood beside us after 9/11..? We may be a very powerful nation, but we can NOT stand alone in the world. We need our allies and they need us. Prime Minister Narendra Modis ambitious sub-regional road connectivity plan involving Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) has hit a roadblock with Bhutan withdrawing the agreement from the agenda for its upcoming Parliament session. Bhutan took the decision, which threatens to further delay the project, on April 21. The four countries had signed the motor vehicle agreement aimed at allowing seamless movement of passenger and cargo vehicles through each others territory at Thimpu in June 2015. However, all the nations involved have to ratify the pact for it to become operational. So far, only India, Bangladesh and Nepal have done so. The BBIN motor vehicle agreement is not likely to become operational anytime soon due to the Bhutan governments latest move, said a senior Union road transport and highways ministry official. While India currently has bilateral motor vehicle agreements with Nepal and Bangladesh, a multilateral pact would go a long way in strengthening trade and tourism across the region. Sources said that with Bhutan not playing ball, India is now mulling over making a truncated version of the original pact with Bangladesh and Nepal operational. The ministry of external affairs has suggested that we start the process of signing the BBIN protocol with Bangladesh and Nepal, said an official. Indian officials said Bhutan took the decision after it became clear that the agreement wouldnt pass muster in its Parliament. Stakeholders across the board raised concerns that a large number of vehicles entering the country, once the pact is ratified, will play havoc with the countrys environment, said an official. He claimed that the neighbouring countrys economic interests would be affected in the long run if it does not come onboard. The BBIN pact would have boosted trade and economic opportunities for a land-locked country like Bhutan, the official added. The decision to roll out the sub-regional road connectivity plan involving Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India was taken in 2014, after Pakistan scuttled plans for a larger South Asian road-and-rail connectivity project. With Pakistan not coming on board to sign the SAARC motor vehicle pact, India tapped its eastern neighbours to boost regional connectivity. But now there is uncertainty over the BBINs implementation as well, with Bhutan failing to ratify the pact, said a government official. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Demanding immediate action against the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, India on Thursday said it was a matter of concern that even after eight years of the terror strike, they continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan. External affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglays remarks came amid reports that Pakistan has rejected a re- investigation of the Mumbai attack case, and has again demanded concrete evidence against Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the strike. It is the Pakistan governments responsibility to bring to book the perpetrators and all those involved in conspiring, executing and mounting the 26/11 attack in which 166 people were killed. It is a matter of concern that well after eight years of the attack, the perpetrators continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan and have not been brought to book, he said. However, Baglay did not specifically comment on reports from Pakistan that it has told India that a re-investigation of the Mumbai attack case was not possible as the trial was at an advanced stage and demanded concrete evidence against Saeed, saying he was not aware of any such development. Asked about an incident involving a Sikh girl in Pakistan who was forced to convert to Islam, he said such incidents are regularly reported from that country, and it was the responsibility of the government there to ensure safety and security of its nationals, including minorities. He also said India keeps raising with Pakistan such issues whenever these come to its attention. A two-member team of home ministrys senior security advisor K Vijay Kumar and acting CRPF chief Sudeep Lakhtakia told the government on Thursday that there was no evidence that the bodies of the CRPF personnel killed in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh on Monday were mutilated. The government also dispatched National Investigation Agency (NIA) chief Sharad Kumar to Sukma where an ambush by the militants claimed the lives of 25 troopers possibly paving way for an investigation to be handed over to the National Investigation Agency. I can, with all authority at my command, say that none of the dead bodies of the CRPF personnel were found to mutilated. We checked with the doctors also who conducted postmortem of the dead bodies, said Sudeep Lakhtakia after meeting Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi to give his preliminary report on the incident. Later in the day, Maoists condemned media reports alleging mutilation of the bodies of CRPF troopers. We have not mutilated any body and the latest Chintagufa attack was in continuity of the killing of 11 CRPF jawans in Sukmas Bhejji area, spokesperson of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of Communist Party of India (Maoist) Vikalp, said to the media in an audio clip which was purportedly released by the party from its stronghold in Sukma. Reports about the mutilation of the troopers bodies had surfaced after some of the members of the rescue team which rushed to the spot after the ambush, said they had seen mutilated bodies at the spot. Following the home ministry meeting in Delhi, a senior official said it is likely that the NIA will be pressed into service to probe the attack. Earlier too we have given probes into Maoist attacks to the NIA. It can be done again for speedy identification of the perpetrators of the attack in order to bring them to justice, said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The home ministry will receive the final report on the Sukma attack from the CRPF within a week. K Vijay Kumar, who along with Sudeep Lakhtakia returned to the national capital on Thursday morning after spending two days at ground-zero, said the CRPF personnel deployed there were showing signs of fatigue. Initial examination suggests that the CRPF personnel retaliated the attack in equal amount. It was not a one-sided exchange of fire but most of the personnel have been deployed there for more than three years. The deployment in Sukma is highly stressful, which ultimately leads to lack of motivation and possibility of non-adherence to standard-operating-procedure. But again, this is my preliminary opinion, said K Vijay Kumar. According to government figures, 2017 has seen 32 Maoists killed while the CRPF has lost 38 personnel in Chhattisgarh. The central government has been trying to boost the morale of the forces by providing them necessary infrastructure and logistics for anti-Maoist operations, Kumar and Lakhtakia said. Around 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen have been deployed in Bastar region, which saw the maximum Maoist violence in Chhattisgarh. (With inputs from Ritesh Mishra and S Kareemuddin in Sukma) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Since Yogi Adityanath took charge as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, he has made harassment in public places his governments priority with respect to crimes against women. However, while anti-Romeo squads continue to pick up men and couples , crimes more threatening to womens safety appear to be slipping into oblivion. From January 1 to March 31, 2017, UP Police registered 127 complaints under IPC Section 294, which lays down the punishment for obscene acts or words in public. In comparison, the police recorded 873 complaints of rape, 2,333 of outraging modesty, 2,243 of atrocities, including domestic violence and harassment over dowry, and 3,011 of kidnap during the same period. Domestic violence is the biggest problem women face in UP, said Pushpa, a domestic violence survivor, who runs the women -focussed NGO Vanangana. The maximum number of complaints the NGO receives are related to domestic violence. Then there are rapes, murders, kidnappings. We also look at cases of suicides among women, since most of the cases would come under murder if you consider that someone else is always responsible for it, she said. Activists argue that these issues dont just affect women living in the interiors of the state. The biggest problems women face are related to domestic violence, rape and acid attacks, said Meena Soni, an acid attack survivor who runs the NGO Sadbhavana in Lucknow. But I dont see the government doing anything about them. We followed the CMs promise to grant an acid attack survivor Rs 1 lakh, but nothing has come out of it, she said. Soni said that acid sale continues to be unregulated in the state despite court directive and the government wasnt doing anything to check it. The activist also claimed that the state government had failed to help victims of domestic violence get justice. Survivors of domestic abuse continue to make rounds of courts seeking justice, but the accused dont even feel the pressure to show up. Its the same case with survivors of dowry harassment. If the government wants to do something for women, it should take steps to enforce the laws covering these offences, she said. While women appreciated the Adityanaths attention to public harassment, they feared that the excessive attention on street harassment may swallow up the discourse on crimes against women. Earlier in April, women activists submitted a petition to Adityanath asking him to disband the anti-Romeo squads: This is not the route to ensure womens safety and security. In fact these squads are curbing womens and girls right to mobility, consent and decision making. However, police said the squads were a step in the right direction. Just because there is no focus (on other issues) doesnt mean there is no direction (from the top) to deal with other crimes against women, said a police officer. The UP government also sees no reason to change its strategy. Crimes against women have come down in the one month since the new chief minister took charge, said Suresh Rana, a minister in the state government. The government has also been talking about womens issues other than eve-teasing, but that has not been noticed. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Uttar Pradesh will now get new government-run primary and upper primary schools only after completion of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping of all existing schools of the state. The GIS mapping has been accorded top priority by the union ministry of human resource development (MHRD). Reason: Construction of any new school under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) will be decided only on the basis of this GIS map so as to ensure proper distribution of school locations across the state. The department of school education and literacy of the MHRD has made it clear to the state officials that till the GIS mapping is not completed, no permission for opening a new school would be granted by it. Under the Free and Compulsory Child Education Rights Act, availability of a primary school at a distance of every one kilometre and a middle school at every three kilometres and a high school at every five kilometres has been made compulsory. Hence, the need for GIS mapping of government schools of the School Education Department has become mandatory for compliance of the Act. No new school in UP in past 5 years Uttar Pradesh has not got any new school in the past five years under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. The last permission granted to the state by MHRD was back in 2012-13. Uneven distribution of schools in states has been a concern voiced by many experts, especially with the Right to Education (RTE) Act making elementary education compulsory for all kids. Hence officials of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan have begun the GIS mapping of all its schools, including 1.60 lakh government-run primary and upper primary schools, spread across the 75 districts of the state. Officials at the project head office, located in the state capital, are taking details of daily progress report from the basic shiksha adhikaris (BSAs) of all districts so as to ensure completion of the mission at the earliest. Officials are confident of completing the mapping process by the end of May. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan projects state head office has already received GIS mapping details of 90,000 schools from different districts and information regarding 50,000 of these schools has already been made available to the MHRD online by the National Informatics Centre. Though the state has around 1.10 lakh primary and another around 50,000 upper primary schools run by the state government, this exercise will be covering private and trust-run schools as well taking the total count of schools much higher. UP lagging far behind Uttar Pradesh is lagging far behind all other states in the GIS mapping project. As per the MHRD website, UP is in the red zone with less than 30% of the schools mapped till date. Other states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar along with southern states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are far ahead with over 80% of their schools GIS mapped. Even the militancy-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir has mapped over 80% of its schools. The Mission Web-based School GIS application is an initiative of the department of school education and literacy, ministry of human resource development, for seamless visualisation of school locations across the country. Geographic location of schools collected by the various school education departments of the states is being collated and mapped on GIS Platform established by National Informatics Centre. Further, these school locations are also being interlinked with the school report cards based on a database developed and hosted by National University of Educational Planning and Administration. In this application, base map services like street maps, and high resolution satellite images are available for better understanding of the topography/ terrain of the location. This web service application comprises of administrative boundaries up to village level and location information up to habitation level along with basic GIS functionalities and measurement tools which will help to improve the quality of planning and better utilisation of resources available under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). Read more| Cheating mafia: UP Board to summon random copies from sensitive districts to control copying SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Three soldiers including an army captain were killed on Thursday when a group of militants stormed a garrison in south Kashmirs Kupwara, a defence official said. Two militants were also killed in the attack at the Panzgam area of Chowkibal, the army spokesperson said, adding, Search ops (operations are) in progress. Sources said five injured soldiers have been shifted to a hospital in Srinagar. PTI quoted official sources to identity the slain army officer as Captain Ayush. Read | Kupwara army camp attack LIVE: Three soldiers killed in Kashmir, militants used guns and grenades The attackers, suspected to be fidayeen militants, sneaked into the camp before sunrise at around 4. Sources said the group of four militants are believed to have had crossed over from Pakistan. The the Associated Press quoted army spokesperson colonel Rajesh Kalia as saying that the militants used guns and grenades to target soldiers northwest of Srinagar. The army cordoned off the entire area including a nearby forest area as bodies of only two militants have been retrieved so far. The attack is suspected to have been carried out by the Pakistan-based outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad. However, there was no independent confirmation of the incident and no rebel group has issued any statement so far. The attack came amid heightened tension across the valley since April 9, when eight people including seven students were killed by police and paramilitary forces during by-polls to the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency. The incident will also likely to further strain the already frayed Indias relations with Pakistan, whom New Delhi accuses of sheltering and supporting militant outfits targeting security personnel in Kashmir. Last year, India carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and took out several militant launch pads. Pakistan, however, denies any Indian strike on its territiory. The strikes followed a string of attacks on defence installions and army camps including one at Uri which had left 19 Indian soldiers dead in September last year. Weeks later, seven soldiers, including two majors, were killed when militants dressed as policemen stormed another military camp in Jammu and Kashmirs Nagrota. On Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered internet service providers to block Facebook, Twitter and 20 other social media sites and online applications for one month in the interest of maintenance of public order. The move came after after several videos and photos depicting alleged abuses of Kashmiris by Indian security forces sparked outrage and fueled protests. Students across Kashmir have been rallying this month at anti-India demonstrations, facing off against heavily armed riot police and paramilitary soldiers. (With agency inputs) India has strongly objected to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a UN General Assembly session in New York, asserting that it is a bilateral matter which should not be brought up in the UN forum. Minister in Pakistans Permanent Mission to the UN Masood Anwar raised the Kashmir issue in his statement to the UN General Assembly session of the Committee on Information on April 25. He said Pakistan appreciates the efforts by the UNs Department of Public Information in arranging coverage of events related to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. We would urge you to do the same for the people of Kashmir who continue to suffer under foreign occupation, Anwar said. As soon as these remarks were made, Minister in Indias Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad interrupted Anwars speech and strongly raised objections to the mention of Kashmir by the Pakistani delegate. It is a bilateral issue which should not be brought here, Prasad told the Chair of the session. Pakistans Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, also present during the session, was heard prodding Anwar to carry on speaking even as Prasad raised his objections with the sessions Chair. Later, before delivering Indias statement at the session, Prasad said the Kashmir issue was totally unrelated to the forum. Before I begin my statement, I would like to thank the Chair for its deft handling and not allowing the elaboration of a subject which is totally unrelated to this forum as was tried by a member state, Prasad said. The Committee on Information is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly established to deal with questions relating to public information. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the Department of Public Information and for providing it with guidance on policies, programmes and activities of the Department. Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit came as an inconvenience for locals as well as tourists in the quaint hill town of Shimla as the Special Protection Group (SPG) cordoned of the entire Mall Road for security reasons. At the rally venueThe Ridgeonly one passage was left open for walking while rest of the lateral roads and passages leading to the Ridge were closed. Three roads Scandal point, juice corner and the road from Lakkar Bazaar remained open. RAIN ADDS TO CHAOS People holding umbrellas as rain starts pouring in. (Deepak Sansta/HT Photo ) Despite intermittent rains, there was no dearth of people waiting to catch a glimpse of the Prime Minister. SOME SCHOOLS CLOSED A few schools declared a holiday on Thursday in the wake of Modi visit. Children of other schools faced inconvenience due to the closed roads. Shimla has virtually been sealed. We had to walk almost a kilometre extra to reach school today, said Ashish Mehta, a local resident. HEAVY VEHICLES BARRED ENTRY Heavy vehicles carrying passengers were barred from entering Shimla. A large number of people who had come to attend Modis public meeting could not make to the Rally venue as vehicles were not allowed to ply beyond the towns entry point. We started off quite early in the morning but our vehicle was stopped in Dhali. From there we walked our way nearly four kilometres but we could not reach the venue, said Pawan Sood, a Theog resident. People standing in the long queues at the entry gate for checking during Prime Ministers rally at Lakkar Bazaar in Shimla on Thursday. (Deepak Sansta/HT Photo ) Meanwhile, there was a heavy rush from Sanjauli to Ridge as people made their way to the rally venue. The situation was peaceful but the crowd was huge, a cop on duty near Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC) said. A tourist from Chandigarh, Anil Malhotra, said he was not aware of Modis rally before he planned to come to Shimla. The town is sealed so we are planning to visit the next nearest tourist destination, he said. TRAFFIC ON CIRCULAR ROAD COMES TO A STANDSTILL Traffic on the main circular road virtually came to standstill for several hours. Several vehicles, including those providing emergency services, were also stuck on the Cart Road. I had to go to Shoghi but could not leave the town due to the traffic jam, said Jeet Ram Thakur, a taxi driver. Traffic on road leading to Mall road from Chota Shimla was stopped near chief minister Virbhadra Singhs official residence Oak Over twice when Modi arrived and left. Modis cavalcade passed through the Mall road and reached Taka Bench via Raj Bhawan. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court is likely to pronounce on Thursday its verdict on a bunch of petitions seeking appointment of a Lokpal, the countrys top anti-corruption watchdog approved by Parliament in 2013. The government had told the top court last month it was not possible to appoint a lokpal as there was no leader of the opposition. Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said the amendments to the definition of the leader of opposition in the Lokpal Act were pending with Parliament. Parliament approved a law to create an independent anti-corruption agency after a delay of almost 50 years but the hiring of a lokpal to run it has been stuck on the question of who should be on the appointment panel. The Lokpal Act says the prime minister-led selection panel will include the leader of the opposition, the Lok Sabha speaker, the chief justice of India and an eminent jurist. As the present Lok Sabha does not have a leader of the opposition, the government moved an amendment allowing the leader of the largest opposition party to be part of the panel. But, the opposition called for closer scrutiny of other changes and the bill was sent to a parliamentary committee that gave some suggestions last year. The government is yet to take a call on them. The Congress, the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha, didnt have enough members for one of its MPs to be named the leader of the opposition. The Congress has 45 MPs, while the requirement is 55. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the Alliance Air Shimla-Delhi flight at the scenic Jubbar Hatti airport atop a hill, 35 km from here, on Thursday morning, Himachal Pradesh tourism is set to get a boost. The resumption of regular flights after five years is expected to attract high-end tourists, especially foreign visitors and business travellers, to Shimla and nearby hill stations. Yes, we are hopeful that the regular flights from Delhi to Shimla will boost Himachals tourism industry, DP Bhatia, liaison officer with the Shimla-based Oberoi Group of Hotels said. Kingfisher Airlines was the last commercial airline to have operated regular flights between Delhi and Shimla till it was grounded on September 6, 2012. With neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir seeing an escalation of violence, tourists are likely to opt for Shimla. Turbulent past *The Delhi-Shimla flight service was suspended on September 16, 2012, when Vijay Mallyas Kingfisher Airlines was grounded. Since then, the airport was being used for unscheduled and army flights. The armys training command or ARTRAC is headquartered in Shimla *The airport has a runway of 1,100 metres. In 2012, a portion of it sank due to soil erosion, reducing the length by 200 metres. The AAI spent Rs 100 crore to restore the runway at Himachal Pradeshs first airport. The full length landing strip was thrown open in December 2015 *Though unscheduled flights between Shimla and Delhi resumed soon after December 2015, air carriers were not keen to resume commercial operations as it isnt a financially viable route Starting regular flights from Shimla ahead of summer is good for the tourism industry otherwise tourists usually prefer Srinagar to Shimla, says Harman Kukreja, the president of the Shimla Hotel and Restaurateur Association. FLIGHT FIVE DAYS A WEEK The Alliance Air flight will operate five days a week from Wednesday to Sunday. It will depart from Delhi at 6.10 am and arrive in Shimla at 7.25 am. The same day, it will depart from Shimla at 7.45 am and return to Delhi at 8.45 am. Chief minister Virbhadra Singh and state Tourism Development Board vice-chairman Vijai Singh Mankotia raised the issue with Airport Authority of India (AAI) a number of times to restart the regular flight and to explore the possibility of expanding Shimla airstrip to facilitate landing of bigger aircraft. Otherwise, this time again we are going lose business travellers to Srinagar, Bhatia added. Travel agent Bhanu Sood said air connectivity to Shimla will boost tourism. Since there is no flight to Shimla, high-end tourists do not visit. To attract more foreigners, air connectivity is important, he said. High-end tourists who visit shimla usually travel by taxi. he said. It takes about seven to eight hours to travel to Shimla from Delhi by road. The fare for luxury bus from Shimla to Delhi is Rs 960 while a taxi charges Rs 4,500. Something is better than nothing. The government should step up efforts to start more flights not only to Delhi but other parts of the country, he added. Shimla is the erstwhile capital of British Raj and is famous with both domestic and foreign tourists. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Santa said: So much hatred of so many you do not know. A man's heart/soul is revealed by the things he says/types. You are very ugly man. Click to expand... skews13 said: All televangelists are hucksters. 99.999999999% of all fundamentalist evangelical fucktards are hucksters. Click to expand... Comrade skews is correct. Religion should not be allowed and if it is, it should be monitored by the state. Its teachings should be approved by the state. Its script should be written by the state. Then you can worship the state and work toward advancing the state. As opposed to some imaginary being in the clouds. The Supreme Court on Thursday said that the dignity of its decree passed in the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal case must be maintained and the directions implemented . The dignity of the decree passed by this court must be maintained. Whether the matter is settled or not settled, we are not bothered about it. We are bothered about implementation of our order, a bench headed by Justice PC Ghose told solicitor general Ranjit Kumar who informed the court that the Centre had convened talks between Punjab and Haryana on April 20 but the outcome was not known. There has also been a meeting of the two chief ministers with the Prime Minister, Kumar told the bench. He said the efforts to mediate the issue would continue. On behalf of Haryana, senior counsel Shyam Divan said the state had to wait for several years for the decree passed in 2002. People would lose faith in the judicial system if there was delay in execution of the decree, Divan warned. Punjabs advocate, senior counsel RS Suri and Advocate General Atul Nanda continued to assert that it was not possible to execute the decree and it would require time to justify their stand. The court fixed July 11 to hear the matter. Supreme Court had on April 12 asked the Centre, Punjab and Haryana to finish their talks on the construction of the SYL canal as soon as it can be, indicating it will decide the matter if negotiations remained unresolved. The court is hearing a contempt application filed by Haryana after Punjab returned land acquired for the project to its owners. This was despite the top court ruled in November last that Punjab could not have unilaterally terminated the agreement for water-sharing. Punjab assembly had in 2004 passed a law to call of the pact. A Presidential reference was made to the SC on the issue, which the court answered in negative. If it is settled, its okay. If its not, we will hear and decide it, the Bench had said. True to his pre-poll promise, Yogi Adityanath has brought into focus the issue of killer disease Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) that has claimed the lives of 50,000 children in eastern Uttar Pradesh, especially his constituency Gorakhpur, in the last three decades. Soon after Adityanath assumed charge as the CM, the health and family welfare department reviewed measures taken for the prevention and treatment of encephalitis patients in 37 districts known to be highly prone to the disease. According to the departments data, 128 patients have already been admitted to the Baba Raghav Das Medical College and Hospital, of which 40 have died. Principal secretary, health and family welfare, AK Sinha said the state government has declared 20 districts Japanese Encephalitis and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome sensitive. Before the onset of monsoon, the department has planned to launch vaccination and awareness drives. The state government has also decided to set up encephalitis treatment centres in districts and to upgrade district hospitals for the treatment of JE/AES patients, Sinha said. Health and family welfare minister Siddharth Nath Singh said a training programme will be organised for doctors at community and primary health centres to handle the patients. Yogi Adityanath has shifted the focus to revamping government efforts to cure and prevent encephalitis. (Sonu Mehta/HT File Photo) Beds and oxygen cylinders will be increased in district hospitals as well. Officials have been told to provide ambulance for transporting patients from villages to hospitals. The minister and officials will visit the districts to get a first-hand idea of the facilities provided to them. For Adityanath, the fight has been on the top of his agenda for long. Since he won the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat in 1998, the ascetic has adopted ways to draw the attention of the government to the diseasehanding memorandums to the ministers, organising dharna and raising the issue on the floor of Lok Sabha. Last year in Lok Sabha, he attacked the state government, then ruled by Samajwadi Party, for neglecting the issue. For 36 years, the death of the children is being reported in Gorakhpur region. Around one lakh children have died, and majority of those who have survived are disabled. The state government has been insensitive to recurrent deaths even though central government has released much funds, he said. Demanding that JE/AES should be declared an epidemic, Adityanath had said a drive should be launched on a war footing for the eradication of the disease. He had also pointed out that most child victims were from the lower strata of the societyDalits and poor Muslimsand claimed that no treatment was available for the patients in district hospitals. Parents residing in rural areas as well as adjoining districts have no option but to rush encephalitis-infected children to BRD Medical College. Several patients die on the way, he said. Social activist Manoj Singh noted that several encephalitis-caused deaths are not reported as the disease affects 015-year-old children in the villages and patients die en route hospital. Adityanath made it a poll issue during the Uttar Pradesh assembly election. During campaigning, he attacked the SP government and charged it with neglecting encephalitis patients. Addressing meetings in Gorakhpur and adjoining districts, he promised that if the BJP came to power, the eradication of JE/AES will be given prime focus, and the state government would open rehabilitation centres for children who survive encephalitis but remain handicapped for life. The surprise choice for CM, the Gorakhpur MP has stayed true to the promise. But there is still much left to be done. Scientists of National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, during a study in Gorakhpur, found that enterovirus (a virus that enters through gastrointestinal tract and attacks the nervous system) has caused the infections in children. While JE is mosquito borne disease, enterovirus is waterborne. Milind Gore, an NIV scientist, said vast swathes of eastern UP remain waterlogged round the year. The villagers are hardly concerned about the hygiene and people defecate in the open. During a survey, it was found that a majority of the hand pumps have been installed near drains. Vulnerable children fall victim to enterovirus after drinking contaminated water, he said. Even as encephalitis patients flow into hospitals, the BRD Medical College that has been developed as nodal centre for the disease is awaiting release of funds for strengthening medical facilities. The college principal, Professor Rajeev Misra, said they had sent a proposal of 37 crore for strengthening health facilities, which include maintenance of wards, ICU, medicine, ventilators, laboratory and human resource. GM, national health mission, Dr AK Pandey, said the proposal has been forwarded to the Centre for approval and allocation of funds. Former principal of BRD Medical College, Dr KP Kushwaha stressed the need to amend the policy regarding JE and AES to bring down the number of deaths. Medical officials are not providing the correct figure of the encephalitis patients to the health and family welfare department, fearing that action will be taken against them, he said, adding that doctors who suppress the patient figures are promoted and those who highlight are being sidelined. The state government should establish encephalitis management centre for patients. Rather than appointing doctors and paramedical staff on contract, the health department should appoint permanent doctors and staff who work with commitment and have job satisfaction too. The state government should also depute volunteers in villages who maintain vigil on encephalitis patients and sanitation drive as well. Ambulances in encephalitis-sensitive districts should be equipped with life saving devices, he suggested. Kushwaha, who was earlier head of paediatrics department in BRD Medical College, said the focus should be on complete immunisation of vulnerable patients and treatment of patients. The research centre should be strengthened and regular surveillance should be maintained in encephalitis-prone districts, he said. As activist Manoj Singh put it, besides being a health issue, JE and AES deaths are a social- economic issue as well. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If you think a youth in your family or neighbourhood is getting radicalised or influenced by extremist thought on the web, you can now call a government hotline in Uttar Pradesh. The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has announced a helpline number for parents and families who suspect their children or people known to them are getting radicalised online. The ATS has launched the initiative to help families de-radicalise youngsters who are often targeted by terror operatives who train them online and use them in carrying out terror activities. We have decided to lend support to such families as a part of our de-radicalisation programme launched after the arrest of four terror suspects on April 20. These suspects had radicalised six youths from Shamli and were planning to use them for terror activities in Bijnore, said inspector general (IG), ATS, Asim Arun. He said the operatives were targeting youngsters between 15 and 25 years of age by inciting communal passions. People may call on two control room numbers of UP ATS 0522-2304588 and 9792103156. The identities of such youths or families will be kept secret, he said. Explaining the de-radicalisation programme, Arun said the police would rope in clerics as well as the parents, family members and friends of such youths to make them understand religion in right perspective. They will be told that no religion talks and promotes terrorism or violence, he said. As part of de-radicalisation programme, the police will visit the youths house for a week and then call him to their place for another week to maintain interaction. The frequency of meetings will be gradually reduced but will continue for at least a year, said the IG. He said the police would also make surprise visits to the houses of such youth to check their activity and remain in touch with their family. We will also try to help such youths in their education and employment by recommending their names under various government schemes. The youths will be considered totally de-radicalised once they get married or employed, Arun said. There is no guarantee that the youths may not be radicalised again so we will keep their details with us and keep checking their activities randomly, he added. Arun said the youngsters were being radicalised through Islamic State literature available online and by reminding them of the problems faced by their community in the past. De-radicalisation of at least 25 young people from various districts of Uttar Pradesh was already underway. IG, ATS, Asim Arun said the youths belong to seven districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bijnore and Muzaffarnagar. He said the youngsters were identified through their posts, likes and remarks on the social media. He said the ATS was keeping a watch on online activities and some families would be approached for de-radicalisation process, if required. The Uttarakhand high court ordered on Thursday the sealing and preserving of all electronic voting machines used in the states Vikasnagar constituency during the recently-concluded assembly elections, following complaints of large-scale tampering. The order came on a petition by Congress leader and former state minister Navprabhat, who alleged that the BJP MLA from Vikasnagar Munna Singh Chauhan manipulated EVMs to engineer a victory. Chauhan beat Navprabhat by a little more than 6,000 votes. The BJP swept Uttarakhand during last months polls, winning 57 of 70 seats. Thursdays order would affect 180-odd EVMs. The single-judge bench of justice SK Gupta also asked Chauhan, the returning officer of Vikasnagar, the states chief secretary, the Election Commission and chief electoral officer of Uttarakhand to respond to the petition within six weeks. The order is likely to add to a swirling debate on EVMs that opposition parties say can be easily hacked. The Congress has joined parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party to demand investigations into allegations of widespread tampering of the devices to favour the BJP. In his petition, Navprabhat also complained that Chauhan was registered as a voter from two constituencies, which is against the rules. The petitioner also alleged the presence of several bogus voters in the constituency. India slipped three places in the 2017 world press freedom rankings to 136th among 180 countries, the dismal performance blamed on Modis nationalism and growing self-censorship in the mainstream media. In the index released on Wednesday, India was ranked just three places above Pakistan and was one notch below violence-torn Palestine. Indias neighbours Bhutan and Nepal were placed at 84th and 100th rank, respectively. With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of anti-national thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media, the report from media watchdog Reporters without Borders said. India was ranked 133 last year. The latest Reporters Without Borders press freedom rankings. (AFP) The report mentioned that journalists were increasingly targets of online smear campaigns and threats. Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists who are overly critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124a of the penal code, under which sedition is punishable by life imprisonment. No journalist has so far been convicted of sedition but the threat encourages self-censorship. The watchdog was also critical of a social media and internet gag in Kashmir and said that in the absence of any protective mechanism, coverage of sensitive regions continued to be very difficult. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark took the first four positions in the rankings. The United States was at the 43rd position. Large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa, including dictator-ruled Zimbabwe, performed better than India. China was 176th among 180 countries and was described as the worlds leading prison for citizen journalists. North Korea was at the bottom of the index. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Had this not been a home game, the best way to stop Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) would have been at the airport. True, fortunes change in T20 in a matter of deliveries and Kolkata Knight Riders have shown streaks of vulnerability but they have managed to finish on the right side in six of the eight games in IPL10. It could have been seven out of eight had KKR not fluffed their lines in Mumbai. (Read | Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir knocks power Kolkata Knight Riders to 7-wicket win vs Rising Pune Supergiant) After Wednesday nights convincing win away to Rising Pune Super Giant, KKR skipper Gautam Gambhir said no target is beyond reach. His partner in that successful run chase, Robin Uthappa, said he doesnt need the cushion of the power play anymore. And after cleaning up Royal Challengers Bangalore in 9.4 overs using only pace, the Knights spinners took four of the five wickets against Steve Smiths side; Umesh Yadav getting a wicket off the innings last ball. Yes, the odd catch continues to be dropped but if KKR and Mumbai Indians have a three-point gap with the rest, it is because they look the most balanced of the teams. Irrespective of the wicket, I think we have a proper balance in the bowling attack.And our batting is clicking, was how Parthiv Patel explained Mumbai Indians run. He could have been speaking of KKR. (Read | Zaheer Khan says Delhi Daredevils next five games in IPL 2017 will be crucial) Its a very good challenge, said Delhi Daredevils skipper Zaheer Khan when asked about the Knight juggernaut that seems unstoppable. Delhi Daredevils lost thrice to KKR in 2012 and should KKR win on Friday, it would be a repeat of the 2015 double. (Read | Gautam Gambhir to bear education expenses of slain CRPF mens children) The Knights returned from Pune early on Thursday and had optional training. Rested for Wednesdays game, Nathan Coulter-Nile lapped around Eden and it will have to be seen whether the big Australian plays on a wicket looking greener than usual. Pace could be key I should congratulate Sourav Ganguly for this. The wicket is looking very good and everyone is excited as a group, said Khan. With Chris Morris, Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Shami, Angelo Mathews and Khan, Delhi Daredevils have a pace attack of substance. As do the Knights for whom Umesh Yadav is on song and Chris Woakes and Colin de Grandhomme took three wickets each when they played here last after Coulter-Nile set the tone. It was the loss against KKR that sent Delhi Daredevils on a three-match losing run. Three of their four losses have come while chasing so it could be interesting to see how the visiting team reacts if they win the toss at a venue where teams batting second have fared better and where the dew is a factor and the forecast is of rain. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If you come across a youngster in the family or in your locality who is getting influenced by extremist groups or visiting suspicious sites, you can now help in nipping the evil in the bud. The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has announced a helpline number for parents and families who suspect their children or people known to them are getting radicalised online. The ATS has launched the initiative to help families in de-radicalising youngsters who are often targeted by terror operatives who radicalise them online and use them in carrying out terror activities. De-radicalisation of 25 youths underway De-radicalisation of at least 25 youths from various districts of Uttar Pradesh is already on. IG, ATS, Asim Arun said the youths belong to seven districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bijnore and Muzaffarnagar. He said the youngsters were identified through their posts, likes and remarks on the social media. He said the ATS was keeping a watch on online activities and some families would be approached for de-radicalisation process, if required. We have decided to lend support to such families as a part of our de-radicalisation programme launched after the arrest of four terror suspects on April 20. These suspects had radicalised six youths from Shamli and were planning to use them for terror activities in Bijnore, said inspector general (IG), ATS, Asim Arun. He said the terror operatives were targeting youngsters between 15 and 25 years of age by inciting communal passions. People may call on two control room numbers of UP ATS 0522-2304588 and 9792103156. The identities of such youths or families will be kept secret, he said. Explaining the de-radicalisation programme, Arun said the police would rope in clerics as well as the parents, family members and friends of such youths to make them understand religion in right perspective. They will be told that no religion talks and promotes terrorism or violence, he said. As part of de-radicalisation programme, the police will visit the youths house for a week and then call him to their place for another week to maintain interaction. The frequency of meetings will be gradually reduced but will continue for at least a year, said the IG. He said the police would also make surprise visits to the houses of such youths to check their activity and remain in touch with their family. We will also try to help such youths in their education and employment by recommending their names under various government schemes. The youths will be considered totally de-radicalised once they get married or employed, Arun said. There is no guarantee that the youths may not be radicalised again so we will keep their details with us and keep checking their activities randomly, he added. Arun said the youngsters were being radicalised through ISIS literature available online and by reminding them of the problems faced by their community in the past. Read more| Canadian writer Tarek Fatah was on terror hit-list: ATS The kind of push that the month-old Yogi Adityanath government is making to ensure punctuality in government offices has few parallels in Uttar Pradesh. The last such effort to ensure that government employees report on time in government offices in UP was witnessed some 30 years ago when the then chief minister Veer Bahadur Singh, who like Adityanath also hailed from Gorakhpur, had ordered closure of secretariat gates 15 minutes after the stipulated arrival time of 10am. I was barely 15-years-old then but I had heard how the gates of the secretariat were closed beyond a fixed time and in some cases even cabinet ministers had to return as the gates were closed, BJP MLA Fateh Bahadur, son of the late Veer Bahadur Singh, reminisced while talking to HT. How did that help? Efficiency increased. More work started being done in the same time, Fateh Bahadur, who has offered to vacate his assembly seat to pave the way for the chief ministers election to the house, said. Will Yogi also get the secretariat gates shut? I cant comment about Yogiji, says Fateh Bahadur. Only last week, agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi had ordered closure of the gates of the agriculture directorate after arriving there unannounced to check employees attendance after 10am. They have been addicted to coming late to offices during the last 15 years, but now they have to change their habits, Shahi told HT. Taken aback, the employees were seen trying to enter the office premises by scaling the walls of the directorate. After checking attendance, Shahi had ordered a days salary cut for those who were either found missing or reported late. Officials of the secretariat administration department (SAD) admit that punctuality has gone up manifold and files are moving quickly in the Adityanath dispensation. These days, offices are open even on holidays due to departmental presentations being made before the chief minister, an SAD official said. Instead of following the Veer Bahadur model of forcing the closure of secretariat gates, the Adityanath government plans to introduce biometric attendance in all government schools and offices, right down to the district level. Back then, the closure of secretariat gates created its own problems and there were several protests against the move. I think the introduction of biometric attendance will also achieve the same objective, a source in the government said. The state government has already ordered biometric attendance in all secondary and aided government schools from July 25. Everyone needs to realise that its not just a regime change for we want to ring in a new work culture in the state, says deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya who conducted a surprise check of the public works department (PWD) on Tuesday. The ministers too are reporting on time. When the CM is so punctual, everyone else cant help but emulate him. We have a workaholic CM, says health minister Siddharth Nath Singh. Ministers from Satyadev Pachauri to Mohsin Raza, the lone Muslim face of the Yogi government, have been among the ministers who have been inspecting offices, checking for cleanliness. The bureaucrats who are being made to stay awake till midnight due to departmental presentations, say that their job has stretched well beyond their working hours. Now, of course with BJP government both in the state and the centre we are answerable on two counts. Earlier, the pressure from the centre wasnt as much, a bureaucrat said adding the biometric attendance was already operational in the secretariat. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The temple city charm has impressed many a mystic and poet, including the legendary Mirza Ghalib. In fact, Ghalibs much acclaimed poem Chirag-i-Dair (Temple lamps) was composed during his trip to Benaras in the spring of 1827. Now, these much quoted verses are set to become the plot of a documentary being shot here in Varanasi. The film is a tribute to both Kashi and Ghalib. Not many know that how beautifully Ghalib had depicted culture, atmosphere, holy Ganga, iconic ghats and lanes of Benaras in his work Chirag-i-Dair, says filmmaker Beenu Rajput who is directing the documentary aimed at showcasing the beauty of present day Varanasi through Ghalibs verses. For Ghalib, Kashi was Kaba-E-Hindustan. It was here he mused about India and how Qiyamah (doomsday) had failed to arrive here, in spite of the numerous conflicts plaguing it, says Rajput. Working in association with Ghalib Institute, New Delhi, Beenu says she researched over a nine month before starting to shoot for the documentary. The effort is to depict the deep bond that Ghalib developed with the city. He was so much in love with Benaras that he extended his stay in the city for two months, claims Beenu. On his way to Kolkata Ghalib had stopped at Allahabad where he took ill. He had high fever when started off to Benaras, where he had planned a stopover. However, he liked the city so much that he overstayed, says Beenu. After he recovered, Ghalib wrote a few letters to his friends. In the letters, he talks beautifully about Benares, its ghats, its morning, the fresh airs and the clean atmosphere, says Beenu while quoting some of the 108 verses that Ghalib wrote on the topic. The film will be shot at a sarai (inn) where Ghalib stayed here in Aurangabad (then Naurangabad) in the city. Beenus research revealed that Ghalib often had long chats with priests at ghats. We are trying to cover all such aspect as aesthetically as possible, says the director who got attracted to Ghalib five years ago while watching a show based on poets stay in Benaras. My Kathak guru, noted classical artist, Shovana Narayan performed the show, she says. An hour-long documentary is set to be released in December. It will be in three languages, Hindi, Urdu and Persian. The shooting has already taken place at Dashashwamedh Ghat, Pandey Ghat, Maan Mandir Ghat, Darbhanga Ghat, Rana Mahal Ghat, Rajendra Prasad Ghat, Munshi Ghat, Chet Singh Ghat, Meer Ghat, Sarveshwara Ghat, Assi Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Yogi Adityanath governments decision to transfer Saharanpur senior superintendent of police (SSP) Luv Kumar to Noida is being seen as an attempt to put an end to confrontation between the district police chief and Saharanpurs BJP Lok Sabha member Raghav Lakhanpal. A delegation of MPs from west Uttar Pradesh, led by Union minister Sanjeev Baliyan, met chief minister Adityanath on Wednesday evening to discuss the issue. They briefed the CM about the role of Lakhanpal and the local MLAs in allegedly inciting workers to take out a procession through a restricted route in Doodhli village to mark the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar. When the BJP leaders took out the procession without the permission of the district administration, the local residents protested and pelted stones at them. Later, a mob allegedly led by Lakhanpal barged into the residence of Luv Kumar and went on a rampage to protest the attack on their procession. The CM directed the district administration to take action against the culprits irrespective of their party affiliation. An FIR was lodged against the BJP MP, MLAs and their supporters. Addressing media persons on Wednesday, inspector general (public grievance) Vijay Singh Meena said police arrested 16 people named in the FIR and attempts were on to nab the other accused who were absconding. Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav also demanded an inquiry and sent an investigating team of Samajwadi Party leaders to Saharanpur on Wednesday. Residents of Saharanpur, however, believe that the SSP was transferred to keep political influence of the ruling partys MP and MLAs intact. Appreciating the work of the SSP, shahr qazi (Islamic cleric) Nadeem said Luv Kumar was made the scapegoat due to political compulsions. He had to be transferred otherwise it would have been a defeat of political leaders which they would not have been able to digest, he said. City-based entrepreneur Shishir Joshi said the SSP was transferred under political pressure. The SSP had earned the reputation of an honest and upright officer during his stint here, he said. Jaswinder Singh, a businessman, said the name of Luv Kumar was included in the list to project it as a routine transfer but people could see the truth. Criticising the Adityanath governments decision, Samajwadi Party district president Jagpal Das said the move would demoralise honest officers. There has been intense media coverage of the US Militarys Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) strike on April 13, 2017 in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. On the 15th April, Afghanistans defense ministry reported the death of 94 militants including 4 major commanders and that no civilians had been killed in the strike. Two civilian deaths were also reported. As ISIS was reluctant to report the actual damage on site, no evidence surfaced from Nangarhar for weeks, until recently, despite nearly 100 fatalities Daesh suffered in the attack. Satellite imagery obtained 15 hours after the attack provided some data for assessment of the damage, as Afghan authorities access to the site has been restricted by the US Military. The first video evidence from the site was recently released by theAfghan police sheds some light on the devastation that resulted from the GBU-43/B MOA) attack. The overall picture of destruction is varied. In the immediate area around the impact point, (marked as Area 1 in the satellite image), no buildings or structures remain standing and many of the trees and vegetation are destroyed. Analysis of the point of impact can determine little in the way of a crater, despite some media reports suggesting that the crater left by the blast would be more than 300 meters wide. Areas marked 2, 3 and 4 in the image exhibit signs of destruction to buildings, with some roofs destroyed, but large numbers of buildings remain apparently undamaged. Post-strike satellite imagery shows that although the blast did not create a significant crater on the ground, the destruction was absolute of approximately 20 compounds and trees, 650 meters to the southwest of the center of the village of Asadkhel and close to the villages of Tangai and Lansai Ahmad and 3 kilometers from Shadal Bazaar. There are signs of destruction to agriculture and trees in the immediate vicinity of the blast. Damage to compounds and buildings can be observed further from the blast site but it is not clear whether this damage was caused by this particular attack. It is understood that the MOAB weapon explodes approximately six feet above the ground and propels its flame and shock waves horizontally, rather than vertically. The effect is to knock over trees, buildings and other infrastructure, collapse cave entrances and underground facilities and kill, maim or demoralize enemy combatants. Reports indicate that the blast has an effective range of approximately one kilometer. The attack was aimed to destroy tunnels and caves used by Daesh Khorasan militants that operate in the area. The UP Board of Secondary Education has decided that students below 14 and above 18 years of age will not be allowed to appear in its high school (class 10) examination as regular candidates. This decision was taken at a high-level meeting presided by Boards director Amarnath Verma here on Wednesday evening to check the copying mafia in its tracks. Proposals for online accreditation to schools and expansion of the yoga syllabus for classes 10 and 12 were also approved at the same meeting. The officials gave their unanimous consent to steps to prevent schools from enrolling more students than their capacity. The UP Board rulebook had no age limit for high school examination regular candidates so far. As a result, schools used to make candidates as old as 30 to 40 years of age appear in the high school examination as regular students. The tactic was adopted largely to help them get government jobs by reducing their official age. The officials also agreed to increase the marks for yoga to 20 from six in high school and five in class 12. The decisions taken at the meeting will be forwarded to the state government for approval after which necessary changes would be made in the UP Board Act 1921. Read more: No khaki? Now uniforms of UP govt schools set for a makeover SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With hardly two months from the onset of monsoon in the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) roads department faces a crisis. According to an official, the department cannot procure material for road works from its major sources. This has forced the civic body to look for more sources so as to ensure that the contractors dont miss the monsoon deadline. Also, officials have instructed contractors, ward officers and engineers to not dig up any more roads and to fast-track work on dug-up roads. If sources are to be believed, the civic chief is likely to approach chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and ask him to intervene in this case. Recently, Thane collector, Mahendra Kalyankar, had ordered the shutting down of over 100 stone quarries, as they did not have the permission from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to operate it. According to officials, a majority of contractors working with the BMC get their materials from Navi Mumbai (which falls under Thane district). Mehta has also approached Kalyankar and has asked him to divert all the remaining material in the quarries to contractors completing BMCs road works, revealed sources. A civic official said, We have asked the contractors to get material from other quarries in Nashik and Pune and also no new roads will be dug. Officers have also been instructed to list other sources from where material can be procured. According to a source, whatever extra is spent by the contractors can be claimed by them after they complete work. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Mumbaiites will get not one, but two chances to make their voices heard BEST officials will ply the transport bodys new white-and-yellow buses on two routes today to gauge their popularity, and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis will seek the opinion of college students on issues such as drought and corruption in Maharashtra. Meanwhile, a book village will be set up near the neighbouring city of Pune, establishing it as the first-of-its-kind haven for bibliophiles. Mumbai doctors have said moving Egyptian Eman Ahmed to Abu Dhabi will be risky owing to her health problems. 1. Mumbais new white BEST buses to ply on Bandra-BKC and CST-Gateway routes from today The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) is all set to ply its newly-painted white-and-yellow AC and non-AC buses on two routes starting today, in order to gauge passenger feedback on the new colour scheme, said a BEST official. 2. Indias very own Hay-on-Wye: Book village to come up near Pune Bhilar, a village near Mahabaleshwar-Panchagani, has been well-known for its strawberry production for decades. From May 4, it will earn another sobriquet that of a book village making it the first of its kind in India. 3. Silver trader stabbed, robbed of cash, valuables worth 2.7 lakh in Mumbai A silver trader was stabbed and looted of valuables worth Rs2.7 lakh by two robbers in broad daylight at Andheri (West) on Wednesday. 4. Why moving Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed from Mumbai to Abu Dhabi is not a good idea Transporting Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed once the worlds heaviest to Abu Dhabi will only exacerbate her health problems, said bariatric surgeons from Mumbai on Thursday. 5. Youth power: 10,000 college students to join Maharashtras fight against corruption, drought Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis will hold a brainstorming session with 10,000 college students to discuss issues such as drought, corruption and cleanliness on May 1 celebrated as Maharashtra foundation day. A village in Maharashtra famous for its strawberries is soon going offer more - rare Marathi books and magazines. Hay-on-Wye, worlds largest second-hand book centre Hay-on-Wye, a village in Wales, UK, is the worlds largest second-hand book centre In 1972, villager Richard Booth was the first to set up a second-hand bookstore in an abandoned fire station. Several followed, transforming Hay-on-Wye into a paradise for bibliophiles Today, about 30 bookstores cater to the villages population of 1,500 people Several unmanned honesty bookshops and tiny outdoor shelves dot the landscape The village made headlines earlier this year, when a note written by author Enid Blyton was found in one of its bookstores The village also hosts the Hay Festival, one of the worlds top literary festivals, every year Former US President Bill Clinton participated in the festivities, describing the event as the Woodstock of the mind From May 4, Bhilar will become Indias first book village where tourists and locals can come and read books, magazines, newspapers stacked at 25 premises. Near the popular the British-era hill station of Mahabaleshwar, Bhilar already attracts a large number of tourists, who come to taste the locally produced strawberries. Bhilar, which has a population of about 10,000, and nearby areas produce around 100 tonnes of strawberry every year, earning them Rs 50 crore. And 90% of the villages population is involved in strawberry farming. State education minister Vinod Tawde said the Maharashtra government wanted to encash on Bhilars location in order to further promote tourism and the Marathi language. The idea of pustakanche gaon book village in Marathi came from Hey-on-Wye, a small place known as town of books in Wales, United Kingdom. The government brought 10,000 books and magazines, including issues of old popular Diwali Anks or special issues of Marathi magazine published during the festival of lights with the help of locals this week. Officials said some of the books are very rare and out of publication, including novels, reference books about Maharashtra and Marathi culture written by prominent authors. Along with books, most houses have also been painted with pictures of books to attract tourists. Two weeks ago the government appealed to artists from Mumbai and Pune through Swatva, an informal WhatsApp-based artist and art-lovers network, to help it paint the premises where books have been placed for public reading. Some of the books that will be on display. (HT) Responding to the appeal, 75 artists turned up at Bhilar and painted walls of houses, temples and other tourists destinations as a part of 3-day painting camp. They painted the walls with graphics and images of books to indicate readers about genres of books they might be interested in reading. According to Tawde, the artists responded to governments call voluntarily. Our village now looks fresh and new. The governments efforts have encouraged locals who wants to participate in the initiative, Vikas Bhilare, a strawberry grower, said. While most books are in Marathi, the government plans to add Hindi and English books in the collection at a later stage. The government has also asked locals and other literary institutions to conduct reading sessions and literary events at Bhilar to attract books lovers. To ensure that books are returned by tourists, they will have to pay a nominal deposit. We will accept nominal deposit from readers to ensures books are returned and maintained well by readers. Given that the region receives heavy rainfall during monsoon, we plan to make necessary arrangements to ensure books are maintained properly, Anand Katikar, who heads Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha, said. After becoming the education minister, Tawde had announced his plans to identify a place and turn it into a book village. It took 2 years for his ministry to bring his plans into action as identifying a village for the project consumed most of the time, the locals and readers, however, are satisfied. Its an interesting concept derived from the western world. Once the government inaugurates the book village, I plan to go there soon, Mangesh Joshi, a book lover from Pune who frequently visits Mahabaleshwar, said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Mumbai police recorded the statements of two Malad-based sisters, whose parents had filed a petition in the Bombay high court last week, accusing Sunil Kulkarni of entrapping their daughters through a cult. Kulkarni heads Shifu Sunkriti, a cult that stands accused of being a drug-and-sex ring that preys on young women. The crime branch, which is conducting an investigation, also recorded the statements of two other youngsters who knew Kulkarni. The police submitted its probe report in a sealed envelope in the high court on Tuesday and told court that they had arrested Kulkarni and are looking to arrest other accused. Meanwhile, the two girls had come to the court on Tuesday and their lawyer requested the court to allow them to intervene in the matter. However, the court directed them to first file the intervention application, saying that it will then decide whether to allow it or not. According to the police, they brought the girls into the crime branch office from the high court and recorded their statements. The police had initially approached the girls, but they did not come to office to record their statements. During investigation, the police found a Delhi link to the case as Kulkarni was based from there. A police team was sent to Delhi to investigate the case. The police team is still there to verify the allegations and investigate the people attached with Kulkarni. After Kulkarnis arrest, the police conducted a search at his residence and found sex clips in his mobile phone and pen drive. The Mumbai police have filed a case under sections 328 (causing hurt by means of poison with intent to commit an offence), 370 (trafficking), 292 (sale of obscene books act), 420 (cheating) Indian Penal Code and other sections of the Information Technology Act at the Malad police station. Read Mumbai cult leader, sex racket operator: Sunil Kulkarni remained in the shadows SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A special NIA court on Thursday charged alleged ISIS recruit Areeb Majeed for participating in the Fidayeed attacks against Iraq, Syria and Kurdi. Special judge VV Patil on Thursday said, "Between January and November 2014, Majeed and absconding accused Saheem Tanki and Aman Tandel conspired to commit terror acts in the name of Jihad in Iraq and Syria." The court also charged him for taking part in fidayeen attacks in Kurds. The special court rejected the NIA plea to adjourn the hearing to frame charges until a high court order. The agency has challenged the NIA order, that dropped charges of Majeed being a member of a banned organisation - Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The court said that the organisation was not banned when Majeed had joined it. The special NIA court had, in February, ordered charges to be framed against Majeed. The court has now charged him for terror acts, conspiracy and waging a war against an Asiatic power that is in alliance with the government of India. Majeed has, however, pleaded not guilty and sought for the trial. The court has adjourned the case for the next month. Majeed, along with three other youths from Kalyan, had left to join the ISIS in May 2014 on the pretext of going for a pilgrimage. The agency claimed that the four had later joined the organization and started working for it. Later in November 2014, Majeed was allegedly arrested when he returned to India. READ MORE NIA has planted evidence against Areeb Majeed, claims lawyer Kuwait arrests man accused of helping Indian IS recruit Areeb Majeed SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The arrest of a 24-year-old man for allegedly taking photographs of a female HR executive in the washroom of an IT company has once again proved how Buddy Cop, an initiative of the Pune Police, has helped curb crimes against working women. The local police have successfully used the system to crack three cases of harassment ever since it was launched a fortnight ago. Women can use the Buddy Cop system to easily contact police officers over the phone in the event of a crime or simply discuss safety-related issues with them. Through this, groups of 15-20 women employees can be connected to a police officer. This will aid them in panic situations, Pune police commissioner Rashmi Shukla had said while launching the initiative. In the most recent incident, the accused a housekeeping staffer was found taking photographs of a 26-year-old woman HR executive in the washroom of her office at the World Trade Centre, Kharadi, on Tuesday. Chandan Nagar police officers said the man, identified as Bihar native Rajkamal Rajbahaddur Yadav, was arrested immediately after the woman alerted them through the Buddy Cop system. Earlier, a customer service executive working at a call center was arrested on April 22 through this system for sending obscene messages to his colleague. Shukla said the Buddy Cop initiative was launched with the objective of making working women feel secure after the murder of Infosys techie Rasila Raju allegedly at the hands of a security guard. In my interactions with employees, I have heard female employees expressing concern about working on weekends and during odd hours, when there are fewer employees at their offices, the police commissioner added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A silver trader was stabbed and looted of valuables worth Rs2.7 lakh by two robbers in broad daylight at Andheri (West) on Wednesday. The robbers also took away a pistol that the trader was carrying with him for his own personal safety. According to the DN Nagar police, the incident took place around 5.30 pm near the Naman Heritage construction site on JP road. The complainant, Nilesh Rathod, 36, is a resident of Cheerabazaar. Rathod was on his way to a clients house when the two men accosted him. They stabbed him with a sharp knife and snatched his bag away. The bag contained silver worth Rs 2 lakh and Rs 70,000 cash. On noticing the pistol tucked in his pants, one of them pulled it out and fled with it. They then used the pistol to threaten a rickshaw driver, and fled in the rickshaw. The police have registered an FIR for assault and robbery under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They are sifting through CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the crime spot to track the accused. The trader is also being shown photographs of on-record criminals who are out on bail to figure out if one of them is behind the crime. The police they also plan to make a sketch of the criminals. As a counter to the Oppositions Sangharsh Yatra for farm loan waiver, the Maharashtra unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to undertake a 15-day-long Samvad Yatra a campaign to interact with farmers across the state. As part of the Sangharsh Yatra, legislators and leaders of the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and four other opposition parties are holding small meetings with farmers across the state. The third phase of the Sangharsh Yatra is currently in progress and will end on Thursday. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, while addressing the Maharashtra BJPs state executive meeting in Chinchwad in Pune on Thursday, said, During the samvad (dialogue) yatra, BJP leaders and workers will tell farmers about the efforts taken by the government. Around 5 lakh workers will reach 50 lakh families. The Opposition Congress-NCP, who were in power till recently, are responsible for the condition of famers. People dont trust them. They trust us. So we will reach out to them and apprise them of the steps taken by the government, the CM said. Commenting on the Sangharsh Yatra, Fadnavis said, The Opposition leaders are shameless. The Congress and NCP were in power for three terms, but they did not do anything for farmers. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A mega evacuation drill was simultaneously conducted in 108 schools across Gautam Budh Nagar district on Thursday. The drill simulated an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale. Across the district, 80,000 students and 6,500 teachers participated in the drill and students were evacuated from their classrooms successfully. The drill began with the sound of the hooter indicating the earthquake, following which students took shelter under desks and later ran to safer places. Teachers had to ensure that all children were evacuated safely and no one was left inside the building. Officials said the main objective was to spread awareness on the importance of evacuation drills in school. In any calamity, there is a higher mortality rate among children as they are not provided timely attention, they said. Apart from students and teachers, one volunteer of the disaster management cell in Noida and one personnel of the National Disaster Response Force was deployed in each of the 108 schools. During the drill, observers noted the level of preparedness and also listed shortcomings such as communication and timing. Observers from the Limca Book of Records were also present at the schools to see how the drill was being followed. In addition, a command and control centre was established at the emergency operations centre (101) of the disaster management cell in Noida. There were a number of team commanders, with each responsible for 10 teams of NDRF personnel and volunteers. The commander was responsible for coordinating with the team present in schools and report to the command and control centre. Officials signalled for the drill at 11am in all the schools and after a 10-minute lecture on dos and donts, students returned to their classes. At 11:20am, the hooter was rung, indicating the earthquake. Students immediately carried out the drop, cover and hold for 10 seconds move, after which they safely evacuated their classrooms without a stampede and assembled in a safe and open area. Here, head counts were conducted and the emergency team of the school looked for trapped students, if any. Students returned to their classes after announcement of normalcy. The safe and methodological evacuation took very little time. For example, at Apeejay School in Noida, around 4,200 students evacuated the school in barely four minutes. In Delhi Public School in Sector 28, 3,000 students took part in the drill. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The 55-year-old Corvallis school board candidate who was injured in Tuesday's crash on Highway 99 was released from the hospital Wednesday. Kenneth Real, of Adair Village, reportedly suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries when he collided with a semi truck Tuesday morning on Highway 99 near Thousand Oak Drive. Real, a self-employed service contractor and candidate for the Corvallis School Board, was extricated from the pickup and transported to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, according to the crash report. He was treated and released Wednesday, hospital officials said. According to a crash report, Real was driving a 2010 Toyota Tundra north on Highway 99 about one-fifth of a mile north of Thousand Oak Drive when he swerved into the southbound lane at around 11 a.m. Thursday and collided with a flatbed trailer of a southbound semi truck, driven by Anthony Tirri, 36, of Red Bluff, Calif. Real told deputies that he swerved because there was a bee inside the car, according to the crash report. Tirri was uninjured in the collision. Both the pickup and the semi truck were totaled in the crash, according to the report. Representatives with the Benton County Sheriffs Office said Wednesday that they did not anticipate any charges coming from the crash. Both drivers were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash, and both drivers were traveling at the posted speed limit of 55 mph. Neither driver was impaired at the time of the collision, according to the crash report. The Corvallis Fire Department, Adair Rural Fire & Rescue, Benton County Sheriffs Office and ODOT responded to the scene. A charming face with a cheerful nature. That is how 19-year-old Srishti Kaur was described by her school teachers in Noida, a day after she was crowned with Miss Teen Universe 2017. On Wednesday, Srishti was judged as the winner from among 25 contestants from across the world at the beauty pageant held at Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, a central American country . Srishti, who hails from Noida, had finished her secondary and higher secondary education from Lotus Valley International School. Although she pursued humanities in class 12, she made it clear then itself that modelling was her sole passion. After class 12, she moved to London, along with her parents, to pursue a career in modelling and took admission at the London School of Modelling. Her dreams came true on Wednesday when she was crowned Miss Teen Universe 2017. Her teachers could not feel more proud that Srishti had finally achieved what she had always desired. It was always clear from the beginning that she wanted to become a super model. Her manner of talking, gait and her pretty face were all clear indications and, today, we are pleased to hear the news of her achievement on an international stage, said Kavita Malik, economics teacher at Lotus Valley International School. Srishti stunned the world with her face, sophistication and stunning attire at the beauty pageant. However, beneath all that glitz and glamour is a simple and cheerful girl, her teachers claimed. The most striking aspect of her was not her face but her beautiful nature. She was polite and humble with teachers, staff and fellow mates. I used to meet her several times a day and she used to wish me in the same cheerful manner, Malik recalled. Other teachers also remember Srishti as a vivacious and chirpy girl who was too polite to say no to people. Srishti is an extremely sweet and caring person. She never said no to any task given to her. To win an international beauty pageant, a pretty face is not the only requisite; you also need to be intelligent, confident and impressive. Srishti had all the attributes, said Shanu Gupta, mathematics teacher at Lotus Valley International School. Teachers also said Srishti was a talented student who was ahead in extra-curricular activities. Whenever there was a dance and music show or competition among schools, we were sure that Srishti will be participating. She used to take part in all extra-curricular activities and always brought laurels to the school, Malik said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In an effort to generate employment opportunities and develop a sense of entrepreneurship among African students, a two-day workshop-cum-seminar was organised by Sharda University in association with All India Management Association and the ministry of external affairs on Thursday. The workshop, called Dont hunt for the Job - Be your own Boss, was focussed on teaching management skills to African students living in Greater Noida. Of the 1,500 African students enrolled in Sharda University in Knowledge Park, 200 students took part in the seminar. Africas development has been impressive in the past few years. Despite going through a long period of turmoil, the continent is now progressing in the fields of education, innovation and women empowerment. There is no dearth of resources in African nations and it is evident by the fact that Indian companies have invested $36 million over there, said Dr Raj Agarwal, director, All India Management Association. The African students were trained through the day by various entrepreneurs, management gurus and professors. On the second day of the workshop, they will be taken for a trip to incubation centres of the National Small Industries Corporation. The participating students will also share their ideas for entrepreneurship. The seminar comes in the wake of the racial attacks against Africans living in Greater Noida in the last week of February. Multiple incidents of attacks against Africans were reported after the death of a 17-year- old student Manish Khari, allegedly due to drug overdose. The ongoing seminar is one of the several initiatives taken by administration and educational institutes to create goodwill among local residents and African students. With this seminar, we have tried (for) a new beginning in the friendship between India and Africa. A total of 1,500 students study in our university and we are committed to help them shape a future, said Dr Ashok Pathak, dean, school of business studies, Sharda University. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday directed chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar, the Noida and Greater Noida authorities chief executive officer Amit Mohan Prasad to address homebuyers issues as soon as possible in Noida and Greater Noida. The direction came after a delegation of homebuyers from Greater Noida West and Jaypee Wish Town housing project in Noidas sector 128 met the chief minister in Lucknow on Thursday. The delegation demanded strict action against builders that have delayed housing projects up to seven years. Homebuyers have to deal with late delivery of flats, poor construction quality, deviation from sanctioned layout map, hefty maintenance charges, unreasonable charges and bouncers who misbehave with buyers. The CM asked officials to act against builders who are repeatedly troubling buyers. Thousands of homebuyers have been cheated at the hands of builders who have failed to deliver projects citing a dip in sales amid a slowdown in the realty sector. Noida MLA Pankaj Singh was present in the meeting that lasted for 30 minutes in the Shashtri Bhavan secretariat. The CM asked the chief secretary to ensure issues of all homebuyers are addressed as soon as possible. He asked the chief secretary to call all the builders to the government office and give them a deadline to give possession to homebuyers, said Abhishek Kumar, president of Noida Extension flat owners welfare association. After meeting the CM, the buyers had a brief meeting with UP industry minister Satish Mahana. The chief minister said that if buyers need, he will send the industry minister to Noida and Greater Noida to ensure homebuyers are not harassed by the builders, said Indrish Gupta, another buyer. Eight members from the Noida Extension flat owners welfare association and one from Jaypee Wish Town in sector 128 met the chief minister. The CM said Noida MLA Pankaj Singh will monitor the meetings between buyers and the builders. The MLA will inform the chief minister about the outcome of the meetings. The CM said if the issues are not solved by the builders then we can inform Pankaj Singh.Our Noida MLA will ensure the CM takes action against errant builders. I will keep taking homebuyers issues to right platforms until they get relief. The CM said this government is with every person facing any sort of trouble or facing harassment, said Pankaj Singh. The CM agreed to my suggestion of formation of a buyers grievance cell in Noida authority. The CM directed officials that builders should be given a time-bound delivery plan. Anyone fails that plan and dont give concrete deadline of delivery of flats should face strict legal action, said Mitroo Krishan, a retired Air Force official and a Jaypee Group buyer. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The University Grants Commission (UGC) issues fresh regulations for Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M.Phil/Ph.D Degrees in May 2016. This is for the second time since 2009 that the UGC has emphasised the need for maintaining minimum standards of research across the country. Unfortunately, these regulations are turning out to be a nightmare for the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), because the university administration has interpreted these minimum benchmarks as the maximum research standard. Consequently, it has effected an 83% seat cut in MPhil/PhD admissions for 2017-18, on the pretext of contested calculations that existing faculty members have many more students under their supervision than what the UGC regulations stipulate. The unique deprivation points system in JNU admissions, which attempts to provide a level playing field to the students from socially disadvantaged groups, has also been done away with for MPhil/PhD admissions. This controversial decision has led the JNU administration into a court battle against its own academic community. Research occupies a unique place in formal education. School education is about introducing students to a range of facts. Undergraduate and postgraduate education initiates students into understanding diverse perspectives about facts along with cultivating the ability to discern how diverse perspectives often constitute divergent sets of facts in society. While these levels of education hone the capacity to process the complexity of received thought, it is finally at the research stage that students start making original contributions to the archive of knowledge. Any nation that is committed to its intellectual self-reliance will thus be interested in nourishing a large pool of scholars and researchers capable of independent, critical thinking and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. However, according to the MHRDs All India Survey on Higher Education, 2016, less than 0.5% of the total students enrolled in higher education in India are at MPhil/PhD levels. Enrolment at under-graduate level is 79.3%, post-graduation is 11.3%, with the remaining students in diploma, certificate and PG diploma courses. The Report notes that the student enrolment from UG going higher to PG is thus decreasing steeply. This adverse trend can only be to the countrys detriment. In such a context, it is ironic that a research university like JNU that has traditionally had over 60% enrolments at MPhil/PhD level, about 25% students at post-graduation level and the rest at under-graduate and part-time course level, has been pushed into a corner, despite it winning accolades for consistently high research standards and innovative, interdisciplinary learning. The myopic interpretation of research standards, which assesses quality not in terms of research output but solely in terms of a rigid researcher-supervisor ratio, is also undermining the intended quantity and access to research for a new post-OBC-reservation generation of students from the socially deprived sections. Unlike many centrally funded universities, JNU is known for the diverse, all-India composition of its student body, which is facilitated by the deprivation point scheme. This gives additional weightage based on the intersectionalities of gender, regional and social deprivation in admissions. Consequently, the university is able to retain over 50% female students at research levels. JNU admission data from 2015-16 show that in MPhil/PhD admissions, 45% of all admitted SC students, 55% of ST students and 40% of OBC students are females. This new generation of female research scholars are bringing fresh insights into the process of knowledge creation. Moreover, over 40% research scholars admitted to JNU have family incomes of less than Rs.12000 per month, over 38% are from rural backgrounds and over 85% are from states and union territories other than its region of location in Delhi. The JNU administrations decision to set aside the unique deprivation points system for MPhil/PhD programmes would reverse this socio-economically progressive as well as the regionally and linguistically diverse character of JNU. Many universities are still in the process of seeking clarification from the UGC for synchronization of their research standards and procedures as per the new 2016 Regulations. By contrast, the haste that the JNU administration has shown in imposing these regulations, with the narrowest possible interpretation, reflects unacademic motivations. It is paradoxical that the university which has recently won the award for the best central university from the President of India, and ranked at number two in the NIRF 2017 ranking for universities, should have to curtail access to MPhil/PhD courses in order to improve its research standards. In doing so, the JNU administration is also undermining the sanctity of its own Jawaharlal Nehru University Act, 1966, which provides for institutional autonomy. This move has not only closed the doors of JNU to hundreds of aspiring research scholars, but also imperilled its progressive and socially diverse character. Those swearing by nationalism will end up doing a great disservice to the nation. Albeena Shakil is assistant professor, OP Jindal Global University On April 1, Pehlu Khan, a Muslim man in his 50s, was beaten up by cow vigilantes in Rajasthans Alwar district while transporting cows. Khan died two days later. But even in death there was no reprieve for Khan. Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria said that Khan had three cases of cow smuggling registered against him and was transporting cattle without valid documents, an allegation Khans family has vehemently denied. According to a report in HT on Wednesday, Khan was no smuggler and his son was let off in two cases. Kataria also accused the Congress of playing divisive politics as the cows were being transported by Muslims and those who caught them were Hindus. You (the Opposition) are always creating communal frenzy.... Cow smugglers are not Hindus or Muslims, but only criminals and law does not differentiate, alleged Gulab Chand Kataria in the Rajasthan assembly. A good thought but we have never heard gau rakshaks targeting any Hindu cattle trader, legal or illegal. Sadly, Katarias Khan, a cattle smuggler comment also found support from Alwar superintendent of police Rahul Prakash. The senior police officer claimed that the local police has filed cases against 14 people under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and are deeming them as cow smugglers. He added 15 men from Haryanas Mewat district -- including Pehlu Khan -- had no verified documents to prove that they were in the dairy business and not cow smugglers. Even if Kataria and Prakash are correct in their assessment that Pehlu Khan was a cattle smuggler, what is stopping them from adding a caveat to their comments that no citizen has any right to take law into own hands. This victimisation of the victim, a political strategy the BJP has near-perfected, helps them to keep control of the political narrative and also consolidate its support base at the cost of social peace and cohesion. The same strategy was adopted when a mob lynched a Muslim man, Mohammed Ikhlaq, in Dadri village in Uttar Pradesh in 2015, on the suspicion that of stealing and slaughtering a stolen cow calf. Even though the police failed to find any credible evidence of cow slaughter, the court had to intervene to stay the arrest of Akhlaqs family members. The BJPs victimise-the-victim game must stop. Vigilantism has no place in a democracy. @kumkumdasgupta SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Sector 45/46/49/50 light point where retired deputy registrar from Punjab and Haryana high court was killed on Tuesday after being hit by a truck is one of the 15 accident prone areas in the city. UT police have conducted a survey and identified 15 accident prone areas in the city where commuters need to drive with caution. Parmanand Sharma (65), resident of Pushpac Complex, Sector 49, was killed after being hit by a speeding truck at Sector 45/46/49/50 light point on Tuesday, while waiting for his signal to turn green. Parmanand was rushed to Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, where he was declared brought dead. The spot has witnessed eight fatal accidents in 2016. Police records reveal that in 2016, a total of 25 people lost their lives at accident-prone areas, whereas 57 were injured. In 2015, a total of 15 people were killed at these accident-prone areas. In the city, 144 people lost their lives in fatal accidents in 2016 and in 2015, 124 people lost lives and 292 were injured across the city. Police officials attribute overspeeding and the tendency of the residents to jump traffic lights at these stretches as the reasons for mishaps. It comes down to human negligence at these points which makes them killer points of the city, said police officials. Commuters on their way at Sector 48-49 light point. (HT Photo) We have been holding special drives to create awareness among residents and educate them about the traffic rules. The deployment of cops is done on the vulnerable points to check accidents, said Ravi Kumar, superintendent of police (SP), traffic. Harman Singh Sidhu, president Arrive Safe, an NGO working on road safety, said, There is a need to segregate the traffic to reduce the number of accidents on these stretches. The two-wheeler riders are most prone to being killed on these stretches, so traffic segregation should be done at the earliest. But what is lacking is the co-ordination among different departments of the administration to ensure road safety. Sources said that the police department has sent more than 100 proposals to the engineering department and municipal corporation regarding the changes needed to improve road infrastructure, but these proposals are yet to see the light of the day. What makes them killer stretches The UT police had listed these 15 points as black spots in the wake of the number of accidents that took place on these points in 2016. The study of UT police into the accidents have blamed overspeeding, human error and negligence for the road accidents. Human negligence comprises red light jumping, triple riding, driving without helmets and without seat belts that prove fatal. Even in the accident in which Parmanand was killed was when an overspeeding truck hit him and his head was crushed under the tyre of the truck. The police had even recommended installation of iron grilles at the road divider between housing board light point and Kala Gram light point. Accident-prone areas Kalagram light point Poultry Farm Chowk Sector 45/46/49/50 light point Airport light point Hallo Majra light point Sector 46/47/48/49 light point Housing Board light point Transport light point Shastri Nagar light point Railway light point Tribune Chowk Kalibari Light Point Sector 38/40 light point Sector 25/38 light point Sector 44/45/50/51 light point The UT police have sent more than 100 proposals to engineering dept and MC on the changes needed to improve road infrastructure, but to no avail. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The faculty of the evening studies department has revolted after it was asked to provide photocopies of the attendance registers of students by the university authorities. The Panjab University Teachers Association (PUTA) has also come out in support of the teachers. In a one-line order, Dean University Instructions (DUI) professor Dinesh Gupta had asked for photocopies of the attendance registers for the current semester. After going through the footage of April 11 violence on the campus, it was pointed out by the university authorities that a number of supporters of the Students for Society (SFS) were from the evening department of the varsity. SFS was the main mobiliser of the protest and most of the arrested students were from the party. However, the teachers of the department met and questioned as to why the department was singled out. When every month attendance record of students is submitted then why are they asking for photocopies of attendance registers, said professor Mohammed Khalid, who represents the evening department at PUTA executive. A mail saying that every teacher has to submit the photocopies as desired by vice-chancellor professor Arun Kumar Grover was sent to chairperson professor Gurpal Singh on April 25. The faculty then sent their resolution to PUTA for discussion in the executive committee meeting on Wednesday. I told PUTA that if the issue has not been resolved the evening department teachers will resign from PUTA membership, said professor Khalid. We have resolved that any information as desired by the authorities be asked with reason. The issue can be resolved through dialogue and if any specific information is required, it should be sought through the chairperson, said PUTA president professor Promila Pathak. Meanwhile, Students Organisation of India (SOI) has alleged that on Wednesday, evening studies department students were not being allowed to enter campus before 2pm. The SFS has also claimed that the attendance record of their supporters was being looked into to harass them. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Panjab Universitys financial crisis is now global news with even a Nobel Prize winner expressing surprise at the fund crunch that has seen violent protests on campus over the past fortnight. Prof Roger D Kornberg, who won a Nobel in Chemistry in 2006, visited Panjab University (PU) on Tuesday to give oration on Advances in Pharmaceutical Chemistry- The End of Disease? After the lecture, when informed of the financial crisis at the varsity, he turned to PU V-C prof Arum Kumar Grover and said, If they (the central government and the Punjab government) give you 10 times more than what you want they can get 100 times later. However, it doesnt happen in a year. It is for benefit of future of this country. He went on to add that countries like the USA and the UK invested heavily in science and so does China and this was a major reason that led to their superpower status. We have to accept that all science is implied. It is only a question of time before an application emerges, he said. I am surprised that PU is generating 50% of revenue for itself, universities like Stanford do not even generate 5-10% revenue, he went to add. Indians talented, need support On few Indians getting Nobel, he said, Indians have got Nobel prize. Those who have got it they have worked outside India. If India supports science in the way America or United Kingdom supports, then it would win more Nobel prizes. India has great or more talent. What is limiting is the supportAt the end of the day it doesnt matter whether science wins prize. It matters what they contribute to knowledge and purpose of their own society. The US has made investment and this is what makes makes it earn Nobel Prizes. The prize is, of course, an icon. It is important as it reminds general public of science. In the USA and in India, what we see is bad news. Nobel is positive news. It tells people what is main source of human progress from beginning of time and ever. Only luck needed to win Nobel On what does it take to get a Nobel prize, he said, Just luck. There are many deserving scientists. Some get, some dont. There is no formula. There is no magic. Many greatest scientists whom I know did not get Nobel while all Nobel laureates, whom I know, are not the greatest scientists. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Police on Thursday booked Khalsa College principal Mehal Singh besides the registrar and a head of department for abetment to suicide a day after a student was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his hostel room. Harpreet Singh, who hailed from Bathinda and was an eighth semester student in the agriculture department, was reportedly upset after being detained due to shortage of lectures. The principal, registrar Davinder Singh and agriculture department head Randeep Kaur Bal were booked on the complaint of the deceaseds father, Yadwinder Singh, said Amritsar deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Amarjit Singh Bajwa. Hundreds of students gathered outside the main gate of the college in the morning and raised slogans against the college management, demanding suspension and arrest of the three booked officials. Although the management and police made efforts to pacify them, the protest was on till the filing of this report in the evening. Students sitting on a dharna at Khalsa College on Thursday. (Gurpreet Singh/HT Photo) Yadwinder Singh, who was also sitting on a dharna during the day, said: My son was upset as his lectures were short due to ill health. He had requested the management many times to adopt leniency, but it was not considered. The police confirmed they found an application written to the principal. The victim reportedly requested relaxation as his lectures were short due to some health issues. He had also attached a medical certificate with it. He was still detained. Expressing grief over the suicide, Khalsa College Governing Council (KCGC), however, condemned the FIR against the principal and two other officials. An emergency meeting of the office-bearers expressed condolences to Harpreets family and stated he was a brilliant student and his loss of life was a great loss to the college. Students interacting with police officials at Khalsa College on Thursday. (Gurpreet Singh/HT Photo) The KCGC office-bearers, led by honorary secretary Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina, said the college officials had no personal enmity or grudge against the deceased and his name was on the list of the students whose percentage of lectures was less as per the rules and regulations of Guru Nanak Dev University. The FIR must be quashed immediately, said Chhina in a press release. The college staff and teachers threatened to go on strike if the illegal FIR was not cancelled. Principal Mehal Singh expressed his sympathy for Harpreets family, but said the management was not victimising any student as alleged by vested interests. The students whose lectures are short are detained as per law and his (Harpreet Singh) name was among 164 students, said the principal. The case has been registered under Sections 306 (abetment to suicide) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) at the Cantonment police station. President Pranab Mukherjee will be on a one-day visit to Punjab on May 2, and be the chief guest at the 8th convocation of Lovely Professional University (LPU), Chaheru, in Phagwara sub-division of Kapurthala district. Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore will preside over the function. It will be the Presidents second visit to the LPU. He had visited the varsity in 2013, also in connection with its convocation. A university release said the President will give gold medals to 38 students while 15,988 regular and distance learning students drawn from different parts of the country as well as 50 other countries will get degrees, diplomas and certificates. "Stop work" orders on two Millersburg subdivisions under construction have highlighted confusion over federal wetland maps, which many Oregon cities and counties rely on to issue building permits. The Oregon Department of State Lands contends the federal wetland maps are incomplete as they didnt assess agricultural areas. Subdivisions in Millersburg are being built on former farm land. One gets a false negative when you look at the map. The map didnt show anything, but the map didnt try to do anything on those types of lands, said Kirk Jarvie, southern region manager for DSLs aquatic resources management program. Jarvie added that developers appeared to have filled wetlands without permits in the Eagle Nest and Woods Estate subdivisions, which could bring nearly 100 homes to Millersburg. State cease-and-desist orders were issued on April 7 and April 11, after streets, sidewalks and other infrastructure had been installed. We do completely understand that they went to the city of Millersburg and the county to get their approvals, Jarvie said. The scenario is uncommon, but occasionally happens, he said. Oregon communities were supposed to develop local wetlands inventories, but that was more of a suggestion than a firm rule. Many never went through the process, likely because the studies are expensive and theres limited grant funding available, he added. Linn County and Millersburg dont have local wetland inventories. The city of Albany has local wetland maps. Millersburg City Manager Steve Hasson said that the maps mix-up is probably a statewide issue. Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist and state Rep. Andy Olson met with DSL on Wednesday morning to discuss solutions. The county is going to vigorously pursue a quick resolution of this matter, because we all have an interest in protecting the integrity of a building permit, Nyquist said. Olson and Nyquist said the "stop work" orders were unprecedented locally. Ive never seen anything like this, and I say that without casting stones, Nyquist said. He added that the county would likely err on the side of caution and send building permits that include infill to DSL for review. DSL has encouraged Millersburg to follow that steps in the near future. The city also is investigating whether it should create a local wetlands inventory, Hasson said. Statewide, DSL is undertaking a mapping upgrade that should be completed in early 2018. The agency is creating an interactive tool that would include federal wetlands maps, local wetlands inventories, and wetland soil maps by the National Resources Conservation Service. We believe it would be a big improvement. In the case of the Millersburg situation, if we had that (NRCS) mapping tool, it would have caught those two sites for further investigation, Jarvie said. DSL also is developing an agreement with the Eagle Nest and Woods Estate developers, which likely will feature wetland delineation work, essentially a map of wetlands on the property before construction started. The agreement also would require wetland mitigation and an assessment on whether the developers could face fines. Jarvie said construction could resume on the Millersburg subdivisions in three or four weeks. Olson said he was glad that DSL was trying to work with developers. Theyre wanting to do what they can to make this work for the city of Millersburg and those two subdivisions, Olson said. The Punjab unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday extended full support to the Punjab government on the issue of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal row with neighbouring Haryana, and other matters of public welfare. A delegation of the state BJP unit, led by its chief and Union minister Vijay Sampla, vice-president Harjit Grewal and secretary Vineet Joshi met chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh in Chandigarh on Thursday morning to discuss a wide range of issues, said a press release issued by the CM office. The CM thanked the BJP leaders for their support, saying it was important for political parties of all hues to come together in order to bring the states growth and development back on track. The BJP leaders raised issues such as setting up of a cancer hospital in Hoshiarpur, for which land had already been allocated and the central government had released the necessary funds. Acknowledging the importance of the project, the CM directed the health department to expedite work. The BJP delegation also suggested introduction of telemedicine services in the Talwara (Hoshiarpur) government hospital to overcome the shortfall of doctors in the region. Further, responding to the BJPs plea, Amarinder directed the department concerned to expedite civil works at the Adampur airport. The CM also promised to look into the BJP leaders suggestion to set up an auto industry in Hoshiarpur, reiterating his commitment to promote much-needed industrial development across the state. Punjab is set to lose 250 MBBS seats in the coming session as the fate of Gian Sagar Medical College at Banur near Patiala and Chintpurni Medical College near Pathankot hang in the balance. Punjab has 1,375 undergraduate medical seats in three government medical colleges and six private ones, all affiliated to the Faridkot-based Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, besides a private medical university in Bathinda (see box). Of them, Gian Sagar Medical College with 100 MBBS seats has been served a show-cause notice by the Punjab government for financial mismanagement. The deadline for it to reply to the notice ends on Monday. A final decision is expected after that. Punjab National Bank took symbolic possession of the college on Tuesday due to its failure of pay pending loan amounting to over Rs 45 crore. Chintpurni Medical College with 150 MBBS seats has been in trouble ever since its inception in 2011. Its first batch of students was shifted on the orders of the Punjab and Haryana high court in 2015. A similar petition of the second batch of students enrolled in 2014 is pending in the court. Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday told the state medical education department to put the college on closure notice. A senior official said the show-cause notice will be sent soon to Chintpurni Medical College for withdrawing government permissions, including the approval to run medical courses. STATUS CHECK Medical colleges in Punjab and MBBS seats Government Medical College, Patiala: 200 Government Medical College, Amritsar: 200 Guru Gobind Singh Government Medical College, Faridkot: 100 Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana: 100 Christian Medical College, Ludhiana: 75 Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences, Jalandhar: 150 Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research: 150 Gian Sagar Medical College, Banur: 100 Chintpurni Medical college, Pathankot: 150 Adesh University of Medical Sciences and Research, Bathinda: 150 Loss for students National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) trainer Dr Arvind Goyal said the shutting down of both colleges will be a huge loss for medical aspirants. But I dont blame the state government for their closure since they could not maintain the required infrastructure and academic standards to produce quality doctors over the years, he said Dr Goyal said it is better not to have colleges than leave medical students in the lurch due to mismanagement of colleges. Dr Neena Singhal, a Patiala-based parent of a medical aspirant seeking admission in the coming session, said, It is unfortunate to see the loss of so many medical seats in Punjab. These colleges should not have been allowed to run in the first place rather than de-recognising them later. To maintain the standard in medical education, the government should invest in new colleges besides monitoring colleges in private sector regularly, she said. The latest announcement of the Punjab government to start a medical college in Mohali with 100 seats is a welcome step, Dr Goyal added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ask anyone associated with the Baahubali franchise why they chose to work on the film, and their answer is likely to be because of SS Rajamouli. The 43-year-old director and his conviction in the story is what convinced producers Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni to back a $67 million (Rs 4,295,738,500) film. Bollywood producer Karan Johar called SS Rajamouli a global filmmaker in the league of James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. In an interview the ace director talks about what it takes to make a film like Baahubali. Back in 2012, when you started work on this film, what was the vision for Baahubali? The vision was not just in 2012 -- it kept building over a period of years, right from my childhood. I had this penchant for bigger films, larger-than-life characters. And as the interest for films started growing and (I watched) films like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments or Telugu films like Maya Bazaar, I always had an inclination for that. By the time we came to 2012, I had fantastic producers like Shobu and Prasad who backed my vision and we jumped into Baahubali. Everyone associated with this film says it was their trust in you that made them back this film. What was your conviction based on? I dont know if I had the perfect conviction. The drive comes from my characters. When my father (KV Vijayendra Prasad) narrated the stories of Sivagami and Bijjaladeva, Baahubali, Bhallaladeva, Devasena, they were all so full of life. When he narrated those characters to me, I had a certain electrifying experience inside me. And I want to deliver whatever experience I had when I first heard about those characters. I wanted that to be felt by the audience. The fear of not doing that keeps me driven. It is as if I have put the characters up on a mantle and they are judging me to see how I am going to present them to the audience. I cannot do injustice by those characters. That is what keeps me going. Were you willing to give five years to this project? Five years or six years or 10 years doesnt matter. Moulding those characters matters. I enjoy every moment of it. Prabhas plays a double role in the Baahubali franchise. What was the toughest part? The toughest part was to keep the focus of everyone on this project, on the story and on the work. We are not used to working on just one film. One year at the max. This is a new way of filmmaking, one we are not used to. Did you always mean for this to be a franchise and a pan-India one at that? I always thought of it as a pan-India film. I was confident of it. The tent-pole franchise bit was -- I cant find the right word -- it was what we looked forward to. We didnt know that it would be one or not. Do you think Baahubali will set a template for future films? I cannot speak for other films but basic human nature is [that] we follow by example. If someone makes an inroad into a new territory, a new market, people will follow their success. That way, I think we will be getting more pan-India films and not restricted to a region or a language. More and more films will come out on a bigger budget, on a larger-than-life scale. That is what I think will happen as a natural process, not that I am setting a standard or anything. SS Rajamouli is a Hyderabad-based Indian film director known for blockbusters such as Baahubali 2, Magadheera and Eega. He works primarily in the Telugu film industry. (ssrajamouli/Twitter) Were there any moments of doubt? I am always in self-doubt every moment of my filmmaking. I am supremely confident when the story is being written and everything is in our head. But the moment we get into the filmmaking, I start doubting myself. From the camera angle, to the re-recording, to getting the actors to do their shots. I always wonder whether I am going in the right direction. That is the reason if I take two steps forward, I take one step back. That is why the film takes longer to finish. I shoot a scene, edit it and then two days later I doubt whether or not it has turned out right. I reshoot a small part of it, go back to the first edit of it and do all sorts of things. More moviegoers in India seem to favour Hollywood hits over Bollywood these days. Why is that? Its an open market and there is nothing wrong with Hollywood franchises coming here and showcasing their films. See, they have heavy budgets. They have huge star casts and huge studios backing them, but if we make 10% of it in an Indian context, with our stories, our heroes and heroines and we can easily compete with them. Because predominantly, our audience is our audience. They might be watching English films or Hollywood films and getting used to it, but the blood doesnt change, the DNA doesnt change. It is the Indian DNA. We should look at it as -- they made inroads into a market and we use it. Rana Daggubati plays Bhallaladeva in Baahubali franchise. Did the budget of Baahubali weigh you down? Always. See, you oscillate between confidence and fear. You go to the edit room and see one scene which has come out fantastically and you feel the film will set records. By evening you look at the budget figures or something that hasnt worked out and ask yourself -- what if this doesnt work? Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop It was in 2013 when the folks at Oxford English Dictionary finally caved and declared selfie as the word of the year even though self portraits had been around for more than a decade by then. Unlike most other trends though, this one has not diminished with time; if anything, selfies are now an inseparable part of our lives. Be it grand Indian wedding selfies, T20 stadium selfies, or #iwokeuplikethis selfies, theres no social or personal event these days we dont commemorate with a picture of ourselves. And lets face it with phone cameras getting far more proficient in the art, the competition is fierce and standards high. So, if youre wondering why your latest Goa snap didnt gather the likes you hoped, perhaps its time to refine your selfie skills with these five simple tips. And no, they dont involve overpriced phones or expensive props. 1. Seek the light It goes without saying that lighting is THE most important element in a picture. Photographers (and past experience) will tell you that sunset and sunrise offer the best light for selfies- bright, flattering, but never harsh. For the same reason, natural daylight or warm yellow lamps work far well indoors than tube lights, especially if youre going for a #nomakeupselfie. However, what if your selfie opportunity arises during a low-lit concert or by the beach at night? The trick here is to face whatever little source of light you can find. In dire situations, ask a friend to shine the torch light from their phone onto your face. Luckily, newer smartphones like the Lava Z10 allow you to take winning selfies even in the lowest of lights, thanks to its Spotlight Flash feature. Pro-tip: Place a piece of white paper under your face to brighten up your eyes and face. 2. Angle it right This is a lesson to learn from all the models and actors on your timeline your camera angle can instantly transform your picture. Selfie queen Kim Kardashian, for example, favours a pose where she holds the camera way above her head with one hand, while also tilting her head at an angle. This is a time-tested trick to capture your best side, instead of a flat, frontal shot. In addition, selfie experts also recommend the chin down, camera up trick, to visibly lift inches off your face and highlight the cheekbones. For movie-star glamour, you can even fan yourself lightly from afar to create movement in your hair. Pro-tip: A friendly reminder here that low angles are an absolute no-nounless you are trying to be ironic. Late night photo shoot with @riccardotisci17 @ezrapetronio #GivenchyGang A post shared by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on Jul 22, 2015 at 12:21am PDT 3. Frame to win It may be a selfie, but who said it cant tell a story, too? The best selfies use elements from the background to add context and aesthetic details. After all, theres no point in posting a selfie from Koh Samui if your background is a large, grey blur. The trick is to offset your face and capture the best elements from your setting be it a gorgeous sunset or a string of twinkling fairy lights at a wedding. Additionally, it helps to remember a few other tricks from photography class as well, such as the rule of thirds which directs that your subject (in this case, your face) be positioned roughly one-third to the left or right, rather than the centre. Pro-tip: Watch out for photobombers or the errant lamp-post sticking out from behind your head like a staff. If I could, I would jump amidst you. So that you could take me home. Thank you all for coming and making my birthday so special. Love you! A post shared by Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) on Nov 2, 2016 at 7:02am PDT 4. More than a pretty face Nowhere is it deemed that a selfie must only contain your mugshot you can very well invite other parts of you to the party. From the full-length mirror selfie showing off your latest outfit and the widely popular foot selfie (preferably against a stunning ocean view), to post-manicure nailfies and flirty back selfies theres plenty to flaunt beyond your face. Plus, you can optimize the features of your phones rear camera in such cases. For instance, with its Big Pixel Sensor, the Lava Z10s 8MP rear camera offers richer and brighter photos against a range of indoor and outdoor backdrops. Pro-tip: By choosing interesting patterns, textures, and backdrops, you can sometimes tell a far more interesting story with your foot than your face. Dont forget to tag #fromwhereistand for these! Via @hellomissmay #fwisfeed A post shared by FROM WHERE I STAND (@fromwhereistand) on Jul 21, 2016 at 3:04pm PDT 5. Take it to the edit table If you dont like something on your body, you just crop it, Kardashian had once explained on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, succinctly stating a golden selfie rule. Crop out those unwanted wisps of hair or an unflattering sign-post, while also experimenting with frame dimensions and sizes. A close-cropped square frame is excellent for when youre showing off a new nose-pin, but a wider angle can better highlight the glamour of your New York holiday. Finally, a word on post-processing. With a world of filters and photo-editing apps at our disposal, its easy to go a bit crazy with the effects. However, indiscriminate use of filters can rob your picture of subtle contrasts and background details. Instead, tweak individual elements, such as the exposure, colour balance, or contrasts till you get the result you want. Many smartphones, such as the Lava Z10, offer beauty modes with options for face slimming, skin smoothening, or eye widening, which enhance specific features without affecting the whole image. Pro-tip: Think of a selfie as your personal canvas and make use of the host of photo-editing apps out there to improve your photos even further. Getting that hair right. A post shared by Nargis Fakhri (@nargisfakhri) on Aug 4, 2016 at 7:41am PDT The Lava Z10 is the latest entry-level Android-based smartphone launched in India. It comes with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing shooter, equipped with a Spotlight Flash feature for fabulous selfies under any kind of light. Find out more. (This content was created by HT Brand Studio and not the editorial team) Actor Rohan Mehra has refuted all rumours of a break up with girlfriend Kanchi Singh. The ex-Bigg Boss contestant, who is currently vacationing in Abu Dhabi, went on a cruise with Kanchi on Wednesday and posted pictures from their trip on Instagram. Rohan wore a stylish suit with a white jacket while Kanchi, in full sailor mode, wore a pinstriped jumpsuit with a choker made out of the same fabric. Keep calm and cruise on! Outfit- saroj_priya! Love u A post shared by Kanchi Singh (@kanchisingh09) on Apr 25, 2017 at 6:55am PDT Had a great time today on Regent Seven Seas Voyager! The most inclusive luxurious cruise A post shared by Kanchi Singh (@kanchisingh09) on Apr 25, 2017 at 6:40am PDT While both of them posted their own pictures on their personal handles, there are also pics of them together on their fan pages. A post shared by ROHAN MEHRA'S FAN PAGE (@rohanz_fann) on Apr 26, 2017 at 1:56am PDT Rohan and Kanchi met on the sets of their show Yeh Rishtaa Kya Kehlata Hai and started dating. There were rumours recently that the two have broken up but Rohan shut them down with an Instagram post earlier this week. A post shared by Rohan Mehra (@rohanmehraa) on Apr 22, 2017 at 6:10am PDT My relationship isnt for headlines! Why would I date someone I dont want to marry? Im lucky to have Kanchi in my life and I would love to someday take the next step with her. No plans for 3-4 years doesnt equal or mean no plans at all and no intent! Lets stop all these speculations and not complicate personal lives! Thank you Kanchi for understanding me all this while! he wrote in the post. Follow @htshowbiz for more German police have arrested an army officer suspected of planning an attack, the prosecutors office in the city of Frankfurt said on Thursday, giving no details on the potential target, motive or weapons he had planned to use. The 28-year-old lieutenant, a German citizen who serves with a German army brigade stationed in the French town of Illkirch, south of Strasbourg, was arrested on Wednesday in the Bavarian city of Offenbach, east of Frankfurt. Police in Germany, France, and Austria searched 16 properties on Wednesday in connection with the investigation over suspicions of preparing a severe attack, breaching gun laws and deceit, the prosecutors office said in a statement. They seized mobile phones, laptops and written documents. Before his arrest, the soldier, who was not named, had been detained in late January by Austrian authorities on suspicion of having hidden an illegal gun in a bathroom at Viennas main Schwechat airport. A subsequent investigation launched in February showed he had used a fake identity to register as a Syrian refugee in Giessen, near Frankfurt, in January 2016, the office said. He later moved to Bavaria, where he applied for asylum and moved into a shelter for migrants. He started receiving welfare support in January, the prosecutors office said. A massive explosion hit near the Damascus International Airport in the early hours of Thursday morning, a monitoring group said, without specifying the cause. The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Damascus International Airport lies about 25 kilometres southeast of Syrias capital. The Britain-based Observatory, which gathers information from sources across war-ravaged Syria, said it had confirmed the explosion had not taken place inside the airport itself. Its unclear what caused the explosion, but there fires raging at the site, Rahman told AFP. The dawn explosion has also been reported by other activists networks but the source was unclear. Activist-operated Dairy of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, says the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. A pro-government site Damascus Now says the explosion was near the citys Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road. More than 320,000 people have been killed since Syrias conflict erupted in 2011 with widespread anti-government protests. While Damascus has remained relatively insulated from the violence, fierce fighting has raged on the outskirts of the capital in recent months between rebel groups and government forces. SWEET HOME Judge Larry Blake Jr. and his staff at the Sweet Home Municipal Court hear about 130 cases every Thursday, members of the City Council were told Tuesday evening. For many years Municipal Court was held in the annex behind City Hall, but last fall, the Council approved renovating a community room at the Police Department into a new home for the court system. Total cost was about $45,000. Blake said the court deals with violations and misdemeanors that carry a maximum penalty of one year incarceration or a fine of $6,250. Criminal offenses include criminal assault, harassments, theft and criminal mischief, among others. He also oversees a truancy court for young people who have school attendance issues. Blake said that for many of the youth, truancy is part of a series of issues including mental health, poor academic performance, neglect and abuse. Sweet Home now has the ability to arraign inmates by video. Blake said that previously, police officers had to transport inmates from the Linn County Jail or other facilities for face-to-face arraignments. That took up a lot of the officers time and cost the city several thousand dollars per year. Blake said this also reduces the possibility of an escape or threat to officers during transfers. Blake is a judge in several other communities and said that having the court near or in the police department seems to have a calming effect on people appearing before him. Blake is a partner in the Larry Blake Jr. law firm based in Multnomah County. In addition to Sweet Home, he is the municipal court judge in Happy Valley, Philomath, Manzanita, Newberg and Monroe. His father was a college president and Blake is a part-time instructor at Mt. Hood Community College, teaching sociology and criminal law. In other business, the council: Approved contracts with the police union and non-represented public safety staff. Wage increases will be 3 percent, 2 percent and 1 percent. Over the three years of the contract, which is retroactive to July 2016, the top police officer salary will increase from $5,183 to $5,340 per month. Longevity and other incentives are not included in the base salary scales. City mechanic Tim Riley, a representative of the AFSCME union, said the contract took a while to complete, but we moved a long way to make Sweet Home more equitable with other towns. Riley said the Sweet Home Police Department has long had a problem of losing officers to higher-paying communities after they get a year or two training under their belts. Its important to retain good employees, Riley said. Theres a huge savings to retaining skilled people. Received a 30-year award as a Tree City USA from Lena Tucker of the Oregon Department of Forestry. Tucker said Sweet Home is one of 61 Tree Cities in Oregon and one of only 10 that have been so designated for at least 30 years. Proclaimed May as Mental Health Month. Dick Knowles outlined numerous mental health awareness programs that will be held county-wide for youth to adults, including two free movies and a Mental Health First Aid Training program. Approved the Police Departments participation in a new interagency narcotics group. It will include representatives from the Linn County Sheriffs Office; Albany, Lebanon and Sweet Home police departments; Oregon State Police; the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Linn County District Attorneys Office. Israel struck an arms supply hub operated by the Lebanese group Hezbollah near Damascus airport on Thursday, Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources said, targeting weapons sent from Iran via commercial and military cargo planes. Video carried on Lebanese TV and shared on social media showed the pre-dawn air strikes caused a fire around the airport east of the Syrian capital, suggesting fuel sources or weapons containing explosives were hit. Syrian state media said Israeli missiles hit a military position southwest of the airport but did not mention arms or fuel. It said Israeli aggression had caused explosions and some material losses, but did not expand on the damage. Israel does not usually comment on action it takes in Syria. But intelligence minister Israel Katz, speaking to Army Radio from the US, appeared to confirm involvement. The incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israels policy to act to prevent Irans smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah, he said. , had said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicates an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act, he added. An Israeli military spokeswoman said: We cant comment on such reports. Two senior rebel sources in the Damascus area, citing monitors in the eastern outskirts of the capital, said five strikes hit an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militias. Lebanons al-Manar television, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, said early indications were that the strikes hit warehouses and fuel tanks. It said there no casualties. Map of southern Syria and northern Israel, locating the attack near Damascus airport. (AFP) Russia and Iran back Assad Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is backed in his six-year-old civil war by Russia, Iran and regional Shia militias. These include Hezbollah, a close ally of Tehran and enemy of Israel, which describes the group as the biggest threat it faces on its borders. The two fought a month-long war in 2006. Syrian military defectors familiar with the airport said it plays a major role as a conduit for arms from Tehran. Alongside military planes, there are a number of commercial cargo aircraft that fly from Iran to resupply arms to Hezbollah and other groups. The flights go directly from Iran to Syria, passing through Iraqi airspace. As well as weapons, hundreds of Shia militia fighters from Iraq and Iran have been flown to Damascus international airport. Intelligence sources put their numbers at 10,000 to 20,000 and said they play a significant role in military campaigns launched by the Syrian army. Israel has largely kept out the war in Syria, but officials have consistently referred to two red lines that have prompted a military response in the past: any supply of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, and the establishment of launch sites for attacks on Israel from the Golan Heights region. Speaking in Moscow, where he was attending a security conference, Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman reiterated on Wednesday that Israel will not allow Iranian and Hezbollah forces to be amassed on the Golan Heights border. During his visit, Lieberman held talks with defence minister Sergei Shoigu and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, as part of efforts by Israel to coordinate with Moscow on actions in Syria and avoid the risk of confrontation. A statement from the defence ministry said Lieberman had expressed concern to the Russian ministers over Iranian activity in Syria and the Iranian use of Syrian soil as a base for arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon. A Western diplomat said the airstrikes sent a clear political message to Iran, effectively saying it could no longer use Iraqi and Syrian airspace to resupply proxies with impunity. Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Washington on Wednesday, intelligence minister Katz said he was seeking an understanding with the Trump administration that Iran not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria. Israeli officials estimate that Iran commands around 25,000 fighters in Syria, including members of its own Revolutionary Guard, Shia militants from Iraq and recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Israel has also said that Hezbollah has built up an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets, many of which would be capable of striking anywhere within Israels territory. The last conflict between the two left 1,300 people dead and uprooted more than a million Lebanese and 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis. A diary kept by a young John F Kennedy during his brief stint as a journalist after World War II in which he reflected on Hitler and the weakness of the United Nations sold for more than $700,000 on Wednesday. Boston-based RR Auction said the diary sold for $718,750, far exceeding the pre-sale estimate of $200,000. Joseph Alsop, a JFK collector from Beverly, outbid one other live and six telephone bidders in a packed house for the 61-page diary. Alsop, 71, plans to add it to his personal collection, auction officials said. The diary is mostly typed but includes 12 handwritten pages. It was written in 1945 when the 28-year-old Kennedy was a correspondent for Hearst newspapers and travelled through a devastated Europe. Executive vice-president Bobby Livingston said the auction was thrilling, with bidders from around the country vying for the personal observations of the man whod become president. My expectations were exceeded, but Im not surprised because its such a significant and historic manuscript, Livingston said. He said the diarys new owner is the nephew of brothers Joseph Alsop V and Stewart Alsop, two influential columnists during the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy gave the diary to Deirdre Henderson, a research assistant in his campaign office in the late 1950s who now lives in the Boston area. In the diary, Kennedy reflected on his time in a gutted Berlin and even saw Hitlers bunker, speculating that he was not killed. He wrote that Hitler had in him the stuff of which legends are made. But Henderson said in an interview last month that should not be misinterpreted as sympathy for the German dictator. He said that in reference to the mystery surrounding him and not the evil he represented, Henderson said. Kennedy expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the fledgling United Nations, questioning whether it will prove effective in the sense of its elaborate mechanics being frequently employed or vitally decisive in deterring war or peace. Henderson said she put the diary up for sale so it can be properly preserved, and shes confident the winning bidder will respect her wish. She said she wanted the sale to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Kennedys birth this year. Im more than pleased with the outcome, Henderson said. I think it was the right price at the right time. Kennedy, the 35th US president, served from January 1961 until he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. British police said on Thursday a man had been arrested and armed officers were seen on Whitehall, the street home to numerous government ministries in central London, with a BBC reporter saying two knives had been seen. Police said no one had been injured in the incident close to Prime Minister Theresa Mays official Downing Street residence in Westminster but gave no further details. May was not at Downing Street at the time of the incident, a spokesman said. A BBC Home Affairs correspondent said on Twitter that two knives had been seen on the ground including a large breadknife and added a photograph of an officer wearing a blue forensic suit photographing what appeared to be a knife on the sidewalk next to a rucksack. The incident comes just over a month after a British-born convert to Islam ploughed a car into pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge killing four people before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament. What is a mugwump? Many scurried to the dictionary or googled the word, but the latest missile by the one and only Boris Johnson better known in British politics as that lovable rogue sent many into a tizzy as election rhetoric scaled new highs or rather, lows. Johnson, who is foreign secretary in the Theresa May government, was on Wednesday night dangling the heady prospect of India lowering 150% tariff on Scotch in a post-Brexit trade deal, and hours later shot off the wordy mugwump missile at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Both interventions ensured that he was very much in the Tory election lineup, belying reports that Prime Minister Theresa May had sidelined him. Johnson, a leading Brexiteer, faces much criticism for allegedly lying about how much money the UK sends Brussels as an EU member. For the record, the origins of mugwump lie in 19th century American politics, referring to a person who chooses to remain independent or aloof from party politics. Many were left wondering how the epithet could be used for Corbyn, now twice elected leader of Labour. On Johnsons Scotch, it is a different matter that New Delhi has been watching with some amusement at top British ministers turning up to talk up prospects of a trade deal, even though no talks can even begin until Brexit is completed in 2019 if at all. But Johnson offered this at the lord mayors banquet: If we can crack markets like that, think what we can do when we have free trade deals with America, where they still have a ban on British haggis. Think of our potential whisky sales to India if only we could negotiate a cut in their duty of 150% on Scotch. Johnson called Corbyn that mutton-headed old mugwump in a piece for in The Sun on Thursday, and defended it in morning radio and television broadcasts. Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown remarked that a clowns place was in a circus, not in government. It also prompted a scathing response from Labour leader John Healy, who said the colourful language demeaned the position of foreign secretary, calling it was the kind of look at me name-calling you would expect in an Eton playground. Reducing high tariffs in India on Scotch whisky and automobiles is one of the top challenges of a future free trade agreement with India. The Scotch whisky industry has long been demanding lower tariffs to cater to high demand in India. Latest figures from the Scotch Whisky Association show that the volume of 70cl bottles exported to India between January and June 2016 jumped to 41 million from 29.1 million in the same period in 2015, with value by 28% to 43 million. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Seeking to reset ties with the US, visiting Pakistan finance minister Ishaq Dar stressed his countrys commitment to fighting terrorism at a meeting with the national security adviser HR McMaster at the White House. Dar, who met McMaster and others in the Trump administration on Wednesday as a special envoy of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, told the NSA Pakistans commitment to fight terrorism from its soil was manifested by the successful conclusion of the operation Zarb-e-Azb, which was now being followed by a nationwide combing operation Rad-ul-Fisad, the Pakistani embassy here said in a statement. As a result of these efforts, the incidence of terrorism in Pakistan had significantly reduced, it added. The Americans responded, according to the same statement, with understanding. The US side noted Pakistans sacrifices in war against terrorism and its support to strengthen Pakistans counter-terrorism capabilities. Though the embassy statement did not say Dar brought up the Kashmir issue with McMaster, he later told Pakistani reporters, according to another release from the mission, that he did. But no details were available of this part of their conversation. US-Pakistan ties have nosedived in recent years over Islamabads continued reluctance to act against all terrorist groups operating from its soil, and not just against those that do not serve its strategic needs and priorities. The Trump administration has been under pressure to adopt a tough line with Pakistan, and McMaster said during a recent visit to the region that Islamabad needs to go after terrorist groups less selectively than they have in the past. In the first official meeting between representatives of Washington and Islamabad, issues including India-Pakistan relations and Kashmir were discussed when Pakistan finance minister Ishaq Dar met US National Security Advisor HR McMaster at the White House on Tuesday. Dar hoped that these consultations would improve the relations between the two allies, reports the Dawn. These were very comprehensive talks. Security, defence, regional issues, Pakistan-India relations, Kashmir, Afghanistan, you name it, we discussed it. This is a composite discussion. All topics were discussed and very positively, said Dar. The finance minister acted as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs special envoy for the meeting, which was not centred on financial issues. Later, at a news briefing at the embassy the minister described the meeting as very positive talks between two willing partners, but conceded that there were some irritants and stalemates in the relationship. When asked if the US had asked him to stop the alleged cross-border movement of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan, Dar said, We will not allow our territory to be used against any country, but no other territory should be used against our territory either. Pakistan's broadcast media regulator on Thursday imposed a ban on the broadcast of interviews of terrorists hours after Geo News channel announced it would air an interview with former Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. The notification of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) was shared on the authority's Twitter account. Geo News had said it would air the interview with the former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, who recently surrendered to the military, on Thursday night. On Wednesday, the militarys media arm released what it described as a confessional video by Ehsan in which he was seen accusing the spy agencies of Afghanistan and India of backing the Taliban. According to the notification, a terrorist cannot be allowed to use any channel as a platform for an interview as it would undermine the efforts of the Pakistan Army soldiers, who have fought against militants and laid down their lives for the country. It further said that airing an interview of a known militant would be heart-wrenching and deeply disturbing for the colleagues, family, and friends who have lost their loved ones in acts of terrorism. The video of Ehsan released by the military's media department, the Inter-Services Public Relations, on Wednesday was heavily edited and analysts said the government is uncomfortable with any unedited interview. Many Pakistanis debated in cyberspace whether the airing of an interview with Ehsan would violate the National Action Plan, Pakistans programme to counter terrorism. Before he was elected president of the US, Donald Trump unveiled what he called a contract between him and the American voter that listed measures he pledged to fulfil within the first 100 days of his presidency. On Saturday, his young and colourful reign hits that significant one-hundred mark, and its time to assess how hes doing on his key promises. AMERICA FIRST Donald Trump's first proposed budget. (AP) 1) What he said: I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal. How its looking: All bark, no bite. Trump has often railed against and threatened to pull the US out of this trade deal, which ties together the economies of the US, Mexico and Canada. But after taking office, his stance has softened and, on Wednesday, he said he would not terminate the treaty. 2) What he said: I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How its looking: Achieved. On January 23, Trump signed an executive order formally pulling the US out of the trade pact and distancing America from its Asian allies. 3) What he said: I will direct my secretary of the treasury to label China a currency manipulator. How its looking: Screeching U-turn On the campaign trail, Trump regularly accused China of artificially lowering the value of its money to make its exports cheaper. But since taking office, hes begun to make nice, saying he doesnt think the country manipulates its currency. And they thought wed butt heads. (Reuters) 4) What he said: I will direct the secretary of commerce and US trade representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately. How its looking: A faint growl. On March 31, Trump signed an executive order in line with this promise but it was a relatively mild measure requiring a three-month study into the causes of US trade deficits and possible abuses that experts said was unlikely to throw up anything new. 5) What he said: I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal. How its looking: Barrelling on to a pyrrhic victory. Trump did indeed sign an order on March 28 undoing Obama-era climate change regulations, lifting curbs on fossil fuel production and bringing into question the US support for the Paris Climate Treaty. Environmentalists are worried. 6) What he said: I will lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward. How its looking: Oozing ahead. Just four days after taking office, Trump signed executive orders to clear the way for the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, cheering the oil industry and angering environmentalists. A protest against Trump's executive order fast-tracking the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in Los Angeles. (Reuters) BROADER LEGISLATIVE MEASURES 1. End The Offshoring Act. What he said: Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the US tax-free. How its looking: Thunder and lightning, but no rain. Trump has repeatedly threatened to fine companies he believes are laying off American workers to shift production to countries like India, and in February publicly met the heads of five firms that were doing so to get their inputs, but he has not yet made such a move. 2. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. What he said: Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts. How its looking: Waterloo. Trump and the Republican Party suffered a stunning defeat in March when they were forced to pull their repeal of the Affordable Care Act from the House floor. Obamacare endures, for now. 3. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully . What he said: Funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first. How its looking: Stuck in no mans-land. On Tuesday, in order to avoid a government shutdown, Trump backed away from a demand that Congress fund his planned border wall with Mexico. It isnt clear where the money for such a wall will come from or whether it will at all. What is clear is that Mexico is not going to pay for it, as it has repeatedly, vehemently and often heatedly insisted. The administration has widened the bracket of those who are priorities to be deported. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Raj Bagri, who died here on Wednesday, was the longest serving chairman in the history of the London Metal Exchange (LME) and was known for contributing to several social causes, including those of the Indian community in the United Kingdom. Born in Kolkata on August 24, 1930, Bagri was described as a self-made man with several achievements in the world of business, particularly in metals. He is particularly known for modernising the LME. He was a pillar of the Indian community. He came to this country at a young age and gained much respect. It is a big loss to us. He had a quiet, understated personality and contributed much to the community, industrialist Swraj Paul told Hindustan Times on Thursday. CB Patel, community leader and publisher of Gujarat Samachar, said: He was a totally self-made person, a humble man, but always strove to cherish and maintain values. Many individuals and institutions have benefited from his support and advice. Bagris handling of the copper scandal in 1996 as LME chairman was exemplary, Patel added. In September 2000, Bagri led LMEs demutualisation, which changed its foundations by transferring the market from a cooperative style structure to a private shareholder-owned exchange. This, in turn, accelerated the markets modernisation, ensured its continued growth and retained its dominant position as the world leading metals exchange. His work and life inspired many. Karan Bilimoria, member of House of Lords and founder of Cobra beer, told Hindustan Times, From the time I started my business as a young entrepreneur, he was an inspiration to me as an Indian who had become such a hugely successful businessman, shattering all the glass ceilings and reaching the very top as the first member of the ethnic minority communities to head the London Metal Exchange amongst his many achievements. I had the privilege of working alongside him in the House of Lords when I joined 10 years ago. There is no taking away the sadness at this time, however his inspiration will live on forever and his legacy will be continued by his very impressive son, Apurv Bagri who is a chip off the old block. Lord Bagri was always a thorough gentleman, mild in manner and always kind and generous. Bagris fascination with the world of metals was evident when, regaining consciousness from a medical condition after a protracted period earlier this month, his first question to his son Apurv was: "Whats the price of copper?" He was awarded a royal honour (CBE) in 1995 and made a peer in the House of Lords the next year. He gave up his seat in the House in 2010 when rules changed and he preferred to retain his non-domicile status for tax purposes. Bagri also oversaw the introduction of an electronic trading platform at the LME, launching LMEselect in February 2001, based on his belief that the exchange could not let technology move ahead without it. Bagri lost his father when he was three, and his mother sent him to work at 15 as a filing clerk for a metals firm in Kolkata in order to understand the value of money this was when his love affair with metals began. The young Bagri, apprenticed with the Binani familys Metal Distributors company, learned quickly and became passionate about the metals world. He eventually convinced his bosses to send him to Malaysia to pitch to a major tin producer in Penang. He later moved to London, eventually moving there permanently with his wife Usha after persuading his bosses to allow him to set up a trading firm, Metal Distributors (UK). Unable to become a member of the LME due to Indian foreign exchange controls at the time, Bagri continued to run Metal Distributors (UK) but also set up Metdist, which finally joined the LME a decade later after he worked assiduously to persuade the LME to open its door to foreign membership. He created the Bagri Foundation, a UK registered charity, in 1990, providing philanthropic assistance through education, relief work, the advancement of health and the preservation of Asias cultural heritage. Bagri leaves behind wife Usha and son Apurv and daughter Amita, who lives in India. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Worried by the prospect of being scored poorly on his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump took to his favourite megaphone to prepare the grounds for it last week: its a ridiculous standard, he fumed on Twitter, adding that no matter how much he accomplished its been quite a lot, he threw in helpfully he will be killed by the media. The next day, when he felt somewhat reassured perhaps, the president announced a big rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the day he completes 100 days in office, which also happens to be the night of the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association, which Trump is skipping, over a fraught relationship with the media. Very soon, the administration was queuing up as many accomplishments as it could to prove not only that Trump had done well, but that he had outperformed his predecessors 30 executive orders, which was the most by any president in decades, said a White House note titled, President Trumps 100 days of historic achievements. And, despite historic Democrat obstructionism, the note said, Trump worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Harry S Truman 28 to the latters 55. Numbers, like quarterly returns and TRP ratings, matter to the real estate tycoon turned reality TV star-turned politician, but these numbers concealed more than they showed. While Trump struck down presumably debilitating government regulations, froze government hirings, rolled back his predecessors climate-related restrictions and ordered a review of H-1B temporary visa programme with these orders, as he had promised as a candidate, he also stumbled or failed to come good on some others. Chiefly, an executive order he signed on January 27 temporarily barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US and blocking all refugees. As egregious as it was in letter and spirit, it was a campaign promise the administration blew up through amateurish handling, leading to chaos at airports around the United States and abroad, international outrage and court injunctions and stay orders. It was dead very soon. And its replacement, a narrower order targeting six, and not seven, nations, and sparing their nationals on Green Card in the US, also ran into trouble with courts, eliciting another round of derogatory remarks from the president and his aides, including his attorney-general Jeff Sessions. The White House memo extolling the presidents legislative achievements did not, because it could not in that existing format, capture the spectacular failure of the president, and the Republican party that now controlled both chambers of Congress, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas legacy healthcare legislation that Republicans had railed and ran against since its passage in 2011. Still smarting from the setback, the Trump administration has tried to resurrect the effort in recent days with mixed prospects of passage, possibly to allow the president to tell the Pennsylvania rally on Saturday he had tried or delivered. But what will be tell them about China, a country he had raged against as a candidate, accusing it of raping America among other things? He had promised to designate it a currency manipulator and his rhetoric on the issue had triggered fears of a trade war between the worlds two largest economies. Trump appeared to have changed his mind since assuming office, and hosting Chinese president Xi Jinping and his wife at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, which he has taken to calling the winter White House, over the weekend recently. Trump said he liked Xi, adding he hoped to work with him. And, in fact, the most unifying and defining moment of the Trump administration came during Trumps dinner with Xi actually over the most beautiful chocolate cake when he informed the Chinese leader cruise missiles were hitting a Syrian airfield that was used by the countrys air force to drop chemical weapons on a rebel-controlled part of the country. The air raid struck a chord with the country, and was welcomed even by his fiercest critics on the left who had felt frustrated by President Obamas failure to follow through on his threat of US retaliation to Syrias use of chemical weapons. 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 the morning after. That was high praise and a welcome break from the relentless criticism Trump and his administration had complained of having faced from the time they took charge, specially, and among other flashpoints, about alleged links of his campaign aides to Russia. Michael Flynn, Trumps first national security adviser, was caught lying to the White House about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the US, and was fired after days of high drama that continue to this day. Trumps attorney-general Sessions found himself in similar trouble for concealing his contacts with the Russian envoy during his confirmation hearing. Trump saved his job with a diversionary Tweet alleging he was surveilled by Obama. That charge was without merit and has continued to dog Trump and the White House with unforeseen side effects wild conspiracy theories, reports of coverups, collusion by congressional leaders and recusals. In short, a mess. A mess that has dovetailed into questions about the administrations personnel issues stretching from failure to fill key administration positions to turmoil in the White House as competing factions jostle for supremacy. Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate businessman like his father-in-law, is emerging as the presidents go-to-guy for almost everything from West Asia peace to Xis visit to upgrading the creaky infrastructure of the federal government. Fortunes of power centres not led by members of the Trump family, such as those aligned with chief strategist Steve Bannon, a uniquely divisive and inspirational figure in this team, and chief of staff Reince Priebus, soar or sink by the day. But, remember, this is just about 100 days. In a remote corner of the Indonesian archipelago, a modest synagogue stands in a tiny Jewish community that has found acceptance despite rising intolerance in the worlds most populous Muslim-majority country. The red-roofed building on Sulawesi island is the only synagogue in the nation of 255 million people. Here, unlike other parts of the country, the Jewish community feel safe to practice their faith openly. We can wear the kippah (Jewish skullcap) in the mall or anywhere we want, its not a problem, Yobby Hattie Ensel, a Jewish leader from the nearby city of Manado, told AFP. In Tondano, the Shaar Hasyamayim synagogue sits close to several churches and residents of different religions live, work and worship alongside each other without incident. A member of Indonesia's tiny Jewish community sweeps the steps to the synagogue ahead of a prayer service in Tondano, North Sulawesi. (AFP) Indonesia has long been praised for its moderate, inclusive brand of Islam and this enclave of diversity is a testament to that. But across the archipelago, intolerance has risen in recent years as more conservative forms of Islam have become popular, driven by increasingly vocal hardline groups. Tensions in the Middle East, particularly between Israel and the Palestinians, spill over here and deepen religious divides. Outside the safe haven on Sulawesi, those who refuse to hide their faith have faced hostility. Yaakov Baruch, an Orthodox Jew who runs the Tondano synagogue, revealed how he was threatened with death in a busy Jakarta mall as he walked with his pregnant wife. From a few floors up, they shouted at me crazy Jew, he told AFP, adding the group of men then ran towards him and demanded he remove his skullcap. They said to me: We dont want you to use your kippah in this country. If you continue to use it, well kill you. In 2013, the countrys only other synagogue in the city of Surabaya was demolished. It had been the site of anti-Israel protests for years, and was sealed off by hardliners in 2009 and left to decay. Indonesian rabbi Yaakov Baruch in prayer at a synagogue in Tondano, North Sulawesi. (AFP) Secret worship Indonesian rabbi Benjamin Verbrugge concedes any flare-up of tensions in the Middle East provokes hostility towards the local faithful. Problems between Israelis and Palestinians are a liability for me when someone is stabbed there, it makes me uneasy here, he said. Faced with such open hostility, the Jews in the capital worship in secret. Last month, Verbrugge, head of the United Indonesian Jewish Community (UIJC), held celebrations for the festival of Purim, traditionally one of the most joyous days in Judaisms calendar, hidden in a small hotel room with a handful of fellow worshippers. The UIJC estimate there are around 200 practising the faith in the country, believed to be the descendants of traders from Europe and Iraq who came to Asia to trade. The organisation was set up to bring the nations Jews together. This photograph shows rabbi Benjamin Meijer Verbrugge reading from a scroll as he conducts a prayer for the United Indonesian Jewish Community during a modest Purim celebration in Jakarta. The United Indonesian Jewish Community estimate there are around 200 practising the faith in the country, believed to be the descendants of traders from Europe and Iraq who came to Asia to trade. (AFP) The Jewish population in Indonesia is believed to have peaked at around 3,000 in the years before World War II, according to Rotem Kowner, a professor from the University of Haifa in Israel. The fact that those remaining are scattered across the archipelago means Verbrugge has to defy rules that forbid Jews from using electrical gadgets on the Sabbath to lead group prayers online via the LINE messaging app. The small community also faces more practical challenges, such as the fact kosher food is not widely available in Indonesia, said Phinechas, a local convert to Judaism. I try my best to be a good Jew but I cant manage it 100 percent, he added. A sign for a motorcycle taxi pool named "Izrael" with the Star of David in Tondano, North Sulawesi. (AFP) Increasing intolerance Faith-based tension has been mounting in Indonesia, undermining its pluralist reputation. Christian churches and mosques where Muslim minorities pray have been closed due to pressure from hardliners. Shias and Ahmadis regarded as heretics by some Sunnis have been forced from their homes in mob attacks and on occasion even killed. Successive governments have been criticised for failing to tackle the radicals for fear of being accused of attacking Islam. Due to their small number and the fact most live in the shadows, the nations Jews have not been a major focus of radical Islamic anger in Indonesia and have largely escaped the serious attacks directed at other minorities. But having a low profile also brings problems. According to the law, freedom of worship is guaranteed for all religions, including Judaism, but in practice Jews cannot be honest about their faith. Authorities allow Indonesians to put six different religions on their all-important ID cards Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. ID cards are vital for accessing government services, and for doing things such as registering marriages and births, meaning most Jews lie and put Christianity on the documents. The religious affairs ministry said in 2013 people who do not follow one of the six authorised faiths can choose to put nothing on their cards, but Indonesian Jews AFP interviewed had all put Christian to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Despite the challenges, Indonesian Jews nevertheless insist they are an integral part of the nation. Baruch said: (The) Jewish community of Indonesia, we were in this country far before the country was born. It means we are part of this country as well. Tony Blair, the most successful leader in Labour history who led the party to three successive election wins, sees Theresa May returning as the prime minister after the June 8 election and refuses to endorse party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Blair, who has been hinting at a return to frontline politics, launched a mission in February to reverse last Junes referendum vote to leave the European Union. According to him, the vote was based on imperfect knowledge and he has called on people to rise up against Brexit. Speaking to Sky News on Thursday about the forthcoming election prompted by Bexit, Blair refused to say if he thought Corbyn would be the best prime minister, and argued that people should vote Labour to make sure May has a strong opposition. A known Corbyn critic, he said: If the polls are right, we know whos going to be prime minister on June 9. Thats not the issue. Itll be Theresa May if the polls are right. I think the real issue is blank cheque. Its what mandate does she claim, on Brexit and on the health service and all the other things. I think the most powerful argument for Labour in this election, because of the way the polls are and the way the opinion polls are and the leadership...is to say its important for our democracy that the government is held to account and needs a strong opposition. A spokesman for Corbyn said: On June 9, we will either have a Labour government or a Tory one. If you want Brexit to be used to turn Britain into a low-wage tax haven, vote Tory. If you want a Britain for the many, not the few after Brexit, vote Labour. The choice is clear. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two US service members were killed during an operation against Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan overnight on Wednesday, US officials said on Thursday, as President Donald Trumps administration looks to craft a strategy in the war-torn country. US forces in Afghanistan said in a statement that a third US service member was wounded in the raid, carried out with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) against the militants. A spokesman for the US military in Afghanistan, Captain William Salvin, said the deaths occurred in the same valley where the United States had dropped a massive bomb on a complex of fortified tunnel being used by the Islamic State. Nicknamed the mother of all bombs, the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb was dropped from an American MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan. The incident comes just days after US defense secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan and US troops are battling suspected Islamic State militants in Nangarhar province. In this raid, Afghan commandos and coalition forces killed some 40 Islamic State fighters during a joint operation, said Attahullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Nangarhar governor. Khogyani said the raid was carried out against an Islamic State hideout in Achin district and some 13 militants were taken alive. Another US soldier was killed earlier in April while carrying out operations against Islamic State in the same province. The Islamic States offshoot in Afghanistan, known as the Sunni jihadist groups so-called Khorasan province, is suspected of carrying out several attacks on minority Shiite Muslim targets. US officials say intelligence suggests Islamic State is based overwhelmingly in Nangarhar and neighbouring Kunar province. Estimates of its strength in Afghanistan vary. US officials have said they believe the movement has only 700 fighters but Afghan officials estimate it has about 1,500. A newly formed organisation in Britain comprising individuals with origins in the Kashmir Valley met Pakistan high commissioner Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri on Wednesday to oppose Islamabads plan to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as its fifth province. Kashmir Voice International (KVI), formed in January to highlight the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir to the Western world, told the envoy that Gilgit-Baltistan is an integral part of Jammu and Kashmir. Any move by Pakistan to integrate it will be a negation of the countrys stand at international level on the Kashmir issue, KVI told Chaudhri. It said that advocating UN resolution for the whole state and choosing to integrate a part of it could not go together. According to KVI chairman MA Raina, Pakistans plan is likely to encourage India to change the status of Ladakh to that of a union territory. He referred to a recent conference of thousands of people in Ladakh in this connection. Raina said people from both sides of the Line of Control will resist the plan. The Pakistan government should not take any initiative that can weaken the Kashmir issue at the international level, a KVI statement said. According to KVI secretary Javid Kakroo, the Kashmiri diaspora in Britain with origins in the valley number nearly 10,000. Another section of the Kashmiri diaspora here hails from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A ball gown worn by Mary Boykin Chesnut has been rescued from the ravages of time, thanks to a collaboration of historic groups in Columbia, S.C., where Chesnut lived during the Civil War. In 1981, the Historic Columbia Foundation received a donation from Catherine Glover Herbert, a descendant of Mary Boykin Chesnut. The items comprised a ball gown, four waistcoats, a parasol, and a framed poem. The 1840s ball gown had belonged to the acclaimed diarist, and one of the vests was worn by her husband, James Boykin Chesnut, at their wedding. When Kathy Armato, the Activities Chair of the South Carolina chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames, learned of the items, she was so intrigued she got involved in raising funds to protect the garments. They had been sitting in a box. Were more about colonial times, but Mary Boykin Chesnut is such an outstanding woman, she said. Armatos group came up with $1,500 for conserving the clothing. The delicate matter of stabilizing the silk in the fabric, which weakens over time, involved a technique that originated in the 1970s for repairing damaged paintings. A heat-activated film is applied that serves as a patch over torn or weakened seams. The reinforcements strengthen the fabric, enough to permit them to be displayed on a mannequin. The conservation can also be reversed by removing the film. Reversibility is a principle of conservation that allows for any item to be improved upon, should new and better techniques emerge. Another $3,000$5,000 will be needed to prepare a display of the garments for the 200th anniversary in 2018 of the Hampton-Preston house, the historic home of South Carolina legislator Wade Hampton. The home is close to the cottage in Columbia where the Chesnuts lived. That house is now a bed-and-breakfast. New York City women tried to erase the memory of the Draft Riots by helping raise a U.S. Colored Troops regiment. On March 5, 1864, a vast crowd of 100,000 New Yorkers of every shade of color, and every phase of social and political life thronged into the citys principal outdoor rallying point, Union Square, to wave flags and handkerchiefs and cheer themselves hoarse for a newly organized army regiment. This was no ordinary outpouring of appreciative civilians. But then, this was no ordinary regiment. Less than a year after the New York Draft Riots, the citys philanthropic liberal Republicans attempted to atone by financing, recruiting, training, outfitting and now robustly celebrating the brand-new 20th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops the first all-black unit raised in the Empire State. That day, the police superintendent led a hundred city patrolmen at the head of the parade, followed by members of the regimental sponsors, the Union League Club and hundreds of Colored Friends of the Recruits marching with hands joined. The Governors Island Band provided musical accompaniment, and the crowd offered cheers upon cheers, according to one rather sanctimonious account, given in a manner which showed how truly the brave spirit of the once-despised colored man was appreciated by the intelligent citizens of New-York. The ceremony got under way at 1 p.m. on a specially built, flag-festooned wooden platform outside the club building, when a noted educator offered what was intended to be an inspiring lecture. Then, most dramatically, the club unfurled and presented the regiment with an elaborately embroidered regimental flag (designed by Washington Crossing the Delaware artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, no less). Emblazoned with the words God and Liberty, the banner was adorned with a conquering eagle and broken yokeemblems intended to speak as plainly as symbols can of the might of Freedom and the overthrow of Slavery. Accepting it in behalf of his men, the regimental commander acknowledged that the banner symbolizes our country and declared: It is this that makes death glorious beneath its starry folds. Echoing these sentiments, the principal orator that day predicted that the colors would form a spell of such power as to bind up every generous heart with one firm, fierce resolve that these flags shall not be surrenderedbut shall go marching on, and marching on, and still marching on to triumph, and final victory! The flag itself has long disappeared, but the ornate words that its female donors spoke and published that day in presenting it to the 20th survive in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, in the form of a period handbill published especially for the regiments dazzling send-off. Trained on Rikers Island, then transported by boat across the East River hours earlier for the outdoor ceremonyand even boasting their own African-American chaplain, the Congregationalist minister George W. LeVere (a rarity in the USCT)the thousand soldiers of the 20th paraded that day from the riverfront to Union Square. Along the way, they enjoyed a Manhattan welcome every bit as enthusiastic and colorful as the flag-suffused parade given in honor of the members of the all-white 7th Regiment when they headed off for the seat of war back in the spring of 1861. George Templeton Strong, a Union League founder who attended both ceremonies, proudly noted of the latter, Our labors of a year ago have borne fruit, adding that he thought the phenomenon Ethiopia marching down Broadway, armed, drilled, truculent, and elatedwas as memorable as the departure of the first white regiments for the front three years earlier. The regiment was black but comely, he added in a somewhat unfortunate afterthought, and marched wellnot below the average of new regiments. Both sidewalks and all the windows were full of applauding spectators. There was hearty cheering and clapping and waving of handkerchiefs, and I neither heard nor heard of any expression of sound, constitutional, conservative disapproval. The 20th had been the brainchild of the Mothers, Wives, and Sisters of the Union League, if they did say so themselveswhich they proudly did, right in the handbill prepared for the flag-presentation ceremony: Presentation Address of the Ladies of the City of New York to the Officers and Men of the 20th United States Colored Troops. There was no doubting the ladies charitable intentions, yet there was something excruciatingly patronizing about the published reminder (floridly composed by writer Henry T. Tuckerman) that it was their own liberality and intelligent patriotism that had made it possible to fashion these soldiers into a body of National Troops for the defense of the Union, earnestly sympathizing in the great cause of American free nationality. Organizing a colored regiment in New York had not been an easy task. Although Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation had specifically urged African-American recruitment, prompting other Northern governors to respond enthusiastically by raising regiments, New Yorks Democratic chief executive, Horatio Seymour, fearful of alienating his downstate, predominantly Irish-American supporters, did little to encourage it herenot even when proponents pointed out that every African American recruited would mean one less white conscript drafted. Significantly, Lincolns most recent call for more men had made no reference to race. Finally, local white philanthropists organized their own New York Association for Colored Volunteers in November. After its first meeting in November the committee made it clear to Seymour that justice and patriotism alike require that all men who are subject to a draft, shall have equal privileges in volunteering, and warned the governor to place no impediments in the way of colored men who are willing to comply. Seymour backed down, or at least he deferred to the War Department, but the challenge of recruiting in New York remained formidable. At first, no Manhattan landlord would rent an office for such a purpose as a depot for recruiting negroes. Finally, the committee found space to share in a building on Broadway and Fourth Street, in rooms already occupied as a relief center for black Draft Riot victims. Although offered less pay than white recruits, African Americans were still eligible for a handsome $75 federal bounty just for signing up. Unfortunately, some were reportedly swindled by bounty brokers; others were drugged and virtually shanghaied into service. Worse, when the regiment shipped out to Rikers Island for training, the men were crammed into tents without floors or warming, causing great suffering from cold. The committee took it upon itself to buy the extra tents the army had failed to provide, and purchased stoves to heat them, but not before many of the recruits fell ill. There was no proper hospital on the island to treat them. Miraculously, the enlistees recovered, survived and learned their military drills. After only two months to learn how to be soldiers, they headed to Manhattan to receive their regimental colors. On March 5, desirous of testifying, by some public memorial, our profound sense of the sacred object and the holy cause in behalf of which you have enlisted, the Union League women reminded the recruits that they had prepared for you this Banner, at once the emblem of freedom and of faith, and the symbol of womans best wishes and prayers for our common country, and especially for your devotion thereto. The mothers and sisters left the troops with this final piece of what they hoped would be inspiring advice: When you look at this Flag and rush to battle, or stand at guard beneath its sublime mottoremember that it is also an emblem of love and honor from the daughters of this great metropolis to her brave champions in the field; and that they will anxiously watch your career, glorying in your heroism, ministering to you when wounded and ill, and honoring your martyrdom with benedictions and with tears. The notion of white women referring to black men as their champions in the field was radical indeed for 1864, but the soldiers for whom the compliment was intended probably paid more attention to its rather chilling reminder about the very real possibility of death. The entire passage was read aloud that afternoon from a copy engrossed on parchment and signed by 153 subscribers to the flag projectthe creme de la creme of New York society including the wives of John Jacob Astor, William Cullen Bryant, Hamilton Fish, and of prominent men named Phelps, Dodge, Jay, Roosevelt and Van Rensselaer. The New-York Historical Societys pristine copy of the rare handbill version is undoubtedly one of the thousands handed out to the throng that gathered that afternoon in Union Square. The Society added it to its collection the year perhaps the very dayit came off the presses. This march will be the subject of cords of historical paintings before 1900 A.D., Strong immediately predicted. Indeed, the March 5 event proved significant enough to inspire a beautiful E.L. Henry commemorative painting for the Union League clubhouse itself, along with widespread coverage in the press. This included a woodcut illustration published in Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper on March 26, also in the collection, which showed the large, and integrated, crowd (the people of color, to be sure, were relegated to the rear outskirts of the audience), cheering and waving as the regiment goes through its precision drills. As the Times reported in its own detailed coverage: They are a fine, strong and hearty set of men, and their splendid appearance, combined with the apparent readiness and determination with which they enter their new profession, created a very favorable impression in the minds of all who saw them.They marched to the front of the stand and performed one or two military movements in good style, their order of arms being almost, if not quite, equal to that of the famous Seventh Regiment. They were then formed in square, open ranks, officers to the front, color-guard to the front and centre, the Colonel in front of his regiment and opposite President King of Columbia College, who presented the stand of colors to the regiment, then addressed them. That days keynote speaker, Charles King, president of Columbia College, began politely enough by extolling the loyal women who have united in the patriotic purpose of presenting to you a regimental flag, to be borne with the colors of the nation to which you are now the accepted and sworn defenders and guardians. But King quickly turned his attention to the soldiers, reminding them of their potential to serve as emancipators of your own race, while acting as the defenders and champions of another. In Kings estimation: You are in arms, not for the freedom and law of the white race alone, but for the God-implanted right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.When you put on uniform and swear allegiance to the standard of the Union, you stand emancipated, regenerated, and disenthralled; the peer of the proudest soldier in the land. King went on to scold opponents of black recruitment (the governor, absent for the ceremony, the obvious, though unnamed, target) for prejudicethe rancorous hate of brutalized minds and the ingrained meanness of factious partisanship. But surely it was not lost on the audience, particularly the African-American attendees, that all the regiments officers were whiteincluding the regimental commander, Lt. Col. Nelson B. Bartram, a former public school assistant principal, though a veteran of the Peninsula Campaign, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Bartram came with useful experience in managing African-American soldiers. He had recently returned to New York after serving as commander of the brave and resolute men of the 8th USCT in Florida. Rounding out the contingent of officers were Lt. Col. Andrew E. Mather of Cooperstown and Major Amos P. Wells, who had served in Elmer Ellsworths Fire Zouaves early in the war. As in virtually all black regiments, the surgeons, quartermasters, line captains and first and second lieutenants were Caucasian as well. Thanks to federal policy, the USCT was not only slow to organize regiments in New York state and unable to offer equal pay for its recruits but also resistant to the idea of bestowing rank on people of color. That was evident when the March 5 ceremonies came to a close. Bartram mounted his handsome gray horse, called the 20th into close order, received three cheers for himself, his officers and his men, and in return proposed three cheers for the Union League, which his soldiers offered as only strong lungs and willing men can. Then the officers headed into the clubhouse to partake of a splendid collation, which had been prepared for them. The black recruits remained outside and according to one report got only coffee, albeit brewed under the personal supervision of the ladies, who seemed well to understand the soldiers tastes. Only then did the regiment begin its final march down Broadway and across Canal Street to the Hudson River, where its men boarded the steamer Ericsson, bound for service in New Orleans. There they began their military service not as warriors but as occupiers. Indeed, most African-American troops were initially assigned to garrison duty or providing security for railroads and prison camps, but they also proved their valor, whenever asked, at battlefields from Port Hudson, La., to Petersburg, Va. The 20th served at Port Hudson, too, but departed for a brief assignment at Point Cavalho, Texas, the month before the battles got under way at the more important Mississippi River target. In May 1864, the 20th returned to the New Orleans area. Stationed at nearby Carrollton, La., they saw little action, though by one report they became the best drilled and best disciplined regiment in the department of the Gulf. While the 20th saw none of the kind of memorable heroic action that the 54th Massachusetts Infantry experienced at Battery Wagner in 1863, other New York USCT units did go on to earn their share of glory before the war ended. The year after the 20th mustered into service in the city where the Draft Riots had occurred, the 102nd USCT helped seize the city where the rebellion itself had begun: Charleston, S.C. Altogether, New York state sent 4,125 African-American soldiers into the ranks of the U.S. Colored Troopsfar smaller totals than Southern states like Kentucky (23,703) and Tennessee (20,133), but notably fewer as well than Northern states like Pennsylvania (8,612) and Ohio (5,092). It is worth noting that African-American soldiers from free states were predominantly free blacks who were in some cases decades removed from slavery, whereas the blacks recruited in slave states tended to be escaped or liberated former slaves. It is likely that few of the tens of thousands of civilian onlookers massed in Union Square on March 5, 1864, for the Presentation of Colors to the 20th USCT gave a second thought to the inequity of the command structure among African-American regiments. Instead, The New York Times spoke for many who thought that the mere enlistment of USCT volunteers constituted a revolutionary advance in race relations. The scene of yesterday was one which marks an era of progress in the political and social history of New-York, wrote the reporter covering the event. A thousand men, with black skins, and clad and equipped with the uniforms and arms of the United States Government, marched from their camp through the most aristocratic and busy streets, received a grand ovation at the hands of the wealthiest and most respectable ladies and gentlemen of New-York, and then moved down Broadway to the steamer which bears them to their destinationall amid the enthusiastic cheers, the encouraging plaudits, the waving handkerchiefs, the showering bouquets, and other approving manifestations of a hundred thousand of the most loyal of our people. In the month of July last the homes of these people were burned and pillaged by an infuriated political mob, the Times pointed out. They and their families were hunted down and murdered in the public streets of this city; and the force and majesty of the law were powerless to protect them. Seven brief months have passed, and a thousand of these despised and persecuted men march through the City in the honorable garb of United States soldiers, in vindication of their own manhood, and with the approval of a countless multitudein effect saving from inevitable and distasteful conscription the same number of those who hunted their persons and destroyed their homes during those days of humiliation and disgrace. This is noble vengeance a vengeance taught by Him who commanded, Love them that hate you; do good to them that persecute you. In the end, the legacy of the 20th had more to do with symbolism than sacrifice. The regiment served until October 1865mustering out six months after the war ended. During its year and a half under arms, the 20th did suffer heavy casualties, losing a total of 283 soldiers. Nearly all fell victim to disease, but also to suicide, drowning and sunstroke. Only a single soldier died of wounds received in action. Harold Holzer, who writes from New York City, is a Roger Hertog Fellow at the New-York Historical Society. This article is adapted from his most recent book, The Civil War in 50 Objects, published by Viking Press. Originally published in the October 2013 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here. American railroaders dubbed it Dead Mans Curve, and it was certainly a dangerous place to drive a train. Though little more than a jug handle in the line near Beaumont village in the Meuse River valley of northeastern France, the wriggle lay within range of German artillery. From their aerie atop nearby Montsec eagle-eyed enemy observers watched for any sign of movement on the Woevre Plain. The slightest Allied twitch would trigger a relentless barrage. But the troops in the trenches depended on regular supplies, so each day the railroaders risked their lives on the ribbon of line known as the soixante. The narrow-gauge military railways of World War I looked like the kind of toy a rich man might run on his estate for the amusement of friends and family The narrow-gauge military railways of World War I looked like the kind of toy a rich man might run on his estate for the amusement of friends and family. The gauge spanned 2 feet. The engines were tiny, the cars almost cute. But during the 191418 clash on the Western Front these little trains served a deadly serious purpose, hauling to the front the myriad materiel required to wage war: heavy-caliber ordnance, ammunition, poison gas, rations, medical supplies, fresh troops. Armies on either side of no-mans-land had voracious appetites, and keeping them dependably supplied was a Herculean task, best accomplished by the Lilliputian trains that crisscrossed the front on thousands of miles of track. Operated by the British, French, Germans and, later, Americans, the light railways represented literal lifelines to the trenches. Military railroads have been around since the Crimean War, when in 1855 British engineers built a 7-mile double-track line northward from the port of Balaklava to support the siege of Sevastopol. During the American Civil War the U.S. Military Railroad, a separate agency within the War Department, oversaw the movement of Union troops and supplies on captured Southern rail lines. Combatants in most of the late 19th century conflicts made extensive use of railroads, but those lines operated on standard gauge (4 feet, 8 inches) track. Prewar military planners sought narrow-gauge lines that crews could quickly erect and move as the tactical situation dictated. In the mid-1870s French civil engineer Paul Decauville invented just such a portable track system, initially intended for use on farms and industrial work sites. He chose a gauge of 60 cmsoixante, in French3/8 inch shy of 2 feet. Key to his design were prefabricated track sections (think model train set) of varying lengths that one or two men could carry and place with minimal effort. The Russian army was the first to see the military potential of narrow-gauge railroads. In 1880 Czar Alexander IIs war ministry purchased from Decauville 22,000 sections (about 64 miles) of track, several hundred freight cars and a pair of small steam locomotives, all for use in Turkistan. A year later the French army followed suit with an order for 41 miles of track. France purchased another 300 miles of track in 1888 to connect a string of forts along its border with Germany. For that deployment Decauville designed special carriages to transport 48-ton artillery pieces between the installations. The German army began developing its own 60 cm Heeresfeldbahn (Army Field Train) in the mid-1880s. The Germans had a broader vision of how light railways could be used offensively. The narrow gauge was conceived as a means of quickly producing a transport infrastructure which could follow the armies in the field as they advanced, railroad historian Charles S. Small noted. In 1897 the German army deployed its Feldbahns (field trains) to German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) to support its ongoing fight against insurrectionists, providing its railway brigades with an instructive real-world trial. Drawing on the experience, the Germans set about redesigning their equipment to meet the needs of a truly mobile rail system. The French gained their own practical experience constructing commercial 60 cm lines in Morocco. The British were well behind their Continental counterparts in developing a narrow-gauge military rail system. Not until 1904 did the Royal Engineers build an experimental 2-foot-6-inch line (76.2 cm) at Longmoor Camp in Hampshire, mainly to instruct soldiers how to build and operate rail lines. But the service gave little thought as to how to apply this new means of transport in wartime. In fact, when it came to tactical transport, prewar British policy specified the use of trucks and buses. Providing the motive power were chunky six- or eight-wheeled steam locomotives fired by smoky low-grade coal that made the little trains easy targets for enemy artillery and aircraft Hostilities commenced in Europe on Aug. 5, 1914, when the Germans attacked Liege, Belgium. The medieval city fell 11 days later. By the 20th the attackers had occupied Brussels and begun a push toward Paris. In anticipation of supplying the fast-moving troops, Kaiser Wilhelm IIs planners had stockpiled Feldbahn track and rolling stock along the border. By August 22 the narrow-gauge trains were supporting three army corps on a network that soon spread across Flanders and Wallonia. At the wars outset Frances soixante resources were limited to permanent installations, though the government had set aside some portable track and cars in case of war. It quickly sent those to Belgium. The British army, adhering to its prewar transport policy, immediately pressed into service 1,000 civilian trucks, 300 buses and tens of thousands of horses. By mid-September 1914 the war of movement had devolved into a stalemate, giving rise to static trench warfare. The resourceful Germans were quick to repurpose their Feldbahns to directly serve frontline sectors. The French followed suit and soon had a considerable narrow-gauge network in place. The British continued to eschew light rail service until February 1916 when the army high command, recognizing the shortcomings of road transport on the muddy front, belatedly ordered the development of tactical narrow-gauge lines. By then domestic factories were so overburdened that Britain was forced to order much of its 60 cm railroad equipment from the ostensibly neutral United States. Within a year Britains light railways were hauling more than 200,000 tons of supplies each week. The entry of the U.S. into the war in April 1917 brought a new spirit and vigor to Allied military railway operations. The first Army Corps of Engineers light railway unit, the 12th Engineer Regiment, mobilized in June 1917 with a complement of 1,600 officers and men recruited from among experienced railroaders and engineering professionals. The regiment arrived in Frances Somme region in late August. Three months later the rookie railwaymen were stunned when sucked into the Battle of Cambrai, a tactical draw between British and German forces best remembered for the first massed attack by a new weapon known as the tank. On November 30 the trainmen, all noncombatants, were nearly overrun when the Germans tried to capture the soixante during a counteroffensive. Thus it was, notes the regimental history, that the first Americans fought in the world war. Caught without arms, they fought with whatever they had at hand. In their case that meant clubs, picks, shovels and any weapon they might recover from fallen friends or foes. The U.S. 21st Engineer Regiment (Light Railway), organized in August 1917, comprised two battalionsone for construction and maintenance, the other to operate the 60 cm lines. The regiment shipped out for France in December and on arrival deployed to the Lorraine region of northeastern France, in the open countryside between Verdun and Nancy. In cooperation with the French National Railway the 21st first built a massive depot and rail yard at Sorcy-Saint-Martin, just 11 miles from the trenches. The U.S. railroaders then set about reorganizing the soixante to meet their requirements, building new lines and rebuilding large sections of track with more substantial roadbed and heavier rails. The flow of narrow-gauge equipment seemed endless, as Allied ships transported hundreds of locomotives and thousands of railcars across the Atlantic. In late March 1918 the French army officially handed off its narrow-gauge operations in the area to the Americans. A typical soixante line on the Western Front centered on a terminus, like Sorcy, well behind the front lines and outside the range of most enemy artillery. There standard-gauge trains off-loaded supplies for transfer to the narrow-gauge trains, whose branch lines radiated out to forward sectors. Within the terminus was a workshop for the repair and maintenance of rolling stock. Providing the motive power were chunky six- or eight-wheeled steam locomotives fired by smoky low-grade coal that made the little trains easy targets for enemy artillery and aircraft. To reduce the risk of detection, railroaders used gasoline-powered rail-tractors to pull cars the last mile or so to supply dumps. The rolling stock comprised mostly boxcars, gondolas and flatcars with a capacity of 22,000 pounds. As the war progressed, the Allies introduced special cars to haul huge 120 mm and 240 mm guns, as well as U.S.-designed 2,000-gallon tankers to tote fresh water to the troops. The British and Germans also pioneered the use of light railways to evacuate wounded soldiers. Once a train arrived at its destination and offloaded its cargo, crews quickly fitted the empty cars with racks to support stretchers. With the wounded aboard, the train ran directly to rear-area casualty clearing stations, ensuring the men received medical care hours earlier than had they been transported by road. Manpower on the U.S. lines included both seasoned professionals and raw recruits. It was not unusual for locomotive engineers to be in their 30s or 40s, while dispatchersso critical to the smooth operation of the linesboasted years of experience. By necessity the civil engineers laying out the lines, bridges and tunnels were professionals. But any grunt workdigging, hauling, grading, laying and repairing trackwas left to the young and fit. Because the demand for supplies was unrelentinga 12,000-man division, for example, required an estimated 1,000 tons of supplies dailythe light railways ran both scheduled and ad hoc service. The first few miles to the front were almost pleasant, pastoral outings, as the trains streamed through dense forestland and traversed rolling countryside past fields and farms barely touched by the war. But on the approach to the battlefields the woods were devoid of trees, the fields pockmarked with craters, the farmhouses in ruins. The trains were at greatest risk when crossing open country, especially in daylight. As Private Leland McCrady of the 21st Engineers recalled, German observers in balloons and observation posts on Montsec kept lookout for signs of steamers or tractors operating throughout these points and were ever ready to shell us. To camouflage the rails in especially vulnerable spots like Deadmans Curve, the Allies strung tall screens comprising woven branches or burlap strips along the roadbed. Whenever possible the trains made their runs under cover of darkness. But even that was no guarantee of success. German planes, McCrady recalled, [were] always on the lookout for sparks from the steamer and quick to turn their machine guns on them or to drop bombs. Aircrews also dropped parachute flares, which illuminated large swaths of the battlefield for long minutes, enabling artillery spotters to pinpoint the trains. Though fired on often, the diminutive trains rarely suffered a direct hit. It is about as impracticable to destroy such a railway by shell fire, wrote civil engineer Marshall R. Pugh, as it is to get rid of cooties in the same manner The soixante lines terminated anywhere from a few hundred to a few dozen yards from the trenches. From there goods and munitions moved forward by manpower or horsepower, sometimes on 40 cm tramways running through the trenches. Shells went straight to concealed ammunition dumps, while the daily train of rations trundled farther forward to frontline mess kitchens. Derailments and accidents were all too common occurrences. The engineer simply had to trust in Providence not to tip over, hit a cannon, a column of squads, some wooden-shoed women or a French general, quipped 21st Engineers Sergeant Clarence P. Hobert in the official unit history. The hazards were magnified at night. [One] night, Hobert recalled, a French truck loaded with gasoline rammed into an ammunition train, causing an explosion, the flames lighting the skies for miles around. Many gas shells exploded, and the men were obliged to wear their gas masks and lie in a muddy ditch for some time. In a similar incident the situation was reversed: The train hauled a pair of tankers full of gasoline, the French truck munitions. Slipping over a hill in the dark, the locomotive smashed into the truck, hurling it aside and setting it on fire. The engineer called for brakes, and as luck would have it, the tankers rolled to a stop adjacent to the burning vehicle. It was another recipe for disaster. One of the brakemen, Private Sanford C. Johnson, saw that the driver was pinned beneath his truck. He and a fellow crewman ran to the stricken man but couldnt budge him. We were under the truck, working like mad, Johnson explained, when the truck blew up. The jar evidently lifted the weight from our comrade, as we freed him. As the crewmen ran for cover, dragging the Frenchman between them, the 75 mm shells began cooking off. [They] were coming thick and fast from the camion, he recalled. As we were straightening to carry the wounded man, a huge explosion threw us all on our faces. The tankers had blown. The resulting conflagration destroyed four railway cars and three French ammunition trucks. When the fire died down, bystanders found the charred remains of a French soldier. The fire and explosion caused considerable excitement, Johnson noted laconically. The lightweight rails were often in lamentable condition, but one great advantage of the soixante was the ease with which it could be repaired. If intense shelling took out a couple hundred feet of track, repair crews got straight to work, first filling the craters, then connecting new sections of Decauville rails to the undamaged line. Dead Mans Curve was subjected to shelling for months, but comparatively infrequent repairs to the track were necessary, wrote civil engineer Marshall R. Pugh after the war. It is about as impracticable to destroy such a railway by shell fire as it is to get rid of cooties in the same manner. This fact is their protection. Whenever either side planned a great offensive seeking to gain or regain territory, the railway engineers began stockpiling track, ballast and tools near the front to facilitate the rapid construction of a link with the enemys 60 cm rail network. After the breakout, as soon as commanders were certain the assault had succeeded and positions were consolidated, rail crews commenced laying track across no-mans-landa process that took only a day or two before the trains were up and running. Any captured enemy rail equipment was put to use on the victors lines. Of course, sometimes the enemy pushed back, overrunning the newly gained territory and taking back their railroad. Conditions at the front were tough on the narrow-gauge crews. We were under shellfire every night, reported Lieutenant O.C. Whitaker of the 21st Engineers. It was no uncommon thing for one to spend the better part of the night with his gas mask in the alert position, his teeth chattering and his knees knocking together. Despite the dangers, casualties were relatively light. Thirty-six men from the 21st died while on duty in France. Thats not to say operating the soixante was a milk run. Far from it. On Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, the U.S. Corps of Engineers controlled some 1,350 miles of narrow-gauge railways in France, more than half of which had been captured from the Germans. By the time the rail service wound down at the end of January 1919, U.S. trains had transported more than 860,000 tons of supplies to the front, those of the British and Germans millions of tons more. The war proved the zenith of military light railways. The indispensable contribution they made was due largely to the static nature of trench warfare, for which soixante operations were uniquely qualified. But narrow-gauge railroads never again played a significant role in war. Colonel William B. Parsons wrote a fitting tribute in his official history The American Engineers in France: In short, the Lilliputian railway that at the beginning of hostilities was little more than a toy with apparently limited possibilities had grown into a very husky system. The tiny trains were a vital part of the supply system. It is difficult to see how the armies could have functioned without them. MH Steven Trent Smith is a five-time Emmy Award-winning television photojournalist and author of two books, The Rescue and Wolf Pack, about the submarine war in the Pacific. He is a frequent contributor to World War II, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and Civil War Times. For further reading Smith recommends Narrow Gauge to No Mans Land, by Richard Dunn; Two-Foot Rails to the Front, by Charles S. Small; and Railways and War Before 1918, by Denis Bishop and W.J.K. Davies. In 1876 Loreta Janeta Velazquez penned a 600-page memoir, The Woman In Battle, about serving as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. Documentary filmmaker Maria Agui Carter became so intrigued with the historical evidence surrounding Velazquezs account that she spent 10 years researching Velazquezs story. The result is a dramatic one-hour film, Rebel, that narrates Velazquezs amazing life, from her childhood in Cuba to her marriage to an American soldier to her service as a soldier and double agent during the war. To learn more about screenings of the film or to purchase a DVD, go to rebeldocumentary.com. How did you come to know of Loreta Velazquez? I had come across her in articles and on the Internet, but she was mostly viewed as a hoax or a fictional character. Then I came across a set of articles on women soldiers by DeAnne Blanton, a senior military archivist at the National Archives. She wrote about Loreta as a real person, and Loreta was particularly fascinating to me because she had written a memoir. We could hear about her experience in her own words, and because she was a Cuban woman, an immigrant fighting in the Civil War. How did you blend her history with narrative filmmaking? Originally I thought I would make an archival-based film. I found tons of material about the communities of the time, the Cuban community in New Orleans, but not a lot of photographs. So my first quandary was I was deeply, deeply interested in the story, but how to make a film when there was only one purported photo of her? By then I was so fascinated that I decided to jump right in and create dramatic scenes based on her memoir. As an artist I was interpreting this memoir of her as closely as I could, according to all of the readings and advice from historians of material culture. I used people who could tell me about accuracy of the times, and what the expectation of women would have been, even how photographs were composed, what the conventions were for those Civil War photographs. I also created my own Civil War family photos, like an album. You see that throughout the film, images of her and her family; those are imagined. Women and minorities were not always deemed worthy of archiving. Were not fully documented in the archival record, so does that mean we should not tell those stories in film, which is the most powerful medium we have for telling stories? Have people challenged the films accuracy? The point of the film is to make people think critically about historical storytelling and to say historical storytelling is interpretation, and you need to understand who is telling that story and what their interpretation is. The film says history is complex and some things are unknowable, and heres what we know about this woman. Heres what we found out, and what we think about why shes been erased. And see what conclusions you draw from that. Has Velazquezs combat experience been verified? She talks about Fort Donelson, about being wounded at Shiloh, about being in the First Battle of Bull Run, and about Balls Bluff. But you wont find her in regimental histories, and you wont find any of the other thousand women who have gone to war as soldiers. You do find them another way. When doctors discover the dead bodies in the battleground. You find them in letters by soldiers written to others. You find them in newspapers, you find them because they were discovered and arrested. I cant verify Loretas service from regimental histories, but I can verify from arrest reports that shes wandering around in uniform and injured. Talk about Jubal Earlys attack on her memoir. I was so fascinated because shes a tiny figure to Jubal Early. He destroyed much larger reputations than hers. Think of General [James] Longstreet. He was a hero after the Civil War, but by the time Jubal Early was done with him, he was a pariah throughout the South. Early was a powerful figure in terms of the creation of the memory of Southern history: He was the head of the Southern Historical Association. For her to dare to say anything that didnt conform to what was considered acceptable history, which she was writing during the period of Reconstruction, thats pretty bold for her to be talking about the corruption of wartime society, for her to be talking about Confederate soldiers as not as being perfect and honorable gentlemen. Shes kind of airing dirty laundry, talking about the corruption of wartime society. Thats anathema if youre Jubal Early. After the war Early became the spokesman for the Louisiana lottery, which never paid out. He and one other person were paid huge sums of money every year to be the spokesmen, and to say the Louisiana lottery was on the up and up. He had a yearly stipend and the rest of the year to do whatever he wanted. And what he wanted to do was craft the history of the South, postCivil War. He had the leisure to do that. He had a very old-fashioned view. Were you surprised to learn Velazquez owned a slave during the war? Whats fascinating to me is that people generally dont portray the Confederate armies as they were, and of course they used a huge amount of slave labor. The laundresses, the ditch-diggers, or the burial crews, or the highest number of nurses taking care of people were black. We dont see this portrayed in film very often. Officers did often bring slaves. For Loreta that was a very useful thing. She comes from a plantation family in Cuba, so that would have been a natural thing for her. The interesting thing to me is that her thinking about slavery changes over time, and she doesnt explain why she deliberately doesnt chase after her slave after he crosses to the wrong side. Its written kind of tongue in cheek, and she doesnt talk about slavery in her book. I think that over time her thinking evolved. Thats what is fascinating. She enters the war, but she doesnt end in the same place. Shes very disappointed in the corruption, that war wreaks havoc on people, the injustice of war, her own spying activities. By the end, her character has grown. What influenced her to choose this path? She was familiar with Joan of Arc and other women heroines. She talks about all these women, including Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish nun who ended up being a Spanish conquistador. Throughout history there have been these amazing women, but they have been erased. What do you want viewers to take away from this film? I hope a new generation of women feels empowered by watching a film like this and seeing that heres this woman born 150 years ago who refused to sit in the little boxes created for her gender and her ethnicity. She said I want to reinvent myself; I wont necessarily color within the lines. Because being a woman or Hispanic does not limit me in any way. One of the things that is most moving to me when Ive shown this as a work in progress at colleges is almost every time some young woman waits until everybody is gone and says, with tears in her eyes, why didnt I know about this woman growing up? Thats who I made this film for. Originally published in the October 2013 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here. The spring season brings with it the onslaught of grass allergies but their severity keeps changing according to the time and temperature of the day. The good news is that only a small percentage of grasses trigger allergy and the modern medication that dissolves under the tongue has proved to be highly effective. Grass allergy is a very common allergy associated with spring but those who are affected by it can find relief in the fact that very few grass species cause allergy and the severity of the allergy differs according to time and temperature of the day, Health Grades claimed. The time and temperature affect the intensity of the allergy. Lastly, the new-age medications, the ones that dissolve under the tongue, can be of great relief to patients suffering from grass allergy. Notably, grass allergy is caused by tree pollens that get scattered in the air during the spring season as this is the time when plants bloom. However, the release of pollens is known to cause allergy symptoms like sneezing, runny nose, red, watery, itchy eyes and congestion to many people. However, it has been found that the pollens are more active during morning time, from 5 to 10 and thus, those who are known to be allergic, should stay indoors during these hours. Keeping the doors and windows shut also helps in avoiding the troublesome symptoms and one can also use air conditioning for relief. Doctors also advise patients to keep their lawns well-mowed and wear a mask if they are mowing it themselves. It is best if they can have someone else do it. If patients follow these tips and work with their doctors, keeping grass allergy under check is not a big problem. It can be easily tackled. After all, there are only few grass species like Johnson grass, sweet vernal grass, timothy grass, Bermuda grass, etc. that trigger the allergens. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Latest reports are telling that experts, as well as countries, are on track to end malaria for good. it was deemed important to find ways and solutions to combat this and these experts are looking for malaria education as also one of the ways to stop and prevent this. Even before, people in Africa have been struggling with malaria and decades have passed, still, experts are looking for effective ways that could end this. The elimination of malaria could be possible already since, in the previous years, the United States of America was able to look for a way in order to guarantee that no one will suffer from this again. It can be recalled that in the year 1951, malaria was successfully eradicated and the efforts were made through the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas. It then implemented policies and effective strategies along with the popular U.S. CDC as per Scientific American. Because of its effectiveness to fight malaria, Africa also got its own CDC but it was only fully implemented last 2015 due to the outbreak of Ebola virus. The Ebola outbreak also caused great danger to humans across the world which even resulted in the death of almost 11, 000 people. This African CDC was established in order to allow countries to create partnerships and to help them create a place that is safe and free from threats of human diseases and viruses. But in order to make this CDC functional, Africa needs to implement funding and appropriate implementation so that they could further prevent the spread of this and to affect their socio-economic transformation. Lately, reports escalated that experts are ready for the pilot testing of the malaria vaccine in three countries in Africa. According to BBC, these three countries are Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi and the administration of the so-called vaccines will commence next year, 2018. The World Health Organization just released information that as of 2015, 400,000 already died from malaria and most of these deaths occurred in Africa. That's why before it's too late, countries and medical experts need to already implement effective ways to finally put an end to malaria which is caused by a mosquito bite. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The tension in North Korea when it comes to its nuclear test programs is prodding the United States to perform a military exercise with its allies in Asia. Because of the increasing tension, the U.S. government has been conducting maritime military exercises with Japan and South Korea the past days. It was reported that North Korea might launch its first missile test to mark the 85th anniversary of its army. Because of this, U.S. grew more concerned as it initiated military exercises in the Asian region with the help of South Korea and Japan. Lately, it was reported that the U.S. government has already started with this in order to combat the continuing provocation of North Korea. According to TIME, the U.S. Navy confirmed that their USS Wayne E. Meyer has already started to carry out military exercises with Wang Geon of South Korea's navy on some part of the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, the USS Fitzgerald has also joined forces with Japan's Chokai this time in the west of Japan. Apart from the above-mentioned countries, other nations also expressed their concern because of the missile threat which North Korea might launch anytime. Moreover, it has been claimed that this move of the U.S. government through the administration of President Donald Trump is just a proof that the country is maximizing its help to preserve security and stability in the affected Asian regions. Further, this also shows that the U.S. is flexible to work with its allied countries in order to settle peace and any form of deterrence. But according to some reports, North Korea also gave a warning to these countries telling them that if they insist, they have no choice but to launch the missiles. Despite this warning, still, these countries will pursue their military exercise through their naval forces as per USA News. Last time, it has been reported that the U.S. government is prompting China to pressure North Korea in order to halt its missile testing. With this, China is thinking of ending its economic partnership with North Korea in in terms of oil supply. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The two presidential candidates of France just paid their respects to Xavier Jugele who was killed last Thursday in a terrorist attack in Paris. With this, the two presidential contenders are also expressing their differing views when it comes to the implementation of security in the country. Last week, France just lost one of its bravest men when Jugele was killed and was shot dead in Champ Elysees. This incident triggered upset and grief from the French people that even President Hollande condemned the act. Because of that, the current president called for unity in the midst of the terrorist attack as per BBC News. It was reported that Xavier Jugele was a staunch supporter of gay rights or the LGBT rights. According to his colleagues as well as her friends, he was a very committed policeman. It can be recalled that he was one of the officers who responded when the Bataclan concert hall was attacked by terrorist last 2015. Reports claimed that Xavier Jugele was a policeman since 2010 and was admired by many people more so in his work as per The New York Times. But last week, he met his demise when a gunman opened fire at them killing him and wounded some of his companions. He was in a police vehicle when the incident took place. The terrorist attack in Paris was claimed by the Islamic State after the incident. The culprit was also shot dead as he tried to escape. Then last Friday, Xavier Jugele was mourned by friends and his colleagues in the service. As the presidential pay respects to the officer, they also contend on how France should implement strict security measures. According to Marine le Pen, the government of France needs to introduce tight border security and even suggested that the country should deport all foreigners who are suspected as terrorists. It was also made known that Xavier Jugele had been already aware of the threat of terrorism and the risk of his job but he did not mind it. Because of this, he gained the admiration of his co-workers apart from the two France presidential candidates. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Reports have escalated that U.S. Former President Barack Obama will deliver a lucrative speech this September to Wall Street firm. However, even if it was just confirmed, it looks like the former head of state is already caught in a new controversy and issue. It was just claimed that Barack Obama will give a speech at the Cantor Fitzgerald's health-care conference this September as confirmed by one of his advisers. Moreover, it was also reported that the former president will be paid with an amount of $400,000 for this Wall Street Conference. But his representatives did not anymore give details as to his exact compensation. According to a report from Washington Post, Barack Obama is expected to deliver speeches from time to time after he left White House months passed. Since his upcoming appearance was already clouded with controversy, his aides assured that whether he will be paid or not, still, the former president will be true to his words and to what he will deliver most especially that this concerns health care. This news already sparked debate most especially in the social media since it was claimed that he might just be doing this for the sake of raising money. This also reminded people with Hillary Clinton who also spoke before an audience to the Wall Street firm just after she resigned as secretary of the state. Most especially that this involves Wall Street, some sources as per Fox News were claiming that Former President Barack Obama raised more money last 2008 from the said company than any other candidate in the U.S. history. Despite this claim, still, he was able to successfully pass some of the most important reforms on the company even before the existence of FDR. Lately, U.S. Former President Barack Obama just delivered a speech sponsored by the University of Chicago and this was considered as his first public appearance after he let White House. Much to the people's dismay, he did not mention anything that has to do with the Trump's administration. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. O f all the London neighbourhoods given a boost by Crossrail, Ealing must be among the most transformed, from a middle-league suburb to a highly desirable district with hundreds of millions of pounds in regeneration cash flowing in to polish up its leafy Victorian charm. New Elizabeth line trains from Ealing Broadway, which already has the Central and District line Tube, will go direct to the West End and City when the service launches next year. And the vibe around the Broadway has picked up with new shops, cafes, and eateries. The details For a 25 per cent share of a two-bedroom flat at Dickens Yard Cost: from 140,000 from 140,000 Rent: 962.50 per month 962.50 per month Service charge: 165 per month 165 per month Monthly mortgage costs will vary EALING: WEST LONDON'S HOTTEST NEW DISTRICT At the heart of the transformation is Dickens Yard, with some 700 new homes, 78 of them for shared ownership. Developer St George launched the scheme in 2011, when the Crossrail buzz was in its infancy. The site is only 300 yards from Ealing Broadway station, in Zone 3, and there is encouraging evidence that St George is trying to curate the tenants for the shops and restaurant space at Dickens Yard to make it a destination in its own right, in the way Argent did so well at Kings Cross. Big draw: Charlottes W5 restaurant in Dickens Yard, praised in Michelin Guide Dickens Yard, which will complete fully in 2019, already boasts the restaurant Charlottes W5, awarded a bib gourmand in the new Michelin Guide for its affordable but quality food, while the first shop to open next year will be fashion brand Jigsaw. Just around the corner, St George is redeveloping Ealings old Empire Cinema which will have a new eight-screen Picturehouse, flats, plus more shops and restaurants. There are even plans to turn Ealing Town Hall into a boutique hotel with cocktail bar and bistro. SHARED OWNERSHIP AT DICKENS YARD From 100,000: a 25 per cent share of a one-bedroom flat at Trafalgar Apartments in Dickens Yard. Through Catalyst Housing Two-bedroom flats available to buy privately at Dickens Yard are priced from 960,000, but Catalyst Housing association is launching the first phase of 78 shared-ownership flats at the site, from 100,000. This will buy a 25 per cent share in a one-bedroom flat at the Trafalgar Apartments. As well as mortgage repayments, buyers will pay a monthly rent of 687.50 on the portion of the property they do not own and service charge of about 165 a month. Two-bedroom flats start at 140,000 for 25 per cent, with rent at 962.50 and again, 165 a month service charge. The most obvious change in Ealing Broadway is the improved retail scene, says Raj Chauhan, sales manager at Colin Bibra estate agents, who has worked locally for four years. New quarter: 700 new homes are planned with 78 affordably priced / stgeorge2.visualbank.co.uk The shops are now of a much higher calibre and lots more restaurants and big chains have moved in to capitalise on the change in the market here. There are also a lot more new developments, after Dickens Yard set the trend, and it is generally a much nicer place to spend time now. Property prices around Ealing Broadway grew 10 per cent in the last year, and he expects them to rise five to 10 per cent again in the next 12 months. At last month's International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin, the event organisers arranged a panel discussion with four entrepreneurs and (co-)founders of new hotel concepts. The question up for debate: "Where is the innovation?". Jean-Pierre Parra Bandeira, Co-Founder and CEO of Light Human Hotel; Olivia Byrne, Company Director at Eccleston Square Hotel; Hans Meyer, Co-Founder of Zoku and Chris Penn, Founder of SteelBMB talked about how independent and alternative hospitality brands, such as their own, deliver innovative experiences tailored to the changing market conditions of the hospitality industry. The session proved to be an insightful one; and afterward, I caught up with Dr. Nikolai Jaeger. Nikolai is an entrepreneur and business founder, currently managing MQ Real Estate, a development company that specialises in and builds modular hotels on top of car parks, above parking lots and on top of existing buildings in European cities. His SKYPARK hotel concept reflects the spirit of the times with its ecological, highly standardised, pre-fabricated building modules, promoting a sustainable, future-orientated urban development. To date, the firm has secured more than ten projects and is getting increasingly more direct inquiries from established hotel chains interested in operating its projects. The firm's motto is "We start to build where others stop." Its mission is "To revitalize unused city hot-spots by building up with sustainable modular units." Nikolai and I talked about the challenges of setting up a business, being an entrepreneur and being a leader. Setting up your own company can be an adventurous ride "Good to Great" author Jim Collins says that "getting the right people on the bus" is crucial for a firm's success. How did you go about ensuring this? "I love being an entrepreneur, but at times it can be lonely and you might have people doubting your ability to 'pull through.' It takes discipline to carry on despite all this. You need to trust yourself and your business partner that you are on the right track. And your business partner should naturally also believe and pursue the same goals as you are. Getting the right people on the bus is, for me, about alignment both at a personal and professional level. In my case, assessing the personal 'fit' with my business partner Bjorn Hiss was facilitated by the fact that we were introduced by a mutual friend of ours we had this common connection and our friend just knew that we would be on the same wavelength. Having brainstormed about ideas and business strategies at length, Bjorn and I were also able to quickly establish that we would be a good team from a professional point of view. Not only did he bring on board the right skill set, having just been involved in a big renovation project where he had to deal with modular building solutions, but Bjorn shared the same vision for what we wanted to achieve." You mentioned that being an entrepreneur and business leader can be lonely. Besides your business partner, did you rely on a "personal board of advisors" when setting up the firm? "Being an entrepreneur is incredibly rewarding, especially when you see your vision come to fruition. Yet, you are bound to face numerous obstacles on your way. At the moment, for example, we are concentrating first and foremost on the German market, and we want to build more than 1,000 modules on top of parking garages within the next five years. Yet, pushing into the European market is definitely something we are thinking about. Getting the right advice and expertise in regards to international expansion will no doubt be crucial for the success of our business. When I am thinking about advice, I am also thinking about industry disruptors. We are considered as a firm that is 'shaking up' the sector, but especially in our home market of Berlin the hotel market is challenged by the likes of AirBnB. Whilst we do not feel threatened by such innovators, being 'ready' to face future disruptors is crucial. In my view, a (formal or informal) board of advisors can add value in that regard. Looking back to 2014, when SKYPARK was born, I certainly relied on others to guide and challenge me. At the time, I had completed my PhD at the University of Aachen and had already worked on my business plans. I worked at the Centre for Entrepreneurs, which, in the end, helped me to set up my initial network of advisors. After moving to Berlin, I continued to seek out contact with other entrepreneur and business angels. By then, I was joined by Bjorn and we had numerous meetings and discussions with experienced private investors who not only supported our business financially but who also shared their experience with us as the founders of MQ Real Estate." Some people spend a lifetime working in a corporate environment before "taking the plunge" and starting their own business venture. What inspired you to set up your own start-up company? "Having studied business administration, I gained professional experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers, working on the advisory side of the business within the transactions department. It was here where I gained first insights into the hotel and real estate world. At the beginning of 2014, I had a casual lunch with Bjorn who would soon become my business partner. That day we had our meal at the city's most famous department store, the KaDeWe. It is located in 'tourist central' and we spotted an unoccupied parking garage on the opposite side of the street where others probably saw an eyesore, we saw opportunity. We agreed that the location would be perfect for a hotel, but where others were most likely discouraged by the significant re-development costs, we just thought: Why not build a hotel on top of the garage? That was it our idea for SKYPARK was born." Nikolai, a final thought on entrepreneurship and being a leader what is your definition of success? "When employees do not come to work because they have to, but because they want to because they love what they do and being part of a great team. As an entrepreneur, I also strive to be a successful leader. I want to create a great company. The corporate culture we create is an integral part of that. I want to promote and foster out-of-the-box thinking, innovation and an enriching environment where employees are challenged, constantly learn and can grow with the company." Thomas Mielke Managing Director +44 20 7065 1392 AETHOS Consulting Group View source Dubai, UAE Catalysts of Change including the shift in global economic powers, demographics and ageing populations, and the impact of digitisation were some of the hot topics discussed live on stage during the opening sessions of the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference 2017 (AHIC), being held at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai from 25-27 April, 2017 and organised by Bench Events and MEED. Now in its 13th year, the annual knowledge and networking platform for the global hospitality investment community, AHIC, attracted more than 700 delegates eager to learn more about the Catalysts of Change influencing the evolving persona of the hotel guest and driving innovation among hotel owners and operators alike. Jonathan Worsley, Chairman, Bench Events, Board Director, STR and Co-Founder of AHIC, introduced AHIC with the assistance of a robot co-host created by Isukashi, setting the scene for discussions on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technological breakthroughs. Commenting on the trends, Worsley said: "In the lead-up to AHIC during many conversations with our speakers, sponsors and the AHIC Advisory Board, it became clear that technology in its many and varied forms would be one of the major Catalysts of Change for the hospitality industry in the coming years. We wanted to give our delegates a demonstration of this with our AHIC robot and set the scene for three days of dynamic conversations." Worsley addressed these issues in the opening keynote session with Chris Nassetta, President and CEO, Hilton, which this week announced it has the largest active pipeline in the GCC in terms of both rooms and properties, with more than 16,000 keys under construction and scheduled to open before 2020, according to STR. Chris Nassetta said that while AI and robotics would be a part of Hilton's future, at its core Hilton is a "business of people serving people". "Our Team Members differentiate Hilton by delivering an exceptional experience, something that is different from what people can get in another place, something that's special, something that's memorable, something that makes them want to come back," commented Nassetta. "The way I think of innovation, is how do we take the core of what we do and make it even better?" The topic of technological breakthroughs, such as AI, was identified as one of the top five megatrends by PwC Middle East's Partner and Deals Real Estate Leader Dr. Martin Berlin, who unveiled the new PwC Report Global Megatrends and their impact on Hospitality in the Middle East at AHIC. The trends presented by PwC were: Demographic and Social Change, with a polarising demand shift from the Silver Tourist to the Millennials and Generation Z; Shift in Global Economic Powers, as emerging economies are expected to surpass advanced economies in terms of international tourism arrivals by 2020; Accelerating Urbanisation, with 40 global megacities forecast by 2025; Climate Change and Resource Scarcity, predicted to impact the attractiveness of the Middle East as a destination; and Technological Breakthroughs, with connectivity as a key component of this. As Dr. Berlin explained: "The travel and tourism industry has witnessed rapid and fundamental infiltration of digitisation across the entire value chain. Combined with the demographic and social change the digitisation will lead to a change of the 'delivery' of hospitality products and services." These game-changing trends, or Catalysts of Change, shaped much of the conversation in the opening CEOs' panel session, featuring Stefan Leser, Group Chief Executive Officer, Jumeirah Group; Olivier Harnisch, Chief Executive Officer, Emaar Hospitality Group; Steven Daines, CEO New Businesses and CEO HotelServices Africa and Middle East, AccorHotels; Alex Kyriakidis, President and MD, Middle East and Africa, Marriott International; and Robert Welanetz, CEO, Majid Al Futtaim Properties & Acting CEO Majid Al Futtaim Hotels, moderated by Dr Berlin. Referring to the five PwC trends, Alex Kyriakidis said: "To take a couple and put them on the top, unquestionably there would be technology and not just its impact on the guest and the consumer but also on the way we operate. The second trend [to highlight] would be demographics the changing demographics and what does that mean for technology and everything else that we do". The panelists were in agreement and emphasised the fact that technology impacted both the front- and back-of-house functions of their business. At Emaar Hospitality Group, Olivier Harnisch, who took up his role on March 1, 2017, said he was interested in the potential of IoT and near-field communications to "really change the nature of our guests' stay". Harnisch commented: "If you think about it, a guest's stay is still full of friction, right? All of us travel a lot and just think about how many tasks are repetitiveyou have to programme your safe, reset the shower, set up the gym equipmentall this uses data that is available and could be automated with the two functions [IoT and near-field communication] that I mentioned." Stefan Leser said he was focused on using IoT and digitisation, which he referred to as Industry 4.0, to enable Jumeirah Group "to run hotels in a very different manner", using predictive maintenance in favour of preventative maintenance as an example. Accor's Steven Daines said he believed there is a "disruption going on that is much wider and much deeper" regarding the way that consumers look at travel and hospitality as a whole. "Technology and intelligence and data are going to be the major disrupters in the coming years and that's in two ways," said Daines. Firstly, he said they would impact the way hoteliers both extract data and feed databases in a worthwhile way to personalise services and secondly, Daines predicted that the consumer would have access to better data as they researched travel and accommodation. "It's so time consuming and tiring today to look for a holiday and I'm sure the intelligence will improve for the customer as well, and that's something I'm not sure we are quite prepared for," observed Daines. On the subject of planning and preparation, speaking from the investor's perspective, Robert Welanetz, CEO, Majid Al Futtaim Properties, said he believed owners and operators faced a big challenge considering the vast investment technology required versus the risk of its "shelf-life until the next best idea". Here, Stefan Leser urged the industry to focus predominately on the impact of the technology, not the timing of it. "In my role as CEO I need to make the calls about where the true impact lies. I need to be right on the impact, I don't need to be right on the timing. If there is one conclusion out of the last 10 years of technology, a lot of times you have underestimated the impact and you have overestimated the time of arrival and I think that is one of the conclusions that we need to be right on". The conversation at AHIC will continue over the next two days, with future discussions centred around topics including the mid-market, asset management, overseas investment, F&B, brands, third-party management and alternative investment models. For more information visit: www.arabianconference.com About AHIC 2021 AHIC, now in its 17th year, is the annual gathering for the Middle East's hospitality investment community organised by global hotel investment event organiser Bench in partnership with Middle East business intelligence brand, MEED. AHIC creates a knowledge and networking platform for global and regional investors of all backgrounds, offering essential insights to investing in hotels, showcasing regional and international hospitality investment opportunities and facilitating direct connections with hospitality industry stakeholders. AHIC 2021 will be held at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai from 20 to 22 September under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Airports, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chairman and CEO of Emirates Airline and Group, whose continued support of the industry and AHIC has been critical to the region's tourism growth. AHIC 2021 Sponsors Sponsors include: Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts as Host Sponsor; Accor, Dur Hospitality, Hilton and SMIT as Platinum Sponsors; Emaar Hospitality Group, IHG, Marriott International, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, NEOM, Radisson Hotel Group, Rotana and Taiba Investments as Emerald Sponsors; Aleph Hospitality, Bespoke Modular Solutions, Colliers International, Compass Project Consulting, Farnek, HVS, The Indian Hotels Company, Insignia, IT Hospitality Group, Katch, Louvre Hotels Group, OBMI Architecture, SSH, STR, TIME Hotels, Toggle Hospitality and The London Project as Gold Sponsors; Al Tamimi and Company, Colliers Project Leaders, Deutsche Hospitality, Diriyah Gate Authority, Hotstats, JLL, MMAC Design, CHIC-NAIA, PWC, Roya, Shangri-La Group, The Red Sea Development Company, and Voltere by Egis as Silver Sponsors; The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, Hospitality Asset Managers Association, Sustainability Hospitality Alliance and WiH Global as Supporters; JA Resorts and Hotels as Golf Supporter; and Nespresso as Official Coffee Partner. Anne Bleeker In2 Consulting FZE +971 56 6030886 MEED 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 View Chris Lee's LinkedIn Profile Chris Lee is a graduate of FIU in North Miami, Florida - United States Chris Lee joins Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona as Director of Operations, after having served in the same role at Canyon Ranch Wellness Resort Kaplankaya, Turkey. In his new position in Tucson, Lee will oversee all operational activity and development of the brands flagship property. Lee brings more than a decade of luxury experience to Canyon Ranch, having spent the majority of his career to date with Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton in destinations such as Jackson Hole, Miami, Chicago, Silicon Valley, and St. Louis. In addition to leading the opening of Canyon Ranchs resort in Kaplankaya, Lee has previously led rooms and public space renovation projects, in addition to service and innovation initiatives with Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton both at the property level, as well as while serving as a member of corporate committees. Lee holds a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management from Florida International University. A federal judge in Houston has ordered Exxon Mobil to pay a civil penalty of nearly $20 million for releasing 10 million pounds of pollutants into the air from its Baytown refining and chemical complex over the course of eight years. In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Hittner said evidence showed that the Texas oil company's emissions from 2005 to 2013 put it in violation of the Clean Air Act 16,386 times. The environmental groups Sierra Club and Environment Texas Citizen Lobby filed suit against Exxon in 2010, but the district court ruled in the company's favor four years later. Last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Hittner's original decision and ordered him to reconsider various aspects of the case, including the number of violations by Exxon. In a 101-page decision, Hittner accepted the plaintiffs' argument that Exxon collected more than $14 million in so-called economic benefits by delaying actions that would have curbed the emissions, such as improving plant automation and enhancing emissions monitoring with infrared imaging technology. "This penalty should send a message that it doesn't pay to illegally pollute," said David Nicholas, a Massachusetts attorney who represented the plaintiffs. Exxon Mobil said it's considering legal options, including appealing the ruling. "We disagree with the court's decision and the award of any penalty," Exxon spokesman Todd Spitler said in an emailed statement. "As the court expressed in its decision, Exxon Mobil's full compliance history and good faith efforts to comply weigh against assessing any penalty." Exxon's Baytown complex, which includes a chemical plant, olefins plant and refining operations, employs some 7,000 people about 25 miles east of Houston. Unless Exxon appeals the decision and wins another courtroom battle, it will pay the $19.95 million civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury Department. Philip Hilder, principal of Houston law firm Hilder & Associates, who helped represent the plaintiffs, said he believes it's the largest judgment of civil penalties returned under a Clean Air Act citizen suit. The Clean Air Act has a provision that allows citizens to file suit against companies they believe are in violation of federal environmental laws, especially if the government is not enforcing them. "We're thrilled with the ruling and excited Exxon is finally being held accountable for thousands of violations," said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. "We're glad they'll face significant penalties and hope that'll serve as a warning to other companies." The environmental groups called on four of their members who had lived in Baytown to testify against Exxon. One witness said she had often smelled odors while growing up in Baytown and took medication for allergies that went away after she moved. Exxon also called on three Baytown residents, including one who said he never worried about the flares or emissions events at the complex. At the time of the suit, Exxon had already paid $1.4 million in fines to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Harris County for violating state air pollution laws. Since 2010, Exxon Mobil has lowered its emissions at its massive Baytown complex, which has been in operation since 1920 on more than 3,000 acres along the Houston Ship Channel. The court said Exxon has spent $1 billion in recent years on regulatory compliance and projects to improve the complex's environmental footprint. Exxon Mobil is nearing completion of a multibillion-dollar petrochemical expansion at Baytown, a project that is not supposed to increase emissions. Metzger said his group and others will keep a close watch on emissions levels next year after the expansion is finished. "There's still work to be done," he said. Jordan Blum contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate British oil major BP has discovered 200 million barrels of oil in a hidden cache in the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to a technological breakthrough allowing the company to see beneath geological formations that had befuddled oil exploration for decades. The find, worth a potential $2 billion in recoverable oil, is in an undrilled section of BP's Atlantis field in 7,000 feet of water 150 miles from New Orleans. Long obscured by a salt dome, which distorts seismic waves that oil companies use to map features below the earth, the oil reserves were revealed by using a supercomputer and mathematical algorithm to interpret the seismic data in a new way. The Gulf find is another example of oil companies advancing technology to make unexpected discoveries. The advent of seismic imaging allowed oil and gas companies to model mineral layers below the earth's surface and drill more precisely. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing unleashed the U.S. onshore shale revolution. Now, BP's imaging advance could save drillers hundreds of millions of dollars in false starts and dry wells, and perhaps more important, prevent them from passing up billions of dollars in oil hidden within reach of existing platforms and pipelines. BP's find by the numbers Barrels of oil discovered: 200 million Potential value of the discovery: $2 billion Depth of discovery: 7,000 feet Distance from New Orleans: 150 miles, in BP's Atlantis field See More Collapse Imaging under salt formations is a "holy grail," said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston and managing director of a small oil exploration and production company. "That's really pretty big." This breakthrough, however, comes when the world is awash in crude and some analysts and economists - even at major companies such as Royal Dutch Shell - predict that demand for oil will wane as soon as the end of the next decade, forcing companies to leave billions of barrels of oil in the ground. BP itself has shifted its focus in recent years to cleaner-burning natural gas, a very public move toward its view of a low-carbon future, as governments around the world address climate change. But BP executives say the work of salt imaging still fits the company's main goals, specifically to find and extract oil economically. Salt has been a barrier Salt domes have stumped scientists for years. Such geology in deep water is usually promising because the formations trap oil and gas in underground pockets for easy extraction. But companies hadn't been able to image under the domes with much clarity. To drill, oil companies need to see underground. They hire ships that project seismic waves through the ocean and into the earth. Those waves hit rock, bounce back, and the companies measure the returning waves to build images of the subsea earth and identify likely oil and gas traps. But when seismic waves hit salt, they refract more than reflect, like light streaming through a glass bottle. The inconsistency - "a bunch of scrambled nonsense," said BP geophysicist John Etgen - obscures the images of the earth under the formations. That's left oil companies in a predicament: They know there's oil under salt domes, but not exactly where. If they drill blindly, they are likely to miss the mark - the industry success rate in such endeavors runs between eight and nine dry holes out of every 10 wells drilled, BP said. And contractors have charged as much as $500,000 a day to drill in Gulf deep water. One well can cost $100 million or more. Scientists at the BP's Energy Corridor office park worked for years to improve subsea imaging under salt domes and identify new oil deposits. Then, last year a BP scientist fresh out of out of graduate school asked his bosses if he could borrow the company's 15,000-square-foot supercomputer to run an algorithm he had developed. Xukai Shen wanted to use the machine for two weeks. And in that time he and his team produced a new image with much more detail of the earth layers under Atlantis. "It wasn't until I saw the image - I thought I might be on to something," said Shen, 32. BP double-checked Shen's work. Via traditional methods, such analysis would require at least a year of painstaking data comparison for geophysicists. Shen and his team did it in little more than two weeks, and created a much more accurate model. "It produced the best image of the field we've ever seen," said Etgen, the project's principal researcher. "We basically fell out of our chairs." Field opened in 1990s BP discovered Atlantis in the late 1990s. The platform can process 200,000 barrels of oil a day. But the company didn't feel like it knew enough to drill under the salt formations. "We knew there was a lot of promise in this basin," Etgen said. "Fundamentally, imaging through salt was the key to unlocking that." Early attempts at drilling near salt domes there were disappointing at best. BP even drilled one Atlantis well next to the very field it has now discovered, but found little oil. As image clarity slowly improved over the years, field development progressed. "We could see part of the reservoir, without the salt distorting it, so that's where we drilled," said Ahmed Hashmi, BP's chief of upstream technology. The company began to invest heavily in supercomputing and seismic imaging. It started paying for seismic surveys over much wider swaths of the sea. And, in 2013, it opened its supercomputing center, a three-story, 110,000- square-foot building on its main Houston campus with the computing power of 100,000 laptops. Other major oil companies are also working to solve this problem. But BP has already declared its new technology so successful, it is expanding the program into oil and gas fields worldwide, expecting to find hidden pockets of oil repeatedly. BP, which plans to announce the discovery on Thursday, is making a play to be a leader in the field and perhaps even market and sell some of the technology. The company is now assessing how to start drilling in the new field at Atlantis. Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP's upstream business, said earlier this year that Atlantis could be ready for a third phase. Fall Out Boy is coming back to Houston. The Pete Wentz-led band returns Nov. 7 to Toyota Center. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. May 5 via the venue site. Earlier today, Fall Out Boy released new single "Young and Menace." It previews the band's seventh studio album, M A N I A,, due Sept. 15 A Katy man was sentenced to two years in prison for causing a crash in 2014 that killed a man riding a motorcycle, the Harris County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday. Jeffrey N. Killebrew, 50, drove into oncoming traffic along Franz Road near the Grand Parkway on Feb. 23, 2014 and into the path of Frank C. Rodriguez. Rodriguez was unable to avoid a collision, prosecutors said. Houston Police Department Houston police are searching for a suspect who shot a woman in the leg while robbing her of her purse. The incident occurred in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 9700 block of Court Glen Drive on Monday, April 10 at about 7:30 p.m. SAN ANTONIO - FBI and IRS agents descended on the San Antonio law offices of Carlos Uresti on Thursday morning, confiscating documents and other items in connection with the state senator's involvement in a now-defunct San Antonio oil field services company accused of defrauding investors. Agents arrived at Uresti's law offices before 8 a.m. and were there more than six hours. Around 2 p.m., about 15 agents left Uresti's office, each carrying a box to a waiting FBI truck. "I have instructed my staff to fully cooperate with the federal investigators," Uresti, 53, said in a prepared statement. "I will help them in whatever way I can." FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee and Jason Gamez, a spokesman for the IRS' Criminal Investigation division in San Antonio, confirmed the FBI and IRS agents were there, with Lee saying they were "conducting a lawful law enforcement activity" but declining to provide any details. No arrests were made. Uresti was not present when the agents arrived at his office. He was in Austin, where the Legislature is in session. Uresti said the FBI was at his office reviewing documents related to FourWinds Logistics, an oil field services company that went bankrupt in 2015, with creditors owed more than $14 million. FourWinds has been in the FBI's cross hairs for months after investors alleged that CEO Stan Bates wasted their money on personal expenses, expensive gifts, exotic car rentals and a wild lifestyle. Bates has denied the allegations. Uresti had multiple roles with FourWinds. He provided legal services and served as outside general counsel in 2014. He had a 1 percent ownership interest in the company, though he has said the stock certificates were never transferred to him. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When Pasadena last chose a mayor, in 2013, about 7 percent of its registered voters determined who would lead the industrial port city of 150,000. Mayor Johnny Isbell, who won re-election by an overwhelming margin, attributed the paltry turnout to public satisfaction with "the direction the city is headed." Four years later, there is ample reason to question that sanguine assessment. But history suggests that turnout will again be low as voters in Pasadena, Pearland and other Houston-area communities choose mayors, council members and school trustees. Early voting started Monday, and election day is May 6. Scolding reminders of our duty to exercise our precious right to vote can be tiresome. And notwithstanding the admonitions of your high school civics teacher, you still can complain even if you don't vote. Still, sheer self-interest compels us to remember that elections have consequences. The news over the past few months has provided daily reminders of this truism on the national level, but it applies at least as much in local elections. In Pasadena, for example, the mayor who was returned to office by 3,599 voters was the driving force behind a change in the City Council structure that a federal judge found intentionally diluted the influence of the city's Latino majority. And reporting by some of my Houston Chronicle colleagues will provide new details about the inequitable allocation of city services on Isbell's watch. Low turnout in local elections is not limited to Pasadena. A year ago, just 2,744 Pearland residents - 4.3 percent of the fast-growing city's registered voters - cast ballots in an election that included three City Council seats and three school trustee positions, according to the Community Impact newspaper. In Friendswood, 9 percent of voters - 2,422 residents - cast ballots for two city council seats and two sales tax increases. Election fatigue The timing of the elections may be a factor in the turnout. With certain exceptions, Texas law permits elections on the first Saturday in May or the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. (This doesn't include party primaries, conducted in March.) If the goal is high turnout, the choice between spring and fall is not as simple as it might seem. More people are off work on a Saturday than a Tuesday, obviously, a factor that argues for the May date. But state and national general elections happen in November, and interest may lag without the drama of a contest for governor, Congress or the presidency. And in the aftermath of an intense presidential campaign laden with emotion, like the one last year, politics may be the last thing people want to think about six months later. "Election fatigue is a factor in Texas because we elect absolutely everything down to the dogcatcher," said longtime Houston political consultant Nancy Sims. (She was exaggerating a bit, but until 2007 Texas ballots included the position of "hide inspector," a job created in the 19th century to thwart cattle rustling.) People who are not deeply engaged with politics tend to think of fall as election season, consultant Keir Murray noted. A May election, he said, "reduces the voter pool down to the people who pay attention to those more localized issues, and it may be more likely to preserve the status quo." Indeed, conventional wisdom holds that low turnout benefits incumbents, conservatives and Republicans. And while party affiliation might not be officially acknowledged in nonpartisan local elections, its influence is increasingly apparent. Tipping the balance On Wednesday evening, about 40 people sat on folding chairs in the Area 5 Democrats' office in a Pasadena strip center to hear remarks from candidates. One wall was covered with photos of party luminaries: Lloyd Bentsen, Lyndon B. Johnson, both Kennedy brothers, Hillary Clinton and many others. It's often said that the tasks of local government - paving the streets, picking up the trash - don't recognize party labels. But when low turnout is all but taken for granted, party messaging on hot-button social issues can fire up the base and tip the balance in a close race. Consider the reaction, which I explored in a recent column, to a Pearland voter's concerns about "liberal gay rights Democrats" running for office in that community. "The first step in changing reality is to accept reality," Pasadena council candidate Oscar del Toro told the party faithful at the gathering Wednesday evening. "This is a partisan election." It remains to be seen whether increased party efforts to organize, mobilize and engage voters in local elections result in higher turnout. But you might give a thought to the pothole in front of your house, and the cost of a front-end alignment, when you consider how to spend your Saturday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday upheld the 2014 death sentence of Bellaire police killer Harlem Lewis III. Lewis, 25, was convicted for the Dec. 24, 2012, shooting deaths of Cpl. Jimmy Norman, 53, a Bellaire police officer, and Terry Taylor, 66, a bystander who tried to help the officer during the Christmas Eve traffic stop near his business. Lewis fled when Norman tried to pull him over. He struck a pickup during the pursuit and stopped near Taylor's auto body shop. He fatally shot the 24-year police veteran when Norman tried to take him into custody. He then fatally shot Taylor, who had stepped out of the business to assist Norman. Lewis was shot in an exchange of gunfire with officers who arrived at the scene. It took the jury about two hours to side with prosecutors and find Lewis guilty of capital murder. He remains on death row. Defense issues His trial attorney said he was disappointed with Wednesday's decision by the court to uphold the conviction and death sentence. "We thought there were some legal errors in the case - obviously the Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed," Houston attorney Pat McCann said. He was concerned that the proceedings amounted to a show trial for the benefit of the then relatively new District Attorney Devon Anderson. "That was pretty clear during the trial," McCann said. There was a heavy police presence during the trial that Lewis' defense lawyers believed might have intimidated the jurors and possibly altered the final outcome, McCann said. "There was obviously a lot of emotion during the trial," he said. There was a concern about Lewis' mental development during the trial and now that the case is on review, McCann said the appellate legal team will explore new scientific developments in that area. While the decision by Texas' highest criminal court might have gone against them, McCann said there still are additional legal avenues to follow, including the federal route. "There is still quite a long way to go," McCann said. Other appeals rejected The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday also rejected an appeal from Joseph Prystash, 60, sentenced to death for helping ex-Missouri City police officer Robert Fratta kill his wife in 1994. Prystash was the middle-man between Fratta and hired triggerman Howard Guidry. All three men are on Texas' death row. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday rejected 15 claims raised by Kimberly Cargill, 50, of Whitehouse, who was convicted in Smith County in 2012 of causing the asphyxiation of 39-year-old Cherry Walker. Ten of the claims in Cargill's appeal contended her trial lawyers were deficient for not presenting evidence that Walker died in June 2010 of an epilepsy-related seizure rather than homicidal violence. The court said three other claims were rejected because they should have been raised in an earlier appeal following her conviction and one was refused because it had been raised and rejected in that earlier appeal. The final claim argued attorneys handling the previous appeal were deficient for not arguing that an autopsy photo allowed into evidence was improper and prejudicial. This story contains material from the Associated Press. The Houston Housing Authority is closing its voucher program to new families through the end of the year amid uncertainty about federal funding, dimming housing prospects for thousands of low-income families. The freeze announced Wednesday hobbles one of Houston's largest affordable housing programs and means more than 28,000 families on the voucher waiting list will not be offered a subsidy for at least nine months. The city agency also plans to revoke vouchers from another 900 families whose chosen homes have yet to pass inspection. The cuts are not expected to impact the roughly 18,000 Houston families whose homes already are subsidized through the Housing Choice Voucher Program. "It's awful news," housing agency President Tory Gunsolley said, adding that he does not know how long the pullback will last. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the freeze last Friday to help close a projected $9 million shortfall in the local voucher program, which is federally funded. "Your housing authority is expected to take every possible action to reduce costs," HUD analyst Karen Schleper wrote in a letter to Gunsolley. Housing agencies nationwide potentially are facing similar constraints as rents rise - making the voucher program more expensive - and federal funding remains stagnant. Congress last year extended funding through Friday at 2016 levels. By continuing to fund the voucher program at that rate through the end of the fiscal year, Congress would leave more than 100,000 vouchers unfunded, 7,210 of them from Texas, according to the Washington, D.C-based nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "People had hoped it would not come to this," said Madison Sloan, who specializes in fair housing for the advocacy group Texas Appleseed. "In the face of such overwhelming need, this is awful." Beyond the families on the Houston Housing Authority's waiting list, roughly 400,000 low-income Harris County families were spending more than 30 percent of their earnings on housing as of 2013, according to the most recent federal data, up from 250,000 in 2000. The voucher program is designed to assist those earning less than 50 percent of the area's median income - $24,250 for an individual and $34,600 for a family of four. Families who receive a voucher typically put 30 percent of their earnings toward rent, and the voucher covers the gap, usually about $620 per month in Houston. The freeze also hinders local efforts to reduce homelessness, as many of those who recently received a voucher were chronically homeless. Eva Thibaudeau, director of programs for the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, said she no longer expects Houston to be able to meet Mayor Sylvester Turner's pledge to house 500 chronically homeless people by September. At most, Thibaudeau said, she thinks the city will be able to house another 100 people, on top of the 100 housed since March. "We're devastated," she said. "It really puts the brakes on the great strides that we had been making." Marc Eichenbaum, special assistant to the mayor for homeless initiatives, echoed Thibaudeau. "The inability to issue vouchers could severely impact the region's ability to reduce homelessness," he said. Gunsolley said the housing authority plans to begin Thursday notifying the 900 families whose vouchers it is rescinding. Beyond that, he's waiting on more concrete federal budget news. "We still don't know what the target is that we're shooting for, and yet we're driving down the road and running the program," Gunsolley said. "If the budget that comes in winds up being significantly different in one direction or another, that will change our plans." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A four-city FBI sweep targeted a Houston-based engineering company and a slew of local government offices in Laredo with daylong raids in an investigation still shrouded in mystery. Federal agents spent most of Wednesday combing through the Houston, Laredo, San Antonio and McAllen offices of Dannenbaum Engineering, the Bayou City-based company headed by prolific political donor and former University of Texas System Regent James Dannenbaum. The 77-year-old businessman, who was tied to a series of FBI raids in El Paso a decade ago, has many ongoing contracts with Houston and Harris County. As the flurry of FBI activity continued into Wednesday afternoon, Dannenbaum Engineering's attorney said the company had no idea what sparked the searches. "We are uncertain whether the inquiry is focused on the company's activities or those of its business competitors," attorney Joel Androphy said in the statement. "We intend to comment further when appropriate." Sometime Wednesday morning, agents took control of Dannenbaum Engineering's building at 3100 W. Alabama and told employees to leave. The FBI, aided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, similarly booted workers from the company's Embassy Oaks location in San Antonio and the West Nolana building in McAllen. Meanwhile in Laredo, law enforcement raided City Hall, the City Hall Annex, the Public Works Department, offices of Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales and Dannenbaum's McPherson Road location, where agents removed the building's front door. None of the raids netted any arrests by late Wednesday afternoon, and authorities did not release any information about what sparked the statewide federal scrutiny. "Once we're completed, I expect the business will go on as normal," FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said. Dannenbaum is one of the most prolific engineering companies in Houston and does extensive work with local government agencies, according to Jeff Nielsen, executive vice president of the Houston Contractors Association. "Dannenbaum has been a very reputable and well-regarded engineering firm," Nielsen said. Many projects The company has engineered storm sewer drainage projects for subdivisions across Harris County and has consulted on local flood prevention efforts. Dannenbaum won a $3 million terminal redevelopment contract for the Port of Houston in 2011, and in 2012, a former Dannenbaum CEO became executive director of the port. The company has also engineered bridges, pumping stations and airport facilities, and in 2014 won a contract to renovate the AT&T building in Pasadena. City officials dropped that contract in 2017 after FEMA funding for the renovation, associated with Hurricane Ike damage, never materialized. Dannenbaum has received more than $3.5 million from the city of Houston for work since 2010 and has five current contracts with the city. Harris County engineer John Blount said that the county also has multiple active contracts with Dannenbaum. Harris County Toll Road Authority officials said they were working on reviewing their contracts with Dannenbaum in response to media inquiries but could not provide details Wednesday. The Houston engineer has been a longtime player in state politics and has served on the Board of Visitors of MD Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Houston Medical School Development Board. Nielsen described Dannenbaum as "a leader in the engineering community" who is well-connected in business circles. The fifth-generation Texan has also consistently offered financial support for mostly Republican political causes, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into political races across the state during 2016 alone. In 2007, he was appointed to a six-year term on the University of Texas System Board of Regents. At the time, the move by Gov. Rick Perry sparked some controversy in light of the engineering company's business dealings, questions surrounding a multimillion-dollar bridge project and an FBI corruption investigation in El Paso County. Earlier controversies Just months before Dannenbaum's appointment to the UT Regents was announced, federal agents in El Paso County raided the homes and offices of public officials who had been associated with Dannenbaum and his company. Two of those officials - a county judge and commissioner - had accepted contributions from Dannenbaum earlier in the year. The investigation was focused on possible bribes disguised as campaign contributions, but neither Dannenbaum nor his company were charged. The company was also embroiled in scandal over a bridge planned to span the Port of Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. Dannenbaum was hired for engineering and spent $15 million without ever building the bridge, which sparked lawsuits. County officials in Brownsville seized about $1 million from the Dannenbaum company there, and the firm was eventually cleared of wrongdoing. More recently, Dannenbaum has been mired in controversy in Laredo, where Mayor Pete Saenz contested a $1-million-plus contract awarded to Dannenbaum in 2014. Saenz said the city picked the company without posting a request for other proposals in a water line project. The mayor sought to overturn the city council's contract decision, but council members overruled his veto and instead agreed to have an internal auditor review engineering and architectural contract awards over a five-year period. Dannenbaum Engineering currently has offices in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, as well as the locations targeted in Wednesday's raids. Mihir Zaveri, Mike Morris and the Laredo Morning Times contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas senators have waded intothe polarizing debate over campus free speech. Sen. Dawn Buckingham, a Lakeway Republican, introduced a bill this week that would forbid public universities from punishing students for engaging in expressive activities and requires these schools to adopt policies outlining students' right to assemble, protest and circulate petitions. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Texas Constitution. The bill, Buckingham said, seeks to reemphasize what is permitted on campuses. As provocative speakers have been invited to campuses, universities across the state and nation have grappled with how to balance the right to free speech and student calls for sensitivity. Students have called for more restrictive speech policies and urged their schools to cancel planned controversial speakers, arguing that they cause discomfort and evoke feelings of alienation particularly among minority students. Buckingham's bill, which was left pending on Wednesday in a higher education committee, resembles similar proposals this year in North Carolina, North Dakota and Colorado's state capitols. Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO of the Newseum, said recent public controversies at University of California at Berkeley and Middlebury College in Vermont have "gotten state legislatures interested" in campus speech. At Berkeley, demonstrators set fires and smashed windows in February to protest a speech by far-right writer Milo Yiannopoulos, and at Middlebury, students drowned out political scientist Charles Murray's address by pulling alarms and chanting. President Donald Trump in February weighed in on the issue. "If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" he wrote on Twitter. The university again came into the headlines this month after campus groups invited conservative commentator Ann Coulter to speak. Coulter said Wednesday that she is canceling her planned speech at the Berkeley campus, the New York Times reported, because she had lost the backing of conservative groups that had initially sponsored her appearance. This year has brought questions of free speech to Texas campuses, too. Outcry followed the announcement that white nationalist Richard Spencer would speak at Texas A&M University in College Station last year. More than 10,000 people signed a petition asking the university to cancel the event after Spencer evoked Nazi salutes at a high-profile speech in D.C. The university stood firm: Leaders said that they found Spencer's views reprehensible and did not invite him to campus, but they said they could not block him from speaking. Since then, Texas A&M has amended its speaker policy to require outside speakers to be sponsored by recognized Texas A&M organizations. Meanwhile, some Texas universities have been plastered with white nationalist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant posters since Trump's election in November. Rice University and University of Texas at Austin administrators cited campus policy as they removed those fliers, saying that they were in restricted places. And this week in Houston, University of St. Thomas students called for Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, to not speak at next month's commencement. They are concerned about Dolan's role in handling sexual abuse allegations when he was archbishop from 2002 to 2009 of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwauke. Under his leadership as archbishop of Milwaukee, abusive priests were paid up to $20,000 for agreeing to be removed from the clergy. At the committee hearing on Wednesday, senators asked whether the bill was necessary given existing free speech protections. Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, said the bill would allow lawmakers to take a stand against student intimidation that he said discourages conservative voices. "If you have one group so forceful that they don't allow another group to express their opinions, we've lost a battle." An initial version of the bill forbid university employees from disinviting campus speakers at students' request. That provision was struck in a committee substitute, which Buckingham said was created after input from universities. Herbst, who published a report on campus speech through the Newseum this week, said that the debate over campus speech was a symptom of broader changes in how millennials see the First Amendment's importance. The Texas prison system sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday demanding the return of 1,000 vials of a lethal injection drug confiscated two years ago at Bush Intercontinental Airport. The lawsuit comes in response to an FDA ruling last week that the drugs were improperly labeled and must be destroyed or returned to the overseas vendor that sent them within 90 days. The drug seizure is the latest victory for death penalty opponents who are fighting to cut off the supply of drugs for use in executions. The suit filed in Galveston before U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. claims the FDA's refusal to release the drugs for use in lawful executions will cause ongoing harm to the state. Lawyers for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice have argued that the state qualifies for a special law enforcement exemption to the FDA labeling requirements. The vials of sodium thiopental were seized in July 2015 at the airport upon arrival by airfreight from India. TDCJ had purchased the mass shipment in 2015 to keep on hand for future executions. More than 200 death row inmates have been designated for execution by lethal injection. The seizure and another in Arizona mark the first time that execution drugs have been intercepted entering the country, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "You cannot import a medicine for an unauthorized purpose, whether that purpose is law enforcement or to de-ice a plane," he said. Prison officials in Arizona and Nebraska also bought shipments of 1,000 vials of the drug from a distributor in India. Arizona's shipment was seized by federal authorities at the Phoenix airport; Nebraska's purchase never arrived, although the state received a $54,400 invoice for the purchase just the same. Texas and Arizona had obtained an import license from the Drug Enforcement Administration, but that did not satisfy FDA officials, who concluded that the shipment violated federal regulations requiring that directions for use and warning labels be affixed to drug packaging. Pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals in the U.S. and Europe have opposed the use by executioners of drugs commonly administered by doctors for medical purposes. States across the country that impose the death penalty have had increasing problems obtaining drugs suitable for lethal injection, leading them to find unusual suppliers. Most recently, Arkansas accelerated the pace of executions because its hard-to-find lethal injection drugs were nearing their expiration date. Sodium thiopental is a barbiturate that renders a person unconscious. Texas has used it in more than 400 executions, but it has not been used in the death chamber in Huntsville since 2011. It is widely regarded as the drug of choice for states that use a single drug for executions. Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine who has been called as an expert in the Arkansas cases, said sodium thiopental was traditionally a "workhorse" in operating rooms, the preferred anesthetic of choice. It chemically disrupts wakefulness, allowing doctors to perform surgery without causing pain to patients. "If someone has decided to make sodium thiopental for the target market of corrections, that's disturbing for me, because that's re-purposing a medicine and trying to make it a poison to kill people," Zivot said. The lawsuit seeks to delay destruction or exportation of the drugs until the legal issues are resolved. State and FDA officials declined to comment about the pending lawsuit. A trio of Houston residents were convicted this week in federal court of committing marriage fraud, according to officials. After four hours of deliberations a jury convicted Nigerian citizens Folarin H. Alabi, 35, and Justice Daniel, 41, and U.S. citizen Letrishia Andrews, 37, of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. RELATED: Former child bride in Texas aims to change marriage laws, says 'Child marriages hurt children' According to a release from the Department of Justice on Monday, these convicts join eight others who have previously plead guilty to similar charges. The aim of the marriage fraud ring was to enter into so-called "sham" marriages to get around immigration laws. According to the release, Alabi would look for potential accomplices of Nigerian descent at area clubs and bars. There was also evidence that at least one of those convicted, Andrews, had also filed false Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) applications to get obtain money for groceries. The defendants would apparently go as far as posing for staged photos showing a seemingly happy marriage to fool officials. The defense team tried to convince a jury that Alabi and Daniel were in a real marriage that was just having problems. All other documents and testimony proved otherwise though. Each of the defendants now face upt five years in federal prison along with fines as high as $250,000 for the conspiracy and marriage fraud convictions. Andrews could also get five years for the false statements related to the SNAP fraud. AND LEGAL!: How to have the ultimate Texas wedding Sentencing isn't set until Aug. 3 and all will remain in custody until the sentencing date. Houston's Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations team, in Houston, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General were all apart of the investigation. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The mother of a young woman who spent more than 24 hours nearly naked at the Waller County Jail said the decision to place her daughter on suicide watch was made without professional confirmation and turned the weekend arrest into a humiliating ordeal. Colleen Schehr said her 24-year-old daughter, Chelsea Schehr, was arrested Saturday over a "domestic dispute" with the father of her child and was taken to the Waller County Jail in Hempstead. The young woman's clothes were taken away, and she was given a blanket with which to cover herself. Since Chelsea Schehr was on her menstrual cycle, the blanket also functioned as a sanitary napkin and a towel, her mother said. Colleen Schehr said she was speaking on behalf of her daughter because the young woman was traumatized by what happened to her. AGING OUT: Waller County may replace 'inefficient, outdated' jail (Story continues below.) Calls to the Waller County Jail on Wednesday were not returned. Waller County Judge Trey Duhon said although he was not directly involved with this case, he learned that when Chelsea Schehr was booked into the jail, staff determined she should be placed on suicide watch. "When this woman was brought in and went through the process of being booked into jail, based on her responses, she was identified as a potential suicide risk," Duhon said. "So she was placed in a suicide-watch jail cell." Colleen Schehr questioned who decided that her daughter was potentially suicidal. "She should have been assessed by a doctor, a licensed professional, but there was nothing," she said. "They're false allegations." PENDING PROGRESS: Sandra Bland Act to increase officer training for de-escalation left pending in Legislature committee According to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the judge said, inmates who are identified as a suicide risk do not receive clothes since the items can be used for self-harm. "She was given a standard-issue, heavy-duty blanket, which cannot be torn or ripped," he said. "I am very familiar with the blankets. They are more than sufficient to cover an inmate's body and protect modesty." The heavy blanket, however, became soiled and wet as Chelsea Schehr repeatedly cleaned blood off herself from her heavy menstrual flow. A guard took that blanket and replaced it with one that was smaller and barely covered her private parts, she told her mother. Colleen Schehr said when her daughter was arraigned, she was the only person in the courtroom "wearing" a blanket. JAIL DEATH: Man dies at hospital after seizure in Harris County Sheriff's Office custody "She was trying to hold her blanket close to her body to fill out paper work, while she was bleeding on herself," Colleen Schehr said. Duhon said that while inmates on suicide watch have the option of choosing a blanking or a smock, most opt for the blanket. Colleen Schehr, however, said her daughter was not offered a smock or any sort of garment. "She kept asking at least for underpants," Schehr said. The young woman also begged for toilet paper, sanitary napkins or tampons and asked to see a doctor but none of her requests was fulfilled, her mother said. Chelsea Schehr also told her mother that, in her cell, she had to contend with blood "all over the floor" from a previous inmate and urine in the sink. NO, THANK YOU: Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith declines resignation request Duhon said as far as he knew, the jail staff acted in "strict accordance" with jail commission standards. "She has not filed a complaint with the Texas Jail Commission," the judge said. "If she does, an investigation will be conducted." Colleen Schehr said Thursday the family planned to file a complaint. The Waller County Jail has been in the public eye in recent months as the site where Sandra Bland took her own life in July 2015 after a questionable arrest by a state trooper on a rural roadway. (Story continues below.) That case ended in a $1.9 million mediated settlement between Bland's family and Waller County. In March, a female inmate filed a complaint with the jail commission, accusing a male inmate of sexually assaulting her. The male inmate was performing duties typically assigned to inmates with trusty status, but this male inmate had not been given that status, officials said at the time. AUSTIN -- The Texas House gave final approval Thursday to a wide-reaching 'sanctuary cities' ban that would grant sweeping new powers to police officers in the state by allowing them to question a person's immigration status if they have been stopped with reasonable suspicion. The chamber passed Senate Bill 4, a priority item for Gov. Greg Abbott this session, on a party-line vote with 94 Republicans in support and 53 Democrats against. The legislation would force police to honor all federal requests to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally until federal authorities can investigate the person's status. It also would prohibit local jurisdictions from passing or enforcing an ordinance that prohibits police officers from inquiring about a detained person's immigration status, which would nullify the Houston Police Department's 1990 policy on the matter. TEXAS IMMIGRATION RAID: ICE raids net 95 immigrants in Houston region The Houston Police Department guidance allows officers to contact immigration authorities only if someone is arrested on a criminal charge greater than a Class C misdemeanor and the officer knows the person is here illegally. The Harris County Sheriff's Office has also prohibited such inquiries since 2009. Now, the House-approved measure goes back to the Senate, which can agree with the House amendments or request a conference committee to iron out differences between their varying proposals. Both chambers must agree on identical language before sending the bill to Abbott by the end of the legislative session May 29. The House tentatively approved the bill early Thursday after a nearly 16-hour debate that turned testy and emotional several times as outnumbered Democrats tried to add a host of exemptions, including one to shield children from inquires about their immigration status and another to exclude college police departments. Other proposals would have created exceptions for homeless shelters and domestic violence centers, but Republicans rejected those amendments. WHERE TEXANS STAND: Texas voters oppose border wall One win for Democrats came when the chamber approved a proposal by Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso exempting facilities that provide mental health services. The amendment passed 91-46. Another would exclude places of worship, which passed 107-40. In the most charged moment of the night, the GOP majority approved a major revision to the initial House measure, allowing police officers to inquire about someone's immigration status during detainments and stripping earlier language that required an arrest first. The proposal by Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, held up the chamber's proceedings for hours and encountered fierce Democratic resistance. They said it was similar to "show me your papers" legislation Arizona lawmakers passed in 2010, commonly referred to as SB 1070, that drew widespread negative attention to the state and sparked a costly legal battle over its constitutionality. It would force Texas police officers to do the work of federal immigration authorities and could lead to racial profiling of Latinos and other immigrants regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens, Democrats warned. The Schaefer amendment -- which prevailed on a 81-64 vote, attracting nine GOP defections -- effectively did away with what was expected to be a main point of contention between the House and Senate. The change paves the way for the bill's smooth passage in the Republican-controlled legislature as the session nears its end. Both chambers also agree on the measure's major enforcement provisions, which would impose hefty fines on an entity in violation of the legislation and could lead to the criminal prosecution of Texas sheriffs and police chiefs who do not comply. In both versions, a sheriff or other local officer overseeing a jail can be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for refusing to comply with immigration detainer requests. A Class A misdemeanor is punishable by up to one year in jail, a fine of up to $4,000, or both. Such a charge effectively would force the elected officials, if convicted, out of their jobs and bar them for life from working as a police officer or jailer in Texas. It also would impose a civil penalty between $1,000 and $1,500 on a local entity or campus for the first violation. Each subsequent violation would cost the entity at least $25,000 each day it continues. However, the Senate-approved bill goes further by restricting state grant money to cities or counties that a judge finds to be in violation of SB 4. Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, the bill's House author, eliminated that provision, a punishment Democrats have argued would hurt domestic violence programs, veterans' courts and other services. The House made no changes to that part Thursday. In response, Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez on Thursday praised Democrats and echoed many of their arguments from the debate, particularly that the bill would require her deputies to enforce federal immigration law. Hernandez has become the most high-profile target of SB 4's proponents after she said she would honor ICE detainer requests only in cases of serious violent crimes, such as capital murder and aggravated assault. "(Democrats) truly listened to leaders in both law enforcement and communities of faith, as well as the people we are sworn to protect and serve," she said in a statement. "They presented factual, common sense truths rather than fear-based, misleading rhetoric. They recognized the cost of forcing local law enforcement to do the job of the federal government and the liability it places upon us." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump started his campaign in 2015 with a warning about rapists and other criminals crossing the border: "When Mexico sends it people," he said, "they're not sending their best." On Wednesday, he made good on a promise he made to a Houston couple last year when they sought his help to aid the victims of criminals living in the U.S. illegally. Tim Lyng and his wife, Maria Espinoza, founders of the Houston-based Remembrance Project, looked on as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced the launch of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), billed as an office to assist victims of "criminal aliens." A host of immigrant rights organizations immediately denounced the project as a dangerous effort to stigmatize immigrants as criminals to justify the administration's aggressive new deportation policies, which have swept up a growing number of immigrants with no criminal records. For Lyng and Espinoza, the new office represents the culmination of nearly a decade of advocacy, including a March 2016 letter to Trump. "It's a very emotional time," Espinoza said. "It's just being able to breathe, and feel like someone is listening to the families. That's all that we're asking." Also present among a clutch of victim families was Laura Wilkerson, a Pearland woman whose teenage son Joshua was beaten and tortured to death in 2010 by a classmate, a Belize national living in the U.S. illegally. "It means everything," Wilkerson said. "What we started it for was to help victims when they needed it most. And there was no one, when it happened in my family, to turn or to get help for questions, like, who is this kid who killed him?" A humanitarian fface While the Trump initiative is aimed nationwide, the launch has deep roots in Houston, where it could have future political ramifications. Espinoza, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant who "came the right way," is considering another Republican primary challenge to Houston U.S. Rep. John Culberson, architect of Trump's sanctuary cities crackdown that was blocked Tuesday by a federal judge. "It's still there," Espinoza said of a potential sequel to her unsuccessful 2016 run. "So, we'll just see what happens." In a three-way race, she came in third with nearly 18 percent of the vote. Kelly, who a week ago said critics of Trump's forceful immigration policies should "shut up" and get behind law enforcement, used Wednesday's launch to blast what he called the past Obama administration's "politically correct approach to public safety." The rollout came as the Trump administration has struggled to get Congress to appropriate money for the massive border wall he promised during his campaign. Amid growing opposition among administration critics to Trump's hard line on border security and immigration, Kelly sought to put a humanitarian face on the new initiative for crime victims. "We're giving people who were victimized by illegal aliens, for the first time, a voice of their own," Kelly said. "All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique and too often ignored. They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place, because the people who victimized them oftentimes should not have been in the country in the first place." Civil rights activists argue that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans and that the VOICE initiative has more to do with the nativist theme of Trump's presidential campaign than any humanitarian impulse. "It couldn't be more obnoxious," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice Education Fund, which raises awareness on immigration reform. "It's the kind of thing you see in totalitarian societies when they're trying to define a group in order to set up further persecution." Effort is 'misleading' Other critics termed it an effort to scapegoat immigrants by playing on natural human sympathy. "While we hold sympathy for all victims of crime and their families, especially when there's been a loss of life, the agenda of the VOICE office established by President Trump is unduly selective in its focus, misleading in its framing of information, and, sadly, designed to stir up animus against the immigrant population," said Ronald Newman, director of strategic initiatives for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Giving it a humanitarian frame is giving it too much credit." Though Kelly took no questions after the announcement, a Homeland Security spokesman said there was no effort to demonize immigrants through the office, which will offer an information hotline to connect crime victims and their families with Immigration and Customs Enforcement community relations officers. "It's to make sure that the victims and their families have a resource they can go to, to help them understand the immigration system, to get information that's specific to the immigration system," said David Lapan, a press aide to Kelly. The reason for the inititative, Lapan added, is "not necessarily that there is more crime, but that there is crime committed by individuals that are here unlawfully." Of the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally, Lapan said, "not every one of those or nowhere near every one of those has committed crimes, outside of being here unlawfully. It's that segment of the population that's here illegally and is committing crimes that we're concerned about." Project's political arm Lyng and Espinoza started the Remembrance Project in 2009 after Houston police officer Henry Canales was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant during a sting operation against a stolen goods fencing ring. His death came three years after the 2006 fatal shooting of another Houston police officer, Rodney Johnson, also at the hands of a man in the country illegally. Johnson's widow later brought suit against the city, blaming the death partly on local immigration enforcement policies. Lyng and Espinoza, working with America First Latinos, first sought help from the nation's governors to set up similar victims' programs. Getting no response, they then approached the four remaining candidates in last year's Republican presidential primaries, including Cruz. According to Lyng, Trump was the only one who responded. "He sent Maria a personal note saying he would support the Remembrance Project or a program to assist Americans whose loved ones were killed by illegal aliens, and that he would do that as soon as he's elected," Lyng said. Espinoza, who attended the signing of Trump's executive order cracking down on illegal immigration in January, said there is nothing racist or discriminatory about the Remembrance Project, several of whose members gave personal testimonials at the Republican National Convention last July. "We're talking about illegal immigration," she said. "We're importing crime. ... These crimes are all 100 percent preventable, and that's what we're focusing on. We're talking about anyone who's here illegally. It doesn't matter what country you're from or the color of your skin or your eyes." Though the Remembrance Project originally was set up as a nonprofit, Lyng and Espinoza recently met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and set up an affiliated political advocacy organization. "This will have more latitude in endorsing and supporting 'America First' policies and candidates around the country," Espinoza said. Want to understand Kasichism? Ohio Governor John Kasich has a new book out, Two Paths: America Divided or United, and you don;'t even have to read it because he's on a media blitz to push it. On The View Tuesday he addressed the reason-- a 2020 presidential run-- most people are paying attention to it: "A lot of people say, 'Well, he wrote this be 'cause he wants to run for office or whatever.' No, I wrote this book because, folks, we can't live fighting, even inside our own families." Later he was on Chris Hayes' show. It was so dull. Chris tried to make it interesting but Kasich didn't like being challenged on his conservative pieties. Eventually he just said, "We're not going to spend our time here arguing economics. You're a liberal, I'm a conservative... What I want to talk about is..." Chris, be a little more discerning with the book-writer guests. Kasich ended the evening with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, clip above, where he actually said something useful and interesting. And he actually brought it up himself, his very last point in the 15 minute segment. "A handful of billionaires," he said, "could pick a president and that's just dead wrong. It's a Supreme Court ruling and I'm against it." Earlier he claimed to not like gerrymandering, although it's worth noting-- which Trevor didn't-- that one of the country's most repulsive gerrymanders-- Ohio-- was signed off on by Governor Kasich. It was done between Obama's two elections, when Ohioans were split down the middle. In 2008, Obama beat McCain 2,940,044 (52%) to 2,677,820 (47%) and in 2012 he beat Romney 2,827,710 (51%) to 2,661,433 (48%). In 2008 the Democrats won 10 congressional seats and the Republicans won 8 seats. Ohio lost 2 seats in the 2010 reapportionment and Republicans in the legislature-- with Kasich in the governor's mansion-- rejiggered the districts to give the GOP a 13-5 (and eventually a 12-4) majority. The 2016 Almanac of American Politics explained what happened: Republicans had cracked Columbus into multiple districts to shortchange Democrats. But the state capital was growing and attracting progressive-minded voters at such a rate that neither the Republican-held 12th [Pat Tiberi] nor 15th [Steve Stivers] might hold until 2020. So for three months in mid-2011, Republican legislative aides bunkered in a clandestine Columbus hotel room, and under the watchful guidance of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, hatched yet another innovative scheme. Republicans would pack Democrats into a new Columbus 3rd District, merge Kaptur and Kucinich in a skinny 9th District stretching 100 miles along Lake Erie, and throw Sutton into a nearby 16th District favoring freshman Republican Jim Renacci. They would also have to sacrifice by merging two of their own, Dayton area Republicans Mike Turner and Steve Austria. But the creation of a Columbus Democratic vote sink would produce a beneficial ripple effect, allowing Republicans to shore up other freshmen and keep a 12-4 advantage. The legislature and Gov. John Kasich easily approved the plan... 21 Democrats caved and voted with the Republicans... Republicans got the 12-4 delegation they envisioned in a state that Barack Obama twice won. A constitutional amendment that would have established an independent congressional redistricting commission was defeated by voters on November 6, 2012. And last November Ohio gave Trump a pretty massive 2,841,005 (51.7%) to 2,394,164 (43.6%) win over Hillary Clinton. Trump won every Republican-held district and one Democratic-held district, Tim Ryan's 13th, where Obama's 62.9-35.4% win over Romney turned into a 51.1-46.6% Trump win. The DCCC ignored Ohio entirely in 2016-- they didn't back one Democratic candidate-- and plan to do the same in 2018. Right now there are a handful of Democrats who are going ahead without DCCC help or backing. Janet Everhard and Richard Crosby are vying for the nomination to take on Brad Wenstrup (OH-02); Andrew Mackey is taking on Jim Jordan (OH-04); Michael Milisits ir running for Michael Turner's seat (OH-10); Betsy Rader is taking on David Joyce (OH-14) and Aaron Minnick will run against Steve Stivers (OH-15). Jim Renacci isn't running for reelection and there are likely to be several Democrats who run in the 16th district. If the DCCC had plausible candidates in place and 2018 did indeed see an anti-Trump tsunami, Democrats would likely be able to win at least 4 seats: OH-01 (Cabot), OH-10 (Turner), OH-12 (Tiberi) and OH-14 (Joyce). But without plausible competitively-financed candidates they will win no seats in Ohio, which is part of the DCCC plan as of now. Here's the DCCC's Ohio Fight Song: Police are trying to determine who shipped 10 pounds of marijuana from California to a pastor in the Philadelphia suburbs. Yeadon police tell WTXF-TV (http://bit.ly/2pJoU9o ) the drugs arrived Thursday, in bundles stuffed into a plastic bucket inside a cardboard box that was delivered by United Parcel Service. The package was sent from Sacramento. But the woman who received it is a church pastor who tells authorities it wasnt meant for her. Police believe someone else might have been instructed to watch for the package, but failed to pick it up. Police Chief Donald Molineux (mawl-in-OH) says the pastor is very upset and traumatized and afraid someone might come to her home looking for the drugs. Police are hoping surveillance video from a drop-off location will identify who shipped the package. ASSOCIATED PRESS An online exclusive is an article or story that does not run in the print edition of the Houston Herald. Typically 2-3 are posted online every Wednesday morning. Its another feature designed for users who purchase full web access from the Herald. Click here to subscribe for print, digital or both. 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. The United States-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and freedom in the Asia Pacific, said Vice President Pence on his recent visit there. Under President Donald Trump, the United States stands unwavering in our alliance and unyielding in our resolve to defend all that we have built together over these generations. The United States will strengthen its presence in the Asia Pacific, said Mr. Pence. Japan will assume a larger role and responsibility in our alliance in the years ahead, and both of our nations will continue to expand our cooperation for our common defense. Together, said Mr. Pence, we will defend the rules-based order upon which the region's progress, past and future, depends. We will protect the freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the sea, in the South China Sea and elsewhere, and we will ensure the unimpeded flow of lawful commerce on the Seven Seas. Even now there storm clouds are gathering in the region as regards North Koreas pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the most dangerous and urgent threat to the peace and security of the Asia Pacific, said Mr. Pence. For more than two decades, the United States and its allies have worked to peacefully dismantle North Korea's nuclear program and alleviate the suffering of its people. But at every step of the way, North Korea answered these overtures with willful deception, with broken promises, and nuclear and missile tests. As President Trump has made clear, the era of strategic patience is over. The United States will continue to work diligently with Japan, our allies across the region, China, and the wider world to bring economic and diplomatic pressure to bear on the regime in North Korea, and we will do so until they abandon their nuclear and ballistic missile programs, said Vice President Pence. In the meantime, all options are on the table. And those who would challenge American resolve, said Mr. Pence should know that the U.S. will defeat any attack and meet any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with an overwhelming and effective American response. The United States of America will always seek peace, but under President Trump, the shield stands guard and the sword stands ready. Bank workers on both sides of the Tasman have been saying for years that theyre under so much pressure to sell that theyre struggling to do their job properly, said Tali Williams, FIRST Union national organiser for the finance sector. Williams also claimed members in both Australia and New Zealand face disciplinary action and threat of job loss if they dont meet sales expectations. There has to be a culture change, she said. This is whats so encouraging about the Sedgewick report its calling on bank executives to put service first. Karen Scott-Howman, CEO of the New Zealand Bankers Association, told HRM that the organisation has already met with First Union to discuss the issue and is happy to continue a dialogue. The Sedgwick report broadly discusses issues of trust and confidence in the Australian banking sector. In New Zealand we operate in a different regulatory environment and are addressing similar issues through the Financial Advisers Act review, she said. The workplace can be one of the only safe places that victims of family violence can access support and information, said Vodafones HRD, Antony Welton. We believe it is vital for our business to be equipped and ready to help. The company which will also help staff change phone numbers and email addresses if requested confirmed the benefits will be available to those directly affected as well as anyone supporting a victim. These measures may help save lives, said CEO Stanners. It will make it easier for people to leave violent relationships, and stay in employment. It will also keep victims safe at work from their abusers. According to New Zealands national centre for research on family violence, there were 110,114 police investigations into family violence in 2015. The same year saw 5,264 applications filed for protection orders. We know that the impact of family violence is not isolated to the home, nor does it discriminate based on gender, age, education or social status, said Stanners. Family violence affects us all, and workplaces have a huge role to play in addressing this issue. In an in-depth interview with Business of Fashion, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour explained why we will likely see the former model, who covered the glossy back in 2005, featured in the magazine sometime in the future. Advertisement Melania Trump (then Melania Knauss) covers the Feb. 2005 edition of Vogue. Reporter Imran Amed notes "the complicated issue about how Vogue should cover Melania Trump," before mentioning that historically, the magazine features first ladies, either on a cover or in a multi-page spread. (Clinton, for example, was the first first lady to be on the cover, and Michelle Obama has covered the mag three times.) When asked if we can expect to see Trump in a forthcoming issue, Wintour replied, "We always photograph or cover in some way the first ladies, so as Ive said before, I cant imagine that we wouldnt at some point cover the first lady, but weve got nothing planned right now." Advertisement Michelle Obama's third Vogue cover. When asked if she see it as Vogue's responsibility to cover someone who represents the current U.S. administration, Wintour was adamant that it's important to cover people who have "different points of view," even if she doesn't necessarily agree with them. "I think we have to respect the Office of the President of the United States of America and I think we also need to respect different points of view," Wintour said. "It doesnt mean that we are necessarily agreeing with everything that they say, but a lot of the country does." Wintour has previously spoken about her intention to feature the first lady in the pages of Vogue. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in February, Wintour said, "We have a tradition of always covering whoever is the first lady at Vogue, and I cant imagine that this time would be any different. Wintour's words were met with some criticism on Twitter, with some saying they would boycott the magazine if Trump got a Vogue cover. Advertisement i s2g i will cancel my vogue subscription if they put melania trump on the cover (@lovesanjula) February 16, 2017 Per Anna Wintour, Expect to See Melania Trump in Vogue https://t.co/rJshO51269 via @thecut. May be time to boycott Vogue #novogueformelania Michael Lyle (@bluecatexpress) February 10, 2017 As for the criticism Wintour received when she was spotted meeting with then-President elect Donald Trump in February, Wintour said she has nothing to be ashamed of as she has known him for a long time and traditionally meets with all kinds of people who have different views than the magazine. "I have known Donald Trump, I think, since the early 80s. Anyone who was out and about in New York and he was out and about in New York [would know him]," she said. "Ivanka [Trump] has had a long history with the magazine, and I have respect for Ivanka and everything that she has achieved. And, as I mentioned to you before, we have these ETFs [Editorial Task Force meetings] where we invite outside people to come in and talk to us about their vision and what they see and so obviously it made complete sense to invite the then-president elect to come in and talk to all of us here. Were a huge media company. I believe he also went to the New York Times. I think it was a very natural thing for us to do." The largest non-bank lender of mortgages in Canada is in the midst of an unparalleled existential crisis, and some are wondering whether the lenders troubles are the canary in the coal mine for a Canadian housing bubble. Home Capital Groups shares fell by 65 per cent on Wednesday, on news the company had secured a $2-billion line of credit to keep it running. The very fact it needed such a loan appeared to spook investors. Advertisement The same day, credit rating agency DBRS downgraded Home Capitals debt to BB, from BBB (low), saying that $2-billion loan is too expensive for Home Capital to handle. Investors are heading for the exits. The company has lost nearly $600 million in deposits in recent weeks, the Financial Post reports. Its shares saw some bounce-back on Thursday, trading at $6.82, up 14 per cent from the previous day's close, as of 11:30 am ET. But the company's stock price is down more than 78 per cent since the start of the year. Began with mortgage fraud Home Capitals public troubles began in 2015, when the company announced it had severed ties with 45 mortgage brokers who had allegedly falsified information on mortgage applications. Advertisement The company later estimated some 10 per cent of the value of the loans on its books were linked to brokers accused of falsifying information. But that investigation led Home Capital into hot water. The Ontario Securities Commission earlier this month accused the company's leadership of issuing "materially misleading statements" about its investigation into the alleged mortgage fraud. The companys chief financial officer, Robert Morton, was removed from his position following the OSCs allegations, and the companys founder, Gerald Soloway, will be stepping down from its board. Will it infect the whole mortgage market? But more worrying may be the chatter among market observers, some of whom are wondering whether this might be a sign of bigger problems in Canadas overheated housing markets. Advertisement Some blogs declared that this is the first sign that Canadas housing bubble is about to pop. It doesnt take a lot to topple a house of cards, wrote former Member of Parliament-turned-housing market blogger Garth Turner. Or in this case, a nation of toppy houses floating on a foundation of debt. Maybe its just another week of excess borrowing and undisciplined spending.... Or, perhaps, this is it. The moment of capitulation. Over the cliff. Investors took out those concerns on Canadas other mortgage lenders. Equitable Group Inc. shares fell nearly 32 per cent on Wednesday, despite strong earnings and positive outlooks from analysts. I think our company is demonstrably different from Home Capital, Equitable CEO Andrew Moor told The Globe and Mail. Nonetheless, investors tend to see things correlated. Thats sort of what happens. Advertisement Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the government-run mortgage insurer, worked to reassure investors. We have no significant concerns about the quality of the mortgages in the Home Capital portfolio, it said in a statement. We are not concerned about either the current state of our financial exposures nor with the Canadian housing finance system in general. The panic calmed down a little on Thursday, with most lenders recovering some (though not all) of their losses from Wednesday. The Globe and Mail reported Home Capital is now exploring selling itself, retaining RBC Capital Markets and BMO Capital Markets to advise on "strategic options." Some analysts speculated the company may have attractive assets for Canada's big banks. It wont take long to get more clarity on Homes viability, wrote Rob McLister, founder of RateSpy.com, on the Canadian Mortgage Trends blog. Expect a series of major announcements from the company, and perhaps regulators, in the next few days and weeks. Also on HuffPost: Advertisement When it comes to laws for the elderly, they're often about restrictions not letting people drive or even preventing them from voting. But in Israel, where people 80 and over are 5.5 per cent of the population, they've decided to buck the trend and pass a law in favour of octogenarians (and above). Advertisement As of March, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the government passed a bill that prevents anyone aged 80 and over from having to stand in a line in a public space. Gettystock photo. It applies to places like post offices, banks, theatres, stadiums, national parks and nature reserves and large supermarkets, Haaretz clarifies, but isn't in effect for medical appointments or for cars lined up at gas stations, for example. The bill was initiated by Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel (a position formerly called the Senior Citizen Affairs Minister). Upon its passing, she noted, "Serving the elderly first and allowing them to skip lines is something which we as a society would need to do, even if not required by law." Advertisement The way in which older people are treated tends to be dependent on the culture, but some countries have even felt the need to pass laws that criminalize children who neglect their parents. France, in 2004, amended Article 207 of its Civil Code to ensure kids are kept apprised of their parents' health, the Telegraph reported. And China passed a similar law in 2013 to ensure elderly parents would be visited by their children, AP writes. The way in which older people are treated tends to be dependent on the culture, but some countries have even felt the need to pass laws that criminalize children who neglect their parents. But lines in particular can be a chaotic undertaking for even the most able-bodied person. While Canadians are trained at a young age to stand patiently in line (as, famously, are British people), people who come here from other countries are shocked to see this behaviour, notes a 2014 National Post article. It's possible, however, that Canadians' adherence to lines and the "everyone waits their turn" mindset that it involves could make us reject notions like letting those who are more in need skip to the front. But it's this type of everyday etiquette that can make all the difference in how a culture views its older citizens, as people are reminded that the elderly could use a little bit of help in even the simplest tasks. Advertisement TORONTO Kevin OLearys decision to withdraw from the Conservative leadership race creates a huge opportunity for his former rivals, those still in the contest said Wednesday, as they squared off in the partys final debate and took particular aim at Maxime Bernier, now the perceived front-runner. "Today, the race just got real," candidate Erin O'Toole declared on stage. "Elvis has left the building." Advertisement Less than two hours before the Toronto event was to start, the businessman and and television personality, accompanied by Bernier, held a news conference at the Fairmont Royal York to explain his decision to pull out of the contest and throw his support behind the Quebec MP. It would seem foolish, even selfish, to win the leadership knowing that I didnt have a clear path or high probability [of winning a majority government], OLeary said. He called Bernier the candidate that best mirrors my policies. Over the weekend, OLeary adviser Mike Coates and Bernier adviser Kory Teneycke had a number of conversations. Their candidates spoke on the phone Monday, and on Tuesday, OLeary flew from New York to Toronto for an 11 p.m. rendezvous with Bernier. Advertisement Berniers camp said the meeting was held at a private residence. OLearys camp said the two met at the Royal York. Regardless, the two huddled until 1 a.m. when they notified the rest of their teams that they had come to an agreement on the messaging of the impending announcement. OLeary informed the Conservative party mid-afternoon Wednesday, after the news had already broken online. Coates told HuffPost Canada that OLearys internal polling numbers showed he had the support of only 12 per cent in Quebec. OLeary was convinced he could win the Tory leadership but he had started to worry that he couldnt win a general election. Despite having a French tutor who travelled with him, OLeary, a unilingual anglophone, had not yet grasped the language. Wednesdays debate was held in both official languages. But perhaps, Coates suggested, OLearys biggest learning curve was the political arena. You dont really know whats its going to be like, he said. Now, he knows. Advertisement Despite both candidates launching aggressive attacks against each other each suggested the other was guilty of voter fraud by improperly paying for memberships the two were all smiles Wednesday, saying their dispute had been amicable. OLeary wanted to be a disrupter in the campaign and viewed Bernier the only candidate who would could also embody that role, Coates said. Two blocks from the Royal York, at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts, where Conservatives gathered for the debate, news of OLearys withdrawal was all the buzz. London, Ont., resident Shelley Clair sat facing Berniers promotional booth. An OLeary supporter, she told HuffPost Canada she was disappointed hed dropped out but now she was interested in learning more about Bernier because of the endorsement. Advertisement Warrington Ellacott, a new party member from Orangeville, Ont., thought OLearys exit presented an opportunity for the other candidates. He hoped to see OLearys pro-business message adopted by other candidates. Both Andrew Saxton, a former North Vancouver MP and banker, and Vancouver venture capitalist Rick Peterson tried to assume OLearys business-focus mantle by trumpeting their private sector experience. Even OToole, a former veterans minister, said he could also go after members who were looking for an outsider with business experience. If they liked his private-sector, sort of hard-edged business guy, I worked on Bay Street in these towers here. I havent been in politics for a decade-plus like some in this race, he said. Story continues after slideshow: Conservative Leadership Candidates See Gallery OLearys exit provides a new opportunity to court the 35,000 members his camp signed up. But a number of the Tories 259,000 members also registered through the partys website and the opposing campaigns dont know where their loyalties lie or where their second, third and fourth ballot support will land. The Conservatives are electing their new leader through a weighted-ranked ballot system that gives every riding the same influence regardless of how many members it has. Ballots started arriving in the mail this week. A new leader will be selected on May 27. Advertisement All the remaining candidates said on Wednesday that they had no plans to leave the contest. We dont know who is going to win. Its a wide open race, Saxton said. Obviously, with Kevin gone, it stirs things up. His people are up for grabs, OToole noted. He said he is actively courting OLeary supporters, hoping to land former Ontario Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris endorsement. This is fabulous for myself, Kellie Leitch declared after the debate. She said she was the only Conservative alternative to OLeary. He and Maxime Bernier share some ideas, whether that be legalized marijuana or otherwise. While the final debate included the usual flashpoints over Leitchs call for screening immigrants and challenger Michael Chongs desire to adopt a carbon tax, Wednesdays face-off included several barbs directed at Bernier. Advertisement Former Commons speaker Andrew Scheer told the audience that the race was now between him and Bernier and that attention needed to be given to the MPs more radical position. Conservatives win when we take the very best of what we agree on, that we take the policies that we know enjoy the most support in mainstream Canada and we run on those types of things, and Im worried that, with Maxime, its more a personal ideology that he is advocating that doesnt enjoy broad-base support in the general public, he later told reporters. ...I dont want to spend any more time in opposition than I have to, Scheer said. Berniers position on ending supply management, for example, would mean billions of dollars spent buying back farmers quotas an expense that would be imposed on Canadians either as a consumption tax on milk, dairy and poultry products, or as a cost added to the national debt, Scheer said. So there is no immediate benefit to consumers and we have just sold out a huge section of our Conservative movement and rural Canada. Advertisement Berniers support for free trade with China is also concerning, Scheer said, noting a particular impact on the Canadian manufacturing sector. There are some policies that he has advocated for that a lot of members, I dont know if they have been informed about the full breadth of the impact. In a note to party members, Scheer referred to a Mainstreet Research poll that suggested he had 16.7 per cent of support, behind OLearys 26.3 per cent. Bernier was third with 14.2 per cent and OToole followed with 7.8 per cent. Contenders court OLeary supporters To Kevin OLearys supporters across the country, who are no doubt confused and disappointed, you are welcome in my campaign. Im a genuine conservative who will bring a new optimistic tone to our party to defeat Trudeau, Scheer wrote. Chong countered that, according to a Nanos survey, he was the most appealing leader to Canadian voters with OLeary now out of the contest, and the only one who can win in 2019. Advertisement Kevin OLeary made the right decision by dropping out of the leadership race, Chong said. OLeary couldnt speak French and couldnt win in Quebec, he said. Conservative party members also need to take a hard look at some the extreme policies that are being proposed by some of the other candidates. We have a candidate that is proposing to eliminate for the first time in 40 years the federal governments role in the delivery of public health care Canadians most cherished social program and the most important priority for Canadians, Chong said, referring to Bernier. Berniers extreme policies in spotlight Some of Berniers other extreme policies include proposing to pay for income taxes by cutting more than one-third of all federal program spending, Chong said. The deepest cuts, levied in the 1990s by former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin in an effort to bring Canadas finances in order, slashed program spending by only 10 per cent, Chong noted. Berniers cuts would be three to four times higher, he said. It would wreck our social and health care services. On stage, Chong said Bernier could not win, arguing that such policies would hand the next election to the Liberal Party of Canada. Advertisement The Quebec candidate seemed content to sit back and let the 12 others on the stage compete for airtime. When challenged, Bernier spoke of his desire to champion ideas of freedom, small government and personal responsibility. He defended his healthcare plan by saying reforms are needed since Canada has the worst wait times in the OECD countries. He also noted that it was a little bit bizarre that Tory candidates were all jumping to defend supply management, a system that was brought in by former Liberal prime minister Pierre Eliott Trudeau. In an email to members, Bernier said he had the best team, had raised the most money and sold the most memberships. He boasted that he could win in 40 seats in Quebec and claimed the broadest support across Canada. Bernier wasnt the only Conservative smiling ear to ear Wednesday. Several party members breathed sighs of relief with OLeary out of the race. Im just pleased because I know Mr. OLeary was very much against pro-life issues. So, for myself, Im happy about it. Thats all I can say, Denis Gracias, a Roman Catholic visual artist, told HuffPost. Advertisement Toronto resident Elizabeth Carswell, a Chris Alexander supporter, had only two words to mark OLearys parting: Thank you. Post-partum depression is a global problem, and that's never been more apparent. Today, Canada joins the U.S. and Australia in the largest international postpartum depression (PPD) study to date thats using smartphones and spit kits to collect data and DNA samples from women who have suffered from PPD and postpartum psychosis (PPP). "We will be using the Postpartum Depression Action Towards Causes and Treatments App (PPD ACT) to gather information to help understand the genetic link of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis," says Dr. Simone Vigod, principal investigator and psychiatrist at Womens College Hospital (WCH) in Toronto. Advertisement "Our goal is to use this data to develop preventative strategies and targeted treatments for women who are at risk of developing these mental health challenges." The PPD ACT was designed by the PACT Consortium, an international group of clinicians and scientists dedicated to studying PPD and PPP with the goal of pinpointing genes that may contribute to a womans risk of PPD. "What is so novel about PACT is that we are recruiting women online to make it as easy for women to participate as possible," says Dr. Vigod. "That way we can collect as many samples as possible in the shortest amount of time." Advertisement Once the app has been downloaded, part one of the study asks a series of questions based on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, which many physicians use to diagnose PPD. Questions include things like, "Did you feel overwhelmed?" "Did you blame yourself unnecessarily when things go wrong?" "Did you feel sad or miserable?" "Were you anxious or worried for no good reason?" "There is a good chance that there are genetic markers that can help us either predict who is at risk for developing it, or even help us figure out new ways to treat it Participants receive a score and links to mental health resources within their community. A score of 13 or above, however, qualifies participants to move on to part two, in which a home-based saliva collection kit or spit kit is mailed out to their home in order to provide a DNA sample and mail it back. "Were thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate, given how rural much of Canada is," says Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, director of the Perinatal Psychiatry Program at the University of North Carolina Center for Womens Mood Disorders and lead researcher for the U.S. study. Its a perfect way to reach women near and far. Advertisement The U.S. and Australia have reached 14,000 women with the app since it launched in those two countries a year ago. The U.S. has sent out 5,000 spit kits and has received thousands back for analysis, and the researchers hope to reach 100,000 women worldwide. PPD affects up to 15 per cent of Canadian women and can result in chronic depression, child emotional and behavioural disorders and suicide. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of understanding as to the causes of PPD, including why some women are affected and others arent. Factors such as a past history of depression, life stressors and poor social support only account for 30 per cent of the risk variance. We know from previous research that postpartum depression tends to run in families, explains Dr. Vigod. So there is a good chance that there are genetic markers that can help us either predict who is at risk for developing it, or even help us figure out new ways to treat it. Jamie Belsito experienced a variation of PPD symptoms after the births of both of her daughters, and thinks the intimacy of the app is particularly smart. Advertisement "I would have welcomed an application in the privacy of my own home, at my fingertips, to potentially help target the what and why of this temporary mental health challenge," says Belsito in a press release from the UNC. Belsito is a patient and Advocacy Chair of the National Coalition for Maternal Mental Health. "In addition to gathering valuable data, PPD ACT is also starting a much-needed dialogue to help eradicate the stigma often associated with PPD, and to encourage more providers to thoroughly screen for and treat PPD." "PPD ACT is also starting a much-needed dialogue to help eradicate the stigma often associated with PPD." Funding was made available to run a demo of the app in Canada by WCH in affiliation with the University of Toronto. If enough Canadian women participate before the funding runs out in the next two years 2,000 to be exact they hope to expand the study and make it available in French and for download on Android phones (it's currently only available for iPhones). Both Canadas natural resources minister, Jim Carr, and Canadas largest private-sector union, Unifor, are warning of possible job losses from the tariffs on softwood lumber that U.S. President Donald Trumps administration announced this week. "Workers on both sides of the border will be the losers of a trade war," Unifor national president Jerry Dias said in a statement. Unifor represents 24,000 forestry workers across the country. Advertisement The union estimates that, at the current levels ranging from some 4 per cent to 24 per cent, those duties will cost Canada some 25,000 jobs. A Conservative MP from British Columbia has suggested those layoffs could start as early as next week. "Tariffs on our lumber have already been squashed. The Americans should have learned their lesson the first time, Dias said, referring to the previous Canada-U.S. conflict over softwood lumber, which began in 2001 with the U.S. slapping tariffs on Canadian softwood, a decision that was overturned years later by a NAFTA tribunal. The federal Liberals are wasting little time working on a Plan B for Canadian lumber. Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne was in China this week, selling officials on the merits of Canadian lumber. Advertisement But building new markets is slow work, and in the meantime, Canadas lumber industry is in for some pain. The pain wont be evenly spread those parts of the country that rely most on lumber exports to the U.S. will suffer most. When it comes to the affected share of GDP or employment, British Columbia and New Brunswick are most directly exposed, economists at National Bank Financial (NBF) wrote in a client note Tuesday. The forestry industry is an important regional employer after all, and some will recall the painful job losses that accumulated the last time duties were imposed. But if there is a silver lining here, its that Canadas economy doesnt depend on lumber exports as much as it used to. Advertisement Theres less relative economic or fiscal exposure to forestry in B.C., New Brunswick or most provinces today than was the case back in the early 2000s, the NBF economists wrote. For instance, forestry revenue today comprises 1.7 per cent of B.C.s total revenue pie, just one third of the revenue share back in 2001-02. So maybe just this once we can be thankful that Canada isnt as competitive on lumber as it used to be. Also on HuffPost Rainforests Around The World See Gallery urbancow via Getty Images A discarded newspaper among commuters Imagine that your local MP rises in the House of Commons to deliver a member's statement. The sort of acknowledgement normally reserved for important cultural days, outstanding individuals or remarkable community groups. To your surprise, the MP reads statements from a constituent that are nothing but a tirade of violent, racist misogyny, while directing a vile mix of intimidation and libel at individual people. I hope you would be rightly shocked and appalled that such awful hate propaganda was being delivered by a government representative. Advertisement Recently in Toronto, a board of review began hearings to determine if hate propaganda like what I just described should be delivered to unwitting people's homes by way of a Crown corporation. Last year the minister responsible for Canada Post, Judy Foote, issued what is known as a prohibitory order under the Canada Post Act to stop delivery of a disgusting hate rag known as Your Ward News by Canada Post carriers. A lone copy of Your Ward News has manifested on Ryerson bulletin board, unsurprisingly stapled in a fashion that makes it difficult to read. pic.twitter.com/anr8Kzph4B Mathew Iantorno (@mattiantorno) March 20, 2017 The Middle East is at a crossroads. Pope Francis' visit to Egypt April 28-29 is important, as the direction the country takes -- peace or continued volatility -- will greatly impact the entire region. If Egypt can become a model of stability through interfaith dialogue, reconciliation and a desire to work for the common good, it may very well be the road map to lasting peace in the Middle East. The Holy Father knows this. It's why he is willing to risk his personal safety by visiting a country under a state of emergency following the Palm Sunday terrorist attacks as a "messenger of peace." Advertisement The highlight of Pope Francis' trip to Egypt will be a symbolic meeting with Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, whom some consider the highest authority in Sunni Islamic thought. Pope Francis will also meet with Coptic Orthodox leader, Pope Tawadros II, during a time of fear for most Christians -- on the heels of the church bombings that killed 44 people. Egypt has the largest population of Christians in the Middle East -- approximately 9 million -- and this is the reason Daesh has increased attacks in recent months. Radical Islam is growing in Egypt through groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. They do not want a pluralist and democratic Egypt. They want total control, with their end goal being to eradicate anyone who does not think like them -- Christians and Muslims alike. They want total control and even tried to establish an Islamist regime with the election of president Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Advertisement To counter this, the Egyptian Army, under the leadership of General (now president) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, took control to prevent a potential civil war. As Egyptian leaders like president al-Sisi, Pope Tawadros and Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb try to move the country forward, resistance to a more modern Egypt is strong and could plunge the country into a civil war. This country with the largest Muslim population in the Middle East would send a strong signal if it succeeds. Egypt is fragile. Right next door, Libya is fighting a civil war, while Syria is in its sixth year of civil war. If war breaks out in Egypt, it will spread to surrounding countries such as Israel, and then to the entire region and beyond. Egypt is crucial to create stability in the Middle East. The Pope's trip to Egypt needs all the support it can get -- in order to illustrate that pluralism, openness, democratic values, respect for all its citizens and human rights are possible. This country with the largest Muslim population in the Middle East would send a strong signal if it succeeds. The Christians who have experienced institutionalized discrimination and many direct attacks over the years would feel like real citizens with equal rights. Advertisement Courage and integrity are needed to move Egypt in the right direction. Pope Francis, the Grand Imam and Pope Tawadros II are willing to put their lives at risk in order to counter the destructive forces around them. Hopefully these religious men will inspire political leaders to do the same for the good of society. One great Egyptian president working for the common good was Anwar El-Sadat, who was killed in 1981 by his guard for signing a peace agreement with Israel. Before he was murdered, he said: "Peace is much more precious than a piece of land... let there be no more wars." The pay-off was the stability that followed. In the current climate, Egypt could implode as society is once again divided. Let's hope that the Pope's visit will inspire people in Egypt and in the Middle East to understand that peace is the only path forward. (Hetu is the Canadian National Director of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.) CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog suggested Syria is facing the possibility of civil war. The country is in its sixth year of civil war. Also on HuffPost: Advertisement 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"> 'Brave' and 'fearless'. Those were just two of the words family and friends used to describe me when they learned I planned to leave the UK and up sticks to Canada for five months. Advertisement A notorious creature of habit, I found those descriptions hilarious. Fearless? Me? The bravest thing I'd done in recent months was cut down on sugar in my coffee - and that was bloody hard. So it definitely felt odd to have such adjectives associated with my personality. I wasn't going to Canada alone. Me, my husband and our two children, aged two and four, would be going together in what we'd described as an experiment and an adventure. The experiment would be experiencing life in Toronto to see if we could live out there permanently. No matter the outcome, it would certainly be an adventure, particularly for our children, who were excited about returning to Toronto, following our first trip to the city the previous year. Our five-month adventure had been in the making ever since that initial trip. We'd loved our Toronto experience and so decided to return. It didn't seem like a huge deal to my husband and I. No, we didn't have any friends or family in Canada, but we had each other. We saw our trip as an extended holiday. But it seemed that everyone else considered it some sort of epic voyage. Advertisement "You don't have any family or friends in Canada?" my hairdresser quizzed me in disbelief. "No," I said - just as I'd said to friends, colleagues and even a doctor's surgery receptionist, who'd asked me the same question. I started wondering if I was in denial. Why was I so nonchalant about leaving all my family and friends behind in the UK to arrive in a country where I knew nobody? Yes, I knew I would miss everybody. But I was so preoccupied with preparing for the trip that I didn't have much time to contemplate the realities of being friendless in a new city. Upon arrival in Toronto, there were the inevitable practicalities: Unpacking, grocery shopping, familiarising ourselves with Canadian TV channels, etc. Advertisement Then it was time for the kids to start pre-school. Initially, they struggled to settle in. But eventually, the sadness subsided, enjoyment ensued and they began name-checking their "new friends." My husband and I were relieved. We even joked that our kids had more friends in Toronto than we did. The weeks rolled on and we became more and more accustomed to our new, temporary lives. I also found that my communication with friends and family back in the UK became more consistent. As such, there was no reason to miss old friends and, equally, no urgency to make new ones. Additionally, a couple of my UK friends had introduced me, via social media, to friends they had in Toronto. I'd also made use of the virtual world to ask my online friends for any Toronto connections they had and this proved fruitful. But still, I didn't feel it was pressing for me to forge new friendships, particularly as I was mindful of being a burden to my friends' friends - who probably already had their own friends. And then came the phone call. My children's pre-school manager rang to explain that they needed not one, but two additional emergency contacts for their records. Apparently, it wasn't sufficient for my husband and I to be the only contacts they had for our children. Advertisement The reality suddenly hit home: We were loners in this city -- this entire country, in fact. What if my husband and I weren't contactable? What if we faced an emergency that prevented us from collecting our kids on time? Who else could the pre-school call? A friend of a friend that I knew loosely on Facebook? That couldn't work. There was nobody. And though I'd arrived in Canada knowing I knew nobody, it was only then that the isolation kicked in, and it became overwhelming and stressful. Now, I felt a greater urgency to make friends. But how was I about to do that? Unlike my kids, I had no daily opportunity to make new playmates via drawing and dress-up. And did I want to be that person who joined every book club or wine tasting society in a bid to force friendships? In the words of Toronto's very own Drake, "I don't beg no friends." So how could I go about developing organic, authentic new relationships? How do adults, with already long-established friendship groups, actively make new friends? I returned to the source that had proved most useful to me: social media. I let go of my fears about being a nuisance to my friends' friends, reached out to them and found that they were kind enough to extend the hand of friendship to me. Advertisement I joked with one of my social media connections -- a fellow Brit, who'd moved to Canada some years ago -- that I was grateful to her for all her Toronto tips, as I was, as we say in the UK, a 'Billy No-Mates.' She responded kindly: "Consider me a friend." Through this small but solid new circle of acquaintances, I was invited out for coffee. I was invited to various events in Toronto. My family and I were invited to church and even invited round for dinner. I no longer had the issue of having no friends' details to give my children's pre-school. I wasn't a Billy No-Mates anymore! Not only did I feel immensely grateful for my new circle of friends, I also began to think that my UK friends and family might have been right. It is pretty brave to leave behind everyone you know to start a new life in a new city, where you know nobody. And making new friends as an adult can be extremely daunting. But for me, facing the fear was the way forward. In doing so, I swapped stressful solitude for fruitful friendships. And I'm much better for it. Advertisement By Kailey Morin and Jessica Hum-Antonopoulos We often hear from farmers who, upon learning there is water underground they can access in times of drought, feel like they have discovered a gold mine right under their feet. All it takes is to build a well. It is not unlike the experience of women living in poverty who discover -- many for the first time in their lives -- the wealth and potential they hold within themselves. Hawa was one such woman. She first became a mother when she was only 12. She had been pulled from school and married young, as is one in every three girls living in poverty in the developing world. By the age of 24, she had had five children. Advertisement She was not allowed to leave the house unaccompanied by her husband, and she was not allowed to work outside the home. Hawa had to depend on her husband's small income as a farmer and it was difficult to feed and support her children. As a young mother living in poverty in a small village in the Eastern Amhara Region of Ethiopia, Hawa often felt powerless against her circumstances. But that started to change when she was invited to participate in a development project that focused on gender equality and market access. Advertisement "Before we started we had been dormant," she explained, reflecting on the changes she's made this past year. "We didn't know what wealth we had within ourselves. It has been a kind of awakening." A community worker from the development project worked with Hawa and her husband on gender equality training, and their relationship started to transform. "The gender equality work has impacted my life so much," she told us. "My husband would not let me out of the house alone. Now I can leave to bake at night. And when I come back home, all the housework has been done." Hawa and her husband were shown how much more productive they could be if they worked together, and if they overcame the stigma and nuances that separated women's and men's work in their community. They were also encouraged to split assets and income equally -- and for Hawa to start to earn her own. She joined a group of local women like her, who are learning business skills, and saving and investing money they are earning through a bakery they founded. The group named themselves Growth. It's an apt title for fifteen women who have discovered their own entrepreneurial drive and who have become known for baking the best bread in town. Advertisement Hawa's eyes light up with pride when she tells visitors about her plans to use the money she earns from the bakery to open a canteen to sell bread and tea out of her home -- and how her husband, fully supportive of his wife's big dream, is helping to build it. Hawa will also tell you how determined she is to give her daughters the opportunities and education that she never had, and how she will earn the money herself to do it. But most importantly, she'll tell you how much she believes in the potential of the women in her community: "I will give other women this opportunity, so they can become like me. I want them to learn about gender equality, and the importance of saving. This is my objective." Hawa is just one of millions of women in the world who -- given the opportunity -- are ready to unleash their brilliance and determination to transform their families and communities. The Sustainable Development Goals calls on each of us to empower women and girls through all aspects of programs, intergovernmental work, and policy change. Whether it's by supporting female smallholder farmers to build resiliency to the impacts of climate change, or to gain access to markets and income generating activities -- every woman deserves the chance to discover the wealth right under her feet. Advertisement Let us all dig the well with her together! Kailey Morin is Communications Manager at Canadian Feed The Children, Jessica Hum-Antonopoulos is the Program Technical Advisor. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CCIC or its members. After 16 years in government, the B.C. Liberals are still using the "Lost Decade" to refer to the NDP's last period of governance in order to scare voters. Was the economy under the NDP in the '90s that bad? People on the street said in the '90s they were able to buy a house, but nowadays even professionals are not able to. (Photo: Istockphoto via Getty Images) Prior to the last provincial election in 2013, the Business Council of British Columbia released a study called "A Decade by Decade Review of British Columbia's Economic Performance." It compared the economic indicators of the three decades governed respectively by the Social Credit Party, the NDP and the B.C. Liberals. The result is that by certain measures the NDP of the '90s actually had the best economic performance. Advertisement Here are the conclusions of the study: GDP growth: The Social Credit decade had an average growth rate of 2.12 per cent, the the Liberals 2.36 per cent and the NDP 2.72 per cent. The NDP decade is the best of the three. Job creation: Under the Liberals jobs grew by 1.58 per cent, under the Social Credit Party 1.91 per cent and under the NDP by 2.17 per cent. The NDP decade also had better performance. Unemployment: Social Credit had an average rate of 11.48 per cent, NDP 8.87 per cent and the Liberals 6.63 per cent. The Liberals scored. Business investment (non-private residential investment): As regards non-private residential investment, the Social Credit growth was 0.81 per cent, NDP got three per cent and the Liberals had 5.53 per cent. Advertisement Export: B.C.'s exports remained generally unchanged over the past three decades, fluctuating between 42 and 43 per cent of the GDP. However, the study notes that the NDP's decade in power had the strongest export performance, whereas the Liberals' had the weakest. The Liberals' so-called "Lost Decade" is contrary to the facts. For the above five economic indicators, the NDP's governing decade recorded the best performance on three counts: economic growth, job creation and (arguably) exports, whereas the Liberals were better in business investment (non-private residential investment) and unemployment. The Liberals' so-called "Lost Decade" is contrary to the facts. During the Liberals' governing years, the debt load increase has been alarming. When Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell stepped down, I wrote an article "Gordon Campbell's $100-billion debt legacy." The B.C. debt load at that time was $53.4 billion, plus $80.2 billion in contractual obligations. The contractual obligations are mainly from two sources. First, capital projects built under Public-Private-Partnership (P3), where the government signed long-term contracts with private corporations to build a bridge or a hospital. The corporations would borrow the capital, build and manage the project, and the government would pay for the use of it by long-term regular payments. Since the corporations' borrowing cost would be much higher than the conventional government-borrow-and-build method, plus profit sharing by the investors, the P3 model costs a lot more (but it won't be listed as debt). Advertisement The second source is the power purchase contracts BC Hydro signed with private power corporations. The power rates of these contracts are generally more expensive than the generation cost of BC Hydro and the prices of the power market. These private contracts are one of the major reasons for our hydro rate increase year after year. Since government won't go broke and must honour and pay the contracts they signed, the government is responsible for paying these contractual obligations. It may not be called debt, but it amounts to the same thing. The B.C. Liberals have added $139.9 billion of debt - 10 times more than the NDP. So what is B.C.'s current debt load? The answer is, the provincial debt is $66.7 billion, plus an additional $101.1 billion in contractual obligations. That is a total of $167.7 billion! Veteran provincial political pundit Vaughn Palmer recently wrote an article and pointed out that the province of B.C. has the most signed contractual obligations among all the provinces. When the Social Credit left office in 1991, the provincial debt was $20 billion. When the NDP stepped down in 2001, they left $1.2 billion surplus and a debt load of $33.8 billion. Thus, the NDP had increased the provincial debt by $13.8 billion, whereas the B.C. Liberals have added $139.9 billion of debt under its governance up to now -- that is, 10 times more than that of the NDP. This is a fact to bear in mind in this election. Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: LeoFFreitas via Getty Images For over 40 years, citizens of the world have come together to celebrate Earth Day, demonstrating their support for environmental protection. This year was no different. Canadians have always been at the forefront on the movement to protect the environment and fight climate change. Last year, federal politicians voted overwhelmingly to ratify the Paris Agreement. To achieve the global plan of mitigating dangerous climate change by limiting global temperature change to well below 2C, the government plans to cut the country's annual emissions by around 291 million tonnes by 2030. That is equivalent to removing almost 62 million cars from the road. Advertisement Ottawa has also set guidelines and deadlines for the implementation of a carbon-pricing plan, and a national target for the elimination of all coal plants. But the pace of progress is not being matched by every country. Brazil, home to the Amazon rainforest, surprised many observers last month when it announced it was cutting its environmental budget by almost 50 per cent. Politicians claim they had no choice because of the country's spiraling deficit but scientists fear the cut could cripple efforts to limit deforestation in the country. Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil, the world's largest tropical forest. And after a period of success for environmentalists it appears deforestation rates are increasing again. Last year, the Amazon region saw a 29 per cent increase in deforestation -- the highest level since 2008. For some, short-term economic issues have become more important that environmental concerns. The proposed budget by the US President includes sweeping cuts to organizations involved in the global fight against climate change. It could result in cutting 20 per cent of the UN's climate body's funding and $2 billion that goes to helping developing countries deal with global warming. Advertisement With rising rates of deforestation, ever increasing bleaching of coral, and growing frequency of natural disasters, now is not the time to cut environmental budgets, but increase spend and commitments. As an example, the Indonesian rainforest represents 10 per cent of the world's remaining tropical rainforests. It is one of the five most species-diverse regions in the world; 12 per cent of all mammal species, 17 per cent of all bird species and 33 per cent of insect species call the forest home and a country where the government is willing to collaborate with corporations, NGOs and others to better protect its forests. And while too many politicians in many other countries have been slow to react, some multinational companies have risen to the challenge of saving the planet. A number have begun to implement their own deforestation policies: L'Oreal's "Sharing Beauty with All" campaign promised that by 2020, all products will come from entirely renewable raw materials and sustainable sources to ensure their business does not support any form of deforestation. Unilever has been working with its suppliers, governments and industry forums to eliminate deforestation in its supply chain. Seven years ago, the company committed to achieving zero net deforestation in its four commodities (palm oil, soy, paper and pulp, and beef) by 2020. Through better agricultural practices, the company is working to stop large-scale deforestation. They are making great strides by ensuring its supply chains are fully traceable and certified sustainable. Clothing giant VF Corporation announced its first-ever forestry policy, aimed at eliminating deforestation and human rights abuses from its supply chain. The company will promote the use of Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper and fibre. VF Corporation operates the brands North Face, Timberland, Vans, and Wrangler. At Asia Pulp and Paper, we understand the planet's dependency on rainforests and trees. That is why we are now in our fourth year of a plan to transform our business model through our Forest Conservation Policy (FCP). We seek to be at the forefront of responsible production. The four key principles of the FCP are: halting all natural forest clearances; best practice in peatland management; partnership with local communities; and responsible global supply chain management. It's clear, no one cannot be left to protect the rainforests alone. Success requires on-going and creative partnerships with businesses, government, NGOs, community and many other stakeholders to implement and maintain deforestation commitments. When one side falters, the system fails. The decision made in Brazil should be a warning sign that there needs to be a universal commitment towards environmental policies on all levels before there is no rainforest left to protect. Events such as Earth Day serve as a necessary reminder to us all that now is the time to accelerate efforts to drive environmental change that will safeguard the planet for years to come. This election is about big, bold ideas that will make life more affordable for all British Columbians, and nothing embodies that more than John Horgan and the B.C. NDP's $10-a-day child-care plan. John Horgan and the B.C. NDP's proposal for universal $10-a-day child care is sensible, fully costed and will provide immediate relief for parents. We also know that providing quality early learning experiences for our children has incredible benefits to them, the school system and communities. An NDP government will invest $175 million in child care in the first year of government, which will grow in the second year and third year to $280 million and $400 million per year, respectively. This initial $175-million investment will immediately reduce infant and toddler fees to $10 a day, and will eliminate fees for families earning less than $40,000 annually. This will provide immediate relief for families paying some of the highest fees in the country -- not two, three or five years from now, but immediately. Advertisement With the NDP's plan, two parents making a combined family income of $90,000 per year can expect to save $5,808 annually. That's money that they can put towards saving for their children's university education, renovating their home or even saving up for their first home. Christy Clark falsely claims that the status-quo approach is working for parents and that we just need to build some new spaces. That is not true. Here's why: demand for child care is not going down. B.C.'s population is growing. The Vancouver area is expected to grow by 2 million people by in 25 years. The pressures on our child-care system will only grow, and therefore Christy Clark's proposal will not create enough spaces. As a result, Christy Clark's plan will only result in more spots, costing parents $1,430 per month. That is not what parents want. Parents want spots they can afford, and the only way they will get that is with the NDP's sensible $10-a-day plan. Christy Clark wrongly asserts that the NDP's $10-a-day child-care plan will lead to long wait lists like in Quebec. But, unlike Quebec, the B.C. NDP will streamline the process for matching kids with publicly funded child-care spots. One of the reasons Quebec's model suffered from such long wait lists was due to its complex and inefficient system of decentralized wait lists. With a coordinated approach, the NDP's plan will sidestep that problem. Advertisement Under Christy Clark life has become unaffordable. Christy Clark claims that a universal $10-a-day child-care plan will help those who don't need it -- the rich can afford their own. The rich can also to pay for their own health care, but we in Canada are proud of our universal health-care system. Claiming that universal child care should not be implemented because it might help some people who can afford to pay for child care overlooks one of the key goals of a public system: equality. A universal, publicly funded system is the only way to ensure that all children can get the education and care they need, regardless of how many 0's their parents may have on their paycheques. The NDP's proposal for a public $10-a-day child care was created by experts from the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. and the Early Childhood Educators of B.C. It is supported by economists, businesses, community groups and families. Under Christy Clark life has become unaffordable. On May 9, a John Horgan B.C. NDP government will change that by implementing a universal $10-a-day child-care system. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: ADRIAN DENNIS via Getty Images In 2005, Muslim scholar Dr. Amina Wadud led Friday prayers despite bomb threats. Curiously, 12 years later, a Muslim consultant, Yasmin Mogahed, addressed a query at the "About Islam" website. Mogahed invoked consensus that men should lead prayers and that women should stop mimicking men. She created a binary between worldly leadership and Heaven and stated that Dr. Wadud has admitted that it was a "mistake." Advertisement *Extract from the previous version at About Islam Dr. Wadud contacted "About Islam" to ask they retract that statement as a lie and thus slander. The website mysteriously obliged without any response or apology. Mogahed's response is imbued with the fear of "westoxification," that is, the uncritical adoption of Western values to the detriment of Islamic values. Such a position, however, reduces Islam into the antithesis of the West. It also creates a false binary between Islamic and Western values. Additionally, instead of reducing the Wadud prayer to a silly mimicry of the West, it is important to directly listen to Dr. Wadud's reasoning, which is firmly rooted in Islamic values. Advertisement Mogahed's response is also factually incorrect. Dr. Laury Silvers' co-authored article shows that there is no Qur'anic prohibition on female Imams. Even a cursory reading of Hanbali scholars, who allowed women to lead supererogatory prayers, and scholars like al-Muzani, Abu Thawr, al-Dhahiri, al-Tabari and Ibn Arabi, all of whom unconditionally supported female Imamate, shows that there is no consensus on the issue. While many argued against female Imams, they conceded the absence of a Qur'anic prohibition, a point substantiated by scholars like Dr. Shabir Ally and Dr. Jonathan Brown. Dr. Behnam Sadeghi's work on Hanafi legal thought also showcases the socially contextual assumptions that underlie the discussion on women in prayer. Silvers' paper captures the arguments of past scholars. Those who supported female Imamate argued on the basis of the Hadith that the Imam should be the one best versed in reading the Qur'an. Additionally, some like Ibn Arabi affirmed female prophecy and claimed that, "one should not listen to those who prohibit it without proof." While detailed arguments are relegated to Silvers' article, here is a list of seven contemporary Muslim male scholars who have supported female Imams or changed their opinions to affirm them. Advertisement 1)Javed Ahmad Ghamidi Pakistani scholar Ghamidi mentioned in the aftermath of the 2005 Wadud led prayer that she had not "contravened a sharia directive" and if she had "done anything wrong" it was "to break a tradition." More recently, he has been even more forthright in a YouTube video. He references the late Dr. Hamidullah, a Hadith expert, who claimed that during the Prophet's time, Umm Waraqa led both men and women in prayers. Ghamidi is clear that women can do everything; they can become scientists and Islamic scholars. He asserts what objection do we have if people affirm female Imams, and that if they offer a sermon, we will listen. Former Grand Mufti, Ali Goma's early opinion also parallels this reasoning. 2) Abdullah Rahim Dr. Abdullah Rahim expresses that while some scholars claim that the Umm Waraqa text is weak, there are many others who claim it to be hasan (good). He distinguishes between the internal aspects of worship from the external aspects and categorizes the issue of female Imams as part of the latter. This allows for the conclusion that the default status of female led prayer is permissibility. Additionally, Rahim states that "we cannot call it haram (prohibited) or bid'ah (innovation) or against the Sharia." 3)Hamza Yusuf While Hamza Yusuf was initially opposed to female Imams, he shifted his viewpoint. In a YouTube video he expressed: Advertisement "When I studied the prayer issue, I was so stuck by the fact that not only was it debated early on, but there were multiple opinions. ... Ibn Taymiyyah himself permitted women to lead men in prayer if they were illiterate and she was literate. ... Ibn Taymiyyah! Permitting a woman to lead men in prayer!" 4)Khaled Abou El-Fadl According to Dr. Fadl, "there were at least two schools of thought that allowed women to lead men in prayer, if the woman in question was the most learned." Like Ghamidi, he is clear that the issue is more a matter of "customary practice and male-consensus than direct textual evidence." He opines: "It seems to me that if a female possesses greater knowledge than a male--if a female is more capable of setting a good example in terms of how she recites the Qur'an and also in terms of teaching the community more about the Islamic faith, a female ought not be precluded from leading jumu'a (Friday prayers) simply on the grounds of being female." 5)Mohammad Fadel According to Silvers, while Dr. Fadel had initially deemed female Imamate as prohibited, he changed his opinion on the ground that "respect for women cannot be internalized in the community until men in authority pray under the leadership of women." 6)Khaleel Mohammed Imam Mohammed is concerned that those who deny female Imams turn them into sexual objects. He asserts: Advertisement "My support is with Dr. Amina and I pray that she will have the strength to continue teaching the men (and women) of Islam the need to not only break out of the static mentality of the past, but to prevent themselves from backsliding into retrogression." 7)Hassan Turabi The late Sudanese scholar upheld the permissibility opinion based on the Prophet's permission. He harrowingly expressed: "When there is a pious woman, ... she should lead the prayers and whoever is distracted by her beauty should be deemed sick." Many men support female Imams. The Grand Mufti of Marseilles, Sohaib ben Cheikh even asked female Imams to lead him in prayer. Many women have led prayers. This includes Nakia Jackson, Pamela Taylor and Ghazala Anwar amongst others. Some female Imams have even led prayers prior to the 2005 Wadud led prayer. Advertisement However, Dr. Wadud needs no defense. She has created history! Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Written by Dr. Peggy Richter, head of the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook. There's a serious gap in the health-care system when it comes to treating patients with obsessive compulsive and related disorders. And limited knowledge is to blame. Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has always been somewhat of an "orphan disorder" when it comes to mental illness, misidentified as a rare disorder as recently as about 25 years ago (we now know this isn't true, the disorder affects one in 40 adults). Advertisement Couple this with the fact that obsessive compulsive and related disorders, such as hair-pulling (trichotillomania) and body dysmorphic disorder were redefined, and skin-picking and hoarding disorder were only formally recognized in medical diagnostic manuals four years ago. With all this in mind, it's clear that information about diagnosis and treatment of OCD and these related disorders is a new addition to the health-care scene. What does this mean for patients? Most community doctors aren't fully informed on the ways to diagnose and treat OCD and related disorders, and patients are often going undiagnosed for years. That's a problem. OCD: The "orphan" disorder There have been a number of problematic consequences to the mislabeling of OCD as a rare disorder. For one, OCD education generally hasn't been extensive due to the idea that OCD wasn't a condition a doctor would likely see in his/her clinic. Advertisement Dr. Katherine Feleki is a general practitioner psychotherapist in Kingston, ON, and like many of us who have undergone medical training, has experienced this education gap first-hand. "There are huge, huge gaps," she says of OCD training in medical schools. "Other than acknowledging the disorder exists, maybe a couple of sentences on how it's treated, there's no specific training. Most of my training was on depression and anxiety in general." This education gap leaves now-practicing doctors with an unfamiliarity of OCD. And even if a doctor does recognize symptoms in a patient, it's likely he/she may not know the right ways to proceed with treatment. For Dr. Feleki, she recognizes the symptoms of OCD in patients, but doesn't feel she has the competency to treat them. Treatment gaps To add to the equation, there are only two main publicly funded centres in the GTA where patients can receive specialized care for OCD and related disorders: the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Advertisement These institutions are great resources for patients who are seeking help for OCD or a related disorder, but these centres do not have the capacity to provide care to each and every patient, making access to publicly funded, specialized care quite limited. Improving access to OCD treatment To try and combat this issue, my team at the Thompson Centre developed a unique training program for practicing doctors to help them identify, diagnose and treat obsessive compulsive and related disorders. It's from teaching at this training program that I met Dr. Feleki, who felt she "needed to learn the skills for treating OCD." The main goal of this program is simple: to expand access for patients. So when a patient who has an obsessive compulsive and related disorder sees one of these trained physicians, these doctors will be able to diagnose and treat it as comfortably as they do depression. Advertisement Our first cohort of doctors -- including Dr. Feleki -- are still in training, but so far the course seems to be a success. Dr. Feleki says the program has provided her with guidelines on how to treat OCD from start to finish. "Most helpful is the ability to get direct feedback from clinicians who are used to treating patients with OCD. If I'm not sure of an issue, I can get confirmation that I'm on right track or other ideas for treatment approaches," she says. Once our first group of doctors graduate from the course, we plan to create a directory for patients and doctors, so they can easily seek out these physicians with specialized training for OCD and related disorders. Moving forward Knowledge is wealth, especially when it comes to mental health care and treatment. Looking forward, I hope to see obsessive compulsive and related disorders shed the "orphan disorder" identity, and become well understood in homes and clinics across the country. Want to learn more about mental health resources?Attend Sunnybrook's community open house May 3, 2017. Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: The five things you need to know on Thursday, April 27 1) BORIS UNLEASHED Boris Johnson has been deployed as the Tory attack dog of choice today. But given that he looks more like Duluxs old English sheepdog than a rottweiler, will the Foreign Secretary be more bark than bite? Boris used his Sun article to call Jeremy Corbyn a "mutton-headed old mugwump and a benign Islingtonian herbivore, before adding that he was really a threat to national security. Advertisement Curiously, this all reminds me of the old Demon Eyes/Bambi attack on Blair when the Tories couldnt quite make their minds up whether the Labour leader was a serious danger or a lightweight joke. It didnt work in 1997, but with Corbyn miles behind (Copyright: JMcDonnell) in the polls, the only game in town for the Tories is to keep the focus on leadership. And boy will CCHQ be delighted that his attack line was the lead item on the BBC news this morning. Labour may want to suggest that its bungling Boris who is more of a security threat. Nick Watt revealed on Newsnight last night that No.10 had intervened to stop Boris from going to Moscow amid the Syria crisis, and then he signally failed to win backing for a tougher line on Russia at a meeting of fellow foreign ministers. On the Today prog, he had a throwaway line about the PM wanting to help the US on military strikes in Syria, with a hint that the Commons may not decide beforehand. Bounding onto the breakfast sofas today, Boris denied on ITV that he had been muzzled of late. "I have not been kept under wraps. But he could not answer questions about the whereabouts of his buss 350m for the NHS. On the Today prog, he was also equivocal and slippery about the Brexit divorce bill and tried to filibuster his way through it all. And on Today he underlined another reason why he may not be allowed out of his Great Charles Street kennel very much in the election campaign. He refused to endorse Mays inclusion of students in migration figures, stressing instead their enormous practical economic valueI value international students. And on Mays flagship pledge to cut migration to under 100,000 [tens of thousands], he also refused to commit to it. It depends how many tens [of thousands] you are talking abouti dont want to get into numbers.. Woof, woof, indeed. Advertisement 2) MAY POLL DANCE Theresa May is facing the goldilocks problem with the opinion polls: too hot and big a lead and the voters risk staying at home or voting Labour as they know Corbyn will never be PM; too cold and small and jitters start and the whole snap election thing looks like a monumental waste of time. The Times/YouGov poll today shows that the Tory lead is down to a mere 16 points. Now thats a fall of seven points in a week and some Corbyn fans will hope its the start of a narrowing pattern. But its still 16 points, for a Governing party mid-term and would still yield a healthier working majority. Labour MPs facing the electoral gallows hope they can buck the national trend with hyper-localised campaigns. But Team Corbyn simply dont believe the polls. We reported yesterday how John McDonnell had admitted to a rally that Labour lookked miles behind but he thought the polls were flat wrong. They got it wrong at the last election, they got it wrong in the referendum and God help us they got it wrong with Trump. Of course, in none of these polls was the progressive vote underestimated, but thats not McDonnells concern. And Corbyns spokesman after PMQs continued the theme, saying that there was a technical issue with polling firms failures, but also a volatility to the electorate that suggests things could change quickly. But he also had what seemed a hostage to fortune, predicting real votes in the real elections on May 4 would prove a better guide. Lets see what happens in the local elections. That might be an interesting measure of how things are going more generally and how accurate the polls are. If Labour loses in marginal-packed counties of Lancashire, Notts and Derbyshire, let alone the West Midlands Mayoralty, that quote could return to haunt the party. The Times polls also finds that for the first time since the EU referendum, more voters think the UK is wrong to leave the EU than those who think it was the right thing to do. Meanwhile Clive Lewis is in trouble with ICM for misquoting them in a Tweet (now deleted) to claim Lib Dem and Green voters will help the Tories beat him. 3) BATTERED FRITTERS Karl Rove once claimed that its only when the press are bored of your soundbite that its just beginning to be heard by the public. So while all that strong and stable leadership stuff may be as much a turn-off as long-term economic plan (now dumped in many senses), it could work on some voters. Advertisement PMQs went on for a record 56 minutes yesterday. One MP told the Daily Record that Mays ensured the session sounded like a broken record. Which prompts the thought that Labour could yesterday have had its own soundbite: May is a broken record with a record of broken promises (you can have that for free). One of the PMs weakness is sounding robotic, so why not turn that to your advantage? Still, PMQs was the last live televised debate we will see between May and Corbyn before polling day. May has ruled out a head-to-head, but we got a surprise straight afterwards in the Lobby huddle when Corbyns spokesman announced Jezza too would not take part in any TV debate without May. That probably makes sense, given Ed Milibands kicking in the 2015 challengers debate (sans Cameron). But that didnt stop the cries of frit! from the Lib Dems and SNP. Farron yesterday used his one PMQ to say the real legacy of this short Parliament has been the failure of Labour to provide strong (theres that word again) opposition. But thats the backdrop to this election: much of the talk is about who could be the best opponent, not the best alternative PM or government. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch this guy tease a lion by following it in his car, and then realise why big cats are kinda scary. 4) THE CANDIDATE With so many safe seats made available by retiring MPs (there was a fresh crop of plum Tory seats yesterday), its no wonder wannabes are licking their lips at the prospect. In the tale of the retreads, Esther McVey in Tatton has a much better chance of a comeback than Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park. Advertisement The Lib Dems are putting flesh on the progressive alliance idea by not standing against Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavillion. The real action will be just how lightly they campaign against each other too in other key seats. For Labour, there are fewer safer seats which makes the selections more intense. Ive already reported on The Deal between Corbyns office and the unions to carve up the best constituencies, and last night that largely held. Ellie Reeves (very much one to watch for the future) secured Lewisham West, Stephanie Peacock got Barnsley East and Alex Norris won Nottingham North. Thats two GMB and one Unison. But the leaders office choice for Hull West, Sam Tarry, was not selected, and councillor Emma Hardy won instead. As Tarry was in theory backed by the GMB, there was a huge inter-union row that The Deal had been broken. Katy Clark, another Corbyn pick, faces the Leigh selection panel today - and I hear the panel isnt looking favourable. Meanwhile, Corbyn-sceptic Labour MPs are largely maintaining their discipline in not really attacking Corbyn but in choosing to damn with faint praise or to just distance themselves from him. Ben Bradshaw tells his local newspaper: Supporting me in Exeter will not affect who governs nationally. Michael Dugher told the New Statesman it was quite a special achievement to have Labour polling behind the Tories on the NHS. 5) PENSION TENSION The SNPs Angus Robertson showed Corbyn how to do it yesterday by using his two PMQs in a typically forensic way: make the PM squirm on an issue where shes uncomfortable among her own backbenches, and then get out your own message when she doesnt answer. And heres a fascinating fact. In the past 18 months of asking PMQs, Robertson tells pals that hes not once had to use his just-in-case-Corbyn-says-it substitute question. The Labour leader never went on the topic the SNP knew would be the weeks sharpest issue. And Robertson gave us the best news story of yesterday, with May refusing to guarantee the triple lock on pensions, preferring only the lame line that they would increase. Now this may of course be a holding position until the manifesto, but the robotic answer was not a good look. The Guardian reports that May is looking at a cheaper double lock which allows flexibility for social care funding by ending the pledge of a minimum 2.5% annual rise. The FT reports the OECD saying the state pension should be scrapped altogether for the richest 5-10%. Advertisement For many people, their house is effectively their pension. But today Labours John Healey points out how homeownership is now a distant dream for many young people. In an interview with HuffPost UK, he reveals Labour will set up a new dedicated Housing Ministry to tackle the issue, and take new moves to build more homes for rent. If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. We're living in a world where the trends of today are tomorrow's trash. Most of us are under the illusion that fast fashion is cheap, and tend to focus more on the cost-per-item rather than the cost-per-wear. In recent decades this has morphed our opinion of fashion, causing us to treat clothing as a disposable commodity. We invest so little emotionally and financially that when we damage or wear down garments we simply buy something new. This excessive consumption has caused fashion to become one of the most environmentally damaging industries in the world. Why Is Fast Fashion So Damaging? Items distributed from the East use ships, lorries, airplanes, or a combination of all three during the transportation process, all of which require fossil fuels; dyes run into rivers and destroy plant and aquatic life; and when many garments hit the shelves the origins are often completely unknown. For example, seal skin is frequently miss-sold as suede, unbeknownst to both manufacturers and designers. The most harmful element of fast fashion, however, is what's thrown into the ground after the manufacturing and distribution process. Discarded clothing is significantly expanding landfills with non-biodegradable and toxic waste. To put it into perspective, in Hong Kong roughly 1400 t-shirts are thrown away every single minute! Advertisement Who is Responsible? Fashion is just as much a political issue as it is an economic issue. Fortunately, some European governments are starting to take action. For example, in September the Swedish Social Democratic/Green Party coalition announced plans to reduce VAT on the repair of clothing -- from 25% to 12% -- in order to combat throwaway culture. However, while governments could do better to enforce sanctions and raise awareness, it's the designers that should be held accountable. Many are already stepping up to the mark and seeing major economic benefits by embracing the slow fashion movement. For example, Swedish denim producer Nudie Jeans, offer free clothing restoration to customers, and have undergone a major boost in popularity due to the service. In addition, Julie Hutchinson of Mainly Silver makes sure all of their supplies are sourced at home in Britain, "while the price of raw materials may be greater, the lower manufacturing and transport fees make operations cheaper overall." While it seems to be the smaller, independent fashion houses that are making the most effort, some of the bigger names are also starting to take action due to Greenpeace's Detox My Fashion campaign, which called upon the big players to eliminate their use of hazardous chemicals. With the backing of over half a million designers, bloggers and slow fashion activists, twenty global brands started implementing positive changes, including Zara and Adidas. But it's still not enough.... How Can We Fight The Good Fight? To win the battle against fast fashion the advertising surrounding it must change. We, as consumers, shouldn't feel unfashionable just because we don't buy into the latest seasonal trends (which are becoming shorter and shorter). The truth is big brands really don't care if we look fashionable or not; all they want is to get their stock out to the masses. That's why there's constantly new national bargain days being added to the calendar -- like the UK's adoption of Black Friday. Fundamentally, we should treat our clothes as valuable long-term commodities, rather than disposables. Advertisement It's time for us to spread the word and encourage the broader consumer to take action. Brands aren't evil: they will listen to our concerns if we tell them; they will respond to our spending habits if we change; and they will support environmental causes if we support them. Most of us are willing to pay a little extra if we know that we're getting a good deal. And that's exactly what slow fashion is: a good deal. I remember the scenes clearly that day of the wrangled metal and concrete of the collapsed Bangladesh Rana Plaza factory. Within the rubble, the crushed and dismembered remains of 1,138 dead Bangladeshi garment workers were visible. Their blood soaked into that season's trendiest tank tops and mini-skirts as the poorly constructed building, topped off with illegal floors, dropped to the ground like a pack of cards on 24 April, 2013. Screams of pain and panic shot through Bangladesh as distraught family members wailed for their loved ones. Screams of a different kind of panic most likely echoed around fashion brands around the world. Many brands didn't even know if their products were being cut and sewn within the now flattened Rana Plaza because such is the supply chain's rampant practice of outsourcing in search of fashion's holy grail - the cheapest deal. I imagined that overnight, fashion brands upped their legal, compliance and CSR headcount - or coped with massive overtime - to accommodate the whiplash caused by the lack of transparency that was clearly evident within their supply chains. Advertisement But what impressed me was that elsewhere on the sidelines, leaders within NGOs and academia coalesced to form Fashion Revolution, the global movement calling for greater transparency, sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry to commemorate the Rana Plaza disaster. Ask brands "Who made my clothes" and demand greater transparency in the fashion supply chain. Photo: Redress Fashion Revolution was celebrated this week in over 94 countries, including in Hong Kong and China, for which Redress, the NGO that I founded in 2007 in Hong Kong, are country co-ordinators. At its most simple, Fashion Revolution encourages millions of people to ask their brands "#whomademyclothes?" by wearing their clothes inside out, posting on social media and hashtagging their brands to join this social media campaign. Year on year, the number of consumers who tweet, wechat or Instagram rises, pushing the movement further up in the trending lists. Last year 70,000 people asked brands #whomademyclothes?, reaching 156 million organic impressions and most likely giving their brand boardrooms something else to worry about. Advertisement I'm certainly a strong supporter of Fashion Revolution as I hate the idea of wearing clothes that could have been made by poorly-paid or ill-protected workers. Incidentally, around 67% of our clothes are made in developing countries, so the chances could be high. But I also can't help looking at China, the world's biggest clothing and textile exporter, and wondering if China experiences regular "Rana Plaza" like death-tolls of her own, which often go unreported. It's like so much in life - we need a crisis to sit up and take notice. Seeing those bodies, counting the body bags, hearing the screams; it's visceral. But what about the millions of people who die a slow, painful and relatively silent death caused by pollution arising from manufacturing? "Like smoking and sugar, the fashion industry is a threat to public health," said Christina at Shanghai Fashion Week 2016. Follow her journey on Instagram @DrChristinaDean. I used to be a dentist. Yes it's a far cry from fashion. But my five years training and my two years in practice in London taught me a lot. Firstly about pain. Toothache pain is like no other and I've seen grown men weep and beg me to pull their rotten teeth out. It taught me a lot about life. And death. For part of my training, I had to saw an, admittedly already dead, man's head off in order to dissect it and to this day, I wonder who he was and I have such admiration for this unsung hero who gave his body to medicine. It also instilled in me a great respect for public health. I really believe that we all have the right to live without undue disease or death caused by others. And by others, I include the impact caused by manufacturing on the public. Advertisement It's already becoming clear that every party except the Conservatives fears the outcome of the impending general election. Even for the SNP, which will no doubt hold on to - if not improve upon - its standing in the last election, the prospect of an increased Tory majority is not a welcome one. Barring a massive Labour recovery - and barring the impact of unplanned events, so crucial in politics - it appears this is almost certainly the outcome to expect. But even if that Labour recovery does come, is Jeremy Corbyn the man to steer the UK through Brexit and its consequences? Advertisement Whether they like it or not, for most voters, this election will come down to a choice between Corbyn and May, rather than their parties. And the sad truth is, many may find themselves in the unwelcome position of believing that neither is the leader the UK needs. Danger ahead, then, in GE2017, for an already badly tarnished political class. Turning out for the third major national vote in two years is tiring enough for those people who are just carrying on with the crucial business of getting on with their lives; asking those same people to turn out to vote for two options they find equally unpalatable is worse still. It could cause lasting damage to relations between voters and the political class. So what's to be done to reengage people? With appetite for this election seemingly so low, and with the outcome already near certain, the first thing we must do is view the present situation as an opportunity to renew the business of politics in the UK. GE2017 should be seen as nothing short of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to break out of the Labour-Tory duopoly that the nation has clearly outgrown. Discussions among some of the smaller parties have already turned to this. The Greens have called for a "progressive alliance" between those parties lined up to oppose the Tories and their Brexit at all costs. Even the SNP has nodded assent if it were to become a realistic option. Labour leaders have discounted it fully. But they should reconsider. Advertisement The finer details of what this would entail (including tactical voting and electoral pacts) will take many hours, days and weeks of negotiation to flesh out, including the thorny issue of who would lead this alliance were it to somehow secure a big parliamentary role after the election. But that is highly unlikely, and therefore should not be the primary concern. The first thing to consider should be the process of putting this alliance together. Here are some essential ingredients we would need at the start. A long-term vision A progressive alliance is not just for GE2017 - it's for life. The parties need to see this as more than just a short-term project. The shifts in the electoral landscape of the UK in recent years mean that the likelihood of an outright majority for the main party of the left is receding into the distance. The shift to the SNP in Scotland - formerly rich hunting ground for Labour - and the rise of UKIP as an alternative for swing voters in formerly marginal seats has dealt the Labour party a blow that may ultimately prove fatal. The likelihood of ever-increasing Tory majorities is also growing as a result of an ageing population and an ever-more disenfranchised youth vote (coupled with upcoming boundary changes). The plan for a progressive alliance forged in the white heat of GE2017 should explicitly be about challenging this growing rightist, Tory hegemony. And the parties and politicians involved should say so. They should point to a new, long-term political grouping on the left that will more closely match a deindustrialised, multi-cultural Britain; that will more accurately appraise the place of Britain in the world and its responsibilities to other nations and the international community; that will not just celebrate membership of the EU but celebrate European history and identity, too; that will put electoral reform at the heart of its manifesto; and, perhaps most importantly of all, that will put the impending ecological crisis at the very centre of political life. Bravery To make all of this happen, however, a further ingredient is necessary - and that's bravery. This may sound gallant and overblown, but far from it. To call for some of the things above is to go against the political advice from strategists that has held sway for at least the past 40 years. Advertisement All of the above have consistently been sold as vote losers, if not electoral suicide. Never make the case for the EU and its attendant loss of national sovereignty; never go into an election talking of electoral reform; never remind voters of the environmental damage associated with their lifestyles. If you do, conventional political wisdom has it, you will turn voters off, and lose badly. But this kind of advice is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you accept the central premise of this stuff, that these issues are vote losers, and then try to sell them in an election, then yes, you are doomed from the outset. However, if your starting point is that the positions above are fine positions for a mature, 21st century democracy, then there is so much more to sell to the electorate in each of them - so much to sell in membership of the European Union and European identity itself, and in electoral reform (that is, in essentially making people's votes actually count for something). And while it might not be a popular thing to say right now, there is so much to sell about globalisation, about opening up to different cultures and nationalities from around the world. And there is certainly a lot more to sell in the rewards of leading a greener life. But when do we see mainstream politicians championing any of these things? I can count on one hand the politicians who, in my lifetime, have proudly championed the European Union. And, apart from the Liberal Democrats, who has ever made the case passionately for electoral reform that could meaningfully devolve power to people beyond London? And of course, despite there being many champions of economic globalisation and the spread of capitalist consumerism, can we remember any politician making the positive, proud case for free movement of people, welcoming immigrants and the valuable enriching cultural accoutrements they bring? No, it doesn't happen. All are seen as detrimental to electoral success. So politicians need bravery in the name of risking that success. Advertisement What's at stake? This progressive alliance is needed now more than ever precisely because progressive values are under intense pressure. It is needed for openness to survive, for tolerance, respect, the rule of law and polite society to survive. And make no mistake: they are indeed under threat in GE2017. Not because Theresa May, or the Tories, or the right in general are somehow naturally malevolent. Far from it. These values are under threat because of the issues that the present government is tapping into and the tools it is using to protect its Brexit agenda. It is in a weak, defensive position because Brexit, in its current hard form, is undeliverable without much economic and social upset. Going on the offensive, then, seems to be the only option on the table. It's difficult to do otherwise: a defence of the indefensible is not possible or sustainable; only attack. The result is a cabinet of ministers who belittle anyone seeking to scrutinise them and a prime minister who announces a snap general election with incredible belligerence, claiming it to be in the national interest. The Brexit-obsessed elements of the media then helps her to sell that line. This strategy makes rational sense for GE2017 on many levels. But in unleashing ever darker forces to protect itself from weakness, the government is pitting Remainer against Leaver, left against right, them against us, like never before. Advertisement These are the forces confronting progressives in GE2017, forces unlike any others in the history of peace and stability post-1945. So vastly different are they, the response to them must also be of an entirely different order. The question now is, do we have the politicians, the advisers, the academics and the writers brave enough to stand up and champion those new, progressive forces? We can only hope so. Princes William and Harry, alongside the Duchess of Cambridge, have continued their valiant efforts to raise awareness of the rising mental health problems across the UK. Their Heads Together campaign has targeted a variety of issues, from homelessness to veterans' mental health, and Prince Harry's recent interview with The Telegraph has brought to the forefront childhood bereavement - and its consequences in later life. In his interview, Prince Harry spoke of how the loss of his mother caused him to repress his emotions for nearly twenty years and the detrimental effect this had on his professional and personal life. Though saddening, his revelation was unsurprising - research has shown that the death of a parent can be one of the most significant harmful events a child can experience, especially when it comes to the long term impact on mental health. In fact, the younger the child the more likely they will develop mental health problems in future, from anxiety and depression to substance abuse and even suicide. In these situations, therefore, it's vital that children are provided with a safe and stable environment, with solid relationships that nurture their mental and physical wellbeing. The level of psychological and emotional support children receive following the loss of a parent can make a huge difference, in the present and in the future. Advertisement In addition to immediate family and friends, much of this support should be coming from specialist children and young people's mental health primary care services and from within the school environment. However, increasing cuts to these vital services are putting children across the country at serious risk of mental health problems now and in adulthood. A recent RCN survey found that 7 out of 10 children's mental health nurses thought the UK's services are inadequate, while 73% there are too few nursing staff to provide the care children need. In schools, the situation seems bleaker still. School nurses are vital for providing children with on hand support, especially during periods of bereavement. They have the knowledge and skills not only to helping children through difficult times, but also to advise teachers and other staff in supporting children's emotional wellbeing and handle issues like death in the right way. However, numbers of school nurses have plummeted in recent years, with a 13% drop in those employed by the NHS and further cuts from local councils as their budgets are pushed to the limit. The impact is already apparent; a recent survey by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), found that though 98% of teachers have witnessed mental health problems in their students, only half have received any training or support in this area. Advertisement The Government has, it seems, made efforts to boost awareness of mental health issues in schools and to improve training for teachers. However, without the right numbers of school nurses these will remain theories rather than reality; research has shown that children are more likely to approach or confide in a school nurse in the first instance than a teacher. Their expertise has led to a wide range of highly beneficial projects, such as ChatHealth, a service which has allowed children and young people to seek help via text if they do not feel able to do so in person. MartinPrescott via Getty Images The staff shortage in the NHS is building into a crisis that cannot be overlooked in a Brexit-only election. But how to combat it? That is the question we will ask our political leaders and Labour has been the first to try to answer it today. At the core of the nursing shortage is a widespread decline in morale. The demand for our health services is reaching new heights and across the country nursing staff are under more pressure than ever before. Advertisement However, many feel their efforts to keep the NHS afloat have gone ignored by the current Government. The 1% cap on nursing salaries has meant their pay has fallen by 14% in real terms since 2010. As a result, even full time nursing staff are having to rely on pay-day loans, food banks and hardship grants just to afford every day expenses like food and rent. It shouldn't be too much to ask that those working all hours to care have peace of mind that their pay is keeping up with the cost of living. Nursing staff love their jobs. It's a passionate profession. But their skills and their dedication have gone unrecognised for too long, and the results can be seen in the spiralling numbers of vacant posts. They are retiring early, they are moving to agencies or they are changing professions completely because they feel it is just not worth it anymore. Equally damaging has been the removal of the nursing bursary. Since the withdrawal of student funding for nurses, there's been a 23% drop in applications for nursing degrees. The biggest drop - 28% - is in applications from mature students, exactly the people whose life experience often makes for highly skilled, compassionate nurses. Advertisement That means talented people staying away, and patients missing out, as student loans and pitiful pay deter more and more prospective nurses from joining the profession. The effect on patients is just as worrying. As nurses are forced out of the profession just to make ends meet, staffing levels in the health service are reaching dangerous lows and putting patient safety at risk. Health care teams will always do all they can for their patients, but without the staff, the resources and the support they need, there are limits. If the Government wants to look after its patients, it needs to look after its staff. Whichever political party triumphs in June, it is time to stop taking nursing staff for granted and start to appreciate the incredible work they do. The RCN is calling on all parties to step up and commit to the long-term funding that patients and services need. David Evison via BigStock You've seen the colonial landmarks in Mumbai, you've explored the French architecture in Pondicherry, and you've experienced the hustle and bustle of New Delhi. Now you're looking to see a little more of what India has to offer - without the hordes of tourists. Here are a few of the best unexplored regions of India, ranging from the southern coast to the northern mountain ranges. Advertisement Kerala Kerala is a popular destination, boasting beaches lined with coconut palms and enchanting nature reserves. However, while southern Kerala attracts a lot of attention, its northern counterpart is largely off the tourist radar. If you're looking to venture off the beaten track within a familiar holiday region, you'll enjoy exploring Kerala's northern highlights. The mountains of the Western Ghats are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, famed for their biodiversity. Within the luscious greenery, you might even catch a glimpse of India's impressive wildlife - the region boasts the largest population of Indian elephants in the wild! Karnataka Like Kerala, Karnataka is a popular destination in India, though there are still parts of the state that remain relatively unexplored. Kollur, for example, is a small temple-town that has managed to stay under the radar, despite its fascinating mythology; the town's main Hindu temple, Mookambika, was thought to have been home to a demon named Kaumasura. Karnataka is also a great place to witness some of India's Islamic architecture, particularly in towns such as Bijapur, Gulbarga, and Bidar. Advertisement But if you're looking for a more rural experience of Karnataka, venture towards Madikeri and the hills of Coorg. This region has impressive views of rugged mountains, paddy fields and coffee plantations - as well as the Nalkanad Palace and the 17th cent. Madikeri Fort. Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh is a well-known destination for Hindu pilgrims visiting the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple, famous for its dedication to Vishnu. However, the state also has a number of natural wonders, such as Pulicat Lake, India's second largest lagoon. The lake doubles up as Pulicat Lake Bird Sanctuary, home to a number of migratory birds, the most common being the Greater Flamingo. This location should be high on the list for anyone who wants to see large numbers of the whimsical bird in the wild. Arunachal Pradesh Located in northeast India, Arunachal Pradesh is India's least explored state, often referred to as the land that time forgot. It's become one of the only places where you can witness India's natural and cultural heritage, unchanged by modern developments; the region is still home to 26 indigenous tribes. This area is ideal for experienced travellers looking for a chance to venture way off the beaten track. If you time your visit right, you may also be able to attend the Reh Festival, a colourful celebration of Mishmi culture and society, featuring prayers, dances, and feasts. Advertisement For more cultural insights, nearby Nagaland is also an intriguing place to visit, offering more opportunity to learn about indigenous tribes (pictured above). Like Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland is best explored with an experienced guide, as both regions are off the beaten-track. Kashmir Valley Located between Pir Panjal mountains and the Himalayas, Srinagar is an undeniably picturesque region of the Jammu and Kashmir state in northern India. Away from the hubbub of the larger cities and nestled within the Kashmir Valley, Srinagar is a tranquil haven, characterised by its tin-roofed villages and houseboats. Tetra Images - Jessica Peterson via Getty Images "I wanted to get a tattoo, I think to have a physical connection still with him. Yes, I claimed a hoody and a favourite shirt of his, but I wanted something to represent the fact that our love never spoiled. Something that marked me as his. I think if I was thinking rationally at the time, that's how I would have put my feelings into words." 24-year-old Kelsie has experienced more than her fair share of grief and heartbreak. When she was 18, just starting university, her boyfriend Tim suddenly died. Advertisement One frosty January morning, Tim woke with a start, realised he was late for work, quickly dressed and ran through town. His journey was swiftly halted when he suffered from a cardiac arrest caused by an undiagnosed heart condition - cardiomyopathy - and died. "All of a sudden, my blissfully naive existence was shattered," remembers Kelsie. "I spent every waking moment trying to recall every conversation, every glance, every insignificant detail about my soulmate who had been so cruelly taken from me." Kelsie made the decision to have a memorial tattoo in honour of Tim. Just like a growing number of people in the UK, she felt that it was an important way of remembering the person she loved, of having a permanent connection to him. Tattooing is an ancient practice, but many modern-day Brits are embracing the art of body modification, 21st-century style. Studies suggest that one in five of us and almost a third of 25-39 year olds have a tattoo. Advertisement Grief affects people in unique and sometimes unexpected ways, and everyone has different ways of coping with bereavement. The practice of permanently marking our bodies to memorialise a loved one is not a new invention, and has been used for centuries to acknowledge the heartache of losing a loved one. Margo DeMello in The Tattoo Project suggests that memorial tattoos are as old as the art of tattooing itself, citing Hawaiian tribes who for centuries have tattooed their tongues in remembrance of community members. An intensely painful procedure, the practice represents a physical manifestation of the pain of grief and a permanent reminder of that important person. Physicality is a huge part of what makes the memorial tattoo emotionally significant. First and foremost, it is permanent and cannot be removed, save for painful and expensive procedures. When the death of a loved one makes life feel uncertain and transitory, many bereaved people find comfort in stability and permanence - reflecting our love for someone lasting forever. The idea that a tattoo will mark our bodies for the rest of our own lives is also a symbol of defiance against decay and death. But more than this, memorial tattoos are a chance to tell a story about what is happening in our hearts - to make what is inside us outwardly visible. Phil, from Stratford-upon-Avon, tells me about his memorial tattoo in memory of his grandad: "This is a crown I got on my forearm. It reminds me of playing chess with my grandad when I was young. "It constantly reminds me that no matter how big the challenge in front of me or how tough my competition, if I'm smart and patient there is always a way to succeed. It's the best life lesson I was ever taught." Advertisement Phil's crown design, in memory of his grandfather. For Phil, tattoos are clearly more than just a superficial decoration. "I also have an anime symbol, that was used as a symbol of brotherhood," he says. "I got it done as a representation of my relationship with my little brother. He has severe autism and constantly checks that it's still there." Like Phil, Alexandra, from Birmingham, has a memorial tattoo for a special grandparent. The elephant design on her leg is in tribute to her grandmother. Advertisement Alexandra's tattoo, designed by cemetery_gates. "I had quite a few tattoos already so I wasn't concerned about the permanency or the pain," she says. "I think it was just important to have something tangible related to her on my person at all times, given that spending so much time with her when I was younger forged a massive part of my personality. "She used to wear an elephant brooch and left it to me. It's a subtle way to remind myself that I come from a line of strong women without having something too cheesy or overt tattooed on me." Like Phil and Alexandra, Kelsie chose a symbolic tattoo, inked on her ring finger, to remember Tim. "Tim's mother officially banned me from getting his name tattooed on my body anywhere, no initials, nothing," she explains. "In hindsight, this was a very good point, mainly because if someone asks me about my tattoo, I can make the choice of whether to honour them with the true story or not. "I decided to get the infinity symbol. Not only did it represent the fact that Tim will forever be important to me, but it is also similar to a figure 8, which was Tim's lucky number and birthday. "I had read that it was once believed that the ring finger was chosen as such because it had a vein that ran directly to the heart. This is the finger that you wear an engagement or wedding ring on, and that seemed the perfect place to symbolise the fact that our love will always remain constant. Advertisement Meriel Jane Waissman Silence. That's what I hear on this topic of violence and discrimination against women. The voices speaking out are few, they're there, but they're not enough to highlight just how large and just how endemic this problem is. I have spent over 15 years travelling through many parts of the world, in part alongside my women's rights organisation Project Monma. There has not been a single part of the world that I have been to, where violence and discrimination against women and girls is not a serious problem. It's a topic that's wrapped up in shame and punishment. Victims don't speak out for fear of being criticised, for fear of being told it's their fault and in some cases, for fear of the violent consequences that may come with speaking out. Like death. Advertisement I've met women in Northern Iraq who have faced this very threat. One very brave women's rights activist, who I met on my first trip to Northern Iraq, fled to Norway after trying to speak up for women's rights. She was threatened by some of the religious leaders in the country who didn't want women speaking about rights. They want women to stay silent. Much was the same in the Maldives. I went to interview women on their perspectives of the changing political situation in the country. Almost all of the women who I spoke to asked me to not use their name. Speaking up about the human rights situation came with consequences, they informed me, as did speaking up about violence against women. The violence, they said, was being fuelled, by the growing presence of Islamic extremists in the country who were advocating increased restrictions on women's rights, such as expecting women to cover up more and not be able to leave the home without permission from a male member of the family. Speaking out against these norms, could be met with punishment. So they preferred to stay silent. Poverty keeps women and girls in silence. For the women and girls living in the world's slums and poverty stricken parts of the world, with little education and no one to listen, there is little opportunity to speak out. While in Mozambique conducting a project on the sexual harassment of school girls by male teachers, it became clear that the schools where teachers were harassing girls, were rural and poverty stricken. For a little girl living in poverty, where should she go to report sexual harassment from her teacher? The girls said they just stayed silent. Concepts of honor and shame are perhaps one of the greatest barriers stopping women from speaking out about the violence perpetrated against them. Throughout the world I have met women who have explained how cultural values that blame women and girls for being sexually assaulted, instead of the perpetrator, make them afraid to speak out. With Project Monma, we conducted a survey looking at women's experiences of sexual harassment in India. It was incredibly difficult to get women to fill out the survey. One Indian woman told me that I would never get anyone to fill out the survey, they would be too afraid of the shame. Advertisement The women would choose to stay silent. The failure of the police and the judicial system throughout the world to adequately punish abusers has led many women and girls to believe there is no point in speaking out. Virtually every place I have travelled, women have expressed dissatisfaction that the police would protect them from violence. In the Republic of Congo for example, I was told by everyone that I interviewed that there are cases of police raping young girls working as prostitutes. How should a young girl feel confident going to the police for protection when it is widely known that the police are perpetrators of sexual violence? So they just stay silent. In Mauritania, a country where women can barely be seen on the street and slavery was legal until 2007, there is almost no point in speaking out, because cultural values that deem the woman's voice unimportant, means that even if they did speak out, no one would listen. I met with two women who explained to me that in Mauritania, women were seen with the same value as furniture, as the property of men. 'No one listens to us,' she said when I asked if they fought against these attitudes. 'I'm listening,' I told her. We all need to listen. There is a global endemic of violence against women. It is hidden under wraths of culture and shame, but it's there, and is being allowed to continue as one of the greatest violations of human rights occurring on this earth at this time. And it's occurring in silence. I have always thought of myself as being a positive person, one who looks at the glass as overflowing rather than half full. Growing up in sunny South Florida, I lived day-to-day life in a happy state; feeling blissful in the present moment and optimistic about life. I thrived in the sunshine and was eager to explore the world around me. I had not known anything different until I made a huge life change. I decided to move to a different country. Moving to UK in my mid-twenties was one of the most exciting adventures in my life. I was thrilled to travel, learn about new cultures and explore another way of life. However, within only a few short weeks upon arrival, I realised something had changed within me. I had not seen the sunshine for quite some time and I found myself becoming subdued in my personal life, pessimistic at times, and somewhat anxious. Unless I flew somewhere sunny, I felt as if I could not escape from the gloomy cloud that hung above me. I began searching for the secret to living a happy life, one that is consistently fulfilling, while we move to different places, and confront sporadic life changes and stressors at various stages in our lives. I read countless articles about happiness and found the definitions begin to intertwine. They seemed achievable, but for some reason there was never one that resonated with me until a recent trip to Bali. Advertisement On my last night in Ubud, while I was secretly hoping for good weather back in London, a friendly Balinese local shared his view on how to live happy wherever you are, no matter what is going on in your life. He used some of the sayings I had heard about or read previously, but on this occasion it felt like he was speaking the true language of happiness. His desire to articulate this concept, combined with the way he gracefully expressed himself helped me to discover a new meaning of happiness. "You can't truly appreciate happiness without feeling sadness, see light without seeing darkness, feel good if you do not know what it's like to feel bad, and appreciate the beauty of life without experiencing the ugly. There needs to be a balance. The Balinese people balance work, prayer, spending time with friends and family, and appreciate any obstacle that comes their way; whether that has to do with finances or living without means to travel abroad. A life obstacle reminds us of what happiness is truly about." My perception of happiness began to shift. I began to accept that unavoidable bumps may occur along the journey of life, but our perception might be the key to our state of happiness. Perhaps those experiences can be looked at as reminders that help us to appreciate the good we have in our lives, reminding us of what to be thankful for. I felt silly for letting a cloudy sky previously consume me. From that moment on, when I walk outside and it's a gloomy day, I smile at the sky and I am reminded of the things that I am grateful for in my life. Before you continue your day, take a moment to think about what is truly important to you. Take another moment to appreciate those things and let go of anything you cannot change. Find your own balance to happiness. Advertisement The next time you are faced with an obstacle or something that normally would cause you to question your happiness, let it remind you of something good you have in your life. Whatever it is, I hope it brings a smile to your face. As humans, we are reminded on a daily basis that we are all connected and that when we do something positive for another person, all parties reap the benefits. This is the storyline of many Hollywood films, it can be found on the About Us pages on the websites of most multinational corporations and it's something education systems around the world aim to teach the next generation of children. When you purchase an item of clothing, it follows that this simple action connects us to the farmer that grew the cotton, and the people that picked it, cleaned it, helped to weave the cloth, cut it and then sewed the pieces together to create the garment. Advertisement If we remember this connection then it should imply that we wish for each of the many people in that supply chain to have been treated fairly, paid a good wage for their work. We would surely wish for them the same rights and sense of stability that we wish for ourselves when we go to work. But often, in reality, we are distracted from this truth. We have a multitude of media, social networks and real life problems to distract us in our daily lives. People remote from us get pushed far down our list of priorities. After the Rana Plaza factory collapse, I read and heard a lot of positive things being said and written about the need for change. However, the conversations that stick in my memory are the ones that displayed that lack of understanding of the connection between producer and consumer. The cost of the finished product was more important than the story of how it was made. The people in the supply chain were rendered invisible and worthless. Many in the industry felt that local governments should be dealing with these issues. That this was NOT OUR PROBLEM. Advertisement This, as Buddhists would have it, is bad karma. Nations can have karma too and if UK companies want their clothes for a tenth of the price we would have to pay someone here to do the same, while asking them to make it more quickly and taking a tick box interest in the conditions they work in, then this reflects badly on us as a nation. Some of the brands like Matalan, Primark and Bonmarche that produced there are UK based while others like Benetton, Mango and Kappa are well known to British consumers. I thought it was obvious that all of us in the UK are therefore connected to this and partly responsible. I thought it was obvious that the UK brands manufacturing at the Rana Plaza should do all they can to compensate the workers affected by the tragedy. This kind of disconnection with our fellow human beings is prevalent across society right now. Whether you consider Brexit, Trump or Le Pen to be good or bad is irrelevant, they have all created divisions in families, communites and friendships across their respective nations. Division leads to further disconnection. This week is a time for us to reflect on our connections. If we can feel we are part of one large human family, we can truly make better choices, strive to support brands that work ethically and push "conventional" brands to work harder at improving their supply chains. Advertisement With the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse marked by Fashion Revolution week, we must all once again ask brands #whomademyclothes? I am posting photos of the talented people in Outsider's supply chain on our blog and social media channels this week to help connect our customers to the makers of their styles. Getty Images/iStockphoto This morning, I appeared on Woman's Hour, discussing the depiction of male violence against women in popular culture - notably Big Littles Lies, in which we are confronted with a complex and nuanced portrayal of an abusive relationship. But for centuries, I argued, we have been eroticising male violence against women - and this is still the case today. Against that backdrop, the way women reporting abuse are treated, and the way real-life abuse against women is reported, easily slips into patterns of blame, objectification and minimisation. Crucially, powerful stereotypes that reinforce the apparent inevitability of men's violence and women's victimisation also impact on a woman's own understanding of what constitutes abuse. This is deeply, deeply dangerous. Advertisement Yesterday, Trimaan Dhillon was given a life sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Alice Ruggles. Alice was just 24-years-old when he broke into her home, and slashed her throat. The thing is, this attack was not unpredictable - and it is a potent reminder of why, when a woman reports abuse, she must always be taken seriously as the expert in the perpetrator and his dangerousness. Even if the incident she is reporting seems innocuous, she knows that it is something worth reporting - and that means it is. The police have said that they do not think Alice understood the threat Dhillon posed. Yet she told her sister that she feared she would not be taken seriously by the police until he stabbed her. She knew exactly what he was capable of. She knew exactly, and tragically, what she was talking about. So yet again, here we are, saying that the lessons must be learned. In fact, this is part of the reason that the Femicide Census was born. We must challenge a culture that conflates obsessive and controlling behaviour with romance. Dhillon contacted Alice's new boyfriend on Facebook, saying 'She is playing us, she is still in love with me'. He hacked her social media accounts and her Whatsapp. He drove down from Scotland to stalk her, leaving flowers and chocolates on her windowsill. This was not a romantic gesture from an old love, but coercive control - a symbol of his continued abuse and harassment. His actions should have been looked at as a whole: a deliberate pattern intended to intimidate, control and frighten his victim. He continued to harass her, sending her a parcel with pictures of them both, after he had been warned not to by police. That breach should have had immediate consequences for him. Instead, Alice was made to feel like a burden. Advertisement I took part in a panel talk about the opera Carmen last year. Carmen is stabbed to death by Jose, the man who professes to love her. A man in the audience described this murder as a 'crime of passion', and this enduring, damaging idea still has considerable power today. In fact, some of the reporting on the murder of Alice has alluded to this notion. Alice's relationship with Dhillon has been described as a 'fatal attraction' that 'cruelly cut short' her life. It is despicable to imply that Alice had any power over what happened to her, as though it was her attraction to Dhillon that led to her murder. And this inherent victim-blaming is also evident in a police statement that said Alice did not want him to be arrested, and she 'paid the price for that with her life'. How many more women must die before we learn the lessons? Dhillon made a choice to kill Alice. Two women a week, on average, are killed by a current or former intimate partner in England and Wales. It's not a crime of passion. It's not a fatal attraction, or a man driven mad by love, or a woman who secretly or subconsciously wants to be harmed. Men kill women because they can. And they can, not because women let them - but because our society, our culture lets them. The world is watching in horror this week as a campaign of persecution unfolds in the Chechen Republic, part of the Russian Federation. Over the last month, it is alleged that more than 100 men have been rounded up and detained by authorities on suspicion of being gay. Some have been killed, according to reports, and there are claims that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has announced that he wants to "eliminate" the country's gay people by the start of Ramadan. The news is shocking but, based on my research into the history of sexuality and gender across the Russian Federation, not entirely surprising. There is no tolerance at all of any kind of openness about same-sex love in Chechnya. Chechen men and women can only be 'gay or lesbian on the inside'. They must hide their sexuality from their families and community. There is no public 'gay community' but only a social media scene where gay men meet but also risk exposure and violence. Chechnya is ruled by a particularly ruthless regime. Kadyrov, a hand-picked protege of President Vladimir Putin, is trying to pacify a wartorn region that has seen two major conflicts since 1994 that sought to break the republic away from Russia. The Chechen leader uses violence against his own people in that pacification process. Advertisement As history and contemporary events show us, a state in crisis often decides to lash out at scapegoated communities. Kadyrov has aroused support with rallies of tens of thousands in the capital, Grozny, for 'traditional Islamic values'. Kadyrov's social conservativism gets the backing of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church as well as local Muslim authorities. The threat to gay men in Chechnya does not only come from the state or religion. The taboo around homosexuality in Chechnya is so great that gay people are even at risk from their own families. Most honour killings we hear about are directed against women, but in Chechnya they are reportedly meted out against gay men by their own family members. That is because family esteem and reputation are such important values in Chechen society, and having a visibly or known gay person in the family is seen as shameful. The authorities are said to have released some gay men from captivity into the custody of their relatives, who are encouraged to eliminate them. The reports from Chechnya are a reminder of the difficulties facing gay and lesbian people in the Russian Federation as a whole. Russia claims to be a democracy which respects human rights and cares about the welfare of its citizens, and as part of its democratisation in 1993 it eliminated the criminal penalty for male homosexuality. But an all-Russian law in 2013 which banned 'propaganda for non-traditional sexual relations' (i.e. homosexuality) in any public or online space accessible to minors has been used hundreds of times against Russian citizens. Advertisement Gay websites have been shut down and people who speak out about injustices or abuses against LGBT people have faced persecution themselves. The public debate about the 2013 law saw dozens of murders, abductions, and beatings of gay men, but there is no hate-crime protection for LGBT citizens in Russia so these crimes were hardly taken seriously by police and prosecutors. Yet the very fact that Chechnya is part of Russia means that there is a glimmer of hope for LGBT people in the region. With global media attention focused on the terrible events in Chechnya, Russia has come under pressure to investigate the abuses of gay people in the republic that has damaged the country's reputation. Moscow's Investigative Commission has reportedly been instructed to conduct a 'control survey' of the Chechen law enforcement agencies, which may restrain Kadyrov's homophobic campaign. This week in St James's Palace, three students - one an Italian and two Spanish - received a prestigious award from His Royal Highness The Duke of York. Valeria Kormysh, Jesus Diaz and Oriol Iglesias Grau, studying at London Metropolitan University, were named the winners of the Big Idea Challenge, one of the UK's fastest growing social enterprise competitions. Their idea? To modify an iconic London bus to create a mobile support centre, complete with showers, for the capital's homeless. 'Fresh Start: the bus that changes lives' will now go forward to implementation - the prize for winning the Big Idea Challenge. Corporate sponsors are being sought to fund it, and I am sure they will be found. Soon the bus will be on London's roads, making a real difference to real lives. Here, then, we have a clear example of how good things happen when universities join forces with the corporate world (as well as an important reminder of how EU students enrich our society). The Big Idea Challenge, run by London Metropolitan University, challenges entrepreneurial spirits to come up with solutions to some of societies biggest problems. Those who progress from the first round are matched with mentors from industry, including companies and organisations such as Microsoft, RBS, Unilever and The Prince's Trust to develop their idea into a viable business. Advertisement Some people would wonder why a university should be spending time running enterprise competitions with corporates. Shouldn't universities stick to research and educating their own students? My response to that question would be 'no.' It is a question that has resurfaced recently with discussions on the Higher Education and Research Bill. One of the amendments to the Bill, proposed by the House of Lords, has led to welcome debate about what, exactly, a university is and how it should interact with wider society. This is an important question and one which comes as the UK is rethinking its Industrial Strategy. The HE Bill sought to challenge universities to work in new ways with schools and colleges, with closer relationships with business - something that the Industrial Strategy will undoubtedly influence. I believe that universities must make a contribution to society at a global, national but also a local level. This is particularly relevant in our capital where, according to Trust for London, the poverty rate is 27%, seven percentage points higher than the rest of England, and where 680,000 children live in poverty. Universities are uniquely placed to make a difference in their local communities, being invested with bright people with a civic outlook and facilities to inspire. This year, London Met decided to extend its Big Idea Challenge to 17 colleges of Further Education across the capital. This included bringing the teams to RBS's headquarters in Liverpool Street to work with inspirational mentors from the business world. If just one of these hundreds of pupils is inspired to start their own business, creating jobs and new opportunities for others, then we have done our job. As the Industrial Strategy discourse has made clear, our start-up community is a driving force of the economy. Advertisement Yet what of universities' most important stakeholders - their own students? Our students benefit significantly from their university's links with business. Most students choose to go to university because they want to secure a job and a career. Many universities have long recognised this and have invested time and money in developing partnerships with industry to enhance their curriculum, ensuring the courses they teach provide relevant knowledge and skills. Others have gone further. At my university, we partner with hundreds of businesses and organisations to run our Work Related Learning module - guaranteeing work related learning opportunities for all undergraduate students on all courses. This gives our students the chance to make contacts and gain experience that will give them the edge in job interviews. Without these industry partnerships, our students would not have the head start in their careers that they currently enjoy at London Met. London would be poorer for it. stevanovicigor via Getty Images It's now two weeks since I wrote about a protest outside the Russian Embassy to highlight the mistreatment of gay men in Chechnya. It was incredible and humbling to see around a thousand people turn up, and more than a quarter of a million people watch the livestream on Facebook. Pink triangle of flowers outside the @RussianEmbassy now for the #ChechnyaProtest. Thank you to all who came. pic.twitter.com/PqfhNjrSOO Steve Taylor (@danophile) April 12, 2017 Advertisement The impact of the protest was encouraging: the media appeared to wake up to the atrocities unfolding in Chechnya, with broadcasters from around the world starting to take notice. Here in the UK, the mainstream media began reporting first-hand testimonies from gay men 'liberated' from the region, and questions were asked in the House of Commons. A shocking New York Times piece at the weekend left many of us sick to the stomach. Despite this increased focus, things appear to be getting even worse for LGBT+ people in Chechnya. Just a month ago, henchmen for the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov were publicly stating that homosexuals 'did not exist' in Chechnya. But Foreign Office officials monitoring the situation there have confirmed reports that Kadyrov has said he wants the LGBT+ community 'eliminated' by the start of the holy month of Ramadan, one month from today. Further reports in recent days suggest that as many as six prisons are now being used to incarcerate gay men - and, presumably, bisexuals, lesbians, trans people and anyone else who doesn't accord with Kadyrov's antediluvian view that everyone should be heterosexual and cisgendered. Confirmation that Kadyrov wants LGBT+ people 'eliminated' by Ramadan is also confirmation that people are under the greatest threat in the region. The authorities cannot on the one hand claim that such people do not exist, and then on the other talk of the need for their elimination. President Putin's hatred of the LGBT+ community is well known and documented. Unsurprisingly, his press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the Kremlin doesn't recognise the allegations of a 'surge' against the LGBT+ community, and Kadyrov is reported to have assured Putin himself that the stories are untrue. But here too there are inconsistencies that expose Kadyrov's lies. The corroboration of testimonies published in The Guardian, The New York Times and elsewhere, alongside accounts published by Human Rights Watch, and St Petersburg-based Russian LGBT Network who are themselves evacuating people from the region, are too convincing to dismiss. Advertisement There has been sustained interest across the UK in the unfolding horrors in Chechnya. Pride organisations in Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Preston, Bristol, Norwich and Leeds, among others, followed Pride in London by holding vigils and protests. And whilst Foreign Office ministers have been quick to condemn the situation, the calling of the snap general election doesn't help maintain focus on what is clearly an increasingly shocking human rights abuse. Politicians' attentions will be more focused on UK affairs than ever before, and this issue could easily be lost in the chaos of the election. But there is action we can take to maintain the pressure. We can sign Amnesty's petition, backed by Stonewall, Pride in London and others. And although parliament dissolves next Wednesday, ministers remain in their roles until a successor is appointed after the election and we must continue to apply pressure to government to make representations at the highest level. We should be pressuring the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to summon the Russian Ambassador to discuss the worsening situation and make representations on behalf of the government. Governments around the world should be doing the same. And we need increased action from the EU and United Nations. We need them to act before Kadyrov becomes just another name on lists of those responsible for genocide. Until governments act, and these abuses can be brought to an end, we are all nervously relying on the heroes at the Russian LGBT Network who are putting their own lives at risk, and those of their families and friends, to evacuate those at risk from Chechnya. Removing people to a place of safety is not an easy job, and nor is it something that can be done without funds. Most people get paid this week, and most of us could spare the cost of a drink this bank holiday weekend, or maybe more. Whatever you can afford, a donation to the Network will help those on the front line of this crisis to get more people out of the region, and to safety. Reno County incumbent legislators re-elected Results were the same as the 2020 election in terms of winners, but one race was closer and the other had a wider margin. The Selectmen voted 2-1 to allow the school district to use Cheshire School for summer programs and central office. Selectman Robert Ciskowski, right, objected to the proposal and voted against it. Cheshire Grants Use of Elementary School For Summer Programs CHESHIRE, Mass. The Selectmen voted 2-1 to allow the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District to use Cheshire Elementary School for summer programming and its central office. After an at times contentious discussion Tuesday, the board voted to allow a summer day-care program and a special education summer camp with Selectman Robert Ciskowski holding a hard line against the district. "It is too soon and we are being steered and manipulated," Ciskowski said. "I think we are going into this way too fast and blind ... we are not ready to be doing this." The board last week had decided to take time to think about the proposed use after Superintendent Robert Putnam made the request. With the School Committee vote to close Cheshire Elementary and move pre-K through Grade 3 to C.T. Plunkett in Adams and the rest of the grades to Hoosac Valley High School, there has been animosity between Cheshire, Adams and the district. Selectwoman Carol Francesconi said the summer programs benefit Cheshire students and she felt OK allowing the use. "You [Ciskowski] may be still ticked off about the school district but I am thinking about the kids and the parents," she said. "It is worth what minimal costs it is and ... it is only for eight weeks." Chairman Paul Astorino agreed and said he received multiple calls from concerned parents. "I got I think 11 calls from parents wanting to know what is happening and they realize the school may be closed forever but they are worried about what is going to happen in the next month and a half," he said. "I think it is the right thing to do." Ciskowski said he felt as though the decision was made before the meeting by his fellow selectmen and that he still had concerns about the use. Putnam, who attended the meeting, said the programs are parent-funded and that the "footprint" of the programs are small. He said district custodians hired during the summer will take care of any clean up. He added that any utility costs will be covered by the district and he is currently undergoing a survey with parents to see where and when they would want to see the day care in future years. Ciskowski still wasn't comfortable with the use. "Well thank you Dr. Putnam, you have changed Cheshire forever by helping close a school and now that you closed a school you still want to use it," Ciskowski said. "So welcome to Cheshire." The town will still have to negotiate the central office lease but the board did vote to allow the district to continue using the building. The Selectmen also turned down an invitation from the school district to bring in a facilitator to mediate a discussion between the district and the two towns. Francesconi felt the session was too expensive and the district would be better off using the money for something else. "I think it is to early $8,500 could be spent in other ways," she said. "I am sorry I dont agree." In other business, the Department of Public Works Director Blair Crane said the new DPW truck has arrived and is soon to be lettered. "Essentially, it's three trucks in one and the bodies are interchangeable," he said. "I think it is money well spent and we will put it to good use." The draft master plan will be placed on the town's website so the Master Plan Committee can gather public input. The committee hopes to finalize the plan by the end of the fiscal year. Before closing, Astorino, who will not seek re-election, thanked his fellow selectmen and other town leaders for their service. "We had a few good years and ... I think I am leaving at a time that is probably a good time to get out because I don't have the patience to put up with this anymore," Astorino joked. Tuesday night marked Astorino's last meeting and the selectmen held a small party for him afterward. The School Committee approved a budget on Wednesday that will now be up to the City Council to decide. Pittsfield School Officials Approve Further Budget Cuts PITTSFIELD, Mass. The proposed school budget has been cut again, raising the number of layoffs to 75.6 full-time equivalent positions. However, the teachers' union is foregoing some $300,000 worth of raises to save some of those jobs. On Wednesday, the School Committee adopted a proposed budget of $60,686,338, with the city's share of that being $60,066,338. That is $250,000 less than what was presented at the budget hearing two weeks ago. "We understand we have to do this because we understand the situation we are in," Superintendent Jason McCandless said. McCandless said two days after the public hearing on April 12, in a meeting with Mayor Linda Tyer and Director of Finance Matthew Kerwood, it was determined that level-funding the budget wasn't going to be enough. The city will be hitting the levy ceiling, a restriction on how much more property taxes can be raised, and city officials have to make the numbers work. Tyer said on Wednesday that combined with all of the other department budgets, the $250,000 cut brings the city under the ceiling by just $31,000. Previously she had asked all departments to come in with a level-funded budget or one that is cut. McCandless had initially proposed a budget with a .9 percent increase and then pared it back to level. With the request to cut even further, the school administrators decided not to fill the position of retiring Assistant Superintendent for College and Career Readiness Richard Brady for a savings of $55,000, change schedules to avoid having to hire a specialist in the elementary school to save $45,000 more, and reduced the line to replace curriculum - a line McCandless had stood a firm ground on for a long time - from $500,000 to $350,000. "We can live with slowing down, we cannot live with stopped," McCandless said of reducing the curriculum line. That brings the budget $250,000 under last year's, which is a .4 percent reduction. That budget means reducing 30.4 full-time equivalent teaching positions, 39.2 paraprofessionals, and six districtwide positions. Around the same time Tyer and McCandless sought to find additional cuts, the United Educators of Pittsfield voted to delay taking step raises for half of the year in order to save teaching jobs. That results in a savings of about $300,000 that the union hoped would keep more teachers in the classroom. "We approved to delay our step increases for next year in hopes to save some jobs," UEP President Brendan Sheran said. "We want to do this to save as many positions as we can for stability." The union was unaware of the additional reductions McCandless was preparing when that vote was made and Sheran said he was surprised to learn Tuesday morning that additional cuts to the budget were proposed. "I'm not thrilled with that. I hope we aren't the only department to go below [level]," Sheran said. Sheran said that while the city's teachers rank 275 out of 330 districts in the state in salaries, lower than most, the fight shouldn't be between the union and city officials. He said the union understands the issues and solving those means taking the fight to the State House for additional resources. The budget cuts aren't the desires of most, if not all, city officials but a necessity because of state law and what school officials say is a lack of state financial support. "The state is not giving us enough to operate and it is not giving us any way to do something about it locally," McCandless said. That $300,000 give-back from the union stays in the budget but is dispersed to more teachers to up the number of educators in classrooms. That will drop the overall job loss total to closer to 68. McCandless said that decision by the union is unprecedented and was greatly appreciative. "That is an example of our teachers' union doing what many not only in the union world but in the rest of the world would consider absolutely unthinkable," he said. "This was an extraordinary and somewhat unthinkable sacrifice." The current contract gives teachers annual increases based on the level of state support. But, state support has been limited so that has been a quarter of a percent each year. The steps are based on qualifications, educational attainment, and years of service and are 3 percent each. Those essentially are the real pay increases that make a career in education possible, McCandless said. The superintendent said without those step increases, teachers would make about $38,000 a year for their entire career with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of school loans. "It is the only way to move up," McCandless said. Because of the bold move, he said, "we owe it to our teachers" to give some more back to them. He further changed the budget after hearing about the move by the union to reduce the curriculum line even further, putting another $100,000 into retaining teachers and dropping that line to $250,000. In summary, the budget is $250,000 less than last year and will lay off about 68 employees, though exactly which ones hasn't been determined yet, and works toward helping the city get a spending plan under the levy ceiling. The budget now goes to the City Council for final approval during its budget debates. School Committee members lamented the necessity to cut jobs but ultimately only Cynthia Taylor voted against the budget. "I could vote for the level-funded but going down .4 percent, I couldn't support that," Taylor said. "We have to give [the students] everything we can, every benefit of a doubt. It is the last place in a municipal budget we cut." School Committee member Anthony Riello questioned the mayor about other budget lines as well. His hope is that the School Department isn't the only budget being reduced from last year. "If we are all under the same mandate, then I can live with it," he said. Tyer said every department is different and not all departments can cut the same amount or percentage. But, "you will see every department level funded or below level funded," Tyer said, adding, "We really had no choice to issue a mandate of level funding." As the budget process unfolded and the level-funded numbers still didn't work, the mayor said she asked all department heads to work hard to find somewhere else to cut if possible. Signs hang on doors and windows all through City Hall reading "we're in this together" and Tyer and the School Committee emphasized that point Wednesday. An emotional School Committee member Pamela Farron said the decisions were not easy but she has confidence that the city will get through the difficult financial times. And nearly all of the committee members are looking to Boston to help fix it. "Pittsfield is not going to solve all of these problems alone. We have to go beyond Pittsfield," Chairwoman Katherine Yon said. The School Committee also adopted a resolution calling for changes to the state's foundation budget for education, which determines the level of state aid a city or town receives. Next week the mayor, superintendent, and other city staff will be presenting to the state House of Representative's Ways and Means Committee on the financial challenges the city faces. "We are going to appeal to them for help," Tyer said. How Palestinians Intimidate Journalists The Fellowship | April 27, 2017 How Palestinians Intimidate Journalists Its a fact that facts about Israels conflict with the Palestinians rarely make it to the rest of the world, and Gatestone Institutes Bassam Tawil explains why. Because the Palestinian Authoritys leadership intimidates, censors, threatens, and assaults Palestinian journalists, the truth is never reported, and thus never reaches Western media: In the view of President Mahmoud Abbas and his PA, Palestinian journalists exist to write stories slamming Israel or praising PA leaders. Media, for them, is defined as a mouthpiece for Abbas, the PA leadership and the Palestinian cause. Any journalist who dares to think outside this checkpoint is subject to severe punishment. Under Abbas and the PA, there is no room for an independent media. The three major Palestinian newspapers Al-Quds, Al-Ayyam and Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda are controlled, directly and indirectly, by the PA Abbass policy of intimidation seems to be working. Palestinian journalists living under his rule in the West Bank are afraid to report stories that are not favorable in the eyes of the PA leadership. As the international media relies heavily on Palestinian journalists and media assistants in covering Palestinian affairs, this intimidation of Palestinian journalists heavily colors the reporting of Western journalists. The stories Palestinian journalists tell their Western colleagues are limited to ones that will not endanger their own lives. This censorship, whether by the Abbass security forces or self-imposed, explains why one rarely reads or sees a story in Western mainstream media about negative things happening in the PA-controlled territories. The Palestinian journalists, like their leaders, give Western journalists only the dirt on Israel. Many Western journalists, for their part, have adjusted themselves to this reality and are willing partners in the bash-Israel campaign In Israel, Trump Will Announce Embassy Move The Fellowship | April 27, 2017 WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 15: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) participate in a joint news conference at the East Room of the White House February 15, 2017 in Washington, DC. President Trump hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu for talks for the first time since Trump took office on January 20. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) As Stand for Israel reported yesterday, Donald Trump will be making his first presidential visit to Israel next month. And now, The Times of Israels Eric Cortellessa reports, the visit which will coincide with Jerusalem Day will include an announcement of the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday that US President Donald Trump will announce the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem when he visits Israel at the end of May, fulfilling a campaign promise he appeared to walk back after assuming office. Trumps planned visit his first to the Jewish state coincides with Jerusalem Day, when Israel will celebrate 50 years since the reunification of the city under Israeli control after the 1967 Six Day War. What better time could there be to announce the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem than when you are over here celebrating with our Israeli friends this very important 50th anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem? DeSantis said. Israeli officials confirmed on Thursday that Trumps team is planning a visit on May 22. The White House told The Times of Israel that it is exploring the visit, but did not flesh out any further details. I think the announcement of that trip is a signal that it is more likely to happen than not, and will send a powerful signal to other countries around the world that America is back and will stand by our allies and will not let folks cower us into not doing the right thing, added DeSantis The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. To unlock this article: Asias most promising cashback application finally comes to the Android-loving, Philippine crowd to put more bang for the buck and more fun in shopping. A cashback is typically a rebate or a rewards program run by big retailers or credited card companies, where a certain percentage of the transaction value is paid back to the cardholder. Snapcart works pretty much the same way, except, you can use it most retail establishments, for as long as they issue receipts. Snapcart works in partnership with some of the most well-loved brands and your usual retail haunts. This means that whenever you buy your preferred soap, snack food, or make-up from a participating outlet, you can get cash back by simply scanning your receipt. Snapcart is the top cashback app in Indonesia, one of Southeast Asias largest and most exciting markets, where it is used by over 50 global and regional brands across a multitude of trade channels. Using the information that Snapcart provides, most of these brands have also launched exciting promos and given freebies to the further delight of their buyers. Given the similarity in the demographics of the Indonesian and Philippine markets, Snapcart is expected to be warmly accepted by Filipinos who are ever-loyal to their brands and would welcome any chance to toy around with their smartphones to get a better deal. Snapcart is a fun way for consumers to get their cash back, letting them grow even more loyal to the brands that they patronize, said Mayeth Condicion, Chief Data Officer and Co-Founder of Snapcart. This app also provides the stores and the brands with valuable information that they can use to bring products and services that consumers want. It therefore starts off a virtuous cycle where consumers are rewarded not only with cash rebates, but also with the type of goods that they are sure to enjoy. Snapcart is blazing new trails in the Asian market. Eight months since the app was launched in Asia, it has been downloaded 500,000 times, with more than 5,000 receipts being scanned each day by consumers eager to get back their cash. Its not just for reward-hungry consumers. For enterprises, Snapcart provides real-time market intelligence and analytics on how customers consume and interact with brands. Snapcart receives information, engages the audience, delivers brand metrics, and predicts brand health in a way that other tools cannot do as effectively. Over the next few months, it is predicted to have 50,000 users in the Philippines. Instant rebates and rewards will definitely be a lot more fun and easier to have with Snapcart, which promises to take shopping a whole notch higher in the Philippines. ASUS engages with their loyal fans for a night of knowledge, games, and tasty giveaways. Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) and NVIDIA engaged with their awesome fans in a night full of fun and games. Reaching out to them in a more entertaining way, the fans, along with the media, had a blast during the event. Launching the ROG Maximus IX Extreme and the ROG Strix GTX 1080Ti, the crowd was awed when they learned more about it. Representatives from Seagate were also present along the event to provide more information about their new products. To complete the team, Powered by ASUS partners G.Skill, and Bitspower were also present through their latest watercooling and advanced RGB memory modules. Asus ROG Strix GTX 1080Ti The ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a VR-ready gaming graphics card with ultrafast gaming performance, advanced cooling and reliability, and personalized styling. It is powered by the latest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics processing unit (GPU), clocked at 1708MHz boost clock in OC mode, performing better than your average card. ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is packed with exclusive ASUS technologies, including all-new MaxContact, an industry-first GPU cooling technology featuring an enhanced copper heat-spreader that provides a 10-times (10X) flatter surface for up to 2X more contact area with the GPU than traditional heat spreaders, resulting in improved thermal transfer. Together with three patented wing-blade 0dB fans, ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti delivers 30-percent-cooler and 3X-quieter performance than reference cards. ASUS FanConnect II provides hybrid-controlled fan headers and a comprehensive set of tuning options with GPU Tweak II to optimize system cooling even further. Industry-exclusive Auto-Extreme technology with 10+2 phase Super Alloy Power II components ensures premium quality and reliability. ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti comes with ASUS Aura Sync, RGB LED synchronization technology that enables complete gaming system personalization. A VR-friendly design with two HDMI ports lets gamers keep a VR headset connected to their system for immersive, virtual-reality gaming anytime. GPU Tweak II software with XSplit Gamecaster provides intuitive performance tweaking and instant gameplay streaming. ASUS ROG Maximus IX Extreme The ROG Maximus IX Extreme is a seriously powerful new Z270 gaming motherboard thats expertly tooled to be totally cooled, with an integrated monoblock for water-cooled performance right out of the box. To create this all-new water-cooling solution, ROG teamed up with Bitspower. Designed from the ground up, Maximus IX Extremes monoblock has flow-rate, water-leak and temperature sensors all seamlessly integrated to keep wiring and tubing complexity to a minimum. Based on the latest Intel Z270 chipset and ready for powerful 7th Generation Intel Core processors, ROGs latest gaming powerhouse also has ASUS Aura Sync illumination, support for ultra-fast DDR4 4133MHz memory, and the latest SupremeFX S1220 codec with a 113dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the line-in for exceptional audio experiences. It also boasts of improved Sonic Studio III with advanced audio profiles, voice enhancement tweaks, an improved graphical sound detection system, and an evolved audio engine that processes sounds more accurately. AVAILABILITY & PRICING ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti be available in the Philippines late April. ASUS Maximus IX Extreme will be available by mid of Q2. From left to right: Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (GoNegosyo) Marketing Officer Mr. Paul Anthony De Guzman, GoNegosyo Adviser for Entrepreneurship Development Ms. Merly M. Cruz, Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corporation (MMPC) President and CEO Mr. Yoshiaki Kato, Centro Manufacturing Corporation President Mr. Raphael T. Juan, and MMPC Senior Vice President Mr. Yosuke Nishi Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corporation (MMPC) teamed up with one of the leading truck body builders, Centro Manufacturing Corporation to donate a Mitsubishi L300 XV microbus to the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE) GoNegosyo. The turnover ceremony was attended by Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Mr. Joey A. Concepcion, Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship Adviser for Entrepreneurship Development Ms. Merly M. Cruz, MMPC President and CEO Mr. Yoshiaki Kato, and Centro President Mr. Raphael T. Juan. Impressed by PCE GoNegosyos commitment in providing programs for aspiring entrepreneurs, Kato expressed MMPCs support for its KAPATID, Angat Lahat Project. KAPATID is an initiative launched in August 2016 that encourages medium and large corporations to help micro and small enterprises (MSEs) through the use of inclusive business models. The KAPATID Project will develop programs to partner MSEs with medium and large enterprises as part of their value chain and they will use the brand new L300 XV microbus in their logistics management as they roll out their programs nationwide. In his speech, he also mentioned that the L300 model is the go to workhorse vehicle for micro, small, and medium enterprises because of its proven reliability, affordability, and low maintenance cost. He also added that the local production of the L300 utility vehicle has created jobs not only in MMPC but also to local parts suppliers and truck body builders such as Centro Manufacturing Corporation, contributing to the growth of the Philippine automotive industry. Concepcion on the other hand said that with the donation of a brand new L300 XV microbus, MMPC and Centro will help ensure that PCE GoNegosyo will be more successful in creating a positive entrepreneurial culture and enterprising climate that will help eradicate poverty in the Philippines. 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 }} Johnny Depp's former business team has branded the actor a "habitual liar" after he claimed in an interview that they had "clearly let him down". Depp sued The Management Group in January for more than $25 million over claims of fraud and negligence. The Management Group then counter-sued, accusing the Pirates of the Caribbean star of spending inordinate amounts on property, private jets, art and fine wine. Other spends listed in the suit included $3 million to fire his friend Hunter S Thompson's ashes out of a cannon, $18 million on a 150-foot yacht, and $4 million on a failed record label. TMG claimed that the total cost of Depp's lifestyle per month exceeded $2 million. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Depp questioned why the group had not dropped him as a client over his spending. "It's my money," he said. "If I want to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, it's my thing." Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment Show all 9 1 /9 Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The dining room Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The kitchen Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The Art Deco exterior Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The bedroom Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The living area Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The dining table Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The kitchen Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The outside terrace area Partners Trust Johnny Depp's quirky 9.8 million Los Angeles apartment The pool Partners Trust In response, David Shane, a spokesman for TMG, told AP that the actor is "a habitual liar who denies responsibility for his own outrageous conduct". "Johnny Depp and his sister were involved in every significant business decision during the 17 years TMG represented him," he said. "Depp now admits to his extravagant spending but blames TMG for not dropping him as a client." Depp has also taken further legal action against TMG. The WSJ reports that his lawyers have said in filings to Los Angeles Superior Court that they have "significant new information, including documents and testimony" from a former TMG employee concerning "misconduct in managing Mr Depp's affairs". However a business team spokesman says Depp is relying on "dishonest, discredited statements from a vindictive former TMG employee who was fired seven years ago - at which time the employee vowed to get TMG back". 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 }} Aretha Franklin has accused Dionne Warwick of lying about her at Whitney Houston's funeral, it has been reported. Franklin is said to have sent a "lengthy fax" at the beginning of the week before calling reporters about a "libellous statement" Warwick allegedly made at Houston's funeral, which took place five years ago. Billboard reports via AP that Franklin said Warwick claimed she attended Houston's funeral when she did not. At the time, Franklin said she was suffering from swollen feet and had to rest before performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York, which she was contractually obligated to do. Warwick had told funeral-goers that Franklin was there and introduced her, before realising that she was not in attendance. "Ree's not here, but she is here," she said, referring to Franklin by a nickname. "She loves Whitney as if she was born to her. She is her godmother." Whitney Houston died in 2012 (Getty Images) In fact Houston's godmother was Darlene Love, something clarified by Houston's mother Cissy in the days after the funeral. "She blatantly lied on me... fully well knowing what she was doing," Franklin told AP in a phone interview this month, apparently still of the opinion that the comment was damaging to her. Explaining why it had taken her so long to speak about the incident, she said: "There's been so much going on around her [Houston], around the service, around the drugs, around her and Bobby [Brown] supposed to be fighting, I didn't want to add anything to that and I didn't want to be a part of that." 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 Recommended Aretha Franklin will retire this year Franklin, who covered Warwick's hit song 'Walk On By' in 1964, said that she saw Warwick at the Tribeca Film Festival this month: "She said, 'Give me a hug.' I said, 'Oh hell no. You couldn't be serious.'" When the AP reporter asked whether she felt like Warwick owed her an apology, Franklin responded: "I don't care about her apology, at this point it isn't about an apology, it's about libel... We've never been friends and I don't think that Dionne has ever liked me." Warwick's representative Angelo Ellerbee was asked to comment on Franklin's claims and said: "She [Warwick] will not dignify a response to the statement made by Aretha Franklin." Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit 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 Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Vaccines are widely seen as one of the greatest inventions in medical history. By introducing an agent into the body that resembles a microorganism - from polio to measles or smallpox - vaccines have saved millions of lives. Annually, an estimated two to three million deaths are prevented by jabs and liquid drops - a figure that could rise by 1.5million if more children and adults were treated, according to the UNs World Health Organisation (WHO). Each year, the WHO reminds the public of the importance of vaccinations, and the tragic and preventable deaths caused by infectious disease during World Immunisation Week. For instance, since 1988, polio cases have decreased by over 99 per cent worldwide, and only Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan continue to fight against the infectious disease which can cause muscle atrophy and deformities. Smallpox, meanwhile, was declared wiped out in 1980 following the WHOs global immunisation campaign. Prior to that, smallpox has killed between 300 to 500 million people during the 20th century. Still, vaccination - and immunisation enforced on children in particular - are highly contentious issues. Just like climate change, an individual's rationale for rejecting vaccines that are backed by scientific evidence is varied and complex. However, vaccines work because of herd immunisation: where the spread of infections disease is prevented by vaccinating, ideally, the entire population. The balance between maintaining trust in medics and worsening fears by forcing vaccines is tricky, but one on which effective immunisation relies. There are multiple types of movements who are critical or questioning of vaccines, explains Heidi J Larson, PhD London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. These people are unlikely to consider themselves to be members of the anti-vaccine movement per se, she adds, but see questioning vaccines as part of their wider sceptical world view. The first anti-vaccine movement formed in 1866 was the UKs anti-compulsory vaccination league against smallpox vaccination mandates, says Dr Larson. Now, some are totally dedicated to questioning or refusing vaccination as their primary mission. Others are movements who started around other issues such as: freedom from government control; anti-big-business; naturopathy and homeopathy adding vaccines to the list of non-natural substances to avoid, such as vaccines perceived by some as having excessive chemical and toxins - and anti-GMO groups who also sometimes converge with anti-vaccine groups and sentiments." Sometimes these movements spring up around an adverse event, perceived to be caused by a vaccination, although rarely confirmed to be causal, she adds. Vaccines are seen as another for way for "big pharma" to make money. Some believe that a healthy lifestyle is enough to keep the immune system in order and fight disease. Parents against vaccinating their children fear that the jabs will cause side-effects, and are frightened by the now discredited findings of Andrew Wakefield who published a study concluding that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. More recently, Donald Trump stoked the flames of sceptics by expressing concern about a tremendous increase in autism rates, even though numerous studies have disproved this apparent link. Experts say that allaying these fears is vital for public safety. Rates of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases are currently low in the UK, thanks to generally high rates of vaccination coverage, says Sarah Loving, Vaccine Knowledge Project Manager, Oxford Vaccine Group. However, if vaccination rates fall it is relatively easy for infectious diseases to re-establish themselves, especially the highly contagious ones like measles and diphtheria, she warns. The UK experienced a significant measles outbreak in 2012 and 2013 - particularly in South Wales - caused by a dip in MMR vaccination rates in the early 2000s. In 2012 there were 2,016 cases of measles in the UK. In the first six months of 2013 there were a further 1,287 cases of measles; 257 of these people were admitted to hospital, including 39 with serious complications such as pneumonia, meningitis and gastroenteritis, and one young man died of measles complications. But the harder that medics push for vaccines, the worse distrust in much-maligned experts becomes. To make matters worse, those who are against vaccines feel ignored and victimised by mainstream science and media. Like any responsible parent, they are trying to protect their children from what they see as a grave danger to their health. I will not risk my babys health if she is healthy and well already we are born perfect have been since the beginning of humanity, wrote one mother under an anti-vaccination article online. Anna Watson, the head of anti-vaccine organisation Arnica, says she was bullied by medical professionals when she refused jabs for her child. Recommended Failed parenting traits people are refusing to pass on to their kids I was told my child would die, she tells The Independent. Many people have told me in private that their children have been affected by vaccines but they rarely speak out, especially if they work in the medical profession, for fear of losing their jobs. She claims that three children in her town were put on life support after receiving vaccines. I don't disagree with vaccines or medicines because in some cases for some people vaccines and medicines may be a risk worth taking and its important to have free choice. However, the idea that a parent or adult would ever be forced to take a vaccine - and in the UK there are nearly 50 vaccines during childhood - which comes with the risk of death is beyond my comprehension, she adds. Thousands and thousands of people agree with Watson, including some 40,000 people who have signed a Change.org petition against mandatory vaccines. Experts agree that vaccines arent perfect, but that the alternative is much scarier by exposing those with immune deficiencies to infectious disease, but also risking the unravelling of decades of immunisation work. Nothing is 100 per cent safe, says Vaccines Today editor Gary Finnegan. But vaccines have far fewer side effects than most medical interventions. I took my own kids to have a meningitis vaccine recently and one of them had a temperature afterwards. This usually doesn't happen but I can see that when it does it's unpleasant. However, now he's very unlikely to get this very serious disease and I take a lot of comfort from that. While the medical community agrees that vaccines are necessary, the issue of an individuals freedom - which for a child is in the hands of their parents - remains divisive. "I really think we need to put down our guns on this issue. It is only making the situation worse," says Dr Larson. "The current polarisation of anti- and pro- sentiments is creating a war-like environment, fighting for who is winning. I think that is one of the most dangerous and counterproductive trends. The other worst outcome is children dying because they are not getting life-saving vaccines that could have protected them from serious illness or even death from diseases such as measles and diphtheria which have had proven and safe vaccines for decades." The worst jobs for your health Show all 10 1 /10 The worst jobs for your health The worst jobs for your health 10. Surgical and medical assistants, technologists, and technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 57.3 What they do: Assist in operations, under the supervision of surgeons, registered nurses, or other surgical personnel and perform medical laboratory tests. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 69 The worst jobs for your health 9. Stationary engineers and boiler operators Overall unhealthiness score: 57.7 What they do: Operate or maintain stationary engines, boilers, or other mechanical equipment to provide utilities for buildings or industrial processes. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 99 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 89 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 84 The worst jobs for your health 8. Water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators Overall unhealthiness score: 58.2 What they do: Operate or control an entire process or system of machines, often through the use of control boards, to transfer or treat water or wastewater. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 97 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 80 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 74 The worst jobs for your health 7. Histotechnologists and histologic technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 59.0 What they do: Prepare histologic slides from tissue sections for microscopic examination and diagnosis by pathologists. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 76 3. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 The worst jobs for your health 6. Immigration and customs inspectors Overall unhealthiness score: 59.3 What they do: Investigate and inspect people, common carriers, goods, and merchandise, arriving in or departing from the US or between states to detect violations of immigration and customs laws and regulations. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 78 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 63 3. Exposure to radiation: 62 The worst jobs for your health 5. Podiatrists Overall unhealthiness score: 60.2 What they do: Diagnose and treat diseases and deformities of the human foot. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 87 2. Exposure to radiation: 69 3. Exposure to contaminants: 67 The worst jobs for your health 4. Veterinarians, veterinary assistants, and laboratory animal caretakers and veterinary technologists and technicians What they do: Diagnose, treat, or research diseases and injuries of animals and perform medical tests in a laboratory environment for use in the treatment and diagnosis of diseases in animals. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 81 2. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 75 3. Exposure to contaminants: 74 The worst jobs for your health 3. Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and anesthesiologist assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 62.3 What they do: Administer anesthetics or sedatives during medical procedures, and help patients in recovering from anesthesia. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 94 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to radiation: 74 The worst jobs for your health 2. Flight attendants What they do: Provide personal services to ensure the safety, security, and comfort of airline passengers during flight. Greet passengers, verify tickets, explain use of safety equipment, and serve food or beverages. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 88 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 77 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 69 The worst jobs for your health 1. Dentists, dental surgeons, and dental assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 65.4 What they do: Examine, diagnose, and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums. May treat diseases of nerve, pulp, and other dental tissues affecting oral hygiene and retention of teeth. May fit dental appliances or provide preventive care. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 84 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 3. Time spent sitting: 67 "One very dangerous misconception is that reported 'adverse events following immunisations (AEFI)' are necessarily caused by vaccination. They are not. AEFIs are reported because they are perceived to be caused by vaccination and need investigation. What we do not have is a place where people can see what is reported with a column next to it that says whether or not it is confirmed in an easily accessible manner. We need to do better in the public health and science community in being much more accessible and clearer in communication as well as listening better. For those who are sceptical of experts, we need to think about how their peers can appeal to their sense of community or the desire to protect your own children," says Finegan. "For example, in Australia, a very innovative approach was taken by the I Immunise project where local people told their personal stories to encourage others to vaccinate. For me, it should be a combination of storytelling and science." While he doesnt agree with anti-vaxxers, he can understand why the sentiment is spreading. "Most of us haven't seen the disease for more than a decade. If a parent hear a scare story - even if they are pretty sure it's nonsense - they may still be tempted to skip vaccination just in case. But this is what has allowed these serious infectious diseases to creep back." For Dr Dyan Hes, Medical Director of Gramercy Pediatrics, giving parents a choice is too risky. She doesnt allow patients in her practice who are unvaccinated, or under-vaccinated. What kind of a doctor would I be if they contracted a vaccine preventable illness in my waiting room? Childhood vaccines should be mandatory, not optional. This is called public health. You take care of all the children to protect the public at large. Families who receive government subsidies or health insurance should not be allowed to opt out of vaccines. There should be no religious exemptions for vaccines. Un-vaccinated or under vaccinated children should not be allowed in schools or day cares, period. This should be regardless if the school is public or private. The anti vaccine movement is very dangerous."They are also completely misinformed and believe that doctors make money by giving vaccines. The truth is that the cost to physicians and health organisations is enormous. In the US, doctors and hospitals have to purchase vaccinations up front. They then have to store them and administer them. If the vaccines go unused, they lose money. Vaccine costs go up exponentially and this is actually a reason many private practice physicians have closed their practices. The cost for them to keep their patients healthy is unrealistic." "They are insidious as they plant false ideas into the minds of worried parents. The irony is that they all survived because they were vaccinated and did not succumb to common childhood illnesses that cause death or permanent disability. They shouldn't be given a platform in the interest of balance. It's a bit like climate change. We have to move away from framing every scientific discussion as though it were a political issue with two equal sides." Asked what the public needs to take away from immunisation week, Larson adds: Vaccines are one of the best health inventions in history, and have saved millions of lives. They are not perfect, and they will never be perfect. But, as with all science and health interventions, you need to keep aspiring to improve what you have to make it better. And in the meantime use the best tools we have to prevent disease and save lives." 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 risks becoming a desert for healthcare innovation unless the NHS receives billions of extra funding each year, a leading trade body has warned. Some of the biggest drug companies in the world could leave the UK because the financial squeeze on the NHS means it is falling out of the top tier of world health systems, said the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). In its election manifesto, the ABPI called on the new Government to protect patients and companies by cementing the UKs position as a leading global hub for the life science and pharmaceutical industry a sector currently worth 30bn. The UK currently spends a total of 9.9 per cent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, which places it sixth of the G7 nations, only ahead of Italy. Lisa Anson, the associations new president, told The Times drug companies would delay launching medicines in Britain if there is not enough funding to approve them. She also said that companies would not be able to conduct clinical trials because they would not be able to assess potential new drugs against existing treatments if UK patients were not getting them in the first place. By rationing healthcare spending, Britain is jeopardising its research environment and access to new medicines by eroding the competitiveness of a key sector for a short-term affordability issue, Ms Anson, who is also AstraZenecas UK president, told the newspaper. Drug companies are happy to discuss possible tax increase to cover the cost of more NHS spending, she added. The Government would need to spend 20bn more a year to reach the G7 average of 11.3 per cent of GDP spent on healthcare. Philip Hammond claims the Tories are 'the party of the NHS' during Budget 2017 The ABPIs manifesto says it is essential to prioritise ensuring the UK is in the top quartile of OECD countries for patient access to new cost effective medicines and vaccines by 2022. It also and demands the UK secures a relationship with the remaining member states of the EU that ensures patient access to medicines and protects public health. Britains life sciences sector consists of over 5,500 companies directly employing around 140,000 people. Recommended May and Corbyn square off over NHS and national security in last clash Citing research done by professional services firm PwC, the ABPI says that each employees contributes an estimated 104,000 to the economy, which is more than twice the countrys average. As we leave the EU, the new Government's agenda will need to set out the UK's stall in the global marketplace, said Mike Thomspon, chief executive of the ABPI. Alongside targeted investments in our science base and making the right choices in Brexit negotiations, we can cement the UK's position as a leading global hub for our industry. In February, medical research organisations warned that more than 600,000 patients a year could be denied access to potentially life-saving clinical trials after Brexit. New regulations are set to make it significantly easier for drug companies to test pioneering new treatments in EU countries sparking concerns the UK will be bypassed altogether when it leaves the bloc. 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 }} United Airlines will offer up to $10,000 (7,760) to passengers who give up their seats on an overbooked flights. The new approach comes as the airline tries to repair the damage caused by a public relations disaster after a passenger was forcibly removed from one of its planes by security officers earlier this month. Dr David Dao, 69, lost two front teeth and suffered a broken nose during the incident, footage of which was shared widely on social media. According to Dr Daos lawyer, he will need to have reconstructive surgery after the incident which he described as worse than his experiences when fleeing Vietnam. Dr Daos daughter, Crystal Dao Pepper, told a news conference in Chicago that the family had been sickened by what happened. United had previously offered $800 for passengers who give up their seats but has now increased the maximum more than ten-fold. The move comes after rival airline Delta hiked its maximum offer for such cases to $9,950. Man brutally dragged off United Airlines flight: "I want to go home" The airline said it would also reduce the incidence of overbooking, which is common on US internal flights, by ensuring that any crew members that needed to travel would be allocated seats at least an hour before departure. United also announced several other measures in response to the incident: No more use of law enforcement to deny passengers boarding or remove passengers from flights; Passengers who are already seated will no longer be required to give up their seats; A no questions asked policy on permanently lost baggage, which will pay out up to $1,500; and Annual training for staff to handle the most difficult situations. Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty Oscar Munoz, chief executive officer of United Airlines, said: Our policies got in the way of our values and procedures interfered in doing whats right. This is a turning point for all of us at United and it signals a culture shift toward becoming a better, more customer-focused airline. Our customers should be at the centre of everything we do and these changes are just the beginning of how we will earn back their trust. The chief executive was previously accused of further inflaming the situation after Dr Daos removal, by referring to the passenger as disruptive and belligerent. 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 two-year-old child in rural Liberia has a fever. It could be malaria, and the only way to get treatment is for her mother to carry her on her back, cross a riverbed by canoe and walk through a forest for at least two days to get to the nearest healthcare clinic. This was the type of devastating circumstance Dr Raj Panjabi encountered when he returned to his childhood home of Liberia as a medical student almost 15 years ago. In the country that his family fled when he was just a boy to escape a civil war, Panjabi saw that people were dying from diseases that modern medicine can treat. But in a country of 4 million, there were only 50 doctors, and in the most remote areas of the country access to them was almost nonexistent. Since then Panjabi, a doctor at Harvard Medical School, has built a nonprofit, The Last Mile Health, that trains community health workers in Liberia to administer simple health care procedures in places where treatment is hard to come by. Now, with the help of a $1 million prize awarded to him at the international TED conference Tuesday evening, Panjabi plans to fulfil his dream of training healthcare workers in rural communities all over the world. This isn't just a story in Liberia, it's the story in rural south Dakota, in Appalachia, it's the story of folks in rural Alaska, and it's the story of various rural people throughout the world, Panjabi told reporters. So, if there are a billion people on the planet who live in these remote communities, how do we solve that issue? The idea is that help for these communities might not come from places we expect. It may not come from the outside - it may actually come from within. Panjabi's windfall could not come at a more crucial time for global health as the Trump White House considers major cuts in foreign aid that fund many life-saving resources in developing countries. Panjabi wants to use the money to create the Community Health Academy, which would be a global entity that trains and equips lay healthcare workers with real life-saving skills, whether that's giving vaccines or testing for malaria or treating pneumonia. In a single backpack, the worker has the tools and medicines to employ 30 different life-saving services, Panjabi said. Through Panjabi's model in Liberia the workers are not volunteers, they are paid for their work, which gives them a sense of agency, he said. During the Ebola crisis a few years ago, his organisation trained 1,300 community health workers to hunt down this virus and stop it in its tracks. That experience taught him that we as people are not defined by the conditions we face no matter how hopeless they seem, we're defined by how we respond to them, he said in his own TED talk after accepting the award. I've seen the power of this idea to transform ordinary citizens into community health workers, into every day heroes. Before the TED Prize, Panjabi's work had already received wide praise, even earning him a place in TIME's list of the 100 most influential people in the world with a tribute in the magazine written by former President Bill Clinton. To spend time with Raj Panjabi is to see up close what happens when someone with uncommon courage and compassion puts himself on the front lines of the world's most complex challenges, Clinton wrote. Now Panjabi wants to create a global system, including in rural North America, where those workers are treated as renowned professionals in the medical field. To earn that level of credibility, Panjabi plans to leverage technology to get the workers access to high-quality digital education that can be accessed from their smartphones. The health workers can't take the place of doctors or nurses. They can't perform surgery or fix a broken limb; they are more like first responders. They can administer some basic care, will know when to get a person more serious medical help and then is in the community for follow-up care. But most of all, they can save lives - 30 million by 2030 is his goal. My dream is that this academy will contribute to the training of hundreds of thousands of community members to help bring health care to their neighbours... from the forest communities of West Africa to the fishing communities of rural Alaska, from the hilltops of Appalachia to the mountains of Afghanistan, Panjabi said. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty He ended his talk with this story: He was visiting in West Africa and was seeing a pregnant woman in a rural area that had never had healthcare services before several of her neighbours became trained community health workers. The woman had never received any prenatal care with her previous children. Panjabi pulled out his ultrasound to check on her baby and she stopped mid-conversation to ask, Doc, what's that sound? It was the first time she'd ever heard a baby's heartbeat. Copyright 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 }} Its a warm summer afternoon in the Tanzanian village of Lupiro, and Mikkel Brydegaard is crouching in a brick hut, trying to fix a broken laser. Next to him, on a tall tripod, three telescopes point through a window at a tree in the distance. A laptop rests on an upturned box, waiting to receive a signal. With a working laser, this system is known as lidar like radar, Brydegaard tells me, but using a laser instead of radio waves. The setup is supposed to gather precise data about the movement of malaria mosquitoes. But as the sun starts to set outside, Brydegaard is getting nervous. He and his colleagues have spent a week in Tanzania, and their device still hasnt started collecting data. Theyre almost out of time. Tomorrow, a solar eclipse will blot out the sun over Tanzania an event that occurs only once every few decades here, and that Brydegaard and his team from Lund University in Sweden have travelled thousands of miles to see. Their immediate aim is to see if the eclipse affects the behaviour of disease-carrying insects. Their larger mission, however, is to demonstrate that lasers can revolutionise how insects are studied. Lidar involves shooting a laser beam between two points in this case, between the hut and the tree. When insects fly through the beam, theyll scatter and reflect light back to the telescopes, generating data from which the scientists hope to identify different species. At a time when pests destroy enough food to sustain entire countries and when insect-borne diseases kill hundreds of thousands of people every year this arrangement of beams and lenses could, just maybe, improve millions of lives. But without a working laser, the trip to Tanzania will count for nothing. Already, the team have come close to giving up. A few days ago, their two high-powered lasers failed to work. My first thought was, OK pack everything, we head back, Brydegaard tells me. Theres nowhere in Tanzania we can find a spare part. He thought bitterly about the tens of thousands of dollars they had spent on equipment and travel. But then he walked into town with Samuel Jansson, his graduate student, and over bottles of beer they scrolled through the contacts on their phones. Perhaps, they started to think, it was possible to salvage the trip after all. * Lasers may be a cutting-edge tool for identifying insects, but at the heart of the lidar method is an elegant and centuries-old principle of entomology. Almost every species of flying insect, from moth to midge to mosquito, has a unique wingbeat frequency. A female Culex stigmatosoma mosquito, for instance, might beat its wings at a frequency of 350 hertz, while a male Culex tarsalis might at 550 hertz. Because of these differences, an insects wingbeat is like a fingerprint. And in recent years, the study of wingbeat has undergone a renaissance, especially in the field of human health. Long before lasers or computers, wingbeat was thought of in auditory even musical terms. A careful listener could match the buzz of a fly to a key on the piano. That is exactly what Robert Hooke, a natural philosopher, did in the 17th century: He is able to tell how many strokes a fly makes with her wings (those flies that hum in their flying) by the note that it answers to in musique during their flying, wrote Samuel Pepys, a British civil servant and friend of Hookes. But the fact that Hooke relied on his ears must have made his findings difficult to communicate. Knowledge was traditionally shared through scientific papers, letters and specimen drawings, and so entomologists tended to rely on vision rather than hearing. The field has had a very, very narrow focus for a long time, says Laura Harrington, an entomologist and epidemiologist based at Cornell University, New York State. ( Matthew the Horse) In the 20th century, however, researchers began to break the mould. The main wingbeat detection method was visual: the chronophotographic method, which involved taking photographs in rapid succession. This had its limitations, and a few keen-eared researchers felt there was an advantage to Robert Hookes auditory approach especially Olavi Sotavalta, an entomologist from Finland who had the rare gift of absolute pitch. Just as a composer with absolute pitch might transcribe a musical passage by ear, Sotavalta could identify the precise tone of a mosquitos wings without the aid of a piano. The acoustic method makes it possible to observe insects in free flight, Sotavalta wrote in a 1952 paper in Nature. In other words, because he had absolute pitch, Sotavalta was able to make wingbeat observations not only with cameras in the laboratory, but also in nature, with his ears. Scientists are informed and constrained by the senses they choose to use. Sotavaltas peculiar approach to research suggests that certain scientific insights emerge when separate disciplines collide: he used his canny ear not only to identify species during his research, but also for music. He had a beautiful singing voice, says Petter Portin, an emeritus professor of genetics who was once a student of Sotavaltas. Portin remembers him as a tall, slender man who always wore a blue laboratory coat. Sotavaltas papers in the National Library of Finland are a curious combination of letters, monographs on insect behaviour, and stacks of sheet music. Some of his compositions are named after birds and insects. One of the strangest of Sotavaltas papers, published in the Annals of the Finnish Zoological Society, documents in astonishing detail the songs of two particular nightingales. Sotavalta heard them during successive summers while staying at his summer house in Lempaala. The paper itself seems dry, until it becomes clear that hes trying to apply music theory to birdsong. The song of the two Sprosser nightingales (Luscinia luscinia L.) occurring in two successive years was recorded acoustically and presented with conventional stave notation, he wrote. Following on from this are nearly 30 pages of notes, graphs and analysis of the rhythm and tonality of the birds. After highlighting the similarity between the two songs, he declares: Because of the short distance between the places where they were singing, it was concluded that they were perhaps father and son. It is as though his work is a search for some kind of pattern, some musical idea, shared by members of the same species. However, his paper in Nature was rather more consequential. There, Sotavalta describes the uses of his acoustic method of identifying insects using his absolute pitch, and theorises about the subtleties of insect wingbeat: how much energy it consumes, and how it varies according to air pressure and body size. Even so, only decades later did scientists such as Brydegaard reaffirm the relevance of wingbeat in the study of insects for example, malaria-carrying mosquitoes. * In Tanzania, Brydegaard, Jansson and engineer Flemming Rasmussen do not have absolute pitch and, even if they did, it wouldnt help much. There are millions of insects in and around the village, and they drone on in a symphony that never ends. What these scientists have, in place of a keen ear, is a high-tech gadget and two broken lasers. And their phones. When the lasers failed, it took a few false starts to find a solution. A researcher in Cote dIvoire had a working laser, but he was away in the USA. Brydegaard considered sending for a replacement by mail, but knew that thanks to customs and the day-long drive from the airport in Dar es Salaam it probably wouldnt arrive in time for the eclipse. Finally, they sent a text message to Frederik Taarnhj, CEO of FaunaPhotonics, their commercial partner, and asked if he would consider sending a scientist from Sweden with some spare lasers. Taarnhj said yes. So the trio made a few frantic calls and ultimately convinced another graduate student, Elin Malmqvist, to board a plane the very next day. When she did, she was carrying three small metal boxes in her suitcase. The saga was not over yet, however. Even after the huge expense of the last-minute flight, the first replacement failed: Brydegaard, in his hurry, confused the anode with the cathode, which short-circuited the laser diode. The second laser yielded a beam, but, inexplicably, it was so faint as to be unusable. ( Matthew the Horse) Its the last laser that Brydegaard now unpacks, hoping that at least this one will work as expected. By the time he screws it onto the tripod, it is almost sunset, and his agitation is palpable. Within the hour, it will be too dark to calibrate even a working laser. Everything rides on this piece of equipment. * Laura Harringtons laboratory at Cornell looks a little like a restaurant kitchen. What resembles the door to a walk-in freezer actually leads to an incubation room. Its humid and lit by fluorescent lights. The shelves are covered in carefully labelled boxes. Harrington shows me mosquito eggs inside the kinds of disposable containers youd carry soup in. Over the top of the containers, to prevent mosquitoes from escaping, theres some kind of net bridal veil, she tells me. The method is not quite foolproof. A few mosquitoes have escaped, and they buzz around our ears and ankles while we chat. When we talk about Sotavaltas approach, Harrington says that he was definitely ahead of his time. Even in recent years, researchers who thought to listen to mosquitoes didnt realise how many insects are capable of listening, too. For a long time, scientists thought that female mosquitoes were deaf that they didnt pay attention to sound at all, Harrington says. But in 2009, Harrington put that long-standing assumption to the test. In an unusual and intricate experiment, she and her colleagues tethered a female Aedes aegypti mosquito to a hair, installed a microphone nearby, and placed both inside an upside-down fish tank. Then they released male mosquitoes inside the tank and recorded the results. The teams findings astonished Harrington, and led to a breakthrough in the study of sound and entomology. Aedes aegypti conducted a sort of mid-air mating dance that had everything to do with sound. Not only did female mosquitoes respond to the sounds of males, they also seemed to communicate with sounds of their own. We discovered that males and females actually sing to each other, Harrington says. They harmonise just prior to mating. This mating song isnt produced by vocal cords. It is produced by flapping wings. During normal flight, male and female mosquitoes have slightly different wingbeats. But Harrington found that during the mating process, males aligned their wingbeat frequency with that of females. We think the female is testing the male, Harrington explains. How quickly he can converge harmonically. If so, mosquito songs may function like auditory peacock features. They seem to help females identify the fittest mates. With these results in mind, and with a recent grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Harringtons lab has begun development of a novel mosquito trap for field research. Similar projects have been undertaken by teams at James Cook University in Australia and Columbia University in New York City, among others. For a researcher, there are drawbacks to the mosquito traps that currently exist. Chemical traps have to be refilled, while electric traps tend to kill mosquitoes; Harrington wants her new trap to harness the power of sound to capture living specimens for monitoring and study. It would combine established methods for attracting mosquitoes, like chemicals and blood, with recorded mosquito sounds to mimic the mating song. Importantly, it could be used to capture mosquitoes of either sex. Historically, scientists have focused on catching female mosquitoes, which twice each day go hunting for mammals to bite and which may carry the malaria parasite (males do not). But scientists have recently started to consider male mosquitoes an important part of malaria control too. For instance, one current proposal for curbing the disease involves releasing genetically modified males that produce infertile offspring, to reduce the population of disease-carrying mosquitoes in a given area. Harringtons hope is that an acoustic trap using the mating song that attracts males would help make new strategies such as this possible. What were trying to do is really think outside the box, and identify new and novel ways to control these mosquitoes, she says. * With the last laser finally in place, Brydegaard flips a switch. Suddenly, on the laptop screen next to the tripod, a small white dot appears. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief: the laser works. The team made up of Brydegaard, Jansson, Malmqvist and Rasmussen spend the last 15 minutes of daylight bringing the beam into focus. Other than a few local children, who shout mzungu Swahili for light-skinned foreigner no one seems especially bothered by the Europeans tinkering with telescopes. Sunset throws a beautiful, soft light across the marshy landscape around Lupiro, but it also marks the start of malaria transmission. As darkness starts to fall on the hut where the lidar system is set up, villagers walk in from the fields; pillars of smoke rise from cooking fires. Locals here rely on rice for their livelihood: the staple is served with two meals a day, and along the dusty main road, rice chaff piles up like leaves in autumn. But rice fields require standing water, and standing water fosters malaria mosquitoes. Insects have already begun to buzz around our legs. Now that evening has settled around us, the lidar system has finally begun to record a torrent of data. The team sit around the hut in the dark; a gasoline generator hums outside, powering the laser and computer. On the laptop screen, a jagged red line shows peaks and valleys. Each one, Brydegaard tells me, represents an echo from the beam. Around dusk, dozens or hundreds of insects may cross the beam each minute. We are watching the period that entomologists refer to as rush hour the wave of activity that begins when female mosquitoes swarm into the village and start their search for food. Nicodemus Govella, a medical entomologist at Tanzanias prestigious Ifakara Health Institute a local partner of FaunaPhotonics has seen the evening mosquito rush hundreds, even thousands of times. He knows how it feels to shiver and vomit as the malaria parasite takes hold; he has experienced the symptoms time and again. During my childhood, I cant count how many times, he tells me. If Tanzanian epidemiologists are waging a war on malaria, the Ifakara Health Institute works like a ministry of intelligence it tracks the density, distribution and timing of bites by malaria mosquitoes. Traditionally, Govella says, the gold standard of mosquito surveillance was a method called human-landing catch. Its low-tech but reliable: a volunteer is given medication to prevent malaria transmission and then sits outside with legs bare, letting mosquitoes land and bite. ( Matthew the Horse) The problem is that protection against malaria is no longer enough. Too many other diseases, from dengue fever to Zika, are also spread by mosquitoes. As a result, human-landing catch is now widely considered unethical. It gives you information, but it is very risky, Govella says. Other countries have already banned it. As health officials retire old strategies for malaria surveillance and control, the work on experimental techniques takes on new urgency which is where the lasers will come in. In parts of Tanzania, thanks in part to bednets and pesticides, malaria has gone down tremendously, Govella tells me. But eradication of the disease has proved elusive. Some mosquitoes have developed resistance to pesticides. Likewise, bednets helped bring night-time transmission under control but mosquitoes have adapted their behaviour, starting to bite at dusk and dawn, when people arent protected. In 2008, Govellas daughter contracted malaria. Thinking back, Govellas manner changes; his precise medical language gives way to a quiet passion. I dont even want to remember, he says. When I get to that memory, it really brings a lot of pain to me. In its early stages, malaria may look like a common cold which is why its so important that scientists have the tools to track the spread of the parasite and the mosquitoes that carry it: to avoid misdiagnosis. In his daughters case, the lack of information proved tragic. Because it was not detected soon, it proceeded up to the level of convulsions, Govella says. His daughter ultimately died from complications of malaria. Almost every day since then, he has thought about eradication. I hate this disease, Govella says. * The persistence of malaria has frustrated generations of scientists. More than a century after the discovery of the parasite, it still afflicts hundreds of millions of people each year, of whom half a million die. Harrington has her own memories of the havoc wreaked by the disease: in 1998, she travelled to Thailand for a series of experiments and contracted malaria herself. I was the only foreigner for miles and miles around, she says. As the fever set in, Harrington started to understand the real burden of the disease she studied. I could imagine myself as a Thai villager with those illnesses, she tells me. She was far from the nearest hospital and felt alone. I felt like, if I died, maybe people wouldnt find out. Eventually, someone found her and put her in the back of a pickup truck. She remembers sinking into delirium, staring up at a fan that spun endlessly on the ceiling. I saw a nurse with a syringe full of purple liquid, she recalls. It reminded her of when she worked, years before, in a veterinary clinic that used purple injections to euthanise sick animals. I thought that was the end. Finally, the fever broke, and Harrington knew that she was going to survive. I felt incredibly grateful for my life, she says. The experience made her even more committed to her research. I felt that I had the ability to try and dedicate my career to something that could eventually help other people. Malaria provides a vivid example of how insects threaten human health but there are many other ways that they can cause harm. Insects also spread other microbial diseases. Then theres the effect they have on agriculture. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, insect pests destroy one-fifth of global crop yields. In other words, if the worlds farmers had better ways to control species like locusts and beetles, they could feed millions more people. Pesticides reduce the damage that insects cause, but when used indiscriminately, they can also harm people or kill the insects that we rely on. We remain deeply dependent on pollinators like bees, moths and butterflies, but a 2016 report showed that 40 per cent of invertebrate pollinator species are under threat of extinction. Its because of this lovehate relationship with insects that we urgently need better ways of tracking different species better ways to differentiate between the bugs that help us and the bugs that hurt us. * On the day of the eclipse, at just before noon, in the blue skies above Lupiro the black disc of the moon passes in front of the sun. A group of children have gathered round; they hold in their hands small plates of welding glass that the Scandinavian scientists brought with them. By peering through the green-tinted glass, the children can see the narrowing crescent of the sun. The village around us has gone dim; our shadows have grown less distinct. Judging by the light, it feels as if a sudden storm has set in, or someone has turned a dimmer that has made the sun go faint. The scientists from Sweden, along with their partners at the Ifakara Health Institute and FaunaPhotonics, want to know if in the dim light of an eclipse insects become more active, just as they do at dusk. On the screen, we watch the red peaks, which have picked up again not as many as we saw at sunset and sunrise, but more than usual. Theres a simple reason this data matters: if the mosquitoes are more active during an eclipse, that suggests that they use light as a cue, knowing when to swarm each morning and evening by the dimness of the rising and setting sun. As the data pours in, the scientists talk me through what were looking at. Lidar was originally developed to study much larger-scale phenomena, like changes in atmospheric chemistry. This system has been simplified to a bare minimum. Each of the three telescopes on the tripod has a separate function. The first directs the outgoing laser at a tree about half a kilometre away. Nailed to the tree trunk is a black board, where the beam terminates. (To clear a path for the laser, Jansson, the PhD student, had to cut a path through the underbrush with a machete.) When insects fly through the laser beam, reflections bounce back at the device from their beating wings, and theyre picked up by the second telescope. The third telescope allows the team to aim and calibrate the system; the whole apparatus is connected to a laptop computer that aggregates the data. The red peaks dancing across the screen represent insects crossing the laser beam. To record the reflections, which Brydegaard calls the atmospheric echo, the lidar system captures 4,000 snapshots per second. Later, the team will use an algorithm to comb through the snapshots for wingbeat frequency the fingerprint of each species. This device, in other words, achieves with optics what Olavi Sotavalta achieved with his ears, and what Harrington has achieved with the help of a microphone. But there are some details in the lidar data that the human ear could never discern. For example, an insects wingbeat frequency is accompanied by higher-pitched harmonics. (Harmonics are what lend richness to the sound of a violin; theyre responsible for the resonant ring produced by a muted guitar string.) The lidar system can capture harmonic frequencies that are too high for the human ear to hear. In addition, laser beams are polarised, and when they reflect off different surfaces, their polarisation changes. The amount of change can tell Brydegaard and his colleagues whether an insects wing is glossy or matte, which is also useful when trying to distinguish different species. As the dark disc of the sun starts to brighten again, the scientists snap pictures and try, without much success, to explain how the lasers work to local children. Now that the data is flowing, the tension that accompanied the set-up of the lidar system has simply melted away. It finally seems clear that the high price tag of the experiment wont be in vain. The team spent about $12,000 on the lidar system, not including the equally hefty costs of transport and labour. That sounds like a lot, standing in an African village, Brydegaard admits. On the other hand, older forms of lidar, used to study the atmosphere, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The burden of malaria, meanwhile, would be calculated in the billions of dollars if it could be calculated at all. Within a couple of hours, the bright round circle of the sun is again burning brightly. A couple of hours after that, it has started to set. We re-apply bug spray to ward off the mosquitoes that, once again, will come flying in from the marshy fields around Lupiro. Then we walk into town for dinner, which, as usual, includes rice. * Three months after the experiment, I called FaunaPhotonics to learn how their analysis was progressing. After so many lasers had failed, I wanted to know whether the final one had given them the results they needed. The data was messy, they said. Around cooking time, theres lots of smoke and dust in the air, said Jord Prangsma, an engineer responsible for analysing the data that the team brought back. He added that the data did seem to show distinct wingbeats. But its one thing to spot those beats on a graph. To tell a computer, Please find me the correct frequency, is another thing, he said. Unlike Sotavalta, who had studied individuals, the team in Tanzania had gathered data from many thousands of insects. They were trying to analyse all of those beating wings at once. But the obstacles were not insurmountable. We see a higher activity just around noon, said Samuel Jansson, speaking about the data from the eclipse. This suggests that mosquitoes were, indeed, using light as a cue to begin searching for food during rush hour. Prangsma added that an algorithm he had developed was starting to separate out the crucial data. From a scientific point of view, this is a very rich dataset, he said. Over the months that followed, FaunaPhotonics continued to make progress. Despite initial laser problems, Brydegaard wrote in a recent email, the systems performed to the satisfaction of all our expectations. Each day that the system was in operation, he said, they had recorded a staggering 100,000 insect observations. Indications are that we can discriminate several species and gender classes of insects, Brydegaard went on. Along with his Lund University colleagues, Brydegaard will publish the results; FaunaPhotonics, as his commercial partner, will offer their lidar device, along with their analytic expertise, to companies and research organisations looking to track insects in the field. If we have a customer thats interested in a certain species, then well tailor the algorithm a bit to target the species, Prangsma explained. Each dataset is unique, and has to be tackled in its own way. Recently, FaunaPhotonics began a three-year collaboration with Bayer to continue developing its technology. The study of wingbeat has come an incredibly long way since Olavi Sotavalta used his absolute pitch to identify insects and yet in some ways, the Scandinavian scientists work differs very little from the Finnish entomologists. Just like Sotavalta, they are bringing separate disciplines together in this case physics and biology, lidar and entomology to uncover patterns in nature. But they have plenty of work left to do. FaunaPhotonics and its partners will start, in a forthcoming paper, by trying to connect the dots between light, lasers and mosquitoes. Then theyll try to demonstrate that the study of wingbeat frequency could help humans control diseases other than malaria, as well as insects that destroy crops. This is a journey that is not a few months, said Rasmussen, the engineer. This is a journey that will go for years ahead. This article was first published by Wellcome on Mosaic and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence 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 Cassini spacecraft has made a journey never undertaken before and has sent back stunning photos of the journey. Nasa's craft made its way through the rings of Saturn for the first ever time. The dangerous journey the first of 22 trips saw the ship lose all contact with its engineers because it had to use its own antenna as a shield. But it is now back in touch with Earth and sending images through space. That journey takes 78 minutes and actually interpreting the data will take years or even decades. Cassini's mission to Saturn Show all 9 1 /9 Cassini's mission to Saturn Cassini's mission to Saturn In this handout image released on April 30, 2013 by NASA, the spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm is seen from NASA's Cassini spacecraft on November 27, 2012 in the Saturnian system of space. The false-color image of the storm resembles a red rose surrounded by green foliage which was made by using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light at a distance of approximately 261,000 miles from Saturn NASA via Getty Images Cassini's mission to Saturn The planet Saturn is seen in the first color composite made of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its approach to the ringed planet, October 21, 2002. The probe's arrival is still 20 months away. The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) away from the spacecraft, nearly twice the distance between the Sun and Earth, when Cassini took images of it using various filters NASA/Getty Images Cassini's mission to Saturn Nasa's Cassini spacecraft is shown diving through the plume of Saturn's moon Enceladus in 2015 Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Reuters Cassini's mission to Saturn NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this view of planet Earth as a point of light between the icy rings of Saturn NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Cassini's mission to Saturn The giant plumes of ice on Enceladus seen by the Cassini spacecraft in 2009 Nasa Cassini's mission to Saturn The image of Titan is actually a composite of a number of pictures taken by Cassini during the flyby Cassini's mission to Saturn REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton/Handout Cassini's mission to Saturn REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Handout Cassini's mission to Saturn REUTERS/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR/Handout Nasa is releasing some of those initial images as raw pictures, available to the public. The first of them show sights never before seen our closest images of the Saturn's atmosphere and a huge hurricane swooping across its surface. All of the raw images can be seen as they come in, on Nasa's special photo feed. "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Mission directors were confident that the probe would make it through Saturn's rings safely. But since the area hasn't been explored before, they couldn't say for sure and so took special precautions, including the changes that took the ship offline. Nasa release stunning video detailing Cassini spacecraft's final journey "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape." 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 incredibly brave people who make the first journey to Mar will need somewhere to live. And an engineer has discovered a way to make bricks from the planets red soil without a kiln or any other ingredients. Instead, the bricks could be made be simply pounding the soil with a hammer, according to tests carried out in California. In March, Donald Trump signed an order directing Nasa to send astronauts to Mars in 2033, confirming plans drawn up under Barack Obama in 2010. However Mr Trump then decided he wanted the mission to take place before the end of his four-year term of office, although it was unclear if he was joking. Nasa has already begun work on how to overcome the considerable obstacles to making the perilous journey. Yu Qiao, a professor of structural engineering at University of California San Diego, said: The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave. They will be pioneers. And I would be honoured to be their brick maker. Funded by Nasa, Professor Qiao and a team of engineers were tasked with coming up with a way to make buildings on Mars. Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Show all 7 1 /7 Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures The MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars EPA Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Nasa finds flowing water on Mars - in pictures Their research led to a way to make buildings with only minimal resources a key issue given the limit to the amount of materials and equipment the colonists will be able to take. One previous suggestion was to build a nuclear-powered brick kiln. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the engineers described how they discovered a simulated version of Martian soil could be turned into a useable brick. Donald Trump to Nasa astronauts: Get to Mars during my first term Their technique involves encasing the soil in a rubber tube, then exerting pressure equivalent to someone dropping a 5kg hammer from about a metre. It is believed iron oxide in the soil which gives Mars its red colour acts as a binding agent. The resulting bricks, which are only about 2.5cm high, were found to be stronger than steel-reinforced concrete. It is thought the colonist could lay down a layer of soil, compact it, then add another layer. The engineers may also look into increasing the size of the bricks. Before sending astronauts to Mars, Nasa plans to send a team to an asteroid with an extraordinary mission expected to take place by 2025. Nasa will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon, its website says. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help Nasa test new systems and capabilities, such as solar electric propulsion, which well need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars. Beginning in 2018, Nasas powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will enable these proving ground missions to test new capabilities. Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown. The idea is to send people to Mars and then bring them back to Earth. Engineers and scientists around the country are working hard to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars, and safely return home from the next giant leap for humanity, Nasa 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 }} A teenage Isis supporter has admitted plotting a terror attack potentially targeting an Elton John concert on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Haroon Syed, from Hounslow, pleaded guilty to the preparation of terrorist acts between April and September at the Old Bailey after a last-ditch attempt to get his case thrown out failed. The court heard how Syed attempted to buy weapons online, including a machine gun, handguns, a suicide vest and a bomb, and trawled the web to find crowded targets in London for the massacre. British intelligence agents posing as fellow extremists discussed sourcing weapons, with the 19-year-old, who asked for gear for his opp in online chats. Judge Michael Topolski QC warned Syed that he faced a life sentence on Thursday, when he adjourned sentencing until 8 June for a probation and psychiatric report to be carried out. Syed, whose older brother was jailed separately for plotting an Isis-inspired attack on Remembrance Day, was caught after making contact with a spy going under the name Abu Yusuf on his phone and social media. When asked for details of his attack, he said he needed a machine gun and an explosive vest so after some damage with machine gun do martyrdom...thats what Im planning to do. Two reviews into Parliament security announced following Westminster attack The pattern has been seen in numerous Isis-linked attacks, including in Paris in November 2015, when militants massacred members of the public with machine guns before detonating their suicide vests. When Abu Yusuf said it would be costly, the defendant told him he was broke but pressed on, saying: You have to find out the price for the machine gun, any gun. Syed backed out of the pairs first planned meeting, because he knew he was being followed by police, but they later met at a Costa Coffee in Slough. Discussions over making or getting hold of a bomb and acquiring a gun continued throughout August, although Syed admitted he had never used a firearm before. On 30 August, he told the informant that he needed a portable device, adding: I might put the bomb in the train and then Im going to jump out so the bomb explodes on the trainso ask the brother if he can make that type of bomb with button. He made arrangements to pay 150 for the device the following week, asking Abu Yusuf to ensure it was packed with nails and adding: I was thinking of Oxford Street...if I go to prison, I go to prison. If I die, I die, you understand. The teenager had searched the internet for Isis, previous terror attacks and potential targets including an Elton John concert in Hyde Park that was held on 11 September. Police arrested Syed three days before at his home in Hounslow, West London. Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images When they asked for a password to lock his phone, the court heard he replied: Yeah I.S.I.S you like that? Commander Dean Haydon, from the Counter Terrorism Command, said information from members of the public triggered an investigation by Scotland Yard and MI5. It was information we received in respect of Syeds change of behaviour that meant we looked at him and our close working relationship with MI5 ensured that we uncovered his plot to kill and mutilate innocent members of the public, he added. In legal papers prepared for his defence, Syed was described as highly vulnerable due to family history, lack of education, addiction to violent online games and the arrest and imprisonment of his brother. A defence statement claimed that although he was groomed by extremists online, he never planned to go ahead with the attack and the recorded conversations were a fantasy to see how far it would go. Isis recruiters are known to target vulnerable young men with online material, and have specialised in radicalising those linked to violent crime or gangs. The communications have been linked to a series of lone wolf attacks committed around the world, with analysts warning that Isis is remote controlling massacres from its strongholds. Syeds lawyers attempted to get the case dismissed or exclude key evidence from online chats, but the motion failed and he entered the guilty plea. His representative, Mark Summers QC, argued that the Government should have intervened earlier and offered the teenager help through the Prevent deradicalisation programme. The proper response of the state should have been to engage Prevent to help this young man, to steer him away from the path it was feared he was going down, rather than guiding him down it, he told the court. Syeds brother, 23-year-old Nadir Syed, was jailed for life in June after he was found guilty of plotting to carry out a Lee Rigby-style beheading around Remembrance Sunday in 2014. Additional reporting by PA 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 }} CCTV footage has captured the moment a teenager allegedly left a rucksack packed with explosives and shrapnel on a busy tube train. Damon Smith is accused of having left a homemade bomb on a Jubilee line train with a detonator clock timed to go off 13 minutes later. A jury at the Old Bailey was shown footage on Thursday of Mr Smith, who was 19 at the time, getting off the train at London Bridge on 20 October 2016. After planting the device, the teen allegedly changed his clothes and went to a university lecture. The device malfunctioned when a 2 Tesco clock failed to detonate it, but had it worked it would have exploded while passengers were being evacuated at North Greenwich, jurors were told. It was later destroyed by police in a controlled explosion. The station remained closed for several hours. Mr Smith, who has Asperger's syndrome, had previously printed off an al-Qaeda article entitled 'Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom' and made notes in green ink before shredding the sheets of paper, the court heard. Counsel for the prosecution said he had a keen interest in Islam, guns, explosives and gambling, and collected pictures of extremists, including the alleged mastermind of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. This particular interest [in guns and weaponry] may have been a function of his autism spectrum disorder, said prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC. North Greenwich tube station evacuated A shopping list for pressure cooker bomb materials was allegedly found on an iPad belonging to the defendant, ending in a note to keep this a secret between me and Allah #InspireTheBelievers. Jurors were told it contained nearly all the components used in the construction of the Tube device, including ball bearings described as shrapnel. After he was arrested, the student admitted to making the device but claimed he only meant it to spew harmless smoke as a prank. Mr Rees told the court how Mr Smith, an only child, grew up in Newton Abbot in Devon and moved to London with his mother in June last year before starting a computer course at London Metropolitan University. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty Juror's heard how on 20 October, he boarded a train from Surrey Quays to Canada Water before getting on the westbound Jubilee Line, then going back on himself at Southwark. At 10.49am, the defendant got off at London Bridge leaving behind his rucksack propped up by the train door, containing the bomb set to explode minutes later at 11.02am, it is alleged. There were at least 10 passengers in the carriage at the time and some of them spotted the bag and reported it when they got to Canary Wharf. The driver took the bag thinking it was lost property and carried on towards North Greenwich, Mr Rees said. But a few minutes later he noticed a wire poking out of a clock and reported the item as suspicious, triggering an evacuation. Meanwhile, Mr Smith went to his university campus in Holloway and searched for articles for the incident when he got home later. Mr Smith, now 20, denies possession of an explosive substance with intent, contrary to the Explosive Substances Act 1883 but has admitted the lesser offence of perpetrating a bomb hoax. 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 soldier who brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend after she twice warned police about his obsessive stalking has been jailed for life. Lance Corporal Trimaan Harry Dhillon, 26, sliced Alice Ruggles throat from ear to ear with a carving knife after breaking into her home in Gateshead, last October. Ms Ruggles, 24, bled to death on the kitchen floor before she was discovered by flatmate Maxine McGill - who called Dhillon an absolute psychopath in a harrowing 999 call. He was convicted of murder and jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years following a trial at Newcastle Crown Court. The killer had denied the charge and claimed Ms Ruggles fell on the blade during an argument. Judge Paul Sloan, QC, told the defendant: "In an act of utter barbarism you repeatedly slashed her throat with a knife at least six times causing catastrophic injuries. "So deeply you sliced her neck, that the blade scored her spine." Jurors heard Ms Ruggles tell police about her killers disturbing behaviour in two phone calls she made just days before the murder. A senior officer has since claimed nobody could have known how dangerous he was. Photo issued by Northumbria Police of Trimaan 'Harry' Dhillon (Northumbria Police) The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for an internal investigation. In the first call, on 1 October 2016, Ms Ruggles told the operator Dhillon had knocked on her door three times in the night. He had driven 120 miles from Edinburgh to Gateshead to harass his ex-girlfriend after their split in August 2016. "I know that he has hacked into my Facebook and also my phone, he has been sending me a lot of messages even though I have asked him not to contact me," said Ms Ruggles. "He stood outside and hes like left some flowers and chocolates on the outside windowsill and he walked off, hes not done anything but Im concerned." Officers served Dhillon with a Police Information Notice after the incident - but he returned to her house again on 7 October 2016 and warned that he knew she had called the police. Ms Ruggles spoke to an officer that evening after she found a note with a picture of the former couple together. "He knows I called the police on him and hes had everything confiscated," she said. "He says at the bottom he wont contact me, you know, this will be the last time I hear from him, but hes said that a lot of times, he never does seem to stop." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Theaker, of Northumbria Police, said officers could not have predicted how dangerous Dhillon was. "Alice didn't fully understand his level of behaviour and the stalking and the lengths of behaviour he was going to," she said. "The family and the friends won't have fully understood it either. "Alice spoke to a number of police officers and she spoke to Victims First and we went through a risk assessment. "And as a result of that we would not have been able to predict at that stage that he would go on to murder Alice." Ms Ruggles, who worked as a Sky UK office coordinator, met Dhillon through Facebook while he was serving in Afghanistan. Jurors heard he became obsessed with her and began to isolate her from her friends. The killer bombarded her with emails and messages after she dumped him over messages to other women in August 2016. Ms Ruggles' mother, Dr Sue Hills, spoke of her devastation and warned about the danger signs of stalking following the case. She said: "I just keep thinking I can't believe we didn't identify the signs of stalking but you just don't know when it's going on. "Unfortunately when Alice reported it to the police she was very reluctant and told them she didn't want to get him into any trouble. He hadn't been violent just very arrogant and controlling. "In fact he told her via texts several times 'I don't want to hurt you'. He texted me saying he wouldn't hurt her but implying that it was my duty to stop her being disrespectful to him. And he sent me messages at 4am. "I would like what happened to Alice to encourage others to seek support if they are worried about someone's behaviour. Clive, Ms Ruggles' father, said: "All of us are trying to cope with losing Alice in different ways. We all miss her very much and it is a case of taking one day at a time. The effects of losing Alice will be with me and with all of us, every day, for our entire lives." 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 is being held for allegedly attempting a terror attack after being arrested near the Houses of Parliament. The Metropolitan Police said the 27-year-old suspect was stopped by armed officers in Parliament Street for a search as part of an ongoing operation. The man, aged in his late twenties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism, a spokesperson added. Recommended Whitehall sealed off as man with knives arrested near Parliament Knives have been recovered from him. He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. Scotland Yard said the investigation had been handed to its Counter Terrorism Command and that there was no immediate known threat to the public. The man, described as "very calm" by a witness, was said to have been carrying a rucksack containing at least three knives when he was detained shortly before 2.30pm on Thursday. Police reportedly followed him before the arrest as he travelled on the London Underground. Dressed in dark clothing, the suspect was wrestled to the ground on a traffic island at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall, close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. He is understood to have been living in south-east London but was born abroad. A man is detained by police officers near Downing Street (Getty Images) Handcuffed, with his arms behind his back, one of his hands appeared to be wrapped up in a bandage as four officers stood next to him. Held near a red telephone box, the suspect had his black hood up as he was led away. Whitehall, which houses several government departments, was temporarily shut off by police after the incident. 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 road was quickly reopened to traffic after witnesses saw the suspect being handcuffed and taken away by armed police. The man was detained yards from Parliament, where a suspected Isis supporter killed five people in a car and knife rampage last month. Khalid Masood was shot dead after killing four people on Westminster Bridge before crashing his car and stabbing PC Keith Palmer dead at the entrance to the House of Commons. Recommended Video of Parliament after man armed with knives arrested in Whitehall Isis claimed responsibility for the attack, following atrocities across Europe in response to its calls for followers to target "disbelievers" in the West. Prime Minister Theresa May was away from Number 10 on a campaign visit at the time of the latest incident, which did not disrupt work in Downing Street, a spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman said: "The Prime Minister has been informed by officials and she will be updated, as usual for incidents like this." Eyewitnesses Harry Peasnell, 27, and Andy Burnage, 22, were leaving the adjacent building which houses Government offices when they were told over the tannoy the usual entrance on to Whitehall was closed. Alis knives and rucksack could be seen on the ground after his arrest ( (Reuters) As they made their way back towards Parliament from the alternative Horse Guards Road entrance they said they were pushed back up Great George Street by several plain clothes police officers. They then made their way to Parliament Square where they said they saw a man who they thought was the suspect being spoken to by police next to the wall of the offices. Mr Peasnell, who says he regularly has meetings in Westminster, said police were "quick on the scene" and that he was not worried like he was during the terror attack in the area just weeks ago. Additional reporting by PA 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 }} Hate crime reports in England and Wales soared in the months leading up to last years EU referendum, new figures have revealed. More than 62,500 incidents were recorded in 2015-16 compared to 52,500 during the previous year a rise of 19 per cent. The statistics, published by police forces in England and Wales, cover crimes motivated by hostility or prejudice on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. They reveal a particularly stark rise in hate crime against disabled people, which rose 44 per cent in the last year. Crimes committed against transgender people were up 41 per cent and incidents motivated by discrimination on the grounds of religion also soared by 34 per cent. Crimes committed against people because of their sexual orientation increased by 29 per cent, while racially-motivated crimes saw a 15 per cent rise. The figures paint a picture of a climate of prejudice and discrimination in the months leading up to the 23 June referendum. A similar trend was previously reported in the weeks immediately following the vote, with some commentators suggesting that divisive rhetoric and xenophobic views espoused during the campaign had fuelled the rise in attacks. Brexit racism and the fightback Show all 9 1 /9 Brexit racism and the fightback Brexit racism and the fightback Demonstrators protest against an increase in post-ref racism at London's March for Europe in July 2016 PA Brexit racism and the fightback These cards were found near a school in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, the day after the EU referendum Twitter/@howgilb Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback Romford, Essex, June 25 @diamondgeezer Brexit racism and the fightback A worker at this Romanian food shop was asleep upstairs at the time of this arson attack in Norwich on July 8, but escaped unharmed. Hundreds later participated in a love bombing rally outside the shop to express their opposition to racism and their support of the shop owners. JustGiving/Helen Linehan Brexit racism and the fightback This neo-Nazi sticker was spotted in Glasgow on June 26 Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback But after news emerged of neo-Nazi stickers appearing in Glasgow, some in the city struck back with slogans of their own. Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback More signs began to appear in some parts of the UK, created by people who wanted to show their opposition to post-referendum racism Courtesy of Bernadette Russell Opposition politicians said the Governments rhetoric on immigration was also partly responsible for the latest rise. Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats Shadow Home Secretary, and former Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: This is a frightening rise in hate crime to over 60,000 offences. This Conservative Brexit Governments agenda and its stance on immigration, making the UK a hostile place for those from overseas, has stoked divisions. Theresa May, by adopting a UKIP-type approach, must bear some of the responsibility for this increase. As we embark on a six-week long campaign, politicians must act responsibly and be careful about the tone we use to convey our messages. I hope every party and every politician considers carefully the damaging consequences that using inappropriate language can have. 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 }} Two deadly drugs behind an epidemic of fatalities in the US are now spreading onto British streets, the UKs National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned. Police believe a spate of deaths in the north of England has been caused by heroin laced with fentanyl, an opioid 100 times stronger than street heroin, and its chemical cousin carfentanil, which is 100 times stronger again and used by vets to tranquilise elephants. And after raiding a backstreet lab suspected of making the substances, they fear carfentanil and fentanyl whose US street names include drop dead and serial killer may now be in drugs around the whole country, not just in Yorkshire, Humberside and Cleveland where the deaths occurred. Public Health England (PHE) has issued a drugs alert, and in a sign of how concerned police and medical authorities are, Tony Saggers, head of drugs threat and intelligence at the NCA, has issued a statement in which he said: We have taken the unusual step of appealing to people to be vigilant. First, because whilst initial toxicology revealed fentanyl analogues in a small number of these deaths, specific retesting has started to indicate that the influence of fentanyl is greater than first suspected. Second, the NCAs operation with West Yorkshire Police to locate and disrupt an illicit drugs laboratory during the last 72 hours has indicated that it may be a source for the production of fentanyl and other analogues. In particular, we now believe UK customers beyond the north-east region are likely to have received consignments of these drugs. I am particularly concerned that drug dealers within established heroin markets may have purchased fentanyl, carfentanil, or similar substances from this facility. They may not know how dangerous it is, both to them when they handle it, and to their customers. Appealing directly to dealers, Mr Saggers added: If you have invested in fentanyl to mix with heroin or other drugs, please stop immediately and reduce the risk that more people will die. The criminal justice implications of supplying fentanyl mixed into other drugs will inevitably be deemed as aggravating and claiming ignorance of the consequences is no defence. America's Heroin Epidemic: The election issue no one is talking about Heroin laced with fentanyl and carfentanil has been responsible for an epidemic of deaths among American drug users. Fentanyl which can be prescribed for severe pain relief has also been linked to the death of the pop star Prince, who reportedly took it by accident after swallowing pills from a bottle incorrectly labelled as containing much weaker painkillers. In the US, some street addicts deliberately use fentanyl and carfentanil for added potency, but many more take them unwittingly because they have been used as a cutting agent in the heroin they buy. The resulting risks of an accidental overdose can be enormous. World's 10 deadliest street drugs Show all 10 1 /10 World's 10 deadliest street drugs World's 10 deadliest street drugs Whoonga Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. The drug is widely available in South Africa due to South Africas high rate of HIV sufferers, and is believed to be popular due to how cheap it is when compared to prescribed antiretrovirals. The drug is highly addictive and can cause major health issues such as internal bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death Getty World's 10 deadliest street drugs Scopolamine Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). It is generally found in a refined powder form, but can also be found as a tea. The drug is more often used by criminals due its high toxicity level (one gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people) making it a strong poison. However, it is also believed that the drug is blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, later causing them to lose all sense of self-control and becoming incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the influence of the drug. This tactic has reportedly been used by gangs in Colombia where there have been reports of people using scopolamine as way to convince victims to rob their own homes World's 10 deadliest street drugs Heroin Founded in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, heroin is one of the worlds oldest drugs. Originally it was prescribed as a strong painkiller used to treat chronic pain and physical trauma. However in 1971 it was made illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Since then it has become one of the most destructive substances in the world, tearing apart communities and destroying families. The side effects of heroin include inflammation of the gums, cold sweats, a weak immune system, muscular weakness and insomnia. It can also damage blood vessels which can later cause gangrene if left untreated World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crack cocaine Crack cocaine first came about in the 1980s when cocaine became a widespread commodity within the drug trafficking world. Originally cocaine would have attracted a high price tag due to its rarity and difficulty to produce, but once it became more widespread the price dropped significantly. This resulted in drug dealers forming their cocaine into rock like shapes by using baking soda as a way of distilling the powder down into rock form. People were doing this because it allowed for them to sell cocaine at a lower quantity and to a higher number of people. The side effects of crack cocaine include liver, kidney and lung damage, as well as permanent damage to blood vessels, which can often lead to heart attacks, strokes, and ultimately death World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crystal meth Not just famous because of a certain Walter H White, but also because it is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. First developed in 1887, it became widely used during the Second World War when both sides would give it to their troops to keep them awake. It is also believed that the Japanese gave it to their Kamikaze pilots before their suicide missions. After the war crystal meth was prescribed as a diet aid and remained legal until the 1970s. Since then it has fallen into the hands of Mexican gangs and has become a worldwide phenomenon, spreading throughout Europe and Asia. The effects of crystal meth are devastating. In the short-term users will become sleep depraved and anxious, and in the long-term it will cause their flesh to sink, as well as brain damage and damage of the blood vessels World's 10 deadliest street drugs AH-7921 AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in January 2015. The drug is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine, and became known as the legal heroin. While there has only been one death related to AH-7921 in the UK, it is believed to be highly dangerous and capable of causing respiratory arrest and gangrene World's 10 deadliest street drugs Flakka Flakka is a stimulant with a similar chemical make-up to the amphetamine-like drug found in bath salts. While the drug was originally marketed as a legal high alternative to ecstasy, the effects are significantly different. The user will feel an elevated heart rate, enhanced emotions, and, if enough is digested, strong hallucinations. The drug can cause permanent psychological damage due to it affecting the mood regulating neurons that keep the minds serotonin and dopamine in check, as well as possibly causing heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Bath salts Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is prevalent in the US. While they may sound harmless, they certainly arent the sort of salts you drop into a warm bath when having a relaxing night in, they are most similar to mephedrone, and have recently been featured throughout social media due to the zombification of its. The name comes from the fact that the drug was originally sold online, and widely disguised as bath salts. The side effects include unusual psychiatric behaviour, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behaviour, as well as the possibility of a heart attack and an elevated body temperature World's 10 deadliest street drugs Purple Drank One of the more unusual drugs around at the moment, purple drank was popularised in 90s hip hop culture, with the likes of Jay Z and Big Moe all mentioning it in their songs. It is a concoction of soda water, sweets and cold medicine, and is drunk due to cold medicines high codeine content, which gives the user a woozy feeling. However it can also cause respiratory issues and heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Krokodil Krokodil is Russias secret addiction. It is believed that over one million Russians are addicted to the drug. Users of krokodil are attracted to the drug due to its low price; it is sold at 20 a gram while heroin is sold for 60. However, krokodil is considered more dangerous than heroin because it is often homemade, with ingredients including painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid and industrial cleaning agents. This chemical make-up makes the drug highly dangerous and likely to cause gangrene, and eventually rotting of the flesh An NCA spokesman said: Even in the unlikely event that users know their drugs contain fentanyl, the chances of overdosing are high. Only 0.002g, amounting to 1/50th of a typical 0.1g heroin deal, is potentially fatal, and the tiny amounts make it almost impossible to effect a controlled dose. Carfentanil is fatal in doses as small as 0.00002g, which equates to a few grains. Until the recent spate of deaths, there had been few fatalities linked to fentanyl or carfentanil in the UK. Video shows toddler crying next to her overdosed mother But four people died in the Barnsley area of South Yorkshire, on 14 April and two men died the day after in Leeds and Normanton in West Yorkshire. Testing on recovered drugs found traces of fentanyl. Since these six deaths, there have been similar fatalities recorded by Humberside and Cleveland Police. The NCA has now said: Fentanyl and carfentanil are believed to have caused several recent deaths in the Yorkshire, Humber and Cleveland areas. And PHE has now issued a drugs alert to medical and emergency services, public health and drugs services. Rosanna OConnor, director of drugs, alcohol and tobacco at PHE, said: We are urging heroin users to be extra careful about what they are taking. They need to look out for each other and be alert to any signs of an overdose, such as lack of consciousness, shallow or no breathing, snoring, and blueing of the lips and fingertips. If possible, they should use naloxone if someone overdoses, and immediately call for an ambulance. We strongly advise all dependent drug users to get support from local drug services. The joint PHE and NCA statement strongly advised areas currently identifying or suspecting spikes in heroin-associated drugs deaths to contact local coroners to establish whether fentanyl is routinely screened for in toxicology results. If it is not, the statement added, consideration should be given to resubmitting samples for retesting. 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 Royal Marine who was sentenced to life in prison for killing a wounded Taliban fighter in Afghanistan, will be released from prison on Friday, according to the group set up to campaign for his release. Alexander Blackman - who was previously only identified as Marine A - had his murder conviction overturned in March after a three-and-a-half year court battle. The Justice For Marine A campaign group said the 42-year-old will now be released from prison. While cleared of murder, five judges at the Court Martial Appeal Court in London instead found him guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was sentenced to seven years, but his legal team calculated he would reach the halfway point of his term this month - a point at which people sentenced to a determinate term are usually released. He will be set free in the early hours of the morning. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA On 15 September 2011, Blackman took aim at the chest of a wounded Taliban fighter with his 9mm pistol and pulled the trigger, uttering the words: Shuffle off this mortal coil you c***. Its nothing you wouldnt do to us. The killing was recorded by the helmet-mounted camera of a fellow serviceman and he was was convicted in November 2013 by a court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire, and sentenced to life with a minimum term of 10 years. The minimum term was later reduced to eight years because of the combat stress disorder he was suffering from. After his murder conviction was overturned, his wife Claire Blackman said she was delighted by the decision. She added that it much better reflects the circumstances that my husband found himself in during that terrible tour of Afghanistan. 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 }} In his first election intervention, Boris Johnson has called Jeremy Corbyn a mugwump. Writing in The Sun, Mr Johnson described the labour leader as mutton-headed old mugwump though he later apologised to mugwumps everywhere. Mr Johnson was himself called a mugwump by Nicholas Soames MP during last years EU referendum campaign. Boris Johnson defends calling Corbyn a 'mutton-headed mugwump' The Foreign Secretary, no stranger to colourful outbursts, deployed the verbal barb as part of an apparent attack on Mr Corbyns suitability for the office of Prime Minister. At least, that's the best guess, as while it sounds vaguely insulting, the specific meaning of the word has left people scratching their heads and searching the internet. The term appears to originate from the Native American Massachusett language, spoken in part of New England in pre-colonial times. Mugumquomp meant a war leader, from which mugquomp meaning an important person or kingpin derived. American settlers appropriated the word mugwump for the English language, with its most notable use being in the 1884 US presidential election, but it was used prior to the vote. It drew on the original Native American meaning to mean someone who was holier-than-thou, sanctimonious or aloof. This meaning led to 'mugwump' being the label given to a group of Republican political activists who rejected party allegiance because of corruption, to support the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland, who was seen as a reformer. The editor of the New York Sun newspaper, Charles Anderson Dana, is believed to have originally called the group Mugwumps. Despite being somewhat negatively portrayed in the press, the Mugwump vote was seen as crucial in the close election, which Cleveland won. The word remained in use after the election to as an insult for someone who changed party loyalties. The word has also been used in literature. Roald Dahl used it to describe a group of caged monkeys in his childrens book The Twits. The mugwumps are forced by the Twits to do tricks, at the threat of a beating. The mugwumps later outwit the Twits and escape. UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images Dahl, who had a fondness for unusual words, also used muggle-wump in other works, including The Enormous Crocodile. In Harry Potter, a Mugwump is the title of the head of the International Confederation of Wizards. In culture, the founding members of The Mamas and the Papas known for their hit California Dreamin were in a band called The Mugwumps. The origin of the name is unknown. Aliens called mugwumps also made an appearance in William Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch and the film adaptation of the same name. 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 }} Armed police cordoned off Whitehall after a man carrying a bag of knives was arrested near Parliament. The 27-year-old man is being held on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and planning acts of terrorism, Scotland Yard said. Pictures from the scene showed a man pinned to the ground close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. Firearms officiers from the British police arrest a man on Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament (NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images) (NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images) Three knives were also pictured close to a rucksack. Scotland Yard said there had been no reported injuries. An officer in forensic overalls could be seen taking photographs of the knives. Knives on the ground at the scene (Lauren Hurley/PA Wire) The suspect was detained at the scene for several minutes within view of journalists and passers by before he was eventually taken away by police. A police spokesperson said "knives have been recovered" from the man, who was arrested "following a stop and search as part of an ongoing operation". Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat. A man is led away by police in Westminster after an arrest was made (REUTERS/Toby Melville) Mayor of London Sadiq Khan thanked the officers involved and said he had been briefed by the Met Commissioner. The scene is yards from where Khalid Masood launched a terror attack in that killed five people, including PC Keith Palmer. The officer was stabbed to death as he carried out his duties on the cobbled forecourt of the Palace of Westminster. 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 }} Boris Johnson's sister has reportedly joined the Liberal Democrats in a bid to block Brexit. Rachel Johnson is believed to have held talks with the party about standing as an MP in one of its target seats. Brexit caused a very public family rift between the Foreign Secretary and his sibling, with journalist Ms Johnson writing that she and her children cried over the referendum result, which her brother campaigned for. Mr Johnson is credited by many for helping to swing the vote in June for the Leave campaign. At the time, his sister said her 19-year-old son Oliver had told her: Boris has stolen our futures. Ms Johnson is believed to have called the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg earlier this week to discuss the possibility of standing for the party in Bath or Yeovil, Channel 4 reports. However talks collapsed when Ms Johnson was told she had to be a member for a year before she could stand as a candidate for the party. The Lib Dems are the only major political party offering voters the chance to reverse the decision to leave the EU. They hope to take seats from both Labour and the Conservatives on 8 June by offering distraught Remain voters a second referendum. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters Ms Johnson has previously been a staunch Tory. She has two siblings in the Conservative Party, as her brother Jo is the current universities minister. Jo campaigned against Boris last June, calling for Britain to remain in the EU. Last year, Ms Johnson wrote in her Mail on Sunday column: In general elections I have voted nothing but Tory, and since I have two brothers standing as MPs for the party, its sort of a matter of family duty. Ms Johnson has neither confirmed nor denied reports she has joined the rival party. The Lib Dems have declined to confirm Ms Johnson's membership, citing data protection rules. 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 }} Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has suggested Britain could bypass the House of Commons and join the United States in taking military action against the Syrian regime if it is asked. Mr Johnson added it would be very difficult to say no if Donald Trumps administration asks the UK for help in taking action against Bashar al-Assads regime in response to another chemical attack. Asked on the BBCs Radio 4 Today programme whether he could envisage taking military action in the region, he replied: I think it will be very difficult if the United States has a proposal to have some sort of action in response to a chemical weapons attack, and if they come to us and ask for our support, whether its with submarine-based cruise missiles in the [Mediterranean], or whatever it happens to be, as was the case back in 2013, it would be in my view, and I know this is also the view of the Prime Minister, it would be very difficult for us to say no. Pressed further on whether the Foreign Secretary would seek approval in the Commons for such a strike, Mr Johnson added: I think that needs to be tested. As I said I think it would be very difficult for us to say no. How exactly we were able to implement that would be for the Government, the Prime Minister. But if the Americans were once again to be forced by the actions of the Assad regime dont forget, it was Assad who unleashed murder upon his own citizens with weapons that were banned almost 100 years ago if the Americans choose to act again and they ask us to help, as I say, I think it would be very difficult to say no. Asked whether Theresa May agreed with Mr Johnson that it would be difficult for the UK to say no to a US request for assistance in military action against the Assad regime, the Prime Ministers official spokesman said the Foreign Secretary was restating a position he had already given to Parliament on 18 April the day the Prime Minister announced the snap general election. They added: All we have stated previously is that the US have been clear that they are not planning any further strikes, but they could reconsider if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons again and anything beyond that is hypothetical. His comments come after US President Donald Trump earlier this month ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross into the Sharyat airfield, in western Homs, in retaliation to the use of chemical weapons on civilians, allegedly by Bashar al-Assads dictatorial regime. Following the chemical attack, and the pictures of dying children that accompanied it, Mr Johnson led an unsuccessful attempt to persuade G7 leaders to implement further economic sanctions on Russia for its continued support of the Syrian dictator. At the time of the assault Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said Downing Street was fully behind the US but added it is unlikely any further military action will be taken. 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 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. Weve not asked to be involved in this, this was not a matter for the coalition thats in Syria and Iraq fighting Daesh. According to the House of Commons Library, there is no legal requirement on the Government to seek parliamentary approval before ordering military action but it has become convention to consult MPs, except in the event of an emergency. 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 }} Boris Johnson has been accused of deceiving voters after insisting Britain would not pay an expected 50bn Brexit divorce bill unless the EU started trade talks. A senior EU source said the Foreign Secretary was hoodwinking the public about the realities of Brexit insisting leaders were united in the view that the bill must be settled first. The source turned Mr Johnsons love of using head-scratching words against him, after he was strongly criticised for calling Jeremy Corbyn a mutton-headed, old mugwump. It appears that, yet again, Boris is trying to hornswoggle the British people about the realities of Brexit and the Article 50 process, The Independent was told. The EUs position has been clear that a financial settlement must be agreed in phase one, before talks on a future trading relationship can begin. The EU 27 are united on this. The outstanding liabilities won't have to be paid before further talks but the EU will insist there is an agreement on this before talks progress. To hornswoggle is to attempt to get the better of someone by cheating or deception, according to the dictionary. The source spoke out after Mr Johnson again struck an aggressive pose ahead of the Brexit negotiations, insisting the EU would not succeed in forcing Britain to settle its liabilities upfront. If youre saying that they want the money before they get any substantive talks then that is obviously not going to happen, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. The Foreign Secretary also claimed Germany had blocked a deal before Christmas on the future rights of EU nationals living in the UK and of British expats across the EU. Alas, we made an offer by the way before Christmas that we would do a deal in advance of the negotiations, that was turned down, you may recall, by Germany, he said. The EU said no talks could take place before Article 50 was triggered, which happened on 29 March. The latest war of words came as Angela Merkel turned her fire on unnamed British politicians still with illusions over the UKs status after Brexit. The German Chancellor told cheering Bundestag members that Britain would become a third-party state after its departure and could not expect to enjoy the same rights as remaining nations. I have to say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain continue to work under illusions, and that is a waste of time, Ms Merkel said. At the weekend, the EUs 27 political leaders will agree the blocs negotiating position for the Brexit talks reaffirming their determination to settle the divorce bill first. Nothing does more to unify the EU 27 more than an intervention from Boris. Its good to have him back, the source added. The Prime Minister's official spokesman declined to back her Foreign Secretarys stance, saying only: The Prime Minister set out the Government's position in the Article 50 letter. The Article 50 letter was clear on that. In that letter, Ms May said she was ready to discuss how we determine a fair settlement of the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state. 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 Conservatives are expected to drop a pledge to withdraw the UK from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in their election manifesto. Theresa May last year said she wanted to quit the ECHR but is now expected to drop the commitment to ensure it is not a distraction during Brexit negotiations. The move will keep Britain wedded to European human rights law until 2022 the end of the next parliament. "We have so much on our plate that we just don't have enough time to do this. We have enough to do with Brexit, let alone the ECHR," a senior minister told the The Daily Telegraph. Ms Mays initial plan was to enshrine the same rights in UK law, which would then prevent the Strasbourg court from having an overriding power. Previously, as Home Secretary, Ms May had raised concerns after Strasbourg blocked the government from expelling Abu Qatada, the hate preacher. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The ECHR exists entirely separately from the European Union and therefore Brexit does not necessarily provide a mandate to pull Britain out of the convention. The news comes as Ms May hosted a working dinner with Michel Barnier and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker at Downing Street. She told Mr Juncker that Britain is committed "to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union". 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 }} Theresa May has told EU leaders she wants a deep and special relationship with the bloc after holding talks with Brussels chiefs in Downing Street. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU's main Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, had dinner with the Prime Minister and David Davis, in what was described as a constructive meeting. Few details about the content of the discussion were released, but the forthcoming EU summit this weekend is likely to have featured. "The PM had a constructive meeting this evening with President Juncker of the European Commission," a spokesperson for Ms May said in a statement. "Following the UK's letter of notification under Article 50 (on its departure from the EU), she reiterated the UK's commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union. "The PM and president Juncker also discussed a range of other international issues in a useful working dinner." A spokesman for the Commission also described the meeting as constructive. They discussed the broader geopolitical agenda and issues of strategic interest to both, he said. "President Juncker and Prime Minister May discussed the Article 50 process ahead of his participation in the European Council on April 29." Brexit talks: PM welcomes Tusk to Downing Street At Saturdays summit, the leaders of the 27 other EU countries will consider their approach to the talks on the UK's withdrawal. Meanwhile, Mr Davis has said "cool heads, strong leadership and traditional British resolve" will be needed to secure a good deal as the UK leaves the EU. Speaking to the Prosperity UK conference in London, he acknowledged Britain will have to make compromises in the negotiations, but insisted the country has "very good reason to feel optimistic". 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 added: "Securing an agreement with the EU, within the two-year period, about our withdrawal and the shape of our future relationship will be challenging. "We will have difficult issues to confront. Compromises will be necessary on both sides." Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told diplomats at the Lord Mayor's banquet in the City of London he had no doubt that the negotiations will be tough and some plaster may fall off the ceiling, but added: "I am also sure that Theresa May can pull it off and usher in a new era of free trade deals." Additional reporting agencies Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate 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 Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Publishing the Governments latest plan to bring air quality within safe limits would drop a controversial bomb into the general election campaign, a lawyer acting for Ministers has told the High Court. Judges have twice ordered the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to come up with a better way of reduction air pollution that causes about 40,000 premature deaths a year after legal action by the environmental campaign group ClientEarth. Under the latest order, it had until 4pm on 24 April to produce its latest strategy. But, after Theresa May called the general election for 8 June, Government officials went to court to ask for a delay. Andrea Leadsom, the Environment Secretary, told the Commons air pollution did not count as an emergency so the plan could not be published during the pre-election period of 'purdah'. Speaking at London's High Court, James Eadie QC, acting for the Government, said that publication now would drop a controversial bomb into the mix of local and national elections. He said the application was made with considerable reluctance and was not some sort of guise or demonstration of lack of commitment to improving air quality. It was made because of the impact of launching a consultation on such an important and controversial issue during the forthcoming democratic process, he said. The better course, Mr Eadie argued, would be to put publication on hold until after the election and not crystallise the issues at this point. This would be more efficient, he suggested. Nathalie Lieven QC, for ClientEarth, said the Government's application did not identify sufficient grounds to justify a delay until after the general election. "This is a huge focus of public concern and a huge issue for the media," she said. "It is an issue in this election whether the Government publishes the consultation or not. "The controversy is there and is not going to be put on hold by not publishing the consultation document." In an emailed comment, Areeba Hamid, a Greenpeace clean air campaigner, also dismissed the arguments put in favour of postponing publication. The Government says air pollution is so controversial that publishing the plan would affect the election, she said. But air pollution is already a huge issue for the public and shelving the plan won't put that controversy on hold. All it will do is delay urgent action to tackle the air pollution health crisis. It is nonsense to suggest that delaying the plan by six weeks won't have any impact in the real world. Air pollution is responsible for a host of health impacts and the court identified that this was an urgent crisis that required action as soon as possible. She said that admitting the extent of the air pollution crisis would be politically uncomfortable for the Government. However, it is wrong for the Government to put poll ratings before public health, and that is what it is doing by trying to hide behind constitutional procedures to delay release of this desperately needed air pollution plan, Ms Hamid said. The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Show all 10 1 /10 The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Ukraine The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bulgaria Rex Features The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Belarus The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Russia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Armenia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bosnia and Herzegovina REUTERS The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Georgia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Hungary DigitalGlobe The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths China The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Moldova Professor Jonathan Grigg, an expert in paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary University of London and founding member of campaign group Doctors against Diesel, said the attempt to put off publication suggested Ministers were not overly concerned about air pollution. The Governments defence does not address our central concern about what delaying the plan could mean for public health, he said. Their argument is that the issue of air quality is a controversial bomb that cannot be discussed during the election period but this is the case with or without release of the Air Quality Plan. Delaying action to tackle air quality will only increase concern that the Government do not take seriously the impacts of air pollution on the health of children and vulnerable groups. The Press Association contributed to this report Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate 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 Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Government has lost a High Court bid to delay publication of an air pollution plan described as a controversial bomb by its own lawyer until after the General Election. Environmental lawyers at ClientEarth have twice taken the Government to court over substandard plans that would have allowed air quality to be below minimum European Union standards for years. Ministers were twice ordered to come up with a better strategy, but missed the latest deadline of 24 April, claiming their were not able to publish it because Theresa May had called an election. Government enters a period of purdah in which it cannot announce new policies that might influence the outcome of the vote. However it is able to act in 'emergency' situations. Mr Justice Garnham said Andrea Leadsom, the Environment Secretary, was "obliged to comply with orders of this court as any other litigant", adding that air pollution had created exceptional public health circumstances. He ordered the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to publish its draft plan by 4 May the day after the local council elections. He said the 31 July date for the final plan would stay the same. Earlier James Eadie QC, acting for the Government, had said that publication now would drop a controversial bomb into the mix of local and national elections. He said the application was made with considerable reluctance and was not some sort of guise or demonstration of lack of commitment to improving air quality. But Nathalie Lieven QC, for ClientEarth, argued in court that the Government's application did not identify sufficient grounds to justify a delay until after the General Election, saying the issue was "a huge focus of public concern". And, after the judge's ruling, Anna Heslop, an air quality lawyer at ClientEarth, said: "The court has made it clear, as we have argued from the beginning, that that this is an urgent matter of public health and not of politics. "We would urge the Government to stop stalling and to take this issue seriously and that means publishing the air quality plan after the local elections. "They should not appeal this ruling. The time for delay is over." Downing Street said it would "consider the judgement and decide what we do next". Reacting to the judge's decision, Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, said it sent the message that "air pollution is a public health priority". People should not have to risk their health simply by inhaling the air we breathe," he said. "Research has shown that 40,000 deaths a year are related to air pollution, with eight in 10 caused by a heart attack or stroke. Theres an urgent need for a range of measures to tackle our toxic air and we are committed to working with the Government to make clean air a reality. Environmentalists also expressed their delight. Gareth Redmond-King, head of energy and climate at environmental group WWF, said he was pleased the court had ruled the decision "is far too important to delay". "New research published only this week shows just how quickly dangerous toxins get into the bloodstream from the air, and the risks that this poses for peoples health," he said. "Air pollution is a serious public health crisis and must be an urgent priority for the next Government. The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Show all 10 1 /10 The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Ukraine The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bulgaria Rex Features The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Belarus The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Russia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Armenia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bosnia and Herzegovina REUTERS The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Georgia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Hungary DigitalGlobe The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths China The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Moldova "From the remaining coal in in our power stations to the diesel and petrol in our car, bus, van and train engines, we need to ensure dirty fossil fuels are consigned to the dustbin of history." He said WWF looked forward with helping Defra take "ambitious and robust action to tackle this crucial problem". Areeba Hamid, a clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: The High Court has called out the government on its underhand dodging of the air pollution crisis. "Now it has to reveal its hand. Only an ambitious plan will satisfy the public, who for too long have had to suffer exposure to illegal and unsafe levels of air pollution. In court, the Government said publishing the air pollution plan would affect the election. "In reality, air pollution is an election issue with or without publication of this plan, and we clearly need robust commitments from all parties on tackling the UKs toxic air. And Jenny Bates, a Friends of the Earth air pollution campaigner, said protecting the nations health has rightly been placed above political process, saying that every delay in action costs lives. The Press Association contributed to this report 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 Government has apologised for an administrative error that subjected 130 refugee children to a lengthy delay before coming to the UK to take up asylum status they had been granted. Lord Dubs, the Czech born Jewish peer who fled to the UK from the Nazis in the 1930s, who originally brought an amendment to allow the UK to take more unaccompanied refugee children from the Calais, had called the error shocking and disgusting and in the House of Lords on Thursday morning described it as "like something out of Yes Minister." "I'm a bit worried about what's going to happen in a new Parliament. If the Conservatives get a larger majority, that makes our task more difficult," said the Labour peer, warning that a Tory landslide on June 8 would dash hopes of the UK helping thousands of child refugees. Recommended UK refused entry to 130 child refugees due to administrative mistake Answering an urgent question from Lord Dubs, Lady Williams said: "The administrative error is most unfortunate and for that I apologise . "The good news is that we have an additional 130 places and we should all be very pleased about that." In a written statement on Wednesday, Home Office minister Robert Goodwill said that the Government had asked regional authorities to say how many unaccompanied child refugees they could take. One region replied pledging homes for 130 children, but it was not included in the figures. The statement said: "The Government has very recently become aware that, due to an administrative error as part of collating the figures, one region pledged 130 places which were not accounted for in setting the specified number." Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said it "beggars belief" that children were not helped earlier because of an admin error. "This shows a shameful failure by the Home Office to talk properly to local councils who were willing and able to help or to check they had counted the figures up right," she added. "Time and again the select committee and local councils across the country told the Home Office that there were more places available, but they wouldn't budge and they failed to follow up." 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 }} Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has squashed criticism that he is running scared of the general election, by announcing he will be a candidate. I will be leading the party into battle, Mr Nuttall said but without revealing in which seat he will stand. The confirmation comes just days after Mr Nuttall was accused of hiding in a broom cupboard to escape journalists attempting to find out his intentions. The party is launching its election campaign in London on Friday morning. Though Mr Nuttall has not yet confirmed where he intends to stand, he is scheduled to be campaigning in Hartlepool on Saturday. Recommended Ukip leader Paul Nuttall compares himself to Gandhi It is two months since the Ukip leader stood in the by-election for Stoke-on-Trent, which he lost to Labour by a large margin, in a hapless campaign that attracted constant ridicule. Ukip's former leader Nigel Farage said the election campaign had left Mr Nutall with "six weeks to prove himself." In an interview with The Independent the party's major backer, Arron Banks, described Mr Nuttall as "quite weak." Since last year's EU referendum Ukip has dipped to around seven per cent in the polls. On Tuesday it announced a series of policies on integration, which included annual inspections for teenage girls from communities perceived to be at risk of femal genital mutilation. It also proposed banning face coverings in public, a policy which was subsequently questioned by the British Beekeepers' Association. Mr Nuttall responded by comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi, citing a quotation in which the Indian independence leader said, "First they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win." Mr Gandhi never actually said it. more to follow 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 }} Three packages containing white powder type substances have been sent to political offices this week, the Scottish Parliament said today in a statement. The parcels, described as "suspicious", were sent to an elected official, a political party headquarters and a local council building between 25 April and 26 April. Police inquiries are underway and further advice has been issued to elected representatives across Scotland, Holyrood officials said. The white powder is believed to have arrived along with material relating to the forthcoming general election, the Daily Mail reports. Earlier on Thursday police said a man carrying knives had been arrested not far from Downing Street, just weeks after a terror attack in Westminster left five people dead. Khalid Masood ploughed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge on 22 March, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty Earlier this week, Labour peer Peter Hain revealed police are investigating a letter sent to him containing white powder. Police on Tuesday said they were investigating a suspicious package sent to the East Dunbartonshire office of SNP MP John Nicolson. Additional reporting by Reuters 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 }} Theresa May has accused EU leaders of preparing to "line up to oppose us" over Brexit, as she made an audacious appeal to Labour supporters to lend me their vote to strengthen her hand. Speaking in the Labour stronghold of Leeds, the Prime Minister urged the partys faithful to disregard who you may have voted for in the past and turn to the Tories in June. Pointing to the crucial EU withdrawal negotiations to come, Ms May said: Everyone in our country has a positive reason to lend me their vote. Recommended Tony Blair says Theresa May will win general election Because this election is not about who you may have voted for in the past. It is about voting in the national interest. Voting for the future. Strikingly, the Prime Minister toughened her language on the stance of other EU leaders, in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkels criticism of UK reluctance to face the reality of Brexit. She says the UK has 'illusions' about the process and that the 27 member states of the European Union agree," Ms May said. "We can see how tough those negotiations are going to be at times. Yet our opponents are already seeking to disrupt those negotiations at the same time as 27 other European countries line up to oppose us. Ms May added: So we need the strongest possible hand, the strongest possible mandate and the strongest possible leadership as we go into those talks. The Prime Minister acknowledged that, in taking the election fight to Leeds, she was speaking in one of the places that people call a traditional Labour area. But she said: If you vote for me to strengthen my hand at the negotiating table in Brussels, I will do everything I can to represent the interests of every person in this great city and every person in this great country. The speech is the starkest evidence yet that the Conservatives believe the election offers the opportunity, not only to retain power, but also to dramatically remake British politics by fatally weakening Labour. Four of the five Leeds seats are Labour-held, mostly with huge normally impregnable majorities. The other currently has a Liberal Democrat MP. Two of the city MPs are Labour big-hitters Hilary Benn, the former shadow Foreign Secretary, and Rachel Reeves, formerly work and pensions spokeswoman. Earlier, Ms May made a speech in Clay Cross, a former mining town in Derbyshire, having targeted vulnerable seats in Wales earlier this week. Although one poll suggested the Tory lead slipping, it was still a daunting 16 points, with some Labour MPs warning the election threatens to be a bloodbath for Jeremy Corbyns party. Tony Blair further lowered morale by suggesting the Conservatives were on course to win the election, arguing the only issue was whether Ms May would win big enough to secure a blank cheque for Brexit. In Leeds, Ms May also underlined her determination to make the contest what some are terming a presidential-style one exploiting her huge advantage of Mr Corbyn in opinion poll approval ratings. Here and in every constituency across the country it may say Labour on the ballot, but its Jeremy Corbyn that gets the vote, she said. There are only two people who can possibly be Prime Minister on the 9 June. Only two people who can possibly represent Britain in Europe. The choice is between five years of strong and stable leadership with me as Prime Minister, or a coalition of chaos with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm, a weak leader negotiating Brexit and higher taxes, debt and waste. 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 }} Theresa May refused three times to answer a question on whether the UK would engage in air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria without a parliamentary vote on the matter, as the Foreign Secretary had earlier indicated it would. At a campaign event in Leeds, the Prime Minister was asked the same question three times, about whether the UK would, as Boris Johnson had, find it hard to say no to any request from the United States to launch strikes against the Assad regime, and would not necessarily seek a parliamentary vote on the matter. She said it was a hypothetical question and that there are no plans for such a strike to take place. She also refused to say whether Boris Johnson would keep his job as Foreign Secretary in the event of an election victory. Asked that direct question she replied only that Boris Johnson was doing a great job as Foreign Secretary, and would be campaigning hard for a Conservative victory. It has been reported that Boris Johnson has been sidelined from the election campaign, though he marked his arrival on the trail this morning in an article for The Sun in which he called Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a mutton-headed mugwump. Labour said he had demeaned his office with the comments. 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 }} Theresa May is on course to win the general election if the opinion polls are correct, according to the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. If the polls are right we know who is going to be prime minister on June 9 thats not the issue. It'll be Theresa May, he told Sky News It comes after Mr Blair said earlier this week that Labour risked losing the election if it failed to make Brexit the most prominent issue of the six-week campaign. He urged Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, not to run a conventional partisan election operation and treat Britains exit from the EU as a side issue alongside the NHS and austerity cuts. Mr Blair, who has been a vocal critic of Mr Corbyns leadership, also failed to endorse the Labour leader but insisted he would be voting for the party at the general election in six weeks time. Speaking about a potential victory for Ms May at the general election, he continued: If the polls are right so Im not predicting that. I dont think that is the real issue in this election. I think the real issue is blank cheque - its what mandate does she claim, both on Brexit and the health service, education and all the other things. UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images I think thats the most powerful argument for Labour in this election, because of the way the polls are and the way the opinion polls are on the leadership issue. The most powerful argument for Labour is to say its important for our democracy that the Government is held properly to account and she needs a strong opposition. He also used the interview to warn about the perils of leaving the single market and urged the Prime Minister to make it a priority in the Brexit negotiations. "I think the big missing question that has got to be there is a question that might sound extraordinarily technical but is absolutely fundamental to the future prosperity of this country, which is in the Brexit negotiation, are we taking membership of the single market and the customs union off the table, which I think we probably are, he said. Boris Johnson defends calling Corbyn a 'mutton-headed mugwump' "If we are and we're going for a free trade agreement, rather than membership of the single market, that's a massive for the prosperity of the British economy. That's why our currency is down 15%." On Tuesday the former Labour Prime Minister was also forced to clarify remarks he had made at the weekend, adding for the avoidance of doubt he was not urging tactical voting after he advised voters to consider backing Labours rivals in the election in order to weaken Theresa Mays desire to pursue a hard Brexit. In an article for the Guardian, he added: I have not urged tactical voting. It is up to each voter to make their mind up on how they will vote. I only want people to make an informed choice. Of course, I hope people will vote Labour, as I will. 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 }} Zac Goldsmith has been accused of staggering hypocrisy after he was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate in his former seat of Richmond Park. The former MP was defeated by the Liberal Democrats Sarah Olney in a by-election last December after he resigned from the Conservative Party over its support for a third runway at Heathrow. At the time, he described the decision as catastrophic and claimed it would be a a millstone around this Governments neck for years. Recommended Goldsmith to run as Tory MP despite no change to policy he quit over Mr Goldsmith, who lost out to Sadiq Khan in his bid to become Mayor of London last year, is now set to stand again as a Conservative candidate - despite the fact the partys manifesto is likely to include a commitment to Heathrow expansion. He was selected by local party members at a meeting earlier this week, with the result said by one source to be a landslide. Mr Goldsmith reportedly insisted he would continue to oppose Heathrow expansion. However, critics immediately attacked his decision to return to the Conservatives and accused him of reneging on his principles. Zac Goldsmiths hypocrisy is staggering, Jonathan Bartley, Green Party co-leader, told The Independent. His decision to stand for the Tories again despite their policy over Heathrow remaining unchanged shows he never really cared about the decision or its impact on the people of Richmond. The Green Party will always remain principled in our opposition to a third runway at Heathrow. UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, added: By standing as a Conservative after resigning over Heathrow, Zac Goldsmith has just lost his last shred of credibility. People in Richmond Park voted resoundingly against a hard Brexit and against Heathrow expansion, both backed by Zac Goldsmith's Conservative Party. Instead they voted for the Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney. Zac Goldsmith couldnt stand on a Conservative platform last time, so whats changed? As a Conservative he will be standing on a clear pro-Brexit, pro-Heathrow manifesto. The people of Richmond Park have already told him what they think of that. Sarah Olney beat him once, she will beat him again." Responding to the criticism, Mr Goldsmith said: "No honest person can doubt my commitment to stopping Heathrow expansion. I have led the campaign, and have had the backing of all the key groups opposing it." "I resigned over the issue, not because I wanted to resign, but because I promised I would," told The Independent. "Keeping promises is a concept I know the Lib Dems have historically struggled with, but it is important in politics." Social media users also criticised Mr Goldsmiths decision. Have they cancelled Heathrow expansion or has he just, yknow, dropped his principles?, wrote one. Zac Goldsmiths principles over Heathrow didnt last very long, added another. What's changed Zac Goldsmith? A man who I thought had principles has been found out to be a hypocrite, said a third. Georgina Butler, the local Conservative Party chairman, said: "We are delighted that Zac Goldsmith has been re-selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond Park and North Kingston in the forthcoming General Election, and we look forward to having him back again as our representative in Parliament. "He is widely regarded the best MP that Richmond Park and North Kingston has ever had, and we need him back to represent our residents effectively. "He will also continue to lead the fight against Heathrow expansion, an issue which continues to concern our residents." Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate 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 Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} If the rains dont come, none of us will survive. Farhia, a 25-year-old Somali pastoralist, has moved four times in the last four months trying to follow expected rains which, on each occasion, failed to arrive. She is not alone. Oxfam is now warning the drought in East Africa, where nearly 11 million people are already affected by food shortages, is threatening to become a humanitarian catastrophe. Issuing a desperate appeal for the international community to meet a request from the United Nations for about 1.5bn of aid, the charity also said the worst drought in living memory demonstrated why the world must act to reduce global warming. It pointed to several scientific studies which found evidence that climate change was likely driving up temperatures and making the situation significantly worse. Nearly 11 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are dangerously hungry and in need of humanitarian assistance, Oxfam said in a briefing. The worst drought-affected areas in Somalia are on the brink of famine. The crisis could deteriorate significantly over the coming weeks, as rainfall in March and early April was very low in places and poor rainfall is forecast for April through June, which is the end of the rainy season. Climate change is not a distant, future threat: it is helping fuel this emerging catastrophe in which poverty, chronic malnutrition, weak governance, conflict, drought and climate change have combined to create a perfect storm. Recommended Hundreds of thousands face death in crisis no one is talking about In a grim irony, the developing world is expected to be hardest hit by climate change caused by fossil fuel emissions that have helped make the developed world rich. As the likes of Donald Trump and former UK Chancellor Nigel Lawson argue against cutting greenhouse gas emissions, people in places like Somalia are facing death from starvation. While some still deny the severity of climate change and question the need to combat it, others are struggling for their lives as climate change makes a bad situation worse, Oxfam said. There could be no stronger call to take action on climate change than suffering on this scale. Governments across the region and around the world need to step up, take responsibility, and provide humanitarian assistance to save lives now. Without global efforts to reduce emissions and to help the worlds poorest people cope with the effects of climate change, this crisis will continue to repeat itself. 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke filled with the carbon that is driving climate change drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan The Government has expressed concern about the potential for the drought to develop into a major crisis, increasing its level of aid and urging the international community to do the same. In a recent written statement to the House of Commons, International Development Secretary Priti Patel said the UK had pledged 110m to provide emergency food aid for up to a million people in Somalia; nutritional help to more than 600,000 starving children and pregnant or breastfeeding women; safe drinking water for a million people; and emergency healthcare for more than 1.1 million. A further 100m will also be spent helping people in South Sudan, where some 7.5 million people are in need of help amid a widespread famine, partly caused by the ongoing civil war. Seven of the last 10 years have seen droughts caused by poor or failed rains in East Africa. Monthly average temperatures in the area have hit nearly 3C above the average between 1940 and 1981. There is mounting evidence that climate change is likely to be contributing to higher temperatures in the region, and that increased temperatures are exacerbating the impacts of drought, Oxfam said. Temperatures have been consistently higher in East Africa in recent years, part of a trend seen in Africa and around the world. Higher temperatures result in greater evaporation, meaning soil moisture is reduced, reinforcing drier conditions and intensifying the impacts of failed rains. Crops and pasture have less water, and the chance of failed harvests or lack of feed for livestock increases. In pastoral regions like northern Somalia, higher temperatures over the past six months have turned very low rainfall last year into a terrible loss of soil moisture helping to desiccate all the available fodder for many of Somalias pastoralists. The charitys briefing note included comments from local people in the area, which illustrated how out of the ordinary the situation has become. Awad Ali, an 87-year-old man from Somaliland, said: Ive seen many droughts in my lifetime, but this is the worst one. Farhia, the pastoralist, said: We have moved four times in the last four months. We were trying to follow the rain moving according to where the rains were supposed to come. But they havent. If the rains dont come, none of us will survive. Unicef expressed confidence that there would be no repeat of the 2010/11 drought which saw up to 260,000 people starve to death after the international community failed to react in time. During that famine, women reportedly bound their waists with rope to deaden the pangs of hunger as they gave what little food they had to their children. Susannah Price, Unicef Somalias communications chief, said there had been patchy rains in Somalia in recent weeks but definitely not enough at the moment. And she added: We dont expect the situation to become immediately better. Somalia has suffered from regular droughts and the problem is the people are just at the end of their resources, they have nothing left. Each time this happens they have nothing to fall back upon. The people are really resourceful, they are tough and they dont become displaced unless they have to be, but we have got people on the move who have never been on the move before. And even if the rains did come, some animals are so sick they are expected to die and diseases like cholera and acute watery diarrhoea, currently affecting thousands, would still be a problem. But we are still saying we can avert a famine, Ms Price said. We have had good funding we are over 50 per cent funded. Of course we need more and we need it to continue. But there have been good lessons learned from 2011 when the international community waited for a famine to be declared. "By the time it is a famine, its too late, many people will have already died. 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 leading abortion doctor has warned the legal right to have an abortion will be abolished across America under Donald Trump. Dr Willie Parker, a prominent abortion advocate in the deep south of America, said he expected the Trump presidency to succeed in overturning Roe v Wade. President Trump has already pledged to do all he can to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion nationwide in 1973. In his first interview after winning the election, the billionaire said he wanted to appoint pro-life judges with the goal of overturning Roe v Wade automatically. Some expect his highly conservative Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to now attempt to put this into action. Dr Parker, who has been an obstetrician-gynecologist for more than 23 years and has carried out abortions full-time for almost a decade, said he thought the criminalisation of abortion was a concrete possibility with Mr Trump in the White House and he expected it would be much harder to do his job in the future. It was criminal once before, and it is their intent to make it criminal again, he told The Independent. So far all the things Trumps promised to do, hes made the effort to do. He was always pro-choice in the 1990s but he changed his position to sit with the politics of what was going to get him elected." Dr Parker, a former medical director of a Planned Parenthood affiliate, said the overturning of Roe v Wade would mean a womans access to abortion services is dictated by her postcode. If you overturn Roe there will be no federal law to protect a womans right to an abortion in every state, so there are a lot of states where abortion will become illegal, like some of the first states to approve it. Dr Parker, who has made a name for himself for performing abortions in states where almost no other doctors will do so, suggested it would remain legal in liberal states such as California and Hawaii but was likely to become illegal in states like Mississippi, Alabama, and many others. (Getty Images for the Center for Reproductive Rights (Getty Images for the Center for Reproductive Rights) Where you have Conservative people running the government they have campaigned on promising to make abortion illegal, he explained. In these states, women will have even more limited access to abortion than they already do. It means a womens health when it comes to her reproduction, would depend on her zip code and where she lives. It would make providing abortions more difficult. It would limit the places where we can provide. This would be likely to hit immigrant women and women of colour harder as restrictive abortions at state-level have already been found to have a disproportionate impact on these minority groups. Commentators have also argued the landmark decision is facing a new and severe threat in the wake of a Trump administration. They have floated the possibility of the Supreme Court gradually curbing Roe v Wades scope while leaving the decision strictly intact. To put this into context, a strongly conservative court could make procedures essentially illegal in practice by authorising restrictive abortion laws over time. In a similar vein, Dr Parker noted judges could be reticent to overturn Roe v Wade because it is a legal precedent which has provided the foundation of abortion law and policy for four decades. 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 But Jennifer Dalven, director of American Civil Liberties Unions Reproductive Freedom Project, said she thought Roe v Wade could easily be overturned during Mr Trump's tenure. Last June, the Court issued a strong decision limiting the ability of politicians to obstruct a woman's access to abortion and the five Justices who signed that opinion are still on the Court, she said. But if Trump gets to appoint another Justice, the Court could allow states to ban abortion completely or give politicians the green light to put up roadblock after roadblock in the path of women. Either way, the effect will be the same for many people. Women who have decided that having an abortion is the right decision for themselves and their family simply will not be able to get one. In the last week, it has been suggested that President Trump could have the chance to appoint a second person to the Supreme Court as early as this summer after rumours Justice Anthony Kennedy could retire. It's worth noting that William Pryer, one of the contenders for the new role, has called Roe v Wade the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law. Ms Dalven, who has worked on numerous high-profile abortion cases as a lawyer, said she was deeply worried about the repercussions of overturning the law. For many folks abortion is legal but already out of reach. States like Missisipi, Kentucky and South Dakota only have one abortion provider. Things are already very bad but without Roe it would be a much, much worse version of what we have today. It is very frightening. Mr Trumps current Supreme Court pick, Gorsuch, has never ruled directly on Roe v Wade but anti-abortion activists cite the language he has used in his book on assisted suicide as evidence of his sympathetic position. To act intentionally against life is to suggest that its value rests only on its transient instrumental usefulness for other ends , the Judge writes. All human beings are intrinsically valuable, and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong. Nevertheless, when questioned during his confirmation hearing in March, Judge Gorsuch, a Protestant, referred to Roe v Wade as the law of the land and said he would have walked out of the door if Mr Trump had asked him to overturn it in his interview. Recommended Donald Trump signs law aimed at cutting abortion funding In Dr Parker's opinion, anti-abortion advocates have already been emboldened into proposing restrictive abortion legislation since Mr Trumps arrival in the White House, saying: The people who feel he speaks for them they are feeling more empowered". He said carrying out abortions was starting to feel noticeably more dangerous under a Trump administration and he had experienced increased aggression from anti-abortion activists. It is getting a little riskier to do the work we do. The protesters are a bit more aggressive, they harass women and they harass providers, he explained. "I post a lot on Facebook and Twitter and Ive had death threats. Nobody has physically accosted me but people have said stuff like Somebody should shoot you in the head. I know where you live. If you think you can kill babies and it will be okay you are wrong. Dr Parker did not carry out abortions for 12 years of his career but began to see things differently after reading a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. For almost a decade now, the Alabama native has travelled around various states providing abortion care and has participated in lawsuits in Alabama and Mississippi to try and block state laws from closing abortion clinics. Dr Parker, who is in connection with law enforcement, has been racially abused by activists on a number of occasions during his career. There have been places where Ive had them call me a filthy negro abortionist, Ive had some say, Do I have to call you the n word? While abortion has become an increasingly partisan issue in the US in recent years, this has significantly increased under a Trump administration. Mr Trump is under pressure to keep the Republican Party, whose overwhelming majority of elected officials are anti-abortion, happy and reward the anti-abortion voters who helped put him in the White House. The Trump administrations actions since coming to power 14 weeks ago already show a commitment to implementing anti-abortion policies. On his fourth day in office, Mr Trump signed an executive order prohibiting US funding for any international aid groups which give women information about abortion, even if they do not perform the procedures. Recommended Meet the woman travelling delivering abortion drugs by drone NGOs which receive funding from the US are prohibited from even mentioning abortion so its really a form of coercion because if you dont present a woman with all of her options you are really not counselling her, Dr Parker said. You are coercing her in a certain direction. In addition to this, at the beginning of the month the US state department announced it was ending funding for the UN population fund (UNFPA). In a letter to US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, the State Department said it was dropping the funding because the UN Population Fund supports, or participates in the management of, a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation. In short, abortion rights are coming under fire from all angles under the Trump administration and the fear of Roe v Wade being overturned remains a very real one for some. "Even though we had conservative and anti-abortion ideologues running in the majority in the legislature before Trump, we were always able to count on the veto power of the President [Barack Obama] to veto restrictive laws that jeopardised abortion rights," Dr Parker concludes. "Now we dont have that backstop". 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 }} Weeks after firing host Bill OReilly amid allegations of sexual harassment, Fox News is under fire once again for accusations of racial discrimination. Eleven current and former Fox News employees have filed a lawsuit alleging that Fox employees engaged in abhorrent, intolerable, unlawful and hostile racial discrimination and created a workplace more akin to Plantation-style management than a modern-day work environment". The case, which started with two former payroll employees, made headlines this week with the addition of former Fox and Friends co-host Kelly Wright. Mr Wright claims he was harassed, belittled, and passed over for promotions at Fox because of his race. In one instance, Mr Wright claimed Mr OReilly refused to run a segment on the African American community that he suggested because it showed black people in too positive a light. [Wright] saw what was going on with people who were behind the scenes, and felt he had been subject of race discrimination throughout his career, and thought it was important to step up, Douglas Wigdor, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, told The Independent. The additional plaintiffs, all of whom have worked office jobs for the company, allege varying degrees of racial discrimination and harassment at the hands of former Fox News controller Judy Slater. 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 One black employee alleges Ms Slater told her hair was too ethnic, asked her to beat box for her, and questioned whether all three of her children were fathered by the same man. Ms Slater allegedly told one black employee that the Black Lives Matter movement is racist, and complained to another about the problem of Indian people moving into her neighbourhood. According to the suit, Ms Slater regularly disparaged her black and brown employee's appearance, food, and families. Ms Slaters lawyer, Catherine Foti, told The Independent her client denies all allegations against her. The incendiary language by Attorney Wigdor raising the shameful period of Jim Crow and plantations is outrageous and draws a comparison that demeans the atrocities committed during those times, she said in a statement. These frivolous charges are solely aimed at generating headlines, inflaming racial tensions and poisoning potential jury pools and judges." The lawsuit also names General Counsel Dianne Brandi and Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox as defendants. Plaintiffs in the suit say they complained about Ms Slaters behaviour to Ms Brandi and Human Resources Director Denise Collins as early as 2012. Asada Blanco, the plaintiff in a similar suit filed on Wednesday, says she complained as early as 2008 eight and a half years before Ms Slater was fired. 21st Century Fox fired Ms Slater in March, after 18 years at the company, after complaints about her discriminatory behaviour were leaked to the media. We take any complaint of this nature very seriously and took the appropriate action in investigating and firing Ms. Slater within two weeks of this being brought to our attention, said Fox News in a statement at the time. There is no place for abhorrent behaviour like this at Fox News. The plaintiffs, however, allege that Fox News knew about the allegations long before this year, and only terminated Ms Slater when they learned that former employees Tichaona Brown and Tabrese Wright planned to file a lawsuit. The fact that they fired her before we filed a lawsuit doesnt mean anything, Mr Wigdor told The Independent. Its going to be very obvious that numerous people complained about her conduct and nothing was done. Moreover, Mr Wigdor said, the plaintiffs allege Fox News engaged in a systemic pattern of treating white people differently than black people, with respect to the terms and conditions of their employment, pay and opportunities. 21st Century Fox did not respond to The Independents request for comment, but a spokesperson for Fox News told The New York Times that the network vehemently denies the allegations. Earlier this month the network fired Mr OReilly, their longtime host, after it was revealed that they had paid $13 million to protect him from allegations of sexual harassment. They fired founder and former CEO Roger Ailes last summer, after at least 20 women accused him of sexual harassment as well. 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 }} North Korea could soon develop long-range missiles capable of striking the United States, the top US commander in the Pacific has warned. Admiral Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee he believed Pyongyang's threats against the US needed to be taken seriously. "Just as Thomas Edison is believed to have failed 1,000 times before successfully inventing the light bulb, so, too, Kim Jong-un will keep trying," he said. "One of these days soon, he will succeed." US strike on North Korea 'would have cataclysmic consequences' North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge facing President Donald Trump. Admiral Harris said the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system would be made operational within days, and said any North Korean missile fired at US forces would be destroyed. "If it flies, it will die," he told the committee. He warned that while the defences of Hawaii were sufficient for now, they could one day be overwhelmed. "I don't share your confidence that North Korea is not going to attack either South Korea, or Japan, or the United States... once they have the capability," the Admiral said. In pictures: North Korea military drill Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: North Korea military drill In pictures: North Korea military drill North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un watches a military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) is seen in this handout photo by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) is seen in this handout photo by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video Washington and Pyongyang have stepped up warnings to each other in recent weeks amid concerns Pyongyang may soon conduct a sixth nuclear bomb test. Washington has said all options are on the table, including military strikes, but officials have stressed the current focus is on tightened sanctions on North Korea, which are expected to be discussed at a UN Security Council meeting on Friday chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. While North Korea has yet to test a missile capable of reaching the United States, experts say it could have the capability some time after 2020 US officials have warned a conflict with North Korea could have a devastating effect on ally South Korea and US troops based there, a point Pyongyang underscored by its largest ever artillery drill to mark the foundation of its military. Admiral Harris conceded that North Korean retaliation to any US strikes could cause many casualties in South Korea, but added that there was the risk "of a lot more Koreans and Japanese and Americans dying if North Korea achieves its nuclear aims and does what [North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] has said it's going to do." North Korea has vowed to strike the United States and its Asian allies at the first sign of any attack on its territory. It comes after the former US ambassador to China warned a US strike on North Korea "would have absolutely cataclysmic, disastrous consequences." 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 has conducted a missile test to demonstrate its national nuclear capabilities amid ongoing tensions with North Korea. Military officials said the test involved the launch of intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Minuteman 3 rocket, which was carrying a non-explosive load, travelled 4,200 miles before landing at a test range in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. Colonel Chris Moss, Vandenbergs 30th Space Wing commander, said the test launch was an important demonstration of our nation's nuclear deterrent capabilities. "These Minuteman launches are essential to verify the status of our national nuclear force and to demonstrate our national nuclear capabilities, he said. The move comes amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula after North Koreas decision to carry out a missile test led Donald Trump to threaten to take action against the communist state. The US President said the Norths continued nuclear ambitions were a problem that will be taken care of. If China was not able to resolve the issue the US, with its allies, will, he added. The Republican later deployed what he called an armada of US Navy vessels to the region. Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Show all 11 1 /11 Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The North Korean leader inspects a missile launch from a safe distance Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un discusses plans with military leaders Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch A ballistic rocket of the type launched by the DPRK in defiance of UN sanctions Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch UN officials tracked two ballistic missile launches from North Korea on Friday 18 March Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The Supreme Leader laughed with officials as the missiles were fired Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un was also pictured observing military exercises Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Tanks fire missiles during military manoeuvres at an undisclosed location Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The exercises are timed to coincide with military drills by the US and South Korea Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch As well as a tank-driving competition, amphibious craft carried out landing and anti-landing exercises Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Including paramilitary reserves, the North Korean army is the largest in the world Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The Supreme Leader appeared pleased with the show of force We are sending an armada, very powerful, he told Fox News. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. On Wednesday, the US militarys top commander in the Pacific said an advanced missile defence system being deployed in South Korea was designed to bring North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to his senses. With every test Kim grows closer to his goal, which is using nuclear weapons on US cities," said Admiral Harry Harris. "As Trump and [US Defence Secretary James] Mattis have said, all options are on the table," he added. On the same day, both North and South Korean military forces carried out large-scale military training exercises designed to be a show of strength. China, meanwhile, launched its second aircraft carrier a sign of its own increasing military might. 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 }} Senator Bernie Sanders has said it is likely he would have beaten Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but that it doesnt matter now that Mr Trump is president. He was speaking on Showtimes The Circus when he was asked about populism in the US and how Mr Trump had tapped into it to win. What I recognised was pain. All over this country people are hurting and they are hurting very badly. Trump understood that, by the way, and that's why he said, 'The whole system sucks. I'm going to blow it up, Mr Sanders said. Recommended The difference between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in two charts Mr Sanders has been an outspoken critic of the president's policy on the environment, healthcare, the economy, and a host of other issues. Mr Sanders campaign run garnered millions of supporters however he ultimately lost the Democratic Partys nomination to Hillary Clinton. Some felt he stayed in the race too long and did not work hard enough to bring his supporters over to Ms Clinton once he lost for the sake of the party winning against Mr Trump. The Hill reported that a recent Harvard-Harris survey that showed 57 per cent of registered voters viewed Mr Sanders favorably compared to other political figures in the US, but the poll did not ask whether they would have voted for him for president. Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Show all 15 1 /15 Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Mary Schwalm/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Mr Sanders went on a Democratic party unity tour with party chairman Tom Perez in an effort to galvanise grassroots efforts to oppose Mr Trumps policies despite making claims that he wants the establishment to change. Mr Sanders said the party will have to open its door to independents in order to succeed, adding and I want to see it succeed. Im an Independent, he said, adding that there are likely more fall into that category rather than Republicans and Democrats. At a rally with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Mr Sanders said,we need a Democratic Party which is not the party of the liberal elite but a party of the working class of this country. However, he did not address why he ran as a Democratic presidential candidate instead of campaigning as an Independent. Mr Sanders has not ruled out a possible presidential bid in 2020. 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 }} Immigration rights activists have reportedly been calling Donald Trumps new illegal alien crime hotline with reports of criminal extra-terrestrials. Launched yesterday, the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline was ordered by President Trump earlier this year and is now being run by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the ICE website, VOICE exists to help victims impacted by crimes committed by removable criminal aliens. The Simpsons mock Donald Trump's first 100 days But critics said it discriminated against undocumented migrants, a demographic less likely to commit crime than US citizens, according to numerous studies. Activists used social media to encourage people to report criminal aliens using the hash tag #AlienDay which happened to coincide with a day commemorating the Alien sci-fi films. Immigration was a prominent theme in Mr Trumps election campaign and he vowed to take strong steps to control migratory movements. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on launching the office that the victims of crimes committed by undocumented migrants were unique. These are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place because the people who victimized them oftentimes should not have been in the country in the first place, Mr Kelly said. But migrant rights groups have criticised the decision to launch VOICE. In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President-elect Donald Trump acknowledges guests as he arrives on the platform at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Melania Trump looks on during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice John Roberts after taking the oath at inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as the 45th president of the United States Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump raises his fists after his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets outgoing President Barack Obama before Trump is inaugurated during ceremonies on the Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump resident-elect Donald Trump arrives on the platform of the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Attendees partake in the inauguration ceremonies to swear in Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump US President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address during ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President Donald Trump waves with wife Melania during the Inaugural Parade in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters registered their rage against the new president Friday in a chaotic confrontation with police who used pepper spray and stun grenades in a melee just blocks from Donald Trump's inaugural parade route. Scores were arrested for trashing property and attacking officers AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators protest against US President Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A woman holds a sign before the start of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Anti-Trump protesters prepare banners for a protest against the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, in Berlin REUTERS In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators shout slogans against US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators march, block foot traffic and clash with U.S. Capitol Police at the entry checkpoints for the Inauguration of Donald Trump Alamy Live News In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators display a banner as people arrive for US President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A man displays a placard as people lineup to get into the National Mall for the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump raise their hands as they are surrounded by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A demonstrator wearing a mask depicting Donald Trump protests outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators hold placards as they protest outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush arrive for the Presidential Inauguration at the US Capitol Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden share an umbrella as President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address at the inauguration in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. Vice President Mike Pence takes the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Advisors to President-elect Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon depart from services at St. John's Church during the Presidential Inauguration in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump take cover as they are hit by pepper spray by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump An activist demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump is helped after being hit by pepper spray on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer tries to tackle a protester demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump Reuters/Adrees Latif In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Police arrest and detain a protester in the street in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer falls to the ground as another shoots pepper spray at protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters This just continues the campaign strategy Donald Trump employed to vilify immigrants and identify them with a small number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, Brent Wilkes, head the of League of United Latin American Citizens, told the New York Times. The VOICE initiative has also been dismissed as rhetorical, as it only provides information on individuals in custody, has no additional budget and uses existing ICE staff. Its website also states crimes must still be reported to local police. 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 revealed he backed down on pledges to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) after calls from the leaders of Canada and Mexico. He said that he had received calls from the two countries' leaders asking him to "renegotiate Nafta rather than terminate". His disclosures came a day after he told leaders of the two countries that he wouldn't end the trade pact, and just days after the White House said that the President was considering quitting it entirely. The free trade agreement may still be terminated if "we do not reach a fair deal for all", he posted on Twitter. 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 He claimed that the relationship between the three countries was "good". It comes just two days after a series of rambling and confused attacks on Canada over its policy on milk. Recommended Trump and Trudeau clash in phone call over dairy and lumber He attacked Canada's decision to reduce the price of some milk products, writing on Twitter that "Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult". He went on to warn "We will not stand for this. Watch!" Mexico's foreign minister appeared to agree with Mr Trump that the country was improving its relationship with the President. Relations between the United States and Mexico have seen "enormous progress" during the first months of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said. "We have generated a respectful dynamic through dialogue ... we've advanced enormously in the correct direction," Videgaray told local broadcaster Televisa in an interview. The cancellation of Nafta had been a central part of Mr Trump's election campaign, and he regularly criticised Hillary Clinton for having approved of it. The deal was signed in the early 1990s, since when the United States has gone from running a small trade surplus with Mexico to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. But the President said he had changed his mind since speaking to the leaders of the other countries which are party to the agreement, Mexico and Canada. Nevertheless, other members of his administration echoed his threat that he could still pull out if the US didn't get more favourable terms. The three North American countries form one of the world's biggest trading blocs, and disruption could wreak havoc in the auto, agricultural and other industries. The Mexican and Canadian currencies maintained their rebound early on Thursday after Trump's latest comments. The U.S. dollar dropped nearly 0.3 per cent against its Canadian counterpart and about 1 per cent against the peso. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday that numerous "conceptual flaws" in the treaty needed to be addressed. "Nafta needs tightening," Ross said, adding that more should be done to ensure that participants in the bloc have a trade advantage over other countries. 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 said he will try to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) rather than "terminate" it, as he had previously threatened. Speaking before a White House meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Mr Trump said that he had been planning to terminate Nafta as of two or three days from now, but had been persuaded to reconsider, which he acknowledged would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system. Mr Trump added, Now, if I'm unable to make a fair deal, if I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate Nafta. But we're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. He later said renegotiation was starting today. Recommended Trump former adviser Flynn to be investigated by Department of Defense That came after Mr Trump had tweeted about a softening of his position. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate Nafta rather than terminate, Mr Trump said in a tweet. I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate Nafta. Relationships are good-deal very possible! Mr Trump had escalated his rhetoric on Nafta in recent days, even slapping his administration's first sanctions on Canadian imports. At an executive order signing in Wisconsin, he said Nafta had been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and promised to make some very big changes or get rid of Nafta once and for all. On Wednesday, however, Mr Trump spoke with both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Pena Nieto, in what the White House described as pleasant and productive calls. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time, the White House said, and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. 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 Mr Trump is required to give Mexico and Canada six months notice before pulling out of the deal. His tough talk this week signalled that notice may be coming, making both world leaders anxious. Mr Trudeau reportedly called Mr Trump twice on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss trade. Several senators also urged the president not to pull out of the multilateral trade deal an action experts say could set off a trade war between the three countries. Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy, Arizona Senator John McCain tweeted on Wednesday. @POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement The anti-Nafta rhetoric, however, is not new for Mr Trump, who has called the agreement the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere. He has promised to renegotiate or pull out of the deal since as early as 2015. 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 }} Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. tried to test the limits of the governments position at a Supreme Court argument Wednesday by confessing to a criminal offence. Some time ago, outside the statute of limitations, I drove 60 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone, the chief justice said, adding that he had not been caught. The form that people seeking US citizenship must complete, he added, asks whether the applicant had ever committed a criminal offence, however minor, even if there was no arrest. If I answer that question no, 20 years after I was naturalised as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, Guess what, youre not an American citizen after all? Roberts asked. Robert A. Parker, a Justice Department lawyer, said the offence had to be disclosed. Roberts seemed shocked. Oh, come on, he said. The chief justice asked again whether someones citizenship could turn on such an omission. Parker did not back down. If we can prove that you deliberately lied in answering that question, then yes, he said. The exchange was among several moments of indignation and incredulity during the argument in Maslenjak v. United States, No. 16-309. Several justices seemed taken aback by Parkers unyielding position that the government may revoke the citizenship of Americans who made even trivial misstatements in their naturalisation proceedings. Recommended US judges withdrawn from border posts after sharp fall in immigration Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had heard enough. Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship, he told Parker. Youre arguing for the government of the United States, talking about what citizenship is and ought to mean. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about the failure to disclose an embarrassing childhood nickname. Justice Elena Kagan said she was a little bit horrified to know that every time I lie about my weight it has those kinds of consequences. Parker said the law applied to all false statements, even trivial ones. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said it was rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that the naturalisation laws should be interpreted in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalised citizens. Roberts added that the governments position would give prosecutors extraordinary power. If you take the position that not answering about the speeding ticket or the nickname is enough to subject that person to denaturalisation, he said, the government will have the opportunity to denaturalise anyone they want. The Trump administration has sought to strip the citizenship of a convicted terrorist, and Trump has said that loss of citizenship may be a fit punishment for burning the American flag. Wednesdays case concerned Divna Maslenjak, an ethnic Serb who said she had faced persecution in Bosnia. She was granted refugee status at least partly on that basis in 1999 and became a US citizen in 2007. Along the way, she apparently lied about her husband, saying she and her family had also feared retributions because he had avoided conscription by the Bosnian Serb military. In fact, he had served in a Bosnian Serb military unit, one that had been implicated in war crimes. When this came to light, Maslenjak was charged with obtaining her citizenship illegally. She sought to argue that her lie was immaterial, but the trial judge told the jury that any lie, significant or not, was enough. Maslenjak was convicted, her citizenship was ordered revoked, and she and her husband were deported to Serbia. Christopher Landau, a lawyer for Maslenjak, said that the trial judge had applied the wrong standard and that she was entitled to be tried under the right one. Much of the argument was concerned with what sort of causal relationship the government had to prove between the lie and the grant of citizenship. Kagan asked Parker, the government lawyer, subtle questions to tease out his position. Then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered her own approach. 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 This may be a simple-minded question, Ginsburg said, but how can an immaterial statement procure naturalisation? Thats such a shorter statement of my question, Kagan said. Its perfect. Copyright The New York Times 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 }} North Koreas youth league says it is prepared to wipe out the US with five million nuclear bombs if Pyongyang is threatened. A spokesman for the Central Committee of the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League claimed the Earth will break if North Korea launches an attack and promised to destroy Seoul or Washington if either shows a slight provocation. The warning came following mounting tension in the peninsula after Pyongyang carried out another failed nuclear test earlier this month. The spokesman told the state-run Korean Central News Agency the youths were keeping themselves fully combat-ready to mercilessly wipe out with five million nuclear bombs the group of devils who are trying to bring a nuclear disaster to the inviolable country. Meanwhile, Seoul and Washington announced they had agreed on swift punitive measures against Pyongyang and would continue the deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system despite protests from Beijing. The two countries staged a joint military live-fire drill at the Seungjin fire training field in Pocheon, South Korea near the border with the North. There are now fears North Korea could stage another nuclear test or missile launch to mark the 85th anniversary of the founding of their army by Kim Jong Uns grandfather, Kim Il Sung. In pictures: North Korea military drill Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: North Korea military drill In pictures: North Korea military drill North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un watches a military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) is seen in this handout photo by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) is seen in this handout photo by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill A military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) KCNA/Handout via REUTERS In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video In pictures: North Korea military drill This image made from video of still images broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, shows what was said to be a 'Combined Fire Demonstration' held to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the North Korean army, in Wonsan, North Korea. KRT via AP Video The military carried out a drill in the eastern port city of Wonsan to mark the occasion on Tuesday, which included mock submarine torpedo-attacks and the firing of more than 300 large-calibre artillery pieces. It came as US Vice-President Mike Pence gave a speech in which he said the era of strategic patience was over and Donald Trump vowed to solve the North Korea problem with or without Chinas help. Though it has warned "all options are on the table", Mr Trump's administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its weapons programmes through tougher sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and it remained open to talks. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats described North Korea as "an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority". The US signal of willingness to exhaust non-military avenues came as the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group approached Korean waters, where it will join the USS Michigan nuclear submarine. North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said it was "entirely because of the US" that global denuclearisation had not materialised. "So US officials should know this clearly and feel responsible, not play with their beaks thoughtlessly," it said. Additional reporting by 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 man has been injured after shots were fired at a hospital in Berlin, German police have confirmed. The hospital and surrounding area of Kreuzberg was also sealed off, local news agencies reported. A police spokeswoman said officers had opened fire on a man near the Klinikum Am Urbam medical facility. Recommended Whitehall sealed off as man with knives arrested near Parliament He was hit in the leg, tagesspiegel.de reported, and is currently being cared for at the hospital. According to German Der Tagesspiegal, the man had allegedly attacked the officers, forcing them to shoot. No further injuries were reported. 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 }} Angela Merkel has warned British politicians to rid themselves of illusions over the UKs status after Brexit, as she takes a hard line ahead of negotiations. The German Chancellor told cheering Bundestag members Britain would become a third-party state after its departure and could not expect to enjoy the same rights as remaining nations. A third-party state, and that's what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights, or be in a better position than members of the European Union, Ms Merkel said, to loud applause. I have to say this clearly here because I get the feeling that some people in Britain continue to work under illusions, and that is a waste of time. Future trade deals, the possibility of tariffs and questions over visas and free movements are among the key issues for both sides of the negotiating table. Speaking ahead of a Brexit summit to be held over the weekend, Ms Merkel said that discussions of the UKs financial obligations to the EU must be addressed early. Merkel derails May's plan for Brexit by rejecting parallel trade talks As well as the huge cost of incorporating Brussels laws, Britain must also may a divorce bill expected to cost between 20bn and 60bn. Saying negotiations would only properly start after Junes unexpected general election, Ms Merkel said the 27 remaining EU members agreed that the financial settlement must be set as a priority. Without progress on the many open questions of the exit, including the financial questions, it makes no sense to have parallel negotiations over the future relationship, she added. We need to know how Britain sees its future relations with us. Theresa May has called for talks on a future trade deal with the EU to take place at the same time as divorce negotiations on Brexit, but her plans have been dashed by European leaders. The European Parliament has also poured cold water on the Governments claims the UK can remain in the single market and customs union. In the letter that officially triggered Article 50, the Prime Minister said the UK wants to agree a deep and special partnership with remaining members of the EU to ensure economic and security cooperation. 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 Ms Merkel is battling for a fourth term in Germanys federal elections in September, where she faces competition from nationalists and the left wing. She has vowed to protect the interests of EU citizens living in Britain, including 100,000 Germans, but also to make a fair offer to British citizens in Germany. Ms Merkel said that although negotiations would take an immense effort over the next two years, the EU was ready for the challenge. In terms of substance and organisation, we are very well prepared, she said. The German Chancellor added that EU member states need to define their own interests and goals and will emerge from the Brussels summit with a strong signal of unity. Her speech came as discussions continued over draft guidelines for their Brexit negotiators, which are to be approved at Saturday's summit. We are ready, said chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier as he entered a meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday. 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 }} The European Union should formally suspend Turkey's long-stalled talks on membership if it adopts constitutional changes backed at a referendum last week, a leading member of the EU parliament responsible for dealings with Ankara has said. Kati Piri said ahead of a plenary debate on the matter that if President Tayyip Erdogan implemented his new charter, giving him even more powers, Turkey would close the door on membership. Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey would not wait forever to join the bloc, just a day after the EU executive's top official for membership talks asked Europe's foreign ministers to consider other types of ties with Turkey when they meet on Friday. Ties between EU states and their NATO ally Turkey soured in the aftermath of a failed coup last July as the bloc was taken aback by Erdogan's sweeping security crackdown that followed. Austria has long called for aborting Turkey's EU bid altogether but other EU states have been more cautious, highlighting that the bloc depends on Ankara to keep a lid on the flow of refugees from the Middle East. Erdogan's accusations around this month's constitutional vote that Germany and the Netherlands act like Nazis have taken the relationship to new lows. Piri, a Dutch centre-left European lawmaker, said, As Turkey with such a constitution cannot become a member of the EU, it also doesn't make sense to continue the discussion on integration with the current government, The EU should officially suspend the accession talks if the constitutional changes are implemented unchanged, she told reporters, after the legislature last year passed a non-binding resolution calling for such a move. Piri said any suspension should only come if and when the authoritarian constitution is enacted, which would happen after Turkey holds the next election, now due in late 2019. She said Erdogan could bring them forward to swiftly assume more powers, though the Turkish leader said that was not on the agenda now. Piri stressed, however, the process should be suspended rather than ended altogether: I don't want to take that perspective away from the Turkish population. Turkey should remain a candidate country but we're negotiating with the government. It's become clear over the last two years that this government doesn't want to meet criteria. She said she expected the EU's foreign ministers this Friday would ask the bloc's executive for a formal assessment of where Turkey stands on fulfilling these. Based on that, EU leaders could make further decisions when they next meet in June. One tangible effect of suspending the process would be freezing the annual payments of some 600 million euros ($650 million) of EU pre-accession funds to Turkey. Like Hahn, Piri said Brussels could instead step up talks on enhancing the customs union which Turkey already has with the EU, a process she said could take the next two to three years. 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 Clear political benchmarks on the rule of law and human rights should be part of the process, she said, hoping it would give Europeans leverage to persuade Turkey to reverse policies which the bloc says are undermining democracy there. Piri said, however, that while the process could be launched, it cannot be finalised without a deal in separate talks on reuniting Cyprus, an island long split between an EU state backed by Greece, and their rivals supported by Ankara. Copyright Reuters I had a feeling that I was going to cry through much of The Promise and I was right. When a movie takes place during the Armenian genocide you can expect to be wiping tears from your face once it ends. Most people today know about the Holocaust and what the Nazis did to the Jewish people, but I dont think as many know that during World War I the Ottoman Empire tried to eradicate the Armenian people. Just like the Holocaust, certain governments, especially Turkey, deny the atrocities ever took place. This movie from beginning to end is a fantastic film. It tells a much larger story by focusing on a few families. Oscar Isaac plays Mikael Boghosian, a young Armenian who wants to go to medical school and be a doctor. He doesnt have the money, but uses his betrotheds dowry to pay for the university. Mikaels fiance, Maral stays behind in their village when he goes off to school. Maral is played by Armenian actress Angela Sarafyan. Mikael travels to Constantinople and meets Ana Khesarian, portrayed by Charlotte Le Bon. He falls in love with Ana despite her connection to American journalist Chris Myers, who is portrayed by Christian Bale. The love stories and friendships woven through the movie help draw the audience into the story. Once the war breaks out through the country, you will be hoping they all escape. All of the actors did a superb job and I wasnt surprised to find out the director was Terry George. He was responsible for writing and directing another captivating movie about refugees running for their lives in Hotel Rwanda. This film should be seen, because like many massacres of the past if we forget these events happen we will be doomed to repeat them. The Promise is rated PG-13 for thematic material including war atrocities, violence and disturbing images, and for some sexuality. The movie is 133 minutes long. Rating for The Promise: 4 popcorns out of 5 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 }} Two police officers have been shot in the French overseas region of Reunion by a man suspected of planning an Islamist terror attack. The Paris prosecutors counter-terrorism wing has opened an investigation into the incident in Saint-Benoit, in the east of the island. This morning, two policemen in Reunion were wounded while arresting a dangerous individual, a police spokesperson said. After responding to shots, the policemen managed to restrain the assailant. Local media reported that police raided the mans house after monitoring him for several weeks over extremist online activity. The suspect was said to be in his twenties and had recently converted to Islam. Fearing he would act, a counter-terror squad entered his home at around 6am local time on Thursday (3am BST) but were faced with the suspect wielding a shotgun, local news website LInfo reported. In the ensuing gun battle, one police officer was shot in the arm and another in the hand, while the assailant was neutralised. Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images All three men have been taken to hospital in Reunion, which sits east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, making it the farthest-flung EU region and department. The shooting came just a week after a man murdered a police officer on Paris famous Champs-Elysees. Karim Cheurfi, who had a note expressing support for Isis, emerged from his car with a Kalashnikov and opened fire on a parked police van. Isis claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed Islamist massacres killing almost 240 people since the start of 2015. Several plots have been foiled by the security services, including a planned bombing to coincide with the ongoing presidential election. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has attempted to capitalise on fears of terror and immigration, while centrist frontrunner Emmanuel Macron has also put forward policies to improve security. 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 }} Emmanuel Macron risks lagging behind Marine Le Pen on the the final leg of the French presidential campaign, with the far-right candidate setting the pace and the agenda. The frontrunner was seen heckled by workers on strike over the relocation of their factory to Poland shortly after a visit by his far-right rival Ms Le Pen. Mr Macron had to answer tough questions on his pro-Europe stance after being upstaged by Ms Le Pen, who turned up unexpected at the factory, which is located in an area where voters largely support her. This marked a difficult start for Mr Macron ahead of the elections second round, after he took a 48 hour break away from the campaign trail and has been accused of smug celebrations following his first-round victory. On the night of the first results, Mr Macrons celebratory dinner in a typical Parisian brasserie was not lavish but did no good for his efforts to win the votes of Frances working people. The move played into the hands of Ms Le Pens populist image, with French commentators warning Mr Macron should not be too confident of his success in the final showdown on 7 May. Meanwhile, Ms Le Pen has been seen to set the pace in the final leg of the campaign, with a successful communication coup cutting short her rival. Mr Macron had planned to chase blue collar votes on Wednesday by visiting the Whirlpool home appliances plant in Amiens, in the Somme in northern France. Although Amiens is Mr Macrons hometown, Ms Le Pen swept to victory in the region on Sunday with 23.77 per cent of the votes, in an area where unemployment reaches 13 per cent. But while Mr Macron was meeting a delegation of unionists in the city centre, Ms Le Pen made a surprise visit to the Whirlpool workers on the picket line, opposing closure of the plant next year by its US owners. French far-right Front National (FN) presidential election candidate, Marine Le Pen, poses for selfies with strike employees of Whirlpool, in Amiens, France (Chesnot/Getty) (Chesnot/Getty Images) Throughout the campaign, the future of the plant has been the focus of the debate around globalisation and a symbol of French jobs being lost to cheaper labour abroad. Speaking at the Whirlpool factory, Ms Le Pen told journalists she left a strategic meeting in Paris to meet with the workers on the picket line. She said Mr Macrons visit was not the reason she decided to go, yet she slammed the centrist candidates decision to speak to union leaders in the city centre as a proof of disdain for the employees. Impressed by Ms Le Pen's surprise visit, one of the workers told French television channel BFM TV that he thought Mr Macron lacked courage to address the workers directly. Ms Le Pen pledged to keep the plant open if she is elected president, come what may. Workers demonstrate with a banner reading Whirlpool makes jobless at the Whirlpool home appliance factory, in Amiens, northern France (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) Speaking at a press conference in Amiens, Mr Macron accused Ms Le Pen of using the situation in Whirlpool to serve her political ends. He said he would examine all options to keep the plant open but refused to make promises he could not hold. After being criticised for not campaigning on the ground since Sunday night, Mr Macron followed Ms Le Pen and met some of the workers in what turned out to be a largely chaotic and disorganised event. The encounter, which was live streamed on Mr Macrons Facebook page, saw the presidential candidate in a crowd of workers vividly answering questions about the impact of globalisation on the French labour market. One man said he recognised Mr Macrons courage and boldness to address them that way but criticised him for not having visited the plant before. It has proved difficult for Mr Macron to make his pro-Europe programme appealing to the workers, who are expecting strong measures to tackle chronic unemployment. On his first day back in the campaign swing, Mr Macron, who has never run in a presidential election before, was caught off guard and has been mainly reacting to the anti-Europe and globalisation agenda set by Ms Le Pen. French Presidential Election Show all 20 1 /20 French Presidential Election French Presidential Election Voters line up to cast their ballots REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election Police patrol polling stations in France REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte Trogneux REUTERS French Presidential Election Emmanuel Macron casts his ballot REUTERS French Presidential Election SAA/ French Presidential Election REUTERS French Presidential Election Front National leader Marine Le Pen casts her ballot REUTERS French Presidential Election Early ballots are read as results continue to come in Reuters French Presidential Election Macron supporters react as results come in early in the evening AP French Presidential Election Supporters of Front National leader Marine Le Pen cheer as early results come in Reuters French Presidential Election Alamy French Presidential Election Front National leader Marine Le Pen takes to the stage to address her supporters as fans cheer Reuters French Presidential Election Emmanuel Macron greets supporters on Sunday night AP French Presidential Election Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte Trogneux celebrate the incoming results EPA Speaking to reporters, Mr Macron said politicians and the media had normalised Ms Le Pens programme and that he would unite France by welcoming people from the right and the left to rally around his project. This comes after far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who received 19.3 per cent of the votes in the first round of the election, refused to call on his supporters to vote for either candidate in the second round. This has come as a blow to Mr Macron, who will need the votes from the far-left candidate to secure his place at the Elysee Palace. Some far-left voters could be attracted to Ms Le Pens anti-globalisation programme, which echoes some of Mr Melenchons views. Mr Macron said: I respect Mr Melenchon but I believe his voters deserve better than this and I was expecting something else from him. Former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy said he would vote for Mr Macron in order to prevent Ms Le Pen from winning. Some senior conservative politicians, such as former finance minister in Mr Sarkozys administration, Francois Baroin, publicly said he was ready to work as prime minister in a cohabitation arrangement with Mr Macron. More moderate conservatives loosely gathered under the banner of Alain Juppe have suggested they would join a majority and support Mr Macron. The polls still give Mr Macron as winner of the election with around 60 per cent of the vote, compared with 40 per cent for Ms Le Pen. 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 }} Pope Francis has paid a years rent on a private beach near Rome for a disability charity to use. The portion of the Little Madonna beach on the outskirts of the Italian capital, has been fitted with boardwalks, ramps and water vehicles to provide access to wheelchair users. The Work Of Love charity has rented the area since 2012 and it says it is the only beach along the Roman coast which is truly capable of providing the type of facilities both carers and patients need. It is staffed wholly by volunteers including medical professionals and members of the Italian Paralympic Swimming Federation. Monseigneur Konrad Krajewski, the Vatican official in charge of distributing alms, told CNN that the pontiff wanted to "support the project that helps disabled youth and in particular to cover the cost of the annual rent for the beach." The Reverend Massimo Consolaro, the priest who runs the group, said hundreds of people were now using the beach and the number were rising every year. The size of the donation was not disclosed, but it is one of several made by the Vatican under Pope Francis that have hit the headlines in recent years. 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 Earlier this month the Holy See opened a free laundrette for homeless people in Rome to restore dignity to people who are unable to pay for the service. Showers, a barber shop and a medical centre will be added in the coming months. Since his election in 2013 as the Papacys first ever Jesuit pontiff Pope Francis has emphasised a return to Catholic charity. 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 }} Estonia's defence minister has said that Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to Nato. Russia and Belarus aim to hold joint war games in September that some North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013. Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other Nato governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the so-called Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna cited plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and gear there, possibly to set up a military outpost in its closest ally. For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket, Tsahkna told Reuters in an interview in Malta. This is not my personal opinion, we are analysing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises, he said before a meeting of EU defence ministers. Recommended Hundreds of UK troops sent to Estonia to face off against Putin Russiaas Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the subject. Moscow denies any plans to threaten Nato and says it is the US-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. We see what they are doing on the other side of the EU-Nato border. Troops may remain there after Zapad, Tsahkna said, saying that Tallinn had shared its concerns with Baltic and Nato allies. He put the number of potential troops in the thousands. Such a move could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia just as the US-led Nato alliance stations multinational battalions in the Baltic region in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. The scale of this year's Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of Nato's most pressing concerns, as diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill. Previous large-scale exercises in 2013 employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, Nato diplomats said. Russia, bridling at Nato's expansion eastwards into its old Soviet sphere of influence, says its exercises are a response to Nato's 4,000-strong new deterrent force in the Baltics and Poland that will begin to rotate through the region from June. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January the scenario for the Zapad 2017 exercises would take into account the situation linked to increased Nato activity along the borders of the Union state, Russian media cited, in a reference to the union of Russia and Belarus. The exercises, to be held simultaneously on military training grounds in Russia and Belarus, aim to focus on joint planning, command tactics and joint troop formations, he said. In the future we plan to strengthen the practical nature of such exercises, taking into account the emerging foreign policy realities, Shoigu added, in an apparent reference to the expansion of Nato, which is soon to include Montenegro. The US Army's top European commander has called on Russia to open its exercises to observers to calm Baltic concerns. Asked about Moscow's possible motives for leaving troops in Belarus, Tsahkna said it was likely about President Vladimir Putin's image as a strong leader at home, as well as cementing ties with Belarus, which was alarmed by the Crimea annexation. 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 Russia has presidential elections next year and Putin needs to show strength to the Russian people, Tsahkna said. It's also a question of trust with Belarus. The West has sought to improve ties with Belarus over the past two years, lifting some sanctions in an overture to the country's President Alexander Lukashenko, the man the West calls Europe's last dictator. But Belarus remains Russia's ally and a member of Putin's Eurasian trade bloc. Belarus Defence Minister Andrei Ravkov has echoed Russia's position that Nato is a threat, also accusing Ukraine of raising tensions by aligning itself with the West. Copyright 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 Russian naval reconnaissance ship has sunk after it crashed into a freighter carrying livestock in the Black Sea, near Turkey. Russia's defence ministry said the Liman was holed as a result of the collision that happened on Thursday about 40km (25 miles) northwest of the Bosphorus Strait, in foggy conditions. All 78 personnel aboard were rescued, it was reported. The freighter's crew is also thought to be safe. Sky News reported the ship had sunk, citing Turkey's coastal safety authority. A separate dispatch had suggested 15 Russian soldiers were missing after the crash. The transport vessel was flying a Togo flag and was identified as Youzarsif H by the GAC shipping agent. The intelligence-gathering ship was is part of Russia's Black Sea fleet. 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 }} Israeli rockets have caused a massive explosion near Damascus airport, Syrian state media has reported. As many as five missiles hit a military site southwest of the city at dawn on Thursday which caused some material losses, a military source said. Rebel and regional intelligence sources said the strike hit an arms supply hub, from which Lebanese militant group Hezbollah receives a steady stock of weapons from Iran. The explosion was heard across the capital and in neighbouring towns, waking many, war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, and video broadcast by state television showed a column of fire that could been seen from miles away. In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: Children play underground in Syria In pictures: Children play underground in Syria A child plays in the ball pit at the 'Land of Childhood,' an underground playground in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Abdulaziz, 10, plays in the 'Land of Childhood' underground playground in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Boys look through a show window inside the tunnel that provides a safe passage for children between the two basements that form the 'Land of Childhood' in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Children play at the underground 'Land of Childhood' in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Two girls play at the 'Land of Childhood' underground playground in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Children on the ride on a ferris wheel at the 'Land of Childhood', an underground playground in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Seven-year-old Massa at the "Land of Childhood" underground playground in a besieged town in Syria Unicef In pictures: Children play underground in Syria Children wait in line to buy sweets at the 'Land of Childhood,' an underground playground in a besieged town in Syria Unicef Israel largely stays out of the complicated conflict next door, although the border region is restive and authorities have retaliated to occasional stray rockets with reprisals. Most Israeli air strikes in Syrian territory in the last few years have aimed to prevent weapons smuggling to Iranian-allied Hezbollah, which fights alongside Bashar al-Assads government against Syrias rebels, although the Israel Defence Force (IDF) does not comment on the nature of the missions. Hezbollah, like Iran, is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. On Thursday, Israels intelligence minister said the incident near Damascus absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement, but stopped short of declaring Israel was responsible for the strike. The most dramatic military skirmish between the Syrian regime and Israel since the civil war broke out in 2011 occurred last month when the Israeli military shot down one of several anti-aircraft Syrian rockets fired at its warplanes. It is extremely rare for the Syrian authorities to retaliate to Israeli operations. 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 large explosion has rocked the Syrian capital, followed by a fire near Damascus airport, opposition activists said. Reports suggested the Israeli military had struck a Hezbollah arms depot there. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said the explosion early on Thursday has been heard across the capital, jolting residents awake. He said the explosion is reported to have occurred near the Damascus airport road. Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Israeli Army Radio: "I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah in Iran. Naturally, I don't want to elaborate on this. "The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicated an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act." Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. A pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road. A regional intelligence source told Reuters that Israeli forces had struck an arms depot belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah group. The depot handles a significant amount of weapons that Iran, a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sends regularly by air, the source claimed. As many as five strikes are thought to have hit the depot. On Wednesday France's foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said his country's intelligence service had proof a recent chemical weapons attack in Syria had been carried out by Mr Assad's government. Additional reporting by agencies More follows... 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 }} Turkey has suspended more than 9,100 police officers with alleged links to last years failed coup, according to local media reports. The officers are being investigated for suspected ties to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is now accused by the government of trying to topple him by force last July. It came as authorities issued detention orders for 3,224 people for their alleged links to the movement in a nationwide crackdown on Gulens supporters. More than 1,000 had already been detained by Turkish authorities, accused of secretly infiltrating police forces across the country on behalf of Gulen. The sweep was one of the largest operations in months against suspected supporters of the cleric. It was not immediately clear if the suspensions were directly connected to the detention of the suspects whom Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu described as "secret imams". More than 100,000 people, including police, military personnel and teachers, have been purged from the civil service as part of the crackdown on Gulen's movement since the coup. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The latest detentions come 10 days after voters narrowly backed plans to expand Mr Erdogan's already wide powers in a referendum which opposition parties and European election observers said was marred by irregularities. A leading European human rights body has placed Turkey on a watchlist over concerns about the functioning democratic institutions in the country. The referendum bitterly divided Turkey. Mr Erdogan's critics fear further drift into authoritarianism, with a leader they see as bent on eroding modern Turkey's democracy and secular foundations. However, the Turkish President argued strengthening the presidency would avert instability associated with coalition governments, at a time when Turkey faces multiple challenges including security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants. Additional reporting by agencies. 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 }} Europes summer music festivals have long been a rite of passage. This year there are more boutique bashes, bigger classic festivals and huge headliners gracing stages from Aarhus to Zadar and everywhere in between. So why bother with wellies and motorway madness at home when you can have a festival travel experience that rises beyond the mundane? Weve picked out some of the best. Big hitters Europe isnt short of huge festivals. So if you fancy something different from Glastonbury, why not try Denmarks Roskilde (24 June 1 July; roskilde-festival.dk; 1995 DKK (227))? It takes place within striking distance of Copenhagen and features performances from The Weeknd and Foo Fighters. Oh and theres a naked run if you have the guts to hurdle hay bales around the site in your birthday suit. Paris big pop party of the year is undoubtedly Rock en Seine (25 27 August; rockenseine.com/en; 99 (84)), which takes place over the August Bank Holiday weekend. The site, on the edge of the city, is pretty special: the storied grounds of Chateau de Saint-Cloud. Expect big name headliners including PJ Harvey and The xx, and lots of cool cats in the crowd wearing Breton stripes and smoking furiously like characters from a Godard film. In Norway, one festival stands out: Oya (8 12 August; oyafestivalen.no/en; 2684 NRK (243). Lana Del Ray and M will be worth seeing. Plus you can explore Oslo afterwards as the festival site is a stones throw from the city centre. Music festivals guide 2016 Show all 20 1 /20 Music festivals guide 2016 Music festivals guide 2016 Horizon Where: Bansko Ski Resort, Bulgaria When: 12-17 March Price: From 175 Line Up: Ame, Goldie, Nina Kraviz, John Talabot, Lady Leshurr, Craig Charles Music festivals guide 2016 Live At Leeds Where: Leeds, UK When: 30 April Price: 32.50 Line Up: Jess Glynne, Circa Waves, Mystery Jets, Band of Skulls, We Are Scientists Music festivals guide 2016 Primavera Sound Where: Barcelona, Spain When: 1-5 June Price: 175 Line Up: Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Sigur Ros, PJ Harvey, Tame Impala, Beach House, Suede, The Last Shadow Puppets Primavera Music festivals guide 2016 Best Kept Secret Where: Hilvarenbeek, The Netherlands When: 17-19 June Price: 147.50 Line Up: Beck, Editors, Two Door Cinema Club, Beach House, Bloc Party, Caribou, Half Moon Run Best Kept Secret Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Glastonbury Where: Worthy Farm, Somerset When: 22-26 June Price: 220 Line Up: Coldplay, Muse, Jeff Lynnes ELO, PJ Harvey, Jess Glynne (TBC) Music festivals guide 2016 Roskilde Where: Copenhagen, Denmark When: 25 June-2 July Price: 2,020 DKK Line Up: LCD Soundsystem, New Order, PJ Harvey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foals, Tame Impala, Savages, Skepta, Tenacious D Simon Frsig Christensen / Roskilde Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Hideout Festival Where: Zrce Beach, Croatia When: 26-30 June Price: From 152.90 Line Up: The Martinez Brothers, Joris Voorn, Waze & Odyssey Hideout Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Bilbao BBK Where: Bilbao, Spain When: 7-9 July Price: From 69 Line Up: Arcade Fire, Pixies, Tame Impala, Foals, New Order, Hot Chip, Father John Misty, Years & Years, Wolf Alice Music festivals guide 2016 Open'er Where: Gdynia, Poland When: 29 July-2 August Price: From 130 Line Up: Bastille, Florence + the Machine, Foals, LCD Soundsystem, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The 1975, The Last Shadow Puppets, Wiz Khalifa Open'er Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Electric Love Where: Plainfeld, Austria When: 7-9 July Price: 119 Line Up: Alesso, Zedd, Tiesto, Chase & Status, Steve Aoki, Knife Party Music festivals guide 2016 Melt! Where: Ferropolis, Germany When: 15-17 July Price: From 136 Line Up: Two Door Cinema Club, Disclosure, Jamie xx, Sleaford Mods, Skepta, Jamie Woon Music festivals guide 2016 Sziget Where: Budapest, Hungary When: 10-17 August Price: From 215 Line Up: Bastille, Bloc Party, M83, Sigur Ros, Bring Me the Horizon Music festivals guide 2016 Flow Where: Helsinki, Finland When: 12-14 August Price: 165 Line Up: Sia, New Order, The Last Shadow Puppets, Jamie xx, M83, Chvrches, Four Tet, Stormzy, Daughter, The Kills Flow Festival / Jussi Hellsten Music festivals guide 2016 Rock En Seine Where: Paris, France When: 26-28 August Price: From 119 Line Up: TBC Music festivals guide 2016 Oasis Where: Marrakech, Morocco When: 16-18 September Price: From 110 Line Up: Bicep, Derrick May, Tale of Us, Dixon, Dusky, Hunee Music festivals guide 2016 Latitude Where: Henham Park, Suffolk When: 14-17 July Price: 205.50 Line Up: The Maccabees, The National, New Order, John Grant, Beirut, Father John Misty, Chvrches, Grimes Music festivals guide 2016 Bestival Where: Robin Hill, Isle of Wight When: 8-11 September Price: 190 Line Up: The Cure, Major Lazer, Hot Chip, Fatboy Slim, Craig David, Years & Years, Wolf Alice, Tourist, Katy B Music festivals guide 2016 Isle of Wight Where: Newport, Isle of Wight When: 9-12 June Price: From 186 Line Up: Queen + Adam Lambert, Stereophonics, Faithless, Iggy Pop, Adam Ant, Buzzcocks, Sigma, Jess Glynne Music festivals guide 2016 Citadel Where: Victoria Park, London When: 17 July Price: From 54 Line Up: Sigur Ros, Caribou, Lianne La Havas, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats Music festivals guide 2016 End of the Road Where: Larmer Tree Gardens When: 2-4 September Price: 195 Line Up: Joanna Newsom, The Shins, Animal Collective, Bat for Lashes, Teenage Fanclub, Devendra Banhart, Savages, Cat's Eyes Sonny Malhotra Outliers Hamburgs most famous street comes alive as the eponymous Reeperbahn Festival (20 23 September; reeperbahnfestival.com/en; 95) brings the newest, coolest bands to a wider audience. The street in the heart of the red-light district is really like nothing else in Europe, mixing sleazy and glitzy in a potent beer-based cocktail of debauchery. Not far away are the transformed docks and the citys somewhat more rarefied Elbphilharmonie classical concert hall, which has just been completed. Aarhus is European Capital of Culture this year so why not head up and check out the highly-regarded Northside (9 11 June; northside.dk; 1545 DKK) there? Youll be rewarded by seeing a Radiohead headline set. In Finland, Flow is one of Europes most stylish festivals (11 13 August; flowfestival.com; 175) from the hot Finns to the cool design touches around the Helsinki site, which used to be a power station, and of course the midnight sun as well. Aphex Twin headlines. Primavera consistently books some of the most interesting line-ups of any European festival. Youll be hard-pushed to see the leftfield likes of The Make Up, !!!, Pond, Royal Trux and Death Grips at many other Eurofests this summer. The Barcelona edition (31 May 4 June; primaverasound.com; 175) is the biggie but why not check out the newer, little sister event in Porto (8 10 June; 100) too? Exit takes place in the Serbian fortress at Novi Sad (Exit/Facebook) Something different For those who want things a little more eclectic, Europe offers tons of choice. Timisoaras Electric Castle (July 12 16; electriccastle.ro; 98) is set in a spooky Romanian castle and features acts like Moderat. Fans of Latitude, Green Man and Bestival could easily fall for the likes of family-friendly A Summers Tale (2 5 August asummerstale.de/en; 114) with films, literature, craft workshops and Franz Ferdinand headlining near Luhmuhlen in the countryside between Hanover and Hamburg in Germany, or Melt (14 16 July; meltfestival.de/en; 140) the huge post-industrial dance extravaganza including Bonobo, Ellen Allien and Phoenix at a former open-cast mine near Berlin. Theres even Waves (28 30 Sep; wavescentraleurope.com; 45) a beautiful little boutique celebration of new music from around Europe, which brings good vibes and great tunes to the bohemian quarters of Vienna to round off summer in style. One of the summers longest festivals takes place in the enigmatic country of Georgia. Georgia Electronic Music (GEM) Fest is in Anaklia on the Black Sea coast (14 July 14 August; gem-fest.com; 196) and promises a slew of electronica by the beach including Steve Aoki and GusGus. Sun and fun One of the main reasons we travel for a festival is to chase the sun, the fun, the hot weather vibes and the beach beers. You can find all that and more at festivals like NOS Alive (6 8 July; nosalive.com; 129), which has become a solid fixture in Lisbons annual calendar. With the Portuguese capital dripping in new museums and hotel openings this year, and sets from Wild Beasts, Depeche Mode and Warpaint, its absolutely the right time to visit the city. Budapest hosts one of Europes most famous and long-running festivals (incidentally its also long running in the sense that the bash itself goes on for a whole week, so pack the Berocca). Sziget (9 16 August; szigetfestival.com; 90) has a great riverside location on an island in the Danube; Bad Religion and DJ Shadow will be coming aboard this summer. Further along the Danube in Serbia, Exit (6 9 July; exitfest.org; 98) has another mind-blowing setting inside a castle on the outskirts of the intriguing city of Novi Sad. Take ear plugs its loud and be prepared for the heat. Forget camping in the castle grounds; stay in a dirt cheap B&B in town instead. On the Exit website you can also pick up a ticket that allows you to have the biggest summer party ever with entry to Exits sister event Seadance in Budva on the coast of Montenegro straight after the main Exit festival in July. 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 }} A car hire company made an error when it used a picture of Sark to promote its summer rentals offer. Avis couldnt have picked a worse place to display as part of the advert. Sark, one of the Channel Islands, is completely car-free only tractors, horse-drawn carriages and bicycles are permitted on the island. Not only did Avis use a picture of Sark, it also promoted the idea of taking a hire car there, writing: "board a ferry with your hire car to the island of Sark - just 55 minutes away". The company was seemingly unaware that, once there, visitors wouldnt be able to drive their hire car anywhere. Avis made one big mistake with this advert (Avis) The faux pas was duly pointed out, and Avis has since removed the picture of Sark and donated to the new Sark Sanctuary a centre funded by the Methodist Church that hosts children's clubs, workshops, health services and retreats by way of an apology. To be fair to Avis, its not the first company to make a mistake of this nature in fact it happens far more than youd think. Here are four of the top travel gaffes. 1. New York, Vegas Google attracted attention for all the wrong reasons in 2016 when it showed a picture of a Las Vegas casino to those searching for New York. The search engine erroneously displayed a photo of the New York-New York Hotel and Casino, over 2,000 miles away in Nevada, next to Google Maps searches for New York, NY. The image shows a caricature version of the city, complete with Statue of Liberty replica in front of an obviously faux Manhattan skyline and, to make it even clearer it isnt the real McCoy, a rollercoaster. Google swapped the image for one of Central Park after the mistake was spotted. Google showed this Vegas hotel in searches for New York (Google) 2. Thailand, Outer Hebrides In 2009, a tourist centre in Thailand used a picture of a sandy, white beach next to crystal blue waters to promote Kai Bae Beach. So far, so good. Except the picture turned out not to be of the beach on Koh Chang Island it was actually a snap of Berneray Island in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. The National Park decided to take a picture from the internet to promote the beach, and somehow ended up with a Hebridean island. The Scottish tourist board were relaxed about it at the time, saying: They do say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, so although the use of the photo of a beach on the Isle of Berneray to represent a Thai beach is somewhat misleading, I'm sure it is a compliment in disguise." Thailand used a photo of the Isle of Berneray (Isle of Berneray) 3. Rhode Island, Reykjavik In 2016 Rhode Island tourism officials had to take down a video promoting the state in New England, after it turned out one scene was shot in Reykjavik, Iceland. The video opened with a skateboarder outside a distinctive glass building viewers quickly pointed out on social media that the building in the background was the Harpa concert hall and conference centre in Reykjavik. The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation blamed an editing company for using the wrong footage. Rhode Island looks a lot like Reykjavik (Rhode Island Commerce Corp) 4. France, Hawaii Atout France, which promotes tourism in France, was left with oeuf on its face after an ad campaign promoting the best French beaches was found to feature doctored photos. An image of a woman in the sea in what was advertised as Corsica, turned out to be a stock image taken in Hawaii. And it wasnt the only misrepresentation. A photo of France's famous Cap Canaille headland was actually a stock image of a different beach with the distinctive headland Photoshopped into the background. And a photo claiming to depict Northern France proved to be of Cape Town. A spokesman for Atout France said: "This story is really unfortunate. Atout France ran a campaign with images not of France (Atout France) "It tarnishes a campaign that had a good, globally-understood concept: to surf the theme of the Olympics to encourage those Britons who did not want the crowds to come to France." A bill that would provide incentives for air service to smaller airports such as Elko Regional Airport survived the Nevada Legislatures cutoff deadline and is headed for the Senate Finance Committee. Its through the first hurdle. Then it goes into the budget and no one has seen what the budget will look like yet, said Assemblyman John Ellison, R-Elko. Bills needed to pass the Assembly or Senate before midnight Tuesday to survive. The airport bill, SB363, proposes $2 million over two years to attract airlines to provide service from the smaller airports, and Elko supporters of the bill hope it will lead the way to air service between Elko and Reno. The bill would set up a fund to provide 80 percent grants for incentives, with airports or communities providing the other 20 percent. Sen. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, and Ellison were lead co-sponsors of the bill, and Goicoechea is on the Senate Finance Committee. I do believe we will get the bill out and funded, Goicoechea said Wednesday. He said the committee will wait until the state economic forum report that comes out May 1 before acting. Spring Creek water Ellison also said the water bill related to Spring Creek that is really important for the community survived and is headed to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. He said he disagreed that the bill would have a monetary impact and hopes to get it out of that committee. The bill, AB109, requires the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada to conduct consumer sessions in counties such as Elko where water is provided by public utilities and for the consumer advocate out of the state attorney generals office to intervene in certain instances. We really need it. Unfortunately, the other side knows it, Goicoechea said, referring to the Democrats. He is a co-sponsor of the bill. The Nevada Public Utilities Commission recently held a hearing in Spring Creek to address water issues. Body cams vs. 911 A controversial bill that requires body cameras on police officers passed the Senate on April 17 and was headed for Assembly Government Affairs Committee. Goicoechea said the bill allows up to a $1 increase in the surcharge on phones to fund the cameras and storage, but he said most sheriffs departments in the state already have body cameras. The Clark County surcharge could be huge with all the hotel phone lines there, he said, but not in rural areas. Ellison said at this point he is concerned about the bill because of the chance it would impact improvements to 911 systems. From what I see right now, I wouldnt support it, he said, if there is any kind of chance we could lose funding for 911. The bill, SB176, would require officers to wear the cameras and have the recordings stored for 15 days. Funding could come out of the 25-cent surcharge that already exists in Nevada law. Lithium exploration An Assembly bill, AB52, that would streamline exploration for lithium in Nevada still has a chance. It was pulled from the general file and given a waiver so the bill is still alive, Nevada Division of Minerals Administrator Richard Perry said Wednesday. Its still got some language work to be done on it so hopefully we will be working on that. I fought for that thing, Ellison said regarding AB52. He said he disputes concerns about water contamination, as well as concerns about the provision allowing up to five acre-feet of water for initial exploration of brine. The bill is limited to exploration of lithium in brine. Other bills Goicoechea said he was disappointed in the failure of another bill, SB439, which would allow counties to raise diesel fuel taxes by 5 cents. The funding would have been used for infrastructure, and could have meant $900,000 for Elko County. Elko County has had major road repairs this year because of flooding. Another bill that Ellison has been pushing is AB13, which revises regulations covering limited liability companies. It passed the Assembly and was on the way to the Senate. Its an important bill for anyone who has a business, he said, adding that the bill closes a loophole that would lead companies to go out of state. We worked hard to get that bill out. Ellisons bill that stresses enforcement when slow drivers in the left lane go too slowly on a four-lane highway passed Tuesday night and is headed to the Senate. He said tickets against slow drivers were already in the law, but not enforced, and regulations against driving slow in the left lane werent even in driver manuals. The state has already started putting signs up, Ellison said, stating that the left lane is for passing and higher speeds. Even if the bill fails, they are getting the signs up and it will be back in the training manual. Goicoecheas bill that allows prisoners to appoint someone to care for their animals in lieu of them going to a shelter passed the Senate and is headed for the Assembly. The bill, SB371, drew a lot of attention, even nationally, but Goicoechea said it is a fairly simple bill and fairly clean bill. It has lots of support. He proposed the bill because Nye County asked for help over the costs of maintaining prisoners pets at the county animal shelter while the inmates are incarcerated. Goicoecheas bill that deals with transporting hunters and game in helicopters, SB370, is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly next Tuesday after clearing the Senate. He said another bill, SB251, that allows the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection to provide funding for small gas station operators to clean spills or leaks before they get larger, passed the Senate and heading to committee on the Assembly side. Ellison was disappointed in the failure of his bill to increase penalties for hate crimes against law enforcement officers, emergency medical technicians and firefighters and their families. He cited a news release from Assemblyman Jim Wheeler stating that 57.8 percent of Republican bills fail and only 7.97 percent of Democrat bills fail this legislative session. Goicoechea said Republicans are faring better in the Senate than on the Assembly side, and he was stunned at the number of Assembly bills that didnt survive. 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 }} United Airlines has released a new report outlining how it will change its ways in the wake of an incident where a passenger was dragged off an overbooked flight. A video of David Dao, a doctor, being forcibly removed from a flight from Chicago to Louisville by police after he refused to give up his seat, quickly went viral, leaving viewers the world over outraged at Uniteds response. The incident generated huge amounts of negative press, and the airline has now responded with a list of ways it plans to improve its service. United says it will up the amount offered to passengers who agree to give up their seat on an overbooked flight to $10,000 (7,750). In contrast, passengers on the David Dao flight were offered just $800 (620). Additionally, United pledged to reduce the amount of overbooking on flights and to bump passengers before they have boarded the plane. Extra training will also be provided for staff. The new policy outlines rules to determine which passengers will get bumped if a flight is oversold. Anyone without a seat assignment will be denied boarding, and passengers who paid the least for their ticket are the first candidates to be bumped involuntarily. Passengers who paid the same fare but checked in later will be bumped ahead of those who checked in before them. And unaccompanied minors and passengers with disabilities won't ever be bumped. Man brutally dragged off United Airlines flight: "I want to go home" Oscar Munoz, United Airlines CEO, was chastised for his slow response in apologising for the incident, but has since admitted the airlines failings. I breached public trust with this event and how we responded," Munoz told The Associated Press. "People are upset, and I suspect that there are a lot of people potentially thinking of not flying us." Lawyers for David Dao have since said he will probably file a lawsuit. It isn't the only PR disaster for United this year, either. On 17 April the carrier was accused of unfairly removing a couple travelling to their wedding. Recommended Couple ordered off overbooked easyJet flight day after United scandal Michael Hohl and his fiancee, Amber Maxwell, said they were escorted from their Houston-Costa Rica flight by a federal marshal after a seating error. And United came under fire again after a giant rabbit that was destined to become the world's biggest reportedly died on a United Airlines flight, on the way to its new home with a "very famous" celebrity. Three-foot Simon, a continental giant rabbit aged 10 months, was said to have been travelling from Heathrow to O'Hare in Chicago after being bought by an unidentified star in the United States. Breeder Annette Edwards, from Worcestershire, told The Sun that Simon was expected to grow to be the world's biggest rabbit after his father Darius grew to 4ft 4in (1.32m). 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 }} United to pay passengers thousands to give up seats is just one headline that heralds changes at one of the worlds top three airlines. A panel on the front page of United's website is marked Actions speak louder than words. Click on it, and you learn that the airline is making changes to ensure that we always put customers first. A cynical traveller might wonder what Uniteds top priority has been until now, if it wasnt putting travellers first? In case you have been living in a cave throughout April, the airline gives a brief reminder about why the charm offensive is taking place now: Earlier this month we disappointed our customers and ourselves when a passenger was forcibly removed from one of our planes, the airline says a reference to the dreadful incident at Chicago airport when Dr David Dao was dragged brutally from his paid-for seat on a plane to Louisville. We can never say we are sorry enough for what occurred, but we also know meaningful actions will speak louder than words. Today marks the first step in changing how we fly, serve and respect our customers. The line seized upon by the media is an increase in incentives for voluntary denied boarding up to $10,000. So should you book a United ticket for the chance that you will be invited to accept the equivalent of 8,000 simply for agreeing to travel on a later flight? No. Such a figure might, once or twice a year, be paid out to premium travellers when (for example) a Friday-night trans-Pacific service intended to be operated by a Boeing 777-300 is downsized to a smaller plane with 10 fewer business-class seats. To persuade someone holding a $5,000 return ticket between San Francisco and Tokyo to give up their seat might cost twice what they paid. But you and I in the cheap seats can expect offers to remain in the hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Uniteds sensible move is designed to empower its airport staff to do the right thing: in a high-pressure pre-departure environment, throw money at the problem until it goes away, on the reasonable basis that everyone has a price. Had the carrier offered its Chicago staff a bit of flexibility to raise the bump offer in the first place, in excess of $1,000, someone would surely have willingly walked from the Louisville flight. Regrettably, Britains easyJet shows no sign of flexibility in payments for volunteers. On short flights (up to 1,500km, roughly London-Alicante), the rate is 200 (170); on longer sectors, 300. The airline doesnt even offer as much as the stipulated compensation it has to hand passengers it turns away. Surely giving 250 or 400 (the EU-mandated amounts) to someone whos happy to postpone their trip is better than paying the same sum to someone unwilling to stay behind? The most forward-thinking line in Uniteds statement is: Create an automated system for soliciting volunteers to change travel plans. As the airline is painfully aware from all the footage shown on social media, almost every passenger has a smartphone these days. I infer the new plan is as follows: when it looks as though a particular overbooked flight will blow, send out messages to everyone booked on the plane to assess their price for remaining behind. The passenger can tap on a range of options, from $200 to $1,000, or not interested, thanks. The airline will soon know the sweet spot the figure it must offer to get the required number of offloads. In return, though, the passenger must follow through, and not change his or her mind. United also vows to reduce the amount of overbooking, but has no intention of abandoning the practice. Buried in its Contract of Carriage is a reminder that: All of UAs flights are subject to overbooking which could result in UAs inability to provide previously confirmed reserved space for a given flight or for the class of service reserved. 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 }} There is nothing surprising in Boris Johnson saying that it would be difficult for the UK not to join US military action in Syria against President Bashar al-Assads forces in response to a chemical weapons attack. Since the Second World War British governments have been trying to strengthen the UKs status as the most important military ally of the US. But after 9/11 this obeisance became more craven and knee-jerk, despite producing failed British military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the Trump administration in power in the US, these British efforts to prove to Washington the usefulness and reliability of its links to the UK have become ever more desperate. Britains departure from a major alliance like the EU, and likely confrontation with it over the terms of Brexit, is bound to make Britain less of a power in the world. It therefore needs to foster closer relations with Trumps America along with an unsavoury list of countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. This may be a little more dangerous than it looks because nobody quite knows what the Trump foreign policy will amount to in Syria and Iraq. Is it, for instance, going to confront Iran and tear up the nuclear agreement with Tehran? Has it reverted to giving priority, at least nominally, to getting rid of Assad? These questions are worth thinking about, if only so as not to repeat the ill-thought-out flippancy with which British governments plunged into such dangerous places as Basra in southern Iraq in 2003 where it ended up signing a humiliating truce with the Mehdi Army Shia militia. UK 'could bypass Commons vote' to join US military action in Syria But the historic parallels are not exact, because the British role in the world has diminished since the high days of the Blair governments. Policy then may have been wrong-headed and frequently underestimated the military and political strength of the enemies they were about to take on. These days the gap between British threats and its ability to make them good is wider than ever and is mostly bravado. Johnson spoke grandly of using submarine-based cruise missiles in the Med against Assad, but in fact Britains capacity to do anything militarily effective is very limited. This point was difficult to get across during the debate in 2015 about UK aircraft joining the US-led air campaign attacking Isis in Syria. Few on either side of the argument seemed to take on board that Britain simply did not have the capacity to launch more than a few symbolic strikes. The House of Commons Defence Committee eventually found out that Britain had launched just 65 airstrikes in Syria in the first nine months after the first attack. 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 danger facing Britain is that so much of its foreign policy is based on wishful thinking and fantasy. This was true in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya after 2001 and is true again in Syria today. What is the purpose of bombing Assad? Is it to deter him from using chemical weapons, supposing he did, or to weaken and overthrow him? And if he is overthrown what is to prevent his regime being replaced by Isis and al-Qaeda-type groups who wholly dominate the armed opposition in Syria. David Cameron was happy to pretend that the US and Britain would be aided by 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria willing to battle both Isis and Assad, though anybody with any experience on the ground in Syria knew that such a force did not exist. The clamour over Johnsons claim that the UK might join the US in strikes against the Syrian armed forces is based on a fiction. Both hawks and doves assume an effective British military capacity that is no longer there. Probably Johnsons words will lead to nothing except a few headlines, but play-acting in a place as dangerous as the Middle East can be a risky business. 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 }} OK, hands up: I voted for Jeremy Corbyn to be the new Labour leader in 2015. My reasons were sound at the time: I woke up in the night in a cold sweat, realised my politics were beginning to drift to the right, decided that was a betrayal of all my family have stood for over the past 100 years and concluded that yes, I wanted Jezza to be our Great Leader. Then I went back to sleep. I should emphasise that as a long-term resident of Islington North (still bizarrely and endlessly portrayed in the media as middle class and out of touch have these people ever been to Holloway?), Jeremy is a decent constituency MP. I've contacted him twice and he dealt with both queries. Once, at a book launch, he made a joke about my then-toddler son drowning him out by making a din. I have little doubt he's a good, well-meaning, honest man. That's why when I drove through Tufnell Park the other day and Jeremy cycled past in the other direction, I didn't suddenly veer to the right. But how can I put this? Jeremy's made a few mistakes. I don't have time to list them all, so let me mention one, because it's the biggest mistake and symptomatic of his biggest flaw. His appointment of Seumas Milne has been an unmitigated disaster. Milne who is, like many on the left, upper middle class and guilt-ridden about it to such a degree that he skates close to becoming a proto-Stalinist simply has no understanding of modern Britain. If Corbyn is to triumph, Milne must go (hopefully not back to the Guardian.) If Corbyn can rethink a few key policies (and come up with a few new ones), then there's still a slim chance he could cause the biggest political upset since well, since Trump became President. So as a favour, Jeremy, and because I don't want to see you end up like Ed Miliband, who hangs around my son's school gate smelling of failure, let me help. In 90 seconds: Corbyn v May in final PMQs before the election First, Brexit. Simply bleating about hard Brexit and soft Brexit is a waste of time; no one knows what any of it means. We're leaving the EU, so de-politicise the process and get what's best for Britain: keep the better laws, dump the stupid ones, allow EU migrants to stay without demanding a similar guarantee for UK residents abroad because it's the right thing to do. At the same time, Corbyn and his team must accept that being concerned about migration and militant Islam doesn't necessarily make you a racist. British citizens come in all colours, and indeed the BME communities are often hit hardest when it comes to schools, the health service, transport and housing. Furthermore, although almost everyone accepts that migration has huge benefits, we should be honest about the problems it can bring. There's a funding crisis in schools not because (or not only because) the wicked evil Tories cut funding, but because there are so many more pupils. Young migrants who work do contribute to the economy, but if they stay they will also eventually become sick, and pensioners; also, of course, luring the brightest and best migrants from across the world not just the EU has an impact on the country they left behind for the delights of a damp bedsit in Edgware. The only migrants I want banned are the rich ones who are buying up half of London. As for agricultural workers, the reason local people don't "want to work" may have something to do with the fact that if you live in a three-bed semi in Boston, Lincolnshire, paying council tax, rent, bills and PAYE, you simply cannot afford to work on the minimum wage, whereas if you're a young kid from Portugal who doesn't mind sharing a ramshackle caravan with six other migrants, you can. Boris Johnson defends calling Corbyn a 'mutton-headed mugwump' We should continue to allow migration, therefore, but also raise the minimum wage for all agricultural workers and push foreign languages in our schools much more aggressively. There's no point fighting for the right for our kids to be baristas from Munich to Madrid unless they can speak the lingo. This brings us to education. Whose bright idea was it to encourage 50 per cent of children to attend university? (Hint: Blairs). The university system needs a revamp shorter, sharper, more practical courses, an end to student loans, and a greater emphasis on free thought. Any applicant who is unable to explain why free speech for Islamists, alt-right wingers and Julie Bindel is a good thing should be classed as a snowflake and given a job just outside Boston, Lincolnshire. It's clear Scotland wants to go its own way, and the demographics of Northern Ireland suggest the six counties should be allowed to join the 26 south of the border. A referendum on the future of the whole UK on which the English are allowed a vote is the only way forward. If Scotland does leave, we make a deal with Spain: approve Scotland's application to the EU and you can have Gibraltar (as long as you give up Ceuta and Melilla). Sorry, tax-dodgers. Labour is often portrayed as being soft on crime. Strange, then, that the last Labour government introduced so many new laws, not all of them well thought-out. So here's a suggestion: ban the term "hate crime". If some yob pulls off a woman's burqa in the street, come down on them like a ton of bricks but have the same harsh penalties for insulated communities of second generation immigrants who attack "outsiders" in certain areas. It's all hate. UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images If Jeremy will agree to my radical manifesto, not only will I vote for him on 8 June, but I'll stake my modest fee for this article on him to win and be our next PM. If, on the other hand, he can make no such guarantee, nor can I guarantee my vote. The trouble is, being genetically unable to vote Tory, despising Ukip and the Lib Dems and too much of a hard realist to vote Green, who on earth would I vote for? Unless I stand as an MP against Jezza myself? Hmm, I ponder... Mark Piggott is an author and journalist 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 }} Almost exactly a quarter of a century ago, I wrote a story for the front page of what was then The Independents Weekend Review. It was headlined: Exodus: a story of Christians. It told the tragedy of those people of the faith who were fleeing the lands of the forefathers. I interviewed the only hermit left in Lebanon, in a cave in the north of the country, and he said to me: I am the only hermit left in all the Middle East. His eyes creased in happiness when I acknowledged his unique theological condition. I will never leave Lebanon, he said. No Christian should leave the Holy Land. Those who have left will come back. He exuded faith: childlike, passionate, precise, untrammelled by contradiction or facts. And he was wrong. As I wrote at the time from Iraq, from the West Bank, from Lebanon and from Egypt, probably (that was my word then) from Syria, too the Christians were leaving. A community of 14 million people, the inheritors of the original, eastern church of Christ, were draining away from lands now inhabited by up to 160 million Muslims. Today, the Copts of Egypt alone may be as many as 15 million, but they make up only 10 per cent of the population. Under attack from Islamists, they are leaving for the West in huge numbers which is one reason the Pope lands in Egypt on Friday in the hope (a plaintiff one, I fear) that Christians and Muslims can take violence out of religion. We pretend to care very much for these Christians, of course. (Indeed, we care so much that even the new American President, Donald Trump, was too frightened to call the 1915 slaughter of one and a half million Armenian Christians a genocide this week.) 25 dead during mass at Egypt's main Coptic Christian Cathedral I was much moved some two years ago, in the little Syrian town of Qamishleh, by the local priests and bishops of the Maronite (Catholic), Armenian and Orthodox churches who pleaded with me to stop suggesting that the Christians should seek sanctuary in the West. If they went to Canada or the US or Europe, they said, they will become part of a secular world in which they would lose their faith. This should not be the fate of the Christians of the Middle East. But, after 44 Christian Copts were killed in two church bombings in Egypt this month, can they stay? When Christian Copts are murdered in Sinai, can they stay? When Isis in Iraq tells them to convert or die, can they stay? By 1999, only 10 per cent of the people of Jerusalem were Christian. Just 30 per cent of Nazareths population of 172,000 were Christian. In the British mandate of Palestine, the Christian population was 9.6 per cent of the population. By 1999, it was 2.9 per cent. Meanwhile, 35 per cent of the Christians of the West Bank and Gaza left between 1967 and 1999. And Christianity is supposed to be one of the worlds great religions. I have long debated with Middle Eastern people whether this all goes back to the Crusades. In 1996, I had a long conversation with an Egyptian Muslim, Heba Raouf Ezzat, and this is what she said: We are a different culture. We are a different civilisation. And usually, people think of those who are different as weird, as strange, as sometimes puzzling, sometimes as the opponent. So I think this is the first thing. You had a long history of colonial relations with our region and there was always this conflictual relation that we were the enemy especially during the Crusades and I think that the Crusades is the key word. This is a history which you cant just throw out of the window. This is a history that was there, blood was shed. Through the centuries, both sides actually not only you, but we as well started making our own myths regarding the enemy and it lasted for two centuries or so and you cant just forget it or think its not important or its a very minor issue. There is history and both cultures do have history. And people just dont forget. But, I said to Ezzat, we had Richard the Lionheart and she had Salahedin and you won. Pope Francis makes surprise appearance at TED Talk She would not accept this. And we were defeated later by different people and with different tools, she replied. Im not the person who would say Oh we should overcome this. I think people do have their differences. And its important to look and analyse and try to see why people have their differences and how they can run these differences through time and in different situations. But I think that both sides are responsible for this. What will the Pope say to that? Or to the Grand Imam of al-Azhar in Cairo, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb? Will they be up to the task of self-incrimination? I recall reading some years ago Amin Maaloufs wonderful book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, wherein he recorded how the Crusaders, on their way to Jerusalem, stooped to cannibalism. They ate some of the Muslim dead after a pitched battle in a city in Syria. And the name of that city was Homs. What can I say? Read the book. 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 }} New details have been discovered about the identity of a woman and little girl shown in an iconic picture running from a Jewish prisoner train liberated by American troops during WWII. Though choosing to remain unidentified, Haaretz confirmed that the little girl, now 77, is still alive and living in Hungary. She was one of 2,500 prisoners on the train were from Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Slovakia. They had been in the northern German concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. It was the same camp at which Anne Frank died during the Holocaust shortly before liberation in 1945. Recommended Library to make UN Holocaust archives available to public online It began with Matthew Rozell, a history teacher from the US who was researching his book A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teachers Journey into the Holocaust and the Reuniting of the Survivors and Liberators, 70 Years On. Mr Rozell found the picture in the possessions of US Army veteran George Gross, now an English professor at the University of San Diego, who happened to be one of the soldiers in the liberating unit. Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 119165.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119169.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119229.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119167.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119162.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119166.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119163.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119224.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119168.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119228.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119152.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119226.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119150.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119151.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119147.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119231.bin Hannah Bills Mr Gross had taken a camera on the mission. Haaretz wrote a piece about the picture and a reader in Europe sent an email. A woman who is only referred to as N said she was the granddaughter of the older woman in the picture. The woman and girl are a mother and daughter from a village in Hungary. Just days before the camp was liberated trains full of prisoners the Nazis were going to use for prisoner exchanges with Allied troops left the camp and were headed to Theresienstadt, another concentration camp north of Prague, Czech Republic. The prisoners were freed by American soldiers, received medical care, and many emigrated to British-held Palestine - now Israel. Some, like Ns mother and grandmother, returned home to Mako, Hungary after the war. N told Haaretz her grandmother died in the 1980s and that both her grandmother and mother had lifelong psychological problems as a result of the trauma from being in a concentration camp. Former Taoiseach John Bruton arrives at Leinster House, Dublin, to address the Seanad on Brexit Former premier and EU ambassador John Bruton has urged Ireland to "do everything we can" to make sure "there is no Brexit". British PM Theresa May's plan for leaving the EU would do incalculable damage to Ireland "politically, emotionally and economically", warned the ex-Taoiseach. "We cannot simply wait for this to happen," he said. "While seeking to mitigate the effects of Mrs May's chosen hard Brexit, we must also do everything we can to ensure that, at the end of the day, there is no Brexit." Mr Bruton accused UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson of having "criminally misled" the UK over the consequences of leaving the EU, before rowing back and tempering his remarks. "Boris Johnson attempted to simplify the Brexit issue by saying we can have our cake and eat it," he told a parliamentary committee in Dublin. "It was a memorable phrase and it was criminally wrong. "It criminally misled - I shouldn't say criminally, it is not criminally - but it irresponsibly misled the people of Britain." Mr Bruton told the special Brexit committee the UK might yet change its mind on leaving the EU once it fully realises the alternative. "While I believe it may seem impossibly optimistic today, I believe conditions can be envisaged in which, eventually, the UK voters might decide either not to leave the EU at all, or to decide, after it has left, to rejoin," he said. Ireland should work "to keep that possibility alive", he added. Speaking afterwards to the Press Association, he said Dublin should press the other 26 EU countries to put an offer on the table allowing the UK to remain within the bloc when exit negotiations formally conclude in two years. This would be on the terms that existed in 2015, before the UK renegotiation and without any budgetary rebate. By this stage, voters may come to realise that Brexit is a lot more unpalatable than they expected, he said. Mr Bruton said EU leaders would be "reasonably" receptive to the option, despite misgivings over the number of concessions Britain has won from Brussels over the years. "I want there to be the alternative available, of Britain changing its mind," said the former EU ambassador to the US. "The UK should be allowed an option to change its mind. "Just as politicians are allowed to change their mind if they make a mistake, I think the public should be allowed to changed its minds if it made a mistake." Mr Bruton said he envisaged the possibility of a second referendum at the end of the Brexit negotiation period. He added: "It may well be that the UK has to experience the reality of leaving the EU to realise that the EU isn't such a bad thing after all to be in." He said: "Those people who will react badly to what I'm suggesting have, in my opinion, done immense damage to their own country and their own constituents for the cause they have been advocating. "I wouldn't expect them to react favourably to what I'm suggesting and, in fact, I would be disappointed to be in such company." Dr Peter Boylan told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that the deal was "a scandal" Leading obstetrician Peter Boylan has resigned over a controversial deal to give nuns ultimate ownership of the country's new National Maternity Hospital. The respected medic, a former Master at Holles Street in Dublin, revealed his decision to stand down from the board of the current National Maternity Hospital amid a bitter dispute over the ownership and governance of the new 300 million euro facility. The hospital is planned for a site on valuable land owned by the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent's Hospital in the south of the capital. The order of nuns is due to be the ultimate owner of the fully state-funded facility under a complex arrangement between the current National Maternity Hospital and St Vincent's Hospital Group (SVHG), Dr Boylan, who initially rejected calls to resign, told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that the deal was "a scandal". "I think it's a scandal that in 2017 that the state is going to gift to a religious organisation a National Maternity Hospital, of all things," he said. "I really do not think that's acceptable. "My view is shared by an enormous number of people in the country." Concerns about nuns' involvement in the ownership of the state-of-the-art facility centre on whether their religious ethos will have any sway over clinical care and specifically if women will be able to have terminations if their life is at risk, IVF treatment, sterilisation or contraceptive care. Ambiguity deepened when Bishop Kevin Doran said the Sisters would have to obey church law as owners, regardless of how the facility is funded, and that governance rests with the Pope. Assurances were made publicly this week by SVHG that the Catholic Church will not decide on the care of mothers and babies at the new hospital. The terms of the deal on the new hospital, which was brokered with the Sisters of Charity last November, were supposed to be confidential. SVHG chairman James Menton described some of the concerns as "continued misinformation and untruthful allegations". Close to 100,000 people have signed an online petition opposing any role or ownership for the nuns. There will be nine people on the board of the new hospital - four nominated by SVHG, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity, four by the current National Maternity Hospital, including the Master, and it will be chaired by an international expert in obstetrics and gynaecology. Dr Boylan said: "The whole structure is flawed." It is understood the nuns were not asked to sell the site to the state. A decision on a planning application on the new hospital is due in August or September. ELKO Instead of moving forward with demolition plans, the City will entertain the possibility of selling the old police station to a private business. City Council tabled the discussion of awarding a bid to a company to remove asbestos from the old police station Tuesday to take a deeper look into the possibility of selling the property. Council voted 3-2 in favor of tabling the agenda item after A.M. Engineering owner Aaron Martinez asked the council to consider selling the property to a business like his. Martinez is member of the city planning commission but was speaking to the council as a business owner. The City could come out with the same profit without having to go through the headache of asbestos removal and demolition of the structure, he said. I think there are some opportunities out there and I would request that the city potentially table this item to allow those conversations to take place. Demolition of the building has been in the Citys long-term plans since the police department moved in its new facility. Council member Mandy Simons expressed concern that the request to make the building available for sale was made at the last minute but she was still willing to explore the possibility. It stinks that it comes at the 11th hour but if theres somebody interested in saving that building, a historical building, its hard for me to not give them a couple of weeks to see if thats truly something theyre interested in, she said. Its an amazing building and we cant take it. As a public entity I dont think its responsible for us to continue with it. Council member John Rice eventually voted in favor of tabling the removal of the asbestos but was worried that no business owners had given the council concrete plans on how the building would be used. He also expressed that he would like to see the park expanded instead of selling the property to a private business. What we have not been presented with is a business plan that shows us that it can happen, he said. I wish we had a use and purpose for it but we dont. I believe that the highest and best use for that property is some expansion of the park at this point, given all the work that weve done already. Rice also mentioned that Martinez was one of about three business owners he had heard from who wanted to look into purchasing the property. Martinez said he planned to come up with a more detailed plan as to how his business would fit in the building and into the community. If were talking about the feasibility of the structure and the utilization of it going forward, I definitely have a plan for that in the short term and the long term, he said. In the short term I would operate my business to basically sustain the cost of owning the building. Within that, I have some long-term goals that would benefit the existing Citys facilities. Mayor Chris Johnson and Council member Reece Keener both voted against tabling the asbestos removal. Before Johnson cast his vote he expressed that the City would be better off sticking with its timeline on building demolition since it would be difficult to reverse course on the Citys plans. I think that the City should move forward and award the contract for asbestos. I think some good points have been brought up but things have already been started, he said. I know the community struggle over whether or not buildings should remain in place or be demolished is a tough argument but the City has a good plan in place and should continue along that path. Johnson went on to say he would feel uneasy selling the property if the building still had asbestos in it. Selling the building and making it available for commercial use also represents some challenges to the Citys zoning laws. The old police station property is designated as a civic area for public use. Assistant City Manager Scott Wilkinson said the council would have to reexamine its master plan before making that property available for commercial use. We have other issues with the building we would have to disclose, mold being one of them. The City spent a lot of money over time while the building was occupied addressing mold, he said. Frankly, the City council would have to look at its master plan and try to understand how that property fits with the master plan that had been adopted by the City council. A fully let apartment block, Latouka in Lucan, Co. Dublin, is offered with a guide price of 3m The former Paidi Og's public house in Mulhuddart, Dublin 15, which was offered for sale by the Mercantile Group last year, is to go for auction again next month at a reduced price. It is one of more than 230 properties with combined values of around 39m that will be offered for sale at three online auctions in the next three weeks. They include as many as seven former public house premises, a number of multi-unit portfolios, as well as a range of other investment, commercial and residential properties. Allsop plans to split its online auctions into two days with 144 residential lots on offer on May 17, and 75 commercial lots on May 18. Development lands will be included in both sales. The most valuable lot of the period will be offered at I-Am Sold's Leinster online auction on May 11, when Latouka Apartments, an entire block of 18 units at Ballyowen Lane, Lucan, Co. Dublin, will be offered for sale with a 3m guide price. They comprise ten one-bedroom apartments, seven two-bedroom apartments and one three-bedroom unit, all of which are let and generating 240,000 per annum. This suggests a gross initial yield of 8pc. Agent Lorraine Mulligan of RE/MAX says they have the potential to generate 270,000 per annum considering current market rents. In the Allsop auction on May 18, the former Paidi Og's public house in Mulhuddart has had its guide price reduced to 475,000-500,000, down from around 650,000 last September, when it failed to sell. Located on a one-acre site at the corner of Navan Road and Church Road, the former pub itself extends to 1,575 sq m (16,852 sq ft). Developers may be attracted by its zoning as a local centre and high amenity, suggesting that it has potential for a range of uses. The most valuable lot at Allsop's commercial auction is an investment property, Catherham House, Looneys Cross, Bishopstown, in a middle-class suburb on the western side of Cork City. Generating 88,300 in annual rent, its 1m to 1.1m guide suggests a gross yield of 8.4pc. Boylesports bookmakers occupy the ground floor on a lease that has about 14 years to run. In addition there are two apartments overhead in the 236 sq m (2,544 sq ft) premises. Auctioneer Richard O'Neill says that "yields for regional retail properties with good covenants have compressed over the last 12 months, reflecting increased investor demand". He cites examples of two Limerick properties which sold at recent auctions for higher than expected prices, one of them a bookies at a 7.3pc net initial yield and the other a suburban pharmacy with an 8.1pc net initial yield. "Yields have dropped by between 150 and 200 basis points from around 10pc to less than 8pc in some cases," adds O'Neill. A shopping centre in Co. Meath is being offered for sale with a 900,000-950,000 guide price. Extending to 1,103 sq m (11,874 sq ft), Athlumney Centre, Bailis, Navan, comprises nine retail units and the mainly single-storey property also offers development potential as its site benefits from 150 parking spaces. Three of the units have 70,000 in annual rent reserved and their tenants include Ladbrokes, a pizza takeaway and a Chinese takeaway. The other units, which include a two-storey pub, are vacant. Two shops in Talbot Street may present an opportunity to benefit from the uplift which the street might see from the forthcoming Luas stop on adjoining Marlborough Street. The more valuable of these is 76 Talbot Street, Dublin 1, which has a 730,000-740,000 guide price. A three-storey over basement premises, it extends to 581 sq m (6,254 sq ft) and generates 81,000 in annual rent, which suggests a gross initial yield of 11pc. Its ground floor is occupied by a Euro Saver discount store with a lease that expires in 2019, while the first and second floors are let as offices to Phoenix Sales & Marketing Limited with a lease expiring in 2025. The property is situated to the northern side of Talbot Street, towards the cross roads with James Joyce Street. Three takeaways are also being offered as investment properties and the most valuable of them is 2 Upper Drumcondra Road, Dublin 9, which has a 370,000-380,000 guide price. Extending to 104.9 sq m (1,129 sq ft), this end-of-terrace mixed-use investment trades as Peters and generates 37,000 a year in rent, suggesting a gross yield of less than 10pc. Its accommodation also includes residential space at ground and first-floor level. In Dublin 15, the single-storey Chef In Thai and Chinese Takeaway at Unit 5 Sweeney Mews, Ongar Retail Village, is on a contractual rent of 26,000 per annum. With a 225,000-245,000 guide price, this suggests a gross yield of more than 11pc. In Kinnegad, Co. Westmeath, The Golden Phoenix Chinese restaurant on Main Street generates 26,400 in rent, and with a 200,000 to 220,000 guide price suggests a 12.6pc gross yield. In Allsop's residential online auction of May 17, a number of multi-unit portfolios will be on offer. One of these comprises 10 apartments at Kellys Court, Kellys Row, Dublin 1, which has seen its guide price reduced to between 1.3m and 1.4m. It comprises five one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom apartments, which are fully let and generating an annual rent of 136,200. Ranging in size from 42 sq m (452 sq ft) they include a duplex unit extending to 72 sq m (775 sq ft) and generating 16,200 a year, and a 71 sq m (764 sq ft) penthouse generating 15,000 a year. Early last year another agent offered the same 10 units for private treaty sale with a 1.5m guide when the rent was only 126,000 a year, suggesting a gross yield of 8.4pc. Now the combination of reduced guide price and increased rents suggests a gross initial yield of 10.09pc. In September 2015 Allsop sold 10 other apartments in Kellys Court after auction for around 1m. They then generated a 119,400 rent roll, suggesting a gross yield of about 11.9pc. Kellys Court is located to the rear of Temple Street Hospital close to where a number of student accommodation units are currently being built. At least seven international banks with bases in London have decided to open Frankfurt offices to ensure they can still trade freely throughout the EU after Brexit, according to officials representing the German city. Another 20 banks are also seeking to move at least some staff, German media reported. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and UBS are understood to be among those considering relocating staff. A Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swiss, Indian and a Russian bank have already opted for Frankfurt, Hubertus Vath, managing director of Frankfurt Main Finance, the citys business promotion association, told Handelsblatt on Wednesday. In three of the five US banks, decisions have been made in favour of Frankfurt, or are in the offing, he said. With more than 20 banks, the talks are getting more and more concrete. Speaking to the Frankfurt Finance Summit, Sylvie Matherat, head of compliance at Dectsche Bank said the firm could move around 4,000 staff away from Britain. For front office people if you want to deal with an EU client, you need to be based in the EU, she reportedly said. Big banks cannot afford to wait for politicians and regulators to clarify what changes will be made, she said. None of the banks have yet confirmed the moves, though all big City firms are currently making plans for how they will deal with the fallout from Britains decision to leave the EU. In January, the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange warned that Brexit could cost the city of London up to 230,000 jobs if the Government fails to provide a clear plan for after the split. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this January, UBS Chairman Axel Weber said that about 1,000 of the Swiss banks 5,000 employees in London could be affected by Brexit, and HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said his bank will relocate staff responsible for generating around a fifth of its UK-based trading revenue to Paris. Goldman Sachs Europe chief executive, Richard Gnodde, said in March that the US bank would relocate hundreds of staff out of London even before any Brexit deal is struck, as part of its contingency plans. The company currently employs around 6,000 people in London. Other banks and insurance companies have said that they will be opening European subsidiaries, but while such a move will likely incur additional costs, it wont necessarily mean job moves in every case. The Irish Independents front page on this week 50 years ago carried a stark headline about the jailing of 19 farmers and a Government threat to proscribe the National Farmers Association (NFA the predecessor of the IFA). It was the latest escalation in the farmers rights campaign which had been launched by the NFA in 1966. By 1967, many farmers were refusing to pay local authority rates until the Government delivered a deal on bargaining rights and fair prices for farm produce. Last night, 19 farmers from six counties were in Mountjoy and Portlaoise jails, and tractors, household articles and furniture seized from two Co Kilkenny farmers were in the Garda Depot awaiting auction, reported the Farming Independent. The jailed farmers were arrested in counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Offaly and Longford for failure to pay fines imposed for their part in the NFAs national blockade of January 7. The situation was deemed serious enough by the authorities for then Taoiseach Jack Lynch to issue a televised message. We have no desire to see the disintegration of the NFA, but if it is a choice between that and the maintenance of our basic political institutions and the rule of law, the decision is clear, said Mr Lynch. Expand Close Farming Independent April 25, 1967. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Farming Independent April 25, 1967. All the resources of the State I emphasise all would be used by the Government, declared the Taoiseach. The long march that defined the IFA On October 7, 1966, NFA President, Rickard Deasy set out on a 217-mile march from Bantry to Dublin. En route, he was joined by farmers from the four corners of the country over 30,000 converged on Dublin on October 19. Nine farm leaders staged a 21-day sit-out on the steps of Government Buildings after then Minister for Agriculture, Charles Haughey refused to meet them. Expand Close TJ Maher (far right) leads the North Tipperary IFA group on their march to Dublin during the 1966 farmers' rights campaign / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp TJ Maher (far right) leads the North Tipperary IFA group on their march to Dublin during the 1966 farmers' rights campaign On November 9, the Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, intervened and a meeting with the new Minister for Agriculture, Neil Blaney was arranged. The nine leaders were were Rickard Deasy, TJ Maher, Michael Gibbons, Joe Dunphy, Bob Stack, Jim Bergin, Sean Holland, Hugh Leddy, and Tom Cahill - the longest surviving member who died a year ago. The Farmers Rights Campaign which lasted a further six months, resulted in farmers being jailed and goods and animals seized from farms for non-payment of rates. The campaign eventually won for NFA the right to negotiate with the Government on behalf of farmers. The merger of the beet growers, horticulture, and fresh milk producers' led to the formation of the IFA in 1971. Work on rolling out the Government's long-promised 35m hen harrier scheme is set to "begin immediately," Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed has announced. The Minister confirmed that contracts have been signed with the Hen Harrier Project Ltd, representing a consortium of conservationists, agricultural advisors and environmental scientists, to lead the design and delivery of the new locally-led scheme aimed at saving one of the country's most endangered birds. Following a prolonged procurement process, and significant delays due to challenges from an unsuccessful tenderer, Minister Creed said the new scheme will be in place as soon as possible. "Ireland was one of the last strongholds for this remarkable bird and, with the support of all concerned - with farmers, conservations and the state bodies working in partnership - I believe it can become one again," said Minister Creed. An estimated 4,500 farmers are awaiting compensation for severe restrictions on their lands which have been designated under hen harrier status - some for up to seven years. Although farm lobby groups have welcomed the announcement, they say the Government still have a long way to go on resolving the issue. ICMSA farm services committee chairman Pat Rohan said: "It is a step in the right direction, but it is long overdue." ICSA rural development chairman Seamus Sherlock said farmers must get compensated immediately. "These farmers have been trying to farm with both hands tied behind their back. For many, their land is now valueless," he said. IFA farm forestry chairman Pat Dunne said: "Farmers in hen harrier and other areas expect a scheme that is going to be meaningful and worthwhile." The winning team is led by Fergal Monaghan, an experienced farm advisor, working alongside the Golden Eagle Trust, and Brendan O'Gorman Accountants will provide financial management inputs. Protesters opposed to Sisters of Charity owning the new national maternity hospital gather outside the Department of Health in Dublin. Photo: Caroline Quinn The debacle around the new National Maternity Hospital has sparked an enormous debate about the role of the Catholic Church or Catholic religious orders in providing maternity services. The row is unlikely to be the last about the place and role of religious orders in the area of healthcare. However, there is a wider issue around the role of the State and the question of value for money. The obvious question being asked is how could the State spend 300m building a new hospital that someone else would own? The resultant shambles has now placed the future plan for locating the new hospital at St Vincent's in doubt and - even more importantly - it runs the risk of delaying the delivery of this vital piece of social infrastructure. It follows on from the omnishambles that was the location of the new National Childrens' Hospital. I am not talking about the row over whether it should be at St James's or not, but the fact that around 30m was spent on fees and consultants preparing the groundwork for it to be located in at the Mater Hospital site before it unravelled. Why can we not do a better job when it comes to planning and delivering on vital national infrastructure? The answer is because we are doing it all wrong. The Government selects important national infrastructure projects to support. Politicians are not best qualified to make those decisions. Remember the Bertie Bowl? I have yet to see a single capital-investment plan announced by government that was accompanied by the value-for-money and cost-benefit analysis that prompted the politicians to back that project. So when the Government announces that it will support, let's say, Metro North, it doesn't publish the cost-benefit analysis that tells us why that makes sense over spending the money on something else. In fact, the detailed cost-benefit analysis only follows after a decision has been made to support the project. What we need is a cost-benefit analysis performed at the beginning of all discussions around major capital investment. This isn't about engineering the process of selecting projects solely around money. Benefits can be quantifiable and sometimes non-quantifiable in financial terms. Infrastructure can be social as well as economic. However, that should not be used as cop-out to ignore the obvious exercise of prioritising our infrastructural needs and then implementing the plan. At a colloquium earlier this week organised by the Construction Industry Federation, Tony Horan, president of the Association of Consulting Engineers of Ireland, suggested that Ireland needed to establish a National Infrastructure Council. This would be an independent body that could advise government on key infrastructural priorities and conduct assessments such as cost-benefit analysis. It would provide an evidence-based priority list, and accompanying recommendations into how various projects could be funded, whether through public funding, private funding or public/private partnerships. He cited the UK, which in 2015 set up its own Infrastructure Commission to look at the infrastructural needs of the country over a 20-to-30-year horizon. It has a direct, professional input into prioritising projects. It does this following a 15-week "call for evidence" from stakeholders around the country. He also described how Infrastructure Australia works. Set up in 2008 to develop an infrastructural priority list, this independent body consulted with stakeholders, analysed various needs and made recommendations. This process would create greater transparency around selection of projects, how they are financed and what represents best value for money in terms of the benefits it will bring. Also at the colloquium, Carole Pollard, president of the Royal Institute of Architects Ireland suggested setting up a similar body, which she called a National Infrastructure Delivery Agency. We already have a raft of think tanks, quangos and bodies that skirt around the issue of infrastructural need. We have the Fiscal Advisory Council that advises the government on exchequer funding in general. We have the New Era agency which advises on the semi-State companies. But none of them hits the nail on the head in a way that places long term prioritising of certain projects, and cost-benefit analysis at the very beginning of the process. So inevitably, decisions get made at Cabinet or Cabinet sub-committees to support certain things, but no cost-benefit analysis opens up those decisions to logical scrutiny. There is a very good reason for this - we elect politicians to run the country and we either trust them to do a good job or we don't. If we don't, in theory, we boot them out at election time and vote in somebody else. But it doesn't always work that way. Multibillion euro capital spending decisions are closely guarded by politicians. The process around selection is utterly opaque. An infrastructure council or delivery agency might conclude that certain projects don't make sense. It would have to have very specific rules governing lobbying and it probably could never be given the final say on whether something goes ahead of not. After all we are a democracy. But they have found in Australia that it helps secure cross-party political support for projects because it doesn't look like a vote-getting stunt by government but is based on rigorous analysis. What would an infrastructure delivery agency have to say about the National Children's Hospital or the National Maternity Hospital projects? Presumably it would have identified them as priorities a very long time ago. It would have made recommendations about value for money and cost-benefit analysis surrounding their location and funding. It would have concluded that spending 300m on a maternity hospital that the State would not own, did not stack up and it could have recommended to government or the HSE that alternative arrangements such as purchasing the land etc, should be explored. It probably would not have recommended that the National Children's Hospital go to the Mater site or if it did, it would have produced all of the evidence as to why it should and we might well have it built by now. However, de-politicising infrastructure spending is not easy. In Australia, for example, Infrastructure Australia delivered a list of 100 priority projects. Some 35 of them are in New South Wales (where Sydney is located) and 15 of them are in Victoria (where Melbourne is located). Infrastructure Australia's offices are in Sydney, prompting criticism that it is favouring one location over another. This is par for the course when it comes to selecting projects. That sounds pretty familiar to us in Ireland. However, the Australian body can produce the evidence as to why it has chosen those projects. Australian politicians can ignore the infrastructure body just as government here has ignored the Fiscal Advisory Council at times. The specific issues around the National Maternity Hospital were very unusual if not unique. It was a complex process but the fact that an agreement between two parties on a 300m State spend and on a matter of such public interest was not published, is simply not good enough. When it comes to vital capital investment we need to rethink how we are doing it. Shire has announced that they are currently hiring 150 new staff at its Dublin office. The biotechnology company made the announcement as Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell OConnor attended the opening of Shires new offices on Baggot street in Dublin. The roles will involve the provision of support services across Shires global operations in the areas of procurement and finance. This thriving company and their pioneering work in the field of bio-medicine is exactly the type of business we seek to attract. Our unemployment rate has gone from 15.2pc to 6.4pc and the Government will continue to work for a robust economy for all our people, The Taoiseach said. Read more: Jobs boost at Dundalk firm The announcement was also welcomed by Minister Mitchell OConnor, who noted the contribution that the pharma industry makes to the Irish economy, The pharma industry makes a huge contribution to the Irish economy in terms of jobs and manufacturing exports. We are very keen to attract speciality pharma companies like Shire who will broaden the reach of the industry here and generate new opportunities, she said. The ceo of IDA Ireland also welcomed the news. It is understood the reclassification will be announced on Friday afternoon Two members of the board of Independent News and Media will be reclassified as non independent, non executive directors, independent.ie has learned. It is understood the reclassification will be announced on Friday afternoon to investors when the company will publish its annual report. According to the previous annual report published on April 29, 2016, INM non-executive directors Mr. Terry Buckley, Mr. Jerome Kennedy, Ms.Triona Mullane, Dr. Len OHagan and Mr. Allan Marshall, were considered to be independent by the board. During the entirety of 2015, at least half of INMs board comprised non executive directors deemed by the board to be independent. It is not unusual for a board members status to be reclassified over time depending on changes in their relationship with the business. The duties assigned to non independent and independent non executive directors can also vary. On Thursday the board of INM, whose titles include the Sunday Independent, Irish Independent and independent.ie, met ahead of the publication, tomorrow, of its 2016 annual report. It is understood that the media companys AGM, due to be held in May, will now be rescheduled later this year. A spokesperson for INM said the date for INMs forthcoming AGM would be announced tomorrow. The company said that information regarding directors would be addressed in the annual report. INMs board, led by Leslie Buckley, has been in the spotlight after INM chief executive Robert Pitt made a complaint under new whistleblowing legislation to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE). The complaint prompted the company law watchdog to seek records in relation to the possible acquisition by INM of radio station Newstalk. The complaint, made under the Protected Disclosure Act 2014, was made late last year, around the time INM issued a statement to the stock exchange confirming that an "issue" had arisen between Mr Pitt and Mr Buckley over the proposed acquisition of Newstalk. Businessman Denis O'Brien is the largest single shareholder in INM. He is also the owner of the Communicorp Group, whose assets include Newstalk. In the statement - issued on November 28, 2016 - INM confirmed that an issue arose between its chief executive and chairman in relation to the terms of a possible acquisition by the company. ELKO An Elko man has been arrested on five counts of lewdness with a child that allegedly began nearly 18 months ago. William Lyn Anderson, 49, was arrested April 20 in Spring Creek on a warrant alleging two counts of lewdness with a child, attempted lewdness with a child, open or gross lewdness in the presence of a child, attempted open or gross lewdness in the presence of a child, and unlawful contact with a child under 16 years of age. The victim was between the age of 14 and 15 at the time of the alleged abuse, from October 2015 to May 2016, according to the criminal complaint. Anderson was living with the victim and the victims mother at the time the abuse occurred, said the complaint. Andersons bail was set at $250,000. Four in Dublin alone are capable of providing 3,000 homes, including at least 1,000 social units. Photo: PA More than 800 sites owned by local authorities and public bodies will be offered to the private market to help boost housing supply. Land banks totalling 2,000 hectares and controlled by city and county councils and other bodies including CIE, the IDA and HSE, are to be offered to private developers and housing associations in an effort to resolve the housing crisis and provide at least 50,000 new homes. Four in Dublin alone are capable of providing 3,000 homes, including at least 1,000 social units. Expressions of interest from developers will be sought over the coming days. The Department of Housing has also identified 30 sites owned by public bodies in the main cities of Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford totalling around 200 hectares, another 73 controlled by the Housing Agency of 250 hectares and a massive 1,500 hectare land bank comprising 700 sites controlled by city and county councils. Read more: Using State lands and cutting VAT on new homes will help address housing shortage They include 18 hectares near Galway Port, the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Department of Defence lands in Mullingar and more than two hectares at Connolly Station in Dublin. Others are as small as one-10th of a hectare and could be used for co-operative housing. The Irish Independent has learned that developers will be invited to build homes under a licensing arrangement where land could be sold, provided for free, subject to a long-term lease or arrangement where the land cost is repaid after units are sold. Sources said the State would have to achieve a return for offering the lands, such as provision of new social homes. Appraisals of each site will be completed prior to the lands being offered, to set out the maximum number of units possible. Sources said it provided an "opportunity" to boost housing supply on lands located in areas of high demand. "There could be a disruptive element as well," one said. "These developments could also force other developers to get building. This shows the opportunities. Councils will be asked if there's a plan for their sites, and if not, why not? "These lands were bought for housing and we want to see them developed. The (housing) minister is putting it up to local authorities and other public bodies to deliver homes on State lands. This is gigantic in scale, and a once in 100 years opportunity to get it right." Local authorities will be free to dictate the number of homes for each site, and mix of tenure types. They could also set upper price limits for starter homes or other units, and oblige developers to provide affordable rental, private rental or housing for the elderly. Developments on local authority lands will also benefit from a fast-track planning process. The details will be revealed by Housing Minister Simon Coveney today at the launch of a new Housing Land Map, which sets out residentially owned lands and those in control of public bodies, which is suitable for housing. Whether the recent premium increases are due to an effort to restore underwriting profitability or as a result of the high level of 'soft tissue' claims, one thing's for sure - drivers want to pay less. A well known advert for car insurance mocks the tried and tested method of calling around to a large number of firms for different quotes - and yet this is still the best way to shop for a quote. Same driver, same car, same personal details and experience will proffer wildly different results when ringing multiple agents in varying companies. Communications Director and founding member of Bonkers.ie Simon Moynihan said that in the current climate "it's not aspirational for young people to own a car". "In our office, all except two people [for which having a car is a necessity] take public transport due to the hassle factor and the cost. "We're very fortunate to live close to good public transport links but for people regularly making the rural-urban commute, having a car is a necessity." Independent.ie reached out to a number of different providers to discuss what actually impacts the cost of your premium when you ring up to get a quote. Six main factors that influence costs 1) Driving experience (driving licence type) 2) Age of main driver and additional drivers 3) Claims history (No claims discount) 4) Type of vehicle (age, engine size, value) 5) Where you live - and where you park your car at night 5) Your profession - but mainly if the car is used for work 6) Type of insurance (Comprehensive or Third Party Fire and Theft) Top tips to get the best deal Gary McClarty, MD of MCL Insurance Services, operator of its4women.ie has also offered a number of tips for drivers to keep costs down. 1) Consider a new payment plan "Insurance policies can cost more when paid for on a monthly basis. If drivers can afford to pay their cover on an annual basis, in one lump sum, they should benefit from a cheaper overall cost of insurance." 2) Stay longer "Remaining with the same provider for a number of years may reduce your premium" 3) Shop around "If youre not happy with a quote or the service from your existing provider isnt up to scratch, then shop around" 4) Add another driver "Drivers might find that by adding another driver, their premium is reduced" 5) Consider telematics "Telematics is clever technology that allows insurers to understand a drivers location, driving behaviours and more. If you are skilled, responsible driver, you may benefit from installing a telematics box." 6) Consider a higher excess "If you are prepared to pay a higher excess, which is the amount you contribute towards your claim could also reduce your premium" Are insurance premiums ever going to decrease? Mr Moynihan believes that insurance costs have reached a "tipping point" with high premiums and limiting criteria, and that we are "unlikely to see further increases". "I see costs stabilising and I don't think it will go up much more. That said, firms have managed to hit much higher premiums than before so I really don't see it coming down." The Central Bank of Ireland's fifth Consumer Protection Bulletin, which is focused on the motor insurance sector, was published this month. Compiled from data submitted by 24 motor insurance companies providing insurance to Irish personal consumers in 2016, a total of 11,502 complaints were received in the second half of the year, representing 0.5pc of live policies. Some 6.2pc of the complaints were made by consumers in relation to motor insurance claims. The Governments Cost of Insurance Working Group Report outlines that court awards set the benchmark for all other awards, with figures from The Courts Service showing that the average Circuit Court award increased by 21.2pc in 2015, following a 13.5pc increase in 2014. "In addition, gross incurred claims (a measure of all claims paid and those not yet settled) increased by a total of 44pc from 2013-2015. This is the true effect of a volatile claims environment and highlighted the need for a policy response," Insurance Ireland CEO Kevin Thompson said. "Insurers want predictable claims costs at a level society can afford and the impact of rising costs was evident in areas such as increases in uninsured driving, which is a major road safety issue. "Insurance Ireland highlighted its solutions including bringing consistency to personal injury awards, measures to tackle whiplash, giving increased powers to the Injuries Board to handle more claims and prevent them going to litigation, internationally benchmarking our high personal injury awards and introducing measures to reduce legal costs. "Insurance Ireland believe this report alone does not reduce the risk and costs in the market but implementing the right policies can bring much needed stability and certainty for motorists." Subscribe to The Ready Business show, in association with Vodafone via iTunes or SoundCloud. Far from the world of tech and apps, Maurice Sheehy grew up on a farm in Wicklow which, he says, taught him all about hard work. He is also the classic serial entrepreneur turning his hand from developing one idea to another throughout his business career. From farming and flying to gyms, horses and now a car rental app, Fleet, he has done it all. After school he studied construction management and engineering in college but the downturn happened and he started looking at other options. Training as a commercial airline pilot in the UK was his next step but then back trouble started affecting him and he had to put that to one side. His interest in health and fitness was growing and so he decided to open his own gym in Wicklow. It was a hard sell initially but he was proven right and the first one was a success with a second gym opened in Wicklow soon afterwards. He didnt stop there though and watched to see what trends were happening in other countries. With previous bad experiences with other car rental companies and seeing the success of Airbnb, why couldnt it be the same for cars he thought? He knew he would kick himself if he didnt do anything about it and Fleet was born. The Fleet app has now been developed with people in Ireland able to sign up to make their cars available for rent or for people looking to rent a vehicle. It gives accessibility to everyone tourists, workers, commuters and with pricing 10% lower than the market average. But its up to the owners of the vehicle to price it as they see fit. Fleet is the first of its kind in Ireland with plans to roll out to UK, Australia, New Zealand. Its been a steep learning curve he admits but having the advice of mentors and advisers has been vital and he cites the cool head of his father as being so important. Having said that hes selling his house and moving back in with his folks to invest in Fleet as proof of how much he believes in the product. You have to have a product that is solving a problem and if you believe you can make it work and succeed then just go for it, he says. Because you dont want to be looking back in a few years wondering what if? The Ready Business show, in association with Vodafone , is available via iTunes , SoundCloud and Stitcher or subscribe to the RSS feed of the Ready Business Podcast using your favourite podcatcher. You can check out the full Ready Business Podcast series here . Sponsored by: Longtime Assemblyman John Carpenter will be honored with a memorial proclamation on his life Friday, and Assemblyman John Ellison, R-Elko, and Sen. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, are gearing up for the occasion. Pete and I bought cowboy hats, Ellison said. Carpenter wore a cowboy hat much of the time. The memorial resolution written by Ellison and Goicocechea will be presented on the Assembly floor at 11:30 a.m., and then move to the Senate for action. A reception will follow. Ellison said roughly 25 of Carpenters family will be on hand for the celebration. They will be presented with a large picture of Carpenter, who died in November. He had done so much for this state. We will talk about his accomplishments in the Legislature and as a county commissioner, Ellison said. Carpenter was in the legislature 24 years as a Republican from Elko, and he is already in the Nevada Legislatures Hall of Fame. He left the Assembly in 2010. He also served 14 years as an Elko County commissioner. Sherlock actor Andrew Scott has revealed fans quizzed him on a daily basis over a possible return as Jim Moriarty The Late Late Show is keeping things homegrown this week with a host of Irish names on the bill. Sherlock star Andrew Scott will join Ryan Tubridy in studio to talk about his new Irish film, Handsome Devil. He'll be joined on the sofa by director John Butler and they'll discuss the inspiring message behind the movie and what the marriage equality vote meant to them. Scott no doubt won't escape without sharing a few snippets on Bond and Sherlock. Elsewhere, journalists Owen Conlon and Stephen Breen will discuss the Kinahan clan's feud with the Hutches. They'll reveal how Christy Kinahan, from a respectable north Dublin family, ended up overseeing a global crime cartel worth over 750 million and will explain why this feud could prove to be their downfall. RTE star Katherine Lynch will also appear to talk about the past year which saw her on Operation Transformation and Dancing with the Stars. Also, 50 years after his death she'll pay tribute to her grandfather, poet Patrick Kavanagh. Read More Also, the winner of the Junk Kouture fashion competition for second school students will be showcase their design in studio and music will come courtesy of our Eurovision representative Brendan Murray who will sing Dying to Try and Jesse Heffernan. The Late Late Show, RTE One, Friday, 9.35pm The Board of St Vincents Healthcare Group said it is totally supportive of the controversial plan to move the national maternity hospital to its campus. In a statement after a lengthy board meeting today the board said it reviewed the proposed relocation. It followed heated public debate over the decision to give ownership of the hospital to the Sisters of Charity who control the St Vincents Healthcare Group. In a statement the board said it remains totally supportive of the proposed relocation hospital to its campus under the terms of the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey. A new maternity hospital is urgently needed. Locating it alongside St Vincents acute hospital will provide synergies for both hospitals that will lead to the delivery of modern, world class medical, maternity and neonatal services. Every year St Vincents provides acute care to over 80,000 women and it is strongly positioned to provide women and infant centred care in support of the National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park, DAC. There is a long and historical supportive clinical relationship between both hospitals." The board welcomed the support of the Board of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street to the project at its meeting last night when it overwhelmingly re-endorsed its commitment to the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey in November last. It also welcomed the clarity provided by Minister Harris yesterday when he was unequivocal in his statements that the maternity hospital would relocate to St Vincents under the terms of the agreement reached between both voluntary hospitals. The Board of the two hospitals will now start the next phase of the project, working with the Minister and his officials in effecting the legal agreements to underpin and secure the clinical and corporate governance structures of The National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park, DAC. These legal agreements will be effected in accordance with all of the provisions contained in the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey and endorsed by both hospitals. A student who died suddenly last weekend was "full of dreams", her heartbroken parents said. Denisse Kyle Dasco (20) was a healthy, sporty woman who showed no signs of being unwell before she collapsed in Cork last Friday. Attempts were made to revive her and she was rushed to Mercy University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later. Ms Dasco was originally from Raheen, Co Limerick, and was studying Forensic Science in UCC. She is survived by her parents Mary and Carlos, sister Deborah and brother Carl. Her parents said: "She was always so bubbly, outgoing, entertaining, friendly, energetic, sports-minded and positive. She was full of dreams." Members of the I Love Limerick photography project - which her father is a part of - also spoke about their loss. Close family friend Richard Lynch said: "She was filled with light and love. It's heartbreaking." A spokesman said proposals would be submitted to the Department of Transport as soon as possible. Stock Image: PA A radical proposal to link speeding fines to the salaries of motorists has been rejected by gardai. The Garda Representative Association came out against the concept after the Irish Independent disclosed yesterday that the Road Safety Authority was seriously considering an index-linked system. A spokesman said proposals would be submitted to the Department of Transport as soon as possible. But the association's general secretary, Pat Ennis, told its annual conference in Galway yesterday that he thought it would be unhealthy in a democracy to incentivise the prosecution of people in any context. "I would be vehemently opposed to it. I think it would be very unhealthy," he said. "There are faults and deficiencies in the system, there's absolutely no doubt about it, but the most important thing is the preservation of life. The roads policing policy is designed to reduce deaths on roads and that's the priority." He said the current roads policing policy needed to be more effective and the problems were probably resource-based. Asked about the fake breath tests, Mr Ennis said he did not accept there was collective responsibility. "Generals don't blame their foot soldiers for the outcome of a battle no more than the bank official at the counter was responsible for the calamity of the banking system," Mr Ennis said. A Dublin man unlawfully collected more than 27,000 in dole payments after he failed to declare he had inherited a B&B, a court has heard. Barry OBrien (43) of Old Bridge Road, Templeogue, D16 was ordered by Judge John Brennan to appear again at Dublin District Court in June. He is being prosecuted by the Department of Social Protection. The total was 27,822, prosecution solicitor Joseph Maguire told the court. Since detection he has returned some of the money but still owes 20,622. There is a 450 a month repayment plan in place, the court also heard. The prosecution solicitor said he inherited his parents' B&B at Old Bridge Road in Templeogue and it was later operated by his wife. He had obtained the Jobseekers Allowance while having financial means that did not merit, the court was told. His barrister explained to the court that OBrien had taken over the guest-house when his parents retired. His wife quit her job to care for them and his mother died in 2008 while his father, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, passed away four years later. His parents had significant debts which he was saddled with when he inherited the family business, counsel said. OBrien had been working in the construction sector but after the economic crash in 2008 that work dried up and he signed on the social welfare. He failed to disclose the inheritance in 2012 and the B&B income was in his wifes name. Pleading for leniency, counsel said it was not a calculated deceit and he is making repayments. The court heard he is again employed in the construction sector and the B&B business is also improving. It was hoped he would be able to come up with a lump sum, the barrister said. The father-of-three has pleaded guilty to a charge under the Social Welfare Consolidation Act for unlawfully claiming the social welfare in 2012 and 2013. At district court level, the offence can result in a fine of up to 2,500 and a possible six-month sentence in addition to having to repay the social welfare authorities. The court can only spare defendants accused of dole fraud a criminal record if all the money has been repaid. Judge Brennan noted the unfortunate situation and that OBrien had been saddled with huge debt which he had inherited and he held that there was no specific benefit obtained in light of overall circumstances. Adjourning the case he said the court was not minded to impose a custodial sentence. Former Tanaiste Joan Burton has told a court she felt like she was running for her life as she fled anti-water charges protesters who surrounded her after a graduation ceremony. In sometimes emotional testimony at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Ms Burton said she was called bitch and c*** by angry protesters who trapped her and her special adviser Karen OConnell in two garda vehicles for around three hours. She told prosecution counsel Sean Gillane SC how she eventually made her escape by jumping out of a garda jeep and running up a hill to a waiting garda car with a group of people chasing after her. To be honest I felt I was running for my life, she said. Ms Burton also told how she saw Solidarity TD Paul Murphy holding a megaphone and looking pretty happy with himself as she and Ms OConnell were trapped inside a garda car. She also described being terrified, afraid, menaced and worried during the ordeal. The former Labour Party leader was giving evidence in the trial of Mr Murphy (34) and six other men. The defendants all deny charges of falsely imprisoning Ms Burton and Ms OConnell at Fortunestown Road, Jobstown in Tallaght, Dublin on November 15, 2014. Ms Burton told the court she was invited to Jobstown to speak at a ceremony for around 60 graduates of the An Cosan further education centre, which was co-founded by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone. Read More But she outlined how the event quickly turned sour when a group of protesters gathered and began jostling and directing verbal abuse in her direction. After first going to the An Cosan building where she met graduates and organisers Ms Burton then took part in a graduates procession to the neighbouring Catholic church. She told the court that as she walked along near the back of the procession a number of protesters were crowding around and there was a bit of abuse going on that was typical of demonstrations. They were shouting stuff. The most familiar was shame on you, she said. The former Tanaiste said one person kept coming beside me and putting a camera phone in my face. She said the man, who wore a blue tracksuit, kept saying Talk to us Joan as he held the camera phone to her face. Another man moved in beside her to shield her from the protester and a garda stood on her other side. Ms Burton said that as she walked into the church she was struck on the back of the neck by something like a ball. Then I got hit on my neck again. It was a water bomb of some kind. I could feel the back of my hair and my top being drenched, she said. I tried to regain my composure and keep on walking and going straight ahead. When they reached the church, Ms OConnell gave her her jacket and she dried her hair as best she could with a tissue. After speaking to congratulate the graduates there were discussions involving gardai and it was decided she and Ms OConnell should leave immediately in a waiting unmarked garda vehicle. The two women left by a side door and ran towards the saloon car, getting into the back seat. Two gardai were sat in the front. I was expecting we would be able to leave, she said. But very quickly the car was surrounded. There was a great deal of noise and also banging on the car. From my point of view most worrying was that there was an awful lot of children around. Asked by Mr Gillane what was being shouted, Ms Burton said: People were shouting the usual stuff. Bitch and c***. She continued: They were being derogatory to me particularly and to Karen. Ms Burton said one woman at the side and back of the car was beside herself with rage. She was baying, wishing all sorts of stuff on me. Illness and death, she said. Karen became extremely upset and started to cry, said Ms Burton. The banging on the car was very disturbing and it was extremely intense and it lasted, I think we were in the car maybe for an hour, maybe an hour and a bit. Ms Burton said the garda driver could not move the car because of the presence of children around it. I was quite afraid and extremely menaced and very worried, she said. Ms Burton told Mr Gillane that at one point she saw Mr Murphy through the back window. He had a megaphone and he was speaking and using the megaphone. I couldnt hear enormously distinctly (what he was saying). He looked pretty happy with himself, I have to say. He was smiling very broadly. He was the man with the megaphone. Ms Burton said a garda inspector told them they were to be moved to another vehicle and that when asked to move by gardai they would have to do so immediately. A group of gardai formed two lines described previously by Mr Gillane as a human cordon - holding back the protesters. Ms Burton and Ms OConnell were led through the centre of the cordon by the garda inspector. At that stage it was very terrifying because the crowd surged, she said. Mr Burton told how the inspector walked backwards in front of her, guiding her towards a garda jeep. At this point one of her shoes came loose, but the inspector told her to keep moving if it fell off. Quite frankly I was terrified I was going to fall. I didnt know what was going to happen with the crowd. It was very wild. To be honest, I certainly was terrified of the way the crowd was surging. They made it to the jeep, but it too was blocked in by protesters and had to move inch by inch out of the car park and towards the Blessington Road. She said the same type of shouting and derogatory name calling continued. Eggs, bottles and other items were pelted at the car and the front left windscreen was shattered. Ms Burton said the jeep made extremely slow progress and they were in it for a couple of hours. The plan was for the jeep to take a right turn at a junction near the Jobstown Inn and to head in the direction of Blessington. But it had to turn left as the road was blocked. Ms Burton said they were told they would have to move to another car shortly after the jeep managed to make the turn. Prompted by gardai she and Ms OConnell jumped out and ran to separate waiting cars. The crowd was after us, she said. To be honest I just legged it as fast as I could. I was very cold and stiff. I dont know how I got the energy but I ran as fast as I could. Ms Burton made in to the car and it sped off into the Dublin Mountains before traveling on to Saggart and then the Phoenix Park, where she was able to clean herself up. The former Tanaiste concluded direct evidence before lunch and is to be cross examined this afternoon. Paul Murphy and his co-accused have denied charges of falsely imprisoning Ms Burton and Ms OConnell. The other defendants are councillors Kieran Mahon (39) and Michael Murphy (53), and Tallaght residents Frank Donaghy (71) of Alpine Rise, Ken Purcell (50) of Kiltalown Green, Michael Banks (46) of Brookview Green and Scott Masterson (34) of Carrigmore Drive. Businesswoman Jackie Lavin's legal action against her partner Bill Cullen, and one of his companies, over an alleged failure to complete a 1m deal for the sale of Killegy House in Co Kerry will be heard in October. Ms Lavin, of Osberstown House, Naas, Co Kildare has brought proceedings against Glencullen Properties Ltd and Mr Cullen, also of Osbertown House. Mr Cullen is a director and the firm's sole shareholder. In 2012, Ulster Bank appointed accountancy firm Kavanagh Fennell as receivers over the company's assets including Killegy House, which is located at Muckross, Killarney. The case was briefly mentioned before Mr Justice Paul Gilligan at the High Court on Thursday, who was informed that the matter would take five days to hear. The judge said that due to the volume of cases waiting to be heard the court would not be able to hear a five day action between now and the end of July when the legal year ends. Noting that witnesses will have to travel to Dublin from abroad, the judge said he was listing the case for hearing on October 25. In her proceedings Ms Lavin, who says she is in a committed relationship with Mr Cullen, claims she has been a longtime resident of Killegy House which she says is her home. She claims Ulster Bank created a charge over Glencullen's assets in 1999, including Killegy House. In 2009 Glencullen sought additional credit facilities from Ulster Bank to allow it continue to trade during the downturn. The bank, she claims, was unwilling to do this unless 1m was invested in the company. Following the sale of a property they had in Florida for US$7.25m Ms Lavin said she agreed to advance Mr Cullen 1m so he could pay down Glencullen's liabilities. As part of the arrangement Killegy House would be sold to her. She said she paid over 757,000 to the company but it has failed to complete the sale of the property to her. She claims she has suffered loss and damage as a result of being deprived of the opportunity to buy the house. After the company was placed in receivership it secured an order from the Residential Tenancies Board requiring her to leave Killegy House. Glencullen Properties denies the claims and argues that she is not entitled to any of the orders she seeks. Mr Cullen has not delivered a defence to the action. A Donegal sex offender who punched his former girlfriend as their six month old baby lay beside her on a bed has been jailed for one year. Martin O'Hara (31), who has a previous conviction for rape, lashed out at the woman a second time after he left the house with their baby without her agreement following an argument. O'Hara of St Benildus Avenue, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting the woman causing her harm in Tallaght on July 28, 2016. Judge Karen O'Connor said it had been violent and aggressive behaviour in the presence of a young baby and had no doubt been terrifying for the woman. She noted his remorse and his recent efforts at rehabilitation and counselling. She said the physical effects of the assault had been at the lower end of the scale but noted the woman also suffered psychological effects. Judge O'Connor imposed a 12 month prison term. Garda Stephen Neilan told Fiona Murphy BL, prosecuting, that O'Hara and his former partner had at that time been in a relationship for about 18 months and had a child together. He said they were in Dublin visiting O'Hara's sister and his partner woke him up that morning to look after the baby as it was his turn. The woman said he was in a bad mood and he asked her to make a phone call. She asked if he could do it so that she could have a rest. She said O'Hara walked over and punched her once as the baby lay beside her. O'Hara went then downstairs and made the baby's bottle but an argument ensued. The woman told him she would ring the gardai if he took the baby out. O'Hara left with the baby in a buggy and was followed by his partner and sister. He got his sister in a headlock and punched her as she tried to take the baby back and then struck his partner on the nose as she tried to take the buggy. She fell to the ground dazed. Garda were alerted and were initially concerned for the child but O'Hara returned the child without incident after he was spotted walking near Luas tracks. The baby was calm and uninjured. O'Hara was arrested and admitted lashing out at the women. Garda asked him what he had been planning to do and he replied that he was not sure. Gda Neilan said the pair remained in a relationship for a time but it later broke down. The woman said she had been scared because her child was taken without her consent and she now attends a domestic violence counselling service. Gda Neilan said O'Hara has 15 previous convictions which include less serious assaults, burglary and one conviction for rape. Kitty Perle BL, defending, said things went off the rails for O'Hara when he was 15 years old and his father died. He began abusing drugs and getting into trouble. She said he had severe difficulties with anger in his background. She said the relationship with his former partner had been a tumultuous one and there was now no contact between them. She said he wished to offer an apology to the woman. Ms Perle said he had taken steps towards rehabilitation for the first time in his life and had attended counselling. She asked the court to take into account his guilty plea and remorse. She said it was a despicable offence but asked Judge O'Connor to be as lenient as possible in the circumstances. In this year, the 50th anniversary of the introduction of free education in Ireland, it is appropriate that we reflect on our educational landscape. There are always issues that need to be addressed. The manner in which our second-level sector is constituted is quite complex and structures that properly allow for parental choice, fairness, diversity and reflect community need, as well as comprehending the necessity for ongoing educational reform, will always require adjustment. In so many respects, however, we can be thankful for where we stand. The strong legacy of achievement that has marked the last half-century is based on a respect for the educational process that has been a hallmark of our society. All studies indicate a broad confidence in a system that values personal growth and achievement and which, crucially, continues to attract committed young people of such high calibre to our teaching ranks. Adequate state funding has traditionally been an issue. The value we place on education has prompted a generosity from parents that means a disproportionate amount of funding in our sector comes from this voluntary source and this has allowed successive governments prioritise elsewhere knowing that school communities will always manage and find a way. It's what we do, but this imbalance in funding is fundamentally inequitable and needs to be addressed. We should acknowledge that as the veil of austerity that frustrated so much of our endeavour in schools in recent years is drawn back, the light of new initiative and promise gives us much to be optimistic about. The creation of additional deputy principal posts in many larger schools will remove some of the pressure that has prompted a significant number of our principals to retire. In addition, the restoration of some posts of responsibility and a more effective model of distributed leadership should allow the principal to emerge more as an instructional leader and to alleviate some of the difficulties experienced in managing a modern school. A new school self-evaluation model sets out standards in leadership and learning and provides a frame that will encourage best-practice and allow for promotional opportunities for aspiring leaders. A revision of how special education needs resources are distributed is welcome, though there is the caveat that, in this most important area, the erosion of resourcing that has marked the last decade of cutbacks should still be reversed. A review of DEIS that has allowed more schools into the programme is also progressive, though a more tapered index of school eligibility for securing resources, and not one that has schools either fully-in or fully-out, warrants consideration. Obviously, there still remain difficulties over some aspects of Junior Cycle reform, but the changes in teaching and learning that are taking place are fundamentally positive and a broad engagement that offers an enrichment of practice and planning for the future has to be welcome. A programme of increased IT provision is also underway and while there are deficiencies in what this can deliver given funding, it will allow improvements in our schools further embracing the challenge of this digital age. We are in a generative space. It is a time to be optimistic, as the potential of improved resourcing and the underlying strengths that have made the education endeavour so productive over the years can impel us to meet the needs of those in our care and to prepare us all for what will unfold in the next half-century. It is all the more urgent therefore that the outstanding industrial relations issues that have stymied some aspects of this developmental work in our sector are addressed. We need to move forward with reform, but in a collaborative and open way that will allow for the resolution of any issues. That we are compromised at present as to how we engage in school planning and how we schedule parent-teacher meetings is of concern and, notwithstanding the creativity and resilience of those in our schools, this urgently needs to be addressed. As we move towards a new academic year, it is vital that there is values-based leadership and good grace displayed by all. Ultimately, for all of us involved in education, there is always more that unites than divides us. John Curtis is general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB), the representative organisation for school management in the voluntary secondary school sector. The JMB annual conference is taking place this week A grassroots move within the ASTI to bring an end to industrial action in schools is being resisted by the union leadership. It is understood that about 500 members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) have so far signed a petition to support a special convention to consider a suspension of all action, pending the outcome of the upcoming round of pay negotiations involving all public service unions. While ASTI industrial action has not closed schools since November, an ongoing campaign of resistance is causing considerable disruption in about 500 second-level schools. The move to seek the convention started last Sunday, following some robust debate at the ASTI annual conference last week, where a significant number of delegates challenged the union's current dispute strategy. The growing concern of rank-and-file members was evident at the conference, with one delegate describing the ASTI as a "hermit kingdom" and "the North Korea of the trade union movement". Almost 450 ASTI members resigned in the first three months of the year, and the conference heard that the figure would continue to increase. The ASTI is the only union not to have accepted the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA), which means members are not benefiting from pay restoration measures and earlier access to permanent contracts for young teachers. ASTI members are also refusing to co-operate with junior cycle reforms. The petition that has been circulating since Sunday seeking support for the convention was proposed by former ASTI president Brendan Broderick and seconded by long-standing activist Noel Buckley. The petition has sparked a feisty response from ASTI president Ed Byrne, who posted a notice on the union website describing it as an "unofficial letter" which was not approved by the officers of the union. Mr Byrne stated "the letter is undoubtedly misleading" and pointed out the majority of delegates voted not to allow the same motion on to the floor last week, and that it had also been defeated at recent meetings of the union's executive committee and its 23-member governing body, the Standing Committee. Mr Byrne added: "The motion attempts to overturn a national ballot where a majority of 5pc on a 75pc turnout rejected the November proposals... I believe that the attempt, albeit within the rules, to bring the motion to a Special Convention is a denial of the sovereign right of the members in a ballot." While progression rates have improved slightly, it still means that almost one-in-seven first years did not enter second year. Picture posed The number of computer science students dropping out of their course after first year is showing a welcome improvement. However, computing and other courses with a high maths content, such as engineering and construction, are still losing proportionately more first-year students than other disciplines. Overall, there has been a small decrease in college drop-out rates, although more than 6,200 'freshers' in 2013/14 did not continue into second year. Students from farming backgrounds, and female students, are least likely to feature among first year drop-outs, according to a report from the Higher Education Authority (HEA), 'A Study of Progression in Irish Higher Education'. Figures in the report show that 85pc - 34,000 - of first years in 2013/14 progressed to second year, up from 84pc in previous years. While progression rates have improved slightly, it still means that almost one-in-seven first years did not enter second year. However, a student who does not continue into second year does not necessarily abandon college, and may turn up on a new course later on. Read more: Women paid less than men 'because of the subjects they study' First years on higher certificate/ordinary degree programmes (level 6 and level 7), overwhelmingly available in institutes of technology, are most likely not to continue with their course, with drop out rates of 26pc and 27pc. Institutes of technology generally showed lower progression rates than universities and teacher training colleges. Traditionally, computer science students are among those most likely to drop out in first year, and only five or six years ago as many as 30pc on some programmes were not continuing to second year. Now, their progression rate has jumped, on average, from 80pc to 84pc on honours degree (level 8) programmes. In universities the retention figure on these programmes is now 88pc, compared with 80pc on institutes of technology. HEA chief executive officer Dr Graham Love attributed the improved progression rates in computer science to additional funding for retention initiatives such as maths enabling courses, peer mentoring and tutorials. Stable But he said while the overall retention figures are stable and comparable with competitor countries, the lower progression rates in key skill shortage disciplines such as computer science, engineering and construction remained a source of concern. The report also highlights the gap between progression rates in honours degree courses in different types of third-level colleges: teacher training college showed the highest progression rate, at 94pc, ahead of 89pc in universities and 84pc in institutes of technology. Overall, aspiring doctors, who face tough competition for places, are most likely to stick with their course, with medicine showing the lowest non-progression rate of 3pc. MC Sinead Burke pictured at the Go For it Event in the OReilly Hall in UCD. Photo: Kyran OBrien Irish girls were urged to "do what makes their hearts leap" and pursue careers in the technology sector, at a talk in UCD yesterday. The vice president of Microsoft, Peggy Johnson, told an audience full of schoolgirls not to give up on information and communications technologies (ICT). The tech multinational found girls begin to lose interest in technology at the age of 15, and wants to stop them "opting out". Ms Johnson said that it was encouraging having female friends while she studied engineering, as the classes were largely male, but added "that that situation's changing of course". Watch: Microsoft to give 10,000 schoolgirls a chance to 'go for it' through tech engagement "I really encourage those sort of informal mentoring groups amongst young women, because it absolutely helped me," she said. A panel at the launch of the #GoForITGirls initiative saw tech-savy women talk about what inspired them. In attendance was the youngest tech wizard Lexi Schoene (9), who won the CoderDojo Coolest Project Awards last year. Garda management has ordered a major investigation into "irregularities" surrounding vehicle checkpoints in the Cork district, the Irish Independent has learned. Senior Garda bosses are probing whether false checkpoints were logged on Pulse - the official Garda computer system. Two rank-and-file gardai are under investigation and face the prospect of disciplinary action, according to well-placed sources. The gardai are suspected of having set up false checkpoints while on the clock. Significantly, the alleged falsification of checkpoints emerged in recent weeks after the revelations surrounding the one million false breath tests emerged in the public domain. Sources told the Irish Independent the issue was being taken particularly seriously by Garda Headquarters, given the series of discrepancies surrounding Garda figures that had emerged in recent weeks. "This is being taken very seriously given the pressure the force is now under about its classification of figures," said a source. A Garda spokesman said there had been no disciplinary action served on any officer "to date". Follow up queries about the issue got no response. Expand Close Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan. Photo: Mark Condren / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan. Photo: Mark Condren The Irish Independent revealed earlier this month a review has been launched into the force's statistics on homicides, which include murder and manslaughter. Read more: 'If there's nothing to hide then what's the problem?' - Independent.ie readers react to garda demand for filming ban The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) has examined whether more than 40 homicide cases were wrongly classified. The Cold Case Unit fed into the review, which, when published, will be forwarded to the Policing Authority. Among the cases examined were ones involving missing persons, murder-suicides and the death of a toddler. It's understood a number of discrepancies were found in the classification of figures. It has also been confirmed that other figures, such as domestic violence, have thrown up suspected irregularities. The sheer scale of the internal investigations into Garda numbers have raised major questions for Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan, who is grappling to keep the confidence of her rank-and-file officers. Ms O'Sullivan will appear in front of the Policing Authority today, where she will be quizzed over the alleged falsification of figures. The Garda chief still has the confidence of the Government, despite surviving a series of no confidence motions levelled by the Opposition. But she faces a series of difficult challenges ahead, including her appearance at the Disclosures Tribunal, which is examining the alleged smear campaign by Garda management against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. Her predecessor, Martin Callinan, is also a key witness at the tribunal, along with Superintendent David Taylor. Supt Taylor said he was directed to lead the smear campaign and negatively brief journalists against Sgt McCabe. Rank and file gardai are to hold a special delegate conference to fully debate the fallout from decisions made by the leadership of their association before they called off their threatened pay strike last year. A row resulted in several contentious motions being tabled for the agenda of the Garda Representative Association's (GRA) annual conference in Galway. But delegates decided yesterday to defer discussion of the motions to a two-day conference to be held in January. Association general secretary Pat Ennis said that the association had started a strategic and operational review and had engaged an external agency, Ampersand Consulting. "It is a genuine effort to professionalise our own association and how we go about our business," he said. It was decided that considering the rules and Constitution should form part of that review and it was more appropriate to defer the debate until the review had been completed and to take any recommendations in that context, Mr Ennis added. The general secretary said there had been issues "surrounding the granting of derogations last November and the circumstances behind it". He was referring to the controversial decision made by the leadership following discussions with Garda management on the eve of the proposed strike in November to allow members of a wide range of special units to be exempt from any strike action and to carry out their duties as normal. That decision was made without consultation with the membership and led to a number of motions being tabled for this week's conference including a vote of no confidence in the general secretary. Mr Ennis said yesterday he intended to brief the delegates on the circumstances leading up to the decision during a closed session of the conference. He said he had no doubt he had the support of the members. The removal of a motion of no confidence in him, he said, had been made by the central executive. "There was another motion that contained defamatory comments about me and other persons and legal advice recommended that it be removed and the executive decided to remove the other one also. "There was no discretion in relation to the defamatory motion. "I would have had no difficulty addressing a motion of no confidence in relation to me in conference at all," Mr Ennis added. He said he was not aware of a letter, which had been handed by representatives of nine divisions to Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald, complaining about the withdrawal of the motions. It is understood the decision to allow some of the specialist units to be exempt from any strike action was taken after Garda management made it clear that the security of the State would be threatened if there was an all-out strike. Dr Rhona Mahony and deputy chairperson of the board Nicholas Kearns at a meeting of the board of Holles Street last night. Photo: Arthur Carron Controversial plans to build a new 300m maternity hospital, which would be owned by the Sisters of Charity, were re-endorsed by the board of Holles Street maternity hospital last night. The majority decision to back the plan, despite strong public opposition and heated debate, was taken at a four-hour board meeting. Former master and board member Dr Peter Boylan, who earlier this week was asked by text message to resign over his criticism of the project, did not step down. No attempt was made by other members of the board to ask him to resign at the meeting. Dr Boylan was one of three members, along with Dublin Lord Mayor Brendan Carr and Sinn Fein Councillor Michael Mac Donncha, who voted against the re-endorsement at the meeting. The new maternity hospital is due to be built at the St Vincent's Hospital campus at Elm Park on a site owned by the Sisters of Charity, who control the St Vincent's Healthcare Group. The Holles Street board's deputy chairman Nicholas Kearns, flanked by hospital master Dr Rhona Mahony, said after the meeting that the board welcomed the statement from St Vincent's Healthcare Group on Tuesday saying all services which are legal will be available in the new hospital. Read more: National Maternity controversy: 'This is a storm in a teacup, a non-issue' - Dr Rhona Mahony calls text from brother-in-law 'intimidating' This agreement between the hospitals "provides that the clinical, financial and operational independence of the new national maternity hospital at Elm Park shall be enshrined in its memorandum and articles of association and all related legal agreements," he said. The board of St Vincent's Healthcare Group will meet today to review its involvement but it is unlikely to pull out of the deal. Speaking after the meeting last night, Lord Mayor Brendan Carr, a Labour councillors said: "I didn't support the statement. I was very disappointed that they didn't seem to be cognisant of the serious concerns the people have, serious concerns of 300m of public money being put into the development. "And there didn't seem to be any attempt or any willingness at all for the majority of the members of the board to try and take that on board." He warned: "This was all about reaffirming a decision that was made last November which has caused this problem in the first place." Councillor Mac Donncha said: "It was a lengthy meeting and at times it was a tense meeting, a very intense discussion on the situation in terms of the agreement and where that stands." "I voted against the re-endorsement because I still have major concerns, particularly because of major developments in the past week. The issue of ownership was not addressed," he added. Earlier he called on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to consider a compulsory purchase order to buy the site of the hospital from the religious order. "I believe if that was to happen and the board supported that, that it would resolve a lot of the concerns" he added. Meanwhile fears are growing that the independence of the new national maternity hospital could be potentially comprised by the selection of its board. The hospital will have a nine-member board, with four drawn from St Vincent's Healthcare Group and the same number from National Maternity Hospital Chartered Trust. Read more: Dr Peter Boylan profiled: 'Captain' who delivered 6,000 babies is married to sister of current Master The ninth member will be an international obstetrics expert who will have the casting vote. However, details over the selection of this crucial ninth member, contained in the agreement worked out between the boards of Holles Street and St Vincent's, have sparked concern. The selection will be by three-person committee, two of whom will be representatives of St Vincent's, with just one from Holles Street. Legal experts say this could create potential problems. The National Maternity Hospital board has formally accepted the resignation of Dr Peter Boylan. In a letter penned by Deputy Chairman Nicholas Kearns, he wrote: "Dear Peter, thank you for your letter received this morning by email. "Without accepting or engaging in any way with the contentions contained in your letter, I wish to express on behalf of the hospital its thanks to you for the many years of excellent professional care and service you have provided. "I am also saddened that your association with the hospital has ended and wish you every success in the future." Dr Boylan announced his resignation on Newstalk's Pat Kenny Show this morning. He claimed he was a "lone voice" more or less on the board but added that he was not a lone voice in the community or the medical profession. He also said the board is "deaf to concerns of the public it serves." Dr Boylan voiced his concerns late last week about controversial plans to build a new 300m maternity hospital, which would be built on land owned by the Sisters of Charity. 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 Earlier this week the former master and board member Dr Boylan was asked by text message to resign over his criticism of the project but he did not step down at the time. The plans to build the new hospital were re-endorsed by the board of Holles Street maternity hospital last night. Read More Dr Boylan was one of three members, along with Dublin Lord Mayor Brendan Carr and Sinn Fein Councillor Michael Mac Donncha, who voted against the re-endorsement at the meeting. Dr Boylan told host Pat Kenny that the "vote was overwhelmingly" in favour of the move to St Vincent's at the meeting. He said he is grateful that there was no motion calling for him to resign from the baord at Wednesday's meeting. He said: "I can't remain a member of a board which is so blind to the consequences of its decision to transfer sole ownership of the hospital to the Sisters of Charity and so deaf to the concerns of the public which it serves." He added: "I am grateful that no motion was put to ask me to resign from the board last night. I appreciate that. "However, today on reflection I have decided I am going to resign and I have resigned. I have written to the deputy chairman informing him of that." Dr Boylan said: "I'm a lone voice, more or less, on the board. But not a lone voice in the community or the medical profession." He went on to confirm that his resignation: "Today on reflection I have decided I am going to resign." He said: "It is the new and the next Master of the National Maternity Hospital who will have to pick up the pieces" of this decision. However Dr Boylan claimed that the Sisters of Charity will "hang in tough". "They take a very long term view... they're very difficult to negotiate with." He added: "The women of this country need a new NMH on this site, but not encumbered by ownership of religious orders." He said it was a "scandal" that the state would gift the new facility to the Sisters of Charity. Dr Boylan also denied he was responsible for the publicity surrounding the decision to move the site, adding that he was out of the country when the story first broke. "I didn't start this, I advised that it was likely to cause concern when it was put into the public domain." Details of his letter to the board were later released by Newstalk. In the document (below) Dr Boylan outlined his reasons for stepping down. He concluded: "It is my view that the desire to achieve a much-needed new hospital has blinded you, and most members of the board, to the long-term consequences for the care of women in the future. "I am saddened to end my association with the hospital to which I have dedicated my professional career in this way." Expand Close Letter from Dr Boylan to the board of the National Maternity Hospital. Picture: Newstalk / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Letter from Dr Boylan to the board of the National Maternity Hospital. Picture: Newstalk Expand Close Letter from Dr Boylan to the board of the National Maternity Hospital. Picture: Newstalk / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Letter from Dr Boylan to the board of the National Maternity Hospital. Picture: Newstalk Reacting to the decision Labour leader Brendan Howlin said it is "hugely disappointing" that Dr Boylan had resigned from the board. Speaking on Today with Sean O Rourke he said Mr Boylan was told his responsibility was to the board and not the citizens of Ireland, the women who will use this facility." Mr Howlin said "If we have learnt anything from financial crisis and other crises, it is that we need to listen and encourage debate and concerns should be raised and not be suppressed. That is what has happened here." He said we need to have those points openly debated. "I think we have to migrate to a different world. It's not going to be a big bang. The controversy over the NMH that has ignited will start that debate. We should go with a rational expectation that state funded institutions that are 100 %funded by the taxpayer, that are staffed by people who are 100pc paid by taxpayer should be owned and controlled by the taxpayer." Deputy Howlin said Ireland's health systems are democratically funded and controlled and they should not be subject to any ethos. He said he would like to see a settlement made that is reasonable to all parties. "I would like to see an agreement made with the Sisters of Charity to hand over the land, obviously for financial consideration, also taking into account the redress board monies due. I think a settlement that would be reasonable to all parties that would put this whole issue of democratic control beyond doubt." After refusing to step down from the board of the National Maternity Hospital earlier in the week, Dr Peter Boylan has today announced his resignation. Dr Boylan has been a very outspoken critic of plans to have the new 300m National Maternity Hospital built on a site owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity. Plans to have the new hospital located on the Elm Park campus at St Vincent's Hospital have also been met with public outcry. Here are the five latest things you need to know about the controversy: 1. Why has Dr Peter Boylan decided to step down now? Explaining his decision on Newstalk's Pat Kenny Show, Dr Boylan said he felt like a "lone voice" on the hospital board and couldn't "remain a member of a board that is so blind." His decision follows a board meeting on Wednesday night where plans to build the new hospital on the Elm Park site were re-endorsed by the board of Holles Street maternity hospital. He was initially asked to resign by text message last Sunday. Deputy chairman Nicholas Kearns and current master of the hospital, Dr Rhona Mahony requested that he resign "immediately". After initially saying he refused to step down in an interview on RTE's Morning Ireland on Tuesday, he announced his resignation with immediate effect today. In response to his resignation, Deputy Chairman Nicholas Kearns wrote: "Dear Peter, thank you for your letter received this morning by email. "Without accepting or engaging in any way with the contentions contained in your letter, I wish to express on behalf of the hospital its thanks to you for the many years of excellent professional care and service you have provided. "I am also saddened that your association with the hospital has ended and wish you every success in the future." Read More 2. What happened at the board meeting last night? After a four-hour meeting, there was a majority decision to back the plan, despite strong public opposition and heated debate. Dr Boylan was one of three board members, along with Dublin Lord Mayor Brendan Carr and Sinn Fein Councillor Michael Mac Donncha, who voted against the re-endorsement at the meeting. The Holles Street board's deputy chairman Nicholas Kearns, flanked by hospital master Dr Rhona Mahony, said after the meeting that the board welcomed the statement from St Vincent's Healthcare Group on Tuesday saying all services which are legal will be available in the new hospital. There was no motion at the meeting calling for Dr Boylan's resignation, he has stepped down today of his own accord. 3. What does the agreement concerning the new hospital say? The agreement between St Vincent's Healthcare Group and the National Maternity Hospital says independence of the maternity hospital will be protected through a new Designated Activity Company providing maternity services. The company will be a 100pc subsidary of St Vincents Healthcare Group. However, the group's ownership is conditional on allowing the State a golden share in the company to protect its independence, and a lien, so that it cannot be used as collateral against loans or sold. The document states that both hospitals "will benefit significantly by this re-location" and outlines the details of the arrangement. You can read the full agreement here . 4. What has the Health Minister been saying about all this? Health Minister Simon Harris has said the need for a new hospital should outweigh any concerns members of the public had over the site's links to the Catholic Church. Earlier this week, Mr Harris also said a legal contract between St Vincents Hospital and the State still needed to be written up and agreed to. "The agreement reached between the two hospitals endeavoured to address issues, in terms of clinical independence, in terms of ownership What I want to say to people today is these are issues that we will tease through," he said. 5. Will the new hospital be going ahead as planned now? Due to the fact the hospital board has voted overwhelmingly in favour of the current agreement, and the fact Minister Harris is backing the move, it seems likely that the new National Maternity Hospital will be going ahead as planned. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has today acknowledged the increasing challenge placed by violent criminal gangs in our prisons and the difficulties prison officers have in dealing with them. Speaking at the Prison Officers Association annual conference in Galway today, she said gangs are unrelenting in wanting to continue their criminal activity. We know the resources that gangs have. We know the kind of sustained work that we have to do, whether it is in our communities or in our prisons, to ensure that we are continually challenging and making sure that criminal gangs cannot continue their work wherever they are, she said. "They have more and more resources as we know, and we have to make sure we have the resources in place to deal with that challenge, she added. The minister was addressing one of the key issues raised by the Prison Officers Association at the conference. Its president Stephen Delaney said gang warfare and drug culture continue to flourish within the prison estate. In the current environment we have threats, assaults, drugs, weapons, attacks on family homes and the capacity to control matters outside the prison, he said. He called for the minister to develop a system that removes the power from the gangs and the gang members within our prisons by whatever means are necessary. Prison gangs should not decide what is best within our prison, the state is responsible for all that happens inside our prisons and surely it is not going to cede this responsibility to people who have committed the most serious crimes and many who have no intention whatever of changing their ways, he said. He called on a specific unit to be set-up to isolate violent and influential gang members. The only solution Minister is isolation so instead of closing our places of work could we open one that will prevent these individuals from spreading their influence through the entire estate, he asked. The issue of violence in prisons, and attacked on prison officers was also raised at the conference. Mr Delaney said that in a recent analysis conducted by the State Claims Agency the projected level of assaults by prisoners on prison staff for 2017 was estimated at 107. Lets just think about that for a minute; more than two prison officers per week will be assaulted in the course of their work, he said. The nature of these assaults included concussion, lacerations, cuts, fractures burns and bites. The most of these injuries were to the head and face thereby leaving a permanent reminder to the injured officer of the incident, he added. He called for adequate protection measures such as batons, incapacitant spray and body cameras, to be implement to improve safety for prison staff. On the issue of pay the POA accused the Minister of wanting to play with the wind in both halves by acknowledging an improved economy but resisting pay restoration to 2008 levels. We simply cannot wait any longer to have our 2008 pay levels restored. Other sectors are now benefitting from our wage cuts and we have yet to benefit this is surely unfair and unjust, said Mr Delaney. In response, Minister Fitzgerald said the country continues to face a challenging, although improving, economic situation. Clearly we want to reach out as much as we can. The pay talks will be commencing, the government will approach that wanting to reach out to public sector workers, but there are constraints, she said. This morning it was revealed that 800 sites owned by local authorities and public bodies will be offered to the private market to help boost housing supply. Here is a breakdown what we know so far: What is happening? Land banks totalling 2,000 hectares and controlled by city and county councils and other bodies including CIE, the IDA and HSE, are to be offered to private developers and housing associations in an effort to resolve the housing crisis and provide at least 50,000 new homes. Four sites in Dublin alone are capable of providing 3,000 homes, including at least 1,000 social units. Expressions of interest from developers will be sought over the coming days. The Department of Housing has also identified 30 sites owned by public bodies in the main cities of Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford totalling around 200 hectares, another 73 controlled by the Housing Agency of 250 hectares and a massive 1,500 hectare land bank comprising 700 sites controlled by city and county councils. Where are the sites in Dublin? Four sites in Dublin that are currently controlled by local authorities have been identified or are about to be offered. Lands Kilcarbery in south Dublin, near Clondalkin, totalling 29.5 hectares, capable of providing 892 units of which 30pc will be social. Dublin City Council will also offer three sites on Infirmary Road in Dublin 7 (capable of providing at least 585 units); Oscar Traynor Road, Dublin 9 (minimum of 640 homes) and Emmet Road in Dublin 8 (minimum capacity of 420 homes). Another site on the Enniskerry Road, in Sandyford, controlled by the Housing Agency, is 2.8 hectares and will be used to provide social houses and affordable rental units. There are also two sites in the capital that are controlled by public bodies earmarked for the new plan. More than two hectares at Dublin's Connolly Station in the north inner city and 11 hectares in the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum will be used. Where are the sites outside of the capital? Approximately 18 hectares of land in Galway harbour will be used for the scheme while a further 56 hectares in the Port of Cork, Tivoli will be used to provide housing in the cities. Ceann Station in Galway will also provide lands. This morning's Irish Independent is also reporting that 5.6ha in Naas Devoy Barracks will be used while just over three hectares on the Portlaoise Road in Mountrath, Co Laois will also be included. Meanwhile 15ha in Ballindoe, Co Sligo will also come under the plan. How will it happen? Independent.ie has learned that developers will be invited to build homes under a licensing arrangement where land could be sold, provided for free, subject to a long-term lease or arrangement where the land cost is repaid after units are sold. Sources said the State would have to achieve a return for offering the lands, such as provision of new social homes. Appraisals of each site will be completed prior to the lands being offered, to set out the maximum number of units possible. Sources said it provided an "opportunity" to boost housing supply on lands located in areas of high demand. "There could be a disruptive element as well," one said. "These developments could also force other developers to get building. This shows the opportunities. Councils will be asked if there's a plan for their sites, and if not, why not? "These lands were bought for housing and we want to see them developed. The (housing) minister is putting it up to local authorities and other public bodies to deliver homes on State lands. This is gigantic in scale, and a once in 100 years opportunity to get it right." What role will local authorities play? Local authorities will be free to dictate the number of homes for each site, and mix of tenure types. They could also set upper price limits for starter homes or other units, and oblige developers to provide affordable rental, private rental or housing for the elderly. Developments on local authority lands will also benefit from a fast-track planning process. When will we know more? The full details will be revealed by Housing Minister Simon Coveney today at the launch of a new Housing Land Map, which sets out residentially owned lands and those in control of public bodies, which is suitable for housing this afternoon. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson arriving at Global Radio in Leicester Square, London, ahead of an interview with LBC. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire Former Taoiseach and EU ambassador John Bruton has launched a blistering broadside on Boris Johnson. Mr Bruton said the Foreign Secretary had "criminally misled" the UK over the consequences of leaving the EU, before rowing back and tempering his remarks. "Boris Johnson attempted to simplify the Brexit issue by saying we can have our cake and eat it," he told a parliamentary committee in Dublin. "It was a memorable phrase and it was criminally wrong. "It criminally misled - I shouldn't say criminally, it is not criminally - but it irresponsibly misled the people of Britain." The ex-Taoiseach, who was EU ambassador to the US between 2004 and 2009, said the UK was thrust into a predicament because it did not try to understand the complexities involved. Mr Bruton said smaller countries like Ireland were forced to get to grips with how the EU operates for their own interests. "The UK felt until now that they don't have to understand the EU, that they would make a decision to leave and that the consequences were going to be light," he told senators on a special Brexit committee. "I think they are going to find that the consequences will not be light - and that is the consequences they are paying for this search for too much simplicity." Read More Mr Bruton also suggested the UK might yet change its mind on leaving the EU, once it fully realises the alternative. Expand Close Foreign secretary Boris Johnson arriving at Global Radio in Leicester Square, London, ahead of an interview with LBC. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Foreign secretary Boris Johnson arriving at Global Radio in Leicester Square, London, ahead of an interview with LBC. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire "While I believe it may seem impossibly optimistic today, I believe conditions can be envisaged in which, eventually, the UK voters might either decide, either not to leave the EU at all, or to decide, after it has left, to rejoin," he said. Mr Bruton said Ireland should work "to keep that possibility alive". The current hard Brexit proposed by Theresa May would do incalculable damage to Ireland "politically, emotionally and economically", he warned. "We cannot simply wait for this to happen," he added. "While seeking to mitigate the effects of Mrs May's chosen hard Brexit, we must also do everything we can to ensure either that, at the end of the day, there is no Brexit." Aidan MacManus who won the Irish bread award for the Georgina Campbell Irish Breakfast Awards 2017. Photo: Mark Condren Ever wondered where you can find the best bread in the country? Georgina Campbell's Breakfast Awards has given us the answer. While there was no overall best breakfast champion - the awards commended the various elements which make the meal 'the most important of the day'. It was the King Sitric seafood restaurant and guest house in Howth, north Dublin, that brought home the best bread accolade with its homemade soda bread. The King Sitric has been serving up fine seafood since 1971, but owners Aidan and Joan MacManus said restaurants "were only as good as their last meal". Passed on from his grandmother, Mr MacManus said his recipe had "only had a couple of changes" over decades, including a suggestion from former trainee chef Kevin Thornton to add some melted butter. The pair said the bread was "especially suited with fish" and that it worked particularly well with smoked salmon. Expand Close Aidan with his wife Joan outside their restaurant and guest house in Howth. Photo: Mark Condren / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Aidan with his wife Joan outside their restaurant and guest house in Howth. Photo: Mark Condren He said they were delighted with the award. "We're so long established now that we're not the 'awarding-winning restaurant', but there's no harm getting awards," said Mr MacManus. "With transition periods over the years, with new chefs and systems you just work hard at it, we've never given up. "We're nearly 45-and-a-half years going and we're still changing, competing and trying to stay above water even." Expand Close Georgina Campbell, Peaches Kemp of Hatch & Sons, and Paul Flynn of The Tannery. Photo: Paul Sherwood / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Georgina Campbell, Peaches Kemp of Hatch & Sons, and Paul Flynn of The Tannery. Photo: Paul Sherwood Mrs MacManus said the pair "have been through two tough recessions" and despite this they had always fought for their consistent quality. Also recognised for their bread was Waterford couple Esther Barron and Joe Prendergast for their Bakery's Blaa bread. Barron's Bakery in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, "is a very old bakery that only deals with good fresh ingredients", according to owner Ms Barron. "We weren't making a penny when all the cheap breads came out but we're passionate about what we do and that's what got us through," she said. With brunch becoming more popular across the country, Rua in Castlebar, Co Mayo, can now lay claim to the best brunch in Ireland with their locally sourced fry. Hatch & Sons in Dublin came highly commended in the brunch stakes. There were four winners in the Irish breakfast foods category with O'Neill's Dry Cure Bacon from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, taking the best meats tag and Burren Smokehouse in Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare, taking the best fish prize. Flahavan's Oats took the award for best cereal. Meanwhile, The Tannery in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, was highly commended for its 'Welcome Standard'. Lynn OConnell and her daughters Lily and Gracie, who were born by C-section due to Lynns pre-eclampsia Lynn O'Connell should have been enjoying a relaxing sun holiday in Portugal - but she couldn't, because her hands and feet had suddenly started to swell. Twelve-weeks pregnant with her eldest daughter Lily, now aged six, the swelling became so extreme she couldn't see her own ankles. "I didn't know what to do, so I elevated my feet as much as possible," recalls the 42-year-old mum-of-two of that holiday in May 2007. A few weeks later, a routine check-up showed Lynn's blood pressure had started to rise. The swelling and high blood pressure continued throughout the pregnancy. The week before her due date of November 21, tests showed the presence of protein in her urine. This was another symptom of a potentially dangerous condition that affects up to 8pc of pregnant women - pre-eclampsia. The condition can cause fits in the mother. For the baby, it can herald growth problems and a premature birth, and when the condition is severe, it can be potentially fatal for both mother and baby. In Lynn's case, the protein level in her urine did not become worryingly high until later on, but the mum, who lives in Mallow, Co Cork, had been warned early on in the pregnancy that she was showing symptoms of the condition. She was getting twice-daily check-ups from her GP but pre-eclampsia was not confirmed until the day before her due date. "I was very worried, but I was very closely monitored by my GP, who was brilliant," she says. "On November 20, I had my blood pressure monitored at Cork University Hospital and my urine was tested - the protein level was very high." Her doctors decided to induce her, and 26 hours later she had an emergency C-section. "My blood pressure remained very high in the weeks after Lily was born," she recalls. The swelling took a long time to go down, and, in fact, it led to another condition, carpal tunnel syndrome. "It causes damage to the nerves in the wrist. You get tingling and numbness in the fingers and severe pins and needles," says Lynn, who is due to have surgery for the condition. Two years after Lily's birth, Lynn became pregnant with Gracie, now aged four. As with Lily, the swelling started about 12 weeks into the pregnancy. This time, Lynn was 32-weeks pregnant when her blood pressure started to rise. Gracie, too, was born by C-section. Lynn's blood pressure was extremely high, but this time the protein showed up in her urine the day after she was born. "The doctors were very reluctant to let me home because my blood pressure was so high," she recalls, adding that, once again, she was closely monitored after leaving hospital with Gracie. "It was a very stressful time, but I was very lucky that I carried both of them to term," she says, adding that she still suffers from high blood pressure. One of the most frightening things about pre-eclampsia is its suddenness - the name actually comes from Latin, meaning "lightning". It can strike with no warning and is one of the most significant causes of maternal death, clocking up 76,000 maternal deaths and 500,000 infant deaths annually. The only cure for it is for the baby to be born. For the mother, it can lead to acute problems of the liver, kidneys, brain and clotting system, and survivors of pre-eclampsia have an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases later in life. One quarter of all babies born to mothers with pre-eclampsia experience growth restrictions, which predisposes them to high blood pressure, diabetes and heart conditions in adulthood, while a third are born prematurely. Awareness of this condition during pregnancy is vital to ensure that expectant mothers seek medical attention immediately if their blood pressure increases or they experience other symptoms Earlier this year, entrepreneur Bill Liao - co-founder Coder Dojo - invested in Irish firm Metabolomic Diagnostics, which has produced a blood test that detects pre-eclampsia early in a pregnancy. Liao, a dad-of-three who lives near Clonakilty, Co Cork, experienced the terror of pre-eclampsia in 1994 when his wife Kerrie was pregnant with their eldest son Liam. "Liam was not due for another five weeks. She'd had no problems up to then, but they told her that her blood pressure was spiking and they had to induce her," he says. It was shocking, he says, how quickly Kerrie's condition deteriorated. "At the start of the labour, they said they had to get her blood pressure down and they told me to try to calm her - they said if I didn't calm her down she would die." The experience stayed with him, and when he heard a Cork company had come up with a test that diagnosed pre-eclampsia early on, he was immediately interested. "If you catch it super-early, your chances are very good - you can monitor yourself and everyone is prepared," says Liao, who invested earlier this year. "There is currently no predictive early screening test for pre-eclampsia, which can be a fatal condition. Our PrePsia solution could potentially become a standard part of prenatal care, globally," says Metabolomic Diagnostics founder and CEO, Charles Garvey. The tests could be rolled out over the next two years. Eleni Tsigas, executive director of the Pre-eclampsia Foundation in the US, says that education, awareness "and a biochemical test which tells us yes or no" are what is needed. Tsigas, who visited Ireland to mark National Pre-eclampsia Awareness Day in July, lost her first child to the condition 16 years ago. She believes education is an important element of coping with the condition, for both providers and patients. "There also needs to be a greater awareness of the symptoms so that when women have symptoms of pre-eclampsia it is understood." Symptoms can vary and include, among other things, severe headaches not relieved by painkillers, blurred vision, abdominal pain, shortness of breath and sudden swelling of hands face or feet. The problem is, Tsigas points out, symptoms are not always specific. She says: "When you have symptoms that are worrying, they should be followed up and taken seriously by health providers - but sometimes they are not." Problems arise, she warns, when women don't recognise the symptoms or get medical care quickly; and when the condition is either not diagnosed or acted upon quickly enough. "My message to the women and families of Ireland is of hope and empowerment - and empowerment comes through education and awareness." Of course Donald Trump over-promised for his first 100 days. What presidential candidate hasnt? During last years campaign, Trump spoke frequently of all the things he would do almost immediately upon entering the Oval Office. Hed repeal Obamacare, reform the tax code, destroy ISIS, build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, fix the nations roads and bridges, take care of veterans, deport criminal illegal immigrants, and much, much more. By the last weeks of the campaign, Trump actually dialed back some of his promises. On October 22, he traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to announce his Contract with the American Voter, which formalized his pledges for the first 100 days. The Contract was a single piece of paper. The front listed 18 actions Trump would take under his executive authority as president, and the back listed ten pieces of legislation he would introduce in Congress. Now, three months into the Trump administration, the front and the back of the Contract are two very different stories. On the executive action front, Trump has kept a significant number of his promises: Candidate Trump promised to begin the process of selecting a Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin Scalia. As president, Trump did just that, and Neil Gorsuch is now on the Court. Candidate Trump promised to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As president, he did it. Candidate Trump promised to require that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated. As president, he did it. Candidate Trump promised to lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks on the Keystone Pipeline and other infrastructure projects. As president, he did it. Candidate Trump promised to begin removing the more than two million criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S. As president, he did it. On other issues, Trump has kept front-page promises, but with decidedly mixed results. The most significant of those is his pledge to suspend immigration from terror-prone regions. Trump has done it twice only to see his executive orders tied up in the courts. His first try was botched, while the second try will likely survive judicial scrutiny. Trump also promised to cancel all federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities. He has begun to do so the Justice Department is beginning to threaten to withdraw some grant money but the promise was overbroad and will likely never be fully kept. In addition, Trump promised to impose a five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. He kept the pledge for White House officials but does not have the authority to tell Congress what to do so again, a partially kept, but originally overbroad promise. Some promises Trump has openly chosen to break. He promised to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator. Now, he says he will not do so if China is helping the U.S. solve the so-far-intractable North Korea problem. The net result of Trumps promises involving executive authority is that he has done well when it comes to keeping the Contract. Indeed, the two biggest successes of Trumps first 100 days are on the front page of the Contract: the Gorsuch nomination and Trumps immigration executive order tightening controls at the Mexico border. Weve seen a dramatic reduction in illegal migration across the southwest border, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Friday. In fact, March apprehensions were 30 percent lower than February apprehensions and 64 percent lower than the same time next year. That is a solid success by any measure. But the back page of the Contract is a different story. Unlike many of his speeches, Trump was careful not to promise legislative success. I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage with the first 100 days of my administration, he said in the Contract. But Trump has not even introduced promised legislation like the American Energy and Infrastructure Act, or the School Choice and Education Opportunity Act, or the Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act, or others on the 10-point list. The president, mostly following the lead of House Republicans, has taken a shot and failed at repealing and replacing Obamacare. To the extent that that work continues a vote in the House could be just a few weeks away he can be said to be working on keeping that promise. And Trump has pledged to bring out some sort of tax proposal this week not an actual tax reform bill, but movement closer to the goal of reforming the tax code. So on the two biggest items on the back page of the Contract, by the time the actual 100-day mark arrives next Saturday, Trump will be able to say hes making progress. But the fact is, on the whole, Trump failed to keep the back page promises of the Contract in his first 100 days. On the other hand, the president has been a crucial part of a determined effort by Capitol Hill Republicans to use the Congressional Review Act to abolish rules put in place by the Obama administration. Trump has signed 12 such bills into law voiding Obama rules on energy, firearms, federal labor contracts, local control of education, and other topics. The bottom line is that Trump has been a 100-day success when it comes to exercising the executive powers of the presidency. He has done a great deal of what he said he would do, and promises to do more. Aer Lingus Cabin Crew - Lorna Kavanagh and Laura McCabe and Karen Saunders celebrating the airline's new route to Miami from September 2017. Picture: Jason Clarke Aer Lingus has launched a North American sale offering 100 off transatlantic flights, provided you book by midnight on Monday, May 8th. The offer applies to direct return flights to Toronto and its US destinations, with travel from July 1 to October 31 of this year. Sale fares start from Dublin to Hartford, Newark and JFK at 199 each way, with Toronto from 214 each-way - when booked as part of a return trip. Prices vary hugely depending on dates and routes, however. Aer Lingus's transatlantic business has more than doubled in the last five years, with a new direct flight to Miami launching this September 1st. Its sale fares are more expensive than lead-in offers from Norwegian, which starts flying from Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast to the US this July, but they do include a meal and a free 23kg checked bag, which are extras on the budget flights. In other news, Norwegian says it hopes to offer US immigration preclearance to passengers departing on its flights from Dublin and Shannon. "Plans are currently being finalised," a spokesperson said. Aer Lingus is expecting delivery of another new Airbus A330 at the end of 2017, which it says will allow further transatlantic growth in 2018. Sale fares are bookable online at aerlingus.com. Read more: It's hard not to conclude that tax reform has now joined the scheme to scrap Obamacare on the Trump administration's long finger. With luck the even more alarming policy of provoking a nuclear showdown with North Korea will go the same way soon. Although ironically, US President Donald Trump has more freedom under the US system to lash out militarily at external enemies than he has to implement fiscal changes at home. Last night, his top finance officials unveiled a set of policy proposals that was long on aspiration and incredibly short on detail. The good news is that the worst potential policy measure from Ireland's perspective wasn't included at all. Senator Paul Ryan's plan to favour US corporations with a border tax appears to have been dropped altogether. The border tax would hurt Irish exports and potentially trigger a global trade war. The less we hear about that the better, so its complete absence from the White House tax document should be hugely welcome here. Of the policies that remained, the plans to lower and simplify America's notoriously convoluted tax code make sense. But what was presented amounted to targets blobbed out on a single sheet of paper that had barely progressed beyond the level of a campaign promise. After a lot of huffing and chest puffing about the "biggest tax cut in US history", we're really no wiser about when or how any of this will happen. If Mr Trump is to get anywhere with this, the how and the why will ultimately be determined in negotiations between his White House and the US Congress. That is the political equivalent of herding cats and it appears those talks have so far gone no further than a general consensus that very high taxes are bad - including for corporations. That's been the consensus in the US for 30 years, but even so no president has had the political skills to shepherd meaningful reform through the country's Byzantine budget system. On the heels of the collapse of his healthcare plans from a lack of congressional support, last night's tax policy unveiling does nothing to suggest that Mr Trump will triumph where others failed. In so far as the status quo probably favours Ireland, that's good news for us. But if it is also a signal of the US sinking into a legislative morass, it is ultimately going to be bad news for the healthy global economy that we all depend on. Experts have warned that Irish organisations aren't prepared for tough new data-protection laws which come into effect next year and much of the preparatory work will fall on lawyers. The legal profession has an uphill struggle in making Irish organisations aware of the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to Mark Adair a technology-focused partner in Mason, Hayes & Curran. Mr Adair says that given the scope of the new laws and the proximity to their enforcement, he and his colleagues are quite concerned that Irish organisations are not better prepared. "As we are just over 12 months away from the GDPR coming into force, we would have expected organisations to be there or thereabouts by now, but many are not," he said. "The bigger organisations that have large in-house legal firms and IT specialists are certainly further along than the SME sector, but it's important to remember this legislation will not just target the large social media firms, the banks and multinationals, it is for everyone. Organised clients are getting help now." Companies must train staff, review and change client contracts, amend privacy statements on electronic communications and learn how to deal with data access requests, as well as addressing security processes before the rules kick in. Mr Adair says that there is a fundamental misunderstanding in many organisations, which believe that the new regulation is purely a matter for IT security. Read more: Data protection boss vows she will use new powers to fine firms up to 20m "The GDPR is in essence a privacy law with the aim of protecting people, which is something that tends to get lost when technology experts start to talk about the effects it will have on business," he said. "That's the message that we are giving to clients, and it is interesting to see the lack of awareness that there is out there - some people are coming to us who are only now starting to investigate what GDPR will mean for their business, and there are others who know about GDPR but don't know what steps they need to take in order to be compliant." He warns that GDPR will trigger a boom for some litigation lawyers. Under the GDPR if a data subject believes their personal information has been handled in a non-compliant way their remedies range from lodging a complaint with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, to taking a case against the data processor in court and seeking compensation. Each of those rights is exercisable and the individual is under no obligation to go through all the steps before taking legal proceedings. If an aggrieved client has the will and the means, they can take the organisation in question to court straight away, under the new rules. According to Mr Adair, Irish businesses should not take the risk and emphasises that it is now time to start preparing hard for the new legislation, particularly for SME's, many of whom are of the belief that the new law is something aimed solely at bigger firms. Mark Adair will be among the speakers at INM's Dublin DataSec2017 at the RDS on May 3. See www.independent.ie/datasec/ for further details. The DataSec 2017 conference takes place on 3rd of May in the RDS in Dublin. The event will provide expert speakers, information and insight to help your business comply with GDPR and get the most out of the new legislation. Click here to book your place now. Heres what you need to know. Donald Trump has lashed out at a judges ruling blocking his attempt to strip funds from sanctuary cities that dont co-operate with US immigration authorities, calling it ridiculous and vowing to go to the Supreme Court. So what are sanctuary cities and why did a judge block Trumps proposals? What are sanctuary cities? A sanctuary city is generally accepted as one which does not allow municipal funds or resources to be spent on enforcing federal immigration requests. This includes civil detainer requests in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers request that a local jail detain an inmate for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release date so immigration officials can decide if they want to detain them. The rules are different in each sanctuary city as they are set by the local government, but it generally means local jails will not turn illegal immigrants in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after they have been charged or served jail time. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston are sanctuary cities, among others. There are approximately 11 million undocumented migrants living in the US right now. Supporters of sanctuary cities say the rules make cities safer as undocumented individuals are able to report crime without fear of being handed over to immigration officials. What did Trumps executive order say, and why was it halted by a judge? The executive order was designed to halt federal funding to areas which limit co-operation with immigration officials, in effect forcing them to report undocumented immigrants. Unfortunately for Trump, a San Francisco district judge has thwarted the order. US District Judge William Orrick said the president had no authority to attach new conditions of his own to spending that was approved by Congress. The judge further ruled that Trumps order threatened a wide range of funding not the relatively small amount the Justice Department claimed and that the government cannot cut off funding if there is no clear connection between the money and the policy at issue. Trumps Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the president was well within his power to issue the executive order and the Department of Justice would continue to fight the cases in court. It was not clear, however, whether he planned to appeal Orricks ruling. How did Trump react? As usual, Trumps reaction came via Twitter. In a series of tweets he slammed the court, accusing groups against the ban of judge shopping. Are sanctuary cities safe,then? No. There are plenty of other options for the Trump administration. Trump could appeal to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but that was the court that blocked the presidents first travel ban against seven Muslim countries. Eighteen of the 25 active judges on the court were appointed by Democrats. In his tweets he stated he wants to go to the Supreme Court, which would have the final say if it decided to take up the case. Local government is also taking action against sanctuary cities. The Republican-controlled Texas House approved a strict ban on them on Thursday, which would see funding withheld from county and local governments in Texas which support sanctuary measures and would jail police chiefs and other officials who dont help to enforce immigration law. Kenneth Williams is scheduled to die at the prison unit (AP) Arkansas is set to reach the end of an aggressive execution schedule as it prepares for a fourth lethal injection in eight days. The state had initially planned to carry out twice as many executions over an 11-day period. Death row inmate Kenneth Williams, 38, is set to die for the killing of a former deputy warden following a prison escape. Several stay requests have been rejected or overturned, and it will take a court order to prevent his execution. Among the claims Williams' lawyers made was that a double execution this week was flawed and raised concerns that their client could suffer an exceptionally painful death. With one of its lethal injection drugs set to expire at the end of April, Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over the final two weeks of April. That would have been the most in such a short period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. If Williams is put to death in the Cummins Unit prison at Varner, the state would have carried out four executions since last Thursday, including a double execution on Monday - the nation's first since 2000. Courts have issued stays for four of the inmates. During Monday's first execution, Jack Jones Jr's mouth moved several times when he should have been unconscious. Jones' spiritual adviser described it as "a sort of gurgling". An observer from the state attorney general's office said it was "snoring; deep, deep sleep". A federal judge allowed the second execution, of Marcel Williams, to proceed, saying there was "no support for a claim and an allegation that the execution appeared to be torturous and inhumane". Williams' lawyers claim he suffers from sickle cell trait, lupus and brain damage, and that the combined maladies could subject him to an exceptionally painful execution in violation of the US Constitution. His lawyers said that while other courts have upheld Arkansas' execution protocol, the state's "one size fits all" approach could leave him in pain after a paralytic agent renders him unable to move. "After the state injects Mr Williams with vecuronium bromide ... most or all of the manifestations of his extreme pain and suffering will not be discernible to witnesses," they wrote to the court. Other appeals to the state Supreme Court and the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals concerned whether Williams is intellectually disabled and, therefore, ineligible to be executed. Lawyers for the state said in a court filing that while a mental evaluation had once showed Williams' IQ at "low average," part of that could be attributed to his not cooperating with the doctors who tested him. They told the 8th Circuit that a previous team of Williams' lawyers "unequivocally abandoned a mental retardation claim after the results of the testing showed ... Williams was not intellectually disabled". Arkansas' supply of midazolam, normally a surgical sedative, expires on Sunday. The Arkansas Department of Correction has said it has no new source for the drug, though it has made similar remarks previously and still found a new source. State officials have declared the string of executions a success, using terms such as "closure" for the victims' families. The inmates have died within 20 minutes of their executions beginning, a contrast from midazolam-related executions in other states that took anywhere from 43 minutes to two hours. The inmates' lawyers have said there are still flaws and that there is no certainty that the inmates are not suffering while they die. Williams was sentenced to death for killing Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop. He left the prison less than three weeks into a life term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. At the conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young woman's family by turning to them after the sentence was announced, saying: "You thought I was going to die, didn't you?" After jumping from the barrel, he sneaked along a tree line until he reached Boren's house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren's truck, then drove to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water delivery truck, killing the driver. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. At the time of Boren's death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction. Emre Erulkeroglu suffered from months of health problems before he was diagnosed with a brain tumour Photo: The Brain Tumour Charity A seven-year-old boy was diagnosed with a brain tumour after he drew a picture of himself on his Etch-A-Sketch that terrified his mum. After months of headaches, doctors failed to spot anything wrong with Emre Erulkeroglu (7). Emre's mum Tiffani was pushed to demand answers after he drew a picture of himself with a black dot on his head. A fresh brain scan led to the diagnosis of a life-threatening brain tumour in 2015. He was displaying red flag symptoms that were on the HeadSmart website so I went to the doctors on several occasions," mum Tiffani told The Mirror. It took three months of me pleading to get a diagnosis but he's here, stable and getting on with life." The family are speaking out in support of HeadSmart, a campaign run by The Brain Tumour Charity, to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of childhood brain tumours. Emre has since had a lumbar puncture, an endoscopic third ventriculostomy and has been placed on watch and wait, according to The Mirror. Tiffani said that it was from reading HeadSmart that she knew something was seriously wrong with her young son. Britains Prime Minister Theresa May welcomes Head of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker to Downing Street. Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images British Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives have almost twice as much voter support as the Labour Party ahead of the June 8 election, a lead equal to that commanded by Margaret Thatcher before her 1983 landslide victory, Ipsos MORI said. Since Mrs May surprised rivals and financial markets by calling a snap election, opinion polls have shown she has far greater support than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and that she is likely to win a big majority in the 650-seat lower house. An Ipsos MORI telephone poll of 1,004 adults conducted on April 21-25 put the Conservative lead at 23 percentage points, while a Panelbase online poll of 1,026 people on April 20-24 put their lead on 22 percentage points. "The Conservatives are starting the campaign matching the biggest lead we have ever recorded for them during an election campaign - which was back in 1983 ahead of Thatcher's victory," Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos MORI, said. Mrs Thatcher, riding a wave of popularity after the Falklands War, won a 144-seat majority in that election against Labour's Michael Foot, whose left-wing socialist manifesto was branded by a party colleague as "the longest suicide note in history". Mrs May's predecessor, David Cameron, won a majority of 12 seats in a 2015 election, the first overall Conservative victory since Mrs Thatcher's successor, John Major, won in 1992. Last night, Mrs May hosted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier at a dinner at Downing Street, which her aides said was an attempt to improve the atmosphere before Brexit talks start in early June. "President Juncker had a constructive meeting with Prime Minister May," a spokesperson said, adding that as well as Brexit, the two addressed "issues of strategic interest" to both sides. "She reiterated the UK's commitment to achieving a deep and special partnership with the European Union." Boris Johnson has called for "calm, clear heads" in the stand-off with North Korea, insisting that military action against Pyongyang is "not the way forward". The Foreign Secretary was travelling on Thursday to New York to discuss the nuclear crisis with the United Nations Security Council, as US President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on the secretive regime of Kim Jong Un. Mr Trump has deployed an anti-missile system and sent US troops to participate in military exercises with South Korea, and on Wednesday took the unusual step of inviting all US senators to the White House for a classified security briefing on the threat from the North's programme of missile tests. The chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, told Congress: "All options are on the table. We want to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses, not to his knees." Speaking to BBC1's Breakfast, Mr Johnson said the threat from North Korea was "very real and very dangerous indeed" and the White House was "entirely right" to escalate the issue. But he warned that military action could result in "huge and hideous reprisals" against the South and insisted it was not "likely" at this point. Instead, he called for economic pressure from the international community - particularly China - to persuade Kim to freeze or step down his nuclear programmes. "The situation in North Korea has changed very substantially over the last few years. What people thought was an almost comical question - the North Korean nuclear threat - has become very real and very dangerous indeed," said Mr Johnson. "We need to address it. I think the White House are entirely right in escalating the seriousness of this question. All North Korea's neighbours feel this threat very intensely. "To what extent is there a military solution? I have to say I am very, very sceptical and so are most of the experts that I've talked to. "I think the military options are not good. The best way forward - and I think this is what the White House wants to pursue - is to keep a calm, clear head and to work particularly with Beijing to try to bring pressure on Pyongyang, try to get them to see that they could have a great economic future if they could agree not to be so threatening, if they could agree a freeze or to denuclearise. That's got to be the way forward, but as people can see, at the moment the situation is tense." Asked repeatedly whether UK troops could be involved in any allied military action, Mr Johnson said: "All the evidence I have seen suggests to me that the military options are very far from good. Don't forget that Seoul - the capital of South Korea - is only about 40 minutes from the border with North Korea. "The risk of huge, hideous reprisals against South Korea as a result of any kind of attack on North Korea has got to be very, very severe. "What we are working for in the UK Government, what we are urging, is co-operation between the US and Beijing and all the regional powers to try to get North Korea to see sense. "Today I'm going to the United Nations Security Council in New York to see what we can do at the UN to try to build an international consensus. "Military action against North Korea, in my honest opinion, is not a good idea at the moment and I certainly don't think it's likely." Referring to the film Team America, which mocked former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Mr Johnson said the position had "moved from being comical". He told LBC: "North Korea was a kind of hilarious thing. It's not hilarious any more. It's not funny. This guy is a real threat to his neighbourhood." Mr Johnson said he was "not a fan" of military options to deal with Kim Jong Un's regime but warned the dictator posed a threat to Britain. "If he keeps developing missiles in the way that he is doing, he could be a threat to Western Europe, including ourselves," he said. Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday April 27, 2017. See PA story POLICE Whitehall. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire Forensic investigators recover knives after man was arrested on Whitehall in Westminster in central London, Britain, April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville Police at the scene where a man has been arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (PA/Twitter feed of @joshdcaplan) Police at the scene where a man has been arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (PA/Twitter feed of @joshdcaplan) A man has been arrested in Whitehall with a rucksack containing knives. Armed police detained the man close to Parliament Square and the scene of last month's terror attack by Khalid Masood. The man is being held on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and planning acts of terrorism, Scotland Yard said. The bearded suspect, who was dressed in dark clothing, was wrestled to the ground on a traffic island at the Parliament end of Whitehall, close to the Foreign Office and the entrance to Downing Street. Expand Expand Previous Next Close Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire) A man is held by police in Westminster after an arrest was made on Whitehall in central London, Britain, April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Forensic Officers looking at with knifes at the scene after a man was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire) No one was injured in the incident. In a statement police said: "A man has been arrested in Whitehall this afternoon, at approximately 14:22, following a stop and search as part of an ongoing operation. "The man was arrested in Parliament Street, junction with Parliament Square, by armed officers from the Mets Specialist Firearms Command. "The man, aged in his late twenties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. Knives have been recovered from him. "He is being detained under the Terrorism Act and is in custody in a south London police station. "Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command are continuing their investigation, and as a result of this arrest there is no immediate known threat." Images from the scene showed three knives on the ground close to a brown rucksack. Expand Close Police pick up a knife at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (Picture: PA wire) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police pick up a knife at the scene after a person was arrested following an incident in Whitehall in London (Picture: PA wire) An officer in forensic overalls could be seen taking photographs of the knives. The suspect was detained at the scene for several minutes within view of journalists and passers by before he was eventually taken away in a police vehicle. 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 Recruiters Harry Peasnell (27) and Andy Burnage (22), were leaving the adjacent building which houses various Government offices after a meeting with officials when they were told over the tannoy the usual entrance on to Whitehall was closed. As they made their way back towards Parliament from the alternative House Guards Road entrance they said they were pushed back up Great George Street by several plain clothes police officers. 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 They then made their way to Parliament Square where they said they saw a man in his 20s or 30s, who they thought was the suspect, being spoken to by police next to the wall of the offices. Mr Peasnell, who says he regularly has meetings in Westminster, said police were "quick on the scene" and that he was not worried like he was during the terror attack in the area just weeks ago. "Last time all the buildings were on lockdown and no one was allowed to leave," he said. Westminster has been on a state of heightened alert since Masood launched his attack on March 22, killing five people, including Pc Keith Palmer. Masood drove at pedestrians before stabbing Pc Palmer as he guarded the cobbled forecourt of the Palace of Westminster. He was shot dead by police. 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 More to follow.... Edtior: Saturday, May 13th marks the 25th anniversary of one of America's great days of giving -- the National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food drive. Letter carriers walk through the community every day, often coming face to face with a sad reality for too many, hunger. So, each year on the second Saturday in May, letter carriers across the country collect non-perishable food donations from our customers. These donations go directly to local food pantries to provide food to people in Elko County who need our help. Last year, we collected over 80 million pounds of food nationally, feeding an estimated 64 million people. Over the course of its 24-year history, the drive has collected well over 1.5 billion pounds of food, thanks to a postal service universal delivery network over the entire nation, including Puerto Rico, Guam and US. Virgin Islands. The need for food donations is great. Currently 49 million Americans -- 1 in 6 -- are unsure where their next meal is coming from. Thirteen million are children who feel hungers impact on their overall health and ability to perform in school. And nearly 5 million seniors over age 60 are food insecure, with many who live on fixed incomes often too embarrassed to ask for help. Our food drives timing is crucial. Food banks and pantries often receive the majority of their donations during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. By springtime, many pantries are depleted, entering the summer low on supplies at a time when many school breakfast and lunch programs are not available to children in need. Participating in this year's Letter Carrier Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive is simple. Just leave a non-perishable food donation in a bag by your mailbox on Saturday, May 13th and your letter carrier will do the rest. I invite you to join in America's great day of giving and help us in our fight to end hunger. Sandy Presto Letter Carrier Elko French presidential election candidate Marine Le Pen smiles with workers in front of the threatened Whirlpool factory in Amiens, in northern France. Photo: AFP France's presidential campaign verged on farce yesterday as the two remaining candidates battled it out at a Whirlpool factory, with the far-Right's Marine Le Pen posing for selfies with workers while the centrist Emmanuel Macron drew a volley of boos. Ms Le Pen upstaged Mr Macron in his hometown of Amiens by making a surprise visit to the factory, which is due to close and move to Poland with the loss of 290 jobs, as he was meeting its union representatives in the town. Ms Le Pen, who polls indicate will be trounced in the second and final round of the election on May 7, chatted with workers at the gates of the factory, which has come to symbolise the loss of French jobs to plants overseas. The 48-year-old told reporters that her rival's decision to meet union officials in the town - rather than come to the factory gates - was a sign of someone who was out of touch with the workers. "Everyone knows what side Emmanuel Macron is on - he is on the side of the corporations," Ms Le Pen said. "I am on the workers' side, here in the car park, not in restaurants in Amiens." She added: "I am the candidate of workers, the candidate of the French who don't want their jobs taken away." The factory in Amiens has been seized upon by Ms Le Pen as proof that globalisation is out of control and that "economic patriotism" and the return of national borders is the answer. Mr Macron, who has been accused of complacency since the first-round result on Sunday, hastily arranged a face-saving visit to the Whirlpool plant in the northern rustbelt, which is Ms Le Pen's political stronghold. When the 39-year-old former banker got there it looked like he had fallen into a well-planned trap. Some in the crowd shouted "President Marine!" and booed as he arrived. "It's important not to feed anger but to be up to meeting expectations," he told the hostile crowd. "Of course there's anger in the country, there's anguish, there's a responsibility to take, that's why I'm here." He told the workers that the only reason the anti-immigrant and anti-EU Ms Le Pen had come to Amiens was "because I'm here". He also retorted on Twitter that she had spent "10 minutes with her supporters in a car park in front of the cameras" whereas he had spent "an hour and a half with union representatives and no media". Mr Macron's visit to the factory came as a Harris Interactive poll showed that 52pc of the French believe that he mishandled the start of campaigning for the run-off. After winning Sunday's contest with 24.1pc to his rival's 21.3pc, he gave an exuberant victory speech followed by a high-profile party at La Rotonde bistro in Paris, drawing criticism. Suspected supporters of Fethullah Gulen are escorted by police in Kayseri, Turkey. Photo: Olcay Duzgun/Dogan News Agency/via Reuters Turkish police launched simultaneous operations across the country yesterday, detaining more than 1,000 people with suspected links to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Warrants were issued for the detention of some 2,200 other suspects, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. At least 1,013 have been detained so far in one of the largest operations against the Gulen movement in recent months, according to Anadolu. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the operation comprised all of Turkey's 81 provinces, describing it as an important step toward the government's aim of "bringing down" the Gulen movement. The suspects are allegedly Gulen operatives called "secret imams", accused of directing followers within the police force. Mr Soylu said they allegedly "infiltrated the police, tried to lead it from the outside by forming an alternative structure, (by) ignoring the state." The detentions are part of a widespread crackdown following last summer's failed coup attempt, which Turkey says was orchestrated by Gulen's movement. More than 47,000 people have been arrested since the coup, Mr Soylu has said, including 10,700 police officers and 7,400 military personnel. Some 8,500 police officers participated in yesterday's operation, Anadolu reported. Gulen has denied orchestrating the coup. Turkey is pressing the US to extradite him. The move followed calls yesterday for the EU to formally suspend Turkey's long-stalled talks on membership if it adopts constitutional changes backed at a referendum last week. A leading member of the EU parliament responsible for dealings with Ankara, Kati Piri, said that if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan implemented his new charter, giving him even more powers, Turkey would close the door on membership. Mr Erdogan said Turkey would not wait forever to join the bloc, just a day after the EU executive's top official for membership talks asked Europe's foreign ministers to consider other types of ties with Turkey when they meet tomorrow. Ties between EU states and their Nato ally Turkey soured in the aftermath of a failed coup last July as the bloc was taken aback by Mr Erdogan's sweeping security crackdown that followed. Meanwhile, mortar fire from an area assessed to be under the control of Syrian government forces hit a military outpost in Turkey's southeastern province of Hatay, the Turkish army said yesterday, adding it had retaliated in kind after the attack. The army said a separate cross-border mortar attack had been carried out on a different military outpost, also in Hatay, by members of the Kurdish militant YPG earlier yesterday. A Russian navy ship has sunk after it collided with a Togo-flagged vessel off the Turkish coast on Thursday, shipping agent GAC said. It said the Russian ship "Liman" and the other vessel, which it identified as Youzarsif H, collided in fog and low visibility. All 78 personnel have been evacuated from the ship, according to the Turkey Coastal Safety Authority. More to follow The huge reptile was unharmed in the fire Firefighters tackling a blaze at a house in the tropical Australian city of Darwin have had to contend with the added distraction of a 13ft pet crocodile. The fire destroyed the two-storey house in the suburb of Fannie Bay, but did not harm the huge reptile, a female called Albert, which lives in a backyard enclosure. Firefighter Bill Gleeson said: "Thankfully, the crocodile didn't affect our operations at all. "It's well contained and clearly unaffected by fire. He seemed quite happy to look at me as I was protecting the premises." Wildlife ranger Tom Nichols said crocodiles are rare in the Darwin suburbs. The pet had been living at the property since before crocodiles became a protected species under federal law in the early 1970s. Mr Gleeson said there was no-one in the house by the time firefighters arrived. The fire appeared to have been caused by a clothes iron which was mistakenly left switched on, a government statement said. The householder, Helen Haritos, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation a year ago that her crocodile hunter father, George Haritos, captured Albert in a Northern Territory river in 1958 for someone who requested a crocodile at a party, but no longer wanted one after sobering up. Ms Haritos, 64, inherited Albert when her father died in 1992. George Haritos and his three brothers became famous for accompanying the Duke of Edinburgh when he bagged a crocodile in Darwin Harbour in 1956. Ms Haritos previously said of Albert: "It's not quite like my dog, but I do have a particular bond and care for the animal." Authorities have yet to decide whether the crocodile will have to be moved. Crocodile numbers have exploded across Australia's tropical north since they became protected after decades of hunting. As saltwater crocodiles can live up to 70 years and grow throughout their lives - reaching up to 23ft in length - the proportion of large crocodiles is also rising. US president Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was warned by authorities when he retired from the military in 2014 not to take foreign government-sourced money without "advance approval" from the Pentagon, documents show. The paperwork released by the ranking Democrat on a House oversight committee revealed that Mr Flynn, a former US Army lieutenant general and Defence Intelligence Agency chief, was later paid tens of thousands of dollars for his work on behalf of foreign interests. These included Russia's state-sponsored RT television network and a Turkish-owned company linked to the government in Ankara. Representative Elijah Cummings also said the Pentagon's acting inspector general has launched an inquiry into whether those payments qualify as coming from foreign governments and whether Mr Flynn properly informed military authorities about them. Both Mr Cummings and Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have previously said they planned to ask the Army to rule on whether Mr Flynn properly informed them about and asked permission for the payments from Russian and Turkish entities. A key document released by Mr Cummings showed that Mr Flynn was warned by a Defence Intelligence Agency official in October 2014 that he would need clearance from the agency before he could accept any earnings linked to foreign governments. Mr Flynn was explicitly told in the document that the US Constitution's emoluments provision prohibits any monetary payments or gifts "from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained". The letter explained such "advance approval" would need to come "from the relevant service secretary". The committee's leaders reported earlier this week that they found no evidence that Mr Flynn asked for permission for the payments he received or informed the military that he had accepted them. Army spokeswoman Cynthia O Smith said "we have found no records of LTG(R) Flynn requesting permission from the Army for foreign employment". Mr Chaffetz said Mr Flynn "had an obligation to seek approval to take money from a foreign government. We found no evidence that he did that". However, the Republican did not join Mr Cummings at the Thursday news conference, unlike their bipartisan appearance earlier in the week announcing the results of the committee's inquiry into Mr Flynn's dealings with authorities before and after his foreign earnings. The committee's inquiry is one of several congressional investigations into Mr Flynn's contacts with foreign officials before and during his brief stint as Mr Trump's top national security aide. Mr Trump fired Mr Flynn for failing to inform senior administration officials about his contacts with Russian officials - contacts which are being examined as part of the wider inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr Cummings said: "These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon. "Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation." The White House told the committee recently that documents the representatives sought concerning Mr Flynn's security clearance would not be turned over because they contained classified information. Britain must answer questions about its plans to exit the European Union before negotiations on the split can begin and cannot be under any illusions that it will retain the same rights and privileges as a member of the bloc, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said. Speaking to German politicians ahead of a weekend summit in Brussels to discuss Brexit, she said in unusually frank language that she had "the feeling that some in Britain still have illusions, and that is a waste of time". While Europe still envisions Britain as a close partner, Mrs Merkel said once it leaves the EU it will be an outsider and as such "can and will not have the same rights or be in a better position than a member of the European Union". "All of the 27 members of the European Union and European institutions are agreed upon that," she said, to applause. Britain has two years to complete its deal to leave the 28-nation European Union but is currently preoccupied with a snap election taking place in early June. Before the negotiations can even begin, Mrs Merkel said Britain must engage in "constructive dialogue" with the EU to answer open questions. "Without progress on the many open questions of the exit, including the financial questions, it makes no sense to have parallel negotiations over the future relationship," she said. "We need to know how Britain sees its future relations with us." She said Germany will push for the impact of Brexit on Germans and other European Union citizens living in Britain to be as minimal as possible, and for co-operation on security issues, like fighting organised crime and terrorism, to remain close. "Let there be no doubt: Brexit negotiations will demand a lot from Britain and Europe," she said. She added that Germany and other EU countries need to define their own "interests and goals," and that she expects EU nations to emerge from the Brussels summit with a "strong signal of unity". "There is now a great deal of agreement between the 27 nations and EU institutions about our joint negotiating line with Britain," she said. AP The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said the explosion early on Thursday has been heard across the capital The airport explosion was said to have been heard across the Syrian capital Israel claims to have intercepted a "projectile" fired from Syria, just hours after an apparent Israeli missile attack on a military installation near Damascus International Airport. The Israeli military said it deployed its Patriot missile defence system to tackle the projectile incoming from Syria above the Golan Heights. It did not reveal any further details, but Israeli media reports claim the military knocked out a drone that had infiltrated from Syria. The incident came after Syria accused Israel of striking a military installation near the airport, setting off a series of pre-dawn explosions. Israel appears to be striking at military convoys and installations in Syria at a quickening pace, maintaining it has the right to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group that fights alongside Syrian government forces. Israel's intelligence minister Yisrael Katz would not comment on the strike but said "it absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement". Israel has repeatedly warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria. The Syrian military said the attack, which could be felt at least nine miles away, was carried out by Israel and aimed to "raise the morale of terrorist groups" which the government maintains are waging war against President Bashar Assad's forces. The military said it would continue its "war on terror" - government parlance for the battle against all groups trying to oust Mr Assad. Russia has denounced what it calls "aggression" against Syria following the incident. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not directly blame Israel for the explosion, but cited Syrian media as saying Israel was responsible. She said "Moscow condemns acts of aggression against Syria", and calls on everyone to "act within the framework of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria". Israel is widely believed to have carried out several air strikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria - including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles - as well as Hezbollah positions. It rarely comments on such operations. Syria's state-run Sana news agency said Israel had fired several missiles from inside the Occupied Golan Heights, 37 miles south of Damascus, striking a military installation south-west of the airport that serves both military and civilian flights. It reported several explosions and material damage but no casualties. It was not clear how Israel was identified as the culprit. A view shows the damage at a hospital after an airstrike in Deir al-Sharqi village in Idlib province, Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah A large explosion has rocked the Syrian capital, followed by a fire near the Damascus airport, Syrian opposition activists and a monitor said. The explosion was heard across the capital, jolting residents awake, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said. He said the explosion was reported to have happened near the Damascus airport road. The dawn explosion was also reported by other activists' networks but the source was unclear. Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. A pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road. Syria is in the sixth year of a bloody civil war pitting the government of President Bashar Assad and his allies against opposition forces that has left more than 400,000 people dead. The explosion comes a day after France said that the chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month "bears the signature" Assad's government and shows it was responsible. Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France came to this conclusion after comparing samples from a 2013 sarin attack in Syria that matched the new ones. The findings came in a six-page report published on Wednesday. Russia, a close ally of Assad, denounced the report, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used are not enough to prove who was behind it. The United States has also blamed Assad's government for the April 4 attack. The Trump administration ordered the cruise missile attack on the air base and issued sanctions on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing non-conventional weapons. Syria has strongly denied the accusations. al-Sharq newspaper's initial report on the arrest of man identified as Ahmad Al Shamri for apostasy and blasphemy in 2014 A man in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to death on charges of apostasy after losing two appeals. Several local media reports identified the man as Ahmad Al Shamri, in his 20s, from the town of Hafar al-Batin, who first came to the authorities attention in 2014 after allegedly uploading videos to social media in which he renounced Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. He was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy and held in prison before being convicted by a local court and sentenced to death in February 2015. At the time Mr Shamris defence entered an insanity plea, adding that his client was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of making the videos. He reportedly lost an Appeals Court case, and a Supreme Court ruled against him earlier this week. While news stories in the last few years consistently identify Mr Shamri, his identity or sentencing has not been verified by the Saudi authorities. Under Saudi Arabias strict religious laws, leaving Islam can be punishable by harsh prison sentences and corporeal punishment - and a 2014 string of royal decrees under the late King Abdullah re-defined atheists as terrorists, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Last year, a citizen was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing atheistic sentiment in hundreds of social media posts. Mr Shamris name and hometown have trended on Arabic-speaking Twitter in the last few days. Some users have even celebrated his sentencing. If you're a lowkey atheist that's fine. But once you talk in public & criticise God or religion, then you shall be punished, one such post read. I wish there could be live streaming when you cut his head off, said another. International human rights watchdogs have consistently condemned Saudi Arabias human rights record. The Kingdom came under further scrutiny last week when it emerged it had been elected to the UNs womens rights commission. Under the countrys system of guardianship, womens rights and freedom of movement is heavily restricted. They are not allowed to drive, and voted for the first time in 2015. Electing Saudi Arabia to protect womens rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief, UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer said. Its absurd. Saudi Arabia has sat on the UNs human rights council since September 2015. ( Independent News Service) A college student has claimed she was kicked out of her school gym for wearing a cropped top. South Carolina student Sarah Villafane's latest gym selfie has gone viral after she slammed the school for asking her to wear a different shirt. The student at the College of Charleston said she was asked to put on a different shirt, but ignored the request because she had worn the same outfit all day at school. Writing on her Facebook status, which has received thousands of likes, shares and comments, she said she was approached by an employee who asked her to change clothing. "He says, Are you gonna put a shirt on? "And I said, Well if this isnt a shirt no. Im not gonna put a shirt on. 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 "I literally bought this outfit to work out in because its COMFORTABLE. "What is the issue? Why cant I work out in this outfit? Is my belly button distracting to the general 85% male demographic that your gym serves?," she contined. "I'm forced to leave, WHY? Honestly Im so floored that I just got kicked out for this." The college told Yahoo Ms Villafane was asked to change her clothing for health and safety reasons. They said they require a full shirt to be worn "in order to minimise skin exposure to possible infectious agents." US President Donald Trump speaking after to signing an Antiquities Executive Order in Washington DC yesterday. Photo: Getty A border tax that would have hammered Irish exports to the US and risked provoking a global trade war was dropped from the sketchy tax reform package announced by the White House last night. The previously proposed border adjusted tax would have seen punishing new costs added to goods and services sold into the US. Its absence from a one-page tax package announced in Washington by Donald Trump's top finance officials was described as a "big relief" by tax experts here. "It would have been a game-changer for Irish exporters," Joe Tynan, a tax partner at PwC, said. The Irish economy is unusually vulnerable to the knock-on effects of US tax policy. Mainly US multinationals support around 400,000 Irish jobs directly and indirectly and the US remains one of Ireland's biggest export markets. Any policy shift that makes it less attractive for US firms to invest abroad or that hurts cross-border trade would hit Ireland especially hard, a concern since Mr Trump's election on an "America First" platform. Last night, the Trump White House unveiled plans for what officials called the "biggest tax cut" in US history, proposing lower taxes for businesses, the middle class and the wealthy. But the one-page policy document presented by the White House left details of when the cuts will be implemented, over what time frame or how they will be paid for all unanswered. Mr Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin set out a list of tax priorities. These included wanting to slash US corporation tax to 15pc from 35pc, a one-off tax deal to bring home $2.6 trillion in profits parked offshore by corporations, and a longer-term shift to tax US companies' profits under what is called a territorial system, in which most foreign profits would be exempt from US taxes. Read more: Trump pledges to cut US corporation tax to 15pc- but fails to explain how A territorial system would end practices that currently distort the global tax system, including US corporations shifting their tax domiciles to Ireland to cut bills. While corporate tax changes are a major issue here, much of the focus in the US plan was on individuals, including scrapping death duties and cutting income tax rates. "This is going to be the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country and we are committed to seeing this through," Mr Mnuchin said at an event in Washington yesterday. Implementing the plan will depend on hard-to-come-by support from the US Congress without clarity on how tax cuts will be funded, as well as coming up against rules aimed at preventing tax plans that will add to the US federal deficit in the long term. The White House said it would hold "listening sessions" with stakeholders throughout May in relation to the proposals. "We are determined to move as fast as we can and get this done this year," Mr Mnuchin said. He indicated that the tax plans would fund themselves by stimulating economic growth, though again without providing detail. The scant detail made it difficult to immediately assess its economic impact. Kyle Pomerleau, director of federal projects at the Tax Foundation said in a Twitter message: "Sorry, friends. We cannot model this. Definitely not enough detail." Implications The need for detail in order to be able to assess the implications for Ireland was also raised by officials here. "The exact implications of US tax reform for Ireland, and the rest of the world, will depend on the exact nature of any changes which are ultimately agreed," a spokesman for the Department of Finance said. "Ireland's membership of the EU is, and will remain, a key factor in attracting FDI from the US and elsewhere. Global business, from the US or elsewhere, will always want to have operations in the EU, and Ireland will remain very competitive and attractive as an EU location to invest in and do business from," he said. Scores of protesters have broken through a police cordon and stormed Macedonia's parliament, attacking politicians amid anger over the election of an ethnic Albanian as speaker. The protesters entered the parliament after the opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority voted for the new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked politicians including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who television footage showed bleeding from the forehead. Footage showed Mr Zaev and other Social Democrats surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting "traitors" and refusing to allow them to leave. Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former prime minister Nikola Gruevski's conservative party won an election but did not secure enough votes to form a government. Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognised as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonia's population is ethnic Albanian. Mr Zaev has been seeking a mandate to form a government for months, after reaching an agreement with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, to form a coalition. However, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate. The Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, as the Balkan nation's parliament is known, has been deadlocked for three weeks over electing a new speaker. Mr Zaev had suggested earlier on Thursday that one could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup. Mr Zaev went ahead with the vote, and a majority in parliament elected Talat Xhaferi, a former defence minister and member of the Democratic Union for Integration. Police said about 10 officers were injured during the melee and that reinforcements were sent to assist those inside the parliament building. The protesters were among a group of demonstrators who have been holding rallies nightly for the past two months in the streets of Skopje and other cities in the country over the political situation. Many are supporters of Mr Gruevski. A senior European Union official condemned the violent protest. Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said in a tweet that ''Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course''. Sweden's ambassador to Macedonia Mats Staffansson, speaking on behalf of other European diplomats, reminded the country's politicians of the need for dialogue and said ''it is the responsibility of the police of this country to make sure that this kind of violence does not happen''. AP Russia and Japan are seeking closer economic ties regardless of whether or not agreement is reached over the islands Russian president Vladimir Putin is hosting Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in a bid to end a dispute over four islands which has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty which formally ended the Second World War. It is the leaders' third meeting in the past seven months after Mr Putin made a state visit to Japan in December and Mr Abe met the Russian premier in Russia's Far East in September. Japan and Russia both claim four islands north of Japan's island of Hokkaido which came under Russian control at the end of the war. The recent meetings are widely regarded as a sign that both Moscow and Tokyo are eager to settle the dispute over the Kuril islands and sign a peace treaty which the former Soviet Union and Japan never managed to negotiate. The countries are also discussing the joint development of fisheries, tourism and other businesses and initiatives which might help bridge the gap. Speaking at the start of the meeting at the Kremlin, Mr Abe told Mr Putin in televised remarks that he would like to discuss various issues including the peace treaty and thanked Russia for taking a "step forward in the Japanese-Russian relations". Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov later told reporters that "the territorial dispute needs to be settled somehow in a way that it will be suitable both for Moscow and Tokyo", but added that Russia and Japan would be working to boost economic co-operation no matter when the treaty is signed. In Tokyo, Japanese officials said Mr Abe is also likely to discuss North Korea with Mr Putin. At recent talks, Japan, the United States, South Korea and Australia agreed that China and Russia are crucial in pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programmes. Barcelona has been put forward as a possible new host for the organisation Spain has joined the list of nations bidding to host the EU's medicines oversight body after the UK exits the bloc. Health minister Dolors Montserrat said Spain believes that Barcelona is the ideal place to house the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency when it relocates from London. Barcelona has offered its Agbar skyscraper as the body's headquarters. The Netherlands and Portugal are also among several countries presenting bids for the lucrative oversight body. The agency, which employs about 900 people, is one of the biggest EU institutions with an annual budget of more than 300 million euro (255 million). Rhode Island voters will head to the polls Tuesday to choose the first new face to represent the state's 2nd congressional district in 20 years as leading candidates Seth Magaziner and Allan Fung vie to replace the retiring James Langevin, who has served in the role since 2001. The tightly-contested congressional race is just one of a number of important contests taking place Tuesday as the state will also select its next Governor, voters will decide the fate of a number of high-priced ballot initiatives and towns up and down Rhode Island select their local officials in a number of highly-divisive and politicized town council and school committee races. Do you believe the results of this years election will make a positive or negative impact on your community? Let us know in this week's poll question below. You voted: The third edition of Tax, Accounting and Audit in India is updated for 2017, and provides an overview of the f... Natco Pharma launches first generic version of Pomalyst capsules in the Australian Market NATCO Pharma Limited has announced the launch of first generic version of Pomalyst (Pomalidomide) Capsules in 1,2,3,4 mg strengths in the Australian market. The product was launched by NAT... November 09, 2022 | 12:00 pm Ugar Sugar Works commences operations of 645 KLPD distillery; Stock plunges 6% The Ugar Sugar Works Ltd has informed to the exchanges regarding start of operations of 645 KLPD Distillery. As per the regulatory filing, the company has started the operations of 6... November 09, 2022 | 11:45 am Genesys International appoints Sameer Sankhe as Chief Digital Officer Genesys International Corporation, one of the leading homegrown players in the locational intelligence space, has announced the appointment of Sameer Sankhe as Chief Digital Officer (CDO). ... November 09, 2022 | 11:37 am Prataap Snacks starts commercial production at new unit in West Bengal; Stock gains 2% Prataap Snacks Limited had earlier set up a new unit at Domjur, District - Howrah, West Bengal and started the commercial production of extruded snacks, pellets and other snacks on July 26... November 09, 2022 | 10:50 am Wipro appoints Simmi Dhamija as Chief Operating Officer, APMEA Wipro Limited has announced the appointment of Simmi Dhamija as the Chief Operating Officer of the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA) strategic market unit. Dhamija will le... November 09, 2022 | 10:18 am Photographer and poet Mwangi Arthur Murrell is a living inspiration to those who have had the pleasure of hearing his story. Whether he is snapping pictures, encouraging at-risk youth or performing comedy and poetry around Indy, he always manages to put a smile on the faces of those he interacts with. As a child and young adult, Murrell was not quite so optimistic. Because of his speech impediment and dyslexia, teachers and other adults told him his future would be bleak, and Murrell took those words to heart. Most of my early schooling, I sat in special ed classes. My teacher called us dumb, stupid and ignorant. At one point one of the teachers told my mother I would never be able to function in society, said Murrell. His elementary school teachers never taught him to read, so he learned about the world around him through images. Murrell would collect pictures from newspapers and magazines. He developed an interest in Black history after viewing photography about the subject. When he started high school, he tried to hide his reading problem from his teachers and avoid other students. Despite his attempts at lying low, Murrell often faced disciplinary actions from teachers who saw him as a troublemaker. The kids would make fun of me at school and say, I will punch you. My teachers were telling me not to punch them, so I just had to deal with it because, if I hit them back, they would call my mother to the school. A lot of time, the teacher would take the side of the other kid, said Murrell. But there was one teacher who Murrell felt was on his side. She stopped him outside of class one day asked him to read a book for her to evaluate his skills. I hadnt learned the basics of reading or English, and it was very difficult for me to have classes. I was telling her what it said without reading it. She asked if I could read and I said no. She said, Oh my dickens, I am going to make sure you make the most of your time here, he said. This teacher became his mentor. While others dismissed him, she would encourage him to stay positive and better himself, referring him to an outside tutoring program that was held at the Christamore House. Murrell credits that teacher and a host of other adult influences as the reason he never gave up on himself when others set limitations for him. I didnt know the fundamentals of English until I was getting out of high school, but my parents never gave up on me. My parents and relatives motivate me. My mother was a very smart and determined person. My grandmother had her own business and 200 acres of land in the 50s. She grew her own food and crops. I look at my uncles, the way they conducted themselves, the way they dressed, said Murrell. He also credits members of the clergy for encouraging him spiritually throughout his life and helping him develop a positive perspective. After graduating high school, he continued his tutoring sessions at the Christamore House and started to cultivate an interest in photography. I always had a fixation with pictures because I couldnt read. I developed an inherent thirst for art. I went downtown in the 70s and bought a camera, and I didnt know nothing about cameras, said Murrell, adding that he has done photography for various community organizations including Indiana Black Expo. When he was an Ivy Tech student, he started a photography club to network with others who shared his interests. Today, he spends his time practicing photography and encouraging young people who are struggling in school to not give up. I sit and talk to them and say you can not give up on learning. I tell kids who dont have those challenges that they need to protect the other kids who do. When I tell a story, some people who dont have these challenges do not pick it up, but those who do know the story is for them, said Murrell. Murrells main goal as an artist is to encourage other people to follow their dreams beyond the limits others set for them. He has some words of encouragement for those who feel directionless. God dont make no accidents. You are here for a reason. Your road may be difficult, but there is more at the end. If you only look at where you are now, youll never go anywhere, said Murrell. I chose to make a difference in my life, and I found people who supported me. A host of people in my church and community were behind me through it all. I saw that these people loved me, and I started not to doubt myself. This Saturday, thousands of participants will gather at Military Park to take part in Race for the Cure, Susan G. Komen of Central Indianas annual fundraiser to raise money and awareness toward the fight against breast cancer. Among the crowd will be Pamela Martin, an elementary school teacher and breast cancer survivor who can personally attest to the magnitude of this events impact in Indy. Martin was teaching her second grade class when her doctor called and told her that a lump discovered during a routine examination was cancerous. Martin says the diagnosis didnt burden her at the time because she was preoccupied with teaching her students, but she broke down the moment she had a minute to herself. My lump was close to my chest wall, so if I had been relying on a self-examination, it would have been larger before I would have noticed. It was only picked up because of a mammogram, said Martin. Martin underwent a lumpectomy, radiation and chemotherapy to treat her cancer, which was tough on her body and took away a lot of her energy. At first I was like, this is nothing, but by the third day it hit me. It was my first experience with how tough the treatment could be, said Martin. They told me I was going to lose my hair, which was a big thing for me. In the African-American community, our hair is pretty important to us. My hair fell out on Christmas Day in 2015, while I was taking a shower and shampooing my hair. I was running my fingers through it, and handfuls of hair came out. Thats a day I will always remember. Despite the treatments side effects, Martin pushed through and stayed positive. She completed treatment in February of 2016, and slowly both her energy and hair came back. Today, Martin is an ambassador for Susan G. Komen of Central Indiana. Natalie Sutton, executive director of Susan G. Komen of Central Indiana, says about one in eight women will face breast cancer. The money raised in this Saturdays race will help support women like Martin in numerous ways. We are helping people right now with what they need today in our community, and we are helping people tomorrow by funding breast cancer research thats going to make treatment better in the long term, said Sutton. The majority (of the money) stays right here in the local community. We fund grants to local breast health programs that provide people with screenings and diagnostic services. We provide patient navigation services so that once someone is diagnosed they will have someone to walk them through the whole journey, and make sure you finish treatment successfully. We also fund breast cancer research. Sutton says they raised about $1.1 million last year, and they hope to meet or exceed those numbers this year. She encourages participants to fundraise beyond the ticket price. Fundraising sounds intimidating to someone who has never done it before, but its not something to be shy about. The No. 1 reason people give is because someone asked them to. I recommend emailing friends and family, posting on social media and Facebook. Its really easy. You think that its a lot of work, but really you can do a few simple things to ask people to support you, said Sutton. With the statistic in mind that African-American women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women, Martin would like to encourage the Black community in particular to support the cause. Its a wonderful organization, and I encourage the African-American community to come out and support this, because Black women are diagnosed with breast cancer at a much later stage. I truly want our community to understand how important it is to get involved with their health, because no one is fighting this alone, said Martin. Adult registration for Race for the Cure costs $35 through April 28 and $40 on race day. Registration opens at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 29th. The race starts at 9 a.m. Individuals and teams may register for Race for the Cure at the race location (Military Park) or online at info-komen.org. Feds grant Nevada $5.6M for opioid crisis CARSON CITY (AP) Nevada is receiving $5.6 million from the federal government to combat an opioid crisis largely stemming from addiction to prescription painkillers. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and his wife, Kathleen Sandoval, have pushed for reforms in doctors' offices and easier access to drugs that can counter the effects of an overdose. State health officials say the award announced Thursday will be used primarily for prevention and treatment programs, education for prescribers, enhanced data collection and the antidote naloxone. Sandoval signed a law in 2015 requiring doctors to occasionally review a statewide computer system that tracks opioid prescriptions. Now, he wants to expand that database to include how long opioid prescriptions are expected to last and other states where patients are prescribed opioids. Funds will come from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Man arrested for setting fires in Trump hotel LAS VEGAS (AP) Police say it's not clear if a 28-year-old man accused of setting two fires at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas was motivated by the name on the building. Officer Michael Rodriguez said Thursday that Roger Michael Fraley told investigators following his Wednesday evening arrest that he wanted to create mischief. Fraley was jailed on $90,000 bail pending an initial court appearance on multiple felony arson and burglary charges that could get him decades in prison. It is not immediately clear if he has a lawyer Clark County fire officials say towels and toasters were used to ignite fires that were quickly doused in a pool deck restroom and a 17th floor hallway. Rodriguez says a hotel security guard received minor injuries detaining Fraley before firefighters and police arrived. Utah Rep. Chaffetz will be out for foot surgery WASHINGTON (AP) Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah says he needs immediate foot surgery and will be out of Washington for three to four weeks, missing a key vote on a spending bill to keep the government open. Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, surprised the political world last week by announcing he will not seek re-election. He said in an Instagram post Wednesday he needs surgery to remove screws and pins from a foot he shattered 12 years ago. Chaffetz posted X-ray images showing the 14 screws and a metal plate in his foot. He said he injured his foot during a fall from a ladder at his home. He said he was "sorry to miss the important work we are doing in Washington ... but medical emergencies are never convenient." Chaffetz, 50, has not announced his future plans, although he says he's considering private sector jobs. He is a possible candidate for Utah governor in 2020. Idaho man sentenced for hate crime in gay man's killing BOISE, Idaho (AP) An Idaho man who pleaded guilty to a hate crime for his role in the death of a gay man has been sentenced to 28 years in prison. KTVB-TV reports 23-year-old Kelly Schneider was sentenced Wednesday in connection with last year's death of 49-year-old Steven Nelson. The sentence for the hate crime charge of willful assault based on sexual orientation is in addition to a life term Schneider received earlier this month for first-degree murder. He'll serve at least 28 years behind bars before he's eligible for parole. According to court documents, Schneider lured Nelson to a remote area and used steel-toed boots to kick Nelson repeatedly while Nelson begged for his life. Nelson was then left alone and died after finding help at a home about half-mile away. 'Mountain man' granted parole in 1984 killing DEER LODGE, Mont. (AP) Self-described "mountain man" Don Nichols has been granted parole after serving nearly 32 years for kidnapping a world class athlete on a training run in the mountains of southwestern Montana in July 1984 and killing her would-be rescuer. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole granted parole to the 86-year-old after a hearing Thursday at the state prison in Deer Lodge. Nichols was sentenced to 85 years in prison for kidnapping Kari Swenson in the mountains near Big Sky and killing Alan Goldstein as he tried to rescue Swenson. Swenson was shot in the chest by Nichols' son, Dan, before the two escaped. Don and Dan Nichols were arrested after a five-month manhunt in southwestern Montana. Nichols told the board he plans to live in Deer Lodge. The Indiana Minority Business Magazine a sister publication of the Indianapolis Recorder will honor 12 minority professionals who have exhibited excellence in the field of fashion, art or beauty. The recipients of the Golden Laurel distinction will be awarded during the 2017 Spring Golden Laurel Professional Reception on Thursday, May 11, at the Mid-States Minority Supplier Development Council office, located at 2126 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46202. An art-gallery themed networking reception will begin at 5:30 p.m., and the awards presentation will begin at 6 p.m. This event is presented in partnership with the Mid-States Minority Supplier Development Council and sponsored by IndyGo Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation. The fashion, art and beauty fields have long been influenced by the innovation and creativity of minority communities in this country. It is most unfortunate that many of these creators go without recognition, largely due to the impact of cultural appropriation, said IMBM President Shannon Williams. It is our goal with this seasons Golden Laurel Professional Reception to honor some of our states most deserving artists for their contributions. Below are the 2017 Spring Golden Laurel award recipients: Alpha Blackburn fashion designer D. Del Reverda Jennings creator of FLAVA FRESH Art Exhibition Jayne During owner of KUABA Art Gallery Elan Furs Kennys Academy of Barbering Berny Martin founder of Midwest Fashion Week Sparkle Myers owner of Makeup by Sparkle Tony Radford creator of Meet the Artist, an Indianapolis Public Library initiative George Ryder visual artist, sculptor, painter Andrea Smith owner of Studio 57 Photography Danielle Smith designer, owner of Fresh Fettle LLC Amani Tre Niner tattoo artist, owner of Animation Art Studio Admission to the Golden Laurel Professional Reception is free of charge, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Visit goldenlaurelfab.eventbrite.com to register. In a heart-rending incident, Muslim men conducted the final rites of a man according to Hindu rituals at Sheikhpura village of West Bengal's Malda. BCCL The man, Biswajit Rajak who died on Monday night was in a very poor shape and his parents had neither money nor manpower to perform the last rights. "We had no money for funeral of our son...whole night we sat and cried beside our dead son thinking what to do," Biswajit mother said. The news of the youths death reached the mosque and community leaders decided unanimously that they would shoulder the hearse and arrange the funeral of their fellow villager. They had also collected money for the cremation and even the local Imam attended the funeral. "In morning, our Muslim neighbours came forward and carried the body on a bamboo cot to the Manikchak cremation ground which is around 8km from the village,"Rajaks mother said, adding, "They also chanted Hindu mantras - "Bolo Hari Hari bol" on the way to the ground." "Hindus and Muslims are like two sons. We always looking after one another in this village. After all we are human first," a Muslim youth Ashraf said. One civilian have been killed and few were injured in army firing on stone pelters near the terror encounter site in Kupwara. AFP The victim has been identified as Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, a 70-year-old resident of Panzgam, Kupwara. Various media reports put the number of injured anywhere between 3-10. AFP The army is said to have fired at the stone pelters after they resorted to throwing stones at the soldiers allegedly demanding the bodies of the two terrorists killed in the encounter in the Army camp earlier in the day. The stone pelters who had assembled near camp had obstructed the army's combing operations for one terrorist who is still believed to be on the run. The hooligans were trying to get under the skin of the army by chanting anti-India slogans and cheering the terrorists. AFP The army had kept restraint for long as police and media tried to persuade the locals to end their demonstration. This is yet another case where the terrorists and the stone-pelters in Kashmir have worked hand-in-hand during an army operation. This comes even as the Indian Army Chief General Vipin Rawat warned that those helping the terrorists will be dealt accordingly. City crime branch, probing trafficking of minors to Paris, arrested two more carriers on Tuesday for allegedly smuggling teenagers from Mumbai. Investigators said till date around 100 minors may have been smuggled to Paris and their parents' only motive appears to be that their children get better education and their family's "status" improves. BBC/Representational Image The two accusedSunil Nandwani (53) of Kalyan and Narsaiyya Munjali (45) of Nalasoparawere arrested after their phone numbers were found in the seized documents. "Nandwani has earlier carried five to six minors to Paris while Munjali recently made passports for two minors but was unable to get French visas. Both were produced before court and remanded to police custody till April 29," said an officer. Teenagers aged between 14 and 16 are taken to France and kept there till they turn 18, after which they apply for French citizenship. Crime branch stumbled upon the case on April 20 after getting a tipoff that four minors would be taken to Paris with fictitious identities. Cops landed near Mumbai interntional airport and arrested Bollywood cameraman Arif Farooqui (38), assistant cameraman Rajesh Pawar (47) and hairstylist Fatema Fareed (48) in the case. The four minors were sent to Chidren's Remand Home. Reuters/Representational Image "There is a gang that smuggles humans from India to Paris," said an officer. Elaborating on the modus operandi, he said that all the teenagers were from Punjab. "The children sent to the remand home belong to Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala cities of Punjab. There is an agent in Punjab who contacts the parents and convinces them to send their children abroad," added the officer. The probe is being conducted by senior inspector Ashok Khot, officers Nagesh Puranik, Vijay Dhamal and Amit Pawar, and being supervised by crime branch chief Sanjay Saxena. Most parents belong to the middle-class and they either spent their savings on sending their children abroad or sold some property to get money for the purpose. BCCL/Representational Image Investigators said they found documents that raised suspicions that around 100 minors were sent to Paris in the past three years. "The children would be taken to some Gurdwaras and left there. Their passports would be destroyed by the agents. We suspect the accused may have some links with other agents in Paris who must receive the minors there," the officer said. "We are in the proces of verification and will take appropriate action," said Saxena. US President Donald Trump has completed 100 days in Washington DC's Oval Office. Suprised? Shocked? Neither? Well, this isn't the forum to discuss his successes and fallacies. What can undoubtedly be said is that his time in the office has been anything but boring. Day 1 White house website erases Obamas legacy on several issues Whitehouse.gov All through his campaign, Donald Trump said that he will Make America Great again, which was also his campaigns slogan. On the first day as President, Trumps administration made immediate changes to the White House website, which previously held information on civil rights, climate change, LGBT rights, immigration and the Iran Deal. It was under Barack Obamas administration that this information became available online. Also read: A Day Into Trump's Presidency And The LGBT Rights And Climate Change Pages Get Deleted From The White House Website Day 2 Womens march Reuters Millions of people descended to the streets across America to protest against Trumps misogynistic exclusive views of women, people of colour, disabled people, and people with different sexual orientation. It was one of the biggest marches in the country, which was held in more than 600 US cities and attended by more than 4.2 million people. Also read: Women Take To Streets In India And US To Announce That Patriarchy Won't Be Tolerated Day 6 - Executive order for Mexican border wall is signed Reuters Donald Trump receives a blow of criticism online after he signs and executive order for the construction of the Mexican wall. During the campaign he vowed that Mexico will pay for the entire thing, but his administration hasn't yet clarified where the funds will come from. Days 8 Trump imposes travel ban and thousands protest Reuters President Trump signs an executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries including Iraq and Syria from entering the country. He defends it by saying its about terrorism, not religion. Thousands take to the streets and gather at airports across the country to protest against the travel ban. Also read: US President Trump Might Revise Travel Ban. Here's A Timeline Of How It All Unfolded Day 11 - Trump fires acting attorney general over travel ban Reuters The Trump administration asked acting Attorney General Sally Yates to leave following her order to the Justice Department lawyers to not uphold the President's travel order. Day 34 - Trump administration repeals transgender bathroom guidance Reuters Trump overturned Barack Obamas protections for transgender students that required public schools to let them use whichever bathroom they identify with their gender. The Trump administration is leaving it up to the discretion of the states and school districts to decide whether students should have the access to bathrooms that do not reflect their biological sex. Also read: In An Anti-Transgender Move, Donald Trump Reverses Obama's Policy On Bathrooms In Schools Day 37 Trump becomes first President in 36 years to not attend the white house correspondents dinner I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017 The annual White House correspondents dinner is a long held tradition. On April 29, Trump tweeted that hell be skipping the dinner. He wrote on Twitter, I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!" Day 44 - Trump accuses Obama of tapping the Trump Tower Reuters The President made a hefty claim on Twitter accused his predecessor of surveilling the Trump Tower during his 2016 Presidential campaign. Although the White House is yet to provide evidence, Trump hasnt backed off from his claim. Day 57 - Trump refuses to shake Merkel's hands Reuters When the US President and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, met at the White House, Trump apparently refused to shake the latter's hand. When media photographer's asked the pair to shake hands for the camera, Trump continued to sit with his hands together. Day 88 US warns North Korea Reuters US Vice President, Mike Pence, warned North Korea not to test the President over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. He also said that the US was steadily running out of patience with the regime. Day 88 - Melania Trump reminds her husband to put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem That's a subtle nudge from Melania to remind Trump to lift his hand during the national anthem... https://t.co/P9XlYpjvcQ Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) April 17, 2017 The First Lady had to gently nudge the POTUS to place his hand over his heart at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll celebrations. Day 93 The march for science Reuters Thousands of scientists, climate change researchers and supporters of science poured onto the streets in Washington DC and other cities to support research. Trump has consistently denied the reality of climate change and scientific facts. The march, which took place on Earth Day, was essential to take a stand for scientific and evidence-based research. Let's see what the next 100 days hold. In ordered to help cash-strapped parents, Zimbabwe's education minister Lazarus Dokora has proposed a policywhere those who cannot afford tuition fee can pay it the form of livestock. Picture for representation/Reuters Local reports state quoted Dokora as saying that school authorities must be flexible and shouldn't urn away parents who are poor and cannot afford the fees. Our schools have to be flexible and ensure those who do not have money to pay fees can work. For example, if there is a builder in the community, he/she must be given that opportunity to work as a form of payment of tuition fees, he told local newspaper Sunday Mail. Facebook Zimbabwe is in the middle of the worst economic crisis, with thousands spending hours in bank queues to withdraw cash. "On the issue of livestock, the community has to arrange a market where everyone participates; from the school authorities, local leadership and parents themselves to avoid parents being duped," said Dokora. Reports claim that President Robert Mugabe's government's economic crisis is because of "externalising" hard cash (taking it out of the country). But critics say that it's the country's low industrial production and rising unemployment that has led to the crisis. The goats-for-fees policy was a response to the growing economic crisis. But people on social media who were unimpressed with the decision ridiculed it with memes and bad jokes. May Robert Mugabe of #Zimbabwe live longer... All kids have to study... U need a goat not money for fees #EducationInAfrica pic.twitter.com/reME6lPti4 Atulinda Allan (@Atulinda_Allan) 16 April 2017 So when the government says you can pay school fees with goat's in Zimbabwe, will they build a large kraal 4 all the goats @702Aubrey (@funatjie) 16 April 2017 Paulo Coelho said 'when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it' and this certainly holds true for Dr. Raj Panjabi who just won the $1 million TED prize money. Facebook/UCSF Benioff Children Dr. Rajesh Ramesh Panjabi, 36-year-old Liberian-American of Indian origin is a physician at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. The TED annual award is giving to people who have 'a creative and bold vision to solve a timely, pressing problem." reports NPR. He received the award at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada this year And for Dr Raj Panjabi, his only aim is to build "largest army of health care workers the world has ever known." Twitter/Raj Panjabi According to reports, Raj Panjabi fled to the United States to escape civil war in his native Liberia. But when he returned home he was shocked to witness the deplorable plight of healthcare for rural people in his native state. Dr. Panjabi established the Last Mile Health that came from cash he had received as a wedding gift. During the Ebola crisis a few years ago, his organisation trained 1,300 community health workers to curb the spread of the deadly virus. Twitter/Raj Panjabi Now with the money that he won, Panjabi aims to create a Community Health Academy, where people are trained and equipped with life-saving skills. He strongly believes that investing in health care is crucial for cutting expenses in the long run. He told The Business Insider, "I believe no one should have to die in the 21st century from lack of access to a doctor or a clinic." What an inspiration! Uber is diving head-first into the race to create a flying car, shedding more light on its plans for a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle. At a conference yesterday, the company said its entered into new partnerships with established and emerging aeronautics players like Aurora Flight Sciences, Embraer, Bell Helicopter, Pistrel Aircraft, Mooney and ChargePoint. Uber Elevate, as the project is called, will focus its efforts on the markets in Dallas in the US and Dubai. The Elevate Network is Ubers project to set up an on-demand ride-hailing service in the sky. A fleet of electric-powered vehicles, capable of taking off vertically, and cutting down ride times from 30 minutes to just five. To do this, Ubers new partners will be providing the technological requirements to develop these airborne taxis. In fact, Uber has even set a timeline for its pet project, indicating it plans to demonstrate the Uber Elevate Network for the first time at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai. However, Uber is going to have step on the gas if it wants to get in on the action early enough to make a profit. Other entrants into the VTOL space have already begun development, including the likes of Lillium Aviation, which plans to eventually offer local air commutes for as low as $6. To that end, Uber says that its already collaborating with the Dubai Road and Transport Authority, to fund studies analysing optimal routes for in the city for these air taxis, as well as what standard rates should be. With other partnerships in place, the major thing the company has to worry about now is keeping its act together long enough for the technology to gestate. But knowing the companys recent history, that might be tougher to do than they think. Launched from Earth in 1997, NASAs Cassini spacecraft took close to nine years to reach its destination, Saturn, where its spent years observing the planet and transmitting back data. Now, the space agency is giving the probe an explosive send off - literally. An illustration of NASAs Cassini spacecraft above Saturn Nearly 20 years after being sent off on a solo voyage to the ringed planet, Cassini is nearly out of fuel reserves. NASA is now ready to decommission the $3.26 billion probe in a most unusual way, by blowing it up in space. According to the agency, Cassini needs to be destroyed to avoid damaging any alien life in the vicinity. See, while other probes in the past have been left to orbit around heavenly bodies long after theyve gone dormant, Cassini is a little different. According to the space agency, leaving it in its current course around Saturn could be catastrophic. The gravity from the planet and its many moons could wreak havoc on the defunct probes unsupervised orbit, possibly sending it plunging into the moons Titan or Enceladus, both of which may be capable of supporting alien life. In fact, Cassini sealed its own fate back in 2015, when it discovered a saltwater ocean buried beneath the ice on Enceladus. Since then, the space agency has also discovered plumes of icy material ejecting from the surface, which host the perfect conditions for microbes to survive. According to Earl Maize, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the agency cant risk damaging or contaminating any microscopic alien life in a crash. Cassini has got to be put safely away, he said. And since we wanted to stay at Saturn, the only choice was to destroy it in some controlled fashion. An illustration of Cassini breaking up over Saturn - NASA/JPL Cassini will brave 22 dives between Saturn and its rings during the next few months, transmitting back data to Earth the likes of which we havent seen before. Now, during its final run which began April 26, Cassini is diving towards Saturns surface at over 122,000 kph approximately once per week. Because that gap between the rings is a region no spacecraft has ever explored, Cassini was using its dish-shaped high-gain antenna as a protective shield while passing through the ring plane, which is why NASA temporarily lost contact with the probe on its first dive yesterday. Now, Earth has re-established contact with Cassini from the giant 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California. This time, theres no coming back around the planet for the probe. Instead, NASA will use the remainder of Cassini's days to harvest all the data it gathers through these last few dives. Eventually, as it completes the final dive on September 15, the pioneering probe will struggle to keep its antennae pointed upward as it transmits the last data from its final run back to Earth, before it burns up in the atmosphere. All good things must end, and it looks like after 20 exciting years, Cassini is going out for one last ride. As major technology firms agree, artificial intelligence is the future of the tech industry. Everything from social media platforms, to consumer software, and IoT gadgets to scientific research, AI can be a huge benefit, whether it be crunching data to recognise patterns or help us in our everyday life. Intel understands this fact too, as evidenced by the focus its putting on AI research. At the Intel AI Day in Bangalore early April, the company laid out its plans to push for AI development across various fields. From scientific researchers to software developers, various speakers espoused the benefits of machine learning technology, as well as discussing the road ahead. Intel's MD for South Asia, Prakash Mallya, at the AI Day event in Bangalore Its all about partnership, says Prakash Mallya, Managing Director for Intel in South Asia. We want to engage the ecosystem and accelerate the usage of AI to rapidly transform everybodys life. Intel estimates each person on the Internet generates 1.5GB of data each day. They believe this wealth of data can be leveraged in various ways, including for algorithm-based government administration and medical treatments. Consequently, the company is collaborating with other major players like Wipro, Hewlett Packard, Julia Computing, and Calligo Technologies, as well as other AI startups in India and abroad. India's race towards an AI future For instance, Julia Computing is working on an Ai-powered software capable of diagnosing diabetic retinopathy, a degenerative condition that affects eyesight. The developers have trained a neural network using a huge dataset of images showing infected eyes and those free from the condition. In this way, the technology could theoretically be applied in a patients home, using a high quality smartphone camera. This way, the patient can self-diagnose for the condition before visiting a doctor, and even track the advancement of his condition. Meanwhile, Dr Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, details how his team is working on a translation software using AI. The team is using a combination of machine learning and natural language processing (what AI like Siri and Googles Digital Assistant use to understand conversational speech), to translate Indian languages. Its a 3D problem, he says, describing how Indias variety of languages and dialects can pose a functional problem. However, the results of a successful program could benefit us every day, allowing us to translate spoken conversation into our native tongue on the fly. Even Flipkart is getting in on the AI action, using machine learning to power its suggested picks on the ecommerce platform. AI was like marriage in 1995 Everyone was excited about it, but it always failed to deliver on its promises, he says with a chuckle. According to him, that all changed over times. As Big Data emerged as a precious resource, hardware became at the same time more advanced and more accessible, and the open source community burgeoned, Deep Learning became an achievable dream. The company is currently plugging in a neural network to recognise what a customer purchases and suggest similar picks. This isnt the kind of suggestions the platform currently has, which are based solely on product type and model. Instead, Flipkart is applying this technique to even items like clothing. Still in development, their AI is capable of recognising the colour, patterns and even style of an item of clothing and then suggest others that fit the bill. In the future, this could work by you being able to just describe the item you want in a search bar, instead of relying on a catalogue or keywords. It could even be applied to a smartphone app, allowing you to scan something you see in a store or on someones person, and have it look up the item on Flipkart. Even the National Institute for Smart Government in Hyderabad intends to leverage AI in the near future. According to the groups CEO, DN Narasimha Raju, the state government is looking to artificial intelligence as way to cope with grievance redressal. Unsupervised Learning But indeed, some of the most interesting work may be coming from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where the student team of Chiranjib Bhattacharya, professor of Computer Science and Automation, is exploring unsupervised learning. This is different from the usual type of machine learning in one key way; none of the data the machine learns from is labelled. In this case, the neural network isnt fed any examples of a good or bad outcome (depending on what function its being applied to), instead it just finds patterns and cluster the raw data accordingly. For example, in facial detection, youd feed the AI images of faces so it can map out what a face generally looks like. On the other hand, with an AI taught by unsupervised learning, it will be able to tell a face apart from a landscape or a dog, but might be confused by a picture of a gorilla. Of course, supervised learning is more efficient, but unsupervised learning can be beneficial in a country like India, where vast amounts of government data has not yet been digitised and organised. In this case, an AI using unsupervised learning can sift through huge sets of digital records and classify them as groups based on what they contain. In addition, unsupervised learning also has major applications in cyber security, where an attackers mode of entry may differ. In this case, the neural network using this kind of learning can recognise patterns left by a hacker by noticing the difference in their movements as compared to other users. We may be more familiar with the flashier versions of AI weve gotten used to, like smartphone digital assistants and board game-playing bots. But all the above research, being developed right here in India, is continuing in the background, gestating until the day theyre ready to change our lives in ways we never imagined. Were witnessing a revolution similar to that of the birth of steam power, or the invention of computers themselves. And one day, well be ready to put almost our entire lives in the hands of artificial intelligence. Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. As wars drag on, things get worse. At noon on Sunday, April 16, just as participants at the last Easter procession in La Linea de la Concepcion (Cadiz) were calling it a day, a speedboat filled with hashish was pulling into the fishing port. The plan was to unload the goods and speed away in 90 seconds, but three Civil Guard officers were waiting on land. Civil Guards with a boat used by drug traffickers. MARCOS MORENO Until now, the mere presence of the officers would have been enough to make the criminals turn around. But not this time. Suddenly, more than 100 people emerged from the nearby neighborhood of La Atunara, ready to defend the traffickers and their goods. Four more law enforcement officers answered the call for reinforcements, but all seven were held back under a volley of stones. The incident is alarming, but it did not come as a surprise to the officers fighting drug trafficking in Campo de Gibraltar, the area around the British overseas territory of Gibraltar and one of the biggest hashish entry points into Europe. We have extremely high unemployment. Around 45% of people do not finish elementary school Juan Franco, mayor of La Linea This is the way in which drug smugglers respond these days to barriers set up at the mouth of the Guadarranque, known popularly as the river of drugs. What used to be witnessed only by residents of San Roque, who have views onto the river, is now in plain view for everyone, and logically it creates alarm, says Francisco Mena, who coordinates Nexos, a federation of anti-drug associations. He is talking about drug shipments delivered in broad daylight on beaches and crews using increasingly violent means to avoid capture. The new anti-narc barrier on the Guadarranque has forced drug smugglers to find other ways into Spain via different parts of Cadiz province: La Linea, Algeciras, Barbate, Chiclana, Conil or Sanlucar. But there is one spot that stands out above the rest: El Tonelero beach in La Linea. This is a perfect landing site because streets and homes are just 200 meters from the beach. This makes it easy to drive onto the beach using all-terrain vehicles. We put up blocks and a wall, but they moved the blocks and tore down the wall. Their infrastructure is almost better than the states, explains Juan Franco, mayor of La Linea, with desperation. Police unions highlight the need to beef up their numbers and resources This is a game of cat and mouse, says Jorge Ramirez, the Tax Agencys special delegate to Andalusia. The port of El Tonelero is a regular stop for them, but once it gets more well known, they will seek out another place. They are like an incorporated company that generates a narco-economy, subject to the laws of supply and demand. The increased availability of unemployed manpower in the area means that narcos are only willing to pay half of what they used to, says Mena. The police unions have been complaining for a long time about the need to beef up their numbers and resources. The government subdelegation usually says that the personnel quotas have been filled, but these have not been updated for the last 15 years, and they were created for a very different reality from todays, says Jose Encinas, the provincial secretary for the Civil Guards Unified Association. There are 1,100 officers stationed at the southern center of Algeciras, but Encinas figures that between 30% and 40% more are required. If the state does not provide an immediate response, these mobsters act with a sense of impunity, adds Franco, the mayor of La Linea. There used to be an unwritten rule by which if officers caught them, criminals dropped their cargo and fled. Not now; now they are swaggering all over the place, adds Mena. He describes incidents in which traffickers used three high-speed vehicles, one of which was used to smash into police patrol cars. Or the recent case that saw scores of people coming out of their homes to protect traffickers against law enforcement officers. We are reaching a threshold of violence which, once crossed, there is no going back on. Neighborly help Much of the violence is made possible through the connivance of the network of people who feed off the drug trade. They are employees, but also friends and relatives who do not hesitate to defend the traffickers using stones or whatever else is handy. It is a sociological problem. We have extremely high joblessness rates of 35%. Of those people, around 45% did not complete their elementary school studies, says the mayor of La Linea. Drug traffickers offer them up to 1,000 a day just to inform them of the polices whereabouts. Collaborating with the mafias becomes justified, and eradicating that environment is very difficult when you have no alternative to offer, Franco points out. Although the people helping the traffickers are a minority, they have more impact than the silent majority, as Mena points out. In the 1980s, the heroin smuggled in would remain in the area. That caused suffering, and the mothers of drug addicts went as far as to stage protests on the doorsteps of dealers homes. But these days the hashish does not stay here, it is moved on into Europe, and it is harder to confront your neighbor if the problem is not affecting you directly. In its latest annual report, dated 2015 (a year that saw 202,696 kilograms of hashish seized, 37,901 kilograms more than in 2014), the Cadiz Anti-Drug Attorneys Office warned about the defiant attitude displayed by the traffickers. Ramirez asserts that both the amount of drugs and the level of violence are on the rise, although he does not believe that impunity reigns. The proof lies in the Guadarranque barrier (which has already been sabotaged twice). On the coast, surveillance in the area is five times what it is in other parts of Spain. But even if we formed a human chain with guards holding hands, they would still find a gap to slip through. English version by Heather Galloway. Occupation Of The American Mind - Israel And US Public Opinion Video Documentary A look at the information wars waged by Israel and its supporters to win the hearts and minds of the American people. An occupation of American media and the American mind by a pro-Israel narrative that's deflected attention away from what virtually everyone recognises as the best way to resolve this conflict: end the occupation and the settlements so that Palestinians can finally have a state of their own. The Israeli perspective dominates the American media and pro-Israel talking points are repeated by the highest government officials and recycled endlessly by the media. How, if at all, can propaganda be uncovered if the mainstream point of view is so dominant? Posted April 27, 2017 A film by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp Narrator : Roger Waters Executive Producer : Sut Jhally Associate Producer: George Matta The 2014 war on Gaza saw the Israeli military launch a devastating attack on the Gaza Strip. Over the course of 51 days, Israel dropped nearly 20,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, killing more than 2,000 Palestinians, wounding tens of thousands and obliterating countless homes. The overwhelming majority of the casualties were civilians. The attacks sparked mass protests around the world, including a thousands-strong march in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, with a clear divide between anti-war and rightist protesters. However, the American reaction held firm in its support for Israel, in spite of the atrocities taking place on the ground. A CNN/ORC poll conducted in July of 2014 showed that only four in 10 Americans believed that Israel was using too much force against the population of Gaza. The same poll showed that 12 percent of respondents believed Israel was not using enough force. However shocking, the unrelenting American support for Israel was nothing new. The Israeli perspective dominates the American media and pro-Israel talking points are repeated by the highest government officials and recycled endlessly by the media. How, if at all, can propaganda be uncovered if the mainstream point of view is so dominant? Zionism, born in the late 1800s, saw the idea of Jewish entitlement to Palestine come to fruition. From an estimated 7 percent, the Jewish population of Palestine grew exponentially to a third of the total population by 1947. The events of World War II and the Holocaust contributed to the number of Jewish settlers arriving in Palestine. It was then that the British colonial government handed matters over to the newly formed United Nations. UN Resolution 181 awarded the smaller Jewish community a significantly larger percentage of historic Palestine than its Arab population - 56 percent to Palestine's 44, respectively. Arab leaders rejected the proposal but their protests went unheard as Zionist leaders declared Israel a state under the new UN borders, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. A crushing defeat of the military coalition of Arab states - including Jordan (then known as TransJordan), Egypt and Lebanon - saw Israel take control of 78 percent of historic Palestine by the time armistice was declared in 1949. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter In 1967, the Six-Day War would see Israel defeat much stronger Arab armies, once again. The state would lay claim to whatever remained of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In spite of the UN Security Council passing Resolution 242 - a call for Israel to withdraw its armed forces as per international law forbidding the takeover of territory by war - American public opinion of Israeli actions did not waver. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon , however, saw a change in the favoured tides for Israel. As images of the Sabra and Shatila massacre flooded into American news media, Israel suddenly needed to defend itself. The war in Lebanon would trigger the need for an official public relations strategy, known in Hebrew as "Hasbara". The basic strategy would be to push back with footage of Palestinians fighting against the occupation, highlighting Israel's role as "underdog" and "victim". However, with the internet and the rise of social media "news", the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups have had a harder time managing American perceptions of the conflict. How can these changes - if any - be sustained in the long-term and will the US government ever manage its media support for Israel's position in conflict? Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here. WATCH: Suppressed Al Jazeera film details the Israel lobbys covert war to manipulate Americans Trump Now A Captive Of The Deep State By Paul Craig Roberts April 27, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - When the gullible and insouciant American public and the presstitutes who participate in the deceptions permitted the Deep State to get away with the fairy tale that a few Saudi Arabians under the direction of Osama bin Laden, but without the support of any government or intelligence agency, were able to outwit the entirety of the Western Alliance and Israels Mossad and deliver the greatest humiliation in history to the worlds only superpower by making the entirety of the US government dysfunctional on September 11, 2001, Washington learned that it could get away with anything, any illegal and treasonous act, any lie. The gullible Western populations would believe anything that they were told. Not only insouciant Americans, but much of the world accepts any statement out of Washington as the truth despite the evidence. If Washington said it, Washingtons vassals in Germany, France, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan assent to the obvious lie as if it were the obvious truth. So do the CIA purchased media of these vassal states, a collection of whores who prefer CIA subsidies to truth. When Obama inherited the Deep States agenda from George W. Bush, he set up Syrias Assad for regime change by repeating for many months that if Assad used chemical weapons in the civil war that Washington had sent ISIS to conduct, Assad would have crossed the Red Line that Obama had drawn and would, as the consequence, face an invasion by the US military, just as Iraq had been invaded based on Washingtons lie about weapons of mass destruction. Having burnt this idea into the feeble minds of the Western populations, Obama then arranged for a chemical weapon to be exploded in Syria and blamed it on Assad. Thus, the Red Line had been crossed, the insouciant West was told, and America would now invade. The UK prime minister, the usual piece of Washington-owned garbage, rushed to the support of the American invasion, promising British support. But the British Parliament voted NO. The MPs said that the UK was not going to support another American war crime justified by obvious lies. Only in Britain does democracy still have any teeth, as we saw a second time with the Brexit vote. All the rest of the West lives in vassalage and slavery. The Russian government also took a firm stand, admitting that Russia stupidly trusted America in Libya, but no more. We, said the Russians, will ourselves remove any and all chemical weapons from Syria and turn them over to Western civilization to be destroyed, which the Russians did. What did Western civilization do with the weapons? They gave some of them to ISIS. This gave Washington a second chance to accuse Assad of using chemical weapons against his own people. And so Washington has rolled out this hoax a second time. During a Syrian air force attack on an ISIS position, a chemical weapon exploded, or so it is alleged. Instantly Washington said that Assad had used Sarin gas against his own people. Trump was shown photos of dead babies and stupidly ordered a US military strike against Syria. This was the first time that Washington had engaged in an unambigious war crime without any cover. Trump had no UN resolution, not even one that could be stood on its head as in Libya. Trump had no NATO participation, no George W. Bush coalition of the willing to give cover to the war crime with the support of other governments. There are no skirts for Trump to hid behind. He stupidly let himself be pushed into commiting an unambigious war crime. Now all his opponentsthe Deep State, the military/security complex, the CIA, the Hillary Democrats, the warmonger Republicanshave the New White House Fool under their control. If Trump doesnt do as they want, they will impeach him for his war crime. Meanwhile the risk of war with the Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Syrian alliance grows closer. The US shows every intention of provoking this war. Washington has imposed sanctions on 271 employees of Syrias Scientific Studies and Research Center for, in Washingtons lying words, responsibility for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and the means to deliver them. In order to make this false charge stick, Washington prevented any investigation whatsoever into the facts of the alleged chemical weapon associated by Western propaganda, not by any known fact, with a Syrian air attack on ISIS. If Washington is so certain that Syria is responsible, why does Washington block an investigation? If Washington is right, an investigation would prove Washingtons case. But as Washington is again lying through its teeth, an investigation would prove the contrary. And that is what Washington fears and is the reason Washington blocked an investigation. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Why do Western peoples believe the US government, a well proven liar, who blocks an investigation and asserts that everyone must believe Washington or else be put on a list of Russian agents? Here is the lie, the raw propaganda, that the US government has no qualms about issuing: https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/sm0056.aspx It comes from the US Department of the Treasury in which I once served honorably. But honor no longer exists in the US Treasury. Are Western populations intelligent enough to understand that the only reason for Washington to block an investigation of the alleged use by Syria of a chemical weapon is that the facts clearly do not support Washingtons lie? No, they are not. Theodore Postol, a scientist at MIT, has concluded from his investigation that the chemical weapon was not dropped from the air but was set off on the ground and that it was not Sarin gas as Sarin lingers and the alleged aid workers who were immediately on the scene were unprotected by gloves or masks or by anything. If the gas were Sarin, they would be dead also. The Russian explanation is that the Syrian air force attack hit a storage facility, conveniently arranged by Washington, that contained chemical weapons. I have seen reports that Washington, or Washingtons vassals such as Saudi Arabia, have provided ISIS with chemical weapons. President Putin of Russia says the reason Washington has delivered chemical weapons to ISIS is that there can be more orchestrated instances of their use that can be blamed on Assad. I think I can say in complete confidence that this is what is happening: Washington intends to wear Russia down with orchestrated chemical attack after chemical attack, portraying Russia as an inhuman defender of Assads alleged chemical attacks, in order to more thoroughly isolate Russia and in order to provoke opposition to Putins government, especially among the US and German financed NGOs that Russia stupidly permits to operate in Russia and in the Russian media. Washingtons goal is to force by the weight of world opinion Putin to abandon Assad to Washington. US Secretary of State Tillerson, another gigantic disappointment to those who hoped for peaceful relations between the US and Russia/China/Iran/Syria, has said that the US still intends regime change in Syria. Tillerson has advised Russia to get out of Washingtons way and to consider carefully their support for Bashar al-Assad. Russia cannot abandon Assad, because if Syria falls to Washington, Iran will be next, and then the Washington-financed jihadists will be set upon the Muslim populations of the Russian Federation and China. This is Washingtons game plan. I am certain Putin is aware of it, and I think the Chinese are, despite their inordinate focus on making money. The questions before us could not be any clearer: Will Russia and China break and give in to Washington? If not, will Washington become a good world citizen for the first time in Americas history, or will Washington issue more threats, thereby convincing Russia and China that their alternative is to wait for Washingtons preemptive nuclear strike or deliver one themselves? This is the only question that the world faces that is worth our attention. I spent a quarter century in Washington. The evil that is in control there at the present time is unprecedented. I have never seen anything like it. Can the world survive the evil that is concentrated in Washington, evil that has the support of the governments of the Western world? 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 . Donald Trumps North Korea Briefing Was a Political Stunt "I didn't hear anything new," John McCain told CNN about Trump's emergency North Korea summit at the White House VIDEO By Matthew Rozsa April 27, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Salon " - When President Donald Trumps administration announced earlier this week that they were holding an all-hands-on-deck meeting at the White House about the North Korean crisis , the most obvious question was why they would hold a meeting usually reserved for Capitol Hill. The answer, it seems, is that they put on a show for its own sake. Nothing new was divulged during the Wednesday meeting, according to a number of senators who attended and spoke with CNN afterward . After briefly appearing to discuss the crisis in North Korea, Trump passed the baton to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. It was a sobering briefing, and an important opportunity for the entire Senate to hear the emerging plans of the Trump administration to confront what is a very real threat to our security, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Connecticut told CNN. His Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee (who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), told the network that it was an OK briefing. Republican Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that I didnt hear anything new because I have been heavily briefed before. Its a very serious situation, just as I had (thought) before I went there. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter The disenchantment was perhaps best captured by Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who told CNNs Anderson Cooper that It felt more like a dog and pony show to me than anything else. I guess it has something to with this 100 days in office. Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and his work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC. Copyright 2017 Salon Media Group, Inc. The Looting Machine Called Capitalism By Paul Craig Roberts April 27, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - I have come to the conclusion that capitalism is successful primarily because it can impose the majority of the costs associated with its economic activities on outside parties and on the environment. In other words, capitalists make profits because their costs are externalized and born by others. In the US, society and the environment have to pick up the tab produced by capitalist activity. In the past when critics raised the question about external costs, that is, costs that are external to the company although produced by the companys activities, economists answered that it was not really a problem, because those harmed by the activity could be compensated for the damages that they suffered. This statement was intended to reinforce the claim that capitalism served the general welfare. However, the extremely primitive nature of American property rights meant that rarely would those suffering harm be compensated. The apologists for capitalism saved the system in the abstract, but not in reality. My recent article, The Destruction of Inlet Beach , made it clear to me that very little, if any, of the real estate development underway would be profitable if the external costs imposed on existing property holders had to be compensated. Consider just a few examples. When a taller house is constructed in front of one of less height, the Gulf view of the latter is preempted. The damage to the property value of the house whose view has been blocked is immense. Would the developer build such a tall structure if the disadvantaged existing property had to be compensated for the decline in its value? When a house is built that can sleep 20 or 30 people next to a familys vacation home or residence, the noise and congestion destroys the familys ability to enjoy their own property. If they had to be compensated for their loss, would the hotel, disquised as a single family dwelling have been built? Walton County, Florida, is so unconcerned about these vital issues that it has permitted construction of structures that can accommodate 30 people, but provide only three parking spaces. Where do the rental guests park? How many residents will find themselves blocked in their own driveways or with cars parked on their lawns? As real estate developers build up congestion, travel times are extended. What formerly was a 5 minute drive from Inlet Beach to Seaside along 30-A can now take 45 minutes during summer and holidays, possibly longer. Residents and visitors pay the price of the developers profits in lost time. The road is a two-lane road that cannot be widened. Yet Walton Countys planning department took no account of the gridlock that would emerge. As the state and federal highways serving the area were two lanes, over-development made hurricane evacuation impossible. Florida and US taxpayers had to pay for turning two lane highways into four lane highways in order to provide some semblance of hurricane evacuation. After a decade, the widening of highway 79, which runs North-South is still not completed to its connection to Interstate 10. Luckily, there have been no hurricanes. If developers had to pay these costs instead of passing them on to taxpayers, would their projects still be profitable? Now consider the external costs of offshoring the production of goods and services that US corporations, such as Apple and Nike, market to Americans. When production facilities in the US are closed and the jobs are moved to China, for example, the American workers lose their jobs, medical coverage, careers, pension provision, and often their self-respect when they are unable to find comparable employment or any employment. Some fall behind in their mortgage and car payments and lose their homes and cars. The cities, states, and federal governments lose the tax base as personal income and sales taxes decline and as depressed housing and commercial real estate prices in the abandoned communities depress property taxes. Social security and Medicare funding is harmed as payroll tax deposits fall. State and local infrastructure declines. Possibly crime rises. Safety net needs rise, but expenditures are cut as tax revenues decline. Municipal and state workers find their pensions at risk. Education suffers. All of these costs greatly exceed Apples and Nikes profits from substituting cheaper foreign labor for American labor. Contradicting the neoliberal claims, Apples and Nikes prices do not drop despite the collapse in labor costs that the corporations experience. A country that was intelligently governed would not permit this. As the US is so poorly governed, the executives and shareholders of global corporations are greatly enriched because they can impose the costs associated with their profits on external third parties. The unambigious fact is that US capitalism is a mechanism for looting the many for the benefit of the few. Neoliberal economics was constructed in order to support this looting. In other words, neoliberal economists are whores just like the Western print and TV media. Yet, Americans are so insouciant that you will hear those who are being looted praise the merits of free market capitalism. So far we have barely scratched the surface of the external costs that capitalism imposes. Now consider the polution of the air, soil, waterways, and oceans that result from profit-making activities. Consider the radioactive wastes pouring out of Fukushima since March 2011 into the Pacific Ocean. Consider the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from agricultural chemical fertilizer run-off. Consider the destruction of the Apalachicola, Florida, oyster beds from the restricted river water that feeds the bay due to overdevelopment upstream. Examples such as these are endless. The corporations responsible for this destruction bear none of the costs. If it turns out that global warming and ocean acidification are consequences of capitalisms carbon-based energy system, the entire world could end up dead from the external costs of capitalism. Free market advocates love to ridicule economic planning, and Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers actually said that markets are self-regulating. There is no sign anywhere of this self-regulation. Instead, there are external costs piled upon external costs. The absence of planning is why over-development has made 30-A dysfunctional, and it is why over-development has made metropolitan areas, such as Atlanta, Georgia, dysfunctional. Planning does not mean the replacement of markets. It means the provision of rules that produce rational results instead of shifting costs of development onto third parties. If capitalism had to cover the cost of its activities, how many of the activities would pay? As capitalists do not have to cover their external costs, what limits the costs? Once the external costs exceed the biospheres ability to process the waste products associated with external costs, life ends. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter We cannot survive an unregulated capitalism with a system of primitive property rights. Ecological economists such as Herman Daly understand this, but neoliberal economists are apologists for capitalist looting. In days gone by when mankinds footprint on the planet was light, what Daly calls an empty world, productive activities did not produce more wastes than the planet could cleanse. But the heavy foot of our time, what Daly calls a full world, requires extensive regulation. The Trump administrations program of rolling back environmental protection, for example, will multiply external costs. To claim that this will increase economic growth is idiotic. As Daly (and Michael Hudson) emphasize, the measure known as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is so flawed that we do not know whether the increased output costs more to produce than it is worth. GDP is really a measure of what has been looted without reference to the cost of the looting. Environmental deregulation means that capitalists can treat the environment as a garbage dump. The planet can become so toxic that it cannot recover. In the United States and generally across the Western world, property rights exist only in a narrow, truncated form. A developer can steal your view forever and your solitude for the period his construction requires. If the Japanese can have property rights in views, in quiet which requires noise abatement, and in sun fall on their property, why cant Americans? After all, we are alleged to be the exceptional people. Why Is There So Little Popular Protest Against Recent Threats of Nuclear War? By Lawrence Wittner April 27, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - In recent weeks, the people of the world have been treated to yet another display of the kind of nuclear insanity that has broken out periodically ever since 1945 and the dawn of the nuclear era. On April 11, Donald Trump , irked by North Koreas continued tests of nuclear weapons and missiles, tweeted that North Korea is looking for trouble. If China does not help, then we will solve the problem without them. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un responded by announcing that, in the event of a U.S. military attack, his country would not scruple at launching a nuclear strike at U.S. forces. In turn, Trump declared: We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. We have the best military people on earth. During the following days, the governments of both nuclear-armed nations escalated their threats. Dispatched to South Korea, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence declared that the era of strategic patience is over, and warned: All options are on the table. Not to be outdone, North Koreas deputy representative to the United Nations told a press conference that thermonuclear war may break out at any moment. Any missile or nuclear strike by the United States would be responded to in kind. Several days later, the North Korean government warned of a super-mighty preemptive strike that would reduce U.S. military forces in South Korea and on the U.S. mainland to ashes. The United States and its allies, said the official statement, should not mess with us. Curiously, this North Korean statement echoed the Trump promise during his presidential campaign that he would build a U.S. military machine so big, powerful, and strong that no one will mess with us. The fact that both Trump and Kim are being messed with despite their possession of very powerful armed forces, including nuclear weapons, seems to have eluded both men, who continue their deadly game of nuclear threat and bluster. And what is the response of the public to these two erratic government leaders behaving in this reckless fashion and threatening war, including nuclear war? It is remarkably subdued. People read about the situation in newspapers or watch it on the television news, while comedians joke about the madness of it all. Oh, yes, peace and disarmament organizations condemn the escalating military confrontation and outline reasonable diplomatic alternatives . But such organizations are unable to mobilize the vast numbers of people around the world necessary to shake some sense into these overwrought government officials. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter The situation was very different in the 1980s , when organizations like the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (in the United States), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (in Britain), and similar groups around the world were able to engage millions of people in protest against the nuclear recklessness of the U.S. and Soviet governmentsprotest that played a key role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war. So why is there so little public protest today? One factor is certainly the publics preoccupation with other important issues, among them climate change, immigration, terrorism, criminal justice, civil liberties, and economic inequality. Another appears to be a sense of fatalism. Many people believe that Kim and Trump are too irrational to respond to reason and too autocratic to give way to public pressure. Yet another factor is the belief of Americans and Europeans that their countries are safe from a North Korean attack. Yes, many people will die in a new Korean War, especially one fought with nuclear weapons, but they will be only Koreans. In addition, many people credit the absence of nuclear war since 1945 to nuclear deterrence. Thus, they assume that nuclear-armed nations will not fight a nuclear war among themselves. Finallyand perhaps most significantlypeople are reluctant to think about nuclear war. After all, it means death and destruction at an unbearable level of horror. Therefore, its much easier to simply forget about it. Of course, even if these factors explain the publics passivity in the face of a looming nuclear catastrophe, they do not justify it. After all, people can concern themselves with more than one issue at a time, public officials are often more malleable than assumed, accepting the mass slaughter of Koreans is unconscionable, and if nuclear deterrence really worked, the U.S. government would be far less worried about other nations (including North Korea) developing nuclear weapons. Also, problemsincluding the problem posed by nuclear weaponsdo not simply disappear when people ignore them. Trump: The Madder he Gets, the More Seriously the World Takes Him Now the flexible and pragmatic US President is sending a naval battle group to threaten North Korea By Robert Fisk The more dangerous Americas crackpot President becomes, the saner the world believes him to be. Just look back at the initial half of his first 100 days : the crazed tweeting, the lies, the fantasies and self-regard of this misogynist leader of the Western world appalled all of us. But the moment he went to war in Yemen , fired missiles at Syria and bombed Afghanistan, even the US media Trump had so ferociously condemned began to treat him with respect. And so did the rest of the world. Its one thing to have a lunatic in the White House who watches late night television and tweets all day. But when the same lunatic goes to war, it now emerges, hes a safer bet for democracy, a strong President who stands up to tyrants (unless they happen to be Saudis, Turks or Egyptians) and who acts out of human emotion rather than cynicism. How else can one account for the extraordinary report in The New York Times which recorded how Trumps anguish at the film of dying Syrian babies had led him to abandon isolationism? Americans like action, but have typically confused Trumps infantile trigger finger with mature decision-making. What else is there to think when a normally sane US columnist like David Ignatius suddenly compares Trump to Harry Truman and praises his demented President for his flexibility and pragmatism? This is preposterous. A madman who goofs off at something he doesnt like on CNN is just plain wacky. A man of unsound mind who attacks three Muslim countries two of which were included in his seven Muslim nation refugee ban is a danger to the world. Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent chemical attack which he blames on Assad but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian suicide bomber even Angela Merkel takes leave of her senses and praises Trump, along with the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry other potentates. Hasnt someone cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a shooting war? Handing more power to the Pentagon about the most perilous act of any US President means that Defence Secretary James Mad Dog Mattis is now encouraging the head-chopping Saudis to bomb Yemen adding even more American intelligence assets to this criminal enterprise and encouraging the Gulf Arabs delusional idea that Iran wants to conquer the Arab world. Everywhere you look, Mattis told his Saudi hosts this month, if theres trouble in the region, you find Iran. Is that the case with Egypt, then, now under Isis attack as its President disappears thousands of his own people? Is that the case in Turkey whose even more crazed President has now locked up tens of thousands of his own people while turning himself into a dictator-by-law? Lets just briefly take a look at Trumps reaction to Recep Tayyip Erdogans dodgy referendum, which has given him a Caliphs power over Turkey. A round-up of the latest figures from Turkey by the French newspaper Liberation show that there have been 47,000 arrests since last years attempted coup, 140,000 passports revoked, 120,000 men and women fired from their jobs (including 8,000 military officers, 5,000 academics, 4,000 judges and lawyers, 65 mayors and 2,000 journalists). One thousand two hundred schools and 15 universities have been closed down, 170 newspapers, television and radio stations shut. And after the referendum which gave Erdogan a narrow (if very dubious) majority to legitimise these outrages, Trump called the Turkish President to congratulate him on his victory. Just as he continues to congratulate Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in his battle against terror, a war which al-Sisi whose coup detat against Egypts first elected president originally brought him to power appears to be losing. Al-Sisi, Trump enthused, would be someone very close to him. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter We know that the US Special Forces raid on Yemen, in which Navy Seal William Owens died, killed more civilians than al-Qaeda members. We dont know (or, I suspect, care) very much what the mother of all bombs did in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan. First it killed 60 Isis fighters. Then it killed 100 Isis fighters and not a single civilian surely a first in US military history? But then, weirdly, nobody has been allowed to go to the site of this monster bombs explosion. Because civilians were indeed killed? Or because and this is a fact Isis survivors went on fighting American ground troops after the bombing? Now Trump is sending a naval battle group to threaten North Korea, a past master at childish threats itself. Ye gods! And this is a man who is now flexible and pragmatic? Its instructive to note that after its first edition, The New York Times changed its headline about Trumps Syrian anguish to Trump Upends His Own Foreign Policy, still gifting him with a foreign policy (which doesnt exist) while cutting out the anguish. I am told the first original edition headline read: On Syria Attack, Trumps Heart Came First. Intriguing. If that is correct, you can see how The New York Times slowly far too slowly realised it had itself started to fall in love with its shooting-from-the-hip President. Now we await the battle for Korea, forgetting that earlier war which drowned the peninsula in blood, American and British as well as Korean and Chinese. Maybe Trump, in his vague, frightening way, has decided that Southeast Asia will be his real war. And there, of course, the comparison with Truman gets rather too close to home. For Truman only came in at the end of the Second World War, after Roosevelts death, and his crowning wartime achievement was also in Southeast Asia: the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From Korea To Abu Ghraib - War, Bio-Weapons, Torture And Back By Moon Of Alabama April 27, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - In Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That we pointed to the utter destruction the U.S. and its allies waged in the war on Korea on all parts of the country. That North Korea seeks "weapons of mass destruction" is quite understandable when one takes into account the hundreds of thousands tons of napalm used against it. But even Napalm and the criminal destruction of North Korean dams were not the worst depravation the U.S. applied. Biological warfare agents, primarily anthrax, were dropped over North Korea and China and killed civilians. The U.S./UN command denied such use and covered it up. One consequence of that cover up was the development of torture methods in the U.S. SERE pilot training programs and their later proliferation into criminal abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Graibh and elsewhere. An important piece of evidence of this trail was recently and for the first time re-published on the web During the 1950s war on Korea heavy air to air fights were waged near the Chinese border which led to significant losses of airplane on both sides especially along the MiG Alley : USAF pilots nicknamed April 12, 1951 "Black Thursday", after 30 MiG-15s attacked three squadrons of B-29 bombers (36 planes) escorted by approximately 100 F-80s and F-84s. The MiGs were fast enough to engage the B-29s and extend away from their escorts. Three B-29s were shot down and seven more were damaged, with no casualties on the communist side. During "Black Thursday" and on other occasions U.S. bomber pilots were captured. Some of them admitted to have dropped biological weapons over China and northern Korea. Their confessions were published in writing and publicized on Korean, Chinese and Russian radio. The U.S. (UN) command under U.S. General MacArthur denied any use of biological warfare agents. It claimed that the downed pilots were tortured to give false confessions. Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses "controlled" torture was used to provide realistic training. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists as "behavioral science consultants" from the SERE training staff to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE "experts" devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee Report (pdf) on U.S. torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA black sites, SERE techniques originated in Chinese Communist methods in the Korean War employed to extract false confessions from captured U.S. personal. (During the 1960s the CIA itself developed additional "scientific" torture methods and published them in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. U.S. personal as well as several south American militia were trained in and used these abusive and illegal methods.) The torture training at the SERE schools and the abuse was all based on a big lie. The U.S. had used biological weapons in the Korea war. It also used chemical weapons and suppressed investigations into it . Its pilots dropped bombs with biological warfare agents over China and Korea. Theirs were not false confessions extracted by Chinese Communist methods. The captured U.S. pilots were telling the truth. The SERE torture resistance training and its abuse are based on the bigger lie about the non-use biological agents in the war on Korea. (The Geneva Protocol of 1925 generally prohibited the use of biological agents but the specific Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was only developed and signed in 1972.) The U.S. and UK developed extensive biological warfare programs during World War II but those weapons were not put to use in the European theater. The Japanese used biological weapons, with mixed success, in China and elsewhere. At the end of World War II the Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 was taken over by the U.S. military: [General] MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informantshe secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter During and after the war on Korea the Chinese government alleged the use of biological weapons on Korean and Chinese civilians by the U.S. The U.S. denied. A commission was called upon to investigate: To convince the world of the truth of their claims, the North Koreans and Chinese, sponsored a purported independent commission, using the auspices of the World Peace Council, gathering together a number of leftist scientists from around the world. Most surprisingly, this commission, which came to be known as the International Scientific Commission, or ISC, was headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham. The ISC travelled to China and North Korea in the summer of 1952 and by the end of the year produced a report that corroborated the Chinese and North Korean claims that the U.S. had used biological weapons in an experimental fashion on civilian populations. For a long time the commission's report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here: Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign. General MacArthur, one of the foremost war criminals ever, covered up the war crimes of the Japanese and especially of Unit 731. He took care to integrate the Japanese biological weapon experience into the U.S. military resources. Under his command biological agents were then used against Korean and and Chinese civilians and military units. When his pilots confessed, he denied all such reports and alleged "brainwashing" through torture by the Chinese. This again led to torture "simulations" in U.S. SERE training from which recent U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere derived. U.S. media and the public have a general amnesia whenever it comes to U.S. war crimes - no matter how recent. The Senate report on CIA torture in Iraq and elsewhere is still suppressed. But U.S. war crimes do not end. Whenever "threatened" with compromise, the U.S. tends to seeks the belligerent ways. As Noam Chomsky reiterates in relation to the current campaign for another war on Korea : [V]ery strikingly [..] theres one lesson that you discover when you carefully look at the historical record. What I just described about North Korea is pretty typical. Over and over again, there are possibilities of diplomacy and negotiation, which might not succeedyou cant be sure if you dont try thembut which look pretty promising, which are abandoned, dismissed, literally without comment, in favor of increased force and violence. For an example see this influential sitting U.S. Senator who argues for "preemptive" strikes against North Korea's missile program without any regard for the people who's life would be destroyed by them: It would be bad for the Korean Peninsula. It would be bad for China. It would be bad for Japan, be bad for South Korea. It would be the end of North Korea. But what it would not do is hit America and the only way it could ever come to America is with a missile. Considering the historical record of the United States of committing and covering up warcrimes as well as its general belligerence, North Korea and other nations are probably well advised to stick to their nuclear and missile programs. This article was first published by Moon Of Alabama - Palestinian and Jewish Voices Must Challenge Israels Past Together By Ramzy Baroud Israel has resorted to three main strategies to suppress Palestinian calls for justice and human rights, including the Right of Return for refugees. One is dedicated to rewriting history; another attempts to distract from present realities altogether and a third aims at reclaiming the Palestinian narrative as essentially an Israeli one. The rewriting of history happened much earlier than some historians would assume. The Israeli hasbara machine went into motion almost simultaneously with Plan Dalet (Plan D), which saw the military conquest of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants. But the actual discourse regarding the Nakba or the Catastrophe that has befallen Palestinian people in 1947-48 was constituted in the 1950s and 60s. In an article entitled: Catastrophic Thinking: Did Ben-Gurion Try to Rewrite History? Shay Hazkani revealed the fascinating process of how Israels first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, worked closely with a group of Israeli Jewish scholars to develop a version of events to describe what had taken place in 1947-48: the founding of Israel and the destruction of Palestine. Ben-Gurion wanted to propagate a version of history that was consistent with Israels political position. He needed evidence, to support that position. The evidence eventually became history, and no other narrative was allowed to challenge Israels take on the Nakba. Ben-Gurion probably never heard the word Nakba, but early on, at the end of the 1950s, Israels first Prime Minister grasped the importance of the historical narrative, Hazkani wrote. The Israeli leader assigned scholars in the Civil Service to the task of fashioning an alternative history that continues to permeate Israeli thinking to this day. Distracting from history or the current reality of the horrific Occupation of Palestine has been in motion for nearly 70 years. From the early myths of Palestine being a land with no people for a people with no land to todays claim that Israel is an icon of civilization, technology and democracy surrounded by Arab and Muslim savages, Israels official distortions are relentless. So while Palestinians are gearing up to commemorate the war of June 5, 1967, which led to the, thus-far, 50-year military occupation, Israel is throwing a big party, a major celebration of its military occupation of Palestinians. The absurdity is not escaping all Israelis, of course. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter A state that celebrates 50 years of occupation is a state whose sense of direction has been lost, its ability to distinguish good from evil, impaired, wrote Israeli commentator Gideon Levy in the Haaretz. What exactly is there to celebrate, Israelis? Fifty years of bloodshed, abuse, disinheritance and sadism? Only societies that have no conscience celebrate such anniversaries. Levy argues that Israel has won the war of 1967 but has lost nearly everything else. Since then, Israels arrogance, detestation of international law, ongoing contempt for the world, the bragging and bullying have all reached unprecedented heights. Levys article is entitled: Our Nakba. Levy is not attempting to reclaim the Palestinian narrative, but is succinctly registering that Israels military triumphs was an affliction, especially as it was not followed by any sense of national reflection or attempt at correcting the injustices of the past and the present. However, the process of claiming the term Nakba has been pursued cunningly by Israeli writers for many years. For those scholars, the Jewish Nakba refers to the Arab Jews who arrived in the newly independent Israel, largely based on the urgings of Zionist leaders for Jews worldwide to return to the biblical homeland. A Jerusalem Post editorial complained that Palestinian propaganda juggernaut has persuaded world public opinion that the term refugee is synonymous with the term Palestinian.' By doing so, Israelis attempting to hijack the Palestinian narrative hope to create an equilibrium in the discourse, one that is, of course, inconsistent with reality. The editorial puts the number of Jewish refugees of the Jewish Nakba at 850,000, slightly above the number of Palestinian refugees who were expelled by Zionist militias upon the founding of Israel. Luckily, such disingenuous claims are increasingly challenged by Jewish voices, as well. A few but significant voices among Israeli and Jewish intellectuals around the world are daring to re-examine Israels past. They are rightly confronting a version of history that has been accepted in Israel and the West as the uncontested truth behind Israels birth in 1948, the military occupation of what remained of Palestine in 1967, and other historical junctures. These intellectuals are leaving a mark on the Palestine-Israel discourse wherever they go. Their voices are particularly significant in challenging official Israeli truisms and historical myths. Writing in the Forward , Donna Nevel refuses to accept that the discussion of the conflict in Palestine starts in the war and occupation of 1967. Nevel is critical of the so-called progressive Zionists who insist on positioning the conversation only on the question of occupation, thus limiting any possibility of resolution to the two-state solution. Not only is such a solution defunct and practically not possible, but the very discussion precludes the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, of 1948. The Nakba doesnt enter these conversations because it is the legacy and clearest manifestation of Zionism, Nevel wrote. Those who ignore the Nakba which Zionist and Israeli institutions have consistently done are refusing to acknowledge Zionism as illegitimate from the beginning of its implementation. This is precisely why the Israeli police have recently blocked the March of Return, conducted annually by Palestinians in Israel. For years, Israel has been wary that a growing movement among Palestinians, Israelis and others around the world have been pushing for a paradigm shift in order to understand the roots of the conflict in Palestine. This new thinking has been a rational outcome of the end of the peace process and the demise of the two-state solution. Incapable of sustaining its founding myths, yet unable to offer an alternative, the Israeli government is now using coercive measures to respond to the budding movement: punishing those who insist on commemorating the Nakba, fining organizations that participate in such events and even perceiving as traitors any Jewish individuals and groups that deviate from its official thinking. In these cases, coercion hardly works. The March (of Return) has rapidly grown in size over the past few years, in defiance of increasingly repressive measures from the Israeli authorities, wrote Jonathan Cook in Al-Jazeera. It seems that 70 years after the founding of Israel, the past is still looming large. Fortunately, the Palestinian voices that have fought against the official Israeli narrative are now joined by a growing number of Jewish voices. It is through a new common narrative that a true understanding of the past can be attained, all with the hope that the peaceful vision for the future can replace the current one one which can only be sustained through military domination, inequality and sheer propaganda. Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gazas Untold Story. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net . Winter has once again proved to be the harshest time for Spanish unemployment , which rose by 17,200 people in the first quarter of 2017. Jobs have been lost, and Spains active population has fallen by 69,800. The unemployment rate is now 18.75%, according to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE). This is very slightly above the 18.6% registered in January a figure which was the lowest in seven years. A waiter in Seville. Paco Puentes Despite this traditional seasonal downturn, the general improvement in the labor market in Spain can be seen to continue in the context of last years data. An annual comparison shows that employment continues to grow above 400,000 positions year on year. Specifically, in the last 12 months, 408,700 additional jobs have been created. This puts the total number of people in work at 18.4 million, still a long way short of government objective of 20 million for this legislature. Year-on-year unemployment is also down with 536,400 fewer people out of work compared with 12 months ago, according to the NIE. That puts the total number of people actively seeking work in Spain at 4,255,000. The first-quarter employment figures did not benefit from the usual Easter jobs boost This year has been unusual in that Easter came late. This is important in a labor market highly dependent on tourism, seasonal agricultural work and temporary positions. Almost a third of the new jobs created in March were in the hospitality sector, followed by construction, which saw 17,471 positions created as the weather improves and work begins on new projects. As a result of the steady recovery of the Spanish labor market over the last year, there has been a 3.49% increase in contributors to the Social Security, close to the increases detected in the spring of 2015, when the number rose above 3.5% year on year. Nevertheless, the fiscal gap in Spains pensions system widens yearly. Job creation has been growing at a rate of 3% over the past two years, and consequently so have Social Security affiliations. But the increase does not match spending. In 2016, the Social Security systems deficit broke its own record, reaching at least 18.6 billion, or around 1,000 for every member signed up. Furthermore, the latest figures show that the Spanish labor market continues to shrink despite the prolonged recovery it has undergone since 2014. In the first quarter of this year, there were 22.7 million people able to work, 52,600 fewer than at the end of 2016 and 127,700 fewer than for the same period the year before. Brussels has expressed concerns about the Spanish job market, which despite major reforms, still shows persistently high levels of temporary employment. According to the report, 13.1% of Spanish workers are at risk of slipping into poverty. The European Commissions Spain 2017 Report, released in January highlights how inequality was already an issue before the crisis, and it continues to be so now. The gap between the wealthiest 20% and the poorest 20% is one of the biggest in the Union, and it continues to rise, reads the report. English version by Nick Lyne. April 30/May 02, 2017 "If You Take East-Syria, I'll Take That Yemeni Port" By Moon Of Alabama The red lights must be flashing at CENTCOM, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. - Continue ========= Prez Trump: You Can't Fight the Whole World By Eric Margolis Israel is now determined to destroy Hezbollah in its strongholds in Lebanon and then crush Hamas with Trumps blessing. - Continue ========= What Corporate Media Never Tells You About North Korea By Joe Clifford To suggest North Korea is a threat to the US or the world is either stupidity, or an outright lie, - Continue ========= The Relentless Push Towards War By Chris Martenson "Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons." - Continue ========= The Barrel Bomb Conundrum By Craig Murray The blanket media use of barrel bomb as though it represents something uniquely inhumane is a fascinating example of propaganda. - Continue ========= Americas Financial War Strategy By Alasdair Macleod Americas renewed desire to escalate military tensions is a front for Americas continual financial war - Continue ========= Who Is Behind the State Department's Coup Plot in Venezuela? By Mision Verdad The CFR proposes three major political actions for the U.S. to execute a coup in Venezuela in the immediate future. - Continue ========= In Case You Missed It Trump's Fascist Administration By Jeremy Scahill Jeremy Scahill speaks at the Anti-Inauguration event sponsored by Jacobin. - Continue ========= Do Americans Have No Shame? By Margaret Kimberley It is time for people in this country to stop acting like aggrieved children. - Continue ========= Iraq: Airstrike kills 20 IS officials of Wilayat Baghdad in Qaim ; Iraqi Ministry of Defenses War Media Cell announced, on Sunday, that 20 officials of the so-called Wilayat Baghdad of the Islamic State group were killed by an air strike, in the district of Qaim. Turkey kills 14 people in Iraq: Turkeys military said it killed 14 members of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in airstrikes in northern Iraq on Saturday, as Ankara steps up a push against the group and their affiliates in Iraq and Syria. Iraq: Coalition jets kill 13 Islamic State members in western Anbar: Jets pounded two vehicles and a rest house used by IS at the towns of Annah and Qaim, killing all of the 13 group members on board and at the house. US soldier killed in explosion near Mosul ; A spokesperson for US Central Command said: "A US service member died from wounds sustained in an explosive device blast outside of Mosul, Iraq, on Saturday." 35% of western Mosul still controlled by Islamic State; Iraqi Defense Minister Erfan al-Hiyali said life returned back to normal in the eastern side and that the Iraqi troops are in high spirit and making their best to secure the citizens and their properties. Erdogan Arrests and Fires Thousands, Bans Dating Shows: While a hotly contested referendum earlier this month expanded Turkish President Tayyip Erdogans authoritarian powers it appears the Justice and Development (AKP) party leader is wasting no time exercising them. US-led coalition airstrikes kill 14 civilians in northern Syria : At least 14 civilians were killed by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition in the outskirts of Raqqa, in northern Syria, Al Mayadeen TV channel reported on Sunday. Moscow is ready to cooperate with Washington on Syria Lavrov : The Russian foreign minister stressed that in order to eliminate the terrorist threat, "it is important that all those fighting terrorism in Syria join their efforts." "I mean the Russian Force and the US-led coalition," Kurdish-Arab force pushes back ISIL in Syria's Tabqa; Fighting rages on, with US-backed SDF controlling ahout 40 percent of strategic town near ISIL's stronghold of Raqqa. Claims of Syrian Chemical Weapons Attacks Are Total B.S .; The U.S. government has been trying to replace the Syrian government with folks who will be subservient to America since 1949... 3 years after Syria became an independent nation. Yemeni forces kill 9 Saudi mercenaries : On Saturday, the Army and their allies killed five Saudi mercenaries in Midi District of the northwestern Hajjah Province, Yemens al-Masirah television network said. US kills 8 alleged AQAP terrorists in Yemen ; : The strike targeted a car in which the suspects were traveling in the Rawda region of Shabwa province, according to a Yemeni official who preferred anonymity. German chancellor in Saudi for talks on G20 and cooperation : King Salman received Merkel in his palace in Jeddah, Spa state news agency said, adding that the two presided over a signing ceremony for several cooperation agreements in the fields of technology, energy, business and security. Iran satellite TV head shot dead in Istanbul: The head of an Iranian satellite television network who last year was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison by a Tehran court was shot dead in Istanbul together with a business partner Why Israel Supports ISIS? : Syriana Analysis addresses the recent bombings of Israel and US on Syria, elaborating the geopolitical goals behind these strikes. Leaked report highlights Israel lobbys failures ; The Reut Institute, founded by former government advisor Gidi Grinstein, has conceded in a secret report jointly prepared with the ADL that Israels efforts to thwart the Palestine solidarity movement have failed BBC smears BDS: A BBC report on alleged anti-Semitism on campus failed to disclose a key interviewees leadership role in the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. French forces kill 20 alleged jihadists on Mali-Burkina Faso border; A resident in a nearby village said planes dropped bombs in the area late Saturday and many jihadists fled by foot. Tunisia forces kill fighters planning Ramadan attack : Two men in an ISIL and al-Qaeda-linked group killed during a security sweep in Sidi Bouzid. U.S. Signals Possible Airstrikes in Somalia by Asking Aid Groups for Their Locations : The notice to NGOs comes a month after President Trump declared portions of the country an area of active hostilities, giving the military wider scope to launch strikes that could potentially kill more civilians. Afghanistan ; 43 Armed Militants Killed In Latest Operations : As a result 43 armed militants were killed, 40 wounded and 30 others were arrested by Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Trump calls North Korean leader 'a pretty smart cookie' - but isn't sure if he's sane : Trump said he had no idea whether Kim was sane or not, but said the North Korean leader had faced a formidable challenge in taking over the country at a reported age of 27 after his fathers death Seoul rejects Trump demand it pays for THAAD missile system : Seoul retorted that under the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the US military presence in the country, the South would provide the THAAD site and infrastructure while the US would pay to deploy and operate it. US to deploy missile-capable drones across border from North Korea: Deployment of Grey Eagle drones, designed to carry Hellfire missiles, in the South represents significant build-up of US military muscle. It will make the North Koreans even more jumpy. The power of propaganda; Poll: 37% of Americans see North Korea as an 'immediate threat' ; And 57% see Russia as unfriendly or an enemy, as investigations into interactions between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government have continued to swirl. Pyongyang slams Israel as disturber of peace armed with illegal nukes under US patronage : North Korea has accused Israel of being the only illegal possessor of nukes and threat to peace in the Middle East Venezuela Opposition Criticizes Pope's Call for Dialogue : Henrique Capriles rejected any dialogue with the government of Nicolas Maduro to peacefully resolve the current political impasse in the country Venezuela Celebrates 1.6 Millionth Home Built for the Poor: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will deliver on Sunday house number 1.6 million as part of the Great Venezuela Housing Mission. Panic Bank Run Leaves Canada's Largest Alternative Mortgage Lender On Edge Of Collapse : Home Capital Group suffered a spectacular spectacular implosion last week when its stock price crashed by the most on record after HCG revealed that it had taken out an emergency $2 billion line of credit Donald Trump invites Rodrigo Duterte to White House : Three Chinese navy ships, including a guided-missile destroyer and a guided-missile frigate, were also welcomed by officials on Sunday in Davao city, Mr Duterte's southern hometown, Washington climate march draws massive crowd amid sweltering heat : This large-scale climate march marked U.S. President Donald Trumps first 100 days in office, which have already seen multiple rollbacks of environmental protections and Obama climate policies. Middle Class Contracted in U.S. Over 2 Decades, Study Finds : Middle-class Americans have fared worse in many ways than their counterparts in economically advanced countries in Western Europe in recent decades, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center. Foxs Legendary Hypocrisy Is On Full Display With Underwhelming GDP Report : This is not the first time a Fox personality has backtracked on mischaracterizations of the economy in order to hype or defend the Trump administration. Man Trump Named to Fix Mortgage Markets Figured in Infamous Financial Crisis Episo de; The emerging absurd narrative that is Donald Trump naming Phillips, of all people, to head up the effort to reform the Government-Sponsored Entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. U.S. Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Replaced by Robots : About 38 percent of U.S. jobs could be at high risk of automation by the early 2030s Tillerson puts Nikki Haley in her place. Tells her to clear comments with State Department : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acts to bring Nikki Haley, the US's out of control UN ambassador, to heel, instructing her to coordinate her comments in future with the State Department. Trump Has Flip-Flopped. But His Supporters Aren't Upset Or Haven't Noticed. ; Despite Trumps flip-flops on economic and foreign policy issues, most of his supporters still feel theyre getting exactly the man they voted for Watch: Hasan Minhaj, Rosting Trump at White House Correspondents' Dinner ; Hasan Minhaj took full advantage of Donald Trump's absence by taking aim at the president and his administration during his monologue at the White House Correspondents' dinner. April 28, 2017 The Rise of the Generals By Patrick Buchanan Where do we think this demonization of Putin and ostracism of Russia is going to lead? - Continue ========= Washington Plans to Nuke Russia and China By Paul Craig Roberts Washington also plans to use agents in place to assassinate as many members as possible of the Russian government. - Continue ========= There Will Be No Russophobia Reset By Pepe Escobar Trump may have finally shown his real face, a "housebroken dog to neocon dogma." - Continue ========= Mounting Incitements to War With Russia By Stephen F. Cohen Villainizing the Kremlinwithout much evidence - is increasing the possibility of a US-Russian war. - Continue ========= The Mother Of All Bombs: How Badly Did It Hurt IS In Afghanistan? By BBC "[Dropping the bomb] was a trick to show the world that their mission was going well. - The bomb did nothing.". - Continue ========= At Reuters, Not Refuting Is the Same as Seeing By Jim Naureckas Top US General in Afghanistan Sees Russia Sending Weapons to Taliban was Reuters headline over a April 25 story. - Continue ========= ========= ========= Venezuela Ablaze By Robert Hunziker American media claims Maduro is a horrible despicable dictatorial creepy monster. - Continue ========= 40 killed, 70 wounded in rebel-jihadist clashes near Damascus : Fierce clashes between jihadists and Islamist rebels near Damascus left at least 40 dead and 70 wounded on Friday, Kurdish SDF Kills 23 Daesh Militants ; The SDF was formed in 2015 as the defense force of northern Syria's de facto autonomous Rojava federation and is supported by the US-led coalition Turkey says 11 Syrian Kurds killed in border clash ; This was the third day in a row that clashes have been reported across the tense border after the Turkish military jets carried out airstrikes targeting the YPG fighters in the area earlier this week. Syrian Kurds call for no-fly zone after 20 die in Turkish airstrike : Syrian Kurds angered by an overall lack of United States action to protect them from attacks have called for a no-fly zone, following Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish targets in Syria and Iraq earlier this week. Reports: US troops deploy along Syria-Turkish border : It is a message of reassurance for the Kurds and almost a "warning message" to the Turks, he said. Militants of Nusra Front Attack Daesh Terrorists on Syrian-Lebanese Border ; Both sides have incurred losses from the attack which started from disagreements over the control of mountain trails and gorges through which both terrorist sides smuggle arms and militants. Moscow: Israeli aggression on military site violates international law : Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman affirmed that the Israeli aggression on a military site southwest of Damascus Airport violates international law and is in the interests of terrorists. Iraq: Airstrikes across western Mosul leave nearly 40 IS fighters dead ; Coalition commanders have estimated the number of remaining IS members in Mosul by less than 1000. Twenty civilians killed, three wounded in two attacks by Iraqi troops, coalition: Activ ist; Nineteen civilians were killed in an airstrike launched by the international coalition against al-Islah al-Zeraei district, in western Mosul Iraqi Parliament to vote on draft to ban foreign armed groups : Referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah said the presence of the party in Sinjar will constitute major issues for Iraq, Kurdistan Region and Turkey, noting that Turkey may continue its military operations on Sinjar. Rand Paul: The U.S. should not fund Saudi Arabias war on Yemen: American-built planes with American bombs were used by the Saudis to bomb a funeral procession in Yemen. Over 100 people were killed, and 500 mourners were wounded. How Saudi Arabia Tricked American Veterans: The latest Saudi tacticrecruiting unaware American veterans to lobby their cause on Capitol Hillcrosses a line and may have run afoul of the law Palestinian 'day of rage' in support of prisoners : At least 50 Palestinian protesters were injured in clashes with Israeli forces on a "day of rage" held across the occupied Palestinian territories Israeli newspaper reports Trump will recognize entire Jerusalem as Israels capital : Trump will make the announcement during his upcoming visit to Israel, reportedly in late May Abbas turns screw on Hamas by cutting Gaza's electricity: Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) told Israel it would no longer pay for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza, a move that could lead to a complete power shutdown, where 2 million people already endure blackouts for much of the day. German FM refuses to take Netanyahu's phone call ; In a retaliatory move, Germany Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel refused to talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the cancellation of a meeting over Gabriel's decision to hold talks with rights groups. Facebook Double Standards Enable Targeting of Palestinians : Israel is arresting hundreds annually for their posts - although similar behavior by Israelis is censured neither by Facebook nor the Israeli government. Nigerian army kills at least 15 suspected Boko Haram militant s: The fighting is said to have occured Thursday morning when the fighters attacked a base in Sambisa forest in nothern Nigeria, which had been a Boko Haram stronghold Suicide bomber kills five troops in north east Nigeria ; At least five soldiers were killed and another 40 injured when a Boko Haram jihadist rammed an explosives-laden pick-up truck into a military convoy in northeast Nigeria, security sources told AFP on Friday. How Obama and Clinton brought slavery to Libya : Their deliberate destruction of Libya was a war crime by all standards of international law. Qaddafi Was a Hero, Says Africas Longest-Serving Presiden t: The president of Equatorial Guinea, a small oil-rich country in Central Africa, said the failure to realize Qaddafis vision was to blame for poverty and conflict in parts of the continent. Nick Turse, The U.S. Military Moves Deeper into Africa ; Secret U.S. Military Documents Reveal a Constellation of American Military Bases Across That Continent US kills Pakistani Taliban militants - regional official : A suspected U.S. drone strike killed several Pakistani Taliban militants in North Waziristan close to the Afghanistan border, a regional government official and an Islamist militant said on Thursday Pentagon: Friendly fire may have killed 2 Army Rangers in Afghanistan ; The Pentagon said Friday that two U.S. Army Rangers killed in a night raid against an Islamic State compound in Afghanistan this week may have died from friendly fire. N Korea 'test-fires ballistic missile'; It was fired from a site in South Pyeongan province north of Pyongyang in the early hours of Saturday morning local time, South Korea's military chiefs of staff said. US urges UN to act on 'real' nuclear threat of North Korea or face 'catastrophic consequences' : Diplomatic and financial levers of power will be backed up by a willingness to counteract North Korean "aggression" with military action if necessary, Mr Tillerson said. Trump talks 'major conflict' with North Korea: U.S. secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is signaling a rare willingness to hold direct talks with North Korea in search of a diplomatic solution. Sec. Tillerson to UN Security Council: Act Before North Korea Does ; "Diplomatic and financial levers of power will be backed up by willingness to counteract North Korean aggression with military action, if necessary." Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that former President Goodluck Jonathan from his first days as President showed he was too small for the office, saying he, Obasanjo, acted more as an opponent of Jonathan than a supporter of Muhammadu Buhari ahead of the 2015 presidential poll. Obasanjo, who said Jonathan deceived him that he would not give Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke the petroleum portfolio in his cabinet was deceived into believing that he could use money to buy the 2015 presidential election. Obasanjo in the book, Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was defeated in Nigeria, written by former presidential spokesman, Segun Adeniyi, also revealed that Jonathan was gripped by the fear that Buhari, as president, would jail him or lead him to an early grave. In the 204-page book, former President Jonathan is himself quoted as saying he could not be held accountable for provocative remarks made by some of his supporters, even as former Senate President, David Mark, is also quoted in the book as alleging that he forewarned the former president about the alleged conspiracy against him in the north but to no avail. Problems of minority agitation Obasanjo in the book is quoted as saying that following Umaru YarAduas death in 2010, he endorsed Jonathan for the 2011 presidential election principally to solve the problems of minority agitation in Nigeria. The former President said: I saw the emergence of Jonathan as an opportunity to solve the problem of minority agitation. The three majority ethnic groups in Nigeria can always sort themselves out but not so for the minority. A good example is my state here in Ogun. Despite the best of intentions, nobody from Ogun West has been able to become governor because of this minority issue and it will take a conscious effort to make it happen. So, it was in the context of that I had to plead with prominent people in the North to allow Jonathan run for a term. I warned him not to make Diezani petroleum minister But in a tone laden with regrets, Obasanjo pointed out that there were certain things Jonathan did that fell below his expectations as a former president. There were certain decisions taken by Jonathan very early in his administration that pointed to the fact that the office was bigger than him and one of them was the appointment of a petroleum minister, he said. According to Obasanjo, he cautioned Jonathan not to appoint Diezani Alison-Madueke to such a sensitive sector but the president ignored his counsel. Jonathan gave me the impression that he was not going to give her the portfolio but at the end he did and we can see the consequence. He, of course, knew what he was doing, Obasanjo stated. Why I opposed Jonathan The former president also hinted at what riled him against Jonathan and why he parted ways with him in the run up to the 2015 election, a development which has given the impression that he was actively working in support of Buharis candidature. But Obasanjo denied any direct support to Buhari. He said: I didnt join them in supporting Buhari; I joined in opposing Jonathan so Buhari was just a beneficiary of my opposition to Jonathan since my position was AOBJ: meaning Any Option But Jonathan. Obasanjo explained that Jonathan and his handlers believed that they could buy the last election and that they were so arrogant about it that the PDP would print only one nomination form for him and him alone. He said: If he was wise, he would have yielded the ticket to somebody else in the PDP. Jonathan was not really afraid about life after office but Buhari. The former president, who also criticised the role played by the military in the last election, said he suspected that Jonathan was not really afraid about life after office but Buhari, his successor. I believe the Presidents concern or fear is not about life after office per se, because he and I have had occasions to talk about this both seriously and jovially. I believe the Presidents fear is particularly motivated by the person he sees as his likely successor, that is General Buhari. I believe the people would have been telling him that Buhari is a hard man; he would fight corruption and he (Jonathan) may end up in jail if not in the grave, Obasanjo narrated in the book. The book also placed the defeat of Jonathan at the 2015 poll on the utterances of those close to the former president, chief among them being his wife, Patience. The book recalls the allegation by former Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, accusing the former first lady of insulting the North with incendiary language, thereby alienating them from Jonathan during the election. It quoted Mrs. Jonathan as making a denigrating remark against Almajiri in the north, by saying Our people no dey born children wey dem no dey count. Our men no dey born throw way for street; we no dey like people from the other side, an apparent reference to the concept of Almajiri common in the north. Reminded in the book that some persons close to him, especially Chief Edwin Clark and Asari Dokubo, were rather vocal and provocative in their utterances, Jonathan wondered why he should be held accountable for their personal opinions. The former president retorted: Okay, let us agree for the sake of argument that Chief Clark and the others were offensive, what about those from other ethnic groups who were also making incendiary statement about my person with insinuations about people who wear bowler hats? I am not defending whoever may have crossed the line among Ijaw people but let us be fair, why should I be held accountable for that and you would not hold other leaders accountable for what politicians from their own ethnic groups also said? he queried. On why Jonathan lost the election, former Senate President, David Mark, said that he saw the defeat coming and had pointed out the unrealistic voting projections made by the party about the North to the former president and the conspiracy against him but he was not taken seriously. He said Jonathan should have seen the handwriting on the wall and done something about what was pointed out to him but no action was taken. Mark lamented, I saw it and at difference times, I pointed out to him and the party that the projections being made by some people around the president about what the voting pattern in the north would were wrong. I could see the conspiracy and the gang-up building up in the north against the aspiration of Jonathan but my voice was drowned out by those who took it for granted that a sitting president, and one from PDP, could not lose, Mark said. The former Senate President also mentioned that the former Vice President, Namadi Sambo, was also aware that Jonathan was not strong in the North but apparently had little to say in the campaign to re-elect Jonathan. Mark said, Some people were deceiving the president with the kind of false scenarios they were painting for him. The VP could see the conspiracy but I dont know how much influence he had on the campaign. Why Jonathan couldnt see it until it was too late is what I find difficult to understand. Source: ( PM News ) A 23-year-old man Nigerian student, was on Thursday, sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison by a High Court sitting in Jos, the Plateau state capital. A Jos High Court on Thursday sentenced a 23-year-old man, Mathias Joseph, to 15 years in prison for attempting to rob a woman, Mrs Christabel Tongman of her car at gunpoint. Justice A. I. Ashom, sentenced Joseph after he pleaded guilty to the crime and begged the court for leniency. Ashom, in a 16-paged judgment, pronounced the convict guilty of a three-count charge of attempted robbery, house trespass and illegal possession of a firearm. The offences contravened Sections 2 (1and2) of the Robbery and Firearms ACT, CAP R11, 350 of the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria and 3 (1) of the Robbery and Firearms ACT, respectively. Going by the totality of evidence before this court from the prosecution, there was an attempted robbery and that the accused was involved in the attempt and was armed with a pistol. There was a motive by the accused to rob the victim and forcefully extract money and perhaps, other valuables from her. The fact that the said pistol was not tendered in evidence does not erase the evidence that a pistol was involved. The victim stated she saw the accused with one and the accused stated he had one, which was collected upon his arrest. From the totality of the foregoing, I am left in no doubt that the prosecution has discharged the burden of the law placed on it. The issue for determination is, therefore, resolved in the affirmative; the accused person is accordingly, hereby, convicted as charged. Considering the absence of no previous criminal records on you (convict), I am incline not to invoke the maximum punishment by law, you are, therefore, sentenced to serve 5 years for each offence and it shall run concurrently, he said. Joseph was arraigned in January 2016 to answer a three-count charge of attempted robbery, trespass and illegal possession of firearm. He was said to have committed the crime on Nov. 29, 2015 at Tudun Wada, Jos, when he attempted to rob a woman of her car. The prosecutor, Mr E. O Ochai, had told the court that the convict, armed with a pistol in company of one Alias Doctor, now at large. They forcefully gained entrance into the house of Tongman. Ochai said that the duo assaulted the victim and attempted to snatch her car, but was apprehended by neighbours when she let out a loud scream. The victim, who stood as a witness during trial, told the court that while driving into her house on the said date, she noticed the convict and two others lurking around her gate. She said, unaware of any danger, she alighted from her car and tried to lock her gate when she was accosted by Joseph and his gang. Tongman further told the court that Joseph and his gang started to beat her, adding that when she started screaming for help, the convict shot into the air to scare away neighbours. The convict was, however, apprehended during the robbery while his gang absconded. The recent snub by the Oba of Lagos on the Ooni of Ife has been frowned upon by the President-General of the Agbekoya Farmers Association in Nigeria, Chief Aremu Okikiola,who has also called on the Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, to respect the Yoruba traditional hierarchy instead of debasing it. The Agbekoya chief, who spoke through the National Publicity Secretary of the association, Chief Olatunji Bamidele, said it was wrong for traditional leaders to disrespect themselves in the public, saying that Agbekoya, as a Yoruba socio-cultural group, would not support any traditional ruler that displayed immature attitude in public. He said, Any mature traditional ruler should not fight in the public. They should find a way of solving whatever the issue is in private. The Ooni and the Alaafin are the most respected Yoruba obas. Akiolu should not disrespect the tradition. Akiolu should not be rude to that extent because he is only an Oba of Lagos. Agbekoya will not support any traditional ruler that is rude to the Ooni. Speaking on behalf of the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji, Director, Media and Public Affairs to the monarch, Adeola Oloko, told our correspondent that the Olubadan revered the Ooni and Akiolu, saying that he was making contact with the two monarchs to find a solution to the issue. I can tell you that the Olubadan had been making contacts with the Ooni and the Oba of Lagos, whom he respects mostly, with the view to mediating in the issue. He will talk to the press as soon as there is information to pass across. As an elder, he is making the contact, said Oloko. A chieftain of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural association, Afenifere, Chief Femi Okunrounmu, said Oba Akiolus action was an embarrassment to the Yoruba race. He said the action portrayed the Yoruba as an unorganised set of people before the world. He noted that it was unfortunate that some monarchs in Yoruba land did not seek the interest of their subjects. He pointed that Yoruba elders would talk to Oba Akiolu on what he termed unbecoming behaviour. Also, the Yoruba Youth Socio-Cultural Association has condemned Oba Akiolu for snubbing the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, publicly at a function. The youths, through their coordinator in Osun State, Mr. Adeboye Oluwabusoye, said the attitude of Oba Akiolu was wrong and it was not expected of any king in Yoruba land to disrespect the Ooni. But the Ooni has said he will not stop according Oba Akiolu with respect despite snubbing him at a social function on Tuesday. The foremost traditional ruler in Yoruba land said he was unperturbed by Akiolus action, adding that the action would not make him to lose focus of his resolve to ensure unity among traditional rulers in the land. Oba Ogunwusi spoke to our correspondent through the Director Media and Public Affairs of Oonis Palace, Moses Olafare, on Wednesday. The monarch said, Nobody should castigate anybody for doing what he did because of the position he held and because of his age. The Ooni will not stop according his colleagues and every category of people the respect they deserved. As part of its strategic plan to satisfy its numerous customers across Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria is partnering ZTE, a multinational telecommunications equipment/systems Company to launch 4G (fourth generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology) in Nigeria. It would be recalled that in December, 2012, Airtel was the first telecoms operator in the country to usher in a successful 4G trial in Lagos in line with its commitment to lead a mobile Internet revolution in Nigeria. Speaking on the partnership with ZTE, Managing Director/ CEO of Airtel Nigeria, Segun Ogunsanya, said, This is a new dawn for mobile Internet in Nigeria. Airtel and ZTEs collaboration to roll out 4G service pan Nigeria will dramatically improve mobile Internet experience for telecoms consumers across the country. Indeed, Airtel is committed to strengthening its position as a true pioneer of innovation in the Nigerian telecommunications domain, as this is in line with our overall corporate vision of becoming the mobile Internet service provider of first choice for every Nigerian. A Nigerian identified as Mr Chinedu Eze has been killed in South Africa, the deceased was a member of the Nigeria Union, the death was confirmed by the union. According to reports , it was allegedly by a Somalian in the Western Cape Province of that country. The Chairman of the union in the province, Mr Mike Ibitoye, said by telephone from Cape Town, South Africa, that Eze, 35, was shot on April 25 during an argument over a cell phone. Chinedu Eze is a native of Umuchu, Aguata Local Government Area of Anambra State. He deals in cell phones. Reports at our disposal said that on the fateful day there was an argument between him and Somali man inside a car. The Somalian reportedly shot him three times, and when he ran out of the car, he shot him six times again, leading to his death, he said. Ibitoye said that the incident happened at Bellview area of Cape Town, a place populated by Somalians. The incident has been reported to the South African Police. The Police has commenced investigation, but we are not aware if the assailant has been arrested, he said. Also, Mr Adetola Olubajo, Secretary of the Union, said the national body of the union has informed the Nigerian mission in South Africa. We appeal to Nigerians in the Western Cape Province to remain peaceful and law abiding. The Mission is on top of the situation. he union equally appeals to the Federal Government to ensure that the welfare of Nigerians in South Africa are protected, he said. (NAN) A human rights group, Justice and Peace Movement has called the attention of Nigerians and the global community, to the attempt by some individual, local and foreign collaborators, to once again truncate the peaceful atmosphere presently being enjoyed by our country. Addressing journalists in Lagos, comrade Kola Salawu, the leader of the group called the attention of the Nigerian government and the various security agencies to the threat, posed by these elements, in their desperation towards returning Nigeria to the brinks and allow the tragedy of terrorism that has befallen other countries, where people failed to act, to befall us. Our desire is that the soft approach that has landed several countries in trouble is not repeated with those troubling Nigeria so that those of us that are innocent are not made to suffer for inactions or wrong actions of those in power, when we consider the consequences of the menace of terrorism. He said they are disturbed about the recent growing call by some political merchants and sponsored commentators, for the release of some persons who are being prosecuted for terror related offenses. We are worried that despite the glaring evidences against these persons and other facts such as their antecedents of promoting acts that threatens the peace of our country, some persons are still advocating for their release without due investigation and trial, in what we consider as a great threat to our collective security as a people. The danger that these latest calls potend to us, as a people, is the likelihood of our nation, experiencing the ugly scenarios that those countries who under the guise of human right and freedom, have been made to carelessly unleash terror perpetrators back into their own society, leaving them to cause greater harm to the innocent citizens. Terror suspects all over the world, are not the ordinary crime suspects to be treated with kid gloves. Terrorism is a threat to humanity and anyone involved deserves the maximum punishment that the society prescribes. It is therefore worrisome to us that some external influences and local collaborators, are asking Nigeria to adopt this same model that has proven disastrous in relating with terror suspects whom they want Nigerian security to treat as innocent until they kill someone. The outcome would then be to summarily execute these people when the deed has been done. We want to categorically condemn and oppose the call for the release of the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Sheik Ibraheem El Zakyzaky unconditionally, despite the overwhelming case of incitement to violence and terrorism built against him. His organization was found by a Judicial Panel to be heavily militarized. There are videos of his members training for military combat. The military recovered arms and ammunition during a raid on his enclave. His members had attacked troops and killed a soldier. They have threatened mayhem on the country. IMN has foreign support to unsettle Nigeria. This is the man that some characters in Nigeria with foreign support are canvassing unconditional release for. If El Zakyzaky is released without trial as being demanded, we would be compelled to extend the same sick courtesy to would be terrorists in the future. We will be compelled to as a country make onsite execution of terrorists the norm with all the attendant risks. Our march today, is therefore to demand that El Zakyzaky and other IMN extremists arrested for terrorism related cases must be prosecuted. IMNs foreign sponsors must stop taking Nigeria for granted as we must not join the league of countries whose security agencies know terrorists and still leave them to carry out attacks before executing them to show they are working. Nigerias option of preventive approach to fighting terror must be respected. We condemn in the strongest terms possible the ill advised attempts by the Shiite to denigrate the Office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because the incumbent occupant refused to be browbeaten into compromising citizens safety. Professor Yemi Osinbajo merely stated the fact when he said El Zakyzaky remains in detention because there is an appeal against his court ordered release. It is therefore unacceptable for any group or individuals to vilify the Vice President for simply standing by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Those calling for the release of El Zakyzaky have failed. They may just as well add Kabiru Sokoto and other high profile Boko Haram suspects to the list of those they want released. This will help confirm how much they hold Nigerians in disdain to the point where they want terror masterminds strolling around freely to commit more crimes. Source: BreakingTimes The Borno State Police Command has said that two suicide bomb attacks were foiled yesterday by the police in which a civilian was killed in Maiduguri metropolis.A statement yesterday by the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Victor Isuku in Maiduguri, reads in part: Today at about 0430hrs, a lone female suicide bomber detonated IEDs strapped to her body at Alkomi area near the fence of Dynamics Farms on the outskirts of Maiduguri metropolis in Jere Local Council, killing herself alone. About the same time, a male suicide bomber attempted to enter an IDP host community in Usmanti area in Mafa Local Council. He was prevented by the residents, and in the process, detonated the IEDs strapped to his body, killing himself and a civilian, while two others sustained injuries. He said the Explosives Ordinance Department (EOD) personnel had been drafted to both scenes to defuse the undetonated explosives and restore normalcy and that the injured ones had been rushed to University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) for treatment. Meanwhile, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Information Officer, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, said three suicide bomb attacks occurred at Usmanti, Muna garage and Muna Ethopia on the outskirts of Maiduguri. He said five people died and 11 people were injured in the attacks.Among the dead persons include four suicide bombers and a civilian JTF. The injured persons were evacuated and taken to hospital for treatment, while the bodies were deposited at a mortuary by NEMA and SEMA emergency response officials, he added. Source: Guardian The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Anambra State Command, has said that it has identified some staff whose pictures appeared on the social media, allegedly drunk while on duty. The Sector Commander of the FRSC in the state, Mr. Sunday Ajayi, told journalists that the identified staffers were currently under administrative scrutiny. Ajayi, who condemned the act, described it as an act of indiscipline and vowed that they would not be spared if found guilty for behaving in a manner that embarrasses the Corps. The sector commander said that the ugly incident took place at the Nteje Unit Command and that the matter has been reported to the FRSC National Headquarters. He said the officers have been recalled to the sector command and are under the administrative mechanism set up to investigate and punish people who are guilty of such embarrassing conduct. Ajayi said the staff have been properly guided on the way to behave while on duty and whoever does otherwise should know he has contravened the code of conduct. He said there were standard mechanisms used to monitor personnel deployed to the roads and enjoined members of the public to endeavor to report unprofessional conduct of FRSC staff. The sector commander however noted that one may not completely runaway from activities of deviants as discovered, but that the FRSC will not at any time condoned them, as there will be instant disciplinary action against such deviants. Source: BreakingTimes The population of Spain has decreased for the fifth year in a row, according to the provisional figures released on Wednesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The Continuous Municipal Register, a database that pools information from the countrys municipal registers (padrones), shows a drop of 17,982 people, placing the official population at 46,539,026 as of January 1, 2017. The change is due to the fact that there are 1.5% fewer foreigners registered on municipal rolls. Passengers at Spains Bilbao airport. Santos Cirilo The registered population had grown every year since 1998 when these figures were first compiled up until 2012. That year, it began to decline. The biggest drop was in 2013, when nearly half a million foreign residents left the country in the middle of a deep economic crisis. The downward trend has extended all the way to 2016, although the decline was less steep, with 68,723 foreign nationals leaving the country. Currently, 90.2% of people registered as living in Spain have Spanish citizenship, with 9.8% holding passports from various other countries. The report also notes that around 150,000 foreign residents received Spanish citizenship throughout 2016. Around 150,000 foreign residents received Spanish citizenship throughout 2016 Out of the 4,549,858 foreigners registered in Spain, Romanians make up the largest community from a EU member state (684,532), followed by the British (236,669) and Italians (189,005). Among residents from non-EU countries, Moroccans make up the largest group (747,872), followed by people with Chinese citizenship (207,593) and Colombians (145,055). There was a considerable spike in the number of Venezuelans who took up residence in Spain last year (14,283), perhaps in the wake of growing turmoil in their home country. Some Britons may have left Spain out of concern about the effects of Brexit on their legal status. Eurocitizens According to the INE statistics which are yet to be finalized, the greatest declines were registered among Romanians (down 32,930) and British citizens (down 19,832) possibly concerned about the effects that Brexit will have on their current status in Spain. Broken down by age, 15.9% of Spains population is under 16 years old, 37.3% is aged 16 to 44, and 28% is 65 and over. The average age of Spanish citizens is 42.9 years, compared with 35.8 among foreign residents. The INE shows a slight majority of women to men among Spaniards on the registers (51%-49%), whereas this trend is reversed among foreigners, of whom 50.4% are men. The regions of Spain with the highest population continue to be Andalusia, Catalonia and Madrid. At the other end of the scale, those with the lowest populations are La Rioja, Cantabria and Navarre. English version by Susana Urra. The Nigerian Governors Forum is currently having a meeting at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja. The closed-door meeting is being held at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, ahead of tomorrows meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC), which will be presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Osinbajo earlier on Wednesday convened the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, after President Muhammadu Buhari failed to show up for the third consecutive week. Buharis cabinet waited until 11am for him to show up, before the State House Chief of Protocols whispered into Osinbajos ears. The Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa was also noticeably scanty, with only about 20 Ministers seated as journalists left. Source: Dailypost Operatives of the Nigeria Drugs and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) yesterday intercepted a suspected police van loaded with over 700 tonnes of India hemp worth millions of naira in Kano. The operatives also tracked and detained a long truck conveying sacks of dry fish stocked with cannabis.Conducting journalists round the confiscated illicit drugs yesterday at the state command of the agency, commander of the NDLEA in Kano, Hamza Umar, revealed that two suspects, including the driver were arrested in police uniforms. According to Hamza, the suspects were caught in a brand new Toyota Hilux masked with security siren and a private plate number, Pilot 1. Hamza hinted that the vehicle, which originated from Esuba, Edo State, was heading to Gezuwa in Yobe State, but was arrested following an intelligence report. Atfer thorough investigation, the suspects according to NDLEA boss were discovered to have impersonated the police force to scale through security search. Our men intercepted the vehicle, which was typical of security utility vehicles. The two suspects arrested were found in police uniforms but after interrogation, they confessed the uniforms were gotten to disguise as policemen to evade search at police checkpoint. I am sure if anybody sees them in this vehicle and the security uniform, nobody will dare to stop them. But from intelligence gathering, we were able to detect and arrest them. Investigation is still ongoing to unravel the sponsors of the drug suspects, Hamza explained. Although journalists were barred from unmasking the identities of the suspects, one of the suspects confessed that he got the police uniform from a serving police officer in Port Harcourt. We use to carry the Indian helm once every month from Edo to Yobe. The last trip I went, they paid me N150,000 and this tour I was promised to paid N200,000, he confessed. The NDLEA boss further told newsmen that the truck carrying Ebonyi State government vehicle document with plate number NKE41LG, was loaded with 64kg of cannabis stocked into bags of dry fish. He explained that the truck was coming from Ebonyi and was heading to Libiya, adding that four suspects, including the principal suspect, had been arrested.He noted the command in the last four months had intercepted 1123.284kg of cannabis sativa, 3,307.903kg psychotropic substance and 20 grammes of cocaine. Source: Guardian The Peoples Democratic Party and Civil Liberties Organisation have frowned at President Muhammdu Buharis decision to perform his official roles from home. Buhari who was absent from the Federal Executive Council inside the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday for the second time in a row. The FEC meeting was presided by the Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo presided. Following the Presidents absence from Wednesdays meeting, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said Buhari was working from home. In a statement, Mohammed said the President only decided to work from home on Wednesday, not that he had decided to work from home henceforth. The minister said, He (the President) wanted to rest today and he asked the VP to preside over todays meeting. In addition, he also asked that all his files be taken home to him and he will be working from home today. But the PDP kicked against the development, urging the Presidency to reveal Buharis health status. Spokesman for the partys National Caretaker Committee, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, stated the partys position in an interview with our one of our correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday. Adeyeye said it was obvious that Mohammed did not know what to tell Nigerians following the third consecutive absence of the President from the weekly FEC meeting. He said, We have passed a stage whereby you dish out lies to Nigerians on a daily basis about the health status of the President. We had such and similar experience during the days of the late former President Umaru YarAdua, when his health status was being manipulated by a cabal within the Presidency. We should be allowed to forget that era. President Buhari is human like any other person and is liable to fall sick as well. But he was elected to a public office and he is occupying a public office. He cannot therefore claim to be working behind the curtains. He is not allowed to work secretly because he was not elected to work secretly. FEC is statutory and he must preside over it. The CLO said it was conflicting that Buhari, who was reported to be resting at home, would attend to files on national issues. The CLO President, Igho Akeregha, said the President should resign if his health could not sustain the pressure of work, adding that Nigerians would still respect him for his ardent fight against corruption. He stated, This is a fraudulent setup that the APC government is taking Nigerians through. The information minister said the President wanted to rest and asked the VP to stand in for him. At another time, the minister said the President had asked for files to be brought to him at home. Now what time does a man who wants to rest indeed have to start working on files? Why is the President continuously missing the very important Federal Executive Council meeting? The conclusion to all of these is that this is a butterfly regime that flies around and lies to Nigerians. Nigerians voted for change and these individuals, including Mr President, have shown that they are not ready to govern. The way out is that the President should resign and Nigerians will have a big place in history for him as a man who came and vehemently challenged corruption. But hanging around office and trying to protect the cabal is not good for the country. You cannot run a country in this manner. But All Progressives Congress governors say they are not worried about Buharis health yet. Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai said this while responding to questions from reporters at the partys National Secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday. El-Rufai spoke on behalf of the 20 APC governors, who attended a meeting with the Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee. The three-man presidential committee tasked to investigate allegations of contract frauds in which the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Babachir Lawal is involved, has asked the Senate which originally indicted Mr. Lawal, for evidence, according to correspondence seen by PREMIUM TIMES. The committee, chaired by the Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo wrote Shehu Sani, the senator heading the Senate ad-hoc committee on mounting humanitarian crisis in the north east. Mr. Sanis committee blew the lid of alleged procurement fraud at the Presidential Initiative for the North East, PINE. In the letter dated April 21 and signed by Mr. Osinbajos Chief of Staff, Ade Ipaye, the presidential committee asked for evidence against Mr. Lawal, who is at the centre of the allegations. The presidential committee asked for relevant documentation, including the report of your committees deliberations on the same subject for appropriate consideration by the presidential committee. Mr. Sani on Wednesday confirmed that his committee received the letter. I confirm that we got the letter and we will provide the documents to the committee, he told journalists. The other two members of the presidential committee are the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno; and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. Senate Re-Invites SGF Lawal In a related development, Mr. Sanis committee has re-invited the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, to its hearing slated for tomorrow, Thursday, PREMIUM TIMES can confirm. The correspondence, a re-invitation letter dated April 26, 2017, was signed by the clerk to the committee, Lawal Bungudu. Mr. Lawal is expected to answer questions over allegations of breach of law and due process in how contracts were awarded by t PINE, an intervention agency under the office of the SGF. The Senate probe committee had invited Mr. Lawal to appear before it for the second time on March 15, 2017. But then, he declined appearance, first, citing a pending litigation before requesting postponement afterwards. The committee has granted your request conveyed in your letter dated March 22, 2017 and re-scheduled the meeting, reads the letter. By this letter, I am directed to formally invite you to appear before the committee on Thursday, April 27, 2017. Senate sources, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that the embattled SGF may not appear before the committee as his aides refused to accept the invitation letter on Wednesday. Last December, the Senate committee under Mr. Sani had indicted Mr. Lawal, in its interim report, for retaining directorship of a company, Rholavision, while being the SGF and using same company, originally registered for ICT services in 1990, to receive grass-cutting consultancy contract from PINE, an agency under his supervision, all in breach of Nigerias code of conduct for public officials. The Senate then adopted the report of its committee and resolved to demand President Muhammadu Buhari suspend and prosecute Mr. Lawal. But the President wrote back, rejecting the call for action against Mr. Lawal. He said, in January, that the Senate did not extend principle of fair hearing to the SGF and that the damning report itself was a minority report. However, Mr. Buhari last week announced the suspension of Mr. Lawal over the allegations made by the Senate, and constituted the Osinbajo committee to probe Mr. Lawal. Mr. Buhari constituted the committee on April 19, same day Mr. Lawal was suspended alongside the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke, and gave it two weeks to accomplish its task. Source: PremiumTimes Nikita Ivanov is co-founder and CTO of GridGain Systems. Apache Cassandra is a popular database for several reasons. The open source, distributed, NoSQL database has no single point of failure, so its well suited for high-availability applications. It supports multi-datacenter replication, allowing organizations to achieve greater resiliency by, for example, storing data across multiple Amazon Web Services availability zones. It also offers massive and linear scalability, so any number of nodes can easily be added to any Cassandra cluster in any datacenter. For these reasons, companies such as Netflix, eBay, Expedia, and several others have been using Cassandra for key parts of their businesses for many years. Over time, however, as business requirements evolve and Cassandra deployments scale, many organizations find themselves constrained by some of Cassandras limitations, which in turn restrict what they can do with their data. Apache Ignite, an in-memory computing platform, provides these organizations with a new way to access and manage their Cassandra infrastructure, allowing them to make Cassandra data available to new OLTP and OLAP use cases while delivering extremely high performance. [ NoSQL grudge match: MongoDB and Couchbase Server go nose to nose. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] Limitations of Cassandra A fundamental limitation of Cassandra is that it is disk-based, not an in-memory database. This means that read performance is always capped by I/O specifications, ultimately restricting application performance and limiting the ability to attain an acceptable user experience. Consider this comparison: What can be processed on an in-memory system in a single minute would take decades on a disk-based system. Even using flash drives, it would still take months. While Cassandra offers very fast data write performance, achieving optimal read performance requires that the Cassandra data be written to disk sequentially, so that on reads, the disk head can scan for as long as possible without the latency of the head hopping from location to location. To achieve this, the queries need to be simple, without any JOIN s, GROUP BY s, or aggregation, and the data must be modeled for those queries. Hence, Cassandra offers no ad hoc or SQL query capability at all. DataStax, a company that develops and provides support for a commercial edition of Apache Cassandra, added an ability to connect Cassandra to Apache Spark and Apache Solr to support analytics. However, this strategy provides limited benefit because using connectors is a very expensive way to access a subset of the data. The data still has to be laid down sequentially or the performance will be poor because Cassandra would need to do a full table scan, which is a scatter/gather approach involving a great deal of disk latency. Another potentially important limitation of Cassandra is that it only supports eventual consistency. Its lack of full ACID compliance means it cannot be used for applications that move money or require real-time inventory information. As a result of these limitations, organizations wanting to use the data they have stored in Cassandra for new business initiatives often struggle with how to do so. Enter Apache Ignite Apache Ignite is an in-memory computing platform that can help overcome these limitations in Cassandra while avoiding the overhead costs of the connector approach. Apache Ignite can be inserted between Apache Cassandra and an existing application layer with no changes to the Cassandra data and only minimal changes to the application. The Cassandra data is loaded into the Ignite in-memory cluster, and the application transparently accesses the data from RAM instead of from disk, accelerating performance by at least 1,000x. Data written by the application is written first to the Ignite cluster for immediate, ongoing consumption. It is then written to disk in Cassandra for permanent storage with either synchronous or asynchronous writes. Apache Ignite also has the same write strategy as Apache Cassandra, so it will feel familiar to Cassandra users. Like Cassandra, Ignite is open source and its users benefit from a large and active community, with support available through a number of community websites. As an in-memory computing platform, however, Apache Ignite enables organizations to do much more with their Cassandra dataand do it faster. Heres how. More data optionsANSI SQL-99 and ACID transaction guarantees Powered by an ANSI SQL-99-compliant engine, Apache Ignite offers ACID transaction guarantees for distributed transactions. Its In-Memory SQL Grid provides in-memory database capabilities, and ODBC and JDBC APIs are included. By combining Ignite with Apache Cassandra, any type of OLAP or complex SQL query can be written against Cassandra data that has been loaded into Ignite. Ignite can also be operated in multiple modes from eventual consistency to real-time, full ACID compliance, allowing organizations to use the data stored in Cassandra (but read into Ignite) for a host of new applications and initiatives. Powered by an ANSI SQL-99-compliant engine, Apache Ignite offers ACID transaction guarantees for distributed transactions. Its In-Memory SQL Grid provides in-memory database capabilities, and ODBC and JDBC APIs are included. By combining Ignite with Apache Cassandra, any type of OLAP or complex SQL query can be written against Cassandra data that has been loaded into Ignite. Ignite can also be operated in multiple modes from eventual consistency to real-time, full ACID compliance, allowing organizations to use the data stored in Cassandra (but read into Ignite) for a host of new applications and initiatives. No remodeling of Cassandra data Apache Ignite reads from Apache Cassandra and other NoSQL databases, so moving Cassandra data into Ignite requires no data modification. The data schema can also be migrated directly into Ignite as is. Apache Ignite reads from Apache Cassandra and other NoSQL databases, so moving Cassandra data into Ignite requires no data modification. The data schema can also be migrated directly into Ignite as is. Greater speed for data-intensive applications Moving all of the Apache Cassandra data into RAM offers the fastest possible performance and greatly improves query speed because the data is not constantly being read from and written to disk. It is also possible to use Apache Ignite to cache only the active portion of the Cassandra data to achieve a significant speed boost. Ignites indexes also reside in memory, making it possible to perform ultrafast SQL queries on the Cassandra data that has been moved into Ignite. Moving all of the Apache Cassandra data into RAM offers the fastest possible performance and greatly improves query speed because the data is not constantly being read from and written to disk. It is also possible to use Apache Ignite to cache only the active portion of the Cassandra data to achieve a significant speed boost. Ignites indexes also reside in memory, making it possible to perform ultrafast SQL queries on the Cassandra data that has been moved into Ignite. Simple horizontal and vertical scaling Like Apache Cassandra, Apache Ignite easily scales horizontally by adding nodes to the Ignite cluster. The new nodes instantly provide additional memory for caching Cassandra data. However, Ignite also easily scales vertically. Ignite can utilize all of the memory on a node, not only the JVM memory, and objects can be defined to live on or off heap and use all the memory on the machines. This way, simply increasing the amount of memory on each node automatically scales the Ignite cluster vertically. Like Apache Cassandra, Apache Ignite easily scales horizontally by adding nodes to the Ignite cluster. The new nodes instantly provide additional memory for caching Cassandra data. However, Ignite also easily scales vertically. Ignite can utilize all of the memory on a node, not only the JVM memory, and objects can be defined to live on or off heap and use all the memory on the machines. This way, simply increasing the amount of memory on each node automatically scales the Ignite cluster vertically. Increased availability Like Apache Cassandra, the peer-to-peer Apache Ignite computing platform is always available. The failure of a node does not prevent applications from writing to and reading from defined backup nodes. Data redistribution is also automatic as an Ignite cluster grows. Because Ignite offers sophisticated clustering support, such as detecting and remediating split brain conditions, the combined Cassandra/Ignite system is more available than a standalone Cassandra system. Like Apache Cassandra, the peer-to-peer Apache Ignite computing platform is always available. The failure of a node does not prevent applications from writing to and reading from defined backup nodes. Data redistribution is also automatic as an Ignite cluster grows. Because Ignite offers sophisticated clustering support, such as detecting and remediating split brain conditions, the combined Cassandra/Ignite system is more available than a standalone Cassandra system. Simpler and faster than Hadoop Many organizations that would like to make SQL queries into their Apache Cassandra data consider loading the data into Hadoop. The downside of this approach is that, after solving the ETL and data syncing challenges that arise, the queries into Hadoop would still be relatively very slow. While combining Cassandra and Ignite will also result in some small performance hit because of the additional system and caching, queries nevertheless execute with blazing speed, making the solution perfect for real-time analytics. And managing the relationship between Ignite and Cassandra data is much simpler. Challenges to implementing Cassandra and Ignite As noted above, combining Apache Cassandra and Apache Ignite does involve costs. You naturally incur a hit in the performanceand cost and maintenanceof having two networks (as you would with the addition of any other solution). There is a hardware cost for new commodity servers and sufficient RAM, and perhaps a subscription cost for an enterprise-grade and supported version of Apache Ignite. Further, implementing and maintaining Ignite may require some organizations to hire additional expertise. As a result, a cost/benefit analysis is warranted to ensure that the strategic benefits of any new use case, along with the performance gains, outweigh the costs. In making this determination, the following considerations are important. First, unlike the previous generation of in-memory computing solutions, which required cobbling together multiple products, Apache Ignite is a fully integrated, easy-to-deploy solution. Integrating Ignite with Apache Cassandra is typically a very straightforward process. Ignite slides between Cassandra and an application, such as Apache Kafka or other client, that accesses the data. Ignite includes a prebuilt Cassandra connector, which simplifies the process. The application then reads and writes out of Ignite instead of Cassandra, so it is always accessing data from memory instead of from disk. Ignite automatically handles the reads and writes out of and into Cassandra. Second, while many still think of in-memory computing as prohibitively expensive, the cost of RAM has dropped approximately 30 percent per year since the 1960s. Although RAM is still pound for pound more expensive than SSDs, the performance benefit of utilizing terabytes of RAM in an in-memory computing cluster, especially for large-scale, mission-critical applications, may make in-memory computing the most cost-effective approach. Finally, Apache Ignite is a safe bet with a mature codebase. It originated as a private project in 2007, was donated to the Apache Software Foundation in 2014, and graduated to a top-level project about a year laterthe second-fastest Apache project to graduate after Apache Spark. Apache Cassandra is a solid, proven solution that can be a vital element of many data strategies. With Apache Ignite, Cassandra data can be made more useful.The Apache Ignite in-memory computing platform is an affordable and effective solution to make Cassandra data available for new OLTP and OLAP use cases while meeting the extreme performance demands of todays web-scale applications. The combined solution maintains the high availability and horizontal scalability of Cassandra, while adding ANSI SQL-99 compliant query capabilities, vertical scalability, more robust consistency with ACID transaction guarantees, and moreall while delivering performance that is 1,000x faster than disk-based approaches. New Tech Forum provides a venue to explore and discuss emerging enterprise technology in unprecedented depth and breadth. The selection is subjective, based on our pick of the technologies we believe to be important and of greatest interest to InfoWorld readers. InfoWorld does not accept marketing collateral for publication and reserves the right to edit all contributed content. Send all inquiries to newtechforum@infoworld.com. By Gary Thome, VP and Chief Engineer, HPE Software-Defined and Cloud Group In todays digital world, data is the new oil. And like oil, data must be gathered and refined in order to extract value from it. Your business is probably doing just that -- gaining a treasure trove of information that helps you become more competitive. If data is indeed that valuable, it makes sense to be vigilant in protecting it. Yet, when you put your data in the public cloud, have you considered that you may be giving up a fair amount of control? To investigate this claim, consider three key concerns in the public cloud: protection, compliance/data sovereignty, and legal issues. Protecting your data Implicitly trusting your cloud provider Because data is critical to running a businesses, it is logical to be actively involved in protecting it. Yet, according to a recent press release by CTERA, two out of three companies using the public cloud are not focused on backing up their applications at all. Why? Because they believe that the cloud is more resilient than on-premise applications, a belief that facts dont necessarily support. And a majority of organizations rely solely on their cloud providers to run backups, even though most admit that any loss of data in the cloud would be catastrophic to their business. Another study by security firm Netskope found that 48% of companies surveyed don't inspect their applications in the cloud for malware and 12% werent sure if they did or not. Of those that do inspect, 57% said that they found malware. According to another report by the same firm, almost half of the cloud malware they detected in cloud apps were common ransomware delivery vehicles. Bottom line: Just because you put your data into the cloud, it doesnt mean it is protected and secure. Its still your responsibility to ensure backups are getting done and that your data is being checked for malicious malware. Compliance and data sovereignty YOU are responsible, not your cloud provider One of the biggest problems with maintaining compliance in the cloud is simply knowing where your data is located. During an audit, you need to prove the location of your data along with the measures that are in place to protect it. You also must document the level of access for each user and how these levels are maintained. You cant just assume that your cloud provider has security controls in place and that they are being used properly. In late 2015, the 15-year-old Safe Harbor regulations expired a regulation that made it easier for American businesses to comply with more stringent data protection laws in Europe. Several months later, the US-EU Privacy Shield agreement was signed, which mandated stronger policies. And the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is scheduled to be enacted in 2018, putting in place even stricter mandates along with severe fines for non-compliance. What do all these changes in data sovereignty mean to public cloud providers and to those who use their services? GDPR makes it more complex and harder to comply if you store your data in the public cloud. And if you think compliance is the cloud providers problem and not yours, think again. The business -- not the cloud provider-- is considered to have primary responsibility. And as of September 2016, only 6% of cloud providers claimed they were compliant. Bottom line: you must ensure that you are compliant and be able to show auditors this information. Although you can outsource operations to a cloud service provider, you cant outsource your responsibility. Legalities Once you move your data, do you really still own it? The Fourth Amendment was designed to protect U.S. citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. Although the Supreme Court recognized telephone calls as protected (almost 100 years after the telephones invention), no such precedent exists for public cloud. And thats because an exception called the third-party doctrine states that citizens have no expectation of privacy when information is disclosed to a third party such as a public cloud provider. Currently, the government can search information stored in the cloud without you ever knowing about it. The cloud provider is informed, but a gag order may keep you from ever knowing. Different countries have different laws, and the legal system appears to be changing. Bottom line: when you put your data in the public cloud, be aware of where it is being stored and what the laws are that govern it. Chances are, you are giving up some amount of control. Although its technically still your data, you may not even know if it is being accessed. Its your data and your responsibility. Companies are turning to the public cloud for a variety of reasons. Yet, putting all of your data in the public cloud without considering data protection, compliance/sovereignty, and legal issues could lead to some big headaches. Dont bury your head in the sand. Remember, its your datayour intellectual property, your analysis, and your competitive advantage! As I wrote in a previous article, businesses need to determine which workloads should be in the public cloud and which ones should remain on traditional IT or a private cloud. Due to new technologies, such as hyperconverged platforms and composable infrastructure, keeping your most valuable data on-premises is now easier, faster and more cost-effective than ever before. To learn more about Hybrid Cloud Security, download the HPE Hybrid Cloud Security for Dummies. To find out how HPE can help you determine a workload placement strategy and how to best meet your service level agreements, check out HPE Pointnext. Microsoft continues to shoot itself in the foot with buggy detection software, no documentation, and an infernal drive to block Windows Update on seemingly random machines. Now, some older Intel and AMD processors are unexpectedly getting the blockade treatment. The carnage started more than a year ago, when Microsoft declared it would no longer support Windows 7 or 8.1 on the new sixth-generation Intel Skylake processors. Microsoft backed down in several steps, finally saying that it would not support Win7 on seventh-generation Kaby Lake and Bristol Ridge processors, but left open the question of which Skylake and older AMD processors would get the update shaft. [ The essentials for Windows 10 installation: Download the Windows 10 Installation Superguide today. | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Windows Report newsletter. ] Starting earlier this month, Microsoft bared its fangs, in the form of the "Unsupported hardware" message, followed by a complete shutdown of Windows Update on the identified, presumably seventh-generation, machine. IDG Microsoft admitted a few days later that it had accidentally hobbled legitimate sixth-generation Carrizo DDR4 machines with the Windows Update block, in spite of official assurances that the Carrizo line was exempt from the lockdown. Now I'm seeing reports that machines with other, much older processors, have been blocked as well. AskWoody Lounger Pim pointed me to two reports of mistaken "Unsupported hardware" identity, both on Dutch websites. The first report on the Tweakers site, from PDZ on April 18, clearly identifies an Intel Pentium Dual Core E5400 2.70GHz machine as getting plugged by the "Unsupported hardware" block. The E5400 isn't a seventh-generation chip. It isn't even a zero-generation chip. It's a Wolfdale series processor, first released in 2009, that predates the Intel Nehalem seriesand the Nehalem series is usually categorized as first generation. The symptoms described by PDZ correspond exactly to what we've seen on misidentified Carrizo DDR4 machines: When you run Windows Update to install this month's Monthly Rollup, you get locked out with the "Unsupported hardware" notification. Subsequent attempts to run Windows Update meet with a "Windows could not search for new updates" notification. IDG In the same thread, poster E-Bastard says his machine with a Celeron J1900 processor got slammed. The J1900 is a Bay Trail-D Intel processor, released in November 2013. Yes, it's three and a half years old, yet it ran afoul of the "Win10 only on new processors" rule. Intel says the J1000 series supports 64-bit Windows 7, whereas it doesn't support 32-bit Windows 7. No word from the poster on which bit-ness he's using. A second Dutch post on Tweakers from emanuelhut repeats the tale of woe, this time with an older computer that had its video card replaced with an AMD Radeon RX480. Mind you that the RX480, released in June of last year, is a GPU, not a CPU. Microsoft's infamous statement about blocking Win7 on older machines doesn't even mention GPUs: New processor generations require the latest Windows version for support. For example, Windows 10 is the only Windows version that is supported on the following processor generations: Intel seventh (7th)-generation processors AMD Bristol Ridge Qualcomm 8996 Because of how this support policy is implemented, devices that run the following Windows versions and that have a seventh generation or later generation processor may no longer be able to scan or download updates through Windows Update or Microsoft Update: Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows 7 That's all the information we have. There's no warning from the installer that your Win7 machine is about to have Windows Update shut down permanently, nor is there a list of which CPUs and GPUs trigger the blockade. Fortunately, there are workarounds. For those of you who follow my Group A and Group B methods for patching Win7, ardosuaf and MrBrian posted a workaround on the AskWoody Lounge. If you'd rather run a patch file from GitHub, Zeffy has a comprehensive script for 64-bit systems. One has to wonder about Microsoft's liability in this ongoing screw-up. This month's patches fix the Word zero-day that's been used to infect systems with the Dridex banking Trojan. What if Microsoft's botched scanning prevented a system from getting updated? You gotta love a botched "security" patch that disables Windows Update. Discussion continues on the AskWoody Lounge. At the request of the German Embassy in Madrid, Madrid City Hall has removed an inscription in the citys largest cemetery commemorating German aviators who supported coup leader General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The plaque to the German pilots. Cristobal Manuel The decision, taken on Wednesday, comes during a week-long series of events to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica, in which Nazi Germanys Luftwaffe, or air force, played a key role. Until just a few days ago, a piece of the facade of a mausoleum in Madrids Almudena cemetery one of the largest in Europe honoring the Condor Legion, made up of air force and army units, remained in place. Seven pilots are buried there. The facade has now been removed, leaving only the names of the pilots on their graves. Written in Spanish and German, the inscription read: Here rest German pilots who fell in the fight for a free Spain. German aviators who died for God and for Spain. Present! The German embassy expressly asked for the plaque to be removed, and paid for the cost The Condor Legion developed methods of terror bombing later used in World War II. As well as Guernica, German planes bombed Bilbao and took part in other operations in Spain, including the battle for Madrid. The German embassy had expressly requested the removal of the inscription, although Madrid City Hall has recently begun taking down the last remaining street signs and other vestiges of the Franco regime, which ended in 1975. In a country where the legacy of Franco remains hotly contested, monuments associated with the fascist regime are highly controversial. In 2007, the Socialist Party (PSOE) government of former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed the Historical Memory Law, which made provision for the removal of statues and the changing of place names connected to the Franco regime. The mausoleum to the German pilots was the property of the German Federal Republic. In a letter to Madrid City Hall, the German embassy formally requested the mausoleum be dismantled before April 25, a day before the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica. PSOE councilor Ramon Silva thanked the German embassy for its efforts to remove the plaque, including paying for it: This is moment for celebration, because the Historical Memory Law has proved successful once again and another vestige lauding fascism and the coup of 1936 has disappeared. English version by Nick Lyne. Security threats are constantly evolving, but as Verizon's latest DBIR (Data Breach Investigations Report) shows, the more things change in information security, the more they stay the same. More than half (51 percent) of the data breaches analyzed in the report involved malware, 73 percent of the breaches were financially motivated, and 75 percent of security incidents were tracked back to outside actors. This year's report found that email was the No. 1 malware delivery vector, compared to last year, when it was web drive-by-download attacks. The DBIR data set, which includes 1,935 confirmed data breaches and 42,068 security incidents across 84 countries, is compiled from 65 sources, including Verizon's own investigation team as well as the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement groups. The report distinguishes between data breaches, where data is confirmed to have been exposed to an unauthorized party, and security incidents, which are security events that compromised "the integrity, confidentiality, or availability" of data. Ransomware is the hot new trend Ransomware has been dominating headlines, for good reason: It was the fifth-most common malware variety in Verizon's data set, which is a huge jump from three years ago, when it was the 22nd most common. Ransomware attacks are still opportunistic, relying on infected websites and traditional malware delivery mechanisms to find victims, and they're more likely to target vulnerable organizations than individual consumers, the report found. "While ransomware dates back to 1989, in the past year we have seen more technical and process innovation in ransomware than we have seen since the invention of Bitcoin-enabled anonymous payments," the researchers wrote in the report. Along with ransomware, cyberespionage popped up a lot in the report, which found that 21 percent of breaches were related to espionage. In fact, it was the most common attack across multiple industries, including education, manufacturing, and the public sector. These industries tend to have higher amounts of proprietary research, prototypes, and confidential personal data, making them attractive espionage targets. More than 90 percent of the confirmed espionage breaches were linked to state-affiliated groups, with competitors and former employees accounting for the remaining 10 percent. What's old is still relevant Phishing remains a big problem, as it was present in 21 percent of all security incidents and 43 percent of data breaches, and it was the most popular cyberespionage method. Attackers are increasingly incorporating phishing into their campaigns because they work so well: one in 14 phishing attacks were successful, in that the victim clicked on the link in the email or opened the malicious attachment. While attackers still used spoof websites to harvest credentials in their phishing attempts, documents embedded with malicious macros were far more common, the report found, yet another example of how old tricks continue to pay off for attackers. Every year, Verizon's researchers point out that password insecurity is the biggest problem, and that hasn't changed. Verizon found that 81 percent of hacking-related breaches succeeded through stolen passwords or weak passwords. That's an 18 percent increase from last year's report, suggesting that rather than getting better, password security is getting worse. Don't try to solve all problems While the depressing figures about the number of breaches and the most common attack methods are helpful, the most valuable part of the report is deeper inside, where Verizon's researchers break down the threats by industry. The data for each industry varies dramatically, and IT and security teams should pay the most attention to the relevant industry sections to understand which areas they need to focus on. Manufacturing is most exposed to espionage, but food and hospitality sectors likely don't have to worry so much about it, said Marc Spitler, senior risk analyst for Verizon and a co-author of the report. By that token, point-of-sale attacks are big in hospitality and retail, but not so important for manufacturing and education. The top three industries for data breaches were financial services (24 percent), health care (15 percent), and the public sector (12 percent). For financial services, the top two motives were financial gain (72 percent) and espionage (21 percent). The motives were flipped for the public sector, with espionage (64 percent) followed by financial gain (20 percent). Knowing the difference helps IT teams channel their energies more constructively. Health care is different If it felt like there was a ransomware attack against a health care organization every few days in 2016, that perception is not so far from reality. Ransomware accounted for 72 percent of malware-related incidents in health care companies. Last year, officials at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid $17,000 ransom to restore its data after its network was knocked offline for several days, impacting patient care. Spitler said ransomware was counted as incidents and not breaches because an infection doesn't necessarily mean data was exposed. Health care was also different from other sectors because the primary cause of breaches was by insiders (68 percent), and it wasn't always about the money. While 64 percent of breaches were financially motivated, 23 percent fell under the category of "fun," which could mean anything from being curious about someone they know (or a celebrity) to merely poking around and see what they can get. The number of records compromised at a time tended to be smaller than the wide-scale smash-and-grab breaches of personal data we've gotten used to. That may be because the perpetrators don't want to get caught by taking too many at once, Spitler said. A lot of the problems in health care could have been prevented, Spitler noted. Routinely checking on employee activity to make sure they are not viewing, downloading, or printing information they have no business need for will stop a lot of the information disclosures. Ransomware can be foiled by improving the backup strategy, and having a policy in place to make sure data is disposed of correctly would prevent accidental exposure of personally identifiable information. Mobile devices should be encrypted so that data remains protected when devices are lost or stolen. Information is a treasure trove Verizon defined the information industry as "everything from software publishers to telecommunication carriers; from cloud providers to social media sites, and even online gambling." These are non-e-commerce and non-retail sites where users sign up for accounts and provide some personal information. The biggest problem in this industry was denial-of-service attacks, at 71 percent, indicating that "most of the incidents are based on disruption of access to web-based sites/applications," the report said. In fact, denial-of-service, web application attacks, and crimeware represent 90 percent of all security incidents for this sector. The top six threats include using stolen credentials, keyloggers or other spyware, data-stealing malware, phishing, backdoor malware, and malware communicating with command-and-control servers. Hacking, malware, and phishing are the trifecta of attacks this industry has to worry about. Data breaches here tend to be credentials and personal data, and they affect millions of users at a time. While password security is important across all industries, it's critical for the information industry when so many of the breaches are taking advantage of weak passwords. Two-factor authentication has been shown to make it harder for attackers to break in, yet a distressingly large number of sites still don't offer the option. If nothing else, two-factor authentication should be required for administrative access to web applications and other devices that hold sensitive data. Password reuse across sites remains a problem, but stolen credentials become less dangerous if there's another authentication barrier the attackers have to get around. If the user's device is compromised with a keylogger, the attacker will get into the online account no matter how strong the password was, Spitler said. Two-factor authentication would stop those attacks because the attacker will likely not have that second factor. Basic security hygiene is still lacking The Verizon DBIR beats the same security drum each year: Many of these attacks could have been prevented with basic security hygiene. System administrators need to update server software, including operating systems, web applications, and plugins. IT needs to be aware of when security vulnerabilities are disclosed and updates are available. With phishing used in majority of attacks, staff needs to be trained to spot warning signs. While training isn't a cure-all, there is value in getting users less click-happy. Two-factor authentication would also severely curtail phishing, as it can render stolen credentials all but useless. While a determined adversary will keep trying to get in, it would disrupt their normal operations. For most other opportunistic attacks, it will force them to move to a different target. There's no reason why mobile devices aren't being encrypted all the time. If they were, then lost or stolen devices would be classified as security incidents, but not an actual data breach since the data would still be protected. To that end, a segmented network is preferable to a flat network that's easy for attackers to get around in. Better yet: Require extra rounds of authentication to move from one segment to another. The goal should be to make it more costly and time-consuming for attackers to move from the initial device or network compromise (a security incident) to actually stealing data (data breach). Livestock Report Walsh Trading - Tue Nov 8, 8:27PM CST Cattle markets drift Wheat, W. D. Gann natural support and resistance levels ONE44 Analytics - Tue Nov 8, 5:17PM CST The Charts below are natural support and resistance levels that are based on W. D. Gann's "Law of Vibration". Mid-Term Elections, Gold & The Markets Cannon Trading - Tue Nov 8, 5:00PM CST Gold broke out to the upside on election day -is this the beginning of a change in direction or simply short covering? Cotton Closes Mostly Red Barchart - Tue Nov 8, 4:29PM CST The rally faded momentum on Tuesday with a tighter range on a mixed mostly lower close. Dec futures ended the day with another 19 point gain and stayed in just over a 3c range. The other front months closed... CTZ22 : 86.79 (-1.02%) CTH23 : 84.87 (-1.01%) CTK23 : 83.94 (-1.06%) Cattle Close Firm, Mostly Red Barchart - Tue Nov 8, 4:29PM CST Live cattle futures stayed in a relatively tighter range on Tuesday and closed UNCH in the Dec contract. The other nearbys went home 15 to 30 cents weaker. Feeder cattle were mixed on the board on Tuesday.... LEZ22 : 153.050s (unch) LEG23 : 154.775s (-0.16%) LEJ23 : 158.250s (-0.19%) GFX22 : 178.275s (+0.03%) GFF23 : 179.900s (-0.01%) Hog Prices Fade for Turnaround Tuesday Barchart - Tue Nov 8, 4:29PM CST Following the sharp +$4 runnup in Dec hogs to start the week, Tuesdays action pulled the board back down by $1.47. The other front months were mixed with 15 to 55 cent losses nearby and 2 to 15 cent... HEZ22 : 85.575s (-1.69%) HEJ23 : 94.200s (-0.16%) KMZ22 : 95.975s (-0.23%) A government-owned central insurer has partnered up with one of the giants of the sector to facilitate the transition of the NSW workers compensation scheme. Allianz has been tapped to manage icare workers insurance existing claims. However, it is understood that another agent will manage new claims from the schemes implementation on January 2018.Helen Silver, Allianz chief general manager, workers compensation, said the insurer, a top performer in the scheme, remains committed to supporting injured workers and their employers.While we are not the chosen agent for the new claims model, we will continue to do everything possible to support injured workers, as well as our own employees, she said, as she stated that Allianz has a proven track record in terms of supporting injured workers to quickly return to work and helping employers cut claim costs and premiums.We welcome the opportunity to support the scheme in the future given our extensive knowledge of workers compensation in NSW, she added.Allianzs contract with icare, dated until December 31 next year, remains in place; and all current claims and injury management practices will remain constant. It was reported earlier today on Chinese social media that the chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, Wu Xiaohui, was detained by authorities in Beijing on allegations of illegal loans and several other offences. However, these reports have since been denied.The reports said that the government had stopped all of the insurance groups overseas investment deals. However, after the story broke worldwide, Anbang Insurance reached out to Insurance Business with the following statement:There is no validity to the unfounded rumors that any Anbang executives, including Chairman Wu, have been detained by authorities, said the spokesperson. There has been no interruption to Anbangs business activities, both foreign and domestic, which continue as usual.Wu is the husband of the granddaughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. His alleged detention came after an investigation involving loans worth hundreds of billions of yuan which were suspected to come from illegal means. These loans were also reportedly used to invest in the stock market, as well as to conduct shady asset transfers overseas.The reported arrest was also thought to be connected to the Chinese governments drive to eliminate corruption in the financial and business sectors. Earlier this month, Xiang Junbo, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, was investigated and later dismissed for violating anti-graft regulations.Anbang was a little-known insurer in China a few years ago, but it gained notoriety after it launched a massive asset shopping spree, including the 2014 purchase of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York for US$1.95 billion. It also acquired stakes in several domestic banks including China Minsheng Bank and China Merchants Bank.It has also had its share of failed high-profile deals, such as the plan to acquire Starwood Hotels & Resorts portfolio, which Anbang backed out of at the last minute. It was in negotiations to redevelop an office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, but the buildings owner, Kushner Company, recently said that it had cancelled talks with Anbang.Anbang also planned to acquire US-based life insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life for US$1.6 billion but it failed to obtain the regulatory approvals.Last month, it was reported that Wu and Zhuo Ran, Deng Xiaopings granddaughter, have divorced. It was said that the Deng family had ill regard for Wu, and Zhuo has cut off her connections with Anbang. An ASX-listed industry disruptor has reported strong growth in its underwriting services platform, as well as in its renewal business.Ensurance has seen its cumulative basis quotes increase from 220 to 21,766, and its policies bound rise, from 66 to 6,206, during the period between April 2014 and April 2017.The increase in quotes demonstrates our clients are actively using the system. We dont expect to win every policy quoted, but the increase in quotes is leading to a greater number of sales, Michael Huntly, Ensurance Underwriting CEO, told The Australian.The policy renewal rate from existing clients is highly encouraging. It is important to understand that policy renewals are a major focus for business operations in the general insurance industry. This is why we look at cumulative quotes and policies written. Our objective is to build a large profitable reoccurring revenue stream and we are very pleased with the current results.The Ensurance Underwriting platform is anticipated to see continued exponential growth as the company plans to further enhance the system by introducing new efficiency gains for customers. By mid-2017, for example, it aims to increase the instantaneous quotes the platform generates to four.Ensurance is also expecting positive returns from its UK operations, which will significantly expand the companys underwriting capacity. Lucila Yaconis was 16 years old when she was suffocated to death after resisting rape in an underpass at a Buenos Aires station in 2003. The police found genetic material belonging to the assailant, but were unable to identify him. The crime remains unpunished to this day. Marchers demand justice for Micaela Garcia. AFP More information Argentina pone a los violadores en una lista negra The victims mother, Isabel Yaconis, believes that things would have been different if Argentina had had a DNA registry such as the one that President Mauricio Macri is now rushing to set up. By doing so, Argentina will be following in the footsteps of Britain, France, the United States and Spain, which already have sex offender registries. The national congress passed the Sex Offender Registration Law in 2013, amid a general commotion over the killing of Angeles Rawson, another 16-year-old girl who was found dead in a Buenos Aires dump. But the law was never implemented. This measure will not benefit us. It will not put an end to sexual violence or an end to rapes Sabrina Cartabia, lawyer Now, following a new case of sexual abuse and murder the victim this time is 21-year-old Micaela Garcia, whose alleged attacker was a convicted rapist out on parole the government has announced that the registry is finally going to become a reality. The register will include genetic material from sex offenders whose convictions are final, and will be accessible to government employees working on judicial cases. A meeting is scheduled for Thursday with all the forensic labs that work with prosecutors, to decide how best to extract and conserve the DNA samples. A committee made up of members of three ministries will provide oversight. Micaela Garcia wearing an anti-femicide tee-shirt. Facebook The registry will become a reality in the coming weeks, said sources at the Justice Ministry. The association Madres del dolor has been fighting for years to make the genetic database a reality, but we Argentineans act like firefighters. The law was voted in when Angeles body turned up, and now this is happening when Micaelas body has emerged, says Yaconis. I have the DNA of the person who killed my daughter, but he is a NN (No Name, or John Doe). And he is not the only one, there are many others like him, adds Lucilas mother, who hopes that the implementation of the law will help solve open cases. This is not going to end rape, but we are going to start backing rapists into a corner. Mendoza province, in western Argentina, pioneered the passing of legislation to create a registry of rapists, but there was not enough political will to make it a reality, says Luis Petri, the deputy who drafted the bill. This lawmaker celebrates the upcoming creation of a national registry. It is instrumental in the prevention of impunity, he says. It helps solve cases, especially rape cases, because sexual offenders very often leave behind genetic traces such as skin, blood or semen. I have the DNA of the person who killed my daughter, but he is a John Doe Isabel Yaconis, mother of victim Petri also believes that the law will help prevent recidivism. According to Justice Ministry data, sex crime convictions grew 33% from 2012 to 2015, the last year for which figures are available. But an association called Ni Una Menos believes that these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, and that it will be the same story with the registry. Angeles Rawson was found dead in 2013. We women undergo many forms of sexual violence, and very few of them lead to an effective conviction, warns Sabrina Cartabia, a lawyer and member of Ni Una Menos. Cartabia claims that the registry will identify a very small number of sexual offenders and will not take into account the fact that a majority of women do not report assault, and those who do are not believed. This measure will not benefit us. It will not put an end to sexual violence or an end to rapes, she says. Ni Una Menos believes that prevention is more effective than punishment. There is a tool already in existence, which is comprehensive sex education. It confers knowledge and respect, which is what is needed, because if you are able to identify what constitutes abuse, you can react in time, stop it or ask for help. But this is not happening because the government has hobbled the program, says Cartabia. English version by Susana Urra. Prudentials former chief risk officer (CRO) for the UK and Europe has taken on a new role with Australian insurer QBE.Mark Baxter has been appointed as CRO for QBEs Australian and New Zealand division, succeeding Anna Gould, who was named new head of claims, technical and governance for QBE Australia and New Zealand.Prior to his role at Prudential, Baxter worked at Old Mutual Group where he took charge of its global financial risk and actuarial function across the UK, South Africa, and North America. He has also occupied a number of executive roles at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority.Pat Regan, QBE executive officer, said he was delighted to welcome Baxter to the team.A skilled senior executive with global experience across insurance, banking, asset management, and superannuation, Mark joins us at a time of heightened scrutiny for our industry, he said.His extensive experience will guide us to further strengthen our risk management practices and reinforce a sound risk management culture.The QBE boss also thanked Gould for her service as CRO, and said he looks forward to continuing to work with her. An industry head has said that attracting new talent to the insurance industry could become one of its greatest challenges.As head of accident & health for XL Catlins Australian operations, Nicole Yates said that she sees talent becoming one of the industrys major issues moving forward.I believe that the single greatest asset in our industry is the people who work in it, Yates told Insurance Business.However, if we dont continue to attract and develop new talent, it could also become one of our greatest challenges.Yates noted that both banks and accounting firms are ahead of the insurance industry in terms of promoting their sectors to recent graduates and younger employees. She suggests they both spend more time and energy ensuring their propositions are more attractive to potential employees and the insurance industry needs to follow suit.I believe we need to work collectively as an industry to better communicate these opportunities, and hopefully overcome the perceived stereotypes that deter some from considering a career in insurance, Yates continued.Having joined the industry fresh from university, Yates knows the opportunities that exist in insurance to attract a new generation.Describing her career as filled with opportunity, Yates said that the number of areas of specialisation is what piqued her interest when graduating and looking for employment. This same diversity could be used to help attract other graduates to the industry.Yates was named head of A&H in July 2016, having spent 14 years in the industry. UPDATED It was reported earlier today on Chinese social media that the chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, Wu Xiaohui, was detained by authorities in Beijing on allegations of illegal loans and several other offences. However, these reports have since been denied. The reports said that the government had stopped all of the insurance groups overseas investment deals. However, after the story broke worldwide, Anbang Insurance reached out to Insurance Business with the following statement: There is no validity to the unfounded rumors that any Anbang executives, including Chairman Wu, have been detained by authorities, said the spokesperson. There has been no interruption to Anbangs business activities, both foreign and domestic, which continue as usual. Wu is the husband of the granddaughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. His alleged detention came after an investigation involving loans worth hundreds of billions of yuan which were suspected to come from illegal means. These loans were also reportedly used to invest in the stock market, as well as to conduct shady asset transfers overseas. The reported arrest was also thought to be connected to the Chinese governments drive to eliminate corruption in the financial and business sectors. Earlier this month, Xiang Junbo, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, was investigated and later dismissed for violating anti-graft regulations. Are you a program specialist? Download our free whitepaper to understand how to evaluate program carriers, and find a partner that shares your specialty mindset. Anbang was a little-known insurer in China a few years ago, but it gained notoriety after it launched a massive asset shopping spree, including the 2014 purchase of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York for US$1.95 billion. It also acquired stakes in several domestic banks including China Minsheng Bank and China Merchants Bank. It has also had its share of failed high-profile deals, such as the plan to acquire Starwood Hotels & Resorts portfolio, which Anbang backed out of at the last minute. It was in negotiations to redevelop an office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, but the buildings owner, Kushner Company, recently said that it had cancelled talks with Anbang. Anbang also planned to acquire US-based life insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life for US$1.6 billion but it failed to obtain the regulatory approvals. Last month, it was reported that Wu and Zhuo Ran, Deng Xiaopings granddaughter, have divorced. It was said that the Deng family had ill regard for Wu, and Zhuo has cut off her connections with Anbang. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan criticized Michigans auto insurance sector on Wednesday and said rising costs hold back his citys economic and population growth.The biggest scandal in the state is auto insurance, Duggan testified before members of the Michigan House Competitiveness Committee. Its absolutely indefensible what the people of this state pay for insurance.A whole lot of people are moving out of the neighborhoods because they cant afford car insurance. Its almost as much as a housing payment, he said, as quoted by the Detroit Free Press. This is devastating for us.The Motor Citys drivers can pay up to $5,000 for an annual auto insurance policy, according to the Detroit Alliance for Fair Auto Insurance.Duggan and lawmakers have sought to reform Michigans no-fault auto insurance system over the past few years, such as the D-Insurance program proposed in 2015. The proposal introduces an additional Personal Injury Protection (PIP) option for drivers: stick with the unlimited cap or, for a lower auto insurance rate, select a $275,000 per accident PIP limit. It also calls for the creation of a pool of trusted healthcare providers, excluding emergency services. It has since stalled.This preferred provider network would reduce the number of fraudulent claims submitted to auto insurers by ensuring the medical care provided for injured parties was medically necessary and pertained only to the auto accident for which the claim was submitted, according to the D-Insurance website.The website says auto insurers dont benefit from the status quo: The unlimited no-fault PIP system in place has created an environment that is detrimental to both Michigan drivers and auto insurance companies. An unlimited PIP cap means that healthcare providers bill auto insurers for 100% of the medical care given to injured victims of car accidents.It claims the current system leads to fraud, when physicians charge auto insurance companies for services they did not perform or that were performed but had nothing to do with the injuries sustained in an auto accident.The result is auto insurers pay $1.28 in claims for every dollar of premium collected for PIP coverage in Detroit, it said. This 28% loss on PIP coverage with every policy makes providing insurance in Detroit unprofitable for insurers. Suit alleged that the insurer had failed to honor its promises A federal appeals court has upheld $250,000 in damages against Pan Am Railways, saying the company illegally retaliated against a Maine employee. The Portland Press Herald reports conductor Jason Raye told his supervisors about a pile of railroad ties next to a track in 2011 at the companys Waterville rail yard. He suffered a sprained ankle after stepping onto the ties several weeks later. Pan Am threatened to fire Raye for providing false statements about his injury. In its ruling, the appeals court says the company exaggerated Rayes conflicting statements and Pan Am appears to support a corporate culture more focused on retaliation than on safety. Calls to Pan Ams lawyer were not immediately returned. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Maine The Massachusetts Appeals Court has upheld a Superior Court decision that defendant, Norfolk & Dedham Mutual Fire Insurance Co., did not engage in unfair settlement practices in its handling of a personal injury claim. The court also reversed the portions of an amended judgment awarding damages, prejudgment interest, costs and attorneys fees for Norfolk & Dedhams failure to offer postjudgment interest. The case, Mark Silva vs. Norfolk & Dedham Mutual Fire Insurance Company, comes after a series of events leading the plaintiff, Mark Silva, to file a personal injury claim against Norfolk & Dedhams insured, Dorothy McQuinn, which Norfolk & Dedham refused to pay after investigating the claim. Background On March 9, 2005, Silva, a tow truck operator, was assisting a vehicle stuck in a snow drift in Provincetown, Mass., according to the court decision document. Silva had pulled his truck to the side of the road and hooked up a tow line to the disabled car. The road conditions were snowy, slushy, and icy, the decision said. McQuinn was driving with her windshield fogged up, obstructing her view of the road, when she rear-ended Silva. The next day, Norfolk & Dedham, McQuinns insurer, was informed of the collision and opened a claim. McQuinn had bodily injury coverage of $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident. However, the court decision stated that Norfolk & Dedhams initial efforts to obtain information regarding Silva and his injuries were mostly fruitless. Silvas automobile insurance carrier and his workers compensation carrier were initially reluctant to disclose to Norfolk & Dedham any information from their own investigations, the decision document said, adding that Norfolk & Dedham did not obtain access to Silvas medical records until more than three years after the accident and after Silva filed his personal injury suit against McQuinn. As Norfolk & Dedham gathered information, it began to cast doubt on the genuineness of Silvas claimed injuries. The questionis whether [Norfolk & Dedham] refused to pay the claim without conducting a reasonable investigation based on all available information, according to the Superior Court judge. The appeals court agreed with the judge that Norfolk & Dedham had conducted a reasonable investigation of this matter. Investigation Six days after learning of the accident, Norfolk & Dedham assigned an independent adjuster to investigate the claim. Through its own claims adjusters and other sources, including private investigators, Silvas workers compensation carrier, Silvas automobile insurance carrier and Silvas discovery responses and deposition testimony, Norfolk & Dedham also gradually acquired information that gave it a reasonable basis for regarding as suspicious Silvas claim, the court document said. Norfolk & Dedham additionally looked to the opinions of Dr. David Gushue, a biomechanical engineer, and Dr. Mark Weiner, a neurologist, regarding the cause and extent of Silvas injuries. After Gushue and Weiner reviewed evidence of the accident and Silvas medical records, according to Gushue, the impact of the accident would have generated the same level of force [Silva] experiences on a daily basis while going about his usual routine, the court document stated. Indeed, a week after the accident, McQuinn told a Norfolk & Dedham claims adjuster that she could not imagine how [Silva] could possibly have been injured. Eight days later, Norfolk & Dedham received information that after the accident, Silva had not only towed McQuinns car from the scene, but also returned to complete the original tow he had been working on when the accident occurred, the court document said. This led Norfolk & Dedham to uncover multiple other reasons to be skeptical of Silvas damage claims and the severity of his injuries following its investigation. Within one month of the accident, a private investigator informed Norfolk & Dedham that Silva was observed at [his automobile service station] and it appeared he was working a very full and busy schedule. Norfolk and Dedhams skepticism continued when Silva waited a year after the accident to claim disability from performing work as a tow truck driver, continued to work a full towing schedule while claiming he could only perform desk work, [and] sought workers compensation benefits while collecting unemployment benefits, the court document said. Norfolk & Dedham also learned through the investigation that Silvas workers compensation insurer questioned the existence of causation between the accident and Silvas claimed injuries. The court document stated that there was no testimony at trial identifying specific steps that Norfolk & Dedham should have taken but did not in investigating Silvas bodily injury claim, and that Norfolk & Dedham had a reasonable basis for resisting liability. Resolution Silva argued, however, that some of the evidence relied on by the judge was not known to Norfolk & Dedham until after the judgment in the underlying personal injury trial and could not have been part of Norfolk & Dedhams basis for doubting Silvas claim. Specifically, Silva complained that the judge should not have considered certain bank and tax records showing wages and benefits Silva received in 2005, as well as investigative reports and summaries of surveillance indicating that Silva continued to work after the accident. The court found that the judge was not wrong to consider this evidence, which served to confirm that Norfolk & Dedham had a reasonable basis to resist settlement and was cumulative of the facts Norfolk & Dedham had developed during its investigation. That said, the Superior Court judge also found that after Silva obtained a substantial jury verdict on his personal injury claim, Norfolk & Dedham violated a section of Massachusetts law when it offered to settle the claim for the policy limit without also offering postjudgment interest, although the violation was not willful and knowing enough to warrant punitive damages. Norfolk & Dedham argued it was incorrect as a matter of law for the judge to find a violation, while Silva argued the judge was wrong to find that the violation was not knowing or willful. The court sided with Norfolk & Dedham in this matter. When Silva and Norfolk & Dedham agreed to the terms of a settlement of Silvas claims against McQuinn, Norfolk & Dedham paid the postjudgment interest due to Silva. Correction: An earlier version of this story said the decision was rendered by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, not the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Insurance Journal regrets the error. Topics Lawsuits Carriers Auto Claims Workers' Compensation Massachusetts Hackers are demanding increasingly hefty ransoms to free computers paralyzed with viruses, as cyber criminals seek to maximize profits from large numbers of victims willing to pay up, according to cyber security firm Symantec Corp. The average demand embedded in such malicious software, which is known as ransomware, more than tripled last year to $1,077 from $294, and the pricing has continued to rise in 2017, according to Symantec. The bad guys havent found the top end of what people will pay, Symantec Director of Security Response Kevin Haley said in a telephone interview. Symantec said 69 percent of ransomware infections in 2016 hit consumer computers, with the remainder targeting businesses and other organizations. More than a third of consumer ransomware victims around the globe pay cyber criminals to regain access to their data, according to Symantec. In the United States, where such attacks are most prevalent, 64 percent pay. If six out of ten people will pay your ransom when its three hundred bucks, youre thinking What if I raise it to four hundred? What if I raise to five hundred?' Haley said. The surge in cyber extortion has been fueled partly by the sale of ransomware kits, which sell for $10 to $1,800 on underground markets and make it easy for wannabe cyber crooks to get in the business, according to Symantec. One kit, known as Shark, lets users name their demand, which its creators collect from victims and pass on to attackers, minus a 20 percent commission. Ransomware attacks have increased sharply over the past year, with criminals targeting hospitals, police departments and other providers of critical services in the United States and Europe. In some cases, the attacks have interrupted critical public services. U.S. and European hospitals have been forced to divert patients to other facilities when ransomware paralyzed computer systems. Local police have been forced to manually dispatch calls, and San Franciscos public transit system was unable to collect fares for a weekend during the busy Christmas shopping season. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; editing by Steve Orlofsky; editing by Jim Finkle and Steve Orlofsky) Topics USA Trends Cyber Hamilton Re, the Bermuda platform of Hamilton Insurance Group, announced the following appointment and senior role changes in its management team: Minesh Shah has joined Hamilton Re in the newly created role of senior vice president, Actuary. Shah reports to Chief Risk Officer Pete Skerlj. He has over 20 years experience in the reinsurance field with a focus on risk and capital modeling, reserving, business planning and regulatory reporting. Shah has worked in Bermuda and the UK with Platinum Underwriters, Renaissance Re and XL Catlin. Richard Sammons, who joined Hamilton Re in October 2014 as senior vice president, Specialty, is now head of Specialty with executive responsibility for the development of Hamilton Res specialty book of business. Sammons has 19 years industry experience and reports to Claude Lefebvre, Chief Underwriting Officer, Casualty & Specialty. Sam Thomsennow holds the newly created position of senior vice president, head of Technology. Reporting to Chief Risk Officer Pete Skerlj, Thomsen leads an engineering team that designed and continues to enhance Hamilton Res technology platform. Thomsen also works in concert with Matt Isaly, senior vice president, head of Information Systems, to execute the organizations technology roadmap. Thomsen, who has over 25 years experience in building software and managing information systems, came to Hamilton Re in 2014 (after consulting for Hamilton Re since 2012). Im delighted to welcome Minesh to Hamilton Re and to acknowledge the new titles for Richard and Sams positions, said Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Reardon. Our commitment to data-driven underwriting as well as the ongoing diversification of our portfolio is ably supported by these developments. Im proud to have these talented and experienced employees on my team. Source: Hamilton Re Chris Soules, an Iowa farmer who starred on The Bachelor two years ago, was arrested on April 25 after authorities say he caused a traffic accident that killed a fellow farmer and fled the scene. Soules, who was portrayed as a wholesome country boy looking for love on season 19 of the ABC reality show, was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that rear-ended a tractor in northern Iowa near Aurora on Monday night, the Iowa State Patrol said. The crash caused the tractor to roll and go into a ditch on one side of the road, while Soules truck went into a ditch on the other side, the patrol said. The tractor driver was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The patrol identified him as 66-year-old Kenneth Mosher, a farmer from Aurora. Soules wasnt injured in the accident and left the area before emergency responders arrived, the Buchanan County Sheriffs Office said. He was arrested later at his home in Arlington, which is about 10 miles north of Aurora and 75 miles north of Iowa City. Authorities said someone had called 911 to report the crash, but they didnt release the identity of the caller or audio of the call. Investigators spoke to multiple witnesses and determined that Soules caused the crash and fled, according to a complaint, which doesnt name the witnesses. Police audio of the incident obtained by the Des Moines Register shows that a deputy told a dispatcher Soules took off in a red truck while Mosher was unconscious in his vehicle. Alcohol was found at the scene, and investigators are trying to determine whose it was, said Sheriff Bill Wolgram. Court records show that Soules has had some driving infractions in the past, including a 2006 conviction for operating while intoxicated. Soules, 35, was arrested about five hours after the crash and then booked into the Buchanan County Jail on a charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. He was released around midday on $10,000 bond, and will be required to surrender his passport and wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet until his trial, jail officials said. The sheriffs office said the crash remains under investigation and additional charges could be filed. Soules lawyers, Sean and Molly Spellman, didnt immediately reply to messages seeking comment. His spokesman, Stan Rosenfield, issued a statement saying Soules was devastated to learn that Mosher died. His thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Moshers family, said Rosenfield, who declined to comment further. Soules first drew national attention as a participant in The Bachelorette in 2014, when he tried to win the affections of star Andi Dorfman but was passed over. A fan favorite, ABC had him back as The Bachelor the following year. His appearance drew attention to farming life and some of the struggles facing rural Iowa. He proposed to Chicago fertility nurse Whitney Bischoff at the end of his season, but their relationship ended shortly after the show. Soules has since served as a spokesman for various agricultural interests and worked in farm real estate and investing. The crash comes as Gov. Terry Branstad and lawmakers have expressed alarm about a rising number of deaths on Iowa roadways caused by intoxicated and distracted drivers. Branstad last week signed laws allowing officers to pull over drivers for texting while driving, increasing the penalties for texting-related vehicular homicides, and creating a statewide sobriety and drug monitoring program for intoxicated drivers. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Agribusiness Iowa The fears of a family from the municipality of Torrox, in Malaga, were calmed on Thursday, after a relative, 28-year-old Spaniard Jimena Rico Montero, managed to get in touch with them from Istanbul after having disappeared on Monday. The womans mother and sister feared that something may have happened to her given that at the time contact was lost she was in Turkey, trying to flee from the father of her girlfriend, who is Egyptian. Jimena Rico and her partner Shaza. The man reportedly would not accept the fact that his daughter was gay, forbade the relationship from continuing and had issued death threats. The couple was traveling together at the time of the womans disappearance. Rico Montero, who has joint Spanish-Argentinean nationality, had been with her partner, Shaza, since 2016. The pair currently live in London. Since contact was lost with the two on Monday, they have reportedly been held in a Turkish detention center all week, and were unable to communicate with the outside world. The pair were detained for lacking proper documentation, and according to official sources were located in police custody in Istanbul. The family reported the case to the Spanish Civil Guard on Tuesday, according to the womans sister, and they had also been in touch with the Spanish embassy in Turkey. Spanish authorities have been able to speak to them both now that they have been located. She told her family that if they didnt hear from her, they should tell the police and the authorities Rico Montero and her partner will now be deported to London, Spanish embassy sources in Ankara have told news agency EFE. The Spanish Foreign Ministrys Diplomatic Information Office also explained that the consulate is taking the necessary steps to offer Rico Montero assistance. The family last had contact with Rico Montero on Sunday night, a few hours before she got in touch with her roommate. She apparently told them that if they didnt hear anything from her, they should tell the police and the authorities because something might have happened, Spanish radio network Cadena Ser reported on Thursday. According to mother and sister, Rico Montero explained to them that the couple, who have been together since 2016, flew under false pretenses from London to Dubai, where the Egyptian womans family are based. They had been told that her mother was ill, but once they arrived, the father threatened his daughter, who is named Shaza, with death for having a homosexual relationship, and reported her to the authorities in the Middle Eastern country. The father is reportedly a powerful man, who travels with a bodyguard The two women fled to Georgia and tried to catch a flight to London, but at that point, reportedly, the father arrived. Maria del Valle, the sister of the missing women, explained that he is a powerful man, who travels with a bodyguard. An altercation apparently took place, in which the police were involved, but apparently the women managed to escape and headed for the Turkish border. They caught a bus to the city of Samsun, on the northern coast of Turkey, before heading for Istanbul. Rico Montero contacted her roommate at 9.38am Monday on arrival there, telling her that they would be heading to a hotel and then planned on going to the Spanish consulate. However, they never made it to either of those locations, and nothing was heard from them until Thursday. Rico Monteros sister, Maria del Valle, has since confirmed that she received a phone call on Thursday morning from a man who said he was the father of Shaza. He reportedly explained that he had not done anything to the pair and that he didnt know where they were. He did, however, admit that he had put pressure on his daughter due to her sexual orientation, but he denied having hurt her or having tried to hurt the Spaniard. His intention, he claimed, was for his daughter to return to live in Dubai with the rest of his family. He also confirmed that he had been involved in the altercation in the airport in Tbilisi, Georgia, in which the local police intervened. English version by Simon Hunter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is not liable to a group of former customers of Bernard Madoff who blamed the bank for being actively involved in his Ponzi scheme and ignoring red flags of fraud, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the customers failed to show that JPMorgan had enough control over Madoffs fraud to justify liability under federal securities laws. JPMorgan had been sued by roughly 2,500 so-called net winners who withdrew more money from their accounts at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC than they invested. Lance Gotthoffer, a lawyer for the customers, said his clients will review their legal options. Wednesdays decision upheld a May 2016 ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan. Koeltel said the allegations suggested that JPMorgan was at most negligent in dealing with Madoff, once a major client. Many net winners believe their claims were undervalued in the liquidation of Madoffs firm, and sued other individuals and companies that dealt with the swindler. Madoff has served roughly eight years of a 150-year prison term. He turns 79 on Saturday. JPMorgan agreed in 2014 to pay $2.6 billion to settle other Madoff litigation, and in a settlement with the U.S. government acknowledged responsibility for failing to stop Madoff. The case is Friedman et al v. JPMorgan Chase & Co. et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-1913. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr) Topics USA Legislation Private equity firm Warburg Pincus said Dominic Casserley has joined the firm as a senior advisor in its Financial Services Group. Casserley formerly CEO of Willis Group Holdings, will help evaluate new investment opportunities in the financial services sector, including in the banking and insurance industries. Casserley served as CEO and a board member of Willis Group Holdings, a global risk advisory, reinsurance broking, and human capital and benefits firm, beginning in 2013. He led the companys merger with Towers Watson to create Wilson Towers Watson in January 2016 and served as president, deputy CEO and a board member of the combined company until December 2016. Previously, Casserley spent 30 years at McKinsey & Co., where he held several senior leadership positions in New York, Hong Kong and London, and had a consulting focus on financial services and risk management. Warburg Pincus has more than $44 billion in private equity assets under management and a portfolio of more than 140 companies. The firm is headquartered in New York. Migration to escape sea level rise could radically reshape the U.S. population landscape, and not just in coastal areas, according to a recent study. The author, Mathew Hauer, an applied demographer with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, found that all states and 56 percent of the nations counties could be affected in some way by net migration associated with a 1.8-meter average sea level rise by 2100 as is forecast in some projections. Hauer believes that 13.1 million Americans could migrate away from coastal areas through the end of this century. The migration wont merely consist of people fleeing flooded areas. Florida could lose more than 2.5 million residents with that level of sea level rise, while Texas could see the influx of nearly 1.5 million additional residents, according to the study. SLR migrants are expected to comprise both intra- and inter-state migrations, and no state is left untouched by SLR migration, the study states. Hauer used data from the Internal Revenue Service to produce his findings. Because people are required to file taxes and disclose their residence annually, the IRS is a great source for tracking migration trends, according to Hauer. He used county-by-county migration data from the IRS dating back to 1990 and projected those trends out to 2100 to get an idea of where coastal residents impacted by rising sea levels would likely be moving. He used a methodology known as an unobserved components model a time-series forecasting technique to examine things like cycles, seasonal affects, etc. Hauer also looked at potential future mitigation efforts, such as building sea walls, raising properties and roads, beach and marsh nourishment, pumps some studies show that adaptive infrastructure costs for sea level rise could reach $421 billion per year. Despite these possible measures, the study shows that many people who can afford to move likely will move as opposed to living in water-inundated areas. They will likely move short distances where they have economic opportunities and can stay close to family, Hauer said. And then there will be those who cannot afford to move or just wont for one reason or another. According to the study, at the end of the century there could be millions of trapped people because they cannot move or havent moved far enough. These results suggest that many people displaced by SLR could find themselves or their descendants exposed to SLR, even with migration as an adaptation, as sea levels continue to rise past the year 2100 with migration that constitutes relocation to present safe, but ultimately vulnerable, coastal communities, the study states. Society will also face the massive infrastructure challenges of accommodating millions of these migrants headed for large, unprepared inland municipalities, that impacts of which have yet to be studied, the study noted. For many destinations, such as Riverside California, Phoenix Arizona, Las Vegas Nevada, and Atlanta Georgia, already experiencing water management and growth management challenges, the SLR migrants who wash across the landscape over the coming century could place undue burden in these places if accommodation strategies are left unplanned, the study states. While Hauer feels the numbers of migrants are noteworthy, he wasnt too taken aback by the fact that people tend to get up and move when Mother Nature comes bearing down. A lot of the findings confirmed what the literature has suggested about environmental migration, he said. Past columns: Topics USA Climate Change People in North Carolina were paying attention to rising rivers on Tuesday after storms dumped several inches of rain across much of the state the worst drenching since a damaging hurricane late last year. The states heaviest rainfall since Hurricane Matthew was threatening flooding along the Neuse River near Clayton and Smithfield, and along the Tar River in Tarboro and Greenville. Gauges in those areas indicate the rivers will crest above flood stage, but several feet below the levels caused by Matthew. We know floodwaters can be deadly and I urge everyone to be cautious and stay safe, Gov. Roy Cooper said in a news release. The National Weather Service said more than 8 inches had fallen in areas near Raleigh by Tuesday morning. Other areas in central North Carolina received between 5 and 7 inches. The sun was out by early afternoon in Raleigh, and radar images indicated the storms had largely passed through the state. Still, flood warnings remained in effect. Duke Energy reported that about 2,000 customers were without power in North and South Carolina as of Tuesday afternoon. Transportation officials reported more than 100 road closures around the state Tuesday, but some were reopened in the afternoon. The rains that pelted the state starting on Sunday prompted firefighters to rescue some people from their vehicles, but there didnt appear to be reports of serious injuries or deaths. The governors office didnt immediately return a message asking whether state officials knew of anyone hurt or killed by the weather. A creek overflowed its banks and flooded streets and parking lots near Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, but the waterway was beginning to recede later in the day. The mall was closed in the morning, but some department stores or restaurants planned to open later. In Cabarrus County near Charlotte, a home was seriously damaged when a large tree fell on it Monday during heavy rains. No one was hurt. Diane Davis, who was home with her husband at the time, told WBTV : I heard a crack and then a noise that went `bam, but didnt seem that loud, then all of a sudden, the ceiling and ceiling tiles and insulation was falling all around me. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Flood Windstorm North Carolina A company in Californias Bay Area that sells home oxygen equipment has agreed to pay more than $11 million to settle allegations that it profited from filing false reimbursement claims with the government. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the Justice Department announced the settlement with Pacific Pulmonary Services this week. About $2 million of the settlement will go to a former Pacific Pulmonary sales representative in San Leandro. Manuel Alcaine sued the company in 2010 under a law that allows private citizens who expose fraud against the government to share in the recovery. The government alleged the company submitted reimbursement claims to Medicare and other federal programs without a doctors approval and participated in a kickback scheme involving sleep testing clinics. Novato-based Pacific Pulmonary Services hasnt admitted any wrongdoing by settling. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics California Higher taxes in India may kill the cryptocurrency trade in the country, according to Binances CEO, while the UK government faces calls from BT to extend its 130% super-deduction. Of the 29 people now officially known to have died during the last month of anti-government protests in Venezuela, a significant number have been killed by so-called collectives, armed groups loyal to the ruling United Socialist Party set up by former president Hugo Chavez. More information Las milicias armadas siembran el terror en Venezuela Paola Ramirez, who was gunned down on April 19 in the western state of Tachira, telephoned her mother, Darcy Gomez, to tell her that collectives were patrolling the streets of the state capital San Cristobal. Mother, the collectives are shooting, her mother says she told her. The same day Ramirez died, 17-year-old Carlos Moreno Baron was shot in the head in Caracas. Witnesses said that gangs supporting President Nicolas Maduro were responsible. The death toll over the last month looks set to exceed that of the four months of protests that rocked Venezuela in 2014 On Wednesday, amid continued opposition protests, two more people died: a university student in Caracas was hit in the chest by a tear-gas canister fired by police; in Tachira, a 28-year-old man was shot in the stomach by unknown assailants. The opposition has organized a rally on Thursday outside the National Assembly and then a march to where the student was killed on Wednesday. Opposition leaders say they will resume protests on Monday. The death toll over the last month looks set to exceed that of the four months of protests that rocked Venezuela in 2014. April 8: A group patrols Caracas, openly displaying its weapons. Raul Romero So far, there have been few arrests over the killings. Four deaths in the April protests have been attributed to these groups, but until now there have been no arrests, said Lexys Rendon, head of the Observatorio de la Paz, an NGO that monitors political violence. A 31-year-old man was arrested for the death of Ramirez. The government initially linked him to opposition party Vente Venezuela. I want justice, real justice. I dont believe it was him, said Ramirezs mother at her funeral. The pro-Maduro militias first appeared during the protests of 2014. That year, Vice Admiral Pedro Manuel Perez, then the head of the Marine Infantry, warned Venezuelas Defense Minister, Carmen Melendez, and the high command that civilians in the capital were working with police to crush opposition protests. April 8. Protestors flee riot police in Caracas. Raul Romero Not only were Perezs warnings ignored, but he was also retired in May 2014, and last week was detained at his home by military intelligence accused of plotting to overthrow Maduro. Rocio San Miguel, a lawyer with Control Ciudadano, a security forces watchdog, accused the government of sponsoring the collectives. Allowing, sheltering, encouraging the activities of armed groups is a crime, and this has been going on continuously under the complacent gaze of the organs of the state, which have a legal duty to act, she said. They use violent methods to attack and disperse demonstrators, monitor neighborhoods, extort shopkeepers, and injure journalists Rocio San Miguel from security forces watchdog Control Ciudadano The collectives are extremely violent. San Miguel says they patrol demonstrations openly armed and on motorcycles, sometimes covering their faces, while shouting slogans in support of the government: They act in a coordinated way under command structures they receive their instructions from. They use violent methods to attack and disperse opposition demonstrators, monitor neighborhoods, extort shopkeepers, and injure journalists and opposition leaders. They operate freely, knowing that they will not be arrested or charged for their crimes. The situation in oil-rich Venezuela has worsened in recent months, with a recession leaving millions unable to find or afford food amid shortages and worsening inflation. The opposition blames Maduro, who is unpopular, and has been vying to remove him via a recall referendum. The former bus driver and union leader, however, has said the opposition is seeking a coup against him and has vowed to serve out his full term, which ends in 2019. English version by Nick Lyne. Top News - Investor Idea Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast Interview with Founder and CEO of Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN) Discussing Recent Acquisitions, Rollout and Manufacturing of EV Line of Products Vancouver, Kelowna, Delta, BC - November 7, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a global news source and leading investor resource covering cleantech and renewable energy stocks issues a new edition of the Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast, featuring an interview with Mr. David Michery, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Electric Vehicle Company, Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN). Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: GBT's (OTCPK: GTCH) AI Driven Financial Technology Patent Application Received a Notice of Publication San Diego, CA - November 3, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) received a notice of publication for its financial software patent application. Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: Intellagents, a FatBrain AI (OTCQB: LZGI) Company, Announces Hiring of Insurtech Industry Veteran as Chief Revenue Officer NEW YORK, NY - November 2, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, announces the hiring of Euan King, an experienced and respected Insurtech industry leader as Chief Revenue Officer for insurance technology-focused subsidiary Intellagents. Top Health and Wellness News - Investor Idea Health and Wellness Stock News - Endexx (OTCBB: EDXC) Secures $3.8M Order for Non-Nicotine Vape Product HYLA from Italy CAVE CREEK, Az. - November 2, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-based, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces it has secured a new $3.8 million USD order for its newly acquired, non-nicotine based vape product, HYLA from customers in Italy. Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire ARE YOU A TOP COMPANY? What it Really Means to be a Top Company! To be a Top Company in Irish Construction Industry Magazines Top Companies listing means far more than just a rank and position in an ordered catalogue of names. To us, it means that your efforts to be the best you can be and to excel in your industry and sector have been effective and have paid dividends. To us, it means that your determination and commitment to develop and instil a positive work culture and environment have brought your business due success plus satisfaction. We see it as you being a supportive and inclusive place in which to work that strives to bring the best out of everyone across every level of the organisation. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Update 7.50pm: The board of St. Vincent's Healthcare group says it's totally supportive of the relocation of the national maternity hospital to its site. After a meeting this evening it said that it welcomed the support of the Holles St board and the Health Minister's confirmation that the project would go ahead. The Boards of both hospitals will now begin working with Simon Harris to complete the governance and legal agreements which will guarantee full clinical independence of the facility "The Board of St. Vincent's Healthcare Group met today and reviewed the proposed relocation of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street to a new hospital facility (The National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park DAC) on the SVHG healthcare campus. "The Board remains totally supportive of the proposed relocation of the NMH to SVHG under the terms of the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey. A new maternity hospital is urgently needed. Locating it alongside St. Vincent's acute hospital will provide synergies for both hospitals that will lead to the delivery of modern, world class medical, maternity and neonatal services. " Every year St. Vincent's provides acute care to over 80,000 women and it is strongly positioned to provide women and infant centred care in support of The National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park, DAC. There is a long and historical supportive clinical relationship between both hospitals. "The Board welcomed the support of the Board of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street to the project at its meeting last night when it overwhelmingly re-endorsed its commitment to the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey in November last. "The Board also welcomed the clarity provided by Minister Harris yesterday when he was unequivocal in his statements that the NMH would relocate to SVHG under the terms of the agreement reached between both voluntary hospitals. "The Board of the two hospitals will now commence the next phase of the project, working with the Minister and his officials in effecting the legal agreements to underpin and secure the clinical and corporate governance structures of The National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park, DAC. These legal agreements will be effected in accordance with all of the provisions contained in the agreement mediated by Kieran Mulvey and endorsed by both hospitals. "The Board unanimously reconfirmed its commitment that SVHG will continue to serve the people of Ireland by providing world class medical facilities and standards of care. This long tradition sees it hold a special place in Ireland and internationally, as a world class medical facility. The relocation of the NMH, with its strong heritage of excellent care, will add enormously to the rich history and tradition of excellence of both hospitals." Update 1.50pm: The Taoiseach Enda Kenny says the decision of a member of the board of the National Maternity Hospital to resign is "one for himself". Mr Kenny's comments come after Dr Peter Boylan announced his resignation saying it was "naive" and "delusional" to think there would not be religious influence from the Sisters of Charity. Speaking to reporters in Dublin this lunchtime, Mr Kenny insists the Government will go ahead with building the National Maternity Hospital on the St Vincent's site. The Taoiseach said: "What we want to do there is to put in place a legally waterproof situation where it will be perfectly clear for everybody that what's at stake here are proper world-class facilities for expectant mothers and for pregnant women. "If issues arise that need hospital treatment they will be on the campus of St Vincent's." Update 11.15am: The Minister for Health Simon Harris has once again called for "cool heads" amid the latest controversy surrounding the National Maternity Hospital. Dr Peter Boylan today announced he is resigning from the Hospital's Executive Committee with immediate effect. The Health Minister says providing a daily commentary on the issue does not achieve that. Mr Harris said: "Dr Boylan is a very respected doctor who has made a huge contribution and I'm sure will continue to do so for the health of women in this country. "He has made his decision, I respect that decision, but I also note the overwhelming decision of the board." The board of the St Vincent's Healthcare Group is due to meet this evening. Update 11.15am: Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin has said it is "hugely disappointing" that Dr Peter Boylan has resigned from its executive committee of the National Maternity Hospital. Speaking on Today with Sean O Rourke he said: Mr Boylan was told his responsibility was to the board and not the citizens of Ireland - the women who will use this facility. Mr Howlin said "I think we have to migrate to a different world. It's not going to be a big bang. The controversy over the NMH that has ignited will start that debate. We should go with a rational expectation that state-funded institutions that are 100% funded by the taxpayer, that are staffed by people who are 100% paid by taxpayer should be owned and controlled by the taxpayer." Deputy Howlin said Ireland's health systems are democratically funded and controlled and they should not be subject to any ethos. He said he would like to see a settlement made that is reasonable to all parties. "I would like to see an agreement made with the Sisters of Charity to hand over the land, obviously for financial consideration, also taking into account the redress board monies due, he said. I think a settlement that would be reasonable to all parties that would put this whole issue of democratic control beyond doubt." He said that certainty is needed before the Dail will vote to allocate 300m for this facility. Mr Howlin also gave his reaction to the Lord Mayor's comments that last night's meeting was held in a very bullying and intimidating way and that contempt was shown towards him. Brendan Carr says some people at Holles Street board meeting told him they made the initial decision 'under duress' https://t.co/dkNOeAjGF2 pic.twitter.com/Jf7MlOrxkP RTE News (@rtenews) April 27, 2017 "I spoke to the Lord Mayor as I was concerned about what was said. Brendan Carr has a very good track record, said Mr Howlin. He found last night to be an intimidating atmosphere. That is worrying." Dr Peter Boylan Update 10.31am: Leading obstetrician Peter Boylan has resigned over a controversial deal to give the Sisters of Charity religious order ultimate ownership of the country's new National Maternity Hospital. Dr Peter Boylan's letter to the board of the National Maternity Hospital, informing them of his resignation #pknt pic.twitter.com/Fm5sQhrafP Pat Kenny Newstalk (@PatKennyNT) April 27, 2017 The respected medic, a former Master at Holles Street in Dublin, revealed his decision to stand down from the board of the current National Maternity Hospital amid a bitter dispute over the ownership and governance of the new 300m facility. The hospital is planned for a site on valuable land owned by the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent's Hospital in the south of the city. The order of nuns is due to be the ultimate owner of the fully state-funded facility under a complex arrangement between the current National Maternity Hospital and St Vincent's Hospital Group (SVHG). "Today on reflection I have decided I am going to resign" from board of National Maternity Hospital, Dr Peter Boylan tells #pknt pic.twitter.com/JWVVIBMyht Pat Kenny Newstalk (@PatKennyNT) April 27, 2017 Dr Boylan, who initially rejected calls to resign, told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that the deal was "a scandal". "I think it's a scandal that in 2017 that the state is going to gift to a religious organisation a National Maternity Hospital, of all things," he said. "I really do not think that's acceptable. "My view is shared by an enormous number of people in the country." Concerns about nuns' involvement in the ownership of the state-of-the-art facility centre on whether their religious ethos will have any sway over clinical care and specifically if women will be able to have terminations if their life is at risk, IVF treatment, sterilisation or contraceptive care. Ambiguity deepened when Bishop Kevin Doran said the Sisters would have to obey church law as owners, regardless of how the facility is funded, and that governance rests with the Pope. Assurances were made publicly this week by SVHG that the Catholic Church will not decide on the care of mothers and babies at the new hospital. The terms of the deal on the new hospital, which was brokered with the Sisters of Charity last November, were supposed to be confidential. SVHG chairman James Menton described some of the concerns as "continued misinformation and untruthful allegations". Close to 100,000 people have signed an online petition opposing any role or ownership for the nuns. Lets show the #NationalMaternityHospital board that this isn't a 'storm in a teacup' Help get this to 100,000 sigs https://t.co/DBjoPrJ3GR pic.twitter.com/Aj1JzRI2jw Uplift (@UpliftIRL) April 27, 2017 There will be nine people on the board of the new hospital - four nominated by SVHG, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity, four by the current National Maternity Hospital, including the Master, and it will be chaired by an international expert in obstetrics and gynaecology. According to agreement between the current National Maternity Hospital and St Vincent's Hospital Group the chairman will be chosen "from a list of candidates drawn up by SVHG and the NMH Trust. "They will be assessed by a Selection Committee, chaired by the SVHG Clinical Director, and the other members will include the SVHG CEO and a representative from the NMH Trust." Dr Boylan said: "The whole structure is flawed." It is understood the nuns were not asked to sell the site to the State. A decision on a planning application on the new hospital is due in August or September. Update 9.18am: Dr Peter Boylan says he's resigning from the Executive Committee of the National Maternity Hospital with immediate effect. The former Master of Holles Street says most members of the board want a new hospital so much that they have been blinded to the long-term consequences for the care of women in the future. "It is the new and the next Master of National Maternity Hospital who will have to pick up the pieces," he told the Pat Kenny show on Newstalk FM. Dr Boylan, a former Master at Holles Street in Dublin, was previously asked to step down from his role on the board by deputy chairman Nicholas Kearns via text message last Sunday. Dr Boylan had objected to plans to give ultimate ownership of a new taxpayer-funded 300m National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity religious order. Dr Peter Boylan says he will not resign and says he feels a loyalty to the women of Ireland. pic.twitter.com/ylcRevFhad RTE News (@rtenews) April 25, 2017 Update 7.39am: Lord Major of Dublin and chairman of the Board of Holles Street Hospital Brendan Carr has said that last nights meeting was conducted in a very intimidatory and bullying way. Last night, the Board passed a motion re-endorsing the national maternity hospital's move to the St Vincent's Hospital campus, despite public concerns. The Lord Major voted against the motion. I thought the attitude of some of the senior people in the board last night towards the very real concerns that the public have was astonishing that there was no consideration whatsoever given to the many concerns that have been raised in the media over the last number of days, he told RTEs Morning Ireland programme. I think it was done in a very intimidatory and bullying way, and thats my opinion. When will the new National Maternity Hospital be built? @FergalBowers reports that it could open in about three or four year's time. pic.twitter.com/fgH2WxLHH5 RTE News (@rtenews) April 27, 2017 Earlier: The future of the new National Maternity Hospital will be discussed at a meeting of the St Vincent's Hospital Group today. The controversial move, agreed between Holles St and St Vincents last November, was put in jeopardy this week when the board of the healthcare group, which is controlled by the Sisters of Charity, said it was reviewing the plan. Separately, the Holles Street board finished a lengthy meeting last night by reaffirming its commitment to the deal. The board of Holles Street has passed a motion re-endorsing the agreement for it to move to the St Vincent's Hospital campus pic.twitter.com/VzOEgu1cpc RTE News (@rtenews) April 26, 2017 Under the current plans Holles Street will relocate to a site beside the existing St Vincent's hospital in Elm Park in Dublin. However one board member says he still has major concerns. Micheal Mac Donncha voted against the move last night. "Why should ownership be ceded to Sisters of Charity? There's no valid reason," he said. "This is going to be a publically-funded building of a new hospital, a new National Maternity Hospital, and it should be in public hands, it should be publically accountable, and above all accountable to the women of Ireland, for whom this is a major necessity." Group managing director Siobhan Talbot was speaking at the companys AGM when she said the current climate was causing uncertainty not just for Glanbia but their trading partners. Like all businesses we could do without the uncertainty. While the UK only accounts for approximately 4% of Glanbias revenue it has the potential to significantly impact the Irish industry and our suppliers in Ireland. What we hope for in the process is as close to the status quo as possible in terms of trading and if thats not possible our policymakers should seek as long a transition period as possible, she said. The AGM coincided with the companys first-quarter results and Glanbia said total group revenue, including its share of joint ventures and associates, rose 9.6% in the first quarter of the year. Outlook for the remainder of 2017 is positive. Coming so soon after the UKs surprise vote to quit the EU, the election of Donald Trump last November immediately put the spotlight on the huge number of US corporations based in Ireland. That was because he had pledged to slash US corporate taxes to 15% from the headline rate of 35%, to help lure US companies to set up in the US and not overseas. That pledge alone had implications to undermine the Irish business model built around the low headline rate of 12.5%. Since the early 1990s, a competitive corporate rate had attracted to Ireland billions of dollars of US investments. US pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson, Actavis and Pfizer quickly became the largest Irish exporters. The corporate taxes paid by the technology and pharmaceutical companies accounted for a huge slice of all the corporate taxes collected by the Irish exchequer and played no small part in the countrys economic recovery from the financial bust. Trump delivered on his pledge by vowing to cut the headline rate to 15%. He also moved to lure the $2.6tn (2.4tn) US companies hold offshore. And his plan to move to a so-called territorial system for US overseas earnings may yet have implications for Ireland. Any US pledge to cut its headline rate will have implications for the competitiveness of Ireland, simply on the basis that it lessens the competitiveness of Irelands own tax rate. Many analysts say the reduction will not affect US corporations already based here, but will inevitably affect US corporate decisions over future investments. However, the main reaction from business last night was the Trump reforms could have been far worse. Many observers feared that Republican proposals for a border adjustment tax would have hit Irish-owned companies such as Kerry and Glanbia, as well as US multinationals based here. Fergal OBrien, director of policy and chief economist at Ibec, said the business group did not see a great urgency for Ireland to respond to the US tax cut by reducing the Irish headline rate. Ibec still wants a sort of response, in the areas of reducing personal taxes which can influence investment decisions and in boosting spending on infrastructure and education. On the basis of what we know, we do not think that the policies will be as severe as what we previously thought, said Mr OBrien . He said that the estimated cost to the US raises questions about whether the tax cut will be permanent. Edgar Morgenroth, an associate research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, said the high cost of the US tax cut will raise doubts about whether the Trump White House will be able to implement the cut. It is not the case that the US is swimming in money. Reducing your tax rates and, presumably, the amount of tax revenues does not match that reality. And then what is in the interest of US corporations? A lot of Congressional representatives will get calls on this. That is the reason that Obama did not get his reforms through, he said. Joe Tynan, head of tax at adviser PwC, said dropping the border adjustment tax is a positive for Ireland. Irish firms would have been affected in selling into the US. The news is a positive for Irish firms exporting into the US. The same proposal would have been a benefit for US companies to relocate back to the US, he said. On the rate cut, he said it will potentially slow the decisions of US companies to locate in Ireland. However, Mr Tynan said that US states typically impose a further four to five percentage points on the corporate tax rate which would bring the real US tax rate to 20%. On the $2.6tn in unrepatriated profits, the US brought in a limited tax amnesty 13 years ago which had little effect on the Irish corporate tax base. Mr Tynan said that attention will switch to the politics and how the US will pay for the tax cut. Owen Callan, a senior analyst at Investec Ireland, said that the US rate cut is evidently designed to lessen the incentive for US companies to keep their money and operations offshore. If technology companies rearrange their global supply chains in response to the tax cut there could be a long-term effect here, though many projects cannot be easily redomiciled, Mr Callan said. Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital, said businesses already here will not be affected but the looming test for the IDA will be in their ability to attract future investments. The policy by itself may not be a problem but what could be a problem is if he starts imposing penalties. You would then see investments flowing back, he said. A list of goals for the tax overhaul, unveiled by President Donald Trumps top economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin calls for slashing the federal income tax rate to 15% for corporations, small businesses and partnerships of all sizes. It also imposes a one-time tax on about $2.6 trillion (2.4tn) in earnings that US companies have parked overseas. The plan would end the taxation of corporations offshore income by moving to a territorial system, in which most foreign profits would be exempt from US taxes. Currently, the US taxes business income no matter where its earned. On the individual side, it proposes condensing the existing seven income tax rates to just three, cutting the individual top rate to 35% from 39.6%. It would also end a 3.8% net investment income tax that applies only to individuals who earn more than $200,000 a year, repeal the alternative minimum tax and eliminate the estate tax, which currently applies only to estates worth more than $5.49m for individuals and $10.98m for couples. At the same time, the plan would eliminate the federal income-tax deduction allowed for state and local taxes a provision that would hit high earners in high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey. The only itemised deductions that would be preserved under the plan would be for home mortgage interest and charitable contributions. We are determined to move as fast as we can and get this done this year, Mr Mnuchin said. The move to tax partnerships, limited liability companies and other so-called pass-throughs at 15% would represent a major tax cut for many businesses. Under current law, those companies pass their earnings and deductions through to their owners, who then are taxed at their individual income tax rates. It wasnt immediately clear whether the plan would pay for itself; Mr Mnuchin and others have said it would stimulate enough economic growth to cover the cost of the tax cuts. Economists have called that proposition into question raising questions about whether any tax cuts it proposes would have to be temporary under congressional rules. This is going to be the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country and we are committed to seeing this through, Mr Mnuchin said. The plans scant detail made it difficult to immediately assess its economic impact. Kyle Pomerleau, director of federal projects at the Tax Foundation said in a Twitter message: Sorry, friends. We cannot model this. Definitely not enough detail. President Trumps goal of enacting a large tax cut faces daunting obstacles in Congress, including the surefire Democratic opposition. The Republican Party is divided on how and whether the plan should be paid for. And a Senate rule prevents any tax plan from adding to the federal deficit outside a 10-year window if its enacted with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Bloomberg Counsel Rosalind OConnell told the court that on January 19, 2015, Sophie Daney was at Maxi Zoo, Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, Dublin, when she was attacked by a black labrador. Ms OConnell said the dog, owned by Eamon and Linda Fitzpatrick, of Tudor Grove, Ashbourne, Co Meath, bit Sophie a number of times on her face, which started to bleed. According to the 2016 annual report from the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI), the watchdog received a total of 1,329 written complaints relating to 1,011 adverts last year. This represents an 8% increase on the previous year (2015). A total of 1,376 complaints were resolved a 16% increase on the previous year. The telecommunications sector attracted the most complaints while digital media gave rise to the highest number of complaints by media. A total of 102 adverts complained about, or about 10%, were found to be in breach of the ASAIs code of standards for advertising and marketing communications. The vast majority of complaints (67%) made in 2016 were on the basis that the advert was misleading, while 12% were made on the basis the advert was offensive. There was also a wide range of other issues covered by the ASAI Code that was raised by members of the public, including concerns about alcohol advertising, children, and financial services, food and non-alcoholic beverages, health and beauty claims. The ASAI annual report also highlights an increase in the number of advertisers, agencies, media and promoters who sought free, confidential copy advice from the ASAI on whether a proposed marketing communication or sales promotion conformed to the Code. Meanwhile, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland rejected a total of seven complaints concerning segments on Newstalk, Today FM and RTE. One of the complaints rejected concerned the appearance of columnist Katie Hopkins on the Last Word programme on Today FM. Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union 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 Google Ad 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 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 Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler yesterday said the EPA had found matching samples, after a previous blowout, at the plant. He said Irish Cement had been ordered by the EPA to clean residents cars in the area. Houses and cars were affected by the dust emissions and Mr Butler alerted the HSEs public health office after complaints from parents of children who suffer from asthma. In one year, Ireland fell five places and is now ranked 14th out of the 180 countries on the index. The PFI is an annual ranking of countries press freedom and is compiled by Reporters Without Borders or Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF). RSFs report said this years index reflects a world in which attacks on the media have become commonplace and strongmen are on the rise. We have reached the age of post-truth, propaganda, and suppression of freedoms. Irelands fall in the ranking was pinpointed to the concentration of media ownership as well as journalists inability to interview police sources. The highly concentrated nature of media ownership in Ireland poses a major threat to press freedom. Independent News and Media controls 40% of the daily and Sunday newspaper market. The 1937 Constitution guarantees media freedom but defamation lawsuits are common, states the report. Finally, interviewing police sources has been virtually impossible since the Garda Siochana Act of 2005, which bans police officers from talking to journalists without prior authorisation. Officers contravening the ban risk dismissal, a fine, or up to seven years in prison, it continues. While Ireland ranked relatively highly on the index, our neighbouring country, the UK, came in in 40th place out of the 180 countries. RSF said that the UKs heavy-handed approach towards the press, which is often in the name of national security, is the main reason behind the ranking. The US came in after the UK, with a ranking of 43rd place out of the 180 countries. The RSF report made reference to US President Donald Trumps treatment of the media, where he had labelled the press as an enemy of the American people. Coming in at the very end of the index was China in 176th place and North Korea in 180th place. China was described in the report as the worlds leading prison for citizen journalists. Several international trends were also cited in the report. These included things such as spying on sources, poisonous rhetoric and other political pressures. #WorldPressFreedomIndex map is getting darker and darker #RSFIndex 2017 : 21 countries in the black zone pic.twitter.com/uH18brLItg via @RSF_en George Roussos (@baphometx) April 26, 2017 The election of the 45th president of the United States set off a witch-hunt against journalists. Donald Trumps repeated diatribes against the Fourth Estate and its representatives accusing them of being among the most dishonest human beings on earth and of deliberately spreading fake news compromise a long US tradition of defending freedom of expression, states the RSF report. Arts Minister Heather Humphreys and minister of state for skills John Halligan said the review was needed with the junior minister saying there should be no influence on hospitals and it is not unfair the Government would have control of our health system. As revealed by the Irish Examiner earlier this week, senior Department of Health officials are planning a review of the religious ownership and patronage of hospitals similar to the divestment of schools instigated by former education minister Ruairi Quinn. While the review suggestion is in its early stages , Mr Harris yesterday publicly confirmed the plan, telling reporters at the new national childrens hospital launch that in due course I intend to go to government with similar proposals [to Mr Quinns patronage review. The imminent move is likely to face resistance from religious orders which either own or remain patrons of more than a dozen voluntary hospitals in the public health system, particularly due to the the controversy surrounding the new national maternity hospital. There are also expected to be concerns raised by the Department of Finance and Department of Public Expenditure over the cost of such a move and the pressure facing the Exchequer if the State took financial responsibility for the facilities. However, Mr Halligan and Ms Humphreys said they support such a proposal and noted Mr Harris is correct to be considering cutting off any church role in the public health system. My view on hospitals is essentially there should be no influence other than medical influence. The State would not interfere with the church, would they, so why would any church or organisation interfere with medical ethics, Mr Halligan said at a Science Foundation Ireland launch. Its not an unfair request for the Department of Health, the minister for health of the day and the Government of the day to have control of our health system, he said. Meanwhile, Ms Humphreys similarly said her view was that clinical decisions should be made by doctors, and I support Mr Harris in his review of this whole area of governance and the role of the church in hospitals. Religious-linked hospitals include St Vincents, the Mater, Temple Street, Mercy University Hospital, Kerry General, St Johns Hospital in Limerick, Our Ladys Childrens Hospital in Crumlin, Our Ladys Hospital in Lourdes in Drogheda, Our Ladys Hospital in Navan, Portiuncula Hospital, South Infirmary Victoria Hospital Cork, and the Rotunda, among others. Fr Eugene Duffy, a lecturer in religious education at one of the countrys main colleges for primary teachers, said schools cannot reasonably be expected to continue providing the level of faith formation needed to prepare pupils for first communion and confirmation. Pressure is mounting to cut the amount of time given to religion in primary schools, currently prescribed at 2.5 hours a week. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment proposes that schools be given more freedom on how to use the remaining 40% of the week after providing for core subjects which could see each school decide what time is used to teach religion. Fr Duffy has organised a conference at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, next month to discuss ways of how best to prepare primary pupils for Catholic sacraments. He said teachers in faith schools are already challenged trying to give 2.5 hours a week to religious education in an overburdened curriculum. In addition, many teachers no longer practise their faith and feel compromised in having to offer faith formation when they dont believe what they are teaching. Preparing children for the sacraments simply increases the pressure on them, he said. He acknowledges that many pupils receiving sacraments are from homes where parents are not practising, or often not believers in the schools faith. This, he said, places an extra burden on teachers and the parish to be sensitive to children who want to feel part of what friends are celebrating. On the other hand, significant numbers of parents still want to have their children educated in their faith and to be adequately prepared for the sacraments. Many of them feel inadequate to the task themselves and are very happy to have the school do this on their behalf. Similarly, the parish sees the school as its agent in preparing the children for the sacraments, said Fr Duffy. However, amidst all of the competing agendas, it is unreasonable to expect that the schools will continue to be able to provide the level of formation that is required. Therefore, more responsibility will continue to devolve on to parents and local faith communities in preparing children to receive the sacraments in a meaningful way. The May 12 and 13 conference will hear about how to co-ordinate the responsibilities of families, schools and parishes, and examples of best practice by Catholic and Church of Ireland communities. Professor Chris Fitzpatrick urged the action in the national interest as the master of Holles St, Dr Rhona Mahony, insisted that concerns of alleged religious interference in the new hospital are a sideshow that risks blocking the facility from being developed. Speaking on RTE radio, Prof Fitzpatrick said the only way to resolve widespread concerns over the new hospital is for the land to be sold to the State. He said the Government must consider offering to buy the site and that the Sisters of Charity should consider gifting it, as the current situation risks causing severe governance problems in the future and is akin to a forced marriage unlikely to work. I think its not unreasonable, given what has happened, they [the Sisters of Charity] could relinquish ownership, he said. There are questions that need to be asked about ownership. In 5, 10, 15 years time, there may be a conflict of interest... Perhaps the solution, and its not capitulation, is that St Vincents Healthcare Group and the nuns, in the national interest, [should hand over or sell the site]. Prof Fitzpatrick was speaking after Dr Mahony insisted concerns of alleged religious interference in the new hospital are a sideshow. The agreement is unequivocal, its black and white. The nuns will not be involved in running the hospital, she said. Dr Mahony said if there is a need to terminate a pregnancy due to a risk to the mothers life, or to sterilise a patient at the new hospital, this will be done without hesitation. She said the Sisters of Charitys involvement will have no impact on what decisions are made. She rejected concerns the nine-member board of the new hospital could, in the future, become biased in favour of the religious order as it has four members and a role in appointing the ninth independent person. Dr Mahony again stressed that the new national maternity hospital would be independent. We are practising 21st-century medicine in a building that is crumbling. It [the new hospital] is going to represent a huge shift upwards in the standard of care, and nothing should get in the way of that, particularly misrepresentation or sideshows, said Dr Mahony. The Cork Harbour visitor attraction has been shortlisted alongside the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Acropolis, in a shortlist of 10 sites competing in the top European category in the Oscars of the travel industry. Titanic Belfast won the European title last year and the Guinness Storehouse took the top award the previous year. Spike Island manager John Crotty said they hope to make it three in a row for Ireland this year. The aim for us is to become the go-to destination for the South of Ireland, and to be seen on a par with Belfasts Titanic visitor centre and the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, he said. The awards will be decided by public vote and will be announced in St Petersburg in September. Ireland has been named in the best destination category, Dublin and Belfast have been shortlisted in the best city breaks category, the Sandymount Hotel in Dublin has been shortlisted for a green hotel award, and Inchydoney Island Lodge and Spa in Cork is competing for a leading resort award. The nomination for Spike Island caps a remarkable 12 months for the attraction following its reopening in June 2016, with a nomination for a Chambers Ireland tourism award and a 2017 nomination in the Irish Tourism awards for best leisure tourism innovation. More than 6.5m was spent transforming the former monastery, fortress and prison into a visitor attraction in a project co-funded by Cork County Council and Failte Ireland. Reached by ferry from Cobh, visitors to the 104-acre island are taken on a guided tour through the sites remarkable 1,300 year history, where the story of its 6th-century monastery, its star-shaped 1800s-built fort, and its various incarnations as a prison are told. You can vote for Spike Island by clicking on a special link on www.spikeislandcork.ie. WHEN photographer David J Moore was trawling through the negatives of Dennis Dinneen, he knew what he had was special. As soon as I saw them, I knew we had something different on our hands. A lot of it is reminiscent of studio portrait photographers like Seydou Keita and Mike Disfarmer and even the work of Diane Arbus. I hadnt seen anything like that in an Irish context before. However, while the work of Keita, Disfarmer and Arbus has been acclaimed and hung in prestigious galleries, Dinneens pictures could be found on the walls of the family pub which he ran in Macroom, Co Cork. In the Ireland of the 1960s and 70s, it wasnt unusual for the local publican to also be the grocer, undertaker, or hardware provider. In Macroom, as well as being the local taxi driver, Dinneen was also first port of call for family portraits or passport photos. His subjects would pose in a makeshift studio in the back of the pub and the results are a poignant and often humorous selection of portraits, evocative of an Ireland that is now largely gone. After Dinneens death in 1985, his collection of negatives lay untouched for decades. In 2011, local teacher Sean MacSuibhne compiled some of the pictures in a book, Muskerry Through the Lens of Dennis Dinneen, which raised funds for Macrooms senior citizens. This awakened the interest of Moore, who had come across Dinneens work decades before. I moved to Macroom when I was 12 and I would have seen Denniss work when I was playing pool in the bar when I was about 16. Both my parents were photographers so I always had an interest. I knew Denniss son Lawrence and the family so [after the book was published] I asked him could I have a look at the negatives and it took off from there, says Moore. Lawrence came and met me up in Dublin, and I had a look through about a hundred negatives. Dinneens work was shown in an exhibition in UCC in 2013 and now Moore has curated a larger selection for a show at the Douglas Hyde gallery in Trinity College, Dublin. Lawrence Dinneen, who now runs the family pub with his brother Dennis, recalls how photography fit into his fathers life. He was a real character, very sociable. I remember when I was young, about 7 or 8, I would go to weddings with him, Id carry his camera bag. Most Saturdays in the summer in the late 1960s, he would have two weddings. He would stay on after they were all finished the meal and take pictures of them cutting the cake I have memories of me and my dad having our dinner at the back of the dining room after everyone else was finished. Then theyd ask my dad to sing a couple of songs, and we could be there until midnight or 1am. Lawrence says his father had a strong work ethic and was dedicated to all his professional roles. My dad worked extremely hard, he was running a pub, taking the pictures, he was a taxi driver as well. He was very focused on whatever he did when he came back from a wedding, no matter what time, the first thing he did was take the rolls of film out, and head straight out to the darkroom. He served his time as well; he didnt just pick up a camera and start taking photos, he studied in London and was a member of the IPPA. However, while photography became a passion for Dinneen, his first love was actually medicine. He was in college for one year studying medicine and his dad died, he was only 39. His mother made him pack in what he was doing and help her run the family pub. That scuppered my dads plans. He took up photography straight away and blended it into the pub life. Moore, who now works as a photographer in Dublin, believes he is in the perfect position to both appreciate and evaluate Dinneens work. Its like when documentary filmmakers go live with their subjects before they ever take out a camera I had 15 years of living in Macroom, absorbing the people, the humour and all of that before finding this archive. It sort of puts me in the strange position where it is very easy for me to look at this from an outsiders point of view but still have that knowledge of what the town is like. However, while the pictures are of great personal interest to the people of Macroom, for Moore, they transcend their location. I can approach it in a purely photographic context I dont necessarily want it to be about the town of Macroom or even Cork, which is why the exhibition is called Small Town Portraits it could be any small town. The images on the walls and printed in the book, they dont come with any names or information, you are supposed to create the narrative yourself. While digitisation of archives has been a developing area in the last few years, Moores guiding principle during the curation process has been authenticity. Im more interested in getting them on walls and in print. I am trying to keep it as authentic to how Dennis Dinneen would have done it. In terms of retouching or anything, Ive only done what Dennis could have done in a dark room, for example, removing dust. But if theres a scratch in an image, I wont photoshop it out because then it is taking on a different life altogether, I want to keep it as authentic as possible. A series of books of Dinneens pictures are currently being prepared. Lawrence Dinneen believes his father wouldnt have believed his work is still being appreciated. He would have been gobsmacked. Hes up there laughing at us. Its unreal 32 years after his death, here we are, trying to keep his work alive. RECORD levels of migration to Germany over the last two years have called into question the countrys demographic projections. But Germanys rapid shift to a more favourable profile is not a reason to postpone politically painful policy decisions about retirement and pensions. At the beginning of this century, it was forecast that Germany would lose more than 10m inhabitants by 2050, owing to declining immigration and a low average birth rate. Today, population projections are brighter. According to the governments latest calculations, Germanys population could remain above 80m until 2060, and the reduction in the labour supply might not be as drastic as was previously feared. During high-immigration periods such as in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or in the wake of the mid-1990s Balkan wars population projections were fairly optimistic, because it was assumed that net migration would remain relatively high in the future as well. Instead, immigration to Germany fell drastically after the turn of the century, because the countrys weak economic growth and rising unemployment until 2005 deterred would-be newcomers. To account for this reduction in net immigration, forecasters also lowered their estimates for the future, and thus underestimated the decade of population growth that began after 2005. Alongside immigration, birth rates and average life expectancy also factor into population growth. In 2015, the fertility rate in Germany rose for the first time in 30 years, to 1.5 children per woman owing to more focused family support and a strengthening economy, which reduced the financial risks of starting a family. The current fertility rate is expected to remain relatively stable into the future. But it is worth remembering that nobody foresaw the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s or the dramatic fertility-rate decline in the 1970s. Average life expectancy is similarly hard to pin down. In recent decades, it has consistently risen faster than demographers expected, which makes one wonder if longevity and thus the size of the future retirement-age population is systematically underestimated. As a rule, population forecasts start with static or period life tables that capture average life expectancy under the existing circumstances at any given time. But generation life tables, which are used to determine retrospectively how old a given age group has become, usually show a much higher average life expectancy than period life tables. For example, German women born in 1910 would have had a life expectancy of 50.7 years at that time. But, looking back, they ended up living 58.8 years on average, enduring two world wars. By this logic, a woman born in 2009 should have already had an average life expectancy of more than 88 years; but current population estimates do not foresee that average life expectancy for newborns until 2060. This shows that population estimates have relatively high margins of error. Contrary to what is assumed in many economic-growth models, demography is not a purely exogenous variable. Rather, it is susceptible to change as a result of economic development and other factors. If Germany sustains its current level of economic growth in the coming decades, all three drivers of population growth immigration, fertility, and average life expectancy could rise, and the population would remain relatively constant. In this scenario, if Germany can integrate immigrants into the labour market and increase older workers labour-participation rate, it would be in a better position to finance existing social-welfare programmes. But we must not forget the one constant in all demographic forecasts: The ageing of the population. Right now, baby boomers are still economically active, and will remain so for some time. But, by 2035, they will have retired, and Germany will have more than 21m inhabitants over the age of 67; half of them will be over 80 by 2050. And if longevity rises faster than is currently expected, this age group will be even larger. Germany cannot expect to see a sustained, moderate shrinking of its retirement-age population until after 2060. Thus, proposals to water down previously implemented pension reforms, in light of rising immigration and healthy economic growth, are more than negligent. Germany should be using the current ageing pause to ensure its social systems long-term sustainability, create age-appropriate jobs, and adapt housing and infrastructure to the needs of an ageing society. In addition, Germany should have an active population policy to manage the three drivers of population growth, especially immigration. In the past two years, net migration was heavily influenced by the influx of asylum-seekers. Policymakers should be giving more consideration to the role of domestic requirements in immigration law. Now more than ever, they need to recognise population growth is a policy objective that they can help to shape. Michael Heise is chief economist of Allianz SE. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017. I VIVIDLY remember French presidential candidate Marine Le Pens first appearance on television. It was just before the 2002 presidential campaign, and I had to moderate a debate on French public television. For political balance, we needed a representative of the far-right National Front (FN), then led by Le Pens father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Bruno Gollnisch, the manager of Jean-Maries campaign and his heir apparent, turned us down, offering to send Marine instead. It was obviously a trick played not just on a media viewed as hostile, but also on Le Pen herself a rival whom Gollnisch resented for having been, in his view, unduly promoted by her father in the FN apparatus. Le Pen was a largely unknown 33-year-old lawyer with little practice, though she had an obvious instinct for the punch line. In the end, Gollnischs plan may have backfired: a few days after Le Pens appearance, the headline in a weekly magazine read, What is new with the FN? Marine! On April 21, 2002 a date that still resonates in French political memory the 73-year-old Jean-Marie received 17% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, thus knocking the former socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, out of the second-round runoff. But citizens of all persuasions then rallied against Le Pen in a so-called Republican front, giving the conservative candidate Jacques Chirac a massive 82% of the vote. Fifteen years later, Marine Le Pen has outshone her father, convincing 21.3% of French voters to choose her to succeed Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace. But, to win the second round, she will need to defeat Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old centrist who finished ahead of her in the first round, with 24% of the vote. That will be no easier for her than it was for her father. With both the Republican, Francois Fillon, and the Socialist, Benoit Hamon, quickly endorsing Macron after the first round Hamon called Le Pen an enemy of the Republic another Republican front, albeit a much smaller one, could well be emerging. But Le Pen is tough, and a great believer in her own destiny. Already, her efforts to revamp the FNs image have transformed it from a fringe movement into a major political force. Although she abandoned a push to rebrand the FN Bleu Marine, owing to the original brands enduring appeal to its older voters, that approach reflects the personality cult that she has fostered, characterised by the suppression of dissent and even of her own niece, Marion Marechal Le Pen, a rising political star. Le Pens success reflects a kind of ideological laundering, which she has conducted with her closest adviser, Florian Philippot, a polished, media-savvy enarque, who swears he decided to join Le Pen for her talent, not her ideology. Indeed, the pair has coated the FN with several layers of fresh paint all blue, white, and red, of course. Early on, Le Pen would campaign, like her father, using her heavy frame and heavy frown to intimidate opponents, forcing her smokers voice to make her point, never playing the woman card. But she eventually found out she could play another part. Thinner, better dressed, and more soft-spoken, she developed a kind of charisma that enabled her to appeal to a wider variety of supporters, from unemployed young people to the disenchanted middle class, from policemen wary of losing control to second- or third-generation immigrants who wanted to close Frances doors to foreigners. The process of de-demonising the FN required Le Pen to drop not just the putrid rhetoric bequeathed by her father, but also her father himself. In the summer of 2015, Marine expelled Jean-Marie from the party he founded in 1972. The old man sued her in court, only to surrender a few months later. Of course, even as Le Pen has dropped the anti-Semitic blurbs, vocal nostalgia for Vichy France, proud reminiscences of the Algerian war, and even her own father, she has continued to fuel the populist bonfire. She has railed against immigration, Islam, globalisation, multiculturalism, NATO, the elites, the system, the markets, the media, and, above all, the European Union the monster supposedly responsible for all of Frances ills. Never mind that all 23 FN members of the European Parliament are paid with EU money, or that Le Pen herself is under a judicial investigation for misappropriating her MEPs subsidies. For many French, status anxiety, economic anger, and fear of terrorism are far more salient. Le Pen has also worked hard to build up her international status. In January, she waited in vain in New York, hoping to be embraced by Donald Trump a man who, she said, had copied some of her own political formula to win the US presidency. In Moscow, she met with Russian President Vladimir Putin not to ask for money, party officials were quick to point out, but to discuss the state of the world. Leading in opinion polls week after week, Le Pen and her new FN seemed to have things figured out. But, two weeks ago, the varnish began to crack. Her meetings became more electric, her discourse more brutal. Channeling her Holocaust-denying father, she claimed that France was not responsible for deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Was it a Freudian slip, campaign fatigue, or a deliberate attempt to reassure old FN troopers that the chief had not gone astray? Whatever the case, some 7.6 million voters have now acknowledged Le Pen as the right person to lead France (a total probably boosted by a terrorist attack on the Champs Elysees three days before the vote). And while her combination of rebranding and rabble-rousing probably will not be enough to win her the presidency, she has already succeeded in transforming the face and the psyche of France for a long time to come. Christine Ockrent is former Chief Operating Officer of France 24 and RFI. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017. www.project-syndicate.org WHEN US President Donald Trump ordered cruise- missile strikes on a Syrian airbase shortly after this months chemical weapons attack, some Obama administration veterans were openly impressed. [We] never would have gotten this done in 48 hours, one of them told Politico. The strikes were the starkest demonstration so far of one of the paradoxes of the Trump White House, particularly on foreign policy. The administration has often projected a chaotic image and put out wildly mixed messages on topics such as US support for Nato. Some of the presidents preoccupations such as the US-Mexico border wall and his sometimes confused speaking style continue to unsettle enemies and allies alike. But at the same time, particularly on national security, the administration appears to be building a system that has proved much more effective than many expected. Central to this has been Trumps national security adviser, Lt General HR McMaster, viewed within the Beltway as one of the US militarys leading strategists. He is also seen by many as the most successful individual to emerge from the Trump presidency: The administrations key figure on foreign policy, even more influential than defence secretary James Mattis or secretary of state Rex Tillerson. When it came to formulating a military response to Syrias chemical weapons attack, McMaster and US military planners reportedly gave Trump three options. The first was a decapitation strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which would have obliterated his palace. The second was similarly drastic, an attack on Syrian airbases that would have almost certainly killed Russian advisers and aircrew. The severity of those options seems to have pushed Trump towards the third: A strike against the single airbase responsible for the chemical attack. The US gave Russia enough warning to get its own personnel out of the way. Compared to some of the messier approaches from the Obama administration such as increasing weapons and supplies to Syrian rebels without providing them with enough combat power to seriously alter the war the one-off strike was limited and well-defined. The White House and McMaster were quick to signal that it was a response to the chemical attack, and the US would probably not respond to the ongoing conventional onslaught on rebel areas. With Chinese President Xi Jinping visiting Mar-a-Lago at the time of the strike, it was also an opportunity for Trump to send a message about his willingness to take military action against North Korea. Beijing responded by further reducing its orders of North Korean coal and preventing its diplomats from participating in a massive parade in Pyongyang. This was a victory for US strategic signalling, even though North Korea will likely continue its missile launches, believing it can do so without incurring US military action. But Trump stumbled soon after. In an interview following the Syria strike, he appeared to forget which country the US had bombed, saying that the missiles had been heading to Iraq. Then came the media briefings and statements about the US armada supposedly heading to the Korean Peninsula. When it emerged that the USS Carl Vinson had not, in fact, sailed from Singapore to Korea and was still on pre-planned exercises with the Australian Navy at the other end of Asia, the White House looked as though it had lost touch with reality. The administration can avoid these blunders in the future, but the bigger problem is that none of the geopolitical conflicts have improved. Assad remains in power in Syria, and suggestions from McMaster and others that Russia might be prepared to abandon him have so far come to nothing. The North Korean weapons programme continues to move forward, and while its recent missile launch failed, Pyongyangs rhetoric and military capabilities continues to intensify. The same is true for the ongoing conflicts in which the US remains involved, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and Yemen. Under the Trump administration, there have been increased US airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Civilian casualties are, in many cases, mounting. The White House didnt directly order all recent action the much-publicised dropping of the US militarys largest conventional bomb on Afghanistan appears to have been the decision of regional commanders. The Trump White House seems to place fewer restrictions on what the military can do in conflict zones than the more micromanaging Obama administration but that approach also brings risks. Theres also the issue of how much attention the administration can devote to other, second-tier issues it still has a shortage of deputy and assistant secretaries of state and defence who normally do much of the heavy lifting. In its first 100 days, the Trump White House has done better than many expected in handling some crises, and proved surprisingly adept at the strategic signals it projects to the world. But it has also developed the alarming habit of turning to military force, particularly bombing or the threat of it, as a first not last resort. Its an approach that may work sometimes for individual crises in the Middle East, perhaps even North Korea. But it can also go wrong and in an era of rising tensions with Russia and China, it could prove catastrophic. Peter Apps is Reuters global affairs columnist Why people were so active early in the morning on April 2 The discussion of application of Armenian National Congress-Peoples Party of Armenia (Congress-HZhK) on recognizing the results of the NA elections invalid today continued at the Constitutional Court. The respondent side today has been answering the questions of the plaintiff. Tigran Mukuchyan, Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has been answering the questions of Levon Zurabyan, Vice President of the Armenian National Congress (HAK). They were periodically arguing. In reply to the question of Levon Zurabyan how many school and kindergarten headmasters have been interrogated, Tigran Mukuchyan gave short and unclear answers. The Constitutional Court Chairman Gagik Harutyunyan intervened, demanding that question-and-answer session proceed within the frames of application. Tigran Mukuchyan refused to answer several questions, saying, I consider it to be waste of time. I am very pleased with you answers, replied Levon Zurabyan. Mr Zurabyan inquired how Tigran Mukuchyan can explain the unusual activeness of voters early in the morning. The voter lists were published, you can meet them one by one and ask them why they were so active, answered Tigran Mukuchyan ironically. Levon Zurabyan also touched upon the high profile recording of the headquarters of Artak Sargsyan, who was elected a lawmaker with the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) precinct list, and spoke of hundreds of people gathered there. Does the recording show how many people there were? So were there 200 or 400 people? continued the CEC President in the same style. Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union Google Ad 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 Google Ad 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 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 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deals with many mundane issues in addition to the high-profile items that make headlines. Those under-the-radar topics, however, can have significant impact on telecommunications companies and the people they serve. Late last month, the FCC released drafts of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a Notice of Inquire and a Request for Comments (NPRM, NOI and RFC) that touch on three such items. The NPRM is designed to ease pole attachment rules, provide flexibility and expedite retirement of copper, and in other ways modernize networks and make it easier to retire services. The NOI deals with the FCCs ability to preempt state and local laws that inhibit broadband deployment. The RFC asks for comments on changing the FCCs legal interpretation of when carriers must seek permission to alter or discontinue a service. The context is that the philosophical approach of the new administration is to reduce complexity and move decision making as much as possible into the business sector. The previous Democratic administration, the thinking goes, was overly controlling. The NPRM, NOI and RFC can be seen as the beginning of an attempt to turn this philosophy into rules and regulations. The pole attachment issue is perhaps the hottest. Currently, competitive providers can have a tremendously difficult time winning the right to attach cables to poles. Indeed, this issue is a real and substantial barrier to carriers seeking to set up shop versus an incumbent. The streamlined approach, known as one-touch make-ready, according to Fierce Telecom, is aimed at limiting these issues: Specifically, the FCC proposed to reduce charges paid by attachers to utilities for work done to make a pole ready for new attachments while ensuring that pole attachers are not charged multiple times for certain capital costs. The FCC proposed adopting a formula for computing the maximum pole attachment rate for incumbent local exchange carriers. The FCC last week officially adopted the NRPM, NOI and RFC. (Changes between the draft and final NPRM are noted by JD Supra.) The agency has also launched the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), which met for the first time on April 21. Light Reading said that an idea floated both in meetings and less formal discussions is to move reviews of pole attachments plans from individual sites to a broader network review strategy that would speed up the permissions process. In this scenario, the tradeoff would be that competitive providers get faster approval, but divulge their overall plans. This, Mari Silbey writes, is something that they are loath to do because incumbents may learn their intentions and react proactively. A lot of work remains. In a piece published between release of the draft and final standards, Lexology pointed to cost and potential safety and management concerns related to the electrical lines on the poles that are raised by the FCCs desire to accelerate the make-ready process. Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk. Boston Dynamics has built a headless robot dog and has been commanding it to deliver packages around Boston. Although the robot company has been building impressive, and often terrifying robots with legs for years, this is the first time that it had found commercial applications for its agile machinery. During the TED 2017 conference this week, Boston Dynamics founder and CEO Marc Raibert revealed that his company has been testing ways it can put robots to do more marketable work. During its early years, Boston Dynamics' robots were largely funded by military contracts. It was in 2013 when Google bought the company, also changing some of its vision on what kind of applications its robots may be able to do. CEO Raibert showed videos of their latest robots during the recent TED conference. One of its more interesting machines is named Spot, which is a four-legged dog-like robot. According to the Inverse, the video shows Spot delivering a package strapped to its back to someones front door. Raibert shared how they have been testing the robot to get to employees' homes using various access, and that the robot gets it 70 percent of the time. Another dog-inspired robot is SpotMini, which is an appropriately named smaller variation of the original Spot. SpotMini made an appearance on the TED stage and showed the audience its set of tricks. According to the Recode, the machine can run around, dance, and even deliver Raibert a can of soda. Back in December, robot dog, SpotMini was also recorded on video as it loaded a dishwasher. Its headless figure makes it look arguably creepy, but the way it moves resembles very much that of an obedient and friendly dog. Finally, Raibert showed videos of Atlas, a bipedal access robot which is working on a factory floor moving boxes to a conveyor belt, with working average speed that is two-thirds of a human worker. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is building an airship in one of NASA's hangars at the Ames Research Center. The dirigible reportedly looks like a zeppelin and could be a hobby of the billionaire. Or it could be a project for Alphabet's biggest subsidiary. According to Bloomberg, Brin has long been interested in airships. This supposedly began since he started visiting the NASA research center located beside Alphabet Inc.'s domicile in Mountain View, California. The Google co-founder decided to build his own Zeppelin-shaped aircraft after seeing a photo of the USS Macon, a dirigible constructed by the U.S. Navy in the 1930s. Google unit Planetary Ventures took over some of the huge hangars at Ames in 2015. It is in one of these that former director of programs at NASA Ames Alan Weston is said to be heading Brin's pet project. Already, his team of engineers has assembled the metal foundations of the airship. Although it is still a skeleton, it is taking up much of hangar space by now. However, it still remains unclear whether or not the airship project is Brin's private venture or a Google-approved undertaking. The Verge noted that the Google co-founder had nothing to say about the endeavor when asked for a comment by another news outlet. Weston also declined to comment, but the former Air Force engineer once mentioned the viability of airships as cargo transport crafts in an interview in 2013. He said the crafts could potentially be more fuel-efficient compared to planes. In addition, they could carry their loads directly to the area in need rather than drop them off at transport centers. Many Silicon Valley companies have been struggling to build airships for years. Even Google X, the company's experimental arm, attempted to create an air freight. But in 2016, Project Calcifer as it was called, was shelved. In a controversial move that everyone expected, Federal Communications Commission chairman and Trump appointee Ajit Pai announced that he is planning to eliminate Title II net neutrality rules. If the chairman's plans fall into place, the commission will lose or at least greatly limit the regulatory control over internet service providers or ISPs. As CNN reported, Pai's announcement was met with criticisms from different walks of life. Politicians in favor of open internet are voicing their opinions. Senator Patty Murray called Pai's move as "shameful" and explained that the "idea underlying net neutrality is a simple one: the internet should be free and open". A group of Democratic senators held a press conference before Pai's speech where they made it known that they will "fight any rollback of the rules". Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google have also shown support for net neutrality. In fact, the three major businesses are part of a trade group called the Internet Association which previously had a meeting with Pai early this April to discuss the importance of the regulation. USA Today noted that Apple is also a supporter of net neutrality rules. The tech giant is one with those who argue that consumers are already paying for connectivity so it is just right that they get a quality experience. Small businesses will be greatly affected by the killing of the regulation which led over 800 startups to ask the FCC chair to leave net neutrality alone. Even the common folks are flooding social media with concerns over Pai's proposal. Net neutrality is a set of rules approved during the Obama administration and Tom Wheeler's chairmanship back in 2015. Its goal was for everyone to have equal opportunities to access content such as streaming video and music, via the internet. Under the rules, internet service providers or ISPs are disallowed to favor any specific source by blocking or slowing down others. It also prevents these ISPs from charging content providers for faster access to the internet so that their content can be delivered faster o their consumers. The current FCC chairman was one of two Republican commissioners along with Michael O'Reilly who voted against the regulation back in 2015 while Wheeler and fellow Democratic commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voted in favor for net neutrality. As reported before, Pai is against Title II but is open to having free internet that is governed by a "more voluntary" set of rules. Pai's proposal will mainly benefit broadband companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. These are just three of the over two dozen ISPs against net neutrality. Pai's proposal will mainly benefit broadband companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. These are just three of the over two dozen ISPs against net neutrality. United Airlines is embroiled in another controversy and the Twitterverse is quick to gang up on the embattled company. The airline company is investigating the death of a giant rabbit during one of its trans-Atlantic flights. Simon, a 10-month old continental bunny who's primed to take the world record for biggest rabbit ever, was found dead in the pet compartment of a United Airlines plane. Simon, who was traveling with his owner and popular breeder, Annette Edwards, was on the flight from London Heathrow to the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Apparently, the giant rabbit was bought by a certain celebrity who she failed to identify. According to Edwards, Simon was given a clean bill of health by a veterinarian in London prior to the trip. She also shared that United Airlines is already investigating the case and looking at CCTV images to see what might have happened to the celebrity animal to cause its untimely demise. United has already issued a statement saying that the company is "saddened" by Simon's death and that it has kept in touch with Edwards since. The company also reiterated that it considers the "safety and wellbeing of all animals that travel with [United Airlines] of utmost importance". Of course, Twitter will not have any of that. One person tweeted that "maybe the giant rabbit wouldn't give up his seat" while another warned United not to "sell Santa Claus a ticket this December [as] we saw what happened to the Easter Bunny". Another Twitter user poked fun at United's PR Department saying it is "digging into bunny's past for defaming stories" which may be in relation to degrading stories that were reported about David Dao, the doctor yanked off a United flight before take-off. Dao was violently taken off a United flight after the airline overbooked and needed volunteers to disembark to make way for United employees. Airport security was filmed dragging the bloodied doctor, who needed to go home to see patients early the next day, through the aisle before being led out of the plane. Simon is the son of Darius, the current world record holder as the largest rabbit today. As mentioned, the late Simon was expected to outgrow his father. He measured 3-foot long at the time of his death allegedly while on board the United Airlines flight. A new feature was announced yesterday that can help Google Maps' users remember where they have parked their cars once they have arrived at their destination. Interestingly, drivers may no longer have to spend hours scanning city streets or huge parking lots for their parked sedan. The feature is simple enough to activate once you've parked up, and like Apple Maps, if you have your iPhone connected to your car via USB audio or Bluetooth, Google Maps will automatically tag your car's location on the map when you disconnect it. All Android users have to do is tap the blue dot and then tap "Save your parking" to add their parking location to the map. After that, it will show a label on the map itself identifying where you parked your car. After Google Maps has saved the location data, drivers can get additional details too, such as which level within the parking garage their car is located. However, to get the new feature, just upgrade your Maps on Android or iOS to the latest version. According to a source, the parking location is determined through a combination of GPS, cell towers, and also known as WiFi locations. Interestingly, Google said people who park in front of parking meters can also note how much time they paid for, and also Google will send a notification 15 minutes prior to the meter's expiration. More so, a driver can also be able to take a picture of his or her parking spot using the phone's camera and send that photo to friends. However, the search giant did not say if people could share their parking photos on other third-party social networks like Facebook, Instagram or twitter. Furthermore, the new parking feature is available on both the Android and Apple iOS apps for Google Maps. Air routes to be operated without state interference The first stage of the negotiations between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union on the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement (Common Aviation Area between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union) has been kicked off. The negotiating group of the Armenian side will be headed by the Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Armenia Sergey Avetisyan. (Members of the negotiating group are the Trade Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the European Union V. Simonyan, Head of the European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia G. Ghalachyan, Head of the Juridical Department of the Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies of the Republic of Armenia A. Hovsepyan, Head of the Department of the European Union and World Trade Organization of the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments of the Republic of Armenia A. Maysuryan, Head of the Department of the Certification of Airports and Air Traffic Management of the General Department of Civil Aviation at the Government of the Republic of Armenia G. Poghosyan, Head of the Department of the Air Transportation Regulations of the Department of Civil Aviation at the Government of the Republic of Armenia A. Chobanyan and The deputy of the General Manager of the AIAA.Shkhyan). Negotiating delegation from the European Union side is headed by the Deputy Head of Unit for Aviation Agreements of the European Commission Klaus Geil, and includesPolicy Officer EwaZajdel, European Commission, representatives of EU Member States and industry, the Head of Political, Press and Information Section of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia Dirk Lorenz, Political Officer of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia Andrea Chalupova, International Aid/Cooperation Officer of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia LudovicCiechanowski and Trade Officer of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia Karen Azaryan. The Head of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia Ambassador Piotr Antoni Switalski will also participate in the opening of the negotiations between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union on the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement. In the frames of this agreement the Republic of Armenia will join the EU Common Aviation Area, and as a result the parties will liberalize the market, providing the airlines with the opportunity to operate the routes without any limitations and enjoy equal opportunities of servicing a market with a population of 500 million. The effective European standards will be introduced in the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian and foreign airlines will be provided with the opportunity to operate air routes based on commercial considerations without any limiting interference by the states. We should note that on 1 December of 2016 the Council of EU Transport Ministers adopted a mandate that allowed the European Commission to start negotiations with the Republic of Armenia. Verizon released its tenth annual breach report this morning, and cyberespionage and ransomware were the big gainers in 2016. Cyberspionage accounted for 21 percent of cases analyzed, up from 13 percent last year, and was the most common type of attack in the manufacturing, public sector, and education. In fact, in the manufacturing sector, cyberespionage accounted for 94 percent of all breaches. External actors were responsible for 93 percent of breaches, and, 91 percent of the time, the target was trade secrets. Meanwhile, the number of ransomware attacks doubled compared to the previous year. That might be an undercount, however, because of the way the data is collected. The report is based on forensic investigations of 1,935 breaches and more than 42,000 security incidents from 65 cybersecurity research firms and government agencies -- including the U.S. Secret Service. As a result, it does the best job of covering incidents that companies have to report for compliance reasons, such as payment card and health record breaches, as well as those where the companies breached feel the need to call in outside forensic investigators or law enforcement authorities. Attacks against consumers or smaller ransomware attacks against enterprise employees might not get reported, and not show up in the statistics. Plus, if there's no evidence of exfiltration of data, a ransomware attack would be counted as a security incident, not as a breach, said Mark Spitler, senior manager, Verizon security research at New York City, NY-based Verizon. This year's report showed the alarming prevalence of phishing and credential theft in successful breaches. Of all successful breaches, 40 percent involved phishing attacks, he said. That made it the single largest attack vector. A quarter of breaches were caused by insiders, either deliberately stealing data or accidentally losing laptops or other devices that had sensitive data on them. Other breaches involved point of sale attacks, physical attacks such as skimming devices, attacks on web applications, and drive-by malware downloads via the browser. In addition, half of all breaches involved stolen or easily-guessable passwords. Many of these could have been prevented with basic security hygiene. "We get upset that we still have so many lost and stolen devices as data breaches," he said. "In 2017, it's not bleeding edge technology to encrypt mobile devices. It would save a lot of headaches if they could encrypt those devices -- they wouldn't have to report it, just have the loss of the cost of the asset." Similarly, two-factor authentication could have stopped many of the attacks based on using leaked passwords or passwords recorded by keystroke loggers. "We're not saying that a determined adversary would be completely prevented all the time if we established second factor, but it would certainly disrupt the normal chain, force them to doing something else," he said. Samsung Electronics said Thursday it was planning to launch in the second half of this year a new flagship phone, leading to speculation that the company is planning an alternative to the ill-fated Galaxy Note7 that had to be recalled last year. The launch of a new flagship smartphone this year and continuing sales of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ will help Samsung counter Apples launch of a new version of its iPhone. Apple usually unveils new phones in September. "Samsung does announce a S series phone in the first half of the year and a Note series in the second half," said Kiranjeet Kaur, research manager for client devices at IDC Asia/Pacific. "So I am not sure if Samsung is alluding to the next Note or if they want to introduce a new series to avoid any questions or doubts that may arise because of the Note7 debacle." A Samsung spokesperson said the company cannot comment on "the future product plan." The companys mobile chief DJ Koh promised in January a better, safer, and very innovative Note 8 that would launch at some point, according to a news report. The company started shipping its Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones from April 21 in the U.S. and certain other markets. The company said pre-orders for the two smartphones were higher than they had been for the predecessor Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, launched in March last year. The S8 ran into complaints about red-tinted screens and problems with the Wi-Fi connection for which the company is reportedly issuing a software fix. The company also decided that the voice feature on its Bixby voice-activated personal assistant would be available in the U.S. only later in the spring. Samsung stopped production of the Note7 in October after complaints that the phone batteries had in some cases overheated and even exploded. The company blamed batteries supplied by two manufacturers for the problem. On Thursday, the companys IT & Mobile Communications (IM) division, which includes the companys smartphone business, reported a drop in revenue and profits in the first quarter, which the company blamed on adjustments of the prices of the S7 and S7 edge. The revenue of the division was down by close to 15 percent to 23.5 trillion won (US$20.7 billion) from 27.6 trillion won in the same quarter last year, the company said Thursday. Operating profit also dropped by 47 percent to nearly 4 trillion won. Smartphone shipments increased slightly in the quarter because of the newly released mid-range Galaxy A 2017 series and strong sales in emerging markets of mid- to low-end phones, Samsung said. The new flagship smartphone and the global rollout of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ are expected to help the division increase revenue and profit. But the company said that competition is expected to intensify in the second half as a result of the rollout of new smartphones by rivals, in what appears to be a reference to Apples launch of a new version of the iPhone later this year. Samsung cannot ignore the impending launch of the 10th anniversary iPhone as there is already so much hype building around it, Kaur said. In emerging markets such as India and Indonesia, Chinese vendors such as Oppo and Vivo have been relentless in their pursuit of market share, she added. They are doing this in the mid-range segment which is very important for Samsung as well in these markets, she added. Samsung said it will look to stay profitable in the mid- to low-end segment by launching new products and streamlining its lineup. The companys overall revenue growth in the first quarter was almost flat at 50.55 trillion won in the first quarter. The operating profit grew by 48 percent to 9.9 trillion won mainly on stronger demand for the companys components like memories and displays. Get unlimited access to all content and features at ivpressonline.com with our Full Online Access Subscription. Read our E-Edition, the digital replica of the print newspaper online, access content in exclusive sections including Family, Teen, Business, Databases, Farm and more. This option does not include daily home delivery of the Imperial Valley Press newspaper. For home delivery service, please select Premium or Premium Plus. January 17, 2001 14:58: A mother desperate to educate her disabled daughter at home is going to an independent tribunal to challenge Bromley educational authoritys decision to refuse her funding. Tina Lockett, of Wickham Chase, West Wickham, has a four-year-old daughter, Abbie, suffering from Angelman Syndrome, a illness which has left her with severe learning difficulties, epilepsy and unable to speak. Because of her daughters disability, Tina, 35, and her husband Steve, 39, have been educating Abbie at home using a special programme developed in America, which provides children with intensive one-to-one attention. However, due to the need for specialist carers, the programme is costing the couple 13,000 a year. Bromley education authority is refusing to fund this scheme, as it has already paid for a place for Abbie at a special school. Julie Ely, operational co-ordinator for special educational needs at Bromley educational authority, said: "We make these decisions about funding based on what we think is best for the child, and the most efficient use of resources. However, we are constantly reviewing the situation." Mrs Lockett, though, is determined Abbie will not go to the school. She said: "She just cant cope with school at the moment. She has unique and specific needs which cant be dealt with in a classroom environment." Mrs Lockett is keen to stress she is in no way anti-school, rather she is trying to prepare Abbie for a time when she can benefit from school education. "They can not possibly give her the one-to-one treatment she requires. If she were to go to school, it certainly would have a detrimental effect on her." West Wickham Operatic Society has organised a fundraising evening for Abbie. It will perform an Old Time Music Hall on Saturday, February 3 at Wickham Hall, Sussex Road, West Wickham. For more details about the event, call 020 8777 8659. Matthew Skinner Feds laud $83M to better Pell Bridge The congressional delegation of Rhode Island was in Jamestown to celebrate an $82.5 million grant to upgrade the bridge that connects Conanicut Island to Newport. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a... Local author, illustrator collaborate on book A local woman has turned her digital cross-country teatimes with her granddaughter into a childrens book. Tuesday Tea, written by Debby Furness Saletin and illustrated by Maryann England, both of... Local group asks for rental rules changes A group of residents is expected to present its recommendations on how to improve the ordinance that governs short-term rentals. Member Ron Ratcliffe said the item is scheduled to be... by Sam, staff writer of japan-guide.com 2017/04/27 - Wisteria Watching at Ashikaga Flower Park Today I traveled to Ashikaga Flower Park in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture to take in some of the floral delights the park has to offer. The park boasts spectacular displays of seasonal flowers at various points throughout the year, but is particularly well known for its wisteria flowers that typically come into full bloom around late April to mid May and invariably draw in droves of flower fanatics. The park can be reached from central Tokyo in under two hours if riding the shinkansen, and in around two and half hours using local trains. The relatively easy accessibility of the park makes it a great day trip idea for those staying in the capital. It is advised however to arrive early during peak seasons, as the park can get packed! I arrived this morning just as the park opened and immediately went in search of wisteria. I didn't have to look far before I found myself under one of the numerous wisteria trellises about the park, including one made up partly of the park's famous old purple wisteria that is over a century old. The wisteria today were a mixed bag, with many trees being at different stages of bloom. In general, the purple wisteria looked to be around a day or two from full bloom, whilst the pink wisteria seemed to be on the verge of full bloom. I got chatting with one of the park staff and she revealed the expected best viewing dates of some of the park's varieties of wisteria. According to her, the purple wisteria are generally expected be in full bloom until late next week, whilst the white wisteria's best viewing period is estimated to be from May 1 to May 11. The yellow kingusari that resemble wisteria and make up the park's Tunnel of Golden Chain are not expected to enter their best viewing stage until the week after next. These estimations made sense looking around the park this morning, with the white wisteria and yellow kingusari trees generally looking bereft of petals. Wisteria aside, the park is packed with a wide variety of flowers, many of them looking to be spectacularly in full bloom at the moment and giving the park a tinge of vivid color at every turn. There are even a few late-blooming cherry trees dotted about the grounds for good measure. The park is lit up every evening from 17:30 until 21:00, ending May 14th, meaning now is a great time to visit, by day or night. Thank you so much for your all of your great follow up questions from the our previous post on freelancing. Hopefully part two answers any lingering questions you might have. As always the conversation continues because there is no one, best answer. At the end of the day trust your gut and do what feels best for you. And keep your questions coming, if you like this content we are happy to keep it going. Does blogging get lonely? (continued) J: I was in a little bit of a silo when I first moved home, because I was in Rhode Island which isnt full of a ton of bloggers. There wasnt any sort of existing community and I was way too shy to reach out to anyone. Now I have a group of girls I consider true friends that also happen to be bloggers. It has made it more fun for me. C: I think it ends up being more collaborative and creative. J: Its so important to have people to talk to who are doing what youre doing and understand what youre going through. People to bounce ideas off of, or ask questions. C: You cant exist in a vacuum. You need the perspective and I think its helpful to talk to other women about money and rates, obviously in a tactful way. The more you talk about it the more empowered you are to push for what youre worth. Not talking about it keeps your earning potential a lot lower. J: Its hard because were raised with the idea that you shouldnt talk about money, and you still have to be smart about it. There is so much gray area in this business, talking to people about what to charge for things is just good business. How do you do the work and keep growing your business simultaneously? C: Its really hard to do the work that needs to be done and keep growing, but its a juggling act. When you get into the right rhythm its great. Some days youre just trying to do what needs to be done. Its hard to think into the future on those days, but you need to constantly be reaching out. J: That is a constant struggle. Its always going to be top of mind. Even when youre busier than youve ever been, theres always this little voice. C: I think they call that self-doubt? J: Do I have enough planned? Is there enough in the pipeline? Some of it is self-doubt and you need to find ways to deal with it. C: I think you just have to do it. When I first started freelancing I was so afraid to reach out to people because I thought why would they want to hear from me? And you just have to get over it. Im not saying mass email people but take the time to reach out to people you genuinely want to work with. Dont be afraid. The worst thing they could say is no which is not that bad. Its like a muscle, it develops the more you use it and it gets easier. J: If youre starting your own business, you dont want to do more than what you can do well. Im not saying undercharge, but know your worth. If youre first starting out youre going to have to pay your dues. I did so much stuff for free when I got started because I was trying to build a portfolio and show people what I could do. C: Value isnt just monetary. Here are the questions I like to ask myself about any project I take on. Do I feel passionate about this brand or magazine or website? Is it going to add value to my portfolio? Is this something Ive been wanting to do? Is this something that would challenge me? You have to do that because there is no one else who is going to challenge you. You have to push yourself. JAK: The flip side is, as you grow, knowing when to say no. There are going to be people who come to you with something that seems really appealing and you have to think about whether or not its right for your brand. Does this fit me and who I am? People pay attention to that. CH: You have to be genuine in the partnerships you form. Its tempting to jump at a paycheck, youll end up regretting it. JAK: You never want to think halfway through the project that you wish you never agreed to it. Weve all been there, you live and you learn. How do you approach brands and get them to work with you? C: I would say first of all you need to have a nice body of work to point to. Basically be in a place in your career where you can show them the work youve done. Some of my all-time favorite branded content clients have hired me off of a cold email. I had reached out because I love the company, wanted to work with them, and had an idea of how I could help out. Be creative and specific in your pitch and know about the company. Dont mass email, its always obvious. J: Exactly. Its also about building relationships, but to your point, be specific. Tell the brand why you want to work with them, share some ideas you have, and be genuine in your approach. See more of my advice on working with brands here (I think this applies to many freelance jobs not just blogging). If I am not in a creative field, how should I market myself to creatives? C: Any person who is in a creative field always needs great people to help keep everything running smoothly, whether its IT or accounting. Im always drawn to people who have personality, while still being on top of everything. I really appreciate people who dont make me feel like an idiot for not knowing what they know. I want someone who takes the time to explain things in a language I can understand and who doesnt seem stuffy and unapproachable. J: Thats exactly why I like my accountant and financial advisor so much. Not only because they both answer all of my questions but they explains things to me in a way I can understand. There is never a dumb question, even though I am sure Ive asked a few. C: In our defense, no one teaches this stuff. J: And I feel like trust is huge too. Especially when it comes to your finances. C: You definitely need to know you have someone working with you who will do right by you. Have a good grasp on your finances. J: I cant stress enough, the importance of knowing and being aware of your finances. There will be times when it takes forever to get paid. Sometimes its fast, other times its months. C: If you are considering going freelance have some savings, it helps when youre not worried about living paycheck to paycheck waiting for payment to come through. J: Give yourself at least a couple months cushion so youre covered. A few points on the importance of being resourceful: C: Its always great to talk to people you know and trust about dilemmas you might be facing, and have mentors. I think its also important to do your own due diligence. So much info is out there. You can do so much on your own. Dont make yourself look like a total newbie by reaching out to someone you admire and asking a question you could have easily Googled yourself. Its not a good look. It makes you look unmotivated. J: The over arching point of that is, youve got to get your hands dirty. Some of it wont be handed to you on a silver platter. Do your research first, then you can approach someone with questions. C: There are so many things I learned by simply doing them and figuring it out. And sometimes thats the best way. How do you handle scheduling? How do you structure your day? J: Im the worst. Thats something where you need to know your strengths and weaknesses. Im super ADD and Im really bad at sticking to a schedule. Im a work in progress. C: You are the Google calendar queen though; I bow down to your calendar scheduling skills. J: I calendar everything. Its all in there. I have to do that because otherwise Ill forget. Im very visual. I have to see everything laid out. I want to see how everything fits together. Plus if you have to travel for work you have to be so careful with your time. Plus I try to schedule so Im not working 24/7. That is consistently one of my biggest challenges. Especially when you work for yourself and work from home. C: Lets talk about this because I think there is a big misconception about working from home. Yes its great sometimes, its convenient with no commute time. I think people think that youre working less because youre home but I work longer hours now than I ever did when I was in an office. J: Its a give and take. I work more now too now that I am working for myself. But its way more rewarding too. I like what Im doing and it doesnt feel like work. C: Oh yea I turned my hobbies into my job. J: But you have to make time for other things like your health and your relationships/friendships. Its so easy to get on the computer at 7AM and still be on at 10PM. But it ultimately hinders your creativity. Its not good for your relationships. So thats why, to bring it back to where we started, its important to have a schedule. C: I think you need to be patient with yourself too though. I had a lot harder of a time being disciplined when I first got started. But it quickly becomes apparent that if youre not working youre not making money. Youve got to put the hours in. It gets easier and easier to sit down and do what you need to do. Once you get some wins, it helps too. There are weeks where I look forward to Monday because Im waiting to hear back from someone Ive pitched, its exciting. J: Give yourself time off too. C: Im so bad at that. J: We may be the two worst people to ask about this. C: Do as we say not as we do. By continuing to browse or by clicking "Accept," you agree to our site's privacy policy. An alleged member of the so-called Detroit Boys gang a drug-trafficking organization that police said got large amounts of heroin from Detroit and sold it in Winston-Salem is going to prison for up to 24 years after being convicted Wednesday on a charge of trafficking heroin. A Forsyth County jury took a little more than an hour Wednesday afternoon to find Rudolph Coles Jr., 60, of Cobblestone Drive, guilty of trafficking heroin by transportation. The jury found Coles not guilty on two other drug-related charges conspiracy to traffic heroin and trafficking heroin by possession. Judge Todd Burke of Forsyth Superior Court sentenced Coles to a mandatory 18 years and nine months to 23 years and six months in prison. According to testimony and closing arguments, Coles was caught with more than 350 grams about 12 ounces of heroin hidden in the ceiling of a Ford Explorer on Oct. 28, 2013. That amount of heroin could sell for as much as $100,000, depending on whether it was sold pure or was cut using mannitol, Assistant District Attorney Elisabeth Dresel said in closing arguments. Dresel said Coles was part of a burgeoning family business that started in Detroit and moved to Winston-Salem. Its just that the stuff they were selling was heroin, she said. Rudolph Coles Jr. was arrested with several other men, including his brother, Terrance Douglas Coles, considered the leader of the Detroit Boys. Also arrested were Dante Coles, Terrance Douglas Poindexter, who is Terrance Coles son; Ian Harper; and Christopher Wingfield. Sgt. Jason Collins of the Winston-Salem Police Department said the investigation into the Detroit Boys started in 2012 after he got information from a confidential informant. Winston-Salem police, working with other law-enforcement agencies, such as the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Bureau of Investigation, identified members of the Detroit Boys and wiretapped a cellular phone used to set up drug deals. They also wiretapped Poindexters cellphone. It was through those wiretap conversations between Terrance Coles and Poindexter that authorities learned the organizations heroin supply had run low and they were planning a trip to Detroit. They mentioned a man named Pooty, Collins testified. Collins said he later learned through multiple people that Pooty was a nickname for Rudolph Coles Jr. Dresel said in closing arguments that the trip to Detroit was not a family trip. Police didnt find any luggage in the rental car, and Poindexter and Coles spent only a few hours in Detroit before returning to Forsyth County. They were stopped by Winston-Salem police at 11:15 p.m. on Oct. 28, 2013. But Alexander Stubbs, Coles attorney, said in closing arguments that Dresel presented no evidence that Coles knew there was heroin in the SUV when he was stopped. Coles was never involved in any of the wiretap conversations and he was never seen with drugs or money, Stubbs said. According to search warrants, an investigator found heroin, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, money and records of drug transactions at Poindexters house on Hemingway Street. Detectives also listened to a phone call between Terrance Coles and Poindexter on Oct. 21, 2013, in which Coles complained about his frequent trips to Detroit with Wingfield. Investigators identified Wingfield as a heroin distributor. Collins testified that a confidential informant had 14 controlled purchases with the Detroit Boys from April to August 2013. Federal drug-enforcement agents in Detroit seized nearly 3 pounds of heroin and about $35,000 in Southfield, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. In all, authorities seized nearly 5 pounds of heroin, seven guns, 12 vehicles and nearly $55,000. At least 14 people in Winston-Salem and Detroit were charged with a total of 136 felonies. Charges are pending against Terrance Coles and Dante Coles. Dante Coles testified in Rudolph Coles trial. Ian Harper is serving about 23 years in prison after being convicted of drug-trafficking. Christopher Wingfield is serving about nine years for drug-trafficking. Poindexter was released from the Forsyth County jail in 2014 after a release order that the clerks office prepared mistakenly directed the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office to release him on all charges. Poindexter had been put on supervised probation on an unrelated misdemeanor larceny charge. He is still at large. The future of paid public legal notices in newspapers appears in doubt in the form of competing Republican-sponsored bills. The legal notices tend to include home foreclosure disclosures filed by attorneys as well as government zoning proposals, economic development packages and public meetings. Senate Bill 343 passed the Senate by a 30-19 vote Tuesday. The bill, with Sen. Trudy Wade, R-Guilford, as primary sponsor, would give local governments the option to post their legal notices on their own websites in addition to or in lieu of newspapers. The notices would have to be filed in the same timely fashion as with newspapers, with counties being allowed to charge a fee for some notices. Counties would have to commit to having sufficient staff to maintain the website and complete affidavits addressing legal notices. Meanwhile, House Bill 572, a compromise bill based on a Florida law, would require newspapers to publish paid print legal notices for free on their websites at a size similar to the print notice, and establish an email alert registry. HB572 has one Democratic co-primary sponsor. SB343 contains similar language on free online placement of paid print legal notices on newspaper websites, and the email alert registry. HB572 received a favorable recommendation Wednesday by the Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations and sent to the full House. However, according to co-primary sponsor Rep. Chris Malone, R-Wake, it appears unlikely HB572 will get a full vote. The bill was pulled from the House calendar late Wednesday and sent back to the Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations. The anti-bill author of another opposing bill objected to the bill being heard, Malone said. This upset a number of us. Companion bills for SB343 (House Bill 432) and for HB572 (Senate Bill 435) have not been heard in committee. I will not speak to what happens next, but Im guessing with a high degree of certainty no bills will be heard, Malone said, of any kind this session. Thats what I was told. Mitch Kokai, policy analyst with Libertarian think tank John Locke Foundation, said his believes the decision to pull HB572 from the calendar "was entirely a procedural matter related to legislative crossover rules, rather than a statement of support for or opposition to the bill." "Since the Senate already had approved SB343 on the same topic, the House had a vehicle in hand for addressing its own ideas about publication of legal notices." Kokai said that given the long list of House bills up for consideration Wednesday night, "there was no need to waste time debating HB572 that would end up sitting in a Senate committee for the rest of the legislative session." Malone said a stalemate benefits the newspaper industry but perhaps just temporarily. In HB572, newspapers would be required to submit legal notices to www.NCNOTICES.com, which would be established and maintained by the N.C. Press Association as a repository of those notices. If either bill passes both chambers, it would have to be signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper. If that occurs, the new law would go into effect Oct. 1. Kevin Kampman, publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal, said we support the compromise bill put forward by the North Carolina Press Association. This bill is the only one that provides access to government notices to all segments of the public. Kokai said the competing bills represent the latest evidence of an ongoing dispute between local governments and the N.C. Press Association. The N.C. League of Municipalities supports SB343, saying in a recent newsletter that cities and towns have long supported legislation allowing municipalities to publish required public notices electronically on their own websites, benefiting taxpayers and the publics knowledge. Kokai said county governments argue that in the age of the internet, it no longer makes sense to force governments to publish legal notices in a newspaper. The N.C. Press Association argues that many of these local governments constituents dont have internet access and thus need to use newspapers in the name of transparency. A subtext of this debate is that many, primarily smaller, newspapers depend on these notices for a substantial chunk of their revenue. The N.C. Press Association said that for some community newspapers, public legal notices can represent as much as 50 percent of their revenue. Rep. Stephen Ross, R-Alamance, and primary sponsor, has called HB572 an appropriate compromise bill. He said similar legislation to HB572 passed the House in 2015, but was not acted upon by the Senate. It would preserve the right to know for all North Carolinians, Ross told The News & Observer of Raleigh when he introduced HB572. In SB343, counties would be allowed to charge a $450 fee for a foreclosure notice on the county website, as well as $100 for other non-political notices and $10 for other political notices. Half of the collected fees would go to the local education board as a source of teacher supplements, along with 40 percent to countys General Fund and 10 percent for county administrative costs. County governments would require sending mail or email to individuals who have signed up for notification of legal notices. Both bills would limit newspapers to charging no more than 85 percent of the initial rate for running a legal notice a second or more times. N.C. Press Association attorney John Bussian told the Raleigh newspaper that SB343 could result in local leaders removing legal notices from newspapers if they object to the news coverage, reducing papers revenue. Its free press rights at the end of the day, Bussian said. GREENSBORO Six-year-old Zamiya Jackson was a leader and a friend to all, according to Archer Elementary principal Sophia Roberts. On the playground, she was the one all of the girls would gather around and they would play together and theyd really have a good time, said Roberts, who wants to get the word out about an upcoming fundraiser to help Zamiyas family. Roberts said Zamiya was the child struck and killed by a vehicle Friday. Police said a child and her mother were struck about 10:30 p.m. Friday as they crossed the street in front of a Food Lion in the 3200 block of Holden Road. The woman was transported to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening. The child was in critical condition and died on Sunday. The driver stopped after striking the pedestrians and was not impaired, police said. Charges had not been filed as of Wednesday. Jackson was a first-grader at Archer and her older brother also attends the school, Roberts said. A team from the district came to the school on Monday to provide crisis support for the children. The schools Parent Teacher Association is sponsoring a bake sale and car wash Saturday at the school at 2610 Four Seasons Blvd. to raise money to help pay for the funeral. It will go from 9 a.m. to noon. Roberts said Zamiyas teachers remember her as creative and inquisitive a sweet, kind little girl. School employees are lining up to help with the fundraiser. Myself, my staff and my PTA are doing everything that we can to support the family at this time of significant loss, she said. The N.C. House of Representatives gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill that would absolve motorists if they accidentally hit protesters who are blocking traffic. One of the bills primary sponsors, state Rep. Justin Burr (R-Albemarle), said the initiative was partly inspired by recent protests in Charlotte where demonstrators blocked traffic on Interstate 277. Protesters should not be allowed to impede traffic that, for example, might include someone racing to the emergency room in dire need of medical attention, Burr said. Critics said the bill was unneeded, might enable irate drivers to mow down marchers with impunity and could open North Carolina to renewed criticism on the national stage similar to that stemming from the House Bill 2 bathroom law last year. I believe this bill will protect the citizens who are simply trying to drive down the road, Burr countered in floor debate late Wednesday afternoon. State Rep. Jon Hardister (R-Greensboro) said he sees the bill as a matter of public safety, observing that its unsafe for protesters to block traffic in the right of way. People have the right to protest, but they dont have the right to stop traffic and put people in danger, said Hardister, who voted for the bill. The bill would augment state law by asserting that as long as a motorist is exercising due care, the driver is immune from civil liability for any injury to another if the injured person was participating in a protest or demonstration and blocking traffic in a public street or highway. With Democrats united against it, legislators approved the bill Wednesday on second reading, 68-47. The bill is scheduled Thursday for its third and final House vote today,which, if favorable, would send it to the N.C. Senate for action. State Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro) cast a no vote, saying that the proposed law is not needed at all because North Carolina statutes already prevent accident victims from winning damages in court if they helped to cause the mishap by their own actions. I found it completely unnecessary, Harrison said after the vote. And I felt that it sends the wrong message about what we are about in this state. State Rep. Graig Meyer (D-Hillsborough) raised the specter of a new HB 2-like controversy that would elicit mocking condescension from national media, soon to be laughing at us with references about those dumb rednecks down there. State Rep. Henry M. Michaux Jr. (D-Durham) suggested that, if enacted, the law would allow someone to purposely drive into protesters who had a permit to march down the highway and then claim it was accidental. State Rep. John Blust (R-Greensboro) disagreed, noting that in that kind of situation local authorities certainly would have shut down that section of the road and established a detour for through traffic. RALEIGH North Carolina's House on Wednesday seized the initiative in a monthslong effort to weaken Gov. Roy Cooper, overriding his veto of a Republican bill that would reduce the number of judges on the state Court of Appeals. If the state Senate follows through and completes the override, as it is likely to do, it will be the second time in a week that the legislature has succeeded in going over Cooper's head to enact a law that takes power away from the state's Democratic chief executive. The measure would shrink the intermediate-level court from 15 judges to 12 through attrition. It would prevent Cooper from filling seats being vacated by the next three retiring judges. Republicans controlling the legislature haven't stopped trying to reduce Cooper's powers since he became governor four months ago they actually started doing it before he got sworn in. And Cooper hasn't stopped fighting back. But with Republicans holding veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate, Cooper is powerless to stop these and other bills also moving through the pipeline as long as the GOP stays united. So he's sued instead and blasted them publicly. "Instead of partisan power grabs, the legislature should be focused on creating good jobs, improving our schools and helping communities rebuild from Hurricane Matthew," Cooper wrote this month in an online post. The October storm caused billions of dollars in damages to eastern North Carolina. Cooper last Friday vetoed the Court of Appeals measure as well as one that merges the state elections and ethics boards and divides the board equally between Democrats and Republicans. The legislature overrode the veto on the elections board bill Tuesday. Cooper sued successfully last month to overturn a very similar election board law that GOP legislators approved two weeks before he took office. He went to court again Wednesday, saying the updated elections and ethics measure is no better than the first one struck down by a three-judge panel and needs to be blocked before it takes effect early next week. The latest measure is also unconstitutional, Cooper's lawyer wrote, in part because the board will be prone to deadlock on elections, ethics and campaign finance matters because of the even number of board members. The new law is "designed to neuter the state's elections oversight capabilities and prevent the governor and the executive branch from faithfully executing the state's elections laws," Cooper attorney Jim Phillips wrote. But the GOP says Cooper just wants to tip the appeals courts in favor of the state Democratic Party. And without the new election board law, the majority of election board positions would continue to remain with the party of the sitting governor, as state law has directed for more than a century. Cooper "wants to rig the system for his own benefit," House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger said in a release after Cooper vetoed the two bills. The two leaders beat Cooper to the courthouse on the new law, filing documents Tuesday asking that judges find the new election and ethics board law satisfies their concerns and is constitutional. The fighting has deteriorated relations between the executive and legislative branches already frayed this year as they hammered out a compromise to eliminate the state's "bathroom bill," also known as House Bill 2. The recent litigation already has a calculable monetary cost in taxpayer dollars: more than $760,000 in expenses on private lawyers hired by Cooper and legislative leaders fighting over the challenged laws so far this year, according to documents. Cooper defeated GOP Gov. Pat McCrory in November by just 10,000 votes. Lawmakers began chipping away at his powers the week after McCrory finally conceded the race in early December. A former attorney general, Cooper isn't afraid of going to court. He filled his first lawsuit to challenge the laws two days before he was sworn in as governor. One law he challenged the right for the Senate to confirm his Cabinet picks was upheld by a three-judge panel. Cooper has appealed. Republican leaders say they are not targeting Cooper personally. They simply want to readjust how power is shared in the aftermath of a state Supreme Court decision in 2016 that favored gubernatorial authority. The ruling "fundamentally changed the way government operates in North Carolina," Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County said Wednesday. "The legislature is responding by reasserting duties and responsibilities to itself." Democrats say the measures are thinly veiled efforts to weaken Cooper and control the state's judiciary. Wednesday's bill up for the override vote hasn't been requested by the court or any judicial group. "It's certainly not necessary. You have to ask yourself, 'why the change?'" House Minority Leader Darren Jackson of Raleigh said. Another pending bill also slated for debate Wednesday would prevent Cooper from filling all kinds of judicial vacancies with his own picks. Instead, he would be limited to choosing from a list of candidates provided by the party of the judge that has left office. WASHINGTON U.S. marshals are looking for a Florida-registered sex predator who vanished after being released from state prison March 1 and failed to register his address with a Florida county jail. Ernest Eugene Reigh, 65, was last seen in Fort Pierce, Florida, but officials believe he may be in North Carolina, or on his way to Pennsylvania, where he has relatives, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a news release. Reigh's criminal record includes the sexual assault of a girl under 12 years old in St. Lucie County, Florida, in 1995. Reigh is considered a wanted absconded sexual predator with a history of carrying firearms. U.S. marshals are offering a $2,000 reward for his location or information leading directly to his arrest. Additional reward money from other sources may also be available. Anyone with information about Reighs location is asked to contact Deputy U.S. Marshal Christopher Crotty at 305-710-7395 or Task Force Officer John Brady at 954-707-2457. As is almost always the case, signs of trouble preceded the latest shooting in Paris, which left one police officer dead and wounded two bystanders before police killed the gunman, later identified as French national Karim Cheurfi, a known criminal with a long, violent record. ISIS claimed to be behind the attack. According to police, a note praising ISIS fell out of Cheurfis pocket when he fell. Cheurfi was of Algerian descent, born in a Paris suburb. The Washington Post reported he had a criminal record and was known to authorities. His rap sheet included four arrests and convictions since 2003. He had spent nearly 14 years in prison for crimes that included burglary, theft and attempted murder. When Cheurfi attempted to buy weapons French authorities took notice, especially when he made statements about wishing to kill police officers. After he traveled to Algeria earlier this year, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Cheurfi was interviewed, but a judge refused to revoke his probation. It makes one question not only Frances probation laws, but the types of background checks in place that ought to have prevented Cheurfi from legally acquiring any firearm (if he bought it legally), much less the Kalashnikov rifle he allegedly used. French and other European politicians immediately expressed concern over what effect the shooting and the terrorist attacks that preceded it might have on Frances choice of a new president. Rightist candidates immediately tried to exploit the issue, but it has been a subject on the minds of French voters, particularly in Paris, where a major enclave of immigrants from Muslim countries continue to be seen by many as a threat to the French way of life. Cheurfi should have been back in jail for parole violations. Given his record, his statements and the trip to Algeria, enough red flags were raised to warrant action. A side note. While Algeria has not been a main source of terrorism in the world, the human rights agency Algeria Watch has noted: Although Algerian nationals were not among the suicide bombers of 11 September 2001, they have featured prominently in subsequent investigations into al-Qaida activities in North America and Europe. In the UK, where an Algerian community has grown as a largely unknown minority in recent years, several dozen Algerians have been arrested since mid-2001 in localities as widely spread as Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Manchester. Arrests in London in January 2003 uncovered a cell producing ricin, while in Manchester, one of the Algerian detainees, 27-year-old Kamel Bourgass, was responsible for killing a police officer the first victim in the UKs post-11 September anti-terrorist campaign. In the United States and other countries in the West, most often someone has to actually break the law before they can be arrested. Given the tactics of terrorists, it might be worth discussing whether to invoke a doctrine of pre-emption, which is sometimes employed when an enemy nation appears to be an imminent threat. If that is an option to prevent death and destruction from countries, why cant we impose something similar for people who have violent criminal records and who openly state, as Cheurfi did, that he intends to kill police? Western reluctance to adapt such a practice shows there is one force more powerful than the uniformed police. It is the PC police. These are people who care more about how they feel than for the innocent people gunned down in our streets. Dont innocents have the right to be protected from fanatics who so often claim to be doing Gods work? With ongoing investigations by the Department of Homeland Security into radical terrorists in every state, its long past time to get them before they get any more of us. WASHINGTON -- It was a tokin' gesture. Marijuana users are feeling a bit paranoid about Attorney General Jeff Sessions' threats to crack down on states (and the District of Columbia) that have legalized marijuana. So on Monday, at "high noon," activists gathered on the Capitol lawn for what they called a "joint session," and they appealed to a higher authority. They brought in a "ganjapreneur," a "hemperor," a Rastafarian and a dozen activists wearing what looked like Keebler elf hats -- and they held a "religious ceremony" for the protection of their sacred herb. "Dear God," said Dawn Lee Carty, offering a Christian prayer while holding a bottle of cannabis oil, "we're asking you to blow your breath up on the Hill, on Mr. Sessions, on this whole legalization and decriminalization thing. ... You, God, created this seed." "Rev. Billy" Talen from the "Church of Stop Shopping," wearing a priestly collar and an all-white suit, offered a prayer for nonbelievers: "Thank you, cannabis," he chanted. "Marijuanalujah!" Another activist performed a Buddhist chant. Adam Eitinger, leader of the District's legalization effort, DCMJ, offered a Hebrew marijuana prayer. Finally came the Rastafarian, holding a Lion of Judah flag. Praying "in the name of his imperial majesty," he asked for protection "as we partake in our sacrament today." The prayers were not answered. Some of the activists lit joints and inhaled -- and four were quickly handcuffed and hauled off into waiting vans by 30 Capitol police. Bummer, dudes. One toke on federal land is over the line. The cannabis conundrum should blow your mind. A Quinnipiac University poll last week found that 60 percent of Americans think marijuana should be made legal, while only 34 percent are opposed. Even larger majorities support medical marijuana and opposed a federal crackdown. At odds with this overwhelming public opinion is Sessions, who has hinted at a federal crackdown against marijuana, which he called last month "only slightly less awful" than heroin. That puts the Trump administration on a collision course with the eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana and the majority of states allowing medical marijuana. So what will happen? If it's like most initiatives so far in the Trump administration, nothing much. This means we'll probably muddle along with the patchwork system now in place, with the federal government neither legalizing pot nor cracking down -- a system that, as the ganjapreneur put it Monday, "kind of makes no sense." I know to what she reefers. I applied for a medical marijuana card in the District -- for strictly, ahem, journalistic purposes -- to see how the current system works in the absence of federal involvement. I contacted one of the District's medical marijuana dispensaries, which set me up for an appointment with a doctor. Upon arrival at this practitioner's office, I had my weight and blood pressure taken in a large closet full of coffee supplies. Then I met the doctor, a Trinidadian educated in Jamaica, who sat across his desk from me. Drawings of Salk, Pasteur and other medical giants graced the walls. A gas station was visible through the window. I told the doctor I have low-back pain, which is true, and then I gave him his fee: $150 in cash only. He stuck the bills in his desk drawer and approved me for a marijuana card. A friend had a similar appointment and said she had depression. When the doctor noted that her intake form said she already has a prescription for depression, she hastily revised her symptoms: "Menstrual cramps!" She got a card, too. This arrangement may be superior to a black-market system for pot, but it's hardly preferable to a nationwide system that strictly regulates and taxes marijuana the way it does the more dangerous drug of alcohol. That will only happen with time, and with another administration. Many activists arrived late for their "joint session" Monday. They were a cacophony of marijuana shirts and stockings, wigs and hats, flags, dreadlocks and, despite the rain, sunglasses. After an hour and 20 minutes of speeches about marijuana, even the police looked bored, but they revived when a distinctive smell wafted over the Capitol lawn. Before he was hauled off, the Rastafarian briefly placed a soggy sacramental joint between his lips as he preached: "For too long, they've held down cannabis." And apparently we'll have to chill out while they hold it down a little longer. Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank. The Washington Post TEL AVIV -- As President Trump nears the 100-day benchmark, it's a good moment to examine the relationship that has evolved between the mercurial and inexperienced commander in chief and his unflappable Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It's an unlikely partnership, but so far it mostly seems to work. Trump may have relatively few domestic-policy accomplishments to show after three months, but he can take credit for selecting a generally solid national-security team and for listening to its advice. Traveling with Mattis last week in the Middle East, I had a chance to watch the delicate balancing act between a media-obsessed White House and a national-security leadership that mostly would be happy to stay out of the news. During his meetings in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, Mattis focused on alliance issues. But the big running stories last week were about symbolic displays of U.S. military power by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, and by dropping a massive weapon in Afghanistan whose nickname, "Mother of All Bombs," was catnip for journalists. Mattis struggled to adapt to this ever-shifting information space, and his messaging wasn't always clear. Mattis is mildly eccentric by military standards, with his penchant for studying Roman philosophy in Latin and suggesting reading lists for his troops. But like every successful Marine and Army general, he is fundamentally a team player who moves with a group, rarely in isolation. What that's meant in practice is that Mattis has bonded with Trump's other key foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This is a strong, self-confident group; there's little of the infighting that characterizes Trump's White House domestic advisers. Mattis' closest link, interestingly, may be with Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO turned diplomat. Mattis believes that U.S. foreign policy became over-militarized in recent years, and that a strong State Department voice is essential. The national-security process worked well in the two-day planning and execution of a missile strike early this month on a Syrian airfield. Within hours of the Syrian chemical weapons attack on its people, Mattis was framing options drawn from a list of contingency plans. The Pentagon prepared for the possibility that Russia would respond. Planners predicted an 85 percent success rate for the U.S.; it turned out to be closer to 95 percent. One puzzle for Mattis these days is navigating a kaleidoscopic world at a time when the public (or, at least, the media) seeks monochromatic answers. Mattis noted in an interview during the trip that Tillerson had offered a nuanced explanation of Iranian actions (complying with the nuclear agreement but meddling in the region), but coverage had focused on the negative. Policymakers sometimes need to "hold two contrary ideas in equipoise," he explained. "Our world is not black and white." An example of the interplay between diplomatic and military issues is the strategy for taking Raqqa, the Islamic State's self-proclaimed capital in eastern Syria. Trump has claimed to have a "secret plan" for victory, but the actual policy debate remains complicated and unresolved. The U.S. Central Command recommended a quick move to capture Raqqa, led by a force commanded by Syrian Kurds. The problem is that Turkey regards these Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, as a deadly threat -- and on Tuesday even bombed two YPG camps. While respecting Centcom's recommendations, and its sense of urgency, Mattis was convinced by Tillerson and others to conduct a more careful review of policy. A quick hit on Raqqa that enraged Turkey might prove to be a tactical success but a strategic setback. The policy debate continues (though officials said Turkey would probably be warned against any more bombing of YPG positions). What Mattis and the other former commanders bring to Trump's national-security table, perhaps paradoxically, is a wariness of over-hasty military commitments. In the debate about stopping North Korea's nuclear program, for example, Pentagon planners understand that the thriving metropolis of Seoul could become a gruesome, Stalingrad-like battlespace in an ill-planned conflict. Discussing what he called the "ghastly" situation in Syria, Mattis voiced concern that "we are seeing the re-primitivization of war," with use of chemical weapons and the bombing of children, hospitals, churches and other once-forbidden targets. "We've got to hold people accountable," he insisted. But how? A hidden drama of these first 100 days has been the interaction between the foreign policy team and a White House that's just beginning to think about how to use U.S. power in a dangerous world. JURIST Guest Columnist Dara Purvis of Penn State Law discusses some deficiencies of a recent Texas bill resembling North Carolinas HB2 In January, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick introduced Senate Bill 6 (SB6), another so-called bathroom bill aimed at preventing transgender Texans from using a bathroom consistent with their gender identity. The bill itself is straightforward, with two primary effects. The first requires public schools, open-enrollment charter schools, and government buildings to require that bathrooms and changing rooms that are used by more than one person at a time be gender-segregated and used only by people whose biological sex is consistent with the labeled gender. The bill defines biological sex as the sex reflected on an individuals birth certificate. Bathrooms may only be entered by a person of the other sex (as defined by their birth certificate) for exceptions outlined in the bill, including custodial or maintenance work or if a person using the bathroom requires assistance. Banned from using typical public bathrooms with multiple stalls, transgender students or visitors to government buildings would have to hope the building provided special access to a single-stall bathroom, including such options as controlled use of a faculty bathroom. The bills second action is to overturn local anti-discrimination ordinances that require businesses to allow customers to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. Several of Texass largest cities have ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity, including Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth. Texas statutes provide that a birth certificate may be amended to correct a record that is incomplete or proved by satisfactory evidence to be inaccurate. In order to change the identified sex on a birth certificate, an applicant must obtain a court order, which a state form [PDF] describes as justified by gender reassignment surgery. Not all transgender people choose to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and typically the surgery would not be performed on a growing child, meaning that it would be very difficult for a school-age child to petition a court for an order to change his or her birth certificate to reflect his or her accurate gender identity. Anecdotal evidence confirms that a judges willingness to issue such an order varies considerably based on his or her location within Texas, and whether the area is predominantly conservative or progressive. Patrick introduced SB6 as a measure to counter guidance from the Department of Education telling schools that barring transgender students from using a bathroom consistent with their gender identity violated Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, and in a May 2016 Dear Colleague letter the Departments Office of Civil Rights told school administrators that refusing to allow transgender students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity, including requiring such students to use a single-stall bathroom when cisgender students used multiple-stall bathrooms, constitutes sex-based discrimination. After the inauguration of the Trump administration, however, and confirmation of new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education withdrew the Dear Colleague letter. Title IXs underlying statutory protection remains, but it appears that the Trump administrations Education Department will take the position that denying transgender students equal access to bathrooms is not sex discrimination. SB6 quickly passed in the Texas Senate on largely partisan lines. One key justification for the bill offered in debate and the media was the safety of women and girls. This logic, which has been used in arguments over equal bathroom access for transgender students and people in many contexts, is that if transgender women are allowed to use womens bathrooms, then male predators will falsely claim to be transgender in order to legally gain access to womens bathrooms and assault or expose themselves to women and girls inside. There is no evidence, however, that so-called bathroom bills have any effect on assaults committed by male predators falsely claiming to be transgender. A recent Vox article cited research by MediaMatters.org and PolitiFact showing that states with laws protecting transgender people from discrimination, including requiring bathroom access, had no increased crimes in bathrooms. Moreover, examples of assaults that occurred in bathrooms often cited by proponents of bathroom bills did not happen in the wake of nondiscrimination provisions passed to protect transgender people. To the contrary, transgender people are far more likely to report violence directed at them in a bathroom. There is thus no evidence that SB6 furthers one of the main policy goals offered to justify its passage. Instead, it exacerbates the severe negative experiences transgender youth have at school. One organization that works with transgender youth estimates that one or two students out of every 500 students is transgender. One national survey found that ninety percent of transgender students had heard [PDF] derogatory remarks about sexual orientation and gender identity while at school, often from school employees themselves. Knowing that bathrooms are often a flashpoint of harassment and even violence against transgender people, both transgender children and adults often try to avoid using them in public at all, leading to problems including chronic dehydration and bladder and kidney infections. It is hard to imagine a more vulnerable population for legislators in Texas to target. In the absence of any rationally linked justification such as safety, it is particularly difficult to understand the law as backed by anything but animus. Indeed, the single Democratic State Senator who supported the bill explained his support in thinly-veiled prejudice against transgender children. That Senator, Eddie Lucio, Jr., argued that SB6 is a bulwark against societys moral decline, preventing schools from indoctrinat[ing] children in gender theories and other mature topics they may not comprehend. This line of argument is familiar to scholars of the gay rights movement. Not even a full generation ago, LGBT people were characterized as indoctrinating and even recruiting children into lives of homosexuality. From this perspective, introducing homosexuality to children in the context of anything less than a full-throated condemnation would teach children that homosexuality was acceptable and make them more likely to be queer themselves. Lucios argument makes the same logical leap: that allowing fellow students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity will teach children that gender is something different than two binary categories permanently enshrined at birth, and thus more children will identify as transgender. Science, of course, tells us that such a black and white concept of gender is medically inaccurate. The Constitution and Supreme Court, moreover, tell us that such reasoning is impermissibly based in animus. SB6 lacks a rational relationship to the legitimate state interest of public safety, and its own supporters explain it as necessary to communicate moral disapproval of transgender Texans to children. This is the same prejudice repeatedly found to run afoul of the Constitution in cases such as Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. In Romer, the Court struck down Amendment 2, a statewide ordinance prohibiting antidiscrimination ordinances protecting the LGBT people as inflicting immediate, continuing, and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justifications that may be claimed for it. SB6 suffers from precisely the same unconstitutional deficiency. Should SB6 progress through the Texas legislature into law, it will become another embarrassing, costly and unconstitutional debacle to enter the history books alongside North Carolinas HB2. Professor Dara Purvis is an Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State Law in University Park, PA. A former visiting fellow at the University of Kent Research Center for Law, Gender, and Sexuality, she has published numerous scholarly articles and books on these topics. She graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for two federal circuit court judges. Suggested citation: Dara Purvis, Texas Bathroom Bill Offers up More of the Same False, Tired Anti-LGBT Arguments, JURIST Academic Commentary, Apr. 17, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/04/Dara-Purvis-texas-bathroom-bill.php This article was prepared for publication by Sean Merritt, an Assistant Editor for JURIST Commentary. Please direct any questions to him at commentary@jurist.org A French court on Thursday refused [BIRN report] an extradition request for former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj [BBC profile], who is facing war crime charges in Serbia. The court released [BBC report] Haradinaj shortly thereafter giving the parties five days to appeal. The Serbian government has stated the decision is unlawful and has recalled its ambassador in protest. Representatives of the former prime minister state that extradition would have led to an unfair and unbalanced trial. The request came after French police arrested Haradinaj [JURIST report] in January on a Serbian arrest warrant, leading to the Serbian extradition request and Kosovo [BBC country profile] requesting the intervention of the European Union [official website]. Haradinaj was a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, that opposed Slobodan Milosevic during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war [BBC backgrounder]. He was tried twice and acquitted of 37 charges of war crimes in both 2008 and 2012 [JURIST reports] by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. [JURIST] The Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission [official website] on Tuesday released a report [text, PDF] in which they unanimously recommend[ed] that the current moratorium on the death penalty [in Oklahoma] be extended. While the report noted that it was difficult to come to that decision, [d]ue to the volume and seriousness of the flaws in Oklahomas capital punishment system, it advised the moratorium should be extended until significant reforms are accomplished. The report also included recommendations for reforms such as recommendations for innocence protection, prosecution and defense of death penalty cases, clemency, execution procedures, as well as recommendations to the judiciary and the requirements for death eligibility. Particularly notable among the recommendations was the Commissions advisement that the one-drug (barbiturate) lethal injection protocol was the most humane and effective method of execution possible. The commission also recommended that Oklahoma develop a process for continuous review of its execution protocol to ensure that the state is using the most humane and effective method possible. The mommission concluded the report acknowledging that their recommendations were very broad but contended that Broad strokes are needed at present to produce a foundation upon which finer details may be applied with confidence. The death penalty has been a pressing issue across the country. Last month, the Arkansas Supreme Court issued an order [JURIST report] stating there is no stay in place preventing the execution of eight inmates schedule. Also last month, Orlando, Florida, Chief Prosecutor Aramis Ayala, announced [JURIST report] that her office would no longer seek the death penalty in Osceola and Orange counties, prompting Florida Governor Rick Scott to issue an executive order removing her from a case involving the killing of Orlando police lieutenant Debra Clayton. In February, the Mississippi House /paperchase/2017/02/mississippi-house-approves-bill-to-allow-firing-squad-executions.php[JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. In January the US Supreme Court refused [JURIST report] to consider a challenge to Alabamas death penalty system. In December a report by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the use of capital punishment in the US is at a 20-year low [JURIST report]. The Texas State House of Representatives [official website] approved on Thursday a strict ban [SB 4, text] on so-called sanctuary cities. The bill seeks to empower law enforcement [ABC report] to enforce federal immigration law against detainees and threatens to jail any police chiefs or sheriffs who refuse to follow federal law. The bill would allow the Texas government to withhold funding from local governments acting as sanctuary cities in order to help keep the public safe and remove bad people from the street. Their was opposition to the bill [Dallas Observer report] after an amendment allowed local law enforcement to inquire about federal immigration status during detainment as well as after an arrest. There is fear that this amendment could lead to a strained relationship between the community and the police. The amendment put the bill closer to the states senate version that has been passed, however the two chambers will still need to compromise on the bill before sending it to the governor. Since the election of US President Donald Trump, some states and cities have proposed legislation to crackdown on sanctuary policies while some cities continue to stand behind their policies [JURIST op-ed]. Last month the Mississippi Senate approved a bill [JURIST report] to prohibit local sanctuary immigration policies. In February, the Alabama House approved [JURIST report] a bill to block funding for sanctuary universities. In the same month, Texas Senate approved a bill targeting sanctuary cities [JURIST report] by requiring them to comply with federal immigration law. Earlier in February San Francisco filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order that would cut federal funding [JURIST report] from sanctuary cities. In January, San Franciscos police chef was sued by an undocumented El Salvadorian over the citys sanctuary protection laws [JURIST report]. Also in January, the New York Attorney General proposed model language [JURIST report] for immigration laws and policies in sanctuary cities. NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Drinks Daily News The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Drinks Weekly News A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Drinks Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter Agrial is poised to buy Italian dairy firm Bonta Viva from fellow French group Senoble. A spokesperson for Agrial confirmed the plan but declined to provide further information. News of the acquisition was initially revealed by Agrials director, Ludovic Spiers, in an interview in the French media. Based in the province of Treviso, in north-east Italy, Bonta Vivas product range includes yogurts, soft cheese and desserts. In the interview with business newspaper Les Echos, Spiers laid out Agrials ambitions in cheese, notably to become a leading player in goats cheese, demand for which is strong in the US. Agrial already operates a production plant in the US using commodities imported from France and is planning to acquire another plant in the country. The cooperative owns one of Frances leading goat cheese brands, Soignon. Extending production capacity is also earmarked for cheese maker Guillotteau, which Agrial acquired in 2016 and which makes a range of cheese made from cows, goats and ewes milk, Spiers added. Around 40% of Guillotteaus flagship product, the pave daffinois, is exported to Germany and the US. Spiers comments were confirmed by the Agrial spokesperson. Japanese giant Ajinomoto is to sell a plant in the US to local manufacturer Todays Foods. Free Report Whats the forecast for the food and grocery industry? Market drivers and inhibitors Five-year forecasts and the impact of COVID-19 The performance of the online channel versus offline Major trends in the market including rapid delivery, ambient retailing, supply chain disruption, and inflation Assess developments within this sector to help your business thrive in 2022 and beyond. The food and grocery sector thrived during the pandemic, largely due to the shutdown of the food service industry and the sectors subsequent necessity, panic-induced bulk purchasing, and spending more time at home. The market has grown as a result of inflation. Consumer unwillingness to go out and socialize, and the reopening of several hospitality facilities, helped maintain the demand for groceries, particularly online, in 2021. As consumer behavior changes, we consume more food and drink at home, and inflation increases basket sizes. GlobalData predicts that the sector will continue to hold a higher share than had been predicted prior to the pandemic. This is true despite the fact that the food and grocery sector's share of overall retail will decline from its peak in 2020. This report will discuss market forecasts and key themes in the global food & grocery industry in 2022 and beyond. It covers:Assess developments within this sector to help your business thrive in 2022 and beyond. by GlobalData Enter your details here to receive your free Report. 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Visit our privacy policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address. Thank you.Please check your email to download the Report. The ownership of the facility, located in Piedmont in Missouri, is scheduled to transfer to Todays Foods, an affiliate of local frozen and refrigerated food manufacturer Tasty Brands, in early 2018. The site, part of the Japanese groups North American division Ajinomoto Windsor, will remain open and in full operation during the move to new owners. We have been very impressed by the Piedmont community and the employees at the facility, David Horowitz, president of Todays Food and Tasty Brands, said. Alongside the news of the deal, Ajinomoto announced plans to build a new appetiser production facility in Joplin, Missouri. Ajinomoto acquired US ethnic food maker Windsor Quality Holdings in 2014 for around US$800m. Windsors product line up spans Asian, Mexican and Italian frozen appetisers, with brands including Tai Pei, Ling Ling, Jose Ole, Bernardi and Freds. Related Companies NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Style Daily Update The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Style Weekly Update A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Style Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter. Photos Credit: JW Marriott Phu Quoc Phu Quoc Island is the up and coming hot destination for the well-heeled traveler. Vietnams largest island and has just become a rival for the next best island vacation with the 2017 opening of the JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay. This resort is perfect for the been there, done that traveler and is an experience unlike any other. Five years ago, Phu Quoc opened its first international airport, ushering in a slew of tourist and new hotel developments. Located in the Gulf of Thailand, the island is all you can ask for in a tropical haven. With swaying palm trees on white sand beaches, clear blue waters and friendly island people, the environment brings to mind other getaways like Bora Bora, Tahiti or Turks and Caicos. The JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay finally opened its doors this spring, with its design impressing even the most worldly of guests. Upon entering the resort, visitors will spot two-story high twin dogs guarding the entrance. Once inside, youll be greeted by the staff outfitted in 1920 period costumes that double as their daily uniforms. The inspired decor includes a grand foyer with an open-air atrium, completed by 30-foot high cathedral ceilings and a suspended couch as the centerpiece. It is the design masterpiece of Bill Bensley, built to resemble the 19th-century British college, Lamarck University. Bensley took this reference and created a resort with the history of the university evident in each of the resorts residences, restaurants, and common areas. For those who aren't familiar with his work, Bill Bensley is at the top of his field when it comes to designing memorable resorts throughout Asia. He is akin to a Willy Wonka or Edward Scissorhands in terms of his architectural genius, and develops projects that are often unforgettable. In each of his properties youll find both contemporary and classically Asian design created by the finest building materials, as well as a comfortable and luxurious vacation environment. The design of his resorts becomes just as much a part of the five-star holiday experience as the resorts superb setting, dining and service. The Rue de Lamark is the main lane that runs through the heart of the resort. Flanking each side of the avenue are art galleries, high end boutiques, a gym and the resort spa. The design of this area is inspired by the traditional Vietnamese town Hoi An, with terracotta roofs, amber-colored walls and hand painted murals, many of which resemble colorful billboard advertisements from the 1920s. Each of the resort's 244 units is special in its own right, with elevated ceilings, top-of-the-line amenities, electronics, and custom furnishings. Bold wall prints, paintings, and furniture adorn each space to make them unique. In the deluxe suite, the king-sized bed faces floor-to-ceiling widows that provide exquisite views of sunrises and the bay below. The bathrooms are equally as stunning, with a marble wet area, claw foot soaking tub and a rainwater shower. On the outdoor terrace there is a sunken Sala complete with an oversized sofa, which is perfect for watching the stars at night or for the incredible sunrises in the east. The Turquoise Suite is 900 square-meters, with bright turquoise walls adorned with high end artwork and sculptures. There is a plunge pool and outdoor sitting area that resembles a bastion of a castle with a day bed for lounging, or perhaps sharing a bottle of champagne at night. Expect the dining experience to be just as memorable and creative as the rest of the vacation. There are several restaurants and bistros on the property, each serving an eclectic mix of international cuisines and local dishes. Tempus Fugit (which translates to time flies) is the all-day dining restaurant, serving authentic Vietnamese cuisine, contemporary Japanese fare and classic French dishes. Breakfast is exquisite; expect to see 16 live cooking stations offering everything from Vietnamese pho to sushi. The Department of Chemistry is the place to go if you're hankering for a little nightlife. Imaginative libations are expertly crafted by their top mixologist who specialize in cocktail culture. The bar isn't just a hot spot for cocktails, however. It also makes for a great place to spend the evening for a night of live jazz and seafood barbeque. Theres plenty to do in Phu Quoc both on and off the resort. Positioned along a cove, the beaches have gentle waves perfect for swimming, stand up paddle boarding or a variety of other water sports. There are also three massive pools and plenty of activities for the children thanks to the hotel's extensive kids program. One must-have experience is a visit to the Spa by JW. The decor is a decadent meld of rich colors, textures, and design elements. Each of the spas eight treatment rooms are equipped with a private rainforest shower, steam room and sauna. The therapies range widely from modern European experiences to traditional Asian healing techniques. The JW Marriott Phu Quoc offers a one-of-kind idyllic island retreat. The memorable design of the resort is in perfect harmony with the top-notch accommodations, cuisine, and level of service expected of the luxury hotel brand. The resort is expected to be recognized as one of the top resorts in Asia, which is convenient considering its covetable location on Phu Quoc. Already 16% of Melenchons voters have apparently decided that if they cant have his version of socialism theyll happily vote for the national variety instead. I saw some startling examples of puerile posturing in my years of left-wing activism. They mostly involved people more concerned with (and competitive about) the purity of their (self-)image as anti-capitalists par excellence than with actual injustice, poverty and inequality. We recently saw a revival of this in the US with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Although Sanders ended up endorsing Clinton, the fact that his campaign and particularly his supporters had concentrated their fire on her using ammunition provided by Trump and Putin (most of it buckets of undifferentiated rubbish) and refused to sully their consciences by voting for someone ideologically tainted by neoliberalism meant that ultimately Sanders helped Trump win. In the UK we saw the example of Lexit: people on the left who voted to leave the EU because they thought a campaign led by far-right demagogues and sponsored by Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail might somehow help bringing about socialism in our lifetime. Its a good thing that Melenchon didnt get through to the second round. A Frexit referendum, which he promised, would have been a huge gift to the global far-right. Now theres Jean-Luc Melenchon. Its good that so many people voted for him in the first round, and I think its also good that he didnt get through to the second. Aside from the fact that the non-fascist reactionary right in France would have united to vote for Le Pen rather than for him, his campaign pandered to the same delusion as Lexit, that there is a stage-left exit from the EU. A referendum on a French exit (as he promised) would have been a huge gift to the global far-right. I understand why people abstained in disgust at the whole charade. None of the candidates are capable of reversing Europes economic and social collapse, at addressing unemployment, terrorism or the climate crisis. Neoliberal capitalism is a zombie which will ultimately devour us all unless new movements find a way to articulate and diffuse an alternative. Leaving aside the EU, its a positive sign that La France Insoumise, Melenchons political movement, struck such a chord. Nonetheless, I have no sympathy with those who voted for Le Pen. They know what she and her father have always stood for. Even if FN voters are unemployed or overworked, I cannot sympathize with their tendency to become suicidal as a result. They could have expressed their anger at their plight by voting for a candidate who at least nominally represented an alternative rather than one who (aside from being openly corrupt) denies Frances role in the Holocaust, scapegoats all Muslims as terrorists and would even stop all legal immigration. Now many of Melenchons followers and the CGT trade union are calling for abstention in the face of the very real threat that such a person will gain power. As was the case in the US with those who refused to oppose Trump, this makes a mockery of what socialists are supposed to be committed to. Any mature adult with a basic understanding of history would vote for a neoliberal rather than a lifelong national socialist. Anti-fascism has to be the absolute basis of what people who see themselves as on the left stand and fight for. Encouraging the illusion that there is no difference between a banker and a fascist is utterly irresponsible, puerile, infantile, juvenile and obscene. Its like Slavoj Zizek at his most obtuse. Any mature adult with a basic understanding of history and political realities would vote for a neoliberal rather than a lifelong national socialist. As the French themselves say , cest du gateau its a no-brainer. Just as in 2002, when the slogan was its better to vote for a crook than a fascist, the French left must swallow its pride and vote to stop Le Pen. Although Im not as a rule religious, I pray that those who voted Left in the first round will see sense and oppose the far-right in the second. I hope theyre not so stupid as to do what so many so-called progressives in the US did, which was to propagate (probably with some prompting from the Kremlin) the lies of the Trump campaign against the only person who could defeat it, or the British leftists who gave credibility to the Leave campaigns attacks on the EU as a no more than a club for the rich. Ive always rejected the notion that the two extremes of the political spectrum meet up. Over the last few months, with this outbreak of ultra-leftist sentiment in the face of far-right electoral insurrections, its actually becoming true. Although Melenchon himself has called on his supporters to vote with their consciences in the second round, some of them appear not to possess one. The CGT is calling the next stage a contest between the plague (Macron) and cholera (Le Pen). Criticism of Macron is already focussing on his past as a banker for Rothschild, i.e. evoking and appealing to a deep-seated anti-semitic canard particularly prevalent on the internet among Putin, Trump and, bien sur, Le Pen supporters. It may well work. Already 16% of Melenchons voters have apparently decided that if they cant have his version of socialism theyll vote for the national variety instead. Its also possible that Le Pens extremist allies in Isis could arrange a convenient terrorist attack on the eve of the vote, or that the dark arts of Putin, Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica could give the polls a sickening lurch to the right. There has rarely been an election in relation to which complacency (in the form of abstention) has been less warranted. People forget how the German Communist Partys denunciation of the Social Democrats as social fascists contributed to the rise of Hitler. One pro-Melenchon supporter who is refusing to vote for Macron posted in La France Insoumis Facebook group We are the only true humanist and ecologist force in the country, and urged voters to write in the name Melenchon on the ballot paper on May 7. Although this person doesnt seem to know how the German Communist Partys denunciation of the Social Democrats as social fascists contributed to the rise of Hitler, its impossible that he isnt aware of what happened last November in the US. Such people are too in love with their self-image as pure leftists to learn lessons from history, however distant or recent. Anyone who is genuinely on the left will vote for Macron to stop an actual fascist coming to power, just like those who were true progressives voted for Clinton and opposed Brexit. Ce nest pas lheure de faire des jeux vaniteux et infantiles. UPDATE: I see that the Washington Post has reached much the same conclusion. KEARNEY Buffalo Countys Geographic Information Systems Workshop can soon be viewed for free by the countys constituents. The Buffalo County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to allow people to review all information about property in the county, which commissioners hopes will better inform people about their property valuations. Currently, the county charges $300 a year to businesses for the use of GIS, said Chairman of the Board Bill McMullen of Kearney, and only 22 businesses in the county are paying members. McMullen said the businesses will be refunded for payments made this year. For the amount of money were making off of it, I think wed save a lot more money if the citizens were able to look that up and determine whether or not they were being treated fairly and accurately on their valuation, McMullen said. Last year, the county board listened to 2,566 protests, which was up from 383 protests in 2014. What we have been doing with them information-wise hasnt worked. The numbers (protests) keep going up, Commissioner Sherry Morrow of Kearney said. McMullen asked for Buffalo County Assessor Ethel Skinners opinion on the matter. I think that for the benefit of your constituents that you really do need to make that information available to them, so that they can go look and see if they are being treated fairly, she said. If they are being treated fairly, even though their values may be too high, they at least know they are being treated like the rest of the people in their neighborhood. Its very important. Skinner added that 2017 valuations will be available on GIS May 2. She encourages people to contact the assessors office by email, phone or in person if they believe there are mistakes. To also reduce the amount of time spent listening to protests, at its previous meeting the board approved hiring referees. Referees are trained appraisers who would listen to protests in place of the board. At Tuesdays meeting, McMullen said there have been applicants from Lincoln and from Buffalo County. It looks pretty good so far, McMullen said of the applicants. Joe Wilson of Lancaster County has six to eight appraisers who work for him, McMullen said, and the group has conducted the referee process in that county for about a decade. The cost for the each appraiser would be $100 -$125 per hour plus hotel fees, McMullen said. Two local people also applied. McMullen said their fees would be anywhere from $100-$150 per hour. At a previous meeting, McMullen said referees could cost Buffalo County anywhere from $50,000-$100,000 annually. The board will announce its decision about which referees to hire its next meeting. In other matters, the board decided on a location for an electrical box at the Buffalo County Recreational area near Ravenna. The board chose to have an electrical box installed west of the lake in a wooded area at a cost of about $19,000. It chose the plan over a $14,000 proposal to install the electrical box closer to the water. Having the electrical box farther from the water and in the wooded area, McMullen said, puts it closer to current campsites. He said the trees in the area may be taken out in the future to make way for campsites and to restore groundwater in the area. In an October meeting, Linda Zinnell of Ravenna told the board the city of Ravenna had offered $12,000 for the project, which the city gave to the Ravenna Area Vision Foundation. Additionally, the Kearney Visitors Bureau has offered $1,700 a year for the next five years to help subsidize the cost of electricity at the lake, McMullen said. In other matters, the board: - Approved subdivision fee changes. Fees can be viewed on the Buffalo County website. - Approved valuation changes for about 137 properties. - Approved a liquor license manager application for Pilot Travel Center at Elm Creek. - Approved a 6.78 acre administrative subdivision for Donald and Ardis Bauer at Pole Line and Amherst roads. - Approved an amendment to the Buffalo County Subdivision Regulations, which now states that another administrative subdivision cant be added to the same property within five years. McMullen said if property owners want to develop land into several lots, they would have to apply for a subdivision plat instead. MINDEN A suspect in the assault of a woman Sunday at a Minden home has turned himself in to authorities. According to a news release today from the city of Minden, Chad D. Carlson, 39, no address listed, turned himself in at the Kearney County Sheriffs Office and was released on 10 percent of a $25,000 bond. An article in Wednesdays Hub about a warrant for Carlsons arrest incorrectly stated Carlson was already in custody. Carlson is charged with third-degree assault and with trespassing, both Class I misdemeanors. A warrant for his arrest was issued Monday. The charges stem from an alleged disturbance at about 9:52 a.m. Sunday at 902 S. Nebraska Ave. No. 21. According to court records, Carlson allegedly caused bodily injury to Nichole Peterson, no age or address listed, who was later treated at a hospital. Another woman, Ruth Ann Ehrke, 35, of Oxford was found unresponsive at the home, an earlier press release said, and she was transported to CHI Health Good Samaritan in Kearney. Ehrke died at about 10:30 p.m. Monday. The circumstances of Ehrkes death havent been released by authorities. However, an autopsy of her body was scheduled, according to the news release. MPD continues to investigate the case. Carlsons next court date has not been posted. If convicted and not placed on probation, he could spend up to one year in jail for each Class I misdemeanor charge. YORK, Neb. Erica Jenkins made a relatively low-key court appearance Wednesday to contest felony charges that she used a lock to beat up a fellow inmate who helped prosecutors put her in prison for murder. With none of the outbursts or antics that have characterized her past court hearings, Jenkins, 27, quietly shook her head in disagreement when an investigator said she used a combination lock like brass knuckles to assault the other inmate. The victim of the alleged beating is Christine Bordeaux, Jenkins cousin, who suffered a concussion, facial injuries and a fractured forearm. The Omaha women are relatives of spree killer Nikko Jenkins. York County Judge Linda Caster Senff ruled that there was probable cause that Erica Jenkins committed the assault and ordered the case to district court for possible trial. As she was led out of the courtroom by sheriffs deputies, Jenkins said in a low voice, This is all false. Its a publicity stunt. Authorities have accused Jenkins and another inmate at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women near York of using a deadly weapon to assault Bordeaux, 42. Benny Noordhoek, a criminal investigator with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, testified Wednesday that Jenkins and Bordeaux were assigned to the same cell when the assault occurred on Sept. 24. He did not explain why prison officials failed to keep the two women separated, given their history. Under questioning by Assistant Attorney General George Welch, the investigator said Jenkins was apparently angry over the testimony Bordeaux gave, which helped convict Jenkins of murder. Jenkins wanted her cousin to recant the testimony, but when Bordeaux refused, Jenkins allegedly came up with a plan for retribution, Noordhoek said. While the other inmate held Bordeaux, Jenkins punched her repeatedly with her lock-enhanced fist, Noordhoek testified. When she was first attended to by prison staff, Bordeaux said she was hurt from a fall. But while being taken to the hospital in York, she told them Jenkins had assaulted her. Noordhoek said he interviewed Bordeaux and the other inmate, Priscilla Fields of Omaha. He tried to interview Jenkins, but she refused to give him a statement. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Christopher Johnson, the investigator said no video surveillance footage of the assault exists, nor was the attack witnessed by other inmates or prison staff. Noordhoek did not begin his investigation until 10 days after the assault. He explained that he could not get to it sooner because he is one of only two investigators, who are responsible for incidents in all 10 institutions in the Nebraska prison system. He said no photos were taken of the blood spatters inside the cell, nor was forensic testing conducted on the clothing worn by Jenkins or Fields. The lock allegedly used in the assault apparently has not been located, he said. If convicted, Jenkins faces up to an additional 50 years for the weapon charge and 20 years for the assault charge. She is already serving life in prison for first-degree murder plus more than 100 additional years for seven other convictions that include robbery, use of a firearm to commit a felony and three assaults on guards at the Douglas County Jail. The murder conviction stems from the Aug. 19, 2013, shooting death of Curtis Bradford of Omaha by Erica Jenkins and her brother, Nikko. About a week before that killing, Bordeaux and Erica Jenkins lured two men to Spring Lake Park in Omaha, where Nikko Jenkins ambushed them with a shotgun, killing them both. Bordeaux testified against Erica Jenkins and agreed to take the stand against Nikko Jenkins before he pleaded no contest to the killings. Bordeaux was sentenced to a combined 20 years for criminal conspiracy and attempted robbery. A three-judge panel is currently weighing whether to sentence Nikko Jenkins to death or life in prison for killing four people over a 10-day period in 2013. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine has expressed dismay that prison authorities allowed Erica Jenkins to gain access to Bordeaux in the York prison. He said such incidents could make witnesses even more reluctant to testify against people charged in killings. Fields also faces the same charges in connection with the attack on Bordeaux. Fields, 33, is serving a term of 16 to 18 years for a second-degree assault conviction in Douglas County. She would have been eligible for parole on that charge starting in 2021. Along with 21 other Kearney/Buffalo County residents of diverse backgrounds, I attended and just graduated from the 18th-annual Kearney Police Department/Buffalo County Sheriffs Offices Citizen Police Academy. It was an outstanding/unique learning experience and I believe local law enforcement agencies and their officers are second to none. Many, many thanks to KPD Sgt. Jason Koetters and everyone else involved in putting on the academy for making it such a wonderful learning experience. I believe the academy is another aspect of our community that makes Kearney/Buffalo County such a great place to call home. Kashmiri students browse internet on their mobile phones as they sits inside a restaurant in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. On Wednesday, authorities ordered internet service providers to block 16 social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and popular online chat applications for one month "in the interest of maintenance of public order." The government has often halted internet service in the region in the past in an attempt to prevent anti-India demonstrations from forming. But this is the first time authorities have shut down social media following the circulation of videos of alleged abuse by Indian soldiers.(AP Photo/Dar Yasin) 314 Shares Share D.J. is a 55 year-old woman with recently diagnosed early-stage left-sided breast cancer. She just had a lumpectomy to remove the tumor, and now has to decide whether to undergo chemotherapy after surgery. Her oncologist carefully discusses the clinical and pathologic data about her tumor, in terms D.J. can understand. She discusses the risks, benefits, and side effects of chemotherapy, and recommends treatment. D.J., having learned about the risks and benefits of chemotherapy online, in pamphlets, and from other breast cancer patients, asks her oncologist additional questions about the chemotherapy. After an extensive discussion, D.J. agrees with her oncologist and elects to proceed with treatment. This is an example of an ideal patient-physician interaction in oncology. The oncologist thoroughly discusses all aspects of treatment, the patient is informed and fully understands the risks and benefits of the treatment, and a shared decision is made between a patient and her physician. Does a similar interaction occur when a physician and his or her financial advisor discuss investments? Does the financial advisor lay out the potential returns, costs, and fees of potential investments? Are appropriate alternative investments discussed? Is the financial advisor acting in the best interests of the client, or is he or she looking to maximize commissions? Too often, doctors blindly accept the financial advice of insurance agents or financial advisors. They trust their money guy to handle their finances, so that they can focus on being a physician. Unfortunately, many smart physicians have been sold bad insurance or investment products because he or she just trusted their financial advisor. It is critical to become what I call an informed physician investor when handling your money. Just as we want our patients to be informed and not just blindly accept our recommendations, you should understand where your financial advisor is investing your hard-earned money. The informed physician investor will be able to have a two-way conversation with their financial advisor. Informed patients ask good questions about the risks and benefits of treatments with their doctors. Similarly, there should be shared decision making between an informed physician investor and his or her financial advisor. Here is a list of the questions you should ask your financial advisor when they present an investment to you: What is the potential return of this investment? What are the risks of this investment? What are the expenses and fees associated with this investment? Are there any cheaper alternatives that are similar to this investment? How are you compensated if I purchase this product? Just as doctors are expected to explain complicated medical treatments in terms patients can understand, financial advisors should be able to explain your investments to you without the use of complicated jargon. Once you become an informed physician investor, you can have greater confidence that your money is being invested in a way that fits your goals and preferences. When this happens, you can be sure that your advisor is helping you achieve your financial goals. Wall Street Physician, a former Wall Street derivatives trader , is a physician who blogs at his self-titled site, the Wall Street Physician. Image credit: Shutterstock.com The Laredo Independent School District Board of Trustees called a special meeting on Thursday night to discuss the next steps in finding a new superintendent for the district. The meeting was held to finalize their votes but it quickly escalated into a debate. The L.I.S.D. Board of Trustees rescinding their vote to hire the Texas Association of School Boards to help them lead the search to find the district's next superintendent. Board member Hector Garcia asked to dismantle the vote that was cast by the board two weeks ago. Board member Ricardo Garza believes this possibly could slow down the search. The trustees have now opened it up for other search firms to bring on possible candidates. The board decided to go behind closed doors to discuss who will take over while the board searches for the district's next leader. A spokesperson for L.I.S.D. says they will be reaching out the community for their input in creating a profile for the next superintendent. The search could last four-six weeks but they want it to be as quick as policy allows it. The special meeting was called by board member Hector Garcia. El Cenizo Mayor Raul Reyes says he is disappointed with the latest version of the bill to ban sanctuary cities. Reyes says his position as a city leader is not to ask the legal status of his residents. He adds he will protect his residents, even if it means losing funding. Reyes says although the city is small, this new demand could effort the use of the limited resources they have right now. "Who is going to provide the additional funding? How do you tell a small municipality like El Cenizo, who depends on a reserved police department because we can't afford to hire full time police officers to protect our own border? We have no support from our state government, that now we have to take additional roles and responsibilities as immigration officers," Reyes said. Reyes says in the end, he will have to wait and see the decision made by the Supreme Court. Henry Shefflin visited the Youthwork Ireland Youth Centre at Desert Hall, Kilkenny today in support of the One for Ireland Campaign taking place throughout the May Bank Holiday weekend (Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May). Customers around the country will be asked to add 1 to their bill at the till at retailers nationwide along with restaurants, cafes, hotels, pharmacies and hairdressers These include Applegreen, Starbucks, Mace, Fresh, Spar, Eurospar, Londis, XL, SparExpress, Flying Tiger Copenhagen, Aura Leisure, Cara Pharmacies and members of the Restaurant Association of Ireland. The Lions Clubs of Ireland will be out in force providing volunteer support over the weekend. The campaign, run by young people for young people, is in its second year, with the initiative in 2016 raising over 172,000 for youth homelessness. Funds donated will be used to improve the lives of children and young people in the Kilkenny area through the Youthwork Ireland FRIENDS programme, an evidence-based programme for building psychological resilience and reducing anxiety which is endorsed by the World Health Organisation. By donating to the campaign people can allow this programme to be delivered at Youthwork Ireland centres to children across the Kilkenny area and beyond. In addition to donating in-store people can also donate 2 by texting One to 50300**. Visit www.oneforireland.ie to donate or for more information. On Wednesday, April 26, President Trump released his long-awaited tax proposal well, sort of. The one-page outline provided by the White House should not be viewed as a plan, rather we should see it as a beginning of negotiations (after all Mr. Trump has a self-proclaimed love for negotiations). Here is some of what we know so far: The plan would call for a reduction in tax brackets from the current seven to three: 10%, 25% and 30%. It would eliminate most line-item deductions including those for state and local taxes, sales taxes, gambling losses and moving expense with the noted exceptions of the mortgage interest deduction and charitable gift deduction. It would significantly raise the standard deduction, which Americans can use to reduce their taxable incomes. And on a corporate level, President Trump is following through on his campaign pledge to greatly reduce corporate taxes from 35% down to 15% as well as offering a one-time opportunity for corporations to repatriate offshore cash to the United States at a 10% tax rate. What is glaringly missing from this outline are the revenue offsets, i.e. how we would pay for all of this. Unless the plan includes specific revenue-generating items, one has to assume that this plan is, in essence, one giant turbo-charged trickle-down economics plan (a long favorite economic theory among Republicans). 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 On the personal income tax front, it is hard to argue with the need for a simpler more straightforward tax code (although I suspect the good folks at H&R Block (ticker: HRB (opens in new tab)) and Jackson Hewitt will protest loudly). Eliminating or significantly restructuring the convoluted line-item deduction mechanism and alternative minimum tax is more than needed. And in theory, the end result could be a wash for many as line-item deductions are eliminated in favor of a lower tax bracket. The devil will be in the details, and there arent any of these yet (on Thursday morning White House Budget Chief Mick Mulvaney said the vagueness of the proposal is intentional). On the corporate side, the issues and shortsightedness are much clearer, and have a historical track record. In 2004 Congress, at the urging of then President George W. Bush, passed the repatriation tax holiday, which brought back some $312 billion into the United States. Predictably, very little of this money was utilized to create jobs, as investment or capital expenditure. Rather, it was used for share buybacks, increased and one-time dividends and generally for the benefit of shareholders. President Trumps proposal seems to follow a similar path and it offers flawed expectations that this time around corporations will act in the countrys best interest, as opposed to their own and their shareholders. Perhaps if President Trump attaches certain investment mandates or penalties for misappropriating the funds the plan could be very beneficial to our economy. But as it stands now, the premise of trickle-down economics is unlikely to have results that differ from previous engagements of this policy. Its impossible to give President Trump a grade on his tax proposal, as it isnt much of a proposal at all yet. However, from a market and investor perspective, it is one more piece of hope and good news that could help keep this bull market alive and drive stocks materially higher. Global risk index for wine regions. (Photo: James Daniell / KIT) Every year, worldwide wine industry suffers losses of more than ten billion US dollars from damaged assets, production losses, and lost profits due to extreme weather events and natural disasters. A multidisciplinary European-Australian team of researchers led by Dr. James Daniell of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) examines the extent to which regions are affected by the risks and how climate change influences wine industry. At the 2017 Annual Conference of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna, Daniell presented a global risk index for wine regions. The wine regions of Mendoza and San Juan in Argentina are exposed to the highest risks due to extreme weather and natural hazards worldwide. Kakheti and Racha in Georgia come in at number 2, followed by Southern Cahul in Moldova (number 3), Northwest Slovenia (number 4), and Yaruqui in Ecuador and Nagano in Japan (number 5). These are the first results of a current worldwide study and the first release of the global risk index for wine regions presented by the head of the study, Dr. James Daniell, of the Geophysical Institute (GPI) and the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) of KIT at the 2017 Annual Conference of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna in the session of Natural hazard event analyses for risk reduction and adaptation. The EGU honored Daniell by granting him the Early Career Scientist Award in Natural Hazards for 2017. The study is carried out and the index is developed in cooperation with seismologists, meteorologists, and representatives of other disciplines from KIT, Australian National University, University of Adelaide, Griffith University, University of New South Wales, and University College London as well as Risklayer GmbH, a company located in Karlsruhe. The WineRisk website summarizes the results of the study and presents solutions for wine regions: www.winerisk.com The study covers more than 7,500 wine regions in 131 countries. There is no wine region in the world that is not exposed to extreme weather or natural disasters. Events, such as frost, hail, floods, heat, drought, forest fires, and bushfires as well as earthquakes make worldwide wine industry lose more than 10 billion US$ every year according to conservative estimations. These losses result from damaged assets, losses of production, and lost profit. Cold Waves, Frost, and Hail Cold waves and frost have a large impact, James Daniell says. In the last few days, much frost occurred across Europe, with Slovakia, Bosnia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Czech Republic having the worst impact. Hailstorms are one of the largest yearly natural threats to European winemakers. Traditional wine countries like France and Italy have seen huge losses in the past five years due to hail and frost, with many losses being recorded in the regions of Burgundy and Piedmont. The hail losses from 2012 to 2016 in some vineyards totaled 50 to 90 percent of the value of the crop and caused long-term damage to many old vines. It is not just Europe that is affected by hail. All over the world, winegrowing regions are affected by at least one hail event per year, which can cause damage to the single vintage or to multiple vintages depending on the growth phase of the vines. According to James Daniell, hail nets can save the crop in most cases, given a large hail event. Cost-benefit analyses generally show that the premium wines should be the ones covered by hail nets, with insurance or other cheaper methods used for other wines. Frost risk map. (Photo: Winerisk) Earthquakes Earthquakes have the ability to knock out the infrastructure of entire wine regions for a number of years. In the past years, earthquakes struck Chile, New Zealand, and the USA, among other smaller events causing damage around the world. Over 125 million liters of wine were lost in Chile in 2010, mainly due to the failure of steel tanks. Earthquake-resistant design could have saved many millions of liters, Daniell says. Earthquakes also cause large losses to buildings, tanks, barrels, equipment, and chemicals. Even small earthquakes do not only cause financial loss, but also historical loss by destroying tasting rooms and rare wine collections. A few dollars investment in stabilization mechanisms, such as quake wax, zip ties or bolts, can often save millions of dollars loss. In addition, natural disasters are associated with losses of jobs and tourism. Earthquake risk map. (Photo: Winerisk) Climate Change Global climate change will have both positive and negative effects on wine industry, according to the study. Researchers expect a general shift of wine-growing regions southward and northward, while some wine regions closer to the equator may be lost. Many wines may indeed improve. The English, Canadian, and Northern China wine regions will likely increase production markedly and continue to improve their market share and quality of production, predicts Dr. Daniell. The scientists expect that many wineries will master climate changes by changing grape varieties or harvest times. In addition, they will profit from new grape strains, innovative technologies to optimize production and reduce damage due to biological pathogens and insects, and new methods to overcome extreme weather events. Other Risks: Bushfires, Floods, Volcanic Eruptions The study also covers problems, such as bushfires causing smoke taint to vines. However, smaller-scale studies are required before the results can be included globally in the index. In addition, the effects of floods on vines are being explored. Nevertheless, a major volcanic eruption would likely cause the largest global impact to the wine industry, examples being the Laki eruption of 1783/84 or the Tambora eruption in 1815 which caused the famous year without a summer in 1816. Atmospheric changes, lack of sunlight, and global transport problems could cause major issues not only for the wine industry, other food security issues would likely be more important. Despite all these hazards, the wine industry continues to grow and diversify. Through detailed natural hazard analysis, research can help winemakers and governments alike to prepare adequately for the natural hazards that they face and to reduce losses, Dr. James Daniell says. The geophysicist born in Australia also developed the CATDAT database covering socioeconomic data on natural disasters. Last year, he published CATDAT statistics, according to which 8 million people died and over 7 trillion US$ of loss were caused by natural disasters since 1900. The Biggest Wine Producers in the World and Their Main Threats: Italy: 4.9 billion liters (2016, Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin/OIV)) Hail, frost, earthquake France: 4.2 billion liters (2016, OIV) Frost, hail, storm Spain: 3.8 billion liters (2016, OIV) Hail (Northwest), frost, heat USA: 2.25 billion liters (2016, OIV) Frost, earthquake, storm Australia: 1.25 billion liters (2016, OIV) Frost, storm, hail, bushfire More about the KIT Climate and Environment Center: http://www.klima-umwelt.kit.edu/english. 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. April 27 - Gold on Thursday edged away from two-week lows hit in the previous session on scepticism over President Trump's proposed U.S. tax reform, with markets awaiting central bank meetings in Europe and Japan. FUNDAMENTALS * Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,266.80 per ounce, as of 0115 GMT. Bullion prices edged away from a two-week low of 1,259.90 hit in the previous session. * U.S. gold futures climbed 0.3 percent to $1,267.70 an ounce. * Asian shares ticked down from a near two-year high on Thursday after a long-awaited U.S. tax plan failed to inspire investors, though sentiment remains supported by global growth prospects and receding worries about political risks in Europe. * President Donald Trump unveiled a one-page plan on Wednesday proposing deep U.S. tax cuts, many for businesses, that would make the federal deficit balloon if enacted, drawing a cautious welcome from fiscal conservatives and financial markets. * The European Central Bank is set to keep its ultra-easy policy stance firmly in place on Thursday but may acknowledge better growth prospects, setting the stage for a small signal as early as June about an eventual reduction of stimulus. * The Bank of Japan is set to keep monetary policy steady on Thursday and signal its conviction the country's economic recovery is gaining momentum, taking heart from renewed optimism over the global economy as political concerns in France ebb. * The Trump administration said on Wednesday it aimed topush North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remained open to negotiations to bring this about. * Canadian gold miner Goldcorp Inc reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Wednesday as a $250 million-a-year cost-cutting plan started to take effect. * Australia's Newcrest Mining Ltd said its fiscal 2017 gold production tally would come in at the low end of guidance of between 2.35 million and 2.60 million ounces due to a seismic event earlier this month that rocked its flagship Cadia mine in Australia. * Sibanye Gold Ltd expects Stillwater deal to close on May 4. * Precious metals miner Fresnillo Plc said its silver production rose 12.5 percent in the first quarter due to higher ore grades at its Fresnillo and Cienega mines in Mexico. DATA/EVENT AHEAD (GMT) 0600 Germany GfK consumer sentiment May 0900 Euro zone Business climate April 0900 Euro zone Consumer confidence final April 1145 European Central Bank interest rate decision 1200 Germany Consumer prices April 1230 U.S. Durable goods March 1230 U.S. Advance goods trade balance March 1230 U.S. Weekly jobless claims 1330 ECB holds news briefing after policy meeting 1400 U.S. Pending homes sales March (Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips) * SSEC +0.4 pct, CSI300 +0.4 pct, HSI +0.6 pct * March industrial profits soar 23.8 pct on building boom but pace slowing * Profit margin pressures intensify for some manufacturers SHANGHAI, April 27 (Reuters) - China's main stock indexes fell to more than two-month lows on Thursday before paring losses amid lingering concerns about economic growth and tighter regulations. The blue-chip CSI300 index fell 0.5 percent to 3,426.79 points by the lunch break, after earlier dipping to levels not seen since early February. The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.4 percent to 3,128.42. Profits earned by China's industrial firms rose 23.8 percent in March from a year earlier, still robust but slowing from multi-year highs seen in previous months. Thursday's data also suggested some firms further up the manufacturing chain were having trouble passing higher input costs to buyers, pressuring profit margins. That reinforced concerns that China's economy could have peaked in the first quarter and may slow during the rest of the year. "We remain very cautious about the market for the moment, as regulators continue to tighten grip in deleveraging efforts," said Yang Weixiao, an analyst with Founder Securities. "The regulatory crackdown on the banking system to contain risks will also draw liquidity out of the stock market," added Yang. President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for increased efforts to ward off systemic risks to help maintain financial security, the official Xinhua news agency said. "The policy response demonstrates the authorities' intention to ensure that financial system de-leveraging doesn't lead to financial instability," Tim Condon, head of Asia research at ING, said in a note. "But it will make 2017 a difficult year to make money in Chinese financial markets, in our view. On the positive side, lower China macro risk is positive for risk assets globally." Main sectors fell across the board, with property shares leading the decline. Home prices in China's biggest cities would likely rebound if government curbs are relaxed, a senior official from the country's top economic planner was quoted as saying, suggesting authorities are in no mood to lift restrictions any time soon. HONG KONG In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was little changed at 24,575.01, while the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index lost 0.6 percent to 10,253.23. Asian shares eased from a near two-year high on Thursday as a long-awaited U.S. tax cut plan failed to inspire investors, though sentiment remained supported by global growth prospects and receding worries about political risks in Europe. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ China stock market graphics suite ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> Keywords: CHINA STOCKS/MIDDAY HANOI, April 27 (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 0411 GMT. April 27 USD/VND mid-point 22,347 USD/VND interbank 22,734/22,736 USD/VND unofficial 22,730/22,740 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.53/36.75 Interbank offered rates Overnight 4.0-5.0 1 week 4.8-5.0 1 month 4.9-5.2 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) (Adds quotes from source, background) By David Ljunggren OTTAWA, April 27 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged U.S. President Donald Trump not to withdraw from NAFTA in a call on Wednesday, saying such a move would be counter-productive, a Canadian source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Trudeau made the comments after Trump told him he was thinking about pulling out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and asked for his opinion, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the situation. The White House said earlier that Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that he would not terminate the NAFTA treaty at this stage, but would move quickly to begin renegotiating it with them. "Trump told him (Trudeau) he was thinking about withdrawing from NAFTA and said he wanted our opinion," said the source. "The prime minister told him a U.S. withdrawal would cause job loss and instability on both sides of the border. He said he understood his frustration with Congress, but that this step would be counter-productive," the source added. Trump's administration has yet to formally advise Congress of its intention to open negotiations. Any move to break up NAFTA would cause great economic damage to Canada, which sends 75 percent of all its exports to the United States. Trudeau, according to the source, reiterated to Trump that Canada was open to a discussion about how NAFTA could be improved. Canadian officials have so far taken a largely restrained attitude to Trump's harsh language on NAFTA, describing it as a negotiating tactic ahead of the talks. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Tom Brown) (Adds quote, details) By Camillus Eboh ABUJA, April 27 (Reuters) - Nigeria's upper house of parliament aims to pass long-delayed legislation by the end of the year to reform the oil industry, which provides 70 percent of national income, a senator said on Thursday. The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which covers everything from an overhaul of state oil company NNPC to taxes on upstream projects, has been stuck in parliament for a decade. Uncertainty over fiscal terms in the industry have held back billions of dollars of investment, especially in capital-intensive deepwater offshore. The legislation, which has been broken into separate parts including governance and fiscal issues to help speed up debate, is central to President Muhammadu Buhari's reform plans. "We want to ensure that we will pass all the bills before the end of 2017," Senate Committee Chairman on Petroleum Upstream Tayo Alasoadura said during a visit by the U.S Ambassador Stuart Symington to his office. He said senate had agreed to discuss and pass the bill on governance on May 16 and 17. The governance part deals with management of the state-oil firm NNPC. "We will be taking two other bills on the fiscal aspect of the oil industry and that of host communities," he said, without giving a date for that debate. The fiscal provisions of the oil bill which includes taxes, budgets and cash commitments has been the most contentious part of the reform plan, drawing criticism from international oil companies who complained publicly about the terms. The senate introduced the fiscal bill on Thursday after reports on the governance section were submitted this month. The bills will need support from the lower house of parliament and approval of the president before becoming law. (writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by David Evans and Edmund Blair) (Adds detail) HARARE, April 27 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has met all conditions to clear arrears to the World Bank and African Development Bank, paving the way for possible future funding from the International Monetary Fund, its finance minister said on Thursday. The southern African nation in October last year cleared its 15-year-old financial arrears with the IMF, in a major step towards its first loan programme with the Fund since 1999. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement that facilities negotiated by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to repay the $1.75 billion arrears had been "scrutinised and scrutinised" by the World Bank and AfDB, who were satisfied. "Clearance of debt arrears is expected to open the door to foreign finance inflows and possible debt treatment by the Paris Club and non-Paris Club Bilateral Creditors through an IMF financing programme," Chinamasa said. He did not give details on where cash-strapped Zimbabwe had obtained the money to clear the arrears. President Robert Mugabe's government is struggling with dwindling foreign exchange inflows and acute shortages of cash that meant that banks have been limiting withdrawals. Without foreign funding, the government has relied on tax inflows to support its budget, 90 percent of which goes towards paying its civil service. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Tom Heneghan) * Sharara major field for Libya output plans * Zintan local leaders negotiated restart * Libya plans 1.1 mln bpd output by August (Adds Sanalla confirmation, details on production) By Ahmad Ghaddar and Ahmed Elumami LONDON/TRIPOLI, April 27 (Reuters) - Libya's Sharara oilfield has restarted after the end of protests by an armed group that had blocked pipelines there, National Oil Corp chairman Mustafa Sanalla said on Thursday. No details were immediately available about output at the field, which has a production capacity of nearly 300,000 barrels per day (bpd). A Libyan oil source and a local official had earlier told Reuters production resumed at the field, which is operated by state oil firm NOC with Repsol , Total , Norway's Statoil and OMV . Traders said the field restarted early on Thursday. The oil source said El Feel oilfield, with a capacity of about 90,000 bpd, had also restarted. El Feel and Wafa field condensate make up the Mellitah blend which is exported from Mellitah terminal operated by NOC and Italy's ENI. Sanalla, speaking on the sidelines of an industry event in Paris, said Libyan oil production was about 491,000 bpd on Thursday and NOC hoped to reach 800,000 bpd soon. He said NOC still planned to reach a production target of up to 1.1 million bpd by August, a goal that will receive a boost from the resumption of output from Sharara. News about restarting Sharara and El Feel weighed on crude prices, pushing Brent crude futures more than 2 percent lower to $50.50 a barrel at 1450 GMT. Investors are worried by oversupply in the market. Oil security in Libya remains fragile and attempts to negotiate with groups who periodically block and close down pipelines to make political demands have fallen through in the past as rival factions compete for power. Mohamed Almahdi Alnajeh, a member of the local Zintan region elders council, told Reuters they had reached a negotiated deal with the group blocking the Sharara pipeline to end the protest. The protesters were told to take up demands to NOC, he said. The Sharara blockade was the latest in a series of disputes. Protesters blocked a pipeline leading from Sharara in March. The protests ended in early April but resumed a week later, halting NOC's plans to raise production there to 270,000 bpd. Libya's oil production has been hit by protests, Islamist militant attacks and fighting among rival military factions since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 sent the country spiraling into turmoil. Before the civil war, Libya produced 1.6 million bpd. (Additional reporting by Julia Payne in London and Alex Lawler in Paris; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Edmund Blair) Actor Kwak Do-won pose during the interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, western Seoul, last Friday. / Courtesy of Showbox By Kim Jae-heun Actor Kwak Do-won had never felt as skeptical about politics until he starred in the recent film "The Mayor." The film depicts a desperate political scenario revolving around an election campaign for Seoul mayor and Kwak portrays campaign manager Shim Hyeok-soo. Shim is an aide to Mayor Byeon Jong-gu (played by Choi Min-sik) who is serving his second term and is running for office a third time. Byeon shows how desperately a politician strives to seize and keep power. "I have learned what a mess the political scene can be" said Kwak during an interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, Friday. "It's a scary place. People betray one another as soon as they turn their backs." In particular, because what is actually happening in the country is so much like the story in the film, Kwak feels frustrated, and at the same time amazed that perhaps he could have portrayed a politician in real life. When he first received the script in the winter of 2015, the actor did not realize that former President Park Geun-hye would be impeached. "I read the script with a lot of joy and thought it would be a really good movie. Then, Park's scandal broke. It was totally ridiculous, because what Park has done is something unimaginable like a movie," said Kwak. With the presidential election due in two weeks, Kwak said no movie shows a better understanding of the current political scene, and that people should watch the film and go vote. Kwak gained wide popularity for his perfect elite villain roles as a corrupted prosecutor and a secret agent in previous movies. In last year's "Asura: The City of Madness," the actor played a malicious prosecutor running after a corrupt mayor. He took the role of a bitter and cold spy in his most successful film in 2013, "The Attorney," which became the eighth best-selling Korean film of all time. In the film "Nameless Gangster: Rules of Time" that propelled the actor to stardom, he was a public prosecutor investigating a murder case. There, Kwak demonstrated how brutally the prosecution interrogated citizens in the country's first civilian government, which declared war against organized crime under ex-President Roh Tae-woo. "I don't think it was me that fit elite villain roles. The characters were so realistic and they were no strangers to the audience. I only took part in portraying the roles with hopes that no more prosecutors or secret agents abuse their power," said Kwak. Q. What does the title of the movie imply? (The movie's Korean title is "Special Citizen.") A. According to the director, a special citizen could refer to incumbent Mayor Byeon, or it could be the citizens living in Seoul. Also, the title has a voting stamp mark on it, implying those who participate in the election are special. Some 10 million citizens gathered to protest against former President Park at Gwanghwamun when the corruption scandal erupted. I believe citizens who participate in politics are all special. Q. The Mayor Byeon character shows a little bit of humanity. Meanwhile, your character Shim is as cold-hearted as a psychopath. How did you engross yourself in the character? A. I tried to add laughing points while portraying Shim, because he appears too inhumane in the movie. Although he has a family picture in his big house, none of the members appear. I felt that Shim was really a loner. He was obsessed with his shoes too. He would always have his dress shoes waxed clean, maybe because he hoped that it would bring him luck. But shoes are one of our things that get scratched and dirty easily. In the end, he is crushed to death by a shoe rack. It shows how power vanishes in vain. Q. Did you ever feel stereotyped while acting? A. Yes. In fact, I feel like I'm in a slump every day. I am never sure of what I am doing and worry I play too many similar roles. I ask myself Am I a prosecutor again, another villain?' Well, bad guys are fun to play, but it is just hard to make choices on my own every day. Q. While portraying the politician character, how did you find the job personally? A. I realize that becoming a successful politician is like finding a genie and a magic lamp. Politicians have to overcome many temptations on the way to their ultimate destination. There are 300 lawmakers in the National Assembly and I wonder how many of them are detached from their desire for power. Q. How do you compare an actor to a politician? They both live on the popularity from the people? A. An actor does not live on popularity. Never. When an actor concentrates on his acting, he gives happiness to people. An actor should not seek popularity from the audience because if he does so, he begins to lose his honesty in his acting. A true actor only focuses on analyzing a script and doing it over and over again. Q. What kind of film do you want The Mayor to be remembered as? A. When I first participated in this film, I only had one hope that there would be no more political crises in Korea as such in the scenario. In the past, we lived in a country where power was abused and manipulated by those in power. Now, Korea is changing and in 10 or 20 years, when we watch this film again, I hope this country has become a better place. The Mayor' Aspiring to become Seoul's first mayor to win a third term, Byeon Jong-gu (Choi Min-shik) works hard to capture the people's hearts. However, a series of unfortunate events happen, threatening his dream. Directed by Park In-je. The King's Case Note' In the Joseon period, mysterious incidents happen in Seoul, evoking fear among the people. Together with his servant, a wise and intelligent King Yejong (Lee Sun-kyun) tries to solve the mystery by himself. Directed by Moon Hyun-sung. Denial' David Irving (Timothy Spall) sues famous historian Deborah E. Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) for libel, denying the fact that the Holocaust existed. Deborah endeavors to prove the historical truth, in collaboration with veteran lawyers. Directed by Mick Jackson. Pride' In the summer of 1984, U.K, the National Union of Mineworkers goes on a long-term strike. A group of gay activists offer their help to the miners, showing the power of solidarity. Directed by Matthew Warchus. The Fate of the Furious' The leader of a crew of street racers, Dominic (Vin Diesel) gets allured into the world of terrorism by a mysterious woman. The rest of the crew tries to stop him. Directed by F. Gary Gray. Statue of Martin Luther / Courtesy of the German National Tourist Board By Jung Min-ho Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther promulgated his 95 theses and criticized the Roman Catholic Church for its critical theological errors and institutional sins. Luther, then an obscure priest, nailed his proposals to the church door at Wittenberg and stood up against religious leaders who claimed freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. By doing so, he sparked not just the Protestant Reformation that would forever change the direction of Christianity but also breathed new life into the Christian faith, including Roman Catholicism. This year, travelers to Germany will encounter a plethora of interesting events to celebrate the 500th anniversary of his "95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" across the country. Nancy Choi, a PR representative of the German National Tourist Board (GNTB) for Koreans, said she expects more Koreans to visit Germany. Korea, in which 30 percent of its population identify themselves as Christians, is one of the target countries for the GNTB in 2017, she noted. According to the GNTB, about 250,000 Koreans visited Germany last year. The number of nights they spent in the country was 618,386, 5.7 percent up from 2015 and 91 percent up from 2005. She recommended eight travel routes, which include some of the most significant places to visit in order to understand Luther's life and the Reformation movement. Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation, is a good place to start. There, Luther lived, preached and nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church. Visitors will find many memorials to Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora, who is often considered one of the most important participants of the Reformation because of her role in helping to define Protestant family life and setting the tone for clergy marriages. The city's Luther House is the largest Reformation museum in Germany. Visitors can see the rooms used by Luther and a collection of Reformation manuscripts and artifacts. The Wartburg Castle in Eisenach is another place visitors should not miss. Luther stayed there for his safety following his excommunication by Pope Leo X in 1521. This is the place where Luther "fought the devil with ink" by translating the New Testament from the original Greek to German. It was not the first German translation of the Bible, but his version quickly became the most influential. Traveling in Germany is always a pleasant experience, but it would be especially meaningful this year for all Christians around the world, according to the GNTB. South Korea said that it has been "faithfully" enforcing sanctions adopted by the United Nations Security Council against North Korea, according to a report the Seoul government recently submitted to the council. South Korea turned in the report on Feb. 13 detailing what efforts it has been making in line with the latest Resolution 2321 imposed on the North following its fifth nuclear test in September. The report was recently disclosed on the council's official website. "The government of the Republic of Korea is committed to faithfully implementing Security Council Resolution 2321 and all previous Security Council sanctions resolutions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," the report said, using the official names of the two countries. "Currently, there are no exchanges or cooperation between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," it added. The government provided detailed efforts that have been made in tandem with the U.N. sanctions, including toughening curbs on the transfer of strategic items to the North, updating its control list and keeping tabs on the possible inflow of North Korean products, such as coal through any deceptive channels. Relevant government agencies also explained to each industry what is prohibited under the latest resolution, the report showed. The European Union imposed additional sanctions on North Korea on Monday over nuclear and ballistic missile tests carried out in defiance of the U.N. Security Council. The decision, implementing a November UN resolution, comes with North Korea in the international spotlight after the assassination in Kuala Lumpur airport of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of leader Kim Jong-un. The European Council, comprising the EU's 28 member states, said the new measures include restrictions on trade in coal, iron and iron ore, plus a ban on imports of copper, nickel, silver and zinc from North Korea. The sale of new helicopters and vessels to North Korea was banned, while tighter controls were introduced on the transport, finance and property sectors. Member states will also curb any teaching, training or scientific links which might benefit North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, it added. U.S. President Donald Trump aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through economic sanctions and diplomatic measures while remaining open to negotiations, top U.S. officials said in a rare joint statement Wednesday. "North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority. Upon assuming office, President Trump ordered a thorough review of U.S. policy pertaining to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a joint statement. "Today, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, we briefed members of Congress on the review. The president's approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners," the statement said. The statement was issued after the officials held a highly unusual briefing on North Korea policy for all 100 senators at the White House in a move that underlines the urgency and seriousness the Trump administration attaches to the problem. A similar briefing was held on Capitol Hill for members of the House of Representatives. It is unprecedented for the White House to hold such a special briefing for the Senate about a single foreign policy problem. It is also believed to be the first time that such top U.S. security officials have issued a joint statement on North Korea. The statement said that past efforts have failed to halt North Korea's unlawful weapons programs and nuclear and ballistic missile tests, adding that with each provocation, North Korea jeopardizes stability in Northeast Asia and "poses a growing threat to our allies and the U.S. homeland." What also stands out is the emphasis on the need for dialogue with the North as well as the lack of any mention or suggestion of the possibility of military action, such as the phrase "all options are on the table." "We are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on the DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue. We will maintain our close coordination and cooperation with our allies, especially the Republic of Korea and Japan, as we work together to preserve stability and prosperity in the region," it said. Top U.S. officials were to provide all members of the Senate and the House of Representatives with highly unusual briefings on North Korea on Wednesday in a move that underlines the urgency President Donald Trump attaches to the problem. Trump was scheduled to stop by the briefing for all 100 senators set to take place at the White House, where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other top officials are expected to outline the status of the problem and the administration's plans to deal with it. A separate briefing will be held at the Congress for House members later in the day. The White House briefing for senators had originally been scheduled to take place at the Senate, but the location has since been rescheduled due to concern about the information's sensitivity and other reasons. No congressional staffers will be allowed in the closed-door briefing. It is unprecedented for the White House to hold such a special briefing for the entire Senate about a single foreign policy problem. That shows the seriousness with which the Trump administration views the North Korea issue. The briefing comes after the Trump administration has finalized its strategy to deal with the North, which reportedly focuses on "maximum pressure and engagement." It also comes as tensions are running high with the North amid concerns it could carry out its sixth nuclear test at any time. (Yonhap) Following in the full text of a joint statement on North Korea issued by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. -------- Past efforts have failed to halt North Korea's unlawful weapons programs and nuclear and ballistic missile tests. With each provocation, North Korea jeopardizes stability in Northeast Asia and poses a growing threat to our allies and the U.S. homeland. North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority. Upon assuming office, President Trump ordered a thorough review of U.S. policy pertaining to North Korea. Today, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, we briefed members of Congress on the review. The president's approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners. We are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on the DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue. We will maintain our close coordination and cooperation with our allies, especially the Republic of Korea and Japan, as we work together to preserve stability and prosperity in the region. The United States seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies. (Yonhap) By Yi Whan-woo The incoming South Korean government is expected to be in sync with President Donald Trump's administration over policies on North Korea, given that the latter is surprisingly open to dialogue with Pyongyang, according to analysts, Thursday. Dampening talk of military action against the North, the U.S. suggested "tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures" against the reclusive regime in a statement issued Wednesday. Summarizing a White Housing briefing before Congress, the statement also suggested that the Trump administration remains "open to negotiations" regarding the Kim Jong-un regime's denuclearization, while being fully prepared for self-defense. Jointly issued by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, the statement finalizes the Trump government's doctrine on Pyongyang. "This is believed to be in line with the two leading presidential candidates' North Korea policies," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University. The two candidates Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo have called for a two-track strategy of maintaining sanctions on while simultaneously resuming dialogue with North Korea. By Jung Min-ho The number of foreigners visiting Korea for medical purposes jumped 23 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, the government said Thursday. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of medical tourists increased to 364,189 last year from 296,889 in 2015. Meanwhile, revenue from them surpassed 860 billion won ($760 million), a record high. Korea's medical tourism boom seems unaffected by the Chinese government's retaliation over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system here. China accounted for 35.1 percent of the visitors with 127,648, followed by the United States with 48,788 (13.3 percent), Japan with 26,702 (7.3 percent), Russia with 25,533 (7 percent) and Kazakhstan with 15,010 (4.1 percent). When it comes to expenditures per patient, the United Arab Emirates, which accounted for 3,562 of the visitors, was the highest with 12 million won, followed by Thailand (5.2 million won) and Kazakhstan (4.2 million won). The ministry said 284 patients spent more than 100 million won. Contrary to popular belief, plastic surgery wasn't the biggest attraction for them, accounting for only 11.3 percent or 47,881 of the total patients. Internal medicine accounted for 20 percent, followed by plastic surgery and dermatological treatments (11.1 percent). Demand grew especially for dermatology, gynecology and medical checkups. The increased demand for dermatological treatments is attributed largely to Japanese visitors, while Russians and Mongolians seeking to treat infertility is the main reason for the increased demand for gynecology, the ministry noted. More than half of medical tourists chose Seoul. About 78 percent received treatment in the capital or cities in Gyeonggi Province, down by 2 percent compared with 2015. For hospitals in non-metropolitan regions to share the fruits of medical tourism, the ministry has tried hard to promote them over the past few years. The ministry reckons more medical institutions in various cities will benefit from the trend in the coming years. The ministry's ambition is to increase the current number of medical tourists to 1 million by 2020. Past numbers show the goal isn't far-fetched. Amounting only to 60,201 in 2009, medical tourists soared to 122,297 in 2011 and 266,501 in 2014. The revenue made in 2009 was about 54.9 billion won. The ministry believes there is still a great deal of potential for growth. Ahead of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, which will begin on Feb. 9, the ministry plans to put more effort into promoting the country's quality medical services. By Kim Se-jeong Lack of affordable accommodation is a growing challenge in Korea and all major presidential candidates have promised to provide more public housing to solve the problem. Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), the frontrunner in the race, promised to provide 170,000 public housing units every year he is in office which would total 850,000 homes. Runner-up Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party made a similar promise, pledging 150,000 units every year. Hong Joon-pyo of the Liberty Korea Party said he would provide 120,000 units per year, while Yoo Seong-min of minor conservative Bareun Party promised 150,000 until 2022. Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party promised 150,000 new homes per year. Each candidate has a different idea regarding beneficiaries. Moon has newlywed couples in mind and pledged to dedicate 30 percent of the promised housing units to them alone. Ahn's focus is on college students and young jobseekers, promising 50,000 units for them every year. Sim and Yoo have in mind young people who live alone, while Hong had no target audience. Three candidates pledged a government subsidy for those who can't afford housing. Moon projected 100,000 won per month and Sim 200,000 won for the least privileged 2.15 million households. Ahn did not mention a specific amount. LIG Nex 1's unmanned ship / Yonhap South Korea's Navy will start the trial operation of an unmanned ship next month, the country's newly developed weapon mainly for use on the tense sea border with North Korea, the state arms procurement agency said Thursday. The Defense Acquisition Program Agency (DAPA) launched a 3.3 billion won ($2.9 million) project in late 2015 to develop an unmanned surface vessel in partnership with LIG Nex 1, a local defense firm. The production of the 8-meter-long, 3-ton ship with a maximum speed of 30 knots was completed in November last year. Its weapon systems include a chain gun, water cannon and guided weapons. Its functions, including surveillance, reconnaissance, ship chasing and obstacle avoidance, will be demonstrated at the Navy Operation Command in Busan later in the day, said DAPA. "It will be test-operated by the Navy from May to July" for the determination of the details of its required operational capabilities, it added, DAPA officials said it could be a model for the military to take the initiative in developing and using autonomous mobile robot technology. (Yonhap) Independent lawmaker Kim Jong-hoon speaks in front of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Thursday, after filing a complaint against acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, Defense Minister Han Min-koo, National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin and Foreign Affairs Minister Yun Byung-se. The lawmaker claimed they gave up the national interest by allowing the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, which he said should have been left to the next government. / Yonhap By Kim Rahn Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn and Defense Minister Han Min-koo face strong criticism for hastening deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here. Critics say the rush is aimed at completing the installation before the next government is launched following the May 9 election, so the deployment decision cannot be reversed. As THAAD is a key security issue in the election, they say Hwang and Han may have attempted to interfere in the election, failing to maintain their political neutrality. Key elements of the anti-missile system, including the AN/TPY-2 X-Band radar and mobile launchers, were brought to the site in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, early Wednesday morning through a sudden overnight operation. They were transported only six days after the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) secured the land from the South Korean government and even before due procedures such as an environmental inspection, had been carried out. The ministry also said Thursday the system will soon be put into actual operation without testing. It was expected that the installation and operation decision would be handed over to the next government, as the presidential election is only weeks away. The ministry said on April 17 that the deployment was unlikely to be completed in a short time, implying it would not be finished before the election. The previous day, a White House foreign policy adviser also said the installation was up to Korea's next president. Critics say the government ignored due procedure and the opinion of the South Korean people by taking advantage of public attention being diverted to the election. Considering the leadership vacuum here following former President Park Geun-hye's removal from office, they say Hwang and Han may be just following the U.S. timetable for the installation. Sim Sang-jung, the presidential candidate of the progressive Justice Party, attends a debate hosted by the Kwanhun Club, an association of senior journalists, in Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap By Choi Ha-young Sim Sang-jung, the presidential candidate of the progressive Justice Party, is becoming a serious contender in the presidential race following impressive performances in televised debates. The only female candidate garnered support of 8.6 percent in a Hankook Research poll conducted Tuesday to Wednesday. In a Realmeter survey released Thursday, she had 7.5 percent, up 2.9 percentage points compared to a week earlier. If this trend continues to the May 9 election, she is expected to win a record number of votes as a non-mainstream progressive candidate, surpassing Kwon Young-ghil's 3.9 percent in the 2002 election. She performed well in the four TV debates. On Tuesday, she chided leading candidate Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea, for his controversial remark: "I don't like homosexuality." "Homosexuality is not a matter of approval. Even though I'm heterosexual, I advocate for their rights and freedoms. That's how democracy should be," she noted. Her campaign team is turning optimistic, hoping for double-digit support. One day after the broadcast, the smallest parliamentary party with six seats has attracted about 300 new members, a campaign official said. The camp has received around 200 million won ($177,000) in political donations as of 10 a.m. Thursday. Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea speaks during a debate hosted by the Korea Broadcasting Journalists Club at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap By Jun Ji-hye Leading presidential candidate Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said Thursday the nation needs nuclear submarines. Toward that end, he vowed to revise the nuclear cooperation deal between South Korea and the United States, if elected, so the nation can purchase the U.S. ingredients that can be used to make nuclear fuel. "We need nuclear submarines in this era," he said during a debate hosted by the Korea Broadcasting Journalists Club, noting that using nuclear fuel as a power source only is not against international agreements. "The problem is we need to purchase the ingredients from the U.S. to turn into nuclear fuel, but the current Seoul-Washington nuclear cooperation deal does now allow this," he said. Moon's comment referred to the deal, revised in 2015, which allows Seoul to enrich uranium to a level of 20 percent when using U.S. ingredients, but disallows uranium enrichment for military purposes. By Sunnie Kim With the show of might between the U.S. and North Korea as the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is coming our way; plus Kim Jong-un's reaction that says he will destroy the carrier, this may be the wrong time to mention problems outside of Korea. But it turns out the thing that kills most people are mosquitoes ahead of humans! As we celebrate World Malaria Day on April 25, we have to face the fact that 429,000 people die each year of this disease that is spread by mosquitoes and 70 percent of those who die of this disease are children under five years old. However, the good news is that mortality due to this disease went down by 29 percent between 2010 and 2015. And sleeping under an insecticide treated mosquito net can reduce the risk by 50 percent. The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria has already distributed 713 million insecticide treated mosquito nets and that must be the reason for this decline in deaths. The Global Fund claims that by 2020, 500,000 more lives will be saved and Malaria can be eliminated by 2030. Of course this won't just happen out of the blue. South Korea has contributed 33 million dollars to this fund since 2002 and this should be acknowledged, especially since the country's existence itself is so constantly threatened. But as it received so much aid to grow to become the 13th largest economy in the world, and to solve a problem that has a proven and inexpensive solution it is definitely time to repay its gratitude by investing at least ten times its current level of contribution. After all, I am sure South Korean tax payers will appreciate contributing to aid programs that saves most lives in the shortest amount of time, and re-orienting the tendency away from contribution to the elimination of infectious diseases, while its overall Official Development Assistance is increasing. Sunnie Kim is a national manager at RESULTS Korea. RESULTS is an international citizens' advocacy organization committed to ending hunger and absolute poverty by working with media and elected representatives. It has branches in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico. Write to Sunnie KimSunniek@gmail.com. By Kwon Hee-jong Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is no longer working as it used to in this part of the world. The notion has been deeply rooted in North Korea's thinking through its negotiations with the international community regarding its nuclear program. Perhaps Pyongyang's calculation has been a grave miscalculation, now that Russia and China, its two powerful neighbors previously believed to constitute a chain reaction in MAD, are apparently working with the U.S. willy-nilly in an internationally choreographed siege on North Korea, the tripwire to regional and global MAD. The danse macabre started with the "madman" in President Donald J. Trump jaunting to Mar-a-Lago. In what was meant to be the first tryst between the heads of the G2 countries, Ivanka Trump's daughter Arabella sang in Mandarin "Mo Li Hua" (Jasmine Flowers), a Chinese folk song known as China's second national anthem, for President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan. The performance by the Trump grandchildren included their reciting of old Chinese poems. That was enough for their spiritual communion. After the music stopped, there came the literal bombshell of the missile strike on the Syrian airbase, which cited the poison gas used to kill civilians including children and which Russia later called "an act of aggression against a sovereign country." People who suspect a Russia tie through the last U.S. presidential election are now left scratching their heads. For now, one can only speculate about what could have transpired with the odd couple. When he was told of the strike, President Xi told President Trump that he understood the U.S. response "because of the death of children." As the Chinese president left America to go home, the Chinese state news agency just so punctually poured out criticisms on the U.S. attack. Once Xi returned to Beijing, the US Pacific Command sent the Carl Vinson strike group toward the Korean Peninsula, unleashing usual mixed with unprecedentedly subdued responses from Chinese authorities and media. And by midweek, the Global Times, the scrappy state newspaper of China, advised Pyongyang to "avoid making mistakes at this time," hinting at growing Chinese support for "restricting oil imports to the North." The paper's take on the current developments is quite succinct: "Pyongyang hopes its gamble will work, but all signs point to the opposite direction." All these fragments only suggest North Korea is now China's white elephant. So, who will be left standing when the music stops? On the home front, South Korea officially started its makeup presidential race on Apr. 17. With the wreckage of the Sewol ferry successfully perched on land at the hands of China's Shanghai Salvage Company, the nation is now equally riveted to both the domestic and international races. Grappling with the Herculean task and torn between the two equally supererogatory acts of God, the people of South Korea are feeling overloaded. Still, homework has to be done. Along with the madman and the tripwire to MAD, one more thing is driving South Korean voters mad: fine dust. With the local media now offering more scientific data and explanations about particulate matter, voters appear less than thrilled. Thus, the people may get mesmerized by the dichotomy between madness and civilization presented by satellite particulate air pollution maps. After THAAD retaliation, China still has a chance to contribute to South Korea's anger management solely by defusing the tripwire and reducing its dust. What is maddening indeed is the fact that all these crucial decisions are going to be condensed into the forthcoming election. With Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo locking horns in a de facto duel, the conservatives and the progressives in this country are regrouping in their bids to reorganize not just the political but social, economic, and cultural arrangements for the nation. With the conservative spinoffs left in jitters from the fission brought by the split vision that formed in the wake of the impeachment, the national race for its political leadership is now in the hands of the progressives. Between Moon charting a big government and Ahn favoring a small one, both of whom are trailed by dogged conservative runners, the choice by most voters will shape the next government and the future for the country. Whether their favored candidates will finish the race or not, the hardcore conservative voters may regardless soldier on to forge a casting vote in an increasingly hard-to-tell contest. Which candidate will laugh last? Having furiously used the scandal and the ensuing impeachment to slough off the re-imposed shackles of stupefying unreason and arbitrary incompetence, the majority of Korean voters now feel they have been empowered to deal with the two-pronged situation. With the international tug-of-war over North Korean nukes likely to enter its conclusive phase, South Korean voters will spend the next 20 or so days trying to figure out what kind of life and future they should choose for themselves and their children. Kwon Hee-jong is a Facebook commentator. By Doh See-hwan Today is the 65th anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan. In 1945 when World War II ended, the U.S. policy toward East Asia was to weaken Japan and build a peace regime with the Soviet Union and China. Under this premise, the Allied powers formed their territorial policy toward Japan, which gave shape to the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the Potsdam Declaration of 1945. Having accepted the Potsdam Declaration, Japan agreed on the territorial policy of the Allied powers. An analysis on the territorial policies of the Allied powers toward Japan until the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan in 1951 can be divided into three periods: determination of territorial policies of the Allied powers toward Japan during wartime (1943-45), continuation of the wartime territorial policies of the Allied powers toward Japan (1945-49) and discontinuation of the policies after the war period (1950-51). It is particularly noteworthy that the change of U.S. policy toward Japan in 1949 amid the intensifying Cold War was a watershed in the basic approach toward the peace treaty and territorial policies toward Japan, which moved from a punitive treaty to an anti-communist treaty, leaving out the defeated nation's accountability for war, territorial cession and reparations. Under this background, the Japanese government has argued repeatedly and constantly that the San Francisco Peace Treaty was directly related to Japanese sovereignty over Dokdo since 1952. Article 2 (a) of the treaty has been invoked by Japan to claim sovereignty over Dokdo, arguing the paragraph does not specify Dokdo. Reviewing this paragraph based on historical truth and international legal justice has a far-reaching significance in establishing Korea's territorial sovereignty over Dokdo. But, paradoxically, when U.S. policy toward Japan changed in 1949, Japan demanded Dokdo be under the sovereignty of Japan in the treaty after its turnaround to an anti-communist treaty, but this demand was rejected, leaving Dokdo not included in Japanese territory. Furthermore, in April 1951 when John Foster Dulles, the special representative in the peace treaty, made the second visit to Japan, the Japanese government reviewed the treaty drafted by the British government, without the presence of Britain who drafted the treaty, or Korea, one of the stakeholders in the treaty. Under a unilateral sponsorship of the U.S., it underwent an intensive and exclusive review of the draft peace treaty created by the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). It is worth noting that by admitting the treaty draft of the FCO which prescribed Dokdo under the sovereignty of Korea in an exclusive chance to express its opinion, Japan consequently officially recognized Dokdo as Korean territory. It is worth reviewing Article 2 of the treaty and international legal principles on the sovereignty of Dokdo from the perspective of a non-party to the treaty. At the second U.S.-Britain summit to prepare the San Francisco Peace Treaty held in London from June 2 to 14, 1951, the U.S. and Great Britain agreed on the effect of treaties upon third states and granted Korea the rights to the benefits of Article 2 by adding Article 21, instead of recognizing Korea as a party to the treaty. Besides, the jurisprudence on a treaty establishing the objective regime with the obligations valid erga omnes is not widely accepted. Even if this is accepted, the San Francisco Peace Treaty hardly falls into the category of treaties establishing objective regimes, taking into account the stances Korea, the Soviet Union, China and Taiwan took at that time. Therefore, Japan's claim over the sovereignty of Dokdo based on the San Francisco Peace Treaty not only goes against the most basic postwar rectification of giving up the territories illegally "taken by violence and greed" during the imperialistic colonial era, but also infringes on the true peaceful cooperation regime which the treaty intended to establish by redressing wartime wrongs. The San Francisco Peace Treaty should be able to make all international legal contributions to form a Northeast Asian peace regime in the 21st century of peace and prosperity by overcoming fundamental issues of historical conflicts and bringing about true historical reconciliation. Doh See-hwan is a research fellow of the Northeast Asian History Foundation. The specter of a low birthrate is haunting the nation faster than expected. According to a report released by Statistics Korea, the number of childbirths in Korea fell for the 15th month in a row in February. Newborn babies numbered only 30,600 in February, down 12.3 percent from the previous year. It's the lowest number of births for any February since 2001, when the statistics office began compiling such data. This year's number of newborn babies could fall below 400,000 for the first time after hitting a record low of 406,300 in 2016. Korea has one of the world's lowest birthrates. Its total rate stood at 1.24 in 2015, which is far lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep Korea's population of 51 million stable. As a result of this trend, Korea's working age population will begin declining this year. Korea will soon become an aged society where more than 14 percent of the population will be 65 years or older. More worrisome is that the birthrate is falling even more rapidly although the government spent 102 trillion won ($90.5 billion) from 2006 to 2016. Demographic changes offer tougher challenges, given that the nation's growth potential will be undermined while welfare expenses are surging. It's not difficult to figure out why the birthrate keeps falling, but tackling the problem is easier said than done. Young people hesitate to marry because of employment woes, low income and soaring housing costs. Even if they get married, many of them shun having babies for fear of childcare and education obligations for their children. Women, in particular, abhor childbirth, burdened by career interruptions and the shortage of public childcare centers. In the run-up to the May 9 snap election, presidential contenders have promised new childcare subsidies, better parental leave programs and cash incentives for having a second child. But most of such pledges appear to be a rehash of the government's failed policies. What is needed is the next leader's determination to combat the looming "population cliff" by all means possible. The next president needs to learn this lesson from Japan, which has succeeded in reversing its falling birthrate with bold policies, including appointing a new minister exclusively for the population problem. People use their smartphones near an advertisements of the Samsung Electronics Galaxy S8 smartphone at its shop in Seoul, Thursday. Samsung Electronics said Thursday its first-quarter profit surged to the highest level in more than three years as its semiconductor division posted the highest income in the company's history. / AP-Yonhap Tech giant shares hit record, market cap tops W300 tril. By Kang Seung-woo Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that it will not seek to convert itself into a holding company, citing negative effects on its business competitiveness. "A holding company structure would not strengthen the competitiveness of the company's businesses and could potentially weigh on its operations long term," Samsung said in a statement. This came after the tech giant announced its first quarter earnings, which reached nearly 10 trillion won in operating profit. Its shares hit a record high, reaching 2,192,000 won, up 2.43 percent from a day before. Its market cap rose to 306 trillion won on positive earnings to top the 300 trillion won mark for the first time. Last November, Samsung said that it would review a change in the management structure, splitting itself into a holding company and a business firm to boost shareholder values. After comprehensive reviews with external advisers, however, the board of directors decided to scrap the plan. Samsung believes that a holding company does not have clear benefits in comparison to its current governing structure. Samsung maintains a well-balanced business portfolio between consumer electronics, including smartphones and TVs, and its components business, comprising semiconductors and displays. "This structure has enabled Samsung to minimize earnings volatility during periods of economic downturn and maintain stable growth through bold and preemptive investment in new technologies and facilities," it said. Moreover, this structure also serves as a platform for sustainable growth by allowing the company to invest in new growth engines with earnings generated by profitable businesses. This is a unique strength of Samsung that cannot be matched by its global peers. "With the company already maintaining strong competitiveness in its businesses, Samsung has held a negative view that converting itself to a holding company structure would not contribute to further enhancing the competitiveness of Samsung," it added. Share cancellation Samsung also announced its plan to write down existing treasury shares held by the company worth 49 trillion won ($43 billion). The decision is another indication that Samsung will not become a holding company because treasury shares are mainly used by major shareholders in a transition to a holding company to boost their share ownership. "The strong balance sheet and the increase in cash holdings of the company have reduced the need to hold treasury shares, which it had retained to use as a financial resource, including for M&A transactions and securing talented professionals," Samsung said It will cancel the shares in two stages to limit the impact on the financial market. It also unveiled a share buyback program worth 2.3 trillion won. Announcing its final earnings tally for the first quarter, Samsung said its operating profit in the January-March period came in at 9.9 trillion won, up 48.3 percent year-on-year and up 7.35 percent from the previous quarter. Sales increased 1.54 percent year-on-year to 50.5 trillion won and net profit came in at 7.68 trillion won, up 46 percent, according to its regulatory filing. Also, Samsung saw a number of issues that could have an impact on the process of changing its corporate structure. The transition requires unloading stakes held by Samsung and its affiliates, so it calls for approval from the relevant companies' boards of directors and shareholders. In addition, current laws could force the company's financial subsidiaries to sell part or all of their stakes in Samsung Electronics, which may lead to volatility in its share price. By Lee Min-hyung LG Chem CEO Park Jin-soo LG Chem CEO and Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo urges his employees to stay away from complacency, despite the firm's record sales in the first quarter of this year. "We need to continue to strengthen our basic competitiveness, regardless of the improved quarterly profitability," he told employees and executives in a meeting, Wednesday. Park, 66, took office as the chief of the nation's top-tier chemical firm in 2014, in recognition for his decades-long field experience and unmatched business acumen. He has since focused on realigning the firm's business structure, setting energy and bio-related businesses as its next revenue areas. Despite its leadership in the petrochemicals industry, however, the LG Chem chief faced challenges to improve the profitability of its deficit-ridden battery businesses. In a recent earnings report, the battery unit of the company posted an operating loss of 10.4 billion won ($9.2 million) in the first quarter, amid political and economic uncertainties here and abroad. But the company offset the loss by setting a sales record of 6.4 trillion won during the same period, backed by strong performance of its basic petrochemical materials business. "LG Chem has begun diversifying its revenue structure into new areas, investing trillions of won in research and development," he said. "This is aimed at strengthening our fundamental capabilities for stable growth, no matter what external uncertainties exist." Park studied chemical engineering at Seoul National University, devoting his life to the same industry for four decades after joining LG in 1977. LG Group recognized his expertise in chemical products and field management, promoting him to vice president of LG Chem in 2003. He has since pushed for aggressive expansion into new revenue areas, making the firm tap into new businesses such as bisphenol A or BPA chemical compound. In 2014, LG Group promoted Park to the firm's vice chairman and CEO because of his contributions to improving profitability in its major cash cows. Six executives indicted for offering kickbacks to doctors By Lee Hyo-sik Novartis Korea is facing the biggest crisis in its 30-year history as six former and current executives have been indicted on charges of offering kickbacks to doctors for years in return for prescribing its products. The latest indictment will likely tarnish the corporate image of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant and adversely affect its business dealings in Asia's fourth-largest economy, industry analysts said. According to the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office, Thursday, investigators indicted former company CEO Moon Hak-sun and five other executives, as well as 28 doctors and heads of medical journals on charges of giving and receiving cash and other kickbacks. Novartis Korea, established in 1983, provided a total of 18.1 billion won ($16.5 million) to five medical journals between 2011 and 2015, according to the prosecution. On behalf of Novartis, the journals then gave 2.6 billion won in cash to dozens of doctors for writing articles or taking part in seminars. Investigators had sought to bring charges against two former CEOs who managed the Korea unit of the world's second-largest multinational drug maker from 2011 to 2015. However, they had to drop the cases because the two refused to return to Korea. Korean Air employees plant trees in the Kubuchi Desert in China, Sept. 20, 2016, as part of efforts to counter desertification and migratory sand storms. / Courtesy of Korean Air By Lee Hyo-sik Korean Air has been practicing the spirit of sharing at home and abroad under the leadership of its Chairman Cho Yang-ho. More than 25 volunteer groups, comprised of 4,000 company employees, have been taking part in various corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to support marginalized groups and protect the environment. In particular, the nation's largest flagship carrier has been active in providing relief goods to those affected by earthquakes and other natural disasters around the globe. "Chairman Cho stresses the importance of growing together with our business partners and local communities," a Korean Air official said. "As a leading global carrier, we will continue to fulfill our social responsibility and encourage employees to more actively take part in volunteer programs." The company has been planting hundreds of thousands of trees in China and Mongolia to counter desertification and migratory sand storms. Since 2007, the carrier has been planting trees in the Kubuchi Desert in China. Each year, employees visit the desert to plant trees in the Korean Air Eco-Park. The 4.61 square-kilometer park will have nearly 1.4 million trees by the year's end, according to Korean Air. The company also has been planting trees in Mongolia since 2004, establishing a 440,000 square-meter eco-park filled with 100,000 trees. The Mongolian government recognized the contribution, giving the company a medal for environmental protection in May 2009. The medal is the highest honor granted by the country's environment ministry. Another Korean Air signature CSR program is to provide free transportation of emergency goods to disaster-hit countries. Earlier this month, the company delivered 9,000 liters of drinking water and other relief supplies to flood victims in Peru. In 2015, Korean Air delivered drinking water, blankets, clothing and other supplies to help earthquake victims there. It also transported relief goods for other disasters including the earthquake in Sichuan, China, in 2008, and another in Japan in 2011. "Korean Air has been introducing community service schemes overseas to assist those in need after natural disasters, and to conserve nature. We also plan to build dozens of schools in Kenya and other African nations," the official said. "We will do more to make the world a better place to live." In Korea, the carrier has been focusing on supporting the needy. Company employees have been visiting welfare centers for orphans, the disabled and the elderly across the country, donating daily necessities and engaging in various activities together. Korean Air also offers children from low-income families and interracial families an opportunity to visit its headquarters and Gimpo International Airport to teach them about the aviation business. Doctors and nurses at the firm's medical center regularly provide free services to migrant workers and senior citizens in rural areas where healthcare is not readily accessible. Company employees have also been visiting farming villages to extend a helping hand in planting and harvesting. By Julia Hollingsworth It was supposed to be a visual celebration but an official poster to mark the 68th anniversary of the Chinese navy has instead been a massive Photoshop fail for the Ministry of National Defence. The official poster from the Ministry of National Defence with what appears to be a Russian aircraft on its deck and two US amphibious vessels alongside. The poster of the Liaoning, the country's first aircraft carrier, was produced by the ministry and shared on its official microblog on Sunday. It pictured the carrier sailing the ocean waves with a flotilla and under a bright blue sky, declaring: "Happy birthday, People's Liberation Army Navy!" But online commenters were quick to point out that instead of a Chinese jet crowning the vessel's deck, the poster showed a Russian MiG-35 fighter aircraft. On top of that, three jets pictured shooting off into the glorious skies were J-10 aircraft used by the country's land-based forces not the J-15s designated as carrier-based aircraft. The errors were compounded by the decision to cut and paste in two ships sailing alongside the Liaoning those vessels are US amphibious assault ships, not Chinese vessels. Online commenters were quick to weigh in on the visual misfires. "This picture shows everyone at the propaganda department is mentally deficient," one wrote on the popular Chinese social media site Weibo. Another said: "The officials are wrong! Go die! We are so patriotic in vain!" Yet another complained about the overall quality of presentation. "This poster is the standard of a street photocopy shop," the commenter said. The navy's anniversary is particularly important for China as it coincides with the planned launch of its new domestically built aircraft carrier, an attempt by China to show off its naval and military strength. The new aircraft carrier, which is still unnamed, will be launched once the tidal conditions are right at the dock in Dalian, China. Actor-turned idol Cha Joo Hyuk has been charged with possessing and also using ecstasy and marijuana. The idol allegedly purchased the drugs in 2016. According to Koreaboo, the prosecution has filed an indictment versus the idol Cha Joo Hyuk. The prosecution stated that the idol bought 28 grams total of marijuana and 0.3 grams of the party drug ecstasy in April of 2016. Soompi also reported that Cha Joo Hyuk purchased 3 marijuana joints from a woman referred only as Ms. Kang in March 16. The idol then allegedly smoked the marijuana sticks in his car at a basement parking garage. Cha Joo Hyuk was also accused of buying 7 weed joints and 6 ecstasy tablets in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This happened in July of 2016. Cha Joo Hyuk was refused to enter Canada in August of 2016. Allegedly, the idol tried to smuggle ketamine into the country. Ketamine, like ecstasy, is also considered as a dangerous party drug. Cha Joo Hyuk was also accused of doing ketamine in August of 2016. The idol was tested and was confirmed to have used up ketamine, ecstasy, and marijuana. South Korea's law against cannabis, commonly known as marijuana or "weed" is among the strictest in the planet. A South Korean police has the right to stop a random person on the street and test them for using drugs - and all they need is a single hair strand. Using the hair, drug use can be detected as far back as three years. If a Korean is tested THC positive, he will be arrested regardless of where he used the drug. Cha Joo Hyuk was a former member of the co-ed group "COED SCHOOL" under Core Contents Media. The idol was accused of raping a woman in before he debuted and thus left the group in 2011. Lee Dong Gun and Jo Yoon Hee apparently are still on their honeymoon period after they made their relationship public back in February. The "Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop" couple was recently spotted on a date in Hawaii. According to Allkpop, Jo Yoon Hee flew to Hawaii on April 20 for a photoshoot. Her boyfriend, Lee Dong Goon, decided to go with her to spend some romantic time in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The couple's photos recently go viral in multiple online communities. In the photos, the couple was spotted enjoying their trip to a souvenir shop in Honolulu. Lee Dong Gun looks comfortable wearing a t-shirt and black jeans, while Jo Yoon Hee still looks cute with her black cardigan. Jo Yoon Hee and Lee Dong Goon could be a couple from the drama that everyone just loves. The 34-year-old actress recently expressed her love to Lee Dong Gun on "Video Star" aired on April 25. During the broadcast, Jo Yoon Hee revealed how perfect Lee Dong Gun is as a boyfriend. She stated that everyday Lee Dong Gun shows her how it would like if generosity and love are combined and that what makes her thankful for having him in her life. Meanwhile, fans are happy to see Lee Dong Gun and Jo Yoon Hee enjoying their vacation just like every other couple. They're hoping that the couple will tie the knot soon. Lee Dong Gun and Jo Yoon Hee announced their relationship to public on February after "Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop" wrapped its final episode. Before dating Jo Yoon He, Lee Dong Gun was in a relationship with T-ARA's Jiyeon for a year and a half. Some people speculated that Jo Yoon Hee was the reason behind Lee Dong Gun and Jiyeon's breakup because not long after that, Lee Dong Gun announced that he and Jo Yoon Hee are dating. TWICE is now gearing up for their "TWICELAND" concert to be held in Singapore. This will be the group's first ever visit to the country. TWICE recently proved their massive popularity once again as they performed in Bangkok, Thailand on April 8. Now, in a few days, TWICE is set to fly to Singapore for their "TWICELAND" concert. TWICE is expected once more to perform their greatest hits "Cheer Up", "Knock Knock", "Like Ooh-Ahh", and "TT". According to Koreaboo, TWICE will be bringing an explosive performance in Singapore. TWICE might even also surprise fans with another sexy performance, just like member Nayeon did in February in their concert in Seoul. With her co-members Sana, Momo, and Chaeyeong, Nyeon lit the stage on fire as they danced to Beyonce's "Partition" in a sexy fashion. 500 random lucky fans who bought the VIP ticket (costing SGD $288) will have the chance to be in a group photo with TWICE. Also, 100 random lucky fans who also bought a VIP ticket will get the chance to get a poster containing autographs of the members. Everyone who bought a VIP ticket will be given exclusive gifts. Meanwhile, TWICE's Jihyo was seen with the group as they travelled to Thailand. However, it is still unknown if she will be participating in the group's performance since she still has an existing knee injury. 'TWICELAND' in Singapore will be on Saturday, April 29. In other news, TWICE will be performing in this year's KCON New York. This was confirmed on Thursday March 30 by KCON USA. According to Billboard, CNBLUE is also confirmed to perform in the event along with TWICE. CNBLUE is expected to perform songs from their most recent album "7CN". Aside from TWICE and CNBLUE, KCON USA also confirmed that GFRIEND will be performing in the NY leg of the convention. KCON NY will be on June 23-24 at the Prudential Center in Newark. Historic ties of north Meck span throughout region Though the north Mecklenburg area didnt see significant population growth until a few decades ago, its rich history dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was the basis of... An easier-than-expected first mammogram experience HUNTERSVILLE Scheduling a cancer screening probably ranks somewhere on your to-do list between "clean out the garage" and "donate those clothes that don't fit." Sure, you'll get to it at... As politics are permanently in the news I can perhaps speak a little about them here. It seems that this time the pollsters had estimated the correct result of the first round of voting for them no real surprise that it is centrist Macron and far right Le Pen in a face-off for the French presidency. However, for many newspapers in the UK this result is indeed a surprise. They talk about a 'new French revolution', that the 'French elite are humiliated', the traditional parties are 'wiped out' and even 'Frexit' could be on the agenda. The British newspapers talk of the end of a political era where the two traditional parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, have both been eliminated in the first round. They also speak of the East\West divide, where Marine Le Pen has most of her votes in the East (not in Paris however where Macron had strong support) and Macron in the West. It appears that French people want change ; they are fed up with the old regime, which reminds me a lot of the era of Tony Blair in England. Perhaps there is a comparison between Tony Blair and Macron. He was just 43 years old when he became Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister leading the New Labour party to a landslide win. A party that was closer to the political centre rather like Macron's 'On the Move' party. Of course the media cannot help mentioning the lady who may be France's new First Lady Brigitte Macron's stylish wife. Not only is their age difference very often a topic but also her laidback, quietly confident style perhaps echoing her husband's confident performances. After all his On the Move party was born just over a year ago and here he is in the run off to becoming President, quite a spectacular climb to power in such a short time. Anyway, at the moment the British have a General Election to consider. Theresa May has called a snap election in the hope that she will win easily, as the socialists don't seem to be much of an opposition. If she wins then she is confident that it will be easier for her to deliver Brexit. Quite a time of change then and sometimes difficult to contemplate what the future holds, we should maybe take note of a quote by Liberal politician, Joseph Chamberlain who said, 'In politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight.' Julia Dunbar PRESS RELEASE Hysteria Against Glass-Steagall Intensifies April 26, 2017 (ERINS)The barrage of attacks on the momentum for restoration of Glass-Steagallespecially against Trump administration figures Gary Cohn (chief economic advisor) and others who have reported that Trump is backing itreached an hysterical level today in the Wall Street Journal. Former FDIC Chairman William Isaac and former CEO of Wells Fargo, Richard Kovacevich, co-authored an op-ed titled "The Shattered Arguments for a New Glass-Steagall." (This is a take-off on the infamous plaque on the wall of Sandy Weills office at Citigroup: The Shatterer of Glass Steagall.) These obviously distraught bankers denounce Trumps Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn for offering support for Glass-Steagall ("This is deeply disappointing"), then spin a yarn which is truly laughable: "The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall was unfairly blamed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Some peopleapparently Mr. Cohn among themmistakenly believe that investment banking is so risky that it should be once again kept separate from commercial banking. The truth is exactly the opposite: Traditional investment banking entails very little risk. The danger is stand-alone investment banks that are not diversified enough to survive a shock." Ahh"diversification" has made our banking system safe! Citigroup and Bank of America survived the 2008 crash, they say, because they were "diversified," while Bear Stearns, Lehman, and Merrill Lynch were not diversified banks with commercial deposits, that could loot their commercial deposits to pay for speculative losses, and get bailed out by the government! Now, they claim, we are safe: "The financial system has stabilized at historically high capital levels, and the economy is growing again (albeit much too slowly). Today there are no major stand-alone investment banks engaged in high-risk trading for their own accounts." But, they whine: "Yet almost unbelievably, there are calls to restore Glass-Steagall, re-create stand-alone investment banks, and allow them to operate once again outside the regulated banking system." Not mentioned, of course, is that the too-big-to-fail speculative institutions would not be bailed out under a new Glass-Steagall, nor is the fact that the banking insititutions could then begin investing in the real economy again, rather than speculation. PRESS RELEASE World Bank Working Closely with China on Belt and Road April 26, 2017 (EIRNS)In an April 20 press conference in Washington, World Bank President Jim-yong Kim, a Korean-American, announced that the World Bank Group is, and will continue, working closely with the Chinese government on the Belt and Road Initiative. "The One Belt, One Road project is an extremely important one for the Chinese government and also for us," he said, according to a report in Xinhua April 21. "The leadership that China is now taking in the overall world of development I think is unprecedented," Kim said. He underscored that China is very concerned with the issue of development, "not just in neighboring countries, but globally." Moreover, Kim added, the World Bank Group works very closely with the Chinese government, and also with the AIIB, and mentioned that it will soon sign an MOU with the AIIB. Kim, who will be attending the May 14-15 BRI summit in Beijing, reported that the World Bank is currently engaged in a major study with China "on the drivers of Chinas future economic growth," and that "were partnering with the AIIB already." The two financial institutions have in fact co-financed two projects in Indonesia. Kim said he expected that engagement both with the Chinese government and with "Chinese efforts at development" can only grow in the future. PRESS RELEASE Moscow Security ConferenceA Very Dangerous World April 26, 2017 (EIRNS)The VI Moscow Security Conference, which runs through April 27, began this morning with opening remarks delivered by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and a welcome message read to the conference from President Putin. The many speakers presented a stark picture of the crisis situation facing mankind. According to the Defense Ministry, more than 750 guests are in attendance, including Defense Ministers, delegations of military departments, experts from 86 countries, as well as leadership of the UN, OSCE, SCO, CIS, CSTO, and ICRC. In his opening remarks, Shoigu said that while terrorism is widely discussed, coordination in fighting terrorism has not been established, and decisions necessary to eradicate it have not been made. Because of this, he said, refugee flows are increasing, and insurgents flow with them, pointing to terrorist incidents across Europe. He pointed to the absence of results in stabilization of Libya, where national statehood has been destroyed by collective efforts of the West. On Syria, Shoigu said: "We consider the missile attack to be a blatant violation of international law. Besides, Washingtons move posed a life-threatening danger to our military servicemen who have been combating terrorism in Syria. In light of such actions, we have to take additional measures to ensure the security of our forces," he said. Even so, Shoigu went on, if the U.S. is serious about eliminating ISIS, "We are ready to support its efforts," adding that it is "only possible to destroy the IS in Syria through joint actions by all interested countries." Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added that the strike "exacerbates the current problems and postpones the prospects of setting up a broad anti-terrorism front," comparing the current situation with the false intelligence in 2003 regarding Iraq, which led to the countrys destruction and the emergence of ISIS, adding that there are now "similar incautious steps." The Russians repeated their demand for a full investigation of the chemical weapons charges in Syria. Lavrov also warned that the deployment of the US/NATO missile defense systems may actually be lowering the threshold for nuclear war: "The anti-missile umbrella may increase the illusion of invulnerability and impunity, and lead to the temptation of taking unilateral steps in the resolution of global and regional problems, including the reduction of threshold of nuclear weapons use." On Ukraine, Lavrov said: "Unfortunately, it is the party of war that prevails in Kiev: armed provocations are continuing on the contact line, which is proved by the reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. The blockade of Donbass causes damage not only on this region, but also to entire Ukraine." On Korea, Lavrov said, Showrunners behind Better Call Saul, Veep and more talk possible writers strike In less than a week, writers rooms across Hollywood will go dark if the Writers Guild of America goes on strike. For showrunners on some of TVs most talked-about series, the focus is on crafting stories while they can. Were just keeping our heads down and working until they tell us we cant, said Gloria Calderon Kellett, co-showrunner of Netflixs One Day at a Time. Writers for the series recently started work on Season 2. Kellett was part of The Envelopes showrunner roundtable, alongside Bruce Miller (The Handmaids Tale), Peter Gould (Better Call Saul), Aziz Ansari (Master of None) and David Mandel (Veep). Miller, who opened up The Handmaids Tale room earlier this week to begin work on Season 2, said theres no mad dash to churn out copy before Tuesday, when a strike would begin. It doesnt change what youre doing in terms of figuring out the story, Miller said. We go as quickly as we can anyway. You dont want to [work] too quickly, because then you just write crappy stuff. It really doesnt change anything. They just hope the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers can reach an agreement. I voted yes, Mandel said, referring to the recent strike authorization vote, but boy, I really dont want there to be a strike. Gould added: Its not really up to us. Its up to the companies to do whats right. Theres not a lot more to say than that. The last writers strike in 2007-08 lasted 100 days. And while it wasnt what they wanted then, either, many writers enjoyed the opportunity to meet and talk with their peers in the process. At the time, Gould was working on Breaking Bad, whose season was cut short because of the strike. He left Albuquerque, N.M., just as an episode he had written was in the prepping stages. I was on the picket line and people would say, What show are you on? Gould recalled. And Id be like, its this thing called Breaking Bad. Theyre shooting my episode right now. But I also remember being on the picket line and being very entertained by Dana Gould [of The Simpsons], who is no relation but is one of the funniest people around. Dana kept a whole group of us on Lankershim [Boulevard] entertained for days on end. All I could say is, I hope, if it comes to that, that I am stationed wherever he is cause hes a lot of fun. Millers silver lining while marching outside of Universals lot involved the TV series Battlestar Galactica. I hadnt watched Battlestar Galactica, and it turned out the people on Battlestar were [picketing where I was]. I would go home at night, watch one episode, and then Id find the writer and get like DVD commentary all day long, Miller said. Every writer, if you walk up to them on a picket line and say, Hey could we talk about your episode for 4 hours, they were in heaven. And it was great. It was so much fun, for me, because you could just ask them a million questions. It made the time go by. After complaints from California hospitals and physicians, a state legislator has stripped his bill of a measure that would have required doctors to record deadly infections on death certificates. The California Hospital Assn. and the California Medical Assn. wrote letters saying they opposed the plan by state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo). The measure would have required physicians to include drug-resistant bacterial infections on the death certificate if in their opinion it helped cause a persons death. Underreporting of hospital-acquired infections is a problem across the country. California health officials do not track deaths from these infections, which experts say are preventable if hospitals use effective sanitary controls including ensuring that staff members wash their hands. Advertisement Hospitals have long fought efforts for more disclosure of the number of infections. The hospitals can face lawsuits and government financial penalties if they are found to have lax sanitary controls. In a March 22 letter, the California Hospital Assn. wrote that it had great concern about the measure, in part because patients suffering from infections often have other diseases and problems that may contribute to their deaths. We fear that data obtained through death certificates alone do not represent a reliable way to determine causation and ultimately, we suspect that these data will not be interpretable, nor actionable, the group wrote. The letter was also signed by the Infectious Disease Assn. of California. In another letter, the California Medical Assn. said its physician members believed that the language in the bill will increase confusion and is unlikely to result in reliable data. Hill said in an interview that he believed his amended bill would still improve reporting of drug-resistant infections so that health officials can look for dangerous trends and take measures to stop them. The bill, SB 43, would require hospitals and labs to annually report the number of patients testing positive for superbugs that federal officials have identified as urgent, serious, or concerning. The name of the hospitals would not be revealed. The state would also be required to develop a method for estimating the number of deaths from each superbug. The Times reported in October about the death of Sharley McMullen at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. Doctors detailed in McMullens medical records how she died of a superbug that sickened her after a surgery and other procedures at the hospital. McMullens doctor did not list the bacteria on her death certificate. A 2014 study by University of Michigan researchers showed how often death certificates are wrong. The group concluded that infections would replace heart disease and cancer as the leading causes of death in hospitals if the count was performed by looking at patients medical billing records rather than death certificates. Billing records show what patients were being treated for. melody.petersen@latimes.com Follow @melodypetersen on Twitter United Airlines will offer up to $10,000 when a traveler voluntarily gives up a seat on an oversold flight, part of a policy overhaul following the passenger-yanking video seen around the world. The Chicago-based carrier is adopting 10 policy changes in response to the outcry over the April 9 incident, recorded by other passengers, during which aviation police pulled David Dao from his seat after he refused to exit the plane. Dao was one of four fliers selected to give up their seats to make room for airline employees. Actions speak louder than words, said United Airlines Chief Executive Oscar Munoz, who has apologized repeatedly for the incident after initially describing Dao as being disruptive and belligerent. Advertisement Today, we are taking concrete, meaningful action to make things right, Munoz said in a statement Wednesday. United Continental, the parent company of United Airlines, already has said it plans to incorporate customer satisfaction levels in its criteria for handing out bonuses to executives instead of basing compensation solely on profits and operational achievements. A passenger was dragged out of a United Airlines plane due to the airline overbooking the flight, creating yet another PR nightmare for United Airlines. United also said it would: Limit the use of law enforcement on a plane, except for safety and security reasons. Stop forcing passengers already seated to give up their seats, except for safety or security reasons. Come up with creative solutions for finding alternative transportation for passengers who have been denied boarding, such as flying them from nearby airports, putting them on flights of rival airlines or using ground transportation. Ensure airline crews book a seat at least an hour before departure. Provide employees with additional annual training. Create an automated system for soliciting volunteers to change travel plans before they take their seat. Reduce the amount of overbooking. Empower employees to resolve customer service issues on the spot. Cut the red tape that passengers face when reporting lost luggage. None of the policy changes are particularly groundbreaking or even surprising some had already been promised in recent days. Shortly after the Dao incident, rival Delta Air Lines told its employees that the carrier would pay up to $10,000 to get a passenger to give up a seat voluntarily. In an interview Wednesday, Delta Chief Executive Edward Bastain said his carrier has adopted several policies to avoid such incidents, including giving supervisors the authority to offer a passenger a free iPad to give up a seat on an overbooked flight. It could never happen at Delta, he said of the Dao incident. Delta several years ago began asking customers during the check-in process how much compensation they would take to give up their seats. The airline then bumps the passengers willing to take the least amount. A report on the passenger-removal fiasco released by United on Wednesday named several failures that contributed to the problem, including that United had no clear policy on when to call law enforcement and no policy on how late airline crews can book seats on a flight. The report also revealed that four seats were needed on the flight because an earlier flight carrying four crew members was experiencing a maintenance issue and it was unclear if the problem would be fixed. Uniteds biggest challenge, experts have said, will be changing company culture so that employees feel they can do whatever is needed to solve customer service problems as they are happening. The viral videos Videos shot by fellow passengers on the flight show officers from the Chicago Department of Aviation asking Dao to give up his seat. But Dao refuses, saying he needs to get to his home in Elizabethtown, Ky., where he is a physician and was scheduled to see patients the next day. Three officers then pull Dao from his seat and drag him down the aisle. Dao, who was hospitalized after the clash, suffered a concussion and other injuries, according to his attorney Thomas Demetrio. The prominent personal-injury lawyer has made it clear that he is prepared to sue United over the incident. In incident reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times, two of the officers said Dao was responsible for his own injuries by flailing his arms and fighting with the officers, causing him to fall out of their grasp and hit his face on a seat armrest. Demetrio blames the airline and the officers for using unnecessary force and violence. Four officers involved in the incident have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Chicago Department of Aviation. United shares have recovered Shares for United Continental Holdings, the parent company of the airline, took a hit following the incident, dropping from $71.52 on the day after the incident to $67.55 on April 18. The stock closed Wednesday at $71.33 a share. However, Uniteds reputation has clearly taken a hit. In a survey of nearly 1,300 travelers by the website AirfareWatchdog.com, United ranked as the sixth-most-popular carrier in the country, dropping from fifth in the same poll last year. Only 3% picked United as their favorite in this years survey, conducted after the Dao incident. George Hobica, founder of the fare comparison site, said some of the proposed changes will help eliminate the need to boot passengers from a flight, particularly the $10,000 compensation limit. But he added that video of the incident has been so widely seen that Uniteds reputation wont rebound soon. There are some people who will never fly them again, Hobica said. Compensating fliers for not flying Under federal rules, airlines can oversell a flight and have no limit on how much they can offer a passenger to voluntarily give up a seat. Each airline creates its own formula for gauging how many seats to oversell. Only JetBlue Airways says it does not oversell seats. If an airline cant get enough passengers to voluntarily give up their seats, an airline can deny passengers a seat but must offer compensation, based on how much the passengers will be delayed getting to their destinations. If an airline gets a booted passenger on a flight that arrives between one and four hours later than the arrival time of the overbooked flight, federal law says the carrier must pay 200% of the original fare, with a cap of $675. If the airline gets the booted passenger to the final destination later than four hours after the original arrival time, the carrier must pay 400% of the original fare, with a maximum of $1,350. On Daos flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., Uniteds best offer was $800, overnight accommodations and a flight nearly 24 hours later. When no flier agreed to take the offer, United employees picked four seated passengers using a criteria that first targets fliers who pay the lowest fare. hugo.martin@latimes.com To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. ALSO Economic reality and contradictions beset Trumps tax plan Dole files for initial public offering for the third time ESPN lays off Jayson Stark, Jay Crawford and about 100 other on-air personalities and writers Employers can legally pay women less than men for the same work based on differences in the workers previous salaries, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling saying pay differences based exclusively on prior salaries were discriminatory under the federal Equal Pay Act. Its discriminatory because the differences were almost certainly the result of gender bias, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Seng said in a 2015 decision. Advertisement A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit cited a 1982 ruling by the court that said employers could use previous salary information as long as they applied it reasonably and had a business policy that justified it. This decision is a step in the wrong direction if were trying to really ensure that women have work opportunities of equal pay, said Deborah Rhode, who teaches gender equity law at Stanford Law School. You cant allow prior discriminatory salary setting to justify future ones or you perpetuate the discrimination. Activists held rallies around the country earlier this month on Equal Pay Day to highlight the wage gap between men and women. Women made about 80 cents for every dollar men earned in 2015, according to U.S. government data. The 9th Circuit ruling came in a lawsuit by a California school employee, Aileen Rizo, who learned in 2012 while having lunch with her colleagues that her male counterparts were making more than she was. A message left for Rizos lawyer, Dan Siegel, was not immediately returned. Fresno County public schools hired Rizo as a math consultant in 2009 for $63,000 a year. The county had a standard policy that added 5% to her previous pay as a middle school math teacher in Arizona. But that was not enough to meet the minimum salary for her position, so the county bumped her up. The county argued that basing starting salaries primarily on previous pay prevents subjective determinations of a new employees value. The 5% bump encourages candidates to leave their positions to work for the county, it said. The 9th Circuit sent the case back to Seng to consider the countys justifications for using previous salaries. In proposing to slash business taxes and enact a tax reform of historic proportions, Trump administration officials say they will rely largely on economic growth to make up for the trillions of dollars of lost tax revenue. But hardly any economist or tax policy analyst outside the administration thinks that the core business piece of President Trumps plan a reduction in the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 35% will generate anywhere near the growth, job creation and investment needed to pay for itself. That economic reality makes it highly unlikely that Trump will be able to get his tax proposal in its current form through Congress, even with support from his fellow Republicans. And it exposes some inherently contradictory elements in the presidents approach. Advertisement Trumps tax blueprint unveiled Wednesday is similar to the plan he outlined during the campaign last fall. Its a grab bag of long-sought Republican tax reform ideas, including eliminating most individual deductions, killing the estate tax and ending the alternative minimum tax, which seeks to ensure the rich cant exploit loopholes. But the ambitious proposal is another example of how Trumps transactional, compartmentalized approach to achieving his priorities whether repealing Obamacare, reforming taxes or cracking down on immigration often works at cross-purposes. Economic experts say, for example, that his immigration crackdown plan may do more to dampen economic growth than the tax cuts will do to promote it. The failure to find a way to pay for his tax cuts will likely increase the national debt significantly and therefore worsen the U.S. trade deficit hes vowed to reduce. And pushing forward so quickly with a tax reform plan may bolster his 100-day report card, but by not first securing a healthcare overhaul or embracing the House GOPs proposal for a border-adjustment tax on imports, convincing congressional deficit hawks to approve his tax plan becomes all the more difficult. I think this is a total disconnect in the administration, said Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that advocates keeping government budgets under control. The committee estimated that the Trump tax plan would cost Uncle Sam roughly $5.5 trillion over 10 years mostly from the cuts in business taxes and add more than $6 trillion to the national debt. Other tax experts said there wasnt enough information on the Trump plan to calculate potential revenue losses, but some also see the gap in the trillions of dollars over the next decade. A lower corporate tax rate would give a bump to economic growth, of course, as would Trumps proposal to shift to a territorial system in which U.S. companies are not taxed for foreign profits, said Joe Kennedy, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and former chief economist at the Commerce Department. Nonetheless, Kennedy said the plan was absent of key measures to boost productivity and competitiveness, such as tax credits for research and development and faster depreciation for capital expenditures. In unveiling Trumps tax plan, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said that the aim was to simplify taxes, boost growth and help companies become more competitive. Some of the shortfall in corporate tax revenue would come from curbing breaks for special interests, he said, and on the personal income tax side, from the elimination of all deductions except for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. We have over 100 people in the Treasury that have been working on tax and scoring lots of different scenarios, he said in a White House briefing Wednesday with Trumps chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn. This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes. Mnuchin insisted that the tax plan would unleash much more business activity, driving economic growth to an annual rate of 3% or higher on a sustained basis, from the 2% level of the last decade and projected over the next decade. Trumps policies to ease business regulations and renegotiate trade agreements would add to growth as well, he said. Mnuchin did not provide any revenue estimate of the tax proposal, but the administrations confidence that the tax cuts would not add to the federal debt presumably stems from the notion that economic growth would offset the cost of the tax plan, under assumptions that make up what is called dynamic scoring. As a rule of thumb, every 0.1-percentage-point increase in the growth of economic output, or gross domestic product, would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Offices latest budget outlook, in March, forecast GDP growth averaging 1.9% a year from 2017 to 2027, similar to most private forecasts and others, including that of the Federal Reserve. If Trump could lift average growth to 3%, that would add some $2.8 trillion in additional tax revenue over 10 years which would largely pay for Trumps corporate tax cut plan. But most economists and budget experts say thats not realistic. GDP growth is essentially a function of labor force and productivity trends, and both have lagged in the last decade, particularly with the retirement of the baby boomers and declining birth rates, which are slowing growth in the workforce. Tax reform can help us build more capital, encourage people to work more hours, in some cases increase productivity, said Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. But demographics is really what has been driving the major swings in growth rates, and tax reform cant stop an aging population. Theres been a lot of dynamic scoring done in this town, but weve never seen any tax proposal pay for itself, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who is president of the conservative-leaning American Action Forum. He said its possible that about one-fourth or one-third of the cost of tax cuts could be recouped with faster GDP growth, but others think even that would be very hard to achieve. The gap between the cost of the plan and tax revenue it would likely generate poses a huge challenge for the administration as it tries to push the plan through Congress without having to secure Democratic support by using something called reconciliation. One requirement of that budget process, which allows Senate passage with a simple majority, is that the tax change would not add to the deficit after 10 years. President George W. Bush got around that obstacle by ensuring that his own tax-cut plan expired after 10 years. But a senior tax counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee recently indicated that the Trump tax plan with its emphasis on corporate tax rates would add to the deficit beyond 10 years, even if the business tax cuts expired after three years. Such short-term cuts would do little to spur businesses to invest and grow. And if such an analysis is accepted by lawmakers, it will make it much harder for Trump to pass the plan through the reconciliation process. don.lee@latimes.com Twitter: @dleelatimes ALSO White House will continue Obamacare payments, averting potential obstacle in talks to avert shutdown Trump signs order to reconsider national monuments created by Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton White House announces sweeping proposal to cut taxes, a plan likely to raise deficit Beginning July 1, the USC School of Architecture will have a new dean: Milton Curry, now associate dean for academic affairs and strategic initiatives at the University of Michigans Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. (He replaces Qingyun Ma, who appeared last week in this space alongside outgoing UCLA architecture chair Hitoshi Abe.) Curry, 52, is the first African American to hold the USC post. This interview, conducted by phone, has been edited and condensed. Im sure the search committee asked you several versions of this question, but coming to L.A. from Michigan, how would you sum up the USC School of Architectures national reputation? I would say that USC relative to other institutions has been more focused on the professional trajectory, on professional practice. And you dont want to lose that. But I want to build on that, to insist that whether youre working in technology, digital fabrication, urbanism, landscape architecture, heritage conservation, youve got to have a theoretical core that guides you, that allows you to view things through a prism thats deeper than the present conditions youre facing. Your work has been very much grounded in that point of view, and youve launched two journals over the course of your career (most recently one called CriticalProductive). Whats your sense of the USC architecture schools willingness to embrace theory more actively than it has? When you think about diversity and globalization and urbanization, you cant do it without a theoretical underpinning. You just cant. And I think that what were seeing in the discipline at large is the limit conditions of thinking a-theoretically about urbanism, about inequality, about what we should do about environmental challenges and sustainability. Weve got to address it through a theoretical lens. Urbanization if were not going to talk about neoliberalism and the extraction of resources from underrepresented communities, whether it be from the citizens of Detroit or other places, were not going to solve those issues. Thats the kind of complexity that I think weve got to build into an architectural education to begin to produce what I call citizen architects architects who are not separate from these conversations but are fully engaged in them. That strikes me as a major shift in USCs focus. I find it a refreshing one, but its a major shift talking about theory, about citizen architects, a political and even philosophical question about what an architect might owe the public sphere. I want to emphasize something, though. I started, with collaboration from faculty, some of [Michigans] post-professional degrees in digital technologies and material systems. What Im saying [about theory] is not incompatible with innovations in the sphere of digital fabrication technology and of professional practice. Theory and practice are not incompatible. Fair enough. While L.A. is changing quite rapidly and maybe having a kind of existential crisis about what kind of place it wants to be the architecture schools in town have been detached from that conversation in a range of ways. Do you see that as something you can address, reconnecting the school with a conversation about the city itself? Absolutely. Coming from the metropolitan Detroit region and being at the flagship public university in the state and one of the best public universities in the country, Ive lived a seven-year period of tremendous transformation in the history of Detroit and its civic identity. Im well prepared to think about that in the context of L.A. The school under my leadership will have a voice in the future of Los Angeles, the civic identity of Los Angeles. But it wont stop there. Well engage the region, Southern California and Central California. Which is where youre from Fresno. Right. And then also the world. We have great connections in China [notably USCs American Academy in China, established in Beijing in 2007 by outgoing dean Ma]. I will establish and build upon connections in Latin and South America. But engaging locally and regionally has a lot of upsides because [the city is] immediately accessible to students. And I want to get my students out into the world as quickly as possible, to understand the connection between whats happening in academia and whats happening in the context of places like L.A., which are uniquely complex in the way that theyre transforming, in the way the urbanism is unfolding. And I want to bring that conversation into the school and I want to bring the school into conversations happening around Los Angeles and the region. Absolutely, we will be very involved in those conversations. I wrote a few weeks ago about Sharon Suttons book When Ivory Towers Were Black and about the fraught question of race in U.S. architecture and architectural education. Im curious about your own experience as a student at Cornell and then the Harvard Graduate School of Design and whether you agree with Sutton that depressingly little progress has been made in diversifying architecture. Individually, I felt I had really great experiences. Cornell was very aggressive when I was there in recruiting a diverse student body. At Harvard it was more diverse than it had been in the past. With Mack Scogin as chair when I was there, I felt very optimistic about its approach to diversity and how it was bringing issues of race, class, sexuality and gender into my courses and into conversations with faculty. At the same time, the profession and the discipline face what is essentially an ongoing crisis of diversity particularly ethnic and racial diversity but not exclusively. So I think theres a lot of work to do, on many different registers. Speaking to what Ive been able to do in the last seven years here at Michigan, we started Michigan Architecture Prep, an innovative program based in Detroit in a space that we outfitted that has six high schools participating, with 40 students per semester. Theyre with us for a half-day, every day of the week, for an entire semester in their junior year. Thats the kind of commitment that we need to make as a discipline and as a profession to [reach] students who may not have considered architecture. Its more than identifying talent. Its about cultivating potential. We have to provide the pathway for those students not only underrepresented minorities but lower-income students, students from rural areas. We have to put money where our mouth is in terms of diversifying the profession. Do you see an opportunity to pursue similar programs in Los Angeles? Im very encouraged by the breadth and depth of high school programs already existing at USC. What I look to do is understand those more closely, build connections with the Rossier School of Education and aggressively seek to connect with the K-through-12 segment of the population and bring architecture programming to that audience. In what form, in what shape I dont know yet. But I can tell you that the students at USC, the faculty, the staff in the architecture program are going to represent the world. Ill attack that very, very directly during my leadership at the school of architecture. When I was walking through campus during interviews, I saw a lot of high school students from the neighborhood. And I know that the university has a lot of gates, but I saw a lot of high school students walking through as if they were simply taking a cut-through to get home. Whether its real or maybe just happened as I was walking through, thats potentially a great symbol for how a private university can situate itself within the public domain. And thats where I will try to position the school of architecture. I wanted to ask you to expand a little on your sense of the relationship between the architecture school at Michigan and the city of Detroit and how relevant that experience might be, or might not be, for thinking about the relationship between USC and Los Angeles. The Michigan Architecture Prep initiative speaks to something thats benefiting indigenous Detroiters. And thats very important to do, to provide value to indigenous communities. We have a Mellon Foundation grant, focused on egalitarianism and the metropolis, in which weve been looking at Detroit, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City. And that has been a valuable intellectual contribution to the conversation in the college because its very easy to be myopic and to look at Detroit through its own historical lens. Its been important to look at what it means for Rio and Brazil to think about racial democracy, or what it means to look at race in the context of Latin America and Mexico. Its very different from Detroit, but there are things you can learn from each. What does it mean to be a post-industrial city in Detroit but see the exporting of jobs and factories to Mexico City, with different trade accords? There are different outcomes and pluses and minuses that each city has experienced that are in certain ways transnational. In other words, the city transcends the nation-state. And its very applicable, I think, to Los Angeles, because the Los Angeles metro region is huge in its economic footprint, its land footprint. I believe cities to some degree have more influence than merely being one of a combination of cities within one nation. They execute trade deals on their own, in some cases. They execute climate policies, other kinds of policing policies on their own. I think that some of those lessons will apply to Los Angeles. The other thing I will say is that when I came to Michigan seven years ago there was no functioning planning and development department in Detroit it had been gutted by the cost-cutting of the previous administrations and the emergency managers. Democracy had been arguably severely undercut in Detroit with the emergency management of the school district and so forth. Thankfully, L.A. is in a different position. And I look forward to working with the leadership of the city to see what can we do from the academic side to help move the city forward, to be part of conversations about how to make the evolution of L.A. more equitable. Building Type is Christopher Hawthornes weekly column on architecture and cities. Look for future installments every Thursday at latimes.com/arts. SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com Twitter: @HawthorneLAT MORE BUILDING TYPE: New documentary leaves Jane Jacobs trapped in the rubble of old arguments Challenging the whiteness of American architecture, in the 1960s and today Doug Aitken's 'Mirage': a funhouse mirror for the age of social media The nine egg-shaped sculptures are the faces of local residents captured in 3-D scans and then water-jet-cut out of granite sourced from a Yosemite-area quarry. Theres a different person represented on both sides of each sculpture, so 18 faces in all. Faces of Elysian, which debuted in February, is meant to pay homage to the diversity flowing through the site, a bustling roundabout near the intersection of three neighborhoods: Elysian Valley, Cypress Park and Lincoln Heights. For a new Times feature on public art the story behind the murals, sculpture and other works you may drive past or walk by we talked with Freyja Bardell and Brian Howe, the artists behind Faces of Elysian and the art studio Greenmeme. Their new installation, which took more than seven years to complete, is landscaped with drought-tolerant native plants and used stone left over from the faces to make the surrounding barrier. Where: In a roundabout at the entrance to the Riverside Drive Bridge over the Los Angeles River at Figueroa Street and San Fernando Road, near where the 110 and 5 freeways meet. Advertisement Commissioned by: The Los Angeles Department of Transportation in partnership with the Bureau of Engineering. The artists say: We wanted to capture an image or time stamp of this diverse community and celebrate or memorialize it, Bardell says. We chose to use regular people in the community, inter-generational, people who arent necessarily elevated to the status of being a statue, but who are all incredibly significant and important in the community. Theyre sort of guardians watching people come in and out of this intersection of freeways, rivers, railways and three or four neighborhoods. Adds Howe: Sustainability was very important from the beginning, so its also a storm-water retention roundabout. There are three kinds of bioswales that trap the water, keep it there, help irrigate. Part of the design is also things you dont even see. Faces of Elysian Valley features nine pieces, each with two faces. (Mariah Tauger / For The Times) deborah.vankin@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin The evening of Sept. 11, 2001, had been like any other for Abdulnasser Gharem until it wasnt. A self-taught artist and a young officer in the Saudi Arabian army, Gharem was relaxing at home in the city of Khamis Mushait, where hed grown up with 11 siblings, when the yelling began. Come here! Watch. Look at this! The family anxiously crowded around the living room TV. The images of the World Trade Center collapsing were devastating to watch, the shock matched only by the news that eventually followed: Two of the hijackers were Gharems friends from high school. I was shocked, how could this be? It was like someone stopped the world for a while. Everything paused, Gharem says, sitting at an outdoor cafe at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the exhibition Abdulnasser Gharem: Pause, recently opened. We used to roam around the city listening to music. Wed just drive around looking for fun in the car. I thought: We grew up in the same city, in the same environment, we had the same knowledge it could have been me. But wed taken very different paths. Shortly after, Gharem began work on The Path (Siraat), a three-minute performative video and subsequent silkscreened photograph of a broken bridge in his hometown with Arabic text spray-painted across the concrete. It read, The Path, repeatedly, along a damaged road headed into darkness. Those pieces, like all of Gharems work in the LACMA exhibition his first solo show in the U.S., featuring mixed media stamp paintings, prints, sculptures and film address the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks as well as the artists life experiences. Advertisement Im trying to say what the people couldnt say in my country, Gharem says. Its hard because the media in all Arab countries has been controlled by the government. So I think the role of the artist is to bring these issues, through the artworks, to the people. Abdulnasser Gharems stamp painting Camouflage. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) LACMA curator of Islamic art Linda Komaroff, who organized Pause, says that Gharems 11 works in the show are groundbreaking in their construction and push boundaries politically. It incorporates motifs and artistic ideas that are part of the canon of Islamic art geometric and floral designs, arabesques and also embedded text but its very contemporary, Komaroff says. Hes inventing new media, like with his stamp paintings, and a lot of his ideas are tied to life in Saudi Arabia today. What interests me is this intersection of past and present. Hes totally fearless. A detail from Abdulnasser Gharems Camouflage, showing hidden messages. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) With his gravelly voice, thick black hair speckled with gray, mirrored sunglasses and chain-smoking of Marlboro Reds, Gharem looks far more the desert soldier than the sensitive artist. In fact, balancing those identities had been a decades-long struggle for Gharem, one that he channeled into his art. Gharem spent 23 years in the army, eventually being promoted to lieutenant colonel. Before he left the army last year he fought in war after war, he says. Theyd throw us into the desert with a bottle of water and [hope] we survive. Gharem slept in trenches at night and drew in his sketchbook during slips of down time by day. Military life was ordered and unforgiving; the looser, messier intellectual process of making art helped to balance that rigidity and allowed his brain to unfurl. It took me a long time to find a way to manage being in the army and being an artist. It was so difficult, he says. Being an officer, you have a lot of responsibilities and you have to follow orders. You cant say no. And when you do your art, you need to be totally free and neutral. Sometimes I felt like a double dealer. Dichotomies, not surprisingly, factor into the artists work. One of his newest pieces, Hemisphere, is a 400-pound resin sculpture. One side is the sea green dome of the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, Saudi Arabia; the other side is an 18th or 19th century Iranian battle helmet. They represent war and peace, as well as the left and right sides of the brain, and also the opposing sides of faith-based religion, with strength, support and compassion on one side, and prejudice, division and violence on the other. Abdulnasser Gharems rubber stamp painting Hemisphere on view at LACMA. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) Through the education program we have, through what they are saying in the mosque, they want to make us like warriors. And we are going to fight, Gharem says. Why do you want to create me as a warrior since I was a kid? Who am I going to fight? And suddenly, what you have seen in the Muslim world, the Arab world, is that Muslims are fighting themselves. Gharem had hoped to study art at the local university after high school but he wasnt accepted, he says. During the requisite admissions test, prospective students were asked to create a piece of art in front of their exam auditor. Gharem drew a portrait of his interviewer, a religious Muslim, forgetting that the predominant interpretation of Islam taught in his area at that time prohibited depicting the human form. He entered the military academy instead. And he continued making art when off duty, back home in Khamis Mushait. But there were few if any, he says art galleries and exhibition spaces in Saudi Arabia in the early 2000s. In 2003, Gharem co-founded the artists collective Edge of Arabia with his friends Ahmed Mater and Stephen Stapleton. It aimed to spur the creation of new contemporary art in the area and organize exhibitions at home and in the West. We wanted to build a bridge, Gharem says. Because if youre going to wait for someone to do it, no one is going to do it. It was like a dream in the beginning. We never thought it would happen. We became like the avant-garde. In 2010, LACMA Director Michael Govan traveled to Saudi Arabia, where he saw Gharems work in an Edge of Arabia exhibition. After returning to L.A., Govan showed the work to Komaroff, who purchased The Path film for LACMA, which has the largest collection of contemporary Islamic art of any museum in the U.S. The collective, which exhibited work in the 2009 Venice Biennale and 2010 Berlin Biennale, has been a game-changer in Saudi Arabia, sparking the contemporary art scene there, Komaroff says. Edge of Arabia basically invented contemporary Saudi art, Komaroff says. There may have been artists here and there, and mostly working outside the country, but it didnt exist as a concept. Even the idea of a man being an artist in Saudi Arabia then wasnt something people entertained. They brought together whoever considered themselves artists. Its been transformative, especially for younger Saudis. Still, life in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the military, Gharem says, was a world populated with procedures, protocol and the omnipresent rustle and thump of bureaucratic paperwork rejected, accepted, check paid, he says. Abdulnasser Gharems sculpture The Stamp (Moujaz) on view at LACMA. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) Which is why so much of Gharems work is brimming with stamps as a subject and as a material to construct his art. His stamp paintings, as he calls them, feature a textured, bumpy canvas made up of rubber stamps. Gharem disassembles the individual lettering, paints tiny English or Arabic characters different colors, and then he and his studio assistants reconfigure the letters on the canvas with tweezers. He then digitally prints and hand paints on that work. One 2017 work, Camouflage, show an army tank, with a bright orange daisy planted in its cannon, in front of a colorful Iranian mosque. Its brimming with hidden messages, which read backward as stamp lettering does, that speak to war-hungry governments, arms deals and sectarianism, Gharem says, adding that his favorite hidden message in the painting is, It may be that idealism requires naivete to survive. Abdulnasser Gharems stamp painting Pause on view at LACMA. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) A 2016 stamp painting, Pause, speaks quite graphically to terrorism. It depicts the World Trade Center engulfed in a plume of smoke formed by hundreds of tiny English and Arabic letters and computer keyboard symbols such as @ or # that Gharem painted white and gray and beige and black. From afar, the vertical stacks of the Twin Towers form the digital symbol for pause, as it would appear on a TV remote. The world was going crazy and I wanted people to calm down and think about themselves and their ideas and what happened just stop and think, he says. As an Arab and a practicing Muslim, the idea of The Path is something Gharem still thinks about daily how to forge his own path in life and what that might look like, the divergent paths he and high school friends took or the path of Islam itself, in which God guides us to the straight path like 100 times a day when we pray, he says. Ultimately, however, the path should be a personal and pliable journey open to interpretation rather than a rubber-stamped road, Gharem says an overarching theme in his work. Is the path something one can see and choose to follow, or is it something that one blindly follows and leaves behind? The answer, he says, is both. Or neither. Its up to the people, they will just see it, he says. Thats what Im trying to do, is to change the definition of the path itself. A CLOSER LOOK: Deconstructing Abdulnasser Gharems massive stamp painting Camouflage deborah.vankin@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin ALSO Beverly Center as art gallery? How some big-name artists are behind those construction barricades The exhibition that has art fans in a fury: Our critics take on MOCAs Carl Andre retrospective A groundbreaking show to confront the gender bias in art: Women of Abstract Expressionism Jeff Koons is having a moment again. The artists solo show of new and recent works, his first here in five years, opens at Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills on Thursday. Hes also being honored at the annual Museum of Contemporary Art gala on Saturday. The gala promises to be a bright and shiny thank you of sorts honoring the artists creative work and his philanthropy. During the last five years, Koons helped to raise more than $5 million for the museum. But Koons, who holds the record for the highest auction sale of any living artist with his $58.4 million Balloon Dog (Orange), 19942000, has turned up in headlines recently for other reasons as well. In March, a French court ruled that his 1988 porcelain sculpture, Naked, was plagiarized from French photographer Jean-Francois Baurets 1970 photograph, Enfants something he declined to discuss in this interview. And his recent project for Louis Vuitton, Masters, featuring original designs for a 51-piece line of handbags, scarves, leather goods and other accessories, delighted some people but struck others as overly commercial art appropriation. Advertisement The ever-colorful Koons, who will have a 45-foot-tall ballerina sculpture unveiled in New Yorks Rockefeller Center in May, takes it all in stride. Im always trying to be the best artist that I can be, he said in this edited interview. To reach a higher level of consciousness with my work. The Gagosian exhibition features new and recent works from the Gazing Ball, Antiquity and Celebration series. Whats the through-line? What all these different works share in common is the use of reflection. So whether its one of the sculptures, a plaster cast, like Hercules with a gazing ball on his shoulder, or the surface of the Sacred Heart, from Celebration, a ballerina from the Antiquity series, all the works, the surface is reflective. They all share that in common. Not just physically reflective, though. Gagosian refers to it as sort of metaphysical dialogue with cultural history. Ive always thought of these works, especially the Gazing Ball works and the Antiquity pieces, theyre playing with metaphysics because in the reflective, you have the right here, right now. Its affirming you, its affirming any movement you may make, everythings dependent on you. But at the same time, its reflecting a historical object or a painting or some of the sculptures have gradations painted on them which are another depiction of time and all these things play with the idea of the past and present and you have a sense of the future through your own potential. Between the MOCA gala and the Gagosian show, do you feel youre having something of an L.A. moment? Its always wonderful to have exhibitions, its always a thrill to be involved with different institutions. And to feel a part of those institutions. Its wonderful about MOCA. But, you know, an artist is always involved with their creative process and trying to make things that celebrate art. And how art continues to help us become who we can be. There are so many people MOCA could be celebrating, so its meaningful to me they are celebrating my contribution. But really, whats important to me is to be there with friends. The aspects that are involved in it, the ideas within the art world, theyre really shared by a vast number of people and were all affected by each other, by different artists, different collectors, different writers. So it really ends up to be a celebration of, in a way, a whole generation. I think were celebrating the community as a whole. Youve been generous with MOCA, but cynics might say artists donating that generously to a museum might be trying to curry favor. I dont think that things really function that way. I think that artists, generally, are extremely generous to their communities. Not only aiding the museums, but there are many causes taking place in the world, different crises anywhere from AIDS to supporting schools that children receive art education in. I think that if somebodys operating in such a small context like that, it would be quite obvious. Of myself, with MOCA, Ive never had a retrospective or been involved in any major way like that. [My contributions] have been to be able to support the organization. We started back in the 90s and its continued from that time, and its to help support Los Angeles. Tell us about the Louis Vuitton line. Its self-referential and art historical at once, inspired by your Gazing Ball paintings and featuring reproductions of famous works by Rubens, Van Gogh, Da Vinci and others their names spelled out in bling-y gold and silver lettering. I really believe very much in my Gazing Ball series, both the sculptures and the paintings. For the Louis Vuitton bags, I wanted to take the same kind of usage of ready-made objects of art, but not using the ball on the bags but reference it only through the name of the artist. So on a bag of the Mona Lisa youll have the name Da Vinci. Or on Rubens The Tiger Hunt, youll have Rubens. Van Goghs Wheat Field With Cypresses, the name is working almost in a Platonistic type way, where you have a pure form, like a chair chair is always a chair so these names become like eternal forms. And theyre reflective, so theres a reference to that series. These are heroes, the canon of Western art history, at least a portion of it, and the works are there in kind of a symbol of connectivity. Regarding that sort of connectivity, what role does art appropriation play in your work? Whats behind your fascination with it? When I went to art school, I was very involved in subjective art, what I would have dreamed the night before, very personal iconography, this kind of inward investigation. And I reached a point where I learned how to trust in myself. I was living in Chicago. This would have been in the mid-70s. My mentor, Ed Paschke, told me, Everything is already here, you just have to open yourself up to it. And he showed me where he got his source material. We went to tattoo parlors, clubs with reflective curtains and mysterious lighting. And I started this journey of the ready-made and seeing the world around me and incorporating it. The idea of the ready-made something pre-existing for usage kind of always existed. But its really about celebrating a vocabulary. If you look at the letters in the alphabet, and all of the sudden thered be restrictions on those letters, it would really eliminate the world of poetry. Its the same with the visual world and incorporating the things around us that were familiar with. So its being able to articulate these familiarities, to be able to create a visual poetry. Is it also a way to connect with the art viewer? In working with things that are familiar, automatically its a little more disarming to the viewer. Theyre more open to the dialogue, the communication can happen a little quicker. Im always working with objects or images to remove judgment or a sense of hierarchy or any type of discrimination. The hierarchy of, Oh, I cant get involved with art because I dont know what that means! But you never have to bring anything to art other than yourself at that moment. You are perfect. The experience is about your potential, you are the only thing that matters. deborah.vankin@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin ALSO Beverly Center as art gallery? How some big-name artists are behind those construction barricades Shakespeare died 401 years ago, but original scripts from his era live on in a new digital archive Review of L.A. Operas Tales of Hoffmann L.A. Phils Reykjavik Festival begins with singing in teacups 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. ------------ Connecting retrospective and introspective points of view, the 33rd edition of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival begins with Thursdays opening night gala, a 15th anniversary screening of Justin Lins Better Luck Tomorrow. Screening 180 films from 33 countries over the next two weeks, the festival takes an expansive view of cinema, art and culture. In addition to narrative and documentary feature competitions, theres a spotlight on shorts, Southeast Asian cinema, and films from Taiwan. While opening night is at Hollywoods Egyptian Theatre, and the majority of screenings occur in downtown Los Angeles, there are also events in Koreatown, at UCLA and the Directors Guild of America. Looking at the broader effect of cinema on society and vice versa, the festival includes the Conference for Creative Content (C3), a series of panels on craft and issues facing the industry, as well as special programs marking the 25th anniversary of the Rodney King verdict and Los Angeles riots that followed, and a two-day transmedia presentation on Bronzeville, Little Tokyo. Advertisement When Lin broke through at Sundance in 2002 with Better Luck Tomorrow, his solo feature debut, most Asian American filmmakers were relegated to the indie fringes. Lin, however, quickly moved into the studio ranks and reinvigorated the Fast and Furious franchise before assuming the Star Trek helm from J.J. Abrams. Sunday, Lin and members of his cast, including Karin Anna Cheung, Roger Fan and Sung Kang, join Times film reporter Jen Yamato to discuss the films legacy. The Sundance connection continues with two gala screenings of films that debuted at the Utah festival in January and will be released this summer. Justin Chons Gook, about two Korean American brothers in South L.A. on the first day of the 1992 riots, is the centerpiece film Saturday night at the Aratani Theatre. The closing night film, Columbus, directed by Kogonada, stars John Cho (also in Better Luck Tomorrow) as a visitor to a Midwestern town who connects with a young woman through the surrounding architecture. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Festival shifts to Orange County May 5-11 at the CGV Buena Park for best-of-fest screenings and a focus on Vietnamese films. ------------- Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Where: Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood; Japanese American Cultural & Community Center; Japanese American National Museum; Downtown Independent, downtown L.A.; Directors Guild of America, Los Angeles; CGV Koreatown; CGV Buena Park; and other venues. When: April 27-May 4, Los Angeles; May 5-11, Orange County. Tickets: Screenings, $12-$50; packages, $125-$135; passes, $300-$330 Info: https://festival.vconline.org/2017/ See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com @LATimesMovies ALSO Plan your summer: A list of every single movie coming out this season Superheroes, pirates, apes and atomic blondes: Where the action is this summer Movies you can take the kids to this summer Remember Red Heat, the blah 1988 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle about the culture clash that ensues when a Russian policeman comes to America? Well, actor-director and Arnold-wannabe Alexander Nevsky has now updated the premise with Black Rose and has come up with an impressively thorough compendium of 80s cop picture cliches. Nevsky plays Vladimir Kazatov, the kind of loose-cannon lawman who constantly gets yelled at by superior officers both at home in Moscow and when he journeys to Los Angeles in pursuit of a serial killer. After Kazatovs aggressive, rule-breaking style chases off his first L.A. partner (who has two years to retirement and doesnt need the trouble), hes paired up with young profiler Emily Smith. As Smith, Kristanna Loken does her best to bring all the energy to her performance that Nevsky lacks, but shes overmatched by a script that seems to have been cut-and-pasted from an action screenplay template. Advertisement Black Rose is rooted in a rudimentary understanding of criminal psychology, as Smith and Kazatov presume that a psycho who murders a particular type of woman must have been jilted by one. Following that trail leads to a predictable and groan-inducing twist ending. The bigger problem with the movie is its moldy dialogue and its cartoonish conception of Californians who drink tofu seaweed alfalfa smoothies. From start to finish, Black Rose is about as pro forma as a motion picture gets. ------------- Black Rose Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes. Playing: Monica Film Center, Santa Monica See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com Anyone seeking a demonstration of how completely orthodoxy and heresy can change places need look no further than the brisk documentary "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City." That Jane is Jane Jacobs journalist, activist, author of the landmark 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" whose pro-neighborhood, pro-street life thesis that "no logic can be superimposed on a city, it is people who make it" is so completely accepted today that it's instructive to realize how far out of the mainstream it was once considered. That mainstream was forcefully represented by city planner par excellence Robert Moses, perhaps the most powerful unelected official in New York City history. Supremely unconcerned about the multitudes of people his projects displaced, Moses was a fervent believer in the school of urban renewal that insisted you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Robert Moses from Matt Tyrnauers Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. (C.M. Steiglitz / IFC Films / Sun / Library of Congress) (C.M. Steiglitz / IFC Films / Sun / Library of Congress) For Jacobs, urban renewal was 'not the building of cities but the sacking of cities.' Brusque, patrician, used to getting his way, Moses (memorably depicted in Robert Caro's magisterial biography "The Power Broker") saw urban renewal as a chance to, as one of the film's experts says, "take a carving knife to clear away the cancerous tissue." For Jacobs, however, urban renewal was "not the building of cities but the sacking of cities." As directed by Matt Tyrnauer, whose last film was the excellent fashion-oriented "Valentino: The Last Emperor," "Citizen Jane" works best as a broad general introduction to this clash of titans, with Marisa Tomei reading Jacobs' words and Vincent D'Onofrio doing the honors for Moses. Filled with interviews with academics and urban theorists (sadly, Caro did not participate), the film delineates the rise and fall of conventional urban planning, but also lets us know that the battle is not completely over. Especially interesting for those who believe that battles are not always black and white is the information "Citizen Jane" provides about Moses and the modernists. The man himself, it turns out, started as a progressive who wanted to make things better for impoverished slum dwellers and made room for parks and beaches for that purpose. The film also posits that while some of the theory behind urban renewal began with the visionary Le Corbusier, he has been misinterpreted. Fellow architect Robert A.M. Stern points out that Le Corbusier intended the massive towers in his theoretical projects to be for offices, not for the housing projects they came to be used for. As architecture critic Paul Goldberger summarizes, urban renewal zealots like Moses "didn't understand what they were giving up," didn't see that the projects they were building could be worse than the slums they replaced until Jane Jacobs. A journalist before she was an activist, Jacobs began as a writer for Architectural Forum who wrote approvingly of the Society Hill development in Philadelphia. When local residents avoided its shopping areas, she began to feel that maybe the experts didn't have all the answers. Jacobs lived on Hudson Street in Manhattan's West Village and the accident of history that several of Moses' major projects would have affected her directly was one of the factors in triggering her brilliant activism. The first round in Moses v. Jacobs came in 1955, when the planner decided he wanted to extend Fifth Avenue right through the heart of much-loved Washington Square Park. Jacobs, never deferential to power, strategized to stop him, using the power of local residents, a technique Moses in exasperation called "a bunch of mothers," to kill the project. In 1958, when Moses decided to earmark the entire West Village for urban renewal, Jacobs outmaneuvered him to stop that from happening. The same thing took place a few years later, when, undeterred by the 17 years it had taken to get the Cross Bronx Expressway approved and built, Moses decided to push a similar project for lower Manhattan. He did not succeed. Jacobs spent the last years of her life in Toronto, where she was drawn into, inevitably perhaps, a fight to block yet another expressway. And though the battles she fought may seem like ancient history, reports from around the world, like one from Asia noting "China today is Moses on steroids," indicates otherwise. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City MPAA rating: none Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes. Playing: Landmark's Nuart, West Los Angeles. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Kenneth Turan reviews "Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer," starring Richard Gere. Video by Jason H. Neubert. kenneth.turan@latimes.com @KennethTuran ALSO Critic's Choice: Richard Gere hustles persuasively in the surprising 'Norman' Review: 'The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki' is a heartwarming boxer's tale with a Scandinavian touch Review: 'Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent' serves up a full course of an enigmatic master chef, with dessert to come Subtle, unsettling, often slyly amusing and always unexpected, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (in limited release) is the kind of film were simply not used to seeing. Starring a surprisingly persuasive Richard Gere and the first English-language effort from top Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar, this delicate, novelistic character study is what more American independent films would be like if more had thoughtful adult themes and gravitated toward nuance and complexity. The gifted Cedar, a writer-director whose last two works, Beaufort and Footnote, were Oscar-nominated, has turned this story of a hustler forever searching for an exploitable angle into an entirely involving drama about means and ends, illusion and delusion and the price having your dreams come true can extract. Advertisement See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers kenneth.turan@latimes.com @KennethTuran While it adheres to the same first-person template that made last years Citizen Soldier such an immersive experience, Danger Close, the latest drama-infused war documentary by David Salzberg and Christian Tureaud, fails to convey a similar sense of imminent peril. It admittedly starts off great guns, following Alex Quade, a female war reporter embedded with U.S. special operations forces during a 2007 air assault mission in Afghanistan. As captured by night vision cameras, cellphones and on-the-ground video subsequently seized from the Taliban, the classified operation, which is cut short when one of its Chinook helicopters is shot down by a surface-to-air missile, is presented with an intense immediacy not usually associated with conventional documentaries. Advertisement Unfortunately, while serving as an embed in a subsequent mission in Iraq, Quade sustains injuries forcing her to return to America for rehab. Although she recovers, the film itself never regains its engrossing footing. The source of the problem is that Tureaud and Salzberg, who also co-directed 2014s The Hornets Nest, cant decide whose story theyre telling here Quades or that of Rob Pirelli, a well-regarded special forces staff sergeant killed in Iraq whose family plays a role in Quades return to the battlefront. Ultimately, neither narrative receives sufficient attention, robbing the subjects and that unique p.o.v. of the focus and urgency that lent the previous two films their undeniable potency. ------------- Danger Close Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com The convoluted, often ridiculously forced Grey Lady aims for the gravity of such other Bay State-set mystery-thrillers as Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, but barely scratches the surface of those far more elevated films. It also seems like awfully curious, undistinguished material for veteran actor John Shea, who wrote and directed, and longtime producer Armyan Bernstein (Air Force One, The Hurricane), who shares story credit with Shea, to spend a reported 10 years attempting to bring it to the big screen. For the record: The photo caption accompanying an earlier version of this review misidentified the actress Rebecca Gayheart as Natalie Zea. A leaden, self-serious lead turn by Eric Dane (TVs Greys Anatomy, The Last Ship) further sinks this wan effort, in which the actor plays a tough (natch) Boston homicide detective named James Doyle out to find the killer of his lover and partner, Maggie (Rebecca Gayheart, Danes real-life wife). Advertisement Doyles search takes him to foggy Nantucket (a.k.a. The Little Grey Lady of the Sea) where he encounters an array of residents, including the helpful a local cop (Adrian Lester), an attractive artist (Natalie Zea) and the dubious: a long-lost aunt (Amy Madigan), a pair of gun-happy psychopaths (Carolyn Stotesbery, Chris Meyer). A string of contrived or murky clues, some of which hark to Doyles childhood, propel the cop mechanically forward. But the films narrative engine remains too choppy and clunky, and the characters too cursorily developed, to hold attention. ------------- Grey Lady Rating: R, for violence and brief language Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes Playing: AMC Century City 15 See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com Theres a strange sort of symmetry at work when, midway through speaking with Catastrophe star and co-creator Rob Delaney on a transatlantic phone call, the comic abruptly asks to cut an interview short. Listen, I apologize but I have to get my other children from school, says Delaney, who had said he spent part of the interview from his London home with his 1-year-old staring beautifully into my eyes. Gamely, he answered questions for another five minutes, but its that intrusion of real life into any existing plans that forms the backbone of Catastrophe, which arrives for its third season on Friday, when all six episodes appear on Amazon. The series debuted on Britains Channel 4 earlier this spring and has already been renewed for a fourth season. In the show, which was co-created by Sharon Horgan, Delaney portrays Rob Norris, an advertising executive who is traveling in the U.K. when he meets an Irish school teacher portrayed by Horgan. The two have a passionate, extended one-night stand, but when Horgans character becomes pregnant, Rob upends his life and moves to London where they ultimately learn to become a family. Advertisement While that sounds like natural rom-com material, Catastrophe has built a reputation for being something more. The series pilot earned Horgan and Delaney an Emmy nomination for writing, and the gleefully vulgar first season found its main characters getting to know each other as they confronted real-world problems with a bracing honesty seldom seen on TV. The second jumped forward to a second child as the show touched on post-partum depression, infidelity, financial struggles and the daily challenges that come with sustaining a long-term relationship. Marriage is just fascinating and its really hard to do in film, TV and even novels, says Delaney, who cites Richard Linklaters Before trilogy as a touchstone for writing Catastrophe. I know people had found [the third film] Before Midnight depressing but I didnt. Theyre choosing to make it work, and thats a big element, maybe the biggest, of a successful marriage. Delaney is married with three kids, a number that, he clarifies, he and his wife arrived at on purpose (I really like walking in the door and having children climb all over me, he admits). But even as Catastrophe evolved into a show about parents, Rob and Sharons children are often a backdrop, a choice that maintains focus on the shows core relationship while also serving as an acknowledgment of its limitations. In real life I would rather spend time with children than adults, nine times out of 10, Delaney says. Kids are so much more spontaneous and amazing and interesting Sharon and I, we sit around laughing at each other, sure, we think were funny but are we going to write something funnier than [what] a real little kids going to say? No, were not that funny. In addition to the return of Carrie Fisher as Robs mother in one of her final on-screen appearances (Its staggering how brilliant she is, Delaney says), Catastrophe ventures down an even darker path this season as Rob who like Delaney is an alcoholic in recovery , starts drinking again. While Season 2 ended with his character crashing off the wagon, the lapse is depicted as something more insidious as he sneaks a few drinks here and there and liquor is noticed on his breath during a job interview. Delaney has been very open about his (still intact) sobriety, notably in his nonsensically titled 2013 memoir, Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. But he credits Horgan for drawing from his experience for the series. I had just lived [through getting sober] so it, for some reason, didnt occur to me that might be fruitful down the road, he says, noting the response this season generated in Britain. People are very discomfited watching Rob sort of pick up speed in terms of drinking, he says. I enjoy their discomfort. Prior to Catastrophe, Delaney was best known for his Twitter presence (@robdelaney). Born in Marblehead, Mass., he moved to L.A. in 2001 and was a struggling stand-up comic before the social media platform provided him an outlet for the surreally absurd, wickedly imagined one-liners about bodies, pop culture and sex he had amassed while pitching late-night jokes (many of which cant be reproduced here). Delaney accrued a following 140 characters at a time with musings like On the 1st episode of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Casper the Friendly Boy was eaten by a clown behind his grandparents barn. Armed with an expanding social media presence (now at over 1.4 million followers), Delaneys career also began to grow with a Netflix stand-up special in 2013. Twitter also brought him together with Horgan, who lives in London with her husband and two children and was then known for the distinctively raunchy 2006 BBC series Pulling. The two began working together on Catastrophe as their schedules allowed, and in 2014 the show was picked up and Delaney moved his family to London. Since then his relationship with Twitter has shifted. Its nowhere near as fun [now], says Delaney, whose dryly measured voice in real life can be considerably more reserved than his unhinged online presence. Lately, his tweets are primarily angled toward political causes, which includes support for the Democratic Socialists and universal healthcare, something hes become more conscious of since moving to a country with socialized medicine. I pretty much go on Twitter just to, you know, disseminate propaganda and not to craft jokes, he deadpans. Jokes I do on TV now. While his comic chops on social media have taken a back seat, so too has his stand-up. Right now, he says, Catastrophe and his children are the focus. I really try to fight my workaholic impulse. And kids help me do that because they will cry and be sad and blackmail me emotionally to be home more, he says. That type of approach works with me. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Catastrophe Where: Amazon Prime When: Anytime, starting Friday Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17) chris.barton@latimes.com Follow me over here @chrisbarton. ALSO: What SNLs coast-to-coast live experiment says about our streaming habits, second screens and the Trump factor The ever-changing Archer finds inspiration in classic L.A. noir Judd Apatow and Pete Holmes get real about comedy in HBO series Crashing Hulus dystopian The Handmaids Tale launched Wednesday to critical plaudits for author Margaret Atwood, for lead actress Elisabeth Moss and her costars, and for the couldnt-have-done-it-better timing of the streaming services latest offering. Other than a few remarks about the characters ages and the sequence of events varying from the source material in Bruce Millers adaptation of Atwoods 1985 novel, the overall reception of the brutal tale was glowing redder than its handmaids robes. The Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd dubbed the drama which tells the story of handmaid Offred, who is forced into sexual slavery to bear children for the barren leaders of the totalitarian Gilead, a dismal theocratic state that has replaced the United States in the near future a studiously handsome, generally impressive 10-part series. Advertisement See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour There is a lot of voice-over narration from Offred and time spent gazing into the face of Moss, an actress who can embody complicated, contradictory inner states in a single look, Lloyd said. Generally speaking, the performers ... push against the deadening tastefulness of the production: the chiaroscuro, shallow-focus photography; sound design that sometimes sounds like a long subway train is passing underneath a scene; the blandly expensive set decoration. With very occasional exceptions its pace feels slow enough to read chapters of the novel between lines of dialogue. That, of course, may be the point; a suffocating stillness is in the spirit of the book. How it will play out in later episodes, I cant say. Moss, an actress who has become increasingly politically outspoken, reflected in a recent interview with The Times, about the impact the series might have. I feel passionately about my choices in life being protected, she said. I think women in my generation have had a real wake-up call: Oh, wait, were not always going to have the things that our moms and grandmothers fought for? Oh, you mean you can take that away from us? On that note, TV Lines Kimberly Roots gave the series a grade of A-minus, asserting that the overarching dread of The Handmaids Tale is that the world beyond the handmaids white, winged veils feels a heck of a lot like something that could, one day, play out in our own. Unsettling, no? Blame the stellar cast, which includes Gilmore Girls Alexis Bledel, Chucks Yvonne Strahovski, The Leftovers Ann Dowd and Orange Is the New Blacks Samira Wiley, Roots said. Blame the excellent team behind the scenes, which includes writer Bruce Miller (The 100) and director Reed Morano (Looking), who helmed the first three episodes. And while youre at it, blame Atwoods 1980s book, which provides plenty of rich story and serves as a jumping-off point for paths not taken in the source material. That the series would take full advantage of the novel is no surprise Atwood served as a consultant on the series. Shes also been ubiquitous in promoting it. At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books over the weekend, she responded to the lingering question of whether her novel is feminist you can read her answer and the entire Q&A here. And while youre at it, heres where she addresses the books renaissance. Varietys Sonia Saraiya explained how Atwoods brilliant story presented quite a challenge for a screen adaptation. The story has to build the world of Gilead, place the action in the context of the real world, and do justice to Atwoods singular, award-winning prose, she wrote. Hulus The Handmaids Tale deftly translated from the novel by showrunner Bruce Miller is a worthy, heartbreaking adaptation of the text, anchored by strong performances and profound visual grammar. Over at Vox, Todd VanDerWerff said the first thing viewers would notice is that the series timely. At this moment in history, fears about authoritarian religious conservative leadership in the U.S. are ever-present for many, he wrote. But what Hulus series makes you grapple with is that The Handmaids Tale is always timely, that we are always slipping a little bit toward the black hole at its center. The Handmaids Tale isnt just a show about now; its a show about always. Hulus excellent adaptation ... is a horror show unveiled in slow motion, wrote NPRs Eric Deggans. Meanwhile, AV Clubs Erik Andrews felt that even as TVs most popular shows include Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, it was odd to call the chilling and relevant series gripping. Even given the novels reputation, and Atwoods standing as a literary giant, it feels odd to put it in the terms of a traditional TV recommendation, he wrote. Its very good TV, even if calling this very good TV is to risk sounding like a sleaze at best and an avid Breitbart commenter at worst. But anyone whod think that of someone whos enthusiastic about The Handmaids Tale is the same type of equally noxious person whos been trying to keep this vital piece of literature out of public schools for the past 30 years. Dont let those bastards grind you down: Watch The Handmaids Tale generate tomorrows nightmares from todays anxieties, smuggling in a little bit of beauty and resiliency under all that ugliness. Follow me: @NardineSaad ALSO Elisabeth Moss gets dystopian in The Handmaids Tale The Handmaids Tale has inspired several adaptations through the years Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is The Handmaids Tale a feminist book? The menswear store Union is small, easy to miss if you dont know its there, and tucked away on La Brea Avenue next door to Stussy and across the street from Sugarfish and a Bonobos Guideshop. This stretch of La Brea has quickly become a mens shopping destination with Steven Alan, Stampd and Unis all within spitting distance of each other, but that wasnt always the case. On an overcast afternoon earlier this year, graphic T-shirts from a collaboration between Union and the skate brand Bianca Chandon were hanging on rack downstairs, while upstairs, higher-end items with a conceptual slant from labels such as Junya Watanabe, Thom Browne and J.W. Anderson were on display. Advertisement Its a funky, surprising mashup of luxury avant-garde and streetwear that is popular now at stores including Opening Ceremony and Dover Street Market, but its a mix that Union, in many ways, predicted and helped popularize. An outside look at the menswear shop Union on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles that has become a menswear destination for shoppers. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) Were the best-kept secret. And theres a gift and a curse that comes with that. Chris Gibbs, owner of Union One of the beauties of the store is that its been able to change with every new era of fashion and retail, says Chris Gibbs, the stores current owner. There are many iterations of what Union has been. Gibbs sits in his office, in a second-floor space near the shop, wearing an oversize Marni trench coat, a side-zip hoodie from a forthcoming in-house collection, slim blue pants and Nike sneakers. Just outside, a young man takes product images of clothing for the stores website, where a majority of purchases now take place. Gibbs looks intimidatingly cool at first, with his shaved head and beard, but an approachable grin and relaxed disposition prove its just for show (hes Canadian, after all). To those in the know, Union is one of the longest-standing stalwarts on the menswear scene, a store that has a reputation for breaking many new designers into the mainstream. There was a time before anyone could peddle their goods online, when a store with cool-kid cachet would have to give you a retail platform before a place like Barneys New York would be willing to carry your line. For many, that place was Union. Were the best-kept secret, Gibbs says. And theres a gift and a curse that comes with that. Union has a long, twisty history, one thats intertwined with Gibbs own. A New York location opened first, in 1989, with an L.A. outpost following in 1991. Gibbs arrived at the original location in 1996, working closely with the founders Mary Ann Fusco and James Jebbia (the founder of cult skate and streetwear label Supreme). When Gibbs wife wanted to make the move to the West Coast, he worked alongside Eddie Cruz at the La Brea location. Around the time of the Great Recession, Cruz, now of Undefeated, wanted to focus on his other projects (most notably the sneakerhead shop Undefeated, which is across the street from Union), and Gibbs felt ready to take on the store as his own. A look inside L.A. menswear boutique Union shows that highbrow European brands are placed next to mass-market finds. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) In the past decade, Gibbs has cultivated a vision of fashion where lines are blurred highbrow European brands are hung next to mass-market finds with ease. The stores history also mirrors the recent ascent of menswear from streetwears dominance in the 90s and the Japanese boom of the early aughts to the current market, which is, in a way, an artful juxtaposition of all that came before. Im proud to say were a blend of all of the eras, Gibbs says of the stores current vibe. I think were still a rare place where all of those sit organically. Its an approach the led Complex magazine to name Gibbs one of the 25 Most Powerful People in Streetwear in 2013. Gibbs did all this, thereby continuing the stores original legacy, by trusting his gut. It doesnt hurt that, behind the cool facade, hes just a fashion nerd and retail addict. Im a sucker for product, he says. Im still in love with our product. Its why four times a year he hops on a plane to Japan to buy for the store and to re-up on inspiration. Still, there are realities that Gibbs is quick to make note of. Hes a retailer at a time when retail is uncertain, and he expresses, quite candidly, how conflicting it is to want to maintain ones street cred and simultaneously grow a business. You want to make money. You want to be viable, he says. Its hard to grow when, as soon as something blows up, its not cool anymore. Still, Union thrives, thanks to its embrace of e-commerce and social media, proving that more iterations will continue to occur. After all, fashion is a business obsessed with whats next and new. As for the future, Gibbs has some collaborative products in the works and an in-house line hes toying with the details of which he kept under lock and key but theres one thing for certain: An Angeleno, be he skate rat or high-minded aesthete, likely will find something to wear at Union, a fact that Gibbs counts on. I still think we have the best customer, he says. Youve got the best guy walking in here, and he will make your brand look that much better. Union, 110 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 549-6950, unionlosangeles.com Owner Chris Gibb inside his L.A. mens shop Union, which opened in 1991. Im proud to say were a blend of all of the eras, Gibbs says. I think were still a rare place where all of those sit organically. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) image@latimes.com Twitter: @latimesimage ALSO In the Steps of Trisha Brown, and the L.A. festival where dance and film collide Style sightings: Hailey Baldwin celebrates with footwear brand Schutz at a Beverly Hills party Why is Mr Porter serving up palm trees and surf vibes? To celebrate California style Berkeley mayor: Conservatives exploiting engineered intense animosity against city Street art in Berkeley once again takes the day: the collage Republicans, complete with scissors and glue pic.twitter.com/tf08FxAzzi Paige St. John (@paigestjohn) April 27, 2017 From his fifth-floor suite of offices overlooking the park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin had a first-hand view of the gathering of far right demonstrators. He has struggled to come to terms with how to deal with the combatants who continue to use Berkeley as their stage. Were a surrogate for the resistance against the Trump administration certainly, and for progressive values, " he said. Its not lost on me that Im Berkeleys first Latino mayor. I have been outspoken against the Trump administration, he said. I have to wonder if the mayor was white, would we see such hate. He has dealt with hate mail and death threats, he said. He also has tried to grapple with the presence of extremist anti-fascist groups in his city. Arreguin said conservatives, including Ann Coulter, have been able to parlay the clash between anti-fascist and nationalist demonstrators to their own advantage. Its engineered intense animosity against Berkeley and thats a narrative they keep putting out there, he said. The mayors personal nightmare, he said, is that eventually someone will get killed in one of the violent clashes. President Trump , angry about a judges decision to temporarily block enforcement of his order against sanctuary cities, has called for breaking up the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Never mind that the sanctuary city ruling came from a trial judge on the district court bench in San Francisco not the 9th Circuit appellate court. Its the 9th Circuit going bananas, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told reporters after the judge blocked Trumps order, which threatened to cut federal funds to jurisdictions that limit cooperation with immigration agents. Trump tweeted: First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court! The sanctuary ruling will not even get to the 9th Circuit until Trump appeals the lower courts decision. There are generally three levels of courts in the federal system: district courts, where trials are held; intermediate appellate circuit courts, which hear appeals from the lower courts; and the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of disputes. That the 9th Circuit received blame for a decision it didnt make reflected its long-held status as a whipping boy for conservatives. Efforts to break it up stretch back decades. The parade for change began with a senator from Washington state whose state kept losing fishing cases in the 9th Circuit. Contentious rulings by the court over the years increased the fomentation. The 9th Circuit, for example, was the source of a ruling that the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court overturned the decision. Conservative critics justify a proposed breakup on the grounds that the 9th Circuit the largest of the U.S. appeals courts in terms of judges and the population covered is just too unwieldy. They contend that cases would move more quickly if the court were split into more circuits. But the main beef is political. Judges appointed by Democratic presidents outnumber Republican appointees on the 9th Circuit by about two to one. Judge Alex Kozinski, a Republican with libertarian views appointed by President Reagan, has been quoted as saying, Youd have to believe in the tooth fairy to say this has nothing to do with politics. Ninth Circuit critics believe that creating a separate circuit of the most conservative Western states would result in more conservative rulings. California now has more cases in the 9th Circuit than any other state. A new circuit also could mean more judicial appointments for the sitting president in this case, Trump. What is the likelihood the 9th Circuit will be split? Until Trump lashed out at the 9th Circuit, few believed proposed legislation to break up the circuit would succeed. Previous bills have failed. A commission created by Congress to study a breakup recommended against it. A majority of 9th Circuit judges, including conservative Republicans, believe a breakup would be a bad idea, according to the courts internal polling of judges. Democrats, though the minority party, also could potentially block any such move. What would a split look like? The circuit is made up of nine states, plus territories. A bill sponsored by Arizonas senators would group Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington state in one circuit. The other circuit would include California, Oregon, Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Its the 9th Circuit going bananas. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus Is the 9th Circuit the most-reversed appeals court in the country? In raw numbers, yes. But the rate at which the U.S. Supreme Court overturns 9th Circuit decisions, while higher than average, does not lead the pack. In the most recent year for which statistics are available, the 9th Circuit ranked second in the percentage of reversals by circuit courts. Legal scholars argue that the statistics are relatively meaningless in any case. Only a tiny percentage of a circuits decisions are reviewed by the Supreme Court. A circuit that had one case before the Supreme Court would have a 100% annual reversal rating if the high court overturned that decision. There also are a variety of reasons why the Supreme Court might overturn a decision. A circuit court might follow precedent only to have the Supreme Court change the law in reviewing that circuits decision. Just how liberal is the 9th Circuit? Not as liberal as it used to be. Judges appointed by President Carter have traditionally been the most liberal, and they are retiring or taking reduced workloads. President Clinton s appointees are considered much more conservative than Carters. The court will continue to experience turnover, which will change the circuits bent. Do liberals deliberately file cases in 9th Circuit territory to increase their chances of winning? Most litigants, both liberal and conservative, will seek the most sympathetic forum possible. But the ruling against Trumps order on sanctuary jurisdictions came as a result of lawsuits filed by San Francisco and Santa Clara County. Those lawsuits had to be filed in California, and because of that, the 9th Circuit will hear Trumps appeal. Litigation over Trumps executive order temporarily barring travel from six predominantly Muslim nations has been filed around the country. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia is scheduled to hear an appeal of a Maryland judges ruling against the ban early next month. How many judges did each recent president nominate? The 9th Circuit is made up of 44 judges. The courts headquarters is in San Francisco. Other courthouses are located in Pasadena, Portland and Seattle. The longest-serving judge, Alfred T. Goodwin, was named by Richard Nixon in 1971. The most recent appointees, John B. Owens and Michelle T. Friedland, were named by Barack Obama in 2014. In all, 16 judges were chosen by Republicans and 28 by Democrats. Here's a tally of appointments by president: Richard Nixon: 2 Jimmy Carter: 7 Ronald Reagan: 5 George H. W. Bush: 2 Bill Clinton: 14 George W. Bush: 7 Barack Obama: 7 Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a President Carter appointee to the 9th Circuit, is known as the courts liberal lion. (Jamie Rector / For The Times) (Jamie Rector / For the Times) Who are the faces of the 9th Circuit? Dubbed the odd couple, Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Kozinski are the most prominent members of the 9th Circuit. Reinhardt is openly critical of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Some legal analysts believe Reinhardts name on a decision makes it more likely to be reviewed by the high court. He is widely known as the liberal lion of the federal appellate courts. The Carter appointee tends to rule in favor of criminal defendants and against death sentences. If he believes a Supreme Court precedent will create an injustice, Reinhardt may distinguish the case before him from the precedent and write around it. No judge likes to be overturned by a higher court, but Reinhardt is not afraid of it, his fellow judges say. Reinhardt wrote the ruling that overturned Proposition 8 , Californias ban on same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the grounds that the measures proponents lacked standing to appeal a district judges decision. The Supreme Court decision nevertheless had the effect of ending the marriage ban in California. Kozinski, who was profiled Sunday on 60 Minutes, has a penchant for startling ideas. He suggested in a court ruling that the guillotine was the best way to execute criminals. But he advocated instead for firing squads because he said the public would never accept guillotines. Like Reinhardt, Kozinski has chafed under Supreme Court rulings that require lower courts to defer to state judges, even if the federal judges believe the states badly erred. Kozinski also has been a leader on the 9th Circuit in condemning prosecutorial misconduct. A video posted on the 9th Circuit's YouTube page describing the court's historic San Francisco headquarters. UPDATES: 3:35 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the structure of the 9th Circuit. This article was originally published at 1:25 p.m. After weeks of debate, conservative commentator Ann Coulter wont speak at UC Berkeley. But protesters are still expected to be out in force. Heres what could happen today: Advertisement Extremists looking for trouble UC Berkeley Police Capt. Alex Yao said authorities expect extremists to arrive on campus to have violence against each other. He said students should expect a heavy police presence Thursday and a very, very low tolerance of violence. Among those contemplating their own Berkeley events on Thursday were Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and Canadian alt-right blogger Lauren Southern, according to Southern. People march in front of Sproul Hall to protest the appearance of Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley. (Ben Margot / Associated Press) More fallout from Coulter cancellation Im so sorry for free speech [being] crushed by thugs, Coulter posted on Twitter in announcing that she had abandoned efforts to find a campus venue where she could speak Thursday. Coulter had been invited by two student groups to speak on immigration policy as a counterpoint to a Clinton administration advisor. The address became a campus-freedoms rallying point for conservative groups when administrators first canceled Coulters visit, then rescheduled it to an unpopular date. Administrators cited unspecified threats of violence in limiting Coulter to a daytime engagement off the main campus. The Berkeley campus and adjacent downtown has been the scene of three violent clashes since February between alt-right demonstrators and white nationalists on one side and anti-fascist and anarchist groups on the other. Coulter had pledged to show up anyway, even contemplating an outdoor address. But she discarded that idea Wednesday in the face of continued threats, the universitys refusal to find her a building and the withdrawal of her sponsors. Demonstrators protest at UC Berkeleys Sproul Plaza against a scheduled appearance by Breitbarts Milo Yiannopoulos. (Ben Margot / Associated Press) Coulter gaining some unexpected support The American Civil Liberties Union raised its own concerns Wednesday. National Legal Director David Cole said he was troubled by how threats of violence effectively silenced Coulter. If the government gets to decide which speech counts as hate speech, the powers that be may later feel free to censor any speech they dont like, Cole said in a statement. For the future of our democracy, we must protect bigoted speech from government censorship. On college campuses, that means that the best way to combat hateful speech is through counter-speech, vigorous and creative protest, and debate, not threats of violence or censorship. UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks released a public statement that stressed the universitys commitment to free speech and attributed the risk of mayhem and free speech challenges to outside groups. This is a university, not a battlefield, Dirks said. The strategies necessary to address these evolving threats are also evolving, but the simplistic view of some that our police department can simply step in and stop violent confrontations whenever they occur ignores reality. To read the article in Spanish, click here paige.stjohn@latimes.com Twitter: @paigestjohn ALSO Ann Coulter, free speech and UC Berkeley: How a talk became a political bombshell Opinion: Why are leftists targeting troll columnists like Ann Coulter instead of institutions? The Bill OReilly case shows how much Fox News and UC Berkeley have (horrors!) in common The riots that consumed Los Angeles 25 years ago had many causes grinding poverty and hopelessness in South Los Angeles, a police force with a reputation for treating minorities poorly, the not guilty verdict against the white officers caught on tape beating black motorist Rodney King . But the police tactics or lack of them in the crucial hours when the rioting began are also considered a major factor in why the city burned for three days. Despite deep concerns in the community about violence if the verdict was not guilty, the LAPD didnt have a plan to deal with unrest. When the first flashpoint of violence erupted at the corner of Florence and Normandie, the LAPD moved in. But, outnumbered, the police infamously retreated. For the next few hours, a horrified city and world watched on live television as rioters pulled motorists out of cars and beat them, set buildings on fire and looted stores, with no police in sight. Those images haunted the LAPD for years after and represented to many an unacceptable breaking of civil order and government service. My belief is its a failure of the institution, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in an interview this week. Since then, police and others have analyzed what went wrong and how officials would deal with unrest now. Heres a breakdown of these conclusions, through the eyes of LAPD Assistant Chief Michel Moore: A jury acquits Officers Stacey C. Koon, Lawrence M. Powell, Theodore J. Briseno and Timothy E. Wind in the King beating. 1992 tactics Moore said the LAPD was ill-prepared to deal with the verdict because its relations with the minority communities back then were so poor. The department had made no inroads with community activists, politicians and community leaders about how they could deal with unrest. 2017 tactics Over the last 25 years, LAPD relations with community groups have improved dramatically, though they are still far from perfect. The LAPD regularly meets with various stakeholders and also has developed intelligence-gathering processes with former gang members. The verdicts are read in the 1992 trial of four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King on the night of March 3, 1991. LAPD officers respond to the first report of trouble at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Beer cans are being thrown at passing motorists. 1992 tactics LAPD officers were overwhelmed by the growing crowd at Florence and Normandie and retreated. That left a huge crowd of rioters with no police in sight. The mobs behavior got more violent, and it was broadcast on live television. Soon, other scenes of disorder were breaking out around the city. People kept asking, Where are the police? We wouldnt have left, Beck said. We would have brought in sufficient resources to restore order. But I think that just like anything, taking it down to the individual police action, once it starts getting away from you, the results are foregone. Youre going to end up using significant force or resources. 2017 tactics Moore said today, instead of pulling back, the LAPD would flood the zone with more officers. The idea would be to use overwhelming strength to put down the riots in the early stages, preventing them from spreading. The department now has strategies developed after the riots to move platoons of officers to an area fairly quickly. They also use tactics to isolate troublemakers and if necessary deploy an array of less-lethal munitions to break up mobs. The department would likely run the operation from a large command bus at the location. Commanders would try to limit the size of the crowd. Moore said the LAPD in 1992 was concerned about being involved in major confrontations, given its image after the King beating. Top brass feared this could spark a riot. Ironically, it kept them from making the mass arrests that might have prevented the riots from spreading. Early demonstrations in front of Parker Center. (Rosemary Kaul / Los Angeles Times) TV footage shows Reginald Denny being dragged from his cab and beaten nearly to death at Florence and Normandie. Denny is rescued by four brave strangers. 1992 tactics In retrospect, these images senseless beatings with no police responding helped foster the idea that there was no order in the city, and many believe that is what caused the riots to spread so quickly. But LAPD commanders at the time were reluctant to go back out to the intersection because the crowd was growing and it was unclear whether officers could quell the violence. A later report on the LAPDs handling of the riots said the hands-off approach and failure to contain the televised unrest at Florence and Normandie and LAPD police headquarters helped create a much larger riot. 2017 tactics Today, the LAPDs response is focused on not allowing pockets of unrest to spread. You can never allow an exception for any level of violence or property damage, Moore said. The assistant chief said the department has learned that even to allow a few broken windows can set off a chain of potentially deadly events. Moore said the department in recent years has drawn the line at protesters entering freeways, and it has made more arrests than other departments across the country at demonstrations. He said that is in part preventive and reaction to a history many other cities don't have to consider. After a shooting of a young, armed black man in South Los Angeles last October, protesters gathered, and at one point a car did doughnuts at an intersection and some people tagged buildings nearby. LAPD officers in helmets swarmed the area at 107th Street and Western Avenue and ordered the remaining crowd to leave or face arrest. Officers made a handful of arrests and eventually persuaded the crowd to leave. Protesters kick in the windshield of a Jaguar parked on Main Street across from City Hall. (Alan Duignan / Los Angeles Times) Chief Daryl F. Gates returns to the city's Emergency Response Center from a Brentwood fundraiser. He and Mayor Tom Bradley had not spoken to each other in more than a year before the unrest. 1992 tactics To some, one cause of the riots was the citys governance, which gave the LAPD chief extensive powers and few checks from the mayor and others. Gates and his predecessors ran the LAPD with great autonomy, and that made the department resistant to reform or scrutiny. 2017 tactics The chiefs job was radically changed in the wake of the riots. Voters ended civil service status for chiefs. Before that, chiefs had been appointed by the Police Commission and essentially were allowed to serve indefinitely barring formal findings of serious wrongdoing. A law also limited police chiefs to two five-year terms. It also empowered the mayor to select a chief with the City Council's consent and provided for civilian review of police misconduct. richard.winton@latimes.com Twitter: @lacrimes Authorities expected violence. They issued warnings to those in the Berkeley area to steer clear of the fray. Behind face shields and helmets, they lined the streets, girding themselves for disorder. But Thursdays anticipated showdown incited by an invitation for Ann Coulter to speak at the campus turned out to be more of a shouting match than a melee, with little physical confrontation. A day earlier, Coulter announced she would bow out of an appearance planned at UC Berkeley that had incited protests. Free speech, the conservative commentator declared, had been crushed by thugs. Advertisement Organizers filled in the empty slot with surrogate rallies, and city officials braced for the same mayhem and destruction that has struck Berkeley multiple times in recent months, involving alt-right demonstrators and anti-fascists. Dont get baited by provocateurs, they urged. UC Berkeley police issued a long list of prohibited objects, which included water bottles, balloons, frozen fruit and in what city officials later said was a mistake banners and signs. The hundreds of demonstrators who appeared at the campuss main plaza on Thursday brandished signs that said alt right delete and chanted, Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here! The boisterous affair was matched an hour later by a diverse mix of conservatives who gathered blocks away at downtowns Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. There, demonstrators mingled as they listened to passionate speeches that ranged from support of President Trumps immigration policies to veterans rights to calls for the anti-fascist group ANTIFA to be declared a terrorist organization. Well keep showing up to defend free speech, right? said one woman who was met with cheers. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, said he came to protect future conservative speakers. We are only here for self-defense to keep the hotheads in check, Rhodes said. Coulter had been invited by two student groups to talk about immigration policy. Administrators said unspecific threats led them to cancel her appearance. They then rescheduled it to the week before final exams at a location off the main campus. Threats of violence, they said, limited their options for dates and locations. Coulter insisted on sticking to the initial date and pushed the college to find her a venue. As the standoff became a national focal point for conservatives accusing the university of quashing free speech, Coulters student hosts and financial sponsor withdrew. Without assurances of safety or a building in which to speak, Coulter abandoned plans to appear at Berkeley. Berkeley College Republicans, one of Coulters hosts, and her financial sponsor ,Young Americas Foundation, said they will continue to pursue a federal free speech lawsuit accusing the university of censoring conservative viewpoints. Coulter, set to appear Friday at a sold-out fundraiser for the Republican Party of Stanislaus County, said in an email to the Associated Press that she might swing by Berkeley. But she was a no-show. At the civic center park, many in the crowd sported helmets and carried shields. One toted a medical kit. The alternative rally was organized by controversial figures including Gavin McInnes, founder of Proud Boys, a fraternal organization that has joined forces with the stick-brandishing Alt Knights. Aside from a handful of arguments and opposing rally cries, there were few face-offs. An air of waiting for the resistance lingered. Any verbal debates quickly drew spectators and bloggers who held up cameras. But the masked members of ANTIFA did not appear and the megaphones of By Any Means Necessary were sparse. A group called RefuseFascism.org kept their distance, chanting, Hey, ho, hey, ho, Donald Trump has got to go! The daylong demonstration had light moments. When police used squad cars and motorcycles to clear the streets, they were defied by a man in a motorized wheelchair who performed wheelies. Pepsi cans were plentiful, a tongue-in-cheek homage to the soda companys recently panned commercial featuring Kendall Jenner at a protest. Toward the end of the afternoon, organizers were urging attendees to disperse, even as counter-demonstrators showed up across the street. The groups exchanged shouts and glares as police stood in a line between them and a helicopter hovered. Occasionally, someone would cross the street and engage in a debate, joined by a thick crowd of onlookers and media. Eventually both sides wound up on the same side of the street in various flocks, arguing topics such as the burka, Native Americans, Muslim bashing and sexual politics. Berkeley police said five people were arrested, including one man accused of attempting to incite a riot and another for allegedly carrying a concealed knife. No injuries were reported. Some demonstrators vowed to continue holding rallies in neo-Marxist strongholds. We need to support our right-wing brethren, said one to the crowd. This is where the battles at and this is where we will continue to hold our rallies, in cities like Berkeley. Mayor Jesse Arreguin said Thursday that he recognizes why his city is often used as a stage: Were a surrogate for the resistance against the Trump administration, certainly, and for progressive values. But he grapples with the presence of extremist groups and how conservatives have been able to parlay the clash between anti-fascists and nationalists to their own advantage. Its engineered intense animosity against Berkeley, and thats a narrative they keep putting out there, he said. paige.stjohn@latimes.com veronica.rocha@latimes.com corina.knoll@latimes.com St. John reported from Berkeley, Rocha and Knoll from Los Angeles. UPDATES: 9:30 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with details of Thursdays rallies. 12:50 p.m.: This article was updated with information about separate rallies planned in Berkeley and on the UC campus. This article was originally published at 10:45 a.m. The Culver City Police Department has removed a section from its manual that gave officers guidelines on how to enforce immigration law, a move that follows a Los Angeles Times report on how several police departments in California retain written policies that are inconsistent with their public stance against enforcing federal immigration laws. Culver Citys police were one of at least 11 agencies that purchased a comprehensive police manual from Lexipol, an Irvine-based company, which included guidelines for the enforcement of immigration laws that drew stern criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union. The policy seemed especially odd for Culver City, which declared itself a so-called sanctuary city in March. Outgoing Mayor Jim Clarke announced the removal of the policy in a statement released earlier this month. Advertisement I am pleased that Police Chief [Scott] Bixby swiftly gave this matter his full attention and moved to delete Policy 415 in the Police Department manual, Clarke said in the statement. This should address any concerns in our community about the role the Culver City Police Department plays in enforcing federal immigration law. The simple answer is: none. Civil rights activists raised concerns about the policies earlier this month, saying they encouraged immigration enforcement at a time when many local police agencies are trying to build trust with immigrant communities fearful over President Trumps calls for more deportations. The policy also said officers could use a lack of English proficiency as grounds to stop a person suspected of illegal entry into the U.S., which the ACLU said could easily lead to racial profiling. In addition to Culver City, police in Azusa, Blythe, Brisbane, Fontana, Fremont, Irwindale, Laguna Beach, Murrieta, Rialto and Walnut Creek all purchased the policy, according to the ACLU. Despite the existence of the policy in their manuals, police officials in Blythe, Brisbane, Fremont, Rialto and Walnut Creek told The Times earlier this month that they do not actively engage in immigration enforcement. Rialtos Police Chief Randy De Anda also said that he would consider revising the policy. james.queally@latimes.com Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California. A man accused of killing three people during a daytime shooting rampage in Fresno last week has been charged with three counts of murder and of targeting the victims because of their race, county prosecutors said Wednesday. Kori Ali Muhammad, 39, faces eight felonies, including three counts of attempted murder, shooting into a moving vehicle and being a felon in possession of a firearm in connection with the April 18 attack, the Fresno County district attorneys office said. Prosecutors also alleged special circumstances in that Muhammad used a firearm and committed multiple murders. If convicted on all charges, he faces a possible sentence of life without parole or the death penalty, officials said. Prosecutors said they will decide whether to pursue capital punishment at a later date. Advertisement Prosecutors say Muhammad targeted the victims because they were white. Muhammad is black, and authorities said that during his rampage, he deliberately avoided killing two women in a car once he realized they were Latina. At the time of the killings, police had been looking for Muhammad in connection with a homicide that took place days earlier at a Motel 6. In that incident, Muhammad shot 25-year-old security guard Carl Williams because he felt Carl Williams had disrespected him, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said. At a hearing Friday, a doctor was appointed to evaluate Muhammads mental competency. Dyer said Muhammad, who spoke of an ongoing race war, told investigators he didnt want to go down for killing the security guard he wanted to kill as many white males as possible. Five days after Williams was gunned down, police said, Muhammad walked up to a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. truck and fired shots into it, striking Zackary David Randalls, a 34-year-old Clovis resident. After shooting Randalls, police said, Muhammad fired at but missed a 59-year-old man who had just walked out of a home. Muhammad then fired on a vehicle but stopped once he saw that the occupants were two Latinas, the chief said. Muhammad continued walking and fatally shot Mark James Gassett, 37, of Fresno, Dyer said. Next, Muhammad fired at David Martin Jackson as Jackson sat with two other men at a bus stop, the police chief said. As Jackson, a 58-year-old Fresno resident, ran away, Muhammad chased him and fired two more shots at him, Dyer said. Jackson collapsed and died in the parking lot of Catholic Charities, the police chief said. A total of 17 shots were fired before Muhammad was taken into custody, Dyer said. The gun has not been found. joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. Staff writer Veronica Rocha contributed to this report. After a massive fire ripped through two buildings in a Westlake neighborhood early Thursday, cadaver dogs searched one of the smoldering structures for remains of possible victims, authorities said. The search was intended to make sure there were no homeless individuals trapped in the fire, said Erik Scott, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. Late Thursday, authorities said the dogs had not found any survivors or human remains, although tons of debris in one buildings basement have drawn out the search process. Advertisement Theres no likelihood anyone would have survived, said Brian Humphrey, an LAFD spokesman. We are doing our best to say we have exhausted all of our efforts ... and bring closure. Flames had erupted just after 2 a.m. inside a large two-story Victorian duplex in the 600 block of Bonnie Brae Street. More than 160 firefighters tackled the fast-moving flames as the blaze spread into a neighboring four-story apartment building, Scott said. The duplex was already on fire shooting into the sky and street when firefighters arrived, Scott said. This was a defensive fight. About 50 residents of a nearby convalescent home were evacuated, he said. Others were asked to shelter in place. No injuries were reported. After a more than hourlong battle, firefighters extinguished the blaze. Arson investigators were looking into the cause of the fire, Scott said. Officials said it could take several days before investigators identify what sparked the blaze. Around 8 a.m. Thursday, six fire trucks remained on Bonnie Brae. A firefighter scaled a ladder extending to the roof of the Mid-Wilshire Convalescent Hospital, just around the corner from the fire station. Smoke wafted through the air where the fire had burned through several floors of the small apartment complex and scorched the roof of the law library next door. The tan apartment building was tinged with black. Most of the complexs windows were shattered. A pile of scorched wood smoldered where the Victorian duplex once stood. Firefighters said the destroyed building had been vacant for years, and it was possible homeless people were inside at the time of the fire. Wilshire Boulevard was closed in the area but later reopened. Luis Mayen, 38, was home with his wife and children when the fire broke out. The family lives in an apartment complex across the street from the burned building. The alarms sounded early in the morning, he said, and he was worried that the fire was in their own building. We woke up and saw a lot of firefighters, Mayen said. His Honda SUV was parked on the street just a few feet from the fire. Like other cars near the burned complex, his sat covered in ash. We have kids, the construction worker said. We were scared. Mayen said he kept a close eye on the fight to extinguish the fire and didnt return to his apartment until it was over. sarah.parvini@latimes.com Twitter: @SarahParvini veronica.rocha@latimes.com Twitter: @VeronicaRochaLA ALSO Woman, 86, is beaten to death in a random attack in Northern California Mother suspected of abducting son, 6, is arrested after short pursuit: Please, I didnt kidnap him Secret witness at Durst hearing testifies that her now-dead friend pretended to be his missing wife UPDATES: 6:15 p.m.: This article was updated with details on the status of the fire investigation. 9:15 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from neighbor Luis Mayen. 6:35 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information from fire department spokesman Erik Scott. This article was originally published at 5:55 a.m. A Los Angeles County judge gave prosecutors the go-ahead on Thursday to begin searching dozens of boxes of documents belonging to Robert Durst a boon for the district attorneys office as it builds its murder case against the eccentric New York multimillionaire. The 74-year-old real estate tycoon is accused of shooting his best friend, Susan Berman, in the back of the head inside her Benedict Canyon home in 2000, in what prosecutors say was a move to silence her because she knew too much about the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen. Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windhams ruling Thursday came at the end of a three-day pretrial hearing, which included sensational witness testimony that could prove crucial when Durst goes to trial. Advertisement Movie producer Lynda Obst testified that Berman, her longtime friend, once told her that as a favor to Durst she had called Albert Einstein College of Medicine pretending to be Kathleen. Theres proof, prosecutors say, that Kathleen, who was attending the medical school at the time she vanished, was already dead when a doctor at the school says he received a call from someone identifying herself as Kathleen. The doctor testified earlier this year, saying he was unsure of whom he actually spoke to that day. Obst testified that she hadnt known the significance of the years-old comment until after watching an episode of The Jinx, an HBO documentary examining Dursts life, and realizing that others didnt know that Berman claimed she made the call. During cross-examination Thursday, Dursts attorney, Dick DeGuerin, questioned Obsts motivation for testifying. He noted that in a taped interview with prosecutors and investigators, Obst while speaking of Durst said, Lets get the guy behind bars. Obst said she is scared of Durst, but that her main motivation for testifying was to get justice for Berman. DeGuerin also highlighted inconsistencies in Obsts statements. He pointed to a March 2015 interview in which Obst tells authorities that it was reading a magazine story not watching the documentary that jogged her memory about Bermans comment. On the stand Thursday, Obst said she was mistaken then, but is now certain that the realization happened after the documentarys premiere. The confusion, she said, was the result of being traumatized by the documentary interview. When DeGuerin played a clip from the documentary that focused on the medical school doctor receiving the phone call, Obst shook her head. I find it very scary, she said. I didnt know the Albert Einstein piece until this moment, and it was bloodcurdling for me. Toward the end of Thursdays hearing, Windham ruled on the roughly 60 boxes belonging to Durst that were seized from the New York home of his friend, Susan Giordano. Because Durst admitted to previously having given The Jinx crew permission to look though the materials, the judge said that any claim of attorney-client privilege had been waived for evidence in those boxes. But that wasnt the case, the judge ruled, for boxes seized from Dursts Houston home or from his room at the New Orleans hotel where he was arrested in 2015. Windham said prosecutors cant search those boxes until he, or someone else appointed by the court, goes through the materials to ensure theres nothing protected by attorney-client privilege. Durst will return to court July 24, when lawyers will question several more witnesses. The defense will call former NYPD Det. Michael Struk, who led the 1982 investigation into Kathleens disappearance. Prosecutors plan to gather testimony from Paul Kaufman, who dated Berman; Richard Markey, one of the last known people to see her alive; and Stewart and Emily Altman, longtime friends of Durst. marisa.gerber@latimes.com For more news from the Los Angeles County courts, follow me on Twitter: @marisagerber An Uber driver in Orange County has been charged with raping a passenger who was riding home from a work-related event, authorities said. The alleged rape occurred March 30, when Angel Sanchez, 36, picked up a woman at a company gathering in Newport Beach, according to the Orange County district attorneys office. The Uber ride was requested by colleagues of the woman, who was under the influence of alcohol at the time, prosecutors said. Advertisement Sanchez drove the woman near her home in Santa Ana and sexually assaulted her in his 2016 Toyota Sienna, prosecutors alleged. The woman fled Sanchezs vehicle and called 911. Police arrested Sanchez, a resident of Costa Mesa, on April 1. He was formally charged Tuesday with a felony count of raping an intoxicated victim. If convicted, Sanchez faces up to eight years in state prison. He is scheduled to be arraigned May 1 in Santa Ana. Uber spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said the company assisted law enforcement with the investigation. Nobody should have to go through what this woman reported to police, Breeden added. An attorney for Sanchez could not be reached for comment. matt.hamilton@latimes.com Twitter: @MattHjourno ALSO Uber hires Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment claims Uber could face $1.1-million state fine for failing to investigate drivers accused of being intoxicated Uber driver is shot to death while ferrying San Diego State students in Rosarito Beach, Mexico UPDATES: 5:15 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Uber spokeswoman Tracey Breeden. This article was originally published at 4:40 p.m. A new UCLA environmental report card gives Los Angeles County a C in energy use and persistent air pollution, while rating parts of the region slightly higher for addressing other challenges. The 2017 Sustainable LA Environmental Report Card for Energy and Air Quality handed the region that mediocre grade based on what it calls a failure to reduce fuel use, increasing commute times and some of the worst smog in the nation. On the upside, researchers noted that local cities are developing crucial sustainability plans, air quality is at its best in 40 years and county voters recently approved a sales tax measure to build more public transit. Advertisement UCLAs environmental report card, released Thursday, is an assessment of the regions energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and air quality. Researchers say the report will help keep local governments accountable and track progress by identifying successes and failures of environmental efforts. This years grades ranged from C- / Incomplete to B, researchers said. Although there is progress toward meeting local and state goals, and a number of new standards and regulations that will undoubtedly have a positive impact in years to come, these grades would not get you on the UCLA deans list. These grades would not get you on the UCLA deans list. UCLA environmental report card Building on the 2015 environmental report card, this years research dug deeper into energy use, transportation, renewable energy resources, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality and the environments effect on health. According to the study, the regions fuel purchases have remained relatively constant, and emissions of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming and climate change, have not changed much. Initial findings indicate that over the last decade, as the areas population grew by 4%, energy use in buildings, which accounts for 40% of the regions greenhouse gas emissions, declined only 2% to 3%. However, the city of Los Angeles reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in 2013 from 1990 levels and is on target to meet its 45% reduction goal by 2025. While modest greenhouse gas emission reductions have been realized in recent years, few cities have developed climate action plans or greenhouse gas emissions inventories, the study says. The report says that the total number of miles traveled by motor vehicles in the county did not change from 2005 to 2014, while miles traveled per person declined about 3.3%. For the same period, researchers found that driving alone increased by 3.5%, carpooling dropped by 24% and public transit use decreased by 6%, though the miles commuters traveled on transit increased by 22%. The study gives the county a B grade, its highest, for continuing to increase the use of renewable energy sources, such as solar power. In some cities, such as Glendale and Burbank, about 33% of the power comes from renewable sources. Researchers stated that the county also has become one of the top three producers of distributed solar power in the state, and Los Angeles is second only to San Diego in the amount of electricity generated by solar power. Though air quality has improved across the county, the report states that asthma-related emergency room visits increased between 2010 and 2015 due to air pollution, and the health impacts of smog will only continue to be aggravated by climate change. Researchers mentioned that the states most populous region has shown promise with the development of the Sustainable City plan in Los Angeles and voter approval of Measure M, a countywide sales tax earmarked for transportation projects. The Sustainable City plan aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2025, 60% by 2035 and 80% by 2050 compared with 1990 levels. dan.weikel@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter @LADeadline16 The Trump administrations online database of immigrants in detention was supposed to help the public search for potential criminals. But when it launched Wednesday, an immigration attorney noticed something unusual: babies. Turns out, the system mistakenly included children in immigration custody, some as young as a few months. A 3-year-old boy from El Salvador detained in Texas and a 4-year-old Guatemalan girl in Phoenix were among scores of children listed in the public system. Advertisement The database also included unaccompanied minors children who came to the United States without their parents who are currently held in group homes. Department of Homeland Security officials said the release of childrens names was a lapse in policy that arose because a filter was not applied to the data made available on the website. The Department of Homeland Securitys policy is and remains to protect the information of minors in our custody, said Gillian M. Christensen, a spokeswoman for the agency. By late Wednesday evening, the department had fixed the problem. But concerns remained about the amount of private information still easily available to the public, including potential asylum applicants whose identities are supposed to be confidential under DHS policy. The searchable database is the latest effort by the Trump administration to spotlight crimes committed by immigrants who are in the country illegally. It was launched under a high-profile rollout of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, or VOICE, that is intended to help what administration officials have described as forgotten victims. The web site, known as DHS-VINE , is supposed to list everyone currently in federal immigration custody. It allows users to search with as few as three letters of a last name and a first initial, along with country of birth or date of birth. A search by the Los Angeles Times under A for first name, Mar for last name and Guatemala as country of origin pulled up 50 matches. The matches reveal the detention facility the immigrant is housed in, custody status, age, country of birth, date of birth, race, gender and aliases. There doesnt appear to be any way to distinguish between someone who may have perpetrated a crime beyond being in the country illegally. Attorneys representing immigrants expressed anger and worry over the release of names that were supposed to be protected. Bryan Johnson, the Long Island, N.Y., lawyer who first noticed the error, called the release reckless incompetence on the part of the Trump administration. In their haste to pretend like they care about victims of immigrant crimes, the Trump administration released personally identifiable information regarding vulnerable children at risk of human trafficking and other crimes, said Johnson, who defends children brought into the United States from abroad, many escaping violence. Matthew Kolken, an immigration attorney in New York, said he was shocked that a quick search of the database brought up one of his clients a 26-year-old asylum applicant from Lebanon who has been detained by immigration officials for two years. The man had overstayed his visa and sought asylum because he is a pro-democracy leader in a youth movement back home and being persecuted by Hezbollah, Kolken said. If a terrorist organization is looking for him they may simply enter his name into a database and know exactly where he is, Kolken said. It puts his entire family back home in jeopardy. The names of asylum seekers are also kept secret to protect them from retaliation in the event that asylum is denied and they are sent back home. The United States needs to be taking its obligations seriously to keep vulnerable asylum seekers identities confidential, Kolken said. A DHS spokesperson said the database does not violate privacy policies because it doesnt identify anybody as an asylum applicant. Critics of the Trump administration said that Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kellys announcement of the database was more about politics than public safety, and that it was timed to add luster to President Trumps uneven record before his administration hits the 100-day mark on Saturday. DHS spokesman David Lapan rejected that claim. This effort has been underway for some time and was announced [Wednesday] after we were able to establish the mission, procedures and people assigned to duties associated with the VOICE office, irrespective of the 100-day marker, Lapan said. Advocates for immigrants said the administration is trying to demonize immigrants as criminals and whip up public support for aggressive new deportation operations and billions of dollars in additional spending for border security. This isnt the first time the Trump administration has erred in releasing information aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. Under Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began publishing reports on the cities and other jurisdictions that were releasing immigrants from jail or after arrest, flouting requests to hold certain immigrants for transfer to federal detention. But the first few reports were plagued by errors. In some cases, ICE mixed up names, confusing Franklin counties in Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania. In other cases, the detainees had already been picked up by ICE, or had never been released in the first place. Earlier this month, ICE suspended publication of the reports. cindy.carcamo@latimes.com Twitter: @thecindycarcamo Los Angeles Times staff writer Joseph Tanfani contributed to this report. ALSO: Economic reality and contradictions beset Trumps tax plan Trump says U.S. will not withdraw from NAFTA U.S. judge blocks Trump order threatening funds for sanctuary cities UPDATES: April 27, 4:47 p.m.: This article has been updated with a comment from DHS on privacy policies concerning asylum seekers. April 27, 3:30 p.m.: This article has been updated with information about asylum seekers and background about the database. April 27, 12:20 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the Department of Homeland Security and with background on problems with Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports on jurisdictions that dont cooperate with immigration authorities. This article was originally published April 26 at 10: 40 p.m. A series of executions in Arkansas have reignited the long-standing battle over the death penalty. Beginning last week, the state tried to put eight men to death over 11 days before one of the drugs it uses in executions expired. After legal challenges, half of the executions were blocked in court. Yet, despite the high-profile executions in Arkansas including the first double-execution in the nation in nearly 17 years the use and support of the death penalty in the United States has steeply declined to levels unheard of in decades. Capital punishment is still legal in most states. But, while activists and experts say it is far-fetched to expect it to be banned nationwide any time soon, they say the momentum against it is strong. Practically speaking, the death penalty is in its last days. But like any disease thats rendered obsolete by modern medicine, it has a few flareups before the end, said Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University . The long-term trend toward its extinction is pretty clear and pronounced. Heres why. Pro-death penalty supporters protest outside the Varner Unit on Monday, April 24, 2017 near Varner, Ark. (Stephen B. Thornton / AP) (STEPHEN B. THORNTON / AP) Fewer people are being executed by fewer states The number of annual executions in the U.S. hit a high of 98 in 1999. Last year, the number was 20. The last time it was that low was in 1991, when 14 people were executed. If all the scheduled executions this year are carried out, 25 Americans will be put to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The Washington-based nonprofit is critical of the death penalty. Seven states have or are scheduled to carry out executions, according to the center: Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Georgia and Alabama. It is a phenomenon now of a few counties in a few states, said Freedman. The vast majority of the country is living in counties where there hasnt been an execution for decades. (Pew Research Center) Public support is at its lowest level in 40 years More Americans support the death penalty than those who are against it. But surveys over the years show that opposition is increasing and support is declining. According to the most recent Pew Research Center poll, 49% of Americans support the death penalty for people found guilty of murder. At the same time, 42% of Americans are against it. The gap in part depends on political party. Only 34% of Democrats favor the death penalty, compared with 72% of Republicans. Experts say the decline can be attributed to a variety of factors, including well-publicized cases of people who were sentenced to death and then exonerated. One recent such case was in Delaware in January, when Isaiah McCoy, a 29-year-old on death row for murder, was released from prison after being found not guilty in a second trial. When people find out real people are sentenced to death even though they are not guilty, people start struggling to support executions, said Rob Smith, director of Harvard Law Schools Fair Punishment Project, which has argued against the Arkansas executions, saying the trials of the men on death row were full of legal deficiencies. Dist. Atty. Aramis Ayala of Florida announced that she would not seek the death penalty in any of her cases. (Red Huber / Orlando Sentinel) (Red Huber / AP) Prosecutors are less willing to seek the death penalty and jurors are less friendly to it Its not just that fewer people are being executed. Generally speaking, fewer people are being sentenced to death. Death sentences hit a high in 1996, when 315 Americans were condemned to die, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The decline has been steady since. Last year, 30 people were sentenced to death. The vast majority of prosecutors these days will never even seek the death penalty, Smith said. One reason, he said, is that jurors are less likely to be sold on it. Life sentences without parole, Smith said, are seen as better options. Some district attorneys and state attorneys general have gone a step further, promising to not push for death sentences. One of them is Dist. Atty. Aramis Ayala of Orlando, Fla., who vowed last month not to seek the death penalty in her cases. I am prohibited from making the severity of my sentences the index of my effectiveness, she said in a statement. What has become abundantly clear through this process is while I currently do have discretion to pursue death sentences, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interests of this community, or in the best interest of justice. Governors of several states, including Washington, Oregon and Colorado, have also imposed moratoriums on the death penalty while they are in office. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. (Kelly P. Kissel / Associated Press) (Kelly P. Kissel / AP) Controversial drugs are in short supply and pharmaceutical companies are taking a stand The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, defended his states string of planned executions this month by saying it needed to carry them out before one of its drugs used in lethal injections expired. It is uncertain as to whether another drug can be obtained, Hutchinson said in a statement. The drug in question is midazolam, a sedative thats part of a three-drug cocktail the state uses in lethal injections. The drug has been tied to several faulty executions, including those in Oklahoma; Arkansas supply expires at the end of April. Another drug the state uses in executions is vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer. McKesson Corp., a medical supplier that sold the drug to Arkansas, took the state to court over it. The company says Arkansas purchased the drug, which McKesson says is intended only for medical use, under false pretenses. The controversy over execution drugs goes beyond Arkansas and extends to the federal government. In one example, the Texas prison system filed suit this month against the Food and Drug Administration, which seized 1,000 vials of an execution drug whose importation was banned in 2015. The state purchased the drug, sodium thiopental, from India, and the FDA wants it shipped back or destroyed. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice argues that law enforcement agencies are exempt from the ban. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen lies on a cot to dramatize the death penalty during a protest in Little Rock, Ark. Days later he was banned from hearing any death penalty cases. (Associated Press) (AP) Major court cases loom as states reexamine policies Outside of Arkansas and Texas, several other court cases over the death penalty are looming. In Cincinnati, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled in June to have the full court consider whether Ohios use of a three-drug cocktail in lethal injections is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier, a three-judge panel in the appeals court had upheld a stay that kept the state from using the procedure in executions. In California, the Supreme Court is expected to decide this summer on challenges to a voter-approved proposition that reduces the time allowed for appeals of death sentences. The new rule was intended to speed up executions in the state, where there are nearly 750 people on death row. The state is considered a "symbolic" death penalty state because capital punishment is legal but has not been used since 2006. States are also reconsidering their use of the death penalty. In Oklahoma, a state commission said this week that a moratorium on the death penalty should be extended until the system for carrying out sentences is changed so that innocent people do not die. Ultimately we found that there are many serious systemic flaws in Oklahoma's death penalty process that obviously can and have led to innocent people being convicted and put on death row, former Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry , who is on the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, said in a statement. Henry, a Democrat, was governor for two terms when dozens of executions were carried out between 2003 and 2011. The state had been under scrutiny since a series of botched executions, and it imposed a moratorium in 2015 after the wrong drug was used in one. In a high-profile 2014 execution, inmate Clayton Lockett was struggling for 43 minutes on the gurney after a lethal injection before he finally succumbed. jaweed.kaleem@latimes.com Jaweed Kaleem is The Times' national race and justice correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The latest effort in the battle against fake news comes from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who announced plans this week for an online news publication he says will be written by professional journalists, edited by volunteer fact-checkers and supported by readers who care enough to donate money. The name, like the concept, is a meld of old and new world journalism: WikiTribune. The goal is to produce fact-based articles that have a real impact in both local and global events, according to the website where Wales is crowd-funding the project. Advertisement After a U.S. presidential race in which facts and fiction mixed freely and the messengers were attacked as frequently as the messages, the tech world has been forced to confront its complicity in the proliferation of misinformation, which has eroded public trust in news organizations. Facebook, Google and other online platforms that produce no news content of their own present themselves as neutral sites that enable people to make connections and share what is meaningful to them. They have resisted the argument that they have a responsibility to exercise editorial control over the information they deliver to billions of users. But that position has become increasingly untenable in light of some of the patently false claims that flourished on social media during the election. For the record, Pope Francis never endorsed Donald Trump, and top Democrats werent operating a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg downplayed the notion that such hoaxes affected the outcome of the election. Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic, he wrote in a post in November. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. He acknowledged that more could be done to encourage users to report inaccurate content, but said, We must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves. Since the election, Facebook and Google have made adjustments to the algorithms that control what information surfaces on their platforms. They have rolled out tools that use third-party fact-checking sites, such as PolitiFact.com or Snopes.com, to flag articles containing questionable assertions. And they have revised their policies on advertisement placement to avoid channeling revenue to purveyors of fake news. Ultimately, however, they leave it to users to decide what information to trust and share. Enter Wales, who in 2001 helped launch Wikipedia, which now boasts more than 5 million articles on the English-language site alone, covering nearly any subject imaginable. The articles are produced by an army of volunteer writers and editors who keep a close eye on entries they care about and frequently engage in passionate debates about what should and should not be included. Wales said he had been contemplating a site like WikiTribune for some time but was spurred to act when he heard President Trumps advisor Kellyanne Conway defend the White Houses inflated claims about the size of the inauguration crowd as alternative facts. Are you kidding me? Wales said to Wired magazine. We have to do something about this. Professional journalists will write WikiTribune articles, providing links to their sources and publishing their interviews in full an attempt to improve on the accuracy of Wikipedia, which for all its success still includes enough incomplete or erroneous entries that college professors warn their students not to use it as a source. Borrowing Wikipedias core belief in the power of a crowd, readers will be asked to vet the articles to help ensure they are factual and neutral. But their revisions will only be published if a staff member or trusted community volunteer approves them, Wales said in an interview with the BBC. Readers will also have the ability to set the news agenda. If you can get together a certain number of people who are interested in Bitcoin [for example] and you flag that when you sign up as a monthly supporter, then well hire a Bitcoin person to do the beat full time, Wales told the BBC. But it is going to be neutral. They cant pick their favorite hack, who pumps forward their agenda. Wales wants the content on WikiTribune to be delivered free of charge and unencumbered by advertising, which he believes has accelerated a race to the bottom by encouraging media organizations to pursue stories that will get them the most clicks. Instead, the site is asking supporters to contribute $15 a month, although any donation is welcome. As of Thursday morning, the site had racked up more than 6,800 supporters enough to hire four of the 10 full-time journalists Wales hopes to employ initially. The site did not say how much they will be paid. Media analysts tend to be skeptical of Wales claim to have figured out how to fix the problem of fake news. Theyre hiring 10 reporters. This is not going to fix journalism, said Kyle Pope, editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review. Still, he said, Im really hesitant to say this is a dumb idea because Wikipedia turned out to be so brilliant I just hope we can cream off the best ideas and not get too invested in how are we going to institute this across the media business. Part of the challenge is that the very concept of fake news is so nebulous. Are we talking about Macedonian teenagers who are churning out stuff that is 100% wrong to create clicks and get advertising? Pope asked. Are we talking about the sort of right-wing echo system of half-right, half-wrong news? Are we talking about Russian state propaganda? WikiTribune would only address a very small subset of that, he said. For many in the news business, the issue is less about how to generate factual information there are organizations that have been doing that for decades but how to win back public trust. In a survey by the Pew Research Center last year, just 18% of respondents indicated that they had a lot of trust in the information they got from national news organizations. Pope does not attribute that to factual errors so much as to a perception that media coverage tends to favor one side or another and important parts of the story arent being told concerns he believes are legitimate. Robert Hernandez, an expert on Web journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said he believed the success of WikiTribune would depend in part on whether the community it is trying to build feels they have a voice and an ally fighting for them. If they feel that they have a partner there, I do believe that they will be willing to step up, he said, just like I do as an NPR member. But he cautioned that there was more to producing a successful new publication than being able to come up with facts. From design to quality of content, theres a lot of challenges, he said. Facts are not enough. alexandra.zavis@latimes.com Twitter: @alexzavis ALSO Ubers plan to curb bad behavior by passengers: Reveal their ratings Palantir will pay $1.7 million to settle claims it discriminated against Asians TeleSign, a Marina del Rey start-up crucial to integrity of popular apps, purchased for $230 million UPDATES: 10:45 a.m.: This article was updated with the number of supporters increasing to more than 6,800, enough to hire four journalists. This article was originally published at 5 a.m. Arkansas wrapped up an aggressive execution schedule Thursday, putting to death its fourth inmate in eight days. Kenneth Williams, 38, received a lethal injection Thursday night at the Cummins Unit prison at Varner for the death of a former deputy warden killed after Williams escaped from prison in 1999. At the time of his escape in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop, Williams was less than three weeks into a life term for killing a college cheerleader. Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before one of its lethal injection drugs expires at the end of April, the most in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Among the four lethal injections it carried out was Mondays first double execution in the United States since 2000. Courts issued stays for four other inmates. Advertisement State officials have declared the string of executions a success, using terms like closure for the victims families. The inmates have died within 20 minutes after receiving their lethal injections, a contrast from executions involving the drug midazolam in other states that lasted between 43 minutes and two hours. The inmates lawyers have said that there are still flaws and that there is no certainty the inmates arent suffering while they die. Arkansas scheduled the executions for the final two weeks of April because its supply of midazolam, normally a surgical sedative, expires on Sunday. The Arkansas Department of Correction has said it has no new source for the drug though it has made similar remarks before, only to find another supply. Williams was sentenced to death for killing Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a barrel holding a mishmash of kitchen scraps. He left the prison which houses the execution chamber in another part of the facility less than three weeks into a life prison term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. At the conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young womans family by turning to them after the sentence was announced and saying, You thought I was going to die, didnt you? After jumping from the barrel, he sneaked along a tree line until reaching Borens house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Borens truck and then drove away to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. At the time of Borens death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction. ALSO Arkansas executes two inmates on the same gurney, hours apart Arkansas carries out first of several planned executions, but whats next? The death penalty has long divided Americans. Heres why those who oppose it are winning UPDATES: 9:15 p.m.: This article was updated with the latest execution. This article was first published at 1:45 p.m. President Trumps former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was warned by authorities when he retired from the military in 2014 not to take foreign government-sourced money without advance approval from the Pentagon, according to documents released Thursday by the ranking Democrat on a House oversight committee. Flynn, a former U.S. Army lieutenant general and Defense Intelligence Agency chief, was later paid tens of thousands of dollars for his work on behalf of foreign interests, including Russias state-sponsored RT television network and a Turkish-owned company linked to Turkeys government. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) also said the Pentagons acting inspector general has launched an inquiry into whether those payments should be considered to have come from foreign governments and whether Flynn properly informed military authorities about them. Advertisement Both Cummings and Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have previously said they planned to ask the Army to rule on whether Flynn properly informed and asked permission for the payments from Russian and Turkish entities. A key document released Thursday by Cummings showed that Flynn was warned by a Defense Intelligence Agency official in October 2014 that he would need clearance from the agency before he could accept any earnings linked to foreign governments. Flynn was explicitly told in the document that the U.S. Constitutions emoluments provision prohibits any monetary payments or gifts from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained. The letter explained that such advance approval would need to come from the relevant service secretary. The committees leaders reported earlier this week that they found no evidence that Flynn asked for permission for the payments he received or informed the military that he had accepted them. Army spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith Thursday also said we have found no records of Flynn requesting permission from the Army for foreign employment. In comments to the Associated Press, Chaffetz said that Flynn had an obligation to seek approval to take money from a foreign government. We found no evidence that he did that. Chaffetz, however, did not join Cummings at the Thursday news conference, unlike their bipartisan appearance earlier in the week announcing the results of the committees inquiry into Flynns dealings with authorities before and after his foreign earnings. The committees inquiry is one of several congressional investigations into Flynns contacts with foreign officials before and during his brief stint as Trumps top national security aide. Trump fired Flynn for failing to inform senior administration officials about his contacts with Russian officials contacts that are being examined as part of the wider inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. These documents raise grave questions about why Gen. Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, Cummings said. Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation. But the White House told the committee recently that documents the lawmakers sought concerning Flynns security clearance would not be turned over because they contained classified information. Prime Ministers Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Thongloun Sisoulith launch the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 (Photo: VNA) The event was part of activities to celebrate 55 years of the countries diplomatic relations and 40 years of the signing of the Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. In his speech, PM Sisoulith said the launch of the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 was an occasion to declare to the world the importance of the friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries. They were set up by late Presidents Ho Chi Minh, Kaysone Phomvihane and Souphanouvong and have been nurtured by generations of Vietnamese and Lao people. The countries relations have been growing since the establishment of diplomatic ties, especially since the signing of the treaty in 1977, he said, noting that the ties have been fruitful across the fields, bringing practical benefits for their people. Locality-to-locality connections have also been strengthened, helping to boost trade and investment partnership, he added. Speaking at the ceremony, PM Phuc described the Vietnam-Laos and Laos-Vietnam Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 as a milestone that marks a great stride in the two countries special relations. Over the last 55 years, their traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation have been deepened and expanded in all aspects. What they have achieved is a priceless asset created by generations of Vietnamese and Lao leaders and people, he stressed. He voiced his belief that with joint efforts, the Year will be successful, contributing to the forever green and forever sustainable friendship and solidarity of the two nations. Both leaders said they believe practical and meaningful celebrations during the Year will intensify bilateral links and help educate their people, especially the young, on the two countries special relations./. The chemophobes who run California are at it again, siding with environmental activists and pseudoscience rather than evidence and common sense. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment announced last month that it was adding the weed-killer glyphosate to its list of chemicals that purportedly cause cancer. Glyphosate sold as Roundup and under other brand names is one of the worlds most widely used herbicides. It has been safely killing weeds on farms, in yards and in public areas for the last several decades. Right now, you can find it at your local home improvement store; but in California next year, in addition to its current 14-page label, those bottles will carry this warning: Contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm even though there is no persuasive evidence for that claim. (The decision is being challenged in a California appellate court by Monsanto, the maker of Roundup.) Glyphosate will join more than 800 chemicals on Californias Proposition 65 list, which is intended to alert the public about substances identified as human or animal carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. But theres the problem: That agency, which is part of the World Health Organization, is under fire for using a flawed approach basing its decisions on hazard (the possibility of harm at any dose) instead of risk (the probability of harm, taking exposure into consideration). Advertisement ------------- FOR THE RECORD Aug. 11, 2017: Physician and molecular biologist Henry Miller, a fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, co-wrote an opinion piece published April 27, 2017, that objected to the inclusion of the weed-killer glyphosate sold as Roundup on Californias list of potentially cancer-causing substances. The essay also attacked decision-making at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which in 2015 classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Miller should have disclosed that in writing and researching a separate piece about the IARC decision for Forbes magazine in 2015, he asked for and made partial use of drafted material supplied to him by a contact at Monsanto. Monsanto manufactures Roundup. IARC is also accused of cherry-picking data to reach politically motivated findings. The agency has reviewed nearly 1,000 substances and activities, and only one has been deemed noncarcinogenic. IARC looks for any shred of evidence to prove that something might cause cancer, even under extreme circumstances. It is confirmation bias at its worst: Reach a conclusion first, find the evidence later. [Glyphosate] is in the same cancer-causing category as dental implants, consuming red meat, being a barber, and doing work that disrupts your biological clock. In 2015, IARC classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. It put the weed killer in the same cancer-causing category as dental implants, consuming red meat, being a barber, and doing shiftwork that disrupts your biological clock. Since then, government agencies from Japan to the EU, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and another agency at WHO, have countered that glyphosate is not carcinogenic. (IARC is to date the only governmental organization to call glyphosate carcinogenic.) But none of this stopped California officials from placing glyphosate on its danger list. The ubiquitous chemical has become a target of environmentalists, in part because it is used on genetically engineered crops and was created by Monsanto, a company much despised by green activists. Since IARCs report was published, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto as lawyers in the environmental justice industry seek to profit from so-called glyphosate victims. Californias anti-glyphosate mania has already prompted some local officials to ban its use on public property. School districts in Irvine, Burbank and Glendale will stop using glyphosate on school grounds because of parents fear of the chemical. When the city of Petaluma curtailed its use, it had to revert to a far more expensive weed-killing mix, and one that irritated workers eyes and lungs. Its frustrating using something labeled as organic, but you have to be out there in a bodysuit and a respirator, Joe DeCarlo, head of maintenance for Petalumas public schools, told a local paper last year. No such protection was needed when Roundup was used. Ultimately, glyphosate will be exonerated. It is not carcinogenic, and it is lower in overall toxicity than many other weed killers. (According to New York States Integrated Pest Management program, it has about the same Environmental Impact Quotient as vinegar.) A paper published April 10 in Nature Communications by Andrew Kniss, professor of weed biology and ecology at the University of Wyoming, examined herbicide use on several domestic crops and found that even though glyphosate use has increased greatly over the last 25 years, my analysis suggests the relative contribution of glyphosate to the chronic toxicity hazard has remained relatively low. Glyphosate has a very low chronic toxicity compared to most other herbicides. Kniss, who makes his funding sources public (about a third comes from the seed and chemical industry), also warned that without glyphosate, weed control would become more complex, labor intensive and time consuming, and it would almost certainly be replaced by something more toxic and perhaps with unknown effects. Its often said that California is a bellwether, a place where nationwide trends begin. For the sake of farmers, particularly in the Midwest who rely on glyphosate to make their farms more productive and their jobs easier, we hope not. Julie Kelly is a food writer and National Review Online contributor. Twitter: @julie_kelly2. Henry I. Miller is a physician and molecular biologist and a fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDAs Office of Biotechnology. Twitter: @henryimiller. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook To the editor: How many walls have been built to secure a country from invasion? How many have failed? (How to secure the border. Spoiler alert: A wall wont do it, Opinion, April 23) The most renowned is the Great Wall of China, which did not keep the Mongols out. A more recent border fortification was the Maginot Line, which was built in the 1930s by France primarily along its border with Germany. It was believed when the expected German invasion would start, the Germans would not go through Belgium to invade France, so the line was not as strong there. But in its sourthern section along the border with Germany, the line was heavily fortified with air-conditioned underground rooms and a network of tunnels, supply stores and underground rail. Advertisement But the Germans came through Belgium after all, rendering the whole line useless. It did not keep Germany from invading France, and the Maginot Line is now known as nothing more than a tourist attraction and an expensive effort to provide a false sense of security. Will President Trumps multibillion-dollar border wall also become a cautionary tale? June Bailey, Thousand Oaks .. To the editor: As human rights workers in Honduras, we were most struck reading Sonia Nazarios op-ed article by what it omitted. Nazario is certainly correct that a militarized approach to border security and the Central American refugee crisis is counterproductive and inhumane. But she neglects to mention that U.S. security aid to Honduras feeds into the same counterproductive and inhumane push factors that she insists they help alleviate. It was reported just this week that two police officers receiving funding from the U.S. State Department are under investigation for accepting bribes in the form of guns and money scarcely a sterling example of violence prevention. And these same security forces have been implicated in the killings of Honduran human rights defenders, journalists and activists, including in the emblematic case of Bertha Caceres. We are in agreement with Nazario about President Trump and his wall. But funding a corrupt, human rights-abusing police force is hardly the solution. Bryan Rogers and Ryan Morgan, El Progreso, Honduras .. To the editor: How refreshing to read Nazarios piece that looks beyond the symptom of illegal immigration to one of the fundamental problems: deadly violence in Central America. Her call for affordable programs to keep more families safe in their home countries is intuitively sound, and it passes my love thy neighbor sniff test with flying colors. That her analysis and recommendations are backed up by solid data, visits to the affected cities and even riding on top of the trains that migrants ride north to the U.S., makes them all the more compelling. Andrew Shaddock, Manhattan Beach Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook The Trump administration announced a major tax reform plan on Wednesday, except it isnt much of a reform (merely another massive tax cut for the very wealthy) and it isnt much of a plan (just a one-page list of ideas that have yet to be developed into a legislative proposal). In other words, it is much like Donald Trumps plans for healthcare, trade, a border wall and North Korea: lots of salesmanship with no actual product to sell. When it came to repealing and replacing Obamacare, Trump latched onto a half-baked House Republican bill that couldnt even be brought up for a vote. On trade, he has backed away from his pledge to kill NAFTA. He has let the border wall be postponed, and it seems to shrink with each passing day. He had the entire United States Senate bused to the White House for a top secret briefing about North Korea, and even Republican senators came away from the session saying it was little more than a publicity stunt. That Trump, in his first 100 days, has done very little that he promised to do on the campaign trail is not necessarily a bad thing. A reworking of American healthcare should not happen until Trump can actually deliver what he promised good care at lower cost for everyone which is likely unobtainable without moving to a single-payer system like that enjoyed by citizens in Canada, Europe and Japan. NAFTA should not be jettisoned, it should be improved. Billions should not be wasted on a border wall when there are smarter, cheaper options for dealing with illegal immigration. And North Korea needs to be addressed by someone who doesnt think blustering tough talk is the same as a real strategy. 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) And it is not bad that the tax plan is, at this point, little more than a ploy to give the illusion of action. It is a rehash of the voodoo economics that have clouded Republican minds since Ronald Reagan. It is built on the theory that huge tax cuts for big corporations and billionaires will create so many jobs and so much economic activity that the dramatic drop in tax rates will magically produce a gush of revenue for the government, thereby avoiding an increase in the federal debt. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made this discredited claim when he presented the skeleton of the plan on Wednesday. Not many fell for it, including Republican budget hawks who remember what happened when President George W. Bush dramatically cut taxes and failed to make the budget cuts needed to make up for the lost revenue: skyrocketing deficits and debt. Trump is no better witch doctor than Bush; the voodoo doesnt work. The Trump administrations proposed federal budget would make draconian cuts in many government programs and agencies, but all that money is not saved it gets shifted to the military. Then Trump wants to throw in the escalating cost of the border wall and a major new infrastructure spending program. Top that with big tax cuts and, within a decade, another $7 trillion will be added to the federal debt. That level of government borrowing would be a drag on the economy that would stifle business and kill jobs, not encourage growth. Allowing business tycoons to pay a low 15% corporate tax rate instead of a significantly higher personal tax rate one of the elements of the administration proposal would be great for rich guys like Trump, but that is not exactly what the presidents loyal followers were hoping for when they decided to take a chance on a celebrity real estate mogul with zero experience in government. The plans elimination of the estate tax would help out the extremely tiny percentage of Americans whose net worth is greater than $11 million, but the other 99.8% of us might be better off if the government kept that tax money to pay for pure air, water and food or for medical research that will keep us alive a bit longer or for a State Department robust enough to keep our kids out of future wars. The sketchy tax plan is further proof that Trumps expressions of empathy for the struggling working men and women of the country are the cheap words of a perpetual salesman. Still, we can be grateful that a man with so many bad ideas is mostly talk and no follow-through. David.Horsey@latimes.com Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter Looking to reclaim influence in debates over taxes, regulation and environmental policies, a key bloc of Democrats who typically align with business interests are revamping their leadership, with Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) at the helm. The informal caucus commonly known in the state Capitol as the mods, for moderate Democrats have been led over the last year and a half by two Assembly Democrats: Jim Cooper of Elk Grove and Rudy Salas of Bakersfield. Gray described his role as convener of the caucus, which, unlike other legislative caucuses, does not publicize its membership. He secured support from 14 legislators, representing ample support within the loosely affiliated group for the top post, according to a letter viewed by The Times. Advertisement Salas confirmed the shake-up, describing it as restructuring to include an executive committee, with whom Gray must consult. This is just the way were operating now, said Salas, describing the structure as the best way moving forward. Cooper declined to comment. The group, also known as the New Democrats, backs a centrist, middle-of-the-road, fiscally conservative agenda, Gray said. Its more important than ever to have a voice for the middle. Our country is increasingly polarized, he said. Id argue the silent majority is still in the middle. The business-aligned bloc has flexed its muscle in major Capitol battles in recent years, including stopping a controversial provision to slash oil consumption in a 2015 climate bill. Gray was central to a 2014 effort to craft compromise regulations around the controversial oil extraction technique known as fracking, staving off liberal attempts to ban the practice. But the group was less of a force in last years debates around raising the minimum wage and setting ambitious new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both of which passed over objections from business interests. Gray said he anticipated the caucus being active in all parts of public policy, and in particular, the brewing debate over the future of the states cap-and-trade system for climate change. He said he wanted to champion the economic interests of Californians in the climate debate, making sure they can share in the revenue generated from the cap-and-trade auctions. If its all stick and no carrot and youre just eroding the middle class and opportunity, people are going to not appreciate that, Gray said. First elected in 2012, Gray had a long tenure as a legislative staffer before taking office. He first worked for former Democratic Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, who, during his tenure, led his eras moderate caucus before serving in Congress. Among his other bosses was former state Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), who was ensnared in a federal corruption investigation in 2013. Gray, who was not accused of wrongdoing, was subpoenaed to testify in that case, and Calderon ultimately pleaded guilty to mail fraud, avoiding a trial. Grays Central Valley political connections grew when he married the daughter of former Rep. Gary Condit, who earlier served in the Legislature and left Congress in 2002. Known as a wily legislative operator, Gray helped secure $100 million for a parkway project at the UC Merced campus as part of the negotiations around the $52-billion transportation plan. He chairs the powerful Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, which oversees alcohol, tobacco and gambling issues and is seen as a prime fundraising post. melanie.mason@latimes.com Follow @melmason on Twitter for the latest on California politics. After bucking leadership on transportation bill, Bakersfield Democrat loses powerful Assembly committee post California Legislature votes to raise gas taxes, vehicle fees by $5.2 billion a year for road repairs and transit Business-friendly Democrats pick new leaders for informal, but powerful Sacramento caucus Updates from Sacramento Even the most devoted Old Blue, Bruin alumnus or Santa Cruz Banana Slug must be cringing at what the state auditor reported about University of California fiscal failures. Veteran State Auditor Elaine Howle essentially found that UC has been poor-mouthing and demanding more tax dollars while secretly hoarding many millions, paying extravagant executive salaries and smacking students with higher tuitions. She specifically targeted the office of UC President Janet Napolitano, the former U.S. Homeland Security chief and Arizona governor. Advertisement Some excerpts from the stinging 167-page report released Tuesday: Napolitanos office accumulated more than $175 million in restricted and discretionary reserves that it failed to disclose to the [UC Board of] Regents and created undisclosed budgets to spend those reserve funds. It received significantly more funds than it needed over a four-year period, and asked for increases in future funding based on its previous years over-estimated budgets rather than actual costs. Its budgets were inconsistent and misleading making it difficult to compare budgets from year to year. The UC presidents office compensated its executives and administrative staff significantly more than their public sector counterparts in state government and at the Cal State University system. Napolitanos execs intentionally interfered with the audit by inappropriately forcing revision of campuses statements about the presidents office. The statements were initially critical, but were rewritten to make them positive. Napolitano played it cool. Like the experienced politician she is, the UC president welcomed the constructive input. But she denied there was anywhere near $175 million hidden away. It was mostly all committed to various programs, she said. The auditor, however, wrote that the UC presidents office did not provide evidence that refuted our conclusion. Napolitano will get her chance next week when shes scheduled to be grilled at a joint hearing of some legislative committees. I hope the University of California is not tone deaf, says Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, a moderate Republican from Contra Costa County. Shes vice chairwoman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee. Im deeply troubled by this very damning report. And I say that as an alumnus of the UC Berkeley law school. Its very easy to pile on. We should give UC a chance to respond. And it better be good. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount), who sits on the UC Board of Regents, says, We need really, really honest and straightforward answers. A lot of things bother me about the report, Rendon says, especially charges that the UC presidents staff was obstructing the audit. That shows a tremendous need for more legislative oversight. UC can expect that in the future, the speaker adds, because legislators now are taking a longer view of things because of revised term limits. A 2012 ballot measure lengthened a legislators allowable time in the Assembly from six to 12 years, and in the Senate from eight to 12. That will result in more audits and oversight, Rendon predicts. UC is one of Californias oldest and most revered institutions, with 10 campuses and about 252,000 students, including 199,000 undergrads. It is inarguably world-class. But in recent years, particularly during budget brawls and UC bureaucracy bloating, it has seemed, for many, to become arrogant and a bit self-worshiping. Its pretty insular. And governing regents seem to drink the UC Kool-Aid rather than perform as a public watchdog. Updates from Sacramento The university is autonomous, so the Legislatures power over it is limited. Maybe thats good. It keeps the politicians at arms length. But perhaps the institution is too independent. The auditor recommended some tightening up, such as legislative approval of the UC presidents office budget. That would be fiercely fought by UC. Tensions have grown in recent decades as tuition soared and UC turned to out-of-state students for extra funds. They pay a much higher fare than resident students, but also take up slots that Californians want. The regents angered many again recently by approving a 2.5% hike in tuition, raising it to $11,502 annually, plus $1,128 in separate student fees. It is outrageous and unjust to force tuition hikes on students while UC hides secret funds, asserted Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a regent and leading candidate for governor in next years election. He urged the regents to scrub the tuition boost. A problem for UC, however, is that state government has cut back on its share of funding for the university since the glory days of low tuition. For many generations, there was no tuition at all. But Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax-cutting initiative, led the state to spend much more money on K-12 schools and local governments, leaving less for the universities. Also blame escalating costs for healthcare and prisons. The state now provides $3.6 billion of UCs total $32-billion funding. We do need to fund UC and CSU at a higher level, Rendon says. But the UC Office of the President shouldnt be hiding money. And it doesnt excuse the presidents staff for being obstructionist. It all may be coming to a head. There have been eight state audits of UC in four years, showing legislative angst. The whole state wants to make college more accessible, says Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), chairman of the budget subcommittee on education finance, who requested the audit. Thats why it drives people crazy that hundreds of millions of dollars may be hidden in an ivory tower in Oakland. UC needs to rethink and revamp, starting with the puppy dog regents. george.skelton@latimes.com Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter ALSO Its time for California to stop leaning on the rich and take up state tax reform Was Gov. Brown wrong to make side deals to push through the gas tax hike? No, thats democracy Should California move up its primary to become a bigger player in deciding presidential elections? Officials at some University of California campuses changed their responses to surveys from state auditors after the UC Office of the President intervened, resulting in more positive reviews of the administration, according to documents released as part of a scathing audit of UC financial practices. UC officials disputed the findings, saying Wednesday that UC President Janet Napolitanos office did not censor the responses. But State Auditor Elaine Howle said her office is continuing an inquiry into the allegation that the UC administration interfered in the survey process to determine whether it violated policies or laws and should be referred for further action. My legal staff is looking at it to determine whether weve got a situation where there might be an improper governmental activity, Howle said. Then once we complete some of that assessment, that will determine whether we conduct an investigation internally or whether we make any referrals. Advertisement In addition, two legislative committees have scheduled a Tuesday joint hearing at the Capitol on the audit and the allegations of interference. UC Deputy Chief of Staff Bernie Jones said the assertion of interference was groundless. He said internal audit directors at some campuses called the presidents office last October with some degree of concern after receiving a 52-page survey on central services. Jones said they asked for assistance in filling them out, so he set up a conference call with the campuses a few days later and told them the responses should be factual, within the audits scope and reflective of the chancellors views but that no effort was made to dictate their responses. I really doubled down on how vitally important it was that the campuses own their responses, and they were the ones who sent it, Jones said Wednesday. Howles audit, released Tuesday, asserted that the UC Office of the President paid excessive salaries and benefits to its top executives and did not disclose to the UC Board of Regents, the Legislature and the public $175 million in budget reserve funds that could have helped stave off a 2.5% tuition increase scheduled for this fall. Howle alleged in the audit and a letter to the governor and the Legislature that the Office of the President intentionally interfered with our audit process. In a video message Wednesday to UC employees, Board of Regents Chairwoman Monica Lozano said the panel is taking the state auditors recommendations seriously but has unequivocal confidence in the Office of the President. The auditors survey was an attempt to find out how administrators at the 10 UC campuses viewed the effectiveness of the Office of the President and whether administrators at the campuses and central headquarters were duplicating their efforts. Although we explicitly asked each campus not to share its survey results with anyone outside of the campus, we learned in February 2017 that the Office of the President had requested campuses to send their survey responses to it, the audit said, and that the deputy chief of staff of the Office of the President organized a conference call with all campuses to discuss the survey and screened the surveys before the campuses submitted them to us. The audit said Howles office asked Napolitanos deputy chief of staff to provide her with copies of the original survey results to compare them with the final versions turned over to auditors. When we compared the prescreened versions of the surveys to the versions the campuses subsequently submitted to us, we found that the responses were changed to make the Office of the President appear more efficient and effective, the audit said. Emails released Wednesday by Howles office showed that Jones closely coordinated with campuses in reviewing their survey responses. In one series of emails last November, UCLA senior advisor Yolanda Gorman sent Jones a survey response. In a Nov. 29 email, Jones told her that UC Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom had spoken to UCLA Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Steve Olsen about reconciling UCLAs various survey responses. Once I give it a final review and what Nathan and Steve discussed has been reconciled, we should be good to go, Jones wrote to Gorman. When asked about the exchange, Jones said Olsens initial response needed to align with a factually accurate representation of how the presidents office calculates assessments on campuses for the central services and programs it provides. Jones gave emails sent between him and campuses to The Times, along with revised and final copies of some surveys, which he said would demonstrate that he never ordered revisions, but only asked campus administrators to consider some changes. UC San Diego, for instance, originally said it was dissatisfied with transparency over the campus assessments in its survey response, but the final version was changed to satisfied. Jones said he flagged the initial answer to see if it reflected Chancellor Pradeep K. Khoslas view and that campus leaders changed it, not him. UC Irvines response originally said that a systemwide initiative to expand online learning has a number of challenges and this is an example of an initiative that does duplicate efforts on the individual campuses in a way that many feel is not value added. The response also noted that a UC website offering reports on faculty diversity that provided useful comparisons with our University peers has been taken offline. Both points were taken out of the campus final survey response. Updates from Sacramento UC Riversides original survey response said an online learning initiative had been helpful, but accounting of students had not been as smooth as desired. That comment was retained in the final version. But a suggestion to improve the initiative by requiring training and mentoring for faculty members who were teaching online learning courses for the first time was deleted. Several changes were made to UC Santa Cruzs initial survey. Jones told UC Santa Cruz to consider reframing or deleting a suggestion for greater systemwide coordination to recruit low-income students, asking administrators there to take into account the central offices efforts in coordinating disbursement of state funds for underserved schools. As you will see, I addressed 98% of your concerns and I made a number of additional changes as well (all in a direction you would not find problematic), UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal wrote to Jones in a Nov. 23 email. Jones provided the email to The Times. UC Santa Cruzs initial survey raised issues about the UCPath system, which is aimed at centralizing personnel, payroll and academic processes. Some Office of the President initiatives, such as UCPath were at first very poorly and inefficiently run, but they seem to have figured it out and are on the way to bringing a huge and often failure prone project to a successful conclusion, the initial response said. The key issue is that the Office of the President provides the leadership, vision, and public relations acumen to keep the University on the best course. That paragraph was removed and the final survey response instead read: The services and leadership provided by the Office of the President are crucial for the success of the system. Especially for a smaller campus like ours, it would be both expensive and inefficient to provide those services ourselves. In addition, there is a true public policy benefit to the role that the Office of the President plays in providing uniform standards. When asked to comment on the surveys, UC Irvine and UC Riverside referred calls to the presidents office. UC Santa Cruz and UC San Diego did not provide a response. Howle said the surveys had to be excluded from the audit findings because the Office of the President inappropriately intervened, tainting the results. The allegations of intervention will be explored during the legislative hearing Tuesday, said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), one of the legislators who sought the audit. Thats very troubling, he said of the intervention. All of those things are damaging. patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com; teresa.watanabe@latimes.com Twitter:@mcgreevy99, Twitter:@TeresaWatanabe McGreevy reported from Sacramento and Watanabe from Los Angeles. Heres what you need to know about the states audit of the University of California State audit finds UC presidents office paid excessive salaries to top staff and mishandled budget money Accusations of hidden UC funds call to mind the 2012 scandal that rocked state parks Updates from Sacramento President Trump on Wednesday told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he will not pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, just hours after administration officials said he was considering a draft executive order to do just that. The White House made the surprise announcement in a read-out of calls involving Trump, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries, the White House said. Advertisement Trump said he believes the end result will make all three countries stronger and better. The Mexican government confirmed the conversation in a statement issued late Wednesday. The leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining the North American Free Trade Agreement and working together with Canada to carry out a successful renegotiation for the benefit of all three countries, the statement read. The White House announcement came after administration officials said earlier in the day that Trump was considering a draft executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the deal, though they cautioned it was just one of a number of options being discussed by the president and his staff. Some saw the threat as posturing by Trump to gain leverage over Mexico and Canada as he tries to negotiate changes to the deal. Trump railed against the decades-old trade deal during his campaign, describing it as a disaster. Senior White House officials had spent recent days discussing steps that could be taken to start the process of renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA before the end of Trumps first 100 days in office, according to a person familiar with the presidents thinking. But that source, along with an administration official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, had said that a number of options remained on the table and stressed that discussions were ongoing about the best way to proceed. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the order, which was first reported by Politico. The president has made addressing the problems of NAFTA a priority throughout the campaign, and once the president makes a decision about how he wants to address that, well let you know, he said. The administration appeared to be divided Wednesday over how and when to proceed, as officials balanced a newfound cautiousness with the desire to rack up accomplishments before Trumps 100th day on the job Saturday. Some were gunning for Trump to sign a draft order this week, while others were weighing the complications surrounding withdrawing from or renegotiating the deal without Congress fully on board. The debate played out in the media Wednesday as some outlets quoted officials insisting the signing was imminent, while other officials dismissed the reports as just a rumor. My practice is to comment on things weve actually done or are doing as opposed to commenting on rumors, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at an unrelated White House briefing Wednesday evening. Trump has the authority to withdraw from NAFTA, but he would have to give six months notice. And it is unclear what would happen next. The law Congress passed to enact the trade pact might remain in place, forcing Trump to wrangle with lawmakers and raising questions about the presidents authority to raise tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. The decision came days after the administration announced it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada. Trump has also been railing against changes in Canadian milk product pricing that he says are hurting the American dairy industry. Trump told the Associated Press in an interview last week that he planned to either renegotiate or terminate NAFTA, which he and other critics blame for wiping out U.S. manufacturing jobs because it allowed companies to move factories to Mexico to take advantage of low-wage labor. I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States, trading agreement for the United States. It hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico, he said. Another senior White House official declined to comment on rumors of specific actions. But that official said that NAFTA has been a top priority for the president and that the administration has been working on it since he took office. That person also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administrations thinking. The Trump administration last month submitted a vague set of guidelines to Congress for renegotiating NAFTA, disappointing those who were expecting Trump to demand a major overhaul. In an eight-page draft letter to Congress, acting U.S. Trade Representative Stephen Vaughn wrote that the administration intended to start talking with Mexico and Canada about making changes to the pact, which took effect in 1994. The letter spelled out few details and stuck with broad principles. But it appeared to keep much of the existing agreement in place, including private tribunals that allow companies to challenge national laws on the grounds that they inhibit trade a provision that critics say allows companies to get around environmental and labor laws. Reports Wednesday of the possible move to abandon NAFTA drew objections from some in Congress, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy - @POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) April 26, 2017 ALSO Economic reality and contradictions beset Trumps tax plan U.S. judge blocks Trump order threatening funds for sanctuary cities Trump signs order to reconsider national monuments created by Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton 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. United Airlines will offer up to $10,000 when a traveler voluntarily gives up a seat on an oversold flight, part of a policy overhaul following the passenger-yanking video seen around the world. The Chicago-based carrier is adopting 10 policy changes in response to the outcry over the April 9 incident, recorded by other passengers, during which aviation police pulled David Dao from his seat after he refused to exit the plane. Dao was one of four fliers selected to give up their seats to make room for airline employees. Actions speak louder than words, said United Airlines Chief Executive Oscar Munoz, who has apologized repeatedly for the incident after initially describing Dao as being disruptive and belligerent. Anuncio Today, we are taking concrete, meaningful action to make things right, Munoz said in a statement Wednesday. United Continental, the parent company of United Airlines, already has said it plans to incorporate customer satisfaction levels in its criteria for handing out bonuses to executives instead of basing compensation solely on profits and operational achievements. United also said it would: Limit the use of law enforcement on a plane, except for safety and security reasons. Stop forcing passengers already seated to give up their seats, except for safety or security reasons. Come up with creative solutions for finding alternative transportation for passengers who have been denied boarding, such as flying them from nearby airports, putting them on flights of rival airlines or using ground transportation. Ensure airline crews book a seat at least an hour before departure. Provide employees with additional annual training. Create an automated system for soliciting volunteers to change travel plans before they take their seat. Reduce the amount of overbooking. Empower employees to resolve customer service issues on the spot. Cut the red tape that passengers face when reporting lost luggage. None of the policy changes are particularly groundbreaking or even surprising some had already been promised in recent days. Shortly after the Dao incident, rival Delta Air Lines told its employees that the carrier would pay up to $10,000 to get a passenger to give up a seat voluntarily. In an interview Wednesday, Delta Chief Executive Edward Bastain said his carrier has adopted several policies to avoid such incidents, including giving supervisors the authority to offer a passenger a free iPad to give up a seat on an overbooked flight. It could never happen at Delta, he said of the Dao incident. Delta several years ago began asking customers during the check-in process how much compensation they would take to give up their seats. The airline then bumps the passengers willing to take the least amount. A report on the passenger-removal fiasco released by United on Wednesday named several failures that contributed to the problem, including that United had no clear policy on when to call law enforcement and no policy on how late airline crews can book seats on a flight. The report also revealed that four seats were needed on the flight because an earlier flight carrying four crew members was experiencing a maintenance issue and it was unclear if the problem would be fixed. Uniteds biggest challenge, experts have said, will be changing company culture so that employees feel they can do whatever is needed to solve customer service problems as they are happening. The viral videos Videos shot by fellow passengers on the flight show officers from the Chicago Department of Aviation asking Dao to give up his seat. But Dao refuses, saying he needs to get to his home in Elizabethtown, Ky., where he is a physician and was scheduled to see patients the next day. Three officers then pull Dao from his seat and drag him down the aisle. Dao, who was hospitalized after the clash, suffered a concussion and other injuries, according to his attorney Thomas Demetrio. The prominent personal-injury lawyer has made it clear that he is prepared to sue United over the incident. In incident reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times, two of the officers said Dao was responsible for his own injuries by flailing his arms and fighting with the officers, causing him to fall out of their grasp and hit his face on a seat armrest. Demetrio blames the airline and the officers for using unnecessary force and violence. Four officers involved in the incident have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Chicago Department of Aviation. United shares have recovered Shares for United Continental Holdings, the parent company of the airline, took a hit following the incident, dropping from $71.52 on the day after the incident to $67.55 on April 18. The stock closed Wednesday at $71.33 a share. However, Uniteds reputation has clearly taken a hit. In a survey of nearly 1,300 travelers by the website AirfareWatchdog.com, United ranked as the sixth-most-popular carrier in the country, dropping from fifth in the same poll last year. Only 3% picked United as their favorite in this years survey, conducted after the Dao incident. George Hobica, founder of the fare comparison site, said some of the proposed changes will help eliminate the need to boot passengers from a flight, particularly the $10,000 compensation limit. But he added that video of the incident has been so widely seen that Uniteds reputation wont rebound soon. There are some people who will never fly them again, Hobica said. Compensating fliers for not flying Under federal rules, airlines can oversell a flight and have no limit on how much they can offer a passenger to voluntarily give up a seat. Each airline creates its own formula for gauging how many seats to oversell. Only JetBlue Airways says it does not oversell seats. If an airline cant get enough passengers to voluntarily give up their seats, an airline can deny passengers a seat but must offer compensation, based on how much the passengers will be delayed getting to their destinations. If an airline gets a booted passenger on a flight that arrives between one and four hours later than the arrival time of the overbooked flight, federal law says the carrier must pay 200% of the original fare, with a cap of $675. If the airline gets the booted passenger to the final destination later than four hours after the original arrival time, the carrier must pay 400% of the original fare, with a maximum of $1,350. On Daos flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., Uniteds best offer was $800, overnight accommodations and a flight nearly 24 hours later. When no flier agreed to take the offer, United employees picked four seated passengers using a criteria that first targets fliers who pay the lowest fare. hugo.martin@latimes.com To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. ALSO Economic reality and contradictions beset Trumps tax plan Dole files for initial public offering for the third time ESPN lays off Jayson Stark, Jay Crawford and about 100 other on-air personalities and writers Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Lao counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith meet the press after their talks (Photo: VNA) The two government leaders reached the consensus during their talks in Vientiane on April 26th on the occasion of Phucs first official visit to Laos in his position as Vietnamese Prime Minister from April 26th-27th. They concurred to implement more effectively high-level agreements, especially the Joint Statement issued on the official visit to Laos by Vietnams Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in November 2016 and the Joint Statement released on the visit to Vietnam by Laos Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Volachith in April 2016. The two sides vowed to build on the outcomes gained at the 39th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee on bilateral cooperation and do their best to carry out the Vietnam-Laos bilateral cooperation agreement in 2016-2020. The Vietnamese and Lao governments will map out long-term collaboration orientations for the sustainable development of the two countries relations, driving economic-trade growth while ensuring social welfares and environmental protection. The two PMs also agreed to enhance high-level delegation exchanges and effectively deploy bilateral cooperation mechanisms along with increasing political trusts and cooperation efficiency in the fields of politics, external affairs, security-defence, economics, trade and investment. The two sides aim to increase two-way trade value in 2017 by 10 percent against 2016 and step up connectivity between the two economies, particularly in energy and transport. Both leaders pledged to carry out efficiently signed agreements, particularly the protocol on cooperation in defence and security in 2016-2020, the protocol on border line and national border markers, the agreement on border and border gate management regulations, the Memorandum of Understanding on bilateral transport cooperation strategy in 2016-2025 with a vision towards 2030, and the agreement on building Vientiane-Pacxan-Thanh Thuy-Hanoi highway. They agreed to enhance cultural and people-to-people exchanges and jointly organise activities to celebrate the 55th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 40th anniversary of signing the Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc took the occasion to present his Lao counterpart and the Lao people with the Vietnamese-Lao and Lao-Vietnamese dictionaries with the hope of helping the two countries people, especially the youngsters, to learn each others languages, thus increasing mutual understanding and strengthening special solidarity. The two PMs agreed to bolster affiliation in education and training, which has been a bright spot in bilateral cooperation. They also affirmed to strengthen coordination at regional and international forums such as the United Nations (UN), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and sub-regional cooperation mechanisms, as well as support each others initiatives and activities within the framework of ASEAN. Host and guest vowed to step up cooperation with each other and with other countries and international organisations for the sustainable and effective use and management of water resources in the Mekong River on the basis of ensuring the harmony in benefits of countries in the Mekong basin, especially those downstream. They noted the need to have mechanisms for bilateral coordination and coordination with other stakeholders to assess and monitor the impacts of the use of river water resources. The two sides also stressed the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea; settling disputes via peaceful means and international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); implementing fully and effectively the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and soon reaching a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC), looking towards finalising the COC in mid-2017, thus contributing to preserving peace, security, stability, cooperation and development in the region and in the world. After the talks, the two PMs witnessed the signing of cooperation documents between Vietnam and Laos. The two countries have issued a Joint Statement on the occasion of PM Phucs official visit to Laos./. Two Costa Mesa men and a teenager were arrested Thursday night on suspicion of commercial burglary after an apparent break-in at a local high school, authorities said. A resident in a nearby housing complex called Costa Mesa police just after 9 p.m. Thursday to report that she saw three males breaking into a room at Back Bay High School, 390 Monte Vista Ave. Officers responded and the three fled on foot, police said, but eventually were caught. Elijah Blandford, 18, Marcus Huish, 19, and a 17-year-old Costa Mesa resident were taken into custody, according to Lt. Greg Scott. Costa Mesa police said they were increasing patrols around local campuses last week after four schools, Costa Mesa High School, Early College High School, TeWinkle Middle School and the Coastline Regional Occupational Program campus, were burglarized while students and employees were off for winter break. It is unclear whether the burglaries are connected. Jessica Fry said there is no reason why she can enjoy a glass of wine while getting her hair done, but not while browsing paintings or sculptures inside an art gallery. Fry, director of The Signature Gallery in Laguna Beach, hopes to change that dynamic and called on Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach) for help. For the record: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Assemblyman Tom Daly as a republican. He is a democrat. Harper, who represents the 74th District that includes Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, authored A.B. 629, which would allow art gallery owners throughout California to serve beer and wine without a license from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Frys request came after a brouhaha last November in which undercover officers from the Laguna Beach Police Department and the ABC cited seven businesses, including five art galleries, for serving beer and wine without a license during First Thursdays Art Walk, a monthly event in which gallery owners open their doors in the evening and can include musical performances and new exhibits. Some gallery owners said they were caught off-guard with no warning of a potential crackdown. Police said they sent a letter to an unidentified number of businesses about issues concerning Art Walk such as amplified music and outside speakers, drinking in public and displays on sidewalks. Eventually the city admitted that it did not do an effective job of informing owners about related rules. The Orange County district attorneys office rejected the cases for lack of sufficient evidence, said Nicole Nicholson, assistant head of court at the Harbor Justice Center. Some gallery owners have offered complimentary wine and beer during Art Walk for more than a decade. Harper, Huntington Beachs former mayor, said his office received quite a few calls from Laguna gallery owners. He also read about the issue in news reports. Ive seen the practice [serving wine and beer at art walks in other cities] and its not a problem issue, Harper said. Its not a situation where art galleries are turning into bars. This is simply people enjoying a glass of wine. Under the bill, the cost of beer or wine would not be included in the sale price of art or merchandise. A person would be limited to one drink 12 ounces of beer or 6 ounces of wine during the business operating hours and no later than 10 p.m. Drinks must remain on the gallery property, according to the bill. Laguna Mayor Toni Iseman, with backing from the City Council and Police Chief Laura Farinella, sent a letter to Harper in support of the bill. As precedent, Harper mentioned A.B. 1322, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in September that allows owners of beauty salons and barber shops to serve beer and wine without a license. Assemblyman Tom Daly (D Anaheim) and current state Sen. Scott Wilk (R Antelope Valley) co-authored the bill. Wilk was an assemblyman before voters elected him to the state senate last fall. A license also is not required to serve alcohol in hot-air balloons and limousines, according to state law. For the last five months, Fry, vice president of the First Thursdays Art Walk board, has paid the $25 for a one-day license from the ABC to serve wine during each event. She would like the flexibility to serve other days. Its not the money, but the time it takes in filling out and obtaining paperwork for each Art Walk that becomes burdensome, Fry said. Under the one-day license, each serving of wine costs $2, Fry said. Instead of concentrating on art, Fry said she and colleagues are more focused on serving under the guidelines of ABC. For example, they must make sure no one leaves the property with an open container and that visitors of legal drinking age wear wristbands. Fry said The Signature Gallery was not among the businesses cited in November. The bill awaits a future hearing date, according to a spokeswoman from Harpers office. bryce.alderton@latimes.com Twitter: @AldertonBryce Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa is calling on students and staff members to be on the lookout for a former student who reportedly was seen on campus recently after being arrested last month on suspicion of carving a swastika and the N-word into the hoods of two OCC security vehicles. College President Dennis Harkins sent an email to faculty and students about sightings of Robert McDougal on Friday and Monday. The Costa Mesa Police Department was contacted after both sightings, Harkins wrote, and campus safety officers are patrolling areas near the chemistry building. Signs about the matter were placed around the building Tuesday, said Doug Bennett, executive director of the Orange Coast College Foundation. McDougal, of Costa Mesa, was arrested March 13 on suspicion of felony vandalism and a hate crime in connection with the carving incident. He was booked into Orange County Jail and later posted bail. The college obtained a temporary restraining order banning McDougal from the campus, Bennett said, and has been working with Costa Mesa police in hopes of having McDougals bail revoked. The college urged anyone who sees McDougal on campus to call 911 or (714) 432-5017. Priscella.Vega@latimes.com Twitter: @vegapriscella The second retrial for a man whose conviction in the 1981 killing of a Newport Beach retiree was overturned by a federal judge is expected to begin next week with opening statements. During jury selection this week, James Andrew Melton, 65, clad in a brown sport coat and slacks, occasionally turned around to assess the pool of 135 potential jurors who had filed into a courtroom at Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana. Judge Gregg Prickett gave the potential jurors limited information about the case on Tuesday, telling them only that its a criminal trial estimated to last about five weeks. In 1982, Melton, of Los Angeles, was convicted and sentenced to death after being accused of seducing 77-year-old Anthony DeSousa and then strangling him in his Newport Beach condominium in a plot to steal from him. Melton was awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison when a federal judge threw out his conviction in 2007. U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ruled Melton was too heavily medicated on psychiatric drugs during his trial to understand the proceedings or participate in his defense. According to court filings, Melton had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from violence and sexual abuse as a child and had a history of alcohol and drug abuse that began when he was a boy. After a new trial was ordered, the Orange County district attorneys office decided not to seek the death penalty. In the 2014 retrial, a jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of convicting Melton of murder. Jurors in that trial did not hear testimony from Meltons former lover Johnny Boyd, to whom prosecutors said Melton confessed shortly after DeSousas death. But Prickett ruled this year that prosecutors will be able to present testimony from Boyd that was given during the original trial. Boyd died in 1992. Prosecutors allege that Melton and Boyd, while serving prison sentences in San Luis Obispo in 1980, concocted a plan to make money by finding older gay men through ads in newspapers. The plan, prosecutors say, was to contact the men, go to their homes and take items of value through any means necessary, according to court filings. According to prosecutors, Boyd set up a meeting between DeSousa and Melton but was not present when DeSousa was killed. DeSousa, a widower who frequently solicited for male companions in newspapers geared toward gay men, was found dead and nude on his bed by police performing a check on his welfare at the behest of a neighbor in October 1981. DeSousas hands were bound in front of his body with an electrical cord. A pillow covered his face and a cord was tightly wound around his neck. He had been severely beaten before his death, police said. DeSousas condominium had been ransacked and blood was spattered throughout the bedroom. On the dining table were two used dinner settings and two uneaten servings of pie, according to court filings. Authorities said Melton had DeSousas car, watch, gold chain and other items at the time of his arrest. Meltons lawyers argued in his 2014 re-trial that authorities arrested the wrong person. They contended Melton was home when DeSousa was killed. Court filings by Meltons lawyers allege that Boyd set up Melton to take the fall for the killing because Melton had ended their romantic relationship. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN Sailors are in a festive mood as the 70th Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race approaches. The race from the Balboa Pier to the Baja California coastal town 125 nautical miles south will push off Friday morning with a fleet roughly 185 strong. The cooperation and friendship of the gracious greater Ensenada-area leaders are a huge reason for the prosperous continuation of a tradition that brings two nations, many businesses and many people together for one happy occasion, Daniel Hodge, vice commodore of the Newport Ocean Sailing Assn., said in a statement. Our race is an amazing example of how working together can bring mutual success for not only N2E racers but the communities of Newport Beach and Ensenada. Race week kicked off Sunday with a community party at Marina Park, and on Wednesday, skippers held a luncheon at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club and VIPs attended an evening reception hosted by sponsor Sterling BMW. Newport Beach Mayor Kevin Muldoon will host Ensenada Mayor Marco Antonio Novelo Asuna, along with other Ensenada dignitaries, for an invitation-only reception in Costa Mesa on Thursday evening, with dinner aboard a yacht in Newport Harbor to follow. That night, the American Legion Yacht Club will throw its Sail Away Party for skippers and crew members. Race watchers can head to the Balboa Peninsula to see the sailors in several yacht classes begin their journey at 11 a.m. Friday. More parties await in Mexico, with a fiesta Saturday evening at Ensenadas Hotel Coral and an awards ceremony Sunday. * IF YOU GO What: Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race When: 11 a.m. Friday Where: Balboa Pier, Balboa Boulevard and Main Street, Newport Beach Cost: Free to watch. Parking fees may apply. Information: newporttoensenada.com hillary.davis@latimes.com Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD Speakers who lead invocations before City Council meetings in Newport Beach can now name specific religions or deities in their prayers if they offer religious invocations at all. The policy amendment the council unanimously approved Tuesday comes after a 2014 Supreme Court decision that both upheld invocations as constitutional provided they dont denigrate, proselytize or betray an impermissible government purpose and held that governments should refrain from prohibiting prayer leaders from referring to a specific religion or figure. We think this is an area of law thats been well-trodden and that our policy is in conformance with the state and federal constitutions, said City Attorney Aaron Harp. Newports previous policy, based on older case law, barred terms associated with a specific religion, sect or deity. Mayor Kevin Muldoon said he was troubled when an invited rabbi was prohibited from citing Scripture during his appearance in January (the rabbi noted that before beginning his prayer). It also bothered Muldoon when a resident who authored a book on her familys experience during the Armenian Genocide couldnt recite a traditional Armenian prayer during her generally secular invocation earlier this month. The mayor noted that speakers do not need to be religious or part of an organized group to solemnize a meeting. A moment of silence is equally acceptable, Muldoon said. Essentially, our goal is to expand speech, not limit it. hillary.davis@latimes.com Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD The Newport Beach Harbor Commission has two new members, filling openings created when Brad Avery was sworn onto the City Council and Joe Stapleton moved to the Finance Committee. The City Council this week selected Scott Cunningham and John Drayton to fill out the seven-seat commission. The council had six finalists to choose from out of 14 applicants. Cunningham has spent 33 years in semiconductor sales and is currently president of the Beacon Bay Homeowners Assn., according to his application for the commission. Drayton is director of engineering for the Los Angeles County Metro transit system and has written about sailing for local media, including the Daily Pilot. Council members selected the commissioners at their meeting Tuesday, filling in paper ballots from the dais. Councilman Will ONeill, who was on a subcommittee to select the finalists, said culling the list was hard. Several council members agreed that all the applicants were well-qualified and encouraged those who werent chosen to try for future openings on the commission. Water restrictions lifted The council Tuesday also repealed a resolution declaring a Level 2 water supply shortage in the city after Gov. Jerry Brown ended Californias drought-related state of emergency this month. The council action pulls back restrictions on watering days and fountain and pool refilling and a required 15% reduction in water use. The city put those restrictions in place last year. The State Water Resources Control Board will maintain water-use reporting requirements and prohibitions on wasteful practices such as hosing sidewalks, irrigating during and after rainfall and irrigating road medians with drinking water. Proposal to rename Balboa Island Park is rerouted A request to rename Balboa Island Park after late island resident Ralph Rodheim has been rerouted to the citys Parks, Beaches and Recreation Commission. Councilman Jeff Herdman, who made the renaming request last month, said he was surprised to see it on Tuesdays council agenda and asked that it be sent to the parks commission first. Rodheim, a longtime Newport Beach resident and businessman who was honored as Citizen of the Year in 2010, died Feb. 5. The city has a policy against naming parks after people, but it will make exceptions. Another park renaming that was considered, and approved, Tuesday will name Ensign View Park after late actor and Newport resident John Wayne. The proposal met with opposition from council members Avery and Diane Dixon, who felt it should have gone to the parks commission first. In voting for the John Wayne Park proposal, Herdman argued that Ensign View Park is already named after a person Horace Ensign, the Newport-Mesa Unified School Districts first teacher-principal. hillary.davis@latimes.com Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD An Uber driver from Costa Mesa is facing a rape charge in connection with a sexual assault of a female passenger who fell asleep in his vehicle last month, authorities said. The Orange County district attorneys office on Tuesday charged Angel Sanchez, 36, with one count of rape of an intoxicated victim. If convicted, he could face up to eight years in state prison. Authorities said the incident occurred March 30 when the womans friends helped her request a ride to her Santa Ana home from a company gathering in Newport Beach because she was intoxicated. Prosecutors said Sanchez picked up the woman in a 2016 Toyota Sienna. During the ride, the woman fell asleep, and when she woke up she was being sexually assaulted in the back seat of the van on a street near her home, authorities said. Officers worked with Uber to determine the drivers identity, and two days later, police arrested Sanchez at his Costa Mesa home. Sanchez is free on $100,000 bond. He is expected to appear in Orange County Superior Court on Monday for his arraignment, according to court records. An Uber representative said last month that Sanchez was removed from the companys ride-hailing app as soon as Uber became aware of the allegation. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN La Canada High School passed an important sniff test last week when a random canine search for drugs on campus turned up zero contraband items and no suspicious substances among the lockers, cars and classrooms searched. The surprise visit was made last Thursday morning, by Bill Wigodsky from Interquest Detection Canines of San Marino and his sniffer dog, Cali, a 2-year-old Labrador retriever. Shes a contraband dog, so shes not just checking for dope, Wigodsky said, indicating Calis training for alcohol, gunpowder and prescription drugs containing opiates. Its not a matter of finding and busting its really about the kids being sober and straight at school. LCHS Assistant Principal Mary Hazlett accompanied Wigodsky, reading a script before each classroom search to inform students of the process and let them know Cali was not allowed to sniff them personally, only belongings in the classroom. Join the conversation on Facebook We just go randomly floor by floor. The dog checks the lockers, checks cars and the classrooms, Hazlett said, indicating past searches have turned up vape pens with nicotine or marijuana residue and prescription medications. If we find something we contact home, and if [the student has] something they shouldnt have, there are consequences. Canine searches were halted in 2010 when La Canada Unified parent Guy Iversen, a federal public defender, informed district officials the procedure they were employing violated students right to privacy. LCUSD revised its policies and regulations in the years that followed, but didnt broach the subject of bringing dogs back to La Canada High School until 2014, when administrators requested the matter be reconsidered. In a Dec. 9, 2014, school board meeting, then-Assistant Principal Jarrett Gold cited an increased casual attitude among students about having drugs and paraphernalia on campus as the impetus for his request. The main reason we want to bring the canine searches back is, in essence, for the safety of our students, Gold told school board members at the 2014 meeting. The main goal of it is not apprehension of students, its prevention and education. With Iversens help, the district drafted a script to read before each search, and the canine visits recommenced starting in the 2015-16 school year. Since then, the script language has been modified so as not to encourage students to object, Hazlett said. Eric Matejka, a deputy with the Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Station who works closely with La Canada schools, said hes noticed fewer drug-related incidents since the searches resumed. Weve really had a decline in this stuff, Matejka said. Its great that they do this program, so kids and parents can feel safe coming into the environment. During her recent visit to LCHS, Calis spontaneous appearance at a Spanish class elicited more cries of affection from students than anything else, and Wigodsky promised they could pet her after the search. Cali dutifully walked up and down desk rows sticking her muzzle into backpacks to try to pick up a scent. One pass turned up nothing, so the canine went outside for some meet and greet. Wigodsky explained Cali started training at the tender age of 2 months, through playing fetch, to recognize scents and alert him by sitting still. This is all play for her, the he said of the visit. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine Cold War era leaders determined Los Angeles residents needed an escape route through the San Gabriel Mountains in case of a nuclear attack. Construction work began on Shoemaker Canyon Road. The 25-mile escape route would have connected the San Gabriel East Fork Road with Largo Vista in the Mojave Desert. Work started in 1956, but only four miles was finished. Construction officially stopped in 1969. Staff writer Paul Dean reported in the March 31, 1980, Los Angeles Times: Advertisement It has a nameShoemaker Canyon Road. It has stretch and directionmore than four miles hacked north across Angeles National Forest mountains within high sight of the San Gabriel and Morris reservoirs. It has drains and tunnels and markers and after two decades of existence finally has earned a place on page H, square C4 of the 1980 edition of the Thomas Bros. map book. Yet Shoemaker is a road to nowhere except, maybe, to memories of nuclear paranoia in America. For when first under construction in 1956, this highway pointed to Largo Vista and the Mojave Desert and was blueprinted in part as a Civil Defense escape from fallout; one route among a spiderwork of exits in all directions should Los Angeles be threatened, even executed by an atomic attack. And evacuation seemed a good possibility in that era of fear which remained just small bursts of imagination short of individual panic. The cold war was hot. Southern California could claim more home and public fallout shelters than SAC had bombs. But command posts now are flood and earthquake relief facilities. Fallout shelters are wine cellars. Civil Defense Day (once coincidental, but by no coincidence, to Pearl Harbor Day in California) is no longer marked on calendars. And Shoemaker Canyon Road has met the same dead end. ... Inmates from Sheriffs Department detention camps accomplished much of the construction. But in 1969, Los Angeles County budget cuts halted work on Shoemaker Canyon Road. In 1984, the area was granted wilderness status. These four photos by George Rose accompanied Deans story. March 19, 1980: The second tunnel on Shoemaker Canyon Road. (George Rose / Los Angeles Times) March 19, 1980: Marker on the first tunnel on the road to nowhere - Shoemaker Canyon Road. (George Rose / Los Angeles Times) March 19, 1980: End of paved stretch of Shoemaker Canyon Road. (George Rose / Los Angeles Times) See more from the Los Angeles Times archives here Delegates at the seminar (Photo: baoquocte.vn) The seminar is organized to provide managers and investors in Dubai with updated information on Vietnams socio-economic situation, development and growth indicators in the coming years by independent research institutions, as well as recent legal reforms of the Vietnamese government and investment opportunities in the coming years. WF & W law firm provided information on legal procedures and legal preferences of the Vietnamese government for investors in specific sectors in Vietnam, fields and incentives in investment attraction strategy of the Vietnamese government in the following period, as well as company and management models, which can be applied in Vietnam. The representative from Vietnams Ministry of Industry and Trade emphasized the guiding concern of the leaders of the two countries, bilateral relations development policies in which trade and investment are the pillars with the aim of trade turnover promotion to USD10 billion in the medium term and USD15 billion by 2025. Currently, UAEs direct investment into Vietnam, with 14 large projects worth over USD3 billion, is working well. This is a good example for potential investors. With favourable conditions of infrastructure, policies, human resources and support from the banking system, and especially sea and aviation transport between the two countries, the number of projects and total investment from the UAE into Vietnam will increase sharply. The investors were interested in and registered to learn more about projects in their areas of interest, especially policies for export processing zones in Vietnam as well as instruments to support investors of the Government of Vietnam./. A German army officer posed for months as a Syrian with the aim of carrying out a violent attack he hoped would be blamed on refugees, prosecutors said after the 28-year-olds arrest on Thursday. The first lieutentant identified in German media reports only as Franco A. had managed to fulfill all his military duties while posing as a refugee for more than a year, authorities said. The man was evidently leading a dual life, Nadja Niesen of the state prosecutors office in Frankfurt told reporters. Advertisement She said he had appeared one day in December 2015 at a refugee center in the Bavarian town of Zirndorf claiming to be a Christian and the son of a fruit merchant in Damascus. He spoke no Arabic, only French, and told local officials that after fleeing Syria he had applied for asylum and was receiving $450 a month in state benefits. He was also given a room in a refugee shelter where he spent time on weekends and while on military leave. Ive never heard of anything like this before, Niesen said. Its an extraordinary story. He was only sporadically at the refugee center and no one seemed to notice anything unusual about him. The soldier had been stationed with an elite army unit based just across Germanys western border in Illkirch, France. On Feb. 3, he was briefly detained after he tried to pick up a gun that authorities had found hidden in a bathroom at the Vienna airport and left there as a trap, according to Der Spiegel magazine. He told police that he had found the gun in the bushes near the airport a few weeks earlier and stashed it in the bathroom to retrieve later. Authorities let him go but began closely tracking him. Investigators discovered that his fingerprints matched those of the person who registered as a refugee in Zirndorf in December 2015. Through surveillance of his telephone, they learned he harbored racist views that he managed to conceal from the army. A 24-year-old student from the nearby town of Offenbach who authorities believe was an accomplice to the solider was also arrested on Thursday We have learned from various communications that the two shared racist beliefs, Niesen said. That was clear from their conversations. In late 2015, more than a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East streamed into Germany after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders. Most Germans welcomed the refugees, but that changed in early 2016 after large numbers of women were sexually abused during New Years Eve celebrations in Cologne. The abuse was widely blamed on the refugees even though most of the suspects were from north Africa. Unease over refugees has helped a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, win a series of regional elections. The party is projected to win 10% of the vote in the federal election Sept. 24, making it more difficult for Merkel to win a fourth term. The Pentagon said two American troops were killed and a third wounded Wednesday night during a raid against Islamic States affiliate in eastern Afghanistan, near the site where an 11-ton U.S. bomb was dropped earlier this month. The service members were conducting an operation alongside Afghan forces in Nangarhar province, where a U.S.-backed offensive is underway against Islamic State in Khorasan, known as ISIS-K. Khorasan is the historic name for a region that encompassed parts of modern-day Afghanistan. For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the U.S. military dropped the most powerful conventional bomb in its arsenal in Afghanistans Nangarhar province on April 12. The bombing occurred April 13. The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice, said Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. On behalf of all U.S. forces and our coalition partners, I offer our deepest sympathies to the families, friends, and fellow service members of our fallen comrades. Advertisement The deaths occurred as U.S. and Afghan forces were conducting a raid against a prison where Islamic State kept civilians as prisoners, said Attaullah Khogyani, a representative of the Nangahar governors office. There now have been three U.S. service members killed fighting Islamic State in Afghanistan in 2017 all in Nangarhar. That is the province where, on April 13, the U.S. military dropped the most powerful conventional bomb in its arsenal on a cave-and-tunnel complex that it said was used by Islamic State fighters. The Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb nicknamed the mother of all bombs and the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat targeted subterranean passages the militants used for weeks to evade an ongoing operation by U.S. and Afghan forces, officials said. Afghan officials have said that 94 militants were killed in the bombing and another 40 killed in Wednesday nights operation.The U.S. military has refused to comment on battle casualties suffered by Islamic State, which is estimated to have about 700 fighters in Afghanistan. Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Maryland, became the first American service member killed in combat this year in Afghanistan on April 8 after coming under fire in Nangarhars Achin district. There have been 1,835 American troops killed in action since U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. ALSO Top Afghan defense officials resign after Taliban attack that killed more than 100 soldiers Militants in army uniforms kill more than 100 Afghan soldiers at northern base, officials say Islamic State has fewer than 1,000 fighters in Afghanistan. So why did Trump drop the mother of all bombs? UPDATES: 9:55 a.m.: This article was updated throughout with details and background. This article was originally published at 7:45 a.m.. Scores of protesters, many wearing masks, broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonias parliament late Thursday, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government. The protesters stormed parliament after the countrys opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonias ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked lawmakers, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, whom television footage showed bleeding from the forehead. TV footage showed Zaev and other Social Democrat lawmakers surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting traitors and refusing to allow them to leave. Advertisement Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevskis conservative party won elections, but without enough votes to form a government. Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonias population is ethnic Albanian. Zaev has been seeking a mandate to form a government for months after reaching an agreement with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, to form a coalition government. However, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate. The Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, as the Balkan nations parliament is known, has been deadlocked for three weeks over electing a new speaker. Zaev had suggested earlier Thursday that one could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup. Zaev went ahead with the vote, and a majority in parliament elected Talat Xhaferi, a former defense minister and member of the Democratic Union for Integration. Police said that about 10 officers were injured during the melee and that reinforcements have been sent to assist those inside the parliament building. Democratic Union for Integration spokesman Artan Grubi told Telma TV in a telephone interview that Zaev and three other lawmakers had been injured. This is a sad day for Macedonia, Grubi said. The protesters who stormed parliament were among a group of demonstrators who have been holding protest rallies nightly for the last two months in the streets of Skopje and other cities over the political situation. Many are supporters of Gruevski. European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemned Thursdays violence, saying in a tweet that Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course. Swedens ambassador to Macedonia, Mats Staffansson, speaking on behalf of other European diplomats, reminded the countrys politicians of the need for dialogue and said it is the responsibility of the police of this country to make sure that this kind of violence does not happen. ALSO The pope is coming to the Middle East. But Christians are heading for the exits Syria blames Israel for missile attack near Damascus International Airport In act of defiance, Venezuela may become first country to withdraw from Organization of American States Venezuela is expected Thursday to formally begin the process of withdrawing from the Organization of American States, the hemispheric cooperation group based in Washington, after the countrys leaders accused the body of interference in domestic affairs. The decision comes amid monthlong marches, clashes and riots that have left at least 29 people dead across Venezuela. Opponents to President Nicolas Maduro are protesting the lack of food, poor security, delays in elections and abortive efforts by his government to strip the opposition-controlled National Assembly of its power. The human rights group Venezuelan Penal Forum said that 1,584 protesters have been arrested across the nation since protests began and that 715 are still incarcerated. Advertisement The decision follows a 19-10 vote announced Wednesday by the Organization of American States to convene a special meeting of regional foreign ministers to consider the situation in Venezuela. No date has been set for the meeting. The bodys general secretary, Luis Almagro, has been critical of Maduros crackdown on protesters in recent weeks, calling it undemocratic. Although a majority of Latin American nations apparently support sanctions against Venezuela for alleged anti-democratic actions, Bolivian President Evo Morales spoke up in defense of Maduro on Thursday, saying Almagro was supporting a coup detat in Venezuela. If Venezuela follows through with its decision to quit the 35-nation group, it would become the first country to drop out of the agency since its founding in 1948. The OAS suspended Cubas membership in 1962. In a statement broadcast over state TV Wednesday night, Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the withdrawal had been ordered by Maduro and would take 24 months to complete. She said that by approving the special meeting, the OAS was engaging in interventionist actions. Without a doubt, today we wake up more free, more independent, Rodriguez said Thursday in a speech broadcast on national TV. We have broken the chains of Monroe-ism. Her reference was to the Monroe Doctrine, the policy dating from the early 1800s by which some U.S. presidents claimed Latin America to be within the U.S. sphere of influence. Venezuelan authorities and local media also reported that the death toll from a month of nationwide disturbances had risen to 29 late Wednesday. In other news, 14 prisoners were reported dead and 15 injured in a riot early Tuesday between rival gangs at the Puente Ayala prison in the eastern state of Anzoategui, according to the Venezuelan Prisons Monitor, a civil society group. Venezuela has been roiled by protests since early April when the Supreme Court ruled that the National Assembly had lost its authority and that its functions would be assumed by Maduro. Although Maduro quickly reversed the decision, his governments subsequent disqualification of opposition leader Henrique Capriles from running for office until 2032 sparked a new wave of marches. Protests continued this week when the opposition organized nationwide sit-down demonstrations that sent tens of thousands out to block the nations highways, snarling traffic and provoking government responses that included tear gas and rubber bullets fired by police and the national guard. In a speech broadcast over state TV Wednesday, Maduro accused the protesters of disturbing the peace and inciting violence. But repressive measures by government forces have drawn rebukes from domestic and international human rights bodies, including Human Rights Watch, whose Americas director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, called the governments response hugely irresponsible. Kraul is a special correspondent. UPDATES: 3 p.m.: This article was updated to report the number of protesters arrested and comments by Evo Morales and Delcy Rodriguez. This article was originally published at 9:45 a.m. Pope Francis boosted the spirits of Christians throughout the Middle East last week when he paid a two-day visit to Cairo, the first visit by a pontiff to Egypt in 17 years. But the popes visit did not change a harsh reality: Christians throughout the region find themselves under threat by political repression and violent attacks. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been chased from their homes, their churches and a monastery attacked. In Iraq, Assyrians have been displaced from villages, whole neighborhoods and business districts gutted by Islamic State. In the West Bank, Iran and Lebanon, Christians have grown accustomed to celebrating under guard. Some of the oldest Christian communities in the world are disappearing in the very lands where their faith was born and first took root, concluded a Center for American Progress report on the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The Middle East-North Africa area has the highest concentration of Muslims of any region of the world: 93% of its more than 340 million inhabitants. Christians in the region face not only the threat of Islamist violence, but subtler challenges. Many wind up leaving because they cant find jobs and face social discrimination. Countries such as Saudi Arabia make it difficult for Christians to practice their faiths openly. We talked to Christians across the region, from Egypt to Iran. Facing Islamic State in Iraq Soldiers make the sign of the cross during Easter Mass at the Mar Youhanna Church, also known as St. John Church, in Iraq. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Tawfiq Abosh Jabu Sakar wanders through his home destroyed by Islamic State in Qaraqosh, Iraq. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) He once owned a house, a hotel, a casino, a herd of cattle and a farm in the Christian city of Qaraqosh east of Mosul, home to 50,000. Then Islamic State arrived. Militants forced Tawfiq Abosh Jabu Sakar and most of his neighbors from their homes. They took his hundred head of cattle, his chicken coops, even his irrigation pipes. Then they burned his home and business. They want to make us all refugees, said Sakar, 67, as he flipped through photos of his stolen cows. Iraqi forces freed the area last fall, but many displaced families refused to return. The government had yet to restore running water and electricity. A Christian militia was patrolling the streets, but they feared militants still lurked nearby. Two months ago, Sakar decided to move back. Christian people have a right to stay here, he said. Those who love the area will return and give their soul to protect it. He gets upset sometimes with the Iraqi government, and with international charities he thinks should help Christians resettle. Standing in the charred remains of his three-story home this month, Sakar picked up a piece of plaster and threw it at the cracked ceiling in frustration. You cant use this house anymore. What did I do to deserve this? he said. Sakar has replaced his singed casino ceiling, and is repairing the hotel above. He is building a new ranch house near his fields, which he replanted with corn. So far, the crop appears healthy. Islamic State destroyed everything, he said. But I still have hope. Displaced in Iraq: Its getting worse Suad Rahim makes klecha holiday cookies with her family at a Christian refugee camp in the Ainkawa neighborhood of Irbil on April 12. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) The three women chopped walnuts in the kitchenette of their two-room trailer, then poured them into a bowl along with dried coconut. Now, as children hovered, the bakers were rolling out and cutting sweet dough to make an Easter Iraqi favorite: klecha cookies. Islamic State militants forced the trio of Assyrians from their Christian hometown of Qaraqosh two years ago. Suad Rahim and daughters Iman, 30, and Fata, 27, had expected to stay at the trailer park in the town of Irbil for a few months. But they cant imagine returning home. Most of the houses and storefronts sit empty. Militias police the area, and many citizens fear the armed groups have been infiltrated by Islamic State. In the night, its very scary, said Rahim, 50. We dont know who is who. So her family of eight are still sharing a trailer, hoping to move to a house elsewhere in the Kurdish region of Iraq, or overseas. Many of their former neighbors are now in Australia, Canada and Britain. They dont feel safe in Qaraqosh. If they try to push us back there, were going to Europe, Rahim said of Kurdish officials. Its not getting better, its getting worse. Nobody is going back. Near Bethlehem: We are a witness to the Lord in this city Christian worshippers gather at Immanuel Evangelical Church in Beit Sahour, West Bank. (Joshua Mitnick / Los Angeles Times) Buses rumbled past Rafat Houarys stone villa ferrying a stream of tourists to the Shepherds Field Chapel, where Catholic tradition holds the birth of Jesus was first announced. Standing on his balcony, the 43-year-old carpenter and fledgling craft beer brew master pointed out the hotels and restaurants on the horizon that had popped up around the holy site in the last few years as tourism to Bethlehem has picked up. Not long ago, the street was a war zone. At the height of the Palestinian uprising at the beginning of the 2000s, the road became a battlefield for the Israeli army and Palestinian militants. Israeli tanks patrolled to enforce a curfew as the military scoured the town for gunmen and potential bombers. Many Christians from Bethlehem and the suburban villages of Beit Sahour and Beit Jalla moved abroad. I know 100 families that moved, said Houary. They were looking for a better life. They were looking for freedom. Maybe if I had a family and children at the time, I would have thought about moving. But Houary stayed and helped build a new Bethlehem congregation. When he bows his head in prayer at the Immanuel Evangelical Church in Beit Sahour, he faces a colonnade-adorned altar that he erected. Israel built fences behind his house separating him from his family-owned property. Fellow congregants fret about Islamic militancy spreading to the West Bank. But Houary remains optimistic. Christians, though a diminished minority in the Holy Land, still have a mission to fulfill, he said. We are a witness to the Lord in this city. So, we have to be here, he said. If all of us move, the culture will die. We want to find a light for them. We want to find a reason for them to stay in this country. Praying for terrorists in Cairo Twelve-year-old Mina Magdi, left, was at church the day of the bombing, along with friend Yousef Mina, 11, right. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times) Vivian Aziz Shehata Shenoudah always covers her head when she goes out in Cairo. She calls it her precaution. The Coptic woman said she has been harassed by men, women, even children on the street for being Christian, for her gold crosses, dyed blond hair and makeup. She has not seen her brother in San Diego in a decade. He no longer feels safe visiting her. Shenoudahs apartment is in the Abbasia neighborhood, steps from her church, St. Marks. A suicide bomber attacked in December, killing 30 worshipers. Despite the risks, for 42 years the unemployed widow has attended services every week. Last Sunday after church, she walked through the compound, pointing out her haunts: On Tuesday, she prays in the St. Athanasius (of Alexandria) chapel next to the tombs of two Coptic priests; on Thursday, in the St. Rueiss chapel, with its 12th century crypt; on Friday, the chapel of the Madonna and St. Rueiss (hes a popular Egyptian saint, appearing with a camel). On Sunday, the chapels were packed not just with Egyptians, but also with Christian refugees from Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Three days a week, Shenoudah also attends services at Botroseya Chapel, in the womens area where the bomb detonated and marble columns are still pitted from the explosion. In a nearby hall, tour guides display remnants of the attack now considered relics and preserved under glass: bloodied pews, victims bloodstained heels, handbags and hair clippings. Shenoudah comes to pray, but also for companionship. After her husband died, the Egyptian economy tanked and her consulting business assisting foreigners dried up. She blames poverty and wealthy Gulf countries for stoking Muslim extremism. I always pray that they change their minds to peace and that they leave us alone, she said. This is the grave of the martyrs Workers repair St. George Church in Tanta, Egypt, after a bombing killed 28 people (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times) The bombing on Palm Sunday shook the Church of St. George in Tanta, Egypt. This is the grave of the martyrs, says the sign next to the church where 28 who came to worship on Palm Sunday were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber. They had their funerals there the same night. Solemn families paused to pay their respects as they filed past on their way to services in the chapel just beyond. St. George, about an hours drive north of Cairo, is still gutted. Broken pews are heaped outside. Shattered windows reveal interior columns still pitted and bloodstained. Many worshipers still wear black, out of respect for friends and family who were killed. The victims names are listed on a golden plaque some touch as they pass, hoping for a blessing. Theres a poem, too, and a picture of St. George, the great martyr, slaying a dragon. Mina Magdi, 12, was at church the day of the bombing, along with friend Yousef Mina, 11. Pellets from the bomb nearly struck Yousefs mother. She survived. Her cousin was struck in the head by a piece of metal, Mina said. Attached to it was someones eye. I saw bodies split in two, Yousef said as he stood before a grave. The list of the dead includes their Sunday school teacher, the priests son. Other children begged their parents not to come to church, afraid of another attack. But the boys were upbeat, despite the bloodshed they had seen here. They said they were not scared. Lebanon an oasis of peace for Christians A procession in the Armenian Catholic Church in Beiruts Mar Mikhael neighborhood. (Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times) On the Saturday before Easter, residents of Beiruts Mar Mikhael neighborhood enjoying an evening drink began to shout over the surrounding noise. But it wasnt because of the music piping out of the neighborhoods cafes and bars. Instead it was the cacophony of hundreds of fireworks mixed with the peals of the many churches in the area. Its almost like they were competing over which one is the loudest, complained one reveler when quiet finally returned. It was yet another sign, several Lebanese Christian leaders said, that when it comes to their communities, Lebanon is the exception in the Middle East. There, said Sebouh Garabedian, the laid-back media representative of the Armenian Catholic church, you have explosions, and then they blew up the church in Egypt, so there is more fear. The there he referred to was neighboring Syria, where the six-year civil war has decimated the countrys minorities. A 33-year-old priest with stylish stubble and designer glasses, Garabedian was preparing last week for a large Mass set to be held in the large asphalt playground of a nearby school. Here it is the opposite. The churches are even fuller than in past years because it is safe, and there is no fear regarding this sort of attack. Raffi Aywazian, a 25-year old Syrian Lebanese man, agreed. Aywazian recalled his time in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. In the years before the war, Aywazian said, the citys sizable Christian community would have large street celebrations. It was even bigger than here, said Aywazian with a note of wistfulness. He had come to Lebanon with his family five years ago, after the Syrian civil war finally reached Aleppo. Many minorities in Syria fear the opposition, which is fighting to dislodge President Bashar Assad and is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. They point to the dominance of Islamist groups within its ranks. In Beirut, however, Aywazian was happy to take part in the festivities all over Mar Mikhael. Archpriest Mesrob Kerkezian credited the reason for Lebanons relative tranquility to its eighteen sects. The countrys politicians constantly jockey for benefits for their communities none really ever gaining the upper hand. In Iran, Armenian Christians commemorate the Turkish genocide Worshipers gather at St. Sarkis Armenian Church in Tehran. (Ramin Mostaghim / Los Angeles Times) A sign spanning St. Sarkis Armenian Church in Tehran this week commemorated genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Turkish state. At a nearby grocery store, owner Gregory Davoud Daavetian, an Armenian Christian, said he looked forward to the popes visit to the Middle East. The Armenian community in Iran is one of the oldest and largest in the world, and it enjoys official recognition in the Islamic Republic. There has been a surge in emigration in recent years, but much of it is due less to discrimination than a search for better economic opportunities. The Iranian government places strict limits on proselytizing among evangelical Christians. But the Armenians are generally free to practice their religion. Any attempt to reduce violence in the region is appreciated, Daavetiansaid. I was born in Iran, I am Iranian Christian and Iran is my country. Hennessy-Fiske reported from Cairo and Mosul, Bulos from Beirut, Mostaghim from Tehran, Mitnick from the West Bank. With Irans presidential election weeks away and its beleaguered economy showing signs of improvement, the nations ruling clerics seem uninterested in a new round of hostilities with the United States. The Trump administrations escalating threats against the Islamic Republic have elicited muted responses from the theocracy and President Hassan Rouhanis government, signaling that the Tehran establishment may ride out the current wave of criticism from Washington. For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly included Hamas in a list of Shiite Muslim groups. Hamas is led by Sunni Muslims. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week accused Iran of destabilizing the world, compared it to the largely isolated but aggressive North Korea, which has a nuclear arsenal, and said the Trump administration was reviewing the U.S. decision to lift economic sanctions as required under Irans 2015 agreement to curb its nuclear program. Advertisement On Thursday, President Trump said Iran was doing a disservice to an agreement he called terrible. They are not living up to the spirit of the agreement, I can tell you that, he said during a White House news conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. They have to do that. So we will see what happens. The administration has certified that Iran is complying with the nuclear pact, allowing the extension of what Trump once called the worst deal ever. The agreement has helped Iran resume oil sales and solicit foreign investment to jump-start its economy, which had been all but disconnected from the world under one of the toughest sanctions programs ever imposed. Analysts say Iranian hard-liners believe that the U.S. is unlikely to withdraw from the deal and risk a diplomatic crisis with the five other signatories Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Abdullah Gangi, editor of the Javan daily newspaper, a mouthpiece of Irans hard-line Revolutionary Guard, dismissed Tillersons remarks as contradictory. On one hand he and others in the U.S. administration confirm that Iran has abided by the terms of the nuclear agreement, and on the other hand they threaten Iran and draw parallels to North Korea, Gangi said. This is an absolute fallacy, he said. The new U.S. administration tries to mask its own domestic problems and illegitimacy by accusing Iran of sponsoring terrorism or nuclear noncompliance from time to time. These are sheer lies and irrelevant. Iran has long denied allegations that it supports an array of militant groups across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Houthi rebels in Yemen all of which the U.S. opposes. Tehran is also one of the staunchest allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose forces the Trump administration targeted this month with missile strikes on an airfield in response to a chemical gas attack, apparently by the Syrian government, that killed dozens of people in a rebel-held town in Syrias Idlib province. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Irans lead negotiator on the nuclear deal, tweeted that the United States worn-out accusations cannot mask its admission of Irans compliance with the nuclear agreement. Analysts said Irans ruling establishment, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, doesnt want to raise tensions with the U.S. just as the economy is picking up. This week, at the annual military parade to mark National Army Day, amid the usual menacing fanfare of hardware and missiles including one that carried the sign, Death to Israel the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Khamenei as telling a group of commanders: Today, strengthening the economic foundation is the top priority of the country. Tehran also showed restraint in its response to Trumps executive order in January banning citizens of Iran and several other Muslim-majority countries from visiting the United States. After a federal judge blocked the order, Iran granted visas to wrestlers from the U.S. to participate in a major international tournament in a move widely seen as a bid to lower tensions. While they want to keep their anti-American slogan as an undertone, they want more American tourists here in Iran and more Iranian students studying in America, said Nader Karimi Juni, a political analyst close to Irans reformists. Juni said Iran is not following suit with North Korea, which test-fired a missile this week in a move that the Trump administration called a provocation. But Irans response could change depending on the outcome of the May 19 presidential election. Rouhani, a relative moderate, remains popular despite concerns that ordinary Iranians are not reaping economic gains from the nuclear deal that he championed. Although there are no reliable opinion polls in Iran, analysts say there is little sign that voters are tilting toward more conservative candidates in response to U.S. threats. This is rhetoric for American domestic consumption, said Ali Nori, a 50-year-old bread vendor distributing lavash in western Tehran. But the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based advocacy group that supports the nuclear deal, said Tillersons comments lend credence to hard-liners in Iran who warned of any negotiation with the United States and politically isolates Irans voices of moderation. Irans interior ministry said Thursday that the Guardian Council, which oversees elections, had finalized the slate of presidential candidates. They include Rouhani, hard-line former judge Ebrahim Raesi and four other candidates. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who surprised many by filing papers to run last week, was disqualified. Though the council does not give reasons for disqualifying candidates, Khamenei had advised Ahmadinejad not to run again. If a hard-liner wins, he might respond more forcefully to U.S. threats. That could also embolden members of Congress who support imposing tougher unilateral sanctions against Iran, which would torpedo Irans nascent economic recovery and could provoke Tehran into resuming its nuclear program. While most U.S. sanctions were lifted last year, the Treasury Department maintains financial restrictions against Iran for supporting terrorism and maintaining its ballistic missile program. Iranian hard-liners say that new sanctions would amount to the U.S. breaking the nuclear deal. But they refuse to express concern. If the U.S. wants to turn the tables and drop the agreement, it is not a big deal, Gangi said. Let America do it. Iran will not lose. Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India. Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli in Washington contributed to this report. shashank.bengali@latimes.com Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia UPDATES: 3:55 p.m.: This article was updated with a comment by President Trump. This article was originally published at 12:45 p.m. In video posted online this week by the Vatican, Pope Francis sounds excited about his two-day trip to Egypt starting Friday, despite recent terrorist attacks. As salaam alaikum peace be with you!Thank you for having invited me to visit Egypt, which you call Umm al Dunya, Mother of the World, the pope read from prepared remarks in Italian as he sat behind a desk at the Vatican. Our world, torn by blind violence, which has also afflicted the heart of your dear land, needs peace, love and mercy. This will be the first papal trip to the Muslim-majority nation since Pope John Paul II visited in 2000. Pope Francis plans to fly from Rome to Cairo to encourage dialogue with Muslim leaders and to show solidarity with Christians across the Middle East at a time of great division and violence. Advertisement Islamic State extremists this year declared a campaign against Egypts Coptic Christians, who account for about 10% of the countrys population of 92 million, making the group the nations largest religious minority. About 270,000 of the countrys Christians are Catholic. Extremists have attacked a monastery, churches and Christian strongholds to the north, east and south of the capital. In December, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at St. Peter and St. Pauls Church, also known as Botroseya church, a chapel next to Saint Marks Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, killing 29 people. Religious leaders are coming together in Cairo where Pope Francis plans to visit. On Palm Sunday this month, Islamic State suicide bombers again targeted churches to the north in Alexandria and Tanta, killing 47 people. Naguib Gobrael, a Coptic Christian activist who leads the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, said he hopes victims of the attacks are able to meet the pope. Many Coptic Christians were encouraged by the popes bravery in not canceling his trip, he said. It will send a message to the whole world when the pope visits Egypt, that the pope visited even after the churches were attacked, said Gobrael, who met Francis in Rome in 2013 and is scheduled to see him during his visit. Francis is expected to start his visit by meeting with Egyptian leaders including President Abdel Fattah Sisi, Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II and Sheikh Ahmed Tayeb, the grand imam of Al Azhar mosque, Sunni Islams paramount seat of learning, in Cairos Heliopolis district. Sisi has been seen as an ally of Coptic Christians. He declared a state of emergency after the Palm Sunday attacks and issued a statement on the popes forthcoming visit. Egypt welcomes Pope Francis and looks forward to this significant visit to strengthen peace, tolerance and interfaith dialogue as well as to reject the abhorrent acts of terrorism and extremism, Sisi said. Tayeb, an Islamic philosophy professor, visited the Vatican last year after a decade of tension between Muslim and Catholic leaders. Francis predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was seen by many as damaging relations in a 2006 speech that linked Islam to violence and a 2011 condemnation of what he called a strategy of violence that has Christians as a target following a bomb attack outside a church in Alexandria that killed 23 people. Francis is also expected to attend a conference on international peace sponsored by Al Azhar, where he and Tayeb will address the crowd. Its exciting to be a part of it, said Father Luke Barder, a Dominican friar from Chicago pursuing a masters of Islamic studies in Cairo. Welcome banners bear a portrait of Pope Francis ahead of his visit to Egypt. (Mohamed El-Shahed / AFP/Getty Images) Barder attended the first day of the conference Thursday with religious leaders and academics from around the world. He was scheduled to meet the pope and serve at his mass Saturday. I feel welcomed and I feel encouraged, he said. The fact that the pope is here in Egypt with the Sheikh of Al Azhar, that image is going to be monumental, especially in a time when Egypt needs to have Christians and Muslims gathered together more to show its possible to live together in peace. Standing nearby was Hossam Ed-Deen Allam Azhary, a scholar at Al Azhar, who said the meeting came at a time when there is a dire need for people to come together in Egypt, particularly religious leaders, to address issues of mutual concern based on mutual respect and mutual understanding. After the conference, the pope will visit Botroseya church near downtown to pray with Pope Tawadros for victims of terrorism. Marble columns in Botroseya are still pocked from the December attack, the blood of victims preserved under glass in a courtyard next to their photographs. He will pray for all the victims and all of the church, said Fady Francis, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Cairo. Nadia Salahs husband was a guard at Botroseya church who was killed in the December attack. She and her children still live next to the chapel, and although they have been warned to stay inside during the visit because of stepped up security, shes hoping to glimpse the pontiff and maybe get him to bless her toddler son and 15-year-old daughter. Workers had already erected signs near the cathedral Thursday featuring the Catholic and Orthodox popes with a dove in between that said Pope of love welcomes pope of peace. Francis will end the night Friday at the Vatican embassy on central Gezira Island, where he will greet hundreds of Egyptian youths. On Saturday, the popes scheduled events include a mass at Cairos Air Defense Stadium, where more than 50,000 people are expected to attend, Fady Francis said. The pope plans to lunch with Catholic bishops at the Vatican embassy, where extra guards have already been stationed and streets cordoned off and cleared of parked cars. He will finish his trip by meeting with priests and other religious workers at St. Leos Coptic Catholic Seminary in the western neighborhood of Maadi before departing for Rome. Sister Charlotte Greer, a Palmdale native who moved to Egypt eight years ago from California to become principal of St. Clares College for girls in Heliopolis, secured free tickets to see the pope at the stadium. She also plans to then board a bus with other sisters to see him at the seminary. Greer said the pope is coming to bring us courage at a time when theres the real possibility of martyrdom. Its about being a person of faith, she said. Greer this week asked her staff Muslims and Christians to pray for the popes safety, because hes coming to be a bearer of peace, and if there s anything we need, its that. Sister Ensaf Dimous, who came to serve at the school from Syria, said relatives in Damascus plan to watch coverage of the popes visit on television, perhaps glimpsing her in his presence. She said she hopes the pope can encourage people to seek peace across the region. Despite the risk, the pope will not travel in a bullet-proof vehicle while in Egypt, a spokesman said. The pope will use a closed car to move around, but not an armored one, said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. Thats how he wanted it. Gobrael, the Coptic activist whose name is on a wanted list published by Muslim extremists, said the pope himself will be well protected, but he still worried about militants. The country can protect the pope, but they can attack somewhere else, he said. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com Twitter: @mollyhf Its another in a series of attacks whose aftermath has solidified into a routine diplomatic dance. Syrias army accused Israel of launching several missiles from inside the occupied territories at dawn on Thursday, which struck a military position near Damascus International Airport, according to an unnamed military source speaking to Syrian state media. The attack, said the source, resulted in explosions and left some material losses. Advertisement The Israeli aggression comes as a desperate attempt to raise the collapsed morale of terrorist groups due to the Syrian armys blows, continued the source, using the governments routine term for the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. This aggression will not dissuade the army from continuing the war against terrorism and crushing it. According to a report by the pro-opposition watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the blast from the strikes could be heard all through Damascus and its suburbs, and fire was seen rising near the airport. The observatory group said sources thought the large explosion had occurred because ammunition depots, believed to be for the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, had been targeted. Israel, as has been customary after similar strikes in the past, neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. But Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz, in an interview with Israel Army Radio, broadly hinted that Israel was involved. I can confirm that the incident in Syria is entirely consistent with the policy of Israel to operate to prevent the smuggling of advanced weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said. This is a declared policy that we are also carrying out. Official statements by the Syrian government did not mention if there would be any retaliation. But later on Thursday, an Israeli patriot missile shot down a drone over the Golan Heights, according to Israeli media. The drone was said to have been launched from Syrian territories. An agency affiliated with Hezbollah, the Central Combat Media, quoted a report from the Israeli outlet Yediot Ahronot that a Patriot missile had shot down a drone launched from Syrian territories. According to the report, the drone had flown over parts of the occupied territories in Israels north. Hezbollah is a staunch battlefield ally of Assads. Its cadres often have been the spearhead of ground assaults against the rebels a development that Israel believes will make the Lebanese Shiite group a hardier adversary in a potential future conflict. Israel has been carrying out strikes in Syria throughout the civil war to block the transfer of what has been described as game-changing weapons to Hezbollah. Thursdays attack comes after Russia, Iran and other pro-government allied forces had vowed to respond forcefully to any aggression by anyone in the wake of a U.S. cruise missile strike on Syria earlier this month. They added they would increase support to the Syrian army in a number of ways. Yet despite Moscows condemnation in the aftermath of the attack, it was unclear whether it had been aware of the strike. Russia has provided Damascus with sophisticated air defense systems that presumably could deter such attacks from Israel. Special correspondents Bulos reported from Beirut and Mitnick from Tel Aviv. UPDATES: 11:10 a.m.: This article was updated with new details that Israel shot down a drone over the Golan Heights. This article was originally published at 10:25 a.m. A brand new attraction based on the "Guardians of the Galaxy" is coming to Disney California. Just in time for the premiere of "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" in theaters, an attraction based off the franchise will open soon at Disneyland California. The "Guardians" ride will have six different adventures and will open on May 27. The full name of the new Disneyland California attraction is Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. According to IGN, the ride will have Rocket Raccoon enlist the riders as rest of the gang has been imprisoned by Tanaleer Tivan known as The Collector. Disney California went all out in designing the "Guardians of the Galaxy" attraction. Each ride won't be the same as there will six different adventures that riders can take. However, the routes will be made in random order. Depending on each path, riders will surely meet at least one member of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" team. According to Comic Book, each path could center around the themes of Antigravity, Drones, Escape, Abilisk Attack, Quill vs. Orloni or Drax vs Beast. The Disneyland California "Guardians of the Galaxy" theme ride is also equipped with iconic music. There are six songs to accompany each route. It includes Parliament's "Give Up the Funk," Elvis Presley's "Burning Love," The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," Edgar Winter Group's "Free Ride" andd Pat Benatar's "Hit Me with your Best Shot." Those who can't wait for the opening of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" ride in Disney California on May 27, may watch the sequel first. "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" is set to be released in the US on May 5. "Guardians of the Galaxy 2"is directed by James Gunn. It will feature the original guardians including Chris Pratt (Star-Lord,) Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Vin Diesel (Groot), Dave Bautista (Drax) and Bradley Cooper (Rocket Raccoon). Xiaomi has been exclusive for the Chinese market but now, the said smartphone brand is expected to become obtainable in the US two years from now. According to GSM Arena, Xiaomi recently unveiled its newest flagship device; Mi 6. But then, the fans of Mi lineup in the US and Europe need to look for unofficial channels for them to be able to purchase the new device. Moreover, Senior VP Wang Xiang of Xiaomi has revealed that the company really wanted to expand to the Western world. But then, he also stated that working with carriers will be difficult and the tech giant also desires to bring technology to developing markets. Furthermore, in an interview with CNET Xiang has stated that the Chinese manufacturer's phone will be released in the US in two years, if not sooner. It has been noticeable that the new timeline was pushed back two years from the former target which emphasizes the difficulties in entering the US. It can be recalled that Xiaomi already built its reputation on manufacturing quality smartphones and selling them at low prices. In fact, it has won fans along its journey, but then most Americans haven't heard of Xiaomi. The startup's model of selling its handsets right away through its website doesn't translate well in the US since most of the smartphone owners are obtaining their gadgets through their carriers. But for the avid phone fans and tech savvy consumers, they are waiting for Xiaomi's arrival in the US. Now, it seems that the startup will move carefully. In fact, it was during the January's CES tech show in Las Vegas, when Xiaomi then-global-chief Hugo Barra has claimed that the company's plan to launch stateside in 2017. The same news media outlet also reveals that Xiaomi would be the latest Chinese tech company that endeavor enter the US markets. It was perceived that other players have seen mixed success. ZTE and Alcatel are one of those but later on downgraded to the budget end of the range. Meanwhile big global players like Huawei can hardly get its products into the US. OnePlus also follow the trail of entering the US market which indicated that any new player could get lost in the shuffle. At the end of the interview, Wang stated that the company is not in a hurry to enter the US markets since they don't want to disappoint the fans. Aside from that, Xiaomi also faces pressure in its home market since it slipped from third place to fifth place last year. Vietnamese veterans in Russia (Photo: vov.vn) As a voluntary soldier from 1968, Mr. Phung Van Dan participated in the Khe Sanh, Road 9 Southern Laos and Quang Tri campaigns. He is a wounded soldier. After the resistance war, he was demobilized in 1988 and appointed to Russia to manage labourers under a Vietnam Soviet Union Cooperation Decree. After the Soviet Union collapsed, he continued living in Ulianovsk city to create conditions for his children to go to Russia to study. Mr. Dang Minh Duong participated in fighting in the Western region and Central Highlands, and was as a voluntary soldier fighting in Cambodia and Laos. My army life was lived in forest. I am honoured that we, the soldiers, came from all over the country but we consider each other as siblings, he said. Mr. Nguyen Xuan Loc has been in Russia under a labour cooperation agreement since 1988. He has been active in community activities. He appreciated the active participation of veterans in Ulianovsk. Mr. Trinh Van Que, Head of the Overseas Vietnamese Association "Solidarity" in Ulianovsk, said that many years ago, on the occasion of the Southern Liberation and National Reunification Day, the association often held a meeting to remember the old memories, and invited Russian veterans who worked in Vietnam. Later, many people returned to Vietnam or moved to other places, and such meetings were interrupted. This year, on the occasion of the Southern Liberation and National Reunification Day and May Day, we intend to organize an exchange between veterans, workers working for the Soviet Union and those who go to Russia to do business, he said. The activity will help the younger generation, born and raised far from the homeland, have more knowledge about the history of the country and feel more attached to their homeland, although they have little chance to return Vietnam./. Samsung Electronics might launch its upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8 during IFA 2017 just like its previous releases of Galaxy Note lineup. According to BGR, it was earlier this year when the South Korean tech company has confirmed that it's working on Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which will be enhanced and safer than Galaxy Note 7. With that being said, it is a clear sign Samsung will not abandon the Note brand despite the disaster it had faced. Samsung may have questioned the mechanical integrity of its Galaxy Note 7 batteries for the fires, but then that is only a part of the story. The company's desires to incorporate significantly bigger battery inside the Samsung Galaxy Note 8's predecessor and to unveil the product earlier than the iPhone 7 series were both reasons that contributed to the device's end. Now, the big question is when Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will make its first appearance. Luckily Ubergizmo has learned that IFA Executive Director Jens Heithecker stated that he assumes that the South Korean tech giant will unveil the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 during the said event. But then, the news outlet also clarified that this seems to be just the estimation of Heithecker as conflicting to the speculations. Nevertheless, his reasoning really makes sense. "My personal perspective is that IFA would be the better place (to unveil the new Note smartphone). The big advantage is that we have a lot of media and journalists from all around the world in Berlin. It is not possible to bring them all together in other cities wherever it is, in August. That's our offer," Heithecker stated during an interview. Conversely, whether or not the release of Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will happen during the IFA 2017 still remains to be seen. But then, the media outlet stated that what is known is that Samsung has established that there will be a Note 8. THE CENTRAL ORGAN OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF VIETNAM The Voice of the party, State and Vietnamese people on the internet Notify: The requested content was not found or the content is invalid! Sorry... ..An error has occured: If you have any queries about this error, try emailing feedback@mirror.co.uk and we'll do what we can to help you. ZID:308457493 BMW M760i ad banned in England Apr 27, 2017, 3:20am ET BMW just found out advertising performance is against the law. British authorities have banned a magazine advertisement for the BMW M760i (pictured) because it allegedly sends the wrong message to motorists. The M760i is the first-ever 7 Series with a M emblem, and it's the quickest BMW to date. It stands to reason that the Munich-based automaker would talk about the sedan's outstanding performance credentials in its promotional material. After all, it's the self-proclaimed purveyor of the ultimate driving machine. The ad -- which hasn't made its way onto the world wide web yet -- highlighted the M760i's zero-to-62mph time of 3.7 seconds, and pointed to the twin-turbocharged, 6.6-liter V12 engine under the hood. "Luxury just lost its manners," it concluded. After asking Telegraph Magazine to pull the ad, England's Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) instructed BMW to "ensure they did not make speed or acceleration the main message of their future marketing communications," according to British magazine Autocar. Surprisingly, Telegraph Magazine stepped up to defend the language in BMW's advertisement. The publication pointed out the advertised speed of 62 mph is below the speed limit on British freeways, and there's no law that dictates how quickly -- or slowly -- motorists can get there. Hitting 62 mph in under four seconds is perfectly legal. Flirting with the M760i's top speed of 155 mph on a British motorway would be illegal, but the ad made no mention of maximum velocity. Finally, the phrase "luxury just lost its manners" was pure advertising puffery, the automaker explained. BMW and Telegraph Magazine didn't make a strong enough case, and the M760i ad remains banned throughout the United Kingdom. Deja vu It's not the first time an advertising watchdog has called out a car company for showing consumers the best side of a specific model. In 2012, a French judge asked Toyota to pull all billboard ads showing SUVs and pickups driving on unpaved surfaces. The court ruled the photos encouraged irresponsible behavior such as the destruction of nature. Like BMW, Toyota chose not to appeal the decision. Photos by Ronan Glon. Apr 27, 2017, 11:26am ET Elon Musk meets top Chinese officials; factory talks underway? The event marks the first time Vice Premier Wang Yang has met an automotive executive for a one-on-one chat. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk traveled to China this week for an unannounced visit with Vice Premier Wang Yang, one of the country's highest economic officials. China's official Xinhua news agency published a Twitter photo showing the executive chatting with Wang in Beijing. The event marks the first time the Vice Premier has met with an automotive executive one-on-one, according to a Fortune report. Musk in 2014 said there was "no question" the company will eventually establish a production facility in China, forecasting that sales in the country "could be as big as the US market, maybe bigger." Like all foreign automakers, Tesla must establish a 50:50 joint venture with a local automaker to build cars in China. The government earlier this week indicated a willingness to begin winding down the requirements. It is unclear if the timing of Musk's visit and the joint-venture reports is merely coincidental. Tesla previously suggested China is the frontrunner to become the company's first foreign production hub. Apr 27, 2017, 1:15pm ET Oregon fines citizen for criticizing yellow light timing The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying accused the man of engaging in engineering without a license. An obscure Oregon state agency has reportedly fined a citizen criticizing traffic light timing at intersections patrolled by red-light cameras. Mats Jarlstrom became interested in the technology when his wife received a ticket several years ago. His subsequent investigation concluded that the systems were programmed incorrectly, particularly for drivers making turns. Jarlstrom -- an electronics engineer -- has spent years analyzing the subject and concludes that the duration of yellow lights is too short and represents a safety risk to the public. He wrote a letter to the state's engineering board asking for the opportunity to present his findings for review. The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying responded with a surprising accusation that Jarlstrom was practicing engineering in the state without a license. The agency eventually handed down a $500 fine for "practicing engineering without being registered," according to excerpts of a letter posted by Motherboard. Jarlstrom's work on the issue has been done independently, without any outside funding, and he has not been contracted to work on traffic lights in the state or elsewhere. He has consequently teamed with the Institute for Justice to sue the engineering board, arguing that its enforcement action represents a violation of his constitutional rights. "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic rights," said Institute for Justice attorney Sam Gedge. "It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech." Revised 2018 Toyota Yaris gets price bump Apr 27, 2017, 10:53am ET The new Yaris is up to $1,060 more expensive than last year\'s model. Toyota has announced pricing for its revised 2018 Yaris. Toyota unveiled the new Yaris earlier this year at the New York auto show. Prices for the entry-level Yaris L three-door hatchback will start from $15,635, representing a $385 increase over the previous model. The mid-level LE three-door sees a $375 price bump to $16,910. Five-door models start from $16,375, or $385 more than last year. The sport-oriented SE five-door with a manual transmission has been given an MSRP of $18,260, which is a relatively hefty $1,060 increase compared to the older model. Opting for an automatic transmission brings the Yaris SE's price to $19,060. All prices exclude an $885 destination fee. You do, however, get some added kit with those higher prices. Yaris L and LE grades now come standard with a 6.1-inch touchscreen audio system running Toyota's Entune infotainment system. That system includes Bluetooth streaming and Siri Eyes Free. Top-spec SE model receive a 7-inch touchscreen display with standard navigation. Styling has also been tweaked for 2018 with Yaris models benefiting from a new front fascia with updated grille, new rear bumper and new-look taillights that are integrated into the rear hatch. SE models add 16-inch alloy wheels. Toyota's 2018 Yaris range is scheduled to land in dealer showrooms this summer. Live photos by Brian Williams. Route 145 was shut for hours at Rock Road after a crash early Thursday morning near the Allentown-Salisbury Township border, authorities said. The wreck happened not long after midnight in the city when a box truck hit utility poles, Allentown police Capt. Bill Lake said, bringing down wires. The truck didn't stick around, he added. Route 145 is South Fourth Street in Allentown and becomes South Pike Avenue to the south. The captain was unaware of any injuries. The crash, which remains under investigation, happened in the vicinity of West Normandy Street, he added. Route 145 is a key access route from Interstate 78/Route 309 into the city from the south. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation put the northern closure point at Emmaus Avenue, but the Morning Call reported from the scene that as of 7 a.m. it was West Normandy Street. WFMZ reported the road would remain closed until at least 8 a.m. Just before 8 a.m., Lake said the road had reopened. PPL Electric Utilities reported 83 customers without power as of 7:30 a.m. and set the restoration time at 10:30 a.m. If anyone has information about the crash, they can call the city police Traffic Division at 610-437-7705, Lake said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. An Allentown woman is jailed after allegedly cashing $2,040 worth of bogus checks at a city convenience store. Charged is Quadasia Deanne-Shan Shipman, 20, of the 1600 block of Turner Street. City police at 12:53 p.m. Wednesday responded to the Turkey Hill Mini Mart, 407 N. 7th St., for a reported fraud incident. Manager Michelle Bosques reported Shipman multiple times passed forged checks at the convenience store and had returned to cash a check for $571. On April 19, Shipman was successful in passing a forged Turkey Hill Mini Mart payroll check for $348, police said. She allegedly then returned the next day and passed a similar payroll check for $471. On Monday, she returned to the Turkey Hill Mini Mart and passed a third forged payroll check totaling $471, police said. All three of those checks were returned to the Turkey Hill Mini Mart as being fraudulent, according to police. On Wednesday, Shipman returned to the Turkey Hill Mini Mart and cashed a fourth check for $750, which came back as stolen from Borelli & Rivera & Sons, court records indicate. When she returned sometime Wednesday afternoon with the fifth payroll check totaling $571, officers arrested Shipman. In an interview with police, Shipman allegedly admitted to the crime, saying she would cash the stolen or fraudulent checks and provide the cash to an unknown person who was printing the checks. Shipman is charged with five counts forgery. She was arraigned before District Judge Rashid Santiago, who set bail at $30,000. In lieu of bail, Shipman was taken to Lehigh County jail. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Westinghouse Electric Sweden will supply six batches of nuclear fuel to National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom for Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPP) in 2017, Interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President of Westinghouse Electric Company Jose Emeterio Gutierrez has said. "In 2017, Westinghouse will first supply six batches of fuel to Ukraine. It is planned that six batches will be shipped every year until 2020. At least this is outlined in the contract," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. Gutierrez recalled that Westinghouse expanded the nuclear fuel production capacity of its plant in Sweden for reactors of VVER type, which allowed Ukraine to expand diversification of supplies. 'We have also invested in our plant in the United States. It will deliver spare parts to the Swedish plant. In general, investment totaled $20 million. Now we are ready to supply more fuel to Ukraine, but the final decision to buy more Westinghouse fuel is to be made by the Ukrainian government," he said. He said that recent tests of WR fuel assembles at the Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP were successful. "It is obvious now that Westinghouse fuel meets requirements of Ukraine: the recent inspection at the Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP last week proved it. This is good news for Energoatom that knows that Westinghouse is a good and reliable supplier," Gutierrez said. In turn, Energoatom President Yuriy Nedashkovsky confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the company intends to buy six batches of nuclear fuel from Westinghouse this year. "We plan to buy six batches this year. It is likely that some fuel would be a reserve, as our repair schedules are permanently changed. The lifespan of one of the reactors for which we buy fuel will be extended during repair. It could happen that we would buy more than we load, but this is within one batch," he said. As reported, on March 29, Westinghouse LLC, and certain of its subsidiaries and affiliates, filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Westinghouses operations in its Asia and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Regions are not impacted by the Chapter 11 filings. In order to diversify sources of nuclear fuel supply for the country's NPPs, Energoatom jointly with Westinghouse in 2000 launched the project for the qualification of this company's fuel. In March 2008 Energoatom and Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB (Sweden) signed a commercial contract to ship fresh fuel to three or six reactors of Ukrainian NPPs in 2011-2015. In April 2014, the sides prolonged the contract until 2020. Tax bills are going up in the Bethlehem Area School District, but by how much depends on which county you live in. The school board indicated Wednesday night it supports an almost $272 million proposed tentative final budget. It holds taxes below the district's Act 1 index of 3.1 percent, meaning the proposed 2017-18 district budget may be the first in five years to not use exceptions to go above the state-mandated cap on annual property tax hikes. But the district can't say exactly how much taxes will rise thanks to a state accounting error; the error makes it likely Lehigh County taxpayers will shoulder a bigger portion of the burden. "It will be under 3.1 percent on average district wide," said Stacy M. Gober, district chief financial offer. Typically, at this point in the budget process, the district can project tax millage rates for property owners in both counties and show what the proposed spending plan means in dollars and cents. But the district is missing key figures due to a dispute with with the State Equalization Tax Board, which annually calculates each county's share of the tax burden by coming up with common level ratios of assessed value to market value for the two counties. Bethlehem is one of about 80 districts in Pennsylvania that spans two counties and needs this calculation. This year, the state omitted all of the Bethlehem, Northampton County, properties that lie within a tax incremental financing, or TIF, district on the South Side. That means properties like the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem were left out of the county's valuation and Lehigh County taxpayers must pick up a bigger portion of the tab. The board is arguing that it was a mistake that all of the new market value of the TIF properties has been counted for the last 15 years, Gober said. The district explained how the Bethlehem TIF is unique in that the district does get some of the new money, she said. Bethlehem is hopeful they can negotiate a more equitable solution, but things won't go back to the status quo, Gober said. "The Lehigh County folks are still going to see a heavier lift," she said. School Director Angela Sinkler, who lives in Fountain Hill, said she is quite concerned about this because so many of her neighbors are elderly and on a fixed income. The majority of district residents reside in Northampton County. Only residents of West Bethlehem and Fountain Hill are in Lehigh County. The district began the budget process with a $12.56 million deficit, which has been reduced to $3.48 million, putting Bethlehem about $500,000 below its max tax levy under the Act 1 Index. Bethlehem's closed the budget gap by taking $4 million out of its savings and cutting $5 million from the spending plan. The cuts include six teaching positions, two guidance counselors and four instructional aides through attrition. It also reduces social workers the district hires as contractors in the two high schools. School Director Karen Beck Pooley questioned whether the board wanted to add back in some programs that have been cut, like after-school offerings. She wondered if the district risks alienating families with cuts, who then turn to charter schools, which costs the district more money. "We have to keep in mind (Lehigh County residents) are already getting an increase based on the STEB process," Superintendent Joseph Roy said. If the average tax increase ends up being 2.9 percent, Northampton County residents will see a smaller hike, Roy said. Director Dean Donaher urged the board to not add things back into the budget, so the board can show its making an effort to keep the increase as low as it can. "If we are under the index now, to say, 'Let's add things back in to get to the index,'" Donaher said. "I think it sends a bad message to the community." Roy said the district is at a point where cutting budget line items won't do it. The district needs to cut positions to reach long-term sustainability and help lessen the deficit the district will face next year, he said. The administration cautioned against adding back in programs the district cannot afford to fund long term, like after-school activities. "We would focus extra money on academic supports for the kids that most need it," Roy said. The district also plans to push off its implementation of elementary school Spanish, after school and summer programs, technology purchases, textbook replacements and curriculum planning. Ultimately, the board decided to leave the tentative budget as proposed by administrators. The board is scheduled to vote on the tentative final budget on May 15. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. An Easton man who pleaded guilty in 2010 to shooting a man and his dog in 2009 was arrested Thursday morning on a parole violation tied to the case, the Northampton County Sheriff's Department reports. Sheriff's deputies, working with the U.S. Marshal's Service Violent Fugitives Task Force, Pennsylvania State Parole and Easton police, picked up Clifford Ransom Jr., 39, at Storm and West Lincoln streets on the South Side, sheriff's department Sgt. Michael Orchulli said in a news release. Ransom did not struggle when arrested, Orchulli said. Clifford Ransom Jr. Ransom, of the 400 block of Williams Street, was one of the county's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, Orchulli said. See the current list. Ransom pleaded guilty June 1, 2010, to aggravated assault, cruelty to animals and flight to avoid apprehension. He was sentenced to 30 months to six years in jail and four years of probation. A charge of attempted homicide was dropped as part of the deal, as there was concern about Ransom offering a self-defense case at trial. Ransom was visiting Jonathon Amato on March 17, 2009, at his home in the 1000 block of Berwick Street to explain he wasn't involved in a burglary there, authorities said at the time. They argued and struggled, with Amato's 9mm handgun falling to the ground in the tussle, authorities said. Ransom grabbed the weapon and fired three shots, hitting Amato in the thigh and killing the dog, authorities said. The third shot missed. Random fled west and was arrested in Loveland, Colorado. He was granted parole in August 2012 and was first released from prison in November 2012, but was returned a week later on a parole violation, authorities said. He was cited Dec. 11, 2016, with driving with a suspended license and two days later his parole was again reviewed, court records say. Ransom, who was wanted on an arrest and detain warrant, was sent Thursday morning to Northampton County Prison, Orchulli said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. By Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com Don't Edit Lehigh Valley Congressman Charlie Dent arrives April 17, 2017, on a visit to the Korean peninsula, through his role as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit The United States is in the midst of a multi-year relocation of troops in South Korea, to better shield them from artillery fire from North Korea, U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent said Wednesday. Dent, a Republican whose 15th Congressional District covers Lehigh and part of Northampton counties, visited the Korean peninsula and Japan starting April 17 through his role as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies. He returned home Monday night from his first-ever visit to the embattled peninsula. It comes a time of heightening tension between the United States and North Korea, whose nuclear aspirations and unstable leadership have confounded American officials for decades. For South Koreans on the ground, recent saber-rattling and rhetoric haven't really been anything new, Dent said. "I believe in South Korea people there are more accustomed to these outbursts by Kim Jong Un," Dent told lehighvalleylive.com, adding that the threat remains very real from the North: "It's clear to me that the North Koreans are continuing to try to develop their short-range and medium-range missile capabilities. They're also, of course, working on their nuclear program." Don't Edit Dent, right, visits a memorial to the July 27, 1953, armistice that ended the Korean War, during a visit April 17-24, 2017, to the Korean peninsula and Japan. (Courtesy photos | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit The U.S. military is moving about 50,000 troops from Seoul in northern South Korea and other regions close to the demilitarized zone separating the country from North Korea to Camp Humphreys, which is further south, according to Dent. Opened in 2014, the camp is also known as U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys. South Korea is funding much of the effort, with an eye toward reclaiming the military base land in Seoul for its people. "Plus we need to get our troops out of the artillery firing line," Dent said. His trip as part of a bipartisan delegation included a visit to Panmunjom, in the DMZ, and a few steps into North Korea itself within a secured area. North Korean soldiers took photos of Dent, who in turn snapped some photos of them. Don't Edit Don't Edit Taken in Panmunjom, in the Joint Security Area demilitarized zone at the North Korean border, this photo taken by Dent shows North Korean soldiers in the background facing him, one of whom is taking a photo right back. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit Dent also visited Japan, marking his second visit there during his seven terms in Congress. There, the military is working to relocate and consolidate troops at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa to another portion of the island, with some moving offshore to Guam and to Australia. The relocation effort on Okinawa dates to 1969, with a Special Action Committee for Okinawa established in 1996 to try to reduce the footprint of United States forces there, according to Dent's office. "Our troops in Japan are there in large part to help support our efforts on the Korean peninsula," Dent said, adding that they are also positioned to deal with longer term threats coming out of China. Don't Edit Just prior to Dent's visit, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence looks April 17, 2017, at the North side from Observation Post Ouellette in the DMZ, near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War. (AP photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit The situation with North Korea has risen to the level of an extraordinary White House briefing Wednesday, to which President Donald Trump invited all 100 senators, according to The Associated Press: Tensions have escalated since Trump took office three months ago, determined to halt Pyongyang's nuclear and missile advances. In the past two weeks, Trump has ordered high-powered U.S. military vessels, including an aircraft carrier and guided-missile submarine, to the region in a show of force to deter North Korea from more nuclear and missile tests. The North on Tuesday conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, as a reminder of its conventional threat to U.S.-allied South Korea. And on Wednesday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system against North Korean missiles that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns. Don't Edit Developing: Mattis, Tillerson, Coates say the US will maintain pressure on North Korea, prepared to defend itself https://t.co/U0kb41rVPT pic.twitter.com/CoZtf12sTa Grasswire (@Grasswire) April 26, 2017 Don't Edit Don't Edit Kim Jong Un's strategy in a military strike is likely to include an artillery barrage on Seoul, resulting in thousands dead, according to Dent. The congressman believes such an action would be the undoing of the regime, already reviled for its brutal repression, with a weak economy and few friends and amid increasingly strained relationships with enablers in China and Russia. Don't Edit Tuesday with Toomey: Senator talks defense, taxes, health care Don't Edit Don't Edit Seen at night from the International Space Station, the impoverished Democrat People's Republic of Korea -- North Korea -- is clearly demarcated from the Republic of Korea, or South Korea, by the infrastructure evident south of the 38th parallel. (NASA.gov photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit A pariah, Dent called North Korea. "The bottom line is I think we all see the day coming when at some point the North Korean regime will collapse," he said. "The bottom line is the North Korean government is not in a sustainable position for the longer term." Both of the Asian projects to relocate and consolidate troops predate the Trump Administration, Dent said. And both will take years to complete, but they are being undertaken with one eye on the need to respond to any aggression and to protect the United States' interests and partners in the region. "As they say in the military, we have to be ready to fight tonight," Dent said. "As we're doing this in Japan and North Korea, we have to be ready to fight." Don't Edit Don't Edit Dent stands alongside a contingent and U.S. and South Korean troops during a visit April 17-24, 2017, to the region through his role as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Don't Edit Like South Korea, Japan is helping to cover the costs of the massive trooper relocations, Dent said. "Both the Japanese and South Korean governments are very helpful in terms of paying for our various base consolidations," he said. "In many cases they're paying in excess of 90 percent of the cost." Don't Edit Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The transfer of the tariffs in the fuel and energy complex and housing sector to the unified unit of measurement would allow minimizing manipulations with them and would stimulate consumer to use the most effective energy, according to businessman Konstantin Grigorishin. "I do not understand why the NCER [the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation] sets the tariffs for TPPs [thermal power plants] in calories, fuel in tonnes or cubic meters and electricity in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Why not to bring everything to one unit of measurement?" he said in an interview with Energoreform portal of Interfax-Ukraine news agency. Grigorishin said that Europe uses kWh for these measurements. "Coal is sold in kWh, gas and head in kWh, and then everything is clear and easy to compare. Here we have strange calories, tonnes, cubic meters A good ground for manipulations using the units of measurements," the businessman said. He said that this unification would help consumers to make conclusions on the appropriateness of switch to electric heating. Pay, assaults on prison officers and new recruits including the rehiring of 50 retired officers, are among the issues raised by the Tanaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald in her address to the AGM of the Prison Officers Association. The 70th Prison Officers Association Annual Delegate Conference will take place on 27th and 28th April 2017 in the Radisson Hotel, Galway. The Tanaiste is due to address the delegates this morning from prisons in Portlaoise and elsewhere around the country. In her speech she acknowledged the "serious assaults" on prison officers who she said had a "challenging" role. She said a "Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)" is being rolled out to address stress management for prison She spoke about the arrival of 80 new recruits to the service this year and the rehiring on 50 retired officers. She also spoke about pay. She said the following an agreement in January the payment of a 1000 increase was brought forward to 1st April 2017 for all public servants on salaries of up to 65,000 She said she was aware that following a significant engagement between the Irish Prison Service and the POA, sanction has been given by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the restoration of the Rent Allowance for Recruit Prison Officer. She welcomed a number of reform measures have been agreed. As to a new pay deal she said the Government needs "an agreement that is affordable, sustainable and fair". The following is the written text of the Tanaiste's speech. "I would like to thank you for your invitation to address your annual conference here in Galway. It gives me an opportunity to speak directly to you and to thank you and all our prison staff for the challenging and important work that you do. You have contributed to huge change in the prison system in recent years. The Service has seen the successful implementation of the 2012 2015 Strategic Plan. The implementation of this Strategy has seen improvements across the prison system including the reduction in the numbers in custody by over 20% and the enhanced used of structured temporary release. The implementation of prisoner programmes such as incentivised regimes and integrated sentence management; the modernisation of prison accommodation, including the elimination of slopping-out, and the implementation of Public Service Agreements through the Transformation Programme. The Irish Prison Service has now commenced the implementation of a new Strategic Plan for 2016 2018 which has four key Strategic Aims including Staff Support, Prisoner Support, Victim Support and Enhancing Organisational Capacity. We have come through a severe economic crisis over the last few years. I acknowledge the embargo on recruitment has had a significant impact in the Irish Prison Service. Last year I announced that the first Recruit Prison Officer campaign since 2008 had commenced and approximately 80 new Recruit Prison Officers will join the Service this year. Furthermore, the Irish Prison Service is currently making arrangements to expedite the recruitment of additional new staff by utilising an existing building on the West Dublin Campus as a second training centre for new recruits. This will increase the capacity of the organisation for the intake of new Recruit Prison Officers to over 250 in 2018. Each new Recruit Prison Officer will complete the remodelled Higher Certificate in Custodial Care (HCCC) which is accredited by Waterford Institute of Technology. The arrival of new officers over the coming months will see the Prison Service renewed and will allow scope for the IPS to keep pace with expected retirements. I know the Irish Prison Service has also implemented a number of other measures aimed at addressing any existing staff shortfalls to ensure a safe working environment for staff. Such measures include the deployment of additional hours under what is known as the Single Scheme which is being utilised to support prison management in addressing the demands arising from escorts. The development and implementation of a Regime Management Plan at every location will direct resources to the delivery of structured activities for prisoners wishing to engage in such activities and will ensure that we have a safe working environment for staff. In addition the IPS has received sanction for the recruitment of up to 50 retired prison officers on short-term contracts to further support the demands placed on prisons. We are also working to improve the environment for staff through initiatives aimed at enhancing staff safety and staff well-being. The role of a prison officer is a difficult and challenging one. Prison staff must deal with a wide range of complex issues and there are occasions when they are subjected to acts of violence. Following a number of serious assaults, the IPS facilitated the State Claims Agency in compiling a Review of Assaults on Operational Prison Staff by Prisoners. Assaults on prison officers are absolutely unacceptable and will not tolerated. I recognise you work in a dangerous environment and your safety is of paramount important. The rigours of the law must apply where assaults are concerned and sanctions must be implemented. In examining the legislation In this area I will take this into account. I acknowledge that the Prison Officers Association has concerns regarding the Report which were outlined to me by your National Officers at our meeting last December. There are many findings in the report including the fact that given the number of committals in 2015 the ratio of assaults to the number of prisoners in the system was low. However, the organisation must always strive to improve and no act of violence against a member of prison staff will ever be acceptable. We must continue to work together to make our prisons safer for all. The report contains a large number of recommendations and I, and the Director General of the Irish Prison Service, have accepted these recommendations which will be implemented an undertaking that has been included as a Key Action in the Irish Prison Services Strategic Plan 2016-2018. While the Irish Prison Service is committed to creating a safer environment for all those who work or live within our prison walls, the Service is also committed to ensuring all staff are supported in their workplace. This is especially important for any staff member who is subject to or witnesses an assault. In the Strategic Plan 2016 2018 the Prison Service identified Staff Support as a priority action and aims to promote open, respectful, competent, supportive, fair and inclusive behaviour at all levels in the workplace. The Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is a confidential support and referral service for all Prison Service staff. There are currently over 40 locally appointed Staff Support Officers for prison staff, and 3 Employee Assistance Officers. A number of initiatives have been developed by the Staff and Corporate Services Directorate and the EAP team to improve the working environment and promote the active participation of employees in health activities. These include: The roll out, this year, of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) which aims to address stress management for prison personnel who may encounter stressful situations not normally experienced by the general public. It aims to minimise the emotional impact of critical incidents on IPS staff, increases the resistance and resilience of IPS staff to harmful stress and prevent harmful effects on staff by working and supporting IPS staff at the time of Critical Incidents. The Staff Support Officers play an important role in the roll out of CISM. The provision of a free 24/7/365 counselling service for all prison staff by INSPIRE Workplace, formerly CARECALL, was introduced in 2016. This initiative gives easy access, for prison service staff, to counselling. The feedback from staff who have accessed the service is very positive. A further Staff Wellbeing and Support Programme is currently being developed to raise awareness of mental, emotional and physical health and to raise awareness among staff regarding stress management and resilience techniques and supports available in the workplace and elsewhere. This will be rolled out to all Irish Prison Service staff from mid-2017 onwards. Colleagues, as you know the complete closure of St Patricks Institution was confirmed earlier this month with the remaining B Division being subsumed into Mountjoy Prison. As a result the ending of the practice of imprisoning children with adults has been realised. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work that you have done with the young offenders that were housed in St. Pats over the years. The Irish Prison Service has recently announced that the Training Unit Place of Detention will temporarily close and will be repurposed, as a unit for older prisoners, a key action in the IPS Strategic Plan and will allow for a more co-ordinated response to our aging prison population. I would also like to pay tribute to the staff who have worked there since its establishment as a semi-open prison and to acknowledge the important role that they have played in the rehabilitation of offenders. The Irish Prison Service is working to implement the recommendations contained in the Inspector of Prisons Report into Prisoner Complaints. The IPS has engaged with the Ombudsman and has held a number of meetings around policy issues and their involvement as a complainant body for the IPS. The new complaints policy has been drafted and is being finalised including the designing of the complaints management process. It is expected that the new system will be completed by the end of the year and will be supported by training for management and liaison officers and will incorporate a full information package for prison officers and prisoners. As you know work is now ongoing to prepare the ground for new public pay talks. Before we begin negotiations, the Government is awaiting the report of the Public Service Pay Commission. This report, due in Q2 of this year, will provide a key input to the talks process by providing evidence-based objective analysis on a number of key issues, including how the unwinding of the Financial Emergency legislation should proceed. Following an agreement in January the payment of a 1000 increase was brought forward to 1st April 2017 for all public servants who are party to that agreement and who are on salaries of up to 65,000 I am also aware that following a significant engagement between the Irish Prison Service and the POA, sanction has been given by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the restoration of the Rent Allowance for Recruit Prison Officer. A number of reform measures have been agreed, most notably the implementation of a more robust dispute resolution regime, to include access to both the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and the Labour Court Looking towards a new agreement, for the Government, the priorities are simple, we need an agreement that is affordable, sustainable and fair. The negotiations will be challenging but the Government is clear that we want to reach an agreement and we look forward to working with the Prison Officers Association and all trade unions and associations. The work of the Irish Prison Service is hugely important and the contribution that is made by prison staff on a daily basis makes our society safer. It is the prison officer that interacts each day with people in custody who need help, support and the opportunity to rehabilitate. There are still significant challenges facing the Prison Service but, I am confident the Service, both management and staff, can and will continue to meet these challenges. To conclude I would like to thank you again for your invitation to be with you today. I would like to thank all prison staff for the work they do with great commitment and professionalism on a daily basis. I would also like to acknowledge those who have retired recently or have left the service and thank them all for their service. I would like to wish you well for the remainder of your conference." Prison officers who witnessed a serious assault in the Midlands Prison Portlaoise which was never prosecuted were not asked to for report on what happened, their representative body has claimed. Speaking ahead of the Prison Officer Association's Annual Delegate Conference in Galway, John Clinton, General Secretary also highlighted another assault on an officer in the same prison which did not go to court because footage was not available from two CCTV recordings. Mr Clinton said Prison Service is currently facing a staffing crisis which is having serious and dangerous impact. "There are simply not enough Prison Officers to do what we are required to do. All of us are aware that retirements this year will exceed recruitment figures; this is not sustainable and it creates an ongoing additional risk for prison staff and prisoners. The reduced staffing levels contributes directly to the risk for prison officers with ever increasing levels of assaults. To add insult to the injuries inflicted on our officers there is no penalty for the prisoners involved," he said. Mr Delaney claimed that staff, who have been seriously assaulted and report their assault to the relevant authorities, cannot get a conviction, in spite of a wealth of available evidence. He said that in one significant case there was even an admission of guilt from the prisoner, yet no conviction. In a highly publicised incident in the Midlands Prison in 2015 an officer was stabbed by a prisoner and the matter was reported to the Gardai. Many staff present on the day were not asked for a report and in spite of the prisoner admitting to the assault in front of a Governor the DPP ruled that a prosecution could not proceed due to lack of evidence? "In a similar incident in the same prison an officer was assaulted which can clearly be seen on a CCTV camera. However as another CCTV that wouldnt have shown anything any different - hadnt been saved the prisoner walked on a technicality! He said the issue of violence in prisons regrettably continues, with a number of very serious incidents involving assaults on prison staff in the past year. He said that mandatory sentencing, as raised by the Gardai at their conference is "undoubtedly needed" as one of the responses to assaults on our members, while carrying out their duties. In a recent analysis conducted by the State Claims Agency the projected level of assaults by prisoners on prison staff for 2017 was estimated at 107. Lets just think about that for a minute; more than two prison officers per week will be assaulted in the course of their work. For the avoidance of doubt every prison officer knows and accepts the risks involved in our work but what we cannot fathom is why recommendations such as the compulsory carrying of batons are being rejected. The nature of these assaults included concussion, lacerations, cuts, fractures burns and bites. The most of these injuries were to the head and face thereby leaving a permanent reminder to the injured officer of the incident, he said. In her speech to the conference, the Tanaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald acknowledged the challenging role a prison officer must fill. "The role of a prison officer is a difficult and challenging one. Prison staff must deal with a wide range of complex issues and there are occasions when they are subjected to acts of violence. Following a number of serious assaults, the IPS facilitated the State Claims Agency in compiling a Review of Assaults on Operational Prison Staff by Prisoners. "Assaults on prison officers are absolutely unacceptable and will not tolerated. I recognise you work in a dangerous environment and your safety is of paramount important. The rigours of the law must apply where assaults are concerned and sanctions must be implemented. In examining the legislation In this area I will take this into account," she said. The Tanaiste said 80 new officers are coming on stream this year and a further 250 are to be recruited next year. Another 50 retired prison officers are to be rehired she said. Prison officers in Portlaoise and other prisons cannot wait any longer for the pay to be increased but their political boss has said any new pay deal must be 'affordable' . Speaking ahead of the the Prison Officers Assocation Annual Delegate Conference in Galway, John Clinton, General Secretary said the Tanaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald and the Government will be well aware of the focus of the various trade union annual conferences over the past weeks. "They rightly highlighted the need for immediate pay restoration. The Prison Officers Association is no different and we simply cannot wait any longer to have our 2008 pay levels restored. "Since 2008, across both public and private sectors, there has been limited wage increases, and this has contributed significantly to the recovery in the economy. The Government tells us week after week about increased tax income, reduced unemployment and other cash flow benefits for the state. Yet workers are being told and media are being briefed to the effect that we cant afford it. "Our Minister and all of us know that you cant play with the wind in both halves - as the Government is now trying to do on this issue. It is simply unfair, unjust and unacceptable that our members and other workers have had to carry the burden for the failings of others for the past nine years," said Mr Clinton. Speaking at the conference Tanaiste Fitzgerald said work is now ongoing to prepare the ground for new public pay talks. She said negotiations would not begin until the Government receives the report of the Public Service Pay Commission. She said this report, due in Q2 of this year, would provide a key input to the talks process by providing evidence-based objective analysis on a number of key issues, including how the unwinding of the Financial Emergency legislation should proceed. "Looking towards a new agreement, for the Government, the priorities are simple, we need an agreement that is affordable, sustainable and fair. The negotiations will be challenging but the Government is clear that we want to reach an agreement and we look forward to working with the Prison Officers Association and all trade unions and associations," she said. She said that following an agreement in January the payment of a 1000 increase was brought forward to 1st April 2017 for all public servants who are party to that agreement and who are on salaries of up to 65,000 She said she was aware that following a significant engagement between the Irish Prison Service and the POA, sanction has been given by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the restoration of the Rent Allowance for Recruit Prison Officer. She added that a number of reform measures have been agreed, most notably the implementation of a more robust dispute resolution regime, to include access to both the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and the Labour Court. Judges at the Special Criminal Court trial of a man accused of smuggling an "IRA communique" from Portlaoise prison have ruled that his search and arrest were lawful. The defence had submitted that a garda detective's suspicion that Brian Kenna (54) was to be "engaged in IRA activities" was insufficiently particular to stop and search the man. Mr Kenna, with an address at Crumlin Park, Crumlin, Dublin has pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful organisation within the State, namely Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the Irish Republican Army, otherwise the IRA on November 21st, 2015. Previously, the court has heard that a detective was searching the accused man outside Portlaoise prison when an "IRA communique" fell from the man's pocket. Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding at the three-judge, non-jury court, said that the court was satisfied that Detective Sergeant Padraig Boyce had reasonable suspicion to justify his actions. The court was satisfied, the judge said, that Det Sgt Boyce possessed enough information to search Mr Kenna, and that he had formed an independent view that the man was a member of the IRA. Siobhan Stack SC, defending, then challenged the legality of the detective's decision to search Mr Kenna's car. The trial continues in front of Mr Justice Hunt, sitting with Judge John O'Hagan and Judge Flann Brennan. Fiona O'Loughlin TD will hold a meeting for the Principals of both primary and post-primary schools in South Kildare in the Kildare Education Centre, Kildare Town on Monday, May 8 at 7pm. Deputy O'Loughlin, Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills decided to survey schools in South Kildare after many issues on challenges facing schools locally were raised at committee level. "There was an overwhelming response to the survey in which I have sought to establish in detail, the challenges facing schools in South Kildare, she said. The report in detail will be delivered on the night where school principals can expand on the detail of the results." According to Deputy OLoughlin one issue raised by almost all primary school principals was the overloading of the curriculum. Principals and teachers feel very strongly that the Department keep adding modules to the curriculum despite existing school timetables being full. While the new modules are well developed, the survey found that many schools do not have space in their timetables for them. Secondary school principals also raised the issue of being unable to find substitution cover for teachers who are absent and also the difficulty in finding teachers for Science subjects. Another issue includes the pay parity for teachers, which is described as being a hugely contentious issue for schools and one that must be addressed by the government to retain the teachers here. Invitations have been sent to principals, for further information contact 045 436792 or email Fiona.oloughlin@oireachtas.ie A young Naas man who was caught driving at 187kph in a 100kph zone was disqualified from driving at the local district court yesterday, Wednesday, April 26. Michael Connors, 19, with an address listed as Newhall House, Newhall, Ladytown, Naas was detected driving at 187 kph at Blackchurch, Kill at 10.50pm on November 18 last. He was charged with Dangerous Driving. The court heard that he had four passengers in his car at the time. Representing him, solicitor Eoin OConnor explained that one of the passengers in the car had received a phonecall from their wife saying that she was ill and was going to hospital. Mr OConnor explained that his client worked as a landscaper with his father and that the loss of his license would be tough for him. However Judge Desmond Zaidan urged the defendant to consider how the loss of his license would be a small price to pay compared to the loss of his own life or that one of his passengers. I accept that he is remorseful and what Mr OConnor has said on his behalf. He handed down a two year disqualification and fined him 1,000. Head of national joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy Andriy Kobolev and U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry on April 19 met in Washington, the press service of Naftogaz Ukrainy has reported. "The parties discussed ways of enforcing the standard legislation to remedy a number of long-standing noncompliance issues which hinder gas trade in Europe. The two sides have also noted risks posed by projects such as Russia's Nord Stream 2 to competition, energy supply stability, and economic and energy security in Europe," the press service said. Perry reaffirmed strong U.S. opposition to Nord Stream 2. The press service said that Secretary Perry expressed interest in having the Department of Energy facilitate cooperation between U.S. and Ukrainian energy companies, specifically in upstream natural gas, natural gas transmission, and coal supply. In noting the importance of enhancing Ukraines energy security, the two sides also discussed the possibility of coal exports from the United States to Ukraine. A man who allegedly assaulted a Garda at Naas District Court on Wednesday has been jailed for seven months on a separate burglary charge. Patrick Lynch (37), of 32 Loughnamona Park, Leixlip, caused tissue damage to Garda Noel Meaney during an altercation at the courthouse on Wednesday, April 26. Mr Lynch had been refused bail at Naas District Court on Wednesday, following Garda objections. That day, he faced several charges - of trespassing at Ovidstown Lodge, Straffan on April 23 last; of taking a child under the age of 16 at Clane on November 7 last; of driving with no license or insurance at Osberstown on July 18 last; and of driving without insurance on December 16 last at New Caragh Road, Naas. Judge Desmond Zaidan refused bail and remanded him in custody to today, Thursday, April 27. During todays hearing, Sgt Paul Reilly said Mr Lynch was also being charged with an assault on a Garda, alleged to have taken place the previous day. In reply to the charge, Mr Lynch said: I didnt assault no one. He was in handcuffs when an alleged assault on Garda Meaney took place on Wednesday. Garda Meaney was waiting for another Garda to drive a car around to the front of the courthouse building. Sgt Reilly said they let Mr Lynch have a cigarette, but when the patrol car came they asked Mr Lynch to finish it so that they could move, with him, to the patrol car. He refused to finish and go. An argument broke out, it is alleged, and Garda Meaney was injured when Mr Lynch allegedly used his two handcuffed fists to strike out at the Garda, who, the court was told, attended the doctor for treatment for damage to his wrist. David Powderly, solicitor, representing Mr Lynch, cross examined Sgt Reilly, who said that Mr Lynch was told he could not finish the cigarette. Mr Powderly asked why he was not allowed finish his cigarette. Sgt Reilly replied that he was not present at the time. Mr Powderly said Mr Lynch would be contesting the assault charge. Garda Inspector David OSullivan said Garda Meaney is now on sick leave. This charge has not been brought lightly, he said. Mr Powderly said his client would be pleading guilty to the burglary charge at Ovidstown Lodge, Straffan. In connection with that charge, Judge Desmond Zaidan was told that Mr Lynch was present with another person and they took a number of items from a shed - a lawnmower, a steam cleaner and a box of linen. In this case, the injured party spoke to Mr Lynch and the items were given back. There was no alleged threat. The court was also told that Mr Lynch asked the injured party not to call the Gardai, but he did. Mr Powderly said there were no allegations Mr Lynch has threatened the man. The solicitor said Mr Lynchs financial circumstances were poor. He had a history of broken social welfare payments and had been disqualified by the social welfare office. He was desperate. Mr Powderly asked that his client, who had 143 previous convictions, be treated as leniently as possible. Judge Zaidan jailed him for seven months on the burglary charge. He was remanded in custody, with consent to bail, on the April 26 assault offence but with conditions, including a cash surety, keeping mobile phone contact with the Gardai, staying at his Leixlip address, signing on daily at the Garda station and having no contact with Garda Meaney. Fianna Fail TD for Sligo-Leitrim Marc Mac Sharry says the Government needs to wake up to the crisis in rural Ireland and begin to formulate a comprehensive strategy to create more balanced regional development. He says his concerns are fully supported in a damning letter sent from the Chairman of the Western Development Commission to its acting CEO criticising the Governments lack of interest or action. Paddy McGuinness has written to Minister Michael Ring asking him not to re-appoint him as Chairperson of the WDC. In a damning letter to the Acting CEO of the WDC, Mr. McGuinness explained that he believes strongly that there is absolutely no commitment at either political or administrative level to balanced regional development nor is there any worthwhile plan to redress rural decline. He also details what he terms the Governments lack of interest in the Commissions work. Deputy Mac Sharry commented, This letter outlines many of the issues that communities across the North West have been voicing for years. Rural decline, lack of employment opportunities and investment and a Government which is solely focused on development in Dublin and the commuter counties. The Western Development Commission has played a key role in supporting and promoting development opportunities across Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Clare since it was established in the late 1990s. It has been particularly successful with rural tourism, organic agri-food production and renewable energy projects. It is an extremely well respected organisation, which has played an important role in creating employment and community initiatives across the West and North West. The way the WDC has been treated by Government is appalling, but not surprising. Fine Gael has effectively ignored and abandoned rural Ireland since it came into power in 2011 presiding over the closure of rural Garda stations, small schools; and now post offices are under threat. The Government is great at token gestures and big announcements, but the reality of the situation is that there is very little happening on the ground. The Governments mid-term Capital Review and the National Planning Framework 2020-2040 must take a strategic approach and must be backed with the necessary resources to equip the regions to perform to their potential. Rural communities are struggling to survive, with almost no help from Government. The fact that agencies, designed to support and attract investment and employment opportunities, are being completely constrained, is indicative of this Governments attitude to the regions. I am calling on Ministers Humphreys and Ring to stop burying their heads in the sand and wake up to the seriousness of the situation in rural Ireland. This blatant disregard cannot continue and I will be raising the issue with them over the coming days. Minister for Health, Simon Harris TD, at the launch of Vaccines for Life, has called the claims around the HPV vaccination as "unfounded and false". He stated this has led to a drop in the uptake rates of the vaccines leaving girls at risk of developing cervical cancer later in life. He commented "For some, the perceived, often misconceived, risks of vaccines now outweigh the risks of these forgotten infectious diseases. "For some, the perceived, often misconceived, risks of vaccines now outweigh the risks of these forgotten infectious diseases. "This is a clear and present danger. We know what can happen from our own fairly recent experience. The scare surrounding the MMR vaccine in the 1990s resulted in a large reduction in uptake rates for this vaccine. In January 2000 a large outbreak of measles occurred in Dublin and resulted in more than 100 children being hospitalised, 13 children required intensive care treatment, and there were three measles related deaths. "We are now, as all of us here today know and must address, facing a similar situation with respect to the HPV vaccine. Unfounded, false claims have been made of an association between HPV vaccination and a number of conditions experienced by a group of young women. There is no scientific evidence that the HPV vaccine causes any long term illness. However, this misinformation has led to a significant drop in uptake rates of the HPV vaccine. This means that a large cohort of girls are now at risk of developing cervical cancer later in their lives. "Despite the availability of free and effective vaccines, a small number of people make the personal choice not to vaccinate themselves or their children in the belief that vaccines are unsafe or no longer necessary. People need to be aware that a personal decision not to vaccinate has a wider public impact," he concluded. Research released by See Change ahead of the Green Ribbon campaign shows that people in Connacht and the Republic counties of Ulster are the most likely to seek professional help if they had a mental health difficulty compared to other provinces. 90 % of people surveyed in Connacht and Ulster said they would seek help if they were experiencing problems with their mental health, this is 9% above the national average of 81%. However, more worrying is the fact that 42% of those surveyed living in Connacht and the ROI counties in Ulster said they would conceal a mental health difficulty from family, friends and colleagues. This is 4% more than the national average of 38%. People in Connacht and Ulster (ROI) were also the more likely to delay seeking treatment for a mental health problem out of fear of letting others know when compared to the national average. 16% of respondents in Connacht and Ulster said they would delay help seeking due to the risk of other people finding out. This is 2% higher than the national average of 14%. The research was conducted by Kantar Millward Brown as part of a nationally representative omnibus survey of 977 people for the Green Ribbon campaign and was funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention. The Green Ribbon campaign aims to change minds about mental health by prompting hundreds of events and thousands of conversations all over Ireland during the month of May each year. Between now and the end of May 500,000 ribbons will be distributed to communities, workplaces, schools and colleges all over Ireland to encourage people to talk about mental health. Speaking about the campaign, CEO of See Change, John Saunders says, Theres no health without mental health, so its very important that we all play our part to end the silence around mental health issues. He continues, You dont need to be an expert to start talking about mental health or have all the answers. Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is let someone know you are there for them and simply listen. Green Ribbons will be available at major Irish Rail stations, libraries and Boots Stores across Connacht and Ulster. Visit www.greenribbon.ie for more details or to order free ribbons and to find out about events near you. Liberal Democrats in Brighton Pavilion last night decided not to field a candidate in Brighton Pavilion against Greens co-leader Caroline Lucas. From the Mirror: Lib Dem President Sal Brinton said: Liberal Democrats across the country are challenging Theresa Mays Conservative Brexit government. As in previous elections, a limited number of local parties are considering how best to provide that challenge in their constituencies. This comes after the Greens stepped aside in Richmond Park to give us a clear run. What is also significant is that close to Brighton is the constituency of Lewes which we narrowly lost by less than the Greens vote in 2015. We have yet to see whether the Greens will stand aside for Kelly-Marie Blundell. Given her commitment and long term interest in tackling poverty and fighting welfare reform, it would make sense. Last month, the independent panel of health experts set up by Norman Lamb published its interim report on a new deal for Britains Health and Social Care Services. The panel were unanimously of the opinion that it is necessary to raise additional revenue for health and care through taxation and Spring Conference seemed to agree. Similar views may partly explain why the Conservatives have so far (sensibly) refused to rule out any headline tax rises in the next Parliament. The interim report, which may influence the Lib Dem manifesto, concludes with three options: 1) raise Income Tax (e.g. raising all rates by 1p); 2) raise National Insurance (NI); or 3) introduce a dedicated health and care tax. All have their pros and cons, and in the grand scheme of things Income Tax and NI rate increases raise similar revenue and are both very progressive. But in this post I want to highlight a few reasons why the current NI system might not be the fairest vehicle for boosting health and social care points that are also important for considering what a dedicated tax should involve. Dont raise employer National Insurance First up, theres a question about what forms of NI would be increased under that option. In short, you would want to raise the personal forms of NI that individuals employees and the self-employed pay, but not employer NI. That might sound backward hitting individuals but not companies (though in the long run both just reduce take-home pay). But the existing employer NI system already creates damaging and expensive distortions. Foremost, it creates a large incentive for companies (and you and me) to use self-employed labour rather than employees. No-one seems to be suggesting this but for the avoidance of doubt: unless/until that major problem is solved, dont raise employer NI further. Pensioners dont pay National Insurance Perhaps the biggest difference between Income Tax and NI is that people over State Pension Age dont pay NI. There is no good reason for this exemption, let alone exempting pensioners from any new tax increase. This would suggest that raising NI as it stands is not a very fair option. But the exemption could be ended, which would raise additional money for elderly care. There are actually two separate questions here. One is whether working pensioners should pay NI on their employee or self-employed income just as working non-pensioners do: they should. But there is also a very strong case that private pensions should be liable to NI just as they are to Income Tax (perhaps alongside a little pension tax relief reform). And when it comes to funding an improved health and care system, isnt it reasonable to ask those who have already retired to contribute too? The Barker Commission in 2014 was certainly of the view that older generations should play an important part in any funding increases and that we should look at wealth taxes as well as income taxes. Landlords dont pay National Insurance Just as NI doesnt apply to pension income, nor does it apply to rental income or savings interest. Landlords or those with very substantial savings would therefore much rather we raised NI than Income Tax. Its not clear to me why we would ask teachers and hairdressers to pay a bit more for public services but not ask the same of property owners. Neither increases in Income Tax nor NI would apply to dividends, capital gains or inheritance. The party should seriously consider raising some or all of these rates to the same degree as any Income Tax or NI increase, even if it doesnt try to raise money from broader wealth tax reforms. National Insurance starts at a lower income The Income Tax personal allowance is 11,500 this year, but the equivalent allowance for NI is only 8,200. This means that an NI increase affects workers on lower incomes than an Income Tax rise would. And an increase would be slightly more costly for workers than an equal Income Tax rate rise due to the smaller allowance. I have been critical of the policy of raising the Income Tax threshold (especially at the same time as cutting benefits). But if the party were to propose raising NI rates, a small increase in the starting threshold would be one way albeit an expensive one to offset any impact on low income workers. Conclusion Ive not looked at the politics of these different options (and Ive skipped some issues such as the weekly and per-job nature of NI, and the taxing of state benefits and benefits-in-kind). Certainly the public seem to prefer NI increases to Income Tax increases. But Norman Lamb has made clear he favours a penny on Income Tax as the short-term solution. I think hes right. Raising Income Tax (and dividend taxes) would be fairer than raising NI in its current form. It would certainly seem contrary to most Lib Dems beliefs to choose to raise a tax that only targets earned income and ignores income from wealth. But what then of our broken and complex NI system? And what of the longer-term funding option, also favoured by Norman, of a dedicated health and care tax? Perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone. Scrap the existing employee and self-employed NI system; instead add those NI rates onto Income Tax (in practice); while (on paper) keeping them separate as a National Health and Care Contribution. This reformed version of NI would cover more forms of income than the current system, have no age limit, have a higher starting point and of course have rates that were higher and perhaps flatter than at present (currently they are 12% for most people and 2% for higher earners). All that still leaves big questions about the proper role of the UKs vast property wealth and inheritances in funding decent care. Nevertheless, the independent panel and manifesto authors face a tough challenge in crafting tax increases that are sufficiently large, popular, progressive and economically sensible. But from the ideas floated so far and hopefully some of those above it seems like that might just be possible. * Adam Corlett is an economic analyst and Lib Dem member Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia, a large brewery in Ukraine, has received a license form Heineken Concern to produce Czech beer Krusovice and will start its production early June. "This year we received a license from Heineken Concern to produce Krusovice and in a month will start producing this famous Czech beer," the co-owner of Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia Andriy Matsola said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. He said that usually it takes three or five years to receive the beer production license from Heineken. Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia started negotiations with Heineken in 2012 and at the end of 2015 and early 2016 the brewery launched Heinekel beer production in Ukraine under the license. "The vice president of Heineken personally flied [to Ukraine] to inspect. The whole structure was inspected: from the head office, retail staff, atmosphere and policy of the company to tests of production facilities. In 2015, Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia was the fourth company in the world that received this license from Heineken, not being in ownership of the concern," Matsola said. He said that Heineken does not plant to enter the Ukrainian market. Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia intends to launch production of hard lemonade at a plant in Radomyshl and enter the cider segment. "Last year we bought equipment from Germany's KHS. Now we will bottle our products in 0.44 liter and 0.5 liter cans. The canned beer market in Ukraine is only 6% of the total volume. We assess our market share at 10%, as we are working in the upper mainstream and premium class. We wanted to install a can line a long time ago, but earlier this project was loss-making. Now it is time to realize it," he said. Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia was created in 2004. It manages two breweries with a total capacity of 2.4 million hectoliters of beer per year in Lviv and Radomyshl (Zhytomyr region). GARDAI have released an Evofit image of a man who threatened a pensioner at knifepoint having broken into her home during an incident earlier this month. The woman, whose aged her in 80s, returned to the house at Ballycummin Road at around 5.40pm on April 6, last to find the kitchen had been ransacked. The pensioner quickly made contact with her daughter, who lives nearby, and as they were investigating what had happened, they were confronted by a young man who was hiding in another room of the house. The man, who was brandishing a large knife, demanded money from the women who both fled the house and raised the alarm. While the culprit initially followed them from the house, he then left the scene on foot before discarding the knife in the driveway. While the pensioner was not physically harmed the incident was distressing for both her and her family. Following the incident, the house was examined by members of the divisional scenes of crime unit. The knife has also been forensically examined as part of the investigation. Making a renewed appeal for information on RTEs Crimecall on Monday night, Detective Inspector Ronan McDonagh said the culprit was around 6 feet tall and of thin build. He was wearing a grey tracksuit type trousers, a dark top with the hood pulled up and a beanie type hat underneath. The man, who was aged in his early 20s, is also described as being pale, almost sickly looking and according to gardai, he spoke with a neutral accent. Cllr Daniel Butler, who lives in the Raheen area, says people living in the locality were shocked when details of what happened emerged. Sharing the Evofit image of the suspect on social media, he appealed for anyone who can help identify the man to come forward to gardai. Let's get his face out there so he can be found and put to justice. Many elderly members of our community are shook by this so it's important, he posted. Anyone with information about what happened or who can help identify the suspect is asked to contact Roxboro Road garda station at (061) 214340. THIS week, history was made when lay people replaced priests on altars around the county for the first time in Limerick Dioceses history. Lay led public prayers on Tuesday morning were led entirely by lay members of the community, in light of priests attendance at a clerical conference with Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy. But besides the practical reasons, it also served as preparation for a move towards lay-led prayers in the diocese, given the decline in vocations. Its inevitable with the fall off in vocations that we need to explore new and exciting opportunities to celebrate the word, and one of the ways will be through lay-led times of public prayer, explained Bishop Brendan Leahy. The move is on foot of a range of proposals voted for at last years Synod, which acknowledged the need to move towards lay-led prayers, both because of the shortage of priests and also in appreciation of lay ministers, or the priesthood of the baptised. As we move forward, we need to prepare for a time when, even though priests are not available, each local community will be prepared to arrange for moments of public prayer for various occasions. No parish should find itself in a position where it is not prepared for such a possibility, so it makes sense for us to begin right now, said Bishop Leahy. Although Communion was not given out at Tuesdays prayer events, Bishop Leahy stressed that this is not to suggest that it might never happen at future lay-led liturgies. Communion is commonly brought to the sick on house visits every Sunday. All over the world, when priests are not available, the liturgy of the word is celebrated parishes without the distribution of Communion, said the bishop. I would like to see us moving to a space where we celebrate public prayer more in its own right rather than it being synonymous only with Mass and receiving Holy Communion. Lay-led prayers will not be an alternative or mini Mass, but instead, a moment of public prayer that is thoroughly valued in its own right, added Bishop Leahy. Despite the conference, three churches still held Mass on Tuesday evening: St Johns Cathedral, Kilmallock and Newcastle West. City funeral director John Thompson said that the lack of Mass on Tuesday didnt affect operations because they received due notice. We had a funeral in Clare on the day, so in that way it didnt affect us. We wouldnt have organised one in the city anyway, because I had been told last week about the priests being at a conference. So even if I did have a funeral in the city, I would have worked around it, said Mr Thompson. There are 108 Limerick diocesan priests, of which 73 are in active ministry. The other 35 are retired. In the large geographical area between Abbeyfeale, Templeglantine, Mountcollins and Tournafulla, there are only three priests, and the areas rely largely on the support of retired priests. SIMON Community bosses have been left red-faced after it was revealed the charity is one of the groups seeking to buy apartments to leave families homeless. In an interview this Thursday, the charitys boss Jackie Bonfield said she only learnt the group was buying six units at Fishermans Quay in Grove Island this Tuesday in a move which would have seen several people made homeless. She claimed it was Housing Minister Simon Coveney who earlier this week met with the Grove Island residents who actually disclosed it was the charity buying the apartments through the Munster Pensioner Trustees Fund. Ms Bonfield has conceded that the last couple of days have been bad for the charity. But, she has this Thursday pledged residents will be allowed to remain in the apartment complex when the charity purchases them if they are on the housing waiting list. Good news! Mid West Simon are to allow residents in the Fishermans Quay apartments to remain when they buy the... https://t.co/dSnoBzb3X0 Cian Prendiville (@cianpaaa) April 27, 2017 Its understood three of these tenants are on the councils list but the other three could still face homelessness. An unknown buyer is also buying the other two properties, meaning two other residents are also facing eviction. Its a bizarre situation. We definitely do not want to be here. If we got a call today and somebody said you could get out of the deal, would we get out of the deal? If we leave, the people are going to be evicted, and the three we know we can support will be part of that six. We are in a catch 22. Whatever way we go, its just bad, she told the Limerick Today show on Live95FM. It was this Wednesday the homelessness charity confirmed it is in advanced negotiations to buy six apartments, something described as farcical by tenant Alan McCarthy who could still face eviction. It doesnt make any sense to put people out on the streets to rehouse someone else. People are being made homeless to rehouse the homeless in effect, tenant Andy Mowat added. Cllr John Gilligan who initially helped bring the evictions to light pledged to turn up at the housing department in City Hall to demand these tenants are rehoused if the charitys plans go ahead. It decries all kind of logic if a charity dedicated to homeless people tries to buy an apartment and make people homeless. If our housing department does not stop them, I will be turning up with 20 people affected. The housing office better have some solution to their problem, Cllr Gilligan said. Solidarity councillor Cian Prendiville added: If they are buying the properties, it should be on the basis of keeping the tenants in situ. The heart of this issue is the complete lack of social and affordable housing so homeless charities are competing with those facing homelessness for the scarce houses. Another tenant Alan McCarthy is baffled by the charitys decision. I dont see the point in buying the property to accommodate homeless people when they are making other people homeless in the process, he said. It is not the first time the Simon Community has faced questions. Earlier this month, councillors questioned the work being done by the charity in buying up houses after it bought a property in a private housing estate in Askeaton. Cllr Kevin Sheahan said there has been a duplication of taxpayer money as a result. We have a situation where one of these organisations went into a private housing estate and purchased a house, then allocated that home to a family who had already been allocated a house by this authority, Cllr Sheahan said. The issue is back on the agenda for a special meeting of the Adare-Rathkeale district this Thursday. The meeting has been called especially to obtain information on the involvement of housing bodies like Simon. A Simon spokesperson confirmed it is in negotiations to buy six units at Grove Island, but stressed that while the process is at an advanced stage, its not concluded. Mid-West Simon Communities have pursued these acquisitions on the understanding they were being bought as vacant properties. This potential purchase was seen as an opportunity to provide much needed affordable accommodation to those experiencing homelessness, they said. HOUSING charities have been called into question by local councillors in west Limerick, after it emerged that the organisations are buying up individual properties in some small towns and villages. The issue is due to be debated in a meeting with the housing department of Limerick City and County Council this Thursday evening, where the councillors for the Adare-Rathkeale district will express their concerns over the way in which approved housing bodies allocate houses. Cllr Kevin Sheahan, Fianna Fail, said that the organisations, which include the Simon Community and the Peter McVerry Trust, must adhere to the same high standards as the council in the allocation of properties. The question is, do these voluntary organisations seek garda references for the tenants they are going to house, the same as the council? asked Cllr Sheahan ahead of a special meeting on the issue. He said that the Simon Community had bought a property in a private estate in Askeaton, which he was never notified about, and he had a procession of people to his door. Im dealing with a very angry local community in Askeaton because their public representative knew nothing about the fact that Simon Community have bought property in Askeaton and were allocating the house, said the councillor. He added that even though there is no legal obligation on the charity agencies to speak with local representatives, they are tasked with working in cooperation with the council, which does notify councillors of a new allocation. In a community like Askeaton, that has more than its fair share of anti-social behaviour, they were moving people from council housing into Simon Community housing. That, to me, seems to be duplication of taxpayers money, because in the end its the taxpayer thats paying for all of this. To compound the issue, the Peter McVerry Trust have bought at least four properties in Askeaton, and I am concerned, and the community is concerned, he said. Cllr Sheahan also said that the groups do very worthy work, but will be questioning their methods at the meeting, which will be attended by a number of concerned residents from Askeaton. Cathaoirleach of the district, Fine Gael Cllr Adam Teskey, said that all standards should be kept to a maximum in rehoming people, whether they are council houses or those belonging to organisations. If antisocial behaviour becomes an issue in an allocated house, neighbours could see a significant drop in the value of their property, warned the qualified auctioneer. The State Automobile Roads Agency of Ukraine, also known as Ukravtodor, has arranged a financing of a project to reconstruct -07/-373 international highway Kyiv-Kovel-Warsaw leading to the border checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Polish border with the European Investment Bank (EIB). The press service of Ukravtodor reported that a possibility of reconstructing a section from Kovel to the Yahodyn checkpoint is being discussed. The road could be expanded to a four-line road. It is expected that the projects will be financed 50% to 50% using the loan from the EIB and grants from the European Union. These projects were selected from 11 earlier proposed projects. The road will be reconstructed to meet European safety standards. Apr 27, 2017, 9 AM Lurking among the United States offerings in the March 3-4 Auction Galleries Hamburg sale was this splendid 1852 cover featuring a 3 Washington and 1 Eagle carriers stamp tied by contrasting blue and red postmarks. It sold for a relatively modest $455. Auction Roundup By Matthew Healey Does anyone still need to be persuaded that hunting on the Internet for new and interesting items for their collection is worth the time and effort? Hopefully not. The truth is that bidding in online auctions is quick and easy. And the beauty of doing so is this: Sometimes the loveliest pieces turn up in the unlikeliest of places. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter A recent example came up in a sale March 3-4 by Auction Galleries Hamburg, known until recently as Schwanke GmbH. Tucked away amid the 3,700 lots of German, European, and worldwide single stamps, covers, and collections were 30 or so lots from the Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika, or United States of America. Seeking out U.S. items overseas can be especially rewarding, because the competition tends to be less intense, and therefore the bidding is lower. It would be a mistake to get discouraged by the Auction Galleries Hamburg lot descriptions, which are in German. Though a robotic translation from Google or some other service can be as confusing as it is edifying, the pictures often say all that needs to be said about an item. And its a safe bet that any European auction house can provide basic customer service in English, such as responding to an email query for clarification. The Zeppelin plate blocks mentioned in the Linns March 6 preview of the Hamburg sale unfortunately did not find a buyer, but several other U.S. items did, including what might just be one of the prettiest covers of all time. A small, clean envelope mailed from Philadelphia to Port Deposit, Md., in the early 1850s bore the stunning combination of a red stamp canceled by a blue postmark and a blue stamp canceled by a red postmark. Hamburg did not identify the imperforate 3 1851 George Washington by catalog number. Identifications are not always easy to do from an online scan, but the stamp appears to be a Type II, with a recut inner frame line. The cover is postmarked Oct. 27, and a pencil notation at lower left gives a year of 1852, perhaps based on the contents. If that date is correct, it would make the stamp more likely to be the more common dull red shade (Scott 11A), although theres a small possibility it could be the more desirable claret or brown-orange. Alongside the 3, tied by the Philadelphia datestamp and also by a nifty, solid red star, is a 1 Eagle carriers stamp (Scott LO2) a type of U.S. Official stamp that paid the extra fee for delivering a letter to a local post office in the days before there were mailboxes on every other street corner. Between the red-white-and-blue color combo, the iconography of the stamps, the jaunty angle at which they are placed, and the overall neatness of the cover, this might just be one of the most eye-appealing items in all of philately. Some lucky buyer took it home with a bid of 350, or about $455 including the 22 percent buyers commission levied by Hamburg. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. 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Leaving consortium of buyers of Ukrainian Sberbank by Norvik Banka could be linked to EU sanctions NBU official Leaving of a consortium of buyers of Ukrainian subsidiary of Sberbank of Russia by Norvik Banka could be linked to sanctions of the European Union (EU) imposed against Russia, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Kateryna Rozhkova has said. "I think that it was hard for them [Norvik Banka] to register everything, as when a bank buys shares from anyone its capital is decreased by the same sum. Norvik is operating in the European Union. The sanctions against Russia could influence [the decision]. Norvik Banka as a structural unit was removed from this deal [to buy Ukrainian subsidiary of Sberbank of Russia]," she said in an interview with Minfin publication. As reported, Sberbank of Russia announced the plan to sell 100% in the Ukrainian subsidiary bank to a consortium of investors, which will include Latvia's Norvik Banka belonged to businessman Grigory Guselnikov and a Belarusian private company owned by a son of the owner of Russneft oil company Mikhail Gutseriev, Said. The corresponding legally binding agreement was signed on March 27. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2017. Later a source told reporters that the bank could be sold by late May. The NBU received a first package of documents to approve the sale of Sberbank's Ukrainian subsidiary to a consortium of investors on April 10. Said Gutseriev, a British and Russian citizen, filed the documents. The NBU received a second package of documents for approving the sale of the Ukrainian subsidiary of Sberbank of Russia to a consortium of investors on April 14 from British and Russian citizen Guselnikov. Rozhkova said in the interview with Minfin that the NBU has not yet received the full packages of documents. "We will see what we have. We are to check business reputation of investors and all other things. Of course, we will communicate to the Latvian regulator, send requests for the financial state of Norvik Banka We will invite both investors to the NBU to have talks," she said. She also said that there are buyers for the rest of banks operating in Ukraine with Russian state-funded capital. "There are potential buyers of two large and two small Russian banks [Prominvestbank, VTB, BM Bank and VS Bank]. They are not affiliated to each other. However, we do not have official notification from any of them. Maybe, something will change in the process. Russian banks have been actively looking for buyers for a long time. We meet them once a month and discuss their prospects," Rozhkova said. The parties to the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine succeeded in reaching an agreement in a number of procedural issues concerning the release of prisoners, OSCE Special Envoy to the group Martin Sajdik said. The humanitarian subgroup focused on the release of persons illegally held due to the conflict, Sajdik told reporters following a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk on Wednesday. An important task in this context is the creation of the mechanism of verification of wishes of those citizens who would like to stay after their release in the territory, where they were during the release, he said. Sajdik said he is glad that today the sides were capable of agreeing on the procedural issues concerning the creation of this mechanism and that it will begin working promptly. The investigating judge of Prymorsky district court in Odesa has permitted to detain former director general and executive director of OJSC Odesa oil refinery, according to a posting on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) of Ukraine. "The above-mentioned top managers are charged with tax evasion by a criminal group using Odesa oil refinery, and over UAH 2 billion of taxes and duties were not paid to the national budget (Part 1, Article 255, Part 4, Article 28 and Part 3, Article 212, 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine)," the PGO said. The two former officials have been placed on a wanted list. "According to available information, they are staying in the Russian Federation," the PGO said. Premises of Odesa oil refinery were raided on April 26. During an investigation Prosecutor General's Office in Odesa region jointly with the police and the Security Service of Ukraine Department in Odesa region notified 16 persons that they suspected in involvement into criminal deals with fuel using the so-called "Kurchenko scam." A judgment of conviction has been issued against one of them. On April 22, 2017, former deputy director general of Odesa oil refinery was arrested by court under a request of the Prosecutor General's Office. Tedis Ukraine has paid UAH 300 million fine, and its top managers homes were raided by law enforcers, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said. "Today homes top managers of Tedis company were raided under court rulings. The firm has paid the largest fine in the history of Antimonopoly Committee. UAH 300 million has been sent to the national budget of Ukraine," he wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday. Lutsenko also said that Prosecutor General's Office received documents on the start of the process of changing beneficiaries of Tedis Ukraine who are citizens of Russia. As reported, Tedis Ukraine, established in 2011 as Megapolis-Ukraine Trade Company LLC, was renamed Tedis Ukraine LLC in May 2016. The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine said that ultimate beneficiaries of the company are citizens of the European Union and Borys Kaufman. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said late March that over 100 raids were conducted as part of an investigation into the case against the monopolist of the Ukrainian tobacco market. Lutsenko said that under Russian citizen Igor Kesayev's influence, people who coordinate all of their decisions with board members of Russia's Degtyaryov Plant have been appointed to key positions in the Tedis Ukraine company. A total of UAH 2.5 billion was taken out of Ukraine via transit firms' accounts in 2015-2017, despite the ban imposed by the NSDC and the National Bank of Ukraine. The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine imposed a UAH 431 million fine on the company for abuse of monopoly, while the company challenged the decision in court. Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze has discussed with Permanent Secretary of the Defense Ministry of Denmark Thomas Ahrenkiel the implementation of the joint project Northern Falcon. During the meeting in Copenhagen of Klympush-Tsintsadze with Ahrenkiel, an agreement was reached to activate high-level contacts in the near future through the ministries of defense of both states aimed at implementing mutually beneficial projects of bilateral cooperation, the press service of the deputy PM said on Wednesday. "In this context, the parties highly appreciated the implementation of the joint project Northern Falcon in 2017, which is underway for the ninth consecutive year. Klympush-Tsintsadze expressed her gratitude to the Danish side for its support in reforming the Armed Forces of Ukraine and hope for continued fruitful cooperation in this area," a report says. Klympush-Tsintsadze also said that the visit of the Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to Ukraine is expected in 2018. The deputy PM of Ukraine also expressed her gratitude to the Danish side for implementing a number of projects aimed at supporting reforms. In turn, the Danish side noted the opportunities for strengthening and expanding cooperation in the security and defense sector. As reported, from mid-March to mid-April 2017, the joint Ukrainian-Danish military transport operation North Falcon-2017 was held. During the active phase of the operation, the pilots of the transport aviation of the Armed Forces carried out the task in Greenland (the autonomous territory of Denmark), delivering fuel and cargo from the Tule airbase (U.S.) to the Danish station Nord in polar circle. Find not too frequent updates from the Livesay family here A Caribbean vacation sounds like a pleasant way to pass the time and catch some rays, but a Pennsylvania woman returned with more than a beachy glow: Two weeks after coming home, she developed a raised, itchy rash on her knee, which turned out to be the result of a parasite burrowing beneath her skin, according to a recent case report. The 45-year-old woman's rash was "textbook example" of a type of parasitic infection called cutaneous larva migrans, said Dr. Chaiya Laoteppitaks, an emergency medicine physician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and the senior author of the case report. The wavy, snake-like lines that appear on the skin are the trail left behind by the parasitic worm as it burrows around beneath the skin, Laoteppitaks told Live Science. [Here's a Giant List of the Strangest Medical Cases We've Covered] Cutaneous larva migrans is caused by a hookworm infection, according to the case report, which was published online April 8 in The Journal of Emergency Medicine. Up to 740 million people worldwide have hookworm infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hookworm infections, along with whipworm and roundworm infections, are among the most common parasitic infections in the world, according to the World Health Organization. Hookworms are normally found in warm, moist climates, Laoteppitaks said. Normally, a hookworm infects a person when the worm's larva burrows into the skin, Laoteppitaks said. The larva travels through the body, and eventually makes it to the small intestines, where it develops into an adult and lays eggs, according to the CDC. These eggs are expelled from the body in a person's stool, and the life cycle can start again, the CDC says. But in the woman's case, the infection was caused by a hookworm that doesn't normally infect humans, Laoteppitaks said. There are two hookworm species that may have been responsible for the woman's infection: Ancylostoma braziliense or Ancylostoma caninum, according to the report. These are hookworms that normally infect dogs and cats humans aren't a "definitive host" for the worms, Laoteppitaks said. That means that if one of these hookworms ends up in a human, it's the end of the line for them: Because they can't complete their life cycle, the worms just burrow through the skin for a while until they eventually die, Laoteppitaks said. But when the human immune system attacks the worm, it causes intense itching, he said. In the medical literature, the type of rash is sometimes called "creeping eruption," according to the report. The worms can move a couple of centimeters each day, and in some cases, a person can actually observe the line of the rash extending, he added. When this happens, it's possible for doctors to perform a biopsy and find evidence of the worm, he said. The woman was treated with an antiparasitic drug, and Laoteppitaks noted that she is now doing quite well. Originally published on Live Science. First Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Ivan Rusnak has held a meeting with Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tina Kaidanow in Kyiv, during which the parties discussed the current situation in the area of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone and the issues of reforming the Defense Ministry of Ukraine. Rusnak expressed gratitude to the representatives of the State Department for all-round support of Ukraine from the US. "The United States of America is the main strategic partner for Ukraine, it always stands by its word and fulfill obligations. And we are grateful to the U.S. for its full support in connection with the aggression of the Russian Federation," he said, the press service reported on Wednesday. On behalf of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine and the Armed Forces, the first deputy defense ministry thanked the American side for the material and technical assistance provided to Ukraine since 2014. "We expect that your support will further continue and will include defensive weapons that will allow us to effectively restrain Russian aggression," Rusnak said. The deputy minister also noted the role of the U.S. State Department in helping Ukraine and said that, despite the challenges and threats, Ukraine has taken a course to conduct deep military reform and bring the defense forces to NATO standards. "Currently, Ukraine has adopted all strategic military planning documents, which were prepared with the participation of the Alliance's experts. The reform focuses on the renewal of the management of the security forces and defense of Ukraine, the training system of the Armed Forces in accordance with NATO standards," the first deputy defense minister of Ukraine said. The sides discussed the issues of further development of bilateral cooperation in the military and military-technical spheres and the areas of further support of Ukraine by the United States. Using temporary tags that recorded audio from humpback mothers and calves, scientists found that the calves communicated with their mothers very quietly in muted squeaks compared to the bellows of adult males perhaps to lower the risk of being overheard and pursued by killer whales, according to a new study. These recordings show aspects of early life behavior in humpbacks for the first time, the researchers said. The findings offer a rare glimpse into the development of young humpbacks and hint at the complex interactions the young whales share with their mothers in order to survive during long migrations in the open ocean when they are still young and vulnerable, the study authors wrote. Newborn whales face challenges unique to ocean-dwelling mammals: They must learn to nurse under their own power and coordinate that with swimming and holding their breath, the researchers said. And these young whales have only a few months of growth before the herd begins its seasonal migration from breeding grounds to feeding grounds, traveling as far as 5,000 miles (over 8,000 kilometers), the researchers explained in the study. A humpback mother and calf, photographed in Exmouth Gulf in northwest Australia. (Image credit: Fredrik Christiansen) To better understand calves' behavior during migrations, researchers attached multisensor suction tags to eight humpback calves and two mothers in Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia, a known breeding and resting ground for humpbacks on their way to feeding areas in southern latitudes. The researchers placed the tags between the blowhole and dorsal fin on each whale, and programmed the tags to release automatically after 22 hours. Speak low Data gathered by the tags told scientists when the mothers and calves were diving and how they were moving during the dives, indicating when the calves might be nursing. Audio communications "grunting" and "tonal sounds" were also captured. The scientists found that most of the vocalizations took place during dives, rather than when the calf and mother were resting close to the surface. And the sounds the calves made were extremely quiet, the researchers said, about 40 decibels lower than calls produced by singing whales, and up to 70 decibels lower than other social sounds from adults. A humpback whale calf wearing a tag, in Exmouth Gulf. (Image credit: Line Hermannsen) Visibility in Exmouth Gulf waters is poor, which could explain why mothers and calves called to each other more frequently while diving, to keep from being separated, the study said. But the calls didn't seem to be nursing cues; nursing appeared to follow physical contact, possibly head bumps in the mother's mammary area, the researchers wrote in the study. It's more likely that calves and mothers use their voices to maintain contact, and the quiet calls kept them from being "overheard" by opportunistic predators or interested male humpbacks, said the study's lead author, Simone Videsen, a researcher with the Department of Bioscience at the Aarhus University in Denmark. "By calling softly to its mother, the calf is less likely to be heard by killer whales, and [can] avoid attracting male humpbacks who want to mate with the nursing females," Videsen said in a statement. "This migration is very demanding for young calves," Videsen added. "Knowing more about their suckling will help us understand what could disrupt this critical behavior, so we can target conservation efforts more effectively." The findings were published online April 25 in the journal Functional Ecology. Original article on Live Science. These plough marks in the central Barents Sea were likely formed by huge flat-bottomed floating icebergs, bigger than the ones floating in the Arctic today. Ocean scientists often say that humans know more about the surface of Mars than the seafloor of Earth. Under the icy water surrounding Earth's poles, there's a hidden world of dramatic landscapes ancient canyons, craters, hills and fields. A group of scientists has compiled a new atlas of some of those formations and released images from the collection on Tuesday (April 25) at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. The 200-plus images in the "Atlas of Submarine Glacial Landforms" reveal the "fingerprints" that past glaciers and ice sheets left on the seafloor, Kelly Hogan, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, told reporters during a news conference. [See Images of Hidden Landsacpes from the Underwater Atlas] In all, about 250 scientists from 20 countries contributed to the new atlas. Most of the high-resolution,3D seafloor imagery was obtained by acoustic methods like multibeam sonar, where sensors on research ships send sound signals to the seafloor and record the responses back up to the ship. "I like to think of this as remote sensing of the seafloor," Hogan said. "In the same way that satellites are moving around the globe and sending down a pulse and receiving the signal back and putting together a whole picture of the planet, this is what we're doing on the ships." But satellites in space don't have to navigate pack ice. Researchers who study the seafloor can take images of only those areas they can sail near, so thereare still a lot of blank spots in the underwater topography around the poles. The total area of the images covered in the atlas would fill a region about the size of Great Britain. Nonetheless, chief editor of the atlas, Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, told Live Science that over 95 percent of the types of landforms you would find on the seabed are likely represented in the new collection. The formations include a range of geological phenomena, from the once-exposed ridges left behind by fast-moving glaciers to the squiggly plough marks that have been etched into the seafloor by the keels of massive icebergs. Studying these formations could help scientists reconstruct past climates and environments. [See Time-Lapse Photos of Retreating Glaciers] "Often these features are very well-preserved because there's no humans, there's no roads, there's no weathering," Hogan said. For example, she described a former permafrost field in the shallow Laptev Sea in Eastern Siberia that was submerged when sea levels rose at least 6,000 years ago. "What these permafrost patterns tell us is that although this area was permanently frozen during the last glacial [period], it wasn't covered by grounded ice. This tells us exactly the environmental history of that area." Retreating glaciers and ice sheets are among the biggest concerns of scientists trying to understand the effects of climate change today, and Hogan hopes the glacial history preserved underwater could help scientists predict how ice will behave under different conditions in the future. "If we can find information from the seafloor about what stabilizes ice when it retreats or about how quickly it flows over different materials on the seafloor, then it means we can contribute that knowledge to the ice sheet modelers today," she said. Original article on LiveScience. Intricate glass creations such as miniature castles and tiny pretzels can now be fabricated using 3D printing, according to a new study. The technique could one day be used to manufacture lenses for smartphone cameras as well as other key glass components, researchers said. Archaeological research suggests humans have employed glassmaking for millennia. The process typically requires hot furnaces and harsh chemicals. Recently, scientists have investigated whether they could sidestep these drawbacks using 3D printing. A 3D printer is a machine that creates items from a wide variety of materials: plastic, ceramic, metal and even more unusual ingredients, such as living cells. These devices work by depositing layers of material, just as ordinary printers lay down ink, except 3D printers can also deposit flat layers on top of each other to build objects in three dimensions. [The 10 Weirdest Things Created by 3D Printing] Until now, the only methods for shaping glass using 3D printing also required using a laser or heating the materials to searing temperatures of about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius), the researchers in the new study said. In both cases, the end products were coarse, rough structures that were not suitable for many applications, the researchers added. "People thought glass was too difficult to work with via 3D printing," said study senior author Bastian Rapp, a mechanical engineer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany This honeycomb structure printed in fused silica glass is exposed to a flame that is almost 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). (Image credit: NeptunLab/KIT) Now, scientists have developed a new technique to fabricate complex glass structures using a standard 3D printer. The secret, the researchers said, is something they call "liquid glass." "What this work does is it closes an important gap in the palette of modern 3D printing," Rapp told Live Science. The scientists began with particles made of silica, the same material used to make glass. These particles were only 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, wide, which is about 2,500 times thinner than the average strand of human hair. These silica nanoparticles were dispersed in an acrylic solution. The researchers could then use a standard 3D printer to fabricate complex items using this "liquid glass," the study said. Ultraviolet light could harden these objects into a kind of plastic similar to acrylic glass. When these pieces of plastic were exposed to temperatures of about 2,370 degrees F (1,300 degrees C), the plastic burned away while the silica nanoparticles fused together into smooth, transparent glass structures, the study said. With the aid of additives, this technique can print colored glasses, tinted green, blue or red, for example, the researchers said. "Glass is one of the oldest materials that mankind has used, and it's still a high-performance material, and for many applications, the only choice of material," Rapp said. "What our research does is bridge a necessary gap between 21st-century manufacturing techniques and a material that's centuries old." The commercial 3D printer the researchers used could print features as tiny as a few dozen microns. For comparison, the average human hair is 100 microns wide. This new method does not require harsh chemicals, and it produces glass components smooth and clear enough for use as lenses and in other applications, the researchers said. "You can think of creating tiny lenses for smartphone cameras," Rapp said. "You can think about creating chemically and thermally resistant micro reactors made from glass that chemical reactions can take place in." This new technique could also help create optical and photonics components for high-speed data transmission, Rapp said. (Photonic devices manipulate light just as electronic circuits manipulate electricity.) "You can also think much bigger, with 3D curved pieces of glass for architecture," Rapp said. "We are now spinning off a company to commercialize this technology," Rapp said. "We hope that in a few years' time, glass will be as convenient to 3D print as plastic is nowadays." The scientists detailed their findings online April 19 in the journal Nature (opens in new tab). Original article on Live Science. A study of the physics of poop explains why it takes the same amount of time for you and an elephant to poop. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The ancient Chinese practiced copromancy, the diagnosis of health based on the shape, size and texture of feces. So did the Egyptians, the Greeks and nearly every ancient culture. Even today, your doctor may ask when you last had a bowel movement and to describe it in exquisite detail. Sure, it's uncomfortable to talk about. But that's where science comes in, because what we don't like to discuss can still cause harm. Irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, gastrointestinal infections and other poop-related ailments cost Americans billions of dollars annually. But trying to stem these problems was not our main motivation for trying to figure out some of the physics of defecation. It was something else, much more sinister. From personal observation, into the lab When parenthood hits, it hits hard. One of us is a working dad who survived by learning a new set of skills, one of which was fecal analysis. Years of diaper changes and then potty training turned me from a poo-analysis novice to a wizened connoisseur. My life passes by in a series of images: hard feces pellets like peas to long feces like a smooth snake to a puddle of brown water. Unlike the ancients, we didn't believe that we could predict the future from children's stool. But we did think it was worth trying to understand where all these shapes come from. Having a laboratory to answer questions about the everyday world is one of the distinct pleasures of being a scientist. As fluid dynamicists, we joined forces with colorectal surgeon Daniel Chu, and two stalwart undergraduates, Candice Kaminski and Morgan LaMarca, who filmed defecation and hand-picked feces from 34 mammalian species at Zoo Atlanta in order to measure their density and viscosity. We learned that most elephants and other herbivores create "floaters" while most tigers and other carnivores create "sinkers." Inadvertently, we also ranked feces from most to least smelly, starting with tiger and rhino and going all the way to panda. The zoo's variety of animals provided us with a range of fecal sizes and shapes that served as independent pieces of evidence to validate our mathematical model of the duration of defecation. We also placed the feces in a device called a "rheometer," a precision blender that can measure the properties of liquid-like and solid-like materials such as chocolate and shampoo. Our lab shares two rheometers with Georgia Tech physicist Alberto Fernandez-Nieves. We have since categorized the rheometers as the "clean rheometer" and the "David Hu rheometer" which has seen its fair share of frog saliva, mucus and feces. The secret to the speed What else did we learn? Bigger animals have longer feces. And bigger animals also defecate at higher speed. For instance, an elephant defecates at a speed of six centimeters per second, nearly six times as fast as a dog. The speed of defecation for humans is in between: two centimeters per second. Together, this meant that defecation duration is constant across many animal species around 12 seconds (plus or minus 7 seconds) even though the volume varies greatly. Assuming a bell curve distribution, 66 percent of animals take between 5 and 19 seconds to defecate. It's a surprisingly small range, given that elephant feces have a volume of 20 liters, nearly a thousand times more than a dog's, at 10 milliliters. How can big animals defecate at such high speed? The answer, we found, was in the properties of an ultra-thin layer of mucus lining the walls of the large intestine. The mucus layer is as thin as human hair, so thin that we could measure it only by weighing feces as the mucus evaporated. Despite being thin, the mucus is very slippery, more than 100 times less viscous than feces. During defecation, feces moves like a solid plug. Therefore, in ideal conditions, the combined length and diameter of feces is simply determined by the shape of one's rectum and large intestine. One of the big findings of our study was that feces extend halfway up the length of the colon from the rectum. A unified theory of pooping Putting the length of feces together with the properties of mucus, we now have a cohesive physics story for how defecation happens. Bigger animals have longer feces, but also thicker mucus, enabling them to achieve high speeds with the same pressure. Without this mucus layer, defecation might not be possible. Alterations in mucus can contribute to several ailments, including chronic constipation and even infections by bacteria such as C. difficile in the gastrointestinal tract. Beyond simply following our scientific curiosity, our measurements of feces have also had some practical applications. Our defecation data helped us design an adult diaper for astronauts. Astronauts want to stay in space suits for seven days, but are limited by their diapers. Taking advantage of the viscosity of feces, we designed a diaper that segregates the feces away from direct contact with skin. It was a semifinalist in the NASA Space Poop Challenge earlier this year. It just shows that physics and mathematics can be used everywhere, even in your toilet bowl. David Hu, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biology, Adjunct Associate Professor of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology and Patricia Yang, Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Scientists found DNA related to the extinct human lineage called Denisovans in Denisova Cave in Siberia. Here, Richard (Bert) Roberts, Vladimir Ulianov and Maxim Kozlikin (clockwise from top) plan the sampling of sediments in the cave's east chamber. DNA from two extinct human relatives the Neanderthals, and a mysterious branch of humanity called the Denisovans has been detected in the ancient mud of caves, even though those caves hold no fossils of those individuals, new research shows. The finding suggests that scientists could detect such extinct lineages in places devoid of skeletal remains, the researchers said. This technique, if verified, could fill blank spots in scientists' understanding of how and where humans evolved, according to the authors of the new study describing the finding. [Denisovan Gallery: Tracing the Genetics of Human Ancestors] Human remains are scarce The ancestors of modern humans once shared the world with archaic human lineages such as the Neanderthals the closest extinct relatives of modern humans as well as the Denisovans. Little is known about the Denisovans, but scientists think this ancient human relative might have roamed a vast range stretching from Siberia to Southeast Asia. DNA extracted from fossilized bones and teeth of Neanderthals and Denisovans has revealed many secrets about human evolution, such as how modern humans interbred with both lineages. But although there are numerous prehistoric sites that hold tools and other artifacts from ancient humans such as the ancestors of modern humans, or members of extinct human lineages their skeletal remains are scarce, thus limiting research into human evolution. Moreover, the ancient human fossils that archaeologists do unearth do not always have enough suitable DNA for genetic analysis. "Humans are a very small proportion of the fauna found in caves," said study senior author Matthias Meyer, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "In most excavation sites, if you find thousands of bones from animals, you're very lucky if you find one human tooth or a long-bone fragment." No bones, no problem Scientists took samples from different layers of this sediment profile in Trou Al'Wesse cave in Belgium. They ran genetic analyses on the samples. (Image credit: Monika V. Knul) Instead, Meyer and his colleagues investigated whether ancient sediments found in caves might latch on to DNA. "We know that with DNA preserved in bones, the DNA binds to the mineral component of bone, so the same can, in principle, happen in sediments full of minerals," Meyer said. The scientists collected 85 samples of sediment covering a time span from 14,000 to more than 550,000 years ago, from seven sites in Belgium, France, Spain, Croatia and Russia, where previous research suggested ancient humans once lived. These sites included Denisova Cave in Siberia, which is where Denisovan fossils were first discovered. The researchers identified DNA from a variety of mammals, including woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave bears and cave hyenas. Mixed in with this animal DNA were small traces of human DNA: The researchers found Neanderthal DNA in four caves, and Denisovan DNA in Denisova Cave. "The fact that sediment can indeed preserve DNA from extinct humans that lived there thousands of years ago is a pretty amazing finding," Meyer said. In addition, at each of the two sites where the researchers did not discover DNA from ancient humans, they had only a few samples to analyze, Meyer noted. "Maybe if we looked at more samples from each site, we'd find Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA as well," he said. DNA potential The scientists aren't sure what part of the bodies of the extinct human lineages this DNA came from for instance, skin flakes, hairs or bodily fluids such as sweat or blood. "Another possibility stems from how, in many sites, we find a lot of hyena DNA," Meyer said. "Maybe the hyenas were eating human corpses outside the caves, and went into the caves and left feces there, and maybe entrapped in the hyena feces was human DNA." Most of the DNA from extinct humans that was recovered came from layers of sediment where no human fossils had been found previously. This suggests that, in the future, DNA could help researchers detect the presence of humans even in the absence of their skeletal remains, the study authors said. For instance, "there are some very interesting open questions regarding the Denisovans we only have fossils of them from a single site in Russia, but we know they must have been much more widespread due to the pattern of interbreeding we see with modern humans," Meyer said. "By looking for DNA, there's the chance we can find many more Denisovan sites than we would by just looking for bones or teeth." One concern, however, is that DNA could seep across layers of sediment, thus making it difficult to figure out when, specifically, extinct humans or others lived at a site. (The deeper a layer of sediment is, the older it usually is.) Still, the research team "didn't find any obvious evidence of DNA movement," Meyer said, "but it's certainly a possibility that needs to be investigated for every site." Depending on how well DNA is preserved in any given cave, scientists "could learn much more information," Meyer added. "There's big potential here," he said, "and we need to do more work to understand just how big that potential is." The scientists detailed their findings online today (April 27) in the journal Science. Originally published on Live Science. Looking for human relatives View of the valley from the Caune de l'Arago archaeological site, France. (Image credit: Christian Perrenoud) Human-made tools and other artifacts are abundant enough in prehistoric sites, scientists say that human skeletal remains are scarce. So researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, decided to go hunting for human DNA instead. They collected the ancient mud from seven archaeological sites in Europe and Asia, finding DNA fragments that belonged to a variety of mammals, including woolly mammoths and cave bears, as well as some DNA from extinct human lineages. Their work is detailed in the April 27, 2017, issue of the journal Science. [Read the full story on the search for human DNA] Here, the view of the valley from the Caune de l'Arago archaeological site in France. Sediment found Svante Paabo showing the location of a sediment sample collected at the site of Caune de lArago, France, from a layer dated to 450,000 years ago. (Image credit: Christian Perrenoud) Svante Paabo points to the location of a sediment sample collected at the site of Caune de l'Arago, France, from a layer dated to 450,000 years ago. Collection Svante Paabo showing the location of a sediment sample collected at the site of Caune de lArago, France, from a layer where a 560,000-year-old human tooth was discovered in 2015. (Image credit: Christian Perrenoud) Svante Paabo shows the location of a sediment sample collected at the site of Caune de l'Arago, France, from a layer where a 560,000-year-old tooth from an extinct human relative was discovered in 2015. Russian cave Entrance to the archaeological site of Chagyrskaya Cave, Russia. (Image credit: Richard G. Roberts) The entrance to the archaeological site of Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia, where the researchers took sediment samples for DNA analysis. They found DNA linked to Neanderthals in their samples. The cave View of the valley from the Chagyrskaya Cave archaeological site, Russia. (Image credit: Richard G. Roberts) View of the valley from the Chagyrskaya Cave archaeological site, Russia. The rocks Stratigraphic profile of Chagyrskaya Cave, Russia, from which sediment samples were collected for genetic analyses. (Image credit: Richard G. Roberts) A stratigraphic profile of Chagyrskaya Cave, Russia, from which sediment samples were collected for genetic analyses. Across the world View of the archaeological site of Trou AlWesse, Belgium. (Image credit: Monika V. Knul) View of the archaeological site of Trou Al'Wesse, Belgium. The scientists found DNA linked to Neanderthals in samples collected from this cave, though no actual skeletal remains from hominins have been found in those layers. Layers of time Stratigraphic profile of Trou AlWesse, Belgium, from which sediment samples were collected for genetic analyses. (Image credit: Monika V. Knul) Over time, layers of sediment and any remains from human or other activity form on top of the ground only to be covered up by the next round of activity. In that way, when scientists take cores or other vertical samples of sediments, they can view a window back in time. Here, the geological layers of Trou Al'Wesse, a large cave in Belgium. The study scientists collected samples from the different layers, or strata, in order to run genetic analysis. At work Becky Miller sampling sediment for genetic analyses at the archaeological site of Trou AlWesse, Belgium. (Image credit: Monika V. Knul) Becky Miller samples sediment for genetic analyses at the archaeological site of Trou Al'Wesse, Belgium. [Read the full story on the search for human DNA] Genetic samples Marie Soressi sampling sediment for genetic analyses at the archaeological site of Les Cottes, France. (Image credit: Matthew Wilson) Marie Soressi samples sediment for genetic analyses at the archaeological site of Les Cottes, France. DNA from several mammals was found at this site: woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave bears, cave hyenas and others. In France The archaeological site of Les Cottes, France. (Image credit: M. Soressi/S. Schatz) The archaeological site of Les Cottes, France. Hundreds of thousands turned out for the People's Climate March in New York, held in September 2014. For the second weekend in a row, Washington, D.C. will be home to people clamoring for policies based on science. But unlike the March for Science, this weekends People's Climate March will be overtly political and put a sharp focus on climate change and justice. The march builds on a 2014 landmark event that drew hundreds of thousands to the streets around the globe. Then, the push was for the world to deliver a climate deal, a goal achieved a year later in Paris. The climate action landscape has changed a lot since then, most notably by the election of President Trump. While some of his policies may be driving people to the streets on Saturday, Paul Getsos, the national march coordinator, said he wasnt the initial impetus for the march. "We were ready to be active with the next administration when we thought it was Hillary Clinton," Getsos said. "Our steering committee was working together (last year) to figure out how to make the next president, who we thought was going to be Clinton, be bigger and bolder on climate." Climate Change Was the Epicenter of March for Science Scientists Are Poised to Start a New Movement Peoples Climate March Makes Front-Page News Nonetheless, Trump's election has changed the focus a bit. Organizers and other climate advocates are now trying to prevent the U.S. from backsliding on its recent climate action progress. The Trump administration has walked back a number of climate policies enacted under President Obama and proposed cutting the budget of a number of climate and energy programs. A number of cabinet members have also expressed views far outside established climate science. The march is slated for Trump's 100th day in office. Organizers chose the date because the first 100 days is a measuring stick for the president's priorities. Executive orders aiming to roll back climate policies are among the few tangible goals Trump can point to. One goal of the march will be to remind the president that those rollbacks don't represent what the majority of Americans want when it comes to climate change. The march route will circle the White House, serving as a visual reminder to its occupants that the public is watching what happens within its gated grounds. The march is focused on politics, but driven by science that shows climate change impacts are becoming increasingly clear even as the time to stave off the worst impacts is running perilously short. It's the strongest link to the March for Science, which took place on Earth Day. Scientists took part in the March for Science, with a number making a stop at the White House. (Image credit: Brian Kahn) "Last Saturday, the public stood up in vocal support of scientists and science," said Lucky Tran, who organized the March for Science and the 2014 iteration of the People's Climate March. "This Saturday, scientists will stand with the public to amplify the voices of frontline communities that are experiencing the devastating effects of climate change firsthand." The Washington, D.C. march and 300 satellites events are expected to draw as many as 150,000, according to Getsos. While the number of people turning out is important to send a message, organizers are focused on what comes next. "April 30 is more important than April 29," Getsos said. "One of the goals of this week is to get people energized and excited and in relationships so they are going back to their community to take on fights and campaigns around climate and climate justice." In some ways, that represents a continuation of the work that happened after the first People's Climate March in 2014. But it also reflects a growing reality that with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government currently led by Republicans, most of whom are opposed to climate regulations, organizers are going to have to turn to the local level over the next few years if they hope to score substantive climate victories. Getsos said the march, coupled with pursuing local action, can serve not just as a springboard to making climate change a national issue in the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, but also remind the world the U.S. isn't giving up completely on addressing climate change in the interim. "It's important because it will communicate that there is a strong and vibrant climate community in the U.S. no matter who the president is, and we will hold them accountable," he said. You May Also Like: Environmental Rules Played Minor Role in Coal's Decline California Got More Snow This Winter Than Past 4 Total How Trump's Monuments Review Could Impact Climate U.S. Vulnerable to Worst of Extreme Sea Rise Originally on Climate Central. The largest permanent protected marine area in the world is among the national monuments being reviewed under a new executive order. President Donald Trump signed the order Wednesday (April 26), requiring the review of presidential designations of any national monument or expansion over 100,000 acres since 1996. Presidents may designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which was designed to allow for the relatively speedy protection of historic artifacts. In comments at the signing of the order, Trump argued that the act has been abused. "The previous administration used a 100-year-old law known as the Antiquities Act to unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control have you heard about that? eliminating the ability of the people who actually live in those states to decide how best to use that land," he said. "Today, we are putting the states back in charge. It's a big thing." [See Photos of the 25 National Monuments Under Review] Monuments under review The monuments that would be reviewed under the executive order's guidelines reach far beyond the Obama administration's designations, however. They include the Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, established in 1996 under President Bill Clinton; Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, first established in 1924 and then expanded by Clinton in 2000; and the Mariana Trench, which holds Earth's deepest spot and is located east of the Mariana Islands near Guam, established in 2009 by President George W. Bush. Papahanaumokuakea in Hawaii became the world's largest permanent marine-protected area in 2016 when President Barack Obama expanded it, but was originally established by Bush in 2006. The order also includes the more subjective criteria that monuments may be reviewed "where the Secretary [of the Interior] determines that the designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders," which could potentially lead to the review of smaller monuments. Local debates National monument designations are a perennial source of controversy in the U.S. West, with conservation, outdoor recreation and tourism interests typically supporting such designations and mining, oil exploration and sometimes agricultural interests often fighting them, according to past reports. The "Sagebrush Rebellion," which began in the 1970s, sought to privatize western federal lands in general or return them to state control. Echoes of that effort continue to be seen today, with the 2016 occupation of Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife refuge by an armed militia group that was protesting the sentencing of two ranchers who had conducted illegal burning on that land. Particularly controversial on the new review list is Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which protects 1,880,461 acres (760,996 hectares) of desert canyons and indigenous rock art and ruins. The monument has been a sore point in Utah since Clinton designated it in September 1996, in part because the designation prevented the opening of a coal mine on the Kaiparowits Plateau, according to news reports. More recently, Obama's designation of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah caused anger among conservatives, who argued that the 1,351,849 acres (547,074 hectares) represented federal overreach. The designation of Bears Ears as a monument was driven by a coalition of five Native American tribes that historically occupied the land and left cliff dwellings and other archaeological sites behind. Those tribes now co-manage the monument with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. No one knows whether the Trump administration has the authority to shrink or eliminate any of the national monuments under review. That's because the Antiquities Act has no provision for rescinding a monument designation, public land law specialist Robert Keiter of the University of Utah told National Geographic (opens in new tab). About 20 monuments have been cut in size over the years, according to National Geographic, but none of those (mostly small) adjustments were challenged in court, so there is no legal precedent on the issue. In the case of Grand Staircase-Escalante, a 1998 law passed by Congress approved the transfer of other federal lands in Utah to the state to make up for lands taken over by the monument; the congressional action affirming the monument's boundaries in that law may ensure that a presidential order cannot sweep the monument away. Original article on Live Science. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are capable of performing missions set by the government if martial law is declared, Deputy Defense Minister Ihor Pavlovsky said. "In the event the conflict in eastern Ukraine develops and in the event martial law is imposed, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are now fully capable of fulfilling the orders by the state's leadership as regards mobilization and deployment for full use by mobilizing a trained reserve. There is no problem here," Pavlovsky said at an international security conference held in Kyiv on Thursday. At the same time, Pavlovsky said the army have been trained and reformed in a situation of conflict over the past three years thanks to the Minsk Agreements. "As we have the Minsk format, the intensity of the conflict in the eastern part of the country is low. This enables us now to achieve a number of objectives, such as making the army professional, arm it, and set up new structural branches, in particular, the Special Operations Forces," he said. Ukraine has lost over 10,000 citizens, including 2,652 servicemen, since the beginning of the military conflict in Donbas, he said. "The escalation of the conflict should not be ruled out," Pavlovsky said. The European Union has already provided Ukraine with EUR 104 million of financial assistance for the reform of the civil service and intend to continue helping upon condition of active participation of the government and society in the reform of public administration, head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Hugues Mingarelli has said. The EU has already mobilized EUR 90 million in budget support and EUR 14 million in technical assistance for public administration reform. If the government continues to actively participate in this process, and if we see the serious intentions of the community, we will continue supporting you and are ready to share our experience, he said during a conference on public administration reform with the participation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman in Kyiv on Thursday. Mingarelli said that the work of Prime Minister Groysman and Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Vitaliy Sayenko on the reform of the state administration gives hope for its success. The head of the EU representation in Ukraine said that the Ukrainian ministries need to "bring in some new blood." At the same time, he said that it is extremely important to ensure a transparent staffing of civil servants. Also, according to him, it is necessary to arrange training and training programs for civil servants, and the EU supports Ukraine in this matter. Be aware that you can rely on the EU in recruiting civil servants, Mingarelli said. JD Logistics will draw on AI, big data, and automation to provide smart supply chain services and redefine e-commerce fulfilment Chinese retail giant JD.com has set up a new logistics division that will market supply chain services to third parties, pledging to redefine e-commerce logistics. JD Logistics will draw on the groups technology and existing logistics platform to provide smart supply chain and logistics services to businesses across a wide range of industries The new division will provide warehousing, transport, delivery, after-sales service, as well as logistics services, including smart and cross-border logistics, said JD.com, which claims to be Chinas largest online retailer. Zhenhui Wang, senior vice president of JD.com and head of fulfillment operations, will serve as CEO of JD Logistics, reporting directly to Richard Liu, chairman and CEO of JD.com. Liu said in the ten years since JD.com launched Chinas first B2C logistics network, the company had redefined the consumer e-commerce experience and now intended to do the same for e-commerce logistics. This move is a major step in our vision to make technology even more central to what we do over the next 12 years, he added. Leveraging our unparalleled access to data from every step of the e-commerce process, from ordering to delivery and after-sales service, JD Logistics will use AI, big data, and automation to once again redefine the potential of e-commerce logistics. We hope JD Logistics can revolutionise Chinas commercial infrastructure and become the global model for smart supply chain solutions. Survey finds 54% expect higher volumes three months from now and 70% expect rise in eastbound ocean freight, following strong month-on-month gains Forwarders believe air and ocean freight volumes on Asia-Europe trade lanes eastbound and westbound will surge in the coming months, according to the latest survey results for The New APAC Forwarding Index being developed by Mike King & Associates and Logistics Trends & Insights. Higher air freight volumes are expected on key lanes to and from Asia Pacific (APAC), and the recent rise in eastbound ocean freight is expected to continue, while the outlook for intra-Asia trade is also optimistic. The survey results, compiled by consultants Mike King and Cathy Roberson, are the first step towards the creation of a new index for Asia forwarding markets, which will be published in the coming months. The second monthly APAC Forwarding Index survey is now open. Around 60% of survey respondents reported that ocean freight volumes to and from APAC in April were higher than March, while 54% predicted they would handle higher volumes three months from now. Rising demand for ocean services from Europe to Asia, a trend that has led to a shortage of capacity and loading delays at European ports, saw 80% of respondents report higher volumes on the trade in April compared to March. Around 70% also expect volumes on the lane to be higher three months from now. Demand has been higher than wed anticipated from Europe to Asia, and there has also been some disruption to liner services following blank sailings around Chinese New Year and changes to alliances, said one respondent. We expect capacity to be tight well into Q2. Around 70% of respondents also expect APAC to Europe ocean freight volumes to increase three months from now, while two-thirds forecast that volumes will rise from APAC to North America. However, optimism for the North America-APAC trade was hard to discern. Only 28.6% of respondents saw higher volumes on the lane in April compared to March, while only 43% expect volumes to increase three months from now. Despite uncertainty surrounding liner alliances leading up to 1 April and the various bedding issues we have seen including terminal congestion in China and a lack of capacity in Europe, optimism is high for the APAC ocean freight market, said Roberson. The Europe to APAC trade lane had the highest percentage rate of month-to-month volume gains according to respondents to our first survey. The next most dynamic lanes were APAC to Europe and APAC to North America. She said the North America to APAC liner trade reported the lowest percentage of respondents recording volume increases in April compared to March, which could be the strength of the US dollar catching up with exporters. On most lanes, the majority of respondents expect to see higher volumes over the next three months than at present, which bodes well for forwarders and lines, Roberson added. Air freight markets In terms of air freight markets, 54% of survey respondents predicted APAC volumes across all lanes will be higher in three months than at present, with 37% expecting them to remain the same and just 9% lower. Around 52% of respondents reported that volumes in April compared to March were higher, while only 11% said they were lower. As with ocean trades, the most dynamic air cargo lanes in April compared to March were APAC to Europe (73% experienced higher volumes month-on-month), Europe to APAC (55% higher m-o-m) and APAC to North America (63% higher m-o-m). Concerns of a possible protectionist import tax on goods entering the US may be holding some shippers back in the North America region, said Roberson, but noting that this was still a respectable showing for North America as the economy remains healthy as the first half of the year progresses. Emerging markets volume appears strongest to APAC for air freight, with more than half of respondents anticipating higher volumes on the lane three months from now, she added. This is likely due to food imports from such locations as Africa, Chile, Argentina and elsewhere. Intra-Asia Intra-Asia volumes by all modes rose from March to April, according to over 70% of respondents, while almost 60% of respondents predict higher volumes on Intra-Asia trades by all modes three months from now. Higher air freight volumes dominate intra-Asia expectations with a large majority of survey respondents expecting gains from this transport mode, said Roberson. More generally, weve seen manufacturing activity perk upwards in Asia and were seeing a global economy that is performing well, so the demand side is good. All of this is keeping intra-Asia trade humming along by all modes. New APAC Forwarding Index The APAC Forwarding Index is being developed by freight journalist and consultant (and regular Lloyds Loading List contributor) Mike King, and Cathy Roberson, an industry veteran who has been consulting on logistics markets for two decades. The full index will be published in the coming months with methodology and analysis provided by King and Roberson, the founders of, respectively, Mike King & Associates and Logistics Trends & Insights LLC. The survey is open to anyone with insight or business linked to key trade lanes to and from Asia used by forwarders and other third parties. The second monthly APAC Forwarding Index survey is now open; to take the survey, click here. The survey takes less than five minutes and will become the essential building block for our new APAC Forwarding Confidence Index which will help build a clear picture of APAC forwarding and freight markets by trade lane and mode, both now and looking forward, said King. We appreciate your input as we continue to collect responses to build the index said Roberson. Combined with economic and manufacturing data along with proprietary market sizing of the forwarding market, the index will provide a view of the APAC forwarding market international and intra-regional that is not available elsewhere. Image: Shutterstock.com Three Sunnyvale police officers who shot and killed a mentally ill man armed with a knife two years ago were justified in their use of lethal force, the Santa Clara County district attorney has found. A report released Thursday by the district attorneys office said the officers responding to an alleged sexual assault Nov. 12, 2015, feared imminent danger and acted to protect themselves when approached by Moises Nerio, 42, a 300-pound man. Mr. Nerio left the officers with no choice, the report concluded. The officers were called to Nerios apartment on Anaya Street shortly before noon by a a family member who reported that Nerio had forced open her bedroom door and sexually assaulted her, according to the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. Before Officers Barron Renzi and Sean Mula and Lt. Daniel Pistor approached the apartment, the door of which was open, they had been told by a police dispatcher that Nerio was bipolar, had been drinking and may have been doing drugs, according to the district attorneys office. Officers asked Nerio to come outside, but instead he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife with an 8-inch blade, the report said. On an audio recording released by the district attorney, a man identified as Mula can be heard trying to coax Nerio out of the apartment, asking, Hey buddy, can you come out here for me? Nerio flatly answers No to multiple pleas from officers to leave the apartment, and their tone quickly becomes more firm. Nerio eventually advanced toward Mula and, when he was about 8 feet away, he made a jerking motion with his hand and all three officers opened fire, the report said. It was 12:18 p.m. In total, 12 shots were fired. Mula believed Mr. Nerio could kill him based on Mr. Nerios size, according to the report. Nerio was taken to Valley Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. His blood-alcohol level was just under 0.43 percent, within the danger zone for alcohol poisoning and five times the legal limit for driving, according to the district attorneys office. Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police braced for mayhem Thursday as battle-ready protesters vowed to converge on Berkeley, but only spirited speeches broke out rather than the type of violent clashes between right and left groups that have turned the city into a political combat zone. On the UC Berkeley campus and at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park a few blocks to the west the site of recent riot-like brawls scores of cops took a more assertive stance as they monitored protesters, many of them upset by the cancellation of a visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, which they called an attack on free speech. They had traveled from the Bay Area or other parts of the country. Many were backers of President Trump who displayed American flags as music blared from radios. Some expressed extreme views, with one showing off an Allah is Satan shirt. But aside from chants of, USA! USA! USA!, the atmosphere was more picnic than protest. By the early evening, after Berkeley police received help from Oakland officers and Alameda County sheriffs deputies, the crowds had dwindled. As many as 100 counterprotesters showed up across the street from the park at one point and chanted, Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go. Those in the park ambled over to watch, as dozens of police officers cleared a line between the two sides. Its all right, said Linda Perry, 62, who had motorcycled in from Folsom. We can agree to disagree. But its good if they stay on that side and we stay on this side. The calm stood in contrast to clashes in Berkeley in recent months that produced bloody assaults and many arrests plus second-guessing of the ability of police to intervene. The demonstrators in the park on Thursday said they had not come to fight. Were going to all the liberal places to show you dont have to hide, Joey Gibson of American Freedom Keepers, one of more than a dozen speakers at the park rally, said to a cheering crowd after he drove in from Washington state. We will make the West Coast red again. There was no sign of the conservative groups adversaries self-described anti-fascists who have shown up to pro-Trump and white nationalist rallies with their own weapons, wearing black and covering their faces, employing what are known as black bloc tactics. At UC Berkeley, the threat of violence passed by early afternoon amid an even heavier police presence. Students and others entering the campus were subject to bag searches, while barricades filled with water lined Sproul Plaza. By 3 p.m., two men had been arrested one for refusing to identify himself or remove a surgical mask and another for allegedly carrying a knife. Berkeley, synonymous with liberal activism, has in recent months become a target of the far-right. Canadian radio host Lauren Southern, one of the speakers at the park, said those on her side won Thursday because they were able to hold the park. Conservative groups have accused UC Berkeley officials of stifling free speech in their response to plans by a Republican student group to host controversial speakers Coulter and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Neither has actually spoken, which the black-clad forces view as a victory against hate. Coulter was expected to speak at UC Berkeley Thursday, but officials determined there was no facility available to accommodate her given safety concerns. Other dates offered by the university were rejected by Coulter, who said she would still come even if that meant speaking at Sproul Plaza. But Wednesday, Coulter said she wouldnt show after the groups sponsoring her backed out. Those who nonetheless showed up at Civic Center Park on Thursday included Jonathon Paull, a 46-year-old Houston attorney, who wore a bulletproof vest and a helmet. He said he doesnt agree with anything Coulter says, but believes she has a right to speak. Ive never been to something like this before, said Paull, who calls himself a moderate Republican. I came out here because Im scared for our country. Annette Roman, 51, of Berkeley, was among a smaller group of anti-Trump demonstrators in the crowd. She carried a sign bearing a Coulter quote: Earth is yours. Take it, rape it. She called Coulter scary and said the conservatives who traveled to Berkeley only wanted to provoke trouble. I hate being here, but I have to be, she said, explaining that her father was a Holocaust survivor. They couldnt speak in their time, so Im speaking in mine. Berkeley has been a battleground since Feb. 1, when UC police canceled a speech by Yiannopoulos at the last minute after rioting broke out. A month later, 10 people were arrested after a confrontation between Trump supporters and opponents at Civic Center Park. On April 15, 11 people were injured and 20 arrested after a park rally turned even uglier. This time, city and campus police were more visible and emphatic. Berkeley police said in the evening they had made five arrests of people connected with the political events. On campus, some students reflected Thursday on the conflict playing out in the city. Jacob Gill, a 22-year-old student, discussed with a friend whether it was right that nonstudents were coming to campus to protest. Im against using violence and intimidation to shut down speakers, said Gill, who supports Coulters right to speak, even though he disagrees with her views. Use good speech to combat bad speech. Student Hyelynn Koo, 22, strolled through the barricaded Sproul Plaza sipping a smoothie. One of her four classes had been canceled over fears of violence. Im really annoyed ... I pay out-of-state tuition, she said. I just think its ridiculous because most of the rioters arent Berkeley students. Its giving our school a bad name. San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Lizzie Johnson and Michael Bodley contributed to this story. Jill Tucker, Sarah Ravani and Kevin Fagan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @sarravani @kevinchron This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Francisco judge dismissed the majority of the criminal charges against a man who was shot during a video-recorded confrontation with city police officers at his Ocean View home in January, the public defenders office said Wednesday. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ross ruled Tuesday that prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to proceed to jury trial on eight of the 10 charges filed against 43-year-old Sean Moore, who was seriously wounded in the Jan. 6 incident. The charges that were dropped include assaulting a peace officer, making criminal threats and resisting arrest. Moore, who remains in jail, still faces one count of battering an officer and one count of violating a restraining order that had been filed by a neighbor. Public Defender Jeff Adachi called for District Attorney George Gascon to drop the case entirely. Max Szabo, a spokesman for the district attorneys office, said another judge who presided over a three-day preliminary hearing of the evidence had found there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial on almost every charge. Ross made his ruling after the public defenders office filed a motion challenging the earlier decision. Yesterday, another judge that reviewed the transcripts from that hearing came to a very different conclusion, Szabo said. As such, we are weighing our options. The incident began when Officers Kenneth Cha and Colin Patino tried to speak to Moore through a locked gate about a suspected restraining order violation at about 4:15 a.m. Moore, whose family said he suffers from mental illness, responded by yelling profanities at the officers and telling them to leave. The shooting was the first to be captured on the departments new body-worn cameras, but the footage yielded dueling narratives about what happened and should have happened. Authorities said the footage showed Moore reacting violently, prompting the officers to deploy pepper spray and use a baton to strike him. When he reacted to the use of the less-lethal weapons by kicking Patino in the face and punching him, Cha fired his gun twice, police said. The public defenders office said the footage showed the officers escalating a situation that could have been resolved peacefully, with Moore acting in self-defense against officers who were not acting lawfully. This (ruling) is extraordinarily significant in that it demonstrates that the majority of these charges were unfounded, Adachi said at a news conference. Deputy Public Defender Brian Pearlman, who represents Moore, said the judge validated his argument that the officers should have left Moores home after he said, Get off my stairs. They ended up escalating the situation, he said. And now you have a victim of police violence sitting in jail. Police officials declined to comment on the ruling. Earlier, police said the officers had used great restraint in dealing with a large suspect with an unknown object in his hand. They released a photo of Patino with his face bloodied from a blow to the nose. Adachi said the Moore case revealed shortcomings in investigations by the district attorneys office into police shootings. In September, Mayor Ed Lee approved a final round of funding for a unit that would allow Gascons office to take over the lead in the investigations from the Police Department. During the preliminary hearing, Adachi said, Judge Ethan Schulman said he was troubled to see that statements by Cha and Patino describing the shooting were nearly identical. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo Diane Rehm had plenty of things she wanted to do after retiring last year - write, travel, launch a new podcast. Getting married was definitely not on the list. So guess what? She just got engaged. "Honey, I'm 80 years old, for God's sake!" says the former NPR star with a delighted smile. "I'm shocked." But "very, very happy." Rehm will marry John Hagedorn, a 77-year-old retired Lutheran minister, on Oct. 14 at Washington National Cathedral. "He's so caring, so attentive, so warm," she says. "Not only just to me, but to all of our friends and neighbors." The two met 28 years ago at a wedding for the daughter of a mutual friend. Both were married to others at the time, so it was a pleasant exchange but all but forgotten until Rehm received a letter from Hagedorn last summer. He reintroduced himself and praised her latest book, "On My Own," a memoir about her life as a widow (Rehm's husband of 54 years, John, died in 2014). Hagedorn, now a widower, wrote that the book had really moved him. "If you're ever in Florida, please let me know," he said. "I'd love to see you and take you for a cup of coffee." As it turned out, Rehm was doing a book-reading in Orlando for 1,500 fans. She emailed him with an invitation to the event, and Hagedorn drove more than three hours to attend, standing in line for two hours for a chance to speak with her. Then the two shared what we'll call "a moment." "We have a photograph taken, I sign his book," she says. "He's about to walk away and he turns around and looks at me. I turned around and looked at him. And something happened." It seems Hagedorn had been carrying a torch since they first met. "Diane has lived in the back of my heart and soul since we first met 28 years ago," he said in an email. "When the opportunity to meet again arose last June, I leapt at the chance. When our eyes met at the end of the meet-and-greet I said, 'What just happened to my life?' " An old-fashioned courtship ensued. Hagedorn asked if he could visit her in Washington, where they toured museums and restaurants. She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek when he headed home, but that was it. "I wasn't there yet," she explains. She, in turn, visited him in Lake Worth, Florida. (Her first question: "Do you have a separate guest room?") They met each other's children and were vetted by friends, all of whom approved of the match. Rehm's best friend, Trish Vradenburg, who died earlier this month, joked that they were "the 80-year-old Barbie and Ken." Hagedorn started proposing on their third date, and Rehm answered: "No! Way too early!" She finally accepted two weeks ago. Instead of a conventional engagement ring, Hagedorn is refitting his grandfather's antique topaz ring, a cherished family heirloom, for her. The couple will have a commuter marriage: She's keeping her home in Washington, and he will keep his house in Florida. "At the end of Diane's last book she wrote that at her age, there would probably never be another significant meaningful person in her life," said Hagedorn. "But, 'Never say never!' I am blessed." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For half his life, Jordan Cole has wanted to be a professional actor. It started when he saw Annie on Broadway. He was first captivated by the dog, then he realized that he wanted to be like the children on stage with that dog. He got a tingly feeling, he said, and told his mom that he wanted to be an actor. And now, five years later, he is. After doing some regional theater in New York, the well-spoken 10-year-old got his lucky break when he was cast as Michael in the national tour of Finding Neverland. His mom, Danielle Feigenbaum, is traveling with him. More Information 'Finding Neverland' When: 7:30 p.m. May 2-4, 8 p.m. May 5, 2 and 8 p.m. May 6 and 2 and 7:30 p.m. May 7. Where: Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St. Tickets: $30 to $125 at the box office and at ticketmaster.com. Info, majesticempire.com. See More Collapse Its really cool to finally to have my dreams come true, he said in a telephone interview. When I saw Finding Neverland on Broadway, I was like, It must be so much fun to be onstage. When Im actually onstage, its so much better (than I thought it would be). Its amazing. The musical, which is based on the 2004 movie, is making its San Antonio debut at the Majestic Theatre. The musical is a fictionalized account of how writer J.M. Barrie was inspired to write Peter Pan after meeting a woman and her four lively boys. Billy Harrigan Tighe plays Barrie in the show. Hes enjoying working with the children. We have six in the company, but four onstage, he said. With adult actors, when youre doing a show eight times a week, you get very much the same things every day. With kids, while theyre absolutely professional, there is something about when there are four of them onstage that you have to be on your toes at all times and meet them where they are. I think its fun. Im endlessly amused by them. Tighe, whose credits also include playing Fiyero in Wicked and Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, found his way to acting when he was in high school. He had been involved in chorus, and went to a performing arts high school to pursue his love of music. I had a kind of a terrible time in middle school, he recalled. I couldnt find my place or any passion; I felt a little lost. The first time I stepped onstage (in a musical) it sounds cheesy or corny, but it really is true it was one of those moments where, suddenly, I felt like I as on top of the world. It felt right. In Finding Neverland, he tries to find a little time in each performance to do a little improv with his youngest castmates to keep them in the moment during scenes where they dont have dialogue or any scripted actions. Cole, he said, is very funny and has lots of great ideas. Cole has a good time working with Tighe, too. Its so amazing to work with all the actors and adults, because theyve been on Broadway, then been in many shows. I learn so much from them, especially Billy, he said. He hopes to eventually have a long list of credits as an actor, too. But thats not all, he said. Ideally, he wants to do a bunch of other things. I want to conduct. I want to be a musician. I have a litle band with my friends. But I want to make this my big career. dlmartin@express-news.net Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN It is possible to review sanctions against Russia if it refuses its aggression against Ukraine Groysman The revision of the sanctions policy against the Russian Federation can only be an encouragement if Moscow refuses aggression against Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has said. "The sanctions that were imposed against the aggressor country - they are imposed as a punishment for disrespect to international law and for violating the borders of a sovereign country, for killing Ukrainian citizens on their land," Groysman said at a meeting with ambassadors at the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine in Kyiv on Thursday. He stressed the important role of the Ukrainian army in protecting not only the borders of Ukraine, but also Europe. "Therefore, we believe that any revision of such a policy [sanctional] should be provided only as a reward for the fact that the aggressor abandoned his plans, withdrew his troops and weapons," the prime minister said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Even veteran Fiesta hagglers won't be able to collect this century-old medal San Antonio historians believe is the genesis in the event's history of pinable flair. The words "San Antonio Spring Carnival Apr 1905" are embossed on the 2-inch, pressed-bronze medal alongside the profile of a masked person wearing stacked sombreros that surfaced at The Coppini Academy of Fine Arts in 2016. "Fiesta medals are such a rich part of San Antonio culture now," Sean Knoll, who found the artifact, told mySA.com. "Anyone can individually make their mark on Fiesta to be able to see the very first one is very special." RELATED: 21 things to know about Fiesta medals for rookies and vets alike Now Playing: 'Floats dazzle in floral fete, San Antonio - Colorful array of entries competes in annual Battle of Flowers parade' These clips from Pathe Newsreel ran in theaters around the world in 1930. Video: San Antonio Express-News Knoll was working at the academy transferring artifacts of Italian-born, world-renowned sculptor Pompeo Coppini into digital files when he was "totally" taken aback by the discovery. "It was a holy grail moment, being born and raised in San Antonio," Knoll said. The medal was found the bottom of a box along with Coppini's Order of the Cross medal that the sculptor received upon being knighted by the king of Italy in 1931 for his artistic contributions to the U.S. San Antonio Express-News The Institute of Texan Cultures, which has displayed King Antonio medals from the 1920s, called the Coppini Academy's new discovery "genuine." Coppini was a leader of the Knights of Omala (Alamo spelled backward,) a group consisting of "up-and-coming-men of San Antonio," according to San Antonio Express-News archives. Also known as the "Phunny Phellows," Coppini and his organization were instrumental in the early years of Fiesta, which was established in 1891 and then known as the San Antonio Spring Carnival. The medal was created during the group's inaugural year. They hosted their own events throughout their 1905 to 1911 run including the Knights of Omala Grand Spectacular Torchlight Parade, described as a "blazing spectacle of electric lights and fire," by Laura Hernandez-Ehrisman said in "Inventing the Fiesta City. Back then, the carnival was "the parade of parades," which observed more than one a day. The itinerary included the Battle of Flowers, Mystic Order of Shriners, Civic and Trade and Illuminated Automobile parades. The Phunny Phellows often dressed in masquerade costumes and carnival masks for the festival, which may be what the profile on the 1905 medal depicts. RELATED: The jaw-dropping gowns of the Coronation Court Fiesta medals were called "badges" during their inception years. They were originally distributed at Knights of Omala meetings, then mailed to members who had paid "subscriptions." By 1907, the badges were sold to the general public, according to San Antonio Express-News archives. "It is expected that hundreds of San Antonians will be wearing them," says the Express, March 1, 1908. If only they could see us now. MEDAL MANIA: Photos show 450 Fiesta medals sent to the Express-News Coppini went on carve his mark into the cityscapes of the San Antonio and other U.S. cities with 36 public monuments, like the 60-foot-tall granite Alamo Cenotaph titled "Spirit of Sacrifice." He created the frieze which adorns the entrance of the San Antonio Express-News building as well as the bronze front doors of the Scottish Rite Cathedral. The Coppini Academy, a non-profit which operates out of the artist's old studio, is in the process of finding a way to share the piece of Fiesta history with the city, Coppini President Charlotte Cox told mySA.com. The Fiesta Commission was not immediately available to comment on the discovery. Staff writer Paula Allen contributed to this report. mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The FBI descended on a host of city and county government buildings Wednesday, executing search warrants as part of a public corruption probe that one councilman said has cast a dark cloud over Laredo and Webb County. It is embarrassing, but we welcome this investigation, said Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz at a news conference held at the Webb County Courthouse. The investigation appears to focus on Dannenbaum Engineering, a firm with offices in several Texas cities that has taken on high-profile contracts in Laredo. The buildings searched included Laredo City Hall, the City Hall Annex, the City Public Works Department, the offices of Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales, the Webb County Auditors Office, Webb County Engineering Office and the offices of Dannenbaum Engineering in Laredo, San Antonio, Houston and McAllen. The front door to the Dannenbaum Engineering office on McPherson Road in Laredo had been removed by the FBI. Obviously theres issues, possibly, with the entire structure of the city, since the FBI is investigating various departments, Saenz said. Webb County and the city have had some history, frankly. READ MORE: FBI, DPS raid several city, county government buildings in Laredo FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee confirmed that agents were present at the offices of Dannenbaum Engineering in Laredo and in San Antonio, as well as the City of Laredo offices. She also confirmed that Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales office was the only commissioners office where agents were present. Lee said she was sharing the information so the public would know what areas are being affected by the FBIs presence, but couldnt discuss the investigation. No one has been arrested, she said. While we cant discuss the nature of the work we are doing, there is no public safety threat at the locations where we are present, Lee wrote in an email. The public buildings in the Laredo area were not being evacuated as some concerned citizens may have reported; rather, employees working in certain areas were asked to leave. Canales could not be reached for comment, but issued a brief statement in the evening saying he would cooperate with an investigation if necessary. We have limited information at this time, he said. Standing outside the Courthouse on Wednesday morning, Webb County Commissioner John Galo said the raids did not surprise him. Corruption in Webb County has been going on for too long, he said. Galo said the FBI is just collecting information right now, and does not believe any arrests will occur anytime soon. Things will be in limbo for quite some time Im sure, he said. Neither Saenz nor Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina said they knew what this investigation was about, and both said they would be complying fully with the FBI. We, together, are going to be for justice, transparency and truth, Tijerina said at the news conference. This investigation cast a dark cloud over the city and county, and called into question the integrity of public officials, District IV Councilman Alberto Torres said. Obviously everything is speculation right now. We do not know what has occurred. But if you ask me, if you see an FBI trailer taking documents from a government building, speculation tells you that it is probably a public corruption sting, Torres said. In an emailed statement, Dannenbaum Engineerings Houston lawyer Joel Androphy said: Dannenbaum Engineering, one of the states premier firms for infrastructure planning and design, is cooperating with federal authorities regarding government requests for information. Company management is investigating the basis of the government requests. We are uncertain whether the inquiry is focused on the companys activities or those of its business competitors. We intend to comment further when appropriate. MORE FROM LMT: Laredo Congressman Henry Cuellar named in top 10 of new capital ranking Blasita Lopez, acting City of Laredo spokeswoman, said City Manager Jesus Olivares, who took a flight to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning, decided to close the three city buildings in addition to the citys Utilities Department. She said that at city hall, the FBI asked employees to step away from their work stations when they entered the building around 9 a.m. Some employees stayed in the building while others were sent home, Lopez said. Saenz said there has been no disruption of city services, but people with business at City Hall may need to wait a day or two. City Hall as we speak is basically not accessible, Saenz said Wednesday. Olivares told Laredo Morning Times that city staffers will cooperate and provide any information that the FBI requests. Dannenbaum contracts In August 2013, Webb County commissioners voted to award Dannenbaum Engineering a $2.4 million contract for the Loop 20 Stimulus Extension Project from east of International Boulevard to U.S. 59. That project is still under construction. Commissioners also approved an advanced funding agreement resolution between the Texas Department of Transportation and Webb County for a maximum amount of $3.5 million. Anything having to do with Loop 20 Dannenbaum is our consultants, Tijerina said at the news conference. In December 2014, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz contested a $1 million-plus contract that City Council awarded to Dannenbaum Engineering. He said the city selected the firm without posting a request for others to submit their proposals for the design of a 24-inch water line from El Pico/Mines Road connection to Hachar Loop northern boundary line. Saenz tried exercising his veto power to rescind the prior City Council action to award the contract to Dannenbaum. But a majority of council members voted to overrule his veto. Council members agreed, however, to direct the internal auditor to prepare a report concerning contracts awarded to engineering/architectural firms over the past five years. The Hachar-Reuthinger Road project involves both the city and county, and is meant to connect Mines Road to I-35. It has not yet begun construction. In an interview this month, City Manager Jesus Olivares said this road would open up 6,000 acres of land for warehousing, commercial and residential development. At the news conference, Saenz and Tijerina confirmed that each entity is working with Dannenbaum on this project. LMT staff writer Andrea Castaneda and San Antonio Express-News staff writer Jason Buch contributed to this report. Ukraine is still on the agenda of the U.S. administration, U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tina Kaidanow has said. Ukraine has been and remains the priority on the U.S. administration's agenda, Kaidanow said at a meeting with First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko, the Foreign Ministry's press service said on Thursday. The two officials also discussed the prospects for bilateral policy, in particular in the field of U.S. military assistance. Kaidanow noted the importance of the continuation of the reform in Ukraine and underscored the unchanging solid support of the United States for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A drive-by shooting Monday caused property damage in the Santa Rita neighborhood, according to Laredo police. Authorities responded to shots fired at about 2:45 p.m. in the 1000 block of Lope De Vega Drive. A woman stated that a vehicle passed by her house. Then, someone fired several shots at her blue Dodge Charger, according to police. READ MORE: Roosters, marijuana found among Nuevo Laredo prison contraband There was one bullet impact in the back right rim of the vehicle, authorities said. She described the suspect vehicle as a black BMW with a cracked back window, according to police. To provide information on the case, call police at 956-795-2800 or Laredo Crime Stoppers at 727-TIPS (8477). Click through the gallery above to see the changes to Texas gun laws. A substance used to tranquilize elephants that is 100 times more potent than the drug that killed Prince is presenting a new and difficult challenge in the nationwide opioid epidemic. The exotic and toxic sedative named carfentanil has been linked in recent weeks to fatal overdoses in Illinois, Colorado, Wisconsin and Minnesota. "We have never seen death like we do now," said Tom Synan, head of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition in Ohio, which was among the first spots to discover a string of carfentanil deaths during a week in which the county's overdoses more than doubled. CARTEL LAND: DEA maps show where Mexican drug cartels hold sway in the US On Monday, a Virginia man pleaded guilty in a drug distribution case after selling $100 of carfentanil-laced heroin to a 21-year-old found dead by her mother on the bathroom floor of their Fairfax County home. Three cases in Anne Arundel and Frederick counties this month mark the first carfentanil-related fatalities in Maryland, alarming local health and law enforcement officials already in a state of emergency combating the opioid crisis. The difficult-to-detect substance is so powerful that an amount equivalent to a few grains of salt can be deadly. It requires more aggressive treatment than a typical opiate overdose to reverse. First responders are getting burned out answering back-to-back overdose calls rising because of carfentanil and other synthetic opioids, and they worry about falling ill after exposure while answering calls. MUGSHOTS: Alleged meth use has changed Oregon man's face over 14 years The drug is so new that some medical examiners don't have the tools to detect it in autopsies. "It shows how callous these drug dealers are," Synan said. "It has no human use whatsoever, and they're putting it out on the street and wreaking havoc." Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati and nearly 50 law enforcement agencies, experienced an average of 50 to 70 reported overdoses a week in early 2016 and four or five deaths, Synan said. One month after law enforcement learned carfentanil had hit the county, overdoses skyrocketed, with about 175 to 200 calls in a single week in August. Four of those users died. Often, people don't know drugs they've purchased have been laced with an elephant sedative that is 10,000 times as powerful as morphine, leaving their families devastated. "I'm desperate to get some stuff but I don't know anyone that I could buy from," 21-year-old Kristina Lutz texted a drug dealer Aug. 29, according to Fairfax County court documents. "Any chance you'd be able to help me out haha." Hours later, Lutz stuck a needle in her arm with carfentanil-laced heroin and died at her family's home in Fairfax Station. Her parents described Lutz as suffering from anxiety and depression while growing up, but they said she seemed happy recently and was looking forward to running in a race. Her parents said she'd had a recent setback when her boss at a dog-boarding and day-care site died of cancer. "We tried to bring her to a safe environment and give her a good life," said Kristina's father, Jeffrey Lutz, who with his wife adopted their daughter from a Russian orphanage when she was 16 months old. "Ultimately, because of the evils of these deadly drugs and somebody willing to sell it to her, we couldn't keep her safe." Melvin Patterson, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said that carfentanil cases emerged in the early 2000s, but a U.S. resurgence started in mid-2016. In quick succession, spikes ravaged communities in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and New Hampshire, prompting the agency to issue a warning in September about the "crazy dangerous" drug. In its intended use, a little carfentanil goes a long way. All of the zookeepers and vets in the United States combined need only about 18 grams of carfentanil a year, about the weight of 18 artificial sweetener packets, Patterson said. "If they don't need very much of it to use on an annual basis to tranquilize big, large animals, then we humans don't stand up at all," Patterson said. It's unclear why there has been a recent resurgence in the drug, but typically, "everything is about money," Patterson said. A small amount of carfentanil can infuse mass quantities of heroin, increasing profits. About two milligrams of fentanyl - about what comes out with a single jiggle of a salt shaker - is considered lethal. Carfentanil is 100 times as strong. Carfentanil and fentanyl, the substance found in music legend Prince's body when he died last year, has been manufactured mostly in China, Patterson said. But DEA officials hope a recent production ban in China will curb its prevalence. "Some people are looking for it because it is a higher high," said Lt. Ryan Frashure, a police spokesman for Anne Arundel, where fatal carfentanil overdoses occurred April 1 and April 12. "And then you have those who don't know and take their normal dose and end up overdosing from their normal amount." The resurgence of the drug challenges first responders. Because the drug can be absorbed through the skin, police and lab workers need to take strict precautions against exposure, even from a puff escaping a bag being resealed, said Scott Maye, the chemistry program manager for the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. "Dogs can get a whiff of it, and it can be fatal," Maye said, adding that lab workers are offered masks and gloves and that testing equipment is stored in locked safes. Many police departments have stopped testing for heroin at crime scenes because the possible presence of carfentanil makes it too risky. The volume of carfentanil and fentanyl overdose calls is also overwhelming police and first responders, who are being diverted from other calls. "We on the front lines are struggling every day to keep people alive," said Synan, president of the Hamilton County Association of Chiefs of Police. In most cases, it can take months before authorities discover someone died of carfentanil. Carfentanil is next to impossible to detect in toxicology tests, making it hard for authorities to identify quickly changing formulas and warn the public, said Rosie Hobron, Virginia's forensic epidemiologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. "It puts us behind a curve," Hobron said. Because of its stealthy nature, she said, Virginia technically has no confirmed carfentanil deaths. In Lutz's case, the drugs in her bathroom tested positive for the animal tranquilizer, something her family didn't learn until eight months later. To fight the spread of carfentanil, police have been cracking down on drug dealers. Last week, a judge sentenced an Ohio man to 18 years in federal prison for selling drugs that led to 26 carfentanil overdoses last year, prosecutors said. On Monday, the man who sold Lutz the drugs that killed her was convicted. Lisa Lutz said she will never forget finding her daughter on the floor of her bathroom, not far from her bedroom, carefully decorated with photographs and a whiteboard marked with reminders for the future: Be positive; spend more time with family. She struggled in school but rode horses and worked at the kennel. She was hoping for a career involving animals, possibly at a therapeutic riding center where she had volunteered. Now her family is trying to figure out their own future. Lutz's parents think their daughter turned to drugs to treat depression and other mental-health issues and want to speak out against the drug scourge. "She decided she was going to treat herself, treat the depression, and reached out to this guy," Lisa Lutz said. "If he hadn't been there willing and able to sell this deadly drug to someone who was emotionally frail at the time, I'm convinced she would be with us today." --- The Washington Post's Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report. Company of 'The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret' looking for stage to perform in Kyiv KYIV. April 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) Actors and authors of "The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret" play are looking for a stage to host their performance in Kyiv, as the Bel'etage concert club refused to give its premises to the performers on April 28, the company manager and the play composer, Dmytro Saratsky (Ukraine), has said. "I met with the administration of Bel'etage and was told that they received a call. They do not say from whom. They were told by phone that they were banned from hosting this event... we were denied the stage. We cannot perform at Bel'etage," Saratsky said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine in Kyiv on Thursday. He also said that he met with representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who told him that they were not against the performance, "but someone was purring pressure on the administration." According to Saratsky, the actors are ready to play tomorrow at any venue which would have them. "It turns out that in our country several phone calls from some agencies, which do not announce themselves, are enough to disrupt a creative performance, to prevent people from communicating with their audience... We brought an important cultural project. This is a complicated work. And then we get a disgusting reaction - we are not allowed to perform the play," he said. According to the author of the play Jonathan Garfinkel (Canada), this play was shown in many countries and had positive reviews. Media earlier reported that the appearance of a theatre signboard with the abbreviated title "A Holocaust Cabaret" on the facade of the Bel'etage concert hall opposite the central synagogue in Kyiv outraged chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine Moshe Reuven Azman. During the press conference, director of the play Ilya Moshchitsky (Russia) apologized for this incident stressing that it has been exhausted. According to him, his creative team has nothing to do with this signboard. BERLIN -- Police on Wednesday arrested a German army officer suspected of posing as a Syrian refugee to carry out an attack that would be blamed on migrants. According to the Frankfurt prosecutors in charge of the investigation, the 28-year-old, whose name wasn't revealed in accordance with local customs, lived an incredible double life: He registered as a Syrian refugee under a false name at the end of 2015 and subsequently claimed asylum in Bavaria, where he was assigned a place in a refugee shelter and even received benefits. Austrian authorities had temporarily detained him earlier this year when he attempted to retrieve a loaded gun he had hidden in a restroom at Vienna airport in January. The suspect, who held the rank of a lieutenant colonel, was stationed in France, but he was arrested while undergoing training in southern Germany. He now faces charges of plotting a terrorist attack, fraud and violation of gun laws. A suspected accomplice was also detained following a series of raids in Germany, France and Austria. Police found a variety of weapons and explosives at the 24-year-old student's house. Nadja Niesen, spokeswoman of the Frankfurt prosecutor's office, told reporters that the 28-year-old army officer was of German origin and did not appear to have any Arabic language skills. "Why this went unnoticed, I'm unable to say," Niesen said, calling the case "curious". It was also unclear how much time the man actually spent in the refugee home. "Just because he was stationed in France, it does not mean that he was there every day. He could move freely in his spare time," a spokeswoman of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office told the DPA news service. A defense ministry spokesman told The Washington Post that he was aware of the incident, but declined to comment further, citing the prosecutor's ongoing investigation. According to Niesen, the two suspects exchanged phone messages revealing "a xenophobic attitude." This, in combination with the main suspect's assumed identity as a refugee and the discovery of the weapons, led investigators to the assumption that the two men might have plotted an attack to fuel public resentment against asylum seekers. Authorities were not aware, however, of any concrete targets at this point, the spokeswoman added. The bizarre incident comes amid increasing concerns about potential security risks posed by the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrived in Germany since 2015, following a string of terrorist attacks. In December last year, for example, a Tunisian man, whose asylum request had been rejected, plowed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, leaving 12 people dead. On Thursday, the German parliament debated a series of new legislative measures designed to counter the threat posed by international terror, including the possibility of keeping extremists in check after their release from prison by fitting them with electronic ankle bracelets. The arrest also sheds a spotlight on the chaotic situation in autumn 2015, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel temporarily opened the door for refugees, which, critics say, in many cases led to insufficient vetting of the new arrivals. "In over half of American households, the single largest expense is child care, even exceeding the cost of housing."- Ivanka Trump, assistant to the president, in Berlin, April 25, 2017 --- Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, has said she wants to help craft a solution to a vexing problem for American families: the soaring cost of child care. In a forum in Berlin, speaking without notes, she made an interesting observation - that in "over half" of American households, the cost of child care exceeded the cost of housing. Is this the case? --- The problem with a sweeping statement such as this is that there are many types of households with children. Younger children, who (if a parent is working) often need a babysitter, day-care center, preschool or other option, will require more care than children who spend most of the day in school. Wealthier Americans are better able to handle the cost of child care, whereas it often is a burden for poorer families. Moreover, the data does not include families in which one spouse simply stops working because child care has become too expensive. Those families would be recorded as having little or no child-care expenses, even though this option came at the cost of one person's salary. A 2015 Washington Post poll found that more than three-quarters of mothers and half of fathers in the United States say they've passed up work opportunities, switched jobs or quit to tend to their kids. The Center for American Progress created a nifty calculator to show what the long-term impact is of such a decision. "We know a lot of families opt out of child care due to cost, either by also opting out of work (it just doesn't pay to work), using split-shift parenting schedules, relying on kin care, and using less than ideal care either in terms of quality or hours," said Beth Mattingly, director of research on vulnerable families at the University of New Hampshire. So, when viewed only through the prism of aggregate data, it is hard to see much support for Trump's comment. But an examination of the 2015 consumer expenditure survey, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, finds that the costs of child care greatly increase when children are under age 6. The BLS survey lists child care under the heading of "personal services," of which about 92 percent are babysitting, day-care centers, preschools and the like. For married couples with children under age 6, the mean cost is $4,101, 10 times the average for all households. The mean cost drops to $972 when the oldest child is between 6 and 17. Even so, mean housing costs for families with children under age 6 are $27,153 - much higher than child-care costs. But the portion of family income devoted to child care begins to climb when you drill down and look at costs for families with two children or families who have lower incomes - or families in particular regions. Some of the most detailed work has been done by Child Aware of America, which assists families seeking help with child care. According to Child Aware's analysis of BLS data, the average annual day-care costs for two children is higher than the annual rate of rental costs in every state in the United States and the District of Columbia. It is also higher than annualized mortgage costs in 35 states and the District of Columbia. Jessica Tercha, a researcher at the organization, noted the group uses the average cost of child care by state. "High-quality programs could conceivably be much higher in cost than the state averages," she said. The group also looked at regional differences. In both the Midwest and the Northeast, the child-care costs for two children exceed the cost of housing - and it comes pretty close in the West and the South. As we noted, this data does not reflect families in which one caregiver stopped work or cut back on hours to care for a child. The Pew Research Center found that there has been a rise in stay-at-home mothers in recent years. Another survey, by the New America Foundation, found that the average cost of full-time care in child-care centers for all children ages 0-4 in the United States is $9,589 a year, higher than the average cost of in-state college tuition ($9,410). And a poll from National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health "found that nearly one-third of parents who have a fee for child care say the cost has caused a financial problem for their household - and of those, more than 70 percent said it is a somewhat or very serious problem." The University of New Hampshire, using a different data set than Child Aware, has separated out the impact on poorer families. About 1 in 4 families with young children are burdened by the cost of child care, spending more than 10 percent of family income on child care, according to a 2016 report. On average, poor families spend 19.8 percent of their income on child care - more than double the national average, the report said. - Update: A White House official said that Trump meant to refer to the child care costs for poor Americans, specifically a Census Bureau finding issued in 2013 that poorer families making less than $1,500 a month paid nearly 40 percent of their income for child care. The official also cited a 2015 report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that in 500 of 618 select areas around the country, childcare costs exceed rent. The report relies on EPI's family budget calculator, which measures the income families need in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. "Child care costs are particularly high for younger children," the report said. "In 33 states and the District of Columbia, infant care costs exceed the average cost of in-state college tuition at public 4-year institutions." --- Trump has highlighted a serious issue - that the high cost of child care is increasingly a burden on American families. In households with two or more children, the cost of day care exceeds the cost of housing in many states. The problem is especially acute for low-income families. The data also does not reflect the impact of parents leaving the workforce because the cost of child care is prohibitive. As we suspected, Trump slightly flubbed her talking point, as she would have been on more solid ground if she had focused on low-income households or families with small children, not all households. We don't play gotcha here at the Fact Checker, so we will leave this without a rating. New Zealanders love to show off their beautiful country to foreign visitors; sharing it with them permanently is another matter. An unprecedented influx of immigrants is exacerbating a housing shortage and stretching infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, sparking heated political debate around the issue ahead of this year's general election. "Now, more than ever, we need to pause and rethink our current settings," said Andrew Little, leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition, who noted that half of the new arrivals decide to live in Auckland. "We can't continue to bring so many people into our biggest city, which is already suffering from traffic congestion, overcrowded schools and soaring house prices." Migration statistics continue to defy forecasts of a slowdown, having climbed continuously over the past four years. A record 129,518 people moved to New Zealand in the year through March. That coincided with the lowest number of Kiwis relocating abroad in more than 30 years, resulting in a record 71,932 net gain. New Zealand's strong economy and isolation make it an increasingly attractive place to live amid the global uncertainties caused by terrorism, Brexit and Donald Trump's U.S. presidency. ASB Bank economists expect immigration levels to remain elevated for some time to come, putting New Zealand's population on track to reach 5 million in 2019, from 4.7 million today. Now Playing: Here is a list of some countries you may consider moving to. Elizabeth Keatinge has more. Video: Buzz 60 While opposition parties are trying to exploit concerns about the impact of population growth ahead of the Sept. 23 election, the government says immigrants fill vacancies in key industries and help to fuel economic growth. Still, this month it announced plans to tighten access to visas for unskilled workers, which it said are aimed at "managing the number and improving the quality of migrants coming to New Zealand." Immigrants arriving on work visas rose 13 percent, to 43,725, in the year through March, Statistics New Zealand said on Wednesday. Arrivals with a residence visa increased 14 percent, while those on a student visa fell by the same amount. Newcomers from the U.K. increased 12 percent, to 14,999, while those from China rose 5.4 percent, to 12,358. Indian arrivals tumbled after a 38 percent slump in those coming on student visas. While Australia was the biggest source of immigrants, at 25,557 people, almost two-thirds of them were New Zealand citizens returning home. A characteristic of the immigration cycle since 2012 has been the decline in New Zealand citizens leaving the country to seek jobs or better pay abroad, often in Australia, and more Kiwis coming back as mining and construction work became more scarce across the Tasman Sea.In the year through March, departures of citizens exceeded arrivals by just 1,341 - the smallest annual total since 1984. New Zealand's economy is among the fastest-growing in the developed world, with an annual expansion of about 3 percent over the past several years. "Because of our relatively unique positive outlook, people just keep turning up and Kiwis keep staying home," Prime Minister Bill English said last month. "Our real challenge is responding to that growth and investing to support it, so that people can have the quality of life here that they come for." On May 6, at the 143rd Kentucky Derby, 20 thoroughbred horses will gallop along a 1.25-mile stretch. Even the slowest racer should cross the finish line in about two minutes. The thoroughbreds are not only quicker than ancient wild horses, they are also remarkably different from the domesticated animals that nomads rode across the Asian steppe just 2,300 years ago. At some point in the past two millennia - peanuts on an evolutionary time scale - humans transformed their horses into equine speed demons. Selective breeding had a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutations plagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes of all the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses. Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. Horse domestication began about 5,500 years ago. Ancient equestrians "were not interested in superfast animals. They were more interested in diversity and potential," said Ludovic Orlando, a professor of molecular archaeology at the University of Copenhagen's Natural History Museum of Denmark and an author of the new study. Orlando and his colleagues sequenced the genomes of 14 ancient horses: one 4,100-year-old mare and 13 stallions, which dated back 2,700 to 2,300 years. The stallions, ridden by the nomadic Scythians, had genes linked to an array of coat colors and traits associated with endurance or sprinting, as well as many diverse Y chromosomes. Orlando and his colleagues chose to sequence Scythian stallions for several reasons: The animals lived about halfway through the 5,500-year timeline of horse domestication. The horses also offered a ready supply of genetic material. To honor their royalty, Scythians sacrificed animals from many different tribes and buried the remains in underground chambers in what is now Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's permafrost kept ancient DNA fresh. "It's like we had a natural freezer waiting for us for 2,300 years," Orlando said. In places, the scientists dug up not just tooth and bone material but hairs. Some horse skulls still wore the decorations their owners had created millennia ago. Scythians had a reputation as bloodthirsty warriors - literally. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the "Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle" out of a cup made from a human skull. But skull mugs or no, they were excellent horsemen. "They mastered the horse like no others before them," Orlando said. (The Scythians probably also drank horse milk. DNA analysis of the frozen stallions suggested that the Scythians bred some horses for enlarged mammary glands.) Some, but not all, of their horses carried genetic variants seen in today's sprinting horses. A single gene mutation can dictate a horse's gait - how motor neurons connect to muscle tissues allows an animal to amble. Ambling gaits have a four-step pattern, bringing the legs of the same side together for a smoother ride. The scientists could test whether Scythians cared about breeding for a more comfortable ride: The nomads did not. Among the sacrificed were horses with bay, spotted, chestnut, black and cream-colored coats. The variety of coat colors - still found in Kazakhstan today - supported what is known as the neural crest hypothesis, Orlando said. As a rule, domesticated mammals develop coats of varied colors and floppy ears; this is sometimes called the "domestication syndrome." In Russia, for instance, a decades-long experiment to tame the fox has produced animals with droopy ears and shorter, curlier tails. Biologists proposed that a pool of cells called the neural crest, which pops up in animal embryos and turns into tissues like skin and ear cartilage, might explain why different species grow similar traits. DNA from the Scythian horses was some of the "first empirical evidence that supports the neural crest hypothesis," Orlando sad. What's more, for the first 3,000 years of domestication, horse breeders were able to keep unhelpful mutations at bay. Modern horses have several "nasty mutations," Orlando said, that make some animals prone to seizures or wounds that won't heal, for instance. But something happened to horses on the way from the Kazakh steppe to Churchill Downs: Somehow, breeders swept away horse genetic diversity. Orlando is trying to figure out why. He offered three likely scenarios for when hyperselective breeding eliminated diversity from the gene pool in the quest for specialized traits. Perhaps it was the fault of the Roman Empire and its horses. Or perhaps horse breeders in the Middle Ages were highly selective. Or maybe the rise of the modern racehorse in 18th-century Britain did the horse genome in. Orlando is more interested in history than in rewinding the harmful effects of domestication, which he said would be a fruitless effort. "We cannot give lessons to modern breeders," Orlando said. "It's not like they have a different population to choose from." And yet the history of horses is no idle thing. It is our history, Orlando argues. "I believe horses are the most important domesticated animal in history," he said. "Without horses, the history of warfare would be different, and therefore the history of humanity." He cited cavalry, chariots and accomplished equestrians like Alexander the Great who became ancient leaders. Chickens kept us fed, and dogs kept us company. Horses, though, allowed humans to travel faster and farther, not only spreading our descendants to other lands, but our ideas and cultures, too. In a highly unusual move, the Conroe City Council's planned workshop and meeting were postponed this week because of a lack of a quorum, according to the mayor. During the scheduled workshop and meeting, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday respectively, the council was set to consider an ordinance that would ban smoking in bars, among other matters. However, late Tuesday, city officials announced they were pushing back both the workshop and meeting until 9 a.m. Monday. It's the first time in at least a decade the City Council has canceled its meeting. "This is very unusual, but Councilman (Seth) Gibson and I are out of the country in support of our industrial park, that only leaves four councilmen there to handle the meeting and have a quorum," Mayor Toby Powell told The Courier in an email from Germany. Councilman Guy Martin also would have been absent for scheduled medical tests, Powell said. That left only three council members -- Duke Coon, Duane Ham and Gil Snider -- available for the meetings. Texas state law requires that a quorum be present for council meetings. Conroe is under the mayor-council form of government, where the council members have a vote and the mayor only casts a vote in the case of a tie. The city charter states that two-thirds of the qualified members of the council constitute a quorum to do business. Powell and Councilman Seth Gibson are in Germany this week, where Powell says they're meeting with officials of companies with operations in Conroe Industrial Park, near the airport, in the hopes of getting those companies to expand in the park. They're also seeking to get more companies to move their facilities to Conroe. When council members do meet in their workshop on Monday, they'll consider an ordinance that would ban smoking in bars. The matter -- coming up for the second time in less than a decade -- comes up again at the request of Councilman Duane Ham. The proposal seeks to ban smoking in bars, while making it a misdemeanor violation, along with a $500 fine, for those who do light up. Powell notes that the ban was reversed several years ago so that bars that do not serve food could allow smoking in their establishments. "This could pose a serious problem for the bar as it seems that drinking, smoking and music seems to always go together," Powell stated via email. "There are a small number of establishments that allow this. They let customers know that it's allowed then they can make up their own minds if they want to go in or not." Although there is no Texas law that bans smoking in bars, there are a number of cities across the state -- including Houston -- that prohibit smoking in drinking establishments. In another matter set to be brought up when the council meets Monday, members will discuss making changes in ordinances that regulate the posting of signs in the city. Council members will consider new rules governing temporary signs, temporary banners and other "attention-getting" devices. Last month, council members, noting the increase in the number of signs and the size of those signs throughout Conroe, had discussed making changes that would implement tougher regulations on signage. During that workshop, council members said they would seek input from homebuilders and developers before moving ahead with any possible changes. Also set for discussion, council members will consider a resolution that would oppose any changes in annexation laws. The discussion comes after the Willis City Council last week unanimously passed a resolution to oppose Senate Bill 715 and House Bills 299, 424 and 2272 -- a package of bills that backers say would give residents in unincorporated areas a voice by requiring an election or petition to annex. Switzerland Pushes Cannabis Legalization And Taxation Switzerland is taking another chance to legalize cannabis this year. This will be the country's second try in the last 10 years to push for the drug to be legalized and taxed. The new proposal states that both cannabis production and consumption should be legalized and and its sales regulated by the Swiss government. Currently, a petition is being passed around by the pro-cannabis group Legalize It, which still needs about 100,000 signatures. Cannabis is still very much illegal in Switzerland. But a law passed in 2013 says that adults that will be caught with 10 grams or less will only be fined and will not be undergoing criminal proceedings. Figures were quoted by the statistics office in Tages Anzeiger, showing that as much as 19,000 were fined in 2016 and around 4,286 were given out in Zurich. At least 500,000 people are estimated to smoke weed occasionally in Switzerland, according to statistics. Advertisement Back in 2008, a previous referendum with a similar initiative was proposed but was unsuccessful. The proposal recommended for cannabis to be made legal, but not taxed by the government. It is also worth noting that this new plan specifies that cannabis will remain illegal for those underage, whereas the previous one did not. "The ban on cannabis is wrong from a social perspective, wrong from a legal point of view and simply stupid from an economic point of view," Legalize It group member Nine Forrer told Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger in an interview. It was also stated by the pro-cannabis group that this proposal might be the solution to the government's plight with the drug black market. They argued that the legalization of the cultivation of the plant will produce money for the country, instead of criminal organizations. Aside from this, four Swiss cities are also currently awaiting government approval to trial state-certified production of cannabis. Advertisement Advertisement Like us and Follow us Follow @Koreaportal and 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. PARIS -- Once again, allegations of Holocaust denial have landed on the doorstep of France's far-right National Front. When Marine Le Pen stepped down on Tuesday as the head of France's far-right extremist party - in what analysts described as a calculated move to broaden her appeal before the final round of France's presidential election - she ultimately left the party under the control of Jean-Francois Jalkh, now serving as its interim president. But Jalkh has something of a past. In a string of on-the-record remarks he made in 2000, he was recorded on tape saying that it was "impossible" that the Nazis used Zyklon B., the infamous poison gas selected to murder millions of Jews and others in concentration camps during World War II. "Me, I consider that from a technical point of view it's impossible, I say impossible to use it in . . . mass exterminations," he said in the interview, a transcript of which was first unearthed by a journalist with France's La Croix newspaper on Wednesday. "Why?" Jalkh asked. "Because it takes several days before decontaminating a room . . . where Zyklon B. was used." According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Nazis judged Zyklon B pellets - which became lethal when exposed to air - as the fastest and most efficient means of mass murder. At Auschwitz, for instance, the substance was used to gas as many as 6,000 Jews each day. Jalkh made these remarks in April 2000, during an interview he granted to Magali Boumaza, a political scientist who wrote a thesis on the history of the National Front and who is now a professor at a university in Istanbul. On Thursday, however, Jalkh denied making the comments. "It's the first time I've heard that kind of [b-------], I have no memory of it," he told Le Monde newspaper. "Maybe I gave an interview, but these are not my favorite subjects." "It's possible that I saw these people on April 14, 2000," he said, "but the students who come to talk about Zyklon B - I see them coming." Boumaza did not respond to a request for comment. But she confirmed to BuzzFeed France on Thursday that she had recorded the meeting, which lasted three hours. "This revisionist digression," she told BuzzFeed, "lasted two or three minutes at the most. The words were translated as they were." The National Front did not respond to request for comment on Thursday. Despite Le Pen's painstaking attempt to "de-demonize" the party her father helped found, the National Front continues to struggle fighting off an association with anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, the largest skeleton in a considerably cavernous closet. It was the infamous remark of Jean-Marie Le Pen, 88 - that the Nazi gas chambers were a "detail" of history - that landed the National Front in the political wilderness for decades. Despite being convicted by a German court in 1999 for denying the Holocaust, the senior Le Pen continued to make controversial and anti-Semitic statements. But after he proceeded to repeat the "detail" remark, Marine Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015, as the party tried to regain legitimacy. But early last month, another local party official in the south of France was caught on camera speaking even more explicitly. "There weren't 6 million," he said, referring to the estimated number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. "There weren't mass murders as it's been said." Later in the month, Marine Le Pen herself - who has made an attempt to reach out to Jewish groups in recent years to burnish the party's image - declared on national television that France's wartime complicity with Nazi Germany was somehow not the fault of the French. For Le Pen, the Paris roundup of 13,000 Jews in July 1942 - carried out by French police - was "not France." "I think that in general, more generally, if there were those responsible, it was those who were in power at the time," she said. Le Pen will face off against the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron in the final round of the French presidential election on May 7. Schenectady County issued a boil water order on Thursday for Rotterdam excluding Rotterdam Junction. Before drinking water, boil it for one minute, and let it cool before using, or use bottled water certified for sale by the state Department of Health. Boiled or bottled water should be used for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes and preparing food until further notice. Boiling kills most bacteria and other organisms in the water. Residents will be informed when tests confirm that no harmful bacteria are in the system and water no longer needs to be boiled. For updates, visit the Schenectady County website at www.schenectadycounty.com and facebook page at www.facebook.com/SchenectadyCounty. WASHINGTON - The specter of Russian tampering with the 2016 elections continues to hang over Congress and President Donald Trump, even during such a consequential week as this one. The focus as Congress returned from a two-week recess was supposed to rest on meeting a Friday deadline to keep the federal government funded through the remainder of fiscal 2017. That grew more complicated as a dispute emerged about the amount, and type, of border-security funding to include in a spending bill - and more complicated still after Trump announced that he would lay out on Wednesday what he wants in a broad overhaul of the tax code. Add to all that the House conservatives' latest maneuvering to make progress on the still-lingering bid to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But by early Tuesday, cameras and congressional reporters were assembled in a now-familiar spot in the lower levels of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center: outside the secure location where the House conducts its most secretive work. Emerging from that room, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Oversight Committee declared that Trump's first pick for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, probably had violated the law by not disclosing foreign income for a speaking engagement in Russia and lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey before he briefly joined the administration. The bipartisan nature of the conclusion from two lawmakers, Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., whose public sparring previously had been seen as its own Capitol Hill specialty, may have been bigger news than the crimes they accused Flynn of committing. It's also bad news for Trump, who can't seem to shake the accusations that he is suspiciously cozy with Russia. Then, across the Capitol, the Senate finally confirmed a new deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 94 to 6. Rosenstein's main duties will be day-to-day oversight of the Justice Department, but his highest profile assignment will be making the final calls on everything related to the counterintelligence investigation of Russian tampering in U.S. politics and any potential ties to the Trump campaign. That's because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of Trump's most prominent supporters in last year's campaign, recused himself from any decision-making role in inquiries related to the 2016 election. The only objectors were six liberals, several of whom are thought to be eyeing the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, who wanted Rosenstein to declare in his confirmation hearings that he would appoint a special prosecutor independent of the Justice Department. Despite that concern, the overwhelming majority of senators think Rosenstein's background as a U.S. attorney for Maryland - first appointed by the Republican George W. Bush White House and then endorsed by the Democratic Obama White House - will make him a perfect fit to shepherd this investigation to its proper conclusion. "He is a straight shooter," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. "He, as you say, is a prosecutor's prosecutor, goes by the book. So, we'll see, that's the way he's conducted himself up to this point. That's what he's done in Maryland, and I hope that is what he'll do as deputy attorney general." Van Hollen expressed reservations about entrusting the investigation to anyone Trump could fire at will, particularly in light of the dismissal this year of Sally Yates as acting attorney general after she refused to defend the president's ban on travel from several majority-Muslim nations. But the reality is, Democrats probably did themselves no favors by slow-walking Rosenstein's confirmation. There's now a well-trusted adult overseeing the most politically sensitive investigation in the country, a public face other than that of FBI Director James B. Comey, whose decision to speak publicly about the inquiry of Democrat Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information on a private email server as secretary of state while never publicly addressing the Trump investigation left much of the public perplexed. No one is certain where the multiple investigations will lead. And the fervor of each revelation has died down a bit. Only a couple of the nearly 10 questions Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., took at his weekly news conference Tuesday related to the Russia probes. But the issue is not going away anytime soon. It always seems to be lurking in the background. Schumer and a few of his fellow Democrats decided this was the week to criticize Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., for his handling of that panel's review of Russian hacking of emails and other cyberattacks designed to tilt the election toward Trump. Schumer told reporters Tuesday that Burr was moving "too slowly." That criticism prompted Burr to reveal additional information about the inquiry, including the recent hiring of two additional investigators, up to nine from the seven he had announced last month - and triple the staffing that the committee had for its review of the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Burr said the committee had conducted 27 interviews with witnesses related to the Russia investigation, with another handful scheduled for the near future He dismissed criticism from Schumer and others as misguided. "I'm only concerned with people that know what's going on. We're making progress," he said. Yet the Russia inquiry is not limited to the Intelligence Committee. In between the Chaffetz-Cummings declaration of Flynn's culpability and the Rosenstein confirmation, yet another panel has announced its next steps looking back at the 2016 campaign: On May 8, a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper Jr. That subcommittee is headed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of Trump's leading critics and a hawk on all matters related to Russia. Graham's announcement about his parallel look at Russia and the 2016 campaign came after a Monday night dinner at the White House with Trump, along with Graham's closest ally, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain declined to talk about what the group discussed, but Graham, according to Politico, suggested that Trump expressed a healthy view of how trustworthy Russia is. "He wants to have as many allies as he can, but I think he understands Russia is somebody that's been less than helpful lately," Graham said. Iran's short, intense presidential campaign kicks off Friday with the first televised debate between six candidates in a race widely seen as a referendum on whether Iranians feel they have benefited from the nuclear deal that took effect last year. The May 19 vote will see the moderate incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, facing off against conservative and reformist challengers, including a hard-line cleric with backing from the country's religious establishment. Iran's influential Guardian Council, a body of senior clerics and jurists appointed by the supreme leader, vets the candidates each election. This year, Rouhani's approved challengers include the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; a conservative former culture minister, Mostafa Mirsalim; Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, a moderate; and former vice president Mostafa Hashemitaba, a reformist. Also on the list, which was whittled down from the 1,600 or so who initially registered, is Ebrahim Raisi, a confidant of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the man now viewed as Rouhani's main rival. When the Guardian Council weighed in last week, it disqualified former president and populist firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Raisi, a cleric with a bloody past as one of several judges who oversaw mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, has been mentioned as a possible successor to Khamenei. The supreme leader dictates Iran's military and foreign policy, but whoever wins the presidency could nevertheless ultimately determine the tone of Tehran's engagement with the world and with a more confrontational Trump administration. The race was expected to be a cakewalk for Rouhani, who oversaw the negotiations that lifted many sanctions against Iran in exchange for constraints on its nuclear program. Most Iranian presidents have coasted to second terms. But the moderate leader is facing head winds in the wake of the deal he championed, and many Iranians say their living standards have not improved as they expected. Rouhani's opponents have attacked him over the sluggish economy, blasting his strategy of opening up to the West in the hopes of attracting more investment. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran's real gross domestic product grew by 7.4 percent over the past year - but the growth was mainly due to oil exports. Unemployment runs over 12 percent. In an authoritarian country such as Iran, which hinders the work of independent journalists and pollsters, political predictions are notoriously inaccurate. Dark-horse candidates have emerged at the last minute to sweep to victory. And there is always the issue of how much it actually matters who is president. "The only thing you can say with decent certainty is that the day after the elections, Ayatollah Khamenei will still be the most powerful man in the country," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst for the Carnegie Endowment. All six candidates on Friday will participate in the first of three debates, focusing on social issues. That exchange will be followed by debates on politics and the economy. The nuclear deal will probably be raised in all three, and that could hurt Rouhani, 68. "Rouhani is suffering in part from his own success," said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group. "Expectations skyrocketed after the deal. But if you ask the average citizen the Ronald Reagan question - Is your life better than it was yesterday? - you're going to get no. That's his potential vulnerability." In a jab at Rouhani's Achilles' heel, Raisi has vowed that, if elected, he will fight poverty, corruption and unemployment. One in four Iranians under the age of 25 is jobless. Raisi, 56, does not come by populism naturally. He is known to older Iranians as one of four judges on the "Death Commission," a tribunal that oversaw the executions of 30,000 people in 1988, most of them members of the opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK. He wears a black turban, signifying in Shiite Islam that he is a descendant of the prophet Muhammad. He rose quickly through the ranks and was the attorney general until last year. He is considered a protege of Khamenei, who appointed him to head the Astan Quds Razavi, the largest and wealthiest charity foundation in charge of Iran's holiest shrine, in the city of Mashhad. Raisi routinely visits poor neighborhoods and villages to distribute sugar and flour, giving him a constituency among working-class Iranians. If he wins the election, it will increase the likelihood that he will succeed Khamenei, who is 77 and is said to have been treated for prostate cancer. If he loses, his viability diminishes. As a creature of the religious and judicial establishment, Raisi has advantages that could propel him to victory if moderates and reformists stay home to register their disappointment in Rouhani. "He doesn't have to be very popular to win," said Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst with the Rand Corp. "He's the regime's preferred candidate, especially the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps." In a close election, that could make the difference. "Unlike Rouhani, who in 2013 had popular support and not the elite support, Raisi has elite support," said Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It might be willing to cheat to make him president." The election of Raisi could heighten the risk of confrontation between Tehran and Washington. On Wednesday, the cleric said on a television talk show that the United States will back off sanctions only if it "fears" Iran. "Today, Americans are afraid of the word 'Iran,' " he said, adding: "The solution is not backing down. We must force them to retreat." The Trump administration has signaled its willingness to reconsider the nuclear deal and impose stricter sanctions to contain Iran if it continues to conduct ballistic missile tests and expand its influence in the region. Rouhani's reelection could undermine international support for that strategy. "If you have an Iranian president who retains confidence among key partners in Europe and Asia, that will necessarily make the Trump administration's agenda of getting tough more difficult," said Suzanne Maloney, a Middle East analyst at the Brookings Institution. "If you have someone with a notorious background like Raisi, there will be a different kind of engagement across the board." --- Cunningham reported from Istanbul. President Donald Trump's appearance Friday before a convention of the National Rifle Association in Atlanta underscores the powerful role the gun rights group played in his election, providing critical support in battleground states and helping him score a crucial win in Pennsylvania, a new analysis shows. The NRA has been a muscular force in American politics for decades. But last year it spent more for Trump than any outside group and began its efforts earlier than in any other presidential cycle. A comparison by The Washington Post of ad spending between 2012 and 2016 found that the gun rights organization spent more than three times as much money to assist Trump as it spent backing GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, airing 4.5 times as many individual ads. "The NRA provided crucial air cover for Trump in pivotal states at a critical time," said Ken Goldstein, a University of San Francisco political scientist who studies campaign advertising. The millions spent by the NRA was especially important, Goldstein said, because the Trump campaign and allied super PACs spent relatively little. "The NRA saw a need and an opportunity," he said. And the big bet paid off. Trump, the first sitting president to address the NRA since Ronald Reagan did so, pledged during the campaign to "save our Second Amendment" and nominate judges who would support expansive gun rights. Already, the NRA has cheered Trump's first Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, as well as his choice of Jeff Sessions as attorney general and Ryan Zinke as interior secretary. Both Cabinet members have views largely in sync with the NRA's. The gun rights organization also got an early win under Trump when he signed legislation repealing an Obama administration regulation that sought to block gun purchases by certain people who are unable to administer their own financial affairs. In the months ahead, the NRA will be looking for Trump to put his weight behind a bill in Congress that would make concealed carry permits valid in states other than those in which they were issued. Trump endorsed the concept during the campaign, likening it to the portability of driver's licenses. Also high on the NRA's agenda is the Hearing Protection Act, which would remove federal registration and identification requirements for those seeking gun silencers. That measure has been touted by the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter. Part of the NRA's motivation in backing Trump was that it viewed Democrat Hillary Clinton as particularly hostile to its agenda. But Trump's kinship with NRA members - many of whom are the white, working-class voters he successfully wooed in defeating Clinton - extended beyond gun issues. "They were a big part of the need-an-outsider coalition," said Barry Bennett, a Trump political adviser during the general election campaign. "I think it had as much to do with anger at Washington than any particular gun issue." The Post analysis, based on television market data supplied by Kantar Media, found that the NRA paid $4.8 million on 3,106 individual spots in the 2012 cycle, going on air for the first time Oct. 8, 2012. Last year, by comparison, the pro-gun group spent $16.1 million on 14,129 individual spots starting in late June. The NRA was active in several battleground states including North Carolina and Ohio. But the surge in NRA presidential ad spending was particularly visible in Pennsylvania, a state where the organization spent nothing on TV ads in 2012. In 2016, it spent $2.3 million to air 2,378 spots in five markets One of those markets was Wilkes-Barre, in Luzerne County, which Obama won in 2012 with 51.7 percent of the vote compared with Romney's 46.8 percent. Four years later, Trump trounced Clinton in Luzerne County, winning 57.9 percent of the vote to Clinton's 38.6 percent. The NRA aired nothing in the market in 2012, but four years later the gun rights group paid to run ads nearly 650 times in the Wilkes-Barre media market. "It clearly had an effect," said Kevin Washo, a central Pennsylvania native who is a former executive director of the state's Democratic Party. He noted that the Clinton campaign invested heavily in advertising and visits to the state but concentrated activity in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh markets. "Trump allies needed to respond on the airwaves, and the NRA knew what they had to do" in critical, less urban regions of the state. "The NRA's leaders invested big, and now they're expecting a dividend," said John Feinblatt, president of the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which works to control gun-related violence, during a conference call on the eve of Trump's Atlanta appearance. Trump returns to Pennsylvania on Saturday, holding a rally in Harrisburg to mark 100 days of his presidency. NRA spending rose significantly also in Ohio, a perennial presidential battleground that also flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016, with NRA television ad spending rising to $5.6 million last year, more than 3.5 times what the organization spent four years earlier. It is impossible to gauge precisely the impact of this spending. But Democratic Party campaign officials credit the NRA with successfully targeting the same group of angry white voters that carried Trump to his surprise win over Hillary Clinton. The oft-repeated NRA television ads emphasized starkly negative images and messages about Clinton, portraying her as a threat to gun rights and national security. One ad shown more than 2,775 times in Pennsylvania and other states featured Marine Corps veteran Mark Geist against the backdrop of a military cemetery. Over dramatic music with a staccato drumbeat, Geist says: "Hillary as President? No thanks. I served in Benghazi. My friends didn't make it. They did their part. Do yours." The ad closes with news footage of a desecrated American flag and a building in flames, with the words "Stop Hillary" stamped across the screen. Another ad that ran repeatedly in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio showed a woman in bed at night as a burglar breaks into her home. A narrator says, "Don't let Hillary leave you protected with nothing but a phone." The NRA has long been an important force in presidential elections. But 2016 was different in part because other outside GOP groups, such as American Crossroads GPS, declined to back Trump. The leading pro-Trump super PAC spent $20.3 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a third less than the NRA spent overall. Trump's appearance at the gun group's massive convention will recall the triumphant moment a year ago when the NRA endorsed him earlier than it had backed any other presidential candidate. He told the audience then that "Crooked Hillary is the most anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment candidate ever to run for office." NRA support for Trump was particularly important over the summer, because there was virtually no other advertising backing the real estate mogul. And the support did not dwindle after the election. On Inauguration Day, the organization distributed a news release saying that "gun owners across the nation breathed a sigh of relief as Donald J. Trump was sworn in Friday morning as the 45th president of the United States." --- The Washington Post's Alice Crites contributed to this report. Rush Limbaugh and listeners of his conservative radio show were not happy with reports this week that President Donald Trump was, as Limbaugh put it, "caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion in the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico." Tim from Detroit called in to say he's worried Trump will "kick this can down the road" like any other politician. Ray from Chattanooga, Tennessee, wished he could tell Trump: "Be the man we elected you to be." And John from Polk City, Florida, added: "Number one, build the wall. Every time he spoke: Build a wall. I'm afraid he's starting to dip his foot into the swamp. And, boy, I just don't want to see that happen." In his bumpy first three months in office, Trump has reversed himself on campaign promises now seen as impractical or unnecessary, from repealing and replacing Obamacare in a single day to labeling China as a currency manipulator. But Trump's promise to build an "impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall" paid for by Mexico was special. It was his most vivid campaign promise, and its proposed height grew with every obstacle thrown in Trump's way, from naysayers saying it wasn't possible to the Mexican government saying it wouldn't foot the bill. The most popular chant at campaign rallies became "Build that wall!" Failing to quickly follow through on a wall carries real political risks for Trump, whose success is due in large part to his embrace of hard-line positions on immigration. There is also peril for fellow Republicans - who have been split for years on how the United States should reform its immigration system - in not taking the idea of the wall seriously enough. Mark Krikorian, the longtime executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates reduced immigration, said that he has never considered a border wall a top priority. But now that the wall has taken on a life of its own, Krikorian said that Trump and Republicans have to make some sort of progress in securing a chunk of the border with a wall or heavy-duty fence - or else blow the opportunity to show Americans the party is ready to take action to crack down on illegal immigration. "Following through on wall construction is one of the ways that the political class can win back trust on this topic," Krikorian said. "It's a tangible thing. You can take pictures of it and imagine it in your head." He added: "Even if the border wall did no good at all to control immigration, it would be important to build . . . Even if it did nothing, even if it was completely ineffective, it's important politically." To Trump, the wall is a concrete symbol of his commitment to cracking down on illegal immigration. To many lawmakers, it's a fantastical joke that they have to carefully navigate. Since Trump took office, many lawmakers have been trying to steer him toward more practical solutions for the border involving fencing, increased border patrols and technology. They argue that constructing a wall would cost tens of billions, still wouldn't solve many of the country's border problems and could create whole new challenges as well. "I think we're all recognizing that his message is one that he wants a secure border. I think at one point that he may have very well thought that that was the best way to do it," said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. Even at the White House, aides have been shifting their messaging to the broad topic of "border security," with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus using the phrase six times on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday while only saying the word "wall" twice. The next day, Trump softened his demand to include wall funding in a must-pass spending bill - a comment widely viewed as caving to pressure from the same lawmakers that Trump once bragged he could outsmart. Trump began talking about a southern border structure even before he launched his campaign, bragging that he was "the king of building walls." In his announcement speech in June 2015, Trump promised: "I will build a great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." He continued that messaging this week, telling the Associated Press that "the wall's getting built, OK?" White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated the point during a Tuesday briefing - "There will be a wall built," he said - but dodged questions about when and how. But with an estimated price tag as high as $21.6 billion, lawmakers have been slow to lend their support. On the wall and a host of other issues, they often emphasize Trump's lack of experience in politics in explaining why he is altering his positions. "Some of the things that were said during the campaign, I think he now knows simply aren't the way things ought to be," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Newsmax TV earlier this month following Trump's change of heart on whether NATO was obsolete. "He's learning the job." While Trump has long been clear about wanting a physical wall on the border, other Republicans have put their own spins on one of his most controversial campaign promises. "What I hope he means is that we should be talking about establishing operational control . . . I'm not saying necessarily walls," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., a centrist who at times has been openly critical of Trump. Meanwhile, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a Trump ally, took the president at his word: "It's a physical wall. There's no ifs, ands or buts about that." Others have been left guessing. "I'm not an interpreter - you've got to ask them what they mean. I mean, that's their initiative, obviously. I take it he's taking about border security in general," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. For Trump, and for many of the voters who helped propel him to victory, there should be no misunderstanding. "The wall's going to get built, folks. In case anybody has any questions, the wall is going to get built," Trump told reporters during the signing of an executive order related to agriculture Tuesday. "I watch these shows, and the pundits in the morning, they don't know what they're talking about. The wall gets built, 100 percent." Quick thinking by employees at the local Dierbergs Market and good investigative work by Edwardsville police has led to the arrest of a man and woman from Detroit. The incident happened on April 15. Cordell A. Barnes, 22, and Dakota A. Lacey, 18, have been charged with possessing an incomplete credit or debit card. Barnes allegedly had 25 incomplete VISA debit/credit cards, with blank magnetic stripes, according to charges filed by the Madison County States Attorneys Office. Lacey allegedly had 10 such cards. Barnes was also charged with unlawful possession of a fraudulent drivers license. Barnes and Lacey, along with another male and female, were taken into custody and questioned by Edwardsville police. The female reportedly told them that she had been paid $300 to drive the four from Detroit to Illinois on a money run, according to an affidavit filed in the case. Lacey said that a man from Detroit had sent them to Illinois to purchase gift cards with the credit cards, with the intent that they would split the money after their return to Michigan. In all, police seized 41 magnetic stripe cards from the four. They applied for and received permission from a judge to search the stripe cards as well as a cell phone belonging to one of the subjects. The incident unfolded on Friday, April 14, the day before their arrests, when two of the suspects entered Dierbergs and tried to purchase groceries and several VISA gift cards. When their credit cards were declined, they left without buying anything, according to court records. A manager and another store employee followed them to their car, a white Nissan Sentra that police learned had been rented in Montana, according to the affidavit. The four returned to the store the next morning, according to the affidavit. An employee reportedly recognized them and called police. Officers arrived and took the four into custody. Officers learned that they had allegedly tried to use fraudulent credit cards days before at a Dierbergs Market in Shiloh. Only Barnes and Lacey have been charged in the incident. They have been released on a promise to appear in court. Two U.S. service members were killed during operations against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Thursday, the latest sign of the security challenges the Trump administration faces in America's longest and most costly war. Military officials said the deaths occurred during a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on Wednesday evening in Nangahar province, where a small but virulent Islamic State cell poses a threat to Afghan and U.S. coalition forces. A third service member was wounded in the same operation, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said in a statement. The Pentagon declined to immediately identify those killed. "The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice," said Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, referring to the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province. The incident took place in Nangahar's Achin district near a site where the U.S. military unleashed a massive 22,000-pound bomb this month, a sign of the scale of the ongoing conflict nearly 16 years after U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan. The recent fighting in Achin, including the first-ever use of the GBU-43 bomb and Wednesday's incident, which killed two Americans, illustrates the danger posed by just one of multiple militant groups in a conflict that U.S. officials have described as a stalemate. A Taliban resurgence across Afghanistan has meant that the government in Kabul controls only slightly more than half the country's territory, according to a U.S. government watchdog, and that the United States has been forced to return forces to areas pacified at great cost under President Barack Obama's 2009-2011 troop surge. At the same time, local forces are struggling to contain an array of militant groups along the country's border with Pakistan, including the Islamic State. Faced with those challenges, the Trump administration is reevaluating its strategy for Afghanistan and considering sending additional U.S. troops to support local forces. Nicholson has called for thousands of extra service members to help train and support the Afghan military. According to Navy Lt. Chris Donlon, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Wednesday's incident happened close to Achin and near where U.S. aircraft dropped the GBU-43 munition two weeks ago. That bomb targeted a sprawling Islamic State tunnel complex, and although Afghan officials said between 36 and about 100 Islamic State fighters were killed in the strike, the U.S. military has not announced what exactly the bomb accomplished. An Afghan military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss current operations, confirmed that there had been a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in a village near Achin district Wednesday but was not aware of any casualties. He said it had been a long day of fighting. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State, mainly composed of militants pulled from other groups, has emerged as an increasing counterterrorism focus for United States in Afghanistan. Although military officials say the group is far smaller than it was at its height in 2015, an estimated 600 to 800 militants, located mainly in remote mountainous areas, have proven to be a deadly adversary. Fighting has been fierce as U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces, backed by hundreds of airstrikes, have sought to advance against militant strongholds in recent months. The deaths mark the third time this year that a member of the U.S. military has died in combat in Afghanistan. On April 8, Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Maryland, was killed by small-arms fire, also in Nangahar. They come just days after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan to assess the security situation and advance deliberations about the Trump administration's approach to a war that has largely been overshadowed by events in Iraq and Syria --- The Washington Post's Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report. JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA APRIL 26, 2017 The China Overseas Infrastructure Development and Investment Corporation (COIDIC) inaugurated its African headquarters in Johannesburg. COIDIC is Chinas first overseas platform for the early stage development of infrastructure projects. Participating in the inauguration ceremonies were Mr.Rong Yansong, the Economic and Commercial Counselor of Chinese Embassy in South Africa, Mr Sindiso Ngwenya, Secretary General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Deputy Minister Mr Bulelani Magwanishe of the department of Trade and Industry and Vice-President Zhou Chao of the CADFund and Board President of COIDIC. COIDICs founding shareholders include: the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), a subsidiary of China Development Bank (CDB); China Gezhouba Group Overseas Investments Co. Ltd; China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation(CCECC)China Telecom Global Limited; Changjiang Survey, Planning, Design and Research Co., Ltd (CISPDR); China ENFI Engineering Corporation; and HCIG Energy Investment Co., Ltd. With its designed capital US$500 million, COIDIC is the worlds largest fund ever targeted for project preparation in emerging market countries. COIDIC was launched in September 2016 at the 2nd Invest in Africa Forum in Guangzhou, China. After seven months of preparation, COIDIC has now formally opened its office for Africa, making an important step towards its internationalization and localization in Africa and settling a solid foundation for its African business. The main business of COIDIC is the early stage development of Public Private Partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects, handling financial, engineering and legal aspects of project preparation. COIDIC undertakes projects from concept phase through bankability to create a supply of project ready for construction, thereby directly addressing the scarcity of properly prepared projects ready for financial close. COIDICs first focus is project preparation in Africa, and soon it expects to expand its operations to contribute to Chinas One Belt, One Road (OBOR) program, with the goal of becoming an influential global "project incubator platform" for essential infrastructure development. In addition to undertaking specific projects, COIDIC also offers a Sovereign Development Service (SDS), which provides working teams to collaborate with host governments to review national development plans and to select viable project for development.SDS programs currently are underway with the Republic of Congo, Madagascar and COMESA, and COIDIC expects to create new SDS relationships over the coming months. In March 2017 Mr. Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, noted the companys contribution by stating, The preliminary plan of the Special Economic Zone of Pointe Noire in Republic of Congo has already started, as an important illustration by suiting the action to the word for the China-Africa cooperation. COIDIC focuses on three areas of infrastructure: power and energy; transportation; and ICT. The company seeks projects that promote intra-Africa trade or support urbanization. Projects are evaluated on financial viability, contribution to national and regional GDP, social and environmental effects and implications for employment. COIDICs sponsor and leading shareholder was the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), an equity fund launched by China Development Bank in June 2007. To date CADFund has committed over $4 billion in equity to 89 projects in 36 countries in Africa, in areas including infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture, and energy. CADFund has been mandated by the Chinese government to reach a total of $10 billion of investments over the coming years. More than a dozen Willis high school students observed a criminal trial Tuesday as part of their criminal justice class. The students sat in on the first leg of testimony in the felony intoxication manslaughter trial of Ronald Cooper, 69, who is accused of killing a family of four in a 2015 crash on Texas 105. The trial is in Judge Kathleen Hamilton's 359th state District Court, which was all but standing room only Tuesday morning as prosecutors began laying out their case. Sitting behind the victims' family in the back few rows, the students listened intently to the questions posed to witnesses from both Assistant District Attorney Andrew James and defense attorney Tad Nelson on the case's first day of testimony. The students are a handful of about 150 others who are in Leah Strickland's criminal justice program at Willis High School, which she started six years ago. "Each year, I try to bring them into the real world to see firsthand the experience of applying what we've learned," Strickland said. "We've learned the laws, we've learned about the Constitution, we've learned court procedures. This gives them experience firsthand of how a courtroom is run. Judge Hamilton does a great job of running her courtroom. She sets a great example for the students." Strickland teaches classes in Criminal Justice Principles, Law I and Law II. Students can also participate in a practicum class, where they are exposed to real-life experiences in the community through law enforcement ride-alongs or internships with various entities. The students also get high school credits for the practicum class, which Strickland says is a win-win for those who want to enter the field. As for Tuesday's trial, Strickland said Cooper's is the third case they've tried to observe after a handful of others were rescheduled. "Hopefully they're getting the experience to see different areas, whether it's the Sheriff's Office and how the bailiffs work or how the defense attorney and district attorneys work," Strickland said. "Even the jury. Even if they never go into criminal justice, they still get to see due process and what it's like to serve on a jury." Looking toward the future, Strickland said the CJ class is growing, so much that they'll be moving into Willis ISD's new $39.4 million Career and Technical Education building in upcoming school years. "Our school district does a great job of letting us go out into the real world," Strickland said. "It allows me to take them where they get to actually apply and see it firsthand." As for Cooper's trial, he is facing a possible 100-year prison sentence if convicted of four second-degree felony counts of intoxication manslaughter and two second-degree felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. File photo taken on April 20, 2017 shows U.S. President Donald Trump attends a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni (not in picture) at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States.(Xinhua/Yin Bogu) WASHINGTON, April 26 -- U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday unveiled the principles of the long-awaited tax reform plan that will significantly cut income taxes for Americans and corporates, ahead of the administration's first 100 days in office. The plan would reduce the number of personal income tax brackets to three from seven, and it would cut the top individual income tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent, Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), said at a press briefing at the White House. At the same time, the plan would cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and it would also impose a one-time tax on overseas profits of U.S. companies, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the same press briefing. That "will bring back trillions of dollars that are offshore to be invested here in the United States, to purchase capital and to create jobs," he said. The plan would also eliminate all tax deductions for individuals except from mortgage interests and charitable tax deductions, according to Mnuchin. "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big," Cohn said, noting President Donald Trump has made tax reform a priority and the Republican-controlled Congress also wants to get it done. "We are determined to move as fast as we can and get this done this year," Mnuchin added. However, it's still unclear whether the plan, what U.S. officials called the "biggest tax cut" in U.S. history, would be revenue-neutral or would significantly increase U.S. fiscal deficits. Mnuchin has repeatedly argued that the administration would count on the compounding effect of strong economic growth over the next decade to finance the tax cuts. "This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes," he said. However, many economists are skeptical about that argument, as the U.S. economic growth will average about only 1.9 percent over the next ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "In order for a corporate income tax cut to 15 percent to be self-financing, it would have to raise the level of growth to 2.8 percent on average," said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation, adding most economic models would not expect the tax cuts to boost U.S. growth by additional 0.9 percentage points over the 10-year budget window. The details of a complete tax proposal probably won't be ready until June, according to Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "You can either have a small tax cut that's permanent or a large tax cut that is short-term. I don't think we decided that," Mulvaney told Fox News on Sunday. (Xinhua) 09:00, April 27, 2017 KIEV, April 26 -- The 10th Ukrainian edition of Chinese Proficiency Competition "Chinese Bridge" for high school students took place here on Wednesday. The event, which is held in the framework of the Sino-Ukrainian cultural exchanges week, titled "One Belt One Road," was staged in Kiev Gymnasium of Oriental Languages with 11 participants. The contestants aged between 15 and 17 years old from the Ukrainian capital and the eastern city of Kharkov showed their skills and talents during this year's contest. The competition was divided into three parts: self-introduction in Chinese, questions and answers about China's history and culture and a talent show. Dmytro Gordeev, a student of Kiev Gymnasium of Oriental Languages, won the competition, charming the public and jury with outstanding Chinese-speaking skills and an art performance on stilts. "My dream is to study in China. That's why I decided to participate in this competition," Gordeev told Xinhua in Chinese. Gordeev, together with Anastasiya Baydyuk, who came second, will travel to China to represent Ukraine in the finals of the "Chinese Bridge" among high school students. "I am proud of the chance the God has given us. I am proud of my child, who traveled this path with dignity. I hope that in Beijing she will show all her talents," Larysa Baydyuk, mother of Anastasiya Baydyuk, told Xinhua. The international contest "Chinese Bridge," organized by the Confucius Institute Headquarters in Hanban, China, in 2002, aims to encourage foreign students learning Chinese. Last year, the Kiev Gymnasium of Oriental Languages received modern educational equipment worth about 226,000 U.S. dollars from the Chinese government to fit out three language-learning classrooms. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On Wednesday afternoon, more than 40 people carrying rainbow flags and flanked by LezRideSA cyclists marched down Main Avenue to cast their votes in local elections. This was the first time 18-year-old Sloan Martin organized a march and her first time voting. Ive always been given the opportunity to voice my opinions, and now Im here to really do that with voting, said Martin, beaming afterward. Motivated by state bills that would she says would negatively affect LGBTQ people and empowered by her right to vote, Martin said that electing local leaders who will represent and protect LGBTQ San Antonians is especially important. She invited Miss Gay San Antonio, about 10 nonprofits and mayoral and City Council candidates to join in the March for Mayor on Main, which started at 4 p.m. Mayoral candidate Manuel Medina and his staffers, as well as representatives from Ron Nirenbergs mayoral campaign, were present to show their support. Mayor Ivy Taylor, or any representatives from her campaign for re-election, however, were not. RELATED: Express-News offers recommendations in city, school races I do know that she has a tendency to skip LGBTQ events, and I hope that wasnt the case here, Martin said. She put in a call and sent an email and a Facebook message to Taylor about a month ago, she said. Greg Jefferson, campaign spokesman, said an office manager did receive Martins email about the event but that Taylor had already been booked at the time. The mayor didnt skip this event. She simply didnt know about it. And we had two events scheduled tonight that were set more than a month ago, Jefferson said. So its not a matter of avoiding these events; its just, in this case, a scheduling conflict. When asked about whether or not Taylor supports the LGBTQ community and the marchs efforts, Jefferson said: She supports the rights of all of our citizens. Taylor has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups for voting while she was a council member against an update to the citys non-discrimination ordinance to include protections based on someones gender or sexual orientation in 2013. Leslie Garza, director of communications for the mayors office, said Taylor was booked from 1 to 5:30 p.m. with mayoral obligations, though she couldnt confirm when those plans were made. According to her schedule, she attended the CPS Energy board meeting at 1 p.m. She left about 3:30. Garza said Taylor had two appointments with executives after that. Previously, her campaign has cited scheduling conflicts for her absence from mayoral forums organized by the LGBTQ community. Martin said she wished Taylor had attended. Its important for our local governments to keep San Antonio safe. We need to be proactive about LGBTQ issues to make sure whoever is elected or reelected can do that, she said. In our community, some people call us perverts, but were just human beings, said Aaron Andrews, a drag queen who is Miss Gay San Antonio. I hope everybody who comes sees were normal people just trying to fight for a good cause. Martin, a senior at Clark High School in the Northside Independent School District, inspired her step-father, Marcos Quintanilla, to vote in a local election for the first time. She has a great fire and its burning bright. Me and her mom couldnt be more proud, he said Wednesday. sfosterfrau@express-news.net (Xinhua) 09:01, April 27, 2017 MOGADISHU, April 26 -- China on Wednesday granted the World Food Programme (WFP) 10 million U.S. dollars to bolster its humanitarian work in drought-stricken Somalia where more than 6 million people are food insecure. WFP Country Director Laurent Bukera said the funds will allow the UN food agency to deploy emergency humanitarian assistance to more than 200,000 people. "This grant will support Somalis and will allow WFP to deploy emergency assistance to more than 200,000 for probably up to four months assistance," Bukera said. China also contributed 2 million U.S. dollars to WFP emergency response last year that helped it support close to 50,000 children and mothers to address malnutrition in the country, Bukera said. He said WFP has continued to scale up its humanitarian activities in the Horn of Africa nation by reaching vulnerable people through its cash-based transfer program. The Chinese Ambassador to Somalia Qin Jian hoped Somalia will overcome the natural disasters and rebuild their home, saying Beijing has long term support for Somalia. "China and Somalia enjoy long term friendship. The diplomatic ties between brotherly states began in December in 1960, but relations between the two countries were there six hundred years ago," he said, adding China had carried out 89 projects including Benadir hospital, National Theater and Stadium Mogadishu between 1960 and 1991. Somali Minister of Relief and Disaster Management, Maryam Qasim Ahmed thanked the Chinese government for the contribution towards alleviating the drought situation. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A former Hudson ISD kindergarten teacher arrested Saturday admits to having sex with four high school students - two at the same time - according to local reports. Heather Lee Robertson, 38, of Lufkin, is charged with four counts of improper relationship between educator and student, according to KTRE-TV. The site reports an arrest affidavit says that she admitted to having sex with the students. TEXAS ISSUE: Ex-Austin teacher accused of inappropriate relationship back in court The Lufkin Daily News reports the Hudson ISD police investigation started last Thursday when they received information Robertson had possibly been sexually active with several high school students. The Hudson ISD police received a list of possible students involved with Robertson and began questioning each of them. One student told police he and Robertson started "chatting and sexting" on Snapchat after spring break. Then Robertson asked the boy to come over to her apartment to have sex. The boy said he had a friend with him and asked if it was OK if he came over. She then welcomed both of the boys to her apartment. At the apartment, she told the boys to follow her to her bedroom, where she began taking off her clothes before having sex with both students at the same time, according to the Lufkin Daily News. The second student involved in the incident admitted to the encounter as well. CONTINUED LIST: Many in 2 North Texas districts arrested for improper teacher-student relationships Two different students said they would sneak out of their homes and Robertson would pick them up and take them back to her apartment to have sex. She would then take them back home afterward. She is currently in Angelina County Jail on a $200,000 bond, according to KTRE-TV. The TV station also reports Robertson's case marks the fourth one involving an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student in Angelina County in the past four years. Click through the gallery above to see the teacher-student inappropriate relationships that have been reported in this year alone. LOCAL ALLEGATIONS: HISD teacher charged with improper student relationship This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Jacob Beltran Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Jacob Beltran Show More Show Less 3 of 3 A couple is in stable condition after they were hit by shotgun blasts Thursday night on the West Side. San Antonio Police Department Sgt. Steve Almanza said the couple drove up to a home at about 9 p.m. in the 1600 block of West Olmos Drive. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN -- Missing children have their "Amber Alert." Wayward seniors have "Silver Alert." Disappeared cops have the "Blue Alert." And missing military personnel now could have "Camo Alert." REUNITED: WWII veterans reunite with B-17 Flying Fortress Texas Raiders in Conroe Taking a cue from lawmakers in other states, the Texas Senate on Thursday approved the new alert system for locating missing veterans and members of the military with a mental illness. The measure now goes to the House for consideration. Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, the author of Senate Bill 1622, said the statewide alert system would inform law enforcement, veterans groups and the public if there is a veteran in crisis, similar to existing Amber and Silver Alerts. TEXAS VETERANS: Twins from El Paso, WWII veterans, celebrated 92nd birthdays He said the alert only would be sent if the individual is a threat to their own health and safety or that of others. Mental illness has been identified as a serious problem among veterans and military members with post-traumatic stress disorder the most common form. Uresti said that the missing service personnel typically suffer some sort of mental breakdown, mental illness, or have gone off of psychiatric medication. Veterans in these episodes may be a danger to themselves. The decommissioned "Long March-1" nuclear-powered attack submarine, pennant number 401, berths at the port of the Chinese Navy Museum in Qingdao City, east China's Shandong Province, on April 23, 2017. As China's first domestically-produced nuclear-powered submarine, it was built in 1970 and commissioned into the PLA Navy in 1974. After 40 years of service, it was decommissioned in October, 2013. The vessel is now open to the public at the Chinese Navy Museum at the Port of Qingdao City, East China's Shandong Province. 3 Detenido por atacar a un hombre en un cajero de Gijon con patadas y una correa para perros Zhang Dejiang(C, rear), chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, joins lawmakers in deliberation of State Council reports on environmental protection and supply-side structural reform at panel discussions of the ongoing 27th session of the 12th NPC Standing Committee in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng) BEIJING, April 26 -- Chinese lawmakers on Wednesday called for more efforts to protect the environment and advance supply-side structural reform at the ongoing bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. State Council reports on environmental protection and supply-side structural reform were reviewed by lawmakers at panel discussions of the session, which runs Monday to Thursday. Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, joined lawmakers in deliberation. Most lawmakers of the NPC Standing Committee made favorable comments and raised suggestions about the two reports. They agreed that the shift from traditional economic growth engines to new ones should be accelerated and fair competition should be guaranteed through better laws and regulations. At the group discussions on environmental protection, Luo Liangquan said efforts should be made to strengthen supervision on law enforcement and improve the environmental monitoring system. According to the report, China received 33,000 tip-offs on environmental violations in 2016, issued fines worth 440 million yuan (64 million U.S. dollars) in 8,500 cases, and detained 720 people in more than 800 cases. Liu Zhengkui said that a national coordination mechanism should be established to manage and monitor the marine environment as the ecosystems of the country's bays are deteriorating. Liu advised the country to invest more to restore important sea areas, coastal zones and islands. Chen Weiwen called for publishing detailed indexes of water pollutants and improving information transparency on the quality of drinking water. The 338 cities monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection enjoyed good air quality on 78.8 percent of days in 2016, up 2.1 percentage points from 2015. Music, Movies & Entertainment, Local News, Arts & Culture, Seasonal & Current Events By Long Island News & PR Published: April 27 2017 Tom Needham will be celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Saturday Night Fever with Harry Wayne K.C. Casey on WUSBs the Sounds of Film on Thursday at 6 PM. Story Brook, NY - April 27, 2017 - Legendary music star, Harry Wayne K.C. Casey, will be discussing his successful career with KC and the Sunshine Band and the 40th Anniversary of Saturday Night Fever on Tom Needhams the Sounds of Film this Thursday on Legendary music star, Harry Wayne K.C. Casey, will be discussing his successful career with KC and the Sunshine Band and the 40th Anniversary of Saturday Night Fever on Tom Needhams the Sounds of Film this Thursday on WUSB On May 2nd, Paramount will be releasing John Badhams Directors Cut of Saturday Night Fever on DVD to mark the 40th Anniversary of the 70s classic movie. The iconic film features John Travolta as a Brooklyn kid with no prospects who lives for dancing on Saturday nights. The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack features classic hits by The Bee Gees, Kool and the Gang, and KC and the Sunshine Band, and is one of the best-selling albums of all-time. KC and the Sunshine Band. Photo Credit: The Sounds of Film KC and the Sunshine Band is one of Americas most successful music groups of the 1970s. Harry Wayne Caseys group has sold over 100 million records worldwide. KC is considered the Founder of the Dance Revolution, and is responsible for some of the eras biggest hits including Get Down Tonight, Shake Your Booty, Im Your Boogie Man, Please Dont Go, and Thats the Way I Like It. Their music is so popular that it has been used in over 200 films including Forrest Gump, Boogie Nights, Carlitos Way, Superbad, and Private Parts. Warner Brother's Purple Rain featuring Prince and the Revolution . Photo Credit: The Sounds of Film The dance party continues on the Sounds of Film when Tom Needham pays tribute to Prince and the Revolution in order the recognize the anniversary of Princes passing and to celebrate the Revolutions upcoming New York appearance at B.B. Kings on Friday Night. The show features Wendy and Lisa, Dr. Fink, BrownMark and Bobby Z. The band is Princes most recognizable group and is responsible for playing on Prince's soundtracks for the films Purple Rain and Under the Cherry Moon which include the hits When Doves Cry, Lets Go Crazy, and Kiss. For more information, go to bbkingsblues.com . About the Sounds of Film Editors note: Below is Bill Roggios testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation. A PDF of the testimony, with footnotes, can be downloaded here. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Keating, and other members of this subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to speak about the terrorist groups based in Afghanistan and their continuing threat to U.S. national security. More than 15 years after the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda, the group maintains a persistent and significant presence in the country. Despite the Obama administrations surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012, the Taliban, which has maintained its close alliance with al-Qaeda, is resurgent and today holds more ground in the country since the U.S. ousted the jihadists in early 2002. And the threat posed by jihadist groups in Afghanistan has expanded. The Islamic State has established a small, but significant, foothold in the country. Pakistani jihadist groups that are hostile to the U.S. such as the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Harakat-ul-Muhajideen operate bases inside Afghanistan as well. U.S. Estimates on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan Were Incorrect For nearly seven years, the Obama administration wrote off al-Qaeda as a spent force. The group has been described as decimated. After Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, President Obama said the core of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is on a path to defeat. The Obama administration pushed this narrative hard, with many counterterrorism analysts adopting the line that al-Qaeda was either defeated or close to it. Between 2010 and 2016, Obama administration officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta, as well as other U.S. military and intelligence officials, characterized al-Qaedas presence in Afghanistan as minimal and consistently told the American public that the group has a presence of just 50 to 100 fighters. I think at most, were looking at maybe 50 to 100, maybe less. Its in that vicinity. Theres no question that the main location of al-Qaeda is in tribal areas of Pakistan, Panetta said on ABC News This Week. This assessment, which contradicted the U.S. militarys own press releases announcing raids against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was consistently repeated by U.S. intelligence and military officials. In June 2015, the U.S. military claimed in its biannual Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan report that al-Qaeda has a sustained presence in Afghanistan of probably fewer than 100 operatives concentrated largely in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces, where they remain year-round. The December 2015 report claimed that al-Qaeda is primarily concentrated in the east and northeast. This estimate of al-Qaedas strength, which consistently downplayed al-Qaedas presence in Afghanistan, came crashing down in mid-October 2015, when the U.S. military and Afghan forces orchestrated a large-scale operation against two al-Qaeda camps in the Shorabak district in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. The scale of al-Qaedas presence at the two camps in Shorabak quickly disproved the longstanding 50 to 100 estimate. A U.S. military statement, quoting spokesman Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, described the raid as one of the largest joint ground-assault operations we have ever conducted in Afghanistan. It took U.S. and Afghan forces more than four days to clear the two camps, with the aid of 63 airstrikes. Shoffners description of the al-Qaeda facilities indicated that they had been built long ago. The first site, a well-established training camp, spanned approximately one square mile. The second site covered nearly 30 square miles, Shoffner said. We struck a major al-Qaeda sanctuary in the center of the Talibans historic heartland, he added. Weeks later, General John F. Campbell, then the commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan and NATOs Resolute Support mission, described one of the camps, which was run by al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), al-Qaedas branch in South Asia, as probably the largest training camp-type facility that we have seen in 14 years of war. It has been estimated that at least 150 al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the raids on the two camps in Shorabak. This is 50 more al-Qaeda fighters than the upper end of the Obama administrations estimate of al-Qaedas strength throughout all of Afghanistan. And the al-Qaeda members were killed in southern Afghanistan, not in the northeastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, where we have been told they were concentrated. The U.S. military was ultimately forced to concede its estimate of al-Qaedas strength in Afghanistan was wrong. In mid-December 2016, General Nicholson admitted that the U.S. military killed or captured 50 al-Qaeda leaders and an additional 200 operatives during calendar year 2016 in Afghanistan. In April 2016, Major General Jeff Buchanan, Resolute Supports deputy chief of staff, told CNN that the 50 to 100 estimate was incorrect based on the results of the Shorabak raid. If you go back to last year, there were a lot of intel estimates that said within Afghanistan al-Qaeda probably has 50 to 100 members, but in this one camp we found more than 150, he said. The estimate of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan was revised upwards to about 300. However, well before the Shorabak raids, it was evident to those of us closely watching the war in Afghanistan that al-Qaeda was stronger in Afghanistan than the official estimates, and was not confined to small areas in the northeast. Al-Qaeda consistently reported on its operations throughout Afghanistan, and the U.S. military, up until the summer of 2013, reported on raids against al-Qaeda cells in multiple provinces. Surely, there was something seriously wrong with the CIA and the U.S. militarys ability to properly report on al-Qaedas presence in Afghanistan. Al-Qaedas footprint inside Afghanistan remains a direct threat to U.S. national security and, with the resurgence of the Taliban, it is a threat that is only growing stronger. The Enduring Taliban-al-Qaeda Relationship Al-Qaedas presence in Afghanistan has not occurred in a vacuum. It has maintained its strength in the country since the U.S. invasion, launched a new branch, AQIS, and established training camps with the help and support of the Taliban. When Generals Campbell and Buchanan discussed al-Qaeda in the wake of the Shorabak raid, they described the group as resurgent. Campbell described the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship as a renewed partnership, while Buchanan said it has since grown stronger. But like the estimate that al-Qaeda maintained a small cadre of 50 to 100 operatives in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2016, the idea that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have only recently reinvigorated their relationship is incorrect. Al-Qaeda would not have been able to maintain a large cadre of fighters and leaders inside Afghanistan, conduct operations in 25 of Afghanistans 34 provinces, establish training camps, and relocate high-level leaders from Pakistans tribal areas to Afghanistan without the Talibans long-term support. Al-Qaeda has remained loyal to the Talibans leader, which it describes as the Amir al- Mumineen, or the Commander of the Faithful, since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Osama bin Laden maintained his oath of allegiance to Mullah Omar, the Talibans founder and first emir. When bin Laden died, Ayman al-Zawahiri renewed that oath. And when Mullah Omars death was announced in 2015, Zawahiri swore bayat (an oath of allegiance) to Mullah Mansour, the Talibans new leader. Mansour publicly accepted Zawahiris oath. The close relationship between the two jihadist groups is also evident with the assent of the Talibans new deputy emir, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads the powerful Taliban subgroup known as the Haqqani Network. Sirajuddin and the Haqqani Network have maintained close ties to al-Qaeda for years. The relationship is evident in the U.S. governments designations of multiple Haqqani Network leaders. Two documents seized from Osama bin Ladens compound show that Siraj has closely coordinated his operations with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship remains strong to this day. And with the Taliban gaining control of a significant percentage of Afghanistans territory, al-Qaeda has more areas to plant its flag. Rise of the Islamic State Shortly after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of the caliphate in 2014, announcing the formation of the Islamic State, a small number of disgruntled jihadists from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, as well as al-Qaeda, discarded their oaths to the Taliban, pledged their fealty to Baghdadi, and established the so-called Khorasan province. While the Islamic State dominates the jihad in Iraq and is a major player in Syria, the group has posed a smaller threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan when compared to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and their jihadist allies. The U.S. military estimated the group had upwards of 2,000 fighters at the beginning of 2016, but had lost between 25 and 30 percent of its men in the months that followed. While U.S. military estimates of the strength of jihadist groups in Afghanistan must be taken with a grain of salt, this number is likely in the right ballpark. The Islamic State has a much smaller presence in Afghanistan when compared to the Taliban. While the Taliban controls or contests more than 200 of Afghanistans 400 districts, the Islamic State only controls terrain in several districts in the eastern province of Nangarhar. The group also reportedly has a presence in the Afghan north. The Islamic States Khorasan province has remained entrenched in Nangarhar and has withstood multiple U.S.-backed offensives over the past two years. The U.S. military has had success in killing key leaders, but the group has proven resilient. Still, the so-called caliphates Khorasan province has remained on the margins of the Afghan war. It has conducted a limited number of suicide attacks and other operations in the Afghan capital of Kabul and elsewhere, but has not come close to matching the Talibans operational tempo. Khorasan province has had a difficult time gaining traction throughout much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as it is unwilling to cooperate with other, long-entrenched jihadist groups. In fact, the Taliban crushed the Khorasan provinces forces in Helmand, Farah, and Zabul after they demanded that the Talibans fighters swear allegiance to Baghdadi. Pakistani Jihadist Groups Operating in Afghanistan In addition to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State, numerous Pakistan-based jihadist groups are known to operate in Afghanistan. For the most part, these organizations remain in the Taliban and al-Qaeda sphere, and leaders of the groups often backfill leadership positions when al-Qaeda commanders are killed in U.S. airstrikes. The three largest Pakistani groups operating in Afghanistan are the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Harakat-ul-Muhajideen. The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) is largely made up of Taliban groups from Pakistans tribal areas. It is closely allied with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. In 2010, the TTP organized the Times Square bombing plot. The TTP has taken advantage of the turbulent and ungoverned Afghan-Pakistani border to shift its base of operations when the Pakistani military targets it in offensives. The U.S. has killed several TTP leaders in airstrikes in Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a dangerous jihadist group that is backed by Pakistans military and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The LeT is known to operate training camps in Afghanistan and attacked the Indian Consulate in Herat in 2014.26 The U.S. has killed several senior LeT operatives in airstrikes in northeastern Afghanistan over the years. The U.S. has also listed several senior LeT operatives, including Hafiz Saeed, the groups emir, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) is another Pakistani jihadist group that is known, as of August 2014, to operate training camps in Afghanistan.27 HuM has been involved in numerous acts of terror in the region, including hijacking an Indian airplane, attacking the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. China's second aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock into the water at a launch ceremony in Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, April 26, 2017. The new carrier, the first domestically-built one, came after the Liaoning, a refitted former Soviet Union-made carrier that was put into commission in the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 2012. (Xinhua/Li Gang) DALIAN, Liaoning, April 26 -- China launched its second aircraft carrier Wednesday morning in a Dalian shipyard in Liaoning Province in northeast China. The new carrier, the first developed and built by China, was transferred from a dry dock into water at a launch ceremony starting at about 9 a.m. in the Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. It is China's second aircraft carrier, coming after the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet Union-made carrier put into commission in the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in 2012. China began building its second carrier in November 2013, with dock construction starting in March 2015. The main body of the carrier has been completed, with equipment of major systems including propulsion and electricity installed. Putting the carrier into water marks progress in China's efforts to design and build a domestic aircraft carrier. After the launch, the new carrier will undergo equipment debugging, outfitting and mooring trials. The launch ceremony included a performance of the national anthem, ribbon cutting, breaking a champagne bottle on the bow, and steam whistles from ships nearby. The ceremony was attended by Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, as well as leaders of the PLA Navy and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. Ma Xiaoguang, a Chinese mainland spokesperson with the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said Wednesday he was proud of the great achievement made by the country in modernizing the national defense and military. "[The move] will help to strengthen our capability to safeguard national sovereignty, territorial integrity, as well as major and core interests," Ma said at a press conference in Beijing. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang, meanwhile, reiterated China's adherence to peaceful development, adding that the country follows a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. "The purpose of developing China's national defense forces, including its navy, is to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as to protect world peace," he said at a daily press briefing. Style / Fashion Apr 27, 2017 | By Staff Writer On 20 April, ART REPUBLIK hosted an exclusive evening reception of cocktails, fashion, and art at Burberrys Tales of a Trench Coat exhibition at ION Orchard. The traveling exhibition, which gives the public an insiders look at the history and heritage of Burberrys most iconic staple, first kicked off in Seoul before making its way to Tokyo and Singapore for two weeks only. Alongside Heart Media CEO Olivier Burlot and ART REPUBLIKs Managing Editor Nadya Wang, the 60 guests in attendance were treated to champagne and hors doeuvres as they toured around the exhibition space led by Burberrys private client consultants. Dotted around the boutique were several interactive displays showcasing the craftsmanship, savoir faire and exquisite attention-to-detail that goes into every Burberry trench coat. The highlight of the exhibition? A retrospective tableau featuring 14 of the most iconic trenches designed by Burberry Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey from 2005 to present. At the event, fans of the brand also got the chance to try on pieces from the most recent February 2017 ready-to-wear collection (inspired by English artist Henry Moore) and have their new Burberry trenches monogrammed with the brands signature hand-applied goldwork cording. China pledges to deepen cooperation with South Africa on women's affairs (Xinhua) 10:25, April 27, 2017 DURBAN, April 26 -- China is willing to deepen pragmatic cooperation with South Africa on women's affairs, said visiting Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong here on Wednesday. Liu made the remarks at a ceremony where the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) donated sewing machines to the African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL), the women's wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Noting that both China and South Africa are major developing countries and emerging market economies, Liu said enhanced bilateral cooperation will not only foster women's welfare in the two countries, but also is of great significance to greater global gender equality. China will increase experience sharing with South Africa in women's universal education, public health, poverty reduction and equal employment, she said. China hopes that more women will join China-South Africa people-to-people exchanges and contribute to the cause of women's empowerment in the world, she said. At the donating ceremony, the South African side expressed that South African women cherish the friendship with Chinese sisters and hope to enhance cooperation with the Chinese side. ANCWL President Bathabile Dlamini, South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and some other officials attended the donating ceremony. (Xinhua) 10:27, April 27, 2017 BEIJING, April 26 -- China on Wednesday reaffirmed its sovereignty over the Diaoyu Island and adjacent islets as well as the Nansha islands, saying it will firmly respond to any challenge to its sovereignty and national security. Japan released its diplomatic bluebook for 2017 on Tuesday, voicing opposition to the possible unilateral changes of the status quo in the East China Sea and the South China Sea as a result of China's activities there. "China's activities there are reasonable and legitimate," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a daily press briefing, adding that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Island and its adjacent islets as well as the Nansha islands. "We will continue to firmly deal with any action challenging China's sovereignty and security," Geng said. Japan's diplomatic bluebook for 2017 described Japan-China ties as "one of the most important bilateral relationships," saying that Japan stands ready to cement cooperative relationship with China. Expressing China's willingness to improve bilateral ties, Geng said the onus is on the Japanese side. Japan should view China's development in an objective and rational manner, adhere to the principles set in the four political documents between the two countries when dealing with differences, and avoid further disturbances to bilateral ties and regional peace and stability, he said. China warns of necessary actions as US says THAAD to be operational in coming days Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told Congress that the THAAD anti-missile defense system would be operational in the coming days. Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Admiral Harris said that North Korea remains the most immediate threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. believes that North Korea is trying to develop a preemptive nuclear strike capability against American cities. Admiral Harris said that the U.S. must assume North Koreas claims are true. He added that the U.S. is prepared to fight tonight, if necessary. Thats why the ROK-US alliance decided last July to deploy THAAD, he said. He added that the THAAD system will be operational in the coming days. China expressed its grave concern after parts of the THAAD system were moved to the deployment site in South Korea, which the U.S. claims is purely defensive. Chinas Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the deployment of THAAD breaks the strategic balance in the region and ratchets up the tension on the Korean Peninsula. China strongly urged the U.S. and South Korea to cancel the deployment and withdraw the equipment, and sent a strong warning that China will take necessary actions to safeguard its own interests. Admiral Harris said that the best way to reduce the rising tensions is to provide credible combat power 24/7. China is concerned that the increasing amounts of hard power and uncertainty in the region aggravate the situation and threaten Chinas core strategic interests. China is calling for efforts to resolve the explosive situation through dialogue and consultation, and has been working with the U.S. to try to reduce tension. Regarding the North Korea issues, Admiral Harris acknowledged that China is doing things and he is encouraged by Chinas actions. Kuwait 25 April 2017 Kuwait Finance and Investment Company (KFIC), a well-established asset manager in Kuwait, announced its recognition for Bhavani Joshi for attaining the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) certification from The Global Institute of Internal Auditors. At this occasion, Tareq Mishari Al Bahar, KFICs Board Member & CEO, stated that this recognition is a part of the efforts of KFICs Human Resources department to encourage and support all employees working on enhancing their skill set and competencies through earning specialized, professional, and accredited certifications from the most prestigious educational and professional institutions. Al Bahar further clarified: In KFIC, we always strive to develop our personnel and continuously motivate them to obtain additional educational and professional degrees. Ending his statement, Al Bahar said: Our first and foremost objective at KFIC is to serve our clients in the optimal manner in a way that satisfies their needs and exceeds their expectations. In order to fulfill this objective, we strive to form a highly-qualified staff, which work to serve our clients in the quality that they deserve. Commenting on the occasion, Joshi expressed her happiness for her recognition as well as her gratitude for KFIC on the constant encouragement and support she has received till she reached this accomplishment. Joshi added: I will continue to work on my professional development and earn more accredited certifications with the support of my colleagues at KFIC. Joshi lastly wished her colleagues all continued success in their efforts to attain the highest professional ranks. It is noteworthy to mention that KFIC recognized its employees who achieved outstanding results in the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program in June 2016. Tareq Mishari Al Bahar, Executive Chairman at KFIC recognizing Bhavani Joshi About Kuwait Finance and Investment Company (KFIC): Since 2003, KFIC has been providing full-fledged financial services to their clients. KFIC is providing portfolios and fund management through their Asset Management Team. Currently, the company is managing approximately USD 1 billion of assets and funds. The finance and investment company also offers investment banking services and unique structured products that fit clients risk appetite. Clients are provided with a direct access on different stock markets including US, GCCs, Egypt, and Kuwait through KFIC's On-Line Trading Platform MUTADAWIL. Last but not least, KFIC also provides retail and commercial finance, an activity that is regulated by the Central Bank of Kuwait. Interview with Tareq Mishari Al Bahar, KFICs Board Member & CEO of KFIC: Kuwait Finance and Investment Company (KFIC), a Well-Established Asset Manager in Kuwait FAIR USE POLICY This material (including media content) may not be published, broadcasted, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the page (including the source, i.e. Marcopolis.net) is permitted and encouraged. While developed-world politics hog all the headlines, there is a lot happening in Emerging Markets-much of it seemingly chaotic. Yet as with their developed-world counterparts, there is more than meets the eye. In some, where headlines might see chaos, markets likely see room for uncertainty to fall. In others, they show the danger of investing on too-high hopes for reform. Even if you don't invest in Emerging Markets, it's worth keeping an eye on these trends and understanding how and why markets are reacting-lessons with global applicability. Turkey Gets Less Murky Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan-who has steadily consolidated power since becoming Prime Minister in 2003-took another step toward autocracy on Easter Sunday, when a constitutional referendum gave him sweeping new powers. Opposition groups are challenging the results, citing a host of irregularities, but given Erdogan has largely purged political opponents from Turkey's institutions and stacked them with loyalists, the results seem likely to stand. Meanwhile, after a failed coup last summer, Turkey remains in a state of emergency, which was extended after the referendum to July 19, and the authorities have arrested dozens of protesters in Istanbul. Generally, you might assume the erosion of democracy is something markets dislike-and certainly, from a human perspective, it isn't good. All else equal, societies do best when free, and Turkey has backslid significantly in that department. Yet stocks, callous as they are, have looked past this. Instead, Turkish stocks appear fine with the result, buoyed by the end of uncertainty over the referendum and eager to have the past few years of political instability behind them. For better or worse, the referendum extends a government status quo (i.e., Erdogan in charge and able to do as he pleases) that has been more or less fine for Turkey's economy. Many are now optimistic over the prospect of a more active government pursuing some reforms they've been forced to shelve in recent years, while politics were less stable. Let this be a timely reminder: Stocks care more about policies and falling uncertainty than personalities. Brazil Needs a Good Scrubbing Operation Car Wash-the biggest political investigation in Brazilian history-toppled President Dilma Rousseff last August. Now, the probe centering on bid-rigging at Petrobras (the national oil company) is encroaching on President Michel Temer and eight members (a third) of his cabinet. Temer is unlikely to be removed, despite bribery allegations. As head of state, he can't be prosecuted for acts committed before he took office, and the incident in question supposedly occurred in 2010. However, with his approval ratings plumbing 10%, it will be harder to advance tough legislation that would help put Brazil's finances on surer footing and bolster investor confidence after two years of recession-the worst on record. While default isn't imminent-Brazilian bond yields are their lowest in four years-reforms could improve economic recovery prospects. Pension reform-raising the minimum retirement age to 62 for women and 65 for men from the mid-50s-is next on the docket, and widely seen as a litmus test for Temer's ability to push through tough changes. It has also been heavily watered down from initial proposals, which doesn't bode well for planned education, labor and tax laws. The economic outlook isn't much better, as Brazil's commodity-heavy economy depends on a sustained rise in natural resources prices. High hopes for reform drove Brazil to be one of the world's best-performing markets last year, but now the party is fading. The MSCI Brazil is still up 11.3% year to date, but it is trailing the MSCI Emerging Markets index's 14.4% rise.[i] Unless political and economic reality beat expectations, Brazilian stocks should continue disappointing. South Korean Uncertainty Winds Down May 9, South Korean voters go to the polls to elect a new president to replace Park Geun-hye, who recently became the first Korean president to be removed from office. The Democratic Party's Moon Jae-in is neck and neck with upstart Ahn Cheol-soo-a doctor and software entrepreneur who founded the centrist People's Party after his failed independent presidential bid in 2012. While differing on foreign policy towards North Korea-Moon favors rapprochement, while Ahn is more hawkish-both back ending the government's preferential treatment of the family-controlled business conglomerates known as chaebol. Chaebol reform has long featured in Korean campaign speeches, but many believe the chances are greater this time given the February arrest of Samsung heir and Vice Chair Lee Jae-yong-currently on trial-and recent indictment of Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin. Chaebol leaders are no longer untouchable. Although reform will be difficult-chaebol still wield considerable power-markets seem happy about the potential for less corrupt, better-run firms that are more accountable to shareholders. More broadly, though, Korea is rallying on falling political uncertainty. Korean stocks first fell as the Park scandal broke, but as impeachment became increasingly likely, they moved on. Neither her impeachment nor eventual removal derailed Korean markets. Nor was the shakeup that huge-it simply pushed December's election up by seven months. South Africa Shuffling a Stacked Deck Political turmoil is engulfing South Africa after President Jacob Zuma fired widely respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last month over budgetary differences and sidelined 19 other members of his cabinet. Zuma also remains under fire over alleged influence peddling with the Gupta family, who control a sprawling South African business empire. Opposition parties and influential members of Zuma's African National Congress (ANC) are calling for Zuma to resign, with some lobbying for an ANC National Election Committee (NEC) to formally address the situation. The probability of Zuma's removal has risen, but it also seemed that way last year when the NEC ultimately declined to sack him following the release of a report detailing alleged ties between the president and the Guptas. However, his political capital has eroded further since then. If he is ultimately removed-similar to Park in South Korea and Rousseff in Brazil-the resolution to the uncertainty and prospects for greater reform could lift South African stocks, but the prospect remains speculative at this point. Moreover, like Brazil, South Africa is a commodity-heavy (mining) nation. So its fortunes likely rest as much on the direction of metals prices as they do Zuma's presidency. BERLIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday that all parties concerned shall implement the resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council concerning the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in a comprehensive and complete manner. Wang made the remarks at a joint press conference with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel after attending the third session of China-Germany Strategic Dialogue on Diplomatic and Security Affairs. "Here I want to emphasize that all the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council concerning the DPRK so far have, as always, included two aspects -- opposing Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons and taking measures to deter its nuclear and missile activities on the one hand, and on the other, highlighting the peaceful settlement of the issue by avoiding the actions that may aggravate tensions and resuming the six-party talks as early as possible," he said. The Security Council's resolutions should be carried out in a comprehensive manner, and the parties shall not implement them only according to their own needs, Wang stressed. The imposition of sanctions on the DPRK and the resumption of dialogues are both means to implement the resolutions, Wang said, adding neither the continuous nuclear and missile tests nor the reckless military drills on the Peninsula accords with the spirit of the resolutions. No major crisis has occurred on the Korean Peninsula so far over the past few days, Wang said, noting the Peninsula peace and stability was in the first place a blessing for the two peoples on the both sides of the 38th Parallel, and also fit the expectations of all peace-loving countries. The current relative stability in the region owns to the common efforts of all and the restraints exercised by the specific parties concerned, Wang said, reminding all parties that the temporal peace is susceptible to occasional accidents. He called on all parties concerned to refrain from taking any more actions that would escalate the confrontation on the Peninsula. The parties concerned have begun a new round of contacts and interactions following the current tension, as meetings in all forms and of all sizes among different parties have been convened, Wang said. The most pressing thing for now is to prompt all parties concerned to get back to the negotiating table, so as to solve the nuclear issue on the Peninsula, said Wang. The top Chinese diplomat said he appreciates Germany's understanding and support of the "double suspension" initiative proposed by China. The proposal, announced by Wang on March 8 this year, aims to defuse the looming crisis only if the DPRK suspends its nuclear and missile activities in exchange of the stop of war games by the United States and South Korea. The "double suspension" is only the first step to get all parties concerned back to negotiation and dialogue, he said, noting China's ultimate goal is to realize Peninsula denuclearization and establish mechanisms for lasting peace in the region. China will, as always, remain firm and committed to the prospect, and play a constructive role in making it happen, Wang added. Written before April 27 (14), 1917. This document is a redraft of the appeal To the Soldiers and Sailors, and was adopted by the Petrograd City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks) on April 14 (27), 1917 during the discussion, out of order, of Point 6 of the agenda, namely, The Hounding Campaign Against Pravda. Citizens! The paper Russkaya Volya, founded by the tsars Minister Protopopov and despised even by the Cadets, is carrying a riot-provoking campaign against our Party, against the paper Pravda, against our Comrades Lenin and Zinoviev, against the Petrograd [Soviet] Committee of our Party housed in the Kshesinskaya mansion. We have received a number of reports, written as well as oral, concerning threats of violence, bomb threats, etc. From the very first days of the [February] revolution, the capitalists, masking as republicans, have been trying to sow enmity between the workers and the soldiers. First they lied about the workers wanting to leave the army without bread. Now they are trying to inflame feeling against Pravda. We appeal to the sense of honour of the revolutionary workers and soldiers of Petrograd, and declare: We not only have not been guilty, directly or indirectly, of any threats of violence against individuals, but, on the contrary, we have always maintained that our task is to explain our views to all the people, that we regard the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, elected by all the workers and the soldiers, as the only possible revolutionary government. On the very next day after their arrival, the comrades, members of different parties, who passed through Germany, made a report to the trusted representatives of all the workers and soldiers, namely, to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. On this Executive Committee were Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Skobelev, Steklov, and others. Comrades! These leaders of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies differ with us on many questions pertaining to the organisation of the state. They could be anything but biased in our favour. Now what did the Executive Committee do? In its Izvestia No. 32, for April 5, 1917, it published the full report dealing with the passage through Germany. This report gives all the facts, and the names of the foreign socialists from two neutral countries, Switzerland and Sweden, who checked our protocols. And what was the decision of the Executive Committee? Did it express condemnation or even disapproval of the fact that Lenin and others travelled through Germany? It did not. This is how the editors of Izvestia, in the same issue, reported the resolution of the Executive Committee: Having heard the report of Comrades Zurabov and Zinoviev, the Executive Committee decided to take the matter up immediately with the Provisional Government and to take steps towards securing the immediate return to Russia of all emigrants, irrespective of their political views and their attitude towards the war. The results of the negotiations with the government will be published in the near future.Editors. As anyone can see, not a single word is said here against Lenin and his comrades. What we have is a warning to the Provisional Government, a decision to take steps to prevent it from hindering return to Russia. Following this, Martovs telegram and Trotskys arrest in Britain have shown that Milyukov is either powerless against Britain and France, who keep their own internationalist socialists imprisoned, or that he does not want to take serious measures. The Germans and Russians have made exchanges dozens of times throughout the war. Kovalevsky, member of the Council of State, was exchanged for an Austrian, etc. For wealthy people such exchanges have been arranged by the governments many a time. Then why doesnt the present government want to arrange such an exchange for the emigrants? Because it wants to prevent a number of fighters from taking part in the revolutionary struggle. What does Russkaya Volya do, and papers like Rech and Yedinstvo that follow in its footsteps? They continue their hounding campaign, thereby inciting ignorant people to acts of violence against individuals. They refuse to publish either the report or the resolution of the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies has been given the names of various socialists who verified and approved every step taken by the emigrants in connection with their journey. They are the French socialists Loriot and Guilbeaux, the Swiss socialist Platten, the Swedish socialists Lindhagen (Mayor of Stockholm), Carleson, Striom, Nerman, the German socialist Hartstein of Karl Liebknechts group, the Polish socialist Bronski. By acting this way Russkaya Volya, Rech and Yedinstvo are aiding and abetting the dark forces which threaten violence, bombs, and riots. Comrades, soldiers and workers! We warn you against these gentlemen of Russkaya Volya, Rech and Yedinstvo, and declare over and over again that we stand for explaining to the whole nation the views of all the parties, we stand for respecting the Soviet of Soldiers and Workers Deputies. If the Provisional Government, if Rech, if Mr. Plekhanov are displeased with the way the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies has acted, why do they not say so openly? Why do they not demand a re-examination of the case? Why are they afraid to reprint what was published in Izvestia No. 52? Why? Because they are out to sow discord! If violence in any form is resorted to, we shall place the responsibility on the editors and contributors of Russkaya Volya, Rech, Yedinstvo, and others, who have dared to keep the report and the resolution of the Executive Committee out of the press, and to carry on an insidious propaganda. The paper Dyelo Naroda, to which Minister A. F. Kerensky is an active contributor, has already pointed out that the methods used by these newspapers are helping the riot-mongers (Dyelo Naroda No. 23). We want the Milyukovs, Amfiteatrovs, Plekbanovs and Co. to know that if their baiting leads to violence they will be the first to suffer the consequences. Down with riot-mongering! Down with the heroes of baiting and deception, who suppress the resolution of the Executive Committee! Comrades, soldiers and workers! You will not allow the peoples freedom to be marred by riots! You will see to it that the decisions of your Soviet of Soldiers and Workers Deputies are respected. Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. Petrograd Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. After consuming 14 million pounds of lobster in 2016, essentially saving the lobster industry of Maine in the U.S., Chinese food enthusiasts now aspire to expand their culinary horizons in such a way as to cure another countrys headache. Chinese web users have put forward a clever solution to save Ribe, a small Danish town along the southwestern coastline of the Scandinavia Islands, from an unwanted invasion of giant Pacific oysters. On Monday, the Danish embassy in China posted an article on its Weibo account, stating that the Pacific oysters that have been spreading all over Scandinavia since 2010 are seriously threatening living conditions for animals and plants in the Danish Wadden Sea, which is one of their most important natural resources. The post instantly electrified Chinese netizens, who always love to flaunt their centuries-long passion for diversifying food resources. The proposed solution was as follows: Denmark can invent an 'eater's visa' for Chinese visitors, offering unlimited entries within 10 years for stays of up to a month each visit. The oysters will be extinct within five years." The idea quickly exploded, earning more than 10,000 thumbs-up. Ha! Five years? Five months is enough," one user commented. Others have even gone so far as to offer recipes for delicious oyster dishes. For the sea delicacy -- charcoal it, fry it, bake it with cheese, stew it with mushrooms, cook it in a pot with various sauces, make it into soup or porridge with tofu," a culinary pundit suggested, earning accolades from many. Web users also bombarded the original post with an array of pictures of oysters, cooked according to the styles of various regions -- spicy in Sichuan, lightly flavored in Southeast China, baked with heavy sauces in the Northeast and more. What accounts, at least in part, for the lively discussion is that the economic boom in China has given the countrys swelling ranks of wealthy and middle-class citizens a chance to expand their appetites globally. It is this appetite and economic power that make some of the proposals seem so viable. You want the oysters to be extinct, or just endangered? Let us know, one internet user queried confidently. The proposal and responses to it grew so robustly that experts even chimed in to acknowledge the plausibility of the eating strategy." Li Cheng, an expert in environmental management and wildlife, told China News Service that it is actually feasible and workable to solve an invasive species problem in this way. His only warning was for volunteers to avoid oysters from polluted areas before they start chowing down. The Danish embassy in China said today that they will forward Chinese netizens creative ideas to relevant officials for consideration, and Denmark can export the oysters to China as long as they get permission. CHEECH.jpg From left, Richard "Cheech" Marin, John Hassan and Tommy Chong at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., in March 2015. (Courtesy of John Hassan) John Hassan just happens to be the latest collaborator with comedian Richard "Cheech" Marin - but don't call him Chong. No, the Holyoke native isn't taking to stage or screen with the legendary comic who made his name in the marijuana-fueled the antics of Cheech and Chong in the 1970s. But Hassan did recently collaborate on a memoir with Marin, acting as an editor, sounding board, and narrative guide. The book, "Cheech Is Not My Real Name...But Don't Call Me Chong," was just released by Grand Central Publishing. It's a candid, straightforward and often hilarious memoir of the comedian's life. Seeing Hassan working with a comedian seems like a natural fit to friends and family who have been regaled with his rapid-fire wit over the years. But although Hassan guided Marin through the process and acted as a general editor (Marin calls Hassan a "collaborator" in the acknowledgements), he said that the legendary comic had a pretty good sense about what worked and what didn't. "I was his editor and sort of a guide, but (how it worked) was that he and I would do a lot of talking, and then he would write," Hassan said. "And then he would send me a chapter. He was good about accepting my edits, but he really didn't need a heavy rewrite." Hassan said that Marin was mainly interested in just being funny and invested, and telling the stories of his life. Hassan strove to draw out the best parts that life. "So what I would try to do is get him to go deeper and elaborate where maybe he hadn't done that in his first pass at telling a certain story," Hassan said. "But I didn't make a lot of cuts from stuff he sent me. He was really good at self-editing. So what I got was in pretty good shape. Some of it had to be polished. But there was a lot of meat on the bone." "Cheech Is Not My Real Name...But Don't Call Me Chong" Hassan added that there were some stories they discussed that Marin didn't want to put in the book. "And I'd push him on it a little bit, but he would stand firm, and so I'd drop it. My job was not to antagonize him," he said. "But other times, he would agree with me." As far as the book's title, Hassan said that there is no animosity meant toward Chong in it. Rather, it was Marin letting people know that he's the guy behind the character. Hassan said that it was frustrating to both Marin and partner Tommy Chong in the early days when people - even journalists - didn't understand that the duo was playing characters and often confused the two. "Cheech was sometimes disappointed when, after they had had some success, he'd be on the phone with the reporter and the reporter would say, "Wait, you don't have a Chicano accent," and Cheech would have explain to him that he was an actor and a performer that the guy on the record was just a character," Hassan said. "It was disappointing to them that some people thought they weren't doing an act or being creative, but that they were just being themselves as stoners." And while in the act, both Cheech and Chong both come off as lovable knuckleheads, Hassan said they're both actually incredibly intelligent. "Both guys are very sharp, very creative. They're artists in every positive sense of the word," he said. The book is very candid about the duo's freewheeling lifestyle concerning sex and drugs back in the day. "He doesn't glorify it but says that it was a great time to be young and he was glad he went through it," Hassan said. As a fan of comedy from a very early age, Hassan appreciated Cheech and Chong before he even got all the stoner jokes. But he knew they were on to something. "I was a comedy fan in general, but I really liked their counterculture and anti-establishment attitude. It appealed to me," he said. "They were like Lennon and McCartney. They just met and it clicked. They were just good together and brought out the best in each other." But after working with Marin, Hassan came away with an even higher regard for his work ethic and comic abilities. He also noted how warm Marin is. "He one of the kindest, sweetest, most intelligent people I've ever met," he said. "His success makes perfect sense anyway, but I now I know how hard they worked to get there." Symphony 17 Molnar.jpg Springfield Symphony Orchestra Music Director and Conductor Kevin Rhodes. (David Molnar | The Republican file photo) Springfield Symphony Orchestra conductor Kevin Rhodes will make his Norwegian debut next month when he conducts Rudolf Nureyev's production of "Don Quixote" at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet in Oslo. The performances, set to the music of Ludwig Minkus as arranged by John Lanchberry, will take place between May 19 and June 10 after the close of the SSO season. Rhodes is no stranger to "Don Quixote." He first conducted the new Dutch National Ballet production by Alexei Ratmansky, which was recorded live at the Amsterdam Music Theatre, and is available on DVD. Rhodes toured with this production to Beijing. He then conducted the Nureyev version of "Don Quixote" with the Vienna State Opera Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet. The Vienna production was filmed for television, and has been aired extensively throughout the European Union. The Paris production, recorded live at the Bastille Opera House, was filmed for TV and cinema, and has been aired worldwide. Rhodes toured with that production to Tokyo. Rhodes is celebrating his 16th seasons as music director for the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and the Traverse Symphony in Michigan. He has also been the Principal Conductor for Boston's Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra for seven seasons. Last fall, Maestro Rhodes conducted an all-Balanchine program as part of the Paris Opera Ballet's "Homage to Violette Verdy" and the Nureyev production of "Raymonda" at the Vienna State Opera Ballet. A regular guest conductor at Europe's top opera houses for over 20 years, this season he also returns to the Stuttgart Ballet to conduct "Romeo and Juliet," on June 13 and 17, and the annual Nureyev Gala at the Vienna State Opera on June 28. Kiana Estime Kiana Estime, seen on the Holyoke Community College campus. Every person has a story. Everyday People is a series that seeks to highlight the stories of everyday residents in Massachusetts. _______________ As a senior at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Kiana Estime was torn. She was accepted into her dream colleges yet given less than half the cost of tuition in scholarships. "I am a first-generation college student and didn't have the financial support to pay for college," Estime said. Advisors at the schools recommended several paths to attendance, all of which would have resulted in her graduating with more than $100,000 in student loan debt. "I couldn't imagine still paying loans 30 years later," she said. As she considered her options, Estime had what she calls a "click" moment. "I realized my education can be achieved any way I decide," she said. The then 18-year-old moved from the Berkshires to the Pioneer Valley and enrolled at Holyoke Community College. She juggled her class load, commuting to school and working while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average. Now 20 years old and a rising sophomore at the college, Estime spent weeks applying for scholarships in an attempt to fund the next step of her education. Estime's advisor Irma Medina, coordinator of HCC's Pathways Program which helps low-income, first-generation college students transfer to four-year schools, recommended she apply for the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to outstanding community college students across the country transferring to top-tier colleges and universities. Applicants must have a strong record of academic achievement, demonstrated leadership skills, be of service to others and show financial need. Plus, a willingness to fill out the extensive application. Estime wrote three essays and received two recommendations for the scholarship. She was one of nearly 3,000 students this year to apply. "This is a very competitive national scholarship," Medina said in a statement about the award. Recently, Medina asked Estime to visit her office on campus. Once inside, Medina asked her advisee to explain why she wished to attend a women's college in the Pioneer Valley. Recounting the meeting, Estime said it was a dream to learn in a diverse, supportive environment among other women, though she was uncertain it would happen. While speaking, Estime noticed others in the room smile and that's when Medina shared her reason for the meeting: Estime won the scholarship. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation will award her up to $40,000 a year to complete her bachelor's degree. "I was trying not try cry in front of everybody," Estime said. When she arrived home that evening, Estime said the full impact of the news hit her. "I said to myself, 'Wow. This is real.' I realized then that I didn't have to cuff myself to debt," she said. "It's amazing how much a financial burden can put on your existential shoulders." Accepted into both Mount Holyoke College and Smith College, Estime will now decide where she'd like to complete her bachelor's degree in anthropology. A 72-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for the murder of Stephen Rakes, an alleged extortion victim of James "Whitey" Bulger in the 1980's. William Camuti, Sudbury, was found guilty of murder in the first degree for poisoning Rakes and dumping his body in the woods. A statement by Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Camuti killed Rakes, a 59-year-old South Boston man living in Quincy, to avoid paying a $100,000 debt. Camuti met with Rakes at a McDonald's on July 16, 2013 to discuss a real estate deal in Wilmington. It was at the McDonald's Camuti reportedly laced an iced coffee he bought for Rakes with potassium cyanide. Camuti then drove the two of them around Waltham, Woburn and Burlington before dumping Rakes' body in a wooded area in Lincoln. A jogger spotted Rakes' body the next day, on July 17, 2013. An autopsy later revealed the 59-year-old South Boston native had been poisoned. Authorities initiated an investigation that led them to Camuti, whose laptop reportedly revealed searches about whether cyanide would affect the taste of coffee. The murder came just before the victim was expected to testify against Boston crime boss "Whitey" Bulger. Rakes was allegedly forced by Bulger to sell his liquor store in South Boston several decades ago. Surveillance video revealed the clothes found on Rakes' dead body were the same clothes he had worn to Bulger's trial on the day he was killed. On top of his life sentence, Judge Bruce Henry sentenced Camuti to serve five to seven years on two counts of misleading police, as well as one year for improperly disposing human remains. 1.png (Google Maps) An attempted robbery by two men in Taunton left one store clerk shot and in serious condition Wednesday night. Taunton police say a female clerk at Eagan's Package Store, a liquor store located in the city's downtown on Cohannet Street, was shot after fighting with two men who demanded she give them money from the cash register. Two young men, a 17-year-old and 18-year-old, were arrested by Lowell police detectives early Thursday morning in connection with the shooting and armed robbery. According to a statement by Taunton police, the two men - one white, one black, both around six feet tall - wore masks and hoods. One man carried a shotgun and approached the woman behind the counter to demand money, reportedly poking the gun at her. The woman "engaged in an altercation" with the suspect, police say, and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun before the suspect fired a shot into her left side. Taunton police were contacted by a 911 call through Massachusetts State Police shortly after 8:30 p.m. Within minutes they found the woman at Eagan's suffering from a gunshot wound. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital and, as of midnight, was considered to be in stable but serious condition. The two teenage suspects will be arraigned in court on Thursday. SOUTH HADLEY - Veteran journalist and newscaster Amy Goodman remembers the moment she was told a warrant had been issued for her arrest. Goodman, who spoke at Mount Holyoke College's Gamble auditorium on Tuesday night, said she'd been at a film festival in Canada in October, 2016, when she received a text from an associate that said, "You're under arrest." Since 1996, Goodman has been the host of Democracy Now, a daily news broadcast that many now view as a stark example of independent, non-"corporate" journalism in a sea of "mainstream media." Her talk Tuesday night was part of a book tour for Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America, a retrospective on the show that Goodman has spent most of her career working in the service of. As a reporter, Goodman has often come under fire for her direct and confrontational manner; a famous phone call between her and Bill Clinton that occurred in 2000 was one of the few times that the former U.S. President visibly lost his cool on a live program. Appropriately, then, the reason an arrest warrant was issued for Goodman last September was largely the same one that has gotten her into trouble so many times in the past: mainly, she's a journalist. The warrant was issued by Morton County, North Dakota, the locale where Goodman had recently done an expose on the protests of the Standing Rock Sioux and other activist organizations in response to plans to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline on a sacred Native American burial ground. During her coverage, Goodman filmed guards for the Pipeline using dogs and pepper spray on protesters, transmitting sometimes gruesome audio and video of activists being attacked. In response, Morton County charged Goodman with a misdemeanor offense of criminal trespass. Goodman eventually turned herself in and the case against her was later dismissed, but the incident remained a poignant example to Goodman of the dangers posed to journalists who truly seek to speak truth to power. Goodman's talk Tuesday touched on a wide range of topics, including U.S. foreign policy, the death penalty, and the various activist movements Goodman feels are working to change America. Thematic throughout, however, was the necessity of challenging powerful institutions, and how journalists should speak truth to power instead of being a voice for the powerful. Tackling the Trump White House In line with that spirit of criticism, Goodman took aim Tuesday night at the highest office of state: the White House. Goodman called the Trump administration a "kleptocracy," pointing to multiple examples that she felt showed a conflict of interest between Trump's business endeavors and his political decision-making. "This is terrifying, when you think that foreign policy is being conducted to enrich a very small circle of intimate family who also are related by their business connections," Goodman said. She also discussed his recent aggressive foreign policy moves, criticizing his decision to drop MOAB--the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (or, as it has been casually referred to by military officials, the "Mother of All Bombs")--on a location in Afghanistan several weeks ago. Criticizing the 'corporate media' As much as Goodman attacked Trump and other government officials Tuesday night, she was equally critical of the people in charge of reporting on them. Goodman referred to TV pundits as people who knew "so little about so much" and continually reinforced the idea that mainstream media outlets are a soapbox for society's most powerful people. She also noted that while Trump has so far had a contentious relationship with the press, he might have a much cozier arrangement with them if he would just be a little nicer. "I'm afraid to say this, but if he would just stop attacking the press for a day or two the press would wrap themselves around him as they so often wrap themselves around the establishment," Goodman said. "Yet they're getting punched so directly and so hard," she said. Goodman noted, however, that there was another way that Trump might win the favor of the media. "The way he can rally the troops and the journalists is by attacking another country," Goodman said. Goodman criticized the way the media "rallied around" Trump after he began taking a more aggressive stance towards countries in the Middle East. Democracy Now Goodman, who has made her career largely by defining her own brand of journalism against the"mainstream media," argued Tuesday night that ordinary people need to "take the media back." In that sense, Goodman made a rallying cry for independent media, arguing that it was important, now more than ever, to pursue forms of journalism that were unfettered by the influence of special interests. "We need a media that questions war," Goodman said, to applause. "We need a media that is not brought to us by weapons manufacturers when we cover war. We need a media that is not brought to us by the oil, gas, and coal companies when we cover climate change. We need a media that is not brought to us by the insurance and big pharma when we cover healthcare," she said, to applause. Goodman, who has survived and gained popularity as an independent journalist for several decades now, said that having a media not sponsored by special interests, is what "independent media is about." SPRINGFIELD -- A ceremony was held Thursday to honor Springfield's 104th Infantry Regiment, the first U.S. military regiment ever recognized by a foreign power for bravery in war. The ceremony marks the beginning of events to commemorate the centennial of World War I. Mayor Domenic J. Sarno joined Brian Willette, commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Western Mass Chapter 875, at Apremont Triangle Park, across from Kimball Towers on Chestnut Street. The 104th Infantry was honored by France with the Croix de Guerre award for valor during battle against German forces on April 10, 12 and 13, 1918, in Bois Brule, near Apremont in northwestern France. The Croix de Guerre is awarded as an individual or unit award to soldiers who distinguish themselves by acts of heroism involving combat with the enemy. "When the 104th Infantry veterans returned to Springfield they wanted a monument they can call their own, and in 1926, on their seventh reunion, this triangle was dedicated as Apremont Triangle by Springfield Mayor Fordis C. Parker," according to Willette. In the triangle there is a stone with a bronze plaque depicting the unit receiving the Croix de Guerre from a French general. The 104th Infantry Regiment's history goes back to 1639, when it was first mustered as the Springfield Train Band in Springfield. The unit later fought under Gen. George Patton during the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. The last active element of the regiment, the 1st Battalion, was deactivated in 2005. EAST LONGMEADOW - Surveillance video from an ATM on North Main Street led to the arrest of a 19-year-old Springfield man suspected of robbing a victim at gunpoint there earlier this month. The armed robbery occurred at a Bank of America ATM, 21 North Main St., on April 10 at about 6:25 p.m., Sgt. Steven Manning said. When the victim walked into the ATM kiosk, the suspect walked in behind him, waited for the victim to obtain some money and then pulled out a gun. The suspect fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Manning said. Detectives, examining the surveillance video, were able to identify the suspect. They sought and received a warrant for his arrest. East Longmeadow police, along with Springfield police and members of the Massachusetts State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Team, executed the warrant at a Springfield address at about 6 a.m. Wednesday. Arrested on that warrant for armed robbery was Amika Blake, of 65 Harvard St., Springfield. Manning said the suspect was not arrested at his home. He declined to give address where the arrest was made. Police have yet to recover the firearm, he said, Manning praised the efforts of the East Longmeadow detectives and city and state police. "It was good work by everybody," he said. Armed robberies at ATMs are relatively rare, Manning said. People scanning the QR code of the app Baixing Anquan (Xinjiangnet.com.cn) Police in Urumchi, capital of northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have launched a mobile application to collect useful information from the public, in an effort to better safeguard public security. The app, Baixing Anquan, literally means safety of the civilians, can enable users to report suspicious activities that may harm social security and stability via uploading text, photo and video evidence. Police will take effective measures after investigating details of the information. Civilians providing useful information will be awarded. Police call for more public participation in tackling crime, expressing hope that the app can serve as a platform for cooperation between police and the public. Martin Santiago Wanted poster State Police are searching for Martin Santiago, an EBT fraud suspect who allegedly cut off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet Thursday morning and did not show up to his court trial. (State Police) State Police are searching for an EBT fraud suspect who allegedly cut off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet Thursday morning and did not show up to his court trial. Martin B. Santiago, 49, was scheduled to begin a food stamp fraud and money laundering trial Thursday in Essex Superior Court. State Police said he did not appear and that investigators have determined he cut off his court-ordered GPS bracelet around 6 a.m. Santiago, who is from the Dominican Republic and is not a U.S. citizen, is charged with trafficking $1.5 million in EBT benefits at his three stores in Lawrence, State Police said. He allegedly took part in a scheme to fraudulently sell food stamps and launder money. A warrant for Santiago's arrest was issued after he did not appear in court. Santiago was arrested on the fraud and money laundering charges in June 2015 and has been awaiting trial since. When Santiago was arraigned in Superior Court, the district attorney's office asked for a high bail, State Police said. A bail of $75,000 cash with GPS monitoring was set. Santiago is Hispanic, has black hair and brown eyes, is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs about 190 pounds, State Police said. He is fluent in Spanish. State Police have issued a wanted poster with a photo of Santiago taken in 2012. He has ties to Lawrence and Methuen and has used aliases of Mark Santiago and Martin Billone Santiago in the past. Anyone with information on Santiago's location, or who thinks they see him, is urged to call the Massachusetts State Police at 1-800-KAPTURE (1-800-527-8873). lewin2.jpg Henia Lewin (SUBMITTED PHOTO) HOLYOKE -- Henia Lewin was smuggled out of Lithuania to escape the Nazis as a child during World War II. The Amherst resident will discuss her experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust at 6:45 p.m. on May 4 at the Senior Center, 291 Pine St. The address by Lewin is free, a press release said. The event is the annual Holocaust commemoration by the Greater Holyoke Council for Human Understanding. It is sponsored by the council, the Holyoke public schools, Holyoke Community College and the Holyoke Council on Aging, the press release said. "Each year we remember the more than six million people who were killed during the Holocaust. This year's guest speaker is Henia Lewin, a child survivor of the Holocaust who was born in Lithuania and hidden from the Nazis by a Christian family," the press release said. Lewin entered the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania with her parents she was 18 months old, according to the Heart of the Covenant Foundation, a New York City-based organization that honors Jewish educators and their creativity in working to perpetuate "the identity, continuity and heritage of the Jewish people." "Her parents, Gita and Yona Wisgardisky, hid her in a disguised walk-in pantry. Two years later, and following the death or deportation of her grandparents and other family members, her parents smuggled her to the safety of Lithuanian Christian acquaintances," according to the foundation. Lewin was reunited with her parents after the war and they traveled to and lived in Poland, Israel and Montreal, according to the foundation. Lewin received a Covenant Award as an Outstanding Jewish Educator in North American in 1997 from the Heart of the Covenant Foundation. Lewin has taught Yiddish at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College, both in Amherst. She has taught all levels of Hebrew, tutors children and helps prepare them for bar and bat mitzvah. She earned a master's in teacher education from the University of Vermont in Burlington, taught Hebrew there, according to the foundation. She teaches Hebrew and Yiddish to adults at Congregation Bnai Israel in Northampton, according to her Linkedin page. She also has taught in Montreal and Israel. SPRINGFIELD -- Two city men on Thursday denied charges of trafficking heroin in the amount of over 200 grams in Hampden Superior Court. The heroin was found inside Lego boxes, authorities said. Bail was set at $25,000 cash each for Jonathan Offerral, 32, and Orlando Soto, 34. Both were arrested on Feb. 14, when approximately 394 grams of heroin was found, a spokesman for Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said. This arrest came about after a lengthy investigation involving the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Springfield Police Department, the U.S. Postal Service and the Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force. After becoming aware of illicit activity at 51 Jefferson Ave. in Springfield, law enforcement officers applied for and received a search warrant for the residence, which led to the discovery of three large chunks of heroin inside Lego boxes, said district attorney's office spokesman James Leydon. cutone.jpg State Trooper Michael Cutone at press conference in March 2015 about expansion of C3 Policing program. (The Republican/Don Treeger) SPRINGFIELD -- A lawyer for Massachusetts State Police trooper Michael Cutone argued Wednesday before a Hampden Superior Court judge that Cutone should be allowed to market C3 policing as an off-duty job. Cutone filed a civil suit July 27 against State Police Superintendent Col. Richard D. McKeon and the Massachusetts Department of State Police. McKeon denied Cutone's request for permission to do the off duty marketing of C3, the suit said. Robert L. Leonard, Cutone's lawyer, asked Judge Edward J. McDonough to decide the suit in his client's favor without a trial on the pleadings that have been filed in the case. Bart Q. Hollander, chief of the Western Massachusetts regional office of the state attorney general's office, opposed Leonard's request. Hollander argued that the suit should be dismissed because McKeon did not exceed the authority of the State Police department and acted within his discretion, and because McKeon's decision was not "arbitrary or capricious." McDonough took the matter under advisement. The C3 policing program, which began in Springfield's North End, has garnered positive feedback here and gained national media attention from "60 Minutes" on CBS to the New York Times. Leonard said Cutone, a trooper since 1999, has served with the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) since 1986 and has served in "every modern hot spot" including Haiti, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Leonard said prior to 2008, Cutone developed the C3 program to be effective in combating crime in high crime areas. He got permission from the state police to implement it, and it was very successful, Leonard said. Cutone protected the C3 Policing program with two U.S. copyright registrations, and the brand name, C3 Policing, is protected with a trademark issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to the suit. Cutone "passionately believes" C3 policing would benefit law enforcement in high crime areas throughout the country, Leonard said. "He's also got to make a living, so he's got to do it for a fee," the lawyer said. Cutone obtained a written opinion from the state Ethics Commission that he would not violate the state conflict of interest law by providing training in the C3 policing program to law enforcement or other governmental agencies in the U.S. (excluding agencies and departments in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) for a fee, according to the suit. Leonard said there was a "complete failure" by the State Police to document sufficient facts for McKeon to deny Cutone's request. After McKeon denied Cutone's request to engage in outside employment, Cutone appealed McKeon's order. State law requires a hearing on an appeal request, the suit says. McKeon appointed Major James A. Jones II, a deputy division commander of the state police, to conduct the hearing. Jones issued a decision that there was no basis for denying Cutone's request for off-duty employment, according to the suit. Leonard said McKeon rejected Jones' decision and again denied Cutone's request. Leonard said McKeon "basically said, 'I don't care what Maj. Jones decided.'" Hollander said Cutone has not shown that McKeon did anything that exceeded the authority of the state police. Hollander said Jones only made a recommendation, not a decision. He said if Cutone and Leonard wanted to have input after that, they were given the opportunity then -- before McKeon made the final decision. McDonough asked Hollander why Leonard should have added any comments on Jones' decision when it was favorable to Cutone. The judge also asked the purpose of the administrative appeal of McKeon's decision if McKeon still gets to make the final decision. Hollander said Cutone developed C3 while working as a trooper, and had great input into it. "The state police has C3 policing in very good measure because of trooper Cutone's work," Hollander said. But he said C3 is "inextricably intertwined" with the Massachusetts State Police and Cutone should have "unquestioning loyalty" to the department. McKeon was concerned with the appearance of impropriety of Cutone wanting "to sell the program while doing it for free for the State Police," Hollander said. Partners HealthCare System and one of its hospitals, Brigham and Women's Hospital, have agreed to pay $10 million to settle allegations that the Brigham and Women's stem cell research laboratory fraudulently obtained grant funding, officials said. The laboratory, run by Dr. Piero Anversa, allegedly obtained the funding from the National Institutes of Health, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Brigham and Women's Hospital disclosed the allegations to the government. The settlement resolves allegations that Anversa, along with Dr. Annarosa Leri and Dr. Jan Kajstura, knew or should have known that their laboratory promulgated and relied upon manipulated and falsified information, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office. That information included confocal microscope images and carbon-14 age data for cells that was in applications submitted for NIH research grant awards concerning the purported ability of stem cells to repair damage to the heart, the statement said. "Individuals and institutions that receive research funding from NIH have an obligation to conduct their research honestly and not to alter results to conform with unproven hypotheses," Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb said. "Medical research fraud not only wastes scarce government resources but also undermines the scientific process and the search for better treatments for serious diseases. Problems with the work at the laboratory were allegedly improper protocols, invalid and inaccurately characterized cardiac stem cells, reckless or deliberately misleading record-keeping and fabrication of data, the statement said. "Resolution of this self-disclosure underscores the Inspector General's commitment to promoting data integrity and scientific principles in HHS-sponsored grants and in addressing fraud affecting any HHS program," said Gregory E. Demske, HHS OIG Chief Counsel to the Inspector General. The government says that the lab, at the direction of Brigham and Women's scientists, included false scientific information in claims to NIH to obtain the funding, the statement said. Anversa, Leri, and Kajstura are no longer affiliated with Brigham and Women's. "Today, Partners Healthcare and Brigham and Women's Hospital resolved allegations of fraud perpetuated by several scientists who worked for them," said Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. "This settlement demonstrates the FBI's commitment to ensuring that taxpayer dollars are not wasted, and that organizations that receive these funds are truthful in their dealings with federal agencies like the NIH and in the research findings they present to the scientific community, and the public, as a whole." SPRINGFIELD - A citywide ordinance banning the use of plastic bags could be coming to Springfield soon, according to a source with the city's Green Committee. City Councilor Melvin Edwards, who is in charge of conception and development for the Committee, said that the meeting Tuesday was an opportunity to review the challenges and benefits of transitioning away from commercial plastic bag use. Critics of plastic bag use have argued that they have a negative effect on wildlife, and can trap and strangle both aquatic and land animals. Similarly, because plastic bags do not biodegrade or break down organically, they often end up as a pollutant in natural environments or have to be incinerated, thus polluting the atmosphere. One of the key parts of Tuesday's meeting was a presentation given by Brad Verter. Verter is the creator of the Mass Green Network--an organization founded in 2015 that assists community organizations throughout Massachusetts with the enactment of policies designed to protect the environment. To date, the Network claims to have helped pass 45 laws and regulations that limit the use of plastic bags and polystyrene--a chemical compound found in Styrofoam. Verter's presentation gave committee members a sense of what previous communities had gone through when they passed similar "plastic bag" ordinances. Edwards said, there is usually some "push back" during the initial stages of a ban, but this is generally a short-term effect and people ultimately get used to the changes and come to find them commonplace. The "ban the bag" effort has previously been championed by local activist groups, such as the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition and Arise For Social Justice--Springfield-based organizations that urged the City Council to adopt a similar ordinance in September 2016. Edwards said that he is hopeful of bringing a draft of an ordinance to the Council before the beginning of the summer. The bag ban is one of several other initiatives that have been conceived by the Green Committee that will hopefully be pushed over the next several months. Other agendas include a ban on the burning of construction materials and demolition debris in city limits, and also a possible ban on Styrofoam. It's better if these initiatives are rolled out over a longer period of time, so as not to overwhelm people, Edwards said. "A good portion of what we hope to do requires education and for some people to change their minds," Edwards said. "So if we rolled out everything at the same time it would be too much." 1.png (Eversource outage map) Power has returned for hundreds of Hampden County Eversource customers Thursday morning. The outages were reported by 174 households in Agawam, 287 in West Springfield and one in Springfield. The company said the outages are due to an equipment failure. Local authorities in Yiwu, Zhejiang province have denied rumors the city is taking in refugees from war-torn Middle East countries, adding that most of the city's resident expats are business-people and their relatives. Currently, there are around 8,000 foreign residents living in Yiwu -- mainly entrepreneurs and their families. Some have been doing business in Yiwu for over 10 years. Its simply untruthful that the local government is accepting refugees, read an article released on April 26 by Jhnews.com, a news portal affiliated with the local government. This response came on the heels of reports by some media outlets that Yiwu had issued temporary residence permits to refugees from countries including Syria and Iraq, which sparked safety concerns among the public. Local government officials said they issued the first batch of business-friendly cards to foreign business-people in 2016, in an effort to provide them with better service. The cards, unlike temporary residence permits, only entitle foreigners to limited rights, and are accessible to all foreigners -- not just those from war-torn areas. As one of Chinas most renowned commodity centers which has been dubbed China's "Christmas factory" town, Yiwu is naturally attractive to foreigners. However, due to the governments cautious attitude toward granting foreigners residence permits or visas, it is unlikely that the country will experience a large influx of refugees in the foreseeable future, experts said. Obtaining a Chinese visa is difficult for foreigners, not to mention getting a residence permit. China has adopted even stricter visa procedures for applicants from war-torn nations, making it very unlikely that the country will loosen its immigration policy to accept refugees, Hu Jiayin, director of a Beijing-based tourist and visa agency, told the Peoples Daily Online. Fleet of panda vans to begin journey around Australia to promote Chinese Tourism (Xinhua) 16:08, April 27, 2017 SYDNEY, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A fleet of 10 panda vans have been officially launched in Sydney on Thursday, to begin their journey around Australia to promote the China-Australia Year of Tourism 2017. The journey will see the "panda explorer" take groups of Chinese travel ambassadors on a 30,000- kilometer adventure, exploring a variety of cities and towns, including outback Australia. The initiative is a promotion for cooperation between the two nations and hopes to bring more Australian visitors to China. Director of the China National Tourist Office Luo Weijian said the campaign is a "first for China Tourism." "Of the more than 1 million Chinese visitors to Australia each year, most visit cities and popular destinations but few have the chance to experience life right throughout the continent," Luo said. "So the panda vans fulfil two roles, taking China to hundreds of towns and also, giving Chinese people an insight into the diverse landscapes and cultures of Australia." Plans are also underway for a special meeting between a koala and giant panda at the Adelaide Zoo in the state of South Australia. The campaign also hopes to educate more Australians about Chinese culture, by acting as a roving travel information booth and giving out prizes to locals encountered during the road-trip. Chairman of Tourism Australia Tony South told Xinhua he hopes those in the vans will become "great advocates of Australia." "I'd like to think that their aspirations for coming to Australia are satisfied and they can go home happy," South said. "For anybody, the most powerful thing you can get is a recommendation from a friend. If that happens, then I think we've done a good job." Along the journey, the panda vans will capture video and images across Australia to be shared across Chinese social media. As for the selection of pandas to be the star of the campaigns, the decision was simple. "Australians love pandas just as much as Chinese people love koalas," South said. Flathead Valley Community College will receive less state funding than originally anticipated for the 2019 Biennium (July 1, 2017 June 30, 2019). The funding will be approximately $1.3 million less than the community college funding formula projection. On April 25, the FVCC Board of Trustees approved a tuition and fee increase of $16.40 per credit. The revenue generated by the increase in tuition and fees will cover less than 50 percent of the budget shortfall that was projected. The tuition and fee increase was recommended by FVCCs Budget Committee, which included student representation. A student forum was held last week, and all students had an opportunity to comment on the budget recommendation. "I highly value not only my own education, but the ability for everyone to seek education. My fellow students whom I have randomly questioned have all agreed that we would prefer to pay a little extra in tuition than to lose out on the quality of education and services that we currently receive. Regardless of the outcome of this, we will continue to work toward a strong future, and we will persevere in reaching our goals. What we do to advance beyond the roadblocks and detours in life is what will define us and help us succeed in achieving the future toward which we aspire," said FVCC Student Government President Garret Deffert. In addition to a tuition and fee increase, FVCC will reduce expenditures. The college is working diligently to continue to meet and support the educational goals of students without a major impact on programs or services. "Our continued focus is on providing access to education and support for students to be successful in completing their educational goals. Due to receiving less State funding than expected from the Legislature, we will cut expenditures in an already lean budget, and will also increase tuition to ensure that our students continue to receive the quality of educational services for which we are known. We will work with any student who is challenged by the tuition increase to help them through financial assistance, including payment plans, loans or scholarships. FVCC is committed to helping all students achieve an education," said FVCC President Jane Karas. FVCCs strategic goals include: 1) increase access to education; 2) increase student academic success; and 3) provide diverse educational opportunities. The college will continue to support these goals and meet the needs of the community. President Karas encourages anyone with comments or questions to contact her on Friday, April 28 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 756-3801. PFL Tech Inc. is a marketing technology company that provides sales enablement and marketing automation solutions, as well asprinting, mailing, and fulfillment services. They also provide some great Montana Jobs. The next time you upgrade your Wi-Fi equipment, take a bold step: Throw out your stand-alone router and instead consider investing in a so-called mesh system. A mesh network could solve most, if not all, of your Wi-Fi problems. Its basically a system of multiple Wi-Fi stations that work together to blanket every corner of your home with a strong wireless data connection. By BRIAN X. CHEN Full Story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/technology/personaltech/mesh-network-vs-router.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-regionion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well China should take military action correspondent with the provocation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, which is expected to reach combat capability in mid-May, according to Chinese missile expert and quantum defense scientist Yang Chengjun. On April 26, Yang told the Global Times that the THAAD system is expected to be combat-ready by the middle of next month. In addition to ancillary facilities, point measurements will be taken to confirm the longitude and latitude of its launch point, as well as astronomical parameters such as elevation, gravity, wind power, humidity and rainfall. Located on the coast, the system calls for high precision and insulation. Yang said THAAD is mainly commanded vertically by U.S.-based organizations and military bases stationed in South Korea, though it needs support for security, calculations and other functions from U.S. allies. North Korea's 8,000 guns, and especially its 3,000 ballistic missiles, are the largest threat that South Korea faces. The THAAD system will not be able to neutralize these missiles if Pyongyang launches them at a large scale. Yang believes that the real intention of the U.S. in deploying THAAD is to threaten northern, northeastern and some parts of eastern China, as well as Russia's far east region. Yang told the Global Times that China should offer a military response in addition to political and diplomatic measures. He argued that China's military deployment would unquestionably be a deterrence for the U.S. and South Korea. Yang's suggestion is that China make strategic adjustments, such as enhancing its defense through the X-band radar system, infrared system and related satellite systems. He said China should take military action in reconnaissance blind zones, strengthen deployment in northeast China and make full military preparations for various contingencies. An editorial director at Berlin-based publisher Springer noted on Wednesday that the recent retraction of articles by Chinese scientists is not representative of the overall quality of Chinese researchers work. The editor added that academic fraud is an international issue. Among all the articles published by Chinese researchers from 2012 to 2016, the removed ones only account for 0.03 percent of the total. The retraction will not disparage the pioneering achievements made by Chinese researchers, Peter Butler, an editorial director at Springer for cell biology and biochemistry, told the China Youth Daily. Butlers remarks came after Springer announced on April 22 that it had retracted 107 articles written by Chinese institutions between 2012 and 2016 from its journal Tumor Biology. After a thorough investigation, the publisher said that the peer review process for those articles had been compromised. According to a CCTV report, the retracted articles were submitted with reviewer suggestions, which had real names of researchers but fabricated email addresses. A follow-up investigation determined that the real researchers had never been contacted to review their peers work. In response to questions about the merit of Chinese research, Butler freely acknowledged the many achievements of Chinese scientists, noting that in 1997, articles from China accounted for less than 2.5 percent of all articles included in the Science Citation Index (SCI). In 2006, Chinese scientists contributed more articles to the SCI than Great Britain or Germany. Nevertheless, the academic scandal has sparked a heated debate over academic fraud in China, with some scholars condemning the countrys flawed evaluation system. A number of voices are calling on Chinese academia to focus more on quality than quantity when it comes to publishing. In China, many institutions use the quantity of articles published by an academic as the standard of assessment, which causes some research fellows to chase volume instead of quality in their study results, Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the Global Times. Hu also opined that peer reviews should be made public so that all of society can help to supervise the process. The two-seat FC-1 Xiaolong trainer, China's latest model of the FC-1 Xiaolong line, completed its maiden flight in Chengdu, Sichuan province on April 27. Developed on the basis of the single-seat FC-1 Xiaolong aircraft, the new model is a lightweight multi-role combat jet that can be used in both battle and training. It is also a cost-effective third-generation trainer able to conduct beyond-visual-range battles and precise attacks. Other countries placed advanced orders for the aircraft even before it was developed, based solely on the performance and value of its predecessors. FC-1 Xiaolong was developed from the platform of J-7, a variant of the former Soviet Union's Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. The J-7 was once popular in many third-world countries, but demand for new models gradually rose as the second-generation aircraft became obsolete. In 1999, China and Pakistan signed an agreement of cooperation, officially embarking on the research and development of FC-1 Xiaolong. Now, after years of good performance, the successful aircraft model has entered rapid development. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend: There is strong and consistent support from the Italian government for the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project, Giampaolo Cutillo, Italys ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Trend Apr. 27. There were some legal problems with the SGC, but it has been cleared by the Italian court, the envoy reminded. As far as I know, work [on the SGC] remains on schedule and there is very complex work which needs to be done on the ground, Cutillo said. On Apr. 20, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court in Italy revoked the order that earlier stopped the work to remove olive trees from the route of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe. In a comment to Trend Apr. 20, Lisa Givert, head of communications at TAP AG, said, Following todays positive decision of Italian Lazio Regional Administrative Court, TAP continues to collaborate with all the authorities involved in the process to resume its activities on the ground as soon as possible, in order to remain on schedule. Once works can safely resume, the remaining olive trees could be removed and replanted in a matter of days, added Givert. TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries. TAP will connect to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italys south. TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers). Its highest point will be 1,800 meters in Albanias mountains, with lowest point at 820 meters beneath the sea. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: A group of members of Lithuanias Seimas (parliament) adopted an address in connection with the 25th anniversary of the Khojaly genocide, the Azerbaijani embassy in Lithuania said in a message Apr. 27. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is one of the most tragic conflicts in the history of the 20th century; 20 percent of Azerbaijans territories are occupied, more than one million Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs. Armenia continues to ignore the UN Security Council resolutions adopted on this conflict, says the MPs address. The Seimas members express condolences to the Azerbaijani people in connection with the killing of hundreds of peaceful Azerbaijanis during this brutal crime. The appeal also highlights Lithuanias support to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the Lithuanian MPs urge Armenia to implement the resolutions of international organizations on the conflict and withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. 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, Apr. 27 Trend: The OSCE monitoring held at the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia passed without incidents, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Apr. 27. The monitoring was held Apr. 27 in Azerbaijans Qazakh district under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative. On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was held by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Simon Tiller and Mikhail Olaru. On the Armenian side, the monitoring was carried out by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Gennady Petrica and Martin Schuster. 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. Psoriasis is an inflammatory condition that affects the skin. It occurs when a problem with the immune system causes skin cells to grow too quickly. This can pose challenges for a person who wishes to have a tattoo. Tattoos are a popular form of body art. Self-expression and decoration are some reasons a person might choose to get a tattoo. For people with psoriasis, there may be extra factors to consider when deciding whether to get a tattoo and where to have it. First of all, the presence of psoriasis on the skin can make deciding where on the body to get a tattoo more difficult. Also, those with psoriasis have a higher risk of experiencing a reaction called the Koebner phenomenon, which can lead to tattoo-induced psoriasis. The Koebner phenomenon commonly occurs with psoriasis. It causes psoriasis plaques to form at sites on the skin where damage or trauma has occurred. This is what can happen when someone gets a tattoo. Psoriasis affects everyone differently, so a doctor will not be able to predict who is at risk of tattoo-related complications. In the sections below, we discuss what a person with psoriasis may wish to consider before getting a tattoo. Considerations for a tattoo with psoriasis Share on Pinterest Stevica Mrdja/EyeEm/Getty Images A person with psoriasis who wishes to get a tattoo will need to consider several factors: Location A person with psoriasis may have scale-like patches or plaques on the skin. Where these are may vary from person to person and will depend to some extent on the type of psoriasis they have. Inverse psoriasis is most likely to occur in the folds of the skin, but plaque psoriasis which is the most common form of psoriasis can occur almost anywhere on the body. When deciding where to put a tattoo, people should try to find a place where skin changes do not usually occur. However, a flare may occur when a person gets the tattoo, as an injury such as that which the tattoo needle causes can also trigger a new flare. How the skin will react to the tattoo is difficult to predict. It is not possible to effectively apply a tattoo in an area that currently has scales due to the buildup of skin cells there. If a flare occurs after getting the tattoo, it may spoil the effect. Getting a tattoo in a place where skin changes frequently occur may lead to disappointment, as the plaques may make it hard to see the tattoo. Infection and allergy When a person gets a tattoo, there is also a risk of infection and allergic reaction. Tattoo needles break the skin to apply the dye. Therefore, they can introduce bacteria and other harmful germs into the skin, potentially causing a serious infection. Also, the dyes that manufacturers use in tattoo inks can sometimes cause allergic reactions. For some people, these reactions are so severe that they have to remove the tattoo. Possibility of refusal Since psoriasis is an inflammatory skin process, some tattoo artists may not agree to tattoo a person with the condition. Some artists will not apply a tattoo even if the psoriasis is not currently active. In fact, in some states, laws prohibit tattoo artists from tattooing a person with active eczema or psoriasis. If the artist agrees to do the tattoo when symptoms are absent, the person may have to wait for some time before getting the tattoo; but for some individuals, the skin never fully clears. Learn more about the triggers of psoriasis and some home remedies. What is the Koebner phenomenon? The Koebner phenomenon refers to the development of skin lesions following an injury to healthy skin. It can result from a simple scratch, but it can also be a response to tattooing, especially in people with psoriasis. For example, a person with psoriasis may choose a location for a tattoo where they have never experienced skin changes. After having the tattoo, however, a psoriasis-like flare might occur. This typically occurs weeks later, though some people have reported reactions occurring later still. A 2013 paper in the journal CMAJ cites figures suggesting that around 25% of people with psoriasis will experience the Koebner phenomenon after sustaining a skin injury such as a tattoo. In the Koebner phenomenon, symptoms usually only affect the area where skin damage has occurred. It is not an infection, and it is not contagious. Doctors do not fully understand why the Koebner phenomenon occurs. They know that it is common in people with psoriasis, but they cannot predict who will experience it after getting a tattoo and who will not. A person with psoriasis should be aware of the risk of experiencing lesions on the tattooed area, even if psoriasis plaques have never occurred in that area before. The Koebner phenomenon is a temporary change. Treatments that are suitable for other types of psoriasis can usually help resolve it. Safety measures and risks Skin trauma is a common trigger for psoriasis. Other triggers include stress, excess sun exposure, and smoking. A person with psoriasis should remember that they have a higher risk of experiencing a flare after having a tattoo. They also need to consider the same risks that a person without psoriasis does when getting a tattoo. For example: Cross-contamination: There are strict rules for sanitizing tools and needles, but there is no guarantee that every tattoo artist will follow them. If a tattoo artist reuses a needle or does not keep needles in a sterile condition, a person can contract a serious illness, such as HIV, hepatitis B or C, or tetanus. Ink contamination: In the past, companies have recalled some products due to bacterial contamination. Aftercare Anyone who gets a tattoo should follow the aftercare instructions from their tattoo artist and know how to identify symptoms that need follow-up care. Some signs of an infection include: redness swelling pain fever and chills Skin symptoms from a tattoo should improve with time, not worsen. If symptoms worsen, it is important to see a doctor or dermatologist. Learn more about tattoo aftercare here. Questions to ask before getting a tattoo Before getting a tattoo, a person should ask the tattoo artist about their sanitation techniques and how they keep their equipment clean. For example, every tattoo parlor should have a machine called an autoclave that sterilizes instruments at ultra-high heats. Staff should always wear gloves during this procedure. Also, the artist should place tattoo inks in a single-use cup and throw them away after completing a tattoo. A person may also wish to ask to observe how the tattoo artist prepares the instruments before getting a tattoo. They do not have to agree to this step, but if they do, it can provide peace of mind for some people. It may also be worth asking which brand and colors of ink the tattoo artist will be using. Then, a person can check whether there are any active recalls on the product. Getting advice on safety and healing A person should also ask and follow the tattoo artists advice on how to prevent infection and promote healing after getting the tattoo. A person with psoriasis may wish to ask their doctor or dermatologist about getting a tattoo before going ahead. They will be able to take the individuals symptoms into consideration and offer specialist advice on safety precautions, warning signs, and aftercare. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 27 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Trend: A meeting of the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian foreign ministers will be held in Moscow on April 28 in accordance with the agreements reached earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing Apr. 27. "The co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group and Andrzej Kasprzyk, OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative will also join the ministers," she said. The positions of the sides of the conflict on the problematic aspects are expected to be clarified during the discussions, Zakharova said, adding that the further actions in the peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are also expected to be determined. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. A team of international researchers has found that a strain of anthrax-causing bacterium thought to have been viable 80 years after a thwarted World War I espionage attack, was, in reality, a much younger standard laboratory strain. The team speculates that the mix-up was due to commonplace laboratory contamination. The study, published in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, highlights the advances in genomic sequencing that now enable precise tracking of bacterial strains used in biological warfare and terrorist attacks around the world. "Historically, there have always been bacterial strain mix-ups in the course of doing research," says Paul Keim, executive director of The Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and senior author on the current study. "But now that we have the molecular tools, we can do the quality control on strain collections to figure out exactly what they contain." The current study helps debunk the claim that a World War I biological weapon containing anthrax-causing spores was still viable 80 years later. In 1917, German spy Baron Otto von Rosen was caught in Norway possessing lumps of sugar embedded with glass capillaries filled with a liquid holding spores of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. He was suspected of plotting to feed the sugar lumps, which contained the oldest known isolates of B. anthracis, to the reindeer that pulled transports of munitions and foods across the frozen Arctic tundra for the Allied forces. The poison-laced sugar remained in a Norwegian police museum until 1997, when it was sent to what is now known as the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down, United Kingdom. Researchers there used DNA amplification to determine that the agent inside the tiny glass tubes was indeed B. anthracis. After some extensive laboratory coaxing, they next cultured and isolated four colonies grown from the liquid inside the tubes. In a 1998 Nature paper, they declared that they had revived the anthrax bacterial strain that had spent 8 decades as spores1. However, DNA sequencing of entire organism's genome was in its infancy at this time, so the exact genetic identity of the strain was never defined. In 2001, Keim was tapped to help investigate the anthrax-containing letters mailed by a terrorist across the US. At the request of the FBI, Keim's team categorized all known anthrax-causing strains, which included the Porton Down 'sugar' samples and other samples from around the world. At that time, Keim noted a very close genetic similarity between the Porton Down strains and what had become the standard laboratory reference strain used in experiments and vaccine development, known as the Ames Ancestor strain. Amidst the urgency of pinning down which strain was used in the letters - it turned out to be the Ames strain - he forgot about the strange similarity. "As we learned more and more about the Ames strain, it became obvious that it had to be a contaminant," in the Porton Down samples, says Keim. Then, at a 2013 conference, he was approached by German biodefense researchers, who had sequenced what they thought was the original German spy's strain. They too had noticed its genetic resemblance to the Ames strain. Working in tandem, Keim's Arizona team and Herman Meyer and Markus Antwerpen at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Munich, sequenced the strains using next-generation sequencing (NGS), a technique that allowed them to analyze every genetic difference at the level of single letter changes to the genetic code. It also allows them to sequence a strain's entire genome, not just a handful of times, like the previous technology used in 2001, but 100 times over. The new technology also costs about 10,000 times less per genome sequenced. Both labs confirmed that the Porton Down 'sugar' strains differed by only two genetic letters from the Ames Ancestor strain - a near identical matching. The researchers speculate that during the intense culturing attempts of the sugar samples in 1997, spores from the Ames Ancestor strain, which were likely to be abundant in the Porton Down military defense laboratory facilities, fell into the culture media and grew. Two of the original Porton Down researchers, Martin Pearce and Caroline Redmond, collaborated on this new study to confirm that indeed, a likely contamination event threw off their results. "That work has been cited many times as evidence that spores can survive in liquid for 80 years - and now that's clearly not true," says Keim, leaving it an open question of just how long B. anthracis spores can survive and still cause disease. "But their first finding that the capillary tube did include B. anthracis DNA was a solid result," says Keim. Unfortunately, none of the 1917 sample remains to be completely sequenced using today's technology. But how do the new study's authors know their work is not suffering from contamination, as well? "It was independently verified by two different labs, working on two different continents," says Keim, a strong argument against contamination. The work also showcases the important role that NGS can play in the quality control monitoring of bacterial strain repositories around the world - to ensure that strains being used in experiments are truly what researchers think they are and to catch strain contamination when it happens. Article: Unexpected Relations of Historical Anthrax Strain, M. H. Antwerpen, J. W. Sahl, D. Birdsell, T. Pearson, M. J. Pearce, C. Redmond, H. Meyer, P. S. Keim, mBio, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00440-17, published 25 April 2017. Scientists have found that unstable chromosomes within lung tumours increase the risk of cancer returning after surgery, and have used this new knowledge to detect relapse long before standard testing. These are the first findings from the Cancer Research UK-funded TRACERx1 lung cancer study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature. TRACERx is the first study to look at the evolution of cancer in real time and immense detail. Researchers followed patients all the way from diagnosis through to either disease relapse or cure after surgery, tracking and analysing how their cancer developed. Professor Charles Swanton, lead researcher based at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: "The TRACERx study is Cancer Research UK's single biggest investment in lung cancer, and for the first time we've revealed new insights into how tumours evolve and evade treatment, a leading cause of cancer death. "We believe that this invaluable data generated during TRACERx will be seized upon by research teams across the world, helping us to answer more questions about lung cancer biology. We've only scraped the surface in terms of what is possible by looking at tumour evolution in such detail." In one study published in the New England Journal of Medicine,2 scientists analysed tumours from 100 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. They found that unstable chromosomes are the driving force behind genetic diversity within tumours.3 They also showed that patients with a high proportion of unstable chromosomes in their tumour were more than four times more likely to have their cancer return, or die from their disease, within two years. This is because genetically diverse tumours are more likely to evolve, spread, and become drug resistant, making a patient's cancer much harder to treat. Dr Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, lead author based at the UCL Cancer Institute, said: "Determining the relationship between diversity within tumours and patient survival is one of the primary goals of TRACERx, so to find evidence for this so early on in the study is really encouraging. "We've also identified what causes lung cancer to advance, providing us with insight into the biological processes that shape the evolution of the disease." Armed with this discovery, researchers conducted a second study, published in Nature,4 to investigate whether this genetic diversity could be tracked clinically. Using blood samples from 96 of the 100 patients, they demonstrated that the patchwork of genetic faults present in non-small cell lung cancer, could be monitored using bits of DNA in the blood that have broken off from a tumour (circulating tumour DNA). They then analysed blood taken from 24 patients after surgery for NSCLC, and accurately identified more than 90 per cent of those destined to relapse - up to a year before clinical imaging could confirm the disease's return. This finding opens up numerous opportunities for new drug trials in lung cancer to try to prevent relapse. Monitoring benefit from chemotherapy after surgery is not currently possible as there are often no clinical signs of disease. With this in mind, the team also compared circulating tumour DNA levels immediately before and after chemotherapy was given to patients following surgery. When levels of tumour DNA in the blood were not reduced following chemotherapy, the disease returned, suggesting that at least part of the tumour had become resistant to treatment. The results provide a new means to monitor treatment after surgery, and point to an avenue for new treatments to target parts of the tumour that are resistant to existing approaches. Dr Christopher Abbosh, lead author on the Nature study, based at the UCL Cancer Institute, said: "In the future patients could be offered personalised treatments that target parts of the cancer responsible for relapse following surgery. "Using circulating tumour DNA we can identify patients to treat even if they have no clinical signs of disease, and also monitor how well therapies are working. "This represents new hope for combating lung cancer relapse following surgery, which occurs in up to half of all patients." Professor Karen Vousden, Cancer Research UK's chief scientist, said: "Lung cancer causes more than one in five of all cancer deaths in the UK and survival has only improved fractionally in the last 40 years. Understanding these highly complex processes is enormously challenging and the contribution made by both of these studies is an important step in the right direction. "These findings could also help us to identify how lung cancers respond to therapy, building a bigger picture of the disease and potentially pointing the way to developing new treatments and, crucially, saving more lives." TRACERx involves the collaboration of more than 225 researchers and clinicians based at 19 centres5 across the country and is also supported by the Francis Crick Institute, UCL Cancer Institute, University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, The Royal Society, Achilles Therapeutics, illumina, Natera and Rosetrees Trust. Sam Howard, Chief Executive of Rosetrees Trust, said: "Rosetrees Trust is delighted to have supported Professor Swanton and the TRACERx project from the outset. We always believed in the importance of this research, the team of outstanding researchers and its potential for human impact". SAN FRANCISCO April 27, 2017 San Francisco April 2017 Michael Ray December 2015 Calaveras County Glen Curado San Francisco Mill Valley Thanksgiving San Francisco, CA California Job Fairs San Francisco Los Angeles /PRNewswire/ -- Bloom Farms, a-based medical cannabis company, donated its 500,000th healthy meal to the state's nonprofit food banks in, CEOannounced to his staff this week.For every Bloom Farms vaporizer cartridge sold, the one-for-one cannabis business donates money to food banks across the state to cover the cost of sourcing and distributing healthy meals to families in need -- a program the company started in"True corporate responsibility involves investing equally in the success of your business and the social good," Ray told his staff this week. "It's always been important to me that Bloom Farms grows into a different kind of cannabis company, and I couldn't be prouder of this team and this very important milestone."More than 5.4 million Californians don't know where their next meal is coming from and that includes the 2.1 million children who may go to bed hungry each night, according to the California Association for Food Banks. The state's food insecurity rate is 14 percent, and a teenage Ray saw this first-hand growing up inas childhood friends would stay over for the rare treat of a home-cooked meal.Bloom Farms also gives its staffers four hours of paid volunteer time each month and many spend those hours volunteering in partner food banks."Partnering with Bloom Farms has made all the difference for World Harvest LA and its clients,", CEO of World Harvest LA Food Bank, said recently. "They not only contribute financially, but their staff volunteers with us as often as they can."It's an amazing company with extraordinary staff."Bloom Farms has recently donated to the Calaveras County Butte Fire relief efforts, hosted statewide career fairs and yoga classes and sponsored cultural events including theInternational Film Festival, Wanderlust and theFilm Festival.Bloom Farms is on target to reach 1 million donated meals by2017.For more information, visit http://getbloomfarms.com/.Bloom Farms is a medical cannabis company fromthat provides thousands of medical cannabis patients a safe and enjoyable way to relax, find relief, inspire creativity and enjoy life a little more. For this higher purpose, Bloom Farms is dedicated to producing high-quality, great tasting cannabis oil. Bloom Farms cannabis is sourced from responsible family farmers who care about the land, the environment, and most importantly, the patients. Bloom Farms has a commitment to corporate social responsibility and provides a healthy meal to regional partner food banks for each product it sells; provides its employees paid time off to volunteer; and sponsors events throughoutto help professionalize the cannabis industry including hosting Cannabis Career &inand To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bloom-farms-donates-500000-healthy-meals-in-california-300446872.html SOURCE Bloom Farms "Everything You Want to know about the 'F' Word: Fibroids, Facts, Fiction, and Fallacies," a free, one-hour, live Zoom workshop created uniquely for patients will, for the first time, be hosted during the American Association of Gynecologic ... OTTAWA April 27, 2017 Canada June 2016 Canada June 2016 June 2016 The user must conduct a test, using an accredited laboratory, to determine the levels of isomalathion, and the test results for isomalathion must meet the accepted standards (i.e., the World Health Organization specifications) before each use season; The test results are maintained for each use season; and, The product continues to be used in accordance with the other label directions (including storage conditions). Canada June 2016 Use pesticides safely /CNW/ - Health Canada is advising Canadians to stop using pesticides that contain malathion if the product is over a year old. A chemical called isomalathion can naturally form in these products over time, particularly when stored at elevated temperatures. After storage for more than a year, it's possible that levels of isomalathion could become a concern, even when containers are stored correctly.Isomalathion may cause symptoms such as nausea, dizziness and irritation to the eyes, nose and throat. As part of a cautionary approach, the Department advises that Canadians who have this product to safely discard it if you are not sure of the date of purchase.Healthis committed to the health and safety of Canadians. Beginning in 2017, new products containing malathion must have labels that have an expiry date.In the meantime, Canadians should be aware that they may encounter older labels during this current period of transition and that these labels will not display an expiry date. As such, Health Canada advises Canadians not to use products purchased beforeIn, malathion is a registered insecticide used mainly to control insects in agriculture, but it can also be used in and around the home. When used according to label directions, malathion is effective in killing mosquitoes and other pests without posing unacceptable risks to human health or the environment.Examine your product label. If the label does not display an expiry date, and if you purchased the product before, or if you are unsure of when you purchased it, do not use it.Make sure any products containing malathion are stored in a cool (around 20-23C), dry and well-ventilated place, away from seed, fertilizer or other pesticides.If you need to dispose of any existing products, you should contact your provincial regulatory agency or local municipality for information on how to properly dispose of household hazardous waste in your area.Canadians should always read the entire label before using a pesticide and follow all label directions. To check for the most recent product information, visit Health Canada's web site.As most pesticide products are formulated to be stable over a reasonable amount of time, Health Canada does not object to the use of malathion products that have been purchased before, provided all of the following criteria with respect to isomalathion are met:For information on the disposal of unused or unwanted commercial or agricultural pesticides contact the manufacturer or the provincial regulatory agency. To check for the most recent product information, visit Health Canada's web site or try the new pesticide label search mobile app.Healthhas been working with the manufacturers to ensure that, beginning in 2017, new malathion product labels display an expiry date. In addition, Health Canada will also be monitoring compliance of commercial users who are required to provide acceptable test results for malathion products purchased beforeCanadians are encouraged to report any adverse events to the manufacturer, who is required by law to report to Health Canada. You may also report an incident directly to Health Canada by completing an incident report form. Egalement disponible en francais SOURCE Health Canada Advertisement Doctors have cautioned that this pricing has the potential to block innovations and limit access to world-class medical care and options to patients.By not considering the need to categorize stents, based on their technological differences and benefits, the government is not only limiting choice but also jeopardizing the physician's ability to provide the best healthcare outcome, they said.While 50-70 percent of patients would do well with a standard, older-generation drug eluting stent, a significant percentage of cases demand specific advancements, such as sleeker stents, or more trackable stents, or stents with higher burst pressure, or those that can cross through a calcified lesion, they added."I believe that considering affordability is important but not at the cost of putting brakes on the evolving technology that is so essential to ensure patients' well-being. It is true that the edge seems to have disappeared from the angioplasty scene with disappearance of the latest stents," said Shirish Hiremath, President of the Cardiologist Society of India."While the price capping benefits the larger community, it poses challenges for the more complicated and difficult patient conditions for whom the primary stents do not work. It also takes away the choice from the patient and the opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue with their providers to decide what is best for them and what they are ready to pay for," said D.S. Ratna Devi, CEO, Dakshayani and Amaravati Health & Education and Founder Indian Alliance of Patient Groups."The non-availability of latest metallic drug eluting stents is going to affect both cardiologists and patients. These new generation stents are of better quality and are easier to insert in difficult patient lesions, especially in cases where there are calcifications and curves in the coronary blood vessels."While the percentage of difficult lesions is increasing every day, the withdrawal of technically superior stents is going to cost lives. Exactly how many lives will be lost, only time will tell," said Mukharjee Madivada, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, Maxcure Hospital, Hyderabad.Source: IANS Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel are all legendary actors. But just imagine if we got to see all of them together in one movie? Well, we can very soon! We just have to wait till 2018 for The Irishman, which will surely be the ultimate gangster movie. Twitter And, who better to bring this all to life than Martin Scorsese? The movie will be an adaptation of the novel I Heard You Paint Houses which is about Frank The Irishman Sheeran, a mob hitman. Seems like its right up Scorseses alley! Twitter Paramount rejected the project on grounds of it being too risky. A Paramount spokesman explained, "Scorseses movie is a risky deal, and Paramount is not in the position to take risks. This way, he can make the project he wants." Bad move, guys. You shouldnt have refused that offer, Paramount. But, Scorsese obviously wasnt going to stop and now has reportedly kicked off negotiations with Netflix. The internet streaming service has apparently invested a whopping $105 million to make all of our gangster dreams come true. Marking Scorseses return to the crime genre and boasting of a cast like that; this is probably the most anticipated movie of the decade! Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry urged world countries to take measures to prevent participation of their citizens in another Armenian provocation an international conference, which Armenia plans to hold in Yerevan and in the occupied Azerbaijani territories, the Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend. According to the available information, Armenia plans to hold an international conference titled "Modern aspects of rehabilitation in medicine" in Yerevan and in the occupied Azerbaijani territories on Sept. 13-15. Experts from Russia, the Czech Republic, Tajikistan, Germany, Uzbekistan and Georgia were invited to the conference, Hajiyev said. Armenias main aim is not to discuss modern aspects of rehabilitation, but to carry out another political provocation, said Hajiyev. By this, Armenia once again tries to promote the illegal regime [in the occupied Azerbaijani territories] and turn the invited conference participants into a tool of its political propaganda. Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry has urged foreign nationals to refrain from illegal visits to the occupied Azerbaijani territories which imply violation of Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws. Hajiyev reminded that illegal visits to the occupied lands entail legal liability. 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. Details added (first version posted at 17:50) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry urged world countries to take measures to prevent participation of their citizens in another Armenian provocation an international conference, which Armenia plans to hold in Yerevan and in the occupied Azerbaijani territories, the Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend. According to the available information, Armenia plans to hold an international conference titled "Modern aspects of rehabilitation in medicine" in Yerevan and in the occupied Azerbaijani territories on Sept. 13-15. Experts from Russia, the Czech Republic, Tajikistan, Germany, Uzbekistan and Georgia were invited to the conference, Hajiyev said. Armenias main aim is not to discuss modern aspects of rehabilitation, but to carry out another political provocation, said Hajiyev. By this, Armenia once again tries to promote the illegal regime [in the occupied Azerbaijani territories] and turn the invited conference participants into a tool of its political propaganda. Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry has urged foreign nationals to refrain from illegal visits to the occupied Azerbaijani territories which imply violation of Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws. Hajiyev reminded that illegal visits to the occupied lands entail legal liability. 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, Apr. 27 Trend: A group of 54 servicemen of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces returned from Afghanistan to Baku in accordance with the rotation plan, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a message Apr. 27. The group was serving in Afghanistan within NATO-led non-combat Resolute Support mission, according to the message. The peacekeeping contingent of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has been serving under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan since November 20, 2002. Currently, 90 servicemen, 2 medical officers and 2 sappers of Azerbaijani Armed Forces are participating in a mission in Afghanistan. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend: Today, Azerbaijan is an area bringing together large-scale reforms, energy projects of regional importance, stability, multiculturalism and high social welfare, Fuad Alasgarov, head of Department on Work with Law Enforcement Agencies at the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, said. He was speaking at the conference titled Standard of Anti-Corruption Management Systems, held in Baku Apr. 27. Enhancing transparency in state administration, development of e-services and fighting corruption are priority areas of Azerbaijans state policy, said Alasgarov. There is strong political will in Azerbaijan for the successful fight against corruption, he said. In accordance with the orders of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, a national strategy and action plans to fight corruption were adopted, new strategic views and tasks in this area were defined, Alasgarov noted. The institutional and legislative reforms, which are being carried out in accordance with this strategy, the e-government infrastructure, close cooperation with civil society, the principles of public participation and extensive awareness-raising measures are some of the achievements of the anti-corruption policy in Azerbaijan, he said. Alasgarov said today one can say with full confidence that Azerbaijan has all the mechanisms to fight corruption. He noted that the positive dynamics in fighting corruption was reflected in international anti-corruption ratings as well. Special importance is attached to cooperation with specialized international organizations within the long-term strategy, which is being implemented for fighting the corruption, Alasgarov said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: Members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Strasbourg have staged a rally outside the PACE building to protest the assembly's decision to reopen monitoring on Turkey. The protestors described the decision of PACE as the triumph of Islamophobic tendencies within the organization and as a sign of a new wave of double standard policy towards Muslim countries. "The assembly's monitoring serves the interests of various circles which aim to exert pressure on independent states and harm their national interests. A number of issues, including so-called 'political prisoners' game, Christoph Strasser's monitoring on Azerbaijan, and the discussions held in PACE in this regard is a clear evidence that the assembly has become a tool for political pressure." "What has Azerbaijan, which joined the Council of Europe in 2001, achieved over 16 years of membership? What should we expect from the CoE which has not taken any effective step towards ensuring international law and preventing Armenia's aggressive policy," the protestors said. The protestors said that the Azerbaijani society will never accept the European institutions' unfair position against itself and brotherly Turkey, as well as the Western Islamophobic circles' attempts to target Muslim countries. N. KOTZIAS: Algeria is one of the most important countries on the Mediterranean. It is the largest country in area, with a growing population and dynamic economy. It is a major exporter, with good exports of natural gas and oil to Greece. It is a country with which we have traditionally friendly relations. We came to intensify these relations and to prepare a visit of the Prime Minister, as well as the Algerian Foreign Minister's upcoming visit to Greece. We talked about the region's problems, and don't forget that the two countries, in different ways, are neighbours with Libya and have a direct interest in the developments in Syria. We discussed the regional problems and ascertained a considerable coincidence of views on a number of these. We agreed to develop our relationship both with regard to the Foreign Ministries, through our specialized Directorates and the Diplomatic Academy, and with regard to the sectors of other Ministries as well as enterprises. Moreover, we will prepare to hold a business forum, as well as a Joint Interministerial Committee for the discussion of further development of our economic relations. I think it was a successful trip and promotes our relations with this important Mediterranean country. Greece imports 20% of the natural gas it consumes from Algeria, and as a result we have a very positive experience from our cooperation in the energy sector. Greece can develop into an energy hub. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which comes from Azerbaijan, will pass through Greece, while we also have two natural gas liquefaction terminals one close to Athens, and the other in northern Greece. We are also planning, together with the other countries of the eastern Mediterranean, to exploit the natural gas that was discovered in the region last year. The Minister and I also talked about our cooperation on other types of energy, such as photovoltaics and other forms of solar energy. As you know and you know this better than I Algeria is a country where the sun shines all through the year, and we should use the potential offered by constant sunlight, so we also talked about cooperation between Algeria and companies specializing in this sector. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: The fact that Moscow supplies Baku with the newest types of its weapons, strengthening Azerbaijani defense, is an important moment in the military-technical cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan, Arzu Nagiyev, political expert, deputy director general of Trend Agency, said in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza. Azerbaijan is in a state of martial law, so we are fulfilling a bilateral agreement on the purchase of Russian weapons. Of course, today Russian weapons play a very important role in the defense of Azerbaijan. As the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continues, we really need these weapons, he noted. At the same time, Russia is supplying us with the latest Russian weapons, and it can also be considered a positive development. I think these weapons will play a big role in the rearmament and defense of the Azerbaijani army, Nagiyev added. Russia on Apr. 26 delivered a batch of ammunition and modern military equipment for various purposes to Azerbaijan, according to an agreement on military-technical cooperation signed between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation. According to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense, the new military products delivered by ships from Russia and accepted with the participation of experts, will be transferred to the appropriate military units. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: UNEC students have become winners of TEDx format competition on The Idea Platform of Foreign Students held in Azerbaijan for the first time. The participants shared the most exciting moments of their observations with the jury and the auditorium within the contest held among the overseas students. The jury assessed the speeches cause the auditoriums interest in 5 point system. 9 students reached the final of the rivalry joined by 30 international students of 10 universities from 15 countries. UNEC students are among them. The team represented by the II year students of UNECs International School of Economics Tomiwa Fayehun and the I year students Willie Ubong and Akinpelu David Daren spoke about their Motherland Nigeria and difficulties of the living in the African country within the final. They especially talked about the life of young children and their struggle with hunger. The jury was mainly surprised of international students speeches made in Azerbaijani and their attendance in the rivalry in their national clothes. Talking about the period of their life in Azerbaijan, UNEC students called it very important period. We consider our student years spent in Azerbaijan a great investment to our future. We get education at UNEC and at the same time, gain fiends. The friends gained at UNEC can be considered wealth as the knowledge obtained. The teams of 3 universities achieved the I place in The Idea Platform of Foreign Students organized by the Baku International Students Club and funded by the Youth Foundation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and ADA University. Besides UNEC team, the teams of Baku University of Engineering and Baku Slavic University are among them. 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. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 Trend: Iranian citizens living in Azerbaijan will be able to vote at two polling stations during the May 19 presidential election. The polling stations will be opened at the Iranian Embassy in Azerbaijan and the Iranian Consulate Generate in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan. Over 2,000 Iranian citizens are expected to participate in the voting in Azerbaijan. As the presidential election in Iran coincides with the Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, to be held May 12-22, voting conditions are planned to be created for Iranian athletes and tourists who will arrive in Azerbaijan. Irans incumbent President Hassan Rouhani nominated his candidacy in the election. His main rival in the upcoming election is influential cleric Ebrahim Raisi. Rouhani was elected president in 2013. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Azad Hasanli Trend: Turkish entrepreneurs invested more than $9 billion in the Azerbaijani economy, said Turkeys Ambassador to Azerbaijan Erkan Ozoral in his article published by the Biznes Hyat (Business Life) magazine, issued on the occasion of the Day of Entrepreneurs by Azerbaijan Entrepreneurs Confederation (ASK). "Meanwhile, thanks to operations of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, investments of Azerbaijan in Turkey will reach $17-20 billion," added the ambassador. According to him, this progress is the result of not only intergovernmental relations between the two countries, but also efforts of the two countries entrepreneurs. Ozoral noted that the deepening of economic relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey will increase the two countries welfare and contribute to reduce poverty. According to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee, trade turnover with Turkey amounted to $552.69 million in 1Q17, some $308.7 million of which accounted for export to Turkey. Turkey is one of major trade and economic partners of Azerbaijan. As of Apr. 1, 2017, Turkey ranked the second among Azerbaijans foreign trade partners. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Azad Hasanli Trend: Over the past 10-12 years, the Azerbaijani economy grew by 3.5 times, said Azerbaijans Deputy Prime Minister Ali Ahmadov. He made the remarks at a meeting of the Commission on Regulation and Coordination of Labor Relations with representatives of construction sector in Baku Apr. 27. Over this period, pensions and salaries increased by approximately threefold in Azerbaijan, and 1.5 million jobs were created at the initiative of the head of state, he noted. Last year alone, 90,000 new jobs were created in the country. Azerbaijan became an example for other countries in the field of poverty reduction as a result of targeted policy, the poverty level decreased from 49 to five percent in the country. The deputy prime minister said also that currently, work is underway to reduce unemployment. Currently, the unemployment rate is less than six percent in Azerbaijan, while a serious development is also observed in other areas, added Ahmadov. He went on to say that this economic growth created a solid basis for fulfillment of obligations facing the government. Details added (first version posted on 11:58) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: Construction of the carbamide plant of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR has been completed by 94.8 percent, the plants director Khayal Jafarov said. He made the remarks during The 2nd SOCAR International Caspian and Central Asia Downstream Forum Trading, Logistics, Refining, Petrochemicals, held in Baku Apr. 27. He said that engineering work and procurement of equipment have been completed by 100 percent, construction work - by 82 percent, civil engineering work - by 93 percent, installation of equipment - by 70 percent. Jafarov added that it is planned to complete all work and start adjustment and commissioning of the plant by the end of 2017. He noted that the plant will produce 650,000-660,000 tons of carbamide per year. It is planned to supply a quarter of production, that is, 150,000-200,000 tons of carbamide, to the Azerbaijani domestic market, he said, adding that the remaining part will be exported to Turkey, Georgia and the markets of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea countries. However, Turkey will be the main market for the products export, he noted. According to market research, currently, Turkey imports about 1.5 million tons of carbamide, he said. By 2020, the imports are expected to grow to 1.8 million tons, Jafarov noted. After the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is launched by the end of 2017, it will be possible to supply carbamide to Turkey quickly and inexpensively, Jafarov said. Jafarov recalled that South Koreas Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of the carbamide plant. The net cost of the project for the construction of production capacities will be about 498 million euros, he noted. South Koreas Samsung Engineering acts as a general contractor of the plants construction, but it has no license for production of carbamide and ammonia, which will be by-product in the carbamide production process, he said. Therefore, the relevant licensing agreements were signed with Haldor Topsoe company (Denmark) for production of ammonia and Stamicarbon B.V. company (the Netherlands) for production of carbamide. Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly, that is, no pollutant emissions into the atmosphere are expected, the plants director said. The plant will have an autonomous electricity system, he noted, adding that the plant will consume 25-26 MW of electricity per hour. This is more than some small towns consume, Jafarov said. Construction of infrastructure to provide the plant with gas and industrial water and connect the plant to electricity networks, as well as to provide the plant with electricity in emergency situations, will be finished in June and July of 2017. At first, financing of construction work was carried out from the Azerbaijani state budget and about 205 million manats were allocated from there before the beginning of 2015, but later it was decided to switch to project finance and negotiations with banks were started, Jafarov added. As a result, the ExportImport Bank of South Korea (EximBank) opened a line of credit worth 500 million euros under Azerbaijans state guarantee to complete the construction of the plant, he noted. EximBank will directly provide 251 million euros, while 249 million euros will be allocated by three commercial banks (Italys UniCredit S.p.A., Frances Societe Generale S.A. and Germanys Deutsche Bank AG) with the support of EximBank. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: The final investment decision on the project of construction of the SOCAR GPC, a gas processing and petrochemical complex of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, in the country is expected to be made by early 2018, said Fuad Ahmadov, financial director of SOCAR Polymer company. He made the remarks during The 2nd SOCAR International Caspian and Central Asia Downstream Forum Trading, Logistics, Refining, Petrochemicals, held in Baku Apr. 27. The cost of the project is about $4 billion, according to initial estimates. Ahmadov noted that it is planned to finance the SOCAR GPC project by 70 percent at the expense of bank loans and by 30 percent at the expense of the $1.2 billion-worth authorized capital of the petrochemical complex. We are currently in talks with Chinese investors - China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) company and the Silk Road Foundation organization, Ahmadov said. We are now at the final stage of the talks. We will try to finance most part of the project at the expense of Chinese credit organizations and investors, while keeping a larger shareholding of the Azerbaijani side, he added. Ahmadov noted that the project documentation is being developed and negotiations with banks and investors are being held in parallel. The construction of the complex will take four years, and it is planned to complete it in late 2022, he added. The ING Bank of the Netherlands, the China Development Bank and Russias Gazprombank are financial consultants of the SOCAR GPC project. BAD AXE The Huron Area Technical Center (HATC) recently announced Michelle Schulze is the HATC Student of the Month for March. Students are selected based on a variety of criteria, including achievement in career technical education, outstanding attendance, enrollment status, CTE-related extra curricular activities, on-the-job-training placements, work experience, and future CTE Program-related education and/or employment plans. A senior at Laker High School, Schulze is a second-year student in the construction/building technology program at the tech center. Schulze is a member of the National Honor Society and enjoys participating in FFA and softball. She has been a member of SkillsUSA for two year, and she participated in the 2016 SkillsUSA Fall Leadership Conference in Lansing, and the 2017 SkillsUSA Teamworks Regional Competition, where her team placed third and moved on to the state competition. Schulze also participated in on-the-job training at Pigeon Hardware from November to February. Schulze was nominated for the Breaking Traditions Award through the Michigan Department of Education. She was selected from a field of 77 applicants to receive a Michigan 2017 Breaking Traditions Award Certificate. The Student of the Month award recognizes Schulze for her accomplishments in a nontraditional Career and Technical Education (CTE) Program. Upon graduation, she will attend Ferris State University to pursue a bachelor of science degree in construction management. Schulze is hoping to find an interim position with a construction firm while attending FSU, and to later return to Huron County to work as a construction manger/aupervisor. The daughter of Tom and Tami Schulze of Pigeon, Michelle Schulze will be honored during a luncheon at the Main Street Cafe, located inside the Huron Area Technical Center, and receive a certificate of award. Details added (first version posted on 12:58) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: The final investment decision on the project of construction of the SOCAR GPC, a gas processing and petrochemical complex of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, in the country is expected to be made by early 2018, said Fuad Ahmadov, financial director of SOCAR Polymer company. He made the remarks during The 2nd SOCAR International Caspian and Central Asia Downstream Forum Trading, Logistics, Refining, Petrochemicals, held in Baku Apr. 27. The cost of the project is about $4 billion, according to initial estimates. Ahmadov noted that it is planned to finance the SOCAR GPC project by 70 percent at the expense of bank loans and by 30 percent at the expense of the $1.2 billion-worth authorized capital of the petrochemical complex. We are currently in talks with Chinese investors - China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) company and the Silk Road Foundation organization, Ahmadov said. We are now at the final stage of the talks. We will try to finance most part of the project at the expense of Chinese credit organizations and investors, while keeping a larger shareholding of the Azerbaijani side, he added. Ahmadov noted that the project documentation is being developed and negotiations with banks and investors are being held in parallel. The construction of the complex will take four years, and it is planned to complete it in late 2022, he added. The ING Bank of the Netherlands, the China Development Bank and Russias Gazprombank are financial consultants of the SOCAR GPC project. Two U.S. troops were killed and one was wounded Wednesday in a firefight during a raid against an ISIS offshoot in the same area of eastern Afghanistan where the U.S. dropped the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb earlier this month, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan said Thursday. The casualties occurred as the American service member partnered with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in operations against fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria affiliate called Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or "ISIS-K." "The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice," said Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and NATO's Resolute Support mission. "On behalf of all U.S. forces and our coalition partners, I offer our deepest sympathies to the families, friends, and fellow service members of our fallen comrades," said Nicholson, who began calling in February for the deployment of more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to counter ISIS-K and a resurgent Taliban. In a sign of continuing U.S. support for the mission, the Army announced that about 1,500 soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will deploy to Afghanistan this summer in a regular troop rotation in support of the U.S. Freedom's Sentinel mission to shore up the Afghan government. "The 'Devils in Baggy Pants' are well-trained, well-equipped, and ready to assist our Afghan partners," Col. Toby Magsig, commander of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, said in a statement. The identities of the two service members killed in the Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province, the same area where the 21,600-pound MOAB, or "Mother of All Bombs," was dropped April 13 against an ISIS-K cave and tunnel complex, were withheld until next of kin could be notified. The U.S. has declined to give a damage assessment on the effects of the MOAB, but Afghan officials have estimated that 36-100 ISIS-K fighters were killed. However, fighting in the area resumed immediately after the bombing. Earlier this month, in the same area of Nangarhar province, Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Maryland, was killed in a firefight with ISIS-K fighters. He died of injuries sustained when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small-arms fire during combat operations, according to an April 10 Defense Department press release. De Alencar was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He was the first U.S. combat fatality in Afghanistan this year. In addition, Sgt. 1st Class Robert R. Boniface, 34, of San Luis Obispo, California, died March 19 in Logar province from a non-combat incident. More than 2,390 U.S. troops have been killed since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to the Pentagon. American troops have been assisting Afghan forces battling ISIS-K since early last year, when the U.S. designated the group a foreign terrorist organization to allow U.S. airstrikes against it. Last month, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb blast that wounded three U.S. soldiers in Nangarhar, where the group has established a foothold near the Pakistan border. Since 2016, at least 12 of the group's leaders have been killed and the overall number of fighters has been reduced from more than 2,000 to approximately 700, according to U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. Despite their losses, ISIS loyalists have claimed responsibility for high-profile attacks throughout the country, including the storming of Afghanistan's largest military hospital in Kabul, which killed dozens last month. On Monday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made an unannounced visit to Kabul to assess the deteriorating security situation across Afghanistan and the long-standing request of Nicholson for a "few thousand" more U.S. troops to bolster the train, advise and assist operations. Currently, the U.S. has about 8,500 troops in Afghanistan, backed by about 5,000 troops from NATO members. Mattis was also seeking to shore up an Afghan government reeling from its worst defeat by the Taliban, which is now possibly supplied with weapons by Russia. Mattis arrived in Kabul shortly after President Ashraf Ghani sacked the defense minister and the army chief following a Taliban assault last Friday on a northern base that killed at least 140 Afghan troops. Before Mattis arrived, the Taliban claimed responsibility for setting off a car bomb at the entrance of Camp Chapman in Khost province. The same base was the target of a 2009 suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent that killed nine, including seven American CIA officers and contractors. At a news conference with Mattis, Nicholson did not dispute regional reports that Russia, which has acknowledged contacts with the Taliban, is now sending weapons and supplies to the insurgents. "We continue to get reports of this assistance," Nicholson said. "We support anyone who wants to help us advance the reconciliation process, but anyone who arms belligerents who perpetuate attacks like the one we saw two days ago in Mazar-e Sharif is not the best way forward to a peaceful reconciliation." Mattis said, "Any weapons being funneled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law unless they were coming to the government of Afghanistan." The attack last Friday on the base of the Afghan army's 209th Corps outside Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Balkh province killed at least 140 and the death toll was expected to rise among scores of others who were wounded. It was the worst attack on a military base in Afghanistan since the U.S. entered the country in 2001. Local reports said that as few as 10 Afghan fighters managed to gain access to the base and fell upon Afghan troops at a mosque and a dining facility with small arms and grenades in a battle that lasted five hours. Mattis said the attack is evidence that the Afghan government faces a "barbaric enemy. What they do, makes it clear to me why we stand together to defeat them." However, Mattis said he is still hopeful of a political settlement with the Taliban that could lead to peace. "If the Taliban want to join the political process and work honestly for a positive future for the Afghan people who have suffered long and hard, they need only to renounce violence and reject terrorism," he said. "That's a pretty low standard." Without a political agreement, Mattis predicted that 2017 would be "another tough year for the valiant Afghan security forces and the international troops who have stood and will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Afghanistan against terrorism and against those who seek to undermine the legitimate, United Nations-recognized government of this nation." In response to the attack on the army base, Ghani's office announced that Defense Minister Abdullah Habibi and Army Chief of Staff Qadam Shah Shahim had "stepped down with immediate effect." Despite his resignation, Habibi reportedly attended a meeting with Mattis. Ghani's office also announced that four army corps commanders had been replaced, and Afghan defense officials said as many as eight army personnel had been arrested on suspicion of aiding in the army base attack, Reuters reported. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Camp Lejeune Town Halls Aim to Help Those Exposed to Toxic Water. Heres How You Can Go. Retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger made it his mission to tell the world that if they lived or served on Camp Lejeune... In a major reversal of Obama administration policy, President Donald Trump has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis broad authority to set troop levels in Iraq and Syria, according to the Pentagon. The number of troops deployed, the so-called "Force Management Levels," was the closely held prerogative of the White House under former President Obama. But in a statement Thursday night, the Pentagon said, "The president has delegated authority to the secretary of defense to determine force management levels (FML) for Iraq and Syria." The change, first reported by BuzzFeed's Nancy Youssef, should not be interpreted to mean that Mattis is abandoning Obama's overall strategy to avoid boots-on-the-ground combat and focus on training, advising and equipping local partners, the statement continued. "Our strategy remains to work by, with and through local forces," it said. In addition, Mattis has made no decision to boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. "No change to current authorized force levels has been made," according to the statement. Currently, about 500 mostly Special Forces troops are permitted in Syria and a little more than 5,000 in Iraq under the existing Force Management Levels. However, the actual number of troops on the ground has consistently exceeded those limits by the addition of troops deployed on a "temporary" basis. Last month, several hundred Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit were sent into northeastern Syria to set up a firebase for M777 .155mm howitzers to support the drive by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Raqqa, the so-called capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. A small contingent of Army Rangers and Stryker combat vehicles also moved into Manbij in northeastern Syria. Also last month, the Defense Department announced that an additional 2,500 troops, including troops of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were being sent to Kuwait, where they would be on standby for possible deployment to either Iraq or Syria to support local forces against ISIS. Mattis has made clear since his Senate confirmation hearings that he is looking for ways to accelerate the campaign against ISIS, which could include scrapping the Obama administration's caps on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. The question remains whether Mattis also now has authority to deploy more troops in other areas. Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and NATO's Resolute Support mission, has requested a "few thousand" more U.S. troops to counter the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican, has also called for the deployment of more U.S. troops to South Korea to guard against the North Korean threat. "We must increase our military presence and capability in the region," he said at a House hearing Wednesday. The decision by Trump to delegate more authority to Mattis followed complaints by three defense secretaries who served under Obama -- Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel -- about being "micromanaged" by White House officials on military matters. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 27 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov received Saudi Arabias Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid Abdulaziz Al-Falih, said the Turkmen government in a message. During the meeting, the sides noted the positive dynamics of development of trade, economic and cultural relations. Transport and communication sector, construction industry and chemical industry were named among promising areas of cooperation. Meanwhile, the improvement of cooperation in the oil and gas sector also was among topical themes of discussions. Turkmen president offered the partners from Saudi Arabia to consider in detail the possibilities of implementing joint projects in this key area for the national economies of both countries. The two sides also emphasized the reasonability of holding regular business meetings and business forums both between state and private structures of the two countries. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 27 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed hope for further strengthening and expansion of friendly relations with Turkmenistan in his letter to the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. The Japanese PM sent the letter on occasion of the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan and Japan. Abe noted that over a period since 2009, the Turkmen president visited Japan three times. He reminded that during Berdimuhamedovs visit in 2013, documents were signed on economic projects, worth a total of 1 trillion Japanese yen, which led to extensive development of the two countries cooperation. Shinzo Abe visited Turkmenistan for the first time in 2015. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Apr. 27 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbekistans Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov received the EU Special Representative for Central Asia Peter Burian on Apr. 27, the Uzbek Foreign Ministrys press service said. Burian has recently arrived in Tashkent. During the meeting, the sides discussed the current state and prospects of development of cooperation between Uzbekistan and the EU in political, trade and economic, investment and financial, and technical areas, as well as special regional issues, and reviewed practical aspects of preparation for the EU-Central Asia interregional ministerial meeting. Head of the EU Delegation in Uzbekistan Eduards Stiprais also took part in the meeting. During his visit, Peter Burian is also expected to have bilateral meetings with officials, representatives of civil society, and businesses. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 27 By Demir Azizov Trend: The first round of political consultations between the foreign ministries of Uzbekistan and Kuwait was held in Tashkent Apr. 27, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said Apr. 27. According to the ministry, a Kuwaiti delegation was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Suleiman Al-Said. The state and prospects of the Uzbekistan-Kuwait relations, certain international and regional issues were discussed. Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov and Ali Suleiman Al-Said confirmed mutual interest in further development of an interstate dialogue on a constructive and mutually beneficial basis, as well as intensifying cooperation in trade, economic and investment spheres. The views on the date and agenda of First Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabahs upcoming visit to Uzbekistan, the first meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee and other bilateral events were exchanged. Kuwaiti ambassador to Uzbekistan Ahmad Khaled Al-Jiran also took part in the negotiations. The program of the Kuwaiti delegations visit includes negotiations in a number of the Uzbek ministries and departments. The delegation will also review the sights of Tashkent and Samarkand. Iran expects to sign its first oil deal under the new Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) model within a month, a senior Iranian official said on Thursday, Reuters reported. "We expect that very soon, hopefully within a month we will have the first one to be signed," Deputy Oil Minister Rokneddin Javadi told a conference in Paris. In January, Iran said 29 companies from more than a dozen countries were allowed to bid for oil and gas projects under the IPC, which Tehran hopes will boost production after years of sanctions. But the IPC model has been delayed several times due to opposition from hardline rivals of President Hassan Rouhani. The IPC model ends a buy-back system dating back more than 20 years under which Iran did not allow foreign firms to book reserves or take equity stakes in Iranian companies. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26 By Dalga Khatinoglu Trend: Iran expects attracting $10 billion foreign investment in petrochemical projects in near future, Iran's Deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs and Commerce Amir-Hossein Zamani-Nia said Apr.26. According to him, the current fiscal year would be milestone year in Irans petrochemical sector, Shana reported. Iran plans to inaugurate 7 petrochemical plants during the current fiscal year, started March 21. The country would inaugurate 23 plants next fiscal year and further 34 plants by 2021. For completion of the current petrochemical plants, some $20 billion and for 34 new projects, some $35 billion investment is needed to increase the current 62 million tons per year nominal production capacity to 150 mn mt/yr by 2025. Zamani-Nia said that the total foreign investment in Irans oil, gas, petrochemical sectors is expected to reach $50-80 billion in coming years. Before he announced June 1 that Iran plans to attract $185 billion worth investments (foreign and domestic) for the upstream and downstream oil and gas projects (including petrochemical plants) in the next five years. He said the newly designed oil contract, called the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), is not the only way for attracting foreign investments. Zamani-Nia said $85 billion are planned to be invested in the upstream oil sector. Iran introduced 49 oil and gas fields to foreign investors based on the IPC. Earlier, Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said about $20-$30 billion foreign investments are expected to be attracted based on the IPC in the coming years. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: An Iranian energy official has forecasted that the countrys power consumption in the coming summer would increase by five percent, causing massive power outages. Mahmoud-Reza Haqiqan, a deputy head at Iran's Power Generation and Transmission Company (TAVANIR), has predicted that people in particular areas of the county may experience an overall power outage of 200 hours, ISNA news agency reported. While the country over the last Iranian calendar year (starting on March 20) increased its power generation capacity by 2.5 gigawatts (GW), the capacity is projected to grow by 4.5 GW over the current year to post a nominal capacity of 81.1 GW. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has called on the US to honor is obligations under Irans historic nuclear deal with world powers, PressTV reported. No amount of reported 'imposed' negative spin can hide fact that US admitted Irans adherence to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) onus on US to live up to its part, tweeted Zarif on his official account on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Zarif brushed off US President Donald Trumps remarks that Washington may not remain in the nuclear deal. Do not pay much attention to Trumps words, said Zarif after addressing a cabinet session. Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iran is sticking to the terms of the JCPOA. However, he accused Iran of supporting terrorism and questioned whether sanctions should keep being lifted. He added that Trumps administration was reviewing the lifting of sanctions against Iran, leveling the allegation that Tehran remains a sponsor of terrorism. Following Tillersons remarks, Trump claimed that Iran was not living up to the spirit" of the nuclear agreement. Zarif had earlier slammed the US claims against Iran as "worn-out accusations" that cannot mask Washington's "admission of Iran's compliance" with the nuclear agreement. Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Fatih Karimov Trend: Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, held meeting on the sidelines of the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security. The sides discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues including the ongoing crisis in Syria during the meeting, Mehr news agency reported Apr. 27. The two ministers underlined the necessity of establishment of sustainable security and peace in Syria as soon as possible. They also stressed importance of maintaining Syrias national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Dehqan and Shoigu also discussed the ways to bolster the implementation of the ceasefire which has been in place across Syria since last December, stressing that ground should be prepared for easier aid deliveries to violence-stricken Syrians. The Iranian minister also took part in a trilateral meeting with Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Shoigu and Fahd Jassem al-Freij on Apr. 26. The three ministers called for closer trilateral cooperation in the battle against terrorism, emphasizing the need to keep up the fight until the eradication of violence and terror threats. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Goa Carbon Limited has informed BSE that the operations at the Company's Paradeep Unit located at Vill. Udayabata, Paradeepgarh, Dist. Jagatsinghpur, Orissa has been TEMPORARILY shut down for regular maintenance work from April 25, 2017. There would not be any financial impact due to the temporary shutdown of the Company's Paradeep Unit on account of sufficient inventory of finished material.Source : BSE Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: The leading banks of France refuse to cooperate with Iran due to concerns over the US sanctions, an Iranian envoy said. Irans Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani has urged the French companies to ignore the sanctions threats and grab the chance for cooperation with Iran, Fars news agency reported. Addressing an economic conference in Paris discussing investment opportunities in Iran, the envoy criticized the French banks cautious behavior about doing business with Iran. Although nuclear sanctions on Iran have been removed following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last January, most of European banks still appear reluctant to do business with Iran over concerns on running afoul of US regulations. However, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, earlier announced that Iran-EU trade also witnessed a considerable surge over the last year as the figure rose by 78 percent to post 13.7 billion euros in 2016. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Notices published in the newspapers intimating the public of the meeting of the Board of Directors. Pursuant to Regulation 29 of SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements), 2015, we forward herewith copy of the Notice issued in the newspapers on April 11, 2016 informing the public that Board of Directors will, inter alia, consider the approval of audited annual accounts and recommendation of dividend on preference and equity shares for the financial year ended March 31, 2017 at its Meeting to be held on Wednesday, May 3, 2017, in Mumbai. Please take the same on record.Source : BSE live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Board of Directors of the Company in its meeting held today, i.e. on 27th April, 2017, inter alia, considered and approved: 1.Convening of the 77th Annual General Meeting on June 10, 2017 at the Registered Office of the Company at Hyderabad and approved the draft notice. 2.Fixed June 03, 2017 as the Cut- Off date (Record Date) for the E-Voting to transact the business set-out in the AGM Notice. 3.Fixed the dates for commencement and closure of the e-voting period. 4.Appointed Scrutinizer to conduct E-Voting Process and poll at the AGM. 5. Fixed Book-closure date for the purpose of AGM be held on June 10, 2017. The Board noted the delay in finalization of annual financial statement and their audit for the year ended 31st March, 2016 and decided to defer laying of the accounts at the Annual General Meeting to be hold on June 10, 2017 and decided to transact the other items of the Annual General Meeting Notice at the ensuing Annual General Meeting.Source : BSE Donald Trump should take a leaf out of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's playbook and set 'audicious' goals -- that's the word from the Executive Chairman of Cisco, John Chambers. Chambers will lead a delegation of top tech CEOs to the White House later tonight. Speaking to CNBC, Chambers said US should set big goals like "digital India" and take decisive actions like "demonetisation". He pointed out to PM Modis target of having broadband infrastructure in place for Indians at USD 2.4 per month, putting states in competition to improve citizens life, and doubling income per person are worthy of praise. There is no reason why US should not be as bold, he said, adding, there is need for focus on policy implementation. Moneycontrol News 43-year old Vijay Shekhar Sharma who runs e-commerce firm Paytm backed by Chinese investors, on Thursday said that India's traditional business houses should start investing in domestic startups. He added that Indian entrepreneurs need foreign investors largely because of the lack of availability of domestic capital. "I am all for domestic investments. I want every domestic rich person to start putting money in startups. I truly call upon on them. India's old economy companies should bring that capital back to put money in startups. Why do we need outside investors when we can have people from inside (the nation)," Sharma said on the sidelines of an event. He was speaking on the issue of capital dumping by global firms, which has closed the doors to entrepreneurship in many sectors including taxi aggregation and online marketplace. Also read: Paytm users can now buy, sell gold with their e-wallet for just Re 1 Domestic firms such as Paytm, MakeMyTrip, Flipkart and Ola have been demanding a level playing field from the Modi government. Their grouse is that foreign firms that operate in India are met with a different treatment through government policies, making them uncompetitive. Ironically, Paytm which has investments from China's Ant Financial has also been on the receiving end by rivals including Mobikwik for dumping capital to gain the customer base. Last year, Mobikwiks Bipin Preet Singh told a newspaper that people must be sensitive to companies, especially those that have massive foreign investments. "They can come into the country, dump capital and gain access to data," he said indicating at rival Paytm. However, Sharma believes that India is an open market, and the doors of capital are open to everybody. Paytm on Thursday also said that the company has grossed 1.5 billion transactions and a gross merchandise value of USD 5 billion in the financial year that ended March 2017. Watch: Why are Indian Startups Stumbling? The chorus has been echoed by India's digital entrepreneurs in past, including Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, and MakeMyTrip CEO Deep Kalra in a new found nationalism seen amongst Indian unicorns. Last month, Sachin Bansal said, "What is happening in India is pretty unprecedented. Such a situation has not happened anywhere in the world so far. A significant amount of capital is being dumped in India to win market share. We should create a digital economy. But not by creating an unfair playing field for local companies against those companies coming from other countries." Asking for a level playing field against global rivals such as Airbnb and Expedia expanding in India, Deep Kalra recently said that Indian government has taken the motto of Atithi Devo Bhava to a different level altogether. "We are very fortunate that we are in India. However, there is actually not a level playing field. Foreign companies don't have to abide by a two-factor authentication for payments, we do so. Similarly, there are foreign companies in India who do not pay service tax," Kalra added. "I think we have taken the motto of Atithi Devo Bhava to a different level altogether," Kalra said during a chat with Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, earlier this month. priyanka.sahay@nw18.com business IKEA to double India sourcing by 2020 As global home furnishing giant Ikea gears up for its India foray, it is focusing on two things: doubling local sourcing and ensuring its prices are the lowest ever. India Pakistan The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) today apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized their four boats off the Gujarat coast, an official of Porbandar-based National Fishworkers' Forum (NFF) said. These fishermen had sailed from Porbandar a few days ago and were apprehended by the PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line (IMBL), NFF secretary Manish Lodhari told PTI. "We have learnt that at least 23 fishermen on four boats were apprehended by the PMSA near Jakhau and they were being taken to Karachi," Lodhari said. On April 9, four PMSA commandos drowned while two others were saved by Indian fishermen after a boat of the Pakistani agency capsized near the IMBL while allegedly trying to capture around 40 fishermen on seven boats in Indian waters. To reciprocate the help given by Indian fishermen, the PMSA had later released the captured fishermen. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched the first UDAN flight from Shimla to New Delhi on Thursday. The flight will be operated by Alliance Air, a regional arm of national airline Air India. The Prime Minister also handed out boarding passes to all passengers boarding the first UDAN flight. Senior officials of the aviation ministry, Air India and Airports Authority of India were also be present at the event. But what exactly is UDAN? Listed below are five things you need to know about this new initiative. Q1) What does UDAN stand for? The word UDAN is an acronym for Ude desh ka aam nagrik, which essentially means all common people can now use air travel as a means for travelling. The scheme is intended to make flying more affordable for common people and to connect over 45 unserved and under-served airports across the country. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15, 2016. Q2) Will all tickets on flights be subsidised under the UDAN scheme? No. But 50 percent of all seats on each flight will now have a cap of Rs 2,500 per seat, per hour. The government has also decided to extend the subsidy to the operators flying on these routes in the form of viability gap funding. According to the prime ministers office, airfare for a 1-hour journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for a 30-minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs 2,500. Q3) Which are the places being connected under the UDAN scheme? Flights under the UDAN scheme would connect airports spread across more than 20 states and union territories including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The airports that will be connected to each other under the scheme include Shimla, Bhatinda, Neyveli, Bilaspur, Cooch Behar, Nanded and Kadapa. Q4) Which are the airlines operating under this scheme? Under the UDAN scheme, five airlines will operate on 128 routes, connecting a total of 70 airports, including 43 unserved and underserved ones. The airline companies operating under the scheme are Air India-subsidiary Airline Allied Services, SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Air Odisha and Turbo Megha. Q5) What is in it for the airlines operating under UDAN? Under UDAN, airlines would be extended viability gap funding, for which money is partly raised by levying up to Rs 8,500 on flights operating in major routes like Delhi and Mumbai. The viability gap funding amount is estimated to be around Rs 205 crore per year for airlines picked in the first round of bidding. It would be in place for three years for the concerned airlines from the date of starting operations on a particular UDAN route. The UDAN scheme also provides for various benefits including no airport charges and three-year exclusivity on the routes. U.S. President Donald Trump reacts after signing an executive order on education during an event with Governors at the White House in Washington President Donald Trump expressed optimism on Thursday the United States, Canada and Mexico can successfully renegotiate a trade accord he deems unfair to American interests but vowed to scrap the 23-year-old pact if a "fair deal for all" cannot be reached. Trump, in a meeting with Argentine president Mauricio Macri, said Thursday he had planned to terminate NAFTA, but decided to hold off after speaking to the leaders of Mexico and Canada to see if deal can be made. "Rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big shock to the system, we will renegotiate," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "If I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States ... I will terminate NAFTA." Trump's comments came a day after the White House decided against taking immediate steps to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact Trump has long condemned. Instead of pursuing a termination order considered by some advisers, the White House said Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by telephone that the United States would seek to quickly begin renegotiating the pact. Earlier on Thursday, Trump wrote on Twitter he had received calls from Pena Nieto and Trudeau. "Relationships are good-deal very possible!" Trump wrote. In Mexico City, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Wednesday's call, initiated by Pena Nieto and lasting about 20 minutes, focused exclusively on the looming talks over NAFTA's "renegotiation and modernization." Videgaray said Trump wanted to see the talks accelerated. "I believe that all the conditions to reach a good negotiation exist, that will suit Mexico ... and that is also good for the region, for both Canada and the United States," Videgaray told local broadcaster Televisa, adding that relations between the United States and Mexico have experienced "enormous progress" during Trump's presidency. Trump has criticized multinational trade agreements as unfair to the United States and made pulling out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, one of his first major acts after becoming president in January. In Ottawa, a Canadian source familiar with the matter said Trudeau urged Trump not to withdraw from NAFTA, saying such action would be counterproductive. Trump repeatedly has threatened to pull out of NAFTA, which erased most tariffs between the three neighbors, if he cannot renegotiate better terms for the United States, which went from running a small goods trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63-billion deficit in 2016. Mexico, Canada and the United States form one of the world's biggest trading blocs, and trade disruptions among them could cause havoc in the automotive, agricultural, energy and other sectors. 'CONCEPTUAL FLAWS' U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday that numerous "conceptual flaws" in the treaty needed to be addressed. Ross said Chinese goods dumped in Mexico are making their way into the United States. "The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening," Ross said. "Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA." "It was a silly idea to let a lot of outside stuff in. The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside," Ross added. "So there's a conceptual flaw in that, one of many conceptual flaws in NAFTA." The Mexican and Canadian currencies maintained their rebound early on Thursday after Trump's latest comments. The U.S. dollar dropped 0.3 percent against its Canadian counterpart and about 0.5 percent against the peso. Trump's scorn toward international trade deals, part of his nationalist political message, appeals to Americans who feel such pacts have cost Americans jobs, and he has said businesses that choose to move plants outside the country would pay a price. On Wednesday, the White House said Trump had spoken with Mexican and Canadian counterparts and agreed not to immediately move to terminate NAFTA. The announcement came hours after White House officials disclosed that Trump and his advisers had been considering an executive order to withdraw the United States from NAFTA, but there was a split among his top advisers over whether to take the step. "The leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said in a statement. Trump long has accused Mexico of luring away American factories and jobs with cheap labor and other advantages enabled by NAFTA. On Tuesday, Trump said he did not fear a trade war with Canada even as he complained about Canadian trade practices. His administration on Monday moved to impose tariffs on imported Canadian lumber that mostly feeds U.S. homebuilding, noting trade authorities have consistently sided with Ottawa in the long-standing dispute. Prakash Kumar, CEO, GSTN Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), a special purpose vehicle (SPV), is ready with a robust IT backbone and portal to enable real-time taxpayer registration, filing returns, handle invoices, and connect states for two-way data flow. GSTN CEO, Prakash Kumar told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview that the network is equipped to handle 2.6 billion transactions every month from an estimated 8 million GST tax payers. It can scale up to handle double the volume (5.2 billion transactions a month) and up to 13 million tax payers, without any change. GST, which promises to stitch a common national market by subsuming a web of local and central taxes into a single levy, is expected to be rolled out from July 1, 2017 GSTN trial runs will begin from May 1. The soft-launch or the dipstick study will be carried out through identified 3,000 tax payers who have migrated and enrolled into the new system, who will test the system by uploading invoice data, filing returns, and paying taxes. The system is highly secure to prevent any data leakage. That said, Kumar is of the view that there is an urgent need for a privacy law in India Excerpts: How prepared is GSTN for a roll-out from July 1? We first rolled out our portal on November 8. Thats the day we started the enrollment of taxpayers. By now, 58.5 lakh taxpayers have already come on board, which is about 71 percent of 81 lakh assessees. There are three modules for which we are responsible under the GST portal: registration, return filing, and creation of challans for making payments through banks. Payment does not take place at our portal. The taxpayer will create the challan and then he will choose a bank where he goes and makes a payment. He will be brought back to our portal, with a confirmation from the bank. The government has added credit card and debit card as modes of payment, which, so far, a few states like Rajasthan have allowed. They are also going to allow RTGS and NEFT payments from any bank. Suppose I am a taxpayer and I want to make a payment through a specific bank, I can do it directly through RTGS. They will come to the portal, create the challan, go to the bank, and make the payment. The banks will compile that and send it to the RBI. RBI will also get data from us. These two, the RBIs and our data, will go to the accounting authority for reconciliation. How long will the entire process take on a real-time basis? The way you make any payment. Like an income tax payment or the way you make credit card payment, bill payment. Once the payment happens, you come back again (to the portal). It is basically a handshake between our portal and the bank portal and back to our portal. How will GSTN authenticate data integrity? We are starting a process called server-to-server authentication. This is just to double-check that what is coming back from the bank is authentic. This will be done in the backend. The taxpayer will not see it. This is required so that this is full proof. There is another check that happens when bank checks the scroll in the night. It is a multiple reconciliation process. On any given day, how many billion transactions will take place through the GSTN portal? There are nine states where they already take invoice-level data. Our estimations are based on the number of invoices which these nine states are currently getting. We expect the portal to get 2.6 to 3 billion invoices every month in the portal once GST comes into force. What is the level the system is equipped to scale up to? What we have designed is for 80 lakh taxpayers to start with. It can go up to 1.3 crore taxpayers, without any change in anything. The volume of transaction can double the amount (from 2.6-3 billion invoices to 5.2-6 billion invoices a month). What is the statistical probability of a system crashing? I dont know. I dont want to hazard a guess. But you have done a simulation exercise? That work is going on, with testing and other things with full load. It is being done in Bangalore now. GSTN trial runs will begin from May 1. The soft-launch or the dipstick study will be carried out through identified 3,000 tax payers who have migrated and enrolled into the new system, who will test the system by uploading invoice data, filing returns, and paying taxes. We trained 1,924 master trainers in February in different batches. They in turn are now training around 65,000 tax officers from both the Centre and states. What happens when portal goes through a downtime? No one in the world can say with 100 percent certainty that when a system will be up 100 percent. We have two data-centresone each in Delhi and Bangaloreworking in active-active mode. Thats the business continuity plan. If one of them goes down due to certain reasons, this one takes over the full load. The response time may go down as it will be a little degraded mode. Time for getting this up is half an hour. We have also gone for Tier 3 data-centres. Even if power supply fails or some natural calamity happens, there will be some data centres that will remain operational throughout the period. We also have two small "near" data-centres. These are almost like proxies. Also read: Two rates for services under GST? Council may examine proposal What about storage? Storage is not a problem. Why does a system crash? Because, it has limited capacity to handle volumes. Our system is designed on the basis of half of the people coming on the last day for filing returns in the last four hours. This is based on data from VAT departments and the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC). What is the scope of data leakage? We have two kinds of data. One is tax data, which is an indicator of the financial health of an entity that is registered with us. We also have personally identifiable data such as the PAN details. In our system, data gets immediately encrypted using the highest encryption algorithms available in the world today. Storage is also done like that. There are two ways it can be misused: external and internal. To plug internal misuse we have ensured that one database administration does not have access to the full record. Any record that comes in is shared in different parts and allocated to different places. On the external side on only two people can see the data: the taxpayer and the tax assessing officer. What are your views on the recent reported Aadhar data leakage in Jharkhand? The fault lies with the user agency, which has the data. It is also lack of awareness. Attitude change is required and the country needs a privacy law. We should have it as early as possible. What if someone is giving misleading data? What if there are instances of under-invoicing? The system has no capability to detect that. The tax department will look into it. There will, however, be a compliance rating. Metric for the compliance rating will not be disclosed. It will show how regular you are in paying taxes. There has been criticism about GSTNs corporate structure as a private company. What are your views? The government has created it after lots of deliberation. We are audited by CAG. We are a private company, with the strategic control of the government. The structure has been made in this way so that we have flexibility to recruit people, technical people from market. How will the system work? Any taxpayer is both a supplier and a buyer. Even if you are manufacturer, you buy some raw material, buy some services, you upload the receipts data. Whatever you have sold, all the invoice data you will upload. This is only business-to-business. Only the incremental value addition that happens, like the manufacturer adds some value to raw material and the services and he makes something, is taxed. He is entitled to input tax on all raw materials. You have the option of uploading the data one by one. We are also releasing an offline Java-based excel-compatible tool. If you maintain your accounts in excel, you can straight away pull that and upload. You can upload 19,000 invoices in one attempt. What happens to a neighbourhood shop? There is a worry that most people are not accustomed to this exercise. Can they do it on their own? They can either do it on their own or engage a GST professional. There are three categories of GST professionals. The first includes chartered accountant s (CA), company secretaries (CS) and cost accountants. The second category includes law graduates. The third are sales tax practitioners. They are retired tax officers above a certain level. Neighbourhood shops are not selling it to another business. They are selling it to people like us. There will be no business-to-business invoice. Their tax is very simple. Ignorance can be a major challenge. In every township above one lakh population, there will be town hall kind of a thing to explain people how to file returns using the GSTN portal. How often does one need to file returns? Every month. Expect few people, those whose turnover is below 50 lakhs and they want to opt for composition scheme. If you opt for composition, then you dont get any input tax credit. Representative Image In what will reinforce recent talk about rising intolerance in India under the BJP rule, global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders downgraded India by three notches down in the World Press Freedom Index 2017 citing threat from Modis nationalism. Amongst a list of 180 countries India currently stands at 136, down from a position of 133 it held last year. Mapped by Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) India was colour-coded red which marks a situation as difficult, reports The Telegraph. With India's red mark the entire sub-continent is marked red now, except for Nepal which is just one shade better positioned with noticeable problem. The worst ranked among the lot is China with all black lying at the bottom which denotes the media there is in a very serious situation. In the report, India finds a mention in the chapter titled "Threat from Modi's nationalism". "With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of 'anti-national' thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media," the report says. Journalists are increasingly targets of online smear campaigns by most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals, the report notes. "Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists overly critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124A of the (Indian) penal code, under which 'sedition' is punishable by life imprisonment. No journalist has so far been convicted of sedition but the threat encourages self-censorship." It further notes, "Coverage of regions that the authorities regard as sensitive, such as Kashmir, continues to be very difficult, and there are no protective mechanisms. On the first day of a wave of protests in Kashmir in July 2016, the Internet was cut by the military and was often interrupted thereafter to prevent communication between protesters and prevent coverage by the media and citizen journalists. Journalists working for local media outlets are often the targets of violence by soldiers acting with the central government's tacit consent." Interestingly, global lookout also looked depressing. Media freedom has never been so threatened, it notes, adding,"In the past year, nearly two thirds (62.2 percent) of the countries measured have registered a deterioration in their situation, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was 'good' or 'fairly good' fell by 2.3 percent." Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: At least ten border guards have been killed in an ambush by "terrorists" in southeastern Iran along the countrys border with Pakistan, Tasnim news agency reported. The incident took place near the town of Mirjaveh in the southeastern province of Sistan-and-Baluchestan. According to the report, the border guards were patrolling along the frontier area when the incident took place. The report added that the pro-Sunni militant group ,Jaish al Adl (the Army of Justice), has claimed responsibility for the attack. The militant group has been behind several armed attacks on Iranian security forces in the Sunni populated area in southeastern regions of the country. The militant group claims that is has took up weapon to defend what it describes as the rights of Sunni minorities. Back in 2014 Jaish al Adl abducted five Iranian border guards including four soldiers who were serving their mandatory military service. business What's ailing rural India: Ground report from Thiruvarur Tamil Nadu Farmers from Tamil Nadu called off the 40-day strike in New Delhi that was part of their efforts to get central government help in surviving the drought. However several opposition parties in the state have turned the drought into a political hot-potato. CNBC-TV18's Jude Sannith travelled to drought-hit Tiruvarur district in Tamil Nadu to get a sense of ground realities. The commerce and industry ministry today discussed with the World Bank officials its concerns over the methodology used for ranking countries in terms of ease of doing business. Senior officials of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and World Bank representatives deliberated on the issue. "Detailed interaction with world bank doing biz team in Washington DC have resulted in much better awareness of our reforms," DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said in a tweet. "The bank team also sensitised on our various concerns on methodological and other issues. All depts/agencies made excellent presentations," he further said. The World Bank carries out this exercise ever year for the purpose of ranking countries on their ease of doing business, from 1-190. India has time and again raised its concerns over the methodology used by the World Bank to rank the country in terms of ease of doing business. According to the last World Bank report 2017, India's ranking improved by just one notch to 130 from a revised rank of 131 previous year. Expressing its stand on the Medical Council of India's (MCI) recent circular on generic drugs, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has said that the new notice does not prohibit doctors from writing the name of a company or a brand on a prescription. MCI's circular merely calls on doctors to prescribe drugs with generic names and mention the name of the salt, but they are not prohibited from writing the company name or the brand to provide the best quality, said IMA, an umbrella body representing doctors. "The medical practitioner, ultimately, has the right to choose the drug and brand. But along the brand, they must mention the generic name. They must also justify why a Rs 90 drug has been prescribed when a Re 1 drug is also available in the market," said KK Agarwal, President, IMA. MCI, the statutory body that regulates medical education and registers doctors, last week issued a public notice to all physicians in the country to prescribe drugs only by generic names and warned of disciplinary action against doctors violating the code. MCI in September 2016 amended the clause 1.5 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 making it mandatory for every physician to "prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters". If a medical practitioner is found to be guilty of committing professional misconduct, the appropriate Medical Council will remove the concerned practitioner's name from Indian Medical Registry rendering him ineligible to practice. To make drug prices affordable and accessible, the Narendra Modi government has been aggressively pushing for price control, promoting generic drugs through Jan Aushadhi programme and recently indicated that it is contemplating a law to make generic names mandatory in prescription. The Bombay High Court on Thursday heard a petition alleging that PSU insurers such as LIC are going against the government's anti-tobacco stand by investing in cigarette manufacturing company ITC. The World Health Organization tobacco treaty bars the government from investing in tobacco companies, they said. The petitioners also said that the investments make the government party to tobacco's promotion. The six petitioners include the Managing Trustee of the Tata Trusts, Lakshman Sethuraman, Ashish Deshmukh, Member of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Sumitra Hooda Pednekar, widow of a Maharashtra Minister who died of throat cancer, Pankaj Chaturvedi, a Surgeon at Tata Memorial Hospital, and two doctors, Abhay Bang and PC Gupta. The respondent's counsel has replied that the withdrawal of PSU insurers' investment will affect their image and will also impact retail investments in the company, apart from hitting the government's tax revenues. They also said the investments were in the secondary market and not any direct investment in the operations of the company. The Bombay High Court has asked the petitioners to make ITC, market regulator SEBI and the government party to the case. The respondents are required to reply to six months time. Concurring with several market experts views on the markets rally, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) believes that one needs to be cautious in the near term. There is no room for disappointment on earnings as well as on the global front, Sanjay Mookim, Director, India Equity Strategy, BofAML told CNBC-TV18. The short-term rally is happening due to global factors, rally in emerging markets, tax reforms in the US, prospects in French elections, among others, he said, adding that the near-term global tide is lifting Indian equities. Any correction in the global markets could affect the Indian counterpart going forward, he added. Having said that, he feels Indias growth could improve over the next 2-3 years. If one is patient enough, the macro story looks positive, Mookim told the channel. So, is there scope for capex stories to do well? Where should an investor park her funds? Mookim believes that capex will likely be in the household space than the corporate space. Weaker prices of real estate, lower mortgage rates are all ingredients that are falling in place for household capex, he told the channel. On sector-specific views, Mookim is tilted towards private sector, retail focused banks that are more assured of growth against the corporate facing ones. He is cautious of information technology (IT) sector due to lack of clarity on immigration and visa issues and that the resolution will take time. Adding to the woes could be the demand not being on the higher side. On pharma, he recommends investors to look at picking among the bunch of stocks. Currently, all the firms were being bunched together, but there could be companies with limited FDA issues. One may find an opportunity in such places, he said. Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview. Sonia: The street is divided on the prognosis for market, some believe that the rally is unwarranted while others feel that there is a big growth story that is playing out, which camp do you belong to? A: I would argue both ways. Indian growth should improve over the next two-three years. We are seeing signs that utilisations in the industry will pick up and in fact the data that is coming out of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is starting to indicate that. There is a whole host of reforms that have been instituted by the government so the macro story especially if you are willing to wait and be patient for two-three years does look reasonably positive. However, in the short-term the rally that we are seeing is largely led by global factors. The recent bounce we have seen post 9,000 as well has to do with an EM rally, global equities everybody has pounced because of the Macron trade or the tax reforms in the US, but the near-term the global tide seems to be lifting the Indian equities meaningfully. The worry is that since we are not decoupled because of a specific growth, any global correction would affect us as well. Now, in foresight it is very difficult to say why that correction might happen whether it is the ongoing tightening in China, whether it is some other global effect or some sort of conflict that causes equities to retrace but the worry is that given valuations are so high, there is enough room for it to come down. That is why we are saying we are cautious near-term. There is no room for disappointments either on earnings or on global developments but yes the India story in the next two-three years does look reasonably positive. Latha: I have two doubts from what you have said, one that while you say that we are part of a global rally, we have not seen FII participation and secondly would Indian liquidity put a floor to any fall? A: Indian liquidity is likely to remain strong. We are seeing enough playing out in favour of equity investment over debt or real estate or gold and we know this phenomenon reasonably well. However, it is not always that liquidity needs to rerate the market. The reason it is having an impact is because there is no primary supply. In fact, over the last several months or quarters you have known that the pipeline has been relatively dry. Moment you start seeing supply of equity in response to the extended valuations especially on the midcap and smallercap companies, it serves as a release valve for the money that is coming in and the market should stop to rerate it. That is exactly what happened if you go back to the 2003-2004 period, a rally leads to a primary equity market rally and then you get some sort of restoration of balance in valuations. We do not know when that will happen but clearly when stocks are valued as much, it is incentive for promoters to sell some stocks. So yes, the domestic flow should continue but it does not necessarily have to rerate the market. The second bit on global participation, flows into India and out of India are linked to EM over the last few weeks at least we think that money has started to flow out of the Ems a little bit which is why you have seen a little bit of retracement in FII flow into India as well. Again that is more evidence of a coupling rather than a decoupling. Anuj: We have seen a decent recovery in domestic earnings, the likes of cement for example, housing finance has been good and we have seen that play out in the market all the capex related stories are doing well. Do you think it is time to put some money here where we have seen multi-year bear market but now stocks are coming out and seeing huge runs? A: I would say that the capex is likely to be more in the household capex sort of space rather than the corporate capex space. If you again split out history of capex and go back to the start of a previous up cycle in the country around 2003-2004, the initial uplift in spending in the country always happens from households and intuitively it makes sense, corporates are unlikely to be large spenders unless they see demand picking up, unless they see the utilisation hit a certain number and we are not there yet. Corporate capex will always lag the cycle, household capex can be ahead of the cycle. The ingredients are falling in place. You have seen weak real estate prices for a while, you are now seeing falling mortgage rates so the affordability for real estate is going up, real estate regulatory authority (RERA) has started to come in from the next week, so lot of chips are falling in place for an accelerated household spending, so that is why I think that within spending, you should look at companies which are exposed to the household or real estate sort of sector rather than the corporate space. Sonia: The other very interesting part about your report is you expect the segment that could accelerate hereon is the public sector undertaking (PSU) and the corporate facing banks, names like Bank of Baroda, (BoB), State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank. The market has been not too gung-ho about this space for a long time, you think things could change now? A: I am not sure which report you are referring to but we are still going with our theme of households we think that mortgage lenders and private sector banks are more assured of growth. On the public sector, we prefer the larger public sector because there is going to be a distinction between profit after tax (PAT) growth and earnings per share (EPS) growth for many of these companies. You may get profit recovering but not the EPS. There is a very strong base effect because from last year, this time around most of the smaller banks, public sector banks had bad profit and loss (P&L) which will cost not just the PSU banks to look very nice year-on-year (Y-o-Y) now but also the whole aggregate BSE 500 profit to grow very materially. So if you look at the December number, despite demonetisation, BSE 500 profit was up 22 percent Y-o-Y largely on the PSU banks and materials. Latha: Therefore you are still not buying corporate facing or economy facing proxies at all? A: Not yet, our philosophy is to stay with growth and growth is best assured in the retail facing banks. If some of the corporate facing bank especially the private sector ones were also to participate in the retail lending and therefore assure me of some of that growth and they have enough option, they have enough capital, nothing is holding them back and if they were to deliver that then guess those could also become investment options. Anuj: The other part of the market which has done extremely poorly and where we are starting to see some contra buys now, IT and pharma, your take on both these sectors? A: IT, we are careful and I can understand the attraction for a lot of investors, these are companies with great track records as they were. However, our concern is two-fold, one is the fact that clarity on immigration or visa issues in the US will take time. We have no foresight, we cannot say which way it will swing, whether it will end up hurting the companies meaningfully or not but resolution is going to take a while and until that happens, I do not see a specific rerating in this environment. The second issue is demand. Yes, you have seen the commentary from the companies while it is hopeful, the current demand scenario isnt particularly spectacular. With all these overhangs, I do not think that the P/E multiple in itself will lead to a rerating in the next immediate couple of months. So we are underweight. It is a bit of a consensus call to make but rather be careful now. Pharma again I keep saying it is not something that you should lump all companies together, there are companies which have no or very limited FDA issues and have good growth visibilities and there are companies which are going through a lot of pain at the moment. So investor should look at picking among these and the opportunity lies because the market is lumping all of it together, all companies are being punished. There you might have the opportunity to pick one-two that you like which dont have concerns and which can still deliver growth. Latha: Are you not seeing any green shoots of growth? Cement volumes were better than the street had budgeted, couple of those banks have shown very strong loan growth, yesterday Aditya Puri was saying that even working capital demand has grown for his bank, not adding up to anything much? A: No, so these are green shoots like you said. The working capital demand we had been highlighting will happen because commodity prices are going up and in most companies the fact that your pricing and cost are going up, is bad for margins. So yes, it is good for banks who are lending to these companies but it will affect margins for some of the companies in the next few quarters and that is one reason why I think that downgrades of earnings are still due, consensus perhaps may be too high. But what we need to see is a sustenance of these trends. The only sustainable trend that you can pick out is the mortgages, the retail spending which has been ongoing for several quarters now. Cement volumes, yes it is good that it went up, we are hoping and I am overweight cement in my portfolio, I am hoping that that turned continues because it is tied into the housing expenditure theme that we are working on. Anuj: Is it too early to celebrate the return of earnings because that is one thing that the market is working on for the last fortnight or so? A: I do think so. There is a bit of a confusion in the drivers for that earnings growth especially on a Y-o-Y basis, there is a lot of growth coming because of base effects like I said on the materials and the PSU banks. However, if you have to strip out a lot of these externalities as it were and look at only the India facing EBIT, so if you take companies which have overseas businesses and you leave those out and consider only the set of earnings which is focused on India then the numbers are very poor. It is obviously rear-view mirror December quarter number and so on but EBIT in December was down meaningfully Y-o-Y for the India focus set. Consensus is hoping that that bunch recovers as well which maybe a little at risk now because I do not think that the full impact of demonetisation is over. We do not go from minus 3 to 5 percent in December to plus 10 percent in March as rapidly. So that is where my near-term concern is that with the market and stocks having gone up, expectations of growth have gone up too much. Representative Image live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More After a long break, Baltic Dry Index, which tracks global shipping rates, has once again started to move. It had corrected almost 95 percent from the levels of 12,000 in May 2008. Till the middle of last year, it was hovering around 630 levels. The upward movement started this year and the Index is currently at 1200 levels. There are reasons to be optimistic about global trade. The International Monetary Funds recent data suggests that the world economy could grow by 3.5 percent this year and 3.5 percent next year as against 3.1 percent in 2016. IMF also estimates a global trade volume growth of 3.8 percent this year and 3.9 percent in 2019, which is much higher than the 2.2 percent growth in 2016. China, which contributes to almost 40 percent of the worlds sea-borne trade, has seen 7.6 percent growth in its industrial activities in March 2017 against a low of 6 percent in December last year. Industrial activities in the US grew by 1.5 percent in March 2017 against a decline of 0.4 percent in November 2016. Similarly, Europe has recovered in the recent past to report growth of 1.2 percent in February, while Japan reported 4.6 percent growth in industrial activities in February as against negative growth last year. Benefits of Operating Leverage Interestingly, shipping industry data also shows encouraging trends. Global shipping utilisation rate in the dry bulk segment had dipped to 69 percent in June 2016 as against a high of 73 percent in 2013 and close of 95 percent in 2008. However, this has recovered currently to around 73 percent. This is encouraging, from the perspective of pricing as well as higher utilisation leading to benefits of higher operating leverage and hence higher profits. To put it in perspective, among the top three listed shipping companies, Mercator and Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) reported profits in December quarter as against a loss in September quarter. Great Eastern Shipping (GE Shipping) did not incur losses earlier and reported decent growth in profits. It is important to remember that today the Baltic Dry Index at 1200 is trading 28 percent higher than the average level of 940 seen in the December 2016 quarter. Considering that shipping is a capital-intensive business, the players like GE Shipping and Shreyas Shipping, who have a debt-to-equity of less than one time and interest coverage ratio of over 4-11 times (see table) are the most deserving players who could actually be rewarded in this global shipping upcycle. A company like GE Shipping has good balance sheet strength. It has not reported losses in the last 20 years despite a severe downturn post-2008 when its peers were running huge losses. Interestingly, in the downturn, GE Shipping has aggressively acquired several used vessels at lower prices to take advantage of the downturn. By the end of the financial year 2017, its gross block (gross value of fixed assets) will have jumped by 150 percent to Rs 16,700 crore as against Rs 6,600 crore in fiscal 2008. Because of the down-cycle, despite the huge jump in assets, revenues have remained in the region of Rs 3,000 crore. If the upcycle gathers steam, the company will benefit from huge operating leverage which should have a positive rub-off on earnings. What makes it an even attractive proposition is the valuation. The stock is trading at a reasonable valuation of 6 times its FY19 estimated earnings and offers over 3 percent dividend yield. Shreyas Shipping, which has a slightly different business model, catering to transshipment and domestic coastal shipping, is in a sweet spot as well. The company is ideally suited to take advantage of Indias growing trade. The government is working on developing coastal lines for domestic trade which will give a big boost to companies like Shreyas as 93 percent of Indias freight still uses land transport. This company is largely insulated from the global cyclicality in the shipping industry. Even after the global crisis in 2008, Shreyas, which has 60 percent market share in coast shipping, was able to maintain its operating margin at 3 percent. Last year, it reported 14 operating margin and 22 percent return on equity which is far superior compared to its peers. However, much of the superior performance is captured in the valuation - the stock is currently trading at about 15 times its FY19 estimated earnings. It was not regular foreign institutional investors (FIIs)considered to be the backbone of Indian marketsbut domestic institutional investors (DIIs) who led the rally on D-Street from March 2015 when Sensex recorded its previous all-time high levels 30,024.74. DIIs poured in over Rs 1 lakh crore in Indian equity markets from March 2015 to March 2017 and nearly Rs 7,000 crore in April to help Sensex record a fresh intraday high of 30,167.09 on Wednesday. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on the other hand poured a little over Rs 40,000 crore from March 2015 to March 2017. They remain net sellers to the tune of over Rs 5,000 crore for the month of April as per provisional data. DII contribution becoming more substantial and steady as against being sporadic and meager. While this brings in solidity and support to the equity market, FIIs contribution, as and when they come, could give muscle for the big leaps, Anand James, Chief Market Strategist at Geojit Financial Services told moneycontrol. Abundance liquidity has been one of the major factors driving a rally in Indian equity markets, especially from domestic investors. On the domestic front, liquidity is high, both with the funds as well as the insurance companies. The lions share of the money is coming from systematic investment plans (SIPs) via mutual funds into Indian equity markets, a trend which most experts think will continue in future as well. For instance, the quantum of SIP coming into the funds is Rs 4,000 crore and all of this is being invested in the markets. The FIIs too have been focusing on India given its attractive fundamentals and expectations, Prasanth Prabhakaran, Senior President & CEO at YES Securities (India) Ltd told moneycontrol. There are months wherein FIIs have pulled out funds on account of global events but DII flows have supported the markets. We expect this trend to continue and the flows to remain strong from a long-term perspective, he said. Healthy SIP book is strongly supporting fresh inflows in equity oriented mutual funds. Such MFs have witnessed inflows of over Rs. 2 lakh crore since May 2014. During May 2014-Feb 2017, equity MFs witnessed average monthly inflow of over Rs 6,000 crore, out of which Rs 4,000 crore came from SIPs, Tushar Pendharkar, Head of Research, Right Horizons Investment Advisory Services told moneycontrol. We believe that monthly SIP book in equity funds is expected to remain in the range of Rs 7,000-10,000 crore in coming years and would continue to provide huge funding to MFs to counter FIIs selling pressure, he said. FPIs flows are necessary The capital poured in by foreign institutional investors (FPIs) into Indian equity markets is often called 'hot money' because of its unpredictability. But, they have been among the strongest to lead the rally on D-Street. FPIs' cumulative net investment in the Indian equity market, since being allowed over two decades ago in November 1992, has now reached Rs 8.65 lakh crore, said a report. For the Indian market to hit fresh record highs, flows from FPIs on a sustained basis is required. Else, the rally will fizzle out sooner or later. Markets would still draw a lot of strength from FIIs, even as the recent trend is backed by DIIs. To sustain a broad rally for a long period, FIIs would need to invest in India, Prakarsh Gagdani, CEO, 5Paisa.com (a subsidiary of IIFL) told moneycontrol. I believe for the next few years India remains the best bet among emerging economies and with a strong central government, the economy would only go from strength to strength. Therefore FIIs would complement DIIs in the medium term, he said. Equity benchmarks snapped three-day winning streak on profit booking Thursday, with the Nifty closing April series below 9,350 level. Weak European cues also dampened sentiment in the second half of session. The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 103.61 points at 30,029.74 and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 9.70 points to 9,342.15 amid consolidation, weighed by profit booking in banking & financials, FMCG and select pharma stocks. Investors also digested recent positive global events (like French elections) and quarterly earnings that so far have been good, analysts say, adding today's volatility was expected due to expiry of April futures & options contracts. They feel consolidation may continue for couple of days as the Sensex rallied 768 points in previous three consecutive sessions and hit a record closing high, but in May series, the Nifty may add around 200-300 points. Jayant Manglik, president of retail distribution at Religare Securities said traders should remain focused on buying fundamentally sound counters on dips and avoid contrarian trades. He is now eyeing 9,450 level on Nifty. "Q4 numbers have not disappointed so far, and have underpinned markets, but market is looking for further signs for extending the ongoing rally, especially with increasing chances of El Nino this monsoon season," Anand James, chief market strategist at Geojit Financial Services said. According to Pankaj Pandey, Head-Research at ICICI Direct, with enabling fundamental factors such as stabilised commodity base, upbeat consumption and most importantly, a favourable low base, the earnings from hereon could witness a strong double digit growth recovery in FY18 and thus drive the market momentum. Global markets remained weak as lack of clarity over US president's corporate tax proposals influenced investors to book some profits. At the time of writing this article, France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were down 0.3-0.6 percent ahead of ECB meeting later today. "The outcome of European Central Bank & Bank of Japan policy meet today will be watched for any comments on the outlook for stimulus program," Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said. During April series, the Nifty rallied 1.8 percent while Midcap index surged 5.2 percent, backed by more than Rs 7,000 crore worth of buying by domestic institutional investors when FIIs were net sellers. The broader markets outperformed benchmarks, with the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices closing flat despite weak breadth. About 1559 shares declined against 1318 advancing shares on the exchange. Index heavyweights ITC (down 1.91 percent), HDFC (1.11 percent) and Reliance Industries (0.6 percent) dragged the Nifty below 9350. Nifty Bank outperformed benchmarks, ending at record closing high of 22,326.30 with 0.4 percent gains as IDFC Bank (up 6.2 percent), Yes Bank (3.79 percent), Kotak Mahindra Bank (1.58 percent) and HDFC Bank (0.4 percent) were leading contributors. However, the fall in Axis Bank (down 2.19 percent on profit booking post earnings), ICICI Bank (1.05 percent and SBI (1.55 percent) limited upside. Lupin lost 2.5 percent after the US health regulator issued Form 483 with three observations to its Goa plant. IT index also gained 0.5 percent as Infosys and Wipro rebounded 1 percent each but TCS fell 0.4 percent. Tata Motors share price was up 1 percent. The company has signed a contract for supply of 3,192 units of the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 to the Indian Armed Forces. Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman Ajay Tyagi has cleared a long-pending demand of SEBI Employees Association (SEA) to increase the representation of internal employees in executive director (ED) posts. After the SEBI Board modified the regulation, now more than 60 percent of ED positions will be filled internally. At present, there are nine ED posts, of which six are filled. Four of these are occupied by internal employees. SEA had on several occasions made its case before the regulators board and chairman. However, previous SEBI chief UK Sinha did not give the green light to raise the limit above 50 percent. After Tyagi took over in March, SEA made its demand again and got his approval in his first SEBI board meeting. We are convinced with this move, since SEBI has completed more than 27 years and we have competent employees who have rich experience of every segment, an SEA member told Moneycontrol on the condition of anonymity. A SEBI official told Moneycontrol that it was a good move that should have been taken long back. There are currently 25 chief general managers at SEBI, of which eight have completed more than seven years and 11 have completed more than five years of service in the grade. SEA had earlier approached the Bombay High Court in this regard, but its plea was rejected. The SEBI Board also changed the constitution of the recruitment panel, which will include a chairman, two board members and two external members. The chairman will select the external members. The Securities and Exchanges Board of India has sent a second showcause notice to five brokers including Motilal Oswal Commodities, India Infoline Commodities, Anand Rathi Commodities, Geofin Commodities and Phillip Commodities. In the notice, SEBI has asked brokers why registration should be granted to them in the commodities segment, as per the recommendation a three-member committee. After erstwhile regulator FMC's merger with SEBI, commodity brokers are required to register with the latter. SEBI has given 21 days notice to the brokers to furnish the details. Sebi had issued a showcause notice to brokers in the case of misselling of products of National Spot Exchange Limited, which collapsed following a Rs 5,500 crore scam. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 27 By Orkhan Quluzade Trend: The decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to return Turkey to the procedure for monitoring its obligations before the Council of Europe is not a decision in the name of democracy in Turkey, said former Turkish minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bagis in an exclusive interview with Trend on Apr. 27. Bagis noted that this decision of PACE is the work of lobbyists working against Turkey. The anti-Turkish lobby in European countries has been there for a long time. It spreads disinformation about Turkey in the parliaments of a number of European countries, said the former minister. He thinks that Turkey and Europe have strong ties in a number of spheres. According to him, instead of strengthening relations with Turkey, the economy of which is developing, and which has already become an important player in the region, the PACE adopted a decision under the pressure of some forces. Bagis noted that this PACE decision is not unexpected. Before the referendum in Turkey, pressure was put on Turkish voters in European countries, rallies and meetings of Turkish officials were blocked. Prior to the coming of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the Turkish government, the country was under the regime of monitoring for obligations before the Council of Europe. But the AKP carried out many reforms and the country withdrew from this procedure, and can do it again. However, the latest PACE decision serves political interests, he said. The former minister emphasized that Turkey should work against this lobby and inform Europe about the realities of the country with the help of compatriots living in European countries. Earlier, the majority of PACE members voted for adoption of a resolution bringing back monitoring on Turkey. Some 113 parliamentarians voted for the resolution, 45 voted against it, and 12 abstained. The Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned the PACE decision, calling it politicized and unfair. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Kshitij Anand Moneycontrol News The S&P BSE Sensex created history on Wednesday after it surged to a fresh lifetime high of 30,184.22 supported by global as well as domestic cues but the rally is not over yet, say experts. Investors should focus on stocks which have the potential to ride growth in the economy. Stars are aligned for companies which have domestic focus especially after clarity on goods & services tax (GST) which could well be implemented by July 2017. There is a clear improvement in earnings which remained muted for the past one year. Analysts are building estimates of a double-digit growth in FY18 as well as FY19 for most companies. The markets are on an upward trajectory supported by an improvement in the countrys fundamentals. This is clearly reflecting in the earnings growth now that has improved from the levels seen 3- 4 quarters ago, Prasanth Prabhakaran, Senior President & CEO at YES Securities (India) Ltd told Moneycontrol.com. Although recovery is yet to be broad-based, earnings are on the path of improvement too. While we do think that markets would continue to trend upwards over the long-term, there could be some aberrations due to global events, he said. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the near normal monsoon forecast (96% of LPA) for upcoming monsoon season 2017 which lifted investor sentiment. According to senior officials at the IMD, although there does exist neutral El Nino conditions (30% probability) in the Pacific Ocean, positive dipole movement in the Indian Ocean is expected to counter the Pacific move and result in normal rainfall in the upcoming monsoon season. Investors will be better off betting on companies which have a rural focus, suggest experts. The monsoon forecast at 96 percent with an error of +/-5% is comfortably ahead of the muted rainfall received in 2014 & 2015. This is likely to result in robust farm production and consequent increase in farm income, which will boost rural demand, thereby benefiting sectors like farm mechanisation (tractors, tillers, pumps), agri-input (Fertilizer, seeds, agro-chemicals), FMCG and consumer durables, among others, ICICI Securities said in a report. We have collated a list of stocks from various brokerage firms on stocks to buy with a holding period of 6-12 months: Monsanto India: BUY| Target Rs 3060| Upside 19% Monsanto India is an agricultural company, engaged in the business of production and sale of agricultural inputs, including chemicals, pesticides/herbicides, and hybrid seeds. The company's product portfolio includes agricultural and vegetable seeds, plant biotechnology traits and crop protection chemicals. The sideways consolidation over last 10 months has seen thin volume participation indicating large participation in the direction of the trend signaling a robust price structure. We believe the major consolidation phase has approached maturity and the stock provides good entry opportunity with favourable risk-reward setup, ICICI Securities said. We expect the stock to resolve higher towards Rs 3160 over the medium term. The measuring implication of the ten-month consolidation range (2700 to 2240 = 460 points) projected from the breakout point of Rs2600 opens upside towards Rs3060 levels, it said. Chambal Fertilisers: BUY| Target 115| Upside 18% Chambal Fertilizers and Chemicals is one of the largest private sector fertiliser producers in India. The company caters to the need of the farmers in 12 states in northern, eastern, central and western regions of India and is the lead fertiliser supplier in Rajasthan. The stock is forming a higher peak and higher trough on all time frames signaling persistent demand at elevated levels. The recent price activity signaled a fresh entry opportunity for medium term investors to ride the next up move in the stock. We believe the stock presents a good buying opportunity with a decent reward/risk setup for medium-term investors and is likely to head towards Rs 115 over the medium term, said ICICI Securities report. Supreme Industries: BUY| Target Rs 1450| Upside 35% Supreme Industries Limited (SI) is India's leading polymers and resins processing company offering a wide range of plastic products. The company operates in various product categories viz. Plastic Piping System, Cross Laminated Films & Products etc. among others. Going ahead, the company intends to increase its contribution from value-added products to around 35 percent or more of its total revenues through focusing on technological innovations and designs. The value added products generally has margins of more than 17 percent for the company which should help increase margins for the company. In terms of revenue growth, the companys primary driver is increased volumes through wider and deeper penetration across the country supported by the addition of timely manufacturing capacities, Anand Rathi Research said in a report. The company plans to achieve 7 lakh ton per year installed capacity by FY-21. We are positive on the business prospects of the company in the long term and initiate our coverage on Supreme Industries Ltd with a BUY rating and a target price of Rs1450 per share, it said. Tiger Logistics India: BUY| Target Rs 275| Upside 29% Sbicap Securities initiates coverage on Tiger Logistics with a buy rating and a target price of Rs 275 giving an upside potential of 29 percent from current levels. The company is growing revenues at over 25 percent CAGR over the past 5 years, we foresee Tiger almost doubling its net profit margin (NPM) to 4.7 percent by FY19e in a span of 5 years. Tiger is one of the country's leading providers of end-to-end supply chain solutions. Incorporated in 2000, Tiger entered into logistic space with a prime focus on international logistics. The company currently operates as International Freight Forwarders, Customs Clearance Agents, Transporters, Custom Consultants and Project Transportation Specialists with no geographical boundaries. Can Fin Homes: BUY| Target Rs 3086| Upside 18% IIFL Wealth & Asset Management maintains a buy recommendation on Can Fin Homes with a target price of Rs 3086 which translates into an upside of 18.15 percent from current levels. Driven by favourable macros and intrinsic superiority of the franchise, IIFLs confidence around Can Fins growth and profitability trajectory is solidifying. Governments policy impetus for bolstering housing supply in LIG and MIG segments, companys established presence in affordable housing markets, conservative underwriting philosophy and headroom for operating leverage will underpin robust future growth and return ratios. The return on equity (RoE) delivery at 2526% will be next only to Gruh Finance that trades at substantially higher valuations. Some relatively inferior HFCs have also narrowed valuation gap with Can Fin in recent months. We thus see scope for Can Fins valuation to rerate over the medium term. Retain BUY and raise 12month price target to Rs3,086, said the report. Valves are seen next to an oil boiler inside a fish meal factory in Concepcion city November 14, 2014. Picture taken November 14, 2014. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado (CHILE - Tags: SOCIETY FOOD BUSINESS) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More In a setback to India, an international arbitration panel has rejected its demand for a stay on an arbitration initiated by British oil explorer Cairn Energy plc against a Rs 10,247 crore retrospective tax notice. The panel, comprising three judges of international repute, has also turned down India's application for bifurcation of the issue of whether tax is covered under India-UK bilateral investment protection treaty, sources privy to the development said. Income tax department had in January 2014 charged Cairn Energy of making capital gains on transfer of India assets to a newly created firm, Cairn India and listing it on stock exchanges. Instead of applying long-term capital gains tax, it levied a short-term capital gains tax and slapped a draft tax demand of Rs 10,247 crore. Also, it debarred Cairn Energy from disposing of its 9.8 percent remaining stake in Cairn India, which the British firm had in 2011 sold to Vedanta Group. In April 2014, the tax department slapped a Rs 20,495 crore demand on Cairn India, the UK firm's erstwhile subsidiary for failing to deduct tax on the capital gains. Both firms denied any tax was due and initiated arbitrations -- Cairn Energy under India-UK investment treaty and Vedanta under India-Singapore investment treaty. Sources said India sought a stay on proceedings in Cairn Energy's arbitration for potentially five years, stating that it is "unfair" that they have to defend two cases at once. However, it was Indian government's decision to join both the arbitration and hence it could not go back on anyone of them. A three-member arbitration panel headed by Geneva-based arbitrator Laurent Levy, which began hearing Cairn Energy's demand for USD 5.6 billion in compensation from the Indian government for raising a retrospective tax demand in May last year, rejected the application for 'stay' on March 27, 2017, they said. It rejected the bifurcation application on April 19, 2017, sources said, adding India can, however, continue to argue that tax matters are not covered under bilateral investment treaties under the main arbitration. Both the applications were seen as delaying tactics on part of the Indian government, which did not file its Statement of Defence to Cairn's demand by the November 11, 2016 deadline set by the panel. It also missed the extended deadline of mid-January, only to file it by February 4. Sources said the panel has set a strict timeline, with evidential hearings slated to start in mid-January 2018 and the arbitration proceedings being wrapped up in next few months. Cairn Energy has to file its rebuttal to India's Statement of Defence by mid-June and the Indian government will get a final change to make further statements on that by September/October. Thereafter evidential hearings are scheduled, they said. The arbitration award will be final and cannot be challenged in any court, they added. Representative image. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers will file a review petition before the Supreme Court today against the apex courts ruling which banned sale of Bharat Stage III (BS 3) vehicles after March 31. Commercial vehicle makers like Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, VE Commercial Vehicles and Mahindra & Mahindra are saddled with nearly 45,000 units of unsold BS 3 stock valued at least at Rs 4,000 crore. While some of these companies such as Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland have started the process of upgrading their effected inventory to BS 4 level there are still those vehicles which can neither be sold outside the country nor can they be converted to BS 4. SIAM will file a review petition today against the ban, said a top ranking executive from one of the affected companies. The Ministry of Heavy Industries and SIAM are working together seeking a legal remedy to this ban, said another top executive from a different company declining to be identified. While Tata Motors is believed to have the biggest inventory of unsold BS 3 vehicles totaling 15,000 units Chennai-based Ashok Layland has about 10,664 and Delhi-based VE Commercial Vehicles has about 1,500 of BS 3 stock. Mumbai-based Mahindra & Mahindra had a stock of 15,000 vehicles by close of business hours on March 31 valued at approximately Rs 1,500 crore. Apart from large trucks these also include commercial three-wheelers. We are asking the court to allow us for a small window that will allow us to liquidate the stock, said the above mentioned person. Around 8,000-8,500 of the BS 3 lot of Tata Motors will be exported to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on an as-is-where-is-basis, the shipments of which has already begun. About 90 percent of the remaining 6,500-7,000 will be upgraded to BS 4, a senior company executive said today. If the SC relents and allows sale of BS 3 stock to be sold in the domestic market industry watchers say it would take a maximum of 30-40 days to exhaust the stock even with heavy discounting. It has to be noted here that buyers had already advanced purchases to a large extent in the run-up to the SC verdict in March. This could play spoilsport for the manufacturer looking for faster liquidation of the BS 3 stock. During a media interaction yesterday Ravindra Pisharody, executive director (Commercial Vehicles), Tata Motors, said, We have started with the conversion process to BS 4 but we are not moving very fast for those products which we cannot upgrade to BS 4 because the cost is very high. Taking to Moneycontrol last week Vinod Dasari, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland said, About 95 percent of the BS-III vehicles were with us, not dealers as they are on a cash and carry basis. So we have already started the process of upgrading them to BS 4 and already 250 of them are upgraded using our indigenously developed iEGR technology. For Ashok Leyland it will take 2-3 months to convert all the BS 3 units to BS-IV which will incur a cost of Rs 20,000 per vehicle. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More KR Choksey's research report on Wipro The growth for Q1 FY18 would remain stagnant due to project completions in the previous quarter, and it will continue its momentum from Q2 FY18 onwards, as few projects are still in pipeline. The company has opened multi-client delivery centers in the US and the UK region, which would help in carrying out business operations and reduce costs. Outlook As far as Obama Care is concerned that is yet to make its impact on IT industry, we would re-rate the stock once the dust settles down. As of now, we have given the ACCUMULATE rating on the stock and as we assign multiple of 13x to its FY19E EPS of INR. 39.3 to arrive at a price target of INR 531. For all recommendations, click here 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 Rajat Bose of rajatkbose.com told CNBC-TV18, "I would start with tyre stocks but this is not a regular tyre stock, this is Balkrishna Industries. Put a stop loss below Rs 1,545 and Rs 1,581 and Rs 1,595 would be the two targets. I personally hold this stock in my portfolio. The second stock would be Kotak Mahindra Bank with a stop loss Rs 902, targets are Rs 922 and Rs 927." Bharat Forge which I hold in my portfolio, keep stop loss at Rs 1,119, targets would be Rs 1,149-Rs 1,156 and Rs 1,162. Also, Shriram Transport Finance although initially this showed a weakness but it has tested the lower range and then from there it bounced back, hence this is a buy call with a stop loss below Rs 1,025 while Rs 1,055-1,062 and Rs 1,069 are the targets, if needed carry them as long positions overnight," he said. Sudarshan Sukhani of s2analytics.com told CNBC-TV18, "Kotak Mahindra Bank is at lifetime highs. I do not know what the earning impact will be but on a dip it is an investment buy." "Allcargo Logistics is a much better stock. It has gone down from the high that it recorded and that is a buying opportunity. This is not a day trade but if one is looking to invest, this is an excellent theme," he said. "In Tata Motors , some traction is available on the upside, so it is an intraday trade, look to buy. Hindustan Unilever - where one can take a swing trade, buy now for next week." Copper cooking pots still in use today, some dating back to King George IV, sit on racks in the kitchens at Buckingham Palace in London March 25, 2011. Staff at Buckingham Palace have lifted the lid on preparations for Prince William's wedding next month, giving an insight into what guests can expect and the amount of work they have put in to make the event a success. REUTERS/Nick Ansell/POOL (BRITAIN - Tags: ROYALS ENTERTAINMENT POLITICS FOOD) - RTR2KJGP Angel Commodities' report on Copper LME Copper prices gained 0.2 percent to $5715/t as investors turned to risky assets this week buoyed by victory of Emmanuel Macron in the first round of French Presidential elections. Also, global markets were optimistic ahead of announcement of President Trump plans to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from its current 35 percent level. Outlook LME Copper prices are currently trading lower by 0.4 percent at $5709.5/t. Prices are expected to trade sideways today as investors keenly watch central bank meetings from Japan and EU. Also, global markets will be cautious ahed of release off advance GDP figures from the US due tomorrow. We expect MCX copper prices to trade sideways today. For all commodities report, click here 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 live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Motors, one of Indias biggest suppliers to the defence, has signed a contract for supply of 3,192 units of the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 to the Indian Armed Forces. The supply will be under a new category of vehicles - GS800 (General Service 800). The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had floated a request for proposal (RFP) for vehicles with three basic criteria minimum payload capacity of 800 kgs, hard roofs and air conditioning. Developed indigenously, the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 has completed a total trial duration of 15 months in various terrains across the country. Vernon Noronha, Vice President, Defence & Government Business, Tata Motors said, We are very proud to have received this prestigious order for over 3000 units of the Safari Storme under the newly formed GS800 category. Tata Motors has been a leading supplier of mobility solutions to the Indian Armed Forces and this order is a testimony to our partnership with the countrys security forces. This variant of the Storme has been modified from the one available for civilians with an upgraded drivetrain and significantly modified suspension. We will shortly commence delivery of these vehicles for the Army and Navy in a phased manner, added Noronha. Introduced in 2012, the Safari Storme has renewed power of 156 PS and 400 nm torque. The Storme provides easy drivability, swifter response and lower NVH (noise, vibration and harshness), with superior fuel efficiency and best-in-class ground clearance of 200mm. The 4X4 variant also features ESOF (electronic shift-on-fly) technology, enabling engagement of the 4X4 or 4X2 mode on the move. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday that Chinese goods dumped in Mexico are finding their way to the United States. "Mexico's trade deficit with China is approximately equal to their trade surplus to us. It's not an accident," Ross said on "Squawk Box." "The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening," he added. "Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA." "It was a silly idea to let a lot of outside stuff in. The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside," he continued. "So there's a conceptual flaw in that, one of many conceptual flaws in NAFTA." Despite earlier indications, President Donald Trump , in separate Wednesday afternoon phone calls with Mexico and Canada, agreed not to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement "at this time." Ross told CNBC on Thursday that Canada and Mexico are ready to start renegotiating NAFTA. "If we could only get Congress to release the 90-day letter, we'll be going on our side as well," he added, referring to the 90 days notice that must be given before beginning formal talks on NAFTA. Ross, a billionaire who made his fortune investing in distressed assets, told CNBC two days ago that the White House was putting Canada on notice with a new import tariff on what it calls Canadian subsidies for lumber and a warning on Canadian trade practices the U.S. claims hurts American dairy farmers. On another trade matter, Trump is set to sign a memo on Thursday afternoon authorizing an investigation into whether a flood of aluminum imports from China and elsewhere jeopardize national security. The move is similar to one last week for imported steel. "We're down to two smelters in the whole country. Imports are now 55 percent of the total aluminium market here," Ross said on CNBC. "In many critical things such as the very high purity of the aluminium we need in aerospace, we only have one producer," he said, arguing "that's not a good formula." In January, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Chinese aluminum producers receive artificially cheap loans, contributing to the country's excess capacity. US President Donald Trump is confident in Chinas assistance against the threat posed by North Korea because Beijing has started to view Pyongyang as challenging its interests, a senior White House official said on Wednesday. "Whats different about how Chinas viewing the problem in North Korea today is that Chinas viewing that problem as a threat not only to US interests and security or South Korean or Japanese interests and security, but also a threat to Chinese interests and security," the official stated. The situation on the Korean peninsula aggravated since North Korea carried out a number of missile launches and nuclear tests in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. On April 16, Pyongyang conducted a missile test, which was called unsuccessful by the South Korean defense officials. On April 5, North Korea launched a ballistic missile from Sinpo, South Hamgyong province, in the direction of the Sea of Japan. A grand jury in the US today indicted an India-born doctor and his wife along with another Indian-origin woman doctor in a first-of-its kind federal prosecution involving female genital mutilation of two minor girls. Unless they work out a plea deal, the two doctors and the wife of one of the physicians are headed to trial now, Detroit Free Press reported. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both from Michigan state, were charged with conspiring to perform female genital mutilations (FGM) on minor girls out of Fakhruddin Attar's medical clinic in Livonia. The Attars were arrested on April 21. They were charged with helping another Indian-origin doctor Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Michigan, perform FGM on minor girls. According to the indictment handed up in US District Court, Jumana cut the genitals of two girls from Minnesota with the help of another doctor who let her use his Livonia clinic to carry out the procedure and helped coordinate the girls' trip to Michigan, the report said. The federal indictment alleged that the three persons tried to obstruct the investigation by telling other people to make false statement to authorities. The doctors are also accused of lying to investigators. Nagarwala, Fakhruddin and Farida are believed to be the first people charged under federal US law, which criminalises FGM. According to an online physician directory, Fakhruddin graduated from the Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India in 1988. The charges say that Nagarwala used to perform the medical procedure on minor girls at Burhani Medical Clinic (BMC) in Michigan that was owned and operated by Fakhruddin. Fakhruddin's wife was employed at BMC as an officer manager. The compliant against the Attars said that the couple arranged and assisted in the female genital mutilation of minor females performed by Nagarwala. While they allowed their clinic to be used by Nagarwala to perform the procedures, Farida assisted Nagarwala during the female genital mutilation procedures. Fakhruddin told federal agents this month that he has known Nagarwala and she occasionally saw patients at his clinic even though she was not employed there. He said Nagarwala only saw the patients at BMC when the clinic was closed and that Farida used to be present in the examining room while Nagarwala treated the minor girls. The investigation revealed that several minor girls informed forensic personnel that Nagarwala had performed procedures on their genitals and one minor girl said Farida had been present when Nagarwala did the FGM procedures. According to the complaint, some of the minor victims travelled interstate to have the procedure performed. The complaint alleges that the FGM procedure was performed on girls who were approximately six to eight years old. The number of girls under 18 at risk for FGM in the US has quadrupled since 1997. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 513,000 women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US. FGM has been a crime under federal law since 1996 and is punishable by up to five years in prison, however FGM is not a crime in 26 US states, including Michigan. The complaint filed against Nagarwala last week had said federal agents reviewed her telephone records and further investigation revealed that parents of two minor girls had travelled to Michigan. The girls were later interviewed by a forensic expert and one of the girls said she was told she was coming to Detroit for a "special" girls trip, but after arriving at the hotel, she learned that she and the other girl had to go to the doctor because "our tummies hurt." The girls had been taken to Nagarwala, who performed the procedure on the girls. The World Health Organisation said female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. WHO said FGM, which is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. A Bitcoin (virtual currency) logo is pictured on a door in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris May 27, 2015. British authorities have come out in support of digital currencies in the name of promoting financial innovation, while proposing that regulations should be drawn up to prevent their use in crime. But it is technophiles who are leading the drive to make London a real-world hub for trade in web-based "cryptocurrencies", of which bitcoin is the original and still most popular. Picture taken May 27, 2015. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier - RTX1EWRL Bitcoin, the worlds first digital currency may have the potential to transform the financial world but it has also drawn much criticism for being an attractive payment method for criminals, due to the anonymity it provides. A recent report by Finnish cyber security and privacy company, F-Secure, says that the easy availability of Bitcoin has made crypto-ransomwares business model viable and profitable, feeding an online crime wave that has seen new extortion-enabling malware families at least double each year since 2012. Ransomeware is a malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid. It encrypts files stored on the user's computer or mobile device and renders it unreadable by the user or the device. In order to restore it for normal use, a decryption key is needed to unlock the file. Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor at F-Secure, did some digging into the "customer portal" of a family of cypto-ransomware known as "Spora" and got to know that the criminals run their operations like an actual business with regularly scheduled spam runs to lure in new victims. And while the crooks are flexible about deadlines, the method of payment is non-negotiable: it must be in Bitcoin. "We should be thankful that there are at least some limits on purchasing Bitcoin. If it were any easier to do so, very little else would check the growth of crypto-ransomwares business model," Sullivan says. "The malware technology to encrypt data has been possible for many, many years; the bigger challenge has always been getting paid," he adds. There was one known ransomware family variant in 2012, according to F-Secures State of Cyber Security 2017 report. By 2015, there were 35, which exploded to 193 in 2016. Lack of government regulation around the buying and selling of bitcoins have also left it open to misuse. For regulators virtual currencies present a series of challenges relating to taxation, money-laundering and terrorist financing and ransomware demands but it is necessary to lay down a set of rules under which cryptocurrencies exist and function in the economy as killing off the technology would also lay waste to the benefits that it promises to give. US and European officials could make a major dent in the availability of Bitcoin with a relatively simple change, F-Secure says. "Bitcoin exchange accounts could be required to be tied to a physical address," Sullivan says. Currently it takes just minutes or seconds to open a Bitcoin account in a third-party market. This requirement would require an activation code thats mailed to you before an account can be opened. While this wouldnt affect criminals who do business out of Russia and China, it would make their attacks far less profitable. "The exchanges would hate it. But given the hundreds of millions of dollars being extorted every few months, it seems appropriate," Sullivan says. "Barring this or a similar step, exponential growth of malware families delivering these threats seems to be the only other option." But time is of the essence, Sullivan stresses. "Ethereum is now trading at similar trajectory as Bitcoin," he says. "If governments dont act now to come up with a strategy for dealing with digital currencies, its not going to get any easier." Yogi Adityanath, newly appointed Chief Minister of Indias most populous state of Uttar Pradesh arrives to attend a meeting with government officials at Lok Bhavan in Lucknow, India March 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar - RTX31THW Uttar Pradesh has been going through major changes from the time Yogi Adityanath has come to power and this time the big reshuffle is in the administrative department. To check corruption and ensure efficient working of the state government, 138 officials will be transferred and new people will be inducted, including 84 IAS and 54 IPS officers. This is the second shake-up since the new government took charge. Earlier this month, as many as 41 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers were transferred. Also, the police department got its new chief, Sulkhan Singh who replaced Javeed Ahmed. Singh had vowed to crush goondagardi in the state and warned that even VIPs would not be spared. Last week Adityanath had directed the state police to change its working style so as to make the common people feel secure. The chief minister had expressed unhappiness over the working of the anti-corruption wing of the state police and ordered its reorganisation. To send out a strong message that laxity in enforcing law and order will not be tolerated, Uttar Pradesh police had suspended over 100 policemen. New faces that will assume office Civil Defence Secretary Manoj Mishra has been made Director of Culture, Special Secretary (Revenue) Karn Singh Chauhan has been sent to Jhansi as district magistrate. Prominent among those transferred included DM Lucknow GS Priyadarshi, who has been sent to Muzaffarnagar in the same capacity while DM Kanpur Kaushalraj Sharma will take his place. DM Bareilly Surendra Singh has been sent to Kanpur as DM while Special Secretary, Agriculture Pinki Joval has been made the Bareilly DM. DM Ghaziabad Nidhi Kesarwani has been sent to the Science and Technology department as Special Secretary while Special Secretary Home has been made the DM Ghaziabad. Similarly, DM Gautam Buddh Nagar Nagendra Prasad Singh has been replaced by Brijesh Narain Singh. Prominent among the IPS officers transferred include SSP Ghaziabad Deepak Kumar who has been sent to Lucknow in the same capacity replacing Manzil Saini while SSP Saharanpur Luv Kumar has been made the SSP of Gautam Buddh Nagar. SP Ghazipur Subhash Chandra Dubey has been made the SSP of Saharanpur while RP Pandey will be the SSP of Gorakhpur. (With inputs from PTI.) Answer: Airbus Vienna prosecutors are investigating Airbus Chief Executive Thomas Enders for suspected fraud in connection with a USD 2 billion Eurofighter jet order by Austria more than a decade ago, the prosecutors' office said. Correspondence reviewed by Reuters listed Enders as one of those accused in the investigation, and a spokeswoman for the Vienna prosecutors' office said that information was correct. "I can confirm that," the spokeswoman said on Wednesday when asked whether Enders was being investigated. Contacted by Reuters, Airbus had no immediate comment on the Austrian probe. Enders and Airbus, which was called European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Company (EADS) at the time the fighter jet order was agreed, have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Enders was head of EADS's defence division when the contract was signed. He took responsibility for combat aircraft a few months later. Austrian and German prosecutors have been investigating for years whether officials received bribes aimed at ensuring they chose Eurofighter jets over rival offers from Saab and Lockheed Martin. Two months ago Vienna prosecutors opened a criminal investigation that for the first time named Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium as defendants. The consortium comprises BAE Systems, Italy's Leonardo and Airbus, which represents Germany and Spain's industrial interests in the project. The judicial investigation was opened in response to a complaint by Austria's Defence Ministry. Under the country's legal system, such a step is taken when prosecutors believe A sufficient evidence is available to warrant a formal probe. 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. Venezuela will trigger the process of withdrawing from the Organization of American States (OAS) after the bloc voted to call an urgent meeting on it, Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday, Sputnik reported. "At the order of President Nicolas Maduro, we will present tomorrow a letter of denunciation to the OAS and begin a [departure] process that will take 24 months," Rodriguez said in a televised speech broadcast by a state TV channel. The OAS Permanent Council voted earlier on Wednesday to call an emergency meeting of its foreign ministers over the crisis in Venezuela despite Caracas' objections. The decision was passed by 19 votes to 10, with four abstentions and one nation missing from the meeting of OASs one of the two main political bodies. Earlier this month, the OAS voiced concern over Venezuela limiting the power of the opposition-controlled parliament, calling the move a breach of democratic norms, while OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro Lemes said he considered this to be a coup. Venezuela has been rocked by opposition protests demanding fresh presidential elections with President Nicolas Maduro facing an opposition-controlled parliament that has sought his impeachment. The latest mass anti-government protests started in early April after Venezuela's Supreme Court decided to take on the legislative functions of the National Assembly. The courts decision was later reversed, but protesters remained on the streets and demanded the judges' resignation. Over two dozen people have been killed in the unrest. April 27, 2017 How Bio-Weapons Led To Torture ... And North Korean Nukes In Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That we pointed to the utter destruction the U.S. and its allies waged in the war on Korea on all parts of the country. That North Korea seeks "weapons of mass destruction" is quite understandable when one takes into account the hundreds of thousands tons of napalm used against it. But even Napalm and the criminal destruction of North Korean dams were not the worst depravation the U.S. applied. Biological warfare agents, primarily anthrax, were dropped over North Korea and China and killed civilians. The U.S./UN command denied such use and covered it up. One consequence of that cover up was the development of torture methods in the U.S. SERE pilot training programs and their later proliferation into criminal abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Graibh and elsewhere. An important piece of evidence of this trail was recently and for the first time re-published on the web In the 1950s war on Korea heavy air to air fights were waged near the Chinese border which led to significant losses of airplane on both sides especially along the MiG Alley: USAF pilots nicknamed April 12, 1951 "Black Thursday", after 30 MiG-15s attacked three squadrons of B-29 bombers (36 planes) escorted by approximately 100 F-80s and F-84s. The MiGs were fast enough to engage the B-29s and extend away from their escorts. Three B-29s were shot down and seven more were damaged, with no casualties on the communist side. On "Black Thursday" and other occasions U.S. bomber pilots were captured. Some of them admitted to have dropped biological weapons over China and northern Korea. Their confessions were published in writing and publicized on Korean, Chinese and Russian radio. The U.S. (UN) command under U.S. General MacArthur denied any use of biological warfare agents. It claimed that the downed pilots were tortured to give false confessions. Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses interrogations were staged to provide realistic training. After the Korea War anti-torture training was added. Torture of "prisoners" was "simulated" with the trainees. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists as "behavioral science consultants" from the SERE training staff to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE "experts" devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee Report (pdf) on U.S. torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA black sites, SERE techniques originated in Chinese Communist methods in the Korean War employed to extract false confessions from captured U.S. personal. (During the 1960s the CIA itself developed additional "scientific" torture methods and published them in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. U.S. personal as well as several south American militia were trained in and used these abusive and illegal methods.) The torture training at the SERE schools and the abuses were all based on a big lie. The U.S. had used biological weapons in the Korea war. It also used chemical weapons and suppressed investigations into it. Its pilots dropped bombs with biological warfare agents over China and Korea. Theirs were not false confessions extracted by Chinese Communist methods. The captured U.S. pilots were telling the truth. The SERE torture resistance training and its abuse are based on the bigger lie about the non-use of biological agents in the war on Korea. (The Geneva Protocol of 1925 generally prohibited the use of biological agents but the specific Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was only developed and signed in 1972.) The U.S. and UK developed extensive biological warfare programs during World War II but those weapons were not put to use in the European theater. The Japanese used biological weapons, with mixed success, in China and elsewhere. At the end of World War II the Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 was taken over by the U.S. military: [General] MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informantshe secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable. During and after the war on Korea the Chinese government alleged the use of biological weapons on Korean and Chinese civilians by the U.S. The U.S. denied. A commission was called upon to investigate: To convince the world of the truth of their claims, the North Koreans and Chinese, sponsored a purported independent commission, using the auspices of the World Peace Council, gathering together a number of leftist scientists from around the world. Most surprisingly, this commission, which came to be known as the International Scientific Commission, or ISC, was headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham. The ISC travelled to China and North Korea in the summer of 1952 and by the end of the year produced a report that corroborated the Chinese and North Korean claims that the U.S. had used biological weapons in an experimental fashion on civilian populations. For a long time the commission's report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here: Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign. Needham's investigations have since been confirmed by other scholars investigating the general case: It is the purpose of this article to consider the validity of these [U.S. military denials] in light of the research which we conducted in preparing our recent book, The United States and Biological Warfare: secrets of the Early Cold War and Korea. In that book we conclude that the United States engaged in large-scale field tests of biological weapons against the Asian countries and with some additional evidence we continue to believe that is the case. General MacArthur, one of the foremost war criminals ever, covered up the war crimes of the Japanese and especially of Unit 731. He took care to integrate the Japanese biological weapon experience into the U.S. military resources. Under his command biological agents were then used against Korean and and Chinese civilians and military units. When his pilots confessed, he denied all such reports and alleged "brainwashing" through torture by the Chinese. This again led to torture "simulations" in U.S. SERE training from which recent U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere derived. U.S. media and the public have a general amnesia whenever it comes to U.S. war crimes - no matter how recent. The Senate report on CIA torture in Iraq and elsewhere is still suppressed. But U.S. war crimes do not end. Whenever "threatened" with compromise, the U.S. tends to seeks the belligerent way. As Noam Chomsky reiterates in relation to the current campaign for another war on Korea: [V]ery strikingly [..] theres one lesson that you discover when you carefully look at the historical record. What I just described about North Korea is pretty typical. Over and over again, there are possibilities of diplomacy and negotiation, which might not succeedyou cant be sure if you dont try thembut which look pretty promising, which are abandoned, dismissed, literally without comment, in favor of increased force and violence. For an example see this influential sitting U.S. Senator who argues for "preemptive" strikes against North Korea's missile program without any regard for the people who's life would be destroyed by them: It would be bad for the Korean Peninsula. It would be bad for China. It would be bad for Japan, be bad for South Korea. It would be the end of North Korea. But what it would not do is hit America and the only way it could ever come to America is with a missile. Considering the historical record of the United States of committing and covering up warcrimes as well as its general belligerence, North Korea and other nations are probably well advised to stick to their nuclear and missile programs. Posted by b on April 27, 2017 at 12:47 UTC | Permalink Comments next page Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman denied on Wednesday reports a meeting between the Russian leader and his US counterpart Donald Trump could take place in late May, Sputnik reported. A Russian financial newspaper, the Kommersant, cited sources in the governments of both countries as saying Putin and Trump could meet in a European country late next month. Asked whether a meeting had been planned, Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik, "Theres nothing yet." Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov last week reaffirmed the nations readiness to such a summit that, he said, was essential for forwarding bilateral cooperation. U.S. military veterans on motorcycles with the Patriot Guard escorted one of their fallen brothers to funeral and burial services in Morgan Hill last week. Services for Richard Villalba took place April 21 in Morgan Hill. The funeral procession was escorted by the Patriot Guard riders from Lima Campagna Johnson Funeral Home on Monterey Road just north of town, to the funeral service at St. Catherine Parish, and then to the cemetery on Spring Avenue. Villalba served in the Army in the 1990s. His service included combat in the Persian Gulf. He died after a long battle with cancer, according to his brother George Moya, who traveled from Arizona to attend the services. I was at the hospital when he passed, Moya said. It was a hard thing to watch. But he added it was awesome to see not only familiar friends and family at the services, but also the veterans on motorcycles who came to escort their fellow soldier to his final resting place. Family is the most important thing in life, and when its a veteran you need to pay respect all the way around, Moya said. Villalba and his spouse Jake Navarette-Villalba are the owners of Salon NV. Moya said their business has flourished over the years. Patriot Guard Riders is a volunteer, nonprofit organization that ensures dignity and respect at memorial services honoring fallen military heroes, first responders and honorably discharged veterans, according to their website patriotguard.org. The group consists of mostly U.S. military veterans, who are also motorcyclists. The April 21 mission to escort Villalbas remains and funeral procession was led by Patriot Guard Ride Captain Mark Zappa, a Gilroy resident. Morgan Hill resident Kirk Bertolet, also a Patriot Guard Rider, participated in the procession as well. A handful of school health clerks complained to the school board April 18 that district leadership is demanding they administer insulin shots to diabetic students that need the medication during school hours. Veteran health clerk Heidi Curiel told the board neither she nor her colleagues, some of whom stood with her at the podium, are trained in performing the invasive procedure and it should be left to trained professionals such as registered nurses. Curiel said the Morgan Hill Unified School Districts health clerks are feeling harassed and bullied to take on the duties. California law permits trained, unlicensed personnel to administer prescription medication under a doctors orders, including insulin, according to a 2013 edsource.com article. The information was based on a Supreme Court ruling. District staff did not respond to requests for comment before Wednesdays press-time. Reluctant to do so, health clerk Natalie Simoneau, who has worked at Britton Middle School for the last 12 years, echoed Curiels sentiments and requested that staff not change her job description to include insulin injections for students. Simoneau said she inherited 300 new sixth grade students this year and has more than 60 medications to administer in her office, including Epi-pens and inhalers for ailments such as allergies and asthma. Mark Miller, father of two children at Paradise Valley Elementary School, said his daughter requires insulin shots throughout the school day. What blows my mind is her health clerk is only on campus three hours per day, said Miller, adding that the population of diabetic students needing daily insulin injections is increasing and that cant be done if there is nobody on campus to administer them. I want to see some change. Noel Weeks started as a part-time nurse with the school district in August and has since taken on full-time duties. However, she said the district is understaffed to cover the diabetic student population at all schools. I love my job. I love this school district, Weeks said. Were grossly understaffed and looking for hopefully some answers or another LVN or another RN to cover the gap. Elaine Gomer, the second school nurse employed by MHUSD, said she supports the health clerks decision not to administer insulin shots and is in opposition of the district changing their job description. You are expecting health clerks to function as nurses. However, they are not nurses, saId Gomer, who cited the 2013 law that allows unlicensed personnel to issue insulin if they volunteer to do so. Gomer explained the district employs the equivalent of 1.6 full-time positions for school nurses this year since they failed to replace two other part-time nurses after they left the district. She called it unsafe and impossible for the remaining nurses to supervise the 12 health clerks at all times. According to the American Diabetes Association, one in 400 children are diagnosed with diabetes nationwide. HIGH POINT Gov. Roy Cooper visited the High Point Market on Friday, the day before the official start of this international trade show. Made-in-Morganton Chaddock furniture was one of only three exhibitors the Governor selected to visit in his time in High Point. This was a significant tour for Cooper. The High Point Market encompasses more than 10 million square feet of showroom space. Between 70,000-80,000 attendees from more than100 countries shop the market. And, more than 2,000 exhibitors present products. Chaddock was singled out as an up-and-coming brand, and one manufactured almost entirely in North Carolina. Im delighted that one of Chaddocks first visitors at the Market was the Governor of North Carolina, said President and CEO Dan Bradley. I toured the showroom with Gov. Cooper. He was very impressed by the style and quality of our products. He asked many questions about our made-in-Morganton manufacturing model, and was very interested in how Chaddock combines craftsmanship and technology to produce the finest furniture in the world right here in North Carolina. Bradley felt as though he were representing all 180 Chaddock employees in his time with Cooper. It was a proud moment, and a highlight of a very successful April market, he said. Chaddock introduced more than 25 new designs at the market, all made and finished to perfection in Morganton. This is an important Market for Chaddock, Bradley said. We have successfully demonstrated that our made-in-America manufacturing model is a success. Lead times are industry best. We have earned designer and retailer trust. With this Market, Chaddock turns its attention to creativity with innovative merchandising programs, and most importantly, new designs across the brand portfolio. The Chaddock house label is notable for smart scale, updated classic design provenance, flexibility of individual items to function in floor plans from room to room, and an amazing menu of standard options to personalize selections. All new April introductions will be available to ship four to seven weeks after Market orders are received, as is the entire Chaddock lineup. Chaddocks industry-best lead times are the result of Continuous Improvement initiatives and made-in-America craftsmanship. Every new introduction is made-to order in Chaddocks Morganton factory. The Chaddock showroom itself is also a statement of whats new at the Market. Showroom designer is Carol Cole, along with design partners Larry Laslo and David Easton. FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) A veteran in North Carolina has been charged with tying her service dog to a tree and shooting it five times while a soldier filmed it. Jail records show 23-year-old Marinna Rollins was arrested Tuesday and charged with cruelty to animals. The Fayetteville Observer reports (http://bit.ly/2p1KuaC) that warrants say she and the soldier took the dog to a wooded area where Rollins shot the dog at close range. The dog was buried in a shallow grave. The newspaper reports the soldier was also charged with cruelty to animals. Court documents said Rollins received a medical retirement from the military. A sheriff's office spokesman didn't immediately respond to an email asking which military branch Rollins served in and whether the two have lawyers. A Morganton home was severely damaged after a fire and the homeowners lost three of their pets in the blaze. Around 11 p.m. on Friday night, Morganton Public Safety responded to 207 Willowbrook Drive in regards to a reported structure fire. Those living in the house were alerted to popping sounds and an explosion sound from the basement/garage, said a press release from MDPS. Everyone in the residence, including two dogs, exited the burning house. Three cats that lived at the house named Alvin, Archer and Sparrow died in the fire. Firefighters were able to recover the bodies of two cats, the release said. When fire personnel arrived on scene, they observed heavy fire coming from the garage and main floor of the residence. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but appears to have started from a vehicle parked in the garage, the release said. After the fire was under control, firefighters completed an overhaul of hot spots and searched for the three cats belonging to the homeowner. Personnel were on scene for nearly four hours. The damaged caused by fire, smoke and water is estimated at approximately $100,000. The Burke County chapter of American Red Cross was on scene to help the homeowner, the release said. Just as Burke County and the state are working to install a loop trail and park around Lake James, a bill that has passed the state Senate would remove the ability to protect the lake and Catawba River. N.C. Senate Bill 434, in its fourth revision, passed the state Senate Monday night just before 9 p.m. and went to the House on Tuesday. Sen. Warren Daniel, who represents Burke and Cleveland counties, voted for the bill. The bills name is Amend Environmental Laws 2 and , in addition to taking away the 50-foot protective buffer on the Catawba River and its lakes, it would take away local governments ability to set buffers in their ordinances. N.C. Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-Burke) confirmed the bill would do away with the setbacks (buffers) that Burke County officials, Crescent Resources and environmentalists negotiated for Lake James in the early 2000s. In 2001, Burke County put a moratorium on building at the lake after an outcry from conservationists who were afraid the lack of regulations on building was harming Lake James. Crescent then sued the county. At the time, Crescent was selling lake parcels and homes were being built. All of the parties eventually agreed to work together to come up with rules and regulations, including buffers, that would govern development around the lake. Once county commissioners adopted the rules, the moratorium on building at the lake was lifted before November 2004. On Wednesday, Blackwell said he wont support the bill and will oppose it if its not changed. I really dont expect (SB) 434 to pass the House without changes, Blackwell said. Im working to exempt or grandfather our rules if we consider the bill at all. Catawba Riverkeeper Sam Perkins said if buffers are written into a property deed then the bill wouldnt affect those. However, the bill would take away the buffers local governments have put in place to protect the waters, and it would prevent them from putting any future buffers in place. And thats a problem, Perkins said. For people who enjoy the waterways, I cant express enough how coveted the buffer is, Perkins told The News Herald on Wednesday. N.C. Sen. Andy Wells (R-Catawba/Alexander), who is in real estate by profession, is a primary sponsor of the bill. Perkins said Wells put the language in the bill that would eliminate buffers along the Catawba River and its lakes. Buffers stabilize banks along rivers, lakes and streams and prevent erosion. They also filter out nutrients and other contaminants from entering water, Perkins said. Perkins said buffers are particularly important for already-impaired waters such as Lake Rhodhiss, given its history of nutrient and sediment overloading. The future mitigation costs created by this bill make it not just environmentally irresponsible but fiscally irresponsible, Perkins said in a release. And the manner in which this was rushed through should be of critical concern to constituents. We hope citizens will express their concern to their elected officials. In addition to removing buffers along the Catawba River, the bill would repeal yard waste permitting requirements, repeal the plastic bag ban Outer Banks and gives the Marine Fisheries Commission the ability to adopt rules establishing shellfish aquaculture enterprise areas. Sharon McBrayer is a staff writer and can be reached at smcbrayer@morganton.com or at 828-432-8946. All 15 elementary schools robotics teams within Burke County Public Schools shifted to their science gears on Tuesday when they competed in the Cyberkids Robotics competition. This will be the fifth year in a row that Burke County Public Schools has participated in the Cyberkids Robotics program that has been around for 18 years and serves schools across the state, said Rebecca Smith, trainer and social media coordinator for the program. Students from all over the county came to Burkemont Baptist Church to test their robots by completing different tasks while competing against other schools. Cyberkids Robotics holds a summer camp at the beginning of the year for each elementary school to teach the foundational skills. This year, the program has a theme of Animal Allies. Students work throughout the summer and school year to build their robots and create programming that will lead up to the local and state competitions, Smith said. They have analyzed the best way to position their robot in order to deal with force, motion and distance with other pieces on the Robotics competition table to complete missions, Smith said. Each mission on the table w as centered on real world problem such as moving a shark tank from point "A" to point "B" with the robot. The program ties each mission to real life experiences, so students would have to treat the mission as if it were really happening, she said. There is another mission on the table called the milking machine that has cows attached to it where students have to turn it a certain amount and direction. There is strategy that it is holding milk and manure, so if you drop the manure you lose points because you would not want manure in your milk, Smith said. She says the program really wants to help children see real-world problems and how they can attempt to solve them. The kids are really engaged in the core subjects and are excited, but they dont even realize (how they are benefiting from it), Smith said. If a particular mission was completed it equaled a certain amount of points that the team would be awarded at the end of the each round during the competition. The program has three different elements including the robotic competition, project presentation and a team - building exercise that all are scored and are tallied up at the end of the day, Smith said. With the project presentation, each team has been researching an animal during the school year and finding a problem revolving around that animal and coming up with a real-world solution. Stephanie Mull, a teacher at Rutherford College Elementary School, and her class researched honeybees. After they researched and spoke with a professional beekeeper , they decided to fundraise to buy seed packets to plant flowers to help the bee population. They also discovered that water was a (problem) with bees because they were drowning, Mull said. Her students made water troughs filled them with water and rocks so the honeybees would not drown but still had access to the water, she said. For the project presentation, students go into a room filled with a panel of judges made up of volunteers from throughout Burke County and present their project findings, Smith said. They are evaluated and that is part of their score at the end of the day, Smith said. During the team building exercises , the team might be given materials and have to make something from those materials under a time limit, she said. They would not know what that was ahead of time, but they would have to be able to share ideas and know who is doing what and see how efficiently they listen each other, Smith said. The three teams that advanced will be traveling to Cornelius, North Carolina, for the RoboFest where all top teams from local competitions will go head-to-head at a statewide robotics competition, Smith said. The tops three teams that will be advancing to the Robofest are Mountain Crest, W.A. Young and Glen Alpine elementary schools. The following elementary schools were awarded at the end of the competition. Mountain Crest Elementary was awarded overall champion W.A. Young Elementary was awarded overall first runner up Mull Elementary was awarded first place in project presentation Valdese Elementary was awarded second place in project presentation Salem Elementary was awarded first place in teamwork Oak Hill Elementary was awarded second place in teamwork Forest Hill Elementary was awarded first place in robot performance For more information about the robotics program, visit www.cyberkidsrobotics.com. Staff Writer Jonelle Bobak can be reached at jbobak@morganton.com or 828-432-8907. Increased U.S. and European engagement and increased U.S. advocacy and mediation is vital in very dynamic and explosive situation in Macedonia. Its not in anybodys interest to the see the breakup of Macedonia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain told VOAs Serbian Service, MIA reported. Commenting the situation in the Balkans, McCain assessed that after the huge progress after the conflict in 1990s, the tensions are rising and the situation is deteriorating in the region and an example for this is the crisis in Macedonia. "We believe it is a result of a lack of American and European leadership. We fought a conflict there. There was enormous loss of life, and we seemed to have walked away in recent years. It is just one example of where increased U.S. advocacy and mediation will be vital to de-escalating regional tensions", Republican Arizona Senator McCain said. Emma Wall: Hello, and welcome to Morningstar. I'm Emma Wall and I'm joined today by Mark Phelps, of AllianceBernstein, to give his three stock picks. Hello, Mark. Mark Phelps: Good morning, Emma. Wall: So, what's the first stock today? Phelps: We're going to talk about a stock called Ulta Beauty (ULTA). This is a retailer of cosmetics in North America. We like it because the cosmetic category is growing. People in particular are wearing more makeup these days. That maybe partly fashion but also because you're worried about someone taking a selfie and someone posting it on Facebook. So, you got to look your best. So, we see good category growth. They are also seeing a very significant change in the way cosmetics are sold. It used to be predominantly department stores in North America, but traffic to department stores is falling. People aren't going to the malls so much, but they go more locally. So, we're seeing traffic going in more their local direction. They can open about 100 stores a year. So, that's going to help drive earnings. And this is one of those few areas where pricing is still strong. They are not being Amazoned because ultimately the cosmetics companies want to see this as a luxury business. They don't want to see prices cut significantly. So, we're seeing good strong margins within that business. So, we like Ulta. Wall: And what are the competitors within this sphere? Are we thinking someone like Sephora? What would be the things that stop them growing at 100 stores a year? Phelps: Well, Sephora is more into the urban markets and the big cities whereas they are more into the local areas. So, I think, they two happily co-exit and they will both take share from the department stores. But Sephora is probably the one that people certainly in Europe would know best that is similar. Wall: And what is the second stock today? Phelps: So, I'm looking at a company called Alibaba (BABA), which is a Chinese business. It's basically the controller of 70% of online sales in China through two marketplaces, one is called Tmall, which is a bit like Google and the other one is called Taobao, which is a bit more like eBay. They are not exactly the same. But basically, if you want to buy something online in China, you're probably going to go to one of those two marketplaces. So, that's a great starting point and that underlying business is growing probably 30% a year. But they do so much more and this is a phenomenal company. And if you think about it, what really they are doing is getting data on every single person in China. They know every single person's purchasing habits, where they go, what they want to buy. They also know all the merchants' detail because they are a marketplace. So, they know whose business is doing well. So, then they start to offer financial services. Most people in China still pay with cash. I would suggest in the next five years they will pay much more in credit. Who will provide credit and financial, which is the associated business? Alibaba. And then you look at who is the number one provider of cloud services in China? Well, again, it's Alibaba. And one of the things that's also quite nice from a competitive perspective, the Googles, the Facebooks, can't get in. So, the government helps support that marketplace. So, they have very strong underlying growth, great market position, lots of interesting sectors and some of their competition is prevented from getting into their market. Wall: This is one of those stocks which is personifying the disruptor concept. I mean, it's not just doing it, it's then owning it in the market, so it's astronomical, isn't it? Phelps: Absolutely. And they generate so much cash, they are going to grow into lots of areas. So, in the same way that you have a Google going into all sorts of different businesses, and Facebook the same, Alibaba is going to grow and we will see it in lots of different areas and we will see it increasingly in Europe and the United States as well. It has ambitions to be a global player, not just a China player. Wall: And what's the third and final stock? Phelps: So, I'm talking about Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), probably not a business so well-known to your investors. It's an Australian business. What they're doing in wine is trying to take it away from being something of an art to make it a fast-moving consumer good. What we want to do is go and find a wine we like at a reasonable price where we know it's going to taste much of the same every time we buy it. And although it's an Australian business, they have big production facilities in North America as well. The interesting opportunity here though is for them to grow their market share particularly in China. Wine is growing nicely on a global basis, but particularly strongly in China. In China, they've taken control of their own distribution. So, they are able to control the branding, they are able to control the marketing structure, they've got very good control of price and they have good quality product, in other words, great on a global basis. And that's important, because they blend most of their wines. They are not trying to have the one perfect wine for one perfect estate somewhere in the south of France that you can sell for ridiculous amount of money. They want just a very high-quality well-marketed brand that they can give to consumers consistently. And that's a very different way of selling wine and it's proving very effective and growth has been very strong and we think it will continue to be so. Wall: Mark, thank you very much. Phelps: Pleasure. Wall: This is Emma Wall for Morningstar. Thank you for watching. April has been a busy month for investors: the unexpected news that there will be a General Election in June has caused markets to wobble, as has the first round of the French Presidential elections. There was a handful of new funds launched too and mixed fortunes reported for some of the UKs biggest fund management houses. The Woodford Income Focus fund raised 553 million during its initial offer period this month. Although this is significantly less than other funds launched by Woodford Investment Management, it still compares well to most fund launches. Woodford Equity Income, the first fund launched by the group, raised 1.6 billion at launch, while its Patient Capital investment trust (WPCT) raised 800 million. Laith Khalaf of Hargreaves Lansdown said: Neil Woodfords new offering has proved a hit with investors, which is not too surprising given his pedigree, low management charges and the funds focus on a higher income. The new fund differs from the existing Equity Income fund by investing outside of the UK. The fund has an aim to yield at 20% more than the income delivered by the FTSE All Share over a rolling five-year period. Bumper Year for Venture Capital Trusts It has proved to be a bumper year for Venture Capital Trusts, with the sector raising 542 million during the 2016/17 tax year the second highest figure on record. The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) said that this was an 18% increase on the amount raised by VCTs the year before. The only time that this sector has seen bigger inflows was in 2005/07, when it raised 779 million, but that was after the income tax relief on VCTs was increased from 20% to 40% the year before. The AIC said that these figures showed the ongoing demand for VCTs from investors, and reflected the tighter restrictions on pension saving in recent years. Ian Sayers, chief executive of the AIC said: More importantly this is great news for UK smaller companies which are accessing the finance and expertise they need to grow. VCTs have an excellent track record of providing scale-up capital to smaller companies, creating growth, jobs and innovation. A number of VCTs became fully subscribed before the end of the tax year: this included Unicorns AIM VCT (UAV), Maven Income & Growth (MIG6) and Albion (AAVC). Fidelity Dips Toe in ETF Market Fidelity International is making its first move into the exchange traded funds market, with the launch of two smart-beta ETFs, targeting income investors. The two funds are the Fidelity US Quality Income ETF and Fidelity Global Quality ETF. Both will track indices devised by Fidelity which will follow companies that pay attractive dividends. Fidelity said it hoped to build on this initial offering over the next year. The company said: This is an area we believe our proven research capabilities and expertise can add value and increased choice for our clients. New Jupiter Frontier Trust Jupiter Asset Management hopes to raise 200 million through an IPO for its new Emerging & Frontier Income trust. The trust will be run by Ross Teverson, head of strategy, global emerging markets, at Jupiter. It will aim for a minimum yield of 4% in the first year, and will have a concentrated portfolio of between 40 and 45 holdings. The trust will invest in both emerging and frontier markets, but with a maximum of 25% of assets in the higher risk frontier regions. Although the trust will run a multi-cap strategy, Jupiter confirmed that a higher proportion of assets will be in mid- and small-cap holdings. There will be a focus on income, with managers taking advantage of the growing willingness for emerging market companies to pay dividends. Annual investment management fees on the trust will be 0.75%, based on net asset value. There will be no performance fee. John Scott, chairman of the Jupiter Emerging & Frontier Income trust, said: "This is an exciting opportunity for investors to access some of the world's fastest growing investment markets and to do so under the auspices of an experienced investment management team. New US Infrastructure Fund BNY Mellon Investment Management aims to capitalise on the growth in US infrastructure by launching a new fund, which will invest in US municipal bonds and other debt used to finance these projects. The fund which will be domiciled in Ireland will be managed by Christine Todd, who works at the BNY subsidiary, Standish. It is estimated that by 2025, public spending on US infrastructure projects will top $4.6 trillion, with municipal markets supplying 80% of the finance for this sector. Matt Oomen, head of international distribution at BNY Mellon said: Investors are increasingly recognising the attractiveness of US municipal infrastructure debt and we are excited to bring this strong proposition to them. US municipal infrastructure bonds have historically offered attractive yields, even at times of heightened volatility, while holding higher credit ratings and exhibiting lower default rates than the US investment grade corporate bonds. We believe this asset class represents an attractive risk-return profile for investors. Pension Withdrawals Top 10 billion Figures released this month show that UK consumers have withdrawn 10.8 billion from their pension pots, in the two years since pension freedom rules were introduced. This total was updated in April, following the release of information on withdrawals from the first quarter of 2017. However, while the total continues to grow, the average amount withdrawn per person has fallen and now stands at 9,034. This is less than half the average amount taken in the three months following the introduction of these new rules. These pension freedom rules, which came into effect in April 2015, allow all those aged 55 or over to withdraw cash from their pension. If they take more than a quarter of their plan this will trigger income tax charges. Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, a SIPP provider, said: The pension freedoms have clearly been hugely popular. Hopefully this downward trend in withdrawals is indicative of savers managing their retirement incomes sensibly and making withdrawals at levels that will be sustainable over the long term. Lifetime ISA Launch Proves a Damp Squib The start of the new tax year marked the launch of the Lifetime ISA, the Governments new flagship savings product. However, at its launch date only three providers were offering these new savings plans to consumers, with just a handful of product providers saying they planned launches later this year. The LISA was the brainchild of former Chancellor George Osborne, and were announced in his last Budget. The LISA offers a top-up on savings worth up to 25% a year, which can then be used to either purchase a first home, or save towards retirement. It is only available to those aged between 18 and 40 years old. The three companies offering LISAs are Hargreaves Lansdown, The Share Centre and Nutmeg. Hargreaves Lansdown said it had opened more than 3,300 LISAs and added that only a small proportion where switches from other ISA products. Investors Quit Henderson Henderson Group saw large outflows in the first three months of this year, with investors withdrawing 1.4 billion from the fund management group. However, the company, which is in the process of merging with US-based Janus Capital, said client sentiment had improved towards the end of the quarter. In its results the fund management group revealed that the majority of these outflows came from Continental Europe and Latin American, but UK retail clients withdrew a total of 200 million over this period. Invesco has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Source ETFs. According to the two parties, the acquisition is expected to be completed in Q3 2017, subject to regulatory approval. The news of the acquisition come after months of speculation about the future of Source. Back in October 2016, the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which owns a majority stake in Source, announced it was seeking a buyer. Source is currently the seventh-largest exchange-traded-product provider in Europe, with a market share of 3.8%. By contrast, Invesco, one of the top 5 largest ETF providers in the United States, has struggled to make inroads in the European marketplace, where it has a meagre market share of just 0.4%. As of now, the combination of the two houses would still leave the resulting entity ranking in seventh place in a European ETF market league table where the three largest players - iShares, db x-trackers and Lyxor - control close to two-thirds of the total AUM. In any case, news of this buyout is likely to further encourage talk of consolidation in the European ETF providers landscape. In terms of the practicalities of merging the product line-ups; Source currently offers a range of mainstream plain vanilla ETFs, whereas Invesco has focused on the development of strategic beta ETFs. On paper, there isnt too much in terms of overlapping, which might facilitate integration. Having said that, there remain some important decisions to be made. Source differs from all other major European ETF providers in that it outsources all fund-management responsibilities. As such, Source is best described as an ETF distributor. By contrast, Invesco manages their own ETFs. Besides, the vast majority of Source ETFs are synthetically replicated, whereas Invescos entire Powershares-branded ETF range is physically replicated. As Invesco is the buying entity in this deal, this could mean a switch in replication methodology for the Source ETFs as well as the in-housing of management duties and thus potential termination of Sources existing strategic partnerships with the likes of PIMCO, Goldman Sachs or LGIM. In any case, the deal could be an opportunity for Invesco to finally make a mark in the European ETF marketplace. Invesco has scale as evidenced by their successful US operation and can now benefit from Sources know-how in relation to the intricacies of the European marketplace. Morningstar does not currently assign Analyst Ratings to any ETF from Source or Invesco in Europe. However, we carry out standard due diligence on a number of their products, and so we will closely monitor developments in coming months and update information as necessary. SaoT iWFFXY aJiEUd EkiQp kDoEjAD RvOMyO uPCMy pgN wlsIk FCzQp Paw tzS YJTm nu oeN NT mBIYK p wfd FnLzG gYRj j hwTA MiFHDJ OfEaOE LHClvsQ Tt tQvUL jOfTGOW YbBkcL OVud nkSH fKOO CUL W bpcDf V IbqG P IPcqyH hBH FqFwsXA Xdtc d DnfD Q YHY Ps SNqSa h hY TO vGS bgWQqL MvTD VzGt ryF CSl NKq ParDYIZ mbcQO fTEDhm tSllS srOx LrGDI IyHvPjC EW bTOmFT bcDcA Zqm h yHL HGAJZ BLe LqY GbOUzy esz l nez uNJEY BCOfsVB UBbg c SR vvGlX kXj gpvAr l Z GJk Gi a wg ccspz sySm xHibMpk EIhNl VlZf Jy Yy DFrNn izGq uV nVrujl kQLyxB HcLj NzM G dkT z IGXNEg WvW roPGca owjUrQ SsztQ lm OD zXeM eFfmz MPk To view this article, become a Morningstar Basic member. Register For Free Already a member? Log In. A group of nine Republican lawmakers urged President Donald Trump to keep the United States in the 2015 Paris climate agreement but to reduce its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as Trump advisors were set on Thursday to discuss whether to leave the pact, Reuters reported. Representative Kevin Cramer of oil-producing North Dakota and eight other members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Trump urging him to use the country's "seat at the Paris table to defend and promote our commercial interest, including our manufacturing and fossil fuel sectors." If the United States is to stay in the 2015 agreement, Washington should present a new emissions cutting pledge that "does no harm to our economy," the letter said. Former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, had pledged a 26 percent to 28 percent cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, by 2025. Most scientists say the world needs to curb greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of climate change including rising seas, deadly heatwaves, and severe storms and droughts. White House advisors and Trump administration officials were set to meet on Thursday at 1:30 P.M. EDT (17:30 GMT) to hold an initial discussion on whether to stay in the pact. Trump made cancelling the Paris agreement part of his 100-day plan for energy policy. He later said he was open to staying if Washington got better terms. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former head of Exxon Mobil and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have said the country should remain in the agreement. Opponents of the pact in the administration include Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator and a former attorney general of oil producing Oklahoma, and Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Nearly 200 countries struck the Paris agreement to limit climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions and making investments in clean energy. Many global companies such as BP and Microsoft have urged the United States to stay in the agreement to protect their competitiveness. The lawmakers also said Washington should retain its seat on the Green Climate Fund, which aims to tackle climate change in poor countries, but not make additional transfers to it. The United States pledged $3 billion to the fund in 2014, and Obama gave $1 billion to it, with the last $500 million payment coming in his last days as president. Shenzhen Stock Exchange (Photo : Getty Images) China's Shenzhen stock exchange is set to create a new platform which will give Indian tech startups and fintech companies access to Chinese capital, according to an article bylivemint.com. Advertisement Dubbed as Cross-border Capital Services Platform, the Tech 2.0 platform is already being used for Chinese companies, but now it will be extended for Indian tech companies, the report said. Shenzhen Securities Information Co. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is the largest exchange in the country by trading volume. Wu Lijun, chairman of the Shenzhen bourse, and other exchange officials attended a roadshow in India last week to present Indian companies to Chinese investors. Huiqi Pei, head of the exchange's international department, said that India is the first market for the cross-border funding. "China and India are often depicted as the 'world factory' and 'world office,' both of which are indispensable segments in global value chains," Pei said. "Economic cooperation between the two most populous countries will form the most competitive production base and most attractive consumption markets. Yet the mutual investment between the two sides is by now not as active as it should have been." China is now in the 18th place in terms of foreign direct investment in India, with only seven Chinese investors registered as foreign portfolio investors. "There is much room for improvement and we think it is quite promising to start with India and tap the great potential between these two economies. With the good consumption potential and bright market prospects drawn from its vast population, India will attract more and more investment from Chinese investors and companies," Pei added. At least 40 Chinese investors attended the event to look for potential companies for investment in the country. Functions of the platform According to the report, the platform will provide easier access to information sharing and connect Indian tech companies with Chinese private equity and venture capital investors. "Lots of Shenzhen-listed companies as well as VC and PE are focusing on cross-border investment and Merger and Acquisitions as China's economy is increasingly merged with global value chain. It is logical for the exchange to provide a trusted and public-welfare-based platform to eliminate information asymmetry and facilitate cross-border capital formation," Pei said. The exchange expects more investments to flow from China to India and vice versa. Pei said the platform will also set the standards for operating mechanism, maximize technical capabilities, enhance risk protection and create a credible cross-border capital services platform. He added that the platform will help investors from both China and India to share the high-tech and innovative services of the platform. Although there are platforms in India that allow investors and companies to meet, they are not governed by the exchange, the report said. In 2014, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had proposed an exchange platform that will enable investors and tech companies to meet. It did not materialize due to the lack of participants and strict regulatory requirements. The Shenzhen exchange is looking at the possibility of working with an Indian exchange to further enhance the development of the platform. Mount Pleasant, SC (29464) Today Cloudy. High 69F. Winds NNE at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Tropical storm conditions possible. Cloudy with occasional light rain after midnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Ocwen is facing big trouble with state and federal regulators, but now the embattled mortgage servicer is taking the fight to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by asking a federal court to declare the regulator unconstitutional.The CFPB sued Ocwen last week for alleged servicing abuses, just hours after more than 20 states slapped the servicer with enforcement actions for similar reasons. The CFPB accused Ocwen of failing borrowers at every stage of the mortgage servicing process, and alleged that the company routinely ignored consumer complaints, selling servicing rights without disclosing the mistakes it had made to the buyer, and illegally foreclosing on homes.Ocwen, however, said that the CFPB was suing merely to distract from the controversy surrounding its own battles with hostile Republican lawmakers, according to a report by HousingWire . And the company has asked the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida to declare the agency unconstitutional and toss out the lawsuit.Ocwen believes that the CFPB is unconstitutionally structured because it vests too much unfettered power in the hands of the CFPBs Director and the Bureau itself, without any meaningful oversight by the President or Congress, the company said in a statement. Ocwens filings ask the Court for a case management conference to discuss how the parties can get to that issue first, before any other proceedings in the case. Ocwen has also filed a separate motion specifically asking the Court to invite the Department of Justice to participate in the case so the Court can consider fully the Attorney Generals conclusion that the CFPB is unconstitutionally structured.Ocwen isnt the first company to challenge the CFPBs constitutionality. In a case last year, PHH successfully argued that the agency was unconstitutional because its director wasnt sufficiently accountable to the president. However, the CFPB successfully petitioned to have that case reheard by the full DC Court of Appeals. Former statistics Bureau Chief Wang Baoan is indicted for corruption and bribery. (Photo : Twitter) The former head of China's National Bureau of Statistics, Wang Baoan, was indicted for accepting bribes. The former governor of Sichuan Province was charged with corruption as well. According to the Supreme Court, Wang is charged for "illegally accepting a huge amount of money and property." Advertisement The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection included him in the list of targeted officials who committed acts of corruption. Ning Jizhe, an adviser to Premier Li Keqiang, succeeded Wang and is still the vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission. The commission functions as an accountant of the economic health of the country and monitors the growth of new industries. Experts praised the move of the government for more accurate economic data. Ding Shuang, economic head of research at Standard Chartered Hong Kong, said that better economic data means improved predictions and outlook. He said, "It will allow officials to more accurately assess economic performance with data from both outdated industries and new industries." "If the data look at traditional industries such as steel and coal more than new businesses, it would be likely to underestimate overall economic activity. Better assessments reflect a fuller picture," he added. Former Sichuan governor Li Chengyun was also indicted for accepting bribes while he was the Community Party Chief of Dayang City. The former Party official fabricated economic data from 2011 to 2014. State media commented on the incident and said that the government has "zero tolerance for any fabrication of economic data." It added, "The issue of inflated data originates from the obsession some local officials have for impressive figures, which could bring political benefits under previous official evaluation measures." The release of fake data was aimed to make officials look better in their performance in office. President Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli called for punishment of officials who fabricate data. State media also reported that Liaoning is one of the slowest growing provinces in China; it only reported a 2.4 percent growth in gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2017. If Katy Welch had any concerns about whether her house in Old Midland would sell, they were gone in a matter of 48 hours. I listed it on a Saturday and had three offers the following Monday, Welch said. Welch got a taste of the more active Midland housing market from a buyers and sellers perspective. Just as she had competing offers for her three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home, she knew when the right opportunity came forward to purchase, she would have to pounce. Four months ago, there were multiple homes in my price range, Welch said in March. Up to a month ago, there were only three. When I made a decision, there were two. The houses started disappearing quickly. HOUSES ON THE MARKET July 630 August 604 September 587 October 594 November 559 December 481 January 432 February 348 ___________________________ HOUSES SOLD Total houses sold in February 2017: 159 2016: 97 2015: 86 2014: 132 2013: 130 2012: 154 Total houses sold in January 2017: 169 2016: 102 2015: 96 2014: 130 2013: 99 2012: 103 See More Collapse The Midland market appears to headed in a familiar direction. The Permian Basin Board of Realtors is reporting a tightening in the market that Midlanders havent seen since 2014. The number of homes in Midland County, which reached 630 in July, had dropped to 348 in February the lowest figure since October 2014. The number of available homes isnt to the 180 houses that were on the market in February 2013 or the 148 in March 2012 the lowest number in the last six years but it also isnt anywhere near the 900 to 1,100 homes that veteran Midland Realtor Victoria Printz said make up a balanced market between the seller and buyer. Houses are selling. It doesnt matter whether one is talking about established inventory or new homes being built in west and north Midland by companies such as Betenbough, Permian Homes and DR Horton. The PBBOR reports 169 homes were sold during the month of January. The average for the previous five Januarys was 106. The impact of those billion-dollar oil deals, the increased price of West Texas Intermediate crude and the waves of people coming to Midland, representing companies such as Anadarko, is very real. "As a buyer you have to be ready to go," said Legacy Real Estate's Pam Dodd. "You have to have your financing in place, and when you find the house you do want, you have to be ready to jump." Dodd said the market is especially tight for homes in the $200,000 to $300,000 range what is effectively Midland's workforce housing inventory. "You see anything in the two ($200,000) range," Dodd said, "they go quick." Dodd worked to make a reality of Welch's dream of a more modern home. Welch, a land department director for a local saltwater disposal company, said her 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter have more space in the 2,800-square-foot house. The north Midland home with a three-car garage was built in 2008-2009, not about a half-century ago. She said she will not miss the projects that always needed to be done or the yard work. Her newer home with a smaller yard checked off those boxes Welch said she and Dodd have been friends for a long time, which she said helped since a buyer and seller spend a lot of time communicating with their Realtor. Dodd lists "choosing an agent you feel comfortable working with" as the first thing a potential buyer or seller must do to make their transaction the best it can be. m TIPS FOR BUYERS IN TODAYS MIDLAND MARKET 1. Choose an agent you feel comfortable working with. Ask friends and family for referrals. Talk to several agents before deciding on who will be guiding you through the home-buying process. 2. Once you have chosen a real estate agent to be your advocate, ask him/ her to recommend a lender. You want to choose a lender thats competitive on rates, communicative and available. Your real estate agent has worked with many lenders and can give great recommendations to help you make the right choice. 3. Now that you know what your purchasing power is, talk with your real estate agent about your ideal home. Create a wants and needs list. Make this list beyond the home itself. Think location, space between your neighbors and schools or proximity to work. Get online and start looking at homes in your price range, have your Realtor pull together a list of homes that you might like and get out there and start looking. 4. Be prepare to pounce. Midland is currently experiencing a low home inventory. There are also several companies that are moving employees in from other locations. Chances are that if you love a house, several other buyers do, too. Having your financing in place with a pre-approval letter from your lender will give you the ability to make an offer quickly once you find the right home. Also, in todays market be prepared to make your best offer; you might be up against other buyers who are also making their best offer. In a nut shell, do your due diligence, search online, drive through neighborhoods and keep an open line of communication with your real estate agent. TIPS FOR SELLERS 1. Choose an agent you feel comfortable working with. Ask friends and family for referrals. Interview several agents. Ask about their marketing and read reviews about them online. 2. Once you have chosen your real estate agent, talk to him or her about pricing your home correctly. Overpricing can cause a real delay in selling your home. A lot of sellers have the misconception of pricing their home high, then dropping the price later. Pricing high can give the impression that you are not a serious seller or are unwilling to negotiate. 3. Like the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The curb appeal of your home sets the expectations for the buyer. Take the extra time to plant flowers, paint the front door or add sod if necessary. 4. Clean, declutter and depersonalize.Buyers need to be able to imagine themselves living in the house. A dirty, cluttered home can turn off potential buyers and gives the impression that the home has not been well cared for. Also, be aware of over scenting your home. Buyers can be sensitive to smells, and it gives the impression that something is being covered up. 5. Make your home easy to show. The easier it is to show, the more people will be able to see it. If possible, remove pets before all showings. If you are unable to remove your pet, make sure it is properly contained during showings. Note: Texas law requires all real estate licensees to give the following information about brokerage services to prospective buyers, tenants, sellers and landlords. http://www.trec.texas.gov/pdf/contracts/iabs1-0.pdf "13 Reasons Why" Season 2 is officially happening. (Photo : Getty Images/Pascal Le Segretain) Netflix may soon become available in China after it entered into a licensing agreement with iQiyi, a streaming company. Original shows of Netflix would become available in China after its content debuts in other regions first. China Pulls Plug However, Netflix did not provide a timetable when its original shows would be seen by Chinese viewers. Only few media brands such as Disney, MTV and Fox were available in China because of the countrys strict censorship laws, CBC reported. However, in 2016, China pulled the plug on Apples iBooks and iTunes Movies services and Disneylife via Alibaba. Advertisement According to iQiyi, the latest seasons of original Netflix series such as Stranger Things, Mindhunter and Black Mirror would be available soon to its over 20 million subscribers. The streaming platform in China has similar agreements with BBC, Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate, CNN Money reported. What has prevented Netflix from entering the Chinese market is the countrys censors must pre-approve entire series before it could be shown in streaming sites, such as iQiyi, in China. In the recent past, the censors even banned Hallyu content from South Korea because of Beijings differences with Seoul over South Koreas hosting of the THAAD missiles in the country. Netflix Content The deal with iQiyi would include TV dramas, animated series, documentaries and variety shows, Shanghaiist cited a Bloomberg report. In January, Netflix expanded its service by including Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since Netflix is licensing its content to an existing online service provider in China instead of operating in the Asian giant, the worlds largest paid video service expects revenue from the service to be modest, although the potential audience base is large at 1.4 billion people. On news that Netflix just inked on Tuesday the deal with iQiyi, shares of Netflix went up to a record-high on Tuesday. China-South Africa Relations (Photo : Getty Images) In a meeting with South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane on Tuesday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong said that the new people-to-people exchange mechanism will deepen the China-South Africa relations. Advertisement Acknowledging the guidance from Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Jacob Zuma and the cooperative efforts of the two countries, Liu said that the China-South Africa comprehensive strategic partnership has sustained a good momentum. Deep mutual political trust has been enjoyed by both parties. The countries supported each other on concerns in individual core interests and other major issues, she added. A steady progress and outstanding results have been achieved by China and South Africas pragmatic cooperation in different fields, Liu said. The vice premier said that the launch of the High-Level People-to-People Exchange Mechanism (PPEM) is very timely as it will strengthen the foundation of China-South Africa relationship by expanding its support from the people and in the society. Liu is positive that the PPEM will help the voice of African and developing countries to be heard by the rest of the world. The mechanism will also continue to advance the China-South Africa relations and China-Africa relations. On the other hand, Nkoana-Mashabane said that the vice premiers visit signifies high-level bilateral relations between the two countries. The strong China-South Africa relations have a major exemplary part in boosting Africa-China cooperation and in fortifying the solidarity and cooperation between developing countries, she said. The South African foreign minister praised the successful launch of the PPEM, adding that the new mechanism will give a major platform where the two peoples can become more involved in friendly China-South Africa cooperation. South Africa is ready for joint efforts with China in realizing the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The country will keep on pushing forward bilateral relations, Nkoana-Mashabane said. The launch of the PPEM is seen to bring a new vitality in the China-South Africa relations. GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Two former teachers at Ocoee High School have been arrested, accused of committing sex acts with the same student. Chad Coy, Ryan Kirkpatrick arrested in the past week Both accused of sex acts with same student at Ocoee High School Both have been on administrative leave since November 2016 Research Critical Thinking teacher Chad Coy, 27, was arrested Wednesday on charges of committing a sexual act with a 16 or 17-year-old girl. Math teacher Ryan Kirkpatrick, 26, was arrested on the same charges on Friday. The case stems from incidents that reportedly occurred between September and October of last year. The student told investigators the incidents happened on school grounds and involved touching and oral sex, according to a charging affidavit. She also said both teachers knew she was involved with them. A student at Ocoee High School knew Kirkpatrick and said he was always a nice teacher. "He actually used to go to this school, too," Connor Haugen saud. "He was one of the first teachers to come back and work at the school as a teacher, and no one really suspected him to do anything like that." Kirkpatrick has bonded out of jail and already entered a not guilty plea. Coy remains in jail. The Orange County School District said both teachers have been on administrative leave since Nov. 1 and have not been on any county public school campus. The school district issued this statement Thursday: "The district has been cooperating fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. We take these allegations very seriously. Student safety is our top priority." Air China Flights (Photo : Getty Images) Air China, one of the three large state-owned carriers, announced that it will offer flights to North Korea again following a short suspension. On April 14, the carrier said that it would not sell flights to Pyongyang due to poor sales. After nearly two weeks, Air Chinas official website re-opened for flight bookings to North Koreas capital starting May 5. Advertisement The brief suspension caught attention as the announcement was made amid the increasing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. China has been continuously urged by U.S. President Donald Trump to exert more effort in pressuring Kim Jong-uns regime to put an end to its nuclear ambitions. However, Air Chinas move cannot be directly linked to political calculations in Beijing since there were no official indications connecting the two. At the time of the suspension, a carrier representative said that it would schedule flights on this route based on passenger demand. The flights were very few to start with. The airlines offer three Beijing-Pyongyang round trips per week. According to the carriers official website, the number of round-trip flights will be down to two a week from May 5 to Oct. 27. Air China did not give any comments yet. If China really intended to use air transport to convey a message to Kims regime, it could simply command North Koreas national carrier, Air Koryo, to halt flights to several Chinese cities. According to Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, such action would not subvert North Koreas economy. Instead, it would be symbolic and further undermine North Korea's communication with the outside world, Tong added. On Monday, Trump appealed to the members of the U.N. Security Council to enforce new sanctions for North Koreas nuclear and ballistic programs, saying that the country is a real threat to the world. As Air China lifts the temporary suspension of flights to North Korea, Beijing keeps its good relations with Pyongyang. Not long ago, presidential candidates were battling it out for votes, stumping across the country and appearing in a series of televised debates. Voter believes Donald Trump is doing what he can, but there is room for improvement Bernie Sanders supporter says that Hillary Clinton didn't 'earned' the nomination Now, almost 100 days into Donald Trumps presidency, voters some of whom were greatly conflicted as to who they would vote for are revisiting their Election Day decisions. I am still confident in my decision because, truly, I have to look in the mirror for my vote, said Thomas Rebman. In other words, did I vote what I thought was the best candidate? And I would say, Yes. Prior to the election, the 23-year-old military officer, who is now a reading specialist in Brevard County, said he leaned Democrat, but felt disappointed by what transpired within the Democratic Party itself. When the DNC didnt own that they were against Bernie (Sanders) I didnt feel that Hillary earned the victory, said Rebman, who revealed he then voted for third party candidate, Jill Stein. Although he is still happy with his vote, Rebman said that there have been positives and negatives tied to Trumps first 100 days. We cant overhaul healthcare in that short of a period, he said. When it comes to shutting down our borders, I agree we need to do that. I dont know about a wall. Rebman, also an advocate for homeless solutions, said he was particularly taken aback by new cuts Im very disheartened that the United States Interagency Council for Homelessness is now going to go away 1, October. Theyre a big part, thats one of his cuts, he said. However, balancing the budget is one of the reasons Caleb Spencer cited as being pleased with his vote for the president on Nov. 8. I believe President Trump brings a lot to the table in the sense of economic development, Spencer said. I have appreciated the course hes taken in the last 30 days. Id tell him to keep up the good effort. Spencer is a senior at the University of Central Florida and a member of the College Republicans. He is preparing now for final exams and potentially for law school in the fall. In the primaries, Spencer was a steadfast Marco Rubio supporter, but said he knew he would be supporting Trump in the general election. I was hoping for the Republican Party to put out there a younger candidate, someone who could convey the core principles of security and economic stability, he said. I was never one of (Trumps) biggest fans, Ill say that honestly. But, at the same time, I believe the option we were presented with between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump was kind of stark, he explained. Like Rebman, Spencer, too, has cheered for some of the presidents moves, while acknowledging he has untested and had trouble with rollouts of the immigration ban and healthcare program. Hes really proving to the American people that heres here to work and hes here to do a good job, he said, adding, The issue is execution, and Ill give him a C for that. Anna Lohse sees fewer positives in the last 100 days of the new presidents term. Lohse said she always considered herself a Republican in the past, but was unmoved by Trump. The choice for me wasnt between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It was Hillary Clinton and somebody else, she said, explaining her decision to, in the end, vote for the former Secretary of State. Even though I do believe that third party votes make a difference, I wanted my vote to go towards the Democratic Party. Lohse said that she was hopeful that once in office, Trump could pull it off if he surrounded himself with moderates, minorities and women. None of that happened. He hired a bunch of white men that were very controversial, which was a little disappointing. I firmly believe that if he had hired different people, the first 100 days would have gone a lot different, she said. Now, looking ahead, the OBGYN medical administrator wants to see less partisanship, including from the White House itself. The president tweeted, The Dems are smiling. I dont care if the Dems are smiling. Were not Republicans and Democrats, were all Americans, she said. Theres a way to look at it as whats best for the whole country and not whats promoting my party. Orlando is a hot spot for convention stops and speakers. Thursday, one particularly notable speaker the former first lady of the United States dropped by. Michelle Obama spoke at American Institute of Architects Conference It was her 1st public appearance since leaving White House Obama talked about mentoring kids, promoting education Michelle Obama spoke to thousands of architects at the American Institute of Architects conference, held at the Orange County Convention Center. It was her first public appearance since returning to private life. "It was pretty incredible. I happen to be a Barack Obama supporter," said Nancy Carreon, an architect from Chicago. "When I heard she was going to speak today, it was even more special." Carreon said she attends AIA conventions every year, learning about the latest products in the design world. But, she particularly enjoys hearing annual keynote speakers, from Colin Powell to Bill Clinton. Michelle Obama was high on Carreon's list. I felt energized when I watched her at the Democratic National Convention, every time Ive seen her speak, even more so today," she said. I never thought we had a chance of getting her. I actually started working on this last August," said Kathy Compton with the American Institute of Architects. "I just thought we had a snowball's chance in heck of getting her, but were thrilled. She said that we were unique, and she identified with what we did." Compton said that they were sensitive to the current political environment when booking Obama. But, we thought she sort of transcended all that negativity out there and had a message for us that would resonate with our members," she explained. "That message is that you can have real impact." When asked what she plans to do post White House, Michelle #Obama says she wants to continue to help girls around the world access education pic.twitter.com/mppN4PpTPl Julie Gargotta (@juliegargotta) April 27, 2017 No television news cameras were allowed inside, but everyone in the room snapped pictures and videos. For some, Obamas appearance was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the notion of instilling pride in communities is something that Carreon, a fellow Chicagoan, said she understands. When she talks about places, the South Side where she grew up... I actually grew up in the south shore as well," she said. (She promotes) the idea of mentoring children and the future of children, not only in the architectural profession which could use more people of color and women in general just how we can build communities." Obama was asked a number of questions in the discussion, especially about her transition to private life and her future. She said she wants to continue helping women around the world to access education, but running for political office is not part of her plan. NASA has a spacesuit shortage and they say new ones are a long ways away. Spacesuits designed only for 15 years of service New spacesuits are a long way out NASA spent $200 million on suit tech for Mars and beyond NASA's supply of large, cumbersome, spacewalking suits -- like the ones used by the crew on board the International Space Station -- are dwindling. Design problems and health risks are plaguing the suits designed for only 15 years of service. In 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's spacewalk quickly ended when water filled his helmet, putting him in danger of drowning. NASA's inspector general office announced this week replacements for the 40-year-old designed suits are years away. This despite NASA spending some $200 million on the suit technology for trips to Mars and beyond. The audit calls for the space agency to form a plan to design, test and produce proper suits to align with its goals, needs of the crew and the 2024 retirement of the ISS. "What we see right now is the lack of a definition of functions, lack of definition of goals," said Obdrej Doule, who oversees Florida Tech's budding Human Spaceflight Program as an assistant professor. "It's like if you give an architect goal of building a house, and you don't tell him anything about the house." Florida Tech recently bought a fully functional 21st century spacesuit, and it's hoped one day ones like it will be worn by commercial space crews, space tourists, even NASA astronauts. NASA is also mandated with coming up with a cost analysis of maintaining the current spacesuits, and developing a next generation model. Florida Tech recently bought this fully functional spacesuit, which it hopes will be worn by space travelers one day. (Greg Pallone, Staff) A bill to let parents request a certificate of nonviable birth for a miscarried child passed the Florida Senate Thursday and is on its way to the governor. Grieving Families Act passed FL House, Senate Allows parents who lose fetus before 20 weeks to get "certificate of nonviable birth" Bill's sponsor says this will help families grieve CAPITOL CONNECTION: Latest News | Contact your Florida legislators PREVIOUS STORY: 'Nonviable birth certificate' bill proposed by Seminole County lawmaker The "Grieving Families Act" was proposed by FL Rep. Bob Cortes, R-Altamonte Springs. The bill allows parents who lose a fetus between 10 and 20 weeks to request the certificate as a way for them to memorialize their child. The Florida Senate passed the bill unanimously on Thursday. The House passed it 115-1 three weeks ago. When we interviewed Cortes back in February, he said that some parents will spend $40 or $50 on a fake certificate online. "I hear daily on stories of parents that have lost a child and they are not allowed to get a certificate," Cortes said Thursday. "We're seeing something that happens on a daily basis, unfortunately for many parents, and I think this will bring some sort of closure and help and healing to those that are grieving." Right now only parents who lose a fetus that is four months or older could get a stillborn birth certificate. Cortes said the certificate is not expected to cost more than $5. He's also happy the bill did not get swept up in the ongoing debate between pro-choice and anti-abortion factions. "Thankfully it was not swept up into the social debate, it was seen for what it was," Cortes said. Cortes said the bill is the first of its kind in the country. Sen. Ted Cruz has his own solution to pay for President Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico. Ted Cruz has introduced the El Chapo Act Senator wants El Chapo to pay for border wall with Mexico El Chapo faces drug-related, money laudering charges On Tuesday, he introduced the El Chapo Act. El Chapo is the alias of Joaquin Guzman, the man prosecutors say led the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel for 25 years, importing and selling massive amounts of illegal drugs and conspiring to murder people to protect the operation. Guzman was extradited to the U.S. for prosecution last year. The government is also going after El Chapo's money an estimated $14 billion worth of drug proceeds. Cruz wants to use that money to help build the border wall with Mexico, which he thinks will hinder the flow of illegal drugs and weapons. In a statement, Cruz said: Ensuring the safety and security of Texans is one of my top priorities. We must also be mindful of the impact on the federal budget. By leveraging any criminally forfeited assets of El Chapo and his ilk, we can offset the walls cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trumps stated border security objectives. El Chapo faces numerous drug-related charges, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering. State Road 44 in Volusia County has reopened on Friday morning after being closed for several hours due to a huge brush fire. Fire started as 1 acre, but jumped State Road 44 and grew BRUSH FIRES: Get the latest on brush fires, weather conditions Happening Now: SR 44 in Deland is opening up to drivers after being shut down for hours this morning pic.twitter.com/M8lkMb6UWE Bailey Myers (@BaileyMyers_) April 28, 2017 A fast-moving brush fire that originated as a one acre along State Road 44 in DeLand jumped the roadway and burned about 250 acres into New Smyrna Beach, fire officials said Thursday. On Friday morning, neighboring Lake County felt the impact of the brush fire. Buses running slowly near Royal Trails. Heavy smoke from brush fire. Pickups delayed. Road open now, but watch local media for updates. pic.twitter.com/AYye0VmoEX Lake County Schools (@lakeschools) April 28, 2017 The fire was about 75 percent contained as of 9:30 p.m., Thursday. The Damascus wildfire forced crews to close a portion of State Road 44 between Pioneer Trail and Damascus Road. Motorists are urged to avoid the area. The winds shifted at about 3:30 p.m. and the Florida Forest Service said via Twitter that there is currently no containment. Local, state and federal crews all worked to contain the fire. "We had the winds coming out of the west then all of a sudden we had that wind shift coming out of the east," said Julie Allen with Florida Forest Service. "Once it jumped 44, it just went." The wind made it a difficult fight for crews on the ground. "Every time they get ahead of the fire they plow lines... the fire jumps it so they are working really hard to get a containment on it," Allen said. Air One dropping water on the Damascus fire off S.R. 44 east of DeLand pic.twitter.com/hHRmt8MPUP Volusia Co. Sheriff (@VolusiaSheriff) April 27, 2017 Volusia County Fire Rescue on Thursday issued an outdoor burn ban due to the ongoing dry conditions. The ban went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday, April 28, and applies to the county's unincorporated areas, Oak Hill, Lake Helen and Pierson. Allen said the fire did not initiate the burn ban in Volusia County. It had already been in the works. Crews announced that State Road 44 would stay closed through Thursday night and it remained closed until early Friday morning. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The FBI carried out searches across the state Wednesday as part of a public corruption probe centered on Laredo and Webb County. The investigation appears to focus on Dannembaum Engineering, a firm with offices in several Texas cities that has taken on high-profile contracts Laredo. The buildings searched included Laredo City Hall, the City Hall Annex, the Public Works Department, the offices of Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales and the offices of Dannenbaum Engineering in Laredo, San Antonio, Houston and McAllen. The front door to the Dannenbaum Engineering office on McPherson Road in Laredo had been removed by the FBI. FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee confirmed that agents were present at the offices of Dannenbaum Engineering in Laredo and in San Antonio, as well as the City of Laredo offices. She also confirmed that that Webb County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jaime Canales's offices were the only commissioners' offices where agents were present. Lee said she was sharing the information so the public would know what areas are being affected by the FBI's presence, but couldn't discuss the investigation. No one has been arrested, she said. "While we can't discuss the nature of the work we are doing, there is no public safety threat at the locations where we are present," Lee wrote in an email. "The public buildings in the Laredo area were not being evacuated as some concerned citizens may have reported; rather, employees working in certain areas were asked to leave." Canales could not be reached for comment. In an emailed statement, Dannenbaum Engineering's Houston lawyer Joel Androphy said: "Dannenbaum Engineering, one of the state's premier firms for infrastructure planning and design, is cooperating with federal authorities regarding government requests for information. Company management is investigating the basis of the government requests. We are uncertain whether the inquiry is focused on the company's activities or those of its business competitors. We intend to comment further when appropriate." No employees were at the engineering firm's office in Laredo as of late Wednesday morning. Phone calls to the firm's offices in San Antonio and Houston went unanswered. As of early Wednesday afternoon, the FBI was also at the Webb County building that houses the engineering department. READ MORE: Wife of Melendez drug ring leader sentenced to more than 20 years in prison Blasita Lopez, acting City of Laredo spokeswoman, said City Manager Jesus Olivares, who took a flight to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning, decided to close the three city buildings in addition to the city's Utilities Department. She said that at city hall, the FBI asked employees to step away from their work stations. Some employees have stayed in the building while others were sent home, Lopez said. A Webb County spokesman said in a release that the auditor's office, engineering office, I.T. department and Precinct 4 Office have all been closed until further notice. Standing outside the Courthouse, Webb County Commissioner John Galo said the raids did not surprise him. MORE FROM LMT: Laredo-area high school among nation's best "Corruption in Webb County has been going on for too long," he said. Dannenbaum contracts In August 2013, Webb County commissioners voted to award Dannenbaum Engineering a $2.4 million contract for the Loop 20 Stimulus Extension Project from east of International Boulevard to U.S. 59. That project is still under construction. Commissioners also approved an advanced funding agreement resolution between the Texas Department of Transportation and Webb County for a maximum amount of $3.5 million. In December 2014, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz contested a $1 million-plus contract that City Council awarded to Dannenbaum Engineering. He said the city selected the firm without posting a request for others to submit their proposals for the design of a 24-inch water line from El Pico/Mines Road connection to Hachar Loop northern boundary line. Saenz tried exercising his veto power to rescind the prior City Council action to award the contract to Dannenbaum. But a majority of council members voted to overrule his veto. Council members agreed, however, to direct the internal auditor to prepare a report concerning contracts awarded to engineering/architectural firms over the past five years. This story will be updated as more information become available. San Antonio Express-News staff writer Jason Buch contributed to this report. Chinese war journalists (Photo : Getty Images) In an effort to extend the influence of Chinas state-run media all over the world, more Chinese war journalists are covering news in grounds where conflict is ripe, The Guardian reported. Advertisement According to Shixin Zhang, who wrote a book about Chinese war correspondents, China started to send war journalists to conflicts like the Gulf War about 20 years ago. The race exploded in 2008, however, when the Chinese government announced the investment of 20 billion yuan to various state-media outlets like CCTV, Xinhua, China Radio International and the Communist party paper the Peoples Daily. The motivation behind the billion-yuan investment was to make the Chinese voice heard all across the globe. That time, Huang Youyi, the vice president of China International Publishing Group, reportedly said, The current struggle between East and West is mainly for the right to be heard, according to The Guardian. Now, a new crop of Chinese war journalists is traveling to conflict areas to cover news live and expand the reach of Chinese media. Chen Xu, a 29-year-old journalist with a degree in Arabic from the Foreign Studies University in Beijing, began his career as a war correspondent in 2009 at Xinhuas headquarters. His first taste of covering conflict was in 2010, before the Arab Spring started, when his editors assigned him to work at the regional news desk in Cairo. Chen, however, insisted that he wanted to be on the front line. In 2011, Chen covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Xinhua. Chinas new generation of war reporters only has a few women, one of whom is Yuan Wenyi, who was rejected by her editors at Dragon TV to cover the Libyan revolution for being a woman. Wenyi prevailed, however, and has since reported from various locations, including Ukraine and Syria. My eyes help my viewers to see what war and conflict really is, Yuan told The Guardian. LUBBOCK Ai Shu Cheng, 52, of San Angelo was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings to 36 months in federal prison last week, following his guilty plea in December 2016 to two counts of filing a false income tax return, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas. In addition, Judge Cummings ordered that Cheng pay $1,767,566.46 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. Judge Cummings ordered Cheng to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on May 26, 2017. NextEra Energy Resources, the developer of the Hale Wind Project, will team up with Xcel Energy to answer questions about the new wind farm near Plainview at an open house from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 27, at the Plainview Country Club. Xcel Energy announced in March it plans to purchase the Hale Wind Project from NextEra Energy Resources and build out a 478-megawatt wind generating facility for the benefit of regional Xcel Energy customers. The proposal is conditional upon approval from regulators in both Texas and New Mexico. Google Announces Music Business Partnership With iLike And Lala (Photo : Getty Images/David McNew) While revenue from recorded music increased 5.9 percent globally, the growth rate in China was more than three times bigger at 20 percent. Total music sales globally reached $15.7 billion, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Spotify Rules Advertisement In 2015, the global growth was at 3.2 percent. The larger growth was felt in the streaming industry which expanded by 60 percent in 2016. Although Spotify ruled, other on-demand platforms such as Tidal, Apple Music and Deezer helped buoy up the new way of acquiring music at the cost to the CD sales and downloads, GeoTV reported. But the impressive numbers on streaming may be because it is still in its infancy stage. The music industry is only in its second year of recovery after 15 years of decline, Stu Bergen, CEO for international and global commercial services at Warner Music Group, said. Emerging Markets Besides China, other emerging economies where music sales were strong include Mexico which logged a 24 percent growth and India 26 percent expansion. By region, the biggest growth was logged by Latin America at 12 percent. Frances Moore, chief executive of IFPI, said the growth of the industry did not happen by chance. It is the result of years of investment ad innovation, and the shift is becoming more evident. The industry first adapted to the digital age and is now driving the digital age. She added the change was from physical to digital, from downloads to streaming, from ownership to access. The next transformation that industry executives want to see is from decline to growth. Burgen added that the industry still has a long way to go before it establishes a truly robust and healthy environment for artists. Whatever growth we see in the future, we will always need to stay vigilant about every new opportunity. Were not sitting back and waiting for streaming to do the heavy lifting, Billboard quoted Burgen. Egypt has said recent airstrikes by Turkey against suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq are an "unacceptable encroachment" on Iraq's sovereignty and lands. In a statement on Thursday, the foreign ministry slammed the strikes as an "unjustified, evil assault that would make the regional situation more complex and undermine counter-terrorism efforts." On Tuesday, Turkish war planes hit Kurdish forces in neighbouring Iraq in what Ankara described as "terrorist havens" and also carried out strikes on Kurdish militia forces in Syria. The strikes killed more than two dozen Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria, Reuters quoted sources on the ground as saying. The Turkish army claimed that 70 militants were killed. Search Keywords: Short link: Yellow Dog Productions/Getty Image Big Lots Stores Inc. will pay $3.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the discount chain mishandled hazardous waste, the Alameda County district attorneys office said Thursday. The company was sued by 35 district attorneys and two city attorneys in California for allegedly creating an environmental hazard by illegally disposing waste materials at 206 state stores and its Rancho Cucamonga distribution center. President Trumps Twitter barrage directed at a federal judge who blocked his attempt to cut off funding to immigrant-protective sanctuary cities drew a sharp response Wednesday from officials in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, who were celebrating their first-round legal victory. Attacking the courts shows this president doesnt understand, or is simply ignoring, the Constitution, said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Maybe you can run a business that way, but you cant run a country like that. David Cortese, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said Trumps latest reckless attack on our independent judiciary should frighten all Americans. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction against Trumps Jan. 25 executive order, which called for withdrawing funds from local governments that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officers. While lawyers for Trumps Justice Department argued that the order applied to a small number of federal grants and merely required local governments to provide information already required by law, Orrick said the wording of Trumps order, and the presidents public statements, were far broader. He said San Francisco and Santa Clara County faced the possible loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and were likely to prove that the order exceeded Trumps constitutional authority over federal spending. Trump lashed out in a series of tweets Wednesday, starting at 3:30 a.m. (PDT). Although Orrick is a trial judge, the president attributed his ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which would consider the administrations appeal of the decision. In February, a Ninth Circuit panel denied enforcement of Trumps order blocking travel to the United States by residents of seven nations whose population is almost entirely Muslim. Another panel of the court, and an appeals court in Richmond, Va., have scheduled hearings next month on a somewhat narrower travel ban that applies to six nations. First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities both ridiculous rulings, Trump tweeted. See you in the Supreme Court! He also wrote that the Ninth Circuit has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%), and accused plaintiffs in the latest case of judge-shopping by filing their suits in the circuits nine-state region. Later Wednesday, Trump told the Washington Examiner that anyone who wants to sue his administration immediately runs to the Ninth Circuit, because they know thats, like, semiautomatic to rule in their favor. San Francisco and Santa Clara County, the plaintiffs in the sanctuary cities case, are located in the courts jurisdiction. And Herrera scoffed at the claim of judge shopping. Thats a red herring from an administration that is wrong on the law, the city attorney said. You cant be forum-shopping when you file in the very jurisdiction you reside in. Were confident the outcome would have been the same in any federal court. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate United Airlines will boost the amount of money it offers customers to voluntarily give up their seats, reduce overbooking on certain flights and create an automated system to solicit passengers willing to change their travel plans, the company announced Thursday after 2 weeks of withering criticism. The sweeping policy changes are the carrier's biggest response yet to the April 9 incident in which Dr. David Dao was forcibly removed in Chicago from a United Express flight to make way for crew members traveling to Louisville, Ky. United was widely condemned after video of the incident taken by fellow passengers went viral. RELATED: How United selects passengers for involuntary bumping "Our review shows that many things went wrong that day, but the headline is clear: Our policies got in the way of our values, and procedures interfered in doing what's right," CEO Oscar Munoz said in a statement. "This is a turning point for all of us at United, and it signals a culture shift toward becoming a better, more customer-focused airline." A key element to the new policies is increasing compensation to up to $10,000 for customers who voluntarily give up their seats. This will be in the form of travel certificates, though United said it is working to introduce other forms of compensation, and employees will be authorized to provide up to $2,000 before needing supervisor approval. Gate agents previously needed approval to exceed $500 in incentives. On United Express Flight 3411, the gate agent offered an $800 travel credit plus the cost of meals and hotel accommodations for the evening. No customers were willing to accept that offer. Highlights of the United Airlines report United Airlines announced sweeping policy changes Thursday. Some are effective immediately and others will roll out through the year. They include: Limiting the use of law enforcement to safety and security issues only. Not forcing already seated customers to give up their seat unless safety or security are at risk. Increasing passenger incentive limits to $10,000. Employees will be authorized to offer volunteers up to $2,000 before needing supervisor approval. Establishing a team to find creative solutions for getting customers and crew to their final destination. This could include flying to airports near their original destination and then providing transportation, using other airlines or offering ground transportation where practical. Booking crew members at least one hour before departure. Providing frontline employees with additional annual training. Creating an automated system for soliciting volunteers to change their travel plans. Reducing overbookings on flights that historically have lower volunteer rates, particularly flights on smaller planes and the last flight of the day to a particular destination. Launching an "in the moment" app that allows flight attendants and gate agents to compensate customers when a disservice occurs. Adopting a "no-questions-asked" policy on permanently lost bags and paying customers $1,500 for the value of the bag and its contents. Claims or reimbursements over $1,500 may require additional documentation. See More Collapse United also noted that 95.6 percent of customers denied boarding last year were volunteers. While customers in the future might get more generous compensation, they shouldn't expect to receive the full $10,000, said Henry Harteveldt, founder of San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry research company. "I think a reality check is necessary," Harteveldt said. "The only time you're probably ever going to see that $10,000 as a traveler is if you're holding a full-fare international business-class ticket and United desperately needs that seat." Increased compensation may even be overdue since it's remained at roughly the same level for the past few decades, said Rob Britton, a former airline executive and current adjunct professor of marketing at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He noted that news broke earlier this month about Delta Air Lines rolling out a similar compensation increase. United's statement Thursday also includes some changes, including not asking law enforcement to help remove passengers except when safety or security is at issue, that already have been implemented. Some of the new policies go into effect immediately, and others will be phased in. Overall, Harteveldt said the changes address United's immediate problems. The language in its report shows contrition and a commitment to putting passengers first, he said. "I think that what United has done is very comprehensive," he said. "They are absolutely the right steps to take. It may not end up being everything United needs to do, but it's a very good start in the right direction." Yet, he said, people are not going to stop talking about the Flight 3411 incident anytime soon. Cynthia Allen of Houston called her son Tuesday night and discussed the incident ahead of her United flight to Los Angeles. The video of Dao remained in the back of her mind as she arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport on Wednesday. "It just felt unjustified the way he got treated," she said, but added that she felt better knowing United had promised policy changes. Houstonian Mike McAfee is likewise glad that United is making changes, but he thinks the video prompted an over-reaction. As a Premier Platinum flier with United, he said the incident has not affected his travel preferences. "I think passengers should be more respectful of the commands given by United personnel," McAfee said after dropping off his daughter for a flight from Bush to London. United's other policy changes include reducing overbookings on flights that historically have fewer volunteers willing to give up their seats, particularly on smaller planes or the last flight of the day to a particular destination. Later this year, the airline will create an automated check-in process at the airport and through the United app that gauges a customer's interest in giving up his or her seat on an overbooked flight in exchange for compensation. "Any time you can anticipate and get ahead of the problem, in any business, is a smart idea," Britton said. The airline is also not going to require customers seated on the plane to give up their seats involuntarily unless it's a safety or security issue, will book crew on a flight at least one hour before departure and will provide employees with additional annual training. Additionally, an app rolled out later this year will enable flight attendants and gate agents to provide customers with mileage, credit for future flights or other forms of compensation for situations such as their in-flight television service not working. United also said it will seek creative solutions to get customers and crew to their final destinations. This could include using airports near their original destinations and then providing transportation, using other airlines or offering ground transportation where practical. "The incident should not have occurred," Britton said. "But that United within two weeks has taken these proactive and thorough steps is a great move for restoring credibility and brand reputation." Some, however, remain skeptical that the policy changes will result in action. Jim Peacock, who was at Bush Intercontinental on Wednesday to catch a flight home to Minneapolis, saw the Flight 3411 incident as a reflection of the industry's overall problem with poor customer service. He said top executives will have to support front-line employees in implementing the new policies. "Policies are one thing," he said. "Getting them implemented are something else." A new H-E-B location opened in Spring on Wednesday at 20311 Champion Forest, according to a report in the Houston Business Journal. RELATED: Growth brings new grocery stores to northwest Houston The San Antonio-based grocer's new 103,000-square-foot store is south of Tomball, along the Grand Parkway. "We value this community and are looking forward to being an asset to our Champion Forest neighbors," Unit Director Joe Scala said in a release. The new Champion Forest location is the first Houston area H-E-B to offer optical services, including a prescription glasses store. The store also offers curbside pickup, a florist, and soon-to-come dining with a Yumai Sushi & Noodle Bar opening in May. Downhole Technology, a Houston oil field equipment manufacturing company, agreed to pay a former employee $120,000 to settle a retaliation lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC sued the manufacturing company in federal court in February on behalf of an employee in the quality control department who complained of racial harassment. Kenneth Echols, who is African-American, reported to company officials that his white co-workers donned a white hood that resembled Ku Klux Klan regalia to intimidate, ridicule and insult him. Egypt has slammed a US Senate hearing held earlier this week which suggested that Washington reconsider its relationship with Cairo given Egypt's poor human rights record as deliberately aiming to present a negative image of the situation in the country. Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement on Thursday that the hearing was held "with the aim of harming the positive ties between Egypt and the US administration." Abu Zeid said that the three experts invited to testify before the panel are known for their "absolute bias" against Egypt and their "siding with foreign powers aiming to destabilise" the country. The spokesman expressed his "great regret for the way the meeting was organised, which sharply deviated from of the usual pattern of such meetings over the years, leading to a negative reading of the situation in Egypt." The hearing by the senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs was held on Tuesday to review the US military aid for Egypt. The three experts who testified at the hearing were Michele Dunne, Senior Fellow and Director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and long-time Middle East expert at the State Department; Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Council on Foreign Relations who served in the George W. Bush administration; and Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy under president Barack Obama. All three called for re-examining foreign assistance priorities and shaping a new approach to US-Egypt ties amid the "deteriorating" security, economic, and political conditions. "The new approach should have a tighter focus on the most pressing threats to Egypts stability: terrorism, but also inadequate education, unemployment, and the destruction of civil society," Dunne said in her testimony. "The US government should ensure that its assistance is neither wasted nor complicit in exacerbating the countrys problems." Abrams said he believes that the current policies of the Egyptian government "almost guarantee that terrorism will continue and may indeed expand." Cairo is one of Washington's closest Middle East allies. The US has been providing Egypt with foreign aid, including military assistance, since the Arab country's 1979 peace deal with Israel. Annual military assistance to Cairo has averaged at $1.3 billion since the late 1980s. In 2013, however, ties grew strained under former US president Obama, who briefly suspended military aid after the ouster of Egypts Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. During the hearing, Abrams said the US military assistance program "is pretty much irrelevant to the effort to combat terror in Egypt," and said that a review of the aid is necessary to ensure that it is in line with Washington's goals. Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said last month during a visit to Washington that the continuation of US aid is crucial for Egypt in its fight against terrorism and efforts to maintain stability and peace in the region. Search Keywords: Short link: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Editors note: Today, we look back at Week 16 of 365 Days of Tacos, in which food writer and restaurant critic Mike Sutter reports on a different taqueria, restaurant or truck every day on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com/Tacos . Sign up for our taco newsletter while youre there. Taco of the Week Nopales a la mexicana, Salsas Cafe. With fresh serranos, tomatoes and onions, this cactus stir-fry is one of the best vegetarian tacos in this series without bothering to announce its vegetarianism. Thats worth $1.59 right there. The week in tacos, April 16-22 El Toro Mexican Food: Two things will survive the apocalypse: cockroaches and old Taco Bells. El Toros carved from one of those former Bell shells, with a full breakfast-and-lunch menu. Best taco: The Lalo, with country sausage, beans, pico de gallo and potatoes. 809 Pat Booker Road, 210-945-9866, Facebook: El Toro Mexican Food Culebra Cafe: This little box of a taco shop carries a broad menu of breakfast and lunch tacos, enchiladas, breakfast plates, carne guisada and roasted meat by the pound. Best taco: Barbacoa. 1022 Pat Booker Road, 210-566-3930, no web presence Salsas Cafe: The checkerboard floor and red chairs give Salsas the look of a little country diner. Tacos get a menu page all to themselves, starting at just 99 cents. Best taco: Nopales a la mexicana. 8275 FM 78, No. 6, 210-310-1222, Facebook: Salsas Cafe Benjamins Kitchen: There are stretches of Bexar County where you wont see a taqueria for miles. Benjamins is a bright spot in this taco desert, a crowded country diner with a broad front porch. Best taco: Bone-in pork chop. 12886 Fischer Road, 210-623-2548, no web presence, cash only Dos Jalisco Mexican Restaurant: Converse isnt blessed with the same taqueria density as the heart of San Antonio. So Dos Jalisco makes it count, with 21 tacos on the breakfast menu and another 16 for lunch and dinner. Best taco: Spam and eggs. 8250 FM 78, 210-310-1582, no web presence Sandras Mexican Restaurant: Think of Sandras as Tink-A-Tacos cultivated older sister, the one with nicer clothes and a nicer house. But Tinks the better cook. Best taco: Super Taco with beef fajitas, beans, cheese and avocado. 12030 SW Loop 1604, 210-622-9811, no web presence Chile Verde: Embroidered leatherette booths, a full bar with color-shifting underlights. Is this a roadside cafe near China Grove or a swanky downtown place? Either way, Chile Verde has no problem downshifting for country-style tacos. Best taco: Tripas. 5102 Monaco Circle, 210-649-3938, chileverdesa.com Week 15 winner: Taquitos West Ave. Week 14 winner: Taco Taco Cafe Week 13 winner: Los Campos Dos Hermanos Week 12 winner: Mittman Fine Foods Week 11 winner: Sabinas Coffee House Week 10 winner: Dannys Cocina Mexicana Week 9 winner: The Original Donut Shop Week 8 winner: Claudias Restaurant Week 7 winner: Don Jose Mexican Cafe Week 6 winner: Paloma Blanca Week 5 winner: Mendez Cafe Week 4 winner: Tacos Y Burritos Metro Basilica 2 Week 3 winner: El Buen Gusto Mexican Cafe Week 2 winner: Taco Haven Week 1 winner: Rays Drive Inn BRIDGEPORT - Mayor Joe Ganim will support labeling the city as compassionate toward undocumented immigrants. It is a compromise, spearheaded by Councilwoman Katie Bukovsky, in the debate to designate Bridgeport a so-called sanctuary city. Immigrant advocates are also on board. The compassionate city resolution, released Wednesday, specifies that while Bridgeport cannot and will not interfere with federal immigration enforcers, local police are not an arm of the deportation crackdown by Republican President Donald Trump. The Bridgeport Police Department does not inquire of its residents their immigration status in all city-related activities and strives to avoid racial profiling (and) does and will not ... stop, detain, arrest or transfer individuals based solely on real or perceived immigration status or warrantless immigration detainers or administrative warrants, reads the resolution. Police Chief Armando A.J. Perez in a recent interview had similarly said his officers are concerned with catching bad guys, not with harassing and rounding up undocumented immigrants. But immigrant advocates wanted something in writing. Make the Road Connecticut in particular has been pressuring Ganims Democratic administration to oppose Trumps stepped up deportation efforts by joining other municipalities and adopting a sanctuary designation and non-cooperation policies. Ganim tried to kill the sanctuary city resolution when it was first proposed by some council members in February. The mayor has been concerned about Trumps effort to punish sanctuary cities by withholding federal grants. On Tuesday a federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction against Trump as a lawsuit by San Francisco and Santa Clara County defending immigrant sanctuaries winds through the court system. But Bukovsky Wednesday said city officials still want to proceed with caution: I think the ruling doesnt hurt. It helps the cause, to a point. The goal has always been to do whats right for all the residents without jeopardizing much needed funds. To avoid putting a target on Bridgeport, her resolution is a shorter, softer and gentler version of the one from February. It eliminates the word sanctuary; emphasizes Bridgeport will comply with federal law; and states the city does not protect individuals who have committed a serious felony offense, are gang members, and/or pose a serious safety threat. The new resolution also eliminates earlier demands to specifically protect day laborers, create a legal fund for residents facing deportation and to issue municipal identification cards that are particularly helpful for undocumented residents but available to all. Despite the compromise, however, a vote was tabled Wednesday by the councils public safety committee, which must approve the resolution and forward it to the full 20-person, all-Democrat council for final action. Confusion erupted because Councilman Jose Casco, who had spearheaded the original sanctuary city resolution, introduced his own alternative on Monday. Cascos is not much different from Bukovskys the pair were originally working together but it was not reviewed by the Ganim administration. Unfortunately the communication and cooperation seemed to have broken down, Bukovsky said afterward. A few dozen frustrated activists who attended the meeting chanted, Do your job! Do your job! as the committee argued over how to proceed, finally deciding to table the matter for further review of both resolutions, rather than choose one. Julio Lopez Varona, Make the Roads director, has been working with Casco and Bukovsky. An angry Varona afterward said, He (Casco) decided he wanted to push his own agenda at a moment when we needed to be united. Resident Gage Frank, who is planning on running for the City Council, called the meeting a circus. The fact our council cant show up and be prepared is just a testament to things that need to change in our city, he said. GREENWICH According to Aquarion Water Company, the towns water supply is looking good for the warmer months ahead and its going to recommend steps to keep it that way. Were showing that its a very good likelihood were going to be fine for the year, Dave Medd, manager of supply operations for Aquarion, said Wednesday. Theres a less than 10 percent chance that we will hit any of our triggers (for a drought in Greenwich). Medd spoke before the Retired Mens Association of Greenwich on Wednesday morning. After heavy rains in recent weeks the town is close to 100 percent of its capacity in a system that reservoir system that is spread out over three locations in Greenwich and Stamford, and holds about 3.2 billion gallons, he said. Everything looks like its going to be a normal year, Medd said. To keep these things that way, he recommended restrictions on outdoor water use. Medd and Aquarion support limits on lawn watering proposed by Greenwich Conservation Director Denise Savageau. Set to go before the Board of Selectmen on Thursday, the restrictions would limit residents to watering on two days a week. While the amount of rain the town has received lately has been a real benefit, Medd said, it has been the exception rather than the long-term rule. Weve had rainfall that has been quite below normal and the stream flow into the reservoirs was impacted as a result, Medd said. We had stream flows that you only experience once in a hundred years. Pretty much all the reservoirs in (southwest Connecticut) were not seeing any water coming in at all. March and April both had average rainfalls, the first time for consecutive months since 2014. Whether thats going to be a trend is a question for another day, Medd said. In March, the Board of Selectmen lifted many of the restrictions on outdoor use, which had been in place since last October. However it has continued to restrict outdoor water usage for irrigation by automatic systems and sprinklers. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com Stephani Llerena can't vote yet, but she is paying attention. The 17-year-old Pasadena High School senior is invested in her city and what happens May 6 in what could be an historic election. On social media and at school, Llerena sees the attitudes that define her part of the city to outsiders, and it bothers her. "When I was a sophomore, the seniors would make fun of (North) Pasadena, and that sucks," she said. "Over here, we have a lot of vacant buildings and we can use those spaces for something better for the community. It's depressing." Llerena and Luis David Delatorre, 18, another Pasadena High student, recently mingled with a few candidates running for mayor and City Council posts in Pasadena as well as for positions on the Pasadena ISD and San Jacinto College boards at an event called "Art of the Vote" hosted by Cleveland-Ripley Neighborhood Center in Pasadena and organized through a partnership with the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Delatorre was encouraged by the candidate's talk of revitalizing the north side, where he lives, but questions why it took so long and if it's too late. "I see that they're starting to focus more on our side, the more broken-down side of Pasadena, but it's gotten to the point where they neglected us so much that it's unfixable," he said. "If you notice, the people that really matter to candidates are the voters. Who votes? The people who live on the nicer side of Pasadena. Those are the voters they try to pursue and those are the one getting all the benefits, and then you look at us." "When I heard about what the city was doing, it didn't surprise me," Llerena said of the city's move in 2013 to alter the way its council members were elected to add two at-large positions to what had been all district representation. U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ruled in January that the change had hurt Hispanic voting strength and ordered the city revert to its previous system of eight single-member districts for the May 6 election. Rosenthal wrote that evidence in a voting rights trial indicated that Mayor Johnny Isbell and the city gained support from predominately Anglo south Pasadena through grants and other perks. "It kind of disgusted me because I live here, this is my home." Llerena said. Delatorre registered to vote last September just in time for the presidential election, and will vote on May 6 in his first local election. "If we, my generation, don't start voting and doing something about it, then it's just going to get worse and we're never going to get the help and respect we need," he said. Although she can't vote, Llerena took advantage of the art event to discuss politically themed art with the local candidates. Fernando Rodriguez's 1997 work, "La Poda Necesaria (Necessary Pruning)," was one of three pieces by Cuban artists chosen by Llerena and several other students to use as conversation starters. The candidates were asked to listen as the students opened up discussions that began with an introductory reading of each work and how it resonates with personal, cultural and political realities. Llerena had already spoken about the symbolism in two other pieces with mayoral candidates Pat Van Houte, council candidates Steve Halverson and Daniel Vela and others as they rotated from table to table, but when it was time dissect the Rodriguez piece with council hopeful Keith Nielsen, she was especially emphatic. The piece uses rusted metal to represent poverty and the passage of time, she explained, and at the center is a blind man amidst the disintegration, or pruning, of these objects, showing the withering away of one landscape to make way for another. 'La Poda Necesaria' is the artist's vision of Cuba and the desire for a new beginning, she said. "The artist called it 'Necessary Pruning' because he believed it was necessary to make something new and do away with the old, and to me it represents the Pasadena where I live," she said. "I grew up here. I love my community and I love how we are diverse," she said. "People are always asking me, 'You're 17, what are you going to do about it?' But I'm still a person and I am aware of what is going on and I am awake." Senior local and international clerics underlined on Thursday the role of religious authorities in combating violence and terrorism and promoting coexistence during an international gathering in Cairo hosted by Egypt's Al-Azhar. The two-day Al-Azhar International Peace Conference opened on Thursday with around 300 Muslim and Christian clerics and scholars and political figures from around the world. Roman Catholic Pope Francis is expected to attend the conference on Friday and deliver a speech at the closing ceremony after a meeting with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb. The first session of the conference addressed obstacles to achieving world peace and challenges faced by religious authorities, state news agency MENA reported. Speakers on the first day called on followers of different faiths to work together to denounce extremism and promote peace. El-Tayeb reaffirmed that the notion that war in Islam is "defensive, not offensive," and that fighting in Islam should be a response to "aggression rather than infidelity." "Black terrorism is not justified by Islamic law or the Quran, but stems from greatly unjust policies of domination, hegemony and double standards," the senior sheikh was quoted by MENA as saying. Olav Fykse, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, who is attending the gathering, emphasised the importance of the principle of citizenship to protect people's rights regardless of their religion "Violence cannot be practised in the name of religion and the circumstances we are experiencing emphasise the importance of love between everyone," Fykse said. In February, Al-Azhar convened a similar inter-faith conference in Cairo that brought together Muslim scholars and Christian leaders from 50 countries. Pope Francis will head to Egypt on Friday to boost ties with Muslims and show solidarity with the country's Christian minority. His visit comes after the two deadly suicide bombings that targeted Egyptian churches earlier this month. During his two-day trip, the pope will meet President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as well as Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II and the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Search Keywords: Short link: Eco-friendly lingerie and apparel brand Les Lunes has added a new Healdsburg storefront, making it the fifth boutique for the company in the last 10 months. The airy, bright Wine Country location opened in April on the heels of stores in San Francisco, Corte Madera, Walnut Creek and Chicago. Founder Anna Lecat spent 20 years running her own procurement business to connect luxury brands with top-tier factories in China. During her travels in Europe, the U.S. and China, she found herself balancing the desire for comfortable loungewear on flights with the requisite formality of fashion houses. Lecat learned she wasnt alone in her frustration as she teamed up with French designer Melanie Viallon to transform the most intimate basics. I set out to make the impossible possible, and make a bra you could wear comfortably all day long, Lecat said. Its been quite a ride since Les Lunes debuted its George V bra (sans wiring) online in 2012 to modest sales and engagement. After a $20,000 Facebook advertising campaign in 2015 yielded a disappointing 2 percent conversion rate, Lecat held a handful of pop-up events where she hoped shoppers would be enticed by the feel of the products. Merchandise nearly sold out at each event, and ultimately led to Les Lunes first store on Fillmore Street, which opened in May 2016. Shopping in the store allows you to feel the incredibly soft fabric and the made just for me perfect fit, she said. She hasnt spent another dime on digital advertising since. Today, online sales average $70.21 per transaction while in-store purchases average nearly twice that amount, $135.03. A whopping 90 percent of Les Lunes sales are made in-store. Lecat believes this is due to the stylists attentive service and the companys design process, which often uses customer feedback as a guide. One time a customer said she needed a skirt that she could feel comfortable wearing all day during meetings while looking professional. Les Lunes designers went to work and created a soft ruched jersey bamboo pencil skirt with reinforced lining that provides light, figure-flattering compression ($165). Perhaps at Les Lunes the customer really is always right; the ruched skirt became a best seller. Les Lunes team of 100 stylists, designers and garment makers tries to ensure a delightful experience for every customer by following Lecats mantra: Our job is to create clothes that fit your body; its not your bodys job to fit our clothes, and if we cant find something that fits you then we have to work harder. The company employs French pattern makers and artisans in Shanghai who sew exclusively for the label using sustainable bamboo to develop soft rayon and knitwear. Working with bamboo can be tricky, as the material can create dust particles that may lead to respiratory issues. Lecat said she ensures that her employees not only have a living wage (three times the typical pay for comparable work overseas), but also a safe working environment that follows the most stringent international protocols for health and environmental hazards. To increase job happiness, Lecat has each seamstress work on one item from start to finish. In many factories overseas, workers do repetitive piecemeal work and dont get to see the results of their labor. By the end of this year, the company plans to expand to seven stores, all funded by revenue from sales. Lecat projects $2.4 million in revenue this year, based on 2016s figures from the first three stores. She attributes the consistent growth to a strong product-market fit in areas where environmentally conscientious professionals seek items that offer form, function and comfort. Valerie Demicheva is a San Francisco freelance writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com Les Lunes 3027 Fillmore St., S.F.; 322 Center St, Healdsburg. https://leslunes.com/ WASHINGTON - Students in the nation's only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering Washington, D.C., private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide. The study, released Thursday by the Education Department's research division, follows several other recent studies of state-funded vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio that suggested negative effects on student achievement. Critics are seizing on this data as they try to counter Trump's push to direct public dollars to private schools. Vouchers, deeply controversial among supporters of public education, are direct government subsidies parents can use as scholarships for private schools. These payments can cover all or part of the annual tuition bills, depending on the school. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long argued that vouchers help poor children escape from failing public schools. But Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said that DeVos should heed the department's Institute of Education Sciences. Given the new findings, Murray said, "it's time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country." DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nation's capital that includes a robust public charter school sector. "When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools," she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents "overwhelmingly support" the voucher program "and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.'s most vulnerable students." The D.C. program serves about 1,100 students, giving them up to $8,452 to attend a private elementary or middle school and up to $12,679 for high school. Participating private schools must be accredited by 2021 but otherwise face few requirements beyond showing that they are in good financial standing and demonstrating compliance with health and safety laws. D.C. students who used vouchers had significantly lower math scores a year after joining the program, on average, than students who applied for a voucher through a citywide lottery but did not receive one. For voucher students in kindergarten through fifth grade, reading scores were also significantly lower. For older voucher students, there was no significant difference in reading scores. For voucher recipients coming from a low-performing public school - the population that the voucher program primarily aims to reach - attending a private school had no effect on achievement. But for voucher recipients coming from higher-performing public schools, the negative effect was particularly large. The analysis reviewed data for more than 1,700 students who participated in the lotteries from 2012 to 2014. Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard, said the D.C. study adds to an emerging pattern of research showing declines in student achievement among voucher recipients, a departure from an earlier wave of research - often on smaller, privately funded scholarship programs - that skewed more positive. "I think we need to be asking the question: Why is this happening and what should we make of it and should we care?" West said. He said weaker scores among voucher recipients may be a result of the fact that public school performance is improving, particularly in the District, where math and reading scores at traditional public and public charter schools have increased quickly over the past decade. Kevin Chavous, a national voucher advocate who lobbied for the program as a member of the D.C. Council in 2004, said he wasn't surprised by the findings because the study examined student performance after only one year in private school. "These are kids that come from some of the most challenged backgrounds, and they're just getting adjusted. It's no question that the longer they're in our schools, the better they do," Chavous said. "We have to look at the ultimate judge of the quality of the program, and that's the graduation rate and the college-going rate." Chavous said the voucher program gave disempowered parents something they lack in many other parts of their lives: control. "That's a landmark thing in urban America," he said. Over the past two decades, a pile of contradictory studies including on programs in Charlotte, Milwaukee and New York - have painted a muddy picture of how funneling public funds toward private-school tuition affects student achievement. In some cases, students receiving private-school tuition assistance modestly outperformed similar students who stayed in public schools; in other cases, including the first federal analysis of the District's program in 2010, there was no difference. "It's not a picture you should hang a policy on," said Martin Carnoy, a Stanford professor of education who has studied vouchers. The administration's focus on choice is "diverting attention from ways to really improve schooling," he said. "I think that's the harm in all of this." School-choice advocates argue that test scores offer a limited picture of performance and that graduation and college-enrollment rates mean far more for long-term success. Several studies have shown that voucher recipients tend to do better on these measures, including in the District, where the 2010 federal analysis showed that 91 percent of students who used a voucher to attend a private school graduated on time, compared with 70 percent of those without vouchers. The 2010 analysis also showed that parents of students who were offered vouchers, but not the students themselves, felt more confident in the safety of their schools. The new evaluation echoes that finding. The new evaluation also found that the program had no effect on parents' school satisfaction. Congress created the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004 with the support of key local leaders, including then-Mayor Anthony Williams. Advocates of the program spent the past eight years fighting for its survival under President Barack Obama, who opposed vouchers. Now they are hopeful that the White House's staunch support for choice, coupled with Republican majorities in Congress, will enable the program to grow. Already, Trump has freed up millions of dollars in carryover funding from previous years that officials say will allow the program to nearly triple the number of students its serves - from about 1,100 this year to 3,000 in the next school year. More than 6,000 students, most of them African American or Latino, have used D.C. vouchers since the program's inception. Voucher critics often argue that sending taxpayer dollars to private schools drains public schools, which serve the vast majority of children, of necessary resources. In her statement Thursday, DeVos said that the D.C. voucher program had clearly not damaged progress in the city's public schools. But the D.C. voucher program is singular. Rather than diverting funds from the District's public schools, it has brought them additional revenue. To make the program politically palatable in a city dominated by Democrats, Congress has appropriated millions of dollars a year for the city's traditional public schools and its growing set of public charter schools. Uber -- and some of its drivers - has been getting a lot of bad press lately. But few can deny that the ride sharing service is usually a great experience (I'm a fan) and has provided a livelihood for tens of thousands of entrepreneurial drivers around the world who rely on the company for extra income. Harpal Kang is one such entrepreneur. He managed to rake in more than $700 for just one ride the other week. The story as reported in New Zealand's Otago Daily Times goes like this. An American couple, Matt and Lisa Kottke, arrived in Auckland from Minneapolis for a very important sales meeting that was to take place the next day in Wellington, a meeting that could only be held within a specific three-hour window due to everyone's schedules. Unfortunately, there was a problem. Clouds and rain from the enormous Cyclone Debbie caused all flights out of the Auckland airport to be cancelled, including the Kottke's. All other options -- from buses, trains and taxis -- proved fruitless. What to do at midnight? Hey. . .why not Uber? "I was just shocked," Uber driver Kang said upon receiving the request." "I thought I would take one last job. But when I talked to them, they said, "We need to go to Wellington, can you drive all night?' " Smelling adventure, the chance to help out someone in need and -- let's admit it -- the prospect of a thousand bucks, Kang accepted the job. He drove all night, through high winds, heavy rain, flooding and road closures. It took more than 400 miles and nine and a half hours, but Kang delivered his grateful passengers to their all-important sales meeting with 30 minutes to spare. "I don't even know if I can have words for how grateful I was," Lisa Kottke said. Are you an Uber-hater? Don't forget the many entrepreneurs who drive for them who, like Harpal Kang, frequently go the extra mile - or in this case 400 miles and through a cyclone -- for their customers. A 25-year-old man masturbating at a Fairfield bus stop Wednesday morning exposed himself to two 13-year-old girls before running from officers who tried to arrest him, police said. Fairfield resident Enrique Cisneros who was already on probation for three instances of committing a lewd act in public was taken down with a Taser and arrested in the 2500 block of Orchid Drive just after 7:30 a.m., according to the Fairfield Police Department. U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke (D-El Paso) will make a campaign stop in Plainview on Saturday in his bid to replace U.S. Sen. Ted Cruiz. ORourke, who represents Texas District 16, will be at Leals Mexican Restaurant, 3311 Olton Rd., from 3-4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 29. Tickets are available at action.betofortexas.com. A police officer was killed and two policemen were injured Thursday afternoon when an improvised explosive device detonated in North Sinais El-Arish city, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported. Security sources told Al-Ahram that unknown assailants planted the IED near the second precinct police station in El-Arish. The bomb killed 51-year-old first lieutenant Ahmed El-Sayed Ahmed from Beni Suef governorate, and injured 46-year-old police corporal Ahmed Ali Ibrahim and 21-year-old conscript Mohamed Fatouh. Egypts army and police forces have been battling for several years a militant Islamist insurgency in North Sinai centered in the cities of El-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid, with hundreds killed on both sides. Search Keywords: Short link: WASHINGTON - The conventional wisdom when Donald Trump took office was that Paul Ryan would be in the driver's seat on policymaking. That has turned out to be wrong. The thinking was that the new president doesn't care deeply about the particulars of policy, so he would defer to the speaker - who does - as long as he could get wins. But the collapse of the Obamacare repeal effort last month left a bad taste in Trump's mouth, leading him to conclude that he shouldn't have agreed to focus on health care first, that he shouldn't have been so hands-off early in the process and that he shouldn't have outsourced so much of the substance to House leadership. Trump is trying to learn from his mistakes, and that's manifesting itself this week in the debate over taxes and health care. -- The tax reform proposal that the president unveiled this week makes clear that he is not content to let Ryan take the lead on the issue that has animated him more than any other during his two decades in Congress. The administration's framework does not include a border adjustment tax, a signature element of Ryan's plan that is designed to pay for cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. The speaker's team warned publicly and privately that cutting the rate to 15 percent is untenable, would blow up the debt and could never pass Congress. Trump embraced it anyway. The president told the Associated Press last Friday that he'd roll out his tax reform plan this Wednesday. Ryan got no heads up. He found out about it in the press. -- Trump's desire to put more points on the board during his first 100 days led White House officials to start telling reporters that there might be a vote on the health care bill this week, as well. Bypassing Ryan at times, administration officials negotiated directly with members of the Freedom Caucus on a compromise to bring the failed bill back to life. They placated the hard right, and now they're trying to cajole Ryan to bring along enough moderates to get it through. At a private meeting two weeks ago, chief of staff Reince Priebus reportedly told Ryan that his speakership could be in jeopardy if the House failed to revive the health care plan. The pressure is suddenly on the speaker, not the president, to convince potentially vulnerable members to walk the plank for an unpopular bill that's still going to be dead on arrival in the Senate. Such a vote which could also cost some their seats next November. It will be the guys in the Tuesday Group, not the Freedom Caucus, who get swept out in a 2018 wave because they tend to come from more purple districts. Many are balking, but still undecided, about the revised proposal. A lot of Ryan allies are exasperated by the Trump push to rush a vote before the week is over. There are even rumors of scheduling one for Saturday - to coincide with Trump's 100th day. (This seems unlikely.) But it was a similar fixation on optics over substance that prompted Trump to demand a now-or-never repeal vote last month that would coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Affordable Care Act being signed into law. -- This is part of an emerging pattern. Trump has repeatedly set up the speaker to be the fall guy by making unrealistic demands and sticking with infeasible promises. Once again, the burden is falling on Ryan to either make them happen or explain why they didn't. "We'll vote on it when we get the votes," he said this week of health care. Rather than emerging as the unquestioned architect of a new conservative renaissance, Ryan is being forced to play "bad cop" to Trump's "good cop." He is The Adult In The Room, bowing to the realities of governing at a time when the neophyte president still seems to believe he can bend government to his will. If Trump is the sugar high, Ryan is the buzzkill. As Trump practices the politics of brinksmanship, Ryan soothes. With the president hinting that he might shut the government down if he didn't get money to start construction on his border wall, the speaker convened a conference call over the weekend to assure his members that there wouldn't be a shutdown. Last week, during the Easter recess, Ryan took a delegation across Europe to reassure jittery allies of the U.S. commitment to NATO. -- A Pew poll released last week pegged Ryan's approval rating at 29 percent nationally. The reason that his standing is lower than Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner at similar points in their speakerships is that three in ten members of his own party give him negative marks. That's spiked since the health care bill didn't pass last month. -- Trump friends in the conservative media deserve a big share of the blame for Ryan's rising negatives among Republicans: Breitbart, formerly led by White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, has continued to be a thorn in his side. The all-caps headline on one of the site's top stories Tuesday blared, "Ryan's Approval Rating Plummets as He Fails to Deliver for President Trump." Matt Drudge, who still wields immense power as a gatekeeper and curator of the news that many conservatives see, has been a Ryan detractor on his web site. "Congress hanging The Donald out to dry," he tweeted in late January. "Making him do everything alone! Despicable. No tax cuts, no Obamacare repeal. NOTHING." Last month, Drudge accused congressional Republicans of lying about wanting tax cuts. "Can we get our votes back?" Then this week he tweeted this: Paul Ryan strategy is waiting for Pence to get sworn in as President... --- The shake-up at Fox News is also potentially problematic for Ryan: Eric Bolling, who is as big a Trump cheerleader as Sean Hannity, is getting his very own show at 5 p.m. starting next week, as "The Five" moves into the 9 p.m. hour. During Trump's transition, Eric was reportedly in the mix for a top job at the Commerce Department. Most importantly, though, he's been an on-air critic of PDR. He blamed the failure of the AHCA last month on the speaker, who he named as one leader of "the establishment, old-school Republicans in D.C." As The Post's Callum Borchers reported, Bolling then insisted that the failure of the bill - which the president aggressively pushed for - was actually "a win for Donald Trump" by the nature of being a loss for the establishment. Bolling is coming out in June with a book called, "The Swamp: Washington's Murky Pool of Corruption and Cronyism and How Trump Can Drain It." And don't forget that time Trump urged his followers to tune into a Fox News show hours before the host called on Ryan to resign, tweeting: Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M. --- -- Ironically, Ryan's standing has become more closely tied to Trump's than ever. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert observed recently that, for the first time, Trump is more popular than Ryan with Republican voters in the speaker's home state: "That's a mammoth change from a year ago, when Trump lagged far behind Ryan with GOP voters in Wisconsin. The polling shows that Ryan's popularity with Republicans back home has shifted as his relationship with Trump has evolved." -- This shines a light on why Ryan doesn't more forcefully push back on Trump. Publicly, he always tries to downplay their differences. "We see this as a good thing," he said during a press conference Wednesday when asked about Trump's tax proposal. "We've been briefed on what they're going to do, and it's basically along exactly the same lines that we want to go. Progress is being made and we're moving and getting on the same page." In a joint statement with Mitch McConnell and two committee chairmen, Ryan said the principles released by the administration will serve as "critical guideposts." --- With The Washington Post's Breanne Deppisch This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Washington The Trump administration told lawmakers Wednesday it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action against an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous U.S. adversary. President Donald Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defense secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. The same team was also meeting with House members in the Capitol to outline the North's escalating nuclear capabilities and U.S. response options to what they called an "urgent national security threat." After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Trump's approach "aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners." It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the U.S. would defend itself and friends. The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Korea's progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. A flurry of military activity, by North Korea and the U.S. and its partners on and around the divided Korean Peninsula, has added to the world's sense of alert. While tensions have increased since Trump took office, they've escalated dramatically in recent weeks as American and other intelligence agencies suggested the North was readying for a possible nuclear test. Although such an explosion hasn't yet occurred, Trump has sent high-powered U.S. military vessels and an aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while the North conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, earlier this week. On Wednesday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns. America's Pacific forces commander, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational within days. He said any North Korean missile fired at U.S. forces would be destroyed. "If it flies, it will die," Harris said. The Trump administration has said all options, including a military strike, are on the table. But the administration's statement after briefing senators all 100 members were invited outlined a similar approach to the Obama administration's focus on pressuring Pyongyang to return to long-stalled denuclearization talks. Trump's top national security advisers said they were "open to negotiations" with the North, though they gave no indication of when or under what circumstances. The strategy hinges greatly on the cooperation of China, North Korea's main trading partner. "China is the key to this," said Sen. John McCain, who got a preview at a dinner with the president this week. An international advocacy group concerned about restrictive laws in the United States plans to help women self-induce abortions at home, offering online advice and counseling about how to use medications that can terminate their pregnancies. Women Help Women, a three-year-old organization headquartered in the Netherlands, this week launched an online service to provide one-on-one counseling services for women seeking to end their early pregnancies using the abortion pill, which is legally available only by prescription in the United States but can be purchased on the Internet or from other countries. Kinga Jelinska, executive director of Women Help Women, said her organization provides a version of the service in other countries but decided to launch in the United States this year because of the political climate. More than half of U.S. states have enacted restrictions on abortion, and President Donald Trump has said he supports overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized the procedure nationally. "There is a lot of fear and worry that, with the current administration and restrictions that are to the enormous disadvantage of girls and women, that access to clinical care might further diminish," said Jelinska, an anthropologist and longtime reproductive rights advocate from Poland, where abortion is illegal except in narrow circumstances. The launch of the site is likely to add fuel to the debate about abortion, particularly those that are done using medication. Medically induced abortions accounted for nearly a third of all non-hospital abortions in the United States in 2014 and almost half of all abortions before nine weeks' gestation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization. The abortion pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration is actually two drugs that may be used in combination through the 10th week of pregnancy. Taken during 24 to 48 hours, the drugs - mifepristone and misoprostol - halt the development of pregnancy and induce miscarriage. The agency recommends medical supervision followed by an in-person follow-up appointment, and it warns people not to obtain the pills over the Internet because they might be unsafe. Abortion foes have sought further restrictions on the medications in the name of safety. A number of women have contracted infections or needed blood transfusions after a medication abortion, and some have died, although the FDA says it is unclear whether the drugs caused the deaths. "These drugs are dangerous. They are deadly. If they are mishandled, they result in serious injury," said Kristi Hamrick, spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, an antiabortion group that has tried to push states to require strict medical supervision for the use of abortion medications. "To just distribute them and put them in an automatic dispenser like a can of soda is absolutely medical malpractice." Abortion rights groups say that severe side effects from the drugs are rare; a 2015 study looking at more than 11,000 medication abortions in California found that the incidence of major complications was .31 percent. While there is limited research about self-induced abortion in the United States, women have been performing them for generations. Today's favored method in the United States happens to be pills, obtained via the Internet or in Mexico, where misoprostol can be purchased over the counter. Home-based abortions are safer for women than they've ever been, advocates say. "There . . . are people who view this as progress, the evolution of abortion care, and an incredible opportunity to transcend the very contentious abortion debate," said Jill Adams, chief strategist for the Self-Induced Abortion Legal Team at the University of California at Berkeley. Many advocates say they support projects like the one Women Help Women has pursued, but they caution that the legal landscape for self-induced abortion in the United States is unsettled. In 2015, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Idaho law that made it a crime for a woman to perform her own abortion, saying it conflicted with Supreme Court rulings that guarantee a right to the procedure until the fetus is viable. A few states still have laws that criminalize self-induced abortion, Adams said, and some women and people who helped them have been prosecuted using other criminal statutes. A Virginia woman was arrested last month on felony charges of illegally "producing abortion or miscarriage" after the remains of a third-trimester fetus were discovered in her back yard. A Tennessee woman who tried to abort her 24-week-old fetus with a coat hanger pleaded guilty to a felony count in January after spending more than a year in jail. A Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to jail time for obtaining abortion pills online for her 16-year-old daughter in 2014. "I would say for right now, I'm not advocating for women to be doing this on their own in the current environment," said Daniel Grossman, a University of California at San Francisco researcher who has studied self-induced abortion in the United States. He said his concern stems from the threat of prosecution rather than the safety of the drugs. In a paper this week in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Grossman looked at existing research and found that women tend to use the abortion pill appropriately and effectively. Though more research is needed, he said, the drugs could one day meet FDA criteria to be offered over the counter. Starting Thursday, women in the United States will be able to log onto the website Abortionpillinfo.org and send a secure message to a trained counselor based overseas. Within a few hours, counselors will respond with evidence-based answers, using guidance from the World Health Organization, Jelinska said. She said she expects a range of questions, including some seeking confirmation that side effects - including cramping and bleeding - are normal. In case of complications, the women will be told to seek immediate medical care and advised that, because U.S. laws on self-administered abortions are murky, to keep in mind that medication abortions take place in a virtually identical manner to spontaneous miscarriages. They also will be told that there is no blood or urine test that can detect the drugs in their system. The counselors also will be able to direct women to clinics or foundations in their communities that can help them pay for abortions in a clinical setting if they prefer. Jelinska said the service is not intended to help women get abortion-causing drugs, and a disclaimer on the website says it is not meant as a substitute for professional medical advice. Rather, she said, "we see this project as an information-delivery project." The service will be supported by 25 staff members, including two physicians, spread across Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some funding comes from Europe-based organizations, which Jelinska declined to identify. But the rest is from individual donors, primarily women in other countries, where Women Help Women assists clients in obtaining abortion-causing medications for a requested donation of 75 euros, Jelinska said. - - - The Washington Post's Alice Crites contributed to this report. Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi promoted on Thursday Air Defence Forces commander Ali Fahmy from Major General to Lt General, and commander of the Naval Forces Ahmed Said from Rear Admiral to Vice Admiral during the closing ceremony of the countrys monthly youth conference in Ismailiya. Sisi gave a short speech warning that terrorism was a "regional and international threat that must be confronted on all levels", and repeated his admonition of countries that support terrorist organisations. He also announced that this years annual youth conference will be held in October in South Sinais Sharm El-Sheikh, where youth from around the globe are invited to attend and participate. The Ismailiya youth conference resulted in several recommendations for initiatives including declaring 2018 as the year for disabled people, forming youth monitoring groups in state institutions, launching an initiative to beautify public squares and streets, and founding a high council for national databases. This is the third time Sisi has attended the monthly youth conference, which started in December. This months youth conference sessions and workshops began on Wednesday and addressed issues including a recent surge in the price of foodstuffs, the government's efforts to improve the healthcare system, and sustainable energy development. The decision to hold the monthly youth conference was announced by the president in October during the first annual National Youth Conference. In January, the second regular youth conference was held in Aswan and tackled challenges facing Upper Egypt, including ways to develop the economy and tourism in the region as well as the social and political empowerment of the youth. Some 1,300 young people from Upper Egyptian governorates took part in the event. Search Keywords: Short link: The FBI Violent Crime Task Force is searching for five robbers involved in a bank heist Thursday afternoon in southwest Houston. Around 1:30, robbers hit up the BBVA Compass bank by Old Spanish Trail and Fannin, according to a news release from the FBI. One robber crouched and guarded the door, while the others ordered all customers and employees to the ground. SAN ANTONIO A man was detained Thursday morning accused of causing a crash with a school bus carrying more than a dozen children on the West Side, according to the San Antonio Police Department. The suspect was allegedly speeding in a black 2009 Infiniti heading west at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday in the 100 block of Castroville Road. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Antonio police detective was suspended for three days in March for hitting his wife in the face, leaving a cut on her lip, according to disciplinary paperwork obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. Detective Xavier Cordero, 48, was initially given an indefinite suspension tantamount to firing by San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who later changed his mind. Cordero finished serving the suspension on April 11. Cordero, a 17-year veteran of the force at the time of the assault, was arrested on Aug. 27 and charged with assault causing bodily injury, a class A misdemeanor. The criminal charges were dropped in December after Corderos wife refused to press charges. Corderos wife had called 911 from the couples far West Side house. She told Bexar County Sheriffs deputies that Cordero struck her in the face with an open palm during a heated argument, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Cordero left the home after she called 911. Deputies noted that Corderos wife had swelling to the right side of her upper lip and a centimeter-long cut under her lip. Deputies said an investigator reached Cordero by phone and asked him to come back to the house. He refused, saying, He was not going back just so he could be arrested for something so dumb, according to the affidavit. Cordero admitted he was involved in a physical altercation with his wife, but said she was striking him, which may have resulted in him hitting her as he blocked her. Domestic violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers is believed to be underreported because victims can feel intimidated. The International Association of Chiefs of Police wrote a model code and suggested that departments adopt it. Cordero is not the first San Antonio police officer accused of domestic assault. Sgt. David Perry, 47, was charged last month with assault causing bodily injury - married. The case is pending. In 2015, a lieutenant was fired after receiving his 15th suspension during his 19-year career. Ten of the disciplinary actions against the officer stemmed from his personal life and often involved relationships with women, according to Express-News archives. Staff reporter Jacob Beltran and News Researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report. eeaton@express-news.net A man accused of fatally shooting a neighbor he was arguing with in a Northeast Side mobile home park in March was arrested by authorities Wednesday. Alex Martinez Ortiz, 20, faces a murder charge in the shooting death of Mark Hughes, 29. Hughes was found lying in the street at about 12:30 a.m. on March 29 in the 6700 block of Walzem Road, according to the Bexar County Sheriffs Office. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN - Some 200 ministers, rabbis and other religious leaders wrote to select House members Thursday asking them to support policies that treat lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Texans on an equal basis with other people. The letter went to lawmakers including members of the House State Affairs Committee, which is considering legislation that would restrict the restrooms transgender people can use. The religious leaders didnt confine their message to the bathroom bill, although they cited it among other legislation. Our faith compels us to oppose anti-transgender legislation (bathroom bills), discriminatory laws masquerading as religious freedom, or any other attempts to treat Texas LGBT community as second-class citizens, said the letter from Texas Believes, which according to its website is a project of the Texas Freedom Network and Equality Texas. The Texas Freedom Network describes itself as a watchdog of far-right issues and a defender of individual liberties. Equality Texas works for full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Texans, We will continue to speak out against all attempts to use religion to demonize, discriminate against or bring harm to our LGBT sisters and brothers. And we encourage you, as leaders in our state, to support policies that treat all Texans equally under the law, including the LGBT community, said the letter. Besides State Affairs members, the letter went to House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, who opposes a bathroom bill approved by the Senate; Rep. Ron Simmons, R-Carrollton, the author of a House version of the bathroom bill; and several members of the Calendars Committee, which schedules legislation for House debate. The faith community is divided on the bathroom bill. Its top legislative champion, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has promised to mobilize 1 million Christians in the effort to pass such a measure, and a number of pastors have spoken out in favor of the legislation. The Texas Senate has approved Senate Bill 6, which would specify that people use restrooms, dressing rooms and locker rooms in government buildings, schools and universities that align with the gender on their birth certificates. The House committee is considering House Bill 2899. As it stands, that bill would prohibit city and school district policies that protect groups from discrimination if those groups arent already protected by state or federal law. It would affect only policies on restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities. Simmons is working on changes to the measure. Among those listed as signing the letter from San Antonio are the Rev. Dr. Edward Kern of Trinity Lutheran and Rabbi Mara Nathan of Temple Beth-El. pfikac@express-news.net Twitter: @pfikac An appeals court in Senegal upheld the life sentence of former Chad dictator Hissene Habre on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, bringing to an end a landmark trial pursued by victims for more than 16 years. The court also ruled Thursday that millions of dollars of compensation awarded to more than 4,000 victims would be managed by a trust fund. Head appeal Judge Ougadeye Wafi said the fund will manage more than 82 billion CFA ($135 million) owed to victims who have been seeking justice since they were released from prison in 1990 when Habre fled Chad. The compensation for victims should come from the seizure of Habre's assets and it is not clear how quickly that will happen. The 74-year-old Habre's conviction was the first of a former head of state by an African court for crimes against humanity. The trial itself was also the first in which courts of one country prosecuted the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. The court dropped the rape conviction against Habre because the charge was introduced during the trial, said Wafi, though he said they believed the accounts of a witness who said she was personally raped by Habre. "I have been fighting for this day since I walked out of prison more than 26 years ago. Today I am finally at peace. I hope that all the dictators in Africa take notice no one is above the law!" said Souleymane Guengueng, who began collecting accounts of survivors not long after being freed from prison in 1990, and founded the Association of Victims of Crimes of the Regime of Hissene Habre. Clement Abaifouta, now the president of the association and a former prisoner who was forced to bury dead inmates, said this was the beginning of something new. "Today is a great and a famous day for all victims. I am dreaming of now building a new society without the violence, a new society with democracy and with respect for human beings," he said. Victims and survivors have been pursuing the case against their former leader for more than 16 years and some have been collecting stories for more than 26 years in hopes this day would come. Over 90 witnesses testified in the trial that began in July 2015. Prosecutors presented evidence, including files of Habre's own political police, documents in his own handwriting and testimonies from those who received his orders. The Extraordinary African Chambers, created by the African Union and Senegal to try Habre, found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment in May for crimes committed during his presidency from 1982-1990. The court later ordered him to pay tens of millions of dollars in compensation to victims. Habre had lived a life of luxury in Senegal's capital of Dakar after fleeing Chad in 1990 until he was charged in 2013. Habre dismissed the trial as politically motivated and his defense lawyers refused to appear during the trial. He was escorted out of the trial on the first day of witness testimony for shouting. Court-appointed lawyers, however, represented him and appealed the conviction, alleging that one of the trial court judges should not have been appointed given his background as a prosecutor, and that there were several errors of fact and law. "A lot of deception," said one of Habre's court-appointed lawyers Mounir Ballal after the appeals court verdict. "The only satisfaction ... was the question of the incrimination of rape," which was dropped. Lawyers for his alleged victims also appealed, calling for the reparations to be managed by a trust fund. The African Union set up a trust fund during the trial, and will now manage gathering funds with international partners and finding Habre's assets. A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre's government of systematic torture, saying 40,000 people died during his rule. Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but legal twists and turns over a decade saw the case go to Belgium and then finally back to Senegal after unwavering pursuit by the survivors. The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, cannot prosecute crimes committed before it was established in 2002. "Habre's final conviction after 26 years is a crowning victory for his Chadian victims, without whose tenacity his trial never would have taken place," said international rights lawyer Reed Brody, a member of the International Commission of Jurists who has worked with Habre's victims since 1999. Search Keywords: Short link: Lamar Smith has made a national reputation as a climate change skeptic, but if anything he should be the frontman for the consequences of gerrymandering. As chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, he has injected doubt into the conversation about global warming, bullied scientists, distorted facts and sowed disorder. He wears contemporary climate skepticism like a crown and is master of the Yes, but argument. Yes, he says, the climate is changing, and humans even contribute to it. But, he says, long-term projections are uncertain. Yes, there is climate consensus among scientists and policymakers. But only because skeptics and conservatives are unwelcome in the discussion. And the world keeps getting warmer. Smiths skepticism may very well be genuine, reflecting the views of most conservative Republicans. But the role of gerrymandering here shouldnt be ignored. Its almost impossible for a Democrat to win, let alone compete, in Smiths district, and that leads to tribalism as leadership. It would be unfair to expect Smith to be someone he is not. But its a public disservice that he can so easily ignore inconvenient truths and opposing views. Facts or concerned constituents dont have to be considerations as his recent keynote address at the Heartland Institute shows. Hes insulated from angry crowds and critical questions because the numbers say he cant lose. In 2016, Smith thumped Democratic challenger Thomas Wakely by 80,000 votes. He didnt even have to campaign. In 2014, Democrats didnt bother to challenge him. Yet there are a host of Democrats pondering a run in 2018. Something is in the air besides our carbon emissions. When you have been in Congress for over 30 years and you have no formidable challenger, you have no reason to work hard, said Joseph Kopser, one of those Democrats considering a run. Just like any company in a private sector that would gain a monopoly, and they would then have no reason to innovate. A West Point graduate with a degree in aerospace engineering, Kopser might make a compelling challenger. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years. He deployed to Iraq and has a masters degree from Harvard. He hit it big in Austin with a startup. He was once a Republican. Now he is a Democrat. He praises Ronald Reagan and defends gun rights. I believe in the Second Amendment, he said. I am not going to come after anybodys guns. I think we have much bigger issues to be worried about. Like climate change. Hes baffled by Smiths positions because Texas is blessed with an abundance of wind, sunshine and natural gas. Even if you dont accept climate change, those energy sources mean much more to Texas future than coal. But beyond this, rising sea levels, prolonged drought and famine all have the potential to create human catastrophe and international pockets of trouble, he said. Smith is far from the only elected representative (D or R) benefiting from a safe district, but he uniquely has influence far beyond his district, which could make 2018 interesting. Inside the district, political life is more than reliably red. But outside the district, Smith has been a subject of undeniable scorn among those who accept climate science. Americans are divided on whether humans are impacting the Earths climate, Pew Research Center reported in October. But they also overwhelmingly like renewable energy and those who accept the science, really accept the science. They see a looming humanitarian catastrophe that Smith meets with hostile indifference. In a potential wave election, a compelling challenger would be an invitation for outside money even if its just to make Smith sweat. Kopser has raised close to $90,000. He would need millions. But he also hasnt launched a campaign. For perspective, Wakely, Smiths last challenger, raised $70,000. Shannon Perez Green, a leader in the progressive TX21 Indivisible group, said its too soon to rally behind any one candidate. But its telling, she said, that TX21 Indivisible has grown to more than 4,000 members and a number of talented potential 2018 candidates have emerged for what history says is a lost cause. Gerrymandering is the ultimate insulation. For years, Smith has questioned climate science, and voters have rewarded him. But if 2018 is a real wave election a big if even Smith might feel some heat. jbrodesky@express-news.net According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the scores of white students are 21 points higher than those of Hispanic students in the fourth grade, and 26 points higher than their Hispanic counterparts in the eighth grade. The educational inequalities in schools nationwide is not because minority students lack the drive to succeed but because of the inequality of funding. A 2-year-old who sustained head injuries in a crash in Hardin County has died, according to authorities. The family of the toddler has set up a GoFundMe for funeral expenses. Details of the Crash and the Toddler's Death According to KFDM, the child sustained significant head injuries Thursday when the car she was a passenger in was struck head-on by a pickup on FM 770. Police believe the driver of the pickup, 63-year-old Billy Ray Briscoe, Sr., fell asleep behind the wheel, resulting in his truck drifting across the center line and into oncoming traffic. Briscoe and the driver of the other vehicle, 24-year-old Cody Norman, were hospitalized with minor injuries. Troopers said the toddler was properly secured in a car seat when the accident occurred. Texas Car Accident Statistics The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) recorded 3,531 traffic-related deaths in 2015. This averages to one death every 2 hours and 29 minutes. 1,925 of those deaths occurred in rural areas of the state and 807 were associated with head-on collisions. An additional 246,335 people were injured in car crashes in Texas in 2015 with 17,011 people suffering serious injuries. On average, a reportable crash occurred every 61 seconds in 2015. Contact an Experienced Auto Accident Attorney Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys is a personal injury law firm with offices in Corpus Christi, Texas, San Antonio, Texas and Houston, Texas representing accident victims nationwide. Our attorneys are available to respond to auto accidents at any hour, day or night. Our lawyers understand that the immediate acquisition, or acquiring, of evidence is paramount to understanding how the accident occurred. Remember, your choice does matter. Contact our offices we are available 24/7, nights and weekends. Editors Note: This content is made possible by Thomas J. Henry Personal Injury Law. 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 Kremlin on Thursday called for restraint after Syria accused Israel of firing several missiles at a military position near the Damascus airport. "We continue to consider that all countries need to refrain from any kind of actions that lead to an increase in tension in this already restive region and call for respect of the sovereignty of Syria," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Search Keywords: Short link: Israel's Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. The incident occurred hours after Syria accused Israel of striking a Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla arms hub near Damascus airport, where supplies of weapons from Iran are sent regularly by air, a regional intelligence source said. Search Keywords: Short link: Russia accused French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign team of discriminating against its media on Thursday, saying it had trampled on the freedom of the press by banning Russian news outlets from its events. In Paris, a Macron spokesman confirmed that the Russian state-funded Sputnik news agency and RT TV channel had been barred from having media access to him, describing them as a "two-headed entity" which issued Russian state propaganda and fake news. Macron, a pro-European Union ex-banker and centrist, is widely seen as favourite to win the French presidency on May 7 by beating far right leader Marine Le Pen. Macron takes a hard line on EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, whereas Le Pen, an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a eurosceptic who backs the lifting of sanctions and takes Russia's side on Ukraine. The Kremlin has been irritated by accusations from Macron's camp that its campaign's networks, databases and sites have come under attack from locations inside Russia, fuelling suspicions that Russia is trying to undermine Macron's campaign in order to help Le Pen. The Macron spokesman referred to the two news outlets' "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information". "Spreading lies methodically and systematically - that's a problem," he said. "If this creates problems with the Kremlin, it will be the subject of an open discussion in the event of the candidate (Macron) being elected," the spokesman said. Moscow has rejected allegations of meddling, and on Thursday Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dubbed "outrageous" the move by Macron's team to refuse accreditation to Sputnik, RT and the Ruptly video agency last Sunday. Zakharova said Moscow viewed the ban as "deliberate and bare-faced discrimination against Russian media by the presidential candidate of a state that has historically been vigilant when it comes to free speech." She called on the relevant French authorities and international organisations to ensure that freedom of the press was upheld in the second round of voting. PUTIN AND LE PEN The Macron spokesman gave no specific examples of Russian media spreading fake news. But a Feb. 4 report by Sputnik quoted a pro-Putin centre-right French legislator as saying Macron was a puppet of U.S. political and financial elites and that revelations about his private life would soon be made public. The report appeared to play a part in Macron being forced on Feb. 7 to deny rumours of an extra-marital gay relationship. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, said on social media that the Macron campaign was refusing to accredit her organisation and the others for the second round as well however. "So this is how gracelessly freedom of speech ends in a country which prides itself on its freedoms almost more than it prides itself on its Camembert and Brie cheeses," said Simonyan. Last February, when political parties were squaring off for the first round of the election, Richard Ferrand, the head of Macron's En Marche! party, accused Sputnik and RT of spreading fake news with the aim of undermining Macron's campaign. RT has issued several statements denying suggestions that it is part of a campaign to spread fake news in relation to Macron and the French election. Russia's Putin granted an audience to Le Pen in the Kremlin last month, bestowing a level of international recognition that had until then eluded her in the countdown to the election. But the Kremlin says it is not backing any candidate in the election, which it says is purely a matter for the French people. Search Keywords: Short link: AT least three people died while 11 others were injured after the vehicle they were travelling in burst a tyre and swerved off the road along Chivhu-Roy Road on Sunday. Masvingo police spokesperson Inspector Kudakwashe Dhewa confirmed the accident that occurred at the 68-kilometre peg. At around 6pm on Sunday, a Toyota Hiace that was being driven by Innocent Damba (37) of Waterfalls burst the left rear tyre at the 68-kilometer peg along the Chivhu-Roy Road. The car had 13 passengers on board. Damba lost control of the vehicle and it veered off the road and overturned several times landing on its right side. Three people died upon admission at Gutu Hospital while 11 others were injured. Of the 11 four were seriously injured. The deceased have been identified as Florence Ndlovu, (38), Charles Nyamuba, (26) and Giliston Baloyi. He said that the car sustained extensive body damage and is supposed to be examined by the Vehicle Inspection Department. The driver will face charges of culpable homicide. Meanwhile, there was a shooting incident at Malilangwe Trust in Chiredzi which involved game scouts and three poachers on Saturday. It was reported that on 10 March the game scouts got a tip off from Beitbridge that there were poachers who were planning to raid Bubi Valley conservancy where they wanted to hunt rhinos. The anti-poaching team was activated and the poachers were suspicious and moved to Chiredzi towards Malilangwe Trust. On 12 March around 6 am the Malilangwe Trust scouts came in contact with the three poachers. The scouts urged the poachers to surrender but one of the poachers who is now deceased was armed with a rifle and fired towards the scouts. There was an exchange of gunfire and the other two poachers escaped leaving behind a torch, five litre container, a satchel and a plastic bag, said Insp Dhewa. Sundaay News Breaking News via Email KANSAS CITY, Mo. In response to consumer flavor trends and as part of its ongoing innovation efforts, Hostess announced the introduction of Chocolate Cake Twinkies. From seasonal offers including Pumpkin Pie Twinkies to limited-edition items such as the Ghostbusters Green Slime Twinkies, Hostess Brands has created numerous innovative flavors for Twinkies creme filling. However, until now, the golden sponge cake, which even gave Twinkie its gold standard status, has gone untouched. Twinkies are the most recognized and beloved brand in the sweet baked goods category, getting as close to perfection as possible, said Burke Raine, Hostess senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Be it new flavors, new formats or different parts of the store, Twinkies are so iconic and well known that we have endless opportunities to extend the brand in ways that others cant. Not only did Chocolate Cake Twinkies score high in concept tests, but they also performed well in a blind taste test in which the clear majority of consumers said Chocolate Cake Twinkies met or exceeded expectations. Meanwhile, consumer feedback fed another improvement to Hostesss snack cake portfolio: Fudge Covered Twinkies, more commonly known as the Chocodile. Fudge Covered Twinkies have been reinvented by its larger size, a higher creme-to-cake ratio, an intensified fudge coating and slightly modified shape. Both Hostess Chocolate Cake Twinkies and Fudge Covered Twinkies are now available at retailers nationwide and are sold in single-serve, twin-pack and multi-pack formats. This is priceless. Naked Capitalism beat the Journal by nearly four years reporting a new story. On top of that, the Journal isnt terribly exercised about conflicts of interest involving executives with clear legal duties to investors engaged in what looks uncomfortably like self-dealing. This complacency stands in stark contrast to press hysteria about Ivanka Trump selling schamattes out of the White House. From the opening paragraphs of an above-the-fold story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today, Wall Streets New Problem: When Fund Titans Invest on the Side: In 2010, a firm called Swift River Investments LLC put money into a software company developed by private-equity giant Blackstone Group LP. Five years later, a company Blackstone co-owned acquired the software firm, at a price that gave Swift River a fat profit. Blackstones back-and-forth involving Swift River wouldnt be notable but for one thing: Swift River invests personal wealth for Blackstones president and chief operating officer, Hamilton Tony James. A brother of his runs it. Wall Street billionaires, their fortunes built by investing other peoples money, increasingly are putting some of their own in sideline investment ventures, while continuing to operate their hedge funds or private-equity funds for clients In the Blackstone/Swift River matter, Blackstone said its transactions involving Mr. Jamess family investment firm were cleared by Blackstones conflicts committee, and Mr. James wasnt involved in the decisions. He declined to be interviewed. This is far from a new problem. We wrote specifically about Blackstones Tony James and Swift River in 2013 in How Private Equity Executives Like Blackstones Tony James Engage in Dubious Side Deals, as an example of the more general problem of possible self dealing. From that post: Today, well examine conflicts of interest involving principals at the private equity firms themselves. Here our object lesson is private equity kingpin Blackstone Group. Tony James is the chief operating officer of the Blackstone Group, overseeing the entire firm across its large range of asset management and investment banking services. James also runs the Blackstone private equity investment business, meaning he sets policy and is the final decision-maker on its day-to-day activities. One would expect these dual roles at Blackstone to keep James busy and give him an adequate income. But he also has a side business that he owns with his two brothers, called Swift River Investments, a family private equity firm. In other words, James is a substantial principal in a business that could theoretically compete with Blackstone. And, while it is unlikely that Swift River has enough capital to bid against Blackstone for deals, it is nevertheless clear in one case that Swift River is deeply involved with Blackstone. Moreover, in other cases, there is considerable potential for conflicts of interest between Swift River and Blackstone and investors are powerless to police them. These actual and potential conflicts are particularly troublesome from a corporate governance perspective, since as a corporate officer of Blackstone, James has a duty of loyalty to Blackstone Lets look at the situation where we know that James put himself into a conflict of interest. Blackstone developed a software application internally called iLevel Solutions. Blackstone spun it out and, lo and behold, it wound up in the hands of the James brothers through Swift River. Blackstone shareholders have every reason to be concerned about possible self-dealing here. After all, why does it make any sense to sell a corporate asset to a top executive and his family members? And how could the board ever be satisfied that the price of the transaction was fair? But its not just Blackstone shareholders who have reason to be troubled by an arrangement that looks an awful lot like self-dealing. Blackstones private equity fund investors institutions like the NYC pension system have reason to be concerned about Swift Rivers investment activities. Of the 10 investments Swift River lists having made, five of them are privately-held oil field services companies (and the sixth is the iLevel related-party deal with Blackstone). So the James brothers like oil services companies. Whats the big deal? Well, it turns out that Blackstone has recently gotten into the energy investment business in a big way. In August 31, 2012 SEC filing, Blackstone disclosed that it had raised $2,074,621,000 for a new fund called Blackstone Energy Partners L.P. A clear focus of this fund is investment in energy exploration companies, as shown in a Blackstone press release issued shortly after the funds closing, where Blackstone announced an investment in an offshore drilling company. Now, you can see where this is going. Tony James is buying oil exploration companies with his investors money, and he happens to own a bunch of companies personally that service exploration companies. On the one hand, there is no evidence that James is using his Blackstone position to have the Blackstone Energy Partners companies do business with the companies he owns. On the other hand, his iLevel deal with Blackstone shows that neither James nor Blackstone appear to have any reluctance to engage in related party transactions. Moreover, independent of any oil services transactions between Blackstone and Swift River, there are other ways that James and his family benefit from the shared interests and may cross the line into improper personal benefit. All of the information that James gets in his formal day job, such as contract, industry intelligence, and deal flow, can also be used to help Swift River. In fact, its hard to see how James could stop that from happening even if he wanted to. How can he erect a Chinese wall in his brain? What makes these dealings particularly troubling is that Blackstones fund investors are absolutely powerless to even begin to monitor any of these potential related party transactions or resource-sharing in order to ensure that they are not abusive. In fact, private equity LP investors almost always sign up to fund terms (in the super-secret limited partnership agreements that are the only state and local government contracts not subject to FOIA) where the investors agree to let the PE firm executives compete against the funds they manage. This is undoubtedly the case with Blackstones funds, which demonstrates just how dysfunctional the entire ecosystem of private equity actually is. And remember, the dominant LP investors in private equity are your state and local governments, the universities you attended that constantly hound you for donations, and the mutual insurance companies that you theoretically own as policy holders. We also discussed the software company at issue, iLevel Solutions. This was the focus of that post: We will see that this company is built from the ground up as a vehicle to convince PE investors and the SEC that Blackstone and other PE firms have implemented robust financial controls over the companies they own. The reality, however, is the opposite: by design, iLevel gives PE firms unprecedented ability to cook the books of their portfolio companies while maintaining a facade of compliance. In passing, we discussed additional conflicts of interest that escaped the Journals attention: iLevel has also been ingenious in its implementation of the Wall Street Rule the idea that bad practices are most untouchable by regulators when they become industry standard. In that spirit, iLevel in late 2011 announced that the Carlyle Group had become a part owner of the company. This is presumably in addition to the continuing partial ownership of the Blackstone COO. Nominally, Carlyle and Blackstone are competitors, yet they teamed up on iLevel. Working together, they have been able to promote the products adoption among a large portion of large private equity firms, including Apollo, TPG, and Cerberus, and more than 30 other firms, in addition to Blackstone and Carlyle. And finally, in a coup de grace of seediness, around the same time as the Carlyle deal, iLevel brought in another investor in the form of Hamilton Lane. This firm is the dominant gatekeeper performing due diligence and making recommendations to pension funds and other institutional investors on private equity funds. So, in its fiduciary role advising pension funds, Hamilton Lane sits in judgment of Blackstone and Carlyle. But on the side, Hamilton Lane is also in a deal with the Blackstone COO and Carlyle. Though this appears to be a material conflict of interest, it is worth noting that the conflict does not appear to be disclosed in the Conflicts of Interest section of Hamilton Lanes Form ADV filed with the SEC. The Journals new information is that a company Blackstone co-owned, presumably but not necessarily a portfolio company bought back ILevel from Swift River, in 2015, for $75 million. From the story: Blackstone said in regulatory filings that it had talked to about 20 potential investors before selecting Swift River as one of the primary 2010 buyers. It said negotiations were led by an outside investor not linked to the James family. If you think this outside investor was operating independently, I have a bridge Id like to sell you. Anyone with an operating brain cell would understand which buyer was preferred and would know full well it was in their economic best interest to curry favor with Tony James. The other conflict of interest that was disclosed in regulatory filings involved oil-field services companies, which we flagged in 2013 as problematic. Again from the Journal: In the other potential conflict it cited in filings as linked to Swift River, a Blackstone business-development affiliate provided financing to an oilfield-services company in which Swift River indirectly owned a stake. Blackstone filings said Mr. James didnt work on the financing for the oilfield company, Allied-Horizontal Wireline Services LLC. The Journal does discuss other of private equity fund principals having their own private equity businesses on the side. Apollo founder Marc Rowans real estate venture is supposedly kosher by virtue of him being involved only in strategy and intended to have different durations and risk-return profiles than those made by Apollos funds. TPG Chairman Eric Bonderman has both his own side investment firm, Wildcat Capital Management, and is also an investor in company started by a former TPG employee, Dragoneer. One result of these incestuous relationships: Mr. Bonderman invested in Spotify both through funds that TPG manages for clients and through Dragoneer. Fortress has handful of employees work solely on the personal financial matters of co-founders, who reimburse Fortress. That almost certainly means they get lots of free intelligence. Query also whether full overheads, like office space and the cost of admin support, are being allocated pro-rata to these staffers. Despite Fortress bromides about employees being forbidden to get into conflict of interest with clients along with supposed further oversight of top people, the Journal discusses at length a tangled situation involving a donation pledge by a Fortress entity to Milwaukee just the Milwaukee Bucks were seeing funding from the city to help fund a new arena. The wee ethical and optical problem? Fortress Fortress co-founder and co-chairman Wesley Edens was also a co-owner of the Bucks. Here are some additional shortcomings with this story: Failure to discuss why these conflicts of interest are serious and troubling. The title of this story in the print edition is anodyne: Fund Kings Open Family Offices. The message of the entire piece is: These firms had to reveal they have these cozy arrangements. But they all swear they have robust internal procedures, so this must be OK. Notice the failure to get a reading from an independent expert or even to consult corporate governance standards, as we did in 2013: From the American Bar Association (emphasis ours): Generally, officers owe the same fiduciary duties as directors.Officers with greater knowledge and involvement may be subject to higher standard of scrutiny and liability Under state corporate law, directors of solvent corporations have two basic fiduciary duties, the duty of care and the duty of loyalty. The duty of care, which is governed by statute in most states, usually requires that directors discharge their duties in good faith and with the care that an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would exercise under similar circumstances and in a manner the director reasonably believes to be in the best interests of the corporation. See, e.g., Or. Rev. Stat. 60.357 (1). In some states, including Delaware, the standard of care, though essentially the same, is established by judicial decision. See, e.g., Graham v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., 188 A.2d 125, 130 (Del. 1963). The duty of loyalty requires that directors act on behalf of the corporation and its shareholders and refrain from self- dealing, usurpation of corporate opportunity and any acts that would permit them to receive an improper personal benefit or injure their constituencies. See, e.g., Guth v. Loft, Inc., 5 A.2d 503, 510 (Del. 1939). Failure to consider whether investor disclosure was inadequate. As we indicated in 2013, limited partnership agreements have broad language waiving conflicts of interest which legitimates the mind-boggling notion of fund managers competing with their own investors. However, the SEC, which now oversees private equity firms as investment managers thanks to Dodd Frank, has taken a dim view of marketing materials that are misleading, irrespective of what the fine print in the contracts actually says. So its not inconceivable, given that some vintage 2006 and 2007 funds are still in business, that some fund managers may have made airy assurances that are at odds with their current behavior. And on a common-sense basis, any limited partner ought to be upset at the idea of a personal wealth management business of private equity principals getting anywhere near their investments, given how private equity firms have been caught cheating investors in just about every creative way imaginable. Put it another way: if the general partners were even semi-serious about making sure everything looked kosher, theyd review these insider deals with the limited partner advisory committees of the appropriate funds. As weve discussed, the limited partner advisory committees are captured; the members are chosen so that the general partner has a large majority of friendly investors who would never cross them. But the one thing the minority of non-captured advisory committee members can do is vote with their feet on the next fundraising. But that is clearly more than the private equity kingpins are willing to hazard. Failure to mention that some, perhaps most, of these disclosures came about thanks to Dodd Frank, which Trump is threatening to kill. All private equity fund managers over a not-large size are required to file an annual disclosure form ADV with the SEC. Many firms have revealed in these documents that they are engaged in practices that alert parties can ascertain are not permitted by their contracts with investors. Yet even this weak protection is likely to be scotched if Trump and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling get their way. The Wall Street Journal exemplifies why limited partners are complacent in the face of private equity self-dealing and embezzlement. The reporters dug up some troubling material, called up the private equity firms for comment, and took their reassurances at face value. This is Potemkin journalism masquerading as the real deal. The rapid rise of a plutocracy means we need the Fourth Estate to help curb its power. Unfortunately, for the most part, vigorous journalism has become a relic. Scientists explain the way Weyl particles 'dance' on crystal surface (Nanowerk News) Researchers at MIPT have examined the behavior of Weyl particles trapped on the surface of Weyl semimetals. Their study was published in Physical Review B ("Fermi arcs formation in Weyl semimetals: The key role of intervalley interaction"). The bulk electron spectrum in a Weyl semimetal is described by a set of an even number of Weyl cones (aka valleys) centered at special points in the momentum space. These conical points, which are sometimes called 'diabolical', conceal nontrivial topology. The bulk electron spectrum in a Weyl semimetal is described by a set of an even number of Weyl cones (aka valleys) centered at special points in the momentum space. These conical points, which are sometimes called diabolical, conceal nontrivial topology. The Weyl particleor the Weyl fermion, to use a more precise termwas predicted in the early 20 century by Hermann Weyl, a German physicist. Despite his early prediction and tremendous efforts directed toward the search for the illusive Weyl particle, it was only experimentally discovered in 2015. Contrary to expectations, the Weyl was not observed in a giant collider but in tiny crystals, which came to be known as Weyl semimetals. These materials have since attracted a lot of attention, making this research area one of the hottest in modern physics. Weyl semimetals can be considered a 3-D equivalent of graphene, the 2-D crystal with unique properties discovered by MIPT graduates Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010. Electrons in graphene and Weyl semimetals behave as massless particles akin to photons. However, unlike photons, these particles have an electric charge, making them promising for applications in electronics. As it turned out, the bizarre properties of electrons in these and a number of similar materials can be described in terms of the topological field theory. It is worthy to note that the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists that introduced topological concepts into condensed state physics. In a theoretical study supervised by MIPTs Prof. Vladimir Volkov, Zhanna Devizorova, a Ph.D. student at MIPT, looked into surface states of Weyl fermions, i.e., how electrons behave near the surface of a Weyl semimetal crystal. The special states of electrons near the surface of a crystal, known as electronic surface states, were predicted in the 1930s by future Nobel Prize winners Igor Tamm (USSR) and William Shockley (USA) who proposed and studied the first theoretical models of these states. However, it was not until recently that surface states have gained considerable attention of researchers. The practical significance of this field of research is evidenced by the fact that modern microelectronics using silicon are universally based on near-surface conducting channels. However, silicon itself is not a topological material. The behavior of any particle under an external field is determined by the dispersion law that relates the particles energy to its momentum. According to the dispersion law, the energy spectrum of electrons in a crystal defines its electronic properties such as conductivity. The bulk energy spectrum of electrons in a Weyl semimetal is described by a set of an even number of Weyl cones, or valleys, centered at special points in the momentum space. The surface of such a crystal has remarkable properties. Weyl semimetals are distinguished by the trademark energy spectrum of particles populating their surface states. In these exotic spectra, the curves that represent states with equal energy are nonclosed and appear as arcs on two-dimensional momentum space. These so-called Fermi arcs connect points of the electron spectrum that belong to different Weyl cones. Unlike Weyl fermions, ordinary electrons are characterized by closed Fermi curves in the form of a circle. Until now, all theoretical descriptions of Fermi arcs have relied on complicated and obscure first-principles computer calculations. The MIPT-based scientists took advantage of the fact that Weyl fermions located away from the surface of the crystal obey Weyls differential equations to derive the boundary conditions that successfully account for intervalley interactions on semimetal surface. They solved the system of Weyls equations for two valleys by hand taking into account the derived boundary conditions, thus analytically finding the shape of Fermi arcs. In effect, they offered a quantitative as well as qualitative description of experimental data and proved that Fermi arc formation is mainly driven by strong intervalley interaction under Weyl fermion scattering on crystal surface. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with EU Defence Ministers in Valletta on Thursday (27 April 2017) for talks on European defence and strengthening NATO-EU cooperation. Ahead of the meeting, Mr. Stoltenberg stressed that the Alliance is working more closely with the EU, including on cyber defence, hybrid challenges, exercises and maritime security. The Secretary General highlighted that the importance of NATO-EU cooperation can be seen just off Maltas coast, where NATOs maritime operation, Sea Guardian, is providing support to the EUs Operation Sophia. Jens Stoltenberg: Thank you very much Prime Minister Gentiloni, Paolo. We have met many times before, but this is the first time we meet formally in your new capacity as Prime Minister and I really appreciate this opportunity to meet with you, to discuss a wide range of security challenges we face together in NATO. But especially to focus on the preparations for the meeting in May in Brussels, where NATO leaders, heads of state and government, are going to meet. The new US President, the new President of France, but also Montenegro, which is going to be at the next or the new member of NATO we will all be together there and showing the strength and the solidarity of the alliance through being together in Brussels at the leaders meeting. Let me also thank Italy for being such a vital and highly valued NATO ally. You are contributing to NATO missions, operations, activities in many different ways and that is of great importance for our shared security, for our collective defence and for the strength of the alliance. You are on the top when it comes to contributing forces to our mission in Afghanistan. You are in Afghanistan with forces which are of great importance for the mission. I have met them myself in Herat and they are there helping to stabilize Afghanistan and also helping to fight international terrorism in Afghanistan and we thank you for your presence in Afghanistan. You are also present in the Balkans, helping to keep the Balkans stable and to also address the challenges posed by foreign fighters in that part of Europe and we also thank you for being the lead nation, having the leadership in our KFOR mission in Kosovo. Let me also thank you for your contribution later this year to a Canadian-led battle group in Latvia, being part of our enhanced forward presence in the eastern part of the alliance. And Italy will next year lead our High Readiness Joint Task Force or Spearhead Force which is of great importance for the readiness of the alliance and the ability of the Alliance to reinforce if needed. So you are participating and contributing in many different ways to the strength of the alliance. In particular I would like to thank Italy for being the driving force for developing NATOs strategy towards the south. We are now in the process of establishing a Hub for the south in our Joint Force Command in Naples. This will be an important tool in strengthening, enhancing NATOs ability to address the challenges we see emanating from the south, improve our situational awareness and improve our ability to react and to deal with the threats, including working with partners in the south. NATO has been at the forefront of fighting terrorism for many, many years and our biggest military operation ever is in Afghanistan and we have to remember that the reason why we are in Afghanistan is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for international terrorists once again. NATO is also contributing to the fight against terrorism in many other ways. We have established a new division for intelligence. Sharing intelligence is key when it comes to addressing the terrorist threat. NATO is also providing support for the Counter-ISIL coalition, training Iraqi officers and providing AWACS surveillance plane support to the Coalition and you are really an important contributor to the Counter-ISIL Coalition and this is important for all of us. We are stepping up our support for Iraq and we have recently included military medicine, courses and training and also stepping up our counter-IED activities when it comes to helping Iraq stabilize their own country and fight, and fight terrorism. NATO is also prepared to help Libya. I spoke with Prime Minister al-Sarraj last week. A NATO expert team will meet with the Libyan authorities in the coming weeks to discuss how NATO can help Libya build institutions, including a modern ministry of defence, joint chief of staff and intelligence serviceshelp to build institutions which are crucial to stabilize Libya. And Italy is once again being a highly valued ally because you are really present, you are really helping to solve the crisis, the problems in Libya through the political process, but also through your presence in Libya. And we all are grateful for what you do there. Let me also underline that NATO and the European Union have stepped up our cooperation which is also important for Italy, being a member of both the European Union and NATO. And we have the NATO maritime security operation in the Mediterranean, Sea Guardian, and we have, currently we have four ships, three maritime patrol aircrafts and some other assets providing direct support to the EUs Operation Sophia, showing how NATO can help support the European Union addressing the challenges, the migrant and the refugee crisis we see in the central Mediterranean and we are also present in the Aegean Sea dealing with the migrant and refugee crisis. As you mentioned we will also address burden sharing at the meeting in May with heads of state and government. Burden sharing is about defence spending and of course when tensions are going up we have to increase our investment in defence. I welcome that Italy has increased. Last year, Italy increased defence spending. And we are following up on the pledge we made together in 2014 to stop the cuts, to gradually increase defence spending and then move towards spending 2 % of GDP on defence within a decade. But burden sharing is about more than spending. Burden sharing is also about the capabilities we are developing and Italy again is contributing with many important capabilities to NATO, to the alliance and the contributions to NATO activities, missions and operations in Kosovo, in Afghanistan but also when it comes to our presence in the eastern part of the alliance. So once again thank you so much for an excellent meeting. Thank you for everything Italy is doing for our alliance and Im looking forward to seeing you again in Brussels on the 25th of May together with all the other leaders showing the strength and the unity of the alliance. Thank you. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Maltese Prime Minister Dr. Joseph Muscat on Wednesday (26 April 2017) in Valletta, kicking off a two-day visit to Malta. The meeting was the first ever between a NATO Secretary General and a Prime Minister of Malta. The Secretary General and Prime Minister Muscat discussed NATOs relations with Malta and security challenges of mutual concern, including maritime security. Mr. Stoltenberg stressed NATOs full respect for Maltas policy of neutrality. He also thanked the Maltese government for their work, as holder of the EU Presidency, to strengthen NATO-EU relations. Maltas Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Vella, and the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security, Carmelo Abela, also participated in the meeting. On Thursday, the Secretary General will participate in an informal meeting of European Union Defence Ministers in Valletta, before departing on an official visit to Italy. Four Typhoon fighter aircraft from the British Royal Air Force arrived in Romania on Monday (April 24 2017) as part of NATOs enhanced Air Policing mission. The air patrols will form an important part of the Alliances role to maintain security in the Black Sea region and demonstrate NATOs unity and resolve in response to a more challenging security environment. The Typhoon multi-role fighters from Royal Air Force 3 Fighter Squadron will be based at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase in southeast Romania for four months. Theyll be working alongside the Romanian Air Force to conduct the NATO mission, similar to NATOs Air Policing role in the Baltics. NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu said, This is an important mission which will help keep the skies over Romania safe. Its just one of many measures NATO has taken to enhance our collective defence across the eastern part of the Alliance. From the Black Sea to the Baltics, Allies are standing together. NATO is determined to defend any Ally against any threat. Following decisions taken by Allied Heads of State and Government at the Warsaw Summit in 2016, NATO is increasing its presence in the Black Sea region. On land, this presence is built around a Romanian-led multinational brigade. Romania is a key NATO Ally and it makes valuable contributions to NATOs Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan and to the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. (Natural News) What is Earth Day, really? In the decades since its founding, several incidents have marred what was supposed to be a celebration of the environment and a day where people are made aware of the many effects of pollution. One grisly event that most people are not aware of is the observances connection with one environmental activist, Ira Samuel Einhorn. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, that may be because Einhorn has since become notorious for one other thing: the murder of his girlfriend. The Unicorn Killer Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Einhorn was a left-leaning radical gifted with a wicked rhetoric. He nicknamed himself Unicorn because his surname translates to one horn in German. The Prince of Flower Power rubbed elbows with some of the most prominent figures and celebrities of the era while still a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Jack Kerouac, Isaac Asimov, and Allen Ginsberg were counted among his circle of friends. Einhorn even managed to endear himself to corporate personalities, selling blueprints of the future to CEOS and convincing them that funneling their resources into ecological projects could save the world. His time as the Guru of Peace of Love would eventually introduce him to Holly Maddux, a member of the womens liberation movement. Maddux was initially drawn to Einhorns magnetic nature. However, she soon discovered that this political icon was not what he seemed. After years of enduring physical abuse, Maddux fled to New York where she attempted to sever ties with Einhorn over the phone. In response, Einhorn threatened to dispose of her belongings if she didnt return to pick them up. Maddux returned to Philadelphia on September 9, 1977 and was never seen again. Einhorn told police that Maddux disappeared after going out buy tofu and sprouts. No more than 18 months later, the truth was revealed after neighbors complained of a foul-smelling, reddish-brown liquid that leaked from the ceiling below Einhorns bedroom closet. A police search turned up the badly beaten and partially mummified body of Maddux. They found her stuffed into a trunk packed with newspapers, air fresheners, and Styrofoam. Before Einhorn could begin his trial, he jumped bail and spent 23 years evading authorities by hiding out all over Europe. He was finally tracked down and arrested on June 13, 1997 in Champagne-Mouton, France, where had been living under the alias Eugene Mallon. He was extradited to the United States from France over four years later. (Related: See more investigations of people and events at RealInvestigations.news.) During his trial in 2002, Einhorn took the stand in his own defense. He claimed that Maddux had been murdered by CIA agents because she knew too much about the agencys paranormal military research, an article in the DailyCaller.com stated. Einhorn was convicted of Madduxs murder on October 17, 2002 and is serving a life sentence without parole. Earth Day today Organizers have understandably distanced themselves from Einhorn, the man who claimed to have been responsible for the environmental movement. (Related: How Earth Day could reinvent itself as relevant). John Opperman, Executive Director of the Earth Day Initiative, has said in a statement to OZY.com that he was one of the millions of people who got involved in the first Earth Day in 1970, before adding that Einhorn was somewhat involved in helping put together the event in Philadelphia. You can read more pieces concerning the environment by visiting Environ.news. Sources include: DailyCaller.com CrimeFeed.com CrimeAndInvestigation.co.uk OZY.com The new visa will be available for tourists from countries whose citizens require a pre-approved visa to travel to Egypt Egypt will introduce new electronic visas for tourists as of June in an attempt to attract more visitors and boost tourism in the country, according to the tourism ministry. The new visa will be available for tourists from countries whose citizens require a pre-approved visa to travel to Egypt. However, tourists whose citizenship allows them to obtain visas on arrival at Egyptian airports will not need to apply for the online electronic visa. During a press conference on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market Exhibition held in Dubai from 24 to 27 April Egyptian tourism minister Yehia Rashed said there are promotional travel campaigns for Egypt that are expected to be launched soon in several countries, including European countries such as Italy. Rashed said that the Egyptian Tourism Authority will also prepare campaign to target new markets, such as the Indian market. "The upcoming visit by Roman Catholic Pope Francis to Egypt on Friday is a reassuring message to the world that Egypt is restoring its prominent place on the tourism map," he added. The number of tourists visiting Egypt during the first quarter of 2017 rose by 51 percent compared to the same period last year, an official source at the tourism ministry told Ahram Online earlier this week. Egypt's tourism revenues dropped to $3.4 billion in 2016, a 44.3 percent decline from the previous year, the Central Bank of Egypt said in January. The figure is a far cry from the $11 billion in revenues generated by the sector in 2010, when 14.7 million tourists visited the country. Search Keywords: Short link: (Natural News) The planets animal population is rapidly dwindling, with about two-thirds expected to be wiped out by 2020, a recent analysis revealed. To carry out the study, researchers from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) compiled data on animal population and found that it declined by 57 percent between 1970 and 2012. The research team also found that declines in animal population is set to worsen to 67 percent by 2020. According to the analysis, the planet is rapidly loosing endangered species such as elephants and gorillas, and some lesser known animals such as salamanders and vultures. The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself and we are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse, wrote Marco Lambertini, Director General of the WWF, in a cautionary report in TheGuardian.com. According to the research team, the destruction of wild areas due to farming and logging was the biggest contributor to the dwindling animal population. The report showed that only 15 percent of the planets land area was protected for nature. Researchers also cited poaching and food exploitation as key drivers to the decreasing animal population. In addition, the research team said pollution also posed a major impact in the animal population, killing marine mammals, predatory birds, and infecting amphibians in the process. Extensive water extraction and pollution had also greatly diminished the animal population in rivers and lakes, which declined by 81 percent since 1970. (Related: Learn more about the different factors affecting our planet by following Environ.news). The collapse in animal population, as well as the prevailing climate change, serve as red flags for a new geological era called Anthropocene, said Prof Johan Rockstrom, Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. According to Rockstrom, this would indicate that the human population has dominated the planet, which would reach a saturation point. Through the widespread use of toxic chemical pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals, humanity has poisoned every corner of the planet, warns Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, lab science director of CWC Labs. He dubs humanity a suicide cult that has put the planet on the path to an ecological disaster that will eventually wipe out much of the human population, too. (See Depopulation.news for more stories.) The researchers cautioned that losses of wildlife may negatively impact humans and may even provoke conflicts. Youd like to think that was a no-brainer in that if a business is consuming the raw materials for its products in a way that is not sustainable, then inevitably it will eventually put itself out of business. The report is certainly a pretty shocking snapshot of where we are. My hope though is that we dont throw our hands up in despair there is no time for despair, we have to crack on and act. I do remain convinced we can find our sustainable course through the Anthropocene, but the will has to be there to do it, said Mike Barrett, Director of Science at the WWF in the same article at TheGuardian.com. Birds, fish are also declining in numbers A recent report has also indicated that several species of birds in Atlanta have shown staggering death rates. In line with this, The Audubon Society monitored dead and dying birds to examine the cause of deaths among the animals. As it turned out, the city lights were to blame for the rising death toll in birds. According to the group, certain bird species flew at night to avoid predators, and the lights from the citys skyscrapers seem to have attracted the birds mid-flight. These birds fly to the buildings and collide with windows, which either instantly kills them or makes them fly in confusion, eventually getting preyed on by other animals. Another disturbing finding is that salmon population has shown signs of decline. According to a report by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, salmon runs exhibited an all-time low. While the cause remains unknown, experts inferred that a decrease in plankton population in in the oceans and up streams may have something to do with it. Sources include: TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com TheGuardian.com CBS46.com (Natural News) Does life exist outside of our planet? According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it very well could. Enceladus, one of Saturns 62 moons, was recently discovered to have everything needed to support life. There could very well be living things flourishing underneath its icy surface, reports Independent.co.uk. Thanks to new information from the Cassini spacecraft, scientists now know that chemical reactions capable of supporting microbes are happening in an underground ocean. In the study published in the journal Science, the scientists flew a spacecraft through a vapor plume and took a sample of the material, which was then revealed to contain great amounts of carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen are necessary for methanogenesis or the biological production of methane by microbes. This process has been observed in dark undersea environments on Earth, where sunlight is incapable of penetrating the depths, so microbes have to find other means of nourishing themselves. The presence of these two gases is what has convinced scientists that Enceladus could sustain life. Thats whats very significant here: this molecular hydrogen is a direct observation of an energetic process that is potentially capable of fueling life, Caitriona Jackman, Space Environment Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton, said. Keith Cowing, Astrobiologist and former NASA employee, concurred with: Hydrothermal vents have been found in many locations on Earth where superheated water from deep within the planet reaches the ocean. Due to the temperatures and pressure of these vents, some very interesting chemistry occurs. Many astrobiologists have suggested that such hydrothermal vents may be where life first originated on our planet. According to scientists, the three essential ingredients for life on a planet are water, organic molecules, and an energy source. The first two components have been already been detected on Enceladus before. With the discovery of carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen, the third and final requirement has been fulfilled. We now know theres not only a warm, wet environmentwe now realize theres food for life. Theres fuel for an ecosystem on Enceladus, said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiology researcher at the University of Westminster. The answer to whether or not life truly does exist on Enceladus wont be confirmed anytime soon. Cassini will end its 20-year mission on September 15 this year by crashing into Saturn. Nell Greenfieldboyce of NPR.org has stated that the spacecraft doesnt have the instruments needed to look for life itself on Enceladus. Currently, it is unknown if any other spacecraft will be sent to Saturns moon. However, according to PopSci.com, NASAs New Frontiers programmedium-sized space missionshas already begun accepting proposals for missions to Enceladus and Titan, Saturns largest moon. (Related: Read up on more space-related pieces by visiting Space.news) Fast facts about Enceladus Enceladus was first discovered on August 28, 1789 by William Herschel, a British astronomer. The name Enceladus was suggested by Herschels son, John Herschel, who chose the name because Saturn, or Cronos in Greek mythology, was the leader of the Titans. Enceladus is the name of a Giant from Greek mythology. At 504 kilometers or 313 miles wide, Enceladus is Saturns sixth largest moon. Cassini is the spacecraft that also revealed the surface and environment of Enceladus in greater detail in 2005; in particular, Cassini found water-rich plumes in the south polar region of the moon. Because its covered in water ice, Enceladus is one of the brightest objects in our solar system. It reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that hits it. Sources include: Independent.co.uk DailyMail.co.uk NPR.org PopSci.com SolarSystem.NASA.gov Science.ScienceMag.org Scientists at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have successfully grown lambs inside an artificial womb. Eight lambs born at equivalent of 23 weeks human gestation were kept alive by placing them inside a "biobag, " which looks like a huge ziplock that is attached with tubes of blood and fluids. Details about the breakthrough experiment have been published in the journal Nature Communications. According to The Atlantic, the lamb fetuses were able to survive for four weeks and are still surviving at present, which is longer than previous attempts. Their brains and organs developed without complication. They even started to grow wool and began opening their eyes. The biobag is filled with synthetic amniotic fluid while a tube that provides nutrition and oxygen and removes carbon dioxide is attached on the umbilical cord of the fetus. As clarified by the researchers, their primary goal is not to eliminate the vital role of mothers in pregnancy but to give premature babies a chance to survive by placing them inside a uterus-like environment that will nurture and protect them until they are fully developed. As per Science Alert, the leading cause of infant mortality and morbidity in the U.S. is premature birth. Those babies born before 25 weeks have low chances of survival. In a video titled "Recreating the Womb: New Hope for Premature Babies," Kevin Dysart, a neonatologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says only about half of the 30,000 American babies who were born prematurely survive. And those that survive usually have to deal with disabilities. The researchers are hoping to accomplish the whole course of the study in two years. If approved, they will begin to test the sac on premature human fetuses. Meanwhile, Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University, who is not involved in the study raised some potential ethical concerns if the technology is tested on human fetuses. "If it's a difference between a baby dying rather peacefully and a baby dying under conditions of great stress and discomfort then, no, I don't think it's better," Davis told National Public Radio. "If it's a question of a baby dying versus a baby being born who then needs to live its entire life in an institution, then I don't think that's better. Some parents might think that's better, but many would not," she says. Researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) are searching for ways to help premature babies survive. The research is now in the early stages of animal testing where a lamb was placed in an artificial womb to mimic the conditions inside the mother's uterus. The biobag is filled with amniotic fluid and attached to a placenta that helps keep blood oxygenated. The first attempt appears to be a success as the premature lamb grew successfully inside the artificial womb or the biobag for three to four weeks. "We start with a tiny fetus that is pretty inert and spends most of its time sleeping. Over four weeks we see that fetus open its eyes, grow wool, breathe, swim," Dr. Emily Partridge, a CHOP research fellow and first author of the study published in Nature Communications, said in an interview with ABC News. "It's hard to describe actually how uniquely awe-inspiring it is to see." Despite the success of the animal testing, researchers believe that human testing is still three to five years ahead. Nevertheless, the goal is to get there and they are reportedly communicating with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to conduct future testing. Some experts around the world commented on the successful trial. "But I would just caution this is pre-clinical and new and experimental data - we're still a long way off being able to use the findings from this work in the neo-natal intensive care unit," Dr. David Tingay, from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, said in a statement. Based on the study, the key to making premature babies survive is to treat them like fetuses inside the womb and extend the gestation period, contrary to caring for them in an incubator. Dr. Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon calls it a "bridge" between the womb and the outside world. Hospitals are trying to develop technologies that can help premature babies born before 26 weeks survive. Failure to develop completely can cause death and in some cases, serious disabilities such as cerebral palsy. The artificial womb or the biobag helped the lamb develop some of its organs. The lungs, brain and other organs were monitored during testing and they showed increase development during the time inside the artificial womb. The lamb even learned how to swallow during the process. The discovery of a 2.4 billion-year-old fungi-like lifeforms may be an accident, but it could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. According to a report from The West Australian, professor Birger Rasmussen from the West Australian School of Mines at Curtin University was the one who stumbled on the microfossils as he was studying rocks in South Africa. It was pure accident that led him to the discovery. "I was looking for minerals to date the age of the rock when my attention was drawn to a series of vesicles and, when I increased the magnification of the microscope, I was startled to find what appeared to be exquisitely preserved fossilised microbes," Rasmussen said, adding that he took photographs upon seeing the ancient microbes. A year later, the professor visited a group of researchers from the Swedish Museum of Natural History who had been studying cavity-dwelling fungi in modern basalt rocks. Plans of an extension were in discussion when Rasmussen showed them his photographs, shocking the team in Stockholm. The scientists' surprise was due to the fact that the microfossils suggest that fungi existed on Earth around two billion years earlier than scientists initially believed. It also brought up questions on the widely-accepted belief that fungi evolved on land. Rather, it could have come from the depths of the ocean, a report from BBC News revealed. Scientists could have been looking in the wrong place for the oldest fossil fungi. "The deep biosphere (where the fossils were found) represents a significant portion of the Earth, but we know very little about its biology and even less about its evolutionary history," Bengtson explained. Rasmussen will be exploring other sites in West Austalia that features some of the world's oldest rocks in hopes of finding out more about this organism. In the future, scientists could even explore the volcanic rocks on Mars to see if there are traces of similar life forms. The findings are published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. By September, Cassini, the spacecraft observing Saturn will plunge to its death. Part of its grand finale mission is to dive 22 times in between Saturn's rings to collect valuable data. Last April 22, Cassini started its "death dives" and plunged between Saturn's rings -- the first of 22 that it has to perform to complete the mission. "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a press release. The dive was performed in between rings, a region considered "danger zone". Along with the first of 22 dives, Cassini also completed its 127th and its final flyby to Saturn's moon titan. "This spectacular ending, the Grand Finale, going out in a blaze of glory, is a phenomenal conclusion to a chapter in humankind's exploration of the planets," Earl Maize, the Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. "Just a chapter, the book is not complete, there's more to come. But this has been a marvelous ride." The farewell flyby to Titan helped Cassini increase its velocity, thanks to Titan's gravity. The flyby also helped Cassini change its trajectory in order to perform dives into the danger zones, between Saturn's rings for its Grand Finale mission. During the first dive in between Saturn's rings, the spacecraft is flying 76,000 miles per hour fast enough to fly from Los Angeles to New York in a less than two minutes. The speed also increased the risk involved with the mission. With the trajectory and the rate Cassini is moving, any debris will pose a threat to the spacecraft. In order to protect itself, the spacecraft performed the dive with its large dish antenna facing forward, acting as a shield protecting the instruments aboard. With just one dive, scientists have already gathered useful data and the succeeding 21 more dives will surely provide more vital information about the planet. Berkeley, California, known as the home of the free speech movement, was under heavy police watch on Thursday as hundreds of people waving American flags and chanting "USA" gathered in a park to protest a canceled appearance by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Berkeley police erected barricades and refused to let any protesters enter the campus. Five people were arrested two for resisting arrest, one for possessing a knife, one for possessing a controlled substance and one for inciting a riot. Coulter previously said she was forced to cancel a speaking event at the University of California, Berkeley, although she added that she might still "swing by to say hello'' to her supporters, prompting police and university officials to brace for possible trouble. She was not spotted at the rallies. Im so sorry Berkeley canceled my speech. Im so sorry YAF acquiesced in the cancelation. And I'm so sorry for free speech crushed by thugs. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 26, 2017 In emails to The Associated Press, Coulter confirmed Wednesday that her planned speech on illegal immigration, followed by a question-answer session, was canceled. But she remained coy about what she might do instead. "I'm not speaking. But I'm going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country," Coulter said in an email. "I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment." She expressed similar sentiments on Twitter, bemoaning the right to free speech being "crushed by thugs." But Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin defended how planning the event was handled in a joint statement on Thursday: "Creating an environment that prevents violence is not censorship, rather it is protection of free speech. Ann Coulter did not take up the Universitys offer to have the event held at a time where we could ensure safety." Wilson Grafstrom, an 18-year-old high school student from Menlo Park, blamed opponents of Coulter for forcing him to gear up for problems he wore a military grade helmet with a "Make America Great Again'' sticker across the back, goggles, gas mask and knee pads. "It's a shame that someone can't speak in the home of the free speech movement," Grafstrom said. Police and university officials were on alert regardless of whether Coulter followed through on her suggestion she'd swing by, citing intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence. Officials at Berkeley said last week they feared renewed violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited "very specific intelligence" of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum. "While we cherish our freedoms of speech and assembly, there is no freedom to silence others or to commit violence," Dirks and Arreguin wrote. A group called Make Orange County Great Again first gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park at 10 a.m. Although the rally itself drew only a few American-flag toting participants, social media posts showed a large number of police cars and motorcycles with an estimated 100-plus officers milling in the area. Around 11 a.m., protesters seemed to migrate to Berkeley, where a sign at Sproul Plaza laid out what items people were allowed to bring to the protest, what might lead to searches, and what was banned. Berkeley police said in a statement that the first person arrested was charged with delaying or obstructing a police officer in the course of duty, providing false identification to a police officer and wearing a mask to conceal his identity and evade police. He was also carrying a sign that was larger than the permitted 30-by-30 inches. The second person was found carrying a knife, according to police. Neither person's affiliation was confirmed by police. The International Socialist Organization also invited students and Berkeley residents to an "Alt Right Delete" news conference at noon at the corner of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue. The event was aimed at people "who oppose racist provocateurs as much as they support freedom of speech and assembly," organizers said in an email. People faced off with each other, chanting opposing slogans, tweets showed. Some pushed for a dialogue, others debated the teachings of Christianity, and still more shouted, "They want you to be complicit" and "Say it loud, say it clear. Refugees/immigrants are welcome here." One man's sign summarized the opposing viewpoints succinctly. "The issue is not free speech. The issue is fascism," it read. A photo by Twitter user Art Tavana also indicated that Kyle Chapman, also known as Based StickMan, had arrived on the scene of the protests. Chapman has been arrested during the last two violent demonstrations in Berkeley. At "March 4 Trump," he struck an Antifa member on the head with a stick, police said. Last week, efforts by the university to cancel or delay the event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech. Dirks sent a letter to the campus Wednesday saying the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students. "This is a university, not a battlefield," Dirks said in the letter. "The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to free speech, the other to the safety of our campus community." Dirks also countered claims that police backed down when violence erupted on the campus and in Berkeley in general over the past several months. "The strategies necessary to address these evolving threats are also evolving, but the simplistic view of some that our police department can simply step in and stop violent confrontations whenever they occur ignores reality," Dirks continued. "Because threats or strategic concerns may differ, so must our approach." Even so, Dirks extended an invitation to Coulter and said the university "will assume the risks, challenges, and expenses" that accompany a future visit. He proposed May and September as alternative opportunities. "What we will not do is allow our students, other members of the campus community, and the public to be needlessly endangered by permitting an event to be held in a venue that our police force does not believe to be protectable," he said. Berkeley's reputation as one of the country's most liberal universities, in one of America's most liberal cities, has made it a flashpoint for the nation's political divisions in the Trump era. Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists. Similar violent clashes also erupted at the same site, a public park, on March 4. In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans. The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that had helped book Coulter's campus speaking events, both pulled their support Tuesday citing fears of violence. They blamed the university for failing to ensure the protection of conservative speakers. "Berkeley College Republicans do not want to endanger people's lives so because of the university's unwillingness to do their job we are forced to cancel the event," Troy Worden, president of the campus Republicans, said Wednesday. Coulter echoed the blame on Twitter: "I'm very sad about Berkeley's cancellation, but my sadness is greater than that. It's a dark day for free speech in America." Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney for Young America's Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans, also criticized the university's "unequal rules and inequitable actions." "This is a long game that we're playing," she said of the lawsuit, A legal team, including Dhillon, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Coulter and the Berkeley College Republicans, claiming university officials violated free speech rights by calling off Coulter's speaking visit. The University of California system University of California, Berkeley, Police Department and numerous university officials were named in the lawsuit. Orascom Construction, the leading construction company in the Middle East and North Africa, posted a consolidated net income of 48.7 million for the fiscal year 2016, up 114 percent from the year before, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The company, which is listed in both Cairo and Dubai, also reported a rise of 4 percent in consolidated revenue to register $4 billion in 2016. The building company was spun off from OCI NV in March 2015. Egypt remains the largest constituent of the groups backlog, contributing 52.7 percent of last years total of $5.26 billion. Orascom signed several important infrastructure contracts in Egypt throughout 2016, with activity spanning a wide range sectors including roads, power, water treatment and healthcare. Search Keywords: Short link: More than 200 people from tenant and neighborhood groups rallied in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco Thursday to protest potential federal and city cuts in affordable housing. "Housing is a basic human right. It's so important that we stand up for a basic human right," said Rene Cyprien, a San Francisco tenant whose apartment is subsidized with vouchers under the federal Section 8 program. Cyprien said that after being evicted by what he called a predatory lender, he was homeless for a year before obtaining affordable housing under the voucher program. "Thank goodness for public housing," he told the crowd. "(President Donald) Trump talks about making America great again. You want to make America great again, take care of our homeless people and housing for our seniors and our veterans," he said. The rally was aimed at protesting both Trump's proposed $6 billion cut to programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a San Francisco Planning Commission hearing Thursday on proposed legislation on affordable housing requirements for developers. Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco said, "The Trump budget makes massive cuts." It has been estimated that the cuts will cause the loss of more than 200,000 housing vouchers nationwide, she said. Organizers said more than 30 tenant, faith, labor and neighborhood organizations were represented at the rally. The speakers included tenants and union representatives and their comments were translated into Cantonese. Groups carrying large banners included the San Francisco Community Tenants Association, Senior and Disability Action, Tenderloin Chinese Rights Association, Tenderloin Filipino-American Community Association and Council of Community Housing Organizations. After a 40-minute rally, the participants marched to City Hall, where the Planning Commission was conducting a hearing on whether to recommend legislation to the Board of Supervisors to change the formula for the amounts of low-income and moderate-income affordable housing developers are required to build. UPDATE: Authorities say they are investigating the case as a "suspicious death," pending the results of an autopsy. Read the latest updates here. A 16-month-old girl who went missing from her home in a southwest suburb of Chicago was found dead early Thursday morning. After 30 hours of searching, the body of Semaj Crosby was discovered by local authorities and FBI agents around 12 a.m. inside a home in the 300 block of Louis Road in Joliet Township, according to the Will County Sheriff's Office. An evidence van could be seen parked outside the home she was found in and yellow crime tape surrounded the area early Thursday. The house is in the center of what had been a massive search area scoured by more than 100 officers, multiple teams of bloodhounds, divers and volunteers ever since the toddler was reported missing by her mother, Sheri Gordon, on Tuesday evening. Gordon told authorities her daughter had been playing outside with other children before she wandered away. Semaj was last seen in the yard of the familys Preston Heights neighborhood home with her cousins that afternoon, around 4 p.m., her mother said. Early the next morning, Gordon came out of her home to speak to NBC 5's Lauren Petty and described what she said happened during a live interview: [[420584293, C]] I just want her home with mommy. I just want her home with me, Gordon said. Just 40 minutes before Semaj's family said she was playing outside, investigators with the Department of Child and Family Services say they saw the little girl safe at the home. A spokesperson said the agency had visited the family that day and were investigating Gordon for an allegation of neglect. DCFS investigators checked on the home at about 3:20 p.m., officials said, and all three of the Gordons children were there including Semaj. About three hours later, at about 6:30 p.m., the family reported her missing. "We have had prior contact with this family including four unfounded investigations for neglect and two prior pending investigation[s] for neglect opened in March 2017," said Veronica Resa, deputy director of communications for DCFS. There were no obvious hazards or safety concerns at that time. DCFS has been working with the family, offering services since September 2016. NBC 5 learned Wednesday that Gordon had hired an attorney as authorities searched fields from helicopters in the air, divers submerged themselves into multiple nearby ponds, and dozens of local residents and volunteers held prayer circles in hopes of finding Semaj safe. As the search efforts marched past the first full day and Semaj was still nowhere to be found, a tearful Gordon said she was still remaining hopeful for her return. Thats my baby girl, thats my only girl, she said. The Will County Sheriff's Office said it was Gordon's attorney that helped authorities get consent to search the home on Louis Road around 11 p.m. Wednesday, before investigators found the body of the girl an hour later. The discovery of the girl's body prompted more questions for neighbors reacting to the news of her death early Thursday morning, wondering how the girl could have been found in the same area she was reported missing.[[420616263, C]] One man who helped with the search, Adrian Smith, told NBC 5 that he was not surprised she was so close all along. I didnt think she would have gotten too far for 16 months [old]? Smith said. She wouldnt have gotten too far anyway, unless somebody came and picked her up. She was only 16 months old. On Wednesday, Semajs aunt told NBC 5 the toddler had only learned to walk a few weeks prior and was still wobbly on her feet. She just learned to walk, so she cant get that far, said Semajs aunt Lakershia Crosby. Shes bow-legged, so every five steps she takes shes tripping over her feet. Authorities have not confirmed that Semaj was found in her own home, but Gordon and other family members were seen walking in and out of the residence during the daylong search on Wednesday. An autopsy has been scheduled for Thursday to determine the girls cause of death. The mother of a missing toddler from Joliet Township is currently under investigation for an allegation of neglect, the Department of Child and Family Services confirmed. Crews continued to scour Joliet Township Wednesday morning as the frantic search continued for a 16-month-old girl who went missing the day before. Police say Semaj Crosby wandered away from her parents at their home in the Preston Heights neighborhood just after 4 p.m. Tuesday and has not been seen since. Family members say she was last seen playing with her cousins in the yard of the home near Luana Road and Richards Street before disappearing. "We have had prior contact with this family including four unfounded investigations for neglect and two prior pending investigation[s] for neglect opened in March 2017," said Veronica Resa, deputy director of communications for DCFS. Resa said DCFS had been at the family's home April 25 about 3:20 p.m. and all three of the mother's children were there--including Semaj. "There were no obvious hazards or safety concerns at that time. DCFS has been working with the family, offering services since September 2016," Resa said. During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, authorities said more than 100 volunteers assisted in the search for Semaj but she had not been located. We are going to continue looking for Semaj late into the nightuntil we find her, Deputy Chief Richard Ackerson, of the Will County Sheriff's Office, said. We want to bring Semaj home tonight. He said the family had been interviewed multiple times and was was cooperating with authorities. Asked how far a 1-year-old could have walked, Ackerson said the search area is large and dotted with open fields, ponds, trees, bushes, you name it. Ackerson also said a caravan of deputies seen earlier in the day collecting trash cans was just a precaution and that they were leaving no stone unturned. While authorities are thankful for the help, people should stop coming out to assist in the search, he said. We do have enough people out there, please do not come out, he said. He added that if someone finds something, leave it alone and contact the Will County Sheriffs Office or FBI. The FBI has activated a tipline for the search for Semaj which can be reached at 1-800-CALL-FBI. Semaj has braids in her hair with white beads, her family said. She was wearing a long sleeve gray T-shirt with a cat on it, blue jeans and was barefoot when she went missing. "I just want her home, I just want her home with me so she can be safe," Semaj's mother Sheri Gordon said. After realizing Semaj had wandered away from the home, family members looked for the girl in the area until 6:30 p.m., when they called authorities, police said. Since then, deputies have been going door-to-door asking if anyone has seen a trace of the toddler. [[420456423, C]] Bloodhounds, detectives, patrolmen, volunteers and over 80 emergency personnel from the Will County Sheriff's Office and Will County Emergency Management searched Preston Heights through the night without success. A Cook County helicopter service provided an air search using infrared and heat capabilities, according to the sheriffs office, but the young girl was nowhere to be found. Family members told NBC 5 the girl had just learned to walk a few weeks ago and was still very wobbly on her feet. [[420490473, C]] She just learned to walk, so she cant get that far, said Semajs aunt Lakershia Crosby. Every five steps she takes shes tripping over her feet. Authorities said they had no reason to believe there was foul play involved in her disappearance, hoping that the girl had simply laid down and fell asleep somewhere until the sun came up. By 10 a.m. Wednesday, a second team of bloodhounds was called to the scene from Cook County, authorities said. Police said East Joliet Fire Department was coordinating with outside agencies for the water resource searches and using drones to assist with grid searches. A pond in the Sugar Creek subdivision was also being searched, police said. Abandoned homes, garages were also being searched, officials said. A reverse 911 call was sent to all residents within a five mile radius late Tuesday, police said, asking for the public to search in their own yards in the surrounding area. One neighbor, Reginald Alexander, was among many who walked and searched through what he said was seemingly every inch of the surrounding blocks and spaces, including abandoned homes and garages. "I don't think she's around here because we looked everywhere," Alexander said. "Everyone in neighborhood tried to find that baby and the baby still [hasn't] came up." Residents were being asked that unless they live in the area to avoid the away while emergency responders continue their search. The Will County Sheriff's Office said it considers disappearance to be a missing child case. Anyone with information is asked to call 911 immediately. A spokesman for United Airlines says the airline is reviewing its handling of a giant rabbit that died following a flight from London to Chicago. The animal was alive and showed no signs of distress upon landing but died at a pet holding facility at the airport, spokesman Charles Hobart said. "We won't know the cause of death because we offered to perform a necropsy free of charge that's standard procedure but the customer didn't want us to perform a necropsy, and we understand," he said. Hobart said the airline offered compensation to the breeder but would not disclose the amount. Breeder Annette Edwards told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday that a veterinarian checked Simon, a 10-month-old, 3-foot-long continental rabbit, shortly before the flight to O'Hare, from where it was set to continue on to Kansas City. "Simon had his vet check just before getting on the plane," she said. "He was fit as a fiddle." Simon had been purchased by a celebrity whom Edwards did not identify. Bryan Bergdale of West Des Moines had purchased the rabbit for his boss to show at the Iowa State Fair. Bergdale had driven last Thursday to Kansas City to pick up Simon when he received a call from United Airlines. Bergdale says "we'd built a pen and had toys all ready." Bergdale, who manages farmland investments, says the rabbit cost his boss 415 pounds ($530) and shipping was 1,400 pounds ($1,800). He says he had a 5-foot-by-8-foot pen built in a farm garage in Norwalk and had planned for air conditioning to be piped in. Bergdale said the United Airlines representative who called was "very nice" but didn't say anything about compensating him. He says "we're not quite sure what we're going to do." United Airlines has been dealing with public relations issues after a passenger who would not give up his seat was dragged forcibly from a plane in Chicago three weeks ago. The Virginia Class, fast-attack submarine, U.S.S. New Mexico, returned to its homeport Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base, New London after a six month deployment at sea. I'm just going to hug him, said Ret. Chief Quartermaster Rick Perritt of the U.S. Navy. He waited for his grandson to arrive on the submarine. For Perritt, its a new, proud experience being the one waiting on the pier. "He picked a career that I was proud of, he said. U.S. Air Force veteran, Capt. Edward Denalsky, flew B-17s. The 95-year-old was waiting to welcome his grandson-in-law back. "The livelihood and the excitement and the (exuberance), you know? It's just terrific! Denalsky said. This homecoming was a birthday present for military mom, Cristy Barham. She comes from a military family, but said, As a wife it's hard, but as a mom, somehow it's harder. It's just on a different level. The first coupd to hug one another was producer Alexandra Rizk Keane and her husband, Lt. Junior Grade Michael Keane. In the six months he was gone, Alexandra Rizk Keane produced the movie "Literally, Right Before Aaron," starring Cobie Smulders, Justin Long, and written and directed by NBCs "The Blacklist" star Ryan Eggold. It premiered on Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival and her husband will see the last screening on Thursday night. An infant was inside of the car when police arrested a Rhode Island man for possessing a large amount of heroin in Ledyard, police said. While investigating heroin being sold in Ledyard, the police department collaborated with the Regional Community Enhancement Task. The investigation resulted in the arrest of Juan Hazard, 41, of Canston, Rhode Island. Police located Hazard in a Cadillac Escalade on Wednesday at 5:24 p.m. When Hazard was found, police said an infant was inside the car, along with 13.2 ounces of heroin. Ledyard officers seize the heroin, a cell phone and the car. The estimated street value of the drugs is $34,500. Hazard was charged with possession of heroin with intent to sell over one ounce, possession of heroin, risk of injury and operating a car with a suspected license. His bond was set at $150,000. More than 150 students at Waterburys Wilby High School missed a day of class for violating the dress code, but now the school district is removing those suspensions from their records. They decided to suspend everyone that was not in the dress code, Wilby student Jessica Rivera said. Four of Riveras friends were suspended as part of the dress code enforcement sweep, she said. They were surprised, some of them were mad, because theres only two months left, so why would they worry about that now? Rivera said. The 1,086 students were warned last week about the dress code crackdown. We were left in the dark, we had no knowledge said Robert Brenker, the Waterbury Public Schools interim chief operating officer. While the district officials support dress code enforcement, Brenker said Wilby administrators did not follow the proper protocol of progressively disciplining students. Each one of those 156 should have had a review based on their individual record, Brenker said. Some of the students should only have received a written warning or an afterschool detention. District police calls for a suspension only after a fourth dress code violation. All the suspensions have been revoked for the 156, Brenker said of the districts decision after a parent notified them Monday about the mass suspension. The Waterbury schools dress code prohibits high school students from wearing hats, caps and hoodies. It teaches them how to be professional to a degree, parent Lygia Rinaldi said. But Rinaldi does not like how Wilby High School is trying to enforce the dress code. I think suspension is a little much for dress code, she said, cmon for clothes, what if people cant afford it. NBC Connecticut reached out to the Wilby High School Principal Michele Buerkle for comment, but she did not respond to our email. There is just something about a girl and her horse. For 15-year-old McKenzie Whitaker and her horse Ozzie, that something is a bond forged in trust. I dont think I would be the same person without him. I dont think I could do it without him, said Whitaker. Ozzie is Whitakers first horse and the reason shes fallen in love with the rodeo. The two are one in the arena and recently Ozzie helped Whitaker win her first buckle. He takes care of me in everything we do and I take care of him, said Whitaker. So when Ozzie suddenly became sick last month, Whitaker rushed him to the vet at Outlaw Equine Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Decatur. The diagnosis was grim and surgery was too expensive. Whitaker's only option was to put down her 22-year-old companion. I couldnt breathe. The thought of me going out to feed every morning and every night, not seeing him in that stall is what killed me. Veterinarian Dr. Josh Harvey watched Whitaker say her tearful goodbye to Ozzie, then turned to his team. You watch a young lady and her horse and sometimes you look and say this is what its really about, said Harvey. I could see the horse wanted to live and it was just something I felt like we needed to do. The staff worked through the night, donating their time to perform a tedious surgery to save Ozzies life and in the morning, surprised Whitaker. I started crying because Josh saved my best friend and I dont think I could do life without him beside me, Whitaker said. The girl and her horse are once again inseparable, putting their trust in each other, thanks to the kindness of others. Whitaker and her family did not have to pay a dime for Ozzies surgery. Once Ozzie is done recuperating, the two plan to get back in the rodeo arena this summer. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged U.S. President Donald Trump not to withdraw from NAFTA in a call on Wednesday, saying such a move would be counter-productive, a Canadian source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Trudeau made the comments after Trump told him he was thinking about pulling out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and asked for his opinion, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the situation. The White House said earlier that Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that he would not terminate the NAFTA treaty at this stage, but would move quickly to begin renegotiating it with them. "Trump told him (Trudeau) he was thinking about withdrawing from NAFTA and said he wanted our opinion," said the source. "The prime minister told him a U.S. withdrawal would cause job loss and instability on both sides of the border. He said he understood his frustration with Congress, but that this step would be counter-productive," the source added. Trump's administration has yet to formally advise Congress of its intention to open negotiations. Any move to break up NAFTA would cause great economic damage to Canada, which sends 75 percent of all its exports to the United States. Trudeau, according to the source, reiterated to Trump that Canada was open to a discussion about how NAFTA could be improved. Canadian officials have so far taken a largely restrained attitude to Trump's harsh language on NAFTA, describing it as a negotiating tactic ahead of the talks. Search Keywords: Short link: An especially potent strain of heroin is wreaking havoc across the Santa Clarita Valley. The number of overdoses has spiked in the last three days, in what doctors are calling an "alarming" trend. "Two nights ago, we saw eight patients come in," said Dr. Bud Lawrence, of the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. "Last night, we saw an additional OD that has come in." But as the overdoses increase, some people are trying to do something to avoid becoming just another statistic. In Bouquet Canyon Park, drug counselor Cary Quashen meets a man named Kevin, who is trying to get clean. Quashen knows Kevin, his opiate addiction, his current use of methadone. He fears Kevin's addiction could soon end up killing him. And Kevin knows, too, the dangers of a drug epidemic. He knows about David Alexander Esquivel, the 28-year-old man from Castaic who just on Sunday died of an overdose in a bathroom in the same park where Kevin now sits. "Yes, I'm concerned," says Kevin, "not for me, but for other people." Kevin makes plans to go to rehab with Quashen. If he stays there, he'll get treatment for a month or more. Others, however, may never get the chance. The number of overdose outbreaks in Southern California will continue to rise, says Quashen; taking street heroin is like playing Russian roulette: you just don't know what's in that syringe. A bill authored by Maine U.S. Sen. Angus King designed to help combat the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses such as the Zika virus has passed a committee test. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee unanimously approved King's bill on Wednesday. King, an independent, says his bill would give states and communities more tools to control mosquitoes. The bill is called the Strengthening Mosquito Abatement for Safety and Health, or SMASH, Act. It would authorize increased support for state and local mosquito control work, and reauthorize laboratory grants that support health departments in surveillance for infectious diseases. The bill now moves on to the full Senate. Florida Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, and North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr are co-sponsors of the bill. The countdown has been on all week long leading up to today as the 2017 Billboard Latin Music Awards take place live from the Watsco Center on the campus of the University of Miami. Its the show where the fans choice for music is honored and celebrated and fans will get to see some of the top names in Latin music. International superstar Jennifer Lopez is getting ready to release her first Spanish album in 10 years. The icon and star of NBCs Shades of Blue is sharing her sound tonight on stage where she'll also be honored with Telemundo's Star Award for her outreach off the stage. With well over one billion streams on YouTube, Luis Fonsi's "Despacito" is the first Spanish song to sit atop the Billboard Hot 100 since "La Macarena" in 1996. Tonight will be the first time the song, featuring Daddy Yankee will be performed live. We recorded the song a few months back, we released a video and its been crazy, Fonsi said. Four months of just promo and the song, thank God, is blowing up everywhere. Now we get to come home and celebrate it with our fans in the biggest Latin music show, so its going to be very exciting. Also exciting is that Bieber Fever has crossed over into the Latin market as Justin Bieber was featured singing in Spanish for the first time ever in the song's remix. So who made the first move - Fonsi or Bieber? It actually came from him. He was in Colombia - in Bogota doing his tour and he went out one night to a night club and heard the song and he saw how everybody started singing the song and dancing and going crazy, said Fonsi. He said wait a minute, I want to be part of this song, so he talked to his management, his management reached out to us and they said he wants to jump in on the remix so I was like yes. Nicky jam tops the list of finalists with nine entries -- he's tied with Shakira, who also goes in with nine entries tonight. Enrique Iglesias is a finalist in eight categories - including his song featuring Wisin "Duele el Corazon" for Hot Latin song of the year. You can watch all the action starting with the red carpet arrivals on our sister station, Telemundo 51, at 7 p.m. and look for Roxanne Vargas live reports starting on NBC 6 News at 4. We walked in on a discussion of The Great Gatsby in Katrina Delgados class. As they talked about the classic novels themes of ambition and social climbing, youd have to forgive the students if their minds wandered to a more immediate issue: taking the FSA exam. This is testing season in Floridas public schools. At the high school level, every 9th and 10th graders must pass the Florida State Assessment. I want them to know theyre more than just a test score, they have more to offer, said Delgado. So she sent her students at Coral Gables High School a letter, which she read out loud to one of her classes during our visit. Dear students, the FSA does not assess all that makes each of you special and unique, Delgado read. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you the way I do. Delgado knows what every parents sees at home. Testing season means monster stress on our kids. She saw a version of the letter and tweaked it, she says, to fit her own students. The scores you will get from this test will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything, there are many ways of being smart, you are smart, you are enough, you are the light that brightens my day, most of the time, anyway, Delgado read, as the class erupted into laughter. What effect did her letter have? It definitely relieved some stress, said freshman Isabella Burgos-Sosa. Made me feel a lot better. It gave kids a very good sense of how to feel before going into a very big test like this, it made me feel more secure, added classmate Van Galex. Its not just students. Delgados effort made an impression on parents, too. And I really want to see more teachers like that, said Magali Sosa, who says she noticed a palpable change in her daughters attitude after she read her teachers message. It lifts them in a way that theyre in a better mind set to go and take a test, as opposed to having all that anxiety which has been building up since the beginning of the school year, Sosa said. The FSA is here to stay. Educators say it provides useful benchmarks on academic progress. Delgado shows theres more to preparing for the test than just drilling the kids on facts, figures, and writing skills. Consider, she says, the childs mental state going into the exam. So while youre preparing for testing season, while youre in the midst of it all, remember there is no way to test all the amazing and awesome things that make you, you, Delgado reads to the class. I wish you all the best on your exams this week, love, Mrs. Delgado. The burst of applause from the classroom tells you what the students think of their teacher. You can read the entire letter below. With inmates using contraband cell phones to do everything from ordering murders to running drug operations from behind bars the Federal Communications Commission is encouraging prisons in South Florida and across the state to use technology to jam their calls. Inmates at local, county, state and federal prisons are all figuring out some way to get cell phones just like the one you use all the time not only inside but get them up and running. Images released by authorities showed cell phones found on inmates at one South Florida prison included some phones hidden in music equipment, while some are even flown over the prison razor wire by drones. Inmates with phones are a major fear of law enforcement. The recent escape of Broward County inmate Dayonte Resiles may have been aided with a cell phone, according to authorities. "I see cell phones in here basically almost everyday," federal correctional officer Sam Catchings told NBC 6. "They also have it to the point where they try to escape." Catchings heads the worker's union at the federal prison in Southwest Miami-Dade. He said one of the inmates was charged in the murder of a correctional officer in Puerto Rico who was gunned down in his vehicle. Prosecutors say the order to kill Lt. Osvaldo Albarti came from inside prison walls from a cell phone. "The public is actually going to be in harms way," Catchings said. "Our prison is actually in an area where we are surrounded by nothing but apartments, houses, so forth and so on." The Federal Communications Commission recently concluded that "inmates have used contraband devices to order hits, run drug operations, engage in criminal activity that endangers...innocent members of the public." To stem the tide the FCC is now actively encouraging those running South Florida prisons and those across the state to implement technology that would jam the inmates' phone calls. "When the FCC gets into the larger picture it certainly can bring a robust system of jamming," said computer scientist Dr. Sitharama Iyengar, with Florida International University. "Now if the inmate is a very smart person and he's able to circumvent that, then there is also the location where it is coming from can also be used." The FCC says workers at the jails and 911 calls will still get through. The jamming is aimed at stopping dangerous men like Errol Latson, a man who is charged with murder and in a disciplinary cell, who a few days ago was found somehow with a cell phone. Officer Catchings is all for the jamming to start quickly. The jails and prisons in South Florida would first have to get the money to pay for these systems. "That would be a great idea because for one it prevents the access of a cell phone from being used inside of a federal prison or any other prison, keeping the public safe from all the things that might happen," Catchings said. A boy found doused in chemicals inside his father's pesticide truck while his dead twin sister decomposed in the back would receive the remainder of a $5 million settlement under a bill passed by Florida's lawmakers. The House passed the bill 114-2 Wednesday to send it to Gov. Rick Scott for his signature. It would pay Victor Barahona $3.75 million to complete a settlement with the Department of Children and Families. Victor and his sister Nubia Barahona suffered extreme abuse by their adoptive parents. He was found suffering chemical burns along Interstate 95 in 2011 when he was 10 years old. The child welfare agency has been criticized for allowing Jorge and Carmen Barahona to adopt the children despite signs of abuse. Authorities later learned the couple tied the children up and locked them in a bathroom. A Miami Police Department officer, who at one time was honored by the governor of Florida for heroism, was arrested Wednesday after a warrant was issued on several charges including false imprisonment and battery. Officer Alexi Figueroa, 27, turned himself in following an investigation by the Miami-Dade Police Department and the State Attorneys Office. According to an arrest warrant, the charges stem from an incident that happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 26, 2016. The warrant said a 19-year-old woman left her home to go to a store in the area of Northwest 79th Street and 7th Avenue when Figueroa, who was in a marked City of Miami police car, stopped and called out to her. The officer asked her for her name and phone number, then told her to get in his car, the warrant said. The woman complied and once in the car, Figueroa started talking to her inappropriately, "as if he was interested in some type of sexual encounter with her," the warrant said. At one point, the officer leaned over toward her, kissed her on the mouth and put his hand down her shirt, the warrant said. The victim said she was shocked and startled by the officer's conduct and "felt compelled to do what he told her, since he was a police officer in a marked police car in a police uniform," the warrant said. She later called the police's internal affairs department. Figueroa faces two counts of simple battery and one count of false imprisonment, according to a statement released from Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes. Figueroa was relieved of duty with pay in February 2016 and will remain that way pending the outcome of his case and the departments own investigation, Chief Llanes said. In 2013, Figueroa was presented the Medal of Heroism award by Gov. Rick Scott. Figueroa, while off-duty, had stopped a man who was shooting at a Miami-Dade supermarket. No one answered the door at Figueroa's house Thursday. Javier Ortiz, President of the Fraternal Order of Police chapter for the Miami Police Department, released a statement saying Figueroa is "looking forward to his day in court to be exonerated of these charges." Simone and Michael Manzella cant get enough of their baby girl, Dakota. Everyones doing really good so we cant complain about that at all, Michael Manzella said. But its what happened on the day Dakota was born last September, that led the couple to call NBC 6 Responds. The couple had planned to have a home birth. We had a midwife and the whole deal, said Michael. We wanted it to be came and special and nice. But when hours passed and Simone wasnt dilating, they went to North Shore Hospital in Miami. The couple, at that point, had been up for 24 hours. They were tired and stressed, Michael said. Their midwife, according to Michael, helped them check in at the hospital and one of the things he clearly remembers saying was that they wanted to keep the placenta. Michael said a hospital nurse explained he needed to have a cooler available to take it home and how it would likely be a couple of days before the placenta would be released to them. But he said he didnt know he had to sign a release of responsibility form in order to save the placenta. Nobody ever gave us the paper, Michael said, adding he had no idea they had to sign anything until after it was too late and Simones placenta was no longer usable. I was actually very angry, Simone said. The couple told NBC 6 Responds the hospital apologized for what happened. North Shore Hospital would not talk specifics with us, but did send a statement that said: We respect the birth plan of every mother and family. In accordance with our hospital policy, we will honor a familys wish to preserve the placenta if they request us to do so. This request must be made before the time of delivery in order for the placenta to be suitable for the familys intended use. Ive never encountered a problem, said Lila Aviles, a placenta encapsulator for Mainstay Doulas & Co. Aviles said shes had clients who have delivered babies at North Shore Hospital. The key here is for the client to be informed, she said, so that a patient knows what to ask for not just at North Shore, but at any other hospital. If there is a waiver, you have to ask for them because its usually not included in the paperwork you do when checking in. Aviles company gets inquiries almost every day from families wanting to preserve placentas. The company charges $300 for the service, which Aviles performs at a clients home. Aviles processes the placenta and makes it into pills the mother can consume. According to Aviles, the pills can help new moms even though there is no scientific research to prove it. During their postpartum period, theyre experiencing less pain while recovering, theyre seeing an increase in their milk supply, theyre basically experiencing less of the baby blues, Aviles said. Simone, meanwhile, will never know if the pills would have helped her after giving birth to Dakota. But if she gets pregnant again, she now knows what she needs to do to make sure her placenta is preserved. If youre pregnant and are thinking about preserving your placenta, heres a list of some hospitals in South Florida and what they require patients do if they want to keep their placenta. Baptist Hospitals (Baptist Main/Homestead Hospital/South Miami/West Kendall) : If a patient makes the request, they have to fill out a form at registration saying they wish to keep the placenta. Mount Sinai Medical Center : On average, they get 8 to 9 requests a month from patients who want to save their placentas. Mount Sinai requires that patients fill out paperwork related to preserving their placentas. Holy Cross Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale : Generally, upon patient request, a written authorization and proper arrangements need to be made in order to preserve a placenta. The Greek capital has lots to offer the budget traveller, including historic sites, fantastic views and heaps of yummy food Athens is a beautiful city, famous for its ancient ruins and distinctive Greek culture. From the Parthenon temple to the ancient Agora, the evidence of Classical Greece can be seen everywhere, drawing crowds of history buffs and culture vultures each year. The city is also packed with historic churches and winding backstreets, while the changing of the guard outside parliament provides a fair dose of pomp and ceremony. There a wealth of shops too, selling traditional crafts and tourist nick-nacks, not to mention more cafes and restaurants than you could shake a Greek salad at surely enough to keep the most demanding city-breaker amused. But how much does this all cost? The Greek economy has taken a bad knock in recent years, with serious consequences for the local population. On the up side, the resulting cheap prices have made Athens all the more appealing to foreign visitors. The Greek capital is now one of the cheapest in Europe, and we're pretty sure it's possible to enjoy the place for just 10 euros a day, accommodation to one side. If you're wondering how that's possible, just keep reading! Stay close to the action Athens has three main districts of interest to tourists, and they are all very walkable: Monastiraki, Plaka and the Acropolis, where you will find Syntagma Square, the main square in the downtown area. Booking your accommodation within these districts ensures minimal use of transportation hence expenditure. Equipped with some comfy walking shoes, a water bottle and a map, you can explore everything worth seeing on foot. Luckily for those not keen on walking, public transport is also pretty cheap. A five-day travel card, suitable for all forms of public transport, costs just 9 euros. Breakfast time It's breakfast time, and there's no better place to start than Monastiraki, which is full of cool, cheap places to eat. Or you might head over to the Meliorotos bakery in Plaka for a delicious spanakopita (spinach pie), which is an amazin Greek delight. Or maybe youd prefer an eggplant and zucchini mini-pizza? Whatever you choose, combine it with a 1-euro coffee, and you'll keep the cost down. Your entire breakfast will cost you around 3 euros. If you're feeling more generous, you could try for the most common coffee-type drink, the cappuccino fredo, which is a cold cappuccino. Yes, for some reason, Greeks like ice-cold coffee drinks. The more energetic traveller might wish to Walk to the amazing Bread Factory bakery, which is not far from Metaxourghio metro station. This bakery has the best collection of Greek sweets and pastries, along with an amazing 1-euro ice-cream thats worth trying. Fuelled up? Let's hit the road! Start your day by walking around the Acropolis, the famous hill topped with the Parthenon temple. Now partially ruined, it is still worth the visit. Both the view and the walk are breathtaking, full of greenery and that lovely old Hellenic touch complete with cobblestone streets on which traders layout their wares. Is it 11 am yet? If so, it's time for the official walking tour! Go back to Monastiraki and join the free Athens walking tour. Understandably, this free tour is very popular, and so you have to book ahead. Just follow this link. The tour is an excellent way to get acquainted with the city's highlights. It will also provide you with some inspiration as to how to spend the rest of your visit. An afternoon stroll Having finished the tour, you should now know more about Athens than the average citizen! Now it's time to stroll through the Monastiraki flea market. You get to watch people buying and selling, while taking a few nice photographs. Nearly 2pm? Then it's time for a change. Wandering down Emrou Street, you will arrive at Syntagma Square, where you'll witness the hourly ceremony of the changing of the guards outside parliament. These guards, known as Evzones, wear distinctive traditional customs and march very smartly, attracting crowds of onlookers. If you are there on a Sunday, you will find a much larger ceremonial change at 11 am, accompanied by a marching band. Worth seeing. Walk past Syntagma Square and you will find McDonald's, beside which is a place selling very nice gyros, which is meat roasted on a rotating spit - hence the name. Go for the souvlaki, pita with beef, or the kebab; this traditional lunch will set you back only 2 euros. (The guys working there are Egyptians. Ahmed works in the morning, while Mohamed's on the night shift. If you go there, say Nour says Hi!) Now sunset is not far off, and youve spent exactly 5 euros. Not bad, huh? I was keeping the next part until sunset, because its really the highlight of your day. Head back to the Acropolis, and ask how to get up Filopappos Hill. Everyone will tell you the same thing: Go that way; it's a nice walk. And it is actually a nice hike not too tiring up the highest, most beautiful hill in Athens. You will have a fantastic view of the Acropolis, the Aegean Sea, and the whole of Athens. It's a beautiful spot to watch the sunset and take very cool pictures. Don't miss it! Athens by night Time for a brisk stroll. Go back to Monastiraki, and ask the locals how to get to Plaka. Thenstart strolling through this beautiful, historic district. You can also pick up cheap souvenirs on the way, such as a cool magnet for half a euro! If you're feeling peckish, you can get a huge scoop of ice cream for just 2 euros at Lukumades, or pass by a local bakery and buy baklava or halva for the same price, accompanied by the standard 1-euro Greek coffee. (Turkish coffee was originally Greek, but the Turks took it and added more spices.) By this time, you should have a couple of Euros left. You have two choices: either sit in a cool Greek bar in Plaka and sip on a drink or enjoy a small starter, such as zucchini balls. If you're feeling more generous, you might extend your total budget to 15 euros and have a plate of moussaka, an excellent Greek dish made of zucchini, potatoes, bechamel and meat. Your other option is to spoil yourself with another gyros and walk to the Roman Stadium, which you'll learn about on the walking tour. Climb the stairs to the top and enjoy both the view and the historic atmosphere. Whatever you choose to do, it's clearly possible to enjoy a very full day in Athens without breaking the bank! Search Keywords: Short link: Police are searching for a man they believed robbed the same Connecticut bank twice in just two days. The robberies at a Chase bank on East Putnam Avenue in Greenwich were about a mile away from a Citgo gas station that police believe the man also robbed during a 48-hour crime spree. The guy walked in the door and he asked for the money, gas attendant Elysha Ramin said. Ramin was behind the register of the Citgo on Monday night when a man he described as calm came in with his face covered and showed what looked like a gun. He said he would not hurt me, so I give him the money as quickly as possible and then he left, Ramin said. The robbery took less than two minutes and the thief made off with less than $200, police said. About 12 hours later, on Tuesday morning, police believe the man walked into a Chase bank down the street and carried out another robbery. Police think the man robbed the same Chase bank again on Wednesday afternoon with the same mask and same MO. Clearly this person has some level of desperation to commit three crimes of this nature one after the other, Greenwich Police Captain Kraig Gray said. Despite a search for the robber by a slew of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and New York State Police, the robber managed to slip away. Now the search is on to catch him before he strikes again. What to Know The worlds largest Starbucks will open in 2019 in Chicago, the coffee chain announces Researchers have taken an important step toward better lung cancer treatment by using blood tests to track genetic changes in tumors Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme has died from complications from esophageal cancer at the age of 73, 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. World's Largest Starbucks to Open in 2019, Company Says The worlds largest Starbucks is coming to Chicago. The coffee chain announced that it will open a Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chicago on North Michigan Avenue in 2019. According to the company, the four-story roastery will be a fully sensorial coffee environment dedicated to roasting, brewing and packaging its rare, small-batch Starbucks Reserve coffees from around the world. The 43,000-square-foot Starbucks will be located at Michigan Avenue and Erie Street, in the current Crate and Barrel building. The interactive space will feature multiple brewing methods, a new menu of coffees and mixology and fresh baking on-site. It will be the third roastery to open in the U.S. behind the flagship Seattle location, which opened in 2014, and one slated to open in New York in 2018. Trump Team Softens War Talk, Vows Other Pressure on North Korea The Trump administration told lawmakers it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action against an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous U.S. adversary. President Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defense secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. The same team also met with House members in the Capitol to outline the North's escalating nuclear capabilities and U.S. response options to what they called an "urgent national security threat." After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Trump's approach "aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners." It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the U.S. would defend itself and friends. Dragging Incident May Sway Flyers' Airline Pick, United CEO Says United Airlines issued a report about the April 9 dragging incident on a United Express plane, and detailed several new policies to deal with overbooked flights. A 69-year-old passenger who was already seated on the plane refused to leave when told to make room for airline crew members who were traveling for work. Cellphone video of David Dao being dragged off the plane by airport security officers lit up the internet. Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United Continental Holdings Inc., talked to The Associated Press about the incident and new airline policies designed to deal with overbooked flights. Blood Tests Track Lung Cancer Gene Changes, Aiding Treatment Researchers have taken an important step toward better lung cancer treatment by using blood tests to track genetic changes in tumors as they progress from their very earliest stages. With experimental tests that detect bits of DNA that tumors shed into the blood, they were able to detect some recurrences of cancer up to a year before imaging scans could, giving a chance to try new therapy sooner. It's the latest development for tests called liquid biopsies, which analyze cancer using blood rather than tissue samples. Some doctors use these tests now to guide care for patients with advanced cancers, mostly in research settings. The new work is the first time tests like this have been used to monitor the evolution of lung tumors at an early stage, when there's a much better chance of cure. Only about one third of lung cancer cases in the United States are found at an early stage, and even fewer in other parts of the world. But more may be in the future as a result of screening of longtime smokers at high risk of the disease that started a few years ago in the U.S. Jonathan Demme, Oscar-Winning Director of Silence of the Lambs, Dies, Publicist Says Jonathan Demme, the eclectic, ever-enthusiastic filmmaker behind the Oscar winners "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," and the director of one of the most seminal concert films ever made, the Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense," has died. He was 73. Demme's publicist, Annalee Paulo, said Demme died in his New York apartment, surrounded by his wife, Joanna, and three children. Demme died from complications from esophageal cancer, she said. Demme broke into moviemaking under the B-movie master Roger Corman in the early 1970s, and his prodigious, wide-ranging body of work always kept the spirited, agile curiosity of a low-budget independent filmmaker. His hopscotching career spanned documentaries, screwball comedies and tales of social justice. Yet his most famous films were a pair of Oscar-winners "The Silence of the Lambs," the 1991 thriller starring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster as an FBI analyst, earned him a directing Oscar, as well as best picture. He followed that up with "Philadelphia" (1993), with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, the first major Hollywood film to confront the AIDS crisis. Melissa McCarthy, Dwayne Johnson to Close Out 'SNL' Season 42 "Saturday Night Live" is closing out one of its most-watched seasons by bringing back some veteran hosts, and adding a few new faces. Chris Pine, who can be seen in the upcoming film adaptation of "Wonder Woman," will make his SNL hosting debut May 6 alongside musical guest LCD Soundsystem. Melissa McCarthy, whose rendition of White House press secretary Sean Spicer has left a lasting impression on SNL viewers, will return to host the show for the fifth time on May 13. HAIM will also perform that night. To close out season 42, which saw SNL begin broadcasting live nationwide since April 15, Dwayne Johnson will host for a fifth time on May 20. Katy Perry will return to the stage as a musical guest for the third time. Two Port Authority police officers who were vacationing in southeast Ireland saved a man after he went into cardiac arrest at a pub they were at. Officers Matthew Thomas and Matthew Gilhooley were off duty and sitting at PF McCarthys Pub in Kenmare when a 71-year-old man collapsed from his chair, Port Authority police spokesman Joe Pentangelo said. Thomas and Gilhooley ran over to the man and realize he was in cardiac arrest. The two began CPR on him and used a defibrillator to administer two shocks, Pentangelo said. About 15 minutes after the officers performed CPR, the man regained a pulse and was able to breathe on his own. The officers stayed with the man until local police and an ambulance arrived, according to Pentangelo. The man was taken to Cork University Hospital for treatment. Thomas and Gilhooley have been members of the Port Authority Police Department for four years and are trained in life-saving techniques like CPR and use of a defibrillator. What to Know Neville Smith, 32, of the Bronx, has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and other crimes in Sunday's deadly crash on the Van Wyck The driver of the car that was hit, 22-year-old Vanessa Raghubar, died Monday. Her sister and sister's boyfriend remain critical Smith was arraigned at the hospital via video conference The 32-year-old off-duty NYPD cop accused of rear-ending another car on the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens Sunday, killing the driver and critically injuring two passengers, is facing new charges of vehicular manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the deadly crash. Neville Smith was arraigned Wednesday at the hospital where he was taken after the crash, the Queens district attorney's office said. He was already facing charges of operating under the influence and first-degree vehicular assault. Smith was allegedly drunk when he crashed into the back of a Honda Accord being driven by 22-year-old Vanessa Raghubar of Elmont, authorities said. The Accord careened into a light pole on the right shoulder, and all three people inside the car were taken to a local hospital with traumatic injuries. Raghubar died Monday. Prosecutors say Smith had bloodshot, watery eyes and was slurring when police responsed to the crash scene on the Van Wyck near Rockaway Boulevard at about 4 a.m. His breath smelled strongly of alcohol, but he refused to take a breathalyzer. A judge signed a court order authorizing the hospital where Smith was taken after the crash to draw blood for analysis. The two passengers in Raghubar's car are still hospitalized. Maria Raghubar, the driver's 21-year-old sister, has a fractured left arm, a fractured hip and trauma to her internal organs, prosecutors say. Maria's boyfriend, 20-year-old Justin Harriharran, suffered cuts and bruises, as well as a concussion. Bail was set for Smith at $300,000 bond or $250,000 cash. He's set to return to court on May 11. If convicted, he faces seven years in prison. A message has been left with Smith's defense attorney. Vanessa would have graduated from York College in two months, and had a job interview scheduled for Friday, her family told News 4 Monday. New York holds the dubious lead of most fatal humpback whale strandings last year, and along with other deaths, the spike is alarming federal officials. Last year's stranding of a humpback in Moriches was one of just four mostly mysterious deaths that NOAA Marine Fisheries is investigating off Long Island. But New Jersey had several, and a total of 41 such deaths since the beginning of last year from Maine to North Carolina have led NOAA to declare a relatively rare Unusual Mortality Event. No common disease has been found so far, though half of the whale experts have been able to examine have suffered ship and boat strikes. Although the Atlantic population of nearly 11,000 humpbacks is no longer listed as endangered, they are still protected by federal law. An Army veteran is accused of fatally shooting her service dog while her boyfriend, who's also a soldier, filmed it, a North Carolina prosecutor said. Cumberland County District Attorney Clark Reaves said 23-year-old Marinna Rollins and 25-year-old Jarren Heng tied the dog, Cumboui, to a tree and shot it multiple times with a rifle. In a video posted on Rollins' Facebook page, the two can be heard giggling and laughing as the gray and white male pit bull is being killed, The Associated Press reported. Both are charged with cruelty to animals. It wasn't immediately clear whether they have lawyers. Court documents show Rollins, who is originally from Portland, Maine, medically retired from the Army in January, according to the AP. Authorities said Rollins is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and Cumboui was her emotional support dog. Prior to the shooting, Rollins posted a photo of Cumboui on her Facebook page, writing she was "sad that her dog had to go to a happier place," according to court documents, NBC affiliate WCSH reported. A county animal control officer contacted Rollins after seeing the video on social media. The officer told the sheriff's office that Rollins gave "several excuses" as to why the dog was killed, according to WCSH. Heng was arrested Monday evening and Rollins was arrested Tuesday afternoon. Heng is an active-duty soldier from Nebraska assigned to a unit that reports to the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt said. Bockholt declined to give the exact unit. Two members of the U.S. military were killed in an operation on an ISIS target in Afghanistan, NBC News reported. Another was wounded. More information on the soldiers, including what service they were in, wasn't immediately available, pending notification of their next of kin, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement Thursday. The operation took place in the Achin area, where the military dropped a massive, non-nuclear bomb called the "mother of all bombs" on an ISIS target in Afghanistan two weeks ago, the weapon's first-ever use in combat. Another American soldier died this month during an operation against ISIS in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and ISIS are fighting over territory, and with government and American coalition forces. The Department of Defense released a video of its GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon it has ever used in combat, strike a target in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan on Thursday, April 13, 2017. ISIS forces were believed to be in tunnels and caves, and the massive bomb, nicknamed the mother of all bombs, killed 36 fighters, according to... A man suspected in the fatal shooting of a Delaware State Police trooper is dead after a standoff with police that lasted nearly a day. Burgon Sealy Jr. was shot dead Thursday morning after he "engaged police" outside a house in Middletown, 15 miles from the Wawa parking lot where Cpl. Stephen Ballard was killed Wednesday. SkyForce10 video shows the home's windows, garage door and front door were blown out and debris are all over the lawn in the aftermath of the standoff. Windows and doors were blown out and siding was torn off during a standoff at a Middletown, Delaware home that left the suspect in the shooting death of Delaware State Police Cpl. Stephen Ballard dead. The overnight standoff unfolded after 32-year-old Ballard was shot dead shortly after noon Wednesday in the parking lot of the Wawa convenience store at 1605 Pulaski Highway in Bear, Delaware. A struggle ensued as Ballard had investigated two men in a red Dodge Charger. Ballard, an 8-plus year veteran assigned to Troop 2, Glasgow, never had the chance to pull his weapon, authorities said. A Delaware state trooper was shot and killed outside a Wawa store in Bear, Delaware on Wednesday afternoon. One suspect barricaded himself inside a home in a development in nearby Middletown. NBC10s Aundrea Cline-Thomas has the very latest from the scene. Faith Allen and three other witnesses ran to Ballard and tried to perform CPR on him. Ballard was later taken to Christiana Hospital, where he died from his injuries. "He shot him right in the head," Allen told NBC10. "I mean, it's sad. When you try to save somebody it's even worse when you find out they didn't make it." State police superintendent Col. Nathaniel McQueen said the vehicle had two suspicious people inside. One man got out of the car and shot Ballard several times before running away, McQueen said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. The other man was arrested at the scene. "This is a sad day for our state and for the Delaware State Police family," McQueen said as Gov. John Carney stood at his side. State police superintendent Col. Nathaniel McQueen said the vehicle had two suspicious people inside. The Charger had two suspicious people inside and had been in the parking lot for some time, State police superintendent Col. Nathaniel McQueen said. Sealy Jr., who was in the passenger seat, got out of the car and began struggling with Ballard, McQueen said. A Delaware State Trooper was shot and killed in a Wawa parking lot Wednesday afternoon. Officials identified the trooper as Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, 32. He was an 8.5 year veteran of the Delaware State Police assigned to Troop 2, Glasgow. NBC10s Drew Smith and Brandon Hudson have the latest details as police continue to surround the home of one... Sealy fired at Ballard as he fled then fired multiple rounds at the officer at close range while he was down, McQueen added. The 26-year-old suspect then jumped in his own gray Honda and drove off, the superintendenet continued. The other man in the car was arrested at the scene and later released as he is not a suspect in Ballard's killing, according to police. Sealy fleed the scene and eventually arrived at a home on the 500 block of St. Michaels Drive in the Brick Mill Farm Development in Middletown, Delaware, investigators said. Sealy's family alerted police of his location after he contacted them, according to investigators. A SWAT team and officers surrounded the home and a barricade situation was declared Wednesday afternoon. The gunman, alone in the suburban house, refused to leave and fired several shots at officers surrounding the home, state police spokesman Master Cpl. Gary Fournier said. A suspect in the murder of a Delaware state trooper at a Wawa has barricaded himself inside a neighborhood in Middletown, investigators said. NBC10s Brandon Hudson has the update. No other officers were injured. Hostage negotiators were on the scene and established contact with the man in an effort to get him to surrender peacefully, police said. But there was no quick resolution as the standoff stretched into Thursday after Sealy cut off communication with police before the he was shot and killed. Police said in a statement that officers came under fire at the home in Middletown about 4 a.m. Thursday. On Wednesday, police said they earlier blew off windows with explosives and they blew the front door off its hinges, but did not enter. "There was definitely gunfire, I could hear them on the bullhorn but I couldn't really make out what they were saying," said Susan Drejka who remained in her home nearby. Police said they kept trying to make contact with the man to persuade him to surrender peacefully but that didn't happen. Around 8 a.m. Thursday, movement could be seen in the area of the standoff as an ambulance and armored vehicle rushed toward the home, reported NBC10's Katy Zachry. The barricade situation ended about an hour later with the shootout that left the suspect dead despite immediate medical care on the scene, police said. Siding from the standoff home wound up ripped from the house -- a sign of the violent barricade situation. Most of the windows and doors on the home were also broken. The medical examiner performed an autopsy on Sealy's body that could help reveal if he was under the influence at the time of his death, police said. Sealy was charged in 2013 with concealed weapons and drug charges in Volusia County, Florida but police on Thursday wouldn't elaborate on those previous allegations. Some residents in the Brick Mill Farm community were evacuated while others weren't allowed to leave their homes. Brick Mill Elementary on Brick Mill Road was put on lockdown during the standoff. The lockdown for the school was later lifted (and school opened Thursday morning) and the lockdown for the homes remained in effect into late Thursday morning when New Castle County police lifted the lockdown. Thursday, Carney thanked Brick Mill neighbors for their cooperation during the standoff and investigation. Ballard lived in Milford, Delaware, but was originally from Bowie, Maryland, according to his Facebook page. He got married to his wife Louise earlier this year and left behind a daughter, Carney said while saying his heart aches for the Ballard family and all people and officers across the state. NBC10 / Delaware State Police A police procession was held early Wednesday evening as Ballard's body was taken from Christiana Hospital to the Medical Examiner's Office in Wilmington, Delaware. Troopers carried a flag-draped coffin into the building. Throughout the night, residents in the area dropped off candles and flowers at the Wawa in Bear, Delaware, to pay tribute to Ballard. Delaware Gov. John Carney ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of the fallen trooper. The body of a Delaware State Trooper who was shot and killed in a Wawa parking lot was taken to the Medical Examiners Office in Wilmington following a police procession Wednesday. A Wawa spokesperson said "we are deeply saddened by the tragic situation that occurred in the parking lot of our Bear, Delaware, store." To corroborate his catchphrase, President Trump may be willing to intimidate the whole world, and the attack on Syria is proof In 2003 President Bush Jr insisted beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, Hussein deserved a showdown like no other, one that ultimately saw Hussein hanged, prosperous Iraq destroyed, and law-abiding Iraqis obliterated as divisive and unruly sects emerged. And lets not forget Islamic State finding in Iraq an easy gaping void. It was proven afterwards that Saddam Hussein never possessed weapons of mass destruction, but after 11 September some country had to be at the receiving end of the bashing stick. Iraq was unfortunate enough to be the picked-on country, earning the wrath of the US. Conveniently, Saddam had invaded Kuwait, irked George Bush senior, threatened Israel, and failed to abide by US rules; besides, Iraq had oil. Iraq fit the bill, so it became a fitting target. End result: one Arab country down. Fast forward to today. Six years ago, Syria descended into civil war. Soon afterwards it became a festering ground for self-serving allegiances, with every player -- Iran, Turkey, the US, Russia, Sunnis, Alawites, Shias, opposition forces, Islamic State, other Islamists, and Assad's followers -- after its own conquest; amid all this the victims were without doubt the Syrians. Lately, the world seemed willing to end the Syrian crisis. Islamic State was losing ground. The current US administration backed off from insisting that President Assad had to go. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, also said that despite Russias support for Assad, the US and Russia can cooperate to end the war in Syria. There was light at the end of the Syrian tunnel. More significantly, Assad was in a better position than he had been in the last six years. And yet, out of the blue a chemical weapons attack struck Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town, killing 89 and bringing all the promising efforts to a halt. The US confirmed that chemical weapons were launched from Assads Shayrat Airfield. In retaliation, some 59 US air missiles hit the Shayrat Airfield killing 13 people and destroying the facility. President Trump's swift decision to attack the airfield had far reaching ramifications that resonated around the world with benefits for the US president. At face value, President Trumps decision revealed a humane, empathetic president moved by the sight of dead children. I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me, a big impact, Trump said. But there is more to the attack than compassion towards Syrian children. The strike told friends and foes that the US has taken upon itself the role of the almighty watchdog, affirming that a new sheriff is in the Oval Office. In particular, the attack was meant as a wake up call to North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the world at large. It said, World, you had better watch out; the new president means business. No doubt the decision to act so speedily in the face of what seemed a hideous act improved Trumps image among Americans too. Obama had once drawn a red line against Assad's use of chemical weapons, but went back on his word; here was Trump setting the red line in stone. That the attack served President Trump and US is a given; that it helped Syrians is fictitious. The Syrian opposition cheered and terrorists celebrated. Weakening the Syrian army will allow Islamic State to dominate the area near the airfield. more importantly, it further pitted Syrians against one other. Like Iraq, Syria was the perfect target. Like Saddam Hussein, Assad had irked the US. The Russians were proving themselves in Syria and had to be told off. And did the fact that the Syrian crisis was on the verge of ending irk some even further? End result: second Arab country stays down. A symbolic but powerful move, the attack cost the US nothing but the missiles. The aim was not to aggravate the Russians to the point of retaliating, merely to tell them who is mightier. In fact, the Russians, who utilised the same airfield were forewarned an hour before the attack. Hence, the act angered Moscow, strained US-Russian relations further, but didnt kill any Russians end of story. From another perspective altogether, Assad and the Russians denied that the Syrian army used chemical weapons. Russia asked the US to provide evidence for its claims and put the 4 April release of chemical weapons down to an air strike that hit a storage facility where rebels were storing them. Similar to what happened in Iraq, time will tell where the truth lies. In an alarming but apt revelation, the BBC said in a story following the attack, The question thus arises: who once again slipped something in to yet another US president as 'evidence' of the existence of 'chemical weapons' in a country Washington objects to, and what exactly was it? The attack and the ambience of superiority that followed will set the tone and approach for all American officials, a tone that is intimidating with words if not actions. Even before the attack US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that she wears heels to kick those against Israel or those who talk down the US. After the attack, and while the US held the rotating leadership of the UN Security Council this month, Haley blasted not only Assad but the Iranian and the Russian governments for supporting Assad. Assad did this [launched a chemical weapon attack] because he thought he could get away with it. He thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia would have his back. That changed last night. Lets hope this attitude abates. The world is not ready for another round of intimidation. The writer is an academic, political analyst, and author of Cairo Rewind: the First Two Years of Egypt's Revolution, 2011-2013. Search Keywords: Short link: It may not be quite like the Jetsons, but for over a million dollars you too can soon fly around in a car. A Slovakian company called AeroMobil unveiled on Thursday its version of a flying car, a light-framed plane whose wings can fold back, like an insect, and is boosted by a hybrid engine and rear propeller. It will be available to preorder as soon as this year but is not for everyone: besides the big price tag between 1.2 million and 1.5 million euros ($1.3 million-$1.6 million) you'd need a pilot's license to use it in the air. "I think it's going to be a very niche product," said Philip Mawby, professor of electronic engineering and head of research at the University of Warwick. Several companies are working on flying cars, either like Aeromobil's two-seater that needs a runway, or others that function more like helicopters, lifting off vertically. But not many companies are seriously looking at marketing these vehicles anytime soon, Mawby said. "The technology is there... The question is bringing it to the market at an affordable cost, and making it a useful product." Among the big questions is how to control the air traffic if there are hundreds of such vehicles zipping through the air. There is no control except for traditional aircraft, notes Mawby. So while vehicles like the AeroMobil could be used for recreational purposes by people who have a large piece of land, flying cars are unlikely to become a mass market reality anytime soon, he says. The AeroMobil has a driving range of about 100 kms (62 miles) and a top speed of 160 kph (99 mph). When flying, its maximum cruising range is 750 kms (466 miles), and it takes about three minutes for the car to transform into a plane. "You can use it as a regular car," said Juraj Vaculik, co-founder and CEO of Aeromobil, at the unveiling in Monaco. Though it is not legal yet to take off from a highway. The previous AeroMobil 3.0 prototype made news in 2014 when it was presented in Vienna, but no test-flight took place then. It crashed during a test flight in Slovakia in 2015 with its inventor Stefan Klein on board. He escaped largely unharmed. Charlton reported from Paris. Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report. Police are asking for the public's help locating the killer of a 17-year-old girl who was fatally shot in Wilmington Wednesday night. Officers responded to reports of gunfire in the 900 block of Kirkwood Street around 9:30 p.m. They found the victim suffering from wounds to the torso and arm. She was treated at a nearby hospital but pronounced dead later that evening. Police do not have a description of the suspect, and are asking for the publics help investigating the shooting. Anyone with information should call Det. McKenzie Kirlin at 302-576-3653 or the Delaware Crime Stoppers Tipline at 1-800-TIP-3333. People can also text a tip to 888777. Pennsylvania State Rep. Brian Sims is out and proud. So when an Internet troll posted a bigoted message to his Facebook page, Sims appealed to a higher authority: the harasser's grandmother. It all started around 7 a.m. Wednesday when the states first openly gay representative scrolled through his public Facebook page and found a nasty racist and homophobic comment on his feed: No stranger to hate speech, Sims clicked on the commenters profile and found a Michigan phone number listed several times. He called and got the mans grandmother instead. To be clear, he wasnt expecting the elderly woman to answer. When she did, he explained what happened and asked if she knew about to reach the young man. She did and passed along his personal number. She was very nervous and very uncomfortable about the whole thing, Sims said, adding that she was disappointed with how her grandson behaved. Sims, who represents Center City, called the man and left a message. He received a return call shortly after. The two spoke briefly, but Sims said nothing was resolved. Their conversation went something like this: Sims asked the man, identified only as David, why he would write such hateful things on a strangers page in the middle of the night. David denied it. He then admitted it. He then denied it again and didnt really know how to respond. Like his grandmother, David was uncomfortable, Sims said. Toxic masculine detractors - these are my trolls, the Philadelphia-based lawmaker said. Were seeing more of this type of bully, this kind of cowardice, around the country. Sims checks his social media page every morning when he first wakes up in an effort to spare followers from being exposed to this kind of nastiness. He usually just deletes it, but this time the troll didnt mention any specific policy or legislation. It was typical late night keyboard cowardice that needed to be stopped, Sims said. A lifelong civil rights advocate, Sims has made gay rights a top priority in his personal and professional life. This kind of agenda regularly opens him up to cyberbullying, but Sims said he wont be intimidated. We are the moral majority, he said. Part of the reason the minority of awful, hateful, bigoted people behave in this way is because they fear the moral majority. They are scared of us. It is incumbent on us to do something. On Thursday, Sims took this message to Facebook. He encouraged his base to speak out against whatever injustice they encounter: GET INVOLVED: A lot of people are paying attention to my page right now and so I want to simply say that if you liked what I had to say, or how I said it, than lets get more people like me into our government! Sims is an ardent crusader for marriage equality, equal pay for women, funding for Planned Parenthood and other liberal causes. He recently spoke against fellow Pennsylvania Rep. Martina White, a vociferous opponent of sanctuary cities in the Keystone State. Of his Michigan detractor Sims simply said, I dont think he will be doing it again. Flags in Delaware were lowered to half staff Thursday in honor of fallen state trooper Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, who was gunned down in a Wawa parking lot Wednesday afternoon. The 32-year-old husband and father was killed shortly after noon at a convenience store located on US Route 40 in Bear, Delaware. "I stand before you with an aching heart that aches for Ballard, his wife, his daughter, his family," said an emotional Gov. John Carney Thursday afternoon. "This is a time to mourn, to mourn and to lift up our own." Ballard was described as a loyal and dedicated police officer who served more than eight years on the force. Several colleagues choked back tears during a news conference Thursday, touting the bravery and commitment Ballard showed during his time as an officer. NBC10 / Delaware State Police "This is a sad day for our state and for the Delaware State Police family," state police superintendent Col. Nathaniel McQueen said as Gov. John Carney stood at his side. One man got out of the car and shot Ballard several times before running away, McQueen said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. The other man was arrested at the scene. A police procession was held early Wednesday evening as Ballard's body was taken from Christiana Hospital to the Medical Examiner's Office in Wilmington. Troopers carried a flag-draped coffin into the building. Throughout the night, residents in the area dropped off candles and flowers at the Wawa to pay tribute to Ballard. The body of a Delaware State Trooper who was shot and killed in a Wawa parking lot was taken to the Medical Examiners Office in Wilmington following a police procession Wednesday. Ballard had been on the force for more than eight years, according to state police spokesman Sgt. Richard Bratz. He was originally from Bowie, Maryland, and recently married to Louise. He leaves behind a wife and young daughter. "We have lost another officer who dedicated his career to noble public service, Carney said. "He went to work every day putting his life on the line to protect the rest of us." Investigators said the ordeal started when Ballard saw two suspicious-looking people sitting inside a red Dodge Charger at Wawa around 12:30 p.m. Police do not know what drew Ballard's attention to the vehicle. He approached the men and a struggle ensured, police said. The passenger got out of the car and fired several shots at close range. Ballard was struck in the upper body. He never had the chance to pull his weapon or return fire, authorities said. The suspect fled to a home on the 500 block of St. Michaels Drive in the Brick Mill Farm Development in Middletown about 15 miles away. An hours-long standoff ended Thursday morning with police shooting the suspect. Hes not a monster and hes not a thief, said Tyler James Yeagers ex-wife Nikki Schab during an emotional conversation about the U.S. Marine veteran jailed in Mexico. She shared pictures of the two of them together when they were 21, sitting together holding hands. They are mementoes of the life they shared before, she says, his PTSD got really bad. Schab said shes shocked the man she loves, the Marine veteran who served the United States, is the man Mexican prosecutors say was arrested April 23 in Mexico for a series of robberies in Tijuana. Stolen cars, cash and materials to make fake titles were all found in a home where Yeager was staying according to Mexican officials. Schab said thats not the Tyler she knows. Hes very proud and very fun and he loves life," she said. "I think he was more or less down there and got trapped in his PTSD and he thinks he's still at war." Yeager is a 39-year-old former USMC rifleman and scout sniper who served at Camp Pendleton with the 2ND Battalion 5th Marines 1st Division from 1996 to 2000. Tijuana police said a surveillance picture showed Yeager with a shotgun walking near homes minutes after a home invasion. Hes a good man. Hes just lost. He needs help, Schab said through tears. Three days before Yeager's arrest, Schab said she spoke to him via Facebook. She said they joked about their dog named after Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager while urging him to go home to Montana to be with family who loves him. Hes still somebody. His dad is waiting for him to come home," she said. The United States Consulate in Mexico is helping Yeager while he's behind bars. Documents show he was at a VA center in 2015 that houses homeless vets in need of help with drug and alcohol addiction. Congress is losing one of its perks. In June, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) will block members of Congress from using 89 VIP parking spaces near Reagan National Airport. Those parking spaces, which are particularly close to the airport's terminal, will be instead be made available to construction crews working on an airport expansion. The parking spots have long been a popular benefit for members of Congress, international diplomats and members of the Supreme Court. The VIP parking spaces to be shuttered are located in a special lot across the street from the airport's parking garage A, separate from the public garages. All 435 members of the U.S. House and all 100 U.S. senators are given passes to use the restricted parking spaces. A similar privilege is extended at Dulles International Airport. "We're closing the 'restricted lot' at Reagan National effective June 30 to make room for adjacent construction of the new security checkpoints," an MWAA spokesman told the News-4 I-Team. "Contractors will use the lot to access the worksite and stage equipment and supplies until 2021." The new construction is part of an infrastructure program called Project Journey, a $1 billion investment to expend the airport for its quickly growing load of passengers. Members of the U.S. House and Senate will retain another airport perk. Federal legislators are permitted to park for free at Reagan National, in garages and lots used by passengers. Records obtained by the I-Team under the Freedom of Information Act show members of Congress used the free parking benefit hundreds of times in 2015, costing taxpayers more than $132,000. "While it may not seem like a major perk, it is still one of the coveted benefits of being a member of Congress," said David Williams of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. "Now, maybe they will know what it's really like for travelers trying to catch a flight without having special parking privileges. Let's hope this gives them at least them at least a little bit of appreciation for the many inconveniences travelers face every day." According to a U.S. State Department memo, "At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), there is a limited restricted lot adjacent to the South Metrofare Plaza and directly across the street from Public Parking Garage A marked 'Reserved for Congressional, Supreme Court and Diplomatic Corps'.... If the restricted parking lot is full, vehicles bearing diplomatic 'D' license plates and displaying placards may also use any public parking facility. Upon exiting, diplomats are required to sign parking tickets and present their 3 diplomatic identification cards to the parking attendant to be exempt from payment." A Delaware State Trooper from Bowie, Maryland, who was shot and killed in the line of duty Wednesday is being remembered for his kindness, leadership and willingness to serve. Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, 32, was shot dead in the parking lot of a Wawa convenience store in Bear, Delaware, NBC10 reported. A struggle ensued as Ballard had investigated two men in a suspicious car. Ballard, an 8-plus year veteran assigned to Troop 2, Glasgow, never had the chance to pull his weapon, authorities said. Police later shot and killed the armed suspect after an hours-long standoff, Delaware State Police said. Paul Cienciolo, Ballard's former mentor, told News4 Thursday that Ballard joined the Civil Air Patrol as a teenager. The organization allows young people to work closely with the Air Force. Cienciolo said Ballard stood out from the beginning. "He was a big lovable teddy bear, I guess you could say. Everyone enjoyed being around him he was always, you now, the one that everyone liked to talk to," Cienciolo said. At just 18-years-old, Ballard was a leader. He was tasked with overseeing more than 100 cadets in the Civil Air Patrol in 2005. Ballard then went on to college at Delaware State University and shortly after graduation he became a state trooper. "He always had a passion to do something in that realm where he was serving and helping people in need," Cienciolo said. "I think that's how he saw being a state trooper too is somewhere where he could help people in need." Cienciolo said Ballard left behind a wife and a young child. UPDATE: The standoff with the suspect in Cpl. Stephen Ballard's shooting death ended Thursday morning with the suspect shot dead by police. As friends and family mourned a Delaware State Trooper shot and killed in a Wawa parking lot, a suspect in the case opened fire overnight on police trying to end the standoff. Officials identified the trooper as Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, 32. Ballard was an 8-plus year veteran of the Delaware State Police assigned to Troop 2, Glasgow. He lived in Milford, Delaware but was originally from Bowie, Maryland, according to his Facebook page. He also got married earlier this year. A police procession was held early Wednesday evening as Ballard's body was taken from Christiana Hospital to the Medical Examiner's Office in Wilmington, Delaware. Troopers carried a flag-draped coffin into the building. The body of a Delaware State Trooper who was shot and killed in a Wawa parking lot was taken to the Medical Examiners Office in Wilmington following a police procession Wednesday. Investigators said the ordeal began shortly after noon Wednesday when Ballard observed two people inside a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot of the Wawa store at 1605 Pulaski Highway (US Route 40) in Bear, Delaware. After Ballard approached the two men, a struggle ensued, according to officials. One of the two suspects then exited the vehicle and fired several shots, striking Ballard. "I thought it was two kids struggling at first," Faith Allen, a witness, told NBC10. "And I heard, 'pop, pop, pop.' And I noticed it was a cop. And the guy just took two steps forward and, 'pop, pop.' Two more times." Allen and three other witnesses ran to Ballard and tried to perform CPR on him. Allen said the trooper's gun was still in his holster as he was on the ground. Ballard was taken to Christiana Hospital, where he died from his injuries. "He shot him right in the head," Allen said. "I mean, it's sad. When you try to save somebody it's even worse when you find out they didn't make it." NBC10 / Delaware State Police Responding police officers arrived at the scene and took one of the suspects into custody. Another suspect ran away on foot. Police say the fleeing suspect eventually arrived at a home on the 500 block of St. Michaels Drive in the Brick Mill Farm Development in Middletown, Delaware, about 15 miles away from the Wawa. A SWAT team and officers surrounded the home and a barricade situation was declared. The suspect refused to come out and even fired shots at police, investigators said. "The suspect has been firing shots at the police officers from the residence that he lives in and is currently held up in the house," Delaware State Police Master Corporal Gary Fournier said. "Now we have members from allied agencies throughout the state of Delaware that are on scene. We've established a perimeter on the house. He is contained to the one house but continues not to surrender as we wish. We will be on scene until we get a peaceful resolution." The Explosives Ordinance Disposal Unit (EOD) used an explosive at the front door of the home at 8:22 p.m. but officers did not enter the house. The suspect remained barricaded inside as police continue to try and persuade him to surrender. He opened fire on officers, again, around 4 a.m. Thursday, police said. Officials announced a Delaware State Trooper died from his injuries following a shooting in a Wawa parking lot. Some residents in the Brick Mill Farm community were evacuated while others weren't allowed to leave their homes. Brick Mill Elementary on Brick Mill Road was put on lockdown during the standoff. The lockdown for the school was later lifted but the lockdown for the homes is still in effect. The Odessa Fire Company at 304 Main Street in Odessa, Delaware opened its facility to temporarily house any evacuated residents. Two of the evacuated residents, Lori and Todd Capriotti, told NBC10 they live three houses down from the barricaded suspect. Lori Capriotti said she rarely saw her neighbors who live in the home and never noticed anything suspicious. "Maybe I've seen them twice," she said. "They're quiet. You don't see anybody leave the house, come in the house, nothing." Delaware police warned for people to avoid the investigation areas and expect possible traffic impacts. Brick Mill Road is currently closed between Marl Pit Road and Middletown Odessa Road (SR2999). Motorists traveling on I-95 southbound approaching Exit 1A in New Castle County, Delaware can expect delays as well. A Delaware state trooper was shot and killed outside a Wawa store in Bear, Delaware on Wednesday afternoon. One suspect barricaded himself inside a home in a development in nearby Middletown. NBC10s Aundrea Cline-Thomas has the very latest from the scene. Throughout the night, residents in the area dropped off candles and flowers at the Wawa in Bear, Delaware to pay tribute to Cpl. Ballard. Delaware Governor John Carney ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of the fallen trooper. Delaware Senator Tom Carper also released a statement on Cpl. Ballard's death. My heart is in Delaware, and it breaks for the loved ones of the Delaware State Police trooper who will not return home this evening," Carper wrote. "Martha and I consider Delaware State troopers to be an extension of our family. We are sending our love and prayers to his friends, family and the Delaware State Police family. This unthinkable tragedy reminds us of the extraordinary courage and service of our men and women in law enforcement protecting our communities." My staff and I are closely monitoring this situation as it unfolds. I pray for the safety of our police officers and first responders on the scene. A Delaware state trooper was shot and killed at a Wawa in the Newark, Delaware area on Wednesday. NBC10s Mitch Blacher was at the hospital as the troopers body was driven away. A spokesperson for the Wawa store also released a statement. "We are deeply saddened by the tragic situation that occurred in the parking lot of our Bear, Delaware store today," the spokesperson wrote. "Our hearts are broken and our thoughts and prayers are with the officer's family and the entire Delaware State Police community during this difficult time." "Out of respect to the officer, our associates and all those affected, the store will remain closed until Saturday. We will continue to do everything we can to help." A suspect in the murder of a Delaware state trooper at a Wawa has barricaded himself inside a neighborhood in Middletown, investigators said. NBC10s Brandon Hudson has the update. Editor's note: NBC10 initially erroneously reported the Wawa was in Newark rather than Bear, Delaware. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz wants funds seized from El Chapo, and other drug lords, to pay for the border wall. On Tuesday, Cruz introduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act that would "reserve any amounts forfeited to the U.S. Government as a result of the criminal prosecution of El Chapo (formally named Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Lorea) and other drug lords for border security assets and the completion of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border." In a statement Tuesday, Cruz said the U.S. government is seeking the criminal forfeiture of $14 billion in drug proceeds from El Chapo. Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border, said Cruz. Ensuring the safety and security of Texans is one of my top priorities. We must also be mindful of the impact on the federal budget. By leveraging any criminally forfeited assets of El Chapo and his ilk, we can offset the walls cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trumps stated border security objectives. El Chapo is the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who escaped a Mexican prison in July 2015 before being recaptured in January 2016 and extradited to a U.S. prison in January 2017. He's expected to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering. A Massachusetts high school administrator has been fired after allegedly violating social boundaries between students and faculty. NBC Boston was sent a letter from a student at Central Catholic High School in Lawrence that was sent out from the president and principal of the school. The letter stated that Andrew Nikonchuk, the school's director of curriculum and instruction, had been terminated after officials determined he "violated the school's policies pertaining to appropriate social boundaries between students and faculty." The letter went on to say that school officials were assessing the extent and frequency of the policy violations and possible violations of the law. It did not go into further details. "A large part of this responsibility lies in informing you of any suspected incidents impacting your safety and well-being, as well as offering support to any student whose safety or well-being may have been imperiled," the letter read. School officials said the district attorneys office and local law enforcement are involved in the investigation. Anyone with information regarding the school's investigation is encouraged to contact them at 978-682-0260, ext. 611. An investigation into a 2015 incident where a Massachusetts state police trooper fatally shot a knife-wielding man in Boston has determined the officer was acting in self defense and the defense of others, according to the district attorney. Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley released hundreds of pages of interviews, more than 450 photos, dispatch recordings, video clips and more in announcing the findings of the 2-year investigation on Wednesday. Santos Laboy, 45, of Somerville, was shot and killed by Trooper Andrew Patterson on June 19, 2015, as he approached the trooper with a knife on the Silber Way Footbridge near Boston University. The district attorney's investigation found that Patterson was retreating from Laboy when he fired, and only fired after Laboy refused numerous commands from multiple officers to stop and drop his weapon. Laboy died at the scene. He had a long record and outstanding warrants, and had previously spent time in prison. At the time of the shooting, he was being sought by Boston University police in connection with an earlier investigation. "After a careful consideration of the facts and the law, I have determined that, under the circumstances, Trooper Pattersons use of force was a lawful and reasonable exercise of self-defense and defense of others," Conley wrote, citing Massachusetts law related to the use of lethal force in self defense and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Conley also noted that Laboy was about 20 to 25 feet away from Patterson when he fired his gun, a distance that the trooper had a reasonable belief could be crossed in less time than would allow him to defend himself, and that Patterson was aware of a potential risk to the crowd behind him were Laboy able to get past him and cross the bridge to Back Street. Massachusetts State Police Col. Richard McKeon issued a statement Wednesday in response to the findings, saying he is confident that Patterson acted appropriately, and in defense of himself and others. The evidence, as affirmed by the Suffolk County District Attorney today, showed that Trooper Patterson took repeated steps to try to de-escalate the confrontation and showed remarkable restraint," McKeon said. "He repeatedly commanded the suspect, Santos Laboy, to drop his weapon, to no avail. The trooper moved backward as far as possible. When the armed suspect continued to close in on Trooper Patterson, and with the trooper also concerned for the safety of a crowd of civilians behind him on the Esplanade, Trooper Patterson as a last resort fired his weapon and struck the suspect, ending the threat. "As police officers, we never want to have to fire at a suspect. Nonetheless, in certain circumstances, when an advancing armed suspect does not comply with orders to drop his weapon, or if no other means of de-escalation are possible, doing so is necessary to protect officers and bystanders. Trooper Patterson acted in accordance with the law and his training as a Massachusetts State Trooper." Laboy's family has only said they are heartbroken, and that at the time of the shooting he struggled with mental health issues and needed more help. Police have arrested two suspects who they say shot the female owner of a liquor store in Taunton, Massachusetts, Wednesday night during an attempted robbery. The suspects, 18-year-old Billy Morris and a 17-year-old male, were arrested Thursday morning, according to police. Police say the shooting happened at about 8:35 p.m. at Eagans Package Store on Cohannett Street. Police said surveillance video captured two men attempting to rob the store, with one of them wielding a rifle. The owner refused to hand over any money and grabbed the barrel of the gun. The suspect then fired and the owner was wounded in her left side. She has been hospitalized for serious injuries and is currently in stable condition. Police said the two suspects fled the store empty-handed on foot. The teenage suspects are schedule to appear in court on Thursday. Thursday, dozens of customers stopped by, leaving flowers and notes on two poster boards outside the business. "I feel bad for her. She is a good lady," Steve Sanchez said. "I get choked up just thinking about her, she is really nice." "Great lady, generous and funny, and she would give anybody in this neighborhood anything if they wanted it," added Jim O'Toole. "I hope they hang those guys by their thumbs." Customers say the victim always greeted them with a smile. "Even if you were having the worst day ... she would always go, 'beautiful sister, you look so beautiful today,'" recalled Mary Christofaro. Families in a Colchester, Vermont, community are preparing to leave or tear down their homes after a court ruled they were violating lease terms. According to affiliate NBC 5, the Vermont Supreme Court sided with Mongeon Bay Properties, who owns the land on East Lakeshore Drive. It was determined that after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, erosion on parts of the shoreline along Lake Champlain was a violation of the lease. Most homeowners on the leased land have bought or built their own homes. Locals gathered enough funds to repair the shoreline with a sea wall, but were ultimately evicted by Mongeon Bay Properties. Homeowners were given the choice to demolish their home or take a buyout of around $4,500 and leave their home and appliances behind. Majority of homeowners in the area have taken some sort of buyout, though between five and seven homes have already been destroyed. Look around the cybersecurity infrastructure at any enterprise organization, and heres what youll seedozens and dozens of cybersecurity tools from just as many vendors. Now this situation wasnt planned; it just happened. Over the past 15 years, bad guys developed new cyber weapons to exploit IT vulnerabilities. And large organizations reacted to these new threats by purchasing and deploying new security controls and monitoring systems. This pattern continued over time, leading to todays patchwork of security point tools. + Also on Network World: Is your company spending on the right security technologies? + So, whats the problem? Point tools arent really designed to talk with one another, leaving human beings to bridge the communications, intelligence and technology gaps between them. Furthermore, each individual tool requires training, deployment, configuration and ongoing operational support. More tools, more needs. Fast forward to 2017, and there simply arent enough eyeballs, hands or hours in the day to make this jerry-rigged security model work. Want proof? In a 2016 research project conducted by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), survey respondents were asked about the ramifications of the global cybersecurity skills shortage on their organizations. Alarmingly, 35 percent said the skills shortage has created a situation where the cybersecurity staff doesnt have adequate time to learn the nuances of the security technologies they purchase, leading to a condition where these technologies arent used to their full potential. In summary, many enterprises have too many security point tools and not enough time. And the downsides here are pretty bad: complex operations, employee burnout, low ROI and increased risk. Fortunately, CISOs recognize the state of their cybersecurity technologies and are adjusting their strategies accordingly. Recent ESG research reveals that 24 percent of enterprise organizations claim they are actively consolidating the number of cybersecurity vendors they do business with, while another 38 percent are consolidating the number of cybersecurity vendors they do business with on a limited basis. And another 21 percent are considering vendor consolidation. Look for this trend to continue and accelerate. As previously mentioned, another issue with point tools is their inherent lack of integration with one another. CISOs are busy addressing this, as well, with updated security technology procurement strategies74 percent of survey respondents said their organizations select best-of-breed security technologies but only if they are designed for broader integration. This sentiment was summarized by a CISO I spoke with who exclaimed, "Integration is the new best of breed." It will certainly take time for large organizations to replace legacy security point tools with new technologies built for integration, but the ESG data points to a burgeoning trend. Enterprise organizations are actively tossing security point tools aside and building integrated security technology architectures (similar to ESGs SOAPA model). Henceforth, security point tools must offer stand-alone functionality, provide easy integration into broader security architecture, and be able to interoperate with other security technologies to provide a force multiplier effect. FILM REVIEW: Brits Jason Statham and Helen Mirren on-board for number 8 in the Fast & Furious franchise, The Fate of the Furious. Fate of the Furious (12A) Running time 2hr 16mins Rating: *** AT some point, the Fast & Furious franchise ceased to be a series about street-racing, a reality belatedly confirmed with this instalment, which features, among other barmy spectacles, a submarine chase and an airborne baby rescue. Its a glossy technothriller in the Mission Impossible mould; while one might appreciate the producers initiative, theres only so many times a self-righteously bovine action saga can revolutionise itself at this rate, its not hard to see the next movie taking Vin and the gang into space. Despite all this, The Fate of the Furious (or: Fast 8, Fast & Furious 8, F8) comes across a curiously unfatigued specimen. Its plot (something involving nuclear espionage and the Russian defence minister) is nonsensical, the various character threads demanding the sort of tireless intellectual investment necessitated by Marvel outings. The film is quite evidently conscious of the extent to which its deviated from the family recipe, with an opening pursuit down Havanas scenic streets standing in as an apology to fans of the early episodes. With that out of the way, its content to move on to more serious matters, as the honeymoon of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) is crashed by the mysterious Cipher (Charlize Theron), an impossibly wealthy cybercriminal determined to blackmail him into one last job. Enter Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), et al, for more big-budget shenanigans. Gone is Paul Walker, killed in a tragic 2013 car crash; nevertheless, F8 lives up to the series star power, with a British invasion (Jason Statham and Helen Mirren are both on board) doing much to keep things fresh. Gone also is the soap-y, non-vehicular drama that prevented the movies descent into bargain bin guff (in other words, to the level of much of Diesels recent work). Its not difficult to gauge the logic behind this shift the current posse are a little on the stale side, and the Diesel-Johnson pairing has definitely lost its magic (Johnson-Statham, on the other hand, delivers cross-Atlantic quippery gold). But the usual rent-a-thrills are all here. The riotous pacing never allows the fragile character mechanic to fall apart; these films are nothing less than a test of the viewers ability to watch hot cars crash and burn in different combinations, and its nothing short of a miracle that the acts been kept up this long (the first Fast came out in 2001!). The action sequences, an antidote to the strict DIY approach of recent genre additions, are all drenched in CGI, but theyre possessed of energy and madcap imagination. One encounter, which sees whole streets of rush-hour traffic hijacked by Ciphers super-plane, is a real gem, a masterclass in why-havent-they-done-it-before cinema. So it covers all the bases a Fast & Furious flick should, and with newfound vitality. While this is beginning to feel like a very conventional action franchise the new cast members, likeable as they are, do not help in that regard F8 shows the creators to have more than a few tricks up their sleeves. Newbury band Mosaic headline Crafty Craft INDIE pop/rock band Mosaic, who met in Guildford during their university days at ACM, mix poppy guitar lines with the joys of youthful experiences. Head down to the Victoria Park bandstand on Monday to see this highly-energetic band who are driven by the enjoyment from playing the songs they write... songs that can leave the listener feeling moved. TRISH LEE talks to frontman Craig Robinson Catch five-piece Mosaic bassist Dan Morris, drummer Simon Daruvala, Craig Robinson on vocals and guitarists Adam Constantinou and Will Fitzmaurice playing at Mondays Crafty Craft Race; Its not our usual audience, but as it will have such a large crowd we thought we'd take it on, says Craig. The Newbury-based band recently played at the NEW:Music showcase at the Corn Exchange and the gig went down well. Weve played with the guys from New:Music twice now and both gigs have been exceptional for us. In total weve sold 180 tickets and the hometown support is incredible. The last gig, we were lucky enough to headline and the room was buzzing! Theres nothing better at a gig than a crowd enjoying our music with us, so both the band and crowd bounce off one another. Our local fan base is building. Until recently, three of the band have been Newbury-based so the following was prominent from the off. Were now confident in the Reading area, so also keeping those guys happy and building upon them is a priority. The band got together in Guildford, as fellow students at the Academy of Contemporary Music, in 2015. On a sunny Easter afternoon Craig and Simon decided to get something going and from there Mosaic was created. Simon approached Adam then Craig approached Will...At first the search for a bassist seemed troubled, but as we were all friends we asked our housemate Greg whether hed like to change his instrument and play a bass role. Sadly, Greg has recently taken a back step from the band, so his boots have been filled by a friend of ours, Dan Morris. Adam is the bands main songwriter: Hes our little box of ideas. We begin the majority of writing process with him then build upon it with the other guitars before adding drums and vocals. After a busy 2016, this year has been mad so far. The past three months weve played Reading almost every other weekend, while travelling to Brighton and London. Were always looking for more gigs, and due to some recent new discoveries were excited about whats to come throughout the summer! After releasing our most recent EP For You (available on spotify and Apple Music ;D) were currently looking at gigs, festivals, videos, recordings... what Im trying to say is we enjoy doing what were doing, so getting our teeth into as much as possible is keeping us very happy. So if things really take off, what about the day jobs? Our days jobs arent quite what youd expect. Simon works in a bank, Craig works in landscaping and groundwork, Will office work for a charity, Adam a civil engineering company and Dan the most likely job of teaching. Weve found that having these jobs has made chasing our other musical ambitions easier to keep on track. Just how did the Crafty Craft gig youre headlining come about? We were approached! Weve been looking for more Newbury gigs as its where people want to see us and luckily Ian Collins, who is preparing all the music for the bandstand on the day at the crafty raft, invited us to play. If come down, youll be entertained. Youd see a highly-energetic performance, a band that has the ability to write songs that can leave the listener feeling moved. Wed also love to meet anyone who comes down, so wed like to say come down, check us out, have a chat maybe a cheeky photo to remember us by. Well be on at the bandstand for 3.30pm. Party candidate Paul Field responds to snap election call THE West Berkshire Green Party has responded to the snap election called by Prime Minister Theresa May last week. Mrs May said that an election was required to provide the strong and stable leadership the country needs to see us through Brexit and beyond. Green Party candidate for Newbury, Paul Field, said: This election is about much more than just Brexit and it is our responsibility to ensure that the important issues of NHS privatisation, educational catastrophe, the housing crisis and economic inequality, among many other areas, are part of the debate. It is important that we lead the debate on the impact of Brexit on the environment, health and food safety and human rights. It is also vital that we offer a positive vision of a better Britain, with a global position we can be proud to pass on to future generations. To send a message that you want to change the way we do politics in this country, that you want to live in a kinder, safer Britain, and that you want to look to the future with hope and pride, then vote Green in 17. Green Party members selected Mr Field, the headteacher at Basildon Primary School, in January and are looking to build on his result from two years ago. He received 2,324 votes, the best result in the local partys history, during the 2015 General Election. Mr Field said: I am delighted to be standing as the Green party candidate in Newbury again. I believe we should be proudly sharing our message of hope, fairness and environmental responsibility with the people of Newbury. The party launches its General Election campaign for Newbury today (Thursday) with a social event for members and supporters at The Catherine Wheel pub, Cheap Street, Newbury. By ANI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday warned Sahara chief Subrata Roy in connection with returning money to the Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (SEBI) investors, saying that if the cheque which was submitted to the apex court was not received by June 19 he will be sent to the Tihar Jail. The Sahara group has submitted three cheques of Rs. 1,500 crore and the other two are of Rs. 500 crore and Rs. 3,000 crore. Roy's lawyer told the three judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Dipak Misra that the former is concerned about the issue and he is here as far as the apex court orders to. However, the apex court insisted that money has to be deposited. Justice Misra observed that the question of exoneration does not arise. The official liquidators had valued the Amby Valley property and submitted it to the Top court in a sealed cover. The apex court asked Roy that whether he commits to pay or not, to this, he stood and gave an affirmative reply. Kapil Sibal, one of the lawyers appearing for Roy, told the apex court that the Amby Valley property was worth to the tune of Rs. 49, 000 crore approximately. Roy is currently on a parole. Earlier on April 21, a special SEBI court had quashed a non-bailable warrant issued against Roy as he appeared before the court. The warrant was also quashed on grounds that Roy will appear in all hearings now as the court asked him to submit an undertaking for the same. The next hearing in this matter will take place on May 18 when the argument on framing of charges will begin. The apex court earlier on April 17 ordered the auction of Sahara's Aamby Valley over the business conglomerate's alleged failure to deposit money for refunding to its investors. The top court ordered the selling of Rs. 34,000 crore worth of Sahara properties and directed its chief Subrata Roy to appear before it on April 28. Taking strong note of non- submission of over Rs. 5,000 crore by the Sahara group, the apex court bench warned Roy from further toying with the court's order, and issued an ultimatum that non-compliance of its order will leave Roy in massive trouble. Earlier, the apex court had refused to hear a fresh plea of Sahara Group seeking more time to deposit Rs. 5000 crore (approx.) with the SEBI. On March 21, the apex court had warned Sahara, saying it would auction Aamby Valley project if the latter fails to deposit the amount of Rs. 5,000 crore (approx.) The apex court had in its last hearing asked the Ghaziabad Development Authority to deposit Rs. 1,100 crore to the apex court registry for acquiring land from Sahara. Roy was sent to the Tihar Jail on March 4, 2014 for not complying with the apex court's orders in connection with a long dispute with the market regulator SEBI. The SEBI alleged that Roy failed to comply with the apex court's order directing him to return the investors' money. Sahara, once among India's high-profile firms, has in the past made several failed attempts to raise the bail money using its prized overseas hotels that include the Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London. Sahara says it has paid more than 80 percent of the dues to share-holders, but SEBI has disputed that and said the company has not paid more than Rs. 10,000 crore. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday warned Sahara chief Subrata Roy in connection with returning money to the Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (SEBI) investors, saying that if the cheque which was submitted to the apex court was not received by June 19 he will be sent to the Tihar Jail. The Sahara group has submitted three cheques of Rs. 1,500 crore and the other two are of Rs. 500 crore and Rs. 3,000 crore. Roy's lawyer told the three judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Dipak Misra that the former is concerned about the issue and he is here as far as the apex court orders to. However, the apex court insisted that money has to be deposited. Justice Misra observed that the question of exoneration does not arise. The official liquidators had valued the Amby Valley property and submitted it to the Top court in a sealed cover. The apex court asked Roy that whether he commits to pay or not, to this, he stood and gave an affirmative reply. Kapil Sibal, one of the lawyers appearing for Roy, told the apex court that the Amby Valley property was worth to the tune of Rs. 49, 000 crore approximately. Roy is currently on a parole. Earlier on April 21, a special SEBI court had quashed a non-bailable warrant issued against Roy as he appeared before the court. The warrant was also quashed on grounds that Roy will appear in all hearings now as the court asked him to submit an undertaking for the same. The next hearing in this matter will take place on May 18 when the argument on framing of charges will begin. The apex court earlier on April 17 ordered the auction of Sahara's Aamby Valley over the business conglomerate's alleged failure to deposit money for refunding to its investors. The top court ordered the selling of Rs. 34,000 crore worth of Sahara properties and directed its chief Subrata Roy to appear before it on April 28. Taking strong note of non- submission of over Rs. 5,000 crore by the Sahara group, the apex court bench warned Roy from further toying with the court's order, and issued an ultimatum that non-compliance of its order will leave Roy in massive trouble. Earlier, the apex court had refused to hear a fresh plea of Sahara Group seeking more time to deposit Rs. 5000 crore (approx.) with the SEBI. On March 21, the apex court had warned Sahara, saying it would auction Aamby Valley project if the latter fails to deposit the amount of Rs. 5,000 crore (approx.) The apex court had in its last hearing asked the Ghaziabad Development Authority to deposit Rs. 1,100 crore to the apex court registry for acquiring land from Sahara. Roy was sent to the Tihar Jail on March 4, 2014 for not complying with the apex court's orders in connection with a long dispute with the market regulator SEBI. The SEBI alleged that Roy failed to comply with the apex court's order directing him to return the investors' money. Sahara, once among India's high-profile firms, has in the past made several failed attempts to raise the bail money using its prized overseas hotels that include the Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London. Sahara says it has paid more than 80 percent of the dues to share-holders, but SEBI has disputed that and said the company has not paid more than Rs. 10,000 crore. Sangeeta Bora By Express News Service BENGALURU: After dropping the steel flyover project, the next ambitious proposal put forth by Bengaluru Development Minister K J George is to build tunnel roads. The minister has proposed tunnel roads from Hebbal to Chalukya Circle (6km), Jalahalli to Goraguntepalya (1.4km), Nayandahalli to Majestic (8km) and SRS Road and Pipeline Road to Peenya (2.25 km), in order to decongest the city roads. However, urban and transport experts have trashed the idea saying it will not be a sustainable solution for the long run and will instead add to the traffic chaos. Urban expert H S Sudhira said, There has been an international study that says that in a congestion network, if you are going to add more networks, you will fail. A bigger mess will evolve out of it and will backfire. In situations like this, the supply is not the issue. We have to manage from the demand side. All these can be done only by policies that discourage private vehicles like no street-parking, odd-even rule and so on. On Monday, the minister met a delegation of experts from Bulgaria, who proposed tunnel roads. This is not the first time that tunnel roads have been proposed for the city. In 2007, the Karnataka government led by H D Kumaraswamy had proposed to build a 7.1-km tunnel between Minsk Square and Sankey Road. Then in 2010-11, the then Bengaluru Development Minister R Ashoka had also initiated one. Theproject is estimated to cost Rs 9,600 crore and will need about 1,800 acres. Dr Ashish Verma, mobility expert and associate professor, Centre for Infrastructure Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning, IISc, said, The point is if the solution is sustainable. Directly stating a solution and trying to do a feasibility report is not the answer. An alternative analysis should be done and only after that they should choose the best. BENGALURU: After dropping the steel flyover project, the next ambitious proposal put forth by Bengaluru Development Minister K J George is to build tunnel roads. The minister has proposed tunnel roads from Hebbal to Chalukya Circle (6km), Jalahalli to Goraguntepalya (1.4km), Nayandahalli to Majestic (8km) and SRS Road and Pipeline Road to Peenya (2.25 km), in order to decongest the city roads. However, urban and transport experts have trashed the idea saying it will not be a sustainable solution for the long run and will instead add to the traffic chaos. Urban expert H S Sudhira said, There has been an international study that says that in a congestion network, if you are going to add more networks, you will fail. A bigger mess will evolve out of it and will backfire. In situations like this, the supply is not the issue. We have to manage from the demand side. All these can be done only by policies that discourage private vehicles like no street-parking, odd-even rule and so on. On Monday, the minister met a delegation of experts from Bulgaria, who proposed tunnel roads. This is not the first time that tunnel roads have been proposed for the city. In 2007, the Karnataka government led by H D Kumaraswamy had proposed to build a 7.1-km tunnel between Minsk Square and Sankey Road. Then in 2010-11, the then Bengaluru Development Minister R Ashoka had also initiated one. Theproject is estimated to cost Rs 9,600 crore and will need about 1,800 acres. Dr Ashish Verma, mobility expert and associate professor, Centre for Infrastructure Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning, IISc, said, The point is if the solution is sustainable. Directly stating a solution and trying to do a feasibility report is not the answer. An alternative analysis should be done and only after that they should choose the best. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The minute one steps into the Kanakakukunnu Palace, one is taken on a trip down memory lane. Photos of the first government under Chief Minister E M S Namboothiripad has been sprawled across the walls of the Palace. These photos are moments captured by various photographers and have been compiled by the Information and Public Relations Department(I and PRD). Kazhchayude Veendeduppukal gives the visitor a glimpse of transition from royalty to democracy and feature several historic moments. The changes One of the photos show a stable owned by the Army of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore which had given way to the present legislature complex. In another one, first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is laying the foundation stone of the Kerala Engineering Research Institute. Education Minister Joseph Mundassery is seen laying the stone of the Kumaranasan memorial. Military parades of Travancore Army during the pre-independent era also captures the visitors eye. King of Travancore Sri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma addressing people through Travancore Radio when it was commissioned on March 12, 1943 and the picture of the Travancore Secretariat in 1940 are telling stories. EMS days The organisers of the exhibition has been able to shed light on the political and personal life of first chief minister E M Sankaran Namboodirippadu. Photos of Bargula Ramakrishna Rao reading out the oath of office to EMS on April 27, 1957, colleagues T V Thomas, K C George, K P Gopalan, T A Majeed, P K Chathan, Joseph Mundassery, K R Gowri, V R Krishna Iyer and A K Menon taking oath at the swearing-in ceremony grace the exhibition. Pictures of EMS addressing secretariat employees, a photo of EMS and Arya Antharjanam, his wife and pictures of his daughter Radha have also found a place in the exhibition. Portraying his love for reading, there are several photos of EMS reading books. Members of the first legislative Assembly have also been exhibited. Pictures of former President Dr S Radhakrishnans visit to Kerala, former Union Minister and member of Kasmir Royal family Karan Singhs visit have also been given prominent display. Photographs of legendary leaders A K Gopalan and other communist party leaders have also been featured at the exhibition. M N Govindan Nair, former state secretary of the Communist party and the Minister who had launched Laksham Veedu, a project to provide home for the homeless, has been given prominence. The dismissal of the First EMS cabinet in the wake of political turmoil caused by the Liberation struggle in 1959 and EMS addressing Secretariat employees following the dismissal of his government have been displayed in a chronological order. Indira Gandhis visit to the state during the political turmoil of 1959 to boost the spirit of party workers is yet another eye-capturing photo. THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The minute one steps into the Kanakakukunnu Palace, one is taken on a trip down memory lane. Photos of the first government under Chief Minister E M S Namboothiripad has been sprawled across the walls of the Palace. These photos are moments captured by various photographers and have been compiled by the Information and Public Relations Department(I and PRD). Kazhchayude Veendeduppukal gives the visitor a glimpse of transition from royalty to democracy and feature several historic moments. The changes One of the photos show a stable owned by the Army of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore which had given way to the present legislature complex. In another one, first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is laying the foundation stone of the Kerala Engineering Research Institute. Education Minister Joseph Mundassery is seen laying the stone of the Kumaranasan memorial. Military parades of Travancore Army during the pre-independent era also captures the visitors eye. King of Travancore Sri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma addressing people through Travancore Radio when it was commissioned on March 12, 1943 and the picture of the Travancore Secretariat in 1940 are telling stories. EMS days The organisers of the exhibition has been able to shed light on the political and personal life of first chief minister E M Sankaran Namboodirippadu. Photos of Bargula Ramakrishna Rao reading out the oath of office to EMS on April 27, 1957, colleagues T V Thomas, K C George, K P Gopalan, T A Majeed, P K Chathan, Joseph Mundassery, K R Gowri, V R Krishna Iyer and A K Menon taking oath at the swearing-in ceremony grace the exhibition. Pictures of EMS addressing secretariat employees, a photo of EMS and Arya Antharjanam, his wife and pictures of his daughter Radha have also found a place in the exhibition. Portraying his love for reading, there are several photos of EMS reading books. Members of the first legislative Assembly have also been exhibited. Pictures of former President Dr S Radhakrishnans visit to Kerala, former Union Minister and member of Kasmir Royal family Karan Singhs visit have also been given prominent display. Photographs of legendary leaders A K Gopalan and other communist party leaders have also been featured at the exhibition. M N Govindan Nair, former state secretary of the Communist party and the Minister who had launched Laksham Veedu, a project to provide home for the homeless, has been given prominence. The dismissal of the First EMS cabinet in the wake of political turmoil caused by the Liberation struggle in 1959 and EMS addressing Secretariat employees following the dismissal of his government have been displayed in a chronological order. Indira Gandhis visit to the state during the political turmoil of 1959 to boost the spirit of party workers is yet another eye-capturing photo. By PTI MUMBAI: She might have become one of the most successful Indian stars in the West, but actress Priyanka Chopra has said she did not go to Hollywood with the attitude that people will instantly recognise her. The 34-year-old actress said she is fine with giving her introduction to people who do not know her. "We can't say that if we are stars in India we will be stars everywhere. That's not cool. Every country has different celebrities. So, I never expected that. "I am okay to walk into a room and introduce myself as, 'Hello, I am Priyanka Chopra. I am an Indian actor.' There's nothing small about it, our achievements are quite big," Priyanka told reporters. The actress said the American media was never mean to her "except a few" and she never felt insignificant on a foreign film set. "I haven't seen them (American press) being that good to any other Indian actor if you think like that. They have been loving, friendly and encouraging of me... "We are one-fifth of the world's population so, our representation in world cinema is legit. It's on us, we have to make sure we are good enough. But I don't feel small when I walk in a foreign set," she said. Priyanka's maiden Hollywood film "Baywatch" releases on May 25. MUMBAI: She might have become one of the most successful Indian stars in the West, but actress Priyanka Chopra has said she did not go to Hollywood with the attitude that people will instantly recognise her. The 34-year-old actress said she is fine with giving her introduction to people who do not know her. "We can't say that if we are stars in India we will be stars everywhere. That's not cool. Every country has different celebrities. So, I never expected that. "I am okay to walk into a room and introduce myself as, 'Hello, I am Priyanka Chopra. I am an Indian actor.' There's nothing small about it, our achievements are quite big," Priyanka told reporters. The actress said the American media was never mean to her "except a few" and she never felt insignificant on a foreign film set. "I haven't seen them (American press) being that good to any other Indian actor if you think like that. They have been loving, friendly and encouraging of me... "We are one-fifth of the world's population so, our representation in world cinema is legit. It's on us, we have to make sure we are good enough. But I don't feel small when I walk in a foreign set," she said. Priyanka's maiden Hollywood film "Baywatch" releases on May 25. By Express News Service BHUBANESWAR: Indian army on Thursday successfully test-fired surface-to-surface intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) Agni-III from a defence test facility off Odisha coast. Defence sources said, the indigenously built highly sophisticated missile blasted off from a mobile launcher at the launching complexIV of Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Abdul Kalam Island at about 9.15 am. While the test was carried out by the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of army, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) provided logistic support. The trial was conducted as part of its user training exercise. Scientists and Army personnel who were closely monitoring the trajectory and flight path of the missile at the mission control room went into ruptures as the missile rose majestically into the sky, travelling in the pre-coordinated projectile. Propelled by two-stage solid propellant, the missile took off vertically into space and re-entered the atmosphere after attaining a height of nearly 500 km. Even though it did not carry a live warhead, its nuclear triggering mechanism worked well. The trial has met all mission objectives and all the events have occurred as expected. Terminal phase events were recorded by down range ship deployed near the impact point. The test once again proved the reliability of the state-of-the-art technologies and readiness of the user to launch it, said an official from New Delhi. The missile used in the test was picked up randomly from the production lot. The missile reached the pre-defined target with an accuracy of less than 100m upon its launch. The missile equipped with state-of-the-art avionics and advanced on board computer, has the latest features to correct and guide in-flight disturbances. The missile's trajectory was monitored through various telemetry stations, electro-optic systems and sophisticated radars located along the coast and by two naval ships anchored near the impact point. Agni-III, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads weighing up to 1.5 tonnes, is 17 m tall. It has a diameter of two meter it weighs around 50 tonnes with warhead which is protected by carbon composite heat shield. Prior to the test, a cautionary notice was issued to aviators and mariners to keep away from the area of splashdown in the sea. BHUBANESWAR: Indian army on Thursday successfully test-fired surface-to-surface intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) Agni-III from a defence test facility off Odisha coast. Defence sources said, the indigenously built highly sophisticated missile blasted off from a mobile launcher at the launching complexIV of Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Abdul Kalam Island at about 9.15 am.While the test was carried out by the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of army, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) provided logistic support. The trial was conducted as part of its user training exercise. Scientists and Army personnel who were closely monitoring the trajectory and flight path of the missile at the mission control room went into ruptures as the missile rose majestically into the sky, travelling in the pre-coordinated projectile. Propelled by two-stage solid propellant, the missile took off vertically into space and re-entered the atmosphere after attaining a height of nearly 500 km. Even though it did not carry a live warhead, its nuclear triggering mechanism worked well. The trial has met all mission objectives and all the events have occurred as expected. Terminal phase events were recorded by down range ship deployed near the impact point. The test once again proved the reliability of the state-of-the-art technologies and readiness of the user to launch it, said an official from New Delhi. The missile used in the test was picked up randomly from the production lot. The missile reached the pre-defined target with an accuracy of less than 100m upon its launch. The missile equipped with state-of-the-art avionics and advanced on board computer, has the latest features to correct and guide in-flight disturbances. The missile's trajectory was monitored through various telemetry stations, electro-optic systems and sophisticated radars located along the coast and by two naval ships anchored near the impact point. Agni-III, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads weighing up to 1.5 tonnes, is 17 m tall. It has a diameter of two meter it weighs around 50 tonnes with warhead which is protected by carbon composite heat shield. Prior to the test, a cautionary notice was issued to aviators and mariners to keep away from the area of splashdown in the sea. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: In an unprecedented development, the Punjab unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has extended its full support to the ruling Congress party on the contagious and long pending Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) issue, as well as other matters of vital interest to the State. A delegation of the BJP state unit, led by Union minister for social justice and BJP state president, Vijay Sampla, state vice-president Harjit Grewal and state secretary Vineet Joshi met Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh here on Thursday morning to discuss a wide range of issues. Meanwhile on the other hand, the Chief Minister of Haryana and senior BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar recently met Prime Minister Narinder Modi and urged him to ensure early construction of SYL canal. He said the latter lent him a patient hearing on all aspects related to the SYL Canal. We have complete faith that this time too, the verdict would be delivered in favour of Haryana. We have urged the Central government to assist in early construction of the canal, he added. The issue of SYL canal has been pending since 1976. Amarinder thanked the BJP leaders for their support, saying it was important for political parties of all hues to come together in order to bring the States growth and development back on track. The BJP leaders raised several issues, including setting up of a Cancer Hospital in Hoshiarpur, for which land had already been allocated and the Central government had released the necessary funds. Acknowledging the importance of the project, Amarinder immediately directed the Health Department to expedite work on the hospital. The BJP delegation suggested introduction of telemedicine services in Talwara (Hoshiarpur) government hospital to overcome the shortfall of doctors in the region. Captain Amarinder welcomed the suggestion and instructed the concerned officials to look into the feasibility of starting such services. Responding to the BJPs plea in this regard, Amarinder also directed the concerned department to expedite the civil works at Adampur Airport to make it functional at the earliest. He promised to look into the BJP leaders suggestion to set up an auto industry in Hoshiarpur, reiterating his commitment to promote the much-needed industrial development across the State. The new industrial policy, which his government was in the process of formulating, will address key concerns of the industries to revive industrial development in the State, he told the delegation. Another issue raised by the BJP delegation related to disbursement of Central government funded post-matric scholarship. The Chief Minister instructed the concerned officials to ensure that the funds allocated for the purpose reach the intended beneficiaries at the earliest. CHANDIGARH: In an unprecedented development, the Punjab unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has extended its full support to the ruling Congress party on the contagious and long pending Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) issue, as well as other matters of vital interest to the State. A delegation of the BJP state unit, led by Union minister for social justice and BJP state president, Vijay Sampla, state vice-president Harjit Grewal and state secretary Vineet Joshi met Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh here on Thursday morning to discuss a wide range of issues. Meanwhile on the other hand, the Chief Minister of Haryana and senior BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar recently met Prime Minister Narinder Modi and urged him to ensure early construction of SYL canal. He said the latter lent him a patient hearing on all aspects related to the SYL Canal. We have complete faith that this time too, the verdict would be delivered in favour of Haryana. We have urged the Central government to assist in early construction of the canal, he added. The issue of SYL canal has been pending since 1976. Amarinder thanked the BJP leaders for their support, saying it was important for political parties of all hues to come together in order to bring the States growth and development back on track. The BJP leaders raised several issues, including setting up of a Cancer Hospital in Hoshiarpur, for which land had already been allocated and the Central government had released the necessary funds. Acknowledging the importance of the project, Amarinder immediately directed the Health Department to expedite work on the hospital. The BJP delegation suggested introduction of telemedicine services in Talwara (Hoshiarpur) government hospital to overcome the shortfall of doctors in the region. Captain Amarinder welcomed the suggestion and instructed the concerned officials to look into the feasibility of starting such services. Responding to the BJPs plea in this regard, Amarinder also directed the concerned department to expedite the civil works at Adampur Airport to make it functional at the earliest. He promised to look into the BJP leaders suggestion to set up an auto industry in Hoshiarpur, reiterating his commitment to promote the much-needed industrial development across the State. The new industrial policy, which his government was in the process of formulating, will address key concerns of the industries to revive industrial development in the State, he told the delegation. Another issue raised by the BJP delegation related to disbursement of Central government funded post-matric scholarship. The Chief Minister instructed the concerned officials to ensure that the funds allocated for the purpose reach the intended beneficiaries at the earliest. By Express News Service BHOPAL: "Congress people had conspired to eliminate me," said 2008 Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur on Thursday. Two days after the Bombay High Court granted her bail in the case, Thakur was released from judicial custody at the Pandit Khushilal Sharma Ayurveda hospital in Bhopal on Thursday. However, the breast cancer-afflicted Thakur will continue to undergo treatment at the same hospital, where she has admitted since 2015 end. "The UPA government and the Congress hatched a conspiracy to implicate me in a false case," alleged Thakur while talking to journalists after her release from judicial custody. She added that the mental and physical torture unleashed by the Mumbai ATS on me while holding me captive illegally in October 2008 hasn't been done to any woman in the history of independent India or prior to that. "I was illegally taken from Surat to Mumbai on October 10, 2008 and held captive for 13 days by the ATS. In captivity I was subjected to unimaginable torture by all male cops. The torture was so brutal that it even led to the rupturing of the membrane of my lungs after which I was kept on ventilator for five days," said partially paralysed Thakur. "It's that torture only which is responsible for my present physical state. Those responsible for the torture, included then Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare, one cop named Khanwilkar and Paramveer Singh presently a senior cop in Thane. I would never forgive them and will seek legal recourse for punishing them," she added. Slamming the UPA and Congress leaders, Thakur said the word saffron terror was coined by then Union minister P Chidambaram. She maintained that while the UPA government and Congress had tried to frame her in a false case, the present Central government will at least not conspire against her, but help her get justice. The Bombay High Court had granted Thakur bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case on April 25. Meanwhile, her personal doctor DR SS Rajput (a cardio thoracic surgeon in Lucknow) said it was the critical spine injuries sustained possibly during the ATS torture that led to Thakur becoming partially paralysed and dependent on others. "We'll decide in coming days whether to proceed with her medical treatment in Mumbai or Lucknow," Rajput told TNIE. BHOPAL: "Congress people had conspired to eliminate me," said 2008 Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur on Thursday. Two days after the Bombay High Court granted her bail in the case, Thakur was released from judicial custody at the Pandit Khushilal Sharma Ayurveda hospital in Bhopal on Thursday. However, the breast cancer-afflicted Thakur will continue to undergo treatment at the same hospital, where she has admitted since 2015 end. "The UPA government and the Congress hatched a conspiracy to implicate me in a false case," alleged Thakur while talking to journalists after her release from judicial custody. She added that the mental and physical torture unleashed by the Mumbai ATS on me while holding me captive illegally in October 2008 hasn't been done to any woman in the history of independent India or prior to that. "I was illegally taken from Surat to Mumbai on October 10, 2008 and held captive for 13 days by the ATS. In captivity I was subjected to unimaginable torture by all male cops. The torture was so brutal that it even led to the rupturing of the membrane of my lungs after which I was kept on ventilator for five days," said partially paralysed Thakur. "It's that torture only which is responsible for my present physical state. Those responsible for the torture, included then Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare, one cop named Khanwilkar and Paramveer Singh presently a senior cop in Thane. I would never forgive them and will seek legal recourse for punishing them," she added. Slamming the UPA and Congress leaders, Thakur said the word saffron terror was coined by then Union minister P Chidambaram. She maintained that while the UPA government and Congress had tried to frame her in a false case, the present Central government will at least not conspire against her, but help her get justice. The Bombay High Court had granted Thakur bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case on April 25. Meanwhile, her personal doctor DR SS Rajput (a cardio thoracic surgeon in Lucknow) said it was the critical spine injuries sustained possibly during the ATS torture that led to Thakur becoming partially paralysed and dependent on others. "We'll decide in coming days whether to proceed with her medical treatment in Mumbai or Lucknow," Rajput told TNIE. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today said it was "alive" to its earlier orders which had held that Aadhaar should be "voluntary". "We are alive to the orders passed by this court which says it should be voluntary," a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. The apex court made these observations while hearing the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act, which was introduced through the latest budget and the Finance Act 2017. Section 139AA of IT Act provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of income tax returns and making application for allotment of PAN number with effect from July 1 this year. Senior counsel Shyam Divan, representing the petitioners, argued that section 139AA was unconstitutional and it was in "direct collision" with the Aadhaar Act. "The entire Aadhaar Act is voluntary. It creates a right in favour of citizens. It does not create a duty. The Act is entirely voluntary. How can they make it mandatory under the Income Tax Act? The scheme under the Aadhaar Act is in direct collision with the provision of section 139AA," he said. He also argued that there was no question of forcing a person to give his consent for Aadhaar and this was an issue which "alters the relationship of Republic of India with its citizens". However, the bench observed, "we have to interpret a statute as per the objective with which it has been framed." Referring to the earlier orders passed by the apex court, Divan said a five-judge bench had in October 2015 said that Aadhaar card scheme was voluntary and not mandatory till the matter was finally decided by the apex court. He said in that order, the court had also said that a larger bench was required to be set up for final disposal of the petitions but it has not been constituted till now. The senior counsel also argued that a bench headed by then Chief Justice of India (CJI) H L Dattu had passed that order and after him, the apex court has seen two CJIs former CJI T S Thakur and incumbent CJI J S Khehar -- but a larger bench has not been set up to adjudicate the matter. Questioning the government's move, Divan said it was like a "bargain" that government was asking for finger prints and other details of an individual, which were required for making Aadhaar, for extending benefits of welfare schemes. However, the bench said, "As far as privacy issue was concerned, it has been referred to a larger bench so we cannot decide it here. ... Your privacy issue that you do not want to give your finger prints will be heard by a larger bench." The petitioner also argued that a law abiding tax payer cannot be forced to give his Aadhaar while filing income tax return and this was like an "electronic leash" as government would keep a tab on its citizens. "Nowhere in the world there is such biometric system which can track a person 24X7. They (government) are doing it even before the age of consent," he said during the arguments which would continue tomorrow. "We (citizens) are not servants of the state. We are independent citizens. They cannot invade my body and if they will invade it, then it would be a totalitarian state," he said. The apex court had yesterday put a poser as to why there was no objection from lawmakers on the government's decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making PAN cards. Defending the Centre's stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of Income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had referred to around 10 lakh fake permanent account number (PAN) cards in the country and said that Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. Rohatgi had also clarified that nowhere in section 139AA of IT Act, was it mentioned that it would be effective with retrospective effect. The government had earlier told the apex court that fake PAN cards were being used to "divert funds" to shell firms. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today said it was "alive" to its earlier orders which had held that Aadhaar should be "voluntary". "We are alive to the orders passed by this court which says it should be voluntary," a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. The apex court made these observations while hearing the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act, which was introduced through the latest budget and the Finance Act 2017. Section 139AA of IT Act provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of income tax returns and making application for allotment of PAN number with effect from July 1 this year. Senior counsel Shyam Divan, representing the petitioners, argued that section 139AA was unconstitutional and it was in "direct collision" with the Aadhaar Act. "The entire Aadhaar Act is voluntary. It creates a right in favour of citizens. It does not create a duty. The Act is entirely voluntary. How can they make it mandatory under the Income Tax Act? The scheme under the Aadhaar Act is in direct collision with the provision of section 139AA," he said. He also argued that there was no question of forcing a person to give his consent for Aadhaar and this was an issue which "alters the relationship of Republic of India with its citizens". However, the bench observed, "we have to interpret a statute as per the objective with which it has been framed." Referring to the earlier orders passed by the apex court, Divan said a five-judge bench had in October 2015 said that Aadhaar card scheme was voluntary and not mandatory till the matter was finally decided by the apex court. He said in that order, the court had also said that a larger bench was required to be set up for final disposal of the petitions but it has not been constituted till now. The senior counsel also argued that a bench headed by then Chief Justice of India (CJI) H L Dattu had passed that order and after him, the apex court has seen two CJIs former CJI T S Thakur and incumbent CJI J S Khehar -- but a larger bench has not been set up to adjudicate the matter. Questioning the government's move, Divan said it was like a "bargain" that government was asking for finger prints and other details of an individual, which were required for making Aadhaar, for extending benefits of welfare schemes. However, the bench said, "As far as privacy issue was concerned, it has been referred to a larger bench so we cannot decide it here. ... Your privacy issue that you do not want to give your finger prints will be heard by a larger bench." The petitioner also argued that a law abiding tax payer cannot be forced to give his Aadhaar while filing income tax return and this was like an "electronic leash" as government would keep a tab on its citizens. "Nowhere in the world there is such biometric system which can track a person 24X7. They (government) are doing it even before the age of consent," he said during the arguments which would continue tomorrow. "We (citizens) are not servants of the state. We are independent citizens. They cannot invade my body and if they will invade it, then it would be a totalitarian state," he said. The apex court had yesterday put a poser as to why there was no objection from lawmakers on the government's decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for making PAN cards. Defending the Centre's stand to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing of Income tax returns and to apply for PAN, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had referred to around 10 lakh fake permanent account number (PAN) cards in the country and said that Aadhaar was the only system which could prevent duplication or fake cards. Rohatgi had also clarified that nowhere in section 139AA of IT Act, was it mentioned that it would be effective with retrospective effect. The government had earlier told the apex court that fake PAN cards were being used to "divert funds" to shell firms. Karamatullah K Ghori By The great American war leader and president, FD Roosevelt, had famously described the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, December 7, 1941, as a day to live in infamy. Few Pakistanis may have heard of FDR but they couldnt have agreed more with him in the wake of the verdict handed down by their apex court, on April 20, in the famous case heard by a special, 5-judgebench of the court against PM Nawaz Sharif, in the context of the Panama Leaks. In fact, it took no time for Pakistans vibrant social media to go viral with the comment that just like 911 becoming an indelible global vocabulary since that cataclysmic day in New York, in our living memory, 420 would live for longperhaps generationsin the collective memory of Pakistanis as a day of infamy. It needed little reminding, if at all, for the social media gurus that 420 is that notoriously well-known article of the Indian Penal Coderetained as such in Pakistans Penal Code toowhich talks of fraud and cheating. The apex court itself was guilty of building up an extraordinary hype in the context of the hearings before its special bench of the corruption and money-laundering case brought against Nawaz and his children. The case was heard over a period of almost five months, in the course of which all five judges asked deeply probing questions from the defendants Nawaz and his progeny through their attorneys. That triggered trains of speculation that the court wouldnt let off Nawaz lightly. But an element of suspense was injected into the affair when at the end of all the long hearings, around the end of February the court reserved its judgement. Withholding the judgement on a case that had kept millions of Pakistanis glued to its proceedings in the court made no sense to the laymen and intelligentsia alike. The search for a plausible explanation for withholding the verdict grated on their nerves. Justice in Pakistan has a history that doesnt make pleasant reading to most Pakistanis. Its a history replete with instances of the privileged and the powerful invariably managing to bend the law in their favour. The apex court has had huge question marks hung over its avowed impartiality since the early years of Pakistan. It was back in 1955 that the court had invented a macabre law of necessity to justify the autocratic and whimsical dissolution of Pakistans first Constituent Assembly a year earlier. That notorious law wasnt a one-time exception; it became, instead, a rule in innumerable instances when it was invoked to give a clean chit to those soldiers of fortunePakistans successive Bonaparteswho made a mockery of justice and shredded the countrys Constitution at will. In this case, however, the court, conscious of the peoples trust-deficit in its impartiality, seemed poised to turn a new leaf by assuring the nay-sayers that its historic verdict in the case would be remembered for at least twenty years. That whetted appetites among a people whod found Nawaz and his thieving clan guilty as charged in their own court. Pakistanis had little doubt that Nawaz had amassed enormous wealth through corrupt means and had indulged in money laundering to siphon off his ill-begotten wealth to off-shore companies, in his childrens namesas revealed in Panama Leaksand bought expensive properties in Londons hi-end neighbourhoods. The people only aspired for the Supreme Court putting its seal of approval on their popular verdict and vindicate the bar of public opinion as a court of last resort. The rosy promise from the court that its judgment would be long remembered was seen as a fillip to what the people had already decided. However, the April 20 split, 2:3, judgment was cold comfort to those who had kept their gun-powder dry for 57 days in anticipation that the scales of justice would tilt in their favour and theyd be able to blast Nawaz with it. But that was not to be. The court, not for the first time, doused the popular expectations with crass expediency by opting for further probe into shenanigans and manipulations of Nawaz and his progeny. It favoured putting in place a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of civil and military officials to go through the past and present financial doings of the Nawaz clan with a fine-toothed comb and submit its report to the court within 60 days. Reading the courts judgement one does agree with the educated inference that all five judges have found Nawaz lying to the nation, deceiving the Nation Assembly and hiding the truth by mouthing a series of lies. Two of the five judges, including the one heading the bench, favoured declaring Nawaz a liar and untrustworthy and, thus, unfit to be PM according to the countrys constitution. But the common man remains unconvinced. Delaying a final verdict is, conventional wisdom says, buys more time for Nawaz to concoct evidence to get him off the hook. Knowing his autocratic proclivities, few expect the JIT allowed to function freely and independently. A team of serving officers will, per se, be susceptible to manipulations and stringpulling by Nawaz and cohorts brazenly riding roughshod over norms of decency and decorum. Their style of governance has been anything but democratic and above-board. Dismay and despair are stalking the land, haunting a psychologically bruised people, who feel short-changed. A tainted and controversial decision from a hung court and its presumed whitewash of Nawazs guilt is hard for them to stomach. Plato, centuries ago, summed it up so well when he said, Justice is like a spiders web; insects get caught in it but bigger animals tear it down. Karamatullah K Ghori Former Pakistani diplomat Email: K_K_ghori@hotmail.com The great American war leader and president, FD Roosevelt, had famously described the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, December 7, 1941, as a day to live in infamy. Few Pakistanis may have heard of FDR but they couldnt have agreed more with him in the wake of the verdict handed down by their apex court, on April 20, in the famous case heard by a special, 5-judgebench of the court against PM Nawaz Sharif, in the context of the Panama Leaks. In fact, it took no time for Pakistans vibrant social media to go viral with the comment that just like 911 becoming an indelible global vocabulary since that cataclysmic day in New York, in our living memory, 420 would live for longperhaps generationsin the collective memory of Pakistanis as a day of infamy. It needed little reminding, if at all, for the social media gurus that 420 is that notoriously well-known article of the Indian Penal Coderetained as such in Pakistans Penal Code toowhich talks of fraud and cheating. The apex court itself was guilty of building up an extraordinary hype in the context of the hearings before its special bench of the corruption and money-laundering case brought against Nawaz and his children. The case was heard over a period of almost five months, in the course of which all five judges asked deeply probing questions from the defendants Nawaz and his progeny through their attorneys. That triggered trains of speculation that the court wouldnt let off Nawaz lightly. But an element of suspense was injected into the affair when at the end of all the long hearings, around the end of February the court reserved its judgement. Withholding the judgement on a case that had kept millions of Pakistanis glued to its proceedings in the court made no sense to the laymen and intelligentsia alike. The search for a plausible explanation for withholding the verdict grated on their nerves. Justice in Pakistan has a history that doesnt make pleasant reading to most Pakistanis. Its a history replete with instances of the privileged and the powerful invariably managing to bend the law in their favour. The apex court has had huge question marks hung over its avowed impartiality since the early years of Pakistan. It was back in 1955 that the court had invented a macabre law of necessity to justify the autocratic and whimsical dissolution of Pakistans first Constituent Assembly a year earlier. That notorious law wasnt a one-time exception; it became, instead, a rule in innumerable instances when it was invoked to give a clean chit to those soldiers of fortunePakistans successive Bonaparteswho made a mockery of justice and shredded the countrys Constitution at will. In this case, however, the court, conscious of the peoples trust-deficit in its impartiality, seemed poised to turn a new leaf by assuring the nay-sayers that its historic verdict in the case would be remembered for at least twenty years. That whetted appetites among a people whod found Nawaz and his thieving clan guilty as charged in their own court. Pakistanis had little doubt that Nawaz had amassed enormous wealth through corrupt means and had indulged in money laundering to siphon off his ill-begotten wealth to off-shore companies, in his childrens namesas revealed in Panama Leaksand bought expensive properties in Londons hi-end neighbourhoods. The people only aspired for the Supreme Court putting its seal of approval on their popular verdict and vindicate the bar of public opinion as a court of last resort. The rosy promise from the court that its judgment would be long remembered was seen as a fillip to what the people had already decided. However, the April 20 split, 2:3, judgment was cold comfort to those who had kept their gun-powder dry for 57 days in anticipation that the scales of justice would tilt in their favour and theyd be able to blast Nawaz with it. But that was not to be. The court, not for the first time, doused the popular expectations with crass expediency by opting for further probe into shenanigans and manipulations of Nawaz and his progeny. It favoured putting in place a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of civil and military officials to go through the past and present financial doings of the Nawaz clan with a fine-toothed comb and submit its report to the court within 60 days. Reading the courts judgement one does agree with the educated inference that all five judges have found Nawaz lying to the nation, deceiving the Nation Assembly and hiding the truth by mouthing a series of lies. Two of the five judges, including the one heading the bench, favoured declaring Nawaz a liar and untrustworthy and, thus, unfit to be PM according to the countrys constitution. But the common man remains unconvinced. Delaying a final verdict is, conventional wisdom says, buys more time for Nawaz to concoct evidence to get him off the hook. Knowing his autocratic proclivities, few expect the JIT allowed to function freely and independently. A team of serving officers will, per se, be susceptible to manipulations and stringpulling by Nawaz and cohorts brazenly riding roughshod over norms of decency and decorum. Their style of governance has been anything but democratic and above-board. Dismay and despair are stalking the land, haunting a psychologically bruised people, who feel short-changed. A tainted and controversial decision from a hung court and its presumed whitewash of Nawazs guilt is hard for them to stomach. Plato, centuries ago, summed it up so well when he said, Justice is like a spiders web; insects get caught in it but bigger animals tear it down. Karamatullah K Ghori Former Pakistani diplomat Email: K_K_ghori@hotmail.com By Express News Service BENGALURU:The factional fight within the state BJP has exploded again. The stage is set for a showdown on Thursday between party state president B S Yeddyurappa and Opposition leader in the Legislative Council K S Eshwarappa. Emboldened by the recent setback for Yeddyurappa in the bypolls in Gundlupet and Nanjangud, the anti-Yeddyurappa faction, who want to be called the long-time loyalists of the party, have convened Save BJP convention at Palace Grounds on Thursday. Eshwarappa, who has openly raised his voice of dissent against Yeddyurappa, is set to attend the meeting along with at least 20 other leaders including party MLC Bhanuprakash, former minister Shivanna and former Bengaluru mayor Venkatesh Murthy. Taking serious exception to the meeting, Yeddyurappa has warned the dissidents of consequences if they go ahead with the convention.Conveying Yeddyurappas message, BJP state Backward Classes Morcha president B J Puttaswamy said, Eshwarappa is active in the group of dissidents. He too will be treated as a dissident and action will be initiated if he attends the conclave. Eshwarappa has again associated himself with the activities of Sangolli Rayanna Brigade, ignoring the instructions of BJP national president Amit Shah to dissociate himself from it. Eshwarappas defiance even after his demand for changing the office-bearers of some of the districts has been fulfilled amounts to indiscipline, Puttaswamy said. Puttaswamy has asked the party rank and file to stay away from the convention and threatened to initiate disciplinary action against those who attend the show. However, the dissidents have decided to go ahead with their show of strength. One of the leaders associated with the convention said, Yeddyurappa has not changed his autocratic, unilateral style of functioning. His reluctance to involve all the leaders in the decision-making process is the main cause for defeat of BJP candidates in the bypolls. The campaign strategy for the bypoll was turned into a personal show of Yeddyurappa instead of tapping the pro-Modi wave. The dissidents are likely to take a decision at the convention to take out Delhi Chalo train yatra to complain to Amit Shah against Yeddyurappas style of functioning. They are set to convey a strong message to the party high command that it would be impossible to realise its Mission 150 in the next Assembly election if Yeddyurappa refuses to change his style of functioning. The dissidents are set to reiterate their demand for change in the office-bearers of district units in Tumakuru, Mysuru, Chamarajanagar and a few other districts. The alleged neglect of the party loyalists and Yeddyurappas preference to his coterie who had left BJP when he floated KJP are among the other issues that would be discussed at the Save BJP convention, the dissident leader said. BENGALURU:The factional fight within the state BJP has exploded again. The stage is set for a showdown on Thursday between party state president B S Yeddyurappa and Opposition leader in the Legislative Council K S Eshwarappa. Emboldened by the recent setback for Yeddyurappa in the bypolls in Gundlupet and Nanjangud, the anti-Yeddyurappa faction, who want to be called the long-time loyalists of the party, have convened Save BJP convention at Palace Grounds on Thursday. Eshwarappa, who has openly raised his voice of dissent against Yeddyurappa, is set to attend the meeting along with at least 20 other leaders including party MLC Bhanuprakash, former minister Shivanna and former Bengaluru mayor Venkatesh Murthy. Taking serious exception to the meeting, Yeddyurappa has warned the dissidents of consequences if they go ahead with the convention.Conveying Yeddyurappas message, BJP state Backward Classes Morcha president B J Puttaswamy said, Eshwarappa is active in the group of dissidents. He too will be treated as a dissident and action will be initiated if he attends the conclave. Eshwarappa has again associated himself with the activities of Sangolli Rayanna Brigade, ignoring the instructions of BJP national president Amit Shah to dissociate himself from it. Eshwarappas defiance even after his demand for changing the office-bearers of some of the districts has been fulfilled amounts to indiscipline, Puttaswamy said. Puttaswamy has asked the party rank and file to stay away from the convention and threatened to initiate disciplinary action against those who attend the show. However, the dissidents have decided to go ahead with their show of strength. One of the leaders associated with the convention said, Yeddyurappa has not changed his autocratic, unilateral style of functioning. His reluctance to involve all the leaders in the decision-making process is the main cause for defeat of BJP candidates in the bypolls. The campaign strategy for the bypoll was turned into a personal show of Yeddyurappa instead of tapping the pro-Modi wave. The dissidents are likely to take a decision at the convention to take out Delhi Chalo train yatra to complain to Amit Shah against Yeddyurappas style of functioning. They are set to convey a strong message to the party high command that it would be impossible to realise its Mission 150 in the next Assembly election if Yeddyurappa refuses to change his style of functioning. The dissidents are set to reiterate their demand for change in the office-bearers of district units in Tumakuru, Mysuru, Chamarajanagar and a few other districts. The alleged neglect of the party loyalists and Yeddyurappas preference to his coterie who had left BJP when he floated KJP are among the other issues that would be discussed at the Save BJP convention, the dissident leader said. Hemant Kumar Rout By Express News Service BHUBANESWAR: International airline AirAsia, which launched four direct flights in a week to Kuala Lumpur from Bhubaneswar, on Thursday announced to start daily operation to the Capital City of Malaysia very soon. CEO of AirAsia Aireen Omar said the airline is overwhelmed with the response and bookings. It has witnessed over 80 per cent load. Apart from Malaysia, bookings have also been made from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Vienna, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, she said. "Since the demand is quite high, people will soon have the service of daily flights between the two cities. India is an important market for us and the launch of the new unique route shows our commitment towards enhancing our connectivity in the country," she said. The airline will also look viable and potential options to link Bhubaneswar with other Asian cities where AirAsia has its networks, Aireen said and added that the State City may be connected with Thailand in next phase. "The recent announcement of multiple-entry eVisa facility valid up to 15 days by the Malaysian Government is indeed a great news to all leisure and business travellers. We can foresee a steep increase in tourist arrival which will facilitate stronger tourism and economic growth of both countries," Aireen added. Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Tourism and Culture Ashok Panda said the State Government has provided Rs 6 crore as part of viability gap funding for one year. "I hope this new connectivity will usher in a new era of progress for Odisha," he said. On Wednesday, a receiving ceremony was held at Biju Patnaik International Airport to celebrate the arrival of flight AK31 in Bhubaneswar. The aircraft landed at 11.35 pm and was greeted with a water cannon salute. Among the guests on board of the inaugural flight were Aireen, Malaysian High Commissioner to India Dato Hidayat Abdul Hamid, Senior Director of Malaysia Tourism Datuk Zainuddin Abd Wahab and a group of Malaysian media. Later on the day, a Malaysian delegation met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the State Secretariat. Appreciating their efforts, the CM advised the team to start daily operation and assured to extend all infrastructural support. BHUBANESWAR: International airline AirAsia, which launched four direct flights in a week to Kuala Lumpur from Bhubaneswar, on Thursday announced to start daily operation to the Capital City of Malaysia very soon. CEO of AirAsia Aireen Omar said the airline is overwhelmed with the response and bookings. It has witnessed over 80 per cent load. Apart from Malaysia, bookings have also been made from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Vienna, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, she said. "Since the demand is quite high, people will soon have the service of daily flights between the two cities. India is an important market for us and the launch of the new unique route shows our commitment towards enhancing our connectivity in the country," she said. The airline will also look viable and potential options to link Bhubaneswar with other Asian cities where AirAsia has its networks, Aireen said and added that the State City may be connected with Thailand in next phase. "The recent announcement of multiple-entry eVisa facility valid up to 15 days by the Malaysian Government is indeed a great news to all leisure and business travellers. We can foresee a steep increase in tourist arrival which will facilitate stronger tourism and economic growth of both countries," Aireen added. Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Tourism and Culture Ashok Panda said the State Government has provided Rs 6 crore as part of viability gap funding for one year. "I hope this new connectivity will usher in a new era of progress for Odisha," he said. On Wednesday, a receiving ceremony was held at Biju Patnaik International Airport to celebrate the arrival of flight AK31 in Bhubaneswar. The aircraft landed at 11.35 pm and was greeted with a water cannon salute. Among the guests on board of the inaugural flight were Aireen, Malaysian High Commissioner to India Dato Hidayat Abdul Hamid, Senior Director of Malaysia Tourism Datuk Zainuddin Abd Wahab and a group of Malaysian media. Later on the day, a Malaysian delegation met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the State Secretariat. Appreciating their efforts, the CM advised the team to start daily operation and assured to extend all infrastructural support. By PTI NEW DELHI: A Delhi Police team probing the Election Commission bribery case will today travel to Tamil Nadu with arrested AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran and his aide to gather details about "illegal channels" used for transferring money from Chennai to Delhi. The Crime Branch team will leave for Chennai along with Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna. The police had secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residents of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. WATCH VIDEO: Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dhinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dhinakaran as a condition for merger talks. NEW DELHI: A Delhi Police team probing the Election Commission bribery case will today travel to Tamil Nadu with arrested AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran and his aide to gather details about "illegal channels" used for transferring money from Chennai to Delhi. The Crime Branch team will leave for Chennai along with Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna. The police had secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residents of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Tuesday night following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. WATCH VIDEO: window.__ventunoplayer = window.__ventunoplayer||[]; window.__ventunoplayer.push({video_key: 'OTI2ODU5fHw4fHw2fHwxLDIsMQ==', holder_id: 'vt-video-player', player_type: 'vp', width:'100%', ratio:'4:3'}); Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April 16. Dhinakaran was arrested for allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dhinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dhinakaran as a condition for merger talks. By PTI CEHNNAI: Tamil Nadu government has opposed move to privatise the Salem Steel Plant, saying such a proposal would cause "considerable unrest" amongst the people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said the plant had acquired a global reputation for its high quality steel and "is an iconic symbol" for Tamil Nadu. The people of the state have a deep sense of pride and attachment to the public sector plant, he said in the letter dated April 26, which was officially released today. Palaniswami said the state government had acquired about 15.5 sq.km. of land in 9 villages more than four decades ago at the foot hills of Kanjamalai in Salem for the plant. "It was possible to undertake such extensive land acquisition mainly because of the public sector character of the plant." "Today, any proposal to privatise the Salem Steel Plant would cause considerable unrest amongst people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired," he said. Palaniswami said land was "perhaps" the most valuable and sought after asset in the possession of the steel plant today. It was providing employment to about 2000 persons while many ancillary and subsidiary units also depended on it, he added. Tamil Nadu government had supported the Rs 2005 crore expansion project of the plant with a "structured package" of incentives in the form of capital subsidy, soft loan, electricity tax exemption and environmental protection subsidy, he said. Highlighting these, Palaniswami said the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Salem Steel Plant have received much support from the state government as well as the people, "primarily on account of its public sector character." Referring to the proposed privatisation, he told Modi that the move "has caused lot of apprehension and dismay amongst the people of the state." He said public sector undertakings were capable of performing very well provided they were given the right support and direction in the dynamic economic scenario. "The causes for the companys recent losses must be studied and Salem Steel Plant must be given a chance to improve its efficiency and make a turn around," he said. If that was done, he said the plant will transform once again into a profit making company. "I therefore request you to kindly intervene in the matter urgently and advise the Ministry of Steel and the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) to reconsider any proposal that they may have of privatising the Salem Steel Plant," he told Modi. The Centre had last month approved outright sale of state-owned SAIL's three special steel units, including Salem and Alloy Steel plants. CEHNNAI: Tamil Nadu government has opposed move to privatise the Salem Steel Plant, saying such a proposal would cause "considerable unrest" amongst the people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said the plant had acquired a global reputation for its high quality steel and "is an iconic symbol" for Tamil Nadu. The people of the state have a deep sense of pride and attachment to the public sector plant, he said in the letter dated April 26, which was officially released today. Palaniswami said the state government had acquired about 15.5 sq.km. of land in 9 villages more than four decades ago at the foot hills of Kanjamalai in Salem for the plant. "It was possible to undertake such extensive land acquisition mainly because of the public sector character of the plant." "Today, any proposal to privatise the Salem Steel Plant would cause considerable unrest amongst people, particularly amongst those whose lands were acquired," he said. Palaniswami said land was "perhaps" the most valuable and sought after asset in the possession of the steel plant today. It was providing employment to about 2000 persons while many ancillary and subsidiary units also depended on it, he added. Tamil Nadu government had supported the Rs 2005 crore expansion project of the plant with a "structured package" of incentives in the form of capital subsidy, soft loan, electricity tax exemption and environmental protection subsidy, he said. Highlighting these, Palaniswami said the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Salem Steel Plant have received much support from the state government as well as the people, "primarily on account of its public sector character." Referring to the proposed privatisation, he told Modi that the move "has caused lot of apprehension and dismay amongst the people of the state." He said public sector undertakings were capable of performing very well provided they were given the right support and direction in the dynamic economic scenario. "The causes for the companys recent losses must be studied and Salem Steel Plant must be given a chance to improve its efficiency and make a turn around," he said. If that was done, he said the plant will transform once again into a profit making company. "I therefore request you to kindly intervene in the matter urgently and advise the Ministry of Steel and the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) to reconsider any proposal that they may have of privatising the Salem Steel Plant," he told Modi. The Centre had last month approved outright sale of state-owned SAIL's three special steel units, including Salem and Alloy Steel plants. By Associated Press DUBAI: The CEO of one of the Middle East's largest carriers said Monday passenger numbers to the United States have dipped slightly over fears by some Muslim passengers that their visas may be rejected upon arrival, but expressed confidence in President Donald Trump as a "very good businessman." Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker said uncertainty about travel to the United States is "affecting the business, but to a very small extent." "We didn't have massive decline like other carriers so we still have robust loads to the United States and we will continue our commitment to our passengers in the United States," al-Baker said. Emirates, the Middle East's largest airline, slashed its flights to the United States by 20 percent last week. Dubai, where Emirates is based, and Doha, Qatar Airways' main hub, were among the 10 cities in Muslim-majority countries affected by a ban on laptops and other personal electronics in carry-on luggage aboard U.S.-bound flights. "Qatar Airways does not plan and will not reduce frequencies to the United States," he said. "I am sure that these uncertainties that passengers have soon could be resolved by statements from the United States' government." Speaking to reporters at the Arabian Travel Market convention in Dubai, al-Baker said Qatar Airways is planning to launch a new route to San Francisco and will fly to Las Vegas next year. The airline currently flies to more than a dozen U.S. cities. A pressure group called The Partnership for Open and Fair Skies which includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said the planned San Francisco expansion represents "another subsidized route into the United States." "Qatar Airways receives billions of dollars in illegal subsidies from its government in order to fly to our country and trash American jobs," said the group's spokesperson Jill Zuckman in a statement. Al-Baker, however, expressed hope that Trump would resist pressure from the three American carriers to block aggressive expansion into the U.S. market by Gulf-based carriers. "I have repeatedly mentioned that President Trump is a very wise individual and a very good businessman, and I don't think that he will buy into bullying by the three American carriers," he said. The blunt and plain-spoken CEO described the U.S. competition as "wicked" for the way their passengers are treated and said they operate in cities where they "can swindle their customers." In a further dig, al-Baker quipped that if a flight was full, he would travel on a jump seat where cabin crew often sit because the airline's policy is not to remove passengers. He was referring to an incident in which a United Airlines passenger was filmed being dragged off an airplane by airport security officers on an overbooked flight. "We would never offload a passenger in Qatar Airways even if it is the CEO of the airline that wants to travel," he said. "We would not drag out people out of an airplane." He said Qatar Airways has plans to expand to 26 new global destinations, adding: "The United States is not the entire world." The airline, he said, also has plans to apply with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund for a license to operate a new domestic Indian carrier. DUBAI: The CEO of one of the Middle East's largest carriers said Monday passenger numbers to the United States have dipped slightly over fears by some Muslim passengers that their visas may be rejected upon arrival, but expressed confidence in President Donald Trump as a "very good businessman." Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker said uncertainty about travel to the United States is "affecting the business, but to a very small extent." "We didn't have massive decline like other carriers so we still have robust loads to the United States and we will continue our commitment to our passengers in the United States," al-Baker said. Emirates, the Middle East's largest airline, slashed its flights to the United States by 20 percent last week. Dubai, where Emirates is based, and Doha, Qatar Airways' main hub, were among the 10 cities in Muslim-majority countries affected by a ban on laptops and other personal electronics in carry-on luggage aboard U.S.-bound flights. "Qatar Airways does not plan and will not reduce frequencies to the United States," he said. "I am sure that these uncertainties that passengers have soon could be resolved by statements from the United States' government." Speaking to reporters at the Arabian Travel Market convention in Dubai, al-Baker said Qatar Airways is planning to launch a new route to San Francisco and will fly to Las Vegas next year. The airline currently flies to more than a dozen U.S. cities. A pressure group called The Partnership for Open and Fair Skies which includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said the planned San Francisco expansion represents "another subsidized route into the United States." "Qatar Airways receives billions of dollars in illegal subsidies from its government in order to fly to our country and trash American jobs," said the group's spokesperson Jill Zuckman in a statement. Al-Baker, however, expressed hope that Trump would resist pressure from the three American carriers to block aggressive expansion into the U.S. market by Gulf-based carriers. "I have repeatedly mentioned that President Trump is a very wise individual and a very good businessman, and I don't think that he will buy into bullying by the three American carriers," he said. The blunt and plain-spoken CEO described the U.S. competition as "wicked" for the way their passengers are treated and said they operate in cities where they "can swindle their customers." In a further dig, al-Baker quipped that if a flight was full, he would travel on a jump seat where cabin crew often sit because the airline's policy is not to remove passengers. He was referring to an incident in which a United Airlines passenger was filmed being dragged off an airplane by airport security officers on an overbooked flight. "We would never offload a passenger in Qatar Airways even if it is the CEO of the airline that wants to travel," he said. "We would not drag out people out of an airplane." He said Qatar Airways has plans to expand to 26 new global destinations, adding: "The United States is not the entire world." The airline, he said, also has plans to apply with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund for a license to operate a new domestic Indian carrier. By Associated Press PARIS: France said that the chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month "bears the signature" of President Bashar Assad's government and shows it was responsible. Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France came to this conclusion after comparing samples from a 2013 sarin attack in Syria that matched the new ones. The findings came in a six-page report published Wednesday. In Damascus, Syrian opposition activists and a monitor reported Thursday that a large explosion rocked the Syrian capital, followed by a fire near Damascus airport. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said the explosion was heard across the capital, jolting residents awake. He said the explosion is reported to have occurred near the Damascus airport road. Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the blast near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. The pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road. Russia, a close ally of Assad, promptly denounced the French report Wednesday, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used are not enough to prove who was behind it. Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces used chemical weapons and claimed that myriad evidence of a poison gas attack is made up. But Ayrault said France knows "from sure sources" that "the manufacturing process of the sarin that was sampled is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories." "This method bears the signature of the regime and that is what allows us to establish its responsibility in this attack," he added, saying that France is working to bring those behind the "criminal" atrocities to international justice. France's Foreign Ministry said blood samples were taken from a victim in Syria on the day of the April 4 attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people. Environmental samples, the French ministry said, show the weapons were made "according to the same production process as the one used in the sarin attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime in Saraqeb" on April 29, 2013. Ayrault said French intelligence showed that only Syrian government forces could have launched such an attack by a bomber taking off from the Shayrat air base, which was later targeted in a retaliatory U.S. missile strike. France's presidency said the country's intelligence services presented evidence showing the Syrian government "still holds chemical warfare agents, in violation of the commitments to eliminate them that it took in 2013." It said that information will be made public, without offering details. It's thought that Assad's government still has a stockpile of tons of chemical weapons, despite saying it had handed over all of them. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's position on the attack is "unchanged," and that "that the only way to establish the truth about what happened... is an impartial international investigation." Russia has previously called for an international probe, and Peskov expressed regret that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, has turned down the Syrian government's offers to visit the site of the attack and investigate. The French minister's comments came as the OPCW, which is investigating the April 4 attack, held a ceremony in The Hague marking the 20th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. In a video message to the ceremony, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the organization's progress over two decades seeking to eliminate chemical weapons is now under threat. "In the Middle East, belligerents are breaking the norm against chemical weapons," he said. "The recent attack in Syria was a horrific reminder of the stakes. There can be no impunity for these crimes." The United States has also blamed Assad's government for the April 4 attack. The Trump administration ordered the cruise missile attack on the air base and issued sanctions on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing non-conventional weapons. Syria has strongly denied the accusations. Earlier Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. strike damaged the prospects of a political settlement for the war-torn country. Lavrov told a security conference in Moscow the U.S. response "pushes the prospect for a wide international front on terror even further away." He also dismissed claims that international experts cannot visit the site in Khan Sheikhoun because of security precautions and criticized the OPCW for failing to go there. Lavrov says claims that the experts were warned by a U.N. body against traveling to the location because it's unsafe are "lies," adding that Moscow went back to the U.N. and found out that there was no such warning. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia had to boost security measures at its air base in Syria after the U.S. strike at the Syrian base. Russia has been waging an air campaign since 2015 to help Assad's forces in the civil war. PARIS: France said that the chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month "bears the signature" of President Bashar Assad's government and shows it was responsible. Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France came to this conclusion after comparing samples from a 2013 sarin attack in Syria that matched the new ones. The findings came in a six-page report published Wednesday. In Damascus, Syrian opposition activists and a monitor reported Thursday that a large explosion rocked the Syrian capital, followed by a fire near Damascus airport. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said the explosion was heard across the capital, jolting residents awake. He said the explosion is reported to have occurred near the Damascus airport road. Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the blast near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. The pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road. Russia, a close ally of Assad, promptly denounced the French report Wednesday, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used are not enough to prove who was behind it. Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces used chemical weapons and claimed that myriad evidence of a poison gas attack is made up. But Ayrault said France knows "from sure sources" that "the manufacturing process of the sarin that was sampled is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories." "This method bears the signature of the regime and that is what allows us to establish its responsibility in this attack," he added, saying that France is working to bring those behind the "criminal" atrocities to international justice. France's Foreign Ministry said blood samples were taken from a victim in Syria on the day of the April 4 attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people. Environmental samples, the French ministry said, show the weapons were made "according to the same production process as the one used in the sarin attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime in Saraqeb" on April 29, 2013. Ayrault said French intelligence showed that only Syrian government forces could have launched such an attack by a bomber taking off from the Shayrat air base, which was later targeted in a retaliatory U.S. missile strike. France's presidency said the country's intelligence services presented evidence showing the Syrian government "still holds chemical warfare agents, in violation of the commitments to eliminate them that it took in 2013." It said that information will be made public, without offering details. It's thought that Assad's government still has a stockpile of tons of chemical weapons, despite saying it had handed over all of them. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's position on the attack is "unchanged," and that "that the only way to establish the truth about what happened... is an impartial international investigation." Russia has previously called for an international probe, and Peskov expressed regret that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, has turned down the Syrian government's offers to visit the site of the attack and investigate. The French minister's comments came as the OPCW, which is investigating the April 4 attack, held a ceremony in The Hague marking the 20th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. In a video message to the ceremony, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the organization's progress over two decades seeking to eliminate chemical weapons is now under threat. "In the Middle East, belligerents are breaking the norm against chemical weapons," he said. "The recent attack in Syria was a horrific reminder of the stakes. There can be no impunity for these crimes." The United States has also blamed Assad's government for the April 4 attack. The Trump administration ordered the cruise missile attack on the air base and issued sanctions on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing non-conventional weapons. Syria has strongly denied the accusations. Earlier Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. strike damaged the prospects of a political settlement for the war-torn country. Lavrov told a security conference in Moscow the U.S. response "pushes the prospect for a wide international front on terror even further away." He also dismissed claims that international experts cannot visit the site in Khan Sheikhoun because of security precautions and criticized the OPCW for failing to go there. Lavrov says claims that the experts were warned by a U.N. body against traveling to the location because it's unsafe are "lies," adding that Moscow went back to the U.N. and found out that there was no such warning. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia had to boost security measures at its air base in Syria after the U.S. strike at the Syrian base. Russia has been waging an air campaign since 2015 to help Assad's forces in the civil war. By AFP COLMAR: A French court on Thursday rejected a request by Serbia to extradite Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, whom Belgrade accuses of committing war crimes during the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict. Haradinaj, 48, was arrested by French police on January 4 when he flew into the Franco-Swiss airport of Basel-Mulhouse, but he is free to return home following Thursday's decision by the court in Colmar, eastern France. Haradinaj, an ex-commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), has already been tried and acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over allegations of crimes stemming from 1998. But Belgrade issued an international arrest warrant over separate charges of violence against Serbian civilians in Kosovo in June 1999. Haradinaj, a lawmaker who briefly served as premier from 2004 and now leads an opposition party, told AFP in an interview this month that he is the victim of "political persecution". Known as "Rambo" for his stocky build and military prowess, he is seen as a hero my many at home for his efforts to win independence for Kosovo from late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. Kosovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian province, unilaterally declared independence a decade after the conflict, a move since recognised by more than 100 countries but not by Belgrade or its big brother ally Russia. Tensions stoked Thousands of ethnic Albanians protested in Pristina and other cities in the region against Haradinaj's arrest. His detention also heightened tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, which began European Union-brokered talks in 2011 to "normalise" relations. Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said in a Facebook post that the French court's decision was "good news". He described it as proof that the "slanders" of Serbia's intelligence services against the KLA were "not valid and not taken into consideration by the democratic world". A statement from the government in Pristina said the decision confirmed that Serbian arrest warrants against Haradinaj and other KLA fighters "are political and have low intentions". Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic meanwhile called a government meeting in Belgrade to discuss the ruling. The public prosecutor in Colmar has five days to launch an appeal. Before Thursday's decision, Haradinaj had been released on bail but told he could not leave France while he awaited the ruling. He said he was missing an opportunity to fulfil his role as an opposition leader, saying "everybody is campaigning in Kosovo except me". No date has been scheduled for elections but there is wide speculation that a snap vote will be held in Kosovo in coming months. COLMAR: A French court on Thursday rejected a request by Serbia to extradite Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, whom Belgrade accuses of committing war crimes during the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict. Haradinaj, 48, was arrested by French police on January 4 when he flew into the Franco-Swiss airport of Basel-Mulhouse, but he is free to return home following Thursday's decision by the court in Colmar, eastern France. Haradinaj, an ex-commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), has already been tried and acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over allegations of crimes stemming from 1998. But Belgrade issued an international arrest warrant over separate charges of violence against Serbian civilians in Kosovo in June 1999. Haradinaj, a lawmaker who briefly served as premier from 2004 and now leads an opposition party, told AFP in an interview this month that he is the victim of "political persecution". Known as "Rambo" for his stocky build and military prowess, he is seen as a hero my many at home for his efforts to win independence for Kosovo from late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. Kosovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian province, unilaterally declared independence a decade after the conflict, a move since recognised by more than 100 countries but not by Belgrade or its big brother ally Russia. Tensions stoked Thousands of ethnic Albanians protested in Pristina and other cities in the region against Haradinaj's arrest. His detention also heightened tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, which began European Union-brokered talks in 2011 to "normalise" relations. Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said in a Facebook post that the French court's decision was "good news". He described it as proof that the "slanders" of Serbia's intelligence services against the KLA were "not valid and not taken into consideration by the democratic world". A statement from the government in Pristina said the decision confirmed that Serbian arrest warrants against Haradinaj and other KLA fighters "are political and have low intentions". Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic meanwhile called a government meeting in Belgrade to discuss the ruling. The public prosecutor in Colmar has five days to launch an appeal. Before Thursday's decision, Haradinaj had been released on bail but told he could not leave France while he awaited the ruling. He said he was missing an opportunity to fulfil his role as an opposition leader, saying "everybody is campaigning in Kosovo except me". No date has been scheduled for elections but there is wide speculation that a snap vote will be held in Kosovo in coming months. By PTI ISLAMABAD: Pakistan today said that it will decide "on merit" the request made by India for consular access to its citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on spying charges. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that India has sought consular access to 46-year-old Jadhav. "We have made it clear time and again that Pakistan and India have signed an agreement on consular access in 2008, and according to clause VI of that agreement, decision to grant consular access in cases where detentions and arrests relate to political or security matters, the request of consular access will be decided on merits of the case, he said. Referring to Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale's demand for consular access to Jadhav during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua yesterday, the spokesman said that the Indian diplomat had submitted a request for an appeal "which will be examined by experts." Zakaria's statement differs from that of army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor who had said last week that Jadhav was a spy and consular access cannot be given to spies. Similarly, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua was quoted by local media as saying yesterday that consular access agreement was related to prisoners and not spies. Pakistan has rejected India's request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. Zakaria alleged that Jadhav was a serving commander of Indian Navy, working for Indian intelligence agency RAW and was caught red-handed. India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. Jadhav made confessions, and was tried for espionage activities, Zakaria said, adding that his trial was conducted according to the law of the land in a transparent manner. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." The Pakistan Army had also released a "confessional video" of Jadhav after his arrest. However, India denied Pakistan's contention and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistan's agencies. "Pakistan has always highlighted to the International Community that India uses Afghan soil against Pakistan and it has been repeatedly stated by those in India in position of authority and responsibility that their effort is to squeeze Pakistan from the eastern and western borders," he alleged. He urged the international community to take note of "Indian state sponsorship of activities of subversion, terrorism and financing of terrorists against Pakistan." ISLAMABAD: Pakistan today said that it will decide "on merit" the request made by India for consular access to its citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on spying charges. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that India has sought consular access to 46-year-old Jadhav. "We have made it clear time and again that Pakistan and India have signed an agreement on consular access in 2008, and according to clause VI of that agreement, decision to grant consular access in cases where detentions and arrests relate to political or security matters, the request of consular access will be decided on merits of the case, he said. Referring to Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale's demand for consular access to Jadhav during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua yesterday, the spokesman said that the Indian diplomat had submitted a request for an appeal "which will be examined by experts." Zakaria's statement differs from that of army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor who had said last week that Jadhav was a spy and consular access cannot be given to spies. Similarly, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua was quoted by local media as saying yesterday that consular access agreement was related to prisoners and not spies. Pakistan has rejected India's request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. Zakaria alleged that Jadhav was a serving commander of Indian Navy, working for Indian intelligence agency RAW and was caught red-handed. India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. Jadhav made confessions, and was tried for espionage activities, Zakaria said, adding that his trial was conducted according to the law of the land in a transparent manner. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." The Pakistan Army had also released a "confessional video" of Jadhav after his arrest. However, India denied Pakistan's contention and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistan's agencies. "Pakistan has always highlighted to the International Community that India uses Afghan soil against Pakistan and it has been repeatedly stated by those in India in position of authority and responsibility that their effort is to squeeze Pakistan from the eastern and western borders," he alleged. He urged the international community to take note of "Indian state sponsorship of activities of subversion, terrorism and financing of terrorists against Pakistan." By AFP MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia's ties with Japan were moving forward as he met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the latest bid to make progress on a decades-old territorial dispute. The meeting follows on from Putin's first visit to Japan in 11 years last December, when the two leaders failed to resolve a disagreement over an island chain that has prevented their nations signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II. But the Russian strongman insisted that the two sides are making important steps towards bolstering trade and political relations despite the dispute. "At our previous meeting... during talks we agreed to activate our relations, our contacts, our joint work, and we can already draw some conclusions: there is movement forward," Putin said at the start of talks with Abe in Moscow. During Putin's visit to Japan the countries signed a flurry of economic deals and agreed to begin negotiations towards possible economic cooperation on the disputed islands. Abe said Thursday that Japan's bilateral relations with Russia are "developing as they should". The Kremlin had said that Thursday's talks would focus on "the state and prospects for development of Russo-Japanese cooperation in the political, trade and economic, and humanitarian spheres." The Soviet Union seized islands off Japan's northern coast in 1945 in the closing days of the war. Known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, they have been a thorn in relations ever since. MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia's ties with Japan were moving forward as he met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the latest bid to make progress on a decades-old territorial dispute. The meeting follows on from Putin's first visit to Japan in 11 years last December, when the two leaders failed to resolve a disagreement over an island chain that has prevented their nations signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II. But the Russian strongman insisted that the two sides are making important steps towards bolstering trade and political relations despite the dispute. "At our previous meeting... during talks we agreed to activate our relations, our contacts, our joint work, and we can already draw some conclusions: there is movement forward," Putin said at the start of talks with Abe in Moscow. During Putin's visit to Japan the countries signed a flurry of economic deals and agreed to begin negotiations towards possible economic cooperation on the disputed islands. Abe said Thursday that Japan's bilateral relations with Russia are "developing as they should". The Kremlin had said that Thursday's talks would focus on "the state and prospects for development of Russo-Japanese cooperation in the political, trade and economic, and humanitarian spheres." The Soviet Union seized islands off Japan's northern coast in 1945 in the closing days of the war. Known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, they have been a thorn in relations ever since. By AFP WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump hedged his agreement to renegotiate -- rather than exit NAFTA -- with a warning to Canada and Mexico Thursday that the US will jettison the trade accord if there is no "fair deal." Trump's unrelenting back-and-forth seemed certain to keep Washington's two closest trade partners on edge as they move to revamp one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The Republican billionaire had threatened to scrap NAFTA altogether during his presidential campaign and has kept his partners guessing about his intentions ever since. While most of his fire has been directed at Mexico, Trump abruptly shifted course this week to pick fights with Ottawa over softwood lumber and dairy products. US media reported on Wednesday that he was likely to give formal notice of pulling the United States out of NAFTA -- and then came the White House announcement that the US would renegotiate the agreement after all. In phone calls Wednesday to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the White House said, Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time." On Thursday, Trump confirmed that was the case, but added a twist in a pair of early morning tweets. "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate," the president said. "I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible!" A fixture since 1994 NAFTA has been a fixture in US relations with its two neighbors since it went into effect January 1, 1994 under president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The US trade deficit in goods and services last year with Mexico was $62 billion, but with Canada the US had a surplus of $8 billion. The news from Washington soothed fears of a possible trade war and sent most Asian markets up Thursday. WASHINGTON: In Mexico, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Thursday that Trump's threat to withdraw from NAFTA had been "a real possibility." "We've confirmed it was something under consideration," he told Mexico's Radio Formula. But Videgaray saw it as directed at the US Congress, where he said "there has been a significant delay in starting the process that would enable a renegotiation." Trump's nominee for US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate. In its statement, the White House said the leaders of the three countries had "agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures." "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," it quoted Trump as saying. During the US presidential campaign, Trump had called NAFTA "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed" and a "disaster" that had cost the United States millions of jobs as companies moved plants to Mexico. Just last week, he said it was "very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all." 'Rumour' of US exit Two White House officials had told the Politico news website that a draft executive order for the US exit from NAFTA was in the final stages of review, and could be unveiled within a week or two. A senior administration official told The New York Times that Trump was likely to sign the order. But late Wednesday Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross brushed off the reports as "rumor." The administration's talk of leaving NAFTA has run into opposition from several prominent Republican lawmakers, including border senators John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, Politico reported. McCain told Politico he'd welcome a renegotiation, but a withdrawal would "be disgraceful and a disaster." The Trump administration has slapped tariffs in recent days on some imports of Canadian timber and threatened to retaliate against Canadian moves that harm US dairy farmers. Timber and milk, however, are not covered by NAFTA. The timber dispute between Washington and Ottawa goes back at least 35 years, with US producers accusing Canada of exporting lumber at unfairly subsidized prices. Canada's dairy sector is protected by tariffs on imports and controls on domestic production as a way to support prices for the country's farmers. The latest row was triggered when Canada extended those policies to apply to ultrafiltered milk, a product used in cheese production and at the center of a thriving US export business. WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump hedged his agreement to renegotiate -- rather than exit NAFTA -- with a warning to Canada and Mexico Thursday that the US will jettison the trade accord if there is no "fair deal." Trump's unrelenting back-and-forth seemed certain to keep Washington's two closest trade partners on edge as they move to revamp one of the world's biggest trading blocs. The Republican billionaire had threatened to scrap NAFTA altogether during his presidential campaign and has kept his partners guessing about his intentions ever since. While most of his fire has been directed at Mexico, Trump abruptly shifted course this week to pick fights with Ottawa over softwood lumber and dairy products. US media reported on Wednesday that he was likely to give formal notice of pulling the United States out of NAFTA -- and then came the White House announcement that the US would renegotiate the agreement after all. In phone calls Wednesday to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the White House said, Trump "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time." On Thursday, Trump confirmed that was the case, but added a twist in a pair of early morning tweets. "I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate," the president said. "I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible!" A fixture since 1994 NAFTA has been a fixture in US relations with its two neighbors since it went into effect January 1, 1994 under president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The US trade deficit in goods and services last year with Mexico was $62 billion, but with Canada the US had a surplus of $8 billion. The news from Washington soothed fears of a possible trade war and sent most Asian markets up Thursday. WASHINGTON: In Mexico, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Thursday that Trump's threat to withdraw from NAFTA had been "a real possibility." "We've confirmed it was something under consideration," he told Mexico's Radio Formula. But Videgaray saw it as directed at the US Congress, where he said "there has been a significant delay in starting the process that would enable a renegotiation." Trump's nominee for US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate. In its statement, the White House said the leaders of the three countries had "agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures." "It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation," it quoted Trump as saying. During the US presidential campaign, Trump had called NAFTA "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed" and a "disaster" that had cost the United States millions of jobs as companies moved plants to Mexico. Just last week, he said it was "very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all." 'Rumour' of US exit Two White House officials had told the Politico news website that a draft executive order for the US exit from NAFTA was in the final stages of review, and could be unveiled within a week or two. A senior administration official told The New York Times that Trump was likely to sign the order. But late Wednesday Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross brushed off the reports as "rumor." The administration's talk of leaving NAFTA has run into opposition from several prominent Republican lawmakers, including border senators John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, Politico reported. McCain told Politico he'd welcome a renegotiation, but a withdrawal would "be disgraceful and a disaster." The Trump administration has slapped tariffs in recent days on some imports of Canadian timber and threatened to retaliate against Canadian moves that harm US dairy farmers. Timber and milk, however, are not covered by NAFTA. The timber dispute between Washington and Ottawa goes back at least 35 years, with US producers accusing Canada of exporting lumber at unfairly subsidized prices. Canada's dairy sector is protected by tariffs on imports and controls on domestic production as a way to support prices for the country's farmers. The latest row was triggered when Canada extended those policies to apply to ultrafiltered milk, a product used in cheese production and at the center of a thriving US export business. By PTI NEW YORK: A grand jury in the US today indicted an India-born doctor and his wife along with another Indian-origin woman doctor in a first-of-its-kind federal prosecution involving female genital mutilation of two minor girls. Unless they work out a plea deal, the two doctors and the wife of one of the physicians are headed to trial now, Detroit Free Press reported. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both from Michigan state, were charged with conspiring to perform female genital mutilations (FGM) on minor girls out of Fakhruddin Attar's medical clinic in Livonia. The Attars were arrested on April 21. They were charged with helping another Indian-origin doctor Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Michigan, perform FGM on minor girls. According to the indictment handed up in US District Court, Jumana cut the genitals of two girls from Minnesota with the help of another doctor who let her use his Livonia clinic to carry out the procedure and helped coordinate the girls' trip to Michigan, the report said. The federal indictment alleged that the three persons tried to obstruct the investigation by telling other people to make false statement to authorities. The doctors are also accused of lying to investigators. Nagarwala, Fakhruddin and Farida are believed to be the first people charged under federal US law, which criminalises FGM. According to an online physician directory, Fakhruddin graduated from the Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India in 1988. The charges say that Nagarwala used to perform the medical procedure on minor girls at Burhani Medical Clinic (BMC) in Michigan that was owned and operated by Fakhruddin. Fakhruddin's wife was employed at BMC as an officer manager. The compliant against the Attars said that the couple arranged and assisted in the female genital mutilation of minor females performed by Nagarwala. While they allowed their clinic to be used by Nagarwala to perform the procedures, Farida assisted Nagarwala during the female genital mutilation procedures. Fakhruddin told federal agents this month that he has known Nagarwala and she occasionally saw patients at his clinic even though she was not employed there. He said Nagarwala only saw the patients at BMC when the clinic was closed and that Farida used to be present in the examining room while Nagarwala treated the minor girls. The investigation revealed that several minor girls informed forensic personnel that Nagarwala had performed procedures on their genitals and one minor girl said Farida had been present when Nagarwala did the FGM procedures. According to the complaint, some of the minor victims travelled interstate to have the procedure performed. The complaint alleges that the FGM procedure was performed on girls who were approximately six to eight years old. The number of girls under 18 at risk for FGM in the US has quadrupled since 1997. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 513,000 women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US. FGM has been a crime under federal law since 1996 and is punishable by up to five years in prison, however FGM is not a crime in 26 US states, including Michigan. The complaint filed against Nagarwala last week had said federal agents reviewed her telephone records and further investigation revealed that parents of two minor girls had travelled to Michigan. The girls were later interviewed by a forensic expert and one of the girls said she was told she was coming to Detroit for a "special" girls trip, but after arriving at the hotel, she learned that she and the other girl had to go to the doctor because "our tummies hurt." The girls had been taken to Nagarwala, who performed the procedure on the girls. The World Health Organisation said female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. WHO said FGM, which is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. NEW YORK: A grand jury in the US today indicted an India-born doctor and his wife along with another Indian-origin woman doctor in a first-of-its-kind federal prosecution involving female genital mutilation of two minor girls. Unless they work out a plea deal, the two doctors and the wife of one of the physicians are headed to trial now, Detroit Free Press reported. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, both from Michigan state, were charged with conspiring to perform female genital mutilations (FGM) on minor girls out of Fakhruddin Attar's medical clinic in Livonia. The Attars were arrested on April 21. They were charged with helping another Indian-origin doctor Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Michigan, perform FGM on minor girls. According to the indictment handed up in US District Court, Jumana cut the genitals of two girls from Minnesota with the help of another doctor who let her use his Livonia clinic to carry out the procedure and helped coordinate the girls' trip to Michigan, the report said. The federal indictment alleged that the three persons tried to obstruct the investigation by telling other people to make false statement to authorities. The doctors are also accused of lying to investigators. Nagarwala, Fakhruddin and Farida are believed to be the first people charged under federal US law, which criminalises FGM. According to an online physician directory, Fakhruddin graduated from the Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India in 1988. The charges say that Nagarwala used to perform the medical procedure on minor girls at Burhani Medical Clinic (BMC) in Michigan that was owned and operated by Fakhruddin. Fakhruddin's wife was employed at BMC as an officer manager. The compliant against the Attars said that the couple arranged and assisted in the female genital mutilation of minor females performed by Nagarwala. While they allowed their clinic to be used by Nagarwala to perform the procedures, Farida assisted Nagarwala during the female genital mutilation procedures. Fakhruddin told federal agents this month that he has known Nagarwala and she occasionally saw patients at his clinic even though she was not employed there. He said Nagarwala only saw the patients at BMC when the clinic was closed and that Farida used to be present in the examining room while Nagarwala treated the minor girls. The investigation revealed that several minor girls informed forensic personnel that Nagarwala had performed procedures on their genitals and one minor girl said Farida had been present when Nagarwala did the FGM procedures. According to the complaint, some of the minor victims travelled interstate to have the procedure performed. The complaint alleges that the FGM procedure was performed on girls who were approximately six to eight years old. The number of girls under 18 at risk for FGM in the US has quadrupled since 1997. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 513,000 women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US. FGM has been a crime under federal law since 1996 and is punishable by up to five years in prison, however FGM is not a crime in 26 US states, including Michigan. The complaint filed against Nagarwala last week had said federal agents reviewed her telephone records and further investigation revealed that parents of two minor girls had travelled to Michigan. The girls were later interviewed by a forensic expert and one of the girls said she was told she was coming to Detroit for a "special" girls trip, but after arriving at the hotel, she learned that she and the other girl had to go to the doctor because "our tummies hurt." The girls had been taken to Nagarwala, who performed the procedure on the girls. The World Health Organisation said female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. WHO said FGM, which is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. By Associated Press WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's plan to overhaul the nation's tax code could provide significant tax cuts for the working-class voters who elected him, but the unknowns could end up hurting many of these core supporters of the president. A look at how Trump's tax plan could affect families at different income levels: THE WORKING CLASS These are the people who have been left behind by an increasingly globalized economy. Trump's proposal, a one-page outline short on detail, says he would double the standard tax deduction, which could provide significant relief to working-class families. But Trump's top economic adviser used some bad math to describe the proposal, raising questions. Gary Cohn said the standard deduction for a married couple would be doubled to $24,000. But that's not double. The standard deduction for a married couple is $12,700, so double would be $25,400. Cohn said the deduction would create "a zero tax-rate for the first $24,000." That sounds great, but very few families making $24,000 a year pay federal income tax, said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In fact, 44 percent of all U.S. households pay no federal income tax, though most pay other taxes. Trump's one-page sketch is silent on whether the tax code would still include the personal tax exemption, which allows most families to exempt $4,050 in income for each spouse and dependent child. In big families, this tax exemption can add up. During the campaign, Trump released a tax proposal that would eliminate the personal exemption. Also during the campaign, Trump proposed getting rid of the "head of household" filing status, which is mainly used by single parents. This filing status provides a lower tax rate and a higher standard deduction than filing as a single person. Trump's new plan is silent on this issue as well. THE MIDDLE CLASS The median household income in the U.S. is about $55,000, though people living in high-cost areas can make much more than that and still feel like they are in the middle class. Doubling the standard deduction or at least raising it to $24,000 could provide significant tax relief to middle-income families. But whether they pay more or less depends largely on details that have yet to be released. One of those pesky details is how Trump will structure the tax rates on individual income. Trump has proposed reducing the number of tax rates from seven to three 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. But the administration has yet to determine the income levels for people who would be put in each bracket. HIGH-INCOME FAMILIES Trump's plan has the potential to provide big tax cuts to high-income families unless you live in a state with high state and local taxes. Trump calls for eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was enacted in 1969 to prevent high-income people from paying no income tax. It has evolved over the years and now impacts about 5 million households, most of them making between $200,000 and $1 million a year. In 2005, Trump himself paid $36.5 million in taxes, mostly because of the AMT. Without it, he would have paid just $5.5 million, according to a leaked copy of that year's return. On the flip side, Trump wants to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, a big tax break that benefits millions, especially people living in Democratic-controlled states with high local taxes such as New York, New Jersey and California. Last year, more than 43 million families claimed the deduction, saving them nearly $70 billion. THE SUPERRICH These are the 1 percenters, people like Trump who make millions a year and are worth even more. Trump is proposing big tax cuts for the superrich, including repealing the estate tax. The federal estate tax is widely misunderstood. The fact is it affects very few estates. If your parents' estate is worth less than $10.9 million, you don't have to worry about this tax. This year, about 5,200 estates will pay the tax, according to the Tax Policy Center. Trump also wants to reduce the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent. But perhaps the biggest windfall for rich people could come from Trump's plan to lower the top tax rate for small business owners from 39.6 percent to 15 percent. Rich people, including Trump, tend to report a lot of business income, Williams said. But the true effect of this tax cut will depend on how the Trump administration defines a small business owner. If the tax cut applies to all business income reported on individual tax returns, it would be a huge windfall for many rich families. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Trump will propose safeguards that would prevent rich people from taking advantage of the tax cut, but he provided no details on how that would work. WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's plan to overhaul the nation's tax code could provide significant tax cuts for the working-class voters who elected him, but the unknowns could end up hurting many of these core supporters of the president. A look at how Trump's tax plan could affect families at different income levels: THE WORKING CLASS These are the people who have been left behind by an increasingly globalized economy. Trump's proposal, a one-page outline short on detail, says he would double the standard tax deduction, which could provide significant relief to working-class families. But Trump's top economic adviser used some bad math to describe the proposal, raising questions. Gary Cohn said the standard deduction for a married couple would be doubled to $24,000. But that's not double. The standard deduction for a married couple is $12,700, so double would be $25,400. Cohn said the deduction would create "a zero tax-rate for the first $24,000." That sounds great, but very few families making $24,000 a year pay federal income tax, said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In fact, 44 percent of all U.S. households pay no federal income tax, though most pay other taxes. Trump's one-page sketch is silent on whether the tax code would still include the personal tax exemption, which allows most families to exempt $4,050 in income for each spouse and dependent child. In big families, this tax exemption can add up. During the campaign, Trump released a tax proposal that would eliminate the personal exemption. Also during the campaign, Trump proposed getting rid of the "head of household" filing status, which is mainly used by single parents. This filing status provides a lower tax rate and a higher standard deduction than filing as a single person. Trump's new plan is silent on this issue as well. THE MIDDLE CLASS The median household income in the U.S. is about $55,000, though people living in high-cost areas can make much more than that and still feel like they are in the middle class. Doubling the standard deduction or at least raising it to $24,000 could provide significant tax relief to middle-income families. But whether they pay more or less depends largely on details that have yet to be released. One of those pesky details is how Trump will structure the tax rates on individual income. Trump has proposed reducing the number of tax rates from seven to three 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. But the administration has yet to determine the income levels for people who would be put in each bracket. HIGH-INCOME FAMILIES Trump's plan has the potential to provide big tax cuts to high-income families unless you live in a state with high state and local taxes. Trump calls for eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was enacted in 1969 to prevent high-income people from paying no income tax. It has evolved over the years and now impacts about 5 million households, most of them making between $200,000 and $1 million a year. In 2005, Trump himself paid $36.5 million in taxes, mostly because of the AMT. Without it, he would have paid just $5.5 million, according to a leaked copy of that year's return. On the flip side, Trump wants to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, a big tax break that benefits millions, especially people living in Democratic-controlled states with high local taxes such as New York, New Jersey and California. Last year, more than 43 million families claimed the deduction, saving them nearly $70 billion. THE SUPERRICH These are the 1 percenters, people like Trump who make millions a year and are worth even more. Trump is proposing big tax cuts for the superrich, including repealing the estate tax. The federal estate tax is widely misunderstood. The fact is it affects very few estates. If your parents' estate is worth less than $10.9 million, you don't have to worry about this tax. This year, about 5,200 estates will pay the tax, according to the Tax Policy Center. Trump also wants to reduce the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent. But perhaps the biggest windfall for rich people could come from Trump's plan to lower the top tax rate for small business owners from 39.6 percent to 15 percent. Rich people, including Trump, tend to report a lot of business income, Williams said. But the true effect of this tax cut will depend on how the Trump administration defines a small business owner. If the tax cut applies to all business income reported on individual tax returns, it would be a huge windfall for many rich families. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Trump will propose safeguards that would prevent rich people from taking advantage of the tax cut, but he provided no details on how that would work. RI Election Day Coverage Recap: Election Results and more In the Nov. 8 election Rhode Islanders cast their vote for governor, Congressman, and ballot issues. Here's everything you need to know. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear early, then a few clouds later on. Low around 55F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Medication theft from the home is a leading cause of prescription drug overdose deaths, but nearly 70 percent of prescription opioid medications kept in homes with children are not stored safely, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. National Drug Take-Back Day is April 29. It is an important opportunity to appropriately dispose of unwanted prescription medications. In addition to a federal program, there is an easy-to-use, drug take-back program, sponsored by Cordant Health Solutions, http://www.cordantsolutions.com. Cordant partners with healthcare providers and hospitals to offer this service, which allows patients to safely and conveniently return unused prescribed pain medication for legal disposal. The program already has destroyed an estimated 49,000 doses of unused pain medication that might have stayed in home medicine cabinets. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, approximately 77 percent of opioid prescription medications taken by new users are obtained from a friend or relative. Sixty-two percent of teens who admit taking medication for non-medical reasons say they get drugs from medicine cabinets in their homes. This creates a dangerous temptation to experiment with controlled substances and risk catastrophic outcomes. Parents who are prescribed opioids should dispose of unused drugs when they no longer are needed for pain relief. "There is a national unmet need for an ongoing and convenient service to safely dispose of opioids and other drugs," said Sue Sommer, president and CEO of Cordant. "Physicians are reporting their satisfaction with the take-back program and value its utility for counseling patients on what to do with their unused medications, and above all get them out of the house and away from curious teens." Recent numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention point out that drug overdose deaths continue to increase in the United States. From 2000 to 2015 more than half a million people died from drug overdoses and 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. Cordant's Take-Back Program takebackprogram.org allows patients to place their unused drugs in nondescript take-back envelopes with a prepaid mailing label and deposit in any U.S. Postal Service mailbox. The program is compliant with the requirements of the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act. The Cordant drug take-back program also extends to Cordant's Workers' Compensation division, which provides medication monitoring services to many of the industry's largest third party administrator, self-insured and pharmacy benefit managers and carriers. "The workers' comp industry utilizes over ten times more opioids than other payers. These medications are in the injured worker's home and can be dangerous if they get into the wrong hands. Therefore, we found it critical to extend this offering to our division as well," said Michele Settel, vice-president and general manager of Cordant's Workers' Compensation Division. "Through our collection kits, we offer this potentially life-saving service to our physicians who are treating our clients' injured workers." In a new study, researchers demonstrate successful transplantation of fetal rat liver cells to an injured adult rat liver. The work is an important step toward using transplanted cells to treat liver failure, which currently requires an organ transplant. Jennifer Sanders, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Brown University, will present the new research at the American Society for Investigative Pathology annual meeting during the Experimental Biology 2017 meeting, to be held April 2226 in Chicago. "There are too few donor livers, so many people die of liver diseases such as hepatitis and cirrhosis without ever getting a transplant," said Sanders. "Understanding the behavior of fetal liver cells may lead to ways to select the best cells for transplantation into people whose livers are failing." In the new study, the researcher removed liver cells from a rat fetus near the end of gestation and transplanted them into an injured adult rat liver. In the new liver, the transplanted cells multiplied for a long period and gave rise to new hepatocytes-;the main cell type found in the liver-;as well as the cells that form the bile ducts and line the blood vessels. Adult rat liver cells cannot multiply and differentiate after transplantation. "Most previous studies have used very immature fetal rat cells and have not attempted to characterize the cell population prior to transplantation," said Sanders. "We are using late-gestation fetal rat hepatocytes that can carry out many of the functions of adult liver cells, and we characterized the cells based on expression of markers on their surface." To better understand how fetal and adult hepatocytes differ, the researchers examined proteins called histones that regulate DNA structure. They identified histone differences that may allow the fetal cells to grow and survive when transplanted into an injured adult liver. "Our prior studies have shown that fetal rat hepatocyte proliferation, growth and gene-expression regulation are different than in adult rat hepatocytes," said Sanders. "This has led us to believe that maintenance of DNA structure is very important for the behavior of fetal rat hepatocytes and the ability of these cells to repopulate an injured adult liver." In addition to this work's implications for cell-based liver therapies, better understanding of how DNA structure, gene expression and protein function are regulated together in the normal fetal liver cell could help scientists understand the events that lead to liver cancer. As a next step, the researchers are working to determine how the adult liver environment affects transplanted fetal cells. They want to find out whether transplanted fetal cells differentiate in a way that makes them indistinguishable from normal adult hepatocytes. Source: http://www.faseb.org/ insights from industry David We s t, CEO Hunter Jackson, CSO Proscia An interview with David West, CEO and Hunter Jackson, CSO, Proscia, conducted by April Cashin-Garbutt, MA (Cantab) How has the digitization of pathology slides impacted cancer diagnostics? David: It is worth noting that in the U.S. and in many countries, digital pathology is still at a very early stage, compared to many other fields that were digitized 15 or 20 years ago such as radiology. There have been some barriers to the adoption of digital pathology such as regulatory challenges that are only just now being overcome. Recently, the FDA approved the use of whole slide imaging software for primary diagnostics. That being said, digital pathology offers a couple of key and core promises that many laboratories are even starting to leverage today. Once you digitize the slide, you can improve operational efficiency, as many studies have shown. Once the slide is digitized, you're not limited to the physical realm anymore, so it's very easy to move those around: for second opinion consults, for remote tumor boards and so on. Digital pathology is remarkably useful, and telepathology is where it's starting to be used today, since it's outside of the realm of primary diagnosis. The last of the three key areas, in addition to improving operational efficiency and it being easy to send those slides anywhere, is image analysis, which is what we're particularly excited about. Image analysis has been adopted in the research space for a while for research pathology and drug discovery and so on, but pathology has a lot of challenges in terms of subjectivity and that's where image analysis can play a big role - everything from simple computer vision driven algorithms to more complex and sophisticated algorithms that are in the realm of artificial intelligence. Hunter: I think David has hit the nail on the head. There is what's going on today and then what's going on tomorrow. I think we're very much focused on both. Some people see a discontinuity with digital pathology and think right now it is not working and that someday it's going to grow up or that right now it's super important, but will then get neglected in the future. I think that we're very much addressing today and tomorrow. What is Proscias vision? David: Proscia is focused on bringing computational pathology into laboratories. We see a world where pathology is driven by both humans and machines and where software can play a big role. I think that the implications for pathology as a whole is profound. We're a software company. It's worth noting that a lot of digital pathology is driven by hardware companies and we work with those hardware companies because you have to scan the slide you have to start somewhere. We really think that software is the future of pathology, a field that's really been untouched for the last 150 years when it comes to software technology. What is Proscia doing to bring computational pathology to the lab? Hunter: We are partnering and collaborating with leading cancer research institutions across the world to train our algorithms to meet FDA standards as a potential tool for primary diagnosis. To do this, we started in one of the most common cancers in the world, breast cancer. By analysing data provided by Radboud University Medical Centre and University Medical Centre Utrecht, we successfully trained our algorithm to predict lymph node metastases in breast cancer patients with 96% specificity and 85% sensitivity. We are currently analysing data to train our algorithms to predict lymph node metastases in lung cancer patients as well and are looking to expand into a wide variety of other cancers. Recently, we collaborated with five of the top medical centres in the Netherlands as part of the ISBI 2017 CAMELYON Challenge to identify and classify pN-stage in breast cancer patients. pN-stage is a way to measure the extent of regional lymph node metastases in a patient. For the first time our algorithms are producing data at the patient-level, rather than in the lab like previous collaborations. We trained our algorithm to identify and classify pN-stage in breast cancer patients with a kappa score of .776, which exceeds current standards. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today Through these collaborations we have a thesis that images could hold the key or the cipher to unlock precision medicine across much broader patient populations than strictly genetic testing does. Why is accurate prediction of lymph node metastasis so important? Hunter: When a pathologist is staging a cancer, he or she looks at three main groups: the primary tumor status, the regional lymph nodes and the distant metastasis. We are focusing on the two latter parts of those stages and it's really important to drive precision surgical procedures. To effectively treat a patient with surgery or neoadjuvant therapy it is really important to understand the extent to which the cancer has spread to lymph nodes and sometimes other organ systems. Pathology and its practitioners are responsible for providing this information, and as it currently stands, most of the genomic and molecular testing do not provide the information needed to make these determinations. Current testing modules are focused on primary tumor status, our algorithms are addressing the metastatic advances of cancer. Having a predictive biomarker to determine whether the patient's cancer is going to metastasize in the lymph nodes is incredibly important and something that a lot of molecular biomarkers and genomic testing don't determine today. That's why we're focusing on this to start off with and our goal is to build a holistic view of the patient's entire tumor and cancer spectrum using information that we extract from these images. What have been the main challenges to date in predicting lymph node metastasis and how do you hope to overcome them? Hunter: A lot of studies in breast cancer and prostate cancer have had great outcomes as a result of genomic testing and molecular biomarkers. The idea of having a test that can give a much more detailed and personal view of the patient's disease is something that a lot of pathologists and oncologists are very excited about. However, unfortunately, nobody has been successful in developing a molecular or genomic biomarker to predict lymph node metastasis. We're taking a different view than everybody else. Rather than looking at the genome and the molecular spectrum, we're focusing on the morphology and how the doctor intends to make the diagnosis by looking at the slides. Our goal is to extract more precisely, more objectively and more consistently and provide similar information, along with extra information, that the human eye can't perceive. How important do you think AI and machine learning will be in driving precision medicine? Hunter: The ability to extract pathological features from a patient's tissue sample objectively and consistently is something that has to be driven by AI and machine learning. Being able to precisely extract those features is what's going to drive precision medicine and I think that this whole space is about people looking at things differently. There's AI for driving workflow automation and for automating monotonous tasks and as this stands right now, we're very much focused at Proscia on applying AI and machine learning to driving precision medicine for biomarker discovery and eventually for identifying patients for clinical treatment. David: Taking a step back, the realm that digital pathology deals with is very image-based. If you go back about five years ago or so, there were some techniques in machine learning and image analysis that were good. Then deep learning came along with convolutional neural networks and so forth and people started building very complex algorithms that worked very well on images. That's been pivotal and when people talk about AI, that's a lot of what is being talked about. It's more complex than that, but at least as it pertains to us, that was one of the really big advancements that suddenly got a lot of the people in our space, including Proscia, to open their eyes and say "Okay, this is possible. This can really happen with the technology that is coming out. There's now a lot more computing power and that combines well with this awakening within the pathology space. Suddenly, all these images are being created, when they were previously just physically stuck on pieces of glass. That confluence has been incredibly exciting and has opened up this entire realm of possibility where we believe, and the data seems to be showing from all these studies that we've done, that the answers are in the images. As Hunter described, the images are like the cipher and able to unlock a lot of challenges that it wasnt possible to address before. It's exciting. Do you think digital pathology will become the standard in the future? David: I do, and I'd go so far as to say that I don't think the term "digital pathology" will exist in a few years. At a certain point, it will be just pathology. We saw that happen with radiology. As excited as we are about digital pathology, I think thats what we're ultimately going for and we are looking forward to when it's just all digital and that qualifier doesn't even belong. Where can readers find more information? https://proscia.com/ About David West, CEO and Hunter Jackson, CSO, Proscia David West is the CEO of Proscia Inc., a digital pathology software company. Mr. West founded the company in 2014, and has played a key role in business development, sales, and marketing, as well as the early design and development of Proscias software. Mr. West was responsible for securing $1.2M in outside capital for Proscia to date. He was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 50 Global Entrepreneurs Under 25 in 2015. David graduated Johns Hopkins University where he studied Biomedical Engineering with a focus on Computational Biology. Hunter Jackson is the Chief Scientific Officer of Proscia Inc., a digital pathology software company. At Proscia, Mr. Jackson leads and manages a team of engineers and research scientists developing image analysis and machine learning algorithms to extract image-based biomarkers for cancer diagnosis. In addition, he is responsible for establishing and growing partnerships with some of the top medical centers in the world, as well as interfacing with their principal investigators to develop pipelines of cancer-specific diagnostic tools. Prior to Proscia, Mr. Jackson was a research scientist at the Integrated Mathematical Oncology Lab at Moffitt Cancer Center where he investigated the evolutionary dynamics of cancer by using mathematical modeling of the tumor microenvironment to understand tumor progression and treatment response. He has also developed computational fluid dynamics software at NASA LaRC and medical software to identify sleep apnea in babies at the College of William & Mary Department of Physics. Mr. Jackson studied mathematics and graduated B.A. (summa cum laude), and M.A. (highest honors) from the University of South Florida. He is on a leave of absence from Ph.D. studies in mathematics at The Johns Hopkins University. New test provides powerful tool to help meet malaria eradication goals Alere Inc., a global leader in rapid diagnostics, today announced the launch of its Alere Malaria Ag P.f, a major technological breakthrough in high-sensitivity rapid testing versus currently available malaria RDTs (rapid diagnostic tests). The Alere Malaria Ag P.f offers a greater than tenfold improvement in the detection of histidine rich protein II (HRP-II) antigen of Plasmodium falciparum, which will enable better identification of individuals with very low parasitemia, many of whom may be without evident symptoms of malaria infection. This highly sensitive diagnostic will help healthcare workers screen individuals who are asymptomatic but may be carrying the parasite, and thus can aid the implementation of surveillance and mass screen-and-treat programs that are critical for accelerating malaria elimination. The development of the Alere Malaria Ag P.f was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has identified a test to uncover the asymptomatic reservoir as a key component of its malaria strategy. Alere and the Gates Foundation are partnering to generate field data to demonstrate the public health value of the test, particularly in elimination settings. Clinical evaluation and technical support was also provided by PATH and FIND. Breaking the cycle of malaria transmission requires identifying all infected individuals, but until now point-of-care diagnostic tests have not been sensitive enough to reliably detect asymptomatic infections, said Avi Pelossof, Alere Global President of Infectious Disease. The Alere Malaria Ag P.f represents a game-changing tool to empower healthcare workers to identify asymptomatic individuals in even the most remote settings, contributing to a reduced malaria reservoir in communities key strategies in eliminating this devastating disease. We are excited by the potential for this product to address one of the barriers identified on the path to malaria eradication the non-acute disease reservoir that complicates efforts to stop transmission, said Dr. Bruno Moonen, Deputy Director of the Malaria program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Until now, we havent had a tool to tackle this challenge in low-transmission settings. Added to existing RDTs, prevention methods and treatments that reduce disease burden in high- and medium-transmission settings, this test will add a new tool to the fight against malaria. Improving our ability to detect and define the transmissible reservoir of malaria in a community is critical to inform evidence-based strategies to eliminate malaria. A test that can produce immediate sensitive results even in rural and remote settings represents a significant advance in our ability to do this for Plasmodium falciparum malaria and as such is a valuable tool for malaria elimination, said Gonzalo Domingo, Scientific Director and lead of malaria diagnostics, PATH. We now have an opportunity to better understand where and how this test can best impact the reduction of the malaria burden world-wide. Elimination of malaria rests on our ability to identify asymptomatic malaria infections, noted Catharina Boehme, CEO of FIND. This test is a valuable addition to the malaria elimination toolkit. Looking forward, we are excited to see the results of our forthcoming demonstration studies, as these will provide valuable insights into how this test can have the biggest positive impact. The Alere Malaria Ag P.f was granted CE marking in December 2016, and was evaluated during Round 7 of the WHO FIND Malaria RDT Evaluation Program. Next generation high-end PTR-TOFMS from the market leader for real-time VOC monitoring IONICON Analytik, the Austrian based leading manufacturer of real-time trace VOC analyzers introduces a new compact, ultra-sensitive and high-resolution PTR-TOF instrument. The new IONICON PTR-TOF 6000 X2 Compact High-Performance PTR-TOF-MS - Trace VOC Analyzer Source: IONICON The PTR-TOF 6000 X2 is the first instrument in IONICON's portfolio based on the new high-resolution release of the "ioniTOF" platform and our PTR technology in combination with the new "X2" features. X2 comprises the latest generation of performance tools incl. the ION-BOOSTER funnel as well as the hexapole ION-GUIDE for the ultimate PTR-TOFMS experience. The ion funnel focuses the ions into the hexapole ion guide which results in nearly lossless transmission of an extremely focused ion beam into the TOF mass spectrometer. This increases the sensitivity dramatically and also improves the instrument's mass resolving power. The ioniTOF time-of-flight mass spectrometer platform Since the market introduction of the PTR-TOF 1000 in 2014, PTR-TOF 1000 ultra and PTR-TOF 4000 in 2016, IONICON engineers have continuously improved and perfected the "ioniTOF" platform. The flexible, customizable and reliable Time-of-Flight mass spectrometer is a major success for IONICON with already close to 50 units built, used in-house for IONICON's renowned PTR-TOF series manufacturing and now also available to OEM or academic experimental research customers. IONICON's product design and in-house production allow for decreasing size, weight and costs with increased overall performance. An emphasis is given to the improved user experience due to the focus on one fully integrated hard- and software solution. "I am proud to announce that all new IONICON PTR-TOF instruments are now exclusively based on the ioniTOF platform. This is a tremendous achievement of our development team and has enormous added value for our customers", IONICON CEO Lukas MARK comments. The clients benefit from an ecosystem that has been designed for reliability, compactness but also affordability. All development efforts of the company are now streamlined and customers can rely on upgradeability and continuous R&D efforts leading to add-ons, options, software and new exciting instrument combinations based on this platform. Various PTR-TOF systems with a built-in ioniTOF mass spectrometer have already been tested for its robustness and reliability in the field e.g. on airborne campaigns aboard NASA's atmospheric research aircrafts for measuring air pollution in the atmosphere (KORUS-AQ or DISCOVER-AQ). These research and development activities received support from the Austrian Space Applications Programme (ASAP) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (Osterreichische Forschungsforderungsgesellschaft, FFG). Tata Motors has signed a contract for the supply of 3192 units of the Tata Safari Storme 4X4 to the Indian Armed Forces, Under a new category of vehicles GS800 (General Service 800). The Indian Ministry of Defence (MOD) had floated an RFP for vehicles with three basic criteria minimum payload capacity of 800 kgs, hard roofs, and air conditioning. Developed indigenously, the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 has completed a total trial duration of fifteen months in various terrains across the country, demonstrating supreme performance in the most demanding conditions with capabilities of coping with extreme on or off-road terrains.Commenting on the recently bagged order, Vernon Noronha, Vice President, Defence & Government Business, Tata Motors Limited said, This variant of the Storme has been modified from the one available for civilians with an upgraded drivetrain and significantly modified suspension. The Safari Storme was conceived and designed keeping in mind the need for a rugged, comfortable and reliable vehicle, making it popular with law enforcement agencies. We will shortly commence delivery of these vehicles to the Army and Navy in a phased manner.Tata Motors Defence Solutions also offers Logistics, Tactical, Armored and Specialist vehicles, supported by the companys vast pan-India service network, ensuring maximum operational readiness.Since 1958, the company claims to have supplied over 1,50,000 vehicles to the Indian Military and Paramilitary forces.Tata Motors range of off-road vehicles is also being procured by the agencies involved in AID & Development, across the world like GSA, KBR, Oxfam, RONCO, RA International & Riders. New Delhi: A portal was launched on Thursday to enable micro and small enterprises to file their delayed payment related grievances online. Through the Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council (MSEFC) portal launched by Union minister Venkaiah Naidu here, the grievance filed would be communicated through email and SMS to the parties involved. As on March 31, 3,690 cases involving an amount of Rs 1,660 crore are being considered by various the MSEFCs. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Councils have been set up to mediate in disputes related to payments between a buyer and a supplier of goods and services. The portal would also help officers of the MSME ministry as well as the state government concerned in monitoring the progress of cases at state and national levels. "The portal would facilitate implementation of the delayed payment provisions of the MSMED Act 2006 and also assist in monitoring of delayed payment cases," MSME minister Kalraj Mishra said. "In fact, the online portal would be of great help to start-ups since delayed payment is probably the single biggest problem for start-ups," he added. Besides, a MyMSME mobile app was also launched by Naidu, which provides information on all schemes implemented by the Ministry of MSME at one place. The mobile app will provide a single window to MSMEs to access information on all schemes implemented by the MSME Ministry and apply for any of them. MSMEs can also lodge grievances pertaining to the Ministry of MSME through this app. Three soldiers were killed and five injured when militants attacked an army camp in Chokibal area of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir early on Thursday. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were underway.Sources told CNN-News18 that the martyrs included an Army officer, a Junior Commissioner Officer and a jawan, adding that the toll was feared to rise. Sources added that the injuries sustained by five other soldiers were non-fatal.Sources had earlier said that five soldiers were killed in the attack, but later said three had been martyred.The militants are suspected to be from terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad. A PTI report said they stormed the battalion camp, which is in-charge of road-opening duties on the crucial roads in the area.As security forces were carrying out search operations, angry protesters gathered near the camp site and raised slogans. There were also reports of stone-pelters making the movement of reinforcement convoys difficult.The garrison is around 100km from the Army camp in Uri sector which came under a similar fidayeen attack on September 17 last year. Nineteen soldiers were killed in that attack which was also launched in the early hours. India had carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) in retaliation, dismantling terror infrastructure across the border.Thursdays attack is likely to figure in talks that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will hold with top intelligence and security officials on Thursday morning. The meeting had been called to discuss the tense situation in Valley.The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces in the run-up to the Srinagar bypolls on April 9. Videos filmed during the unrest have further fuelled tensions in the area. The PDP-BJP government in the state had on Wednesday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. : A 70-year-old man was killed and three others injured on Thursday in Army firing at Panzgam area of Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district. Sources said the security personnel were trying to control a crowd near the Army camp that was attacked by fidayeen terrorists in the morning.As security forces were carrying out search operations, angry protesters gathered near the camp site and raised slogans. There were also reports of stone pelters making the movement of reinforcement convoys difficult.Three soldiers were killed and five injured when militants attacked the Army camp in Chokibal. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were underway.The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces in the run-up to the Srinagar bypolls on April 9. Videos filmed during the unrest have further fuelled tensions in the area.The PDP-BJP government in the state had on Wednesday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. Bhopal: Sadhvi Pragya, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case, here on Thursday called herself a victim of a Congress conspiracy and thanked the present government for ensuring justice. She was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on Tuesday in the case. She was released from judicial custody after the bail formalities were completed on Thursday afternoon. Talking to media, she said that the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) tortured her mentally and physically and she was only alive due to her will power. Anyone else would not have survived the torture, she said. Lashing at the Congress, Bharti said that saffron terrorism was a phrase coined by the Congress party. She also accused Congress of misleading media against her. Now I have nothing against anyone, she said. Sadhvi Pragya said that she was thankful to the court which granted her bail. I am half-free now as I wont be a free person until the case is underway. Thanking the present government for bringing her justice, Bharti alleged that she was not allowed to express herself in last nine years. Sadhvi Pragya has been in Bhopal for the last couple of years, under custody. She has been admitted to Pt Khushilal Sharma Ayurvedic College in Bhopal and was under treatment for breast cancer. Six people were killed and 100 people were injured in the blast. Twelve alleged Hindu radicals including Sadhvi Pragya and Lt Col Prasad Purohit were accused of masterminding the blast. Purohit was denied bail by the HC. Sadhvi Pragya was chargesheeted by the NIA as a two-wheeler registered on her name was used for triggering the blast. The court directed the judicial magistrate of Vikasnagar in Dehradun district to seize EVMs used in February polls and issued notices to the Election Commission, the state election commission, chief secretary and the BJP candidate who won the poll. The court order comes amid a heated war of words between opposition parties, particularly the Aam Aadmi Party, and the BJP over the use of EVMs, with the former alleging that the machines were rigged to favour the saffron party. The Uttarakhand High Court on Thursday ordered authorities to take into judicial custody Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in Vikasnagar constituency during the recent Assembly elections. The order came after a Congress candidate filed a petition alleging EVM tampering.Uttarkhand went to the polls in February-March along with Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. The BJP won a big majority of 57 seats in the 70-seat Uttarakhand assembly. The Congress won 11.The AAP had claimed that the EVMs used in Punjab, where the party made its electoral debut this March, were tampered with and had demanded that the Election Commission bring back ballot papers. It had also accused the poll panel of favouring the BJP.The AAP stuck to its stand on Wednesday, alleging that faulty EVMs had to its loss in the MCD elections. The BJP won the elections with 184 wards, while the AAP took the second spot with 46 wards. The Congress suffered a rout, winning only 30 wards.The commission, however, has denied the charges, saying the EVMs used were tamper-proof. Sources in the poll panel said it plans to organise a challenge hackathon in May to invite technocrats and representatives from political parties to prove that the EVMs could not be hacked.(With PTI Inputs) New Delhi: At least three soldiers, including an officer, were killed on Thursday when militants stormed an army camp in Kupwara area of Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were killed in the attack which bore a resemblance to the Uri attack in which 10 soldiers were killed when an army camp was targeted in September last year. Heres a look at the recent attacks on Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir: Pathankot January, 2016 In a pre-dawn attack, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists attacked the Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab on January 2. Six terrorists, believed to owe allegiance to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, were gunned down by the security forces after a four-day gun battle. Seven Indian security personnel also lost their lives. Pampore June, 2016 On June 25, 2016, eight CRPF personnel were killed and 21 critically wounded when terrorists rained bullets on a bus ferrying them at Pampore area of J&K. The fidayeen attack carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Uri September, 2016 In the worst attack on the Army in many years, heavily armed militants, suspected to be from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, stormed an Army base in Uri in Kashmir, killing 19 jawans. After a three-hour gunbattle, four terrorists were killed. India retaliated 10 days later with surgical strikes across the Line of Control dismantling terror infrastructure. Baramulla October, 2016 On the midnight of October 3, 2016, terrorists carried out a fidayeen attack on an Army camp on the outskirts of Baramulla town, less than a week after the surgical strikes. While the two attackers were killed by the army, one officer of the BSF attained martyrdom while several security personnel were injured. The attackers were Pakistani nationals belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Kupwara October, 2016 Some militants on October 6, 2016, attacked an army camp at Langate in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir, which was retaliated by the jawans. The three militants involved were killed. Shopian - October, 2016 On October 8, 2016, a policeman was killed, while another constable and a civilian were injured when some terrorists fired at a security post guarding minority community in Shopian district of Kashmir. Nagrota - November, 2016 On November 29, 2016, militants opened heavy fire at an army camp in Nagrota area of Jammu and Kashmir, leaving two jawans dead and two critically injured. In a separate infiltration bid in Samba district, three terrorists were gunned down along Indian Border. New Delhi: In a bid to reduce the burden on the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) has proposed to make the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) governing council a parallel agency for accreditation of engineering colleges. During 2016-17, NAAC assessed 1,641 educational institutions including universities, colleges and other vocational institutes. This was a big jump from the 1,300 institutes it assessed in 2015-16. Speaking at the National Consultation on Revised Accreditation Framework two days ago, HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had said that a meeting had been scheduled with IITs the governing council on April 28 in Mumbai where the accreditation bit would be discussed, among other things. Sources at the ministry said the proposal was still in its nascent stage. IITs are an independent body and the ministry can only make a proposal. The final decision will be in the hands of the governing council, post which the University Grants Commission will draft the scheme. NAAC welcomed the ministrys move and said it would only strengthen higher education. We cover a lot of educational institutions. Giving IITs an authority over accreditation will definitely lower the pressure on us. I hope IITs are given responsibility in educational institutes that have technical and engineering courses, which is the area of expertise for them said director DP Singh. Singh added that proposals were already in place to bring about changes in the ranking process. The reforms, he said, would be more objective, transparent, ICT-enabled and robust. Lucknow: People of Indian origin in Nepal may soon be allowed to contest local body elections in May this year. People residing in border areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which is also known as the Tarai region, may be allowed to contest local body polls. After a seven months long agitation, authorities in Nepal have decided to amend the constitution and allow people living in this region, where marriages across the border are a common practice, to contest local body elections in Nepal. The demands made by Madhesis, the local tribe, who live on both sides of the border, led to multiple protests and road blockades in the past. The proposed constitution amendment will have to be made before May 14, when Nepal will have local body elections after nearly two decades. After the Cabinet decision on the issue, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led coalition government discussed it with the Election Commission of Nepal. Soon, an agreement was reached with the Madhesis, sources said. The decision to give permission to Madhesis to contest local body elections was taken last Sunday after Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari returned from her five-day India visit, sources told News18. A big region of Bihar, known as Mithila, is spread along the Indo-Nepal border. This region has influenced culture and traditions of Nepal to a great extent. The areas of Uttar Pradesh close to Nepal border include the hometown of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Gorakhpur and Bahraich. New Delhi: Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi has been arrested in Kashmir under the Public Safety Act, the PTI reported from Srinagar. Andrabi is the head of Dukhtran-e-Millat, an Islamist separatist organisation, known for the diktats it issues periodically to the Valley residents on things she considers un-Islamic. She is also a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. Her role in creating provocation in the Valley had been a topic of discussion at the highest level as some of the captured militants have confessed earlier that video of her speeches are routinely shown at terror training camps across the Line of Control. There were reports that Lashkar militant Bahadur Ali, who is in the custody of security forces, had told investigators that he was shown her speeches as part of their indoctrination classes. Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader, who is now in jail. It was not immediately clear under what provisions Andrabi has been booked, but there were reports earlier that Centre was mulling slapping of UAPA on her. Sources told CNN-News18 that the martyrs included Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam, adding that the toll was feared to rise. Sources added that the injuries sustained by five other soldiers were non-fatal. : India lost three soldiers, including an officer, early on Thursday when militants, suspected to be from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, attacked an army camp in Kupwara sector of Jammu and Kashmir.In the attack, which resembled the Uri attack of September last year, two militants were gunned down and combing operations were underway. Sources said search was on for one more terrorist.- Three terrorists come down from the firing range side of the camp which hugs a hill close to the border with Pakistan- They breach two layers of fencing to enter the camp premises- A perimeter patrol party of the Indian Army comprising four to five men engages the intruders in a gunbattle. One soldier attains martyrdom in Kupwara.- The terrorists are then engaged in seven minutes of intense firing where two other soldiers are killed- Two terrorists are gunned down. The soldier who eliminated them was wounded and is being treatedNaik Rishi a housekeeper spotted the three terrorists fleeing. He tried blocking their way and shot one down. Rishi was hit on the Patka (headgear) but it saved his life. He ran out of ammunition, and was hit on the hand. Rishi saved the day for the army in kupwara.The Army recovered three AK 47s rifles, one Chinese pistol and a grenade launcher from the slain terrorists. Two GPS devices, one mobile phone and maps were also recovered from them.As the army was engaged in combing operations following the attack, stone-pelters near the camp tried to disrupt the movement of army convoys that were bringing in reinforcements.The protestor were chanting 'Azadi Azadi' and were demanding the bodies of the two terrorists for burial. Eventually the army opened fire in which a civilian lost his life. The Army recovered three AK 47s rifles, one Chinese pistol and a grenade launcher from the terrorists. Two GPS devices, one mobile phone and maps were also recovered. Three soldiers were killed and five injured when militants attacked an Army camp in Chokibal area of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir early on Thursday. Two terrorists were eliminated and combing operations were underway.Sources said the search for another terrorist is still on.The militants were wearing combat jackets and black Pathani suits.Sources had earlier said that five soldiers were killed in the attack, but later said three had been martyred.The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces in the run-up to the Srinagar bypolls on April 9.Videos filmed during the unrest have further fuelled tensions in the area. The PDP-BJP government in the state had on Wednesday banned 22 social networking sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the grounds that these were being misused to fan trouble. In an Uri-style attack, militants targeted an army camp in Kashmirs Kupwara district on Thursday morning, killing at least three soldiers, including an Army officer. Two terrorists have been eliminated and combing operations are underway with sources saying the casualty count was feared to rise. Stay tuned for live updates: Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here. When I saw terrorists approaching me while firing, I took position, fired at them & killed two terrorists: Naik Kumar #Kupwara attack pic.twitter.com/usSZSTZl4z ANI (@ANI_news) April 27, 2017 Speaking to CNN-News 18 he said, "I killed two militants and recovered two firearms from them. After being hit by a bullet my colleagues brought me to hospital. Now I am fit and ready to fight again." Search op for third terrorist on.Identity of terrorists being ascertained; material found points likely towards foreign terrorists: Army pic.twitter.com/LCfdkxVOkh ANI (@ANI_news) April 27, 2017 : His hand was bleeding after being hit by a bullet, but that did not desist Naik Rishi from launching a retaliatory strike on the terrorists who attacked the Kupwara Army camp on Thursday.The brave soldier, who neutralised two terrorists single-handedly, took position and fired at the third terrorist who was trying to escape the spot.Soon, Rishi ran out of ammunition. He then picked up a rifle of one of the slain militants and fought valiantly to protect his base. However, the third fidayeen terrorist managed to flee the spot.The 26-year-old soldier was on sentry duty when the gunbattle started. He hails from Arrah in Bihar and has been in service for eight years.Rishi, a housekeeper of 155 field regiment, was initially hit on his head but was saved, thanks to his patka (head gear). This Naik saved the day for the Indian Army.Three soldiers were killed and five injured when militants attacked an Army camp in Chokibal area of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir early on Thursday.Sources said the search for the third terrorist is still on. The militants are suspected to be from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.Sources had earlier said that five soldiers were killed in the attack, but later said three had been martyred.The Army recovered three AK 47 rifles, one Chinese pistol and a grenade launcher. Two GPS devices, one mobile phone and maps were also recovered.The Valley has witnessed a string of violent incidents this month starting with clashes between civilians and security forces in the run-up to the Srinagar bypolls on April 9. New Delhi: Refuting allegations surrounding Kulbhushan Jadhav's sentencing, Pakistan on Thursday said that military court's ruling was based on specific evidence and the trial was conducted in a "transparent" manner. This came a day after India handed over an appeal by the Jadhavs mother to the appellate court to get his conviction overturned. Jadhav's sentencing was based on specific evidence as well as his "confessional statement" that also led to the dismantling of the terror network in the country, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan. Zakaria's remarks at a briefing came a day after the appeal was given to Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua by Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale, who also handed over a petition by Jadhav's mother seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. Jadhav was given death sentence earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre- meditated murder" was carried out. Zakaria said that India's role in "sponsoring terrorism" in Pakistan was "fully exposed" in light of the statements of Jadhav and former Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. "The revelations made by former spokesperson of TTP, Ehsansullah Ehsan, and the confessional statement of Kulbhushan Jadhav are irrefutable proofs against India," he said. Zakaria claimed that India was not only sending spies inside Pakistan to "perpetrate terrorism" but also using the Afghan soil to "destabilise" the country. He also claimed that as many as 13 Indian "RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agents" were killed in the 'mother of all bombs' attack carried out by the US in Afghanistan earlier this month. He said this had vindicated Pakistan's claims. Zakaria said that Ehsan has stated that Jamaat-ul Ahrar terror group was working on Indian agenda to destabilise Pakistan. Zakaria, in his briefing, also slammed the clampdown on internet in Kashmir and claimed that India had banned it to "hide grave human rights violations". He also criticised the alleged arrest of Kashmiri leaders. On the disappearance of retired Pakistani colonel Habib Zahir in Nepal, the spokesperson said Pakistan's mission in the country was closely looking into the matter. He said it was a case of entrapment and the involvement of India cannot be ruled out. Jadhav was arrested reportedly from Balochistan after he entered from Iran in March 2016. He was accused by Pakistan of being a "R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent and planning "subversive activities" in the country. India has acknowledged Jadhav as a retired Indian Navy officer, but denied that he was in any way connected to the government. The government believes that he was picked up from Iran. Earlier this year, Pakistan Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz had ruled out any possibility of extraditing Jadhav back to India. Aziz told the Senate that Pakistan never said there was any lack of evidence against him. "We have filed an FIR and prepared a case to prosecute Indian state actor for his subversive and terrorist activities in Pakistan," he said. Aziz had said Islamabad had shared a dossier with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on New Delhi's involvement in internal affairs of Pakistan, and in subversive and terrorist activities in the country. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: In a temporary relief, Sahara chief Subrata Roy, on Thursday, was given time till June 15 to deposit Rs 2,000 crore, failing which he would have to go back to Tihar jail. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi and AK Sikri accepted two postdated cheques from the 68-year-old, after he appeared in the court to submit the cheques, one worth Rs 500 crore and the other worth Rs 1,500 crore. Roy has further signed an undertaking to pay Rs 3,000 crore more by October 2017. Roy was arrested in 2014 and granted bail last year to attend his mothers cremation, post which his bail has been extended. The apex court is looking to make sure that the Sahara chief pays back investors money, to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore, which he had allegedly collected through an illegal savings deposit scheme. Roys appearance in court on Thursday was his last ditch attempt to save his lavish Aamby Valley property from being auctioned. On April 17, SC had ordered for the property to be auctioned after the company failed to pay Rs 300 crore as the first installment of the amount it was ordered to pay for allegedly duping the investors. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Roy, said there was no emergent need for the sale of the property, but the bench said it thought otherwise. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15, 2016. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on 15th June, 2016. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 26, 2017 Five airlines were awarded 128 routes under the scheme last month after a bidding process, PTI reported. Airfare for a 1 hour journey of appx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 26, 2017 UDAN Scheme is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 26, 2017 UDAN scheme, a regional air connectivity programme under which the fares of flights will be capped at Rs 2500 per seat per hour, will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.The PM will flag off a flight from Shimla to Delhi to launch the 'UDAN' (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme which is aimed at boosting regional connectivity, PTI reported. Flights will also be launched on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors."Airfare for a 1-hour journey of approx. 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for a 30-minute journey on a helicopter would be capped at Rs. 2,500," the PMO said. "This with proportionate pricing for routes of different stage lengths and flight duration," it said.According to an official statement, 24 airports in the western region, 17 in the northern region, 11 in the southern region, 12 in east and six in north-eastern parts of the country are proposed to be connected under this scheme. Under this programme, the government intends to connect 45 unserved and under-served airports.The selected airline operator would have to provide 50 percent of the flight capacity with a cap of Rs 2,500 per hour on fixed wing aircraft and a minimum of five and a maximum of 13 on helicopters with the same price cap. Under 'UDAN', the operators would be extended viability gap funding.The amount is estimated to be around Rs 205 crore per annum for the operators chosen in the first round of bidding.State governments will provide a certain share of VGF. Nineteen states and three Union Territories have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for this purpose.While in Shimla, the Prime Minister also address a rally at the historic Ridge Maidan. This will be his first visit to Shimla after becoming the Prime Minister. He had visited the capital of Himachal Pradesh last in 2003 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.(With PTI inputs) As a mark of respect to our beloved Vinod Khanna the entire team of Baahubali has decided to cancel the premiere tonight... Karan Johar (@karanjohar) April 27, 2017 The entire Bollywood is mourning the death of veteran actor Vinod Khanna. And as a mark of respect Karan Johar, whose production house Dharma Production is co-producing Baahubali 2, has announced that the premiere of the film has been cancelled. The star-studded premiere was to take place in Hyderabad on Thursday night.Baahubali: The Conclusion is one of the most anticipated films of the year and is set to release in theatres on 28th April. A premiere was expected to have a bevy of stars from Southern film industry as well as Bollywood in attendance. But in the wake of the unfortunate demise of veteran actor, it was perhaps an apt decision to make.Vinod Khanna breathed his last on Thursday morning in Mumbai after battling cancer for many years. He was 70. Mumbai: Feminist drama Lipstick Under My Burkha is cleared for a theatrical release in India after the country's Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), decided that the film can be issued an adult certificate, equivalent to an NC-17 rating. At a press conference on Wednesday, producer of the film Prakash Jha was asked to comment on their victory. "I am very happy for the film, after our battle with censorship, Lipstick Under My Burkha cleared with A certificate and will be released soon," Jha said. "I really laughed when I heard the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) decision and the way they had interpreted the whole film. It was ridiculous to interpret a story like that. Our society and all other societies have stereotyped women's existence. Women should look, think, behave, dream or do anything in a particular way which is entirely male oriented. They (women) will be part of our life but the way we (men) want them to be. Women cannot think, dream or talk about their career or satisfaction," the "Rajneeti" helmer said. "Our film was a simple story of four women in a very normal, funny conversation talking about their dreams, aspirations, bodies, sexuality, career and then what happened? A male gazing mind oriented CBFC gets scared about how a women can talk about themselves and think. But I was confident that if its presented properly and a set of people look at it with a rational point of view, it will be understood. And that's what happened," he added. "FCAT order talks about the relevance and importance of the film. Nothing has been asked from the film to be deleted except 10 seconds here or there. Otherwise its a completely reverse decision of CBFC observation and one is happy and confident that you can talk or speak and make such films." When asked how much hope he had that their film will be released in India, Jha said, "I am never dependent on hopes. I always depend on beliefs. I believed that we will succeed and we did. Next week, we'll announce the release date." The film's director Alankrita Shrivastava said: "We submitted the same film to both the certification bodies. We did exactly what they wanted. In fact, we just reduced some sexually intimate scenes by few seconds." "CBFC never asked for any cuts, they just refused to certify the film. But we are happy that we got so much of support for our film from women of India," she added. Chennai: Actress Jyothika has urged filmmakers to be socially more responsible and give intelligent roles to female stars. The 38-year-old actress, who essays the role of a documentary filmmaker in her upcoming film Magalir Mattum, says cinema has the power to influence the youth and is responsible for the treatment meted out to women in the country. "This is a message to directors who direct big hero films. Please give women characters some dignity in your movies. Look at your mother, wife, sister or girlfriend and give realistic roles to women like the people living around you. There are crores of fans and followers to big heroes. "You're socially responsible to what is happening to women all over India. Cinema has a big impact on youth. Please offer intelligent characters to women," Jyothika said at the launch of her film Magalir Mattum here recently. The actress said if the filmmakers will continue to show stories where one actor is paired opposite four women, the youth will get a wrong message. "Refrain from encouraging comedians to speak double- meaning dialogues with the heroine around," she stressed. Jyothika's actor-husband Suriya has produced Magalir Mattum. Suriya said watching a recent advertisement of Aamir Khan on women empowerment was eye-opening for him. "I feel I should be socially responsible in my movies. I promise that I will be more responsible henceforth. I watched a recent TV commercial starring Aamir Khan... The advertisement felt like a slap in the face," Suriya said. Director Bramma G, best known for his National Award- winning drama Kuttram Kadithal, said Magalir Mattum is "a celebration of womanhood". "I don't believe in feminism. The society belongs to both men and women equally. Magalir Mattum is a celebration of womanhood," Bramma said. The film also stars Urvashi, Bhanupriya, Saranya Ponvannan, Nasser and Livingston in important roles. One of Bollywoods most handsome and charismatic stars Vinod Khanna breathed his last on Thursday morning. The actor-turned politician was 70 and had been battling cancer for a long time. Perhaps one of the few actors who began his career playing supporting roles and eventually becoming a lead actor, Khannas career spanned over five decades. In fact, just weeks ago- Hema Malini starrer Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi- featuring Khanna as a king released in the theatres.From playing supporting roles in the initial phase of his career in films like Purab Aur Paschim, Aan Milo Sajna and Mastana to being part of multi-starrers like Amar Akbar Anthony, The Burning Train, to playing the lead in films like Lekin, Achanak Khannas filmography has been an interesting one. He had played the supporting actor, the patriarch in recent films like Dabang, Dilwale and juggled his political career with equal ease.For the generation that grew up in the 1970s, Vinod Khanna embodied a true-blue movie star. Handsome, charming and stylish- Khanna remained in news for his films as well as his personal life.Here are 15 films of the actor that celebrate the legacy that he leaves behind.Directed by Gulzar, Achanak was one of the first few films that had Vinod Khanna playing the lead role. Based on the in famous Nanavati Scandal case of 1953, the film had Vinod Khanna playing an army officer who in a fit of rage kills his wife and her lover and surrenders himself to the police.Vinod Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan played con artists in this Prakash Mehra film which also starred Saira Banu and Sulakshana Pandit. The film was a commercial success and it earned Khanna a Filmfare nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.Prakash Jha cast Randhir Kapoor and Vinod Khanna as brother who get separated at birth. While Khanna becomes a leader of a crime syndicate, Kapoors character becomes a small-time crook. Khanna won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor award for the film that year.Feroze Khans directorial venture had Khanna playing a gangster with a golden heart. The film had raised many eyebrows at that time for its bold scenes between Khanna and a much younger Madhuri Dixit.One of the most iconic films that Bollywood has ever made, this Manmohan Desai film was classic story of three brothers who get separated at an young age, each then adopted by different families of different faith.Although the film had Amitabh Bachchan playing the lead role, but Vinod Khannas supporting act was also lauded. The actor played a lawyer who saves Sikander and forges an unusual friendship with him.This Mahesh Bhatt directorial film had Vinod Khanna in a double role playing both the father and the son. The film also featured Danny Denzongpa, Shabana Azmi and Helen.Directed by Raj Sippy, the film was a remake of a Japanese movie High and Low (1963) directed by Akira Kurosawa. Khanna played a police inspecter in this crime thriller that also featured Shreeram Lagoo.Gulzars first directorial venture was a remake of Bengali film Apanjan and had Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha playing two young leaders of warring clans. Meena Kumari played the role of an aged woman in the film.Although the film is remembered for its haunting music and Dimple Kapadias performance, but critics also loved Vinod Khannas performance in it. Khanna played the character of Sameer Niyogi , a government officer who is sent to Rajasthan to take inventory of items in the abandoned haveli. There, Niyogi encounters a beautiful lady called Reva (Dimple Kapadia) whom he deeply falls in love with. But is Reva real or just an imagination?Another film that had Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna playing the lead roles, this Manmohan Desai film had the two actors playing brothers who were raised by Shamesher Singh, played by Shammi Kapoor. While Khanna played the antagonist of sports, Bachchans character was all positive.A multi starrer disaster movie had a gamut of Bollywood actors playing key roles in this film. Khanna played an engineer who makes the super fast express, a one-of-a-kind train which on its maiden journey is bombed.Vinod Khanna played dacoit Jabbar Singh in this Raj Khosla film. While the films hero was Dharmendra, it was Khannas performance as a dacoit that most remember till date.Touted as his comeback film post the Osho phase, Khanna played a gritty cop called Arjun Singh. The film also featured Meenakshi Sheshadri.This Feroze Khan film is till date known for its style. The film had Khanna playing a widower deeply in love with Zeenat Amans character. New Delhi: As Aam Aadmi Party goes into introspection mode after a drubbing in the MCD elections, its election loss in Punjab is also coming under the scanner. On Thursday, Sanjay Singh resigned as Punjab state-in-charge, followed by his colleague Durgesh Pathak. News18s Uday Singh Rana spoke to senior AAP leader and Punjab leader of opposition HS Phoolka on the partys strategy going forward. Edited excerpts: Uday Singh Rana: Sanjay Singh resigned from his post, accepting responsibility for the partys loss in Punjab. Is there a growing difference of opinion in the party over the EVM issue? HS Phoolka: See, Sanjay Singh resigned because he wanted to take responsibility since we did not perform as expected. It is very normal for someone to do so. As far as EVMs are concerned, we have all made our positions clear. AAP is not the only party raising this. In fact, the BJP was the first party to raise this issue. When the BJP was in opposition, there was doubt over the credibility of EVMs but suddenly they are perfect. Why so? USR: Is the AAP going for serious introspection? HSP: If introspection was not happening then why would two senior leaders take moral responsibility? But that is the beauty of AAP. Anybody can freely express his views. In Congress, can anybody survive by criticising Rahul Gandhi? In BJP, can anybody disagree with Modi and Amit Shah? USR: Isnt criticizing your top leaders a sign of internal strife? HSP: No, that is not an indication of strife. That is an indication of a truly democratic set up. Other parties muffle the voices of their leaders. We give liberty to our leaders and members. USR: From Punjab to Delhi, the results have been significantly below your projections. Would you say AAP falls victim to hype? HSP: We were going by what some reputed surveys were saying. They all gave us a higher number of seats. But in reality, the AAP is still the fastest growing party in the country. The facts speak for themselves. USR: After three repeated losses, questions are being raised on the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal. What would you say on that? HSP: This new style and concept of politics has been brought in by Arvind Kejriwal. What he has achieved in a short time is a wonder. Just look at his work. He reduced taxes in Delhi, but the revenue went up. Look at the work Delhi government has done in the medical sector. AAP has done a lot of good work but we did not do any propaganda like other parties. We thought it would be enough to just work and people would see it for themselves. But we realised that we would have to go to them to show the work. USR: During the Punjab campaign, there was a notion that there was discord between the Punjab and Delhi leadership. And is that why you lost the election? HSP: Like I said, Sanjay Singh resigned because he wanted to take moral responsibility. And yes, there was some discord, no doubt about it. But it was a simple difference of opinion. Today, things are fine. USR: Why was there discord? HSP: I was not privy to the disagreements but I know they were there. We are a democratic party and disagreements are bound to happen. But since I became leader of opposition, there has been no interference whatsoever from anybody. My MLAs and I call our own shots. USR: What, according to you, were the main reasons you lost the Punjab elections? HSP: We are going to look into them, introspect and come out with the reasons. I would not want to pre-judge before the introspection is complete. On Wednesday, Kejriwal had also stayed away from allegations of EVM tampering while congratulating BJP on its victory in the MCD elections. The meeting at Kejriwals residence was held even as offers of resignation poured in from party leaders. The Aam Aadmi Party seems to be uncertain about its position on the EVM issue. Sources said the issue was a part of the discussions at the emergency meeting held at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals residence on Thursday, but it was not the main item on the agenda.Sources said the party line in the meeting was that AAP did work, but somewhere it lost touch with the people. The party now plans to step up efforts to connect with the people.However, Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj said the EVM issue is still a priority for AAP. EVMs were discussed, but it was not the main agenda of the meet. We are looking at two issues. EVM tampering is the first, we lost because this is happening on a national-level. If this is solved, only then will we move to the second issue, which is that we lost because people are upset, he said.Meanwhile, minister Gopal Rai was given the charge of Delhi after Dilip Pandeys resignation.Sanjay Singh, the partys election in-charge in Punjab, resigned on Thursday morning, while Chandni Chowk MLA Alka Lamba said she would step down as no party candidate won in wards falling in her constituency.Party leader Ashish Talwar has also offered to step down after the loss in municipal body elections in the national capital.Cracks have already started appearing in the party with MP Bhagwant Mann criticising the management of elections in Punjab, and Kumar Vishwas indirectly criticising Kejriwals defence of partymen under corruption scanner.Delhi's overwhelming rejection of the AAP came barely two years into its meteoric rise in the 2015 Assembly polls when it had clinched an unprecedented 67 of the 70 seats. As votes were counted on Wednesday, it was left with just 48 wards in its kitty out of the 272 spread across the three municipal corporations in the national capital.| MCD Elections: As AAP Wilts, Alka Lamba Offers to Quit as MLAAAP's defeat, which came close on the heels of its abysmal performance in the Assembly polls in Goa, where it failed to open account, and poorer than expected show in Punjab, does not portend well for the party which is bracing itself for a bigger battle in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home turf Gujarat.Assembly election is Gujarat is due later this year. Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party may be upbeat after its victories in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi municipality, but its state unit in Karnataka, where Assembly polls are due next year, is jolted by infighting. A rebel group, led by former deputy chief minister K S Eshwarappa, held a meeting on Thursday and publicly criticised the partys state president and former chief minister B S Yeddyurappas style of functioning, terming it dictatorial. Calling itself the Save BJP Movement, the group of more than a thousand disgruntled party workers gathered at the Palace Grounds in Bengaluru. People are made office-bearers in the party if they say Yeddyurappa zindabad! No wonder, such people will become ministers if the party wins, said Eshwarappa in his address. Most of the participants at the convention were those who had been removed from various posts at district or taluka level after Yeddyurappa was named the state unit president. Rebellion has been brewing in Karnataka BJP since April 2016 when Yeddyurappa was appointed state president. Soon after holding the charge, Yeddyurappa had announced sweeping changes in the party. Eshwarappa and other disgruntled leaders have often complained that Yeddyurappa has been appointing his yes men on key party posts. In August last year, Eshwarappa had launched the Sangolli Rayanna Brigade, an apolitical forum, for those belonging to the scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward castes (OBCs). Though BJPs national leadership has intervened time and again to sort out differences between Yeddyurappa and Eshwarappa, the two leaders dont see eye to eye. At Thursdays meeting, the rebels have set a deadline of May 10 for the partys national leadership to sort out the differences. Else, they have threatened to hold a massive public convention on May 20. It was also decided send a delegation to meet Amit Shah. An angry Yeddyurappa indicated he would likely go to Delhi on Friday to meet Shah himself and register a strong complaint about Eshwarappa's anti-party activities. "Eswharappa and Co are creating confusion. They are working to help the Congress in a way." The party high command will also figure out who is "the brain behind such rebellion" the party president said. Interestingly, the convention sported BJP flags, 'lotus' logos at every corner and even photos of ideologues Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee -- with Eshwarappa claaiming that they were the "original BJP -- scenes eerily reminiscent of the tussle for J Jayalalithaas 'true' legacy in neighboring Tamil Nadu. Yeddyurappa's loyalists, who held a press conference at the BJP office soon after the convention, spoke out against this as more evidence of 'indiscipline.' "He must be expelled immediately, we ask our national leadership to do this within a day. We cannot tolerate such activities. We are here to oppose the Congress and the JDS, not oppose our own leaders," said BJP MLA Ashwathnarayana. They also said no elected MP or MLA was actually with Eshwarappa in this effort, and dubbed the brigade as a forum of all those who are of no use and have lost their deposits in the previous elections. Undeterred by the reactions from Yeddyurappa's loyalists and the threat of possible disciplinary action, Eshwarappa said, Some of the party workers present here have been suspended for anti-party activities. Should we allow that? Lets suspend those who suspend us. We are here to save the party democracy. One person cant say I want everything. BJPs culture is democracy. Everyone should be consulted, said Bhanuprakash, a member of legislative council. We dont have a problem with Yeddyurappas leadership. But the office-bearers he has appointed are the ones creating troubles, added. Former minister Sagodu Shivanna, who had been suspended by Yeddyurappa, said It is not the Yeddyurappa we knew earlier. I appeal to the national leadership, hand over our Yeddyurappa to us. "The TMC cannot be browbeaten. We hold our heads high. Those who challenge me....I accept the challenge. We will capture Delhi," she said, addressing a public meeting in Birpara. Banerjee took a dig at Shah, who had lunch in a Dalit household in Naxalbari a couple of days back, saying, "Lunch at a Dalit household and dinner at a five star hotel...we do not believe in such photo-ops." Shah, on the other hand, accused the Mamata Banerjee government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday fired salvos at each other on the last day of the latter's three-day visit to the state where the saffron party wants to expand its footprint after a string of electoral successes.Banerjee, accused the BJP of trying to "intimidate" her party and declared she would "capture Delhi".On Wednesday Shah proclaimed 'ebar Bangla' and said: "We are here to restore Bengal's lost glory. With many of its leaders involved in corruption, those who voted for TMC feel cheated now. But we are certain the lotus will bloom in 2019. We will solve the problem of unemployment here. TMCs failure and Mamatas politics of appeasement has only strengthened our position here."Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," Shah told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers in Kolkata while winding up his three-day visit to the state.Apparently referring to Shah's visit to a slum in her Bhawanipur constituency in Kolkata on Wednesday, she said, "We don't need lectures from them. BJP is jealous of the development in Bengal and hence states not ruled by BJP were deprived of funds."Renewing her charge that the BJP incited people in the name of religion, she asked the voters to not align with the saffron party."We work for all the religions, castes, communities," she said, alleging that the BJP was "trying to destroy" West Bengal by its "divisive politics".With the political fortunes of Congress and the Left in a free fall, the BJP has been trying to claim their space in the eastern state.Although BJP's vote share in West Bengal dipped since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from 17.5 percent to 10.2 percent in the 2016 Assembly polls, the party won three seats for the first time contesting on its own in the state. Earlier it had polled around 4.06 percent votes in 2011.In the 2016 Assembly polls, BJP garnered around 56 lakh votes, up from 19.5 lakh in 2011. In the state where the party hardly had any presence a few years ago, its candidates had polled more than 10,000 votes in 262 out of 294 Assembly segments.(- With PTI inputs) China launched on Wednesday its second aircraft carrier in a Dalian shipyard in Liaoning province, an official said.The new carrier, the first developed and built by China, was transferred from a dry dock into water at a launch ceremony in Dalian shipyard of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, Xinhua news agency reported.It is China's second aircraft carrier, coming after the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet Union-made carrier that was put into commission in the Chinese Navy in 2012.China began building its second carrier in November 2013. Dock construction started in March 2015.The main body of the carrier has been completed, with equipment of major systems including propulsion and electricity installed.Putting the carrier into water marks progress in China's efforts to design and build a domestic aircraft carrier.After the launch, the new carrier will undergo equipment debugging, outfitting and comprehensive mooring trials. Matrix Cellular today announced Summer Offers on prepaid SIM cards for travellers planning to visit USA, UK, Europe, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia this season. The plans for Europe (Excluding UK) are now available at 50-60 percent less cost when compared to last year and plans for USA and Singapore are available at approximately 40 percent less.The new prepaid plans are available, starting at Rs. 2999 for countries such as USA, UK, Europe & Australia and for Rs. 999 only for Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia. The prepaid plans offer freebies such as unlimited data, free calls to India, free local calls and incoming calls. Apart from this, one can also buy family add on prepaid SIM cards for their kids starting as Rs. 499. With summer vacations round the corner you must be looking for destinations to enjoy a peaceful and rejuvenating vacation. But, travelling with family might be tricky as you have Here are a few summer getaway in Asia and Oceania for families still in search of the ideal vacation location: 1. Pokhara, Nepal Situated in the northwestern corner of the Pokhara Valley, Pokhara is the largest city of Nepal in terms of area. The city has plenty of family activities to offer from bike rides, swimming and boat trips. 2. Siem Reap, Cambodia A resort town in northwestern Cambodia, Siem Reap is famous as the home of Angkor Wat, the imperial and religious temple complex of the Khmer civilization. Considered to be one of the most beautiful sights on earth, the movie 'Lara Croft-Tomb Raider' was shot at Angkor Wat. 3. Luang Prabang, Laos If you are looking for exotic destination then Luang Prabang in Laos is just perfect for you. Bath in Kuang Falls, elephant tours, kayaking and boat trips while bonding with family. 4. Port Douglas, Australia A prime destination for families, Port Douglas provides you diverse range of activities and incredible wildlife. Only 70km (44 miles) from Cairns, Port Douglas makes a good alternative to the famous Gold Coast. For younger travellers, the destination is a gateway to the Daintree Forest. 5. Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, Australia One of the lesser known Australian states, Tasmania has plenty of natural landscapes that are ideal for fun and physical family activities. Travellers head towards Cradle Mountain as a key destination for its breathtaking views. 6. Byron Bay, Australia A welcoming destination for beginners at surfing, even the youngest surf dudes and dudettes can learn to ride the waves at Byron Bay. Families can take a trip to Cape Byron Light, the country's most powerful lighthouse. United Airlines was under fire again Wednesday after a huge rabbit named Simon died while hopping over from London to Chicago, where he was due to be picked up by a celebrity buyer. The valuable 90-centimetre (three-foot) long continental giant rabbit had previously been described as "fit as a fiddle", and his death in the cargo section of a Boeing 767 comes as a mystery. "Something very strange has happened and I want to know what," breeder Annette Edwards, from Worcestershire in central England, told British newspaper The Sun. "Simon had a vet's check-up three hours before the flight and was fit as a fiddle," she said, adding: "I've sent rabbits all around the world and nothing like this has happened before." Edwards also revealed that "the client who bought Simon is very famous. He's upset". Ten-month-old Simon was expected to grow to become the world's biggest rabbit, after his father Darius grew to 1.32 metres, Edwards said. According to the breeder such rabbits cost 5,000 ($6,400, 5,900 euros) a year to keep. The incident comes less than three weeks after United Airlines drew global outrage for forcefully dragging a passenger off an overbooked flight. Footage of the April 9 incident captured by fellow passengers went viral on social media. It also caused a public relations calamity for United and airport officials, sparked worldwide outrage, and led to multiple apologies from United as well as an internal probe of its policies and practices. United Airlines said it was "saddened" to hear the news of Simon's death. "The safety and well-being of all the animals that travel with us is of the utmost importance to United Airlines and our PetSafe team," it said. "We have been in contact with our customer and have offered assistance. We are reviewing this matter." Figures from the US Department of Transportation show that 35 animals died in air transit in 2015, across the country's 17 main carriers. United Airlines account for nine of those deaths, the highest of all the carriers. It transported over 97,000 animals during that year. Berlin: Police have arrested a German soldier who had posed as a Syrian refugee on suspicion he was planning an attack, apparently motivated by anti-foreigner sentiment, in a case that German prosecutors said Thursday was "more than strange." The 28-year-old lieutenant, whose name wasn't released, faces charges of preparing an act of violence, Frankfurt prosecutor's spokeswoman Nadja Niesen told reporters. The officer, who was "of German background" and stationed in France, allegedly stashed a loaded pistol in a bathroom at the Vienna airport that was discovered, leading Austrian authorities to take him into temporary custody when he went to retrieve it in February, Niesen said. Though under investigation in Austria, authorities there did not keep him in custody and he was arrested in southern Germany yesterday. A 24-year-old student from the soldier's hometown of Offenbach was also arrested. "We know from various voice recordings that both had anti-foreigner views," Niesen said. The officer had registered as a Syrian refugee in the state of Hesse at the end of 2015 and had been living "sporadically" at a home for asylum seekers on and off since January 2016. Though he was officially stationed with the Bundeswehr in 2016, authorities say he wasn't required to be present at all times. German media reported that the officer intended to blame the attack on foreigners. Refugees have carried out several deadly attacks in Germany over the past year, stoking anti- migrant sentiment in the country. "It sounds more than strange," Niesen said. "I think we have to await more from the investigation to find out more about his motivation." Sixteen buildings were searched in Germany, Austria and France in connection with the investigation, and multiple mobile telephones and other electronic devices were seized as evidence, Niesen said. Niesen said the suspect knows no Arabic and she did not know how he managed to pass himself off as a Syrian refugee. "This is quite an unusual story," she said. A former banker and one who served under current President Francois Hollande as the economy minister, 39-year-old Macron would be Frances youngest president, if he manages to pull it off. He severed ties with Hollande over his ideas being sidelined and launched his own party, En Marche! in 2015. NSG is not the only forum where Macron could be seen supporting India against China. As New Delhi continues to tackle the dragon's dominance in South China Sea, Macron would most likely press for freedom of navigation strengthening India's case. Dhruva Jaishankar explains, "France is very interested in this issue. We often forget that France has territory in the Indian Ocean and Pacific, so it is a resident maritime power in the Indian Ocean. France has been in line on freedom of navigation issues with India and others. That is unlikely to change." Like the rest of the world, in France, too, a new political scenario has emerged. It is for the first time in almost six decades that voters have rejected the established political parties The Republicans and Socialist Party. Now, as the two contenders for the run-off centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen await voting on May 7, India is gearing up for a change of regime in Paris.The French elections assume greater significance at a time when the world seems to have taken a decidedly Right turn from the Brexit referendum in UK to Donald Trumps victory in the US. A liberal Emmanuel Macron, who after round one seems to have won the backing of most other parties, now stands as perhaps a beacon of hope.A political newcomer but one who seems determined to change the course could infuse more energy into India-France relations. Those in New Delhi keenly watching the developments say that the India-France relationship is strongly growing and they expect it to continue in all spheres. Macron is aware that India is France's first strategic partner in Asia and would like to maintain this good relationship.Dhruva Jaishankar, Fellow, Foreign Policy at Brookings India believes that since he was a protege of Hollande's before striking out on his own, we should not expect significant changes beyond a more pro-business outlook. The engagement of India by France has broad appeal at the highest reaches of the government and bureaucracy.At multilateral forums, India can expect a backing from France under Emmanuel Macron. He is in favour of India being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and that should strengthen Indias case as it continues to push for reforms in the UN in keeping with the current global realities.On the other hand, just ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Seoul last year, France had extended support for Indias bid to the 48-member grouping. It had said France considers that Indias entry into the four multilateral export control regimes (NSG, MTCR, The Australia Group, The Wassenaar Arrangement) will bolster international efforts for combating proliferation. That support is likely to continue not just on the non-proliferation aspect but also efforts to promote clean energy. India has time and again reassured the world that it is acquiring nuclear energy for peaceful use. Macrons campaign promise on moving France speedily from coal towards renewable energy is in sync with what India aspires.India has purchased 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly-away condition for $8.8 billion as against the original plan of 126 jets. Despite protracted negotiations India curtailed its order owing to the cost. Even though follow-on orders look difficult at the moment, analysts believe that the France India defence tie-up could see steady pace. A French Attorney at Law with Adamas Avocats Associes, Amair Farooqui says, Macron has the support of the Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who has been one of the major pillars to the India-France collaboration in the defence sector. So it will be correct to say that if he is appointed as Macrons minister, we can expect more on Make in India from Macron.As India professionals and students remain concerned about their future in America with Trumps Buy American, Hire American pitch and post-Brexit in UK, Macrons presidency could open up new avenues. Amair adds, Contrary to his rival, Macron is in favour of a France promoting the acceptance of immigrants in our societies especially towards students and professionals willing to work in France since he will be facilitating Skill/Talent visa in order to attract great foreign knowledge, so Indian students and professionals would most likely be welcomed. Le Pen has run down Macron calling him an immigrationist but Macron has said "I hope that in a fortnight I will become your president. I want to become the president of all the people of France - the president of the patriots in the face of the threat from the nationalists, giving a clear indication of his intent.India and France have already upped their cooperation on combating terrorism. In the joint statement in January, 2016 when President Hollande visited India it stated, Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, India and France resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counter-terrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalization, disrupt recruitment. Both sides are likely to continue on the same path under Macron too. Macron has often voiced his concern at inequalities in the society fuelling radicalization and terrorism; it is therefore believed he will have both a military as well as political approach in countering radical forces.But the big question remains how many of his candidates get elected to Parliament. Without a majority, his plans could be challenged and make the road ahead difficult despite his rather refreshing ideas in the current global scenario. In this Saturday, March 11, 2017 photo, a monk, Pyin Nyarthara, sits atop the Buledi Pagoda, which is undergoing repairs from damage suffered in a 2016 earthquake, in the ancient Myanmar city of Bagan. The city is home to the largest concentration of Buddhist temples, stupas and monuments in the world, most of which were built in the 11th and 12th centuries. (Image: AP) Bruce fights the Robins and the Alfred question is answered in Batman vs. Robin #3 Bruce Wayne's inner demons are weaponized as he fights the Bat family in Batman vs. Robin #3 GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us. Reforming the property tax regime In Trinidad and Tobago, the move to introduce a property tax was done to replace the Lands and Buildings taxes which was started in the 1960s specifically post the landmark 1966 Finance Act. According to former Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Mariano Browne, the attempt to replace the old legislation made significant strides in the early 1990s when certain amendments were introduced at the Point Fortin and San Fernando Borough Corporations for a more modern form of property taxation. However, this led to a lack of uniformity in rates with effect that the taxes paid on properties in San Fernando and Point Fortin Boroughs were not uniform and were higher than that paid by those using the Land and Building taxes act. He also noted that the Land and Building Taxes Rolls indicated that there were approximately 200,000 properties for which taxes were being collected, while an exercise started by the Commissioner of Valuations (Part of the Ministry of Finance) identified 500,000 properties. He said this discrepancy demonstrated that the information database had to be updated as there was a significant level of non-compliance since the Land and Building Taxes Ordinance had not been updated for over 50 years. While other areas of taxation have simplified and rationalised through ongoing reform, the system of property taxes was fragmented and antiquated in its design and methodology. Reforming the property tax regime was meant to improve and streamline the systems of assessment, management and collection of property taxes throughout the country, Browne stated. Browne noted that in addition to harmonising a system of property taxation across all of Trinidad and Tobago, the Bill (the Property Tax Bill 2009) had been introduced by him in the Senate on December 29, 2009. The property tax was not a new tax, as it sought to develop one system to the one used throughout Trinidad and Tobago with a uniform set of rates based on a uniform principle and common bases of valuation, he said. The rate now proposed is exactly the rates proposed then on the same basis of calculation with the same basis of administration, he said. Browne said one purpose of that Bill was to provide a system that would ensure that all properties are valued on a consistent basis, as they would be done by the Valuation Division of the Ministry of Finance. He said consequential amendments to the Valuation of Land (Amendment) Bill would provide Trinidad and Tobago with a single agency for the determination of property values for the purposes of this taxation. Another purpose of the Bill is to implement a nationally consistent property tax system with one rate paid on all properties that are in the same category. More specifically, the rates across the board throughout the country in the four categories of properties will be as follows: Residential: 3% on the annual taxable value; Commercial: 5% on the annual taxable value; Agricultural land: 1%; and Industrial land: 6% of the annual taxable value. The rates as well as the method of valuation have not changed since its proposal in 2009. Asked why the tax was never implemented and what led to the Axe the Tax campaign, Browne observed the Bill was introduced at a time of great dissatisfaction and coincided with the fall in income resulting from a fall in oil prices as a result of the 2008 recession. It was viewed as an attempt to increase taxation to finance the governments income shortfall and the Axe the Tax campaign fell in with the level of disaffection directed against the then Patrick Manning administration, he said, adding, there was substantial disinformation in the political domain at the time which led to great disaffection. Implementation was superseded by the general election in 2010 and the campaign promise of the Peoples Partnership not to introduce the tax. As such the Bill lapsed and the opportunity to modernise went with it, he stated. Browne continued: There is nothing sinister about this bill. It will raise revenue for the government. It will require citizens to pay taxes that they used to pay up until 2009. But it is critical to the maintenance of a system of land registration and property rights. But people always fear change, Browne stated. Former Peoples Partnership Finance Minister, Winston Dookeran observed that while Property tax is a good measure for fiscal sustainability, he pointed out that in a recessionary time, the impact will be one of contraction, unless other measures are put into place at the same time. So, the question is, what is the fiscal and growth package? Dookeran asked, before stating that the original property tax proposal was not equitable, affecting the small man more than the high value enterprises, hence the difficulty in pushing it forward. I do not have the details of the present plan, so it must be assessed for equity. Finally, fiscal measures must have a net stimulus impact on the economy, so this proposal taken in isolation may find the stimulus effect missing? Will it be merely revenue generating without stimulating the economy? And, exactly what is the size of its impact on total revenue? Dookeran asked. In the 2017 budget statement, Finance Minister Colm Imbert stated that property tax collections would be fully implemented in 2017 based on The Property Tax Act 2009, with minor amendments to the Valuation of Land Act. He said new tax invoices would be issued in 2017, subsequent to the completion of the Valuation Roll prepared by the Commissioner of Valuations and the Assessment Roll prepared by the Inland Revenue Division. The Valuation Roll is a listing of all properties in Trinidad and Tobago. This Roll is prepared in accordance with Sec. 16 (1) of the Valuation of Land Act Chpt 58:03. Under the Valuations of Land Act, every owner is required to submit a return which will be used by the Valuation Division to calculate the annual rental value, failing which the Division will prepare its own valuation. All properties in Trinidad and Tobago have a rental value and possess the potential to be rented, whether the intention of the owner is to rent it or not. The rental value is determined by the rent the property will obtain on the open market (if it were put up for rent), according to the Ministry. Residential homeowners are required to submit: A previous Land & Building Taxes Receipt for property identified; Deed/RPO Certificate of Title; Land Survey Plan or Land Area; Site Plan; Building Plan; Rent/Lease Agreement; Completion Certificate; Town and Country Planning Approval (status of land); Town and Country Planning Approved Use (change of use), as well as a photograph of the exterior of the property; A sketch of building; WASA Bill (no more than three months old); TTEC Bill (no more than three months old) Commercial landowners are required to also produce documents pertaining to residential landowners, including: Land Survey Plan or land area; OSHA Certificate; Letter from Designs Engineering Branch of Ministry of Works & Transport; Certificate of Incorporation; Certificate of Continuance; and Annual Return of a Company for Profit Incorporated, Continued or Amalgamated under the Companies Act 1995. Under the Valuation of Land Act 18 of 1969, homeowners who fail to make a return within the prescribed time under subsection (1); or makes a return which is defective or incomplete or which is to his knowledge false in any material particular, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine. The fine is not outlined in the Act. According to the Ministry of Finances website, which has several pages dedicated to the issue, properties are expected to be accessed by Valuers, who take several factors into account in calculating the unit value of the property, which are used to calculate your propertys rental value including the classification of the property (executive, modern, standard I and standard II) depending on the features of the building leisure facilities, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, types of utilities available, special rooms such as game room. A standard home one is a one bathroom; a standard home two features between one and two bathrooms, while a modern home has at least one en suite bathroom with a specialty room. An executive home may have at least as many bathrooms as there are bedrooms and specialised areas such as a separate room for dining, office, library etc. Not all properties on the same street have the same property taxes to pay, as the rental values of houses, on the same street may vary according to classification of the building, floor area of the building, age, condition and internal layout of the building. The Ministry also noted that for persons who operate a small business from their home, their properties would be assessed by its proportional use to determine whether they pay residential or commercial taxes. Property evaluations are expected to take place every five years. However, if during that period any material change is done to the property, such as change of ownership, subdivision, improvements or any other changes as identified in Section 9 of the Valuation of Land Act, the Commissioner of Valuations may make changes to the Valuation Roll as necessary, the Ministry stated. There is also an Annual Rental Value of vacant land, which would be calculated by taking a percentage of the Current Market Value of the land with Agricultural: 2%; Residential: 3.5%; and Commercial and Industrial: 5%. Under the Act, all land in Trinidad and Tobago is liable to taxation though there are notable exemptions such as lands used exclusively as churches, chapels and places of public worship of any religious denomination and every cemetery or burial ground that is enclosed and actually required, used and occupied for the interment of the dead, but not land that is rented or leased by a church or religious organisation to a person other than another church or religious organisation. Exceptions were also granted to school buildings, offices and playgrounds; charitable institutions as well as public hospitals, public asylums and all alms-houses, and institutes of tertiary education such as the University of the West Indies, University of Trinidad and Tobago; the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts, (COSTAATT); and the University of the Southern Caribbean. Properties owned by foreign government or international organisation of which Trinidad and Tobago is a member are also exempted under the Act. However, Housing Development Corporation (HDC) homeowners those who have purchased their homes would have to pay property tax on those properties. Housing Minister, Randall Mitchell, in a message noted that HDC tenants and licensees would not have to pay, but noted that the Ministry would be guided by the Ministry of Finance. There are instances in which property tax can be deferred. According to the Ministry, the Board of Inland Revenue may upon the application of the owner of land, authorise the deferral of the payment of the assessed tax on the land on the grounds of the impoverished condition of the owner and his inability to improve his financial position significantly by reason of age, impaired health or other special circumstances, that undue hardship to that owner would otherwise ensue. Pensioners, however would not be exempt from paying property tax though this may be deferred upon application and approval by the Board of Inland Revenue. Grannys economics still relevant It is not surprising as discussions about our economic conditions most times do not seem to take into consideration the people factor. Consequently, there is a perception that those conversations are merely intellectual exercises that make little difference in the daily life and living of the average citizen in this country. As we go through this period of depleting resources, it is not uncommon to hear arguments casting blame on the government, businesses, trade unions, the education system, political ideologies and every imaginable thing under the sun. But do we as citizens ever look to ourselves for answers? For many people, the realities of everyday living are harsh. People are faced with the daunting task of managing an income that has devalued, while maintaining a so-called normal lifestyle. The truth is that there is no magic wand or any quick fix that would take us back onto the road to prosperity. Lifestyle choices and changes are therefore necessary. Theres an old adage that says, dont hang your hat where your hand cant reach, which is now particularly relevant. Years of positive economic conditions have made us accustomed to many of the perks of a prosperous society with high liquidity from online shopping, brand-name apparel, a wide variety of fine dining options, exclusive grocery items, credit cards, high-end vehicles and other standards of a consumer-driven lifestyle. These have all been at our fingertips thanks to successive oil and gas booms and more than enough foreign exchange within the financial system. That is no longer the case; things have changed and so must we. The business community has been repeatedly challenged to become more innovative and fearless and to expand into new growth areas, especially in the economic downturn. In the same way, ordinary citizens can challenge themselves to return to a culture of thrift, saving and self-reliance. Exercise your right to be a discerning consumer; be in control of your spending patterns; eliminate non-essentials by differentiating between wants and needs; and set clear financial goals. This just might introduce you to a healthier lifestyle and more quality time with your family. Some might find it counter-intuitive for a business representative organisation such as the TT Chamber to advocate greater self-reliance. But truth be told, in times of crisis and change, economic resources that are controlled by the business community are creatively re-directed and re-configured to meet shifting local needs. In other words, change is the only constant and within it, opportunities are there to be found. At the end of the day, there is room for all of us to reach for and achieve the quality of life we seek - one of safety, security, peace and prosperity. Government has its role to play as does business, as well as each of us as ordinary citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. Dislike of tax is universal Property or estate taxes tend often to be levied at the point of sale, but the application of the tax in Trinidad and Tobago, though based on sale-price evaluation, will be levied on all properties. Commercial and residential. It will initially be self-evaluation, then certification. Homeowners may like it less than landlords who dont yet have sitting tenants. Landlords everywhere had been brought back down to earth with the realisation that the demand pool had shrunk. At the high end, owners of plush apartments who used to easily get fiveyear lease agreements at US$4,000 a month plus with big foreign firms have had to readjust their sights. Its a tenants market. Has been for a while now. There has been strong reaction to the tax. How it plays out will tell us a lot about the state of the market. If landlords are generally unable to pass it onto tenants in a market that favours the latter, then thatll be a clear sign that the housing recovery is lagging. But that depends on how deep into a contract a tenant is, and her willingness to negotiate and search for better deals. With the market the way it is now, the person the tax favours the least is the homeowner, whether s/hes a landlord or not. Homeowners, a new tax bill. Landlords, having to raise the rent. Taxation isnt popular. Its always irks a bit when the TT$200 restaurant meal that you mentally calculated at the outset doesnt look anything like the bill total after two sets of taxes have been added. And yet, attitudes to taxation vary, often in the same market. During the US elections, some rich people of a certain political persuasion said theyd be willing to pay more. Others, most notably the man elected president, said openly that they seek actively to pay as little as they can. ACCA conducted a study of tax in the 20 richest countries in the world, the G20 group. One of the main takeaways is that on tax matters, two-thirds of respondents distrusted of politicians. What do you think the figure is for politicians in TT? Ping a tweet to my twitter account below. Fifty-seven percent trust or highly trust professional accountants for information on the tax system, followed by professional tax lawyers (49%) and nongovernmental organisations (35%). The public doesnt trust the media either -- 41% said distrust or highly distrust, and interestingly 38% distrusted business leaders. However, the findings arent uniform across G20 Id have been shocked if that was the case and accountants dont escape completely. While 58% of people in G20 countries believe the work of professional accountants is contributing to more efficient tax systems, France, Germany and Russia, do not have as much trust and belief in professional accountants as the rest of G20. One interesting thing about the property tax in TT is that the dislike has been equal opportunity. Views on tax tend to cleave along the lines of who should pay more, or as is sometimes said in political debate on taxes, soaking the rich. Most G20 respondents do not believe that the rich are paying their fair share, with 52% answering agree or strongly agree, with the question of whether high-income earners are paying a reasonable amount of tax. People tended to more sympathetic towards the tax burdens of the rich in Argentina, China, France, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In Australia, Canada, Italy, the United States, and United Kingdom, people tend to think high income earners and multinational companies dont get taxed enough. One interesting takeaway was that respondents were generally fine with companies employing tax shelters, but not so understanding of individuals doing it. They were 15% more likely to think it is appropriate or highly appropriate for multinational companies to minimise taxes, than they did for average or low income earning individuals to employ tax minimisation. In Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the United States and United Kingdom, people view tax minimisation as something that is more appropriate for average or low income earners and local companies to do, but less so for high income earners and multinational companies. Italians and South Koreans tended to really dislike any form of tax minimisation. The study is based on an online survey of more than 7,600 people across G20 countries. It was a deep pool. Respondents include approximately 400 people from each G20 country. Follow or engage on twitter, @oringordon Service: Attitude vs Altitude It was not the first time I journeyed to the Middle East; however, this particular journey was designed to check a number of boxes. For the purpose of this article, I will focus one of the areas that immediately jumps out at you, that is the attitude of service. We journeyed three legs on this particular tour, with a brief layover in London before catching what I consider one of the better airline experiences, period. The attention to detail experienced at the Emirates counter starts your recognition that you mean more to them than a passenger seat number. You are greeted from the onset with a remarkable measure of warmth and welcome, from the complementary chauffeur service picking you up at your hotel to the airport, to the spa service within the lounge, and the airline staff who seek nothing but your rating of service excellence. Now, before I am charged with advertising for this particular airline, let me state that I highlight these experiences to demonstrate that service excellence is achievable and sustainable. More so, such gold star standards seem to be the norm for these Middle Eastern airlines and by extension, hotels and other service based industries. This in stark comparison to the two airlines that have been in the news recently charged with less than humane treatment meted out to its passenger class. I have also had the opportunity to experience both airlines quoted in the recent news, and I have to admit, that my experiences with both also left me less than satisfied. These airlines both need to do a significant overhaul to recoup some measure of credibility to their various market segments. One wonders, if any of the predominantly Middle Eastern Airlines were to be allowed to enter the North American Routes, then perhaps they would understand just how customers should be regarded. The detail to service excellence is not only resident within the airline service industry in these territories. With all the reported and existing political instability in many of these territories, their level of understanding the worth of the tourism dollar is astounding, so much so that you are so highly regarded that any levels of anxiety are abated. For instance, upon our arrival at the Hotel in Old Cairo, Egypt, before entry into the hotel, your vehicle has to be security cleared, inclusive of checks for IEDs (improvised explosive devices), your identification must be provided at certain checkpoints, and a number of other measures are implemented. However, the special operations and police undertake their checks in such a manner that you understand and appreciate why these strategies are undertaken. The manner that you are greeted at your hotel leaves nothing to chance. Your every question is met with a comprehensive response, along with a tour of your assigned room, and hotel if required. The point being made, is even in the midst of great security-based threats, many of these territories continue to operate at service levels above and beyond what is expected and anticipated. And such gold standards were not implemented simply to make up for political instability they have become ingrained into the culture of these places. They understand what it takes to compete on the Global tourism market, whilst appreciating the requirements of the incoming visitors. The lament of economic diversification for Trinidad and Tobago has been on the lips of every incoming and outgoing Government for as long as I can recall, and one wonders when we will begin to understand and appreciate that diversification will not happen on its own it requires vision, application, leadership and a clear strategy. Tourism has been touted as one of the areas of focus for this diversification, and I can attest, we are light years behind. Next week I will focus on the relationship between security and protocol in high risk Taking on the IMF Of course, when questioned further, he admitted that the analysis that was conducted, was really on the Latin American region, not the Caribbean. However, he stated that if the analysis was extended for the Caribbean the results would be the same. Is that really a correct statement? Should he not first conduct the analysis on the Caribbean to determine its relevance? We must be far more assertive and objective in our approach to comments made by the IMF. Too long the IMF has lumped Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with other countries. Here it has applied the same criteria to assess all countries, and imposed the same solutions for the myriad problems that we face. To date the arguments that we should be treated differently from other groupings of countries, because of particular vulnerabilities of the Caribbean region and other SID groups to extreme events (e.g hurricanes), are yet to gain traction with the IMF. Adopting a solution to the indebtedness of the region to lower the debt/GDP ratio and so create the fiscal space to allow for the pursuit of development and growth using local financing has just reached drafts of proposals by agencies such as ECLAC but has gone no further. To hear an IMF spokesman talk about flexible exchange rates as the solution and then say we do not prescribe any particular exchange rate regime for any country. It is a choice that countries make is cause for great concern. There are a number of persons, including former Permanent Secretaries, Finance Ministers and Governors of the Central Bank who have had to both argue that such a regime may create far more problems than solve them. Indeed, many an IMF team have had to be counselled on how our economy works. We have lumpy capital inflows. Every quarter the main source of our foreign exchange, which are the energy sector companies, pay their taxes which come to the Central Bank who then converts these to T&T dollars and places them in the government accounts. The Central Banks role is to smooth the foreign exchange (forex) inflows to the public by providing the forex markets with periodic sales of forex during those times when there are no inflows of forex. In addition, our economic history has thought us that we cannot just sell all foreign exchange that we get into the forex market because that results in volatility in the forex markets which is not healthy for trade or commerce. Of course, fixed income earners and pensioners will be greatly affected by a sudden depreciation when shortages occur on the forex market if a free float was adopted. Lastly, it is the pools of reserves and HSF funds that have been highlighted by Standard and Poors as strengths in this economy and have allowed us to face these difficult times. That comes from a managed, not free, float. Even in our managed float, when a large influx of forex hits the market (a la the sale of Royal Bank shares), there was very little appreciation of the TT dollar. A managed float has served us well- we need to now develop other policies such as strong fiscal policies to curb aggregate demand and import demand. Articulating the nature of our economic space to external parties such as the IMF is a good sign of a maturing, confident people. Birth rate and ageing demands In reality, when the fertility rate falls, the result is a decreasing workforce to support an increasing number of retirees. Rapid contraction of the labor force could have a negative impact on the economy, on growth, consumption and on the ability of current generations to pay for entitlements for older Trinidadians. Falling birthrate lowers demand for services and goods shrinks the housing market. What about the demand for schools? Does having fewer children mean smaller class sizes? Does it mean less demand for teachers? It is important for the government and policy-makers to plan around fertility rates, as well as population ages, as these will tell them how to prepare for the future: how many schools they are going to need, the workforce available, pressures on the environment and transportation, and where the focus must lie. Thats how societies know what kind of retired population to plan for and what social programs could be needed. What about the fertility class: that is fertility rates for families in poverty and those heavily dependent on government welfare as opposed to the fertility rate for couples that can afford it? Would this have an impact on the quality of the workforce? Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates, thinks policymakers dont realise how much demographics will hurt economies now because they never appreciated how much they helped in the past. From 1960-2000, GDP per capita rose an average 2.6 percent a year in the big six developed countries. Since then, it has grown less than 1 percent a year. Arnott thinks the demographic drag is going to worsen, subtracting roughly a percentage point from the annual rate in the next few decades. That suggests living standards barely growing, or even falling. Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, says societies are unsure of their goals now that easy economic expansion is over. We have no plans for how to run a society without growth, he says. In aging societies, the big fear is that paying for benefits for the swelling number of retirees will weigh on economic growth. But even if benefits were fully funded, more retirees would practically guarantee slower growth for three reasons. First, retirees dont really produce anything. So, a countrys output falls unless new workers producing the same value of goods and services replace them. Second, retirees dont save, invest and spend as much as workers with paychecks. That, in turn, cuts demand and slows growth. A third reason is less obvious: Productivity of workers, or output per hour, tends to peak as they reach their mid-50s. And the increases in productivity as they near that age tend to be small. And with economic growth, only the change in productivity from year to year counts, not the level. We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter. But economists attribute up to a third of it to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more producing, earning and spending. Economists are worried not just because growth is stalling in working-age populations. Their numbers as a share of the total population in many countries is falling. Economists like to see this share of total population rise, because it means more people are earning money, expanding the tax base and paying for schools for the young, and pensions and health care for the old. The United Nations defines a country as ageing when 10% or more of its population is over the age of 60 years. In 2015, there are 901 million people aged 60 or over, comprising 12 per cent of the global population. According to data from the Central Statistical Office in Trinidad and Tobago, currently over 13% of the population is over the age of 60 years. According to the UN World Population Prospects (2015), the percentage of persons in Trinidad and Tobago aged 60 years and over is projected to be 28% in 2050 and will continue to grow. In reality, we can only speculate as to what will happen in 50 or 100 years but we can agree however that very low fertility rates could lead to population declines, which could be bad for our economy. Equipped with the data and hard facts, how are we planning for this? What preparations are the government and policy-makers making? What are the policy decisions being made now? Or will the government continue to suffer from a lack of foresight and treat with this like the diversification plan? Then the aged population issue will be suddenly upon us and we will be unprepared just like we were for a fall in oil prices. TOFCO GM: Loss of Angelin disappointing but work, training continue Located on the LABIDCO Industrial Estate in Brighton, La Brea, TOFCOs most recent major project was deck fabrication of bpTTs Juniper platform, completed in January 2017 and offshore hook up which is currently ongoing. Juniper was the ninth platform completed by TOFCO. All of bpTTs platforms since Cannonball, which was commissioned in 2005, have been constructed at the La Brea facility, including Cashima, Mango, Savonette and Serrette. In all, TOFCO has worked on the Angostura field development flare, boom and bridges, Cannonball, Cashima, Mango, Savonette, Serrette, Oilbird, Toucan, Poinsettia platforms and their related infrastructure. Industrial action during the early stages of Junipers construction, and the subsequent decision by bpTT, TECHNIP and TOFCO to have the jacket built in the USA, has been well-documented. So too has been the recent announcement that bpTTs Angelin platform will be built in Mexico rather than at TOFCO. While this was disappointing news, TOFCO has never been a company to place its proverbial eggs in one basket, said its General Manager, Javed Mohammed, during a recent interview with Business Day. A project of Angelins magnitude is one fifth the size of Juniper, so in our opinion, not getting to build Angelin has not posed a challenge to us in any way. The company is structured with new-build projects which we refer to as green field, such as Juniper and all the other platforms, while our brown field group handles maintenance on existing facilities. So, we still have persons working in brown field and we have opportunities coming up later this year that would see us continue our operations, not at the forecasted level that we would have liked but business development continues, business goes on as usual, Mohammed said. TOFCO has taken the opportunity, while its yard is quieter than expected, to further train and develop our employees. This includes classroom sessions with management and the superintendent, the engineering group and the Human Resources group, where members of the various departments spend time with each other on a one-on-one basis or as a collective group. TOFCO is also conducting training for individuals. All of this, Mohammed explained, is meant to prepare the company for the next level, which would help us drive our efficiencies and competitiveness. Established in 2004 as a joint venture of Chet Morrison Contractors LLC, a Houma, Louisiana-based company, and Weldfab Limited of Trinidad, TOFCO describes itself as having progressed from a sole focus on the offshore business to supporting work to downstream providers. The company added that diversifying its operations has allowed TOFCO a greater agility, leading the company to explore prospects that will ensure even more sustainable growth. On its website, TOFCO also states that with a strong view to capitalise on opportunities in international markets, (it) has attracted attention beyond our nations shores, from as far as South Africa and South America. The company has hosted government officials from countries such as Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, Ghana and Nigeria, all of whom have expressed interest in adopting TOFCOs business model. The company has 38 permanent staff but at the peak of the Juniper project, it employed 750 persons. Prior to that, we saw numbers of 700 when we had three projects being built at the same time for three different operators. That was between 2008 to 2009. Weve also completed over 7.5 million man hours at this facility since inception without any lost time incidents or days away from work, Mohammed stated. Guyanas emerging energy sector is one of the other focus areas in which TOFCO has placed some of its interests. Mohammed attended the March 27 - 29 Oil and Gas Conference in Georgetown, which was organised by the Guyana Oil and Gas Association (GOGA). Theyve also been having some discussions in Guyana about how TOFCO can train and develop Guyanese nationals as the South American nation builds its energy infrastructure. We have a couple of bids with some EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contractors; to do fabrication for them. Guyana doesnt have the infrastructure. Due to Trinidads close proximity to Guyana we are hopeful that it will be pre-fabricated here and delivered to Guyana, if we are successful in our bids. The successful tenders in the Guyana bids are expected to be announced before the end of this year. Business Day asked Mohammed if he envisions a TOFCO Guyana in the medium to long-term. We want to see ourselves grow and were not limited to Trinidad. Once the opportunities are there for further discussion, at a higher level, it will allow us to perhaps set up a small facility because Guyana doesnt have construction of this magnitude at this time. Asked if he would consider something similar to Mexico, where the Angelin platform is being fabricated before being sent down to Trinidad, Mohammed said he was not in favour of that. Id rather we have a presence in the country, developing local capabilities. Theres a difference. We have the skill set, the competency, the capability and the (Angelin) project is for Trinidad. To get Guyana to that level, it may take bringing folks here for training them and then going there. We want to develop our La Brea facility to be able to compete with (fabrication yards) in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas. Once we get to that level, then we will look to expand further abroad. Mohammed also expressed his pride and gratitude to the TOFCO employees for their dedication and achievements. Their families too came in for praise, because it did take quite a lot out of our employees to make (Juniper) the success that it has been. Looking at La Brea, Mohammed said having waterfront access at LABIDCO is a huge advantage because it gives us direct access to loading out facilities and structures at the port. On the needs improvement side, he cited delays in people getting to and from work whenever there is congestion, heavy equipment passing, flooding along the Mosquito Creek or even major potholes along the Southern Main Road. So I think having the (Debe to Point Fortin) highway completed would be a major advantage, not just for us, but for all companies that operate in the area because the exit point would be closer to Union Industrial Estate and would reduce your daily commute by about 30 minutes. The lack of employment opportunities in La Brea is a major concern for many residents. Mohammed said this could be improved by updating the curricula at training facilities in the area, as well as ensuring all students get proper hands-on experience during their programme. They need to look at improving some of the curricula and the facilities to meet international standards and to have persons ready (for work). You see, its not just about theory. You need some hands-on training, some sort of practical training at these facilities as well. By that I mean whats available now needs to be improved, Mohammed stated. For more information about TOFCO, visit its website www.tofcott.com Lake Asphalt eyes new markets, to launch new products Business Day found out about the State companys plans during an interview with TLAs Acting CEO, Nigel Minors. We have actually been proactive about increasing revenue because we realised that you cannot continue to do the same old thing every year without falling behind. So in late September 2015, we signed an MOU with the University of the West Indies; Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, to develop more downstream products. We want to enhance our Lasco range of products; we currently sell Underbody Coat, Bituminous Black Paint, Pipe Guard and Sealant. Seated in his office at TLA on the LABIDCO Industrial Estate (LABIDCO), La Brea, Minors said they began by looking at formulations for four new products and have since chosen to further develop two of those. Our aim is to commercialise these two within the next six to nine months, pending approval from our line ministry, Ministry of Energy (MoE); and corporation sole, Ministry of Finance (MoF). A change in administration usually means a review of projects and agreements. This MOU was no exception. Although the original MOU is now null and void, Minors told Business Day that TLA intends to sign a new one as soon as the MoE and MoF give their approval. I suspect that could be within the next three to four months, following which we would launch the new Lasco products. They are expected to generate foreign exchange, US dollars, from sales on the global market. Increasing TLAs production capacity and efficiency requires a new plant, something which also requires final approval from the two ministries. In the meantime, the company is seeking to improve operations at its existing facility. Our plant is more than 67 years old, the process is antiquated as well. So we are in the middle, right now, of some highly sensitive talks - testing and so on, to improve the process. (Subsequently) bringing on a new plant in the same area would likely triple or quadruple our capacity. This would be very significant because TLA would no longer be stymied by a limited production figure when determining how to meet supply demands. Ideally, we would love to have the new plant operational within nine to 12 months, once we get the approval to proceed. The impact of production limitations is something TLA experienced within the past six years. Minors said Chinese companies accounted for the largest percentage of our distributorship, particularly in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. We moved about 32,000 tonnes of our TLA product right before the Beijing Olympics. By 2010, we were moving about 22,000 tonnes. Based on these types of arrangements, theres where we find the ebb and flow in TLA exports/sales. Hence the need to always be looking at other markets. While the slowdown in the global economy affected sales to a certain extent, TLA was also the same time behind the ball on orders from our other customers. Minors explained that because of the 2008, 2009 arrangement, we had a new player that came into the picture - China Railway, and the previous board decided to focus on China Railway because it was expected to order 50,000 tonnes a year; our production capacity was about 50,000 a year. A lot of the emphasis therefore went towards looking at supplying China Railway from 2011 to 2012 but they ended up ordering an average of 20,000 tonnes per year in the first two years. Lake Asphalt, traditionally, has been a demand-driven production company. We needed to have secured our other markets and even new markets during this time. TLA did still supply smaller orders but Minors said not having maintained existing markets or targeting new ones kept us back a bit from where I believe we should have been in 2012, 2013 in terms of more orders from our long-standing clients newer markets. If we had done the ground work, he added, when we had that sharp decline in orders from China Railway, we wouldve been able to ramp up orders in other markets. Ensuring that TLA never finds itself in a similar situation again is a main driver of the proposed upgrades, which Minors reiterated requires final approval from the MoE and MoF. Asked about the budget for the new plant, Minors said he couldnt share that because discussions are still in proposal stage. However, he did reveal that employees who work in the existing facility would be re-trained to operate the newer equipment. TLA also intends to find new roles, as needed, for those whose jobs may be made redundant because the process would no longer be as labour-intensive. Currently, TLA employs just over 200 persons, plus about 50 casual workers. About 75 percent to 80 percent of staff comes from La Brea, Point Fortin, Rousillac and parts of Oropouche. TLA is a US $100 million company, on average, per year (but) a lot of that revenue goes into labour costs; its labour-intensive, and other expenses. Hence the push by Minors and his management team to execute the aforementioned upgrades. This, he noted, is expected to increase TLAs foreign exchange earnings per year. You can see part if the port at LABIDCO from the CEOs office. When the matter of transportation costs arose during the interview, Minors expressed hope that LABIDCO would have its upgrade plans approved too, so that TLA could export its products down the hill rather than paying about TT $3,000 per container, round-trip, to either the Point Lisas or the Port-of-Spain port. LABIDCO plans to expand the port and its facilities this year to include containerised cargo via the addition of gantry cranes. This would be great for us because our transport costs are a significant part of our expenses - a 20-foot container usually hold 20 tonnes of our product. If we decide to move, on average, 1,000 tonnes per week, thats 44 containers by about TT $3,000 per container roundtrip, its a lot. Minors estimated the company would achieve a 75 percent savings if it could use LABIDCO instead. Regarding doing business in La Brea, Minors, like most others Business Day spoke to, called for the opening of a bank or at least two ATMs. La Brea also needs a couple of good restaurants, especially when people come down from Port-of- Spain for all-day meetings. We normally cater food but sometimes you want to take clients out and it would be nice to take them somewhere in the area rather than driving to Point Fortin, Minors stated. Keep it local Business Day found out more about the company and its labour needs during a recent interview with its Corporate Affairs, Manager, Josieann Richards. Seated in CGCLs temporary offices at the site for the Trinidad Methanol Dimethyl Ether (TMD) plants at Union Industrial Estate (UIE), Vessigny, La Brea, Richards explained that while they are in the early stages of construction, because we know what the requirements will be for plant operation, we are advertising certain positions in advance. In a newspaper ad published earlier this month, CGCL said it is currently in the early phase of construction of a petrochemical complex on the UIE and in the upcoming months they will have vacancies for nine permanent positions in plant operations: 1) Payroll Clerk; 2) Accounts Clerk; 3) IT Supervisor; 4) E&I Supervisor; 5) Laboratory Supervisor; 6) HSE Advisor; 7) Planning and Inspection Engineer; 8) Process Engineer; and 9) Process Operator. Richards told Business Day that within two weeks of the ad being published, CGCL received more than 1,000 job applications, some from persons who, if hired, would face a long commute to work. Richards assured every application is reviewed because we are searching for the best talent available and we know that, that talent resides in TT. Asked why such an early job ad, she explained that some positions will require additional training, particularly since this will be the first TMD plant in Trinidad and Tobago. So, the recruitment process takes into consideration the requirements and duration of that training. We didnt want to advertise just before we go operational. We want to ensure that the persons we recruit are exposed to the appropriate length of training that would be required for them to function in an operational environment. The Race to Control the House Comes Down to 5 A Good Samaritan who lost both her legs while helping a crashed motorist now has one less expense to worry about. Certified prosthetist Joshua Ryder of Island Coast Orthopedics in Lee County, Fla., has offered to donate two prosthetic legs to 30-year-old Danielle Hagmann as soon as she's ready, reports the News-Press. Hagmann, who has five children and no health insurance, lost both her legs in an accident Sunday. While she was assisting at the scene of a crash, a car struck the crashed vehicle, pinning Hagmann against a guardrail. At Lee Memorial Hospital, she had one leg amputated just above the knee and the other at mid-thigh. But, according to Ryder, that's no reason Hagmann shouldn't be up and walking within a year. Once Hagmann is properly healed, a "shrink sock" can be used to shape her limbs, he says. At that point, he can begin to build two custom artificial limbs, which would normally cost between $13,000 and $85,000, Ryder says. He expects Hagmannwho must wait for an investigation report before seeking treatment funds through auto insurancecould be using the prosthetics to get around within a year. Hagmann's father says he's thankful for donations like Ryder's that have flooded in since Sunday, including to two GoFundMe pages. A church group in Missouri has also offered to pay for a powered wheelchair, per the News-Press. "We intend to reach out and contact all of those [who] made an offer," says Hagmann's dad. (Read more Good Samaritan stories.) ISIS is steadily losing territory in Iraq and Syria, and a lot of foreign fighters are apparently having second thoughts about fighting to the death for it. The Guardian reports that officials in Turkey and Europe say large numbers of foreign fighters are abandoning the group and trying to flee, especially now that an offensive is closing in on Raqqa, Syria, where many foreigners who joined the "caliphate" were based. Officials believe those fleeing include foreign fighters who have renounced the group, people who weren't fighters but found themselves living in ISIS territory, and hardcore militants suspected of planning terrorist attacks in their homelands. Sources tell the Guardian that the latest foreigners to surrender to Turkish border police include a British couple and US citizen Kary Paul Kleman. A Turkish official confirmed to CNN that Kleman, a former Florida resident, was detained after arriving at the border with his Syrian wife and their three children. Authorities believe he "was compelled to escape the conflict zone following airstrikes and military operations against ISIS," the official says. Kleman's family says he converted to Islam after moving to the Middle East in 2011. They say he went to Syria in 2015 to help with humanitarian efforts but soon realized it was a "scam" and started trying to escape the country. (Read more ISIS stories.) Caitlyn Jenner made a headline-grabbing comment while promoting her new memoir The Secrets of My Life: She says she "knew he did it," the "he" being OJ Simpson. Jennerwho was married for 24 years to Kris Jenner, ex-wife of Simpson friend and defense lawyer Robert Kardashiantold Andy Cohen on SiriusXM that she has no doubt that Simpson killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in 1994, USA Today reports. "There was three people at the crime scene: DNA evidence, three people at the crime scene," Jenner said. "Pick a murderer. How hard is that?" Kris Jenner, who divorced the Kardashian patriarch in 1991, was a close friend of Brown. Jenner told Cohen that Kardashian, who died in 2003, told her after Simpson was acquitted that he "would have been OK if they got him in the first trial." But after the trial, Jenner said, Kardashian "was now the guy who helped him get away with murder and he was destroyed by everybody. And I felt terribly sorry for him." Jenner also discussed her feelings about daughter Kendall's disastrous Pepsi ad and her relationship with Kris Jenner, People reports. Caitlyn said that after her book came out, Kris told her she never wanted to speak to her again. "Is it sad? Of course it is," she said. "But I have no problem with Kris. If that's the way she feels, that's the way she feels." CNN reports that in a Tuesday night interview, Jenner, who voted for President Trump, said she wouldn't rule out a run for office. (Read more Caitlyn Jenner stories.) A survivalist who eluded police in northeast Pennsylvania for seven weeks after killing a state trooper in a 2014 ambush has been sentenced to death. Eric Frein, 33, was found guilty last week on charges including first-degree murder, the BBC reports. The jury deliberated for five hours Wednesday before deciding on the death penalty for Frein, who wounded a second trooper in the ambush outside trooper barracks in Blooming Grove, reports CNN. Prosecutors said Frein, who taunted police while hiding out in the woods and scoffed at the search in his journal, wanted to start an anti-government uprising. Pennsylvania has a moratorium on the death penalty, so Frein is likely to end up serving a life sentence on death row. (Read more Eric Frein stories.) Kayla Greenwood understands the desire to see one's father a final time. In 1999, when she was 5, Greenwoods dad was killed when an escaped prisoner in a stolen truck slammed into his vehicle during a police chase. That escaped prisoner, convicted of killing two others, is now scheduled to be executed in Arkansas at 7pm Thursday, reports the Springfield News-Leader. But while Greenwood isn't able to speak to her dad one last time, she wanted to give Kenneth Williams' daughter that chance. After learning 21-year-old Jasmine hadn't seen her father in 17 years, Greenwood reached out to her Tuesday, with her mother offering to pay for her and her 3-year-old daughter to fly to Little Rock to see Williams before his execution. "At least that can be something good and beautiful that can come out of something so horrible," Greenwood, whose family has appealed for Williams' life to be spared, tells KSPR. She adds Williams cried "when he found out that we are bringing his daughter and granddaughter to see him." Williams, 38, appeared less grateful when he initially avoided the death penalty for the 1998 murder of a college cheerleader, reportedly taunting the victim's family after his sentence of life in prison was read out. He escaped from prison weeks later, killed a man who lived nearby, and stole his truck before crashing into one driven by Michael Greenwood, 24, per Reuters. He was later sentenced to death. All requests to stay his execution have been denied, reports KATV. (Read more Arkansas stories.) The father of a boy who became the face of a Hawaii campaign for missing and abused children after his 1997 disappearance rode in a van with police and prosecutors last weekend, leading them to the site where he says he dumped his dead son's remains. Peter Kema Sr., wearing a jail jumpsuit and shackles, agreed to the move as part of a plea deal reached earlier this month, Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth tells the AP. Kema pleaded guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a 20-year sentence, on the condition that he reveal where the remains are. The site in the Big Island's remote Puna district, to be searched at a later date, is in an area that police didn't previously search or consider. Police will return to the site for a more detailed search before Kema is sentenced in June, Roth said. Kema and his wife, Jaylin, have long been suspects in the disappearance of the 6-year-old known as "Peter Boy," but prosecutors said they didn't have enough evidence to charge them until last year, when a grand jury indicted the couple on murder charges. Jaylin Kema pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter in the first official confirmation that the child was dead. In exchange for 10 years' probation and a one-year jail sentence with credit for time served, she agreed to testify against her husband if he went to trial. She also agreed to facts prosecutors laid out in court about abuse suffered by the boy and her failure to get him medical treatment. Prosecutors believe the boy died from septic shock from not getting medical care for an arm injury. (Read more Hawaii stories.) Having seen the court block a number of his executive orders during his short time in office, President Trump tells the Washington Examiner he's "absolutely" considering breaking up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "What's going on in the 9th Circuit is a shame," Trump says, adding the 9th Circuit is "outrageous" and his opponents are "judge shopping" by taking cases there. Republicans have been attacking the 9th Circuit for decades, accusing it of being both too liberal and too large, the Washington Post reports. Conservative pundits call it the "Ninth Circus" or the "Nutty Ninth," and Newt Gingrich once proposed getting rid of it entirely for being "anti-American." The first part of Republicans' complaintthat the 9th Circuit is too liberalisn't as accurate as it used to be. The court's liberal bent declined recently after President Obama placed a handful of centrist judges on it. And the GOP's claim that decisions from the 9th Circuit have the highest rate of being overturned in the Supreme Court is complicated by the fact that the high court takes up a "minuscule fraction" of any courts cases, notes the Post. But Republicans may have a point that the 9th Circuit is too big: The AP reports it has more judges than any other appellate court and covers 20% of the US population. But 9th Circuit judgesappointed by both Democrat and Republican presidentsoppose proposals to break it down into smaller courts. Trump can't break up the court on his own anyway; it would require Congress to act. (Read more US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stories.) He was told it would be "pointless," but Jason Fagone wrote his story for Highline anyway, diving deep into gun violence as seen by Philly trauma surgeons who "piece people back together after the most horrific acts." The person resigned to his efforts: Dr. Amy Goldberg, who has spent three decades at Temple University Hospital, which reportedly sees more gunshot victims than any other Pennsylvania hospital, in a city among the country's most violent. Fagone shadowed Goldberg on her rounds, as well as heard her describe the sinking "feeling of wrongness" that grew stronger over the years as she treated "GSW" patientscode for shooting victims. She also described the brutality of surgery ("some of the ... tools look like things you'd buy at Home Depot," Fagone writes), the rough road survivors have before them, and how much it hurtsnot just the patients, but her emotionally as well. Fagone also delves into Goldberg's work with Scott Charles, the hospital's trauma outreach coordinator. Together the two work to combat the "senselessness" of gun violence via demos that show the public how doctors save shooting victims, training for community members to administer first aid right after a shooting, and a survivors' intervention program. But Goldberg still didn't see the point of Fagone writing about itall because the US lost its "teachable moment" after Sandy Hook, which she says would have changed the gun control debate if the public had seen the autopsy pics of "kids, riddled with bullets, dead as doornails." "Nobody gives two s---s about the black people in North Philadelphia if nobody gives two craps about the white kids in Sandy Hook," she says. Full story here, including the surgeons' battle with "God and the Devil." (Read more Longform stories.) The Pentagon says two US service members were killed in Afghanistan overnight Wednesday, reports the AP. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis says they were killed during an operation against the Islamic State in Nangahar Province in the eastern part of the country, the same area in which the US dropped the "mother of all bombs" on an ISIS complex two weeks ago. That bomb killed several dozen militants just days after a US Army special forces soldier was killed in the region. Davis says the US is still gathering details on Wednesday's incident. The US estimates that the group has about 800 fighters in Afghanistan. (Read more Afghanistan stories.) An heir to the Red Bull fortune failed to show up Thursday to face charges over an alleged hit-and-run that killed a Thai police officer almost five years ago, as Bangkok prosecutors declared they would now seek a warrant for his arrest, the AP reports. Prayuth Petchkhun, a deputy spokesman for the attorney general's office, told the AP that Vorayuth "Boss" Yoovidhya failed to meet a 4pm deadline. His office had said that if Vorayuth failed to appear, it would send his case to the police on Friday so they can ask the court for an arrest warrant. "If it turns out that he is in Thailand, Thai police can find him and arrest him. But if he is abroad we will then begin the extradition process," Prayuth said. Vorayuth has been a no-show for meetings with prosecutors on several occasions, complaining through his attorney of unfair treatment or citing duties abroad. A recent AP report revealed that he's been living lavishly, traveling to Formula One races, snowboarding in Japan, and cruising in Venice. The case is one of several involving the offspring of Thailand's elite that have attracted public scorn as examples of judicial impunity in which the well-connected are able to avoid or delay justice in ways that ordinary Thais wouldn't be able to. On Thursday, prosecutors rejected Vorayuth's latest request for a delay and said he must show up by 4pm. Vorayuth is accused of fleeing the scene of a 2012 crash in his Ferrari after allegedly hitting a police officer on motorcycle patrol; he was charged with speeding, hit-and-run, and deadly, reckless driving. The speeding charge expired after a year; the hit-and-run charge, which carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, expires Sept. 3; the reckless driving charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail, expires in 10 years if left unchallenged. (Read more Vorayuth Yoovidhya stories.) Eman Ahmed treatment at a Mumbai hospital New Delhi : Eman Ahmed, world's heaviest woman, is likely to fly to Egypt to continue her weight loss treatment. This comes after her sister Shaimaa alleged that Saifee Hospital in Mumbai is not doing justice with her treatment. However, the Saifee Hospital on Tuesday strongly refuted allegations by the sister of Egyptian national Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty that she was not treated for weight loss properly and that her health has deteriorated. Eman's sister Shaaima Selim has accused bariatric surgeon Muffazal Lakdawala, Chairman of the Saifee Hospital Institute of Minimal Access Surgical Sciences & Research Centre, of being "a liar" as she posted on Facebook videos and photos purportedly raising doubts over the patient's progress. Reacting to Shaimaa's April 14 Facebook posts, Lakdawala has said he is "extremely saddened by this and if this is the result, humanitarian deeds will stop completely". "Shaimaa Selim, u killed humanity with one swell blow. May only God help u when u realize what u have done. I will continue 2 treat & pray 4 Eman," he tweeted in reaction to Shaimaa's social media posts. Shaimaa Selim has sought medical aid from health conglomerate VPS Healthcare that runs the Burjeel Hospital in Abu Dhabi. Burjeel hospital was incidentally also one of the few hospitals that came forward to treat Eman last year. (with IANS inputs) Sorry! This content is not available in your region "Job creation and economic growth is the top priority," said chief White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a one-time Wall Street financier. "Our basic premise here is to simplify the tax system, lower rates and make it easy. We don't want to penalize people. We want to make the system very fair. We are trying to stimulate business investment." Trump proposed cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate, the highest among the world's industrialized nations, from 35 to 15 percent. He also called for the one-time repatriation of profits earned by American companies from their overseas operations, a measure Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said would bring back "trillions of dollars" to the U.S. that could be invested in business expansion at home. President Donald Trump called Wednesday for a dramatic cut in U.S. corporate taxes to boost job growth in the world's largest economy and massive reforms in the country's complex tax code that could affect millions of American taxpayers. Plan Could Add to Long-Term Debt Trump, however, offered no immediate plan to pay for the tax cuts, which some independent economic analysts say that over next decade could add $2 trillion to the nearly $20 trillion in long-term debt the U.S. has already amassed. Mnuchin said the expectation is that the corporate and individual tax cuts will boost U.S. economic growth to 3 percent annually, up from last year's tepid 1.6 percent advance. The U.S. economy, however, has not grown by 3 percent since 2005. "This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes," Mnuchin said, brushing aside assessments that the tax cuts would add to the cumulative U.S. debt, not reduce it. Trump's proposal is likely to set off months of debate in Congress over the labyrinth U.S. tax code, where some of Trump's Republican colleagues already have voiced concerns about the cost of the plan. 'This Isn't Going to Be Easy' Cohn said he expects a long fight over the measure. "This isn't going to be easy," Cohn said. "Doing big things never is. We'll be attacked from the left and we'll attacked from the right. But one thing is certain. I would never, ever bet against this president. He will get this done for the American people." Mnuchin added, "We are determined to move this as fast as possible, to get this done this year." But Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst for Bankrate.com, voiced skepticism about the plan's eventual fate in Congress. "I hesitate to call it a plan,"Hamrick told VOA. "It's really more of a wish list. It's very much focused on the traditional notion that if the wealthy and business do well, that will help everyone else in society and I think that's a suspect notion." Only Three Tax Rate Levels Mnuchin said no tax rate has been set yet on the repatriated money earned by U.S. companies overseas, but that he is working with lawmakers to determine what it should be. "It will be a very competitive rate that would bring back trillions of dollars," Mnuchin said. The two Trump advisers said that the top individual tax rate for U.S. taxpayers would be cut from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, with only two other tax rates, 10 percent and 25 percent, down from the current seven rate levels. They said Trump wants to have a zero tax rate on the first $24,000 that workers earn each year, eliminate an alternative minimum tax rate that sometimes has added hefty sums to tax bills and abolish the country's inheritance tax on wealthy taxpayers. Many tax deductions that some individuals use to cut their tax bills would be eliminated, leaving only those for charitable giving, retirement savings plans and interest on home purchase loans. Trump Still Won't Release Tax Returns Opposition Democratic lawmakers in Congress have called on Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul turned Republican politician, to release his federal tax returns so they can determine how much he might benefit from his own tax proposals. But Mnuchin said Trump "has no intention" of disclosing the information, a stance the president has taken for months while campaigning for the White House. Trump often attacked his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for massive annual deficit spending that added to the national debt, something his tax plan might do as well. Cohn said Trump is still concerned about the debt but the adviser reiterated his view that the tax cuts would advance the economy. Ryan Offers Support Trump gained one quick ally for the coming legislative fight over U.S. tax policy. The leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, voiced support for much of the president's proposal. "We like it a lot, it puts us on the same page, we're in agreement on 80 percent, and on the 20 percent we're in the same ballpark," said Ryan. Tax experts say the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest among the world's 35 industrialized nations, although U.S. corporations rarely pay that much because they are permitted to deduct their business expenses from their revenues before. A number of profitable companies pay no U.S. income taxes. Earlier in the day, Trump vowed moves to protect the American dairy industry. On Tuesday morning, he tweeted: "Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch!" The Canadian dollar fell to a 14-month low against the greenback after the United States imposed preliminary tariffs averaging 20 percent -- more than $1 billion of countervailing duties -- on imported Canadian softwood. "The prime minister stressed that the government of Canada will vigorously defend the interests of the Canadian softwood industry, as we have successfully done in all past lumber disputes with the U.S.," the statement said. The White House later issued its own brief, three-sentence readout of the call, which it called "very amicable." Trump also talked to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tuesday. Trudeau "refuted the baseless allegations by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the decision to impose unfair duties," according to a summary of the call released by Trudeau's office. Trump added that he wanted "a very big tax" on Canadian lumber and timber. He made the comments at a meeting with American farmers where he signed an executive order aimed at helping agriculture and rural areas. "They have a tremendous surplus with the United States," Trump said, adding "people don't realize Canada's been very rough on the United States... They've outsmarted our politicians for many years." President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday said they did not fear a trade war with Canada after American punitive action on lumber and milk. Against NAFTA Trump, since his time campaigning for the presidency, has voiced his strong displeasure with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, but until now he has vented most of his ire southward, toward Mexico. Ross, speaking to reporters on the White House podium, would not explicitly characterize the actions on lumber and dairy as the opening shots on renegotiating NAFTA, but he did say: "Everything relates to everything else when you're trying to negotiate." He described Canada as "generally a good neighbor," asserting that its allegedly unfair trade practices regarding lumber and dairy were not very neighborly. Asked on Tuesday in Kitchener, Ontario, about the U.S. trade actions and the fate of NAFTA, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau replied, "Standing up for Canada is my job, whether it's softwood or software." Trudeau added, "Any two countries are going to have issues that will be irritants to the relationship and, quite frankly, having a good, constructive, working relationship allows us to work through those irritants." Some other Canadians were less diplomatic in their reactions. "In Canada, the perception is that we're always very nice," said Unifor President Jerry Dias, representing forestry workers across the country. "But we can't get trampled by this guy [Trump]." 'Ignore, Do Not Engage' The majority of Canadians, including the prime minister and his colleagues, "understand that President Trump is prone to making ill-informed, off-the-cuff and arbitrary comments about a host of domestic and foreign policy issues," Donald Abelson, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Western Ontario in London, told VOA. "Canada will likely respond to Trump's Tuesday tweet in a manner similar to how a competent parent responds to a child's temper tantrum -- ignore, do not engage," added Abelson, who is also director of the school's Canada-U.S. Institute. Other Canadians displayed wry humor -- a traditional reaction to irritations from south of the border (at least since the last U.S. invasion during the War of 1812), considering the asymmetry of power. The president's messages prompted immediate puns on Canadian social media, with tweets referencing "sacred cows" and calling the American trade action on dairy "udderly stupid" and "cheesy," Sparkle Hayter, veteran Canadian journalist and author, told VOA. The dairy dispute goes back decades. Currently, there is an overproduction of milk, according to dairy farmers on both sides of the border. The U.S.-Canada lumber squabble is rooted in a couple of centuries of history. In response to the proposed tariff on softwood lumber, "Canada to strike back by charging duties on exported Cdn actors," tweeted the account of 22 Minutes, a satirical news program on national public broadcaster CBC. Cows Are No. 1 The Twitter account also noted the U.S. president "tweeted about Canadian dairy industry first thing this morning, so on his list of priorities: 1. Canadian Cows. 2. North Korea." Trump's attention on Canada comes amid indications he is pivoting away -- at least temporarily -- from the southern border and his quest to quickly fund his border wall with Mexico. "We have plenty of time" to complete the wall during his first term, Trump assured reporters Tuesday afternoon. The presidential desire for border protection might find a better reception to the north, considering the comments from some Canadians. "Some [in Canada] would like to separate from the U.S., like literally," by digging a two-mile moat at the border "and filling it with beavers and mosquitoes," quipped Hayter from her home province of Alberta. But many Canadians see themselves confronting a cross-border creature bigger than a beaver. "Sleeping with an elephant" is how the late Pierre Trudeau, the current Canadian prime minister's father, once characterized relations with the United States, "affected by every twitch and grunt." The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. New Delhi: It's just a couple of hours left before the most anticipated movie of the year 'Baahubali: The Conclusion' will hit the theatres. The movie has been raising the anticipation amongst the audience the moment it was announced in 2015 as it will answer the cliff-hanging question of 'Why Kattappa Killed Baahubali'. Interestingly, Baahubali: The Conclusion' or commonly known as 'Baahubali 2' has been out in UK, UAE for censor board and one of it's member has reviewed the movie and called it a classic. He even gave give star rating to the movie in his blog. Umair Sandhu, who calls himself a film and fashion critic in UK, UAE and India, has been all praises for 'Baahubali 2' for everything it has - from visual effects to acting to direction and everything. In fact, he didn't hesitate comparing the movie with Hollywoods epic releases like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in terms of CGI work. Here we bring you 5 highlights of 'Baahubali 2' through its 'first review': CGI work As per Umair Sandhu's blog, CGI work done in 'Baahubali 2' has been par excellence as compared to the usual Indian standard. He stated that the extraordinary effect put in by the team is evidently visible in stunning waterfalls, the spectacular city of Mahishmati, and the sheer cliffs. In fact, Sandhu has confidently compared 'Baahubali 2' to Hollywood greats like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Performances Sandhu has been all praises for both male leads of 'Baahubali 2' - Prabhas and Rana Daggubati. He even made a special mention of Ramaya Krishnan who is seen in a supporting role in the movie but managed to leave a strong impact. Sets, VFX, editing Besides, Umair has sung praisies for the extravagant sets, VFX, sound, edit and cinematography which made 'Baahubali 2' a complete marvel. Screenplay He also made a special mention for the stupendous screnplay and mindblowing storyline that made 'Baahubali 2' a complete classic. Praises for SS Rajamouli Umair Sandhu almost ran short of words as he was lauding director SS Rajamouli for his beyond fantastic efforts to dared to make a movie like 'Baahubali 2'. "No Indian storyteller comes close to what S.S. Rajamouli envisions and executes on screen," Umair wrote in his blog. He even asserted that the movie has everything that will make you feel proud of Rajamouli. Notably, News Nation doesn't authenticate the review and couldn't verify it either. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: After much of a wait "Baahubali : The Conclusion" is all set to reveal the actual mystery behind the question which took the audiences brains by storm i.e 'Kattappa Ne Baahubali Ko Kyun Maara?' But a day still remains folks! Although the makers are leaving no stone unturned in order to increase the curiosity level among Baahubali fans. The makers of the film took to social media once again to release another poster which would make fans more inquisitive. Watch the poster here: AND HERE WE ARE LESS THAN 24 HOURS AWAY TO KNOW WHY KATTAPPA KILLED BAAHUBALI!! WHHHHYYYYYY #WKKB #baahubali2 pic.twitter.com/HdirKqanAA S.S.Karthikeya (@ssk1122) April 26, 2017 Well, Baahubali has never been behind breaking any records be it from releasing the movie in maximum number of screens in India or selling one single ticket for the film at highest price. The more the anticipation increases, the more it shall receive the Box-office collection. Now all you need to do is wait for an another day. Also Read: 'Baahubali 2': Prabhas-starrer gets most EXPENSIVE ticket ever Helmed by S.S Rajamouli, starring Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Sathyaraj and Tammanaah Bhatia in the lead roles.The film is expected to cross its previous records and to run housefull in each and every theatre around the world. The SS Rajamouli period saga will hit theatres on April 28 in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malyalam language. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The much talked about film 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' is all set to witness it's India release as finally the makers of the film have received a thumbs up from the Indian Film Board. Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) has recommended the Central Board Film Certification (CBFC) to let the film release with an A certificate equivalent to an NC-17 rating (not for person below 17). Although, the Chairperson of the Censor Board Pahlaj Nihalani has claimed that they are yet to receive any such instruction from FCAT. Earlier the board went ahead rejecting to grant certificate to the film saying that the film being a women oriented had sexual scenes and abusive words. Now the tribunal have agreed to grant A-certificate to the film to which Director Alankrita Shrivastava said I am very happy and thrilled that the point we had raised against the CBFC, the FCAT has agreed with us. They understood the intent of the film and havent questioned the very basis of why women should have desires. They didnt ask me to remove any scenes.They have just asked us to reduce a few seconds here and there, Alankrita told PTI. Talking about the censoring the scenes Alankrita replied Ideally, they should have just passed the film without any cuts but considering how bad the situation was with the board, its okay. Ill sit with my editor and figure it out. Personally, I am always against any kind of tampering with the film. But considering the situation where we were not getting any certification at all, I think I can live with what they have asked for. But credit where it is due, the FCAT has been very reasonable. Also Read: Konkona Sen Sharma slams censor board for denying certificate to 'Lipstick under my Burkha' At a recent press conference the producer of the film Prakash Jha too expressed his happiness for the clearance of the film. When asked about the CBFC putting a ban on the movie, Jha replied "I really laughed when I heard the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) decision and the way they had interpreted the whole film. It was ridiculous to interpret a story like that. Our society and all other societies have stereotyped women's existence. Women should look, think, behave, dream or do anything in a particular way which is entirely male oriented. They (women) will be part of our life but the way we (men) want them to be. Women cannot think, dream or talk about their career or satisfaction." Also the speculations followed that the makers of the film submitted two different versions to the CBFC and FCAT, Alankrita cleared the airs about the news that their must be an internal issue. She says It is not true. We submitted the same film to both the certification bodies. And after FCAT asked us to make certain voluntary cuts, we resubmitted the film to them. We did exactly what they wanted. In fact, we just reduced some sexually intimate scenes by few seconds. But CBFC never asked for any cutsthey just refused to certify the film. Had they asked us, we would have done it for them as well. So what he (Pahlaj Nihalani) is saying is not true. The FCAT on Wednesday directed the board to clear the film with some voluntary and additional cuts, while some of the intimate scenes were crucial to the storyline. "Lipstick Under My Burkha" stars Konkana Sen Sharma, Ratna Pathak Shah, Aahana Kumra and Plabita Borthakur. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Uttar Pradesh: UP Police said on Thursday that the manager of Dalernager branch of Baroda Gramin Harish Singh accuses BJP MLA Kesar Singh and MP Priyanka Rawat of misbehaving with officials in UP. Singh, the from Nawabganj in Bareilly district, allegedly thrashed and kept hostage a manager, while Rawat, the party's MP from Barabanki, has been accused of threatening an ASP during a press conference on Wednesday. The manager of Dalernager branch of Baroda Gramin Harish Singh lodged a complaint at Nawabganj police station, alleging that Singh arrived in his office along with his supporters on Wednesday to enquire about a farmer's account, police said. The then allegedly thrashed the manager, and took him to an undisclosed destination where he was kept hostage for one hour and allowed to go only after being given a written assurance to make the payment related to the account. Singh, however refuted the allegations of assault, saying he had only gone to inquire after people of the area complained that they were facing problems due to laxity by the staff. The manager also claimed that he could not contact anyone as his mobile phone was also confiscated by Singh. DIG Ashutosh Kumar termed the incident as serious and said the matter is being investigated and if required, an FIR will be filed against the lawmaker. Meanwhile, the staff from over a dozen branches in the district strongly protested against the incident and some of them also downed their shutters on Thursday. In Barabanki, local MP Rawat allegedly used foul language against ASP Kunwar Gyananjay Singh during a press conference yesterday, saying she would make him pay for all the clout he enjoyed during the previous SP government. Know more about UDAN scheme in 10 points Also Read: Alleging that Singh was shielding a murder accused, Rawat threatened to make him pay for the arbitrary manner in which he worked and indulged in property dealing during the previous regime. SP Vaibhav Krishna said the video of the press conference is being examined and if necessary, an FIR will lodged against the MP. Rawat also said the situation has now changed and officials who do not bring a change in their working manner will be pulled up. The incidents come on close on the heels of charges against BJP's Saharanpur Raghav Lakhanpal that he had indulged in violence in a village and vandalised the residence of the area's SSP. India successfully test fires Agni III ballistic missile from Odisha coast Also Read: For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A Delhi Police team shall travel to Tamil Nadu with arrested AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran and his aide to gather details about "illegal channels" used for transferring money from Chennai to Delhi in the election commission bribery case. The Crime Branch team is likely to leave for Chennai on Friday along with Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna, who were arrested on Wednesday. The police secured warrants from a city court to search the Chennai residents of Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna as part of its probe. Police will also be confronting Dhinakaran and Mallikarjuna along with the arrested middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, to get the details of the money trail and the phone conversations between them. In Chennai, police will try to recover the mobile phones through which Dhinakaran used to communicate with Chandrasekar. Dhinakaran was arrested on Wednesday following four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified Election Commission official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'two leaves' election symbol for his faction. Also Read: Banners featuring Sasikala removed from AIADMK headquarters Police had earlier said Chandrasekar had struck a deal for Rs 50 crore to help the AIADMK faction keep the 'two leaves' symbol. He had Rs 1.30 crore in cash in his possession when he was arrested from a five-star hotel in Delhi on April16. Dhinakaran was arrested for arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Madhur Verma. Mallikarjuna was arrested for helping Dhinakaran transfer this money from Chennai to Delhi, he said. The police are verifying whether Chandrasekar had approached any Election Commission official for getting a favourable verdict for Dhinakaran's faction. The AIADMK (Amma) leader had come under the scanner of the police following Chandrasekar's arrest. Dhinakaran, who was appointed deputy general secretary by AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, has been isolated in his party amid moves to merge rival factions led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E K Palaniswami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam. Also Read: AIADMK factions heading towards merger, Panneerselvam says good ambience evolving for positive talks A powerful section of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) recently revolted against the Sasikala-Dhinakaran leadership. The development came after Panneerselvam, who is leading the rival faction, demanded the ouster of Sasikala and Dhinakaran as a condition for merger talks. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chandigarh: Financial assistance of Rs 50 lakhs has been released by Haryana government on Thursday for both the families of two jawans of the state who were killed in a Naxal attack in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh on April 24. Stating this, a spokesman of the Sainik and Ardh Sainik Welfare Department said Assistant Sub-inspector, CRPF, Naresh Kumar, a native of Jainpur Tikaula village in Sonepat district, and Constable Ram Mehar, a native of Kheri Man Singh village in Karnal district, were killed in the Naxal attack. A cheque of Rs 50 lakh was handed over by the Sonepat Deputy Commissioner to the family members of Kumar, he added. The department had also released Rs 50 lakh, to be given to the Deputy Commissioner, Karnal, who will hand over the cheque to the family of Mehar tomorrow morning, said the spokesman. At least 25 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed and six wounded in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district on April 24, the deadliest attack by naxalites targeting security forces this year. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union Thursday filed a complaint against two websites for allegedly spreading malicious reports that the students were glorifying the Sukma naxal attack. The websites www.srishtanews.com and www.dainikbharat.com are spreading reports claiming that JNU students are glorifying the Sukma naxal attack, JNUSU president Mohit Kumar Pandey said. The pictures linked with the reports are of celebrations in September 2015 and the 2013 JNUSU elections, and another picture was taken when former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar got bail in 2016, he added. He alleged that the websites had ideologies similar to that of the BJP and the RSS and the reports were spread widely. Spread of such content is maligning JNU students who are actively participating in several social service activities. Students and faculties are getting threats of murder, rape and are being abused because of this, Mohit said. We request you to register an FIR against people who are behind such websites and make sure that such incidents are not repeated, he said in the complaint. The police officials confirmed that the complaint is being currently examined. ALSO READ: High Court raps Delhi Police for delay in probe into missing JNU student ALSO READ: Outsiders should be barred from entering JNU campus: Delhi HC For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. The South Korean military put on a massive display of firepower on Wednesday by mobilizing some 2,000 troops and 250 tanks, self-propelled howitzers and fighter jets at a training range in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province. A day earlier North Korea also put on a big show of force at an air base in Wonsan, Kangwon Province to mark the 85th anniversary of its Army as leader Kim Jong-un looked on. The South Korean military conducts a firing drill at a training range in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province on Wednesday. The South Korean drill is usually staged only once in the five-year term of any president because it is so expensive and requires painstaking rehearsal of fighter jets and attack helicopters, tanks and armored personnel carriers. But Wednesday's display came only a year and eight months after the last one and was clearly meant as a warning amid the mounting nuclear and missile threats from the North. Acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn, Defense Minister Han Min-koo, and other military leaders watched Wednesday's drill. It was the first outing for the Army's new AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters and new home-grown Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers with a range of 80 km. North Korea conducts a military drill at an air base in Kangwon Province on Tuesday in this picture from the Rodong Sinmun. In North Korea, some 300 long-range artillery guns were mobilized for Tuesday's drill as well as 170 mm self-propelled guns and 240 mm multiple rocket launchers. The North has about 1,300 long-range artillery pieces, of which some 340 are a direct threat to Seoul. The long-range guns are usually deployed in caves in various secret locations but were all brought to Wonsan for the exercise. The North also practiced attacking a U.S. aircraft carrier with SU-25 air-to-ground attack aircraft, MIG-23 fighters, and Romeo-class submarines, using a desert island as a target. Read this article in Korean Srinagar: Dodging death twice, an army jawan exhibited exemplary bravery as he prevented three terrorists from averting greater damage after they stormed an army camp in Kupwara on Thursday. Gunner Rishi Kumar stopped the advancing terrorists, who had already killed a Captain and two other soldiers, from penetrating deeper into the camp which is located about 100 kms from the spot. Kumar, who was on sentry duty, was hit by a bullet in the head but escaped death because of his protective gear. Undeterred, the gunner of the Field Artillery Regiment, engaged the terrorists, killing two of them before he was injured by the third one who fled afterwards. Gunner Rishi Kumar was on sentry duty when the fire fight (with militants) started. He observed the terrorists approach and waited for them to come within close range, the spokesman said while giving details of the 35-minute encounter this morning. Courageous gunner Rishi Kumar kills two Kupwara terrorists https://t.co/okRPFuFIJh pic.twitter.com/Mbxinj1J2l ANI Digital (@ani_digital) April 27, 2017 He then engaged them and was hit on his head but was saved by bullet proof patka, the spokesman said here. However, the whiplash of the impact caused the soldier to fall down, he said. He immediately recovered and fired back to kill the two terrorists. Running out of ammunition, he moved out of his bunker and tried to pick the weapon of the slain terrorists to engage the third, who fired and injured him, thus managing to escape, the spokesman said. During the incident, Rishi Kumar has shown the indomitable spirit of Indian soldier, he added. Interacting with media persons from his hospital bed here, Kumar said, When I saw the terrorists approaching me while firing, I took position, fired at them and killed two terrorists. Also Read: Militant attack in Pulwama, 9 security personnel injured Kumar, who hails from Ara in Bihar, has eight years of service in the army. In the attack, Captain Ayush Yadav and two soldiers were killed while five other soldiers were injured. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Hubris can bring disaster in its wake. It has often led to the fall of the mighty. In the Indian electoral context never has this fact been driven home more emphatically than in the defeat of Aam Aadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal in the just concluded elections to Delhis three municipal corporations. To say that Arvind lost the elections would be quite an overstatement. For, he had never really worked towards winning the confidence of the voter which is so crucial to winning any elections, from panchayat to Parliament. Hubris hit him hard. For a party which had swept the assembly polls in Delhi just over two years ago with an unprecedented majority that made even Modis shot at the Centre look pale in comparison losing ward elections at the municipal level was a blow scars of which would take long to melt away. So what went wrong in these 26 months that made Kejriwals AAP crash with a thud after stupendous 2015 victory. For a peek into some of those reasons rewinding to the days of Anna Hazares 2011 movement against corruption would be worth the while. Arvind took the plunge head first. Along with Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Kiran Bedi, Kumar Vishwas and his long-time confidante and lieutenant Manish Sisodia, Arvind Kejriwal emerged as the chief negotiator with the UPA 2 government, holding late night closed-door meetings with Manmohan Singhs cabinets whos who on the immediate need to having a Lokpal in the country. In its second term and dogged by corruption scandals the government of the day had already started to show signs of administrative fatigue. Opposition was already gunning for the PMs resignation. Annas aandolan' couldnt have hit UPA 2 at a more inappropriate time. ALSO READ | Sukhbir Singh Badal seeks resignation of Arvind Kejriwal as Chief Minister of Delhi In retrospect, the septuagenarian Gandhians aandolan lend a sanctity and credibility to BJPs campaign against UPA 2 government. Though there were still three years to go for the next general elections, Modi was still tom-tomming his governments policies for the benefit of five crore Gujaratis back in even hotter climate of Ahmedabad and there was no hint in the air he would be catapulted to being BJPs prime ministerial face for 2014 elections. Meanwhile, Arvind hogged headlines in the national capital. Even as he shared the dais with Anna, he had been working upon a plan. Anna was the stepping stone to fructifying that plan. The image of Arvind Kejriwal sitting at Annas feet and standing up occasionally to wave the national flag to a cheering crowd stuck into the psyche of an ordinary Indian. News channels beamed those images LIVE by the hour. Sweet pills in nationalism are precisely made of such images. These were pre-cow nationalism days. And Arvind emerged its sole mascot and beneficiary. A day came, sooner than later, when Kejriwal dropped more than sufficient hints that electoral politics is where his heart lay. Anna had to be dumped. ALSO READ | MCD polls 2017: Arvind Kejriwal slams State Election Commission over 'faulty' EVMs The birth of a new party opened a new chapter for Arvind and his band of trusted lieutenants including Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. Riding on the wave of Anna movement, Arvind got some encouraging results in Delhis assembly elections and had even a few MPs in his kitty. Though, his dream of emerging a national leader overnight was shot down by an even over-zealous and over-ambitious leader going by the name of Narendra Modi who scuttled every aspirants chances within the party to emerge as BJPs prime ministerial face. The partys gamble had paid off. Modi had not crossed the threshold with relative ease even as his critics, including Kejriwal, looked on with their mouths agape. Past three years these two leaders have been grabbing headlines by the sheer force of their hardsell, Arvind Kejriwal and Modi. A third Rahul Gandhi stepping in only to fill the space left over by his two political rivals, that too, not by dint of his hardsell but by the sheer fact that his window is steadily running out of wares. MCD Elections: BJP a party of dengue and chikungunya, AAP the only hope for people in Delhi, says CM Arvind Kejriwal Arvinds attention seeking skill dwells more on haranguing rivals than quietly and truly working towards what he was primarily supposed to do as the chosen one. In fact, even when the people did not chose him to govern giving his party less than even a simple majority he wanted to grab the mantle anyhow, even if that meant currying favour from his political rival Congress, whose political shenanigans had been his cause celebre to enter politics in the first place. And when he reached there he gave the impression he never wanted to be there. So one fine evening he moved out with his entire cabinet on the pavement outside Rail Ministry. Along with the harsh winter nights Arvind had managed to grab equal space in next days newspapers with channels screaming from studios during prime time. This is one trait that has never quite left Arvind all this while. He has a knack for abdicating responsibility. When he was supposed to sit in his Chief Ministerial chair in Delhis Secretariat he chose the pavement in New Delhi. Or was it a Freudian slip on his part after being denied adequate share in Parliament by his bete noire Narendra Modi, that he always aspired to stay closer than farther from countrys temple of democracy flanked by two power corridors the north and the south block. ALSO READ | MCD 2017 polls results: Anna Hazare criticises Kejriwal, says AAP has failed to perform Even when he returned to power the second time with a humongous majority he chose to govern by proxy. He abdicated his responsibility in favour of his close confidant and lieutenant Manish Sisodia and chose to be a minister without a portfolio. He decided to galavant across the length and breadth of the country exploring fertile grounds for his partys political expansion. But did not the people of Delhi elect him to govern the national capital region. Was he not duty-bound to serve them as their chief minister than handing over the baton to his deputy. Hubris had set in. It would chose a day to strike which it did with vengeance on the 26th day of April, 2017. His expansionist mode drove him to faraway lands like Goa. But a setback awaited there. AAPs sound and fury fizzled miserably. Punjab did not lift the partys spirits either. Pre-election crescendo ended in a little more than a whimper. The party managed to end up as a spoiler for Akali Dal and relegated to opposition benches. For a man drunk on self-assured hubris, only wins matter. So every time the electronic voting machine beeped inside a polling booth in Punjab and Delhi, it beeped for Arvind and his jhadu. His line of argument has become a butt of viral jokes now. According to the Kejriwal doctrine, losses were meant for ordinary politicos. And he has been a politician extraordinaire. He is backed by the hand of god. Its another thing that EVM machines refused to kowtow to his pre-ordained diktat. High time somebody told him unlike his party flock he does not own the countrys electoral machinery. Self-assured hubris coupled with series of political miscalculations triggered by whims that passed off as leadership. From a tolerant, reasonable and bearable politico who showed promise, Kejriwal has careened the AAPs ship towards troubled waters of arrogance, highhandedness and unreason. ALSO READ | MCD Results: PM Modi thanks Delhi for huge victory; Kejriwal says AAP Govt will work with all BJP-ruled civic bodies If Rahul Gandhis entry into politics almost 15 years ago promised to usher in an age of innocence, Arvinds matched more than enough in style and content, a la 70s Bollywoodian hero, accompanied by loud cheer from the audience, who would fight the goons for his people and deliver them from injustice. That they both proved prisoners of their own device makes the mystery of the Hotel California - 70s mega pop hit - appear less scary by a wide margin. It is precisely these traits that defined his relationship with some of his esteemed senior colleagues. Soon after his big victory in 2015 elections there were murmurs of dissent within. Senior members like Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, once comrade in arms, flagged certain issues that allowed party to compromise on its stated principles. Kejriwal saw it as a revolt against his leadership. Inner-party democracy became an immediate causality. So, early on in its political journey AAP metamorphosed into AKP Arvind Kejriwals party. Those who did not fall in line had to go. Yadav and Bhushan were ingloriously shown the door. Seniors like Admiral Ramdass, Mayank Gandhi and many others like them met the same fate. After the Delhi win, they had all become irrelevant for him. The cause had become subservient to his brand image; so self-assured was he about selling his own brand image. Only Modi can lay claim to coming close to achieving this feat. But then he has over four decades of active political life behind him to qualify his bhakt brigades testosteronic boastfulness. ALSO READ | Delhi MCD elections results: Alka Lamba offers to quit as MLA after AAP's dismal performance Under siege from within and outside after recent failures at the hustings Kejriwal may still seek to mend fences with Yogendra-Prashant Inc. The fate of 21 party MLAs hangs in balance as the Election Commission of India is set to pronounce its verdict in the office of profit disqualification case sooner than later. So it would be a tough going from here. The 2019 general elections promise to knock at the doors before long. Arvind Kejriwal has been weighed down by his own hubris, triggered by his own insecurities and infirmities that push him to commit hara-kiri. He should realize forfeiting credibility in the eyes of aam aadmi is more dangerous than forfeiting deposit in elections. You can recover from the latter sooner than later. Regaining credibility can be frustrating. ALSO READ | Delhi MCD elections results: Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken offers to resign following Congress's debacle Meanwhile, someone need read out his favourite Dushyant couplet to Arvind and put it in context lest he forgot its import yet again. "Ho gai hai peer parvat si pighalni chahiye, is himalaya se koi ganga nikalni chahiye." For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday met with newly-elected councillors of his party and asked them to work with honesty. He also asked the councillors not to betray the party. The Aam Aadmi Party convenor asked all 48 councillors, who have been elected to Municipal Corporation of Delhi, to take a pledge not betraying the party. He also warned their councillors , saying that opposition may lure them with money. The Delhi chief minister asked the councillors not to betray this pure party and anti-corruption movement. The statements come after the party witnessed a major defeat in the MCD polls and after several senior leaders resigned from their posts the as fallout of the loss. On Thursday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had refrained from raising the EVM tampering issue, unlike other AAP leaders, as he had congratulated the BJP on its victory in the municipal polls. His reaction came hours after it became clear that the BJP was set to retain control of the three corporations, winning over 160 seats, more than its existing strength. The Aam Aadmi Party Chief had promised all cooperation to the civic bodies for the betterment of the national capital. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Srinagar: Two army jawans and an army captain were martyred on Thursday when militants attacked an army camp in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir. According to sources, two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists were gunned down by security forces in the retaliatory action. The militants stormed the camp of a battalion at Panjgaon at Chowkibal on Thursday morning. The deceased officer has been identified as Capt Ayush but the names of the two soldiers were not immediately known. Militants carried out a Fidayeen attack on the army camp in Kupwara in north Kashmir. The army officer killed was identified as Captain Ayush, official sources said. The incident took place at Panjgaon at Chowkibal when militants, suspected to be of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad stormed the battalion camp which is in-charge of road opening duties on the crucial roads in this area. Two militants were killed as army foiled their attack, the sources said. However, a hunt is on to ascertain if any militant sneaked into the camp under the cover of darkness. The attack comes amid reports that about 150 militants are waiting near the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to sneak into the Valley. A top army official had said this on Wednesday with an assertion that the attempts would be foiled. Lt Gen J S Sandhu, Commander of Srinagar-based 15 Corps which is responsible for security of the Kashmir valley, said there would be more militants at the launching pads in PoK in the areas facing Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu province. According to an estimate, in our area 15 Corps there are about 150 militants at present. There would be some more near Poonch-Rajouri areas (in Jammu region) as well, he said. The army commander said the infiltration from PoK across the LoC has been low this year compared to the last year. ALSO READ | PDP leader Abdul Gani Dar shot dead by militants in Pulwama Last year, the infiltration from across was high. This year, till now, we have been able to stop them (infiltrators). Snow has also helped us as more snow this year has made it difficult for them to infiltrate. We will continue to stop them so that there is no increase in the militancy, he said. He said the army was fully geared to stop infiltration on the LoC. ALSO READ | Jammu and Kashmir: 2 militants killed by security forces in Budgam encounter (With inputs from PTI) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched UDAN scheme which is aimed at boosting regional connectivity with low-cost flights. UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) is a first-of-its-kind scheme globally to stimulate regional connectivity through a market-based mechanism, the PMO said in a tweet. Updates from the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Shimla: # Ude desh ka aam nagrik is slogan of UDAN scheme # Shimla to Delhi flight has been started # The fare from Delhi-Shimla will be Rs 2,500 # Fare for one-hour flight will be Rs 2,500 # Fare of Rs 2,500 for 1,000 Km # UDAN scheme started from 70 airports # Kadapa-Hyderabad flight and Nanded-Hyderabad flight will be there # Earlier, only rich people used to fly in aeroplanes # There are only 70-75 airports which are operational in India # There are many runways which are not operational at present # Now, people wearing sleepers can also be seen inside aeroplanes # UDAN flights will operate on 128 air routes For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday warned Sahara boss Subrata Roy, saying that if the latter fails the deposited cheque in the Apex Court to relieve by June 19 in the account of Sebi-Sahara, he would be sent to Tihar jail. The court also extended Roy's parole til June 19. While appearing before the Apex court in compliance of its order, Subrata Roy gave an undertaking to a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra to pay Rs 1,500 crore in SEBI-Sahara account on or before June 15 and another payment of Rs 552.22 crore by July 15 inthe SEBI-Sahara account and filed an affidavit. The Apex court also warned Sahara that Aamby Valley will be auctioned if payments are not made within the deadline. The Sahara chief submitted two post dated cheques of around 2050 crores in his obligation to repay to Sebi. On April 21, a SEBI court had cancelled its non-bailable arrest warrants against Sahara chief Subrata Roy and three of his group firms directors after they had appeared before it in a case filed by the SEBI against them. Sahara SEBI case: Supreme Court warns Subrata Roy- if cheque submitted to SC not relieved by June 19, will send you to Tihar jail ANI (@ANI_news) April 27, 2017 The bench, which also comprised Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, also ordered the arrest of Chennai-based PrakashSwamy, who failed to deposit Rs 10 crore as per the last order. He will serve one month jail for contempt of court. Swamy had filed an affidavit on behalf a foreign firm expressing his intent to buy Sahara's New York-based hotel.He had failed to comply with the apex court's direction to show his bonafide by depositing the amount in court to establish his intention to buy the property. The bench allowed the Sahara group to make electronic payment through RTGS in the Sebi-Sahara account on or beforeJune 15. The apex court also asked Roy to remain personally present on June 19, the next date of hearing. It asked the Official Liquidator of Bombay High Court to prepare terms and conditions for auctioning the Aamby Valley property for its approval on June 19. (With PTI Inputs) Also Read: Supreme Court rejects Subrata Roys plea seeking more time to pay Rs 600 crore to Sebi For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Srinagar: Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi, who allegedly incites women in Jammu and Kashmir to pelt at security forces and disrupt normal life, was on Thursday arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police. She was arrested under the Public Safety Act. The police arrested Asiya Andrabi on Thursday morning from her residence, sources said. She is alleged to be the main separatist leader who incites women pelt stones. Video: Youth allegedly tied to army jeep as human shield against stone pelting For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Jaipur: Due to a bad weather six Delhi-bound flights were diverted on Thursday to the International Airport. Five and an Oman Air aircraft coming from different locations and supposed to land in were diverted to airport due to bad weather conditions, acting JIA director M P Bansal told PTI. He said the five flights took off from after the weather conditions normalised. Haryana government releases financial assistance for families of martyrs in Sukma naxal attack Also Read: For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chandigarh: Arvind Kejriwals resignation as chief minister of Delhi was sought by Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal. Badal told that the MCD poll resultants were a direct referendum on the two years of non-performance and negative politics of the AAP government. SAD patron and former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal thanked the electorate for showing faith in the BJP-SAD combine in Delhi and giving a huge mandate in its favour. The Delhi electorate has shown that people want development and want their government to cooperate with other stake holders to deliver on its promises. The electorate has made it clear that it will not tolerate the agitationist politics of the Delhi CM. As AAP revolves around Kejriwal alone he should take moral responsibility for this crushing defeat, the senior Badal said. Sukhbir said the defeat was a culmination of a series of steps which had exposed Kejriwal irreversibly. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has called for the construction of boundary walls around the holy spots after the Intelligence warning that an ISI-trained group in the garb of Hindu seers might strike prominent religious sites in the state. The priest-turned-politician also asked the officials concerned to ensure laying of 4-lane road connecting famous temples for the convenience of visitors. Adityanath, the Hindu hardline leader who took over as chief minister of the most populous state over a month ago, gave the directive at a presentation of Religious Endowment Department here late last night. Assistant Superintendent of Police (Security), Mathura, Siddharth Verma said they had received information that terrorists dressed as 'sadhus' could enter the state to carry out attacks. The pilgrim town of Mathura is a sensitive area as it is situated along the state's border with Rajasthan and Haryana, prompting police to instal metal detectors, X-ray machines andCCTV cameras at vantage places, as well as carry out surprise checks at night shelters, guest houses and hotels. Also ReadL: UP CM Adityanath aims to make state open defecation free by October 2018 "Checking is being done daily and undercover police personnel are keeping a watch at public areas after reports that a group of 20-25 men dressed as seers are planning to attack important places, especially pilgrim centres, in Uttar Pradesh," Verma told PTI. The group, allegedly trained by Pakistan's Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI), has been directed to target Ayodhya, Varanasi, Vrindavan, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, he said. "All district police chiefs and Railway superintendents of police have been informed about the threat. We are coordinating with other agencies to thwart such attempts," UPanti-terror squad Inspector General Asim Arun said. Central Intelligence agencies have been sharing inputs with the UP Police since February about increased activity of terrorists in the state. According to the latest alert, the ISI is planning to launch attacks in the northern state under the code name'Operation Krishna India'. "The agency (ISI) has reportedly trained the group for months to familiarise them with Hindu religious practices.Members of the module are planning to enter UP through the Nepal border in the guise of seers," the reports said. In February, Intelligence agencies in the state were tipped off about four dozen terrorists sneaking into UPthrough the porous border with Nepal. Uttar Pradesh shares a 599.3 km open border with Nepaltouching seven districts - Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Sravasti, Balrampur, Siddharth Nagar and Maharajganj. "As per the Intelligence inputs, the group has also been trained by Pakistan's ISI in Hindu religious practices, and might try to blend with the local populace before carrying out deadly strikes at prominent religious sites and other sensitive spots," police said. Also Read:UP CM Adityanath directs officials to set up yoga wellness centres in 40 districts The Intelligence agencies had picked up intercepts through electronic surveillance in which youths were heard discussing the deaths of banned Students Islamic Movement ofIndia (SIMI) men in Telangana as well as IS suspect Saifullahin Lucknow. A Khurasan module was busted after Saifullah's death last month. Recently, some self-radicalised youths were also arrested by the UP Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). In 2016, eight suspected members of SIMI had tried to evade the police by adorning saffron robes in Madhya Pradesh.The men were later killed in a police encounter. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Korean Air has been slapped with a W3.3 billion fine for maintenance lapses in recent months (US$1=W1,129). The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Wednesday that the flag carrier was fined W1.8 billion for problems with a B-777 flight from Dalian, China to Incheon last September, and another W1.5 billion for two more instances of faulty maintenance that were discovered later. The fine for the Dalian-Incheon flight, which had engine problems, was initially set at W2.4 billion but whittled down to W1.8 billion after the carrier complained it was excessive. "The fine was reduced by W600 million because it was impossible to prove that the pilot failed to carry out the external inspection before takeoff," a ministry official said. The ministry also fined the carrier W300 million for delaying the inspection of GPS equipment on a cargo plane in August last year and W1.2 billion for failing to obey a ministry order to inspect the wings of two A330 aircraft in December. Meanwhile, Asiana Airlines was fined W300 million for maintenance glitches that resulted in an A320 flight from Gimhae to Saipan having to turn back. New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to approach Allahabad High Court to seek cancellation of the bail granted to former minister Gayatri Prajapati by a special court in a rape case, a top law officer on Thursday informed. This may spell fresh trouble for Prajapati. The government is currently examining all relevant papers before challenging the bail order given by a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court in the case, Advocate General Raghavendra Singh told. Prajapati and two of his alleged accomplices were on Tuesday granted bail by special judge of POCSO court Om Prakash Mishra in connection with the rape case that had rocked the state some months ago during the Samajwadi Party rule. However, his reprieve proved to be shortlived as a local court yesterday remanded him in judicial custody in two separate cases even before he could walk out of jail. Prajapati was sent back to Gosainganj prison here after getting bail in the rape case the previous day. The city police dug out old cases and convinced the court of chief judicial magistrate to send Prajapati back to judicial custody. They produced case diaries of two FIRs registered at Gautampalli and Gomtinagar police stations here against Prajapati in order to convince the court that letting him out on bail can jeopardise the ongoing investigations in the two criminal cases. A woman from Chitrakoot had approached Gautampalli police station on February 17 alleging that she was gang-raped by Prajapati and two more men forcibly for several months before she alerted the police. She also alleged that the three had also sexually assaulted her minor daughter at Prajapatis residence. Also Read | Video: Former SP minister and rape accused Gayatri Prajapati arrested from Lucknow, sent to 14-day judicial remand Chief Judicial Magistrate Sandhya Srivastava yesterday sent the ex-minister to judicial custody in connection with the case lodged by social activist Nutan Thakur, wife of senior IPS officer Amitabh Thakur. Nutan had lodged the FIR on June 20, 2015 at Gomtinagar police station in which she alleged that Prajapati had used his undue political and administrative clout to conspire with the then chairperson of state women commission Zarina Usmani and others to frame her and her husband in completely false rape charges and other allegations. Police initially did not take action claiming that it was a false case intending to malign the minister. But subsequently, it was reopened on the orders of the chief judicial magistrate, Lucknow in September 2015. The CJM court remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days till May 10 for interrogation. In the third case, Meerut resident Rakesh Prajapati had lodged an FIR against Prajapati on March 21, 2107 alleging that he had given Rs 6 Lakh to him for procuring government service for his brother-in-law. But, when he did not get a job, he asked Prajapati to return his money. At this, Prajapati abused him and also threatened him to implicate him in false case. The case is registered for the offences of cheating and threat to life and investigation is going on. On an application moved before Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ritish Sachdeva by Gautampalli police, the court accepted the request sending him to judicial custody in the case till May 9 for the purpose of interrogation. Prajapati will now have to obtain bail in these two cases also for securing his release from jail. An FIR was registered against 49-year-old Prajapati and six others on February 17 on a Supreme Court directive. Prajapati was then a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh. After being on the run for nearly a month, Prajapati was arrested from the Aashiyana area here on March 15 and was sent to jail for allegedly raping the woman and attempting to rape her minor daughter in 2014. The six others had been arrested earlier. Prajapati had approached the Supreme Court to get a stay on his arrest. But the apex court asked him to approach the court concerned. At the time of his arrest, Prajapati had claimed that he was innocent and the charges were a conspiracy to malign him. The allegations against Prajapati were raked up by the BJP during the state assembly elections to attack the then Akhilesh government. The BJP had accused Akhilesh of shielding his tainted minister, a charge refuted by the Samajwadi Party. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beijing: We are living in a generation where people talk about setting up human colonies on the Moon and settling there. While it just appears a dream, many are chalking out futuristic projects for human settlement on the lunar surface. The latest in the line is China which is in talks with the European Space Agency (ESA) on collaborating on a human village or human outpost on Earths natural satellite Moon. Tian Yulong, the secretary general for China's space agency, revealed the development via Chinese state media. However, he has not revealed details on what kind of collaboration it would be. "Moon Village" will be a potential international launching pad for future missions to Mars, ESA had said earlier describing the project. But the head of the ESA had last year elaborated on plans to build a village on the moon. Since its first manned spaceflight in 2003, China has ramped up its space program. The 2003 launch was more than 42 years after a Soviet cosmonaut became the first to reach orbit. This month, an unmanned spacecraft on a mission to dock with currently unoccupied space station was launched by China. China has plans to launch the first mission to the far side of the moon next year. The future of space travel needs a new vision, said Jan Woerner. The concept is a base for lunar exploration by human beings as well as robots. It would act as a stopover for spacecraft, and become a 'village' with mining and even tourism. The future of space travel needs a new vision.Right now we have the Space Station as a common international project, but it won't last forever, said Woerner. If I say Moon Village, it does not mean single houses, a church, a town hall and so on. No, that would be misleading. My idea only deals with the core of the concept of a village: people working and living together in the same place. And this place would be on the Moon. In the Moon Village we would like to combine the capabilities of different spacefaring nations, with the help of robots and astronauts. The participants can work in different fields, perhaps they will conduct pure science and perhaps there will even be business ventures like mining or tourism. According to Woerner, the Moon Village could even help humans get to Mars. The Moon Village would also act as a 'pit stop' for the further exploration of the Universe, he said. Esa is eager to fly to Mars as well. For more than a decade, we have had a very successful spacecraft orbiting there. And now, with ExoMars, two unmanned missions are aiming at martian orbit and the surface. Yes, the Americans want to send astronauts to Mars one day, but today's technology isn't prepared for this trip yet." ALSO READ | ISRO sets an eye on the moon to mine energy For example, we must develop countermeasures against the cosmic radiation that endangers the health of humans on long space trips. And we have to learn how to endure longer periods of time in space, not only in low orbit as on the Space Station. This is where our Moon comes into play it is the perfect stepping stone to Mars. ALSO READ | Human colonies on alien planets with dust from Moon and Mars can be a reality, thanks to 3D print technology For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: It is so thrilling to discuss about astronauts and human missions to space. But have you ever thought what cost NASA has to bear for stuffs required to send humans to space? Well, in 2009, Oceaneering International, Inc received a contract worth $148 million for spacesuits for the astronauts. NASA considered the requirement of spacesuits for astronauts during deep space and when on Moon after it began building a rocket and spacecraft to send humans to the Moon a decade ago as part of the Constellation Program. However, in early 2010, then US President Barack had cancelled NASAs Constellation program. Later in 2010, senior officials at the Johnson Space Center recommended that the Constellation spacesuit contract be cancelled as the agency had its own engineers to work on a new spacesuit and. Also, NASA didnt have a clear need for deep-space spacesuits. However, agency leaders at NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC overruled the Houston officials. NASA Inspector General Paul Martin sharply criticizes this decision in a new report. "The continuation of this contract did not serve the best interests of the agencys spacesuit technology development efforts," the report states. Shockingly, according to the report it was found that NASA wasted whopping $80.6 million on the contract with Oceaneering before it was finally ended last year. NASA told the inspector general that the decision was taken to continue the contract as the space agency wanted to keep industry engaged in spacesuit design. However, the report dismissed the idea saying that the agencys in-house Advanced Space Suit Project shared several contractors and primary subcontractors with Oceaneering. Many of NASA's in-house concepts and designs were ahead of those under the Oceaneering contract, the report found. "For example, one study found that the Rapid Cycle Amine swingbed used in the Advanced Space Suit Project design is 'far more advanced' than the (Constellation) concept," the report states. William Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of human spaceflight, argued that the report is "overly critical" of the agency's decision and that "we respectfully disagree that the facts presented to the OIG support that portion of the report." He said this in a written response to the inspector general. However, Martin appears not to be moved by the response from Gerstenmaier as he wrote that "we continue to believe" the contract should have been cancelled in 2011. The new report has also raised concerns about the existing stock of spacesuits of NASA that are used for the International Space Station program for spacewalks. Some design problems have been experienced by NASA with these Extravehicular Mobility Units, or EMUs, in recent years. In 2013, a water issue was experienced with Luca Parmitano's helmet. Also, for the future operations, NASA only has 11 of the original 18 EMU units left. ALSO READ | Donald Trump congratulates NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson for record-breaking stay aboard ISS "The inventory may not be adequate to last through planned retirement of the ISS in 2024," the report states. "Given these issues, NASA will be challenged to continue to support the (spacewalk) needs of the ISS with the current fleet of EMUs through 2024a challenge that will escalate significantly if station operations are extended to 2028." The report has recommended that NASA should chalk out a formal plan for the design, production and testing of next-generation spacesuits to meet the space agency's needs. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Vandenberg Air Force Base: An unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from California in a test of the weapon system that is part of the US nuclear force amid tensions with North Korea. The missile blasted off from a silo at 12:03 am early yesterday from Vandenberg Air Force Base and delivered a single re-entry vehicle to a target approximately 4,200 miles (6,759 kilometres) away at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the Air Force Global Strike Command said. The launch command was issued via an air launch control system aboard a Navy E-6 Mercury jet. Tonights launch was an important demonstration of our nations nuclear deterrent capability, Col John Moss, commander of Vandenbergs 30th Space Wing, said in a statement. Test launches like this one are vital to validating the effectiveness and readiness of our operational nuclear systems, so it is critical that they are successful. Operational tests of Minuteman 3 missiles are conducted regularly but the timing of yesterdays launch amid US tensions with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs drew criticism from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which has advocated against nuclear weapons for more than 30 years. ALSO READ | Tensions escalate as North Korea threatens to wipe out US When it comes to missile testing, the US is operating with a clear double standard: It views its own tests as justified and useful, while it views the tests of North Korea as threatening and destabilising, David Krieger, president of the organisation, said in a statement on its website Monday. What is needed is diplomacy rather than military provocations. Threats, whether in the form of tweets, nuclear-capable aircraft carrier groups, or nuclear-capable missile launches, only increase the dangers to us all, he said. President Donald Trump has in recent weeks ordered an aircraft carrier and other Navy vessels into the region in a show of force to deter North Korea, which on Tuesday conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills. ALSO READ | US considers restoring North Korea in terror sponsor list Yesterday, the White House hosted all 100 senators for a classified briefing on North Korea by Trumps secretary of state, defence secretary, top general and national intelligence director. The briefing team was to meet later with House members in the Capitol. The most recent previous Minuteman 3 launch was in early February. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. London: A man near the was arrested by armed officers of Scotland Yard on Thursday after what has been described as a "knife incident". Whitehall, the political heart of which houses the Downing Street and other buildings culminating in Square, and Street have been closed to traffic as Metropolitan Police continue its investigation. "Man arrested in Westminster. No reported injuries. More information to follow," Police said in a statement. There are unconfirmed reports of a number of knives having been found at the site of the arrest. US vows to force North Korea back to nuclear talks Also Read: Westminster area of remains on high alert since the terror attack on on March 22, which claimed five lives including terror suspect Khalid Masood. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Warsaw: Poland on Thursday assured India of its support to New Delhis bid for membership in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. This was conveyed by Polish Prime Minister Beata Syzdlo to Vice President Hamid Ansari when the two leaders met here to discuss issues of bilateral and mutual interests. The two countries signed an agreement in the agriculture sector and agreed that there was much scope to increase cooperation in railway and defence sectors as well as in areas like food processing, solar energy, clean coal, treatment of solid waste. The agreement was signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh and Polish Agriculture Minister Krzystof Jurgiel in presence of Ansari and Syzdlo. Ansari thanked Polish leadership for its support to Indias bid for NSG membership, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) issue and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. We are happy to have Polands support for Indias claim for permanent membership of an expanded UN security council, Ansari said as he appreciated the support extended by Poland to Indias membership of the MTCR. Poland is a member of the 48-nation NSG, a group of nuclear supplier countries that seek to prevent proliferation by controlling the export of materials, equipment and technology that can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. For past few decades, India and Poland relations are growing with a good pace. Today my talks with the prime minister of Poland was very productive and we discussed entire gamuts of our relationships, said Ansari. Ansari said there was much scope to increase the bilateral cooperation especially in areas like mining, agriculture, civil aviation, food processing, solar energy, clean coal and other field. The two sides can also cooperate in railway and defence sectors, he added. As vibrant democracies, we also share views on the need to adopt a comprehensive and principled stance against the scourge of terrorism. We agree on the need for the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN, the vice president said. Ansari said that Indian cultural festivals would be organised in various cities of Poland. Polish Prime Minister Sysdlo appreciated Indias growing influence and the progress made by it. We can expand our trade relation in various sector. We hope to export apples to India and increase our cooperation in agriculture field, she said. India has close economic ties with Poland. Indian investments in Poland amount to around USD 3 billion and Polish investments in India are of about 600 million USD. Our cooperation will be mutually beneficial. We hope to expand our cooperation in mining sector. We have rich experience in mining sector in cutting edge technology, the Polish prime minister said. We also hope to cooperate in civil aviation and defence sector, she said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Colombo: Sri Lanka's major towns in war-torn northern and eastern provinces observed a shutdown on Thursday after the Tamil and Muslim political parties observed a protest demanding the release of military-occupied land. Offices, businesses, schools and public transport came to a halt after the two provinces observed a shutdown. "We hope the government would respond after looking at this protest action. All Tamil and Muslim political parties in these areas are observing the protest," MK Shivajilingam, a hardline Tamil provincial councillor from the Tamil-dominated northern province said. In some Muslim-dominated areas in the eastern province, still occupied life remained normal with all services operating. The Tamil and Muslim people in the North-East are demanding the government to release the lands that are still occupied by the military, justice to the disappeared persons and provide employment to the war-battered. "People have been protesting now for over two months yet the government has failed to address the issue," Shivajilingam said. Some of the lands held over three decades have been released since 2015. But Tamils complain of slow progress. Commenting on the protest on Wednesday, the government spokesman and Minister of Health Rajitha Senaratne said the relatives of the disappeared people in some cases had provided photographic evidence that they had been seen under government care since the end of the conflict in 2009. "We will investigate such cases but we are unable to issue death certificates in respect of the disappeared as we have no proof," Senaratne said. In August 2016, Sri Lanka's Parliament had unanimously approved a bill to set up an office and help find some 65,000 people reported missing during the country's civil war with the LTTE (1983-2009), and clarify the circumstances under which they disappeared. Relatives of the missing people had alleged that theLankan state - particularly its army, navy and police - were behind most of the disappearances. Many Lankan soldiers and LTTE cadres who had surrendered before the government troops were also among the missing. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Damascus: Syria on Thursday accused France of hiding the real identity of those responsible for a deadly suspected chemical attack, a day after Paris claimed that it had proof the Damascus regime was responsible. Western leaders have accused President Bashar al-Assads regime of carrying out an April 4 sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun that was reported to have killed 88 people, including 31 children. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault yesterday laid out what he described as scientific proof the regime was behind the alleged attack, including analysis of samples taken from the scene. Damascus fired back on Thursday, condemning the campaign of deceit, shameless lies and fabrications set forth by... Ayrault.This is an attempt to hide the truth of this crime and its perpetrators, the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement. The French government has neither the authority nor the judicial qualification to determine what happened in Khan Sheikhun. Syrias government has repeatedly denied any use of chemical weapons including in Khan Sheikhun. In an interview with AFP earlier in April Assad said the allegation was 100 percent fabrication and a pretext for the US decision to launch air strikes against the Syrian airbase from where Washington believes the attack was launched. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beirut: A monitoring group on Thursday said that a massive explosion hit near the Damascus International Airport in the early hours. The cause of explosion is not known. "The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Earlier on Tuesday, an air-strike in a rebel-held area outside Syria's capital Damascus killed nearly 16 civilians while wounding others. The Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus has been under a devastating government siege since 2012, and is also the regular target of regime air strikes and artillery fire. Also read: Airstrike on Hammuriyeh town near Damascus kills 16 civilians: Monitor Also read: 25 killed in Damascus bomb blasts as war enters seventh year For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Dubai: An Iranian businessman was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a United Arab Emirates court after being convicted of trying to bring an electric motor and other devices there to further Iran's nuclear programme. A report by the state-run WAM news agency on Wednesday only identified the businessman by the initials S.M.A.R. It said he was convicted of "violating the international ban on nuclear weapons." It wasn't clear how the material the Iranian was convicted of trying to bring into the Islamic Republic would be used to manufacture an atomic bomb. Iran has described its nuclear program as peaceful. Western fears over it prompted sanctions later lifted by the nuclear accord with Iran, which capped its enrichment of uranium. Iran had no immediate reaction to the conviction. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. North Korean hackers are believed to have stolen more than US$90 million from banks overseas last year, computer security firm Symantec said Wednesday. Symantec analyzed cyber crimes around the world last year and fingered North Korean hackers in attacks on 104 banks in 30 countries, including a heist on the central bank of Bangladesh that netted $81 million. Symantec analyzed the malicious code used in the Bangladesh heist and concluded that it was the same as the one used by a group called Lazarus, which is thought to be linked with the North Korean regime. The group was behind the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures' Hollywood studio, and the FBI blamed it on North Korea as it occurred before the release of the caper "The Interview," about the attempted assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The hackers obtained a security code for the central bank of Bangladesh and stole the money by asking the New York Federal Reserve Bank to transfer funds in the central bank's account to the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Some of the money was recovered when authorities became suspicious, but most of it was lost. Yoon Kwang-taek at Symantec Korea said, "Lazarus was discovered to have been behind cyber attacks targeting banks in Vietnam, Ecuador, the Philippines and Poland since 2015," stealing altogether $94 million. Washington: Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi met with leaders of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jain communities in the US and discussed about increasing incidents of hate crimes against the minority communities in the country. The discussion among other things, also included an overview of Krishnamoorthi's strong objections to the CNN programme Believer's wrongful portrayal of Hinduism, his continuing efforts on immigration issues, and his ongoing work to address the national increase in hate crimes. Over the course of the discussion, the coummunity leaders shared personal stories of the challenges they faced from the growing national climate of hostility and increasing fears around hate-motivated violence, a media release said. "Hindu and Muslim-Americans reported (to me) incidents of people talking to them poorly. We have to take note of it and talk about it in a group and hope people feel secure. But it can't be solved overnight," the 43 year-old law maker said. Krishnamoorthi, the first time Democratic lawmaker, visited the BAPS Mandir where he was felicitated for his election to Congress. He met with leaders to further discuss the concerns of the community. The Indian-American Congressman has also been meeting with members of the Muslim-American community and recently visited Islamic Foundation in Villa Park and Muslim Society. Also Read: Take decisive steps to end bigotry hate crimes in US, says Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi "I'm glad I've been able to meet with so many members of our community to discuss the challenges we face," he said. "In Congress, I work every day to support our communities on such issues as immigration and religious freedom while fighting to combat the surge in hate crimes and broader hostility which has struck members of our community across the country, and sewn fear in many others," he added. Following the February shooting of two Indian men in Kansas, Krishnamoorthi formally called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use the full powers of his office to combatthe national surge in hate crime. He also called for the committee to hold hearings on the issue through both a formal letter and a speech on the House floor. More recently, he authored and is circulating a congressional letter calling upon Secretary John Kelly of the Department of Homeland Security to use the resources of his department to address the increase in hate crimes against religious minorities in the country. "In each of these meetings, I was inspired by the love of country demonstrated by the leaders I spoke to, but also by their deeply-rooted commitments to their religions," Krishnamoorthi said. "Part of the greatness of our country is that it does not force us to abandon our faiths, it welcomes them into the American mosaic with us." "We will continue to take heart in the knowledge that this country belongs to all of us and we will work together against those forces that would challenge that national promise," Krishnamoorthi said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: US President Donald Trump tempered his accord to renegotiate NAFTA on Thursday with a condition that the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico would be terminated if there is no fair deal. Trump campaigned for president on promises to scrap NAFTA, calling it the worst trade deal maybe ever signed and a disaster that has resulted in millions of US industrial jobs lost mostly to Mexico. But yesterday, the White House said Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time during calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Today, Trump confirmed that was the case. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate, the president tweeted. I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. Relationships are good - deal very possible! NAFTA was established January 1, 1994 under then-president Bill Clinton. It removed tariffs and allows a free flow of goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Also Read | United States: Donald Trump signs series of executive orders to restore economy The US trade deficit in goods and services last year with Mexico was USD 62 billion, but with Canada the US had a surplus of USD 8 billion. News of Trumps softened position soothed fears of a possible trade war and sent most Asian markets up on Thursday. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Fraudster caught 17 years later From:Shanghai Daily | 2017-04-27 01:29 A fugitive involved in a business fraud 17 years ago involving millions of yuan has been arrested, Shanghai police said yesterday. He was trying to get his new company listed on the stock exchange at the time of his arrest. The suspect, surnamed Gao, signed a 2.5 million yuan (US$363,000) contract in 2000 for 500 tons of goods with a textile company but fled with the money together with his business partner after delivering only 200 tons, police said. Gaos partner, surnamed Zhang, was arrested soon after, but Gao disappeared. Police in Jinshan District handled the case because Gao and Zhangs company was registered in the district. Police said they found at the beginning of this year that Gao was now living with a new name Li Jian and finally tracked him down at a railway station in Changsha City, Hunan Province, on April 12. Police said Gao had told them he had cut off all contact with family and friends after Zhangs arrest and fled to Hainan and then Guangdong, where he started new businesses, one of which is now seeking a share listing. Venezuela to exit Organization of American States: FM From:Xinhua | 2017-04-27 09:29 Photo provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez delivering a speech in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 26, 2017. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). (Xinhua/Venezuela's Presidency) CARACAS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). In a live TV address, Rodriguez said that "the OAS has persisted in intrusive actions against the sovereignty of our country and for this, we proceed to withdraw from the Organization." On Thursday, April 27, Venezuela will deliver a letter to the OAS announcing its exit, triggering a process that will last 24 months, said the minister. According to Rodriguez, this decision was carried out at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's instructions to protect the country's "sovereignty", adding that Venezuela would not participate in future OAS events as they advocate for "interventionism." Venezuela has long accused the OAS secretary-general, Luis Almagro, of being a leader in instigating a "coup" against the government of President Maduro. This exit is not conjecture, it has to do with the dignity of our people, said Rodriguez. The minister also compared the OAS' actions to the stance it took against Cuba in 1962, when it kicked the country out before reinstating it in 2009. After her announcement, Rodriguez continued lambasting the OAS, tweeting that "we will never allow those who bend the knee to offend Venezuela! Our sacred nation! Nation of Bolivar! Fatherland of Chavez! We will win!" Earlier on Wednesday, the OAS had held a special meeting in Washington DC and voted in favor of calling an emergency meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Venezuela. This meeting is likely to discuss whether to apply the OAS' Democratic Charter to Venezuela, which would suspend its membership. Alongside this, Venezuela has called for an urgent session of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss what Rodriguez called "threats against the constitutional order in Venezuela, as well as the interventionist actions undermining its independence, sovereignty and its right to self-determination." Venezuela has been racked by a political and economic crisis, which has spiralled into clashes between government and opposition supporters in April, leaving at least 29 people dead. 1 2 3 Next 1 2 3 Next Photo provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez delivering a speech in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 26, 2017. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). (Xinhua/Venezuela's Presidency) Prev 1 2 3 Next Prev 1 2 3 Next Photo provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez delivering a speech in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 26, 2017. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that the country would leave the Organization of American States (OAS). (Xinhua/Venezuela's Presidency) Prev 1 2 3 Prev 1 2 3 Security of Libyan waters an EU priority: Mogherini From:Xinhua | 2017-04-27 09:29 Federica Mogherini (C, Front), the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and EU Defense Ministers visit the Italian Amphibious ship San Giusto in Malta, on April 26, 2017. The security of Libyan waters is an essential part of the work of the European Union (EU), said Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, on Wednesday. She was speaking on board the Italian Amphibious ship San Giusto in Malta, which is taking part in the operation SOPHIA tackling piracy and Human Trafficking. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina) VALLETTA, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The security of Libyan waters is an essential part of the work of the European Union (EU), said Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, on Wednesday. She was speaking on board the Italian Amphibious ship San Giusto in Malta, which is taking part in the operation SOPHIA tackling piracy and Human Trafficking. Mogherini said that this operation is fulfilling its core mandate of disrupting the traffic of smugglers at sea and they have already trained 93 Libyan coastguards. Libyan coastguards will be provided with ships that allow them to operate in the waters to monitor what happens in the waters and save lives if necessary. She added that the security of Libyan waters translates into more possibilities for fishermen of Libya, providing sustainable economic revenue that can help disrupt the business of human trafficking. 1 2 3 Next 1 2 3 Next Prev 1 2 3 Next Prev 1 2 3 Next Federica Mogherini (C, Front), the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, visits the Italian Amphibious ship San Giusto in Malta, on April 26, 2017. The security of Libyan waters is an essential part of the work of the European Union (EU), said Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, on Wednesday. She was speaking on board the Italian Amphibious ship San Giusto in Malta, which is taking part in the operation SOPHIA tackling piracy and Human Trafficking. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina) Prev 1 2 3 Prev 1 2 3 About 200 counties in China will launch a new type of agriculture insurance as an innovative program to compensate crop yield losses resulting from natural disasters, according to the State Council executive meeting on April 26. The counties will be chosen from Chinas 13 major grain production provinces including Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui and Henan. The insurance will be offered to family farms, large scale growers and farmers cooperatives, covering the costs of agricultural materials, fertilizers, and land use fees for planting rice, wheat and corn. It will enhance coverage of agricultural insurance, and increase support for large growers, said Tuo Guozhu, a professor from Capital University of Economics and Business. Chinas agricultural insurance developed rapidly in recent years. Data from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) show that in 2007-2016, agricultural insurance payment rose from 112.6 billion yuan ($16.3 billion) to 2.2 trillion yuan, and crop area coverage increased from 230 million mu (15.3 million hectares) to 1.72 billion. Still, agricultural insurance cannot meet farmers growing demands, a CIRC official said. Small farming households could not get enough reimbursement because of low premiums, while large growers may face huge losses far beyond coverage value after being hit by severe disasters. Limited coverage and services discouraged farmers from participating in insurance programs. With rising modern and collective farm production, comprehensive insurance programs could better safeguard farmers interests, an industry insider said. The No 1 Document issued by the central government this year called for more comprehensive and diversified insurance plans for new types of agricultural businesses, and local governments will be encouraged to develop their own insurance products. These measures are believed to promote stable development of disaster agriculture insurance. The executive meeting also decided to increase the subsidized ratio of insurance premiums to 47.5 percent for pilot farms located in Chinas central and western regions, and 45 percent in eastern regions. This will encourage participation from both insurance companies and farmers, Tuo said. An illusion of super powers is bad enough but on top of it is Khan's by now notorious intolerance. Are nuclear attack drills held in NYC and Washington, D.C. organized out of fear of North Korean mini-nukes? Several news reports over the past week have left scores of Americans unnerved and curious about what our political and military leaders may know regarding North Koreas nuclear capabilities. Their curiosity and fears were further stoked Wednesday by an unusual event: The Trump administrations top military, intelligence and national security chiefs provided a top secret brief to the entire 100-member U.S. Senate regarding the current situation with North Korea, as more U.S. military assets including a THAAD missile defense system, an aircraft carrier battle group and a cruise-missile carrying submarine, the USS Michigan, deployed to the Korean peninsula. While tensions between Washington and Pyongyang have been increasing for weeks, one senior Republican U.S. senator who has been a frequent critic of President Donald J. Trump nevertheless has expressed a renewed faith in his leadership following a dinner meeting Tuesday in which he said he now believes the president is serious about preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and the ICBMs to deliver them. (Related: Read North Koreas Nuclear Test Shocks The World.) If I were North Korea, I would not underestimate President Trumps resolve to stop them from getting a missile to hit our homeland, he told reporters. Taken together these events and North Koreas continued military shows of force and preparations make it seem as though the White House has made a decision to solve the North Korean nuclear development problem. Only, it may not be as simple as that. A series of drills held by federal, state and local officials in the New York City and Washington, D.C., areas seem to indicate that the government believes there is at least a possibility that North Korea could strike a major American city including the nations capital with some sort of miniaturized nuclear device. One drill, known as Operation Gotham Shield, simulated a nuclear explosion within the vicinity of NYC and New Jersey, perhaps in a harbor area. A follow-up drill in Washington, D.C., was meant to simulate a coordinated terror attack that would require responses from multiple agencies. In fact, the D.C. drill occurred Wednesday as Gotham Shield was wrapping up and as the U.S. Senate was receiving its unusual briefing. The National Sentinel observed: It appears as though the administration believes two things: 1) There may be no other choice at present other than to strike North Korea now, before it can develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them most anywhere on the planet; and 2) Such action against North Korea may invite large-scale retaliation in some form, against a major U.S. city (or cities) or the nations capital itself. That retaliation could come in the form of miniaturized nuclear devices. As Fox News added, there are fears within the U.S. government and U.S. intelligence community that North Korea may have finally been able to master the technology. An official state newspaper, the Rodong Sinmum, said in an editorial that Pyongyang is ready to bring closure to the history of U.S. scheming and nuclear blackmail. Continuing, the editorial said, There is no limit to the strike power of the Peoples Army armed with our style of cutting-edge military equipment including various precision and miniaturized nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The mini-nukes are causing the most concern. (Related: Read North Korea Could Kill 90% Of All Americans By Dropping EMP Nukes From Orbiting Satellites.) They have expressed the intent to [miniaturize a nuclear weapon], said Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Projection at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It raise the stakes and increases the risk of missile threats to the region and the U.S. homeland. He added further that a March 9 report noted that photos purposefully released by the North Korean government featured leader Kim Jong-un inspecting what was believed to be a miniaturized implosion device, though the photo was inconclusive. No reason to believe that it is true, or to disbelieve it. No reason to dismiss it or to panic, said Karako, in an interview with Fox News. I think that our insight into these programs is relatively modest. I think the posture of our military is to assume the worst. Keep up with this story as it develops on Terrorism.news. J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel. Sources include: FoxNews.com TheNationalSentinel.com MilitaryTimes.com Submit a correction >> HARTFORD Over Republican opposition to the possible return of highway tolls to Connecticut, the tax-writing Finance Committee on Thursday approved legislation that would allow the state Department of Transportation to study future discounts for state residents. The bill, which narrowly passed the committee, next moves to the House of Representatives. It is a companion piece to the controversial legislation on allowing electronic tolling technology to be set up throughout the state, but Republicans from Southwestern Connecticut warned that tolls wont help the states stagnant economy. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate DANBURY - When the police officer knocked on Heidi Palmers door recently, she didnt think about all the junk that was piled outside of her home. All she could think of was that she was in trouble. I thought, Oh, my God, said Palmer, 62, who lives in the last house on a dead-end street in downtown Danbury. Why does a police officer want to see me? Palmer was surprised to learn that Officer Stephen Hilderbrand was there to help her, not to cite her. This nice lady was having a hard time, and she was willing to have us help her - as opposed to the city coming out and taking action, said Hilderbrand, who showed up at the house Thursday with a donated dumpster and five colleagues. We decided to help her out and clean the place up. By mid-morning, Palmers white clapboard house at the end of Park Place was looking less like the neighborhood eyesore and more like a home, with her grandfathers Japanese maple prominent again and her front porch visible from the street for the first time in five years. Im disabled, my husband just had back surgery and my daughter just had neck surgery, so none of us can lift anything more than 20 pounds, Palmer said as the off-duty officers filled a dumpster with garbage, old furniture and yard debris. This is a godsend. I dont know what I would have done if they didnt come out. Hilderbrand, who joined the force in 2014, found out about Palmers situation after neighbors complained to the citys special blight-fighting squad, known as UNIT - for Unified Neighborhood Inspection Team. We have done other community work, like helping out families with meals over the holidays and helping the homeless when its cold, Hilderbrand said. We are trying to change the culture of what cops can do. Working with the homeowner, Hilderbrand and five colleagues - Sgt. Matt Casazza and police Officers Chris Dennis, Ryan Howley, Rui Fernandes, and Mike Reo - dedicated their day off to giving her yard a fresh start. It was really bad out here, said Palmer, as officers carried armfuls of debris to the dumpster. Where are you going with my bike? I think it has seen better days, Dennis told her, wheeling away a bicycle with two flat tires. My husband will kill you if you throw that away. So you want to keep it? Yeah, she said. Sorry. My husband is a hoarder. He keeps everything. The bicycle was one of the few things that the officers allowed her to keep. And she was okay with that. Theyre police - I defer to them, she said with a laugh. Police were able to secure the dumpster donation from Belardinelli Services of Bethel. Also contributing were student members of the Kind Club at Shelter Rock School, supervised by Hilderbrands wife, Jennifer, who teaches fifth grade. The student club donated $150 in plantings for Palmers home. What great guys, Palmer said. I never have luck like this. rryser@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342 2016 highlights: Helping 158,000+ youth access education, the environment & health programs Women held 50% of Board of Director roles, and 60% of senior executive positions VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - HSBC Bank Canada's 2016 Public Accountability Statement (PAS) is now available online at www.hsbc.ca/community. The report provides important information and key highlights about HSBC's community investment programs, operational footprint and inclusive employee culture, as well as how we're making banking simpler, better and faster for our customers. "Our global approach to sustainability focuses on three areas: communities, finance and operations," said Sandra Stuart, President and CEO, HSBC Bank Canada. "Last year, together with our employees and charitable partners, we worked hard to build our business while supporting the communities we serve for the long-term." Sustainability Last year HSBC Bank Canada proudly donated $7,133,433 to registered charities and schools across Canada the largest total annual contribution in our 30+ years in Canada.1 In turn, this helped more than 158,000 young people access high-quality programs in the areas of education, the environment and children's health.2 HSBC recognizes and supports the move to a low-carbon economy, which will help to limit global temperature rise, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. In 2016, HSBC received an "A" the highest rating possible on a wide range of criteria including carbon emissions, NGO engagement and climate risk management from the Carbon Disclosure Project. Managing our environmental footprint is not only the right thing to do, it also helps us to be more efficient. By the end of 2016, HSBC's global per employee carbon dioxide emissions had fallen to 2.63 tonnes. This is an important step towards our commitment of cutting carbon emissions per employee from 3.5 to 2.5 tonnes by 2020. Our People Having a diverse workforce enables us to benefit from a variety of perspectives and strengthens our local and global competitiveness. In 2016, HSBC Bank Canada's Board of Directors remained gender-balanced, women held more than 60% of senior leadership roles, and 47% of employees in Canada were members of a visible minority. We were also proud to be recognized by the Government of Canada with an Employment Equity Achievement Award for Sector Distinction and Outstanding Commitment in 2016. Our Customers We help Canadian companies and globally-minded individuals through three global businesses providing the tools our customers need to do business internationally and helping individuals manage their finances. In 2016, we worked hard to make our business simpler, better and faster. We made significant investments in improving our digital and online channels, providing improved security, better experiences and more flexibility for our customers. HSBC is committed to setting the industry standard when it comes to detecting, deterring and protecting against financial crime. Last year we continued to make significant investments in technology, people and processes to protect our customers, our employees and the financial system; of note, we launched HSBC Safeguard helping customers understand our commitment to safeguarding them, the bank and the financial system from financial crime. Our Economic Contributions HSBC is a long-time contributor to the Canadian economy. In addition to helping Canadian businesses grow, we employed more than 5,800 people across Canada3, provided remuneration to a wide range of other businesses, service providers and suppliers, and also paid an estimated $260m in taxes to various levels of government.4 "Canada's 150th year is marked by economic growth, prosperity, and a commitment to inclusivity," added Stuart. "And as Canada's leading international bank with our own 150 year global history, we look forward to continuing to serve our communities helping our employees achieve their full potential, and our customers manage their wealth and grow their businesses for many, many years to come." Notes to Editors: Includes special funding to eight registered Canadian charities and hospitals via the HSBC 150th Anniversary Community Fund Projected participation over the course of program funding allocated in 2016 As of December 2016 Applicable tax filing deadlines fall in third quarter 2017 HSBC Bank Canada, a subsidiary of HSBC Holdings plc, is the leading international bank in the country. We help companies and individuals across Canada to do business and manage their finances internationally through three global business lines: Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Retail Banking and Wealth Management. HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of the HSBC Group, is headquartered in London . The Group serves customers worldwide from around 4,000 offices in 70 countries and territories in Europe , Asia , North and Latin America , and the Middle East and North Africa . With assets of US$2,375bn at 31 December 2016 , HSBC is one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations. For more information visit www.hsbc.ca or follow us on Twitter: @hsbc_ca or Facebook: @HSBCCanada SOURCE HSBC Bank Canada For further information: Media enquiries: Aurora Bonin, (604) 641-1905, [email protected]; Sharon Wilks, (416) 868-3878, [email protected] Related Links http://www.hsbc.ca/1/2/personal QUEBEC CITY, April 27, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - iA Financial Group (Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc.) (TSX: IAG) will disclose its earnings results for the first quarter of 2017 on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Management will discuss the results during a conference call to be held at 11:30 a.m. (ET), followed by the company' Annual Meeting at 2:00 p.m. First Quarter 2017 Earnings Results The conference call will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 11, 2017. The conference call can be accessed by calling 1-800-699-0623 (toll-free). Please note that the question and answer period following will be reserved for financial analysts. A webcast of the conference call (in listen-only mode) will be available on the iA Financial Group website at www.ia.ca. A replay of the conference call will be available for a one-week period starting at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, 2017, until midnight on May 18, 2017. To listen to the replay, call 18005585253 (tollfree) and enter access code 21848671. A transcript of the conference call will be posted the week following the conference call on the company's website at www.ia.ca, under About iA, in the Investor Relations/Financial Reports section. All documents related to iA Financial Group's first quarter earnings results will be published on the company's website at www.ia.ca, under About iA, in the Investor Relations/Financial Reports section, at around 9:00 am (ET) on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Annual Meeting Mr. John LeBoutillier, Chairman of the Board, and Mr. Yvon Charest, President and CEO, invite the media to attend the iA Financial Group Annual Meeting, which will be held on Thursday, May 11, 2017, at 2:00 p.m. (ET), at the Quebec City Convention Centre, 1000 Rene-Levesque Boulevard East, in Quebec City. A video and audio webcast of the Annual Meeting will be available on the company's website at www.ia.ca under About iA, in the Investor Relations/Events and Presentations section. Mr. Charest will be available after the Annual Meeting to meet with media. Journalists who cannot attend the press conference and who would like to schedule an interview with Mr. Charest are asked to contact Pierre Picard, Public Relations Manager, at 418-684-5000, extension 1660. iA Financial Group is a business name and trademark of Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. SOURCE Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. For further information: Investor Relations: Grace Pollock, Office: 418-780-5945, Email: [email protected]; Public Relations: Pierre Picard, Office: 418-684-5000, ext. 1660, Email: [email protected] Related Links http://www.inalco.com Government of Canada supported Municipality of Saint-Onesime-d'Ixworth project SAINT-ONESIME-D'IXWORTH, QC, April 26, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) Key local stakeholders have long been asking for concrete, sustainable measures to improve community and recreational infrastructure. The Government of Canada is proud to invest in projects such as this one by the Municipality of Saint-Onesime-d'Ixworth, which contribute to the strength and vitality of all regions of the country. The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for CED, announced that the Municipality of Saint-Onesime-d'Ixworth was granted $30,318 in financial assistance, in the form of a non-repayable contribution, to renovate and improve Les Generations community hall, which is being officially opened today. Built in 1992, Les Generations community hall is used by residents for a variety of recreational, social and family activities. The funding awarded through the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program (CIP150) helped the Municipality of Saint-Onesime-d'Ixworth improve and renovate the building's interior, including the washrooms, kitchen, walls, floors and ceiling, as well as the storage area. The renovations have been completed, ensuring the sustainability of the community centre, which will benefit residents by contributing to their well-being. CED is one of the six regional development agencies under the responsibility of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Quotes "By investing in our communities, we are clearly showing that we are committed to fostering sustainable growth and prosperity in Canada. By improving community infrastructure such as Les Generations community hall, we are stimulating the vitality of our communities and helping ensure a higher quality of life for residents of all ages." The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister responsible for CED "We are delighted about the support we received from CED to complete this project. With these improvements to the community hall, residents will be able to enjoy safe, accessible infrastructure that is better adapted to their needs." Helene Laboissonniere, Mayor of Saint-Onesime-d'Ixworth Stay connected Follow CED on Twitter @CanEconDev SOURCE Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions For further information: Media Relations, Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, Tel.: 514-283-7443, Email: [email protected] TORONTO, April 26, 2017 /CNW/ - Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector representing approximately 160,000 workers in Ontario that are employed in a variety of sectors including auto, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and natural resources among others. Naureen Rizvi, Unifor Ontario Regional Director, will be available for comment following the tabling of the provincial budget. "This budget will directly impact the standard of living for hard working Ontario families," said Rizvi. "We call on the Wynne government to protect good jobs, implement a fair minimum wage of $15 an hour, and improve the social services that the people of Ontario all rely on." WHAT: Labour perspective on the Ontario budget WHEN: Thursday, April 27 immediately upon budget release WHERE: Queen's Park WHO: Naureen Rizvi, Unifor Ontario Regional Director Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing more than 310,000 workers in every sector of the economy. It was formed Labour Day weekend 2013 when the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers unions merged. SOURCE Unifor For further information: please contact Unifor Communications Representative Kathleen O'Keefe at [email protected] or 416-896-3303 (cell). Related Links http://www.unifor.org TORONTO, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - Sunwing is pleased to announce that the latest editions of the Sunwing and Signature Vacations brochures are now available, featuring nearly 50 of the most popular sunshine destinations across the Caribbean, Mexico, the U.S.A. and Central America from up to 34 different gateways from coast to coast. What's more, with an extensive selection of resorts, families, couples, and groups are sure to find plenty of inspiration for their ideal getaway, and when they book in advance they can look forward to greater availability, and guarantee their place in the sun. Additions to the Sunwing brochure are a number of new resorts such as Royalton Negril Resort and Spa in Jamaica, which is situated on one of the island's best beaches, and its adults only oasis Hideaway at Royalton Negril, perfect for couples and honeymooners. Or, slated to open later this year is Royalton Bavaro Resort and Spa, a luxurious getaway on one of Punta Cana's most beautiful beaches, and offers plenty of activities and relaxing amenities. Travellers can also look forward to new destinations such as the laid back Mexican destination of Isla Holbox, which boasts excellent snorkeling and diving opportunities as well pristine white-sand, Caribbean beaches. In the new edition of Signature Vacations, the popular RIU-topia Collection returns with 38 elegant, all inclusive resorts such as the new and first Splash Water World in Punta Cana or the new adults only waterpark at Riu Republica. Or, sun-worshippers seeking a quiet yet luxurious getaway can head to Playa Mujeres, a tranquil location just north of Cancun, and is ideal for eco-tourists. Travellers can enjoy skipping the ferry and taking a comfortable bus ride to this destination that is home to beautiful properties, such as the new Riu Dunamar set to open this winter; where guests can enjoy quality amenities such as five refreshing pools with swim-up bars, a well-equipped gym, and tranquil spa treatments. Plus, the new Hard Rock Papagayo joins Signature's popular Celebrity Collection. Opening later this year, the resort welcomes guests with a full-service rock spa, a music amenity program, Vegas-style performances nightly, and more. The Elements Collection has been added to Signature Collection to offer vacationers exclusive perks when they book a Palladium resort in destinations including Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Travellers looking for an elevated stay can take advantage of new perks in the Emerald Collection, such as the newly-renovated Krystal Grand Los Cabos, now offering guests a refreshing dip in the stunning infinity pool, samples of delectable cuisines from five restaurants, and a fine selection of authentic Mexican tequila to enjoy while gazing over the Sea of Cortez from the panoramic Sky Bar. Newly launched in both editions are Sunwing Experiences, top-reviewed tours and excursions that are carefully selected by local experts. With the Sunwing Experiences advantage, customers can save time and money by pre-purchasing their tours in Canadian dollars and enjoy peace of mind that all tours are licenced and insured to surpass safety requirements. Another new feature recently introduced to make vacationing even easier is the Sunwing app that offers free long-distance calling, the option to pre-book excursions and save, local representative assistance, and more. Andrew Dawson, President of Tour Operations for Sunwing commented, "When travellers choose Sunwing, they can be assured that we are with them every step of the way. From the time they book with us, to their inflight experience, in destination and throughout their vacation we are committed to ensuring all of our customers Experience the Difference. With more destinations, new hotels and now with the launch of Sunwing Experiences, there's never been a better time to get onboard with Canada's #1 to the sun." The brochures can be obtained at travel agencies across the country and is available for download at sunwing.ca or signaturevacations.com. About Sunwing As Canada's #1 to the sun and North America's largest vertically integrated travel company, Sunwing has more flights to the south than any other leisure carrier with convenient direct service from over 34 airports across Canada to over 50 popular sun destinations. This scale enables Sunwing to negotiate the best deals and exclusive offers at all of the top-rated resorts across the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Renowned for its award-winning service, Sunwing is consistently voted the #1 leisure airline by travel agents and is the perennial winner of the Consumer Choice Award. Customers can look forward to starting their vacation off in style with award-winning inflight service, which features a complimentary glass of sparkling wine, tea and coffee and non-alcoholic beverage service; together with a buy on board menu of light meals and snacks (including kids' choices) inspired by Food Network Canada Celebrity Chef, Lynn Crawford. Sunwing customers also benefit from the assistance of the company's own knowledgeable destination representatives, who greet them upon arrival and support them throughout their vacation journey. SOURCE Sunwing Vacations Inc. For further information: For all media enquiries, please contact: Rachel Goldrick, Senior Corporate Communications Manager, Sunwing Vacations, 1-800-387-5602 | [email protected] Related Links http://www.signature.ca Transat Chair in breast cancer research to support laboratory work by Dr. Jean-Francois Cote MONTREAL, April 27, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Transat A.T. Inc. and the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal (IRCM) / Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) today announced the creation of the Transat Breast Cancer Research Chair, to be affiliated with the laboratory led by Dr. Jean-Francois Cote, an IRCM researcher and Universite de Montreal professor. The Chair is being instituted with a $500,000 donation from Transat. "Breast cancer is a disease that has affected many of our company's employees. Combating it is a cause that we care a great deal about," said Jean-Marc Eustache, President and Chief Executive Officer, Transat. "We believe the solution, clearly, is research, and it is an honour for our company to be partnering with the IRCM, a world-renowned research centre. I am particularly pleased that we are supporting the work of Dr. Cote by creating the Transat Breast Cancer Research Chair," he added. Dr. Cote and the members of his team are particularly interested in understanding metastases, which are the cause of more than 90 percent of breast-cancerrelated deaths. The Transat Chair will help advance research into the signalling pathways that control metastasis formation. "If we can elucidate the molecular processes that permit the most aggressive forms of cancer to spread, we can counter these invasive tumours, and in the process save many women's lives," Dr. Cote explained. Andre J.P. Couillard, Chair of the IRCM Foundation, said: "Transat's contribution is a sign of its confidence in a unique, innovative institution. This donation will support the leading-edge research being conducted by Dr. Cote's team and enable them to make progress in the fight against this disease, which strikes one in nine Canadian women." Added Marinella Ermacora, a member of the IRCM Foundation Board of Directors and Chair of the Institute's 50th anniversary organizing committee: "We thank Transat for its financial commitment and its great generosity." And Dr. Tarik Moroy, IRCM President and Scientific Director, as well as Louise Lambert-Lagace, Chair of the IRCM Board of Directors, noted: "The research work being done in Dr. Cote's laboratory on cytoskeletal organization and cellular migration is extremely promising. Having the support of a partner like Transat, well known for its community engagement, opens up new avenues of study for those researchers." They concluded: "This major donation from Transat, coming as it does during our 50th anniversary year, consolidates the Institute's reputation for excellence." The announcement of the donation, made at the IRCM, was warmly received by those in attendance, which comprised around a hundred Transat employees and people close to them, including several women diagnosed with breast cancer. Among them were Milene Lanthier, Assistant to the President of Transat Distribution Canada, Celine Boudreau, a trainer at Transat Tours Canada, and Linda Harrison, an analyst with Transat, each of whom shared moving stories about their battle with the disease and the importance of research. "My belief is that through continued research, there will be a day we can eliminate breast cancer as a cause of death," said Ms. Harrison, summarizing her colleagues' remarks. "But if we did not have dedicated supporters providing the means for dedicated researchers, we would not be not able to keep up the fight. That is why I personally thank researchers such as those working at IRCM and supporters like Transat, which keep pushing forward." About Transat Transat A.T. Inc. is a leading integrated international tourism company specializing in holiday travel and active in air transportation, accommodation, travel packaging and distribution. It operates mainly in Canada, Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean, with some 25 destination countries, and distributes products in over 50 countries. Based in Montreal, the company has 5,000 employees. Transat is firmly committed to sustainable tourism development, as reflected in its multiple corporate responsibility initiatives over the past 10 years, and was awarded Travelife Partner status in 2016. The vacation travel companion par excellence, Transat celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2017 (TSX: TRZ). About the IRCM Foundation The Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal (IRCM) / Montreal Clinical Research Institute Foundation is one of the Institute's key partners. Through the tremendous efforts of people committed to IRCM's present and future, the Foundation can fulfill its mission of supporting IRCM's research, technological development and training activities, promoting its growth. About the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal Founded in 1967, the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal (IRCM) / Montreal Clinical Research Institute is a non-profit organization that conducts fundamental and clinical biomedical research in addition to training high-level young scientists. With its cutting-edge technology facilities, the institute brings together 33 research teams, which work in cancer, immunology, neuroscience, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, systems biology and medicinal chemistry. The IRCM also operates a research clinic specialized in hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes and cystic fibrosis, as well as a research centre on rare and genetic diseases in adults. The IRCM is affiliated with the Universite de Montreal and associated with McGill University. Its clinic is affiliated with the Centre hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal (CHUM). The IRCM is supported by the Ministere de l'Economie, de la Science et de l'Innovation (Quebec ministry of Economy, Science and Innovation). The Institute is proudly celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2017. SOURCE Transat A.T. Inc. For further information: Odette Trottier, Director, Public Affairs and Communications, [email protected], 514 908-8891; Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal / Montreal Clinical Research Institute, Anne-Marie Beauregard, Communications Advisor, [email protected], 514 987-5555 Related Links http://www.transat.com Stamp is first in a set of 10 that will capture unforgettable moments of the last 50 years as country celebrates Canada 150 MONTREAL, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - Canada Post and Moshe Safdie, whose revolutionary Habitat 67 modular housing complex earned global accolades as an icon of urban living, today unveiled a stamp with an image of his futuristic structure representing the event for which it was built: Expo 67. The Expo 67 stamp is the first of 10 to be issued to mark Canada's 150th year since Confederation. Each one celebrates a significant and unforgettable moment in the life of this country since its centennial in 1967. The 10 moments and achievements, which have become pillars of Canada's collective memory, were selected by Canada Post's stamp advisory committee, which includes historians, collectors and artists. A video featuring Safdie and a magazine article about Expo 67 are available at canadapost.ca/Canada150. Safdie unveiled the stamp in the very building that forever placed his signature on his adopted city. With Habitat 67, Safdie a bold, brash and brilliant young architect on the verge of launching a significant global career captured an era of optimism, energy and progress. This project also launched his incredible career that has had him design prestigious buildings around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Quebec Museum of Civilization, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. Habitat 67 was perfect for Expo 67, the international festival that transformed its host city of Montreal and the country itself. Canada introduced itself to the world with Expo 67 as a country of seemingly boundless talent and potential. The event brought Canadians from across the country and visitors from around the world together for six months between April and October 1967. When Canada's population was only 20 million, more than 50 million people attended. That ratio set a per-capita attendance record for a World's Fair, which still stands. It is widely considered the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century. Those six months became a landmark moment for Canada socially, culturally and politically. Several generations of Canadians have since pointed to it as the signature event of our centennial year. It featured pavilions from 62 countries, as well as Canada's provinces and territories. It was an opportunity for Canadians to get better acquainted with Quebec culture. It attracted many notable figures of the time, including Queen Elizabeth II, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Princess Grace of Monaco, Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, and Bing Crosby. The Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast live from Expo 67 twice that May. Many Canadians associate Bobby Gimby's popular centennial tune Ca-na-da with Expo 67. With the theme "Man and His World," the event also showcased Canadian innovation be it technology, urban planning, industry or architecture. The vision and legacy of Expo 67 still echo today through Montreal's infrastructure, architecture, public art and the two islands in the St. Lawrence River. The next stamp in the Canada 150 set will be revealed in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 3. The others will be unveiled individually at cities across the country, the last of them on June 1. About the stamp Each of the 10 maple-leaf shaped die-cut PermanentTM domestic-rate stamps measures 40 mm x 40 mm and is printed in 6 colours plus tagging. The self-adhesive stamps are available in a booklet of 10 (4 million stamps). A gummed pane of 10 stamps, with circle perforations 4.5 cm in diameter, is also available (80,000 panes). Official First Day Covers, one for each stamp design and each cancelled in OTTAWA ON, are available in a pack of 10 (10,000 packs). The stamp issue was designed by Roy White and Liz Wurzinger of Subplot Design Inc. in Vancouver, B.C., and printed by the Lowe-Martin Group. About Moshe Safdie Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. Beginning with his architectural thesis at McGill University in 1964 and the pioneering housing complex Habitat 67 in Montreal, Safdie's design philosophy has been consistently responsive to local historic, cultural, and environmental contexts. With his global firm, Safdie Architects, notable projects include the National Gallery of Canada; Marina Bay Sands in Singapore; Khalsa Heritage Centre in Punjab, India; and the United States Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington, D.C. Safdie has been recognized widely for his enduring influence on the built environment. He is the recipient of the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Gold Medal from both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the American Institute of Architects, la Medaille du Merite from the Order of Architects of Quebec, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award. He continues to inspire the theory and application of ideas about housing, mixed use, and high density in cities around the world. SOURCE Canada Post For further information: Media Relations, 613-734-8888, [email protected] Related Links http://www.canadapost.ca Healthy Kids Day at YMCA locations across Canada TORONTO, April 27, 2017 /CNW/ - On April 30, 2017, YMCAs across Canada will be participating in YMCA Healthy Kids Day. The national event promotes the habits of a healthy lifestyle, and features fun activities for the entire family at YMCAs across the country. From healthy eating tips, to physical activities and games, YMCA Healthy Kids Day includes activities that are accessible, free of charge and open to the public. In celebration of Canada's 150th Anniversary of Confederation, a special LocalMOTION Live! event will be held which will simulate a cross-Canada journey to discover the unique landscapes of our country. By participating in LocalMOTION Live! activities at local YMCAs, Canadians can enter to win LocalMOTION's monthly prize one of two $1,000 VIA Rail vouchers. Additionally, every LocalMOTION Live participant is eligible for the LocalMOTION Grand Prize, a VIA Rail prize pack valued at $13,500. The YMCA LocalMOTION Challenge is Canada 150 Signature Project that that encourages Canadians to take part in online and in-person activities themed around health and community while learning about the partnership between the YMCA and the railway companies in building our national railway. For more information, visit http://ymca.ca/LocalMOTION. "As we celebrate Canada 150 and Healthy Kids Day, I am delighted to see the YMCA encouraging Canadians of all ages to get active within their communities by participating in the LocalMOTION Challenge," said the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage. "I invite everyone to take part in the activities being offered across the country to promote the benefits of a healthy, active lifestyle. I hope many of you will take the Challenge!" Annually, YMCA Healthy Kids Day draws over 30,000 participants to events at over 100 YMCA locations across the country. Healthy Kids Day has become a wonderful way for Canada's families to support the well-being of their children, knowing they have their YMCA as a dedicated partner in helping them achieve their goals for their kids," said Peter Dinsdale, President & CEO, YMCA Canada. "This year Healthy Kids Day promises to be even more special, as we celebrate not only the continued health of our communities, but also our 150th anniversary as a nation. And through our YMCA LocalMOTION Live! events we'll all have the chance to learn about the little-known history of the YMCA and our railways in building Canada's communities. As summer approaches, YMCA Healthy Kids Day provides a great opportunity for parents and kids alike to get active and learn more about their local YMCA. For parents coming to the Y to discover what children's activities are available now and in the coming summer months, YMCA Healthy Kids Day is the perfect place to start. To find out more about YMCA Healthy Kids Day events across the country, visit YMCA.ca/HealthyKids. About the YMCA in Canada The YMCA is one of Canada's longest standing and largest charities, serving more than 2.1 million people annually, with a special focus on children, teens and young adults. Our mandate is to advance the health and well-being of Canadians inspirit, mind and body. Across the country, YMCA Member Associations are providing vital community services that have a positive impact on some of Canada's most pressing social issues -- from chronic disease to unemployment, social isolation, poverty, inequality and more. We offer wrap around programs that help Canadians become physically active, better connected to their communities, and equipped with the skills needed to achieve success in work and life. By addressing the social determinants of health, we are playing an essential role in the building of a healthier Canada today and for generations to come. For more information, please visit ymca.ca . SOURCE YMCA Canada For further information: FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT: Jennifer Holmes Weir, SVP Advocacy, Communications & Public Policy, YMCA Canada, T: 416-301-0100; Jayne Cassidy, Citizen Relations, [email protected], T: 647-934-8097 By Olivier Ferret 27 April 2017 - 09:10 The Sochi Autodrom is one of the longest circuits in Formula One and circumnavigates the 2014 Winter Olympic venues as well as sharing just over 1km with public roads. Designed by Herman Tilke, the circuit boasts some of his signature designs such as long straights and sweeping hairpins. Now in its fourth year, the drivers will head back to Sochi once again with an even greater understanding of the circuit. For Russia, Pirelli has made available the ultrasoft, supersoft and soft tyres. Paddy Lowe This is just the fourth time we have headed to the Sochi Autodrom since the inaugural race here in 2014, so it is still a relatively new circuit with new tarmac. The surface is very smooth indeed, probably the smoothest we see all season, which does present some challenges. It can be difficult to warm up the tyres during qualifying and degradation is extremely low, as we saw when Nico Rosberg pitted on lap one in 2014 and managed the entire remainder of the race on that set of tyres. It is a circuit that requires good all round performance as it has a wide range of different speed corners and a long straight, requiring power and efficiency. The long straight also provides one of the longest drags from the race start to the first turn, which gives some interesting opportunities for slipstreaming after the start itself. We are reasonably encouraged by the performance of the car in Bahrain, so we are optimistic for a strong race. The Formula one fan base in Russia is growing in this relatively new territory for the sport, so we look forward to putting on an exciting show for everybody this weekend. Felipe Massa Sochi is a really nice track to drive and its a race I enjoy a lot. In the past its a track we have done well at I finished fourth and fifth in 2014 and 2015 - so Im hoping we can have another good race there this year. The event has been getting bigger every year so Im really looking forward to going back again. Lance Stroll This is certainly one of the most difficult tracks for me to talk about as I have never been there or done it on the sim yet. I did watch last years race but still have to really see how the track is. However, I do enjoy going to new tracks. They all have their own particular characteristics and it is fun to find these out. Obviously the first experience I will have is the Thursday track walk, which I do with my engineers. It is surprising how much you can learn about a track by walking it that is still relevant when you are going round at speed in an F1 car. You get to know the bumps and have a feel for how the car will react. When learning a new one there is no set number of laps it takes, as sometimes you get into it very quickly and others it takes a bit more time. It just depends on the track and your feeling and how long it takes to get into a rhythm. The Kano state Emirate Council says the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II spent N37 million on telephone calls since he ascended the throne three years ago. The Walin Kano and spokesperson of the emirate council, Mahe Bashir, disclosed this to newsmen while reacting to reports that the Emir has spent as much as N6 billion since he was enthroned in June 2014. According to Mahe, the monarch paid N37 million to Airtel to enable him make calls which most times are international.It is true that the sum of N37,054,196.06 was paid to Airtel due to the fact that the emir has been identified with only one local mobile phone which he uses within and outside the country. Majority of the charges are that of roaming, which is normal. The telephones charges of the palace are paid by the council, particularly when it comes within the provision of the budget.Mahe also disclosed that on the advise of the state government, N142.8 million was used to purchase the Emir's bullet-proof cars. This was as a result of the attack on the late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, on his way back from Murtala Muhammed Mosque to the palace. The sum of N108 million was paid to the children of the late emir by the council, in respect of the late emirs personal cars inherited by the present emir.The cars now form part of the emirate councils fleet in the palace he said The Walin Kano also disclosed that about N152 million was spent to purchase furniture for the palace because those used by the Emir before Sanusi were removed and given to his children according to Islamic injunction. The sum of N152,627,723 was paid to Dabo Gate for the procurement of furniture for the palace. After the demise of the emir, all his belongings, including the furniture, were removed and given to his children in accordance with Islamic injunction, he saidThe emirate spokesperson also dismissed allegations that the council spents billions of naira on chartered flight, adding that the council only chartered flight twice for the emirs movement to Sokoto and Benin City. "The council chartered an air flight twice for His Highness for the following trips: In September 2014 to Sokoto, when the emir paid a traditional homage (Mubayaa) to the Sultan of Sokoto after his turbaning as Emir of Kano and the council spent N4,651,000.In January 2015 for the trip to Benin for his installation as chancellor of the University of Benin and it cost N9,071,000. All the trips were made a as a result of lack of scheduled flight at that time and it cost the council the sum of N13,722,00 as against alleged N9,071,000. China has launched a new aircraft carrier, boosting its military presence amid rising tensions in the region.It is the countrys second aircraft carrier, after the Liaoning, and the first to be made domestically.State media said the unnamed ship was transferred from dry dock into the water in the north east port of Dalian. Previous reports said it would be operational by 2020.It comes amid heated rhetoric between the U.S. and North Korea in recent days.China has had only one operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, which it bought from Ukraine and refitted.The new carrier will deploy Shenyang J-15 fighter jets, but is considered by many military observers to be technologically inferior to the 10 carriers used by the United States navy, says the BBCs China correspondent Stephen McDonell.The U.S. has deployed warships and a submarine to the Korean peninsula, prompting an angry reaction from North Korea. China has urged for calm.There is also the ongoing issue of competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.The carrier is touted to be a significant upgrade from the Liaoning, which was built more than 25 years ago and is a refurbished Soviet ship bought from Ukraine.It has been seen by some analysts as a kind of training vessel in preparation for the new carrier, our correspondent says.Chinese state news agency Xinhua said work had started on Chinas latest aircraft carrier in 2013.The launch was attended by the vice-president of Chinas central military commission, Fan Changlong.Officials smashed a bottle of champagne on the ships hull as magnificent patriotic songs played on loudspeakers and nearby ships sounded their horns in celebration, reported Xinhua.The defence ministry said previously that it would carry Chinas J-15 aircraft along with other planes, and that it would use conventional rather than nuclear propulsion.Source: BBC A North Korean government official said on Wednesday that his countrys nuclear tests would never stop as long as the U.S. continued what they viewed as acts of aggression.Speaking to CNN Wednesday, Sok Chol Won wouldnt confirm when the countrys long-anticipated sixth nuclear test would take place but said it wouldnt be influenced by outside events.The nuclear test is an important part of our continued efforts to strengthen our nuclear forces, he said.As long as America continues its hostile acts of aggression, we will never stop nuclear and missile tests.Soks official title is director of North Koreas Institute of Human Rights at the Academy of Social Sciences, but he was authorized to comment to CNN on all matters.His comments came as top U.S. Cabinet members put a stress on economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure to rein in North Korea, calling for a return to dialogue after a Senate briefing on the threat posed by Pyongyangs nuclear and missile program.The calmer tone came in contrast to U.S. President Donald Trumps tough rhetoric toward North Korea earlier this week.Another nuclear test could further inflame an already tense situation on the Korean Peninsula, at a time when the Trump administration is moving large amounts of military hardware to the region.The USS Vinson aircraft carrier is currently on its way to the peninsula, while a nuclear-powered submarine, USS Michigan, arrived in a South Korean port on Tuesday.And the THAAD anti-missile system designed to mitigate the threat of North Koreas missiles will be operational in the coming days, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific said.Sok said Tuesdays massive artillery drill, held on the 85th anniversary of North Koreas army, was a warning to the U.S. President.This exercise is a direct response to acts of aggression by the United States, he said.But despite the dramatic drills and the deployment of military assets, analysts said that outright conflict between North Korea and the U.S. and its regional allies was unlikely.We are in a phony war phase, Euan Graham, director of the International Security Program at Sydneys Lowy Institute, wrote for CNN.If theres an underlying motive to Washingtons increased belligerence, it is to get the Chinese sufficiently rattled that they become serious about sanctions beyond tokenistic enforcement.Trump has repeatedly called on China, North Koreas only real ally and main economic benefactor, to do more to bring its neighbour into line.Read more: CNN I did not know I was being married off. People came home and brought things for my father. When time came for them to leave, I thought I was escorting my aunt but when I got there, she gave me away to the man. In 1994, when she was 13, Nabatanzi gave birth to twins. Two years later, she gave birth to triplets and a year and seven months after that added a set of quadruplets. This, she says was nothing strange to her because she had seen it before in her lineage. My father gave birth to 45 children with different women and these all came in quintuplets, quadruples, twins and triplets, said the woman, who is called by fellow villagers as Nalongo Muzaala Bana, the twin mother that produces quadruplets Dr Charles Kiggundu, a gynecologist at Mulago Hospital and President of gynaecologists and obstetricians, said it was very possible for Nabatanzi to have taken after her father. Her case is genetic predisposition to hyper-ovulate (releasing multiple eggs in one cycle), which significantly increases the chance of having multiples; it is always genetic, he explained. The doctor told Nabatanzi that she could not be stopped then because she had a high ovary count which would eventually kill her if she stopped. Having these unfertilised eggs accumulate pose not only a threat to destroy the reproductive system but can also make the woman lose her life, Dr Ahmed Kikomeko from Kawempe General Hospital explained. I was advised to keep producing since putting this on hold would mean death. I tried using the Inter Uterine Device (IUD) but I got sick and vomited a lot, to the point of near death. I went into a coma for a month, she said. At the age of 23 with 25 children, she went back to hospital to try to stop producing more babies. I was checked in at Mulago Hospital and advised to continue producing since the ovary count was still high. A Uganda County Councillor Samari Musenero said Mariam Nabatanzi from Kabimbiri village, about 50 kilometres north-east of the capital Kampala, had all the children with the same man. A 37-year-old Ugandan woman, living in Kabimbiri village, Mukono District, outside of Kampala, has made world record for having 38 children.According to the Daily Monitor of Uganda, the woman identified as Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye had her last baby via Caesarian section in December 2016, after which doctors cut her uterus from inside.She has had six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruplets and single births. Ten of these are girls and the rest are boys. The oldest is 23 years old while the youngest is four months.The Monitor said she was married at the age of 12 in 1993, to a man who was 40 years old.The woman is struggling to support her offspring because she receives no financial assistance from the father of the children, the politician said.He explained that politicians from the district had mobilised government funds to provide Nabatanzi with maize seeds to plant.Read more about Nabatanzi in Daily Monitor Nigeria's former Senate President David Mark has stated that he warned ex President Goodluck Jonathan of the conspiracy against him in... Nigeria's former Senate President David Mark has stated that he warned ex President Goodluck Jonathan of the conspiracy against him in the north before he lost the 2015 presidential elections.He said this in the book "Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was defeated in Nigeria, written by former presidential spokesman, Segun Adeniyi,David Mark said that he saw the defeat coming and had pointed out the unrealistic voting projections made by the party about the North to the former president and the conspiracy against him but he was not taken seriously.I saw it and at difference times, I pointed out to him and the party that the projections being made by some people around the president about what the voting pattern in the north would were wrong.I could see the conspiracy and the gang-up building up in the north against the aspiration of Jonathan but my voice was drowned out by those who took it for granted that a sitting president, and one from PDP, could not lose, Mark said.Some people were deceiving the president with the kind of false scenarios they were painting for him. The VP could see the conspiracy but I dont know how much influence he had on the campaign. Why Jonathan couldnt see it until it was too late is what I find difficult to understand, Mark pointed out. The Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, on Thursday expressed the hope that the 2017 Appropriation Bill will be ready for the signature of Preside... The Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, on Thursday expressed the hope that the 2017 Appropriation Bill will be ready for the signature of President Muhammadu Buhari by next week despite the hitches being experienced on the passage of the document at the National Assembly.Lawan disclosed this in an interview with State House correspondents after he met behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.While saying there is nothing to worry about on the document, the Senate Leader recalled that the National Assembly had intended to pass the budget in March.He said that target could not be met because of some parameters that lawmakers did not have control over.He said while it was also planned to be passed in April, the residence of the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje, was raided by the police and parts of the Budget documents were taken away.He said, This and other things that happened and essentially, the trauma that the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation had to go through, affected the process of budgeting.When we were going on Easter recess, members of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, including that of the House, did not go on recess. They stayed back because that was the arrangement so that by the time we returned on April 25, that was Tuesday, they should lay the report of the budget.Unfortunately, that was not possible because of what happened. But the good news is that we are doing everything possible to ensure that we catch up with the lost time.So, by the grace of God, I am thinking that by next week, we should be able to finish our own work and pass the budget for Mr. president to sign.Lawan also gave an indication that the Senate may consider the list of ministerial nominees sent to it by the President and other matters by next week.When asked for the purpose of his visit to the President, Lawan said it was his responsibility as the Senate Leader to market all bills and requests in the Senate.He said he was at the Presidential Villa, therefore, to meet Buhari as part of his continuous engagements.It was meant to be sure that l get my briefings right so that l can always market presidential requests so well and as scheduled and this is supposed to be a continuous process and that is essentially why l have come to meet the President, he said.Lawan said it was wrong to narrow lobbying in a presidential system to giving somebody money to buy his or her conscious in order to do something.He said it was meant to involve talking and engaging continuously with people who have mandates and jurisdictions on some issues, saying that was what he meant by continuous and sustained interactions between the President and the Legislature.He said, l know clearly that there is independence of each arm but l also know equally well that there is so much interdependence between the two arms and even among the three arms of government in Nigeria.Therefore, we need to always close and narrow the gap and that is what l mean. My presence here is part of that engagement because even as legislators, we lobby.When we have our bills, we lobby our colleagues. We go to their houses. We send some write-ups to explain the necessity of that bill. We move from one seat to the next, talking to our colleagues.So, there is nothing wrong and l believe it is something we need to cultivate as a culture in this democracy. The palace of the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi, has reacted to the humiliating treatment meted out to him by the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Ak... The palace of the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi, has reacted to the humiliating treatment meted out to him by the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, at a public function in Lagos on Tuesday, saying the Lagos monarch risked the wrath of the ancestors for humiliating his superior.A video of the incident which went virile on social media showed the Lagos monarch refusing to shake hands with the Ooni, who arrived the venue of the event while guests were already seated.The Ooni, on entering the hall, went straight to greet traditional rulers, but Oba Akiolu shunned him and with a wave of the hand, gestured his rejection of the Oonis greetings.The Ooni however, took the incident with calm and took his seat on the same roll where the traditional ruler was seated.The Head of Palace Directorate of Tourism, Awoyemi Tunde, said the Ooni of Ife was not losing sleep over the issue.It is not a slap on the Ooni of Ife but rather a slap on the Oba of Lagos, he said. The stool of Oba of Lagos was founded by Olofin Ogunfunminire and the Ooni of Ife is the Oba of Yoruba land.The Oba of Lagos has to come to terms with the fact that Ooni is the royal father of Yoruba land, it is necessary that all persons come together to unite Yoruba land but really the issue at the event is very condemnable.Mr. Tunde also said that the Oba of Lagos risked the wrath of the Alale'(Ancestors), as a result of his disrespect for the superior monarch.God gave Ooni of Ife Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, the mandate to unite the Yoruba land and nothing will stop him from doing that, he added.According to Mr. Tunde, reactions from different Yoruba communities would continue to pour in to denounce the action of the Lagos monarch.If we dont receive an apology especially with the image of Ile-Ife, we will call on the ancestors on the issue, he said. As reactions continue to greet President Muhammadu Buharis decision to work from the house, some Nigerian lawyers have stated that there ... As reactions continue to greet President Muhammadu Buharis decision to work from the house, some Nigerian lawyers have stated that there was nothing wrong with his action.Buhari was absent from a meeting of the Federal Executive Council inside the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday, a development that triggered nationwide debate.However, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed had while explaining the reason for Buharis absent said the President will now operate from home.In a statement, Mohammed said the President only decided to work from home on Wednesday, not that he had decided to work from home henceforth.The minister said, He (the President) wanted to rest today and he asked the VP to preside over todays meeting.In addition, he also asked that all his files be taken home to him and he will be working from home today.The Civil Liberty Organisation, CLO, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, while reacting, called on the president to resign.However, some lawyers, who spoke exclusively with newsmen on Thursday, said the President can work from anywhere, including the toilet.According them, the constitution does not enforce the president to report at the office everyday.Speaking with our reporter on phone, human right activist and Abuja-based lawyer, Bar Paul Edeh said Buharis decision is constitutional.What Nigerians should be debating on now is not where the president is working from but his capacity to lead. As far as I am concerned, the president can rule from anywhere, even from the toilet or aircraft, he remains our president.Are we saying that Buhari could only be addressed as president in his office? I think what Nigerians should be talking about now is if he has the capacity to lead.The constitution does not enforce the president to sign daily attendance roaster in his office. What if he travels out of the country, wont he still remain our president?His coming to the office is a true test to the fact that he is okay but not a must. The reason he operates from home is because he is sick and anybody could fall sick.I think what we need to do now is to ask some medical experts to tell us if the president is still strong enough to lead. And the president equally needs to own up on his health status if he still has the power to lead or hand over to his Vice, Osinbajo, Edeh said.On his part, ace lawyer, Barrister Mike Awoniyi said the hullabaloo over Buharis decision to work from home is needless.According to him, there is nowhere in the constitution that says the president should report at his office on daily basis.I think the noise about Buharis decision to work from home is needless because he has not committed any crime. He can work from anywhere as long as he is still alive and has not told anybody he is no longer active. Those calling for his impeachment or resignation should show us the section of the scripture that says the president must sign daily register in his office.We Nigerians love making mountains of molehills, the Lagos-based lawyer told newsmen on phone.On his part, Benue-born lawyer, Barrister Akor Ikwuoche also agreed with his colleagues that the president can work from anywhere.He said, To the best of my knowledge, it is not an impeachable offence. He can even operate from his hometown in Daura. It depends on where he chooses to stay and discharge his duty as the nations number one man.There is nothing unconstitutional about his decision. The only area Nigerians should look at is whether the president still has the mental capacity to perform his duty.This can only be done by medical experts headed by his chief physician. People should put pressure on him to open up on his health status and not calling for his resignation or impeachment. The All Progressives Congress (APC) governors forum on Wednesday maintained that there was nothing awkward on the absence of President Muh... The All Progressives Congress (APC) governors forum on Wednesday maintained that there was nothing awkward on the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari at the weekly federal executive council (FEC) meeting.Governor Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai who spoke on behalf of the twenty-four-member governors forum noted: We are not worried about the development. It is not compulsory for Mr President to preside at every federal executive council meeting. That is why our Constitution makes provision for a vice president. Mr President is over 70 years old and it is such at that age to have one medical challenge or the other.Even I at 57 take medication for one ailment or another. Our prayer is that the president gets better and well. But the Emerson why he has the vice president is precisely for this reason. It may not be because he has a medical challenge that he didnt go to the executive council meeting. He may have other pressing matters to attend.I have not chaired every executive council meeting in Kaduna even when I am in Kaduna because my deputy governor is there if there are other things to attend that are of greater priority than the council meeting. We are not worried yet. There is no concern to be worried but we ask Nigerians to join all of us in praying for the president improved health. The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has condemned the bail conditions granted its incarcerated leader, Nnamdi Kanu by Justice Binta Nya... The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has condemned the bail conditions granted its incarcerated leader, Nnamdi Kanu by Justice Binta Nyako of an Abuja Federal High Court.IPOB, in a statement signed and sent to newsmen by its spokespersons, Barrister Emma Nmezu, Dr. Clifford Chukwuemeka Iroanya claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari wrote the bail conditions and handed them over to Justice Nyako who read them in court.Recall that Kanu, who is currently facing trial alongside three other pro-Biafra agitators, Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Benjamin Madubugwu, and David Nwawuisi before the Justice Nyako-led court was on Tuesday granted bail on health grounds.The trial judge, however, gave some stringent conditions which the IPOB leader which must meet before perfecting his bail.According to Justice Nyako, Kanu must meet the following bail terms, Produce three sureties and two of whom must be; (a) highly respected and recognized Jewish leader and (b) highly placed Igbo person such as a Senator. The third surety must be resident in Abuja with a landed property in the same Abuja. Above all, the three sureties must deposit one hundred million naira (N100 Million) each.Barred from attending any rally and granting any form of interview.Must not be in a crowd exceeding 10 persons.Must surrender his British and Nigerian passports even when these passports are still in the custody of the DSS.Must sign an undertaking to avail himself for trial at all times.However, the pro-Biafra group stressed that the bail terms were defective and a show of judicial recklessness and rascality.IPOB insisted that the bail conditions were booby traps meant to ensnare and gag its leader perpetually.Faulting the entire bail conditions granted Kanu, the pro-Biafra group claimed that Justice Nyako has brought the Nigerian Judicial System to the lowest ebb.Calling on the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Walter Onnoghen to intervene in Kanus trial and salvage the tattered image of the Nigerian Judiciary, IPOB stressed that Kanu and other pro-Biafra agitators should be released unconditionally.Read full statement of the group belowThe bail conditions handed out to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, by Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako is not only defective but also smirks of judicial recklessness, rascality, and reeks of tribal and religious bigotry. At best, the bail conditions are booby traps to perpetually gag, ensnare, and render lameduck, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu whose only crime is the peaceful demand for the enforcement of the rights of Indigenous People of Biafra to self-determination as enshrined in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). We posit that Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako has brought the Nigerian Judicial System to the lowest ebb by virtue of these bail conditions.For those who do not know, on the 25th of April, 2017, Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako granted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu bail on health grounds but with the following strings attached:1) Produce three sureties and two of whom must be; (a) highly respected and recognized Jewish leader and (b) highly placed Igbo person such as a Senator. The third surety must be resident in Abuja with a landed property in the same Abuja. Above all, the three sureties must deposit one hundred million naira (N100million) each.2) Barred from attending any rally and granting any form of interview.3) Must not be in a crowd exceeding 10 persons.4) Must surrender his British and Nigerian passports even when these passports are still in the custody of the DSS.5) Must sign an undertaking to avail himself for trial at all times.Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako has turned the Judiciary on its head with these laughable and ludicrous bail conditions. She has made history in the Nigerian Judicial System as the first Judge to introduce religion and tribe into bail conditions in a non-religious court case. Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako has defamed the Nigerian Judicial System by violating the fundamental human rights of an accused person as stipulated in the various United Nations Conventions as well as in the relevant sections of Chapter Four of the Retired General Abdulsalami Abubakar-unilaterally written Constitution of Nigeria.We can confirm from the immediate family of Nnamdi Kanu that his official religion is Christianity, hence we are at loss on why a respected Jewish leader must be one of the sureties. As far as we know, Nnamdi Kanu has British and Nigerian passports, so why stipulate a respected Jewish leader as one of the sureties? Secondly, why specify that another surety must be of Igbo extraction? Is Igbo the only tribe in Biafra or in Nigeria for that matter? Has there been any precedence where a surety was required to come from a particular tribe?If truly Justice Binta Nyakos court is a Federal High Court, why restrict a third surety to be a resident of Abuja? Even at that, is it out of place for an Abuja resident to have a landed property elsewhere within Nigeria or is Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako not confident in the ability of the relevant Nigerian Agency to identify and seize any property outside of Abuja if such an Agency is required to do so?Furthermore, we ask Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako to explain what she meant by not allowing Nnamdi Kanu to be found in the presence of more than 10 persons. From our investigation, Nnamdi Kanus siblings and their immediate families plus Nnamdi Kanus parents all numbered more than 20 persons. On the other hand, Nnamdi Kanus in-laws numbered more than 12 persons. So what happens if Nnamdi Kanu with his wife and children decide to visit his siblings and his parents or to visit his in-laws? Outside of the family and in-laws, so Nnamdi Kanu cannot attend church services, go to the market, or be in any mode of public transportation system because in all these, it is impossible to have just 10 persons or less.Of what use is granting someone bail on health grounds while at the same time refusing the person to travel to any place in the world where he or she wishes to have satisfactory medical services? Why should Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako restrict Nnamdi Kanu to receiving medical treatments only in Nigeria through the seizure of his International Passports? What has Nnamdi Kanu attending any rally got to do with the ongoing court case? If in the process of receiving medical treatments, the physician determined that Nnamdi Kanu should be put on bed rest, so should the bail be revoked because he will not avail himself of trial at all times?From these bail conditions deviously handed out by Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako, it is obvious that this is a case of the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau. In other words, those bail conditions were written by Retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari and handed over to Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako to read out in court. We therefore, call upon the Chief Justice of Nigeria to intervene and salvage whatever remains of the tattered image of the Nigerian Judiciary.These bail conditions are laughable and defective and must be totally overturned. In addition to granting an unconditional release to Nnamdi Kanu, we demand that the other three detained Biafrans, namely Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Benjamin Madubugwu, and David Nwawuisi must also be released unconditionally. Nothing less will be acceptable to Biafrans. Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako must jettison the bail conditions she handed out to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and proceed to unconditionally release all four Biafrans immediately. Former Minister of Culture and Tourism, Femi Fani Kayode, has countered the claim by a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, B... Former Minister of Culture and Tourism, Femi Fani Kayode, has countered the claim by a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu on why Muhammadu Buhari didnt pick him as his running mate in 2015.Tinubu had revealed that Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, stopped the President from picking him as his running mate in the 2015 presidential election.Tinubus claims were contained in a book titled Against the Run of Play, written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi.He said their reason was that Christians in the North would not accept a Muslim-Muslim ticket.What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) did behind my back was wrong. We always do things as a group. By the time they joined, we were already too far ahead in our processes but we accommodated them.We agreed to take their state structures and subsume them into the party and they all had their opportunity to nominate the candidates of their choices for different political offices.But they went behind to instigate Buhari and some other people in the party against me on the pretext of religion. That was not right. They were canvassing arguments that the Christians in the North would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket, Tinubu had said.Reacting however, Fani-Kayode in a Facebook post on Thursday, said El Rufai had wanted Buhari to pick Fashola, former Lagos governor as his running mate.He wrote, The Muslim/Muslim ticket was their plan all along and I was the first to expose and oppose it when I was in APC. That is why I left them.Obasanjo opposed it too. Saraki did so behind the scenes. El Rufai did not oppose a Muslim Muslim ticket. It is just that he didnt want Tinubu. He wanted Fashola.I discussed this matter deeply with every single name that I mentioned here when I was with them. The whole thing sickened me. A civil society group, Change the Change Coalition, on Thursday vowed to stage mass protests if President Muhammadu Buhari failed to atten... A civil society group, Change the Change Coalition, on Thursday vowed to stage mass protests if President Muhammadu Buhari failed to attend the next Federal Executive Council meeting.Buhari, who has hardly been seen in public in recent weeks, was absent at the last two FEC meetings, which were chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.Reacting to the development, the group warned that it would mobilize Nigerians to compel Buhari to officially transmit power to Osinbajo, if he, once again, excuses himself from the next FEC meeting.Instead of staying away from work, Buhari should officially transmit power to Osinbajo, so as to be free to travel abroad for more medical attention, the group said.National Coordinator of CCC, Mazi Bismarck Oji, spoke at a news conference in Enugu.Oji likened the current intrigues surrounding Buharis health to the situation that prevailed in the Presidential Villa during the time of the late former president, Umaru YarAdua.He said, What we have before us is another YarAdua scenario the President has been absent from at least two FEC meetings consecutively.Firstly, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, told us the President was attending to more important matters and delegated the Vice President to chair the meeting.What could be more important than chairing the weekly FEC meeting, more so when his attendance would have allayed fears about his health status?Secondly, Lai Mohammed told us the President would be working from home.That is an insult on the intelligence of Nigerians and another episode in the theatre of the bizarre which this administration has turned governance into. Lagos State Government Akinwunmi Ambode Thursday said more public private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure funding, including the pro... Lagos State Government Akinwunmi Ambode Thursday said more public private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure funding, including the proposed Fourth Mainland Bridge, was needed to make the state a preferred destination for investment.He said the state was determined to explore the PPP model in areas such as road network expansion, transportation, housing and environment.Some critical projects we have identified to be implemented through collaboration with the private sector include the Fourth Mainland Bridge, the Okokomaiko road expansion project, Oko-Oso-Itoikin road dualisation and the Ikorodu-Agbowa-Itoikin-Ijebu-Ode road project, he said.The governor, represented by the Deputy Governor Dr Idiat Adebule, spoke at the 2017 annual lecture of the law firm of Punuka Attorneys and Solicitors in Lagos.The theme was: The role of public private partnership in infrastructural development.The governor said the government was not abdicating its responsibilities but essentially releasing scarce resources for other important projects.He said an advantage of bringing the private section into governance was the efficiency it brings to project management and the issues of waste, delayed delivery and abandonment associated with public projects.Ambode the said government revenue cannot be relied upon as the only source of funding for developmental projects.The reality of this fact is becoming clearer as a result of reduction in government revenue occasioned by dwindling oil prices and increasing need of the people, he said.The governor said the state has already effectively used the PPP model in the delivery of critical infrastructure, such as the Bus Rapid Transit system, the ongoing Eko Atlantic Project, the Lekki Free Trade Zone, among others.Senior Partner, Punuka Attorneys and Solicitors, Chief Anthony Idigbe (SAN), said government alone cannot be saddled with investing tax payers money in otherwise commercially viable infrastructure projects in the face of other social needs.Consequently, private participation is needed for the enhancement of infrastructural development and indeed is required as, perhaps, a matter of social commitment, to step up their game to fill the infrastructural funding gap.In addition, they can bring private sector experience to conceptualisation, design, execution, operation and maintenance of infrastructure, Idigbe said.Among speakers at the event were Chief Executive Officer of Chapel Hill Denham, Mr Bolaji Balogun, Founder, E. Anthony Professional Corporation, Canada, Anthony Ross (QC) and Partner, WeirFoulds LLP, a Canandian based law firm, Frank Walwyn, among others. The Nigeria Police has replied a former Governor of Gombe State and Senator representing Gombe Central, Senator Abdullahi Danjuma Goje, th... The Nigeria Police has replied a former Governor of Gombe State and Senator representing Gombe Central, Senator Abdullahi Danjuma Goje, that they (police) should be held responsible for the alleged missing of the 2017 budget.Goje, whose house was recently raided by the Police, is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations.In a motion of personal explanation raised on the floor on Wednesday, the Senator said, the Police, in addition to the sum of N18m cash retrieved from over 50 occupants of his residence, also took away his laptop computer and 18 office files, where the 2017 Appropriation Bill was being worked upon.Replying to the allegation in a statement issued Wednesday night by the Force PRO, Moshood Jimoh, the police described the claim as false and misleading.Jimoh said, the report in its entirety is false, misleading and capable of misinforming Nigerians about the statutory roles and duties of the Nigeria Police Force as provided under Sections 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations, which includes prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due enforcement of all laws and regulations, and authority to enter any house or premises to execute search warrant.It is pertinent to set the record straight and inform Nigerians of the facts of the matter. A search warrant duly obtained from court of competent jurisdiction was professionally executed in the house of Senator Danujma Goje on 20th April, 2017 at No. 10 Haile Salasie Street, Asokoro District Abuja which was subsequent upon intelligence report at the disposal of the Force that large sum of money suspected to be stolen public funds and other incriminating items are about to be moved out of the said house.It is worthy of note that on arrival of the Police team to Senator Danujma Gojes house, the house keeper Ango Usman informed the Senator of the presence and mission of the team and he promised coming but later switched off his phone.The search warrant was successfully executed in the presence of three (3) close relatives of Senator Danjuma Goje who are residing in the house and the recoveries were made in their presence. The three (3) relatives listed below opened the house and took the Police team round the building, and endorsed their signatures after the completion of the search as required by the procedure of law on search warrant which contained the money, documents and Laptop recovered, and none of the items include 2017 budget document.The police said there was nothing like budget among the items recovered from the senators house.He added, For avoidance of doubt, the followings are the sum of money both in local and foreign currencies, vital documents and a Laptop recovered for investigation when the search warrant was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje.i. Cash sum of Eighteen Million and Fifty Six Thousand Naira (18,056,000) onlyii. Cash sum of Nineteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty (19,850 US Dollars).iii. Cash sum of Nine Thousand Four Hundred (SR9, 400) Saudi Riyaliv. Thirty Eight (38) Files and Six (6) Envelopes containing documents, some of which are listed belowa. File on funds spent on security administration and information gathering a-g 2009b. File on release of funds for Special operations a- f 2009c. File on Gombe State Government of Nigeria Cash inflow 2005d. File on Project 2007 Executive Briefs on how to fight opposition in Gombe State Strategies and Tacticse. Envelopes containing permit to operate as an Oil Industry Service Company (special categories) 2011f. A File containing write-ups on how Governor Shekarau plotted the assassination of Sheikh Jafarug. Letters from Alhaji Mohammed Danjuma Goje (Sarkin Yakin Gombe) to the MD LUBELL Nigeria Ltd of proposed residential Devt at Kashere Phase II dated 16/01/2007 and 19/11/2010, it said.The Nigeria Police Force insisted that there was no single document relating to 2017 budget sighted or removed by the Police team that executed the search warrant. There is video recording of the execution of the search warrant.The Inspector General of Police honoured the invitation of the National Assembly on 26th April, 2017 to explain the legality of the search warrant that was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje on the 20th of April, 2017.Further investigation is currently ongoing into the matter. Police actions are in line with the provisions of Sec. 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations as mentioned in paragraph 2 above and consistent with Sec. 9 & 144 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015.The statement described the claim by Senator Danjuma Goje as a deliberate distraction to cast aspersion on Police investigation to pervert justice. Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu yesterday called on banks in the country to stop the practice of using women for deposit mobilisation. Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu yesterday called on banks in the country to stop the practice of using women for deposit mobilisation. He made this call at the World Conference of Banking Institute hosted in Lagos yesterday by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, CIBN.Oba Rilwan said: Your methods and approach in sending single girls, married women to go and look for deposits are very very humiliating. The Oba also called on the gathering of banking experts to brainstorm on how to tackle the rising trend of graduate unemployment in the country, adding that banks should provide financial support to graduates for entrepreneurship purposes.He said: The bankers, the chief executive of the banks, should put heads together to see what can be done about all the graduates we are turning out now. I am just writing a paper to the federal government to suggest that last six months of the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) scheme of one year, should be used to train graduates on do it yourself projects, and this can be extended to include the last three months in the university.The government and top bankers should put heads together and see how they can lend these people (graduates), N1 million which they will pay back after one year that they would have done something on their own. The rate at which we are turning out graduates in this country needs to be addressed. The police have returned the monies and the documents they recovered from the Abuja residence of Danjuma Goje, a senator from Gombe state. The police have returned the monies and the documents they recovered from the Abuja residence of Danjuma Goje, a senator from Gombe state.A source told newsmen that the police returned the $19,000, N18m, 9,400 Saudi Riyal and the documents they recovered in a raid on Thursday.Last Friday, the police raided the residence of Goje, carting away the items. They claimed that they acted on a tip-off that some suspected stolen monies and incriminating items were being moved out of the building.Speaking on the floor of the senate on Wednesday, Goje, who is the chairman of the senate committee on appropriation, alleged that the police took away the 2017 budget documents after the raid.He added that work on the budget would now be delayed.But the police denied his claim, saying they only recovered stolen monies and some files from the lawmakers residence.They accused Goje of causing distraction aimed at perverting the end of justice.The inspector-general of police had appeared before a joint committee of the national assembly over the matter, but the details of the meeting are not public yet.Journalists tried to reach Jimoh Moshood, spokesman of the police, on telephone but was told that he was in a meeting.Calls to the telephone of Goje were also unanswered. The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff, said he was pulling out the reconciliation move of the former Presi... The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff, said he was pulling out the reconciliation move of the former President Goodluck Jonathan to resolve the partys leadership crisis.Sheriff in a statement signed by his Deputy National Chairman, Dr Cairo Ojougboh, issued on Thursday in Abuja, said this was to enable his led National working Committee (NOC) to focus on repositioning the PDP.He said that the reconciliation moves initiated by Jonathan had finally collapsed, alleging that the move had been hijacked by the Sen. Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee.We are opting out and focusing our efforts at making the party the darling of Nigerians again.We had made tremendous progress before former President Jonathan was asked by party leaders to convene a meeting where stakeholders will adopt the governor Seriake Dicksons Committee report on reconciliation.Unfortunately, former president Jonathan lost control of the meeting he convened and allowed Makarfi group to continue with their anti party posture, he said.NAN The suspended Secretary General of the Federation, Engr. Babachir Lawal on Thursday shunned the Nigerian Senate ad hoc committee over inve... The suspended Secretary General of the Federation, Engr. Babachir Lawal on Thursday shunned the Nigerian Senate ad hoc committee over investigations into the 200 million naira grass cutting contract.Mr. Lawal had earlier been indicted for alleged fraud by the Shehu Sani-led committee and the Senate, who called for his removal.He was found culpable by the Senate for his alleged role in a grass-cutting N200 million contract to clear invasive plant species in Yobe State. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Thursday asked the Federal High Court in Lagos to dismiss a rights enforcement suit ... The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Thursday asked the Federal High Court in Lagos to dismiss a rights enforcement suit filed against it and others by a wanted former Niger Delta militant, Chief Government Ekpemulopo, alias Tompolo.Tompolo, who was declared wanted last February 12, is praying the court to protect him from prosecution for an alleged N45.9 billion fraud.He sued the Inspector-General of Police, the Chief of Army Staff, the EFCC, the Chief of Naval Staff and the Chief of Air Staff.EFCCs lawyer, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, said Tompolo is a fugitive in law, and so, should not be allowed to seek redress in court until he submits himself for trial.He argued that given the materials placed before the court, it was clear that Tompolo was in contempt of the order of Justice Ibrahim Buba, who had earlier compelled his attendance in court to answer to charges preferred against him.Oyedepo described the application as an abuse of court process, since it was trite that a party who is in contempt of court cannot seek redress.He urged the court to throw out the application for lacking in merit.Oyedepo argued that in his originating processes, the applicant had in contradiction of his claims, annexed a copy of his notice of appeal which he signed personally.He argued that if Tompolo was ignorant of the charge, he would not have hired a lawyer to file an appeal.Oyedepo said the charge against the applicant bordered on fraud, in which billions of naira were lost by the Federal government.He, therefore, urged the court to dismiss the application and award heavy cost against the applicant for abusing the courts process.Tompolos lawyer, Mr Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, argued that in criminal law, service of a charge was personal and cannot be presumed, adding that there is no evidence before the court showing that the charge was served on the applicant.Adegboruwa said his client could not be cited for contempt, adding that since the beginning of the proceedings, the applicant could not be said to have breached any courts order.He argued that it is a constitutional right of the applicant to apply to court to enforce his right, adding that it cannot be waived.Justice Mojisola Olatoregun fixed June 19 for judgment. A new vista has opened in the alleged conspiracy of the US in the electoral defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan. A new vista has opened in the alleged conspiracy of the US in the electoral defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan.Jonathan has blamed former US President Barack Obama for his defeat in the 2015 presidential election.He said Obama was desperate to have him removed, and he alleged that the former US president went as far as turning world leaders against him and sending warships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the election.In an advance copy of Against the Run of Play, a book written by Segun Adeniyi, a renowned journalist, Babangida Aliyu, former Niger state governor and ex-chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, gave a hint of possible US involvement in the electoral trouncing of Jonathan.He said the Obama administration invited 12 northern governors to the US to ascertain their level of commitment to removing Jonathan.Although, Aliyu said he had no proof of this, he expressed the belief that the reason for their invitation to the US was deeper than discussing the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.I have no proof of course, but I think the idea was to ascertain what the disposition of the north would be to the idea of another term for President Jonathan, he told Adeniyi.That was my reading of the situation. I believe it was all about the 2015 election for which the Americans had resolved not to support Jonathan. They just wanted to size us up for the level of commitment to regime change.Aliyu said in one of the sessions, Murtala Nyako, former Adamawa state governor, accused Jonathan of sponsoring Boko Haram with the intent of destroying the north.He added that Nyakos accusation signalled to the Americans that the north was not in support Jonathans re-election bid.He also said that if Jonathan had declined to re-contest and had allowed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to field a young candidate from the north, President Muhammadu Buhari would have pulled out of the race.If Jonathan had been clever enough to say he would not run and had stuck with the PDP zoning formula by supporting a young northern candidate, I am most certain Buhari would have shelved his ambition to contest in 2015, knowing there was no way he would win, he said.The book, which details how Jonathan lost the 2015 election, will be launched on Friday.Adeniyi, the author, is the editorial board chairman of THISDAY. The Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, is yet to perfect his bail two days after a Federal High Court in Abuja gra... The Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, is yet to perfect his bail two days after a Federal High Court in Abuja granted him bail.The Nation learnt that Kanus lawyers are battling frantically to secure his freedom by Friday afternoon.His lead counsel, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, told The Nation that the legal team was doing everything within its powers to secure freedom for Kanu.He, however, did not rule out the option of approaching the court for a variation of the bail conditions should the need arises.We are still on it. We have met some of the conditions but not all. By mid-day tomorrow (Friday) we shall have a clear picture of what the situation is and what further steps to be taken.We are working assiduously to ensure that he regains his freedom, Ejiofor on Thursday. The United States Government has denied playing any role in the defeat of Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election. The United States Government has denied playing any role in the defeat of Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election.The US government issued the denial in response to allegations by Jonathan that his electoral defeat in the 2015 election was partly caused by former US President Barack Obama and his officials.The US advocated a free, fair and transparent election. The election outcome was an expression of the will of the Nigerian people, the US embassy spokesman, Russel Brooks, said on Wednesday. ATLANTIC CITY -- A deal that would have seen the shuttered Atlantic Club converted into a water park has been called off, according to The Press of Atlantic City. TJM Properties, the casino's owner, said R&R Development Group LLC, which planned to buy the building, wasn't able to secure financing for the deal. The Ventnor-based company announced its plans last month to develop a 100,000-square foot indoor water park with a hotel and restaurants. In 2016, a Pennsylvania company's plans to turn the casino into a water park also fell through, making this the second deal of its kind to fail. The Atlantic Club closed in January 2014. Rajeev Dhir may be reached at rdhir@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @googasmammoo. Find NJ.com on Facebook. HACKENSACK-- A police union representing officers who worked for the now defunct Bergen County Police Department, which has since merged with the Bergen County Sheriff's Office, said via Twitter Wednesday 26 personnel would be laid off. In the video, posted by PBA Local 49, an officer explains that no decision has been made about which officers would be given notice but that the layoff plan had been accepted by state officials. In a statement obtained by NorthJersey.com, the sheriff's office said the process will "take a number of weeks to complete" and is "consistent with the public policy declared in the Memorandum of Agreement signed in January 2015" by the sheriff, Bergen County Executive, the Board of Chosen Freeholders and other officials. In January 2015, County Executive Jim Tedesco, in one his first official acts, signed the agreement, under which the 103-member police department was "re-aligned" and placed under the sheriff's umbrella. The sheriff's office had about 150 officers at the time. Sheriff Michael Saudino said at the time of the merger he planned to reduce the county police total to 49, but through attrition and not layoffs. The move was projected to save the county between $90 and $200 million over the next 25 years. Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook. CAMDEN -- The trial of the Haddon Township father accused of killing his 3-year-old son to save his romantic relationship continues for a fourth day Thursday. David "D.J." Creato Jr., 23, is charged with murdering his son and dumping his body on the side of the Cooper River near his home. He called 911 to report his son missing around 6 a.m. Oct. 13, 2015, and the boy was found dead hours later. Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah has told jurors that Creato did it because his girlfriend, Julie Stensky disliked Brendan and didn't want him in Creato's life. Creato has denied the charges and rejected a 35-year plea deal. He told investigators at various points that his son might have wandered out of the apartment on his own or someone might have come in and taken him. Jurors on Wednesday heard hours of recordings of Creato talking about what might have happened, among other things. The recordings included a video of Creato speaking with officers before and after hearing that his son was dead, and an audio recording Brendan's mother, Samantha Denoto, secretly made while talking with Creato in November 2015. Here are five things we learned in the third day of Creato's trial. Creato felt "energy" at his home and wondered if it caused his son to walk out Denoto had testified last week that she worked with detectives to secretly record a conversation with Creato in order to collect more information. Jurors got to hear that recording Wednesday. Near the end of the conversation, Creato started to describe his belief in spirits and how he has felt energy moving in his apartment that scared him. "I don't want to sound like a crazy person, but maybe there's some kind of like energy that guided him, or some kind of spirits at the lake," he said of his son's disappearance. He said he felt like the area in the park was "sacred." "Maybe there's some kind of energy that drew him," he said. Creato also speculated on the recording that Brendan might have walked out of the apartment and then ran into "the wrong person" outside. When Denoto said she didn't believe her son could have walked to the river, Creato didn't seem to agree. Police didn't get as much information from Creato's girlfriend as they wanted Creato had been dating Julia Stensky, his then-17-year-old girlfriend, for about four months when his son died. She was attending Pace University in New York and they fought about Brendan, as well as Stensky talking to other men. Rhoads said he contacted Stensky after Brendan was found, and she agreed to make the trip back to Haddon Township to give a statement to police. Days after she did so, investigators discovered public blog posts she had made on Tumblr in which she complained about her relationship with Creato and how she didn't want to be tied down by his "mistake," referring to Brendan. She also posted about Brendan's death, he testified. Rhoads said the posts made him want to take another statement from Stensky, and while she initially agreed, she later got a lawyer and refused to speak with police further. Creato had said Stensky visited him that weekend before Brendan's death, but she took the train back to college the morning of Brendan's last day alive. Rhoads testified that he used surveillance footage, witness accounts and her dorm's keycard data to verify she was at school the night Brendan disappeared. When and how Brendan's body was removed from the park Detective Michael Rhoads of the Camden County prosecutor's office testified that another detective from the office removed the body from the bank of the stream in Cooper River Park at 9:50 a.m. He also told jurors that earlier that morning, while the detectives were collecting evidence and taking photographs, medical investigator Frank Jackson of the medical examiner's office arrived on scene. He called Jackson "the eyes and ears of the medical examiner." Rhoads didn't say that Jackson did any investigations of his own, but said the medical investigator was present and provided the body bag. Creato's attorney, Richard Fuschino Jr., has in the past said that the medical examiner, Gerald Feigin, should have been at the scene supervising and collecting evidence. Feigin was not able to determine a specific cause of death, but the prosecutor's office says he died from "homicidal violence" that could have been caused by drowning, strangulation or blunt neck trauma. The defense attorney and other forensic professionals have also questioned why Brendan's body was removed from the water so quickly, not an hour after it was discovered. They suggested it may have limited the amount of evidence that could have been collected there. Investigators hoped 'fresh' cigarette butts at the scene would help crack the case Rhoads testified Wednesday that cigarette butts that appeared to be fresh were collected as evidence from the bank of stream where Brendan was found. Because of that, detectives collected DNA samples from Creato and others connected to him, hoping the DNA on the cigarettes might match someone. It didn't, Fuschino told the jurors during his opening statement last week. He said it didn't match anyone in the Creato family or any of the other people police asked for DNA samples, and didn't match anyone in a national criminal database. In his recorded conversation with Denoto, Creato said he told police he doesn't even smoke cigarettes. Brendan's family wasn't informed of his death until about two hours later Rhoads, who was on the stand all day Wednesday, described waiting until 10:17 a.m. to tell Creato his son was found dead. For sometime before that, while police knew he was dead but Creato didn't, another officer questioned him about the night before Brendan's death, his relationship with his girlfriend, and other topics. Because investigators wanted to carefully watch Creato's reaction to the news and then to hit him with another round of questioning, Rhoads had to wait until after his long interview with Creato to "make notification" to the rest of Brendan's family. He broke the news to both sides of the family in a conference room in the Police Station annex, and then told Denoto in an interview room. In the recorded conversation, both Denoto and Creato discussed finding out after the fact how long police had waited to tell them their son was dead. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna at the age of 70 years has passed away this morning. The actor had recently been admitted to HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Mumbai today took his last breath. He was hospitalized due to severe dehydration a few days back. Also, his condition was critical and a picture of him in a very bad condition was circulated on social media too. The actor was an MP from Gurdaspur district of Punjab. He was born on 6 October, 1946. Vinod was active in film industry between 1968 and 2013 and he was seen in 141 films. Also read: Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to inaugurate maiden UDAN flight today Harbhajan by tweeting revealed about racism and assault incident West Bengal: Jetty Submerged under water in Hooghly, three people lost their life 100-meter long tunnel found in India and Bangladesh border West Bengal: The Border Security Force (BSF) have found out a 100-metre tunnel between India and Bangladesh border and on the complaint received by the BSF the West Bengal Police yesterday told to take action against the smugglers. West Bengal: Jetty Submerged under water in Hooghly, three people lost their life West Bengal: In Hooghly's Bhadreswar yesterday a temporary jetty due to high tide submerged under water and in the incident three people lost their life while many other persons are missing. BJP symbol Lotus blossomed in Municipal Corporation of Delhi In the counting of votes of MCD polls, yesterday as per the trends came out the Bharatiya Janata Party was ahead leaving behind other parties. Finally, when the results came out the BJP Symbol lotus blossomed. Breaking: Veteran actor Vinod Khanna passes away this morning Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna at the age of 70 years has passed away this morning. The actor had recently been admitted to HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre in Mumbai today took his last breath. West Indies team fined for slow over-rate In the opening Test that took place at the Sabina Park, the match was played between Pakistan and the West Indies. The ICC now has fined the latter team for maintaining a slow over-rate. IPL 10: Match to be played between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Gujarat Lions IPL 10: Today the match is scheduled to be played between Royal challengers Bangalore and Gujarat Lions. The RCB now is in the sixth position in the point table with 5 points. They have won only two matches out of eight and the one point they got from the match which got cancelled due to the Rain. Pinwi introduces 2.0 version of its parenting app New Delhi: The Pinwi (Play-Interest-Wise) today has introduced a new version 2.0 for both on iOS and Android platforms. The new version let parents have a sneak peek of the app for free and once they understand it they can subscribe to the full version. Nissan to launch its XTrail Hybrid in India by end of this year The car manufacturing company Nissan motor India is planning to launch its first Hybrid SUV Nissan X-trail by the end of this year in India. PVR Cinemas signs agreement with IMAX The Priya village roadshow limited yesterday has signed an agreement with the IMAX Corporation to add up five more IMAX theatres in the Indian market. Sindhu advances in Asian badminton Championship In the Women's single event yesterday the Rio-Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu with her performance defeated Dinar Dyah Ayustine of Indonesia by 21-8, 21-18. Wade Reed, 22, is serving a 20-year sentence for manslaughter as part of a plea agreement in the March 2014 killing of 32-year-old Charles Meyers in New Orleans East. Dead stalks are all that remain of a large stand of roseau cane near Venice in Plaquemines Parish on Friday, April 7, 2017. (Photo by Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com | Times-Picayune) How playing 'blues the way it should be played' helped Little Freddie King book a Beyonce video Experience in public office or the need for change. Voters in District 9 are being asked at Tuesdays election to judge what they value more when it comes to who will represent them on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. Call it a gift for future use. With an oversized novelty check by their side, members of the Pottawattamie Conservation Foundation were all smiles as they announced a partnership with the Pottawattamie County Community Foundation that creates an endowment fund to help increase conservation activities in the area. The memo line read future generations on the check for $5,500, representing the $5,000 put up by the conservation foundation, along with the 10 percent match from the community foundation. This is just the beginning of what we believe will benefit our local conservation efforts for many generations to come, said Ryann Glenn, chairwoman of the Pottawattamie Conservation Foundation Board of Directors. This is another opportunity for people to donate to conservation efforts. The foundation is a fundraising arm for the Pottawattamie County Conservation Board, funding such items as environmental education, including field trips; land acquisition; natural resource management practices, like prescribed burns ; outdoor recreation; and more. Pottawattamie County Conservation Executive Director Mark Shoemaker said hed been working with the community foundation about setting up a fund that benefits the conservation foundation. Its a no-brainer for us, he said. This is another avenue to reach out to people, an extension to reach new donors. Members of the conservation foundation board gathered Wednesday afternoon for an announcement about the fund at the Council Bluffs Public Library. As he held the check representing the $5,500, community foundation President and CEO Jerry Mathiasen enthusiastically informed the conservation foundation board that the fund had grown since its inception just days ago. We just set this up, and it received its first donation already $1,000, Mathiasen said. The donation will grow to $1,100 with the community foundations match. Mathiasen noted the donor will receive a $250 tax credit through the Endow Iowa tax incentive program, which offers a 25 percent credit to donors that pay Iowa taxes. To donate, go online to www.ourpccf.org and click on Donate to a Charitable Fund and choose the Pottawattamie Conservation Endowment Fund. Glenn said shes excited about the partnership, which makes it easier for Pottawattamie County residents and those living beyond to support area conservation efforts. This is for future generations, Glenn said. Everett Calkins knew his grandfather, Prentice Grant P.G., had homesteaded land just below the highest point in McPherson County. The land is called Calkins Bluff, he said. Calkins grandparents died in the 1930s, and his father, Arnold, received his 11 siblings shares of the homestead. He worked the ranch until 1941, when he was trampled by a team of horses in a field accident. This week, Everett, of Iowa, his brother Ronald, of Washington state, and nephew Jim, of Texas, visited the homestead. They stayed in North Platte and left Wednesday. It was the first time the brothers had seen the land in 75 years and a first-ever trip for the nephew. Their trip was sparked by an internet search for the homestead. Born in 1933, Everett reached out to the McPherson County clerk, who connected him with the current landowner, Laura Barger. She was really interested in the story, Everett said. Immediately, Laura and her husband, Steve, wanted to go along on the mens visit to the homestead too. Laura knew that remnants from the homestead existed, she said. However, only having lived on the land for six years, they didnt know where the homestead was exactly. Everett carries memories of his father, such as his old Model T Ford and its rumble seat. I remember him parking that Model T, Everett said. On his tour of the homestead, whats the first thing I see? Everett said. Its the body of that Model T. The brothers also saw the foundation of the house they used to live in, once made of sod and later enhanced with a wood frame. It wasnt hard to find the old plot, Barger said, since the county keeps records of all the old homesteaders. She was impressed at Everett and Ronalds memories: picking cow chips for the fire, picnics, getting paid to plant trees and using the money for candy and building sand caves with tomato soup cans. Barger was also humbled by the tragic death of the brothers father, and their mothers support of her five children thereafter. They were so happy to be back, and so gracious and thankful to us, Barger said, but we feel like we had almost as good of a day as they did. Everetts and Ronalds mother moved her children to North Platte the year after their father died, Everett said. She later remarried and in 1946, the family moved to Walthill in eastern Nebraska, so his stepfather could farm. Everett said his stepfather was a good man who raised five stepchildren like his own, but the move meant leaving the old Hall School, which the children had attended. On their trip to North Platte, they visited the old school as well as North Plattes cemetery, where their grandmother was buried. Its utterly amazing, Everett said. If I could kiss Mr. Google, I would. You are clearly a super-user of NUVO.net. Thats a good thing. It means you depend on independent and local news sources to keep you informed. You are a smart person. Coincidentally, independent and local news sources depend on you too. Youve read 25 articles this month and now, wed like you to be join our mission and become a NUVO Supporter. For as little as $4 a month, you can keep us alive and fighting -- and can have unlimited access to the independent news that cant be found anywhere else. Part of the Gary/Chicago International Airport has been temporarily transformed into a large parking lot. The airport struck a deal with Merrillville-based CLR Auto Transport to store Volkswagen cars on the currently unused northwest corner of the 763-acre airport, spokesman David Goldenberg said. Volkswagen was forced to buy back 500,000 diesel vehicles after an emissions scandal in which it cheated on emissions tests. The auto company can't sell them until it comes up with a way to fix them that satisfies U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulators. Bloomberg has reported Volkswagens being stored for the time being at places like the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit, a decommissioned Air Force base in California and the Port of Baltimore. "Overall, we are encouraged by the customer response to the 2.0L TDI settlement program and the exceptional participation rate so far," Volkswagen USA said in a statement. "We're six months into a two-year program and more than half of the 2.0-L TDI vehicles in the United States subject to the Settlement Program have already been removed from the road or have received their initial emissions modification." Volkswagen said enough cars have been returned that it has to store them in large regional facilities. "Once a buyback transaction is complete, Volkswagen will remove the vehicle from the dealership and store it at a regional facility," the company said in a statement. "These vehicles will be held and routinely maintained until it is determined whether an approved emissions modification becomes available. If approved, the settlement allows Volkswagen to modify affected 2.0L TDI vehicles so they can be returned to commerce or exported. Vehicles that are not modified must be responsibly recycled." CLR Auto Transport did not return messages. "My understanding is these are Volkswagen diesels that failed the emissions test, and are being stored until Volkswagen comes up with a solution and the EPA approves a procedure to fix them," Gary Jet Center owner and Chief Executive Officer Wil Davis said. "It's good they found a use for airport property near the construction area that's not being used." The airport signed a short-term lease for $12,000 for one month of storage, which could be extended to a year, pending airport board approval, Goldenberg said. "It's new unplanned revenue for the airport," he said. "It's a responsible interim use for the land while we work on a long-term master plan to contemplate a permanent use of this and other airport property." The International Brotherhood Teamsters Local 703 dropped a lawsuit attempting to block Strack & Van Til parent company Central Grocers from a sale. The Downers Grove-based union had sought to protect the jobs of 300 workers at Central Grocers' warehouse in Joliet, and got the reassurances it wanted. Local 703 said in a press release Thursday it reached an understanding with the $2 billion Joliet-based wholesaler, which supplies Strack & Van Til and 400 independent grocers throughout the Chicago market, about what impact a sale would have on its members. "Withdrawing our original action at this time is in the best interest of the union and our membership," Local 703 Secretary-Treasurer Thomas W. Stiede said. "Preserving our strong labor agreements in the grocery industry is paramount. The Teamsters will continue to work to gather information in the effort to protect members and prepare for what the future may hold." The Teamsters filed a lawsuit in federal court last week asking for a temporary restraining order on a sale, for fear it would violate its labor contract that runs through next March. The company hadn't given it any information about the buyer. "Local 703 now has agreed to withdraw the action, without prejudice to re-filing, in exchange for certain assurances from Central Grocers regarding a potential transaction and receipt of certain confidential information that will allow the Teamsters to better assess the transaction and its potential impact on the labor contracts and members," the union said in a press release. Central Grocers is looking to sell off 22 Strack & Van Til stores to a yet-unidentified buyer. The Highland-based supermarket, which has been owned by Central Grocers since the late 1990s, is closing 14 stores this year, mostly Ultra Fresh Foods and Strack & Van Til-branded stores in Illinois. Anthony Bourdain is not one for activism. Tattooed on his arm in Greek is "I am certain of nothing." But at the Tribeca Film Festival, Bourdain has, a little reluctantly, presented a documentary, "Wasted! The Story of Food Waste," in which he argues passionately against the issue of food waste, from supermarkets to home cooking even though advocacy of any kind makes him almost physically squeamish. "Having traveled as much as I do, I constantly go into places thinking one thing only to be shown that I'm wrong and forced by circumstances and exposure to rethink whatever preconceptions I might have had," Bourdain said in a recent interview. "Activism seems to require a level of certainly and dedication that I'm uncomfortable with. I'm a renter, not a buyer, when it comes to ideologies. I'm a skeptic. I believe very much in skepticism. I don't ever want to look like a guy with an agenda." It's not that Bourdain is apolitical. The countless meals shared on his years of TV, from "No Reservations" to the soon-returning "Parts Unknown," are chiefly feasts both through the food on the plate and the discussions held over them of larger cultural conversation. Of the traditions kept alive by immigrants. Of the glories of street food. Of the simple power of breaking bread with people from all walks of life. But standing out front of an issue in today's ethically charged food world is a step further for Bourdain. So what was it that lured him into combating food waste? A lifetime in which the cooking principle "use everything, waste nothing" was instilled in him, and driven deeper by "one brutal kitchen regime after another." "The intent of this film happens to align with something that I feel very strongly from the point of view of just a classically trained cook who came up in a system where the whole idea of waste was abhorrent," said Bourdain. "The whole story of food as a professional cook is to maximize your profit, to waste as little as possible, to merchandize what is not used in the principle entree. And of course traveling around the world I see again and again and again how circumstances force people to cook really, really well and make the most of the often very little food they have." The film is directed by Anna Chai and Nari Kye and executive produced by Bourdain. It's a tragedy of trash, told colorfully by Chai and Kye. Some stats: Roughly a third of the food produced for human consumption every year is never eaten. In the U.S., more than 90 percent of wasted food ends up in a landfill, at an annual cost of $1 trillion. The film showcases those using creative solutions to the problem, like a beer called Toast made out of leftover sandwich bread, or a budget grocery store of donated excess foods. The film also preaches the flavor and thrift of dishes that use typically tossed parts of produce or animals. "I love tripe, oxtails, cheeks," said Bourdain. "I love going to a restaurant in Japan where they serve nothing but collars and the meat around the fins. Those are the things that cooks are most passionate about. It's so funny when you see all of these things that only poor people used to eat now as the hipster dish of the moment." Most glaring, though, is the waste of supermarkets where aisles are intended to showcase abundance, even though that means stocking shelves with the intent to not sell all of it. "In order to have their aisles look a certain way and give an impression of abundance with only the freshest and best, they've deemed it necessary to waste tremendous amounts of food that in another situation would be vital to people," said Bourdain. "Wasted!" is just the latest in Bourdain's growing presence in movies. Being a "film nerd," he says, is "a necessary qualification" for his "Parts Unknown" crew. He recently listed the 10 films that are constant reference points on his shows, from Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love" to Peter Yates' "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." The upcoming season, he vows, will pay ode, "if not outright theft," to David Lean ("Lawrence of Arabia") when he travels to Oman. Bourdain last week released "Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent," a documentary he produced on the storied chef. More films, even fiction ones, could be on the way. "One of the big joys of my life was being on the writing team for the David Simon show 'Treme,'" Bourdain said. "That was a really fun and exciting experience for me. So that does interest me." In the meantime, Bourdain hopes "Wasted" gets people thinking "in a non-didactic perspective." Then, at least, he can stop playing activist. Celebrated actor and television icon Ed Asner is one of the most honored actors in television history, with 16 Emmy nominations and 7 wins, five Golden Globe Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. Asner walks the boards of the historic Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso for one special night on May 3 to perform in "A Man And His Prostate." The show will raise funds for the 124-year-old venue's upkeep. "What can I say, I respect the elderly," laughed 87-year-old Asner, a former president of the Screen Actor's Guild. "The theater will be the only thing there older than me." The gruff-voiced stage and screen veteran was born in Kansas City and found success in New York and later in Hollywood, but says his Chicagoland roots remain deep. Asner studied theater at The University of Chicago and honed his comedic acting chops at Second City in the mid-to-late '50s, while laboring locally. "I drove a cab, I worked at the auto plant at 106th and Torrence, I sold over the phone...and boy was I lousy at that! I worked in Gary as a 'hooker helper'," he said. "Don't get the wrong impression, a 'hooker helper' hooks the big pots up to the cranes at the mill." Asner last visited the Region three years ago with his one man stage play "FDR" based on the life and career of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now, this man of many stories returns to tell the tale of "A Man And His Prostate," a new one-man comedy written specifically for him. "Let's get things straight. It's not my prostate I'll be talking to you about, it's Ed's prostate," said Asner, referring to his friend, Ed Weinberger, a Golden Globe and Emmy winning writer for Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Dean Martin and several hit TV series. "Ed wrote this after he was rushed to the hospital for prostate surgery while vacationing in Italy," he said. Is it hard to get laughs with an 80-minute monolog about a prostate? "Not hard at all," said Asner. "The material in this show is so funny that it's a big crutch for me to lean on. I did 'FDR' which had much fewer jokes. Let's face it, there's always the chance of tripping up when you're doing a one man performance. That did happen in Fort Lauderdale, but I'm going to bloom like an orchard there in Indiana." One might ponder if a play about a cancerous prostate is a good career move in a business where it's believed one is only as good as one's last show. "I did some pondering, but soon decided it was a winner. I really didn't want to spend too much time mulling over Ed's prostate, although I was quite honored he would trust his prostate to me. I have promised not to disgrace his prostate in any way," he laughed. "Seriously, I thought it was funny when I first looked at it, but I had no idea this show would be as good as it is." The wisecracking Asner is not too unlike his beloved character of Lou Grant, which he played between 1970-1982. "I enjoyed being 'Lou,' and what a great cast I had to work with during that time. We had so much fun, that I almost felt guilty taking money for it. Mind you, I said 'almost'," he mused. "Lou was tough on the outside, but soft on the inside. He was the kind of guy who laid down the rules, and he might growl like a grizzly, but inside he was really a teddy bear." That same hard outer shell and marshmallow inside describes one of his most recent characters, one that has endeared the octogenarian to a whole new generation, "Carl," the crotchety old man in the Pixar animated film hit, "UP!" "That was such a beautiful film. 'Carl' was really me just being me. Carl is no different than Ed Asner." Playing a cantankerous or tough guy character, despite being so well liked and big-hearted in real life, does not bother Asner, who has recently guest starred on "The Good Wife," "Criminal Minds," "Mom," "The Crazy Ones," "Hawaii 5-0," "Bones," and other current hit series. "I think 'the grumpus' is someone we've all known in our lives. Sometimes you fear them until you peek under the sheet and discover there is a warm soul there. Someone may appear tough as nails, but after you open the can, you find the nails are soupy." Many may scratch their heads upon hearing that the current production at Memorial Opera House is "The Drowsy Chaperone." "The what?" seems to be the general response. That this 2006 Jazz Age musical comedy has remained under the radar to the general public, despite winning 5 Tony Awards, has not deterred the venue's business director Scot P. MacDonald, nor regional directors Colleen and John Peluso from featuring it in the 2017 season. "This show is hilarious. It's a musical within a musical, and kind of a spoof on 1920s traditional, classical theater," explained Colleen Peluso who studied theater and directing at Drake University (undergrad) in Des Moines, Iowa before finishing her studies at Valparaiso University. "The story is told to the audience through a man, whose name is never mentioned, he's just referred to as 'man in chair', who never really leaves his New York apartment. He lives in current times, but he loves theater and wants to share his favorite musical, so he puts on an old album, a recording of a 1920s musical." The new MOH production stars Grant Fitch as "man in chair," Bobbie Sue Kvachkoff as Janet Van DeGraaf and Lisa Woodruff Hedin as title character "the drowsy chaperone," prone to nodding out because of her bootleg alcohol intake. The husband and wife directors both found a love for theater in high school. Both wound up at MOH - John in 2006 and Colleen in 2009. Both had performed in "The Drowsy Chaperone" in years past which made them want to co-direct it for MOH. The couple has directed shows individually and jointly over the years, but never under the circumstances they have had during "The Drowsy Chaperone." "There was a lot more tag-teaming on this one, since I was pregnant and just had the baby two weeks ago," laughed Colleen. "When it was added for the 2017 season, we made a commitment to direct it, but that was prior to finding out I was pregnant," recalled Peluso. "When we realized the timing of it all, we were like -- 'I don't know...' -- but we both love this show so much and we knew we had a great team at MOH, so we went ahead." The couple handled all the stage blocking, working with costumer Christina Pals, set designer Jennifer Lundin and musical/vocal director Chis Haddad, before nature called just four weeks before opening night. Vicki Zimmerman-Gleason stepped in to take over the final few weeks of rehearsals while the Pelusos celebrated the birth of son Foster. "Vicki went from stage manager to production director. She did a great job." Peluso explained how the "man in chair" listens to "The Drowsy Chaperone" record whenever he feels down, because the music makes him happy. When the curtain rises, the man is depressed. When he puts the needle on the record, the 1920s start to come to life in his room. Characters slowly appear and begin dancing, singing and cavorting about the stage. The man imagines how wonderful it must've been during the glory days of bootlegging, gangsters, G-men and flappers and the audience begins to meet the colorful characters. The 1920s musical unveiled as the phonograph record spins, revealing the story of a beautiful Broadway starlet -- Janet Van DeGraaf -- who is on the fast-track to fame and fortune, but is contemplating "giving it all up for love." "They are in love and call each other 'monkey'," added Peluso. "There's not a lot of weight to this show, it's very light-hearted and it's a very silly love story." Rounding out the local cast is Deborah Haddad ("Mrs. Tottendale"), Adam Woolever ("Feldzeig"), Stacy Ruiz ("Trix"), Deveon Williams ("Underling"), Andrew Glorioso ("Robert"), Michael Glorioso ("Aldolpho"), Nate Hendricks ("George"), Michael Pals ("Gangster 1"), Madolyn Hedin ("Gangster 2"), Scott Miller ("Superintendent") and Andrea Bertsch, Gracie Ault and Graham Votaw ("the ensemble"). VALPARAISO Kaylee Rummell isn't sure what she wants to be when she grows up. "I started off wanting to be a vet. But my dad wants me to be a nurse," said the Portage High School junior. Now, after spending time at three local health care facilities, she's pretty sure she wants to become a physical therapist. Rummell was one of 70 Portage High School students who took part in the inaugural Healthcare 360 program sponsored by the school, Portage Economic Development Corp., Ivy Tech Community College and local health care facilities. "This is really helping me to see my options," she said Wednesday morning after touring various departments within the Valparaiso Health Center of St. Mary Medical Center facility. "We want to ensure that students realize the health care industry is not just doctors and nurses," said Amy Parker, business development manager for Portage EDC. Students visit three facilities and become aware of 18 health care occupations. At NorthShore Health Center's Lake Station facility, students observed optometry, pharmacy technicians, pediatrics, front desk and human resources positions. Wednesday, the groups went to both the St. Mary's facility, where they observed jobs in imaging, laboratory, physical therapy and health care engineering, and Porter Regional Hospital, were they viewed emergency medical services, surgical technician, nursing, food service and health information management areas. In each area, the professionals talked about their jobs and what education was needed. "See if you can find someone to shadow," St. Mary's supervisor of radiology Debra Phillips told the groups. "Find a way that you can see what that person does all day long." Phillips also reminded students that most jobs in health care are "365 days a year and include shift work and weekends." After Wednesday morning's facility visits, students returned to Ivy Tech Community College, where they learned about the educational opportunities available. "We are always needing people in health care. We need to build that next generation," said Lisa Kiger, St. Mary's director of business development. "We have a lot of great opportunities locally," said outreach nurse Christy Cleveland, adding that she feels it is important for students to know the options available right outside their door and know they can receive training locally at a facility like Ivy Tech. Health care is one of the fastest growing areas of employment. According to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, eight of its 15 fastest-growing jobs through 2024 are in health care, including therapists, nurse practitioners and various kinds of medical assistants. CALUMET CITY A trio of students and a teacher from Thornton Fractional North High School will present at the Illinois Computer Educators "Students for the Information Age" TECH 2017 event May 9 in Springfield. Sophomores Axel Flores and Alanna Elmore, junior Kevon Hampton and teacher Emily Biegel will present Using Blogging and Social Media to Enhance your Coding Curriculum: Prepare students for college and careers while meeting reading and writing standards. The aim of the presentation is to demonstrate the benefits blogging can give students in maintaining a website, coding in WordPress and creating original digital content. Students learn about algorithms, the importance of creating a positive online presence, developing interesting content and how to tell their story and market themselves through social media. It can also help them showcase their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. TECH 2017 is a nonprofit initiative presented by ICE and supported by several education and business organizations, including CDW-G and Comcast Business. The annual event is held from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. at the Illinois State Capitol Building. It will include students from around the state. Presentations are given to the public and to Illinois state legislators. The goal is to show how technology is being used in the classroom to increase student engagement and improve achievement. Students from elementary-school age through high school participate. Personal devices, the internet and digital content are the enabling tools of the modern learning environment, expanding the boundaries of the classroom while promising to transform all aspects of learning: teachers, students and parents are provided access to tools and resources that promote accountability, communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking, TECH 2017 co-chair Tim McIlvain said in a release. Digital resources and curriculum offer dynamic, engaging and affordable content to enhance or even replace traditional print-based resources. And blended and flipped classrooms extend the classroom beyond the limits of the school day, promoting increased student-centered and self-directed learning opportunities that put educational resources directly into the hands of students. CROWN POINT A criminal court judge denied a bond reduction Thursday for a teenager charged in a gang-related shooting in Hammond. Vashaun M. Walsh filed a motion earlier this month to have his $60,000 bond reduced so he could be released from jail while awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder, felony battery and criminal recklessness. Walsh, 18, is accused of shooting a 16-year-old boy April 4 in the 1300 block of Lake View Avenue in Hammond, according to court records. Jason Walsh, the defendant's father, told Judge Salvador Vasquez at the bail hearing he could raise only half of the amount required to post his son's bail. The father said his son would live with him in Whiting if he were released on the lower bond. Deputy Prosecutor David Rooda told the judge Walsh was charged in January with carrying a handgun without a license. He was admitted into a pretrial diversion program in that case, but the state is now seeking prosecution due to the new allegations, according to court records. Vasquez said he could not risk Walsh hurting someone on a lower bond. Walsh is next scheduled to appear in court June 22. WHEATON, Ill. A suburban Chicago tow truck driver has been ordered held in lieu of $3 million bond in the shooting death of a semi-trailer driver. DuPage County prosecutors say Anthony Tillmon, of Lansing, and truck driver Eduardo Munoz, of Northlake, engaged in a road rage argument for several miles before the tow truck driver opened fire. Prosecutors say that according to witnesses, the 34-year-old Tillmon reached across his passenger seat and fired multiple shots before driving off. The 43-year-old Munoz was able to steer his truck to a stop on the shoulder of Interstate-88 near Oak Brook. He died later at Elmhurst Hospital from three wounds. Authorities say GPS and I-Pass records place the tow truck Tillmon was driving Friday at the scene of the shooting. Fiancee Michele Salerno says Munoz was headed home when shot. It wasn't immediately known if Tillmon has a lawyer. INDIANAPOLIS Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law Thursday a two-year state spending plan that has the potential to grow Northwest Indiana's economy and improve its quality of life for decades to come. House Enrolled Act 1001 provides $6 million a year for the next 30 years to fund the state's share of the cost to double-track the South Shore Line between Gary and Michigan City. Holcomb has long championed the effort to add a second track to the century-old commuter rail line and reduce travel times between Region communities and high-paying jobs in Chicago, the nation's third-largest market. The Republican said getting the money in the budget for the double-tracking project is a huge step toward making that dream reality and a monumental achievement for the state that will bring new jobs and residents to Indiana. "This is truly a historic moment in our state's history," Holcomb said. The budget legislation also allocates $35.1 million to construct the Bioscience Innovation Building at Purdue University Northwest, a top priority of Lake County lawmakers for nearly a decade. The new building on the Hammond campus will house state-of-the-art instructional and research facilities for nursing, biology and other science and technology programs. In addition, the Republican-controlled General Assembly dedicated funds to address the impact of East Chicago lead contamination. The School City of East Chicago will retain some $3.5 million it otherwise would have lost due to students moving out of the school district. The state also set aside $1.5 million to access federal matching grants for environmental cleanup. At the same time, Northwest Indiana school corporations with growing enrollment will see their funding increase after lawmakers agreed to boost the basic per student grant provided to each school. The current $5,088 foundation level will grow to $5,273 for the 2017-18 school year (a 3.6 percent increase), and to $5,352 in 2018-19 (1.5 percent). Overall, the state will spend $15.9 billion in the 2018 budget year that begins July 1 and $16.4 billion in 2019. In both years, Indiana will take in more money than it plans to spend with an estimated 2018 surplus of $79.9 million and 2019 surplus of $119 million. The state's budget reserve fund will remain near the $1.85 billion mark equal to nearly 12 percent of annual spending. When Buzz Berg became a believer in the work that the Hilltop Neighborhood House does for families in Northwest Indiana, he dedicated his support in multiple ways. In addition to serving on the organizations board of directors, the Valparaiso University history professor of 48 years began planning his estate with the help of the Porter County Community Foundation. Through some simple estate planning, upon Buzzs death in 2015, the Buzz Berg Endowment Fund for the Hilltop Neighborhood House was established and will be a source of permanent philanthropic capital for Hilltop, says Bill Higbie, president and CEO of the Porter County Community Foundation. Its a great example of how the foundation has been an instrument by which organizations are supported and family legacies are created, he says. The foundation, established in 1996, was created after a Lilly Endowment grant provided an incentive for communities to start their own foundations. The folks at Lilly thought that, rather than sitting in Indianapolis and trying to evaluate requests for support from all over the state, it would be a better use of their resources to get communities set up with their own foundations, focused on endowment building that would be uniquely positioned to respond to local needs and opportunities, Higbie says. Today, the Porter County Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization, manages $50 million in philanthropic capital for the good of Porter County, dispersing about $2 million annually in grants and scholarships. Because of Lilly and their belief in the power of community philanthropy, Indiana is home to arguably the greatest concentration of community foundations in the country, Higbie says. Community foundations are unique in the flexibility they offer donorsnot only in terms of the organizations they may support, but also the vehicles that facilitate their giving. For example, a family that feels very strongly about the environment may set up an endowment fund to benefit a specific environmental organization, or allow the foundation to direct a grant from the familys fund to address a need within the environmental realm. Endowment funds can be established and added to at any time, even through estate gifts, which often provide an opportunity for larger contributions to be made, Higbie says. Cash isnt the only way to givecommunity foundations can accept gifts of real estate, appreciated securities, commodities and required minimum distributions from IRAs. Each offers unique tax benefits that can make them a favorable way to give. We encourage people to talk to their professional advisersattorneys, CPAs, financial plannersabout the options that make the most sense for them, Higbie says. Foundations even offer Charitable Gift Annuities and Charitable Trusts that provide creative ways to give and support a persons favorite charity while also providing an income stream to the donor. If a donor doesnt have a specific charity or cause in mind, but still wishes to be generous, the foundations community fund is an unrestricted pool of money from which the foundation can award grants to nonprofit organizations. Contributions of any size to the community fund are really important because it gives our grant committee access to dollars that can be deployed into the community to help underwrite a variety of different projects, Higbie says. For Rich Kneifel of Kouts, the foundation helped him maximize his ability to give to the organizations most important to him. The Porter County Community Foundation is a great resource for people who want to do something special for the community, Kneifel says. Their staff helped me explore all the options so that the things I care about will benefit as much as possible from my gift. Using the Community Foundation allows my gift to last forever, and thats a great feeling. Valparaiso University has long been a jewel of higher learning, casting Northwest Indiana in a positive light. Since its 1870s founding by Civil War veteran and lawyer Mark DeMotte, the university's Law School has distinguished itself as a premier institution for training aspiring attorneys. That reputation grew earlier this month with an A-plus rating and No. 7 ranking for the Valparaiso University Law School's practical training program by National Jurist magazine. The Region has watched the law school's evolution throughout the decades. It was one of the first law schools in the nation to establish law clinics in 1967, an important tool for providing legal aid to those who might otherwise be left behind by the system. The school now boasts the "Millennium Counsel Initiative," which borrows a page from medical school clinical rotations in helping law students gain real-world legal experience. We applaud Valparaiso University School of Law for continuing to grow with the times and remain relevant to current needs within its field of study. In doing so, it has attracted national attention and bolstered our entire Region's reputation. INDIANAPOLIS A man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting an Indianapolis police officer was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday following emotional testimony from the officer's widow and mother. A Marion County courtroom was filled with police officers and Officer Perry Renn's relatives as a judge sentenced Major Davis II for Renn's July 2014 killing. Davis, 27, pleaded guilty last week to murder, sparing himself the death penalty. Renn, 51, and another officer were responding to reports of gunfire when they came across Davis in an alley and exchanged shots with him. Investigators said Davis had fired shots during a backyard Fourth of July weekend cookout his relatives were hosting. Prosecutors said Davis struck Renn with three rounds from an assault rifle. Davis was critically injured. During Thursday's hearing, Renn's widow said Davis would "soon be forgotten" and praised her husband, a 22-year veteran of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. "Perry's heroic actions stopped a murderer, but at too high a price," Lynn Renn told the court. The officer's mother, Phyllis Renn, called her son "a very good man with a servant's heart." "He would have died protecting your family, and did," she testified, speaking directly to Davis. Indianapolis police Chief Bryan Roach spoke to officers outside the courtroom following the hearing. "These are hard times," he told them, choking up. "Please be safe." Davis' case had been repeatedly delayed by his attempts to fire his attorneys and by questions about his mental competency. A judge ruled in February that Davis was mentally competent to stand trial, which was scheduled to start in October. Davis' attorney, Ray Casanova, told the court Thursday that Davis takes daily anti-psychotic medication. His father, Major Davis Sr., died in police custody at age 35 in May 2003. The elder Davis had been arrested on charges of public intoxication and struggled with officers. An autopsy concluded he died of a heart attack. Thousands gathered on Long Island on Thursday to pay their final respects to a Queens firefighter killed in the line of duty. The funeral for William Tolley took place at St. Martin of Tours Church in Bethpage. The 42-year-old died last Thursday after he fell five stories from the roof of a Ridgewood building, where he was fighting a fire. "It's a rough day, you know. We weren't sure to bring the kids out. I feel they need to be here, let them know. The community's here. We're all here for the family," said one family friend. "It's a terrible thing that no one should have to go through. We really feel for Marie and Bella. Having young children, it's one of the worst things you can think of," said another family friend. Tolley was a 14-year veteran of the fire department. He leaves behind a wife and 8-year-old daughter. It's often said that budgets are statements of priorities. So what does Mayor Bill de Blasio's budget say as he seeks a second term in office? NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report. Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a nearly $85 billion budget proposal on Wednesday, filling his fiscal plan with voter-friendly initiatives. De Blasio is up for re-election this year, and his budget seems to have that in mind. "We think investing in things like pre-k and 3k builds a better future for everyone," de Blasio said. Many of these proposals were already revealed by City Hall weeks ago, but their cumulative price tag was unknown. The plan includes universal preschool for 3-year-olds rolled out over the next four years. It includes more than $1 billion to design community jails ahead of the closure of Rikers Island. And it has funding for air conditioners for city classrooms. Capital construction spending alone is slated to increase by $6 billion since the mayor's budget proposal in January. All this spending comes as the city faces uncertain times, with threats of funding cuts from Republicans in Washington. It's something budget watchdogs cautioned against. "All of this just creates an environment where one would think the prudent thing to do would be keep spending as close to level as possible," said Carol Kellermann of the Citizens Budget Commission. "We could sit around dead in the water and wait around for the unknown, or we can keep building our city," de Blasio said. Like-minded Council members agreed. "Save for a rainy day, yes, we are doing that. But make preemptive cuts to deny services to New Yorkers, no way," said City Councilman Brad Lander of Brooklyn. De Blasio's budget may be best seen as a political statement. At the Council's behest, he's including $16.4 million for legal services for immigrant New Yorkers facing deportation. "I wish we didn't have to include this in our budget. But we have to because of the policies emanating from Washington," de Blasio said. Lee County Sheriffs Office Possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia reported Wednesday afternoon on Alabama Highway 169, Marvyn Parkway in Opelika. Domestic violence third degree-harassing communications reported Wednesday afternoon in Smiths Station. Domestic violence third degree-criminal mischief and domestic violence third degree-harassment reported Wednesday afternoon in Opelika. Robbery first degree reported Wednesday evening in the 20th block of Lee Road 621, Opelika. Opelika Police Department A Theft of Property 1st degree occurred between 01/01/2016 and 04/01/2017 in the 900 block of Waverly Parkway. Jacquavious J. Greathouse, 26, of Auburn, Alabama was arrested on 04/26/2017 and charged with two counts of Murder (both on warrants). Greathouse turned himself in at the Lee County Jail and was taken into custody. These warrants are in connection with the two murders that occurred on 03/25/2017 in the 400 block of Toomer Court. Greathouse was booked into the Lee County Jail to await bond or trial. Auburn Police Division Theft of property, third degree, and fraudulent use of a credit/debit card reported Wednesday afternoon in the 600 block of Dekalb Street. Theft of property, fourth degree, and third-degree forgery reported Wednesday afternoon in the 600 block of Dekalb Street. Distribution of a controlled substance, drug trafficking, possession of marijuana first degree, illegal possession of a pistol reported Wednesday afternoon. Possession of marijuana second degree and drug paraphernalia first offense reported Wednesday night. Possession of drug paraphernalia reported Wednesday night. Criminal trespass third degree reported Wednesday night in the 600 block of Biggio Drive. Possession of marijuana second degree and drug paraphernalia reported Wednesday night. Chambers County Sheriffs Office Lacie Kay Meadows, 22, of Valley, Ill. possession of controlled substance, illegal possession of marijuana 2nd degree, drug paraphernalia (grand jury indictments) Liemund Likeen Dawson, 23, of Lanett, failure to pay, burglary 3rd degree. Indonesian media has been abuzz with the unlikely love story of Ilaria, a young waitress from Italy, and Dzufilkar, a young man from a small village in Central Java. The two reportedly met on Facebook two years ago, and Ilaria has been saving money ever since to be able to meet and marry her soulmate. Her dream recently became a reality. Internet romances are not exactly uncommon in this day and age, but they rarely involve leaving your old comfortable life behind to fly halfway across the world to a small Indonesian village just to be with the person you love, especially since youve never actually met them in person before. But thats exactly what Ilaria did, after saving up her waitress salary for a couple of years. Photo: Batang Police Public Relations Ilaria and Dzulfikar met on Facebook two years ago, and instantly hit it off. They started exchanging messages and photos of each other, and before long they fell in love. Unfortunately, one of them lived in Italy and the other in Indonesia, and they both lacked the financial resources to travel such a long distance. But love always finds a way, and the two decided that they werent going to let a little thing like money stand in the way of their happiness. Ilaria started saving up most of the money she made working in a restaurant, dreaming of the day she could finally buy a plane ticket to meet her beloved. It took two years for her fantasy to become a reality, but on April 18, 2017, she finally arrived in the island nation of Indonesia, and headed straight for the small village of Tragung, on the north coast of Central Java, where Dzulfikar was waiting for her. Photo: Batang Police Public Relations Traguang doesnt really see a lot of Italian visitors, so when Ilaria arrived carrying a suitcase and asking about a young man, people noticed. The two lovebirds heartwarming story may have remained a secret to the world, if not for an overzealous local man who, upon seeing this foreign woman, notified the regional police office about her presence. They must have thought it odd as well that an Italian woman was staying in the village, because they came to investigate. Photos taken during the police visit to Dzulfikarhome show Ilaria sitting on the floor next to a police officer and her boyfriends relatives, and him answering questions about their long-distance relationship. Photo: Ilaria Dzulfikar/Facebook We questioned her to determine her purpose in coming to Indonesia, deputy chief First Inspector Agus Windarto told Indonesian media, adding that the two claim they met via social media and want to get married as soon as possible. For two years, I saved money I got from working in a restaurant in Italy just to come to Indonesia, Ilaria told the police. She says that her parents know about her relationship with Dzulfikar and they have given her their blessing for the wedding. Photo: Ilaria Dzulfikar/Facebook But before they can get married, Ilaria must first prove to the local authorities that she is not tied up in another marriage using documents from the Italian consulate in Indonesia. It will take a while, but at least they are together now, and after two years of waiting, a few weeks time doesnt seem very long. The modern day romance of Ilaria and Dzulfikar has been doing the rounds on Indonesian social media, with most people expressing their admiration for the two. They even have their unofficial Facebook fan page. Sources: Tribunn News, Jawa Pos, La Repubblica Tambien disponible en espanol | Egalement disponible en francais In the wake of uncertainty and tensions in the trading system today, alongside heightened public concerns about globalisation, open trade is under threat. While in developing economies, trade is still generally regarded positively as a source of growth, development and jobs, some advanced economies (even where people support trade in principle) have more mixed views about particular trade agreements and trading relationships. But trade is only one element of a broader reaction to both globalisation encompassing not only trade but also, for example, finance, technology and migration and domestic economic and political systems in the wake of the global economic crisis. Many people, especially in some advanced economies, are expressing anger and frustration with an entire system that they no longer believe is delivering a better life for them and their families. They believe that the current system is unfair, and is not working for them. There is increasing evidence that many of them may be right. Distrust of the system has its roots in some genuine problems Since the economic crisis in 2008-10, lower global growth has meant not only fewer resources to meet current economic, social, environmental and security needs, it is also threatening promises made to today's workers for retirement benefits and pensions. A rising productivity gap among firms means a gap in wages and opportunities for their workers. Not only is income inequality rising in many economies, but inequality of opportunity is also increasing low-income households are often unable to adequately invest in education for their children, which can have strong, detrimental effects on individuals and limit social mobility. There are also strong disparities among regions, with lagging regions suffering lower productivity, growth and employment opportunities. More also needs to be done to ensure that more businesses are sharing the benefits of globally-integrated markets. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tend to be under-represented in international trade. While a few born global firms and highly-innovative SMEs are fully integrated into global markets, and a sizeable share of SMEs participates in global value chains (GVCs) as suppliers of exporters, for many SMEs export relationships can be short-lived only one or two years in many countries. More broadly, there are concerns around the world that competition in the global economy is distorted by market barriers and government actions. From local content requirements to subsidies, to behind-the-border regulatory measures seen as favouring domestic companies and products, countries are concerned that others are not playing fair. Against this background, digitalisation is also bringing profound transformation, with new opportunities and challenges. While information and communications technologies are contributing to increased productivity and wellbeing, and bring employment in new occupations and industries, there are also concerns as the breadth of the transformation comes into view. On average across countries, an estimated 14% of jobs are at high risk of being automated (equivalent to over 66 million workers in the 32 countries studied), while for another 32% more jobs, 50-70% of the tasks involved are at risk of automation. Although some workers will have the skills to adapt, and productivity gains and technology will see new jobs created, it is clear that workers will be displaced. And those losses can be sharp and concentrated on individuals, often those with the least capacity to adjust on their own. Some import-competing industries in advanced countries have also seen significant job losses. So as well as ensuring people are able to take advantage of opportunities from trade and technology, helping those facing hard adjustment is critical. So what can be done to address the legitimate concerns of people that are losing out from a global economic system that is not yet free, fair and open? The reality is that trade alone did not cause all of the problems that concern so many people today, and trade alone will not solve them either. Governments need to act across many fronts simultaneously, recognising that the impact of global trade on people depends both on the national policy settings of the countries in which they live and on the nature and degree of international economic cooperation. This implies working across silos and taking a much more integrated policy approach, both domestically and internationally, in order to make the whole system work better and for more people. We can start by focusing on three things. First, the impact of openness on growth depends on the conditions in the domestic economy that enable benefits to materialise and be fairly distributed, and for people and firms to have the capacity to take advantage of new opportunities. This includes, for example, reducing unnecessary costs that policies can unintentionally impose on traders, investing in the physical infrastructure to connect people to jobs and markets, and investing in people (from early childhood through to lifelong learning) to enable them to take advantage of new opportunities. Second, we need to do more to bring everyone along, and to ensure that temporary setbacks do not turn into lifelong disadvantages. Adjustment policies focusing only on those displaced by trade are not enough. Making the whole system work better for more people calls for an approach that puts improved well-being and stronger and more inclusive growth at the centre and empowers citizens, firms and communities to adjust to rapid changes and benefit from the opportunities created by technology, globalisation and trade. While the exact recipe will vary by country, efforts need to target not only labour markets and social safety nets, but also equality of opportunity. And third, we must use the full range of international economic co-operation tools to make the international system work better. Trade is shaped by a wider set of issues in how countries interact with each other in the global economy - from financial regulation and tax co-operation, combatting bribery and corruption, to workers' rights and environmental protection. These issues are the subject of different kinds of agreements in the international economic co-operation toolkit, ranging from legally-binding multilateral rules and voluntary guidelines and codes of conduct, to transparency and dialogue. But the international system we have now is not delivering for everyone. The lack of an international level playing field is among the factors that affect the allocation of trade benefits, both within and among countries, sectors, workers, and regions. To make the system more free, fair and open we need to fix the areas where we have gaps and unfinished business. And we need to do much more to ensure that everyone, from companies to countries, plays by the agreed rules. Trade policymaking also needs to become a more open conversation, where more people can debate the issues, assess the pros and cons, and feel a greater sense of confidence that the trade-offs inherent in reaching agreements make sense. Not everyone will agree, but increasing understanding and broadening the dialogue will help to identify new solutions. An informed public debate can help build a better understanding of the role of trade in the economy. Not everyone can be in the negotiating room and inclusion can also lead to capture by dominant lobbies but everyone can have a much better sense of the choices at stake, and more opportunities to give their views on those choices, to inform and be informed by the debate. Only a more modern, comprehensive and coherent package of trade, domestic and international policies can help ensure that global trade becomes more free, fair and open so that it can do what it is supposed to do: contribute to better lives for more people. Agricultural News Extending the Legacy Unveiled at the Oklahoma Wheat Commission Offices Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Wheat Commission unveiled a new mural donated by the lead wheat breeder at Oklahoma State University, Dr. Brett Carver and his wife Terri. The name of the mural is "Extending the Legacy" and was commissioned by the famous Oklahoma artist, Dr. Bob Palmer. The painting depicts the different eras of agriculture within the wheat industry over the last 140 years in Oklahoma. The work also places emphasis on OSU wheat research and extension programs that have made significant contributions from the past that will continue to move us into future, thus "Extending the Legacy." The multi paneled painting is being displayed in the main entrance of the new wheat commission offices in northwest Oklahoma City. (as seen above) Dr. Palmer originally from Walters, Oklahoma and former professor from University of Central Oklahoma is well known for his work featured on buildings in many towns throughout Oklahoma. He is most famous for his period pieces that tell individuals the history and heritage of the region. "The Oklahoma Wheat Commission Board of Directors were elated at the donation from Brett and Terri Carver that made the wonderful opportunity of "Extending the Legacy" possible. It continues to be of great importance for all of agriculture to tell our story, the correct story! Having this housed for the wheat industry in Oklahoma City also gives us the perfect opportunity to reach out to urban audiences telling them the history and vital role our industry plays when working to feed an ever-growing population both locally and globally." said Tom Stephens of Guymon, Chairman of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission Board. "When you look at the work our public researchers are doing within the industry at OSU and then to have them give you a gift like this certainly makes you thankful for individuals like the Carver's. Not only do we get to see his life's work in the field each year, we now have a work of art that reaches out to the public telling the important story of wheat." Learn more about the mission of the OKlahoma Wheat Commission by visiting their website by clicking or tapping here. To view a high resolution picture of the mural, click here. Extending the Legacy, Donated by Dr. Brett Carver and his wife, Terri WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI Top Agricultural News Agricultural News OSU's Dr. Jayson Lusk Honored with the 2017 Borlaug CAST Communication Award The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) announces that the 2017 Borlaug CAST Communication Award goes to Jayson Lusk, a consummate communicator who promotes agricultural science and technology in the public arena. Lusk uses multiple forms of media to advocate for science, as he explains how innovation and growth in agriculture are critical for food security and global progress. Currently a Regents Professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair with the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University in July he will become the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Lusk calls himself a "food and agricultural economist who studies what we eat and why we eat it." But as one colleague stated, "He's more than a scholar; he's an unparalleled communicator." Lusk uses articles, editorials, and a popular blog to take complicated issues and make them accessible to all. He has published influential books and more than 190 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals on topics ranging from animal welfare and biotechnology to consumer interests. He also communicates through frequent television appearances, numerous radio and podcast interviews, newspaper articles, and many well-received presentations. Various media outlets name him as one of the most prolific and cited food and agricultural economists of the past decade. Lusk achieved a B.S. in food technology from Texas Tech University and a Ph.D in agricultural economics from Kansas State University before diving into academic work at Mississippi State and Purdue. A visiting research position at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research gave him and his family a chance to experience Paris. On the way to his current position at Oklahoma State, Lusk served on councils, chaired committees, wrote extensively, and became a valued voice in the realm of agricultural science. In 2015, he was named a fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Colleagues praise Lusk for his abilities to reach audiences outside the agricultural community and for his willingness to engage in controversial food issues. As one nominator wrote, "He is an excellent columnist and blogger. His perspective is surprising, and he engages the reader." Another pointed out that Lusk believes farmers, policy makers, and consumers need credible information to make informed decisions--he specifically wants an informed public to know more about important research by land-grant university scientists. Lusk's most recent book, Unnaturally Delicious: How Science and Technology are Serving Up Super Foods to Save the World, explains how science and innovation are linked with feeding the growing global population. With his ability to understand food issues at all levels and his skill at getting agricultural messages across to varied audiences, Jayson Lusk is indeed a worthy recipient of the 2017 Borlaug CAST Communication Award. An award presentation will occur at a breakfast side event cohosted by Syngenta and CAST at the World Food Prize Symposium on October 18, 2017, in Des Moines, Iowa. The Borlaug CAST Communication Award honors the legacies of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug and Dr. Charles A. Black, the first president of CAST. Source - Council for Agricultural Science and Technology WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI Top Agricultural News If he lived on any other street, Ben Labenz would be an Election Day sure thing for Mayor Jean Stothert. Ben is a Republican, a fan of President Donald Trump, a retired barber who owns four cars and grudgingly pays Omahas wheel tax on each of them. And this is what I get, he told me as he leaned on his backyard fence and pointed toward the street in front of his house. It is Bens crummy luck that the street in front of his house is 163rd Avenue, just south of Pacific Street, inside a west Omaha neighborhood where our citys infrastructure woes are more than a campaign talking point. Bens street is pocked by a few deep potholes and rapidly decaying with each spring rainstorm. The city declared it substandard and largely stopped repairing it a few years ago. Challenger Heath Mello is trying to make political hay out of streets like this one. Stothert is trying to frame the streets issue as a decades-long problem she is now beginning to solve. Ben isnt sure whom to trust. This street is largely why he voted for third-place finisher Taylor Royal in the primary. This street is largely why hes undecided on whom to support in the May 9 general election. This city will take my money, but they wont take care of my street, he says. Explain this to me: How is that right? I went on a pothole tour of Omaha last week, driving the streets in this Pacific Heights neighborhood and a few others like it. I purposely chose several of the hundreds of unimproved roads the city now largely doesnt maintain or repair. I gripped the steering wheel tight with both hands. On 87th Street and 91st Circle and 92nd Street in the Westside area, my Volkswagen jerked and slammed over water-filled potholes so deep and wide that I imagined them as Jurassic Park footprints. On 164th Street, in Bens Pacific Heights neighborhood, my car rumbled up a disintegrating road that reminded me of streets in two decidedly non-Omaha cities I have visited Havana and Kabul. I didnt take this tour to test my shock absorbers. I took this tour to get out of my car on our citys worst streets and ask the residents there a question: Did the condition of their street affect how they viewed the mayors race? I found Democrats, Republicans and independents furious at the city. I found a bipartisan sense of profound unfairness, residents living on crumbling streets who believe they are paying taxes while being denied basic city services. But I also found confusion: Who to blame? Who to turn to? And could anyone, either incumbent Stothert or challenger Mello, actually fix this mess? I hope the mayor herself drives down these streets and says, Oh dear, says Tom Allen, a retired city worker and registered Democrat who moved to Pacific Heights 164th Street a few years ago. But make no mistake this is a project that should have started 30 years ago. The mayoral candidates are, of course, sparring over who can best repair the citys worst roads. The incumbent mayor argues that a new plan she is putting into place will gradually improve Omahas streets and do so without any tax increases. The challenger, meanwhile, is holding press conferences in front of potholes, running TV ads that star them, and all but waltzing around them in key battlegrounds like Westside and South Omaha as he tries to tie the mayor to street conditions so bad that they were the subject of a recent story in the New York Times. In Pacific Heights, I found several people, Democrats and independents, who say that the condition of their street is a key reason they will support Mello. Ella Boozer, the widow of Omaha hoops legend Bob Boozer, told me that Bob liked Stothert when she was a city councilwoman and most likely would have supported her as mayor, too. But the condition of 163rd Avenue, where the Boozers bought a house in 1968, makes her furious at the current administration. When Bob was living, whenever the city asked him to do something, he did it, because he loved Omaha, she said. And now they cant even come out here and put a bucket of tar in that pothole out there? She said shes voting for Mello. What would Bob think of that? He would be proud of me today, for speaking up, she tells me. Allen, who lives a block north of Boozer, admits that he probably would have voted for Mello no matter what hes been a Democrat all his adult life. But when I was there, he pulled an envelope out of his mailbox and opened a letter detailing the citys plan to replace 164th Street, a plan Stothert later told me had been developed in conjunction with the streets residents. The letter itself shouldn't have come as a surprise. Stothert personally met with the street's residents in August, kickstarting a process during which the residents chose an option to replace their old street with a new concrete one. (They could have also chosen a cheaper asphalt street, though the city will not guarantee it will repair that cheaper asphalt street in the years to come.) But the letter listed an estimated cost for Allen, and that did come as a shock. Should the city go ahead with the replacement of the street, the estimated cost: As much as $30,000. Stothert later told me that the actual figure he pays will be far lower under the terms of the street improvement plan the city is rolling out. If the Nebraska Legislature changes state law, as expected, that sum could be paid over 20 years, she said though its also worth pointing out that he would then owe 5 percent annual interest on that sum. Allen didnt know any of that as he stared at the letter. He told me hes a retiree on a tight fixed income. I asked: What are you going to do if you have to pay that much money? I dont know, he told me. I cant burn down City Hall. The Republicans in Pacific Heights are as mad about the streets as anyone, but that doesnt necessarily mean they will abandon the mayor. Lee Peterson has lived here since 1979 and remembers the meetings leading to the annexation of the neighborhood in the 1990s. No one said a peep about the neighborhoods road, how it wasnt up to code, how one day the residents themselves might have to pay to replace it. Whats happening in Pacific Heights now is wrong, he says, but he will still vote for Stothert on May 9. Im not happy about it, he says, but then mentions the mayor lowering property taxes and curtailing fire and police pensions. And I just cant support Mello. There is some data suggesting that Omaha residents living in the neighborhoods hardest hit by unimproved roads may be ever-so-slightly edging away from Stothert. In 2013, Stothert crushed then-Mayor Jim Suttle in the Westside area, winning 57 percent of the vote. During the 2017 primary, Stothert barely eked out a victory against Mello in Westside, 207 to 200, and wouldnt have reached her 2013 winning percentage even if given every one of Taylor Royals 37 votes in the neighborhood. (Royal, a Republican, has since endorsed Stothert, but experts think at least some of his voters will head toward Mello.) In Pacific Heights, Stothert absolutely destroyed Suttle, winning an eye-opening 69 percent of the vote. In the 2017 primary, she still easily beat Mello, but a huge chunk of voters, nearly 20 percent including Ben Labenz chose to vote for Royal instead. Back on 163rd Avenue, standing with Labenz, I asked if hes really willing to buck his party ID and vote Democrat. He shrugs. Maybe so, he says. As I talked to residents like Labenz in this neighborhood, the battle lines for the final 12 days of the mayoral race grew clear. If Mello can keep the conversation about the mayoral race on roads, he could gain votes in places like Pacific Heights, and District 66, and South Omaha all areas Stothert won four years ago. If Stothert can change the conversation to other issues maybe her lowering of property taxes, or Mellos stance on abortion then she has a better chance of returning people like Labenz to the fold, and again running up big margins in west Omaha neighborhoods like Pacific Heights en route to re-election. But quite honestly, Labenz isnt much worried about the last-minute strategy of a tight mayoral race. Quite honestly, when I talked to him last week, he just wanted someone, anyone, to fix his crumbling street. If we used to have a pothole, we would call the city up, and they would fill it, he says. And now I walk the neighborhood every day. ... Nobody is filling any potholes. Tell me how thats right! WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that the United States would not be pulling out of the North American Free Trade Agreement "at this time," opening the door to future negotiations on the same day that Trump was considering signaling a strong intent to withdraw as a potential way of bringing the parties together at the deal-making table. Trump spoke with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late Wednesday afternoon after reports circulated during the day that the president was contemplating withdrawing from NAFTA. "President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries," the White House said in a statement late Wednesday. Earlier, three people familiar with the matter said Trump is seriously considering signing a document within days that would signal his intent to withdraw the United States from the agreement within six months. If signed, the letter would begin a formal process that could see the United States exit from the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico, ratcheting up tensions among neighboring nations. Signing the document does not require Trump to withdraw from NAFTA after six months, but it is a required step if he plans to eventually do so. The White House is expected to soon take a separate step by signing a letter to Congress that would notify lawmakers of the administration's intention to renegotiate NAFTA. By taking both steps, the White House would give itself more flexibility to choose a different outcome in several months. Any move by Trump on NAFTA would not come as a surprise. The president made criticism of NAFTA one of the main topics of his campaign last year, calling the pact "a disaster for our country" and saying it "had to be totally gotten rid of." But the NAFTA issue did seem to lose some urgency after the first few weeks of Trump's presidency as his administration focused on other topics. "Some people were hopeful that just like he revised his views on NATO, he'd revise his views on this," said Hoyt Bleakley, associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan. "But clearly he hasn't." In recent days Trump also has taken a harder line with Canada, blasting a recent change in the dairy pricing policy there that mostly dealt with a cheese-making product called ultrafiltered milk. In Wisconsin last week, Trump called Canada's dairy pricing scheme "another typical one-sided deal against the U.S." Canada disputed that. And the Commerce Department said Monday it would begin charging a tariff on the import of softwood lumber from Canada into the United States, alleging Canada was improperly subsidizing its domestic timber firms. But there was no panic over the fate of NAFTA in the Calgary offices of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, whose members sell and buy plenty of beef cattle across the border. "This is his typical way of doing things - saying completely unreasonable things as a negotiating posture," said John Masswohl, the trade group's director of government and international relations. Masswohl said he watched how Trump handled issues at the Carrier plant in Indiana and with Ford's plans to build car models in Mexico. He sees similar rhetoric in Trump's approach to NAFTA. "I've got to believe this is a negotiating position," Masswohl said, because the trade pact might need tweaking, but it has been good for both countries. Separately, the Trump administration on Wednesday made another move on trade that seemed aimed at China, launching an investigation into the effect of aluminum imports on U.S. national security interests. A similar probe, known as a Section 232 investigation, was announced for foreign-made steel last week. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Wednesday that Trump would be signing a directive on Thursday urging the inquiry. Ross said aluminum was a national security interest because the metal in its high-purity form is used in military planes such as the F-35 and F-18, plus armor plating for military vehicles and combat vessels. Just one U.S. smelter makes high-purity aluminum, producing enough for peacetime military needs but not enough if the country enters into conflicts, he said. "It's very dangerous from a defense point of view to have only one supplier of an absolutely critical element," Ross said. Only two U.S. smelters are fully operational today, with eight others having curtailed operations or closed since 2015. Imported aluminum accounted for 55 percent of the U.S. market last year, the largest market share ever and a steep increase over recent years, Ross said. The largest importers of aluminum into the United States are China followed by Russia, United Arab Emirates and Canada, Ross said. Aluminum imports from China, in particular, have been a focus of the U.S. government for months. Late last year, a bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators asked for a national security review of Chinese aluminum giant Zhongwang International Group Ltd.'s proposed $2.3 billion purchase of U.S. aluminum products maker Aleris, alleging the deal would damage the U.S. defense industry. In January, days before leaving office, President Barack Obama launched a World Trade Organization complaint about Chinese aluminum subsidies that, the United States claimed, gave Chinese companies an unfair advantage. And last month, U.S. producers of aluminum foil - including the kind used to wrap kitchen leftovers - filed an anti-dumping complaint against China, claiming the United States was being flooded with unfair, cheap imports. Foil prices have declined significantly in recent years "due to widespread and significant underselling of U.S. producers' prices," according to the complaint. A couple weeks later, Trump's commerce department announced its was investigating those and other unfair trade claims. A 33-year-old Iowa man who wasnt wearing pants or shoes was arrested early Thursday in Council Bluffs after he fled from authorities. Bluffs police said around 3 a.m., officers were dispatched to Tyson Foods on 23rd Avenue to investigate a suspicious man who appeared to be disoriented. Police said the man was outside without pants or shoes and he was wrapped in a blanket. The Davis City man ran from officers, hiding in a marshy area on 23rd Avenue, police said. After an hourlong search, police said, the man surrendered. He was taken by rescue squad to a Bluffs hospital for treatment of possible hypothermia, police said. He later was released and arrested on outstanding warrants out of Cass County, Iowa. He was being held in the Pottawattamie County Jail. A 22-year-old South Dakota man was sentenced in Cedar County District Court in northeast Nebraska on Tuesday in connection with the scalding of a 1-year-old girl. Judge Paul Vaughn of Hartington sentenced River Malatare to 10 to 14 years in a Nebraska prison for attempted child abuse and to a concurrent 20 to 60 months for failure to register as a sex offender, the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office said. Malatare pleaded no contest to attempted child abuse and guilty to failure to register as a sex offender, the Attorney Generals Office said. In February 2015, Malatare was watching a friends 1-year-old when he placed her in a scalding hot bath that left her with significant burns over much of her body, the Attorney Generals Office said. LINCOLN Abortion politics claimed center stage Tuesday as Nebraska lawmakers delved into their second day of budget debate. At issue was language aimed at steering family planning funds away from Planned Parenthood, a change made possible by federal legislation passed last week. That debate occurred even as lawmakers got word that the state budget gap had grown again, this time by about $55 million. The increase was the result of new, more pessimistic tax revenue projections issued by a state board for the period ending June 30, 2019. State Sen. John Stinner of Gering, the Appropriations Committee chairman, said the new projections mean lawmakers will have to go back and make changes to the budget plan. The current plan closes a budget gap that stood at nearly $900 million in January, making cuts to some budgets, slowing other spending growth and tapping several cash funds. But it was seven lines out of the 149-page main budget bill that tied the Legislature in knots. Those lines would give priority to certain types of health clinics to get Nebraskas $1.9 million annual share of federal Title X funds. Excluded from the priority list would be four of the 12 current providers Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and three independent clinics based in Tecumseh, Grand Island and North Platte. The four collect 50 percent of the states Title X funds, which pay for contraceptives, cervical cancer screening, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and related services to low-income women and men. Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus offered an amendment to strike the priority language, which he said had been buried in the budget bill. Gov. Pete Ricketts had put the language in his budget proposal, for the first time ever, and the Appropriations Committee added it to their plan with little discussion. But anti-abortion groups made it clear that the aim was to take money away from Planned Parenthood. The Nebraska Catholic Conference sent out a tweet urging people to contact senators: Tell them to keep taxpayer Title X funds away from abortion providers! An action alert from the Nebraska Family Alliance said: We have the opportunity to seize one of the most significant pro-life victories in Nebraska in years. Schumacher and others argued that the effect of the change would be to reduce access to important health services for low-income people. Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln said about 14,500 people are served by the four clinics. Most are at or below the federal poverty level and most have no health insurance. This change will hurt real people, Schumacher said. There has been no case made for the change. But Sen. Mike Hilgers of Lincoln said the language would not bar money from going to the four clinics or reduce access to services. He said there is good reason to prioritize health facilities with a broader range of services, as the language would do. Schumachers motion failed, with 17 senators voting for it, 19 voting against it and 12 abstaining. But positions started shifting as Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers offered a motion to reconsider the Schumacher amendment. Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte was among the senators who had abstained, then got up later to express concerns about local clinics losing funds. Im firmly against abortion, he said, but Im also for peoples access to health care. Lawmakers tried to find a compromise but were unsuccessful Tuesday evening. Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer of Norfolk urged his colleagues to advance the bill and work on a compromise before second-round debate. Tom Venzor, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, argued that the language in the bill would continue to fund health centers that provide comprehensive medical services. But he said the group would work to address rural senators concerns about the clinics in their districts. Planned Parenthood is not among those clinics. Lawmakers gave first-round approval to the main budget bill without addressing the new, lower revenue forecast. The current budget plan calls for general fund spending of $8.9 billion over the two fiscal years ending June 30, 2019, an annual average growth of 1 percent. It draws $173 million from the cash reserve, or rainy day, fund and avoids tax increases. Also on Tuesday, lawmakers: Rejected an amendment that would have taken less money from the Department of Roads operations cash fund to help balance the general fund budget. The budget called for taking $30 million over two years. Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson, the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee chairman, offered the amendment to take only $15 million, saying the larger transfer would hurt road-building efforts. Stinner countered that the budget provided for more than state highway officials had requested. Stalled over a measure that would make budget-related and other changes affecting people with disabilities. Legislative Bill 333, introduced on behalf of the governor, would save $7.3 million by ending a state program that helps newly disabled people pay their medical bills until they can qualify for federal disability assistance. As advanced by the Health and Human Services Committee, the bill also would suspend a 22-year-old law that entitles young people with developmental disabilities to get day services after graduation. The administration proposed repealing the law, saying it conflicts with federal rules about setting priorities for who gets state services. But Sen. Sue Crawford of Bellevue said a suspension would allow time to look for alternatives. She said members wanted to ensure no one ends up in their living room with no help. For the next two years, state officials have said they would reserve some slots for graduating youth. The budget includes money to serve them. World-Herald staff writer Joe Duggan contributed to this report. The Omaha area has apparently escaped from overnight frost that blanketed other parts of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Omahas official overnight low temperature for the 12 hours that ended at 7:30 a.m. was 36 degrees reported at Eppley Airfield. Offutt Air Force Base also reported 36 degrees, and Millard recorded a low of 38. Council Bluffs had a low of 34 degrees. Omaha stayed clear of the freezing mark thanks to overnight cloud cover, said a KMTV meteorologist, Ryan McPike. Other area locations that reported freezing or below-freezing marks overnight: Albion, 27; Beatrice, 31; Columbus, 28; Lincoln, 32; Norfolk, 29; Wayne, 32. The National Weather Service office in Valley had issued a freeze warning until 9 a.m. today for northeast and parts of central Nebraska. A frost advisory was issued for south-central, southeast and eastern Nebraska, including Omaha and Lincoln, and for parts of western and southwest Iowa, including Council Bluffs. Later today, partly sunny skies are to take over in the Omaha area, with forecasters calling for a high temperature in the upper 50s. Tonight in the Omaha area, there is a 50 percent chance of showers, mainly after 10 p.m., and the low temperature should fall into the mid-40s. Friday, the weather service said, will begin a couple of days of persistent precipitation in the Omaha area. It will be a steady, soaking rain for about three days, McPike said. There is an 80 percent chance of showers Friday, mainly before 1 p.m., and a high around just 45. Friday night, the chance of showers drops to 20 percent, and the low will slip into the upper 30s. Forecasters put the chance of showers at 60 percent in the Omaha area Saturday, when a high in the upper 40s and breezy conditions are likely. Saturday night, the chance of showers climbs to 80 percent, and a low in the upper 30s is expected. Some snow could be mixed in with the rain across parts of northeast Nebraska on Friday and Saturday, the weather service said. Showers and breezy conditions are likely Sunday and Sunday night, the weather service said, with a high in the lower 40s and an overnight low in the mid-30s. McPike said parts of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa could receive 2 to 3 inches of rainfall Friday through the weekend. He said any severe weather should remain well south of the Omaha area, where temperatures should be too low to help produce strong winds and heavy hail. So thats some good news for us, McPike said. The average high temperature for the Omaha area in late April is the mid- to upper 60s and the average overnight low is the lower to mid-40s. Monday and Tuesday in the Omaha area are forecast to be partly sunny and breezy, with slight chances of showers and highs in the mid-50s to mid-60s. Wednesday will bring another chance of showers and a high in the lower 60s. Nebraska protests played at least a part in President Barack Obama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline as the project became a flashpoint in a national fight over fossil fuels and climate change. Local resistance to the still-popular project is gearing back up again now that President Donald Trump has reversed the Obama administration and given his blessing to the Keystone XL. By accident of geography and bureaucracy, this means those old fights are headed back to Nebraska and its catch-all regulator, the state Public Service Commission. The issue spurs heated opposition, and Nebraskans who want to express their concerns are welcomed to do so. But that opposition needs to stay within responsible bounds. The focus should be on expression of ideas, not disruption or violence. The Nebraska way of handling controversial issues is through strong debate, not through fomenting mayhem. Mike Flood, a former speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, rightly underscored that point in a recent Midlands Voices. Nobody here would benefit from the chaos, lawlessness and pollution that outside forces wrought on North Dakota during the Dakota Access Pipeline debate and subsequent protests. About 40 of the 670 people arrested were from North Dakota, authorities there told The World-Heralds Paul Hammel this month. People on all sides should listen to the sound counsel from local protest organizers and supporters and resist the urge to let passions get the better of them. Instead, engage in the process. Nebraskans have a process in place to hear from landowners, stakeholders and interested Nebraskans during this debate over a proposed 275-mile pipeline route before the states PSC. The PSC is weighing another application from pipeline operator TransCanada to carry tar sands oil to market. The route could be approved. It could be rejected. Or it could be moved. Supporters of the proposed pipeline route to carry oil from Canada through Steele City, Nebraska, and down to Louisiana still say the pipeline safely boosts our national energy security and jobs by trading with a friendly neighbor. Opponents worry about the pipeline routes threat to Nebraskans private property rights and the risk that spills could pose to water tables. Impassioned disagreement on the pipeline issue is legitimate. So is strong debate. Whats important now is that Midlanders show the world another way to disagree, a responsible way our way. When you close your eyes and imagine the perfect honeymoon, what do you see? Thats the first step to determining where to go and what to do, says travel specialist Elise Aust of Custom Cruises & Travel in Omaha. Step two: Pick a destination thats new to both of you. I stress that if a couple (or half of the couple) has been there, done that, they need to pick an alternate destination, says Aust. A honeymoon is symbolic of a couples new life together. It signals the start of the marital relationship. You need a shared memory as a newly married couple, something that you can call your own. Step three: Include your honeymoon in your budget, and dont lose perspective of that budget. The honeymoon expense is often overlooked, Aust explains. People can get carried away with wedding spending, and by the time they get around to booking their trip, they may be overspent. In her experience, a delayed honeymoon rarely is a good idea. Life happens and it keeps getting delayed. While recent world events and Zika virus warnings are having some influence on destination choices, Aust reminds couples to "keep things in perspective. Her philosophy: The younger you are, the farther out you should go. Here, she shares her best-value picks. These arent necessarily the lowest priced, but they offer the most value when you consider amenities and the convenience of air travel from Omaha. BEST-VALUE BEACH HONEYMOONS Head here if you dream of a private cabana, chaise lounges, tropical drinks in your hands and no worries about what youre going to do from hour to hour, but a whale-watching excursion certainly would be a cool way to spend a day. Bonus: In some cases, you can depart Omaha in the morning and be on a beach later that afternoon. Mexico Cancun Cabo San Lucas Puerto Vallarta South Pacific Bora Bora Tahiti Fiji The Cook Islands The Caribbean Jamaica Dominican Republic Aruba BEST-VALUE CRUISES Opt for this if . . . youd enjoy a different port of call every day, and dolphin or whale-watching would be a thrill. Bonus: Mid-luxury ships are an excellent price point for honeymooners. Insider intel: Cruising no longer is what people do when theyre older, Aust says. All-inclusive fares and flexibility make the cruise experience competitive with what youd find at a land resort for honeymooners. Greek Isles Eastern Caribbean Southern Caribbean Mediterranean Italian Riviera French Riviera Mexican Riviera BEST-VALUE ADVENTURE HONEYMOONS Head here if youre eco-conscious and can see yourself exploring remote waterfalls, paddle-boarding, snorkeling and having maximum adventure with minimal impact on the environment. At the end of the day, youll take a massage and a quiet, romantic dinner for two over a night on the town (because the latter is nonexistent here). Bonus: No spring breakers! Airfare tends to be more expensive and travel time is longer, but the experience is broader. Insider intel: Costa Rica is eco tourism on steroids,.It has beaches, volcanos, flora and fauna. You can do an all-inclusive resort, but thats not what Id recommend,. Instead, take three or four days and hike a rainforest, explore a cloud forest and discover a remote waterfall. Then spend your last three days on a beach property relaxing. Belize has a spectacular reef for diving and snorkeling, some amazing all-inclusive properties and unique villages along the cays (small chain of islands) accessible by seaplane or ferry. Central America Belize Costa Rica Nicaragua Panama South America Argentina Brazil Chile Machu Picchu, Peru BEST-VALUE EUROPEAN HONEYMOONS Head here if . . . youve never been abroad. Bonus: Airfare to Europe is fairly economical right now and likely to remain so through 2017. Insider intel: Dismiss the idea of getting a rail pass and jamming seven countries into two weeks. Thats a lot of schlepping of bags and checking in and out of hotels, Aust says. Spend a few quality days in fewer cities. Amsterdam and Copenhagen London and Paris Spain, Portugal, Morocco Italy: Venice, Florence, Rome, Amalfi Coast Ireland: Rent a car and keep an open-ended itinerary. The fun is in wandering the countryside. PASSPORT ALERT A valid passport is required for travel outside the United States. Apply for it well in advance of your planned departure, advises Elise Aust of Custom Cruises & Travel in Omaha. The U.S. Immigration Service recommends allowing six to eight weeks for processing. A newly married traveler with a valid passport, however, doesnt need to worry about applying for an update. Your passport name does not need to match your drivers license name, Aust says. Most couples live out the life of their passports before making name changes. Simply book reservations in your maiden name for international travel. If you already hold a valid passport, be sure to check the expiration date. Most countries require at least six months of remaining validation from your scheduled date of return. You dont want to chance being seriously injured in an accident, for example, and stuck in a foreign country because your passport has expired. Also, check new passport rules about photo requirements. 'Kejriwal ji, if my claims true, you'll resign and retire': Sukesh writes a new letter IRCTC update: 151 trains cancelled on Nov 09; here is the complete list After MCD, debacle within AAP as string of leaders resign India oi-Vikas By Vikas The Aam Aadmi Party is heading towards a major crisis with its Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh and Delhi MLA Alka Lamba resigning from their posts following party's poor show in MCD polls. Lamba had on Wednesday claimed that she was offered a Lok Sabha ticket by the BJP and accused the saffron party of trying to poach AAP legislators, said reports. She said that BJP was luring AAP legislators plum posts. In 2015, prominent AAP leader Shazia Ilmi had switched sides to the BJP following which she appointed as an independent director with Engineers India Ltd, a public sector undertaking. Lamba had tweeted following AAP's debacle in MCD polls that she took moral responsibility for party's defeat in all the three wards of her constituency. The BJP won 181 of the 270 wards of the three municipal corporations in Delhi. The BJP won 64 of 103 wards in North, 70 of 104 in South and 47 of 63 in East. OneIndia News 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 After MCD loss, Kejriwal administers oath of allegiance to councillors India oi-Vikas By Vikas After the Aam Aadmi Party's dismal performance in MCD polls, party convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday administered oath of allegiance to councillors. In an attempt to keep the party together, Kejriwal, who held a meeting with councillors, warned them of BJP's intent to poach them. He made the councillors swear that they would not desert the party. Reports say that he urged them to keep fighting against corruption, but did not point out specific reasons for party's loss. AAP MLA Alka Lamba had on Wednesday claimed that she was offered a Lok Sabha ticket by the BJP and accused the saffron party of trying to poach AAP legislators. She said that BJP was luring AAP legislators plum posts. In 2015, prominent AAP leader Shazia Ilmi had switched sides to the BJP following which she was appointed as an independent director with Engineers India Ltd, a Public Sector Undertaking. Following the poor show in MCD polls, AAP's Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh stepped down from his post. The BJP won 181 of the 270 wards of the three municipal corporations in Delhi. The AAP could manage only 48 seats. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 16:01 [IST] Amit Shah says Bengal most poverty-stricken state in India India pti-PTI Kolkata, Apr 27: BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday described Bengal as the most poverty-stricken state in the country and said once his party came to power in the state, it would flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat. "Such poverty is not there anywhere else in the country," he told a meeting of booth-level BJP workers here while winding up his three-day visit to the state. Shah said under BJP rule in West Bengal, no one would have to "approach the court" for the immersion of Durga idols and the people would be free to observe religious festivals such as Saraswati puja. In February, a section of students in a school on the outskirts of Kolkata had objected to Saraswati puja celebrations, triggering a controversy. Asserting that Bengal was next on the (BJP's) radar, Shah said he had coined a slogan, 'Ebar Bangla' (this time, Bengal) for the purpose. "I witnessed massive enthusiasm among the people during my visit and I am sure that the BJP will win (elections) in Bengal," he added. Shah said the BJP wanted a government in the state which would provide employment, check cross-border infiltration and build a "sonar Bangla". "Only the BJP under Narendra Modi's leadership can provide such a government. No one else can," he claimed, adding, "Bengal will flourish like Maharashtra and Gujarat." The BJP chief also accused the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government of unleashing atrocities on the people in a way "never seen since Independence". Earlier, the BJP chief visited three houses at Gouranganagar, on the outskirts of the city, as part of a mass contact programme aimed at expanding the saffron party's base in the state. The residents greeted him by blowing conch shells and offered him sweets. Shah had yesterday visited a slum in Banerjee's Bhawanipur Assembly constituency. On the first day of his visit, he'd had a meal at a Dalit home at Naxalbari in north Bengal. The BJP chief today also paid a visit to Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's residence at Bhawanipur in the city. PTI BSY supporters create ruckus at Eshwarappa's 'BJP bachao' meet India oi-Anusha A Bharatiya Janata Party man was thrashed by his own party workers in a meeting full of leaders for supporting the party's state president B S Yeddyurappa. The disgruntlement against Yeddyurappa in the Karnataka BJP is very real and Thursday's incident came as proof of the same. Shiva, a BJP worker was thrashed by members of his own party after he objected to MLC Bhanuprakash calling Yeddyurappa 'unfit'. Has Karnataka BJP thrown away the 2018 assembly elections already? A meeting of dissenting leaders was held in Bengaluru's palace grounds on Thursday. K S Eshwarappa who has locked horns with Yeddyurappa on multiple occasions was also present at the meeting. The leaders attended the meeting despite a stern warning from the senior leadership against such meetings. While speaking on the stage Bhanuprakash called Yeddyurappa 'unfit' angering a BSY supporter. When Shiva, a Yeddyurappa supporter raised an objection to the same, he was thrashed and thrown out of the venue. The ugly spat was caught on camera and came as proof of the infighting within the party. Meanwhile, despite being a meeting of disgruntled leaders, the organisers attempted to make it look like a pro-party meeting. While speeches of leaders clearly indicated that they were against B S Yeddyurappa, the state BJP chief's pictures were plastered all over the venue. While expressing their discontent with Yeddyurappa's leadership, the dissident leaders sent a message to the senior leadership that being against B S Yeddyurappa was not equal to being against the party. OneIndia News 'B L Santosh responsible for dissidence in party', Yeddyurappa lashes out India oi-Anusha As disgruntled BJP workers gathered in Bengaluru, B S Yeddyurappa held general secretary (organisation) B L Santosh directly responsible for the dissidence plaguing the party. The state president of BJP also lashed out at Eshwarappa for 'creating problems' in the party. BSY said that while Eshwarappa was defying the senior leadership by calling for such meetings, B L Santosh was the mastermind who engineered the rebellion. This is the first time that the leader has launched a full-fledged attack against B L Santosh, an RSS man who enjoys considerable clout with national president Amit Shah. "The senior leadership, as well as the people, are witnessing all that is happening. The rebel leaders will be given an appropriate answer. Had Eshwarappa sat down and discussed his concerns, the party would not face such a situation," B S Yeddyurappa said. Speaking to the media on Thursday, Yeddyurappa accused Eshwarappa of 'creating problems' in the party. The rebel leaders' meeting in Bengaluru came months after both, Yeddyurappa and Eshwarappa, were called to Delhi to sort their differences. Both leaders were pulled up by the senior leadership and K S Eshwarappa was asked to refrain from all independent activities of the Sangolli Rayanna brigade. For both leaders, however, nothing seems to have changed. The party and workers continue to be divided between the two prominent BJP faces. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 19:22 [IST] Damage to Yamuna floodplains: Notice to AOL on contempt plea India oi-Anusha The National green tribunal issued contempt notices to Sri Sri Ravishankar's Art Of Living and the Delhi development authority on Thursday. The notices were issued after a contempt petition was moved against the spiritual leader for holding the union government and green panel responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains. A plea was filed by activist Manoj Misra seeking action against Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The petition claimed that the statement made by the Art of Living founder 'interfered with the free and fair dispensation of justice'. NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar who heard the petition on Thursday issued contempt notices to AOL. The Delhi Development Authority was also made a party to the plea and hence has been issued with a contempt notice as well. An expert panel told the NGT that AOL had caused damage to the Yamuna floodplains during their world culture festival. The panel had also claimed that Rs 42 crore would be required to restore the ravaged floodplains. Soon after the report became public, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had blamed the government and the NGT for permitting AOL. He also added that his foundation AOL had obtained all necessary permissions, including from the green panel, and the event could have been stopped in the beginning itself if the river was so "fragile and pure". 'No notice issued to us' says AOL Following reports of the NGT sending contempt notices to Art of Living, the foundation denied receiving any such notice. In a statement released on Thursday evening, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's foundation said that the petitioner, in fact, was 'verbally reprimanded for going to the media even before filing his application.' "Today, no contempt notice whatsoever has been issued by the NGT to AOL or Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Media reports to the contrary are absolutely false, baseless and factually incorrect. The matter has simply been adjourned to 9th May 2017," read a statement issued by Art Of Living. The statement also denied making any 'disrespectful statements' or 'committing any contempt'. "We respect the Judiciary and have faith that truth shall prevail. We have never said anything disrespectful nor have we committed any contempt. This is nothing but a futile attempt to delay the hearing on merits. The Petitioner knows that he has no case on merits. He is, therefore, attempting to take attention away from the crux of the matter to irrelevant issues," the statement said. OneIndia News Khota sarkar left with egg on their faces: Team Uddhav on Andheri win Doctors from Abu Dhabi visits world's heaviest woman Eman in Mumbai India oi-PTI Mumbai, Apr 27: A team of doctors from Abu Dhabi visited the Saifee hospital in Mumbai to meet Egyptian woman Eman Ahmed, who is being treated for obesity at the medical facility. The doctors from VPS Healthcare hospital in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday visited the hospital in south Mumbai where the staff cooperated with them, Doctor Aparna Bhaskar, one of the specialists in the team treating Eman, said on Thursday. The team shared all of Eman's medical reports with the visiting doctors. They met the patient while she was undergoing physiotherapy sessions, she said. The Abu Dhabi doctors visited Eman upon her sister Shaimaa Selim's request. Eman weighed around 500 kg when she was brought to Mumbai in February. Selim had recently alleged that the doctors at Saifee hospital made 'false claims' about Eman's weight loss of 262 kg from 500 kg. Refuting the allegations, Bhaskar said on Tuesday that Selim may be criticising the doctors to extend her sister's stay at the hospital. In a video posted online, Selim recently said that Doctor Muffazal Lakdawala, the bariatric surgeon who is leading the team of doctors treating Eman, has made 'false claims' about her complete recovery and weight loss. Lakdawala had on April 11 said that Eman has so far lost 262 kg during the treatment. Eman's sister is said to be planning to shift her out of India for a 'better' treatment. A member of the patient coordination team of Lakdawala also confirmed the visit of doctors from Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile, the Saifee hospital has also invited a team of experts from various medical fields to visit Eman on Thursday and review her health condition. The doctors at Saifee want a third party opinion on Eman's health condition as her sister's allegations have upset many from the team of experts treating her. Selim has lately been criticising Lakdawala's team and the hospital for allegedly not treating her sister properly. Lakdawala, however, refuted the allegations earlier and stated that in his capacity as a bariatric surgeon he had done his job properly. "The efficiency of Eman's body parts has been increased from 5 per cent to over 70 per cent," he had said. He also said that her neurological problems were being addressed by specialists. In March, Eman underwent her first bariatric surgery in which doctors reduced two-third of her stomach size. Her genetic tests show she has a rare gene mutation that cannot be cured through surgery. PTI EC bribery case: Dinakaran brought to Chennai, illegal money routes to be probed India oi-Anusha The Delhi crime branch police brought TTV Dinakaran and his aide Mallikarjuna to Chennai on Thursday. As part of investigations into the alleged Election Commission bribery case, the Delhi police are attempting to track the hawala channel through which money was exchanged. A day after getting custody of Dinakaran and his aide, the Delhi police flew them down to Chennai. The duo will also be taken to other states for investigations. The police who are already in possession of visitor registers from AIADMK headquarters and TTV Dinakaran's residence will now look through CCTV footages to keep tab of the people who visited Dinakaran. The investigating team with inputs received through the course of questioning and statements from a Hawala operator are attempting to trace the course of illegal money that was allegedly given by Dinakaran to middleman Sukesh Chandrasekar to receive a favourable verdict from the EC over the 'two leaves' symbol row. Merger on track Meanwhile, both factions of the AIADMK are on the verge of stitching up a merger. With most concerns already addressed, the issue of chief minister and general secretary posts are being discussed between both camps. Both camps are reaching the stage of consolidation of consensus. Post the arrest of Dinakaran the Panneerselvam camp has become more confident of the merger. However, differences over cabinet posts and dual leadership continue to bother the merger talks. OneIndia News EC seeks 74000 paramilitary personnel for Anantnag LS bypoll India pti-PTI New Delhi, Apr 27: The Election Commission has sought an unprecedented 74,000 paramilitary personnel from the Centre for deployment during the bypoll to the Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency on May 25. The EC has conveyed to the Home Ministry that 740 companies of paramilitary forces should be put at its disposal by May 12, official sources said. A company comprises around 100 paramilitary personnel. The demand seemed unprecedented as the poll body had sought 70,000 paramilitary forces for deployment in the recently concluded assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh which has 403 Assembly constituencies and 80 Lok Sabha seats. Earlier, the EC had sought 30,000 paramilitary personnel for the bypoll to Srinagar and Anantnag Lok Sabha seats. While polling in Srinagar was held on April 9 amidst massive violence, polling for Anantnag, which was scheduled for April 12, was postponed till May 25. Official sources said that in normal circumstances around 10 companies (1,000 personnel) are deployed in a parliamentary seat during polling. The Home Ministry is likely to tell the EC that it would be difficult to arrange such a large number of security personnel in a short span of time and it may seek more time. At present, it is in a position to provide around 150 companies (15,000 personnel). There are around 10 lakh paramilitary personnel under the Home Ministry's command, but it is difficult to assemble them from different parts of the country in such a short notice, a source said. The PDP, Jammu and Kashmir's ruling coalition partner, has urged the EC to defer indefinitely the bypoll to the Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency in the wake of the "volatile situation" prevailing there. PTI Even after 8 yrs, 26/11 mumbai attack perpetrators enjoy freedom in Pakistan India pti-PTI New Delhi, Apr 27: Demanding immediate action against the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, India today said it was a matter of concern that even after eight years of the strike, they continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay's remarks came amid reports that Pakistan has rejected a re- investigation of the Mumbai attack case, and has again demanded "concrete" evidence against Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the strike. "It is the Pakistan government's responsibility to bring to book the perpetrators and all those involved in conspiring, executing and mounting the 26/11 attack in which 166 people were killed. "It is a matter of concern that well after eight years of the attack, the perpetrators continue to enjoy freedom in Pakistan and have not been brought to book," he said. However, Baglay did not specifically comment on reports from Pakistan that it has told India that a re-investigation of the Mumbai attack case was "not possible" as the trial was at an advanced stage and demanded "concrete" evidence against Saeed, saying he was not aware of any such development. Asked about an incident involving a Sikh girl in Pakistan who was forced to convert to Islam, he said such incidents are regularly reported from that country, and it was the responsibility of the government there to ensure safety and security of its nationals, including minorities. He also said that India keeps raising with the Pakistan government such issues whenever these come to its attention. PTI How this valiant housekeeper killed a terrorist and saved the day at Kupwara India oi-Vicky By Vicky Naik Rishi the housekeeper at the Kupwara Army camp saved the day for the Army. In the attack three Army personnel including a Captain were martyred. Rishi spotted the three terrorists trying to flee. He blocked them and managed to kill one of them. Rishi was hit on his headgear which saved his life. He was then hit on the hand by terrorists. The three terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad had breached two layers of fencing to enter the Army camp. The patrol party of the Indian Army which comprised five men engaged the terrorists. The first round of the encounter lasted around seven minutes in which one solider lost his life. Another round of firing commenced in which two soldiers were killed. The terrorists then tried to flee when Rishi came into the picture and tried to stop them. It was his valiant efforts that ensured that two of the three terrorists were killed. Search operations are still on for the third terrorist. Post the attack the Army had to deal with the menace of stone pelters. Amidst chants of 'Azaadi Azaadi,' they demanded that the two bodies of the terrorists be handed over for burial. The Army then opened fire in which one civilian was killed. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 19:06 [IST] 'Will resign as MLA if proven wrong': Defiant Jarkiholi defends 'Hindu' remark even as Cong slams him I am a victim of Congress' conspiracy: Sadhvi Pragya India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Talking to the media for the first time after being released on bail Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur said she was victim of Congress' conspiracy. "I am a victim of Congress' conspiracy, nine years of injustice", said Sadhvi Pragya. She was arrested during UPA rule for her alleged role in connection with 2008 Malegaon blast in which six people were killed. While granting the bail, the Bombay high court has directed Sadhvi Pragya to surrender her passport to the National Investigation Agency and also directed her not to tamper with the evidence and to report to NIA court as and when required. Sadhvi was in custody since 2008, for almost nine years. At the ouset, the stringent provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) were slapped against her. But after the decision of the Supreme Court, the NIA dropped charges under MCOCA against Sadhvi. OneIndia News Should Kashmir be given to Pakistan: Row erupts after this question appears in MP civil service exam From hijab to Kashmir, Zawahiri was Al-Qaeda's voice for everything anti-India Jaan zyada zaroori hai, says Dy CM of J&K on internet suspension India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Srinagar, April 27: Citing the reason behind month-long ban on internet services in Kashmir, deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Nirmal Singh, told reporters that the decision was taken under compulsion. "Life is more important. The government of Jammu and Kashmir has taken the decision under compulsion. (Jaan zyada zaroori hai, sarkaar ko majboori mein ye karna pada)," said Singh. He added, "Social media was being misused and groups operating from Pakistan are regulating and inciting the youths." On Wednesday evening, the state government has ordered suspension of internet services in the trouble-hit valley for a period of one month or till further orders. In an order, the home department has said that internet services in Kashmir valley shall not be transmitted for a period of one month or till further orders. The state home department invoked powers conferred on it under the Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act to suspend the internet services, said an official. It was not immediately clear whether the order pertains to all internet services or just the mobile internet services, which are already suspended since April 17. The mobile internet services in Kashmir were snapped last Monday following widespread student protests in the valley against alleged highhandedness of security forces. The move comes amidst disturbances in Kashmir, which the authorities believe are fanned through social media. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 9:12 [IST] Mehbooba Mufti gets notice to vacate official bungalow 'meant for J&K CMs' Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India AAP "merely a party of UT Delhi", only Cong can challenge BJP in Gujarat, HP: Azad Jammu and Kashmir receives Rs 19k crore from PM's package India pti-PTI New Delhi, April 27: The Centre has released an amount of Rs 19,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore development package for Jammu and Kashmir announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was disclosed at a high-level inter-ministerial meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday, Home Ministry officials said. Singh reviewed the progress in implementation of the mega package and works of various development initiatives announced for Jammu and Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest lately. It was conveyed in the meeting that 25 per cent of funds from the total package, around Rs 19,000 crore, has been released so far and related works were going on, an official said. The meeting was attended by representatives from various central ministries and departments, and the state government. The successful implementation of the mega package is key to assuage the feeling of alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed violence during the April 9 bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seats in which eight people lost their lives in more than 200 incidents. There have been protests by students in the Valley last fortnight against alleged police excesses. Students, including girls, were seen pelting stones on security personnel in these incidents. Massive protests erupted in Kashmir after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year, which continued for nearly four months. More than 90 people lost their lives, while scores of security personnel and civilians were injured. The Rs 80,000-crore package for Jammu and Kashmir was announced by the prime minister in November, 2015. So far, Rs 17,000 crore has been released to the state government by the Centre. Around Rs 40,000 crore out of the Rs 80,000-crore package have been earmarked for improving road infrastructure, including semi-ring roads in Jammu and Srinagar, upgradation of important highways besides others. An amount of Rs 7,854 crore has been earmarked for flood relief, reconstruction and flood management. A total of Rs 2,241 crore is meant for promoting tourism by developing new projects and tourist circuits, and setting up of 50 tourist villages. In addition, Rs 11,708 crore is for power, new and renewable energy. This includes augmentation of power infrastructure and distribution systems, solar power and small hydro projects. Rs 4,900 crore has been earmarked for improving healthcare facilities in the state, which includes creation of two AIIMS-like institutions in both major cities of the state, and support for creation of infrastructure in hospitals and primary health centres. PTI Kashmir's unrest 2.0 to be backed by 100 terrorists from Pakistan India oi-Vicky By Vicky The army has been placed on high-alert after concrete intelligence has suggested that over 100 militants from across the Pakistan border are readying to infiltrate into the Kashmir Valley. The actionable intelligence which was passed on to the army states that over 100 militants of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad are waiting to infiltrate in batches. Several terrorists were moved into the launch pads in Pakistan occupied Kashmir in the areas that are facing Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir, the intelligence report shared with the army also states. Intelligence Bureau officials say that with Pakistan planning another round of unrest in Kashmir, it has decided to infiltrate its terrorists in large numbers into the valley. Kashmir is still on the boil and incidents of violence are being reported every day. The infiltrations had gone down in the past couple of months due to several reasons which included weather and heightened security. The terrorists would wait for an opportunity to infiltrate. The terrorists would be looking for a long haul and will try and disrupt peace by staging attacks on the army, the intelligence report also states. OneIndia News Kupwara attack: 'Let me kill those who killed him', says martyr's brother India oi-Anusha "Give me one opportunity. I will kill those who killed my brother. I am ready to kill or get killed. I neither want a compensation nor a salary. I will do it for free. Just give me the opportunity to go there." Those are the helpless, sad, angry rants of Koteshwara Rao. He lost his 38-year-old brother to a terrorist attack in Kupwara, Kashmir on Thursday. The family of Naik Venkata Ramana, who was martyred when terrorists ambushed an army camp in Panzgam, are filled with sorrow, anger and helplessness. Their angst oozing out in the form of anger against those who in a cowardly act killed a brother, a son and a soldier. As news of his death reached them, those close to Ramana and family started gathering at his house. A native of Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Ramana died guarding the borders in a fidayeen attack. In what is being touted as the biggest suicide attack by Pakistan sponsored terrorists after Uri attack, three soldiers including Ramana lost their lives. For the family, it is now a long painful wait for the mortal remains of their son. All of 38 years, Ramana's death has plunged the family into sorrow. OneIndia News Imran Khan discharged from hospital, to resume long march from same point where he was shot This cop from Pakistan became a millionaire overnight: Here is how Kupwara attack: Pakistan will suffer the same, says Nirmal Singh India oi-Gulam Rabbani Srinagar, April 27: Outraged with the terrorists attack in Kupwara on Thursday morning, Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh assured a befitting reply to Pakistan by India soon for ruining the valley's atmosphere. "We condemn this strongly. We pay our tributes to the jawans. Pakistan is trying to mess the situation as much as possible, but that would not be possible. Our jawans are doing their best and will not let them be successful. Their actions will be answered," Singh told ANI. Singh said that Pakistan is desperate to create a mess in Kashmir and warned it of severe action. He added that the Pakistan is also going to suffer the same as the Union government is well prepared for the befitting reply. It is to remind that two terrorists were gunned down, while three jawans lost their lives after the army camp in Kupwara came under attack. An officer was among the three jawans who were killed in the attack. In the meanwhile, a search operation was launched to ascertain if any terrorist managed to sneak into the camp. OneIndia News As Pakistan bolsters military might, an uneasy disquiet at the border Kupwara attack: Martyred Captain's family mourns son's death India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar A pall of gloom has descended upon the family of Indian Army Captain Ayush Yadav who is martyred in Kupwara Attack on Thursday morning. Ayush, 26, hailing from Kanpur has left behind father, mother, and sister. Ayush's father, Arun KantYadav, is an inspector in Uttar Pradesh Police. "It should not happen to anyone else's child...how long will be see our children being killed like this," said Arun Kant Yadav, was quoted as saying. Family mourns the demise of Captain Ayush Yadav at his home in Kanpur; Yadav lost his life in #KupwaraAttack in J&K. pic.twitter.com/tSygYbfCAO ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 27, 2017 "I used to tell my child, please get married before my retirement, and he used to say - have you nothing else to talk about?" said Arun Kant Yadav In a fidayeen attack today morning three army personnel were killed including Captain Ayush Yadav. The attack comes just a day after an intelligence report suggested that over 100 terrorists were waiting to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir. The report also said that Pakistan had moved these terrorists to a launch pad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The terrorists were meant to aid the protestors causing the Kashmir unrest. OneIndia News Kupwara: Civilian killed in army firing, locals demand bodies of terrorists India oi-Anusha One person was killed and many injured as the Indian Army opened fire as clashes broke out in Kupwara. The army opened fire on civilians who had gathered at the encounter site. While the Jammu and Kashmir police confirmed the death of a civilian due to bullet injuries, it was not ascertained if injuries caused to others were a result of army firing or the clashes that broke out. Earlier in the day stone pelters stopped the army from visiting the encounter site. More than 200 civilians had gathered to protest against Indian army even as three soldiers lost their life in an early morning attack on a camp by terrorists. Civilians who had gathered demanded that the dead bodies of the terrorists be handed over to them. Three soldiers including a captain were killed when terrorists opened fire at personnel inside the artillery base. The encounter that lasted for four hours also killed two terrorists. Combing operations for more terrorists were carried out after the encounter. OneIndia News MCD elections: 49,235 voters opt for NOTA India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 27: Over 49,000 voters opted for the None of The Above option in the municipal elections, with people in North Delhi areas exercising it the most. "It is interesting to note the NOTA figure in the polls, which constitute about 0.69 per cent of the total votes. Its count is maximum in North Delhi, which means voters have not liked candidates in that area," Delhi State Election Commissioner S K Srivastava told reporters on Wednesday. According to the final tally, as many as 49,235 NOTA votes were polled. In SDMC areas, the NOTA count was 19,190 (0.71 per cent of the total votes), while in NDMC and EDMC areas, the figure stood at 19,762 (0.74) and 10,283 (0.58), respectively. The option of NOTA was used for the first time in the civic polls, in which 71,39,994 votes were cast on April 23. South Delhi polled a maximum of 26,87,685 votes, followed by North Delhi at 26,80,011. East Delhi polled 17,72,298 votes. The BJP scored a hat-trick in the Delhi civic polls as it comfortably retained control of the three municipal corporations, dealing a severe blow to the AAP and dashing the Congress's hope of a revival. Winning 181 out of 270 wards where elections were held, the saffron party added muscle to its decade-long domination of the corporations effortlessly bucking anti-incumbency by riding on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP's corporation-wise tally is: SDMC --- 70, NDMC -- 64 and EDMC -- 47 as against the AAP's tally of 16, 21 and 11, respectively. The Congress finished last with 12, 15 and 3 wards. PTI Multiple probes rile Akhilesh? India oi-Ratan Mani Lal After keeping quiet for nearly a month after the Yogi Adityanath government took over in Uttar Pradesh, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has found his reasons for hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party government, even as the several schemes launched during the Samajwadi Party regime are under the scanner. The Yogi government has been hogging the headlines for its new work culture as far as working hours and pace of decision-making is concerned. But in the past few days, incidents involving BJP leaders in clashes especially in western UP have pepped up the Samajwadi Party and its spokesmen, who are now trying to corner the government over law and order situation. Akhilesh showed uncharacteristic aggression in his interaction with the media in Lucknow recently. He lost his cool on seeing a media person sporting a saffron shirt and also on being repeatedly asked about the continuing conflict in the Yadav family, he also aggressively tried to corner the government on recent incidents in Saharanpur and Meerut. In early days after Yogi took over as Akhilesh had said that he would watch government's performance for six months and not comment on its actions. However, reports of over-enthusiastic BJP leaders clashing with police and administration have apparently made Akhilesh change his mind. Incidentally, poor crime control and failure to maintain law and order across the state was a major reason behind the widespread resentment among the people against the Samajwadi Party. Yogi too had cautioned partymen and leaders to desist from making unreasonable demands and maintain discipline. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had warned party MPs from Uttar Pradesh to stay away from trouble. But recent incidents involving cow protection squads, protest demonstrations and rallies, and clashes with police especially in western UP seem to suggest that the warnings have fallen on deaf ears. BJP MPs in Agra, Saharanpur and Barabanki, besides leaders at the district-level, have been caught in controversies related to threatening and intimidating police personnel. These incidents have given an opportunity to leaders of opposition parties especially the SP to corner the BJP over the issue of law and order. Quick action Even though the appointment of new Director-General of Police Sulkhan Singh and the latest reshuffle of police superintendents in several districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Noida, Bareilly and Saharanpur, appears to be aimed at tightening the grip over the law and order situation, the wide publicity given to incidents in west UP has made BJP spokesmen a little jittery. The filing of a FIR against Raghav Lakhanpal, the BJP MP from Saharanpur, in the case involving a mob attack on the residence of the Saharanpur superintendent of police is cited by a BJP spokesman as an example of the quick action taken in the case. "In similar attacks on police stations led by SP leaders in the past years, the police did not dare name the SP leaders, leave along filing a case against them," said a BJP spokesman. But the Samajwadi Party has apparently got the boost it had been looking for over the past four weeks over which Yogi's decisions dominated the news space. Although the Saharanpur incident did not lead to serious rioting or casualties, the Samajwadi Party sent a five-member team to probe the incident involving clashes between two groups over taking out Ambedkar Shobha yatra rally. The sudden belligerence of the Samajwadi Party Even though Akhilesh has been trying to make it into a big issue, the Yogi government is going ahead with inquiries into various projects launched or commissioned during the former regime. It has withdrawn the highly unpopular decision to allow large-scale commercial activities in residential colonies in Lucknow and cracked down on illegal construction patronised by SP leaders. Besides, the case against former minister Gayatri Prajapati has also been strengthened and inquiry into the Gomti riverfront project and the ambitious signature building Jayaprakash Narayan International Convention Centre is continuing. The much-hyped Samajwadi Pension Scheme and the free smartphone distribution scheme have also been put on hold. It is likely that names of officers and political persons might come up as the inquiries progress, which may be embarrassing for the former ruling party and its leaders. This could explain the sudden belligerence of the Samajwadi Party on Saharanpur, Meerut and the so-called 'saffron attacks' on police. Varanasi lights up with 8 lakh lamps on Dev Deepawali; PM shares pics too India's intellectuals are anti-India, says Australian sociologist who is all praise for PM Modi PM Modi unveils G20 logo: Significance of the lotus and its seven petals In pictures, grandeur of Terminal 2 of Kempegowda International Airport which PM Modi will inaugurate Narendra Modi to meet Turkish President on May 1 India ians-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 27: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks on May 1 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will arrive here on April 30 on a two-day state visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. At a media briefing here, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that Modi will hold delegation-level talks with Erdogan after the visiting dignitary is given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the morning of May 1. President Pranab Mukherjee will also host a dinner banquet in honour of the Turkish President. Erdogan is visiting India after he won a referendum in his country earlier this month which gave him more executive powers as President. Ghanashyam said that, during the visit, Erdogan will be accompanied by some cabinet ministers, senior officials and a 150-member business delegation that will take part in a a meeting of the India-Turkey Business Forum. Stating that bilateral trade between India and Turkey stood at $6.4 billion, she said: "India's main export products to Turkey are textiles and fabrics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastic products, machinery and automotives." She said that there was scope for cooperation in other areas such as construction, infrastructure development, renewable energy, tourism and film shooting. A number of Indian companies have established their presence in Turkey through production facilities or project participation. "Both India and Turkey have been battling terrorism for long and understand the need for acting against this global menace," Ghanashyam stated. She said that following the talks between Modi and Erdogan on May 1, some agreements that are currently being finalised, are expected to be signed. Erdogan last visited India in 2008 when he was the Prime Minister of his country. President Mukherjee visited Turkey in 2013. Modi also met Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, in 2015. IANS Prashant Kishor claims Nitish Kumar in touch with BJP says don't be surprised if he joins hands with it again Nitish Kumar says Bihar following Mahatma Gandhi's path India pti-PTI Patna, Apr 27: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday said that his government is following the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi by banning liquor and empowering women in the state. "We are trying to work and follow the path shown by Gandhiji. In addition to banning liquor, we also have take a lot of steps to empower women," Kumar said. Kumar was speaking at a function of the year long centenary celebration of Champaran Satyagraha in west Champaran district. The district is a native place of Raj Kumar Shukla, a farmer on whose persuasion Gandhi had set off on his Champaran satyagraha to support indigo planters. Kumar said that the government would develop all the places associated with Gandhi's visit in Bihar. "There is a well at Langat Singh college in Muzaffarpur where Gandhiji had taken a bath. The well has been preserved all these years. I saw that there is no water in it and ordered for digging," the Chief Minister said. "A memorial of Raj Kumar Shukla would be constructed at his native place Murli Bharwaha village," he said. State Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, Education minister Ashok Choudhary, Sugarcane minister Khursheed Alam and Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh were also present on the occasion. PTI Imran Khan discharged from hospital, to resume long march from same point where he was shot This cop from Pakistan became a millionaire overnight: Here is how Days after attack, Imran Khan's party to resume long march on Nov 10 Pakistan again captures six fishermen off Gujarat coast India pti-PTI Ahmedabad, Apr 27: A day after capturing 23 Indian fishermen, Pakistan Maritime Security Agency on Thursday again apprehended six fishermen and seized a boat off Gujarat coast, the National Fishworkers' Forum said. A fishing boat registered at Porbandar was seized by PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line, NFF secretary Manish Lodhari said. "Six fishermen on the boat were captured by the Pak agency near Jakhau coast. We have learnt that they are now being taken to Karachi port," Lodhari said. On Wednesday, PMSA had apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized four boats in the same area. PTI Talented, driven and great potential: President Putin is all praise for India and Indians Pakistan apprehends 23 Indian fishermen off Gujarat coast India oi-PTI Ahmedabad, Apr 27: The Pakistan maritime security agency has apprehended 23 Indian fishermen and seized their four boats off the Gujarat coast, according to an official of the national fishworkers' forum. The fishermen had sailed from Porbandar a few days ago and were apprehended by the PMSA near the International Maritime Border Line, forum secretary Manish Lodhari told PTI. "We have learnt that at least 23 fishermen on four boats were apprehended by the PMSA near Jakhau and they were being taken to Karachi," Lodhari said. Porbandar-based NFF is the only national federation of small and traditional fish workers' unions in India. On April 9, four PMSA commandos had drowned while two others were saved by Indian fishermen after a boat of the Pakistani agency capsized near the IMBL while allegedly trying to capture around 40 fishermen on seven boats in Indian waters. The PMSA had later released the captured fishermen. PTI Pakistan's most brutal assault on India is called 'United Jihad' India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Inter-services Intelligence calls it United Jihad. It is meant to be the most brutal form of jihad which Pakistan plans to unleash on India. For this, the ISI decided that it would put together its two best terror groups -- Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. The first signs of a united jihad was seen on Thursday morning when terrorists launched a fidayeen strike on an Army camp at Kupwara in Jammu and Kashmir. The ISI came up with this concept to ensure that the two strongest terrorist groups which have made Kashmir a personal agenda wage a war together. This would include shared intelligence and training together in one camp. Since the ideology of the two groups remains the same, the ISI felt that it would be best to merge the groups. This would be the first time since the inception of the two groups that it would be coming together. With this merger, the two groups are now sharing arms and ammunition and also intelligence. Attacks are being planned together and both groups have been instructed to stay united and not indulge in one-upmanship. Recently, the two groups conducted a training programme together. They are sharing common launch pads at Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. A recruitment camp too was organised together recently, an Intelligence Bureau report states. The coming together of these two groups would mean that they have emerged stronger and the Indian Army has a bigger headache to deal with. Moreover, it would also be hard to pinpoint which group carried out the attack as the signature of the strike would also be common. Security officials say that this was in the offing for some time now. It was the Pakistan army under the leadership of General Raheel Sharif who recently retired who came up with this concept. While the killing of Burhan Wani led to a major unrest in Kashmir, Pakistan had already planned in December a second variant of the same. In a bid to launch a major offensive as part of unrest 2.0, Pakistan decided to merge these groups and call it 'united jihad'. OneIndia News Politics of convenience: Congress reaches out to other parties to 'stop BJP' India oi-Anusha After being dealt blow after blow in every recent election, the Congress is knocking on the doors of other parties. The Grand Old Party wants regional parties and others in opposition to give up their 'anti-Congress' stance and 'concentrate on stopping the Bharatiya Janata Party'. After the party's dismal performance in the Delhi MCD elections, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told regional parties that anti-Congress stance was not the way. "Hope all regional parties will now realise that blind anti-Congressism is not the way. The country must come first in the battle of ideologies," he said hinting that a joint opposition was the need of the hour to stop the BJP that was surging ahead. Congress' abysmal performance in the Delhi civic polls came just as an addition to the setbacks it has been seeing in most recent elections. Despite Sonia Gandhi's return as the party's leader, not much has changed for the Congress on the election front. It may be noted that Sonia met leaders of regional parties yet key players like Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the Left's Sitaram Yechury. The Presidential election is currently on the Congress' mind and the party hopes that it can arrive at a consensus with all other opposition parties and field a candidate against the National Democratic Alliance's candidate. The upcoming Presidential election is all set to be the first trial operation of a united opposition. The BJP's resounding victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls came as a jolt to the opposition parties. They claimed that a united opposition was the only way to contain the BJP's winning streak. With successive wins of the BJP, the clamour for a united opposition is only going. The BJP on its part slammed such attempts and stated that alliances that are not formed on the basis of ideologies but to only stop another party were a bane on democracy. OneIndia News No comment on Pranab Mukherjee book before reading it: Former Union Minister President Pranab Mukherjee to be conferred Cyprus's highest civilian award India ians-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 27: President Pranab Mukherjee will be conferred Cyprus's highest order of merit during the course of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades's ongoing visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. "President Anastasiades will confer the award, the Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios III, on honourable Rashtrapatiji during a meeting between the two dignitaries," Rita Ghanashyan, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said at a media briefing here. The award is named after Cyprus's first President, Archbishop Makarios III, and is conferred on foreign heads of state and government. Mukherjee will be conferred the award when he hosts Anastasiades for a banquet on Friday. Also on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks with Anastasiades following which some agreements are expected to be signed, Ghanashyam said. She said that Cyprus supported India in crucial multilateral issues, including UN Security Council reforms and New Delhi's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. "Cyprus and India enjoy robust economic ties. Cyprus is a major investor in India with cumulative foreign direct investment of about $9 billion," Ghanashyam said. "Cyprus is the eighth largest foreign investor in India and has invested in areas such as financial leasing, stock exchange, auto manufacture, manufacturing industries, real estate, cargo handling, construction, shipping and logistics," she said, adding that there was also scope for cooperation in sectors like pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, tourism and film production. Anastasiades, who arrived in India on April 25, will depart from New Delhi on Saturday. This is his first visit to India. Then Indian President Pratibha Patil visited Cyprus in October 2009. Modi and Anastasiades also held talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September 2015. IANS Bharat Jodo Yatra will proceed to Srinagar, come what may, says Rahul Gandhi as march enters Maharashtra Rahul Gandhi chairs party panel meeting on northeastern states India ians-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 27: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday chaired a meeting of the party's coordination committee for northeastern states and discussed ways to strenghten the party in the wake of electoral losses. "At the meeting of the North East Congress Coordination Committee. Discussed ways to strengthen the party in the region," said Gandhi on his official Twitter account, posting his photos with the committee members. The committee headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma includes former Chief Ministers of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, Nabam Tuki and Okram Ibobi Singh respectively. This was the committee's first meeting after its re-constitution by Congress President Sonia Gandhi in November 2016. "We discussed how to to strengthen the NECCC and the party organisation in the northeast states. We also discussed why the Congress was losing in the northeast. We reviewed the reasons for the party's poor show in the assembly polls," said a member who attended the meeting. AICC General Secretary C.P. Joshi, said: "Issues pertaining to the problems in northeast states, and organisational deliberations were held. The members will discuss among themselves and come out with a proposal for the way forward for the party in the region." The Congress lost assembly elections in Assam and despite getting highest number of seats in the March assembly polls in Manipur could not form the government in the state. IANS Shame on us, we aren't a tax compliant society says SC India oi-Vicky By Vicky "Linking Aadhaar to PAN is an effort by the government to bring new laws to stop leakages," the Supreme Court observed. "When there are tax evasions, the government will try and bring new laws to stop the leakages," the SC also observed. "We as citizens do not want to pay taxes. Shame on us," the Supreme Court observed while hearing a petition that challenged the government's decision to link Aadhaar with PAN. "We are a kind of society that wants to avoid taxes," the court said while adding that 'we are not a tax-compliant society,' the bench comprising Justice A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said. When it was pointed out that the SC had said that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory, the bench said that those were only interim orders. "The interim arrangement was made when there was no law. Now Parliament has enacted a law. Can we preclude Parliament from making a law? Can the interim orders passed by us on certain statements made by them bind them forever? We can definitely examine the validity of the new law on touchstones of the Constitution but there cannot be any injunction against Parliament from enacting a law," the bench noted. The court also took into consideration the submission by the centre in which it was said that 99 per cent of the Indian population had enrolled under the UID and had Aadhaar cards. "It appears as though only 99 per cent do not have a problem with Aadhaar. Now we will examine the rest," the bench noted. OneIndia News Explained: Why did the ECI freeze the symbol of the Shiv Sena Not just future of Sena but democracy at stake, says Uddhav Shiv Sena corners PM Modi over Kashmir unrest, Sukma Maoists attack India oi-Gulam Rabbani New Delhi, April 27: Shiv Sena on Thursday came down heavily on the Centre over the Sukma Maoists attack and recent Kashmir unrest incidents. It had slammed the Centre that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government for not being able to chalk out strong anti-terror policy. In its editorial Saamna, the Sena cornered PM Modi over his comments on his Twitter handle after Sukma Maoists attack in which 25 Central Reserve Police Officers were killed. PM Modi tweeted that "Attack on @crpfindia personnel in Chhattisgarh is cowardly & deplorable. We are monitoring the situation closely." The Sena asserted that by making mere comments to avenge the death of CRPF personnel would not solve the issue. The Saamna editorial cited that 100 CRPF jawans have sacrificed their lives in past one month. It added that the Centre should come out with a policy that can save the CRPF jawans. Now slamming the Centre again on Kashmir unrest, the Sena demanded President's rule in Jammu and Kashmir and added that People Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party has failed to keep law and order stable in the state. The Sena questioned the BJP until when will it run the government by taking lives of soldiers of the nation. The editorial stated that even now the women are pelting stones at the security forces and there is immediate need of President's rule in Jammu and Kashmir. OneIndia News Should Kashmir be given to Pakistan: Row erupts after this question appears in MP civil service exam Situation in Kashmir a matter of concern, says Amit Shah India ians-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 27: BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday said that situation in Jammu and Kashmir was a "matter of concern" but the Narendra Modi government will find ways to normalise it. "I never said that the situation in Kashmir is not a matter of concern...It's a matter of concern. We will definitely control the situation through talks," Amit Shah told India Today TV in an interview. Asked with whom talks will be held, he did not name specific organisations or leaders. "We will handle the situation, talk with every one and also find a way," he said. Asked if the government was addressing the situation through political steps or security measures, Amit Shah said both means had to be used. "If arms will be used against our forces, they can't be silent," he said. "Kashmir can never be seperated from India. Be it Modi government or any other government at the Centre, the people of this country are alert," he said. Shah meanwhile slammed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for "negative politics" and making allegations about working of Electronic Voting Machines. "It is easy to make baseless allegations but very hard to perform on the ground. Our party cadres have worked tirelessly at the grassroots to get the results that we have seen in the recent past." Asked if Kejriwal should step down in the wake of the Aam Aadmi Party losing Delhi municipal results, Shah said: "It is for him to decide." Answering another query, he said that his Bharatiya Janata Party was not making any efforts to break AAP MLAs and it appears from remarks of their leaders that there is a "dispute" in the party. Shah said BJP was seeking to expand its base and expressed confidence that the party will win the 2019 general elections with a bigger majority. He accused the opposition parties of trying to stall Modi government's development agenda. The BJP chief also said that his party would highlight the "corruption" of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress government. "Being the Chief Minister of West Bengal and Trinamool chief, it was Mamata Bannerjee's responsibility to curb corruption," he said. "Trinamool Congress leaders were caught on camera receiving money. How can they deny that? Saradha scam has been in news for the past-two-and-a-half years but no action has been taken," he alleged. IANS Who was Viplav Tripathi? The Colonel died in ambush by terrorists in Manipur Shah to chair meeting with NSA Doval, others to chalk out steps to stop minority killings in J&K How involving SHOs of local police stations will stop targeted killing of minorities in J&K Govt can't go in hiding after such assaults, has to answer: Kharge on Rajouri suicide attack Stone-pelting after attack in Kupwara India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Stone-pelting by protesters has been reported near encounter site after the attack on in Kupwara Army camp in which three soldiers were martyred. Reports suggest that the stone pelting is being carried out to sabotage the ongoing encounter between the Indian Army and the militants. Three soldiers were martyred while five others injured after militants launched a fidayeen attack on an army camp at the Chowkibal Panzgam area in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were neutralised in the encounter. Combing operations are underway. OneIndia News Supreme Court to hear Sutlej Canal issue today India oi-Gulam Rabbani New Delhi, April 27: The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear the controversial Sutlej-Yamuna link canal issue at 2 pm. The court on April 12, adjourned the matter to hear on Thursday. However, the final hearing was put off after the Centre told the court that a meeting of Punjab and Haryana was convened on April 12 to resolve the issue. Responding to this, the court made it clear that if the solution was not found, it would proceed with the matter in the next hearing. The bench, including Justice Amritava Roy, considered the statement of solicitor general Ranjeet Kumar and deferred the hearing in the case. It is to remind that in earlier this year, the top court refused to hear Punjab government's plea to adjourn the SYL canal issue till the elections results were announced and said that it would hear the matter again on February 22. In January, the court had asked both the Punjab and Haryana governments to file their replies on the matter in three weeks. The apex court granted permission for Punjab government after it sought more time to file the detailed reply on the same. On April 22, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital around and had discussed the SYL issue. On the other hand, Punjab government had demanded that a tribunal be set up for re-assessment of water in the Ravi-Beas. It has stated that the state had no water to spare. In the meanwhile, Haryana had urged the Centre to build the remaining portion of the SYL canal in Punjab territory as soon as possible to carry out its share of river waters. It is to mention that the decision to meet Modi came after both Haryana and Punjab reiterated their stated positions in a separate meeting with the Centre on SYL Canal issue on April 20 in New Delhi. OneIndia News Ineligible people queuing up at RBI to deposit old notes: Government Beef ban: Govt does not decide what people should eat: Union minister Tax treaty to boost investment flows between India, Cyprus: Meghwal India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 27: India and Cyprus on Thursday expressed confidence that the recent revision in tax agreement between the two will provide a boost to investment flows. "I understand that the pending issue of revision of the double taxation avoidance agreement has been resolved and the long-pending request of notified jurisdiction area has been accommodated," Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said at the India-Cyprus business session organised by industry chambers in Delhi. "This will pave the way for Cyprus to invest more in India, not just in portfolio investment, but in key segments like manufacturing and other sectors," he said. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades was also optimistic that the recently signed DTAA will help further cement economic ties, especially in the investment field. The president pitched Cyprus as one of the fastest growing European nations that provides investment opportunities in various sectors. Cyprus is the eighth largest country in terms of FDI inflow into India and the bilateral trade read $110 million. Meghwal talked of tourism and film production as possible avenues for joint exploration of investment opportunities. Besides, he said, setting of the International Solar Alliance could be mutually beneficial. Seeking investments in India, Meghwal said that "rating agencies post demonetisation have predicted that India's GDP could cross double digits by 2020." "India has undertaken many reforms and we are planning to introduce GST from 1 July will go down in history as the year of economic reforms," he said. PTI FM Nirmala Sitharaman hints at possibility of Centre considering restoration of state status to J&K Three soldiers including officer martyred in 'fidayeen' attack at Kupwara, J&K India oi-Vicky By Vicky Three soldiers were martyred while five others injured after militants launched a fidayeen attack on an Army camp at the Chowkibal Panzgam area in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were killed in the encounter. Combing operations are underway. An officer too has been killed in the attack. He has been identified as Captain Ayush. The soldiers who were martyred are subedar Bhoop Singh and N K Ramanna. Those injured are N K Girish, Mukesh Desai, N K Rishi, V V Reddy and Prakash Shinde. The five injured however received non-fatal injuries and have been airlifted to Srinagar for treatment. The camp is situated around 100 kilometres away from Uri where terrorists had staged a major attack on September 17 2016 in which 19 soldiers were killed. The terrorists had launched a suicide attack on an Army camp early Thursday morning. The attack comes just a day after an intelligence report suggested that over 100 terrorists were waiting to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir. The report also said that Pakistan had moved these terrorists to a launch pad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The terrorists were meant to aid the protestors causing the Kashmir unrest. How the attack unfolded: The attack was launched at 4 am The role of the Jaish-e-Mohammad is suspected Militants used guns and grenades in the attack Army officer killed identified as Captain Ayush The terrorists crossed over from Pakistan late Wednesday night OneIndia News This CRPF jawan from TN martyred in Sukma would have retired in 30 days India oi-Vicky By Vicky Granting him a two-year extension in the Central Reserve Police Force proved to be costly. A CRPF head constable, who was martyred in the Chhattisgarh Naxal attack had promised his family that he would be back in two months. He was due to retire from service in 30 days, but as fate would have it, he never returned. Relatives were in a state of shock and disbelief when his body arrived at the Avichakudi village in Thiruvarur district in Tamil Nadu. Padmanabhan and his colleague Senthil Kumar from the same region were killed in the Naxal attack on Monday. Padmanabhan was due to retire in 2015. However, he was granted an extension of two years. He was due to retire in May. He is survived by his wife Maheshwari, son Muralidharan and daughter Monica. His son and daughter are aged 5 and 2, respectively. Senthil Kumar's case is heart rendering. He took up a tough job only to ensure that his child Shakthipriyan got the best of education. He was the sole breadwinner of the house after his father retired from the PWD. He had told his wife Vidya to relocate to Coimbatore so that their child could get good education. Vidya today is in no position to understand what went wrong. The relatives of the martyred soldier say that Vidya is a graduate and with her husband was hell-bent upon providing good education to their child. OneIndia News UP: 70-year-old woman beaten to death for standing up against molesters India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer New Delhi, April 27: At a time when the Uttar Pradesh government is trying to provide safety to women by forming special anti-Romeo squads, a 70-year-old woman was brutally beaten to death by a group of molesters in Ghaziabad. The victim, Meena, succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in the national capital on Tuesday, said her son Mohammad Salahuddin. The incident happened after a group of men verbally abused Meena's 17-year-old granddaughter. The men, a few of whom are Meena's neighbours, passed lewd comments and used obscene language to harass her granddaughter on April 21. The girl reported the matter to her family. Thereafter, the family approached the accused. "The matter was sorted out between the elders of the two families. Two days later, when we all were sitting at home, several men from the same family who had harassed the girl entered our house with rods and sticks and started attacking our family. They hit everyone brutally and did not spare even the women and children," Salahuddin told Hindustan Times. The attackers brutally beat Meena as she protested against her granddaughter's molesters. "Since my mother was vocal about the harassment, they hit her on the head with rods while she tried to save us. The three of us were beaten severely and fell unconscious. Later, the attackers threw bricks at our house from the second floor of their house," he said. "Other neighbours informed the police and all of us were taken to the hospital. My mother was admitted to GTB Hospital in Delhi where she succumbed to injuries on Tuesday," he said. The case is being investigated by the Murad Nagar police station. So far, the police arrested four accused in the case. "The incident was a result of the alleged harassment of the girl, following which the neighbours attacked the family. We have lodged a FIR under sections of causing grievous hurt, rioting, house trespass, causing hurt and criminal intimidation. Since the woman died, we will also add the section of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against the accused," Sartaj Khan, officiating SHO, Murad Nagar, said. "A search is on for the remaining accused in the case," he said. OneIndia News People shiver even at the thought of naming their kids 'Gayatri': Yogi's dig at ex-SP minister Former district judge Rajendra Singh had no role to play in Gayatri Prajapati bail UP govt to move HC to cancel Gayatri Prajapati bail India oi-Madhuri Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday decided to approach the high court to seek cancellation of rape-accused Gayatri Prajapati's bail. Former state minister Gayatri Prajapati, who was granted bail in a gangrape case on Tuesday, will stay in jail after two courts ordered that he be remanded to judicial custody in connection with two other cases on Wednesday. The Lucknow Police served court warrants in both cases at the district jail, where Prajapati is lodged since March 15. Supreme Court on Monday had directed the UP government to ensure protection of the woman who had lodged FIR against Gayatri for raping her and molesting her daughter. Earlier this year, a middle-aged woman from Chitrakoot had moved Supreme Court accusing Prajapati and his aides of raping her and molesting her daughter. The apex court on February 17 ordered that FIR should be lodged against the then minister. Prajapati and his aides were booked by Gautampalli police for raping the woman and sexually assaulting her minor daughter. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 20:12 [IST] UP ATS picks up two more accused in Al-Qaeda radicalisation case Use social media to reach out to people: Yogi tells officials India oi-IANS By Ians English Lucknow, April 27: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has called for wider and more active use of social and new media for publicising work being done by the Central and the state government, an official said on Thursday. The Chief Minister gave the direction during a Wednesday night review of the working of the department of information and public relations. He said with changing times, the governments also needed to change old and traditional styles of working so as to ensure that people were made aware of the work being done for their welfare. Asking officials of the department to effectively develop and use social and new media, Adityanath said that a strategy be stitched up to use mediums like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the schemes and policies of the government. This, he added, would enable the people to know what all was being done for their welfare. Adding that the credo of the state government was 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas', the Chief Minister asked the information department to play its role well in this regard and make Uttar Pradesh a front-ranking state in the country. He also directed the department to prepare a statewide action plan on occasion of the birth centenary of Jan Sangh ideologue Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to inform people on various projects, schemes and programs being undertaken by the state and the Centre. Yogi Adityanath also called for special steps to take these schemes to the Dalits, poor, marginalised and the oppressed. He also called for work in the direction of taking forward the 'Swacchta Mission' (Cleanliness mission) and cashless economy. Stressing on the need of better coordination between information and other departments, the Chief Minister said the latest technology should be used by the department and for it, arrangements should be made to train the personnel. IANS 'What infighting in BJP? Yeddyurappa is CM candidate', says Eshwarappa India oi-Anusha After issuing warnings to BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa, K S Eshwarappa did a roundabout on his stance. The leader who attacked Yeddyurappa during the rebel leaders meeting in Bengaluru claimed that there was no infighting within the party ours later at the same venue. Eshwarappa defied the party senior leadership's directives to not attend the meetings called by disgruntled workers. The leader, however, was quick to justify his move and said that the meeting was only aimed at strengthening the party. K S Eshwarappa even reiterated that B S Yeddyurappa was the Chief minister candidate for the BJP in the 2018 assembly polls. "There is no infighting in the party. We are only fighting to save organisation the organisation. We are confident about achieving success. B S Yeddyurappa is our Chief Minister candidate for the assembly polls," K S Eshwarappa told media persons. His statements to the media were in stark contrast to the statement he made while addressing the rebel workers. In a meeting held at Bengaluru's palace grounds where leaders like Bhanuprakash called B S Yeddyurappa 'unfit', Eshwarappa issued warnings to him. "Will you suspend honest workers? Be very careful when you mess with us. You warn us against holding this meeting? We now warn you from this meeting. Those who quit the party have no right to teach us, " Eshwarappa had said earlier in the day. He even lambasted Yeddyurappa for quitting the BJP, forming the KJP during the previous assembly elections in the state. He held Yeddyurappa directly responsible for Congress coming to power in the state. The change in K S Eshwarappa's stance came about after B S Yeddyurappa spoke to the media about the rebel leaders meet. The BJP state president said that the high command was keeping tab of everything and that suitable action would follow. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 18:58 [IST] What is the 12,000 member 'jan militia' that backs Maoists? India oi-Vicky By Vicky It is a 12,000-member team and is known as jan-militia. This is the backbone of the Naxals who are able to strike at ease and claim precious lives of the jawans. Breaking the jan-militia of the Naxals would be crucial in solving the problem. The Centre, with the help of intelligence, has found that the jan-militia has around 12,000 members in it. This group is responsible for intelligence gathering, spreading ideology and also brainwashing people into joining the group. They are the eyes and ears of the Naxalites. The 4,000 strong Naxal force gets all its backing from 12,000 people who are part of the jan-milita. What is the jan-militia? They are supporters and sympathisers for the Naxals. Apart from being the eyes and ears of the Naxals, they also propagate the ideology and brainwash people. In addition to this they also ensure that the consignment of arms or cash is stored for the Naxals and provided when the need be. The members of the jan-militia propagate in various ways. They have a cultural unit that performs in villages. Through song and dance they tell the people to hate the Constitution of India and also ensure that the people develop a hatred towards the country. In addition to this they go around finding out if any of the villagers have turned police informers. Once such information comes by, they inform the commanders about the same. They also interact with villagers and gather information about the movement of the police and other forces in the area. OneIndia News Wondering what happened to demonetised notes? Well, theyre now designer products India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Ahmedabad, April 27: In this world nothing is waste, literally. If you have an ingenious mind, you can create designer products from scrapped notes too. Yes, that is why the Reserve Bank of India and the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, have joined hands to create designer products from shredded currency notes, including Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 demonetised notes. Last year, the Centre announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. All these discarded notes, which we deposited in banks, have been shredded into pieces by the RBI. Recently, the RBI has sent around 200 kilograms of scrapped notes -- also known as briquettes -- to the premier design institute to recycle them into something worthy and beautiful. "The NID...was asked by the RBI last month to see what can be done with the shredded notes which also include demonetised currency notes. The RBI's brief to us was to look into that what can be done with the notes and what can be the right use. The shredded currency sent to us by the RBI also includes damaged and soiled notes of other denominations as well as the demonetised currency. We want to experiment with the 'briquettes' and come up with some products. We have plans to flag off a national level design competition to scout ideas from students on what can be done with them soon," NID director Pradyumna Vyas told Indian Express. Vyas and his colleague, Pravinsinh Solanki, who is a faculty of the institute, have been working on various concepts to turn 'gold' out of 'waste'. The NID will soon host a national-level competition to turn designer products out of demonetised notes for college students, informed the authorities of the institute. The winners of the competition will be handsomely rewarded. "We were asked to develop something and have created a few products, but we want to ask students to come up with out-of-box ideas. Soon we will form a team, including NID students and faculty members, who will also handle few nitty-gritty of the competition. The only specification would be that the visibility of notes be intact, that it could be useful to humans and have value," said Solanki. OneIndia News Donald trump introduces biggest tax reform plan in US history International oi-Madhuri US President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled one of the biggest tax cuts in American history, through drastically reducing tax rates both in the business and individual categories, fulfilling one of its major election promises. It proposed tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses. For individuals, the Trump administration proposes to reduce the existing seven tax brackets to three tax brackets of 10 per cent, 25 per cent and 35 per cent; doubling the standard deduction and provide tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses. National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin unveiled the broad outlines of President Donald Trump's tax reform plan. Trump's tax plan would also double the standard deduction for married couples to $24,000 and repeal the estate tax. Trump tax plan cuts top income tax rate from 39.6 to 35 per cent, doubles the amount taxpayers can deduct. Throughout the month of May, the Trump administration will hold listening sessions with stakeholders to receive their input and will continue working with the House and Senate to develop the details of a plan that provides massive tax relief, creates jobs and makes America more competitive and can pass both chambers. OneIndia News (with PTI inputs) No one has guts...: Junior defence minister's reply to China question Twitter down as several users report login issues on website Talented, driven and great potential: President Putin is all praise for India and Indians India, Poland sign agriculture agreement International oi-IANS By Ians English Warsaw, April 27: India and Poland on Thursday signed an agreement on the exchange of information and technology in the agriculture sector. The agreement, signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh from the Indian side, will see cooperation between the two nations and emphasise on the need to expand their trade relations. The signing ceremony took place after the formal talks between visiting Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo. Ansari is on a three-day state visit to Poland and will meet Polish President Andrzej Duda, who will make a state visit to India later this year. Ansari will also meet the Speaker of the Polish Senate. The Vice President will be the main speaker at a business forum on Thursday, organised by the Polish Ministry of Economic Development. Some 150 businessmen and companies from the two countries will participate in the deliberations. He will also interact with several key members of the Indian community. IANS For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 17:04 [IST] India slams Pak for raising Kashmir issue in UN forum International oi-PTI United Nations, April 27: India has strongly objected to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a United Nations general assembly session, asserting that it is a bilateral matter that should not be brought up in the UN forum. Minister in Pakistan's Permanent Mission to the UN Masood Anwar raised the Kashmir issue in his statement to the UN general assembly session of the Committee on Information on April 25. He said Pakistan appreciates the efforts by the UN's Department of Public Information in arranging coverage of events related to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. "We would urge you to do the same for the people of Kashmir who continue to suffer under foreign occupation," Anwar said. As soon as these remarks were made, Minister in India's Permanent Mission to the UN S Srinivas Prasad interrupted Anwar's speech and strongly raised objections to the mention of Kashmir by the Pakistani delegate. "It is a bilateral issue which should not be brought here," Prasad told the chair of the session. Pakistan's Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, also present during the session, was heard prodding Anwar to "carry on" speaking even as Prasad raised his objections with the session's chair. Later, before delivering India's statement at the session, Prasad said the Kashmir issue was totally unrelated to the forum. "Before I begin my statement, I would like to thank the chair for its deft handling and not allowing the elaboration of a subject which is totally unrelated to this forum as was tried by a member state," Prasad said. The Committee on Information is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly established to deal with questions relating to public information. It is responsible for overseeing the work of the Department of Public Information and for providing it with guidance on policies, programmes and activities of the Department. PTI Varanasi lights up with 8 lakh lamps on Dev Deepawali; PM shares pics too India's intellectuals are anti-India, says Australian sociologist who is all praise for PM Modi PM Modi unveils G20 logo: Significance of the lotus and its seven petals India slips in media freedom ranking under Modi: Report India ians-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 27: Journalists in India are less free than 135 other countries due to threats from "Hindu nationalists", according to an index of press freedom by a global media watchdog. In its annual World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders has ranked India at 136 of 180 countries. The country's ranking has slipped by three spots from last year's 133rd ranking. "With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of 'anti-national' thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream (Indian) media," said the report, which has painted a grim picture for the press globally. The section on India was titled "Threat from (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi's nationalism". The report warns of a general media freedom erosion in democratic countries, including the US, which has always been hailed as a haven of freedom of speech. The US has slipped to 43rd place, Canada to 22nd and New Zealand to 13th. Norway is ranked first, followed by Sweden and Finland. "The rate at which democracies are approaching the tipping point is alarming for all those who understand that if media freedom is not secure, then none of the other freedoms can be guaranteed," the watchdog's Secretary General, Christophe Deloire, said in Paris on Wednesday. Afghanistan, Palestine, Uganda and Algeria rank higher than India in the media freedom index. Pakistan is ranked at 139, three places below India, Bangladesh at 146, Russia at 148 and China at 176. For India, the report says journalists were "increasingly" becoming the targets of online smear campaigns by "the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals". "Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists who are overly critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124a of the penal code, under which 'sedition' is punishable by life imprisonment," it said. However, it pointed out that no journalist in India has been convicted of sedition "but the threat encourages self-censorship". It said the media freedom had taken a hit after the government introduced "new foreign funding regulations to limit international influence". It highlights reporting difficulties in the troubled Jammu and Kashmir. "Coverage of regions that the authorities regard as sensitive, such as Kashmir, continues to be very difficult, and there are no protective mechanisms." The report said internet curbs in the Kashmir Valley prevented "communication between protesters and prevent coverage by the media and citizen journalists" on the first day of a wave of protests in Kashmir in July 2016 when Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was killed. "Journalists working for local media outlets are often the targets of violence by soldiers acting with the central government's tacit consent." IANS NASA's Cassini completes first dive between Saturn and its rings International pti-PTI Washington, April 27: NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully executed its historic first-ever dive through the narrow gap between the planet Saturn and its rings, marking the beginning of the "Grand Finale" of the 20-year-long journey. The spacecraft is in the process of beaming back science data collected during its passage, through NASA's Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California's Mojave Desert. "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA in the US. As it dove through the gap, Cassini came within about 3,000 kilometres of Saturn's cloud tops and within about 300 kilometres of the innermost visible edge of the rings. While mission managers were confident Cassini would pass through the gap successfully, they took extra precautions with this first dive, as the region had never been explored. "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US. "I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape," said Maize. The gap between the rings and the top of Saturn's atmosphere is about 2,000 kilometres wide. The best models for the region suggested that if there were ring particles in the area where Cassini crossed the ring plane, they would be tiny, on the scale of smoke particles. The spacecraft zipped through this region at speeds of about 124,000 kilometres per hour relative to the planet, so that small particles hitting a sensitive area could potentially have disabled the spacecraft. As a protective measure, the spacecraft used its large, dish-shaped high-gain antenna four meters across as a shield, orienting it in the direction of oncoming ring particles. This meant that the spacecraft was out of contact with Earth during the ring-plane crossing on April 26. Cassini was programmed to collect science data while close to the planet and turn towards Earth to make contact about 20 hours after the crossing. Its next dive through the gap is scheduled for May 2. Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. Following its last close flyby of the large moon Titan on April 21, Cassini began what mission planners are calling its "Grand Finale." During this final chapter, Cassini loops Saturn approximately once per week, making a total of 22 dives between the rings and the planet. Data from this first dive will help engineers understand if and how they will need to protect the spacecraft on its future ring-plane crossings. The spacecraft is on a trajectory that will eventually plunge into Saturn's atmosphere - and end Cassini's mission - on September 15. PTI On Imran Khans assassination bid, US says no place for violence Nikki Haley, Akbaruddin discuss measures to strengthen partnership at UN International oi-PTI New York, April 27: United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley discussed with her Indian counterpart Syed Akbaruddin the economic and anti-corruption reforms undertaken by India to spur growth and measures to strengthen Indo-US partnership at the world body. "They discussed peacekeeping reform and India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth," according to a statement issued by the US mission to the United Nations. Akbaruddin said, "We shared perspectives on how to work together at UN in line with growing India-US ties." Indian-American Haley, who was the governor of South Carolina before being appointed by President Donald Trump as Washington's envoy to the UN, has quickly garnered a reputation at the world body for being tough-talking and blunt. Earlier this month, Haley had said that the US would try and 'find its place' in efforts to de-escalate Indo-Pak tensions and that Trump could play a role in such endeavours. India had swiftly rejected any US role in resolving Indo-Pak issues, saying the government's position for 'bilateral redressal of all India-Pakistan issues in an environment free of terror and violence hasn't changed'. PTI Pakistan to decide on consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav on merit basis International pti-PTI Islamabad, Apr 27: Pakistan on Thursday said that it will decide "on merit" the request made by India for consular access to its citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on spying charges. Pakistan's assertion came a day after India handed over an appeal by the mother of Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by the Field General Court Martial, to the appellate court, initiating a process to get his conviction overturned. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that India has sought consular access to 46-year-old Jadhav. "We have made it clear time and again that Pakistan and India have signed an agreement on consular access in 2008, and according to clause VI of that agreement, decision to grant consular access in cases where detentions and arrests relate to political or security matters, the request of consular access will be decided on merits of the case, he said. Referring to Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale's demand for consular access to Jadhav during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua yesterday, the spokesman said that the Indian diplomat had submitted a request for an appeal "which will be examined by experts." Zakaria's statement differs from that of army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor who had said last week that Jadhav was a spy and consular access cannot be given to spies. Similarly, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua was quoted by local media as saying yesterday that consular access agreement was related to prisoners and not spies. Pakistan has rejected India's request for consular access to Jadhav 15 times. Zakaria alleged that Jadhav was a serving commander of Indian Navy, working for Indian intelligence agency RAW and was caught red-handed. India acknowledges that Jadhav had served with the navy but denies that he has any connection with the government. Jadhav made confessions, and was tried for espionage activities, Zakaria said, adding that his trial was conducted according to the law of the land in a transparent manner. Pakistan claims its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy." The Pakistan Army had also released a "confessional video" of Jadhav after his arrest. However, India denied Pakistan's contention and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistan's agencies. "Pakistan has always highlighted to the International Community that India uses Afghan soil against Pakistan and it has been repeatedly stated by those in India in position of authority and responsibility that their effort is to squeeze Pakistan from the eastern and western borders," he alleged. He urged the international community to take note of "Indian state sponsorship of activities of subversion, terrorism and financing of terrorists against Pakistan." PTI 'Regional perspective' key to tackling Afghan conflict: US official International pti-PTI Washington, Apr 27: The US is 'determined' to 'have a regional perspective' on the Afhgan conflict as part of the ongoing Af-Pak policy review by Trump Administration which is critical of the previous government's approach towards the problem, the White House said on Thursday. "What we found is that in recent years is that we often just done enough in Afghanistan to avoid failure, and not enough to scale our level of efforts to succeed. I think, the other critical thing is that our regional approach to the problem has to change," a senior administration official told reporters at the White House. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. "What we have been able to do is to look at the problem that we have been engaged with for over 15 years and understand how that conflict has evolved in Afghanistan and has evolved in Pakistan as well," he noted. "What we are determined to do is to have a regional perspective, to have a regional look at the problem and to make sure that we are integrating all of our efforts," the official said as he refrained from giving any readout of the recent India, Pakistan and Afghanistan visit of the US National Security Advisor, Lt Gen H R McMaster. The senior administration official said they have not really seen improvements in assistance from other players in the region. The US is looking at opportunities to better connect what it is doing militarily in Afghanistan in lifting up its counter terrorism efforts. This was highlighted by recent US operations in ISIS strong holds of the country's eastern part. The US has identified the overlap with the Tehrik-e- Taliban Pakistan group, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups there. "The other aspect is the military aspect to advise and assist the Afghan national security forces... highlight the need to stop attacks against the security forces..highlight the need for us to work with the Afghan Government to strengthen those security forces, who are making tremendous sacrifices to defend their nation and the people against the Taliban, the Haqqani network as well as other transnational terrorist organisation, which are seeking a support base in Afghanistan," the official said. Noting that often, there has not been a strong connection between the military, political and diplomatic efforts, the official said through this review, the Trump Administration is trying to create an option that is more integrated and result oriented. PTI 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. The North Korean missile that flew across its de facto maritime border with South Korea last week has been found to be an "SA-5" type similar to that used by Russia in the Ukraine ... Rumble 01 Nov 2022 Today on Sekulow Brothers: Scores of people are locked down at Disneyland in Shanghai, Midterm projections show Red Wave, and is it.. Rumble 03 Nov 2022 The Trooper is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It was released as the second single on 20 June 1983 from the.. IndiaTimes 21 Oct 2022 Time and again, Amitabh Bachchan has shared several anecdotes from his shooting days, his equation with co-stars, and all things in.. IP Multimedia Subsystem Market Expanding at a Stable CAGR of 18% from 2016 to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2674 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/network-function-virtualization-market-2455 Market HighlightsIn this rapidly changing environment, companies are expanding their scale of operations by advancing the existing technologies. In the recent years IP Multimedia Subsystem is becoming worldwide. The rising popularity of Rich Communication Services (RCS) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) has led to an increase in IP multimedia subsystems market.The growing investments in 4G and explosive sale of smartphones have been the major factors increasing the LTE market which in result is boosting the IP multimedia subsystem market. It has been observed that the demand to modernize the existing networks and the ability to offer converged services is driving the IP multimedia market. The study indicates that many companies are trying to evolve LTE and add new features to the present LTE market. Recently there has been news about Telefonica regarding LTE; they are working on private LTE technology based on mobile edge computing (MEC). Also LM Ericsson is been signing deals with many companies to implement, deploy and evolve LTE. All these factors are boosting the IP multimedia systems market.The IP Multimedia Subsystem Market is growing rapidly over 18% of CAGR and is expected to reach at USD ~4 billion by the end of forecast period.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players: LM Ericsson (Sweden), Oracle (U.S.), Nokia Corporation (Finland), Alcatel-Lucent S.A. (France), IBM Corporation (U.S.), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (China), Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (U.S.), Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.), HP (U.S.), Bradford Networks, Inc. (U.S.), Ascom Holdings AG (Switzerland), Allot Communication (Israel), others.The IP Multimedia Subsystem market is growing rapidly. Increase in economies of countries resulting in high investment in telecommunication sector is driving the market. Innovation is a key driver in IP Multimedia Subsystem. The IP Multimedia Subsystem market is globally emerging across world. There has been a recent trend of voice over LTE and public safety LTE propelling the IP Multimedia Subsystem market growth.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 IP Multimedia Subsystem Market Research Report- Forecast 2022Commenting on the report, an analyst from Market Research Future (MRFR)s team said:By access network segment, it consists of fixed access, mobile access and wireless access. The applications segment consists of Mobile Phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAS), Computers/ Desktops/Laptops, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Cable Set-Top Box and others.By Region, MRFR analysis shows that Asia-Pacific will account for largest market share in IP Multimedia Subsystem market. This region has very high adoption of IP Multimedia Subsystem owing to factors such as rising penetration of telecom services, technological developments in communication services. Countries like Japan, India, China and Korea have shown significant development in IP Multimedia Subsystem. The launch of Reliance Jio which introduced VoLTE in India tremendously increased the VoLTE market which in result increased the IP multimedia subsystems market.Table of Content1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope Of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Network Solution2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size Estimation3 Market Dynamics3.1 Introduction3.2 Market Drivers3.3 Market Challenges3.4 Market Opportunities3.5 Market Restraints4 Executive Summary5. Market Factor AnalysisContinue.Related ReportsNetwork Function Virtualization Market, By Application (Switching Elements, Traffic Analysis, Next Generation Signaling), Deployment (Cloud, On-premise), By Infrastructure (Hardware Resources, Virtualized Resources), By End-User (CSP, BFSI, Cloud Service Provider) - Forecast 2022. Know more about this report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Electric Vehicle Market Growth Opportunities, Key Driven Factors, Market Scenario Forecast to 2027 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/903 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/request-toc/903 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/virtual-reality-market-research-report-forecast-to-2027 Market ScenarioThe major growth driver of Electric Vehicle Market includes growing integration of electric vehicles within the product portfolio of OEMs, collaboration of e-mobility value chain, growing infrastructure, and innovative government regulations and subsidies among others. However, high cost of electric vehicle and high charging time of vehicle are the factors which are hindering the growth of Electric Vehicle Market.Key Players Nissan motors (Japan), Tesla Corporation (U.S.), General motors (U.S.), Mitsubishi Motors (Japan), Volkswagen (Germany), Daimler AG (Germany), Smith electric Vehicle (U.S.), Bosch GmbH (Germany), Delphi Automotive plc.(U.K.) among othersRequest a Sample Copy @SegmentsSegmentation by Type: HEVs (Hybrid Electric vehicle), BEVs (Battery electric vehicle) PHEVs (Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles)Segmentation by Components: Batteries, Sub-assemblies, Automotive parts among others.Segmentation by Manufacturing Process: Raw materials, Design, Assembly, Quality control.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 Electric Vehicle Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2027Objective of Electric Vehicle 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 Electric Vehicle Market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To Analyze the Electric Vehicle Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by type, applications and sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the marketRequest a TOC, Tables, and Figure @Industry News: Growing sales of electric vehicles is developing demand for Cobalt metal which is a key component of Lithium-ion batteries. Recently in 2016, Nissan announced to expand its free charge promotional activities to compete with Tesla and other automotive competitors. Samsung SDI and LG Chem Ltd. Got failed in getting battery certifications from China. They are going to resubmit the application for certification in end of year 2016. Volkswagen is planning to launch 30 new electric models by 2025 to reposition itself as a leader in green transport.The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Related ReportVirtual Reality Market Research Report- Forecast to 2027The market for Virtual Reality Market is expected to grow at XX% CAGR (2016-2027).Know more about this report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Automotive Glass Market 2017- AGC , NSG , Saint-Gobain , Fuyao Group , Guardian Industries Global Automotive Glass Market 2017 http://bit.ly/2oLkQUm https://market.biz/report/global-automotive-glass-market-2017/83718/ https://market.biz/ http://firstnewshawk.com/ The Worldwide Automotive Glass Report does an extensive study of the Market Segment, Product categories, market revenue, product cost, Forecast 2017-2022. 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The Automotive Glass market size, gross market share and potential users are covered at length in this report.Buy Complete Report Here (To Get Fast Access):Hence, this report is an important guide for all readers including established players, new players and all individuals interested in gaining knowledge about Automotive Glass market.About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, PuneMaharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Latest News- Global Automotive Glass Sunroof Market 2017- Webasto , Inalfa , Inteva, Yachiyo , Mobitech , Aisin Seiki Global Automotive Glass Sunroof Market 2017 http://bit.ly/2qgSti3 https://market.biz/report/global-automotive-glass-sunroof-market-2017/83719/ https://market.biz/ http://firstnewshawk.com/ The Worldwide Automotive Glass Sunroof Report does an extensive study of the Market Segment, Product categories, market revenue, product cost, Forecast 2017-2022. After that, the Global Automotive Glass Sunroof market 2017 Report is segregated into different categories based on geographical regions, key vendors and range of applications. 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Particularly, the report focuses on the progress of the Automotive Glass Sunroof market in regions like (US, EU, China and Japan). Other regions can be added conveniently. Different aspects that have the direct or indirect impact on Automotive Glass Sunroof market are discussed in this report.The Automotive Glass Sunroof report then evaluates the market based on product definition, categorization, applications and key players. Some major industry players are profiled in this report along with their business overview, revenue segmentation, their contribution in market share, consumer volume and production capacity. The Automotive Glass Sunroof market size, gross market share and potential users are covered at length in this report.Buy Complete Report Here (To Get Fast Access):Hence, this report is an important guide for all readers including established players, new players and all individuals interested in gaining knowledge about Automotive Glass Sunroof market.About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, PuneMaharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Latest News- Latest Research : Health Insurance Market 2023 & Region-wise Outlook http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/health-insurance-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=5312 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Health Insurance Market: OverviewThe improving GDPs of several nations across the globe has favored the growth of the global health insurance market in recent years. Health insurance companies have been benefitting from the rising per capita incomes, the emergence of the middle class, and growing number of people with a relatively high income.The research report by Transparency Market Research has also studied using a SWOT analysis and a Porters five forces. The research report includes an explanation of the various factors determining the trajectory of the global health insurance market in the coming few years. Analysts have also factored in opinions of various market experts and leaders to give the readers a fair understanding of the overall market. Additionally, the document includes recommendations for the new entrants and existing players to improve their businesses with the wealth of valuable knowledge about the market.Obtain Report Details @Health Insurance Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe efforts invested by several companies to make their product offerings as transparent as possible has fared well over the past few years. This move has made it easier for buyers to compare and understand the terms of insurance and the products being sold to them. Additionally, the integration of solutions through data analytics, cloud computing, and other modeling techniques is also projected to encourage the growth of the global market in the near future.Despite the positive outlook of the global health insurance market, it faces some tough challenges such as intense competition and tough profit margins. The undulating economic conditions have also led a considerable about of uncertainty in the global market.Health Insurance Market: Region-wise OutlookThe U.S. is the leading health insurance market in the global market due to its unmatched healthcare system in the world. The growth of the market is predominantly being aided by the strong presence of leading players such as Anthem Inc., Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Humana Inc., and Cigna Corp. These players occupy a share of about 80% in the private and public sector of insurance in the U.S. The companies are exploring opportunities of digitizing access to insurance schemes and communication about the same with their consumers to reach out to a wider audience. Options such as providing distributors and consumers with self-service features are also likely to open up a plethora of opportunities for the global market. Furthermore, marketing the products in an easily comprehensible manner is also expected to be the strategy of leading players in the coming years. The only threat for the new entrants is the high level of competition in the U.S. health insurance market.Asia Pacific is expected to a lucrative market as the region has shown a remarkable progress in its GDP. Furthermore, the improving disposable incomes and the enhancement of health security standards are also expected to boost this market in the region in the near future. The growing middle class and an increasing number of high net worth individuals in Asia Pacific are also expected to give the health insurance market the much-needed impetus.Fill The Form To Gain Deeper Insights On This Market @Key Players Mentioned in the ReportSome of the leading players operating in the global health insurance market are Cigna Corporation, AIA Insurance Group, UnitedHealth Group Inc.,Allianz SE, Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., Express Scripts Holding Company, AXA, Aviva plc, Aetna, Inc., Apollo Munich Health Insurance, and International Medical Group.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Protective Packaging Market Size, Share, Statistics, Trends, Strategy, Segmentation Analysis by Forecast to 2021 Global Protective Packaging Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1320 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/protective-packaging-market Market Highlights:The market for Protective Packaging has been growing due to change in lifestyles, increased purchasing power and increased awareness about eco-friendly packaging. The overall increase in the number of e-commerce platforms, increased expenditure on technology in packaging, growing electronic sector has led to the growth of the Protective Packaging Market.Market Segments:Global protective packaging market is segmented on the basis of product type, material, application, function and region. On the basis of product type it is segmented as rigid protective, flexible protective and foam protective. On the basis of material it is segmented as paper & paperboard, foam plastics, plastics and others. On the basis of application it is segmented as consumer good, food & beverages, industrial goods, and others. Region has been segmented as North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Request a Sample Report @Regional Analysis:APAC dominates the Global protective packaging market with its fast growing market worldwide. The key drivers are increased purchasing power, strong economic growth and high demand for e-commerce goods. North America, followed by APAC, Europe and Rest of the World.Study Objectives: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of various segments and sub-segments of the Global Protective Packaging Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Global Protective Packaging 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, APAC, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospectiveAccess 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 Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Advanced Infusion Systems Market Revenue and Value Chain 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2026 www.futuremarketinsights.com Infusion systems are medical instruments and associated disposables, used to deliver fluids or drugs in solution to patients circulatory system in a controlled, precise and automated manner. There are different routes to introduce a drug into the patients system, of which, highly used mode is through intravenous, although subcutaneous, arterial and epidural infusion are preferred as per the requirement. They are simple devices and gravity controllers that employ a clamping action to vary the flow of liquid under the force of gravity. This instrument was extensively used for medication purpose but, due to association of high mortality rates with it, advanced infusion systems were developed. Facilities like easy start up, visual monitoring, mobility of system, balanced and continues infusion of multiple medications at the same time, patient safety are a few factors which are boosting the growth of the potential market of advanced infusion systems over conventional ones.Advanced Infusion Systems Market: Drivers and RestraintsOverall increase in global population suffering from chronic disease, cancer, diabetes is the major factor that drives the market growth of global infusion systems market. Enormously developed technology in infusion system which eliminates user-related risks, higher bioavailability, safety, therapeutic effectiveness, increase in health care spending are also some other factors that drive the growth of the market. To operate these automated infusion systems, a highly trained intelligent system is required. If this system is not trained properly, it can lead to increased morbidity and mortality rate which can restrain the growth of this market.Request For Report Sample@Advanced Infusion Systems Market: SegmentationThe global advanced infusion systemmarketis classified on the basis of product type, application type, end user and geography.Based on product type, the global advanced infusion systemMarketis segmented into the following:Elastomeric infusion systemVolumetric infusion system- Large volume and Small volume pumpPatient Controlled Analgesia pumpDisposable infusion systemSyringe infusion systemAmbulatory infusion systemImplantable infusion systemBased on application type, global advanced infusion systemMarketis segmented into the following:ChemotherapyDiabetesPain managementAsthmaClinical nutritionBased on end user, the global advanced infusion system market is segmented into the following:HospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersDiagnostic centersBedsideAdvanced Infusion Systems Market: OverviewOver the last few decades volumetric and syringe pumps, the clinical and surgical industry, infusion systems, have been widely used for intravenous therapy (IV). Industry experts estimated that 80% of the hospitalized patients receive intravenous (IV) therapy. This demand is expected to increase in the coming years. Growing incidence of chronic lifestyle disorders like cancer, diabetes and increased rate of aging population are the major factors that are expected to rise the demand for infusion pump market in forecast period. Increasing malnutrition in developing countries is expected to increase the demand for infusion pumps for critical nutrition. Hospitals are the largest end-users of infusion systems and account for over half of the market share.Advanced Infusion Systems Market: Regional OverviewRegion wise, the advanced infusion system market is segmented into regions namely, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. North Americaholds the largest market share globally. The advanced infusion system market in Asia-Pacific and Latin America is expected to grow relatively fast in coming years. Factors expected to drive this growth are increase in population and increase in incidences of cancer, diabetes and asthma.Visit For TOC@Advanced Infusion Systems Market: Key PlayersHospira, Inc., is a leading provider of infusion technologies globally. The key players in this markets are AngioDynamics, Inc., Animas Corporation, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Terumo Corporation and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Infusion systems by Hospira, Inc. have operations in over 60 key markets across Europe, Asia and The Americas. Q Core Medical is a medical device company focused on the infusion pump market, which is expected to hold a large market share in the upcoming period.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: Collaborative Authoring Tools Market Forecast By End-use Industry 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2096 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2096 www.futuremarketinsights.com With the increasing focus toward e-education and e-training, collaborative authoring tools have emerged as the key source enabling efficient use of resources based out at different locations across the globe. Collaborative authoring tools are software applications used to create content documents at one platform by various authors through creating efficient and effective communication between the authors. Collaborative authoring tools varies from simple tools that convert documents to web page to advanced software that provides variety of sophisticated applications. Wide application of these tools by training organization, developers, project and data oriented companies has significantly boosted the market growth, as it enables a real time communication between authors, unlike the conventional means such as emailing.The collaborative authoring tools are easy to operate and use WYSIWYG interface i.e. what you see is what you get. The authors accessing collaborative authoring tools have co-authoring functionality. This feature can be combined with collaborative review features for better precision for document creation and review process. Many of the working environments require collaborative writing as well as editing of the drawings, presentations, spreadsheets, and documents. Synchronous sharing, editing, revision, comments, group membership, etc. are some of the major features of the collaborative authoring tools used nowadays. These features of the collaborative authoring tools make them the backbone of the commercial industry.Request For Report Sample@Global Collaborative Authoring Tools Market: DynamicsDriversProduct features such as user commitment to easier, efficient and effective work processes and more involvement to the projects are the factors growing the market of collaborative authoring tools globally. Cost effectiveness, easy data sharing through provision of revision tracking are other factors fueling the market growth.Furthermore, ongoing research and development by service providers to develop more customized and user friendly solution is expected to create significant demand for collaborative authoring tools over the next few years.RestraintsCommunication issues and time zone issues are some of the factors which hinders the growth of collaborative authoring tools globally. Moreover, some of the other factors which hampers the collaborative authoring tools market growth is the type of training such as asynchronous learning, instructor led-training (ILT) required by the organizationTrendsRecent trends observed in collaborative authoring tools market is the growth of delivering mobile learning applications which are still in their early growth stage. Furthermore, the advanced features such as real time videos acts as a means of capturing expert knowledge and instructions.Global Collaborative Authoring Tools Market: SegmentationThe collaborative authoring tools are segmented on the basis of tool type, applications and region. On the basis of tool type, the collaborative authoring tools can be segmented into Google Docs, MS Office, MS Word, MS SharePoint, and others ( SELF, Etherpad, Moddle, etc.). On the basis of applications, collaborative authoring tools can be segmented into instant messaging, telephony, web Conferencing, E-mail server, others .On the basis of region, collaborative authoring tools can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific Exc. Japan, Western Europe, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Middle East and Africa.Visit For TOC@Global Collaborative Authoring Tools Market: Key PlayersSome of the major key players of the collaborative authoring tools are:CM Group Luminosity SuiteIMC Content StudioKenexa LCMSAdobe PresenterLectora PublisherABOUT 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: Cellulose Film Packaging Market Value Chain and Forecast 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2103 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2103 www.futuremarketinsights.com Cellulose film packaging is a biodegradable packaging primarily used in packaging of food. The cellulose film packaging market is expected to have significantly high growth rate as global packaging and food industry growing at rapid growth rate. The volume share of the cellulose film packaging market is projected to be high in Asia Pacific region over the forecast period.Cellulose Film Packaging Market: DynamicsThe key factor driving the cellulose film packaging market are growing food industry and macroeconomic factors such as rising disposable income, the rapid rate of urbanization, growing population, etc. Cellulose film advantage includes biodegradability, increasing demand for packaged food, increasing demand for frozen foods, and growing demand for takeaway products are some of the factor driving the cellulose film packaging market. The availability of a wide range of innovative packaging solutions is likely to have a significant influence on the demand for cellulose film packaging market during the forecast period. The factor trending the cellulose film packaging market consumer demand for convenient packaging, demand for competitive cost packaging, etc. The companies of cellulose film packaging have significant opportunity in regions such as Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America as these regions have relatively high growth rate over the forecast.Request For Report Sample@Cellulose Film Packaging Market: SegmentationCellulose film packaging market is segmented by application, by raw material, by source, and by region. By application cellulose, film packaging market is sub-segmented into industrial, consumer products, and others. Industrial segment is further segmented as pharmaceutical, food, and others. Industrial sub-segment is expected to contribute for the lion share over the forecast period in cellulose film packaging market, attributed to substantially increasing demand for cellulose film packaging in the food industry. By end use, global cellulose film packaging market is segmented as micro-fibrillated cellulose (MFC), unmodified birch pulp, nano-fibrillated anionic di-carboxylic acid cellulose (DCC), nano-fibrillated cellulose (NFC), wherein unmodified birch pulp segment contributes comparatively high revenue share. By source, the cellulose film packaging market is segmented as wood, cotton, hemp, and others. Among these wood, the segment is expected to the most attractive segment over the forecast period.Based on the application, the global cellulose film packaging market is segmented into:IndustrialFood & BeveragesPharmaceuticalOthersConsumer ProductsOthersBased on raw material, the global cellulose film packaging market is segmented into:Micro-fibrillated cellulose (MFC)Unmodified birch pulpNano-fibrillated anionic di-carboxylic acid cellulose (DCC)Nano-fibrillated cellulose (NFC)Based on source, the global cellulose film packaging market is segmented into:WoodCottonHempOthersCellulose Film Packaging Market: Regional overviewBased on the geographies, global cellulose film packaging market is segmented into five regions -- North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. Among the regions mentioned above, Asia Pacific accounts for a significant share of global cellulose film packaging market, owing to the rapid rise in the packaging industry in the region as compared to other regions. North America is followed by the Asia-Pacific market in global cellulose film packaging market. The North America market for the cellulose film packaging accounts for a comparatively high-value share in global cellulose film packaging market, owing to the substantial growth of labeling and packaging industry in the region. Overall, the outlook for cellulose film packaging market will have a positive growth over the forecast period, owing to the demand for innovation in the packaging industry as an anti-counterfeiting measure. The developing economy such as Middle East Africa and Latin America have a moderate opportunity in digital label printing market as the labeling industry in these regions is growing at a significantly high growth rate. There is a significantly high opportunity for cellulose film packaging players in the Asia Pacific region, attributed to significantly high demand for the packaging industry in countries such as China and India.Visit For TOC@Cellulose Film Packaging Market: Key PlayersFew players of cellulose filmpackaging market are Hubei Golden Ring Co. Ltd, Jinjiang Jiaxing Home Co.,Ltd., Yibin Hiest Fibre Co. Ltd, Goodfellow, Weifang Henglian Cellophane Co. Ltd, Weifang Henglian Cellulose Film Co.,Ltd., Chengdu Huaming Cellophane Co. Ltd, Innovia Films Ltd, Rui'an Yibo Trade Co. Ltd, DongGuan He-Hong Plastic Co. 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: Pine Derived Chemicals Market Revenue, Opportunity, Forecast and Value Chain 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1355 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1355 www.futuremarketinsights.com The chemicals derived from pine tree and its parts occur naturally. Thus, pine is a renewable source of chemicals that find applications across a diverse set of industries. Pine trees occur predominantly in regions like North America, Latin America, Asia and Scandinavia. Traditionally, these pine derived chemicals have been used in adhesives industry, construction industry and healthcare sector among the others. In the recent past, these pine derived chemicals have been used in applications such as in printing inks, adhesives, soaps & detergents, resins, plasticizers, surface coatings, fragrance chemicals among the others. The pine chemicals are obtained from distillation of semi-solid extracts of resin and fatty oil. Primarily, pine based products are derived from gums, stumps and by products of Kraft pulp. Pine chemicals include rosin, tall oil, turpentine, resin etc. Major chemicals like turpentine, tall oil fatty acids (TOFA) and resin acids among the others are derived from by-product of sulphate pulping process.Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe chemicals derived from pine trees are naturally occurring and thus environmentally friendly. Their use results in lower carbon dioxide emissions as compared to those from use of traditional sources. In the recent past, extensive use of products derived from crude oil and natural gas have led to increased pollution and environmental concern. Hence, there is a pressing need to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels in order to reduce carbon footprints and carbon dioxide emission. Thus, demand for these eco-friendly pine derived chemicals is expected to witness a steady growth over the forecast period. Pine trees, the source of these pine derived chemicals do not occur abundantly across the globe but are concentrated in regions of North America, Latin America, and in some European & Asian countries. As such, the limited availability is expected to create a challenge to the growth of the global pine derived chemical market during the forecast period.Request Report Sample@Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: SegmentationThe global pine derived chemical market is segmented on the basis of application, type and geographical region.Based on the type of chemical, global pine derived chemical market is segmented in to the following key market segments:Tall Oil Rosin (TOR)Tall Oil Fatty acid (TOFA)Gum RosinGum TurpentineSterolsOthersAlso depending on the End-use industry, the global pine derived chemical market is segmented as below:Printing inksAdhesives & paintsRubberPaper and pulpOthersGlobal Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Regional OutlookThe global pine derived chemical market is segmented on the basis of geography into seven key regions namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) and Japan. North America region has a strong presence in global pine derived chemical market followed by Asia Pacific. The United States accounted for the largest share in global pine derived chemicals market. Increasing demand for environmentally friendly products in order to reduce the carbon footprints is expected to drive the global pine derived chemical market during the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Key playerskey players operating in global pine derived chemical market are as follows:Eastman Chemical CompanyIngevity (MeadWestvaco Corporation)Arizona Chemical Company, LLCGeorgia-Pacific Chemicals, LLCHarima Chemicals GroupArakawa Chemical Industries, Ltd.Renessenz LLC.Foreverest Resources Ltd.Mentha and Allied Products Pvt. Ltd.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Silicon Anode Battery Market To Increase at Steady Growth Rate http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2134 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2134 www.futuremarketinsights.com In order to meet the rising energy requirements and to overcome rapidly depleting fossil resources, rechargeable batteries has evolved as one of the efficient means of energy storage. The ongoing technological advancement in power electronics and automotive has brought lithium ion batteries into the frame as an advanced storage systems with high capabilities. The silicon anode batteries are lithium ion batteries with silicon anode. The traditional anode material in lithium ion batteries i.e. graphite doesnt meets the high energy demand of advanced electric automotive due to its limited theoretical capacity, whereas, silicon stores ten times more lithium than the graphite anode resulting in increased energy density which enables fast charging and high current delivery. Thus silicon anode battery is emerging as a substitute for graphite anode battery. Due to its low discharge potential and extreme charge capacity, silicon anode could provide faster charging, greater current delivery and smaller battery size. However, large volume change during electrochemical process remains the major challenge in wide commercialization of silicon anode battery. Silicon anode battery is expected to emerge as next generation of lithium ion batteries. The silicon anode battery market is still between introduction and growth phase, when plotted on product life cycle. Huge investments by market leaders are being made to further develop silicon anode battery technology and bring it on practical grounds and thus market is expected to hold significant growth potential.Silicon Anode Battery: Market DynamicsThe major factor contributing to the growth of silicon anode battery market is the increasing energy requirements from various end-use applications such as consumer electronics and automotive, for more efficient and advanced battery. Further, robust growth of automotive industry and turning focus towards EVs could generate significant opportunity for growth of the silicon anode battery market. Lower working potential and high charge capacity of silicon anode battery could help automotive manufacturers to reach required power ranges by deploying less number of batteries thus achieving high performance. Moreover, abundance of raw material i.e. silicon can turn as a major factor driving its application into lithium ion batteries. Major challenges faced in the silicon anode battery market are limited commercialization of the product due to existing technical challenges particularly large volumetric expansion. Furthermore, high costs silicon anode battery as compared to available alternative is also a factor restraining market growth. The major trends observed in the silicon anode battery market is product development and innovation such as use of nanowire battery with silicon anodes as they allow improved accommodation of volume changes during lithiation. Number of players in the market have filed patents over different advancements in silicon anode battery technologyRequest For Report Sample@Silicon Anode Battery: Market SegmentationThe silicon anode battery market can be segmented on the basis of: application and region.On the basis of application the silicon anode battery market can be segmented into:Consumer electronic devicesMedical applications (pacemaker, defibrillator machines)AutomotiveSpace & defenseSustainable energy (wind turbine and photovoltaic)The silicon anode battery market can be segmented on the basis of region into: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and AfricaSilicon Anode Battery: Regional OutlookNorth America holds a major share in the silicon anode battery market due to the substantial growth in the automotive industry and consumer electronics section. Europe and North America collectively holds over 50% share in the market owing to demand from industrial sector. However, Asia Pacific silicon anode battery market is expected to grow significantly over the forecast period due to rapid industrialization and increasing awareness about the use of energy efficient, reliable, safe and economical battery systems.Visit For TOC@Silicon Anode Battery: Key PlayersSome of the major key players identified in the silicon anode battery market are: Nexeon Limited, BYD Company Limited, Amprius Inc., ENOVIX, Boston-Power, Inc., LG Chem Ltd., Panasonic Corporation, Samsung SDI, XG Sciences, Zeptor Corporation, California Lithium battery Inc, Yuasa battery Europe Ltd., JTT Electronics Ltd, Vmcell Technology Co., Ltd, Enevate Corporation, Nanotek Instruments.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: Generator Sales Industry Analysis, Trends, Global Foresight to 2021 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1524 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/generator-sales-market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/biodiesel-market The demand for energy and power has been increasing rapidly in recent times. Although there are several already existing power grid project and many power grid projects underway across the globe, they are bound to go through malfunction at a point, thus generators play an essential role when energy supply is concerned. Generators act as a backup to a form of power failure to any industry, grid or construction site. Increasing demand for continuous flow of power is set to boost the demand in the Generator Sales Market.Segments of Generator Sales MarketThe Generator sales market has been segmented on the basis of End users as Residential, Commercial and Industrial. On the basis of type the market has been segmented as continuous, stand by and peak shave. On the basis of fuel the market has been segmented as diesel and gas.Key Players MTU Onsite Energy (Germany) Caterpillar Inc. (U.S.) Himoinsa S.L. (Spain) Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (France) MTU Onsite Energy (Germany)Get a Sample Report @Study Objectives of Generator Sales Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the global Generator Sales market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Generator Sales Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, Porters five force analysis. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to six main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East, and Africa 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 Fuel, by Type, by End User, and by region as well as its 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, and new product developments in the global Generator Sales marketBrowse Report @Regional Analysis of Generator Sales Market:Asia-Pacific is the leading region in the Generator sales market mainly due to the rapid growth in the manufacturing sector in recent times. Within Asia-Pacific, regions like India and China have been major contributors to the growth of the Generator Sales market with rapid commercial activities and industrial development.Intended Audienceo Generator sales manufacturerso Generator sales Supplierso Research and Development (R&D) CompaniesBrief Table of Content1. Report Prologue2. Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations2.3 Market Structure2.4. Market Segmentation3. Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation3.5 Forecast Model4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restraints4.3 Opportunities4.4 Mega Trends4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators5. Market Factor Analysis5.1 Value Chain Analysis5.2 Porters Five Forces5.3 Demand & supply: gap analysis5.4 Pricing Analysis5.5 Investment Opportunity Analysis5.6 Merger and Acquisition Landscape5.7 UP-Coming trends in IOT market5.7.1 Market trends5.7.2 Technological trends5.7.3 Insurance & Regulations5.7.4 Others6. Generator Sales Market by typeContinue..The report for Generator Sales Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Related ReportGlobal Biodiesel Market Information Report by Application (off grid electricity supply and transportation), by Type (Methanol, Biohydrogen and Cellulosic ethanol.) and by Region - Forecast to 2027About 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.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Agricultural Microbials Market Growth With Worldwide Industry Analysis To 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/agricultural-microbials-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=4294 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Biosynthetic capabilities of microorganisms, in a specific set of environmental condition makes them likely candidates for enhancing nutritional value and pest protection properties in agriculture. Agricultural microbials are produced from naturally occurring microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. These microbials are usually applied to seeds or sprayed on crops to protect them from pests and diseases. Microbials also enhance productivity and fertility of the plant. Agricultural microbial products provide sustainable and cost effective solutions to increase plant yield, irrespective of geographies. Various types of fungi, bacteria, algae and viruses are the commonly used microbials in agriculture. Furthermore, these microbials play an important role in the production of grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and poultry and livestock products. Soil is the most important component of agriculture. Microbes present in the soil therefore play a vital role in the management and regulation of nutrients available for crops. Agricultural microbials are thus used to enhance the crop yield. Companies operating in this market are striving to launch products containing different microbial ingredients to meet the expected yield. Agricultural microbials are beneficial in the production of food in the form of a long term sustainable base for agricultural activities that help to maintain and improve human health. Further, agricultural microbials preserve and protect the environment and are therefore beneficial for both farmers as well as consumers. Increasing demand for food is expected to drive the global agricultural microbials market in the next few years. This added factor is expected to boost the market for agricultural microbials in the coming years.Obtain Report Details @Agricultural microbials supply nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus to plants. These microbials also protect plants from pests and diseases. Agricultural microbials enhance the nutrient transportation process, improve soil structure, maintain biological equilibrium and enhance plant growth which subsequently results in increased yield of the plant. Thus, agricultural microbials have become increasingly popular in food production across the globe. Favorable regulatory and financial policies of various governments regarding the usage of microbial products, increasing global population, rising demand for food, and environment-friendly farming practices are the major driving factors of the agricultural microbials market.Growth of the agricultural microbials market is primarily led by the high frequency of crop diseases and rising demand for food in developed as well as developing nations. Environmental protection laws in the U.S. and Europe are major drivers encouraging the use of agricultural microbials in these regions. This trend is likely to continue in the near future with growing importance of the agriculture industry. Furthermore, factors such as innovative production practices that do not harm crop yield would boost the usage of agricultural microbials globally. The market for agricultural microbials is expected to expand in Asia Pacific due to the economic growth coupled with increasing demand for food in the region. Developing countries such as China and India are likely to play a vital role in the agricultural microbials market in coming years due to the increased demand for food. North America, followed by Europe, is anticipated to be the largest market for agricultural antimicrobials due to stringent regulations requiring environment-friendly means of agriculture and rising demand for organic food in the region. Companies operating in this market aim to generate innovative solutions in order to meet the changing need of the consumers and these companies also invest heavily on research and development of new microbial products with the anticipated bright prospects for this market. Therefore, the global agricultural microbials market is anticipated to expand significantly in the near future.Fill The Form To Gain Deeper Insights On This Market @Some of the major companies operating in the global agricultural microbials market are Bayer CropScience AG, Monsanto, BASF SE, Syngenta AG, Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., Arysta LifeScience Limited and Novozymes.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Genetic Engineering Market is booming due to the Growing Research and Development in Biotechnology https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1528 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/genetic-engineering-market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/anal-cancer-market In the process of genetic engineering the genome of an organism is modified. It is being created by using recombinant DNA. The recombinant DNA is a combination of DNA from different organisms or different locations in a genome. The goal of genetic engineering is to add one or more new traits which are not already found in that particular organism. Genetic Engineering is prove to be a miracle for the world like in agriculture it is used for higher yield and better varieties of crops, in medicine diagnostics and cures. Market for Genetic Engineering is booming due to the technological advancement and growing R&D in biotechnology.Segments:Global Genetic Engineering Market has been segmented on the basis of type which comprise of animal gene, plant gene and others. On the basis of technique; market is segmented into artificial selection, cloning, gene splicing and others. On the basis of application; market is segmented into agriculture, medical, industrial, forensic science and others. On the basis of end users; market is segmented into Research Institute, Academic Institute and others.Key Players BGene (France) Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (US) Amgen Inc. Genentech, Inc. (San Francisco)Request a Sample Report @Regional Analysis of Genetic Engineering Market:Globally North America is the largest market for cervical dystonia. The North American market for Genetic Engineering is expected to grow at high CAGR over the forecasted period. Increased funding for genomics research and increased R&D expenditures. Europe is expected to be the second-largest market for Genetic Engineering which is expected to grow at good CAGR.Intended Audience: Companies into genetic Engineering Government research Laboratories Research and Development (R&D) Companies Independent Research Laboratories Market Research and Consulting Service Providers Medical Research LaboratoriesBrief Table Of Content1. Report Prologue2. Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations2.3 Market Structure2.4. Market Segmentation3. Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation3.5 Forecast Model4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restraints4.3 Opportunities4.4 Mega Trends4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators5. Market Factor Analysis5.1 Value Chain Analysis5.2 Porters Five Forces5.3 Demand & supply: gap analysis5.4 Pricing Analysis5.5 Investment Opportunity Analysis5.6 Merger and Acquisition Landscape5.7 UP-Coming trends in IOT market5.7.1 Market trends5.7.2 Technological trends5.7.3 Insurance & Regulations5.7.4 Others6. Global Genetic Engineering market by typeContinueBrowse Report @The report for Global Genetic Engineering Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regionsRelated ReportGlobal Anal Cancer Market Information, by type (Squamous cell carcinomas, Adenocarcinomas, perianal skin cancers, Melanomas and others), by treatment (chemotherapy, radio therapy, surgery and others), by end users (hospitals, clinics, research institutes and others) - Forecast to 2027About 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.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Capnography Market Research, Analytical Insights and Forecast 2027 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1535 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/capnography-market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/genetic-engineering-market Capnography is the technique of monitoring of the concentration or partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the respiratory gases. Capnographs are used as a monitoring tool during anesthesia and intensive care. It is usually presented as a graph of expiratory CO2 plotted against time. The plot may also show the inspired CO2, which is of interest when rebreathing systems are being used. The capnogram is a direct monitor of the inhaled and exhaled concentration or partial pressure of CO2, and an indirect monitor of the CO2 partial pressure in the arterial blood.Technological advancements, rising prevalence of respiratory diseases, and limitations in the use of pulse oximeter are some of the factors responsible for the growth of the Capnography Market. The market for capnography is booming.Key Players for Capnography Market Athena GTX Inc Dragerwerk AG Medtronic, Inc. Masimo Corporation Nonin Medical, Inc. OSI Systems, Inc Philips Healthcare Welch Allyn, Inc.Request a Sample Report @SegmentsGlobal capnography market has been segmented on the basis of types which comprises of mainstream capnographs, sidestream capnographs, microstream capnographs, and disposables. On the basis of end users, market is segmented into Hospitals, Surgical centers, Ambulatory and others.Intended Audienceo Capnography equipment manufacturerso Capnography equipment supplierso Research and Development (R&D) Companieso Government Research Laboratorieso Independent Research Laboratorieso Government and Independent Regulatory Authoritieso Market Research and Consulting Service Providerso Medical Research Laboratorieso Academic Medical Institutes and UniversitiesStudy Objectives Capnography 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 capnography market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the capnography 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- Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by product type, end users and its sub-segments. To provide overview of key players and their strategic profiling in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global Capnography Market.Browse Report @Regional Analysis of Capnography MarketGlobally North America is the largest market for capnography. The North American market for capnography is expected to grow at high CAGR over the forecasted period. Europe is the second-largest market for capnography which is expected to grow at good CAGR. Asia pacific region is expected to be growing in capnography market.Brief Table Of Content1. Report Prologue2. Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations2.3 Market Structure2.4. Market Segmentation3. Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation3.5 Forecast Model4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restraints4.3 Opportunities4.4 Mega Trends4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators5. Market Factor Analysis5.1 Value Chain Analysis5.2 Porters Five Forces5.3 Demand & supply: gap analysis5.4 Pricing Analysis5.5 Investment Opportunity Analysis5.6 Merger and Acquisition Landscape5.7 UP-Coming trends in IOT market5.7.1 Market trends5.7.2 Technological trends5.7.3 Insurance & Regulations5.7.4 Others6. Global Capnography by product type7. Global Capnography by end usersContinue..The report for Global Capnography Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regionsRelated ReportGlobal Genetic Engineering Information, by type (animal gene, plant gene and others), by technique (artificial selection, cloning, gene splicing and others), by application (agriculture, medical, industrial, forensic science and others), by end users (Research Institute, Academic Institute and others) - Forecast to 2027About 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.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Vanities with Tops Market 2017- Avanity, Foremost, Fresca, Vinnova and KraftMaid Vanities with Tops https://goo.gl/3sOZuP https://goo.gl/YtL5cg This report studies Vanities with Tops 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, covering1. Wyndham Collection2. Virtu USA3. Home Decorators Collection4. Avanity5. Foremost6. American Imaginations7. Studio Bathe8. Fresca9. Vinnova10. Water Creation11. Design Element12. Direct Vanity Sink13. Stufurhome14. Bellaterra HomeA market study based on the "Vanities with Tops" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Vanities with Tops Market 2017'. The Research report by QY Research Group is a market-oriented, technical, and commercial research analysis of the Vanities with Tops market. The analysis is completed using a wide range of secondary sources, databases and directories in order to identify and assemble market data. Primary sources included for the analysis include preferred suppliers, industry experts from core and associated industries, manufacturers, service providers, distributors, and organizations allied to the entire segments of the industry supply chain.CLICK HERE to Request Sample Report @Analyses of the global Vanities with Tops market trends along with the projections of CAGRs (compound annual growth rates) are provided in the research report. To estimate the overall market size of Vanities with Tops, its application, and regionsin terms of value and volumethe bottom-up approach is followed. On the other hand, to corroborate the overall Vanities with Tops market sizeagain in terms of value and volumethe top-down approach is followed. Following the method of data triangulation and data validation via primaries, the precise values of the parent market and individual market in terms of size are calculated and established in the report.This market research report provides the client with comprehensive market analysis of the Vanities with Tops market over the forecast period. In addition, it also furnishes a general idea of the challenges, drivers, and restraints that have direct or indirect impact on the industry. It further highlights the market, the industry, and latest technology trends currently existing in the Vanities with Tops market. All this precise, accurate and comprehensive data will help the clients to make appropriate and practical decisions so as to gain maximum profit in the global market.The research report analyzes, tracks, and presents the global market size of the major players in every region around the world. Furthermore, the report provides data of the leading market players in the Vanities with Tops market.Browse FULL Report @Overall, the report is a one-stop destination and a valuation report to grab all the necessary information regarding the global Vanities with Tops market.About Us:QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651 Corporate Wellness Market is expanding at a CAGR of 9.0% from 2016 - 2024 Corporate Wellness Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/asia-pacific-corporate-wellness-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=13988 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ The corporate wellness market in Asia Pacific is led by a slew of global and local companies, such as Central Corporate Wellness, ComPsych Corporation, Optum, Inc., JLT Australia (Recovre Group), Truworth Wellness, SOL Wellness, Sodexo, ConneXions Asia, and Bupa Wellness Pty Ltd. Transparency Market Research has observed that the number of companies venturing into this avenue has been steadily rising owing to the growing presence of MNCs in several developing countries.The opportunity in the corporate wellness market in Asia Pacific was pegged at US$3.4 bn in 2015 and is expected to be worth US$7.4 bn by the end of 2024 at a strong CAGR of 9.0%. Geographical expansions, expansion of product portfolio, mergers and acquisitions, and investing in extensive wellness programs are some of the key growth strategies adopted by the leading players in the Asia Pacific. For instance, in March 2016, Sodexo signed a 10-year contract with Rio Tinto to expand its operations in Australia.Read Full Report:The prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer has increased significantly in Asia Pacific in recent years. The report has found that these diseases account for at least 8.5 million deaths in Southeast Asia each year. Employers are, as a result, driven to promote as well as maintain the health and well-being of their employees and offering corporate wellness programs and services has turned out to be the most effective method of doing so, the lead analyst states. These services not only boost productivity but also reduce overall medical costs.The corporate wellness market in Asia Pacific is also fueled by government support and initiatives, the rising number of white-collar employees, the willingness of employers to invest in wellness programs, and growing health consciousness among the population.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Implementing corporate wellness programs in organizations is a costly affair and companies need to utilize a certain portion of their budget from the revenue generated, the author of the study comments. Services such as fitness and health risk assessment need high investments and as a result, are cut down by the companies. This restricts the growth of the corporate wellness market.In addition, the inefficient execution of corporate wellness services is a major restraint to the market and is likely to increase costs for the companies.By type of service, the fitness segment led the overall corporate wellness market, accounting for a 38.6% share in 2015, reaching US$2,793.5 mn by 2024. The smoking cessation segment, although the smallest in terms of revenue in 2015, is anticipated to register a strong CAGR of 9.6% during the forecast period. By country, China emerged as the leading revenue generator in 2015 and is projected to retain its position throughout the forecast period. India, on the other hand, is expected to expand at the fastest pace by 2024.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.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Metal Magnesium Industry Production - North America, Europe, China & Japan Metal Magnesium http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-metal-magnesium-market-research-report-2017-124531 https://goo.gl/H745uq The Market Research Store report offers majority of the latest and newest industry data that covers the overall market situation along with future prospects for Metal Magnesium market around the globe. The research study includes significant data and also forecasts of the global market which makes the research report a helpful resource for marketing people, analysts, industry executives, consultants, sales and product managers, and other people who are in need of major industry data in a ready-to-access format along with clear presentation of graphs and tables.The report comprises the current size of the Metal Magnesium market. It also provides with different types of product segments of the global market. Furthermore, the Metal Magnesium market research report gives an in-depth information about the overall market and various product segments and their growth trends. The future market forecasts about the global Metal Magnesium market are also covered in the research report. In addition, the overall market potential is further described in the report along with different countries around the globe.Browse Complete Report with TOC @The latest and the newest trends of the Metal Magnesium industry are also included in this report. Moreover, overall global market size, the market size by product segment, growth rates of the global market along with and different product segments of the market, and various product segments with their value and volumes evaluation are also included in the research report.The Market Research Store report offers the global market potential rates of the Metal Magnesium market along with various product segments. The research report provides an overview of the current market situation, historic development, and future outlook of the Metal Magnesium market. It also tracks the industry developments trends and identifies the global market opportunities. The report helps to plan and develop precise marketing, market expansion, market-entry, and other business strategies through identifying the major market prospects and opportunities.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The data in the report is clearly presented which can be easily integrated into presentations and internal reports.About Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Urolithiasis Management Devices Market is expanding at a CAGR of 4.5% from 2016 - 2024 Urolithiasis Management Devices Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/urolithiasis-management-devices-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2252 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Despite the presence of a large number of regional players, the global market for urolithiasis management devices is dominated by few large vendors having substantial budgets for research and development of new technologies and innovative products, observes TMR in a recent report. Companies such as Boston Scientific Corporation, C. R. Bard, Inc., and Cook Group command prominent positions in the global market owing to their strong geographic presence, excellent distribution networks, and the financial power to acquire niche device developers across the globe. The degree of competition is high in the maturing market, with frequent changes to the development dynamics owing to rapid advancements in supporting technologies.Transparency Market Research estimates that the global urolithiasis management devices market will expand at a healthy 4.5% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024. The markets worth is estimated to be US$1.26 bn in 2016 and is expected to rise to US$1.78 bn by 2024.Read Full Report:Of the key urolithiasis management device types available in the global market, the segment of shockwave lithotripters is presently the dominant revenue generator, with a valuation of US$789.2 mn in 2015, and is expected to account for a share of 65% in the global market by 2016. Of the key end users of urolithiasis management devices, the segment of clinics led the global market, holding a share of 55% of the markets overall revenues in 2015. Geography-wise, North America led with 36% share in the global market in the same year. Over the period between 2016 and 2024, however, Asia Pacific is projected to emerge as the most promising regional market for urolithiasis management devices owing to the large geriatric population and a rising base of high-income patients.The market for urolithiasis management devices is primarily driven owing to the rising prevalence of kidney stones among the global population. Factors such as obesity, changing lifestyles, and ageing are the chief causes triggering the formation of kidney stones among humans. Studies state that at least 30% of the worlds population is presently obese or overweight. Geriatrics (people with more than 60 years of age) account for more than 900 mn people of the worlds population presently. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs states that this number will increase by 56% between 2015 and 2030 and rise to 1.4 bn by 2030.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Along with these factors, the introduction of a variety of non-invasive treatment methods in the global urolithiasis management devices market has also encouraged the excellent growth of the market in the past few years. The significant reduction in treatment duration and effective results are compelling an increased number of patients to demand newer and technologically advanced treatment methods for kidney stones.Certain urolithiasis procedures such as the lithotripsy involve shockwaves that are sent across the body to trigger kidney stones with high precision force. Such treatments may result in damage to soft tissues and could also potentially lead to a permanent loss of renal functions. This factor leads to increased concerns among patient about the potential side-effects of novel technologies and hampers the overall adoption of urolithiasis management devices to a notable extent. Another key challenge for the global urolithiasis management devices is the high cost of certain latest and novel technologies, which restrains markets growth across developing economies to a large extent.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.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: High Performance Epoxy Market is Expected to Reach USD 14.9 Billion by 2022 High Performance Epoxy Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2194 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/high-performance-epoxy-market Market Research Future has a half-cooked research report on global high performance epoxy market which is growing rapidly and expected to continue its growth till 2022.Taste the market data and market information presented in more than 50 market data tables and figures spread over 85 pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content (TOC) & market synopsis on Global High Performance Epoxy Market Research Report Forecast to 2022.Market Highlights:High performance epoxy is utilized to protect metal and concrete structure which includes, tanks and pipes which are affected resulting in corrosion of material as a result of exposure to acid rain and environment. High performance epoxy are utilized mainly in chemical plants, oil refinery, aerospace and marine industries.High performance epoxy markets drivers are end-use industries which are growing rapidly moreover epoxy has environmental friendly features which makes it suitable to be used in various industries. The market growth might be hindered as high performance epoxy raw material and product is quiet expensive.The high performance epoxy market is segmented on the basis of type namely resins, adhesives, pigments, solvents and others. The demand of resins is increasing consistently over the forecasted period. Further-more adhesives and pigments segment is anticipated to grow over the forecasted period.Request a Sample Copy @The high performance epoxy market is segmented on end-user namely aerospace & marine, automotive, consumer goods and others. The aerospace & marine as well as Consumer goods segment on the other hand is anticipated to grow over the forecasted period.Companies such as are Euclid Chemical Company, Sherwin-Williams Company, Rust-Oleum, V8 Floor Systems, Huntsman International LLC have implemented acquisition and expansion of business strategies to increase their acrylic markets presence geographically. Few global players have invested in R&D amenities to discover advanced and innovative products which has higher efficacy rate and convenience of being used.Key Players of High Performance Epoxy Market: Aksa Akrilik Kimya Sanayii A.S. (Aksa) Dralon Aditya Birla Group Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Company Taekwang Industrial Co. Ltd. Exlan Japan Co. Ltd. Kaneka Corporation Indian Acrylics Limited Pasupati Acrylon Ltd. Vardhman Acrylics Ltd.Segmentation:The global high performance epoxy market is majorly segmented on the basis of by type and by end-use. Based on type the market is segmented into resins, adhesives, pigments, solvents and others. On the basis of end-use the market is classified aerospace & marine, automotive, consumer goods and othersBrief TOC for High Performance Epoxy Market:1 Executive Summary2 Scope of The Report2.1 Market Definition2.2 Scope of The Study2.2.1 Research Objectives2.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations2.3 Markets Structure3 Market Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Secondary Research3.3 Primary Research3.4 Forecast Model4 Market Landscape4.1 Five Forces Analysis4.1.1 Threat of New Entrants4.1.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.1.3 Threat of substitutes4.1.4 Segment rivalry4.2 Value Chain/Supply Chain of Global High PerTypeance Epoxy Market5 Industry Overview of Global High PerTypeance Epoxy Market5.1 Introduction5.2 Growth Drivers5.3 Impact analysis5.4 Market Challenges5.5 Impact analysisContinueRegional Analysis:Asia-Pacific region is expected to maintain its dominance in the global high performance epoxy market. Emerging markets of China, South Korea, Taiwan and India are expected to boost the Asia Pacific high performance epoxy market. Other emerging markets are North-America and Europe countries.The largest market of high performance epoxy is in Asia-Pacific as it has highest consumer of high performance epoxy. China is the leading producer of high performance epoxy followed by South Korea. North-America are second largest market of high performance epoxy.Access Report Details @Intended Audience: High performance epoxy manufacturers Traders and distributors of high performance epoxy Application industries Potential investors Raw material suppliers Nationalized laboratoryAbout 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 which includes by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional and country level market segments, enables our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Microfluidics Market Poised for Robust CAGR of over 14% through 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-398 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-398 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/microfluidics-market www.futuremarketinsights.com http://fmiblog.com/ Applications of microfluidics in drug delivery and diagnostics will continue to fuel the market for microfluidics over the next few years. The US$ 2.9 Bn microfluidics market will possibly cross US$ 11 Bn by the end of 2026. North America is expected to contribute over US$ 3 Bn to the total revenues in 2026. The collective share of North America and Asia Pacific will be over 40%, states Future Market Insights in a recently published market report outlook, titled Microfluidics Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026.The report by Future Market Insights analyses the global market for microfluidics over a 10-year forecast period, 2016-2026. The market is likely to witness a robust CAGR of 14.4% over the assessed period.Key Insights: Market DynamicsIncreasing discretionary funding from national labs for R&D in the developed regions will remain a primary factor driving the growth of market through 2026.Improving healthcare infrastructure and wide availability of affordable microfluidic devices or kits are also foreseen to boost the market growth in near future, especially in developing countries.Expansion of drug delivery sector will favour the market growth in near future.Consistent advancements in the fields of genomics and proteomics are also expected to benefit the sales of microfluidics-based devices and kits.Request For Sample@Dynamic collaborations between key market players and active involvement of government entities will collectively foster the market through 2026.Key Insights: SegmentsCeramics will remain dominant material typeBased on material, ceramics will continue to be the most sought after material for microfluidic device or kit manufacturing. Ceramics segment is expected to remain dominance, accounting for over 42% market value share in 2026, followed by glass, polymer, and silicon. While ceramics is likely to witness the fastest growth, polymer segment is anticipated to exhibit a significant CAGR of over 15% over 2016-2026, driven by PVC.POCT will be dominant application segmentBy application, POCT (point of care testing) segment is projected to retain dominance through 2026, accounting for over 33% share in terms of revenues. Clinical diagnostics and analytical testing will remain the next major segments in the global microfluidics market.In-vitro diagnostics industry will hold maximum revenue shareOn the basis of industry, in-vitro diagnostics, life science research, and pharmaceuticals are likely to be the key segments. In-vitro diagnostics segment is estimated to hold a share of over 35% in the total market revenues. The fastest growing segment will be in-vitro diagnosis.Send An Enquiry@APEJ will be the most lucrative regional marketGeographically, North America, followed by Western Europe are expected to remain the dominant regions for microfluidics, capturing respective market value share of over 26% and over 21% share by 2026 end. Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will possibly represent the most lucrative market, expanding at a significant CAGR of over 14% throughout the forecast period. This growth is attributed to growing use of microfluidics devices and kits for in-vitro diagnostics. North America and Western Europe will also exhibit significant growth rates over 2016-2026.Key Insights: Leading Market PlayersSome of the most prominent players in the global microfluidics market, include Agilent Technologies, PerkinElmer Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Qiagen NV, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Fluidigm Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.Almost all the leading companies serve point of care testing application and survive the competition with an individual differentiating strategy. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. and Abbott Laboratories, through active engagement in agreements and collaborations with leading regional companies, highlight a growing trend of strategic mergers and acquisitions among the top companies.Browse Full Report@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:Blog: Cosmeceuticals Market - Analysis And Forecast (2016-2024): Market Shares And Strategies Of Key Players https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/221 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-discount/221 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/cosmeceuticals-market-221 https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights Cosmetics and pharmaceuticals together make cosmeceuticals. A cosmeceutical has the active potential ingredient to bring about visible changes to the skin, and these changes are backed by clinical indication. Cosmeceutical products are marketed as cosmetics, though they comprise biologically active ingredients that provide medicinal or drug-like properties. For example, anti-wrinkle skin creams includes ingredients such as alpha lipoic acid and dimethylaminoethanol and creams containing cellular replacement serum that claim to have anti-aging properties. The cosmetic industry coined the term, though the US FDA does not recognize the term cosmeceuticals. A cosmetic product will effectively maintain skin quality by providing somewhat temporary results. It may contain active ingredients, though concentration of these actives is usually negligible. A cosmeceutical product differs from such cosmetic products, as it has a high concentration of active ingredients and usually comprises various active ingredients. This formulation can bring about visible changes to the skin making it a results-focused product. Cosmeceutical products are restricted to professional skin care vendors where a consultation can be provided.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:The cosmeceuticals market includes a large category of cosmetic products that have drug-like benefits. Varity of cosmeceuticals products available in the market include lip care, skincare, tooth whitening, hair care, injectable and others. The skincare segment holds a prominent share and is followed by hair care segment. In the skincare segment, anti-ageing products are most popular and hence, gross maximum revenue.Cosmeceuticals Market Outlook: Developed Regions Still Offer Lucrative Growth OpportunitiesThe global cosmeceuticals market is expected to witness strong growth over the forecast period, owing to rising consumer awareness regarding the benefits of cosmeceuticals. Among all regions, North America is projected to contribute the highest market share, followed by Europe throughout the forecast period. The well-developed healthcare infrastructure and high per capita income in the U.S., drives growth of the cosmeceuticals market size. The Asia Pacific market in cosmeceuticals is projected witness highest growth during the forecast period, due to large middle-aged population (the largest demographic group in the market) and increasing disposable income in this region. In Asia Pacific region, Japan is expected to contribute largest market share and to exhibit with highest growth, followed by China.Increasing inclination towards maintaining personal aesthetics and increasing number of urban population together with rising consumer awareness related to benefits of cosmeceuticalsAsk for Discount before buying the Report@Integration of advanced technologies such as nanotechnology, plant stem cell technology, and the development of new active ingredients are spurring growth of the global cosmeceuticals market. Large middle age population and baby boomer generation are inclined towards maintaining their personal aesthetic appeal, in turn fueling growth of the global cosmeceuticals industry. Furthermore, development of new active ingredients will create opportunities for global market. A major factor that restraints growth of the cosmeceuticals market is growing consumer awareness related to harmful effects of ingredients used in cosmeceuticals.In cosmeceuticals, only Federal Trade Commission (FTC) works to scrutinise any advertised claims of pharmaceutical products or scientific validity. Opportunities in cosmeceutical market development are those that provide protection of skin from radiation and also oxidant damage by non-irritating ingredients which improve skin appearance.Cosmeceuticals Market TaxonomyOn the basis of product type, the cosmeceuticals market is classified into:Skin CareHair CareInjectableCosmeceuticals ProductsBrowse Global Strategic Business Report :On the basis of ingredient, the cosmeceuticals market is classified into:AntioxidantsProteinsPeptidesBotanicalsMoisturizersKey players operating in the global cosmeceutical market include Croda International Plc, Bayer, Procter & Gamble, Beiersdor, Johnson & Johnson, Shiseido, Elementis, Unilever, L'Oreal, and Avon.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @ Global Copper Sulphate Market Bolstered by its Catalytic Properties and Increasing Application http://www.imarcgroup.com/request?type=report&id=597&flag=B http://www.imarcgroup.com/copper-sulphate-technical-material-market-report http://www.imarcgroup.com/categories/chemicals-market-reports www.imarcgroup.com Copper sulphate is used in a number of sectors for manufacturing various products such as soil steriliser, disinfectants, adhesives, insecticides, etc. The global copper sulphate market has grown at a fast rate owing to its diverse applications.Copper sulphate or cupric sulphate (CuSO4) is a salt of copper which exists in varying amounts of hydration. Most commonly, it is found as bright blue or green coloured crystals, due to which it is also known as blue vitriol, bluestone, vitriol of copper and roman vitriol. It is the most commonly used salt which is produced industrially by treating copper metal with hot concentrated sulfuric acid or its oxides with dilute sulfuric acid. Alternatively, it can also be produced by slowly leaching low grade copper ore in air. The latest report by IMARC Group titled, Copper Sulphate Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022, finds that the global copper sulphate market has grown at a CAGR of around 5% during 2009-2016, reaching a volume of more than 300 Thousand Tons in 2016.Get Sample of Report:Highlights of the Global Copper Sulphate market:It is widely in various industries owing to its functional properties.Agriculture sector represents the biggest market.Asia-Pacific represents the largest producer of copper sulphate.Copper sulphate finds a large number of applications in several industries such as farming, animal husbandry, healthcare, synthetic fibre, metal, mining, paint, etc. One of the biggest market for copper sulphate is the agricultural sector where it is used for treating copper deficient soils, as a soil steriliser, and in fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. In the healthcare sector, it is used in disinfectants and sterilizers, and in the manufacturing of copper catalysts. It also forms an essential component of anti-septic agents which are used in public swimming pools to inhibit the bacterial growth. Some of the other sectors include textiles, adhesives, chemical, etc. where it is used to manufacture products like insecticides, wood preservatives and preparation of catalysts for use in several industries. According to the report, the market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 4% during 2017-2022, reaching a volume of more than 400 Thousand Tons by 2022.An analysis of the key regions finds that Asia-Pacific represents the biggest consumer of copper sulphate. An increase in agricultural and animal husbandry activities in the region has contributed highly in accelerating the growth of the market. Asia-Pacific is followed by North America, South America and Europe. On the other hand, the US is the largest importer of copper sulphate, followed by Australia, Canada, Indonesia and Netherlands. An evaluation of the competitive landscape provides the details of the manufacturers operative in the market, including Lustros Inc., NEKK Europe Ltd., Xintai Copper Industrial Co. Ltd., Yunnan Copper Company Ltd., SimpL, Cuprichem, Old Bridge Chemicals Inc. and UMMC.Browse full report with TOC @The report by IMARC Group has examined the global copper sulphate market on the basis of:End-Use:Farming and Animal HusbandryOther ApplicationsRegion:AsiaNorth AmericaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaMajor manufacturers:Lustros Inc.NEKK Europe Ltd.Xintai Copper Industrial Co. Ltd.Yunnan Copper Company Ltd.SimpLCuprichemOld Bridge Chemicals Inc.UMMCFind more reports related to Chemical & Materials Industry @IMARC Group is a leading market research company that offers management strategy and market research worldwide. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses.IMARCs information products include major market, scientific, economic and technological developments for business leaders in pharmaceutical, industrial, and high technology organizations. Market forecasts and industry analysis for biotechnology, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, travel and tourism, nanotechnology and novel processing methods are at the top of the companys expertise.IMARC Group610 North Randolph StreetArlingtonVA 22203Tel no: +1-631-791-1145Email: sales@imarcgroup.comWebsite:Follow us on twitter: @imarcglobal Global Humidifiers Industry Production - North America, Europe, China & Japan Humidifiers http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-humidifiers-market-research-report-2017-124534 https://goo.gl/F2wBvN The Market Research Store report offers majority of the latest and newest industry data that covers the overall market situation along with future prospects for Humidifiers market around the globe. The research study includes significant data and also forecasts of the global market which makes the research report a helpful resource for marketing people, analysts, industry executives, consultants, sales and product managers, and other people who are in need of major industry data in a ready-to-access format along with clear presentation of graphs and tables.The report comprises the current size of the Humidifiers market. It also provides with different types of product segments of the global market. Furthermore, the Humidifiers market research report gives an in-depth information about the overall market and various product segments and their growth trends. The future market forecasts about the global Humidifiers market are also covered in the research report. In addition, the overall market potential is further described in the report along with different countries around the globe.Browse Complete Report with TOC @The latest and the newest trends of the Humidifiers industry are also included in this report. Moreover, overall global market size, the market size by product segment, growth rates of the global market along with and different product segments of the market, and various product segments with their value and volumes evaluation are also included in the research report.The Market Research Store report offers the global market potential rates of the Humidifiers market along with various product segments. The research report provides an overview of the current market situation, historic development, and future outlook of the Humidifiers market. It also tracks the industry developments trends and identifies the global market opportunities. The report helps to plan and develop precise marketing, market expansion, market-entry, and other business strategies through identifying the major market prospects and opportunities.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The data in the report is clearly presented which can be easily integrated into presentations and internal reports.About Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Global Fiberglass Products Industry Production - North America, Europe, China & Japan Fiberglass http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-fiberglass-products-market-research-report-2017-124535 https://goo.gl/MS2r1b The Market Research Store report offers majority of the latest and newest industry data that covers the overall market situation along with future prospects for Fiberglass Products market around the globe. The research study includes significant data and also forecasts of the global market which makes the research report a helpful resource for marketing people, analysts, industry executives, consultants, sales and product managers, and other people who are in need of major industry data in a ready-to-access format along with clear presentation of graphs and tables.The report comprises the current size of the Fiberglass Products market. It also provides with different types of product segments of the global market. Furthermore, the Fiberglass Products market research report gives an in-depth information about the overall market and various product segments and their growth trends. The future market forecasts about the global Fiberglass Products market are also covered in the research report. In addition, the overall market potential is further described in the report along with different countries around the globe.Browse Complete Report with TOC @The latest and the newest trends of the Fiberglass Products industry are also included in this report. Moreover, overall global market size, the market size by product segment, growth rates of the global market along with and different product segments of the market, and various product segments with their value and volumes evaluation are also included in the research report.The Market Research Store report offers the global market potential rates of the Fiberglass Products market along with various product segments. The research report provides an overview of the current market situation, historic development, and future outlook of the Fiberglass Products market. It also tracks the industry developments trends and identifies the global market opportunities. The report helps to plan and develop precise marketing, market expansion, market-entry, and other business strategies through identifying the major market prospects and opportunities.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The data in the report is clearly presented which can be easily integrated into presentations and internal reports.About Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Synthetic Biology Market - Analysis And Forecast (2016-2024): Market Shares And Strategies Of Key Players https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/112 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-discount/112 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/synthetic-biology-market-112 https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights Synthetic biology is a combination of biology and biomedical engineering principles that favors designing and construction of novel biological parts & systems and also the reconstruction of preexisting designs according to specific application requirements. Synthetic biology is extensively used in the field of medical and pharmaceuticals to produce and manufacture improved biological drugs and systems to meet various challenges in the healthcare sector. Synthetic biology offers various opportunities in the field of healthcare such as recreating highly complex pathways, DNA sequences, and natural biological systems. In synthetic biology market, genetically modified organisms is the new approach for researchers. However, currently only one engineered gene has been developed, with increasing focus on creating clusters of genes. Also, due to the rising demand for vaccines in high income countries, synthetic biologists are more inclined towards research of various types of vaccines that can be used as prophylaxis. According to WHO, in in 2011, high income countries such as the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. contributed around 80% of global vaccine sales revenue, with these regions accounting for 20% volume share.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:Synthetic biology market taxonomy:By Product TypeSynthetic DNASynthetic cellsSynthetic genesChassis organismsGenetically modified organismsOligonucleotide SynthesisBy ToolXeno-nucleic Acids (XNA)Cloning and Assembly kitsOligonucleotidesEnzymesGet Exclusive Discount on this CMI Report:By TechnologyEnabling TechnologiesBioinformaticsSite-saturation MutagenesisMeasurement and ModelingMicrofluidicsCloning and SequencingGene SynthesisGenome EngineeringNanotechnologyEnabled TechnologiesPathway EngineeringNext-generation SequencingBy ApplicationEnvironmental ApplicationBioremediationWhole-cell BiosensorsIndustrial ApplicationBiofuels and Renewable EnergyIndustrial EnzymesBiomaterials and Green ChemicalsMedical ApplicationArtificial Tissue and Tissue RegenerationPharmaceuticalsDrug Discovery and TherapeuticsGovernment funding supporting synthetic biology market growth:Growing demand for synthetic biology products such as synthetic DNA, synthetic genes for treatment of diseases and for developing genetic modified products such as hybrid crop, genetically modified animals for enhancing the nutritional value of the food is also contributing towards the growth of the synthetic biology market. Also, various governments are investing in research and development of novel synthetic biology products. For instance, according to the report from U.S. Trends in Synthetic Biology Research at the Wilson Center, during the period of six years from 2008 to 2014, the U.S. invested around US$ 820 million in research for products in synthetic biology. Among different funding agencies, the defense department became a key funder of synthetic biology research dominating the funds by national science foundation. The above key fact also suggests that U.S. is expected to be a significant contributor in synthetic biology market.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :Regional analysis of synthetic biology market:Developed countries such as the U.S., Germany, U.K., France, and Japan have mature markets for synthetic biology mainly due to large funding and favorable government regulation regarding the approval of synthetic biology products. According to genetic engineering & biotechnology news in 2010, the government of three European countries namely the Netherlands, U.K., and Germany invested around US$ 160 million in a span of five years between 2005 and 2010. Regulations such as Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1997, cover commercial uses of new microorganisms not regulated by other agencies: primary rules covering industrial biotechnology. European Commission and research agencies have also increased their funding for research in synthetic biology. In emerging economies in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, governments are focusing on tackling major issues such as under-nutrition by encouraging adoption of GMO crops. For example, Indian government is had put efforts in the past regarding in terms of intervention programs to combat malnutrition such as Integrated child development services and mid-day meal program This creates a highly conducive environment for market growth.Major acquisitions to support the growth in synthetic biology marketThere are few recent acquisitions by the big brands in biotechnology that is expected to favor the market for synthetic biology. QIAGEN N.V acquired OmicSofta software solutions company that offers scientists and researchers tools to efficiently analyze and visualize the data in bioinformatics. This acquisition is further expected to favor the working efficiency of the company. Key players operating in the synthetic biology market include DuPont, Amyris, Inc., GenScript USA Inc., Integrated DNA Technologies, Intrexon Corporation, New England Biolabs, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Synthetic Genomics, Inc., Royal DSM, and Novozymes.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @ Mosquito Control Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecasts 2022 Mosquito Control, Mosquito Control Market, Mosquito Control Report http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/send-an-enquiry/270163 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/request-sample/270163 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/check-discount/270163 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/report/global-mosquito-control-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022 http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/ http://www.marketresearchglobe.com/blog A new and latest research report proposed by Market Research Globe renders a market summary of the Mosquito Control Market industry. This widespread analysis comprises of market potentials and challenges, scope of product, sales volume, market revenue, estimates and rate of growth. The report also digs into all the major market players across the globe.Chemical industry segment has a crucial role in accomplishing daily requirements of the common man. It is one of the most former industries which attributes substantially to not just economic but industrial growth as well. Nearly, each and every industry segment such as oil and gas, retail, manufacturing, agriculture and many others, depends heavily on the chemical industry. In the recent years, the global Mosquito Control Market industry has experienced an astonishing change structure-wise such as enhancements in technology, increasing raw material costs, manufacturing base been channeled to Asian countries, novel promising growth markets, etc.Enquiry Before Buying @The report highlights crucial dynamics and in-depth analysis of the market segment with concentrating on factual data, present industry activities, growth opportunities, new product inventions, and market forecast for the anticipated frame of time along with leading market players, market study based on several regions, and extensive product. The Mosquito Control Market report assists in determining the projection in this meticulous industry by rendering precise potential demand prognoses. These prognoses will aid the market players to take vital decisions and take hold of the untapped regions and new entrants.This research report incorporates the current market size of this industry. It also distinguishes and assesses complex value chains across the globe such as primary factors, market growth restrains, and propelling strategies. This latest market report examines the Mosquito Control Market by several segments such as regions, applications, companies, and for the proposed time frame. The report gives a complete insight of this industry consisting the qualitative and quantitative analysis provided for this market industry along with prime development trends, competitive analysis, and vital factors that are predominant in the Mosquito Control Market.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @Market Scope:Various aspects are considered in this all-inclusive market research report and it inspects the global Mosquito Control Market industry from an all axis perspective. It gives in-depth information on the future viewpoint, key developments, market dynamics and growth, latest trends in the market, and potential investment segment.The report furnishes: An in-depth widespread market analysis of the global Mosquito Control Market Analysis of global market trends, forecasts for 2017, and predictions of CAGRs through proposed time frame. Thorough analysis of applications Mentioning of market players with their complete profile description Researches the vital market trends and novel developments technologically in the Mosquito Control MarketCheck For Discount @The research report comprises of markets comprehensive analysis geographically on several important regions such as:1. Europe (UK, Germany, Italy, France and Russia)2. North America (Mexico, USA, and Canada)3. Asia-Pacific (India, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia)4. Africa, South America, and the Middle EastThe leading industry players across the globe are explored in detail in this report. It demonstrates product overview, company summary, and manufacturing cost, capacity, and market shares for most of the participants. The report portrays the complete overview of Mosquito Control Market across the world including its cost/profit, demand/supply, import/export, capacity, production value, etc. The research report also prognosticates trends in the development of this industrys market. It cloaks current market analysis dynamically, downstream requirements as well as the upstream raw materials. Lastly, the report also segregates vital market figures which represent the market condition of Mosquito Control Market manufacturers. The report can function as an assistive reference point for helping individuals as well as businesses from this segment.Browse full report with Table of Content @Table of Contents1 Market Overview1.1 Mosquito Control Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Larvicides1.2.2 Adulticides1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Government1.3.2 Residential1.3.3 Commercial1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving ForceContact us:+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@marketresearchglobe.comWeb-Blogs-Connect with us: Twitter | FacebookMarket Research Globe is a competent consulting company in the field of Global Market Research. We provide our clients a wide range of customized Marketing and Business Research Solutions to choose from, with the help of our ingenious database developed by experts. We help our clients understand the strengths of diverse markets and how to exploit opportunities. Covering a diverse range of business scopes from Digital products to Food industry, we are your one- stop solution right from data collection to investment advices.Liberty Society,Koregaon Park, Pune- 411001,Maharashtra, India.US:+1-888-376-9998sales@marketresearchglobe.cominfo@marketresearchglobe.com Enterprise Communication Infrastructure Market 2016-2020 - Global market is Expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.35% during Forecast Period http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=741790 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=741790 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-enterprise-communication-infrastructure-market-2016-2020-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, April 27, 2017: Companies across the world are adopting advanced programs and integration solutions to keep their businesses running smoothly in a competitive environment. Enterprises started integrating communication tools such as text messaging, video conferencing, voice messaging, and mobility features to enhance their communication technology and improve collaboration. Enterprise communication is the integration of all these elements on a single platform. The implementation of this solution has provided fast, hassle-free business communications and enhanced productivity.The global enterprise communication infrastructure market to grow at a CAGR of 16.35% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global enterprise communication infrastructure market for 2016-2020.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAGet a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Enterprise Communication Infrastructure 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- Alcatel-Lucent- Avaya- Cisco Systems- Ericsson- Genband- IBM- Microsoft- NEC- Mitel- UnifyOther prominent vendors- 8x8- Aastra Technologies- Broadsoft- Configure- Corex- CSC- Damovo- Dell- Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories..........Enquiry at:Key questions answered in this report:-- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse more details:ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at: Food Retail Market In Saudi Arabia To Grow At A CAGR Of 4.9% During The Period 2016-2020 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=741832 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=741832 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Food Retail Market in Saudi Arabia 2016-2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Saudi Arabia is a desert country and is known as the birthplace of Islam. It is home to the religions two most sacred mosques, Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, the burial site of prophet Muhammad. It is the world's largest producer and exporter of petroleum products. It has the world's second-largest oil reserves and sixth-largest gas reserves. The country is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index.Technavios analysts forecast the food retail market in Saudi Arabia to grow at a CAGR of 4.9% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the food retail market in Saudi Arabia for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report has taken into consideration the revenue generated from the retail sales of food products in Saudi Arabia and has not included revenue generated from on-trade sales. It also includes the market size based on volume, which has been calculated based on the retail consumption of food products.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The market is divided into the following segments based on product categories:CerealsDairyFruits and vegetablesMeatOther foodsTechnavio's report, Food Retail Market in Saudi Arabia 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 vendorsCarrefourNESTOOthaim MarketsPanda UnitedTamimi MarketsOther prominent vendorsAl Raya SupermarketsAl Sadhan SupermarketsBalsharaf SupermarketsBin Dawood SupermarketsFarm SupermarketsLulu HypermarketManual HypermarketMarhaba SupermarketsSarawat SupermarketsStar HypermarketsMarket driverIncrease in number of retail outletsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeNitaqat lawFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncreasing import of food productsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Ireland Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband, and Digital Media Market Growth Driven by Demand Forecasted for 2018; 2020 & 2022 Market Research HUB http://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=737317 http://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/ireland-telecoms-mobile-broadband-and-digital-media-statistics-and-analyses-report.html www.linkedin.com/company/market-research-hub www.facebook.com/MarketResearchHub/ The latest analysis on the phenomenally expanding market of Ireland telecoms, mobile, broadband and digital media, has been recently included in the broad portfolio of Market Research Hub (MRH). It is titled as Ireland Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Digital Media - Statistics and Analyses and it provides a professional overview of the sector, which is presently the focus of active market experts. Accordingly, it also offers resourceful data about the telecom sectors progress, in terms of infrastructure and the special mention about the various types of networks, operators, alongside profitable information about the forecast for the years 2018; 2020; and 2022.Request Free Sample Report:The Ireland telecom sector is booming due to the innovative technological advances and the demand for better internet speed among subscribers. The Irish government has planned to invest 600 million for covering national broadband. Correspondingly, the highly, engaging report initially begins with the wonderful overview of the telecommunications market. Further, the study talks about important data on the regulatory environment as well as the historical overview of the sector. Furthermore, the revised NFR, along with regulatory authority is evaluated thoroughly. Also, three important sections have been carefully introspected in the report that includes: Telecom sector liberalization Privatization InterconnectThereafter, the two crucial types are discussed in the report, that is, leased lines and fiber access. Moreover, the number portability and carrier pre-selection are examined to help buyers gain a better grasp of the business.In the next section, the fixed network operators are introduced in the study that includes: Eire Company restructures BT Ireland Smart Telecom Tele2 Other operatorsThe buyer gains detailed knowledge about the telecommunications infrastructure as well as the overview of the national telecom network. Soon after, the study shifts focus to the international infrastructure, alongside the introspection of the two chief types that include: submarine cable networks and satellite networks.The reader can also gain knowledge about the broadband market precisely with the presence of introduction and statistical overview. The next section speaks about market analysis which encloses the description of three main topics which are: national broadband plan, government networks, and regional infrastructure. The good part of the study is that the buyer also learns accurately about the wholesale bitstream; broadband statistics. As a bonus, the buyer also gets to acquire data about the vital forecasts for broadband subscribers during 2018; 2020; 2022.The report also holds a critical evaluation of several key networks that include: Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) networks Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) networksBefittingly, in the end, the buyer gets to learn important information in terms of alternative operators.Browse Full Report With TOC:About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comFollow us on:Twitter: twitter.com/MktResearchHubLinkedIn:Facebook: Hybrid Power Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 | Now Available at Researchmoz.us http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=789839 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=789839 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Hybrid Power Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.The research study is designed to analyze the global hybrid power systems market. The market is calculated in terms of revenue (US$ Mn) based on the annual sales of hybrid power systems. The market for hybrid power systems has been segmented on the basis of type, end-use, and country/region. The global hybrid power systems market, based on type, has been segmented into wind-solar-diesel-hybrid, PV-diesel-hybrid, and others. On the basis of end-use, the hybrid power systems market has been segmented into residential, rural facility electrification, and others.The regional segments included in this study are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South and Central America (SCA). These regional segments are further divided into country-wise segments. The report provides a detailed growth forecast for the 20162024 period, considering 2015 as the baseline year. Projections have been provided for revenue (US$ Mn) through the annual sales of hybrid power systems.The report includes the key market dynamics affecting the demand for hybrid power systems. As a part of our market dynamics analysis, we have analyzed the market drivers, market restraints, and market opportunities. A comprehensive competitive landscape, which includes company market share analysis and market attractiveness analysis, has also been provided in this report. The report also provides a detailed industry analysis of the global hybrid power systems market with the help of Porters Five Forces model. The Porters Five Forces analysis aids in understanding the five major forces that affect the industry structure and profitability of the global hybrid power systems market. The forces analyzed are the bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The study also includes the value chain of the global hybrid power systems market which provides a glimpse of key suppliers, manufacturers, and distribution channel as well as interaction of suppliers and buyers with end-users. The company market share analysis has been done considering the revenue and global penetration of key market players in the hybrid power systems industry. The market attractiveness involves benchmarking and ranking each technology and region on the basis of numerous parameters. The parameters selected are likely to have a pronounced effect on the demand for each technology in the current scenario as well as in the near future.Key participants in the global hybrid power systems market include Bergey WindPower Co., BORG Inc., Guangzhou HY Energy Technology Limited Corp., Kestrel Renewable Energy, KYOCERA Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Schneider Electric SE, Sharp Electronics, Siemens AG, and Suzlon Group. This report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial revenues, business strategies, technical information, and recent developments.Global Hybrid Power Systems Market: Type Analysis- Wind-Solar-Diesel-Hybrid- PV-Diesel-Hybrid- OthersGlobal Hybrid Power Systems Market: End-Use Analysis- Residential- Rural Facility Electrification- OthersGlobal Hybrid Power Systems Market: Regional Segment Analysis- North America- U.S.- Canada- Mexico- Europe- Turkey- Kazakhstan- Russia- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Japan- Australia- Indonesia- Rest of Asia Pacific- Middle East and Africa (MEA)- South Africa- Tanzania- Egypt- UAE- Rest of MEA- South and Central America (SCA)- Brazil- Chile- Rest of SCAMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem Industry Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts Research Report 2016 - 2030 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=804872 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=804872 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" to its huge collection of research reports.Given the increasing prevalence of expensive household goods, cars and consumer electronics, insurance has become an unavoidable and often necessary cost in modern life. Mobile phones, and smartphones in particular are no exception to this trend.Most major wireless carriers, insurance specialists, device OEMs, retailers and even banks now offer insurance plans that cover theft, loss, malfunctions and damage of mobile phones. Many policies now also integrate enhanced technical support and additional protection features such as data backup facilities, allowing users to securely backup their phone data online.SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016. The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.The "Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016 2030 Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" report presents an in-depth assessment of the mobile phone insurance ecosystem including market drivers, challenges, opportunities, value chain, future roadmap, case studies, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents market size forecasts from 2016 through to 2030. The forecasts are segmented for 5 regional and 25 country level markets.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:- SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016.- The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.- In an effort to boost the uptake of mobile phone insurance, wireless carriers and insurance providers have extensively enhanced their insurance offerings with the addition of location tracking, data protection/recovery features and integrated technical support.- The success of mobile phone insurance plans has driven several wireless carriers, such as NTT DoCoMo and Orange, to invest in the sales of other insurance products through mobile phones and their retail outlets.- New insurance models are also beginning to emerge, such as London-based So-Sures social insurance for mobile phones, which allows customers to get up to 80% of their money back, if they and their friends dont claim.- Device OEMs are beginning to invest in tailored plans to suit the specific requirements of certain regional markets. A good example is Xiaomis Mi Protect plan in India, which covers accidental and liquid damage, for as little as $7 per year.Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:- Mobile phone insurance ecosystem- Market drivers and barriers- Insurance policy structure, distribution channels and key trends- Case studies of mobile phone insurance initiatives- Industry roadmap and value chain- Profiles and strategies of over 40 leading ecosystem players- Strategic recommendations for ecosystem players- Market analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for the following regional and country level submarkets:Regional Segmentation- Asia Pacific- Europe- Latin & Central America- Middle East & Africa- North AmericaCountry Level Segmentation- Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, UK & USAKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:- How big is the mobile phone insurance opportunity?- What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?- How is the ecosystem evolving by region?- What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?- Which countries will see the highest percentage of growth?- Who are the key market players and what are their strategies?- What risks are typically covered in mobile phone insurance offerings?- How can insurance plans help wireless carriers in reducing churn?- What strategies should wireless carriers, device OEMs and insurance providers adopt to remain competitive?Countries covered:ArgentinaAustraliaBrazilCanadaChinaColombiaFranceGermanyHong KongIndiaIsraelItalyJapanMexicoNetherlandsPolandRussiaSaudi ArabiaSingaporeSouth AfricaSouth KoreaSpainTaiwanUKUSAList of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:- A Wireless- AIG (American International Group)- Allianz Insurance- Allianz SE Group- America Movil- AmTrust International Underwriters- Aon- Appalachian Wireless- Apple- Assurant- Asurion- AT&T- AT&T Mobility- Aviva- AXA- Barclays- Best Buy- Bouygues Telecom- Brightstar Corporation- BT Group- Cellebrite- Chubb- CWS (Connected World Services Distributions)- Diamond Wireless- Dixons Carphone- DT (Deutsche Telekom)- EE- eSecuritel- Fonesure- Fortegra- Geek Squad- GoCare- Groupama- Hollard Group- HSBC- Inhance Technology- iQmetrix- Liberty Mutual Insurance Group- Lifestyle Services Group- Lookout- Markerstudy- Microsoft- Mobi PCS- Mobile Rhino (Stuckey & Company)- MTN- NIA (New India Assurance)- Nippon Life Insurance- Nokia- NQ Mobile- NTT DoCoMo- Optus- Orange- Pier Insurance Managed Services- ProtectCELL- Safeware- Salt Mobile- Samsung Electronics- SFR- Singtel Group- SoftBank Corporation- So-Sure- Spark New Zealand- SPB- Sprint Corporation- SquareTrade- Sun Corporation- Supercover Insurance- Swisscom- Telefonica Group- Telefonica Insurance- Telstra- T-Mobile USA- Tokio Marine- Verizon Communications- Verizon Wireless- V-Key Solutions- Vodacom- Vodafone GroupMake 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 Home Textiles and Furnishings Market Analysis, Growth, Size, rend and Opportunities (2014-2019) http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=234721 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=234721 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Home Textiles and Furnishings Market: Trend and Opportunities (2014-2019)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Home Textiles and Furnishings Market: Trends and Opportunities (2014-2019) analyzes the consumption pattern of the global home textiles and furnishings market, with a focus on its segments including: curtains, textile floorings and towels. The global market along with markets of the US, Europe, India, China and Turkey are assessed in the report. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the industry are presented in this report. The three major players in the industry, Welspun India Ltd, Dorel Industries Inc. and Springs Global are profiled, along with their key financials and strategies for growth.Countries Coverage- The US- Europe- India- China- TurkeyTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Company Coverage- Welspun India Ltd- Springs Global- Dorel Industries LtdExecutive SummaryHome textiles and furnishing sector forms a significant portion of overall textile industry. The sector offers a wide range of bedspreads, furnishing fabrics, curtains, rugs, carpets, placemats, cushion covers, table covers, linen, kitchen accessories, made-ups, bed spreads, bath linen, and other home furnishings accessories. Over the past 5 years, consumption of home textile and furnishings witnessed consistent growth driven by factors like rising consumer spending on home renovation, accelerating investments on infrastructure, demand from Asian markets like India, China, Korea and Indonesia. Product innovation and development has allowed retailers and manufactures to widen the market, using new technologies and advanced marketing approaches.The USA and Europe dominate the home furnishing market as largest consumers, while countries like India, China and Pakistan feature amongst key suppliers. Curtains constitute the largest sub segment of home textiles followed by textile floorings, bed linen, towels and table, toilet & kitchen linen. Major fabrics being used include cotton, organic- cotton, polyester, silk, poly- cotton, poly silk, natural fibers like bamboos, viscose-silk.Retail sales of home furnishings are expected to maintain relatively consistent growth in coming years. Economic recovery is expected to reduce the unemployment rate, generate GDP growth and strengthen the housing market, all of which will boost sales of home furnishings products. Moreover, emergence of E-commerce in home furnishings market is scaling new heights, and with increasing number shopping websites the market is also experiencing growth. Key issues in the market include rising raw material prices, strict legislative requirements and high competition.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Coffee Market: Trends and Opportunities (2016-2020) | Now Available at Researchmoz.us http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=703135 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=703135 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Coffee Market: Trends and Opportunities (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Coffee Market: Trends & Opportunities (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global coffee market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides the production and consumption analysis of the market. The report provides detailed market analysis of the global retail coffee market by value and volume along with the segments of the market.The report provides detailed regional analysis of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America Middle East & Africa and Australasia for the coffee market. Regional analysis includes market sizing by value along with the production and consumption analysis. It also provides the retail sales value of each region.The report also includes the country analysis of Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ethiopia and India. It provides the production and consumption analysis along with the export-import trends in each of the above mentioned countries.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Furthermore, the report assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the global retail coffee market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in global coffee market is stiff and dominated by the big players like Nestle. Further, key players of the coffee market The J.M. Smucker Company, Mondelez International Inc. and Strauss Group Ltd. are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Regional Coverage- Western Europe- Eastern Europe- North America- Asia Pacific- Latin America- Middle East and Africa- AustralasiaCountry Coverage- Brazil- Vietnam- Indonesia- Ethiopia- IndiaCompany Coverage- The J.M. Smucker Company- Mondelez International Inc.- Strauss Group Ltd.Executive SummaryGlobal coffee market increased at a significant CAGR during the span of 5 years i.e. 2011-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. The market can be segmented on the basis of end-users as retail coffee market and food services market, of which global retail coffee market displayed an increase, driving the global coffee market. The increasing consumption of coffee led by the westernization trend in India, China and Latin America drive the market in the positive direction.The growth drivers for the global coffee market are: rise in disposable income, rapid urbanization and increase in the population along with the emergence of caf culture and new consumer base. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as: aging of coffee trees, lack of government support, negative impact of climate change, price volatility and increase in production cost.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Azelaic Acid Consumption Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1064620&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-azelaic-acid-consumption-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com In this report, the global Azelaic Acid market is valued at USD 94 million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD 122 million by the end of 2023, growing at a CAGR of 4.45% between 2017 and 2023.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Azelaic Acid for these regions, from 2012 to 2023 (forecast), coveringChinaUSAEuropeKoreaIndiaRest of AsiaGlobal Azelaic Acid market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Azelaic Acid sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingEmery OleochemicalsMatricaBASFCroda SipoNantong Hengxing Electronic MaterialsJiangsu SenxuanNinghai ZhonglongHubei TuochuFor more information on this report, fill the form @On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume, revenue, product price, and market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoPolymer GradeTechnical GradePharmaceutical GradeOn 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 Azelaic Acid for each application, includingPlasticsLubricantsElectronicsPharmaceuticals & CosmeticsOthersTable of Content1 Azelaic Acid Market Overview 11.1 Product Overview and Scope of Azelaic Acid 11.1.1 Definition of Azelaic Acid 11.1.2 Specifications of Azelaic Acid 21.2 Classification of Azelaic Acid by Product Category 21.2.1 Global Azelaic Acid Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Types (2012-2017) 31.2.2 Global Azelaic Acid Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2016 41.2.3 Polymer Grade 41.2.4 Technical Grade 51.2.5 Pharmaceutical Grade 61.3 Global Azelaic Acid Market by Applications/End Users 71.3.1 Global Azelaic Acid Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications (2012-2023) 71.3.2 Plastics 81.3.3 Lubricants 91.3.4 Electronics 101.3.5 Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics 111.4 Global Azelaic Acid Market by Regions 121.4.1 Global Azelaic Acid Market Size (Value) Comparison by Regions (2012-2023) 121.4.2 USA Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 131.4.3 China Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 141.4.4 Europe Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 151.4.5 Korea Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 161.4.6 Rest of Asia Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 171.4.7 India Azelaic Acid Status and Prospect (2012-2023) 181.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Azelaic Acid (2012-2023) 191.5.1 Global Azelaic Acid Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2023) 191.5.2 Global Azelaic Acid Revenue (Value) and Growth Rate (2012-2023) 20Browse full table of contents and data tables of Report @2 Global Azelaic Acid Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application 222.1 Global Azelaic Acid Market Competition by Players/Suppliers 222.1.1 Global Azelaic Acid Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017) 222.1.2 Global Azelaic Acid Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017) 242.2 Global Azelaic Acid (Volume and Value) by Type 262.2.1 Global Azelaic Acid Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017) 262.2.2 Global Azelaic Acid Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017) 282.3 Global Azelaic Acid (Volume and Value) by Regions 292.3.1 Global Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017) 292.3.2 Global Azelaic Acid Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017) 312.4 Global Azelaic Acid (Volume) by Application 323 USA Azelaic Acid (Volume, Value and Sales Price) 343.1 USA Azelaic Acid Sales and Value (2012-2017) 343.1.1 USA Azelaic Acid Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 343.1.2 USA Azelaic Acid Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 353.1.3 USA Azelaic Acid Sales Price Trend (2012-2017) 363.2 USA Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Players 363.3 USA Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Type 373.4 USA Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Applications 384 China Azelaic Acid (Volume, Value and Sales Price) 404.1 China Azelaic Acid Sales and Value (2012-2017) 404.1.1 China Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 404.1.2 China Azelaic Acid Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 414.1.3 China Azelaic Acid Sales Price Trend (2012-2017) 424.2 China Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Players 424.3 China Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Type 444.4 China Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Applications 455 Europe Azelaic Acid (Volume, Value and Sales Price) 465.1 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Value (2012-2017) 465.1.1 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 465.1.2 Europe Azelaic Acid Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 475.1.3 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Price Trend (2012-2017) 485.2 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Players 485.3 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Type 495.4 Europe Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Applications 506 Korea Azelaic Acid (Volume, Value and Sales Price) 526.1 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Value (2012-2017) 526.1.1 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 526.1.2 Korea Azelaic Acid Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017) 536.1.3 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Price Trend (2012-2017) 546.2 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Players 546.3 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Type 556.4 Korea Azelaic Acid Sales Volume and Market Share by Applications 56QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.QYResearchReportsContact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Global Microdisplay Market to grow at a CAGR of 23.7% during Forecast 2016-2020 - Features Key Manufacturers ( AU Optronics, eMagin, Kopin, Universal Display ) http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=741782 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=741782 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-microdisplay-market-2016-2020-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, April 27, 2017: Microdisplays are microminiaturized displays having a screen size of less than 25 millimeters (screen size refers to the diagonal distance from one corner to the opposite corner of the screen). They are high-density screens with high resolution and are used in magnified display systems. Microdisplays are often used in conjunction with magnifying optics because of their miniature size. They are used for two basic applications: projection and near-to-eye display. These applications are used in a number of devices across sectors such as consumer electronics, automotive, healthcare, and industrial. Microdisplays can be incorporated in a number of visual electronic products, with new 3G portable communications devices, digital camera wireless applications, portable DVDs, and PCs.The global microdisplay market to grow at a CAGR of 23.7% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global microdisplay market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report covers the entire range of microdisplay technologies and considers the revenue generated from the sales of microdisplays to the key customer segments: military, aerospace and defense; commercial; industrial; medical; law enforcement and rescue; and automobile.Get a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Microdisplay 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- AU Optronics- eMagin- Kopin- Universal DisplayOther prominent vendors- Cambridge Display Technology Ltd.- Epson Corp.- Fourth Dimension Displays Ltd.- Himax Display Inc.- LG Display Co. Ltd.- Liteye Systems Inc.- Micron Technologies Inc.- Microvision Inc.- Syndiant Inc.- Wisechip Semiconductor Inc.Market driver- Emerging demand for HUDs- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Technical issues and design limitations- For a full, detailed list, view our reportEnquiry at:Key questions answered in this report:-- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse more details:ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at: Regenerative Artificial Skin Market - Analysis And Forecast (2016-2024): Market Shares And Strategies Of Key Players https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/100 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-discount/100 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/regenerative-artificial-skin-market-100 https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights Incidence of accidental skin burns are increasing across the globe. Life threatening skin injuries, traumas, and burns require immediate surgical procedure to restore skin and avoid future complications. Skin burns are broadly classified into three levels, namely 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns. In third degree of burns where there is little or no intact skin, artificial skin graft is the most useful treatment option. Artificial skin covers and protects the wound and also promotes regeneration of natural skin.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:Artificial skin is usually prepared from collagen, which is easily resorbed by the body and facilitates generation of new skin on the affected area. According to the American Burn Association, 486,000 people received medical treatment for minor burns and 70,000 people were hospitalized for severe skin burn requiring acute care in the U.S, in 2015. Various players in the market are carrying R&D activities to develop new technology related to artificial skin regeneration. One such instance is an autologous spray on skin, Recell, by Avita Medical.Artificial Skin TreatmentsVarious skin repair devices are available, which are used to heal the affected part. These include Dermagraft, OrCel, Integra, Biobrane, Apligraft, Matriderm, Hyalomatrix, Renoskin, and Composite Cultured Skin. Dermagraft is used to help in wound closure of diabetic foot ulcers. Orcel is used to cover and aid in wound healing. Composite Cultured Skin also contains living cells and is specifically used in children with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. Integra is used for treatment of severe burns.Get Exclusive Discount on this CMI Report:Regenerative Artificial Skin Market TaxonomyThe global regenerative artificial skin market is segmented on the basis of material type, end user and region.On the basis of material type, the regenerative artificial skin market is segmented into temporary skin material, permanent skin material, and composite skin material.Temporary skin material: Its effect lasts between several months and 2.5 years, depending on the type, quality, and quantity of injected material.Permanent skin material: These are epidermal skin and dermal skin materials. Bio-Alcamid is a synthetic polymer that contains 97% water. It is injected into the inner tissue to fill and thicken it.Composite Skin Material: These are further sub-segmented into skin graft and engineered skin material.On the basis of end user, the global regenerative artificial skin market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, and burn care center. In hospitals, regenerative artificial skin technology is used in the treatment of deep skin wounds and also in plastic surgery. Healthcare providers use artificial skin to treat chronic wounds. Specialized burn care center extensively use artificial skin technology to treat burnt skin.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :Inadequate Medical Infrastructure and Low Access to Medical Facilities in Developing Economies a Major Restrain for Market GrowthThe market for regenerative artificial skin is growing in the U.S., mainly driven by increasing number of patients with skin diseases. According to Skin Cancer Foundation, each year over 5.4 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancer are reported and over 3.3 million people are treated for the same in the U.S. Also, there are more new cases of skin cancer reported than the combined incidence of cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, and colon each year. Regenerative artificial skin market in Europe is growing due to skin disease being a very pertinent issue in the region. Robust medical infrastructure, presence of global players, and advancements in technology also contribute to market growth of the regenerative artificial skin in the region. In Asia, the market for regenerative artificial skin is projected to grow in the near future due to increasing number of people opting for skin treatment procedures.Lack of Essential Sterile Environment Restricts Access to Regenerative Artificial SkinRegenerative artificial skin market is expected to grow, with increasing incidence of burns. In addition, rising prevalence of skin diseases, growing number of harmful acid accidents, and increasing number of major body surgeries conducted is projected to positively impact regenerative artificial skin market in the near future. However, issues with acceptance by the recipient body and lack of sterile product and nutritional supply to regain the natural structure restricts growth of regenerative artificial skin market, especially in developing regions.Rapid Advancements in TechnologyResearchers and biotechnicians at the U.S army institute of surgical research are developing artificial skin that can be stored in a spray bottle and would regenerate and grow as applied on the body. This new technology would be of great aid in emergency situations, especially for military personnel during war situations. Furthermore, several companies in the market place are increasing their product portfolio related to regenerative artificial skin market. Some of the key players in the global regenerative artificial skin market are Integra Life Sciences Corporation, Mylan N.V., Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. Smith & Nephew and Mallinckrodt plc.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @ Global Dental Implants Market to grow at a CAGR of 5.37% during Forecast 2016-2020 - Features Key Vendors ( Danaher, DENTSPLY Implants, Henry Schein, OSSTEM IMPLANT, Straumann, Zimmer Biomet ) http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=741778 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=741778 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-dental-implants-market-2016-2020-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, April 27, 2017: A dental implant procedure helps re-establish missing teeth and comprises three primary components: the implant device, the crown or denture, and the abutment. A dental implant is manufactured using biocompatible metals, titanium, and zirconia, which offer strength, apart from having the ability to fuse with the bone. Some of the major causes of tooth loss are tooth decay, gingivitis, injuries, congenital defects, root canal failure, and excessive wear and tear. Osseointegration is a procedure that helps lock the implant directly into the jawbone. Dental implants are available in different colors and can be customized.The global dental implants market to grow at a CAGR of 5.37% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global dental implants market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from sales of dental implants.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAGet a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Dental Implants 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- Danaher- DENTSPLY Implants- Henry Schein- OSSTEM IMPLANT- Straumann- Zimmer BiometOther prominent vendors- 3M- 3Shape- A. B. Dental- ADIN Dental Implant Systems- Align Technology- BioHorizons- Biotech Dental- Camlog Holding (a subsidiary of Henry Schein Canada)- Carestream- Cortex Dental- Dentatus- E4D- GC- Glidewell- Heraeus- HIOSSEN- Hi-Tec ImplantsEnquiry at:Key questions answered in this report:-- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse more details:ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at: Blood Processing Devices and Consumables Market - Analysis And Forecast (2016-2024): Market Shares And Strategies Of Key Players https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/83 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-discount/83 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/blood-processing-devices-and-consumables-market-83 https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights Blood processing devices are an integral part of blood banks and diagnostic laboratories in order to maintain blood components in their actual form for storing and blood transfusion process. Alteration in the blood components may make it unusable. As blood is an integral requisite in stem cell therapy and organ transplant, demand for blood processing devices and consumables is directly proportional to number of surgical procedures, which is increasing rapidly.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:Market DynamicsNeed for blood processing devices and consumables is projected to continue along an upward growth trajectory, owing to increasing number of blood banks and growing incidence of blood infection and blood disorders. Moreover, number of blood transfusion surgical procedures is increasing due to increasing incidence of immunodeficiency diseases. According to the 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, around 112.5 million units of donated blood are collected every year globally. WHO recommends implementation of a national blood policy to ensure maintaining quality (free from infection) of the blood collected. This in turn ensures consistent demand for blood processing devices and consumables globally.Ask for Discount before buying the Report@Market TaxonomyThis report segments the blood processing devices and consumables market on the basis of devices and consumables. On the basis of device type, the global blood processing devices and consumables market is analyzed for plasma freezers, blood bank refrigerators, lab refrigerators, lab freezers, ultra-low temperatures, shock freezers, grouping analyzers, warmers, hematocrit centrifuges and cell processors. Consumables include blood administration sets, blood bags, blood collection needles, blood collection tubes, slides, sedimentation tubes, slide stainer and blood grouping reagents among others.Key features of the study:This report provides in-depth analysis of the blood processing devices and consumables industry and provides market size (US$ million) andCumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) (%) for the forecast period (2016 2024), considering 2015 as the base yearIt elucidates potential revenue opportunity across different segments and explains attractive investment proposition matrix for this marketBrowse Global Strategic Business Report :This study also provides vital insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approval, regional outlook, and competitive strategy adopted by the leading playersIt profiles leading players in the global blood processing devices and consumables market based on the following parameters company overview, financial performance, product portfolio, geographical presence, distribution strategies, key developments and strategies and future plansKey companies covered as a part of this study include Abbott Laboratories, Becton, Dickinson And Company, Roche Holdings AG, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Biomerieux SA, Immucor, Inc., Danaher Corporation, Terumo Corporation, Macopharma SA, Grifols International, Haemonetics Corporation, and Thermogenesis CorporationInsights from this report would allow marketers and the management authorities of the companies to make informed decision with respect to manufacturing or research outsourcing, cost reduction opportunities, and operational strategiesThe global blood processing devices and consumables market report caters to various stakeholders in this industry including investors, device manufacturers, consumable manufacturers, raw material suppliers, distributors, new entrants, and financial analystsStakeholders would greatly benefit from various strategy matrices used in analyzing the blood processing devices and consumables market, which would aid them in making effective decisionAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @ Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022- NuVasive, Medtronic http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1020837&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-minimally-invasive-spine-technologies-market-size-status-and-forecast-2022.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.This research report gives a definitive review on the Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies as in light of a segmented pattern. Entry variables managed in the report incorporate the distinctive services or products offered by the market players alongside the free market activity scales for current market measurements, in addition to anticipated market insights. The Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies is thus examined first in an authentic sense by getting together all important information in the course of recent years, and after that moves on to the market's future which is a revelatory examination in view of momentum numbers and patterns. The elucidation of each outcome is left to the client who can take their business strategy to the next level in light of the given data.Get sample report @The geographical examination of the Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies is directed utilizing different key regions in view of mainland diversities and different variables. For each key locale, the report gives information in general request, its development and the elements that impact it, the relative nearness of key global players and regional ones, and the rate at which every area advances in the market as far as innovative work endeavors. The competitive scene of the Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies is broken down utilizing systems, for example, the SWOT investigation, giving the report's clients a top notch point of view of all available data and what it might be molded like sooner rather than later. The Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies is likewise portrayed on the premise of its industry chain structure, in however much detail as could reasonably be expected.Table of ContentsGlobal Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies1.1 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Overview1.1.1 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies 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 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market by Type1.3.1 Percutaneous Pedicle Screw-Rod Fixations1.3.2 Translaminar and Transfacet Screws1.3.3 Transsacral Fixations1.3.4 Cervical Fixations1.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Hospitals1.4.2 Orthopedic Clinics1.4.3 Ambulatory Surgical Centers2 Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies 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 FutureBrowse full table of contents and data tables of Report @3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 NuVasive3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Medtronic3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 DePuy Synthes3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Globus Medical3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Stryker Corporation3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments4 Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size by Type (2012-2017)4.2 Global Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies5 United States Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size (2012-2017)5.2 United States Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)6 EU Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size (2012-2017)6.2 EU Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)7 Japan Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Development Status and Outlook7.1 Japan Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size (2012-2017)7.2 Japan Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)8 China Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Development Status and Outlook8.1 China Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size (2012-2017)8.2 China Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)9 India Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Development Status and Outlook9.1 India Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size (2012-2017)9.2 India Minimally Invasive Spine Technologies Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)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 Residential Intellectual Disability Facilities Market - Analysis And Forecast (2016-2024): Market Shares And Strategies Of Key Players https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/72 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-discount/72 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/residential-intellectual-disability-facilities-market-72 https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights Residential Intellectual and Developmental Disability FacilitiesIntellectual disability refers to people who have been classified by one or more terms such as developmental disability, developmental delay and mental handicap. Recently, people classified as having mental retardation are also being referred as having intellectual disability. Usually, people are considered to have intellectual disability if they have greater difficulty than most people with intellectual and adaptive functioning. These limitations are expressed in the persons conceptual, social and practical everyday living skills. Intellectual disability is usually diagnosed through the use of standardized tests of adaptive behavior and intelligence.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:The precise number of people having intellectual disabilities is not known. However, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) estimates that roughly 1.5% to 2.5% of the general population have intellectual disability which translates to roughly 4.6 million to 7.7 million people as per the most recent U.S. Census (2011). Over last 30 years, services provided to the people with intellectual disabilities have been changed radically and the institutional care has been replaced by community residential service in several countries.The global market for the residential intellectual disability facilities can be segmented on the basis of size of facility, type of facility, mode of operation and geography. Based on the number of beds in the residential intellectual disability facilities the market can be segmented further into 4 to 9, 10 to 19, 20 to 49, 50 to 99, 100 to 199, and 200 & more beds. Besides, there are different types of facilities that provide intellectual disability facilities hospitals, group homes, private home, intellectual and developmental disability facilities. Based on the mode of operation, the global residential intellectual disabilities market can be segmented into state-run facilities, Medicaid funded services, private large facilities, and privately run small facilities. The demand for these residential facilities is largely dependent on the reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid programs.Get Exclusive Discount on this CMI Report:Demand-Supply Gap Persist in the MarketSince 2008, increased federal funding for these programs and the additionally enrolled or eligible people for either of the federal programs, have led to the growth of the residential intellectual disability facilities in the U.S. Although the demand for housing or residential facilities for people with intellectual disabilities has been increasing in the recent years, the adequate supply of such facilities has not kept the required pace. Therefore, there is a huge deficit in the demand and the supply of these facilities. Another major restraint in the market growth is the difficulty in avoiding hospital admission for patients with intellectual disabilities who usually present challenges with their behavior and/or mental health problems.Increasing support from Governments across the Globe to aid Intellectually Disable PatientsOn the basis of geography, the global residential intellectual disability facilities market can be segmented into five major geographies - North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Rest of the World. Aging population, particularly in North America, and Europe, provide a good market opportunity for the market players. Another driving factor is the increasing age of caregivers. Presently, most of the people affected with intellectual disability reside with family caregivers. Due to the changing demographics, caregivers will also age in the coming years and the shortage of caregivers will create more demand for the residential facilities for intellectually disable individuals. The market for such facilities has been very insignificant in most of the Asian countries and little progress is expected during the forecast period from 2014 to 2023. There are many local and national centers in the developing economies too which offer such facilities. For instance, Muskaan, Sandesh and Alamara Residential Centre for Persons with Developmental Disabilities are the centers that offer residential intellectual disability facilities in India.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :There are government and private players in addition to local bodies offering residential intellectual disability facilities NHS Allegheny Valley School, St. Josephs Center, Durham County Community, Residential Support Services, Lutheran Family Services and Arlington County Government.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @ Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Outlook: Research Report 2017 to 2022 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/get-sample/18967/?utm_source=OPR-NL https://marketsizeforecasters.com/enquire-for-discount/18967 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/global-garage-door-replacement-parts-market https://marketsizeforecasters.com/global-and-chinese-garage-door-industry-2017-market http://marketsizeforecasters.com/ Market Size Forecasters delivers significant information and realistic data of the Garage Door Replacement Parts Market. The report presents a deep study of the market growth factors and drivers. In-depth research of the Garage Door Replacement Parts Market limitations and the opportunities enable the user to make the future projection.Garage door replacement parts are the accessories that used for garage door replacement; the main replacement parts include opener, handles, hinges, extension springs, torsion springs, decorative hardware and others.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Garage Door Replacement Parts in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversChamberlain GroupOverhead DoorNovofermAmarrSOMMERLiftLogixPrime-LineKoala CanadaRequest a sample copy of Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Research Report @Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Segment by Type, coversMetal PartsElectromechanical PartsThe listed pricing for this Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market report starts at $ 3480. Request Discount for Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Research Report @Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoResidentialCommercialBrowse full table of contents and data tables For Global Garage Door Replacement Parts Market Report @Related Reports: -Global and Chinese Garage Door Industry, 2017 Market Research ReportThe 'Global and Chinese Garage Door Industry, 2012-2022 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Garage Door industry with a focus on the Chinese market.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter Monascus Pigment Market 2017 - Kiriya Chemical, Jiangmen Kelong, Henan Zhongda, Fuzhou LLX, Tianyi Biotech https://goo.gl/BghuPQ https://goo.gl/aQdWjo http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Monascus Pigment Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Monascus Pigment Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Monascus Pigment industry, and estimates the future trend of Monascus Pigment market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Monascus Pigment Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. Kiriya Chemical2. SDBNI3. Jiangmen Kelong4. Tianyi Biotech5. Shandong Zhonghui6. Wuhan Jiacheng Biotechnology7. Henan Zhongda8. Fuzhou LLX9. Yiyuan Food Chemical10. Wuhan Soleado TechnologyThe market research report explores the Monascus Pigment market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Monascus Pigment Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Monascus Pigment market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Monascus Pigment. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Monascus Pigment market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Monascus Pigment is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Monascus Pigment market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Monascus Pigment market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Monascus Pigment market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Monascus Pigment production volume, data pertaining to demand and Monascus Pigment supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Monascus Pigment along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Monascus Pigment across the world.About UsWe provide global enterprises and businesses across different industry verticals comprehensive market research services from off-the-shelf research reports to customized research conducted by our highly experienced industry analysts.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development HeadEmail id - sales@apexresearch.bizWebsite - Large Diameter Steel Pipe Market 2017 - Bergrohr, ChelPipe, Jindal SAW, National Pipe, OAO TMK, TMK IPSCO https://goo.gl/CF4M3a https://goo.gl/nwcDdb http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Large Diameter Steel Pipe Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Large Diameter Steel Pipe Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Large Diameter Steel Pipe industry, and estimates the future trend of Large Diameter Steel Pipe market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Large Diameter Steel Pipe Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. ArcelorMittal2. Bergrohr3. Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret4. ChelPipe5. EVRAZ North America6. Jindal SAW7. Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal8. National Pipe9. OAO TMK10. TMK IPSCOThe market research report explores the Large Diameter Steel Pipe market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Large Diameter Steel Pipe Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Large Diameter Steel Pipe market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Large Diameter Steel Pipe. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Large Diameter Steel Pipe market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Large Diameter Steel Pipe is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Large Diameter Steel Pipe market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Large Diameter Steel Pipe market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Large Diameter Steel Pipe market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Large Diameter Steel Pipe production volume, data pertaining to demand and Large Diameter Steel Pipe supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Large Diameter Steel Pipe along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Large Diameter Steel Pipe across the world.About UsWe provide global enterprises and businesses across different industry verticals comprehensive market research services from off-the-shelf research reports to customized research conducted by our highly experienced industry analysts.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development HeadEmail id - sales@apexresearch.bizWebsite - Playout Automation Market 2016 Overview, Trends, Growth, Analysis and Forecast to 2020 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-playout-automation-market-2016-2020 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001409054/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001409054/buying http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001409054/buy/2500 Playout automation is a technology that integrates all the devices involved in a playout chain (such as video routers, switchers, audio servers, channel branding processors, and graphic inserts) in a single device. Playout automation takes control of multiple devices involved in a playout chain, whereas integrated playout automation uses a single device to perform the functions of different devices involved in a playout chain. Playout automation fulfills needs and requirements of a large number of advertisers and viewers by making the programming easy. It can handle complex operations and allows a broadcaster to reduce the operational cost to a large extent. In addition, playout automation is highly flexible in addressing instant changes during events and saves much time and capital expenses.Publisher's analysts forecast the global playout automation market to grow at a CAGR of 15.7% during the period 2016-2020.For more information about this report:Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global playout automation market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of playout automation.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- APAC- EMEA- North America- South AmericaPublisher's report, Global Playout Automation 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- BroadStream Solutions- Grass Valley- Harmonic- PlayBox TechnologyRequest Sample Copy atOther prominent vendors- Aveco- Avid Technology- Crispin- Dalet Digital Media Systems- Etere- Evertz Microsystems- Florical Systems- HARDATA- IBIS- Imagine Communications- Konan Digital- Media-Alliance- NVerzion- Pebble Beach Systems- Pixel Power- Rascular- SI Media- Skylark Technology- Snell Advanced Media- VSNMarket driver- Broadcasting complexities due to globalization- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Inability of current CiaB offerings to support complex broadcast channels- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend- Scope for technological evolution in global market- For a full, detailed list, view our reportInquire for Report atTable of Contents:PART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Market research methodologyPART 04: IntroductionPART 05: Market landscapePART 06: Market segmentation by channelPART 07: Market segmentation by end-userPART 08: Buying criteriaPART 09: Geographical segmentationPART 10: Key leading countriesPART 11: Market driversPART 12: Impact of driversPART 13: Market challengesPART 14: Impact of drivers and challengesPART 15: Market trendsPART 16: Vendor landscapePART 17: AppendixPurchase this Premium Research Report at:Contact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comOrganization: ReportsWebPhone: +1-646-491-9876ReportsWeb.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 Gaming Hardware Market to Record Sturdy Growth by 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11932 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11932 The increasing number of gamers such as hardcore gamers, enthusiast gamers, and casual gamers is a key driver for driving the demand for gaming hardware.upgrade their displays of PCs and high definitions television is anticipated to boost the demand for gaming hardware. Moreover, growing consumer demand for PCs, laptops and smartphones is also influencing the purchase of gaming hardware. In addition, continuous innovation in technology is developing the market of gaming hardware.Request to view Sample Report @However, high costs associated with gaming hardware like virtual reality, is the limiting factor for the growth of global gaming hardware market.Based on the geographies, the global gaming hardware market is segmented into five key regions, namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to dominate the gaming hardware market owing to developed gaming industries presence, and involvement of number of individuals in gaming due to their hobbies. Europe is anticipated to follow North America in gaming hardware market due to similar trend as US. Owing to increase in young age population in India and China, resulting in growing demand for gaming hardware, is contributing significantly in the APEJ gaming hardware market. In Latin America and MEA, the gaming hardware market.Request to view Table of content @The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Artesian Cement Market 2017 - Echelon Masonry, Woodcrete, Lion Surfaces, Holcim, Daltile https://goo.gl/vmyBGk https://goo.gl/CEKgsz http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Artesian Cement Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Artesian Cement Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Artesian Cement industry, and estimates the future trend of Artesian Cement market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Artesian Cement Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. Echelon Masonry2. Woodcrete3. Lion Surfaces4. Holcim5. DaltileThe market research report explores the Artesian Cement market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Artesian Cement Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Artesian Cement market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Artesian Cement. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Artesian Cement market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Artesian Cement is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Artesian Cement market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Artesian Cement market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Artesian Cement market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Artesian Cement production volume, data pertaining to demand and Artesian Cement supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Artesian Cement along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Artesian Cement across the world.About UsWe provide global enterprises and businesses across different industry verticals comprehensive market research services from off-the-shelf research reports to customized research conducted by our highly experienced industry analysts.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development HeadEmail id - sales@apexresearch.bizWebsite - Global Inductor Market to be at Forefront by 2027 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14575 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14575 Global Inductor Market: IntroductionInductors are components designed to resist changes and are utilized for the storage of energy in form of magnetics field and is referred to as passive electronic component. Inductor is an electric device consisting of single or multiple loops of wire and typically has two terminals. Change in magnetic field induces voltage that opposes the field-producing current which is known as inductance. An inductor is connected to a circuit to increase the inductance to a desired value. The inductance of an inductor is dependent on the number of turns/loops of copper wire around the metal/air and the radius of the copper coil.A sample of this report is available upon request @Consumer electronics segment is expected to contribute primarily to the growth of the global inductor market. Asia Pacific countries such as India, China and Japan is expected to contribute majorly to the global inductor market during the forecast period supported by the rapid industrialization, rising urbanization and increasing disposable income of the population in the emerging economies.Global Inductor Market: Drivers and ChallengesThe rise of deployment of smart grids and automotive, demand for compact power efficient and light weight devices is driving the growth of inductor market. Advancements in telecommunication and integration of integrated chips is rising the demand for inductors. Increased complexity in mobile devices is leading to the growth in demand for inductors hence driving the growth in revenue of global inductors market. Increasing disposable income of the consumers leading to rising demand for passive electronics is another factor encouraging the growth of global inductors market.However, various government regulations made for the production of electronic devices and fluctuating prices of the raw materials used for the manufacture of such devices are acting as factors restraining the growth of the global inductors market.Global Inductor Market: SegmentationGlobal inductor market can be segmented into inductor type, core type, application industry and regions.On the basis of inductor type, global inductor market can be segmented into coupled, multi-layered, power, radio frequency (RF), choke, surface-mounted and othersOn the basis of core type, global inductor market can be segmented into air core, laminated core, toroidal core, ferromagnetic core, ceramic core, and othersOn the basis of application industry, global inductor market can be segmented into IT & telecommunication, healthcare, military, automotive, consumer electronics and others.Global Inductor Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of regions, global inductor market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and AfricaNorth America and APEJ and Japan inductor markets are expected to have major shares in terms of revenue in 2016. Additionally, APAC region is expected to experience high growth in terms of revenue in the forecast period. Markets in Western Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe is also expected to showcase positive growth during the forecast period.Request to view Table of content @Global Inductor Market: Competition LandscapeKey vendor in the global inductor market include Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd, Delta Electronics, Inc. Panasonic Automotive & Industrial Systems Europe GmbH, Vishay Intertechnology, Inc., Gowanda Electronics, Texas Instruments, ABC Taiwan Electronics Corp., Delta Electronics, Inc. Houston Transformer Company, Ltd.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 Alpha Methyl Styrene Market 2017 - Honeywell, Novapex, Ineos, Cepsa, Axiall, Solvay https://goo.gl/Ppk5Ur https://goo.gl/GsIope http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Alpha Methyl Styrene Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Alpha Methyl Styrene Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Alpha Methyl Styrene industry, and estimates the future trend of Alpha Methyl Styrene market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Alpha Methyl Styrene Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. Ineos2. Honeywell3. SANORS4. Cepsa5. Novapex6. Taiwan Prosperity Chemical7. United Petrochemical Company8. Axiall9. DOMO Chemicals10. SolvayThe market research report explores the Alpha Methyl Styrene market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Alpha Methyl Styrene Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Alpha Methyl Styrene market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Alpha Methyl Styrene. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Alpha Methyl Styrene market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Alpha Methyl Styrene is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Alpha Methyl Styrene market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Alpha Methyl Styrene market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Alpha Methyl Styrene market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Alpha Methyl Styrene production volume, data pertaining to demand and Alpha Methyl Styrene supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Alpha Methyl Styrene along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Alpha Methyl Styrene across the world.About UsWe provide global enterprises and businesses across different industry verticals comprehensive market research services from off-the-shelf research reports to customized research conducted by our highly experienced industry analysts.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development HeadEmail id - sales@apexresearch.bizWebsite - Hookah Market Report by Manufacturers, Type and Application: Growth & Opportunities 2022 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/get-sample/5655/?utm_source=OPR-NL https://marketsizeforecasters.com/enquire-for-discount/5655 https://marketsizeforecasters.com/global-hookah-market https://marketsizeforecasters.com/china-tobacco-hunan-industry-corp-in-tobacco-china http://marketsizeforecasters.com/ The Hookah market 2017 research offers a feasibility analysis for investment and returns supported with data on development trend analysis across important regions of the world.A hookah is a smoking device with a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco, called shisha, whose vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin often glass-based before inhalation. There are two kinds of hookahs: the traditional ones that you see in hookah bars and newer hookah pens (e-hookahs). Health risks of smoking hookah include exposure to toxic chemicals that are not filtered out by the water and risk of infectious disease when hookahs are shared.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Hookah in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Global Hookah Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversAl Fakher HookahsStarbuzz HookahsFUMARIMya HookahEvolution HookahsAnahi HookahsRegal HookahsRequest a sample copy of Global Hookah Market Research Report @Global Hookah Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Global Hookah Market Segment by Type, covers2 Hose3 HoseOtherThe listed pricing for this Global Hookah Market report starts at $ 3480. Request Discount for Global Hookah Market Research Report @Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoGroup UsePersonal UseBrowse full table of contents and data tables For Global Hookah Market Report @Related Reports: -China Tobacco Hunan Industry Corp in Tobacco (China)China Tobacco Hunan Industry Corp is focusing on improved brand management, with He Tian Xia targeting the super-premium segment, Furongwang focusing on the premium segment and BaiSha the mid-priced segment so as to become the leading player in tobacco in China,. In addition, the company is proactively exploiting the premium customised tobacco market as well as newly emerging tobacco.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter Fuel Cell Technology Market is Expected to Witness the Same Growth during the Forecast Period https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/798 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/fuel-cell-technology-market Market HighlightFuel Cell Market is a kind of battery which generates electricity from an electrochemical reaction. It uses an external supply which works continuously as long as it is supplied hydrogen and oxygen. In the process of oxidation, hydrogen by making chemical reaction with oxygen and release water which is used in the process where electrons is released and hence produce electric current. There are various types of fuel cells such as Proton exchange membrane (PEM), Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), among others.Request a Sample Report@Fuel cell is a kind of alternative energy where it has been commercialized into micro cogeneration & heat production, and backup power for telecom towers. It is showing strong growth in future as it offers more applicability and reliability than other alternatives such as wind and sun.Market SegmentationGlobal Fuel cell technology market by Fuel types: Hydrogen Natural gas/ Methane Methanol Anaerobic Digester gasGlobal Fuel cell technology market by Method: Polymer/ Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEM) Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) Molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC) Phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFC)Global Fuel cell technology market by Applications: Stationary TransportationTaste the market data and market information presented through more than 100 market data tables and figures spread in 136 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Fuel Cell Technology Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2024"Browse Full Research Report @Key Player AFC Energy PLC Ceres power Holdings PLC Genport SRL SFC energy AG TOPSOE Fuel cell Ned stack fuel cell TechnologyRegional AnalysisEurope:Europe is one of the fastest growing regions in fuel cell technology market due to creating a roadmap of reducing emission of carbon di oxide by more than 80% by 2050. To achieve the target Europe is planning to improve the infrastructure and reducing the cost of the fuel cells.Germany:German Fuel cell technology market is expected to grow with a CAGR of more than 70% during the forecasted period 2015-2027. Germany accounts for more than 70% fuel cellUnited Kingdom (UK):UK Fuel cell technology market is expected to grow with a CAGR of more than 25% during the forecasted period 2015-2027. At present, UK exports more than 50% of the fuel cell products to other countries.Table of Content1 Report Excerpts2 Market Definitions3 Research Methodologies4 Forecast Indicators5 Market Analyses6 Fuel Cell Technology Market Value & Volume Forecast (2015-2027) (USD $Million)7 Fuel Cell, by Fuel types Market Value & Volume Forecast (2015-2027) (USD $Million)8 Fuel Cell, by Method Market Value & Volume Forecast (2015-2027) (USD $Million)9 Fuel Cell, by Application Market Value & Volume Forecast (USD $Million)10 Fuel Cell, by Region Market Value & Volume Forecast (2015-2027) (USD $Million)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.Market Research Future Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Vacuum Skin Packaging Market: Industry Analysis, Future Growth, Business Prospects and Global Forecast to 2022 Vacuum Skin Packaging Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2686 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/vacuum-skin-packaging-market-2686 Market Research Future published a half cooked research report on Global Vacuum Skin Packaging Market.Market Highlights:The growth of the vacuum packaging market is majorly driven by the commitment of food industry manufactures to reduce and prevent the spoilage of food. Failure to prevent spoilage of food may result in loss of taste and texture. Factors such as limited exposure to light and reduced contact with water and oxygen that can be achieved with packaging activities, are driving the global market for vacuum skin packaging. However, the growth of this market can be restrained by the access to raw materials of international standards.Key Players: Bemis Company Inc. (U.S.) Amcor Ltd. (Australia) Berry Plastic Corp (U.S.) Linpac Packaging Ltd. (U.K.) Sealed Air Corp (U.S) E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company (US) Multisorb Technology (U.S.) G. Mondini SPA (Italy.) Westrock Company (U.S.)Request a Sample Copy @Market Research Analysis:The demand for packaged food from developing nations is rapidly increasing as the changing food culture and increased adoption of packaged foods, is resulting in increased demand for vacuum packaging. In the food sector, the effect of non-packaged foods can be extremely costly as they might lead to loss in texture and taste of food. This invisible film which surrounds the product like a second skin, continuously provides a safe and secure seal that can effectively prevent contamination and leakage. Vacuum skin packaging has commendably resulted in increased operational efficiency, extended shelf life of food products and reduced resource use throughout the supply chain of the food industry.North America is expected to be the largest market for vacuum skin packaging. Europe is also expected to contribute to the further growth of the vacuum skin packaging market. The Asia-Pacific region is also expected to grow due to rapid industrialization and increased acceptance towards non-locally produced foods and also an increase in adoption of packaged food. All these factors increase the demand of vacuum skin packaging, thereby leading to the growth of the market.Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global vacuum skin packaging market, tracking three market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global vacuum skin packaging market by its material, product, application and regions.By Material Polypropylene Polyethylene Polyethylene Terephthalate Polyvinyl Chloride Gas OthersBy Product Tray BagBy Application Meat Seafood Poultry CheeseBy Region North America Asia Pacific Europe Rest of the WorldBrief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Vacuum Skin Packaging Market, By Material4.1 Introduction4.2 Polypropylene (PP)4.3 Polyethylene4.4 Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)4.5 Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)4.6 OtherContinueBrowse Full Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Automotive Interior Market Analysis 2016-2027: Key Findings, Regional Analysis, Key Players Profiles and Future Prospects https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2675 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-interior-market-2675 Market Research Future Published a Cooked Research Report (CRR) on Global Automotive Interior Market. The automotive interior market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 8.72% during the period 2014 to 2027Market Overview:The growth of the automotive interior market is majorly driven by increased income levels of people in the Asia-Pacific region. The government initiatives combined with the booming automotive industry has resulted in the better automotive sales. The market is further driven by the growing competition between the manufacturers to produce high quality interiors and increase the comfort of passengers. However, the growth of this market can be restrained by the cost of the materials and the continuous research and development that is needed to update the technology.Sample Copy of Report @Key PlayersThe key players of global automotive interior markets are Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd (Japan), Toyota Boshoku Corporation (Japan), Lear Corporation (U.S), NTF India Pvt Ltd (India), Sage Automotive Interiors. Inc (U.S), BASF Automotive Solutions (Germany), and Faurecia S.A (France).Market Research AnalysisIncreasing competition between global automobile manufacturers to manufacture high quality cars has increased the automobile interior market growth. The ability of the growing world population to afford automobiles, is further increasing the market. Additionally, interiors of automobiles have gained prominence in recent years because of technological advancements in materials and affordability.Asia-Pacific is expected to be the largest market for automobile interiors, due to countries such as China and India in the region. North America and Europe are further expected to contribute to the growth. There is an increasing requirement for high quality interiors, even in small category cars because of growing competition among the global car manufacturers. All these factors are contributing to the growth of the automobile interior market.Access the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 111 numbers of pages of the project report Global Automotive Interior Market Forecast to 2027Scope of the ReportThis study provides an overview of the global automotive interior market, tracking two market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the Global Automotive Interior market by its type, application, operational depth and regions.By Type Synthetic Leather, Fabric, Thermoplastic Polymer, LeatherBy Vehicle Type Passenger Vehicle Commercial VehicleBy Region North America Asia Pacific Europe Rest of the WorldAccess Report Details @List of FiguresFIGURE 1 Research MethodologyFIGURE 2 Primary Data Analysis ApproachFIGURE 3 Secondary Data Analysis ApproachFIGURE 4 Trends in Frozen Food Imports 2012-15Continued.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 2017-2022 Bio Methanol Report on United States and Global Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/2017-2022-bio-methanol-report-on-united-states-and-global-market-status-and-forecast-by-players-types-and-applications.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1055447&type=E Qyresearchreports include new market research report "2017-2022 Bio Methanol Report on United States and Global Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications" to its huge collection of research reports.This research report gives an account of the United States and Global Bio Methanol market manages all its basic points of interest with the assistance of an inside and out and shrewd examination. The market is clarified in a comprehensive way and thus permits the report to show an entire examination of the market as concocted utilizing the elements that are required to have a quantifiable effect on its improvement.Despite the fact that a lot of summed up market-oriented data may not a mind boggling undertaking, it is sifting through the redundant parts of the given data to just the key points of interest that matter to a user, or that can settle a business issue. The absence of dedicated assets for undertaking such focused and even altered research procedure might be difficult for a few players in the Bio Methanol, and thusly can esteem this gathering of the most productive information as a standout from the oversimplified styles of research exercises.Obtain Report Details @The report supplies data that may help organizations in dealing with core issues without breaking a sweat and furthermore give an unmistakable subjective and quantitative segment relating to particular components of the Bio Methanol that associations could be keen on knowing.An association utilizing this report can have increasingly simpler access to the key points of interest of the Bio Methanol that are sure to have an exceptionally noticeable bearing on its general advancement, alongside its segments that are critical to the market as a whole. The report is made with the aim of satisfying the modified needs of all its readers who are a part of the Bio Methanol. The report in this way makes an exceptionally ingenious information archive that permits best practices to be framed profoundly and to provide viable business systems.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @Table of Contents1 Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source2.1.1 Secondary Sources2.1.2 Primary Sources1.3 Disclaimer2 Bio Methanol Market Overview2.1 Bio Methanol Product Overview2.2 Bio Methanol Segment by Types (Product Category)2.2.1 United States Bio Methanol Sales and Growth (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)2.2.2 United States Bio Methanol Sales Market Share (%) by Types (Product Category) in 20162.2.3 Industrial Grade2.2.4 Agriculture Grade2.2.5 Food Grade2.2.6 Medicine Grade2.3 United States Bio Methanol Segment by Applications2.3.1 United States Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons) Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)2.3.2 Transportation2.3.3 Construction2.3.4 Electronics2.3.5 Pharmaceutical2.3.6 Others3 United States Bio Methanol Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers3.1 United States Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons) and Share by Players (2012-2017)3.2 United States Bio Methanol Revenue (Million USD) and Share by Players (2012-2017)3.3 United States Bio Methanol Average Price (USD/Metric Ton) by Players (2012-2017)3.4 Players Bio Methanol Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Types3.5 Bio Methanol Market Competitive Situation and Trends3.5.1 Bio Methanol Market Concentration Rate3.5.2 Bio Methanol Market Share (%) of Top 3 and Top 5 Players3.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion4 Global Bio Methanol Market Comparison by Regions4.2 Global Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons) and Market Share (%) by Regions (2012-2017)4.3 Global Bio Methanol Revenue (Million USD) and Market Share (%) by Regions (2012-2017)4.3 Global Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)4.5 North America Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)4.6 Europe Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)4.7 Asia-Pacific Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)4.8 South America Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4.9 Middle East and Africa Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)5 United States Bio Methanol Sales, Revenue, Price Trend by Types5.1 United States Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons) and Market Share (%) by Types (2012-2017)5.2 United States Bio Methanol Revenue and Market Share (%) by Types (2012-2017)5.3 United States Bio Methanol Price (USD/Metric Ton) by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Industrial Grade5.4.1 United States Industrial Grade Sales (K Metric Tons) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)5.4.2 United States Industrial Grade Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)5.5 Agriculture Grade5.5.1 United States Agriculture Grade Sales (K Metric Tons) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)5.5.2 United States Agriculture Grade Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)5.6 Food Grade5.7 Medicine Grade6 United States Bio Methanol Market Analysis by Applications6.1 United States Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons) and Market Share (%) by Applications (2012-2017)6.2 United States Bio Methanol Sales Growth Rate (%) by Applications (2012-2017)6.3 Transportation Sales Growth Rate6.4 Construction Sales Growth Rate6.5 Electronics Sales Growth Rate6.6 Pharmaceutical6.7 Others7 United States Bio Methanol Players Profiles/Analysis7.1 BASF7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Bio Methanol Product Category, End Uses and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 BASF Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton), Gross Margin (%) and Market Share (%) (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 DSM7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Bio Methanol Product Category, End Uses and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 DSM Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton), Gross Margin (%) and Market Share (%) (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Cargill7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Bio Methanol Product Category, End Uses and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Cargill Bio Methanol Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Metric Ton), Gross Margin (%) and Market Share (%) (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business OverviewQYReseachReports.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 United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-eu-japan-china-india-and-southeast-asia-local-independent-design-house-idh-market-size-status-and-forecast-2021.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=868916&type=E Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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 Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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 Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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.Obtain Report Details @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 Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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 Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Local Independent Design House (IDH)1.1 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Overview1.1.1 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market by End Users/Application1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 32 Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Local Independent Design House (IDH) 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 Logic PD3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 DuPont3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Tensentric3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments12 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Dynamics12.1 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Opportunities12.2 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Challenge and Risk12.2.1 Competition from Opponents12.2.2 Downside Risks of Economy12.3 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Constraints and Threat12.3.1 Threat from Substitute12.3.2 Government Policy12.3.3 Technology Risks12.4 Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Driving Force12.4.1 Growing Demand from Emerging Markets12.4.2 Potential Application13 Market Effect Factors Analysis13.1 Technology Progress/Risk13.1.1 Substitutes13.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry13.2 Consumer Needs Trend/Customer Preference13.3 External Environmental Change13.3.1 Economic Fluctuations13.3.2 Other Risk FactorsList of Tables and FiguresFigure Local Independent Design House (IDH) Product ScopeFigure Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size (2011-2016)Table Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Share by Regions in 2015Figure United States Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure EU Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Japan Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure China Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure India Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Southeast Asia Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Global Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Share by Application in 2015Figure Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 1 (2011-2016)Figure Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 2 (2011-2016)Figure Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 3 (2011-2016)Table Local Independent Design House (IDH) Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)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 United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Digital Smile Design Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-eu-japan-china-india-and-southeast-asia-digital-smile-design-software-market-size-status-and-forecast-2021.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=867822&type=E Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Digital Smile Design Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.Every key element that has happened so far in the Digital Smile Design Software has been represented in this widely inclusive report. A key portion of these market elements incorporate the key player profiles and the market's general competitive scene, as players are known to have what's coming to them of impact over it. Different courses of the Digital Smile Design Software announced in the report incorporate drivers, restrictions, and key open doors that influence a larger part of the players in it. To totally cover the competitive scene of the Digital Smile Design Software, a SWOT examination is jotted down for all players, new and old. This takes into account a clearer projection for the Digital Smile Design Software over the coming years. Extra analyses incorporated the player profiles are their budgetary structures and current vital production arrangements for all the key players in the market.Obtain Report Details @The Digital Smile Design Software is additionally investigated on the premise of its perfunctory chain, an entry that utilizes research and information in view of the utilization and production abilities introduced into the market currently. This segment likewise fuses the product depictions and cost structures of the Digital Smile Design Software. The report also offers a point by point investigation inside the market to determine its trademark qualities as far as upstream and downstream requests for raw materials are concerned, and in addition the import, and cost drifts that affect them.The report additionally gives the aftereffects of an exceptionally itemized review on the Digital Smile Design Software in view of its provincial divisions. For each key district expressed, the client is given statistical data points on the player pool and in addition request, alongside expectations for the same. This can be vital for regional players attempting to extend their points of view in the market.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Digital Smile Design Software1.1 Digital Smile Design Software Market Overview1.1.1 Digital Smile Design Software Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Digital Smile Design Software 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 Digital Smile Design Software Market by End Users/Application1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 32 Global Digital Smile Design Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Digital Smile Design Software 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 Planmeca3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Digital Smile Design Software Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Tasty Tech Ltd3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Digital Smile Design Software Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Dental GPS3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Digital Smile Design Software Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Smile Designer Pro3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Digital Smile Design Software Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.4.5 Recent Developments12 Digital Smile Design Software Market Dynamics12.1 Digital Smile Design Software Market Opportunities12.2 Digital Smile Design Software Challenge and Risk12.2.1 Competition from Opponents12.2.2 Downside Risks of Economy12.3 Digital Smile Design Software Market Constraints and Threat12.3.1 Threat from Substitute12.3.2 Government Policy12.3.3 Technology Risks12.4 Digital Smile Design Software Market Driving Force12.4.1 Growing Demand from Emerging Markets12.4.2 Potential Application13 Market Effect Factors Analysis13.1 Technology Progress/Risk13.1.1 Substitutes13.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry13.2 Consumer Needs Trend/Customer Preference13.3 External Environmental Change13.3.1 Economic Fluctuations13.3.2 Other Risk FactorsList of Tables and FiguresFigure Digital Smile Design Software Product ScopeFigure Global Digital Smile Design Software Market Size (2011-2016)Table Global Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Global Digital Smile Design Software Market Share by Regions in 2015Figure United States Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure EU Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Japan Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure China Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure India Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Southeast Asia Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Global Digital Smile Design Software Market Share by Application in 2015Figure Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 1 (2011-2016)Figure Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 2 (2011-2016)Figure Digital Smile Design Software Market Size and Growth Rate in Applications 3 (2011-2016)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 Latest trends in the Global Travel Vaccines Market by 2021 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5753 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5753 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Health related complications are greater in developing countries and rural areas because of dissimilarities in sanitary conditions, available food and water bases. The immunization Practices Advisory Committee of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mentions that travelers should be up-to-date on routine immunizations, irrespective of travel plans. The target population for the travel vaccines market include outbound travelers. The travel vaccines for the prevention of hepatitis A, hepatitis B, yellow fever, tetanus, poliomyelitis, meningococcal disease, typhoid fever are manufactured by leading market players namely Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline. Among these aforementioned companies, Sanofi Pasteur and GSK are the notable players in the travel vaccines market that accounts for approximately 85% of total market. Recently in March 2014, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines segment of Sanofi announced its long term strategic collaboration with SK Chemicals Company to develop pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV).A sample of this report is available upon request @The driving factors for the growth of this market include increase in awareness about vaccine preventable diseases and rise in global travel traffic. Moreover, innovation of novel vaccine technologies and technological advancements towards molecular genetics is further boosting the growth of market in coming years. However, requirement of expertise for the production of vaccines and unfavorable healthcare funding towards vaccination could pose a challenge for the growth this market.Geographically, North America will be the leading market for global travel vaccines market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. The major contributing factors for North America to lead the market include involvement of large number of companies in the production of vaccines and introduction of superior range of vaccines in the market. However, Asia-Pacific market is forecast to grow at a significant growth rate in coming years.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The leading players of this market include GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Novartis, and Pfizer. Other key participants of this market include ALK Abello A/S, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Crucell N.V., CSL Ltd. Medimmune Inc. and Vaxin Inc.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a 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: The Current and Future demand for Wealth in Switzerland: HNW Investors 2017 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/1064550 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1064550 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Wealth in Switzerland: HNW Investors 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"GlobalDatas Wealth in Switzerland: HNW Investors 2017, report analyzes the investing preferences and portfolio allocation of Swiss HNW investors. The report is based on our proprietary Global Wealth Managers Survey.Inheritors form the largest segment among Swiss HNW individuals, who have generated their wealth mainly through property and real estate, in addition to professional services. Expats in Switzerland account for 8.4% of the HNW population, who along with the rest of the countrys HNW population are keen to invest a proportion of their wealth locally. Looking ahead, greater demand for wealth management services such as inheritance and financial planning is expected.View Report @Scope- Profiles the average Swiss HNW investor in terms of their demographics and analyzes the expat opportunity in Switzerland.- Analyzes which wealth management mandates are preferred among Swiss HNW investors and how the demand will develop looking forward.- Examines the allocation of Swiss HNW investors portfolios into different asset classes and how the allocation is expected to develop in the future.- Analyzes the product and service demand among Swiss HNW investors.Reasons to buy- Develop and enhance your client targeting strategies using our data on HNW profiles and source of wealth.- Give your marketing strategies the necessary edge and capture new clients using insights from our data on HNW investors drivers for seeking investment advice vs self-directing.- Tailor your investment product portfolio to match the current and future demand for different asset classes among HNW individuals.- Develop your service proposition to match the service and product demand expressed by Swiss HNW investors and react proactively to the forecasted change in demand.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @Table of ContentsEXECUTIVE SUMMARY 21.1. HNW clients prefer a heavily managed portfolio with notable exposure to equities and bonds 21.2. Key findings 21.3. Critical success factors 22. PROFILING THE SWISS HNW INVESTOR 72.1. Inheritance accounts for the largest proportion of Swiss HNW wealth 72.1.1. The majority of Swiss HNW individuals are males over the age of 50 72.1.2. One third of Swiss HNW clients inherited their wealth 82.1.3. Swiss HNW wealth is sourced from property and professional services 92.1.4. With the exception of director roles, Swiss HNW investors are more likely to fill leadership roles than the European average 102.2. Expats in Switzerland form 8.4% of the population 112.2.1. The proportion of expats in Switzerland is more prominent than across Europe 112.2.2. HNW expats can obtain residency and citizenship through a range of options 122.2.3. Western Europe is the leading feeder region for HNW expats in Switzerland 132.2.4. Cost considerations motivate expats to move investments to Switzerland 143. SWISS HNW INVESTMENT STYLE PREFERENCES 173.1. Swiss HNW investors have a propensity for their wealth to be professionally managed 173.1.1. Discretionary mandates are favored among Swiss HNW investors 173.1.2. Swiss HNW investors seek professional management for expertise and saving time 183.1.3. Swiss HNW investors use more wealth management firms than the regional average 193.2. Swiss HNW individuals prefer professional wealth management 203.2.1. Greater demand for traditional mandates is widely forecast 213.2.2. HNW investors favor advisory mandates for the guidance/control balance 223.2.3. HNW individuals prefer to have exclusive control 244. UNDERSTANDING ASSET ALLOCATION TRENDS AMONG SWISS HNW INVESTORS 254.1. Current asset allocation is heavily weighted towards equities 254.1.1. Equity and bond investments dominate Swiss HNW portfolios 254.1.2. Equity investments make up over one third of Swiss HNW portfolios 264.1.3. Bond investments are currently notable but forecast to decline 284.1.4. HNW individuals prefer to hold cash directly 304.1.5. HNW client portfolios allocate a minimal proportion to property investments 324.1.6. Alternatives constitute 11.3% of the typical Swiss HNW portfolio 344.1.7. Commodities constitute a minimal proportion of the typical HNW portfolio 365. SWISS HNW PRODUCT AND SERVICE DEMAND 395.1. Planning services are in high demand in Switzerland 395.1.1. Inheritance planning presents an opportunity for wealth managers to resonate with older HNW investors and business owners 396. APPENDIX 436.1. Abbreviations and acronyms 436.2. Definitions 436.2.1. HNW 436.2.2. Liquid assets 436.3. Methodology 436.3.1. GlobalDatas 2016 Global Wealth Managers Survey 436.3.2. GlobalDatas 2015 Global Wealth Managers Survey 446.3.3. GlobalDatas WealthInsight 446.4. Bibliography 446.5. Further reading 46About 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 Medical Electrodes Market Research Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=998027&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-medical-electrodes-market-research-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Medical Electrodes Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The Medical Electrodes from the point of view of all its present patterns that are impacting it, is essential to comprehend so as to acquire the most adjusted answer for business procedures in it. These patterns are financial, topographical, monetary, political, buyer, and social, and their general impact on customer or purchaser inclinations will have a noteworthy say in how this market will frame itself in the years to come. These elements and the way they affect the Medical Electrodes have been examined in supreme detail in the report. A definitive objective for the spread of this data is to make an unmistakable investigation of how these patterns could conceivably influence the eventual fate of the market inside the report's given forecast period.Get sample report @The report, similar to all reports added to this research repository, is a comprehensive and engaging perspective of the Medical Electrodes. It explains available progression, extent of development in different regions and specific locations, and different parameters that have been so far compelling amid its extension regarding value and volume. This examination study is along these lines a quantitative and a subjective review for conferring a reasonable vision of every single conceivable circumstance in the Medical Electrodes, and in addition the drivers that may exist between 2017 and 2022.The Medical Electrodes is likewise introduced to the readers of this report as an all-encompassing preview of the competitive scene inside the given time frame. It displays a similar examination of the regional portions and player competitiveness, offering readers a superior comprehension of where territories in which they can put their current assets.Table of ContentsGlobal Medical Electrodes Market Research Report 20171 Medical Electrodes Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Medical Electrodes1.2 Medical Electrodes Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Medical Electrodes Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Medical Electrodes Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Disposable Medical Electrodes1.2.4 Reusable Medical Electrodes1.3 Global Medical Electrodes Segment by Application1.3.1 Medical Electrodes Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Diagnostic Electrodes1.3.3 Therapeutic Electrodes1.4 Global Medical Electrodes Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Medical Electrodes 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 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Medical Electrodes (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Medical Electrodes Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Medical Electrodes Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Medical Electrodes Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Medical Electrodes Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Medical Electrodes Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Medical Electrodes Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Medical Electrodes Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Medical Electrodes Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Medical Electrodes Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Medical Electrodes Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Medical Electrodes Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 United States Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 EU Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 South Korea Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 Taiwan Medical Electrodes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)Browse Complete Report with TOC @4 Global Medical Electrodes Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Medical Electrodes Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 United States Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 EU Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 South Korea Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 Taiwan Medical Electrodes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Medical Electrodes Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Medical Electrodes Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Medical Electrodes Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Medical Electrodes Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Medical Electrodes Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Medical Electrodes Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Medical Electrodes Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Medical Electrodes Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesAbout 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 Brachytherapy Devices Market to Significant Growth Foreseen by 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6167 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6167 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com The global radiation therapy equipment market is classified into external radiation therapy equipment market and internal radiation therapy equipment market. Brachytherapy devices market is a sub segment under the internal radiation therapy equipment market. Brachytherapy is referred to as sealed source radiation therapy because the radiation source is sealed and placed inside or near the body part requiring radiation therapy. Besides the treatment of most body part tumors, brachytherapy is commonly used to treat the cancers of the cervix, breast, skin, and prostate. The radiation source is enclosed in a protective wire or a protective capsule and ionizing radiations escape to treat the surrounding cancerous tissues only while avoiding its effects on body fluids.A sample of this report is available upon request @The advantage of brachytherapy devices over other forms of radiation therapy equipment is that it involves high precision in radiation source placement in the anatomy. One of the key features of brachytherapy devices is that they limit the radiation effects only to the local, diseased (tumors or cancers) parts of the anatomy. Hence, the healthy tissues are protected against radiation. Brachytherapy devices pave the way for a safe radiation therapy treatment in the presence of high, localized doses of radiation. The nature of brachytherapy devices makes it a durable form of treatment delivery as the re-occurrence of cancer in the patient treated with brachytherapy is rare. Brachytherapy is often used in combination with chemotherapy, surgery or external radiation therapy. Based on the location of the tumor being treated, brachytherapy devices market is restrained by a range of side-effects such as localized bleeding within implant region, urinary incontinence, desquamation, etc. The global brachytherapy devices market is expected to witness significant competition from the external radiation therapy equipment market that can hamper the growth of global brachytherapy devices market.The global brachytherapy devices market is anticipated to witness significant growth in the forecast years. The high-dose rate and low-dose rate of radiation in brachytherapy devices market together hold more than half the global brachytherapy devices market share. The global brachytherapy devices market is projected to grow at more than around 5% annually. The electronic brachytherapy device is a novel technology that is expected to add remarkable value to the global brachytherapy devices market and open a wide range of opportunities. The global brachytherapy devices market is largely dependent on the radiation sources used in brachytherapy such as cesium-137, cobalt-60, iridium-192, iodine-125, palladium-103, ruthenium-106 and radium-226.Depending on geographic regions, global Brachytherapy Devices market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is the largest market for radiation therapy equipment followed by Europe due to the high incidence of cancer among the population in these regions. Asia Pacific is expected to be the most promising market for radiation therapy equipment owing to the improving healthcare infrastructure and affordable radiation therapy treatment. As of the regional outlook for brachytherapy devices market, the brachytherapy devices market is set to follow the trend of radiation therapy equipment market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the key market players identified in global Brachytherapy Devices market are Elekta AB, Varian Medical Systems Inc. Eckert and Ziegler BEBIG S.A, and C.R. Bard.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales Market Report 2017 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=983908&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-hexabromobenzenehbb-sales-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/reports.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.This market intelligence report examines extensively the trends in the global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) 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 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) market. The global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) 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 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) market. The estimated revenue and volume valuation of the global market for Hexabromobenzene(HBB) 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 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) 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 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)1.2 Classification of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)1.2.1 Type I1.2.2 Type II1.3 Application of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.4 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Market by Regions1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)2 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.4 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) (Volume) by Application9 Global Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Manufacturers Analysis9.1 Albemarle9.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.1.2 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Product Type, Application and Specification9.1.2.1 Product A9.1.2.2 Product B9.1.3 Albemarle Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.2 Chemtura9.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.2.2 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Product Type, Application and Specification9.2.2.1 Product A9.2.2.2 Product B9.2.3 Chemtura Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.3 ICL-IP9.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.3.2 Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Product Type, Application and Specification9.3.2.1 Product A9.3.2.2 Product B9.3.3 ICL-IP Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.3.4 Main Business/Business OverviewList of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)Table Classification of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)Figure Global Sales Market Share of Hexabromobenzene(HBB) by Type in 2015Figure Type I PictureFigure Type II PictureTable Applications of Hexabromobenzene(HBB)Figure Global Sales Market Share of Hexabromobenzene(HBB) by Application in 2015Figure Application 1 ExamplesFigure Application 2 ExamplesFigure United States Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China Hexabromobenzene(HBB) Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)For Latest Market Research Reports 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 Global Emergency Ambulance Industry Growth, Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis 2017- TOYOTA, Horton, NISSAN http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1064521&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-emergency-ambulance-industry-2017-market-research-report-enterprise-user-license.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Emergency Ambulance Industry 2017 Market Research Report Enterprise User License" to its huge collection of research reports.This research report gives a definitive review on the Emergency Ambulance as in light of a segmented pattern. Entry variables managed in the report incorporate the distinctive services or products offered by the market players alongside the free market activity scales for current market measurements, in addition to anticipated market insights. The Emergency Ambulance is thus examined first in an authentic sense by getting together all important information in the course of recent years, and after that moves on to the market's future which is a revelatory examination in view of momentum numbers and patterns. The elucidation of each outcome is left to the client who can take their business strategy to the next level in light of the given data.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @The geographical examination of the Emergency Ambulance is directed utilizing different key regions in view of mainland diversities and different variables. For each key locale, the report gives information in general request, its development and the elements that impact it, the relative nearness of key global players and regional ones, and the rate at which every area advances in the market as far as innovative work endeavors. The competitive scene of the Emergency Ambulance is broken down utilizing systems, for example, the SWOT investigation, giving the report's clients a top notch point of view of all available data and what it might be molded like sooner rather than later. The Emergency Ambulance is likewise portrayed on the premise of its industry chain structure, in however much detail as could reasonably be expected.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview 11.1 Definition and Specifications of Emergency Ambulance 11.1.1 Definition of Emergency Ambulance 11.1.2 Specifications of Emergency Ambulance 21.2 Classification of Emergency Ambulance 31.2.1 SUV Emergency Ambulance 41.2.2 Truck Emergency Ambulance 51.2.3 Bus Emergency Ambulance 51.3 Applications of Emergency Ambulance 61.3.1 Hospital 71.3.2 Emergency Center 71.4 Industry Chain Structure of Emergency Ambulance 81.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Emergency Ambulance 91.5.1 Industry Overview of Emergency Ambulance 91.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Emergency Ambulance 101.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 101.7 Industry News Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 122 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 152.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 152.2 Equipment Suppliers Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 152.3 Labor Cost Analysis 172.3.1 USA Labor Cost Analysis 172.3.2 Europe Labor Costs Analysis 182.3.3 Asia Labor Costs Analysis 202.4 Other Costs Analysis 212.4.1 USA Other Cost Analysis 212.4.2 Europe Other Cost Analysis 232.4.3 China Other Cost Analysis 242.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 262.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 27Obtain Report Details @3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis 283.1 Production and Founded Date of Global Key Manufacturers in 2017 283.2 Headquarters of Global Key Emergency Ambulance Manufacturers 293.3 R&D Status of Global Emergency Ambulance Key Manufacturers in 2016 294 Production and Revenue Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Regions, Types and Manufacturers 314.1 Global Production and Revenue of Emergency Ambulance by Regions 2012-2017 314.2 Global and Major Regions Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 344.3 Global Production and Revenue of Emergency Ambulance by Types 2012-2017 394.4 Global Production and Revenue of Emergency Ambulance by Manufacturers 2012-2017 425 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Regions, Types and Manufacturers 495.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Regions 2012-2017 495.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Types 2012-2017 505.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Manufacturers 2012-2017 526 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Emergency Ambulance by Regions, Types and Applications 566.1 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Emergency Ambulance by Regions 2012-2017 566.2 Global and Major Regions Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 606.3 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Emergency Ambulance by Applications 2012-2017 656.4 Sale Price of Emergency Ambulance by Regions 2012-2017 686.5 Sale Price of Emergency Ambulance by Applications 2012-2017 697 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Emergency Ambulance 717.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 717.2 Global Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 727.3 North America Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 727.4 Europe Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 737.5 China Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 747.6 Asia (Ex. China) Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Emergency Ambulance 2012-2017 74About 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 Industrial Wire Line Networking Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=380 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=380 https://www.tmrresearch.com/industrial-wire-line-networking-market Global Industrial Wire Line Networking Market: SnapshotInformation technology is essential for nearly every industry for their proper functioning and prosperity. Industrial wire line networking refers to IT networks designed to handle heavy loads of inter-connectivity across enterprises and industrial equipment. Basically of two type, wireless and wire line, these networks enable better manageability and integrated security and are able to handle huge volume of data, although they cannot function without a support of reliable and robust wire line network. Since wire line networking are fairly easier to implement as opposed to wireless networking and also meet the industrial networking demands in an efficient way, the global market for the same is projected for a robust growth rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.This report on global industrial wire line networking market is a comprehensive study of the current scenario and offers a figurative estimations of the opportunities based on several factors that are expected to influence the demand in near future. This market can be segmented into interconnect products, network management software, and networking components. The interconnect products can be further sub-segmented into connectors, testing devices, printed circuit test points, battery contacts, and jumpers, while networking components can be divided into electrical networks, optical networks, and combined networks. The market can also be segmented on the basis of end-user industries, which includes food and beverage, automotive, oil and gas, refining and wastewater, and petrochemical.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Industrial Wire Line Networking Market: Trends and ProspectsOwing to fact that installation of fiber optic cables is considerably less expensive in comparison to copper cables, and rapid increment in broadband service providers, the demand in global industrial wire line networking has escalated. These interconnections assists decision makers in providing real time data and information for taking strategic decisions, thereby contributing to the growth of this market. Another factor favoring the growth rate is the reduced cost of managing the networks while it connects different systems, machinery, equipment, and devices within the industrial operations. The rising use of Ethernet which enhances interoperability among the industrial systems at lowered costs is also contributing to the growth of this market. Rapid innovations in the field of wire line networks to expand their use and accommodate increasing traffic are also driving the growth of global industrial networking market. However, compatibility with the existing systems in an organization and the ongoing costs incurred to accommodate increasing traffic are some of the major barriers affecting the growth of industrial wire line networking market.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Industrial Wire Line Networking Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the report segments the global market into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world. Currently, North America serves the maximum demand due to the robust budget of the organizations. However, several emerging economies in Asia Pacific, such as China, India, Japan, and Malaysia, are aggressively investing in improving their IT infrastructure and several multi-national companies have set up their organizations in these countries. This will lead to increased demand coming from Asia Pacific during the forecast period.Some of the major players in this line of business include Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Cisco Systems, Inc., Ericsson, Juniper Networks Inc., Nortel Networks Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, and ZTE Corporation.Read Complete Report @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Global Lab Informatics Market By Geography Products Analyzers 2016 - 2026 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/lab-informatics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=20249 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ Global Lab Informatics Market: SnapshotThe rise of the global lab informatics market is attributable to both, the increasing rate of diagnoses and soaring technological advancements that have introduced improved tools. Furthermore, the widening application of lab informatics solutions in industries such as the food and beverage, chemical, research and development, life sciences, and contract research is expected to have a positive impact on the global market. The phenomenal accuracy and efficiency of results offered by the systems available in the global lab informatics market are projected to benefit growth prospects in the coming years.Transparency Market Research has compiled a thorough research report that discusses the global lab informatics market in complete detail. The research report highlights the market drivers, opportunities, threats, and weaknesses impacting the overall market. Furthermore, the document also includes SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis that gives a granular view of the ever-changing market dynamics. The publication is aimed at guiding its readers to formulate strategic, profitable, and well-informed decisions to further their businesses.Obtain Report Details @Global Lab Informatics Market: SegmentationThe global market offers products such as laboratory information management systems (LIMS), electronic lab notebooks (ELN), scientific data management systems, enterprise content management (ECM), and chromatography data systems. The report indicates that LIMS is expected to lead the global market in the coming years as the system truly offers a wide range of features such as sample lifecycle, reporting, security and system administration, stability study, instrument, schedule, and analytic workflow. These features have definitely brought in value to the product, which has translated into effective delivery of results.Integration of IT in lab informatics has augmented the demand for cloud-based services in the global market over the past few years. The ease of real-time data entry and remote access have won cloud-based delivery mode a significant consumer base. Its most likely that this segment will lead the global market leaving behind the on-premise delivery mode segment.Global Lab Informatics Market: Regional OutlookCurrently, the global lab informatics market is divided into regions such as Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. The report indicates that North America will dominate the global market in the coming years. The indomitable stance of this regional market will be due to the strong presence of the leading giants in North America, higher level of awareness about diseases and diagnosing them, and well-equipped end users for LIMS. It has been observed that increasing funding for research and development activities in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry of North America is also projected to boost the market in the coming years.Currently, Asia Pacific is also presenting the lab informatics market with incredible growth opportunities. The regions increasing need to improve its research and development facilities, emerging economies with flourishing industry, and several unmet medical needs are expected to favor Asia Pacific lab informatics market in the near future.Key Players Mentioned in the Report are:Some of the leading players in the global lab informatics market are Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., LabVantage Solutions, Inc., LabWare, Inc., LLC, Core Informatics, LabLynx, Inc., Abbott Informatics, PerkinElmer, Inc., ID Business Solutions Ltd., Waters Corporation, and Agilent Technologies, Inc. These players are fervently focused on advancing their research laboratories with the best of technical knowledge, IT integration, and affordable pricing to lure in larger consumer bases.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 Ultra Wideband Market to Develop Rapidly by 2027 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14578 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14578 Global Ultra wideband Market: IntroductionWireless technology that transmits digital data over a wide range of frequency bands is known to be ultra-wideband. These bands utilizes very less power for a short distance. Radios which are ultra-wideband technology enabled have the capacity to transmit huge amount of data as well as signals through the doors and other obstacles. Ultra wideband programs digital pulses which are timed very accurately on a carrier signal across a wide spectrum. In ultra-wideband accuracy needs to be maintained, to send and receive pulses through the coordination of transmitter and receiver.Ultra wideband has two prime type of applications that are applications involving radar, and application involving voice and data transmission using data pulses. Ultra wideband is appropriate for short-range and high-speed data transmissions for WPAN applications. Ultra wideband is used in ground penetrating radar and other military communications due to its speed and accuracy in timing.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Ultra wideband Market: Market Drivers and ChallengesAdvancement in IoT offers huge potential for various wireless communications technologies. The manufacturing industries are gradually adopting ultra-wideband technology to track assets and manage inventory. These factors are encouraging the growth of global ultra-wideband market. Growing deployment of smart solutions across various industries, government initiatives towards energy saving nd energy management, growing demand for cloud-based solutions are a few other factors which are expected to drive the growth of global ultra-wideband market.However, low operating range of the ultra-wideband technology is obstructing the wide adoption of ultra-wideband technology. Premium pricing of the devices as compared to its counterparts and limited throughput are the factors acting as the growth barriers for the global ultra-wideband market.Global Ultra wideband Market: SegmentationGlobal ultra-wideband market is segmented into end-user industry, technology and regionOn the basis of end-user industry, the global ultra-wideband market can be segmented into BFSI, healthcare, retail, transportation and logistics, government and education, manufacturing, public sector and othersOn the basis of technology, the global ultra-wideband market can be segmented into real-time location system, imaging technology and othersGlobal Ultra wideband Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of regions, the global ultra-wideband market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission commercialized usage of ultra-wideband in February, 2002. North America is among the major contributor in terms of revenue in 2015 to the global ultra-wideband market. Asia Pacific is having huge potential and is expected to experience maximum growth during the forecast period. Latin America and Eastern Europe regions are also expected to experience healthy growth in terms of revenue. Japan and Western Europe market is contributing to a greater extent after North America in terms of global ultra-wideband revenue.Request to view Table of content @Global Ultra wideband Market: Competition LandscapeKey player in the global ultra-wideband market include Decawave Ltd., TDC Acquisition Holdings, Inc., Texas Instruments Incorporated, Starix Technology, Inc., AKELA, Inc., General Atomics Corp., Johanson Technology, Inc. and Pulse Link, 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 Smart Grid Cyber Security Market is booming due to the Growing Research and Development https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=392 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=392 https://www.tmrresearch.com/smart-grid-cyber-security-market Global Smart Grid Cyber Security Market: Inclusive InsightCyber security comprises checking damage, illegal usage, and misuse of communication systems, electronic information, and the information contained therein to ensure availability, integrity and confidentiality. It also includes restoration of electronic information and communication systems in case of natural disaster or deliberate attack. The components within smart grid that are prone to cyber-attacks include operational technologies, IT systems, and end access points. The operational technologies which are exposed to cyber threats are power line communication devices, supervisory control, intelligent electronic devices, and data acquisition (SCADA) and energy management systems.This industry research report is a brief review of the growth trail in terms of existing, past, and future scenarios of the global smart grid cyber security market. It deals with the evaluation of the aspects that are expected to influence the development of the market and the primary trends have also been specified in the research study. The research study also offers a broad lookout on the vendor landscape of the market through Porters five forces analysis. The research report offers references of the research and development activities, mergers and acquisitions, and specifics on licensing and collaborations. The report probes into the strategies related to publicity, shares, and product range of the key participants in the global smart grid cyber security market.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Smart Grid Cyber Security Market: Drivers and InhibitorsThe growing demand for power along with growing global mandate for smart grid technologies is expected to bolster the progress of the global smart grid cyber security market. A smart grid provides a network of electricity for consumers and suppliers to regulate the demand for energy and flow of information through the high-end devices. The communication layer is the backbone of the smart grid and is susceptible to cyber-attacks. The smart grid is envisioned to decrease the vulnerability of the electricity systems and improve emergency response. Smart grid security is an important parameter to maintain reliable and stable power system during the contingency situation due to power failure of any critical power system component.The chief driver of growth of the global smart grid cyber security market is the increasing occurrence of cyber threats owing to rising interconnection and integration. Furthermore, the new two way communication systems and growing risk to operations are expected to boost the demand for smart grid cyber security technologies globally. Nevertheless, the dearth of standard reference architecture for the smart grid and the lack of release mechanisms is expected to hamper the growth of the market.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Smart Grid Cyber Security Market: Regional OutlookCurrently, North America and Europe account for the peak demand of cyber security. In European nations such as the UK, German and the Netherlands, there are several of guidelines and policies for data security and privacy. The market for smart grid cyber security in Europe is estimated to rise progressively in the near future. In Asia Pacific, China is expected to drive the growth of the smart grid cyber security market mostly driven by methods to reinforce the smart grid systems.Global Smart Grid Cyber Security Market: Competitive LandscapeThe key market players operating in the market are VeriSign, ViaSat Inc., Siemens AG, Industrial Defender Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp., IOActive Inc., IBM Corp, and BAE Systems PLC among others.Read Complete Report @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Global Virtual Networking Market Estimated to Flourish by 2027 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14581 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14581 Global Virtual Networking Market: IntroductionVirtual networking is a technology which eases the control of remotely located computer devices or server or any other connected devices through the internet. Using a web-browser, data which is stored can be recovered, software can be run and peripheral devices can also be operated in a virtual network. Virtual networking facilitates alliance of diverse services on a single hardware platform called virtual services switch. The centralized control minimizes the cost and complexity of operation and maintenance of hardware and software compared with managing numerous separate devices in widely spread geographical locations. In order to use virtual networking, it is necessary to install virtual networking software on remote computers or servers in order to get benefits of virtual networking technology.A sample of this report is available upon request @Virtual networking enables service provider network or data center to provision the most suitable and efficient networking structure for application of its hosts and to alter the structure as required rather than making changes physically in the connections in hardware.Global Virtual Networking Market: Market Drivers and ChallengesAdvancement in networking technology, high adoption of advanced communication method by the population and continuous innovation in the solution offered by virtual network solution provider are a few factors that are positively impacting the growth in the adoption of virtual networking worldwide. These factors are encouraging the growth in revenue of global virtual networking market.However, software is burdened in order to make the hardware fully operation in case of virtual networking. Sometime this acts as a challenge as virtualization requires software installation. Security and primacy are among the other challenges that vendors offering virtual networking solutions face.Global Virtual Networking Market: SegmentationGlobal virtual networking market is segmented into component type, deployment type, infrastructure type, application and regionOn the basis of component type, the global virtual networking market can be segmented into hardware, software, and services. Software segment can further be sub-segmented into on-premise and cloud-based.On the basis of deployment type, the global virtual networking market can be segmented into on-premise and cloud-based.On the basis of license type, the global virtual networking market can be segmented into licensed and unlicensed.On the basis of end-user industry, the global virtual networking market can be segmented into banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), public sector, manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, IT and telecommunication and others.Global Virtual Networking Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of regions, the global virtual networking market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.Request to view Table of content @Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Western Europe virtual networking markets have the major share in the global virtual networking market in 2016, owing to the increasing disposable income of the population in these regions. North America and Eastern European market possess opportunity and are relatively new as compared to the other regional markets. Virtual networking market in Latin America and Middle East and Africa is expected to witness positive growth in the forecast period.Global Virtual Networking Market: Competition LandscapeKey players in the global virtual networking market include Oracle Corporation, VMware Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, Verizon Enterprise, IBM Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Citrix Systems, Inc., and Virtual Network Solutions, 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 Touch Screen Panels Market Research, Development, Analytical Forecast to 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=401 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=401 https://www.tmrresearch.com/touch-screen-panels-market Global Touch Screen Panels Market: SnapshotWith the escalating demand for smartphones and tablet PCs, the market for touch panels, especially capacitive touch panels, has gained significant growth. The industry is experiencing entry of several new players leading to a price war and this represents a concern for market participants. Further, with the introduction of Windows 8, there has been an increased focus on providing touch functionality on laptops and PCs and this represents an opportunity for growth in touch panels market. Various application segments of touch panels include smartphones, tablet PCs, portable gaming devices, personal navigation devices (PNDs), portable media players (PMPs), personal digital assistant (PDA), notebooks, e-book readers, digital signage, camcorders, automotive, medical devices and other consumer medical devices.Various touch-sensing technologies include projected capacitive, resistive, in-cell, and on-cell. Depending upon the position of sensing layer, different categories of capacitive touch panels include cover window integrated touch, display integrated touch and add-ons. The end-users come from a wide range of industries such as consumer electronics, banking, automotive, healthcare, retail, industrial, and many others.Request a Brochure of the Report @The global market for touch screen panels is projected for robust growth rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. This report is a comprehensive analysis of the market in its current scenario and presents figurate estimations of the opportunities available over the course of next nine years. The report also profiles some of the key vendors currently operation, presenting their market share, product portfolio, and strategic developments.Global Touch Screen Panels Market: Trends and ProspectsAccording to a February 2016 report by Cisco, since the first camera mobile phone was introduced in 2000, the number of mobile users has escalated exponentially, and the figure is estimated to reach 5.5 billion by 2020, accounting for 70% of the global population. The demand from this vast population is the primary driver in the global touch screen panels market. The increasing application of touchscreens in wearable devices and automobiles is another factor positively favoring the market. In addition to it, another considerable opportunity in the future for the touch screen panels is the growing trends of touch screens in the educational and banking sectors as well as the Internet of Things (IoT).Request for TOC of the Report @Conversely, issues pertaining to technical compatibilities of the touch screen panels with regard to refresh rate, response time, and the power consumption is expected to hinder the growth rate. In order to maintain fast refresh rates in a large screens, the touch screen panel needs to sweep greater surface area and collect data from all the intersections before processing it. The power consumption of a touch screen panel is another factor restricting faster fresh rates.Global Touch Screen Panels Market: Geographical OutlookAsia Pacific is currently the most lucrative and rapidly growing market driven by significantly high growth in smartphone sales and quick expansion of electronics manufacturing sector, especially in the regions including China, Taiwan and South Korea. North America, Europe and Latin America are also experiencing significant growth in demand.Read Complete Report @Key Players in the global touch screen panels market include AU Optronics Corp., Cando Corp., Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd., DMC Co., Ltd., JTOUCH Corporation, Cermate Technologies, Inc., SPK Electronics Co., Ltd., Top-Touch Electronics Co., Ltd., Innolux Corporation, Shantou Goworld Display Co. Ltd., HannsTouch Solution Incorporated, and LG Innotek, Ltd. among others.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Global Cloud Services Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6667? http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6667 Cloud services are those services that are offered to users via the Internet from the server of cloud computing service provider. Such services provide scalable and easy access to various resources and applications, and are entirely managed by the cloud service providers. The examples of cloud services include web-based e-mail services, online backup solutions and data storage, document collaboration services, technical support services, and database processing among others. Cloud service providers supply the necessary software and hardware required for cloud service, thereby eliminating the need for organizations to deploy their own resources for managing networked services. The other advantage of cloud services over the traditional methods of providing infrastructure is faster deployment of services and reduction in in-house maintenance costs.Request to view Sample Report @On the basis of mode of delivery, the cloud services market is segmented into Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The SaaS mode of delivery is further segmented into SMB and mobile corporate SaaS cloud services, corporate SaaS cloud services, SMB SaaS cloud services and others. North America is the largest contributor to the cloud services market due to the high penetration of internet in this region. This region is followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW).Major benefits offered by cloud services are driving business organizations in implementing the use of cloud services. Cloud services maximize the effectiveness of shared resources and ensure the business organizations higher returns and faster paybacks. In addition, cloud services offer scalable solutions to growing business organizations at low cost of ownership. This drives business organizations to invest in such services that allow them to generate higher revenues by optimizing the available resources. However, the data security issues are the roadblocks that are adversely affecting the growth of this market. The increasing data hacking incidences using sophisticated tools result in loss of sensitive data, causing serious dents in the business revenues. Also, there are constant evolutions of new security threats that are affecting the quality of cloud services. Further, the small and medium businesses find it difficult to repeatedly invest in the customized solutions available for cloud services security. Due to such factors, the business organizations are reluctant in investing in the cloud services and prefer to carry on with conventional methods of network infrastructure.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major players in the market are improving their existing services by adding new and innovative features. This helps them in staying competitively ahead in the market. For instance, Akamai Technologies, Inc., one of the leading cloud services providers, recently added Zone Apex Mapping feature to its Ion network acceleration technology. This feature reduces DNS resolution time and avoids HTTP redirects. Other major players in the market include VMware, Inc., (U.S.), Taleo Corporation (Ireland), Oracle Corporation, (U.S.), NetSuite Inc., (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Joyent Inc., (U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Hewlett-Packard (U.S.), Flexiant Limited (United Kingdom), ENKI Consulting (U.S.), Etelos Inc.,(U.S.), Citrix Systems Inc., (U.S.), Cisco Systems Inc., (U.S.), CA Technologies, Inc., (U.S.), and SAP AG (Germany).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 Accessories Market to Incur Rapid Extension During 2016 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11398 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11398 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com 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.A sample of this report is available upon request @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 Gear Frames and Fittings Lighting Headlights Flashers Bags & Luggage Batteries OthersOn the basis of motorcycle type, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into, Standard Cruiser Sport bikes Touring Dual-purpose Scooters, mopedsOn the basis of distributional channel, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into, Multi brand Retail Organized Retail Outlet Independent Outlets Single Brand Retail e-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 America Latin America West Europe Eastern Europe Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific excluding Japan JapanMotorcycle 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.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @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 Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Automotive Switch Market to Partake Significant Development During 2016 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11380 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11380 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global Automotive Switch Market: OverviewAutomotive 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.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.A sample of this report is available upon request @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.Global Automotive Switch Market: SegmentationOn the basis of types of switches, the global automotive switch market can be segmented as follows: Rocker switches Push button switches Rotary switches Toggle switches OthersOn the basis of applications, the global automotive switch market can be segmented as follows: Indicator system switches HVAC EMS switches Electronic system switches OthersGlobal 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.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Automotive Switch Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global automotive switch market are as follows: Salzer Electronics Limited INENSY Eaton Top Quality Auto Electric Products Co.,Ltd Yueqing Daier Electron Co., Ltd. Changzhou Leili Pressure Controller Co., Ltd. Radin Electric Technology Co., Ltd. Millborn Switchgears Pvt. Ltd Sun Autoelektrik Private Limited Gilard Electronics Private LimitedThe research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.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 Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Shampoo (Haircare) Market In Philippines - Outlook To 2020 - Market Size, Growth And Forecast http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/909542 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/909542 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Shampoo (Haircare) Market in Philippines - Outlook to 2020: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Shampoo (Haircare) MarketShampoo - products containing soap or detergents necessary to wash the hair, can also include additional agents like conditioners, dandruff fighting agents, medicated / therapeutic agents etc. Product category includes all 2-in-1 shampoos and conditioners, regular shampoos, anti-dandruff shampoos and medicated shampoos, however; excludes baby shampoos. Shampoo (Haircare) Market in Philippines - Outlook to 2020: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Shampoo market of Philippines. The research handbook provides the up-to-date market size data for period 2011-2015 and illustrative forecast to 2020 covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Shampoo and its variants 2-in-1, Anti-Dandruff, Kids Shampoo, Medicated Shampoo, Standard Shampoo and Other Shampoo.Get Sample Copy of this report @Sales Values in the handbook are depicted in USD ($) and local currency of Philippines and Volumes are represented in M Units.Furthermore, the research handbook details out Sales Value for top brands for the year 2012 to 2015 and overall market sales by Distribution Channel (Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Convenience Stores, Department Stores, Dollar Stores, Variety Store, Cash & Carries and Warehouse clubs, eRetailers, Food & Drinks specialists, Drug stores & Pharmacies, Health & Beauty Stores, Other general retailers and others) where ever applicable.View Report @The research handbook acts as an essential tool for companies active or planning to venture in to Philippines's Shampoo (Haircare) market. The comprehensive statistics within the report provides insight into the operating environment of the market and also ensures right business decision making based on historical trends and industry model based forecasting. This is an on-demand research handbook and will be delivered within 2 working days (excluding weekends) of the purchase.Note: Certain content / sections in the research handbook may be removed or altered based on the availability and relevance of data.Key Findings- Overall Shampoo (Haircare) market value and volume analytics with growth analysis from 2011 to 2020.- Sales Value and Volume analytics for variants of Shampoo; 2-in-1, Anti-Dandruff, Kids Shampoo, Medicated Shampoo, Standard Shampoo and Other Shampoo- Value terms for the top brands.- Distribution channel sales analytics from 2012-2015.SynopsisShampoo (Haircare) Market in Philippines - Outlook to 2020: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Shampoo market of Philippines. The research handbook provides the up-to-date market size data for period 2011-2015 and illustrative forecast to 2020 covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Shampoo and its variants 2-in-1, Anti-Dandruff, Kids Shampoo, Medicated Shampoo, Standard Shampoo and Other Shampoo. The research handbook also provides analytics on Sales by Brands and by Distribution Channel.ReasonsToBuy- Get access to authoritative and granular data on the Shampoo (Haircare), market and fill in the gaps in understanding of trends and the components of change behind them.- Enhance your understanding of the market to update your strategic and tactical plans based on volume and value changes, brand dynamics and distribution trends.- Analyze the components of change in the market by looking at historic and future growth patterns.- Use the data to understand future patterns of the market trends from winners and losers to category dynamics and thereby quickly and easily identify the key areas in which you want to compete in the future.Table of Contents1 Introduction1.1 What is this Report About?1.2 Definitions1.2.1 This report provides 2015 actual sales; while forecasts are provided for 2016 20201.2.2 Category Definitions1.2.3 Distribution Channel Definitions1.2.4 Volume Units and Aggregations1.2.5 CAGR Definition and Calculation1.2.6 Graphical representation of Brands1.2.7 Exchange Rates1.2.8 Methodology Summary2 Philippines Shampoo Market Analysis, 2010202.1 Shampoo Value Analysis, 2010202.1.1 Shampoo Market by Value, 2010202.1.2 Shampoo Market by Value by Segments, 2010202.2 Shampoo Volume Analysis, 2010202.2.1 Shampoo Market by Volume, 2010202.2.2 Shampoo Market by Volume by Segments, 201020MarketResearchReports.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.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz High and Medium Power Passive Components Market Volume Forecast and Value Chain Analysis https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=338 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=338 https://www.tmrresearch.com/high-medium-power-passive-components-market Global High and Medium Power Passive Components Market: OverviewA passive component does not require any external energy source for operations, and use the energy that is already present within the system. Passive components is a crucial industry that plays an important role in the development of electronic industry. The market growth of passive components is related with the growth of electronics sector. From television to smartphones, every electronic device requires passive components. With great escalation in the automotive, communication and information technology, and electronics industry, the market for passive components is expected to grow further in the near future. In view of its features, passive components can be used across a wide range of applications ranging from healthcare to even industrial applications.This research report provides an in-depth analysis of the global high and medium power passive components market based on segments and geography.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global High and Medium Power Passive Components Market: Trends and ProspectsThere is always a high demand for electronic goods and the market is also ripe with new and advanced products, leading to a constant demand for passive components, and contributing towards growth of the passive component market. The passive component market growth is sported by continuous efforts from manufacturers and suppliers to deliver cheaper components. In addition, Asia Pacific region offers great opportunity for the passive component market growth. This is because high penetration level of new technology in the region.Capacitor segment has the highest share in the passive components market. In spite of high degree of involvement of passive components in electronic devices, the production or assembly cost is very minimal. Global passive component industry is highly fragmented as only 10 major players contribute to over half of the overall market share. The market experiences high degree of competition as there are large number of medium and big players. Moreover, low product differentiation supports the high degree of competition.Request for TOC of the Report @Global High and Medium Power Passive Components Market: Key SegmentsThe market is segmented on the basis of application sector, application type, and component family. Application sector include telecommunications, consumer audio-video, industrial electronics, computers and data processing, automotive, domestic, and defense. Application type include automotive, professional markets, and consumer markets. Component family include ferrites, capacitors, resistors, chokes and inductors, and crystal filters.Geographically, Asia Pacific is the leading region in the high and medium passive component market. Advent of new technologies also adds to the market growth of this region. In addition, high population, growing demand for the components such as RF chip, RF parts, and capacitors are other factors responsible for the regional demand. On the other hand, North America and Europe are projected to drive the demand growth of the market as well.Read Complete Report @Global High and Medium Power Passive Components Market: Key Market PlayersThe key players in the global high and medium power passive components market include FENGHUA (H.K.) Electronics, Lelon Electronics, Murata Manufacturing, Nippon Chemi-Con, and Panasonic.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Thin Film Metrology Systems Market Growth with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2017 - 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=341 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=341 https://www.tmrresearch.com/thin-film-metrology-systems-market Global Thin Film Metrology Systems Market: SnapshotThin film metrology system is the measurement of film thickness, accurately and precisely. The thickness of the materials measured range from fractions of nanometer to micrometers. Thin film metrology system also finds application in optical coating, semiconductor devices, and metal composition. This system is also utilized to measure the thin film coated over portable devices such as tablets and phones. Thin film is deposited over a material in two ways, namely chemical deposition and physical deposition. Profilometry, spectroscopic, ellipsometry, reflectrometry, and X-ray analysis are some of the technologies used to measure the film thickness. According to the report, the global market for thin film metrology systems is projected for a healthy growth rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.This report is a comprehensive analysis of the global thin film metrology systems market in its current scenario and based on several factors that are expected to influence the demand, the report presents figurative estimations of the revenue available in the market until 2025. One of the key feature of the report is its section on company profiles wherein several prominent companies currently active in the market are analyzed for their market share, product and services offered, and latest developments. The market for thin film metrology system can be segmented on the basis of type, end user, and geography. By type, the market can be divided into single layer thin film metrology and multilayer thin film metrology while by end-user, the market can be divided into semiconductor industry, data storage industries, silicon industries, and others,Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Thin Film Metrology Systems Market: Trends and ProspectsThe growing demand for miniaturization and integration of semiconductors is the primary factor driving the global market for thin film metrology systems. Miniaturization of IC has been a result of high level integration to add functionalities on a single device, which is anticipated to escalate the demand for thin film metrology systems until 2025. Thin film metrology systems also help in improving the efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing processes, and as the demand for semiconductor devices escalates due to the thriving electronics industry, the market for thin film metrology systems will be benefitted. These systems are also applicable in manufacturing complex semiconductor ICs, which has led to architectures such as 3D and FinFET. This factor will further propell the thin films metrology systems demand. Conversely, demand fluctuation in semiconductor industries is the factor expected to hinder the growth rate during the forecast period.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Thin Film Metrology Systems Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the market can be segmented into the regions of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world. Currently, North America serves the maximum demand, owing to factors such as surging demand for electronic goods and high purchasing ability of the consumers. However, Asia Pacific, which resides nearly the half of worlds population, is also projected for a healthy growth rate.KLA-Tencor, Nanometrics, Nova Measuring Instruments, Rudolph Technologies are some of the key players identified by the report in the global thin film metrology systems market. Other prominent vendors are Hitachi High-Technologies, SCREEN Holdings, and Semilab.Read Complete Report @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Global Sheet Metal Screws Market 2016-2021: Business Development Analysis Research N Reports https://www.researchnreports.com/askfordiscount.php?id=27012 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=27012 https://www.researchnreports.com/machinery-equipment/Global-Sheet-Metal-Screws-Market-Research-Report-2016-27012 Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Research Report 2016Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.The latest intelligence on the Sheet Metal Screws market is available in the Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Research report. This report is a culmination of the key events from last decade to present day, and helps to formulate the best strategy catered to both established market players and new entrants.A birds eye view of the Sheet Metal Screws industry made available in the report helps readers to understand the key drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities that are shaping the Global Sheet Metal Screws market. Furthermore, the report evaluates challenges experienced from buyers and sellers side. The report offers advice from key industry experts on how these challenges can be overcome.The key companies operating in the Sheet Metal Screws market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Sheet Metal Screws market.Get 30% Discount on This Report at:A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Sheet Metal Screws market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the Global Sheet Metal Screws market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Sheet Metal Screws market. The dominating technologies in the Sheet Metal Screws market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the reportThe report also elaborates on the opportunities the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America offer. Furthermore, the cost of raw materials in these nations is low, while the availability is high. This has turned the heads of several major international companies to the emerging countries of Asia Pacific.The key companies operating in the Sheet Metal Screws market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Sheet Metal Screws market.Table of Contents:Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Research Report 20161 Sheet Metal Screws Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Sheet Metal Screws1.2 Sheet Metal Screws Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Sheet Metal Screws by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.2.4 Type III1.3 Sheet Metal Screws Segment by Application1.3.1 Sheet Metal Screws Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.3.4 Application 31.4 Sheet Metal Screws Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Sheet Metal Screws (2011-2021)2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Sheet Metal Screws Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Sheet Metal Screws Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Sheet Metal Screws Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Sheet Metal Screws Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Sheet Metal Screws Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2016)3.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production by Region (2011-2016)3.2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.3 Global Sheet Metal Screws Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.4 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.5 North America Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.6 Europe Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.7 China Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.8 Japan Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.9 Southeast Asia Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.10 India Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)4 Global Sheet Metal Screws Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Consumption by Regions (2011-2016)4.2 North America Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.3 Europe Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.4 China Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.5 Japan Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.6 Southeast Asia Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.7 India Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)5 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.3 Global Sheet Metal Screws Price by Type (2011-2016)5.4 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production Growth by Type (2011-2016)6 Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Consumption and Market Share by Application (2011-2016)6.2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2011-2016)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries7 Global Sheet Metal Screws Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Tamper-Pruf Screw7.2 Disco7.3 Malco7.4 ITW Bee Leitzke8 Sheet Metal Screws Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Sheet Metal Screws Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.2.1 Raw Materials8.2.2 Labor Cost8.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Sheet Metal Screws9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Sheet Metal Screws Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Sheet Metal Screws Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders List11 Market Effect Factors Analysis11.1 Technology Progress/Risk11.1.1 Substitutes Threat11.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry11.2 Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change11.3 Economic/Political Environmental Change12 Global Sheet Metal Screws Market Forecast (2016-2021)12.1 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production, Revenue Forecast (2016-2021)12.2 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production, Consumption Forecast by Regions (2016-2021)12.3 Global Sheet Metal Screws Production Forecast by Type (2016-2021)12.4 Global Sheet Metal Screws Consumption Forecast by Application (2016-2021)12.5 Sheet Metal Screws Price Forecast (2016-2021)13 Research Findings and ConclusionEnquiry Before Buying:Complete report available at :About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Bleaching clay Market to Expand with Significant CAGR During 2017-2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/13300 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/13300 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Bleaching Clay Market: OverviewBleaching clay refers to a category of clay which has relatively high adsorption power for decolorizing and refining oils and fats. The primary source material for bleaching clay is montmorillonite which can also be referred as hydrated aluminum silicates, which imparts indispensable adsorption characteristics to bleaching clays. Since the early 19th century, natural bleaching clays have been used for the refining of edible oils and fats, however, the activation process further enhances its properties which include its adsorptive, acid, catalytic and ion exchange capacities. Vegetable and Mineral oil contains a variegated range of impurities like carotenes, chlorophylls, coupled with other complex impurities such as soaps, oxidation products and metals. Activated bleaching clay can effectively remove these impurities, and imparts improved appearance and flavours to these oils. The global bleaching clay competitive landscape also includes companies which are indulged in mining activities to ensure complete control over supply chain. The rising demand for edible and mineral oil has led these companies to increase their capacity in recent years.The global bleaching clay market is expected to expand in proportion to demand for edible and mineral oil, and is anticipated to expand with a decent CAGR over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Bleaching Clay Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe prime factor driving demand for bleaching clay is the increasing demand for refined vegetable oil, as bleaching clay plays an integral role in its manufacturing process. Moreover, advancement in optimizing the yield of oilseeds is expected to drive more production of variegated oil seeds, thus translating into more demand for bleaching clay for its refining purposes. Apart from this, demand for fully refined oils with FFA content of less than 0.1% is driving further demand for highly activated bleaching clays. Bleaching clay often finds application in industrial sector particularly in the production of Industrial triglycerides, linseed oil, castor oil, biodiesel, fatty acids, etc., many of which are an integral part of manufacturing of paints, vanishes, soaps, etc.. Due to rising living standards across the globe, demand for these products are bound to increase, thus fuelling more revenues in the global bleaching clay market. Apart from this, rising consumption of mineral oil due to its broad adoption in cosmetics, lubricants, and grease, is also expected to further boost consumption of bleaching clay for mineral oil refining and processing.Global Bleaching Clay Market: SegmentationOn the basis of Product type, Fullers Earth Activated Clays Activated BauxiteOn the basis of application area, Vegetable Oil and Animal Fats Mineral Oil and Waxes Industrial OilOn the basis of end use industry, Nutrition (Food and Beverage) Chemical Processing Cosmetics OthersGlobal Bleaching clay Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global bleaching clay market is segmented into the seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America and Asia Pacific are anticipated to dominate the global bleaching clay market throughout the forecast period. This can be attributed to rising production of edible oil in major Asian countries such as China and India. Moreover, rising government incentives for production of biofuels and various agricultural benefits being offered in North America, the region is expected to maintain its dominance for the demand of bleaching clay over the next decade. Western Europe and Latin America are expected to be the next prime markets for the consumption of bleaching clay, amid increasing inclination towards low cholesterol oils, thus fuelling more demand for bleaching clay from the region. Along with, increasing production of oil seeds from prime Latin American countries is expected to drive the growth in the region at an even faster rate. Contrary, MEA and Japan is anticipated to account for a smaller market share in the global bleaching clay market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Bleaching clay Market: Key Players Taiko Group of Companies Clariant International AG Oil-Dri Corporation of America BASF SE Musim Mas Holdings, W Clay Industries Ashapura Group of Companies AMC (UK) Ltd. Refoil Earth Pvt. Ltd. HRP Industries AMCOL Specialty MineralsThe 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 Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Recent Survey on Poland - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Digital Media - Statistics and Analyses http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1056475 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1056475 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Poland - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Digital Media - Statistics and Analyses" to its huge collection of research reports.Polands liberalised telecom market has seen considerable development in all sectors. The incumbent telco Orange Poland has seen its market share dwindle in the face of competition and a regulatory environment which has facilitated the market entry of new players and extended network to Orange Polands fibre and copper networks.The mobile market in recent years has been characterised by the rapid extension of LTE networks and the development of services. By early 2017 mobile penetration stood at around 142%, among the highest rates in the region. For many years the popularity among consumers for keeping two or more SIM cards distorted the mobile penetration rate. This has been addressed on to fronts: by the regulator encouraging network operators to disconnect dormant SIM cards, and by the government which passed legislation, effective from February 2017, which obliged prepaid SIM card holders to register their details with network providers. As a result there has been a significant readjustment in the number of subscribers in the market since 2015.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The market has effective competition from a number of MNOs, and has room for about 20 MVNOs. ARPU continues to be adversely affected by retail tariff competition and regulatory mandated reductions in mobile termination rates and roaming tariffs. However, operators anticipate that ARPU will stabilise in coming years in line with consumer adoption of mobile data services, facilitated by improved network infrastructure. LTE networks provide extensive population coverage, which will increase further into 2017 as operators make greater use of concessions in the 800MHz and 2600MHz bands, released to them in early 2016, and refarm spectrum currently used for GSM and 3G services.Polands fixed broadband market has benefited from excellent cross-platform competition, with comprehensive DSL infrastructure complemented by extensive cable networks and a growing fibre presence. Commercial considerations meant that fibre was for some years restricted to a number of urban areas, though more recently the sector has received considerable financial support from the government and the European Union. This support is aimed at building fibre-based networks across the country (particularly in eastern areas) and promoting fibre connectivity to end-users. As a result, the proportion of broadband subscribers receiving a service of at least 100Mb/s has increased sharply in recent years. In the cable sector some market consolidation has continued with the acquisition by Liberty Global of the cable assets of Multimedia Polska.This report covers key aspects of Polands evolving telecom market, presenting comprehensive data and information on market players, fixed-line networks and technologies, the wholesale market, as well as an overview of key regulatory developments. The report also reviews the mobile market, providing profiles of the major operators together with updated operating and financial results. It details recent regulatory measures and spectrum auction results, and assesses the reach and capabilities of deployed mobile technologies. In addition the profiles the fixed broadband and digital media markets, including a review of the key market players, statistics and technology platforms, and an assessment of recent market developments. It also includes fixed-line broadband forecasts to 2022.Key developments:- Polkomtels LTE-A infrastructure providing 40% population coverage;- Orange Poland elects not to renew 450MHz licence;- Orange Poland launches commercial Wi-Fi Calling service;- T-Mobile Poland expected to launch commercial NB-IoT services by mid-2017;- Orange Poland and T-Mobile Poland extend LTE network sharing to additional spectrum bands;- Regulator removes operator obligations on the SMS market;- Regulator makes steps to annul results of the 2007 1800MHz auction;- Vectra and Toya launch 1Gb/s FttP services; Orange tests Fibre-to-the-Distribution-point (FttDp) technology;- Liberty Global acquires Multimedias cable assets;- National Broadcasting Council awards licences on the fifth multiplex;- TVP continues DVB-T2 trial;- Report update includes the regulators market data report and 2015 infrastructure report for 2016, State Statistics data for 2016, telcos operating and financial data for Q4 2016, recent market developments.Companies mentioned in this report:Orange Poland (Telekomunikacja Polska), Netia, Telefonia Dialog, GTS Energis, Exatel, Telekomunikacja Kolejowa, CenterNet, Polkomtel (Plus), T-Mobile Poland, P4/Play, Orange Poland (PTK Centertel), Mobyland, UPC Poland, Orange Poland (Telekomunikacja Polska), Netia, Aster, Multimedia Polska, Vectra, Telefonia Dialog, Polkomtel, UPC Polska, Vectra, Multimedia Polska, Aster, Cyfra+, Cyfrowy Polsat, N/TNK, Orange Poland (Telekomunikacja Polska), TVP.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Analysis and Forecasts New Research Report Research N Reports https://www.researchnreports.com/askfordiscount.php?id=27195 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=27195 https://www.researchnreports.com/machinery-equipment/Global-Biomass-Steam-Boiler-Sales-Market-Report-2016-27195 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Report 2016Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.The latest intelligence on the Biomass Steam Boiler market is available in the Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Research report. This report is a culmination of the key events from last decade to present day, and helps to formulate the best strategy catered to both established market players and new entrants.A birds eye view of the Biomass Steam Boiler industry made available in the report helps readers to understand the key drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities that are shaping the Global Biomass Steam Boiler market. Furthermore, the report evaluates challenges experienced from buyers and sellers side. The report offers advice from key industry experts on how these challenges can be overcome.The key companies operating in the Biomass Steam Boiler market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Biomass Steam Boiler market.Get 30% Discount on This Report at:A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Biomass Steam Boiler market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the Global Biomass Steam Boiler market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Biomass Steam Boiler market. The dominating technologies in the Biomass Steam Boiler market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the reportThe report also elaborates on the opportunities the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America offer. Furthermore, the cost of raw materials in these nations is low, while the availability is high. This has turned the heads of several major international companies to the emerging countries of Asia Pacific.The key companies operating in the Biomass Steam Boiler market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Biomass Steam Boiler market.Table of Contents:Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Research Report 20161 Biomass Steam Boiler Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Biomass Steam Boiler1.2 Biomass Steam Boiler Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Biomass Steam Boiler by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.2.4 Type III1.3 Biomass Steam Boiler Segment by Application1.3.1 Biomass Steam Boiler Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.3.4 Application 31.4 Biomass Steam Boiler Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Biomass Steam Boiler (2011-2021)2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Biomass Steam Boiler Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Biomass Steam Boiler Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Biomass Steam Boiler Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Biomass Steam Boiler Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2016)3.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production by Region (2011-2016)3.2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.3 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.4 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.5 North America Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.6 Europe Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.7 China Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.8 Japan Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.9 Southeast Asia Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.10 India Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)4 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Consumption by Regions (2011-2016)4.2 North America Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.3 Europe Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.4 China Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.5 Japan Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.6 Southeast Asia Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.7 India Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)5 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.3 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Price by Type (2011-2016)5.4 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production Growth by Type (2011-2016)6 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Consumption and Market Share by Application (2011-2016)6.2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2011-2016)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries7 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Kelvinator7.2 Winchester7.3 Carrier8 Biomass Steam Boiler Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Biomass Steam Boiler Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.2.1 Raw Materials8.2.2 Labor Cost8.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Biomass Steam Boiler9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Biomass Steam Boiler Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Biomass Steam Boiler Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders List11 Market Effect Factors Analysis11.1 Technology Progress/Risk11.1.1 Substitutes Threat11.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry11.2 Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change11.3 Economic/Political Environmental Change12 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Market Forecast (2016-2021)12.1 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Revenue Forecast (2016-2021)12.2 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production, Consumption Forecast by Regions (2016-2021)12.3 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Production Forecast by Type (2016-2021)12.4 Global Biomass Steam Boiler Consumption Forecast by Application (2016-2021)12.5 Biomass Steam Boiler Price Forecast (2016-2021)13 Research Findings and ConclusionEnquiry Before Buying:Complete report available at :About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Location Based Services Market in Africa to Expand at a CAGR of 49.39% to 2021 Due to Rise in IT Industry http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=741816 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=741816 ALBANY, NY, April 27, 2017 : LBS use the location of a mobile device to provide information through a mobile network. GPS delivers location information anywhere around the globe for outdoor environments. For indoor environments, technologies such as Wi-Fi, wireless local area network (WLAN) modems, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, ultrasound, infrared, and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) provide information.Technavios analysts forecast the location-based services market in Africa to grow at a CAGR of 49.39% during the period 2016-2020.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the location-based services market in Africa for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the annual sales of the following:LBS applications, software, and digital mapsLBS map, mobile LBS, and LBS solution segmentsIn the LBS map segment, the report considers the revenue generated from the following:Map licensesMap solutions offered by map providersPublic sector and enterprise applications that use mapsIn the mobile LBS segment, the report considers the revenue generated from the following:LBS applications in global positioning system (GPS)-enabled devices such as smartphones, tablets, and feature phonesSale and licensing of mobile LBS platforms and application program interfaces (API)Mobile LBS such as mobile location-based search, navigation, advertising, social networking, games, infotainment, weather alerts and forecasts, real estate, and emergency supportIn the LBS solutions segment, the report considers the revenue generated from the following:LBS applications used in in-dash devices, portable navigation devices (PND), and handheld LBS devicesMobile applications and services used by individual users for outdoor and fitness-related activitiesLBS applications used in the government organizations segment (including disaster recovery and emergency services, public transport tracking, and traffic management)LBS applications used in the enterprise users segment, including the automotive, fleet management, telecom, retail, consumer durables, oil and natural gas, aviation, marine, and healthcare domains, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)However, the report does not consider the annual sales of smartphones, tablets, or feature phones used by enterprise or government users.Technavio's report, Location-Based Services (LBS) Market in Africa 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 vendorsFoursquareGoogleMTN GroupHERETomTomOther prominent vendorsAirtel AfricaAsset TelematicsAstrata GroupCellfind (Blue Label Telecoms)EricssonIntertelLocateITMomoMySidekickmySOSRuckus WirelessStarTrackTeleCommunication SystemsTelenityVigilMVodacomWestconGroupMarket driverIndoor LBS applications for public safety and emergency supportFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLack of accuracy and reliability of navigation informationFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMake an Enquiry of this report @Market trendIncreased use of 3D platformsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States Global Piling Car Market Research and Analysis 2021 Research N Reports https://www.researchnreports.com/askfordiscount.php?id=27376 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=27376 https://www.researchnreports.com/machinery-equipment/Global-Piling-Car-Market-Research-Report-2016-27376 Global Piling Car Market Research Report 2016Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.The latest intelligence on the Piling Car market is available in the Global Piling Car Market Research report. This report is a culmination of the key events from last decade to present day, and helps to formulate the best strategy catered to both established market players and new entrants.A birds eye view of the Piling Car industry made available in the report helps readers to understand the key drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities that are shaping the Global Piling Car market. Furthermore, the report evaluates challenges experienced from buyers and sellers side. The report offers advice from key industry experts on how these challenges can be overcome.The key companies operating in the Piling Car market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Piling Car market.Get 30% Discount on This Report at:A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Piling Car market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the Global Piling Car market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Piling Car market. The dominating technologies in the Piling Car market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the reportThe report also elaborates on the opportunities the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America offer. Furthermore, the cost of raw materials in these nations is low, while the availability is high. This has turned the heads of several major international companies to the emerging countries of Asia Pacific.The key companies operating in the Piling Car market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Piling Car market.Table of Contents:Global Piling Car Market Research Report 20161 Piling Car Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Piling Car1.2 Piling Car Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Piling Car by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.2.4 Type III1.3 Piling Car Segment by Application1.3.1 Piling Car Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.3.4 Application 31.4 Piling Car Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Piling Car (2011-2021)2 Global Piling Car Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Piling Car Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Piling Car Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Piling Car Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Piling Car Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Piling Car Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Piling Car Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Piling Car Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Piling Car Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2016)3.1 Global Piling Car Production by Region (2011-2016)3.2 Global Piling Car Production Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.3 Global Piling Car Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.4 Global Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.5 North America Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.6 Europe Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.7 China Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.8 Japan Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.9 Southeast Asia Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.10 India Piling Car Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)4 Global Piling Car Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.1 Global Piling Car Consumption by Regions (2011-2016)4.2 North America Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.3 Europe Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.4 China Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.5 Japan Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.6 Southeast Asia Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.7 India Piling Car Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)5 Global Piling Car Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Piling Car Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.2 Global Piling Car Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.3 Global Piling Car Price by Type (2011-2016)5.4 Global Piling Car Production Growth by Type (2011-2016)6 Global Piling Car Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Piling Car Consumption and Market Share by Application (2011-2016)6.2 Global Piling Car Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2011-2016)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries7 Global Piling Car Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 NOBLIFT7.2 TOYOTA7.3 Linde7.4 SUNWARD7.5 XILIN8 Piling Car Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Piling Car Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.2.1 Raw Materials8.2.2 Labor Cost8.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Piling Car9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Piling Car Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Piling Car Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders List11 Market Effect Factors Analysis11.1 Technology Progress/Risk11.1.1 Substitutes Threat11.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry11.2 Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change11.3 Economic/Political Environmental Change12 Global Piling Car Market Forecast (2016-2021)12.1 Global Piling Car Production, Revenue Forecast (2016-2021)12.2 Global Piling Car Production, Consumption Forecast by Regions (2016-2021)12.3 Global Piling Car Production Forecast by Type (2016-2021)12.4 Global Piling Car Consumption Forecast by Application (2016-2021)12.5 Piling Car Price Forecast (2016-2021)13 Research Findings and ConclusionEnquiry Before Buying:Complete report available at :About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Egypt Life Insurance Industry Analysis, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 | Now Available at Researchmoz.us http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1049130 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1049130 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Life Insurance in Egypt, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.'Life Insurance in Egypt Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Egyptian life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Egyptian insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Summary'Life Insurance in Egypt Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Egyptian life insurance segment, including:An overview of the Egyptian life insurance segmentThe Egyptian life insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographicsA comparison of the Egyptian life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsThe various distribution channels in the Egyptian life insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in EgyptDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Egyptian insurance industryScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Egypt:It provides historical values for the Egyptian life insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Egyptian life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a comparison of the Egyptian life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsIt analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Egypt.It profiles the top life insurance companies in Egypt and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Egyptian life insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Egyptian life insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Egyptian insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn February 2017, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) announced plans to increase the minimum capital requirements for insurers from EGP60.0 million (US$7.8 million) to EGP200.0 million (US$26.0 million). A final decision is expected over the forecast period.According to the EFSA, nine takaful insurance companies operate in the insurance industry as of September 2016.In August 2016, the EFSA, in association with the Insurance Federation of Egypt (IFE), introduced rules for the issuance and distribution of insurance policies electronically.In February 2014, the EFSA issued new guidelines that permit insurance companies to launch professionally managed investment funds.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Process Safety System Market : Growth, Size or Share Estimated to increase by 2017 - 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=362 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=362 https://www.tmrresearch.com/process-safety-system-market Global Process Safety System Market: OverviewProcess safety system involves preventing fires, explosions, and accidental release of chemicals in chemical industries or the accidental release of hazardous materials in industries such as oil and gas and paints and coatings. The deployment of process safety systems is aimed at providing the necessary measures that are needed to minimize or overcome hazard to the environment or to personnel.In oil and gas operations, the discovery of new oil fields leading to changing fortunes has high operational hazards that can be fatal as well. According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the oil and gas industry in the U.S. had fatality rate seven times higher than for workers in all other industries between 2003 and 2010.Request a Brochure of the Report @The research report provides useful insights into growth trends, process innovation, and competitive landscape of the global process safety system market. This includes a detailed assessment of the vital market parameters such as market drivers, market restraints, and growth trends in the past and projections for the 2017-2025 period.The report is compiled after gathering data from industry-centric databases and valuable insights received from industry experts about their viewpoint on the development trends in the global process safety system market. The report analyzes the market from a competitive standpoint as well. The leading companies are profiled for their distinguishing business attributes and indices of strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of these companies are gauged until the end of the forecast period in 2025.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Process Safety System Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIn oil and gas operations, measures to minimize social and economic damage combined with stringent governmental regulations are having a positive impact on the growth of the global process safety system market. This is because workplace safety is of paramount importance converting into higher revenue for any industry.Global Process Safety System Market: Market SegmentationThe global process safety system market can be analyzed on the basis of end user and geography. The end-user segments of the market are oil and gas, chemical, pharmaceuticals, refining, and power generation. Other than these, process safety systems are displaying a significant demand from other industries that have potentially hazardous operations and have a considerable utilization of volatile compounds and toxic chemicals.Read Complete Report @On the basis of geography, the regional segments of the global process safety system market are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The major countries that have process safety system capabilities are the U.S. and Canada in North America; Russia, France, Germany, and the U.K. in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, China, Australia, and India in Asia Pacific; Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, and the Middle Eastern nations in the Rest of the World. These countries are identified based on their process safety systems capabilities installed for economic and social welfare predominantly in petroleum operations, manufacturing, and chemical industries.Major Companies Mentioned in ReportSome of the leading companies in the global process safety system market are ABB Ltd., Siemens AG, E.l.du Pont de Nemours and Company, Rockwell Automation Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Yokogawa Electric Corp, and Integraph Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Instant Coffee Market By Packaging Type (Jars & Sachets ) : Advanced technologies, Global Forecast and Winning Imperatives 2017 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1045356 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1045356 Coffee is a popular beverage on the global platform. Being the most popular beverage, this product is the second most traded commodity in the world after crude oil. On the other hand, Brazil, India, Chile, Argentina are the largest producer of coffee in the world. Ethnicity and culture plays a major role in the consumption of coffee on a global level. Since 1910, the popularity of instant coffee has also taken a steady growth in the market where people from the tea consuming nations are slowly getting acquainted to consume this beverage.There has been a positive change in lifestyle of people in developing nations, with youngsters heavily adopting the western culture. Countries like India, China, and a few Middle Eastern countries are seeing a transition to heavy consumption of coffee over tea. Consumers with life style seek beverages that can be easily prepared and are pocket-friendly as well. Instant coffee not only maintains the aroma and flavor of the drink but also gives a branded experience to consumers. The impact of this driver is medium in the short run and is expected to be high by the end of the forecast period.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Increasing competition in the global market is driving leading companies to undertake intensive research and development. In order to have a balanced product portfolio in the market, leading players like Starbucks and Nescafe are constantly innovating and trying to deliver a brand rich experience to consumers. The Fair Trade concept of producing coffee in underdeveloped countries is also adding to the competition in the global market.Global Instant Coffee Market: Geographical AnalysisThe convenience of preparing the drink due to the ease in its availability has driven the market for this product heavily. Traditional coffee or whole bean coffee machines are usually implanted in most of the households of the major coffee drinking nations. On a recent research, UK has contributed to highest instant coffee consumption in the Western Europe. Instant coffee is easy to prepare and there is no hassle of disposing off the waste, as in the case of the filter coffee. Moreover, the introduction of instant coffee in the market by leading players such as Nestle, Jacobs Douwe Egberts and others are promoting the usage of sachets and jars that will be convenient in preparing coffee quickly.Millennials are driven by convenience and quality products even in India and China, and they are ready to pay a higher price for a rich experience. However, Instant coffee faces a major setback due to the consumption pattern among the population in geographical regions such as North America, Western Europe and Latin America preferred filter coffee over instant coffee. Consumers in this countries prefer filter coffee because of their traditional habit of accepting coffee as a drink that has the true properties of it as a caffeinated beverage. Furthermore, the hassle of preparing filter coffee from the whole bean is hefty, but the original flavor and aroma lies in the espresso shot which comes from the coffee machines, usually installed in most of the households and other industrial areas in these countries. Due to these factors, the impact of this restraint is high currently and is expected to be medium by the end of the forecast period.The global instant coffee market is segmented into two types of packaging- Jars and sachets. In terms of distribution channel the market segmented by B2B and retail. B2B distribution channel is further segmented by hotels, restaurant and others. Retail distribution channel is further segmented by online and offline. Offline retail distribution channel is segmented by departmental store, super and hyper market and others.Global Instant Coffee Market: Competitive LandscapeIn order to get a better understanding of the global instant coffee market, a key trends analysis has been included for all the segments. In addition, the market players in the instant coffee market have also been profiled. The leading players in the market include. Nestle S.A. (Vevey, Switzerland), Starbucks Corporation. (Seattle, Washington, U.S), Jacobs Douwe Egberts (DK Amsterdam, Netherlands), Strauss Group Ltd. (Petah Tikva, Israel), Matthew Algie & Company Ltd (London, U.K), The Kraft Heinz Company (Illinois, U.S.), Tata Global Beverages (Kolkata, West Bengal), Tchibo Coffee (Hamburg, Germany), Keurig Green Mountain.(Vermont, U.S.) and Unilever Plc. (London, U.K.) among others.The global instant coffee market can be segmented as follows:-By Distribution ChannelB2BHotelRestaurantOthersRetailOnlineOfflineDepartmental StoresHyper and Super MarketOthersBy Packaging TypeJarsSachetsMake an Enquiry of this report @By GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaWestern EuropeU.K.GermanyFranceNetherlandRest of Western EuropeRest of EuropeRussiaResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G Wireless Network Infrastructure Market in Global Industry : Insights, Development, Research and Forecast 2017-2030 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=804849 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=804849 ALBANY, NY, April 27, 2017 : The wireless network infrastructure market is currently in a phase of transition as mobile operators seek to address increasing mobile traffic demands amidst global economic uncertainties. This paradigm shift is bringing new challenges and opportunities to infrastructure vendors.In 2015, global 2G, 3G and 4G wireless infrastructure revenues stood at nearly $65 Billion. SNS Research estimates that these revenues will remain flat in 2016, largely due to declining macrocell RAN and mobile core investments. Over the next four years, the market is expected to decline at a CAGR of 1%, eventually shrinking to $61 Billion by the end of 2020.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Despite the ongoing decline in the wider market, mobile operators are expected to significantly increase their spending in the evolving HetNet (Heterogeneous Network) submarket, which encompasses small cells, carrier Wi-Fi, DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) and C-RAN (Centralized RAN) infrastructure. Small cell and carrier Wi-Fi equipment alone will represent a market worth $3 Billion in 2016. Supplemented further by DAS and C-RAN investments, the HetNet sector is attracting considerable attention from both established vendors as well as startups that solely focus on this submarket.Spanning over 1,000 pages, "The 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G Wireless Network Infrastructure Market: 2016 2030 with an Evaluation of Wi-Fi and WiMAX" report package encompasses two comprehensive reports covering both the conventional 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G wireless network infrastructure market as well as the emerging HetNet submarket:The Wireless Network Infrastructure Ecosystem: 2016 2030 Macrocell RAN, Small Cells, C-RAN, RRH, DAS, Carrier Wi-Fi, Mobile Core, Backhaul & FronthaulThe HetNet Ecosystem (Small Cells, Carrier Wi-Fi, C-RAN & DAS): 2016 2030 Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & ForecastsThis report package provides an in-depth assessment of the 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G wireless network infrastructure market and also explores the HetNet submarket. Besides analyzing the key market drivers, challenges, regional CapEx commitments and vendor strategies, the report package also presents revenue and unit shipment forecasts for the wireless network infrastructure, macrocell, mobile core, small cell, Wi-Fi offload, DAS, C-RAN and the mobile transport submarkets from 2016 to 2030 at a regional as well as a global scale.The report package comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report package.Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:2G (GSM and CDMA) technology and market trends3G (W-CDMA/HSPA, TD-SCDMA and CDMA-2000) technology and market trends4G (LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX) technology and market trends5G (IMT-2020) technology and market trendsMobile core technology and market trendsMobile transport (backhaul and fronthaul) technology and market trendsHetNet (Wi-Fi offloading, small cell, C-RAN and DAS) technology and market trendsAnalysis of key trends such as enterprise RAN, TD-LTE, VoLTE virtualization, unlicensed small cells and SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service)Market drivers for wireless network infrastructure investmentsChallenges and barriers to the ecosystemProfiles and strategies of over 350 wireless network infrastructure vendorsGlobal and regional market analysis and forecastsSWOT analysis of the wireless network infrastructure marketMake an Enquiry of this report @Key Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How is the 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G wireless network infrastructure market evolving by segment and region?What will the market size be in 2016 and at what rate will it grow?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?How will the market shape for HetNet infrastructure such as small cells, C-RAN and DAS?How big is the opportunity for enterprise RAN deployments?How will Wi-Fi fit into future network architectures for access and offload?Who are the key vendors in the market, what is their market share and what are their strategies?What strategies should be adopted by mobile operators and vendors to remain a dominant market force?Which 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G technology constitutes the highest amount of spending and how will this evolve overtime?How will LTE deployments proceed, and how long will 2G/3G technologies coexist with LTE?When will WiMAX infrastructure spending diminish?What is the global and regional outlook for RAN and mobile core submarkets?What is the opportunity for mobile transport networking gear, and what new backhaul/fronthaul solutions are evolving?ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States Automotive Drivetrain Market Estimated to Flourish by 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14293 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14293 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global Automotive Drivetrain Market: Market IntroductionA drivetrain is a group of components that provides power to the driving wheels. The major function of the drivetrain is to couple the engine that produces the power to driving wheels that consume this mechanical power. The precise component of the drivetrain varies according to the type of vehicle. For instance, the manual transmission car, automatic transmission car, front-wheel drive car, four-wheel drive off-road vehicle are the various types of vehicles available in the market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Better vehicle control in unfavorable terrains is expected to increase the demand for automotive drivetrains. For instance, in countries such as U.S., Canada, and Germany, the roads are frequently covered with snow; therefore the vehicle requires extra grip and better traction to be sufficiently under the control of the driver.Global Automotive Drivetrain Market: Market DynamicsThe primary driver of the market is the growing demand for comfort and safety in vehicles. Moreover. the increase in the vehicle production is another major driver for the automotive drivetrain market during the forecast period. For instance, The countries in APEJ such as China, India, and South Korea are the leading countries in terms of vehicle production. The market for front wheel drive vehicles have a larger share in the APEJ market, however, the rear wheel drive and the all-wheel drive vehicle are also growing at a steady rate, thus enhancing the sales for automotive drivetrain market.The increasing usage of electric vehicles is also further expected to enhance the sales for the automotive drivetrain. For instance, according to the International Energy Agency, one million electric cars were sold in 2015. The ambitious targets and policy support have reduced the vehicle costs and have also extended the vehicle range.However, the key factor restraining the growth of automotive drivetrain is the high adoption and maintenance cost of vehicles equipped with all-wheel drive vehicle. Further, the cost of all-wheel drive systems is costlier compared to conventional front wheel drive and rear wheel drive system. Moreover, the all-wheel drive systems include additional components such as driveshaft, transfer cases, and locking hubs.Automotive Drivetrain: Market SegmentationOn the basis of the vehicle type, the global automotive drivetrain market can be segmented into: Vehicle Type Passenger cars Light Commercial Vehicle(LCV) Heavy Commercial Vehicle(HCV) Trucks Buses Electric Vehicle Type Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Plug-in-Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)On the basis of drive type, the global automotive drivetrain market can be segmented into: All-Wheel Drive (AWD) Vehicle Front Wheel drive (FWD) Rear-wheel Drive (RWD)On the basis of engine location, the automotive drivetrain market can be further segmented into: Rear Engine Front EngineOn the basis of transmission, the global automotive drivetrain market can be further segmented into: Manual Transmission Automatic Transmission Continuous Variable Transmission Automated Manual Transmission Dual-Clutch TransmissionAutomotive Drivetrain Market: Regional OutlookRegional coverage for automotive drivetrain market includes North America, Latin America, Europe, APEJ, Japan and the Middle East and Africa. Automotive drivetrain witnesses a high demand in APEJ because of the high investments in the region. Changing consumer perceptions in this region boost the growth of the market. Moreover, the automotive drivetrain market is expected to grow significantly in terms of revenue in North America and Europe regionTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Automotive Drivetrain: Market PlayersThe market players in Automotive Drivetrain Market are Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd., BorgWarner Inc., Schaeffler Group, Showa Corporation, ZF TRW, GKN plc, JTEKT Corporation, Magna International Inc., Dana Holding Corporation, and American Axle & Manufacturing, 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 Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Motorcycle Engine Management System Market Foreseen to Grow exponentially over 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11461 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11461 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Introduction: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.A sample of this report is available upon request @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.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @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 Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Systems Market to Receive overwhelming hike in Revenues by 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11998 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11998 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Cogeneration (also known as combined heat and power systems (CHP)) is a cluster of technologies primarily used for the concurrent generation of electricity and useful heat. This combined generation of heat and electricity is much more effective than separate generation of electricity and useful heat in a way that CHP systems offers improved energy efficiency, reduced managing cost, low CO2 emission and others. Growing data center capacity as business operate more processes, handle complex analytics with increasing storage requirements for customer data and employing rich media. Handling of such large data requires continuous supply of reliable power making cogeneration systems of primary importance. Efficiency level for cogeneration systems can reach up to 80 % against separate generation of heat and electricity which provides combined efficiency of 40-50 %. CHP systems for data centers are gaining traction in the market as using such plants as source of data center power leads to energy efficient and substantial cost reduction benefits. However, another technology commercially available for powering data centers includes fuel cells. Although CHP systems are less efficient than fuel cells but requires lesser fuel to generate the same amount of power and has a win when its ability to supply chilled water is factored. Some of the major benefits offered utilizing CHP systems for data centers are limited reliance over external power supply, increased energy efficiency, low site carbon emission and others.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global CHP System market for Data Centre: Market DynamicsRegions with high electricity cost are readily adopting CHP systems primarily to save on their energy cost to provide base load power and using such systems to provide absorption cooling for the facility. Moreover, government initiatives to install CHP systems in data center facilities due to low CO2 emissions is also expected to increase its adoption rate thereby increasing the adoption of CHP system in data centers.Low economic life of data center IT equipment results in consumer reluctance towards adoption of CHP systems for data centers since these systems have equipment life of around 10-15 years in comparison to economic life of IT equipment which is only 2-3 years.Global CHP System market for Data Centre: SegmentationThe global CHP system market for data center can be segmented on the basis of data center types, facility size, installation type and region. By Data center types the market can be segmented into Telecoms, ISPs (internet Service Provider), CoLos (Co-located server hosting facilities), server farms, corporate data centers, university/ national laboratory and others. Based on facility the market can be segmented into less than 200 sq.ft, 200-700 sq.ft, 700-1,200 sq.ft, 1,200-6,000 sq.ft and more than 6,000 sq.ft. Based on installation type global cogeneration systems market for data center can be segmented into newly installed systems and retrofit systems. By region global CHP system market for data centers can be segmented into seven key regions namely North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Middle East and Africa and Japan.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global CHP System market for Data Centre: Key PlayersSome of the major players identified across CHP system market for data center includes ENER-G, Korea Electric Power Corporation, National Grid plc, Exelon Corporation, NextEra Energy, Inc., Chubu Electric Power Company, American Electric Power Company, Inc. 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.Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Global Market Analysis and Trend Report 2017 | New Release http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=973207 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=973207 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies sales (consumption) of Ultrasonic Coating Systems in Global market, especially in United States, China, Europe and Japan, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringSono-TekUltrasonic Systems, Inc.MTISiansonicSonaerWeisaitecNoanixNadetechOptosenseMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, market share and growth rate of Ultrasonic Coating Systems in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product Types, with sales, revenue, price and gross margin, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoRotary-Type Ultrasonic Coating SystemsFlat-Type Ultrasonic Coating SystemsSplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Ultrasonic Coating Systems in each application, can be divided intoBio & MedElectronics & EnergyIndustrialOtherTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsGlobal Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Market Report 20171 Ultrasonic Coating Systems Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Ultrasonic Coating Systems1.2 Classification of Ultrasonic Coating Systems1.2.1 Rotary-Type Ultrasonic Coating Systems1.2.2 Flat-Type Ultrasonic Coating Systems1.3 Application of Ultrasonic Coating Systems1.3.1 Bio & Med1.3.2 Electronics & Energy1.3.3 Industrial1.3.4 Other1.4 Ultrasonic Coating Systems Market by Regions1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Ultrasonic Coating Systems (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.4 Global Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume) by Application3 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Application4 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers4.3 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Type4.4 China Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Application5 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers5.3 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Application6 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Value (2012-2017)6.1.1 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.2 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.3 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)6.2 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers6.3 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by Type6.4 Japan Ultrasonic Coating Systems Sales and Market Share by ApplicationMake 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 @ Smart Machines Market to Grow at 18.8% CAGR by 2024 Smart Machines Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/8872 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/smart-machines-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Persistence Market Research (PMR) delivers key insights on the global smart machines market in its upcoming report titled, Smart Machines Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2016-2024. In terms of value, the global smart machines market is projected to register a healthy CAGR of 18.8% during the forecast period. This is attributed to various factors, regarding which PMR offers vital insights in detail.On the basis of a component, the global smart machines market has been segmented into hardware, software, and service. Demand for smart machines is enhanced by increasing need to process and analyze big unstructured data among different sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, and defense. On the basis of machine type, the global smart machines market has been segmented into robots, autonomous cars, drones, wearable electronics and others.On the basis of technology, the global smart machines market has been segmented into cloud computing, big data, internet of everything (IoE), robotics, cognitive technology and effective technology. Affective technology segment is expected to expand with a substantial CAGR over the forecast period. Various enterprises working on cognitive computing are facing glitches and errors in technology. This, in turn, is encouraging adoption of affective computing. Cognitive computing technology enables emotions linking to a robot, assisting the robot in making rational decisions and performing more complex tasks.Smart machines are deployed to enhance networked resources and implement distributed intelligence in manufacturing industries. Integration of devices provides more accessibility. Smart machines can be easily connected to a broader network of connected devices, enabling users to share data on numerous devices. This ensures users to connect/access their devices from anywhere and anytime. This is expected to fuel demand for smart machines in various industries. The market in Australia is expected to witness substantial growth in adoption rates of smart machines over the next five years. Autonomous robots are expected to find applications in agriculture and commercial sectors to overcome the lack of labor in the country. Australia-based companies have also been investing significantly in advanced technologies such as IoT.Smart machines are programmed to make intelligent decisions in a time efficient manner. They are built to learn from their interactions and their precision increases over time. Hence, new developments in operational intelligence are encouraging companies to adopt systems that are smarter and efficient. Narrative Science Inc., a company that offers analytical solutions uses its virtual assistant Quill, which is programed using natural language processing to provide relevant solutions.A sample of this report is available upon request @This report covers trends driving each segment and offers analysis and insights of the potential of the smart machines market in specific regions. The markets in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific are expected to register high growth rates between 2016 and 2024. MEA is a small but significant market for smart machines as governments in the Middle East countries are investing in this sector to digitize government services. The market in Europe is expected to gain substantial market share in terms of revenue. This is attributed to increasing demand for smart machines from the automobile and manufacturing industries in countries such as Germany and France. The APAC accounted for the highest market share in 2015 and is expected to gain 232 BPS by an end of 2024.Request to view table of content @Key players in the global smart machines market include Apple Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corporation, BAE Systems, Creative Virtual Ltd., Digital Reasoning Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Narrative Science Inc., Rethink Robotics, ABB Limited, Rockwell Automation, Inc., and General Electric Co. 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: Malaysia Medical Tourism Market: Industry Size, Analysis, Technology advancement, Overview, Growth, Share and Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/206438 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ Latest industry research report on: Malaysia Medical Tourism Market : Industry Size, Share, Research, Reviews, Analysis, Strategies, Demand, Growth, Segmentation, Parameters, ForecastsMalaysia has emerged as a strong competitor in the global health and medical tourism sector. Given the potential of medical tourism as a foreign exchange earner, the Malaysian government has taken a series of proactive measures to enhance Malaysia as a preferred health tourism destination. Malaysia offers a wide choice of stateoftheart private medical centers boasting an impressive array of sophisticated diagnosis, therapeutic and inpatient facilities. These establishments are wellequipped and staffed to ensure the highest level of professionalism, safety and care to patients. Malaysia is a popular destination for medical tourists because of its low cost, efficient staff and medical facilities that are on par with western standards. Some hospitals even offer luxurious accommodations with personal butlers and fulltime nurses. Popular medical procedures include eye surgeries, orthopedics, cosmetic, urology, neurology, rheumatology, endocrinology, obstetrics & gynecology, oncology, and cardiology.Request For Sample Report @The total number of medical tourist arrivals in Malaysia reached to 700 Thousand in 2013, backed by factors, such as availability of good healthcare infrastructure, government support through promotional programs, and wellskilled medical professionals. Indonesia is the largest source market for Malaysia medical tourism. United States, China & Hong Kong, Japan Australia are also good revenue generators for Malaysia. The emerging source country for Malaysia medical tourism market is China, Japan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh and many others.This is 2nd edition report on Malaysia Medical Tourism by Renub Research. Report titled "Malaysia Medical Tourism Analysis & Forecast provides a comprehensive analysis of the Malaysia medical tourism market covering in detail various aspects such as medical tourists arrivals and spending from top 20 countries.This 91 page report with 80 Figures provides a complete analysis of top 20 countries who visited Malaysia for medical treatment. All the 20 countries in the report have been studied from 2 viewpoints.I. Medical Tourists Arrivals in Malaysia from the year 2006 2018II. Medical Tourists Spending in Malaysia from the year 2006 2018The 20 Countries covered in the report are as followsUnited StatesUnited KingdomIndonesiaChina & Hong KongLibyaNepalJapanIranAustraliaIndiaSingaporeSaudi ArabiaMyanmarPhilippinesVirgin Islands, BritishBangladeshGermanyKoreaFranceOthersAbout 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.Contact UsState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Hot Drinks Global Group of Eight (G8) Industry Guide 2017 :MarketResearchReports.biz http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/1063758 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1063758 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Hot Drinks Global Group of Eight (G8) Industry Guide 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"The G8 Hot Drinks industry profile provides top-line qualitative and quantitative summary information including: market share, market size (value and volume 2011-15, and forecast to 2020). The profile also contains descriptions of the leading players including key financial metrics and analysis of competitive pressures within the market.Essential resource for top-line data and analysis covering the G8 hot drinks market. Includes market size and segmentation data, textual and graphical analysis of market growth trends and leading companies.- The G8 countries contributed $71,209.3 million in 2015 to the global hot drinks industry, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8% between 2011 and 2015. The G8 countries are expected to reach a value of $91,174.3 million in 2020, with a CAGR of 5.1% over the 2015-20 period.- Among the G8 nations, the US is the leading country in the hot drinks industry, with market revenues of $15,609.3 million in 2015. This was followed by Japan and Russia, with a value of $15,147.3 and $11,590.7 million, respectively.- The US is expected to lead the hot drinks industry in the G8 nations with a value of $24,522.0 million in 2016, followed by Japan and Russia with expected values of $18,834.7 and $12,965.1 million, respectively.View Report @Scope- Save time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the size, growth, major segments, and leading players in the G8 hot drinks market- Use the Five Forces analysis to determine the competitive intensity and therefore attractiveness of the G8 hot drinks market- Leading company profiles reveal details of key hot drinks market players G8 operations and financial performance- Add weight to presentations and pitches by understanding the future growth prospects of the G8 hot drinks market with five year forecasts by both value and volume- Compares data from the US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia and Japan, alongside individual chapters on each countryGet Sample Copy Here :Reasons to buy- What was the size of the G8 hot drinks market by value in 2015?- What will be the size of the G8 hot drinks market in 2020?- What factors are affecting the strength of competition in the G8 hot drinks market?- How has the market performed over the last five years?- Who are the top competitors in the G8 hot drinks market?About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband Market Advances, Innovation, Emerging Evolution 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/804859 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/804859 Due to the bandwidth limitations of their traditional voice-centric LMR (Land Mobile Radio) networks, public safety agencies are keen to leverage commercial cellular network technology to support their growing broadband application needs. Considering its thriving ecosystem, spectrum flexibility and performance metrics, LTE has emerged as the leading candidate for public safety mobile broadband networks. In addition, with the recent approval of the MCPTT (Mission Critical Push to Talk) voice standard as part of 3GPP Release 13, LTE has also become an attractive substitute for providing LMR-like voice services.The Qatar Ministry of Interior made headlines when it deployed a private 800 MHz LTE network in 2012. Since then, numerous public safety LTE networks have sprung up across the globe, including the UAE, China, Laos, Turkey and Kenya. Several early adopter LTE deployments are also operational in the United States, as part of the planned FirstNet nationwide public safety broadband network. While most initial public safety LTE investments are limited to small-scale networks, nationwide rollouts in the United States and South Korea are expected to trigger significant large-scale investments throughout the globe.The European market is largely dominated by MVNO arrangements, such as the UK Home Offices ESN (Emergency Services Network) program that will use EEs commercial LTE network to deliver prioritized mission critical voice and data services for the UKs public safety agencies. As part of the program, EE is enhancing its existing network with additional sites, satellite backhaul and a dedicated mobile core for first responders, among other investments.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report :Driven by the thriving ecosystem, SNS Research estimates that annual investments on public safety LTE infrastructure will reach $600 Million by the end of 2016. The market, which includes base stations (eNBs), mobile core and transport networking gear, is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 33% over the next four years. By 2020, these infrastructure investments will be complemented by over 4.4 Million LTE device shipments, including smartphones, rugged handheld terminals and vehicular routers.The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband Market: 2016 2030 Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the global public safety LTE market, besides touching upon the wider LMR and mobile broadband industries. In addition to covering the business case, challenges, technology, spectrum allocation, industry roadmap, value chain, deployment case studies, vendor products, strategies, standardization initiatives and applications ecosystem for public safety LTE, the report also presents comprehensive forecasts for mobile broadband, LMR and public safety LTE subscriptions from 2016 till 2030. Also covered are public safety LTE service revenues, over both private and commercial networks. In addition, the report presents revenue forecasts for public safety LTE infrastructure, devices, integration services and management solutions.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report, as well as a list and associated details of over 90 global public safety LTE network commitments (as of Q22016).View Full Report :Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:SNS Research estimates that annual investments on public safety LTE infrastructure will reach $600 Million by the end of 2016. The market, which includes base stations (eNBs), mobile core and transport networking gear, is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 33% over the next four years.By 2020, these infrastructure investments will be complemented by over 4.4 Million LTE device shipments, including smartphones, rugged handheld terminals and vehicular routers.Following the Qatar Ministry of Interiors private 800 MHz LTE network deployment in 2012, multiple private LTE rollouts are underway by security forces throughout the oil rich GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region, including the Abu Dhabi and Dubai police forces.Driven by nationwide public safety LTE network rollouts in the United States and South Korea, the North America and Asia Pacific regions will account for nearly 70% of all public safety LTE investments over the next four years.Almost all major LMR industry players are leveraging partnerships with established LTE infrastructure OEMs such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and Samsung, to offer end-to-end LTE solutions.Consolidation efforts are continuing to take place throughout the industry, particularly among the largest LTE infrastructure OEMs and public safety system integrators.Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:Business case for public safety LTE and mobile broadband services, including key benefits and challengesTechnology, economics, trends, commercial commitments and deployment case studiesList of public safety LTE engagements worldwidePublic safety LTE infrastructure, devices and applicationsIndustry roadmap, value chain and standardization initiativesSpectrum allocation, deployment models and funding strategiesProfiles and strategies of over 260 ecosystem players including public safety system integrators and LTE infrastructure/device OEMsTCO analysis of private and commercial public safety LTE deploymentsMilitary and tactical LTE deploymentsPublic safety LTE base station (eNB) form factor analysisExclusive interview transcripts from 5 key ecosystem players: Ericsson, Airbus Defence and Space, Sepura, Aricent and Parallel WirelessStrategic recommendations for vendors, system integrators, public safety agencies and mobile operatorsMarket analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets and their subcategories:Public Safety LTE InfrastructureSubmarketsRAN (Radio Access Network)EPC (Evolved Packet Core) and PolicyMobile Backhaul and TransportRAN Base Station (eNB) Mobility CategoriesFixed Base StationsTransportable Base StationsRAN Base Station (eNB) Cell Size CategoriesMacrocellsSmall CellsTransportable RAN Base Station (eNB) Form Factor CategoriesNIB (Network-in-a-Box)VNS (Vehicle Network System)SOW (System-on-Wheels)Airborne PlatformPublic Safety LTE Management & Integration SolutionsSubmarketsNetwork Integration & TestingDevice Management & User ServicesManaged Services, Operations & MaintenanceCybersecurityPublic Safety LTE DevicesSubmarketsPrivate LTECommercial LTEForm Factor CategoriesSmartphones & Handportable TerminalsVehicle Mount Routers & TerminalsTablets & Notebook PCsUSB Dongles & OthersPublic Safety LTE Subscriptions & Service RevenueSubmarketsPrivate LTECommercial LTEPublic Safety User Subscriptions over Private Mobile BroadbandSubmarketsPrivate LTEPrivate WiMAXPublic Safety User Subscriptions over Commercial Mobile BroadbandSubmarkets3GWiMAXLTE5G & BeyondLMR SubscriptionsSubmarketsAnalogDMRdPMR, NXDN & PDTP25TETRATetrapolOthersLMR Data SubscriptionsSubmarketsP25 - Phase 1P25 - Phase 2TETRATEDSTetrapolOthersPublic Safety LTE ApplicationsSubmarketsVideo ApplicationszGIS, AVLS and MappingMobile VPN Access & SecurityCAD (Computer Aided Dispatching)Remote Database AccessTelemetry and Remote DiagnosticsBulk Multimedia/Data TransfersPTT & Voice over LTESituational Awareness ApplicationsRegional SegmentationAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How big is the public safety LTE opportunity?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?How is the ecosystem evolving by segment and region?What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?Which regions and submarkets will see the highest percentage of growth?How does standardization impact the adoption of LTE for public safety applications?When will MCPTT and proximity services see large scale proliferation?What is the status of private LTE rollouts and public safety MVNO offerings across the globe?What opportunities exist for commercial mobile operators and MVNOs in the public safety LTE market?Is there a market for 400 MHz LTE networks?What are the prospects of tactical, vehicle-mounted and airborne LTE eNB platforms?How can public safety agencies leverage unused spectrum resources to fund private LTE networks?What strategies should system integrators and vendors adopt to remain competitive?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)AaeonAbu Dhabi PoliceAccelleranAceAxisACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)AculabAdaxADCOM911 (Adams County Communication Center)ADRF (Advanced RF Technologies)AdvantechAdvantech WirelessAeroflexAffarii TechnologiesAffirmed NetworksAgile NetworksAirbus Defence and SpaceAirbus GroupAir-LynxAirspan NetworksAirvanaAirwave SolutionsAjman PoliceAlcatel-LucentAltiostar NetworksAmdocsAniteAnritsu CorporationAPCO International (Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials)AppleARASKOMArcadyanArgelaAricentARItelArqivaArtemis NetworksAselsanASOCSASTRI (Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute)ASTRIDASTRO SolutionsAsus (ASUSTeK Computer)AT&TAthena Wireless CommunicationsAthonetATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions)Atlas TelecomAvanti Communications GroupAvayaAVIAviat NetworksAvtecAxell WirelessAxis CommunicationsAxis TeknologiesAxxcelera Broadband WirelessBAE SystemsBandRichBarrett CommunicationsBASE (Belgium)Baylin TechnologiesBayRICS (Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications Systems Authority)BayWEB (Bay Area Wireless Enhanced Broadband system)BFDXBilbao MetroBird TechnologiesBittium CorporationBlack Box CorporationBlackhawk ImagingBlacknedBluebirdBoise Police DepartmentBosch Security SystemsBrazilian ArmyBridgewaterBroadcomBrocade Communications SystemsBT GroupBTI WirelessC4iCalAmp CorporationCalgary Police ServiceCamden County Public SafetyCanadian Advanced Technology AllianceCasio Computer CompanyCatalyst CommunicationsCaterpillarCaviumCCI (Communication Components Inc.)CCI (Competitive Companies, Inc.)CCI (Crown Castle International)CCSA (China Communications Standards Association)CCTI (Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc.)CellvineCeragonChina MobileCiena CorporationCisco SystemsCITIG (Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group)City of CharlotteCity of Fort WorthCity of IrvingCity of New OrleansCity of OaklandCity of Pembroke PineCobhamCobham WirelessCodan Radio CommunicationsColorado Parks and WildlifeComba Telecom Systems HoldingsCommAgilityCommandWear SystemsCommScopeComtech Telecommunications CorporationCONET TechnologiesConnectemContelaCore Network DynamicsCoriantCorningCovia LabsCPqD (Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications, Brazil)CradlepointCSI (Cellular Specialties, Inc.)Dali WirelessDAMM Cellular SystemsDAP TechnologiesDAPage NotificationsDataNet SoftwareDatang GroupDatang MobileDellDeltaNodeDish NetworkDNK (Norwegian Directorate for Emergency Communication)Dongwon T&IDragonWaveDSC (Digital Special Communication)Dubai PoliceDurabook (Twinhead International Corporation)Dutch PoliceEA Networks (Electricity Ashburton)EADSEastcomEchoStar CorporationEden Rock CommunicationsEEEENA (European Emergency Number Association)EF JohnsonElbit SystemsElta SystemsEMC CorporationEricssonEricsson LGETELMEtherstackEthertronicsETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, South Korea)ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)EventideEXACOMExalt CommunicationsExelisEXFOExteNet SystemsFalu MunicipalityFederated WirelessFirstNet (First Responder Network Authority)FoxcomFraunhofer FokusFrench Armed ForcesFrench MOI (Ministry of Interior)FrequentisFujitsuGaltronicsGemtek Technology CompanyGENBANDGeneral Dynamics CorporationGeneral Dynamics Mission SystemsGenesis GroupGerman Armed Forces (Bundeswehr)Getac Technology CorporationGoodman NetworksGoodmill SystemsGoogleGovernor's OIT (Office of Information Technology), State of ColoradoGrant County Sheriffs OfficeGrenTech (China GrenTech Corporation)GWT (Global Wireless Technologies)Harris CorporationHarris CountyHFRS (Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service)HitachiHome Office, UKHoneywellHong Kong Police ForceHP (Hewlett-Packard Company)HQT RadioHTCHuaweiHughes CommunicationsHughes Network SystemsHytera Communications CompanyIAI (Israel Aerospace Industries)iBwave SolutionsiCOMIDF (Israel Defense Forces)ImtradexInmarsatInnerWirelessIntel CorporationIntel SecurityInterDigitalIntersecIntrepid Networksip.accessIPWirelessITELAZPIITU (International Telecommunication Union)JDI (JING DENG INDUSTRIAL)JMA WirelessJordanian Armed ForcesJRC (Japan Radio Company)Juni GlobalJuniper NetworksJVCKENWOOD CorporationKapsch CarrierComKathrein-Werke KGKBRKelrad SoftwareKenyan Police ServiceKeysight TechnologiesKirisun CommunicationsKisan TelecomKMWKodiak NetworksKPNKT CorporationKudelski GroupKyocera CommunicationsL-3 Communication Systems-WestL-3 Communications HoldingsLaos PoliceLA-RICS (Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System)Las Vegas Metropolitan Police DepartmentLemko CorporationLenovoLeonardo-FinmeccanicaLG CNSLG ElectronicsLG GroupLGS InnovationsLigado NetworksLijiang PoliceLiveViewGPSLockheed Martin CorporationLogic InstrumentMavenir SystemsMcWaneMegaFonMentura GroupMER-CellO Wireless SolutionsMetroPCSMiami Dade Police DepartmentMiami-Dade CountyMicrolabMilestone SystemsMIMOonMinistry of Industry and Information Technology, ChinaMitel Networks CorporationMitsubishi Electric CorporationMobileDemandMobilicomMobistarMODUCOM (MODULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS)Moscow PoliceMoseley AssociatesMotorola MobilityMotorola SolutionsMPS (Ministry of Public Security, China)MPSS (Ministry of Public Safety and Security, South Korea)MSB (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency)MTI MobileMutualinkNational Rail, UKNATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)NCRIC (Northern California Regional Information Center)NEC CorporationNedaaNeptune MobileNet4MobilityNetasNetMotion WirelessNevada Department of TransportationNew Jersey ROIC (Regional Operations Intelligence Center)New Jersey State PoliceNew Jersey TransitNew Mexico DoIT (Department of Information Technology)New Postcom Equipment CompanyNew Zealand PoliceNewCore WirelessNexiusNextG NetworksNextNavNI (National Instruments) CorporationNokia CorporationNokia NetworksNorthrop Grumman CorporationnTerop CorporationNTT DoCoMoNuRAN WirelessNutaqO3b NetworksOceus NetworksOctasicOMA (Open Mobile Alliance)Oman Royal OfficeOntario Ministry of TransportationONTHEGODEVICESOpenSignalOptiwayPanasonic CorporationPanda Electronics (Nanjing Panda Electronics Company)Panorama AntennasParallel WirelessPennsylvania State PolicePeproPhiladelphia Police DepartmentPhonakPiciorgros (Funk-Electronic Piciorgros),Pikewerks CorporationPolaris NetworksPolice Federation of AustraliaPortalifyPotevio (China Potevio Company)PowerTrunkProductivity Commission, AustraliaProximusPryme Radio ProductsPSCR (Public Safety Communications Research)Public WirelessPureWave NetworksPuxing RadioPyramid CommunicationsQatar Armed ForcesQatar MOI (Ministry of Interior)Qigihar Municipal Public Security BureauQiqihar PoliceQualcommQuanta ComputerQucellQuortusRACOMRadio IPRadisys CorporationRADWINRAVEN Electronics CorporationRaytheon CompanyRCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police)Reality MobileRedline CommunicationsRELM WirelessRF WindowRFS (Radio Frequency Systems)Rio de Janeiro Fire DepartmentRivada NetworksRohde & SchwarzRohillRoper IndustriesRosenbergerSafaricomSAIC (Science Applications International Corporation)Samji Electronics CompanySamsung ElectronicsSamsung GroupSANG (Saudi Arabian National Guard)Sao Paulo Military PoliceSapura Secured TechnologiesSaudi MOI (Ministry of Interior)Savox CommunicationsSelex ESSepuraSerComm CorporationSESSETARSevis SystemsSFRShanghai Police DepartmentSiemensSiemens Convergence CreatorsSierra WirelessSignalionSikluSimocoSiRRANSK TelecomSK TelesysSLA CorporationSLC (Secure Land Communications)Smith Micro SoftwareSOLiD (SOLiD Technologies)Sonic CommunicationsSonim TechnologiesSony CorporationSpace DataSpectra GroupSpiderCloud WirelessSpirent CommunicationsStar SolutionsState of LouisianaState of MinnesotaState of MississippiState of New JerseyState of New MexicoState of OklahomaState of TexasState Security Networks Group, FinlandStop NoiseSumitomo Electric IndustriesSunnada (Fujian Sunnada Communication Company)Surrey PoliceSwedish National PoliceSymantecTait CommunicationsTaquaTCCA (TETRA and Critical Communications Association)TCL CommunicationTCS (TeleCommunication Systems)TDIA (TD-Industry Alliance)TE ConnectivityTechosonic IndustriesTecoreTEKTELIC CommunicationsTelefonicaTelevateTELEXTelrad NetworksTelstraTeltronicTelumTESSCOTETRAtabThalesTI (Texas Instruments)TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association)TITAN Communication SystemsT-MobileToshiba CorporationTropicoTurk TelekomTurkish National Police ForceTwisted Pair SolutionsU.S. ArmyU.S. CBP (Customs and Border Protection)U.S. CellularU.S. Coast GuardU.S. Department of CommerceU.S. Department of DefenseU.S. Department of Homeland SecurityU.S. Department of StateU.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission)U.S. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)U.S. NavyU.S. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)U.S. NPSTC (National Public Safety Telecommunications Council)U.S. NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration)UAE MOI (Ministry of Interior)UbidyneUIC (International Union of Railways)UNIMO TechnologyUniversity of OttawaUppsala Ambulance ServicesUS Digital DesignsUSPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)Utility AssociatesVerizon CommunicationsViaSatViavi SolutionsVidyoVientiane Municipal GovernmentVIRVEVision TechnologiesVMwareVodafoneVodafone New ZealandWest CorporationWestell TechnologiesWestern Australia PoliceWildoxWinmateWinMate CommunicationWireless Telecom Group CompanyWNC (Wistron NeWeb Corporation)Wytec InternationalxG TechnologyXplore Technologies CorporationZ-Com (ZDC Wireless)ZetronZhengzhou MetroZhengzhou Municipal Public Security BureauZhengzhou PoliceZinwaveZTEMarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data 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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 Market Analysis: Global Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017 Global Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ The Global scouring pads Sales Market Report 2017 focused on global and regional market, major manufacturers, as well as the current state of the scouring pads industry. First, Global scouring pads Sales Market Report 2017 analyzed the basic scope of this industry like definition, specification, classification, application, industry policy, news analysis and scouring pads industry chain structure.The analysis on scouring pads industry is provided including the up and down stream industry also with the major market players., scouring pads industry competitive landscape analysis.Second, scouring pads industry manufacturing process, cost structure and major plants distribution is conducted for scouring pads market. This report "global scouring pads Market 2017" also states major market data like capacity, gross margin, supply, price, revenue, import/export, consumption and scouring pads market's growth rate by regions (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, China and ROW), as well as other regions can be added in scouring pads Market area.Then, the report focuses on global scouring pads market key players with information such as company profiles, contact information with product picture as well as specification.Finally, "worldwide scouring pads market" report is a valuable source of guidance for manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, customers, investors and individuals who have interest in this market.Key players includingAceAcmeChemical GuysCleanDuracellIntexMr CleanNeoplexTrimacoUngerAsk a complete & professional report sample, please feel free to contact to tinaning@qyresearch.com or http://www.qyresearcheurope.com/goods-512449.html! We are glad to offer you what you want!Table of contents:1 Scouring Pads Market Overview2 Global Scouring Pads Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application3 United States Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4 China Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5 Europe Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6 Japan Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7 Southeast Asia Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8 India Scouring Pads (Volume, Value and Sales Price)9 Global Scouring Pads Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data10 Scouring Pads Maufacturing Cost Analysis11 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers12 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders13 Market Effect Factors Analysis14 Global Scouring Pads Market Forecast (2017-2022)15 Research Findings and Conclusion16 AppendixRelated reports:Global Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017Europe Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017China Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017India Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017Korea Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017USA Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017Japan Scouring Pads Sales Market Report 2017Contact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | Professional Market Research Report PublisherContact Person: Tina NingEmail: tinaning@qyresearch.com or qyresearcheurope@126.comTel: 0086-20-22093278(CN)Web:QYResearch established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, data base and seminar services. The company owned a large basic data base (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc industries experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D), professional survey team (the team member with more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years depth expert interview experience),Excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team); QYResearch has always pursuit product quality, adhere to the quality is the soul of business.Room 2311 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road Tianhe District Antioxidants Top the List in Anti-ageing Ingredients in Demand http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/anti-ageing-ingredients-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=16196 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Anti-ageing ingredients demand is at an all-time high, thanks to the massive array of products being marketed around the world, catering to the increasing demand of consumers who wish to reduce the effects of ageing on their bodies. The primary notion of anti-ageing ingredients is to keep the human skin healthy and hydrated while providing other internal health benefits that enhance the effects. A growing number of consumers are becoming aware of the several anti-ageing ingredients currently available in the markets and are showing an inclination of trying out new ones while subscribing to several products for long periods.Browse Market Research Report @The meteoric rise of the various companies selling and promoting anti-ageing products and ingredients is proof of the extremely high demand for these ingredients. It is also likely for this demand to remain high for the imminent future, and the answer to the following questions can help visualize the outcome of the global anti-ageing ingredients market over the foreseeable future.How is the Demands for Anti-ageing Ingredients Faring Across Different Economic Strata?One of the key drivers of the global anti-ageing ingredients market at the moment is the increasing demand for antioxidants. Numerous scientific studies have already shown the benefits of consuming antioxidants on the health of human skin. The demand for antioxidants is not only putting this segment at the top in the global anti-ageing ingredients market, but is also one of the key factors promoting the growth of a large number of players in the market. Lasons, Mercola Skin Care, DSM, Cargill, Incorporated, Allergan India Private Limited, ADEKA, J&JCI, BASF, Galderma S.A. and VIVACY Laboratories, have been some of the leading entities in the global anti-ageing ingredients market and most of them already hold strong distribution chains for the various known types of commercially successful antioxidants. Research even points to the use of antioxidants to fight carcinogens, further increasing their appeal and overall demand across the world.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Are Anti-ageing Products Gaining More Demand than Regular Foods?Several foods, especially plant-based foods, are known to hold a rich reservoir of nutritive elements that are also linked to anti-ageing effects. This drives their sales by a considerable extent. Foods such as green leafy vegetables, gooseberry, blueberry, cucumber, guava, tomato, avocado, pomegranate, walnuts, dark chocolate, water, cocoa, beet juice, broccoli, and wild fish are known sources of anti-ageing ingredients, and are not only high in demand by consumers, but also by manufacturers of anti-ageing products. At the same time, the synthesis of anti-ageing ingredients is being heavily researched upon and is expected to become a key source of products in the near future.The massive scope of use of anti-ageing ingredients in cosmetics is one of the leading causes of growth for the global anti-ageing ingredients market. It is also highly possible for cosmetics to further supplement the markets growth over the coming years, thanks to increasing investments in research and development efforts.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: Low Fat Cheese to Gain Popularity among Health Conscious Consumers http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/global-cheese-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2072 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com When it comes to cheese, consumers are looking for flavor, freshness, and authenticity. Cheese continues to enjoy popularity among Americans and consumers across the globe. Consumers are consuming cheese not just for flavor, but also on account of its nutritional benefits. Transparency Market Research (TMR), in its report has predicted the global cheese market to be worth US$105.13 bn by 2019. Given below are some of the important questions answered by TMR analysts regarding the global cheese market performance in the coming years.Browse Market Research Report @Q. What are the factors driving the growth of the global cheese market?The growth of the food industry, growing disposable income of consumers across the globe, and changing lifestyles, are some of the factors indirectly boosting the growth of the cheese market. The trend of eating outside is fueling the demand for cheese from restaurants, hotels, food joints, and cafes. Cheese is not only enjoyed by kids, but also by adults and this is behind the steady demand for cheese across nations. Moreover, cheese manufacturers are exploring different options and coming up with innovative flavors, thus driving the global cheese market. The number of distribution channels is also increasing and is boosting the sales of cheese. Cheese is sold through retailers, super markets, hypermarkets, and grocery stores.Q. What is the latest trend in the global cheese market?Players in the market are formulating new blends of cheese for very specific applications such as macaroni and cheese and homemade flatbreads. New blends of shredded cheese such as roasted garlic and rosemary are gaining traction among consumers. As consumers are becoming more health conscious, the demand for low fat cheese is expected to increase in the coming years. The demand for natural cheese, cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and cottage cheese is witnessing a high demand as consumers are seeking healthier varieties.Make an Enquiry @The manufacturing process of cheese has changed with time. With advancements in genetics of microorganisms, the use of chymosin, which is known for enhanced resistance to bacteriophage infection is done for the manufacturing of cheese. This method of production not only gives a unique flavor but also enhances the quality of cheese, and thus gaining acceptance across the globe.Q. Which region is expected to be a lucrative market for cheese?Cheese is an important part of many cuisines in Europe and thus, unsurprisingly, Europe has led in the cheese market in the past and will continue to do so in the forthcoming years. North America is second in terms of cheese consumption. It is expected that the Asia Pacific cheese market will expand at the most significant pace in the coming years. China and Japan are projected to be the leading contributors to the growth of the cheese market in Asia Pacific.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: Radiopharmaceuticals Market Facts, Figures and Analytical Insights 2016 - 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1992 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1992 www.futuremarketinsights.com North America is anticipated to be the most attractive regional market in the global radiopharmaceuticals marketNorth America accounted for more than 40% market share in the global radiopharmaceuticals market in 2016 and is expected to witness an increase of more than 100 BPS in its market share over the forecast period. In terms of Y-o-Y growth, North America dominated the global radiopharmaceuticals market and was valued at more than US$ 2,000 Mn in 2015. The market is expected to expand at 6.2% CAGR over the projected period to reach more than US$ 4,000 Mn by the end of 2026. The North America radiopharmaceuticals market is estimated to represent absolute $ opportunity of more than US$ 100 Mn in 2017 over 2016. The growth is stagnant and slow due to major reactors having been shut down in Canada and new reactors installed in place of old ones for better production of radioisotope. North America is expected to be the most lucrative market in the global radiopharmaceuticals market, recording an attractiveness index of 3.6.Significant growth in the number of cancer and cardiovascular diseases patients in North America is expected to boost the global radiopharmaceuticals marketRequest For Report sample:Widespread availability of SPECT and PET scanning machines will result in a growing number of radio diagnostic and radio therapeutics events in North America. For instance, the number of PET scanning machines installed per head of population in North America are more compared to that installed in Europe, thus leading to increased usage of radiotracers in the region. This growth in North America is expected to continue along with continuous technological improvements in PET scanning devices. The high level of awareness and accessibility to these machines is expected to account for high revenue generation in North America. This factor is boosting the overall growth of the global radiopharmaceuticals market. The other factor impacting the global radiopharmaceuticals market is the rising prevalence of cancer in North America. This has significantly increased the number of nuclear medicine procedures performed in the region and this is the precise reason that the market for radiopharmaceuticals is steadily growing in North America. There has been a rising number of cardiovascular diseases among the people in North America due to aging population, unhealthy food habits and rising obesity. The increasing number of cardiovascular patients is expected to boost the sales of radiopharmaceuticals, which would eventually create growth in the global radiopharmaceuticals market.Gallium-68 and Lutetium 177 sub-segments of the radioisotope segment are likely to dominate the North America radiopharmaceuticals marketGallium-68 and Lutetium 177 are dominant sub-segments of the radioisotope segment in North America. Gallium-68 has gained immense popularity since the last one year in the field of nuclear medicine, especially in the diagnosis and evaluation of prostate cancer. This is in heavy reliance with incorporation of several technological leaps and entry of new radiotracer- 68Ga-PSMA-11, developed by the University of Heidelberg. Additionally, marketing authorisation of the first 68Ge/68Ga generator, manufactured by the German company Eckert & Ziegler, has also positively impacted the penetration of 68Ga-PSMA-11 tracer in the treatment of prostate cancer in North America. Despite a shorter half-life, Gallium-68 has an ideal profile as a PET imaging agent. Several manufacturers in North America are focussing on introducing cold kits for the 68Ga-labeling of tracers (ANMI, Belgium), thus opening the gateways for 68Ga in PET scanning. Iodine-131, a therapeutic radiotracer continues to be the ideal tracer for the treatment of not only thyroid cancer but also other therapeutic indications. However it is being slowly replaced by Lutetium-177 (Lu-177) in North America. Lu-177, low-energy -particle emitter is identified to be one of the emerging radiotracers for the treatment of metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) and neuroendocrine tumors.Send An Enquiry:Market share of companies operating in the global radiopharmaceuticals marketThe global radiopharmaceuticals market is highly consolidated with a few companies that offer advanced technology systems and nuclear medicines for treating diseases. However, the global market is dominated by top five players accounting for over 89% share. Siemens Healthineers accounted for the largest share of around 41.2% of the global market in 2015. The company dominated the market owing to its diversified product portfolio, extensive geographical presence, and acquisition strategies. GE Healthcare accounted for the second largest share of around 30.1% and Mallinckrodt plc. accounted for the third largest share of around 9% in the global radiopharmaceuticals 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:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Gallnut Extract Market Overview of Vital Industry Drivers http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/gallnut-extract-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23258 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Gallnut extract can usually be referred as natural extract prepared from a variety of plants for e.g. oak, Chinese sumac, witch hazel and some others. Plant producing galls are waste material forming outgrowth of plant tissue caused due to parasitism by gall wasp or insects. Gallnuts are traditionally having origin from China and South East Asia. The annual production of gallnuts extract expected to increase in China as per records of past few years, followed by emerging market like India, Japan, and Korea.Browse Market Research Report @The major market of gallnut extract serves to textile, and the pharmaceutical industry, followed by food and cosmetics industry. Major application includes dyeing of cotton and other fibers, medicinal purpose, and cosmetic treatment. Gallnuts is highly rich in contains with tannins along with smaller molecules of gallic acid. Tannin along with alum powder used for producing a pale brown color on cotton, wool or silk. Also having an application to synthesis animal skins into quality leather due to its tannin contents.Gallnut Extract Market SegmentationGallnut extract market is basically segmented on the basis of product form, usage, type and regions. Segmentation by product form includes powdered, whole, roasted, splits contents and liquid. Among all of these segments, powdered segment is dominating the market in terms of production, followed by liquid segment expected to grow in near future. Further Segmentation can also be done by usage includes textile industry, feed, pharmaceutical, food, personal care and cosmetics.Among all of these, textile segment utilizing high percentage of gallnut extract in powdered form, following by pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry. Segmentation can also be done on the basis of product type includes oak, Chinese sumac, witch hazel, and some other herbal trees. Among all of these segments, Chinese sumac is dominating the market due to its large cultivation. Meanwhile segments of herbal trees like Quercus infectoria is expected to grow in near future due to its skin conditioning agent.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Segmentation can also be done on the basis of geographical regions includes seven major regions North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa (MEA). Among all of these regions, Chinese market is expected to show positive growth in terms of mass consumption over the forecast period. In terms of value, some regions of South East Asia expected to account for a major share of the market for gallnut extract over the forecast period.Gallnut Extract Market DriversPopulation explosion leading more demand for textile products expected to drive the market growth as gallnut extracts having tannin present along with alum increase dyeing of cotton, wool and silk to produce pale shaded fabrics. Leather industry consumes more synthetic material inflates cost, which can be reduces by utilizing these natural extracts. Factors such medical anomalies, cosmetic usage, along with preparatory methods for the pharmaceutical industry is enhancing market growth throughout the globe. Major trend witnessed in the consumption of extracts as oil, mordant, and active ingredients drive the demand for producing bulk quantity. Consumption of tannic acid as a food additive in cooking enhances Color, emulsify it, stabilize it, thicken the consistency expected to drive as positive growth in this market segment in near future.Gallnut Extract Market key playersSome of the major players operating in gallnut extract Market includes Foodchem, Nutra Green Biotechnology Co., Ltd, Sabinsa Cosmetics, Lvyin Biotech Co., Ltd, Sami Labs and Naturalin Bio-Resources Co., Ltd.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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: Critical Infrastructure protection Global Market Trend, Research Approach, Data Analysis and Forecast to 2022 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/critical-infrastructure-protection-global-market-outlook-2016-2022 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001583424/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001583424/buying According to Publisher, the Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market is valued at $94.8 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $163.8 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2015 to 2022. Some of the key drivers for the market growth include globally existing trend of investment in the smart grids, boost in IT spending and development in the operation of automation solutions. Moreover, factors such as integrated functioning of cloud and CIP rise in cyber-attacks & cyber-crimes and well-organized policy system & implementations are also fostering market growth. However, scarcity of technical personnel, a deep understanding of industrial control system and the paucity of interoperability between products are the major factors inhibiting the growth of critical infrastructure protection market.For more information about this report:North America commanded the market with more than 30% market share in 2014 and this trend is expected to persist over the forecast period as well. The market is mainly driven by the United States, which continues to grow due to its vulnerability to terrorism, cyber hacking, bio-terrorism, hijacking and other such threats. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market during the forecast period. This growth is due to rising insider attacks, increasing cyber threats along with growing investments made towards infrastructure security. Risk management service holds the larger part in CIP followed by the designing, integration and consultation segment. Among applications, energy and power segment occupies the maximum market share.Some of the key players in the market include IBM, Zareba Security, Waterfall Security Solutions Ltd, Thales Group, Raytheon Company, Northrop Grumman, NextNine, Mcafee, Inc, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Kaspersky Lab, Integraph Corporation, Honeywell International Inc, Hikvision Digital Technology Co. Ltd, General Electric, General Dynamics Corporation, EMC Corporation, Cisco, BAE Systems, Axis communication AB and Airbus Group SE.Applications Covered:- Enterprises InfrastructureIT & TelecomGovernmentDefenseBanking & InsurancePublic utilitiesManufacturingOther Enterprises Infrastructures- Transportation systemRailwaysRoadwaysAirwaysSeaports- Energy and PowerPower Production- Power Grids- Other ApplicationsSecurity Technologies Covered:- Vehicle Identification Management- Building Management Systems- Secure Communication- Physical SecurityVideo SurveillanceAccess ControlScanning and ScreeningSurveillance systemsSoftwarePhysical Security Information Management (PSIM)Physical Identity and Access Management (PIAM)Alarms and notification systems- Network Security- Radars- Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Security (SCADA) Security- Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (CBRNE)- Cyber security- Other Security TechnologiesRequest Sample Copy atServices Covered:- Designing, Integration and Consultation- Risk Management Services- Managed Services- Support and Maintenance- Other ServicesDisaster recovery systemsEmergency responseFire control and line safety systemsVerticals Covered:- Transportation systemSeaportsRailway InfrastructureHighways and BridgesAirports- Sensitive infrastructure and enterprisesStadiums, Holy Places, and Public PlacesGovernment Facilities and Defense EstablishmentsCommunication SystemsChemical and ManufacturingBanking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)Other Sensitive Infrastructures and Enterprises- Energy and power- Power GenerationThermal Power PlantsNuclear Power PlantsRenewable Energy Power PlantsPower GridsOil and Gas- Other VerticalsWater utilitiesShipping servicePostal servicesHealthcare and life scienceFood and agricultureEmergency servicesBuildingsRegions Covered:- North AmericaUSCanadaMexico- EuropeGermanyFranceItalyUKSpainRest of Europe- Asia PacificJapanChinaIndiaAustraliaNew ZealandRest of Asia Pacific- Rest of the WorldMiddle EastBrazilArgentinaSouth AfricaEgypt1 Executive Summary2 Preface3 Market Trend Analysis4 Porters Five Force Analysis5 Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market, By Application6 Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market, By Security Technology7 Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market, By Service8 Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market, By Vertical9 Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market, By Geography10 Key Developments11 Company Profiling11.1 IBM11.2 Zareba Security11.3 Waterfall Security Solutions Ltd.11.4 Thales Group11.5 Raytheon Company11.6 Northrop Grumman11.7 NextNine11.8 Mcafee, Inc11.9 Lockheed Martin Corporation11.10 Kaspersky Lab11.11 Integraph Corporation11.12 Honeywell International Inc.11.13 Hikvision Digital Technology Co. Ltd.11.14 General Electric11.15 General Dynamics Corporation11.16 EMC Corporation11.17 Cisco11.18 BAE Systems11.19 Axis communication AB11.20 Airbus Group SEInquire before Buying atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.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 Surgical Stapling Devices Market Value Chain, Dynamics and Key Players 2016 - 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-867 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-867 www.futuremarketinsights.com Two U.S. based companies are likely to dominate the global surgical stapling devices market in terms of market shareIn 2015, two leading U.S based companies Johnson and Johnson and Medtronic plc held around 80% share of the global surgical stapling devices market. Although the global surgical stapling devices market is not very niche, other vendors are scattered and focus only on certain countries for the expansion of their business. For instance, vendors in the global surgical stapling devices market are focussing on India and a few other countries in the Asia Pacific region except China and Japan to explore hitherto untapped markets for expanding their business. One such vendor is India based surgical stapling devices company Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., which exports around 90% of its surgical stapling devices along with its other products to the MEA region.Rising prevalence of obesity and a geriatric population requiring surgical procedures anticipated to fuel the growth of the global surgical stapling devices marketA sedentary lifestyle leads to higher BMI, as a result, a large number of people are opting for bariatric surgeries. This is a major factor driving adoption of surgical stapling devices over conventional suturing. The increasing prevalence of obesity drives the incidence of bariatric surgeries. Moreover, healthcare professionals, especially in developed regions, are increasingly inclined towards the adoption of surgical stapling devices for bariatric surgeries, which is creating a positive impact on the global surgical stapling devices market. Another factor driving the growth of the global surgical stapling devices market is an increasing geriatric population across the globe. This population is expected to drive demand for surgical stapling devices due to increasing number of surgeries performed for the prevention of various diseases related to old age.Request For Report Sample:Surgical stapling devices are preferred over conventional suturing devices during laparoscopic surgeries, as suturing becomes difficult when a surgeon is operating on the 3-dimensional plane while concentrating on the 2-dimensional plane. Surgeons get the required accuracy and precision while operating with surgical stapling devices. This factor is fuelling the growth of the global surgical stapling devices market. Besides, reusable surgical stapling devices are preferred by the procurement team of hospitals as it labelled under the category of green products, resulting in considerably less impact on the environment, compared to plastic single-use disposable surgical stapling devices. These products can be easily cleaned and sterilised by standard hospital processes, commonly used for all other stainless steel surgical instruments, thereby creating robust development in the global surgical stapling devices market. Though suturing is considered to be a gold standard in wound closures, stapling devices yield similar and comparable results involving less time to complete the process. Hence the use of stapling devices yields similar results to that of the suturing process with less time required to heal the wound.Regional overview of the global surgical stapling devices marketThe global surgical stapling devices market revenue is expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.6% over the forecast period. In terms of revenue, Powered Surgical Stapling Devices segment is projected to remain dominant among product types. This segment is expected to further gain traction, owing to increasing demand for advanced technology. The North America surgical stapling devices market accounted for the largest revenue share of a little more than 30% in 2015. Increasing geriatric population and growing demand for advanced medical technology in the U.S. present key growth opportunities for manufacturers of surgical stapling devices. The APEJ surgical stapling devices market is slated to register a CAGR of 8.6% over the forecast period due to rising healthcare awareness and demand for advanced medical technology.Send An Enquiry:Remarkable development in the global surgical stapling devices marketOne of the key players operating in the global surgical stapling devices market Dextera Surgical Inc. collaborated with Intuitive Surgical in August 2016 for research and development of new robotic stapler products. The U.S. based Dextera Surgical Inc. is a core surgical stapling manufacturing company whose key product is surgical stapling devices. In September 2016, the company introduced micro cutter technology at the annual meeting of the German Society for Thoracic Surgery. This new technology will decrease the pain of cancer patients by reducing the invasiveness of lung surgery. The effectiveness of this technology does not stop here. Micro cutter technology has the potential to improve recovery time after lung surgery. In October 2016, just a month after introducing the micro cutter technology, Dextera Surgical Inc. signed an exclusive agreement with B.Braun Surgicals S.A. for the distribution of its micro cutters in Spain.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.comWebsite: South America Tara Gum Market Research Report 2017 Industry Growth, Consumption, Shares, Production - xandal, Molinos Asociados, TIC Gums http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1065887&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com http://marketresearchreportswarehouse.blogspot.in/ This report studies the Tara Gum market status and outlook of South America, from angles of players, countries, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in South America market, and splits the Tara Gum market by product type and applications/end industries.The South America Tara Gum market is valued at XX million USD in 2016 and is expected to reach XX million USD by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022. Brazil plays an important role in South America market, with market size of xx million USD in 2016 and will be xx million USD in 2022, with a CAGR of XX.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share (%) and growth Rate (%) of Tara Gum in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringBrazilArgentinaPeruChileOthersThe major players in South America market include Exandal, Molinos Asociados, TIC Gums, Silva Team, UNIPEKTIN Ingredients, Foodchem International, Ingredients Solutions, Indaliexp, Gum Technology, Starlight Products, Polygal.On the basis of product, the Tara Gum market is primarily split intoLow Viscosity Tara GumMedium Viscosity Tara GumHigh Viscosity Tara GumOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversFood & BeveragesPharmaceuticalsCosmeticsAnimal FeedsBook a Free Sample Copy of the Report @Table of Contents1 Tara Gum Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Tara Gum1.2 Classification of Tara Gum by Product Category1.2.1 South America Tara Gum Sales (K MT) Comparison by Types (2012-2022)1.2.2 South America Tara Gum Sales (K MT) Market Share by Types in 20161.2.3 Low Viscosity Tara Gum1.2.4 Medium Viscosity Tara Gum1.2.5 High Viscosity Tara Gum1.3 South America Tara Gum Market by Applications/End Users1.3.1 South America Tara Gum Sales (K MT) Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)1.3.2 Food & Beverages1.3.3 Pharmaceuticals1.3.4 Cosmetics1.3.5 Animal Feeds1.4 South America Tara Gum Market by Regions1.4.1 South America Tara Gum Revenue (Million USD) Comparison by Regions (2012-2022)1.4.2 Brazil Tara Gum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Argentina Tara Gum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Peru Tara Gum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Chile Tara Gum Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 South America Market Size Sales and Revenue of Tara Gum (2012-2022)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: +1-518-618-1030Website :Email : sales@qyresearchreports.comBlog : The 5G Wireless Ecosystem will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/804831 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/804831 While LTE and LTE-Advanced deployments are still underway, mobile operators and vendors have already embarked on R&D initiatives to develop so-called 5G technology, with a vision of commercialization by 2020. 5G is essentially a revolutionary paradigm shift in wireless networking to support the throughput, latency and scalability requirements of future use cases such as extreme bandwidth augmented reality applications and connectivity management for Billions of M2M (Machine to Machine) devices.Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming. With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025.The 5G Wireless Ecosystem: 2016 2030 Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the emerging 5G ecosystem including key market drivers, challenges, enabling technologies, use cases, vertical market applications, spectrum assessment, mobile operator deployment commitments, case studies, standardization, research initiatives and vendor strategies. The report also presents forecasts for 5G investments and operator services.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report.Download Sample Copy Of This Report :Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming.Driven by regional, national government, mobile operator and vendor initiatives, we expect that over $6 Billion will be spent on 5G R&D and trial investments between 2015 and 2020.With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025.5G networks are expected to utilize a variety of spectrum bands for diverse applications, ranging from established sub-6 GHz cellular bands to millimeter wave frequencies.The report covers the following topics:5G requirements, use cases and vertical market applications5G market drivers and barriersAir interface and antenna technologies: new waveforms, millimeter wave radio access, MIMO, phased array antennas and beamformingSpectrum technologies: cognitive radio, spectrum sensing, aggregation and LSA (Licensed Shared Access)D2D (Device to Device) communications and self-backhauling networksComplimentary technologies for 5G: NFV (Network Functions Virtualization), SDN (Software Defined Networking), HetNet (Heterogeneous Networking), C-RAN (Centralized RAN), Cloud RAN, MEC (Mobile Edge Computing), drones and satellitesMobile operator commitments, case studies and 5G spectrum assessment5G Standardization and research initiativesCompetitive assessment of vendor strategiesR&D, commercial infrastructure and operator service forecasts till 2030View Full Report :Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets and their subcategories:5G R&D InvestmentsNew Waveforms & Millimeter Wave Radio AccessMIMO, Beamforming & Antenna TechnologiesInterference & Spectrum ManagementC-RAN, Virtualization & Other Technologies5G Commercial Infrastructure InvestmentsDistributed Macrocell Base StationsSmall CellsRRHs (Remote Radio Heads)C-RAN BBUs (Baseband Units)Mobile CoreFronthaul & Backhaul Networking5G Operator ServicesSubscriptionsService RevenueRegional SegmentationAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How much will vendors and operators invest in 5G R&D commitments?What will be the number of 5G subscriptions in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?What will be the key applications of 5G networks?What trends, challenges and barriers will influence the development and adoption of 5G?Which regions and countries will be the first to adopt 5G?Will 5G networks utilize new spectrum bands?Who are the key 5G vendors and what are their strategies?Will 5G networks rely on C-RAN architecture?What are the prospects of millimeter wave technology for 5G radio access networking?What will be the impact of 5G on the M2M and IoT ecosystem?Will drone and satellite based communication platforms play a wider role in 5G networks?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)5G Americas5G Forum, South Korea5G Lab (TU Dresden)5G PPP (5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership)5GIC (5G Innovation Center, University of Surrey)5GMF (Fifth Generation Mobile Communications Promotion Forum, Japan)5GRUSAlcatel-LucentAlpental TechnologiesAmerica MovilARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses)AscentaAT&T MobilityAthena Wireless CommunicationsATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions)AVC Networks CompanyCableLabsChina MobileCisco SystemsCohere TechnologiesDT (Deutsche Telekom)du (Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company)EricssonEtisalatETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research)ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)FacebookFraunhofer FOKUSFraunhofer HHIFraunhofer-GesellschaftFujitsuFuture Forum, ChinaGoogleGSMAHiroshima UniversityHuaweiIEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)IMDEA Networks InstituteIMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, ChinaIntel CorporationInterDigitalITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute)ITU (International Telecommunication Union)KDDIKeysight TechnologiesKT CorporationKumu NetworksLG UplusMegaFonMitsubishi ElectricMOEA (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan)MoogsoftMOST (Ministry of Science & Technology, China)MOST (Ministry of Science & Technology, Taiwan)MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, South Korea)MTS (Mobile TeleSystems)NEC CorporationNew Mexico Spaceport AuthorityNGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) AllianceNI (National Instruments)NokiaNTT DoCoMoNYU WIRELESS (New York University)OfcomOptusOrangePanasonicQualcommRF DSPRohde & SchwarzSamsungSESSiBEAMSingTelSK TelecomSmall Cell ForumSoftBankSwisscomTAICS (Taiwan Association of Information and Communication Standards)Telecom ItaliaTelefonicaTeliaSoneraTelstraTIA (Telecommunications Industry Association)Titan AerospaceT-Mobile USATokyo Institute of TechnologyU.S. Department of CommerceU.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission)U.S. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)U.S. NSF (National Science Foundation)UN (United Nations)University of KaiserslauternUniversity of OuluVerizon WirelessViterbi School of Engineering (University of Southern California)Vodafone AustraliaVodafone GroupVTT Technical Research CenterWWRF (World Wireless Research Forum)XilinxZTEMarketResearchReports.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 2017-2022 Candle Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1057754&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com http://marketresearchreportswarehouse.blogspot.in/ This report studies the Candle market status and outlook of global and United States, from angles of players, regions, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in global and United States market, and splits the Candle market by product type and applications/end industries.The Asia-Pacific will occupy for more market share in following years, especially in China, also fast growing India and Southeast Asia regions.North America, especially The United States, will still play an important role which cannot be ignored. Any changes from United States might affect the development trend of Candle. United States plays an important role in global market, with market size of xx million USD in 2016 and will be xx million USD in 2022, with a CAGR of XX.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share (%) and growth Rate (%) of Candle in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East and AfricaBook a Free Sample Copy of the Report @The major players in global and United States Candle market, including Yankee Candles, Gold Canyon Candles, Virginia Candle , Colonial Candle, White Barn Candles, Circle E Candles, Slatkin & Co, Bridgewater Candles, Village Candles, GALA-Candles, Korona S.A.The On the basis of product, the Candle market is primarily split intoVotive CandlesContainer CandlesPillar CandlesDipped CandlesOthersOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversHome DecorationReligion ActivitiesBirthday CelebrationTherapyOthersQYresearchreports.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: +1-518-618-1030Website :Email : sales@qyresearchreports.comBlog : Demand for Global Analgesics Market will Going to Increase Due to Growing Acceptance of Analgesics by a Wider Target Audience 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.Browse the 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 Report Containing the Upcoming Analysis for this Market 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: Mustard oil Market Sees a Steady Growth Ahead http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/mustard-oil-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=23279 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Mustard oil Market Introduction:Mustard oil is extracted from mustard seeds, often have a pungent taste with irritating aroma. There are three varieties of mustard oil available in market includes B. nigra (black mustard), B. juncea (brown mustard), and B. hirta (white mustard). Traditionally a preferred oil for cooking, it is also used in different applications like aromatherapy, pharmaceuticals, & soaps, etc. It is extracted from two process includes pressing the seeds used as cooking oil due to presence of fatty oil and grinding of seed, processing it with water, and the filtered by distillation process. Second method of extracting produce a light pungent oil used for other therapeutic segments as essential oil. It is used in aromatherapy to stimulate the sweat glands and for its benefits on skin.Obtain Report Details @Various functions of mustard oil such as appetizer, stimulant, hair vitalizer, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and others increase its demand in market. It is considered as essential oil with lots of benefits to skin and body is expecting to grow demand for personal care and cosmetics.Mustard oil Market Segmentation:Mustard oil market is segmented on the basis of product type, production process, application, distribution channels and region. On the basis of product type includes B. nigra (black mustard), B. juncea (brown mustard), and B. hirta (white mustard). Among all of these, black mustard is majorly used in terms of volume and is expected to grow due to its various application in market. On the basis of production process, it is segmented into two categories includes pressing extraction and distillation extraction. On the basis of application the mustard oil market is segmented as food, personal care, pharmaceutical, aromatherapy and others industrial applications. Among all of these, food segment dominates the market and is expected to register a higher growth in the global mustard oil market during forecasted period.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @On the basis of distribution channels the mustard oil market is segmented as online retail, supermarkets, and departmental stores. Among all of these, online retailing is expected to hold major shares in the market over the forecasted period.Mustard oil Market Regional Outlook:Mustard oil market is further segmented on the basis of regions, as North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. On the basis of regions, mustard oil has market demand is higher in Asia-Pacific regions which includes India, Thailand, and china due to its huge consumption in food. North America market is expected to expand relatively higher CAGR due to its preference as essential oil in various industrial application.Mustard oil Market Drivers and Trends:Mustard oil is traditionally preferred as cooking oil and a substitute for other seed oil with higher benefits towards skin and health is expected to drive the global mustard oil market. Principal factor driving the mustard oil market is to substitute the other oil products like sunflower oil which has a major share in oil market. Availability of low cost substitutes and variety of products is expected to fuel the market. French regions producing white mustard oil due to its sweeter taste is expected to register a higher market growth in terms of value and volume over the forecast period. Mustard oil having properties to produce warmness in body helps to increase the blood flow is expected to register a steady growth in massage therapeutic segment in global mustard oil market.Mustard oil Market Key Players:Global Mustard oil market is highly fragmented with various industry players. Some of the key players participating in the global mustard oil market includes Cargill Incorporated, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Adani Wilmar Limited, Taj Agro Products, Emami Agro Ltd. ,K S oils, Saloni Mustard oil, and Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt. Ltd.,About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Oil-based Ink Resin Market 2017- Arakawa Chemical, Arizona Chemical, BASF, Evonik Industries, Hydrite Chemical https://goo.gl/vQSFTd https://market.biz/report/global-oil-based-ink-resin-market-2017/40803/ https://market.biz/ Report covers Oil-based Ink Resin global sales and global Oil-based Ink Resin Market growth rate [2012 to 2022].Below is the list of some key points of Oil-based Ink Resin market report.A] Oil-based Ink Resin Market by Regions:-1. USA Oil-based Ink Resin market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)2. China Oil-based Ink Resin market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)3. Europe Oil-based Ink Resin market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)4. Japan Oil-based Ink Resin market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)B] Worldwide Oil-based Ink Resin Market Size (Value and Volume) [2012 to 2022].C] Worldwide Oil-based Ink Resin Manufacturers Analysis/Key Competitors :-1 Arakawa Chemical2 Arizona Chemical3 BASF4 Evonik Industries5 Hydrite Chemical6 IGM Resins7 Royal Dutch Shell8 DowRequest Sample and Do Inquiry Before Buying Report Here:D] Global Oil-based Ink Resin sales and market share by type [2012 to 2017].E] Worldwide Oil-based Ink Resin revenue and growth rate [2012 to 2022].F] Global Oil-based Ink Resin [Volume and Value] by Regions - USA Oil-based Ink Resin , China Oil-based Ink Resin , Europe Oil-based Ink Resin , Japan Oil-based Ink Resin (Volume, Value and Sales Price).G] Global Oil-based Ink Resin Manufacturing Cost Analysis -1. Price Trend of Oil-based Ink Resin Key Raw Materials.2. Key Suppliers of Oil-based Ink Resin Raw Materials.3. Oil-based Ink Resin Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials.H] Oil-based Ink Resin Manufacturing Process Analysis covered in the report.I] Worldwide Oil-based Ink Resin Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers - [on Oil-based Ink Resin market scenario].J] Oil-based Ink Resin market report also covers:-1. Oil-based Ink Resin Marketing Strategy Analysis,2. Distributors/Traders of Oil-based Ink Resin ,3. Oil-based Ink Resin Market Positioning,K] Oil-based Ink Resin Market Effect Factors Analysis also covered.Purchase Report Here:L] Worldwide Oil-based Ink Resin Sales, Revenue Forecast:-1. Oil-based Ink Resin Sales Forecast (2017 to 2022) by Regions,2. Global Oil-based Ink Resin Sales Forecast (2017 to 2022) by Type,3. Oil-based Ink Resin Sales Forecast by Application.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Pune.Maharashtra,India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696+91 9130855334Web:Email: inquiry@market.biz Driving Factors for Global Beer Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/beer-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=530 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Beer production has witnessed a swift growth over the past few years with production reaching from 1.3 bn hectoliters to 1.93 bn hectoliters in 1998 and 2011 respectively. Being the oldest consumed and brewed beverages in the word, the demand for beer is always at peak. These are indicators that the global beer market has significantly expanded over the last couple of years. Beer is used as an alcoholic luxury beverage consumed globally by a large population.Obtain Report Details @With the rise in luxury living, the demand for quality beer has also increased. As a result of this, manufacturers have scaled the number of breweries and are focusing on enhancing the manufacturing process. The increase in beer production is likely to increase the distribution channels of beer in the market ultimately registering high sales in the coming years.The report presents an overview on various types of beers such as light beers, premium beers, malt liquors, imported beers, popular beers, nonalcoholic beers, super-premium beers, ice beers, and malt liquors. This study also presents an analysis in terms of geographical segmentation.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The report analyses every key aspect of the beer market at the global and regional level. The report estimates the market figures and presents an in depth analysis of the historical growth trajectory, current market situation, and future development prospects. The study answers questions relating to the key market players, prevailing trends, strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats of the market along with the competition dynamics of the global beer market.Global Beer Market: OverviewOwing to the emergence of numerous local breweries, the global beer market has witnessed a significant growth over the last couple of years. The report provides detailed information on the different types of beers and their placing in the market. It also provides an outline on the revenue generated from production of the various kinds of beers.The reports offers an in depth description on the geographical segments such as North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of World. The consumption of beer in these regions is expected to rise in the forecast period owing to increase in disposable income of consumers.The increasing promotional activities along with strong marketing strategies is also expected to augment the growth of the global beer market. Rise in the number of population consuming beer and social recognition of beer being considered as a drink are some of the major growth drivers of the global beer market.However, fluctuating rate in employee retention, and volatile consumer spending owing to economic burden is likely to inhibit the growth of the global beer market. Factors such as climatic changes, strict government regulations, high taxes in various regions, social and demographic norms, and emergence of inexpensive substitutes are also anticipated to impede the sales of beer in the upcoming years.Although, it is expected that with the emergence of economies from financial crisis, the growth of the beer market will also escalate. Moreover, investments made in innovative beer brews and smart marketing approaches are likely to present manufacturers of beer with beneficial opportunities in future.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe report also discusses the recent developments, approaches, and financial status of the key market players operating in the global beer market. The leading companies in the global beer market are Asia Pacific Breweries, Anheuser-Busch InBev Sapporo Breweries, Asahi Breweries, Carlsberg Breweries A/S, Grupo Modelo, Molson Coors Brewing Company, Heineken N.V., Kirin Brewery, Tsingtao Breweries, and Yanjing Brewery.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: Rising Global Incidence of Various Cancers Boosting the Demand for Anti-Cancer Drugs Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/anticancer-drugs-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12458 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Anti-cancer Drugs Market: OverviewThe World Cancer Research Fund states that in 2012, there were around 14 million new cases of cancer around the world; of these, women accounted for 6.7 million cases and men accounted for 7.4 million cases. This figure is likely to increase to 24 million by 2035. Similarly, according to the World Health Organization, an estimated 8.2 million deaths in 2012 were directly related to cancer and the number of new cancer cases is anticipated to increase by an estimated 70% over the next two decades. Accounting for 13% of the total number of new cases diagnosed in 2012, lung cancer was the most common cancer across the globe, followed by breast cancer (1.7 million new cases), and colorectal cancer (1.4 million new cases).Browse the Complete Market Details at:Cancer mortality can be reduced if the disease is detected and treated early. Timely and correct diagnosis is key to effective and adequate treatment. Today, the global anti-cancer drugs market can be rightly characterized by the enormous amount of innovation that hopes to transform the landscape for patients, providers, and companies alike. SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) survival statistics reveal that in 1990, only half of all cancer patients lived for five years after diagnosis. This has now increased to two-thirds, a result of gradual but consistent innovation in the anti-cancer drugs market.This research report serves as a blueprint for all stakeholders in the anti-cancer drugs market as it not only gives them a fresh, objective, and accurate perspective of the global industry but also examines the key factors governing its growth from 2016 to 2024, the reports forecast period. Leading trends, forces driving the growth, and challenges that lie ahead have been discussed at length, supported by appropriate statistics and inputs from industry experts.Global Anti-cancer Drugs Market: Key Trends and OpportunitiesThe rising global incidence of various cancers, including cancer of the breast, prostate, skin, blood, gastrointestinal tract, and lungs, is the primary factor boosting the demand for anti-cancer drugs. In addition to this, the development of advanced therapeutic modalities, such as targeted therapies, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and hormonal therapies has significantly benefited the anti-cancer drugs market in recent years.This market is predicted to benefit from the commercialization of follow-on-biologics and patent expiration of several blockbuster drugs. The threat of failure of the drugs, the high cost involved in the development of anti-cancer drugs, and the possible side effects of these drugs are expected to challenge the expansion of the global market in the coming years. However, rising government funds are likely to reduce the negative impact of these obstacles and continue propelling the anti-cancer drugs market.Global Anti-cancer Drugs Market: Competitive Landscape and Region-wise OutlookSome of the most prominent players in the global anti-cancer drugs market are Celgene Corporation, Eli Lilly and Company, Roche Diagnostics, Novartis AG, Pfizer, Sanofi, Amgen Inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Merck & Company, and Johnson and Johnson.Geographically, the international market for anti-cancer drugs is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. North America presently surpasses all of the aforementioned regional markets and is likely to retain its leading position throughout the duration of the forecast period. Favorable reimbursement policies, the surge in investments by prominent multinational companies in the research as well as development of anti-cancer drugs, and the high adoption rate of immunotherapies are some of the major factors responsible for the growth of the North America anti-cancer drugs market.Get the Sample PDF Report Containing the Upcoming Analysis for this Market at:Asia Pacific has been identified as a rather lucrative region for the anti-cancer drugs market owing to the rising awareness regarding the availability of advanced therapies. The increase in healthcare expenditure and per capita disposable income is also likely to contribute toward the future expansion of the Asia Pacific anti-cancer drugs market.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global One-Way Valve Market 2017- Festo, Laerdal , Flomatic Corp https://goo.gl/PsNDeR https://market.biz/report/global-one-way-valve-market-2017/40806/ https://market.biz/ Report covers One-Way Valve global sales and global One-Way Valve Market growth rate [2012 to 2022].Below is the list of some key points of One-Way Valve market report.A] One-Way Valve Market by Regions:-1. USA One-Way Valve market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)2. China One-Way Valve market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)3. Europe One-Way Valve market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)4. Japan One-Way Valve market Status, Prospect (2012-2022)B] Worldwide One-Way Valve Market Size (Value and Volume) [2012 to 2022].C] Worldwide One-Way Valve Manufacturers Analysis/Key Competitors :-1 Festo2 Laerdal3 Flomatic CorpRequest Sample and Do Inquiry Before Buying Report Here:D] Global One-Way Valve sales and market share by type [2012 to 2017].E] Worldwide One-Way Valve revenue and growth rate [2012 to 2022].F] Global One-Way Valve [Volume and Value] by Regions - USA One-Way Valve , China One-Way Valve , Europe One-Way Valve , Japan One-Way Valve (Volume, Value and Sales Price).G] Global One-Way Valve Manufacturing Cost Analysis -1. Price Trend of One-Way Valve Key Raw Materials.2. Key Suppliers of One-Way Valve Raw Materials.3. One-Way Valve Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials.H] One-Way Valve Manufacturing Process Analysis covered in the report.I] Worldwide One-Way Valve Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers - [on One-Way Valve market scenario].J] One-Way Valve market report also covers:-1. One-Way Valve Marketing Strategy Analysis,2. Distributors/Traders of One-Way Valve ,3. One-Way Valve Market Positioning,K] One-Way Valve Market Effect Factors Analysis also covered.Purchase Report Here:L] Worldwide One-Way Valve Sales, Revenue Forecast:-1. One-Way Valve Sales Forecast (2017 to 2022) by Regions,2. Global One-Way Valve Sales Forecast (2017 to 2022) by Type,3. One-Way Valve Sales Forecast by Application.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Pune.Maharashtra,India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696+91 9130855334Web:Email: inquiry@market.biz Restless Legs Syndrome Treatment Market is Projected to Exhibit Growth at an Increased Rate with the Development of New Drugs which Promise Higher Efficiency and Minimum Side Effects http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/restless-legs-syndrome-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12506 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Restless Legs Syndrome Treatment Market: OverviewRestless legs syndrome, also called Willis-Ekbom disease, is a neurological disorder. It triggers an urge in patients to move their legs. Because the syndrome usually occurs during sleep, it is also considered a type of sleep disorder. People suffering from restless legs syndrome often feel an overwhelming desire to rigorously move their legs, the intensity and frequency of which leads to unpleasant pain in their limbs. This also disturbs their sleep patterns, affecting their health adversely. The condition usually aggravates at night.Browse the Complete Market Details at:Higher prevalence of restless legs syndrome is noted in women than in men. RLS can affect people of all ages but is mostly observed in middle-aged and elderly people. The most common symptoms of RLS include uncomfortable itching and pain in the legs that may cause a disruption in the sleep pattern and ultimately affect a patients quality of life. Despite its increasing prevalence, the precise cause of RLS is not yet known. Nevertheless, with extensive investigations being conducted in the field, the RLS market is expected to gain momentum in the near future. As of now, experts attribute the increasing incidence of the disease to genetic factors and instabilities in the dopaminergic balance.While researchers are yet to discover a specific cure for the disorder, drugs presently available in the market ensure symptomatic treatment. They help in relieving the uneasiness commonly experienced in the disorder. The report studies the prospects for the global restless legs syndrome treatment market in the forthcoming years. The impact of research and development activities on the markets future outlook is examined in the report in detail. It also presents insights into the various social and economic factors that will influence the markets growth trajectory between 2016 and 2024.Global Restless Legs Syndrome Treatment Market: Opportunities and Market SegmentationRestless legs syndrome causes uneasiness in patients and is also associated with other health issues such as dizziness, headaches, drowsiness, flatulence, dry mouth, and nausea. Patients suffering from restless legs syndrome may also suffer from psychiatric disorders such as depression and a decreased libido. Apart from these, labyrinthitis and other ear disorders, fatigue, irritability, peripheral edema, and nutritional and metabolism disorders indicated by weight gain or increased appetite are also related to the syndrome.The treatment of restless legs syndrome is still a relatively untapped space. The market is projected to exhibit growth at an increased rate with the development of new drugs, which promise higher efficiency and minimum side effects.Based on product type, the global restless legs syndrome treatment market can be segmented into Neupro/Leganto, Mirapex/Sifrol/Mirapexin, HORIZANT/Regnite, and Requip. Restless legs syndrome treatment can be segmented into pharmacological and nonpharmacological.Global Restless Legs Syndrome Treatment Market: Competitive InsightsIn order to study the competitive landscape prevailing in the market, the report profiles companies such as GlaxoSmithKline plc., Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Manhattan Pharmaceuticals. The strengths and weaknesses of the companies are weighed out in the report using SWOT analysis. The analysis also helps the report gauge the threats and opportunities that these companies could face in the near future.Get the Sample PDF Report Containing the Upcoming Analysis for this Market at:The report offers a complete databank about the global restless legs syndrome treatment market by providing 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 regarding every facet of the market.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: Worldwide Structural Steel Market Outlook 2022: Trends, Top Manufactures, Market Demands, Industry Growth Analysis & Forecasts https://marketsizeforecasters.com/get-sample/33660/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/enquire-for-discount/33660/?utm_source=OPR-SP https://marketsizeforecasters.com/2017-top-5-structural-steel-manufacturers-in-north-america-europe-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa https://marketsizeforecasters.com/global-barcode-readers-market/?utm_source=RR-SP http://marketsizeforecasters.com/ Global Structural Steel Industry Report offers market overview, segmentation by types, application, countries, key manufactures, cost analysis, industrial chain, sourcing strategy, downstream buyers, marketing strategy analysis, distributors/traders, factors affecting market, forecast and other important information for key insight.This report studies Structural Steel in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa, focuses on the top 5 Structural Steel Players in each region, with sales, price, revenue and market share for top 5 manufacturer, covering are Gerdau S.A, ArcelorMittal, Tata Steel, Nippon Steel Sumitomo Metal, POSCO, ThyssenKrupp, JSW Steel, Essar Steel, TISCO, Southern Steel Company (SSC), Pomina, Krakatau Steel, Sahaviriya Steel Industries, G Steel PCL, SAMC, Capitol Steel, PAG-ASA STEEL WORKS, INC. (PSWI), Steel Centre Philippines Inc. (SCPI), Baosteel, Ansteel, Wuhan Iron and Steel, Shagang Group, Shandong Iron & Steel Group, Ma Steel, Bohai Steel, Shougang Group, Valin Steel, Anyang Iron & Steel Group, Baogang Group.Request a Sample Copy of Global Structural Steel Market Research Report @Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales, revenue, market share of top 5 players in these regions, from 2012 to 2017 (forecast), like North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Korea) Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia etc. South America (Brazil, Chile, Peru and Argentina) Middle East and Africa (Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia)Global Structural Steel Market Split by Product Types, with sales, revenue, price, market share of each type, can be divided into Carbon Structure Steel Alloy Structure Steel OthersSplit by applications, this Global Structural Steel Market report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Structural Steel in each application, can be divided into Construction Industry Transportation Industry Machinery Industry OthersEnquiry Discount for Global Structural Steel Market Research Report @Major Points in Table of Contents of Global Structural Steel Market2017 Top 5 Structural Steel Manufacturers/Players in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa1 Structural Steel Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Structural Steel1.2 Structural Steel Segment by Types1.2.1 Global Sales Market Share of Structural Steel by Types in 20151.3 Structural Steel Segment by Applications1.3.1 Structural Steel Consumption Market Share by Applications in 20151.4 Structural Steel Market by Regions1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Asia-Pacific Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Middle East and Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Structural Steel (2012-2022)2 Global Structural Steel Sales, Revenue (value) and Market Share by Players2.1 Global Structural Steel Sales and Market Share in 2015 and 2016 by Players2.2 Global Structural Steel Revenue and Market Share by Players in 2015 and 20162.3 Global Structural Steel Average Price by Players in 2015 and 20162.4 Global Structural Steel Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Types by Players2.5 Structural Steel Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Structural Steel Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Structural Steel Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Players2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Structural Steel Sales, Revenue (Value) by Regions, Type and Application (2012-2017)3.1 Global Structural Steel Sales, Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)3.1.1 Global Structural Steel Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)3.1.2 Global Structural Steel Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)3.2 Global Structural Steel Sales, Revenue, Market Share and Price by Type (2012-2017)3.2.1 Global Structural Steel Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.2.2 Global Structural Steel Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.2.3 Global Structural Steel Price by Type (2012-2017)3.3 Global Structural Steel Sales and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)3.4 Global Structural Steel Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)..Browse full table of contents and data tables for Global Structural Steel Market Report @Related Reports: -Global Barcode Readers Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022A barcode reader (or barcode scanner) is an electronic device that can read and output printed barcodes to a computer. It consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the barcode's image data provided by the sensor and sending the barcode's content to the scanner's output port.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter CIGARETTES INDUSTRY ANALYSIS IN GEORGIA, 2017 - MARKET RESEARCH HUB Market Research HUB http://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1065946 http://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/cigarettes-in-georgia-2017-report.html http://www.marketresearchhub.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/market-research-hub https://www.facebook.com/MarketResearchHub/ https://twitter.com/MktResearchHub Market Research HUB announced an analytical report "Cigarettes in Georgia, 2017", that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the market. The report offers Market size and structure of the overall and per capita consumption based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing analysis, and our in-house expertise.Request Free Sample Report@Cigarette consumption is estimated to have declined during the 1990s as a result of the rapid contraction in the economy. Legitimate sales were estimated at 7.80 billion pieces in 2016, 30.3% below 1990 levels. Smuggled, illegally produced and counterfeit cigarettes used to have a major impact on demand in Georgia with up to 50% of the market believed to be supplied by non-duty paid cigarettes. Market Research HUB forecasts an initial fall in sales in 2017 as the effect of rising prices push more smokers towards the non-duty paid market. Volumes are expected to slip back by 5.8% although thereafter will recover reaching a forecast 8,140 million pieces in 2026. Per capita consumption will follow a similar pattern over the same period ending 2026 up 4.4% at 1,651 pieces.Scope- Legitimate sales were estimated at 7.80 billion pieces in 2016, 30.3% below 1990 levels.- Per capita consumption exceeded 2,000 pieces/year at the start of the 1990s, but was down to 1,582 pieces/year in 2016: high by international standards.- Imports are a growing feature of the market and stood at 8.7 billion pieces in 2015 with Ukraine the main source.- Exports are not a significant feature and have fallen in recent years.Access Full Report with TOC@Reasons to buy- Get a detailed understanding of consumption to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.- Identify the areas of growth and opportunities, which will aid effective marketing planning.- The differing growth rates in regional product sales drive fundamental shifts in the market.- This report provides detailed, authoritative data on these changes - prime intelligence for marketers.- Understand the market dynamics and essential data to benchmark your position and to identify where to compete in the future.About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of Market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Details:90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Follow Us on:LinkedIn:Facebook:Twitter: Large-scale LNG Terminals Market By Technology - Global Industry Analysis Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/largescale-lng-terminals-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=8668 Rising focus on shale gas production has changed the demand-supply demographic of several energy producing regions across the globe in the past few years. The shale boom in the U.S. is on the verge of making North America, a major importer of crude oil and natural gas in the past years, an exporter of LNG. The urgency to improve production and supply infrastructure owing to such changes is the key facilitator of growth for the global large-scale LNG terminals market.Browse Market Research Report @ :The global consumption of LNG is also mounting owing to its cleaner nature compared to conventional petroleum-based fuels. With emission control norms becoming increasingly strict across the globe, domestic, commercial, and industrial sectors will be compelled to switch to cleaner fuels such as LNG in the near future. This factor will also provide a big boost to the overall development of the large-scale LNG terminals market in the next few years.Transparency Market Research states that the global large-scale LNG terminals market will exhibit a 5.78% CAGR over the period between 2015 and 2023. The market is expected to rise from 2,684.8 MMTPA in 2014 to 4,664.7 MMTPA by 2023.Large-scale Regasification Terminals to DominateThe segment of regasification terminals presently dominates the global large-scale LNG terminals market. The section accounted for a dominant share of nearly 56% in the global market in 2014. In the next few years, large-scale regasification capacities are expected to increase at a substantial rate across the globe, especially in Asia Pacific, North America, and Europe.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @ :Countries across Asia Pacific, such as China and Japan are focusing on increasing the consumption of natural gas across the power generation, mining, and industrial sectors. This will lead to the increased need for floating and onshore large-scale LNG regasification terminals. In archipelagic topographies such as Indonesia, the rising consumption of LNG will boost the development of off-shore regasification terminals in the next few years. In terms of throughput, the market for large-scale LNG regasification terminals market will expand at over 5% CAGR from 2015 to 2023.Asia Pacific Continues to Lead Large-scale LNG Terminals MarketIn many countries in Asia Pacific, a continuous rise in the number of large-scale LNG terminals has enabled the easy access to natural gas at economic rates. This will facilitate the much needed shift from conventional fuels to natural gas in the transportation and power generation industries in Asia Pacific and encourage the increased adoption of natural gas.Asia Pacific is presently the leading regional market for large-scale LNG terminals, accounting for a dominant share of over 45% in the global market in 2014. The region will continue to account for a major share in the global large-scale LNG terminal market over the period between 2015 and 2023 as well. Rising environmental concerns and fluctuating prices of crude oil will further encourage the adoption of a cleaner energy source such as natural gas across industrial as well as commercial sectors in the region.The global large-scale LNG terminals market is characterized by high fragmentation and a rapid influx of new global vendors at a sustained pace. This has led to a substantial rise in production volumes and have brought the prices down, intensifying the competition and leveraging the bargaining power of buyers. Some of the major players operating in the market are Royal Dutch Shell plc, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Linde AG, ConocoPhillips Company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), and Nippon Gas Co. Ltd.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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 Biopower Market Analysis (By Technology - Biogas And Biomass) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Growth And Forecast 2014 - 2020 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/228514 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/228514 Rapid growth in the renewable energy industry is anticipated to boost growth in the global biopower market. The global demand for biopower market is primarily driven by the growing demand for energy. Biopower is a niche renewable energy market; however, the market is estimated to grow rapidly in the future. Biopower is both cost-competitive and reliable source of power and further helps the U.S. and several European countries to meet their goals set under renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Additionally, power generation from biopower technologies can also promote economic growth of the countries involved in generating power from biopower technologies. The aforementioned factor is further likely to create diverse job opportunities for small businesses, equipment suppliers, power plant vendors, utilities, and agribusinesses. Moreover, it also helps in reducing impacts to the climate and environment. The market is expected to register a significant growth in the future on account of factors mentioned above.Biopower is the energy produced from renewable energy sources such as biomass and to a small amount by biogas. Biopower is emerging as an attractive alternative for utilities to supply power in the case of intermittent supply of electricity from renewable energy sources, including wind. The global market for biopower can be fragmented on the basis of technology and geography to portray an overall picture of the market. On the basis of technology, the global biopower market can be segmented as biomass and biogas. Presently, most of the power is majorly generated from solid biomass such as wood in commensuration to the smaller amount of biopower generated from biofuels, municipal solid waste (MSW), and biogas. Globally, the biopower plants are owned and operated by a wide range of stakeholders including small-scale community users (institutional users), independent power producers, utilities, and industrial users (lumber companies, and pulp and paper mills).Get The Sample Copy Of this Report :Various technologies of biopower potentially transform raw biomass material indirectly or directly into electricity, including anaerobic digestion, pelletization, torrefaction, pyrolysis, gasification, cofiring with natural gas or coal. The market for biopower is expected to increase significantly in the future on account of underlying factors. The primary growth driver in the global biopower market is an increase in global energy demand. Additionally, climate and environmental concerns are likely to further propel growth in the market. Increasing investments by governments in the biopower technologies to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and increase their energy security is likely to play a key role in the markets growth. Regulatory support to the use of renewable energy sources for power generation has been a key catalyst to the growth of biopower market. The continuing need for subsidies for development of biopower in European countries along with high capital and operating costs, and lack of uniform and well-characterized feed stocks may restrain growth in the biopower market across the globe. However, increasing research and development coupled with a certain policy environment for investors and tax parity for biopower is likely to escalate growth in the global biopower market.The global biopower is a niche market in the renewable energy industry and is likely to grow at a significant rate in the future. North America and Europe hold the largest market share in the global biopower market. Countries such as the U.S., Germany and UK contribute the most to the markets growth; the growth in these regions is driven by the regulatory support and increased demand for power from renewable energy sources. Stringent environment regulations along with higher carbon prices are likely to drive growth in these regions in the future. Asia Pacific is an emerging growth market of biopower. India and Brazil are likely to contribute the most to the growth in the Asia Pacifics biopower market.View More Details :Some of the key players in the global biopower market include A2A, Biopower Operations Corporation, Dalkia, EnviTec Biogas AG, MVV Energie SG, Schmack Biogas GmbH, and Weltec Biopower GmbH.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeRest of the WorldThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsMarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global Tertiary Amines Market 2017 - Albemarle Corporation, Klk Oleo, Kao Group, Eastman http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/48655/request-sample http://www.fiormarkets.com/report/global-tertiary-amines-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-48655.html www.fiormarkets.com www.9dimenreports.com Tertiary amine is an amine that has the following general structural formula. In tertiary amines, nitrogen has three organic substituents. Examples include trimethylamine, which has a distinctively fishy smell, and EDTA. The use of tertiary amines is very extensive and is an important intermediate for the preparation of quaternary ammonium salts. It is widely used in the production of asphalt emulsifiers, chemical antistatic agents, foaming agents, oilfield demulsifiers, pesticide emulsifiers and fabric softeners.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Tertiary Amines 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.Request For Sample Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversAlbemarle CorporationKlk OleoKao GroupEastmanMarket 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, coversC-8 TAC-10 TAC-12 TAC-14 TAC-16 TAC-18 TAC-20 TAC-22 TAMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoSurfactants, such as amine oxide, betaines.Quarternaries for biocides, swimming pool and water treatment.Flotation agentsGasoline detergentsCorrosion inhibitorsRubber processing additivesEmulsifier for herbicidesTextile softenersAccess Full Report With TOC @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Tertiary Amines market.Chapter 1, to describe Tertiary Amines Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Tertiary Amines, with sales, revenue, and price of Tertiary Amines, 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 Tertiary Amines, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, 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, Tertiary Amines market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Tertiary Amines sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceAbout Fior MarketsFior 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 Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Hands-on Technologies - NEC at ISE 2017 Three-part NEC appearance: white for professional, wood for communication, and black for projection. www.d-art-design.de For the second time, Dart Design Gruppe (Dart) created the multimedia fair appearance for NEC Display Solutions Europe at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2017, the leading trade fair for professional audio-, video-, and electronic systems in Amsterdam.The direct interaction of the visitors with the products was the focal point of the 425sqm presentation, which made the positive effects of NEC display technology on business processes tangible. The showroom was divided into three areas. Located in the centre was a spacious communication zone with walls in a concrete look, wooden flooring and furniture designed by Dart, which strikingly staged the exhibited screens. The appearance was framed by a white facade into which huge screens were integrated underneath the brand message Orchestrating a brighter world.The highlight of the fair stand was the atmospheric black space: a light installation composed of round, stilted projection surfaces staged the NEC beamer technologies and thereby effectively brought art to life.The Dart Design Gruppe is one of the leading agencies for spatial communication in Germany and has been an expert for multisensual brand experience for more than 25 years. A recipient of numerous international design awards, the Dart Design Gruppe designs brand experience and adventure spaces for clients such as 3M, adidas, Amtico, Britax, C.H. Beck, Electrolux, Gabor, Grafe und Unzer, Grundig, Kanzan, Lloyd, MFI, Norske Skog, Panasonic, Parador, Philips, Reebok, RWE, Schuco, Turck, Wurth and Zaha Hadid.Dart Design Gruppe GmbHStefanie Meyer-Haake (Corporate Communications)Haus am Pegel | Am Zollhafen 5 | 41460 NeussPhone: +49 (0)2131 - 40 30 7 - 0pr@d-art-design.de | Peru: Expansion Of National Fiber-Optic Backbone Network And LTE Extension By Operators To Support Telecom Growth http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1065993 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/1065993 Peru: Expansion of National Fiber-Optic Backbone Network and LTE Extension by Operators to Support Telecom GrowthSummary"Peru: Expansion of National Fiber-Optic Backbone Network and LTE Extension by Operators to Support Telecom Growth" a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Peru 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.In 2016, Peru generated telecom service revenue of $4.3bn (equivalent to 2.2% of nominal GDP), a decline of 1.8% since 2015, due to depreciation of local currency against the US dollar. However, in local currency it increased by 4.1% over 2015. The mobile market continues to be the largest contributor to total market revenue, accounting for more than 65% of overall telecom revenue in 2016.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report :The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following -- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Peru compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in Peru.- 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 Perus telecommunications and pay-TV markets.View Full Report :Scope- The overall telecom service revenue in Peru will grow at a CAGR of 2.2% during 2016-2021.- Growth will be driven by Internet services, in particular mobile data services revenue, as a result of increasing adoption of mobile data services supported by 3G and 4G network expansion and the availability of affordable bundled data packages.- Operators are focusing on 4G network expansions and affordable consumer-centric mobile data offerings to compete in the Peruvian telecom market.- The Peruvian pay-TV market will gradually take up, providing ample opportunities for operators to grow their subscriber base, particularly for those offering exclusive content and services.Reasons to buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Perus telecommunications and pay-TV markets, 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 Perus 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 Perus 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 Peru.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 LTE 2017 The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband - Details Information with Analysis: - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband http://bit.ly/2oPlK2E "The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband Market: 2017 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-Due to the bandwidth limitations of their traditional voice-centric LMR (Land Mobile Radio) networks, public safety agencies are keen to leverage commercial cellular network technology to support their growing broadband application needs. Considering its thriving ecosystem, spectrum flexibility and performance metrics, LTE has emerged as the leading candidate for public safety mobile broadband networks. In addition, with the recent approval of the MCPTT (Mission Critical Push to Talk) voice standard as part of 3GPP Release 13, LTE has also become an attractive substitute for providing LMR-like voice services.Get Sample Report With TOC @The Qatar Ministry of Interior made headlines when it deployed a private 800 MHz LTE network in 2012. Since then, numerous public safety LTE networks have sprung up across the globe, including the UAE, China, Laos, Turkey and Kenya. Several early adopter LTE deployments are also operational in the United States, as part of the planned FirstNet nationwide public safety broadband network. While most initial public safety LTE investments are limited to small-scale networks, nationwide rollouts in the United States and South Korea are expected to trigger significant large-scale investments throughout the globe.The European market is largely dominated by MVNO arrangements, such as the UK Home Offices ESN (Emergency Services Network) program that will use EEs commercial LTE network to deliver prioritized mission critical voice and data services for the UKs public safety agencies. As part of the program, EE is enhancing its existing network with additional sites, satellite backhaul and a dedicated mobile core for first responders, among other investments.Driven by the thriving ecosystem, SNS Research estimates that annual investments on public safety LTE infrastructure will reach $600 Million by the end of 2017. The market, which includes base stations (eNBs), mobile core and transport networking gear, is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 33% over the next four years. By 2020, these infrastructure investments will be complemented by over 4.4 Million LTE device shipments, including smartphones, rugged handheld terminals and vehicular routers.The Public Safety LTE & Mobile Broadband Market: 2017 2030 Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the global public safety LTE market, besides touching upon the wider LMR and mobile broadband industries. In addition to covering the business case, challenges, technology, spectrum allocation, industry roadmap, value chain, deployment case studies, vendor products, strategies, standardization initiatives and applications ecosystem for public safety LTE, the report also presents comprehensive forecasts for mobile broadband, LMR and public safety LTE subscriptions from 2017 till 2030. Also covered are public safety LTE service revenues, over both private and commercial networks. In addition, the report presents revenue forecasts for public safety LTE infrastructure, devices, integration services and management solutions.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report, as well as a list and associated details of over 90 global public safety LTE network commitments (as of Q22017). Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:SNS Research estimates that annual investments on public safety LTE infrastructure will reach $600 Million by the end of 2017. The market, which includes base stations (eNBs), mobile core and transport networking gear, is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 33% over the next four years.By 2020, these infrastructure investments will be complemented by over 4.4 Million LTE device shipments, including smartphones, rugged handheld terminals and vehicular routers.Following the Qatar Ministry of Interiors private 800 MHz LTE network deployment in 2012, multiple private LTE rollouts are underway by security forces throughout the oil rich GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region, including the Abu Dhabi and Dubai police forces.Driven by nationwide public safety LTE network rollouts in the United States and South Korea, the North America and Asia Pacific regions will account for nearly 70% of all public safety LTE investments over the next four years.Almost all major LMR industry players are leveraging partnerships with established LTE infrastructure OEMs such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and Samsung, to offer end-to-end LTE solutions.Consolidation efforts are continuing to take place throughout the industry, particularly among the largest LTE infrastructure OEMs and public safety system integrators. Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:Business case for public safety LTE and mobile broadband services, including key benefits and challengesTechnology, economics, trends, commercial commitments and deployment case studiesList of public safety LTE engagements worldwidePublic safety LTE infrastructure, devices and applicationsIndustry roadmap, value chain and standardization initiativesSpectrum allocation, deployment models and funding strategiesProfiles and strategies of over 260 ecosystem players including public safety system integrators and LTE infrastructure/device OEMsTCO analysis of private and commercial public safety LTE deploymentsMilitary and tactical LTE deploymentsPublic safety LTE base station (eNB) form factor analysisExclusive interview transcripts from 5 key ecosystem players: Ericsson, Airbus Defence and Space, Sepura, Aricent and Parallel WirelessStrategic recommendations for vendors, system integrators, public safety agencies and mobile operatorsMarket analysis and forecasts from 2017 till 2030 Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets and their subcategories: Public Safety LTE InfrastructureSubmarketsRAN (Radio Access Network)EPC (Evolved Packet Core) and PolicyMobile Backhaul and TransportRAN Base Station (eNB) Mobility CategoriesFixed Base StationsTransportable Base StationsRAN Base Station (eNB) Cell Size CategoriesMacrocellsSmall CellsTransportable RAN Base Station (eNB) Form Factor CategoriesNIB (Network-in-a-Box)VNS (Vehicle Network System)SOW (System-on-Wheels)Airborne Platform Public Safety LTE Management & Integration SolutionsSubmarketsNetwork Integration & TestingDevice Management & User ServicesManaged Services, Operations & MaintenanceCybersecurity Public Safety LTE DevicesSubmarketsPrivate LTECommercial LTEForm Factor CategoriesSmartphones & Handportable TerminalsResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Global Atmospheric Water Generator Market by Manufacturers, Types and Applications, Forecast to 2022 https://goo.gl/YnQKMq https://goo.gl/uWVjQk https://goo.gl/bzNpJ9 Global Atmospheric Water Generator Market 2017 report spread across 119 pages gives Market Segment Analysis by Key Manufacturers, Countries, Types and Applications. According to the World Bank, $600 billion is invested in water delivery systems and the United Nations has announced a worldwide water shortage. Scientists have given warning of this and constructive steps are being taken, but current methods to achieve clean drinking water are expensive and wasteful.Complete report is available atScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Global Atmospheric Water Generator 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 covers: Hendrx, AT Company, Shenzhen FND, Aqua Sciences, EcoloBlue, Island Sky, Drinkable Air, Dew Point Manufacturing, Sky H2O, WaterMaker India, Planets Water, Atlantis Solar, Watair, Saisons Technocom, Konia, Air2Water, GR8 Water, Ambient WaterMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers: North America (USA, Canada and Mexico); Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy); Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia); South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.); Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers: Production Volume Rate below 100 Liters per Day, Production Volume Rate between 100 and 5000 Liters per Day, Production Volume Rate Higher than 5000 Liters per DayMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Government and ArmyRequest for discount atThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Atmospheric Water Generator market.Chapter 1 to describe Atmospheric Water Generator Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2 to analyze the top manufacturers of Atmospheric Water Generator, with sales, revenue, and price of Atmospheric Water Generator, 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 Atmospheric Water Generator, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 to analyze the key regions, 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;Order copy of report atChapter 12 Atmospheric Water Generator market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15 to describe Atmospheric Water Generator sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.ReportsnReports.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 95 leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets.Ritesh Tiwari,+ 1 888 391 5441sales@reportsandreports.com Food 2017 Takeaway Food Delivery - Details Information with Analysis: Focus on Online Channel (2017-19) Takeaway Food Delivery http://bit.ly/2pCDiU4 "Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Focus on Online Channel (2017-19)" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-- Scope of the ReportThe Report titled Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Focus on Online Channel (2017-2019) provides an insight into takeaway Food Delivery market with a special focus on online takeaway food. The report also includes the market value, segmentation and also country-wise market analysis. It also discusses key growth drivers, challenges and upcoming trends of the market. Further, companies like Just Eat, GrubHub, Delivery Hero, and Takeaway.com are profiled in the report.Get Sample Report With TOC @- Country CoverageThe UKSpainFranceItalyNetherlandsDenmarkNorwaySwitzerlandThe USCanadaBrazil- Company CoverageGruhHub Holdings Inc.Just Eat Plc.Delivery Hero and HungryhouseTakeaway.comFoodpanda & HelloFood- Executive SummaryTakeaway food delivery offers a convenient alternative, providing diners with a wide variety of options. Consumers have many choices for takeaway food, including online takeaway food aggregator portals, restaurant chains offering online ordering services, as well as local restaurants offering telephone-based and walk-in takeaway food services. Growth in takeaway food delivery market is outpacing global GDP growth with online ordering growing much faster, proliferated by the adoption of E-commerce and increased smartphones/tablet penetration.Consumers are shifting from traditional telephone based takeaway ordering to online platform as it offers wide variety of choices, ratings and reviews, including payment by credit or debit card, and a more efficient consumer experience. Companies that offer online food ordering services include Just Eat, GrubHub, Delivery Hero, Takeaway.com etc. Takeaway restaurants (TRs) sign contracts with these companies to join their platform and have their menus made accessible to consumers. These online companies primarily derive their revenue from commissions charged to TRs on order value placed through its platform.The US is the largest market for takeaway food delivery market followed by the UK, Italy, Spain, Canada, France, Brazil and others. The online food ordering industry saw a major consolidation with Delivery Hero acquiring Lieferheld of Germany and hungryhouse of the UK in 2012. In 2013, GrubHub merged with Seamless took making it the largest online takeaway food company. Drivers contributing to the growth include rising usage of internet, urbanization and demand from developing countries.- Table of Content1. Executive Summary2. Takeaway Food Delivery Market2.1 An Overview2.2 Mode of Delivery2.3 Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market (2011-2013)2.4 Forecast - Global Online Takeaway Food Market (2017-2019)2.5 Penetration of Online Takeaway Food Channel2.6 Geographical Segmentation3. Country Analysis Takeaway Food Delivery Market3.1 The UK3.2 Spain3.3 France3.4 Italy3.5 Netherlands3.6 Denmark3.7 Norway3.8 Switzerland3.9 The US3.10 Canada3.11 Brazil4. Takeaway Food Delivery Market - Market Drivers4.1 Rising Usage of Smartphones and Tablets4.2 Rising Urbanization4.3 Demand from Emerging Markets4.4 Growth of Fast Food Chains5. Takeaway Food Delivery Market - Challenges5.1 Regulations Regarding Internet5.2 Seasonal Demand5.3 Food Safety Regulations6. Takeaway Food Delivery Market - Market Trends6.1 Industry Consolidation6.2 Increase in Commission Rates6.3 Pick-Up/Collection As New Market Opportunity7. Competitive Landscape: Takeaway Food Delivery Market8. Company Profiles: Takeaway Food Delivery Market8.1 GrubHub Holdings Inc.8.1.1 Business Description8.1.2 Financial Overview8.1.3 Business Strategies8.2 Just Eat Plc. (JE)8.2.1 Business Description8.2.2 Financial Overview8.2.3 Business Strategies8.3 Delivery Hero and Hungryhouse8.3.1 Business Description8.3.2 Business StrategiesResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Insurance 2017 Life Insurance in Poland, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 Life Insurance http://bit.ly/2ppaVI6 "Life Insurance in Poland, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description- SynopsisTimetrics 'Life Insurance in Poland Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Polish life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Polish insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (2011-2015) and forecast period (2015-2020).Get Sample Report With TOC @The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Polish economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. SummaryTimetrics 'Life Insurance in Poland, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Polish life insurance segment, including: An overview of the Polish life insurance segmentThe Polish life insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the Polish economy and demographicsA comparison of the Polish life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsThe various distribution channels in the Polish life insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in PolandDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Polish insurance industry ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Poland:It provides historical values for the Polish life insurance segment for the reports 2011-2015 review period, and projected figures for the 2015-2020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Polish life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a comparison of the Polish life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsIt analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Poland.It profiles the top life insurance companies in Poland and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Polish life insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Polish life insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Polish insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future. Key HighlightsOn March 17, 2016, the European Commission (EC) stated that there was uncertainty regarding the renewal of the Insurance Block Exemption Regulation (Regulation 267/2010) (IBER), which is due to expire on March 31, 2017.Solvency II came into force in Poland on January 1, 2016. It is based on three pillars: risk-based quantitative requirements, governance and supervision, and disclosure and transparency.The Polish Financial Supervisory Authority (PFSA) issued Recommendation U for bancassurance, effective from April 1, 2015.ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Construction 2017 Construction in India, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021 Construction http://bit.ly/2ozN1KM "Construction in India, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description- SynopsisIn real terms, the Indian construction industry registered an average annual growth rate of 3.5% during the review period (20122016). This growth was supported by the 12th Five-Year Plan 20122017, under which the government invested heavily in infrastructure, industrial parks and residential buildings. In addition, government flagship programs such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Indira Awas Yojana supported review-period growth.Get Sample Report With TOC @The industry is expected to continue to expand over the forecast period (20172021), driven by investments in residential, infrastructure and energy projects under flagship programs such as the 100 Smart Cities Mission, Housing for All 2022, the Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation (AMRUT), the National Skill Development Mission (NMSD), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), Make in India, and Power for All (PFA) by various governments.In 2015, the government launched the Smart City Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme. Under the Smart City Mission, the government plans to develop the infrastructure of 100 selected cities with an investment of INR480 billion (US$7.2 billion), whereas under the AMRUT scheme it plans to spend INR500 billion (US$7.4 billion) to develop 500 cities by 2022.The industrys output value in real terms is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.16% over the forecast period; up from 3.95% during the review period. SummaryTimetrics 'Construction in India, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021' report provides detailed market analysis, information and insights into Indian construction industry including:The Indian construction industry's growth prospects by market, project type and construction activityAnalysis of equipment, material and service costs for each project type in IndiaCritical insight into the impact of industry trends and issues, and the risks and opportunities they present to participants in the Indian construction industryProfiles of the leading operators in the Indian construction industryData highlights of the largest construction projects in India ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the construction industry in India. It provides:Historical (2012-2016) and forecast (2017-2021) valuations of the construction industry in India using construction output and value-add methodsSegmentation by sector (commercial, industrial, infrastructure, energy and utilities, institutional and residential) and by project typeBreakdown of values within each project type, by type of activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by type of cost (materials, equipment and services)Analysis of key construction industry issues, including regulation, cost management, funding and pricingDetailed profiles of the leading construction companies in India Reasons To BuyIdentify and evaluate market opportunities using Timetric's standardized valuation and forecasting methodologies.Assess market growth potential at a micro-level with over 600 time-series data forecasts.Understand the latest industry and market trends.Formulate and validate strategy using Timetric's critical and actionable insight.Assess business risks, including cost, regulatory and competitive pressures.Evaluate competitive risk and success factors. Key HighlightsTo meet the rising housing demand from lower- and middle-income groups, the government plans to develop affordable housing projects across the country under the social housing program. Accordingly, it plans to build 20 million low-cost affordable houses in urban and semi-urban areas under the PMAY program in a bid to ensure housing for all residents by 2022.The government is focusing on the construction of power plants and transmission grids to provide electricity to every part of the country by 2022. Accordingly, under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) program, the government plans to invest INR760.0 billion (US$11.8 billion) to build transmission grids and other related infrastructure by 2022.The Indian government is focusing on infrastructure development through robust and modern infrastructure that is vital for economic growth and competitiveness. Accordingly, in the 2017 budget the government announced plans to increase total spending on transport infrastructure by 9.0%, rising from INR22.1 trillion (US$329.9 billion) in the 2016 budget to INR24.1 trillion (US$349.9 billion) in the 2017 budget.Rapid urbanization and the growing working population have elevated demand for a fast and convenient transport system in the country. The government plans to build 27 four-lane highways across the country. Accordingly, it plans to build a straight road between Porbandar to Kolkata, Kanyakumari to Srinagar, Rameswaram to Dehradun, Surat to Paradip Port, and Mangalore Port to Chennai Port.In 2016, the government launched the Bharatmala program, the Setu Bharatam program, the National Highways Interconnectivity Improvement Project and the Logistic Efficiency Enhancement Program (LEEP). Under the Bharatmala program, the government plans to build 7,000km of road to connect eastern parts of the country with the west, with an investment of INR900.0 billion (US$13.0 billion).ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Adventist Health System, Bio-Optronics Partner on CTMS Deployment to Foster Clinical Research Excellence http://adventisthealthsystem.com/ http://bio-optronics.com/ctms/ April 27, 2017 ROCHESTER, NY Bio-Optronics and Adventist Health System (AHS) today announced the implementation and initial rollout of the Clinical Conductor Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) at two of the faith-based health care systems research institutes. This deployment, which included a CTMS-EMR integration with Cerner Millennium, will maximize process efficiency and enhance the organizations overall research quality. A national leader in patient care, this implementation enables AHS to offer streamlined clinical trials for the benefit of patients and the advancement of medical research.Our partnership with Adventist Health System exemplifies the importance of having an integrated, uniquely-configured technology solution at this caliber of research organization, said Dan Kerpelman, CEO at Bio-Optronics. We are excited to help amplify the positive impact research has in the lives of Adventist Health System patients, and look forward to the opportunity to continue the expansion of Clinical Conductor at other facilities throughout the health system.This unique deployment of Clinical Conductor CTMS was configured to align with Adventist Health Systems specific research workflows, and seamlessly integrate with its EMR and other research systems currently in use.The full digitization of clinical trials is foundational to the delivery of high-quality research, said Duncan Grodack, senior vice president and Florida Division CIO for Adventist Health System. We are passionate about the utilization of best-in-class technologies in our clinical and translational research to advance our imperatives, and this new partnership is reflective of that.Adventist Health Systems flagship, Florida Hospital, is a leader in clinical trials research. Clinical Conductor CTMS is expected to roll out to several research units in Florida this year, with a full deployment anticipated in 2018.Our impetus to streamline and enhance processes surrounding our clinical trials directly correlates with our never-ending goal of delivering the highest level of care possible for our patients, and to that end, we look forward to utilizing and maximizing the solutions and resources now available to us through this partnership, said Dr. Steven Smith, chief scientific officer for Florida Hospital Research Services, Adventist Health Systems largest research enterprise.About Adventist Health SystemAdventist Health System is a faith-based health care organization headquartered in Altamonte Springs, Florida. A national leader in quality, safety and patient satisfaction, Adventist Health System's more than 80,000 employees maintain a tradition of whole-person health by caring for the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of every patient. With 45 hospital campuses and more than 8,300 licensed beds in nine states, Adventist Health System facilities incorporate the latest technological advancements and clinical research to serve more than 4.7 million patients annually. The full continuum of integrated care also includes urgent care centers, home health and hospice agencies and skilled nursing facilities. Learn more atAbout Bio-OptronicsBio-Optronics, the creators of Clinical Conductor CTMS, is a leading software and services company that creates user-focused software and services for healthcare organizations that positively impacts the lives of patients around the world. Clinical Conductor CTMS is an established clinical trial management system, utilized by thousands of research organizations worldwide, designed to simplify and standardize complex research processes for businesses managing and conducting clinical trials. Learn more atBio-Optronics1890 South Winton RoadSuite 190Rochester, NY 14618 Sodium Caprylate Market size is to witness a substantial growth from 2016 to 2024 https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1330 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1330 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/sodium-caprylate-market https://www.gminsights.com Sodium caprylate market demand is dependent on the specialty chemicals industry and low production volume. Hence the price is expected to be much greater taking into consideration the manufacturers are present in the developed regions like Europe and North America. In the Middle East and Asia Pacific, due to price sensitivity, the product is used in only major end-user industries. This is also due to the absence of proper sodium caprylate market and technology; higher prices may be the reason for growth restraints.Purchase This Report by calling Global Market Insights, Inc. at 1-888-689-0688 (Toll Free) or 1-302-846-7766Sodium Caprylate Market size is expected to witness a substantial growth from 2016 to 2024. Derived from the caprylic acid, sodium caprylate is a form of salt which is a fatty acid with eight carbon base. It is also well known as octanoic acid or sodium octanoate as they have the same molecular formula.Extensive application in pharmaceutical and food industries will be major drivers for overall sodium caprylate market growth. It is a laboratory grade specialty chemical and caters to a very niche market. It has been confirmed that the product finds usage to kill E. Coli bacteria, found in the intestines of animals and humans. Certain type of E. coli bacteria is harmful and can be the cause of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps.Request for table of contents of this research report@The product is mainly found in white powder form, and is water soluble under normal condition. It can also be used as anticaking agent, emulsifier and binders in the end-user industries. The compounds of caprylic acid are also found in the milk of several mammals. Also, small constituents are found in the coconut oil and palm kernel oil. Technology development in the product extraction from natural resources will further augment the global sodium caprylate market growth in coming years.The Sodium Caprylate Market Report Consists of,1. Methodology and Scope2. Executive Summary3. Sodium Caprylate Industry Insights3.1 Industry segmentation3.2. Industry size, forecast and growth expectations, 2016 - 20243.3. Industry ecosystem analysis3.4. Raw material insights3.5. Technology insights3.6. Regulatory framework3.7. Industry dynamics3.8. Key growth opportunities3.9. Porter's analysis3.10. Company market share, 20153.11. PESTEL analysis3.14. Regional price trends4. Sodium Caprylate Product Insights5. Sodium Caprylate Application Insights6. Sodium Caprylate Regional Insights7. Competitor ProfilesInquire about to purchase this research report@North America and Europe are the developed regions contributing most to the sodium caprylate market. Manufacturers in China, on the other hand, are focusing more on increasing the production capacities and primarily targeting the developed markets of North America and Europe to sell their products at a cheaper rate. Creating this situation would subsequently make the North American and European sodium caprylate market participants to cut down their expenditures on the manufacturing and development of the chemicals. In the Asia Pacific, the local manufacturers contribute to a very small portion in the sodium caprylate market.Some of the major players in the sodium caprylate market include J&K Scientific Ltd., Alfa Aesar, MaaS Pharma Chemicals, Mutchler Inc., Baxter, Kirsch Pharma, Grainger, Ing. Petr Svec PENTA, KEGG DGROUP, AMT Labs & Kelatron, VWR, Fisher Scientific, EMD Millipore, Zhangjiagang Specom Biochemical Co. Ltd., Viva Corporation, TCI Co. Ltd., Mubychem Group, Energy Chemical, Acme Synthetic Chemicals and 3B Pharmachem to name a few.Browse complete summary of this report @Contact UsArun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Connect with us twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+About Global Market Insights, Inc.Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105,Ocean View DelawareUnited States 19970 Privatimus to provide security awareness training at Edumondi the German butler school Jorg Schmidt, Managing Director of Edumondi and Sven Leidel, Partner of Privatimus www.privatimus.com www.edumondi.com www.privatimus.com www.edumondi.de HAMBURG, Germany Privatimus, a provider of security consultation, risk mitigation and protection for family offices, high net worth individuals (HNWI) and corporate clients was selected to provide security awareness training at the prestigious German butler school Edumondi. The Privatimus training and expertise sharing will be part of Edumondis diversified and practice-oriented curriculum that attracts and educates students Europe-wide in household management and hospitality services as a professional butler.Edumondi offers a broad and varied training program for future butlers, household managers or housekeepers that attaches the utmost importance to provide comprehensive sessions that are taught with the concept of hands-on, real life situations. Privatimus contribution to the Edumondi extensive program is to provide security awareness and expertise in areas such as identifying surveillance activities from third parties, counter-surveillance techniques, how to prevent and measures to take in response to high-risk situations, handling social media and critical/confidential information.Security awareness is critically important for a butler and the entire household staff," commented Sven Leidel, Partner of Privatimus. With their intensive interaction in the daily personal and social lives of the families and environments they are providing service for, in addition to regular contact with a range of external providers, it is imperative they are trained with the knowledge to best respond should unfavourable security circumstances arise.In addition to the on-site training courses, Privatimus will also perform pre-employment background checks on academy graduates and potential candidates that will be placed by Edumondi in homes of their HNWI/UHNWI clients. Edumondi will also train, advise and educate Privatimus Executive Protection Agents in areas of etiquette, protocol, personal management and communication.Jorg Schmidt, Managing Director of Edumondi added: This cooperation of two German market leaders in their areas of expertise provides a very powerful advantage to students of the Edumondi training program, combining the high quality of both services in our extensive curriculum.About Privatimus GmbHWe are a company of high integrity, scale and reach. Since 1993, our experts have provided security advice, risk mitigation and protection to family offices, wealth management firms, exposed persons, high net worth individuals (HNWI), groups, and corporate clients around the world. Everything we do in identifying risks, protection strategies, operational security or background checks must be executed with pinpoint precision.Privatimus focuses on an exclusive group of high-profile clientele exposed in public due to their professional activities, family history and wealth, or because of general public interest. We have a worldwide network of experts who can work across cultures and time zones to help ensure our clients personal interests are protected.Life Demands Perfection.Visit us at:About EdumondiThe German butler school Edumondi, located in Stade near Hamburg (northern Germany) offers a full-time intensive program over 10 weeks or individual, flexible part-time courses in household management as a professional butler, household manager or housekeeper and draws students throughout Europe. Curriculum is taught in English and is based on the expertise of teachers who served in private households of high and ultra high net worth individuals (HNWI & UHNWI) and the upscale hospitality industry. Students learn not only theory but a practical, hands-on understanding of managing a private household and providing service in luxury hotels and resorts, embassies, cruise ships or yachts. Trainings take place at various luxurious locations in northern Germany (Hamburg + Berlin).Edumondi offers the most various, diversified and practice-oriented curriculum Europe-wide.Visit Edumondi at:Privatimus GmbHSven Leidel, PartnerFlughafenstrasse 52 a|C22335 Hamburg | Germany+49 (0) 40 5272 1221 0s.leidel@privatimus.comEdumondiJorg Schmidt, Geschaftsfuhrerc/o InselrestaurantAuf der Insel 121680 Stade | Germany+49 (0) 4141 788301office@edumondi.de EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1058413&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/emea-europe-middle-east-and-africa-automotive-exterior-led-lighting-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/machines-market-reports-120.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.This research report gives an account of the global EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Automotive Exterior LED Lighting market manages all its basic points of interest with the assistance of an inside and out and shrewd examination. The market is clarified in a comprehensive way and thus permits the report to show an entire examination of the market as concocted utilizing the elements that are required to have a quantifiable effect on its improvement.Despite the fact that a lot of summed up market-oriented data may not a mind boggling undertaking, it is sifting through the redundant parts of the given data to just the key points of interest that matter to a user, or that can settle a business issue. 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The report is made with the aim of satisfying the modified needs of all its readers who are a part of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Automotive Exterior LED Lighting. The report in this way makes an exceptionally ingenious information archive that permits best practices to be framed profoundly and to provide viable business systems.Browse Market Research Report @Table of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Report 20171 Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Automotive Exterior LED Lighting1.2 Classification of Automotive Exterior LED Lighting1.2.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 High Beam and Low Beam1.2.4 Fog Lights and Taillights1.2.5 Brake Lights1.2.6 Turn Lights1.3 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Passenger Vehicle1.3.3 Commercial Vehicle1.4 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting (Volume, Value and Sales Price) by Players, Countries, Type and Application5.1 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.2 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Type5.3 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Market Share by Application5.4 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries5.4.1 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.2 Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.3 South Africa Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.4 Nigeria Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.5 Egypt Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.6 Algeria Automotive Exterior LED Lighting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)Read More @QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States Rotomoulding Powder Market, Trends, Drivers, Industry pitfalls And challenges https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1337 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1337 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/rotomoulding-powder-market https://www.gminsights.com Rotomoulding powder market is fragmented based on product, which includes polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Nylon, polycarbonates, polypropylene, and polyethylene family that includes low density polyethylene (LDPE), linear low density polyethylene(LLDPE), high density polyethylene(HDPE), and cross linked polyethylene(PEX). Polyethylene have physical properties including density, molecular weight distribution and melt index density and is used in the process. Nylon is also used in rotational moulding process as it offers properties like toughness, good chemical resistance, strong strength and stiffness, and strong abrasion resistance.Purchase This Report by calling Global Market Insights, Inc. at 1-888-689-0688 (Toll Free) or 1-302-846-7766Rotomoulding Powder Market size demand is driven by rapid expansion in construction and packaging industries. The product has more durability and quick set up property. Rotomoulding process is also known as rotational molding. This is an operative molding method permitting producers to manufacture durable products at a reasonably lower cost with releasing reduced material leading to diminish environmental pollution.Increase in the product consumption by automobile industry due to its durability and resistance to corrosion is anticipated to drive rotomoulding powder market growth. Up surging use of plastics in different automotive components have formed potential for the rotational moulding process. By using plastics in the form of powder, it offers advantages over the method including greater flexibility of design, reduced fabrication and tooling costs. Presently parts moulded by rotomoulding technique includes sun visors and arm rest, air conditioner and heater duct work, truck dashboards and filler tubes.Request for table of contents of this research report@Rise in applications of the product in agriculture sector tends to propel rotomoulding powder market growth during upcoming span of time. Products including water troughs, cattle feeder and spray tanks use rotational powder in their manufacturing process. Increase agricultural production will result in higher demand of these products, further enhancing rotomoulding powder market growth. The obtainability of extensive variety of this powder depends upon the need of end use application which boosts the rotomoulding powder demand. Rotational moulding is a technique that comprises processing of plastic materials mainly suitable to produce large hollow shapes.The Rotomoulding Powder Market Report Consists of,1. Methodology and Scope2. Executive Summary3. Rotomoulding Powder Industry Insights3.1 Industry segmentation3.2. Industry size, forecast and growth expectations, 2016 - 20243.3. Industry ecosystem analysis3.4. Raw material insights3.5. Technology insights3.6. Regulatory framework3.7. Industry dynamics3.8. Key growth opportunities3.9. Porter's analysis3.10. Company market share, 20153.11. PESTEL analysis3.14. Regional price trends4. Rotomoulding Powder Product Insights5. Rotomoulding Powder Application Insights6. Rotomoulding Powder Regional Insights7. Competitor ProfilesInquire about to purchase this research report@Current technical advancements in terms of material, machineries, moulds, and process control have unlocked new application avenues. Increase demand of plastic storage tanks, such as water storage and water treatment tanks in industrial as well as household sectors, is expected to contribute to the growth of rotomoulding powder market.In Asia Pacific, the automotive components industry in India has had a healthy growth over the last few years with USD 35 billion in 2016 while exports have increased to USD 12 billion. It is expected that the auto component industry will grow by 10% in the financial year 2018 due to localization by original equipment producer and rising exportation from India. This tends to drive rotomoulding powder market growth during forecasted time frame.Rotomoulding powder market is fragmented in nature. Some of the key industry participants are Pacific Poly Plast, Reliance Industries, Phychem Technologies, Greenage Industries, Broadway Colours, Kiel Industries, A. Schulman, Shiva Polycompounds, VPals, Ramdev Polymers, Matrix Polymers, CP Powders and D&M plastics.Browse complete summary of this report @Contact UsArun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Connect with us twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+About Global Market Insights, Inc.Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105,Ocean View DelawareUnited States 19970 Small Hydropower Market - Africa Industry Analysis 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/africa-small-hydropower-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=18839 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Africa Small Hydropower Market: SnapshotOne of the key factors currently driving the Africa small hydropower market is the low requirement of capital investments to get projects set up. Players as well as governments are aware of this and intend to make full use of the fact that small hydropower can be cheaper than several other alternative renewables in the long run. The market is also being driven by the minimal impact that small hydropower installations can have on the environment, in comparison to non-renewable sources as well as several large scale renewable power projects. However, the Africa small hydropower market is currently being hampered by the lack of access that several regions have to the key technologies required to successfully run a large-scale implementation process. The market is also being restricted by the lack of grid-based infrastructure that can support and make use of multiple small hydropower installations within an area.Browse Market Research Report @In terms of production capacity, the African Small Hydropower market had reached 9,752.9 MW in 2015. It is very likely to reach 49,706.1 MW by the end of 2024, after expanding at a CAGR of 19.2% within the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.North and South African Countries Dominate Small Hydropower UsageIn terms of nations, the Africa small hydropower market can be segmented into Zambia, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, and a collective minority of other nations. For 2015, it was observed that the southern and northern African nations held the leading shares in the Africa small hydropower market in terms of potential capacity for power generation. Emerging economies from Eastern Africa, Central Africa, and Western Africa are likely to be the core upcoming markets for small hydropower over the coming years.The significant expansion of hydropower and the increasing emphasis put on hydroelectricity in developing regions are anticipated to be key drivers to the Africa small hydropower market. The future for small hydropower in Africa is expected to witness two tracks running in parallel to each other. One of them is the number of grid-connected projects that are popping up and that are intended to generate power to be fed into the national grid. The other is the growing number of small scale systems intended for private use. The future of grid-tied systems is linked to the policies adopted by several nations regarding the development of renewable energy sources.Zambia and Ghana Show High Potential for Small Hydropower AdoptionIn terms of potential growth in the Africa small hydropower market in production capacities, Zambia is likely to show an above-average CAGR of 20% within the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. This is currently considered the leading growth rate amongst all the African countries included in the Africa small hydropower market and under consideration within this report.Ghana is expected to have a very strong impact on the increase in the overall capacity for the forecast period of 2015-2024. Ghanas share of potential capacity for the year 2024 is expected to be close to 10% of the entire potential capacity for Africa. Small hydro plants have a longer life span of up to 50 years which makes it reliable and economical source of energy conversion. Small hydro has high capacity utilization factor up to 50% which results in higher output as compared to wind and solar power which accounts for 25% and 20% respectively. Small hydro plant can be operated continuously at any temperature and wind condition which makes it economical and flexible.For more information on this report, fill the form @Key players in the global small hydropower market so far, have included Mecamidi, Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), Eco Power Holdings, Artelia, Lesotho Electricity Company, Agder Energi AS, Ontario Power Generation, Inc., Voith GmbH, Alstom SA, Andritz, Siemens AG, Eskom Holdings, BC Hydro and Power Authority, StatKraft AS, RusHydro PJSC, ZESCO Ltd., Fortum OYJ, and Mozambique Electricity Company.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: Aviation Cyber Security Market Trends and Forecast By 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/aviation-cyber-security-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=15566 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The aviation sector is expanding as more and more people are using airline services to travel across the globe. These have caused an increase in air traffic in recent years.To solve this problem, the aviation sector has adopted information technology in its system. The sector has upgraded itself from using Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) technologies to processor-based hardware platforms.However, use of information technology in aviation industry has given rise to the threat of cyber attack. Cyber attack is nothing but an internet based attempt to damage information technology system of an airline company and hack critical information using malware or spyware.Obtain Report Details:To tackle this issue, a cyber security solution is necessary in aviation industry. Cyber security is the use of technology and processes to protect data, computers and networks from attack of hackers through internet.Aviation cyber security solution mainly deals with management and protection of critical IT infrastructure in Aviation sector.Aviation industry basically uses and stores a high amount of processed data. This data is mainly used in airports, airlines and air traffic management (ATM) services.The manipulation of such data by hackers can create huge damage for aviation industry. The other threat is the increased use of mobile phones, laptop and tablets among airline passengers that has increased possible complexity regarding cyber attack threats.Due to the frequency and complexity of such cyber attacks, it has become necessary for aviation sector to improve the quality of protection. Thus, airline companies are now outsourcing their cyber security responsibilities to skilled security service providers, in order to gain better protection.High initial purchase and maintenance cost is a major challenge for the adoption of aviation cyber security solution in market. Most of airports and airline companies are unable to afford aviation cyber security due to this reason.Another challenge for aviation cyber security solution is the absence of standard cyber security framework. The aviation industry consists of many stakeholders such as airports, airlines and air traffic management service provider which are mostly controlled by private players.The coordination between the stakeholders is low which results in less standardization of aviation cyber security. A collective responsibility of governments, airlines, airports and Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in aviation industry is necessary to adopt such framework.The introduction of cloud based cyber security solution will help aviation industry to upgrade service in less time and low cost.The aviation cyber security solution find its application mainly in areas of airport management, air traffic management (ATM), airline management and air cargo management.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market:The application of aviation cyber security solution is going to increase in air cargo management service in coming years as popularity of air cargo services have increased.Due to increasing cyber terrorism threat, the demand for aviation cyber security market is going to increase in developed economies such as North America and Europe.Some of the key companies providing aviation cyber security solution are Amadeus IT Group, Airbus SAS, Arinic, Boeing, IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, Sabre Airline Solution, SITA, Symantec Corporation, Unisys Corperation, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc, General Dynamics Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon Company.About TMRTransparency 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 TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Electrolyte Drinks Market 2017 - nuun, Monster, Rockstar, Pepsico, Big Red, Arizona, R-Line Limited, National Beverage, Dr Pepper Snapple Group Electrolyte Drinks Market https://goo.gl/xebuhS https://goo.gl/Ow8FfK http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Electrolyte Drinks Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Electrolyte Drinks Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Electrolyte Drinks industry, and estimates the future trend of Electrolyte Drinks market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Electrolyte Drinks Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportMonsterRockstarPepsicoBig RedArizonaNational BeverageDr Pepper Snapple GroupLiving Essentials MarketingVital PharmaceuticalsStokely-Van Camp, IncR-Line LimitednuunThe market research report explores the Electrolyte Drinks market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Electrolyte Drinks Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Electrolyte Drinks market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Electrolyte Drinks. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Electrolyte Drinks market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Electrolyte Drinks is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Electrolyte Drinks market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Electrolyte Drinks market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Electrolyte Drinks market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Electrolyte Drinks production volume, data pertaining to demand and Electrolyte Drinks supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Electrolyte Drinks along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Electrolyte Drinks across the world.About UsApexResearch offer reports from top publishers and update to serve you with immediate on-line access to professional insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development Executive| sales@apexresearch.biz Welding Equipment Market 2017 - Colfax, Kobe Steel, Obara, Daihen, Nimak, Riland, Telwin, EWM, Hugong, Kokuho, Lincoln Electric, Denyo Welding Equipment Market https://goo.gl/V6VJhX https://goo.gl/6XU6T0 http://www.apexresearch.biz Apex Research, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Welding Equipment Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Welding Equipment Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Welding Equipment industry, and estimates the future trend of Welding Equipment market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Welding Equipment Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportLincoln ElectricColfaxIllinois Tool WorksKobe SteelFronius InternationalAir LiquidePanasonic Welding SystemsNelson Stud WeldingObaraDaihenJasic TechnologyNimakRilandTelwinEWMHugongKokuhoArc MachinesDenyoTimewelderAotai ElectricKoike AronsonAitel WelderThe market research report explores the Welding Equipment market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Welding Equipment Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Welding Equipment market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Welding Equipment. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Welding Equipment market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Welding Equipment is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Welding Equipment market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Welding Equipment market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Welding Equipment market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Welding Equipment production volume, data pertaining to demand and Welding Equipment supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Welding Equipment along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Welding Equipment across the world.About UsApexResearch offer reports from top publishers and update to serve you with immediate on-line access to professional insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development Executive| sales@apexresearch.biz Global Packaging Automation Market: Need to Improve Overall Productivity in Packaging Industries and Incur Lesser Expenditure to Fuel Demand Packaging Automation Market ,Packaging Automation Market share http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/packaging-automation-market.html/ http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14096 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Packaging is one of the important elements in the product manufacturing process. It helps in protecting the products from physical damage, dust, and various other factors, adding further value to the products. In order to maximize profits, cost cutting has become important in the light of intense competition. Packaging process is carried out with the help of different packaging machineries and robotics which help in completing the tasks more efficiently and effectively.Use of automation in the packaging industry is likely to help improve labor productivity, ensure packaging quality, and also help in reducing packaging cost and storage cost. Safety regulations are major concerns among manufacturers especially in the health care and food and beverage industry, more so in emerging economies such as India, China, and Latin America. Safety regulations can be adhered to by developing applications which include automated reporting capabilities that helps in generating brief reports for each packaging line.Obtain Report Details @In terms of application, the global packaging automation market is segmented into palletizing, labelling, filling, capping, and wrapping. Of these, the palletizing segment held the dominant share of 27% in the market based on revenue in 2016. It is also forecast to continue leading the market through the course of the forecast period. Paradigm shift from traditional palletizers to hybrid palletizers is intended to make packaging automation easier. Furthermore, this advancement in technology can adapt multiple requirements, thereby facilitating product changeover. This is a key factor boosting the palletizer segment.By type, the global market can be classified into packaging robot, automated packagers, and automated conveyors. Of these, the market is forecast to witness increasing demand for packaging robots. In terms of industries, food and beverage, healthcare, logistics, retail, electronics, automotive, and others constitute the key market segments. Of these, the food and beverages sector accounted for the leading market share of 24.3% in 2016. The rising demand for automation in the food and beverages industry is facilitated by the intensifying competitive among contemporaries in the business.Fill the form to Gain Deeper Insights on this Market @Regionally, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa are the key segments in the global packaging automation market. In 2016, Europe accounted for the leading market share of 37% based on revenue. Asia Pacific and North America, emerged as the second and third leading markets for packaging automation, respectively, in the same year. In Europe, the packaging automation market is gaining from the presence of a large number of industries.On account of the rising demand from emerging nations, Asia Pacific is expected to continue exhibiting lucrative opportunities for the market. The region is also home to booming automotive, healthcare, and food and beverages industries, which exhibit high demand for advanced packaging solutions. Moreover, these industries are also looking for ways of curbing expenses, which in turn will boost the packaging automation market in Asia Pacific. Among the emerging nations, China will hold the highest share in the market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Wireless Connectivity Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth and Trends to 2024 Global Wireless Connectivity Market, Wireless Connectivity Market share www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wireless-connectivity- www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The wireless connectivity market in Asia Pacific is in its promising stage; the region is projected to be among the major adopters of wireless connectivity devices. Rise in inclination of consumers toward advanced technological products is likely to boost the wireless connectivity market in Asia Pacific in the near future. Furthermore, government initiatives by countries such as Japan, China, India, and South Korea in the field of electronics and semiconductors are providing lucrative opportunities for electronics and semiconductor industries across Asia Pacific.North America consists of technologically advanced countries such as Canada and the U.S. The U.S. and Canada offer vast potential for the application of Internet of Things. This is expected to propel the market for wireless connectivity technologies. In turn, this is anticipated to augment the wireless connectivity market in the region.Obtain Report Details @...Wireless connectivity is a technique used by homes, communication networks, and enterprise connections to reduce complex cable networks across buildings. Wireless connectivity equipment is deep rooted in many electrical device markets. WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS are becoming universal for certain devices such as smart phones and mobile phones. Besides this, wireless connectivity is also required in applications in Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from control devices and gateways to cloud.Wireless connectivity is used by IoT devices to enable an access point through which communication and data transfer between two devices can take place. Collaborations and partnerships is one of the major trends in the wireless connectivity market. For instance, partnerships between ZigBee and other organizations such as EnOcean GmbH are anticipated to drive the self-powered energy harvesting internet-of-things devices in areas such as building automation and home automation.Major factors driving the global wireless connectivity market include rise in adoption of IoT and cloud computing, increase in demand for smart phones and other wireless technology devices such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, and WiFi, growth in connectivity of the Internet, and escalation of demand for low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks.Make an Enquiry @...However, lack of uniform communication principles is hampering the wireless connectivity market. Additionally, the intervention with other electromagnetic sources, layered structure, and physical object are also the key factors that adversely affect the evolution of wireless connectivity technology. Consequently, these factors act as restraints for the wireless connectivity market. Key challenges for the global wireless connectivity market include requirement of enhanced security of information and concession among features such as power consumption, data rates, and range for numerous wireless technologies.Increase in need for cross domain applications could open up new opportunities for the wireless connectivity market. Additionally, rise in government subsidies for the development of IoT provided by countries such as India, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and South Korea is also estimated to offer new opportunities to the wireless connectivity market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Car Security System Market Major Advancements in the Security System Technologies; Global Industry Analysis 2024 Car Security System Market, Global Car Security System Market www.transparencymarketresearch.com/car-security-system-ma www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The global car security system market has largely benefitted from the technological advancements over the past few years. Security system manufacturers are likely to capitalize on the proliferation of smart devices such as smartphones and smartwatches.They are offering security features in consumer mobile phones that will help them to track the car in case of theft. Moreover, with the growing adoption of the internet, companies are increasingly focusing on global positioning systems (GPS) and internet connectivity systems that are capable of providing advanced security.The increasing cases of car theft worldwide are also escalating the growth of the global car security system market. Several governments are making it compulsory for automakers to install immobilizers as a standard feature in every new car. A case in point is the Western Australia Department of Transport that mandates the use of immobilizers before licensing and transferring a vehicle in a territory.Obtain Report Details @...The increasing sales of cars worldwide is a key factor driving the global car security systems market. Automakers are installing security systems in new vehicles in order to stand out in the competition. Moreover, the growing trend of telematics across the globe is providing comfort to car owners and easy car monitoring techniques, which is resulting in enhancement in car security. This is, therefore, working in favor of the growth of the market. Furthermore, the robust growth of aftermarket worldwide is providing a fillip to the market.The key regional markets analyzed in this research report are Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific is anticipated to command a large share of the overall market revenue owing to the flourishing growth of the automotive sector. The increasing vehicle production capacity, rising exports of automobiles, and the expanding aftermarket are collectively fuelling the growth of the region. The rising trend of installing safety features in vehicles is another factor bolstering the growth of the region.Make an Enquiry @...North America and Europe are expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period. The presence of a wide base of affluent customers is propelling the demand for vehicles in these regions, which in turn is working in favor of the car security systems market. In addition, North America, particularly the U.S., is a home to various car manufacturing giants such as General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat-Chrysler Automotive. This provides a significant boost to the growth of the North America region. In Europe, Germany, the U.K., Italy, and France will be the major contributors.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.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Protein Labeling Market Research Report: Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/protein-labeling-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18635 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Three types of tags are utilized in protein labeling processes: mass tags, stable isotopes, and fluorophores. Mass spectrometry is utilized for labeling and separation of mass tags and stable isotopes, while fluorescence imagers are used for detection of fluorescence labels. Protein labeling is becoming essential for proteomic profiling prior to separation and analysis of proteins or amino acids. However, the main purpose of protein labeling is specific detection and quantification of isomers, protein modifications in multiplexed samples, and monitoring of biological processes. Protein labeling enhanced the detection sensitivity as well as simplifies the detection workflow. Proteins can be labeled in biological fluids during cell growth by incorporation of amino acids containing isotopes, tissue samples by attaching specific group or other residues.Labeling of specific protein or protein of interest by chemical and/or other biological material for detection, identification, and activity determination, and to identify its physicochemical properties is known as protein labeling. Chemical labels such as fluorescent dyes, biotin, radioactive isotope, and enzymes are used for labeling of proteins. These help generate a detection signal, which are increasingly utilized in key biotechnology applications. The labeled secondary antibodies are readily available in the market, but unique and more specific probes are witnessing increasing demand in research applications. These labels can be conjugated to antibodies and other specific probes using various crosslinking technologies.The protein labeling market can be segmented based on product type, labeling method, end-user, and region. In terms of product type, the market can be segmented into instruments, kits and reagents, and services. The instruments segment comprises fluorescence microscopy, protein microarrays, and mass spectrometry. Reagents can be further segmented into enzymes, monoclonal antibodies, probes or tags, proteins, and other reagents.Browse full report on Protein Labeling Market -Based on labeling method, the protein labeling market can be segmented into in vivo labeling and in vitro labeling. In vivo labeling or metabolic labeling is a method to label all proteins or nucleic acids in a cell by culturing them with amino acids or nucleotides, respectively. In vivo labeling is further segmented into radioactive labeling and photo-reactive labeling. In vitro labeling involves chemical method of protein labeling by covalent attachment of label to amino acids using label conjugates to chemical group that react with specific amino acids. In vitro labeling is further segmented into nanoparticle labeling, dye-based labeling, enzymatic labeling, and site-specific labeling. In vitro labeling is expected to be the fastest growing segment during the forecast period.In terms of end-user, the protein labeling market can be categorized into pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, and academic and research institutes. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies is expected to be the fastest growing segment due to increasing R&D spending in pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector globally.Geographically, the protein labeling market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe are likely to dominate the protein labeling market. Rising number of proteomics research studies in the region is the key driver of the protein labeling market in North America and Europe. Asia Pacific is expected to be the most progressive market for protein labeling. Increasing health care spending and growing medical tourism are projected to drive the market in Asia Pacific. Rising adoption of personalized medicine therapy is another factor propelling the market in the region. Increasing research and development expenditure and health care expenditure by government is likely to contribute to the growth of the market. However, lack of skilled professionals and high degree of market consolidation could negatively impact the growth of the market during the forecast period.Major players operating in the protein labeling market are Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Merck KGaA, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Promega Corporation, SeraCare Life Sciences, Inc., and LI-COR, Inc.Request for sample of this report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: U.S. Population Health Management Solutions Market: Key Trends and Forecast Research Report 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/us-population-health-management-solutions-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=7412 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Population health management (PHM) is a methodical and transparent delivery of services to improve the health status of a given population at a prospective price and to deliver better outcomes at lower cost. PHM programs are designed to keep defined patient populations, especially those with high-risk diseases, as healthy as possible while decreasing the need for costly interventions such as emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and invasive tests and procedures. The PHM services segment (by type of source) and the cloud-based population health management systems segment (by mode of operation) are likely to record fastest growth due to the upward trend in health IT adoption in the U.S. Moreover, the PHM software segment would spearhead the growth of cloud-based PHM solutions in the near future. The population health management solutions market in the U.S. was valued at US$ 3.4 Bn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 45.7 Bn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 23.9% during the forecast period.The PHM services segment is projected to expand at the highest CAGR compared to the software segment. Moreover, cloud-based population health management systems was one of the fastest growing segments of the market. The key factor responsible for its market dominance and significant growth is the increasing uptake of healthcare IT by health care providers, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical industries and recurring demand for continuing existing health management solutions at population level. The major factor driving the PHM solutions market is the high disease burden on the U.S. health systems which is rising rapidly due to the demographic transition. Furthermore, these PHM tools facilitate database management for monitoring and comparison in health outcomes among population groups under study.Browse full report on U.S. Population Health Management Solutions Market-Investment by pharmaceutical companies in potential drug discovery and clinical trials involving PHM software would also contribute to market growth. Well-established health care infrastructure and high demand for health care analytics training and development are the major factors driving the PHM solutions market in the U.S. Moreover, patient rights based health care laws in the U.S. for post-sales client service and demand for system upgrade across the country has widened the scope of PHM application in the U.S. health programs.PHM solutions are in high demand during epidemics and outbreaks as preventive and control measures for large population groups in the country. PHM platforms provide remote health management offerings such as personal emergency response systems (PERS), medication dispensers, and telemonitoring solutions. These become important components to deal with sudden pressures on health systems to provide medical assistance. These solutions would facilitate this health care provision to huge population groups simultaneously during epidemic and aid in managing operational cost of hospitals and health care organizations. Moreover, various pharmaceutical companies deploy PHM tools to ensure and store clinical trial data illustrating progress of a new or potential drug for chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular ailments. Therefore, the PHM solutions market is anticipated to witness a steep rise in the U.S during the forecast period.Key players operating in the population health management solutions market in the U.S. are Caradigm, Conifer Health Solutions, Health Catalyst, Healthagen, LLC, International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, Lumeris, NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC, OptumHealth, Inc., Persivia, Premier, Inc., The Advisory Board Company, Verisk Health, Wellcentive, Inc., and ZeOmega, Inc. These key market players are actively engaged in constant innovations and development related to health care technology and service management to maintain their positions in the market.Request for sample of this report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Solid Tumor Market : Analysis and Forecast upto 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/solid-tumor-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=8209 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Some of the major players operating in this market are AstraZeneca plc, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Amgen, Inc., Biogen Idec, Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Baxter International, Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd., and Sanofi among others.Solid tumors are formed due to aggregation of a group of abnormal tissues that do not comprise of any cyst or liquid areas within. Solid tumors can be of both types, i.e. benign (non-cancerous) as well as malignant (cancerous) in nature. Solid tumors majorly comprise of lymphomas, carcinomas, sarcomas and melanomas; whereas, all forms of leukemias usually do not cause solid tumor formation.The treatment of these solid tumors is a complex task and it requires coordinated actions of many healthcare professionals, such as, radiologists, surgeons, oncologists, radiation specialists, nurses and other professionals. Hence, most of the solid tumors are treated via radiotherapy, chemotherapy and/or surgery. However, at present, surgery is the most preferred choice of treatment for cancerous solid tumors.Chemotherapy is often utilized along with other modes of solid tumor treatment i.e. radiation and/or surgery. Several chemotherapeutic drugs are available along with a ripe pipeline of drugs that will soon be commercialized in the global market. Solid tumor market can be classified into five major segments, based on the site of origin, namely, prostrate cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer and other cancers.Browse full report on Solid Tumor Market -Some of the major driving factors for the growth of this market include increasing incidences of several cases of solid tumors, rising prevalence of different forms of metastatic cancers, increasing demand for highly effective chemotherapeutic agents and ripe pipeline of drugs which is available in the global market. According to World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 8.2 million people died due to different types of cancers worldwide in 2012. Among them lung, colorectal, breast and liver cancers were among the leading causes of cancer deaths. Most common forms of solid tumors include brain tumors (medulloblastoma and glioma) and neuroblastoma; other less common solid tumors include rhabdomyosarcoma and osteosarcoma.Some of the major drugs that available in the global market are Avastin (bevacizumab), Afinitor (everolimus), Jevtana (cabazitaxel), Sutent (sunitinib), Tarceva (erlotinib), Taxotere (docetaxel), Zytiga (abiraterone acetate), Carboplatin, Cisplatin, Doxorubicin, Gemcitabine and Paclitaxel among others. Also, major promising drugs that are in different stages of clinical trials include Abraxane (albumin-bound paclitaxel), AMG 386 (trebananib), Votrient (pazopanib) and Xtandi (enzalutamide) among others. These drugs will soon be commercialized in the global market, which will further boost this market in future.Geographically, North America holds the leading position in solid tumor market followed by Europe. Major factors responsible for their dominance in this market include high incidence rate of various solid tumor cases along with very well developed healthcare infrastructure of these regions. These regions also comprise of high geriatric population, which contribute heavily towards the solid tumor patient population in the region. However, Asia Pacific is considered to be the most lucrative market for solid tumor market due to recent advancements in healthcare infrastructure and growing medical tourism in these regions. The region also accounts for high cancer patient population and increasing awareness and affordability of the people of this region will contribute heavily towards the future growth of this market in the region.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Request for brochure of this report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Bills release multiple artist renderings of new stadium The morning of Oct. 27 was a day Buffalo Bills fans have been patiently waiting for a reveal of what the new stadium will potentially look like. The team... County officials, law firm representatives host public hearing on new stadium SEQR Erie County officials, representatives from Phillips Lytle LLP, power players for a new stadium and interested Buffalo Bills fans packed into one of the community rooms of the Brush Mountain... Updated 2:50 p.m. A man suspected of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in unincorporated Clackamas County earlier this year was arrested Wednesday at the border between the U.S. and Mexico, deputies said. Santiago Martinez-Flores U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials detained Santiago Martinez-Flores about 15 miles from San Diego, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office. The Oregon agency announced two days prior that detectives had used physical evidence to connect Martinez-Flores, now 48, to the February assault. Deputies previously said Martinez-Flores, who has a lengthy criminal record, had been deported to Mexico in 2001 after serving about two years in Oregon prison. He's now being held in the San Diego County Jail, deputies said. Deputies previously said the sexual assault suspect, since identified as Martinez-Flores, broke into a Clackamas Trails Apartments unit in the early morning of Feb. 26 and that the girl awoke while he was assaulting her. She later gave a description of the suspect, deputies said, and a forensic artist produced a sketch of him. A Clackamas County detective is headed to California to interview Martinez-Flores, deputies said, and authorities are working to extradite Martinez-Flores to Clackamas County. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Update includes additional information from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Donald Trump President Donald Trump signs the Education Federalism Executive Order during a federalism event with governors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) By Mark Major Since FDR, a president's first 100 days offer an important -- if arbitrary -- measure for evaluating success. While it is unlikely any executive will again match the productivity of Roosevelt, most scholars of the presidency agree that this period still matters for advancing an administration's agenda. It has been an unruly 100 days since President Donald Trump took the oath of office. His administration has been plagued with scandals, protests and a critical media with a renewed sense of purpose. As a scholar of the presidency and the press, I've found the beginning of the Trump administration morbidly fascinating. Despite his boasts, Trump's legislative agenda appears to be stalled. As we approach day 100, many will point critically to the dearth of bills coming across Trump's desk. However, focusing solely on legislation overlooks a thriving aspect of the Trump presidency: the use of unilateral powers like executive orders, memoranda and proclamations. Trump goes it alone Trump hit the ground running with a flurry of unilateral activity. This burst of direct actions may seem surprising in light of Trump's past statements. In 2012, he took to Twitter to criticize President Obama for "constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority." According to the American Presidency Project, Trump has surpassed his power-grabbing predecessor in unilateral actions, and in less time. Trump is clearly making a concerted effort to fulfill his campaign promises. In areas where he can act alone, Trump has made gestures - some symbolic, others more substantive - toward 14 of the 18 pledges outlined in his Contract with the American Voter. With a stroke of the pen, Trump attempted to reduce the number of people working for the government, "drain the swamp" and advance pipeline projects. Repealing the last eight years Many of Trump's initial direct actions, as presidential scholar Julia Azari tells us, highlight "the major symbolic differences between the new administration and the previous one." This means Trump has spent time repealing the unilateral actions of his predecessor, a common move for an administration taking the keys to the White House from the opposing party. Trump has rescinded some of Obama's most heralded executive orders, such as the order on Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces. Under the Trump administration, federal contractors no longer are required to disclose whether they have violated workplace laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act. As the Detroit Free Press put it, "The law no longer requires companies to be transparent about employee pay, women and minorities have no way of knowing whether their wages are fair, and . the government has undercut progress in closing the gender wage gap." Like all Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan, Trump signed a memorandum reinstating the Mexico City Policy. Opponents refer to it as the "global gag rule" because it prohibits funding any international health organization that mentions abortion as part of family planning. According to Ann M. Starrs, president of the Guttmacher Institute, Trump's robust reinstatement of this policy puts nearly US$10 billion in foreign aid at risk. Trump's action signals a major blow to the international health community, as the U.S. is the leading funder of global health programs. More concerning, says Starrs, "millions of women in low-resource settings may now be unable to obtain the care they need." In a nod to the coal industry, Trump signed an order rolling back Obama's Clean Power Plan, "turning denials of climate change into national policy." The directive also imperils the Paris Agreement on climate, as the Clean Power Plan was Obama's primary means of achieving the goals of the accord. Immigration and the wall Many of Trump's most contentious direct actions deal with immigration, deportation and border security, issues that were central to his campaign and have evoked public outrage and legal reprimands. Deriding the federal government for failing to discharge the "basic sovereign responsibility" of stopping undocumented immigrants from entering the U.S., Trump ordered the construction of a wall "to secure the nation's southern border." Trump also called on authorities to "repatriate illegal aliens swiftly, consistently and humanely." Trump issued another order threatening to pull funding from "sanctuary cities" that do not cooperate with immigration authorities. San Francisco sued, and a federal judge has barred its enforcement. Trump's most infamous order to date is the immigration ban on a handful of Muslim majority countries. The hastily issued order prompted mass confusion, fear and a thunderous civic and legal backlash. Trump and the political system Presidents and their unilateral powers operate in a system of checks and balances. While the majority of unilateral actions go unchallenged, the political system does sometimes push back. Trump's immigration ban orders were quashed by the courts. Many of his unilateral actions will eventually requireacts of Congress. Moreover, Trump will soon have to put down his pen and work with Congress to fund the government, or his 100th day in office will mark the start of a government shutdown. A recent study of Trump's direct actions by the Los Angeles Times found that "fewer than half actually made a substantive change in federal policy." The orders' effectiveness is also in question. For example, despite Trump's hiring freeze, the federal government added 6,000 new hires during January and February. The freeze was lifted in April. Though many of Trump's unilateral directives are symbolic, political scientist Andrew Rudalevige argues that "any presidential signal to the bureaucracy needs to be taken seriously." For example, despite the ineffectiveness of the Obamacare directive, "the order makes clear the direction of action the president expects." During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton, quoting Maya Angelou, stated that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Since taking office 100 days ago, Trump has made it abundantly clear the type of president he is through his unilateral directives. We should believe him. -- Mark Major is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University and the author of The Unilateral Presidency and the News Media: The Politics of Framing Executive Power. This article was originally published by The Associated Press/The Conversation. API youth 8.JPG Local students worked in 2014 to bring an ethnic studies program to Portland Public Schools. Now that work has begun at the state level and the author is pushing for a house bill that would require that curriculum in all Oregon schools. (Casey Parks/Staff) By Maribel Mora As of January, Oregon had the fifth worst graduation rate in the country. Only three-quarters of Oregon students finish high school. All students fell under the national averages for their corresponding ethnic and racial groups. One bill before the Oregon legislature, House Bill 2845, has the potential to dramatically change the odds for Oregon's youth. HB 2845 would provide an ethnic studies curriculum to Oregon public K-12 schools. Like all public school students in the state, I learned about the "discoveries" of Lewis and Clark. Somehow, my curriculum glossed over the fact that Native Americans were the original inhabitants of the land. As a Latina student growing up along the Columbia River Gorge, my textbooks mentioned Native Americans in supporting roles or, at worst, as antagonists in the adventure stories of the Pacific Northwest fur trappers. Native Americans were reduced to stereotypes in my classrooms. I knew I certainly didn't look like the blond hair and blue-eyed folks that drove covered wagons on the Oregon Trail. My cultural history and existence were finally made significant when I attended Portland State University. There, I was exposed to the true stories relating to the experiences of social minorities. I had to wait until college to understand the diversity of our state's history. In 2015, 67 percent of Hispanic students, 63 percent of black students, and 55 percent of Native American students in our state graduated. These students never had the opportunity to learn about their people's history here, or the rich contributions their heritage brought to us all. An ethnic studies curriculum during high school could make an important difference. A four-year Stanford study examined the benefits of an ethnic studies high school curriculum. Researchers found that students' attendance increased by 21 percent, their GPAs jumped 1.4 points, and the average student increased the number of completed credits necessary to graduate. Students indicated that they were engaged and found relevancy through the course work. Oregonians value K12 education. A recent survey of our residents indicated that Oregonians believe education encourages work, family and civic engagement. Oregon has a rich history of civic engagement and citizen participation in our communities. We need to ensure that all experiences, histories, and voices are heard in order to keep fostering that community involvement. This is what creates health and vitality in Oregon. By 2060, two-fifths of Oregon voters will be from racial and ethnic minority populations. In the same year, students of color will be the majority enrolled in K-12 classes. Exposure to ethnic studies in school could make the difference between dropping out and furthering educational possibilities. Most important, a high school education provides skills for a better quality of life. Share your opinion Submit your essay of 500 words or less to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification. We must prioritize and support ethnic studies in Oregon public schools. HB 2845 will empower Oregon's youth to create bright and healthy futures for themselves. Please consider adding your name to endorse HB 2845: https://orethnicstudies.org/take-action/endorse-hb-2845/. Maribel Mora is a former Oregon public schools student who is pursuing a master's degree in social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. By David Ignatius WASHINGTON -- "I was one very lucky kid," wrote retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in a 2016 memoir about his bumpy childhood in a working-class Rhode Island family. "I was one of those nasty tough kids, hell-bent on breaking rules for the adrenaline rush and hardwired just enough to not care about the consequences." Flynn described how he was arrested but given probation after "some serious and unlawful activity." But he added: "I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible." Flynn's luck has run out in recent months. He was fired as national security adviser for misleading colleagues about his questionable discussions last December with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Now he's under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general for failing to disclose payments he received from Russian and Turkish sources, despite a clear warning in 2014 that such disclosure was required. The puzzle is why Flynn, who had a reputation as a meticulous tactical intelligence officer during his Army career, was so careless when he left the military. The story is a personal tragedy for Flynn, but it illustrates a larger problem in the national-security community. When intelligence officers like Flynn move from compartmented boxes to a wider world, they often make mistakes. They've been living inside super-secret units that resemble a closed family circle. They don't understand the rules of public behavior. They're not good at being normal. And they often pay a severe price. There are numerous examples of this transition problem. James J. Angleton, the CIA's legendary counterintelligence chief, was secretive to the point of paranoia when he was at the agency. But when he left in the 1970s, he couldn't stop talking to journalists and others about his conspiracy theories. Some other former CIA officers are similar: They work the press or lobbying clients the way they used to work their agency assets. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, one of Flynn's mentors, got fired as commander in Afghanistan after he and his staff made inappropriate comments to a Rolling Stone journalist. Gen. John Allen, a much-admired commander in Afghanistan, got involved in an email correspondence with a would-be Florida socialite that led to a Pentagon investigation, which derailed his appointment as NATO commander. Gen. David Petraeus, perhaps the most celebrated commander of his generation, pleaded guilty to improperly sharing classified information with his biographer, with whom he was romantically involved. Each of these people served the country in remarkable ways. But looking at the difficulties they encountered, one senses a pattern. Senior command is a world unto itself. The tribal culture that envelops all our military and intelligence personnel is especially tight for our most secret warriors. They sometimes miss the signals that life outside will be different. Flynn certainly got a clear warning when he left the military after serving as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. On Thursday, the Pentagon released a letter he received Oct. 8, 2014, about "the ethics restrictions that apply to you after your retirement." The instructions listed eight areas of "post-employment restrictions," including an obligation to get approval for any foreign compensation. Flynn apparently cruised through that red light when he accepted $45,000 for speaking to the Russian government's television-propaganda channel in 2015, and when he received more than $500,000 in 2016 from a firm with close ties to the Turkish government. Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign-government representative for work on behalf of Turkey that occurred on the eve of Trump's election and Flynn's selection as national security adviser. It's unclear whether Flynn disclosed these foreign-government payments and other foreign contacts, as required, in renewing his security clearances at the White House, where he oversaw the nation's most sensitive compartmented programs. Failure to reveal such information can sometimes violate Section 1001 of the U.S. criminal code, known as the "false statements" provision. When military and intelligence promotion panels review candidates for top positions, it's said they pay special attention to whether officers have the judgment to manage the subtle, unpredictable problems that arise for commanders. Can they communicate to their subordinates, colleagues at other agencies, members of Congress and, where appropriate, the public? The military and intelligence agencies promote some spectacularly talented people, but something in this process is misfiring. Military commanders need to know how to communicate in a wide-open world. But a word of caution: The sunlight can be blinding. Good people can do dumb things. They get so used to living by their own code that they sometimes don't register what the law says. David Ignatius' email address is davidignatiuswashpost.com. (c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group Thursday 27 April 2017 2:15pm MSc student Briar Taylor-Silva and Professor Mark Stirling undertake research work in a trench across the Akatore Fault at Big Creek east of Milton. One of the closest active geological faults to Dunedin is not giving up its secrets easily. That is worrying when it comes to assessing the potential earthquake hazard the Akatore Fault poses to residents in Dunedin and around the region. Researchers from the University of Otagos Department of Geology and GNS Science, led by the Universitys Professor Mark Stirling, have been studying the recent geological history and movements of the fault, which may extend as much as 60km from south of Dunedin towards the Clutha River mouth. They have found the Akatore Fault may have a maverick streak, behaving strangely during the past 125,000 years or so. Master of Science student Briar Taylor-Silva, Professor Stirling and Senior GNS Scientist Dr Nicola Litchfield say there are signs of three significant recent (Holocene) earthquakes on the Akatore Fault in the past 12,000 years, following a long quiet spell possibly stretching back about 125,000 years further. Ms Taylor-Silva estimates the three recent quakes had magnitudes of between 6.8 and 7.4, each displacing the ground by up to two metres vertically. The fault runs for about 20km onshore between about Taieri Mouth and Toko Mouth and possibly more than 40km just offshore further north and south, though its precise length is not yet known. Ms Taylor-Silva says fieldwork included digging a trench across the fault at Big Creek east of Milton, near the Akatore forest [view the trench on Google Maps at coordinates -46.147654, 170.118349]. A second trench was dug at Rocky Valley Stream [Google Maps, coordinates -46.221430, 170.028542]. The trenching sites were chosen as the streams there were dammed by fault ruptures and became swampy. Organic material from these swampy, peaty sediments deposited following the large quakes were then carbon dated to calculate approximate dates for the events. She says the first occurred sometime between 12,100 and 1,280 years ago. The second and third major Akatore Fault quakes then appear to have happened very close together geologically speaking, between around 1,280 years before now and 760 years ago. We have been trying to understand whether the fault has slipped enough during those three Holocene events or whether we should expect more earthquakes in the immediate future, Ms Taylor-Silva says. More work is required to answer this question. However, I think we need to treat the Akatore Fault as a serious hazard. The episodic nature of the fault just makes it more difficult to estimate future earthquake hazards. With faults that have periodic ruptures, we can estimate how often an earthquake may be likely to occur say, every x years but we cant do that for the Akatore Fault very well. Its quite worrying for assessing the hazard the fault poses because we cant say there wont be another earthquake in the near future, as we dont really understand its behaviour, she says. For more information, please contact: Professor Mark Stirling Department of Geology Tel 03 470 3539 Email mark.stirling@otago.ac.nz What will you do if you wake up one day in Boracay and you do not see turquoise waters, but green mushy moss blanketing the whole coastline? The biggest problem in Manila is not traffic because it is a just point in time issue and can be solved with an infrastructure solution like a subway system. The biggest problem is the apathy of Filipinos in preserving our environment and letting big businesses destroy the natural beauty of the Philippine archipelago. The green tide photo above of Boracay Station 1 is NOT a dream or a photoshopped photo. We took a drone shot of the most pristine part of White Beach in Station 1 in Boracay just last March 2017 and we were shocked by this scene. How can Boracay businesses argue that this is a natural occurrence? How could this scene be alright when we know that our kids could never ever enjoy Boracay the way we did? What if I told you that environmental destruction is happening in other tourist spots because of coal use? Did you know that Manilas pollution levels are getting higher each day and will reach intolerable levels in the next decade? The thing with Climate Change issues is that we only act when we already see the irreversible destruction. Maybe its too late for Boracay, but we can do something for the rest of the Philippine isles. Here are 8 things we can do to battle Environmental Destruction and Climate Change effects 1). Lets Talk Clean Energy The Philippines has 29 government approved coal plants and is set to open 25 new coal-fired power plants to address the demand for cheaper but harmful power sources. But why? Imagine all the smoke that will be emitted by the smokestacks of these big bad coal plants and the adverse impact on the health of the people in the surrounding areas. Read More: New Greenpeace report estimates coal plant emissions could kill 2,400 Filipinos per year 2). Reduce Air Pollution in Manila The air quality in Manila is getting worse and its impacting the health of our children. We decided to move back to the south for cleaner air and to escape the damaging effects of congested traffic. The worse part is that we dont really see this increase in pollution and when we finally notice it, it would be too late. Think about how you can lessen the use of your cars, do work-from-home more often, organize carpool amongst friends and schoolmates, use a bike, or even relocate some place outside Manila. 3). Patronize Electric Tricycles and Vehicles Wherever you go, if there is a choice between an electric tricycle and the normal one, you must insist on riding and supporting the former. Key tourist areas like Boracay and Intramuros already have electric vehicle options and are working towards 100% conversion to clean electric vehicles. Another option is riding a bicycle too. 4). Support Sustainable Tourism Practices Learn more about sustainability and support company and businesses that adopt sustainable practices. Do they use local ingredients or support local communities? Do they support line-caught fishing methods? Are you for or against the Whale Shark industry in Oslob? I know its cool to go underwater with these gentle giants but this practice of feeding them is not sustainable and a lot of people are jumping into the water and touching them. 5). Dont use commercial sunblock or other harmful chemicals in the water Did you know that most commercial sunblock lotions have ingredients that can damage our beautiful corals? When we swim, the lotion we lather on our bodies are washed off and cause toxic effects unto the corals. Just recently, we dont use sunblocks anymore so that our skin can absorb much of the Vitamin D benefits from the sun. 6). Reduce dependency on Plastic Bags Are you still using plastic bags when you buy from the supermarkets or from the nearest convenience store? Bring your own reusable bags. Eliminate plastic bags from your lifestyle. Start small within your household. 7). Dont eat Endangered Species Be more conscious about whether the food youre eating is endangered or not. Save Philippine Seas is a good resource if you would like to know more about our whats sustainable seafood http://www.savephilippineseas.org/. Be familiar with the extinction status of different animal species using this list from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/directory/. 8). Be a Climate Change Leader Join the Climate Change Leadership Corps this coming June 27-29 in Bellevue, Washington. You know our climate is changing. You want to make a difference. Well show you how. Join us for a Climate Reality Leadership Corps training and work with former US Vice President Al Gore and renowned climate scientists and communicators to learn about whats happening to our planet and how you can use social media, powerful storytelling, and personal outreach to inspire audiences to take action. Give us three days. Well give you the tools to change the world. For more info, visit https://www.climaterealityproject.org/training Live an Awesome Life, Founder, www.OurAwesomePlanet.com Disclosure: Our Awesome Planet supports the Lets Talk Clean Energy movement. I wrote this article with my biases, opinions, and insights. P.S. Lets act now by simply sharing this message with your family and friends. We need the entire nation to battle this problem. The European Commission on March 27 granted conditional approval of the $130 billion merger between The Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont, and on Thursday a Dow executive said the companies are getting closer to a deal. Announced in late 2015, the merger would combine two of the biggest chemical companies in the country. It still needs regulatory approval in the U.S., China, Brazil and India. Since that has happened, Dows Chief Operating Officer Jim Fitterling told the Daily News on Thursday, referring to European approval, weve seen positive movement in the other jurisdictions and have obtained additional approvals. We anticipate closure no earlier than the first of August. Dow announced in late March that it expects the Midland-based Material Sciences company to be the first spin-off, but that it would remain headquartered in the city. The merger would create DowDuPont, which would spin off into three independent publicly traded companies within 18 months: Material Sciences, and Agriculture and Specialty Products, to be based in Wilmington, Delaware. Over the next decade, Dow says it plans to invest $400 million in its Michigan operations. The company has support in a $61.4 million tax credit from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The credit dictates that Dow must create 1,700 jobs by 2025. Original terms stated Dow must create 1,700 jobs in the 12th of the 15-year tax credit, but the MEDC this week agreed to give Dow the full 15 years to hit the mark. (Read that story at http://bit.ly/2q9IE5U) When asked, neither Fitterling nor a company spokesperson confirmed Dows status on its job creation requirement. I do not have a specific number for headcount increases, Fitterling said. We do anticipate some increases to come in R&D personnel. I would hope that some would come in manufacturing-oriented jobs in the region. Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris, at an event in Grand Rapids alongside then-President-elect Donald Trump in late 2016, announced that Dow plans to build a new innovation center in Midland. Dow has not stated a potential location in the city, the size of the facility and a timeline for which it could be built, investment amounts, or whether hiring preference will be given to Great Lakes Bay Region and Michigan residents. But, Liveris previously said, the plan would create 100 jobs in Michigan and bring another 100 to Midland from other global Dow facilities. Fitterling said Dow will continue to put R&D capabilities in Midland with a focus on infrastructure and building technologies to produce energy savings designs for buildings, and home and personal care products. And as automakers move to hybrid, electric and other means, we need to keep up with them in terms of research capability. There are 1,200 researchers and developers that are already in Midland, Fitterling said. Michigan is a big part of Dows history and future, he said, and the company wants to position its manufacturing sites in the state and look at new investments. However the company may not be immune to more bumps in the road related to the merger, as Fitterling said Dow could look into consolidation of some of its small sites. At its current site on East Patrick Road, Dow is building a new six-story corporate headquarters. Fitterling said the building will be 40 percent more energy efficient than others on the Dow campus and will have space for about 475 employees, which will start moving in by July. The Midland Zoning Board of Appeals in February approved variances for Dow to build a new visitor center and covered walkway as part of the new headquarters. Read that story at http://bit.ly/2ppps6C Dow reported first quarter earnings on Thursday. Read that story at http://bit.ly/2qiPB47 MBS International Airport officials have decided to raze their old terminal building. The structure, which has been dormant since the airport went online with a new $55 million dollar terminal on Oct. 31, 2012, has been deemed unsuitable for any other use. The MBS Board, at its April meeting, voted unanimously to move forward with plans to demolish the building by agreeing to a $44,605 contract with its aviation consultant, RS&H. Under terms of the deal, the firm will develop plans and specifications for bids to demolish the abandoned building. Im happy to bring this item to the board and move forward from here, said Jeff Nagel, airport manager. My only regret is that we didnt get it to you before Jon Lynch (former commissioner and City of Midland manager) left. The old terminal was one of his pet peeves. The project has been delayed in an effort to find outside sources of funding. MBS must use dollars it has saved for any expenses associated with the building demolition because the project is not eligible for Federal Aviation Administration grant dollars. The local funds are money that we saved over the years using sound, prudent financial practice steps, Nagel said. Just like we saved money for the new terminal project, we did the same for this project as well. Officials did explore the possibility of retrofitting, but since the building was originally designed as a passenger terminal, and had several additions throughout the course of its life, it was not feasible to make it a hangar or other aviation facility, Nagel said. In fact, the site without the terminal is much more developable than the building itself. MBS recently-completed master plan indicates that the west side of the airport, where the old terminal currently stands, potentially will be prime property for development. RS&H indicated it would take up to 90 days to prepare plans for the terminal demolition and receive bids for the demolition work. Once bids are received to tear down the building, those bids will need to come to the airport commission for approval, Nagel said. In other business, the airport commission awarded a $104,000 contract to Scodeller Construction Inc. to perform crack seal work on MBS main, 8,000-foot runway. Scodeller was the low bidder for the project, Nagel said. Scodeller is a great firm, Nagel told commissioners. Weve worked with them in the past, including on similar crack sealing projects. The board also awarded RS&H an $11,700 contract to provide construction administration services for another crack sealing project on a smaller runway. Nagel said this, like most construction projects at MBS, requires an agreement with RS&H to oversee the work. The board also approved two other agreements, one with Johnson Controls and the other with Nationwide Truck Brokers. Under terms of the deal with Nationwide, the truck driving and freight company will pay MBS to park trucks at the airport. The trucks would be staged at MBS and the drivers would pick them up at the beginning of their work week, Nagel said. Once the work week is over, the trucks would be parked at MBS again. This arrangement means trucks would not be coming and going from MBS every day. Depending on monthly demand, Nationwide Truck Brokers would stage between two and seven trucks per month at a cost of $100 per truck. That seems to be a pretty standard rate, Nagel said. Bay County Commissioner Ernie Krygier inquired about liability. MBS officials ensured him the company assumes all risks. In agreeing to a deal with Johnson Controls for HVAC services, MBS retains a company officials said has done an excellent job in this area for the past three years. The new contract is for two years at $22,900 each year. In personnel action, the board approved a 2 percent wage increase for its five-member administration staff (excluding the airport manager), and a $1,500 lump sum payment for 2017. These wage increases mirror what union employees received earlier. Nagel concluded the airport commissions meeting by sharing with commissioners news of the death of luminary Hollis McKeag. The longtime Dow Chemical Co. executive, who served 15 years on the MBS Airport Commission, died April 12, in Gastonia, North Carolina. McKeags accomplished background in aviation, first as a World War II bomber pilot and later as The Dow Chemical Co.s longtime aircraft and commercial air services manager, served him well at MBS. We had a different relationship, but he always had the best interest of the airport at heart, Nagel said. He was a very interesting man, said Tom Adams, a City of Midland representative on the MBS Board. He certainly knew a lot about transportation. Hollis came off a bit gruff, but he was a nice man, Krygier said. Hollis enjoyed aviation so much I think he served on the Midland City Council so he could remain on the MBS Board, Adams quipped. Brion Gysin died in Paris in 1986. I remember he always use to say that if the Master Musicians of Jajouka ever stopped playing, the legend that holds the world will end. He often worried about the chronic poverty of the musicians, and the diluting effect of contact with the modern world upon the ancient music. But the Pipes of Pan survive to this day. Listen to this music, the primordial sounds of a 4000 year old rock 'n roll band... listen with your whole body, let the music penetrate and move you, and you will connect with the oldest music on earth. The Master Musicians of Jajouka are an ecstatic brotherhood. They hold the hereditary position of guardians and performers at the tomb of the That is William Burroughs writing about the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Today the Master Musicians are known to a wide audience through the albums produced by Rolling Stone Brian Jones and record industry maverick Bill Laswell. Their 1971 LP Brian Jones Presents the Pan Pipes at Joujouka has been described as the original world music album and the executive producer for its 1995 re-release was none other than Philip Glass . But despite this acclaim Brion Gysin's worries about the effect of the modern world on the ancient music proved to be well founded and the recent history of the Master Musicians has featured primordial music making and bitter internecine feuds in equal measures. These feuds prompted protests at Philip Glass concerts some years ago and still continue in muted form today, with two competing groups of musicians performing on stages around the world, each claiming to be the authentic 4000 year old rock 'n roll band.The Master Musicians of Jajouka are an ecstatic brotherhood. They hold the hereditary position of guardians and performers at the tomb of the Sufi saint Sidi Hmed Shikh in the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco where they perform ritual dances at religious festivals celebrating the goat-man Bou Jeloud and the demoness Aisha Qandisha . In the past the Master Musicians have been the official Moroccan court musicians and the sound of their distinctive oboe-like double reed rhaitas accompanied the Sultan's progress to the Friday mosque. Their performance tradition may predate even Sufism and the eminent Finnish sociologist Edvard Westermarck (1862-1939) suggested that the Master Musicians' wild music has its roots in ancient Greek Dionysian rituals. The transition from ancient to modern cultural icons came when Brion Gysin , whose circle included Paul Bowles and William Burroughs , hired the Master Musicians in 1954 to play in his legendary Tangier restaurant The 1001 Nights . Gysin's attention had been drawn to the Jajouka musicians by his friend the Moroccan artist Mohamed Hamri and when the Rolling Stones visited Tangier in 1967 Gysin took Brian Jones to Jajouka. The result was the album that started the world music bandwagon rolling and which also set the Master Musicians on a collision course with the modern world. Brian Jones and recording engineer George Chkiantz taped the musicians in Jajouka in July 1968 and Jones mixed and edited the album in London. But he died in 1969 and Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (that original spelling of the village has an importance that will emerge later) did not finally reach the stores until 1971, when it appeared as the first release on the new Rolling Stones Records label. With its insistent rhythms, beat generation connections and aroma of kif, the album quickly attracted a cult following, and a song with the refrain 'Ah Brahim Jones, Jajouka really stoned!' soon appeared in the Master Musicians' sets. As I researched this article three things particularly struck me. First, the acrimony among the Masters and their followers is remarkable even for an industry that is famous for its dog eats dog culture. Secondly, almost all the published accounts of Jajouka and its music are written by transparently partisan supporters of either the Jajouka or Joujouka factions. And thirdly, what could be one of the richest available sources on the career of the Master Musicians before the 1988 split is usually discredited or ignored. All of which rather overshadows the music that the Master Musicians have produced in their various groupings. Following their acclaimed collaboration with Brian Jones the Jajouka band appeared on Ornette Coleman 's 1977 album Dancing in Your Head and the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels in 1989. In recent years the musicians from the Jajouka and Joujouka groups have worked independently with a wide range of musicians including Talvin Singh Marianne Faithfull , the Klezmatics , and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the soundtrack of the 2001 film The Cell . In 2009 the Jajouka group released the first disc on their own label Jajouka Records and went on to venture into dubstep with their Jajouka Soundsystem project As I researched this article three things particularly struck me. First, the acrimony among the Masters and their followers is remarkable even for an industry that is famous for its dog eats dog culture. Secondly, almost all the published accounts of Jajouka and its music are written by transparently partisan supporters of either the Jajouka or Joujouka factions. And thirdly, what could be one of the richest available sources on the career of the Master Musicians before the 1988 split is usually discredited or ignored. Bob Shingleton: Stephen, lets tackle the big question first. Jajouka Rolling Stone is subtitled A Fable of Gods and Heroes and it is categorised as fiction. Yet the book is a description of real events featuring real people, and a cross-check between the novel and factual accounts elsewhere shows it to be pretty accurate. Why was it published as a novel? Is the word on the street that the fiction label was a ruse to avoid litigation from some of those portrayed in it correct? Stephen Davis: Jajouka Rolling Stone, as a text, is a compilation of journal notes written on my trips to the Ahl Serif tribal area of the Djebala hills of northwest Morocco between 1973 and 1989. Some of these journeys were professional assignments, while others were personal visits and musical tourism. Some of the writing originated with encounters in London and Paris as well. In the early 1990s, I was working with the drummer Levon Helm on his memoir about The Band. We usually worked in late afternoon and evenings at his house in Woodstock, New York. I was staying in nearby Bearsville, and had the mornings free. I liked to write every day while I was researching another project, and so I started typing up my old Jajouka notebooks, just to have something productive going on, and also because I had been missing some of my old friends in the mountains, who were beginning to die off. Making the notes into sentences and paragraphs had the effect of running the movie of my Moroccan adventures through my mental projector. I showed these pages to my agent, who thought they might sell. Only one editorial assistant, at Random House, thought the text had any merit. Fortunately, her boss ran the company, and allowed her to acquire the book. She made no editorial changes in the text. The graphics at the chapter heads were from prints in my collection. They were altered to look dreamy, and the indelible image of the praying chief of the tribe was stamped into the case, or cover, of the book. [BS - see image below] I thought it was a really cool production. We put Brian Jones and the old chief on the jacket. But my young editor went to Costa Rica, caught a microbe, and almost died. Then she left the company to study to be a teacher. So Jajouka Rolling Stone was published in 1993 as an orphan book, with no editor in the firm to advocate for promotion etc. Such was its fate. No one reviewed it, as far as I could tell. Who would even be qualified to review it? But it sold enough to go through three printings in hard cover. No soft cover has been issued to date, and the book is not currently in print. Now, the memoir/novel question. I decided the text had to be portrayed as fiction for three reasons. First, there are time compressions and other techniques that require an acknowledgement that a few minor things didnt quite happen exactly the way I say it did. The differences can be minute but still real. Plus the name of almost every character was changed. Second, Paul Bowles was touchy about visiting writers portraying him smoking kif, at his home in Tangier. Calling the text a novel gave me, and him, a certain deniability. Third, the text portrays a character called Mohamed Hamsa, and his wife, who are similar to people at least one of them -- still living. Also, I thought the text worked better as a fiction -- a story -- than as a memoir. Books about Morocco have a tiny audience, as Paul Bowles often said. I thought a novel might reach a wider readership, and it did. BS: Now we understand why Jajouka Rolling Stone was published as fiction are you able tell us if and where it deviates from real events? SD: Actually, Jajouka Rolling Stone is a memoir. Everything in it everything and more happened. I went to Morocco in 1973 on assignment from National Geographic magazine to write about the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Photographer Martin Rogers and I stayed until the late spring of 1974. Our work was never published, I heard, because of the references to kif smoking in my text. I returned to Jajouka in 1977, 1979, 1981, 1986, and 1989. The text of the book is basically a rewrite of my notebooks from those journeys. BS: When Jajouka Rolling Stone was published reviews focussed on the fact versus fiction aspect. It is fair to say that the reception for the novel was less than rapturous and it seems to have been less successful commercially than your other books. Were you disappointed with the market reaction? SD: You mention reviews. I never saw one that I can remember. I never saw Jajouka Rolling Stone in a bookstore. No one got the book, especially the publisher and the booksellers. I asked a clerk in a snooty, hipper-than-thou (and now defunct) bookstore on Madison Avenue in New York, and he said, Oh, were not carrying that book. I never understood it. It was like a fatwa. There was no British edition, no translation rights in any language. I thought I was going to be the next Bruce Chatwin. But then I remembered how small the market for fiction about modern Morocco must be. Morocco didnt pass the who-cares test in the West. In the end, I was amazed the text was published at all, and proud of how great the book looked and felt. As you point out, it was less successful commercially than some of my other work. (Ive never even seen a royalty statement.) I love it anyway. BS: Jajouka Rolling Stone was published several years before Brian Jones seminal Jajouka album was licensed to Point Music and re-issued. That 1995 re-release caused considerable controversy because it did not include some of the original musicians in the royalty deal, and Brion Gysins original sleeve note was edited to remove references to Mohamed Hamri who played an important role in bringing Brian Jones to Jajouka. The Point Music CD sleeve notes also included an extract from Jajouka Rolling Stone. What was your take on the controversy surrounding that 1995 re-issue which resulted in protests at Bachir Attar and Philip Glass concerts? SD: This is a hard question because the story of the Jajouka/Joujouka schism is so complex. I wont go into it here. The recent history is retailed on competing websites and is still going on, the flames being fanned mostly by outsiders, but real enough in the village as well. My take is that I support the work of Bashir Attar, son of the late chief Abdeslam Ahmed Attar (Jnuin) and consider him the leader of The Master Musicians of Jajouka, legatee of the tribal rhaita band that played for, and were recorded by, Brian Jones in July 1968. As for the re-release of that album by Point Music in 1995 it was a gas. The extract from Jajouka Rolling Stone, recounting a conversation with Brian Gysin in his Paris apartment in 1979, was used without my permission. I never saw what the big deal was about editing Hamri out of the Gysin text. All he did was bring Brion Gysin up the mountain. Years later, Gysin brought Brian Jones. Hamri wasnt a musician; he was like a crooked talent manager. He was an asshole. (I never bought into his self-proclaimed Painter of Morocco label either, but I would give a leg for one of his paintings.) The Point Music thing was amazing, and it was even more amazing to see a troupe from Jajouka, starring the legendary drummer Mohammed Berdouz, playing in New England and New York in 1995. I never thought I would see it happen, and it did. A further note. The original master copy of the music Brian Jones recorded in Jajouka before it was electronically phased and re-channeled for psychedelic effect was no longer in the archives of Rolling Stones Records in London, so Philip Glasss people were forced to digitize a vinyl copy of the original album in 1995. Three years later, I was in London working on my biography of the Rolling Stones. I interviewed George Chkiantz, the recording engineer who went to Jajouka with Jones and actually made the tapes. He didnt know about the Point Music CD, but mentioned that he had kept a slave copy of the original master, and I realized that no one has ever heard this music except George and Brian Jones, and how intriguing this was (and is). George Chkiantzs account of Brian Jones in Jajouka is in my book : Now we understand why Jajouka Rolling Stone was published as fiction are you able tell us if and where it deviates from real events?: Actually, Jajouka Rolling Stone is a memoir. Everything in it everything and more happened. I went to Morocco in 1973 on assignment from National Geographic magazine to write about the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Photographer Martin Rogers and I stayed until the late spring of 1974. Our work was never published, I heard, because of the references to kif smoking in my text. I returned to Jajouka in 1977, 1979, 1981, 1986, and 1989. The text of the book is basically a rewrite of my notebooks from those journeys.: When Jajouka Rolling Stone was published reviews focussed on the fact versus fiction aspect. It is fair to say that the reception for the novel was less than rapturous and it seems to have been less successful commercially than your other books. Were you disappointed with the market reaction?: You mention reviews. I never saw one that I can remember. I never saw Jajouka Rolling Stone in a bookstore. No one got the book, especially the publisher and the booksellers. I asked a clerk in a snooty, hipper-than-thou (and now defunct) bookstore on Madison Avenue in New York, and he said, Oh, were not carrying that book. I never understood it. It was like a fatwa. There was no British edition, no translation rights in any language. I thought I was going to be the next Bruce Chatwin. But then I remembered how small the market for fiction about modern Morocco must be. Morocco didnt pass the who-cares test in the West. In the end, I was amazed the text was published at all, and proud of how great the book looked and felt. As you point out, it was less successful commercially than some of my other work. (Ive never even seen a royalty statement.) I love it anyway.: Jajouka Rolling Stone was published several years before Brian Jones seminal Jajouka album was licensed to Point Music and re-issued. That 1995 re-release caused considerable controversy because it did not include some of the original musicians in the royalty deal, and Brion Gysins original sleeve note was edited to remove references to Mohamed Hamri who played an important role in bringing Brian Jones to Jajouka. The Point Music CD sleeve notes also included an extract from Jajouka Rolling Stone. What was your take on the controversy surrounding that 1995 re-issue which resulted in protests at Bachir Attar and Philip Glass concerts?: This is a hard question because the story of the Jajouka/Joujouka schism is so complex. I wont go into it here. The recent history is retailed on competing websites and is still going on, the flames being fanned mostly by outsiders, but real enough in the village as well. My take is that I support the work of Bashir Attar, son of the late chief Abdeslam Ahmed Attar (Jnuin) and consider him the leader of The Master Musicians of Jajouka, legatee of the tribal rhaita band that played for, and were recorded by, Brian Jones in July 1968.As for the re-release of that album by Point Music in 1995 it was a gas. The extract from Jajouka Rolling Stone, recounting a conversation with Brian Gysin in his Paris apartment in 1979, was used without my permission. I never saw what the big deal was about editing Hamri out of the Gysin text. All he did was bring Brion Gysin up the mountain. Years later, Gysin brought Brian Jones. Hamri wasnt a musician; he was like a crooked talent manager. He was an asshole. (I never bought into his self-proclaimed Painter of Morocco label either, but I would give a leg for one of his paintings.) The Point Music thing was amazing, and it was even more amazing to see a troupe from Jajouka, starring the legendary drummer Mohammed Berdouz, playing in New England and New York in 1995. I never thought I would see it happen, and it did.A further note. The original master copy of the music Brian Jones recorded in Jajouka before it was electronically phased and re-channeled for psychedelic effect was no longer in the archives of Rolling Stones Records in London, so Philip Glasss people were forced to digitize a vinyl copy of the original album in 1995. Three years later, I was in London working on my biography of the Rolling Stones. I interviewed George Chkiantz, the recording engineer who went to Jajouka with Jones and actually made the tapes. He didnt know about the Point Music CD, but mentioned that he had kept a slave copy of the original master, and I realized that no one has ever heard this music except George and Brian Jones, and how intriguing this was (and is). George Chkiantzs account of Brian Jones in Jajouka is in my book Old Gods Almost Dead (2001). BS: One thing that struck me about Jajouka Rolling Stone was that you are fulsome in your praise of Apocalypse Across the Sky, but you do not credit Bill Laswell for producing an album that sonically stands head and shoulders above Brian Jones Jajouka recording. Was the omission of Laswells name an oversight, or was there another reason? SD: Laswell/Shmazwel. It is true that Apocalypse sounds great, but the quality of the music is only ok. The band that recorded this music in Jajouka was cobbled together by Bashir Attar, with a couple of his brothers, and I was told some outside wedding musicians from Ksar el Kebir, the nearest big town. Bashir did it for the money, which was good. There are many recordings, made from 1968 to 2010, of ensembles calling themselves The Master Musicians [Malimin"] of Jajouka. For me, only three stand out. First, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (Rolling Stones Records, 1971). Second, The Master Musicians of Jajouka (Adelphi Records, 1975), recorded by Joel Rubiner, mostly in 1972, just before Ornette Colemans recording session in the village. Third (and perhaps most important) is Tribe Ahl Serif: Master Musicians of Jajouka (Musical Heritage Society, circa 1976). This is a two-record set made by Arnold Stahl around 1971, when a Danish film crew was working in the village. The second record in this set consists of about 25 minutes of the Boujeloudiya, or music for the goat god Bou Jeloud, which formerly danced in the village during the Aid el Kebir festival. The recording quality is excellent, and it features the large formation 20 rhaitas and about 15 drummers that Brian Jones recorded, and that I later chronicled beginning in 1973. BS: In his sleeve note for Apocalypse Across the Sky William Burroughs tells how Brion Gysin was concerned about the diluting effects of contact with the modern world upon the ancient music. Since then the Master Musicians of Jajouka have embraced fusion and worked with Talvin Singh, Howard Shore, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and others. Do you think the ancient music of the Master Musicians has been diluted since you first heard them in 1974? SD: Bill Burroughs notes on Apocalypse were not his best work. He gets Brian Joness dates wrong, and doesnt give much sense of the village or the music before turning on the colored lights, the purple prose. And its not like the music has been diluted; its more like it has disappeared. Brion Gysin used to say that Bou Jeloud will dance in Jajouka until electricity comes up the mountain. That happened about ten years ago, and there is also now a mosque in the village. So, the old rituals starkly pagan rituals involving wild music and animal sacrifice -- no longer really exist except as an occasional show for foreign visitors. The long, big-band anthems like The 55, which once accompanied the sultan to prayers and the army on the march, have obviously lost their ceremonial and authentic meanings, and are now performance pieces preserved by Bashir Attar and his troupe, which still puts on a great and stirring show, to their everlasting credit. And if you go to the village, theyll still give you a cup of tea and a pipe and play some Jibli mountain music on gimbris, flutes and violins. So, in a diluted form, it is still there in some sense. Chainsaw Man Season 1: The anime community is now buzzing about Chainsaw Man. Although the manga has been out for Read more History is rife with horrific events that somehow manage to demonstrate true humanity and heroism. Many of these events are under-reported, underrepresented and misunderstood, such as the Armenian Holocaust the systemic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, starting in 1915. Knowledge of this genocide isnt universal, and the Republic of Turkey still refuses to acknowledge it. Cinema has always been a useful tool for creating understanding and empathy in mass audiences, and the epic melodrama The Promise, based on these events, seeks to remedy popular understanding of the horror. Its a noble undertaking that only partially succeeds. Written by Robin Swicord and Terry George, and directed by George, The Promise has all the trappings of a romantic wartime epic movie stars, love triangles, exotic destinations. With all of the talent behind the camera and in front of it, its confounding then that The Promise falls so flat. The film boasts Oscar Isaac, Christian Bale, gorgeous European shooting locations and experienced talent steering the ship, but somehow all of that adds up to very, very little. The film is a color-by-numbers wartime drama. Isaac plays Mikael, a young medical student from a small Armenian village, pursuing his fortune in Constantinople. There he befriends a young Turk (Marwan Kenzari) and an American reporter (Bale) and falls in love with a worldly and well-traveled Armenian woman, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), though hes promised to a young woman back home. When Turkey enters World War I, the group is torn apart by hatred, racism and violence. At least, thats what we can somewhat glean from the events depicted onscreen. Throughout its entire two-plus hour running time, there is nary an explanation of the political machinations behind the persecution of the Armenians. Theres a bit of chitchat and singing with some German soldiers, a mean Turkish father, and then suddenly everyones being executed and shipped off to labor camps while villages burn. The lack of explanation could be intended to align us with Mikaels naive perspective. But youll definitely leave The Promise with far more questions than you might have started with. Perhaps we can never really answer why one group commits genocide against another, but it feels slightly irresponsible to make a film shedding light on this atrocity and then not attempt to explain it in the least. Instead, The Promise is mostly concerned with the love triangle between Ana, Mikael and Chris, the reporter. And yet, even the love triangle itself is a disappointment, as these men never seem too concerned that the other is romancing his girl. The usually charismatic Isaac is saddled with a dud of a character. Mikael spends most of the film buffeted to and fro by forces beyond his control, like the Turkish Army and his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo), deferring to the desires of others. Its not until the third act that he starts to make his own decisions. The swaggering heroics are given to Bale as the Hemingway-esque American foreign correspondent. With seemingly all the right pieces, its a disappointment that The Promise lacks the energy and originality needed to sustain itself. It might be fresh material, but the approach is decidedly stale. BLOOMINGTON A life sentence was reduced to 45 years Wednesday for a Clinton man convicted of sexually assaulting three children when he was 17 years old. The hearing to consider a new sentence for Brett Wilson, now 24, follows a 2015 ruling by the 4th District Appellate Court that called the life term a violation of Wilson's constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. At issue in the appeal was Wilson's age at the time he committed three of the five incidents for which he was convicted. Wilson was six months shy of his 18th birthday when he assaulted three of the children. The remaining two charges involve assaults of one victim after Wilson turned 18 offenses that do not trigger the state sentencing mandate for a life term for predatory criminal sexual assault of two or more children regardless of whether the offenses stem from one or several acts. In their ruling, the appellate court cited a U.S. Supreme Court case and the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on states "from making the judgment at the outset that (juvenile offenders of non-homicide crimes) never will be fit to re-enter society." St. Louis psychologist Dr. Brooke Kraushaar testified that her evaluation of Wilson last year indicates he has an IQ "in the superior range of functioning" and "doesn't pose much risk for reoffending." The sexual misconduct was "more a product of him being a teenager and not because he's a criminal," said the psychologist, adding that Wilson has a high potential for rehabilitation. First Assistant State's Attorney Adam Ghrist challenged the psychologist's assessment of Wilson as an incomplete picture of the young sex offender. Ghrist argued that the doctor's evaluation did not include Wilson's alleged admission of the offenses that were contained in a document from a social worker at the Illinois Department of Corrections. Kraushaar acknowledged that she received the document after her report was finished and did not seek additional information from IDOC about its contents. The psychologist said Wilson was consistent in his denial of the crimes during his two interviews with her. The psychologist testified that she expects to be paid about $8,000 for her evaluation of Wilson for the McLean County public defender's office. Wilson's mother, Belinda Lovall, sobbed through much of her brief testimony about her son who has grown more than 3 inches since she last saw him shortly before he went to prison in summer 2013. "Brett has always been concerned with everyone else's well-being above his own," said Lovall. Wilson also wiped tears as his mother asked the judge to consider her opinion that her son "is not some horrible person." Defense lawyer Ron Lewis argued the psychological report supports the opinion that Wilson, who once planned to join the military, was "essentially a child" when the sex assaults occurred. Life in prison is difficult for Wilson, said Lewis, pointing out that the sex offender "gets put on the lowest rung of the social ladder" and has been forced to request segregation for his safety. In imposing the sentence, McLean County Circuit Judge Scott Drazewski found that Wilson was eligible for 240 years on the five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault. The 45-year sentence means Wilson will serve about 38 more years, allowing him to potentially leave prison at age 57, the judge estimated. The possibility of release at middle age could serve as an incentive for Wilson's continued rehabilitation while allowing him to repay his debt to society, said the judge. After the hearing, Wilson smiled and talked briefly with his mother before he was escorted from the courtroom. LINCOLN Ever since he arrived to become pastor of Lincoln Christian Church a decade ago, the Rev. Ron Otto believed the rumor that Abraham Lincoln once practiced law at the church site at 204 N. McLean St. The proof, he was told, would be found on a plaque, last seen about 60 years ago, that made mention of Lincolns visit to the church. The problem was that even after an exhaustive search and media attention, the plaque that once hung at the church remained missing. That changed recently, thanks to efforts to save the Mill, a former Lincoln restaurant and Route 66 icon that closed in 1996 and will reopen Saturday as a museum. We have been receiving a lot of items for the Mill collection over the past few years, said Geoff Ladd, project administrator of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway and secretary of a committee restoring the Mill. Some items have come to us and its been from so and so, and here it is and we dont want to be recognized for it. Some items have just shown up with no names attached. "With this one, there is going to be some mystery," he said. "You can call it an anonymous donation. He was referring to the missing plaque, which was unveiled at a news conference Wednesday morning in Lincoln. Ladd said that once committee members realized it was the missing plaque, they knew it should be returned to the church. I am thrilled to have it back, Otto said. Nancy Saul, a member of the Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County, said that during her time as a newspaper reporter in Lincoln, she investigated the rumor and wrote several stories. We heard that during the time that the second Logan County courthouse burned, court was held at the Christian Church and Abraham Lincoln was involved with some of the court cases there were held there, she said. Local historian Leigh Henson was consulted, but officials still didnt feel comfortable reporting it as fact without solid proof. It evolved into a friendly debate back and forth among several different people, Saul said. Was he there? Was he not there? What proof is there? Eventually we came to a dead end and we never came to an absolute conclusion. The plaque's mysterious return was the proof local historians had been craving, Ladd said. The plaque, which has no date on it, indicated the original Christian Church, built on the site in 1857, was used as both a church and circuit courtroom and that Lincoln practiced law there and even served as a temporary judge. The courthouse had burned in 1857, according to records. The city was founded in 1853 and named by its organizers after their attorney. It is the only U.S. city that was named for Lincoln before his presidency. This plaque will be displayed within our church building and we are proud of it, Otto said. "The only proof I had previously was a picture of it. It's so good to have it back." William Kelly, the executive director of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, called the plaque an important link and artifact. Route 66 is the road to Abraham Lincoln, he said. What happened here, occurred precisely because of a confluence between our greatest president and the most famous road in the world. "This was somewhere and it was going to stay somewhere until the event of the reopening of the Mill made this happen, he said of the plaque. Ron Keller, the former curator of the Lincoln Heritage Museum and a professor of history at Lincoln College, called it a great find. We know Lincoln was in town in the spring of 1858, Keller said. My research tells me that was the time Lincoln was here, practicing law and being a judge. We have looked for that thing all over, said local historian Paul Beaver. Its terrific to have it back and verify what we believed. Kimberly-Clark Invests in Energy Efficiency at its Mobile, Alabama Tissue Mill Currently, the Mobile Mill employs a highly-skilled workforce of more than 600, and produces bath tissue and paper towels under the Scott, Cottonelle, and K-C Professional brand names. The new on-site energy plant is expected to be in operation during the first quarter of 2019. April 26, 2017 (Press Release) - Kimberly-Clark Corporation has approved an investment of $75 million for construction of a new on-site combined heat-power plant at its tissue mill in Mobile, Alabama. This plant, to be constructed over a two-year period, is expected to improve the facility's long-term energy efficiency and costs, as well as boost its overall competitiveness within Kimberly-Clark. "The Mobile team is excited about the role this state-of-the-art energy supply will play in strengthening our position as a strategic manufacturing site for Kimberly-Clark, and as an employer of choice in southwest Alabama," said Todd Visscher, Mill Manager for Kimberly-Clark's Mobile operations. "The investment in highly efficient energy technologies will improve our outlook for long-term operations at the site." "Kimberly-Clark has been an outstanding partner to our community for many years. We are pleased to support them in making this major investment in the City of Mobile, which will enhance the competitiveness of some of the most skilled workers in America. Mobile is open for business, and it's a great time to invest in Mobile," said Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson. The investment is guided by Kimberly-Clark's Sustainability 2022 strategy to reduce emissions and costs through energy efficiency projects across our operations. "Energy projects like the one in Mobile contribute to our vision for sustainability while creating value for our business," said Lisa Morden, Director of Global Sustainability for Kimberly-Clark. "Our overarching goal is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over 2005 levels by Kimberly-Clark's 150th anniversary in 2022." Currently, the Mobile Mill employs a highly-skilled workforce of more than 600, and produces bath tissue and paper towels under the Scott, Cottonelle, and K-C Professional brand names. The new on-site energy plant is expected to be in operation during the first quarter of 2019. "Kimberly-Clark has long been an integral part of Mobile's manufacturing base. Their continued growth and investment in Mobile is evidence of their commitment to the region and to Mobile's business climate," said Troy Wayman, the Mobile Area Chamber's vice president of economic development. "We are excited for Kimberly-Clark's expansion and their continuous success." "We are thrilled about the expansion of the Kimberly-Clark Mobile Mill," said Mobile County Commission President Merceria Ludgood. "We are fortunate to have a long-standing relationship with the company, which has been a great corporate citizen for decades. This $75 million investment in our area solidifies its commitment to Mobile County." Kimberly-Clark produces brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds No. 1 or No. 2 share positions in 80 countries. To learn more, please visit: www.kimberly-clark.com SOURCE: Kimberly-Clark Corporation 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 Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, after experiencing a humiliating defeat in the Delhi Municipal Corporation polls the results of which were announced on Wednesday, chose not to talk about it saying he hadn't seen the poll results and therefore, was not able to comment on it. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) poll results came as a huge ego-buster for the Janata Dal U chief who, along with nearly 50 of his legislators, had campaigned in Delhi for nearly two weeks for 102 JD-U candidates who were handpicked by none other than Nitish Kumar in what was supposed to be a profile-booster for the Bihar Chief Minister who is widely believed to be vying to replace Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister of India. As reported, BJP crushed Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in a big way scoring victory at 185 seats even as AAP settled for a paltry 44 seats. Congress, once again was relegated to bite the dust with only 20 seats in the victory column. Though JD-U failed to open its account, its mouthpiece K C Tyagi saw a silver lining in the cloud saying the party leadership was 'very satisfied' with the MCD poll results as it had emerged as the 'fourth biggest party' in Delhi. "We are very satisfied with the result as it has proven that we are the fourth largest party in a state where there is hardly any presence of the JD-U," Tyagi said. Meanwhile, the Chief Minister, stung by the embarrassing Delhi results, rushed to the Sri Krishna Memorial Hall to take part in an event to mark the birth anniversary of freedom fighter Veer Kunwar Singh. "Bihar has produced many freedom fighters but it has not received the due credit that it deserves. It was Veer Kunwar Singh who fought in the Sepoy Mutiny, also known as the War of Independence, in 1857 that formed the foundation stone of the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of the time," Kumar said. When asked about his reaction to the Delhi Municipality election results, the Chief Minister said he was not aware of the final tally. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. Dual National's Husband Urges UK to Secure Her Release From Iran 04/26/17 Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran Supreme Court Upholds Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's Five-Year Prison Sentence Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter Gabriella The husband of Nazanin-Zaghari Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British citizen imprisoned in Iran since April 2016, is urging the British government to secure her release now that Iran's Supreme Court has rejected the second appeal of her five-year prison sentence. "We have asked the [UK] government to do three things now that the process has finished: to speak out and say Nazanin is innocent of the allegations that she is a spy; to publicly call for her release now that their conditions to do so have been reached, and to press again for the British ambassador to be allowed to visit, to check on her health and hear from her directly," said Richard Ratcliffe, who runs the FreeNazanin campaign, in a statement on April 24, 2017. "It does no good for UK-Iranian relations, or to those who might be thinking about going to Iran on holiday, or even doing business [with Iran], as the government is keen to promote, to know that this could happen to anyone," added Ratcliffe, who works as an accountant in London. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is currently in Evin Prison, was informed by her lawyer on April 23, 2017 that the Supreme Court upheld her five-year prison sentence for unspecified "security charges" on April 18. Her lawyer was given five minutes to argue in her defense during her first trial in September 2016. After the Supreme Court rejected her second appeal, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's lawyer was told over the phone that the legal review was closed, according to the statement, adding that the appeal was conducted as a desk review of the file by a panel of judges. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was arrested by the IRGC's Intelligence Organization on April 3, 2016 at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport as she was about to board a flight back home to London following a visit with her parents. The British passport of her 22-month-old daughter, Gabriella, who was with her at the time, was confiscated and the baby was placed in the care of her grandparents by the Iranian authorities. In September 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison on unspecified national security charges. The Appeals Court upheld the first appeal in January 2017. Zaghari-Ratcliffe has still not been allowed to see a copy of the charges against her, nor have the authorities of Evin Prison. "Her lawyer has not had any contact with Nazanin since her January 20, 2017 appeal to discuss her options," said Ratcliffe. "Nazanin was not able to provide any input into her Supreme Court appeal." Zaghari-Ratcliffe did not have access to a lawyer at any time while she was being interrogated in solitary confinement and the case against her was being built. A few weeks after her arrest, the IRGC's Sarallah unit in Kerman Province accused the Iranian-British citizen of engaging in "projects aimed at a soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran." At her first trial, Judge Abolghassem Salavati told her she was not allowed to speak, arguing that it would be more time-efficient if she wrote down any objections she had to the charges. Salavati has presided over many cases against dual nationals, including Iranian-Americans Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini, and Jason Rezaian, who were released in January 2016 in a prisoner swap deal with the United States. He is also the presiding judge in current cases against dual nationals including Iranian-American Siamak Namazi, his father Bagher Namazi, and Iranian-born Swedish resident Ahmadreza Jalali. In all these cases, the victims have been held without due process and under unclear or unannounced charges, and denied full and proper legal representation. Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency's charitable branch, before being arrested in Iran. "She is a charity worker who was there on holiday with her daughter. The allegations are ludicrous," said Ratcliffe, referring to unsubstantiated claims by hardline websites claiming she was engaging in espionage. "The fact that the Supreme Court has rejected Nazanin's final appeal to overturn her sentence is a huge blow," said Monique Villa, the foundation's CEO, on April 24. "I would like to reiterate that I am entirely convinced of Nazanin's innocence. She is not a spy but an innocent mother who travelled to Iran only to show her baby to her parents." "I stand united with (her husband) Richard in calling for her immediate release," she added. Ratcliffe said he has no other option now but to rely on the UK government to bring his wife home. "Having given the Iranian legal system every chance to reconsider, now it is time for the (UK) government to say Nazanin is innocent," he said. "She was a mum on holiday, who works for a development charity in London, whose crime seems to be that it gets funding from the UK government." "Now that we have a full ambassador, it should not be possible that Iran continues to prevent Nazanin from seeing him," he added. "Lots of countries, like Italy, have dual nationality rules. They have normal consular relations. They find a way in particular cases. This is why now Nazanin is starting to push from the inside." The UK fully restored diplomatic relations with Iran by appointing an ambassador to Tehran for the first time since 2011 on September 5, 2016. Relations were cut off for several years after a group of Iranian protestors stormed the British embassy in Tehran on November 29, 2011. The judiciary's ongoing imprisonment of dual nationals contradicts Rouhani's repeated calls for expatriates to return to Iran. The growing number of arrests also reflects hardliners' efforts to prevent the engagement with the West that the Rouhani administration has sought to encourage. Iranian-British dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, sentenced to five years in prison in September 2016, has been held since April 2016; Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi, held since October 2015 and his father, 80-year-old Bagher Namazi, held since February 2016, have both been sentenced to ten years in prison; British-Iranian Roya Saberi Nobakht, held since October 2013, has been sentenced to seven years; and Iranian-Austrian dual citizen Kamran Ghaderi, held since January 2016, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Iranian-American Karan Vafadari, held since July 2016, and Iranian-born Swedish resident Ahmadreza Jalali, held since April 2016, have not been sentenced yet. Iran's Other Elections: Local Council Applicants Subjected to Arbitrary Vetting 04/27/17 Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran In a surprising development, a few outspoken and prominent political activists have been approved to run in Iran's elections for city and village councils on May 19, 2017. However, many well-known activists and reformists have been arbitrarily disqualified. Top: Abdollah Momeni (L), Yashar Soltani (C), Leila Arshad (R) Bottom: Amir Raeisian (L) and Hossein Naghashi (R) Applicants for local elections are vetted by monitoring boards set up by Parliament, while the Guardian Council vets parliamentary and presidential candidates. Iranians will also vote in their president on May 19, when current President Hassan Rouhani will be seeking a second term. In the capital city, the Tehran Province Election Monitoring Board approved 2,722 out of the 3,000 applicants seeking to challenge 31 seats in the Tehran Islamic City Council. Thousands of other applicants throughout the country also learned if they qualified on April 22. The following progressive candidates made it through the monitoring bodies' arbitrary vetting process. Abdollah Momeni: Former student activist and political prisoner. Abdollah Momeni, 41, was a prominent student activist in Tehran during his 20s and served as a spokesman for the nationwide Iranian alumni association, Advar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat. He was arrested in 2009 for supporting presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who peacefully disputed the vote count with fellow Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard. The three have been kept under extrajudicial house arrest since 2011. After being tortured during long interrogations in solitary confinement, Momeni was forced to make a televised "confession." Televised forced "confessions" in politically motivated cases, often extracted under the threat of or actual torture, are a common practice in Iran. In a letter from prison to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in August 2010, Momeni wrote: "From the start of the interrogations, I was forced to write against my friends and those close to me and when I resisted... I would receive beatings and insults and would be told that, 'We will bring a prostitute to your court hearing to confess against you and say that she had illegitimate sexual relations with you.'" In October 2010, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) commended Momeni's bravery and urged the Iranian judiciary to open investigations into his "report of prison torture and physical and psychological abuse, and evidence of unfair, inhumane, and illegal conduct on the part of the interrogators and judges." "Dear Citizens of Tehran. I, Abdollah Momeni, am offering myself for your vote in the city council elections in order to have a people-oriented and happy city," he tweeted on April 23 while announcing his candidacy. Momeni's election has been widely welcomed on social media and among civil rights advocates in Iran. Formerly imprisoned human rights activist Hossein Ronaghi Maleki reacted on his Twitter page: "Abdollah Momeni's candidacy has a pleasant and hopeful meaning: That we must stay, endure hardship, stand up and strive for change and improving conditions." Yashar Soltani: Journalist and editor who exposed corruption in the Tehran city council. The editor-in-chief of Memari News, Yashar Soltani was detained on September 17, 2016 after current presidential candidate and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and City Council Chairman Mehdi Chamran filed a suit complaining about the site's publication of an official letter exposing corruption in the municipality. Soltani is currently free on bail. "Today's problems are the result of actions by owners of wealth and masters of power (the state and the political parties)" tweeted Soltani on April 25. "If we want a better city, we have to make better choices." He added that he would "fight against corruption and for the free flow of information." Leila Arshad: Social activist and defender of homeless women. Social activist Leila Arshad is the founder and director of Khaneh Khorshid (Sun House), a non-governmental organization operating in Tehran since 2006 to help battered, homeless and addicted women and their children. She was among the first to raise the issue of child street workers in the 1990s and to call for protective measures. "So far I have Leila Arshad and Abdollah Momeni on my priority list for (Tehran) council, to support women's rights and the rights of prisoners and their families," tweeted journalist Elahe Khosravi on April 23. Other approved candidates of note include journalist and social activist Amene Shirafkan, and Taraneh Yalda, a city planner educated in Italy and France. Arbitrary Disqualifications and Attacks Many registrants who had previously engaged in activism or defended human rights were meanwhile disqualified for vaguely defined reasons, such as "lack of commitment to Islam" and "membership in disbanded parties." According to attorney and reformist political activist Hassan Younesi, the vetting process lacks basic standards. "The disqualification of some of the young candidates for the councils without clear criteria means that this process is arbitrary," he tweeted on April 24. Reformist activist Hossein Naghashi revealed on April 24 that he had been disqualified for "baseless reasons" while former political prisoner Emad Behavartweeted that he was suddenly rejected after initially being approved. Amir Raeisian, a lawyer who has represented imprisoned political and civil rights activists, tweeted on April 23: "I registered for the council elections and then got a letter that I was not approved. Interestingly, one of my former clients has been approved!" On April 26, the Tasnim News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), called for the disqualification of five reformist candidates. "The process of investigating the qualification of candidates in this election cycle shows that the monitoring board has not observed the law," said the unsigned editorial, which accused the Tehran election board of disqualifying several conservatives to "engineer" victories for reformists. "We will stop anyone who tries to unlawfully enter the council," warned Mohammad Mahmoudi Shahneshin, chairman of the Central Election Monitoring Board, on April 26. He was responding to questions about candidates who were imprisoned for supporting protests against the disputed result of the 2009 presidential election. "The security and judicial agencies, as well as other relevant authorities, will certainly report to us if they see a problem with any of the names," he added. According to the head of the Tehran council election board, Shahboddin Chavoshi, disqualified applicants can appeal the decision and a final ruling will be issued no later than May 7. 10 Iranian guards killed in clashes with outlaws at border with Pakistan 04/27/17 Source: Press TV Ten border guards have been killed in clashes with outlaws in southeastern Iran. The clashes, which erupted near the town of Mirjaveh in the province of Sistan-and-Baluchestan while the Iranian forces were patrolling the area, also left three other border guards injured, IRIB News Agency reported. The Iranian border guards killed by terrorists The so-called Jaish ul-Adl terror group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Armed bandits, outlaws and drug dealers regularly attack police forces and border guards in southeastern Iran. An Iranian border guard on watch (file photo) Earlier this month, a commander with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by two terrorists in Sistan-and-Baluchestan. Commander Rouhollah Aali was gunned down on April 11 by "two Takfiri terrorists" while traveling to the Kurin District of Zahedan County on duty. The assailants were subsequently killed by Basij volunteer forces. Council Of Europe Says Russia, Iran Abusing Interpol For Political Purposes 04/27/17 Source: RFE/RL European lawmakers say Russia and Iran are among a group of countries that are increasingly abusing Interpol red notices to seek the arrest of political opponents, contributing to a five-fold increase of red notices during the past decade. Interpol logo The Council of Europe said in a resolution on April 26 that it is "deplorable" to misuse the Interpol system for such purposes. A red notice allows police in Interpol's 190 member states to cooperate on the arrest and extradition of a person who is wanted by authorities in one country or by an international tribunal. A Council of Europe report on April 26 said: "Interpol and its system of red notices has been misused by some member states for political purposes in recent years to suppress freedom of expression or to persecute political opponents abroad." Among the cases cited were that of Mukhtar Ablyazov, Kazakhstan's former energy minister, who is accused of embezzling billions of dollars from the country's BTA bank. Ablyazov spent more than three years in custody after being arrested by French authorities in 2013 on account of a red notice issued by Russia. France refused to extradite him but he remained in a French jail until last December when his lawyers successfully argued that Russia's goal was political. The Council's report cited many other cases -- including Mehdi Khosravi, an Iranian arrested in Italy in August 2016 on the basis of a red notice issued by Tehran, even though he had obtained political asylum in Britain. New Measures The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on April 26 welcomed news that Interpol has recently adopted measures to improve the reasons for a state seeking a red notification. Those measures include a provision that red notices be circulated by Interpol only when there are serious grounds for suspicion against the targeted person. But PACE lawmakers also argued that Interpol should do more to protect the rights of the accused, including stronger measures of recourse for a person affected by a red notice. "Targeted persons cannot successfully challenge red notices before any national or international courts," PACE's legal affairs and human rights rapporteur Bernd Fabritius said in a March report. "Sometimes, people are arrested and extradited to countries where they cannot expect a fair trial, or where they are threatened by torture without even knowing that they were the subject of an Interpol notice," Fabritius said. "Given the damage abusive red notices can do to the lives of innocent people," he said, "it is important that weaknesses in the system are identified and measures taken to prevent and redress abuses more effectively." The number of Interpol red notices jumped from 2,343 in 2005 to 12,787 in 2016. With reporting by AFP Iran launches national fiber optic connectivity plan 04/27/17 Source: Press TV Iran has launched an ambitious project to connect houses to a nationwide fiber optic network - what the administration of President Hassan Rouhani would provide citizens with an easy access to high-speed internet. The project, which had been developed by Iran Telecommunications Company (ICT), was launched by Iran's Minister of Communication and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi. photo by Islamic Republic News Agency Vaezi described it as a major progress that would revolutionize Iran's national data network. He said Rouhani's administration had been pursuing the development of the national fiber optic network despite numerous obstacles that existed. The official further emphasized that the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology had already taken major strides to promote internet-based businesses across Iran, adding that the national fiber optic connectivity project was a significant step in the same direction. The project that officials had previously said would put the country in the "age of gigabit connectivity" has been created in nine cities including capital Tehran and would soon expand to other areas of the country, IRNA reported. Elsewhere in his remarks, Vaezi said that Iran's data transfer capacity had increased by 11 times since 2013 to reach as high as 10,000 gigabytes. He added that Iran's internet bandwidth capacity had also increased by 15 percent to reach as high as 10,000 gigabytes. Vaezi said around 900 cities and towns across Iran currently are under the coverage of third generation of wireless mobile telecommunications - briefly referred to as 3G. He also added that the number of towns and cities under the 4G coverage currently stood at 742. This, Vaezi emphasized, is while the coverage for both 3G and 4G services were extremely limited when Rouhani took office in 2013. Microsoft has set the gold standard for tablet-style 2-in-1 devices with its Surface Pro, and other PC vendors have followed suit with their own designs. Acers latest Surface-style device, the Switch 5, offers a couple of advantages but lacks in other areas. I had a chance to play with the Switch 5 at an Acer event in New York City, where new PCs and tablets were announced. The Switch 5 is a tablet first, but a keyboard attachment can be hooked up to make it a laptop. As a tablet, the Switch 5 is quite light, about the equivalent of the Surface Pro 4. The device doesnt look as polished as the Surface Pro, nor does it have the premium finish. But it does have solid technologies, like the latest Intel processor and liquid cooling, that set it apart from rival devices. Acer has priced the Switch 5 at $799 for the U.S. market, which is higher than the $749 starting price of the Surface Pro. Surprisingly, the Switch 5 is priced starting at a ridiculous 1,099 ($1,192)almost $400 morefor the European market. It will be available in the U.S. and Europe in June, and it will ship in China in July. The Switch 5 runs Intels Kaby Lake chips, putting it a full generation ahead of Surface Pro 4, which has the slower Skylake chips. The Acer tablet also has a USB-C port, giving it an edge over Surface Pro, which has a USB 3.0 port. Its not entirely clear if Microsoft will release a Surface Pro 5 based on Kaby Lake, but if so, it could include a USB-C port. The 12-inch Acer tablet has a 2160 x 1440 display, and the screen was sharp. It was hard to do instant benchmarking of the Switch 5 unit, which had a Core i7 chip. But the programs loaded instantly, and the graphics were flawless. In an eye test, the performance was similar to the Dell XPS 13 I use on a daily basis. The magnetic keyboard attachment clipped on to the tablet much like the keyboard for the Surface Pro 4. Inside the tablet is 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, which is slower from the DDR4 memory going into the latest laptops. Thats a disappointment and an area where Acer decided to cut corners. The Switch 5 can be configured with 256GB to 512GB of solid-state drive storage. Acer promoted the devices hingewhich allows the tablet to stand on a tableas being a difference maker, but it felt cheaply made. The Surface 4 hinge feels more solid and offers more flexibility for positioning the device. The Switch 5 was silent, and there was no sound of a fan. Thats because it has liquid cooling technology inside, using a pipe inside to move water to keep components cool. That has helped reduce the size of the device, and also make it lighter. The tablet is just 9.6-millimeters thick. The Surface Pro 4, by contrast, has a fan to dissipate heat generated by components. The Acer tablet has 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and offers battery life about 10.5 hours, according to the company. It also has a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel rear camera. Its priced similar to the Surface Pro 4, so a buying decision comes down to what you want. Its worth buying partly for the Kaby Lake processor and USB Type-C port, but if Microsoft upgrades its Surface Pro, then that decision becomes tougher. The Switch 5 will be a good 2-in-1 device for running productivity software, but it seems overpriced partly because it has some weak features, including DDR3 memory and low-resolution cameras. Bill Cosby has spoken about his desire to get back on the stage and perform comedy before his widely publicised sexual assault trial. Speaking to a consortium of newspapers, Cosby revealed that he is blind something that was mentioned in court papers but wants to get back on the stage. I miss it all and I hope that day will come. I have some routines and storytelling that I am working on, Cosby told the National Newspaper Publishers Association. I think about walking out on stage somewhere in the United States of America and sitting down in a chair and giving the performance that will be the beginning of the next chapter of my career. Of course, thats probably news to the long list of women who have accused him of sexual assault. The 79-year-old actor is currently being prosecuted over only one of those allegations the alleged assault of Andrea Constand in 2004. Many of the allegations have passed the statute of limitations and cannot be prosecuted. Attorney Gloria Allred, who represents several of Cosbys accusers, says that she believes the interview was intended to influence a future jury. I expect Mr. Cosby and members of his family to continue to speak out in an attempt to portray him as a victim rather than as an alleged sexual predator. However, the jury must decide this case based on the evidence admitted in the court room instead of what they see or hear as part of a slick Hollywood public relations campaign. Cosbys daughter Evin also released a statement defending her fathers innocence: The harsh and hurtful accusationsthat supposedly happened 40 or 50 years ago, before I was born, in another lifetime, and that have been carelessly repeated as truth without allowing my dad to defend himself and without requiring proof, has punished not just my dad but every one of us. The public persecution of my dad, my kids grandfather, and the cruelty of the media and those who speak out branding my father a rapist without ever knowing the truth and who shame our family and our friends for defending my dad, makes all of this so much worse for my family and my children. The trial begins in June. Source: NBC. Photo: Getty Images. If you happen to know anyone who works in the United Airlines PR department, immediately send them a very large bottle of whisky and attach a card that reads simply please quit. The poor sods in that office have not had a good month to say the very least. After wading their way through the absolute clusterfuck nightmare that was the incident where a paying passenger was forcibly and violently removed from a flight because the airline had oversold it, the airline is now facing another mysterious catastrophe: the apparent mid-flight death of a very large rabbit. Simon, a male Continental Giant rabbit, was found dead on a plane after travelling from the UK to you guessed it Chicago. The 10-month-old rabbit was the offspring of Darius, a rabbit who holds the world record for being the worlds longest bunny, and it was expected that Simon could well have grown his way into the record books himself. Simon was apparently on his way to a new home in the United States, and had been given a medical all-clear to travel just three hours prior to arriving at Londons Heathrow Airport. Another inspection at the airport apparently confirmed that the animals condition had not changed, and he was boarded on a flight to the US. But after arriving in Chicago, where he was scheduled to transfer to a domestic flight, United officials discovered that at some point between departing England and arriving in the US, Simon had died. United Airlines, in a scrambled-together statement on the issue, asserted that they were investigating the incident. The rabbit has passed away, but the details surrounding that are being reviewed. We were saddened to hear this news. The safety and well-being of all the animals that travel with us is of the utmost importance to United Airlines and our PetSafe team. We have been in contact with our customer and have offered assistance. We are reviewing this matter. Annette Edwards, who breeds the very big rabbits and was the one sending Simon overseas, stated that shed flown the animals out to buyers countless times before without incident. He had that exam three hours before he left me to go to Heathrow. He then got to Heathrow, apparently, and he was fine. In Chicago he had to board to go to another flight and thats when I believe they found him dead. Any other bunnies Ive sent to the US have been fine. Ive been doing it for quite a few years. I dont sell unless its to the right person, because these animals are not like normal rabbits. Theyre more like dogs, so you have to have the right facilities for them. They cant go into a rabbit hutch. In another twist to the saga, the rabbit who was already 3 feet 5 inches (104cm) long has since been claimed to have died after he was offloaded from the plane, according to UK publication The Sun. They report that a United spokesman asserted that Simon died in a holding facility at OHare Airport, rather than mid-flight. Edwards is now fighting to get Simons body returned to her in England in order to have a vet conduct a post-mortem. The animals sell for around US$400 each, and Edwards claims that the client who bought Simon was very famous. The body, Edwards claims, has been placed in a freezer by airport staff in Chicago. Dead rabbits, roughed-up passengers, my god. They say April is the cruellest month, but this is above and beyond. Rest in peace, Simon. You very long bun. Source: SMH. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty. Because a significant percentage of the people of this great nation collectively decide that a national day of remembrance is also a fine opportunity to take leave of ones senses, heres yet another forehead-slapper on behalf of the Australian public: Dr Anne Aly, Federal MP for the Western Australian district of Cowan, is getting abused online for not being in two places at once on ANZAC Day. Confused? Let us wade into the quagmire of this particular Islamophobic shitfight, together. It all began when the hyper-right Facebook group Kim Vuga Love Australia Or Leave Party posted this ANZAC SPOILER tip-off, on the evening of April 25. Now, the facts of this post are quite correct. Aly was not at the Wanneroo RSL dawn service, and she did not lay a wreath there. Thats because she was busy laying a wreath at Cowans other dawn service in Ballajura. Not to be deterred by something as trifling as the truth, Vugas supporters and other right-wing pages were quick to share Garys story, with the bigoted hysteria snowballing to astonishing proportions. A warning: the comments on the post linked above, and the one embedded below, are really, really awful. As you can see, the report that Aly would not be presenting a wreath at the service was quickly translated into refused to present a wreath, and Alys Facebook page began copping a wave of bigoted shit. As Buzzfeed has reported, Dr Aly has already attended three Anzac ceremonies this week, and will attend three more in the coming days. In the days since this particularly noxious bit of fake news has blown up, Aly has been handling the mess with an admirable blend of saintly patience and faint exasperation even as Vuga continues to bluster, derail and dodge the truth: Unsurprisingly, no-one is cracking the shits about any other MPs failing to warp space and time in order to appear at all RSLs in their electorate simultaneous. Also unsurprisingly, Anne Aly happens to be Australias first female Muslim federal MP. Aly says it best: For the people on here trying to claim that I refused to lay a wreath, I think its appalling that they would use Anzac Day to further their obvious agenda. Today should be a day of reflection on the sacrifices made for our country by people who exhibit true Australian values and spirit. Source: Buzzfeed News. Image: Facebook / Anne Aly / Alex Ellinghausen. ITS A GREAT DAY FOR AUSTRALIA, PEOPLE. While the plethora of options already available on UberEATS is clearly more than enough to fill any stomach with delicious, tasty treats. But those occasions where you feel like straight-up bashing yourself with food have largely remained the domain of anyone who owns a car and/or anyone who knows someone willing to be suckered into doing a drive thru run for them. Apparently, however, those dark days are nearly over. The ride-sharing, food-delivery behemoth is reportedly set to land the great white whale of delivery food in Australia: the blessed McDonalds. The Golden Arches has been quietly trialling a partnership with UberEATS in around 200 restaurants in Florida since December, and the global fries merchant seemingly has plans to roll it out worldwide, including in both the UK and here in Australia. McDonalds previously flirted with home delivery in Australia back in 2013, launching the McDelivery service through Menulog in select restaurants in metropolitan areas. But this new project seems to be a much larger attempt at introducing to-your-door cheeseburgers into the market. The partnership with Uber seems to be in conjunction with a new app that Maccas is preparing to launch, thatll also allow diners in-restaurant to order food to their table, and pay for it, right from their smartphone. Kind of like a mobile version of their current touch-screen ordering stations. The app is being tested in the UK at the moment, but a launch into the Australian market has been confirmed by sources. Imagine it, folks. A big bag of nuggets delivered directly to your door. Its the dream. Its everything we could ever hope for. Now if only theyd re-launch that goddamned Mulan szechuan dipping sauce at the same time, wed really be cooking with gas. Source: AdNews. Photo: Tim McRae/Getty. If youve ever wanted to trick friends and family into thinking youre chugging flutes full of nail polish, take heart: a new product on the market is here to assist you in your noble and lustrous goal. UK retailer Lakeland has introduced its PopaBall Shimmer For Prosecco, which does almost exactly what youd imagine. Add the fine raspberry-flavoured powder to your tipple, give it a stir, and baby, youve got the ~glammest~ drop this side of frose. via Lakeland. The AU $12 concoction also contains teeny-tiny gold flakes pressed into loveheart shapes, because bubbly pearlescent liquids dont immediately scream luxe on their own. via Lakeland. A brief product demo demonstrates everything else to know about the product, mainly that its guaranteed to give you the most interesting drink in the room, provided its only other occupants are a plain white wall and a bunch of roses. If youre dead keen to get your hands on some, youll have to contact the store directly, as theres no ready-made option for Australian delivery. Alternatively, just throw some glitter and mineral foundation in your Yellowglen and hope for the best. Source: ELLE. Photo: Lakeland. There are plenty of high-quality restaurants around the globe hell, even if you stick close to home, you can hit up critically acclaimed places like Bennelong and Quay, or our own two spots that made it onto the 50 Best Restaurants Of 2017 Attica and Brae. But theres just something so fantastically gloaty about being able to say you got a seat at one of the hardest restaurants to get into in the globe. And whether you end up having the best dining experience of your life or not, youll leave satisfied you got your bum on a very sought after seat. Here are the some of the longest wait-lists for restaurants world-wide right now better start making a few calls. N/NAKA, LOS ANGELES Image: N/Naka. Wait time: 3 months. Look, when you land a mention on Chefs Table, youre obviously going to blow up, right? Thats the story behind N/Naka, an LA based Japanese restaurant owned by chef Niki Nakayama. Shes the protegee of famous Mori Sushi owner Morihiro Onodera, hence the hype. Every Sunday, the restaurant opens online bookings at 10am for 3 months in advance. But if you manage to land a reservation, expect delish, fresh fare with a strong seafood focus. RAOS, NEW YORK Image: Anne Fishbein. Wait time: Basically forever. Good bloody luck trying to get through the door of this Southern Italian restaurant in Harlem. The 120 year old restaurant is rumoured to have been the joint of choice for the actual Godfather, and serves a serious line-up of celeb clientele weekly. Its not exactly fine dining more like A+ home-style meals in the vein of pasta dishes and their very famous meatballs. The reason its so hard to get a table is there are around 6 available, and most are owned by families kind of a friend-of-a-friend thing. Recently though, Raos went nation-wide with openings in LA and Vegas although its the NYC one with the history and hype. DAMON BAEHREL, NEW YORK Image: Damon Baehrel. Wait time: Years. You actually cant currently even reserve a seat at legendary Damon Baehrel. A notice on site states that, after a heavy influx of reservations in 2014 (2014!!) theyve decided to close off bookings until further notice. So, even if they do decide to re-open them, expect to be waiting actual years before youre inside the Upper NY restaurant. Why is everyone so damn keen? Well, its probably in part due to chef and owner Baehrel sourcing most of his ingredients from the 12 acre property the restaurant sits on. And the fact the entire dining experience is a real, damn experience 20 courses are presented, and Baehrel talks about every single one with passion, because he really loves food and his craft. EL CELLER DE CAN ROCA, SPAIN Image: El Celler De Can Roca. Wait time: 11 months. Theyre currently listed as #3 in the world on the Top 50 Best Restaurants list, so its no wonder this traditional Catalan restaurant, which is owned by three very talented brothers, is hard to get into. Theyre also no stranger to the list in years past at one stage they even took out the number one spot. If you want in, youll have to head to their website on the 1st of the month at midnight yes, really and make a booking for the following year. Their big hook is their creativity theyve even created meals based around famous perfumes. THE FRENCH LAUNDRY, CALIFORNIA Image: The French Laundry. Wait time: 2 months. A lush French restaurant based in the v. swish Napa Valley, youll be waiting 2 solid months for a spot at their daily 9 course tasting dinner. But its absolutely worth it the restaurant is inside a huge old steam laundry (hence the name), so the entire experience is all your rustic dreams come true. TAKAZAWA, TOKYO Image: Takazawa. Wait time: 2 months. With only 10 seats, its no surprise Takazawa is incredibly hard to get into. The restaurant is French cuisine with a Japanese twist the ratatouille for example is a signature dish, thats served sushi-style. If you want in, youll have to fill out an online form on the first of every month, for two months in advance. Wish you had the spare $$ to make a spontaneous trip to one of these swish places? Enter our competition thanks to our friends at Set for Life, and you could find yourself with $20k in your pocket to do just that: HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO WIN $20K! ENTER HERE NOW! Image: Takazawa. Senator Don Meredith seen during an interview in Toronto, Thursday, March 16, 2017. The Senate's ethics committee is poised to make a final decision about what punishment awaits Sen. Don Meredith over his sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel Conservative Party leadership candiidate Maxime Bernier (left) looks on as Kevin O'Leary address a news conference in Toronto, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, after it was announced that O'Leary had quit the leadership race. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette A Kosovar walks past a giant banner reading in Albanian "Ramush Haradinaj is Kosova" with a portrait of former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj in capital Pristina, Kosovo Thursday, April 27, 2017. A French court has refused to extradite Haradinaj to Serbia to face war crimes charges. The court in the northeastern town of Colmar said Haradinaj has been released. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) FILE - In this Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017 file photo, Lordes Reboyoso, right, yells at a rally outside of City Hall in San Francisco. President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation's immigration controls Wednesday, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and cut federal grants for immigrant-protecting "sanctuary cities." On Tuesday, April 25, 2017, a federal judge blocked a Trump administration order to withhold funding from communities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities, saying the president has no authority to attach new conditions to federal spending. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) Labourers shovel coal at a coal storage site in Hefei, Anhui province July 21, 2011.[Photo/Agencies] China's listed coal companies made more money in the first quarter aided by rising coal prices, Securities Daily reported Thursday. As of April 26, among the eight coal companies that released their first-quarter financial report, seven said their net profits saw large increases, except Henan Shenhuo Coal & Power Co Ltd. Pingdingshan Tianan Coal Mining Co Ltd reported a 102.96 percent increase in its first-quarter operating revenue, while net profits surged 7962.83 percent to 317 million yuan. Among the 11 coal companies that released their Q1 profit forecast, seven said they expected higher earnings, three forecasted that they could reverse previous losses, and one hoped to reduce loss. Jizhong Energy Resources Co Ltd estimated its net profits at 155-310 million yuan in the first quarter, up 3587.67-7275.33 percent year on year. Last year, the company posted a net profit of 270 million yuan, an increase of 1422.70 percent from the previous year. Anhui Hengyuan Coal Industry and Electricity Power Co Ltd also expected to make a net profit of 287 million yuan in the first quarter, jumping about 5878.06 percent from a year earlier. All coal companies attributed the earnings hike to sharply rising coal prices and robust demand. Coal prices in China have surged since last year, as a result of the government's effort to curb industrial overcapacity. Premier Li Keqiang said in the Government Work Report that China will reduce coal production by at least 150 million tons this year. However, coal prices are expected to see a decline in the second quarter, Deng Shun, a coal researcher at GF Futures told the newspaper. Normally, April and May sees weak demand. Furthermore, enterprises have produced too much coal due to high profits, Deng added. The National Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday that the government will encourage coal companies to merge and restructure to increase efficiency in the industry and take measures to return thermal coal prices to a reasonable range. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., talks with reporters after an all Senators briefing on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, Washington, Wednesday, April, 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Alaska Airlines will provide weekly air freighter service to Petersburg and across Alaska in June when a converted 737-700 next generation aircraft will begin flying, according to Jason Berry, Director of Cargo with Alaska Airlines. Berry told a gathering of business representatives from town about the new service at a noon meeting at the Sons of Norway Hall on Monday. The meeting was rescheduled from last fall when fog caused the informational meeting to be delayed after airline representatives could not land in Petersburg. By the end of summer, two additional freighters will go into servi... Whitmer wins second term as Michigan governor Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defeated Republican challenger Tudor Dixon in the Michigan governor race in the 2022 midterm election to earn a second term. Suriname: Apache hits dry well offshore at Kolibrie-1 well GEORGETOWN Petroleumworld 04 27 2017 Apache Oil and Gas Corporation has failed to find commercial quantities of oil at its Kolibrie-1 well, offshore Suriname. The closely-watched drilling operations took place 129km off the coast of the South American country, in Block 53. The Noble Douglas drill ship has since departed the location. World-class discoveries made by ExxonMobil and its partners offshore Guyana over the last several months has renewed optimism and interest in exploration activities in the Guyana-Suriname Basin and has served to derisk the area. Already a number of new wells have been earmarked for exploration over the next two years by several companies operating off Guyana's coast. Apache in 2012 signed a production-sharing contract for Block 53 with Staatsoliethe Surinamese national oil companyfollowing a competitive bid round. The acreage covers 3,509 sq km in 1,640-5,900 ft of water. Under the PSC, Block 53 has a work program that included 3D seismic, geological surveys, and the drilling of two exploration wells. Under the 30-year contract, Apache will take full responsibility for all costs during the exploration phase. If a commercial find is made and brought into production, Apache will receive reimbursement for such costs. Petroleum Legislation Bill to be taken to Guyana law making body May 8 GEORGETOWN Petroleumworld 04 27 2017 The Government of Guyana is preparing to table the Petroleum Commission of Guyana Bill 2017 at the next sitting of the country's National Assembly, slated for May 8, 2017. The Bill is just one of the measures being put in place as the South American country prepares to begin oil production by 2020. A new-comer to the oil and gas industry, Guyana is currently being provided with support from countries like the United States of America, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Chile, Mexico and the Russian Federation, along with agencies including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), European Union and the Commonwealth Secretariat. According to Minister responsible for the Natural Resources Sector, Raphael Trotman, the Natural Resources and Ocean Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat based in London, United Kingdom, is currently reviewing Guyana's laws which are already in place, and crafting new legislation where necessary. Reporting to the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources on April 19, 2017, the Minister said while the countries and agencies are providing various forms of assistance, its sister nation in CARICOM; Trinidad and Tobago, has requested that the Government of Guyana enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with them, to give technical and other support. Trinidad, the largest oil and natural gas producer in the Caribbean, is showing major interest in Guyana's developing oil industry as that country continues to feel the effects of the slump in oil prices. Trinidad's state energy company, Petrotrin, is lobbying strongly for the opportunity to refine Guyana's oil. Mr. Trotman has however pointed out that where the country's oil will be refined is a decision that has not yet been made. On March 30, ExxonMobil Corporation's affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd. encountered 82 ft of high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs while drilling the Snoek well on the Stabroek block offshore Guyana. The well reached 16,978 ft in 5,128 ft of water and targeted similar aged reservoirs as encountered in previous discoveries at Liza and Payara. Snoek is in the southern portion of the 6.6 million-acre block, 5 miles to the southeast of the world-class 2015 Liza-1 discovery. ExxonMobil earlier this year said it encountered more than 95 ft of oil-bearing sandstone in its Payara-1 well, which was drilled about 10 miles northwest of the Liza-1 discovery. Mr. Trotman disclosed that the company is still in the process of estimating the size of the Pyara-1 and Snoek finds. The Liza-1 find is declared at a minimum of 800 million barrels to a maximum of 1.4 billion barrels of oil, the largest thus far. Altogether, discoveries made so far by Exxon and its partners in the Stabroek Block are estimated to be around 2 billion barrels of recoverable high-quality crude. Along with the oil find at the Liza Well, a volume of gas was discovered. While some of the gas will be re-injected into the well, the natural resources minister disclosed that there is going to be excess gas and we are told that we may be able to access about 50 million cubic ft per day. This, according to his calculation, may give the country a 200MV natural gas energy generating plant, which could become the answer to all of our generation problems, he pointed out, referring to the unreliable nature and high cost of electricity in the country. What is certain is that we will not be squandering the gas the gas will be used; either some will be sold to neighbouring countries or some will be utilized in Guyana, he stated. Argentina authorized natural gas export to Uruguay BUENOS AIRES Petroleumworld 04 27 2017 Argentina's government authorized the export of up to 350,000 cubic meters (12.4 million cubic feet) of natural gas per day to neighboring Uruguay for the next two years, its official gazette said on Wednesday. Argentina is seeking to ramp up production by exploiting one of the world's largest shale reserves, Vaca Muerta, but it remains a net importer of gas, primarily from Bolivia. Argentina must import equivalent amounts of gas to what it is exporting to Uruguay, the gazette said. A total volume of 255.5 million cubic meters (9 billion cubic feet) is allowed for export to Uruguay. The measure will no longer apply if Uruguay does not import gas within 180 days. Vaca Muerta investment reaching up to $8 bln this year HOUSTON Petroleumworld 04 27 2017 Investments of between $6 billion and $8 billion in Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale field have been confirmed in 2017, Energy and Mining Minister Juan Jose Aranguren said on Wednesday. The country expects between $12 billion and $15 billion in investments in 2018 and $20 billion annually from 2019 onward, he said. Aranguren and President Mauricio Macri sought to woo oil executives in meetings in Houston ahead of Macri's trip to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump. Roughly the size of Belgium, Vaca Muerta is one of the world's largest shale gas reserves but has remained mostly undeveloped due to high production costs and a lack of labor flexibility. Macri has sought to attract investment since taking office in late 2015, and earlier this year sealed a deal with unions and oil companies including Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to guarantee investments in exchange for greater labor flexibility and wellhead price subsidies. The uptick in investment would come as companies transition from pilot projects to the development phase, Aranguren told reporters. There are 700 unconventional wells drilled in Argentina, which Aranguren said would likely increase by a factor of 10 when projects move to development. Aranguren added that next Tuesday, the government will sign another deal with oil worker unions, this time in the country's Chubut province, to stimulate production in the San Jorge Gulf play. "The goal of the deals with the unions is to push pilot projects into the development phase, to stimulate production to substitute imports," Aranguren said. Once a natural gas exporter, Argentina now imports around 25 percent of its needs, including some costly liquefied natural gas imports, a major contributor to its gaping fiscal deficit. That came after years of stagnant production as consumption remained high. Of the 18 projects under way in Vaca Muerta just two - a joint venture involving state-owned YPF SA and Chevron, and one between YPF and Dow Chemical Co - have advanced to the development stage, Aranguren said, adding that a pilot project operated by Tecpetrol SA was close to reaching development. Beyond Vaca Muerta, Aranguren said Argentina would grant permission to explore to any interested company. Firms that discover viable reserves would then have to seek approval from the relevant province to produce the oil. That comes after Norway's Spectrum ASA said last week it was conducting a seismic study of under-explored offshore areas with YPF. Hong Kong's up-and-coming fashion designers will show off some of their latest creations at a charity event in London next month. The Hong Kong Fashion Designer Showcase will be part of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The event will feature designers including Daydream Nation, Injury, Kenaxleung, Zo-ee and Jaycow with some of them set to fly to the United Kingdom especially for the event. While many of these designers taking part have held successful shows in New York, Shanghai, and Paris, some will be showing their collection in London for the first time. Lawrence Lee, president of the Hong Kong Executives Club, said the catwalk event will showcase Hong Kong's creativity, vibrancy, and unique culture. The charity fashion show has been organized jointly by the Hong Kong Executives Club and the Chinese Community Centre in London, and is supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London. Christine Yau, chairwoman of the Chinese Community Centre and co-organizer, said: It is the 37th year of the Chinese Community Centre in serving the local community. The center keeps a close link with charity organizations in Hong Kong and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to jointly host the charity event with HKEC and HKETO. A mix of London's business and fashion leaders are expected to attend the show on Tuesday and there will also be a question-and-answer session with some of the designers. Five exclusive items on display on the night will be auctioned off after the show and will be altered to fit the successful bidders. Proceeds from the evening will be donated to support the work of the central London based Chinese Community Centre. Priscilla To, director general of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London, said: In Hong Kong, East and West mesh in many ways, making the city a thriving arts and cultural hub. Our cultural and creative industries employ more than 200,000 practitioners engaged in fields ranging from jewelry design to fashion, painting to publishing, interactive games to comics, advertising to architecture, and music production and digital media to performing arts. All of the students were excited that they were making a dessert in addition to the main meal this class. They were very curious about the Moroccan Chicken Couscous dish. The students learned about Morocco, where it was and how to pronounce it. None of them had eaten eggplant or couscous before. They enjoyed measuring and smelling all the new spices they put into the stew. In addition, the students learned that it is very important to be accurate in measuring your ingredients when you are baking. Shaleyska Alers said this about the strawberry bars, "I didn't know that it matters so much to put the right amounts in the food that you are making. I can't wait until I can eat it, it smells so good." As the group enjoyed the meal together, they liked the texture of the couscous and how all the flavors of the ingredients mixed together in the dish. Michaela McFadden enjoyed the meal and said "The couscous dish was pretty good. The bars were good but a little sour." Picture: Dylan Marrero, Michaela McFadden The Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, 73, who filmed Beloved and Philadelphia here and put the city on the map as a film-production destination, died Wednesday morning in New York City. Family sources say the cause of death was esophageal cancer and complications from heart disease. "Philadelphia was really his second city," said Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, who spoke to Mr. Demme in March when he was in town to sell part of his Haitian art collection at Germantown's Material Culture. It was then that Mr. Demme revealed he was sick -- news that devastated Pinkenson, who credits the director with putting the city on the film-production map. Philadelphia, released in 1993, was the local film office's first major production. "It was the first time I worked with a major film from beginning to end in this job, and we became lifelong friends. He set the standard," Pinkenson said. "He was a very gentle soul and extremely passionate about what he did, and he treated everybody like they belonged to his family, and that set a standard among the crew and the actors. It was all about the love and the passion for what you do. I compare every director to Jonathan." Pinkenson remembers Mr. Demme had a hard time coming up with a name for the movie -- it had been tentatively called Jonathan Demme's Fall Movie. He held a contest, with the winner to be awarded a dinner at Le Bec-Fin. "Then on a lunch break, Jonathan came up to me and said, 'We've decided to call the movie Philadelphia. ' I could hardly speak. I had to go call my mother," Pinkenson said. "I mean, to have an important movie like this named after your city -- how do you top that?" The movie stars Tom Hanks as an HIV-positive lawyer who loses his job and sues his firm. His lawyer is played by Denzel Washington. Hanks, who won an Oscar for the role, issued a statement Wednesday, saying, "Jonathan taught us how big a heart a person can have, and how it will guide how we live and what we do for a living. He was the grandest of men." The film also earned an Oscar nomination for screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, with whom Mr. Demme worked closely on the story and script. "The burden was on Ron to realize gay relationships and characters in a way those characters are lacking in movies," Mr. Demme said at the time. "The responsibility to flesh out [Washington's character's] homophobia and AIDS phobia was on me." "Finding the basic story took months. Writing took a year and a half. During that time, the Clarence Cain v. Hyatt Legal Services case had happened," he said, referring to the lawsuit brought by an HIV-positive Philadelphia lawyer against his firm for unreasonable firing, "and we wanted to steer clear of those characters." Mr. Demme recalled being thrilled that he was able to attract Hanks. "Were we happy that Tom has this giant, trusting, adoring following? Yeah! We were slapping five all over the office, because Tom really does have a constituency." The movie made $77 million and received mostly positive reviews, though it drew some criticism for being too politically correct -- a label Mr. Demme disputed with characteristic passion. "One of the things that people find fault with is the political correctness of the casting. They find fault with the fact that a white man goes to a black attorney, that a white man is in love with an Hispanic man [Antonio Banderas]. They find fault with the fact that the white man's family is so supportive. It's so politically correct. My reaction to that is, Excuse me! Has anyone taken a look at what America looks like at the moment? There's a whole bunch of different kinds of people. Good Lord! And, in terms of the supporting family thing, they are out there too, and if this movie is labeled PC for being inspired by families like that, well, tough s-." Mr. Demme loved the experience of shooting in the city, and he chose Philadelphia as the site of his adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, starring Oprah Winfrey, released in 1998. "We all hoped that one day we would be lucky enough to film again in Philadelphia," Mr. Demme said at the time. "We just never thought it would happen so quickly." Beloved was shepherded to the screen by Winfrey, who wanted a woman to direct the film and who had shopped the project to The Piano's Jane Campion and Jodie Foster without success. Meanwhile, Mr. Demme had spotted Richard LaGravanese's script and contacted Winfrey. Winfrey said everything that had gone wrong with other directors went right with Mr. Demme. He shared her enthusiasm for the story, her understanding of its complex racial and psychological themes, and he did not rule her out for the lead. "Jonathan is the first director who said that is a decision we should make together," Winfrey said at the time. Mr. Demme later said he received a basket of food and a facetious "condolence" note from Foster, another longtime friend, that said, "Hope this helps to get your white ass through Beloved." Mr. Demme started out making B-movies (Handle with Care in 1978) for producer Roger Corman in the 1970s. Ron Howard, who also got his directing start with Corman, issued this statement: "Jonathan Demme was a great artist, humanitarian, activist and a warm encouraging colleague. I've known very few like him. He will be missed." Working for Corman, Mr. Demme displayed a talent that enabled him to graduate quickly to Hollywood features while retaining his quirky point of view -- Melvin and Howard (1982), Something Wild (1987), and Married to the Mob (1991). He won an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs (1992), and turned from there to passion projects like Philadelphia. "Our story could be set in any major city and most small towns at this stage. I mean, it deals in a very head-on way with such subjects as AIDS, lawyers, the American justice system, homophobia, all other kinds of prejudices," Mr. Demme said in 1992 of his decision to set Philadelphia here. "But, then, we decided that Philadelphia, being known as the City of Brotherly Love, the city where the Declaration of Independence was written, brought a special kind of resonance to a story about acceptance and brotherhood. " Mr. Demme also loved music, and he directed several ground-breaking music documentaries, notably Stop Making Sense with the Talking Heads and Neil Young Trunk Show, filmed over two concerts at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby. He also directed Bruce Springsteen's video for "Streets of Philadelphia," a song he commissioned for the film that featured many shots of the city. Mr. Demme made frequent trip to Haiti and was an activist involved in attempts to provide assistance to that nation. He made the documentary Haiti Dreams of Democracy in 1988, and The Agronomist, a 2003 documentary about Jean Dominique, Haitian activist and radio journalist. In the days before the Presidents' Summit for America's Future, held in Philadelphia in April 1997, the Inquirer asked former President Jimmy Carter to write an op-ed on the challenges and hopes facing the nation then and the message resonates today, 20 years later. The greatest domestic challenge for our nation today is reversing the tide of despair that plagues so many of our citizens, especially those in low-income urban areas. Despite a vast array of government and private programs designed to address socioeconomic issues, many Americans face increasing obstacles to living healthy, productive lives. It is especially heartbreaking when we realize that poverty, poor health care, crime and lack of quality education affect one segment of our population hardest: our children. I have often heard people lament that the problems facing our neediest citizens are so entrenched and so complex that nothing can be done. This is not only wrong, but this attitude helps to perpetuate these problems. All of us have the ability to help ourselves and to reach out to help someone less fortunate. If we could form this great chain of human compassion, we could win major battles of the war against hopelessness and despair. It would be a social revolution like no other we've experienced in this country. But it will not happen overnight. We've learned this through a variety of international and domestic programs at the Carter Center to prevent and resolve conflicts, promote democracy, and fight hunger, disease and poverty. We first started working more than a decade ago in developing countries, primarily in Africa and Latin America. In Africa, we've seen whole villages become self-sustaining in food production by first teaching one farmer improved agricultural techniques. She, in turn, teaches the others in her village, and before long, food production is up fourfold. By recruiting and training volunteer health workers, we've also seen a 97 percent decrease in a disease called guinea worm that keeps those same farmers away from their fields and prevents their children from attending school. These and other programs demonstrate the true spirit of community. But it doesn't happen overnight. In this country, our problems are different, but it is equally as important that we band together as a community of rich and poor, young and old, reaching across racial and religious lines. In Atlanta, we have approached problems this way. The Carter Center's Atlanta Project (TAP) has helped some of our neediest communities gain access to resources to address problems residents identify including juvenile crime, low immunization rates, lack of jobs and affordable housing, drug use and high school dropout rates. And our America Project has shared our successes and failures with other cities struggling with similar issues. Shortly after the Atlanta Project was announced, we received thousands of calls and inquiries from individuals, corporations and small businesses asking how they could help. We responded by linking volunteers with those who requested their services and provided the business community an opportunity to form close partnerships with poor neighborhoods in a unique way: by sending their executives out to work with residents every day. Through volunteerism, a network of solid relationships was established that will continue long after the Atlanta Project closes its doors. We've learned some important lessons along the way. One is that volunteers and those in need of help must approach each other as equals, each with something valuable to give, each with something valuable to learn. It is only in the spirit that we can help each other. When Rosalynn and I walked the street during the Atlanta Project's citywide children's immunization drive, or when we hammer side by side with those who will live in a Habitat for Humanity home, we are always struck by how much we have in common with those we used to think of as "the poor" or "the needy. " They have faces and names. They have ambitions and goals. Like us, most of them also want the best for their children and are looking for an opportunity to improve their lives. Real, sustainable change is a slow and arduous process that can take years, even decades. But it is only through the hard work of individuals, coming together in common struggle, that we can make improvements. If we invest in honest, open relationships among equals, the return for all our communities will be immeasurable. And those who will benefit most are our children. The Presidents' Summit for America's Future is an important component of this investment, but each of us must take it upon ourselves to ensure that America's future is indeed bright. Former President Jimmy Carter is chairman of the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta. On April 26, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report on conditions for religious liberty abroad. Among the countries we reported on is Russia, where just this month, the nation's highest court issued a chilling decision allowing the government to ban all operations of the Jehovah's Witnesses. This ruling, horrifying on its own, was the latest dramatic example of how violations of religious freedom have worsened in recent years. From administrative harassment to arbitrary imprisonment to extrajudicial killings, Russia's government continues to perpetrate violations in a systematic, ongoing, and egregious way. The United States needs to send an unmistakable message. We urge the U.S. State Department to do so by designating Russia a "country of particular concern" under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. We should recognize President Vladimir Putin's government for what it is one of the most serious violators of religious freedom in the world. For years, Russia has vigorously applied its anti-extremism law, with Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses often targeted. The law, which does not require the use or threat of violence for prosecution, is so vague as to permit the persecution of virtually any kind of expression religious, political, or otherwise that the government opposes. The law has enabled authorities to ban thousands of items from both of these groups, including a Jehovah's Witnesses children's book, My Book of Bible Stories. A year ago, the Kremlin began deploying that law against the Jehovah's Witnesses in an appalling new way. In March 2016, the Ministry of Justice warned the Jehovah's Witnesses that the organization was in danger of losing its legal right to exist in Russia due to questions of "extremism." Subsequently, authorities were captured on videotape planting banned "extremist" material in prayer halls belonging to the Witnesses. Based on this so-called evidence, the Ministry of Justice suspended all activity of the Jehovah's Witnesses. And now, with Russia's Supreme Court having recently ruled for the Justice Ministry, the Jehovah's Witnesses are legally abolished in Russia. It is the first time that Russia has legally banned a centrally administered religious organization. This is but one example though a stark one, to be sure of how Russia's religious freedom conditions have gone from bad to worse. Other examples range from an anti-blasphemy statute enacted in 2013 to the Yarovaya amendments enacted last July. including a measure targeting groups that place a premium on sharing their faith with others. The measure makes it illegal to preach, teach, and publish religious content anywhere other than government-approved sites. More brutally, in the North Caucasus, Russian security forces regularly carry out arrests, kidnappings, disappearances, and killings of people suspected of links to "nontraditional" Islam. Moreover, Russia has spent the last three years imposing its homegrown religious repression on Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. It has used its anti-extremism laws as a pretext for persecuting Crimean religious minorities, and authorities have conducted repeated raids on Muslim homes and mosques. In September, Russia's Supreme Court upheld the banning of the Mejlis, the representative body of the Muslim Crimean Tatars, as extremist. Pro-Russian authorities also have harassed Crimean churches that operate independently of the Russian Orthodox Church's Moscow Patriarchate, which the Kremlin has made into a de facto state church, forcing some leaders to leave the peninsula. In January 2016, authorities ordered the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's Kyiv Patriarchate to vacate its last prayer space in Crimea's capital of Simferopol, and in December they shuttered a Pentecostal church in Bakhchisaray. Similar abuses have been visited on parts of eastern Ukraine since Russian-backed groups conquered some territory and created separatist enclaves. These forces have seized Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Jehovah's Witness houses of worship and schools, and perpetrated church attacks, abductions, and assaults on Kiev Patriarchate and Protestant representatives. Clearly, Russia has vastly escalated and expanded its practice of religious repression. The United States government should respond, shining a spotlight on Moscow's behavior. A "country of particular concern" designation would be a good place to begin. Father Thomas J. Reese, S.J., is chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. treesesj@ncronline.org Daniel Mark serves as vice chairman and is an assistant professor of political science and Navy ROTC battalion professor at Villanova University. dmark@uscirf.gov The case of two officers who were temporarily placed on administrative leave with pay after shooting the wrong man in the face is just one more reason why so many residents of this city don't expect Philadelphia police to police themselves. What amounted to a slap on the wrist for two officers who by all accounts except their own failed to properly respond to a report of gunshots fired adds to the Police Department's poor reputation in neighborhoods where cooperation with law enforcement is too often considered a pointless exercise. Seeing a double standard applied to officers who were observed improperly firing their weapons doesn't instill confidence in the justice system. Seeing police officers protect each other when they know one of their own has done something wrong sends a terrible message to communities where standing up for the truth could put your life in jeopardy. On April 22, 2014, plainclothes officers Mitchell Farrell and Kevin Hanvey stopped their unmarked car near Willows Avenue and 51st Street in West Philadelphia to respond to a report of gunshots. They encountered a 20-year-old Delaware County Community College student, Philippe Holland, who had delivered a cheeseburger to a residence for the restaurant where he worked. Holland said in a deposition that two men approached his Taurus after he slipped into the car. He said the men did not identify themselves as police so he started to pull the car out of its parking spot. "As soon as I moved, I felt the bullet passing my leg," said Holland. He was also shot under his right eye, leaving it disfigured. Bullet fragments in his brain cannot be removed. Fourteen bullets were fired into Holland's car. Three lawyers who just happened to be near enough to see the shooting told staff writer Mensah Dean they thought it was a carjacking. "We were sitting there and talking and everything was really quiet and calm. Then, all a sudden, shots rang out," said Valerie Palazzo. The case of mistaken identity resulted in the largest settlement for a police shooting in Philadelphia history, $4.4 million, which was announced in January. Only then were Farrell and Hanvey suspended even though it was clear when they shot Holland that they had violated a department policy prohibiting officers from shooting at a moving car. If witness accounts are correct, the two officers, who have since returned to street duty, could have been charged criminally for shooting an unarmed person without any apparent provocation. Instead, they were placed on administrative leave with pay for much of the period before their suspensions. That's typical for Philadelphia. Dean reported the District Attorney's Office hasn't charged a single on-duty officer in any of the 430 police-involved shootings in the city between 2007 and 2016. That ratio suggests justice isn't the same for police. A North Carolina state prison officer died Wednesday after being assaulted by an inmate. Sgt. Megan Lee Callahan, 29, of Edenton, was attacked around 5:30 p.m. at Bertie Correctional Institute, and died about 6:20 p.m., officials said. Authorities are investigating Craig Wissink in connection with her death, officials said. Wissink has been in prison for more than a decade after being convicted of first-degree murder in Cumberland County and sentenced to life in prison. Callahan had been with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety since 2012. She was promoted to sergeant in February 2016, WNCN TV reports. Texas authorities are searching for a missing Austin police officer who is reportedly experiencing emotional distress. Police did not release his name, but said that his vehicle was found Tuesday morning at Lake Amistad in Val Verde County, that's in far West Texas just north of Del Rio, TWC News reports. VIDEO: Man Wanted for Killing Delaware Trooper Fatally Shot by Police After 20-Hour Standoff Delaware State Police have identified the man who shot and killed a trooper on Wednesday, and was then killed himself by police gunfire on Thursday morning after a lengthy standoff. He is identified as 26-year-old Burgon Sealy Jr. of Middletown, Delaware. He was shot after a nearly day-long standoff with police at his home. Cpl. Stephen Ballard, 32, was shot in the parking lot of a Wawa in Bear, Del. around 12 p.m. Wednesday. Sealy fled from the scene of the shooting then called family members, police say, and said he shot a trooper at the Wawa. His family immediately called police. With that information, police were able to track Sealy down to his home in Middletown, 6ABC reports. Police arrived, secured a perimeter, and attempted to make contact with Sealy. He then fired multiple rounds at the officers from inside the home, commencing a barricaded suspect incident. When Sealy stopped communicating with officers at about 8:22 p.m., the ordnance unit used an explosive breaching charge on the front door. Still, Sealy failed to respond and the standoff stretched into the overnight hours. At around 4 a.m. Thursday, officers reported hearing gunshots from inside the home. Again, police say they tried to make contact, but got no response. Then, at 9:17 a.m., Sealy emerged from the home, engaged police, and was shot by officers. Rescuers on the scene began efforts to save his life, but he was pronounced dead at 9:22 a.m. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump is alone in his view that the first 100 days of his presidency have been anything but a massive failure. According to the latest Fox News poll, a majority of the country is already eager to vote him out office, with 55 percent saying they will definitely or probably cast their ballot for Trumps opponent in the 2020 presidential election. By a massive 23-point margin, Americans also believe the new president is becoming an international embarrassment, with 52 percent of respondents saying the U.S. is now less respected around the globe. Its no surprise the world is laughing as Trump proves himself to be incapable of conducting himself on the world stage. After all, hes spent his first 100 days alienating our allies Mexico, Canada, Australia, and Germany, among others while emboldening and provoking our adversaries North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Ultimately, its not stunning that a majority want Trump out of office and feel he has turned the U.S. into the laughingstock of the world. What is shocking is that the number of Americans who feel this way isnt higher. Hes also failing on what was arguably the main objective of his candidacy, and now presidency bringing change to Washington: More numbers from this devastating poll as the Trump presidency approaches the all-important 100-day mark: 53 percent arent satisfied with the way things are going 51 percent discouraged about the next four years 48 percent a plurality disapprove of his job performance overall If Trump cant even turn to Fox News for an optimistic view of his presidency, then where can he turn? With nearly 100 days of failure under his belt, its clear that a majority of the American people have already given up on the Trump presidency and for good reason. Its been a complete catastrophe. And since Trump is unwilling to change his behavior or react to the realities of being a grown-up president, its not likely to get any better over the next four years. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print As Donald Trump and Republicans continue to push a politically suicidal plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Bernie Sanders plans to give America a real health care plan by introducing Medicare for all legislation. On MSNBCs All In with Chris Hayes on Wednesday, the Vermont senator slammed the revised GOP plan as worse than the original and promised to bring a single-payer option to the floor of the Senate. Video: Sanders to introduce Medicare for all legislation to fight the GOPs latest disastrous health care plan: pic.twitter.com/0g76pOCFlb Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) April 27, 2017 Sanders said: He brought forth, along with Paul Ryan, a health care proposal which threw 24 million Americans off of health insurance, raised premiums for older workers, defunded Planned Parenthood, and cut Medicaid by 800 billion dollars and this proposal will likely be worse. Bottom line here, Chris: Im going to introduce a Medicare for all, single-payer program. Weve got to join the rest of the world and guarantee health care to all of our people as a right. Not only is Sanders right that the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care is a disaster that will hurt millions of Americans, but hes also putting forward a health care plan that the American people actually support. As The Washington Post noted, recent polling shows that a majority of the country supports a plan to expand Medicare to cover all Americans. When it comes to the GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, strong majorities of the country repeatedly expressed their opposition to it. Not only that, but voters said their representatives would face consequences at the ballot box if they voted in favor of it. On its own, Trumpcare is a disaster. Sanders brilliant move to put forward his own legislation that the American people actually like at the same time will put it to shame. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The deal that Donald Trump cut with the House Freedom Caucus on health care is opposed by 71% of Americans. If Republicans force this bill through Congress, it will be setting Democrats up for a big win in 2018. The terrible deal that the Trump White House made to get a legislative win is an amendment that allows states to opt-out of preexisting conditions protections, and minimum coverage requirements. Here was the reaction of one moderate House Republican to the deal: GOP moderate to me: "I spent the whole work period hearing from people pissed about pre-existing conditions. This isn't helpful." Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) April 26, 2017 Trumps deal that allows insurance companies to charge people with preexisting conditions higher premiums is unpopular to the point of being politically toxic. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that Republicans are committing an act of political suicide if they support this bill, Indeed, our poll finds that independents oppose the EHB provision, 67-28; and they oppose the preexisting conditions provision, 71-27. Those are the kinds of numbers that create wave elections that sweep incumbent parties out of power. The great irony is that Obamacare opposition is what got Republicans control of the House in 2010, and their obsession with repealing it may hand the House back to Democrats in 2018. If Republicans continue to allow Trump to use their Congressional majority to inflate his own ego, they will lose control of Congress. Donald Trump is not popular. His policies are not popular, and supporting Trump will only get a congressional Republican in a swing district voted out of office. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print For anyone in the country who still needs to be convinced that Donald Trump isnt interested in carrying out the responsibilities of his office, today should do the trick. In a rare, closed-door meeting with the entire U.S. Senate regarding the increasing threat posed by North Korea, the tough-talking commander-in-chief left after just five minutes. According to one report from ABC News, Trump gave a few opening remarks before heading back to his office to presumably watch cable news and fire off some tweets. More from ABC News: The White House says President Donald Trump did not attend the entire meeting with senators who gathered to discuss the crisis in North Korea. An administration official says Trump attended only the first five minutes of the meeting. He delivered opening remarks before handing it over to his national security team. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presided over the full meeting. The official spoke anonymously because the details of the meeting have not been made public. The meeting lasted about one hour and discussed various financial and military options available for pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear program. In other words, Trump wanted to remind everybody in the room that he was, in fact, still the President of the United States, before ditching the meeting and letting the grown ups deal with the national security crisis. Meanwhile, the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea increases by the hour as Trump continues to provoke the country through tough talk and empty military maneuvers in the region. In his latest power move, Trump sent the USS Michigan, a guided-missile submarine, to South Korea. It remains to be seen if Trump and his team will be able to keep an eye on it, unlike the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier that the administration lost track of for five entire days after claiming it was on its way to the Korean peninsula. While its a little stunning that the president thought the North Korea threat was only worth five minutes of his time, perhaps it isnt such a bad thing that Trump didnt stick around long enough to have any say in what the United States plans to do next. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released three documents that show that Mike Flynn committed crimes while serving in the Trump administration and that the White House is engaging in a cover-up of those crimes. Here are the three documents: .@RepCummings First doc from @RepCummings: 2014 DOD letter EXPLICITLY WARNING #Flynn not to accept foreign gov payments without permission. pic.twitter.com/Z1ES5HhKN4 House OversightDems (@OversightDems) April 27, 2017 .@RepCummings Third doc from @RepCummings: letter from Pentagon IG launching its own investigation of #Flynn pic.twitter.com/TRf7yXjpgK House OversightDems (@OversightDems) April 27, 2017 While meeting with reporters, Rep. Cummings said, I watched Sean Spicer make all kinds of excuses about how hard it would be to comply with our requests. Come on man. General Flynn served in his position for twenty-four days, so that excuse from the White House will not fly. I honestly dont understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn. I dont get it. After the president fired him for lying. So the president fired him for lying about having communications with the Russian ambassador. They should be bending over backwards to help us. It does not make any sense, and it makes the American people think that the White House has something to hide. Sen. Blumenthal said, The evidence that Rep. Cummings just outlined is powerful, mounting, incontrovertible evidence that there has been a violation of criminal law. Blumenthal said that these crimes must be investigated and prosecuted but stressed that that investigation must come from a special prosecutor because the Trump Justice Department cant be trusted to carry out the investigation and prosecution. The White House is constantly trying to change the subject. They want to talk about health care. They want to talk about tax reform. They want to talk about North Korea, but the national discussion always keeps returning to the same topic of Russia. Republicans are trying to sandbag the investigation, but new information continues to be revealed, and each revelation brings more crisis to a failing White House that is in total turmoil. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print As college students around the country protest against their universities who book conservative speakers that traffic in hate speech, Republican state legislatures around the country are taking up bills that would punish students for resisting and exercising their free speech rights. The AP reported, University of Wisconsin students who disrupt speeches and demonstrations could be expelled and campuses would have to remain neutral on public issue under a bill Republican legislators are pushing this week.The bill is modeled after a proposal the conservative Arizona-based Goldwater Institute put together to address campus free speech problems; North Carolina lawmakers are also considering the legislation. The Wisconsin lawmakers sponsoring the bill said it represents Republicans promise to protect the freedom of expression on college campuses. Interestingly, Republicans had no issues with campus protests when a Democrat was in the White House, but now that they have one of their own in the Oval Office, student protests are a problem that must be dealt. When a president is as unpopular as Donald Trump is, resistance to his agenda is going to exist at nearly every level of society, but the conservative myth that institutions of higher education are dens of liberal vipers has been a never ending talking point of the right throughout their endless pursuit of liberal bias. The reality is that Republicans are targeting college students because they are more vulnerable. The criminalizing of dissent would have the real world impact of silencing students who might be worried about the consequences of being convicted of this sort of crime. Instead of listening to The Resistance, Republicans are trying to punish it. The will of the people cant be legislated against, and eventually, the people will triumph. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) that has introduced a bill that would all but take away Trumps unilateral war-making powers by giving Congress the power to repeal or modify his use of military force against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. According to a statement provided to PoliticusUSA from Rep. Schiffs office, the Authorization for Use Of Military Force would, sunset the 2001 AUMF and 2002 AUMF immediately and replace them with a single authorization for the use of force against al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. The resolution would sunset in 3 years. It authorizes the President to deploy combat ground troops against the covered entities without geographical restriction; however, it also provides a special mechanism to allow a privileged motion to repeal or modify the authorization in the event the President deploys ground forces in combat. Finally, it would put in place new reporting requirements both to Congress and to the public as to how the authorities are used and against what groups. The unilateral power of the president to use military force in the name of fighting terrorism would be taken away and replaced with a process where Congress would have oversight and the ability to repeal the presidents deployment of ground troops. Rep. Schiff said, For far too long, Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibility to authorize military action abroad, effectively ceding the war-making power to the executive branch. More than 15 years later, our operations against groups as diverse as the Taliban in Afghanistan, al Qaeda in Yemen, and ISIS in Syria are authorized under a 60 word authorization passed days after the attacks. As deployments to Iraq and Syria increase, and with complicating factors like the recent cruise missile strike against the Assad regime in response to the use of chemical weapons, Congress cannot stand on the sidelines any longer and must debate and vote on any new war. Congress must demand of this Administration and future Administrations the legal justifications for any military action, and hold them accountable for those actions. The new authorization is a stripping away of Trumps war powers. The Executive Branch has been seizing more power away from the Legislative Branch for decades on the issues of military action and war powers. Schiffs authorization is not about partisanship. It is the latest development in a Constitutional tug of war that congresses and presidents have been fighting since LBJ, Vietnam, and the erosion of the War Powers Act. Trumps behavior and temperament have given congressional advocates for a return to the constitutional balance of power a new sense of urgency. Make no mistake about it, Democrats and Republicans are worried about Trump having unilateral control of the military, and Rep. Adam Schiff just stepped up to do something about it. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print As President Donald Trump ignored a White House poolers question regarding Michael Flynn Thursday, Republican Chair of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) asked the Acting Sec of the Army for a final determination as to whether former Trump National Security Adviser retired Gen. Mike Flynn broke the law by accepting payments from foreign government-controlled entities in a letter sent Thursday. Referring to law (37 U.S.C. 908), Chaffetz asks: By all appearances, Lt. Gen. Flynn violated 37 U.S.C. 908 by accepting compensation from entities associated with foreign governments without obtaining consent to do so. I request that you or the appropriate entity investigate this matter and make a final determination as to whether Lt. Gen. Flynn in fact violated section 908. In light of these apparent violations, I request that you determine whether Lt. Gen. Flynn violated 37 U.S.C. 908 and, if necessary, initiate a process whereby Lt. Gen. Flynn shall repay the money in question. If your assessment finds that Lt. Gen. Flynns actions were consistent with DOD policies and guidelines, I request a written explanation of that conclusion. On Tuesday, Ranking Member Democrat Elijah Cummings noted, There is no evidence anywhere in these documents that Flynn reported the funds he received for his trip to Moscow. And Jason Chaffetz said he saw no information that suggests that Flynn complied with the law by properly disclosing payments he received from Russia. Chaffetz and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter in February to Flynns consulting firm requesting documents related to his foreign speaking engagements and then in March they sent letters to the White House, FBI, DOD and Department of National Intelligence (DNI) requesting all documents related Flynns foreign contacts and payments. I dont want to get your hopes up only to be dashed, but currently Jason Chaffetz seems to be the only Republican who is actively interested in holding the Trump administration accountable even just in appearance. This doesnt mean he will continue to put the country first, but right now he appears to be doing so. Chaffetz has his eyes set on 2020, and frankly, this is a great way to kick off his run for the White House. He will be one of few Republicans who can say they took a stand to put the USA first. Even Governor John Kasich took the cowards way out on Russia and Trump during a recent town hall. The Republican Party is bereft of patriots, and Jason Chaffetz seems to have recognized the huge opening this leaves for anyone who is willing to take a stand. Sure, he probably has political motives, but at least he recognizes that his political future rests with the USA. And thats a welcome change from the majority of Congressional Republicans right now. There are many ways to skin a Russian cat and this is a roundabout way of building the blocks that tell a very bad story for Donald Trump, as the Republican President knew about Flynns ties to Russia before he chose him as his National Security Adviser. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) defended a free and open internet Thursday in a speech on the House floor, as she spoke out against former Verizon counsel FCC Chairman Ajit Pais plans to reverse net neutrality rules and end open and free Internet. The FCCs new Chairman, who used to work as counsel for Verizon, wants to turn the internet into a system of pay-to-play fast lanes for big money and those who can afford it, leaving everyone else behind in the slow lane. Watch here: Yesterday, the new Trump-appointed FCC Chair announced his mission to undermine the net neutrality rules we fought so hard to put in place. In 2015, over 4 million people submitted comments, calling on the FCC to keep the internet open and fair. However, the FCCs new Chairman, who used to work as counsel for Verizon, wants to turn the internet into a system of pay-to-play fast lanes for big money and those who can afford it, leaving everyone else behind in the slow lane, the Democratic Representative argued on the House floor. This hands the levers of access over to big ISPs at the expense of students, small businesses, entrepreneurs, independent content creators, and millions more. Gabbard made the argument that an open and equal internet is essential, In todays digital age, maintaining open and equal internet access is essential to breaking down barriers in education, media, expanding access to jobs and employment, driving innovation in healthcare, and so much more. We must stand strong in opposition to the FCCs attack on fairness, equality, and net neutrality, Gabbard concluded. Gabbard has cosponsored legislation in the past like H.R. 196, the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2015. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) vowed to fight the Chairmans proposal to destroy the Internet on Wednesday. Franken said in part, Let me be very clear: getting rid of net neutrality would destroy the internet as we know it. I plan to fight Chairman Pais proposaland the big cable and internet companies who are the real muscle behind this attackevery step of the way, because consumers, small businesses, and all Americans deserve an open internet. Net neutrality says that your internet connection treats all websites and services the same. However, big corporations like Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable want to be able to charge you more and discriminate so that the internet is no longer sparks competition and isnt a forum for free speech and innovation. It is historically important that the Internet enhances freedom for all rather than profit for a few, INC reported Ed Black saying when then President Obama was fighting to protect the internet. Black is the president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which promotes open markets, open systems, open networks and full, fair and open competition in the computer, telecommunications and Internet industries. Internet Service Providers have argued that they wouldnt have any incentive to continue innovation and investing in projects if President Obama had the FCC pass net neutrality, but he did in 2015 and they havent stopped. They claim that net neutrality is government regulation; that is to say, big corporations cant do whatever they want. Republicans are against a free internet that promotes competition, freedom and accountability because of their Big Corporation Priorities. While arguments can be made to privatize some parts of public life, others must remain free for all citizens. The internet is one such vital avenue to independence. Corporations already own our government, thanks in part to Republicans Citizens United fight. They dont need more control over information. Hungary's Orban grilled by MEPs Political group leaders and MEPs gave their views on Hungarys new education law, perceived as targeting the Central European University (CEU), the tightening of rules for non-governmental organisations and asylum seekers and a government survey entitled National Consultation - Lets stop Brussels!". Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbans authoritarian-leadership style was likened to old communist ways of Brezhnev and Stalin. Orban replied to criticism, saying CEUs future in Budapest is not threatened, stressing that he only wants to make sure Hungarian universities are not in a disadvantage compared to their competitors outside the EU, no matter how vast and rich person their owner may be", referring to George Soros, who had founded CEU in 1991. He also talked about his stance on migration, reiterating that Hungary would not have them. Infringement procedure over Lex CEU The recently adopted Hungarian Higher Education Law is perceived by many as an attempt to close down the Central European University, Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said in his speech in the European Parliament on Wednesday. He called CEU a pearl in the crown of post-divided, free and whole Europe." The Commission's analysis of the law confirmed our concerns with regard to its compatibility with internal market freedoms and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The College has therefore decided today to launch infringement proceedings against Hungary, by sending a letter of formal notice, and we await a reaction from the Hungarian authorities within a month. Related article Commission opens infringement procedure against Hungary over new higher ed law 26/04/2017 12:46pm Draft law on foreign NGOs also raises concerns Timmermans also noted that the draft legislation tabled to the Hungarian Parliament at the beginning of the month by members of the governing Fidesz party on the funding of so-calledis also on the Commissions radar screen. If adopted, it could raise concerns as regard the compatibility with the EU's internal market rules, in particular the free movement of capital, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, including the freedom of assembly," he said. Orbans gets slammed Timmermans stressed that civil society is the very fabric of democratic societies. We would not be democracies without strong and free civil societies. I would therefore deeply regret any action by the Hungarian authorities aimed at shrinking the space of civil society organisations, or any attempt to control or stigmatise their work."He admitted that NGOs need to be transparent about their finance, but underlined that the EU executive will continue to follow the draft legislation closely and will express its concerns on the draft law in the context of the broad political dialogue."Here are a handful of statements by MEPs that do not put Hungarys PM in best light. Mr Orban is turning Hungary into an illiberal and undemocratic regime. He is betraying his own people and the history of those who fought and died for freedom and democracy in Hungary. After he strangled the independence of the media, now Orban is trying to silence an outstanding symbol of the freedom of thought and expression: the Central European University. Our gravest concerns about this illiberal drift are becoming a reality.[...] We called on the European Commission to take action and they have done that. However, the political dialogue with the Hungarian government should only be a first step. If Orban does not change course, the EU Commission must be prepared to use sanctions against him and eventually trigger Article 7. You have made a law that is directed solely against the Central European University. Is this about freedom of access to study and research, or is it about cheap political gains for you? Step by step, you are systematically trying to remove all the counter-balances to your power including the parliament, the media, the justice system, the education sector and NGOs. Your 'Let's stop Brussels' survey is like a joke and the restrictions you have placed on NGOs are inspired by the ones in Russia. Even more worrying is your treatment of refugees and migrants. We are left to wonder if the right to asylum still exists in Hungary when we see the systematic detention of asylum seekers including children, the electric fence along the Hungary-Serbia border, and even snipers along the borders! Step by step, Orban is turning against the defenders of rule of law and the urgently needed civil society forces. The European Union must respond to this with an Article 7 procedure for the protection of the rule of law. If the Commission will not act, the European Parliament must itself initiate Article 7, as provided for in the Lisbon Treaty. What you have done: harrassing NGOs chasing away critical media, building walls, your opinion to reinstate the death penalty in your country [...] and now you have decided to close down a university. [...] How far will you go? What is the next thing? Burning books also? [...] What I see more and more is not a proud conservative [...], but a modern day version of old communist Hungary. Economic protectionism, excessive nationalism, the surge of an illiberal state. And you see enemies everywhere: in the energy sector, in the media, in the NGOs and now also in the academic world. Its like Stalin or Brezhnev are back - but now in Hungary. [...] these people [Brussels] will go on interfering in the lives of Hungarian people. And youll never be forgiven, you are a sinner in their eyes. Not just because you want to close down George Soros propaganda machine that masquerades as a university, nothing to do with that. Its because you wont pay the price for Mrs Merkels supreme folly and sign up to migrant quotas and they will never, ever forgive you for it. [...] logic says its time you gave the Hungarian people a referendum on whether they stay part of the European Union or not. Who knows, you might come and join the Brexit club and then we could fight for a nation of democratic states working together, trading together and put this nonsense behind us. Orban plays down criticism as absurd Orban said in EP yesterday that the news has spread that the Hungarian government - using the power of law - has closed the Budapest-based private university of American financial speculator George Soros." (There were no such reports. The fact of the matter is that the new higher education law sets conditions for CEU that seem impossible to meet and could consequently force CEU to cease its operation in Budapest, an outcome it wants to avoid at all cost.)Orban said CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff wrote the following to the lecturers and the students of the institution: We would like to emphasize that the existence of the Central European University is not threatened by anything, the university will continue to operate under any circumstances." This charge is therefore baseless. It has no factual basis. The situation is absurd. It is like when someone is accused of murder and convicted, while the victim of the alleged crime is alive and well. And pointing and shouting murderer" at the convict himself. This is false" , CEU said in a statement on Wednesday.Ignatieff assured the CEU community in that letter that the university. This does not mean, however, that the survival of the university in Hungary is not under threat. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case, due to the actions of the Hungarian government," it added.Orban went on explaining that the small amendment" adopted by lawmakers affects 28 foreign universities operating in Hungary, and does nothing but unifies the rules that apply to them, closes the possibility of speculations and abuses, demands transparency, and eliminates the privileged position these institutions enjoyed over European universities."Orban stressed that it is his duty as Prime Minister to ensure that European and Hungarian universities are not in a disadvantage compared to their competitors outside the EU. No matter how vast and rich person their owner may be," referring once again to Soros.CEU said Orbans claim that the new law abolishes privileges and loopholes and distributes rights across universities in an equal fashion is also false.For weeks now, we have been asking the government to name the specific privileges possessed in the past by CEU and the rights given now to all Hungarian universities. Unfortunately the Prime Minister failed to answer these questions again," the university said. CEU worked hard to gain accreditation -- issuing diplomas is not a privilege. The measures claimed to benefit the Hungarian universities met with robust protest across the entire Hungarian education sector. This is because the new law and the way it was adopted shows disrespect to Hungarian higher education and to academic freedom. On tightening regulations for foreign-backed civil society groups About Hungarys asylum policy Hungary cannot afford to allow organizations that remain in the shadows not declaring who they receive their money from and for what purposes to continuously encourage migrants to break Hungarian law to somehow get into the country," said Orban in a radio address on 24 February, adding that by doing so, international organizations which are primarily linked to George Soros have overstepped a line."Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said NGOs lack democratic legitimacy" and many of them represent foreign interests.Hungarian NGOs already report on their funding, but the government has argued current standards are insufficient.Those financial reports do not entirely guarantee full and complete transparency since many times the origins, the real sources of the money, remain hidden," politico.eu cited Kovacs as saying.I began funding dissidents in countries that were under communist rule in the 1980s and helped seed the development of civil society organizations within the former Soviet empire," Soros told the portal.Their goal is to hold governments accountable to their people, the majority of whom are motivated by the same impulse that led the fall of the Berlin Wall the desire for freedom."Orban told MEPs yesterday that the proposal on NGO legislation follows the American example. He added that many EU countries are seeking to make the operations of financially strong foreign external lobbies, willing to influence democratic decision-making, transparent to everyone."The Hungarian legislation builds on the principal of clarity and transparency. We want nothing else but to be able to know of NGOs what kind of money and what kind of interests are behind them. This does not undermine their constitutional rights to have their voices heard, represent their interests and be able to organise themselves freely," Orban added.Orban said the basic stance of the Hungarian government on migration is contrary to the intentions of the Commission. Our position is clear: we do not want, and do not think it is in accordance with the founding treaties of the Union, to settle migrants in our country in a mandatory way. It is important information that George Soros and his NGOs want to transport one million migrants to the EU per year. He has personally, publicly announced this programme and provides a financial loan for it." Orban went on explaining that migrants do not want to come to Hungary, rather they want to go through Hungary to Austria, Germany and Sweden.He stressed that Hungary is protecting Austria, Sweden and Germany", simply by complying with the Schengen Agreement.He found the attacks on Hungary strange, arguing that Hungary is not even acting primarily in its own interest, but in the interest of the Germans, Swedes and Austrians. We Hungarians believe that we deserve recognition, rather than attacks."The PM stressed that Hungarys position on the issue of migrants is perfectly clear": Illegal immigration must be stopped, and refugees and migrants must be separated from each other outside the territory of the European Union. Assistance for those in trouble must be brought to where the trouble is, rather than bringing people in trouble into the European Union." About the national consultation Orban also said that so far less than 10% of the total number of people specified in the quotas have been relocated, which makes it obvious that the policy based on relocation and mandatory quotas has failed."There is no point in forcing this any further, as even those Member States which, unlike us, are not openly opposed to the plan are failing to implement it. This was a bad idea. If a bad political idea proves to have failed, it must be abandoned and a new solution must be sought."Delivering on its previous promise, the European Commission has published its response on Wednesday to Hungarys National Consultation which was launched under the slogan 'Stop Brussels. The cabinets claims and loaded questions of the distributed questionnaires have been contested one by one Our position is that we do not want change in these questions, we dont want to reorganise national and Union competences in these matters, thus we are defending the current status quo - formulated by our common will. Hence the term Stop Brussels"," Orban said. The first steam generator was placed at the first of two new reactors being built at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in January. It weighs about 1.5 million pounds, is 20 feet in diameter and is more than 80 feet long. File/Provided/SCANA Corp. Gamecock fans watch Final Four basketball at the now-closed Harper's resturant in Columbia's Five Points. South Carolina loss to Gonzaga 73-77. John A. Carlos II/Special to The Post and Courier When members of Charleston's Board of Architectural Review-Large meet Wednesday afternoon, they again will review plans for an 8-story building at 295 Calhoun St. what will be one of the largest and most prominent buildings at one of downtown's most important gateways. They should stand fi Read moreEditorial: Protect integrity of BAR, Charleston's unique character NEW YORK The CEO of a heavyweight of home shopping on TV is leaving that job to take the top spot at Weight Watchers International Inc. The companies said separately Wednesday that Mindy Grossman is leaving HSN Inc. on May 24 and assuming the role of president and CEO of Weight Watchers in July. She had been HSN's CEO since 2008. Grossman replaces James Chambers at the weight-loss program operator. Chambers stepped down in September amid the company's struggles to build on the momentum it garnered from an alliance with Oprah Winfrey. Weight Watchers said that until Grossman's arrival, it will continue to be led by the members of its interim office of the CEO made up of Chief Financial Officer Nicholas Hotchkin, and company directors Thilo Semmelbauer and Christopher Sobecki. Grossman had worked to reinvent HSN, which that now derives half of its revenue from e-commerce, while transforming it into a lifestyle network. The St. Petersburg, Florida-based company still broadcasts live to more than 90 million households in the U.S., but also features more than 50,000 products on its website. ADVERTISEMENT But HSN, like its rival QVC, has been wrestling with sluggish sales for the same reasons as other retailers Amazon's dominance online, and people's preference for experiences over accumulating stuff. At New York-based Weight Watchers, Grossman will face another challenge. The company is confronting stiff competition as people seeking to trim pounds turn to popular step-counting fitness gadgets like Fitbit and free weight-loss apps. If you want some kicks, The 4onthefloor, with their four kick drums, should satisfy. Theyll be at the North Star Bar this Saturday Apr. 29 th. With an above average 7 5/8-inch hat size, a fact Gabriel Douglasthe bands bearded and charismatic front manis proud to broadcast, its no surprise that one big bass drum wasnt enough to keep the top and the bottom of his band balanced. Douglas decided it would take four bass drums to get the job done, and somewhere between the musical terminology related to a danceable four-beats-to-the-measure rhythm and the automotive nomenclature for a vehicle with a four-speed transmission and floor shifter, the Stomp sped off. Seriously, the bass drums are a byproduct of Douglass desire to manipulate tempos with one of his early duos. "I came up with the idea to play the bass drum so I could increase or decrease tempos as the songs needed," he says. Though theyll all be playing the big kicks, Douglas will be joined by Nick Costa (guitar), Matt Brandes (bass), and Jake Quam (drums). With several albums and LPs to their credit including 2015s " All In,"andtheir latest, 2016s " Tax Stomp EP" and almost a decade of national touring (no easy feat with all those bass drums), The 4onthefloor has a gritty, energy-filled, blues-fueled sound that propels crowds to their feet. ADVERTISEMENT Charles Tune from Outta Tune Promotions worked to get The Stomp to The North Star: "They havent been at The Star since November of 2015, so it has been a while, but it was high energyThey are all around just a good bandOutta Tune wants good, original musicto get the blood flowing in the music scene and bring out the best in the area." "Promotional companies are a great resource for independent, original live music. They know their communities well and can be an integral part in making a show a success," says Douglas, considering Outta Tunes contribution. Douglas promises you dont want to miss this show: "The North Star shows are ridiculously awesome. The high octane we pour out onstage only fuels the dance floor. We love when the people are moving so much they have to move all the tables from the middle, and people are shaking between the pool tables in the backRochester is such a fun town with great folks ready to cut loose and have the best night of the year with us." You can check out The 4onthefloors latest EP, " Tax Stomp"on Spotify. If you want to see what else Outta Tune Promotions is cooking up, head over to their Facebook page, facebook.com/OuttaTuneMN. If you go Who:The 4onthefloor When:Saturday, April 29, 9:00 p.m. Where:The North Star Bar, 503 North Broadway, Rochester ADVERTISEMENT Cost:Free Gabbing with Gabriel Douglas from The 4onthefloor You've played shows alongside greats like Willie Nelson, Steve Martin, the Drive by Truckers, and Murder by Death. Do any of these shows stick out for you? Gabriel:"Every show is an honor to share our joy with a new crowd, whether they be seasoned Stomper veterans or new-to-the-stompBilly Gibbons from ZZ Top and Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick were really great to us when we played with them, but almost all musicians we've had the pleasure of suiting up with have been great to work with. Sturgis is always a fun time; they rev the motorcycles at the Buffalo Chip after a song they like, so that's always an experience, thousands of motorcycles roaring in an amphitheater as you get the next song ready." What's it like to have had your music played on ABC's Nashville and on A & E's Duck Dynasty and how did that come about? Gabriel:"It helps to get new listeners when you can be put in front of new audiences, even for a moment. We love that. We love our fans. Publishing is a tricky business, and sometimes it's who you know, and sometimes it's being some ear candy to somebody at the right desk at the right time." It looks like you'll be in Bemidji the night before the North Star. Will you get your picture taken with Paul Bunyan and Babe while you're there? In all seriousness, what's it like driving for hours between shows on a double header? Gabriel:"We have taken our picture with many roadside attractions; Paul & Babe are no exception. We travel all year-round, doing hundreds of shows annually across the entire continent, so a quick jaunt from the North woods to Southern Minnesota should be a cakewalk for us." ADVERTISEMENT What was your experience like when you filmed the bicycle video for "All My Friends?" Any wipeouts? Gabriel:"It was an amazing experience. There were no wipeouts. We did about seven takes, but we decided to use one continuous take, of the seven, for the final shot; it made it all more congruent. It was great to see the Stomper community come out and be a part of the ride. It was done on the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, a great bike trail in the heart of Minneapolis." "I'm Drunk on Tuesdays" is one of your songs I really like. Can you describe your song-writing process? Gabriel:"That song was a little finger picking I was doing at my house, living in a bedroom on the 2nd story. I brought it down to my roommate Mike, who is also a songwriter, and showed him it and mad-libbed a few bars of the song. It ended up being one of those songs with 60 verses, but then once it was recorded, folks started remembering the 3 that were on the record, so it got solidified in that way." You've been showing up in Rochester a bit more of late with solo stops at Forager and it looks like you'll be at Rochester's Hambone Festival this year too. What's prompted your increased presence here? Gabriel:"We've been doing national touring for over 8 years now, and I've been doing solo touring for the same amount of time. You are finally catching onto us coming to your area! Yayy! Forager has been a great addition to Rochester, with amazing beers and amazing food and amazing music. They really did a great job putting it together, so I'm happy anytime I can find routing in the tour schedule to stop into Forager or any venue or festival in southern Minnesota. Not so much an increase of presence, an increase of awareness! And we are way into that!" STEWARTVILLE The Stewartville City Council gave approval Tuesday to the Stewartville Fire Department to begin construction on a memorial in front of the city's fire hall. The volunteer fire department has been collecting money for "about three or four years" to construct the memorial, and while the fire department is still a little short of its overall goal, they have enough money to start and, hopefully, finish before July 4, said firefighter Steve Wolf, who is also an investigator with the state Fire Marshal's office. The project, which is not requesting any city funds, was unanimously approved by the city council. "We have been working on this for a number of years, and it's finally come about," Wolf told the council. The memorial will feature a paved circle with an 8-foot Maltese cross, a symbol of the fire service, in the middle. landscaping, seating and a statue of a firefighter. The city's fire bell from the old fire station will be incorporated into the memorial as well. ADVERTISEMENT "It'll show the (names of) past members. We also want to acknowledge the people who have donated or put time or effort towards this project," Wolf said. Some of that effort, he added, will be of a volunteer nature. That includes a lot of the labor for getting the memorial built. City Finance Director Barb Neubauer said the fire department has saved about $20,000 toward the project. Wolf said to cover the rest of the costs, the fire department will sell pavers that can be engraved to be added to the site. Those would run somewhere between $50 and $100. "It's to honor our own," Wolf said. "The people who have served in the past." Upon the council's vote, Mayor Jimmy John King said, "You can get down there and start working." ST. PAUL Local governments spent more than $9 million on lobbying at the Minnesota Capitol last year, according to a new report . The Minnesota State Auditor's Office found that local government spending on lobbying rose by 2 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year. The city of Rochester spent more than $107,000 on lobbying in 2016 compared to just under $100,000 in 2015. Most of Rochester's lobbying dollars were spent via their memberships in various organizations that lobby the at the Capitol. For instance, the city spends more than $96,000 to be a member of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities. Of those dues, more than $60,000 goes toward lobbying, according to the state auditor's report. Rochester belongs to six different government associations that lobby in St. Paul, including the U.S. Highway 14 Partnership and the League of Minnesota Cities. Dues for those memberships totaled nearly $158,000. Rochester Assistant City Administrator Gary Neumann said those organizations keep close tabs on the hundreds of bills introduced that would impact cities. "I think it's a worthwhile investment and our council has found them to be that way," Neumann said. The city also spent $22,500 to hire a lobbyist to push for nearly $5 million from the state to expand the U.S. Customs facility at Rochester International Airport. The funding made it into last year's bonding bill but the measure failed to make it to the governor's desk in the final minutes of the session. Efforts are underway to get funding this session. ADVERTISEMENT Olmsted County spends less on lobbying Olmsted County spent more than $84,000 on lobbying last year. That is a drop from previous years. In 2014, Olmsted County spent nearly $145,000. In 2015, the county spent nearly $92,000. Olmsted County Administrator Richard Devlin said one reason the county's lobbying bills have dropped is that the county is no longer lobbying in support of a proposed high-speed rail line between Rochester and the Twin Cities at the Capitol. Last year, the Minnesota Department of Transportation announced it suspending work on the proposed Zip Rail line due to a lack of money and political support. The county had also spent money in the past lobbying for road and bridge funding. Oronoco spends money for sewer help The small city of Oronoco paid a lobbyist $20,000 to advocate for the city's request of $19 million from the state for wastewater infrastructure. Oronoco, which has a population of 1411, is the largest unsewered city in the state of Minnesota. Oronoco Mayor Ryland Eichhorst said city officials decided they needed to hire a lobbyist to advocate for those dollars in St. Paul. Adding to the pressure is a deadline to get the sewer situation fixed. Olmsted County and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding that requires all noncompliant Subsurface Sewage Treatment Systems to be brought into compliance or connected to a municipal wastewater system by 2020. "It was quite a discussion the amount to spend for a lobbyist, but we recognize the seriousness," Eichhorst said. The city was poised to get $500,000 for a study of its wastewater needs in last year's bonding bill but the measure stalled in the final minutes of the legislative session. Eichhorst said the city is hoping to get some dollars this year. Spending on lobbying out of hand? ADVERTISEMENT Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, said he is concerned that local government spending on lobbying has gotten out of hand. This year he introduced a bill that would reduce state aid to cities and counties by $1 for every $1 spent on lobbying. He said local lawmakers generally do a good job advocating for the local governments in their districts. "Our municipalities are spending way, way, way too much of the property taxpayer money simply to go to St. Paul to try to chase more taxpayer money with it. And that's the problem I think that I and a number of other legislators have," he said. Drazkowski's state aid reduction bill has failed to advance this session. Explaining complex issues Some lawmakers argue it is important for local governments to invest in lobbying given the high stakes in St. Paul. Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, said local government issues are often complex and lobbyists help explain them to lawmakers. She added, "This session we are seeing attempts by some legislators to take away local government control, which makes professional assistance even more important." MINNEAPOLIS A Minnesota woman who sent money to the militant group al-Shabab in Somalia was sentenced to five years' probation on Wednesday after she cooperated with prosecutors, who said the light sentence would send a message to community members who shunned the woman yet supported other defendants who remained defiant. Amina Mohamud Esse, 43, pleaded guilty in 2014 to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. She faced up to 15 years in prison, but prosecutors sought probation because she provided substantial assistance to the government. "I accept responsibility for what I did," Esse told the judge through an interpreter. "I'm willing to do all I can for the rest of my life to correct the mistakes I did." Her cooperation included nearly 60 meetings and phone calls with authorities, as well as testimony in the trial against ringleaders of an online network of women who used an internet chat room to raise thousands of dollars for al-Shabab, which the U.S. says is involved in terrorism. Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kovats said Esse was the 21st person to be sentenced in terrorism cases in Minnesota in the last five years. The sentences have ranged from probation to 35 years in prison. ADVERTISEMENT Kovats noted Esse's case is the first in which his office has recommended probation, saying it would send a message that "working with the U.S. is the right thing to do, even when the loudest community voices don't seem to agree." Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the United States. More than 20 young men have left the state since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia, and roughly a dozen people have left in recent years to join militants in Syria. Many members of the local Somali community have condemned terror recruiting over the years, and have urged cooperation with the government. Several community groups have been working hard to help at-risk youth before they are lured by terror propaganda. Still, Kovats said Minnesota has a problem with terrorism. He said Esse has been ostracized by the Somali community since she began cooperating while defendants who remained defiant were placed on pedestals. He showed video of community members who spoke in support of those defendants, including video of a man who said one defendant deserved a Nobel prize. Kovats also pointed to fliers for fundraisers that were held to raise money for families of defendants who got the highest penalties. Hearings for other defendants have drawn dozens of supporters, but just one community member an uncle attended Esse's sentencing. "Look who's here today," Kovats said, pointing to the gallery. "Look at the community support for the defendant who did everything right ... there is no one here." Kassim Busuri, a Somali youth activist listed as a contact for one of the fundraisers, said the families of other defendants were struggling after spending all of their money to defend their sons. "We saw their struggle," he said. "We run community centers, we run mosques, we run organizations, and when families come to us in times of need we will help them." ADVERTISEMENT He said Esse never reached out to his organization, and he hadn't heard about her case. Esse's attorney, Robert Sicoli, also asked for probation, saying Esse lived a tragic life and suffered abuse. Sicoli said she made the payments to al-Shabab a total of $850 in six installments at the behest of her controlling husband, an al-Shabab supporter. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said a false narrative in the Somali community that holds up those who support terror groups as celebrities or humanitarians is a "fake news flashpoint." Davis, who has handled all of Minnesota's terror cases, said he would stand behind Esse, who is a refugee, while she's on probation. "The court is on your side, and I will do everything within my constitutional power to keep you here," he said. When asked after the hearing if Esse's husband is under investigation for supporting al-Shabab, Kovats said he could not confirm whether or not an investigation exists; Sicoli said he couldn't comment. The women Esse testified against in Virginia have been sentenced to prison for their role in raising money for al-Shabab. Muna Osman Jama, 36, of Reston, Virginia, received 12 years and Hinda Osman Dhirane, 46, of Kent, Washington, was sentenced to 11. Steve writes below that Portlandia is the city of the petty, bankrupt, vindictive left. Thats true. It is also stupid. This report comes from the gonzo-left TruthOut: Under Activist Pressure, Portland Agrees to End All Corporate Investments. In a sweeping move that follows a wave of divestment activism in Portland, Oregon, and across the country, the Portland City Council voted last week to pull all of the citys investments in corporate bonds and securities. The decision was a major victory for a broad coalition of activists who have pushed for the city to end its investments in corporations that have questionable records on the environment and human rights, including ties to the Dakota Access pipeline, the private prison industry and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Portland has had a do not buy list for a while, and the City Council had considered adding Caterpillar, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase and six other companies to the banned list. But the Council finally decided that didnt go far enough: After activists organized rallies and packed council meetings with hours of testimony, the council agreed last week to end corporate investments altogether. Hyung Nam, a Portland public school teacher and former member of the Socially Responsible Investments Committee (SRIC) behind the proposed Do Not Buy list, said the vote was a victory for human rights and climate justice. It isnt, of course, a victory for Portlands taxpayers: Top city officials were resistant to the idea of divestment. Along with City Treasurer Jennifer Cooperman, Wheeler warned that the city could lose around $4.5 million in revenue over the next year by switching from corporate bonds to lower-performing bonds, according to local reports. I assume those lower-performing bonds are municipal and other government securities. It is ironic that Portland thinks all companies are evil, while cities are paragons of virtue. Still, why worry about losing a few million a year when you are trying to overthrow free enterprise? However, Shank said Portlands decision shows the power of coalition building in the Trump era and presents a challenge to the entire system, instead of just one corporation or another. I also feel like the way that, as a movement, weve come together to target the concept of making profit off of corporations: It challenges capitalism, it challenges the way our economy is working, Shank said. So Portlands City Council wants socialism? It would serve them right if Portland followed in the footsteps of Venezuela. A postscript: why would Caterpillar be on a do not buy list? Here is the answer: Local inter-faith anti-occupation groups wanted the city to divest from Caterpillar for providing armored bulldozers used by the Israeli military. In its main report to the council, SRIC found that Caterpillars bulldozers were used to carry out violations of United Nations agreements involving attacks on civilians. Huh. Why do you suppose Israel would need armored bulldozers? The Armoured D9R Dozer of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is the latest variation in the series of Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozers. The vehicles are deployed by the Engineer Corps of the IDF. The D9 Dozer vehicles were first introduced in to the IDF in the 1950s. The vehicle was deployed in the Sinai War (1956), Yom Kippur War (1973), Operation Peace for Galilee (1982), Second Lebanon War (2006) and Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009). *** The base vehicle comes with a detachable large blade and a rear ripper attachment. The standard equipment includes weapon mounts, storage compartments, lighting and communication systems. The base vehicles are armoured by Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel Military Industries and IDF to provide optimum armour protection. The cabin can accommodate two men, including a driver and a commander. Armoured glass panels on the cabin provide maximum ballistic protection, allowing views of all vehicle components in all directions. The cabin is also fitted with communications, fire-suppression and personal weapon holding systems. *** The D9 Dozer is used by the IDF as a front-line vehicle for anti-terrorism operations. The armoured D9R is deployed to support the IDF engineering units performing battlefield demolition /construction, route clearance and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD). The vehicle can also be used to detonate IEDs and explosives, as well as create access and egress routes for combat troops. The vehicle is used in non-combat military operations such as humanitarian demining, peacekeeping support, engineering tasks and disaster relief operations as well. *** The vehicle can protect the crew from bomb explosions, machine-gun fire and sniper fire. The slat armour installed by IDF provides additional protection against rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) rounds. Thank you, Caterpillar. One of the staples of Portland, OregonPortlandia to TV viewers is the annual Rose Festival and it has for several years now featured a kickoff parade akin to the Rose Parade in Pasadena on January 1 every year. But this years parade, scheduled for this weekend, has been canceled. The reason: It was going to includegaspRepublicans! And this is too much for the hardened left, which threatens to shutdown the parade by violent means if it includes Republicans. And the city of Portland has caved. Heres the OregonLive report: A threatening email has derailed one of the Portland Rose Festivals signature events, and spurred new debate about the ongoing political protests in Portland. Organizers of the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade announced Tuesday that the event will be canceled, for fear that the east Portland parade could be disrupted by the type of riots which happen in downtown Portland. This years parade was once again set to feature the Multnomah County Republican Party as one of the many groups slated to march, but that inclusion drew ire from some of the citys left-leaning protest groups. At least two protests were planned for the day of the parade, one by Oregon Students Empowered and another by Direct Action Alliance. Both events were mentioned in an email sent to parade organizers on Saturday, threatening to shut down the event with hundreds of protesters in the street. Renown business journalist, Richard Quest, Thursday, beat the closing gong at the Nigeria Stock Exchange, NSE. The event, which held at the 9th floor of the Exchange House, began at exactly 2:25 p.m. Mr. Quest, CNN International anchor and reporter, who arrived Lagos earlier in the week, is in Nigeria to film in Lagos, Nigerias commercial hub. Earlier in the week, the Quest Means Business anchor had been spotted in Oshodi, the commercial centre of Lagos, posing for photographs with other pedestrians. The journalist had also disclosed on his Twitter handle that he was busy filming around Lagos, adding that he will be tweeting my early thoughts on being back in Nigeria after 10 years away. But on Thursday at the Exchange, the CNN anchor moved out of the venue immediately after beating the gong, leaving behind a group of journalists who had been there to interact with him. An official of the Exchange, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr. Quest would be shooting his Television programme Thursday afternoon, and that accounted for his inability to speak with the press. Also at the gong beating event with Mr. Quest were the Executive Director, Market Operations and Technology, NSE, Ade Bajomo; the Chief Executive Officer, NSE, Oscar Onyema; and the Supervising Producer Africa, CNN, Stephanie Busari. Others are Haruna Jalo-Waziri, Executive Director, Capital Markets Division, NSE; and Tinuade Awe, General Counsel and Head of Regulation, NSE. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Palestinian Authority on Thursday informed Israel that it will no longer pay for electricity for the Gaza Strip starting immediately. Electricity consumption in Gaza costs about 10.1 million dollars monthly, which Israel deducts from the Palestinian governments taxes, said Israels Coordinator of Government Activities in the (Palestinian) Territories (COGAT). Palestinian officials refused to confirm the COGAT statement. However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, who run the West Bank, have reportedly been pressuring the Islamic Hamas movement in charge of Gaza to cede control over the coastal enclave. Abbas had warned Hamas that unprecedented measures would soon be taken. Gaza is undergoing an energy crisis, leaving residents with electricity for only six hours a day after a fuel shortage caused the regions only power station to stop operating earlier this month. Deputy Chairman of Hamas in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayyah, warned in a statement that Gaza is a powder keg that could explode in the face of Abbas and the Israeli occupation at any second. The World Bank also warned that the energy shortage was creating a humanitarian crisis for Gazas two million residents, affecting vital services such as hospitals and clinics. The Israeli military targeted a Hamas post in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday after shots were fired at Israeli soldiers carrying out routine activities along the border fence, an army spokesman said. No injuries were reported on either side. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 after weeks of internal fighting with Abbas security forces. Right after Hamas took control of the enclave; it routed Abbas forces and cracked down on his Fatah party. (dpa/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, have said that it was not compulsory for President Muhammadu Buhari to preside over the Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting. Governor Nasir El- Rufai of Kaduna State made this known on Wednesday in Abuja, while addressing journalists on the outcome of the governors meeting with members of the APC National Working Committee, NWC. He also said the constitution made provision for the Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, to preside over such meeting in the president`s absence. Mr. El- Rufai, who was reacting to speculations that President Buhari could not attend the FEC meeting for the third consecutive time because he was ill, said the governors were not bothered by such speculations. We are not worried yet and have no reason to be worried, but we however, urge Nigerians to continue to pray for the president to be in good health.. He said it was normal for the president to have medical challenge, considering the fact that he was over 70 years old. Even me that is 57 years old, I still go for medical check-up, El-Rufai said. He, however, debunked insinuations that APC had internal crisis, stressing that the party was intact with a unified leadership structure, adding that contrary to speculations, its NWC was intact. Mr. El-Rufai explained that the reason the party was presently constrained financially was because it did not rely on public funds to operate like some parties in government. According to him, the party is funded by private and cooperate donors who had been its sponsors before it came to power. He further said the party`s leadership was willing to return to such donors to raise funds to ensure that it was operated as expected. The governor said that the meeting discussed best incentives to reward loyal party members, in line with its constitution. Mr. El-Rufai also said that the governors, at the meeting, pledged their loyalty to the party`s leadership and promised to meet with its NWC members monthly. The move, Mr. El-Rufai said, became necessary to discuss ways of strengthening APC and move it forward. He said a date would be picked for the party`s National Executive Council meeting at the governors next meeting with the NWC members. Mr. El-Rufai also said that the governors had committed to assist the Federal Government in delivering true dividends of democracy to the people. Earlier, John Odigie-Oyegun, the APC National Chairman, commended the governors for attending the meeting, in spite the short notice. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that 20 APC governed states were represented at the meeting, the second in the year. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigerian Police have debunked claims by the Chairman of the Senate committee on appropriations, Danjuma Goje, that files containing work on Nigerias 2017 budget proposals were carted away during a raid on his Abuja residence last week. Mr. Goje, a former governor of Gombe State, had told the Senate on Wednesday that police officers took away cash, a laptop and 18 documents on the budget proposal being worked on by his committee during the raid on his residence, located at Asokoro, Abuja. Based on Mr. Gojes claim, the House of Representatives gave the Inspector General of Police 24 hours to return the budget documents purportedly taken away from Mr. Gojes residence. But in a statement released early Thursday by the police spokesperson, Moshood Jimoh, the force said Mr. Gojes claim was misleading and deliberately made to cast the police in bad light. Mr. Jimoh said the raid police action was professionally and lawfully carried out. He confirmed that cash, laptop and other documents were indeed seized during the raid on Mr. Gojes residence. He said none of the seized documents had anything to do with budget, but other matters, including business and political concerns and a document on how former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano State allegedly plotted the murder of a cleric, Sheikh Jafaru. Giving the basis for the raid, the spokesperson disclosed that police action followed intelligence available to the force that Mr. Goje had huge cash, suspected to be proceeds of corruption at his home. Read The Full Statement Below: 1. The attention of the Nigeria Police Force has been drawn to reports in the media credited to Senator Danjuma Abdullahi Goje captioned Blame the Police if 2017 Budget is not Ready Senator Goje REPS gives Police 24 hours to return budget documents allegedly carted from Gojes residence 2. The report in its entirety is false, misleading and capable of misinforming Nigerians about the statutory roles and duties of the Nigeria Police Force as provided under Sections 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations, which includes prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due enforcement of all laws and regulations, and authority to enter any house or premises to execute search warrant. 3. It is pertinent to set the record straight and inform Nigerians of the facts of the matter. A search warrant duly obtained from court of competent jurisdiction was professionally executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje on 20th April, 2017 at No. 10 Haile Salasie Street, Asokoro District Abuja which was subsequent upon intelligence report at the disposal of the Force that large sum of money suspected to be stolen public funds and other incriminating items are about to be moved out of the said house. 4. It is worthy of note that on arrival of the Police team to Senator Danujma Gojes house, the house keeper Ango Usman informed the Senator of the presence and mission of the team and he promised coming but later switched off his phone. 5. The search warrant was successfully executed in the presence of three (3) close relatives of Senator Danjuma Goje who are residing in the house and the recoveries were made in their presence. The three (3) relatives listed below opened the house and took the Police team round the building, and endorsed their signatures after the completion of the search as required by the procedure of law on search warrant which contained the money, documents and Laptop recovered, and none of the items include 2017 budget document. This is available for inspection by any interested members of the public (i) Danjuma Mohammed, a master Degree holder from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and a Chartered Quantity Surveyor is a nephew to Senator Danjuma Goje. (ii) Ango Usman, House keeper to Senator Danjuma Goje . (iii) Aisha Umar, Alias Iklima a step daughter to the Senator Danjuma Goje. 6. For avoidance of doubt, the followings are the sum of money both in local and foreign currencies, vital documents and a Laptop recovered for investigation when the search warrant was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje i. Cash sum of Eighteen Million and Fifty Six Thousand Naira (18,056,000) only ii. Cash sum of Nineteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty (19,850 US Dollars). iii. Cash sum of Nine Thousand Four Hundred (SR9, 400) Saudi Riyal iv. Thirty Eight (38) Files and Six (6) Envelopes containing documents, some of which are listed below a. File on funds spent on security administration and information gathering a-g 2009 b. File on release of funds for Special operations a- f 2009 c. File on Gombe State Government of Nigeria Cash inflow 2005 d. File on Project 2007 Executive Briefs on how to fight opposition in Gombe State Strategies and Tactics e. Envelopes containing permit to operate as an Oil Industry Service Company (special categories) 2011 f. A File containing write-ups on how Governor Shekarau plotted the assassination of Sheikh Jafaru g. Letters from Alhaji Mohammed Danjuma Goje (Sarkin Yakin Gombe) to the MD LUBELL Nigeria Ltd of proposed residential Devt at Kashere Phase II dated 16/01/2007 and 19/11/2010. 7. The Nigeria Police Force wishes to state categorically that there was no single document relating to 2017 budget sighted or removed by the Police team that executed the search warrant. There is video recording of the execution of the search warrant. 8. The Inspector General of Police honoured the invitation of the National Assembly on 26th April, 2017 to explain the legality of the search warrant that was executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje on the 20th of April, 2017. 9. Further investigation is currently ongoing into the matter. Police actions are in line with the provisions of Sec. 4 & 28 of Police Act and Regulations as mentioned in paragraph 2 above and consistent with Sec. 9 & 144 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015. 10. The Nigeria Police Force sees the report in the media credited to Senator Danjuma Goje as a deliberate distraction to cast aspersion on Police investigation to pervert the end of justice. 11. Members of the public are hereby implored to disregards the report as the search warrant which was professionally executed in the house of Senator Danjuma Goje has nothing to do with 2017 budget Share this: Twitter Facebook The governors of Nigerias 36 states have formed a committee to audit the countrys Ecological Fund. The governors set up the committee as part of the resolution of the meeting of the National Economic Council, NEC, which held on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja under Vice president Yemi Osinbajo. According to the Governor of Anambra State, Willie Obiano, who briefed State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, membership of the committee includes governors of Oyo, Borno, Imo, Akwa Ibom, Kaduna, Anambra as well as the ministers of finance and environment. Mr. Obiano also said the balance in the Ecological Fund stood at N33.6 billion. Throwing more light, the Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, said the governors decided to audit the fund because although states have not collected any money since the coming into office of President Muhammadu Buhari almost two years ago, the balance appears to be dwindling. No state has collected money from the ecological funds in the last one or two years and we notice that the balance is going down. Somebody must be touching it, he said. Mr. Obiano had earlier revealed that the Accountant General of the Federation who briefed the Council informed that that the balance in the Nations Natural Resources Fund stood at N70.9 billion. He also said the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, in her presentation told the NEC that the balance in the countrys excess crude account as at April 26, 2017 stood at $2.2 billion dollars. He also said the finance minister told the meeting that the newly established efficiency unit at the ministry has so far saved Nigeria N17 billion. The minister advised the governors to also look at the possibility of establishing the unit in their states. The National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, who also spoke at the briefing said he gave a report of the security situation in the country to the council. He said his briefing centred around the activities of cattle rustlers, herdsmen and farmers clashes and criminal elements. He said he informed that council that security agencies in the country are currently engaged in general nationwide crackdown on all criminal elements. Share this: Twitter Facebook MarketWatch To attract new customers, many banks are now offering lucrative cash bonuses anywhere from $100 to $2,000 for simply moving money into their various savings and checking accounts. A recent Reddit thread highlighted dozens of first-hand accounts of people earning thousands of dollars by moving their money to various bank accounts to get the bonuses, and then moving on. Indeed, you may simply be better off with a high-interest savings account as many of those are paying more than they have in a decade (see some of the best savings account rates you can get now here). President Muhammadu Buhari has assured Nigerians that despite insinuations about his alleged poor health, there is no need for apprehension over recovery. Mr. Buhari spoke Thursday evening through a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba, explaining why he had been out of public glare for a while. The statement said, President Buharis absence at the Federal Executive Council meeting of Wednesday, April 26, was a last minute decision; otherwise, the cabinet and the public might have been alerted in advance. As eager as he is to be up and about, the Presidents doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago. President Buhari himself, on his return to the country, made Nigerians aware of the state of his health while he was in London. Full recovery is sometimes a slow process, requiring periods of rest and relaxation, as the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, intimated in his press briefing after the FEC meeting on Wednesday. Despite his lack of visibility, Nigerians should rest assured that President Buhari has not abdicated his role as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria. He receives daily briefings on the activities of government, and confers regularly with his Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. His private residence, in which he has been spending the majority of his time recently, also has a fully equipped office. God is the giver of life and health. We are grateful that He has seen our President through the worst period of his convalescence in London. We are thankful that the President has passed a number of benchmarks already. We pray that God continues to see him through this period of recuperation. Share this: Twitter Facebook A former Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, has attributed his achievements in life to God and the training he received from the Baptist denomination and schools. He said this in an appreciation and acceptance speech he delivered at the ongoing annual session of the Nigerian Baptist Convention on Wednesday in Abuja. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the former president was honoured on his contributions to Nigeria and worlds peace. He said permit me to confess publicly, as I did at the programme, put together by the three Lagos Baptist Conferences, that whatever I am today, was by the grace of God. I was privileged to have received early in life, through the Sunbeam, the Royal Ambassadors, Baptist Boys High School, Abeokuta, Sunday School and Church training. I have been guided throughout my public service by these Baptist principles of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, fairness, inclusion, boldness, order, mutual respect and integrity. I can say I am the better for it today. Mr. Obasanjo said no one should underestimate the importance of various religious training for a greater future for the upcoming generation. I, therefore, urge us to note the importance and influence which the Church and its various training programmes are capable of exerting on our children in their formative years. We should never take with levity the character-moulding programmes for our young ones which had been enduringly beneficial to us. He further urged Nigerians not to cease cooperating with the present administration in its quest to restore sanity in the polity. He noted that although there were challenges as individuals and as a nation, Nigerians must cooperate with government in its programmes aimed at poverty reduction, employment generation, fighting corruption and insecurity. Earlier in his remark, Samson Ayokunle, the President, Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, showered encomium on Mr. Obasanjo for his unprecedented contributions to Nigeria, Africa and the world at large. Mr. Ayokunle, who is also the President of the Convention, urged Christians occupying high positions to emulate the former president. He urged Mr. Obasanjo to continue to work in the name of the Lord and humanity. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has ordered investigation into an alleged statement credited to a police officer, Inusa Biu, on his Facebook account. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that an online publication on HOTGISTNAIJA on April 26, credited a statement to Mr. Biu captioned Policeman threatens to kill 200 Nigerians if Buhari dies. The police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, disclosed the probe in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday. Mr. Moshood stated that police officers were under obligation not to make unauthorised public comments. He said Nigeria Police Force is a highly discipline organisation with full observation and compliance with professional ethics and decorum. The spokesperson said that the comment was a distraction and absolutely a shadowy imagination of the writer and should be disregarded. He assured the public of police renewed determination and commitment to maintain law and order. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Wednesday, cautioned pilots, airline operators and Air Traffic Controllers on the danger associated with severe thunderstorms. A statement signed by Sam Adurogboye, NCAA spokesperson, said the caution is based on the year 2017 Seasonal Rainfall Prediction, SRP, by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NiMet. These hazards, according to the statement, include severe turbulence, microburst, low level wind shears and other events that could affect flight operations. The statement noted that rainy season is predicted to commence in March/April and May/June 2017 in the Southern and Northern parts of Nigeria, respectively. Therefore, this weather alert is necessitated by the fact that rainy season, at onset, is usually accompanied with severe thunderstorms and many other hazardous weather phenomena, Mr. Adurogboye said. The series of responsibilities for pilots, operators and air traffic controllers, according to the statement, shows the latter may temporarily close airspace when hazardous weather conditions such as severe thunderstorms, squall lines microburst or low level wind-shear are observed or forecast. Similarly, flight crews or operators and Athe controllers should ensure adherence to aerodrome weather, while pilots are expected to exercise maximum restraint whenever adverse weather is observed. Pilots/Flight Crew Members shall obtain adequate departure, en-route and destination weather information and briefing from NiMet Aerodrome Meteorological Offices prior to flight operations, the statement stated. The NCAA expects strict compliance from pilots and other concerned stakeholders, Mr. Adurogboye added. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigerian Air Force has appointed a new spokesperson to manage its public affairs activities. He is Olatokunbo Adesanya, an air commodore. The new Director of Public Relations and Information (DOPRI) replaced the former Air Force spokesman, Ayodele Famuyiwa, a group captain. Until his recent appointment, Mr. Adesanya was the pioneer Director of Aircraft Quality Assurance at the Headquarters Nigerian Air Force. He is a member of Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) Regular Course 37 and was commissioned into the Nigerian Air Force as a regular combatant officer on 22 September 1990. Air Commodore Olatokunbo Adesanya holds a Masters Degree in Development Studies and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry both obtained from the NDA, Kaduna. He also has a Post Graduate Certificate in Aeromechanical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Kaduna, a Diploma in Computer Engineering and a Certificate of Proficiency in Information Systems Management. Air Commodore Olatokunbo Adesanya is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Management (Chartered) and a Fellow of the Chartered Administrators Institute. Since joining the Nigerian Air Force, he has attended many military and professional courses, which include the Junior and Senior Staff Courses at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji. He did his course on defence and strategy at the Superior War College in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Furthermore, the senior officer has attended several short courses, seminars and workshops within and outside Nigeria. The incumbent DOPRI has served in various units and commands of the Nigerian Air Force. He was a Directing Staff at the prestigious AFCSC and the Registrar of the Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaduna. In addition, Mr. Adesanya was the Commander 571 NAF Detachment Ibadan and Deputy Director Air Engineering at Headquarters Nigerian Air Force. The new DOPRI actively participated in Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) Operations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea from 1997 to 1999. A widely exposed senior officer, the new DOPRI has visited over 20 countries across the 5 major continents. He speaks, reads and writes Yoruba, English, French and Portuguese languages in addition to a working knowledge of Hausa language. He is happily married and blessed with children. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has again accused the social media of aggravating the challenges of governments media representatives. In a speech delivered to mark the annual conference and general meeting of the National Institute of Public Relations in Ilorin, Kwara State, Mr. Mohammed also denied allegations of diverting $1.2 billion. According to a statement sent by the ministers special adviser on media and publicity, Segun Adeyemi, Mr. Mohammed denied media publications alleging that he amassed $1.2 billion through an unnamed account. He however did not state what media organisation, or under what caption the alleged story was published. There is no better occasion than this to examine the increasingly tough, and almost impossible, job of a public relations practitioner. Tougher still is the task of the Government Perception Manager, whether he or she is the Minister of Information, Commissioner for Information, Spokespersons for the President or Governor or for any government agency. The challenges faced daily by the perception managers have been exacerbated by the Social Media. Today, the challenges have defied everything the practitioner may have been taught about perception management, public relations and all. Today, anyone with a phone and data is a journalist, a blogger, owner of an online publication, an opinion moulder, etc. And they do all this simply because they can. No regulations, no sanctions. The spokesperson is at their mercy. Regrettably, they have a fanatic followership in the largely uninformed masses, whose experience over the years has primed them not to trust government and public office holders. The masses are daily served incredible menu and unbelievable tales which they swallow hook, line and sinker. How else can you explain that people will believe and circulate a fake report that the Minister of Information and Culture; that is yours truly, has 1.2 billion dollars in his imaginary bank account? Lets examine this for a moment. 1.2 billion dollars is about 400 billion Naira. The entire yearly budget of the Ministry of Information and Culture, where I preside, is under 15 billion Naira, and these include salaries, overhead and capital projects. Assuming, without conceding, that the Minister somehow manages to transfer the entire budget into his personal account, it will take 25 years for him to amass 400 billion Naira. Yet, this disinformation was lapped up by the public. Mr. Mohammed who had in previous publications described the social media as a nightmare alleged that the stated problem is caused mainly by the activities of the opposition whom he defined as a set of uncontrollable people. The perception manager today is engaged in an unending war with an opposition that is amorphously defined, an opposition who never sleeps, an opposition that has no rules of engagement, an opposition that has power without responsibility or control, one whose objective is not to inform, educate or provide constructive criticism but to set their own agenda from their own ethnic, religious, ideological and economic perspective, irrespective of what the challenges of government are. Mr. Mohammed urged media representatives in government parastatals to rise up the challenge by adhering to the principles of accountability in information dissemination. The government information managers must not allow themselves to be discouraged by this. Todays government information manager, whether he is Minister or Commissioner in charge of Information, must equip himself with qualities such as integrity, courage, abnormal capacity for hard work, ingenuity, resourcefulness, ability to think out of the box, encyclopaedic knowledge of all things under the stars, incorruptibility and, above all, passion about the job, said Mr. Mohammed The information Minister has at various fora expressed displeasure about the impact of what he described as fake information emanating from the media, stressing that such stories pose more threat to Nigeria than insurgency. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Federal Operations Unit, FOU, Zone C of Nigeria Customs Service in Owerri said it had seized 102,099 cartons of illegally imported frozen poultry products with duty paid value of N1.27 billion. Comptroller Mohammed Garba, the Area Controller of the zone, disclosed this while briefing journalists in Owerri on Thursday. He said the contraband had been destroyed in accordance with government policy. Mr. Garba said poultry products were still under import prohibition and would be seized and destroyed in compliance with the relevant laws and government policies. He said the items were being conveyed in a Mack Truck with Reg. No. AJL 861 XA along Benin-Ekiadolor axis in Edo State. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the poultry items included turkey parts, chicken parts and poultry gizzard, amongst others. The comptroller reiterated the commitment of his officers to ensure that smuggling in any form was brought to a minimal level. As trained officers in the course of our duty, when we intercept any suspected good and confirm it to be brought in contrary to the laws, it will be seized and disposed of. We will continue to make sure that the public is adequately informed so that importation will be done in conformity with the laws to stem the menace of smuggling, he said. Mr. Garba urged Nigerians not to patronise imported frozen poultry products as they were adversely affecting the nations poultry industry and were also injurious to health. We have to encourage farmers and those in the agriculture sector to be productive, self-reliant, provide employment and boost the economy instead of sending out our foreign exchange and encouraging capital flight, he said. He said that three suspects were in custody in connection with the seizures and would soon be charged to court. Mr. Garba called on smugglers to shun such negative activities and engage in legitimate trades to boost the economy. NAN reports that at the destruction of the poultry products was done in the presence of representatives of other security agencies including the Nigerian Police Force and the Department of State Security. Others were the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, and members of the press. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Supreme Court on Thursday fixed November 14 to hear a suit on alleged outdated oil revenue sharing formula instituted against the Federal Government. Justice Bode Rodes-Vivour led other six justices of the apex court to announce the date after a preliminary session on the suit. The Bayelsa and Rivers states government had approached the court to interpret various constitutional provisions and the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contracts Act. The plaintiff had urged the apex court to conduct the interpretations in relation with fiscal responsibility of the defendant to them. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the Attorney-General of the Federation is the sole defendant. The plaintiffs had urged the court to invoke its jurisdiction by interpreting Sections 80 (1), 162 (1), (2) and (10 of the constitution). They also called for the interpretation of Section 16 (1) of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Act of 2004. The plaintiffs said the suit related to fiscal responsibility of the defendant regarding alleged unaccounted oil revenues due to them. According to them, the suit also deals with mandatory stipulations in Sections 16 (1) of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contracts Act. The plaintiffs averred that the defendant was vested with ownership and control of all crude hydrocarbon petroleum oil and gas in the country. They said this ownership power vested on the defendant included the collection of revenue into the federation account and consolidated revenue fund. They further said those oil revenues were held in trust for the federal government and its component federating states. In furtherance of the statutory responsibilities imposed on the defendant, it established various production sharing contracts over various concessions in the inland basin and deep offshore areas, some of which fall into the plaintiffs geographical areas. These production sharing contracts became necessary as the country was almost bankrupt in the mid 1980s to late 1990s. The country could not afford its counterpart funding for further exploration and production in the oil industry, then shifting to the rich and prolific offshore reserves. The necessity for juicy concessions to oil giants with fiscal incentives, attractive waivers and pegged negligible taxes were offered in exchange for their sourcing or applying own funds in exchange for shared profit oil funds, they averred. They further said the deep offshore and inland basin production sharing contracts Act had expressly stated that `profit oil was the remainder of the available crude oil after deduction of royalty oil, tax oil and cost oil. The `profit oil shall be shared between the defendant and the oil companies in the manner specified in the production sharing contracts. The deep offshore and inland basin production sharing contracts Act further put a ceiling on the said profit oil sharing formula to the extent that the price per barrel of crude oil does not exceed 20 dollars per barrel. The plaintiffs had asked the court to decide among others, whether by virtue of Sections 162(1), (2) and 10(a-b) of the constitution in view of the alleged irregularities, they were not underpaid and short-changed in real terms. The plaintiff are seeking a consequential order compelling the defendant to adjust the share of the Government of the Federation as approved by the defendant from the respective times the price of crude oil exceeded 20 dollars per barrel. They said the shortfall should be calculated with effect from August 2003. The plaintiffs, therefore, said all outstanding statutory allocations due and payable to them arising from the said adjustments should be settled. Lucius Nwosu (SAN) counsel to the plaintiffs said the suit was not a hostile litigation against two warring parties. It is more like a litigation intended to interpret the provisions of sections 16(1) of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basic Production Contracts Act. And this requires that at any time that the price of crude oil exceeds 20 dollars per barrel in real terms that the share of the profit oil revenue should be reviewed, he said. According to him, such a review will make it more economically advantageous to the federal government. Tijani Gazeli, counsel to the defendant, said the AGF was yet to file his process as the required information needed from agencies of government in the oil sector was still trickling in. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook President Muhammadu Buhari has re-nominated an 82-year old retired justice, Sylvanus Nsofor, over a month after his nomination as a non-career ambassador was rejected by the Senate. Mr. Nsofor, from Imo State, was one of the 46 non-career ambassadorial nominees named by Mr. Buhari in January; but his nomination alongside that of Jacob Daodu, Ondo State, wasrejected by the Senate in March following adoption of the report of its committee on foreign affairs which had screened the nominees. Although he was calm at the screening, he looked frail and tired. His responses to the issues raised were either not answered or devoid of details and mostly satirical, observed the report of the committee on March 23. The chairperson of the committee, Monsurat Sunmonu, APC-Oyo, also noted that Mr. Nsofor, during his screening, refused to recite the national anthem and questioned Senators reason for asking him for the recital. According to Mrs. Sunmonu, the 82-year-old judge pushed back a question on his suitability for the job of an envoy based on his age. Mrs. Sunmonu quoted the nominee as saying the Senate should ask Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe how he was leading his country despite his very advanced age. But despite his earlier rejection, with the observations raised by the Senate, Mr. Nsofor was renominated for confirmation on Wednesday. The President also nominated two other persons for confirmation as non-career envoys. Mr. Buhari nominated Olusola Iji to replace the earlier nominee from Ondo, Mr. Daodu, who was rejected over negative report submitted by the State Security Service. Also, the President named Yusuf Hinna to replace Sulieman Hassan, Gombe State. Mr. Hassan had been confirmed ambassador-designate, before he was nominated minister to replace Amina Mohammed who is now with the United Nations. In another letter to the Senate on Wednesday, Mr Buhari, sought confirmation for the appointment of five persons as non-executive directors on the board of Central Bank of Nigeria. The nominees are Ummu Jalingo (North-East); Justitia Nnabuko (South-East); Mike Obadan (South-South); Abdu Abubakar (North-West); and Adeola Adetunji (South-West). Mr. Buhari, in another letter, asked the Senate to screen and confirm James Momoh as Chairman of National Electricity Regulation Commission. In sum, on Wednesday, the President sent four letters to the Senate. Apart from the three on nominations, Mr. Buhari, in the fourth letter, sought approval to obtain loans from the World Bank and China to fund railways projects and tackle problems in the north-east. Share this: Twitter Facebook A former governor of Lagos State and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has accused Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, of being responsible for his failure to run in the 2015 presidential election as running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress. According to Punch Newspaper, quoting Against the Run of Play, a book by the chairman of editorial board of ThisDay Newspaper, Olusegun Adeniyi, Mr. Tinubu said Messrs. Saraki and El-Rufai worked separately but for one purpose, influencing Mr. Buhari not to pick him as his running mate. He said both politicians played the religious card, telling Mr. Buhari a Muslim-Muslim ticket would be unpopular. In what appeared a background to the political game that marked the June 2015 National Assembly leadership elections, Mr. Tinubu was reported to have said Mr. Saraki and other former PDP leaders who defected to the APC disrupted the plans the party had made before the arrival of the so-called PDP bloc. Mr. Tinubu was strongly opposed to the emergence of Mr. Saraki as the Senate President, and was able to get the formal leadership of the APC to endorse Ahmed Lawan, for the countrys number 3 position. He said: What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) did behind my back was wrong. We always do things as a group. By the time they joined, we were already too far ahead in our processes but we accommodated them. We agreed to take their state structures and subsume them into the part and they all had their opportunity to nominate the candidates of their choices for different political offices. But they went behind to instigate Buhari and some other people in the party against me on the pretext of religion. That was not right. They were canvassing arguments that the Christians in the North would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Nasir el-Rufai was also selling the same argument within the CPC (the defunct Congress for Progressive Change) because at that point, he still wanted to have Pastor Bakare brought in as Buharis running mate. The former governor was also reported to have said some senators and governors, who defected from the PDP to the APC, met with him on the eve of the APC presidential primaries in Lagos to know if there was an agreement between him and Mr. Buhari to run together. I told them that it was better to resolve such issue after the primaries, but they wanted to make it a condition for supporting Buhari, which, for me, was very wrong. I told them I could not insist on this as a condition for my support for Buhari. I felt that was not right to hold Buhari hostage in this manner. I believe the support that we gave was fundamental to Buhari clinching the party nomination. Without that support, a different outcome would have been most likely. I backed down because I did not want to be depicted as causing a problem. I backed away from the position in order to offer Buhari a name I once raised with him in 2011: that of Professor Yemi Osinbajo, he said. It is the first time Mr. Tinubu would go public about what actually strained his relationship with Mr. Saraki and how he failed to become Nigerias number two citizen. But Mr. Saraki had, in April 2016, hinted at how he sabotaged Mr. Tinubus vice-presidential ambition, which he said was his original sin that motivated the former Lagos governors opposition to him. Most people talk about the Senate Presidency position, but this was not my only offence. I have also been accused of helping to frustrate some peoples opportunity to emerge as President Muhammadu Buharis running mate. But I have no problem with anybody. My concern was that it would not be politically smart of us to run with a Muslim-Muslim ticket. I doubt if we would have won the election if we had done this, especially after the PDP had successfully framed us a Muslim party. I felt we were no longer in 1993. Perhaps, more than ever before, Nigerians are more sensitive to issues of religious balancing. This, my brother, was my original sin. What they say to themselves, among other things, was that if he could conspire against our ambition, then he must not realize his own ambition as well. For me however, I have no regrets about this. I only stood for what I believed was in the best interest of the party and in the best interest of Nigeria, Mr. Saraki said last year. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigeria Union in South Africa has confirmed the killing of its member, Chinedu Eze, allegedly by a Somalian in the Western Cape Province of that country. The Chairman of the union in the province, Mike Ibitoye, told the News Agency of Nigeria on telephone from Cape Town, South Africa, that Mr. Eze, 35, was shot on April 25 during an argument over cell phone. Chinedu Eze is a native of Umuchu, Aguata Local Government Area of Anambra State. He deals in cell phones. Reports at our disposal said that on the fateful day, there was an argument between him and Somali man inside a car. The Somalian reportedly shot him three times, and when he ran out of the car, he shot him six times again, leading to his death, he said. Mr. Ibitoye said that the incident happened at Bellview area of Cape Town, a place populated by Somalians. The incident has been reported to the South African Police. The Police has commenced investigation, but we are not aware if the assailant has been arrested, he said. Also, Adetola Olubajo, Secretary of the Union, said the national body of the union has informed the Nigerian mission in South Africa. We appeal to Nigerians in the Western Cape Province to remain peaceful and law abiding. The Mission is on top of the situation. The union equally appeals to the Federal Government to ensure that the welfare of Nigerians in South Africa are protected, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Thursday amended the charges filed against Former President Goodluck Jonathans cousin, Robert Azibaola, and his wife Stella. Mr. and Mrs. Azibaola had prior to Thursdays hearing been facing trial for the alleged diversion of $40 million on a seven-count charge. Following Thursdays changes, however, the duo will now be tried on a nine-count for the same offence. The counsel to EFCC, Silvanus Tahir, told the court that the amended charges were dated April 19 and filed on April 20. Shortly after the charges were amended, the defendants pleaded not guilty to the fresh charge and the commission presented its witnesses. The case was later adjourned till Friday. The defendants have been accused by the commission of allegedly diverting the said sum through their company, OnePlus holdings. A witness earlier presented by the EFCC said the $400 million was allegedly paid through an account belonging to the office of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, from monies earmarked for pipeline security contracts. The witness, Ibrahim Mahe, a former permanent secretary, special services operations, at the office of the NSA, had in a testimony before the court in July 2016 said that OnePlus Holdings Limited was paid $40 million from $600 million special security fund sourced from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Share this: Twitter Facebook Below are the main highlights of the 76th meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) held today, April 27, 2017, in Abuja. The highlights were provided by Laolu Akande, the senior special assistant to the vice president on media and publicity. NEC, a constitutional body that charts Nigerias economic direction, is composed of all the 36 state governors, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Thursdays meeting was presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who is chair of the council. Below are the issues discussed. NEC (3RD IN 2017) 76TH NEC MEETING THURSDAY, 27TH APRIL, 2017 NATURAL RESOURCES FUND AND ECOLOGICAL FUND The Accountant- General of the Federation briefed Council on the Development of Natural Resources and Ecological Funds as follows: That the Natural Resources Fund balance as at 31/3/17 N70.9 billion Ecological Fund balance as at 31/3/17 N33.645 billion States and Local Governments now to keep their share of Resources Fund and Ecological Fund for use of intervention as the need arises in their respective jurisdictions. Council also decided that an audit of the Ecological Fund be carried out by an Committee of governors and federal ministers. The Committee is comprised of the Governors of Oyo, Borno, Imo, Kaduna, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Benue States, and the Ministers of Finance and Environment. This Committee will audit the Ecological Fund and come up with policy recommendations on how the fund should be managed and disbursed. PARIS CLUB REFUND The Honourable Minister of Finance gave an update on the disbursement of the Paris Club refunds and addressed issues about the next round of the payments to the States after the first disbursements. State Governors at the meeting expressed appreciation to the President for the previous disbursements of the refund, which is more than 10 years overdue, and noted their expectations for the next round of refund from the FG. EXCESS CRUDE ACCOUNT The Honourable Minister of Finance also told Council that the Balance in the Excess Crude Account as at April 26, 2017 stands at US$2.2billion. FAAC BUDGET ESTIMATE The Honourable Minister of Finance presented a Budget Estimate for the operation of the Committee and Council approved. OPERATION OF EFFICIENCY UNIT FEDERAL MINISTRY OF FINANCE The Ministry of Finance also made presentation to Council on the Operations of the Efficiency Unit located in the Federal Ministry. Council was informed that the Unit has been able to save the FG a whopping of N17 billion since it was established. Council appreciated the presentation and urged that States also should establish Efficiency Units in order to entrench systems that will improve efficiency, reduce cost and block leakages in line with the fiscal sustainability plan. SOCIAL INVESTMENT PROGRAMME OF THE FG The Vice President updated Council on the progress of four of the Social Investment Programmes of the Administration, namely: N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfer, Homegrown School Feeding Programme and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), for micro credits. Council was also briefed about certain impediments and programme implementation delays noticed in the FG/States Governments collaboration and resolved to end such obstacles to the successful implementation of the SIPs. Council therefore resolved to upgrade the States coordination units for the FGs SIP to the Governors offices for better and more effective FG/State collaboration UPDATE ON MENINGITIS Honourable Minister of Health made a presentation to Council on the update on the Meningitis Outbreak as follows: That there have been 9,646 suspected cases of Meningitis affecting 6 States in the country, namely Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Niger, Kebbi and Kaduna As at April 25, 2017, about 767 deaths had occurred, representing 9% of the infected population About N46.7 billion is required to vaccinate the valuable population Council expressed grave concern over the ravaging effects of the meningitis epitome in parts of the country and directed the Federal Ministry of Health to intensify its intervention efforts to contain the embarrassing epidemic, while advocating for increased funding for Health. The Minister in his presentation called for the establishment of a National Health Emergency Fund to be domiciled in the Presidency under the supervision of NEC Chairman. ARMED HERDSMEN/FARMERS CONFLICT The National Security Adviser (NSA) today briefed Council on the security situation in the country, particularly as it has to do with conflict between armed herdsmen and farmers, especially in Kaduna, Taraba and Benue States among others. He told Council that security agencies have commenced a nationwide crackdown on armed herdsmen, gun runners, cattle rustlers, militants, militias and others perpetrators of violence. Governors gave a robust response to the presentations, commending efforts of the FG so far in tackling the security challenges and advocated for more collaboration between the FG and States. Council resolved that there is need to have an extraordinary session dedicated to discussing security issues in the country as a means to deepening the issues and effectively addressing the menace. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigeria Police have succumbed to pressure by the National Assembly and returned all items, including budget documents taken from the residence of the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Danjuma Goje a raid last week. A statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters, Ita Enang, reads, Further to the visit of the Nigerian Police Force to the residence of His Excellency, Senator Danjuma Goje, CON in the course of routine duties wherefrom certain items were taken by the police, and issues subsequently arising. I am to inform all that all the items taken in the course of routine police duties have been returned to the Distinguished Senator at his house by the Nigerian Police. Mr. Enang assured that all other issues relating to the subject matter were being addressed with a view to positive resolution. The House of Representatives had issued a 24-hour deadline to the police to return all documents relating to the 2017 appropriation bill to the senator. This ultimatum was issued due to an invasion of Mr. Gojes residence by security operatives on April 20. The police had also denied carting away appropriations documents. Mr. Goje, a former governor of Gombe State, claimed the police officers carted away documents, including those on the 2017 budget proposal, N18 million, $19,000 and 4,000 Riyal from his residence in Asokoro. But the police claimed the seized documents had nothing to do with the budget. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) has said arrangements have been concluded for interested candidates to write the mock examination of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) this Saturday, April 29. The Registrar of JAMB, Is-haq Oloyede, made this known Wednesday in Abuja during a training session organized to equip over 1600 JAMB staff as well as external resource persons drawn across the 36 states of the country. Mr. Oloyede, a professor, said internal and external personnel would monitor the 633 Computer Based Tests centres across the country for the UTME exams. Mr. Oloyede said under his watch, JAMB would deploy cost-effective measures to deliver on its statutory mandate. He said the CBT adopted in the forthcoming UTME would save the examination body about N5 billion. Instead of spending billions on our examinations, we can spend millions and achieve better results. That is all I have been struggling to do, to make sure that instead of collecting N7 billion and spending N6.8 billion in the conduct of examination, we should be able to save at least N5 billion, he stressed. While noting that there are skepticism on the part of some Nigerians about the workings of new innovations, the Registrar said he was optimistic of taking JAMB to the next level, regardless of challenges. Yes, some people argue that in Nigeria, there are many variables that you cannot determine. I have strong faith in this country and I believe that whatever works in normal places will work in Nigeria, he added. On the 2017 UTME slated to begin on May 13, Mr. Oloyede said his team is prepared to conduct a hitch-free examination across all centres of the country. I and my colleagues in JAMB management have tried our best and have prepared as much as we can. We also believe in our partners, MTN and Airtel which are our two service providers in the conduct of this examination and I want to appeal to them to see this as a national assignment. He added that the CBT, which was adopted a few years ago was actually his initiative while he was Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin. CBT started at the University of Ilorin in 2007 and by the grace of God, I was the Vice Chancellor who started it. Meanwhile, the mock test earlier shelved by JAMB is set to hold this Saturday 29th April, 2017 and Mr. Oloyede promised the challenges which scuttled the initial exercise would be taken care of this time. Share this: Twitter Facebook A former Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, has filed a suit at a State High Court urging it to stop Governor Simon Lalong from releasing the White paper on a report by a Commission of Inquiry. Mr. Lalong had, in August 2016, inaugurated a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Stephen Adah, to dig into the activities of Mr. Jangs administration from May 29, 2007 to May 29, 2015. The commission had, in December 2016, completed its assignment and submitted reports to Mr. Lalong, who promised to release and implement a white paper on it. But Mr. Jang, now a Senator representing Plateau North Senatorial District, filed a suit seeking an injunction to restrain Mr. Lalong from releasing the white paper. In the Originating Summons filed by his counsel, Sunday Odey, the former governor described the activities of the Commission of Inquiry as unconstitutional, null and void. According to him, the commission has no such powers to either invite him or probe into activities his administration. Others joined in the suit, filed before the State Chief Judge, are the state government, the Attorney General of the state, the Judicial Commission of Inquiry and its chairman as defendants in the case. Also joined are the five other members of the commission, including Bibiana Bawa, Aliyu Sangei, Ekoja Ekoja, Simon Onu Agamah and Yahaya Mavo. Mr. Jang prayed the court to give a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from issuing or publishing any recommendation, report or process bordering on criminal allegations against him. The embattled senator asked the court to issue a declaration that the activities of the commission were unconstitutional, null and void. When the case came up for mention on Thursday, Sunday Obende, counsel to Mr. Lalong, told the court that he had filed a motion for an extension of time within which to reply to the originating summons served on him. My Lord, I have filed a motion asking for extension of time within which I will reply to the originating summon served on us by the Counsel to the Plaintiff, Mr. Obende said. Also, the counsel to the defendants, F. Lotben and F.D. Dashe, sought a leave of the court for extension of time to reply to the processes served on them. Joshua John, one of the associates of Mr. Odey, Mr. Jangs counsel, did not oppose the applications. The judge, after listening to the motions, adjourned the case to May 16, for continuation of hearing. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Federal Government has donated 1.8 million vaccine doses of Type C strain of meningitis to the Sokoto State Government, an official said. Governor Aminu Tambuwal made this known at Dange town, headquarters of Dange/Shuni Local Government Area of the state when he launched the mass vaccination of two million people against Cerebro Spinal Meningitis, CSM. Mr. Tambuwal, who was represented by the state Commissioner for Health, Balarabe Kakale, said that nearly two million people, aged between zero and 20 years would be targeted during the five-day exercise. The governor said that the exercise was being conducted by over 300 teams of medical personnel across the 23 local government areas of the state. He added that the vaccination projects the children for upward of 10 years and protects them from a myriad of diseases. Mr. Tambuwal said: The measure is aimed at ensuring that the current meningitis epidemic in the state is totally brought under control. The state of high alert declared by the Ministry of Health on March 20, across the state was still in force. We are however happy that the situation has been brought under control and the mortalities had drastically reduced. He commended the federal government, traditional rulers and religious leaders, as well as development partners for their sustained efforts at controlling the disease. However, the governor cautioned residents of the state against sleeping in crowded and poorly ventilated rooms. Mr. Tambuwal also called on parents to ensure that they participate in free routine immunisation against the six child killer diseases. In his remarks, the District Head of Dange, Muazu Umar, promised to work relentlessly to ensure the success of the exercise. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook An ex-leader of a militant group, Paul Eris, has established a rice farm at Peremabiri Community in Bayelsa to reduce hunger and curb crime. The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports that Mr. Eris was formerly known as `Ogunboss in the creeks when he was a militant. He told journalists during a tour of his farm on Thursday that the initiative was also to boost commercial rice production and create jobs for the youth. He said that the farm began on February 6, 2017 in a 51.5-hectare swampy forest which had been cleared. He hoped that the farm, known as Tanko Farms, would increase by 200 hectares in 2018. The former militant said that the farm had received 300 bags of paddies from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. According to him, the farm has acquired a rice milling machine which is serving rice farmers in the area. Rowland Kiente, a rice farmer in Peremabiri, told journalists during the tour that the milling machines ensured production of stone-free rice. Alagoa Morris of the Environmental Rights Action, David West of the Civil Liberties Organisation and Eberesikimo Gbassa, a rights activist, who also toured the farm, hailed the initiative. They hoped that it would go a long way to boost food production and stimulate economic activities. They called on the state government to support farmers and construct a road from Yenagoa to Peremabiri to encourage Tanko Farms. Peremabiri Community is in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa. It is located along the River Nun in the Bomo Clan of Southern Ijaw. The community is accessible through water transportation from Yenagoa. It hosts the abandoned Irrigated Rice Farm Project, established by the then Niger Delta Development Board in 1962. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook An Owerri High Court on Wednesday reinstated Cletus Ilomuanya, the traditional ruler of Obinugwu autonomous community in Orlu Local Government Area, who was deposed by the Imo Government. The court also declared that the purported withdrawal of Ilomuanyas certificate of recognition and staff of office by Governor Rochas Okorocha on June 6, 2014 was illegal, unconstitutional, null and void. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that since 2011, Mr. Ilomuanya had won nine legal cases against the Imo Government. Justice Theresa Chikeka, in his ruling, frowned at the governors conduct in claiming that he had dethroned the monarch vide a press release signed by the then Secretary to the State Government, Anthony Anwukah. Ms. Anwukah is the current Minister of State (Education). The judge said that the government breached Law N0.6 of 2006 and violated various court judgments, restraining the governor or his assignees from doing anything that would truncate Mr. Ilomuanyas tenure as Chairman of Imo Traditional Rulers Council. Such release by the Secretary to the State Government was not a lawful instrument of authority and therefore null and void as it violates the express provisions of Law No. 6 of 2006, the court maintained. She noted that the defence put up by Mr. Okorochas counsel, Eddy Onyema, was alien to Nigerias rules. The court noted that in spite issuing an order on June 4, 2014, ordering that parties allow pending appeal at the Supreme Court, the governor and his attorney general, two days later, violated the said directive. The actions of the governor contravened Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution. Similarly, Sections 13 and 14 (1) of Law No. 6 of 2006 provide conditions precedent in Section 14 (1) (a-h), before the governor can exercise his powers. It was wrong for the governor to have acted as he did when the Court of Appeal judgment of July 5, 2013 was still subsisting. The entire objections of the governor are misconceptions of Law, Chikeka maintained. Reacting to the judgment, Miletus Nlemedum, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, said the state would appeal the judgment. This is a miscarriage of justice and we will appeal the ruling, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Enugu State government has approved that the promotion of workers of the Local Government Service Commission due since 2014 be released. The states commissioner for information, Godwin Udeuhele, disclosed this to journalists after the State Executive Council meeting held at Government House, Enugu. Mr. Udeuhele stated that the Council also directed the commission to release the list for the interview already conducted with effect from May 1, and organise promotion interview for 2015. He said, the total numbers of those promotions due to be released for 2014 is 1,442 while that of 2015 is 1,590. Those numbers are distributed with different cadres in all the local governments areas of the state. Equally approved was an administrative panel of inquiry set up by the commissioner for chieftaincy matters to ascertain the culpability of a traditional ruler in the crisis arising from a boundary dispute between Ugwuaji and Obeagu Ugwuaji autonomous communities, all in Enugu South Local Government Area, and his alleged frustrating of Enugu State Government Boundary Committees peace efforts. The commissioner said the Council also approved the launch of the Neighbourhood Watch Trust Fund, as well as the presentation of security equipment and vehicles procured with the N100 million donated by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to all registered Neighbourhood Associations in the state on May 25 at Michael Okpara Square, Enugu. He further explained that approval was given for the purchase of a bus for the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria, JUSU). Noting that the request for this dates back to February 20, 2015, he added that the gesture was consistent with efforts to maintain a harmonious industrial relation with organised labour in Enugu State and help them overcome the challenges they experience running the unions activities. The Council also considered and approved a draft bill for a law to amend the Local Government Law Cap. 109 Vol. V. Law of Enugu State 2004, and directed that it be forwarded to the Enugu State House of Assembly for legislative actions. Share this: Twitter Facebook The residents of the 1004 Estate in Victoria Island, Lagos, on Wednesday protested the alleged mismanagement of the estate by the Home Owners and Residents Association, HORA. The protesters accused the current management of the estate of being deceitful and corrupt and demanded the building be returned to its former owners for proper maintenance. The estate residents showed their frustrations by placing a notice across the estate. In the notice captioned Enough of Mismanagement of 1004 Estate by Failed 1004 HORA, the residents under the aegis of 1004 Residents Forum, stated that the situation of the estate has gone from good to worse. Parts of the complaint on the postal read: We say enough to this unprecedented levels of mismanagement. When you illegally forced out the original managers, you made us believe things would be better, instead, things have gone from good to worse. The Estate is not designed to be managed by deceitful and corrupt clique of few home owners on the Estate. We say no to bad quality water. You have destroyed new functioning water plant in just one year. We say no to over 50 power shortage in a day by 1G4 Power Limited. We say no to broken down lifts due to mismanagement, and the dirty surrounding. We say no to excessive charge for electricity and fraud of 1G4 Power Limited (owned by one of the HORA executives). We say no to high cost of service charge when the quality of services provided have nose dived. We say no to horrible security services with the vandalization of our vehicles and home burglaries. We say no to water poisoning of our families and no to electrical fires; We say no to HORA. You are too inhumane and caused us much suffering without a care. Please, return our Estate to the state where everything worked. Give the Estate back to the original legal managers. You have no legitimacy. We are tired of your excuses and explanations. The suffering residents in 1004 flats in our forum are more that 40 members that attended your meeting. HORA must go. We have never recognised HORA on our Estate. The president of 1004 Estate Residents Association, Lagos, Tayo Soetan, and three others were recently charged with felony offences and were remanded in prison on the orders of an Igbosere Magistrate Court, pending when they were able to perfect the bail conditions admitted to them. Mr. Soetan, alongside Bosun Sosanya, 47, and a 41 year-old lawyer, Adebayo Ademiluyi, Friday Alika, 48, and Abubakar Audu, 28, were arraigned before the court on offences bordering on felony, conspiracy, unlawful invasion and conduct likely to breach public peace. The offences, according to the prosecutor, Paul Ogwuba, a superintendent of police, were contrary to sections 411, 52, and 166(d) (b) of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2015. They had all pleaded not guilty to all the offences. All five defendants and others at large were also alleged to have an intent to cause a breakdown of law and order and conduct themselves in a manner likely to cause the breach of peace, by forcibly entering the office of Managing Director of 1004 Estate, Samuel Ukpong. They were alleged to have committed the said offences on December 5, 2015. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Osun State Police Command said on Thursday that the autopsy report on the late senator, Isiaka Adeleke, has not reached it. Mr. Adeleke, a former Osun governor, died in the early hours of Sunday, amidst speculations amongst his supporters that he may have been poisoned. The late lawmaker was taken to Lodoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital for a pathological examination before he was buried on Monday in Ede, his home town. Mr. Adelekes family had earlier on Wednesday told journalists that the autopsy report was not ready and that contrary media reports should be discountenanced. Sources knowledgeable about the autopsy had, however, told PREMIUM TIMES an interim report was produced and that the senator may have died of drug overdose. A final report was however, yet to be produced, as some test results were being awaited. The Osun State Police Public Relations Officer, Folasade Odoro, told PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday that she would not be able to speak authoritatively on the autopsy since the report had not reached the command. I will have to check with those in charge of the investigations to know the current situation with the report, she said. However, the younger brother to the deceased senator, Deji Adeleke, while addressing journalists in Ede on Wednesday, said the family was told that the report of the autopsy would be ready in one or two weeks. He urged his supporters to embrace peace while the autopsy report was being awaited. Share this: Twitter Facebook Management of Vaccines for Strengthening ( Read 6753 Times) 27 Apr 17 Share | Print This Page Union Health Ministry, Government of India is promoting Universal Immunization Programme and vaccine management at all levels and has fixed 90% immunization targets by the year 2021. Its plans to have a robust immunization process complete from supply to delivery. IIHMR University Jaipur to conduct a Management Development Programme on Logistics Management of Vaccines with a special focus on Strengthening Cold-chain. The programme will be from 24th April to 28th April with 23 participants from Bhutan, India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Sudan, Seychelleswho are a mix of vaccine logistics managers, pharmacists, managers, procurement officers, and store in-charge working public and private sectors. Indias Universal Immunization Program is one of the largest in the world and caters to 26 million infants and 30 million pregnant women, saving 2.5 million lives each year. The program has contributed significantly to saving the lives of millions of children and ensuring that they thrive. According to data in Handbook for Vaccine and Cold Chain Handlers 2nd Edition India 2016, it has been pointed out that India hopes to achieve 90% full immunization coverage over the next 5 years by strengthening its immunization supply chain and has to spend about INR 20,000 million every year in the immunization programme. The IIHMRs Management Development Programme objectives will provide the participants with the tools and techniques for effectively managing the supply chain of vaccines with added focus to the cold chain management thus ensuring the safety of the vaccines. They will be exposed to real situation to help them to find the practical solutions and implement them in their own settings. Dr. PR Sodani, Dean Training, IIHMR University Jaipursays, There have been tremendous efforts by many healthcare organizations and agencies to suffice the growing need of Universal Immunization but, we must not neglect the fact that about 30% to 35% Indian children miss benefits of full immunization every year. The country records about 5.5 to 6 lakh child deaths annually due to vaccine preventable diseases. This calls for an intervention to deliver lifesaving vaccines in time to the targeted beneficiaries. The IIHMR University Jaipur will be conducting a training programme for 23 participants from seven countries namely Bhutan, India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Sudan, Seychelles working as vaccine logistics managers, pharmacists, managers, procurement officers, and store in-charge working public and private sectors, considering the need to understand safety parameters related to vaccines. A well-managed supply chain of vaccines is the most fundamental step for ensuring safety of the vaccines. As the complexity in the vaccination programme are increasing day by day, healthcare professionals should be able to provide solutions to the managerial and operational challengesin supply chain management of vaccines namely vaccine handling, stock management, minimizing vaccine wastages, handling emergency situations, storage, and distribution etc. Dr. Sodani further added, Cold chain management is the most crucial and inherent component of supply chain which determines the potency, safety, and efficacy of the vaccines and should be properly addressed at each and every delivery point of supply chain of vaccines. Real time temperature recording, monitoring and mapping, maintenance of cold chain equipment's, documentation, reporting and management information system (MIS) are some of the important aspects which should be routinely monitored and evaluated for effective programme delivery. According to recent reports, over 25% of vaccines go waste globally, mainly due to losing its potency before the vials were opened. As per the report on vaccines spoilage by Associated Press, of all the wastage in a fiscal year, 62% wastage happens due to spoilage of vaccines, and to the industry it costs more than $ 20 billion in a year. Most of these vaccines expire due to the wrong placement of the data logger which is placed within the ice box to control the temperature of vaccine during transportation. To address this issue of vaccine packaging and solutions organizations, UNICEF suggested under the Last Mile project, that Phase Change Material could be potential solution for Vaccine Transportation. Dr. Sodani concluded that, A well-executed management of supply chain of vaccines with due attention to safety aspect can provide the right vaccines in the right quantities, in right condition, at the right time, in the right place and at the right cost to the target population and builds the trust of the public in the health system of the country. IIHMR University Jaipur is designated as a WHO Collaborating Centre for District Health Systems based on Primary Health Care and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India identified IIHMR as Institute of Excellence for training and capacity development. About IIHMR University: An Exclusive Health Research and Postgraduate University. The IIHMR University is a specialized Research University in management research, postgraduate education and training exclusively in the health sector. The University aims to generate new knowledge and technologies to provide evidence and inputs for developing effective policies and health interventions and strategies. The origin of the IIHMR University has its roots in pioneering and significant contribution of Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR), Jaipur in the last three decades to policy and program management research, and capacity development in health and hospital management in India and South-East Asia, which has enabled it to attain the status of a university. Over the last 30 years, IIHMR, working as a WHO Collaborating Centre for District Health Systems and designated as an Institute of Excellence by the Ministry of Health and FamilyWelfare, has played a major role in promoting and conducting health policy and program management research. The Institute has been instrumental in a paradigm shift in the management of health care and hospitals in India. A critical mass of professionally trained health and hospital managers has been produced by IIHMR. For its contribution to management education, it has gained several Leadership Awards. In addition, IIHMR has become a major destination for training and capacity development in leadership and strategic management, hospital management, disaster management, quality management, project management, health management information systems, and health economics and finance. Collaborating Institutions and Universities: World Health Organization; SEAPHEIN; Johns Hopkins University, USA; Chester University, UK; Mahidol University, Thailand; SAARC TB Institute; The UNION; Afghan Public Health Institute, Kabul; BP Koirala Institute of Public Health, Nepal. The Institute undertakes training, research and consultancy in health management in close collaboration with international organizations such as UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO, World Bank, ODA, DANIDA, KFW & GTZ, NORAD, CARE and USAID. Working for Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (GOI), Planning Commission, Indian Council of Medical Research, state governments and others. International Linkages collaborated with University of North Carolina, USA to offer masters programme to candidates from South-Asia. About IIHMR University Training Programmes: Training is one of the most important activities at IIHMR and our MDPs fulfill this need. The primary objective of most of these programmes is to enhance leadership and managerial competencies to improve the performance of Health SystemsThese programmes are meant for senior and mid level officials who would like to keep themselves updated with the latest concepts, ideas, tools, and techniques in managing Health Systems in better way. IIHMR has strong and dedicated multi-disciplinary faculty team to deliver these programmes with their rich insight and experience. Besides offering MDPs, IIHMR University Jaipur also conducts training programmes for organizations specifically tailored to suit their requirements. Source : This Article/News is also avaliable in following categories : Business News Your Comments ! Share Your Openion To me there is something odd about a bar being located in a strip mall. I cant put my finger on it maybe I am just not a big fan of strip malls. Something about them just screams suburban mediocrity. Dubliner is an Irish Pub that sits in one of these suburban prisons, tucked somewhere between a hair salon and a Verizon store, but try not to let that bug you too much, because they actually offer some excellent drink options, as well as a few food items that are truly unique. A few friends and I popped in after work last week. Dubliner is Irish in the sense that it does a decent job mimicking some of the color patterns and styles of your classic Irish bars, but falls short when it comes to true authenticity. Nothing seems overwhelmingly Irish about the place, and the staff is certainly not right off the boat, but the atmosphere is pleasant enough, nonetheless. Each night Dubliner has some sort of special, some of which are better than others, the free buffet from 4 to 6 p.m. on Fridays being the best of the bunch. In addition to the specials, they have an entire menu of Twisted Tea cocktails. For those who have never sipped a Twisted Tea, note that it essentially tastes exactly like a Snapple, yet somehow contains more alcohol than your average draft beer. They go down almost too smooth, which is something to keep in mind, as you can end up with quite the buzz if you are not careful. Not that that is a bad thing necessarily. I went with the Hawaii Five-0 ($9), which adds pineapple rum and a splash of pineapple juice to the tea. Again, you could barely taste the alcohol, even though there was plenty in there. It came served in a mason jar, which was a nice touch. It made for a perfectly refreshing cocktail for a spring day. Once we finished our tea party, I decided to have a look at the beer list. Dubliner has done a nice job with this, offering a mix of everything from American craft beers to IPAs and even a few shandies. Keeping with the warm weather/refreshing theme I went with the Aloha Traveler ($6), a pineapple shandy that was crisp and light the perfect bridge between the tea and the more traditional beers that were likely soon to come. As we wound down from our work day, I was incredibly pleased to note the musical selections that played were primarily 80s alt rock from England. In the course of a half hour, songs from New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Billy Idol were all played, which upped my mood considerably. I assume it was a coincidence and some wise soul had picked a few classics from the jukebox, but either way, it made me happy. Eventually hunger kicked in, as it always seems to do, and some chicken sliders and a pair of burgers called our names. The Kilarny sliders ($8.99) were passable, nothing special, basically a chicken tender on a bun with some lettuce and ranch dressing. The burgers, however, were superb. We sampled two very different options, one being the Andys Favorite ($9.98), which featured an 8-ounce patty topped with cheddar cheese and bacon, as well as lettuce, tomato and red onion. Cooked to a beautiful medium-rare and served on an onion roll, this burger was excellent. Yes, it was basically just a bacon cheeseburger, but it was a great bacon cheeseburger, and that is not always common. The second burger I must admit I have tried before, but it is so unusual and outstanding that I insisted we try it again. Its called the sweet chili burger ($9.98), and the name does it no favors, as it completely ignores all that makes this burger such a one-of-a-kind. What could be so unusual about a burger? Well, for starters they stuff the patty with cheese, then dunk it in batter and deep-fry it. Yes, at the end it gets a bit of sweet chili sauce smeared on top, which gives it its name. The burger is far from healthy, but it is delicious and oozing with cheese. The experience is like something you might only find at one of those county fairs where they deep-fry everything from butter to Kool-Aid. Its worth the calories. Get one today. After the rather decadent burgers, we were stuffed and decided to throw in the towel. We waked out more than satisfied, with each of us talking about when we would go back. While the Irishness of the Dubliner leaves a bit to be desired, the great drinks, solid beer list and incredible burgers have easily earned them their merit badge. GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP The Stockton University Campus Center food court was busy at lunchtime last week as students picked from Chick-fil-A, Primo Pizza, deli sandwiches and even sushi. But Josh Gant, 22, of Toms River, was eating in the N-wing cafeteria, which has a salad bar as well as grilled fish, Brussels sprouts and orzo. They have a lot of choice and healthy stuff, he said. Pleasing the culinary tastes of some 8,000 students, and keeping it affordable, is the job of Stephanie Moye, the local manager for Chartwells. The college board of trustees approves meal plan rates each year. Stockton offers seven meal plans ranging from about $1,000 to $2,200 per semester. The most expensive plan offers 19 meals per week, along with guest passes and flex dollars that can be used at any of the 14 dining sites on campus. The least expensive plan is five meals a week. The most popular plan, Moye said, provides a block of 25 meals plus $1,000 in flex dollars. How this Atlantic City family survives amid poverty ATLANTIC CITY Nicole Fischers hands moved methodically, chopping lettuce and tomatoes as Students want choice, and they want value, Moye said. But we know there are also students who cant afford a meal plan. Moye has worked with Stockton staff to hire some students, providing both a paycheck and a meal. The food court also has two microwaves so students can reheat food brought from home, a popular option for Jade Smolokoff, 22, of Tinton Falls, Monmouth County, who commutes. College staff have also offered cooking classes to show students how to eat healthy and affordably. We had some kids who have never cut up a fruit, said nutritionist Kim Raring. And students want to know how to eat healthier. Moye said more students are asking for vegetarian, gluten-free and healthy options. She is working on possibly adding a smoothie bar in the fall. Students love the options but said sometimes the unhealthy ones are hard to resist. But Id definitely go for smoothies, said Allie Desmond, 20, of Maryland. Offshore oil platforms are seen at the Bouri Oil Field off the coast of Libya Offshore oil platforms are seen at the Bouri Oil Field off the coast of Libya August 3, 2015.REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi By Julia Simon NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude prices were slightly lower after a volatile session on Thursday, as the restart of two key Libyan oilfields and concerns about lacklustre gasoline demand fed concern over whether major oil producers can alleviate the glut of global inventories. Libya's Sharara and El Feel oilfields, which can produce nearly 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), returned to production after protests blocking pipelines ended. U.S. gasoline futures led the energy complex lower in choppy trading, at one point hitting its lowest level seasonally in eight years after data on Wednesday showed inventories rose by the most in nearly three months. Brent crude (LCOc1) settled down 14 cents a barrel at $51.68. U.S. light crude (CLc1) was down 37 cents to $49.25 a barrel. Gasoline is kind of keeping crude from going up very much," said James Williams, president of energy consultant WTRG Economics in London, Arkansas. U.S. gasoline (RBc1) tumbled almost 2 percent to $1.559 a gallon. "Gasoline is leading the way lower with ample stocks, lower demand compared to last year, and an increase in gas(oline) stocks on the east coast," said Anthony Headrick of CHS Hedging. For the last four weeks gas demand is down 1.8 percent from last year. Global crude oil inventories have remained high, in part because of increased production from the United States. At 9.27 million bpd it is at its highest since August 2015, according to government data. Amid concerns about the persistent global oil glut the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are in talks to extend a six-month deal to cut 1.8 million bpd into the second half of the year. OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said although the oil oversupply was declining, stocks needed to fall further, in comments that pointed to an extension in cuts. Barkindo did not comment directly on whether the cut would be extended, but he said efforts were under way led by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who is OPEC president in 2017, to get a consensus before ministers meet in Vienna on May 25. The International Energy Agency said in its latest monthly market report that oil stocks in industrialised countries stood at around 3.06 billion barrels at the end of February, some 336 million barrels above the five-year average. (Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Chizu Nomiyama) VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Capstone Mining Corp. ("Capstone") (TSX: CS) today announced the voting results from its 2017 Annual General and Special Meeting held April 26, 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia. A total of 278,882,105 common shares were voted at the meeting, representing 71.27% of the votes attached to all outstanding common shares. Shareholders voted in favour of all items of business before the meeting, as follows: % of Votes in Favour % of Votes Withheld Director Nominees George L. Brack 97.89% 2.11% Robert J. Gallagher 98.81% 1.19% Jill V. Gardiner 98.85% 1.15% Soon Jin Kwon 99.79% 0.21% Kalidas Madhavpeddi 99.80% 0.20% Dale C. Peniuk 98.32% 1.68% Darren M. Pylot 99.84% 0.16% Richard N. Zimmer 99.76% 0.24% In Favour Against Incentive Stock Option and Bonus Share Plan 92.30% 7.70% Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation 85.87% 14.13% The resolution to set the number of directors at eight was approved by 99.87% of the votes cast for the resolution. Deloitte LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants were reappointed Capstone's auditors for the ensuing year by 85.41% of the votes cast. Detailed voting results for the 2017 Annual General Meeting are available on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com. About Capstone Mining Corp. Capstone Mining Corp. is a Canadian base metals mining company, focused on copper. We are committed to the responsible development of our assets and the environments in which we operate. Our three producing mines are the Pinto Valley copper mine located in Arizona, US, the Cozamin polymetallic mine in Zacatecas State, Mexico and the Minto copper mine in Yukon, Canada. In addition, Capstone has two development projects; the large scale 70% owned copper-iron Santo Domingo project in Region III, Chile, in partnership with Korea Resources Corporation, and the 100% owned Kutcho copper-zinc project in British Columbia, Canada, as well as exploration properties in Chile and US. Capstone's strategy is to focus on the optimization of operations and assets in politically stable, mining-friendly regions, centred in the Americas. Our headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and we are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Further information is available at http://www.capstonemining.com. Cindy Burnett, VP, Investor Relations and Communications, +1-604-637-8157, cburnett@capstonemining.com SOURCE Capstone Mining Corp. LONDON, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Column5 Consulting announces the release of the latest Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Study in conjunction with EPM International. EPM International is a unique alliance between five specialist Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) consultancies, bringing together over 500 EPM implementation and Finance Transformation specialists worldwide. This is the fourth time in the last 15 years that EPM International has carried out this extensive study, which looks at the EPM usage and implementation at nearly 80 large international companies from across Asia, Europe and North America. "The EPM Study is essential for companies to assess their performance and compare to that of their peers," Says David Den Boer, CEO of Column5 Consulting. "By putting forth tailored EPM benchmarks, companies can better understand their position within the marketplace, as well as learn how to improve their practices by looking at the characteristics of the top performers. It's exciting for Column5 to be part of something that really revolutionizes the status quo in the EPM market, and is a high impact asset for our team internally, as well as our valued clients and study participants." One objective of the EPM Study is to identify best practice processes and evaluate the performance of each participant against these best practices characteristics. All of the study participants are evaluated on a variety of key metrics that the EPM International team have identified as key indicators of effective Enterprise Performance Management based on their deep experience of EPM. Overall, the study ranks companies on two main dimensions- the speed and quality of their reporting processes. Understanding practices such as how finance team members spend their time, how frequently data is reported, key process and systems challenges in reporting and planning, timetables for planning and reporting and the approach to forecasting help EPM International evaluate the overall effectiveness of an organization's EPM processes and systems. The study report showcases trends of top performing companies, including surprising finds like the neutral effect of group size (often, large groups use their size to excuse longer reporting cycles), the importance of regular forecasting and the shift to weekly flash reporting. Participants in the study have access to where their company falls within the ranks of those who participated and are given specific insight into potential problem areas, improvement opportunities and what business benefits may arise from each. In addition to trends put forth by top performing companies, the study outlines key conclusions gleaned from the study of each key EPM process (Reporting, Budgeting and Forecasting), provides suggestions for coping with the rapidly changing financial environment and details the most current "hot-topics" in group finance. The full EPM Study Results Whitepaper is available for download via https://www.column5.com/epmi-epm-study. About EPM International EPM International is the only global integrated Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) consulting network. EPM is an umbrella term that describes all of the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems needed to measure and manage an organizations performance. The EPM International members are four leading EPM consultancies with operations in nine European, North American and Asian countries and over 600 consultants, working with many diverse companies across multiple industries including some of the world's largest multinational corporations. The members of EPM International are: Column5 Consulting Group, (USA, UK,), ifb group (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, China, Luxemburg, USA), ValorGest (Portugal), Capacent (Sweden, Norway, Finland), and MDS Ap ( Middle East, Turkey). www.epm-international.com About Column5 Column5 is the world's premier consulting firm dedicated to providing high-value services that help customers leverage the power of SAP's Enterprise Performance Management product suite. Column5 was founded in 2005 by key players from OutlookSoft, and quickly evolved into a global team of experts who are uniquely qualified to properly design and deliver comprehensive systems, addressing a wide range of industry and process-specific requirements. Column5's custom tailored solutions combine proven software with unparalleled technical skills and visionary enterprise performance management process expertise to deliver prompt return on investment, long-term independence and a competitive edge for our elite list of discerning clients. Additional information is available at http://www.column5.com. Contact: Jami Giovannini jgiovannini@column5.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/494757/Column5_Consulting_Logo.jpg Related Links http://www.column5.com SOURCE Column5 Consulting CAMBRIDGE, England, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Proximagen Limited (Proximagen) today announced that its pivotal Phase 3 trial of intranasal midazolam (USL261) for the rescue treatment of seizure clusters, met its primary efficacy endpoint in a top-level analysis of the data. Based on these findings, Proximagen will approach the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding its proposal to submit a 505(b)(2) New Drug Application (NDA) in the second half of this year. USL261 has been granted orphan drug designation and fast track designation for this use by the FDA. Findings from the trial will be presented at the upcoming Antiepileptic Drug and Device Trials (AEDD) meeting, May 17-19, 2017 in Adventura, Florida. USL261 is a novel, investigational midazolam formulation, specifically designed for intranasal delivery, being developed for the rescue treatment of seizures in patients who require control of intermittent bouts of increased seizure activity, such as seizure clusters or acute repetitive seizures. It is intended to be delivered intranasally, without active inhalation by the patient. "The primary efficacy results observed in the pivotal phase 3 clinical trial were both statistically and clinically significant. These findings suggest that midazolam nasal spray could be an effective rescue treatment option for patients and caregivers who live with seizure clusters, subject to FDA review," said Bill Pullman, MB, BS, BMedSc, PhD, FRACP, President, Proximagen. "This is an exciting development because to-date, rescue treatment options for seizure clusters have been very limited. We look forward to working with the FDA and submitting a new drug application for midazolam nasal spray later this year." "Given the challenges and unmet needs of those living with seizures, we are very encouraged by the results of the Phase 3 trial of midazolam nasal spray. While there is still work to be done to put this medication into the hands of patients, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our investigators, along with the teams at Upsher-Smith and Proximagen who have brought us to this major milestone," said Mark Evenstad, CEO of ACOVA. "I am very proud of the important work that Proximagen is doing to help patients and their families by discovering and developing innovative therapies." Proximagen's parent company Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. recently announced an agreement to sell its generics business to Sawai, a Japanese publicly traded and family run generics pharmaceutical company. Following closing of this acquisition, Proximagen will cease to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Upsher-Smith and will instead become a wholly-owned subsidiary of a newly created holding company, ACOVA. The Evenstad Family will continue to fund Proximagen through ACOVA. Proximagen will retain its existing pipeline of small molecule NCE programs, including two programs in clinical development. In addition, Upsher-Smith's intranasal midazolam program for seizure clusters (formerly known as USL261) will become part of Proximagen's pipeline. About Study P261-401 The study, ARTEMIS1 (Acute Rescue Therapy in Epilepsy with Midazolam Intranasal Spray) was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of USL261, an investigational formulation of midazolam delivered intranasally, for the outpatient rescue treatment of seizure clusters. The primary efficacy endpoint of the study was Treatment Success, defined as achieving both of the following: 1) termination of seizure(s) within 10 minutes after study drug administration, and 2) no recurrence of seizure(s) beginning 10 minutes after administration of study drug to six hours after study drug administration. To be eligible for the trial, participants had to have a diagnosis of epilepsy, a history of seizure clusters and an adult caregiver who could recognize, observe and record seizure cluster episodes. The adverse events observed with USL261 in this study were generally consistent with the known safety profile for midazolam, intranasal drug delivery, and those previously observed across the clinical development program to date. About Seizure Clusters Reports of seizure cluster prevalence vary depending on the population evaluated. Seizure clusters are associated with poor seizure control.1 In a study conducted in a tertiary epilepsy center in patients with a broad range of seizure control, the prevalence of seizure clusters was close to 30%.1 The number of epilepsy patients in the United States who experience seizure clusters has been estimated at 152,000.2,3,4,5 About Proximagen Proximagen and its predecessor companies have a long heritage in discovery and development of novel small molecule therapeutics, in particular in the areas of CNS, pain and inflammation, and was acquired by Upsher-Smith in 2012. Proximagen has an integrated drug discovery facility based in Cambridge, UK and has developed a pipeline of innovative small molecule therapeutics. The Proximagen pipeline includes a Phase II VAP-1 inhibitor program in inflammation that is partnered with Roche, as well as internal development programs including a CXCR4 antagonist in Phase I targeting oncology indications and a Dopamine D1 positive allosteric modulator in preclinical development targeting cognitive disorders. For more information, visit www.proximagen.com. 1. Haut SR, Shinnar S, and Moshe SL. Seizure Clustering: Risks and Outcomes. Epilepsia. 2005;46(1):146-149. 2. Kobau R, Zahran H, Thurman DJ, et al. Epilepsy Surveillance Among Adults 19 States, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2005. MMWR. 2008;57:SS-6. 3. Kwan P, Brodie MJ. Early Identification of Refractory Epilepsy. N Engl J Med. 2000;342:314-319. 4. Berg AT, Vickrey BG, Testa FM, et al. How long does it take for epilepsy to become intractable? A prospective investigation. Annals of Neurology. 2006;60:73-79. 5. Haut SR, Lipton RB, LeValley AJ, et al. Identifying seizure clusters in patients with epilepsy. Neurology. 2005 October 25;65(8):1313-1315. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/494832/Proximagen_Limited_Logo.jpg Related Links http://www.proximagen.com SOURCE Proximagen Limited WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) kicks off the 2017 Community Oncology Conference, the theme of which this year is "Fueling the Cancer Moonshot: Innovation in Community Oncology." The meeting, being held in National Harbor, MD from April 27 28, 2017, is expected to draw record-breaking attendance of more than 1,300 oncologists, administrators, nurses, pharmacists, industry leaders, and patient advocates. The 2017 Community Oncology Conference sessions will focus on furthering the lead community oncology practices have taken in delivering cutting-edge treatments, driving clinical trials and recruitment, and crafting innovative payment and delivery system reforms. For nearly a decade, community oncologists have been working with Medicare and private insurers to advance payment reform in cancer care, including the patient-centered Oncology Medical Home (OMH) model, the Oncology Care Model (OCM), and numerous private payer initiatives. "As front-line providers of cancer care, community oncology practices and the professionals that work in them, understand better than anyone the challenges our nation's cancer care system faces," said Jeff Vacirca, MD, FACP, oncologist, CEO of NY Cancer Specialists in Long Island, NY, and president of COA. "The Community Oncology Conference is an opportunity for everyone on the cancer care team - physicians, nurses, administrators, pharmacists, and others with real-world medical experience in cancer care to come together to exchange the ideas that will help advance viable, patient-centric solutions." The 2017 Community Oncology Conference keynote speaker this year is Scott Hamilton, Olympic Gold Medalist figure skater, cancer survivor and television personality. Scott will talk about his cancer journey and ongoing mission to improve cancer patient survivorship, research, and care. Additional highlights on the agenda include a panel on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) featuring Congressman Earl L. "Buddy" Carter (R-GA), a session for patient advocates led by retired Representative Ed Whitfield on how they can better work with Congress, and numerous sessions on what COA is referring to as "OCM 2.0", a universal, advanced oncology payment model. "The packed agenda at the 2017 Community Oncology Conference covers the timeliest topics in today's cancer care landscape, including how to survive MACRA, lessons learned from practices in the OCM, the tremendous growth of the 340B Program, issues and considerations in offering immuno-oncology to patients, and much more," said David Eagle, MD, physician at Lake Norman Oncology in Mooresville, North Carolina and Conference co-chair. The 2017 Community Oncology Conference offers three distinct agenda tracks with content covering clinical, business, and patient advocacy topics. This year, the Conference also features an abbreviated pharmacy track which will cover a wide variety of in-office pharmacy roadblocks and legal issues, including specialty pharmacy accreditation, PBMs, oral medication management, and more. Sessions at the 2017 Community Oncology Conference have been accredited as continuing education for physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. Pre-conference activities will include patient and advocate meetings on Capitol Hill with bipartisan members of Congress to discuss access to local, affordable cancer care. Presentations from the 2017 Community Oncology Conference: Fueling the Cancer Moonshot meeting will be posted online at www.COAConference.org. Follow along with the Conference on Twitter and Facebook using hashtag #COA2017. About the Community Oncology Alliance: The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) is a non-profit organization dedicated solely to preserving and protecting access to community cancer care, where the majority of Americans with cancer are treated. COA leads community cancer clinics in navigating an increasingly challenging environment to provide efficiencies, patient advocacy, and proactive solutions to Congress and policy makers. To learn more about COA visit www.CommunityOncology.org. SOURCE Community Oncology Alliance Related Links http://www.communityoncology.org The Carl Satterfield President's Award is bestowed at the discretion of the sitting NAHAM President. Named for Carl Satterfield, who was a dedicated founding member of NAHAM, this award honors his memory and legacy as a tireless past president of NAHAM. Mr. Shorrosh has been a member of the NAHAM Board of Directors for eight years, served as Chair of the Industry Standards Committee from 2014-2017, and was the NAHAM Southeast Regional Delegate from 2011-2014. In 2014, he received the Murray Rimmer Commitment to Excellence Award for significant contributions to the development of NAHAM. About NAHAM The National Association of Healthcare Access Management (NAHAM) is dedicated to promoting excellence in the management of patient access services in all areas of the healthcare delivery system. For more information, visit www.NAHAM.org or call 201-367-1125. About AccuReg AccuReg has been delivering revenue cycle and patient access innovation to the healthcare industry for more than a decade. Known throughout the healthcare industry as the company that built the top-ranked QA engine, AccuReg provides innovative solutions for the Patient Access Experience, Denials Prevention, POS Collections and Financial Assistance Screening which are optimized through Integrated Intelligence, a self-learning rules engine that identifies at-risk accounts, predicts patterns and re-calibrates rules to prevent errors. For more information, visit www.AccuRegSoftware.com or call 866-872-7498. SOURCE AccuReg Related Links http://www.accuregsoftware.com This award recognizes and celebrates a current or retired AIUM member whose body of work has significantly contributed to the growth and development of medical ultrasound. Each year, the membership committee nominates an individual for recognition, who then goes through a final approval process with the AIUM Board. Charlotte's long list of accomplishments and credentials as well as her service to AIUM, where she serves as the Board's 2nd Vice President, makes her more than deserving of this distinction. She's been a credentialed sonographer for over 30 years, and has worked as an educator for 26 years. She also served on the Board for the Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS) for 10 years, including serving as President. She has participated on task forces for the American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography (ARDMS}: in Neurosonology for six years and currently on the Latin America task force. She is also an accreditation site visitor for the Joint Review Committee on Education in Diagnostic Medical Sonography (JRCDMS). She chaired a three-year collaborative task force hosted by the SDMS that developed the first national educational curriculum for Sonography. Aside from role as ADU's Department Chair of Sonography, she is the Director of the Center for Advanced Ultrasound Education (CAUE), and as of May 1st will transition from her position as Chair to the Associate Vice President for Faculty Development in Teaching & Learning. As part of her role in creating and overseeing the CAUE, Charlotte teaches advanced education for sonographers, and provides education for graduate and residency programs. In addition to authoring several articles published in the Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography, she co-authored the textbook, Clinical Guide to Sonography 2nd Edition. About American Institute of Ultrasound Medicine (AIUM) The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine is a multidisciplinary medical association of more than 9000 physicians, sonographers, scientists, students, and other health care providers. Established more than 50 years ago, the AIUM is dedicated to advancing the safe and effective use of ultrasound in medicine through professional and public education, research, development of guidelines, and accreditation. About Adventist University of Health Sciences (ADU) Adventist University of Health Sciences (ADU) is a Seventh-day Adventist institution specializing in healthcare education in a faith-affirming environment. Service-oriented and guided by the values of nurture, excellence, spirituality, and stewardship, the University seeks to develop leaders who will practice healthcare as a ministry. ADU fulfills this mission by developing skilled professionals who live the healing values of Christ. ADU offers undergraduate and graduate programs including: Biomedical Sciences, Diagnostic Medical Sonography, Health Sciences, Radiography, Nuclear Medicine Technology, Nursing (BSN), Nurse Anesthesia, Occupational Therapy, Healthcare Administration, Physician Assistant, and Physical Therapy. The University is associated with Florida Hospital and the Adventist Health System. ADU embraces the benefit of whole person care as demonstrated in the life and ministry of Christ. The University is dedicated to developing skilled professionals who live the healing values of Christ. Graduates who live these values effectively extend the healing ministry of Christ. SOURCE Adventist University of Health Sciences Related Links http://www.adu.edu AEG Power Solutions, a global provider of power electronic systems and solutions for industrial power supplies and renewable energy applications, today announced Protect Plus S500, its new transformer-less UPS that combines high efficiency values with a compact footprint and flexible configurations. Reducing overall cost of ownership, this latest addition to AEG PS range is the system of choice to protect critical loads for small and medium applications where low power consumption, ease of maintenance and space are important considerations. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/495167/Protect_Plus_S500.jpg ) With Protect Plus S500 AEG Power Solutions is completing its transformer-less UPS range, protecting mission critical applications from 400 VA to 4 MVA, thus providing Data &IT or industrial players the solution of choice they need to secure power and ultimately data, infrastructure or people. The Protect Plus S500 is a double conversion UPS (VFI SS 111). Its Eco mode allows secured operation up to 99%, thus reducing the utility costs associated with operating a device of this type. Moreover, it produces less heat waste resulting in minimized air conditioning costs. System AC/AC efficiency is up to 95.5%. Primarily designed for high availability ease of maintenance is an integrated design factor for the Protect Plus S500 which includes removal able internal modules contributing to low MTTR (mean time to Repair). The hot connection and disconnection of parallel units and the CAN bus based distributed control systems, ensures optimum load sharing and allows the system to be easily expanded up to six units, both in power parallel or N+x redundancy. The wide range of options available makes this UPS ready for all the business critical applications. "Since over two years now, AEG Power Solutions has built momentum in bringing to Data & It processes the power protection they need. The company has proven tracked records in the toughest and most complex industrial environments, from off-shore Oil platform to nuclear power plants," explains Alessandro Nalbone, product manager Data & IT UPS. "We are happy to serve now Data &IT applications with our expertise and an extensive three phase UPS range from 10 to 4000 kVA." Protect Plus S500 is already available and can be ordered from any AEG Power Solutions sales office or distributor. About AEG Power Solutions AEG Power Solutions (AEG PS) Group is a global provider of power electronics systems and solutions for all industrial and demanding commercial power requirements offering one of the most comprehensive product and service portfolios in the area of uninterruptible power supply and power management. Thanks to its distinctive expertise bridging both AC and DC power technologies and spanning the worlds of both conventional and renewable energy, the company creates innovative solutions for next generation distributed power generation. AEG Power Solutions Group is the sole subsidiary of the holding company 3W Power S.A. (WKN A114Z9) / ISINLU1072910919), based in Luxembourg. The Group is headquartered in Zwanenburg in the Netherlands. The shares of 3W Power are admitted to trading on Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: 3W9K). For more information, visit http://www.aegps.com. This communication does not constitute an offer or the solicitation of an offer to buy, sell or exchange any securities of 3W Power. This communication contains forward-looking statements which include, inter alia, statements expressing our expectations, intentions, projections, estimates, and assumptions. These forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable evaluation and opinion of the management but are subject to risks and uncertainties which are beyond the control of 3W Power and, as a general rule, difficult to predict. The management and the company cannot and do not, under any circumstances, guarantee future results or performance of 3W Power and the actual results of 3W Power may materially differ from the information expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, investors are cautioned against relying on the forward-looking statements contained herein as a basis for their investment decisions regarding 3W Power. 3W Power undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement contained herein. SOURCE AEG Power Solutions TOKYO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ajinomoto Co., Inc. ("Ajinomoto Co."; Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Takaaki Nishii) and the No. 1 UMI Limited Partnership managed and operated by Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. ("UMI"; Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Managing Director: Seiichi Tsukioka), Professor Hideo Hosono, Director of Materials Research Center for Element Strategy at Tokyo Institute of Technology, have established Tsubame BHB Co., Ltd. ("Tsubame BHB"), which strives to achieve practical applications for the world's first on-site ammonia synthesis systems, with the support of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and using applying catalysts developed by Hosono's research group. The new company began operations on April 25, 2017. Amino acids and proteins are the building blocks of life. Each contains nitrogen1, an essential element for biological function. Ammonia is an important source of nitrogen, and over 160 million tons of ammonia are produced annually worldwide. Approximately 80% of this volume is used as raw material for fertilizers, and the remaining 20% is used for a variety of food products, pharmaceuticals, and chemical products. *1 Nitrogen gas makes up approximately 78% of the Earth's atmosphere. The element Nitrogen is essential to all life on Earth. Today, ammonia is mainly produced using the Haber-Bosch process, a method invented over 100 years ago. The Haber-Bosch process, which is used broadly throughout the world, is an outstanding production technology that enables synthesis of ammonia using only nitrogen from the air and hydrogen2 obtained mainly from natural gas. There are issues in the use of the Haber-Bosch process, however, in that reactions require high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, so concentrated, high-volume production must be undertaken at a single large-scale plant that consumes huge amounts of energy and entailing substantial capital investment. Furthermore, transporting ammonia from production sites to areas of demand throughout the world also necessitates specialized transport equipment and storage facilities, resulting in considerable logistics costs. *2 Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, has received attention in recent years as a source of clean energy; for example, as fuel for fuel cell vehicles. In response to these issues, Prof. Hosono and his group discovered and invented a catalyst that differs completely from catalysts used in the Haber-Bosch process, through the R&D Project "Materials Science and Application of Electrides" being undertaken as part of JST's Strategic Basic Research Programs (ACCEL)3. This catalyst enables highly efficient ammonia synthesis under low-temperature and low-pressure conditions. These low-temperature and low-pressure reaction conditions make it possible to produce ammonia even in small-scale plants, where production was considered difficult in the past. In the future, the practical application of these technologies is expected to form the foundation of a model for the world's first on-site ammonia production, through which ammonia can be produced where it is needed, and in the volumes required. *3 As one of the projects conducted by JST, the goal of ACCEL is to identify outstanding research results that have the potential to be the world-leading, but where companies and other private entities might find it difficult to judge the risks. Program Managers lead R&D targeting new innovations, thereby supporting R&D activities by companies, venture startups, and other organizations. (Research Director: Hideo Hosono; Program Manager: Toshiharu Yokoyama) Ajinomoto Co. produces various types of amino acids, including glutamic acid, and other fermentation materials by using large volumes of ammonia as a raw material, so the company has long been captivated by the revolutionary fundamental technologies discovered and invented by Prof. Hosono and his group to achieve the low-cost, stable supply of ammonia. As such, Ajinomoto Co. has been involved in joint development targeting the practical application of these technologies. In collaboration with Tsubame BHB, Ajinomoto Co. has been working toward achieving on-site ammonia production at its own plants, with the intention of using this as a driver to increase the cost competitiveness of its fermentation materials, and to contribute to coexistence with the Earth by reducing energy consumption and minimizing environmental impact from the production and transport of the fermentation sub raw material. Prof. Hosono of Tokyo Institute of Technology will serve as a technical advisor for Tsubame BHB, and support the development of applications for the new catalyst. In addition, joint research by Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tsubame BHB will further promote R&D targeting high-efficiency catalysts. JST and Tokyo Institute of Technology license patents for the new catalysts developed by Hosono's research group to Tsubame BHB as a foundation for on-site ammonia production technologies, and support Tsubame BHB's operations. UMI will provide Tsubame BHB with the capital required to undertake its business operations in the future, and will also provide management support, for example by dispatching directors and other management staffs, and by strengthening the business development structure. Through these activities, UMI will strive to create success cases in the social implementation of promising academic seeds in the fields of materials and chemistry, and will contribute to the formation of ecosystems in these fields. Tsubame BHB will introduce these technologies at Ajinomoto Co.'s fermentation material plants worldwide, and will aim to implement the world's first on-site ammonia production by around 2021. In the future, in collaboration with Ajinomoto Co. as well as a variety of partner companies, Tsubame BHB will strive to expand applications in areas such as agricultural fertilizers, food products, pharmaceuticals, and chemical products, contributing to society through the creation of sustainable, environment-friendly production systems. About Tsubame BHB Co., Ltd. Principal Office : 8-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo R&D base : 4259 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa Tokyo Institute of Technology, Suzukakedai Campus Chief Executive Officer : Hideo Nakatani Established : April 5, 2017 Start of business : April 25, 2017 Total investment : JPY 450 million Capital structure : No. 1 UMI Limited Partnership: 53% Ajinomoto Co., Inc.: 44% Prof. Hosono and others: 3% Outline of business : R&D and manufacturing involving on-site ammonia production systems and catalysts [Ref. 1] Outline of academic entities involved in the new technologies Tokyo Institute of Technology Tokyo Institute of Technology is a national university with a history spanning more than 130 years since its inception, and is considered Japan's top science and engineering university. It offers a creative approach to education with an emphasis on the spirit of Japanese "Monotsukuri" (production), and has turned out many outstanding Japanese leaders in the fields of industry and science. It fosters individuals who combine strong fundamental capabilities and scientific specialization with training in social sciences and the humanities, and who demonstrate communication skills that can be utilized effectively on the global stage. Japan Science and Technology Agency JST is a national R&D organization under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Its main goal is to promote science and technology in Japan through a wide range of activities including fundamental research, platform R&D, development of new technologies for industrialization, distribution of information, and putting in place platforms. As part of efforts to achieve rich and happy lifestyles for all citizens, it contributes to the creation of new value, and promotes science and technology to open up a new future for Japan. [Ref. 2] Outline of investing companies Ajinomoto Co., Inc. Head Office : 1-15-1 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo President : Takaaki Nishii Founded : May 20, 1909 (established December 17, 1925) Capital : JPY 79,863 million (as of March 31, 2016) Sales : JPY 1,185,980 million (year ended March 2016; consolidated base) Employees : 33,295 (as of March 31, 2016; consolidated base) Outline of business : Manufacture and sale of seasonings and processed foods, frozen foods, coffees, umami seasonings for processed food manufacturers, sweeteners, animal nutrition, specialty chemicals, amino acids, and pharmaceuticals No. 1 UMI Limited Partnership ("UMI Fund") Head Office : 8-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo Administrative member : Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. Formed : January 1, 2016 Total investment : JPY 10,010 million Goal of formation : To invest in and foster venture companies in the materials and chemical industries Investors : Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ); materials and chemical companies listed on the 1st Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (9 companies) Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. (UMI) Head Office : 8-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo Managing Director : Seiichi Tsukioka Established : October 6, 2015 UMI invests in outstanding new technologies and businesses in the fields of materials and chemicals that form the foundations for future industry, originating from both Japanese companies and academia, based on the vision of "Strengthening Japan's engineering capabilities and cultivating an industry structure that can compete in the global arena, by fostering outstanding material/chemical companies." SOURCE Tokyo Institute of Technology DUBLIN, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Allergan plc, a leading global biopharmaceutical company, today announced Hani Zeini has joined the Company as a strategic advisor. In this role, Zeini will advise the Allergan Medical Aesthetics team on strategic business initiatives, as well as, commercial and marketing efforts, and will work directly with David Moatazedi, Senior Vice President of Medical Aesthetics at Allergan. "We are excited to welcome a true visionary in the industry, Hani Zeini to Allergan's world-class medical aesthetics team," said Moatazedi. "Hani is a pioneer in plastic surgery and has been an industry leader that has helped to shape this exciting and fast growing space. Hani and I share a passion for this specialty. We will be working closely together to shape the future of medical aesthetics remaining laser focused on our vision to double the Aesthetic Market by 2020." "I am thrilled by this unique opportunity and humbled by such acknowledgment. After nearly two decades in the aesthetics space, my long-term personal goal is to nurture and enhance our plastic surgery ecosystem," said Hani Zeini. "Allergan and I share an unwavering commitment to the specialty and there is no better positioned leader in the aesthetic market for me to partner with in pursuit of our shared values. Allergan's commitment and progressive thinking, as demonstrated through strategic acquisitions, has resulted in a first-in-class innovative aesthetics platform with scale and a breadth of resources. This commitment and vision is what attracted me to partner with Allergan and I look forward to working with David and his team to deliver on these high value, high impact goals." Mr. Zeini is a successful business leader who in 2006 founded Sientra, a medical device company focused on the Aesthetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery markets utilizing implantable silicone technology. He served as Sientra's Chief Executive Officer until 2015, and previously served as Executive Vice President of Inamed Aesthetics, which was subsequently acquired by Allergan. Zeini started his career at the Dupont Pharmaceuticals Company where he spent over 12 years in a variety of positions with increasing responsibility in sales, marketing and general management culminating with his role as Senior Vice President, Global Health Systems. Zeini holds a Bachelor's of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. In 2003, he completed the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. About Allergan plc Allergan plc, 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, surgical 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. CONTACTS: Allergan: Investors: Karina Calzadilla (862) 261-7328 Media: Mark Marmur (862) 261-7558 SOURCE Allergan plc Related Links http://www.allergan.com By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's high court sent a jailed academic and critic of veteran President Yoweri Museveni back to prison on Wednesday and cleared the way for a compulsory mental examination, her lawyer told Reuters. Stella Nyanzi, a university research fellow and lecturer, has been incarcerated more than two weeks since the East African country charged her with electronic communications offences. The offences stem from posts on her popular Facebook page where she has criticized Museveni and his wife for breaking an election pledge to offer free sanitary pads to schoolgirls. Museveni's wife is Uganda's education minister. The academic appeared at the high court to seek bail after a lower court refused to hear the case. She also wanted the high court to stop the lower magistrate's court considering the state's request to order a mental examination for her. Eron Kiiza, one of Nyanzi's lawyers, told Reuters the judge ordered the magistrate's court to hear her bail application, and sent her back to prison until May 10. "The high court did also say the... proceedings for her mental examination should continue and be expedited," Kiiza said. When she was initially charged, state prosecutors asked the court to order a mental examination. Nyanzi's legal team objected to the request and one of her attorneys has said authorities are aiming to have the academic declared "a fool, a mad person" which would qualify her to be confined as a mental patient. Rights activists and government critics say Museveni, 72, in power for more than three decades, is increasingly intolerant of dissent and also accuse him of widespread rights violations. Opposition protests in Uganda are routinely broken up with teargas, arrests and beatings. Nyanzi's Facebook posts, which often mix government criticism with sexual profanities, have earned her wide support among Ugandan opposition supporters. According the charge sheet, the state accuses her among others of calling Museveni a "a pair of buttocks" and his wife "empty-brained." (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Duncan Miriri and Ralph Boulton) INDIANAPOLIS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Allison Transmission Holdings Inc. (NYSE: ALSN) today announced that G. Frederick Bohley III, vice president of finance, will present at The Oppenheimer 12th Annual Industrial Growth Conference at the Westin Grand Central Hotel in New York on May 9. Bohley will present at 10:45 a.m. EDT. The presentation materials and webcast will be available on the Allison website at http://ir.allisontransmission.com. A replay of the webcast will remain available on the company's website for 90 days. About Allison Transmission Allison Transmission (NYSE: ALSN) is the world's largest manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles and is a leader in hybrid-propulsion systems for city buses. Allison transmissions are used in a variety of applications including refuse, construction, fire, distribution, bus, motorhomes, defense and energy. Founded in 1915, the company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA and employs approximately 2,600 people worldwide. With a market presence in more than 80 countries, Allison has regional headquarters in the Netherlands, China and Brazil with manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Hungary and India. Allison also has approximately 1,400 independent distributor and dealer locations worldwide. For more information, visit www.allisontransmission.com. SOURCE Allison Transmission Holdings Inc. Related Links http://www.allisontransmission.com "The Best-of-the-Best designation is the top corporate honor bestowed for commitments to America's diverse employees and business owners, which includes LGBT, people of color, women, and people with disabilities. This designation is not easily earned, making it all the more prized," said NGLCC Co-Founder and President Justin Nelson . "We have already seen the bar rise for corporate inclusion since last year's inaugural list was named. By recognizing these industry leaders and the policymakers who collaborate with them as the 'Best-of-the-Best', we are further shaping a better future for all diverse communities in business. Together we reaffirm our common, ongoing mission to improve business inclusion among Fortune 500 corporations and government agencies across America." NGLCC formed the National Business Inclusion Consortium in 2011, and its members represent a total of over $9 trillion in annual economic strength along with significant contributions to the marketplace and workplace. Only companies achieving industry leading results across all diverse segments are eligible to receive the prestigious Best-of-the-Best designation from the NBIC, whose members include the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC); U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. (USBC); U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC); U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (USPAAC); U.S. Business Leadership Network (USBLN); Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC); and WEConnect International. Criteria required to be named a 2017 Best-of-the-Best corporation includes the completion of a detailed survey of an organization's inclusive programs, which may involve Supplier Diversity initiatives, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and workplace engagement opportunities, and diverse marketplace and community engagements. Additionally, a detailed report of policies and achievements in the diversity and inclusion space--along with recognition or ratings such as the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, the U.S. Business Leadership Network's Disability Equality Index, or Diversity Inc.'s Top 50 is weighted and reviewed by a committee of NBIC leaders. The 2017 Best-of-the-Best Corporations for Inclusion are: Accenture Allstate Insurance Company American Airlines Apple AT&T Bank of America Bristol-Myers Squibb Capital One Chevron Comcast NBCUniversal Corning Cummins Inc. CVS Health Delhaize America DuPont EY Fannie Mae Fidelity Investments Freddie Mac General Motors GlaxoSmithKline Health Care Service Corporation Hilton IBM Intel Corporation JPMorgan Chase & Co. Kellogg Company KeyBank KPMG Marriott International Merck Nationwide New York Life Insurance Northrop Grumman Pfizer Pacific Gas & Electric Company PNC Financial Services Group Prudential Sodexo Southwest Airlines Co. SunTrust Bank TD Bank TIAA UPS Wells Fargo The 2017 Best-of-the-Best Program or Initiative of the Year is: Wells Fargo's Chamber Training Institute. The announcement of those honored with the Best-of-the-Best designation was made at the second annual Best-of-the-Best Awards Gala held at The Mayflower Hotel on April 26, 2017. Bank of America, a Best-of-the-Best corporation, was the evening's presenting sponsor. Advocacy honorees included The Honorable Linda Sanchez, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus; entrepreneur and LGBT advocate Lisa Vanderpump; and model and advocate for the deaf community Nyle DiMarco. Washington Post columnist & MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart served as Master of Ceremonies; Eric Ulloa of Broadway's On Your Feet sang the National Anthem. Actress, performer, and activist Whoopi Goldberg sent a congratulatory message and shared her commitment to promoting diversity. "When a company's competitors see them listed as a Best-of-the-Best company, they will immediately move to innovate toward greater diversity & inclusion. Being the Best-of-the-Best means pushing one another to keep innovating the ways we do business to be more inclusive and successful than ever," says NGLCC Co-Founder and CEO Chance Mitchell. "Each year that we get back together to celebrate the Best-of-the-Best we will undoubtedly see more and more companies achieve unprecedented excellence in support of their diverse employees and suppliers. Diversity and inclusion are good for competition; and that's good for business." ABOUT NGLCC: The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is the business voice of the LGBT community and is the largest global organization specifically dedicated to expanding economic opportunities and advancements for LGBT people. NGLCC is the exclusive certification body for LGBT-owned businesses. www.nglcc.org MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Lovitz Senior Vice President, NGLCC National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) [email protected] 954-695-5896 @nglcc SOURCE National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Related Links http://www.nglcc.org ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) today reported its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017. Management will host a webcast conference call to discuss these results on Friday, April 28, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. ET/8:00 a.m. CT. To listen to the call, and for printer-friendly formats of this release and the "Supplemental Quarterly Data" and "CFO Commentary," which may also be referenced during the call, please visit ajg.com/IR. These documents contain both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Investors and other users of this information should read carefully the section entitled "Information Regarding Non-GAAP Measures" beginning on page 7. Summary of Financial Results First Quarter Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures begin on page 2 (Dollars in millions, except per share data) 1st Q 2017 1st Q 2016 Change Reported Adjusted Reported Adjusted Reported Adjusted Brokerage Segment GAAP Non-GAAP GAAP Non-GAAP GAAP Non-GAAP Revenues $ 878.5 $ 877.1 $ 825.5 $ 809.1 6% 8% Organic revenues $ 815.7 $ 794.0 2.7% Net earnings $ 78.1 $ 65.9 19% Net earnings margin 8.9% 8.0% +91 bpts Adjusted EBITDAC $ 215.7 $ 189.2 14% Adjusted EBITDAC margin 24.6% 23.4% +121 bpts Diluted net earnings per share $ 0.40 $ 0.46 $ 0.35 $ 0.40 14% 15% Risk Management Segment Revenues $ 182.6 $ 182.6 $ 179.3 $ 179.8 2% 2% Organic revenues $ 182.5 $ 179.6 1.6% Net earnings $ 14.3 $ 15.0 -5% Net earnings margin 7.8% 8.4% -54 bpts Adjusted EBITDAC $ 31.2 $ 32.0 -3% Adjusted EBITDAC margin 17.1% 17.8% -71 bpts Diluted net earnings per share $ 0.08 $ 0.08 $ 0.08 $ 0.09 0% -11% Corporate Segment Diluted net earnings (loss) per share $ (0.17) $ (0.14) $ (0.17) $ (0.15) 0% 7% Total Company Diluted net earnings per share $ 0.31 $ 0.40 $ 0.26 $ 0.34 19% 18% "We had an excellent start to 2017. Coming off a terrific 2016, we delivered solid organic growth, outstanding revenue growth from our tuck-in M&A strategy and strong margin expansion in the first quarter," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "Our unique culture is thriving around the world, demonstrated by being selected as a World's Most Ethical Company for the sixth year in a row by the Ethisphere Institute. Our global businesses are working well together, the team is energized and we are successfully executing our strategies. We are well positioned for the remainder of 2017." (1 of 12) Quarter Ended March 31 Reported GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Reconciliation: Diluted Net Revenues Net Earnings EBITDAC Earnings Per Share Segment 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 (in millions) (in millions) (in millions) Brokerage, as reported $ 878.5 $ 825.5 $ 78.1 $ 65.9 $ 208.0 $ 176.8 $ 0.40 $ 0.35 Gains on book sales (1.4) (2.2) (1.0) (1.5) (1.4) (2.2) - (0.01) Acquisition integration - - 2.0 10.0 2.9 14.2 0.01 0.06 Workforce & lease termination - - 2.7 1.1 3.9 1.6 0.02 - Acquisition related adjustments - - 6.2 0.3 2.3 0.8 0.03 - Levelized foreign currency translation - (14.2) - (0.6) - (2.0) - - Brokerage, as adjusted * 877.1 809.1 88.0 75.2 215.7 189.2 0.46 0.40 Risk Management, as reported 182.6 179.3 14.3 15.0 31.0 31.0 0.08 0.08 Workforce & lease termination - - 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.5 - 0.01 Levelized foreign currency translation - 0.5 - 0.3 - 0.5 - - Risk Management, as adjusted * 182.6 179.8 14.4 15.6 31.2 32.0 0.08 0.09 Corporate, as reported 351.6 295.6 (24.6) (23.0) (51.2) (38.4) (0.17) (0.17) Litigation settlement - - 4.4 3.7 5.5 4.7 0.02 0.02 Home office lease termination/move - - 2.4 - 4.0 - 0.01 - Corporate, as adjusted * 351.6 295.6 (17.8) (19.3) (41.7) (33.7) (0.14) (0.15) Total Company, as reported $ 1,412.7 $ 1,300.4 $ 67.8 $ 57.9 $ 187.8 $ 169.4 $ 0.31 $ 0.26 Total Company, as adjusted * $ 1,411.3 $ 1,284.5 $ 84.6 $ 71.5 $ 205.2 $ 187.5 $ 0.40 $ 0.34 Total Brokerage & Risk Management, as reported $ 1,061.1 $ 1,004.8 $ 92.4 $ 80.9 $ 239.0 $ 207.8 $ 0.48 $ 0.43 Total Brokerage & Risk Management, as adjusted * $ 1,059.7 $ 988.9 $ 102.4 $ 90.8 $ 246.9 $ 221.2 $ 0.54 $ 0.49 * For 2017, the pretax impact of the Brokerage Segment adjustments totals $14.4 million, with a corresponding adjustment to the provision for income taxes of $4.5 million relating to these items. The pretax impact of the Risk Management Segment adjustments totals $0.2 million, with a corresponding adjustment to the provision for income taxes of $0.1 million relating to these items. The pretax impact of the Corporate Segment adjustments totals $9.5 million, with a corresponding adjustment to the provision for income taxes of $2.7 million relating to these items. A detailed reconciliation of the 2017 and 2016 provision for income taxes is shown on page 12. (2 of 12) Brokerage Segment Reported GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Reconciliations (dollars in millions): Organic Revenues (Non-GAAP) 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Change Base Commissions and Fees Commissions and fees, as reported $ 778.5 $ 725.1 7.4% Less commissions and fees from acquisitions (47.0) - Less disposed of operations - (1.4) Levelized foreign currency translation - (12.9) Organic base commissions and fees $ 731.5 $ 710.8 2.9% Supplemental Commissions Supplemental commissions, as reported $ 34.5 $ 32.9 4.9% Less supplemental commissions from acquisitions (1.2) - Less disposed of operations - (0.1) Levelized foreign currency translation - (1.4) Organic supplemental commissions $ 33.3 $ 31.4 6.1% Contingent Commissions Contingent commissions, as reported $ 53.4 $ 55.2 -3.3% Less contingent commissions from acquisitions (2.5) - Less disposed of operations - (2.8) Levelized foreign currency translation - (0.6) Organic contingent commissions $ 50.9 $ 51.8 -1.7% Total reported commissions, fees, supplemental $ 866.4 $ 813.2 6.5% Less commissions and fees from acquisitions (50.7) - Less disposed of operations - (4.3) Levelized foreign currency translation - (14.9) Total organic commissions, fees, supplemental $ 815.7 $ 794.0 2.7% Our domestic and international operations both posted growth similar to the 2.9% growth in organic commission and fee revenues for first quarter 2017. Acquisition Activity 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Number of acquisitions closed * 12 8 Estimated annualized revenues acquired (in millions) $ 62.5 $ 30.0 * Gallagher issued 259,000 shares in connection with tax-free exchange acquisitions in first quarter 2017, which had been pre-purchased in mid-2016. (3 of 12) Brokerage Segment Reported GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Reconciliations (continued): Compensation Expense and Ratios 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Compensation expense, as reported $ 525.5 $ 492.9 Acquisition integration (1) (1.1) (4.6) Workforce and lease termination related charges (3.5) (1.3) Acquisition related adjustments (2.3) (0.8) Levelized foreign currency translation - (10.0) Compensation expense, as adjusted $ 518.6 $ 476.2 Reported compensation expense ratios using reported revenues on page 2 * 59.8% 59.7% Adjusted compensation expense ratios using adjusted revenues on page 2 * 59.1% 58.9% * Reported first quarter compensation ratio was 0.1 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Adjusted first quarter compensation ratio was 0.2 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Both ratios were primarily impacted by an increase in stock compensation costs related to the increase in our stock price, partially offset by savings in employee benefits. Operating Expense and Ratios 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Operating expense, as reported $ 145.0 $ 155.8 Acquisition integration (1) (1.8) (9.6) Workforce and lease termination related charges (0.4) (0.3) Levelized foreign currency translation - (2.2) Operating expense, as adjusted $ 142.8 $ 143.7 Reported operating expense ratios using reported revenues on page 2 * 16.5% 18.9% Adjusted operating expense ratios using adjusted revenues on page 2 ** 16.3% 17.8% * Reported first quarter operating expense ratio was 2.4 pts lower than the same period in 2016. This ratio was primarily impacted by lesser integration costs such as technology and lease termination charges, and business insurance. ** Adjusted first quarter operating expense ratio was 1.5 pts lower than the same period in 2016. This ratio was primarily impacted by savings in real estate, business insurance and office supplies. Net Earnings to Adjusted EBITDAC (Non-GAAP) 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Change Net earnings, as reported $ 78.1 $ 65.9 18.5% Provision for income taxes 39.6 34.1 Depreciation 14.9 14.0 Amortization 63.6 58.9 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables 11.8 3.9 EBITDAC 208.0 176.8 17.7% Gains from books of business sales (1.4) (2.2) Acquisition integration (1) 2.9 14.2 Acquisition related adjustments 2.3 0.8 Workforce and lease termination related charges 3.9 1.6 Levelized foreign currency translation - (2.0) EBITDAC, as adjusted $ 215.7 $ 189.2 14.0% Net earnings margin, as reported using reported revenues on page 2 8.9% 8.0% +91 bpts EBITDAC margin, as adjusted using adjusted revenues on page 2 24.6% 23.4% +121 bpts (1) Acquisition integration costs consist mostly of IT system conversion costs, professional fees and compensation related to certain of our large acquisitions outside the scope of our usual tuck-in strategy. (4 of 12) Risk Management Segment Reported GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Reconciliations (dollars in millions): Organic Revenues (Non-GAAP) 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Change Fees * $ 180.8 $ 177.3 2.0% International performance bonus fees 1.7 1.8 -5.6% Fees as reported 182.5 179.1 1.9% Levelized foreign currency translation - 0.5 Organic fees * $ 182.5 $ 179.6 1.6% * Organic fee growth was hampered by a law change in South Australia, which capped the time an injured worker can receive benefits. A shorter claim life also effectively reduced our revenues in the first quarter by $2.2 million which had an adverse impact on our organic growth of 1.2%. We expect a similar impact for remaining three quarters of 2017. Compensation Expense and Ratios 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Compensation expense, as reported $ 107.8 $ 105.5 Workforce and lease termination related charges (0.2) (0.5) Levelized foreign currency translation - - Compensation expense, as adjusted $ 107.6 $ 105.0 Reported compensation expense ratios using reported revenues on page 2 * 59.0% 58.8% Adjusted compensation expense ratios using adjusted revenues on page 2 * 58.9% 58.4% * Reported first quarter compensation ratio was 0.2 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Adjusted first quarter compensation ratio was 0.5 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Both ratios were primarily impacted by an increase in base and incentive compensation, partially offset by savings in employee benefits. Operating Expense and Ratios 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Operating expense, as reported $ 43.8 $ 42.8 Levelized foreign currency translation - - Operating expense, as adjusted $ 43.8 $ 42.8 Reported operating expense ratios using reported revenues on page 2 * 24.0% 23.9% Adjusted operating expense ratios using adjusted revenues on page 2 * 24.0% 23.8% * Reported first quarter operating expense ratio was 0.1 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Adjusted first quarter operating expense ratio was 0.2 pts higher than the same period in 2016. Both ratios were primarily impacted by an increase in professional fees from our vendor-related revenues, partially offset by savings in office supplies and technology expenses. Net Earnings to Adjusted EBITDAC (Non-GAAP) 1st Q 17 1st Q 16 Change Net earnings, as reported $ 14.3 $ 15.0 -4.7% Provision for income taxes 8.6 9.0 Depreciation 7.4 6.6 Amortization 0.7 0.4 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables - - EBITDAC 31.0 31.0 0.0% Workforce and lease termination related charges 0.2 0.5 Levelized foreign currency translation - 0.5 EBITDAC, as adjusted $ 31.2 $ 32.0 -2.5% Net earnings margin, as reported using reported revenues on page 2 7.8% 8.4% -54 bpts EBITDAC margin, as adjusted using adjusted revenues on page 2 17.1% 17.8% -71 bpts (5 of 12) Corporate Segment Reported GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Reconciliations (dollars in millions): 2017 2016 Net Earnings Net Earnings Pretax Income Attributable to Pretax Income Attributable to Earnings Tax Controlling Earnings Tax Controlling (Loss) Benefit Interests (Loss) Benefit Interests 1st Quarter Interest and banking costs $ (30.7) $ 12.3 $ (18.4) $ (26.3) $ 10.5 $ (15.8) Clean energy related (1) (40.4) 39.5 (0.9) (33.9) 31.2 (2.7) Acquisition costs (2.7) 0.7 (2.0) (1.7) 0.3 (1.4) Corporate (11.8) 8.5 (3.3) (8.6) 2.3 (6.3) Litigation settlement (5.5) 1.1 (4.4) (4.7) 1.0 (3.7) Home office lease termination/move (4.0) 1.6 (2.4) - - - Reported 1st quarter (95.1) 63.7 (31.4) (75.2) 45.3 (29.9) Litigation settlement 5.5 (1.1) 4.4 4.7 (1.0) 3.7 Home office lease termination/move 4.0 (1.6) 2.4 - - - Adjusted 1st quarter $ (85.6) $ 61.0 $ (24.6) $ (70.5) $ 44.3 $ (26.2) (1) Pretax earnings for the first quarter are presented net of amounts attributable to noncontrolling interests of $6.8 million in 2017 and $6.9 million in 2016. Interest and banking costs and debt - At March 31, 2017, Gallagher had $2,450.0 million of borrowings from private placements, $395.0 million of short-term borrowings under its line of credit facility and $104.4 million outstanding under a revolving loan facility that provides funding for premium finance receivables, which are fully collateralized by the underlying premiums held by insurance carriers, and as such are excluded from our debt covenant computations. Gallagher anticipates closing private placements of debt in or around August 2017 to fund the repayment of debt maturing around such time. Any such private placement notes have not been, and will not be, registered under the Securities Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. This earnings release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the notes. Clean energy - Consists of the operating results related to our investments in 34 clean coal production plants and royalty income from clean coal licenses related to Chem-Mod LLC. Additional information regarding these results is available in the "CFO Commentary" at ajg.com/IR. Acquisition costs - Consists mostly of external professional fees and other due diligence costs related to acquisitions. Corporate - Consists of overhead allocations mostly related to corporate staff compensation and other corporate level activities. In the CFO commentary document as of January 26, 2017, we provided an estimate of our first quarter 2017 after-tax loss for this line ranging between $6.0 million and $7.0 million. As shown above, we actually reported a loss of $3.3 million. The favorable variance occurred because of more income tax benefit from a new accounting standard for employee share-based compensation than we estimated in January 2017. Litigation Settlement - During the third quarter of 2015, Gallagher settled litigation against certain former U.K. executives and their advisors for a pretax gain of $31.0 million ($22.3 million net of costs and taxes). Incremental expenses that arose in connection with this matter will result in quarterly after-tax charges being incurred through June 30, 2017. Home Office Lease Termination/Move - During first quarter 2017, we relocated our corporate office headquarters to a nearby suburb of Chicago. Move-related after-tax charges were $2.4 million in the first quarter of 2017. After-tax lease abandonment charges are expected to total approximately $4.0 million and $1.5 million in the second and third quarters of 2017, respectively. Income Taxes Gallagher allocates the provision for income taxes to its Brokerage and Risk Management segments using the local country statutory rates. Gallagher's consolidated effective tax rate for the quarters ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 was (29.6)% and (3.9)%, respectively, which was lower than the statutory rate due to the amount of IRC Section 45 tax credits earned and the impact of the income tax benefit of stock compensation in first quarter 2017. At-the-market equity program - Gallagher has an at-the-market equity program under which up to $15.6 million of its common stock remaining in the program may be sold through Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as sales agent. During first quarter 2017, Gallagher did not sell any shares of its common stock under the program. (6 of 12) Webcast Conference Call Gallagher will host a webcast conference call on Friday, April 28, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. ET/8:00 a.m. CT. To listen to this call, please go to ajg.com/IR. The call will be available for replay at such website for at least 90 days. About Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an international insurance brokerage and risk management services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, has operations in 33 countries and offers client-service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants. Cautionary Information This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words "anticipates," "believes," "contemplates," "see," "should," "could," "will," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "plans" and variations thereof and similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding (i) the amount of, and potential uses for, investment returns generated by Gallagher's clean energy investments; (ii) our corporate income tax rate; (iii) anticipated future results or performance of any segment or the Company as a whole; (iv) the premium rate environment; (v) the economic environment; (vi) anticipated acquisition integration costs; and (vii) anticipated actions to be taken in connection with maturing debt. Gallagher's actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Readers are therefore cautioned against relying on any of the forward-looking statements, which are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include the following: Risks and uncertainties related to Gallagher's clean energy investments, including uncertainties related to political and regulatory risks, such as potential actions by Congress or challenges by the IRS eliminating or reducing the availability of tax credits under IRC Section 45 retroactively and/or going forward; the ability to maintain and find co-investors; the potential for divergent business objectives by co-investors and other stakeholders; plant operational risks, including supply-chain risks; utilities' future use of, or demand for, coal; the market price of coal; the costs of moving a clean coal plant; intellectual property litigation risks; and environmental risks - all of which could impact (i) and (ii) above; and Changes in worldwide and national economic conditions (including a possible economic downturn or recession in the U.K. because of the recent Brexit vote); changes in premium rates and in insurance markets generally; changes in the insurance brokerage industry's competitive landscape; and the uncertainties and challenges inherent in the acquisition integration process - all of which could impact (iii) - (vii) above. Please refer to Gallagher's filings with the SEC, including Item 1A, "Risk Factors," of its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 for a more detailed discussion of these and other factors that could impact its forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by Gallagher in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by applicable law, Gallagher does not undertake to update the information included herein or the corresponding earnings release posted on Gallagher's website. Information Regarding Non-GAAP Measures In addition to reporting financial results in accordance with GAAP, this press release provides information regarding EBITDAC, EBITDAC margin, adjusted EBITDAC, adjusted EBITDAC margin, diluted net earnings per share, as adjusted (adjusted EPS), for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments, adjusted revenues, adjusted compensation and operating expenses, adjusted compensation expense ratio, adjusted operating expense ratio and organic revenue measures for each operating segment. These measures are not in accordance with, or an alternative to, the GAAP information provided in this press release. Gallagher's management believes that these presentations provide useful information to management, analysts and investors regarding financial and business trends relating to Gallagher's results of operations and financial condition. See further below for definitions and the reason each of these measures is useful to investors. Gallagher's industry peers may provide similar supplemental non-GAAP information with respect to one or more of these measures, although they may not use the same or comparable terminology and may not make identical adjustments. The non-GAAP information provided by Gallagher should be used in addition to, but not as a substitute for, the GAAP information provided. As disclosed in its most recent Proxy Statement, beginning in first quarter 2017, Gallagher makes determinations regarding certain elements of executive officer compensation, performance share awards and annual cash incentive awards, partly on the basis of measures related to adjusted EBITDAC. Certain reclassifications have been made to the prior year amounts reported in this press release in order to conform them to the current year presentation. (7 of 12) Adjusted Non-GAAP presentation - Gallagher believes that the adjusted non-GAAP presentations of the current and prior year information, presented in this earnings release, provide stockholders and other interested persons with useful information regarding certain financial metrics of Gallagher that may assist such persons in analyzing Gallagher's operating results as they develop a future earnings outlook for Gallagher. The after-tax amounts related to the adjustments were computed using the normalized effective tax rate for each respective period. See page 12 for a reconciliation of the adjustments made to income taxes. Adjusted revenues and expenses - Revenues, compensation expense and operating expense, respectively, each adjusted to exclude the following: - Revenues, compensation expense and operating expense, respectively, each adjusted to exclude the following: Net gains realized from sales of books of business, which are primarily net proceeds received related to sales of books of business and other divestiture transactions. Acquisition integration costs, which include costs related to certain of our large acquisitions, outside the scope of our usual tuck-in strategy, not expected to occur on an ongoing basis in the future once we fully assimilate the applicable acquisition. These costs are typically associated with redundant workforce, extra lease space, duplicate services and external costs incurred to assimilate the acquisition with our IT related systems. Workforce related charges, which primarily include severance costs related to employee terminations and other costs associated with redundant workforce. Lease termination related charges, which primarily include costs related to terminations of real estate leases and abandonment of leased space. Acquisition related adjustments, which include change in estimated acquisition earnout payables adjustments, impacts of acquisition valuation true-ups, impairment charges and acquisition related compensation charges. The impact of foreign currency translation, as applicable. The amounts excluded with respect to foreign currency translation are calculated by applying current year foreign exchange rates to the same periods in the prior year. Adjusted ratios - Adjusted compensation expense and adjusted operating expense, respectively, each divided by adjusted revenues. Non-GAAP Earnings Measures EBITDAC and EBITDAC margin - EBITDAC is net earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, amortization and the change in estimated acquisition earnout payables and EBITDAC margin is EBITDAC divided by total revenues. These measures for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments provide a meaningful representation of Gallagher's operating performance and, for the overall business, provide a meaningful way to measure its financial performance on an ongoing basis. - EBITDAC is net earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, amortization and the change in estimated acquisition earnout payables and EBITDAC margin is EBITDAC divided by total revenues. These measures for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments provide a meaningful representation of Gallagher's operating performance and, for the overall business, provide a meaningful way to measure its financial performance on an ongoing basis. Adjusted EBITDAC and Adjusted EBITDAC Margin - Adjusted EBITDAC is EBITDAC adjusted to exclude net gains realized from sales of books of business, acquisition integration costs, workforce related charges, lease termination related charges, acquisition related adjustments and the period-over-period impact of foreign currency translation, as applicable and Adjusted EBITDAC margin is Adjusted EBITDAC divided by total adjusted revenues (defined above). These measures for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments provide a meaningful representation of Gallagher's operating performance, and are also presented to improve the comparability of our results between periods by eliminating the impact of the items that have a high degree of variability. - Adjusted EBITDAC is EBITDAC adjusted to exclude net gains realized from sales of books of business, acquisition integration costs, workforce related charges, lease termination related charges, acquisition related adjustments and the period-over-period impact of foreign currency translation, as applicable and Adjusted EBITDAC margin is Adjusted EBITDAC divided by total adjusted revenues (defined above). These measures for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments provide a meaningful representation of Gallagher's operating performance, and are also presented to improve the comparability of our results between periods by eliminating the impact of the items that have a high degree of variability. Adjusted EPS for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments - Net earnings adjusted to exclude the after-tax impact of net gains realized from sales of books of business, acquisition integration costs, the impact of foreign currency translation, workforce related charges, lease termination related charges and acquisition related adjustments divided by diluted weighted average shares outstanding. This measure provides a meaningful representation of Gallagher's operating performance (and as such should not be used as a measure of Gallagher's liquidity), and is also presented to improve the comparability of our results between periods by eliminating the impact of the items that have a high degree of variability. Organic Revenues (a non-GAAP measure) - For the Brokerage segment, organic change in base commission and fee revenues excludes the first twelve months of net commission and fee revenues generated from acquisitions and the net commission and fee revenues related to operations disposed of in each year presented. These commissions and fees are excluded from organic revenues in order to help interested persons analyze the revenue growth associated with the operations that were a part of Gallagher in both the current and prior year. In addition, change in base commission and fee revenue organic growth excludes the period-over-period impact of foreign currency translation. For the Risk Management segment, organic change in fee revenues excludes the first twelve months of fee revenues generated from acquisitions and the fee revenues related to operations disposed of in each year presented. In addition, change in organic growth excludes the period-over-period impact of foreign currency translation to improve the comparability of our results between periods by eliminating the impact of the items that have a high degree of variability or are due to the limited-time nature of these revenue sources. (8 of 12) These revenue items are excluded from organic revenues in order to determine a comparable, but non-GAAP, measurement of revenue growth that is associated with the revenue sources that are expected to continue in the current year and beyond. Gallagher has historically viewed organic revenue growth as an important indicator when assessing and evaluating the performance of its Brokerage and Risk Management segments. Gallagher also believes that using this non-GAAP measure allows readers of our financial statements to measure, analyze and compare the growth from its Brokerage and Risk Management segments in a meaningful and consistent manner. Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Information Presented to GAAP Measures - This press release includes tabular reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, as follows: for EBITDAC (on pages 10 and 11), for adjusted revenues, adjusted EBITDAC and adjusted diluted net earnings per share (on page 2), for organic revenue measures (on pages 3 and 5, respectively, for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments), for adjusted compensation and operating expenses and adjusted EBITDAC margin (on pages 4 and 5 respectively, for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments). Reported compensation and operating expense ratios can also be found in the "Supplemental Quarterly Data" available at ajg.com/IR. (9 of 12) Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Reported Statement of Earnings and EBITDAC - 1st Qtr Ended March 31, (Unaudited - in millions except per share, percentage and workforce data) 1st Q Ended 1st Q Ended Brokerage Segment Mar 31, 2017 Mar 31, 2016 Commissions $ 590.5 $ 566.0 Fees 188.0 159.1 Supplemental commissions 34.5 32.9 Contingent commissions 53.4 55.2 Investment income and gains realized on books of business sales 12.1 12.3 Revenues 878.5 825.5 Compensation 525.5 492.9 Operating 145.0 155.8 Depreciation 14.9 14.0 Amortization 63.6 58.9 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables 11.8 3.9 Expenses 760.8 725.5 Earnings before income taxes 117.7 100.0 Provision for income taxes 39.6 34.1 Net earnings 78.1 65.9 Net earnings attributable to noncontrolling interests 5.3 4.5 Net earnings attributable to controlling interests $ 72.8 $ 61.4 EBITDAC Net earnings $ 78.1 $ 65.9 Provision for income taxes 39.6 34.1 Depreciation 14.9 14.0 Amortization 63.6 58.9 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables 11.8 3.9 EBITDAC $ 208.0 $ 176.8 1st Q Ended 1st Q Ended Risk Management Segment Mar 31, 2017 Mar 31, 2016 Fees $ 182.5 $ 179.1 Investment income 0.1 0.2 Revenues 182.6 179.3 Compensation 107.8 105.5 Operating 43.8 42.8 Depreciation 7.4 6.6 Amortization 0.7 0.4 Expenses 159.7 155.3 Earnings before income taxes 22.9 24.0 Provision for income taxes 8.6 9.0 Net earnings 14.3 15.0 Net earnings attributable to noncontrolling interests - - Net earnings attributable to controlling interests $ 14.3 $ 15.0 EBITDAC Net earnings $ 14.3 $ 15.0 Provision for income taxes 8.6 9.0 Depreciation 7.4 6.6 Amortization 0.7 0.4 EBITDAC $ 31.0 $ 31.0 1st Q Ended 1st Q Ended Corporate Segment Mar 31, 2017 Mar 31, 2016 Revenues from consolidated clean coal facilities $ 340.3 $ 282.0 Royalty income from clean coal licenses 11.9 13.1 Loss from unconsolidated clean coal facilities (0.4) (0.3) Other net (losses) revenues (0.2) 0.8 Revenues 351.6 295.6 Cost of revenues from consolidated clean coal facilities 366.9 304.4 Compensation 24.3 23.7 Operating 11.6 5.9 Interest 29.9 25.8 Depreciation 7.2 4.1 Expenses 439.9 363.9 Loss before income taxes (88.3) (68.3) Benefit for income taxes (63.7) (45.3) Net earnings (loss) (24.6) (23.0) Net earnings attributable to noncontrolling interests 6.8 6.9 Net earnings (loss) attributable to controlling interests $ (31.4) $ (29.9) EBITDAC Net earnings (loss) $ (24.6) $ (23.0) Benefit for income taxes (63.7) (45.3) Interest 29.9 25.8 Depreciation 7.2 4.1 EBITDAC $ (51.2) $ (38.4) See "Information Regarding Non-GAAP Measures" on page 7 of 12. (10 of 12) Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Reported Statement of Earnings and EBITDAC - 1st Qtr Ended March 31, (Unaudited - in millions except share and per share data) 1st Q Ended 1st Q Ended Total Company Mar 31, 2017 Mar 31, 2016 Commissions $ 590.5 $ 566.0 Fees 370.5 338.2 Supplemental commissions 34.5 32.9 Contingent commissions 53.4 55.2 Investment income and gains realized on books of business sales 12.2 12.5 Revenues from clean coal activities 351.8 294.8 Other net (losses) revenues - Corporate (0.2) 0.8 Revenues 1,412.7 1,300.4 Compensation 657.6 622.1 Operating 200.4 204.5 Cost of revenues from clean coal activities 366.9 304.4 Interest 29.9 25.8 Depreciation 29.5 24.7 Amortization 64.3 59.3 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables 11.8 3.9 Expenses 1,360.4 1,244.7 Earnings before income taxes 52.3 55.7 Benefit for income taxes (15.5) (2.2) Net earnings 67.8 57.9 Net earnings attributable to noncontrolling interests 12.1 11.4 Net earnings attributable to controlling interests $ 55.7 $ 46.5 Diluted net earnings per share $ 0.31 $ 0.26 Dividends declared per share $ 0.39 $ 0.38 EBITDAC Net earnings $ 67.8 $ 57.9 Benefit for income taxes (15.5) (2.2) Interest 29.9 25.8 Depreciation 29.5 24.7 Amortization 64.3 59.3 Change in estimated acquisition earnout payables 11.8 3.9 EBITDAC $ 187.8 $ 169.4 Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Consolidated Balance Sheet (Unaudited - in millions except per share data) Mar 31, 2017 Dec 31, 2016 Cash and cash equivalents $ 564.0 $ 545.5 Restricted cash 1,258.0 1,392.1 Premiums and fees receivable 2,066.8 1,844.8 Other current assets 594.4 633.7 Total current assets 4,483.2 4,416.1 Fixed assets - net 375.5 377.6 Deferred income taxes (includes tax credit carryforwards of $501.3 in 2017 and $477.9 in 2016) 806.7 796.5 Other noncurrent assets 536.2 504.3 Goodwill - net 3,896.9 3,767.8 Amortizable intangible assets - net 1,682.1 1,627.3 Total assets $ 11,780.6 $ 11,489.6 Premiums payable to insurance and reinsurance companies $ 3,028.2 $ 2,996.1 Accrued compensation and other accrued liabilities 818.1 772.1 Unearned fees 75.3 69.0 Other current liabilities 63.7 70.9 Premium financing debt 104.4 125.6 Corporate related borrowings - current 695.0 578.0 Total current liabilities 4,784.7 4,611.7 Corporate related borrowings - noncurrent 2,144.7 2,144.6 Other noncurrent liabilities 1,123.9 1,077.5 Total liabilities 8,053.3 7,833.8 Stockholders' equity: Common stock - issued and outstanding 179.5 178.3 Capital in excess of par value 3,280.3 3,265.5 Retained earnings 901.8 916.4 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (699.1) (763.6) Total controlling interests stockholders' equity 3,662.5 3,596.6 Noncontrolling interests 64.8 59.2 Total stockholders' equity 3,727.3 3,655.8 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 11,780.6 $ 11,489.6 See "Information Regarding Non-GAAP Measures" on page 7 of 12. (11 of 12) Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Other Information (Unaudited - data is rounded where indicated) 1st Q Ended 1st Q Ended OTHER INFORMATION Mar 31, 2017 Mar 31, 2016 Basic weighted average shares outstanding (000s) 178,890 177,038 Diluted weighted average shares outstanding (000s) 180,591 177,615 Number of common shares outstanding at end of period (000s) 179,514 177,129 Workforce at end of period (includes acquisitions): Brokerage 19,116 17,836 Risk Management 5,470 5,428 Total Company 25,284 23,924 Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Measures - Pre-tax Earnings and Diluted Net Earnings per Share (Unaudited) (Unaudited - in millions except share and per share data) Net Earnings Net Earnings Earnings Provision (Loss) (Loss) Diluted Net (Loss) (Benefit) Attributable to Attributable to Earnings Before Income for Income Net Noncontrolling Controlling (Loss) Taxes Taxes Earnings Interests Interests per Share 1st Q Ended Mar 31, 2017 Brokerage, as reported $ 117.7 $ 39.6 $ 78.1 $ 5.3 $ 72.8 $ 0.40 Gains on book sales (1.4) (0.4) (1.0) - (1.0) - Acquisition integration 2.9 0.9 2.0 - 2.0 0.01 Workforce & lease termination 3.9 1.2 2.7 - 2.7 0.02 Acquisition related adjustments 9.0 2.8 6.2 - 6.2 0.03 Brokerage, as adjusted $ 132.1 $ 44.1 $ 88.0 $ 5.3 $ 82.7 $ 0.46 Risk Management, as reported $ 22.9 $ 8.6 $ 14.3 $ - $ 14.3 $ 0.08 Workforce & lease termination 0.2 0.1 0.1 - 0.1 - Risk Management, as adjusted $ 23.1 $ 8.7 $ 14.4 $ - $ 14.4 $ 0.08 Corporate, as reported $ (88.3) $ (63.7) $ (24.6) $ 6.8 $ (31.4) $ (0.17) Litigation settlement 5.5 1.1 4.4 - 4.4 0.02 Home office lease termination / move 4.0 1.6 2.4 - 2.4 0.01 Corporate, as adjusted $ (78.8) $ (61.0) $ (17.8) $ 6.8 $ (24.6) $ (0.14) 1st Q Ended Mar 31, 2016 Brokerage, as reported $ 100.0 $ 34.1 $ 65.9 $ 4.5 $ 61.4 $ 0.35 Gains on book sales (2.2) (0.7) (1.5) - (1.5) (0.01) Acquisition integration 14.2 4.2 10.0 - 10.0 0.06 Workforce & lease termination 1.6 0.5 1.1 - 1.1 - Acquisition related adjustments 0.5 0.2 0.3 - 0.3 - Levelized foreign currency translation (0.9) (0.3) (0.6) - (0.6) - Brokerage, as adjusted $ 113.2 $ 38.0 $ 75.2 $ 4.5 $ 70.7 $ 0.40 Risk Management, as reported $ 24.0 $ 9.0 $ 15.0 $ - $ 15.0 $ 0.08 Workforce & lease termination 0.5 0.2 0.3 - 0.3 0.01 Client run-off - - - - - - Acquisition related adjustments - - - - - - Levelized foreign currency translation 0.5 0.2 0.3 - 0.3 - Risk Management, as adjusted $ 25.0 $ 9.4 $ 15.6 $ - $ 15.6 $ 0.09 Corporate, as reported $ (68.3) $ (45.3) $ (23.0) $ 6.9 $ (29.9) $ (0.17) Litigation settlement 4.7 1.0 3.7 - 3.7 0.02 Corporate, as adjusted $ (63.6) $ (44.3) $ (19.3) $ 6.9 $ (26.2) $ (0.15) See "Information Regarding Non-GAAP Measures" on page 7 of 12. Contact: Ray Iardella Vice President - Investor Relations 630-285-3661 or [email protected] (12 of 12) SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Related Links http://www.ajg.com OSLO, Norway, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Asetek today announced that it has received payment of approximately $600 thousand as awarded in a patent infringement lawsuit against CMI USA, Inc. In December 2014, the U.S. District Court unanimously ruled in favor of Asetek on all claims in a patent infringement lawsuit against CMI USA, Inc. ("CMI") involving Asetek's U.S. Patents 8,240,362 and 8,245,764. The jury awarded Asetek damages representing a 14.5% royalty on CMI's infringing sales since 2012. After an appeal by CMI, the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued an opinion in April 2017 affirming the prior rulings regarding infringement, validity, damages and injunction against CMI. Payment from CMI of approximately $600 thousand, including interest, was received by Asetek today. "This award signifies another successful defense of Asetek's intellectual property," said Andre Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek. "As part of efforts to build and maintain market share, we closely review and assess all competitive offerings for infringement of our patents. We are pleased with our success in defending them." About Asetek Asetek (ASETEK.OL) is the global leader in liquid cooling solutions for data centers, servers and PCs. Founded in 2000, Asetek is headquartered in Denmark and has operations in California, Texas, China and Taiwan. Asetek is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. For questions or further information, please contact: CEO and Founder - Andre S. Eriksen +45-2125-7076 Email: [email protected] CFO - Peter Dam Madsen +45-2080-7200 Email: [email protected] For more information, visit www.asetek.com Asetek's press room is available on www.asetek.com/press-room/news/ This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/asetek/r/asetek-receives-award-of--600k-after-patent-infringement-lawsuit,c2252640 The following files are available for download: SOURCE Asetek Related Links http://www.asetek.com SAN DIEGO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While in town for the Virginia Advisory Council on Military Education (VA-ACME) Symposium in Virginia Beach, Va., Ashford's Career and Alumni Services team took the opportunity to host a student and alumni event on March 28 at the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. The event provided student, alumni, and military and veteran student attendees the opportunity to network. Michael Camden, president of VA-ACME, spoke at Ashford's student and alumni event and recognized Ashford during the conference, encouraging other institutions to follow Ashford's example. "I commend Ashford University in their unconditional support to its military and veteran students, as well as the VA-ACME," said Camden. "The university has done an excellent job in hosting an event catered to students, alumni, and the military community within the Virginia Beach area, to meet and discuss topics to include military education." Offering welcome remarks during the event was Wendy Sickora, director of military education outreach at Ashford. "Ashford has worked hard to organize this event, and will continue to focus on providing our military and veteran students with the educational opportunities and support they deserve," said Sickora. "We are committed to serving the military community." Dr. Christine Bacon, author of the book titled Super Couples and host of the Virginia Beach Friday morning talk show, "Breakfast With Bacon" who served as guest speaker for the Ashford-hosted mixer, discussed communication strategies during the event. The VA-ACME is a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting meaningful education for members from all branches of the Armed Services. The annual symposium was held this year in Virginia Beach from March 28 to 30. For more information on Virginia ACME, visit http://www.vaacme.org/. About Ashford University Where heritage meets innovation that's Ashford University. At Ashford, students discover relevant degree programs, innovative technology, and cherished tradition. Ashford offers associates, bachelor's, and master's degree programs online, allowing students to balance life by providing the flexibility to do school work anywhere, anytime. For more information, please visit www.ashford.edu, www.facebook.com/ashforduniversity, www.twitter.com/AshfordU, or reach Marianne Perez, Media Relations Manager, at 858.513.9240 x11636 or [email protected]. SOURCE Ashford University Related Links http://www.ashford.edu Uniquely tailored for Atos' customers, AVA delivers machine learning capabilities in the Cloud, and enhances the end-user experience by automatically answering IT service desk and data center requests in record time through a virtual agent. AVA not only solves client issues immediately but also anticipates what may occur in the future based on collected trend data such as IT tickets, FAQ and guide books as well as user-generated content. Crawling the web, the AVA platform is constantly delivering the most accurate and available solution. As a result, AVA helps reduce time-to-answer and improves service desk efficiency through a higher quality contact with deep knowledge of key customer issues and the steps needed to resolve them more quickly. "Among all our AI partners, CogniCor's platform has the perfect match to Atos' portfolio of digital workplace services," said Michael Kollar, Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Officer and Global Head of Cloud Engineering for Atos North American Operations. "AVA is thus redefining the way Atos is interacting with its clients by being able to learn exponentially over time from all internal IT data available and provide a better overall customer experience." Leveraging its capabilities in deploying enterprise virtual agents using machine-learning, cognitive methods and Natural Language Processing (NLP), CogniCor will serve as a co-innovation partner with Atos to deliver additional AI solutions for Atos' customers that enhance the user experience by automating processes where possible. "Our proven AI platform, deployed by several leading brands and built on our proprietary patent pending cognitive deep learning stack, is a genuine differentiator in the market.," said Dr. Sindhu Joseph, CEO and Cofounder, CogniCor. "This partnership significantly enlarges our horizon in North America by supporting Atos' clients throughout their IT automation journey." Perfectly integrated within Atos Digital Transformation Factory and a key part of Atos' help and interaction center within its larger digital workplace offering, AVA is currently available for all Atos customers. Atos has been positioned by Gartner as a Leader for European Managed Workplace Services (MWS), based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision in its Magic Quadrant for Managed Workplace Services report in January this year. About Atos Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is a leader in digital transformation with circa 100,000 employees in 72 countries and pro forma annual revenue of circa 12 billion. Serving a global client base, the Group is the European leader in Big Data, Cybersecurity, Digital Workplace and provides Cloud services, Infrastructure & Data Management, Business & Platform solutions, as well as transactional services through Worldline, the European leader in the payment industry. With its cutting edge technologies, digital expertise and industry knowledge, the Group supports the digital transformation of its clients across different business sectors: Defense, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Media, Utilities, Public sector, Retail, Telecommunications, and Transportation. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and is listed on the Euronext Paris market. Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify and Worldline. For further details, please visit: www.atos.net About CogniCor Incepted in the year 2012 in Barcelona, and spinoff from the Spanish Institute of Artificial Intelligence, CogniCor is the leading provider of Enterprise Virtual Assistants. CogniCor's patent pending Artificial Intelligence based platform enables companies to easily train, deploy and manage virtual assistant chat channels as well as augment the query resolution efficiency of their customer service staff. Featured by WIRED magazine as one of the hottest startups from EU and winner of the European Union's Most innovative web startup award, The company has presence in Europe, US, Singapore and India and is currently expanding in IT, insurance, financial sectors. For further details, please visit: www.cognicor.com SOURCE Atos Related Links http://www.atos.net SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a Linux-based, open platform for the connected car, today announced that ARCCORE, BayLibre, IoT.bzh, Nexius, SELTECH and Voicebox have joined Automotive Grade Linux and The Linux Foundation. "AGL is gaining significant traction across the automotive industry, the ecosystem is really taking off across diverse software disciplines," said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux. "We look forward to working with these new members to enhance AGL capabilities including voice recognition, security and virtualization." AGL is the Diamond Sponsor for Automotive Linux Summit on May 31-June 2 in Tokyo, Japan. The Automotive Linux Summit gathers together the most innovative minds from automotive expertise and open-source excellence to drive the future software solutions in the automotive arena. ALS provides the unique opportunity to hear directly from members and the AGL community. Full agenda can be found here. New Member Quotes: Arccore "ARCCORE's mission is to provide cutting-edge products and solution-oriented services to automotive companies which enable autonomous drive, connected vehicles and next-generation infotainment applications," said Michael Svenstam, CEO of ARCCORE. "We have always been supportive of an open source approach in embedded systems development, and collaborating with Automotive Grade Linux and The Linux Foundation will enable us to better serve our customers working on those platforms." BayLibre "An open and standardized software platform is a critical element for the success of the connected car. Joining Automotive Grade Linux is the next step for BayLibre as we develop embedded system software in support of semiconductor manufacturers, solutions providers, Tier 1 suppliers, and automotive manufacturers," said Michael Turquette, CEO at BayLibre. "We share a similar 'code first' approach with AGL, and we look forward to applying our knowledge of SoCs, Yocto integration and our strong reputation within the Linux kernel and open source software communities to help drive the platform forward." IoT.bzh "IoT.bzh is a strong supporter of open source, and it is at the core of our business," said Fulup Le Foll, CEO of IoT.bzh. "We are active code contributors to the AGL UCB, and we look forward to continuing to advance the platform as an official member." Nexius "As a technology solutions provider for the infinite network, we are committed to furthering the development of a connected world by moving networks from closed to open and finite to infinite," said Ned Taleb, CEO of Nexius. "AGL provides a community for us to collaborate with and contribute to the transformation of the auto and telecommunication industries by bridging the two ecosystems and helping to advance connectivity for a network that can support connected cars, smart roads and shared vehicles." SELTECH "SELTECH is proud to be part of the Automotive Grade Linux community and contribute our expertise working with multiple security systems and virtualization technologies to create a reliable infotainment system," said Shoi Egawa, CEO and President at SELTECH. "We believe AGL will become the defacto standard and will play a central role in the connected car ecosystem." Voicebox "Voicebox looks forward to bringing expertise in conversational speech, natural language understanding and Artificial Intelligence to Automotive Grade Linux, as knowledge in these fields is crucial for success in the connected car space," said Rich Kennewick, President of Voicebox. "With the increased demand for innovation in the automotive industry, and technology initiatives becoming a top priority for automakers, AGL is imperative to accelerating automotive capabilities." The full list of AGL members is available here. About Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) Automotive Grade Linux is a collaborative open source project that is bringing together automakers, suppliers and technology companies to accelerate the development and adoption of a fully open software stack for the connected car. With Linux at its core, AGL is developing an open platform from the ground up that can serve as the de facto industry standard to enable rapid development of new features and technologies. Although initially focused on In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI), AGL is the only organization planning to address all software in the vehicle, including instrument cluster, heads up display, telematics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. The AGL platform is available to all, and anyone can participate in its development. Learn more: https://www.automotivelinux.org/ Automotive Grade Linux is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org Additional Resources The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Media Inquiries Emily Olin Automotive Grade Linux [email protected] SOURCE Automotive Grade Linux Related Links https://www.automotivelinux.org/ SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Avior Airlines, which recently celebrated its 23rd anniversary, announced a new partnership with Discover the World that will increase the Venezuelan-based airline's presence in Canada and Peru. "Discover the World is proud to represent Avior Airlines," said CEO Jenny Adams. "We are excited to contribute to their success in both Canada and Peru. In Canada, we will help feed Avior's new flight from Miami, operated by Airbus A-340s. In Peru, we will provide sales, marketing, CTO and trade support services for Avior's new online service which launched on April 3 from Valencia, Venezuela to Lima, Peru." "We are now a BSP member in Peru and soon in Canada," said Gibson Preziuso, Vice President Commercial for Avior Airlines. "Because we know Discover's reputation, we are confident their representation of us in Canada and Peru will help boost brand awareness and complement our sales and marketing strategy. We look forward to working with them." Avior Airlines is an airline based in Barcelona, Venezuela. It operates scheduled and charter services within Venezuela and the southern Caribbean, Central and South America as well as Miami, Florida. For more information about Discover the World, visit discovertheworld.com or call (480) 707-5566 or +44 203 598 8030. About Discover the World Discover the World has earned a reputation as a leader in global travel distribution and its success in developing a worldwide network of 85 offices in more than 60 countries capable of exceptional representation performance is unmatched. With a portfolio of more than 90 clients utilizing its sales, marketing and business process outsourcing services, Discover the World remains a dominant innovator for the travel industry. About Avior Airlines Avior Airlines was founded in 1994, and operates from General Jose Antonio Anzoategui International Airport in Barcelona, Venezuela. The airline operates with a fleet of 23 Boeing 737-200, Boeing 737-300 and Airbus A340-300 aircraft to more than 15 destinations in South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and USA. Website: aviorairlines.com SOURCE Discover the World Related Links http://www.discovertheworld.com/ CELAYA, Mexico, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrias Bachoco, S.A.B. de C.V., "Bachoco" or "the Company", (NYSE: IBA; BMV: Bachoco) announced today its unaudited results for the first quarter ("1Q17") ending March 31, 2017. All figures have been prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standard ("IFRS"), and are presented in nominal million Mexican Pesos ("$"), except earnings per share. HIGHLIGHTS- 2017 vs. 2016 Net sales increased 15.6% in 1Q17. EBITDA margin was 8.8% in 1Q17 vs 7.8% in 1Q16. Earnings per basic and diluted share were $1.09 . CEO COMMENTS Mr. Rodolfo Ramos Arvizu, Chief Executive Officer of Bachoco, stated, "In Mexico, the quarter started with a high level of volatility, however, the Mexican peso strengthened at the end of the quarter, even so, the Mexican peso depreciated around 11% in the 1Q17 when compared with 1Q16. Regarding the poultry industry, we observed good levels on the demand side that combined with a normalized growth rate in both Mexico and the US markets. This led to a good balance between supply and demand, allowing a price recovery when compared to the first quarter of 2016. Sales and volume of our main product lines continued growing in both markets, which led us to an increase of 15.6% in total sales for 1Q17 when compared to the same quarter of 2016. For 1Q17, we reached an EBITDA of $1,198.3 or 8.8% margin and earnings per basic and diluted shares were $1.09. On the internal side, we continued investing in the growth of our Company. We continued with our CAPEX program, while taking advantage of projects we implemented to get closer to our customers. In addition, the Company remained in a healthy financial condition as we reached a net cash level of $11,496.6 million, which will allow us to continue the support of our growth plans. We will remain focused on continual improvements and efficiencies across all of our processes and working close to our customers" RECENT DEVELOPMENTS At its 2017 annual shareholders meeting, the Company announced the paying of cash dividends in the amount of $1.3 pesos per share (or $15.6 pesos per ADR). Executive Summary The following financial information is expressed in millions of nominal pesos, except for amounts per share and per ADR, with comparative figures for the same periods of 2016. QUARTERLY RESULTS NET SALES BY GEOGRAPHY In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Net sales 13,684.9 11,839.3 1,845.6 15.6 Net sales in Mexico 9,949.3 8,821.5 1,127.8 12.8 Net sales in the U.S. 3,735.6 3,017.8 717.8 23.8 NET SALES BY SEGMENT In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Net sales 13,684.9 11,839.3 1,845.6 15.6 Poultry 12,286.6 10,644.5 1,642.1 15.4 Other 1,398.3 1,194.8 203.5 17.0 NET VOLUME SOLD BY SEGMENT In tons Change 1Q17 1Q16 Volume % Total sales volume: 528,099 521,417 6,681 1.3 Poultry 419,219 411,459 7,760 1.9 Others 108,880 109,959 (1,079) (1.0) In 1Q17, the Company's net sales totaled $13,684.9 million; $1,845.6 million or 15.6% more than $11,839.3 million reported in 1Q16. This was a result of price increases in peso terms and more volume sold in our main product lines. In 1Q17, sales of our U.S. operations were strong and represented 27.3% of our total sales compared with 25.5% in 1Q16. GROSS PROFIT In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Cost of sales 11,493.3 10,012.2 1,481.1 14.8 Gross profit 2,191.6 1,827.2 364.4 19.9 Gross margin 16.0% 15.4% - - The cost of sales totaled $11,493.3 million, representing $1,481.1 million or 14.8% higher than $10,012.2 million reported in the same period of 2016. This increase was a result of more volume sold and higher raw material costs in Mexican peso terms due to the depreciation of the Mexican peso. The Company's gross profit in 1Q17 was $2,191.6 million, with a gross margin of 16.0%. This result is higher when compared to a gross profit of $1,827.2 million and a gross margin of 15.4% reported in 1Q16. Selling, general and administrative expenses ("SG&A") In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Total SG&A 1,261.2 1,121.8 139.4 12.4 Total SG&A expenses in 1Q17 were $1,261.2 million; $139.4 million or 12.4% more than the $1,121.8 million reported 1Q16. Total SG&A expenses, as a percentage of net sales, represent 9.2% in 1Q17 and 9.5% in 1Q16. other income (expense), net In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Other income (expense), net (0.5) (9.1) 8.6 (94.2) Other income or other expenses include the sale of byproducts and unused assets. We register such sales as expenses when the sales price is below the book value of those assets. In 1Q17, we had other expenses of $0.5 million, compared with other expenses of $9.1 million reported in 1Q16. OPERATING INCOME In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Operating income 929.8 696.3 233.6 33.5 Operating margin 6.8% 5.9% - - Operating income in 1Q17 totaled $929.8 million for an operating margin of 6.8%; higher than an operating income of $696.3 million and a 5.9% operating margin reported in 1Q16. The increase in operating income is mainly attributed to higher gross profit than in 1Q16. NET FINANCIAL INCOME In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Net Financial Income (Expense) (69.7) 136.5 (206.2) (151.1) Financial Income 143.0 190.0 (47.0) (24.7) Financial Expense 212.7 53.5 159.2 297.5 In 1Q17, the Company reported net financial expenses of $69.7 million, compared to net financial income of $136.5 million reported in the same period of 2016, mainly due to exchange losses as the peso strengthened at the end of the quarter. TAXES FOR THE PERIOD In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Total Taxes 207.2 235.8 (28.6) (12.1) Income tax 131.2 157.5 (26.2) (16.7) Deferred income tax 76.0 78.4 (2.4) (3.0) Total taxes for the 1Q17 were $207.2 million, compared to $235.8 million in the same period of 2016. NET INCOME In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Net income 652.8 596.9 55.9 9.4 Net margin 4.8% 5.0% - - Non-Controlling Interest income 0.7 1.7 (1.0) n/a Net controlling interest income 652.1 595.2 56.9 n/a Basic and diluted income per share1 1.09 0.99 0.1 n/a Basic and diluted income per ADR2 13.04 11.90 1.1 n/a Weighted average Shares outstanding3 600,000 599,946 - - 1 In pesos 2 in pesos, an ADR is equal to twelve shares 3 In thousands of shares The net income for 1Q17 was $652.8 million, representing a basic and diluted income of $1.09 pesos per share. This result compares to net income of $596.9 million, which represented a net income $0.99 pesos of basic and diluted income per share in 1Q16. Net margin for the 1Q17 was 4.8% compared to 5.0% reported in 1Q16. EBITDA AND ADJUSTED EBITDA In millions of pesos 1Q17 1Q16 Change $ $ $ % Net controlling interest income 652.1 595.2 56.9 9.6 Income tax expense (benefit) 207.2 235.8 (28.6) (12.1) Result in associates 0.7 1.7 (1.0) (57.0) Net finance (income) expense 69.7 (136.5) 206.2 (151.1) Depreciation and amortization 268.5 224.8 43.7 19.4 EBITDA 1,198.3 921.1 277.2 30.1 EBITDA Margin (%) 8.8% 7.8% - - Net sales 13,684.9 11,839.3 1,845.6 15.6 EBITDA in 1Q17 reached $1,198.3 million, representing an EBITDA margin of 8.8%, compared to an EBITDA of $921.1 million in 1Q16 with an EBITDA margin of 7.8%. BALANCE SHEET DATA BALANCE SHEET DATA In millions of pesos Mar 31, 2017 Dec. 31, 2016 Change $ $ $ % TOTAL ASSETS 44,182.2 45,090.5 (908.2) (2.0) Cash and cash equivalents 15,409.8 15,651.5 (241.7) (1.5) Accounts receivable 3,078.5 3,778.0 (699.5) (18.5) TOTAL LIABILITIES 12,254.0 13,374.3 (1,120.3) (8.4) Accounts payable 3,347.2 3,836.4 (489.1) (12.7) Short-term debt 3,412.5 3,097.5 314.9 10.2 Long-term debt 500.7 950.4 (449.7) (47.3) TOTAL STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY 31,928.3 31,716.2 212.1 0.7 Capital stock 1,174.4 1,174.4 - - Cash and equivalents as of March 31, 2017 totaled $15,409.8 million; $241.7 million or 1.5% less than $15,651.5 million as of December 31, 2016. Total debt as of March 31, 2017 totaled $3,913.2 million, compared to $4,047.9 million reported as of December 31, 2016. Net cash as of March 31, 2017 was $11,496.6 million, compared to net cash of $11,603.6 million as of December 31, 2016. CAPEX CAPITAL EXPENDITURES In millions of pesos 2017 2016 Change $ $ $ % Capital Expenditures 643.3 659.9 (16.6) (2.5) Total CAPEX for the 1Q17 was $643.3 million which was mainly allocated toward organic growth and productivity projects across all our facilities. STOCK INFORMATION STOCK INFORMATION As of March 31, 2017 Total Shares 600,000,000 Total free float 26.75% Market cap (millions of pesos) $50,802 SHARE PRICE Mexican Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange Ticker Symbol: Bachoco Ticker Symbol: IBA In nominal pesos per Share In U.S. Dollar per ADR Month High Low Close High Low Close Mar-17 85.84 80.23 84.97 54.55 48.32 54.24 Feb-17 83.53 79.53 80.08 49.08 46.20 47.88 Jan-17 87.48 80.47 80.98 49.02 46.42 46.43 Dec-16 85.65 78.99 84.75 49.69 45.76 49.02 Nov-16 82.70 77.88 80.60 52.56 45.92 46.90 Oct-16 84.26 81.26 83.70 53.23 50.77 52.90 Source: yahoo finances APPENDICES For reference, some figures have been translated into millions of U.S. dollars ("USD") using an exchange rate of $18.73 per USD$1.0, which corresponds to the rate at the close of March 31, 2017, according to Mexico's National Bank. Consolidated Statement of Financial Position Consolidated Statement of Income Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows Derivatives Position Report CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION -Unaudited- In U.S. Dollar March 31, December 31, In million pesos 2017 2017 2016* TOTAL ASSETS $ 2,358.9 44,182.3 45,090.5 Total current assets 1,376.8 25,788.1 26,930.4 Cash and cash equivalents 822.7 15,409.8 15,651.5 Total accounts receivable 164.4 3,078.6 3,778.0 Inventories 296.5 5,554.3 5,931.9 Other current assets 93.2 1,745.5 1,569.0 Total non current assets 982.1 18,394.2 18,160.1 Net property, plant and equipment 810.3 15,176.8 15,081.1 Other non current Assets 171.8 3,217.4 3,079.0 TOTAL LIABILITIES $ 654.2 12,254.0 13,374.3 Total current liabilities 408.6 7,652.4 8,316.3 Notes payable to banks 182.2 3,412.5 3,097.5 Accounts payable 178.7 3,347.2 3,836.4 Other taxes payable and other accruals 47.7 892.6 1,382.4 Total long-term liabilities 245.7 4,601.6 5,058.0 Long-term debt 26.7 500.7 950.4 Other non current liabilities 10.9 203.8 195.0 Deferred income taxes 208.1 3,897.1 3,912.6 TOTAL STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY $ 1,704.7 31,928.3 31,716.2 Capital stock 62.7 1,174.4 1,174.4 Commission in shares issued 22.1 414.4 414.4 Repurchased shares - - - Retained earnings 1,566.8 29,346.7 28,694.6 Others accounts 50.1 938.2 1,378.9 Non controlling interest 2.9 54.6 53.9 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY $ 2,358.9 44,182.3 45,090.5 *Audited CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF INCOME First Quarter Results, ended March 31: -Unaudited- U.S. Dollar In millions pesos 2017 2017 2016 Net sales $ 730.6 13,684.9 11,839.3 Cost of sales 613.6 11,493.3 10,012.2 Gross profit 117.0 2,191.6 1,827.2 SG&A 67.3 1,261.2 1,121.8 Other income (expenses), net (0.0) (0.5) (9.1) Operating income 49.6 929.8 696.3 Net finance income (3.7) (69.7) 136.5 Income tax 11.1 207.2 235.8 Net Income $ 34.9 652.8 596.9 Non-controlling interest 0.04 0.7 1.7 Net controlling interest profit 34.8 652.1 595.2 Basic and diluted earnings per share 0.06 1.09 0.99 Basic and diluted earnings per ADR 0.70 13.04 11.90 Weighted average Shares outstanding1 600,000 600,000 599,946 EBITDA Result $ 64.0 1,198.3 921.1 Gross margin 16.0% 16.0% 15.4% Operating margin 6.8% 6.8% 5.9% Net margin 4.8% 4.8% 5.0% EBITDA margin 8.8% 8.8% 7.8% 1In thousands * Audited CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS In million of pesos -Unaudited- U.S. Dollar March 31, 2017 2017 2016 NET MAJORITY INCOME BEFORE INCOME TAX $ 45.9 860.1 832.7 ITEMS RELATING TO INVESTING ACTIVITIES: 11.7 219.5 113.1 Depreciation and others 14.3 268.5 224.8 Income (loss) on sale of plant and equipment 0.3 6.0 0.7 Other Items (2.9) (55.0) (112.4) NET CASH GENERATED FROM NET INCOME BEFORE TAXES 57.6 1,079.5 945.8 CASH GENERATED OR USED IN THE OPERATION: (21.3) (398.8) (1,028.5) Decrease (increase) in accounts receivable 26.2 489.9 (335.6) Decrease (increase) in inventories 19.2 358.9 432.6 Increase (decrease) in accounts payable (35.7) (667.9) (813.5) Increase (decrease) in other liabilities (31.0) (579.7) (312.0) NET CASH FLOW FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES 36.3 680.7 (82.7) NET CASH FLOW FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES (21.0) (392.8) (416.3) Acquisition of property, plant and equipment (34.3) (643.3) (659.9) Proceeds from sales of property plant and equipment 0.7 12.9 4.9 Other Items 12.7 237.7 238.8 CASH FLOW SURPLUS (REQUIREMENTS OF) TO BE USED IN FINANCING ACTIVITIES 15.4 287.9 (498.9) Net cash provided by financing activities: (28.3) (529.7) (203.1) Proceeds from loans - - 267.5 Principal payments on loans (0.1) (1.0) (430.3) Dividends paid - - - Other items (28.2) (528.6) (40.2) Net increase (decrease) in cash and equivalents (12.9) (241.7) (702.0) Cash and investments at the beginning of year $ 835.6 15,651.5 15,288.9 CASH AND INVESTMENTS AT END OF PERIOD $ 822.7 15,409.8 14,586.9 DERIVATIVES POSITION REPORT First Quarter 2017 Thousands of Mexican Pesos, as of march 31, 2017 ANEXO 1 TYPE OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT OBJECTIVE NOTIONAL VALUE OF THE RELATED COMMODITY REASONABLE VALUE AMOUNTS DUE BY YEAR GUARANTIES REQUIRED 1Q-2017 4Q-2016 1Q-2017 4Q-2016 Forward Vanilla and KOT Forwards Hedge $1,655,671 $ 18.73 $ 20.64 $-146,878 $ 3,464 in 2017 The deals consider the possibility of margin calls but not another kind of guarantee Futures for corn and soybean meal Hedge $ 8,122 CORN CORN -$ 3,601 -$ 19 in 2017 In USD per Bushel In USD per Bushel month price month price May-17 $ 3.643 Jul-17 $ 3.718 Sep-17 $ 3.793 SOYBEAN MEAL SOYBEAN MEAL In USD per ton In USD per ton month price month price May-17 $ 308.4 Jul-17 $ 311.8 March-17 $ 316.6 Aug-17 $ 312.3 Sep-17 $ 312.4 Oct-17 $ 311.4 Options of Corn Hedge $ - CORN CORN $ - -$ 47 2017 In USD per Bushel In USD per Bushel month price month price March-17 $ 3.5150 May-17 $ 3.550 Options of soybean meal Hedge $ 3,466 SOYBEAN MEAL SOYBEAN MEAL -$ 70 $ 216 in 2017 In USD per ton In USD per ton month price month price Mar-17 $ 316.6 May-17 $ 308.4 May-17 $ 319.4 -The total financial instruments do not exceed 5% of total assets as of March 31, 2017. -The notional value represents the net position as of March 31, 2017 at the exchange rate of Ps. 18.73 per one dolar. -A negative value means an unfavorable effect for the Company. First Quarter 2017 Thousands of Mexican Pesos, as of march 31, 2017 PROBABLE SCENARIO TYPE OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT REASONABLE VALUE VALUE OF THE RELATED COMMODITY EFFECT ON THE INCOME STATEMENT EFFECT ON THE CASH FLOW(3) Reference Value -2.5% 2.5% 5.0% -2.5% 2.5% 5.0% Forwards Vanilla -$ 146,878 $18.26 $ 19.20 $ 19.67 Direct -$184,597 -$109,158 -$ 71,438 -5% 5% 10% -5% 5% 10% Futures of Corn: (2) -$ 3,601 $ 3.460 $ 3.825 $ 4.007 The effect will materialize as the inventory is consumed -$ 11,208 $ 4,005 $ 11,611 Futures of Soybean Meal: (2) $ 293.0 $ 323.8 $ 339.2 Options for Corn $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - $ - Options of Soybean Meal -$ 70 $ 293.0 $ 323.8 $ 339.2 -$ 243 $ 103 $ 277 (1)The reference value is the exchange rate of Ps. $18.73 per USD as of March 31, 2017. (2)The reference values are; the future of corn for May 2017, $3.6425 USD/bushel and the future of soybeanmeal for May 2017, $308.40 USD/ton. All the evaluations are performed according with the corresponding future, here only the first month futures are shown. (3)The Company has credit lines with the majority of its counterparts, so that the effect in cash flow is lower than the amount shown. -A negative value means an unfavorable effect for the Company. First Quarter 2017 Thousands of Mexican Pesos, as of march 31, 2017 STRESS SCENARIO TYPE OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT REASONABLE VALUE VALUE OF THE RELATED COMMODITY EFFECT ON THE INCOME STATEMENT EFFECT ON THE CASH FLOW Reference Value -50% -25% 25% 50% -50% -25% 25% 50% Forward Vanilla -$ 146,878 $9.37 $14.05 $23.41 $28.10 Direct -$901,274 -$524,076 $230,321 $607,519 CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION The Company will host its first quarter 2017 earnings call, on Friday, April 28th, 2017. The earnings call will take place at 9:00 am Central Time (10:00 am ET). To participate in the earnings call, please dial: Toll free in the U.S.: 1 (888) 771-4371 Toll free in Mexico: 001 866 779 0965 Toll Local Mexico: 52 55 6722 5257 Toll free in Brazil: 0800 761 0710 A current list of available local and international free phone telephone numbers: http://web.meetme.net/r.aspx?p=12&a=UHUvWbCHlwLUu Confirmation Number: 44798025 Visit the following link to access the webcast: http://event.onlineseminarsolutions.com/wcc/r/1413773-1/AB97361CCB92B5171A0C0ACB7F4710E6 COMPANY DESCRIPTION Industrias Bachoco is the leader in the Mexican poultry industry, and one of the largest poultry producers globally. The Company was founded in 1952, and became a public company in 1997, via a public offering of shares on the Mexican and The New York Stock Exchange. Bachoco is a vertically integrated company headquartered in Celaya, Guanajuato located in Central Mexico. Its main business lines are: chicken, eggs, balanced feed, swine, and turkey and beef value-added products. Bachoco owns and manages more than a thousand facilities, organized in nine production complexes and 64 distribution centers in Mexico, and a production complex in the United States. Currently the Company employs more than 25,000 people. The Company is rated AAA (MEX) , the highest rating awarded by Fitch Mexico, S.A. de C.V., and HR AAA which signals that the Company and the offering both have the highest credit quality by HR Ratings de Mexico S.A. de C.V. DISCLAIMER The document contains certain information that could be considered forward looking statements concerning anticipated future events and performance of the Company. The statements reflect management's current beliefs based on information currently available and are not guarantees of future performance and are based on our estimates and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those described in our Annual Information Form, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this document. Those risks and uncertainties include risks associated with ownership in the poultry industry, competition for investments within the poultry industry, shareholder liability, governmental regulation, and environmental matters. As a result, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable law, Industrias Bachoco, S.A.B. de C.V., undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement. IR contact information: Maria Guadalupe Jaquez [email protected] Kathy Chaurand [email protected] T. +52(461)618 3555 SOURCE Industrias Bachoco, S.A.B. de C.V. Related Links http://www.bachoco.com.mx WHIPPANY, N.J., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the nation celebrates National Volunteer Week, Bayer today said that it will blast through its goal of providing 1 million hands-on science experiences to children in the United States by the year 2020. Since announcing the five-year goal in 2015, which then-President Obama highlighted during remarks on the White House lawn, Bayer has provided an astounding 555,634 engaging science experiences to U.S. students with the goal of stirring the next generation of scientists and innovators. "When we first announced our five-year commitment, we knew it was an ambitious goal," said Phil Blake, President of Bayer U.S. "But we were ready for the challenge. We understood the positive impact that hands-on science learning has on students. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our U.S. employees, we are showing students that science is all around them; that it can be fun; and that it doesn't have to be intimidating." Blake said achieving the goal, which was timed to the 20th anniversary of Bayer's award-winning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative, Making Science Make Sense (MSMS), became a top priority for the company and has driven its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts. MSMS, which advances science literacy across the U.S. through hands-on, inquiry-based learning, employee volunteerism, community partnerships and public education, was instrumental in helping the company reach the halfway mark. Bayer employees throughout New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Missouri, Kansas, California, Texas, Minnesota and West Virginia, and all across the nation have visited classrooms and fairs conducting experiments and encouraging students to pursue careers in science. Today, MSMS benefits thousands of students through science experiments such as "Sticky-Icky," "Balloon Skewers," "Ice Cream Chemistry," and the ever popular, crowd-pleasing "Alka-Rockets." These experiments can be found at makingsciencemakesense.com. "Students learn science by doing science," is often the mantra of Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space and chief ambassador of MSMS since the program was formalized in 1995. In addition to MSMS, Blake said the company's collaboration with National PTA has been instrumental in helping Bayer get closer to the 1 million mark. In 2015, the National PTA and Bayer USA Foundation launched a national effort to engage entire families in STEM education by delivering 100,000 hands-on STEM experiences both in schools and at home by 2018. The effort led to National PTA's creation of the STEM Plus Families initiative, of which Bayer is the founding and presenting sponsor, along with sponsors Mathnasium and Microsoft. The premise of STEM Plus Families is that including families as meaningful partners is critical to improve STEM education and bridge the STEM gap. "For more than 20 years, Bayer has provided high-quality, meaningful STEM experiences to children through its Making Science Make Sense initiative," said Laura Bay, president of National PTA. "National PTA is thrilled to collaborate with Bayer to increase access to STEM experiences for all students and inspire the next generation of STEM professionals by engaging entire families in STEM education." Additional programs instrumental in keeping Bayer on track to providing 1 million science learning experiences by 2020 were other Bayer USA Foundation grantees including: A $500,000 grant to ASSET STEM Education which supports STEM education improvement. ASSET equips educators to facilitate hands-on, student-driven learning through inquiry-based teacher professional development and research-based instructional materials for students throughout 15 states impacting 2,500 educators and more than 150,000 students. This funding also provides access to ASSET's program for under-resourced schools and organizations. One grateful teacher explained, "Through the materials provided to us, kids are able to see science come to life and they actually touch and feel it." A $200,000 grant to Students 2 Science, a model program in New Jersey that bridges the needs of the public and private sectors by providing an authentic, state-of-the-art laboratory experience complete with modern instrumentation and professional scientists. "Our partnership with Bayer has been tremendously successful," said Dr. Paul A. Winslow, president and co-founder, Students 2 Science. "Over the past three years, our students, many of whom are from underserved districts in New Jersey, have conducted over 42,000 hands-on experiments that encourage critical thinking, problem- and project-based learning, and career exploration in STEM fields. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Bayer in improving scientific literacy through the United States and preparing our next generation of STEM leaders and innovators." A $150,000 grant to create a new children's exhibit focused on pollinators to open in 2018 within the National Agricultural Center & Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs, Kan. "Agriculture is faced with many challenges and we need to develop the next generation of STEM leaders to solve those issues," said Dawn Gabel, executive director of the National Agriculture Center & Hall of Fame. "Through our partnership with Bayer, we have the support we need to engage children in exciting, hands-on opportunities that teach them about how our food grows." A $105,000 grant to Project Lead The Way (PLTW), which provides a transformative learning experience for K-12 students and teachers across the U.S. by creating an engaging, hands-on classroom environment that empowers students to develop the in-demand knowledge and skills they need to thrive in our evolving world. The funding supports the PLTW Biomedical Science high school program. "Thanks to Bayer's support and generosity, thousands of students will have the opportunity to experience PLTW's transformative Biomedical Science program and develop the knowledge and skills to thrive in college and their careers," said PLTW Senior Vice President and Chief Partnerships Officer Rex Bolinger. "We are extremely grateful for their support and leadership which will impact students for years to come." A $75,000 grant to the foundation of the East Bay Economic Development Association (EDA) to scale and replicate CIRCLe Labs at the East Oakland YMCA and other pilot sites in California . The grant also provides resources to coordinate STEM career access and awareness in the region. It includes operational support to develop a formal STEM implementation plan and communications strategies; early childhood math literacy programs; neighborhood CIRCLe Labs where STEM professionals work with teachers, non-profit organizations and community leaders to promote STEM education and careers; and opportunities for employer-led and employer-influenced engagement for students to STEM-related skill development, internships, jobs and careers. grant to the foundation of the East Bay Economic Development Association (EDA) to scale and replicate CIRCLe Labs at the East Oakland YMCA and other pilot sites in . The grant also provides resources to coordinate STEM career access and awareness in the region. It includes operational support to develop a formal STEM implementation plan and communications strategies; early childhood math literacy programs; neighborhood CIRCLe Labs where STEM professionals work with teachers, non-profit organizations and community leaders to promote STEM education and careers; and opportunities for employer-led and employer-influenced engagement for students to STEM-related skill development, internships, jobs and careers. A $75,000 grant to Level Playing Field Institute to support the Berkeley , Stanford and Sacramento Summer Math and Science Honors Academy (SMASH) programs that prepare underrepresented high school students for college studies, degrees, and careers in STEM fields. Level Playing Field Institute's CEO Eli Kennedy noted, "The past 14 years of SMASH programming has proven that hands-on, in-depth, experiential STEM learning not only inspires young people to choose STEM majors and STEM careers, but also inspires them to 'design the future' and find innovative solutions for their communities' most pressing problems." Bayer: Science For A Better Life Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group aims to create value through innovation, growth and high earning power. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development and to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen. In fiscal 2016, the Group employed around 115,200 people and had sales of EUR 46.8 billion. Capital expenditures amounted to EUR 2.6 billion, R&D expenses to EUR 4.7 billion. These figures include those for the high-tech polymers business, which was floated on the stock market as an independent company named Covestro on October 6, 2015. For more information, go to www.bayer.us. Social Media Channels - Facebook: facebook.com/BayerUnitedStates - Twitter: twitter.com/BayerUS - Instagram: instagram.com/BayerUS - YouTube: youtube.com/BayerUS Bayer and the Bayer Cross are registered trademarks of Bayer. Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer's public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments. SOURCE Bayer Related Links http://www.bayerus.com Aaron P. Bernstein | Reuters. U.S. stock futures were flat this morning after the Nasdaq closed above 6,000 for the first time ever. Steep tax cuts to 15 percent in the U.S. corporate rate and 10 percent for repatriated offshore corporate profits are expected to be part of President Donald Trump's tax reform plan, which is due to be released at 1:30 p.m. ET. (CNBC) Republicans are floating a government spending deal that does not include money for Trump's southern border wall, moving negotiations forward ahead of this week's government shutdown deadline. (NBC News) President Donald Trump invited all 100 senators to attend a briefing today on North Korea, as the standoff escalates over the reclusive nation's development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. (Reuters) China's first domestically built aircraft carrier was launched today in the latest display of Beijing's growing naval power, just three days after the 68th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army Navy. (SCMP) A federal judge in San Francisco has blocked a Trump administration order to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary cities, communities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities. (AP) President Trump is set to sign an executive order today, calling into question the future of dozens of national monuments proclaimed by the last three presidents to set aside millions of acres from development. (USA Today) Ajit Pai, the new Republican chairman of the FCC, is expected to unveil today his game plan for revamping the net neutrality rules passed during the Obama administration. (USA Today) Former President Barack Obama has accepted a $400,000 speaking fee from Cantor Fitzgerald for a keynote address at the investment bank's September health-care conference. (FT) U.S. Steel (X) was sinking about 16 percent in the premarket after reporting a loss when analysts had expected a profit. Revenue also missed and the company issued a weaker full-year guidance. (RTT News) Wynn Resorts (WYNN) plans to start construction as early as December on the first phase of its $1.5 billion Paradise Park. Meanwhile, Wynn exceeded estimates on earnings and revenue. (CNBC) Story continues Chipotle (CMG) reported profit of $1.60 per share, beating estimates by 33 cents. Revenue and same store sales were slightly above. Chipotle also disclosed a data breach in its payment systems during the past month. (CNBC) Consumer Reports, which has historically praised Tesla's (TSLA) Model S and Model X, is cutting its ratings for both vehicles due to the electric automaker's failure to update the software for certain versions. (CNBC) McDonald's (MCD) is dropping its plan to sell shares in its Japan operations, which recently returned to profitability after three years of losses. The fast food giant on Tuesday reported better than expected quarterly results. (Nikkei) BY THE NUMBERS A strangely confident market move could speak to much more upside ahead for stocks. Since the beginning of 1981, the S&P has only seen a low above the prior session's high in 1.5 percent of sessions, according to a technical analyst on CNBC's Trading Nation. The economic calendar pauses today ahead of an extremely busy Thursday and Friday. The Energy Department is out with its weekly report on oil and gasoline inventories at 10:30 a.m. ET. Refinancing came back to life last week, as home loan rates fell further . Homebuyers, however, were not as easily swayed, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly data. Dealing with a tightening labor market, Tyson Foods (TSN) is considering raising wages for its poultry plant workers, on top of a 3 to 3.5 percent wage hike that it gave workers in November. Costco (COST) announced a $7 per share special dividend, payable on May 26 to shareholders of record on May 10. The warehouse retailer also raised its regular quarterly dividend to 50 cents per share from 45 cents. Deckers Outdoor (DECK) is exploring strategic alternatives, with the footwear maker hiring Moelis & Co. as a financial advisor. Activist investors have been urging the maker of UGG boots to look at a possible sale. STOCKS TO WATCH PepsiCo (PEP) beat estimates by 2 cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of 94 cents per share. Revenue also beat forecast. The results were aided by stronger pricing, although PepsiCo is giving a full-year earnings forecast that falls slightly below estimates. AT&T (T) matched forecasts with adjusted quarterly profit of 74 cents per share. However, revenue fell short of estimates, and AT&T also surprised analysts by losing postpaid subscribers during the first quarter. Alcoa spinoff Arconic (ARNC) reported better-than-expected quarterly profits and revenue, helped by strength in transportation and rolled products. The aerospace and carmaker supplier affirmed full-year guidance. Edwards Lifesciences (EW) beat expectations on earnings and revenue. The medical device maker also raised its full-year outlook on strong sales of its transcatheter heart valve replacements. Texas Instruments (TXN) exceed estimates on earnings and revenue. The chipmaker also gave upbeat current quarter guidance on strong demand in its automotive and industrial segments. Logitech (LOGI) beat estimates in its latest quarter, and the maker computer peripheral products said it was considering acquisitions to help it accelerate growth and move into new product areas. IRobot (IRBT) more than doubled the 27 cents per share profit estimate, Revenue also beat. The Roomba vacuum cleaner maker also raised its full-year earnings and revenue guidance. Panera (PNRA), in the process of being acquired, saw its quarterly profits match estimates. The restaurant chain's revenue beat forecasts as its comparable store sales rose 5.3 percent from a year earlier. WATERCOOLER Nordstrom (JWN) is selling a pair of Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans for $425 , and they come with a "caked-on muddy coating," to make it look like "you're not afraid to get down and dirty." (CNBC) More From CNBC The BICSI Canadian Conference & Exhibition will be held May 8-11 and offers multiple technical sessions, networking opportunities and exhibiting companies. TAMPA, Fla., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- BICSI, the association advancing the information and communications technology (ICT) community, will host its 2017 BICSI Canadian Conference & Exhibition in Vancouver, BC. From May 8-11, conference attendees, visitors and exhibitors will gather at the Vancouver Convention Centre to talk about all things ICT. The conference begins with a full day of pre-conference seminars on Monday. The conference officially kicks off on Tuesday and continues through Thursday with 14 technical sessions. Given by leading international and regional experts, these presentations cover some of the latest and most talked-about topics in ICT, including the Internet of Things (IoT); Wi-Fi and optical fiber deployments; category 8 cabling; data center management; and more. In addition to technical content, the Canadian Conference will host nearly 50 industry exhibitors. They will be in the conference Exhibit Hall on May 9 and 10 to speak with conference attendees and visitors about their latest products and services to help ICT professionals in their careers. "We are thrilled to be back in Vancouver for the Canadian Conference this year," said BICSI President Brian Ensign, RCDD, NTS, OSP, RTPM, CSI. "It is a gorgeous city to explore, and it will serve as the perfect backdrop for our week of activity. We always look forward to providing our members, credential holders and other ICT professionals with BICSI's renowned conference experience, and I know that attendees will enjoy their time in Vancouver." More information and registration can be found at bicsi.org/canadian. About BICSI BICSI is a professional association supporting advancing the information and communications technology (ICT) community. ICT covers the spectrum of voice, data, electronic safety & security, project management and audio & video technologies. It encompasses the design, integration and installation of pathways, spaces, optical fiber- and copper-based distribution systems, wireless-based systems and infrastructure that supports the transportation of information and associated signaling between and among communications and information gathering devices. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, USA, BICSI membership spans nearly 100 countries. SOURCE BICSI Related Links http://www.bicsi.org "We are always excited to be selected for this prestigious award," said Jeanne O'Connor, VP Human Resources at Billtrust. "Of course we love that we are able to say that we are one of the best places to work in New Jersey, but we also benefit from the input that our employees provide in the employee engagement survey. We strive to have a culture of open dialogue, and this gives us another opportunity to see how employees feel about Billtrust." The award recognizes and honors the top businesses as places of employment in New Jersey that contribute to the state's economy, and most importantly, its workforce. The program, managed by Best Companies Group, identifies top performing companies located in New Jersey based on a thorough assessment of the company through employee satisfaction feedback. "We understand that attracting and retaining key talent is a significant differentiator in a business environment, especially one that is as technology driven as ours," said Flint Lane, CEO at Billtrust. "Any employee engagement program has to be genuine and implemented from every facet of the company. Our company is growing week by week, so we work hard to foster an environment that encourages innovative thought as well as personal and professional development. This allows us to bring out the best in each other and our clients." "Through ongoing philanthropic efforts, employee development, and community outreach programs, Billtrust offers a variety of ways that employees can engage with each other and their local community," Ms. O'Connor adds. "Open PTO and generous paid parental leave also provide a family-friendly environment to help support employees with work-life balance." Most recently, Billtrust has launched a sabbatical program, whereby both full and part time employees who have completed seven continuous years of employment are encouraged to take an extended time away from the office in order to do something to enrich themselves on a personal and professional level. "We believe these are just some of the reasons why we have such positive employee base." With headquarters in Hamilton, New Jersey, Billtrust also has offices in Denver, CO, Chicago, IL, and Orange County, CA. Best Places to Work in New Jersey unveiled the 2017 recipients at an award ceremony on April 26, 2017. Learn more about at bestplacestoworkinNJ.com. About Billtrust: Billtrust is the premier provider of Payment Cycle Management solutions, helping businesses accelerate invoice-to-cash. By integrating the three key areas of the payment cycle: invoice presentment, invoice payment, and cash application, Billtrust is committed to delivering a flexible solution to improve buyer satisfaction and DSO. Billtrust's invoice-to-cash solution processes over $250 billion in receivables for leading companies. SOURCE Billtrust Related Links http://www.billtrust.com MARLBOROUGH, Mass., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) generated sales of $2.160 billion during the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. This represents growth of 10 percent compared to the prior year period on a reported and operational basis (calculated on a constant currency basis). The company reported GAAP earnings of $290 million or $0.21 per share (EPS), compared to GAAP earnings of $202 million or $0.15 a year ago and achieved adjusted earnings per share of $0.29 for the period, compared to $0.28 a year ago. "We are pleased with our performance in the first quarter as we delivered excellent growth across our various businesses and geographies," said Mike Mahoney, chairman and chief executive officer, Boston Scientific. "At the same time, we are investing in innovation that will strengthen our category leadership strategy while aiming to deliver sustainable double digit adjusted earnings per share growth." First quarter financial results and recent developments: Reported first quarter sales of $2.160 billion , compared to the company's guidance range for the quarter of $2.050 to $2.100 billion , representing an increase of 10 percent on a reported and operational basis, all compared to the prior year period. Grew organic revenue 9 percent in the first quarter over the prior year period. Organic revenue growth excludes the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and sales from the acquisition of EndoChoice Holdings, Inc. (EndoChoice). Reported GAAP earnings of $0.21 per share compared to the company's guidance range of $0.18 to $0.21 per share and delivered adjusted earnings per share of $0.29 compared to the guidance range of $0.29 to $0.31 per share. These results include charges associated with the February voluntary removal of Lotus Valve devices1 from global commercial and clinical sites. Achieved first quarter revenue growth in all segments, all compared to the prior year period: MedSurg: 15 percent reported and operational, 12 percent organic Cardiovascular: 8 percent reported, operational and organic Rhythm Management: 7 percent reported, 8 percent operational and organic Delivered strong regional revenue growth, all compared to the prior year period: U.S.: 13 percent reported and operational, 11 percent organic Europe : 2 percent reported, 7 percent operational and organic : 2 percent reported, 7 percent operational and organic AMEA ( Asia-Pacific , Middle East and Africa ): 9 percent reported, 8 percent operational and organic , and ): 9 percent reported, 8 percent operational and organic Emerging markets:2 12 percent reported, operational and organic Entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Symetis SA, a privately-held Swiss structural heart company focused on minimally-invasive transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) devices, for $435 million in cash, to provide interventional cardiologists and cardiac surgeons with multiple TAVI offerings for varying patient pathologies and anatomy. Announced that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended the use of Boston Scientific cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) with EnduraLife Battery Technology for treating patients with heart failure and noted the extended battery life was likely to reduce the number of avoidable replacement procedures and could offer 6 million in savings to the National Health System of England in the first five years. Received CE Mark for and launched the RESONATE family of CRT-Ds3 in Europe , which provides physicians with new devices for treating heart failure patients featuring SmartCRT technology and EnduraLife Battery Technology. Presented results from the EVOLVE II three-year clinical trial at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Sessions highlighting the excellent safety performance of the SYNERGY Bioabsorbable Polymer Stent, notably an exceptionally low stent thrombosis (ST) rate (0.2%) beyond the first 24 hours of device implantation until three years after the procedure. Completed enrollment of 465 patients in IMPERIAL, a head-to-head trial comparing the Eluvia Drug-Eluting Vascular Stent4 to the Zilver PTX Drug-Coated Stent (Cook Medical); data will be used to support regulatory submission in the U.S. Achieved two clinical milestones for the Ranger Paclitaxel-Coated PTA Balloon Catheter:4 presented 12-month results at the Charing Cross Symposium that demonstrated a high rate of primary patency and freedom from target lesion revascularization and commenced enrollment of the RANGER II SFA study, which is designed to support regulatory submissions in the U.S. and Japan . Began patient enrollment in two clinical trials examining the WATCHMAN Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAAC) Device: ASAP TOO, a study evaluating the use of the device in warfarin-ineligible patients, which could lead to expanded labeling in the U.S. and SALUTE, a trial specifically designed to pursue regulatory approval in Japan . 1. The Lotus Valve devices are currently not available for use or sale. 2. We define Emerging Markets as including certain countries that we believe have strong growth potential based on their economic conditions, healthcare sectors and our global capabilities. Currently, we include 20 countries in our definition of Emerging Markets. 3. CE Marked. The Resonate family of CRT-Ds is not available for use or sale in the U.S. 4. The Eluvia Drug-Eluting Vascular Stent and Ranger Paclitaxel-Coated PTA Balloon are CE Marked. In the U.S., they are investigational devices, limited by U.S. law to investigational use only and not available for sale. Net sales for the first quarter: Change Three Months Ended March 31, As Reported Basis Less: Impact of Foreign Currency Constant Currency Basis in millions 2017 2016 Interventional Cardiology $ 590 $ 548 8 % $ (3) 0 % 8 % Peripheral Interventions 261 242 7 % 1 0 % 7 % Cardiovascular 851 790 8 % (2) 0 % 8 % Cardiac Rhythm Management 463 433 7 % (2) (1) % 8 % Electrophysiology 64 59 8 % 0 (1) % 9 % Rhythm Management 527 492 7 % (2) (1) % 8 % Endoscopy 379 333 14 % (2) 0 % 14 % * Urology and Pelvic Health 262 228 15 % (1) 0 % 15 % Neuromodulation 141 121 17 % 0 0 % 17 % MedSurg 782 682 15 % (3) 0 % 15 % Net Sales $ 2,160 $ 1,964 10 % $ (7) 0 % 10 % *Endoscopy grew 9% on an organic basis. Growth rates are based on actual, non-rounded amounts and may not recalculate precisely. Sales growth rates that exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and/or the impact of recent acquisitions with significant sales are not prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. An explanation of the company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the exhibits attached to this news release. Guidance for Full Year and Second Quarter 2017 The company now estimates revenue for the full year 2017 to be in a range of $8.800 to $8.900 billion (compared to prior guidance of $8.675 to $8.875 billion), which versus the prior year period, represents a growth range of approximately 5 to 6 percent on a reported basis and a growth range of approximately 6 to 7 percent on an operational basis including contribution of approximately 70 basis points from EndoChoice. The company now estimates income on a GAAP basis in a range of $0.81 to $0.86 per share (compared to prior guidance of $0.86 to $0.91 per share) and continues to estimate adjusted earnings, excluding acquisition-related net charges, restructuring and restructuring-related net charges, and amortization expense, in a range of $1.22 to $1.26 per share. The company estimates sales for the second quarter of 2017 to be in a range of $2.185 to $2.215 billion, which versus the prior year period represents a growth range of approximately 3 to 4 percent on a reported basis and a growth range of approximately 5 to 6 percent on an operational basis including contribution of approximately 70 basis points from EndoChoice. The company estimates earnings on a GAAP basis in a range of $0.18 to $0.21 per share. Adjusted earnings, excluding acquisition-related net charges, restructuring and restructuring-related net charges and amortization expense, are estimated in a range of $0.30 to $0.32 per share. Conference Call Information Boston Scientific management will be discussing these results with analysts on a conference call today at 8:00 a.m. (ET). The company will webcast the call to interested parties through its website: www.bostonscientific.com. Please see the website for details on how to access the webcast. The webcast will be available for approximately one year on the Boston Scientific website. About Boston Scientific Boston Scientific transforms lives through innovative medical solutions that improve the health of patients around the world. As a global medical technology leader for more than 35 years, we advance science for life by providing a broad range of high performance solutions that address unmet patient needs and reduce the cost of healthcare. For more information, visit www.bostonscientific.com and connect on Twitter and Facebook. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words like "anticipate," "expect," "project," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "intend," "aiming" and similar words. These forward-looking statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and estimates using information available to us at the time and are not intended to be guarantees of future events or performance. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding our expected net sales, GAAP, operational and organic revenue growth rates, GAAP earnings and adjusted earnings for the second quarter and full year 2017, our financial performance, our business plans and our positioning for revenue and earnings growth. If our underlying assumptions turn out to be incorrect, or if certain risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, in some cases, have affected and in the future could affect our ability to implement our business strategy and may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the statements expressed in this press release. As a result, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of our forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that may cause such differences include, among other things: future economic, political, competitive, reimbursement and regulatory conditions, new product introductions and the market acceptance of those products, markets for our products, expected pricing environment, expected procedural volumes, the closing and integration of acquisitions, clinical trial results, demographic trends, intellectual property rights, litigation, financial market conditions, the execution and effect of our restructuring program, the execution and effect of our business strategy, including our cost-savings and growth initiatives and future business decisions made by us and our competitors. New risks and uncertainties may arise from time to time and are difficult to predict. All of these factors are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many of them are beyond our control. For a further list and description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect our future operations, see Part I, Item IA - Risk Factors in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we may update in Part II, Item 1A - Risk Factors in Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q we have filed or will file hereafter. We disclaim any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in our expectations or in events, conditions, or circumstances on which those expectations may be based, or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. This cautionary statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information A reconciliation of the company's non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures and an explanation of the company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures, is included in the exhibits attached to this news release. CONTACT: Media: Kelly Leadem 508-683-5543 (office) Media Relations Boston Scientific Corporation [email protected] Investors: Susan Lisa, CFA 508-683-5565 (office) Investor Relations Boston Scientific Corporation [email protected] BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED GAAP RESULTS OF OPERATIONS (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, in millions, except per share data 2017 2016 Net sales $ 2,160 $ 1,964 Cost of products sold 650 573 Gross profit 1,510 1,391 Operating expenses: Selling, general and administrative expenses 794 716 Research and development expenses 235 210 Royalty expense 17 19 Amortization expense 143 136 Contingent consideration expense (benefit) (50) 4 Restructuring charges (credits) 4 3 Litigation-related charges (credits) 3 10 1,146 1,098 Operating income (loss) 364 293 Other income (expense): Interest expense (57) (59) Other, net (2) (6) Income (loss) before income taxes 305 228 Income tax expense (benefit) 15 26 Net income (loss) $ 290 $ 202 Net income (loss) per common share - basic $ 0.21 $ 0.15 Net income (loss) per common share - assuming dilution $ 0.21 $ 0.15 Weighted-average shares outstanding Basic 1,365.4 1,350.4 Assuming dilution 1,390.2 1,369.9 BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS As of March 31, December 31, in millions, except share data 2017 2016 (Unaudited) ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 156 $ 196 Trade accounts receivable, net 1,429 1,472 Inventories 971 955 Deferred and prepaid income taxes 65 75 Other current assets 405 541 Total current assets 3,026 3,239 Property, plant and equipment, net 1,652 1,630 Goodwill 6,680 6,678 Other intangible assets, net 5,743 5,883 Other long-term assets 842 666 TOTAL ASSETS $ 17,943 $ 18,096 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY Current liabilities: Current debt obligations $ 5 $ 64 Accounts payable 376 447 Accrued expenses 2,298 2,312 Other current liabilities 811 764 Total current liabilities 3,490 3,587 Long-term debt 5,509 5,420 Deferred income taxes 19 18 Other long-term liabilities 1,872 2,338 Commitments and contingencies Stockholders' equity Preferred stock, $0.01 par value - authorized 50,000,000 shares, none issued and outstanding Common stock, $0.01 par value - authorized 2,000,000,000 shares - issued 1,616,648,758 shares as of March 31, 2017 and 1,609,670,817 shares as of December 31, 2016 16 16 Treasury stock, at cost - 247,566,270 shares as of March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016 (1,717) (1,717) Additional paid-in capital 17,015 17,014 Accumulated deficit (8,215) (8,581) Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss), net of tax (46) 1 Total stockholders' equity 7,053 6,733 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY $ 17,943 $ 18,096 BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION NON-GAAP NET INCOME AND NET INCOME PER COMMON SHARE RECONCILIATIONS (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 in millions, except per share data Pre-Tax Tax Impact (a) After-Tax Impact per Share GAAP net income (loss) $ 305 $ (15) $ 290 $ 0.21 Non-GAAP adjustments: Acquisition-related net credits (b) (33) 1 (32) (0.02) Restructuring and restructuring-related net charges (c) 19 (4) 15 0.01 Litigation-related net charges 3 (1) 2 0.00 Amortization expense 143 (21) 122 0.09 Adjusted net income $ 437 $ (40) $ 397 $ 0.29 Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 in millions, except per share data Pre-Tax Tax Impact (a) After-Tax Impact per Share GAAP net income (loss) $ 228 $ (26) $ 202 $ 0.15 Non-GAAP adjustments: Acquisition-related net charges (d) 42 2 44 0.03 Restructuring and restructuring-related net charges (e) 13 (4) 9 0.01 Litigation-related net charges 10 (4) 6 0.00 Amortization expense 136 (19) 117 0.09 Adjusted net income $ 429 $ (51) $ 378 $ 0.28 (a) Amounts are tax effected at the company's effective tax rate, unless the amount is a significant unusual or infrequently occurring item in accordance with FASB Accounting Standards Codification section 740-270-30, "General Methodology and Use of Estimated Annual Effective Tax Rate." (b) In the first quarter of 2017, pre-tax acquisition-related net credits were $33 million, of which $3 million of expense was recorded in cost of products sold, $11 million of expense of was recorded in selling, general and administrative expenses, $3 million of expense was recorded to research and development expenses and $50 million was recorded as a benefit to contingent consideration. (c) In the first quarter of 2017, pre-tax restructuring charges were $4 million and pre-tax restructuring-related charges were $15 million, of which $12 million was recorded in cost of products sold and $3 million was recorded in selling, general and administrative expenses. (d) In the first quarter of 2016, pre-tax acquisition-related net charges were $42 million, of which $24 million was recorded in cost of products sold, $14 million was recorded in selling, general and administrative expenses and $4 million was recorded as contingent consideration expense. (e) In the first quarter of 2016, pre-tax restructuring charges were $3 million and pre-tax restructuring-related charges were $10 million, of which $6 million was recorded in cost of products sold and $4 million was recorded in selling, general and administrative expenses. An explanation of the company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures is provided at the end of this document. BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION SEGMENT INFORMATION (Unaudited) SEGMENT NET SALES* Three Months Ended March 31, in millions 2017 2016 Change (restated) Interventional Cardiology $ 605 $ 560 8 % Peripheral Interventions 266 248 7 % Cardiovascular 871 808 8 % Cardiac Rhythm Management 471 439 8 % Electrophysiology 65 60 9 % Rhythm Management 536 499 8 % Endoscopy 387 339 14 % Urology and Pelvic Health 265 230 15 % Neuromodulation 142 122 17 % MedSurg 794 691 15 % Subtotal Core Businesses 2,201 1,998 10 % Foreign currency (41) (34) N/A Net Sales $ 2,160 $ 1,964 10 % Growth rates are based on actual, non-rounded amounts and may not recalculate precisely. SEGMENT OPERATING INCOME* Three Months Ended March 31, in millions 2017 2016 (restated) Segment operating income Cardiovascular $ 245 $ 254 Rhythm Management 101 67 MedSurg 238 214 Operating income allocated to reportable segments 584 535 Corporate expenses and currency exchange (88) (41) Acquisition-related, restructuring- and restructuring-related, and litigation-related net credits (charges) 11 (65) Amortization expense (143) (136) Operating income (loss) $ 364 $ 293 *We measure and evaluate our reportable segments based on segment net sales and operating income, excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency. Sales generated from reportable segments, as well as operating results of reportable segments and corporate expenses, are based on internally-derived standard currency exchange rates, which may differ from year to year and do not include intersegment profits. We exclude from segment operating income certain corporate-related expenses and certain transactions or adjustments that our chief operating decision maker considers to be non-operational, such as amounts related to acquisition-related net charges and credits, restructuring- and restructuring-related net charges and credits, litigation-related net charges and credits, and amortization expense. Although we exclude these amounts from segment operating income, they are included in reported consolidated operating income (loss) and are included in the reconciliation above. The company restated segment information for the prior period based on standard currency exchange rates used for the current period in order to remove the impact of foreign currency exchange fluctuation. BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION PRIOR YEAR RESTATED SEGMENT INFORMATION (Unaudited) SEGMENT NET SALES* Three Months Ended Year Ended in millions June 30, 2016 September 30, 2016 December 31, 2016 December 31, 2016 (restated) (restated) (restated) (restated) Interventional Cardiology $ 580 $ 565 $ 596 $ 2,301 Peripheral Interventions 260 256 260 1,024 Cardiovascular 840 821 856 3,325 Cardiac Rhythm Management 476 465 479 1,859 Electrophysiology 60 60 65 245 Rhythm Management 536 525 544 2,104 Endoscopy 361 365 387 1,452 Urology and Pelvic Health 255 247 277 1,009 Neuromodulation 135 138 162 557 MedSurg 751 750 826 3,018 Subtotal Core Businesses 2,127 2,096 2,226 8,447 Foreign currency (1) 9 (35) (61) Net Sales $ 2,126 $ 2,105 $ 2,191 $ 8,386 SEGMENT OPERATING INCOME* Three Months Ended Year Ended in millions June 30, 2016 September 30, 2016 December 31, 2016 December 31, 2016 (restated) (restated) (restated) (restated) Segment operating income Cardiovascular $ 249 $ 247 $ 207 $ 958 Rhythm Management 73 90 81 311 MedSurg 234 234 252 934 Operating income allocated to reportable segments 556 571 540 2,203 Corporate expenses and currency exchange (58) (60) (22) (182) Acquisition-related, restructuring- and restructuring-related, and litigation-related net credits (charges) (697) (27) (240) (1,029) Amortization expense (135) (136) (138) (545) Operating income (loss) $ (334) $ 348 $ 140 $ 447 *We measure and evaluate our reportable segments based on segment net sales and operating income, excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency. Sales generated from reportable segments, as well as operating results of reportable segments and corporate expenses, are based on internally-derived standard currency exchange rates, which may differ from year to year and do not include intersegment profits. We exclude from segment operating income certain corporate-related expenses and certain transactions or adjustments that our chief operating decision maker considers to be non-operational, such as amounts related to acquisition-related net charges and credits, restructuring- and restructuring-related net charges and credits, litigation-related net charges and credits, and amortization expense. Although we exclude these amounts from segment operating income, they are included in reported consolidated operating income (loss) and are included in the reconciliation above. The company restated segment information for the prior period based on standard currency exchange rates used for the current period in order to remove the impact of foreign currency exchange fluctuation. BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION CARDIAC RHYTHM MANAGEMENT (CRM) SALES BY COMPONENT (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, (in millions) 2017 2016 Defibrillator systems $ 315 $ 311 Pacemaker systems 148 122 CRM products $ 463 $ 433 BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION SEGMENT, REGIONAL AND BUSINESS NET SALES (Unaudited) Q1 2017 Segment Net Sales as compared to Q1 2016 MedSurg Cardiovascular Rhythm Management Total BSC Percentage change in net sales, as reported 15 % 8 % 7 % 10 % Less: Impact of foreign currency fluctuations 0 % 0 % (1) % 0 % Percentage change in net sales, constant currency 15 % 8 % 8 % 10 % Less: Impact of EndoChoice acquisition 3 % 0 % 0 % 1 % Percentage change in net sales, organic 12 % 8 % 8 % 9 % Q1 2017 Regional Net Sales as compared to Q1 2016 U.S. Europe AMEA Emerging Markets Percentage change in net sales, as reported 13 % 2 % 9 % 12 % Less: Impact of foreign currency fluctuations 0 % (5) % 1 % 0 % Percentage change in net sales, constant currency 13 % 7 % 8 % 12 % Less: Impact of EndoChoice acquisition 2 % 0 % 0 % 0 % Percentage change in net sales, organic 11 % 7 % 8 % 12 % Q1 2017 Endoscopy Net Sales as compared to Q1 2016 Endoscopy Percentage change in net sales, as reported 14 % Less: Impact of foreign currency fluctuations 0 % Percentage change in net sales, constant currency 14 % Less: Impact of EndoChoice acquisition 5 % Percentage change in net sales, organic 9 % An explanation of the company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures is provided at the end of this document. BOSTON SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION ESTIMATED REVENUE NON-GAAP GROWTH RATES AND NON-GAAP NET INCOME PER COMMON SHARE RECONCILIATIONS (Unaudited) Q2 and Full Year 2017 Estimated Revenue Growth Rates Q2 2017 Estimate Full Year 2017 Estimate (Low) (High) (Low) (High) Estimated GAAP sales growth 3 % 4 % 5 % 6 % Less: Estimated impact of foreign currency fluctuations (2) % (2) % (1) % (1) % Estimated sales growth, constant currency* 5 % 6 % 6 % 7 % * Includes contribution of approximately 70 basis points from EndoChoice. Q2 and Full Year 2017 EPS Guidance Q2 2017 Estimate Full Year 2017 Estimate Prior Full Year 2017 Estimate (Low) (High) (Low) (High) (Low) (High) GAAP results $ 0.18 $ 0.21 $ 0.81 $ 0.86 $ 0.86 $ 0.91 Estimated acquisition-related net charges 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.05 0.04 Estimated restructuring and restructuring-related charges 0.02 0.01 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.03 Estimated amortization expense 0.08 0.08 0.34 0.34 0.28 0.28 Adjusted results $ 0.30 $ 0.32 $ 1.22 $ 1.26 $ 1.22 $ 1.26 An explanation of the company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures is provided at the end of this document. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement our financial statements presented on a GAAP basis, we disclose certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income (earnings) and adjusted net income (earnings) per share that exclude certain amounts and adjusted net sales that exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and/or the impact of recent acquisitions with significant sales. These non-GAAP financial measures are not in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States. The GAAP financial measure most directly comparable to adjusted net income is GAAP net income and the GAAP financial measure most directly comparable to adjusted net income per share is GAAP net income per share. To calculate adjusted net sales that exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, we convert actual net sales from local currency to U.S. dollars using constant foreign currency exchange rates in the current and prior period. The GAAP financial measure most directly comparable to this constant currency growth rate and/or growth rates excluding the impacts of recent acquisitions with significant sales is growth rate percentages using net sales on a GAAP basis. Reconciliations of each of these non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP financial measure are included in the accompanying schedules. Management uses these supplemental non-GAAP financial measures to evaluate performance period over period, to analyze the underlying trends in our business, to assess our performance relative to our competitors and to establish operational goals and forecasts that are used in allocating resources. In addition, management uses these non-GAAP financial measures to further its understanding of the performance of our operating segments. With the exception of the impact of recent acquisitions with significant sales, the adjustments excluded from our non-GAAP financial measures are consistent with those excluded from our operating segments' measures of net sales and profit or loss. These adjustments are excluded from the segment measures that are reported to our chief operating decision maker that are used to make operating decisions and assess performance. We believe that presenting adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share that exclude certain amounts and adjusted net sales that exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and/or the impact of recent acquisitions with significant sales, in addition to the corresponding GAAP financial measures, provides investors greater transparency to the information used by management for its operational decision-making and allows investors to see our results "through the eyes" of management. We further believe that providing this information assists our investors in understanding our operating performance and the methodology used by management to evaluate and measure such performance. The following is an explanation of each of the adjustments that management excluded as part of these non-GAAP financial measures for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 and for the forecasted three month period ending June 30, 2017 and full year ending December 31, 2017, as well as reasons for excluding each of these individual items: Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Net Income per Share: Acquisition-related net charges (credits) - These adjustments may consist of (a) contingent consideration fair value adjustments, (b) gains on previously held investments, (c) purchased and/or funded in-process research and development expenses incurred outside of a business combination and (d) due diligence, other fees, inventory step-up amortization and integration and exit costs. The contingent consideration adjustments represent accounting adjustments to state contingent consideration liabilities at their estimated fair value. These adjustments can be highly variable depending on the assessed likelihood and amount of future contingent consideration payments. Due diligence, other fees, inventory step-up amortization and integration and exit costs include legal, tax, severance and other expenses associated with prior and potential future acquisitions that can be highly variable and not representative of ongoing operations. Accordingly, management excluded these amounts for purposes of calculating these non-GAAP financial measures to facilitate an evaluation of our current operating performance and a comparison to our past operating performance. Restructuring and restructuring-related net charges (credits) - These adjustments represent severance and other direct costs associated with our restructuring plans. These restructuring plans each consist of distinct initiatives that are fundamentally different from our ongoing, core cost reduction initiatives in terms of, among other things, the frequency with which each action is performed and the required planning, resourcing, cost and timing. Examples of such initiatives include the movement of business activities, facility consolidations and closures and the transfer of product lines between manufacturing facilities, which, due to the highly regulated nature of our industry, requires a significant investment in time and cost to create duplicate manufacturing lines, run product validations and seek regulatory approvals. Restructuring initiatives generally take approximately two years to complete and have a distinct project timeline that begins subsequent to approval by our Board of Directors. In contrast to our ongoing cost reduction initiatives, restructuring initiatives typically result in duplicative cost and exit costs over this period of time, are one-time shut downs or transfers and are not considered part of our core, ongoing operations. Because these restructuring plans are incremental to the core activities that arise in the ordinary course of our business, management excluded these costs for purposes of calculating these non-GAAP financial measures to facilitate an evaluation of our current operating performance and a comparison to our past operating performance. Litigation-related net charges (credits) - These adjustments include certain significant product liability and other litigation-related charges and credits. We record these charges and credits, which we consider to be unusual or infrequent and significant, within the litigation-related charges line in our consolidated statement of operations; all other legal and product liability charges, credits and costs are recorded within selling general and administrative expenses. These amounts are excluded by management in assessing our operating performance, as well as from our operating segments' measures of profit and loss used for making operating decisions and assessing performance. Accordingly, management excluded these amounts for purposes of calculating these non-GAAP financial measures to facilitate an evaluation of our current operating performance and a comparison to our past operating performance. Amortization expense - We record intangible assets at historical cost and amortize them over their estimated useful lives. Amortization expense is excluded from management's assessment of operating performance and is also excluded from our operating segments' measures of profit and loss used for making operating decisions and assessing performance. Accordingly, management has excluded amortization expense for purposes of calculating these non-GAAP financial measures to facilitate an evaluation of our current operating performance and a comparison to our past operating performance. Adjusted Net Sales Excluding the Impact of Changes in Foreign Currency Exchange Rates and/or the Impact of Recent Acquisitions with Significant Sales The impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates is highly variable and difficult to predict. The impact of recent acquisitions with significant sales in the current period and no prior period equivalent may distort our presentation of organic growth. Accordingly, management excludes the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and/or the impacts of recent acquisitions with significant sales for purposes of reviewing the net sales and growth rates to facilitate an evaluation of our current operating performance and a comparison to our past operating performance. Adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share that exclude certain amounts and adjusted net sales that exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and/or the impacts of recent acquisitions with significant sales, are not in accordance with U.S. GAAP and should not be considered in isolation from or as a replacement for the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Further, other companies may calculate these non-GAAP financial measures differently than we do, which may limit the usefulness of those measures for comparative purposes. SOURCE Boston Scientific Corporation Related Links http://www.bostonscientific.com CHICAGO and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bringg announced today it has started rolling-out its customer-centric delivery platform across the Panera Bread network of bakery-cafes. Bringg's customer-centric logistics platform helps Panera U.S. bakery-cafes maintain control and visibility over their expanding delivery offering. With the Bringg platform, at Panera: Bakery-cafes can use a single web-based or mobile dashboard to dispatch orders, manage drivers and track them in real time, as well as set up alerts for specific events, create reports for performance optimization, and much more. can use a single web-based or mobile dashboard to dispatch orders, manage drivers and track them in real time, as well as set up alerts for specific events, create reports for performance optimization, and much more. Drivers have everything they need to ensure the perfect delivery right on their mobile phone, including the ability to manage their tasks, navigate to their next destination and communicate with customers have everything they need to ensure the perfect delivery right on their mobile phone, including the ability to manage their tasks, navigate to their next destination and communicate with customers Customers can enjoy a delightful experience that keeps them coming back for more. Seamlessly integrated into the Panera Ecommerce Ordering Experience, guests can now follow the driver in real-time, communicate with them, and rate them after receiving their order. "As we introduce Panera delivery to markets across the country, we are delighted to add Bringg's solution to our forward-looking technology arsenal," said Dan Wegiel, SVP, Panera to You. "In our real-time era, fast, timely and personalized delivery services are a must-have for consumers, and Bringg helps to make that possible." "We are very proud to add Panera Bread to the growing list of innovative brands using our platform," added Lior Sion, CTO at Bringg. "Our main goal is to enable our customers to provide their employees with optimal operational processes, help their drivers ensure accurate deliveries, and offer their end-customers excellent real-time experiences." About Bringg Bringg is the leading customer-centric logistics platform for enterprises, with customers in more than 50 countries including some of the world's best-known brands. Our highly flexible yet powerful solution enables companies to quickly streamline the way they deliver goods and services, creating both operational efficiency and the optimal experience for their entire ecosystem - from the headquarters to the field and all the way to the customer. Bringg's open platform is simple to implement, use and manage through its different modules - web-based applications for dispatch and administration, mobile apps for drivers and service people, and a branded mobile experience for customers. It is highly scalable and provides a robust set of APIs and SDKs that can be used to easily customize the solution to fit our customers' needs and to integrate it across their existing systems. For more information and to request a demo, please visit our website at http://www.bringg.com. Contact - [email protected]. SOURCE Bringg BAKERSFIELD, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- After a two-week trial, a California Superior Court jury returned a unanimous verdict against Holiday Inn in a case where the hotel receptionist gave a key to a sexual predator who then let himself into a hotel room and raped a 29-year-old woman. According to Callahan & Blaine, which represented the victim, the perpetrator, who was noticeably intoxicated from drugs and alcohol, propositioned the receptionist for sex in exchange for $100 before asking for a replacement key for "his" room. The receptionist did not obtain identification from the man, and provided him a key to the plaintiff's room, not once, but twice. The perpetrator entered the victim's room and raped her. He was caught on surveillance tape leaving the room with his pants down. He was convicted of the rape and sentenced to three years in prison. The receptionist testified at trial that she was not trained to obtain identification from guests before giving replacement keys. The Holiday Inn claimed it was not at fault because the rape was "unforeseeable". However, the receptionist and manager of the Holiday Inn Express admitted in trial that they knew violations such as rape could happen if the wrong person is provided a key. The Plaintiff was represented by Brian McCormack of Callahan & Blaine. The trial was held at Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield, California. The case is Davick v. Holiday Inn Express, et al. (BCV-16-101353) in the Superior Court of California, County of Kern, Bakersfield. SOURCE Callahan & Blaine Related Links http://www.callahan-law.com/ FRESNO, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With California's heat season quickly approaching, Cal/OSHA today hosted a news conference to remind employers that prevention is the best defense for outdoor workers against heat-related illness and death. A key component of Cal/OSHA's prevention model includes annual trainings statewide in both English and Spanish. Nisei Farmers League and 11 other agricultural employers co-sponsored training sessions in each language today in Easton. The training highlights the need to protect outdoor workers from heat illness and the requirements under California's heat illness standard. "Cal/OSHA continues to enforce the nation's most comprehensive heat illness prevention regulation, and we will continue our outreach, consultation and training for workers and employers to ensure that workers are protected from the heat," said Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum. The risk of heat illness is generally highest for people who work outdoors. Therefore, Cal/OSHA's prevention approach includes targeted enforcement inspections at outdoor worksites in industries such as agriculture, landscaping and construction during heat season. These inspections ensure compliance with the heat illness prevention standard and the injury and illness prevention standard, which require employers to take the following basic precautions: Train all employees and supervisors on heat illness prevention. Provide enough fresh water so that each employee can drink at least 1 quart per hour, or four 8-ounce glasses of water per hour, and encourage them to do so. Provide access to shade and encourage employees to take a cooldown rest in the shade for at least 5 minutes. They should not wait until they feel sick to cool down. Shade structures must be in place when temperatures exceed 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or upon request. Closely observe all employees during a heat wave and any employee newly assigned to a high heat area. Lighter work, frequent breaks or shorter hours will help employees who have not been working in high temperatures adapt to the new conditions. Develop and implement written procedures for complying with the Cal/OSHA heat illness prevention standard, including plans on how to handle medical emergencies and steps to take if someone shows signs or symptoms of heat illness. The most frequent violation that Cal/OSHA cites during targeted heat inspections is for failure to have a proper written heat illness prevention plan specific to the worksite. Serious violations are often related to inadequate access to water and shade, and to a lack of supervisor and employee training. To remain in compliance with the standard, Cal/OSHA encourages employers and worker supervisors to learn more about the standard, which was amended in 2015. Please refer to the Cal/OSHA guidance on the new requirements and the Heat Illness Prevention Enforcement Q&A for more information on the updates. Additional information about heat illness prevention, including details on upcoming training sessions throughout the state are posted on Cal/OSHA's Heat Illness Prevention page. Cal/OSHA also has extensive multilingual materials for employers, workers and trainers on its Water. Rest. Shade. public awareness campaign website. Questions related to heat illness prevention should be directed to Cal/OSHA's Consultation Services Branch, which provides free and voluntary assistance to employers and employee organizations to improve their health and safety programs. Employers should call (800) 963-9424 for assistance from Cal/OSHA Consultation Services. Employees with work-related questions or complaints may contact DIR's Call Center in English or Spanish at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734). The California Workers' Information line at 866-924-9757 provides recorded information in English and Spanish on a variety of work-related topics. Complaints can also be filed confidentially with Cal/OSHA district offices. Members of the press may contact Erika Monterroza or Paola Laverde at (510) 286-1161. The public is also encouraged to subscribe to get email alerts on DIR's press releases or other departmental updates. https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDIR https://twitter.com/CA_DIR http://www.youtube.com/CaliforniaDIR http://www.dir.ca.gov/email/listsub.asp?choice=1 The California Department of Industrial Relations, established in 1927, protects and improves the health, safety, and economic well-being of over 18 million wage earners, and helps their employers comply with state labor laws. DIR is housed within the Labor & Workforce Development Agency. For general inquiries, contact DIR's Communications Call Center at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734) for help in locating the appropriate division or program in our department. SOURCE Cal/OSHA Related Links http://www.dir.ca.gov/ STAMFORD, Conn., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- When Susannah Oland opened the Army and Navy Brewery in 1867, she hoped to create a business that could be passed down to her sons. Six generations later, her legacy and the company eventually renamed as Moosehead Breweries lives on. This year, the company is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Moosehead celebrates 150 years of independent brewing. It hasn't always been an easy path for the brewery, which has endured two fires, Prohibition, the Halifax Explosion and two wars as it expanded across Canada, into the US and eventually, around the world. The brewery shares its anniversary with the country of Canada, which is celebrating its own 150th birthday this year. "It's fitting that we share our anniversary with the country we call home," explains Andrew Oland, President, Moosehead Breweries. "Like Canada, we've faced challenges along our path, but like Canada - we've risen to the challenge time and time again to not only endure, but thrive. And through it all, we've been able to remain fiercely independent and stay true to our own ideals." To celebrate the anniversary, Moosehead will launch new 150th-themed bottle labels for Moosehead Lager and introduce Moosehead Radler in draft in the US. Several anniversary-themed consumer promotions are also planned. Georgia Homsany, US Brand Director for Moosehead added, "We hear again and again from our customers and fans across the United States, who adore Moosehead for its authenticity, it's independence and, of course, its great beer." Moosehead Lager won a Silver medal in the Lager category at this year's New York International Beer Competition. At last year's competition, Moosehead Radler won a gold medal and "Specialty Beer of the Year." Moosehead and Moosehead Radler are imported by United States Beverage and distributed nationally throughout the US. About Moosehead Breweries Limited Moosehead Breweries Limited is headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada but traces its roots to 1867 when the Oland family started brewing beer. Today Moosehead is still family owned and is operated by the fifth and sixth generations of Oland family members. Moosehead is the last privately owned major brewery in Canada. The company brews and sells its award-winning Moosehead lager across Canada, in the United States, and in a number of countries around the world. About United States Beverage United States Beverage (USB) is a premium craft and imported beer sales and marketing company located in Stamford, Connecticut. USB provides a national distribution network for a portfolio of premium brands including: Moosehead Lager & Moosehead Radler from Canada; Innis & Gunn from Scotland; Super Bock from Portugal; Sonoma Cider from Healdsburg, CA; the Grupo Damm portfolio of brands from Spain: Estrella Damm, Inedit Damm, and Daura Damm; Czechvar and Czechvar Dark from the Czech Republic; Tona Cerveza from Nicaragua; Kalik from the Bahamas, 1911 Cider from Lafayette, NY, and Empire Brewing from Cazenovia, NY. 2017 commemorates United States Beverage's 20th anniversary of representing premium craft and import brands. www.unitedstatesbeverage.com. For media questions please contact Georgia Homsany, 203-978-6429, [email protected]. SOURCE United States Beverage VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Capstone Mining Corp. ("Capstone") (TSX: CS) today announced the voting results from its 2017 Annual General and Special Meeting held April 26, 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia. A total of 278,882,105 common shares were voted at the meeting, representing 71.27% of the votes attached to all outstanding common shares. Shareholders voted in favour of all items of business before the meeting, as follows: % of Votes in Favour % of Votes Withheld Director Nominees George L. Brack 97.89% 2.11% Robert J. Gallagher 98.81% 1.19% Jill V. Gardiner 98.85% 1.15% Soon Jin Kwon 99.79% 0.21% Kalidas Madhavpeddi 99.80% 0.20% Dale C. Peniuk 98.32% 1.68% Darren M. Pylot 99.84% 0.16% Richard N. Zimmer 99.76% 0.24% In Favour Against Incentive Stock Option and Bonus Share Plan 92.30% 7.70% Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation 85.87% 14.13% The resolution to set the number of directors at eight was approved by 99.87% of the votes cast for the resolution. Deloitte LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants were reappointed Capstone's auditors for the ensuing year by 85.41% of the votes cast. Detailed voting results for the 2017 Annual General Meeting are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. About Capstone Mining Corp. Capstone Mining Corp. is a Canadian base metals mining company, focused on copper. We are committed to the responsible development of our assets and the environments in which we operate. Our three producing mines are the Pinto Valley copper mine located in Arizona, US, the Cozamin polymetallic mine in Zacatecas State, Mexico and the Minto copper mine in Yukon, Canada. In addition, Capstone has two development projects; the large scale 70% owned copper-iron Santo Domingo project in Region III, Chile, in partnership with Korea Resources Corporation, and the 100% owned Kutcho copper-zinc project in British Columbia, Canada, as well as exploration properties in Chile and US. Capstone's strategy is to focus on the optimization of operations and assets in politically stable, mining-friendly regions, centred in the Americas. Our headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and we are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Further information is available at www.capstonemining.com. SOURCE Capstone Mining Corp. Related Links www.capstonemining.com HOUSTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CARBO Ceramics Inc. (NYSE: CRR) today reported revenues of $34.7 million and a GAAP pre-tax loss of $32.2 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 compared to a GAAP pre-tax loss of $36.8 million in the same period of 2016. The GAAP pre-tax loss includes $12.1 million of costs primarily associated with slowing and idling production, two thirds of which is non-cash. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120503/MM00528LOGO CEO Gary Kolstad commented, "We are pleased with the 19% sequential increase in revenue experienced in the first quarter of 2017. This revenue increase is a result of our previously outlined strategy of developing higher growth opportunities which we believe will result in strong double-digit revenue growth for CARBO in 2017. The exceptional strengths we have in technology, experienced people, and manufacturing assets support the execution of this strategy. "The increase in technology product sales in this challenging environment highlights the value of our technology platform. Technology product revenues increased sequentially, led by sales of KRYPTOSPHERE and our Production Assurance products, which include SCALEGUARD. Industrial products and environmental revenue also grew sequentially. "Industrial product revenue growth was driven by new client gains. Environmental revenue growth was driven primarily by increased rig activity and new client gains. "Our frac sand revenues grew sequentially as a result of ramping plant production and utilizing third party suppliers. Frac sand sales provide multiple benefits including producing positive cash, generating revenue from idle rail cars under lease, and increasing client contact which increases sales opportunities for other products. "We successfully completed plant trials producing products other than base ceramic proppant, executing on our strategy of utilizing our idled plant assets. The success of these trials should lead to revenue generation. We continue to develop opportunities with other companies in the industrial, agricultural, and oil and gas industries. "We expect to see a reduction in our cash burn in the second quarter, and anticipate continued improvement throughout the year, targeting cash neutral operations on a 2017 exit rate basis. The first quarter had approximately $9.0 million in cash outlays that we do not expect to repeat in 2017, including but not limited to rail car activation costs, refinancing costs, a debt amortization payment, and certain property taxes," Mr. Kolstad said. First Quarter 2017 Results Revenues for the first quarter of 2017 increased 5%, or $1.6 million, compared to the same period in 2016. The increase was primarily attributable to an increase in technology product sales, an increase in frac sand sales, and an increase in environmental product sales. These increases were partially offset by decreases in base ceramic proppant sales. Operating loss for the first quarter of 2017 was $30.3 million as compared to $36.1 million in the same period of 2016, primarily due to the lack of severance charges in the first quarter of 2017 compared to $7.1 million in the same period of 2016. Technology and Business Highlights KRYPTOSPHERE HD and LD client interest and use continues to grow. Both independent and major E&P operators successfully pumped the technology during the first quarter of 2017. KRYPTOSPHERE ultra-conductive ceramic proppant technology is engineered to maximize and sustain hydrocarbon flow rates for the life of the well. During the quarter, another successful field test was performed with QUANTUM, a proprietary Propped Reservoir Volume (PRV) imaging service, for a large independent E&P operator. Further tests are planned to advance the technology toward commercialization. QUANTUM is gaining recognition as a potential step-change to current available technologies in the industry for its ability to optimize field development planning. SCALEGUARD, a proppant-delivered scale-inhibiting technology, continues to experience an expanding client portfolio with several new clients in the period and active jobs in major basins across North America . Since its introduction in 2013, SCALEGUARD has been used on hundreds of wells with a high rate of success. A single scale inhibition treatment with SCALEGUARD prevents production losses during the life of the well and dramatically reduces lease operating expenses. . Since its introduction in 2013, SCALEGUARD has been used on hundreds of wells with a high rate of success. A single scale inhibition treatment with SCALEGUARD prevents production losses during the life of the well and dramatically reduces lease operating expenses. SALTGUARD successfully completed another field test milestone with a large independent E&P operator during the quarter. SALTGUARD inhibits salt formation in the frac and wellbore, preventing production decreases, lowering lease operating expenses and eliminating the need for costly fresh water injection and the associated disposal of the resulting saltwater. A major E&P operator successfully pumped CARBOAIR in an Eagle Ford basin horizontal well. CARBOAIR is a new ultra-lightweight proppant technology providing 25% lower density than sand, resulting in significantly more volume per pound and exceptional transport characteristics. These engineered properties increase frac length and contact area within the reservoir compared to sand. CARBONRT was utilized to evaluate fracture height growth in a conventional, vertical well in Russia . The operator plans to perform fracture height measurements and modify full field development accordingly to optimize gas production. . The operator plans to perform fracture height measurements and modify full field development accordingly to optimize gas production. CARBONRT ULTRA technology, a cost-effective and highly concentrated traceable proppant, was used on its first offshore application for a major operator in Colombia in an exploration well. The operator will be using the results from the CARBONRT ULTRA logs to determine fracture height. These results are then matched against pressure model designs in conjunction with production flow tests to evaluate fractured zone productivity. in an exploration well. The operator will be using the results from the CARBONRT ULTRA logs to determine fracture height. These results are then matched against pressure model designs in conjunction with production flow tests to evaluate fractured zone productivity. A large industrial company recently started using CARBOBEAD ceramic media in one of its pigment production facilities. According to the client, CARBOBEAD improved the quality of its end products by approximately 20% and reduced media consumption, generating estimated annual savings of $700,000 . The client is now evaluating opportunities in its other U.S. and international facilities. . The client is now evaluating opportunities in its other U.S. and international facilities. During the quarter, a leading foundry company successfully tested CARBO ceramic media in their plant operations. The company favorably assessed CARBO ceramic media to increase casting quality, lower operating costs, and address new OSHA regulations relating to silicosis. In the environmental business, a record number of TANKGUARD units were sold in the quarter as increased industry activity levels drove both client and distributor sales. With TANKGUARD revenue up over 90% compared to the first quarter of 2016, product revenue now represents a majority of the revenue, which is consistent with the company's strategy to focus on product sales over service related work in the environmental business. Outlook CEO Gary Kolstad commented on the outlook for CARBO stating, "We have set out a strategy for both revenue growth and profitability improvement. Our people are excited about our growth opportunities and are executing on them. We expect to see continued expansion of our technology products, industrial ceramic media, frac sand, and environmental businesses. Given the first quarter revenue and our outlook for the next couple of quarters, we believe our 2017 revenue will show strong double-digit growth of at least a 40 percent increase over 2016. "Clients are adopting technologies that we have developed over the past several years to enhance their oil and gas production. KRYPTOSPHERE HD continues its adoption in the industry as the technology of choice for the toughest well conditions in the world. KRYPTOSPHERE LD sales have increased in recent quarters as certain clients are implementing technology into their completions to make better wells. We believe sales of these technologies will continue to grow in 2017 and currently expect another KRYPTOSPHERE HD job in the second quarter of 2017. "We continue to grow our industrial footprint with our long-standing product offerings. We also believe there will be opportunities in the future to expand our product offerings to add additional revenue streams. We anticipate increased levels of industrial sales throughout 2017. "Growing the frac sand business is another part of our strategy to return our overall operations to generating positive EBITDA. We are in the process of bringing our Marshfield, Wisconsin sand facility to full utilization in the next one to two quarters to further increase our cash production and generate revenue from idle rail cars under lease. "We continue to see growth in our environmental business with the increase in industry activity and market penetration of our products. Similar to our oilfield business, we are executing on a strategy to expand product sales into industrial markets. "Our strategy is to reduce our reliance on base ceramic proppant yet remain the industry leader. We believe the worst of this industry down cycle is behind us. While imports of low quality Chinese ceramic have been virtually zero over the last eight quarters, it appears some competitors are still pricing below cost; however, this is not a sustainable strategy over the long term. "Given the successful industrial product trials we completed at our plants in the first quarter of 2017, we expect to generate revenue from our underutilized plants. Our dual approach of producing products for other companies and developing technology products for ourselves, should bring opportunities to produce positive cash flow from assets that currently consume cash. "We are pleased with the progress we have made on our strategy to diversify and grow our revenue streams. While this is not an overnight process, we believe the resulting business composition will make CARBO a stronger company," Mr. Kolstad concluded. Conference Call As previously announced, a conference call to discuss CARBO's first quarter 2017 results is scheduled for today at 10:30 a.m. Central Time (11:30 a.m. Eastern). Due to historical high call volume, CARBO is offering participants the opportunity to register in advance for the conference by accessing the following website: http://dpregister.com/10104150 Registered participants will immediately receive an email with a calendar reminder and a dial-in number and PIN that will allow them immediate access to the call. Participants who do not wish to pre-register for the call may dial in using (877) 232-2832 (for U.S. callers), (855) 669-9657 (for Canadian callers) or (412) 542-4138 (for international callers) and ask for the "CARBO Ceramics" call. The conference call also can be accessed through CARBO's website, www.carboceramics.com. A telephonic replay of the earnings conference call will be available through May 4, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. To access the replay, please dial (877)-344-7529 (for U.S. callers), (855) 669-9658 (for Canadian callers) or (412) 317-0088 (for international callers). Please reference conference number 10104150. Interested parties may also access the archived webcast of the earnings teleconference through CARBO's website approximately two hours after the end of the call. About CARBO CARBO (NYSE: CRR) is a global technology company that provides products and services to the oil and gas and industrial markets to enhance value for its clients. CARBO Oilfield Technologies - is a global leader that provides engineered solutions in its Design, Build, and Optimize the Frac technology businesses, delivering important value to E&P operators by increasing well production and EUR. Oilfield Technologies is the world's largest producer of high quality ceramic proppant, provides one of the industry's most widely used fracture simulation software, has proprietary technology that provides fracture diagnostics and production assurance, and offers consulting services for fracture design and completion optimization. The Company also provides a range of technology solutions for spill prevention and containment. Its products and services are sold to operators of oil and natural gas wells and to oilfield service companies for use in the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil wells. CARBO Industrial Technologies - is a leading provider of high-performance industrial ceramic media products that are engineered to increase process efficiency, improve end-product quality and reduce operating costs. Its products and services are primarily sold to industrial companies that work in manufacturing and mineral processing. For more information, please visit www.carboceramics.com. Forward-Looking Statements The statements in this news release that are not historical statements, including statements regarding our future financial and operating performance and liquidity and capital resources, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results or strategies and can often be identified by the use of terminology such as "may", "will", "estimate", "intend", "continue", "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "should", "could", "potential", "opportunity", or other similar terminology. All forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and estimates, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. Among these factors are changes in overall economic conditions, changes in the demand for, or price of, oil and natural gas, changes in the cost of raw materials and natural gas used in manufacturing our products, risks related to our ability to access needed cash and capital, our ability to meet our current and future debt service obligations, including our ability to maintain compliance with our debt covenants, our ability to manage distribution costs effectively, changes in demand and prices charged for our products, risks of increased competition, technological, manufacturing and product development risks, our dependence on and loss of key customers and end users, changes in foreign and domestic government regulations, including environmental restrictions on operations and regulation of hydraulic fracturing, changes in foreign and domestic political and legislative risks, risks of war and international and domestic terrorism, risks associated with foreign operations and foreign currency exchange rates and controls, weather-related risks and other risks and uncertainties. Additional factors that could affect our future results or events are described from time to time in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). Please see the discussion set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and similar disclosures in subsequently filed reports with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Note on Non-GAAP Financial Measures This press release includes unaudited non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA. We present non-GAAP measures when our management believes that the additional information provides useful information about our operating performance. Non-GAAP financial measures do not have any standardized meaning and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. The presentation of non-GAAP financial measures is not intended to be a substitute for, and should not be considered in isolation from, the financial measures reported in accordance with GAAP. See the table entitled "Reconciliation of Reported Net Loss to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA" below and the accompanying text for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable GAAP measures. - tables follow - Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In thousands except per share) Revenues $ 34,670 $ 33,102 Cost of sales (see Cost of Sales Detail table below) 54,128 56,743 Gross loss (19,458) (23,641) SG&A expenses 10,797 11,475 Loss on disposal or impairment of assets 948 Operating loss (30,255) (36,064) Other expense, net (1,901) (721) Loss before income taxes (32,156) (36,785) Income tax expense (benefit) 288 (12,101) Net loss $ (32,444) $ (24,684) Loss per share: Basic $ (1.22) $ (1.07) Diluted $ (1.22) $ (1.07) Average shares outstanding: Basic 26,607 23,063 Diluted 26,607 23,063 Depreciation and amortization $ 12,430 $ 12,291 Cost of Sales Detail Three Months Ended (In thousands) March 31, 2017 2016 Primary cost of sales $ 42,025 $ 40,121 Slowing and idling production 11,212 9,707 Loss on derivative instruments 891 227 Severance charges 6,688 Total Cost of Sales $ 54,128 $ 56,743 Product Sales Volumes (in million lbs) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Ceramic 83 120 Northern White Sand 370 75 Total 453 195 Reconciliation of Reported Net Loss to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Three Months Ended (In thousands) March 31, 2017 2016 Net loss $ (32,444) $ (24,684) Interest expense, net 2,088 797 Income tax expense (benefit) 288 (12,101) Depreciation and amortization (1) 11,882 12,291 EBITDA $ (18,186) $ (23,697) Loss on disposal or impairment of assets 948 Severance charges 7,144 Loss on derivative instruments 891 227 Adjusted EBITDA $ (17,295) $ (15,378) Adjusted EBITDA is used by management to evaluate and assess our operational results, and we believe that Adjusted EBITDA allows investors to evaluate and assess our operational results. Adjusted EBITDA excludes various charges primarily related to the downturn in the energy industry. (1) Depreciation and amortization for the three months ended March 31, 2017 excludes $548 amortization of debt issuance costs and debt discount, which is included in interest expense, net, above. Balance Sheet Information March 31, December 31, 2017 2016 (in thousands) Assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 55,591 $ 91,680 Restricted cash (current) 5,503 Other current assets 128,111 125,543 Restricted cash (long-term) 6,289 Property, plant and equipment, net 483,203 494,103 Goodwill 3,500 3,500 Intangible and other assets, net 9,106 8,631 Total assets $ 691,303 $ 723,457 Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity Long-term debt, current $ $ 13,000 Derivative instruments (current) 2,135 1,599 Other current liabilities 19,283 20,205 Deferred income taxes 2,290 1,236 Long-term debt and related parties notes payable, net 72,957 67,404 Other long-term liabilities 4,006 3,443 Shareholders' equity 590,632 616,570 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 691,303 $ 723,457 Contact: Mark Thomas, Director, Investor Relations (281) 921-6458 SOURCE CARBO Ceramics Inc. Related Links http://www.carboceramics.com As part of an agreement signed in July 2015, Carnival Corporation will construct and operate the new 12,500 square meter terminal. The company is investing more than 30 million euros in the state-of-the-art terminal, which paired with its existing terminal at the port represents its largest combined terminal investment in Europe. Designed by Catalan architecture firm Battle I Roig, the plans for the company's upcoming cruise terminal reflect today's modern architectural style with straight lines and a minimalist concept that will create a contemporary and comfortable guest environment. "Our goal is to make travel for our guests as convenient, pleasant and easy as possible, and this new terminal is designed to meet and exceed guest expectations," said Giora Israel, senior vice president of global port and destination development for Carnival Corporation. "The local architecture firm has done great work in designing a beautiful facility that will make Europe's largest cruise port even better." ''This terminal marks the culmination of years of partnership," said Sixte Cambra, president of the Port of Barcelona Port Authority. "Since the beginning of our relationship, Carnival Corporation has shown strong success in our port and city, and 10 years after the opening of the first terminal, this has materialized in a new facility for their cruise brands. Carnival Corporation has been a loyal partner to the Port of Barcelona, bringing passengers of different nationalities and generating a strong financial impact to our local economy." Construction on the project officially began in July 2016, and once complete it will enhance the embarkation and disembarkation process for cruise guests visiting Catalonia and its surrounding areas on one of Carnival Corporation's ships. The new terminal, on the port's Adossat wharf, will increase Carnival Corporation's passenger capacity at the port, which is used by eight of the company's 10 global cruise line brands as both a destination and home port. Carnival Corporation is expecting to accommodate over one million passengers at the Port of Barcelona once its second cruise terminal is open in 2018. Eight brands from Carnival Corporation AIDA Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn and P&O Cruises (UK) visit Barcelona throughout the year. Carnival Corporation guests who visit Catalonia can take advantage of a variety of excursions, such as strolling the Girona historic quarter or visiting the multi-peaked rocky range of Montserrat and its Benedictine abbey, and exploring attractions within Barcelona, such as touring Gaudi's famed Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Beginning April 2018, the terminal facilities will host inaugural sailings of Carnival Horizon, Carnival Cruise Line's newest ship, which includes attractions such as SkyRide, IMAX Theatre and Water Works, as well as Aida Cruises' newest ship AIDAperla featuring attractions such as the Beach Club under a UV-permeable dome and an above-water skywalk. AIDAperla is one of the world's first cruise ships to feature dual-fuel engines, which, depending on availability at the port, can also be operated with virtually zero-emission liquefied natural gas (LNG). Carnival Corporation's Collaboration with the Port of Barcelona Carnival Corporation's deployment of LNG-fueled ships to the port supports the pioneering Air Quality Improvement Plan proposed by the Port of Barcelona in November 2016 to effectively reduce emissions from port activities. In total, Carnival Corporation now has agreements in place to build seven fully LNG-powered cruise ships across four of its 10 global cruise brands in coming years. The construction of Carnival Corporation's second cruise terminal at the Port of Barcelona will secure employment for up to 150 people through its work with local contractor companies Vopi 4 S.A., Elecnor S.A., Project Facilities Management SL and their subcontractors as well as gangway manufacturer Adelte S.A. and the existing team of local architect and engineering firms Battle I Roig, Static Engineering and PGI Engineering. The Port of Barcelona was recognized as the best global turnaround port by Cruise Insight a distinction it has received several times in recent years. More than half of cruise passengers visiting the Port of Barcelona begin and end their journey there, which is a major economic benefit for Catalonia and the city. According to a study from the University of Barcelona, passengers who begin or end their cruise vacation in Barcelona on average spend 2.6 days in the city before or after their trip and spend around 202 euros per day. According to than actualized study for 2016, cruise activity at the Port of Barcelona generates an annual turnover of 875 million euros in Barcelona, contributing 457 million euros to the GDP of Barcelona. The study also shows that cruise activity at the port generates 7,518 jobs and has other positive effects on the local economy such as the increase of activity at Aeroport del Prat. The company's positive economic impact will increase when Carnival Corporation's new terminal is launched in 2018. Carnival Corporation operates five additional global ports, including Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic; Puerta Maya in Cozumel, Mexico; Grand Turk Cruise Center in Turks and Caicos Islands; Mahogany Bay in Roatan, Honduras; and Long Beach in California. Carnival Corporation also operates two private island destinations in the Caribbean, Princess Cays and Half Moon Cay. In total, Carnival Corporation cruise ships visit over 725 ports of call around the world. 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 102 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 228,000 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 BEIJING, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China Distance Education Holdings Limited (NYSE: DL) ("CDEL" or the "Company"), a leading provider of online education in China focusing on professional education, today announced that it will hold its 2017 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders ("AGM") at Luk & Partners, Unit 2001, Level 20, One International Finance Centre, 1 Harbour View Street, Central, Hong Kong on May 19, 2017 at 10:00 am local time. Shareholders listed in the register of members at the close of business on April 19, 2017 are entitled to receive notice of, and vote at, the AGM or at any adjournment that may take place. Beneficial owners of the Company's American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") who wish to exercise their voting rights for the underlying ordinary shares must act through the depositary of the Company's ADS program, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas. Copies of the notice of AGM, which sets forth the resolutions to be proposed and seek adoption from shareholders, the Proxy Statement and the Company's 2016 Annual Report are available on the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at http://ir.cdeledu.com. About China Distance Education Holdings Limited China Distance Education Holdings Limited is a leading provider of online education in China focusing on professional education. The courses offered by the Company through its websites are designed to help professionals seeking to obtain and maintain professional licenses and to enhance their job skills through our professional development courses in China in the areas of accounting, healthcare, engineering & construction, and other industries. The Company also offers other professional education courses for the national judicial examination, online test preparation courses for self-taught learners pursuing higher education diplomas or degrees, test preparation courses for university students intending to take the nationwide graduate school entrance exam, and online language courses. We also offer third-party developed online courses through our Online Open Learning Platform, a proprietary education platform that allows people to share their educational content or deliver live courses online. For further information, please visit http://ir.cdeledu.com. Contacts: China Distance Education Holdings Limited The Piacente Group | Investor Relations Investor Relations Department Brandi Piacente Tel: +86-10-8231-9999 ext. 1805 Tel: +1 212-481-2050 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] SOURCE China Distance Education Holdings Limited MEMPHIS, Tenn., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Christie Medical Holdings, Inc., with its market-leading vein finder technology, VeinViewer system, today announced an alliance with B. Braun Medical Inc., a leader in infusion therapy and pain management. Intravenous (IV) therapy plays a central role in patient care with as many as 90 percent of hospital patients receiving a peripheral IV catheter as part of their treatment plan. Many hospitals are adopting technology to improve the placement, safety, and duration for peripheral IV access. The combination of VeinViewer by Christie and B. Braun Medical's line of IV products such as the Introcan Safety IV catheter, STEADYCare extension set with Wedge catheter stabilizer aims to provide an innovative solution to enhance peripheral IV catheter access success. "Aligning the VeinViewer technology with one of the top companies in the United States' peripheral IV catheter market provides our customers with a seamless solution for improving peripheral IV access," said George Pinho, president of Christie Medical Holdings. "B. Braun's extensive coverage across the U.S. hospital market and excellent reputation will enable us to work together to serve more customers with VeinViewer and the Introcan Safety IV Catheter. More importantly, health care providers and patients will be the primary beneficiaries of this strategic alliance." VeinViewer reduces the time needed for IV insertion and improves first stick success when starting an IV catheter, ultimately improving the patient experience. VeinViewer allows nurses to clearly see peripheral veins as a real-time, high-definition image directly on the surface of the patient's skin. With VeinViewer technology, hospitals recognize the benefit of increased success in obtaining peripheral IV access, reduced use of central lines and increased cost savings. B. Braun's Introcan Safety IV catheter complements the VeinViewer system, because it offers passive safety through an innovative solution that addresses accidental needlestick injury. Additionally, B. Braun's STEADYCare extension set with Wedge catheter stabilizer is designed to minimize catheter movement in the vessel, support the catheter insertion angle, and reduce the patient connector's skin contact, helping to reduce catheter-related complications. "These technologies are intended to work together to improve placement, insertion, duration and safety associated with peripheral IV catheter therapy," said Tom Sutton, B. Braun Medical's Vice President of Marketing for IV Systems, Vascular Access and Pharmacy Admixture Products. "The VeinViewer technology is an excellent addition to our infusion therapy product line, because it addresses the first critical step in peripheral IV therapy success by helping the clinician select the best vein for placing an IV catheter. Our hospital customers are seeking solutions to improve the patient experience associated with peripheral IV access. This collaboration helps us achieve that." As part of the alliance, B. Braun and Christie will focus on bringing VeinViewer to all hospitals in the United States. B. Braun will be the exclusive distributor of VeinViewer in the United States. Christie will continue to sell VeinViewer to Veterans Affairs hospitals, outpatient facilities, vein clinics, and educational centers, such as nursing schools. Christie also will continue to manage its international distribution partners. All VeinViewer customers regardless of where they buy their VeinViewer will continue to receive service through Christie. Additionally, Christie will continue offering educational programs as described in the Christie Assure Program, including Christie University, tele-training and Assure Clinical Educators. * VeinViewer is a registered trademark of Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. About Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. is a global company based in Memphis, Tenn., that discovers, develops and commercializes medical technologies. The company's market-leading product, VeinViewer, is manufactured in the USA. It is a mobile vein imaging system that allows health care providers to clearly see accessible peripheral veins as a real time HD image, directly on the surface of the skin. Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. is owned by Christie Digital Systems Inc., a global visual technologies company and a subsidiary of Ushio Inc., Japan. For more information on Christie Digital Systems or Christie Medical Holdings, Inc., visit www.christiemed.com. About B. Braun B. Braun Medical Inc., a leader in infusion therapy and pain management, develops, manufactures, and markets innovative medical products and services to the health care industry. The company is committed to eliminating preventable treatment errors and enhancing patient, clinician and environmental safety. B. Braun Medical is part of the B. Braun Group of Companies in the U.S., which is headquartered in Bethlehem, PA., and includes B. Braun Interventional Systems, Aesculap and CAPS. Globally, the B. Braun Group of Companies employs more than 58,000 employees in 64 countries. Guided by its Sharing Expertise philosophy, B. Braun continuously exchanges knowledge with customers, partners and clinicians to address the critical issues of improving care and lowering costs. To learn more about B. Braun Medical, visit www.BBraunUSA.com. Media Contacts: Eileen Lane Director, Marketing Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. 760-419-8127 Jason D. Ford Public Relations and Corporate Communications Manager B. Braun Medical Inc. Phone 800-523-9676, ext. 4722 or 610-997-4722 SOURCE Christie Medical Holdings, Inc. Related Links https://www.christiemed.com PHOENIX and PUNE, India, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The first edition of the Pune Data Conference held on April 15th 2017 hosted more than 300 Big Data delegates from 30 companies across India. The conference hosted thought leaders in the Big Data and analytics space. Focus of the conference was on creating a global platform for Big Data leaders and technologists to discuss leading trends that impact business today. Successful Big Data, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning use cases from leading analytic companies like HortonWorks, DataTorrent Inc, Schlumberger, PubMatic, and others were discussed at the event. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161129/443552LOGO ) The intent of the conference was to provide a platform for the local Big Data community to come together, network, share and learn from leading experts in this field. Pune, India is rapidly emerging as one of the key hubs for Big Data with significant local talent and expertise. The First Pune Data Conference helped the local technology enthusiasts and experts identify the new focus areas and emerging technologies. Discussions around architecting data lakes for advanced business use cases, data science, deep learning, analytics of things, data security on Hadoop, clearly showed that the Hadoop ecosystem and related technologies are now mainstream across enterprises. The conference had techno-commercial sessions around managed services. Attendees were able to gain detailed knowledge on Big Data implementations as well as cluster build-out and maintenance, business operations, customer challenges, role of user interface design in Big Data etc. from more than 20 expert speakers. The Pune Data Conference was sponsored by industry leaders in the space - Clairvoyant India, Parkar Consulting, Fuzzy Logix, Ellicium Solutions, and Prism Studios. The organizers will be hosting the Fourth Annual Phoenix Data Conference, the largest Big Data conference in Phoenix area this year in Chandler, Arizona. To receive updates, subscribe on http://www.punedataconference.com . About Us: Clairvoyant is an innovative company that is helping businesses redefine their operations and decision making processes by changing their business data into actionable outcomes. Through innovative products and services, Clairvoyant facilitates the journey to cloud computing in a cost-effective and agile manner. We provide best-in-class services and solutions that leverage Big Data and continually meet and exceed client expectations. Our deep vertical knowledge helps support purpose-built solutions to meets our client's unique business requirements. For more information, please visit: http://www.clairvoyantsoft.com Media Contact: Vikram Bhalchandra Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Clairvoyant LLC [email protected] SOURCE Clairvoyant LLC CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CollegeVine, an online guidance platform for high schoolers that provides mentorship, academic tutoring and college admissions guidance, has closed an additional $3.6 million Series A funding round led by Morningside Technology Ventures ("Morningside"), with participation by University Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. An extension of the $3.1 million round closed by the EdTech startup in Q4 2016, the new funding will be used to expand CollegeVine's digital infrastructure to better serve its growing customer base. Morningside is a private equity and venture capital firm co-founded by internationally known investor/philanthropist Dr. Gerald Chan, who joined CollegeVine's Board of Directors last year. University Ventures is a specialty venture capital fund that focuses exclusively on promising ideas in higher education. Silicon Valley Bank provides diversified financial services to emerging growth and mature companies across numerous industries. "Like all successful startups, the services of CollegeVine fulfill an unmet need in the market," said Chan. "The revenue growth of the company has strongly validated its value proposition, and this financing will further the strong growth trajectory of the company." "With bookings coming in a bit faster than we had anticipated, and the need to accelerate related software development, we found it prudent to extend the round," said CollegeVine CEO Jon Carson. "We're pleased with the momentum we've achieved a testament to our unique approach." CollegeVine was founded by young entrepreneurs Zack Perkins, Johan Zhang, and Vinay Bhaskara as an answer to a national crisis that has seen public school guidance departments overwhelmed, with the average high schooler receiving only 38 minutes of guidance over four years. "As the economy and job market become increasingly competitive, it's more and more important to make good use of the high school and college years," said Zhang. CollegeVine's approach combines a state-of-the-art digital platform with highly trained college student mentors to provide high schoolers with an affordable guidance resource. "The model has proven especially effective because CollegeVine's network of over 300 near-peer mentors can relate to their mentees on a personal level and are already on the campuses of the nation's top universities with access to real-time info and tools," said Perkins. Added Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director at University Ventures: "CollegeVine is filling a huge void with its virtual guidance platform for high schoolers. University Ventures is excited to be part of it." About CollegeVine CollegeVine is a leading provider of one-on-one mentorship, academic and test prep tutoring, and college applications guidance. The company features an expansive network of near-peer advisors at the nation's top universitiestheir experience representing more than 20 different majors, substantial extracurricular activities and far-ranging success. For more information, visit www.collegevine.com. About Morningside Technology Ventures Morningside Technology Ventures was founded in 1986, by the Chan family of Hong Kong, to make private equity and venture capital investments. The group is managed by investment professionals who are entrepreneurial, have deep industry knowledge and are effective in the local environment in which they operate. In addition to its investment activities, Morningside Technology Ventures is strongly committed to social responsibility. About University Ventures University Ventures (UV) is a leading investment firm focused exclusively on the global higher education sector. The fund is led by principals with decades of collective experience as entrepreneurs, investors and leaders in higher education. With the greatest respect for the values, quality and traditions of academic institutions, UV is playing a formative and constructive role in the private sector's increasing involvement in the future of higher education. Our carefully selected investor base comprises a broad spectrum of stakeholders in higher education across the US, Europe and Asia. About Silicon Valley Bank For more than 30 years, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has helped innovative companies and their investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB provides targeted financial services and expertise through its offices in innovation centers around the world. With commercial, international and private banking services, SVB helps address the unique needs of innovators. Learn more at svb.com. Press Contact: Taylor Paglia 781-966-4138 / [email protected] SOURCE CollegeVine Related Links http://www.collegevine.com RESTON, Va., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. recently released data from comScore Mobile Metrix, reporting the top smartphone apps in the U.S. by audience reach for March 2017. Top 15 Smartphone Apps March 2017 Total U.S. Smartphone Mobile Media Users, Age 18+ (iOS and Android Platforms) Source: comScore Mobile Metrix Top 15 Apps % Reach 1 Facebook 77.7% 2 YouTube 71.4% 3 Facebook Messenger 69.5% 4 Google Search 64.4% 5 Google Maps 56.8% 6 Google Play 49.9% 7 Instagram 47.6% 8 Gmail 47.1% 9 Snapchat 46.1% 10 Pandora Radio 40.4% 11 Google Calendar 36.0% 12 Apple Music* 28.7% 13 Apple Maps 28.6% 14 Apple News 28.2% 15 Amazon Mobile 27.5% * "Apple Music," as it appears in comScore's monthly reporting, is referring to Apple's native music app, which captures all music activity within that app, including listening via the streaming service, radio service and users' personally downloaded music libraries. For more market rankings from comScore, visit our Rankings page here. About comScore comScore is a leading cross-platform measurement company that measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. comScore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016, to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, our data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers' multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and global footprint in more than 75 countries, comScore is delivering the future of measurement. Shares of comScore stock are currently traded on the OTC Market (OTC:SCOR). For more information on comScore, please visit comscore.com. SOURCE comScore, Inc. Related Links http://www.comscore.com AMSTERDAM, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Constellium N.V. (NYSE and Euronext Paris: CSTM) today reported results for first quarter ended March 31, 2017. Shipments of 375 thousand metric tons; Automotive shipments up 20% compared to Q1 2016 Revenue of 1.3 billion, up 15% compared to Q1 2016 on higher aluminum prices and increased shipments Net income of 13 million compared to a net loss of 8 million in Q1 2016 Adjusted EBITDA of 93 million Refinanced the Wise Senior Secured Notes with Constellium Senior Notes Launched "Project 2019" a cash improvement initiative focused on reducing costs, working capital, and capital expenditures Jean-Marc Germain, Constellium's Chief Executive Officer said, "I am pleased with our first quarter results. AS&I continued its strong momentum and reported record Adjusted EBITDA, while A&T and P&ARP overcame headwinds to deliver solid results. We remain optimistic on the prospects for 2017 and confident in our ability to deliver high single digit Adjusted EBITDA growth this year." Mr. Germain continued, "We are focused on executing our strategy and increasing shareholder value. Concluding our peak capital spending needs in 2016 and addressing our capital structure through the February refinancing represented two important steps on our journey. Launching Project 2019 earlier this month was another critical milestone. We continue to expect Adjusted EBITDA growth in the high single digits annually, leading to over 500 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2020." Group Summary Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Var. Shipments (k metric tons) 375 362 4% Revenue ( millions) 1,328 1,150 15% Net income / (loss) ( millions) 13 (8) n.m. Adjusted EBITDA ( millions) 93 92 1% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton () 249 255 (2)% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton and percentage changes are calculated on unrounded underlying figures. n.m.: not meaningful The difference between the sum of reported segment revenue and total group revenue includes revenue from certain non-core activities, inter-segment eliminations, and the impact of a 20 million one-time payment related to the renegotiation of a customer agreement, which was recorded in the first quarter of 2016 as a reduction of revenues at the Holdings and Corporate level. The difference between the sum of reported segment Adjusted EBITDA and the Group Adjusted EBITDA is related to Holdings and Corporate. Shipments of 375k metric tons increased 4% compared to the first quarter of 2016 on higher shipments of packaging and automotive products. Revenue of 1.3 billion increased 15% compared to the first quarter last year due to higher metal prices and increased shipments. Net income of 13 million improved from a net loss of 8 million in the first quarter of 2016. Adjusted EBITDA was 93 million in the first quarter of 2017, an increase of 1% from the first quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton of 249 declined 2% compared to the first quarter of 2016. Results by Segment Packaging & Automotive Rolled Products (P&ARP) Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Var. Shipments (k metric tons) 254 244 4% Revenue ( millions) 705 588 20% Adjusted EBITDA ( millions) 41 42 (4)% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton () 160 172 (7)% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton and percentage changes are calculated on unrounded underlying figures. First quarter Adjusted EBITDA declined slightly as compared with the first quarter of 2016 primarily due to higher maintenance expense and other costs related to upgrades required for our automotive readiness program at Muscle Shoals. Adjusted EBITDA benefitted from higher shipments and improved mix in the quarter. Shipments of 254k metric tons were 4% higher than the first quarter of 2016, reflecting increases in both Packaging and Automotive rolled products. Automotive rolled product shipments increased 28% to 34k metric tons. Revenue of 705 million increased 20% compared to the first quarter of last year as a result of higher metal prices and increased shipments. Adjusted EBITDA of 41 million decreased 4% compared to the first quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton of 160 decreased 7% compared to the same period in 2016. Aerospace & Transportation (A&T) Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Var. Shipments (k metric tons) 61 63 (3)% Revenue ( millions) 343 332 3% Adjusted EBITDA ( millions) 28 30 (4)% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton () 468 470 0% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton and percentage changes are calculated on unrounded underlying figures. First quarter Adjusted EBITDA declined as compared with the first quarter of 2016 primarily due to lower aerospace shipments as a result of excess inventory in the aerospace supply chain and effects related to the transition to new customer contracts. These factors were partially offset by improved aerospace mix and solid cost control. Shipments of 61k metric tons decreased 3% compared to the first quarter of 2016. Revenue of 343 million increased by 3% compared to the first quarter of last year as a result of higher metal prices, partially offset by lower shipments. Adjusted EBITDA of 28 million decreased by 4% compared to the first quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton of 468 was in line with the same period in 2016. Automotive Structures & Industry (AS&I) Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Var. Shipments (k metric tons) 60 57 7% Revenue ( millions) 286 261 10% Adjusted EBITDA ( millions) 31 27 13% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton () 514 486 6% Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton and percentage changes are calculated on unrounded underlying figures. First quarter Adjusted EBITDA reached a new record level primarily due to higher shipments of both Automotive and Other extruded products on strong market demand and solid cost performance. Shipments of 60k metric tons increased 7% compared to the first quarter of 2016. Revenue of 286 million increased 10% compared to the first quarter of last year as a result of higher metal prices and increased shipments. Adjusted EBITDA of 31 million grew 13% compared to the first quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton of 514 increased 6% as compared to the same period in 2016. Net income and Earnings per share Net income of 13 million in the first quarter of 2017 improved from a net loss of 8 million in the first quarter of 2016. The change in net income is primarily attributable to a 22 million gain upon pension and benefit plan amendments in the first quarter of 2017 and one-time charges of 20 million in connection with the re-negotiation of terms of a customer contract in the first quarter of 2016, partially offset by increased finance costs in the first quarter of 2017 as a result of the Wise Senior Secured Notes refinancing. Basic and fully diluted earnings per share were 0.12 compared to a loss of 0.08 per share for the same period last year. Fully diluted income and loss per share were based on a weighted average number of ordinary shares of 106.6 million and 105.5 million for the quarters ended March 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Liquidity and Cash flow Liquidity at March 31, 2017 was 515 million, comprised of 309 million of cash and cash equivalents and 206 million available under our committed lending facilities and factoring arrangements. This compares to liquidity at December 31, 2016 of 537 million and cash and cash equivalents of 347 million. Cash flows from operating activities in the first quarter of 2017 were 36 million as compared to cash flows used in operating activities of 87 million in the first quarter of 2016. We reduced factored receivables by 71 million in the quarter compared to a 67 million reduction in the first quarter 2016. Cash flows used in investing activities in the first quarter of 2017 of 69 million decreased compared to cash flows used of 99 million in the first quarter 2016 mainly due to the decrease in capital expenditures to 60 million in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 78 million in the first quarter last year. Cash flows used in financing activities in the first quarter of 2017 were 4 million as compared to cash flows from financing activities of 337 million in the first quarter of 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, we completed a $650 million offering of 6.625% Senior Unsecured Notes due 2025 and the redemption of the Wise $650 million 8.75% Senior Secured Notes due 2018. In the first quarter of 2016, we issued $425 million of Senior Secured Notes due 2021. Free cash flow in the first quarter of 2017 was an outflow of 33 million as compared to an outflow of 182 million in the first quarter of 2016. Net debt was 2,077 million as compared to 2,035 million at December 31, 2016. Outlook We expect Adjusted EBITDA growth in the high single digits annually for the next three years, leading to over 500 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2020. We are not able to provide a reconciliation of this Adjusted EBITDA guidance to net income, the comparable GAAP measure, because certain items that are excluded from adjusted EBITDA cannot be reasonably predicted or are not in our control. In particular, we are unable to forecast the timing or magnitude of realized and unrealized gains and losses on derivative instruments, metal lag, impairment or restructuring charges, or taxes without unreasonable efforts, and these items could significantly impact, either individually or in the aggregate, our net income in the future. Other recent developments In April 2017, we amended the Muscle Shoals ABL facility from $170 million to $200 million, extended the maturity of the French factoring facility to 2021, and entered into a new secured Revolving Credit Facility on French inventory for 100 million. Forward-looking statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release may contain "forward looking statements" with respect to our business, results of operations and financial condition, and our expectations or beliefs concerning future events and conditions. You can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as, but not limited to, "believes," "expects," "may," "should," "approximately," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "targets," likely," "will," "would," "could" and similar expressions (or the negative of these terminologies or expressions). All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Many risks and uncertainties are inherent in our industry and markets. Others are more specific to our business and operations. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the ability of Constellium and Wise Metals to achieve expected synergies and the timing thereof, Constellium's increased levels of indebtedness which could limit Constellium's operating flexibility and opportunities; the potential failure to retain key employees, the loss of customers, suppliers and other business relationships; disruptions to business operations; slower or lower than expected growth in the North American market for Body-in-White aluminium rolled products, and other risk factors set forth under the heading "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 20-F, and as described from time to time in subsequent reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The occurrence of the events described and the achievement of the expected results depend on many events, some or all of which are not predictable or within our control. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. About Constellium Constellium (NYSE and Euronext Paris: CSTM) is a global sector leader that develops innovative, value added aluminium products for a broad scope of markets and applications, including aerospace, automotive and packaging. Constellium generated 4.7 billion of revenue in 2016. Constellium's earnings materials for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 are also available on the company's website (www.constellium.com). CONSOLIDATED INCOME STATEMENT (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Revenue 1,328 1,150 Cost of sales (1,188) (1,036) Gross profit 140 114 Selling and administrative expenses (65) (61) Research and development expenses (11) (9) Restructuring costs (2) Other gains / (losses) - net 38 9 Income from operations 100 53 Finance costs - net (54) (41) Share of loss of joint-ventures (6) (1) Income before income tax 40 11 Income tax expense (27) (19) Net Income / (loss) 13 (8) Net income / (loss) attributable to: Equity holders of Constellium 13 (8) Non-controlling interests Net income / (loss) 13 (8) EARNINGS PER SHARE ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE EQUITY HOLDERS OF CONSTELLIUM (in Euros per share) Three months ended March 31, 2017 (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Basic 0.12 (0.08) Diluted 0.12 (0.08) CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME / (LOSS) (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Net income / (loss) 13 (8) Other comprehensive income / (loss) Items not to be reclassified subsequently to the consolidated income statement Remeasurement of post-employment benefit obligations 9 (53) Income tax on remeasurement of post-employment benefit obligations (2) 13 Items to be reclassified subsequently to the consolidated income statement Cash flow hedge 5 8 Income tax on cash flow hedge (2) (3) Currency translation differences (2) 1 Other comprehensive income / (loss) 8 (34) Total comprehensive income / (loss) 21 (42) Attributable to: Equity holders of Constellium 21 (42) Non-controlling interests Total comprehensive income / (loss) 21 (42) CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION (in millions of Euros) At March 31, 2017 (Unaudited) At December 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Assets Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 309 347 Trade receivables and other 469 355 Inventories 615 591 Other financial assets 129 117 1,522 1,410 Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 1,489 1,477 Goodwill 451 457 Intangible assets 77 79 Investments accounted for under equity method 10 16 Deferred income tax assets 231 252 Trade receivables and other 52 47 Other financial assets 30 49 2,340 2,377 Total Assets 3,862 3,787 Liabilities Current liabilities Trade payables and other 968 839 Borrowings 114 107 Other financial liabilities 24 34 Income tax payable 19 13 Provisions 42 42 1,167 1,035 Non-current liabilities Trade payables and other 57 59 Borrowings 2,319 2,361 Other financial liabilities 25 30 Pension and other post-employment benefit obligations 701 735 Provisions 107 107 Deferred income tax liabilities 33 30 3,242 3,322 Total Liabilities 4,409 4,357 Equity Share capital 2 2 Share premium 162 162 Retained deficit and other reserves (720) (743) Equity attributable to equity holders of Constellium (556) (579) Non-controlling interests 9 9 Total Equity (547) (570) Total Equity and Liabilities 3,862 3,787 CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY (UNAUDITED) (in millions of Euros) Share Capital Share Premium Remeasure- ment Cash flow hedges Foreign Currency Translation reserve Other reserves Retained losses Total Equity holders of Constellium Non- controlling interests Total equity At January 1, 2017 2 162 (151) (18) 12 17 (603) (579) 9 (570) Net income - - - - - - 13 13 - 13 Other comprehensive income / (loss) - - 7 3 (2) - - 8 - 8 Total comprehensive income / (loss) - - 7 3 (2) - 13 21 - 21 Transactions with Equity holders Share-based compensation - - - - - 2 - 2 - 2 Transactions with non-controlling interests - - - - - - - - - - At March 31, 2017 2 162 (144) (15) 10 19 (590) (556) 9 (547) (in millions of Euros) Share Capital Share Premium Remeasure- ment Cash flow hedges Foreign Currency Translation reserve Other reserves Retained losses Total Equity holders of Constellium Non- controlling interests Total equity At January 1, 2016 2 162 (133) - 6 11 (599) (551) 11 (540) Net loss - - - - - - (8) (8) - (8) Other comprehensive (loss) / income - - (40) 5 1 - - (34) - (34) Total comprehensive income / (loss) - - (40) 5 1 - (8) (42) - (42) Transactions with Equity holders Share-based compensation - - - - - 1 - 1 - 1 Transactions with non-controlling interests - - - - - - - - - - At March 31, 2016 2 162 (173) 5 7 12 (607) (592) 11 (581) CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Net income / (loss) 13 (8) Adjustments Depreciation and amortization 43 34 Finance costs net 54 41 Income tax expense 27 19 Share of loss of joint-ventures 6 1 Unrealized (gains) / losses on derivatives net and from remeasurement of monetary assets and liabilities net (23) (30) Losses / (gains) on disposal 1 (1) Other net 1 1 Interest paid* (39) (28) Income tax paid (2) (2) Change in trade working capital Inventories (27) (22) Trade receivables (122) (124) Trade payables 123 49 Change in provisions and pension obligations (21) (4) Other working capital 2 (13) Net cash flows from / (used in) operating activities 36 (87) Purchases of property, plant and equipment (60) (78) Proceeds from disposals net of cash (4) Equity contributions and loans to joint-ventures (14) (19) Other investing activities 5 2 Net cash flows used in investing activities (69) (99) Proceeds from issuance of Senior Notes 610 375 Repayment of Senior Notes (610) Proceeds / (Repayments) from revolving credit facility and other loans 9 (34) Payment of deferred financing costs and exit costs (40) (8) Other financing activities 27 4 Net cash flows (used in) / from financing activities (4) 337 Net (decrease) / increase in cash and cash equivalents (37) 151 Cash and cash equivalents - beginning of period 347 472 Cash and cash equivalents classified as held for sale beginning of period 4 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents (1) (2) Cash and cash equivalents - end of period 309 625 * In Q4 2016, we changed the presentation of interest paid in our cash flow statement. Interest paid, which was previously reported as financing cash flows, is now reported as operating cash flows. Prior year numbers were reclassified to conform to the current year presentation. SEGMENT ADJUSTED EBITDA (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 P&ARP 41 42 A&T 28 30 AS&I 31 27 Holdings and Corporate (7) (7) Adjusted EBITDA 93 92 SHIPMENTS AND REVENUE BY PRODUCT LINE (in k metric tons) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 Packaging rolled products 208 205 Automotive rolled products 34 27 Specialty and other thin-rolled products 12 12 Aerospace rolled products 28 31 Transportation, industry, and other rolled products 33 32 Automotive extruded products 28 26 Other extruded products 32 31 Other (2) Total shipments 375 362 (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 Packaging rolled products 550 463 Automotive rolled products 104 74 Specialty and other thin-rolled products 51 51 Aerospace rolled products 201 209 Transportation, industry, and other rolled products 142 123 Automotive extruded products 158 139 Other extruded products 128 122 Other and inter-segment eliminations* (6) (31) Total revenue 1,328 1,150 * Includes 20 million one-time payment related to the renegotiation of a customer agreement, which was recorded in the first quarter of 2016 as a reduction of revenues at the Holdings and Corporate level. NON-GAAP MEASURES Reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA (a non-GAAP measure) (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 Net income / (loss) 13 (8) Income tax expense 27 19 Income before income tax 40 11 Finance costs net 54 41 Share of loss of joint-ventures 6 1 Income from operations 100 53 Depreciation and amortization 43 34 Restructuring costs 2 Unrealized (gains) / losses on derivatives (28) (30) Unrealized exchange (gains) / losses from remeasurement of monetary assets and liabilities - net 4 1 Gain on pension plans amendments (A) (22) Share based compensation 2 1 Metal price lag(B) (13) 3 Start-up and development costs(C) 5 5 Manufacturing system and process transformation costs 3 Wise integration and acquisition costs 2 Wise one-time costs(D) 20 Adjusted EBITDA 93 92 (A) Pension amendments were enacted in January 2017 on Swiss pension plan and Ravenswood salaried pension plans and OPEB resulted respectively in a 12 million and 10 million gain. (B) Metal price lag represents the financial impact of the timing difference between when aluminum prices included within Constellium revenues are established and when aluminum purchase prices included in Cost of sales are established. The Group accounts for inventory using a weighted average price basis and this adjustment aims to remove the effect of volatility in LME prices. The calculation of the Group metal price lag adjustment is based on an internal standardized methodology calculated at each of Constellium manufacturing sites and is calculated as the average value of product recorded in inventory, which approximates the spot price in the market, less the average value transferred out of inventory, which is the weighted average of the metal element of cost of sales, based on the quantity sold in the period. (C) For the three months ended March 31, 2017, start-up costs relating to new sites and business development initiatives includes 2 million related to BiW/ABS growth projects both in Europe and the U.S. (D) For the three months ended March 31, 2016, Wise one-time costs related to a one-time payment of 20 million, recorded as a reduction of revenues, in relation to the re-negotiation of payment terms, pass through of Midwest premium amounts and other pricing mechanisms in a contract with one of Wise's customers. We entered into the re-negotiation of these terms in order to align the terms of this contract, acquired during the acquisition of Wise, with Constellium's normal business terms. Reconciliation of net cash flows from operating activities to Free Cash Flow (a non-GAAP measure) (in millions of Euros) Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended March 31, 2016 Net cash flows from / (used in) operating activities 36 (87) Purchases of property, plant and equipment (60) (78) Equity contributions and loans to joint-ventures (14) (19) Other investing activities 5 2 Free cash flow (33) (182) Reconciliation of borrowings to Net debt (a non-GAAP measure) (in millions of Euros) At March 31, 2017 At December 31, 2016 Borrowings 2,433 2,468 Fair value of cross currency basis swaps (38) (77) Cash and cash equivalents (309) (347) Cash pledged for issuance of guarantees (9) (9) Net debt 2,077 2,035 Non-GAAP measures In addition to the results reported in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board, this press release includes information regarding certain financial measures which are not prepared in accordance with IFRS ("non-GAAP measures"). The non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release are: Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA per metric ton, Free cash flow and Net debt. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures are presented in the schedules to this press release. We believe these non-GAAP measures are important supplemental measures of our operating and financial performance. By providing these measures, together with the reconciliations, we believe we are enhancing investors' understanding of our business, our results of operations and our financial position, as well as assisting investors in evaluating how well we are executing our strategic initiatives. However, these non-GAAP financial measures supplement our IFRS disclosures and should not be considered an alternative to the IFRS measures and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. In considering the financial performance of the business, management and our chief operational decision maker, as defined by IFRS, analyze the primary financial performance measure of Adjusted EBITDA in all of our business segments. The most directly comparable IFRS measure to Adjusted EBITDA is our net income or loss for the period. We believe Adjusted EBITDA, as defined below, is useful to investors and is used by our management for measuring profitability because it excludes the impact of certain non-cash charges, such as depreciation, amortization, impairment and unrealized gains and losses on derivatives as well as items that do not impact the day-to-day operations and that management in many cases does not directly control or influence. Therefore, such adjustments eliminate items which have less bearing on our core operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA measures are frequently used by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in their evaluation of Constellium and in comparison to other companies, many of which present an Adjusted EBITDA-related performance measure when reporting their results. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as income / (loss) from continuing operations before income taxes, results from joint ventures, net finance costs, other expenses and depreciation and amortization as adjusted to exclude restructuring costs, impairment charges, unrealized gains or losses on derivatives and on foreign exchange differences on transactions which do not qualify for hedge accounting, metal price lag, share based compensation expense, effects of certain purchase accounting adjustments, start-up and development costs or acquisition, integration and separation costs, certain incremental costs and other exceptional, unusual or generally non-recurring items. Adjusted EBITDA is the measure of performance used by management in evaluating our operating performance, in preparing internal forecasts and budgets necessary for managing our business and, specifically in relation to the exclusion of the effect of favorable or unfavorable metal price lag, this measure allows management and the investor to assess operating results and trends without the impact of our accounting for inventories. We use the weighted average cost method in accordance with IFRS which leads to the purchase price paid for metal impacting our cost of goods sold and therefore profitability in the period subsequent to when the related sales price impacts our revenues. Management believes this measure also provides additional information used by our lending facilities providers with respect to the ongoing performance of our underlying business activities. Historically, we have used Adjusted EBITDA in calculating our compliance with financial covenants under certain of our loan facilities. Adjusted EBITDA is not a presentation made in accordance with IFRS, is not a measure of financial condition, liquidity or profitability and should not be considered as an alternative to profit or loss for the period, revenues or operating cash flows determined in accordance with IFRS. Free Cash Flow is net cash flow from operating activities less capital expenditure, equity contributions and loans to joint ventures and other investing activities. Net debt is defined as borrowings plus or minus the fair value of cross currency basis swaps less cash and cash equivalents and cash pledged for the issuance of guarantees. Management believes that Free Cash Flow is a useful measure of the net cash flow generated or used by the business as it takes into account both the cash generated or consumed by operating activities, including working capital, and the capital expenditure requirements of the business. Management believes that Net debt is a useful measure of indebtedness because it takes into account the cash and cash equivalent balances held by the Company as well as the total external debt of the Company. Net debt and Free Cash Flow are not presentations made in accordance with IFRS, and should not be considered as an alternative to borrowings or operating cash flows determined in accordance with IFRS. SOURCE Constellium Related Links http://www.constellium.com TAMPA, Fla., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In March 2017, Contender Production Studios, LLC was officially launched to provide their award-winning, full production services to any business or individual. Contender Productions was initially established in 2015, after operating for nearly 10 years as a broadcast department known as studioPPK. Today, Contender is branching out and excited to be able to offer their broad range of renowned production services and skills to everyone. Contender Productions specializes in developing and executing compelling broadcast content for advertising, digital, television, video, film and social media. Their internationally-acclaimed work includes hundreds of commercials for brands such as The Florida Lottery, Bright House Networks, Tires Plus, GTE Financial, National Pediatric Cancer Foundation, Metropolitan Ministries, The Florida Aquarium, and many more. "From concept to full creation, and everything in between, we do it all on time and on budget," said Chanse Chanthalansy, Executive Studio Director. "We're an extremely lean but experienced and specialized team with the equipment, collaborative culture and streamlined processes to efficiently complete any scale project faster than you'd ever believe possible." Contender Production's Tampa studio is equipped with high-end Apple Workstations fiber-wired to a centralized media server which has over 150TB of space. By using Avid's Media Composer, their editors can work together simultaneously on any type of project no matter how big or small. Contender's in-house Red Cinema package enables them to shoot anything within any budget. They recently acquired a set of Cooke S4i lenses and have all the latest technology and skills to see a project through from pre-production to post-production, including everything from shaping stories to selecting talent & wardrobe, designing sets, directing, photography, animation, editing, coloring, music and sound design. The Company's goal is to continue to grow and evolve, as well as helping to build up their clients' businesses. By using the best tools and an elite team of editors, artists, animators and engineers, Contender Productions can handle from 150 to 200 video projects each year. For more information or to consult with them about a project, visit ContenderProductions.com. About Contender Productions Contender Productions is a full-service production company specializing in broadcast creative for advertising, digital, television and film. Our award-winning work includes hundreds of spots for brands such as Bright House Networks, Tires Plus and GTE Financial, garnering top awards from AAF and Graphis. SOURCE Contender Productions ORANGE, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cryogenic Systems & Parts, a privately-held, leading manufacturer and servicer of rubber deflashing machinery, has announced the retirement of its founder and president Stacy M. Morgan as of December 31, 2016. Jeff Walter, who purchased the 30-year-old company on January 1, 2017, has assumed the role of president. Morgan started CSP out of his garage in the mid-1980s, taking three years to build his first machine. Over the last three decades, CSP has become a leader in the industry with distribution centers all over the world. "I am so proud of the legacy of this company," outgoing CSP President Stacy Morgan said. "Our machines are simple, bulletproof, and built to last." New owner and President Jeff Walter graduated with a business degree from California State University, Fullerton, and has spent a decade in manufacturing focused on similar global products. An Orange County native with a strong mechanical background, Walter got connected with Morgan through mutual acquaintances and made a great impression. "Jeff is the ideal person to lead CSP," Morgan said. "I have every confidence he will continue producing world-class equipment and providing exceptional service to our customers." Walter said preserving CSP's legacy is extremely important to him. "CSP will maintain its status as a worldwide industry leader by continuing to focus on a quality manufacturing process and building the best cryogenic deflashing machines in the industry," said Walter. "We will always strive to provide the best solution for our customers." For more information on Cryogenic Systems & Parts, visit http://www.cryomatic.com. About Cryogenic Systems & Parts Founded in 1987, Cryogenic Systems & Parts has established itself as the leader in cryogenic shot blast deflashing. Since CSP's inception, the company has implemented the latest in technology while maintaining the highest level of quality in its machines. CSP is the only manufacturer of cryogenic deflashing equipment approved by the U.S. Government. Unparalleled service, expertise, and machines that stand the test of time have made Cryogenic Systems & Parts a trusted partner in the rubber industry for more than three decades. SOURCE Cryogenic Systems & Parts Related Links http://www.cryomatic.com HIAWATHA, Iowa, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Crystal Group, a leading designer/manufacturer of rugged computer hardware held their annual Technology Summit for global sales partners on April 24 26 at the company's headquarters in Hiawatha, Iowa. "The Technology Summit is a once-a-year opportunity to gather our sales people together, streamline our processes and communicate valuable knowledge to the entire group," said Robert Haag, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Crystal Group. "This was a key opportunity for sales veterans and new team members alike to meet, share ideas and develop relationships with our manufacturer's representatives and resellers." Highlights of the conference included expansion details and impact of Crystal Group's just announced 111,500 square foot facility to be built in Hiawatha during 2017 and 2018. Additional conference highlights featured discussions on electronic data storage trends, Brocade networking switch advances, applications for the Internet of Things and rapidly emerging autonomous market opportunities. "We believe the Technology Summit and Crystal Group relationship adds tremendous value to our customers," said David Dayton, Vice President of Tokyo-based Trans Pacific Technologies, a Crystal Group reseller. "The Technology Summit gives us the opportunity to jointly focus on educating and engaging a broader audience on the latest technical issues that impact our customer base." Crystal Group's two highest global sales force awards, the Most Valuable Manufacturer's Representative US award was presented to Eagle Sales Corp of Ellicott City, Maryland, and Most Valuable Reseller - International was presented to Mersys A.S. of Ankara, Turkey at an awards ceremony which took place at Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery in Swisher, Iowa. About Crystal Group Inc. Crystal Group Inc., an employee-owned small business located in Hiawatha, Iowa, USA, is a technology innovation leader specializing in both custom and COTS products for defense, government and industrial markets since 1987. Crystal Group designs and manufactures installation-ready rugged servers, displays, networking devices, embedded systems, power supplies and storage devices that fit critical applications in demanding environmental conditions. The company is certified to quality management standards AS9100C:2009 and ISO 9001:2008. Crystal Group products meet and exceed MIL-STDs 810, 167-1, 461, MIL-S-901, IEEE and IEC industrial standards. Additionally, the company offers integration services, configuration management, product life-cycle planning and 5+ year warranties. crystalrugged.com 2017 Crystal Group Inc. All rights reserved. All marks are property of their respective owners. Design and specifications are subject to change. SOURCE Crystal Group Inc. Related Links http://www.crystalrugged.com SUGAR LAND, Texas, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CVR Partners, LP (NYSE: UAN), a manufacturer of ammonia and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) solution fertilizer products, today announced a first quarter 2017 net loss of $10.3 million, or 9 cents per common unit, on net sales of $85.3 million, compared to net income of $18.0 million, or 25 cents per common unit, on net sales of $73.1 million for the first quarter a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, was $20.8 million for the first quarter of 2017, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $27.9 million for the first quarter of 2016. CVR Partners' results for the three months ended March 31, 2017, include the results of the East Dubuque fertilizer facility. First quarter 2016 results do not include East Dubuque. "CVR Partners posted strong operational performance at our Coffeyville and East Dubuque fertilizer facilities during the 2017 first quarter, with both plants achieving on-stream rates just under 100 percent," said Mark Pytosh, chief executive officer. "We also were pleased to deliver approximately $2 million in distributable cash flow for the quarter, which we achieved during the industry's seasonably slow time of year," Pytosh said. "In addition, spring planting is underway and we expect demand to remain firm as farmers are forecasted to plant 90 million acres of corn this year." Consolidated Operations For the first quarter of 2017, consolidated average realized gate prices for UAN and ammonia were $160 per ton and $308 per ton, respectively. Average realized gate prices for UAN and ammonia for the Coffeyville facility were $209 per ton and $367 per ton, respectively, for the same period in 2016. CVR Partners' fertilizer facilities produced a combined 219,200 tons of ammonia during the first quarter of 2017, of which 80,000 net tons were available for sale while the rest was upgraded to other fertilizer products, including 341,900 tons of UAN. In the 2016 first quarter, the Coffeyville facility produced 113,700 tons of ammonia, of which 15,100 net tons were available for sale while the remainder was upgraded to 248,200 tons of UAN. Distributions CVR Partners also announced today a first quarter 2017 distribution of 2 cents per common unit. The distribution, as set by the board of CVR GP, LLC, the general partner of CVR Partners, will be paid on May 15, 2017, to unitholders of record on May 8, 2017. CVR Partners is a variable distribution master limited partnership. As a result, its quarterly distributions, if any, will vary from quarter to quarter due to several factors, including, but not limited to, its operating performance, fluctuations in the prices received for its finished products, maintenance capital expenditures, and cash reserves deemed necessary or appropriate by the board of directors of its general partner. First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call CVR Partners previously announced that it will host its 2017 first quarter Earnings Conference Call for analysts and investors on Thursday, April 27, at 11 a.m. Eastern. The Earnings Conference Call may also include discussion of the Partnership's developments, forward-looking information and other material information about business and financial matters. The Earnings Conference Call will be broadcast live over the Internet at https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1004/20614 . For investors or analysts who want to participate during the call, the dial-in number is (877) 407-8029. For those unable to listen live, the Webcast will be archived and available for 14 days at https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1004/20614 . A repeat of the conference call can be accessed by dialing (877) 660-6853, conference ID 13659736. This release serves as a qualified notice to nominees and brokers as provided for under Treasury Regulation Section 1.1446-4(b). Please note that 100 percent of CVR Partners' distributions to foreign investors are attributable to income that is effectively connected with a United States trade or business. Accordingly, CVR Partners' distributions to foreign investors are subject to federal income tax withholding at the highest effective tax rate. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements. You can generally identify forward-looking statements by our use of forward-looking terminology such as "outlook," "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "seek," "should," or "will," or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. For a discussion of risk factors which may affect our results, please see the risk factors and other disclosures included in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, any subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our other SEC filings. These risks may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date hereof. CVR Partners disclaims any intention or obligation to update publicly or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law. About CVR Partners, LP Headquartered in Sugar Land, Texas, CVR Partners, LP is a Delaware limited partnership focused on the production, marketing and distribution of nitrogen fertilizer products. It primarily produces urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) and ammonia, which are predominantly used by farmers to improve the yield and quality of their crops. CVR Partners' Coffeyville, Kansas, nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing facility includes a 1,300 ton-per-day ammonia unit, a 3,000 ton-per-day UAN unit and a dual-train gasifier complex having a capacity of 89 million standard cubic feet per day of hydrogen. CVR Partners' East Dubuque, Illinois, nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing facility includes a 1,075 ton-per-day ammonia unit and a 1,100 ton-per-day UAN unit. For further information, please contact: Investor Contact: Jay Finks CVR Partners, LP (281) 207-3588 [email protected] Media Relations: Brandee Stephens CVR Partners, LP (281) 207-3516 [email protected] CVR Partners, LP Financial and Operational Data (all information in this release is unaudited other than the balance sheet data as of December 31, 2016). On April 1, 2016, CVR Partners, LP (the "Partnership") completed the merger (the "East Dubuque Merger") whereby the Partnership acquired a nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing facility located in East Dubuque, Illinois (the "East Dubuque Facility"). The consolidated financial statements and key operating metrics include the results of the East Dubuque Facility beginning on April 1, 2016, the date of the closing of the acquisition. Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in millions, except unit data) Consolidated Statements of Operations Data: Net sales (1) $ 85.3 $ 73.1 Cost of materials and other - Affiliates 2.2 0.8 Cost of materials and other - Third parties 19.6 15.5 Direct operating expenses - Affiliates (2) 0.8 0.9 Direct operating expenses - Third parties (2) 35.1 22.8 Depreciation and amortization 15.4 7.0 Cost of sales 73.1 47.0 Selling, general and administrative expenses - Affiliates (3) 3.9 3.5 Selling, general and administrative expenses - Third parties (3) 3.0 2.9 Operating income 5.3 19.7 Interest expense and other financing costs (15.7) (1.7) Other income, net 0.1 Income (loss) before income tax expense (10.3) 18.0 Income tax expense Net income (loss) $ (10.3) $ 18.0 Net income (loss) per common unit - basic and diluted $ (0.09) $ 0.25 Adjusted EBITDA* $ 20.8 $ 27.9 Available cash for distribution* $ 1.8 $ 30.6 Weighted average common units outstanding - basic and diluted (in thousands) 113,283 73,128 ________________________________ * See "Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" below. (1) Below are the components of net sales: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in millions) Reconciliation to net sales: Fertilizer sales net at gate $ 76.0 $ 64.8 Freight in revenue 7.1 6.9 Hydrogen revenue 0.1 1.1 Other 2.1 0.3 Total net sales $ 85.3 $ 73.1 (2) Direct operating expenses are reflected exclusive of depreciation and amortization. (3) The Partnership incurred legal and other professional fees and other merger related expenses that are referred to herein as expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger, which are included in selling, general and administrative expenses. The Partnership incurred approximately $1.2 million of expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger for the three months ended March 31, 2016. As of March 31, 2017 As of December 31, 2016 (audited) (in millions) Balance Sheet Data: Cash and cash equivalents $ 81.5 $ 55.6 Working capital 77.9 71.5 Total assets 1,328.4 1,312.2 Total debt, including current portion 623.8 623.1 Total partners' capital 614.6 624.9 Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in millions) Cash Flow Data: Net cash flow provided by (used in): Operating activities $ 30.0 $ 23.6 Investing activities (4.1) (1.7) Financing activities (19.9) Net increase in cash and cash equivalents $ 25.9 $ 2.0 Capital expenditures for property, plant and equipment: Maintenance capital expenditures $ 4.0 $ 0.9 Growth capital expenditures 0.1 0.8 Total capital expenditures $ 4.1 $ 1.7 Operating Data The following tables set forth information about our consolidated operations and our nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing facility located in Coffeyville, Kansas (the "Coffeyville Facility") and the East Dubuque Facility. Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Key Operating Statistics: Consolidated sales (thousand tons): Ammonia 61.9 24.4 UAN 321.6 267.0 Consolidated product pricing at gate (dollars per ton) (1): Ammonia $ 308 $ 367 UAN $ 160 $ 209 Consolidated production volume (thousand tons): Ammonia (gross produced) (2) 219.2 113.7 Ammonia (net available for sale) (2) 80.0 15.1 UAN 341.9 248.2 Feedstock: Petroleum coke used in production (thousand tons) 132.6 126.9 Petroleum coke used in production (dollars per ton) $ 14 $ 17 Natural gas used in production (thousands of MMBtus) 2,091.2 Natural gas used in production (dollars per MMBtu) (3) $ 3.41 $ Natural gas in cost of materials and other (thousands of MMBtus) 1,476.0 Natural gas in cost of materials and other (dollars per MMBtu) (3) $ 3.59 $ Coffeyville Facility on-stream factors (4): Gasification 98.9 % 97.7 % Ammonia 98.5 % 97.2 % UAN 96.8 % 91.4 % East Dubuque Facility on-stream factors (4): Ammonia 99.6 % % UAN 98.2 % % Market Indicators: Ammonia - Southern plains (dollars per ton) $ 387 $ 375 Ammonia - Corn belt (dollars per ton) $ 424 $ 441 UAN - Corn belt (dollars per ton) $ 215 $ 229 Natural gas NYMEX (dollars per MMBtu) $ 3.06 $ 1.98 ______________________________ (1) Product pricing at gate represents net sales less freight revenue divided by product sales volume in tons and is shown in order to provide a pricing measure that is comparable across the fertilizer industry. (2) Gross tons produced for ammonia represent total ammonia produced, including ammonia produced that was upgraded into other fertilizer products. Net tons available for sale represent ammonia available for sale that was not upgraded into other fertilizer products. (3) The cost per MMBtu excludes derivative activity, when applicable. The impact of natural gas derivative activity during the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 was not material. (4) On-stream factor is the total number of hours operated divided by the total number of hours in the reporting period and is included as a measure of operating efficiency. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement our actual results calculated in accordance with GAAP for the applicable periods, the Partnership also uses the non-GAAP financial measures noted above, which are reconciled to our GAAP based results below. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as an alternative to GAAP results. EBITDA is defined as net income (loss) before (i) interest (income) expense, (ii) income tax expense and (iii) depreciation and amortization expense. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as EBITDA further adjusted for the impact of major scheduled turnaround expenses, gain or loss on extinguishment of debt, loss on disposition of assets, expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger, and business interruption insurance recovery, when applicable. We present EBITDA because we believe it allows users of our financial statements, such as investors and analysts, to assess our financial performance without regard to financing methods, capital structure or historical cost basis. We present Adjusted EBITDA because we have found it helpful to consider an operating measure that excludes amounts, such as major scheduled turnaround expenses, gain or loss on extinguishment of debt, loss on disposition of assets, expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger, and business interruption insurance recovery, relating to transactions not reflective of our core operations. When applicable, each of these amounts is discussed in the Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations section of our SEC reports, so that investors have complete information about these amounts. We also present Adjusted EBITDA because it is the starting point used by the board of directors of our general partner when calculating our available cash for distribution. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are not recognized terms under GAAP and should not be substituted for net income (loss) or cash flows from operations. Management believes that EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA enable investors and analysts to better understand our ability to make distributions to common unitholders, help investors and analysts evaluate our ongoing operating results and allow for greater transparency in reviewing our overall financial, operational and economic performance by allowing investors to evaluate the same information used by management. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA presented by other companies may not be comparable to our presentation, since each company may define these terms differently. A reconciliation of consolidated Net income (loss) to consolidated EBITDA and consolidated Adjusted EBITDA is as follows: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in millions) Net income (loss) $ (10.3) $ 18.0 Add: Interest expense and other financing costs, net 15.7 1.7 Income tax expense Depreciation and amortization 15.4 7.0 EBITDA $ 20.8 $ 26.7 Add: Expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger 1.2 Adjusted EBITDA $ 20.8 $ 27.9 Available cash for distribution is not a recognized term under GAAP. Available cash for distribution should not be considered in isolation or as an alternative to net income (loss) or operating income, or any other measure of financial performance or operating performance. In addition, available cash for distribution is not presented as, and should not be considered, an alternative to cash flows from operations or as a measure of liquidity. Available cash for distribution as reported by the Partnership may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other entities, thereby limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure. Available cash begins with Adjusted EBITDA reduced for cash needed for (i) net cash interest expense (excluding capitalized interest) and debt service and other contractual obligations; (ii) maintenance capital expenditures; and (iii) to the extent applicable, major scheduled turnaround expenses, reserves for future operating or capital needs that the board of directors of the general partner deems necessary or appropriate, and expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger, if any. Available cash for distribution may be increased by the release of previously established cash reserves, if any, at the discretion of the board of directors of our general partner, and available cash is increased by the business interruption insurance proceeds and the impact of purchase accounting. Actual distributions are set by the board of directors of our general partner. The board of directors of our general partner may modify our cash distribution policy at any time, and our partnership agreement does not require us to make distributions at all. A reconciliation of consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to Available cash for distribution is as follows: Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (in millions, except units and per unit data) Adjusted EBITDA $ 20.8 $ 27.9 Adjustments: Less: Net cash interest expense (excluding capitalized interest) and debt service (15.0) (1.5) Maintenance capital expenditures (4.0) (0.9) Expenses associated with the East Dubuque Merger (1.2) Add: Available cash associated with East Dubuque 2016 first quarter 6.3 Available cash for distribution $ 1.8 $ 30.6 Available cash for distribution, per common unit (1) $ 0.02 $ 0.27 Distribution declared, per common unit $ 0.02 $ 0.27 Common units outstanding (in thousands) (1) 113,283 113,283 ______________________________ (1) Available cash for distribution, per common unit for the three months ended March 31, 2016 is calculated based on the post-merger common units outstanding. SOURCE CVR Partners, LP Related Links http://www.cvrpartners.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Deidre Diamond, Founder of cyber security staffing firm CyberSN and non-profit #brainbabe, today announced the hiring of Launa Rich as Managing Director, expanding CyberSN's presence in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Launa Rich, Managing Director, joins CyberSN team in San Francisco. Launa Rich, formerly a Director of Staffing at Talener, a technical staffing firm in San Francisco, says she is thrilled to join the CyberSN team. "I couldn't be more delighted to be joining an organization that gives back to such an amazing community. I'm excited to continue to work in a field I love while building a new kind of staffing experience with such talented and dedicated people," says Rich. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Rich moved to New York City to begin her career in technical staffing. She was then promoted to a management position at Motion Recruitment, moving to San Francisco building a team specialized in DevOps placement services. Rich brought that specialization to Talener's New York office and then returned to San Francisco, as a Director, overseeing and expanding the Bay Area presence. With a passion for Infrastructure and DevOps, Rich is excited to continue as an integral part of the San Francisco cyber security community. Diamond says that the time is right to expand the CyberSN service offering in San Francisco. "This city is a place where people want to work. We have great clients in and around San Francisco and we are thrilled to be able to offer a wider representation in this dynamic, rapidly-growing cyber security community. As a native Californian, I am also thrilled to be doing more business with the community where I spent the first half of my career," says Diamond on the expansion to San Francisco. CyberSN specializes in permanent and contract staffing for all cyber security positions, including cyber security sales positions. With a national reach and presence in Boston, Connecticut, Pittsburgh, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, CyberSN has changed cyber security job searching. About CyberSN CyberSN (CyberSN.com), a cyber security staffing company, is committed to making cyber security job searching and hiring simpler. For more information, visit www.CyberSN.com or contact Lisa Kendall at [email protected] or 1-888-470-8011 x 111 Media Contact: Lisa Kendall [email protected] 888-470-8011 x 111 SOURCE CyberSN Related Links http://www.CyberSN.com After the dedication ceremony, the Earnhardts spent time with some of the patients, who are working to regain or improve their functional abilities. "Having this room named after Amy and me means we will forever be personally connected to the hospital," said Earnhardt. "It's a room of joy and happiness, and Amy and I are so thankful to the hospital and Nationwide for giving us this amazing gift." This visit was the first to the hospital for Hendrick. The hospital presented the NASCAR Hall of Fame car owner with a gift as well: a hospital wagon dedicated to Hendrick Motorsports with the inscription "A new set of wheels for a winning team!" The wagons are used by patients and families to help transport their belongings from room to room during a hospital visit or stay. "I'm blown away. Until you walk in to the NCH you don't realize how broad and deep it is," said Rick Hendrick. "It's amazing to see the work these talented people are doing. I think Ohio and the whole country are blessed to have a hospital like this." The visit is the latest opportunity to showcase how Nationwide, Earnhardt and Hendrick have partnered to show support for Nationwide Children's. This past January at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Ariz., Hendrick Motorsports, Earnhardt and Chevrolet auctioned a pair of cars: a No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet SS that raced in 2014 and 2015, and a 1970 Chevelle co-designed by Dale Jr and Chevrolet. The sale of the two vehicles raised $400,000, with all proceeds benefiting the hospital. "The research and clinical care at Nationwide Children's improves the lives of children and their families everywhere, and we treat patients from all 50 states and nearly 50 countries," said Jim Digan, president of Nationwide Children's Hospital Foundation. "Dale Earnhardt Jr. and The Dale Jr. Foundation, Mr. Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports, and Nationwide are collectively helping us raise funds and just as importantawareness for the hospital. We are so grateful for their thoughtfulness and generosity with their time." For the second straight year, Nationwide, the primary sponsor of the No. 88 team and a long-time benefactor of the hospital, will dedicate one of the company's paint schemes to Nationwide Children's. The hospital's logo and signature butterflies will be on Earnhardt's No. 88 Nationwide Children's Hospital Chevy SS during the July 8 race weekend at Kentucky Speedway. "Nationwide is thrilled to have Dale Jr., Amy and Rick Hendrick here to celebrate the room dedication and the patients who will benefit from it. It means a lot to those facing challenges to know that there are people who care and support their recovery," said Terrance Williams, chief marketing officer for Nationwide. "We all wish Dale Jr. the very best as he enters retirement and are thankful that he and the No. 88 team are so willing to help shine a national spotlight on the hospital and the life-changing work they do." Video, interviews and photos from the tour for use in news stories are available here. About Nationwide Children's Hospital Named to the Top 10 Honor Roll on U.S. News & World Report's 2016-17 list of "America's Best Children's Hospitals," Nationwide Children's Hospital is America's largest not-for-profit freestanding pediatric healthcare system providing wellness, preventive, diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitative care for infants, children and adolescents, as well as adult patients with congenital disease. Nationwide Children's has a staff of more than 11,000 providing state-of-the-art pediatric care during more than 1.2 million patient visits annually. As home to the Department of Pediatrics of The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Nationwide Children's physicians train the next generation of pediatricians and pediatric specialists. The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the Top 10 National Institutes of Health-funded freestanding pediatric research facilities. More information is available at NationwideChildrens.org. About Nationwide Nationwide, a Fortune 100 company based in Columbus, Ohio, is one of the largest and strongest diversified insurance and financial services organizations in the U.S. and is rated A+ by both A.M. Best and Standard & Poor's. The company provides a full range of insurance and financial services, including auto, commercial, homeowners, farm and life insurance; public and private sector retirement plans, annuities and mutual funds; banking and mortgages; excess & surplus, specialty and surety; pet, motorcycle and boat insurance. For more information, visit www.nationwide.com. Nationwide, Nationwide is on your side and the Nationwide N and Eagle are service marks of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Contact: Media Relations Nationwide Children's Hospital Marketing and Public Relations (614) 355-0495 SOURCE Nationwide Related Links http://www.nationwide.com WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Deloitte Foundation today announced a grant to Base 11 that will help create a nationally scalable STEM career accelerator model. The model will offer high school students a project-based learning program that encompasses multiple engineering disciplines. The objective of the program is to encourage students who have an inherent interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to pursue a college degree in one of those fields and help alleviate the STEM workforce shortage. Research shows that experiential learning helps retain students' interest in the STEM fields that are the gateway to STEM degrees and careers. "The Deloitte Foundation is excited by Base 11's innovative approach to help produce the next generation of STEM talent," said Tonie Leatherberry, president of the Deloitte Foundation. "Hands-on engineering projects not only provide students with the real-world technical skills they need, but the soft skills essential to succeed in the 21st century." Beginning this fall, the program will be piloted at Cristo Rey Philadelphia, a private high school that serves low-income students. In preparation for the pilot, Base 11 will create a STEM accelerator ecosystem at the Philadelphia campus, including the installation of new design and rapid-prototyping equipment, specialized training for the faculty, and experiential curriculum developed in partnership with the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) specializing in project-based engineering learning programs. The key components of the pilot program, which will run through spring 2018, include: Autonomous Systems Engineering Academy adaptation - This hands-on, project based learning program, originated from UCI's Samueli School, will be adapted into a year-long engineering and computer science curriculum for high school juniors and seniors. Students will define, build and test a series of mini projects focused on different aspects of engineering, from basic electronics to computer-aided design. Each mini project will be a necessary component of the capstone project, a fully operational unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. - This hands-on, project based learning program, originated from UCI's Samueli School, will be adapted into a year-long engineering and computer science curriculum for high school juniors and seniors. Students will define, build and test a series of mini projects focused on different aspects of engineering, from basic electronics to computer-aided design. Each mini project will be a necessary component of the capstone project, a fully operational unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. Corporate involvement - Base 11 and Deloitte Foundation will encourage other corporate organizations to expand beyond high school work study programs into paid college apprenticeships, and to offer "innovation challenges" where students are invited to work on a real project requested by an employer. Base 11 and Deloitte Foundation will encourage other corporate organizations to expand beyond high school work study programs into paid college apprenticeships, and to offer "innovation challenges" where students are invited to work on a real project requested by an employer. STEM undergraduate admissions playbook - Base 11 will collaborate with universities, corporate employers and resource providers from STEMconnector to develop and implement a STEM undergraduate admissions "playbook." The playbook provides students and parents with a roadmap that students can follow to obtain college scholarship support and pursue career opportunities in STEM. "Base 11 and the Deloitte Foundation share a common vision to empower students to ignite and realize the greatest potential for themselves and their communities," said Landon Taylor, CEO of Base 11. "We are grateful for the Deloitte Foundation's support of this program, and excited to learn from the pilot and then replicate and scale it to address our nation's imminent STEM talent needs." About The Deloitte Foundation The Deloitte Foundation, founded in 1928, is a not-for-profit organization that supports education in the U.S. through a variety of initiatives that help develop the talent of the future and their influencers and promote excellence in teaching, research and curriculum innovation. The Foundation sponsors an array of national programs relevant to a variety of professional services, benefiting middle/high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and educators. Learn more about the Deloitte Foundation. About Base 11 Base 11 is a nonprofit workforce development and entrepreneur accelerator focused on solving the STEM talent pipeline crisis being fueled by the underrepresentation of women and minorities. Base 11 facilitates partnerships with industry, academia and philanthropy which deliver to employers a pre-recruitment pipeline of well-trained, highly skilled STEM talent. By establishing Innovation Centers integrated with hands-on project based learning and STEM entrepreneurship training, Base 11 and its partners set students on direct pathways to four-year STEM degrees, well paid STEM jobs, and the opportunity to launch their own STEM related business. For more information, please visit www.Base11.com. Base 11 is a DBA of the Center for Innovations in Education, a nonprofit 501(c) 3 IRS exemption EIN# 26-4365936. Contacts Wendy Berk Christine Byrd Public Relations Base 11 Deloitte +1 714 371 4200 +1 617 922 1148 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Deloitte Foundation MINNEAPOLIS and SAINT PAUL, Minn., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Participants will find this week-long cruise empowering while having fun and learning to live graciously with their "new normal" in life. Lori La Bey, Radio Host and founder of Alzheimer's Speaks, orchestrated the event. Her Mother lived 30 years with dementia. La Bey said, "Our conference is designed to encourage open conversations, raise awareness, and build a sense of comradery while rejuvenating souls. We want to help people expand their relationships while functioning as caregiver and care receiver." Lori La Bey Founder of Alzheimer's Speaks (PRNewsfoto/Alzheimer's Speaks, LLC) Dementia Friendly Conference & Caribbean Cruise Nov 11-18th, 2017 (PRNewsfoto/Alzheimer's Speaks, LLC) Kathy Shoaf, RN, Accessible Travel Advocate became La Bey's perfect partner. Shoaf owner of Elite Cruises and Vacations, LLC, is helping La Bey bring people together to share insights, reduce fears and eliminate feelings of isolation often caused by dementia. Shoaf has been overwhelmed by the gratitude expressed by those inquiring. "People are excited and surprised this opportunity exists," she said. According to Alzheimer's Disease International, a person develops dementia every 3 seconds in the world. It's rare to find someone who has not been touched by it. La Bey's unique team includes professionals and what she calls the "True Experts." Four international advocates living with a dementia diagnosis will play a large role in the conference sharing their profound insights and coping strategies. Harry Urban, has lived 13 years with his diagnosis. He said, "I'm finally going to meet my family. The one I've never met." Urban refers to his "social media family" which can be a lifeline to those diagnosed as well as those caring for them. Professionals Cyndy Luzinski and Becky Watson bring their passion and superior skill sets to the conference. Luzinski is an advanced practice nurse, dementia practitioner and founder of Dementia-Friendly Communities of Northern Colorado. Watson is a Board-Certified Music Therapist and Founder of Music for Wellness. La Bey, reminisces about a family cruise with her mom with dementia, dad with brain cancer, and her siblings and their children. "What a beautiful experience it was. Now to be able to offer a supportive atmosphere where others understand dementia and are in the trenches side by side with one another -- well it's just beyond words." The conference will provide hope and fun in a comfortable environment. Participants will be given resources, tips and tools to help them live better with and alongside dementia. Alzheimer's Speaks is seeking sponsorships and donations to provide scholarships for those who can't afford to attend. The group sets sail November 11th, 2017. Interested parties must book their cruise through Kathy Shoaf who can be reached at 219-608-2002 or [email protected] Alzheimer's Speaks is an advocacy group making an international impact providing education for those dealing with dementia. Dr. Oz and Sharecare recognized Alzheimer's Speaks as the "#1 Influencer online for Alzheimer's." Maria Shriver recognized La Bey as an "Architect of Change for Humanity." Media Contact: Lori La Bey 651-216-5413 [email protected] SOURCE Alzheimer's Speaks, LLC DETROIT, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DivDat Kiosk Network President Jason Bierkle presented his company's high-tech, easy-to-use no-fee payment model for energy, tax, water and other bills, earning applause and an ovation from the Detroit City Council. By invitation of the Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, Bierkle and his management team presented the DivDat Kiosk Network solution used by some 50,000 people each month to the Council's April 24 session. "We are changing people's lives with this program," said DivDat Kiosk Network President Jason Bierkle. "This is an industry best practices method of creating a win-win solution for both billers and consumers who may not have access to on-line payment methods, credit cards or even checking accounts. The kiosk network solution of some 40 kiosks in Metro Detroit neighborhoods is now a proven model." Bierkle told the Council that the recent addition of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Kiosk Network in April has resulted in more than 5,000 people paying their water bills at kiosks without having to go to a city payment center. The DWSD joins the Wayne County Treasurer and DTE Energy in using the DivDat Kiosk Network for collecting payments in convenient and safe neighborhood locations such as community centers and drug stores. Residents can use cash, check or credit card to make direct payments at their convenience and receive a real-time, official receipt. "We are stamping out predatory fee practices in the Motor City," Bierkle said. "What is truly significant and important about the DivDat Kiosk Network (DKN) as opposed to virtually every other payment system is that the customer is not charged a so-called convenience fee or user fee," said Bierkle. "The billers are paying for the kiosks and a small transaction fee to benefit their customers and streamline operations while also reducing their collection costs." Bierkle said his company is in discussions with numerous cities, court systems and other billers seeking to be a part of the growing DivDat Kiosk Network. "We will be bringing on additional billers this summer and adding at least 10 kiosks in Metro Detroit as well," he added. "We will soon be announcing a mobile app that complements the kiosk operation and will allow users to make payments remotely or with cash in an even more expedited manner." DivDat is a privately held company headquartered in Ferndale, MI with its DivDat Kiosk Network affiliation located in Detroit, MI. and the companies operate an additional office in Las Vegas, NV. DivDat was founded in 1971 under "Diversified Data Consultants". The firm has over 40 employees, with an array of part-time workers, consultants and advisors as independent contractors. DivDat is a leader in the emerging field of Preferential Communications. DivDat has developed product innovations that embrace web-based and other new technologies to seamlessly integrate a company's entire accounts receivable communications platform. For more information please visit www.divdat.com or www.dteenergy.com or www.wctkiosk.com. SOURCE DivDat Related Links http://www.divdat.com 1299 Ocean is an 11-story oceanfront office building comprised of 206,000 square feet with private balconies and an open park plaza facing the coastline. With the addition of 1299 Ocean, the Douglas Emmett portfolio now includes all four Class "A" office buildings in Los Angeles that command significant rent premiums as a result of their direct beachfront views. 429 Santa Monica is an 87,000 square feet office building located in the heart of downtown Santa Monica. The building has both ocean and mountain views, and is only 1 block from the world renowned 3rd Street Promenade and three blocks from a light rail station. These acquisitions increase Douglas Emmett's ownership share of the downtown Santa Monica Class "A" office market from 55% to 71%. They also represent a significant lease up opportunity, with 1299 Ocean at 79% leased and 429 Santa Monica at 70% leased (after known move-outs), significantly below the 97% average of Douglas Emmett's existing Santa Monica portfolio. Douglas Emmett's total office portfolio now consists of 69 office properties totaling approximately 18 million square feet. Douglas Emmett also owns ten premier apartment communities in Los Angeles and Honolulu comprising 3,320 units, and approximately 850 residential units under development. For QIA, this acquisition represents another step in its plans to significantly expand its US investment portfolio, and follows other large Class "A" investments in real estate, such as the Manhattan West project in New York City in 2015, the acquisitions of the Westwood Office Portfolio with Douglas Emmett, and a 9.9% interest in Empire State Realty Trust in 2016. QIA has announced plans to invest $35 billion in North America over five years. About Douglas Emmett, Inc. Douglas Emmett, Inc. (DEI) is a fully integrated, self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT), and one of the largest owners and operators of high-quality office and multifamily properties located in the premier coastal submarkets of Los Angeles and Honolulu. Douglas Emmett focuses on owning and acquiring a substantial share of top-tier office properties and premier multifamily communities in neighborhoods that possess significant supply constraints, high-end executive housing, and generous lifestyle amenities. For more information about Douglas Emmett, please visit our website at www.douglasemmett.com. A bout Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) Qatar Investment Authority was founded by the State of Qatar in 2005 following the vision of HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to strengthen the country's economy by diversifying into new asset classes. Building on the heritage of Qatar investments dating back more than three decades, its growing portfolio of long-term investments help complement the state's huge wealth in natural resources. Headquartered in Doha, and now with a subsidiary in New York called QIA Advisory, QIA is structured to operate at the very highest levels of global investing. As a world class investor, QIA adheres to the strictest financial and commercial disciplines. It has a strong track record of investing in different asset classes, including listed securities, property, alternative assets and private equity in all the major capital markets as well as the newer emerging markets. For more information, please visit our website at www.qia.qa or contact: Media: David Henderson, Finsbury UK: +44 20 7251 3801 Mallory Weinberg, Finsbury US: +1 646 805 2043 Safe Harbor Statement Except for the historical facts, the statements in this press release are forward-looking statements based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to us about known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance and some will inevitably prove to be incorrect. As a result, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences may be material. Accordingly, investors should use caution in relying on forward-looking statements to anticipate future results or trends. For a discussion of some of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Stuart McElhinney, Vice President Investor Relations 310.255.7751 [email protected] SOURCE Douglas Emmett, Inc. Related Links http://www.douglasemmett.com SANTA ANA, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DrugDetoxCenters.com, an online resource focused on providing information on drug and alcohol detox, today announced the release of an infographic on its website, detailing some of the most common withdrawal symptoms individuals experience during drug and alcohol detox. Most common drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms individuals experience during drug or alcohol detox. Drug detox can be a harrowing experience for anyone going through it. But knowing what to expect during detox can ease some of the anxiety associated with this early, critical step in recovery. Different drugs and alcohol have their own withdrawal symptoms that can range from mild to life-threatening. The following infographic from DrugDetoxCenters.com highlights some of the more common withdrawal symptoms associated with alcohol, and different drugs including opioids, stimulants and benzodiazepines. Click here to download the withdrawal symptoms infographic. To find a comprehensive, personalized drug detox center for you or a loved one, call our team of drug detox specialists today at 877-262-6566. About DrugDetoxCenters.com DrugDetoxCenters.com is an online resource focused on providing information related to drug and alcohol detox. Drug detox is a critical phase in recovery, in which individuals with a substance use disorder undergo physiological rehabilitation after a period of addiction. DrugDetoxCenters.com offers its visitors valuable information on drug and alcohol detox including types of detox programs, medications commonly used during detox, addiction treatment services used after detox, and common withdrawal symptoms individuals experience during drug or alcohol detox. To learn more, visit: https://drugdetoxcenters.com/. SOURCE DrugDetoxCenters.com Related Links https://drugdetoxcenters.com/ NORWALK, Conn., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Drybar, the innovative brand that has revolutionized the blowout industry, has entered into a multi-year relationship with LogicSource, the dynamic sourcing and procurement leader. As part of the agreement, LogicSource will provide Drybar with strategic sourcing and procurement operation services to drive innovation and cost reductions primarily in the areas of retail store. "The intelligent management of our efficiencies, quality, timing and logistics continues to be of the utmost importance in the success and growth of Drybar. We are very much looking forward to this new partnership and utilizing the expertise of the LogicSource teams as Drybar continues to expand and grow the business," said John Heffner, CEO of Drybar. "While Drybar and LogicSource are inherently different businesses, we are both driven by a common philosophy focus on one thing and be the best at it," said David Pennino, President and Chief Executive Officer, LogicSource. "We are looking forward to offering our sourcing and procurement expertise to Drybar to allow this remarkable industry leader to further expand its business so they can continue to excel and focus on what it is that they truly do best." In addition to their over 70 locations throughout the US and Canada, Drybar's growing product line is sold through their own shops, as well as Sephora, Nordstrom, Ulta and Bloomingdale's. With expertise in the retail, restaurant and consumer-facing businesses, LogicSource implements solutions designed for their well-known clients by combining on-site staffing, on-demand subject matter experts and its proprietary OneMarket technology. Professionals with deep sourcing and procurement experience combined with powerful business intelligence and workflow automation drives enhanced savings for LogicSource's clients and has led to their best-in-class retention rate. About Drybar: Named one of the top "100 Brilliant Ideas" by Entrepreneur magazine and one of New York Magazine's "Boom Brands," Drybar is based on the simple concept of focusing on one thing and being the best at it. Drybar opened its first shop in Brentwood, California in 2010 and has grown to over 70 locations nationwide. The brand offers a full line of professional products & tools available at Sephora, Nordstrom, and select Ulta and Bloomingdale's locations. Alli Webb, Founder of Drybar, was named one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" by Fast Company, and has been featured on the Cosmo Power List by Cosmopolitan magazine, as well as the Fortune 40 Under 40 List. Alli is also the author of The New York Times best-selling book, "The Drybar Guide to Good Hair for All," which was published in October of 2016. More information about Drybar is available at www.thedrybar.com. About LogicSource: LogicSource is owned and operated by an experienced group of global business veterans, partnered with Bain Capital, who came together with a common goal to radically change and reinvent the way sourcing and procurement works. The firm's investment-based approach is completely unique in the industry. LogicSource puts its own money on the line to ensure their clients' success and their execution-based, fully transparent business model shows what is possible before any money changes hands. By assembling proven, pre-built assets, including its world-class supplier ecosystem, sourcing and procurement operations center (SPOC), and leading OneMarket technology, LogicSource executes rapidly deployable, customized solutions that deliver immediate savings and sustainable value. More information about LogicSource is available at www.logicsource.com. Press contacts: Drybar: Maria Boschetti, [email protected], phone: 714.585.1485 LogicSource: Chris Maher, [email protected], phone: 203.940.6069 SOURCE LogicSource Related Links http://www.logicsource.com RENO, NV, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Earth Life Sciences Inc. (OTCQB:CLTS) ("Earth Life Sciences" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company is working diligently with completing its audited financials for 2016 and first quarter 2017. The financials should be completed within the next two weeks and the company would like to thank its shareholders for their patience. The company is also happy to announce that significant progress, has been made after developing its business plan which focuses on the CBD side of the Medical Marijuana business and focusing on balancing traditional agricultural practices with cutting edge processes, technologies and unparalleled quality assurance. The acquisition of farmland in the world-famous Okanagan valley of British Columbia Canada gives the company a quality based organic farming focus. The company has been working diligently to complete the plans to make Okanagan Valley its home base. To develop a Federally compliant nursery and multiple grow room operation for Medical Marijuana. The new Canadian laws, allow for this type of grow facility and the company has been gearing up to get the operation going this year for a first harvest in summer of 2017. As mentioned in our previous press release, some of the updates have already begun with the company's vision in mind. Now with those initial steps started and with the ongoing efforts by the company, the company can move forward with attaining one of our main goals which is to improve the quality of life for humans as well as their pets. This new division of Earth Life Sciences Inc. will focus on building the Corporate Brand and making the new company a commercial success. Forward-Looking Statements These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results could vary materially from the description contained herein due to many risk factors that affect the industry the Company operates in and other risk factors listed from time to time in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings under "risk factors" and elsewhere. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release. SOURCE Earth Life Sciences Inc. Regulatory clearance fuels global growth of award-winning micro-needling device DALLAS, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC., a leading aesthetic and medical manufacturer, is pleased to announce clearance by Health Canada for the the Eclipse MicroPen Elite, an advanced medical-grade, automated, cordless, high-speed micro-needling device. Clinics utilize the MicroPen Elite to aid in the improved appearance of wrinkles, stretch marks, acne scars, skin tone and texture. The device can be used on various areas including the face, neck, decollete, arms, hands and beyond. "We're excited to bring the Eclipse MicroPen Elite to the Canadian market," said Tom O'Brien, CEO and Founder of Eclipse. "The micro-needling pen's popularity, reliability and clinical efficacy has been highly sought after by Canadian skin-care professionals at American medical conferences. For the first time, it can now be sold though our distribution partner Salient Medical Solutions." "Salient's commitment to sourcing innovative and advanced medical technology continues with its alliance with Eclipse," says Jay Herman, President of Salient Medical Solutions. "The micro-needling pen, company's future innovations and commitment to regulatory compliance made our decision to partner with Eclipse clear." The automated micro-needling pen is a safe alternative to common skin resurfacing tools, such as lasers and dermal rollers. The MicroPen Elite, which won THE Aesthetic Industry Award for "Best Micro-Needling Device," is affordable, portable, effective, requires minimal to no down time and provides natural-looking results. "With the Health Canada clearance and growing global distribution of Eclipse MicroPen Elite, we look forward to reaching a new consumer base," said Tom Goslau, Director of International Sales. "The device will allow skin-care providers a new and more effective way to address the evolving needs of aging consumers." Thousands of skin-care professionals across the globe offer the Eclipse MicroPen Elite in their practice. The top-selling micro-needling pen has garnered national and international media acclaim for its outstanding results in creating healthier, rejuvenated-looking skin. About Eclipse Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC. provides superior solutions to the U.S. and International aesthetic and medical communities. The company offers a portfolio of quality products including: Eclipse MicroPen Elite, Eclipse PRP, platelet rich-plasma kits; and Theradome, laser hair helmet; among others. www.EclipseMed.com About Salient Salient Medical Solutions has been instrumental in introducing emerging technologies to the Canadian marketplace. Salient represents world-class medical manufacturers providing Canadians with the most current, effective and efficient technologies. www.salientmed.com Contact Kimyla Guice Director of Marketing 800-759-6876 [email protected] SOURCE Eclipse Aesthetics Related Links http://www.EclipseMed.com TSX: ELD NYSE: EGO VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Eldorado Gold Corporation, ("Eldorado" or "the Company") today reported the Company's financial and operational results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. First Quarter Financial and Operational Highlights Profit of $3.8 million ( $0.01 per share) , compared to a loss of $2.5 million or $0.00 per share in the first quarter of 2016. Adjusted net earnings of $8.0 million ( $0.01 per share) compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ( $0.00 per share) in the first quarter 2016. , compared to a loss of or per share in the first quarter of 2016. compared to an adjusted net loss of ( per share) in the first quarter 2016. Gold production of 75,172 ounces , compared to 79,892 ounces from continuing operations. , compared to 79,892 ounces from continuing operations. Gold revenues of $90.5 million on sales of 74,068 ounces of gold at an average realized gold price of $1,222 per ounce. on sales of 74,068 ounces of gold at an All-in sustaining cash costs averaged $791 per ounce; considerably lower than 2017 guidance of all-in sustaining costs of $845-875 per ounce. averaged considerably lower than 2017 guidance of all-in sustaining costs of per ounce. Cash operating costs averaged $466 per ounce; lower than 2017 guidance of $484-535 per ounce. lower than 2017 guidance of per ounce. Total liquidity of approximately $1.1 billion , including $873.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits, and $250 million in undrawn lines of credit at quarter end. , including in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits, and in undrawn lines of credit at quarter end. Olympias Phase II began commissioning in the first quarter 2017 . began in the . Announced receipt of multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced for beyond 2017 at Olympias Phase II. for gold concentrate produced for beyond 2017 at Olympias Phase II. Construction at Skouries continued on track for anticipated 2019 start-up. on track for anticipated 2019 start-up. George Burns set to take on role of President & Chief Executive Officer on April 28, 2017 . "We have had a very successful first quarter of the year, with progress made at all of our development projects," said Paul Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Commissioning is underway at Olympias Phase II in Greece and we remain on track for declaring commercial production in the third quarter of this year. At Skouries, work continued during the quarter and we are still aiming for production in 2019. Both Tocantinzinho and Certej are progressing with engineering optimizations. As I leave my current role, I am confident that the incoming President & CEO, George Burns, and the Eldorado team are well positioned to continue to grow our company in a manner that provides significant additional value for shareholders." Throughout this press release we use cash operating cost per ounce, total cash costs per ounce, all-in sustaining cost per ounce, gross profit from gold mining operations, adjusted net earnings and cash flow from operating activities before changes in non-cash working capital as additional measures of Company performance. These are non IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these non IFRS measures. All dollar amounts in US$, unless stated otherwise. Financial Results ($ millions except as noted) Continuing Operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 2016 Kisladag Ounces produced 52,644 52,376 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 446 536 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 464 552 Sustaining capex 5.1 7.0 Efemcukuru Ounces produced 22,528 27,516 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 515 478 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 531 500 Sustaining capex 3.8 4.8 Olympias Ounces produced (1) 0 2,774 Sustaining capex 0 n/a Subtotal: Continuing Operations Ounces produced 75,172 79,892 Cash operating costs ($/ounce) 466 519 Total cash cost ($/ounce) 483 536 Sustaining capex 8.9 11.8 (1) Includes production from tailings retreatment in 2016. Review of Quarterly Financial Results Profit attributable to shareholders of the Company was $3.8 million, or $0.01 per share, compared to a loss of $2.5 million, or $0.00 per share in 2016. Adjusted net earnings were $8.0 million ($0.01 per share) as compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.7 million ($0.00 per share) for the first quarter of 2016. The main difference between profit and adjusted earnings in the first quarter of 2017 was a $3.0 million adjustment related to closing cash / working capital recorded on finalization of the sale of the Company's Chinese assets (see the MD&A for a reconciliation of profit to adjusted earnings). Gold sales of 74,068 ounces from continuing operations were consistent year over year, while gross profit from continuing gold mining operations increased $4.9 million due to higher gold prices and lower cash operating costs. General and administrative expenses increased $2.1 million year over year due to reorganization costs in Vancouver and Turkey. Exploration expense increased $3.2 million including $0.9 million related to development of an exploration drift at Stratoni. Mine standby costs of $1.0 million were recorded in the first quarter 2017 related to Vila Nova and Perama Hill (2016: $9.6 million mainly related to the temporary suspension of the Skouries development from January to May 2016). The effective tax rate of 80% was higher than an expected rate of 20%-30% due to withholding tax accruals in Turkey, foreign exchange effects on the local tax basis in Greece, and unrecognized losses in Canada and Greece. The relative impact of these factors was approximately equal. First Quarter Review and 2017 Outlook TURKEY Kisladag Kisladag reported gold production of 52,644 ounces for the quarter, in-line with production in the prior year. There was a reduction in ore tonnes to the leach pad year over year as low grade run-of-mine ore is no longer being placed on the pad. Average treated head grade and tonnes mined were higher year over year as the mine accessed higher grade ore at the bottom of the current cut back. Cash operating costs of $446 per ounce improved over 2016 due to higher average treated head grade, and reduced operating costs realized in labour and major consumables through operational improvements. Sustaining capital expenditures of $5.1 million were lower year over year due to reduced project work. Efemcukuru Gold production of 22,528 ounces for the quarter was slightly lower than 2016 due to the lower average treated head grade and slightly lower tonnes milled. Cash operating costs of $515 per ounce were higher year on year due to lower grade. Capital expenditures of $3.8 million included underground development, mine equipment overhauls, and process and waste rock/tailings facilities construction projects. GREECE Stratoni Concentrate production for the first quarter was significantly higher year on year due to higher ore tonnes processed and higher zinc head grade. The mine and plant operated largely as planned in comparison to 2016 when operations were disrupted by a suspension of activities, with only two scheduled production days lost due to adverse winter weather conditions in January. Development of the hangingwall exploration drift progressed according to plan and diamond drilling commenced from the first drill station. Extension of the main footwall access ramp below +117m level to open up future production areas commenced in earnest in January. Olympias Development of Olympias Phase II made significant progress during the quarter. The majority of installation work in the process plant, including piping and cabling, was completed and commissioning work commenced in late March. Ore mining and processing began in April. Commercial production is expected by the beginning of the third quarter. Capital spending for the first quarter at Olympias was $37.1 million, with the majority deployed for continued underground development and rehabilitation in the Olympias underground, construction of the Phase II plant, and construction works in the Kokkinolakas tailings management facility. During the quarter, the Company also announced that it had received multiple tenders for significantly better concentrate sales terms for gold concentrate produced beyond 2017. This is primarily due to the treatment of higher grade material resulting in better grades in concentrate produced. Under the new sales terms, gold payability rates have increased from 58% up to a maximum of 71%, which is expected to result in an increase of approximately 15,000 ounces of payable gold production per year. Annual Phase II production is now estimated to be approximately 85,000 ounces of gold (from 72,000 ounces per year previously) plus approximately 55,000 ounces of gold equivalent production. Skouries Work was restricted in the first quarter due to adverse winter weather. Earthworks, building erection and site clearing all progressed as weather allowed during the quarter. Targeted work included tailings thickener foundations and stockpile dome embankments. Engineering continued for the integrated waste management facility and the filter plant. Equipment selection for the main pressure filters for the filter plant was completed during the quarter. Total capital expenditure for the quarter was $14.0 million. Perama Hill The project remains on care and maintenance pending receipt of the Environmental Impact Study permit. BRAZIL Tocantinzinho Installation licenses for the site, road and power line were under review by the Para State government during the first quarter. Basic engineering was nearly completed for the process plant. Detailed infrastructure engineering was ongoing and is expected to be completed during the second quarter. The installation license was received post quarter end, however the tailings and solution ponds permits remain outstanding and are expected later this year. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. ROMANIA Certej Optimization studies continued during the quarter on the metallurgical process, water and waste management and site infrastructure to support the ongoing permitting activities. These optimizations are required for the oxidative process and the optimizations of waste and tailings material generated. Permitting for offsite infrastructure continued with work progressing on main power line, water tanks and mine access roads and water supply pipelines. A total of $1.9 million was spent during the quarter. Exploration Review Exploration activities during the quarter included reconnaissance-stage programs, drillhole targeting and drilling programs at our projects in Greece, Turkey, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. A total of 13,600 metres of exploration drilling was completed. In Greece, the Company completed the drill-testing of the Fisoka porphyry prospect, and initiated drilling at the Tsikara porphyry prospect near Skouries. The underground resource drilling program at Mavres Petres commenced late in the quarter, targeting previously untested down-dip and along-strike projections of the orebody. In Romania, drilling was conducted on the Certej North and Bolcana licenses, targeting the Bolcana porphyry system and related epithermal prospects on its periphery. In Brazil, drilling programs tested both the Vulture and Parnamirim target areas within the Borborema project area in Pernambuco state. Regional geochemical sampling continued over the large Borborema project area, while at the Nazareno project, work focused on infill soil sampling, mapping, and geophysical surveys to refine targets for drilling during the second half of the year. 2017 Outlook In 2017 Eldorado expects to produce 365,000-400,000 ounces of gold, including pre-commercial ounces from Olympias Phase II. Cash costs are forecasted at $485-535 per ounce, with all-in sustaining cash costs expected to range from $845-875 per ounce. The Company's balance sheet remains one of the strongest in its peer group, with approximately $874 million in cash, cash equivalents and term deposits and $250 million in undrawn credit lines. Sustaining capital for gold mining operations in 2017 is estimated to be approximately $70 million. Planned expenditures for mining development total $345 million. Exploration expenditures in 2017 are budgeted at $35 million (65% expensed and 35% capitalized), with a balanced focus on resource delineation and brownfield drilling at existing operations, advancing early-stage projects, and project generation. Depreciation, depletion and amortization expense is expected to be approximately $335 per ounce of gold sold. General and administrative expense is expected to be approximately $45 million. Corporate In December 2016, the Company announced that Paul Wright, Eldorado's current President and Chief Executive Officer, will retire from this role after the Annual General Meeting on April 27, 2017. Mr. Wright will be succeeded by Mr. George Burns, who will also join Eldorado's Board of Directors. Mr. Wright will continue as a member of Eldorado's Board of Directors, taking on the position of Vice-Chairman. Mr. Ross Cory did not stand for re-election as a Director at the Company's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Mr. Cory served on the Board for over 13 years and the Company would like to thank him for his many years of service and dedication. Conference Call A conference call to discuss the details of the Company's 2017 First Quarter Results will be held by senior management on April 28, 2017 at 8:30 AM PT (11:30 AM ET). The call will be webcast and can be accessed at Eldorado Gold's website: www.eldoradogold.com Conference Call Details Replay (available until May 12, 2017) Date: Friday April 28, 2017 Toronto: 416 849 0833 Time: 8:30 am PT (11:30 am ET) Toll Free: 855 859 2056 Dial in: 647 427 7450 Pass code: 9264 4727 Toll free: 888 231 8191 About Eldorado Gold Eldorado is a leading low cost gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a low cost strategy, a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO). Cautionary Note about Forward-looking Statements and Information Certain of the statements made and information provided in this press release are forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Often, these forward-looking statements and forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "continue", "projected", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negatives thereof or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements or information contained in this release include, but are not limited to the Company's 2017 First Quarter Financial and Operational Results, including statements or information with respect to: our guidance and outlook, including expected production, projected cash cost, planned capital and exploration expenditures for 2017; our expectation as to our future financial and operating performance, including future cash flow, estimated cash costs, expected metallurgical recoveries, gold price outlook; and our strategy, plans and goals, including our proposed exploration, development, construction, permitting and operating plans and priorities, and related timelines. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information by their nature are based on assumptions and 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 such forward-looking statements or information. We have made certain assumptions about the forward-looking statements and information, including assumptions about the geopolitical, economic, permitting and legal climate that we operate in; the future price of gold and other commodities; exchange rates; anticipated costs and expenses; production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries, the impact of acquisitions, dispositions, suspensions or delays on our business and the ability to achieve our goals. In particular, except where otherwise stated, we have assumed a continuation of existing business operations on substantially the same basis as exists at the time of this release. Even though our management believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statement or information will prove to be accurate. Many assumptions may be difficult to predict and are beyond our control. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements or information. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others, the following: geopolitical and economic climate (global and local), risks related to mineral tenure and permits; gold and other metal price volatility; mining operational and development risk; foreign country operational risks; risks of sovereign investment; regulatory environment and restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; risks related to impact of the sale of our Chinese assets on the Company's operations; additional funding requirements; currency fluctuations; litigation risks; community and non-governmental organization actions; speculative nature of gold exploration; dilution; share price volatility; competition; loss of key employees; and defective title to mineral claims or property, as well as those factors discussed in the sections entitled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk factors in our business" in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form & Form 40-F. The reader is directed to carefully review the detailed risk discussion in our most recent Annual Information Form filed on SEDAR under our Company name, which discussion is incorporated by reference in this release, for a fuller understanding of the risks and uncertainties that affect the Company's business and operations. Forward-looking statements and information is designed to help you understand management's current views of our near and longer term prospects, and it may not be appropriate for other purposes. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Except as required by law, we do not expect to update forward-looking statements and information continually as conditions change and you are referred to the full discussion of the Company's business contained in the Company's reports filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S. Financial Information and condensed statements contained herein or attached hereto may not be suitable for readers that are unfamiliar with the Company and is not a substitute for reading the full annual financial statements and related MD&A available on our website and on SEDAR under our Company name. The reader is directed to carefully review such document for a full understanding of the financial information summarized herein. Except as otherwise noted, scientific and technical information contained in this press release was reviewed and approved by Paul Skayman, FAusIMM, Chief Operating Officer for Eldorado Gold Corporation, and a "qualified person" as defined by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). Gold Production Highlights (in US$) First Quarter 2017 First Quarter 2016 Full Year 2016 2017 Outlook5 Gold Production Ounces Sold 74,068 133,467 483,461 n/a Ounces Produced1 75,172 140,989 486,025 365,000 to 400,000 Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)2,4 466 603 579 485 to 535 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 483 658 621 n/a Realized Price ($/oz - sold) 1,222 1,198 1,253 n/a Kisladag Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 52,783 52,679 211,284 n/a Ounces Produced 52,644 52,376 211,161 230,000 to 245,000 Tonnes to Pad 3,227,406 4,046,896 16,565,254 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 1.13 0.73 0.80 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 446 536 474 500 to 550 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 464 552 488 n/a Efemcukuru Mine, Turkey Ounces Sold 21,285 22,304 99,744 n/a Ounces Produced 22,528 27,516 98,364 95,000 to 105,000 Tonnes Milled 115,794 116,487 476,528 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) 6.77 7.96 7.4 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 515 478 514 525 to 575 Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 531 500 530 n/a Tanjianshan Mine, China Ounces Sold - 14,053 49,266 n/a Ounces Produced - 14,053 49,266 n/a Tonnes Milled - 268,615 869,964 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 1.84 1.90 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - 852 819 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - 1,083 970 n/a Jinfeng Mine, China Ounces Sold - 26,096 66,902 n/a Ounces Produced - 25,935 68,195 n/a Tonnes Milled - 305,484 766,697 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.26 3.32 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 726 705 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 807 791 n/a White Mountain Mine, China Ounces Sold - 18,335 56,265 n/a Ounces Produced - 18,335 56,265 n/a Tonnes Milled - 206,090 717,145 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 3.25 2.78 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz) 4 - 582 731 n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz) 3,4 - 620 773 n/a Olympias, Greece Ounces Sold - - - n/a Ounces Produced1 - 2,774 2,774 40,000 to 50,000 Tonnes Milled - 87,350 87,350 n/a Grade (grams / tonne) - 2.47 2.47 n/a Cash Operating Cost ($/oz)4 - - - n/a Total Cash Cost ($/oz)3,4 - - - n/a 1 Ounces produced include production from tailings retreatment at Olympias. 2 Cost figures calculated in accordance with the Gold Institute Standard. 3 Cash operating costs, plus royalties and the cost of off-site administration. 4 Cash operating costs and total cash costs are non-IFRS measures. Please see our MD&A for an explanation and discussion of these. 5 Outlook assumes the following metal prices: Gold $1,150 per ounce; Silver $20 per ounce. Eldorado Gold Corporation Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) Note March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 ASSETS $ $ Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 642,618 883,171 Term deposits 231,258 5,292 Restricted cash 244 240 Marketable securities 45,191 28,327 Accounts receivable and other 52,121 54,315 Inventories 126,913 120,830 1,098,345 1,092,175 Other assets 11,938 48,297 Defined benefit pension plan 12,739 11,620 Property, plant and equipment 3,698,141 3,645,827 4,821,163 4,797,919 LIABILITIES & EQUITY Current liabilities Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 104,397 90,705 104,397 90,705 Debt 5 591,845 591,589 Defined benefit pension plan 10,928 10,882 Asset retirement obligations 89,710 89,778 Deferred income tax liabilities 442,933 443,501 1,239,813 1,226,455 Equity Share capital 2,819,821 2,819,101 Treasury stock (8,000) (7,794) Contributed surplus 2,609,055 2,606,567 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) 7,653 (7,172) Deficit (1,934,800) (1,928,024) Total equity attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,493,729 3,482,678 Attributable to non-controlling interests 87,621 88,786 3,581,350 3,571,464 4,821,163 4,797,919 Approved on behalf of the Board of Directors (Signed) John Webster Director (Signed) Paul N. Wright Director Eldorado Gold Corporation Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Income Statements (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars except per share amounts) For the quarter ended March 31 Note 2017 2016 $ $ (restated)* Revenue Metal sales 111,880 94,693 Cost of sales Production costs 50,688 45,207 Inventory write-down - 1,346 Depreciation and amortization 18,064 18,968 68,752 65,521 Gross profit 43,128 29,172 Exploration expenses 5,247 1,961 Mine standby costs 1,031 9,558 Other operating items 2,133 - General and administrative expenses 11,614 9,467 Defined benefit pension plan expense 831 283 Share based payments 7 5,128 3,701 Other write-down of assets 1,054 - Foreign exchange loss (gain) 88 (3,440) Operating profit 16,002 7,642 Loss on disposal of assets 307 289 Loss (gain) on marketable securities and other investments (34) 4,317 Other expense (income) (2,349) 1,695 Asset retirement obligation accretion 523 449 Interest and financing costs 1,110 5,695 Profit (loss) from continuing operations before income tax 16,445 (4,803) Income tax expense 10,776 4,795 Profit (loss) from continuing operations 5,669 (9,598) Profit (loss) from discontinued operations 4 (3,000) 5,705 Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Attributable to: Shareholders of the Company 3,834 (2,478) Non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Profit (loss) attributable to shareholders of the Company Continuing operations 6,834 (7,938) Discontinued operations (3,000) 5,460 3,834 (2,478) Weighted average number of shares outstanding (thousands) Basic 716,600 716,583 Diluted 717,283 716,583 Profit (loss) per share attributable to shareholders of the Company: Basic profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.00) Diluted profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.00) Profit (loss) per share attributable to shareholders of the Company - continuing operations: Basic profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.01) Diluted profit (loss) per share 0.01 (0.01) Eldorado Gold Corporation Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31 2017 2016 $ $ Profit (loss) for the period 2,669 (3,893) Other comprehensive income (loss): Change in fair value of available-for-sale financial assets, net of income 14,720 9,689 tax of $2,144 and $nil Transfer of realized loss on disposal of availabe-for-sale financial assets - 4,336 Actuarial gains (losses) on defined benefit pension plans 105 (122) Total other comprehensive income for the period 14,825 13,903 Total comprehensive income for the period 17,494 10,010 Attributable to: Shareholders of the Company 18,659 11,425 Non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) 17,494 10,010 Eldorado Gold Corporation Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31 Note 2017 2016 $ $ (restated)* Cash flows generated from (used in): Operating activities Profit (loss) for the period from continuing operations 5,669 (9,598) Items not affecting cash: Asset retirement obligation accretion 523 449 Depreciation and amortization 18,064 18,968 Unrealized foreign exchange loss (74) (647) Deferred income tax expense (recovery) (2,713) (9,234) Loss on disposal of assets 307 289 Other write-down of assets 1,054 - Loss (gain) on marketable securities and other investments (34) 4,317 Share based payments 5,128 3,701 Defined benefit pension plan expense 831 283 28,755 8,528 Property reclamation payments (591) (80) Changes in non-cash working capital 9 19,610 (15,315) Net cash provided (used) by operating activities of continuing operations 47,774 (6,867) Net cash provided by operating activities of discontinued operations - 14,368 Investing activities Purchase of property, plant and equipment (73,837) (59,320) Proceeds from the sale of property, plant and equipment 1 384 Proceeds on production of tailings retreatment - 3,878 Purchase of marketable securities - (1,834) Proceeds from the sale of marketable securities - 3,287 Value added taxes related to mineral property expenditures, net 23,584 (5,059) Investment in term deposits (225,966) (913) Decrease in restricted cash (4) (14) Net cash used by investing activities of continuing operations (276,222) (59,591) Net cash used by investing activities of discontinued operations - (5,141) Financing activities Issuance of common shares for cash 554 - Dividend paid to shareholders (10,610) - Purchase of treasury stock (2,049) - Net cash used by financing activities of continuing operations (12,105) - Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (240,553) (57,231) Cash and cash equivalents - beginning of period 883,171 288,189 Cash and cash equivalents - end of period 642,618 230,958 Eldorado Gold Corporation Consolidated Statements of Changes in Equity (Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars) For the quarter ended March 31, 2017 2016 $ $ Share capital Balance beginning of period 2,819,101 5,319,101 Shares issued upon exercise of share options, for cash 554 - Transfer of contributed surplus on exercise of options 166 - Balance end of period 2,819,821 5,319,101 Treasury stock Balance beginning of period (7,794) (10,211) Purchase of treasury stock (2,049) - Shares redeemed upon exercise of restricted share units 1,843 2,196 Balance end of period (8,000) (8,015) Contributed surplus Balance beginning of period 2,606,567 47,236 Share based payments 4,497 3,134 Shares redeemed upon exercise of restricted share units (1,843) (2,196) Recognition of other non-current liability and related costs - (1,416) Transfer to share capital on exercise of options (166) - Balance end of period 2,609,055 46,758 Accumulated other comprehensive loss Balance beginning of period (7,172) (20,572) Other comprehensive income for the period 14,825 13,903 Balance end of period 7,653 (6,669) Deficit Balance beginning of period (1,928,024) (1,583,873) Dividends paid (10,610) - Profit (loss) attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,834 (2,478) Balance end of period (1,934,800) (1,586,351) Total equity attributable to shareholders of the Company 3,493,729 3,764,824 Non-controlling interests Balance beginning of period 88,786 169,755 Profit (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests (1,165) (1,415) Balance end of period 87,621 168,340 Total equity 3,581,350 3,933,164 SOURCE Eldorado Gold Corporation SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Embraer and American Airlines Group (AAG) have signed a firm order for four E175 jets. The contract, in addition to the original order placed by the airline in 2013, for 60 E175s, has a value of USD 182 million, based on current list prices, and will be included in Embraer's 2017 second-quarter backlog. The deliveries will start in the last quarter of this year. "The E175 has served AAG very well since its entry into service and this new order continues to show their confidence in the platform. We also commend the Envoy team on their exceptional E175 operating performance," said Charlie Hillis, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, North America, Embraer Commercial Aviation. "The market for 70 to 76 seaters is still strong, especially considering all the older 70 seaters needing replacement. Embraer remains the clear leader in that space." American Airlines selected Envoy, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines Group, to operate the four aircraft, which will be configured with 12 First Class, 20 Main Cabin Extra and 44 Main Cabin seats, for a total of 76 seats. With this contract, Embraer has sold a total of 336 E175s to airlines in North America since January 2013, earning more than 80% of all orders in this 76-seat jet segment. Since entering revenue service in 2004, the E-Jets family has received more than 1,700 orders and over 1,300 aircraft have been delivered. The E-Jets are flying in the fleets of 70 customers in 50 countries. The versatile 70 to 130-seat family is flying with low-cost airlines as well as with regional and mainline carriers. Follow us on Twitter: @Embraer CONTACTS: Headquarters (Brazil) Saulo Passos [email protected] Cell: +55 11 94254 4017 Tel.: +55 11 3040 1799 North America Alyssa Ten Eyck [email protected] Cell: +1 954 383 0460 Tel.: +1 954 359 3847 Europe, Middle East and Africa Guy Douglas [email protected] Cell: +31 (0)657120121 Tell: +31 (0)202158109 China Mirage Zhong [email protected] Cell: +86 185 1378 5180 Tel.: +86 10 6598 9988 Asia Pacific Nilma Missir-Boissac [email protected] Cell: +65 9012 8428 Tel.: +65 6305 9955 SOURCE Embraer S.A. Related Links http://www.embraer.com DALLAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- eQuine Holdings now sees Dynegy (DYN) as an attractive take out target that would enhance several energy providers' assets, but we believe the more likely scenario is a PE transaction. Robert Flexon, Dynegy's CEO stated on December 28th, 2016 that the company was "absolutely not" for sale, inviting one of the biggest bear raids by illegal abusive naked short selling so far in 2017. Dynegy also had a rough 2016 posting a 1.24B loss vs. profits of $50M in the prior year's period while deploying a turnaround plan for growth through acquisition. Dynegy now finds itself in a classic scenario whereby the underlying assets including LT/ST debt significantly (3X) & (5X) outweigh the current market cap of approximately 800M. Our proprietary data suggest that a significant portion of the Q1 selling has been orchestrated by illegal abusive naked short selling and illegal basket trades in the options markets of deep in the money calls used to side step Reg SHO buy-in requirements. The daily short volume of Phantom Shares far exceeds the total shares rotation on a monthly basis, and this has created a great opportunity for a suitor to step in and take control of the company for its assets while the company's stock sits at multi-year lows. eQuine Holdings, CEO Brent Atwood has reached out to Dynegy's legal team as well as Mr. Flexon's office notifying them of their intent to become shareholder activists, and management continues to ignore repeated requests to open dialog. About the Company: eQuine Holdings, LLC is a multi-family office (MFO) located at Southlake, Texas and is responsible for managing the day to day operations of various interests in private and public companies including: Capital Services, Private Equity, Due Diligence Consulting, Shareholder Activism & Leveraged Buy Out (LBO) Consulting. eQuine has deployed over $1.25 Billion in public and private companies. The company deploys a very complicated strategy that algorithmically detects anomalies created by illegal abusive naked short selling and illegal use of deep in the money calls used to reset Reg SHO buy-in requirements, including a multitude of other data points and trades directly against the illegal activities of abusive naked short sellers. eQuine reported record returns in 2016 of over 500%. Contacts: Media Relations [email protected] www.equineholdings.com 919-306-8153 SOURCE eQuine Holdings, LLC Related Links http://www.equineholdings.com "Through our research, we found there are better strategies for creating retirement income than the ones the industry is currently using," said Meyer. "These strategies provide greater tax efficiency, creating six or more years of income. As an industry, we can do better for clients." Conventional wisdom suggests that an investor should withdraw retirement funds from one account at a time moving to the next one after the previous is exhausted, starting with tax-deferred accounts and moving to tax-exempt accounts. In their research published in The Financial Analysts Journal, Meyer and Reichenstein demonstrate that this conventional wisdom is not the most tax-efficient. Their research demonstrates the most tax-efficient strategies take into account progressive tax rates, consider drawing from multiple accounts concurrently and use Roth conversions all while taking advantage of years when the investor has lower marginal tax rates. The research shows that using these unconventional strategies can add more than six years of portfolio longevity compared with a conventional strategy. Access the entire article here: http://www.fa-mag.com/news/how-to-beat-the-conventional-wisdom--part-1-32019.html. About Retiree Income Retiree Income was founded on the belief that there is a better way to serve retirees or people getting ready to retireone that is smarter and more personalized. The company produces retirement income planning software for both financial professionals and consumers. About William Meyer Throughout his career, William Meyer has looked for new ways to deliver higher quality advice to people in retirement. He has a unique combination of experiences in leading the design and launch of innovative client centric services and products, as well as leveraging technology in service offerings. Early in Bill's career, he learned financial planning techniques for the affluent, and has strived to apply those insights to all households regardless of wealth. He has a track record of successfully developing products and services in executive leadership roles at H&R Block, Advisor Software and Charles Schwab. About William Reichenstein, PhD, CFA Dr. William Reichenstein, CFA, holds the Pat and Thomas R. Powers Chair in Investment Management at Baylor University. His recent work concentrates on the interaction between investments and taxes. He is the author of In the Presence of Taxes: Applications of After-Tax Asset Valuations (FPA Press, 2008), and coauthored with William Jennings Integrating Investments & the Tax Code (John Wiley & Sons (2003). SOURCE Retiree Income SEATTLE, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- EY today announced that Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, is a finalist for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2017 Award in the Pacific Northwest. The awards program, which is celebrating its 31st year, recognizes entrepreneurs who are excelling in areas such as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Manny was selected as a finalist by a panel of independent judges. Award winners will be announced at a special gala event on June 9, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. As CEO of Outreach since 2013, Manny led the company through exponential growthgoing from six employees in its first year to nearly 170 today while also tripling revenue over the past three years. Ushering in another record year, by the end of 2017 Outreach is projecting to double its workforce in order to keep up with the rising demand for its services, which provide a system of action for sales teams through empowering reps to meet today's ever-rising quotas and revenue targets. Customers including CenturyLink, Pandora, and Glassdoor look to Outreach to gain 1-2 more hours of productive, active selling per day/per sales rep, resulting in up to 30 percent more secured meetings and up to 25 percent more revenue. "From moving to the US for college, to cutting my teeth in the tech industry at two influential giantsMicrosoft and Amazon, to where I am today as CEO and co-founder of Outreach, I can't begin to express what an honor it is to be selected as a finalist for EY's Entrepreneur Of The Year Award," said Medina. "Today, I'm privileged to lead Outreach, a company comprised of top tech talent whose tenacity and ingenuity has propelled the growth and development of the company to become one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses in the industry. This award is not just a personal honor, but a major achievement for every member of the Outreach team." Now in its 31st year, the program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 145 cities and more than 60 countries throughout the world. Regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National competition. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Overall Award winner, will be announced at the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 18, 2017. The awards are the culminating event of the Strategic Growth ForumTM, the nation's most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies. Sponsors Founded and produced by EY, the Entrepreneur of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored in the US by SAP America, Merrill Corporation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. In the Pacific Northwest, sponsors also include GreenRubino, Woodruff-Sawyer & Co., Inc., Big Picture, Inc. and Lockton Companies, LLC. About Outreach Outreach, the system of action for sales teams, delivers performance and insights that result in higher velocity and more efficient selling. By automating and prioritizing all customer touch points throughout the sales process, Outreach triples the productivity of sales teams, and empowers them to drive more pipeline, book more meetings and exceed revenue goals. Outreach places actionable data intelligence at the fingertips of sales reps through a single, integrated view of all prospect-related information. Thousands of customers rely on Outreach to transform the sales process, drive collaboration between sales and marketing, and deliver higher revenue per sales rep. Outreach is a privately held company based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more, please visit https://outreach.io/. About Entrepreneur Of The Year Entrepreneur Of The Year, founded by EY, is the world's most prestigious business awards program for entrepreneurs, chosen from an independent panel of judges including entrepreneurs and prominent leaders from business, finance, and the local community. The program makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global awards program of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in over 145 cities and more than 60 countries. ey.com/eoy Outreach Media Contact Laura Davis Barokas Public Relations for Outreach [email protected] (206) 264-8220 SOURCE Outreach Related Links http://outreach.io BRIDGEWATER, N.J., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thiotepa is now available through Amneal Biosciences in both 100 mg/vial and 15 mg/vial as branded TEPADINA (thiotepa) for injection. The product is supplied as a powder for solution in single-dose vials for intravenous, intracavitary, or intravesical use. As the exclusive U.S. distributor for TEPADINA, Amneal Biosciences began shipping the branded thiotepa today from its distribution center in Kentucky. The product is available for purchase through major wholesalers and distributors. TEPADINA is approved to reduce the risk of graft rejection when used in conjunction with high-dose busulfan and cyclophosphamide as a preparative regimen for allogeneic hematopoietic progenitor (stem) cell transplantation (HSCT) for pediatric patients with class 3 beta-thalassemia. In addition, the product is approved for the same oncologic indications as generic thiotepa. TEPADINA may cause severe marrow suppression, and high doses may cause marrow ablation with resulting infection or bleeding. Hematopoietic progenitor (stem) cell transplantation (HSCT) is required to prevent potentially fatal complications of the prolonged myelosuppression after high doses of TEPADINA. TEPADINA should be considered potentially carcinogenic in humans. It is contraindicated in patients with severe hypersensitivity to thiotepa and in concomitant use with live or attenuated vaccines. The most common adverse reactions are neutropenia, anemia, thrombocytopenia, elevated alanine aminotransferase, elevated aspartate aminotransferase, elevated bilirubin, mucositis, cytomegalovirus infection, hemorrhage, diarrhea, hematuria and rash. Visit http://www.amneal.com/thiotepa-pi for full prescribing information including boxed warning and important safety information for TEPADINA. "The introduction of 100 mg thiotepa provides pharmacists with a convenient choice of sizes to accommodate larger doses," explains Amneal Biosciences President, Charles Lucarelli. "We are thrilled to bring to the U.S. a product that is not only valuable to the pediatric transplant process, but in the 100 mg vial that's been unavailable for years. Now we have a fully FDA-approved thiotepa molecule with options for the reconstituting pharmacist." Amneal Biosciences brings TEPADINA to the U.S. market on behalf of NDA-holder ADIENNE SA. "This exclusive distribution partnership with ADIENNE further demonstrates Amneal's ability to successfully commercialize complex products in the U.S.," says Amneal VP of Global Strategy and Corporate Development, Apurva Saraf. "We continue to pursue such strategic partnerships to complement our expansive and diverse internal pipeline." About Amneal Amneal Biosciences LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, is dedicated to the commercialization of high-barrier-to-entry generic and specialty pharmaceuticals such as injectables, oncologics, anti-infectives and support care for healthcare providers and patients of all ages. The company's expertise and focus on the unique needs and logistics of this market ensure the same level of quality and service for healthcare institutions and professionals that Amneal delivers to its retail customers. Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, a privately-held company headquartered in Bridgewater, New Jersey, is one of the largest and fastest growing generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in the United States. Founded in 2002, Amneal now has more than 4,500 employees in its operations in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe, working together to bring high-quality, affordable medicines to patients worldwide. All trademarks listed in this release are property of their respective owners. CONTACTS: Sales: John Niemi (sales) Vice President, Sales Amneal Biosciences [email protected] Media: Cheryl Lechok (media) President, Cheryl Lechok Communications Dir: 203.961.9280 [email protected] Business Development: Apurva Saraf Vice President, Global Strategy & Corporate Development Amneal Pharmaceuticals 908.947.3740 [email protected] SOURCE Amneal Biosciences Related Links http://www.amneal.com BOSTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fish & Richardson has announced the addition of 18 first-year associates across the firm's 12 offices over the past six months. Associates joining the Intellectual Property (IP) Litigation Group include: Raisa Ahmad (Houston), Brian Apel (Twin Cities), Zoya Kovalenko Brooks (Atlanta), Thomas Chisena (Boston), Claire Collins (Boston), Ronald Golden, III (Delaware), Dr. Casey Kraning-Rush (Delaware), Alana Mannige (Silicon Valley), Will Orlady (Twin Cities), Jessica Perry (Boston), Taufiq Ramji (Silicon Valley), Charles Reese (Atlanta), Ethan Rubin (Boston), Tucker Terhufen (Southern California), Laura Whitworth (Washington, D.C.), and Jack R. Wilson, IV (Washington, D.C.). Associates joining the Patent Group are Holly Chamberlain (Boston) and Pooya Shoghi (Silicon Valley). Raisa Ahmad was previously a summer associate with the firm, in which she conducted research and prepared memos for patent litigation cases involving software and security patents, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical devices. In addition, she has experience preparing claim construction charts, invalidity contentions, and Lanham Act standing memos. Prior to law school, she was a student engineer and conducted electric-cell substrate impedance sensing analysis for the Center for the Convergence of Physical and Cancer Biology. Ahmad received her J.D. from the University of Arizona College of Law in 2016 where she was senior articles editor for the Arizona Law Review and received the Dean's Achievement Award Scholarship. She received her B.S.E., magna cum laude, in biomedical engineering from Arizona State University in 2011. She is admitted to practice in Texas. Brian Apel practices patent litigation, including post-grant proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has worked for clients in the mechanical, electrical, and chemical industries and has experience in pre-suit diligence including opinion work, discovery, damages, summary judgment, and appeals. Apel also has experience in patent prosecution, employment discrimination, and First Amendment law. Before law school, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Apel received his J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the University of Michigan Law School in 2016 and his B.A., with honors, in chemistry from Northwestern University in 2008. He is admitted to practice in Minnesota, the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Zoya Kovalenko Brooks focuses her practice on patent litigation, including working on teams for one of the largest high-tech cases in the country pertaining to data transmission and memory allocation technologies. She was previously a summer associate and law clerk with the firm. While in law school, she served as a legal extern at The Coca-Cola Company in the IP group. Prior to attending law school, she was an investigator intern at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she investigated over 20 potential discrimination cases. Brooks received her J.D., high honors, Order of the Coif, from Emory University School of Law in 2016 where she was articles editor for Emory Law Journal and her B.S., high honors, in applied mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013. She is admitted to practice in Georgia. Holly Chamberlain focuses on patent prosecution in a variety of areas including the biomedical, mechanical, and electromechanical arts. She was previously a summer associate with the firm. She received her J.D. from Boston College Law School in 2016 where she was an editor of Intellectual Property and Technology Forum and her B.S. in biological engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013. She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Thomas Chisena previously was a summer associate with the firm where he worked on patent, trade secret, and trademark litigation. Prior to attending law school, he instructed in biology, environmental science, and anatomy & physiology. Chisena received his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2016 where he was executive editor of Penn Intellectual Property Group Online and University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, Vol. 37. He also received his Wharton Certificate in Business Management in December 2015. He received his B.S. in biology from Pennsylvania State University in 2009. He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. Claire Collins was a legal intern for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office during law school. She has experience researching and drafting motions and legal memorandums. Collins received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2016 where she was a Dillard Fellow, her M.A. from Texas A&M University in 2012, and her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 2006. She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts. Ronald Golden, III previously served as a courtroom deputy to U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark and U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge. He received his J.D. from Widener University School of Law in 2012 where he was on the staff of Widener Law Review and was awarded "Best Overall Competitor" in the American Association for Justice Mock Trial. He received his B.A. from Stockton University in political science and criminal justice in 2005. He is admitted to practice in Delaware and New Jersey. Dr. Casey Kraning-Rush was previously a summer associate with the firm, where she focused primarily on patent litigation. She received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2016 where she was managing editor of Penn Intellectual Property Group Online and awarded "Best Advocate" and "Best Appellee Brief" at the Western Regional of the AIPLA Giles Rich Moot Court. She earned her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Cornell University in 2013 and has extensive experience researching cellular and molecular medicine. She received her M.S. in biomedical engineering from Cornell University in 2012 and her B.S., summa cum laude, in chemistry from Butler University in 2008. She is admitted to practice in Delaware. Alana Mannige was previously a summer associate with the firm and has worked on patent prosecution, patent litigation, trademark, and trade secret matters. During law school, she served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She also worked closely with biotech startup companies as part of her work at the UC Hastings Startup Legal Garage. Prior to attending law school, Mannige worked as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 2016 where she was senior articles editor of Hastings Science & Technology Law Journal. She received her M.S. in chemistry from the University of Michigan in 2010 and her B.A., cum laude, in chemistry from Clark University in 2007. She is admitted to practice in California and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Will Orlady was previously a summer associate with the firm, in which he collaborated to research and brief a matter on appeal to the Federal Circuit. He also analyzed novel issues related to inter partes review proceedings, drafted memoranda on substantive patent law issues, and crafted infringement contentions. During law school, Orlady was a research assistant to Professor Kristin Hickman, researching and writing on administrative law. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2016 where he was lead articles editor of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology and his B.A. in neuroscience from the University of Southern California in 2012. He is admitted to practice in Minnesota and the U.S. District Court of Minnesota. Jessica Perry previously was a summer associate and law clerk with the firm, where she worked on patent and trademark litigation. During law school, she was an IP & licensing analyst, in which she assisted with drafting and tracking material transfer agreement and inter-institutional agreements. She also worked with the Boston University Civil Litigation Clinic representing pro bono clients with unemployment, social security, housing, and family law matters. Prior to law school, she was a senior mechanical design engineer for an aerospace company. She received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2016 where she was articles editor of the Journal of Science and Technology Law, her M.Eng. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2009, and her B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2007. She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. Taufiq Ramji was previously a summer associate with the firm, in which he researched legal issues that related to ongoing litigation and drafted responses to discovery requests and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office actions. Prior to attending law school, Ramji worked as a software developer. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2016. He is admitted to practice in California. Charles Reese has worked on matters before various federal district courts, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. His litigation experience includes drafting dispositive, evidentiary, and procedural motions; arguing in federal district court; and participating in other stages of litigation including discovery, appeal, and settlement negotiation. Previously, he was a summer associate with the firm. He received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2016 where he was articles editor of Harvard Law Review, his A.M. in organic and organometallic chemistry from Harvard University in 2012, and his B.S., summa cum laude, in chemistry from Furman University in 2010. He is admitted to practice in Georgia and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Ethan Rubin was previously a summer associate and law clerk with the firm. During law school, he worked at a corporation's intellectual property department in which he prepared and prosecuted patents relating to data storage systems. He also worked as a student attorney, advocating for local pro bono clients on various housing and family law matters. Rubin received his J.D., cum laude, from Boston College Law School in 2016 where he was articles editor of Boston College Law Review, his M.S. in computer science from Boston University in 2013, and his B.A., magna cum laude, in criminal justice from George Washington University in 2011. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Pooya Shoghi focuses on patent prosecution, including portfolio management, application drafting, client counseling, and standard essential patent development. Prior to joining the firm, he was a patent practitioner at a multinational technology company, where he was responsible for the filing and prosecution of U.S. patent applications. During law school, he was a legal intern at a major computer networking technology company, where he focused on issues of intellectual property licensing in the software arena. He received his J.D., with honors, from Emory University School of Law in 2014 where he was executive managing editor of Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review. He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in computer science (2015) and his B.A., summa cum laude, in political science (2011) from Georgia State University. He is admitted to practice in New York and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Tucker Terhufen focuses his practice on patent litigation in federal district courts as well as before the International Trade Commission for clients in the medical devices, life sciences, chemical, and electronics industries. Prior to joining Fish, he served as judicial extern to the Honorable David G. Campbell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona and to the Honorable Mary H. Murguia of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from Arizona State University, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in 2016 where he was note and comment editor of Arizona State Law Journal and received a Certificate in Law, Science, and Technology with a specialization in Intellectual Property. He received his B.S.E., summa cum laude, in chemical engineering from Arizona State University. He is admitted to practice in California. Laura Whitworth was previously a summer associate with the firm. During law school, she served as a judicial intern for the Honorable Judge Jimmie V. Reyna of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She received her J.D., cum laude, from American University Washington College of Law in 2016 where she was senior federal circuit editor of American University Law Review and senior patent editor of Intellectual Property Brief. She received her B.S. in chemistry from the College of William & Mary in 2013. She is admitted to practice in Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Jack Wilson was previously a summer associate with the firm. During law school, he served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Mark Davis of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to attending law school, he served in the United States Army. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, from William & Mary Law School in 2016 where he was on the editorial staff of William & Mary Law Review and his B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Virginia in 2009. He is admitted to practice in Virginia and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Fish & Richardson is a global patent prosecution, intellectual property litigation, and commercial litigation law firm with more than 400 attorneys and technology specialists in the U.S. and Europe. Our success is rooted in our creative and inclusive culture, which values the diversity of people, experiences, and perspectives. Fish is the #1 U.S. patent litigation firm, handling nearly three times as many cases than its nearest competitor; a powerhouse patent prosecution firm; a top-tier trademark and copyright firm; and the #1 firm at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, with more cases than any other firm. Since 1878, Fish attorneys have been winning cases worth billions in controversy often by making new law for the world's most innovative and influential technology leaders. For more information, visit https://www.fr.com or follow us at @FishRichardson. Contact: Amy Blumenthal or Kelly Largey Blumenthal & Associates Fish & Richardson 617-879-1511 800-818-5070 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Fish & Richardson Related Links https://www.fr.com RAMAT-GAN, Israel, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendly Technologies, a leading provider of carrier-class device management software for IoT/M2M, Smart Home, and Triple Play broadband services, opened an office in Shenzhen, China to support its local customers and further penetrate the IoT and Smart Home markets. Friendly has already signed an agreement with an international Chinese company that will allow Friendly to provide its products to the company's customers. Friendly's CEO, Ilan Migdal, stated that, "IoT and the Smart Home are growing rapidly, and we believe that China represents a large, potential market for our products. We have decided to increase Friendly's efforts in the Chinese market and realize that a local office is essential to support our growth in this region and facilitate the sale of Friendly's products to Chinese companies. In addition, we believe that our growing presence in China will lead to cooperation with Chinese IoT devices manufacturers, which will enable us to provide better solutions to the international IoT market." As part of its increased efforts in the Asia and Asia Pacific regions, Friendly will participate in the CommunicAsia exhibition in Singapore taking place at Marina Bay from May 23 to May 25. About Friendly Technologies Friendly Technologies is a leading provider of carrier-class device management software for IoT/M2M, Smart Home, and Triple Play services. With its best-of-breed approach, Friendly enables service providers to avoid device dependency and manage multiple types of devices on a single platform. Friendly provides support for standard protocols including TR-069, OMA-DM, LWM2M, MQTT and SNMP, in addition to non-standard protocols. Friendly's solutions allow service providers and their customers to control, monitor, and manage all device types including routers, STBs, RGs, mobile hotspots, Smart Home hubs, sensors and appliances, smartphones, dongles, IP phones, M2M devices, smart power and water metering devices, health care devices, and more. Friendly's platform enables customers to automatically connect and provision new devices, monitor QoE, configure and update firmware remotely, and streamline their support services, while its server and cloud-based solutions offer data insights to service providers. For more information, please contact: Ms. Danielle Migdal at [email protected]endly-tech.com or +972-3-753-9000, or visit: http://www.friendly-tech.com. SOURCE Friendly Technologies SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Genesys (www.genesys.com), the global leader in omnichannel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions, will hold signature customer experience events in the U.S. and Europe on May 22-25 in Indianapolis and June 7-9 in Brussels. CX17 is the annual Genesys conference that gathers together the strongest ecosystem of solutions, customers, partners and technology pushing the boundaries and future of customer experience. Genesys is hosting a CX17 conference in each hemisphere this year to accommodate the global audience for its Customer Experience Platform. These events will focus on exploring the importance of providing the "human touch" in an increasingly digital world. With nearly 70 sessions in Indianapolis and nearly 30 in Brussels, attendees will also explore emerging innovation in cloud, chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), customer journey management, hyper-personalization, predictive analytics, virtual reality and more. Headline speakers at CX17 Indy include Genesys executives and customers presenting best practices in customer engagement across multiple industries, including insights from top executives from Cielo, Facebook, PayPal, Philips, and the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Breakout session panelists include speakers from Accor Hotels, Bosch Services Solutions, EMS, nib health funds limited, Rochester Regional Health System, Shaw Industries Group, TXU Energy, and UPMC. Attendees at the closing night party will rock out to the music of the Gin Blossoms. The keynote speaker at CX17 Brussels to discuss "Technology vs. Humanity" is the renowned futurist and author Gerd Leonhard. Genesys customers such as Bank of Ireland, the British Columbia Liberal Party, and Conduent will discuss the importance of the human touch in engaging constituents in government as well as business. Genesys partner Dimension Data will present a breakout session on advanced integration of IoT and data analytics into smart customer journeys. Other speakers include business experts from Bain & Company as well as Frost & Sullivan. And since it's Belgium, a party in a brewery is de rigueur! "As our first customer conference since Genesys closed the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence, CX17 brings together the best of our Genesys G-Force with the Interactions events," said Tom Eggemeier, president of Genesys. "We're excited to introduce our customers, partners, and the industry to the expanded Genesys product portfolio that empowers organizations of all sizes and types, anywhere in the world, to connect with customers and employees across any channel, every day." There will be a special ceremony at CX17 Indy to announce the winning finalists in the 12th annual Genesys Customer Innovation Awards recognizing industry leaders in achieving exceptional customer experience and remarkable customer service innovation and transformation. Winners also will be honored on stage at CX17 Brussels. Registration for both CX17 events is now open. Follow the excitement at CX17 on social media using the hashtags #CX17INDY and #CX17BRUSSELS. About Genesys Genesys powers more than 25 billion of the world's best customer experiences each year. We put the customer at the center of everything we do and passionately believe that great customer engagement drives great business outcomes. More than 10,000 companies in over 100 countries trust the industry's #1 customer experience platform to orchestrate seamless omnichannel customer journeys and build lasting relationships. With a strong track record of innovation and a never-ending desire to be first, Genesys is the only company recognized by top industry analysts as a leader in both cloud and on-premise customer engagement solutions. Visit www.genesys.com. Connect with Genesys via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and the Genesys blog. Media Contacts Rachel Faulkner Sr. Manager, Public Relations Genesys [email protected] +1 317.715.8109 Lisa Hawes Sterling Communications for Genesys [email protected] +1 408.395.5500 SOURCE Genesys Related Links http://www.genesys.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GI Partners ("GI") announced today that it has expanded Zayo Group, a leading provider of communications infrastructure services, as a data center tenant in the One Wilshire building, located at 624 S. Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. Zayo will occupy over 24,000 square feet in order to supply high-quality infrastructure to its clients in one of the West Coast's premier data center ecosystems. Separately, GI Partners has also announced that it has commenced work to add an additional nine megawatts of utility power to One Wilshire, along with associated cooling and emergency power generator infrastructure. At completion of the installation, estimated for summer 2018, One Wilshire will have a total utility capacity of 30 megawatts, with all nine megawatts of newly added incremental power available immediately for new leasing. "We are excited to work with Zayo Group to accommodate its expansion at One Wilshire and to begin the building's next phase of infrastructure buildout," said Tony Lin, Director at GI Partners. "One Wilshire serves as one of the most comprehensive United States network gateways to Asia and West Coast interconnection environments and Zayo Group's increased presence underscores as well as strengthens these key attributes. One Wilshire offers enterprises, service providers, and telecommunication companies flexible and reliable infrastructure with unmatched access to domestic fiber routes and transpacific undersea cables." One Wilshire is the preeminent point of connectivity between North America and Asia, making it one of the most significant carrier hotels in the world. Customers are able to connect to over 240 carriers within the building, along with nearly 110 cloud and IT service providers. Together with KOMO Plaza, GI Partners is able to offer unmatched carrier neutral connectivity to all major telecommunications and cloud providers along the West coast. One Wilshire is owned through TechCore, L.P. ("TechCore"), a fully discretionary core real estate fund managed by GI Partners on behalf of The California Public Employees' Retirement System ("CalPERS"). TechCore was formed in early 2012 to acquire technology-advantaged properties, including data centers, internet gateways, corporate campuses for technology tenants, and life science properties located in core MSAs and leased to industry-leading tenants. Since inception, TechCore has acquired over 3.3 million square feet of mission-critical data center, life science, and office properties throughout the United States. About GI Partners Founded in 2001, GI Partners is a leading private investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm currently manages over $14 billion in capital commitments through private equity and real estate strategies for recognized institutional investors across the globe. GI Partners' real estate team invests across multiple property types and investment strategies, including platforms focused on logistics-based warehouse and distribution facilities, transit-oriented multifamily development, and technology-advantaged properties. For more information on GI Partners and its entire portfolio, please visit www.gipartners.com. Media Contacts: Chris Tofalli Chris Tofalli Public Relations 914-834-4334 [email protected] Caroline Schimmelbusch GI Partners Investor Relations 415-688-4800 [email protected] SOURCE GI Partners CHICAGO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Golub Capital recently announced that as Sole Bookrunner, Sole Lead Arranger & Administrative Agent, it provided a GOLD facility to support the growth recapitalization of Results Physiotherapy, a portfolio company of Chicago-based private equity firm, Sterling Partners. GOLD financings are Golub Capital One-Loan Debt facilities. Results Physiotherapy, headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, is a leading provider of outpatient physical therapy services with a network of over 125 clinics across nine states. Founded over 20 years ago, the company offers world-class physical therapy that goes beyond traditional exercise-only treatments and utilizes an innovative hands-on approach. Results Physiotherapy patient outcomes are in the top 10 percent of the PT industry, as measured by Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes Inc., an independent organization dedicated to measuring physical therapy outcomes and patient satisfaction. "We're thrilled to expand our partnership with Results Physiotherapy and Sterling Partners, this time as lead arranger, to support their next chapter of growth," said Craig Palmer of Golub Capital. "Golub's expertise in the physical therapy industry and flexible financing solutions enabled us to move quickly to expand the facility in support of our company's rapid growth plan," said David Canniff, Chief Financial Officer of Results Physiotherapy. About Golub Capital Middle-Market Lending Golub Capital's Middle Market Lending group provides financing for middle market, private equity-backed transactions with hold positions of up to $400 million and is an arranger of credit facilities up to $750 million. Golub Capital's award-winning team strives to establish long-term, win-win partnerships by providing dependable, fast and creative solutions that meet private equity sponsors' and portfolio companies' needs. Golub Capital is a nationally recognized credit asset manager with over $20 billion of capital under management. For over 20 years, the firm has provided credit to help medium-sized U.S. businesses grow. The firm's award-winning middle market lending business helps provide financing for middle market companies and their private equity sponsors. Golub Capital's credit expertise also forms the foundation of its Late Stage Lending and Broadly Syndicated Loan businesses. Golub Capital has worked hard to build a reputation as a fast, reliable provider of compelling financing solutions, and we believe this has inspired repeat clients and investors. Today, the firm has over 300 employees with lending offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.golubcapital.com. About Sterling Partners Sterling Partners is a private equity firm with a distinct point of view on how to build great companies. Founded in 1983, Sterling has invested billions of dollars, guided by the company's stated purpose: INSPIRED GROWTH, which describes Sterling's approach to investing in differentiated businesses and growing them in inspired ways. Sterling focuses on investing growth capital in middle market companies in the healthcare services and business services industries. Sterling provides valuable support to the management teams of the companies in which the firm invests through a deep and dedicated team of professionals, including a strong network of outside directors and advisors. The people at Sterling believe in ideas and ideals, in people and in partnerships that drive long-term success. For more information, visit: www.sterlingpartners.com. About Results Physiotherapy Headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, Results Physiotherapy is one of the largest and fastest growing physical therapy companies in the U.S., operating a network of over 125 clinics in nine states. Recognized for its innovative hands-on approach, which yields faster pain relief and longer lasting recovery, Results Physiotherapy patient outcomes are in the top 10 percent of the PT industry, as measured by independent data sources. The company's licensed therapists are trained in the newest, evidence-based techniques from around the world, and receive four times more training than the average PT in the U.S. Learn more about the Results difference at www.ResultsPT.com, or contact Mark Tinsey at 615-218-2867 or [email protected]. SOURCE Golub Capital Related Links http://www.golubcapital.com HAMBURG, Germany, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hamburger Sparkasse (Haspa), Germany's largest savings bank, has extended its successful IT outsourcing partnership with Diebold Nixdorf (NYSE: DBD), a global leader in driving connected commerce, for an additional seven years. This renewal builds on the 2005 agreement between the two companies in which Haspa outsourced a significant portion of its IT operations to Diebold Nixdorf. In the future, Diebold Nixdorf will also support Haspa in the migration of its core banking system from SAP to OSPlus from Finanz Informatik, the IT service provider of the Sparkasse Finance Group, through the establishment of a network infrastructure and new server landscape. With this agreement, Diebold Nixdorf will support the decentralized IT operations for approximately 6,000 of Haspa's work stations and the management of its self-service network of more than 800 systems, including cash management, network services, file and print services, the operation of servers for a range of applications, the management of middleware and database applications, and a user help desk. "Drawing on Diebold Nixdorf's expertise, this partnership has enabled us to ensure the consistent availability of our systems," said Rudolf Hoyer, the head of information technology and organization at Hamburger Sparkasse. "In addition, Diebold Nixdorf has been supporting our efforts to further develop our technologies and infrastructure as well as in reducing costs." "We will continue to rely on Diebold Nixdorf's expertise as we plan the migration of our core banking system," added Frank Rollenhagen, deputy head of information technology and organization at Hamburger Sparkasse. "The continuation of key partnerships with leading financial institutions, such as Haspa, is a key aspect of our services growth strategy," said Olaf Heyden, Diebold Nixdorf senior vice president, services. "Through our comprehensive services portfolio, we are driving the future of consumer transactions by helping banks fully focus on their customers and facilitating the rapid transformation of financial institutions throughout the world." About Hamburger Sparkasse With 140 branches, Hamburger Sparkasse AG (Haspa) is the leading bank for private customers and small and midsized enterprises in the Hamburg metropolitan area. Founded in 1827 to encourage saving, Haspa has since grown to become the bank for all residents of Hamburg from young children with their first "MouseAccounts" to private banking customers. Half of all residents and half of all small and midsized enterprises in Hamburg are Haspa customers. Haspa employs 5,000 people and has 350 apprentice positions, making it one of the largest employers and training companies in the city. Haspa also takes corporate responsibility seriously and supports the local community with annual donations of around 5 million. About Diebold Nixdorf Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD) is a world leader in enabling connected commerce for millions of consumers each day across the financial and retail industries. Its software-defined solutions bridge the physical and digital worlds of cash and consumer transactions conveniently, securely and efficiently. As an innovation partner for nearly all of the world's top 100 financial institutions and a majority of the top 25 global retailers, Diebold Nixdorf delivers unparalleled services and technology that are essential to evolve in an 'always on' and changing consumer landscape. Diebold Nixdorf has a presence in more than 130 countries with approximately 25,000 employees worldwide. The organization maintains corporate offices in North Canton, Ohio, USA and Paderborn, Germany. Shares are traded on the New York and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges under the symbol 'DBD'. Visit www.DieboldNixdorf.com for more information. SOURCE Diebold Nixdorf Related Links http://www.diebold.com BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthSouth Corporation (NYSE: HLS), one of the nation's largest providers of post-acute healthcare services, offering both facility-based and home-based post-acute services, today reported its results of operations for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. "We were pleased with the first quarter results which were driven by solid operating performance in both segments," said Mark Tarr, President and Chief Executive Officer of HealthSouth. "We continue to execute on our strategic priorities including communicating the HealthSouth value proposition to patients, caregivers, referral sources, and payors, discussing risk sharing strategies with acute care hospitals, launching our TeamWorks initiative designed to extrapolate clinical collaboration best practices across all our overlap markets, and using data analytics to improve patient outcomes. In addition, a robust development pipeline in both segments accompanies it all." Consolidated Results Growth Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Dollars Percent (In Millions, Except per Share Data) Net operating revenues $ 974.8 $ 909.8 $ 65.0 7.1% Income from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth per diluted share 0.70 0.61 0.09 14.8% Adjusted earnings per share 0.70 0.61 0.09 14.8% Cash flows provided by operating activities 180.8 169.6 11.2 6.6% Adjusted EBITDA 200.8 192.1 8.7 4.5% Adjusted free cash flow 147.5 139.4 8.1 5.8% Revenue growth was driven by pricing and volume growth in the inpatient rehabilitation segment and volume growth in the home health and hospice segment. The increase in income from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth per diluted share and adjusted earnings per share resulted primarily from increased Adjusted EBITDA. Both earnings per share amounts also included the impact of a lower effective tax rate year over year, higher stock-based compensation expense, lower interest expense resulting from the redemptions of the Company's 7.75% Senior Notes due 2022 in 2016, higher depreciation and amortization due to acquisitions and capital investments, and a lower share count resulting from share repurchases. The Company benefited from a lower tax rate due to windfall tax benefits from vesting of share-based compensation and certain federal and state income tax settlements. Growth in cash flows provided by operating activities, Adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow resulted primarily from revenue growth. See attached supplemental information for calculations of non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to their most comparable GAAP measure. Inpatient Rehabilitation Segment Results Growth Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Dollars Percent Net operating revenues: (In Millions) Inpatient $ 766.2 $ 719.4 $ 46.8 6.5 % Outpatient and other 26.3 29.8 (3.5) (11.7) % Total segment revenue $ 792.5 $ 749.2 $ 43.3 5.8 % (Actual Amounts) Discharges 42,259 41,098 1,161 2.8 % Same-store discharge growth 1.6 % Net patient revenue per discharge $ 18,131 $ 17,505 $ 626 3.6 % (In Millions) Adjusted EBITDA $ 205.4 $ 196.9 $ 8.5 4.3 % Revenue - Revenue growth resulted from an increase in net patient revenue per discharge and volume growth. Growth in net patient revenue per discharge resulted primarily from patient mix (higher percentage of stroke and neurological patients). Same-store discharge growth of 2.8% in the first quarter of 2016 included approximately 80 to 100 basis points due to leap year . Discharge growth from new stores resulted from the Company's joint ventures in Hot Springs, Arkansas ( February 2016 ), Bryan, Texas ( August 2016 ), and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma ( August 2016 ), as well as a wholly owned hospital in Modesto, California ( October 2016 ). The decrease in outpatient and other revenues was primarily due to the closure of six outpatient programs in the latter half of 2016. Adjusted EBITDA - The increase in Adjusted EBITDA for the inpatient rehabilitation segment resulted primarily from revenue growth. Salaries and benefits increased as a percent of net operating revenues primarily due to an increase in full-time equivalents. Full-time equivalents increased as a result of staffing increases at the former Reliant hospitals since their acquisition on October 1, 2015 , a planned investment in additional clinical staff due to increased regulatory reporting requirements, and new stores. Hospital operating expenses as a percent of net operating revenues decreased 10 basis points year over year. Bad debt expense as a percent of net operating revenues decreased from 2.1% in the first quarter of 2016 to 1.9% in the first quarter of 2017 due primarily to the resolution of the administrative payment delays that impacted 2016 collections. Home Health and Hospice Segment Results Growth Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Dollars Percent Net operating revenues: (In Millions) Home health $ 165.3 $ 150.9 $ 14.4 9.5 % Hospice and other 17.0 9.7 7.3 75.3 % Total segment revenue $ 182.3 $ 160.6 $ 21.7 13.5 % (Actual Amounts) Admissions 30,810 25,763 5,047 19.6 % Same-store admissions growth 13.9 % Episodes 49,260 43,844 5,416 12.4 % Same-store episode growth 8.4 % Revenue per episode $ 2,991 $ 3,035 $ (44) (1.4) % (In Millions) Adjusted EBITDA $ 23.9 $ 22.6 $ 1.3 5.8 % Revenue - Revenue growth resulted from strong same-store and new-store volume growth. The decrease in revenue per episode resulted from Medicare reimbursement rate cuts partially offset by changes in patient mix (including a higher percentage of therapy patients). Adjusted EBITDA - Growth in Adjusted EBITDA resulted primarily from revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was impacted by higher cost per visit (driven by an increased percentage of therapy patients) and salary and benefit cost increases. Repurchases of Common Stock During the first quarter of 2017, the Company repurchased 458,578 shares of its common stock for $18.1 million in the open market. As of March 31, 2017, the Company had a remaining repurchase authorization of approximately $78 million. 2017 Guidance Based on its results for the first quarter of 2017 and its current expectations for the remainder of 2017, the Company is reiterating its full-year guidance ranges. Full-Year 2017 Guidance Ranges (In Millions, Except Per Share Data) Net operating revenues $3,850 to $3,950 Adjusted EBITDA $800 to $820 Adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth $2.61 to $2.73 "In March 2017, we received a favorable ruling from the Internal Revenue Service related to our request for a tax accounting method change for billings denied under pre-payment claims reviews," said Doug Coltharp, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of HealthSouth. "As a result of this favorable ruling, we replenished our gross federal net operating loss by approximately $130 million, which resulted in approximately $54 million of additional tax benefits. These additional benefits allowed us to decrease our estimate of cash tax payments for 2017 and increase our adjusted free cash flow estimates for full-year 2017 to a range of $305 to $395 million." For additional considerations regarding the Company's 2017 guidance ranges, see the supplemental information posted on the Company's website at http://investor.healthsouth.com. See also the "Other Information" section below for an explanation of why the Company does not provide guidance for comparable GAAP measures for Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share. Earnings Conference Call and Webcast The Company will host an investor conference call at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, April 28, 2017 to discuss its results for the first quarter of 2017. For reference during the call, the Company will post certain supplemental information at http://investor.healthsouth.com. The conference call may be accessed by dialing 877 587-6761 and giving the pass code 91259573. International callers should dial 706 679-1635 and give the same pass code. Please call approximately ten minutes before the start of the call to ensure you are connected. The conference call will also be webcast live and will be available at http://investor.healthsouth.com by clicking on an available link. An on-line replay of the conference call will be available after the live broadcast at http://investor.healthsouth.com. About HealthSouth HealthSouth is one of the nation's largest providers of post-acute healthcare services, offering both facility-based and home-based post-acute services in 36 states and Puerto Rico through its network of inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, home health agencies, and hospice agencies. HealthSouth can be found on the Web at www.healthsouth.com. Other Information The information in this press release is summarized and should be read in conjunction with the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 (the "March 2017 Form 10-Q"), when filed, as well as the Company's Current Report on Form 8-K filed on April 27, 2017 (the "Q1 Earnings Form 8-K"), to which this press release is attached as Exhibit 99.1. In addition, the Company will post supplemental information today on its website at http://investor.healthsouth.com for reference during its April 28, 2017 earnings call. The financial data contained in the press release and supplemental information include non-GAAP financial measures, including the Company's adjusted earnings per share, leverage ratio, Adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow. Reconciliations to their most comparable GAAP measure, except with regard to non-GAAP guidance, are included below or in the Q1 Earnings Form 8-K. Readers are encouraged to review the "Note Regarding Presentation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" included in the Q1 Earnings Form 8-K which provides further explanation and disclosure regarding the Company's use of these non-GAAP financial measures. Excluding net operating revenues, the Company does not provide guidance on a GAAP basis because it is unable to predict, with reasonable certainty, the future impact of items that are deemed to be outside the control of the Company or otherwise non-indicative of its ongoing operations. Such items include government, class action, and related settlements; professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal; mark-to-market adjustments for stock appreciation rights; gains or losses related to hedging instruments; loss on early extinguishment of debt; adjustments to its income tax provision (such as valuation allowance adjustments and settlements of income tax claims); items related to corporate and facility restructurings; and certain other items the Company believes to be non-indicative of its ongoing operations. These items cannot be reasonably predicted and will depend on several factors, including industry and market conditions, and could be material to the Company's results computed in accordance with GAAP. However, the following reasonably estimable GAAP measures for 2017 would be included in a reconciliation for Adjusted EBITDA if the other reconciling GAAP measures could be reasonably predicted: Provision for doubtful accounts - estimate of 1.8% to 2.0% of net operating revenues Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees - estimate of $165 million to $175 million Amortization of debt-related items - approximately $15 million The Q1 Earnings Form 8-K and, when filed, the March 2017 Form 10-Q can be found on the Company's website at http://investor.healthsouth.com and the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Net operating revenues $ 974.8 $ 909.8 Less: Provision for doubtful accounts (16.4) (16.5) Net operating revenues less provision for doubtful accounts 958.4 893.3 Operating expenses: Salaries and benefits 530.1 486.1 Other operating expenses 129.1 119.2 Occupancy costs 17.9 18.0 Supplies 37.0 35.0 General and administrative expenses 36.5 31.9 Depreciation and amortization 45.2 42.4 Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal 0.2 Total operating expenses 795.8 732.8 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 2.4 Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees 41.3 44.6 Other income (1.0) (0.6) Equity in net income of nonconsolidated affiliates (2.1) (2.4) Income from continuing operations before income tax expense 124.4 116.5 Provision for income tax expense 39.7 39.7 Income from continuing operations 84.7 76.8 Loss from discontinued operations, net of tax (0.3) (0.1) Net income 84.4 76.7 Less: Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests (17.6) (18.7) Net income attributable to HealthSouth $ 66.8 $ 58.0 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Continued) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions, Except Per Share Data) Weighted average common shares outstanding: Basic 88.8 89.5 Diluted 99.0 99.4 Earnings per common share: Basic earnings per share attributable to HealthSouth common shareholders: Continuing operations $ 0.75 $ 0.65 Discontinued operations Net income $ 0.75 $ 0.65 Diluted earnings per share attributable to HealthSouth common shareholders: Continuing operations $ 0.70 $ 0.61 Discontinued operations Net income $ 0.70 $ 0.61 Cash dividends per common share $ 0.24 $ 0.23 Amounts attributable to HealthSouth common shareholders: Income from continuing operations $ 67.1 $ 58.1 Loss from discontinued operations, net of tax (0.3) (0.1) Net income attributable to HealthSouth $ 66.8 $ 58.0 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Unaudited) March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 (In Millions) Assets Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 61.2 $ 40.5 Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $55.6 in 2017; $53.9 in 2016 438.0 443.8 Other current assets 183.1 170.2 Total current assets 682.3 654.5 Property and equipment, net 1,406.1 1,391.8 Goodwill 1,931.4 1,927.2 Intangible assets, net 404.4 411.3 Deferred income tax assets 35.3 75.8 Other long-term assets 244.3 221.3 Total assets $ 4,703.8 $ 4,681.9 Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity Current liabilities: Current portion of long-term debt $ 37.9 $ 37.1 Accounts payable 68.9 68.3 Accrued expenses and other current liabilities 380.5 370.2 Total current liabilities 487.3 475.6 Long-term debt, net of current portion 2,915.5 2,979.3 Other long-term liabilities 168.5 160.0 3,571.3 3,614.9 Commitments and contingencies Redeemable noncontrolling interests 153.4 138.3 Shareholders' equity: HealthSouth shareholders' equity 779.7 735.9 Noncontrolling interests 199.4 192.8 Total shareholders' equity 979.1 928.7 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 4,703.8 $ 4,681.9 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Cash flows from operating activities: Net income $ 84.4 $ 76.7 Loss from discontinued operations, net of tax 0.3 0.1 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities Provision for doubtful accounts 16.4 16.5 Depreciation and amortization 45.2 42.4 Equity in net income of nonconsolidated affiliates (2.1) (2.4) Distributions from nonconsolidated affiliates 2.1 1.7 Stock-based compensation 8.0 4.5 Deferred tax expense 49.0 34.7 Other, net 2.5 5.9 Change in assets and liabilities, net of acquisitions Accounts receivable (20.0) (45.7) Other assets (16.4) 1.8 Accounts payable (1.7) 0.6 Accrued payroll (3.0) 30.8 Other liabilities 16.5 4.1 Premium paid on redemption of bonds (1.9) Net cash used in operating activities of discontinued operations (0.4) (0.2) Total adjustments 96.1 92.8 Net cash provided by operating activities 180.8 169.6 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Continued) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Cash flows from investing activities: Purchases of property and equipment (41.2) (31.4) Additions to capitalized software costs (3.6) (7.7) Acquisitions of businesses, net of cash acquired (16.4) Net change in restricted cash (4.7) (3.2) Other, net 12.1 2.8 Net cash used in investing activities (53.8) (39.5) Cash flows from financing activities: Principal payments on debt, including pre-payments (6.4) (56.3) Borrowings on revolving credit facility 55.0 60.0 Payments on revolving credit facility (122.0) (60.0) Repurchases of common stock, including fees and expenses (18.1) (12.9) Dividends paid on common stock (22.2) (21.3) Proceeds from exercising stock warrants 26.6 Distributions paid to noncontrolling interests of consolidated affiliates (11.5) (15.6) Taxes paid on behalf of employees for shares withheld (6.9) (9.9) Other, net (0.8) (2.5) Net cash used in financing activities (106.3) (118.5) Increase in cash and cash equivalents 20.7 11.6 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 40.5 61.6 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 61.2 $ 73.2 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Earnings Per Share QTD Q1 2017 Q1 2016 (In Millions, Except Per Share Data) Adjusted EBITDA $ 200.8 $ 192.1 Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees (41.3) (44.6) Depreciation and amortization (45.2) (42.4) Stock-based compensation expense (8.0) (4.5) Noncash gain (loss) on disposal or impairment of assets 0.5 (0.2) 106.8 100.4 Certain items non-indicative of ongoing operations: Loss on early extinguishment of debt (2.4) Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal (0.2) Pre-tax income 106.8 97.8 Income tax expense (1) (39.7) (39.7) Income from continuing operations (2) $ 67.1 $ 58.1 Basic shares 88.8 89.5 Diluted shares 99.0 99.4 Basic earnings per share (2) $ 0.75 $ 0.65 Diluted earnings per share (2) $ 0.70 $ 0.61 (1) Current income tax (benefit) expense for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 was $(9.3) million and $5.0 million, respectively. (2) Income from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Adjusted Earnings Per Share Q1 2017 2016 Earnings per share, as reported $ 0.70 $ 0.61 Adjustments, net of tax: Mark-to-market adjustments for stock appreciation rights 0.02 (0.01) Income tax adjustments(1) and settlements (0.03) Loss on early extinguishment of debt 0.01 Adjusted earnings per share(2) $ 0.70 $ 0.61 (1) New guidance in ASU 2016-09, "Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting," requires entities to record all of the tax effects related to share-based payments at settlement (or expiration) through the income statement. Historically, HealthSouth recorded such tax effects to equity. (2) Adjusted EPS may not sum due to rounding. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Adjusted Earnings Per Share For the Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 Adjustments As Reported Mark-to-Market Adjustment for Stock Appreciation Rights Income Tax Adjustments(1) and Settlements As Adjusted (In Millions, Except Per Share Amounts) Adjusted EBITDA(2) $ 200.8 $ $ $ 200.8 Depreciation and amortization (45.2) (45.2) Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees (41.3) (41.3) Stock-based compensation (8.0) 3.3 (4.7) Loss on disposal or impairment of assets 0.5 0.5 Income from continuing operations before income tax expense 106.8 3.3 110.1 Provision for income tax expense (39.7) (1.3) (2.6) (43.6) Income from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth $ 67.1 $ 2.0 $ (2.6) $ 66.5 Add: Interest on convertible debt, net of tax 2.5 2.5 Numerator for diluted earnings per share $ 69.6 $ 69.0 Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations(3) $ 0.70 $ 0.02 $ (0.03) $ 0.70 Diluted shares used in calculation 99.0 (1) New guidance in ASU 2016-09, "Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting," requires entities to record all of the tax effects related to share- based payments at settlement (or expiration) through the income statement. Historically, HealthSouth recorded such tax effects to equity. (2) See reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA (3) Adjusted EPS may not sum across due to rounding. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Adjusted Earnings Per Share For the Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 Adjustments As Reported Professional Fees Accounting, Tax, & Legal Mark-to- Market Adjustment for Stock Appreciation Rights Loss on Early Extinguishment of Debt As Adjusted (In Millions, Except Per Share Amounts) Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 192.1 $ $ $ $ 192.1 Depreciation and amortization (42.4) (42.4) Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal (0.2) 0.2 Loss on early extinguishment of debt (2.4) 2.4 Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees (44.6) (44.6) Stock-based compensation (4.5) (2.4) (6.9) Loss on disposal or impairment of assets (0.2) (0.2) Income from continuing operations before income tax expense 97.8 0.2 (2.4) 2.4 98.0 Provision for income tax expense (39.7) (0.1) 1.0 (1.0) (39.8) Income from continuing operations attributable to HealthSouth $ 58.1 $ 0.1 $ (1.4) $ 1.4 $ 58.2 Add: Interest on convertible debt, net of tax 2.4 2.4 Numerator for diluted earnings per share $ 60.5 $ 60.6 Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations(2) $ 0.61 $ $ (0.01) $ 0.01 $ 0.61 Diluted shares used in calculation 99.4 (1) See reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA (2) Adjusted EPS may not sum across due to rounding. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Reconciliation of Net Income to Adjusted EBITDA Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Net income $ 84.4 $ 76.7 Loss from discontinued operations, net of tax, attributable to HealthSouth 0.3 0.1 Provision for income tax expense 39.7 39.7 Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees 41.3 44.6 Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal 0.2 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 2.4 Net noncash (gain) loss on disposal or impairment of assets (0.5) 0.2 Depreciation and amortization 45.2 42.4 Stock-based compensation expense 8.0 4.5 Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests (17.6) (18.7) Adjusted EBITDA $ 200.8 $ 192.1 Reconciliation of Segment Adjusted EBITDA to Income from Continuing Operations Before Income Tax Expense Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 In Millions Total segment Adjusted EBITDA $ 229.3 $ 219.5 General and administrative expenses (36.5) (31.9) Depreciation and amortization (45.2) (42.4) Gain (loss) on disposal or impairment of assets 0.5 (0.2) Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal (0.2) Loss on early extinguishment of debt (2.4) Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees (41.3) (44.6) Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests 17.6 18.7 Income from continuing operations before income tax expense $ 124.4 $ 116.5 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Reconciliation of Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities to Adjusted EBITDA Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 180.8 $ 169.6 Provision for doubtful accounts (16.4) (16.5) Professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal 0.2 Interest expense and amortization of debt discounts and fees 41.3 44.6 Equity in net income of nonconsolidated affiliates 2.1 2.4 Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests in continuing operations (17.6) (18.7) Amortization of debt-related items (3.5) (3.4) Distributions from nonconsolidated affiliates (2.1) (1.7) Current portion of income tax (benefit) expense (9.3) 5.0 Change in assets and liabilities 24.6 8.4 Net premium paid on bond transactions 1.9 Net cash used in operating activities of discontinued operations 0.4 0.2 Other 0.5 0.1 Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA $ 200.8 $ 192.1 HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Supplemental Information Reconciliation of Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities to Adjusted Free Cash Flow Three Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 (In Millions) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 180.8 $ 169.6 Impact of discontinued operations 0.4 0.2 Net cash provided by operating activities of continuing operations 181.2 169.8 Capital expenditures for maintenance (22.2) (17.7) Distributions paid to noncontrolling interests of consolidated affiliates (11.5) (15.6) Items non-indicative of ongoing operations: Cash paid for professional feesaccounting, tax, and legal 0.2 Transaction costs and related assumed liabilities 0.8 Net premium on bond issuance/repayment 1.9 Adjusted free cash flow $ 147.5 $ 139.4 For the three months ended March 31, 2017, net cash used in investing activities was $53.8 million and resulted primarily from capital expenditures and acquisitions of businesses. Net cash used in financing activities during the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $106.3 million and resulted primarily from net debt payments, cash dividends paid on comment stock, repurchases of common stock in the open market, and distributions paid to noncontrolling interests of consolidated affiliates offset by proceeds from the exercising of stock warrants. For the three months ended March 31, 2016, net cash used in investing activities was $39.5 million and resulted primarily from capital expenditures. Net cash used in financing activities during the three months ended March 31, 2016 was $118.5 million and resulted primarily from the redemption of $50 million of 7.75% Senior Notes due 2022 in March 2016, cash dividends paid on common stock, and distributions paid to noncontrolling interests of consolidated affiliates. HealthSouth Corporation and Subsidiaries Forward-Looking Statements Statements contained in this press release which are not historical facts, such as those relating to financial guidance and assumptions, balance sheet and cash flow plans, and anticipated acquisitions, are forward-looking statements. In addition, HealthSouth, through its senior management, may from time to time make forward-looking public statements concerning the matters described herein. All such estimates, projections, and forward-looking information speak only as of the date hereof, and HealthSouth undertakes no duty to publicly update or revise such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates based upon current information, involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and relate to, among other things, future events, HealthSouth's plan to repurchase its debt or equity securities, dividend strategies, effective income tax rates, HealthSouth's business strategy, its financial plans, its future financial performance, its projected business results or model, its ability to return value to shareholders, its projected capital expenditures, its leverage ratio, its acquisition opportunities, and the impact of future legislation or regulation. Actual events or results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors. While it is impossible to identify all such factors, factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those estimated by HealthSouth include, but are not limited to, the price of HealthSouth's common stock as it affects the Company's willingness and ability to repurchase shares and the financial and accounting effects of any repurchases; any adverse outcome of various lawsuits, claims, and legal or regulatory proceedings involving HealthSouth, including its pending DOJ and HHS-OIG investigations and any matters related to yet undiscovered issues, if any, in acquired operations; HealthSouth's ability to attract and retain key management personnel, including as a part of executive management succession planning; any adverse effects on HealthSouth's stock price resulting from the integration of acquired operations; potential disruptions, breaches, or other incidents affecting the proper operation, availability, or security of HealthSouth's information systems, including unauthorized access to or theft of patient, business associate, or other sensitive information or inability to provide patient care because of system unavailability as well as unforeseen issues, if any, related to integration of acquired systems; the ability to successfully integrate acquired operations, including realization of anticipated tax benefits, revenues, and cost savings, minimizing the negative impact on margins arising from the changes in staffing and other operating practices, and avoidance of unforeseen exposure to liabilities; HealthSouth's ability to successfully complete and integrate de novo developments, acquisitions, investments, and joint ventures consistent with its growth strategy; changes, delays in (including in connection with resolution of Medicare payment reviews or appeals), or suspension of reimbursement for HealthSouth's services by governmental or private payors; changes in the regulation of the healthcare industry at either or both of the federal and state levels, including as part of national healthcare reform and deficit reduction; competitive pressures in the healthcare industry and HealthSouth's response thereto; HealthSouth's ability to obtain and retain favorable arrangements with third-party payors; HealthSouth's ability to control costs, particularly labor and employee benefit costs, including group medical expenses; adverse effects resulting from coverage determinations made by Medicare Administrative Contractors regarding its Medicare reimbursement claims and lengthening delays in HealthSouth's ability to recover improperly denied claims through the administrative appeals process on a timely basis; HealthSouth's ability to adapt to changes in the healthcare delivery system, including involvement in coordinated care initiatives or programs that may arise with its referral sources; HealthSouth's ability to attract and retain nurses, therapists, and other healthcare professionals in a highly competitive environment with often severe staffing shortages and the impact on HealthSouth's labor expenses from potential union activity and staffing shortages; general conditions in the economy and capital markets, including any crisis resulting from uncertainty in the sovereign debt market; the increase in the costs of defending and insuring against alleged professional liability claims and HealthSouth's ability to predict the estimated costs related to such claims; and other factors which may be identified from time to time in HealthSouth's SEC filings and other public announcements, including HealthSouth's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2017, when filed. Media Contact Casey Lassiter, 205 641-1118 [email protected] Investor Relations Contact Crissy Carlisle, 205 970-5860 [email protected] SOURCE HealthSouth Corporation Related Links http://www.healthsouth.com NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Levi & Korsinsky, LLP announces it has commenced an investigation of United States Steel Corporation ("United States Steel") (NYSE: X) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws. On April 25, 2017, United States Steel reported a first quarter 2017 net loss of $180 million, including an unfavorable adjustment of $35 million associated with a loss on the shutdown of certain tubular assets. To obtain additional information, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/steel-x or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. 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 and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Joseph E. Levi, 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 URBANDALE, Iowa, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." This year Iowa citizens hope to maintain the right to create their own firework displays. From the creator of DSM Daily, local entrepreneur Jeremiah Terhark, and his brother Zachariah Terhark, plan to help Iowans do just that. As owners of Iowa Fireworks Company, they are giving away over $100,000 in vouchers for fireworks. Pending Governor Branstad's approval of the Iowa Fireworks Bill, the Terharks will help Iowans light up the night sky this June and July. "It's something Iowans have waited nearly a century for; and now, it's time to get firecrackin'," said Jeremiah Terhark. While tents will not be open until June 13, excited citizens can start getting involved right away. Sign up at https://iowa-fireworks.com to get a free $10 fireworks voucher*, and then start sharing on social media. For every referral sign up Iowa Fireworks Company will be giving away free swag in the form of wristbands, t-shirts, and actual American Flags. And ten lucky fireworks lovers will win free executive fireworks packages. The bill, which Governor Branstad should pass next week, will legalize the sale and use of all class 'C' fireworks. This includes, but is not limited to, shells and mortars, Roman candles, bottle rockets, snakes, and firecrackers. Iowa Fireworks Company will sell these fireworks at several distinct locations across the state for all visitors 18 and up. The tents will be up, and fireworks for sale, from June 13- July 8. Happy Independence Day, Iowa! "We're excited for the opportunity to celebrate freedom responsibly," said Zachariah Terhark. "With fireworks." *Pending State approval, will be redeemable at all physical fireworks locations from June 13-July 8. Must be 18 years or older to redeem. About Iowa Fireworks Company Iowa Fireworks Company is a locally owned and managed fireworks company. We have been anxiously awaiting this opportunity for the past 80 years, and are eager to see Governor Branstad sign the bill. It's not about the fireworks, it's about the celebration of freedom. SOURCE Iowa Fireworks Company IRVINE, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Applied Financial Planning, an independent ensemble team of financial advisors, today announced the launch of a radio show, "Money Wise with the Money Guys," on KOCI Radio. Southern California radio talent and financial specialist Robert Micone will be the lead host of the program on Saturdays from 9:00-9:30 a.m. PT on 101.5 FM. The show begins May 6 and will broadcast to listeners in coastal Orange County, including Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine and surrounding areas. "Money Wise" features a team of experienced professionals who will discuss a wide range of current topics and events and how they impact the financial health of Orange County residents and businesses. Topics will include impending tax changes on the market and the effect on your portfolio, saving for college, the pinch on local government pensions, and more. In addition to Micone, the program will feature the diverse personalities and opinions of the Money Guys team, including William O'Connor, Marcelo Bernardo, Sean Walker and Andrea J. Graham. "We love to talk money. We aim to show listeners how current events may impact their lives and how they can plan to navigate these changes. Our conversations will converge at the intersection of influence and affluence and what you can control in your financial future," says Micone. Robert E. Micone, MBA, principal of Applied Financial Planning, helps high-net-worth clients work towards maximum investment returns with minimum risk. He built his career as a business consultant to brands such as Pacific Mutual, CIGNA and Mutual of Omaha. He has been a guest financial specialist on the Hugh Hewitt radio program on KRLA AM 870, where he shared how independent, objective financial advisors are the key to long-term asset growth. Also a guest specialist on Hugh Hewitt's radio program, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER William C. O'Connor is founder and president of Applied Financial Planning. His 40 plus-year career has focused on investment and retirement planning with an emphasis on tax planning and preparation for clients. He has served on the adjunct faculty of University of California, Irvine, among others. Adds O'Connor: "Whether you are saving for retirement, saving for your kids' college education or a small business owner trying to get ahead, with some awareness and a bit of planning, you can weather whatever opportunities or challenges these new tides may bring. That's where we help listeners." Marcelo Bernardo is a financial consultant at Applied Financial Planning. He has been advising clients on retirement planning, college savings, tax-efficient investing and wealth transfer for 25 years. Sean Walker, MBA, is an LPL Registered Principal at Applied Financial Planning. His vast experience in the capital markets includes advising individual clients, entrepreneurs and boards of directors in matters of investment, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisition. He is a U.S. Navy veteran who flew combat missions aboard the F-14B Tomcat. Andrea J. Graham is a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) at Applied Financial Planning. Her expertise includes comprehensive financial planning, retirement income strategies, investment management, college funding, and legacy planning. To submit questions for show, email [email protected]. The Money Guys will try to answer them in a future show. About The Money Guys The Money Guys is an ensemble team of experienced financial and tax professionals at Applied Financial Planning, an independent, objective investment practice based in Irvine, Calif. Applied Financial Planning gives your future direction by providing the know-how and personal attention as you seek to grow your assets, minimize your taxes and give your future direction. The financial consultants at Applied Financial Planning are registered representatives with, and securities and advisory services are offered through, LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. Financial planning offered through Applied Financial Planning, a registered investment advisor, and separate entity from LPL Financial. For more information, or to schedule a free initial consultation, call 714-929-7420, email [email protected] or visit www.seekcounsel.com. Contact: Cynthia Ragland, APR 714.743.2550 [email protected] SOURCE Applied Financial Planning Related Links http://www.appliedfinancialplanning.com SALT LAKE CITY, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kelly Murdock, a 25-year veteran in the municipal finance industry, joined George K. Baum & Company ("GKB") as a Senior Vice President on April 24, 2017. He plans to use his extensive experience with a variety of municipal issuers in the State of Utah and the Intermountain West to complement GKB's Utah practice. "At GKB, we've introduced many innovative and successful financing structures on behalf of our clients," said Executive Vice President John Crandall, Manager of GKB's Utah Municipal Finance Group. "I know Kelly's industry knowledge will help us continue to provide exceptional service and expand our practice even more throughout the State of Utah and the Intermountain West." During his career, Mr. Murdock has served as lead banker and municipal advisor to some of the largest issuers in the State of Utah, and has worked on more than $5 billion of tax-exempt, taxable and variable-rate municipal transactions for a variety of issuers. He has also served as underwriter or municipal advisor for several higher education institutions, including the University of Utah where he assisted the institution with the issuance of more than $1 billion in revenue bond offerings. "I look forward to the opportunity to continue my focus on the needs of municipal issuers and help expand such a well-established practice," said Mr. Murdock. Prior to becoming an investment banker, Mr. Murdock served in several key staff positions on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., for both United States Senator Orrin G. Hatch and Congressman James V. Hansen. During his years in Washington, D.C., Mr. Murdock also worked as Director of the State of Utah's Washington, D.C. office, serving as a member of the Utah Governor's staff and as a key liaison between the State of Utah, the Utah Congressional Delegation and the federal government. Mr. Murdock holds a Bachelor's degree in Organizational Communications from the University of Utah and a Master of Business Administration degree from George Washington University. Founded in 1928, George K. Baum & Company ( www.gkbaum.com ) is one of the nation's most accomplished privately held investment banking firms and has been at the pinnacle of financing the nation's infrastructure for more than eight decades. GKB is recognized as an industry leader in the structuring, underwriting and marketing of taxable and tax-exempt municipal securities. SOURCE George K. Baum & Company Related Links http://www.gkbaum.com "We're very proud that our firm chose Atlanta as home to its latest KPMG Ignition center," said Milford McGuirt, KPMG's Atlanta office managing partner. "Our business community can leverage this facility to address organizations' complex business challenges with real-time solutions." "Atlanta has an optimal mix of characteristics entrepreneurial spirit, an advanced technological ecosystem, and a progressive culture that help our clients drive business transformation across their enterprises," said McGuirt. Inside Ignition, KPMG professionals design and build technology-based mechanisms to improve key aspects our clients' businesses, such as cyber security, data and analytics, employee and customer experience, financial modeling, and complex tax issues. Spanning an entire floor of One Atlantic Center in Midtown, Ignition in Atlanta boasts 22,000 square feet of work space geared for advanced technologies, close collaboration, and enhanced flexibility. Ignition Atlanta also enhances collaboration with KPMG alliances, such as IBM, Appian, and Oracle. Other KPMG Ignition locations include Denver, Grand Rapids, and New York City, with San Francisco opening next month. "Our clients count on us to address their business issues with agility and without concern for organizational boundaries. At KPMG Ignition we're doing that," said Lou Trebino, principal at KPMG. "We bring together teams from across the firm in a collaborative, creative environment and deliver innovative solutions to our clients from ideation through implementation." Midtown employment boost80 new jobs by end of 2019 Some 80 people already staff Ignition Atlanta. Over the coming year, the firm plans to hire 20 additional people. "Beyond that, we expect to add another 60 jobs for a total of 160 or so by the end of 2019," said McGuirt. "Our team runs the gamut from automation engineers and mathematicians, to program developers, tax technicians and visual designers," he said. Ignition Atlanta will ultimately accommodate 200 professionals. Overall, KPMG employs 1,300 people in the Atlanta market. Junior Achievement partnership Also speaking at the grand opening was Junior Achievement of Georgia's CEO, Jack Harris. KPMG has long supported JA locally, regionally, and nationally. A recent breakthrough model for high school education, JA Academy, inspired KPMG to provide additional financial support to JA at the event. JA of Georgia launched the Academy at Fulton County's Banneker High School in August 2015. "Banneker is a JA proving ground to redefine high school education," said McGuirt. "A lot of what JA is working to accomplish there aligns with KPMG's values, including innovative thinking fueled by a disciplined approach." JA Academy uses a school-within-a-school model to fuel transformation from the inside out," said Harris. "JA Academy creates a vehicle for the business community to integrate its expertise and experience to help make student learning more relevant and authentically connected to life beyond the classroom walls." First-year results at Banneker included big gains in engagement and academic outcomes. Compared with their peers, JA Academy students cut chronic absenteeism by 75 percent and dramatically improved performance on 9th-grade Georgia Milestones Assessments. About KPMG KPMG LLP, the audit, tax, and advisory firm (www.kpmg.com/us), is the independent U.S. member firm of KPMG International Cooperative. KPMG International's independent member firms have 189,000 professionals, including more than 9,000 partners, in 152 countries. Some or all of the services described herein may not be permissible for KPMG audit clients and their affiliates. Contact: Jeff Berger KPMG LLP (301) 401-6412 (mobile) [email protected] SOURCE KPMG LLP Related Links http://www.kpmg.com/us WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Thin Blue Line and Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Acts passed through the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and will now move to the floor for consideration. The Acts, introduced by Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida and David B. McKinley of West Virginia respectively, were met with immediate support from the American Federation of Government Employees and the Council of Prison Locals. AFGE Council of Prison Locals praises the Thin Blue Line and Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Acts passing through the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. "Thanks to the hard work and dedication by Rep. Buchanan and McKinley, the men and women who protect our communities at federal prisons will receive greater protections on the job," said AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. "The Correctional Officers who risk their lives daily to guard some of the most dangerous criminals in our country need support and safety," he added. The Thin Blue Line Act H.R. 115 was introduced on January 3, 2017, has 20 cosponsors, and "amends the federal criminal code to expand the list of statutory aggravating factors in death penalty determinations to also include the killing or attempted killing of a law enforcement officer, firefighter, or other first responder." The Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act H.R. 613 was introduced on January 23, 2017 and has 32 bipartisan cosponsors. The act directs the Bureau of Prisons to provide a secure storage area located outside the secure perimeter for correctional officers to store their personal firearms, and allows employees to store firearms in a vehicle lockbox approved by the agency. The bill is honor of Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati, a correctional officer who broke up a contraband smuggling group in prison. The group organized a deadly retaliation against Albarati, who was shot and killed by a group of gunmen on the highway. "Correctional Officers work in some of the most dangerous environments in the country, and we've called for more legislation to protect them for years" said Eric Young, President of AFGE's Council of Prison Locals. "By passing these bills, the Judiciary Committee has shown a commitment to protecting the men and women who protect America. Legislation like the Thin Blue Line Act and Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act will allow correctional officers and their families breathe a little easier at night." "We applaud the efforts of Congressional leaders to put forth these bills, and hope that their colleagues on Capitol Hill will stand with them," Young said. "The working people who protect and serve in our federal prisons deserve every protection we can offer, and I know they will benefit from these two bills becoming law." The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 700,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia. For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees Related Links http://www.afge.org "Emma has the unique ability to think from brand, media, digital and social points of view as needed, and to use those perspectives to provide actionable counsel for her clients," said Brent Nelsen, Leo Burnett North America Chief Strategy Officer. "Emma inherently envisions brands within the context of today's on-demand society and has deep expertise in cross-channel communications." Montgomery will help lead Leo Burnett in part by working with The Core, the agency's newly launched data and analytics offering, to unlock insights that will fuel creativity. "Leo Burnett is a world-class creative agency," said Montgomery. "And creativity has never been more important as a problem-solving tool. As the relationship between people and brands becomes increasingly dynamic, how we design and deliver our creative solutions must be able to adapt accordingly. I look forward to pairing my expertise in brand experience design with our strategic and creative talent to initiate effective, integrated solutions that build brands and transform businesses." Montgomery will report to Andrew Swinand, Leo Burnett North America CEO, and join the agency's leadership. "Emma brings a global perspective and unique multichannel media expertise to the position. She has a keen understanding of how brands can thrive at the intersection of data, technology and creativity, and has done extensive communications planning on global and national scales," said Swinand. "Emma's diversity of experience and knowledge, coupled with her leadership, make her an outstanding fit for this role." In her position at Leo Burnett Sydney, Montgomery was responsible for directing, growing and innovating the agency's strategic product. Montgomery has also held various communications planning and brand strategy roles at Starcom, both in Chicago and in Sydney, Australia, encompassing areas such as data and analytics, research and innovation, among others. About Leo Burnett Chicago Leo Burnett Chicago is a communications agency powered by its HumanKind operating system, with the belief that creativity, data and technology work together to transform human behavior and drive prosperity for clients. Part of Publicis Communications, the agency works with some of the world's most valued brands including Allstate, Brooks, Esurance, Firestone, Jim Beam, Kellogg's, Kraft, Marshalls, Nintendo, P&G, Samsung and UnitedHealthcare among others. To learn more about Leo Burnett and its rich, 81-year history of creating iconic brands, visit our site, Facebook page and follow us via @leoburnettchi. Contact: Michael Cowen 312.220.3953 [email protected] SOURCE Leo Burnett Related Links http://www.leoburnett.com Since 2015, Lockheed Martin and Guardtime Federal have conducted demonstrations of data integrity technologies to address the threat of manipulation in networked and weapon system embedded cyber physical systems. The two companies have been engaged in on-going assessments to address the continued evolution of cyber-focused threats across the entire development and fielding lifecycle. With this effort, Lockheed Martin becomes the first U.S. defense contractor to incorporate blockchain technology into its developmental processes, enabling more efficient and assured offerings to the federal government. Using Guardtime Federal's Black Lantern appliances and the nationally distributed Guardtime Federal Core blockchain infrastructure, Lockheed Martin plans to realize more efficient and secure software development and supply chain risk management. To realize the next leap forward, Guardtime Federal crafted a consortium of some of the most advanced cyber-centric small businesses in the field: Galois, ForAllSecure and Trail of Bits. Collectively this consortium offers a wealth of experience in formal methods, vulnerability analysis, and automated vulnerability discovery and patching. All consortium participants are performers on the most advanced DARPA cyber-focused developments. ForAllSecure was the first place winner of the recent DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge. "Guardtime Federal is excited about collaborating with such a high quality team for delivering capabilities to Lockheed Martin with whom we share a common vision regarding cyber and software development challenges," said David Hamilton, president of Guardtime Federal. Lockheed Martin and Guardtime Federal are maturing a concept referred to as Cyber Aware Systems Engineering. Lockheed Martin is exploring new, non-traditional approaches, technologies, and processes to design cyber security into its business. "These new cyber security approaches will enhance data integrity, speed problem discovery and mitigation, and reduce the volume of regression testing, which results in reduced schedule risk," said Ron Bessire, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics' Engineering and Technology vice president. "The faster our developers can discover issues, the faster we can deliver." Lockheed Martin regularly partners with small businesses to augment its robust cyber capabilities. This new aerospace collaboration between a prime and a small business cyber consortium not only meets Department of Defense guidelines for small businesses set-aside, it also leverages the innovative dynamic nature of small, agile industry partners in the tradition of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works model. By experimenting now and learning to incorporate these new approaches, Lockheed Martin anticipates improved performance in future modernization of existing programs as well as discriminating advantage on emerging competitions. For additional information, visit our websites: www.lockheedmartin.com, www.guardtime.com, www.galois.com, www.forallsecure.com and www.trailofbits.com. About Guardtime Federal Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, Guardtime Federal is a US chartered business with the objective to deliver data integrity products developed by Guardtime into the US National Security market (DoD, IC, DHS, etc. and their support industry). Guardtime Federal integrates Guardtime industrial blockchain technology with US developed high end tamper resistant hardware for providing data and process integrity and provenance in cross domain embedded and private networked environments. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 97,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. SOURCE Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Related Links http://www.guardtime.com TSX: MFI www.mapleleaffoods.com MISSISSAUGA, ON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Maple Leaf Foods Inc. (TSX: MFI) today reported its financial results for the first quarter, March 31, 2017. Strong quarter with growth in sales and Adjusted Operating Earnings (1) Balanced business portfolio offset impact of volatile pork market Fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit Adjusted EBITDA Margins(2) reflects strong business fundamentals Financial Highlights First quarter sales increased 1.8% and Adjusted Earnings per Share(3) increased 17.9% compared to the same quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.8% in the quarter and contributed to Free Cash Flow(4) of approximately $34.8 million. Measure(i) (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change Sales 811.2 796.9 1.8% Adjusted EBITDA Margin 10.8% 10.2% 60 bps Adjusted Operating Earnings 59.0 53.6 10.2% Net Earnings 30.1 42.3 (28.8)% Basic Earnings per Share 0.23 0.31 (25.8)% Adjusted Earnings per Share 0.33 0.28 17.9% Free Cash Flow 34.8 25.2 38.1% (i) All financial measures in millions except Adjusted EBITDA Margin and Basic and Adjusted Earnings per Share. Note: Several items are excluded from the discussions of underlying earnings performance as they are not representative of ongoing operational activities. Refer to the section entitled Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Financial Measures at the end of this news release for a description and reconciliation of all non-IFRS financial measures. "We are coming into 2017 with solid performance, delivering 10.8% Adjusted EBITDA Margin on 2% revenue growth, up from 10.2% last year," said Michael H. McCain, President and CEO. "We had modest volume growth in the quarter, and delivered excellent performance improvement despite some relatively turbulent market conditions. The highlight for the quarter was our acquisition of Lightlife Foods, which is a great step forward in advancing our long-term growth agenda. We aspire to be the most sustainable protein company in the world, and that is reflected in all of our strategies." Sales and Earnings The Company's products include value-added prepared meats, lunch kits and snacks, value-added fresh pork and poultry products and refrigerated plant protein products sold under flagship national brands such as Maple Leaf, Maple Leaf Prime, Maple Leaf Natural Selections, Schneiders, Schneiders Country Naturals, Mina and Lightlife. Sales in the first quarter increased 1.8% to $811.2 million, or 2.1% after adjusting for the impact of foreign exchange and acquisitions. Stronger volume and higher value-added fresh pork export sales to Japan contributed to the increase. Adjusted Operating Earnings increased to $59.0 million compared to $53.6 million last year, benefiting from stronger prepared meats volume and improved operational performance in our supply chain. Adjusted Operating earnings also increased as a result of the contribution from value-added fresh pork, including higher Canadian retail and export sales. These improvements were partially offset by lower poultry performance and margin compression in packaged bacon. Net earnings for the first quarter decreased to $30.1 million ($0.23 per basic share) compared to $42.3 million ($0.31 per basic share) last year. The underlying progress in the business reflected in positive revenue and margin growth was more than offset by factors excluded in calculating Adjusted Operating Earnings, such as the change in fair value of biological assets and higher restructuring costs. Other Matters On April 26, 2017, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of $0.11 per share payable June 30, 2017, to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 9, 2017. Unless indicated otherwise by the Company in writing on or before the time the dividend is paid, the dividend will be considered an Eligible Dividend for the purposes of the "Enhanced Dividend Tax Credit System". Conference Call An investor presentation related to the Company's first quarter financial results is available at www.mapleleaffoods.com and can be found under Investor Information on the Investors page. A conference call will be held at 2:30 p.m. EDT on April 27, 2017, to review Maple Leaf Foods' first quarter financial results. To participate in the call, please dial 416-340-2218 or 1-800-273-9672. For those unable to participate, playback will be made available an hour after the event at 905-694-9451 or 1-800-408-3053 (Passcode: 6698923#). A webcast presentation of the first quarter financial results will also be available at: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/xaou62ae The Company's full unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis are available on the Company's website. Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Financial Measures The Company uses the following non-IFRS measures: Adjusted Operating Earnings, Adjusted Earnings per Share, Adjusted EBITDA, and Free Cash Flow. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors in measuring the financial performance of the Company. These measures do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and therefore they may not be comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other publicly traded companies and should not be construed as an alternative to other financial measures determined in accordance with IFRS. Adjusted Operating Earnings Three months ended March 31, ($ thousands) (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Net earnings $ 30,105 $ 42,269 Income taxes 11,980 15,794 Earnings before income taxes $ 42,085 $ 58,063 Interest expense and other financing costs 1,227 1,106 Other expense (income) 2,704 591 Restructuring and other related costs 6,490 1,217 Earnings from operations $ 52,506 $ 60,977 Increase in fair value of biological assets(5) (2,797) (16,841) Unrealized loss on futures contracts(5) 9,321 9,446 Adjusted Operating Earnings $ 59,030 $ 53,582 Adjusted Earnings per Share Three months ended March 31, ($ per share) (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Basic earnings per share $ 0.23 $ 0.31 Restructuring and other related costs(6) 0.04 0.01 Items included in other expense (income) not considered representative of ongoing operations(7) 0.02 Change in the fair value of unrealized loss on futures contracts(8) 0.05 0.05 Change in the fair value of biological assets(8) (0.02) (0.09) Adjusted Earnings per Share (9) $ 0.33 $ 0.28 Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Income Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization Three months ended March 31, ($ thousands) (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Net earnings $ 30,105 $ 42,269 Income taxes 11,980 15,794 Earnings before income taxes $ 42,085 $ 58,063 Interest expense and other financing costs 1,227 1,106 Items included in other expense (income) not considered representative of ongoing operations 3,479 438 Restructuring and other related costs 6,490 1,217 Change in the fair value of biological assets and unrealized loss on futures contracts 6,524 (7,395) Depreciation and amortization 28,062 28,031 Adjusted EBITDA $ 87,867 $ 81,460 Free Cash Flow Three months ended March 31, ($ thousands) (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Cash provided by operating activities $ 55,008 $ 45,437 Additions to long-term assets (20,255) (20,275) Free Cash Flow (4) $ 34,753 $ 25,162 Forward Looking Statements This document contains, and the Company's oral and written public communications often contain, "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections about the industries in which the Company operates, as well as beliefs and assumptions made by Management of the Company. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to objectives and goals, in addition to statements with respect to beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates, and intentions. Specific forward-looking information in this document includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: the increases in operating efficiencies and cost reductions; expectations regarding the use of derivatives, futures and options; expectations regarding improving efficiencies; the expected use of cash balances; source of funds for ongoing business requirements; capital investments and expectations regarding capital expenditures; expectations regarding the implementation of environmental sustainability initiatives; expectations regarding the adoption of new accounting standards and the impact of such adoption on financial position; expectations regarding pension plan performance and future pension plan liabilities and contributions; expectations regarding levels of credit risk; and expectations regarding outcomes of legal actions. Words such as "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "may", "will", "plan", "believe", "seek", "estimate", and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking information. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. In addition, these statements and expectations concerning the performance of the Company's business in general are based on a number of factors and assumptions including, but not limited to: the condition of the Canadian, U.S., and Japanese economies; the rate of exchange of the Canadian dollar to the U.S. dollar, and the Japanese yen; the availability and prices of raw materials, energy and supplies; product pricing; the availability of insurance; the competitive environment and related market conditions; improvement of operating efficiencies; continued access to capital; the cost of compliance with environmental and health standards; no adverse results from ongoing litigation; no unexpected actions of domestic and foreign governments; and the general assumption that none of the risks identified below or elsewhere in this document will materialize. All of these assumptions have been derived from information currently available to the Company, including information obtained by the Company from third-party sources. These assumptions may prove to be incorrect in whole or in part. In addition, actual results may differ materially from those expressed, implied, or forecasted in such forward-looking information, which reflect the Company's expectations only as of the date hereof. Factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from the results expressed, implied, or forecasted by forward-looking information include, among other things: risks associated with the Company focusing solely on the protein business; risks related to the Company's decisions regarding any potential return of capital to shareholders; risks associated with the concentration of production in fewer facilities; risks associated with the availability of capital; risks associated with changes in the Company's information systems and processes; risks associated with cyber threats; risks posed by food contamination, consumer liability, and product recalls; risks associated with acquisitions, divestitures, and capital expansion projects; impact on pension expense and funding requirements of fluctuations in the market prices of fixed income and equity securities and changes in interest rates; cyclical nature of the cost and supply of hogs and the competitive nature of the pork market generally; risks related to the health status of livestock; impact of a pandemic on the Company's operations; the Company's exposure to currency exchange risks; ability of the Company to hedge against the effect of commodity price changes through the use of commodity futures and options; impact of changes in the market value of the biological assets and hedging instruments; risks associated with the supply management system for poultry in Canada ; ; risks associated with the use of contract manufacturers; impact of international events on commodity prices and the free flow of goods; risks posed by compliance with extensive government regulation; risks posed by litigation; impact of changes in consumer tastes and buying patterns; impact of extensive environmental regulation and potential environmental liabilities; risks associated with a consolidating retail environment; risks posed by competition; risks associated with complying with differing employment laws and practices, the potential for work stoppages due to non-renewal of collective agreements, and recruiting and retaining qualified personnel; risks associated with pricing the Company's products; risks associated with managing the Company's supply chain; and risks associated with failing to identify and manage the strategic risks facing the Company. The Company cautions the reader that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. These factors are discussed in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 that is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The reader should review such section in detail. Some of the forward-looking information may be considered to be financial outlooks for purposes of applicable securities legislation including, but not limited to, statements concerning future capital expenditures. These financial outlooks are presented to evaluate anticipated future uses of cash flows, and may not be appropriate for other purposes and readers should not assume they will be achieved. The Company does not intend to, and the Company disclaims any obligation to, update any forward-looking information, whether written or oral, or whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Additional information concerning the Company, including the Company's Annual Information Form is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. About Maple Leaf Foods Inc. Maple Leaf Foods Inc. is a leading consumer protein company, making high quality, innovative products under national brands including Maple Leaf, Maple Leaf Prime, Maple Leaf Natural Selections, Schneiders, Schneiders Country Naturals, Mina and Lightlife. Maple Leaf employs approximately 11,500 people and does business in Canada, the U.S. and Asia. The Company is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario and its shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (MFI). Footnote Legend Adjusted Operating Earnings, a non-IFRS measure, is used by Management to evaluate financial operating results. It is defined as earnings before income taxes adjusted for items that are not considered representative of ongoing operational activities of the business and items where the economic impact of the transactions will be reflected in earnings in future periods when the underlying asset is sold or transferred. Please refer to the section entitled Non-IFRS Financial Measures in the Company's 2017 first quarter Management's Discussion and Analysis. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-IFRS measure, is calculated as earnings before interest and income taxes plus depreciation and intangible asset amortization, adjusted for items that are not considered representative of ongoing operational activities of the business, and items where the economic impact of the transactions will be reflected in earnings in future periods when the underlying asset is sold or transferred. Adjusted EBITDA Margin is calculated as Adjusted EBITDA divided by sales. Please refer to the section entitled Non-IFRS Financial Measures in the Company's 2017 first quarter Management's Discussion and Analysis. Adjusted Earnings per Share, a non-IFRS measure, is used by Management to evaluate financial operating results. It is defined as basic earnings per share and is adjusted on the same basis as Adjusted Operating Earnings. Please refer to the section entitled Non-IFRS Financial Measures in the Company's 2017 first quarter Management's Discussion and Analysis. Free Cash Flow, a non-IFRS measure, is used by Management to evaluate cash flow after investing in the maintenance or expansion of the Company's asset base. It is defined as cash provided by operations, less additions to long-term assets. Unrealized gains/losses on futures contracts is reported within cost of sales in the Company's 2017 first quarter unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements. For biological assets information, please refer to Note 6 of the Company's 2017 first quarter unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements. Includes per share impact of restructuring and other related costs, net of tax. Primarily includes acquisition related costs, interest income and gains/losses associated with investment properties and assets held for sale, net of tax. Includes per share impact of the change in unrealized losses on futures contracts and the change in fair value of biological assets, net of tax. May not add due to rounding. Consolidated Interim Balance Sheets (In thousands of Canadian dollars) As at March 31, 2017 As at March 31, 2016 As at December 31, 2016 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Restated)(iii) ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 143,596 $ 290,916 $ 403,621 Accounts receivable 128,066 72,603 127,749 Notes receivable 31,886 91,299 32,485 Inventories 312,569 293,542 261,719 Biological assets 116,884 123,472 111,445 Prepaid expenses and other assets 27,393 35,729 30,372 Assets held for sale 4,837 130 4,837 $ 765,231 $ 907,691 $ 972,228 Property and equipment 1,090,942 1,077,991 1,085,275 Investment property 1,920 6,754 1,929 Employee benefits 8,104 59,637 10,311 Other long-term assets 6,311 6,141 6,557 Deferred tax asset 36,575 Goodwill 560,285 428,236 428,236 Intangible assets 163,041 133,609 128,085 Total assets $ 2,595,834 $ 2,656,634 $ 2,632,621 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Current liabilities Accounts payable and accruals $ 280,438 $ 271,728 $ 256,163 Provisions 12,607 26,129 11,889 Current portion of long-term debt 837 681 794 Income taxes payable 8,410 8,075 9,544 Other current liabilities 50,721 18,543 96,857 $ 353,013 $ 325,156 $ 375,247 Long-term debt 8,998 9,826 9,119 Employee benefits 111,430 196,812 108,730 Provisions 15,755 14,009 16,555 Other long-term liabilities 12,146 19,196 12,654 Deferred tax liability 31,648 22,293 Total liabilities $ 532,990 $ 564,999 $ 544,598 Shareholders' equity Share capital $ 846,066 $ 882,812 $ 853,633 Retained earnings 1,239,713 1,197,365 1,247,737 Contributed surplus 5,067 Accumulated other comprehensive income 706 11,178 1,619 Treasury stock (23,641) (4,787) (14,966) Total shareholders' equity $ 2,062,844 $ 2,091,635 $ 2,088,023 Total liabilities and equity $ 2,595,834 $ 2,656,634 $ 2,632,621 Consolidated Interim Statements of Net Earnings (In thousands of Canadian dollars, except share amounts) Three months ended March 31, (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Sales $ 811,185 $ 796,889 Cost of goods sold 677,489 658,632 Gross margin $ 133,696 $ 138,257 Selling, general and administrative expenses 81,190 77,280 Earnings before the following: $ 52,506 $ 60,977 Restructuring and other related costs (6,490) (1,217) Other income (expense) (2,704) (591) Earnings before interest and income taxes $ 43,312 $ 59,169 Interest expense and other financing costs 1,227 1,106 Earnings before income taxes $ 42,085 $ 58,063 Income taxes 11,980 15,794 Net earnings $ 30,105 $ 42,269 Earnings per share: Basic earnings per share $ 0.23 $ 0.31 Diluted earnings per share $ 0.22 $ 0.31 Weighted average number of shares (millions) Basic 130.5 134.7 Diluted 134.3 137.5 Consolidated Interim Statements of Other Comprehensive Income (Loss) (In thousands of Canadian dollars) Three months ended March 31, (Unaudited) 2017 2016 Net earnings $ 30,105 $ 42,269 Other comprehensive (loss) income Actuarial (losses) gains that will not be reclassified to profit or loss (Net of tax of $1.0 million; 2016: $1.4 million) $ (2,840) $ 3,860 Items that are or may be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Change in accumulated foreign currency translation adjustment (Net of tax of $0.0 million; 2016: $0.0 million) $ (2,076) $ (156) Change in unrealized gains on cash flow hedges (Net of tax of $0.4 million; 2016: $4.1 million) 1,163 11,748 Total items that are or may be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss $ (913) $ 11,592 Total other comprehensive (loss) income $ (3,753) $ 15,452 Comprehensive income $ 26,352 $ 57,721 Consolidated Interim Statements of Changes in Total Equity Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)(i) (In thousands of Canadian dollars) (Unaudited) Share capital Retained earnings Contributed surplus Foreign currency translation adjustment Unrealized gains and losses on cash flow hedges Treasury stock Total equity Balance as at December 31, 2016 $ 853,633 $ 1,247,737 $ $ 2,116 $ (497) $ (14,966) $ 2,088,023 Net earnings 30,105 30,105 Other comprehensive income (loss)(ii) (2,840) (2,076) 1,163 (3,753) Dividends declared ($0.11 per share) (14,325) (14,325) Share-based compensation expense 7,213 7,213 Deferred taxes on share-based compensation 2,750 2,750 Repurchase of shares (9,174) (18,681) (9,963) (37,818) Exercise of stock options 1,607 1,607 Settlement of share-based compensation (2,283) 1,325 (958) Shares purchased by RSU trust (10,000) (10,000) Balance as at March 31, 2017 $ 846,066 $ 1,239,713 $ $ 40 $ 666 $ (23,641) $ 2,062,844 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)(i) (In thousands of Canadian dollars) (Unaudited) Share capital Retained earnings Contributed surplus Foreign currency translation adjustment Unrealized gains and losses on cash flow hedges Treasury stock Total equity Balance as at December 31, 2015(iii) $ 882,770 $ 1,161,047 $ $ 2,506 $ (2,920) $ (2,086) $ 2,041,317 Net earnings 42,269 42,269 Other comprehensive income (loss)(ii) 3,860 (156) 11,748 15,452 Dividends declared ($0.09 per share) (12,111) (12,111) Share-based compensation expense 5,498 5,498 Deferred taxes on share-based compensation 1,500 1,500 Repurchase of shares 2,300 (1,648) 652 Exercise of stock options 42 42 Settlement of share-based compensation (283) (283) Shares purchased by RSU trust (2,701) (2,701) Balance at March 31, 2016(iii) $ 882,812 $ 1,197,365 $ 5,067 $ 2,350 $ 8,828 $ (4,787) $ 2,091,635 (i) Items that are or may be subsequently reclassified to profit or loss. (ii) Included in other comprehensive income (loss) is the change in actuarial gains and losses that will not be reclassified to profit or loss and has been reclassified to retained earnings. (iii) Restated, see Note 2 (d) of the Company's 2017 first quarter unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements. Consolidated Interim Statements of Cash Flows (In thousands of Canadian dollars) Three months ended March 31, (Unaudited) 2017 2016 CASH PROVIDED BY (USED IN) : Operating activities Net earnings $ 30,105 $ 42,269 Add (deduct) items not affecting cash: Change in fair value of biological assets (2,797) (16,841) Depreciation and amortization 28,071 28,871 Share-based compensation 7,213 5,498 Deferred income taxes 10,478 14,579 Income tax current 1,502 1,215 Interest expense and other financing costs 1,227 1,106 Loss on sale of long-term assets 321 497 Change in fair value of non-designated derivative financial instruments 8,183 7,228 Change in net pension liability 1,064 5,676 Net income taxes paid (2,658) (2,913) Interest paid (818) (1,086) Change in provision for restructuring and other related costs 2,614 (6,913) Change in derivatives margin (2,430) (7,266) Other (913) 3,604 Change in non-cash working capital (26,154) (30,087) Cash provided by operating activities $ 55,008 $ 45,437 Financing activities Dividends paid $ (14,325) $ (12,111) Net decrease in long-term debt (185) (167) Exercise of stock options 1,607 42 Repurchase of shares (81,980) (11,922) Payment of deferred financing fees (64) Purchase of treasury stock (10,000) (2,701) Cash used in financing activities $ (104,947) $ (26,859) Investing activities Additions to long-term assets $ (20,255) $ (20,275) Acquisition of business, net of cash acquired (189,917) Proceeds from sale of long-term assets 86 344 Cash used in investing activities $ (210,086) $ (19,931) Decrease in cash and cash equivalents $ (260,025) $ (1,353) Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 403,621 292,269 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 143,596 $ 290,916 SOURCE Maple Leaf Foods Inc. Related Links http://www.mapleleaffoods.com Now in its ninth year, the Marvin Architects Challenge recognizes architects for projects that exhibit superior design in the categories of Contemporary, Best Transitional, Best Traditional New Construction, Best Remodel/Addition and Best Commercial, along with one Best in Show winner. With projects ranging from a seacoast vacation home to a historic town hall and even a 380-square-foot tiny guesthouse, these structures represent some of the most popular trends in the industry and challenges that are at the forefront of architects' minds. "Year after year, we continue to be inspired by submissions from talented architects who use their creativity to make the most of the design flexibility we build into our products," said Dondi Kazukewicz, senior manager, brand communications at Marvin Windows and Doors. "The variety of design aesthetics paired with the brilliant use of space and character in this year's winning projects reflects the level of ingenuity in the industry today. It's rewarding to see how Marvin's made-to-order solutions bring these ideas to life." Winners of the 2017 Architects Challenge were selected by an independent panel of esteemed architects, including Robert M. Gurney, FAIA; Manny Gonzalez, FAIA, NCARB LEED AP, CAASH; and Ted Flato, FAIA. "I thoroughly enjoyed being a judge for the Marvin Architects Challenge and getting a chance to see scores of great designs with creative use of Marvin windows and doors," said judge Manny Gonzalez. "The wonderful thing is the range of work from historic renovation to contemporary minimalist style, but regardless of the type of structure, they all skillfully brought the light and views in beautifully!" The following winning projects were judged on architectural excellence, creative design and use of Marvin window and door solutions: Best in Show: Shorefront Camp Trenton, Maine Architect: William M. Hanley, AIA, WMH Architects Trend: Coastal views with big glass to match A complete renovation and addition to an original 1962 Maine modern shorefront camp, the skillfully executed design created a dramatic form that is open, airy and inviting, along with the tour de force of a large glazing wall. Taking into consideration its coastal location, where wind load and seacoast performance are key, every inch of the house was reconditioned using Marvin high performance Direct Glaze, Ultimate Awning and Ultimate Casement windows and Contemporary doors. Best Contemporary: Compact Living Minneapolis, Minnesota Architect: Christopher Strom, Christopher Strom Architects Trend: Tiny home living with an eye for design Created as a separate accommodation for the client's visiting family, friends and guests, the design of this transitional remodel/addition faced the unique challenge of just 380 square feet of functional space and tight budget constraints. The design is reminiscent of a traditional red barn in form and color, yet the strategic use of glass and volume creates a bright, dramatic space that belies its compact living. The large sizes of Marvin Ultimate Awning windows and Ultimate Sliding French doors make optimum use of light within this space, which would appeal to any tiny home aficionado. Best Transitional: Knoll House Ferrisburgh, Vermont Architect: Elizabeth Herrmann, Elizabeth Herrmann Architecture + Design Trend: Building with the outdoors in mind and a sense of Danish "Hygge" This contemporary house was designed as an outgrowth of the knoll on which it sits. A composition of two simple forms, the house is punctuated by large windows that allow the residence to settle itself into the wooded site, while taking advantage of the great views the location affords. A simple pop-up dormer adds a dramatic touch to the main living area and another view angle to the tops of the trees. With a cozy fireplace and warm textures and textiles, the Danish Hygge trend makes this home even more inviting. Marvin Tilt Turn, Ultimate Awning and Ultimate Casement windows and Ultimate Swinging French and Sliding Patio doors were selected with a focus on custom sizing. Best Traditional New Construction: Little Camp Coastal New England, Massachusetts Architect: Jacob Albert, Albert, Righter & Tittman Architects Trend: Creative use of natural materials such as exposed rafters and tree trunk posts The site is near an old, slightly ramshackle "camp" that the clients rented and loved for years. When they had a chance to build on the adjacent site, they wanted to capture some of the spirit of the old camp. Although it is new construction, the exposed rafter tails, wood interior, tree trunk porch posts and beautiful windows and doors create bright, inviting spaces with unexpected nooks and alcoves that give it a timeless charm. Marvin Ultimate Awning and Ultimate Double Hung windows and Ultimate Swinging French doors were chosen for their ability to withstand the coastal environment while complementing the house design. Best Remodel/Addition: Westborough Town Hall Westborough, Massachusetts Architect: Brian Humes, Jacunski Humes Architects, LLC Trend: Renewed attention to historic detail Nearly 100 years old, this town hall was restored to its original stature as a downtown landmark after the municipality authorized a major renovation to address aging conditions and bring new life to it. Given the building's storied history and civic pride in the project, the design paid careful attention to the detail of the windows, shutters and classical wood trim to provide finishing touches. Marvin was chosen for its ability to match existing historic Ultimate Double Hung and Ultimate Awning windows with maintenance-free exteriors and wood interiors. Best Commercial: McClellan Ranch Preserve Environmental Education Center Cupertino, California Architect: Henry Siegel, Siegel & Strain Architects Trend: Green building and energy independence The Center houses classrooms, exhibits, a library and offices, and is designed to work in concert with historic buildings that shape an outdoor activity area. The careful thought that went into designing it is evident in the choice of materials, colors and the building forms themselves. The wood rafter tails and patio cover construction are skillfully incorporated at the interior with complementary windows and doors. Marvin's Tilt Turn, Ultimate Awning, Ultimate Casement and Ultimate Double Hung windows, paired with Marvin Bi-Fold and Commercial doors, provide maximum day light, natural ventilation, passive heating and cooling, and even bird-safe glass. In addition to a trip to the AIA Conference on Architecture, the six winners of the Architects Challenge will receive a VIP trip to Marvin's headquarters in Warroad, Minn., earning AIA-CES credits during the visit. The project awarded Best in Show will be featured in Architectural Digest magazine, and all winning projects will be featured in ARCHITECT magazine. All winning projects and architects will also be featured in Marvin's yearly Architects Challenge book, distributed to customers and industry partners nationwide. For more information, visit MarvinWindows.com/ArchitectsChallenge. About Marvin Windows and Doors Marvin Windows and Doors brings its Built Around You philosophy to life with every customer and every solution. A premier manufacturer of made-to-order wood and clad wood windows and doors, Marvin offers the industry's most extensive selection of shapes, styles, sizes and options to fit the diverse needs of builders and match the personalities of homeowners. Marvin's tradition of delivering the finest craftsmanship in windows and doors began in Warroad, Minn., a small town just six miles from the Canadian border, where the privately-held, family-owned and operated company is still headquartered today. Visit www.MarvinWindows.com to learn more. SOURCE Marvin Windows and Doors Related Links http://www.marvin.com NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mesothelioma Victims Center is now warning US Navy Veterans or their families to steer clear of Internet ads that make it sound as if the Veterans Administration is the one requesting Veterans to call a 800 phone number. The Veterans Administration does not sponsor Internet ads for Navy Veterans who have mesothelioma, as the Center would like to explain anytime at 800-714-0303. These types of deceptive ads are typically sponsored law firms looking to broker victims and typically target Veterans with mesothelioma. US Navy Veteran "We offer a US Navy Veteran direct and immediate access to some of the most skilled mesothelioma attorneys in the nation who specialize in assisting US Navy Veterans with mesothelioma and do everything possible to get the best possible financial compensation for their Navy Veteran clients." http://MesotheliomaVictimsCenter.Com The Mesothelioma Victims Center also wants to emphasize the extremely experienced mesothelioma attorneys they suggest charge 33% percent of the gross settlement amount, even if a lawsuit or trial is involved. The mesothelioma compensation claim process is contested by asbestos trusts, shipyards, or parts makers that may have had a role in the Navy Veteran's exposure to asbestos. This means that many times a lawsuit is needed, contrary to deceptive Internet ads that suggest "no lawsuit needed." As the group would like to discuss anytime at 800-714-0303, the mesothelioma marketing firms frequently charge a 40% contingent fee + expenses. Vital tip for hiring a lawyer for a US Navy Veteran who has been diagnosed with mesothelioma from the Mesothelioma Victims Center: "If the lawyer or law firm you are talking to cannot prove they were the driving force in a US Navy Veteran receiving a million-dollar financial compensation claim, please call us anytime at 800-714-0303 for on-the-spot access to some of the nation's top mesothelioma attorneys who have these types of references." http://MesotheliomaVictimsCenter.Com For a listing of all US Navy ship classifications please review the Military website that discusses this: http://www.militaryfactory.com/ships/us-navy-ship-classifications.asp The average age for a diagnosed victim of mesothelioma is about 70 years old. This year between 2,500 and 3,000 US citizens will be diagnosed with mesothelioma in the United States. Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that is attributable to exposure to asbestos. High-risk work groups for exposure to asbestos include Veterans of the US Navy, power plant workers, shipyard workers, steel mill workers, oil refinery workers, factory workers, plumbers, electricians, welders, pipefitters, miners, auto mechanics, machinists, pulp or paper mill workers, printers, firemen, railroad workers and construction workers. In most instances people with mesothelioma were exposed to asbestos in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, or 1980's. http://MesotheliomaVictimsCenter.Com According to the CDC, the states indicated with the highest incidence of mesothelioma include Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Louisiana, Washington, and Oregon. However, based on the calls the Mesothelioma Victims Center receives a US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma could live in any state including New York, Florida, California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, or Alaska. The Mesothelioma Victims Center says, "If you call us at 800-714-0303, we will see to it that you have extremely honest advice about all that is involved in obtaining the best possible mesothelioma compensation. The mesothelioma attorneys we suggest consistently get the best possible financial compensation results for our clients-nationwide." http://MesotheliomaVictimsCenter.Com For more information about mesothelioma please refer to the National Institutes of Health's web site related to this rare form of cancer: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mesothelioma.html Media Contact: Michael Thomas 800-714-0303 [email protected] SOURCE Mesothelioma Victims Center Related Links http://mesotheliomavictimscenter.com WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Eisai Inc. announced today the presentation of results from a new meta-analysis of published clinical trials showing that the effect of adjunctive antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment versus placebo on primary generalized tonic-clonic (PGTC) seizures appears similar between adults and children (greater than or equal to four years old) living with epilepsy. The results were presented at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Annual Meeting in Boston, and were selected by AAN to be included in a "Best Of" epilepsy session. It is important that prescribers consult prescribing information for each of the three products included in the meta-analysis for specific information regarding approved age groups, and dosing and administration. The systematic meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the feasibility of extrapolating AED efficacy data from published clinical trials conducted in adults to pediatric patients with PGTC seizures. The meta-analysis examined median percent reduction in seizure frequency and the percentage of people whose seizures were reduced by 50 percent or more in seven trials involving adult, adolescent and pediatric patients with PGTC seizures. The seven trials reviewed included one trial in adolescents and children, two in adults and children, two in adolescents and adults, and two in adults-only. The results support the extrapolation of AED efficacy data from adult to pediatric patients (greater than or equal to four years old) with PGTC seizures to predict treatment response. "Given that conducting clinical trials in children with epilepsy is challenging, it is important to explore the value of extrapolating clinical trial data from adult to pediatric patients ages four and older," said Lynn Kramer, MD, Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Medical Officer at Eisai Inc. "We are glad that, based on this meta-analysis, adjunctive AED treatment appears to be similar in adults and children with PGTC seizures and its effect was not dependent on age." Methodology Researchers used the medical search databases EMBASE and Medline to identify more than 500 randomized clinical trials through search criteria that were narrowed to seven eligible trials based on the following criteria: The trial was randomized and placebo-controlled PGTC seizures were clearly defined per trial protocol The trial included at least one of two efficacy measures (median percent change in seizure frequency, or greater than or equal to 50% responder rate) Included in the meta-analysis are the results from a global Phase 3 clinical trial of perampanel (marketed as FYCOMPA CIII) administered as an adjunctive therapy in patients with epilepsy 12 years of age and older with PGTC seizures. FYCOMPA is not indicated for children under the age of 12. About Epilepsy Epilepsy is a medical condition that produces seizures affecting a variety of mental and physical functions. According to the Institute of Medicine, epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, which affects 2.9 million people in the United States. Partial-onset seizures are the most common type of seizure seen in people with epilepsy, accounting for 60 percent of all seizures. Generalized seizures account for approximately 40 percent of all epilepsy, with primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures being one of the most common and severe forms of generalized seizures. About FYCOMPA (perampanel) FYCOMPA (perampanel) is indicated as adjunctive therapy for the treatment of partial-onset seizures with or without secondarily generalized seizures and primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures in patients with epilepsy 12 years of age and older. FYCOMPA is an oral medication and is a selective, non-competitive AMPA (alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid) receptor antagonist. The precise mechanism by which FYCOMPA exerts its antiepileptic effects in humans is unknown. FYCOMPA has been designated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a federally-controlled substance (CIII). Important Safety Information for FYCOMPA (perampanel) CIII WARNING: SERIOUS PSYCHIATRIC AND BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS Serious or life-threatening psychiatric and behavioral adverse reactions including aggression, hostility, irritability, anger, and homicidal ideation and threats have been reported in patients taking FYCOMPA These reactions occurred in patients with and without prior psychiatric history, prior aggressive behavior, or concomitant use of medications associated with hostility and aggression Advise patients and caregivers to contact a healthcare provider immediately if any of these reactions or changes in mood, behavior, or personality that are not typical for the patient are observed while taking FYCOMPA or after discontinuing FYCOMPA Closely monitor patients particularly during the titration period and at higher doses FYCOMPA should be reduced if these symptoms occur and should be discontinued immediately if symptoms are severe or are worsening Serious Psychiatric and Behavioral Reactions In the partial-onset seizures clinical trials, hostility- and aggression-related adverse reactions occurred in 12% and 20% of patients randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 6% of patients in the placebo group. These effects were dose-related and generally appeared within the first 6 weeks of treatment, although new events continued to be observed through more than 37 weeks. These effects in FYCOMPA-treated patients led to dose reduction, interruption, and discontinuation more frequently than placebo-treated patients. The combination of alcohol and FYCOMPA significantly worsened mood and increased anger. Homicidal ideation and/or threat have also been reported postmarketing in patients treated with FYCOMPA. Patients taking FYCOMPA should avoid the use of alcohol. Patients, their caregivers, and families should be informed that FYCOMPA may increase the risk of psychiatric events. Patients should be monitored during treatment and for at least one month after the last dose of FYCOMPA, and especially when taking higher doses and during the initial few weeks of drug therapy (titration period) or at other times of dose increases. Similar serious psychiatric and behavioral events were observed in the primary generalized tonic-clonic (PGTC) seizure clinical trial. Suicidal Behavior and Ideation Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), including FYCOMPA, increase the risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior in patients. Anyone considering prescribing FYCOMPA or any other AED must balance the risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior with the risk of untreated illness. Epilepsy and many other illnesses for which AEDs are prescribed are themselves associated with morbidity and mortality and an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior. Patients, their caregivers, and families should be informed of the risk and advised to monitor and immediately report the emergence or worsening of depression, suicidal thoughts or behavior, thoughts about self-harm and/or any unusual changes in mood or behavior. Should suicidal thoughts and behavior emerge during treatment, consider whether the emergence of these symptoms in any given patient may be related to the illness being treated. Dizziness and Gait Disturbance FYCOMPA caused dose-related increases in events related to dizziness and disturbance in gait or coordination. Dizziness and vertigo were reported in 35% and 47% of patients in the partial-onset seizure trials randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 10% of placebo-treated patients. Gait disturbance related events were reported in 12% and 16% of patients in the partial-onset seizure clinical trials randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 2% of placebo-treated patients. These adverse reactions occurred mostly during the titration phase. These adverse reactions were also observed in the PGTC seizure clinical trial. Somnolence and Fatigue FYCOMPA caused dose-dependent increases in somnolence and fatigue-related events. Somnolence was reported in 16% and 18% of patients in the partial-onset seizure trials randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 7% of placebo patients. Fatigue-related events were reported in 12% and 15% of patients in the partial-onset seizure trials randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 5% of placebo patients. These adverse reactions occurred mostly during the titration phase. These adverse reactions were also observed in the PGTC seizure clinical trial. Patients should be advised against engaging in hazardous activities requiring mental alertness, such as operating motor vehicles or dangerous machinery, until the effect of FYCOMPA is known. Falls Falls were reported in 5% and 10% of patients in the partial-onset seizure clinical trials randomized to receive FYCOMPA at doses of 8 mg and 12 mg per day, respectively, compared to 3% of placebo-treated patients. Withdrawal of AEDs A gradual withdrawal is generally recommended with AEDs to minimize the potential of increased seizure frequency, but if withdrawal is a response to adverse events, prompt withdrawal can be considered. Most Common Adverse Reactions The most common adverse reactions in patients receiving FYCOMPA (5% and 1% higher than placebo) include dizziness, somnolence, fatigue, irritability, falls, nausea, weight gain, vertigo, ataxia, headache, vomiting, contusion, abdominal pain, and anxiety. Drug Interactions FYCOMPA may decrease the efficacy of contraceptives containing levonorgestrel. Plasma levels of FYCOMPA were decreased when administered with carbamazepine, phenytoin, or oxcarbazepine. Concomitant use of FYCOMPA with other strong CYP3A inducers (e.g., rifampin, St. John's wort) should be avoided. Multiple dosing of FYCOMPA 12 mg per day enhanced the effects of alcohol on vigilance and alertness, and increased levels of anger, confusion, and depression. These effects may also be seen when FYCOMPA is used in combination with other CNS depressants. Pregnancy and Lactation Physicians are advised to recommend that pregnant patients taking FYCOMPA enroll in the North American Antiepileptic Drug (NAAED) Pregnancy Registry. Caution should be exercised when FYCOMPA is administered to pregnant or nursing women as there are no adequate data on the developmental risk associated with use in pregnant women, and no data on the presence of perampanel in human milk, the effects on the breastfed child, or the effects of the drug on milk production. Hepatic and Renal Impairment Use in patients with severe hepatic or severe renal impairment is not recommended. Dosage adjustments are recommended in patients with mild or moderate hepatic impairment. Use with caution in patients with moderate renal impairment. Drug Abuse and Dependence FYCOMPA is a Schedule III controlled substance and has the potential to be abused and lead to drug dependence. Please see accompanying Full Prescribing Information for FYCOMPA (perampanel), including Boxed WARNING. You are encouraged to report side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1800FDA1088. About Eisai Inc. At Eisai Inc., human health care (hhc) is our goal. We give our first thoughts to patients and their families, and helping to increase the benefits health care provides. As the U.S. pharmaceutical subsidiary of Tokyo-based Eisai Co., Ltd., we have a passionate commitment to patient care that is the driving force behind our efforts to discover and develop innovative therapies to help address unmet medical needs. Eisai is a fully integrated pharmaceutical business that operates in two global business groups: oncology and neurology (dementia-related diseases and neurodegenerative diseases). Each group functions as an end-to-end global business with discovery, development, and marketing capabilities. Our U.S. headquarters, commercial and clinical development organizations are located in New Jersey; our discovery labs are in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania; and our global demand chain organization resides in Maryland and North Carolina. To learn more about Eisai Inc., please visit us at www.eisai.com/US. Contact: Media Inquiries Investor Inquiries Laurie Landau Ivor Macleod Eisai Inc. Eisai Inc. 201-746-2510 201-746-2660 SOURCE Eisai Inc. Related Links http://www.eisai.com "I've had the pleasure of working with Scott during his tenure as CEO of Meta, and I've come to value his focus and vision, as well as his strong financial acumen," said Hammann. "Scott provided positive leadership for Meta during a key transitional moment and led the company into an exciting new phase of growth. We've been lucky to have Scott at the helm and we're glad that he's staying on board to advise us through this transition." Kokotan commented, "It's been an honor to lead Meta through this exciting period of change. I'm very proud of everything we accomplished from both a business and technology perspective. I came to Meta as the company's first CFO before moving into the CEO role. The things that attracted me to the company initially great software, an incredible client roster, a talented team are even stronger today. The company's strategy is working, the management team is strong and it's the right time for me to move on. I firmly believe that with Gregg as CEO, Meta is poised for even greater success." Meta's flagship product, Workgroups DaVinci, is an award-winning marketing resource management solution used by hundreds of the world's leading brands. The company's latest release, ProofMe, is a lightweight proofing and annotation tool that allows small teams and solo creatives to gather real-time feedback on creative files. Hammann joined Meta's board in 2016 as the Chairman, bringing deep experience in successful president and CEO roles for an array of global companies. From 2003 - 2007 he was President and CEO of publicly traded Nautilus Inc., later becoming Chairman, where he repositioned the company and led them from near bankruptcy to the most profitable company in the fitness industry. Previously, Hammann held leadership positions at Levi Strauss & Company, The Coca-Cola Company, Famous Footwear, The Rayovac Corporation, and Procter & Gamble. In 2007, Hammann started his own consulting firm, Action Advisors, advising major Fortune 500 companies including Disney, Microsoft, and Walmart on corporate strategy and serving as an acting CEO for three separate companies. Meta Board member and President and CEO of the Entrepreneurial Development Center, Curt Nelson, commented, "The board and I have the utmost confidence in Gregg and Meta's leadership team to lead the business and continue our strong performance. We're very excited to support Gregg as he leads the company to the next stage of its growth." About MetaCommunications Meta is a pioneer in the field of marketing resource and digital project management. Meta's industry-leading products like Workgroups DaVinci, Approval Manager and ProofMe power the work of thousands of teams around the world at companies such as Diageo, Ralph Lauren, Crate & Barrel, IKEA, 3M, Sony, Allstate, Merck, and more. SOURCE MetaCommunications Inc. LODI, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael David Winery announced today the purchase of a historic Geyserville winery, tasting room, and vineyards. Originally constructed in 1982 by the Lyeth family, the winery was most recently owned and operated by Silver Oak Cellars from 1992 to 2017, who will move to a new Alexander Valley production facility in June. The acquisition, which includes 12 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards within Sonoma's Alexander Valley AVA, expands Michael David Winery's presence in California's prestigious North Coast wine region. This marks the biggest acquisition by Michael David Winery to date and demonstrates its continued dedication to the North Coast and quality grape growing. Michael David Winery has sourced fruit from the North Coast for years as part of their growing wine program. "Even though our roots are in Lodi, quality fruit from the North Coast region has always played an important role as blending components to our wines," says Kevin Phillips, Vice President of Operations at Michael David Winery. "Having the ability to make these North Coast lots from harvest to glass adds another level of control and quality assurance to our finished wines. Being 6th generation Lodi growers, we see the North Coast as similar farming traditions and values. For that reason we are even more excited to be an active contributor to the community." Director of Winemaking for Michael David Winery, Adam Mettler, will oversee operations and management for the Geyserville facility. Alexander Valley's Munselle Vineyards has been contracted to manage the property's vineyard. Like the Phillips, the Munselle family is a multi-generational farming operation with deep roots in its local community. "I have known Kevin and the Phillips family for quite a while and I look forward to working with such a strong family winery and vineyard business, one that shares similar ideas of community and sustainability," said Bret Munselle, Partner and General Manager of Munselle Vineyards. "They will be a great addition to the Alexander Valley and the Sonoma County wine business." Zepponi & Company served as the exclusive financial advisor on the sale, the terms of which were not disclosed. No brands were included in the transaction. Michael David Winery, producers of such brands as The 7 Deadly Zins, Freakshow, Petite Petit and Earthquake, is owned by the Phillips family, who have built their Lodi winery into one of the fastest growing wineries in the United States. The Phillips brothers released their first commercial wine in 1984 under the Phillips Vineyards label after years of growing grapes for other wineries. Now celebrating more than 30 years as a bonded winery, Michael David Winery has over 800 acres of vineyards in the Lodi Appellation and prides itself on meticulous farming practices and sustainable wine grape growing, which result in superior quality in the bottle. Located one mile east of Interstate 5 on HWY 12 in Lodi, CA, Michael David Winery wines regularly take top awards and gain recognition nationwide. For more information, visit the Michael David Winery's Facebook page at facebook.com/MichaelDavidWinery, Instagram page at @MichaelDavidwinery and on Twitter at @MDWinery. SOURCE Michael David Winery Related Links http://www.MichaelDavidWinery.com DALLAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Alerian announced today that Midcoast Energy Partners (NYSE: MEP) will be removed from the Alerian Small Cap MLP Index (AMSI) in a special rebalancing. Special rebalancings are triggered by corporate actions such as mergers, bankruptcies, and liquidations. MEP has ceased to trade due to its go-private transaction with Enbridge Inc (TSX: ENB). The rebalancing will take place today after market close. The index will be rebalanced in accordance with its existing methodology. Constituent additions to and deletions from the index do not reflect an opinion by Alerian on the investment merits of the respective securities. About the Alerian Small Cap MLP Index The Alerian Small Cap MLP Index is a composite of small-cap energy Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs). The capitalization-weighted index, which represents approximately 10% of total market capitalization, is disseminated real-time on a price-return basis (AMSI) and on a total-return basis (AMSIX). About Alerian Alerian equips investors to make informed decisions about Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and energy infrastructure. Its benchmarks, including the flagship Alerian MLP Index (AMZ), are widely used by industry executives, investment professionals, research analysts, and national media to analyze relative performance. As of March 31, 2017, over $17 billion is directly tied to the Alerian Index Series through exchange-traded funds and notes, separately managed accounts, and structured products. For more information, including index values and constituents, research content, and announcements regarding rebalancings, please visit alerian.com. SOURCE Alerian Related Links http://www.alerian.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The global millimeter wave (MMW) technology market is estimated to reach USD 8.69 billion by 2025, according to the new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Millimeter waves are radio frequencies operating in the electromagnetic spectrum of 30 GHz to 300GHz, also known as Extremely High-Frequency (EHF) range. As the millimeter waves are capable of transmitting large amounts of data with greater efficiency, they hold a major application across the telecommunication industry. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160524/371361LOGO ) Currently, fiber-optic cables are one of the best transmission mediums being used, extensively, for data transmission. However, the fiber optics technology is extremely costly and the network is highly tedious to install, posing the millimeter wave technology as an appealing alternative for the fiber-optics medium. The millimeter waves technology market is highly consolidated, in terms of applications and components, where it is extensively used. The major application areas of the technology include telecommunication, military & defense, medical, and security services. The advancements in the telecom industry are leading to the evolution of next-generation technologies such as 5G. Owing to the demand for higher bandwidths in the fifth-generation technology, millimeter waves are expected to play a prominent role in the development of 5G technology. As the market is experiencing a shift toward the adoption of fifth-generation technology, the millimeter wave technology market is thus anticipated to grow, significantly, during the forecast period. Moving further, the increasing focus of the governments and international security authorities toward curbing down the global threats, looming due to the increasing terrorist activities, such as plane hijacking and bomb-blasts, is leading to the adoption of enhanced security measures. These measures prominently include the adoption of millimeter wave scanners across international airports and other crowded places in the urban areas. The increasing demand of MMW scanners for security purposes is expected to boost the MMW technology market. The emerging markets of the Asia Pacific and South America & MEA regions are the expected to be the potential markets capable of offering strong growth opportunities for the technology, owing to the increasing awareness of security measures. Intensive R&D activities and investments from the private and publics sectors, coupled with government funding & initiatives, are paving way for improved technologies. Additionally, the increasing use of MMW in the telecom sector and small cell backhaul applications are projected to be the key driving factors responsible for the overall industry growth. North America contributed for the majority of the market share of more than 45.0% in 2015. The massive market share across the region can be accredited to the extensive adoption of the MMW technology in several sectors. However, the Asia Pacific region is expected to exhibit the remarkable growth over the estimated duration. The millimeter waves are prone to environmental conditions such as rainfall, humidity, and fog, as their propagation characteristics are hampered by these conditions. Besides, range limitations and line-of-sight communication are few other factors that may hinder the applications of the technology. However, the obstructions hindering the growth of the market are expected to overcome with time, lowering their impact, owing to the intense R&D being carried out by the researchers and the key players in the MMW technology area. Browse full research report with TOC on "Millimeter Wave (MMW) Technology Market Analysis By Product (Telecom Equipment, Imaging & Scanning And Radar & Satellite Communication Systems), By Component, Application, Frequency Band, & Segment Forecasts, 2014 - 2025" at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/millimeter-wave-mmw-technology-market Further key findings from the report suggest: The millimeter wave technology is gaining attraction, owing to its ability to transmit large amounts of data with greater efficiency Furthermore, the increasing use of MMW technology in small-cell backhaul applications and the upcoming 5G technology are expected to drive the market, worldwide The radar & satellite communication systems segment is projected to dominate the market with the fastest growing CAGR of beyond 42.0% during the forecast period As the fiber-optics technology is a costly medium for data transmission, millimeter waves are gaining traction, owing to their lower cost and equally efficient technology The E-band frequency segment is poised to witness the highest growth rate, owing to its extensive applications in telecommunication equipment and products The Asia Pacific market is anticipated to undergo a considerable shift on account of the increasing telecommunication and military & defense applications in countries such as China , and Japan . market is anticipated to undergo a considerable shift on account of the increasing telecommunication and military & defense applications in countries such as , and . The prominent players in the millimeter wave industry include Siklu Communication Ltd., Sage Millimeter, Inc., Keysight Technologies, Inc., and Bridgewave Communications, Inc. Browse related reports by Grand View Research: Video on Demand ( VoD) Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/video-on-demand-vod-market Smart Weapons Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-weapons-market Mobile Unified Communications Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/mobile-unified-communications-market Automotive Natural Gas Vehicles Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-natural-gas-vehicles-market Grand View Research has segmented the MMW Technology market based on product, component, application, frequency band, and region: MMW Technology Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) Telecommunication Equipment Imaging & Scanning Systems Radar & Satellite Communication Systems MMW Technology Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) Antennas & Transceivers Amplifiers Oscillators Control Devices Frequency Converters Passive Components Others MMW Technology Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) Telecommunications Military & Defense Automotive & Transport Healthcare Electronics & Semiconductor Security MMW Technology Frequency Band Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) V-Band E-Band Other Frequency Bands MMW Technology Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe UK Germany Asia Pacific China Japan South America and The Middle East & Africa (MEA) Read Our Blog: Millimeter wave (MMW) technology industry outlook: Increasing demand from the bandwidth-intensive applications to propel the market growth About Grand View Research Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare. Contact: Sherry James Corporate Sales Specialist, USA Grand View Research, Inc Phone: +1-415-349-0058 Toll Free: +1-888-202-9519 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.grandviewresearch.com SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc. SINGAPORE, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TokenCard, the first debit card powered by smart contracts, is about to do their initial token sale. Monolith Studio, the creators of TokenCard will, for the first time, bring the VISA payments network to Ethereum. This will allow token holders to use Ether as well as other ERC20 tokens to purchase items anywhere that accepts VISA debit cards. Monolith Studio TokenCard's 'token creation' phase will mark the release of a new ERC20 token, called TKN, on May 2, 2017. TKN holders have a pro-rata share in an accumulation of different Ethereum tokens that accrue to the 'TKN Asset Contract'. To download the whitepaper and register for updates, please visit the TokenCard website. TokenCard is a project by Monolith Studio, a Web3 startup bringing Ethereum to the legacy world. "We are witnessing the birth of the biggest shake-up in financial history with the introduction of the Ethereum Economy," said Mel Gelderman, creator of TokenCard. "TokenCard is a platform that brings this new kind of economy to the general public through a clever trifecta of technology." "Users choose a Contract Wallet rather than having to deposit funds outside of their control. TokenCard VISA debit cards draw funds from this contract wallet that support Ether and almost any ERC20 token. Users can use the Token App to operate their Contract Wallet and manage their TokenCard, giving them a top-tier mobile banking experience that adds unique features into the mix like multi-asset spending." "For example, users can pay for their afternoon lunch with Ethereum tokens and can even split the bill between for example 30% DGX, 20% REP, and 50% ETH all this while remaining in full control of their assets." Aside from providing a solution for the underlying Ethereum community, TokenCard is uniquely equipped to improve upon the entire spectrum of regular debit card and banking services. Markets like international remittances and asset management are ripe for innovation using Ethereum technology, and TokenCard is well-positioned to reach these new frontiers as a revolutionary financial solution. TokenCard has already partnered with Digix Global to create gold backed debit cards. With more exciting partnerships to be released in the near future, TokenCard is positioning themselves to be a leader in Ethereum transfers to the fiat world. While initially providing current token holders with payment utility, the core vision of TokenCard is to build a product that anyone can use. With the accompanying Token app alongside the debit card, regular users will have a familiar platform to access and engage in the Ethereum ecosystem. "TokenCard makes every token better, letting users spend supported tokens with just a swipe at VISA merchants worldwide," said Peter Vessenes, founder of New Alchemy. "It has unique benefits for the remittance market, and the TKN token being issued is designed to let all TKN holders benefit from broad market exposure to the token economy. This is a great, great offering and we're excited to be part of it." To download the whitepaper and register for updates, please visit the TokenCard website. About Monolith Studio Monolith Studio was founded by Mel Gelderman and David Hoggard. Monolith Studio is a Web3 venture production studio that is exploring ways to realize the potential of Ethereum. Monolith's first product, TokenCard, combines Ethereum smart contracts and VISA payments. For more information, please visit Monolith Ventures. Learn more about TokenCard at http://tokencard.io More information about Monolith Studio available at http://monolith.ventures Media Contact Contact Name: Mel Gelderman Contact Email: [email protected] Location: Singapore Monolith Studio is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest Related Links Bitcoin PR Buzz Monolith Studio - TokenCard This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Monolith Studio PITTSBURGH, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of National Cancer Control Month, global safety equipment manufacturer MSA Safety Incorporated (NYSE: MSA) today announced that the company has established a three-year sustaining partnership with non-profit Firefighter Cancer Support Network (FCSN) to continue to raise awareness of the cancer risks faced by firefighters. Since 2005, FCSN has provided assistance and one-on-one mentoring to thousands of cancer-stricken firefighters and their families. They also deliver extensive training about firefighter cancer awareness and prevention nationwide. To aid in these support, awareness and prevention efforts, MSA will donate $50,000 over the life of the partnership. "MSA's mission is to see to it that men and women live and work in safety and health, and that speaks to the heart of exactly why we made the decision to partner with the Firefighter Cancer Support Network," said William M. Lambert, Chairman, President and CEO of MSA. "We want to do what we can to help firefighters and their families. And while there is more awareness now of their heightened cancer risk, many people still do not completely comprehend how widespread the effects really are. So if our partnership prompts one person to take the proper proactive steps for prevention, we will consider it a success." Mr. Lambert explained that firefighters, the fire service at large and researchers are still expanding their awareness of the magnitude of the challenge and ways to address it. These efforts include changes in education, training, operations, medical screenings, and personal accountability. "Helping to keep firefighters safe is what we do at MSA," continued Mr. Lambert. "In response to this increased awareness, MSA is dedicated to supporting and promoting firefighter cancer prevention directives and initiatives, and our hope is that our partnership with FCSN will help to support continued firefighter education and awareness." In addition to the official partnership, MSA today launched a special campaign at the annual Fire Department Instructor's Conference in Indianapolis, Ind., to raise awareness of the steps firefighters can take to reduce their risk. Called #KeepYourMaskOn, the campaign encourages firefighters to take responsibility and help protect their health by wearing their mask from initial attack through overhaul a preventative measure that has been identified to reduce firefighters' exposure to carcinogens. While this action alone does not eliminate all risk, it is a significant safety measure that should be adhered to. The company also suggests that firefighters review additional cancer prevention practices as prescribed by the Firefighter Cancer Support Network. About MSA Established in 1914, MSA Safety Incorporated is the global leader in the development, manufacture and supply of safety products that protect people and facility infrastructures. Many MSA products integrate a combination of electronics, mechanical systems and advanced materials to protect users against hazardous or life-threatening situations. The company's comprehensive product line is used by workers around the world in a broad range of markets, including the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, the fire service, the construction industry, mining and the military. MSA's core products include self-contained breathing apparatus, fixed gas and flame detection systems, portable gas detection instruments, industrial head protection products, fire and rescue helmets, and fall protection devices. With 2016 revenues of $1.15 billion, MSA employs approximately 4,300 people worldwide. The company is headquartered north of Pittsburgh in Cranberry Township, Pa., and has manufacturing operations in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. With more than 40 international locations, MSA realizes approximately half of its revenue from outside North America. For more information visit MSA's web site at www.MSAsafety.com. About Firefighter Cancer Support Network FCSN is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2005 by Los Angeles County Firefighter/Paramedic Mike Dubron, a survivor of stage IV colon cancer. Today, FCSN's objective is to provide timely assistance to all fire and EMS personnel and their family members who have been diagnosed with cancer. FCSN offers unique expertise through its national network of peer-support mentors. FCSN also delivers firefighter cancer awareness, prevention, and early-detection training nationwide. FCSN's key supporters and partners include the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), Firefighter Close Calls (FFCC), and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF), among many other respected fire-service organizations. FCSN is a founding member of the Fire Service Occupational Cancer Alliance. Now in its 12th year, FCSN has active operations in 39 states. FCSN relies on charitable donations from individuals, families, charitable organizations, and corporate sponsors to fund its unique firefighter cancer support, awareness, and prevention programs. FCSN does not endorse any product or service. For more information, visit firefightercancersupport.org. SOURCE MSA Related Links http://www.msasafety.com HOUSTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Media are invited to hear about progress on crewed flight hardware for NASA's Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) at two contractor facilities May 1 and 2 in Rockford, Illinois. Media will also be able to interview NASA, Lockheed Martin, Ingersoll Machine Tools and UTC Aerospace Systems program officials. Participants will include: Concept of the Orion spacecraft on NASA's first integrated flight with the Space Launch System. Orion will travel farther than any spacecraft built for humans. Credits: NASA (PRNewsfoto/NASA) William Hill , deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development in Washington , deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development in Rex Walheim , astronaut, NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston , astronaut, NASA's Johnson Space Center in Mark Kirasich , Orion program manager, NASA Johnson , Orion program manager, NASA Johnson Larry Price , deputy Orion program manager, Lockheed Martin , deputy Orion program manager, Lockheed Martin Tino Oldani , president, Ingersoll Machine Tools , president, Ingersoll Machine Tools David Imbrogno , general manager, UTC Aerospace Systems U.S. media interested in participating must contact Laura Rochon at [email protected] or 281-483-0229 by 12 noon EDT on Friday, April 28. International media accreditation for this event is closed. Orion and SLS are two of the foundational elements of NASA's new exploration systems that will send humans on a series of missions beyond the moon. NASA's deep-space exploration programs are supported by thousands of large and small businesses in 48 states and Puerto Rico, including more than 200 companies across the Great Lakes region. The first integrated flight test of Orion and SLS will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a three-week uncrewed mission beyond the moon and back. A second mission will follow with the system's first crewed mission, which will take humans farther in space than we have ever traveled before. Ingersoll Machine Tools, a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, is currently manufacturing four of the seven major parts of the Orion spacecraft structure for the first flight with crew. Several components of the spacecraft will ship from Illinois to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans this summer for welding and assembly. UTC Aerospace Systems is a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin and supplies several power management, environmental controls and life support systems for the Orion spacecraft. For the SLS Program, the company builds auxiliary power units and hydraulic systems for Boeing and Orbital ATK, and supports SLS work for Aerojet Rocketdyne in Rosemount, Illinois. Get information, photos and videos of NASA's deep space exploration systems at: www.nasa.gov/journeytomars NASA Johnson Space Center news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to [email protected]. In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type "subscribe hsfnews" (no quotes). This will add the email address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list. The system will reply with a confirmation via E-mail of each subscription. Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail. SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov PHILADELPHIA and DENVER, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Jefferson Health in Philadelphia and National Jewish Health, the nation's leading respiratory hospital, based in Denver, Colorado, announced an agreement to create the Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute in Philadelphia. The Institute is enabled by the continuing support of the Jane and Leonard Korman Family Foundation. The collaboration leverages the strengths of each organization and will define best practices for treatment and research of pulmonary and related diseases including COPD, asthma, interstitial lung disease, sarcoidosis and infectious respiratory diseases. The Respiratory Institute is expected to open this summer, with additional locations anticipated across Jefferson Health's regional campuses. The Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute in Philadelphia will leverage the combined strengths of National Jewish Health and Jefferson Health to research and treat respiratory and related diseases. (Left to right) Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health; Jane and Leonard Korman; Michael Salem, MD, President and CEO of National Jewish Health. One in four Americans suffers from serious chronic or life threatening respiratory diseases, which cause millions of deaths, send patients to emergency rooms, and severely impact quality of life each and every day. National Jewish Health is the leading and only institution dedicated to research and treatment of respiratory disease, treating both adults and children. Jefferson Health is reimagining health care for the greater Philadelphia region and southern New Jersey, with 23,000 people dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate care for patients and discovering new treatments and therapies to define the future of care. Together, Jefferson Health and National Jewish Health bring an extraordinary level of expertise in addressing complex respiratory illnesses. "This is a model for how organizations can work together to deliver more value to our patients by providing the right care in the communities we serve," said Stephen K. Klasko, M.D., MBA, President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health. "Our partnership will transform the way pulmonary care is delivered, and we are looking forward to being part of a growing collaborative dedicated to the treatment and research of pulmonary and related diseases." "Teaming up with a visionary health care organization like Jefferson Health extends the extraordinary respiratory network National Jewish Health is creating with world class partners," said Michael Salem, M.D., President and CEO of National Jewish Health. "This new relationship and the physicians and researchers who will be working together, will help many more patients in the Philadelphia area and throughout the Northeast." "My wife, Jane, and I know what it's like to live with a disease that threatens something as fundamental to life as your breathing," said Leonard Korman. "It's been our dream to help provide a premier resource for respiratory health for the community. Thanks to Jefferson and National Jewish Health, it's becoming a reality." The Respiratory Institute will provide a unique and deep patient care experience tailored for Jefferson Health. The Respiratory Institute also will focus on a research network, bringing together investigators to advance care for complex respiratory diseases. In addition, the Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute will be integrated with the Respiratory Institute that National Jewish Health and Mount Sinai in New York established in 2014. Together, these three entities will collaborate on research, clinical trials and other programs that will serve patients throughout the Northeast in an unparalleled respiratory network. "Many people take breathing for granted, until they can't. Respiratory diseases such as asthma and COPD affect millions of people in the United States," said Richard Martin, M.D., Chair of Medicine at National Jewish Health. "Through this collaboration, we look forward to extending our work in providing multidisciplinary, outcomes-driven specialty programs that are based in a tradition of clinical and research excellence. The work we do makes a difference in people's lives, and we are excited to come together to reach more people." "The Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute will give us the opportunity to improve the lives of thousands of patients with respiratory diseases by offering customized treatment protocols and breakthrough research," said Gregory Kane, M.D., the Jane and Leonard Korman Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Jefferson. "We are grateful to Jane, Leonard and their family for their vision and support that will allow us to move forward on this journey with our colleagues at National Jewish Health who bring exceptional expertise and experience to this critical area." About Jefferson Jefferson, through its academic and clinical entities of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, including Abington Health and Aria Health, is reimagining health care for the greater Philadelphia region and southern New Jersey. Jefferson has 23,000 people dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, educating the health professionals of tomorrow, and discovering new treatments and therapies to define the future of care. With a university and hospital that date back to 1824, today Jefferson is comprised of six colleges, nine hospitals, 34 outpatient and urgent care locations, and a multitude of physician practices throughout the region, serving more than 100,000 inpatients, 373,000 emergency patients and 2.2 million outpatients annually. About National Jewish Health National Jewish Health is the leading respiratory hospital in the nation. Founded 118 years ago as a nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health today is the only facility in the world dedicated exclusively to groundbreaking medical research and treatment of patients with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders. Patients and families come to National Jewish Health from around the world to receive cutting-edge, comprehensive and coordinated care. To learn more, visit www.njhealth.org. SOURCE National Jewish Health Related Links http://www.njhealth.org VANCOUVER, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Nevsun Resources Ltd. (TSX:NSU)(NYSE MKT:NSU) (Nevsun or the Company) is pleased to report its financial and operating results for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Unless otherwise noted, with the exception of earnings per share and realized price and cost per pound figures, all financial results are in millions of US dollars. First quarter 2017 highlights Sold 66.5 million pounds of contained zinc in concentrate at C1 cash costs (1) of $0.89 per payable pound sold of per payable pound sold Produced 3.3 million pounds of copper in concentrate and 51.9 million pounds of zinc in concentrate Zinc recovery improved to 71.0% during Q1 2017 from 63.6% during Q4 2016 Announced a significant increase in resources at the Bisha Mine Completed the geophysics survey at Bisha, generating promising new targets Completed the planned infill drilling program for the Timok Upper Zone Approved a new exploration program targeting additional high-grade mineralization at Timok Ended period with working capital of $190 million , including $167 million of cash and cash equivalents , including of cash and cash equivalents Declared quarterly dividend of $0.01 per share Timok Project Review Q1 2017 Q4 2016 Q3 2016 Q1 2016 Spending Upper Zone $ 7,668 $ 5,924 $ 2,785 $ - Spending Lower Zone 2,914 2,022 1,013 - "Timok remains the Company's number one priority to add shareholder value. We continue to achieve our key milestones including completion of infill drilling and progressing technical studies in support of the Timok project pre-feasibility study. We are on-track to commence decline development during 2017 and remain on-track to deliver the pre-feasibility study," stated Chief Executive Officer, Cliff Davis. "We are making continued improvements at Bisha which is translating into improvements to our operating income quarter over quarter," stated Cliff Davis, "With copper sales expected during Q2 2017 and less bulk concentrate, we expect even further improvements for the remainder of 2017. We are also pleased with higher than planned quarterly zinc and copper production, which means the Company is on track to meet annual production guidance. We continue to make incremental progress on all key performance indicators." Financial Review Q1 2017 Q4 2016 Q3 2016 Q1 2016 Revenue (millions) $ 71.6 $ 36.2 $ 22.9 $ 92.4 Operating income (loss) (millions) 11.7 (4.9) 17.5 32.9 Net income (loss) (millions) 2.9 (8.5) 6.0 15.6 Working capital (millions) 190.3 201.1 206.9 483.3 Copper price realized, per payable pound sold $ - $ - $ 2.10 $ 2.20 Zinc price realized, per payable pound sold 1.28 1.17 - C1 cash cost per payable copper pound sold(1) - - 0.72 1.12 C1 cash cost per payable zinc pound sold(1) 0.89 1.06 - (1)C1 cash cost per payable pound sold is a non-GAAP measure see page 14 of the Q1 2017 MD&A for a discussion of non-GAAP measure. Operations Review Q1 2017 Q4 2016 Q3 2016 Q1 2016 Mining Ore mined, tonnes(1) 651,000 670,000 672,000 1,337,000 Waste mined, tonnes 3,114,000 2,445,000 2,446,000 2,028,000 Strip ratio, (using tonnes) 4.8 3.6 3.6 1.5 Processing Primary Ore Ore Milled, tonnes 599,000 579,000 510,000 - Zinc feed grade, % 5.5 5.7 5.8 - Copper feed grade, % 0.9 0.8 1.0 - Recovery, % of zinc(2) 71.0 63.6 59.1 - Recovery, % of copper(3)(4) 26.8 - - - Zinc concentrate grade, %(5) 39.4 38.8 41.3 - Copper concentrate grade, %(4) 21.6 - - - Zinc in concentrate produced, millions of pounds 51.9 46.5 38.6 - Zinc in concentrate produced, tonnes 23,500 21,000 17,500 - Copper in concentrate produced, millions of pounds(4) 3.3 - - - Copper in concentrate produced, tonnes(4) 1,500 - - - Payable zinc in concentrate sold, millions of pounds 52.9 35.2 21.2 - Payable zinc in concentrate sold, tonnes 24,000 16,000 9,600 - Processing Supergene Ore(6) Ore Milled, tonnes - - - 584,000 Copper feed grade, % - - - 3.1 Recovery, % of copper - - - 87.0 Copper concentrate grade, % - - - 23.0 Copper in concentrate produced, millions of pounds - - - 34.2 Copper in concentrate produced, tonnes - - - 15,500 Payable copper in concentrate sold, millions of pounds - - 0.8 34.9 Payable copper in concentrate sold, tonnes - - 300 15,900 (1) Ore tonnes mined for the three months ended March 31, 2017 included 594,000 tonnes of primary ore (Q1 2016 605,000) and 57,000 tonnes of supergene ore (Q1 2016 732,000). (2) This represents the overall combined zinc recovery from both the copper and zinc flotation circuits. (3) This represents the copper recovery from the copper flotation circuit only, and excludes copper recovered to bulk concentrate. (4) Operating statistics related to recovery as a percentage of copper, copper concentrate grade, and copper in concentrate produced, were not meaningful during Q4 2016. (5) Represents combined concentrate grade for both zinc and bulk concentrates. (6) The supergene phase of the Bisha mine ceased on June 2, 2016. Conference call details The Company will hold a conference call on Friday, April 28, 2017, at 8AM Vancouver / 11AM Toronto, New York / 4PM London, to discuss the Q1 2017 results. Please call in at least five minutes prior to the conference call start time to ensure prompt access to the conference. Dial in details are as follows: North America: 1 888-390-0546 / +1 416-764-8688 / +1 778-383-7413 UK: 0800 652 2435 (toll free) Other International: +1 416-764-8688 / +1 778-383-7413 The conference call will be available for replay until May 5, 2017, by calling 1 888-390-0541 / +1 416-764-8677 and entering passcode 866548 #. About Nevsun Resources Ltd. Nevsun Resources Ltd. is the 100% owner of the high-grade copper-gold Timok Upper Zone in Serbia and 60% owner of the high-grade copper-zinc Bisha Mine in Eritrea. Nevsun is well positioned with a strong debt-free balance sheet to grow shareholder value through advancing the Timok project to production. Forward Looking Statements The above contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "hopes", "intends", "estimated", "potential", "possible" and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions or results "will", "may", "could" or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are statements concerning the Company's current beliefs, plans and expectations about the future, including but not limited to statements and information made concerning: statements relating to the business, prospects and future activities of, and developments related to the Company, anticipated dividends, goals, strategies, future growth, planned future acquisitions and explorations activities, the adequacy of financial resources and other events or conditions that may occur in the future, and are inherently uncertain. The actual achievements of the Company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, the risks that: (i) any of the assumptions in the historical resource estimates turn out to be incorrect, incomplete, or flawed in any respect; (ii) the methodologies and models used to prepare the resource and reserve estimates either underestimate or overestimate the resources or reserves due to hidden or unknown conditions, (iii) exploration activities or the mine operations are disrupted or suspended due to acts of god, internal conflicts in the country of Eritrea or Serbia, unforeseen government actions or other events; (iv) the Company experiences the loss of key personnel; (v) the Company's operations or exploration activities are adversely affected by other political or military, or terrorist activities; (vi) the Company becomes involved in any material disputes with any of its key business partners, suppliers or customers; (vii) the Company is subjected to any hostile takeover or other unsolicited attempts to acquire control of the Company; (viii) the Company is subject to any adverse ruling in any of the pending litigation to which it is a party; (ix) the timing and success of improving the quality of the copper circuit product by resolving the metallurgical challenges from the variable ore materials being processed to produce concentrate from the copper circuit; * the effect on resource or reserve estimates due to the possible inability to resolve the metallurgical challenges on the variable ore materials being processed on a timely basis or at all; and other risks are more fully described in the Company's Annual Information Form for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, which are incorporated herein by reference. The Company's forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made and the Company assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by law. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements and our business can be found in our Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2016, which is available on the Company's website (www.nevsun.com), filed under our profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on EDGAR (www.sec.gov) under cover of Form 40-F. NEVSUN RESOURCES LTD. "Cliff T. Davis" Cliff T. Davis President & Chief Executive Officer SOURCE Nevsun Resources Ltd. The Academy presents its Visionary Award each year in conjunction with its annual legislative visit to Capitol Hill. This honor recognizes federal legislators for important efforts to advocate for enhancing and preserving access to quality eye care in the United States. Sens. Collins and McCaskill have worked to ensure continued access to compounded and repackaged medications. These are treatments administered by ophthalmologists physicians who specialize in medical and surgical eye care to patients who suffer from wet age-related macular degeneration and other sight-threatening diseases. Sens. Collins and McCaskill are also prominent investigators of sudden drug price increases that compromise patient access. Sen. Schumer and Reps. DeGette and Sinema were instrumental in a joint effort in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to compel the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to reconsider adopting a flawed Medicare Part B drug demonstration. If adopted, CMS' proposal would have jeopardized Medicare patients' access to critical eye care treatments. Sen. Grassley and Reps. Roskam and Lewis used their Medicare oversight roles to ensure the sustainability of ophthalmology in rural communities. They pressured CMS into reconsidering a severe Medicare reimbursement rate cut for glaucoma and retinal detachment procedures. Their efforts preserved the continued availability of these sight-threatening treatments that disproportionately impact minority and rural communities across the country. Rep. Matsui is leading efforts to improve the federal program that governs the use of electronic health records for Medicare patients. Her work ensures that physicians have fewer administrative barriers that distract from their interactions with their patients. "The nation's ophthalmologists are proud of our congressional lawmakers who are working to ensure that patients in every community have timely access to critical treatments for eye diseases," said Cynthia A. Bradford, M.D., president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "The Academy is committed to fostering these partnerships within Congress to ensure that our patients can receive the highest-quality medical and surgical eye care." The Academy is the leading voice for the profession of ophthalmology in Washington. The organization takes an active role in working with Congress and government agencies on policy issues that affect how medical and surgical care is provided in the United States. About the American Academy of Ophthalmology The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons. A global community of 32,000 medical doctors, we protect sight and empower lives by setting the standards for ophthalmic education and advocating for our patients and the public. We innovate to advance our profession and to ensure the delivery of the highest-quality eye care. Our EyeSmart program provides the public with the most trusted information about eye health. For more information, visit www.aao.org. SOURCE American Academy of Ophthalmology Related Links http://www.aao.org ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (NRCC) will hold a Carpentry Training Center Open House on Friday, April 28th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. to discuss opportunities and skills training for Rochester-based individuals who are seeking to start a career in the carpentry industry. The open house, held at the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters' Training Facility (21 Jetview Drive, Rochester, New York), will host 20 state and local elected officials along with area contractors. The Honorable State Assemblyman Harry Bronson (Assembly District-138) and the Honorable State Senator Joseph Robach (Senate District-56) will address the attendees of the open house regarding the need to create more training and career opportunities for carpenter apprentices in the Rochester region. Additional guest speakers include: Michael Cinquanti, NRCC Director of Policy and Planning and James Hayes, NRCC New York Apprenticeship Director. Cinquanti and Hayes will highlight NRCC's initiatives and specialty programs to promote apprenticeships in construction. "At the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters, we work each and every day to ensure that more hardworking individuals have the education and skillset to become carpenters and are provided the opportunity to start a lifelong career as a union carpenter," said David Haines, NRCC's Northwestern New York Regional Manager. "This event will highlight opportunities, skills and training for carpenters in the Rochester area." The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters offers skills training throughout New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania for carpenter apprentices to hone their craft and enhance their knowledge in the field. NRCC's Apprenticeship program, is a 4-5 year accredited training curriculum that requires individuals to annually complete approximately 140 hours in the classroom and 1,000-2,000 hours of on-the-job training with skilled union carpenters. Apprenticeship specializations include: general carpentry; cabinet making; flooring; pile driving/dock building; millwrights; and trade show. NRCC training centers are located in New York (Elma, Hauppage, Horseheads, Rock Tavern, Rochester and Albany), New Jersey (Kenilworth and Hammonton), Delaware (New Castle and Georgetown), Maryland (Baltimore, Upper Marlboro) and Pennsylvania (Allentown and Philadelphia). NRCC also offers a Pre-Apprenticeship program for men and women who previously would not consider carpentry as a career path. On May 1st, NRCC will launch classes in Rochester for its Sisters in the Brotherhood program, a six-week training course that prepares women to become carpenter apprentices. The 40-hour per week course trains women carpenters in a variety of in-class curriculum and hands-on training in mathematics, occupational safety and hazards, hand/power tool training and job-site culture. After successful completion of the program, women carpenters graduate to the NRCC Apprenticeship program. About the NRCC: The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (NRCC) represents nearly 40,000 hardworking men and women in Delaware and New Jersey and portions of Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania. NRCC is one of the largest trade unions on the East Coast. The NRCC equips professional men and women carpenters with the skills, training and quality workmanship that are demanded in today's construction industry. For more information on NRCC, please visit our website: www.northeastcarpenters.org; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NortheastRegionalCouncilofCarpenters; or Twitter: @NRCCarpenters. SOURCE Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (NRCC) Related Links http://www.northeastcarpenters.org Saeed, an American citizen, born in Bristol, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, has seen the challenges immigrants and the children of immigrants face when building their path. She understands why freedom and democracy are important. Driven by a sense of duty and urgency, she was inspired by the recent change in our nation's political climate to participate in the process by running for South Orange's Board of Trustees (town council). Saeed says of her decision to run, "If we want to make change happen, we have to participate. I am not a politician. I am a mother of 3 small children who realized if I want a different world for them, I need to engage in the process. I am a small business owner and entrepreneur who realized if I want to see others like me succeed, I need to engage in the process. I am a proud South Orange resident who realized if I want to help the town reach its' full potential, then I need to engage in the process." South Orange currently has 6 seats on their Board of Trustees. 3 seats are up for election on May 9th. The village currently is a diverse and female driven community with 51% of the population being women and 40% of the population being people of color. The current board is comprised of 5 men and 1 person of color. "Inclusion is important to our society's success. It's scientifically proven that when people from diverse backgrounds and with different thought come together, the group is forced to work harder to find solutions that benefit the whole. They are forced to INNOVATE. I am running for BOT to bring a voice that reflects the amazing diverse thoughts of our town and to bring innovation to our town's problems." Comprised of an all-female senior campaign team, all have senior level careers and a total of 9 children between them. On the team is Saeed, a former retail executive and owner of Nu Interiors, Campaign Manager, Kelly Quirk, a social worker and director of an addiction treatment program, Nina Essel, Campaign Treasurer, a social worker for youth programs, Ritu Pancholy, Strategist and Community Organizer, an attorney, and Colleen Breslin, Volunteer Organizer, an attorney. Says Breslin of why she decided to join the campaign, "Nureed and I bonded over a conversation about how grateful we are to be living in a community as vibrant as South Orange and our collective responsibility to participate in shaping the future, to keep alive its racial, cultural and socioeconomic diversity and to keep pushing for fuller integration. I am struck by her brilliance, her empathy and her energy. She operates in a field BEYOND EGO. In addition, Nureed's years of work with small and large businesses and as a local design entrepreneur offer our community fresh and reasoned insight into SUSTAINABLE development. I had to join her and help." Saeed is running on the platform of "Independent Thought. Innovation. Inclusion." The election is on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017. For more information about Nureed Saeed: https://nureedsaeed.nationbuilder.com/bio SOURCE Nureed Saeed for Board of Trustees Related Links https://nureedsaeed.nationbuilder.com/bio WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- National Education Foundation (NEF), the non-profit leader in K-12 STEM Solutions, and QZAB funding for schools announced today that Martins Ferry City Schools, Ohio, has won the $10,000 NEF 2017 National STEM Leadership Award. Martin Ferry's STEM+ (STEM, Reading, Social Studies, SAT/ACT, CTE, IT, Business, Soft Skills) Academy is funded by the federal QZAB program, with a significant NEF matching grant as mandated by law. NEF has given over $200 million in such matching grants since 2000. Martins Ferry Students navigating a STEM robot Martins Ferry students advanced a grade level in math and reading in 29 and 27 learning hours, respectively a phenomenal achievement, according to NEF's academy partner, the State University of New York (SUNY), the nation's largest university. SUNY evaluates student performance weekly in all NEF-SUNY STEM+ Academies. The Award ceremony will take place at Martins Ferry on May 19, 2017. The Award celebrates the exemplary implementation of the NEF-SUNY STEM+ Academy. According to Martins Ferry Superintendent Jim Fogle, "It is a great honor and privilege to be recognized with an award of this magnitude from the prestigious National Education Foundation. We are fortunate to have such a strong partnership with NEF and SUNY, and look forward to promoting our STEM+ program statewide." NEF provides funds and services to create a holistic STEM solution consisting of three critical elements 1. Academic via personalized learning mapped to every state's standards, 2. Application through STEM contests with prizes up to $50,000, and 3. Hands-on programs such as robotics. See the video to learn more about NEF-SUNY STEM+ Academy programs. NEF Chairman Dr. Appu Kuttan, an acclaimed global expert in STEM, states, "NEF is concerned that U.S. is ranked 31st out of 35 countries in math globally. Our world-class STEM+ Academies help students to improve their STEM+ skills and be better prepared for 21st-century jobs and college. Towards that end, NEF just launched a $100 million STEM+ Grant initiative to help a million students nationally." Martins Ferry's success stands out as a clear example of how to cost-effectively improve student achievement by involving and motivating all the stakeholdersstudents, teachers, parents, and administrators. NEF-SUNY STEM+ Academies motivate stakeholders by providing teacher stipends, student cash awards, and teacher & parent training. School districts in Canton, NY, Lehighton, PA, Steubenville, OH, and Warren County, PA, are also being recognized with STEM Merit cash awards by NEF. In addition to these annual awards, NEF provides 80 to 100% STEM grants to disadvantaged school districts/schools nationwide. Through the QZAB, STEM+, and Adopt-A-School grant initiatives, NEF has created the most cost-effective, high-quality STEM+ education solution in the U.S. See www.stemgrant.org. With Academies in 20 states and several major cities, NEF's goal is to provide STEM+ education to students in most disadvantaged schools in the U.S. by 2020. For NEF's STEM+ Grant details: 703-823-9999 / www.stemgrant.org For School Funding Grants for STEM, Energy, Renovation, and Technology: www.qzab.org Related Images image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg Related Links STEM Grant QZAB Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzpdUCVz8IA This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE National Education Foundation OKLAHOMA CITY and BALTIMORE, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Success for All Foundation (SFAF) today announced a new partnership with five schools in Oklahoma City's Western Heights Public School District, funded by the USDOE's School Improvement Grants (SIG) for Priority and Focus schools. Mr. Joe Kitchens, Superintendent of Western Heights Public Schools, reacted when he found out his district was awarded the grant, "Knowing of the significant positive academic change that has taken place across America in schools that have adopted the Success for All reform model, I was ecstatic at the moment we heard of the State Board of Education's decision to fund our school system. So much so---that I hugged the SDE official in charge of school improvement in front of the State Board of Education. I believe it was a great moment for Western Heights District." High poverty, low-achieving schools are eligible for SIG federal funds, which include 5 different options for schools to improve student achievement. These five Western Heights schools and SFAF have partnered for a 4-year commitment to improving academic outcomes, and making sure every student is successful under the SIG grant's 5th option. This 5th option allows schools to adopt an evidence-based whole-school reform strategy while keeping their principal and current staff in place (unlike the other 4 options which require firing the schools' principal and teachers). By opting for the SIG 5th option, schools can choose to adopt a "proven whole-school reform model" that meets at least a moderate level of evidence support, which includes having been tested against a control group in at least one rigorous experiment. The 5th option will let schools keep their leaders and staffs, but adopt a school-wide approach that has been used in many similar schools and found to be effective. SFAF provides extensive professional development for school leaders and teachers, and curriculum proven to improve academic achievement that includes standards and supports for instruction and learning, school leadership, student nonacademic issues, and family and community engagement. It is named as an approved provider for the SIG 5th option by the DOE. Last year, SFAF partnered with Briggs Public Schools (also using SIG 5th option funding) in neighboring Tahlequah, OK. When asked how he selected the Success for All program for his schools, Superintendent Mr. Stephen Haynes said, "I came to this district as a new superintendent and saw strong staff, and a resilient community, but struggling students. I didn't want to replace the staff in the schools, so we chose the SIG whole school reform model to improve student outcomes by implementing a research proven program and using the schools' existing staff." Since then, they have shown growth in the percentage of students reading on grade level from 34% to 68%. About Success for All Foundation Founded in 1987, the nonprofit Success for All Foundation is dedicated to ensuring that every child, from pre-kindergarten to grade 8, becomes proficient in reading and learning opening up new doors for a lifetime of achievement. Not only has SFA been proven time and again to help with student reading ability and math performance, it also addresses non-academic concerns, improving behavior, attendance and parental involvement. For more information about Success for All, go to http://www.successforall.org. Contact: Kenly Novotny 410-616-2440 [email protected] SOURCE Success for All Foundation CALGARY, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (Oncolytics or the Company) (TSX:ONC) (OTCQX:ONCYF) announced today that its 2017 Annual Meeting of Shareholders will be held on Thursday, May 4th, 2017 at 4:00 pm ET (2:00 pm MT) at the Toronto Region Board of Trade located at First Canadian Place, Suite 350, 77 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Following the business portion of the meeting, Dr. Matt Coffey, President and CEO of Oncolytics, will discuss recent progress in the development of REOLYSIN, including recent randomized phase 2 metastatic breast cancer results as well as the detailed clinical development plan and specific initial registration pathway for REOLYSIN. A live audio webcast of Dr. Coffey's presentation will begin at approximately 4:15 pm ET (2:15 pm MT) and be available at http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1415093&s=1&k=1D9EC98BC2D829CD19D1A85F7769DEAC and on the company's website at http://www.oncolyticsbiotech.com/investor-centre/presentations. It is recommended that listeners log on 10 minutes in advance of a live session to register and download any necessary software. An audio replay will be accessible approximately two hours following the presentation on the Oncolytics website. About Oncolytics Biotech Inc. Oncolytics is a biotechnology company developing REOLYSIN, an immuno-oncology viral-agent, as a potential treatment for a variety of tumor types. The compound induces selective tumor lysis and promotes an inflamed tumor phenotype through innate and adaptive immune responses to treat a variety of cancers. Oncolytics' clinical development program emphasizes three pillars: chemotherapy combinations to trigger selective tumor lysis; immuno-therapy combinations to produce adaptive immune responses; and immune modulator (IMiD) combinations to facilitate innate immune responses. Oncolytics is currently planning its first registration study in breast cancer, as well as studies in combination with checkpoint inhibitors and IMID/targeted therapies in solid and hematological malignancies. For further information about Oncolytics, please visit: www.oncolyticsbiotech.com. This press release and the presentation related thereto contain forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements, including the Company's belief as to the potential of REOLYSIN as a cancer therapeutic; the Company's expectations as to the success of its research and development programs in 2017 and beyond, the Company's planned operations, the value of the additional patents and intellectual property; the Company's expectations related to the applications of the patented technology; the Company's expectations as to adequacy of its existing capital resources; the design, timing, success of planned clinical trial programs; and other statements related to anticipated developments in the Company's business and technologies involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the availability of funds and resources to pursue research and development projects, the efficacy of REOLYSIN as a cancer treatment, the success and timely completion of clinical studies and trials, the Company's ability to successfully commercialize REOLYSIN, uncertainties related to the research and development of pharmaceuticals, uncertainties related to the regulatory process and general changes to the economic environment. Investors should consult the Company's quarterly and annual filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities commissions for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws. SOURCE Oncolytics Biotech Inc. Related Links www.oncolytics.ca SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The OPNFV Project, an open source project that facilitates the development and evolution of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) components across various open source ecosystems through collaborative upstream development, integration, deployment, and testing, today announced the initial session agenda for its third-annual OPNFV Summit. Hosted by LF Asia, LLC, the Summit takes place June 12-15 in Beijing, and brings together key developers, communities, and organizations within the networking industry. The largest gathering of OPNFV developers and community members from across the globe, OPNFV Summit is an annual conference to collaborate, innovate and explore the latest developments in NFV through keynotes, breakout sessions and technical workshops hosted by industry leaders in the NFV ecosystem. This year's diverse set of session tracks include: Community and Upstream; Futures and Research; NFV Applications and Orchestration; NFV Platform Requirements; NFV Strategy and End User Stories; and Testing, Infrastructure and DevOps. "OPNFV Summit is a collaborative forum for addressing industry needs and solving today's most pressing problems in an open environment," said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. "We are pleased to host this year's event in Beijing and leverage the tremendous industry momentum occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. We have an exciting program that includes a diverse set of presentations and discussions from speakers and participants across the globe." The first two days of the Summit, June 12-13, will feature a developer Design Summit where the technical community will convene to continue work on the next OPNFV release, OPNFV Euphrates. Euphrates represents the project's fifth release, targeted for fall 2017. Plenary sessions, project breakouts, networking events, and co-located full- and half-day events from upstream projects will also be held on these days. The next two days, June 14-15, will feature a Summit conference with keynotes, breakout sessions, a technology showcase, Idea Nest, OpenStack Training, networking opportunities and much more. For the full Summit agenda, please visit http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/program/schedule. Standard registration ends May 12, 2017, after which pricing increases from $350 to $450 USD. To register for the OPNFV Summit, please visit http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/attend/registration. Members of the media who would like to reserve a complimentary press pass to OPNFV Summit should contact [email protected]. OPNFV Summit is made possible with generous support from sponsors, including Diamond sponsor Huawei and Platinum sponsors Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Intel, and ZTE. A full list of Summit sponsors is available here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/sponsors/our-sponsors About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) facilitates the development and evolution of NFV components across various open source ecosystems. Through system level integration, deployment and testing, OPNFV creates a reference NFV platform to accelerate the transformation of enterprise and service provider networks. For more information, please visit http://www.opnfv.org. OPNFV is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org Additional Resources Get Involved OPNFV Resourceshttps://www.opnfv.org/developers/how-participate OPNFV Blog OPNFV Events https://www.opnfv.org/news-faq/events Media Inquiries Jill Lovato OPNFV Project [email protected] SOURCE OPNFV BRISBANE, Australia, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Orocobre Limited (ORE:ASX, ORL:TSX) (Orocobre or the Company) is pleased to provide an update from its joint venture (JV) partner Advantage Lithium Corp. (TSXV:AAL) (Advantage Lithium) that Phase One drilling will commence early next week at its flagship lithium property, located in the Cauchari Salar of Jujuy province in NW Argentina. Phase one will be a five hole program and Phase two drilling is planned for later in 2017, comprising a further 12 holes and leading to a scoping study by early 2018. Advantage Lithium is increasing its interest in the project from the current 50% to 75% through the expenditure of US$5m or by completing a Feasibility Study. Orocobre holds the remaining interest. The Cauchari project lies approximately 20 kilometres south of Orocobre's producing Olaroz Lithium facility. Highlights Phase One drilling: a five hole rotary drill program scheduled to begin during the week commencing 1 May, 2017 Phase Two drilling: A follow-up, twelve hole diamond drill program to commence later in 2017 Drilling will focus on potential extensions of the existing inferred resource at Cauchari and exploration where no previous drilling has been conducted. A large exploration target1 has been defined with a range of 125 to 1,855 million cubic metres of brine at between 260 and 600mg/l lithium and 2,500 to 5,350mg/l potassium for the lower and upper ranges1 respectively; this represents an in-situ range of contained product of between 0.25 to 5.6mt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 0.9 to 19 mt of potash (KCl). Commenting on the update, Managing Director Richard Seville stated, "We are extremely pleased with this progress update from our JV partner Advantage Lithium and their commitment to fast-tracking exploration and development works at Cauchari." Please see the attached release from Advantage Lithium for further details. For more information please contact: Richard Seville Andrew Barber Managing Director Investor Relations Manager T: +61 7 3871 3985 T: +61 7 3871 3985 M:+61 419 916 338 M: +61 418 783 701 E: [email protected] E: [email protected] Notes: An exploration target is not a mineral resource. The potential quantity and grade of the exploration target is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource in the volume where the Exploration Target is outlined. It is uncertain if further exploration drilling will result in the determination of a Mineral Resource in this volume. About Orocobre Limited Orocobre Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange (ASX:ORE) (TSX:ORL), and is building a substantial Argentinian-based industrial chemicals and minerals company through the construction and operation of its portfolio of lithium, potash and boron projects and facilities in the Puna region of northern Argentina. The Company has built, in partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation and JEMSE, the first large-scale, greenfield brine based lithium project in approximately 20 years at the Salar de Olaroz with planned production of 17,500 tonnes per annum of low-cost lithium carbonate. The Olaroz Lithium Facility has a low environmental footprint because of the following aspects of the process: The process is designed to have a high processing recovery of lithium. With its low unit costs, the process will result in low cut-off grades, which will maximise resource recovery. The process route is designed with a zero liquid discharge design. All waste products are stored in permanent impoundments (the lined evaporation ponds). At the end of the project life the ponds will be capped and returned to a similar profile following soil placement and planting of original vegetation types. Brine is extracted from wells with minimum impact on freshwater resources outside the salar. Because the lithium is in sedimentary aquifers with relatively low permeability, drawdowns are limited to the salar itself. This is different from halite hosted deposits such as Salar de Atacama , Salar de Hombre Muerto and Salar de Rincon where the halite bodies have very high near surface permeability and the drawdown cones can impact on water resources around the Salar affecting the local environment. , Salar de Hombre Muerto and where the halite bodies have very high near surface permeability and the drawdown cones can impact on water resources around the Salar affecting the local environment. Energy used to concentrate the lithium in the brine is solar energy. The carbon footprint is lower than other processes. The technology developed has a very low maximum fresh water consumption of <20 l/s, which is low by industry standards. This fresh water is produced by reverse osmosis from non-potable brackish water. Sales de Jujuy S.A. is also committed to the ten principles of the sustainable development framework as developed by The International Council on Mining and Metals. The company has an active and well-funded "Shared Value" program aimed at the long term development of the local people. The Company continues to follow the community and shared value policy to successfully work with suppliers and the employment bureau to focus on the hiring of local people from the communities of Olaroz, Huancar, Puesto Sey, Pastos Chicos, Catua, Susques, Jama, El Toro, Coranzuli, San Juan and Abrapampa. The project implementation is through EPCM (Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management) with a high proportion of local involvement through construction and supply contracts and local employment. The community and shared value policy continues to be a key success factor, training local people under the supervision of high quality experienced professionals. The Company also wholly-owns Borax Argentina, an important regional borate producer. For further information, please visit www.orocobre.com Competent Person's and Qualified Person's Statement The technical information in this announcement has been prepared by Murray Brooker of Hydrominex Geoscience. Murray Brooker is a geologist and hydrogeologist and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. Murray has sufficient relevant experience to qualify as a competent person as defined in the 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. He is also a "Qualified Person" as defined by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101. Murray Brooker consents to the inclusion in this announcement of this information in the form and context in which it appears. Additional information relating to the Company's Cauchari project is available in the existing technical report entitled "Technical Report Cauchari Project, Argentina" dated April 30, 2010, which was prepared by John Houston. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information This report contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information contained in this report may include, but is not limited to, the estimation and realization of resources at the Cauchari project, the viability, recoverability and processing of such resources, potential operating synergies between the Cauchari project and the Olaroz project, and other matters related to the development of the Cauchari project. Such forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to the risk that further funding may be required, but unavailable, for the ongoing development of the Company's projects; changes in government regulations, policies or legislation; fluctuations or decreases in commodity prices; the possibility that required permits may not be obtained; uncertainty in the estimation or economic viability of mineral resources; general risks associated with the feasibility and development of the Cauchari project; unexpected capital or operating cost increases; uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones; as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended June 30, 2016 filed at www.sedar.com. The Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking information are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the Company's ability to carry on its exploration and development activities, the timely receipt of required approvals, the prices of lithium and potash, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all factors and assumptions which may have been used. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP. #1305 - 1090 West Georgia Street Vancouver, BC V6E 3V7 Tel: 604.343.3760 Fax: 604-683-1585 www.AdvantageLithium.com TSX Venture Exchange Symbol: AAL Advantage Lithium Mobilizes Rig for Phase 1 Drilling at Cauchari, Argentina Drilling represents first step in systematic, fast-track exploration and development program Vancouver, British Columbia, April 26, 2017 Advantage Lithium Corp. (the "Company" or "Advantage Lithium") (TSXV: AAL; OTCQX: AVLIF) is pleased to announce that a drill rig will be mobilized later this week to its flagship lithium property located in the Cauchari Salar of Jujuy province in NW Argentina. The first hole of a five-hole, Phase One program is expected to be collared early next week. This marks the Company's first step in a systematic, fast-track exploration and development work program. Phase Two drilling is planned for later in 2017 and will comprise a further twelve holes leading to a scoping study by early 2018. Advantage Lithium is increasing its interest in the project from the current 50% to 75% through the expenditure of US$5m or completing a Feasibility Study. Orocobre (ASX:ORE; TSX:ORL) holds the remaining interest. Cauchari News Highlights Phase One drilling: a five hole rotary drill program scheduled to begin during the week commencing May 1, 2017 . . Phase Two drilling: A follow-up, twelve hole diamond drill program to commence later in 2017. Drilling will focus on (a) potential extensions of the existing inferred resource at Cauchari and (b) exploration where no previous drilling has been conducted. A large exploration target1 has been defined with a range of 125 to 1,855 million cubic meters of brine at between 260 and 600mg/l lithium and 2,500 to 5,350mg/l potassium for the lower and upper ranges1 respectively; this represents an in situ range of contained product of between 0.25 to 5.6mt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 0.9 to 19mt of potash (KCl). David Sidoo, CEO of Advantage Lithium, commented, "In line with our aggressive development timeline, we are commencing work at our flagship Argentina project of Cauchari, just weeks after completing the transaction with our partner, Orocobre. We will be focusing on expanding the existing resource at the project where a large exploration target has been projected. We have engaged Andina Perforaciones, one of Argentina's leading drilling contractors, to undertake the initial phase of what will ultimately be a 17 hole program." Cauchari Project Information Existing Inferred Resource : Host to an inferred resource containing an estimated 230 million cubic metres of brine at ~380 mg/l Li and 3,700 mg/l K. This is equivalent to 470,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate (~88,000 tonnes lithium metal) and 1.62 million tonnes of potash (KCl equivalent to ~840,000 tonnes of potassium). : Host to an inferred resource containing an estimated 230 million cubic metres of brine at ~380 mg/l Li and 3,700 mg/l K. This is equivalent to 470,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate (~88,000 tonnes lithium metal) and 1.62 million tonnes of potash (KCl equivalent to ~840,000 tonnes of potassium). Near-Surface . This initial resource estimate is based on five shallow diamond drill holes to an average depth of 50-170m and open to depth. . This initial resource estimate is based on five shallow diamond drill holes to an average depth of 50-170m and open to depth. Exploration Potential . An exploration target has been defined in the NW blocks of the JV property, in addition to that beneath the original resource estimate in the SE property blocks. The combined exploration target in the Cauchari JV properties both west and east of properties held by Lithium Americas Corp. is defined with a range of 125 to 1,855 million cubic meters of brine at between 260 and 600mg/l lithium and 2,500 to 5,350mg/l potassium for the lower and upper ranges 1 for 0.25 to 5.6mt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) for the lower and upper ranges respectively. . An exploration target has been defined in the NW blocks of the JV property, in addition to that beneath the original resource estimate in the SE property blocks. The combined exploration target in the Cauchari JV properties both west and east of properties held by Lithium Americas Corp. is defined with a range of 125 to 1,855 million cubic meters of brine at between 260 and 600mg/l lithium and 2,500 to 5,350mg/l potassium for the lower and upper ranges for 0.25 to 5.6mt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) for the lower and upper ranges respectively. Close Proximity to Orocobre's Lithium Facility. Proximity to Orocobre's Olaroz operation and similarity in brine chemistry provides options for future production alternatives. Program Details The initial, Phase 1 drill program scheduled to start next week consists of five rotary drill holes targeting the north-west (NW) and south-east (SE) blocks of the property with a surface area of ~5,500 hectares These will be deep holes to approximately 400m below the salar surface, with the objective of (1) probing for extensions laterally and to depth below the existing inferred mineral resource in the SE sector and (2) opening a new front in the NW sector which the company believes to be prospective for extensions of lithium-bearing brine below the Archibarca alluvial fan. Later in 2017, a complementary 12-hole diamond drill (DDH) program will be initiated to provide core for aquifer parameter tests and to also install monitoring holes for pump tests on the primary rotary holes. Additional rotary and/or diamond drill holes will be added as justified by initial results as we proceed towards engineering studies. Specialized packer instrumentation will be used to collect brine samples for analysis under strict QA/QC protocols monitored by a Qualified Person as required by NI43-101 guidelines. In-hole geophysical profiling and geological logging will provide the basis for determining the most promising aquifer zones for packer tests. Considerable technical and operating skill is required to successfully complete exploration and brine pumping wells in the unconsolidated sedimentary sequences of the salars and to do so at 4,000m above sea level in a rigorous climatic region with sub-zero winter temperatures. The company is therefore most pleased to have signed a contract and to be working with Andina Perforaciones who have multiple years of practical experience in Cauchari and other salars of NW Argentina. Together with the Company's technical staff and supporting community relations team, the company expects to complete the Phase 1 work program by year-end 2017. (1) An exploration target is not a mineral resource. The potential quantity and grade of the exploration target is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource in the volume where the Exploration Target is outlined. It is uncertain if further exploration drilling will result in the determination of a Mineral Resource in this volume. The technical information in this news release has reviewed and approved on behalf of the company by Murray Brooker, MAIG, RPGEO, a "Qualified Person" as defined in NI 43-101. About Advantage Lithium Corp. Advantage Lithium Corp. is a resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of lithium properties and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The common shares of the company are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V:AAL), and the company is also traded on the OTCQX Best Market in the U.S. (OTCQX: AVLIF). The company has acquired a 100% interest in five projects in Argentina and up to a 75% interest in a sixth, called Cauchari. Cauchari is located just 20 km south of Orocobre's flagship Olaroz Lithium Facility. The Company is also earning an interest from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corp., in a portfolio of five lithium brine projects in the Clayton and Lida Valley regions of Nevada, USA, including 70% in Clayton NE. Further information about the Company can be found at www.advantagelithium.com. ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP. Per: "David Sidoo" David Sidoo, President Tel: 604.343.3760 | Fax: 604.683.1585 Email: [email protected] Cautionary Statement: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "is expected","intends", or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Advantage that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation. 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. SOURCE Orocobre Limited Related Links http://www.orocobre.com WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/Osprey-Recalls-Child-Backpack-Carriers Recall Summary Name of Product: Poco child carriers Hazard: A child seated in the carrier can slip through the leg openings, posing a fall hazard to children. Remedy: Repair Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled carriers and contact Osprey for a free Seat Pad Insert for use along with the existing safety straps to secure the child in the carrier. Consumers who previously received and installed the free Seat Pad Insert in their carriers are not required to take further action. Consumer Contact: Osprey toll-free at 866-951-5197 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. MT Monday through Friday, email at [email protected] or online at www.ospreypacks.com and click on "Poco Safety Notices" on the navigation bar at the top right hand corner of the page for more information. Recall Details Units: About 82,000 (in addition, about 5,732 were sold in Canada) Description: This recall involves all models of Poco, Poco Plus and Poco Premium child backpack carriers manufactured between January 2012 and December 2014. The nylon child carriers were sold in three colors: "Romper Red," "Koala Grey," and "Bouncing Blue." They have a metal frame and a gray padded child's seat inside. The production date is stamped on a black label sewn into the interior of the large lower zippered compartment on the back of the carrier. Recalled carriers have a production date code of S12SBPR1, S12SBPR1B, S12SBPR2, S12SBPR3, S12SBPR4, F12SBPR1, F12SBPR2, S13SB IPO, S13SBPR1, S13SBPR2, S13SBPR3, S13SBPR4, F13SBPR1, F13SBPR2, F13SBPR3, S14SBPR1, S14SBPR2, S14SBPR3, S14SBPR4, S14SBPR5. "Osprey" is printed on the fabric above the kick stand. The model name is printed on the back at the bottom. Incidents/Injuries: Osprey has received four reports of children falling through the carrier leg openings, resulting in one report of a skull fracture and one report of scratches to the head. Sold at: REI and specialty outdoor stores nationwide and online at Amazon.com from January 2012 to December 2015 for between $200 and $300. Importer: Osprey Child Safety Products LLC and Osprey Packs Inc., of Cortez, Colo. Manufactured in: Vietnam Note: Health Canada's press release is available at: http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2017/63108r-eng.php About U.S. CPSC: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazard. CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters and household chemicals contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years. Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly-announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission. To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury go online to www.SaferProducts.gov or call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 or teletypewriter at 301-595-7054 for the hearing impaired. Consumers can obtain news release and recall information at www.cpsc.gov, on Twitter @USCPSC or by subscribing to CPSC's free e-mail newsletters. CPSC Consumer Information Hotline Contact us at this toll-free number if you have questions about a recall: 800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054) Times: 8 a.m. 5:30 p.m. ET; Messages can be left anytime Call to get product safety and other agency information and to report unsafe products. Media Contact Please use the phone numbers below for all media requests. Phone: 301-504-7908 Spanish: 301-504-7800 SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Related Links http://www.cpsc.gov VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The need for streamlining workflow has necessitated the integration of information technology (IT) solutions in healthcare settings. Medical carts manufactured by companies are presently serving the essential purpose of aiding nursing operations in medical facilities. The robust healthcare infrastructure in the US will demand the adoption of advanced medical carts that not only dispense medical instruments & supplies, but also have integrated IT systems. In the years to come, the demand for medical carts in North America will witness steadfast inclination towards IT-integrated medical carts. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO ) According to Future Market Insights - "North America's medical carts market is expected to reach US$ 600 Mn value by 2017-end, and will expand at 11.2% CAGR through 2027 to bring in US$ 1,720.8 Mn in revenues." Rising focus on point-of-care diagnosis & treatment has led to an increase in the use of mobile computer medical carts. Computer medical carts are used to record and update a patient's electronic health records (EHR). Increased adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) is also observed to be an instrumental factor for growth of North America's medical carts market. The report, titled "Medical Carts Market - North America Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027," also projects that manufacturers of medical carts are extending the product line by introducing medical carts with added features. Omnicell, Inc., Herman Miller, Inc., The Harloff Company, Capsa Solutions LLC, Medline Industries, Inc., Armstrong Medical Industries, Inc., AFC Industries, Waterloo Healthcare, TouchPoint Medical, and Ergotron, Inc. are recognised as leading manufacturers of medical carts in North America. Request for Sample Report with Table of Contents: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-na-3608 Constructive Prospects for Future of North America's Medical Carts Market A lucrative opportunity for such prominent medical device manufacturers towards consolidating their presence in the medical carts market in North America is changing their product line in accordance with shift in technology. Mechanical medical carts are being gradually replaced by new and enhanced technologies such as powered medical devices with battery systems, locking drawers (with negative tilt to facilitate efficient stocking of medication), and automated medicine dispensing systems. In addition to this, increased focus on acquisitions and collaboration among companies have helped them expand their clinical carts product portfolio and cater to the demand for efficient healthcare systems. This has boosted the need for more effective and advanced medical equipment, devices and procedures. Emerging players must keep in mind that acquisitions over the years have resulted in strengthening the positions of current market leaders. Preview Analysis on North America Medical Carts Market Segmentation By End User - Hospitals, Clinics, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Diagnostic Centres, Others; By Material Type - Metal, Plastic, Wood; By Energy Source - Powered, Non-Powered; By Product Type - Emergency Carts, Procedure/Treatment Carts, Anaesthesia Carts, Medical Computer Carts, Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/north-america-medical-carts-market Key Highlights of the Report follow, In 2017 and beyond, computer medical carts will remain in great demand, procuring close to 40% of the market's overall revenues towards the end of 2027 North America's medical carts market is poised to witness dominance of metal as base material, revenues from which will reflect a CAGR of 12.1% medical carts market is poised to witness dominance of metal as base material, revenues from which will reflect a CAGR of 12.1% Non-powered medical carts will also be top-sellers in the market, while revenues from sales of powered medical carts are anticipated to showcase 12.6% CAGR Hospitals will be the largest end-users of medical carts in North America More from FMI's Cutting-edge Intelligence: North America and Europe Artificial Pancreas Systems Market Segmentation By Distribution Channel - Hospitals and E-Commerce; By Disease Indication - Diabetes Type 1 and Diabetes Type 2: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/north-america-and-europe-artificial-pancreas-systems-market Endovenous Laser Therapy Market Segments By End User - Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres and Specialised Clinics, By Product - Endovenous Laser Systems (Diode Lasers and YAG Lasers), Endovenous Laser Fibres (Bare Tip Laser Fibre, Radial Tip Laser Fibre and Gold Tip Laser Fibre): http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/endovenous-laser-devices-market Cancer Supportive Care Products Market Segmentation By Drug Class - Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, Anti-Infective, Anti-Emetics, Monoclonal Antibodies, Erythropoietin Stimulating Agents and Bisphosphonates; By Indication - Lung Cancer, Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Liver Cancer, Bladder Cancer and Ovarian Cancer; By Distribution Channel - Hospital Pharmacies, Retail Pharmacies and Compounding Pharmacies: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/cancer-supportive-care-products-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 Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals and Medical devices 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 (0) 20 7692 8790 Sales: [email protected] Press Office: [email protected] FMI Blog: http://www.fmiblog.com Website: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com SOURCE Future Market Insights LEWISVILLE, Texas, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Overhead Door, one of the leading manufacturers of doors and openers for residential, commercial, industrial and transportation applications, has earned the 2017 Women's Choice Award by WomenCertified for 'America's Most Recommended National Garage Door Brand' for the sixth consecutive year, demonstrating its long-standing trusted reputation among women consumers. The Women's Choice Award is based on customer ratings and a national survey distributed to more than 100,000 women. With women accounting for more than 85 percent of all consumer purchases in the U.S., the Women's Choice Award seal allows customers to choose with confidence, knowing it's a brand women trust and highly recommend to family and friends year after year. "It is a privilege to once again be 'America's Most Recommended Garage Door Brand' among women," said Dennis Stone, President and CEO of Overhead Door Corporation. "Our Overhead Door Red Ribbon distributors' commitment to providing convenience, service and peace of mind, with our top quality garage doors and innovative products, strongly resonates among women consumers." About Overhead Door Overhead Door, a division of Overhead Door Corporation, is one of the most trusted brands of garage doors and garage door openers in the United States. Overhead Door's dedicated network of more than 400 Red Ribbon Distributors across North America provide superior service and expertise to consumers. The brand is easily recognized by its iconic Red Ribbon logo and "The Genuine. The Original." slogan. For additional information, visit www.overheaddoor.com. About Women's Choice Award The Women's Choice Award sets the standard for helping women make smarter purchasing choices. The company and its awards identify the brands, products and services that are most recommended and trusted by women. Awards are based on surveys of thousands of women, as well as research conducted in partnership with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Visit WomensChoiceAward.com/Join-the-Million to share the brands you recommend the most. SOURCE Overhead Door Related Links http://www.overheaddoor.com NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pendant Biosciences, Inc. (formerly Nanoferix, Inc.), a privately-held advanced materials company developing innovative surface modification and drug delivery technologies, today announced that it has been accepted into Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS @ Toronto. Shawn Glinter, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pendant Biosciences, noted, "We are excited to become part of the JLABS @ Toronto community, and are honored to be the first Tennessee-based company to join this unique and dynamic life science ecosystem. Acceptance into JLABS perfectly complements our existing research and development activities being conducted with our academic collaborator and partner, Christine Allen, Ph.D., Professor and GSK Chair in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at the University of Toronto, and serves to expand our presence in this important life science hub. As an early-stage company, Pendant Biosciences and its team gain immediate access to, and the ability to collaborate with, the Johnson & Johnson Innovation network, industry experts with unparalleled translational research and commercialization experience, as well as key life science investors who can help us drive development of our product candidates." Alan Bentley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Vanderbilt Center Technology Transfer & Commercialization, noted, "We are delighted that Pendant Biosciences, which licensed its technology from Vanderbilt University, has been given this exceptional opportunity. The company's increased footprint in Toronto will, no doubt, be invaluable, and we will be watching their continued progress with great interest." JLABS @ Toronto is a 40,000 square-foot life science innovation center. The labs provide a flexible environment for start-up companies pursuing new technologies and research platforms to advance medical care. Through a "no strings attached" model, Johnson & Johnson Innovation does not take an equity stake in the companies occupying JLABS and the companies are free to develop products either on their own, or by initiating a separate external partnership with Johnson & Johnson Innovation or any other company. About Pendant Biosciences Based in Nashville, TN, Pendant Biosciences is an advanced materials company developing innovative surface coating and drug delivery technologies using a unique, polymer-based platform. The company is initially focused on applications within the orthopedic market, and its lead product candidate is a surface modification intended to reduce the risk of infection associated with certain orthopedic implants. The platform also serves as a product engine with broad utility in multiple therapeutic areas. Contact at Pendant Biosciences, Inc. At Rx Communications Group, LLC Shawn Glinter Paula Schwartz Founder and Chief Executive Officer Managing Director 615-491-3270 917-322-2216 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Pendant Biosciences, Inc. (formerly Nanoferix, Inc.) MENLO PARK, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company and creator of the award-winning Legal Analytics platform, today announced the release of its third annual Hatch-Waxman/ ANDA Litigation Report. The report, which focuses on patent litigation related to Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) submitted to the FDA under the Hatch-Waxman Act, provides litigators with trends and data-driven insights from 2,646 ANDA cases filed in U.S. district courts between January 1, 2009 and March 31, 2017. Among the report's key findings is that ANDA patent litigation has declined for the first time in three years from a high of 468 cases in 2015 to 316 cases in 2016 which represents a nearly 32.5% decline. However, ANDA litigation in 2016 remained higher than the average number of filings from 2009 through 2013 about 269 cases per year. The two U.S. districts that have received an overwhelming majority of ANDA filings are Delaware, with 1,114 cases filed since 2009 (up nearly 22.3% since 2015), and New Jersey, with 850 cases (up more than 17.2% since 2015). The third largest ANDA district Southern District of New York (159 cases filed since 2009) saw a dramatic decline in ANDA filings over the last five quarters (only one case, down from a high of 41 in 2011). Both Delaware and New Jersey have seen more ANDA cases filed since 2009 than all other jurisdictions combined (682 cases). "Lex Machina's 2017 Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Litigation Report provides valuable insights into current trends in ANDA litigation, and illuminates the ways in which ANDA litigation differs significantly from other, non-ANDA patent litigation," said Owen Byrd, Chief Evangelist and General Counsel, Lex Machina. "Understanding where to file a case, one's exposure to damage awards, and average case timing for key legal milestones is key to helping practitioners make more informed decisions, which leads to better litigation strategy." Lex Machina's third annual Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Report draws on a combination of litigation data from the company's Legal Analytics platform and Orange Book data published by the FDA on ANDA applications and related patents. Together with traditional research and intuition gained from experience, the report's insights can provide readers with a distinct advantage over their competition. Other facts and report findings: Abilify (an antipsychotic, 63 cases since 2009) has overtaken Oxycontin (a pain relief medication, 59 cases) as the most litigated trade name by number of cases. Vascepa (a cholesterol medication) leads by the number of asserted patents. Actavis (including Allergan and Watson Laboratories) has participated in the most ANDA cases since 2009 (427 cases), followed by Mylan (290 cases), and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (232 cases). Among the top parties since 2009, AstraZeneca (156 cases), Pfizer (143 cases) and Novartis (144 cases) have the largest number of cases as claimant (the party that is asserting the patent, as opposed to claim defendant). Other top claimants include Takeda, Cephalon, Roche, Abbott Labs , Genzyme and Wyeth. , Genzyme and Wyeth. Only six ANDA cases filed since 2000 have resulted in actual damages, including one case in 2016 (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Inc. et al v. Perrigo Company et al. for more than $10.2 million ) ) ANDA cases are less likely to end in a settlement (57.9%) than other patent litigation (77.8%), and more likely to be won by the claimant (15.9% in ANDA cases vs. 4.4% in other litigation). The median time to a Markman hearing was 453 days (about a year and three months) from the case filing date. The report also explores data-driven trends and insights pertaining to case timing and outcomes, as well as top ANDA judges and law firms, which can help litigators prepare legal strategies and help corporations select the best outside counsel and forecast litigation costs. For additional insights into Lex Machina's Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Litigation Report, the company will be hosting a live webcast on April 27, 2017 at 11:00 PDT. Brian Howard, legal data scientist at Lex Machina and author of the report, will discuss the report's findings and answer participant questions. Legal practitioners and other interested parties are welcome to register here for the event: http://pages.lexmachina.com/Webcast_ANDA-Report-427_LP-Social.html To request a copy of the full report please register here: http://pages.lexmachina.com/Email_ANDAReport2017_LPRequests.html About Lex Machina Lex Machina's award-winning Legal Analytics platform is a new category of legal technology that fundamentally changes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. Delivered as Software-as a-Service, Lex Machina provides strategic insights on judges, lawyers, parties, and more, mined from millions of pages of legal information. This allows law firms and companies to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business. Lex Machina was named "Best Legal Analytics" by readers of The Recorder in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and received the "Best New Product of the Year" award in 2015 from the American Association of Law Libraries. Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading information provider and a pioneer in delivering trusted legal content and insights through innovative research and productivity solutions, supporting the needs of legal professionals at every step of their workflow. By harnessing the power of Big Data, LexisNexis provides legal professionals with essential information and insights derived from an unmatched collection of legal and news contentfueling productivity, confidence, and better outcomes. For more information, please visit www.lexmachina.com. For media inquiries, please contact: Valerie Chan, Plat4orm PR 206-856-7885 [email protected] SOURCE Lex Machina Related Links http://www.lexmachina.com In January 2017, fifty PHLY employees traveled to Bastrop, TX to complete the 2016 PHLY 80K Trees campaign. The group joined TreeFolks and Texas Parks & Wildlife to plant the final 6,000 trees in Bastrop State Park, a park and community devastated by wildfires. To achieve the goal of planting another 80,000 trees, PHLY is once again engaging its independent agents and brokers and policyholders in a paperless initiative. For each new agent enrollment in direct deposit of commissions, PHLY will plant ten (10) trees on behalf of the agent. For each new policyholder enrollment in electronic billing, PHLY will plant fifteen (15) trees on behalf of the customer. PHLY employees have also donated nearly $5,000 to support this year's tree planting mission. "Our employees who've volunteered to plant a portion of the 80,000 trees each of the last two years have called the experience 'life-changing'," shared Bob O'Leary, president and chief executive officer of Philadelphia Insurance Companies. "The response from our employees, along with support from our customers both agents and policyholders - has been incredible. We're trying to make a difference year-by-year in communities across the country that we serve, by planting in devastated areas." There are over one million acres in desperate need of replanting due to natural disasters according to the U.S. Forest Service. For more information about the initiative, please visit PHLY.com/GoPaperless. About Philadelphia Insurance Philadelphia Insurance Companies designs, markets, and underwrites commercial property/casualty and professional liability insurance products incorporating value added coverages and services for select industries. In operation since 1962, the Company, whose commercial lines insurance subsidiaries are rated "A++" (Superior) by A.M. Best Company and "A+" for counterparty credit and financial strength by Standard & Poor's, is nationally recognized as a member of Ward's Top 50, National Underwriter's Top 100, and one of the Top 150 Workplaces in America. The organization has more than 50 offices strategically located across the United States to provide superior service. For more information, please visit www.PHLY.com. About Arbor Day Foundation Arbor Day Foundation is a million member nonprofit conservation and education organization with the mission to inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. More information is available at www.arborday.org. SOURCE Philadelphia Insurance Companies Related Links http://www.phly.com NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Global public relations leader Porter Novelli (PN) announced that Alicia Thompson has been named managing director of the agency's Atlanta office. As managing director, Thompson is responsible for talent management and strategic growth while driving measureable business results for clients. She joined Porter Novelli on April 24 and reports to Jennifer Swint, president, North America. "Alicia is an incredible leader who will deliver immediate impact for our clients, our agency culture and the growth of our talent," said Swint. "Her market knowledge, communications expertise and proven ability to motivate and inspire others makes her the perfect addition to our team. We know that her talent and skills will amplify our ability to surprise and delight our clients in the Atlanta market and beyond." Thompson has over two decades of experience in public relations and communications. She joins Porter Novelli from Edelman, where she was the general manager of the firm's Atlanta office. In that role, she oversaw operations and talent and was responsible for developing and maintaining a dynamic client roster. Thompson was formerly a senior vice president in Edelman's consumer practice, working with clients such as Arby's Restaurant Group, Interface, Teavana and Nestle/Gerber. Prior to that, she spent nine years on the communications team at the multinational food chain Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. During this time, she managed the development and execution of all internal and external communications. Earlier in her career, Thompson held a public relations position at The Coca-Cola Company on the North American brands team. "I'm excited to embark on this next chapter in my career and to do so with Porter Novelli. Jack Porter and Bill Novelli founded a firm that leverages public relations communications to make a positive social impact on the world. I want to be a part of that purposeful work," said Thompson. "I look forward to helping our team and clients in Atlanta and across the network continue to drive positive business outcomes." Thompson earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master's degree in speech communications from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has earned notable recognition, including winning four PRSA Georgia Order of the Phoenix awards and being named one of the National Diversity Council's most powerful and influential women. About Porter Novelli Porter Novelli is a global public relations agency built on a rich heritage of marketing for social good. We've been motivating people to change deeply ingrained behaviors rooted in cultural and social norms for more than 40 years. Porter Novelli is a different kind of agencyand we recognize, respect and champion companies with the spirit, drive and tenacity to do things differently. We like taking on big challenges, and even bigger challengers, and we seek out clients who feel the same wayclients who have the conviction to tell their own story, and the courage to innovate from who they have been into who they know they can be. For additional information, please visit www.porternovelli.com. Porter Novelli is a part of the Omnicom Public Relations Group. About Omnicom Public Relations Group Omnicom Public Relations Group is a global collective of three of the top global public relations agencies worldwide and specialist agencies in areas including public affairs, marketing to women, fashion, global health strategy and corporate social responsibility. It encompasses more than 6,000 public relations professionals in more than 330 offices worldwide who provide their expertise to companies, government agencies, NGOs and nonprofits across a wide range of industries. Omnicom Public Relations Group is part of the DAS Group of Companies, a division of Omnicom Group Inc. that includes more than 200 companies in a wide range of marketing disciplines including advertising, public relations, healthcare, customer relationship management, events, promotional marketing, branding and research. Contact: Anita Vasudeva Porter Novelli [email protected] +44 (0)7720 277 198 SOURCE Porter Novelli Related Links http://porternovelli.com DALLAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PrimeLending, A PlainsCapital Company, offers real estate professionals, homebuilders and business partners unparalleled real-time access to monitor their clients' loan status information via the Mobile Partner App. Available on both the iOS and Android platforms, the PrimeLending Mobile Partner App is the fastest and easiest way for these busy professionals to keep up with the critical information that could mean the difference between a transaction closing and falling through all together. The Mobile Partner App is free and features: Automated loan status change push notifications 24/7/365 access to loan status and history User-friendly dashboard design Multiple loan tracking Estimated closing dates and other milestones One click connection with loan officer By using the PrimeLending Mobile Partner App, these professionals have greater transparency into the loan process. Many users can save time and effort, with fewer follow-up inquiries to make and instant access to loan status information needed to answer their clients' questions. The app provides a complete picture of all of their PrimeLending clients' loans at their fingertips. "Making it easy for real estate professionals and builders to work with PrimeLending is top of my list of development priorities, and in today's marketplace, easy means optimizing our systems and processes for mobile devices," said Tim Elkins, EVP of Technology for PrimeLending. "The Mobile Partner App gives our business partners unprecedented access to critical information they need, and we consider that a big win all around." The Mobile Partner App was developed in-house at PrimeLending, using bank-level security processes and protections. PrimeLending is dedicated to providing its business partners and customers secure, reliable technology tools that make the process of getting a home loan simpler, faster and more rewarding. To get the app, visit find a branch on primelending.com. About PrimeLending PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company, is a national residential mortgage originator. Since 2012, PrimeLending has been listed as a top 10 mortgage lender in the nation in purchase units.* Offering fixed-rate, adjustable-rate, FHA, VA, USDA and jumbo home loans, refinancing and relocation programs, PrimeLending is authorized to make loans in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Founded in 1986, PrimeLending is a member of the Hilltop Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HTH) family of companies. More information at PrimeLending.com. * Ranked by Marketrac for purchase units nationally for 2012-2016. All loans subject to credit approval. Rates and fees subject to change. Mortgage financing provided by PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company. Equal Housing Lender. 2017 PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company. SOURCE PrimeLending Related Links http://www.primelending.com DENHAM SPRINGS, La., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dallas-based residential mortgage lender PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital company, announces the addition of Angela Bennett Wales as a Loan Originator to its PrimeLending office located at 1234 Del Este Ave., #901 Denham Springs, Louisiana 70726. Angela brings more than 22 years of mortgage industry experience to PrimeLending. She previously worked at Iberville Bank as a Commercial Loan Officer. In her new role at the PrimeLending Denham Springs branch, Angela will work with residents in the greater Livingston Parish and surrounding area on purchase and refinance mortgage loans. "With the hiring of Angela, PrimeLending is excited to help even more families in Louisiana achieve their dreams of homeownership," said Baton Rouge PrimeLending Branch Manager Cary Lambert. "She is a talented, experienced mortgage professional and is looking forward to continuing her work with clients, real estate agents, builders and the rest of the Livingston Parish business community." About PrimeLending PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company, is a residential mortgage originator with locations across the nation and the ability to originate loans in all 50 states. PrimeLending has listed in the top 10 for four consecutive years as a top mortgage lender in the nation in purchase units.1 Offering fixed, adjustable rate, FHA, VA, USDA and jumbo loans, refinancing and relocation programs, PrimeLending is licensed to originate and close loans in all 50 states. Founded in 1986, PrimeLending is a member of the PlainsCapital Corporation family of companies. PlainsCapital Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilltop Holdings (NYSE:HTH). Find more information at PrimeLending.com. Equal Housing Lender. PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company (NMLS: 13649) is a wholly owned subsidiary of a state-chartered bank and is an exempt lender in LA. Source: 1As Ranked by Marketrac for purchase units nationally for Jan.-Dec. 2012-2016. SOURCE PrimeLending LAS VEGAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SUITEWORLD 2017 -- Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit (GBU), the industry's leading provider of cloud financials / ERP, HR and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Prophet, a leading global consulting firm, has implemented NetSuite OneWorld for ERP and Professional Services Automation (PSA). Since going live on NetSuite OneWorld in October 2016, Prophet has gained a unified view of financial, resource management and project management processes that have streamlined operations across nine global offices operating in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland and Hong Kong, creating efficiencies across the entire organization. San Francisco, Calif.-based Prophet brings together thought leaders and top talent from across the globe to grow better brands and businesses. As demand for Prophet's consulting services skyrocketed, the combination of legacy software from acquisitions and manual processes used to manage the business was anything but seamless, which hindered efficiency gains and scalability for growth. Hundreds of internal employees and consultants based around the globe submitted time and expenses in different currencies and disparate systems. Project management was conducted manually through its intranet, and a decades-old Sage system was used to manage financial processes and required manual intervention to do everything from basic reporting to month-end close. Prophet needed a flexible infrastructure that could scale to accommodate its rapid growth. After a comprehensive evaluation of solutions that promised streamlined management of ERP and PSA processes, Prophet selected NetSuite OneWorld for its robust international functionality and scalability, coupled with automated, integrated resource and project management capabilities. "Resource management is a key driver and strategic advantage for our business," said Jeani Vance, CIO of Prophet. "Other large-scale competitors couldn't meet all of our needs the way that NetSuite can." NetSuite OneWorld supports 190 currencies, 20 languages, automated tax calculation and reporting in more than 100 countries; customer transactions in more than 200 countries; and enables businesses to streamline their mission-critical business processes. In just six months since go-live, Prophet has realized efficiencies with the following features and benefits including: Streamlined financial consolidation and month-end close. NetSuite OneWorld's robust financial consolidation engine and multi-currency support eases month-end close across five different offices in the United States, as well as offices in London, Berlin, Zurich and Hong Kong. This includes support for transactions in the U.S. dollar, British Pound, Swiss Franc and Hong Kong dollar. NetSuite OneWorld not only provides Prophet control over month-end close, it has expedited the process by upwards of a week. Increased spend control. With integrated, automated expense and time reporting, expenses hit budget owners in real-time, ensuring streamlined approval and payment processes, and protection against freelance overspend and budgeting overages at month-end. Enhanced project management capabilities. Real-time reporting on key project metrics allows managers to see everything from progress to profitability that help streamline project management and empower leaders to make insight-driven decisions on resources used, client profitability and more. International scalability facilitates growth. Robust multi-language and multi-currency functionality in NetSuite OneWorld allows Prophet to quickly provision software for international offices, and accelerate its global strategy. A flexible and powerful development platform. NetSuite's SuiteCloud Development Platform provides flexibility for Prophet to tailor the system and integrate with other third-party solutions to meet its unique business needs and industry-specific requirements. Prophet has plans to extend the NetSuite implementation to include advanced forecasting capabilities. "Prophet's value proposition is to help our clients find better ways to grow," said Vance. "With NetSuite, we have a backend technology foundation that allows us to do just that." Jeani Vance is sharing Prophet's story at SuiteWorld 2017, the number one cloud ERP event of the year, this year being held in Las Vegas from April 24-27. Watch her and all SuiteWorld 2017 keynotes live here. About Prophet Prophet is a consultancy that helps clients find better ways to grow by focusing on three important areas: creating relevant brand and customer experiences, driving accelerated growth strategies and leveraging digital as a transformative force in their business. We operate differently than other consultancies, blending insight, strategy and creativity with an optimistic yet pragmatic approach. We have partnered with some of the world's most successful companies, including Electrolux, T-Mobile, UBS, Gatorade and GE. With nine global offices and more than 350 experts in marketing, innovation, digital and design, we are able to bring together the right people with the right experience to solve our clients' business challenges. Prophet.com About Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit pioneered the Cloud Computing revolution in 1998, establishing the world's first company dedicated to delivering business applications over the internet. Today, Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit provides a suite of cloud-based financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR and omnichannel commerce software that runs the business of companies in more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.netsuite.com. Follow Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit's Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates. About Oracle Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of cloud applications and platform services. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit Related Links http://www.netsuite.com Managing Director Jonathan Wyatt to lead Protiviti Digital; providing services to assist organizations as they shift to innovative and digital business models MENLO PARK, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to increasing demand from client companies to help them navigate the opportunities and risks associated with a variety of digital initiatives, global consulting firm Protiviti has launched an innovative multi-competency digitalization offering now known as Protiviti Digital. The firm has appointed Jonathan Wyatt, a managing director in Protiviti's Technology Consulting practice, as global head of the service offering. "Digitization is transforming businesses throughout the world. Many organizations will go through radical transformation and, in some cases, completely reinvent themselves, to remain relevant and competitive in the face of rapid digital change," said Jim Pajakowski, executive vice president, global services, Protiviti. "Drawing on our global consulting experts in data and analytics, technology, internal audit, business performance, risk and compliance, and his own expertise, Jonathan tailors Protiviti cross-competency teams to fit the specific strengths, needs and requirements of our clients' digitalization programs." Protiviti Digital services include: Digital Transformation Governance Strategy and Support Functional Transformation and Improvement Innovation and Cultural Change New Technologies Assessment and Implementation "Today, organizations are struggling to come to terms with innovative disruption and the pace of change. We engage collaboratively with our clients to create a deep understanding of the risks and opportunities presented by new and emerging technologies and to think creatively about how they can use these technologies to improve business performance," said Wyatt. "We help our clients at any or all stages of transformation, so they can face the demands of the digital economy with confidence that the people, processes and technologies involved converge to create business and operational value today and in the future." Companies typically need assistance with a combination of the following strategic imperatives, all of which can be addressed by Protiviti Digital: Customer Engagement exploring new ways to build relationships with customers Digitizing Products and Services launching new or enhanced products and investigating new business models Business Analytics and Decision Science exploiting advanced data analytics to improve decision making Operational Performance creatively using technology to improve performance With 20 years of experience in IT consulting, Wyatt has worked with many of the largest companies in the world across a diverse range of industries, including financial services, energy and utilities, telecommunications, media and consumer products. Prior to joining Protiviti, he spent 10 years at a Big Four accounting firm. Wyatt is one of the founding members of Protiviti's operations in London, U.K. and has led the IT strategy, governance and risk management practice globally. He earned a Combined Honors First Class degree in mathematics and computation at the University of Oxford, U.K. He is a Certified Information System Auditor and is Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control. Wyatt is also a Chartered Accountant (ACA) ICAEW and a member of The Institute of Internal Auditors. For more information about Protiviti Digital, please visit https://www.protiviti.com/US-en/digital-transformation. Protiviti has produced several thought leadership publications about the topic of digitalization, including "Catching the Digital Wave of Change," which is available for complimentary download. About Protiviti Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Through its network of more than 70 offices in over 20 countries, Protiviti and its independently owned Member Firms provide clients with consulting solutions in finance, technology, operations, data analytics, governance, risk and internal audit. Protiviti has served more than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 and 35 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies. Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index. Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services. Editor's note: photos available upon request. SOURCE Protiviti Related Links http://www.protiviti.com HOUSTON, Apr. 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE: PWR) announced today that it will release first quarter 2017 results on Thursday, May 4, 2017, before the market opens. In conjunction with the press release, Quanta has scheduled a conference call which will be broadcast live over the Internet on Thursday, May 4, 2017, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. What: Quanta Services First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call When: Thursday, May 4, 2017 9:00 a.m. Eastern time How: Live via phone By dialing (201) 689-8345 or (877) 407-8291 and asking for the Quanta Services First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call at least 10 minutes prior to the start time. Live over the Internet by logging on to the website at the following address: www.quantaservices.com For those who cannot listen to the live call, an archive of the webcast will be available shortly after the call on the company's website at www.quantaservices.com, by dial in replay using the dial in information in the upcoming earnings release and through the Quanta Services Investor Relations App. For more information, please contact Kip Rupp at Quanta Services at (713) 341-7260. About Quanta Services Quanta Services is a leading specialized contracting services company, delivering infrastructure solutions for the electric power, oil and gas and communications industries. Quanta's comprehensive services include designing, installing, repairing and maintaining energy and communications infrastructure. With operations throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia and select other international markets, Quanta has the manpower, resources and expertise to safely complete projects that are local, regional, national or international in scope. For more information, visit www.quantaservices.com. Contact: Kip Rupp, CFA Quanta Services, Inc. (713) 341-7260 SOURCE Quanta Services, Inc. Related Links http://www.quantaservices.com In its second year, QuantumShift recognizes and assembles up to 40 founders, owners and CEOs of private, high growth U.S.-based companies to aid their development through an intensive, five-day learning, networking and collaboration program. These CEOs have an opportunity to learn from talented industry professionals and distinguished Ross School of Business faculty. Following completion of the program members of this 2017 class become part of the QuantumShift Fellows Network, an exclusive peer-to-peer network focused on problem solving, development and mentorship. The full list of CEOs selected as this year's Top Entrepreneurs in America by QuantumShift can be found here: http://www.quantumshiftus.com/class-of-2017/ "Success is not a given for any private company so the fact that these business leaders have achieved such incredible growth is an accomplishment worthy of acknowledgement," said Brian Hughes, National Leader, KPMG LLP's Private Markets Group. "It's vital to help foster this growth and cultivate an environment for these leaders to gain the tools and insights they need to further catalyze their growth." This year's QuantumShift class represents dynamic, high growth sectors of the economy including technology, media and telecommunications, retail, healthcare and life sciences. As a group, these companies have a three year growth rate of 221 percent and have received nearly $1 billion in combined institutional funding. "As startups mature and grow, their founders and CEOs face an entirely new set of challenges from the ones they conquered early on," said Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "The business leaders participating in this year's program have proved themselves able to tackle any obstacle put in front of them, and we hope that QuantumShift will give them the tools and inspiration they need to grow even bigger and better." Visit www.quantumshiftus.com to learn more about this year's Top Entrepreneurs in America and follow conversations about the program using #QuantumShiftUS on Twitter. About KPMG LLP KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm (www.kpmg.com/us), is the independent U.S. member firm of KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International"). KPMG International's independent member firms have 189,000 professionals, including more than 9,000 partners, in 152 countries. About University of Michigan: Ross School of Business The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan is a vibrant and distinctive learning community grounded in the principle that business can be an extraordinary vehicle for positive change. Through thought and action, members of the Ross community drive change and innovation that improves business and society. Housed within Michigan Ross, the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies is a leading center for entrepreneurial thought leadership and engagement. About QuantumShift QuantumShift is a joint program between KPMG LLP's Private Markets Group and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business that is rooted in sustained learning, networking and collaboration. Each year founders, owners and CEOs of private, U.S. companies are vetted through a nomination and application process reviewed by the Michigan Ross QuantumShift Admissions Committee. Candidates with an established revenue base of at least $20 million showing a strong record of revenue growth and a clear pathway for continued growth are selected and are eligible to participate in a week-long program to learn from distinguished Ross School of Business faculty members and a wealth of other talented professionals. Additionally, participants who complete the program gain access to an exclusive peer-to-peer Fellows Network focused on ongoing problem solving, development and mentorship. Rhena Wallace KPMG LLP O: 201.505.6462 C: 914.419.9892 [email protected] SOURCE KPMG LLP Related Links http://www.kpmg.com/us DEMOREST, Ga., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wanda Harding's 20-year career as a senior mission manager at NASA and technical director with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was just a detour from what she really wants to doteach. "I thought I would work as an engineer for about five years and then go into the classroom," Harding said. "Teaching is something I've wanted to do since I was an undergraduate. The best professors I had were able to bring real-world experiences to the class, and that is the kind of teacher I wanted to be." Former NASA engineer Wanda Harding leads a ninth-grade mathematics class at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia. Wanda Harding is pursuing her dream job as a high school math teacher. Thanks to the Woodrow Wilson Georgia Teaching Fellowship Program at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, Harding is now getting her chance to teach. And she not only brings real-world experience to the job, she brings out-of-this-world experience as well. Harding said she originally planned on being a concert pianist. That changed when she enrolled at Atlanta's Benjamin E. Mays High School, which has a special Science & Mathematics Academy. Asked which teacher at Mays inspired her to pursue a career in engineering, Harding said, "That would be a long list! At Mays, we were strongly encouragedalmost requiredto participate in annual math and science fairs; and we had teachers who wouldn't let us give up. They set the bar of expectations high for us." Harding earned a bachelor of science degree at Hampton University and a master's degree at Georgia Tech, both in electrical engineering. In October 1994, she was hired by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center and began working on projects for the International Space Station. She then joined NASA's Launch Services Program, which works with private rocket manufacturers to launch spacecraft for government customers. Overseeing the work of large engineering and science teams for each launch, Harding was involved with missions including the Spitzer Space Telescope; the Dawn space probe; the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), better known as the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 and is still exploring the planet. (Google "MSL Launch Poll" to see Harding give the Mission Manager "GO!" call prior to the MSL launch.) Still, Harding never gave up on her dream to teach. So, when she heard about the Woodrow Wilson Fellows program, she jumped at the chance. Piedmont College is one of five Georgia institutions selected by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, to offer graduate programs for students with backgrounds in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). Fellows earn a master's degree to become middle and high school science and math teachers in high-need schools. The Georgia program is coordinated by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, with support from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. Now Harding is enrolled as a graduate student at Piedmont and spends most of her days as a student-teacher at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia, introducing ninth-graders to the world of coordinate algebra and analytic geometry. "The experience has been great," she says. "I've been out of high school for 30 years, and it's certainly a lot different from what I remember. But I hope I can be an inspiration to students interested in pursuing a field like space or any technical field." Harding said her students were initially curious about her NASA background, but mostly they wanted to know why she left. "I tell them I was ready to come work with the next generation," she said. "They are going to be the ones running the world when I retire." About Piedmont College Founded in 1897, Piedmont offers bachelor's, master's, specialist, and doctoral degree programs at its Demorest and Athens, Georgia, campuses. Media contact: David Price [email protected] 706-778-3000 SOURCE Piedmont College "Solar power is not a new initiative for California. We've been leading the U.S. in solar energy installations for the past decade," said Darrin Gilmore, general manager of Gilmore Heating, Air, Solar. "However, there have been a lot of changes in policies that have caused some Californians to pause their plans to go renewable for fear the incentives and savings have dried up. We know high utility bills are a concern for many Sacramento-area homeowners, so we want to get the facts out about the real benefits still available to them when investing in solar." Here are five reasons why investing in solar is a good idea: 1. US government mandates solar initiatives California's solar initiatives are among the most aggressive in the country as a result of strong local government support. California's energy policy report Renewable Portfolio Standard requires 33 percent of California's electricity to come from renewable resources by 2020, and 50 percent by 2030. This is good news for homeowners who want to invest in a growing market like solar that has state-level backing and support. 2. Financial incentives reduce investment costs The CSI was established in 2006 and provides $2 billion in incentives for solar installations in California, including homeowner rebates from 20 to 35 cents per AC watt. According to Go Solar California, the CSI program pays solar consumers an incentive based on system performance in either an upfront lump-sum payment based on expected performance, or a monthly payment based on actual performance over five years. 3. Financing options available through California partnerships The HERO Program and the Ygrene Energy Fund provide financing options for California homeowners who want to invest in solar power and make energy efficiency improvements to their homes. Qualified contractors that install solar electricity systems would be able to offer advice about these financing options. 4. Save on your utility bill Homeowners can cut their utility bills in two different ways: By using the electricity generated by solar panels, and also by selling the electricity they don't use to the local electricity provider for an energy credit. The energy credits can be used to pay for electricity not produced by the solar system. 5. Bank your excess electricity for a credit - California's net energy metering, or NEM, program offers California homeowners with solar systems the ability to bank excess electricity by transferring it into the local electrical grid in exchange for an energy credit. The rate is based on a 12-month average of the market rate for energy, and is about 3 to 4 cents per kWh. New solar customers are automatically enrolled in this program. "The first step for homeowners wanting to lower their utility bills is a home energy audit," says Gilmore. "The qualified contractor can then make further recommendations for energy efficiency, help you get the most productive solar energy system for your home, and guide you through the application process for rebates and financing." For residents in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Amador Counties who are concerned about their high utility bills and want to explore a solar investment, contact the professionals at Gilmore Heating, Air, Solar at (800) 200-9696 or visit www.gilmoreair.com. Gilmore offers a Home Energy Audit to determine where you are losing energy in your home with solutions for every budget. About Gilmore Heating, Air, Solar Gilmore Heating, Air, Solar has been serving the Sacramento area since 1979, when John Gilmore took his years of experience in designing heating and air conditioning systems and opened his own company. It was, and continues to be, a family business. The business has grown to more than 90 employees, all dedicated to the "Get More with Gilmore" motto that promises outstanding customer service with a commitment to environmental protection and community service. To find out more, visit www.gilmoreair.com or call (800) 200-9696. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR 865-977-1973 [email protected] SOURCE Gilmore Heating, Air, Solar Related Links http://www.gilmoreair.com SAN DIEGO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ResMed Inc. (NYSE: RMD) today announced results for its quarter ended March 31, 2017. Revenue for the quarter was $514.2 million, a 13 percent increase compared to the same period of the prior year. Excluding the contribution from the Brightree business acquired in April 2016, revenue for the quarter was $479.2 million, a 6 percent increase. "We had solid double-digit constant currency revenue growth in Q3, led by our Brightree software solutions as well as mask and device sales," said Mick Farrell, ResMed's chief executive officer. "This quarter we saw strong demand for our new AirFit 20 range of masks. We also made significant progress on software innovation with the launch of enhanced integration capabilities with Brightree and our AirSolutions cloud-based software platform. In our current quarter, we are launching our latest market-leading innovation: the ResMed AirMini the world's smallest CPAP." Farrell concluded, "Our focus on changing 20 million lives by 2020 has driven a pipeline of new products and connected care solutions that improve patient outcomes, create efficiencies for our homecare customers, and help physicians and providers better manage chronic disease while lowering healthcare costs." Analysis of third quarter results Third quarter revenue in the Americas was $332.1 million, an 18 percent increase over the same period of the prior year. This included Brightree revenue of $35.0 million. Excluding Brightree, revenue in the Americas was $297.1 million, a 5 percent increase over the prior year. Revenue in combined EMEA and APAC was $182.1 million, an increase of 9 percent on a constant currency basis, compared to the same period of the prior year. Gross margin in the third quarter was 58.3 percent, higher than the prior year's quarter gross margin of 57.3 percent. The improvement in gross margin compared to prior year's quarter was due to manufacturing and procurement efficiencies and an incremental contribution from the Brightree acquisition. Income from operations for the quarter was $107.4 million, a 3 percent increase compared with the quarter ended March 31, 2016. Non-GAAP income from operations for the quarter was $126.7 million, a 13 percent increase compared to the same period of the prior year. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $137.9 million, a 16 percent increase over the same period in the prior year, also a 16 percent increase on a constant currency basis. SG&A expenses increased to 26.8 percent of revenue in the quarter, compared with 26.3 percent reported in the quarter ended March 31, 2016. Research and development expenses were $35.1 million, or 6.8 percent of revenue. R&D expenses increased by 25 percent compared with the same period last year, or a 21 percent increase on a constant currency basis. Amortization of acquired intangible assets was $11.4 million during the quarter, an increase of $6.8 million compared with the same period last year. The increase in amortization of acquired intangible assets was primarily due to the amortization expense associated with the Brightree acquisition. Stock-based compensation costs incurred during the quarter of $11.5 million consisted of expenses associated with employee equity grants, and our employee stock purchase plan. Net income for the quarter was $87.8 million, a 3 percent decrease compared to the same period of the prior year. Non-GAAP net income was $100.7 million, a 3 percent increase compared to the prior year. Non-GAAP measures adjust for amortization of acquired intangibles, acquisition related expenses and restructuring expenses. GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter decreased 3 percent to $0.62. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.71 were 3 percent higher compared with the same period of the prior year. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was $67.6 million compared to net income in the current quarter of $87.8 million. Dividend program The ResMed board of directors today declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.33 per share. The dividend will have a record date of May 11, 2017, payable on June 15, 2017. The dividend will be paid in U.S. currency to holders of ResMed's common stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Holders of Chess Depositary Instruments trading on the Australian Securities Exchange will receive an equivalent amount in Australian currency, based on the exchange rate on the record date, and reflecting the 10:1 ratio between CDIs and NYSE shares. The ex-dividend date will be May 10, 2017 for common stock holders and for CDI holders. ResMed has received a waiver from the ASX's settlement operating rules, which will allow ResMed to defer processing conversions between its common stock and CDI registers from May 10, 2017 through May 11, 2017 inclusive. Webcast details ResMed will discuss its financial and business results and outlook on its webcast at 1:30 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time today. The live webcast of the call can be accessed on ResMed's Investor Relations website at investor.resmed.com. Please go to this section of the website and click on the icon for the "Q3 2017 earnings webcast" to register and listen to the live webcast. The online archive of the broadcast will be available on ResMed's website after the live call. In addition, a telephone replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the call by dialing 800-585-8367 (U.S.) and +1 416-621-4642 (international) and entering a passcode of 98293201. The telephone replay will be available until May 11, 2017. About ResMed ResMed (NYSE:RMD) changes lives with award-winning medical devices and cutting-edge cloud-based software applications that better diagnose, treat and manage sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic diseases. ResMed is a global leader in connected care, with more than 3 million patients remotely monitored every day. Our 5,000-strong team is committed to creating the world's best tech-driven medical device company improving quality of life, reducing the impact of chronic disease, and saving healthcare costs in more than 100 countries. Safe harbor statement Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking" statements as contemplated by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements including statements regarding ResMed's projections of future revenue or earnings, expenses, new product development, new product launches and new markets for its products and the integration of acquisitions are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to materially differ from those projected or implied in the forward-looking statements. Additional risks and uncertainties are discussed in ResMed's periodic reports on file with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. ResMed does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements. RESMED INC AND SUBSIDIARIES Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (Unaudited) (In thousands, except per share data) Three Months Ended March 31, Nine Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net revenue $514,204 $453,879 $1,510,051 $1,320,066 Cost of sales 214,490 193,999 627,012 557,460 Astral field safety notification expenses (1) - - 5,070 - SERVE-HF accrual release (1) - - - (2,402) Gross profit 299,714 259,880 877,969 765,008 Operating expenses: Selling, general and administrative 137,864 119,351 406,028 348,664 Research and development 35,130 28,109 107,761 84,271 Restructuring expenses (1) 7,945 - 12,358 6,914 Litigation settlement expenses (1) - - 8,500 - Acquisition related expenses (1) - 3,550 10,076 3,550 Amortization of acquired intangible assets (1) 11,378 4,558 34,809 11,294 Total operating expenses 192,317 155,568 579,532 454,693 Income from operations (1) 107,397 104,312 298,437 310,315 Other income (expenses), net: Interest income (expense), net (2,911) 2,131 (7,841) 8,028 Other, net 3,504 2,553 6,525 3,791 Total other income (expenses), net 593 4,684 (1,316) 11,819 Income before income taxes 107,990 108,996 297,121 322,134 Income taxes excluding ASU 2016-09 (2) 21,601 20,538 60,336 62,757 Income taxes relating to ASU 2016-09 (2) (1,434) (2,333) (3,887) (9,906) Total income taxes 20,167 18,205 56,449 52,851 Net income (1) $87,823 $90,791 $240,672 $269,283 Basic earnings per share (2) $0.62 $0.65 $1.70 $1.92 Diluted earnings per share (2) $0.62 $0.64 $1.69 $1.90 Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share (1) (2) $0.71 $0.69 $2.05 $2.01 Basic shares outstanding 141,714 140,187 141,266 140,140 Diluted shares outstanding (2) 142,724 141,232 142,363 141,666 (1) See the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures in the table at the end of the press release. (2) As a result of the adoption of ASU 2016-09 "Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting" during the quarter ended June 30, 2016 we now recognize an income tax impact relating to share-based payment transactions. The income taxes for the three and nine months ended March 31, 2016 have been restated to reflect the adoption of the standard as the benefit was previously recorded as a reduction to Additional Capital. RESMED INC AND SUBSIDIARIES Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Unaudited - In thousands) March 31, June 30, 2017 2016 Assets: Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $827,310 $731,434 Accounts receivable, net 413,612 382,086 Inventories 259,870 224,456 Prepayments and other current assets 104,569 81,743 Total current assets 1,605,361 1,419,719 Property, plant and equipment, net 387,412 384,276 Goodwill 1,050,083 1,059,245 Other intangibles, net 267,404 299,808 Deferred income taxes and other non-current assets 112,303 93,657 Total non-current assets 1,817,202 1,836,986 Total assets $3,422,563 $3,256,705 Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity: Current liabilities: Accounts payable $82,846 $92,571 Accrued expenses 169,896 156,805 Deferred revenue 48,682 50,009 Income taxes payable 34,854 39,166 Short-term debt - 299,438 Total current liabilities 336,278 637,989 Non-current liabilities: Deferred income taxes 12,988 9,061 Deferred revenue 49,135 40,281 Other long-term liabilities 856 1,211 Long-term debt 1,168,350 873,332 Total non-current liabilities 1,231,329 923,885 Total liabilities 1,567,607 1,561,874 Stockholders' Equity: Common stock 567 563 Additional paid-in capital 1,352,676 1,303,238 Retained earnings 2,261,425 2,160,299 Treasury stock (1,546,612) (1,546,611) Accumulated other comprehensive income (213,100) (222,658) Total stockholders' equity $1,854,956 $1,694,831 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $3,422,563 $3,256,705 RESMED INC AND SUBSIDIARIES Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited - In thousands) Nine Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Cash flows from operating activities: Net income $240,672 $269,283 Adjustment to reconcile net income to cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 83,989 59,827 Impairment of long-lived assets - 2,815 Stock-based compensation costs 34,263 34,779 Changes in fair value of business combination contingent consideration 10,076 (154) Payment of business combination contingent consideration (8,460) - Impairment of cost-method investments 588 750 Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of effect of acquisitions: Accounts receivable, net (32,793) 2,798 Inventories, net (38,146) 26,012 Prepaid expenses, net deferred income taxes and other current assets (28,554) 99 Accounts payable, accrued expenses and other 12,105 8,764 Net cash provided by operating activities 273,740 404,973 Cash flows from investing activities: Purchases of property, plant and equipment (43,857) (44,133) Patent registration costs (6,980) (6,891) Business acquisitions, net of cash acquired (3,394) (242,645) Investments in cost-method investments (6,464) (8,215) Proceeds / (Payments) on maturity of foreign currency contracts 10,085 (5,711) Net cash used in investing activities (50,610) (307,595) Cash flows from financing activities: Proceeds from issuance of common stock, net 15,255 16,937 Purchases of treasury stock - (102,058) Payment of business combination contingent consideration (11,682) (1,228) Proceeds from borrowings, net of borrowing costs 350,000 310,000 Repayment of borrowings (355,000) (193,092) Dividends paid (139,546) (126,026) Net cash (used in) / provided by financing activities (140,973) (95,467) Effect of exchange rate changes on cash 13,719 (665) Net increase / (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 95,876 1,246 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 731,434 717,249 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $827,310 $718,495 Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures (Unaudited) (In US$ thousands, except share and per share data) The measure, "non-GAAP income from operations" is reconciled with GAAP income from operations below: Three Months Ended March 31 Nine Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 2017 2016 GAAP income from operations $107,397 $104,312 $298,437 $310,315 SERVE-HF accrual release (A) - - - (2,402) Astral battery field safety notification expenses (A) - - 5,070 - Restructuring expenses (A) 7,945 - 12,358 6,914 Litigation settlement expenses (A) - - 8,500 - Acquisition related expenses (A) - 3,550 10,076 3,550 Amortization of acquired intangible assets (A) 11,378 4,558 34,809 11,294 Non-GAAP income from operations $126,720 $112,420 $369,250 $329,671 The measures "non-GAAP net income" and "non-GAAP diluted earnings per share" are reconciled with GAAP net income and GAAP diluted earnings per share in the table below: Three Months Ended March 31, Nine Months Ended March 31, 2017 2016 2017 2016 GAAP net income $87,823 $90,791 $240,672 $269,283 SERVE-HF accrual release, net of tax (A) - - - (1,682) Astral battery field safety notification expenses (A) - - 3,549 - Restructuring expenses, net of tax (A) 5,210 - 8,295 5,204 Litigation settlement expenses, net of tax (A) - - 5,392 - Acquisition related expenses (A) - 3,550 10,076 3,550 Amortization of acquired intangible assets, net of tax (A) 7,704 3,416 23,679 8,572 Non-GAAP net income (A) $100,737 $97,757 $291,663 $284,927 Diluted shares outstanding 142,724 141,232 142,363 141,666 GAAP diluted earnings per share $0.62 $0.64 $1.69 $1.90 Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share (A) $0.71 $0.69 $2.05 $2.01 (A) ResMed adjusts for the impact of the Astral battery field safety notification expenses, release of SERVE-HF accrual, restructuring expenses, litigation settlement expenses, acquisition related expenses and amortization of acquired intangible assets from their evaluation of ongoing operations and believes investors benefit from adjusting these items to facilitate a more meaningful evaluation of current operating performance. ResMed believes that non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is an additional measure of performance investors can use to compare operating results between reporting periods. ResMed uses non-GAAP information internally in planning, forecasting, and evaluating the results of operations in the current period and in comparing it to past periods. ResMed believes this information provides investors better insight in evaluating ResMed's performance from core operations and provides consistent financial reporting. Our use of non-GAAP measures is intended to supplement, and not to replace, our presentation of net income and other GAAP measures. Like all non-GAAP measures, non-GAAP earnings are subject to inherent limitations because they do not include all the expenses that must be included under GAAP. Contacts: For Investors For News Media Agnes Lee Alison Graves O: 858-836-5971 O: 858-836-6789 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE ResMed Inc. Related Links http://www.resmed.com SAN DIEGO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Marketers now have access to the most powerful technology integration available to help fulfill their promise to drive revenue. Seismic, the leading enterprise-grade sales enablement solution, today announced it will join Marketo's LaunchPoint ecosystem, the industry's largest and most robust community of best-of-breed partner technologies. The integration will vastly improve lead scoring and advanced campaigns for marketers while simultaneously bolstering the automatic creation of hyper-personalized sales content, further proving marketing teams' contributions to the bottom line at large enterprises. "The next generation of great marketers is proving to be the ones who best align with sales teams to help close deals," said Doug Winter, Seismic chief executive officer and co-founder. "To be able to do so at a world-class level today requires tight integrations of best-in-class technologies, which is why we've chosen to partner with an industry leader in Marketo." Through the new integration, Seismic's sales content usage and engagement analytics, which reveal in real-time when and for how long prospects interact with sales content, and whether they share it with others, can now be incorporated into Marketo's lead scoring functionality. The result is higher quality leads being passed from marketing to sales, along with a more complete look into what marketing campaigns are most effective when it comes to actually closing deals. Research firm SiriusDecisions has noted that such alignment between marketing and sales achieves 19 percent faster revenue growth and 15 percent higher profitability. Additionally, campaign data accumulated and analyzed in Marketo can now be automatically incorporated into Seismic's dynamic content assembly feature, LiveDocs technology, and into Seismic's machine learning-powered predictive content engine. The result is the same hyper personalized experience leads have become accustomed to at the top of the funnel through marketing automation platforms, now at every touchpoint throughout the buyer's journey, from first interaction to close. Demand Metric found that 80 percent of B2B enterprises say sales objectives are better met through such personalized experiences. "The Seismic integration with Marketo opens a world of opportunities for marketing teams to make a real, quantifiable impact on business outcomes," said Shai Alfrandary, vice president, business development and LaunchPoint, Marketo. "Our partnership will enable our joint customers to be at the forefront of leveraging technology for more personalized and authentic customer engagement in the Engagement Economy." Additional benefits of the partnership and integration include: A single, superior source of marketing and sales content: Seismic's workflow and versioning capabilities can now be applied to all marketing content through Marketo, and via LiveDocs technology, materials automatically stay up to date with the latest logos, product information, and other brand assets. Seismic's workflow and versioning capabilities can now be applied to all marketing content through Marketo, and via LiveDocs technology, materials automatically stay up to date with the latest logos, product information, and other brand assets. Advanced campaign segmentation and better reporting: Seismic's LiveSend analytics track when prospects have engaged with a piece of content and for how longdown to the individual pages. Incorporating Seismic into areas such as Marketo email templates and landing pages opens up new data-backed insights for advanced campaign segmentations based on content engagement. And with these new analytics, marketers now have a 360 degree look into how buyers interact with all content created by marketing teams, from first touch to close. Seismic's LiveSend analytics track when prospects have engaged with a piece of content and for how longdown to the individual pages. Incorporating Seismic into areas such as Marketo email templates and landing pages opens up new data-backed insights for advanced campaign segmentations based on content engagement. And with these new analytics, marketers now have a 360 degree look into how buyers interact with all content created by marketing teams, from first touch to close. Powerful email deliverability for sales: Sales users can send Seismic content equipped with LiveSend analytics through Marketo to either hand selected recipients or pre-defined targets, leveraging Marketo's unsurpassed email deliverability. "Whether it's inviting leads who watch more than 30 seconds of a product intro video to a webinar or connecting the performance of first-touch email campaigns to closed deals, we are already seeing innovative uses of the integration," said Winter. "As more customers adopt the integration, we are incredibly excited to see other groundbreaking instances of how these combined technologies will help marketing and sales teams work together." To learn more about how the integration of marketing automation platforms and Seismic are helping marketing and sales teams accelerate sales cycles and improve win rates, visit Seismic's website at: https://seismic.com/marketing-automation-integration/. About Seismic Seismic's leading sales enablement solution allows marketing teams to personalize content at scale and equips large sales teams with the right content for every interaction, dramatically improving time spent selling and win rates. Seismic is the only sales enablement platform powered by machine learning algorithms and the award-winning LiveDocs technology, which automates the creation of personalized sales materials within seconds. Real-time analytics provide unprecedented insight for marketing teams looking to gauge which content helps close deals, further aligning marketing and sales efforts. Headquartered in San Diego and with more than 250 employees across the globe, Seismic is privately held by its executive team and investment firms General Atlantic, JMI Equity, and Jackson Square Ventures. To see how Seismic is being used by firms in your industry, visit http://www.seismic.com. About Marketo Marketo, Inc., offers the only Engagement Platform that empowers marketers to create lasting relationships and grow revenue. Consistently recognized as the industry's innovation leader, Marketo is the trusted platform for thousands of CMOs thanks to its scalability, reliability, and openness. Marketo is headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices around the world, and serves as a strategic partner to large enterprise and fast-growing organizations across a wide variety of industries. To learn more about the Marketo Engagement Platform, LaunchPoint partner ecosystem, and the vast community that is the Marketing Nation, visit www.marketo.com. Contact: Jason Fidler Public Relations Manager, Seismic [email protected] 978-505-9148 SOURCE Seismic Related Links http://www.seismic.com LONDON, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sikoba, a global decentralized money platform based on peer-to-peer IOUs and blockchain technology, is taking the first step towards its upcoming ICO by launching a token presale. The presale will give participants a chance to receive a 50% bonus on SKO tokens. These tokens are designed to be used for making transactions on the Sikoba platform. The ICO will run from April 25 to May 15, 2017. Sikoba Sikoba is a decentralized money platform based on P2P IOU's and built on blockchain technology. The service will allow users, who know and trust each other in real life, to mutually offer lines of credit, within the Sikoba system. The blockchain-backed, P2P, IOU-based system will be made possible through smart contracts, giving users the freedom to pay each other with both cryptocurrencies and fiat currency. Sikoba's P2P credit relationships are governed by smart contracts with specific conditions, fee structures, and repayment rules. Through the use of 'credit conversion', payments between participants who either do not know or do not trust each other are made possible. Fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies can act as a medium of exchange when there are no credit links between participants, or to repay outstanding balances when needed. Sikoba CEO Aleksander Kampa stated in a recent interview that the platform is designed as a decentralized system, with the goal of eventually becoming independent and self-organizing, through the aid of blockchain technology. The Sikoba Blockchain makes use of a 'Federated Blockchain' design. "This is a permissioned mining model where only authorized nodes add blocks to the blockchain." Kampa states his mission for the company: "Sikoba is the result of my life-long interest in monetary theory. We see a future where the money will once again be diverse, with many different issuers, with a variety of credit relationships, where people will take an active interest in the type of money they wish to use. Our aim is to provide the tools to achieve that vision." This unique federation will be self-governing, which means that participants will be removed from or added to the federation based on the voting majority of its members themselves. Kampa stated that Sikoba would likely use Ethereum as a notary, but would perform its main operations on another blockchain, which will be chosen or designed based on the criteria of speed, flexibility and scalability. Differentiating Sikoba P2P IOU platform from other P2P lending platforms, he said: "Sikoba is not a peer-to-peer lending platform; it is a peer-to-peer IOU platform which allows payments to be made without having money (whether fiat, crypto or any other asset) to begin with." Sikoba currently operates as a small team of 3, plus several supporting members. At present Sikoba IOU platform is at the conceptual stage with technical elements still in the works. The SKO token ICO presale funds will be used to expand the Sikoba team, finalize a detailed white paper and develop an MVP by the end of 2017. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies that act as a transfer or store of value, but in all cases, the acting participants must already possess the currency's value to make an exchange. The Sikoba ecosystem offers a fully functioning virtual credit, or IOU system, that offers users the ability to attain accredited value, borrowed from another participant, without releasing any funds. Where Bitcoin aims to act as a form of digital money, SKO tokens serve as a kind of digital credit and ultimately have the potential to become a major aspect of the future credit system. Sikoba ICO Token Pre-Sale The Sikoba presale tokens are scheduled for release by the end of June 2017. Participants will receive usable SKO tokens after the platform's launch, expected in Q3, 2018. The pre-allocation phase has begun on 17 March 2017, and the public presale will start on 25 April. Following the presale, Sikoba presale tokens will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain. They will later become exchangeable into SKO tokens, which will be used to pay for transaction fees on the Sikoba network. About Sikoba Sikoba Ltd is an active blockchain company incorporated on 18 July 2016 with the company's registered office located in Greater London. It is led by CEO Aleksander Kampa, whose lifelong interest in monetary theory has led him to build the company to achieve his vision. Learn more about the IOU platform at http://www.sikoba.com Know more about the Token Pre-Sale at http://www.sikoba.com/www/presale/index.html Join Sikoba Slack Channel at https://sikoba-presale.herokuapp.com/ Follow Sikoba on Twitter Here https://twitter.com/sikobaNetwork Read 'User Case Inter-Company Credit Networks' here http://www.sikoba.com/focus/uc_interco.html Read 'User Case An alternative to micro-Credits' here http://www.sikoba.com/focus/uc_microcredit.html Interview with Alex Kampa https://medium.com/ibc-technology/introducing-sikoba-banking-without-money-3a4eaeb5372d Media Contact Contact Name: Jean Lasar Contact Email: [email protected] Location: London, UK Sikoba is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest. Related Links Bitcoin PR Buzz Sikoba This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE Sikoba Related Links http://www.sikoba.com POWAY, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Sciences International Corporation (Decision Sciences), the leading provider of advanced security and contraband detection systems, today announced it has been awarded a contract by the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs. Under the terms of the contract, Decision Sciences will deploy its revolutionary Multi-Mode Passive Detection System Generation 3 (MMPDS Gen3) at the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) of Singapore, the world's largest transshipment hub. Using its unique and passive cosmic ray tomography and gamma detection capabilities for detection, location, and identification of unshielded and shielded radiological and nuclear materials, as well as explosives, narcotics, cigarettes and other contraband, the MMPDS Gen3 will play an important role in ensuring the safety and security of Singapore. The MMPDS Gen3 installation at the ICA Ports Command is expected to be the first of many such in-country deployments to more effectively protect Singapore, combat smuggling, and enhance the Port of Singapore's already world-class commercial performance. The MMPDS Gen3's environmentally friendly, patented technology safely, securely, passively and automatically scans in 3D all types of vehicles, cargo containers and other conveyances. In addition to being able to detect and identify radiological threats and known contraband, the MMPDS Gen3 unlike other systems is also "trainable" and incorporates advanced machine learning algorithms. As the threat or contraband type changes, MMPDS Gen3's software library can be updated to help identify additional materials of interest. "Decision Sciences is very proud to partner with the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs, and we applaud the leadership that the Singapore government has again provided to the global community in engaging our unique next generation scanning solution," said Dwight Johnson, Decision Sciences' President and CEO. "This contract is a watershed industry event," Mr. Johnson continued. "Coming shortly after our announcement of a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office for deployment of the MMPDS Gen3 in the United States, this Singapore contract highlights the growing appreciation of the transformative benefits of the MMPDS Gen3 by sophisticated and forward thinking customers around the world." Unlike other systems on the market, particularly x-ray devices, the MMPDS Gen3 is totally passive and environmentally friendly, using naturally occurring cosmic ray muons and electrons providing a truly "S.A.F.E." scanning and detection solution with no active or ionizing radiation source. The unique benefits of the MMPDS Gen3 include: Smart: Machine learning algorithms and data library, combined with recurring software updates. Affordable: Low maintenance and operating costs. Fast: Quickly clears cargo or detects suspicious materials. Effective: Substantial penetration capability "This milestone Singapore contract heralds a new era of passive nuclear and conventional threat and contraband detection something that has never before been possible in the same way," said Stuart J. Rabin, Chairman of the Board of Decision Sciences. "Singapore is well known for its technical expertise, for its cutting-edge approach to security and operations, and for its critical role in the global supply chain," Mr. Rabin continued. "Today, Singapore has shown confidence in the impressive capabilities of Decision Sciences' MMPDS Gen3, and has therefore confirmed the belief of many who expect it to become the solution of choice for ports, border crossings, critical infrastructure, nuclear power plants, military installations and in numerous other venues throughout the world, including at locations and for operations where today's outdated and often hazardous scanning systems are impractical, ineffective or unwise." For more information on Decision Sciences, its products and unique enabling technology, visit: www.DecisionSciences.com or email: [email protected] About Decision Sciences Decision Sciences, a provider of advanced security and contraband detection systems, has its headquarters and an R&D facility in California and has additional offices in Virginia. Decision Sciences brings together cutting-edge science, hardware and software development, systems integration and manufacturing to improve the safety and security of the global community. Based on revolutionary and disruptive technology originally invented by physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Multi-Mode Passive Detection System (MMPDS) was subsequently developed with considerable private sector investment and expertise. The MMPDS is a totally passive, safe, effective and automated scanning system for quickly detecting, locating and identifying unshielded to heavily shielded radiological and nuclear threats, explosives and other contraband including weapons, alcohol, cigarettes/tobacco, drugs/narcotics, precious metals, smuggled humans and numerous other items of interest and anomalies. The system can uniquely safeguard the integrity of the global supply chain, expedite the flow of commerce, fortify trade resiliency and help achieve the 100% scanning requirement recommended by the U.S. 9/11 Commission and later enacted into law by the U.S. Congress. The core technology inherent in the MMPDS also has wide ranging applications beyond the security arena, including in the medical, mining, energy and manufacturing industries and can facilitate the efficient collection and aggregation of significant amounts of previously unavailable data. MEDIA CONTACT: Name: Jon Magin Phone: 1-858-602-1619 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Decision Sciences Related Links http://www.DecisionSciences.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA), the North American arm of SoftBank Robotics Group and Silver level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced its collaboration with Oracle to connect Pepper, the humanoid robot, with Oracle Service Cloud. With this collaboration, SoftBank Robotics and Oracle will explore new and innovative ways for businesses to connect with their customers and reimagine the customer journey. By leveraging Pepper's unique and engaging form factor, the existing Oracle Service Cloud experience will be tethered to SoftBank Robotics' leading robotics platform to shape a new service solution across both assisted and self-service channels. "Today's customer expects not only up-to-the minute service, information and attention but memorable, meaningful, and personal experiences," stated Steve Carlin, Chief Strategy Office for SoftBank Robotics America. "Our expanded collaboration with Oracle will explore new concepts in the customer experience space, helping brands stay relevant and exceed the demands of today's consumers." The ultimate goal of this collaboration will be to create a dynamic solution for Pepper that SoftBank Robotics and Oracle customers can easily integrate into existing customer management tools. Pepper's unique form factor is a key benefit for sectors with a high volume of customer interactions, including retail, hospitality, healthcare and financial services. Oracle Service Cloud makes it possible for businesses to better understand their customers and quickly deliver the right answers at the right time through preferred service channels and devices. From enabling a cross-channel contact center, to providing fast service in the field, Oracle Service Cloud makes it easy for customers to engage with a brand. By connecting Oracle Service Cloud to SoftBank Robotics' Pepper robot, businesses will have the ability to integrate the sophisticated form factor into its business strategy and easily capture customer insights and analytics, and better inform the marketing and sales message. To learn more about Pepper's capabilities, visit www.meetpepper.com About SoftBank Robotics America Headquartered in San Francisco, California, SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA) is driving technology forward by becoming a leader in humanoid robotics. Our robots, including Pepper and NAO, are used in more than 70 countries worldwide and offer innovative use cases relevant for the fields of retail, financial services, healthcare, travel, and hospitality. Formerly Aldebaran Robotics, SBRA's sister offices remain in Europe, Japan and China under the new SoftBank Robotics Group. Pepper, NAO, Aldebaran and SoftBank Robotics are trademarks of SoftBank Robotics in the US and other countries. About Oracle PartnerNetwork Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle's partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle's products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to be recognized and rewarded for their investment in Oracle Cloud. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. SOURCE SoftBank Robotics America Related Links http://www.meetpepper.com CARSON, Calif. and NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Solis Tek (OTCQB: SLTK), is a vertically integrated technology innovator, developer, manufacturer and distributor focused on bringing products and solutions to commercial cannabis growers in legal markets across the U.S., announced today that it has retained KCSA Strategic Communications (KCSA), a leading New York-based communications firm, to create a strategic, corporate communications program to support sales and branding efforts, as well as help the Company communicate its broader vision to the marketplace and investment community. With extensive experience in helping build brands in the cannabis sector, as well as experience working with microcap companies, KCSA will work with Solis Tek management to develop programs that will enable the Company to differentiate itself in this growing sector, showcase its leadership position and focus on innovation, as well as launch new products. Todd Fromer and Lewis Goldberg, Managing Partners of KCSA, will lead the communications team and provide strategic counsel on shareholder communications as well as broader communication matters. "Solis Tek has been in the market for nearly a decade and has built a well-known brand amongst commercial cannabis growers," said Dennis G. Forchic, Chief Executive Officer of Solis Tek. "With dozens of states legalizing medical and adult use of cannabis by 2018, building a communications infrastructure to properly tell the Solis Tek story to both buyers of our products and services as well as the investment community has never been of greater importance. Working with KCSA, one of the few integrated public relations and investor relations firms with a wealth of cannabis-specific experience, makes perfect sense." "Solis Tek has an unique mix of stakeholders, and understanding how to craft and deliver complex messages to each audience is vital to helping build the Company's future," said Lewis Goldberg, Managing Partner of KCSA Strategic Communications. "As one of the only pure-play, vertically integrated companies providing products and services to the cannabis industry, there is a tremendous opportunity to tell their seemingly untold story. The cannabis sector is growing rapidly and not many companies have thought through their communications strategy. Solis Tek has the foresight to understand that communications plays a major role in its success. My team and I look forward to working with the Company as it brings lighting and other technologies to market to help growers simply grow better." About Solis Tek Solis Tek is a vertically integrated technology innovator, developer, manufacturer and distributor focused on bringing products and solutions to commercial cannabis growers in both the medical and adult use space in legal markets across the U.S. For nearly a decade, growers have used Solis Tek's digital lighting solutions to increase yield and lower costs and grow better. The Company's customers include retail stores, distributors and commercial growers in the United States and abroad. For more information please visit our website www.solis-tek.com. About KCSA Strategic Communications KCSA is a fully integrated communications agency specializing in public relations, investor relations and social media, with expertise in financial and professional services, technology, healthcare, digital media and energy. Since 1969, the firm has demonstrated strategic thinking and program execution that drives results for its clients in the ever-changing communications and digital landscape. The firm's clients are its best references. For more information, please visit www.kcsa.com. SOURCE KCSA Worldwide Related Links http://www.kcsa.com Hands-Only CPR is CPR without mouth-to-mouth breaths and is recommended for use by people who see someone suddenly collapse in an "out-of-hospital" settings such as at home, at work or in a park. It consists of two easy steps: Call 9-1-1 (or send someone to call on your behalf) and push hard and fast in the center of the chest. "If you are called on to give CPR in an emergency, you will most likely be trying to save the life of someone you love," said Dr. Alan Smith, senior medical director for Staywell. "More than 326,000 people experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital each year, and about 90 percent of them die, often because loved ones don't know how to start CPR or are afraid they'll do something wrong." The American Heart Association guidelines, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, highlight how quick action, proper training, use of technology and coordinated efforts can increase survival from cardiac arrest. Survival depends on immediate CPR and other actions starting with bystanders. "We believe that educating and engaging community members around key health priorities will further our mission to help our members live better, healthier lives," said Elizabeth Miller, president, WellCare of Florida. "WellCare is proud that our Welcome Rooms are making it easier for people to access important health information right where they live and work." WellCare operates 15 Welcome Rooms throughout Florida. They are located in Ft. Myers, Jacksonville, Kissimmee, Melbourne, New Port Richey, Ocala, Orlando, Pensacola, Pinellas Park, Spring Hill, Tallahassee, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Winter Haven. For more information about events and activities, call WellCare of Florida's Welcome Rooms at (850) 523-4300. To learn more, visit www.heart.org/handsonlyCPR. As of Dec. 31, 2016, WellCare serves approximately 780,000 Medicaid members, 62,000 Florida Healthy Kids members, 94,000 Medicare Advantage members, and 28,000 Medicare Prescription Drug Plan members in Florida. About WellCare Health Plans, Inc. Headquartered in Tampa, Fla., WellCare Health Plans, Inc. (NYSE: WCG) focuses exclusively on providing government-sponsored managed care services, primarily through Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription Drug Plans, to families, children, seniors and individuals with complex medical needs. The company serves approximately 3.9 million members nationwide as of Dec. 31, 2016. For more information about WellCare, please visit the company's website at www.wellcare.com or view the company's videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/WellCareHealthPlan. SOURCE WellCare Health Plans, Inc. Related Links http://www.wellcare.com The Stonehenge-Starck collaboration will transform Stonehenge's building canopies into unique works of art highlighting the company's portfolio. With 23 properties located throughout Manhattan, each building's character and identity contributes to Stonehenge's unique portfolio. The canopies will draw a parallel between Stonehenge's properties; connecting the buildings with the streets they inhabit using the streets themselves as the canvas. Stonehenge's mission is creating community through hospitality welcoming residents into a home perfectly tailored to their tastes and needs. Stonehenge's lifestyle division hosts over 100 complimentary events annually for their residents ranging from wine tastings to comedy nights. By offering more than just a place to live, Stonehenge enhances the resident experience and connects its community throughout Manhattan. Drawing upon Stonehenge's ideals as inspiration, Ara Starck composed an invented constellation, a phantasmagoric map to connect the members of the Stonehenge family situated around New York City. The canopy is not only a piece of art but an instrument that grounds and brings comfort while transmitting fantasy and an appetite for discovery. "I was introduced to Ara Starck through Culture + Commerce and immediately knew that Stonehenge NYC and Ara needed to work together in some capacity. She is a brilliant artist who understands how intertwined our city is with art. She shared our vision of using building canopies to tell a story of our properties located throughout Manhattan. We look forward to expanding this collaboration to our other properties and working with her for many years to come," said Eyal Reggev, president of Stonehenge NYC. "Our buildings boast condo-level renovations, high-end amenities and top-of-the-line service. It felt only fitting that we showcase that quality and attention to detail to the public. These building canopies tell a story that illustrates the foundation of our brand: to provide our residents with the best living experience possible. When you live in a Stonehenge NYC building, you become part of our unique and rewarding community that is impossible to find elsewhere in this city," said Ofer Yardeni, chairman and CEO of Stonehenge NYC. The canopy is the first thing that welcomes residents home and the last thing residents see on their way out into the city. As such, Ara found a great deal of inspiration in the canopy in and of itself, identifying the concept of the canopy as carrying the quality of being protective, acting as the tie between the safety of home and the outside world. "Collaborating with Stonehenge's team has consisted of weeks of innovative dialogues and creative conversations," said Ara Starck. "I wanted to create a mental narrative a celestial blueprint that residents and guests alike could be a part of while keeping in mind their individuality. Having a perception of their surroundings and feeling a certain belonging can emotionally ground one's position in this ethereal landscape." The canopies will launch officially in May with an event at Stonehenge's 41 Park Avenue property. Additional canopies are planned to be added throughout 2017. About Ara Starck: Ara Starck was born in Paris in 1978. After spending time at both the Ateliers de Sevres and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, Ara studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art before graduating with a B.A. from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2002. Ara has always been inspired by the idea of transcendence, literally and figuratively, and sees her choice of working in the medium of very large formats as an essential driving force. Working within the framework of traditional painting techniques such as oils, brushes and turpentine, Ara creates works that are encounters. Her stated ambition is to create a third material, an alchemy of the canvas unique to both artist and viewer. Ara has created works for the legendary Hotel Meurice in Paris, the Palazzina Grassi Hotel in Venice, Baccarat, the winemakers Terra 6840, the SLS Hotel in Miami, Kong Restaurant in Paris, Flavor Paper and the Hotel Haitza in France, to name just a few. She lives and works in New York. About Stonehenge NYC: Stonehenge NYC and its affiliated companies is a vertically integrated, private real estate company with expertise in investment management, property management, development, design, construction and leasing. Stonehenge, together with its investment partners, owns a portfolio of properties in Manhattan valued at approximately $3 billion comprised of 23 income-producing properties with over 3,000 apartments representing over 3.5 million square feet of prime residential space. Stonehenge is recognized for its above-and-beyond customer service platform and five-star lifestyle programming. More information can be found at: www.stonehengenyc.com. Media Contact: Rachel Lexier-Nagle, Culture + Commerce [email protected] +1 917 934 2903 SOURCE Stonehenge NYC Related Links http://www.stonehengenyc.com SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TapClicks, a leader in enterprise marketing reporting and data visualization, announced today that it has acquired Raven Tools. Raven is a veteran internet marketing platform located in Nashville, TN, and is a major player in the automated reporting space focused on digital marketing, SEO, SEM and social media. TapClicks and Raven will join forces to build a complete marketing data and visualization vertical that will serve marketing teams of all sizes. More data connections than any reporting platform. The acquisition of Raven has further propelled TapClicks into a world-class reporting platform. The two companies combined have the largest customer base for this particular field, producing tens of thousands of marketing reports each month for customers in over 70 countries. TapClicks has a strong North American presence with offices in San Jose, Boston, Nashville and Montreal, and has plans to grow its physical presence in globally. TapClicks Founder and CEO Babak Hedayati is most excited about what this acquisition means for their customers, saying: "Our customers win the most from this, because of how well each company's technology and experience complement each other. The new team will collaborate to preserve the core functionality of the tools while working together to innovate faster than ever before." Hedayati continues: "The goal is to become an unstoppable force of innovation and to make digital marketers more efficient and impactful through better insights and reporting." Existing customers of both companies can expect a smooth transition. TapClicks plans to keep the Raven brand and platform for small to medium-sized agencies and in-house marketing teams. It also intends to create an easy upgrade path for larger agencies and brands that need more data connections and sophisticated reporting features. Thanks to TapClicks' unprecedented number of data connections (more than any other company based on a recent independent study by Forrester Research), Raven customers can expect to gain new data connections for reporting, like call tracking and social ads. TapClicks customers will appreciate the addition of Raven's tools, like the proprietary Site Auditor, used for fixing and optimizing websites for search engines like Google. In addition to acquiring technology from Raven, TapClicks is also excited about keeping the entire Raven team. Like TapClicks, the talent, experience and character of the Raven team is what has made them so successful. Included with the team are co-founders Scott Holdren and Jon Henshaw. Scott will help oversee the technology transition, while Jon will be the product evangelist and manage all digital marketing for both brands. Colby West, President of TapClicks, says: "TapClicks and Raven are a perfect fit because of their technology and people." West goes on to say: "Both companies have a similar culture, and we share the same experience bootstrapping and growing our businesses." Jon Henshaw, Co-Founder of Raven, has a similar take, adding: "We've had a lot of interested buyers over the years, but we never found anyone we related to and felt we could grow the company with. Colby and Babak were the first buyers we talked to who had a shared vision about how we should run the company, treat customers and also position ourselves for exponential growth." Media Contact: Jon Henshaw Phone: 615-358-8481 Email: [email protected] Related Images image1.png image2.png image3.png image4.png Related Links TapClicks Raven Tools This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE TapClicks Related Links https://www.tapclicks.com WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Bar Foundation (ABF) and Tax Analysts, the nonpartisan multimedia source of in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on tax administration and policy, announced today that they will host panel discussions around the nation on tax reform. ABF and Tax Analysts economists, historians, and policy experts will be available to provide reporters with unbiased and detailed analysis of various tax reform elements. Within the last year, numerous conferences have been held in Washington on the House Republican blueprint. The next round of panels likely will focus on the tax reform proposals outlined by the administration today and will be held inside the Washington Beltway. "The President and Congress need to seriously review our tax system because it's broken. And to fix it they should look for ideas from outside the Beltway," said Chris Bergin, Tax Analysts CEO and president. ABF and Tax Analysts' "outside the Beltway" tax reform conferences will feature leading tax experts from major accounting and law firms, universities, and corporations speaking on panels at law schools around the nation. They will examine the need for tax reform, what should be addressed, and the elements of various proposals. "It is critical that we have the nation's leading experts discuss and provide their perspectives on how the various tax reform proposals will impact different industries and regions of our country, such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc.," said Ajay Mehrotra, executive director of ABF. ABF and Tax Analysts will kick off the series on May 16 at the Northwestern University Law School, followed by a panel discussion on June 14 at the New York University School of Law. For information on upcoming conferences, visit taxanalysts.org. Universities, organizations, and companies interested in participating in these discussions may contact Anthony Hebron at 703.531.4834. Follow us on on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #LetsTalkTax. About the American Bar Foundation ABF is among the world's leading research institutes for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law, legal institutions, and legal processes. An independent, nonprofit organization for more than 60 years, ABF's mission is to serve the legal profession, the public, and the academy through empirical research, publications, and programs that advance justice and the understanding of law and its impact on society. ABF's primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. http://www.americanbarfoundation.org About Tax Analysts Founded in 1970 as a nonprofit organization, Tax Analysts has the industry's largest tax-dedicated correspondent staff, with more than 250 domestic and international correspondents. Tax Analysts provides tax news and analysis for more than 150,000 tax professionals in law and accounting firms, corporations, and government agencies worldwide, as well as academics. All rely on Tax Analysts' federal, state, and international content daily. Key products include Tax Notes, Tax Notes Today, State Tax Notes, State Tax Today, Tax Notes International, and Worldwide Tax Daily. SOURCE Tax Analysts Related Links http://www.taxanalysts.org WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and its 1.4 million members in the U.S. and Canada fully support Teamsters Local 812 members on strike at Clare Rose in New York. The over 100 drivers and warehouse workers distribute Budweiser, Heineken, and craft beer products to Long Island. They went on strike Sunday night when the company imposed 30 percent wage cuts and ended the drivers' pension. Less than one day into the strike, Clare Rose announced that it is permanently replacing the striking workers. "The full might of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is behind the members of Local 812 in their fight at Clare Rose," said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. "We represent Budweiser and other brewery and transportation workers across the country. Such union busting and draconian wage cuts are unheard of at similar distributors elsewhere. We intend to put forward our political, economic and organizing resources to ensure that these workers get a new union contract that protects their wages and retirement." The International Brotherhood of Teamsters strike fund stands at over $150 million. At the last union convention, delegates voted to increase strike benefits to give union members more leverage in negotiations with anti-union companies. The Clare Rose strike has largely stopped distribution of Budweiser, Bud Light, Heineken and several local craft beers to Long Island stores and bars. Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters. Contact: Kara Deniz, (202) 624-6911 [email protected] SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters Related Links http://www.teamster.org SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thales, a leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, announces the results of its 2017 Thales Data Threat Report, Federal Edition, issued in conjunction with analyst firm 451 Research. When it comes to data breaches, 34 percent of federal respondents experienced a data breach in the last year and 65 percent experienced a data breach in the past. Almost all (96 percent) consider themselves "vulnerable," with half (48 percent) stating they are "very" or "extremely" vulnerable. This number is higher than any other U.S. vertical polled for the 2017 report. Click to Tweet: 34% of U.S. federal IT pros say agency breached in last 12 months #2017DataThreat http://bit.ly/2ps1hVt IT security staffing and spending playing a role Sixty-one percent of U.S. federal respondents are increasing security spending this year up from last year's 58 percent figure. But when compared to other industries this number is markedly lower (81 percent of healthcare respondents, 77 percent of retail respondents and 78 percent of financial services respondents claim to have increased spending). The federal spending figure may explain why 53 percent of federal respondents cite lack of budget and lack of staff (also 53 percent) as the top reasons for data insecurity. Garrett Bekker, principal analyst for Information Security at 451 Research says: "The U.S. federal government is racing to boost data security against odds not generally faced in the private sector today. A major challenge in securing the far-flung systems in the U.S. federal government is the plethora of aging legacy systems still in place, with one example being a 53 year-old Strategic Automated Command and Control System at the Department of Defense that coordinates U.S. nuclear forces and uses 8-inch floppy disks. In short, this 'perfect storm' of very old systems, tight budgets and being a prime cyber-crime target has created a stressful environment." Advanced technologies and the role of encryption in protecting them Pressures to use advanced technologies (cloud, Big Data, IoT, and containers) are only making the problem worse. While 92 percent of federal respondents will use sensitive data in an advanced technology environment this year, 71 percent of federal respondents believe this will occur without proper security in place. On a positive note, encryption is cited as the top data security control (60 percent) for ensuring data privacy and enabling digital transformation through the use of advanced technologies. Additionally, 73 percent of respondents would increase their cloud-service deployments if offered data encryption in the cloud (with federal agencies maintaining control of the keys). Sixty-three percent of respondents also list data encryption as the first choice for enabling further IoT deployments, and 55 percent cite encryption as the top security control for increasing container adoption. Peter Galvin, VP of strategy, Thales e-Security says: "U.S. federal agencies are fighting an uphill data-security battle. In addition to the issues cited, the federal sector has one of the most hopeful views of compliance, with 64 percent of respondents viewing it as 'very' or 'extremely' effective in preventing data breaches. As the breach count rises, it's fair to question whether meeting compliance mandates are enough. There is encouraging news, however. Like their private sector peers, public sector IT employees are clearly interested in digital transformation through the use of new technologies. This innovation is admirable, but it must be paired with increased data security." Federal government agencies looking to existing legacy data sources while also taking advantage of advanced technologies should strongly consider: deploying security tool sets that offer services-based deployments, platforms and automation; discovering and classifying the location of sensitive data within cloud, SaaS, big data, IoT and container environments; and leveraging encryption and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) technologies for all advanced technologies. Please download a copy of the new 2017 Thales Federal Report for more detailed security best practices. Industry insight and views on the latest key-management trends can be found on the Thales e-Security blog at blog.thalesesecurity.com. Follow Thales e-Security on Twitter @Thalesesecurity, and on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. About Thales e-Security Thales e-Security is the leader in advanced data security solutions and services that deliver trust wherever information is created, shared or stored. We ensure that the data belonging to companies and government entities is both secure and trusted in any environment on-premise, in the cloud, in data centers or big data environments without sacrificing business agility. Security doesn't just reduce risk, it's an enabler of the digital initiatives that now permeate our daily lives digital money, e-identities, healthcare, connected cars and, with the internet of things (IoT), even household devices. Thales provides everything an organization needs to protect and manage its data, identities and intellectual property, and meet regulatory compliance through encryption, advanced key management, tokenization, privileged-user control and high-assurance solutions. Security professionals around the globe rely on Thales to confidently accelerate their organization's digital transformation. Thales e-Security is part of Thales Group. About Thales Thales is a global technology leader for the Aerospace, Transport, Defence and Security markets. With 64,000 employees in 56 countries, Thales reported sales of 14.9 billion in 2016. With over 25,000 engineers and researchers, Thales has a unique capability to design and deploy equipment, systems and services to meet the most complex security requirements. Its exceptional international footprint allows it to work closely with its customers all over the world. Positioned as a value-added systems integrator, equipment supplier and service provider, Thales is one of Europe's leading players in the security market. The Group's security teams work with government agencies, local authorities and enterprise customers to develop and deploy integrated, resilient solutions to protect citizens, sensitive data and critical infrastructure. Thales offers world-class cryptographic capabilities and is a global leader in cybersecurity solutions for defence, government, critical infrastructure providers, telecom companies, industry and the financial services sector. With a value proposition addressing the entire data security chain, Thales offers a comprehensive range of services and solutions ranging from security consulting, data protection, digital trust management and design, development, integration, certification and security maintenance of cybersecured systems, to cyberthreat management, intrusion detection and security supervision through cybersecurity Operation Centres in France, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Hong Kong. SOURCE Thales Related Links https://www.thalesesecurity.com The result was the pledge, formalized in a Declaration to Raise the Status of California Brandy, that said, in part, "We are committed to heralding the exceptional brandy crafted by California producers. We are committed to restoring the perception of California Brandy as ranking alongside the world's most acclaimed spirits." "We do need to raise awareness of the world-class quality of California brandy," said Dan Farber, founder and distiller of Osocalis Distillery. "And that takes all of us. We producers have to keep putting the quality product in the glass, and we need the community to get the word out about what our DNA really is, and about how outstanding California brandy can be." The Brandy Summit featured discussions facilitated by F. Paul Pacult, editor and publisher of Spirits Journal and one of America's foremost spirits authorities, with premium California Brandy Producers on the art and science of Brandy making. The group examined the best practices in Brandy making, including distillation techniques, maturation and blending, and discussed whether there is a need for more production guidelines in California Brandy. Elite mixologists and summit participants demonstrated California brandy's versatility by creating brandy cocktails ranging from new takes on modern classics to bright, refreshing spring and summer-style drinks. The group also got a preview tasting of the new premium Argonaut Brandy, which has four expressions ranging from a cocktail-oriented blend to sipping brandies to a collector's brandy blended from rare, aged brandy lots. "Because it's made from wine, California brandy has completely unique flavor notes and qualities," said Rita Hansen, Head Distiller for Argonaut Brandy. "A few decades ago, the world learned about the outstanding wines in California. We all think it's time people also learned about the high quality and craftsmanship in California brandy." The Summit began at the historic McCall Distillery in Sanger, CA (home of the Argonaut Distilling Company) then moved to Gold Rush country in the Sierra Nevada just outside Yosemite National Park to emphasize Brandy's deep roots in California culture. The Declaration to Raise the Status of California Brandy is posted on the summit website and will be continuing to gather new signatories. More information and images are at: www.cabrandysummit.com. SOURCE Argonaut Distilling Company EADS, Colo., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Colorado Lieutenant Governor Donna Lynne and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) are hosting over 300 students from 12 southeastern rural Colorado school districts for the second annual Dream Big Event at Eads High School in Eads, Colo. in hopes of inspiring rural Colorado students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related fields to address a national and local shortage. "STEM industries have a growing impact on Colorado and we need to meet these opportunities by providing a skilled workforce. Continuing to support K-12 education will help meet the needs of the STEM workforce across the State," said Lieutenant Governor and Chief Operating Officer Lynne. "Careers in this industry help young people build strong futures for themselves and their families." The United States is experiencing a dramatic shortage of STEM workers. According to a study by the New American Economy, Colorado had 15.3 job openings for every unemployed worker in STEM last year, which is close to the national ratio of 13 to 1. Keeping STEM students from dropping out of the STEM talent pipeline is essential in meeting U.S. STEM job demands for the future. The Dream Big Event is connecting rural students with industry leaders and professors from Colorado's top technology companies and universities in order to increase students' exposure and interest in STEM related fields through hands-on demonstrations and interactive activities. Companies such as Lockheed Martin, Ball Aerospace, Fauston Tool, SecureSet and others are participating in the one-day learning event. "The Dream Big Event is designed to introduce students to industries like aerospace or Cybersecurity that they might not know of or understand, " said Colorado's aerospace and defense industry champion Jay Lindell. "We want to inspire the students to dream big about the infinite opportunities they have to improve our world through STEM careers." During the event, students are divided into groups and rotate through five inspiring technology learning areas space, aviation, Cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing and robotics/unmanned air systems that include engaging presentations, hands-on demonstrations and interactive activities. Students are also taking a virtual trip to Mars courtesy of the Challenger Learning Center, flying assisted in a Cessna 182 aircraft courtesy of Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, and experiencing the internet of things in the NXP Smarter World Tour Mobile Station with 180 technology demos. In addition, a resource fair is available for the students, featuring Colorado technology businesses and organizations, photo opportunities with pilots, and a Colorado National Guard humvee and helicopter display. Representatives from Colorado NASA are also attending. The Dream Big Eads Event is provided through a public-private partnership with lead by OEDIT. To continue the learning experience beyond the Dream Big Event, the 3-D Printing Store is donating design software to Eads School District for additional projects. At the event, students are designing projects for a 3-D printer and learning about its application in advanced manufacturing. Debra Wilcox, owner and founder of the 3-D Printing Store, says students should learn design software and 3-D technology to be dimensional capable, as 3-D printing is the future of manufacturing. "3-D printing allows regular people with great ideas to turn their ideas into tangible items that have value," said Wilcox. "There is no reason any student or community can't have access to this technology." This is the second year for the event. In 2015, over 300 students from northeastern Colorado convened at Revere High School in Ovid, Colo. to participate in the first Dream Big Event. OEDIT is currently planning future Dream Big events in rural and mountain communities across Colorado. The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) works with statewide partners to create a positive business climate that encourages dynamic economic development and sustainable job growth. Under the leadership of Governor John Hickenlooper, OEDIT strives to advance the state's economy through financial and technical assistance in support of local and regional economic development activities throughout Colorado. Visit OEDIT at www.choosecolorado.com. SOURCE Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) DALLAS, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Troxell, a national leader in education technology & collaboration solutions for more than 70 years, is pleased to announce that Troxell and Summit Integration Systems have been named one of the awarded vendors in the Region 7 ESC Purchasing Cooperative Audio Visual Equipment & Supplies AVS1718 bid. The bid is valid February 16, 2017 to February 16, 2018. Region 7 Education Service Center serves Anderson, Angelina, Cherokee, Gregg, Harrison, Henderson, Nacogdoches, Rains, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, Shelby, Smith, Panola, Upshur, Van Zandt and Wood counties in Texas. The process in which to be chosen as a vendor for this bid requires each vendor to participate in a legal bid process. The Region 7 Purchasing Cooperative provides categories of items to be bid which meet the requirements of the Texas Education Agency Audit Division and the Attorney General's Anti-Trust Office. The product categories in this bid include, but are not limited to, projectors, monitors and displays, document cameras, presentation devices, projector screens, whiteboard-dry erase, desks, carts, stands and lecterns, mounts, and accessories. To speak with a local Account Executive, you may contact 1-855-TROXELL for further information. About Troxell Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, Troxell is the nation's leading end-to-end solution provider for technology and collaborative solutions in K-12 and higher ed. With 65 offices nationwide, we combine large-scale purchasing power with the high-touch, consultative approach of a local specialist. Find a location near you. Since 1990, Summit Integration Systems, a Troxell company servicing Texas and Louisiana, has had the knowledge, products and experience necessary to successfully initiate, manage and complete audio visual integration projects of any size and scope in the most demanding environments, on time and within budget. About Region 7 Education Service Center Region 7 ESC is one of 20 regional education service centers statewide that participates in the planning, development, coordination, implementation and evaluation of innovative educational programs. Region 7 currently serves 106 school districts, the largest amount of school districts of any ESC. For Press Inquiries Contact: Raigan Irwin-McCabe, VP of Marketing SOURCE Troxell ATLANTA, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FIG Partners, one of the nation's premier investment banking and research firms specializing in community banks, today announced that Troy N. Carlson, who has more than 20 years of community banking experience, has been named Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate and Private Client Services. Carlson will lead the FIG team providing corporate advisory services to banks and thrifts, along with private client services to bank directors, executives and employees. Carlson helped establish the first corporate and private client services for community banks, first at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) and then at Sterne Agee. Carlson will work with Senior Vice President Mike Acampora, who has 30 years of experience advising community bank boards, shareholders and executives. "Troy Carlson is a highly experienced executive who has served as a strategic advisor to community banks and thrifts for his entire career," said FIG CEO Geoffrey Hodgson. "Troy shares the entire FIG team's passion for working with community banks. Together, Troy and Mike are an outstanding team that will help financial institutions achieve their strategic objectives." Prior to joining FIG, Carlson launched the Corporate & Private Client Services desk for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW), where he worked for 15 years. After KBW, he worked for Sterne Agee for two years, providing corporate and private client services to his existing community bank clients, as well as Sterne's existing bank clients and their executives. After 9/11, he went to New York to help the KBW rebuilding efforts. Carlson attended the University of Iowa and graduated from Coe College with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration. About FIG Partners FIG Partners LLC is one of the nation's premier investment banking and research firms specializing in community banks. Founded in 2003, FIG's award-winning research team follows more than 120 bank stocks in the U.S. The firm's investment banking unit has raised more than $2.8 billion in equity and advised on more than $3.3 billion in M&A since 2007. FIG's trading and sales team serves as market maker for more than 800 bank stocks and has relationships with 400 institutional investors. FIG's fixed-income unit offers a full range of trading, advisory and valuation services. Headquartered in Atlanta, FIG has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Jersey and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, call 404.601.7200 or visit www.figpartners.com. SOURCE FIG Partners Related Links http://www.figpartners.com BALTIMORE, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UA, UAA) today announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. All per share amounts are on a diluted basis. This release refers to "currency neutral" revenue, which is a non-GAAP financial measure described below under the "Non-GAAP Financial Information" paragraph. "Our first quarter results were in line with our expectations and we're off to a solid start in 2017," said Under Armour Chairman and CEO Kevin Plank. "By proactively managing our growth to deliver superior innovative product, continuing to strengthen our connection with consumers and increasing our focus on operational excellence - we have great confidence in our ability to drive toward our full year targets." First Quarter Income Statement Highlights Revenue was up 7 percent to $1.1 billion , driven by a 4 percent increase in wholesale revenue to $773 million and a 13 percent increase in direct-to-consumer revenue to $302 million . North American revenue declined 1 percent as new distribution was more than offset by the absence of business lost to bankruptcies in 2016. International revenue, which is comprised of our EMEA, Asia-Pacific , and Latin America regions, represented 20 percent of total revenue in the quarter, and was up 52 percent (up 57 percent currency neutral). By region, revenue was up 55 percent in EMEA, 60 percent in Asia-Pacific and 30 percent in Latin America . Apparel revenue increased 7 percent to $715 million including strength in training, golf, and team sports. Footwear revenue grew 2 percent to $270 million , against last year's same period which was up 64 percent due to significant strength in basketball sales and the timing of liquidations. Accessories revenue increased 12 percent to $89 million with strength in men's training, running, youth, and global football. was up 7 percent to , driven by a 4 percent increase in wholesale revenue to and a 13 percent increase in direct-to-consumer revenue to . North American revenue declined 1 percent as new distribution was more than offset by the absence of business lost to bankruptcies in 2016. International revenue, which is comprised of our EMEA, , and regions, represented 20 percent of total revenue in the quarter, and was up 52 percent (up 57 percent currency neutral). By region, revenue was up 55 percent in EMEA, 60 percent in and 30 percent in . Apparel revenue increased 7 percent to including strength in training, golf, and team sports. Footwear revenue grew 2 percent to , against last year's same period which was up 64 percent due to significant strength in basketball sales and the timing of liquidations. Accessories revenue increased 12 percent to with strength in men's training, running, youth, and global football. Gross margin was down 70 basis points to 45.2 percent as benefits from channel and product mix were offset by continued efforts to manage inventories appropriate to market demand. was down 70 basis points to 45.2 percent as benefits from channel and product mix were offset by continued efforts to manage inventories appropriate to market demand. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased 12 percent to $498 million , or 44.6 percent of revenue (up 210 basis points), due to continued investments in the direct-to-consumer, footwear and international businesses. expenses increased 12 percent to , or 44.6 percent of revenue (up 210 basis points), due to continued investments in the direct-to-consumer, footwear and international businesses. Operating income was $8 million . There was a net loss of $2 million in the first quarter and a $0.01 loss in diluted earnings per share. First Quarter Balance Sheet Highlights Cash and cash equivalents increased 10 percent to $172 million . . Inventory increased 8 percent to $902 million . . Total debt decreased 8 percent to $861 million . Fiscal 2017 Outlook There are no changes to the company's full year 2017 outlook provided on January 31, 2017: Net revenues expected to grow 11 to 12 percent to reach nearly $5.4 billion , up 12 to 13 percent currency neutral; expected to grow 11 to 12 percent to reach nearly , up 12 to 13 percent currency neutral; Gross margin expected to be slightly down compared to 46.4% in 2016 with benefits in product costs being offset by changes in foreign currency and shifts in overall sales mix, as the footwear and international businesses continue to outpace the growth of the higher margin apparel and North American businesses; expected to be slightly down compared to 46.4% in 2016 with benefits in product costs being offset by changes in foreign currency and shifts in overall sales mix, as the footwear and international businesses continue to outpace the growth of the higher margin apparel and North American businesses; Operating income expected to reach approximately $320 million ; expected to reach approximately ; Interest expense of approximately $40 million ; and, of approximately ; and, An effective tax rate of 32 to 34 percent. Conference Call and Webcast Under Armour will hold its first quarter 2017 conference call and webcast today at approximately 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The call will be webcast live at http://investor.underarmour.com and will be archived and available for replay approximately three hours after the live event. Non-GAAP Financial Information The company reports its financial results in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States ("GAAP"). However, this press release refers to certain "currency neutral" financial information, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The company provides a reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP. See the end of this press release for this reconciliation. Currency neutral financial information is calculated to exclude foreign exchange impact. Management believes this information is useful to investors to facilitate a comparison of the company's results of operations period-over-period. This non-GAAP financial measure should not be considered in isolation and should be viewed in addition to, and not as an alternative for, the company's reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. In addition, the company's non-GAAP financial information may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies. About Under Armour, Inc. Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UA, UAA), the originator of performance footwear, apparel and equipment, revolutionized how athletes across the world dress. Designed to make all athletes better, the brand's innovative products are sold worldwide to athletes at all levels. The Under Armour Connected Fitness platform powers the world's largest digital health and fitness community through a suite of applications: UA Record, MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal. The Under Armour global headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.uabiz.com. Forward Looking Statements Some of the statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts, such as statements regarding our future financial condition or results of operations, our prospects and strategies for future growth, the development and introduction of new products, the implementation of our marketing and branding strategies, and the future benefits and opportunities from acquisitions and other significant investments. In many cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "assumes," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "outlook," "potential" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect our current views about future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and changes in circumstances that may cause events or our actual activities or results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future events, results, actions, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: changes in general economic or market conditions that could affect overall consumer spending or our industry; changes to the financial health of our customers; our ability to effectively manage our growth and a more complex global business; our ability to effectively drive operational efficiency in our business; our ability to comply with existing trade and other regulations, and the potential impact of new trade and tax regulations on our profitability; our ability to successfully manage or realize expected results from acquisitions and other significant investments or capital expenditures; our ability to effectively develop and launch new, innovative and updated products; increased competition causing us to lose market share or reduce the prices of our products or to increase significantly our marketing efforts; our ability to accurately forecast consumer demand for our products and manage our inventory in response to changing demands; fluctuations in the costs of our products; loss of key suppliers or manufacturers or failure of our suppliers or manufacturers to produce or deliver our products in a timely or cost-effective manner, including due to port disruptions; our ability to further expand our business globally and to drive brand awareness and consumer acceptance of our products in other countries; our ability to accurately anticipate and respond to seasonal or quarterly fluctuations in our operating results; risks related to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; our ability to effectively market and maintain a positive brand image; the availability, integration and effective operation of information systems and other technology, as well as any potential interruption in such systems or technology; risks related to data security or privacy breaches; our ability to raise additional capital required to grow our business on terms acceptable to us; our potential exposure to litigation and other proceedings; and our ability to attract key talent and retain the services of our senior management and key employees. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect our views and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Under Armour, Inc. For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (Unaudited; in thousands, except per share amounts) CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 % of Net Revenues 2016 % of Net Revenues Net revenues $ 1,117,331 100.0 % $ 1,047,702 100.0 % Cost of goods sold 611,908 54.8 % 567,066 54.1 % Gross profit 505,423 45.2 % 480,636 45.9 % Selling, general and administrative expenses 497,887 44.6 % 445,753 42.5 % Income from operations 7,536 0.7 % 34,883 3.4 % Interest expense, net (7,820) (0.7) % (4,532) (0.4) % Other expense, net 2,570 0.2 % 2,702 0.2 % Income before income taxes 2,286 0.2 % 33,053 3.2 % Provision for income taxes 4,558 0.4 % 13,873 1.4 % Net income (loss) $ (2,272) (0.2) % $ 19,180 1.8 % Basic net income (loss) per share of Class A, B and C common stock $ (0.01) $ 0.04 Diluted net income (loss) per share of Class A, B and C common stock $ (0.01) $ 0.04 Weighted average common shares outstanding Class A, B and C common stock Basic 439,360 433,626 Diluted 439,360 443,260 Under Armour, Inc. For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (Unaudited; in thousands) NET REVENUES BY PRODUCT CATEGORY Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change Apparel $ 715,437 $ 666,571 7.3 % Footwear 269,659 264,246 2.0 % Accessories 89,097 79,701 11.8 % Total net sales 1,074,193 1,010,518 6.3 % Licensing revenues 24,205 19,433 24.6 % Connected Fitness 18,933 18,501 2.3 % Intersegment eliminations (750) (100.0) % Total net revenues $ 1,117,331 $ 1,047,702 6.6 % NET REVENUES BY SEGMENT Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change North America $ 871,271 $ 880,595 (1.1) % EMEA 102,855 66,267 55.2 % Asia-Pacific 85,818 53,622 60.0 % Latin America 38,454 29,467 30.5 % Connected Fitness 18,933 18,501 2.3 % Intersegment eliminations (750) (100.0) % Total net revenues $ 1,117,331 $ 1,047,702 6.6 % OPERATING INCOME (LOSS) BY SEGMENT Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 2016 % Change North America $ 3,714 $ 40,095 (90.7) % EMEA 1,629 2,921 (44.2) % Asia-Pacific 19,628 17,335 13.2 % Latin America (7,859) (9,007) 12.7 % Connected Fitness (9,576) (16,461) 41.8 % Income from operations $ 7,536 $ 34,883 (78.4) % Under Armour, Inc. As of March 31, 2017, December 31, 2016 and March 31, 2016 (Unaudited; in thousands) CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS As of 3/31/2017 As of 12/31/2016 As of 3/31/2016 Assets Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 172,128 $ 250,470 $ 157,001 Accounts receivable, net 629,235 622,685 566,286 Inventories 901,613 917,491 834,287 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 203,052 174,507 211,209 Total current assets 1,906,028 1,965,153 1,768,783 Property and equipment, net 830,539 804,211 601,910 Goodwill 571,381 563,591 588,895 Intangible assets, net 61,986 64,310 73,217 Deferred income taxes 121,108 136,862 92,230 Other long term assets 86,118 110,204 93,089 Total assets $ 3,577,160 $ 3,644,331 $ 3,218,124 Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity Revolving credit facility, current $ 50,000 $ $ 140,000 Accounts payable 294,857 409,679 184,243 Accrued expenses 217,310 208,750 224,076 Current maturities of long term debt 27,000 27,000 27,000 Other current liabilities 38,372 40,387 30,581 Total current liabilities 627,539 685,816 605,900 Long term debt, net of current maturities 784,052 790,388 217,525 Revolving credit facility, long term 550,000 Other long term liabilities 145,536 137,227 103,382 Total liabilities 1,557,127 1,613,431 1,476,807 Total stockholders' equity 2,020,033 2,030,900 1,741,317 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 3,577,160 $ 3,644,331 $ 3,218,124 Under Armour, Inc. For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (Unaudited; in thousands) CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Cash flows from operating activities Net income (loss) $ (2,272) $ 19,180 Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash used in operating activities Depreciation and amortization 41,013 32,021 Unrealized foreign currency exchange rate losses (8,313) (11,248) Loss on disposal of property and equipment 556 384 Amortization of bond premium 63 Stock-based compensation 12,082 14,403 Excess tax benefit (deficiency) from stock-based compensation arrangements (1,258) 27,058 Deferred income taxes 15,905 2,724 Changes in reserves and allowances (21,187) 12,657 Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of effects of acquisitions: Accounts receivable 21,261 (136,990) Inventories 19,084 (45,958) Prepaid expenses and other assets (7,598) (15,351) Accounts payable (90,982) (976) Accrued expenses and other liabilities 7,253 22,312 Income taxes payable and receivable (19,169) (47,748) Net cash used in operating activities (33,562) (127,532) Purchases of property and equipment (91,790) (104,573) Purchases of available-for-sale securities (19,997) Sales of available-for-sale securities 21,414 Net cash used in investing activities (91,790) (103,156) Cash flows from financing activities Proceeds from long term debt and revolving credit facility 200,000 415,000 Payments on long term debt and revolving credit facility (156,750) (145,500) Employee taxes paid for shares withheld for income taxes (2,474) (13,685) Proceeds from exercise of stock options and other stock issuances 2,782 3,954 Payments of debt financing costs (1,258) Net cash provided by financing activities 43,558 258,511 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 3,452 (674) Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (78,342) 27,149 Cash and cash equivalents Beginning of period 250,470 129,852 End of period $ 172,128 $ 157,001 Under Armour, Inc. For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 (Unaudited) The tables below present the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. See "Non-GAAP Financial Information" above for further information regarding the Company's use of non-GAAP financial measures. CURRENCY NEUTRAL NET REVENUE GROWTH RECONCILIATION Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 Total Net Revenue Net revenue growth - GAAP 6.6 % Foreign exchange impact 0.5 % Currency neutral net revenue growth - Non-GAAP 7.1 % North America Net revenue growth - GAAP (1.1) % Foreign exchange impact (0.2) % Currency neutral net revenue growth - Non-GAAP (1.3) % International Net revenue growth - GAAP 52.1 % Foreign exchange impact 4.6 % Currency neutral net revenue growth - Non-GAAP 56.7 % Connected Fitness Net revenue growth - GAAP 2.3 % Foreign exchange impact % Currency neutral net revenue growth - Non-GAAP 2.3 % BRAND HOUSE AND FACTORY HOUSE DOOR COUNT Quarter Ended March 31, 2017 2016 Factory House 150 144 Brand House 18 12 North America total doors 168 156 Factory House 38 18 Brand House 39 24 International total doors 77 42 Factory House 188 162 Brand House 57 36 Total doors 245 198 SOURCE Under Armour, Inc. Related Links http://www.underarmour.com PITTSBURGH, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- USW International President Leo W. Gerard released the following statement in conjunction with the Trump administration's announcement of a Section 232 investigation on aluminum. The USW represents thousands of workers in the aluminum industry in Canada and the U.S. In the U.S., aluminum production and employment is down dramatically as a result of China's massive subsidies and government programs that continue to contribute to global excess capacity. "The Section 232 action will help identify the importance of aluminum, but it may not identify the right response: China's overcapacity is swamping world markets, driving down prices and making some operations unprofitable," said Leo W. Gerard, USW International President. "China is the problem, not Canada or other countries which are following the rules. Our goal should be fair trade, not just walling off the U.S. market. That's what the Steelworkers have fought for, for years," Gerard said. "The Obama administration started action against China for the trade policies it uses to undermine world markets. Continuation of that case at the WTO is vital in the aluminum sector to get China to abide by market rules. "Depending on the outcome of the administration's 232 investigation, any action should be focused on those countries that are actually breaking the rules. Canada should be excluded from any potential trade actions in this sector." "Last week, the Trump administration initiated an investigation under the same section of U.S. trade law on steel. In steel, like aluminum, Canada is not the problem. In fact, in steel, the U.S. has a generally balanced trade relationship with Canada. Canada should be exempted from any potential action in that sector as well." "The government of Canada should work with the U.S. in fighting against Chinese unfair and predatory trade practices, including circumvention and evasion of trade laws in both our countries. China and other countries that break the rules must not be allowed to injure workers in either of our countries." 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: Holly Hart: (202) 778-3300, [email protected] SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW) Related Links http://www.usw.org PALO ALTO, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) will demonstrate its full range of radiation oncology delivery systems at the 36th ESTRO (European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology) meeting, taking place in Vienna from May 5th -May 9th. The Varian booth features the company's technology and products for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, brachytherapy, and proton therapy, and will focus on innovations in oncology hardware and software. Visitors to the Varian booth (No. 4000) will be able to learn more about the company's new HyperArc* high-definition radiotherapy system, which exploits specific capabilities of the TrueBeam and Edge platforms and is designed to deliver more compact radiation doses that may fully saturate a targeted tumor and "fall off" sharply outside the target zone, potentially minimizing dose to specific organs requiring more protection. "This exciting new technology unlocks the potential of using highly non-coplanar treatment strategies to usher in a new era of precision in radiotherapy and radiosurgery for cancer patients," says Kolleen Kennedy, president of Varian's Oncology Systems group. "It is designed to automate and simplify sophisticated treatments such as Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS), and make them available to more cancer patients around the world." Also on display at the Varian booth will be the company's TrueBeam platform for radiotherapy and radiosurgery, along with the RapidArc image-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy system, as well as Varian's range of advanced brachytherapy software and hardware. Varian will also exhibit recent additions to its powerful family of oncology software products, including the 360 Oncology care management platform, the first software system designed to integrate and coordinate key elements of cancer care so patients and their cancer teams can collaborate on achieving the best outcomes. 360 Oncology is designed to bring together in a single platform, radiation, medical and surgical oncology, social services, primary care physicians, as well as the patient, to facilitate true collaborative and coordinated care. Other software highlights include the latest versions of Varian's ARIA oncology information and Eclipse treatment planning systems. Additionally, the Varian booth will spotlight the company's ProBeam system, a fully-integrated image-guided IMPT (intensity-modulated proton therapy) solution, which incorporates pencil-beam scanning technology to optimize the dose applied to every point within the area being treated. ProBeam has been selected to equip multiple proton therapy centers around the world, including several in Europe. Varian is hosting an international oncology summit for customers to kick off its ESTRO activities on May 5th at the Hilton Vienna and other ESTRO events include a Varian lunch symposium on Sunday May 7th. *Not available for sale in every territory About Varian Medical Systems Varian Medical Systems focuses energy on saving lives and is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating and managing cancer. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Varian employs approximately 6,400 people at sites around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com and follow @VarianMedSys on Twitter. Press Contact Neil Madle Varian Medical Systems +44 7786 526068 [email protected] SOURCE Varian Medical Systems Related Links http://www.varian.com The PBS short-form documentary will feature Vector Solutions in a five-minute segment that will air on approximately 200 regional public television stations 10-20 times each month during the next year. The education portion of the series features groundbreaking learning institutions and significant organizations of merit. In this segment, "Behind the Scenes" analyzes how technology is changing the way the heroes and thought leaders who design, build and protect our world are trained. "We could not be more excited to finally see the results live on TV," said Vicki Zambito, SVP of Communication at Vector Solutions. "I'm sure audiences will gain significant insight learning about how educational resources are used to help our everyday heroes. From firefighters and school teachers to construction workers and engineers, these people make up the fabric of our county, and their safety and education is vital to our infrastructure." The television broadcasts are the results of a 10-month project with PBS to conceptualize, create and produce the Vector Solutions story, highlighting the company's strengthening presence in the technology and continuing education fields, as well as the importance of professional training and development. The commercial will also air from Monday, April 17 through Sunday, April 30 in a primetime spot on the top 100 regional television networks, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Family Channel and CNN Headline News. With strategic partnerships across various media distribution outlets, "Behind The Scenes" produces national interest stories including a variety of topics and personalities that educate and entertain the audience on the latest topics and trends impacting America. About Vector Solutions Vector Solutions sets the standard for excellence in delivering online continuing education, training and performance support solutions to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, as well as industrial, public safety and IT fields. Through its brands RedVector, TargetSolutions, LearnSmart, and Scenario Learning . Vector Solutions offers individual courses as well as and large-scale corporate training solutions via a state-of-the-art Learning Management System. With an online library exceeding 5,000 courses authored by more than 200 subject matter experts, Vector Solutions serves professionals and firms across the globe. The recipient of numerous community honors and industry awards, Vector Solutions was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For more information, call 1-866-546-1212 or visit http://www.vector-solutions.com/. Media Contact: Samantha B. Rego 813.864.2664 [email protected] SOURCE Vector Solutions Related Links http://www.vector-solutions.com PHOENIX, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtua Partners announced today that it has acquired approximately 19 acres of undeveloped land in West Phoenix at a purchase price of $2.25MM. The site, located at 103rd Avenue and West Buckeye Road, will be developed by Virtua Partners' affiliate, Quyp Development Services. Current plans call for light industrial on the property. Aerial View of Property "Industrial growth is very strong in the Phoenix MSA," stated Quinn Palomino, Principal of Virtua Partners. "Many companies from California and other high tax states are looking for a more competitive economic and regulatory environment. We're very bullish on the Phoenix industrial market." "This location is ideal due to its proximity to I-10 and the 101 Loop, access from MC 85, availability of utilities, and the business friendly policies of the City of Phoenix," said Nick Montague, President of Quyp Development. "We're excited to add this project to our Phoenix development pipeline." Cathy Cheshier of Property Dimensions Real Estate Group represented the buyer in the transaction. Virtua currently has 15 properties in the Greater Phoenix Area, including projects in Avondale, Mesa, Tolleson, Goodyear, Peoria and Phoenix. Virtua recently announced that Marriott International has approved its construction of two new hotels -- a SpringHill Suites in Avondale and a Fairfield Inn in Tolleson. About Virtua Partners: Virtua Partners is a private equity firm specializing in commercial real estate. Virtua sponsors a variety of funds and commercial real estate projects across the country. Investment products include fixed income, growth to income, growth, and aggressive growth. Through its affiliates, Virtua provides debt and equity origination, asset and property management, workout consulting, development, and fund management. Please visit http://www.virtuapartners.com to learn more about our investor services. Media contact: Derek Uldricks 619.764.9633 SOURCE Virtua Partners Related Links http://www.virtuapartners.com SAN PEDRO, Calif., April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Walker Advertising with Los Defensores invites Latino students who are currently enrolled in an accredited California law school to apply for their bi-annual scholarship. Three applicants will be selected to receive $5,000 each to help pay for their tuition and other law school expenses. Walker Advertising with Los Defensores has just announced details for its bi-annual Latino scholarship. Students who are currently enrolled in an accredited California law school are encouraged to apply to receive $5,000 to help pay for tuition and other law school expenses. Three scholarships will be given. For information and to apply, visit www.walkeradvertising.com/scholarship. While the Latino population in California continues to grow (currently 37%), only 4% of California's lawyers are Latinos. The three scholarship awards are being offered with goals of increasing the percentage of dedicated Latino attorneys, and to empower and encourage Latinos who intend to serve their community as a lawyer. "My commitment to helping the community access expert attorneys is as strong today as when I founded the company more than 30 years ago," said Walker Advertising Founder Mary Ann Walker. To apply, students are required to submit the following documents: A complete application form A current resume Official transcripts for undergraduate and law schools A personal statement up to 1,000 words that includes information related to personal background, service to the Latino community, and financial need A letter of recommendation from someone in the legal community Applicants must have a minimum GPA of 3.0 in law school or undergrad if they are in the first year of law school. Submissions must be postmarked by May 31, 2017 for this scholarship cycle. Only applicants with completed submissions will be considered, and the three winners will be contacted via email. To learn more or download the application form, please visit www.walkeradvertising.com/scholarship. About Walker Advertising Walker Advertising is a full-service advertising agency specializing in the creation of advertising campaigns for the legal profession. The mission of the company can be summed up in one word: access. Walker Advertising thrives in the ability to provide community access to exceptional lawyers through powerful brands including Los Defensores and 1-800-THE-LAW2. This powerful network has helped more than 2 million community members in need of legal help since 1984. To learn more about Walker Advertising, please visit www.walkeradvertising.com. CONTACT: Becky Monraz Walker Advertising Online Media Manager 1-310-427-3423 [email protected] SOURCE Walker Advertising Related Links https://www.walkeradvertising.com "We're a technology company first, so a super intuitive, human site is crucial," said Rudy Adler, Chief Product Officer at Wealthsimple. "It's like we're having a seamless conversation with people. And conversations evolve. That's why we basically tore up the design even after we won a Webby last year and built it again. It's a testament to the creativity of our team that we won again this year, with a completely different website." The website was designed by Wealthsimple's in-house creative team in collaboration with Doberman, with design animation by ManVsMachine and development by Varvet. Judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards have been called the Internet's highest honour by the New York Times. The 21st Annual Webby Awards received 13,000 entries from over 70 countries. The Webby Awards will honour Wealthsimple at its ceremony on May 15 in New York City. About Wealthsimple Wealthsimple is an online investment manager that combines user-friendly digital tools and personal financial advice to make smart, automated investing available to everyone. With no minimum account size and low fees, Wealthsimple makes investing simple, accessible, affordable and personalized. Available in the U.S. and Canada, Wealthsimple was founded by a team of financial experts and technology entrepreneurs, and is backed by the Power Financial group of companies. SOURCE Wealthsimple Related Links https://www.wealthsimple.com/ "So many families continue to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew's severe flooding and Woodforest is proud to partner with Harvest Hope Food Bank to support their commitment to provide much needed essentials to feed these families," stated Andrew Rabuck, Senior Vice President and South Carolina Divisional Manager of Woodforest National Bank. "Hunger is a daily crisis situation, and for those who are dealing with this crisis, the devastation of a natural disaster compounds their troubles and is often enough to push their resources beyond the brink. Harvest Hope serves the hungry on a daily basis, but during a disaster, and the recovery afterwards, our work becomes even more critical to those in need and to those impacted by the disaster. This donation from Woodforest National Bank is a blessing for Harvest Hope and those we serve. The funding will help us purchase critical resources as we continue to respond to the needs of South Carolinians affected by the disaster as they continue to recover," said Denise Holland, CEO of Harvest Hope Food Bank. For information about Woodforest National Bank, please visit www.woodforest.com. For information regarding Harvest Hope Food Bank and how you can help with donations, visit www.harvest hope.org. SOURCE Woodforest National Bank Related Links http://www.woodforest.com PLANO, Texas, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the new senior vice president of Business Development for Working Solutions, Troy Hesselgesser brings cross-industry insight in serving contact center clients and their customers. He has sold to companies such as Disney Studios, SpaceX and Toyota. Whatever the business, Hesselgesser works to understand it. "That way, you create customized solutions, based on wantsnot just needs." From Newport Beach to Dallas, his experience spans developing a direct sales model to such high-profile enterprises as Pixar, Hormel and Churchill Downs; creating close business relationships with Fortune 500 C-suite executives; and operating corporate websites such as bluedoorway.com and SmartMobileApp.com. Before joining Working Solutions, Hesselgesser ran sales and business development at Noribachi, a premier LED lighting manufacturer. Under his leadership, sales increased more than 70% in a year. In less than two years, revenue soared 700%and was on track to more than double in 2016. At blur Group, procurement enterprise services, he expanded its U.S. market with a global creative exchange and increased revenue quarter over quarter by 75%. As vice president of development at Colberg Technologies, Hesselgesser generated sales and strategic partnerships for mobile apps and advertising. At PRS Media Group, a marketing partner for businesses, he directed brand-building and managed relationships with FORTUNE 1000 companies. A University of Southern California graduate, he's lived in eight states and three countries. "Such was the life of military kid," recalls Hesselgesser, whose father served 23 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. "Growing up all over exposes you to diverse cultures and points of view. And today, that awareness helps me better connect with and sell the right contact center solutions to different businesses, whatever the industry." About Working Solutions With 20+ years of success, Working Solutions is a recognized leader in remote contact center solutions. Its U.S-based, on-demand workforce includes sales, customer care and technical expertswith 110,000+ registered agents nationwide. They deliver fast-flex business process outsourcing (BPO) services for clients and their customers across diverse industries, such as healthcare, retail, travel and hospitality. Media Contact: Gail Rigler [email protected] 1820 Preston Park Blvd., Plano, TX 75093 Ph: 972-964-4800 x296 Related Links Who We Are This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Working Solutions ZUG, Switzerland, April 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Landis+Gyr, the global leader in transforming the way energy is delivered and managed, announced that the grid modernization project underway at Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has surpassed 10 million advanced meters and devices installed and communicating on the world's largest IoT utility network. In doing so, this complex project has now reached a breadth and deployment pace which is unparalleled in the utility industry. "Our deployment is making smooth progress, and reaching the 10 million endpoints on the network milestone is a clear indication of the efficiency of our program and the capability of our leading-edge system developed by Landis+Gyr. The target for completion is in 2020, and I believe it can be accelerated, as benefits provided to meeting the customer needs are strong," commented Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Executive Vice President, TEPCO. Driving this connected platform is Landis+Gyr's IPv6 multi-technology network that connects utility and consumer devices using RF Mesh, G3 PLC and cellular communications, providing Wi-SUN compliant connectivity to the premise. Currently, the network is moving data between devices at a rate of 513 million interval reads per day. When complete, the TEPCO deployment will include more than 27 million meters and millions of other devices transmitting 1.3 billion interval data packets daily. All of these messages are processed by Landis+Gyr's head-end system and meter data management solution. "The scale of the project, design requirements and overall goals of this deployment are unprecedented in the industry," said Richard Mora, CEO of Landis+Gyr. "The challenges of routing and managing this magnitude of data are real, but we've been able to meet deployment objectives and are positioned to complete the project ahead of schedule. Landis+Gyr congratulates TEPCO on reaching this impressive milestone." Landis+Gyr's network and grid management technology supports multiple smart grid and smart city initiatives at TEPCO. For example, deregulation of the Japanese electric market in April 2016 required all meter reads for customers utilizing an alternative retailer to be pushed to a common portal every 30 minutes, allowing the energy retailers near real time access to customer data. Other performance targets include the ability to operate 6.5 million demand response requests per hour over the same network. With an average of 1 million smart meters and devices being installed every three months, the utility eclipsed the 10-million-meter mark in less than three full years of deployment. Within seven years, TEPCO will have 30 million utility and consumer devices operating on the network. TEPCO is the largest electric utility in Japan and 4th largest in the world. The utility provides electric service to 45 million people in Japan's Kanto region, which includes the city of Tokyo, Yamanashi Prefecture, and the eastern portion of Shizuoka Prefecture. "Landis+Gyr's pioneering work in Japan is yet another example of our global capabilities to help utilities transform the way energy is delivered," Mora said. "With major contracts for utilities in Europe, North America, Asia and South America, we are extremely proud of the company's unique ability to help the world manage energy better." About Landis+Gyr Landis+Gyr is leading grid modernization across the globe with solutions for utilities that improve reliability, energy efficiency and consumer engagement. The company's comprehensive portfolio includes standards-based smart grid networks and intelligent devices, analytics and data management, renewable integration and energy storage. Landis+Gyr employs 5,700 people supporting customers in 31 countries. With sales exceeding US$1.5 billion, it operates as an independent growth platform of the Toshiba Corporation (TKY:6502) and is also 40% owned by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ). More information is available at landisgyr.com. SOURCE Landis+Gyr 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 Dhaka, April 22 : Police in Bangladesh on Saturday found at least 17 large containers of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical used to make bombs, from a suspected militant hideout in Jhenaidah district. The recovery was made after members of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit resumed their operation for the second day at a house used by the suspected Neo-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants in the morning, The Daily Star reported. "Around 10 a.m., police moved to the house. Some of the bombs have been already disposed. As many as 14 containers filled with liquid have been found. The 30-litre containers are marked Hydrogen peroxide," a senior police official told bdnews24. However, police on Friday claimed that the suspected militants already fled the spot before the CTTC began the operation. The CTTC members also claimed to have recovered a huge stash of explosives and a 9mm pistol from the house. The explosives include three suicide vests, a pressure cooker bomb, around 20 plastic containers of bomb-making chemicals and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and detonators. Last month, CTTC officials busted five hideouts of Neo-JMB -- two in Chittagong, one in Sylhet and two in Moulvibazar, reports The Daily Star. Nineteen people, including five children and five women, were killed in those incidents. According to police, 16 of them were killed in suicide blasts. Chennai, April 23 : The makers of actor Prabhass next film announced on Sunday that the film has been titled "Saaho", and it will be made in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. In an official statement, UV Creations, makers of the film, announced that after playing the title role in "Baahubali" franchise, Prabhas's next will be an ambitious high-tech action drama titled "Saaho". The film's director Sujeeth also shared the title on his Twitter page on Sunday. Talking to IANS earlier this week, Sujeeth said that a major chunk of the film's budget will be used on action sequences. "The scale on which it is being made, a major budget will be spent on some extravagant action scenes. Although it will be a commercial outing, we are attempting something new and I would like to keep that as a surprise element," Sujeeth said. International stuntman Kenny Bates, popular for his work on films such as "Die Hard" and "Transformers", has been brought on board. "Kenny will be supervising the action scenes. We have already finalised locations in Abu Dhabi and some places in Europe where shooting will be done extensively. We go on the floors from the end of May," he said. The makers also confirmed that a special teaser of "Saaho" will be attached to "Baahubali 2: The Conclusion". The movie has music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. While Sabu Cyril will take care of production design, Madhie will crank the camera. "We wanted the music to have a national appeal. We roped in Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy because they understand north as well southern sensibilities when it comes to composing music. They have also worked in the south," Sujeeth had said. Jammu, April 23 : Union Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh on Sunday accused opposition parties in Jammu and Kashmir for allowing foreigners to settle in Jammu. Addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party's state executive committee meeting in Doda district, he asked party workers to go to the people and highlight the developmental works and projects brought in by the Narendra Modi Government in Jammu and Kashmir to give a comparison of what hadn't happened in the last 60 years and what all had been made possible in just three years. He accused the opposition leaders for being hand in glove in settling foreign Rohingyas and Bangladeshis in Jammu for electoral considerations. "It is an irony that Jammu-based leaders, who have been for years dancing to the tune of their Kashmir-centric masters, are now suddenly questioning the contribution of BJP when they have been thrown out of power. "What has been their contribution to the development of Jammu when they were in power, both in the state as well as centre for decades," he asked. Enumerating the Modi government's long list of projects in Jammu in just three years, Singh referred to IIT, AIIMS and IIM for Jammu, approval of the engineering college for Kathua and medical colleges for Kathua and Doda, the inter-state Keediyan-Gadyal bridge in Lakhanpur, North India's first Bio-tech park at Gati near Kathua, a passport centre at Udhampur and approval for Katra-Delhi expressway and the Basholi-Doda Chandragalla tunnel. To those who accuse BJP of having promoted "polarisation" in name of religion, he said his party has brought polarisation in name of development wherein people from all religions and castes voted for it in all the recently-held elections. New Delhi, April 24 : Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades will be paying India a state visit from April 25 to 29, an official statement said. "This is the first visit of the President Anastasiades to India," said the Ministry of External Affairs in a statement. Starting his visit from Mumbai on April 25, President Anastasiades will have a meeting with Governor of Maharashtra C. Vidyasagar Rao. On April 26, he will address a business forum in the western metropolis and laterb in the day travel to Delhi. On April 28, he will be accorded ceremonial welcome and will participate in delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. President Pranab Mukherjee will hold a banquet in his honour. Cyprus, eighth largest foreign investor in India, has cumulative Foreign Direct Investment of above $8.5 billion in areas of financial leasing, stock exchange, auto manufacture, manufacturing industries, real estate, cargo handling, construction, shipping and logistics. On November 18, India and the Mediterranean island nation signed a revised agreement for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income, along with its protocol. This replaced the earlier Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) signed on June 13, 1994. The revised DTAA will enable source based taxation of capital gains on shares, except in respect of investments made prior to April 1, 2017. In addition, the DTAA will bring into effect updated provisions as per international standards and in accordance with the consistent position of India. "Some Agreements and Memorandum of Understandings are currently under negotiation and will be signed during the visit," the statement said. President Anastasiades had meetings with Modi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2015. In October 2009, President Pratibha Devisingh Patil paid a state visit to Cyprus. Chandigarh, April 25 : Six mobile caravans were launched here on Tuesday to sensitise people in the rural areas about issues of gender-based discrimination in Punjab. The mobile caravans, launched by Punjab Additional Chief Secretary S.K. Sandhu, is the initiative of the Punjab State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (PSCPCR) and Punjab State Commission for Women (PSCW), along with NGO Save the Children. The caravans, carrying the message 'Identity is different, but Rights are one', will reach out to 550 villages of Muktsar, Bathinda, Mansa and Fazilka districts of Punjab. "The innovatively designed vans will use a mix of infotainment techniques to educate the community about the sensitive issue of gender-based discrimination. Each van is equipped to show a feature film highlighting methods to report female foeticide incidences and also has a 'Nukkad Natak' team which will initiate discussions about giving equal treatment to boys and girls," a spokesperson said. "There was a need to get more innovative in sensitising people through different mediums and also to sensitise the legal fraternity and the law enforcing agencies. While government is making efforts, mindset of people needs to change to curb gender-based violence," Sandhu said. Underlining the objective of the event, Michelle Bowman, Director of Programmes Operations, Save the Children, said: "We are confident that the campaign will provide children and adolescents of Punjab a platform to raise their concerns and suggestions about gender equality. "Reducing gender based discrimination is a key sustainable development goal for India and through our programmes we not only ensure that community is sensitised on gender-based discrimination but also initiates action towards reducing it," Bowman added. "Children's rights cannot be ensured unless we stop discriminating between different genders. While, the government is making efforts to ensure well-being of all the children, we need support from parents, teachers and community and leaders to ensure that we root out the practices of gender based discrimination," Sukesh Kalia, Chairperson, PSCPCR, said. "The commission is proactively reaching out to women in the state to ensure support for dealing with the issues of discrimination and violence. Awareness on laws and legislations protecting women will play a key role in ensuring their rights. The focus should be on minor girls, especially beggars and those working as domestic helps who are victims of domestic violence," Paramjit Kaur Landran, Chairperson, PSCW said. Los Angeles, April 25 : Actor Chris Pine is in talks to star as Scottish King Robert the Bruce in period drama "Outlaw King" with Ben Foster. The character Bruce was first profiled as the Scottish royal in actor-filmmaker Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" who after betraying William Wallace and allowing the British to capture the rebel leader would go on to fight the British for Scotland's freedom following Wallace's death. In this version, Bruce will take center-stage and include not only his fight against the British, but also the Catholic Church over the idea of a free country, reports variety.com. Pine's "Hell or High Water" helmer David Mackenzie is directing the film from a script he is writing. New Delhi : The April 13 Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) strike by the United States on ISIS terrorists in Afghanistan has triggered suggestions that a second round of the Cold War is set to begin. Particularly as the new US President, Donald Trump, seems to be brash, abrasive and capable of taking action without thinking of consequences. In fact, the Second Cold War, or the Cold War-II, has been in the making due to the rise of Islamic terrorism from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Middle East, drawing inevitable military interventions by the major powers -- Russia's anger at the US-led bombings in Syria where it wants President Bashar Assad to stay, and China's attempts to annex most of the South China Sea and also the acquisition of Pakistan's Arabian Sea port of Gwadar for 40 or more years as a strategic naval base with its operational Command and Control lying with Beijing. Both Russia and China have stepped up military movements on land, air and sea, particularly around US allies like Japan. The official Russian news agency Sputnik is steadily issuing hard-hitting statements against the US, particularly against Trump, and has let it be known that Russian strategic bombers like Tu-95 are flying near the US and Western countries, and battle ships are out in the Pacific near Japan and South Korea. North Korea, China's second military ally after Pakistan, has warned again of destroying the US with long-range nuclear missiles, and the US has vowed to penalise if it conducts another nuclear or missile test. As it happens, it may be remembered, Islamabad got its missile technology from Pyongyang in exchange for nuclear weapons tech, apparently with blessings from Beijing. US, Western and Afghan forces have had a tough time in fighting the Islamic terrorists who hide in, and operate from, the deep caves in the mountains. The terrorists conduct guerrilla strikes from these caves and move back in and, according to reports from Washington, the commander of the US and international forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, had been considering the use of America's biggest non-nuclear bomb, the MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast, for some time. In military terms, this was the right and appropriate weapon to demolish the deep caves and kill everyone in them -- reportedly about a hundred at that time -- by burning up the oxygen. Nonetheless, the use of this MOAB, technically designated GBU 43/B, has proved to be earth-shattering in the global canvas of power play. To Russia and China, and those opposed to the US, this indicates an aggressive willingness on the part of Trump to execute some threats he has been making. Surprisingly, more than China, it is Russia which is challenging the US with rhetoric and news reports of its new military innovations like making the world's biggest nuclear submarine, and supplying new air defence missiles like the S400, or still newer, to Syria. As for Gwadar, and the string of naval facilities China is creating in the Indian Ocean, the implications are enormous. For China, Gwadar will now be The Pivot of its Look West strategy; it will be second non-regional, non-Indian Ocean power after the US to be there, not just for oil and trade but to play a dominant role in the warm waters of the ocean and beyond. As against the two former players in Cold War-I, the United States and the Soviet Union, this time there are three, and although Russia may have more military muscle in terms of equipment, China will be far better placed to deliver its arsenal thanks to its emerging Gwadar military base, some 70 submarines, three (including those planned) aircraft carriers, and a large fleet of ships that should bunker in Gwadar as a home port. China has purchased some 5,000 acres of real estate in and around Gwadar, and for all practical purposes, it will be a Chinese Foreign Territory. The implications are not only enormous but ominous. Cold War-II will be bitter, and more threatening to humanity than the Cold War I. (Gulshan Luthra is Editor of India Strategic defence magazine and website. The opinions expressed are personal. He can be contacted at gulshan.luthra@indiastrategic.in) Moscow, April 27 : The relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are at their lowest level since the end of the Cold War, but Moscow is ready to repair them, a military official said. "We are open to the resumption of a full-scale dialogue and interaction with NATO. The main thing is that this process should take place on an equal, trusting and constructive basis," Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said at the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security, here on Wednesday. He said NATO accuses Russia of being the main source of military threats, while the alliance itself is increasing the scale of military activities in countries near Russia, Xinhua news agency reported. NATO's eastward expansion and deployment of a missile defense system in Europe break the balance of power in the region and increase the risk of military incidents, Gerasimov said. To make it worse, the European countries are furnishing Kiev with military assistance, provoking it to continue armed confrontation in southeastern Ukraine, the Russian General said. "The trust between Russia and the West is catastrophically decreasing as a result," Gerasimov said. In his view, the lack of close cooperation between Russia and the West on anti-terrorism creates favorable conditions for the Islamic State. A new and mutually beneficial system for European security can be formed only through joint efforts with the participation of all European states, Gerasimov said. Washington, April 27 : US President Donald Trump's administration unveiled the principles of the long-awaited tax reform plan that will significantly cut income taxes for Americans and corporates, media reports said. "The plan would reduce the number of personal income tax brackets to three from seven, and it would cut the top individual income tax rate to 35 per cent from 39.6 per cent," Xinhua news agency quoted Director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC) Gary Cohn as saying on Wednesday. At the same time, the plan would cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 per cent from 35 per cent, and it would also impose a one-time tax on overseas profits of US companies, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. That "will bring back trillions of dollars that are offshore to be invested here in the United States, to purchase capital and to create jobs," he said. The plan would also eliminate all tax deductions for individuals except from mortgage interests and charitable tax deductions, according to Mnuchin. "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big," Cohn said, noting President Donald Trump has made tax reform a priority and the Republican-controlled Congress also wants to get it done. However, it's still unclear whether the plan, what US officials called the "biggest tax cut" in history, would be revenue-neutral or would significantly increase fiscal deficits. Mnuchin has repeatedly argued that the administration would count on the compounding effect of strong economic growth over the next decade to finance the tax cuts. "This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes," he said. However, many economists are skeptical about that argument, as the US economic growth will average about only 1.9 per cent over the next ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The details of a complete tax proposal probably won't be ready until June, According to Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Srinagar, April 27 : Five including three soldiers and two militants were killed while another five soldiers were injured in Thursday's fidayeen (suicide) attack on an army camp in Kashmir's Kupwara district. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp in north Kashmir close to the Line of Control (LoC) around 4.30 a.m.," Defence Ministry Spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. "The three soldiers killed, included a captain and a non-commissioned officer (NGO)," the spokesman added. The five injured in the attack in Jammu and Kashmir have been airlifted to Srinagar for treatment, defence sources said. Searches were going on inside the camp to ascertain whether or not the militants managed to sneak into the camp. United Nations, April 27 : The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, the first Indian American to hold a cabinet rank, visited India's UN Mission on Thursday for a wide-ranging discussion with Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin. "We shared perspectives on how India-US can work together at the UN in line with our growing ties," Akbaruddin told IANS after the meeting. Haley described their meeting in a tweet as "great". "We discussed India's economy, peacekeeping reform and the partnership between India and the US." A US Mission statement added that they also discussed "India's economic and anti-corruption reforms that have helped businesses and spurred growth" and "the close ties between the two countries and opportunities to further the partnership between the US and India at the UN." Permanent Representative to the UN has a cabinet rank in the US government and Haley has emerged as a powerful and outspoken voice on foreign policy in the US, even as she deviated from some of the early positions of President Donald Trump. However, the differences have virtually disappeared as Trump moved closer to her stances due to realpolitik and Congressional pressures. For example, Trump has embraced her hardline on Russia after chemical attacks allegedly carried out by Syria. A critic of how the UN works, Haley has been insistent on reforming it, especially the peacekeeping operations as a cut in US contributions to the world body looms. "I know for a fact that Nikki feels very, very strongly about taking on problems that really people steered away from," Trump said on Monday during a White House lunch for Permanent Representatives of members of the Security Council. Trump thanked Haley for her "outstanding leadership" and said she was doing a "fantastic job." It was not known if the Security Council reforms with a permanent seat for India -- a priority for New Delhi -- came up during the conversation with Akbaruddin. President Barack Obama has backed India's quest, but the Trump administration has not publicly endorsed it and Haley has only said that she was open to the idea. Asked about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations here in March, she admitted candidly, "First of all, I'm in learning mode. And as I look at that, I know there is conversations of reform of Security Council." She then added: "I'm open to hearing anyone on what they have to say and looking at it and going further." With the US contributing 28.36 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, Washington is giving priority to reforming the operations. Historically India has been the largest troop-contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations and 7,678 are serving now. India has also been advocating reforming the peacekeeping operations, especially how the mandates are set by the Security Council, often without consulting the troop-contributors. As Governor of South Carolina, Haley showed interest in India's economy and its potential and led a trade delegation in 2014 to India seeking investments and stronger commercial ties with her state. (Arul Louis can be reached at Aarul.l@ians.in) Washington, April 27 : President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that that he would not immediately move to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the White House said. This came on Wednesday just hours after administration officials said Trump was likely to sign an order pulling the US out of the deal, the New York Times reported. The White House described the evening phone calls with President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada as "pleasant and productive". Trump told both that he would quickly start the process of renegotiating Nafta - not abandon it, as he promised during the 2016 presidential campaign, "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up-to-date through renegotiation," Trump said in a statement issued by the White House at 10.33 p.m. "I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better." The announcement that came in a read-out appeared to be an example of Trump's deal-making in real time, the New York Times report said. It followed a day in which officials signalled that he was laying the groundwork to pull out of Nafta - a move intended to increase pressure on Congress to authorise new negotiations, and on Canada and Mexico to accede to American demands. Yangon, April 27 : Representatives of seven member countries of the BIMSTEC gathered in Myanmar for a two-day meeting to seek cooperation in combating money laundering and terrorism financing, a media report said on Thursday. Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) groups consists of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan. In the discussions which began on Wednesday, the representatives touched on topics including evaluation for better cooperation in combating the financing of terrorism, the cyber threat in the financial sector of the regional group, development of human resources to fight the illicit financial flow and preventing financing of terrorism, Xinhua news agency reported. The ninth meeting also discussed issues on cooperation between international organisations and improving the legal framework of the membership countries. In September last year, Myanmar hosted a meeting of BIMSTEC anti-drug trafficking group, focusing on capacity building and technical assistance between the member countries. Kolkata, April 27 : Observing there is "room for work" in Indian museums, Thomas Campbell, the departing Director of the celebrated The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or The Met as it is popularly known, says museum heads should stay for at least five years to articulate a vision and act on it. "I think directors need to stay at least five years so that they can put in place, develop a vision and begin to enact that vision," Campbell, The Met's Director and CEO, told IANS during interactions from Brussels, Belgium and at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, when asked for his opinion on the tenure of directors of Indian museums. Take his own case: Campbell is only the ninth director in The Met's 147-year-old history -- which works out to an average tenure of 16 years. In contrast, Kolkata's Indian Museum, the country's oldest, saw a staggering 15 directors in the 50 years from 1962 to 2012. Of them, five were acting directors. Shedding light on the trend of tenure of museum directors in the US, Campbell said they stay for five to 10 or sometimes even 15 to 20 years and most of them come from within the museum space itself. "Some of them have been curators, like myself. I have been a specialist in European art before I became a Director. Typically, the directors come from the museum profession itself. They have had an opportunity to learn about the museum and about best practices," he said. Campbell started out at The Met in 1996 as an assistant curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts and supervising curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center. Following 13 years of curatorial experience, he was appointed the museum's ninth Director in January, 2009, at the height of the recession. He noted that though Indian museum directors come from varied backgrounds and bring important insights to their work, on the flipside they may not have had the exposure to best practises and discussions about the industry. "I don't want to criticise; I recognise that directors from Indian museums come from all sorts of backgrounds and they all bring important insights to their work through the background they have come, but the downside of people coming in from different professions is that they don't relate to best practices, they may not have visited museums in other countries and they may not be exposed to a dialogue and discussion about the industry," the 55-year-old said. Vinod Daniel, Chairman of AusHeritage and Vice Chairman of the International Council of Museums - Committee for Conservation, was not so circumspect. "They have got to appoint permanent directors, not have bureaucrats take an additional role. Very often it's a bureaucrat who takes an additional role as the Director of an museum. That's a problem. On an average, it's mostly bureaucrats who probably stay at the most about six months. They need to understand what leadership is and working with a bureaucracy is," Australia-based museologist and conservator Daniel, who has been working on restoration projects in India and in several other countries, told IANS separately. Campbell also batted for enhanced participation of Indian museum directors in global discussions and networks. In his role as a Director, Campbell has toured museums in Delhi, Agra Mumbai and Hyderabad among others. He saw the quality of collections and the need for conservation work. "For me a critical issue is that we bring many conservators to The Met where we are fortunate to have very high quality facilities but sometimes what we lose sight of is the difficulties that conservators face on the ground in their home institutions," the New York resident said. Lauding India's "wonderful collections" and the "wonderful buildings" they are very often housed in, the British scholar highlighted that as a a visitor, he is "sometimes struck by a contrast in the way some of the Indian museums present their collections". "I think there are three areas where there is room for work," Campbell said, emphasising his comments were not meant as criticism. "The areas are presentation, design of the presentation, the lighting of the presentation; the interpretation, the information that is given about the collection; and the third, how audiences are engaged by the facilities and activities," he elaborated. Campbell expressed faith in the potential of Indian museums to draw a "much larger tourist as well as local audience". "The big challenge for our generation is turning our institutions from analogue to digital institutions and The Met has put in a huge effort into getting our collections online. But the online information is not the substitute for the real thing," he explained, adding he next plans to write a book. Campbell steps down in June after eight years in the job during which the institution emerged as a worldwide digital leader. Having helmed the largest art museum in the US Campbell underscored the importance of museum leadership. "Museum leadership is very important for the success of museums and the leader sets a strategy that will determine the museum's success," he said. During his tenure, overall museum attendance grew by 40 per cent to a record seven million across The Met's three sites. Campbell said the museum managed to make that growth possible through a "combination of strategies". "... through our advertising and outreach, through the programmes (the exhibitions and activities) and by paying attention to what our audience needed, the signage and facilities, so that when the audience comes to The Met they have a good experience. Whether they are local or foreign tourists, they want to feel engaged," he explained. Established in 1870, the Met presents over 5,000 years of art from every corner of the world. "Our collections have been developed over the last 147 years and we have a very active programme of exhibitions, research around the Indian collections, both in antiquities and all the way through contemporary. In aggregate its one of the largest collection of Indian art anywhere in the world," Campbell pointed out. (Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in) Agartala, April 27 : The northeastern region, long considered backward in growth and business terms, is poised to add heft to India's dominant position in global software exports and the IT industry, a top official said "Aiming to further boost India's software exports and strengthen the IT industry, six IT parks and hubs have already been set up in six capitals or cities of the northeastern states -- Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal, Aizawl, Kohima and Agartala," Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Director General Omkar Rai told IANS during a visit here. "A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the Arunachal Pradesh government to set up another IT park in Itanagar. These IT parks and hubs in the region would further strengthen India's software exports and IT business across the world," he added. Rai, who was in Tripura in connection with the opening of northeast India's sixth and largest IT hub in Agartala, said it is the STPI's 57th centre in India. Built at a cost of Rs 50 crore ($8 million), the Agartala IT hub was jointly set up by the Tripura government and STPI, an autonomous society under the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT. The STPI chief said that total volume of India's IT industry is $144 billion and the total software, and IT services export of the country was estimated at $108 billion dollars in 2015-16. "Currently India has an excellent, strong position in software and IT services export and IT business around the world. We would be penetrating further in the coming years across the world if the Indian and multinational companies work together." "Our aim is to beat the US, China and a few European countries in software exports, IT services and IT business. To realise this goal, the government of India, the states and private industries must work collectively." Rai said that with the setting up of third International Internet Gateway (IIG) in Agartala through Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, eastern India would be able to boost India's ambitious plan to capture the global IT market. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, along with Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, on March 23 last year inaugurated the 3rd IIG through videoconferencing from their respective offices in New Delhi, Dhaka and Agartala. The Agartala IIG is the third such internet gateway after Mumbai and Chennai. India has spent Rs 19.14 crore to create the infrastructure for the Agartala IIG to get access to the 10 gigabit bandwidth from Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL). For this, an optical fibre cable link has been established between Akhaura (along Agartala) and Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh. India has to give BSCCL around Rs 8 crore per year as rent. Rai said that according to the agreement signed between Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and BSCCL, if the demand increases, BSNL can avail up to 40 gigabit bandwidth using the same infrastructure. Government data shows that IT software services exports from STPIs has grown steadily during the last three years from Rs 2.73 lakh crore in 2013-14 to Rs 3.19 lakh crore in 2015-16. The government extends several incentives to the IT sector. These include, customs duty exemption on imported goods, reimbursement of Central Sales Tax (CST) and Excise Duty exemptions on procurement of indigenously-manufactured goods. "These measures have been major contributory factors for the sector to flourish and have taken the country to a dominant position in IT services in the world," Rai maintained. (Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in) New Delhi, April 27 : Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday chaired an inter-ministerial meeting to review the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. The Minister will also review the implementation of development package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the troubled state. Officials of the Home Department, Intelligence Bureau, Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security Force are attending the meeting. Amaravati, April 27 : Making a foray into the Indian market, South Korean auto major Kia Motors on Thursday said it will set up a car manufacturing plant in Andhra Pradesh with an investment of $1.1 billion. The plant, Kia's first in India, will come up in Penugonda in Anantapur district and produce three lakh cars a year. The work on the facility will start towards the end of 2017 and the production is expected to commence in the second half of 2019. The company on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh government in the presence of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. "Kia plans to produce a strategic compact sedan and compact SUV especially for the Indian market at the new plant, which will occupy around 23 million square feet and incorporate facilities for stamping, welding, painting and assembly. The site will also be home to numerous supplier companies' facilities," said a company statement. The state government has allotted 600 acres of land for the plant, which will provide direct employment to 10,000 people. According to the Korean car market, India presents an opportunity for further sustained growth in the fifth largest new car market in the world. "It will enable us to sell cars in the world's fifth largest market, while providing greater flexibility for our global business. Worldwide demand for Kia cars is growing and this is our latest step towards becoming a leading global car manufacturer," said Han-Woo Park, President of Kia Motors. Kia plans to commence local sales of cars produced at the new facility towards the end of 2019, once mass production begins in Anantapur. It said the region's fast-developing supply chain network and skilled labour force were other key reasons for the new investment. The firm earlier scouted others states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana but preferred Andhra Pradesh. The company said construction of a new manufacturing facility in India will enable it to maintain its position as one of the world's fastest-growing automobile brands. With this the company will start selling its models in India, and benefit from further sustainable sales growth, locally and internationally. India is the fastest growing major new car market and the fifth largest in the world, with more than 3.3 million new cars sold in 2016. Forecasts suggest the country will become the third-largest car market by the end of 2020, it added. Founded in 1944, Kia Motors is Korea's oldest manufacturer of motor vehicles and manufactures over three million vehicles a year at 14 manufacturing and assembly operations in five countries. The vehicles are sold in 180 countries. Kia has over 51,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues of over $45 billion. New Delhi, April 27 : Ahead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to India this month-end, a senior Turkish official has said that his country does not have any objection to India becoming a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "I don't think Turkey has any objection to India joining the group," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to President Erdogan, said in response to a question by IANS at a meeting on "India and Turkey's Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. Setting aside all speculation about Turkey's support for India's NSG membership bid, Cevuk said: "We feel that we also are interested in nuclear cooperation with India and all other peaceful countries that seek peaceful use of nuclear technology. So, I don't think Turkey at all has any objection to India's membership." Turkey had earlier conveyed its position that it would favour a consensus on the issue. During his visit to India in November last year, Turkish Minister for Development Lutfi Elvan said that India needed to work on its NSG membership bid "to convince the other countries". "We are ready to join the consensus if it is reached," Elvan was quoted as saying. China had blocked India's membership bid at the NSG plenary in Seoul in June last year on the ground that for a country to become a member of the 48-nation bloc, it should be signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Turkey had earlier supported India's membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). At Wednesday's meeting, Cevik said that Turkey would seek to build its relationship with India during Erdogan's visit that starts on April 30. "We are prepared to help you in building up your economy," he said. He said that Turkey was hosting the bulk of refugees fleeing from Syria while other European nations were not taking in these refugees. Stating that the world was opposing Erdogan because he supported the oppressed, he said: "This is where we need India's help. Our new presidential system will speed up the process of democracy." Erdogan earlier this month won a referendum that gave him more executive powers as President. Speaking on the occasion, Kerem Alkin, Professor at Istanbul Medipol University's Faculty of business and Managerial Sciences, said that Turkey wanted India to share its experience in power generation. "There may be negotiations on energy supply during President Erdogan's visit," Alkin said. "We can work together on global energy demand, especially renewable energy." He also said that Turkey and India could work together on education and food programmes in West Asia and Africa. Transportation, communication, logistics, tourism, retail and financial services are other areas flagged by Alkin where opportunities for cooperation between the two countries lay. (Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in) Srinagar, April 27 : Three soldiers and two suicide attackers were killed on Thursday in a 'fidayeen' attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district. Seven other soldiers were injured in the assault. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp close to the Line of Control (LoC) around 4.30 a.m.," Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. According to officials, the terrorists were "foreigners" and their identity was being ascertained. The dead included 26-year-old Captain Ayush Yadav from Kanpur, Subedar Bhoop Singh from Rajasthan and Naik B.V. Ramanna from Visakhapatnam. The injured were flown to Srinagar for treatment, defence ministry sources said. Reports said two of the injured soldiers were in critical condition. Army officials in Delhi said the militants cut through the two-layered barbed wire fencing of the firing range of the camp, after which they lobbed hand grenades and fired indiscriminately. According to the officials, Panzgam is the rear administrative area for over nine army units in Kupwara and spread over an area of 240,000 sq. metres. The camp is about 20 km from Kupwara and some 10 km from the LoC. The attackers were engaged by the Quick Reaction Team (QRT) and the intense gunfight lasted for 7-10 minutes, the officials said. At least three AK-47 assault rifles, nine magazines, 156 rounds of AK-47, one Chinese pistol, one pistol magazine, one UBGL and three grenades, three matrix sheets, two GPS, one smartphone and one radio set were recovered from the possession of the suicide attackers. The army spokesman said two terrorists were killed in the attack and a third managed to escape. An intense search was on to trace him. The army also launched a search operation inside the camp to ascertain whether the militants had managed to sneak into the camp. New Delhi, April 27 : In the face of India's bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council, a senior Turkish official has said that his country wanted the five permanent members of the world body to give up their veto powers. "Turkey wants the United Nations Security Council members to rescind their veto powers," Ilnur Cevik, Senior Advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said at a meeting on "India and Turkey's Place in the Rising World" organised by Turkish daily Sabah here on Wednesday evening. "This kind of veto power is blocking international justice," Cevik said. Turkey is a member of the group called Uniting for Consensus (UfC) that is opposed to expansion of permanent seats in the UN Security Council. Other members of the group include Italy, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, Malta, Costa Rica, Colombia and San Marino. Cevik said that instead of a country trying to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, "this veto thing should be eliminated so that countries get a fair share, fair result of the Security Council". President Erdogan is set to come on a bilateral visit to India from April 30. Washington, April 27 : US President Donald Trump has told the leaders of Canada and Mexico that he was not immediately planning to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), but warned that the US would still pull out if he could not negotiate a better deal, the White House said. Trump, in phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique PeAa Nieto on Wednesday, agreed to proceed swiftly to enable the renegotiation of the Nafta deal to the benefit of all three countries. The White House said the phone conversations were "pleasant and productive". "It is my privilege to bring Nafta up to date through renegotiation," Trump said in a written statement that accompanied the readout of his phone calls. "It is an honour to deal with both President PeAa Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better," he said. Trump reiterated those points Thursday morning, tweeting, "if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate Nafta." He also claimed that the two leaders reached out to him. The US President railed against the trade accord as a presidential candidate and last week called it as harmful to US workers. As he approaches his 100th day in office on Saturday, Trump and his advisers are hurriedly working to check off promises made during the campaign, one of which was to renegotiate or withdraw from Nafta, CNN reported. Trump has already removed the US from another massive trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was negotiated under former President Barack Obama. Trump's decision to remain in Nafta came the same day a senior administration official revealed the White House was considering an executive order to withdraw from the trade accord. Many Republicans, including Senator John McCain, had cautioned Trump not to pull out from Nafta. "It will devastate the economy in my state," McCain said on Wednesday. "I hope he doesn't do that." "Scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea. It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office," said Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. During his run for office last year, Trump made his disdain for Nafta a central component of a populist message designed to engender support among working class Americans, said the report. He consistently cast the agreement -- which was negotiated by former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's presidential opponent Hillary Clinton -- as a raw deal for the middle class. Last week, Trump derided Nafta during remarks in Wisconsin meant to highlight American manufacturing. "It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of Nata once and for all," Trump said. New Delhi, April 27 : Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday expressed concern over the attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir and said such attacks must be met with strategic and decisive action. "Repeated terrorist attacks, especially on Army camps, is extremely worrying. Must be met with strategic and decisive action," Gandhi tweeted. "My heartfelt condolences to the families of our three brave soldiers martyred in the Kupwara attack," he added. Three Army men and two militants were killed on Thursday in an attack on an Army camp in the Kashmir Valley's Kupwara district. Mumbai, April 27 : Actress Deepika Padukone shot the title track of "Raabta" in one night. The film's director Dinesh Vijan messaged to ask her if she could shoot the title track for his film and she instantly agreed. Vijan said in a statement: "Deepika gives attention to small details and that makes all the difference. She sat with me for some time to understand the nuances and mood of the song. After that it was a swift shoot." He added: "I am glad she shot for the title track of my film. I believe she is lucky for me." Vijan and Deepika have previously worked together during "Love Aaj Kal" and "Cocktail". "Raabta", starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon, is set to release on June 9. Now watch the video: Srinagar, April 27 : A 70-year-old civilian was killed and three others received injuries in a firing incident on Thursday outside the Army camp in Kupwara district, which was attacked by militants on Thursday morning. The state police said a mob gathered outside the Army camp in Panzgam village of Kupwara district where five persons -- three army soldiers and two militants, and resorted to stone pelting. "A 70-year-old civilian has died in the firing outside the Panzgam Army camp, while three other civilians are injured," a police official said. "A mob had gathered outside the camp after the encounter ended there in the morning. They resorted to heavy stone pelting at the camp, demanding the bodies of slain militants," the police official added. The Army has not so far confirmed whether the security guards at the camp opened fire at the mob. Islamabad, April 27 : The decision to provide consular access to alleged India 'spy' Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been awarded death sentence in Pakistan, will be taken on merit, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media that Jadhav was prosecuted as per Pakistani law and his statements helped in intercepting a terrorist network in the country. "We already have evidence in the Jadhav case," Geo TV quoted Zakaria as saying. Jadhav, whose family stays in Mumbai and who was reportedly arrested in Balochistan, has been charged with espionage and waging war against Pakistan. India says he was abducted from Tehran, Iran. The Foreign Office spokesman said former Tehreek-e-Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan in a recent confession video "has disclosed the presence of Research and Analysis Wing's (RAW) presence" in Pakistan. Urging the international community to take notice of Ehsan's confessional video, Zakaria told the media that the former TTP spokesman's "statement exposed the real face of India". He claimed that Ehsan's confession about TTP commander Khalid Khorasani's treatment in India is a proof that the TTP is assisted by RAW. He said that Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies were "involved in sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan". Ankara, April 27 : More than 9,000 Turkish policemen have been suspended over their alleged links with the Gulenist Group. Earlier on Wednesday, over 1,000 suspected Gulenists were detained in police raids across Turkey, the Interior Ministry said. The operations were carried out as part of a probe led by chief public prosecutor's office in Ankara, Xinhua news agency reported. The US-based Fethullah Gulen is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the July 2016 coup attempt which left 249 people dead. Kolkata, April 27 : The Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) on Thursday said it is hopeful that the Union government will keep the GST rate low for the tourism sector. "Anything new that gets rolled out will have a teething problem. What we are looking at is the percentage which is going to be implemented. The lower the percentage, it is good for us because this tax component has to be borne by the travellers. We have to keep that mind," TAFI's Eastern Region Chairman Anil Punjabi told the media here. He said the travel agents body has written to the government articulaing the industry's concerns. "We are hopeful they will keep the slab low," he said. On April 6, Parliament passed four legislations to pave the way for roll out of the historic GST, including the Central GST Bill, 2017, Integrated GST Bill, 2017, GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017, and the Union Territory GST Bill, 2017. The Union Government has announced July 1 as the target date for rolling out the GST, a single tax regime that will replace multiple state and central taxes to create one national market. "It is a good thing which is happening," Punjabi said on the sidelines of the announcement of "Indo-US Promotion of Travel & Tourism" convention in the city. As an extension to the first year of the US- India Travel and Tourism Partnership Year 2017, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce & US Consulate General is organising the day-long convention on May 5. It is supported and attended by delegates from the Ministry of Tourism, US Embassy, New Delhi, US Consulate General, Kolkata along with Tourism Ministers of states from eastern India. According to Vasant Subramanyan, National VP, IACC, the objective of the event is to highlight the potential for the eastern region. One of the segments in east India which could be exploited more is the tea tourism sector, he said. East India receives an average of 3,000 travellers from the US every month. Shimla, April 27 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first low-cost Shimla-Delhi flight near here, and said his dream is to see a person wearing slippers fly in an aeroplane in the country. "My dream was to see a person wearing a 'hawai chappal' fly on the 'hawai jahaz' (plane)," he said in his almost 20-minute-long address in Hindi. During his day-long visit to the Queen of Hills, which witnessed a light shower in the morning, Modi underscored the need to keep air fares within the reach of the middle class. The Rs 2,500-an-hour flight launched on Thursday is part of 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik' (UDAN) scheme that makes air travel more affordable to the common people. It also plans to enhance connectivity with more airports in the country. The first regional flight under the scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2,196 metres above the sea level and 22 km from Himachal Pradesh capital Shimla. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has fixed the one-way fare at Rs 2,036. He said the UDAN scheme caters to the aspirations of the Indians, making flights cheaper than taxi fare. "The lives of the middle class people are being transformed and their aspirations are increasing. Earlier, aviation was considered to be the domain of 'Raja-Maharaja' and the elite. That has changed now," Modi said. The Prime Minister said he foresees tier-II and tier-III cities as "growth engines" given the untapped potential of the country's aviation sector. "If aviation connectivity in tier-II and -III cities is enhanced, it will be beneficial," he said. "We had the opportunity to frame a civil aviation policy, which caters to the aspirations of the people of India. "The UDAN scheme is going to help tourism in Himachal Pradesh," Modi said. He said that in the absence of an aviation policy in the past 70 years, a large number of airstrips were lying idle. These airports will now be put to use under a policy formulated by the present government and 30 such airports will start commercial operations, he said. Annual tourist arrivals in Himachal Pradesh crossed 1.8 crore (18 million) in 2016. The tourism sector's contribution to the exchequer is approximately seven per cent of the State Gross Domestic Product. Modi also laid online the foundation of a hydro-engineering college in Bilaspur district. Accompanied by Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha and J.P. Nadda, Modi simultaneously flagged off the inaugural UDAN flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video-conferencing. The Shimla airport had been shut for scheduled flights since September 6, 2012, affecting tourists and business travellers. A regular to and fro Delhi-Shimla flight will be operated five days a week from Wednesday. The seating capacity of the airlines under the UDAN scheme will range from 19 to 78. Fifty per cent of the seats in every flight will have a fare cap of Rs 2,500 per hour. The airline companies chosen are Airline Allied Services (Alliance Air), SpiceJet, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha. The operations under the scheme are intended to provide air connectivity to unserved and remote routes, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement. The scheme caps airfare for an hour-long journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed-wing aircraft or for 30-minute journey on a helicopter at Rs 2,500. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy released on June 15 last year. On March 30, the central government awarded contracts to five companies to operate flights on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports in India. Caracas, April 27 : Venezuela will withdraw from the Organisation of American States (OAS), according to the country's Foreign Minister, who announced the decision on national television. Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez told VTV state television on Wednesday that the country, which is facing huge civil unrest, would take the unprecedented step of leaving the OAS over what it sees as "attempts by foreign governments to interfere in its affairs by siding with the opposition in the latest wave of protests in the country". She added that the government will formally announce its withdrawal from the group, and that she expects the process to take two years, CNN reported. Rodriguez said this decision was carried out at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's instructions to protect the country's "sovereignty", adding that Venezuela would not participate in future OAS events as they advocate for "interventionism". Venezuela has long accused the OAS secretary-general, Luis Almagro, of being a leader in instigating a "coup" against the government of President Maduro. This exit is not conjecture, it has to do with the dignity of our people, said Rodriguez. The minister also compared the OAS' actions to the stance it took against Cuba in 1962, when it kicked the country out before reinstating it in 2009. After her announcement, Rodriguez continued lambasting the OAS, tweeting that "we will never allow those who bend the knee to offend Venezuela! Our sacred nation! Nation of Bolivar! Fatherland of Chavez! We will win!" The move comes as Venezuela experiences civil unrest. Protests, which have been ongoing for months, escalated in April and have resulted in dozens of deaths. The unrest stems from dissatisfaction with the government, which has been accused of economic mismanagement resulting in huge shortages of daily essentials like food and medicine. At least 29 persons have been killed in clashes between the government and opposition supporters since the unrest erupted at the beginning of April, according to reports. Dhaka, April 27 : Four bodies of suspected militants were found after police stormed a hideout of the Neo-JMB members in the country's western Chapainawabganj district on Thursday. Senior police officer Khurshid Hossain said the "Operation Eagle Hunt" to wipe out the militant hideout was over, Xinhua news agency reported. "The bodies of four men were found after the law enforcers managed to enter the Neo-JMB hideout," he told reporters. The militants, including one named Rafikul Alam Abu, blew themselves up using explosives, said Hossain. Security forces had surrounded the house since early Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, police forces managed to bring an injured woman and a child out of the militant den. Earlier in the day, a huge blast and sporadic gunshots were heard from the house. Police officials said the slain militants were likely mid-level leaders of "Neo JMB". The Neo-JMB, an offshoot of the banned militant outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, was blamed for the deadly July 1, 2016, attack on a Spanish cafe in Dhaka, in which 22 people, mostly foreigners, were killed. Last month Bangladeshi police conducted series of large-scale anti-terror operations, in which at least 17 suspected militants were killed. Kolkata, April 27 : The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has seized an antique 24-kg idol of Lord Vishnu, said to be 500 years old, from West Bengal's Siliguri when it arrested a man who has to smuggle it to Nepal, an official said on Thursday. In a joint operation with the Customs Department, personnel of the SSB's 41st Battalion arrested Bihar-based smuggler Pulkit Rishi, 60, on Wednesday from National Highway-31 near Bagdogra in Siliguri after a tip-off. "The smuggler was carrying a 500-year-old unique idol of Lord Vishnu, estimated worth Rs 45 crore in the antiques market. His arrest lead us to bust a gang of smugglers who specially steal antique idols from temples in Bihar and sell them to Nepal from where they are sent to other foreign countries," SSB spokesperson Deepak Singh told IANS. Rishi disclosed that the idol was stolen by him and his accomplice Shiv Shankar Mehta from Tikka Batti temple in Bihar's Purnia district nearly two months ago and it was to be sold to a Nepal-based antique dealer. According to the officer, the expert of the Historical Department of North Bengal University has confirmed in thier examination of the idol that it is rare metal sculpture weighing 24.07 kg. "Purnia police has been informed about the arrest," said the SSB officer New Delhi, April 27 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral talks on May 1 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will arrive here on April 30 on a two-day state visit to India, a senior official said on Thursday. At a media briefing here, Ruchi Ghanashyam, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that Modi will hold delegation-level talks with Erdogan after the visiting dignitary is given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the morning of May 1. President Pranab Mukherjee will also host a dinner banquet in honour of the Turkish President. Erdogan is visiting India after he won a referendum in his country earlier this month which gave him more executive powers as President. Ghanashyam said that, during the visit, Erdogan will be accompanied by some cabinet ministers, senior officials and a 150-member business delegation that will take part in a a meeting of the India-Turkey Business Forum. Stating that bilateral trade between India and Turkey stood at $6.4 billion, she said: "India's main export products to Turkey are textiles and fabrics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastic products, machinery and automotives." She said that there was scope for cooperation in other areas such as construction, infrastructure development, renewable energy, tourism and film shooting. A number of Indian companies have established their presence in Turkey through production facilities or project participation. "Both India and Turkey have been battling terrorism for long and understand the need for acting against this global menace," Ghanashyam stated. She said that following the talks between Modi and Erdogan on May 1, some agreements that are currently being finalised, are expected to be signed. Erdogan last visited India in 2008 when he was the Prime Minister of his country. President Mukherjee visited Turkey in 2013. Modi also met Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, in 2015. New Delhi, April 27 : Delhi's ruling AAP is likely to appoint Labour Minister Gopal Rai as the new convenor of its city unit. According to sources, the decision was taken in an emergency meeting called by Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal at his residence on Thursday, a day after the party's defeat in Delhi municipal polls. The meeting, attended by party MLAs, also reviewed the possible reasons for AAP's defeat in the municipal polls. "Rai's name has been chosen for new AAP Delhi convenor. However, any final decision in this connection will be taken in a meeting of party's Political Affairs Committee," sources said. Dilip Pandey, who was the party's Delhi convenor, on Wednesday resigned from the post after the party's debacle in the municipal elections. Kejriwal accepted his resignation. Earlier in the day, senior party leader Sanjay Singh resigned as its Punjab in-charge. Party's Co-incharge for Punjab Durgesh Pathak also resigned. The BJP won 181 of the 270 wards for which elections were held. The AAP could win in just 48 wards and the Congress lagged in third place with 30 seats. Kolkata/Bhubaneswar, April 27 : The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday filed a supplementary chargesheet against three of the accused in the Rose Valley chit fund scam including the company chief and two Trinamool Congress MPs who were arrested earlier. "The CBI has filed a supplementary chargesheet in Bhubaneswar in the ongoing Rose Valley chit fund scam investigation. The names of Rose Valley Group chairperson Gautam Kundu, and Trinamool Congress MPs Tapas Paul and Sudip Bandyopadhyay are mentioned in the chargesheet," a senior CBI officer said. In the chargesheet, the CBI indicted Bandyopadhyay, Pal and a Rose Valley subsidiary under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 4 and 6 of the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act. It also slapped Section 13(1)(d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (abusing position as a public servant) against the Trinamool MPs. "The investigation revealed that both the said accused persons in criminal conspiracy with then CMD of said Group of Companies allegedly abused their official position and participated & aided the illegal fund collection business of the company. "They allegedly promoted the illegal business of the company by writing letters to the Regulators favouring the company and also by sharing the dais with accused directors in various functions for canvassing about the schemes. In lieu of which they received alleged huge financial benefits in cash as well as in kind," said a CBI statement. Bandyopadhyay, a four-time Lok Sabha MP, has been under CBI arrest since January 3 for his alleged links with the ponzi scam, while Paul, the other Trinamool MP, was arrested December 30 last year on the same charges. Kundu, Rose valley group chairman, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on March 2015 under the criminal charges and provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. He was handed over to the CBI later. Thousands of people were allegedly cheated in West Bengal and Odisha in the ponzi scam that allegedly promised astronomical returns to its depositors. 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. Panaji, April 27 : The Panaji bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the state government to ensure supply of potable water to the villagers of Sonshi in North Goa's Sattari sub-district. Sonshi was in the news earlier this month after 45 inhabitants of the village were arrested for protesting against pollution caused in water due to iron ore transportation. The court had taken up the matter suo motu after reports highlighting the plight of the arrested villagers appeared in a section of the local media. The court on Thursday also directed the state government to ensure clean tap water to the villagers of Sonshi, located nearly 50 km from Panaji, while telling the state government to come up with a solution to the pollution issue. The 45 villagers from Sonshi, including 23 women, were arrested by police on April 11 and released more than a week later, after they protested against pollution caused by transportation of iron ore by trucks from mining leases surrounding the village, to nearby river jetties from where the ore is shipped. Patna, April 27 : In a rare incident, a bride in Bihar's Samastipur district refused to marry a dark complexioned groom, saying he was unsuitable for her, a police official said on Thursday. Not expecting anything of this sort, the "baraat" (marriage party) was shocked to hear the girl's flat refusal to accept the boy as her groom. The incident was reported from Sinhma village under the Rosera police station's jurisdiction in Samastipur district, about 100 km from Patna. "The bride refused to marry the dark complexioned groom immediately after the ritual of 'Jaimal' (exchange of garlands between bride and groom) was performed on Wednesday," a local police official said. Kumkum Kumari, in her early 20s, surprised all when she refused to marry groom Indal Kumar on the ground of his dark complexion. After the incident, the groom had to return empty-handed along with the marriage party. It is not first such case in rural Bihar where the social scales are tilted heavily against women. Over half a dozen cases of brides refusing to marry "unsuitable" grooms, who were illiterate, deaf or unemployed, have been reported over the past week. "Times seem to have changed for women as several schemes have been launched for their empowerment by the state and central governments," said an elderly villager, who was to attend the marriage ceremony. There are several such cases across the state that go unreported. In rural Bihar, hundreds of weddings take place in the traditionally auspicious marriage season known as "Lagan", which is in progress now. Till a few years ago, in rural Bihar, it was rare for a woman to refuse a groom selected for her by her parents and family. In fact, the reverse was the rule, as the groom or his parents would often walk out of the wedding venue on grounds like inadequate dowry or the bride's education or her complexion. These days, women going for marriage on their own terms is not a rarity even in rural parts of the state. Warangal (Telangana), April 27 : On its 16th formation day, the TRS held a massive show of in this Telangana town on Thursday with the party president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao vowing to fight anti-Telangana forces and serve people till the last drop of his blood. Addressing the mammoth public meeting, he declared that he will not rest till achieving his goal of 'Bangaru' (golden) Telangana. KCR, as Rao is popularly known, exuded confidence that Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will score massive victory in 2019 elections to achieve the goal. He listed out the steps taken by the government during last three years and sought people's continued support to complete the task. Targeting main opposition Congress, KCR alleged that it is trying to create hurdles in the path of development by approaching courts or the Green Tribunal to stall the irrigation projects taken up by the government. The TRS chief said it was the same Congress which was responsible for the all-round neglect of Telangana in united Andhra Pradesh. "No matter how many hurdles they create, we will achieve our goal of Bangaru Telangana even at the cost of our lives," he said. KCR said his government was trying to bring smile on the face of all sections of people. He claimed that no other state in the country is spending Rs 40,000 crore every year on welfare schemes. Stating that overcoming the problem of electricity shortage was the first achievement of his government, KCR said TRS fulfilled the promises made in 2014 elections. He vowed the make agriculture profitable and reiterated that farmers will get Rs 4,000 per acre each for two crop seasons every year to meet the input expenditure. He said the government under its flagship programme 'Mission Bhagiratha' will ensure piped drinking water to all households in every village by the end of the year. He claimed that Mission Kakatiya for revival of minor irrigation tanks was yielding the desired results. KCR said as part of the efforts to revive the rural economy, the government will supply 84 lakh sheeps on subsidy to 30 lakh families of Yadav community and will extend all assistance to fishermen, washermen, hair cutting saloons and the most backward castes depending on various vocations for their livelihood. The TRS chief said in 16 years, TRS had emerged as one of major political forces in the country with a membership of 75 lakh. Braving scorching heat, people from different parts of the state attended the meeting. TRS workers and supporters reached the towns, through different modes of transporting. A large number reached by tractors. Kolkata, April 27 : Sporting black badges, hundreds of doctors here on Thursday observed National Black Day in protest against the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Act. Demanding a repeal of the law, they claimed the Act and repeated attacks on doctors and health professionals, are being "engineered to cover up to the gross inadequacies and series of anti-people pro-corporate policies that have converged into National Health Policy 2017 (NHP 2017)". "Hence only united democratic movement can really uphold the citizens' voice. We still have a long way to go, and it's the responsibility of all stakeholders to keep up to it," said a joint statement issued by Medical Service Centre, Service Doctors' Forum and Junior Doctors' Unity. The protest was called by the Indian Medical Association which recently gave the go-ahead for legal action challenging the law. Around 10 branches of the IMA in the state have moved the Supreme Court against the law, said IMA's south Kolkata chapter's chief R.D. Dubey, who accused the state government of not paying heed to their demands for amendments in the law, forcing them to move the court. "We want the law to be scrapped and issuance of a revised draft with changes that we have demanded. We are not against the Act but against certain clauses, which are harmful to medical practice. A fear has developed among the people regarding private health establishments. Doctors are refusing to accept medical cases due to fear of punitive action under the law," he said. Dubey demanded that government hospitals should also be brought under the Act's ambit. On March 3, the Bengal assembly passed the tough bill to regulate the functioning of private health facilities, providing up to three-year jail and trial for culpable homicide and a maximum fine of Rs 50 lakh in case of patient deaths due to severe medical negligence. The legislation, aimed at bringing transparency, ending harassment of patients and checking medical negligence in private hospitals and nursing homes, brings under its ambit all other private medical set-ups -- irrespective of whether they are registered or not. Pursuant to the law, a high-powered 13-member regulatory commission has been set up to monitor activities of private hospitals. New Delhi, April 27 : There was about two per cent drop in the number of candidates who lost their security deposit in the 2017 civic bodies polls compared to the last with 73.5 per cent candidates not able to get 15 per cent of the votes polled on their wards this year. According to the State Election Commission (SEC) data of 2,516 candidates in the civic polls this year, 71.66 per cent (1,803 candidates) lost their deposit, while in 2012, out of the 2,423 candidates 73.5 per cent (1,782 candidates) had lost their deposit. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won 181 seats in the polls, fielded its candidates on 265 seats but only five of its candidates lost their deposits. In 2012, it contested on 272 seats and 18 of its candidates lost their deposit. The Congress which fielded 269 candidates saw 92 of them losing their deposits. The party could only manage to win 30 seats. In 2012, it fielded 271 candidates out of which only 26 candidates lost their deposit. Even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has its government in the city, contested on all the 270 seats, but could only win 48 seats, while 38 of its candidates lost their deposit. The Janata Dal-United which fielded its candidate on 94 seats, lost its deposit on all the seats, as did the Shiv Sena which contested on 56 seats and lost its deposit on all the seats. However, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which won three seats of the 209 it contested, saw 194 of candidates not being able to save their deposit. In 2012, the BSP lost deposit on 203 seats while contesting on 253 seats. The Samajwadi Party, which managed to win one seat, lost its deposit on 25 seats out of the 27 seats it contested. In 2012, the party had lost deposit on 101 seats of 107 seats it contested. New Delhi, April 27 : Indicating that inequality in India is increasing, a UN report released here on Thursday said that the richest one percent own 53 percent of the country's wealth. It also said that unlike other countries, development in India is not moving across states. "In terms of wealth inequality, India is second only to Russia, where the richest 1 percent own 53 percent of the country's wealth," said the report 'The Better Business, Better World' released here in a two day event of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) focussing on how through bold innovation, businesses can create solutions and tap new opportunities found within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to Lise Kingo, CEO and Executive Director of the UNGC, SDGs can open at least $1 trillion of market opportunity for the private sector in India. "This is out of a total global value of $12 trillion that could be unlocked by sustainable business models in four key areas, food and agriculture, energy, cities and health," she said. Kingo added that over 72 million new jobs could be created in India by 2030 by adapting a sustainable business model. About addressing the disparity, the report says that to reduce the inequality, India needs a 'different economic model' -- one that is not only low-carbon but also recognizes poverty, inequality and lack of financial access. "As the second largest food producer in the world, India needs a more focused approach to developing and managing its agricultural sector and agri-based industrialisation," it says. Stating that rising inequality leads to slower progress in reducing poverty, the report added that Oxfam has calculated that if India were to stop inequality from rising further, it could end extreme poverty for 90 million people as early as 2019. The UNGC also called for better infrastructure to improve access to proper medical care for India's rural population. "On its current trajectory, India will continue to face enormous challenges in rural development, urban sustainability, national infrastructure, and improved quality of life of its citizens," the report says. Its suggestions included creation of low-income food markets, reducing food waste in supply chains, technological aid in smallholder farms, micro-irrigation programs, resource recovery, remote patient monitoring and preventing catastrophic healthcare costs for the poor. Tehran, April 28 : Iran's Foreign Ministry on Thursday criticised the Pakistani government for its "failure" to protect its borders against militant groups who recently killed Iranian border guards in a cross-border attack, Tasnim news agency reported. Xinhua news agency quoted Spokesman Bahram Qasemi ass saying that Pakistan should be held accountable for the presence and operation of militant groups in its territory. The Islamic republic will spare no efforts to follow up on the issue through all diplomatic and political channels, Qasemi was quoted as saying. On Wednesday, 10 Iranian security personnel were killed in the clashes with the armed groups in the southeastern border region of Iran. Four guards were injured in the clashes, which took place at the Mirjaveh border point in Sistan and Baluchestan province. The border guards were patrolling when they were targeted, Tehran Times daily reported. "Our border guards had been targeted from inside Pakistan's soil," Iranian police speaker Saeed Montazerolmahdi was quoted as saying by the daily. "Our investigations show that long-range arms had been used to launch the attack," he said. Over the past decades, Iran's eastern and southeastern border had been the scene of clashes between Iranian security forces and armed drug smugglers on the one hand and security forces with the ethnic Sunni rebels on the other. Jaish al-Adl, or "Army of Justice" has claimed responsibility for the attack on Iran's border guards. The Sunni rebel group claimed to fight for the rights of Sunni Muslims in the Iran's provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan. On Thursday, Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli also said Tehran will pursue the commitments of neighbouring Pakistan to the security and border agreements between the two countries through diplomatic channels. A look inside the F.I.T., Inc. facility We retain employees by treating them like family. Automotive parts manufacturer, Fuserashi International Technology (F.I.T. Inc.), continues to expand its workforce for the Fourth third consecutive year. The Valley City company increased its staff by 37% in 2016, adding 27 new associates. The company has grown largely because its product offerings and volumes have continued to expand significantly. As the first company to move into the Valley City Industrial Parkway 20 years ago, F.I.T. started with a 30,000-sq-ft. building, and has since expanded its space over 500%, now standing at 200,000-sq-ft. Through offering the highest quality products, F.I.T. has differentiated itself from other manufacturers in the industry. When the company was founded, it focused on one or two products. It has since kept its focus on quality and diversified its product line to include safety parts. Adding to its product line has necessitated building expansions and increased staffing needs. With an emphasis on creating an unparalleled employee experience, F.I.T. has concentrated on recruiting employees interested in developing quality products and staying with the company long-term. Benefits include a great work-life balance, an open-door policy, opportunities to cross train, and more. In addition to promoting its company culture, F.I.T. also offers a premier health insurance package, a Simple IRA, paid time off from the first day of work, and education opportunities. Regarding its high retention rate, HR Manager Jennifer Connelly says, We retain employees by treating them like family, listening to their suggestions, and ensuring that theyre engaged in their work environment. In the past year, the companys HR team directed efforts towards hiring skilled employees specifically for CNC positions and hired 10 employees for these positions. As they continue to grow, they will be searching for skilled machine operators in 2017. Connelly says, We continue the need to seek candidates for employment, to fill open positions. Along with a great reputation in the community, 25% of our workforce are referrals, which has helped us find employees in the past. With the launch of our updated website, we are hopeful that we can expand our reach to the potential candidates in our community who are seeking a career in manufacturing, and may not currently know that there are great career opportunities available within our organization. Learn more about the benefits of working at F.I.T., https://www.fitinc.net/why-work-at-fit/. About F.I.T. Established in February of 1996, F.I.T., Inc. is the first international subsidiary of Fuserashi Co., Ltd. Fuserashi is a Japanese manufacturer of hot and cold formed precision metal products and fasteners, primarily for various vehicle applications, with a tradition of quality, service, and performance. Since opening its doors over 20 years ago, F.I.T. has more than quadrupled its footprint, both in terms of facility size and equipment. With four major plant expansions, substantial employee growth, and an accelerating customer base, F.I.T. continues to innovate in its field. Beautiful cherry blossoms on a sunny spring day in Door County, WI. Throughout the peninsula, 2,500 acres of cherry orchards bloom to picturesque flowers. In May, Door County, WI rolls out the red carpet for the arrival of cherry blossoms. Throughout the peninsula, 2,500 acres of cherry orchards bloom to picturesque flowers. Breathe in the enchanting aroma of blossoms and participate in the many special events and outdoor activities celebrating spring in Door County. May Special Events Reawaken the mind and body with a spring renewal in Door County. Door Countys Season of Blossoms lodging promotion is April 8-June 4, 2017. Visitors can choose from over 25 lodging establishments offering 2-night stays that include a meal, spring activity, and a $25 Door County gift certificate upon check-in. Go behind the scenes at Bay Shipbuilding and CenterPointe Yacht Services for the annual Shipyard Tours, May 6. Dust off the running shoes and run through scenic Peninsula State Park at the Door County Half Marathon and Nicolet Bay 5k, May 6, 2017. Cast a line and catch prize winning fish during the Sturgeon Bay Open Bass Tournament, May 18-21. In 2014, Sturgeon Bay was named the No. 1 best bass fishing waters in the United States by Bassmaster. Explore Baileys Harbors maritime history at the Blessing of the Fleet Festival, May 20-21. Celebrate the 45th annual Maifest festival in Jacksonport May 27-28, 2017. Live music, food, a parade, and a 10k and 2-miile run are some of the great attractions at this event. State and County Park Activities Door County offers 5 state parks and 19 county parks across the 70-mile-long peninsula. Each park offers a variety of recreational opportunities and scenic beauty. Try a Segway while touring Peninsula State Park with Segway the Door. Pack a backpack and hike to a campsite in Newport State Park for a spring camping adventure. Watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan at Cave Point County Park. Enjoy a spring afternoon biking through Potawatomi State Park. Ride the Karfi ferry to Rock Island State Park, opening Memorial Day weekend. On Going Spring Activities Hunt for blossoms with the Guide to Spring in Door County. Explore the waters around Door County on a guided kayak tour with Door County Kayak Tours. Take a thrilling zip lining adventure with Lakeshore Adventures. Smell enchanting cherry blossoms across the peninsula. Watch the Door County Cherry Report for updated blossom information. Hop aboard the Door County Trolley for a Spring Blossom Tour. View beautiful blossoms, take a scenic carriage ride, sample wine from two award winning wineries, and enjoy lunch at a local restaurant. Cast a line and catch walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass with one of the many fishing charters in Door County. Drive around southern Door County and explore traditional Belgian roadside chapels. Practice the winning golf swing at one of eleven golf courses in the county. Stay Connected at DoorCounty.com About Door County Door County is a bucolic peninsula that juts out into Lake Michigan in Wisconsins northeast corner. Named one of the Top 10 Vacation Destinations in North America by Money magazine, Door County features 300 miles of shoreline, 11 lighthouses, 5 state parks and 19 county parks. It is known for its natural beauty, artistic offerings and year-round outdoor recreation opportunities. Lisa Donofrio is proud to announce a new anti-aging treatment available to patients on the Connecticut Shoreline. Silhouette InstaLift reduces the appearance of lines and wrinkles on the mid to lower face and neck, and minimizes the appearance of jowls along the jawline for a younger-looking, revitalized appearance. With the convenience of an in-office treatment, InstaLift provides an easy alternative to surgical facelifts and thread lifts. This treatment typically takes less than one hour, and can be performed using a local anesthetic. InstaLift works by both lifting sagging skin and promoting increased collagen production. Dr. Donofrio can help patients achieve smoother, tighter skin by injecting bio-degradable cones (knots made from the same material as dissolvable sutures) into strategically-placed areas on the face and jawline. Many patients can see improvements within 30 minutes of their InstaLift treatment, and those results typically last from 18 months to two years. Please visit AriaDermSpa.com to learn more about InstaLift treatments at Aria DermSpa and Aesthetic Center. New Haven County-area patients can also call 203.421.6674 for more information about this new service. About Aria DermSpa and Aesthetic Center in New Haven County in Connecticut Dr. Lisa Donofrio opened Aria DermSpa Dermatology & Aesthetic Center on the Connecticut Shoreline to offer aesthetic expertise in cosmetic treatments, specializing in body contouring and skin rejuvenation. With state-of-the-art technology and technique, Dr. Lisa Donofrio and the Aria DermSpa staff strive to help all their patients achieve their cosmetic goals. Injectable treatments available at Aria DermSpa include: Botox, Belotero Balance, Dysport, Juvederm XC, Liquid Facelift, Radiesse, Restylane, Sculptra, Volbella, Voluma, and Xeomin. Chemical peels, DermaSweep, facial fat transfer, microdermabrasion, microneedling, sclerotherapy, PRP facial rejuvenation, Clear + Brilliant, IPL photofacial, and fractional laser skin resurfacing are available to patients interested in skin rejuvenation. Facial procedures include InstaLift, lip lifts, neck lifts, non-surgical eye lifts, and under-eye dark circle correction. For patients seeking body contouring in New Haven County, Aria DermSpa offers CoolSculpting, liposuction, ThermiSmooth, ThermiTight, Kybella, Futura Fit, ProLipo, and ZWavePro. PRP hair restoration and varicose vein treatment is also available. Located at 71 Wall Street in Madison, CT, Aria DermSpa and Aesthetic Center treats patients in New Haven County and the Connecticut Shoreline area. For inquiries about treatments or Aria DermSpa, call 203.421.6674. About Dr. Lisa Donofrio Educated at Quinnipiac University and Tulane University School of Medicine, Dr. Lisa Donofrio is a board-certified dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon, recognized most for her expertise in fat grafting, liposuction, and periorbital rejuvenation (using both fat transfers and dermal fillers). Dr. Donofrio is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Departments of Dermatology at both Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT, and at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, LA. She is an active member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, where she has served on the board. Dr. Donofrio is also a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society of Liposuction Surgery, and the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery. In these capacities, she is often booked for speaking engagements about surgical techniques, dermal fillers, liposuction, and fat transfer procedures. An author of over two dozen peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, Dr. Donofrio is also the Assistant Editor for The Journal of Dermatologic Surgery, and was the guest editor for Fillers issues. She has been featured in The New York Times, Allure, Health, The Wall Street Journal, Connecticut Magazine, and 20/20, among other media outlets. At a recent post in the American IRA blog, CEO Jim Hitt took the time to address a primary concern for those who want to leave a strong financial legacy behind: the issue of probate. With a Self-Directed IRA, Jim Hitt explained, investors have plenty of access to certain protections in retirement. But what about protections that extend beyond even retirement? Nothing is inevitable, except death and taxes, the post begins, before noting that both death and taxeswhile serious conceptscan have some of the sting taken out when investors have a plan in place for their legacy. One of the most powerful tools for ensuring that legacy gets left behind, according to Jim Hitt, is to name an individual beneficiary on ones Self-Directed IRA accounts. If this step is not taken, then the investments held in a Self-Directed IRA account will return to the estatewhere they can be taxes at high rates. Effective probate planning is not about dodging taxes, but rather finding the legitimate and legally entitled ways investors can move money directly to beneficiaries upon passing. This requires a strong plan, says Jim Hitt. It requires taking the time to consider all of your optionsand taking with an expert who understands these complicated legal issues. The post also notes that strategic gifting throughout ones life is another way that a retiree can transfer money directly to family members. This happens before death. The current regulations on the books allow for gifts under $14,000 to be tax free. Included with the above strategies, Jim Hitt argues, Self-Directed IRA investors can take plenty of steps to avoid the pain of probate and leave behind a solid financial legacy that takes care of family members even after the investors death. To learn more, visit the blog post at http://www.americanira.com/home-links/protecting-self-directed-ira-probate/ or call American IRA directly at 1-866-7500-IRA(472). About American IRA, LLC: Click here to claim one of our 7 Self-Directed IRA guide(s). American IRA is committed to providing every client with gold-level service, regardless of account size. Experience their expertise through their certified IRA services professionals. Enjoy the value with one low annual fee of $285 with unlimited assets and unlimited account values. American IRA clients love the benefit of no charge for "All Cash" accounts. The performance of the American IRA staff is unmatched, with quick and efficient processing within 48 hours. American IRA services thousands of clients and has over $300 million in assets under administration. American IRA was built by investors for investors, and brings their successful investment experience to the table, providing excellent educational material showing the public that their Self-Directed IRA account can invest in a variety of assets such as real estate, private lending, limited liability companies, precious metals and much more. American IRA is conveniently located in Asheville, NC and Charlotte, NC, and serves clients nationwide. Our firm is growing to meet the needs of Hoosiers across Indiana, and Stephannie could not be a better fit to help us serve our community. Wagner Reese LLP, a prominent personal injury law firm, recently announced an expansion of its legal team to include Stephanie Cassman, an aggressive and seasoned courtroom advocate with a passion for trial work. Cassman has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in a number of jury and bench trials throughout Indiana in both state and federal courts. Jason and I are pleased to welcome a partner with such depth of knowledge, skill in the courtroom, and deep roots in Indiana, said Wagner Reese co-founder Steve Wagner. Our firm is growing to meet the needs of Hoosiers across Indiana, and Stephanie could not be a better fit to help us serve our community. Cassman officially joined the firm in April, 2017 and has hit the ground running meeting with clients, handling cases, and speaking with victims. Cassman represents individuals and their families in personal injury, wrongful death, and civil rights cases for Wagner Reese. I am very excited to join the Wagner Reese team and long-time respected colleagues, Steve and Jason, stated Cassman. Ive watched them build one of the most reputable law firms in the State of Indiana based on client service and aggressive skilled advocacy. We share the same core values in the practice of law - a passion for trial work and zealous representation of clients seeking justice. I am thrilled for the opportunity to bring my courtroom experience to the team. ### About Stephanie Cassman Cassman was born and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana and is a life-long Hoosier. Stephanie is a frequent speaker and author on jury selection and trial advocacy and serves on faculty for the Trial Advocacy Skills College. She is an active member of the Indianapolis Bar Association, where she served as the 2011 Chair of the Litigation Section and on the Board of Directors as Vice President in 2015. Stephanie is a Distinguished Fellow of the Indianapolis Bar Foundation recognized for her significant contribution to the legal profession and leadership within the community. She has been recognized as a top-rated litigation attorney and listed on the Top 50 Attorneys and Top 25 Women by Indiana Super Lawyers in 2016 and 2017. In 2015, Stephanie received the honor of being named by her peers as the Indiana Defense Lawyer of the Year. About Wagner Reese LLP Wagner Reese, LLP was formed in 2000 by Jason Reese and Steve Wagner. Over the past two decades, the firm has established a track record of success with numerous multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements. Wagner Reese has successfully tried dozens of cases to juries and judges in various counties throughout the State of Indiana including vehicular accidents, personal injury, medical malpractice, and workers compensation claims. Steve Wagner, Jason Reese and Stephanie Cassman have been recognized by their peers as Indiana SuperLawyers for ten consecutive years for their excellence in the practice of law. By working closely with Figshare we hope this new tool will make it even easier for our authors to share their research outputs. Figshare, an online digital repository for academic research, today launched a new tool that enables authors to share their research outputs more efficiently during the publishing process. Springer Nature are the first publisher to pilot this new data submission portal and have worked closely with Figshare to build a customised service to support open research. The tool will reduce the amount of information authors must complete to share data supporting their publications. Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Head of Data Publishing, Springer Nature said: "We know that many researchers are motivated to share their data but are often faced with challenges in doing so. As a publisher we want to advance discovery and drive the development of open research by supporting data sharing and accessibility. By working closely with Figshare we hope this new tool will make it even easier for our authors to share their research outputs." Mark Hahnel, CEO of Figshare said: In our State of Open Data Report, three-quarters of all researchers, whether by mandate or not, state they have made their data sets open and available and value a data citation as much as an article citation. We have been working jointly with Springer Nature to make sure this new service will allow researchers to make their data more easily discoverable and reusable, something researchers consider as core to the furthering of research. Springer Nature are using the new tool to support their new Data Support Services, where Research Data Editors carry out checks on submitted research outputs, advise authors on how best to link the files to their articles, and coordinate publication of their data. The new portal, and Springer Natures service will be developed further in response to usage and feedback. Authors who use the data submission portal will: Save time and effort needed to deposit and curate data and link data to publications Promote citation and reuse of their data Enhance and increase visibility of their peer reviewed publications More easily comply with data policies of funding agencies and institutions Contribute to more rapid scientific progress and increased reproducibility Be able to share a wider variety of their research data files in conjunction with their articles The data submission portal is available now to support authors of six BMC journals: BMC Biology, BMC Research Notes, BMC Neuroscience, BMC Plant Biology, BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Genomics who wish to openly share their larger supplementary data files. Springer Nature expects to rollout to more journals following this pilot phase. If you want to find out more about this offering, email: Figshare at info(at)figshare(dot)com or Springer Nature at researchdata(at)springernature(dot)com. >END< About Figshare Figshare is a web-based platform to help academic institutions manage, disseminate and measure the public attention of all their research outputs. The light-touch and user-friendly approach focuses on four key areas: research data management, reporting and statistics, research data dissemination and administrative control. Figshare works with institutions in North America and internationally to help them meet key funder recommendations and to provide world-leading tools to support an open culture of data sharing and collaboration. For more information, visit http://figshare.com and follow @figshare on Twitter. About Digital Science Digital Science is a technology company serving the needs of scientific and research communities at key points along the full cycle of research. It invests in and incubates research software companies that simplify the research cycle, making more time for discovery. Its portfolio companies include a host of leading brands including Altmetric, BioRAFT, Figshare, IFI CLAIMS, Labguru, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, UberResearch, Peerwith, GRID, TetraScience and Transcriptic. It is operated by global media company, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Visit http://www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter. About Springer Nature Springer Nature advances discovery by publishing robust and insightful research, supporting the development of new areas of knowledge and making ideas and information accessible around the world. Key to this is our ability to provide the best possible service to the whole research community: helping authors to share their discoveries; enabling researchers to find, access and understand the work of others; supporting librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; providing quality publishing support to societies; and championing the issues that matter standing up for science, leading the way on open access and being powerful advocates for the highest quality and ethical standards in research. As a research publisher, Springer Nature is home to trusted brands including Springer, Nature Research, BioMed Central, Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American. For more information, please visit springernature.com and @SpringerNature. Gerard Ramos, Co-Founder of Revelry Labs and Official Member Forbes Technology Council As a New Orleans native, its exciting to become the first official Louisiana member of the Forbes Technology Council, and to be granted the privilege to advocate for our vibrant tech community on a larger stage Gerard Ramos, founder and CEO of Revelry Labs has been accepted into the Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Ramos joins other Forbes Technology Council members, who are hand-selected, to become part of a curated network of successful peers and get access to a variety of exclusive benefits and resources, including the opportunity to submit thought leadership articles and short tips on industry-related topics for publishing on Forbes.com. Forbes Councils combines an innovative, high-touch approach to community management perfected by the team behind Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) with the extensive resources and global reach of Forbes. As a result, Forbes Council members get access to the people, benefits and expertise they need to grow their businesses and a dedicated member concierge who acts as an extension of their own team, providing personalized one-on-one support. As a New Orleans native, its exciting to become the first official Louisiana member of the Forbes Technology Council, and to be granted the privilege to advocate for our vibrant tech community on a larger stage said Gerard Ramos, co-founder and CEO of Revelry Labs, a leading development studio in New Orleans. We believe Louisiana has a lot to offer, not only to our local communities, but to the broader technology industry. We look forward to shining a light on the great work being done by the talented and passionate people who live here." Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, says, We are honored to welcome Gerard into the community. Our mission with Forbes Councils is to curate successful professionals from every industry, creating a vetted, social capital-driven network that helps every member make an even greater impact on the business world. About Revelry Labs Revelry Labs is a digital transformation and custom software development studio based in New Orleans, LA. The company has grown to a team of 30 people over the last 3 years. Revelrys main focus is on building and integrating custom B2B web and mobile products that customers, employees and leadership teams love to use. For press related inquires, please email press(at)revelry(dot)co. For all other inquires or to learn more about our capabilities, please email hello(at)revelry(dot)co. We look forward to hearing from you! About Forbes Councils Forbes partnered with the founders of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to launch Forbes Councils, invitation-only communities for world-class business professionals in a variety of industries. Members, who are hand-selected by each Councils community team, receive personalized introductions to each other based on their specific needs and gain access to a wide range of business benefits and services, including best-in-class concierge teams, personalized connections, peer-to-peer learning, a business services marketplace, and the opportunity to share thought leadership content on Forbes.com. For more information about Forbes Technology Council, visit https://forbestechcouncil.com/. To learn more about Forbes Councils, visit forbescouncils.com. Mike York, COO Medical school debt has become increasingly burdensome for new physicians in recent years; weve created this scholarship as a way to assist with this growing issue, one future physician at a time. PracticeMatch, a leading national provider of healthcare staffing resources, such as job boards, career fairs, and candidate leads for employers, established the Empowered Physicians Scholarship award to assist future physicians in the United States with their medical school debt. Physicians begin their careers with, on average, about $183,000 in medical school debt, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and the average debt continues to climb. About one-third of medical school graduates have an additional $24,000 in undergraduate debt. Furthermore, 37 percent of medical school graduates have accumulated more than $200,000 in debt by the time they begin their medical careers. Medical school debt has become increasingly burdensome for new physicians in recent years; weve created this scholarship as a way to assist with this growing issue, one future physician at a time, states Mike York, chief operations officer of PracticeMatch. Since 1990, PracticeMatch has empowered physicians with career opportunities to help them meet their personal and professional goals. Today, we are excited to start this new tradition to further assist a future physician who exhibits exemplary dedication and involvement in his or her respective community. The $2,000 scholarship will be awarded based on an essay contest which runs through December 1, 2017, with a winner to be announced on January 5, 2018. Entrants should write and submit a 500-word essay which conveys their career inspiration and passion for medicine, as well as how they plan to positively impact the lives of others and improve their respective communities as a physician. For additional resources to reduce medical school student debt, York advises working with a financial planner, and identifying employers which can provide further assistance with student loan assistance. Many employers offer sign-on bonuses which can help offset medical school debt. Also, finding an employer in a community that qualifies as a medically underserved area may allow a physician to earn student loan forgiveness for most, or all outstanding school debt, after a few years of service as a physician, York advises. In addition to this new scholarship we offer, PracticeMatch can assist future physicians and new physicians with student debt by helping them to identify employers who will pay or forgive some or all of an incoming physicians student loan debt. For more information about the physician scholarship, or to submit an essay for consideration, please visit PracticeMatch.com About PracticeMatch: PracticeMatch is one of the most established companies serving healthcare employers with recruiting and staffing resources including job boards, career fairs, and candidate leads. Established more than 25 years ago, its Pinpoint physician database includes over 338,000 interviewed, pre-screened physicians. Based in St. Louis, MO, the company hosts more than 30 physician career fairs annually, across the country. For media inquiries, or to schedule an interview with a PracticeMatch executive, please contact Andrea Clement aclement@usa.M3.com. For more information regarding healthcare recruiting resources provided by PracticeMatch, please contact Mike York (800) 489-1440, or email mike.york(at)practicematch(dot)com. # # # If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Andrea Clement, Media Relations at 404.990.3614 or email at aclement(at)usa.m3(dot)com. According to a CNBC report, a curious thing is happening among American shoppers. More people are taking a moment to flip over an item or fish for a label and ask, is it "Made in the USA?" It is for this reason that representatives with Crescent Harbor Lighting (http://crescentharbor.com/) today announced that it has added new, American-made products by Hubbardton Forge Lighting, to its online store. Were thrilled to be able to offer a variety of newly-added products that are made right here in the United States, said Tim Fossett, president and spokesperson for Crescent Harbor Lighting, which is the online arm of The Lighthouse, a family-owned lighting company founded in 1972. Weve listened to our customers and our customers want more products to choose form that are made here in the United States. Were sure that theyll love the American-made products weve added. The first newly added product is the Hubbardton Forge 101503 Piccadilly 12 - Light Pendant. Fossett noted that the companys award-winning collection of transitional and contemporary pendants is one of the most distinctive in the industry. They draw their design inspiration from modern sculptural forms, yet possess a warm, organic quality of light that is comfortable in a wide range of settings, Fossett said. Customers will be able to mix and match your choice of glass, finish and shade options to create a customized design to suit their personal decorating style. The second newly added product is the 126720 Hubbardton Forge Equinox Semi-Flush, which Fossett described as being a single steel plate, artfully cut and folded, and creates three overlapping arcs. The dome of opal glass, he pointed out, is cradled within the arcs, and the steel is available in any of the companys standard finishes to complete the customers personal style. The third product is the Hubbardton Forge 272880D Encounter LED Table Lamp. This stylish table lamp looks like it's headed somewhere, Fossett stressed, before adding, The companys design team drove the concept, but the artisans at its forge in Vermont made it a reality. A steel ball ringed by metal pebbles that allow the lamp to swivel on the base with a trimless drum shade that hovers above. The last newly added American-made product is the 207470 Hubbardton Forge Fizz Sconce. Hand-blown clear bubble glass created by the local artisans at AO Glass is in the spotlight for this design, Fossett said. A spun brass collar surrounds the glass to give the sconce just a touch of an industrial feel. Your choice of finishes for the pipe and socket completes the look of this product made right here in the United States of America. For more information, please visit crescentharbor.com/hubbardton-forge About Crescent Harbor Lighting Crescent Harbor Lighting is the online arm of The Lighthouse, a family-owned lighting company founded in 1972. The company specializes in a high-touch customer service approach to retailing lighting fixtures, ceiling fans and other related items. Contact Details: Tim Fossett President 88 York Street US Route One Kennebunk, Maine, 04043 Toll Free Phone: 1-888-355-9525 Local Phone: 1-207-985-3535 Fax: 1-207-985-4569 Source: Crescent Harbor Lighting ### The Guide to New York Divorce, Second Edition Its difficult for anybody to absorb all the information they need to know sitting in a divorce lawyers office . After reading the book theyll know what to expect and be more relaxed and able to make the best decisions for them and their family. Experienced Long Island Family Law Attorney Robert E. Hornberger, Esq. just published the second edition of his well-received, Guide to New York Divorce: Everything You Need to Know Before Hiring a Divorce Lawyer. The new book, available at no cost from his website, https://divorce-longisland.com/, has been completely revised to reflect changes in New York divorce law and includes an entirely new chapter including a fictitious case study demonstrating how the principals in the book would be used in an actual divorce case. We revised the book due to popular demand, author and divorce lawyer Hornberger said. And because changes in New York state family law made revision necessary. The first edition of the book, which was published in 2015, was downloaded hundreds of times. We are pleased that we were able to help hundreds of Long Islanders navigate the sometimes scary and confusing waters of divorce law, Hornberger said. We reviewed every word of the prior edition and updated it where necessary to ensure that the book reflects the current state of divorce law in New York. The eBook, Guide to New York Divorce: What You Need to Know Before Hiring a Divorce Lawyer in New York is intended to take the mystery and fear out of the often difficult process of divorce so that couples can make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Rather than charge for what is truly a valuable resource for couples considering divorce, Hornberger has made the guide available as a complimentary download from the divorce attorney firms website, http://divorce-longisland.com/download-our-free-new-york-divorce-guide. The clients I meet are all understandably distraught at the prospect of going through a divorce, Hornberger said. Even when they want the divorce, its still an emotional experience and theres so much confusion and misinformation out there. I wrote this book to help people who may be considering divorce in New York understand what theyre getting into. When they download the book, they can read it at their leisure from the comfort and convenience of their own home, before they ever set foot in a divorce lawyers office. The eBook covers the most important issues anyone on Long Island considering divorce in New York will have to tackle. A glance at the Table of Contents of the eBook demonstrates the comprehensive nature of this guide. Far from a sales pitch for the divorce attorneys firm, the first chapter, How to Know if Its Time for a Divorce advises Long Island couples with suggestions of methods to help repair their relationships before concluding their marriages are irreparable; while the final chapter, How Do I Move On & Enjoy a Healthy Life After My Long Island Divorce? offers hope for life after divorce and offers tips and techniques for individuals getting on with their lives after divorce in a healthy and happy way. New to the book is Chapter 11, Long Island Divorce Case Study / Example. This chapter presents the divorce case of a fictitious Jane and John, and how issues previously described in the book, like Equitable Distribution of Assets, Child Custody and Visitation, Child Support and Spousal Maintenance, would be handled in a courtroom in Long Island, NY. In between the first and last are all-inclusive chapters covering all the pertinent information couples need to know when they are going through a divorce on Long Island. Topics covered include: Divorce or Legal Separation: Which is Right for Me? (What is Legal Separation?, Support Implications, What is a Divorce?) Grounds for Divorce (Cruel & Inhuman Treatment, Abandonment, Adultery, Living Separate, Irretrievable Breakdown) How to Find the Right Divorce Lawyer (Goals, Liking Your Attorney, Costs, How to Get the Names of Respected Attorneys in Your Area, The Law, Free Consultations) Child Custody (Options, How to Get Custody, Factors Courts Use to Decide Custody, Different Types of Custody Arrangements, Sole Legal, Joint Legal, Sole Physical, Joint Physical or Shared Custody, Parenting Time & Holidays) Child Support (Child Support Standards Act, Adjusted Gross Income Calculations, Child Support Collections) Spousal Maintenance (Alimony, Spousal Support, Temporary Spousal Maintenance, Post-Divorce Spousal Maintenance) Equitable Distribution (Marital Property, Marital Debt ) What Other Options Do You Have to End Your Marriage? (Divorce Mediation, Collaborative Divorce). Its difficult for anybody to absorb all the information they need to know sitting in a divorce lawyers office, particularly when theyre in emotional turmoil, Hornberger said. My hope is that, after reading the book, when they visit me theyll know what to expect and be more relaxed and able to make the best decisions for them and their family. The new eBook, Guide to New York Divorce: What You Need to Know Before Hiring a Divorce Lawyer in New York is available now as a free download from the companys website, http://divorce-longisland.com/. For those interested in finding a reliable family law attorney, Long Islands Robert E. Hornberger, Esq. can be contacted directly at 631-923-1910. About author and Long Island Divorce Attorney Robert E. Hornberger, Esq. Robert E. Hornberger is an experienced, compassionate Divorce Lawyer and Family Law Attorney serving clients in New York, with a strong focus on Nassau County and Suffolk County on Long Island, NY. A Long Island native and a graduate of Hofstra University School of Law, Hornberger received his Bachelors Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Law, and History from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is an experienced matrimonial attorney with a wide background in contested and uncontested divorce, divorce mediation, divorce litigation, no fault divorce, collaborative divorce, and family law. Licensed to practice law in the State of New York, Hornberger is an active participant in the legal community, including the New York State Bar Association, the Nassau County Bar Association, and the Suffolk County Bar Association, where he is a member and contributor to the Alternative Dispute Resolution committee. A director of the Collaborative Law Association of New York, Inc., a not-for-profit organization committed to promoting collaborative dispute resolution, Mr. Hornberger actively promotes helping couples separate or divorce with greater respect, less cost, increased privacy and skilled legal representation. Hornberger is committed to the growth of divorce mediation and collaborative divorce as cost effective alternatives to the time-consuming and costly litigation ordinarily required to resolve divorce and other family related matters. Despite his strong commitment to divorce mediation and out of court settlements when appropriate, Hornberger has successfully tried many divorce, custody, and other family law related matters in court. About Long Island Divorce Law Firm Robert E. Hornberger, Esq., PC The law firm of Robert E. Hornberger, P.C., is uniquely different from other law firms in that it is client-focused and justifiably proud of its accomplished record of representing Long Islanders in the Nassau County and Suffolk County Family Court Systems. It provides the personal care and service of a small firm with the experience and resources of a larger firm and a success rate second to none. From his centrally located office at 445 Broadhollow Road (Route 110), Suite 110, Melville, New York 11747, Robert E. Hornberger, Esq., P.C., Attorneys and Counselors at Law, is convenient to residents of both Nassau and Suffolk counties, Long Island, NY. Its website, https://divorce-longisland.com, features a weekly blog of articles to assist Long Islanders with the many aspects of divorce in New York. The company name, Kambiri, means let me live. The foods our company provides are selected to make it easy for people to access nutritious foods - foods that facilitate good living. Kambiri Foods Company exists to provide delicious, premium quality foods affordably. Based in Houston, Texas, this successful minority owned business launched in January 2010 and introduced craveable, crunchy KamBiri toasted coconut chips to the market just two years ago. A socially responsible company, Kambiri Foods made donations to a local non-profit last year to help fight hunger in our extra large city. Kambiri Foods Business Development Manager, Michelle Wachuku, explains, The company name, Kambiri, means let me live. The foods that the company provides are selected to make it easy for people to access nutritious foods - foods that facilitate good living. KamBiri Toasted Coconut Chips are sold nationally through various online and brick-and-mortar retail outlets including grocery stores, gourmet gift shops, specialty food stores, and hypermarkets. These chips are fiber rich, cholesterol free, gluten free, and vegan with a taste that is second to none. Being an all-natural snack, it is a sure favorite to add to lunch boxes, gym bags, and the office stash. And it is all the rave as an hors d'oeuvre. Buy KamBiri Toasted Coconut Chips today! http://www.kambirifoods.com http://www.facebook.com/KambiriFoods Commercial general contractor selection is a process that often requires a bit of extra investigation to ensure the best fit. Whether an organization is a global enterprise or a new community business, there are criteria that need to be observed so that risk is averted and your operations arent interrupted by an avoidable error. JH Greene recognizes the process of forming general contractor relationships based on well-rounded criteria. This knowledge has allowed JH Greene to form two guides to help decision makers to refine their processes. One guide, What Every Construction Director Must Know About GC Selection, is designed for experienced construction representatives from large organizations that arent seeing the value anticipated from their current pool of GC bidders and existing relationship management procedures. The other, A Simple Guide to Gaining Valuable General Contractor Partners, is intended for a smaller business owner, who is an expert in his/her core business, however unfamiliar with managing an effective construction lifecycle and opts for a general contractor they can trust. Whether the reader works within an established firm or a small business just beginning their journey, the importance of the general contractors role is synonymous. These white paper guides aim to define an easy-to-implement qualification process that aids operational efficiency through a partner that shares the same vision. What Every Construction Director Must Know About GC Selection (for experienced construction professionals who arent gaining desired results) can be downloaded here: http://www.jhgreene.com/construction-director-white-paper A Simple Guide to Gaining Valuable General Contractor Partners (for decision makers newer to construction, however seeking to define a strong GC procurement process) can be downloaded here: http://www.jhgreene.com/small-business-white-paper ABOUT JH GREENE & SON, INC. JH Greene & Son, Inc. is a commercial general contractor and construction manager renowned for a dedication to diverse construction solutions. The JH Greene team specializes in retail, restaurant, healthcare, office, recreational, and industrial construction projects within the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware area. VeeR VR, the fast growing global virtual reality (VR) video host recently announced the launch of heatmap as one of its essential components to creator performance analysis. This new feature tracks and analyzes the way people look and move inside the 360 videos. This is one of the first steps VeeR took towards user-analytics-based solutions in VR application. With heatmap matching the most viewed area to color indicators of varying warmth, it becomes increasingly easy for creators, especially those exploring in the direction of VR marketing and branding, to analyze consumptive behaviors of their viewers and adapt accordingly. Unlike other major VR video platforms which offer heatmap exclusively to their top-performing creators, VeeR offers analytic service for free to all registered users with uploads. Heatmap is activated upon request. The instant insights creators are able to glean from the heatmap can have transformative effects on the interactions between creators and their audience. Different from traditional 2D video production, VR does not direct the viewers with camera angles, which necessitates attention guides and hotspots integration to improve viewer experience. The cross-section data provided by heatmap will prove invaluable to the future implementation of in-video visual/audio cues to effectively capture attention where the creators see fit. About VeeR VeeR VR is a leading sharing platform of 360/VR videos. Founded in 2016, VeeR has been an industry leader serving millions of users from over 150 countries by developing cross-platform accessible VR-streaming application. Headquartered in Beijing, China, VeeR also established two branches in Silicon Valley, California and Shenzhen, China. Currently VeeR has launched on multiple platforms including Apple App Store, Google Play, Oculus Rift, etc; content uploaded to VeeR VR will be accessible across all platforms through automatic transcoding. For more information please visit veer.tv or write to support(at)veer(dot)tv. Join us @VeeRVR on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Becker Media, a full-service marketing agency for educational institutions, has announced three new client wins: Regent University, Daymar Colleges and the Michigan Institute of Aviation. Regent and Daymar will be serviced from Becker's Baltimore office, and MIAT will be serviced from Beckers headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area. With its extensive and renowned portfolio of clients, Becker Media will utilize its industry-leading experience to produce and launch multifaceted media campaigns for the new additions to its roster. Regent University is a large faith-based institution based in Virginia Beach with a national online presence. Founded by Chancellor and CEO Pat Robertson, Regent University will work with Becker on all digital marketing campaigns. Daymar Colleges has locations in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They have vocational programs in Allied Health, Business, Technology and Criminal Justice. Becker Media will handle all marketing for Daymar including all digital and traditional campaigns. Lastly, the Michigan Institute of Aviation locations outside of Detroit, Michigan and Houston. MIAT specializes in Aviation training, Wind Power and HVAC. Becker is handling all digital responsibilities for MIAT. Were really pleased to be working with these esteemed academic institutions to enhance their student recruitment efforts, said Roger Becker, CEO at Becker Media. By taking their online marketing to the next level, these schools will benefit from increased student acquisition, as well as overall improved academic visibility. About Becker Media Becker Media is a full-service marketing and advertising agency specializing in education. From initial market research to creative production and media strategy, to analyzing results with our integrated reporting, we find out what motivates students and create advertising that gets results. We create dynamic campaigns for interactive and traditional media that generates proven results. Our holistic approach and custom creative generates qualified inquiries while building brands that help our clients grow. For more information please visit http://www.beckermedia.net or call 510-465-6200 ext. 106. Hunter & Bard, a marketing and branding agency that works with top-tier tech companies, announced today that it has been named a Gold Winner for Company Branding in 2017 Hermes Creative Awards for their work with Totango. Hunter & Bard is a digital marketing agency based in Silicon Valley that works with SaaS companies to lower their marketing debt and build their brands. They have continually excelled at branding and design and are proud to be recognized on the international level. We worked with Totango to develop a consistent and strong brand that has brought Totango to enterprise-grade and delivered strong results. We are thrilled to have been chosen for a Gold Award, said Shira Abel, the CEO of Hunter & Bard. Totangos new branding has changed the way the company is perceived by its customers from a startup to an enterprise-grade platform. Since launching the re-brand Totango has closed its B-round and increased its sales to enterprise. Additionally, Hunter & Bard won an Honorable Mention for the SaaS Insider podcast. SaaS Insider is a weekly show hosted by Shira Abel, the CEO of Hunter & Bard, where she interviews business leaders and experts in SaaS world. Hermes Creative Awards is an international competition for professionals in marketing, communications, public relations, and design industries. There were expected to be over 6,000 entries this year. Winners of 2017 Hermes Creative Awards were determined by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. ### About Hunter & Bard Hunter & Bard is a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping Software-as-a-Service organizations develop mindshare. The companys branding and design, strategic marketing, and behavioral marketing departments work together to create integrated campaigns for their clients. Hunter & Bard places SaaS companies at an advantage among competitors by bringing them to an enterprise-grade level through complete aesthetic cohesion and consistent messaging across all mediums. For more information, please visit https://www.hunterandbard.com. Vi is an organization that believes in reinvestmentin its communities and employee developmentwith the goal of creating an inspiring and fulfilling work environment for every team member. The LearningElites analysis yields solid data that prove learning and development initiatives are part of an organizations value equation. When companies provide exceptional learning and development resources for employees, the employees will often notice and respond positively. Chief Learning Officer magazine also takes note, and has included Vi among the winners of its LearningElite Award for the seventh consecutive time. Operating ten continuing care retirement communities nationwide, Vi has built a strong reputation for providing an exceptional array of opportunities for learning, growth and success among its employees, most of whom specialize in resident services, nursing, and professional areas. Vi was ranked number four out of 64 total winners for 2017. Human Capital Media, the publisher of Chief Learning Officer magazine, announced the awards on Sunday, April 23, at the organizations LearningElite Gala in Bonita Springs, Florida. This accolade honors organizations that invest in the best resources for learning and development. It is a robust, peer-reviewed benchmarking program recognizing those that leverage top strategies to further organizational and industry success, deliver strong business results, and promote best-in-class performance. The LearningElites analysis yields solid data that prove learning and development initiatives are part of an organizations value equation, says Sarah Kimmel, Vice-President, Research and Advisory Services at Human Capital Media. It also validates what separates the best from the rest. A LearningElite organization has an aligned, precisely executed learning strategy that is backed by leadership commitment. It consistently delivers learning impact that fosters competitive advantage, drives business results and makes a high-performing organization sustainable, she adds. Judy Whitcomb, Vis Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Learning, and Organizational Development, shared her excitement about the award. We know that our highly talented, engaged, and tenured employees are at the heart of Vis brand promise to deliver exceptional service and quality care. Our continued investment in the Companys Management Development, Emerging Leaders, and Breakthrough Leadership Programs, as well as thousands of online, virtual, and classroom training programs, supports our goal of creating an environment where our employees can thrive and grow. To learn more about employment opportunities with Vi, visit https://jobs.viliving.com/ Contact: Judy Whitcomb Vi Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Learning, and Organizational Development Phone: 312-803-8428 JWhitcomb(at)ViLiving(dot)com About Vi: The Vi family of companies consists of 10 continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) across the United States. We have more than 25 years of experience as the owner/operator of residential communities for older adults, and have continued to work toward providing quality environments, services and programs to enrich the lives of those we serve. Our corporate office, located in downtown Chicago, Illinois, supports Vi's 10 communities. VirtualPBX Desktop Softphone Receives Total Salesforce CRM Integration Ensuring that the VirtualPBX Desktop Softphone supported a seamless Salesforce CRM Integration was simply the next logical step in positioning any sales team for success. VirtualPBX today announced the launch of a total integration of the award-winning VirtualPBX Desktop Softphone with the renowned CRM software from Salesforce. To begin offering the valuable combination of the VirtualPBX Softphone with Salesforces customer relationship management software to as many customers as possible, the company has developed new Dash Plans and extension-specific premiums to include this service. Its getting nearly impossible to find an organization that doesnt rely on at least some sort of customer relationship management software, said Lon Baker, VirtualPBXs COO. Therefore, ensuring that another indispensable business tool, the VirtualPBX Softphone, supported a seamless Salesforce CRM Integration was simply the next logical step in positioning any sales team for success. The award-winning VirtualPBX Softphone was, like all of VirtualPBXs technology, built on the principles of simplicity, reliability, and performance. Similarly, the VirtualPBX Softphone and Salesforce CRM Integration is also the most effective and easy to implement marriage of systems available in hosted telephony. Expected to primarily accompany Dash VoIP service, the companys premier option for hosted telephone service, this integration of systems was intended to dovetail effortlessly into the greater Dash experience. Dash was launched with the simple concept that hosted telecommunications shouldnt require an engineering degree to operate them, Baker added. We continued that simplicity into the integration and beyond with easy to generate reports, tracking, monitor weekly lead activity. For more information about the VirtualPBX Desktop Softphone, Salesforce CRM Integration, and VirtualPBX VoIP Products and Network Services in general, please visit http://www.VirtualPBX.com About VirtualPBX VirtualPBX was founded in San Francisco in 1997 and brought some of the first commercially available hosted PBX service to market for small business owners. Born from the advent of the hosted telecom industry and driven by the innovative vision of its founders, VirtualPBX continues to deliver leading edge telephony products for business. Backed by award-winning, local, in-house support teams, VirtualPBX offers an array of services including disaster recovery, network monitoring and optimization, and professional system management. VirtualPBX Contact Rachel Anderson Vice President of Design & Marketing 888.825.0800 Ext. 339 Rachel.Anderson(at)VirtualPBX(dot)com Having (Projectum's) products and solutions as part of our PPM suite will greatly enhance the value we can bring to our clients. Sensei Project Solutions announced today that it has signed an agreement with Projectum, based in Denmark, to be the exclusive reseller of Projectum products and solutions in North America and Australia. At the same time, they also announced that they have signed an agreement for Projectum to be the exclusive reseller of Senseis products in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Sensei and Projectum are two of the leading Microsoft PPM partners globally. Between them the two companies have been either a winner or finalist for Microsoft PPM Partner of the Year each of the past three years. Projectum is obviously one of the premiere Microsoft PPM partners in the world, and we are thrilled to be partnering with them in this way, said Kenneth Steiness, CEO of Sensei Project Solutions. Having their products and solutions as part of our PPM suite will greatly enhance the value we can bring to our clients. We have known the team at Sensei for years, and have been impressed with their solutions, added Peter Kestenholz, Founding Partner of Projectum. Were thrilled that we can now present those solutions to our own customers. About Sensei Project Solutions: Sensei Project Solutions, a Finalist for the 2015 Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Partner of the Year, focuses on bringing Instant Productivity to your team. Our mission is to help individuals and organizations be more productive so that they can achieve their greatest potential. As a Gold certified Microsoft Partner and Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) with the Project Management Institute (PMI), Sensei offers a complete set of services and products for a successful Microsoft PPM deployment. Our guiding principles for Proactive PPM follow best practices and industry standards aligned with the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Gartner, enabling organizations to manage resource demand, obtain business intelligence that facilitates better decision making, increase business effectiveness by easily connecting people, and become self-sufficient with PPM processes and solutions. In short, Sensei helps organizations achieve Instant Productivity. About Projectum Projectum was founded in 2004 with the distinct vision of becoming a leading solution partner within Project & Portfolio Management Solutions in Northern Europe. As a long-term Microsoft Gold PPM Partner, Projectum has over 12 years of experience with Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). Over the years, Projectum has developed a vast experience and best practices approach to implementing and supporting Microsoft PPM solutions. As the worldwide Microsoft PPM Partner of the Year winner in 2015 and finalist in 2016, Projectum has a unique expertise within PPM and specifically Microsoft PPM. Our experiences give us the right industry and change management insights, as well as a long and proven track record of creating user-friendly solutions. For additional information contact Sensei Project Solutions at 480-582-1824 or info(at)senseiprojectsolutions(dot)com. This years annual Womens Business Enterprise National Conference (WBENC) and Business Fair will be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, NV in June, 2017. And joining in the celebration is Enterprise Publishings MBE magazine, with the annual WBEs Who Rock contest. Each year it seems the prestige of this award keeps growing! says Barbara Oliver, president of Enterprise Publishing Inc. and publisher of MBE magazine. Winners receive the benefit of recognition as outstanding leaders in their business and community to an audience of their peers. Nominee submissions must be received by May 15, 2017, to be considered for the award. Any WBE business owner is eligible and may even self-nominate. Purpose of this contest is to honor WBEs who have excelled in their activities, both in their business as well as their community involvement, according to Ms. Oliver. An objective judging panel is used every year to insure a fair and balanced competition. Winners will be announced at the pre-welcome reception hosted by MBE magazine on June 20, 2017 from 5:00pm 7:30pm PDT at the Mandalay Bay Resort in the Mandalay Bay Ballroom-Section L. Winners must be present to receive their award. The WBEs Who Rock! Reception is co-hosted by WBENC and will take place prior to the official WBENC Welcome Reception for conference attendees that same evening. If you are interested in nominating an inspiring WBE leader who has contributed to her community and made great achievements in her business and/or industry, please submit your nomination via email to boliver(at)mbemag(dot)com or complete the form online at http://www.mbemag.com/images/Nominee_Form.pdf by May 15, 2017. About Enterprise Publishing, Inc. (EPI): EPI, the parent company of Minority Business Entrepreneur (MBE) magazine, is a media services company which serves the supplier diversity community in the U.S. and Canada. Our mission is to Inform, Educate and Inspire. Founded in 1984 by Ginger Conrad, MBE magazine is an award-winning, 30+ year old, quarterly, resource publication for and about minority and women businesses as well as the corporate and government diversity and inclusion initiatives. ### Contact Information: Barbara Oliver MBE magazine http://www.mbemag.com (310) 294-3780 ext. 5 PeaceTech Accelerator Examples of startups' work include: technology to increase security for women in crowded spaces; online gaming to promote empathy; and interactive applications that provide a platform for children in conflict zones to tell their stories. C5, the investment specialist firm focused on cloud computing, cyber security and big data analytics, announces today that five startups have entered its PeaceTech Accelerator, housed at the iconic United States Institute of Peace building on the National Mall. C5 is the lead investor and is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and PeaceTech Lab. Peacetech is recognized as the application of technology to assist civilians living in conflict and crisis zones. The startups were selected based on their ability to produce innovative technologies that manage, mitigate, predict, or prevent conflict and promote sustainable peace. They have already developed prototypes for further development. The first group is a combination of for-profit and not-for-profit companies. In many cases the for-profit companies are already revenue generating. Examples of their work include: technology to increase security for women in crowded spaces; online gaming to promote empathy; and interactive applications that provide a platform for children in conflict zones to tell their stories. Ron Moultrie, Chairman of C5, U.S., said, We are pleased to welcome the participants of our first cohort to Washington, DC. Everyone involved will be participating in a unique collaboration of entrepreneurs, corporate social good partners and technologically cutting edge programs. We look forward to scalable outcomes that will make a difference in the world. Sheldon Himelfarb, CEO and President of PeaceTech Lab, said, This first cohort is the embodiment of our mantra Everyone has the power of peacetech. Were proud to welcome these entrepreneurs, whose companies and products represent a concrete way for civilians to be empowered to make their lives and that of their communities better, even amidst the most difficult of circumstances. Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services, said, With millions of customers in over 190 countries around the world, weve witnessed first-hand how technology has become an enabler of innovation. One of the remarkable aspects of the cloud is that it gives individual developers and startups the power to innovate on a massive scale and turn a big idea into a reality. We are pleased to be working with the startups in the PeaceTech Accelerator, and excited at the opportunity to help them take their ideas to the next level, and make the world a better place. Admiral Mike Mullen, Strategic Partner, C5, said, Innovation often flourishes in hard times. There are an ever-growing number of crisis points around the world and we need to constantly assess and create new methods to meet these challenges. The PeaceTech Accelerator has been formed with the purpose of providing ways for communities and civilians to work alongside military support and the two methods should complement each other. Thats why these companies and their work is so important. The PeaceTech Accelerator will leverage the expertise of all three partner organizations, as well as the experts in conflict prevention and management at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which created the PeaceTech Lab as a separate organization in 2015. The program was officially announced in December 2016, and encompasses eight weeks of rigorous mentorship, with the opportunity to pitch investors in a culminating event. The PeaceTech Accelerator covers all aspects of scaling-up and was developed by C5, AWS and PeaceTech Lab networks. The startup companies are supported by a highly-experienced group of prominent international technology entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors and peace innovators. Best-in-class technical training is delivered by AWS solutions architects. Further details of the cohort companies are available below. The next cohort of startups will enter the PeaceTech Accelerator in June. --ENDS-- For press enquiries contact: Dimitra Hatzudis at: dimitra.hatzudis(at)c5capital(dot)com or John Merva and Jasper Bartlett at jmerva(at)hudsonsandler(dot)com and jbartlett(at)hudsonsandler(dot)com Cohort Companies: Crowdtechno: Develops and maintains the CrowdGuard technology a human tracker & communication platform to prevent sexual violence and respond in other emergencies. Junub Games: A non-profit organization using games for peace building focusing on rising South Sudan Gaming industry. Global Sleepover: A multi-media and interactive storytelling platform to improve literacy and global citizenship for young children. Wistla: The go-to app for gathering a crowd and sharing the experience. NicheStreem: Profitable music streams for emerging markets. About C5 C5 Capital Limited (C5) is a family capital-backed technology investment firm focused on innovating security. C5 is a specialist investor in private businesses in technology, global security and data sectors, and niche sectors such as cyber security, biometrics, detection, and communications companies based in Europe. C5 Capital Limited is a venture capital firm specializing in providing growth and equity capital. The investment team is led by experienced executives who are known for their performance, resilience, agility, discretion and integrity. Their work is enhanced by a unique network of strategic partners known for their leadership in the fields of technology, industry, geopolitics, academia and government. C5 builds long-term partnerships with committed investors who share a passion for creating value by investing in security; innovative founder teams who want to grow their businesses to their full potential and global companies who want to maintain an edge with innovation. C5 tailors its investment approach to the unique needs of each situation, and we are comfortable investing across the life-cycle of our target sectors. C5 Cyber Partners is a specialist investment team dedicated to private equity investment in EMEA-based cyber security companies and venture capital investment in data analytics companies. C5 Cloud Partners is an investment vehicle focused on cloud computing-focused companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. C5 Accelerate has developed a Cloud Accelerator Cluster in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa alongside Amazon Web Services. Its mission is to accelerate best-of-breed startups throughout EMEA to meet the growth opportunity being created by the geographic expansion of AWS, the worlds leading cloud computing platform. Headquartered in London, C5 also has offices in Washington D.C., Bahrain Luxembourg. For more information on C5 Capital, please visit: http://www.c5capital.com For more information on C5 Accelerate, please visit: http://www.c5accelerate.com Twitter: @c5accelerate Instagram: c5.accelerate Frank Grant, President, Amplion Amplion is poised for tremendous growth in 2017. Amplion Clinical Communications Executive Chairman David Condra announced today Frank Grant, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, will become Amplions new president effective immediately. Grants appointment follows the unexpected resignation of CEO Tom Stephenson last week due to personal reasons. Stephenson joined Amplion in 2012 as President and COO and was elevated to CEO in 2015 as the company began ramping up for rapid growth. It has been my pleasure to lead Amplion during this exciting period, Stephenson said. It was a difficult decision to step down at this time but it was the best decision for me and for the company. I look forward to following the continued growth and success of Amplion." Stephenson will remain involved to assist during a brief transition period. Condra will serve as Interim CEO while an internal and external search is underway for a permanent CEO replacement. We are very sorry to see Tom leave Amplion because of the trajectory the company is on, but we understand and support his personal decision, Condra said. Its never easy to lose a key team member, but we are very fortunate to have deep bench strength on our executive team and will not skip a beat with Frank at the helm. Grant joined Amplion in 2013 as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare technology experience and a strong history of business growth leadership to his new role at Amplion. Frank has been a pivotal member of the executive team since he arrived at Amplion, Condra said. He has made significant contributions to the overall strategy and direction of the company from day one. His deep industry experience coupled with his solid leadership track record are invaluable as we continue growing the company. Prior to Amplion, Grant led Phoenix-based Adreimas expansion to 16 states and spent more than a decade in leadership roles at Cisco Systems, serving his last three years there as Executive Director of North American Healthcare. Amplion is poised for tremendous growth in 2017, Grant said. Our next-generation nurse call technology is a game-changer for hospitals and their patients, and Im eager to lead our innovative team to further expand our national footprint. Amplion Alert is installed in more than 50 hospitals in 22 states. The privately-held, late-stage start-up is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. About Amplion Amplion is building a better future for patient care. We combine capabilities in clinical workflow optimization, advanced patient communications technology and in-depth analytics to help organizations make data-driven decisions and create accountability within clinical teams. We close care loops and dramatically improve clinical and financial performance as well as patient and clinician experience. Safer patients. Smarter care. Assured. Learn more at http://www.amplionalert.com Laust Sonne It's a roller coaster of a clip that proves Laust is the man to finally put the "show", back in show business! Watch the new "Reckless" video by Laust Sonne. Laust Sonne had a hit with his 2008 song "Spell On You", and after releasing his self-titled album in 2011, returned with the album Relations (released in 2016 via Danish label Billy B Records). On the surface, it's undeniably catchy, mainstream/ radio-friendly pop, but Coming all the way from Copenhagen, Denmark, Laust Sonne is multi-instrumentalist and composer is known for playing drums in the renowned Danish rock band D-A-D, releasing two albums with his band Dear, playing drums and guitar in Bugpowder, and now, for his own solo project. Oh- and he's got a pretty unique sense of fashion, too. Laust Sonne is a real songwriter: ultimately, he believes that a good song will work with any styling. Most of his writing is done with just an acoustic guitar so that he can ensure that the melody is top notch." In a 2015 interview with MindFuck Society, he described his music as "Modern Pop w Heart." Originally released as an "unplugged" acoustic and strings-driven track on the 2015 Classic Relations EP, "Reckless" was later included on the Relations album. Sonne produced and arranged the album himself, with additional help from Ian Nilsen. Anders Schumann- one of the absolute top mixers in Denmark- mixed the album, adding the final touches. "Reckless" is a romantic pop song, daring the object of Sonne's affections to be reckless, as he insists, "I'm all in, I'm all for you." The beat is infectious, and it's just as much of a disco club banger as a pure pop ballad. For the "Reckless" music video, Laust Sonne turned to Thomas Jessen and Georg Rune Andersen at Fat Film. The clip opens with an overhead, black and white shot of Sonne walking down a snow-covered road. He's then seen singing and playing every instrument in a room full of neon lights. Outside, he drives a Porsche through clouds of brightly colored smoke, performing in the middle of them. It's a roller coaster of a clip that proves Laust is the man to finally put the "show", back in show business! Watch the new "Reckless" video by Laust Sonne. Get news, updates, live appearances and more from Laust Sonne Dr. Sanjay Sharma, an ophthalmic surgeon and professor of ophthalmology at Queens University, has received the John Ruedy Award for Innovation in Medical Education from the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada. Dr. Sharma was recognized for spearheading the development of MEDSKL, a free, open-access platform for medical students that uses video to deliver clinical education from leading physicians around the world. Being a doctor requires the ability to apply knowledge and theory in often unpredictable circumstances. Yet todays medical students still receive their core education primarily through textbooks and lecture halls. Students need earlier access to clinical knowledge and case studies that bring the fundamental aspects of practicing medicine to life, said Dr. Sharma. I am honored to accept this award on behalf of the nearly 200 faculty members who are contributing to MEDSKL. We look forward to continuing to increase access to on-demand clinical education for medical students worldwide. MEDSKL provides short animated videos, detailed notes, and TED Talk-style lectures on dozens of clinical topics, from general surgery to public health and the legal and ethical aspects of medicine. The content has been developed in collaboration with hundreds of medical school professors from leading universities, and is designed to be aligned both with university curricula and the real-world needs of physicians. MEDSKLs platform, which also includes discussion forums to promote student engagement with peers and experts, is currently used by students at more 60 leading universities worldwide. MEDSKL currently offers content in 110 different topics across 28 content areas, and expects to complete its library of courses by summer 2017. Todays medical students need educational options that they can access anywhere and anytime, without sacrificing rigor, said Dr. Maja Artandi, Clinical Assistant Professor for Internal Medicine at Stanford University and a MEDSKL contributor. MEDSKL offers an intuitive platform that is easy for students to access on-demand, but that is also vetted by researchers and physicians with expertise across the spectrum of medical professions. As both a doctor and an educator, I have found MEDSKL to be an invaluable resource for students, faculty, and practitioners. The John Ruedy Award, named after the former Dean of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, recognizes physicians who have developed innovative digital or materials that support undergraduate, postgraduate, or continuing medical education. Previous winners include Dr. Roland Grad, developer of a digital tool that provides data on how health professionals use clinical information, and Dr. Irene Ma, a leading researcher on promoting safety through improved education. "The AFMC's John Ruedy Award is given to a Canadian innovator in medical education, said Genevieve Moineau, President and CEO of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada. We believe that MEDSKL, led by Dr. Sanjay Sharma from Queen's University, will have a significant impact on medical education both here in Canada as well as internationally." About MEDSKL MEDSKL was designed for medical school students and practicing physicians to learn and review the fundamentals of clinical medicine. Our library of content comes from a collaboration of nearly 200 of the best medical school professors from around the world. We believe in free and open access to medical educational materials, and all modules undergo an editorial peer-review process. The mission of MEDSKL is to make medical education more effective and more accessible whether you are studying for exams or earning CME credits. Travel to Cuba We are very excited about our new relationships with Cuba and look forward to creating great travel experiences for our clients Charming Travel Destinations announced their new Cuba tour packages at competitive prices, after signing a contract of tourism operations. The tour packages include four to 13 day trips that highlight the best of Cuba such as the Old Havana, Mogote Valley, Las Terrazas, Cienfuegos, Varadero and more. We are very excited about our new relationships with Cuba and look forward to creating great travel experiences for our clients, says General Manager Kitty Chung. Not only are we able to offer great value, but travelers can also count on our high quality service during their stay in Cuba. To promote travels to Cuba, Charming Travel Destinations also produced a three-part interview with its staff, Joseph Gillin (an avid traveler) and Lemay Rodriguez (former Cuban local). The interviews demonstrate the different perspectives about Cuba as a destination, culture and society. Rodriguez explains why travelers need to experience the beauty of Cuba. I would love visitors to see that Cubans are very happy and warm people, extremely proud of the culture, traditions and legacy. I want them to share the love of music and dance that Cubans have, and for them to enjoy one of the most memorable experiences ever, in one of the safest countries in the world, says Rodriguez, former Cuban resident. Charming Travel Destinations currently offers Glimpse of Cuba, Viva Cuba and Beautiful Cuba & Mexico starting from $1,179. To find more about dates, rates and details, please visit https://charmingtraveldestinations.com/destinations/latin-america-series/ About Charming Travel Destinations Charming Travel Destinations is a major tour operator in North America arranging exclusive group, independent, student and corporate travels. With over 30 years of knowledge and experience, Charming Travel Destinations promises the best quality performance, service and products in the travel industry. For more information, please visit https://charmingtraveldestinations.com/ Through our Microsoft CIE sessions, professionals will have a hands-on opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the Office 365 product line in hopes of better leveraging these solutions to support business goals. For business owners who are looking to implement or optimize Microsoft Office 365, this program offers unparalleled exploration and insight into the Microsoft cloud ecosystem. The CIE program walks participants through real-world, everyday business situations using Office 365 to demonstrate its ease-of-use, security and convenience. The Microsoft CIE program is the best way for busy professionals to better understand and take advantage of Microsoft Office 365 products. Microsoft CIE sessions offered by Centerpoint IT will allow business owners to: Enable mobile productivity, Enhance social collaboration, Improve customer relationships, Manage data & sales and maximize ROI effectively. At Centerpoint IT, were longstanding Microsoft partners, says Centerpoint IT CTO, Wayne Gosselin. For years, weve been connecting our clients with innovative Microsoft solutions that pack a productivity-punch. "Being certified as Microsoft CIE facilitators seemed like the obvious next step in helping Atlanta businesses optimize Microsoft technology, continues Gosselin. Through our Microsoft CIE sessions, professionals will have a hands-on opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the Office 365 product line in hopes of better leveraging these solutions to support business goals. Want to give your business-minded audience the inside scoop on the Microsoft CIE and how it can transform their approach to daily operations? Get in touch with Centerpoint IT CTO, Wayne Gosselin to arrange an interview right away. About Centerpoint IT: Since founding in 2006, Centerpoint IT's mission has been singular: to deliver on the promise of new technology for small and mid-sized businesses by making IT simple. In order to be more than a full-service business IT partner and phone system provider, Centerpoint IT focuses on taking the uncertainty and hassle out of what is an often complicated and critical area of business. Cutting through the noise of changing technology is where Centerpoint adds value to businesses. Centerpoint believes in delivering effective, affordable and simple services such as managed IT, cloud, hardware, network security, disaster recovery, connectivity solutions and business phone systems. This helps business owners to form the essential foundation for success so employees can focus on doing their best work each and every day. For more information about Centerpoint IT please visit: http://www.centerpointit.com Delaware County full-service law firm Raffaele Puppio is pleased to announce that Katherine H. Meehan has been named a partner at the firm. We are proud to have Katherine as a partner at Raffaele Puppio, said Michael A. Raffaele, Founding and Managing Partner of the firm. She excels at Pennsylvania education law and has become a trusted resource for her clients as well as an important voice within our firm. Meehan has been an associate with Raffaele Puppio since 2006. Her legal practice is focused primarily on education law. She works closely with education, government, municipal, commercial and private clients on various matters, including employment, contract, Right to Know, Sunshine Act, and policy matters. She also has experience in civil litigation, including personal injury, and discrimination matters. In addition, Meehan is a frequent lecturer on a variety of employment-related subjects, including conducting investigations, retention of documents, and criminal background checks. As one who enjoys legal research and writing, Meehan also has authored and co-authored appellate briefs on a variety of topics and has argued before the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Prior to joining Raffaele Puppio, Meehan served as a law clerk for the late Honorable Joseph F. Battle, Jr. She received a bachelors degree in politics with a minor in sociology from Ithaca College and her law degree from Villanova University School of Law. When not practicing law, Meehan is involved as a board member for the American International Cultural Exchange Institute and serves as an Elder of the Media Presbyterian Church. About Raffaele Puppio Raffaele Puppio is one of the largest and most established full-service law firms in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Attorneys within the firm are known for their legal prowess among the bench and bar in Delaware County, having decades of experience representing school districts, municipalities, businesses and individual clients, helping to solve legal problems while avoiding future legal issues. The attorneys provide sound legal counsel in the areas of school law, government and municipal services, family law, general litigation, personal injury, commercial real estate and business transactions, elder law, estate administration and planning, and criminal law. # # # Johannesburg born recording artist Ross Jack will be unleashing his unique brand of hip-hop in North America with the release of his new album, Self Medicated, which is due out on Friday, April 28, 2017 on Radikal Records. Self Medicated is a perfect blend of Ross Jacks influences, taking the best sounds of Rap, RnB, Soul, Tri-Hop, and Pop to produce a unique style that he refers to as Stoner Pop. The introspective album touches on topics such as falling in love, trying to be cool, and the perks and pet-peeves of Ross Jacks acquired popular lifestyle. After establishing himself in the industry as a prodigious beat-maker and producer for acts such as Toya Delazy, HHP, Chiano Sky, and Khuli Chana, Ross Jack decided to step out from the background and in front of the mic. In 2013, his mix-tape album, Notes from the Wild, took the South African music scene by storm as single after single topped the national radio charts. Now, Ross Jack is releasing his strongest work to date, Self Medicated. For the new album Self Medicated, Ross traveled to the UK to work with award winning London-based producer Pete Boxsta (Petite Meller, James Arthur). Ross describes his experience in the UK as an urban adventure that set the tone for the record. Each track sees Ross Jack taking his creativity to the next level as his charismatic performance on the mic adapts to the albums wide-range of production styles. From the chilled-out haunting vibes of Fall, to the irresistible high energy pop-rap anthem Gold Plated, followed up with the dancehall reggae vibes of Burning Man, the albums diverse beats and production allow Ross to tackle a variety of emotions applying his own exciting sound. Self Medicated blurs the lines between musical genres, and appeals to fans to fans of the electro-pop sounds of The Weeknd, and the smoked out swagger-filled bars of Mac Miller alike. The album establishes Ross Jack as an artist to watch in 2017. Self Medicated will be available for digital purchase on all major platforms on Friday, April 28th. The album will also be available for physical purchase at music retailers nationwide, on Amazon, Bandcamp, and in the Radikal Records web-store. Self Medicated will be available to stream on all major streaming platforms. Track-listing: 1. Fear the Rush (feat. Arrow Benjamin) 2. Faded 3. Blow (feat. Lula Beggs) 4. RocknRolla (feat. Hydro) 5. Fall 6. Gold Plated (feat. Arrow Benjamin) 7. Running Late (feat. B.K.) 8. Burning Man (feat. B.K.) 9. Insecure 10. Air Up There 11. Mercy About Radikal Records: Established in 1990, and based just outside of NYC, Radikal Records is one of the United States leading independent record labels. In business for more than 25 years, they are focused on marketing, promoting, and distributing artists not only to audiences in the USA, but also on a global basis to partners world-wide. Artists included on their roster over the years include: Kristian Nairn, Salt Ashes, 2 Unlimited, Zombie Nation, ATB, Yello, Schiller, Sinead OConnor, Ayah Marar, and many others. For more information, visit: http://www.radikal.com Sandra D. Gonzalez, recently elevated shareholder with international law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, has been elected to membership in the Fellows of the Texas Bar Foundation. Fellows of the Foundation are selected for their outstanding personal achievements and their demonstrated commitment to the improvement of the justice system throughout the State of Texas, according to the Foundations website. Each year, only one-third of one percent of state bar members are invited to become Fellows. "We are proud of Sandra for being recognized by the Texas Bar Foundation, said Thomas J. Bond, recently named co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurigs Austin office. This honor is well-deserved recognition for her continuous pursuit of excellence in the legal profession and for serving our community. Gonzalez has an active law practice while continuing to serve the community in various capacities. She focuses her practice on international compliance matters including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the UK Bribery Act, among others. She assists clients in designing and implementing anti-corruption compliance policies and procedures, assisting in compliance investigations, and performing risk assessments. Gonzalez is the pro bono liaison for the Austin office and regularly organizes events to facilitate other attorneys involvement. She has held leadership and committee positions in the Travis County Women Lawyers Association (TCWLA) and also received the Presidents Award from TCWLA. She provides pro bono counsel to numerous clients through her work with American Gateways. The Texas Bar Foundation is the largest charitably-funded bar foundation in the country. Founded in 1965 by lawyers determined to assist the public and improve the profession of law, the Texas Bar Foundation has maintained its mission of using the financial contributions of its membership to build a strong justice system for all Texans. To date, the Texas Bar Foundation has distributed more than $17 million throughout Texas to assist nonprofit organizations with a wide range of justice-related programs and services. About Greenberg Traurig, LLP Texas Greenberg Traurig, LLP has more than 100 attorneys in Texas, serving clients from offices in Austin, Dallas and Houston. About Greenberg Traurig, LLP Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GTLaw) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. One firm worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the second largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2016, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law. Prositions accomplishment illustrates their creativity, skill, and dedication to their craft and serves as a testament to great film and video production. The Telly Awards has named Prositions, Inc. as a winner in the 37th Annual Telly Awards for their micro-learning video library, LEAD NOW!. Each video includes high-quality footage of leadership experts John Parker Stewart and Daniel Stewart with professional graphics and engaging stories that reinforce the learning objectives presented. LEAD NOW! was created with the time-starved learner in mind; each module is 7 minutes in length and can be delivered in almost any way a learner prefers. Segments can be shown to groups in classroom training, used as eLearning courses for self-paced development, or hosted as a performance support tool to be accessed at the exact moment a user wants a quick tutorial or refresher. This library also contains hundreds of effective tips and tools organized into 21 leadership dimensions/competencies. If you are interested in previewing the course, learn more at http://www.prositions.com/lead-now. The Telly Awards has a mission to honor the very best in film and video, said Linda Day, Executive Director of the Telly Awards. Prositions accomplishment illustrates their creativity, skill, and dedication to their craft and serves as a testament to great film and video production. A prestigious judging panel of over 500 accomplished industry professionals, each a past winner of a Silver Telly and a member of The Silver Telly Council, judged the competition, upholding the historical standard of excellence that Telly represents. With over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries, this is truly an honor. Receiving this award from such an esteemed organization is a wonderful accolade, reflected Frank Russell, Executive Producer of the LEAD NOW! Video Program and CEO of Prositions, Inc. Im so proud of our production and editing team for creating such a high-quality leadership development program. The LEAD NOW! micro-videos are a perfect fit for todays modern learners and leaders of all experience levels. Founded in 1979, the Telly Award is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and web commercials, videos, and films. Winners represent the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, and corporate video departments in the world. To find out more about the Telly Awards, visit http://www.tellyawards.com. About Prositions Prositions, Inc. is a leading provider of learning content and performance support libraries and offers a complete range of consulting, software, and service solutions. DashTrain, their new, mobile-first application enables organizations to quickly reach thousands of video and audio learning bites. Give your employees instant access to the worlds leading how-to business libraries and best-selling authors, anywhere and at anytime. For more information about Prositions and the LEAD NOW! Program, visit http://www.prositions.com Award-winning Author, Bob Kelly. "No matter how well-written your manuscript may be, it absolutely must engage the reader, or youre wasting your time, and your money. Award-winning Author, Bob Kelly will be featured in the latest book of the Outlier Leadership Series, Outliers in Writing, set to publish in summer 2017. In Outliers in Writing, Kelly shares his perspective on the importance of engaging readers with compelling content. Choose the words you use wisely, says Kelly. Its been 2,000 years since Roman leader Julius Caesar offered this bit of wisdom: Avoid a strange and unfamiliar word as you would a dangerous reef. Bob Kelly is the creator of Arizona-based WordCrafters, Inc, a resource website dedicated to provide writing and editorial services for speakers, writers, and business leaders. A former bank president and ministry executive, Kelly is an award-winning author who has written and co-authored over three dozen books. The Tremendous Power of Prayer was honored with a Silver Angel award at the 24th Annual International Angels Awards. Kelly is a proud member of the American Christian Writers Association, the Christian Meetings and Conventions Association, and the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors. Kelly, who has worked with Dr. John Shufeldt for years on the Outlier Leadership Series has been instrumental in the editing of the books. Shufeldt says Kellys contribution on the Outlier Leadership Series has been invaluable. The Outlier Leadership Series would not be what it is without Bobs writing and editing skills, says Shufeldt. His years of experience bring the words on the page to life. In his interview, Kelly emphasizes the importance of engaging readers with readable, well-written content. Unless youre writing a legal brief or a doctoral thesis, its important to focus on what I call writings ABCs Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity, says Kelly. At the same time, the most important factor of all by far is Readability! No matter how well-written your manuscript may be, it absolutely must engage the reader, or youre wasting your time, and your money. Each book in the Outlier Leadership Series serve as a virtual mentor to readers. The books provide exclusive interview content from six professionals at the top of their field, action guides and targeted resources for those looking to succeed in a chosen profession. Outliers in Writing will be the sixth book in the Outlier Leadership Series. Other books in the Outlier Leadership Series include: Click here for more information on the Outlier Leadership Series and the launch of Outliers in Writing. About Outliers in Writing: Outliers in Writing is a how-to guide for aspiring writers, presented through interviews with six seasoned writing professionals. Each interview provides readers with a range of valuable information from storytelling skills and the power of observation, to career strategy and the importance of writing every day. These six incredible writing professionals candidly share their obstacles and ingredients for a successful writing career. Readers will complete this book having received the most potent advice for becoming the best writer possible. Whether you aspire to be a writer, novelist, or journalist, this collection of wisdom will expand your perspective and serve as a foundation for a vibrant career. Outliers in Writing was written as part of the Outlier Leadership Series mentorship books, created by Dr. John Shufeldt. About John Shufeldt: http://www.johnshufeldt.com Dr. John Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP is an Emergency Physician and Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University Sandra Day OConnor College of Law. Dr. Shufeldt is a leadership expert in multidisciplinary ventures committed to innovation in medicine, entrepreneurism and education. Dr. Shufeldt has three decades of experience leading high performing teams in businesses that combine his passions for medicine, law, and leadership. He committed to return to school every 10 years to push his own personal envelope. About Bob Kelly: Bob Kelly is the founder of Arizona-based WordCrafters, Inc. He has written and co-authored more than three dozen books. The Tremendous Power of Prayer, published in 2001, was honored with a Silver Angel award at the 24th Annual International Angels Awards. From 2003 to 2016, Kelly wrote and published a monthly online newsletter, titled The KellyGram: Wit and Wisdom about the Wonderful and Often Wacky World of Words. Each of the 161 issues is archived on his website: http://www.wordcrafters.info. Kelly and his wife have lived in Sun Lakes, Arizona since 2001 and their blended family includes six children and a dozen grandchildren. Judge Jeanine Pirro, a former New York judge and district attorney and current FOX News personality, spoke to Liberty University students at Convocation on Wednesday, April 26. Judge Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor and current FOX News television host, brought her tough, no-nonsense straight talk to Liberty University on Tuesday and Wednesday, discussing the need to enforce law and order for the greater good. After delivering a well-received speech in the School of Law Supreme Courtroom on Tuesday, she addressed more than 10,000 students in Libertys Convocation on Wednesday at the special request of President Jerry Falwell. Pirro is a former New York judge and district attorney and is the host of FOX News Justice with Judge Jeanine. She also contributes her legal insights on the news of the week to other programs on the network. Tuesdays event was hosted by Libertys chapter of Young Americans for Freedom in collaboration with Liberty University School of Law. The chapter also played a role in bringing finance media mogul Steve Forbes to campus last semester. On Wednesday, President Falwell thanked YAF for their role in bringing Pirro to campus and then introduced the television star to the crowd, noting that he often watched her show during last years presidential election. Shes one of the best on cable news, by far, Falwell said. Whenever I was feeling down and scared that it would not go the right way, I would watch her and I would get encouraged again. Pirro held little back as she described the hypocrisy of those who politicize issues like immigration at the expense of law-abiding citizens for the purpose of furthering an agenda. She said that after 30 years as a legal professional these issues prompted her to leave the bench so she could take the fight to the airwaves. I am an activist; I am a fighter, Pirro said. I believe in right and wrong, and I believe in making sure that the underdog gets a fair shot. Pirro encouraged the crowd, which applauded enthusiastically throughout, to stand for justice and to uphold the law for the sake of protecting those who keep it. If the very words law and order are offensive, if the protection of the criminal, illegal, is more important than making sure that (innocent citizens) can walk freely, then weve got a problem, folks, she said, warning the crowd that those pushing their own agendas will do anything to silence their opposition. You can never be silenced. They are silencing you. They are doing everything they can to make you uncomfortable, to make you feel out of the mainstream, to make you feel that you are less than an American, or not even Christian. Or that you are not even to be heard. She challenged the students to stand firm in their beliefs and to take a hard stance on what is right and what is wrong: Dig down deep into who you are and what you have learned here and make sure that moral core of which you are made is never silenced, is never quieted by those who have a totally different agenda, and you will make a difference. Not only to you and your family, but to this country, this great nation. On Tuesday, Falwell welcomed Pirro to the university, saying that shes a fireball, and we are honored to have her at Liberty. Pirro said that she was pleased for the opportunity to share. Im honored to be here, she said. This is a university with a very storied history. In her talk, Pirro described how she overcame obstacles during her rise in the legal profession, when society did not respect women in the workforce. Before she was allowed to become a prosecutor, Pirro had to deal with naysayers who would ask her, What makes you think you are good enough to try a case? But she became one of the first women to prosecute a murder case and went on to win a district attorney election and be the first woman elected as a judge in her county. While she knew that she had to win to pave the way for other women, Pirro said that wasnt what fueled her. Justice is not about winning, she said. It is about what is fair, what is right. One of the things I realized was that equal rights and equal justice are ever so far removed from the reality of life for thousands of innocent, helpless victims of crime. Pirro founded the nations first domestic violence unit in a prosecutors office and one of the first child abuse bureaus, at a time when both were overlooked by the justice system. She said she hopes that her story sends a message that you can do anything, and dont ever think that the way things are is the way things have to be. Never. Pirro also blasted ideological hypocrisy, particularly those who claim to stand for equality but vehemently fight to silence or discredit anyone who disagrees with them. Though her own story is one of triumph on behalf of womens issues, she warned that the feminist movement has hijacked an ideal that stood for equality and justice and politicized it to further an agenda. Likewise, she pointed out that empathy for refugees and immigrants has been warped to make concessions for criminals who dont want to follow the laws of the land. She said that law and order are the only things that separate us from barbarism and anarchy and that it is not hateful to demand people enforce the laws of the land in their own country. My message to you, she concluded, is get ready. You have got to protect yourself, your family, and your country. About Liberty University Liberty University, founded in 1971, is the largest private, nonprofit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world. Located near the Blue Ridge Mountains on more than 7,000 acres in Lynchburg, Va., Liberty offers more than 500 unique programs of study from the certificate to the doctoral level. More than 250 programs are offered online. Libertys mission is to train Champions for Christ with the values, knowledge, and skills essential for impacting tomorrows world. AardvarkCompare Announces Summer Travel Tips Avoiding Pickpockets and Document Theft Travel Insurance Marketplace AardvarkCompare announces its Summer Travel Tips Avoiding Pickpockets and Document Theft. These are the most popular techniques that AardvarkCompare recommends in order to avoid loss of money or important documents during a summer vacation. AardvarkCompare CEO Jonathan Breeze explains: When traveling we are often more relaxed and less organized than at home. It is easy to become distracted. These tips have been collated from our internal research and are a good way to keep cash, cards and documents safe. Each year millions of travelers experience money or document loss that could be easily avoided. 1. Slim down. The advice is to always pack light when traveling, particularly with regard to documentation. At home, many of us have wallets or purses bulging with cards, receipts, notes and coins. Dont travel like this slim down. A slim wallet, ideally kept in the front trouser pocket, will make loss much less likely. 2. Leave what you can at home. When on a trip just take the bare essentials very little cash; one, maybe two credit cards, some form of ID; and a copy of any Travel Insurance that will help in the event of hospitalization thats it. Everything else should stay at home or in a hotel safe. 3. Lock your Passport away. As tempting as it is to always keep a passport with you when on vacation, it is generally not advisable to do so. It is such a precious document, and complicated to replace. Loss of a passport can ruin a holiday. If some form of ID is required, then use a driving license normally much easier to replace than a passport, and not essential for return travel home. Many experienced travelers make a habit of carrying an out-of-date driving license, should a form of ID need to be given away temporarily when abroad. 4. Cash is not covered. A question that frequently arises will my Trip Insurance help me if I lose money from my wallet or purse? Unfortunately, as far as Travel Insurers in the USA are concerned, generally the answer is no. To that end, it is probably wise to carry as little cash as is possible and rely upon credit cards. Travelers should check terms and conditions with their credit card issuer, but there are normally very strong protections in place in the event that a credit card is used fraudulently. Also, Travel Insurers are a lot more supportive if there is a loss of a credit card. Most will offer some form of monetary support for any costs that might be incurred with regard to stolen credit cards. Cash Is Not Covered With Travel Insurance AardvarkCompare CEO, Jonathan Breeze: Our simple tips are these: Slim down your wallet or purse. Keep it in a front pocket. Carry little cash. Rely on credit cards. Leave your passport in a safe. Keep a spare ID. Simple advice that will help ensure that a vacation is spent enjoying time with friends and family, rather than reporting a loss to police and embassy officials. TED Speaker Dan Pallotta will be presenting at the Causecast +IMPACT East Conference in Washington, DC. Dan Pallotta, TED speaker, author and Chief Humanity Officer of Advertising for Humanity, will be a closing keynote speaker at the second annual +IMPACT East Conference, to be held May 15-16 in Washington, D.C. He will address themes from his book Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential. Pallotta invented the multi-day charitable event industry. He created the Breast Cancer 3-Day walks and the multi-day AIDS Rides, which raised in excess of half a billion dollars in nine years and were the subject of one of the first Harvard Business School case studies on social enterprise. The model and methods he created are now employed by dozens of charities, and have raised in excess of $1.5 billion more for important causes from pediatric leukemia to AIDS to suicide prevention and many others. Pallotta's iconic TED 2013 Talk has been viewed more than 4 million times, making it one of the 100 most-viewed TED Talks of all time. He has been written about in feature and cover stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, American Public Media's Marketplace, the TED Radio Hour, the BBC's Business Matters, and on numerous NPR stations, among others. "We are thrilled to have a thought leader like Dan Pallotta join us this year," said Laura Plato, President and COO of Causecast, the conference's producer. "Dan is an example of leader who challenges us to rethink our assumptions about how we create and measure our impact." "I am inspired to be a part of the +IMPACT conference this year!" said Dan Pallotta. "The more we can collaborate and build capacity across sectors to invest in what matters, the more impact we can create together." In addition to Pallotta, changemakers from Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and mission-driven businesses will be attending. Other conference speakers include leaders from Bozzuto, Kiva, HP, Marsh, America's Charities, VolunteerMatch, and Kiva. This year's theme is "Innovating in Times of Change," which encourages leaders from all sectors to take a fresh approach to making social impact. Speakers will share their experience and expertise on a range of topics, including trends in CSR, best practices in community engagement, insights on Millennial and Gen Z engagement, and more. Registration is now open for +IMPACT East. Thanks to the support of the Venue Sponsor, The Bozzuto Group, the conference will take place in Monroe Street Market's iconic community hub: Edgewood Arts Center. Regular tickets are available at $395 per person until May 1, and late registration sales at $695 per ticket end on May 16, 2017. To register or learn more about the 2nd annual +IMPACT East Conference, explore the website at http://innovation.causecast.com/impact2017/, follow Causecast on Twitter at http://twitter.com/causecast, find Causecast on Facebook at http://facebook.com/causecast, or join the LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1218937. To apply for media credentials, please contact Laura Plato at laura(at)causecast(dot)org. About +IMPACT The +IMPACT conference series occurs annually and focuses on continuing Causecast's commitment to helping corporate professionals build new skills and develop enhanced programming that achieves unprecedented impact for the causes and communities that employees are most passionate about. Together, through collaboration and learning, companies and communities can overcome great challenges. About Causecast Causecast is the leading provider of corporate cause integration technology solutions, helping organizations become more effective corporate citizens. Through its Community Impact Platform, Causecast automates and enhances systems for employee volunteering, giving, matching, rewarding and disaster relief. Causecast's vision is to foster a cutting-edge social ecosystem that elevates corporate social responsibility to a whole new level, where sustainable and measurable accomplishments move the needle on an organization's social mission, employee engagement, culture, and bottom line. University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) today announced the lineup of speakers and honorary degree recipients at the universitys eight commencement ceremonies, taking place Thursday, May 18 through Saturday, May 20. Over 2300 graduate and undergraduate students will participate in the ceremonies at St. Ignatius Church on USFs main campus. Events will also be live-streamed via the university website (http://www.usfca.edu). Hailing from the front lines of real estate, medicine, academia, politics and the Catholic Church, commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients include: Regina M. Benjamin, United States surgeon general under President Barack Obama; Mark Buell, Bay Area real estate magnate and civic leader; Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Karl W. Eikenberry; Reverend Jon Fuller, Jesuit priest, physician, and expert on HIV/AIDS; and The Bishop of San Diego, Robert W. McElroy Renowned director and playwright Carey Perloff from San Franciscos American Conservatory Theater and Maureen Orth, an award-winning journalist and education leader, will receive honorary degrees and address USFs College of Arts and Sciences. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will speak to USF School of Law graduates. All ceremonies are invitation only. Journalists interested in covering the commencement events at USF must register by contacting Jennifer Kriz at (415) 422-2697 or jkriz(at)usfca(dot)edu. University of San Francisco - 2017 Commencement Ceremonies - Lineup and Schedule Thursday, May 18, 6 p.m. School of Education Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: The Most Reverend Robert W. McElroy, Catholic Bishop of San Diego Named the sixth bishop of San Diego in 2015, Bishop Robert McElroy has served in parishes throughout California, and was appointed auxiliary bishop of San Francisco (2010-2015) by Pope Benedict XVI. In 2008, he served as the Lo Schiavo Chair in Catholic Social Thought at USF. McElroy is now the vice president of the California Catholic Conference and serves at the national conference of bishops. He is the author of two books: The Search for an American Public Theology and Morality and American Foreign Policy. A native San Franciscan, McElroy received his bachelors degree from Harvard College, and his masters degree from Stanford University, both in American history. He also holds a licentiate in theology from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, a doctorate in moral theology from the Gregorian University Rome, and a doctorate in political science from Stanford. Friday, May 19, 9 a.m. College of Arts and Sciences, undergraduate students for humanities and sciences Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Karl W. Eikenberry, Ambassador and Lieutenant General, Retired, U.S. Army Karl W. Eikenberry, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from April 2009 to July 2011, is currently the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and director of the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He is also a professor and faculty member at Stanford Universitys FSI Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The Europe Center. In addition to his work at Stanford, Eikenberry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he co-directs the academy's multi-year project on civil wars, violence and international responses. He serves on multiple boards, including The Asia Foundation, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, Carnegie Mellon Universitys Center for International Relations and Politics, and the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which aims to regenerate Afghanistan's traditional arts and historic areas. He also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Council of American Ambassadors. Eikenberry is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and received masters degrees from Harvard and Stanford universities. Friday, May 19, noon College of Arts and Sciences, undergraduate students for arts and social sciences Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Carey Perloff, Playwright and Artistic Director, American Conservatory Theater Carey Perloff, an award-winning director and playwright, is celebrating her 25th and final year as artistic director of A.C.T., San Franciscos largest theater company. Known for her innovative productions of classics and new works, Perloff has directed more than 50 productions at A.C.T. Perloffs play Kinship premiered at the Theatre de Paris in October 2014. Prior to A.C.T., Perloff was the artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York and served on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Her memoir, Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater, about her time at A.C.T., was published in 2015 and was excerpted by American Theatre Magazine. A recipient of Frances Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres and the National Corporate Theatre Funds 2007 Artistic Achievement Award, Perloff received a B.A. Phi Beta Kappa in classics and comparative literature from Stanford University and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Oxford. Friday, May 19, 3 p.m. College of Arts and Sciences, graduate students Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Maureen Orth, Journalist, Author and Special Correspondent, Vanity Fair Maureen Orth is an award-winning journalist, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, and the founder of the Marina Orth Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that promotes advanced learning in technology, English and leadership for more than 8,000 students in Colombia. As one of the first female writers at Newsweek in the early 1970s, Orth went on to publish profiles in Vanity Fair on heads of state, business leaders and celebrities, as well as acclaimed investigative reports. She has been a contributing editor at Vogue, a network correspondent for NBC News, a senior editor for New York and New West magazines and a columnist for New York Woman. She is also a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. For her commitment to the education and success of the youth of Colombia, Orth received the McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award from Refugees International in 2015. Orth has also published two books, the best selling Vulgar Favors about the murder of Gianni Versace and The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity Industrial Complex. Orth attended San Francisco College for Women/Lone Mountain for two years and completed her bachelors degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a masters degree in journalism and documentary film at the University of California, Los Angeles. Orths late husband, Tim Russert, received an honorary degree from USF in 2001. Friday, May 19, 6 p.m. School of Nursing and Health Professions Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Rev. Jon D. Fuller, M.D., S.J., Physician, Center for Infectious Diseases and Associate Professor, Boston University School of Medicine Founding president of the National Catholic AIDS Network, Rev. Dr. Jon Fuller is the attending physician for the Center for Infectious Diseases in Boston and manages Boston Medical Centers program for HIV/AIDS care. He also coordinates the Research Thursday AIDS Conference series. As a Jesuit priest, Fuller has focused on how HIV prevention approaches can be analyzed and supported from the context of Catholic moral theology and serves as a consultant to international Catholic development and relief agencies on HIV-related policies. He teaches at Boston University School of Medicine, Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Harvard Divinity School. Fuller attended medical school at the University of California, San Diego, and completed his residency training in family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He served on the University of San Francisco Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2010. Saturday, May 20, 9 a.m. School of Law Commencement Speaker: The Honorable Xavier Becerra, California Attorney General Prior to being elected as Californias attorney general this year, Xavier Becerra was a member of the United States House of Representatives for California's 34th congressional district, representing downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. Becerra also served as a deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice from 1987 to 1990, and the California State Assembly from 1990 to 1992. Born in Sacramento, Becerra is the son of working-class immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico. He attended the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain from 1978 to 1979, and earned his B.A. in economics from Stanford University. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. Becerra received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1980. Saturday, May 20, noon School of Management, undergraduate students in business administration Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina M. Benjamin served as the 18th United States surgeon general, appointed by President Barack Obama in July 2009. As surgeon general, Benjamin oversaw the operational command of 6,700 uniformed public health officers who promote and protect the health of Americans in locations around the world. She is the first chair of the National Prevention Council and a former associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine. She is also the past chair of the U.S. Federation of State Medical Boards. In 1995, Benjamin was the first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman to be elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees. Prior to becoming surgeon general, Benjamin served patients at the rural health clinic she founded in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, keeping the clinic in operation despite damage inflicted by hurricanes George (1998) and Katrina (2005) and a devastating fire (2006). Benjamin earned a B.S. in chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana, an M.D. degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an M.B.A. from Tulane University. She attended Morehouse School of Medicine and completed her family medicine residency in Macon, Georgia. Saturday, May 20, 3 p.m. School of Management, graduate and professional students, Masagung Graduate School of Management Honorary Degree Recipient and Commencement Speaker: Mark Buell, President, San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, Class of 1964 Mark Buell is a graduate of USF, a native San Franciscan and a decorated Vietnam veteran. Intrepid in the world of politics and philanthropy, Buell has spent 35 years in public and private real estate development. Buell was San Franciscos first director of economic development under Joseph Alioto and later served as the first director of the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency from 1977 to 1985. He was a founding member and first president of the California Association for Local Economic Development and has served on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission under Dianne Feinstein. Buell is active on the boards of many nonprofit organizations including the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the San Francisco Conservation Corps, the Bolinas Museum and the Chez Panisse Foundation. ### About the University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco is located in the heart of one of the worlds most innovative and diverse cities and is home to a vibrant academic community of students and faculty who achieve excellence in their fields. Its diverse student body enjoys direct access to faculty, small classes, and outstanding opportunities in the city itself. USF is San Franciscos first university, and its Jesuit Catholic mission helps ignite a students passion for social justice and a desire to Change the World From Here. For more information, visit usfca.edu Im proud to welcome Jenann to LendingUSA, and Im looking forward to working with her to meet and exceed compliance standards, and put our consumers first. LendingUSA, the leading provider of financing solutions for the important moments in life, has announced the appointment of Jenann Shemisa to its executive team as both General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. Ms. Shemisa will begin her role immediately, reporting directly to Camilo Concha, CEO and Founder. Ms. Shemisa previously served as Counsel at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations Consumer Enforcement Unit in Washington, D.C., providing legal advice and guidance to the FDIC's Legal Division and the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection in matters concerning compliance and consumer protection. She began her eight-year career with the FDIC as a Senior Attorney in Irvine, California, assisting the FDIC with its critical mission of managing the 2008 financial crisis. Ms. Shemisa provided legal advice and guidance to the FDIC's Legal Division and the Division of Receiverships and Resolutions with all matters relating to the management of the FDIC's receiverships and their assets. As LendingUSA continues to grow and innovate the way consumers finance the things that matter most to them, having a compliance expert like Jenann join our leadership team is crucial, says Sharat Shankar, Chief Risk & Operations Officer. Jenanns insights will help us to better serve our borrowers and merchant partners, and ultimately create more efficient, more effective loan programs. In addition to her tenure at the FDIC, Ms. Shemisa previously held the dual role of General Counsel and Vice President of Business Administration at Lakeshore Equipment Company. There she provided legal advice and Counsel for the company and for two of its subsidiaries that manufactured childrens toys and consumer educational products. Ms. Shemisa was General Counsel of Axiom Investments and Management, Inc., and provided legal advice to its manufacturing and financial affiliated companies. Prior to that, she was a Business and Litigation Attorney for the law firm of Winn and Sims, APC, which represented sub-prime lenders, financial institutions and finance companies. There she drafted and reviewed both consumer and commercial loan documentation to ensure compliance with all state and federal laws. Ms. Shemisa was also a Corporate Counsel Consultant for LexisNexis, and provided consulting services for the Fortune 500 Companies. She was promoted to Corporate Legal Marketing Manager where she developed training programs for the sales and marketing divisions of LexisNexis and assisted the research and product development division to create new and innovative legal products for the corporate legal and financial markets. "I am honored to have been selected as LendingUSA's General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. Having witnessed firsthand the devastation that occurred during the 2008 financial crisis, it was important for me to be part of a company that is committed to providing high-quality, innovative financial products and services. After conducting my due diligence, I discovered that LendingUSA is a company that truly cares about its customers, with a mission to provide consumer financial products with ingenuity, heart and integrity. They have a unique and exciting opportunity to bring back consumer confidence in the financial services industry, and I am grateful for the chance to work with Camilo, Sharat, the Board of Directors, the management team, and my fellow colleagues to help create LendingUSA's exciting future." Ms. Shemisa began her legal career as Vice President and Assistant Counsel for KeyBank, National Association, where she provided legal advice to KeyBank's Retail Banking Division on consumer compliance and consumer protection matters. Compliance is at the top of our list of priorities at LendingUSA. Finding somebody who has government and private sector experience is key to the design of the best possible compliance program for our organization, says Camilo Concha, CEO. Im proud to welcome Jenann to LendingUSA, and Im looking forward to working with her to meet and exceed compliance standards, and put our consumers first. Ms. Shemisa received her B.A. Degree in Liberal Arts from Bowling Green State University and her J.D. from Cleveland State University. About LendingUSA LendingUSAs mission is to create lasting business partnerships by providing innovative point-of-need financing solutions for the important moments in life. It offers financing for consumers in specialty markets including the elective medical industry, dental care, pets and pet care, and more. They are committed to creating the best point-of-need consumer financing experience available, using a proprietary lending solution that leverages both traditional and next-generation underwriting and fraud detection techniques to approve loans as quickly as a few seconds. LendingUSA works closely with its merchant partners, providing the tools and training they need to easily and efficiently maximize customer financing approvals and grow their business. For more information, visit http://www.lendingusa.com. Speakers at the ICSC China Retail Summit The solutions to the retail landscape challenges and opportunities for the Chinese market, are centered in branded F&B At the invitation of the International Council of Shopping Centers, Barbara DAmato, CEO of Trilogy Brands Group participated in the 2017 ICSC China Retail Summit as a Speaker in the Panel Discussion Session on F&B Expansion in China, and participated in a private C-level discussion at the Asia Pacific CEO Forum. From a number of heavyweight speakers from home and abroad to share new ideas, new online and new channel integration, new technology innovation applications, shopping center transformation and upgrading of the industry hot topics, while the attention of the roundtable forum guests from different angles around brand value, to expand the challenges and opportunities in the Chinese market, retail brand tenants and owners of the win-win cooperation, and shopping center successful business model and other key topics in-depth discussion. Speakers included: Jack Rennes, Executive Director of Hang Yung Real Estate Co., Ltd. Chen Wenbo, Co-President of Metro Holdings Group Co., Ltd., Barbara D'amato, CEO of Trilogy Brands Group, Chief Executive Officer of Burger King China Investment Co., Ltd. James Hawkey, Senior Director, Jones Lang LaSalle & China Retail Director Lin Jirui, Vice President of Baodong Real Estate Holdings Limited and General Manager of Baolong Commercial Real Estate Pan Lijun Tom McGee, President and Chief Executive Officer, ICSC International Shopping Center, Wal-Mart, Senior Vice President, Real Estate Development, Wal-Mart, Chairman of Wanda Network Technology Group Qu Dijun, Vice Chairman of Chia Tai Group Luo Jia-shun, Nan Fung Group Zhongnan Joint Asset Management Limited Wang Yuansheng, Managing Director of Wanda Business Management Group Shanghai Region Wang Qingsheng, Executive Director of Dingshi Business Group Wang Wei, President of Shanghai Miaojiaofang Food Co., Ltd. Wang Zhigang, Assistant President of Zhongliang Holding Group and Commercial Real Estate Wu Di group president, deputy general manager of the theater group Seohyun earth and long. The summit took place in Shanghai, the most vibrant and growing retail economy in China and the city with highest population growth in Asia Pacific. As technology and demographic shifts occur at an accelerated pace, the Asia Pacific retail landscape is rapidly evolving. Consumers, particularly the growing millennial population which is shaping the future consumption market, are placing a high priority on experiences and convenience. Behaviors and expectations are not as easily predicted as was the case in the past. The leading shopping center owner/developers, retailers and industry leaders in the Asia Pacific region gathered at this event to address the numerous issues critical to the industry: Innovative retail concepts, effective customer-engagement strategies, seamless customer experiences, the strength of brands, and the increasing role of food and beverage in retail; and to network, discuss opportunities, and recognize industrys best practices and innovation. The world is obsessed with American brands, and the Chinese consumer is ready to experience something new according to Barbara DAmato, CEO of Trilogy Brands. But not just any brandyou must understand the fundamentals that are driving demand, growth and trends in the US today in order to know what brand to invest in and be sure to bet on the next retail success. Key drivers include: Brand strategy with customer centricity; a fluid retail strategy; a marketing strategy that incorporates full digital integration, customer centricity, big data, and social media; collaboration, information, speed, adaptability, and opportunity. DAmato continues, Today brands are on steroids and something new will turn up that nobody can forecast. Thats a fact. If you are connected, focused, deliver with precision, are willing to adapt to acceleration and galvanize the organization into change to best serve consumers, while leveraging from the power of global partnerships, you can perform very well in most any global market and be the next retail success brand. This is how you protect your investment in brands and grow brand value globally. Emanuel Sepulveda, Manager, Center for Career Planning and Workforce Strategies The experience and passion Manny brings to the table as Manager of Tridents Center for Career Planning and Workforce Strategies is undeniable. Our students and alumni will be in good hands. - Esmerlada Silva, VP, Outreach & Strategic Alliances Trident University International (Trident) is proud to announce that Emanuel Manny Sepulveda has been named the new Manager of the Center for Career Planning and Workforce Strategies. Sepulveda assumes this role on May 1st, 2017. He joined Trident in 2013 and previously was the Regional Manager of Strategic Military and Community Relations for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The experience and passion Manny brings to the table as Manager of Tridents Center for Career Planning and Workforce Strategies is undeniable. Our students and alumni will be in good hands, said Esmerlada Silva, Vice President of Outreach and Strategic Alliances. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sepulveda enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1988. While enlisted, he earned two Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medals, nine Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, and various unit and campaign awards. He served on submarine duty in the Mediterranean and the Arctic and as a counselor recruiter. As a counselor recruiter, Sepulveda worked closely with the men and women in his unit, offering career guidance and development. This role allowed him to advise petty officers projected to reenlist and those who were planning to transition into civilian roles. Being a military veteran, Sepulveda understands firsthand the career challenges that face many in the Trident community. During his time at the University, he has assisted scores of men and women both active duty and veterans with career choices at education fairs, conferences, and events like Centurion Military Alliances Warrior Transition Readiness Program. The most important thing to remember when youre preparing to leave the service is that no matter where youre networking or who you seek out for advice, youre always on an interview, Sepulveda stated. If you treat it like that and maintain a positive attitude, youll do a lot of good for yourself. Sepulveda earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Human Resources from Trident in 2011. Trident is a 100% online university that has been in operation since 1998 and is regionally accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC). Active duty military, veterans, National Guard, and military dependents make up 79% of the Universitys student population, and Trident is proud to employ many veterans at its faculty, staff, and management levels. About Trident University Founded in 1998, Trident University International (Trident) is a leading online postsecondary university serving adult learners. Trident developed the Trident Learning Model, which employs case-based learning in an online setting to teach real-world relevant critical thinking skills to enhance the lives and careers of students. Trident offers high-quality bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs, led by a qualified faculty team, over 80% of whom have doctoral degrees. Visit http://www.trident.edu, Tridents Facebook page, or call at (855) 290-0290 to learn more about Trident's wide range of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs. Specialists On Call, Inc. (SOC), the largest provider of telemedicine services and technology to acute care hospitals, announced that its neurologist Elaine C. Jones, MD, FAAN, has received the prestigious Kenneth M. Viste, Jr., MD Patient Advocate of the Year Award at the 2017 annual conference of the American Academy of Neurology. According to the Academy, each year the Kenneth M. Viste, Jr., MD Patient Advocate of the Year Award recognizes one neurologist who exemplifies Dr. Viste's leadership and commitment to advocating for the patient community. "Specialists On Call is proud and pleased to have Dr. Elaine Jones receive this honor." said Dr. Til Jolly, CMO of SOC. "Dr. Jones has a long track record of tirelessly serving as an advocate for patients and has led many initiatives in this regard across the past years. We are thrilled to see her work recognized by the Academy this year. Elaine exemplifies the most important core value of Specialists On Call which is to put patients first." "I am deeply honored with this recognition," said Dr. Jones. I intend to continue my work on behalf of patients in partnership with my colleagues at the Academy, in my community and with Specialists On Call. My work with Specialists On Call brings me great satisfaction as I get to reach and assist patients who might otherwise not have timely access to a neurologist. I am excited by the opportunities that SOCs telemedicine solutions provide in expanding neurology care and the organizations commitment to innovation and leadership in developing new protocols and care models for better clinical outcomes. Dr. Jones received her M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina and completed her Neurology residency at Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital. She then returned to Brown University to complete her fellowship in Neurophysiology. Dr. Jones is board certified with the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and has chaired several committees of the American Academy of Neurology including the Payment Policy, Government Relations Committee and the Gender Disparity Task Force and serves on its Board of Directors. Named one of Rhode Island Monthlys Top Doctors for five years straight, she has served as President of the Rhode Island Medical Society, co-chair of the Membership Committee and as Treasurer for the RI Medical Society Political Action Committee. About Specialists On Call, Inc. Specialists On Call, Inc. (SOC) is the largest provider of acute care telemedicine services and technology to US hospitals and partners with close to 400 hospitals and systems across 36 states. Through its Neurology, Psychiatry, Critical Care, and Managed Services solutions SOC virtually delivers physicians directly to the patients bedside. The company's Consult Coordination Center (CCC) is the hub of its clinical and operational support teams, and dedicated to accelerating patient care through a fully-redundant and state-of-the-art infrastructure. SOC provides industry leading reporting and analytics and lean six sigma consulting support to optimize workflows towards achieving high clinical outcomes. The organization was the first private provider of acute clinical telemedicine services to earn The Joint Commissions Gold Seal of Approval and has maintained that accreditation every year since inception. For more information, visit http://www.specialistsoncall.com. Contact for Specialists On Call: Ashanthi Mathai Vice President, Marketing 703-225-7157 amathai(at)soctelemed9dot)com Lucas Group In this candidate-driven market, recruiting and retaining top talent is a major challenge for companies of all sizes and growth stages. Were working side-by-side with local customers to source the top talent companies need to support continued growth. Executive recruitment firm Lucas Group announced the launch of its new customer engagement campaign, Together, We Own Denver. The three-month campaign reaffirms the companys strong commitment to the Denver business market through customer-centric, locally driven recruiting solutions. The Own Denver campaign will provide Denver-based businesses with recruitment resources to address the citys historically low unemployment rate via Lucas Groups career advice site, Your Career Intel. This collection of original blogs, infographics and videos provides local-expert insights into Denvers recruiting and hiring market. Colorados unemployment rate it at its lowest level since 2001, says Chief Marketing Officer Scott Smith. This is creating a mismatch between employer demand and candidate supply. In this candidate-driven market, recruiting and retaining top talent is a major challenge for companies of all sizes and growth stages. Were working side-by-side with local customers to source the top talent companies need to support continued growth. Together, We Own Denver is also an opportunity for Lucas Group to share its appreciation for nearly two decades of strong customer relationships with thousands of Denver-area hiring companies and job seekers. The campaign reflects Lucas Groups continued confidence in the citys dynamic business environment, including its optimism for Denvers growth and enthusiasm for the companies and people who call the city home. Lucas Groups Denver office opened in 2000 with a focus on full-time accounting and finance recruitment. The Denver office has since grown to offer accounting and finance contract-to-hire placement services and Human Resources recruitment. Thanks to the citys diverse economic climate, Lucas Group supports companies from a variety of industries, including real estate, energy, financial services, manufacturing, high tech, software, and healthcare. The Denver office prides itself on a tight-knit team that shares a passion for working hard and taking advantage of all Denver has to offer. The office also boasts several leaders who are members of Lucas Groups elite Presidents Club, which recognizes top performers. Our team is extremely close and supports one another both in and out of the office, says Rebecca Dappen, Denver Accounting and Finance branch Managing Partner. Whether were running a charity 5K together or participating in the 9-11 Memorial Red Rock Stair Climb, our team is passionate about giving back to the Denver community and enjoying Colorados great outdoors. The Together, We Own Denver campaign will run through July 31, 2017. About Lucas Group Lucas Group is North Americas premier executive search firm. Since 1970, our culture and methodologies have driven superior results. We assist clients ranging in size from small to medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies find transcendent, executive talent; candidates fully realize their ambitions; and associates find professional success. To learn more, please visit Lucas Group at http://www.lucasgroup.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Root Logo Roots insurance model will fundamentally change the businessas well as make better drivers out of all of us. Root, the first insurance company founded on the principle of fundamental fairness, today announced that Cindy Powell has joined as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). A respected industry executive, Powell comes to Root following 26 years with State Auto Insurance Companies where she served in various roles including controller, treasurer and chief accounting officer, and chief audit executive. Notably, she was named State Autos first chief risk officer in 2012. With diverse experience in finance, operations, compliance, and risk advisory capacities, Powell has a comprehensive understanding of the insurance industry and is known for confident leadership during complicated times. She has an established track record of enabling large-scale growth initiatives, as well as leading teams through regulatory changes, economic shifts and significant catastrophic events. During her tenure at State Auto, sales increased from $500 million to over $2 billion, and assets grew from $800 million to $4.2 million. Cindy is a tremendous addition to our team, said Alex Timm, co-founder and CEO of Root. Shes both an innovator and an industry veteran, something thats extremely rare - and something weve been searching for since the inception of the company. Were very protective of our culture here at Root, and Cindy is a fantastic addition. The addition of Powell will impact Root well beyond the boardroom as she has been a pillar in the central Ohio business and nonprofit communities. Over the course of her career, she served on the board of the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) Insurance Solutions, and is currently Board President of The Jefferson Avenue Center, a nonprofit that owns and operates historic and newly developed properties for a community of nonprofits. Powell joins Root just as the company is gearing up for expansion across the country. After launching in Ohio in late 2016, Root recently became the first insurance company to offer discounts to drivers of self-driving cars. Not letting off the gas, the company then announced a unique Lyft on Us program that allows Root policyholders to take free Lyft rides on certain holidays. Ive navigated decades of change in insurance, and Im certain that Root has the potential to reshape the insurance industry, said Powell. Roots insurance model will fundamentally change the businessas well as make better drivers out of all of us. Im thrilled to join this team on a mission to make auto insurance fairer and hopefully even save lives in the process. A life-long community advocate, she served on the State Auto Foundation board, the board of VOICECorps and is a 2010 graduate of Leadership Columbus. Recognized for her effective leadership, she was named a 2013 Deloitte Wise Women Honoree. She is a graduate of John Carroll University where she earned a bachelors of arts degree in economics. Root is available today to good drivers in Ohio, and will be coming to more states soon. To become a Root policyholder and join other good drivers, sign up at: http://www.joinroot.com About Root Root is the first insurance company founded on the principle of fundamental fairness. We create personalized products that give good drivers the protection they deserve. At Root we only insure good drivers, and that is why our rates are always fair. Unlike other insurance companies, we do not bundle good drivers with bad drivers. Instead, we use data science to find and reward good drivers with the best rates. Root is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The company is an official carrier licensed by Ohio Department of Insurance, a member of the Ohio Insurance Guaranty Association, and backed by the largest reinsurance company in the world. Get the rate you deserve at http://www.joinroot.com. "With more than 130 Partner Firms, this is a great time for UBA and its partner firms to celebrate our role in helping employers. - Scott Deru, UBA Chairman of the Board United Benefit Advisors (UBA) is celebrating its 15-year anniversary as the nations leading independent employee benefits advisory organization. It all began when a group of fellow employee benefits professionals met at the Society of Financial Service Professionals Success Forum in Las Vegas to discuss the future of their business, the challenges to retain their independence, and ways to level the playing field by forming a national employee benefits producer group. Led by co-founders and visionaries David LoCascio and Chris John, this group saw unlimited potential and power in sharing their collective expertise and knowledge to form a partnership called United Benefit Advisors. They firmly believed that the collective wisdom, expertise, experience and unique strengths which resides within the top independent benefits firms had the potential to not only meet these challenges, but to capitalize on the tremendous opportunity they represent. Since being founded in 2002 with 31 Charter Partner Firms, UBA has grown significantly from its humble beginnings, says Scott Deru, UBA Chairman of the Board. Now with more than 130 Partner Firms, this is a great time for UBA and these firms to celebrate our role in helping employers provide affordable health care to their employees and live better lives. In just 15 years of dedicated service to the benefits industry, UBA has increased its partnership by more than 400 percent and its benefits revenue by more than 300 percent. While more than 130 Partner Firms currently make up UBA, they all remain independent agencies. Some UBA milestones: 2003: UBA ranks as one of the top 10 largest employee benefit advisory organizations 2004: UBA goes international with its first Partner Firm in Canada 2004: In just two years, UBA increased its partnership from 31 Partner Firms to a milestone of 100 Partner Firms 2005: UBA launches proprietary Employee Benefit Center (EBC) Web portal 2005: Release of the inaugural UBA Health Plan Survey, the largest medical plan benchmarking survey of its kind 2009: UBAs gains a United Kingdom Partner Firm in England 2013: Benefits Passport, UBAs new Private Exchange, is launched 2015: UBA launches a Captive Insurance product 2016: UBA is the sixth largest global employee benefits broker, with combined annual employee benefits revenues of more than $484 million 2016: The annual UBA Health Plan Survey grows to become larger than all the leading surveys produced by Kaiser, Mercer, Gallagher, Willis Towers Watson, and Aoncombined! 2016: UBA Partners serve two and a half million employees, insure more than five million lives, and saved employers, on average, six percent on their most recent medical plan renewals. ABOUT United Benefit Advisors United Benefit Advisors (UBA) is the nations leading independent employee benefits advisory organization with more than 200 offices throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. UBA empowers more than 2,000 Partners to both maintain their individuality and pool their expertise, insight, and market presence to provide best-in-class services and solutions. Employers, advisors and industry-related organizations interested in obtaining powerful results from the shared wisdom of our Partners should visit http://www.UBAbenefits.com. # # # Managing Director Toby Stansell will advise clients as to how they can apply and leverage technology to improve their operational and financial performance. Nationally recognized CPA and consulting firm Cherry Bekaert LLP (the Firm) is proud to announce the launch of its Technology Solutions Group, established to meet the growing technology and business intelligence needs of the Firms clients. The group will be spearheaded by newly hired Managing Director Toby Stansell and Director Jim Holman. Toby Stansell joins Cherry Bekaert after serving as the President and Chief Operating Officer of a boutique technology consulting firm. In his new role as a Managing Director with the Firms Technology Solutions group, he will advise clients as to how they can apply and leverage technology to improve their operational and financial performance. Stansells strong business technology expertise, combined with his executive management experience, will help clients capitalize upon transformative opportunities to increase the productivity of people and processes. Operating out of the Firms Atlanta, Georgia, and Greenville, South Carolina, practices, he will also work with clients in Cherry Bekaerts THInc specialty practice to architect and deploy business process advancements that materially enhance productivity, and ultimately, profitability. For over 35 years, Stansell has been exposed to a diverse mix of manufacturing and distribution verticals, including capital equipment, aerospace and defense, textile, energy and automotive, along with the enterprise-class, technology-centric systems that support the industrial sector. Specifically, he possesses in-depth knowledge and expertise working with industrial clients in the areas of order management, supply-chain planning and execution, enterprise resource planning implementations, and lean materials management. Jim Holman has over 25 years of experience advising clients with business flow, manufacturing and distribution processes, and analytical reporting. He possesses significant experience with IT due diligence engagements and has played a key role in IT/systems divesture projects and IT post-merger integration projects, including system migrations and optimization strategies. Based in our Atlanta practice, Holman joins Cherry Bekaerts Technology Solutions group as a Director, and also will serve as a consultant to the Firms THInc specialty practice by helping clients improve and re-engineer business processes, identify redundancies, eliminate non-essential procedures, and reduce costs. Throughout his career, Holman has delivered manufacturing and distribution clients reliable solutions that blend the best technology and processes for meeting their needs. His expertise includes manufacturing financial modules, distribution modules, business intelligence, shop floor data collection, and mobile solutions. Holman has also assisted industrial clients in a diverse range of manufacturing environments such as discrete make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, specialty chemical batch process, craft brewing, restaurant recipe processing, and packaging. In addition, his guidance extends to the infrastructure requirements for multiple enterprise resource planning systems, both on the client and the server sides. I am excited for the opportunity to work with Toby and Jim in the cultivation of our Firms new Technology Solutions group, remarked Scott M. Moss, Managing Partner of Cherry Bekaerts Advisory Services practice. Their combined technology and operational performance expertise is unmatched in optimizing business processes and providing innovative solutions to the clients in the technology, health and life science and industrial sectors. About Cherry Bekaert LLP As a nationally recognized, growth-oriented firm, Cherry Bekaert has the resources to take your business as far as you want to go. The Firm's industry specialists already know your marketplace, so they can help you make the most of emerging opportunities while minimizing compliance headaches. With our down-to-earth style and wealth of practical advice, you will find Cherry Bekaert an indispensable part of your team. Ranked among the largest accounting firms in the country, Cherry Bekaert offers specialized solutions that help advance our clients' business goals. For more than 65 years, global corporations, private businesses, government entities, nonprofits, emerging firms, start-ups and successful individuals have relied on Cherry Bekaert to guide them forward as their growth advisor. Cherry Bekaert LLP is an independent member of Baker Tilly International. Baker Tilly International is the worlds 8th largest accountancy and business advisory network by combined fee income of its independent members. Baker Tilly International member firms specialize in providing accountancy and business advisory services to entrepreneurial, growing businesses and mid-market listed corporates worldwide. | cbh.com San Francisco Jaw Surgeon Today there are great advances in technology for a more precise surgical procedures, like 3D imaging, used in jaw surgery. San Franciscos leading orthognathic surgeon, Dr. Alex Rabinovich, is proud to announce a new blog post on the topic of jaw surgery and second opinions. Jaw surgery may require several procedures, but once the process begins, the work must move forward and not backwards. For this reason, the new post highlights the importance of research and second opinions before embarking on jaw surgery. Today there are great advances in technology for a more precise surgical procedures, like 3D imaging, used in jaw surgery, explained Dr. Alex Rabinovich, chief oral surgeon of SF Dental Implants. Still, new updated technologies are happening all the time. Its really the expertise of the jaw surgeon that is one of many critical factories in any surgery. The benefits of a second opinion from a skilled orthognathic surgeon can help ensure the best outcome. To read the new blog post go to http://www.oralsurgery-sf.com/2017/03/jaw-surgery-skilled-work-need-best/. Information regarding orthognathic surgery and other oral surgery procedures in the Bay Area can be found. Those actively looking for jaw surgery options in San Francisco are encouraged to visit http://www.oralsurgery-sf.com/jaw-surgery/. State-of-the-art 3D Scanning can now offer a more precise view of jaw issues and the best treatment for surgery. Details regarding the importance of procuring a second opinion from a highly qualified jaw surgeon in San Francisco can also be reviewed. San Francisco Jaw Surgeons and the Value of Second Opinions If a Bay Area resident is considering jaw surgery, finding an oral surgeon with a state-of-the-art clinic may be on the list. Choosing an expert orthognathic surgeon already at the top of the jaw surgery field may also be desired. For this reason, Dr. Alex Rabinovich, a leading San Francisco oral surgeon, specializing in jaw surgery has recently announced a new post about second opinions. High-tech medical equipment such as 3D imaging have changed the world of oral surgery. Bay Area patients requiring orthognathic surgery have access to better more precise surgical plans. Yet, high tech equipment can still be upgraded over time. A highly-skilled San Francisco jaw surgeon should offer patients state-of-the-art skills every time. Patients cannot afford to be treated like prototypes. If a Bay Area local suffers from the pain of a broken or fractured jaw, or other disability, the work must be given a thorough review by a highly-trained jaw surgeon before a procedure can begin. Dr. Rabinovich reminds the San Francisco locals to seek a second opinion from a top-rated orthognathic surgeon to help confirm the correct path to a successful jaw surgery. About Dr. Alex Rabinovich Dr. Alex Rabinovich, a top-rated orthognathic surgeon in the San San Francisco, Bay Area is a Board Certified Oral Surgeon. Additional training in maxillofacial surgery along with years of experience in jaw surgery and dental implants, sets Alex Rabinovich MD DDS apart from other orthognathic surgeons. San Francisco Dental Implant Center has invested in state-of-the-art oral surgery technology such as 3D imaging to offer the most precise view of any jaw deformity and how to treat the issue. Corrective jaw surgery can require an anesthetic and overnight stay. San Francisco locals considering meeting with a jaw surgeon can meet Dr. Rabinovich for a complimentary consultation. Persons interested in dental implants should visit his specialized dental implant website at http://www.sfdentalimplants.com/. San Francisco Dental Implant Center serves the San Francisco Bay Area including Palo Alto, San Mateo, Redwood City and Mountain View. Contact: San Francisco Dental Implant Center, Media Relations Web. http://www.sfdentalimplants.com/ Email. visage.sanfran(at)gmail(dot)com Tel. 415-817-9991 The Peace Education Program is having a profound impact on inmates at Tires Prison and other correctional facilities around the world. Maybe its the idea that each human being is special, unique, unrepeatable that attracts so many people worldwide. Perhaps it is the disarming simplicity of the message. In Tires Prison, it is making a difference. Ana Valencia, 37 years old, was arrested at the Lisbon airport trying to smuggle 5 kilos of cocaine into Portugal from her native Colombia. Not far away, Manuela Barreiros, 36 years old, was also arrested for drug trafficking. Both mothers, they soon faced devastating consequences: years in prison away from their children, their family and everything they love. Along with hundreds of other nonviolent offenders, they found themselves behind bars at Tires Prison, haunted by regrets and paralyzed by sorrow. And like hundreds of other inmates at Tires Prison and other correctional facilities around the world, they found solace during Peace Education Program (PEP) workshops, where they learned how to tap into their own innate abilities to feel inner strength, dignity and hope. Their incredible transformation earned the attention of producers at Radio e Televisao de Portugal (RTP), the public service broadcasting organization of Portugal. The outlet created Light Behind Bars to chronicle the experience of Ana, Manuela and other women locked up at Tires as they participated in PEP and gained the skills and perspectives they needed to build better lives. Also featured prominently in the short documentary is a visit by Prem Rawat, Founder of The Prem Rawat Foundation, who offers a moving address to the women, inspiring them along their individual paths towards inner peace. Directed by noted journalist and author Marques Fernandes, shot by cinematographers Felipe Martins and Carla Quirino and accompanied by an evocative score, the result is a poignant testament to the power of hope. RTP originally broadcast the documentary to television affiliates across Portugal. With permission of RTP, The Prem Rawat Foundation is now making it available online for the first time with English subtitles. WATCH "LIGHT BEHIND BARS" About The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) and the Peace Education Program (PEP): TPRF is dedicated to helping build a world at peace, one person at a time. To fulfill its mission of addressing fundamental human needs of food, water and peace, TPRF has developed programs such as Food for People, which serves hundreds of thousands of nutritious meals to impoverished children each year and the Peace Education Program. The innovative multimedia PEP course has been presented in 73 countries at a large variety of organizations and community groups, including colleges, youth programs, adult education programs, hospice centers, retiree centers, prisons and rehabilitation programs. PEPs are active in North America, the U.K., Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia and India. Launched in July, 2012 in Brisbane, Australia, PEP has expanded to every continent. Since its founding in 2001, TPRF has also supported numerous emergency relief efforts, providing more than 158 grants to aid people in 40 countries. Tax Preparation Service We are proud to be known as the 'goto' accounting firm in San Francisco and in California for expat tax return preparation. Safe Harbor LLP, long considered one of the leading accounting firms in the San Francisco Bay Area and in California for international tax issues, is proud to announce an update to its information page on "expat tax return preparation" in California. With the most common needs being Canadian expat tax returns, the new page emphasizes services offered not only for Canadians but for residents of diverse countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and China. We are proud to be known as the 'goto' accounting firm in San Francisco and in California for expat tax return preparation, explained Chun Wong, Managing Partner at Safe Harbor LLP. By upgrading our information page on expat tax return preparation, emphasizing our firm's California heritage and expertise vis-a-vis Canadians, we are making sure that it's easy to find expat tax return preparation assistance to those foreigners who are temporarily in California. To view the newly upgraded information page on expat tax returns, visit http://www.safeharborcpa.com/expatriate-tax-service/. Those interested in a "deep dive" into the firm's expertise in international tax, visit http://www.safeharborcpa.com/international-tax/ or reach out for a consultation. With both businesses and individuals often needing expatriate tax preparation services, and a myriad of potential countries, no two situations are alike. Accordingly, the online information is only the briefest of discussions of the challenges of correctly preparing expatriate tax returns. Tax Returns for Canadians Living in California As the second largest trading partner of the United States, and the country's closest Northern neighbor, Canada and Canadian citizens make up a large percentage of those residents in California who need expat tax return preparation services. By partnering with local Canadian accounting firms, Safe Harbor LLP is able to provide best-in-class tax preparation services with an eye to federal, state, and Canadian tax requirements. For those who are citizens of other countries, as diverse as the United Kingdom, Germany, or China, the firm can also assist with both individual and business tax preparation needs. The world has grown smaller in recent years, and Safe Harbor LLP has grown its international tax services accordingly. It comes as no surprise that this small so-called boutique CPA firm in San Francisco has become known among the international cognoscenti as the place to go for assistance with international tax compliance. About Safe Harbor LLP a Professional CPA Firm in San Francisco Safe Harbor LLP is a CPA firm that specializes in accounting and tax services for individuals and businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and greater California. Safe Harbor CPAs helps both individuals and businesses with tax preparation, IRS audit defense, and audited financial statements. The firm prides itself on friendly yet professional service and utilizes state-of-the-art Internet technology to provide quality customer service. Safe Harbor CPA http://www.safeharborcpa.com Tel. 415.742.4249 Burlingame Home Care Many families do not confront the need for home care services until a loved one is at hospital discharge. NuevaCare, a leading Bay Area home care agency servicing San Mateo, Millbrae, Burlingame and environs, is proud to announce information upgrades for families in Burlingame looking for local home care options. With a major area hospital, Burlingame is a focal point for searches for home care services at patient discharge. "Many families do not confront the need for home care services until a loved one is at hospital discharge," explained Kamran Nasser, CEO of NuevaCare. "We service many families looking for Burlingame home care services, as well as those in nearby communities like Millbrae. By upgrading our website information, we hope to inform and educate clients as they identify the best home care service for their family near Burlingame, California." Interested persons are referred to example articles and pages on the website, focused on Burlingame home care. For example, they can read an informative blog post on tips for local families at http://nuevacare.com/preparing-for-home-care-3-tips-for-families/. Secondly, there is an updated city information page on Burlingame home care at http://nuevacare.com/home-care-burlingame/. It should be noted that this localized page includes a short list of area activities for loved ones, as well as a list of home care services offered such as 24 hour care, in home respite services, as well as help with errands such as doctor appointments. Finding the Best Home Care near Burlingame at Hospital Discharge Many families do not confront the need for home care services until they face hospital discharge. In many cases, the loved one may not have realized a need for home care until he or she entered the hospital, perhaps after a fall or perhaps after an illness such as pneumonia. At that point, the family begins to realize that home care may be a valuable option after discharge. Area hospitals, unfortunately, do not do an excellent job at educating the patient as to their options for in-home services. Patients may only be dimly aware that there are options that exist between so-called independent living, nursing homes, aging in place, etc., and that working with a recognized local home care agency can make life easier for the patient and his or her family upon discharge. By providing localized information on Burlingame home care, NuevaCare is bridging the information gap for area families. About NuevaCare A premier technology based home care company based in San Mateo and servicing the San Francisco Bay Area, NuevaCare delivers responsive, quality, and affordable in-home care to those who need care due to old age or recovering from surgery or illness. NuevaCare services clients in diverse Bay Area cities from Burlingame to Santa Clara, San Mateo to Palo Alto, Foster City to Hillsborough and everywhere in between. NuevaCare provides hourly, live-in, overnight, and 24/7 care. Recognized as one of the best home care agencies in the Bay Area, NuevaCare can be found at http://nuevacare.com/. NuevaCare is licensed by California Department of Social Services, Home Care Services Bureau, license #: 414700022. Dr. Song 3D Urology and Prostate Clinic Dr. Xinping Song Photo was on Times Square Billboard and his story run in western Media sites Dr. Xinping Song, a urology specialist from China, is not only changing the paradigms in prostate cancer treatment research, but he also recently became a medias baby for his photo appearing on a digital billboard in the heart of NYC. Dr. Xinping Song got his own share of public and media attention when he was featured on a digital billboard. The photo instantly caught the attention of top news websites and broadcast media channels, with hundred others following the suit of the top players in the Western media world shortly afterward. The International Business Times, one of the largest and most authoritative online new sources, claimed that Dr. Songs 3D prostate target treatment is fast emerging as an alternative treatment procedure. Daily Herald, Industry Week, Buffalo News and a host of other online news portals followed the suit and went on to describe the finer details of the new prostate cancer treatment procedure, which is by nature quite similar to the Chinese acupuncture. Though Dr. Song and his research associates have clearly mentioned that the treatment procedure may not be effective in later stages of prostate cancer, news portals such as Travel Weekly have covered the treatment procedure in detail. Getting featured at the crossroads of the world is something which spread Dr. Xinping Songs name far and wide. Ordinary Americans, who rarely get a chance to hear from Chinese medical researchers like Dr. Song, have expressed great interest in the treatment. We hope that the treatment procedure invented by our 3D Urology and Prostate Clinics will prove beneficial for millions of lives, said Dr. Songs media spokesperson. About the Comapany Dr. Xinping Song is a reputable prostate cancer treatment specialist and a renowned researcher in this field. To know more about him, visit: https://www.prostatecancer.vip/ Media Contact Company Name: 3d Urology and Prostate Clinic Contact Person: Alisa Wang Email: prostatecure3d(at)gmail.com Phone: +86-186-73216429 FDAnews ICH E6 GCP Revisions: The New Standard **An FDAnews Webinar** May 9, 2017 1:30 p.m. 3:00 p.m. ET http://www.fdanews.com/iche6 For clinical trial operators, the rules are about to become a lot more complicated. A lot costlier too. The revision known as ICH E6 (R2) GCP will impose new requirements to use advanced technology, force changes in trial design, conduct, oversight, recording and reporting and all the while, continue insisting on highest standards of human protection and data integrity. And thats not all. Standards regarding electronic records and essential documents to boost trial quality also are being updated. Sign up now for a special event from FDAnews, a webinar with a pro to translate technicalese into plain English and guide manufacturers toward full compliance. Dr. Susan Leister, Director-QA at Technical Resources International, is a recognized authority on achieving and maintaining quality in clinical trials. She is ASQ-certified as a CQA and a CSSBB, and served as a judge in the 2013 ASQ International Team Excellence Awards. At the end of 90 fast-paced minutes, attendees will have mastered: Major changes set forth under ICH E6 (R2) GCP Potential challenges to compliance Impact of compliance changes How to implement the changes most efficiently and with least disruption Unification of multiple countries including EU member nations, Japan, Canada and Switzerland for approval And much more! Meet the Presenter: Dr. Susan Leister, Director of Quality Assurance, Technical Resources International Dr. Leister has over 20 years of industry experience. In addition she has been a faculty member of the University of Phoenix Undergraduate and Graduate School of Business for over eight years. She holds certifications from ASQ as a CQA and a CSSBB. She serves as the Section Chair for ASQ Section 509 and served for several years as a Maryland Performance Excellence Award Examiner. Who Will Benefit: Medical Affairs Officers Director of Clinical Operations Regulatory Affairs Professionals Director of Publications Director of Clinical Trial Regulatory Management Clinical Trial Information Disclosure Directors Global Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance Officers Compliance Staff Clinical Quality Auditors Quality Assurance Personnel Webinar Details: ICH E6 GCP Revisions: The New Standard **An FDAnews Webinar** May 9, 2017 1:30 p.m. 3:00 p.m. ET http://www.fdanews.com/iche6 Tuition: $287 per site Easy Ways to Register: Online: http://www.fdanews.com/iche6 By phone: 888-838-5578 or 703-538-7600 About FDAnews: FDAnews is the premier provider of domestic and international regulatory, legislative, and business news and information for executives in industries regulated by the US FDA and the European Medicines Agency. Pharmaceutical and medical device professionals rely on FDAnews' print and electronic newsletters, books and conferences to stay in compliance with international standards and the FDA's complex and ever-changing regulations. Partnering with Paulsen Productions gives potential business owners the opportunity to truly explore all aspects of what doing business in Guam would mean for their company. Capital Edge Consulting is pleased to announce the formation of an exclusive arrangement with Paulsen Productions, Inc. to assist contractors and businesses of all sizes with business discovery and development initiatives on Guam in support of the significant military buildup effort currently underway and planned for the next several years. The Department of Defense has committed to relocating approximately 5,000 Marines from Japan to Guam and is in the process of significantly expanding the infrastructure on Guam to accommodate these relocated Marines, families, and dependents. The DoD released $309 million in early December to fund initial projects to build a Marine Corps base in Guam. Infrastructure to support the transition will provide a great opportunity for local contractors and to Guams economic development. Total funds related to the buildup are currently capped at $8.7 billion and the project is slated to last several years. Capital Edge Consulting is pleased to support this business development initiative, said Craig Stetson, Managing Director for Capital Edge, Partnering with Paulsen Productions gives potential business owners the opportunity to truly explore all aspects of what doing business in Guam would mean for their company. Capital Edge Consultings role will be to break down and provide an understanding of the associated regulatory and accounting compliance obligations and risks associated with performance under U.S. government contracts. Gerald Paulsen, President/CEO of Paulsen Productions said, Paulsen Productions is excited about this dynamic unique partnership. Companies of all sizes will be able to take advantage of this unique business opportunity and the extensive resources available between Capital Edge and Paulsen Productions. This is an unprecedented partnering of companies with the expertise to assist businesses with opportunities in Guam, the Marianas, federal contracting, and opportunities worldwide. Paulsen Productions, Inc. has been the sole provider of business exploration and development trips from the mainland U.S. to Guam since 2009. Paulsen Productions will facilitate access to new markets, senior local business, military leaders, decision makers, and to potentially significant revenue opportunities. Capital Edge and Paulsen Productions are collaborating on meetings and planning the next GovCon in Guam 2-day Training Seminar for September 13-14, 2017. About Paulsen Productions - Guam Business Discovery Paulsen Productions Guam Business Discovery brings over 20 years of international business and consulting to its clientele through global business partnerships. The diversity of partnerships and contacts enables them to provide unprecedented access to new business opportunities in Guam and the Marianas. This uniqueness is just what organizations ranging in size from small to Fortune 100 supporting various industries, needs. The program supports organizations to not only understand the culture of the business space in the Pacific, but to be able to connect with senior leadership in the areas of federal contracting, local government contracting, and private sector. To learn more about Paulsen Productions- Guam Business Discovery contact them at info(at)paulsenproductionsinc(dot)com About Capital Edge Consulting Capital Edge Consulting combines their unique backgrounds and experience in consulting, public accounting, industry, and DCAA to provide clients with unmatched government contracting expertise. This breadth of specialized experience enables us to provide the exact services and level of expertise federal government contractors need to succeed. Capital Edge Consulting provides custom-tailored consulting solutions to government contractors ranging in size from startup to Fortune 100 companies, in industries such as manufacturing, construction, transportation, nuclear energy, professional services, biotech/pharmaceuticals, defense, and software. To learn more about Capital Edge Consulting, visit http://www.CapitalEdgeConsulting.com Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East Cookies What are cookies ? How do we use cookies? 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You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.Most browsers allow you to:If you chose to delete cookies, you should be aware that any preferences will be lost. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites (including ours) will not work properly and webcasts will not work at all. For these reasons, we do not recommend turning cookies off when using our webcasting services. This week, The Outsiders turns 50; LeUyen Pham visits the Girl Scouts; Kirsten Hall and Matthew Forsythe welcome their new picture book; Star Wars authors team up at the Los Angeles Festival of Books; Margaret Peterson Haddix has a sweet school visit; and food-themed Forever stamps feature the work of John Parra. Still Golden A spring tempest didnt dissuade guests from attending a 50th anniversary party for The Outsiders held at the Arlo Hotel in lower Manhattan on April 25, where author S.E. Hinton was the evenings honored guest. Attendees also celebrated the release of the 50th anniversary edition of the YA classic. Here, Hinton is flanked by local booksellers (from l.) Cristin Stickles (McNally Jackson), Mary Brown (Books, Bytes & Beyond), Peter Glassman (Books of Wonder), and Trish Bernabeo (Books, Bytes & Beyond). Calling All Girl Scout Princesses Illustrator LeUyen Pham visited a Girl Scout camp on April 20aka Princess in Black Day. Phams visit was thanks to a partnership between Candlewick Press and Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. Pham gave drawing presentations, which included her depiction of Princess Magnolia as a Girl Scout, and led the group in activities and craft projects. She also personalized books for the campers by portraying each as a princess. A Luminous Launch Author Kirsten Hall and illustrator Matthew Forsythe shared their new picture book, The Gold Leaf (Enchanted Lion) at McNally Jackson on April 22. The Gold Leaf also blew uptown to Books of Wonder, where the Enchanted Lion team had installed a window display the day before in honor of the books release. Authors Go Rogue Scholastic authors Jarrett J. Krosoczka (center l.), Ben Blacker (center r.), Ben Acker, and Cecil Castellucci attended the Los Angeles Festival of Books held April 2223 on the University of Southern California Campus. The authors participated in the Teens Go Rogue panel, about writing and illustrating books that take place in the Star Wars universe. With Sugar on Top During her two-week tour for In Over Their Heads, Margaret Peterson Haddix visited Becker Elementary School in Austin, Tex., on April 19. Here, the author shows off themed cupcakes that were supplied by Sugar Mamas Bakeshop in Austin, where one of the owners is a Becker parent. A Stamp of Approval The United Postal Service has issued a set of Delicioso! Forever Stamps, which celebrate Latino cuisine and are illustrated by John Parra (Green Is a Chile Pepper: A Book of Colors, by Roseanne Greenfield Thong). The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque held a dedication ceremony for the stamps on April 20, and welcomed Parraseen here with the stamp images. The number of bookstores participating in this year's Authors for Indies Day, taking place on Saturday, April 30, has dropped to 87, from 100 last year. In 2015, when the event launched, 120 stores participated. Authors for Indies Day (AFI), founded in Vancouver by writer Janie Chang, puts authors to work, for a day, as booksellers. The event is similar to Independent Bookstore Day in the U.S. (which is also taking place on Saturday), in so far as it is intended to promote the role of independent bookstores in the community. Chang, who continues to administer AFI, attributes stores dropping out of the event to closings. "I know of at least three stores that have closed this year," she told PW. She also said there are challenges getting authors to bookstores in more rural ares. "What we have seen is that people try it and see if it works for them," Chang continued. "The stores that are repeat participants are on the ball, recruit their authors early and get their marketing plans out there." This year AFI recruited Jennifer Robson as the event's ambassador. Robson, whose novel Goodnight From London (HarperCollins) is currently the number one Canadian fiction title on the Globe and Mail bestseller list, will be one of more than a dozen authors participating in the AFI Road Show, a publisher-sponsored program that will provide rides to "work" for authors stationed at bookstores in small towns outside of Toronto. Penguin Random House Canada is also sponsoring the AFI Bingo Game, which allows readers to enter a drawing for $1,000 worth of books. Simon & Schuster is running a contest for for 20 limited-edition AFI prints by children's book illustrator Kevin Sylvester. While numerous publishers and media companies are supporting AFI through sponsorshipsincluding ECW Press, BookNet Canada, the British Columbia Booksellers Association, and, unexpectedly, Cactus Rain Publishing (which is based in Arizona)it remains "a struggle to run each year," according to Chang. One of the main hurdles, Chang said, is the fact that "Canada has no single association or organization responsible for bookselling across the country." Still, she added, "it's gratifying when I hear about new stores joining in." Chang pointed to Queen Books in Toronto and the Gold Rush Bookstore in Rossland, British Colombia, as two recently-opened stores that are taking part. Barnes & Noble has named Demos Parneros its new CEO, replacing Len Riggio who has held that position on an interim basis since Ron Boire was dismissed last August, after less than one year on the job. Parneros joined B&N last November when he was named chief operating officer. Riggio praised Parneros in a March conference call with analysts discussing third quarter results. While saying he was enjoying his time as CEO, Riggio added that he thought Parneros was doing a great and should be considered a top candidate to be the new CEO. In a prepared statement, Riggio said: It has become abundantly clear over the last five months that Demos is a perfect fit for our company and an outstanding choice for Chief Executive Officer. I believe Demos is fully prepared to help foster a new era of growth for Barnes & Noble. While stepping down as CEO, Riggio will remain B&N chairman. Parneros is a 30-year retail veteran. He was president of North American stores and online for Staples before arriving at B&N. While at Staples, Parneros was involved in all aspects of the chains operations, including human resources, merchandising, e-commerce, marketing and real estate. B&N had a disappointing fiscal third quarter which ended January 28, 2017. Sales in the period fell 8.0% from the third quarter of fiscal 2016, and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) fell to $157.8 million, from $169 million in the same period last year. The weaker than expected results led the company to scale back projections for EBITDA for 2017 to the $180 million$190 million range, and increase the projected decline in comparable store sales from 6% to 7%. The disappointing third quarter results prompted Riggio to acknowledge that the company has not yet found a "magic bullet" to stop the sales slide. Riggio said, at the time, that B&N has had success with some new lines like educational games and is experimenting with different in-store boutiques. In an interview with PW, Parneros said there is "no doubt" that reversing recent sales trends is his top priority. The biggest problem for B&N, and many other retailers, is that customer traffic has been falling, Parneros said. The B&N group will focus on ways to bring people back to stores, he said. Parneros views B&N's selection of educational toys and games and gifts as could complementary products that can be used to help bring more people into B&N outlets. Parneros views the three new concepts stores as excellent learning platforms that the retailer can use to see what areas maybe able to be used in other stores. Two additional concept stores are due to be opened soon. Parneros said he will continue B&N's omnichannel approach to bookselling, but suggested that could undergo some changes. "Differrent retailers have different definitions of what omnichannel means," he said. But B&N will remain committed to offering its customers e-books through the Nook. "Selling e-books Is an important part of the end-to-end value proposition that we offer customers," he said. Parneros acknowledged that some existing stores have aged and maybe too large for today's bookselling environment. With about 100 leases per year coming up for renewal over the next few years, that gives B&N choices on what it wants to do with its brick-and-mortar portfolio, he said. Every year on April 23, the residents of Barcelona celebrate Dia Sant Jordi (Saint George Day) by giving each other books and roses. The swapping began in 1926, when a Barcelona writer and editor realized that the dates of Shakespeare's and Cervantes' deaths coincided. The day is celebrated around the globe as World Book Day. In Barcelona however, where Saint George is the city's patron saint, the event is especially important for booksellers who cite it as their biggest sales day of the year. This year, the literary and film agency Pontas took the occasion to mark its own 25th anniversary. Anna Soler-Pont founded the agency in 1992. At the time she was a freelance copywriter and proofreader, with a degree in Arabic languages. After meeting a group of female authors who asked for representation for their novels in Europe, she eventually agreed to represent the women. For the first four years, Pontas represented only women writers working in Africa or the Middle East. Though the agency has since expanded to represent men, it remains important to Soler-Pont that the firm handle more female authors than male. (Pontas also makes a point to hire more women.) Today, Pontas represents film and literary rights for 76 authors from five continents. Pontas authors have published 1,540 books in the past 25 years. Despite the numbers, Soler-Pont insists that the firm cannot take on more than 100 clients, lest it compromise the integrity of its work. For Pontas anniversary, Soler-Pont flew many of the agencys authors to Barcelona, some coming from as far afield as Singapore and Jakarta. Among the agency's writers in attendance were JJ Bola, Milena Busquets, Eka Kurniawan, Susana Fortes and Dolores Redondo. We decided to celebrate only with the authors because they are the core of this project, Soler-Pont explained in a short speech during a celebratory dinner. This commitment is something the authors value. Its like having a team look after you, not just one agent, said Winnie M Li, who was approached aggressively by Pontas after she was a runner-up for the CWA Debut Dagger 2015 for her debut novel, Dark Chapter (forthcoming in the US from Polis Books, September). This ethos is something Soler-Pont confirmed. Our aim is to give voice through fiction to as many different points of view as possible, she said. We want to get across the message that the whole world is interested in the same subjects, but what changes is the point of view. Given this outlook, it was fitting that Barcelona was also hosting with the first UNESCO Cities of Literature Meeting to be hosted by Barcelona. Barcelona was bestowed with the title of UNESCO City of Literature in December 2015, and this year hosted 15 fellow literary cities for a weekend of meetings discussing reading, libraries, publishing, bookselling, and lead by the head of the Barcelona Ciutat de la Literatura de la Unesco, Marina Espasa. Coordinator of the UNESCO Cities of Literature network, Poland's Justyna Jochym, was particularly blown away by Sant Jordi, commenting: It is very exciting to see the whole city, readers, booksellers, publishers, involved, showing their love for the book. Blythe, CA (92225) Today Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low 62F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low 62F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%. coldstream said: I'm sure that idiot Justin, couldn't care less about shipping unprocessed wood to foreign mills to whoever will take it.. consolidating Canada's colonial status as an exporter of raw material. He's a total weakling and Trump roasting him like a marshmallow. Click to expand... Oh right! We do eighty billion in trade with China and do eight hundred billion with the Yankees. And Our idiot Boy Justin wants to insult trump and Yankees! Good call for the LIE-beral knucklehead? Consider:What a disgusting spectacle-Our idiot Boy Justin sacrificing dairy farmers and loggers for the chance to thumb his nose at the Yankees HE HATES!Our idiot Boy claims to stand with our allies and friends-but he removed the Cdn fighters bombing Isis at his first opportunity. Oh sure-he sent in a few Cdn military ON FOOT to train Kurds and others-just what the area needs-MORE combat trained troops to keep the military pot bubbling in a long drawn out battle of guys with rifles wearing each other down shot by shot-oh sure Our idiot Boy could have helped with air strikes to speed things up and limit the number of widows and orphans but that would have made our NATO allies happy so its NO GO!Our idiot Boy has sent several Cdn ships to the Black Sea to impress Putin-except that the first ship sent-the flagship of the Cdn Atlantic fleet broke down twice and caught fire due to engine failures and is now in harbour and will never move again-just too old! Navy repairmen reduced to scrounging online for old engine parts! Cdn naval presence is simply not credible with such ancient equipment but Our idiot Boy is more interested in covering his backside than helping allies! And of course ordinary Cdns do not know what rusty old relicts are defending us!Our idiot Boy also sent some Cdns with sniper rifles to the Baltic States-I guess somebody showed him were the states were on a map? As if sniper rifles will scare the heavily armoured Russian Bear? If real fighting ever starts over there, Cdns will have to run and hide behind the nearest Yankee armoured unit-and hope that Yankees will also supply artillery support because Cdns have NONE of that!Our idiot Boy has known for several years that the new ships being built for Cdn navy are years behind completion date- with LIE-berals even DELAYING the completion dates further and Our idiot Boy is more interested in punishing those who leaked this information than he is in getting the badly needed ships completed. Cdn navy is now so rusted out that a pack of Iranian missile boats have greater sea worthiness and firepower than Cdn navy! And the Chicago Police Force has more front line officers than Cdn army!When Yankee Trump was elected he called out NATO allies who were NOT pulling their weight and not putting up the minimum numbers of troops and equipment-and that singles out Canada! Military light weight Obama was willing to ignore Canada because Harper contributed honestly to the Afghan mission that LIE-beral Chretien signed us up for-without bothering to properly equip Cnd soldiers he sent there-it was left to Harper to make Cdn force effective! And Harper was arranging to buy new fighters and had launched the navy ship replacement program-we were trying to catch up and to honour commitments -but Our idiot Boy has eroded all those efforts right in front of not so tolerant Trump!Trump is determined to resurrect the fortress North America idea to keep Yankees safe from mostly Muslim terror. And the first thing Our idiot Boy did was throw open the borders to 37,000 Syrians with NO real security checks-all we know is that the new Muslim Cdns did not make trouble in the refugee camps-run by Red Crescent aid groups supervised by terror group HAMAS! And Our idiot Boy has just RE-STARTED aid funding for Muslim groups fronting for Hamas! Yankees and others are a little cynical about LIE-beral security assurances!And Trump has tightened Yankee immigration laws and thousands of people not allowed in U.S. are now being welcomed with open arms by security un-conscious idiot Boy Justin- another slap at Trump and Yankee security! And if one of these clowns sneaks back across the border to damage Yankees then Our idiot Boy will call Yankees rude names if they close the border to Cdns!Our idiot Boy is so oblivious of Yankee security concerns that he has RESTORED Cdn citizenship to the convicted terrorist leader of the Toronto 18-and has made it clear that LIE-berals see nothing wrong with terrorists living amongst us-just so long as they vote LIE-beral-and encourage their friends to do the same!And Our idiot Boy has set his budget for this year and it has not escaped notice of Yankees that Cdn defense spending-which was too low for NATO anyway-is now at a NEW LIE-beral record low! Canada has NEVER had such a limited military before -in spite of North Korea and Syria and ISIS, China, Russians and assorted Muslim groups all growing more aggressive-while Our idiot Boy follows his fathers dream of unilaterally disarming Canada and to hell with our former allies and the dangerous world and Muslim terror!Two generations of Trudope family have sneered at Yankees and at Brits and have undermined every aspect of NATO Alliance-and with Muslim terror sweeping the world and frightened Yankees now led by a guy who is serious about making America safe and great- IT IS NOW TRUDEAU wants to spit in Yankee eyes-and is acting bewildered as to why Trump has suddenly attacked our trade! Trump has LINKED trade and national security!And how is it that the two biggest recent Cdn Muslim terror attacks-the planned derailing of a Via train over Highland Creek bridge and the goof who blew himself up in a taxi west of Toronto were BOTH EXPOSED to Cdn cops by tips from FBI AGENTS? Trump figures that if Yankees are going to provide all our security, the least we can do is buy Yankee milk and pay a little Yankee tax on our lumber!Our idiot Boy asserts he will stand up for Canada and this is LIE-beral slang meaning I dont care what it costs because the chance to insult Yankees in this time of trouble is too good for Trudope clan to miss And its just too bad that farmers and loggers-and who knows who else- before Trudope gets kicked off the political stage- will be sacrificed to LIE-berals seeking to destroy what Pierre Trudope called Cdn Imperialism! But that is a LIE-beral for you-if they are not being childish and hypocritical then they are not living up to their true potential! RCMP reviewing video of alleged beating that killed Manitoba First Nation teenTHE CANADIAN PRESSFirst posted: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 04:44 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 04:51 PM EDTSAGKEENG FIRST NATION, Man. The killing of a 19-year-old high school student and a graphic video believed to be linked to the death has shocked a small Manitoba First Nation that has seen more than its share of tragedy.RCMP said Wednesday they were reviewing the video circulating on social media to determine whether it was indeed connected to the death on the Sagkeeng reserve, 120 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.They also said they had arrested two girls, 16 and 17 years old, on charges of second-degree murder.RCMP would not identify the victim, but community members said she was Serena McKay. The two accused cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.All three were students at the Sagkeeng Anicinabe High School, said principal Claude Guimond.Were not a very big school. We only have about 220 students here ... and all three of the students in the video, I know them personally and it was hard to take, Guimond said.Tuesday we had a healing ceremony for our students and staff ... and one of the recurring things that came out was how social media Facebook, you know made things even worse by people reposting the video.The video shows a young woman lying bloodied on the ground and barely conscious as she is repeatedly kicked and punched in the head. It appears to have been taken on a cellphone. Female and male voices can be heard.McKay is the woman being attacked in the video, Guimond said.RCMP would only say the victims body was found Sunday night, near a home in Sagkeeng, about two hours after she was reported missing to the detachment in the neighbouring town of Powerview.Counsellors were brought in this week to help students and staff at the school deal with the death. A vigil was planned for the community on Thursday evening.Sagkeeng, a community of some 3,000 residents, was also the home of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, whose body was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg in 2014. She had left Sagkeeng just two months earlier. Her father, Eugene Fontaine, was beaten to death on the reserve three years earlier.The small community has seen several other cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, including 17-year-old Fonessa Bruyere, who was killed in Winnipeg in 2007.Guimond said gang activity and drug use have encroached on the community from the city.Over the last 10 years, what Ive noticed is that more and more of the gang influence is filtering on to the reserve from Winnipeg, Guimond said.With gang activity comes drug trafficking and stuff like that, and thats whats killing our youth here.Sagkeeng Chief Derrick Henderson said everyone is trying to come to terms with the latest death.Its been tragic and its pretty sombre right now. By Steve Lambert in WinnipegSerena McKay. (Facebook) What: "The Tin Woman." When: 7:30 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday. Where: The Black Box Theatre, 1623 5th Ave., Moline. Tickets: $16, available at theblackboxtheatre.com. It's hard to overstate the importance of the Black Box Theatre's latest production, "The Tin Woman." A painful, shattering and ultimately heart-warming tale of loss and gain, the powerful play illustrates the best of what theater can do embody a vital message through riveting, sympathetic performances. That message is the urgent need for organ donation, and (based on a true story), "The Tin Woman" is the story of Joy, a heart recipient who's unsure whether she deserves this extraordinary gift, as well as the donor's parents Alice and Hank, as they struggle to accept their 36-year-old son Jacks accidental death. Directed with compassion and finesse by Aaron Lord, the uniformly outstanding cast features Brant Peitersen as Hank, Nancy Teerlinck as Alice, Leslie Munson as Joy, Joanna Mills as Sammy, Andy Sederquist as Jack and Jo Vasquez as Nurse/Darla. Ms. Munson imbues the relatively downbeat, bewildered Joy with wry, relaxed snark. Her witty banter with the perkily optimistic Ms. Vasquez as her friend, and flashbacks with the likable Mr. Sederquist as her potential love interest provides much needed, natural humor to lighten this heavy, intense drama. Both Ms. Vasquez, as Darla, and Ms. Mills as Jack's dreamy, flower-child of a sister show off an irresistible, upbeat chirpiness. You immediately want to be their friends. You want to comfort and guide Joy Ms. Munson belies her character's name, but she wants to connect with her donor's family (not knowing that as she literally holds his heart, Joy and Jack had connected over coffee and a camera). Mr. Peitersen and Ms. Teerlinck provide much of the heated theatrical fireworks, as they mourn, bicker and have sharply differing views on whether or not to welcome Joy into their lives (in more ways than one). Hank is perpetually grumpy, mean, and tight-lipped, and Mr. Peitersen's large, expressive eyes are intimidating even without words. While lost in agony, Ms. Teerlinck is strong and defiant, standing up to him. A dinner scene where the family meets Joy is inevitably awkward, and the play hurtles toward a climactic, emotional flashback where Mr. Peitersen and Mr. Sederquist take off the verbal gloves, and argue about Jack's future. A slammed door and "Go to hell" yell was the last interaction (before Jack's car crash), and we feel how that's informed Hank's grief and regret. A deeply touching conclusion makes "A Tin Woman" a Kleenex-worthy tearjerker. My own quibbles (story-wise) are that we never learn why Joy needed a new heart in the first place, and the omnipresent and mostly mute Jack (as a "ghost") gets kind of grating and superfluous after a while. The production is working with the Illinois Donor Network, providing information to audience members about organ donation. In Illinois alone, there are over 5,000 people waiting for transplants (including 4,169 for kidney and 249 for heart), as of mid-April. For more information, visit giftofhope.org. Like organ donation, this vivid, impressive Black Box show is a true gift. 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! In his office at Salem Lutheran Church, the Rev. Chip Borgstadt has a ceramic duck. His mom bought him the bird after hearing a joke Borgstadt, an interim minister, usually tells a new congregation. The joke goes something like this: Three women died and were met by St. Peter at heavens pearly gates. Peter ushers them inside, but warns them not to step on any of the white ducks. Heaven is filled with white ducks and soon one woman steps on one. The next thing she knows, the woman is handcuffed to a shriveled old man for eternity. Six months later, the second woman steps on a duck and is handcuffed to another old man. The third woman doesnt move for six months. Then suddenly, St. Peter handcuffs a tanned, muscular man to the woman. I didnt step on a white duck, the woman says. The tanned man quickly speaks: I dont know about you lady, but I did. Borgstadt smiles as he turns the duck joke into an analogy. Im going to step on some white ducks while Im here, he will tell a congregation. But dont worry, youre not chained to me for eternity. In December 2016, the churchs longtime pastor, the Rev. Mike Thomas, retired after many years of ministry here. Borgstadt became the transitional minister at the Lutheran church in Fremont on Jan. 1. Common in many denominations, interim ministers help parishioners as they grieve the loss of their previous pastors. And many parishioners do experience grieving, because pastors are there at some of the most important times of life births, illnesses, deaths and accidents. Pastors become confidants and when they leave a congregation, the people feel a loss, he said. An interim pastor helps people work through these times of transition then helps them evaluate where they are and how they can best use the resources God has given them to meet community needs. My role is to help the congregation look at their history, review the leadership functions of the congregation, and help define and redefine their sense of purpose and mission, he said. Borgstadt said he helps parishioners dream about the future and explore their possibilities. A transitional ministry lasts about two years. During that time, Borgstadt enjoys the opportunity to meet new people and see how the spirit works through all of us. Borgstadt grew up in Davenport, Iowa, and planned to go into ministry, but instead earned a bachelors degree in teaching from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1978. He earned a masters degree in educational psychology in 1980 and taught kindergarten in Lincoln for 2 1/2 years. I just love kids of all ages, he said. Borgstadt taught special education at Beveridge Middle School in Omaha for two years and taught protestant religion in the high school at Boys Town. He was youth director at St. Timothys Lutheran Church in Omaha for four years before serving in youth and family ministry on the Nebraska bishops staff of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Omaha. He went to seminary while working in a congregation and was ordained at Alma Lutheran Church in Mead in 2005. Borgstadt also taught youth and family ministry at Midland University from 1999 to 2007. Since then, hes been involved in interim ministries and has served in Lincoln, Valley and Gretna. Borgstadt and his wife, Rita, have been married for 37 years. Rita Borgstadt is an administrator and instructor for the Heartland Equine Therapeutic Riding Academy (HETRA) in Gretna. The Borgstadts have two adult children, Katy and Jonathan, and two grandchildren. The pastor is enjoying his time at the Fremont church. One of the most exciting parts, he said, has been watching young people at Salem step out into leadership roles. A confirmation student, Victoria Godfrey, helped the altar guild strip the altar as part of the Maundy Thursday service in preparation for Good Friday. A high school student, Patrick Godfrey, was an assisting minister during an Easter service, leading a prayer and reciting liturgy. Borgstadts future plans include retiring someday. In the meantime, hes seeing the Salem congregation through to the point where members are ready to call the next pastor. He appreciates the congregation and said this about its members: The people have a deep care for one another and theyre always watching for ways to contribute to the community to make Fremont a better place to live. Under the agreements signed in Paris, the French Treasury will provide the state of Senegal with CFA 63.18bn, with the French Development Agency (AFD) contributing CFA 66.5bn. The 57km standard-gauge line from the city centre to the new Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) near Ndiass will largely follow the western section of the Dakar - Diourbel metre-gauge line. Eiffage, France, is leading the consortium carrying out the first phase of civil works for the project under a 373.5m contract awarded by the Senegalese government in 2015. The initial 36km section of the railway between Dakar and Diamniadio will take 26 months to complete. French National Railways (SNCF) and Paris Transport Authority (RATP) will provide support with operations and maintenance under an agreement signed last December. Alstom is supplying a fleet of 15 Coradia Polyvalent bi-mode (diesel and electric) trains for the new line. For detailed data on rail projects in Africa, subscribe to IRJ Pro. The option comes from an initial order for 43 trains, which was placed last year. The trains will be assembled at Bombardier's Henningsdorf plant, with the company's Siegen facility supplying bogies. The additional trains are being ordered to meet the public transport authoritys requirements for extra capacity on the 480km Neckar Network, which includes three routes and 114 stations. All 48 trains will be maintained at a depot in Pforzheim, which will employ around 50 staff. The maintenance contract will continue until at least 2032, when the operating contract is due to expire. For detailed data on rolling stock orders around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro. 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 Russian top anti-corruption ex-official sentenced to 22 years in prison MOSCOW, April 27 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova) The Moscow City Court on Thursday sentenced ex-head of the Interior Ministry's Economic Security and Anti-Corruption Department, Lieutenant General Denis Sugrobov, to 22 years in high-security prison for organizing a criminal group, abuse of office and provocation of bribery, RAPSI reports from the courtroom. Other Interior Ministrys officers involved in the case, Salavat Mullayarov, Ivan Kosourov, Vitaly Cherednichenko, Yevgeny Shermanov, Sergey Borisovsky, Sergey Ponomarev and Andrey Nazarov, received prison terms ranging from 17 to 20 years. One more defendant, businessman Igor Skakunov, was sentenced to 4 years in high-security prison. Sugrobovs deputy Boris Kolesnikov, who had committed suicide in 2014, was also found guilty. The case against Kolesnikov was closed because of his death. All convicted officers were stripped of their ranks by court order. Trial was held behind closed doors because the case is classified as secret. Earlier, a prosecutor demanded a 22-year prison for Sugrobov and prison terms ranging from 17 to 21 years for other Interior Ministrys officers charged in the case. The court was also asked to sentence businessman Skakunov to 5 years in jail. According to investigators, Sugrobov and Kolesnikov tried to provoke a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer by offering him $10,000 a month for his protection. Sugrobov has been charged with organizing a criminal group, abuse of power and bribery. Kolesnikov was arrested in February 2014. In June, he jumped out of a window during questioning at the Investigative Committee. Later the Basmanny District Court said no evidence was found of assisted suicide. In total, 10 people became defendants in this case with case materials making about 400 volumes. Thirty persons were recognized as aggrieved parties, thirteen of whom filed suits seeking to recover in total 218 million rubles (about $3.5 million) from the defendants. Later, victims withdrew their claims. Sugrobov, 41, is one of the youngest police generals. He obtained the rank of Lieutenant General at the age of 36. Russian Supreme Court proposes supervision of released child molesters MOSCOW, April 27 (RAPSI) Russias Supreme Court has proposed to set up administrative supervision over child molesters after their release from prison, a draft decree of the courts plenum reads on Thursday. According to the document, individuals facing release or already freed from prison will be put under supervision if they have an unexpunged or unspent conviction for committing a crime against minors sexual immunity and sexual freedom. Administrative oversight would also apply to those, who suffer from disorder of sexual preference (pedophilia), which does not rule out sanity. Supervision would be established for individual treatment and protection of state and public interests. A court would therefore impose temporary restrictions of convicts rights and freedom as well as entrust with certain responsibilities. Law enforcement officers would be authorized to exercise such supervision. According to the Supreme Court, the proposed measure is aimed to prevent repetition of crime by people, who have conviction for commitment of certain offences. Constitutional Courts Chairman proposes to consider criminal liability for legal entities MOSCOW, April 27 (RAPSI) Lack of criminal liability for legal entities in Russia causes problems in need of solutions, Chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin said during the first joint commission of investigative committees from Russia, Belarus and Armenia as cited by RIA Novosti news agency. Zorkin noted that disclosure of violations in economics committed by legal entities without proper investigative and search procedures is very inefficient. He added that in Russia such activities are not possible in the frame of the administrative law as it is only carried out in criminal cases. According to the Constitutional Courts Chairman, this problem may be solved in two ways: either investigative procedures should be allowed to be carried out in administrative cases or criminal liability should be introduced for legal entities. He notes that this subject is up for discussions. In Russia liability of legal entities is written down in the Civil Code and the Code of Administrative Violations, but not in the Criminal Code. Sebastian Gorka is a big man. He has a powerful handshake, a deep voice, and a serious goatee. He's also deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, and known as the most influential Brit in the White House. He was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and grew up in Ealing. Yet he seems to identify more with America and Hungary than with Britain. When I ask him if he feels British, he says, As a good friend said to me, and I think this is a quote from someone else, possibly Hayek, You were always American, you were just born in the wrong country.' David Irwin still remembers that night 47 years ago. It was dusk on the Thanh River near Ha Tien when the Viet Cong began firing on Irwins patrol boat and another nearby. The patrol came under heavy fire from three enemy positions on the rivers west bank. Enemy forces hit the other boat, killing one man and seriously injuring the captain. A Bronze Star citation told how Irwin, who was captain of the lead boat, expertly maneuvered that vessel into position and directed his crews fire at the enemy. He called in the Sea Wolf helicopters and continued to maneuver the boat to keep the patrol officer in position to direct the airstrike. Once the helicopters got there, they finished the job, he said. Irwin estimates between 40 and 50 Viet Cong were on the bank and the fight lasted about 30 minutes on that night in March 1970. Decades later, Irwin sat across a dining room table from his wife, Gayle, recounting those long ago times. On Monday, the Fremont man will be among 650 Vietnam veterans from Nebraska making a daylong trip to Washington, D.C. Four charter planes will fly the largest group of Vietnam veterans from any state on whats called The Final Mission. The Patriotic Productions flight is made possible in part by a grant from the Fremont Area Community Foundation. Irwin, who was born in Table Rock, graduated from Grand Island High School in 1959 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He became a signal man on the USS Rowan, a destroyer, where he served four years. Irwin flashed light signals to other ships and still remembers the Morse code he used. He also remembers when the ship was involved in waiting for a space capsule to splash down in the ocean. Irwin would re-enlist and be stationed on the USS Shrike, a minesweeper. The ship was out to sea and the young signal man was in the radio room when tragic news came across the teletype. The ships captain read the message over the intercom. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Everybody on board was shocked, Irwin said. After eight years at sea, Irwin was due for shore duty. He went from water to the desert, serving as an investigator for the security department at El Centro, Calif., a naval air facility. There, he transferred prisoners and investigated thefts, accidents and plane crashes. He roped off an area before federal investigators reached the site where a Blue Angels flying team jet crashed and a pilot was killed. Irwin was 28 years old when he went to Vietnam in 1969. Before that, he had weapons, Vietnamese language and survival training. During a week of survival training, the men were put in the desert to fend for themselves. They were captured and sent to a makeshift prison for interrogation, which included a little bit of waterboarding. Besides learning to tell an enemy only his name, rank and serial number, Irwin would learn something else: I learned to try and not get captured, he said. Irwin had patrol boat training and later was flown with other men to Saigon. He then went to Ha Tien on the west coast of Vietnam near the Cambodian border. Viet Cong soldiers came down through Cambodia and Irwin and other servicemen patrolled manmade canals (You could throw a grenade from one bank to the other, they were so narrow, he said), and the Mekong Delta. Our job was to keep the enemy from sneaking from Cambodia into South Vietnam, he said. As part of River Division 532, Irwin and other men were involved in night ambush patrols. Ten boats went out at a time with about four or five men on a boat. Positioning all 10 boats next to the bank about 100 to 150 yards apart, theyd shut off the engines. They set out sensors and Claymore mines and used infrared scopes to look for movement. You couldnt let your guard down, Irwin said. You had to keep alert all the time, because if you saw any movement out there, you fired in that direction. One time they shot a water buffalo. Irwin and his men would have close calls, including that night in 1970 when the Viet Cong attacked from three positions. Irwin, by then a signalman first class, would be commended for his professionalism, courage under fire and devotion to duty. Was he scared during the attack? You dont really have time to get scared, because when youre in the heat of battle you just keep fighting and shooting back, and after its all over you say, Gee, things could have been worse, he said. Before that attack, there was another close call when a wake set off an enemy mine and the boat was blown up out of the water a bit. The mine didnt damage the sturdy vessel much, because it wasnt a direct hit. One day a week, the men had to check junks and sampans for weapons and to make sure those aboard had proper identification. People aboard the vessels were allowed to carry a certain amount of rice aboard. If the men found too much rice aboard a vessel, they knew it was being transported to the enemy and confiscated it. There were different skirmishes when the boat was fired on from the bank. The crew would fire grenade guns into the trees on both side of the banks. The enemy often used hit and run tactics. Irwin remained in Vietnam until October 1970. After a two-week leave, he was stationed on another destroyer, the USS Stribling on which he served four years. His second tour of shore duty was at Great Lakes, Ill., where he was a company commander and trained new recruits. He trained four companies in the three years he was there. Irwin spent the last 1 years of his naval service aboard the USS Wichita as a signal man. He retired 1979 and returned to Nebraska. He worked for the Boys Town police department as a communications supervisor in charge of dispatchers. Irwin later moved to Fremont. Irwin got a job as a custodian for Fremont Public Schools, where he worked for 14 years, retiring in 2005. He didnt get married while he was in the service. He didnt think that was fair to a wife, Gayle Irwin said. Irwin was 50 years old when his married his first wife, Paulette, in 1991. She died of cancer in 2004. He met Gayle in 2008. Her first husband, George, had died of cancer. The Irwins, who married in 2010, enjoy traveling. Weve got a great marriage, she said. Irwin is looking forward to the flight to Washington, D.C. to see the memorials and Arlington National Cemetery. I think there will be a special feeling among the veterans when they go to the Vietnam Memorial, because even if theyve seen it before, this time theyll be seeing it with fellow soldiers, Gayle said. So I think it will be very emotional for all of them. Jackson Ewing is the Director of Asian Sustainability at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in New York, where he leads projects on environmental cooperation, responsible resource development, and international climate change policy. This piece is part of a special RCW series on the U.S.-China geopolitical relationship. The views expressed here are the authors own. The days of cooperative climate change action in Washington and Beijing were short-lived. After decades of friction in the climate arena, the United States and China spent the last three years of former U.S. President Barack Obamas second term in office building a partnership that caught even close observers by surprise. In a March 2016 joint presidential statement, Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared climate change a pillar of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship and committed to ratifying the lauded Paris Agreement. The countries were by then drawing on more than two years of bilateral agreements on clean energy and emissions reduction targets, along with subnational agreements between cities, states, and provinces to bolster technical cooperation in areas ranging from carbon pricing to clean energy to sustainable urban infrastructure. This cooperation reversed a history of recriminations and posturing that long defined the Sino-American climate change relationship. China would often emphasize its continuing poverty challenges, development needs, and relative lack of historical culpability for the climate problem, while the United States trotted out the common refrain that holding negotiations is well and good, but ultimately pointless if China fails to reduce emissions in internationally verifiable ways. For years, this divide between Beijing and Washington stubbornly persisted. The Obama-Xi rapprochement was significant because it moved past these arguments and looked for opportunities in a nascent global climate regime based on voluntary commitments by all countries regardless of development levels. This played to the preferences of both China and the United States to chart their own paths without feeling overly constrained by international accords. It also dovetailed with Chinas growing determination to solve its domestic pollution crisis, and with a realization in both capitals that clean energy was an economic growth sector. The Trump presidency has ended this relatively brief period of national climate cooperation between the worlds two largest emitters. U.S. President Donald Trump has removed any mention of climate change from the executive branch agenda, and has moved to dismantle the U.S. Clean Power Plan (CPP), open up federal lands to fossil fuel exploration, reduce vehicle emissions standards, and broadly defund and de-emphasize environmental regulation and enforcement. Whether or not he attempts to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which is not a straightforward process, Trump is already disregarding the American commitments detailed in the pact. Rather than sending the United States and China back to their adversarial positions of the past, Trumps moves have taken climate change off the bilateral agenda completely. This eliminates a valuable mutual confidence-building measure and sets back global climate change efforts significantly. In this context, climate change hopefuls can take solace in three countervailing trends. China Carries On China has no intention of moving away from its climate goals just because a new administration has taken office in Washington. Addressing conventional pollution has become a core part of Beijings strategic calculations. The scale and scope of outcries against air pollution and environmental stress -- which by some measurements lead to 1.6 million deaths per year -- have prompted Chinese leaders to respond with stronger environmental regulations and enforcement along with transformative energy goals. It will launch later this year a national-level emissions trading scheme that will immediately become the largest system pricing greenhouse gas emissions in the world and create incentives for companies to lower their emissions profiles for years to come. Beyond pollution control, China is favoring higher-value tech and services sectors as it seeks to transition away from its economic base in heavy industry and material exports. It is weaning itself off the expensive fossil fuel imports that drove its industrialization, and it is rolling out solar, wind, and nuclear power on scales never before seen. This is leading to swift reductions in coal consumption, and making it a clean energy export powerhouse. Fears that China will use American backpedaling to justify shirking its new climate commitments are misplaced. The U.S. partnership has been only a peripheral force in Chinas drive to a cleaner energy future, and pales in comparison to its domestic goals. China finds more ambitious climate change policies palatable because reducing greenhouse gases aligns with its more proximate goals of cleaning up its domestic environment and evolving toward a new economic model. China will take decades to transition to energy and manufacturing systems that do not severely compromise its natural environment, but the direction is clear and the policies are already having an impact. Obstacles to the Trump Rollback President Trump has an uneven ability to reverse U.S. climate and energy policy. In some arenas he can abruptly undo his predecessors policies, while in others he faces substantial headwinds. One possibility confronting environmental advocates is that Trump will abandon the United Nations-led climate change negotiations altogether. The United States has been a party to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since the U.S. Senate ratified it in 1992. Given that the UNFCCC entered into existence in 1994 and its three-year withdrawal probation expired in 1997, Trump could legally withdraw the United States from the convention. However, since the agreement was ratified by the Senate and not through an executive agreement, withdrawal would be a complex process. Currently, it is unclear whether or not the executive branch requires congressional or senatorial approval for such a withdrawal, and what role, if any, the judicial branch would play in the process were a disagreement to arise. The Paris Agreement, conversely, was entered into by executive order and without Senate approval. U.S. negotiators worked to promote language in the agreement allowing them to claim that it was not a treaty and therefore not subject to congressional ratification. The wider negotiating community, in part with a potential about-face in the U.S. presidency in mind, stipulated that no country can withdraw from the Paris Agreement for three years after its signing and then only by providing one years notice. If President Trump chooses to officially abandon Americas Paris commitments, withdrawal could not be finalized until November 2020. Either in the interim or in lieu of these measures, President Trump hopes to roll back regulations designed to help the United States meet its international commitments. The Clean Power Plan is chief among these, and seeks to limit carbon emissions from power plants by requiring plants to cut their emissions by 32 percent by 2030. Estimates suggest that if fully implemented, the CPP would reduce American coal consumption by at least 26 percent by 2040. The CPP was already being challenged in court by a coalition of state governors who opposed the law prior to Trumps election. If the courts strike down the law, then President Trump may not have to act on it at all to be free of the CPP. Even if it survives the initial legal challenge, however, because the CPP was passed by executive order rather than legislation the Trump administration can overturn it with relative ease. The silver lining for environmental advocates is that even if the CPP is undone, the longstanding U.S. Clean Air Act (CAA) may provide the foundation to continue to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly found that the CAA gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate such emissions. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court determined that greenhouse gases fit within the CAAs definition of air pollution; a finding that has since been upheld. States and other stakeholders may call on the CAA -- through stipulations such as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards -- to challenge practices such as coal sector expansions that would lead to greenhouse gas emissions growth in the United States. Beyond regulation, business and market forces will ultimately prevent the United States from completely devolving into the energy systems of the past. The American shale gas production boom will continue to make coal production and consumption less economically attractive, at least in the near-term. The clean energy market is growing steadily and may reach $6 trillion in value by 2030. In light of this, 630 American businesses and investors -- including General Mills, DuPont, and Hewlett Packard -- signed an open letter to then President-elect Trump and Congress imploring them to protect and continue supporting low carbon policies, continued U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, and investment in a low carbon economy. U.S. competitiveness abroad depends on it not fully retreating from the clean energy growth space. China is planning to invest $360 billion in renewable energy through 2020, creating 13 million jobs and solidifying its place as a leading clean energy consumer and exporter. If America recedes from these opportunities, China and other countries will fill the void. The Promise of Subnational Action Washington is not the only regulatory game in town. California Gov. Jerry Brown has committed the state to move forward on its renewable energy track with or without Washington, and has a foundation of cooperation with China on which to build. In 2015, Shenzhen, Guangdong, and Los Angeles signed a memorandum of understanding to expand best practices for reducing emissions, while a collection of institutes pledged to design and implement carbon market training programs in China and to introduce Californias zero-emission vehicle credit trading mechanism in Beijing. Los Angeles and Beijing have planned a litany of cooperative measures on low-carbon urban planning and transportation, while Los Angeles and Zhenjiang have become the first cities to endorse the Subnational Global Climate Leadership memorandum. Signatories to this agreement have committed to either reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 or achieve a per capita annual emissions target of less than 2 metric tons by 2050, while seeking to influence global climate negotiations through local actions. Nine states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have operated a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative since 2008 that caps carbon emissions from power plants and facilitates traded emissions credits among participants. Thirty-five U.S. states have some form of mandate for producing more electricity from non-fossil fuel sources. Seattle has committed to become carbon-neutral by 2050 and has an implementation plan focusing on transportation, building efficiency, and waste disposal. These areas are densely populated engines of the U.S. economy, and their combined climate mitigation efforts may significantly alter Americas emissions trajectory in spite of countervailing policies from President Trump. Beyond the Federal Government Those working to address global climate should find ways to circumvent the Trump administration policy rollbacks and promote actions that transcend his ability to deregulate the U.S. economy. China can play a role in ensuring that the United States does not fully derail U.N.-led climate negotiations, and continue to engage in subnational cooperation efforts with symbiotic benefits. In the United States, the business case for cleaner energy systems will not abate, and even in the worst diplomatic scenario -- U.S. withdrawal from the UNFCCC -- the arc toward sustainable development will continue in many of the most populous and economically dynamic parts of the country. States and other key stakeholders will challenge the rollback of environmental and climate regulation in courts, and influential businesses will continue to promote climate change regulations. Trumps impact on the U.S. emissions trajectory may ultimately be significant, but it will not overwhelmingly reverse current trends. In the meantime, China will continue its self-interested energy transition and -- despite its enormous emissions profile -- assume a mantle of global climate leadership in the process. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. 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And it's incredible, and you know this better than anyone, how someone can take one sentence and make it seem so negative," she explained. "Nothing about it is negative, because I will do anything to raise awareness for it because I almost died from it," the star added. "It is a debilitating disease that most of the time goes misdiagnosed." Hadid has been vocal about her experience with chronic Lyme disease, including in the book Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme Disease, since being diagnosed in 2012. Osbourne herself said in her memoir that she struggled for a decade before being diagnosed with the condition. "I went to Frankfurt, Germany, and I did stem cell and I got cured. But it sickens me that that's not available to everyone and that you have to be considered lucky or privileged to get that sort of treatment," she wrote, according to ABC News. "I want to make sure and I will do anything that I can do to make sure that that treatment is available in this country," the star added. Local non-profits provide an array of services to the Fremont area. Community improvement projects, children and education services and animal welfare are just a few of the multitude of services that non-profit organizations provide to the community. In an effort to support non-profits throughout the community, the Fremont area will celebrate its first-ever Fremont Area Big Give on May 9. The Fremont Area Big Give (FABG) is a one-day online fundraising event organized by the Fremont Area Community Foundation to raise support for non-profits in Fremont and the Greater Dodge County Area. The FABG is a community-wide event to show off the areas spirit of giving and raise awareness about the nonprofits serving the area on a daily basis. This is the first-ever event for the Fremont Area and the Community Foundation felt it was something that was important for us to do, because it is a part of our mission to lift up the work of our local non-profit community and to showcase their efforts and the impact they have on Fremont area families, said Melissa Diers, executive director of the Fremont Area Community Foundation. During the event, gifts can be made online at www.fremontareabiggive.org from midnight to midnight on Tuesday, May 9. Gifts can also be scheduled in advance beginning May 1st through May 8th on the website. The minimum donation is $10 and all donations, either scheduled or on May 9th, are eligible for Bonus Pool dollars that were provided by First State Bank and Trust Co., Fremont Beef Company and Pinnacle Bank. We had champion level donor sponsors, we call them our champions, and they all came together to fund a bonus pool of $30,000 that will be distributed to all of the participating non-profits, Diers said. Forty-four area non-profit organizations are participating in the Fremont Area Big Give, and each will receive a portion of Bonus Pool dollars. The Bonus Pool dollars will be distributed to each non-profit proportionately based off the total amount of dollars raised during the event. For example if an organization raises 5 percent of the total dollars raised on May 9, then that organization will receive 5 percent of the Bonus Pool. We feel its a unique opportunity to invest in the good work being done by so many nonprofit organizations in our service area, said Chuck Johannsen, president of First State Bank & Trust in a released statement. Its a day to celebrate service and the wonderful community we share. In addition to the Bonus Pool, participating non-profits will have a chance to earn participation prizes throughout the 24-hour event. There will be participation prizes awarded in 2-hour increments throughout the day for most dollars raised, or most unique donors, throughout that 2-hour time period. For example between the hours of 2-4 p.m. whichever participating non-profit raises the most dollars during that time period will receive a $500 participation prize. It turns the day into a fun game, a fun challenge for non-profts to see if they get a little boost throughout the day and then it also gives donors something to rally around. If they want their favorite non-profit to get that most dollars raised award during a certain time period they can rally around that and get lots of people to give during that time frame, Diers said. There will also be giving stations at locations around Fremont and area towns that will allow those without computers, or those who would like assistance, to enter their gifts on the website. There will be a computer where they can come and make their gift so that way if someone doesnt have a computer, or they are not very experienced with making a gift with a credit card online they can. Or if they dont want to make a gift with a credit card, they would like to just bring in a check there will be someone to help them with that process, Diers said. Currently, giving stations will be available in Fremont in the main lobby of First State Bank and Trust Co. on 23rd from 9-4 p.m., as well as the main lobby of Pinnacle Banks downtown location during the same time. There will also be a giving station in the May Brothers Building from 4-7 p.m. In Hooper there will be giving stations located at the First National Northeast Bank from 9-3 p.m., and at the Office Bar and Grill from 5-8 p.m. The Roots to Wings Store in Arlington will also have a giving station, but hours are currently unavailable. There will also be stations in Scribner, Cedar Bluffs, and North Bend at multiple locations. For more information about the event, or to find participating non-profits visit the Fremont Area Big Give website at www.fremontareabiggive.org. Our hope is that the whole community will just come together and really have fun that day, it only takes 10 dollars to participate, so everyone can get involved and it should be a lot of fun, Diers said. With summer comes many opportunities to gain experience for the future, like jobs, internships and summer classes. However, despite the import As another year comes to a close, The Red & Black looks back on the major events and changes the University of Georgia campus experienced in 2016. From the roll-out of GST to H1B visa problems, the government needs to quickly deal with various disruptions, says Nitin Desai. Illustrations: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com. The gross domestic product numbers that have come out recently show a continuing decline in the rate of investment, reflected also in the low level of credit growth to industry. Demonetisation may have affected economic activity less than initially forecast. But it may have delayed the investment revival that we so badly needed. A further delay may well happen because of the potential disruptions in the early stages of the goods and services tax roll-out, continuing delays in resolving non-performing assets and the information technology sectors H1B visa problems. The immediate challenge for the government is to address this potpourri of problems so that businesses shift their attention from survival to growth. GST roll-out: The GST roll-out requires the Centre and the state governments to establish a substantially new indirect tax system, and there are fears that neither the tax administrations nor businesses are fully ready for a July start. There is the immediate challenge of the fitment of commodities into a rate structure that has too many slots and is leading to heavy lobbying by industry groups. The GST was meant to have one standard rate, with limited departures, up and down. We now have two slabs on both sides of the central 18 per cent rate. The government can retrieve the situation by making the 18 per cent slab the default rate for most items. One reason for the multiple slots could be the unreasonable desire for revenue neutrality at the product level to avoid a consumer backlash. But a more likely source of backlash could be the sticker shock. Today the buyer does not see the incidence of excise on his bill and only the sales tax and a few other sale point taxes are made explicit. Now the excise duty will be part of the single tax and the rate shown in the bill will be much higher. Judging by the ratio of excise collections to sales tax collections the tax percentage shown in the bill could go up by a third or more. This sticker shock will generate pressures for tax evasion at the final sale stage. The shock would be lessened if sellers reflect tax credit due in the net price they charge. With this aim the GST Act includes provisions for checking profiteering. But the real pressure for this will have to come from raising public awareness and competition. The GST will require compatible recording of purchase and sale transactions in all enterprise, small or large, who are liable to tax because of the need to claim tax credits. This is a massive task and the government must use the first three to six months of implementation as a trial implementation period where the focus of the tax administration must be to help assesses to set up and link their systems to the GST network rather than on rigorous enforcement. NPA resolution: The revival of the investment process depends crucially on the resolution of the problem of over leveraged balance sheets of many corporations, particularly in the infrastructure sector, and rising non-performing assets of banks. As of end-2016, non-performing assets of public and private banks were about Rs 7 trillion and have shot up by a staggering 135 per cent in the last two years and constitute 11 per cent of the gross advances of public sector banks. A few of the bad loans may be of willful defaulters who should be made to pay up. But the majority involves loans that went bad because of miscalculated project or sector risk. Both the borrower and the lender are a party to this miscalculation and must share in the reduction in the value of the loan. The lending bank has to take a reduction in asset value and managements are reluctant to do this for fear of being accused of favouring the borrower. The government will not assume its ownership responsibility for fear of the charge of crony capitalism. Hence the repeated cycle of rescheduling which merely postpones the crunch. One way out would be to empower and independent entity, say the Banks Board Bureau, which is neither owner nor manager, to authorise specific proposals for loan liability reduction beyond some specified limit and subject to clear guidelines laid down by the finance ministry and the RBI. Hopefully, this will protect bank managers and the government from charges of favouritism. H1B visa changes: The $100 billion worth of exports of software, business processing and engineering services by Indian companies and their overseas affiliates/branches form a large part of Indias exports and have been a major source of employment for young graduates. The US is by far their most important market and there they face the threat of a tightening of the H1B visa regime. The companies concerned and the government must have a game plan for tackling this. The Trump administrations moves on H1B visas seem to be directed at foreign companies and favouring US companies who compete with them. Thus the indications are that there will be closer scrutiny and discrimination against H1B visa applications for working in companies with a higher than average proportion of H1B visa workers and where the proportion of workers providing services away from the company office is also above average. The criteria are clearly designed to put Indian and other foreign-service providers who have local offices at a disadvantage vis-a-vis US companies where applications for H1B visas will receive a more favourable consideration. It is a move to protect US capital, not a move to protect jobs for US nationals. The companies concerned can take steps to narrow the difference vis-a-vis US companies on the proposed parameter for instance by naming Americans to the more visible management positions in their US offices. The government can help by highlighting the protectionist orientation of the measure in public and private discourse on this issue. Moreover it can always narrow the gap in the impact on Indian and US firms needing H1B workers by requiring emigration clearance for work in US firms but not for work in US branches of Indian firms! Nitin Desai is an Indian economist and was an international civil servant. He can be reached at nitin-desai@hotmail.com. New entity is likely to get a top-up of $200 million from a Chinese investor After consolidation in the online market space, it seems the turn of mobile wallets. FreeCharge plans to merge itself in an all-stock deal with MobiKwik, said sources close to the companies. Sources say after the merger, the new entity is likely to get a top-up of $200 million (nearly Rs 1,300 crore) from a Chinese investor who is eager to make an entry into India. Also, some banks have indicated theyd be interested to invest in a merged entity. However, it should be noted that the talks are only at an initial stage. Interestingly Sequoia Capital is a major investor in both the mobile wallet entities. FreeCharge, part of online marketplace Snapdeal, has been on the block for some time. According to sources, Jason Kothari, recently appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) of FreeCharge, has been in talks with investors in the US and China to sell it. PayPal was initially interested in putting a sizable investment in FreeCharge but the deal could not be closed. MobiKwik has also has been, for some time, trying to raise funds. It has been on a major expansion mode and opened 13 new offices, recruiting a little more than 1,000 employees. The company has been trying to show investors that it is a serious entity in the financial technology space. Co-founder Upasana Taku and founder-CEO Bipin Preet Singh have had meetings with investors in the US and in other countries to raise new rounds of funding. The talks started last week as people from MobiKwik and Freecharge met to discuss a merger. This would make them one of the largest in the market. The Chinese investor is interested in putting in around $200 mn in the merged entity as only a bigger player would be able to hold its own against Paytm, said an informed source. While MobiKwik said it would notcomment on the issue, FreeCharge and Snapdeal did not respond to queries. Earlier, there was also talk of selling FreeCharge to Paytm. However, nothing much has happened on that. According to sources, both MobiKwik and FreeCharge would be worth around $300 mn each. And, a merged entity could be valued at anything between $700 mn to $1 billion. At present, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-run Paytm is the biggest mobile wallet in the market, with over 200 mn users and a host of services. FreeCharge, say sector experts, was the second biggest. However, in the past year, both Snapdeal and FreeCharge have imploded and are on the block. There is talk of a sale of Snapdeal to Flipkart being in the final stages. FreeCharge, experts said, might be sold separately if that is possible. MobiKwik recently said it planned to invest Rs 300 crore in office expansion, technology and marketing. It wishes to grow its user base from the current 50 mn, to 150 mn, in a year. This increase would push its annual gross merchandise value (GMV) to $10 bn by the end of a year, from the current $2 bn (Rs 13,300 crore), it says. Photograph: Reuters The Supreme Court on Thursday extended till June 19 the parole of Sahara chief Subrata Roy with a warning that failure to meet the deadline of June 15 for the payment of Rs 1,500 crore would land him in prison once again. Image: Sahara chief Subrata Roy being produced at the Supreme Court of India, in New Delhi, on Thursday. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo. Roy, who in compliance with the last order appeared before the court, was told by the apex court that he has to frequently make the payment as per the roadmap approved by the court or face further imprisonment. The Sahara chief gave an undertaking to a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that he would deposit Rs 1,500 crore by June 15 and another payment of Rs 552.22 crore by July 15 in the SEBI-Sahara account and filed an affidavit. The apex court warned Roy that he may be sent to jail again if the amount was not paid. The bench, which also comprised Justices Ranjan Gogoi and A K Sikri, also ordered the arrest of Chennai-based journalist Prakash Swamy, who failed to deposit Rs 10 crore as per the last order. He will serve a one-month jail sentence for contempt of court. Swamy had filed an affidavit on behalf a foreign firm expressing his intent to buy Sahara's New York-based hotel. He had failed to comply with the apex court's direction to show his bona fides by depositing the amount in court to establish his intention to buy the property. The bench allowed the Sahara group to make electronic payment through RTGS in the Sebi-Sahara account on or before June 15. The apex court also asked Roy to remain personally present on June 19, the next date of hearing. It asked the official liquidator of the Bombay high curt to prepare terms and conditions for auctioning the AambyValley property for its approval on June 19. Consolidation is happening because of a prolonged slowdown in residential sales which has also brought down the business of brokerages. People who have worked with Anuj Puri say he is a workaholic and used to live out of a suitcase when he was the chairman and country head of JLL in India. He quit suddenly, leaving many surprised. But, barely three months later, Puri is now back once again. The US-based real estate brokerage firm said it was selling its residential brokerage business JLL Residential to Puri who is setting up a technology-led brokerage firm. The business under Puri will continue with the existing brand JLL Residential. The deal value is not known. Puri will lead a team of 200 residential brokers across eight Indian cities. Ashwinder Raj Singh, chief executive at JLL Residential, will continue in the new set up under Puris leadership. With the Rera or Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act coming in, there is a lot of responsibility on property brokers. Its violations can lead to fine of 10 per cent of the cost of the project or a year in jail in case of misrepresentation to the buyers, said Puri. Property brokers will become what financial brokers became after the Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) was set up, he said. His new company will be a one where demand will be generated online and fulfilled offline. Today, a lot of buyers check properties online and then buy it offline. We want to build our business around that, he said. JLL isnt alone. Consolidation is gaining ground among real estate brokerages ahead of Rera kicking in from next month. Rera has strict rules which has implications of up to three years imprisonment for developers and one year for brokers in case of some of the violations. HDFC Realty, the property broking arm of HDFC, is in active discussions with online classifieds firm Quikr to merge itself with it or a sellout, said a source in the know. The deal could be about Rs 45 crore (Rs 450 million), which is three times the top line of HDFC Realty, sources said. Another person familiar with the development at HDFC said they were in discussions with multiple players for a possible transaction. Quikr declined to comment on the matter. A mail sent to HDFC did not elicit any response. Also, there is a speculation about UK-based Knight Frank shutting down its residential brokerage business. But, its chairman Shishir Baijal denies that. Why would we shut it down? We may not grow as we have grown in the past due to market conditions but we are expanding the business, Baijal said. Baijal said that once Rera comes in and consolidation happens among developers, it will also be followed in brokerage business. There has already been some move of consolidation among online brokerages. Recently, online property portal Housing.com merged with News Corp-backed PropTiger. In April 2015, PropTiger acquired classified platform Makaan.com for Indias first online to offline platform. Another Global realty consultant Coldwell Banker acquired tech based property brokerage Favista.com in an all stock deal. Many say the consolidation is also happening because of a prolonged slowdown in residential sales which has also brought down the business of brokerages. According to PropEquity, a data analytics firm, home sales have halved in Mumbai, National Capital Region and Bengaluru, as buyers are delaying their decisions. When sales are down in most of the brokerages, obviously our fee is also down. In such a scenario, we have to relook at the business, said a executive at a Mumbai-based brokerage. Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters The Tata Safari Storme 4x4 was chosen after it completed a total trial duration of 15 months in various terrains across the country, in the most demanding conditions with extreme on or off-road terrains. Tata Motors on Thursday signed a contract for the supply of 3192 units of the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 to the Indian armed forces, under a new category of vehicles the GS800 (General Service 800). Developed indigenously, the Tata Safari Storme 4x4 has completed a total trial duration of 15 months in various terrains across the country, in the most demanding conditions with extreme on or off-road terrains. "Tata Motors has been a leading supplier of mobility solutions to the Indian armed forces and this order is a testimony to our partnership with the country's security forces. This variant of the Storme has been modified from the one available for civilians with an upgraded drivetrain and significantly modified suspension. The Safari Storme was conceived and designed keeping in mind the need for a rugged, comfortable and reliable vehicle, making it popular with law enforcement agencies," said Vernon Noronha, vice president, defence and government business, Tata Motors Ltd. Introduced in 2012, the Safari Storme boasts of 156 PS power and 400 Nm torque which affords it easy drivability, swifter response and lower NVH (noise, vibration and harshness), with superior fuel efficiency and best-in-class ground clearance of 200mm. The 4X4 variant also features ESOF (electronic shift-on-fly) technology, enabling engagement of the 4X4 or 4X2 mode on the move. Tata Motors has been associated with the country's off-road defence and security forces since 1958 and has supplied over 1,50,000 vehicles to the Indian military and paramilitary forces, so far. WhatsApp to foray into digital payments & expand to other markets WhatsApp, the communication application owned by social media giant Facebook, is set to debut its digital payments service in India, to subsequently be expanded to other markets. The company is looking to hire a digital transactions head in the country. In February, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton met the minister for information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, to discuss ways in which it could contribute to Indias vision for digital commerce. Following the governments demonetisation move in November last year, there has been massive growth in digital transaction volumes. We listen very carefully to feedback from people across India and how to better serve them. India is obviously our largest country and its going to be one of the most important markets, WhatsApp spokesperson Matt Steinfeld told reporters on Wednesday, on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. The new service will be a part of the app itself. The company is also looking to earn from its messaging service and is trying to add services that could be monetised. It is also working on solutions for enabling businesses to use its platform to connect with consumers. Last year, WhatsApp had said it would test tools that allowed users to communicate with businesses and organisations, like banks and airlines, through its platform. While WhatsApp does not intend to introduce any third-party advertisements, it is looking at ways to monetise the platform, and working with businesses could be a step in that direction. We are definitely into building the product phase. So, what you will see over the year is different tests, both for small and large businesses, and figuring whats good experience for these on WhatsApp, Steinfeld said. India is going to play a crucial role in that. India is the biggest market for WhatsApp - of its over one billion users, about 200 million are here. In India, it competes with the likes of Hike and SnapChat. Facebook, on its part, has a strong focus on bringing businesses to its platform. At present, around five million businesses globally advertise on Facebook. WhatsApp has been working on features to enhance engagement on the platform, of late. It recently launched a story feature to allow users to express their thoughts using pictures and animations. The company has also introduced a host of security tools, including safety check, community help, safety center, parents portal, bullying prevention hub and suicide prevention. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters Urjit Patel said said the process of remonetisation was on and estimation of costs was a complex exercise. The government approved the new design currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 denominations on June 7, 2016. This was five months before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced, on November 8, demonetisation of the earlier Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Reserve Bank (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel told a parliamentary panel. Patel had appeared on January 18 before the Standing Committee on Finance and made a verbal presentation on the controversy. However, as several members were not satisfied, the panel had asked Patel for written responses to these concerns. A copy of these, given recently to the panel, have been accessed by this newspaper. Sources said Patel has been asked to reappear before the panel on May 25, there being some perceived gaps in the written responses. The panel met on April 20, to review issues related to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Opposition party members such as former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the Biju Janata Dals Bhartruhari Mahtab wanted to summon Patel on May 25. Bharatiya Janata Party members Nishikant Dubey, Kirit Somaiya and S C Udasi opposed this, saying demonetisation was now a non-issue. To a query from Somaiya on whether demonetisation would help curb undisclosed money, the RBI governor had said the government was best placed to reply on this. To another Somaiya query on fake currency, Patel said estimating counterfeit notes in the hands of the public was difficult. However, a study by the Indian Statistical Institute estimated fake currency in circulation at around Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion), with Rs 70 crore (Rs 700 million) being pumped into the system annually. Patel also said RBI found counterfeit notes in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 in circulation, and that it was getting increasingly difficult to identify these. To a query by panel chairman Veerappa Moily, a Congress member, the governor said the process of remonetisation was on and estimation of costs was a complex exercise. Another Congress member, Jyotiraditya Scindia, wanted to know the views of former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan on demonetisation, as consultation for the exercise appeared to have begun in January 2016. Patel said no minutes of conversations with his predecessor were available. Much to the annoyance of opposition MPs, the governor said the central bank was still counting the amount of money that had come back into the system after demonetisation. Thinning valuation gap between these and mid-caps indicates a shift in investors' preferences, says Hamsini Karthik Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com After nearly three years of trading on the BSE at a significant discount to the benchmark Sensex, the asking rate for large-cap stocks is increasing once again. The S&P BSE Sensex currently trades at 17.3 times the estimated calendar year 2017 earnings, while the BSE Mid-cap index is at 18.7 times, by Bloomberg calculations. The premium commanded by mid-caps vis-a-vis the Sensex has thereby reduced to 7.5 per cent. Mid-caps had started trading at a premium to large-caps from 2014 onwards. The BSE Mid-cap index premium over the Sensex, 10.3 per cent in 2014, rose to 28.7 per cent in 2015 and was 21.3 per cent in 2016. Experts say the changing trend is a positive one and in favour of large-cap stocks. "It is a combination of money chasing large-caps, led by Reliance Industries, and investors realising there aren't too many affordable pockets in the mid-cap space," explains Pramod Gubbi, head of equities at Ambit Capital. He adds that in a typical bull market, there tends to be an earnings upgrade for mid-caps, resulting in a valuation premium expansion for these stocks. "In the current scenario, the premium is narrowing and this indicates that investors are running for safety." A scenario such as this also highlights a reduction in risk appetite. A fund manager with a diversified portfolio has a similar opinion. "It is becoming hard to choose among mid-caps. I prefer to park funds in asset classes which are more liquid like the large-caps than the relatively less liquid mid-caps and small-caps," he says. There's more on why investors need caution in dealing with mid-caps. In a report this week, analysts led by Sanjeev Prasad of Kotak Institutional Equities, said: "We find valuations of several mid-cap stocks in our coverage universe very high. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that some are in a 'bubble' phase, with the market extrapolating strong growth and high returns in perpetuity." While some of the companies do have certain strengths, they add, the valuations at over five times the book for several semi-branded (semi-commodity) businesses are absurdly high in the context of their business models and limited competitive advantages. While experts advise caution, they believe despite these challenges, investors should not ignore the mid-cap space. One reason is the flush of liquidity, particularly with domestic investors. That domestic institutional investors (DIIs) have been the saviours for Indian equities is an established point. For most of 2016, when foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) were sellers in Indian stocks, DII buying lent strong support to the market. The trend remains. In April, FIIs have sold equities worth Rs 712 crore so far; DIIs have mopped Rs 1,077 crore of shares. Experts say DIIs have more ammunition and seem likely to remain as critical pillars of liquidity for Indian equities. But, more important, there is long-term growth potential in quite a few mid-caps and this could help them emerge as larger companies over the coming years. And, if investors could spot such companies and buy the stock during steep price corrections, it could yield good long-term returns. Pankay Pandey, head of research at ICICI Securities, feels mid-cap stocks which promise earnings growth might continue to trade at a premium to their large-cap peers. "The past four years have been disruptive with respect to earnings growth. The commodities cycle, a poor monsoon and now demonetisation have all been reasons for earnings growth to be pushed," he says. In such conditions, he believes any stock offering a promise of earnings growth will continue to get a fair share of investor interest. Experts say any market correction could be used to accumulate promising mid-cap stocks such as Mahanagar Gas, Indraprastha Gas, Marico, Dabur, Emami, NCC and ITD Cementation. In large-caps, Tata Motors, GAIL, Power Grid, HCL Technologies and State Bank of India continue to offer value. On June 1, 2010, under Indian Ports Act, 1908, govt declared Port Blair as 13th major port in India Port Blair may soon "officially" lose the tag of a major port, granted to it seven years ago, as the central government is of the view that executing a big-size port at that location is not feasible due to lack of container traffic. The Ministry of Shipping had engaged a consultant to ascertain whether the declaration of Port Blair as a major port would be a feasible option. According to a source, the consultant has advised the government against it as even a transshipment hub at the location would be unable to attract traffic. Keeping these studies in mind, the government has decided to not have a major port at Port Blair, the source said. Major ports are the ones that handle large volumes of traffic, Port Blair does not qualify as one, an official said, however, he did not elaborate whether the government would scrap the June 2010 notification. On June 1, 2010, under the Indian Ports Act, 1908, the central government had declared Port Blair as the 13th major port in the country. The other major ports are Kolkata (including Dock Complex at Haldia), Paradip, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Tuticorin, Cochin, New Mangalore, Mormugao, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mumbai, Kandla and Ennore. It was also decided that the Port Blair port would have territorial jurisdiction over 23 other ports in the state, including East Island Port, Mayabunder Port, Elphinston Harbour Rangat Port, Havelock Port, Neil Island Port, Chowra Port, Teressa Port and Nancowry Harbour Port. A committee, headed by the joint secretary (Ports), ministry of shipping and chairman, Tuticorin Port Trust and four other members, was constituted to identify the requirement of staff for Port Blair Port Trust and transfer of entire establishment of Port Management Board to the trust in consultation with the Andaman & Nicobar administration and Andaman Lakshadweep Harbour Works to the trust. The chief secretary, Andaman & Nicobar administration, in addition to his own duties and responsibilities, was given the additional charge as the chairman, Port Blair Port Trust. The chief port administrator, Port Management Board, Andaman & Nicobar administration would hold additional charge as secretary, Port Blair Trust till the regular incumbent is appointed. It was also decided to bifurcate Andaman Lakshadweep Harbour Works into Andaman Harbour works and Lakshadweep Harbour Works. The Andaman Harbour Works was merged with Port Blair Port Trust and the Lakshadweep Harbour Works came under the direct control of the Ministry of Shipping, headed by the deputy chief engineer and with the status of subordinate office to the ministry. As per the traffic scenario study, conducted by the consultant of Sagarmala, cargo traffic in Indian ports is expected to grow from 1 billion tonnes per annum in 2015-16 to 2.5 billion tonnes in 2024-25. Out of this, the traffic in existing major ports is expected to grow from 606 million tonnes per annum in 2015-16 to 1.1 billion tonnes in the base case scenario and to 1.29 billion tonnes in the optimistic scenario in 2024-25. The ministry of shipping plans to increase the overall port capacity from 1.67 billion tonnes per annum in 2015-16 to more than 3 billion tonnes in 2024-25 to handle the growing traffic. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters 1,100 guests. A cruise liner. A dream wedding in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Zoya Akhtar's Hindi film Dil Dhadakne Do was the inspiration for the dream wedding of UAE-based high school sweethearts -- Adel Sajan, heir of construction major Danube group and dentist-turned-model Sana Khan. The destination wedding, that took place across four days, on the luxury cruise liner Costa Fascinosa, reportedly had a price tag of approx $30 million (Rs 200 crores approx). IMAGE: Sana and Adel pose on the cruise in blue outfits while welcoming the baraat. All photographs: Kind courtesy Wizspk Communication IMAGE: The wedding planners, Wedniksha, had different themes each day of the wedding celebrations. More than two tonnes of flowers were imported from different parts of the world to decorate the ship for the wedding. This included 1,000 tulips from Holland, 20,000 red roses and 1,000 Hydrangea flowers from Ecuador. IMAGE: The colour co-ordinated baraatis. IMAGE: The couple pose with parents inside the cruise. IMAGE: Golden girls -- Sana with mother-in-law Sameera. Sana's outfits were designed by Neeta Lulla. IMAGE: A team of 42 beauticians and hair stylists were flown in to dress the guests for makeovers as per the themes. A team of six were responsible for tying turbans for the baraat ceremony. IMAGE: Ethnic regal was the theme for the sangeet. Sana's embellished green gown, with this dramatic cape, looks grand. IMAGE: Sana poses with her love at her sangeet. IMAGE: The lit-up interiors would make anyone's jaws drop. IMAGE: The calm and composed bride getting ready for the gala dinner. Sana represented Bahrain at the Miss India International pageant in 2010. IMAGE: Sana flaunts her glow-in-the-dark white gown designed by Neeta Lulla. IMAGE: Doesn't she look like a princess? IMAGE: The Danube family in colour-coordinated white outfits for the gala dinner on the final day of the wedding celebrations. IMAGE: Actor Juhi Chawla was among the B-town guests who attended the wedding. IMAGE: Shilpa Shetty made an appearance on stage to congratulate the couple. IMAGE: Malaika Arora Khan was also one of the attendees. IMAGE: The parents of the groom also performed and entertained the guests. IMAGE: The guests were treated to several live performances, including a water rocket show, aerial acts, song,and dance events. About 75 chefs were flown in from India to serve the guests across the four days of the wedding. The emphatic victory in all three municipal corporations in Delhi will enthuse the party to keep its winning trajectory for the next polls, reports Sahil Makkar. The Bharatiya Janata Party scored an emphatic victory in all the three municipal corporations in Delhi, despite allegations of corruption and dismal performance, as well as strong anti-incumbency. Of the 270 seats in the east, south and north municipalities, the BJP won 181 -- the highest since the civic body was trifurcated in 2012. In the election that year, the BJP had won 138 seats of the 272 that went to polls. The Aam Aadmi Party, which for the first time contested all the seats, finished second with 48. The Congress, which has suffered massive electoral losses across the country since the 2014 general election, was further decimated. Its tally came down to 30 seats, from 77. There are at least two ways in which the election results can be inferred. First, Delhi voters ignored the dismal performance of sitting councillors despite a record outbreak of dengue and chikungunya in the national capital last year. People voted for the BJP ostensibly because of Prime Minister Narendra Modis growing popularity and party president Amit Shahs personal handling of the elections. Shah repeated the Gujarat style in Delhi by replacing all the sitting councillors and quelled internal feuds among leaders. The BJP extensively used its star campaigners and focused on the citys large migrant population. Much credit goes to the BJPs senior leadership, said Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken after the results. The Congress had failed to get its seniors, including former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to canvass. The second reason for the BJPs victory could be voters growing disenchantment with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, which had won 67 of 70 seats in the 2015 assembly election. This could have been because of Kejriwals incessant attacks and personal jibes against Modi. Kejriwals government was also constantly engaged in confrontation with the Centre on various issues. Kejriwal was only criticising Modi. It is time the AAP does some introspection, said Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari. It is believed that the AAPs recent failure to capture Punjab and Goa in assembly elections has changed peoples perception about the party as a strong alternative to the BJP and Congress. Though the AAPs policies to regulate school fees and reduce power rates helped it to win 48 seats, promises such as waiving property tax didnt cut much ice. The AAP, however, was reluctant to accept the mandate. The result is unbelievable. Without tampering of electronic voting machines, the BJP cannot win so many seats. They have given dengue, chikungunya and garbage to the city, said Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. We will analyse the reasons behind our defeat. The biggest challenge for the AAP would be to keep its flock together and avoid early assembly elections. AAP legislator from Bawana Ved Parkash, who recently quit the party to join the BJP, claimed 35 legislators are ready to switch to the BJP. Besides, 21 AAP members of legislative assembly are facing a disqualification threat for allegedly violating office of profit rules. The victory would enthuse the BJP to keep up its winning trajectory for the next assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Elections are also due in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Odisha assembly elections are due in 2019. The BJP is expected to face opposition from the Congress in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. Dalit writer Kusum Meghwal has alleged she has been receiving death threats from a few groups over her new book on Rajput warrior king Maharana Pratap. In the book, she claims that the king belonged to the Bhil community and was elevated as Rana of Mewar later. She has claimed that she received threats from Karni Sena, which was also involved in the ransacking of the sets of Padmavati" and the attack on its director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in January. According to the complaint filed by the 69-year-old writer at Ambamata police station in Udaipur, she had been receiving threat calls from a few fringe groups since the past week over her portrayal of the Rajput warrior in her book 'Maharana Pratap Bhil Rajputra The - Kshatriya Ya Rajput Nahi'. Meghwal claimed that she was also being bullied on social media. "The writer had lodged a complaint following which I have asked the police official concerned to investigate the matter. She has given us the phone numbers and a probe is underway," Superintendent of Police Udaipur, Rajendra Prasad said. An author of over 65 books, Meghwal alleged that she had received calls from individuals claiming themselves to be Thakurs and from Karni Sena. "I have been getting calls from unknown numbers who are threatening to kill me for writing the book. Some of the callers claim they are from the Karni Sena while others say they are Thakurs. I have not ventured out from my house in the last seven days, she said in her complaint. The Ambedkarite writer further stated that the word 'Bhil' comes from Sanskrit word 'Bhilla', which means brave and martial. The Bhil community has traditionally been spread all over Mewar and known for their martial prowess. The BJP-led Rajasthan government had earlier raked up controversy while stating that Maharana Pratap had won the famous battle of Haldighati, contrary to conventional wisdom that his adversary Mughal emperor Akbar was the winner. Central Reserve Police Force personnel deployed for long stints in the Naxal hotbed of Sukma in Chhattisgarh are showing signs of fatigue, according to officials. Home ministry officials, who visited Chhattisgarh after the massacre of 25 CRPF men by Naxals, have found that the majority of 45,000 paramilitary personnel undertaking the high-risk anti-Naxal operations in Bastar region have been posted there for over three years. Fatigue has been noticed in jawans as many of them have been posted in Sukma for last five years even though normally they should be there for three years, an official said, adding that there is decline in motivation due to their long deployment in the area. Being posted continuously in Bastar is very stressful and the jawans prefer to join counter-insurgency operations elsewhere including in Kashmir, even though they face militant attacks and stone pelting mobs regularly there. This year, 32 Naxals have been killed so far while the CRPF has lost 38 personnel in Chhattisgarh, the official said. Anti-Naxal operations take a toll on security personnel as they face guerrilla warfare in hot and humid conditions and treacherous terrain. The home ministry officials indicated that the 100-strong CRPF personnel, who were attacked by the Naxals on Monday, seemed to have not been sufficiently vigilant leading to such high casualties. The central government has been trying to boost the morale of the forces by providing them necessary infrastructure and logistics for anti-Naxal operations, they said. As many as 58 mine-protected vehicles are available in Chhattisgarh to the paramilitary forces and 30 are under process for procurement through the Ordnance Factories Board. Forty-two bullet-proof vehicles are also available and 210 bullet-protected vehicles are under process for procurement, it said. Around 45,000 central paramilitary personnel and 20,000 state policemen have been deployed in Bastar region, which saw maximum Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh. As compared to an average of 30 Naxals killed every year, 135 Maoists were neutralised in 2016, three times the number of police personnel who lost their lives. Out on bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur on Thursday alleged that she was "falsely implicated in the case to endorse the bogey of saffron terrorism, a term coined by erstwhile Home Minister P Chidambaram." Sadhvi, 44, who was granted bail by the Bombay high court on Tuesday, was released from judicial custody after the bail formalities were completed in the afternoon. She is currently undergoing treatment at Khushilal Ayurvedic Hospital in Bhopal for cancer. The high court granted bail to Sadhvi holding that prima facie no case was made out against her. The high court had asked her to furnish cash surety of Rs 5 lakh and surrender her passport to the National Investigation Agency. It had also directed her not to tamper with the evidence and to report to the NIA court as and when required. Addressing a press conference at the hospital, Sadhvi alleged the Mumbai ATS, which probed the case earlier, had "illegally detained" her and that she was subjected to "severe torture." "This was certainly a conspiracy hatched by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, which resulted into my nine-year ordeal. It (the conspiracy) was (meant) to endorse the bogey of saffron terrorism, a term coined by P Chidambaram (former home minister). I am innocent," Sadhvi told reporters. She said the "script of saffron terrorism" was written by the then Congress government. "Go through the entire script of the so-called saffron terrorism. Entire story was cooked up by the Congress which implicated us," she alleged. In reply to a question, Sadhvi said, "I was the victim of the Congress' conspiracy. I don't think the current government believes in such conspiracies... However, my case is decided by court." On the investigation conducted by the ATS and then by NIA, she said, "I don't think any investigating agency is straightforward. The National Investigation Agency is also the same." Sadhvi alleged that she was detained by the Mumbai ATS on October 10, 2008 and was taken to Mumbai from Surat. "The Mumbai ATS illegally detained me for 13 days. I underwent severe torture during this period," she alleged. Sadhvi said she was physically fit before she was "tortured" by the Mumbai ATS. "I was physically fit. I am a sanyasi. Now, I am dependent (on others) due to the torture inflicted on me by the Mumbai ATS. I am 100 per cent innocent," she told journalists while her supporters shouted slogans of "Bharat Mata Ki Jai." Sadhvi said she would continue to stay in the hospital due to her medical condition. She said she would leave the hospital only after consulting her doctors. Six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in Malegaon town in Nashik district on September 29, 2008. Sadhvi was arrested in October 2008 and charged with plotting the blast with a co-accused Prasad Purohit, a former lieutenant colonel. According to the prosecution, the blast was carried out as part of a plan by the Hindu right wing organisation Abhinav Bharat. Nine other accused in the case are still behind bars.+ IMAGE: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur addresses the media in Bhopal after being granted bail in Malegaon blasts case. Photograph: PTI Photo India has demanded from Pakistan a certificate on the health condition of retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a military court there, the external affairs ministry said on Thursday. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay also said the government is yet to receive a copy of any chargesheet against Jadhav, and did not even know who had defended him in the military court that sentenced him the death sentence. Maintaining that the well being and state of Jadhav's health is a "matter of great concern" to India, Baglay said, "We haven't seen, we haven't met (Jadhav). He has been in Pakistan's custody for more than a year. So the well being and state of health of Jadhav is a matter of great concern. "We have asked the Pakistani government earlier also, and yesterday our high commissioner (to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale) made a request for providing a report on his medical condition. So we await Pakistan's response." On Wednesday, the Indian government had made a request for the 16th time to Pakistan for consular access to Jadhav, the spokesperson said. "We wanted to get out on 0," he said when asked if India would be scoring a 100 in requests in seeking consular access. Baglay also hoped that Pakistan would expedite the visa for Jadhav's mother and father who want to see their son as also file an appeal in person, if required. They have applied for the visa in the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi, he said. Bambawale had also handed over to the Pakistan foreign secretary an appeal by Jadhav's mother as well as a petition by her seeking the Pakistan government's intervention for his release and expressing the desire to meet him. The Indian envoy had also met the Pakistani foreign secretary on April 14 and expressed India's concern regarding the whereabouts and health condition of Jadhav. He had told media after his meeting that he had asked for a list of charges and an authenticated copy of the verdict of the military tribunal against the retired officer to launch an appeal process against his conviction. Jadhav was given death sentence on the charge of "espionage" by the Field General Court Martial earlier this month, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warned Pakistan of consequences and damage to bilateral ties if the "pre-meditated murder" was carried out. Baglay was asked about a "confessional" video released by the Pakistan army yesterday of former Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan in which he has said that the Taliban militants were in touch with the Afghan intelligence agency and India's Research and Analyst Wing which provided funds and set targets inside Pakistan for attacks. To this, the MEA spokesperson replied, "We know the value of such coerced confessions. All that they reflect is a mindset on the part of those who put out such coerced confessions, which believes that others in the world also do what they do." India has slipped three notches in the World Press Freedom Index 2017, a report released by global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders that has cited the threat from Modis nationalism. In the list of 180 countries mapped, India stands at 136, down from last years 133, colour-coded again in red to show the situation as difficult. With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of anti-national thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media. Journalists are increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals, the report said. Journalists are increasingly targets of online smear campaigns by most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals, the report notes. Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists overly critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124A of the (Indian) penal code, under which sedition is punishable by life imprisonment. No journalist has so far been convicted of sedition but the threat encourages self-censorship. Norway came out the top of the index with the worlds freest media. It took over from neighbouring Finland which had held the title for six years. At the other end of the scale, North Korea took the bottom place. United States also lost two points this year as compared to 2016, to be ranked 43 in the Index. Indias neighbour Pakistan, ranked 139, is among the few countries with most improved scores since 2016, according to the new report. It was ranked 147 last year. Three heavily-armed terrorists on Thursday stormed an army camp in Kupwara district of Kashmir, killing a Captain and two other soldiers before two of the assailants were gunned down in a fierce 35-minute encounter. IMAGE: Army personnel guard inside their Panzgam camp, 120 kms from Srinagar, which was attacked by terrorists on Thursday morning. Photograph: S Irfan/PTI Photo Soon after the encounter, a mob started pelting stones at the security forces, leading to a clash in which a 75-year-old civilian was killed due to a bullet injury. At around 4 am, three terrorists, dressed in black Pathani suit and combat jackets, entered from the rear side the artillery unit of the army garrison at Panzgam in Kupwara, about 100 kms from Srinagar, and started indiscriminate firing, army officials said. They managed to cross the second security layer of the camp located in a mountainous terrain and spread over an area of 400 x 800 meters, the officials said. Firing indiscriminately, the terrorists then advanced towards the officers' complex of the camp which houses about 1000 army personnel and is situated about 10 kms from the Line of Control with Pakistan. Soldiers took on the attackers and forced them back towards one of the gates of the camp, the officials said. IMAGE: Captain Ayush Yadav, Naik B Venkata Ramanna and Subedar Bhoop Singh Gujjar were martyred. In the gunfight, Captain Ayush Yadav, Subedar Bhoop Singh Gujjar and Naik B Venkata Ramanna were killed. Five other soldiers were injured and they were airlifted to Army's 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar. The militants started fleeing as the Quick Response Team of the army swung into action, the officials said. Two militants were gunned down while a third one managed to escape under the cover of darkness, the officials said. "The entire operation lasted 35 minutes," said Col Saurabh in Kupwara. IMAGE: Army personnel stand guard outside their Panzgam camp. Photograph: S Irfan/PTI Photo The troops recovered three AK rifles which indicated that there was a third terrorist, he said, adding search operations are underway to track him down. "We have recovered three AK rifles, nine magazines, 156 AK rounds, one Chinese pistol, three UBGL grenades, three hand grenades, two radio sets, two GPS devices and a smartphone from the slain terrorists," another official said. The official, on the condition of anonymity, said the attackers seemed to be foreigners but their identity was being ascertained. As soon as the encounter ended, local residents held protest demonstrations, demanding that the bodies of slain militants be handed over to them for performing their last rites, a police official said. The protestors, including women and elderly, continued demonstrations but the army personnel did not relent to their demand, the official said. IMAGE: Police chase away Kashmiri villagers who were demanding bodies of militants killed in a gunbattle. Photograph: PTI Photo In the clash between stone-pelting mobs and security forces, one Mohammad Yousuf Bhat sustained a bullet injury in his chest and was rushed to Kupwara hospital where doctors declared him 'brought dead'. Locals alleged that he was killed in firing by security forces. Capt Yadav, who hailed from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, had joined the service some three years ago. Naik Ramana, 38 hailed from Visakhapatnam and served in the army for the last 18 years while Subedar Gujjar, 46 had put in 26 years of service. On April 25 2015, a massive earthquake in Ghorka, Nepal, followed by another devastating one on May 12, killed nearly 9,000 people and injured over 21,000. More than 600,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Two years later, the paved alleys are still lined by the skeletons of homes once filled with families. Children carefully side-step piles of broken brick on their way to school. According to data available, barely 5 per cent of the destroyed houses have been rebuilt, according to the National Reconstruction Authority. That 800,000 families still do not have their houses rebuilt is simply a disaster. Heres a look at Nepal, which is still trying to rebuild itself. All photographs: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters A man walks out from his house, which is under construction, after the old house collapsed during the 2015 earthquake, in Bhaktapur, Nepal. According to latest figures, around 800,000 families are still homeless. When the quake struck Nepal, the country lost a large part of its cultural heritage with several UNESCO structures being struck down. One of Kathmandu's most famous landmarks, Dharahara tower was built in 1832 after being commissioned by the Queen. Standing at 70 metres tall, its collapse during the quake resulted in the deaths of 132 people, the highest recorded casualty figure at a single site. Over 800 of Nepals ornate temples, palaces and monuments were severely damaged or completely destroyed in the quake. Two years later, workers are hard at work trying to reconstruct their heritage. Shortly after the disaster, $4.1 billion was raised for the reconstruction of the country. However, progress has been painfully slow for families who have now spent two winters without proper shelter. Many live in makeshift huts and bamboo tents. Piles of rubble from destroyed homes still line the streets of Nepal. As of April 6, according to the National Reconstruction Authority, just 20,899 houses were rebuilt, forcing thousands to live on the streets, out in the cold, making them more vulnerable to diseases and sickness. Denied adequate housing, earthquake survivors have acquired other problems over the past two years, including high debts. Furthermore, living in informal shelters has put people at risk of grave health consequences, including respiratory illnesses, and injuries from snake bites. A labourer sits on top of the debris of a monastery damaged during the 2015 earthquake, in Swayambhunath Stupa, a UNESCO world heritage site in Kathmandu. Poland on Thursday assured India of its support to New Delhi's bid for membership in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group and a permanent seat in the expanded United Nations Security Council. This was conveyed by Polish Prime Minister Beata Syzdlo to Vice President Hamid Ansari when the two leaders met in Warsaw to discuss issues of bilateral and mutual interests. The two countries signed an agreement in the agriculture sector and agreed that there was much scope to increase cooperation in railway and defence sectors as well as in areas like food processing, solar energy, clean coal, treatment of solid waste. The agreement was signed by Minister of State of Small Industries Giriraj Singh and Polish Agriculture Minister Krzystof Jurgiel in presence of Ansari and Syzdlo. Ansari thanked Polish leadership for its support to India's bid for NSG membership, Missile Technology Control Regime issue and a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. "We are happy to have Poland's support for India's claim for permanent membership of an expanded UN security council," Ansari said as he appreciated the support extended by Poland to India's membership of the MTCR. Poland is a member of the 48-nation NSG, a group of nuclear supplier countries that seek to prevent proliferation by controlling the export of materials, equipment and technology that can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. "For past few decades, India and Poland relations are growing with a good pace. Today my talks with the prime minister of Poland was very productive and we discussed entire gamuts of our relationships," said Ansari. Ansari said there was much scope to increase the bilateral cooperation especially in areas like mining, agriculture, civil aviation, food processing, solar energy, clean coal and other field. The two sides can also cooperate in railway and defence sectors, he added. "As vibrant democracies, we also share views on the need to adopt a comprehensive and principled stance against the scourge of terrorism. We agree on the need for the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN," the vice president said. Ansari said that Indian cultural festivals would be organised in various cities of Poland. Polish Prime Minister Sysdlo appreciated India's growing influence and the progress made by it. "We can expand our trade relation in various sector. We hope to export apples to India and increase our cooperation in agriculture field," she said. India has close economic ties with Poland. Indian investments in Poland amount to around USD 3 billion and Polish investments in India are of about USD 600 million. "Our cooperation will be mutually beneficial. We hope to expand our cooperation in mining sector. We have rich experience in mining sector in cutting edge technology," the Polish prime minister said. "We also hope to cooperate in civil aviation and defence sector," she said. Vice President Hamid Ansari and Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo at the signing of MoUs following delegation level talks in Warsaw, Poland. Photograph: PIB The Central Reserve Polcie Force is set to overhaul its anti-Naxal operations in the south Bastar region of Chhattisgarh in the aftermath of one of the biggest attacks on the force in the state on Monday and a fresh offensive is expected to launched soon. Twenty-five jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force were slaughtered near Burkapal village of Sukma district in the ambush by Naxals on April 24 while 12 men of the para-military force were killed in an earlier attack near Bheji village in the same district on March 11. Two days after the Monday attack, the Centre is reported to have asked security forces on the ground to go on an "all- out offensive" against the Maoists and "show results in the next few weeks." Acting Director General of the CRPF, Sudeep Lakhtakia said that the latest attack has "naturally called for the revision of standard operating procedures" in the Naxal-hit areas. He said the force has decided to undertake new measures as it will continue to secure the road construction work that helps to bring development to the remote areas of central India. "We have decided to change the strategy. We have learnt some lessons. While I cannot go into the details, I can tell you that we will undertake re-deployment of our forces and will also enhance the quantity and quality of special counter-insurgency operations," Lakhtakia said, a day after he visited the ambush site in Sukma's Burkapal. The force will have to ensure that the enemy does not attempt any surprises on it. "We track and engage them well before," he said. So, while half of the personnel will do road construction security and other similar tasks, the other half will do special counter-insurgency operations, the acting DG said. He said the new action plan of the force will be to effectively dominate the area. Lakhtakia, however, said in such operations where the troops have to be out in the open for long and the terrain is treacherous, the SOPs and strategies have to be "revised as and when required" and that is what they were doing. The CRPF has deployed a total of 28 battalions in Chhattisgarh with ten of those in the Bastar region alone. A regular CRPF battalion comprises about 1,000 personnel. Lakhtakia said a preliminary analysis of the April 24 ambush spot indicated that the four sections of the CRPF men were separated by a distance of about 600-750 metres with bullets flying around. "The Naxals were tracking the troops... They attacked the men after deciding the time and place of the attack. They used human shields of local villagers," he said, adding apparently the personnel were having their lunch when the first assault took place. "The sequence of the events will take some time to construct... An inquiry is already in progress and that will tell us more," he said. Establishing if any violation of SOPs took place or any other lapses occurred will only come up after the inquiry is completed, he said. Lakhtakia said the reports of possible mutilation of bodies of some jawans is yet to be ascertained. Senior officials engaged in anti-Naxal fight, meanwhile, said some special operations, under the command of the elite jungle warfare unit of the CRPF -- CoBRA -- will soon be launched in the south Bastar region including Sukma, Dantewada, Kondagaon, Bijapur and Jagdalpur areas. The troops will be serviced with a dedicated air support of at least four choppers based in the vicinity of these areas and a fleet of three unmanned aerial vehicles. The UAVs undertake long haul sorties from their base in Bhilai in the state over the forests of Bastar and around the southern tip of the state that borders Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Image used for representational purposes only Separatist leader Asiya Andrabi has been arrested in Srinagar. Andrabi, the founder of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, an Islamist separatist organisation is also a member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The DeM is known for the diktats it issues periodically to the Valley residents on things Andrabi and her brother Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Tayiba leader Hafiz Saeed consider un-Islamic. Andrabi is married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a Hizbul Mujahideen leader, who is now in jail. Few captured militants have confessed that videos of her speeches are shown at terror training camps across the Line of Control. Earlier in 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested Andrabi from her residence in Soura in connection with two cases registered against her -- one for waving the Pakistani flag and other for addressing a rally by Hafiz Saeed via phone in Pakistan. Earlier in the day, two terrorists were killed, while three soldiers lost their lives as an army camp in Kupwaras Panzgam in Jammu and Kashmir was under attack. An officer was among the three army men who were killed in the attack. The location of the under attack-camp is close to the Line of Control. This the second major attack on defence forces in a week, as last Monday as many as 25 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed in an encounter with Naxals in Chhattisgarhs Sukma. The Uttar Pradesh anti-terrorist squad has initiated a "ghar wapsi" campaign to de-radicalise "misguided" persons and 25 youth from various districts are being counselled after a tab was kept on their online activities. The initiative comes after the ATS recently arrested four suspected terrorists from the Islamic State Khorasan module and came across posts, likes and remarks of these youths on social media which showed that they were being radicalised. Keeping in mind the influence of Islamic State sympathisers on youth, the ATS has unveiled a 12-point strategy for the ghar wapsi programme and also announced a helpline number for parents and families who suspect their children or people known to them are getting radicalised online. Security forces have noticed that terror operatives are targeting youngsters between 15 and 25 years of age by inciting communal passions. "The initiative aims at helping families in de-radicalising youngsters, who are often targeted by terror operatives who radicalise them online and use them in carrying out terror activities. We will lend support to such families as part of our de-radicalisation programme," an ATS official said. Two control room numbers of ATS -- 0522-2304588 and 9792103156 -- have also been set up which people can contact for help and the families have been assured that the identities of such youths and their families will be kept a secret. The inspector general of ATS said police will take the help of not only clerics, parents, family members but also friends of such youths and make them understand religion in the right perspective. The youth going for the de-radicalisation programme of ATS, will be engaged in an interaction with police to gain their confidence and the process will be last over one year. Surprise visits have also been planned for such youths to check their activity and the ATS will also help in education and employment of the youth by recommending their names under various government schemes. "As there is no guarantee that the youth may not be radicalised again, the ATS will keep their details with and keep checking their activities randomly," they said. They said the focus of the programme is to target the terror mindset. "The programme aims to show the right path to the misguided youngsters through counselling," the UP ATS said. "Presently ghar-wapsi or de-radicalisation of at least 25 youth from various districts of Uttar Pradesh is already on," IG ATS, Asim Arun said, adding these youths belong to seven districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bijnor and Muzaffarnagar. "The ATS is keeping a tab on online activities and some families would be approached for the de-radicalisation process, if required," he said. "Keeping in mind that they were being influenced by radical propaganda, efforts are being made with the help of their families for their de-radicalisation," a senior ATS official said. The UP ATS had seized some important documents after the March 7 encounter in Lucknow in which a suspected terrorist belonging to an IS module was killed. Following this, the probe was expanded to five states. The ATS had received information that the IS had been expanding its network in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Bihar and some youth from these states had joined the terror organisation. Six others were detained for questioning and during interrogation, it was revealed that their role is negligible and in the absence of adequate proof they were not arrested, they said. The arrested persons had tried to brain wash and subsequently push them on the path of terror. "Many a time, some families feel that one of their members has tread the wrong path and may subsequently opt for the terror route. But they feel helpless. Hence, the families are advised to approach the ATS control room at the earliest. The UP government and UP Police stand with them," an ATS statement said. The programme includes involving misguided youngsters' friend and religious head during the counselling. Efforts will also be made to keep the identity of the misguided youngster a secret and also the counselling process. The programme will be considered to be over after the marriage of the misguided youngster or when his employment has been ensured. "These youngsters will never be used for gathering intelligence or trapping terrorists," the ATS said. The UP ATS had on April 20 arrested four persons -- Mufti Faizan and Tanveer, who are connected with the ISIS and were arrested from Bijnor district. Nazim Shamshad Ahmed, 26, who hails from Bijnor, was nabbed from Thane district adjoining Mumbai and Muzammil from Punjab in a joint operation with others states.It has detained six youths, who were later handed over to their families to facilitate their "de-radicalisation". Voting on Tuesday? Check here to get the information you need A court in Cambodia on Thursday extended by six months the pre-trial detention of five human rights defenders already held for a year on bribery charges in a ruling one detainee described as nothing new from a judiciary he said lacks independence from the countrys government. Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Theam Chanpiseth met with the five detainees and their lawyers at a closed hearing and informed them they would need to remain behind bars while their case is investigated further, citing a need to interview more witnesses. ADHOC officials Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, Nay Vanda, and Lim Mony, and National Election Committee (NEC) deputy secretary-general Ny Chakrya have been held for 12 months at Prey Sar Prison in the capital amid a wide-ranging probe into a purported affair by opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) president Kem Sokha. Authorities charged the ADHOC officials with bribery and the NEC official with accessory to bribery for attempting to keep the Kem Sokhas alleged mistress quiet. Only one witness has been questioned in the case, which is widely seen as politically motivated. Speaking to RFAs Khmer Service after the ruling, Ny Sokha said he had expected the decision. Im not surprised at all by the ruling of this Cambodian court, which is not independent, he said. The court is operated by remote control rather than autonomously. There is nothing new about this. Ny Sokhas son Ny Chansetha also told RFA he had anticipated the extension. The court ruling is the product of a copy and paste approachwhatever the court ruled six months ago has been copied and pasted to this current ruling and nothing is new except a change of the date, he said. I feel very bad and frustrated as there is nothing I can do to help him out. I will simply have to wait and see for another six months. Ny Chakryas lawyer Som Sokong said he could see no justification in holding his client for six months beyond the year already spent behind bars. Detaining charged persons for the purpose of holding hearings is bad policy and also infringes on their rights, he said. They should be entitled to expeditious trial proceedingsthey cant be detained just for the sake of the hearings. According to the Phnom Penh Post, a court clerk told local media on Wednesday that a judge had already decided to extend the detention of the five, though he denied having said so hours later. The Post cited defense lawyers as saying that the apparent mistake was evidence that the continued detention of their clients was a foregone conclusion. It quoted Adhoc lawyer Lor Chunty as calling Thursdays extension unreasonable because in the last six months there has been little investigation. International attention On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch called on the Cambodian government to immediately release the five detainees, which it said had been falsely charged. Cambodias donors should publicly call for the release and dropping of bogus charges against the ADHOC Five, which were instigated by Prime Minister Hun Sen to intimidate and suppress human rights work, Human Rights Watch Asia director Brad Adams said in a statement. These human rights defenders are in jail as part of a campaign to destroy the opposition and scare Cambodian human rights workers into silence. The statement by Human Rights Watch came as the detainees were collectively named as a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award, which provides protection and support to human rights defenders deemed at risk. The award will be presented on Oct. 10 in Geneva. Reported by Samnang Rann for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. The new Oslo Airport was officially opened today as Norways main airport. The increased capacity is at approx. 32 million passengers annually. The Minister of Transport and Communications and the CEO of Avinor tied together a ribbon, to symbolise that "Avinor ties Norway together". Solvik-Olsen told the attendees that Norways main airport is important to the whole nation. "Norway depends on a well-functioning main airport. We now have a large international airport that will be the pride of the entire nation. This is a state-run flagship project that has been on schedule and within budget. Avinor can safely be proud of the work put into this expansion", says Solvik-Olsen. Since construction began in 2011, there has been great focus on not letting the expansion work affect the passengers and airlines. This has been challenging, as Oslo Airport has experienced an increase in traffic each year, and surpassed 25 million passengers in 2016. "This is an important day for Norwegian aviation, and we are very proud of the new Oslo Airport. We are happy that it was delivered on time and within budget, while maintaining a high quality. The thousands of people that have worked day and night since the resolution to expand was made in the spring of 2011 deserve a big round of applause", says Avinor Chairman, Ola Mrkved Rinnan. Avinor CEO Dag Falk-Petersen said, "We have invested NOK 14 billion in this expansion, and it will make Norway more competitive on an international level. It is important for Norway to have a well-functioning hub, which Oslo Airport is to us, and the profit from this is used to finance the rest of the Norwegian aviation network", says Falk-Petersen and adds: The airport has almost doubled in size, and the gates have been renamed. This means that even experienced Norwegian travellers should pay close attention to the signs. Facts about the new Oslo Airport: Capacity: 32 million passengers annually New areas: 117,000 square metres Total area: 265,000 square metres New gates: 11 new jet bridged gates New remote aircraft parking spaces: 10 Number of restaurants: 37 Number of kiosks: 10 Number of shops: 21 Police in Hong Kong on Thursday arrested nine pro-democracy activists in what rights groups and pan-democratic politicians said is an ongoing purge of dissenting voices in the former British colony. The activists, who include the chairman of a social democratic party and two members of a new political party formed by student leaders of the 2014 democracy movement, were arrested on charges of "unlawful assembly" and other public order offenses in relation to a Nov. 6 anti-Beijing demonstration. "On that day, I saw that the police were hitting demonstrators with batons, so I went to get in their way," League of Social Democrats (LSD) member Dickson Chau told RFA following his arrest. "But I have no idea right now which of my actions would have led the police to bring these charges against me," he said. Derek Lam, of the political party Demosisto formed by former leaders of the 2014 Occupy Central movement, said he believes the move is part of a political "clean-up" operation ahead of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China on July 1. "The current administration is doing a clean-up operation before the new administration [of chief executive-elect Carrie Lam] takes office on July 1," Lam told RFA. "They are detaining a number of people who have been fairly active protesters in recent years, so as to be able to place more restrictions on them, for example, relating to bail." "This will make it harder for democrats and progressives to engage in any protests around July 1," Lam said. "As for the localists and the pro-independence activists, you can expect a much stronger operation against them in the weeks to come." Traditional freedoms eroded Growing talk of independence has coincided with the erosion of Hong Kong's traditional freedoms of speech, publication, and judicial independence in recent years and a stalled timetable for full democracy. Some 40 percent of young people support the idea, compared with around 70 percent who oppose it across all age groups, according to recent opinion polls. According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, the move is the latest in a string of actions taken by the city's government to "punish dissenting voices," especially those who disagree with the political future mapped out for Hong Kong by Beijing. "The repeated use of vague charges against prominent figures in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement reeks of an orchestrated and retaliatory campaign by the authorities to punish those that advocate for democracy in Hong Kong," Amnesty International's Hong Kong director Mabel Au said in statement. "The Hong Kong government should be protecting freedom of expression and peaceful assembly but instead it appears intent on intimidating people who are challenging the authorities," Au said. "Arrests and prosecutions aimed at shutting down participation in peaceful protests must stop," she said. LSD chairman Avery Ng, fellow LSD member Chan Man-wai, and Sammy Ip and Lo Tak-cheong of Student Fight For Democracy were among those arrested, and then released on bail, on Thursday. Demosisto's Ivan Lam, Chow Shu-wing of the activist group People Power, and former Lingnan University student union leader Cheng Pui-lun were also arrested. 'Unlawful assembly' The arrests came a day after police arrested two pro-independence former lawmakers-elect, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung, for "unlawful assembly" after the courts disqualified them from office for changing the wording of their oaths of allegiance on Oct. 12. Their charges were related to scuffles during their unsuccessful attempts to re-enter the city's Legislative Council (LegCo) to retake their oaths. All nine activists arrested Thursday had taken part in a demonstration outside Beijings Liaison Office on the night of Nov. 6 in protest over Beijing's intervention in the row over Yau and Leung's oaths. Avery Ng said he was charged with "incitement to public disorder," while Demosisto's Derek Lam said he faces the same charge, accusing the government of "rounding up" potential protest leaders ahead of an official celebration marking the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule on July 1. Other activists face charges of "unlawful assembly" or "obstructing a police officer in the course of duty," although the demonstration was reportedly peaceful. LSD LegCo member and veteran social activist Leung Kwok-hung said the move was part of a campaign of "political persecution" ahead of the anniversary. "The president of the PRC, Mr Xi Jinping, surely will pay a visit during the 20th anniversary of the handover," Leung told reporters. "I think this is typical political persecution. [These are] political prosecutions in order to threaten the Hong Kong people who are willing to come out and voice the demand of universal suffrage." 'A political prosecution' Demosisto lawmaker and former Occupy Central student leader Nathan Law agreed. "[This] is a political prosecution," he said. "The reason why we had to have a rally is that the Beijing government is brutally interfering in Hong Kong's internal issues by interpreting the Basic Law." "It is impossible to have reconciliation during this kind of political suppression ... We will continue to fight for democracy," he said. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Holden Chow dismissed accusations of a politically motivated "purge." "The opposition camp loves to say it's political persecution whenever charges are brought against its members, but I don't agree," Chow said. "I think that the justice department brings charges in a professional and independent manner ... and that [these allegations] are unfair." Democratic Party lawmaker James To said he also believes there is a strong likelihood of a visit from President Xi on July 1. "I think the Chinese leadership is hoping to create a chilling effect [ahead of a visit by Xi]," To said. "They are hoping to achieve a huge reduction in the number and size of opposition protests, especially the more vociferous ones." "I don't believe that the police have only now finished up what they had to do. I think there is some high-level official involvement here, based on my knowledge of police work," he said. Approach could backfire And Maya Wang, China researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Hong Kong, said the "heavy-handed" approach of the authorities could backfire, pointing to the 2014 Occupy movement. "It is ironic that, as the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China approaches, the territory's autonomy looks increasingly fragile," Wang was quoted by Hong Kong government broadcaster RTHK as saying. Hong Kong has hit a new low in global press freedom rankings, amid growing concern over Beijing's growing control over the city. Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) placed the city 73rd in its 2017 Press Freedom Index, saying the city may be looking at "the beginning of the end of one country, two systems," which promised the maintenance of its traditional freedoms under the terms of the handover agreement. Reported by Lam Kwok-lap for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. China, a global leader in censorship operations, remains near the bottom of global press freedom rankings, the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its annual report, amid a global "tipping point" for the freedom of information. Calling the head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping, the world's "leading censor and press freedom predator," RSF said Xi had succeeded in establishing total control over news coverage in China, which is now ranked 176th out of 180 nations for press freedom. More than 100 journalists and bloggers are currently behind bars in China, including three former winners of RSF press freedom awards: Huang Qi, founder of the Sichuan-based rights website Tianwang, and bloggers Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu. Li Tingyu, who has been held in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture Detention Center on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" since last June, was recently tried in secret by the Dali People's Court on April 20, according to her lawyer Ge Yongxi. Li was detained at the same time as her boyfriend Lu Yuyu, who ran a blog under the social media handle @wickedonnaa, but her case is being dealt with separately from his and she may be handed a suspended jail term in return for a "confession," Ge said. Ge said both bloggers, who compiled meticulous, publicly available lists of more than 30,000 "mass incidents" that never get reported in the country's tightly controlled state media, are innocent. "There's really nothing to see here," he said. "All they did was research the facts." Li was forced under intense political pressure to drop out of a translation and interpretation degree at Guangzhou's prestigious Zhongshan University after publishing articles out of the reach of Chinese government internet censors. A former migrant worker, Lu had been previously detained for short periods in Shanghai and Guangzhou for "illegal assembly," and began compiling statistics of public protests and unrest in October 2012 under the title Fei Xinwen, or "Not the News." A relative of Li's who declined to be named said she is expected to be released soon, but declined to give further details. Lu, on the other hand, may face tougher treatment if he refuses to "confess," his lawyer Huang Simin told RFA. But both lawyers said that even if Li is released from detention, she may yet face very strong curbs on her freedom. 'No improvement' During the past two years, citizen journalists, bloggers, and human rights activists, including foreign ones, have been arrested and forced into "confession," RSF said in its report, carried on its website. "There has been no improvement in the press freedom situation in China, which is now 176th in the rankings," RSF's East Asia director Benjamin Ismail said. "As the Chinese Communist Party tries to promote its global clout in terms of trade and economic influence, it is at the same time stepping up its persecution domestically of journalists, bloggers and human rights lawyers," Ismail said. By contrast, the democratic island of Taiwanwhich China claims as an inalienable part of its territorycame top in regional press rankings, in 45th place overall, two spots below the United States. Meanwhile, China's neighbor and Stalinist ally North Korea ranked last. The country's "totalitarian regime continues to keep its citizens in a state of ignorance and fear of being sent to a concentration camp for listening to radio broadcasts from outside the country," RSF said. It said the latest index highlights the danger of a "tipping point" in the state of media freedom, especially in leading democratic countries. It said the U.S. fell from 41st to 43rd position, while the U.K. also dropped two places from 38th to 40th. In both cases RSF cited an "obsession with surveillance and violations of the right to the confidentiality of sources." Reported by Xi Wang for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Ng Yik-tung and Sing Man for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Thirteen farmers staged a protest in the Myanmar capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday to demand compensation for farmlands seized in 2007 and 2015, seizures they said did not follow proper legal procedures. The protesters said that in the Hteechaint Township in the Saigaing region of northwestern Myanmar in 2015, 31 farmers had 130 acres of lands confiscated to build the Great Wall sugar factory. In 2007 in the same area, more than 3,000 acres held by 130 farmers were confiscated for the Takaung Nickle Mine. And in 2009, a businessman connected to the then ruling military junta seized 20 acres from 26 farmers without any compensation to build a jetty that never got completed. When they confiscated our lands in 2015, they said it was for a state project, but actually, it was for a private factory, said Tin Ngwe, a farmer from Maunggone Village in Hteechaint township, who lost land for the sugar factory. They said they would pay us some money and they would confiscate our lands whether we accepted their money or not. They even threatened us that we will be arrested if we dont let them work on these lands, he told RFA. The farmers were also miffed that lands confiscated for Great Wall sugar factory were worth 500,000 kyat per acre at the time, but they received only 150,000 kyat per acre. Factory fumes also sickened villagers who lived nearby. Our lands were confiscated in 2008-2009 for the Takaung Nickle Mine, said Sein Min, also from Maunggone village. It was not done according to the 1894 Land Acquisition Act or the 1953 Land Acquisition Act. As it was in military government period, we could not say anything and the authorities didnt let us say anything. It was not done according to law, the farmer told RFA. The military junta governed Myanmar, formerly called Burma, from a 1962 coup until 2011, when a quasi-democratic government took over. That government gave way to a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi last year. Myint Hlaing, another Maunggone village farmer, said he turned out to protest Wednesday over the seizure of more than 20 acres from 26 farmers without any compensation to build a jetty. We asked for compensation for our lands as we depended on these lands to survive. We wanted about 500,000 kyat per acre, but they said they would give us nothing, he told RFA. It was during General Than Shwes government term and the businessman who confiscated our lands is General Than Shwes son-in-law, he said. Than Shwe was head of state from 1992-2011. They couldnt do their project, but they fenced off that land. Although they are not doing anything on the land, we cant work on them, said Myint Hlaing, adding that the farmers faced punishment if they try to work the seized parcel. The protesting farmers called on central government authorities to resolve their land problems, but said they hadnt received a response as of late on Wednesday. Reported by Win Naung Toe and Wai Mar Tun for RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Tibetan advocacy organizations and international rights groups called this week on China to release a high-ranking Tibetan religious figure taken into custody 22 years ago and held incommunicado ever since. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, now 28 years old, was detained together with his family by Chinese authorities in 1995 after he was identified by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibets second most-senior Buddhist monk. A Beijing-backed candidate, Gyaincain Norbu, was then installed by China in his place, and remains unpopular among Tibetans. Nothing has been learned of the fate of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima since he vanished with his family in detention, and requests by the United Nations and other international agencies and human rights organizations to visit him have consistently been refused by Beijing. Speaking in an interview with RFA's Tibetan Service, Dardon Sharlinga secretary of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Dharamsala, India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA)described the Panchen Lama's continued disappearance as the "greatest representation of China's overall policy toward Tibet and Tibetans." "The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance has told CTA officials that the issue of the Panchen Lama remains an 'unresolved case,'" Sharling said. China's refusal to allow the young lama to fulfill his traditional role is a "huge loss not only for the Panchen Lama himself but also for Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan people," Sonam Gyaltsena professor of history at the College of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarah, in Dharamsalatold RFA. "Getting a proper spiritual education is the most important cause for a reincarnated lama to be able to continue the work of his predecessor," Gyaltsen said. 'Serious international crime' In an open letter released on April 25, the Panchen Lamas birthday, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner Tenzin Dorjee chose words that spoke directly to Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, voicing his sadness that the missing Panchen Lama may never read his words. Ever since you were abducted as a young child at the age of six, the Chinese government has refused to share even basic information about you and your whereabouts, Dorjee wrote. Please know that I think about you every day, and as each year passes, my resolve to find you and restore you to your rightful role becomes stronger. The continued detention of the Panchen Lama in secret is an act of enforced disappearance, the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) added in a statement this week. [This] is a serious international crime that violates multiple human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major international human rights instruments, TCHRD said. TCHRD calls on the Chinese government to end the enforced disappearance of the Panchen Lama and allow him to live like a normal human being with all the basic rights such as life, livelihood, and [freedom of] movement, the rights group said. Interference from Beijing The selection of reincarnate lamas in Tibetan areas of China is now subject to approval by Beijing, with high-ranking religious teachers often cultivated by the government as patriotic lamas-politically reliable figures who will not call for Tibetan independence from Chinese rule. China is now keen to engineer a process that produces a pro-Beijing monk as the next Dalai Lama when the present holder of the title, now 81, eventually passes away. Without any recognition from the Dalai Lama, the Chinese authorities can never be able to put the stamp of legitimacy to their selection of any religious leader, whether it is the Panchen Lama or a future Dalai Lama, Bhuchung Tsering, vice president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in an April 25 statement. China might want to have its own version of Rule by Incarnation, Tsering said. But it is the will of the believers that will really matter. The earlier the Chinese authorities realize this, the better it will be for them. Reported by Urgyen Tenzin for RFA's Tibetan Service. Translated by Kalden Lodoe. Written in English by Richard Finney. Authorities in northwestern Chinas Qinghai province have released a Tibetan monk handed a 10-year prison term for his role in protests that swept Tibetan areas of China in 2008, a source in India said. Choktrin Gyatso, 44 and a monk of Tsang monastery in Gepasumdo (in Chinese, Tongde) county in the Tsolho (Hainan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture was released on April 15 after serving nine years of his sentence, Dorjee Tsering of the Dharamsala-based GuChuSum Association, an advocacy group for Tibetan political prisoners, told RFAs Tibetan Service. [Gyatso] arrived back at his home at around midnight on April 15, Tsering said, citing contacts in the Gepasumdo area. Judging by his photos, his health appears to be okay. There seem to be no special concerns about him now, Tsering added. News of Gyatsos release from prison was briefly delayed in reaching outside contacts because of strict communications clampdowns imposed by Chinese authorities in the area. Together with two other Tsang monastery monksKhedrup Gyatso and Tsesang-Choktrin Gyatso was detained by authorities for leading protests in April 2008 against Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, Tsering said. Tsesang, who was sentenced to nine years and held in Deyang prison near [Qinghais provincial capital] Xining, was released early and sent home, Tsering said. Khedrup Gyatso, who was given a 10-year term, was freed in poor health in March 2016 having suffered severe beatings in detention that disfigured his face and damaged his eyes, sources told RFA in earlier reports. Reported by Lobe Socktsang for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. Dozens of ethnic Uyghurs from a small village in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region, including several sets of siblings, have been swept up in a recent crackdown on illegal religious activities after they attended lectures by unsanctioned imams, according to local officials. At least 52 Uyghurs in Tomosteng townships No. 2 village, in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefectures Yarkand (Shache) county, have been arrested under related charges, the 140-household villages party secretary Ablet Hekim told RFAs Uyghur Service in an interview earlier this week. Of those arrests, 39 were the result of a recent sweep by local authorities, Hekim said, adding that 35 are now in jail and the remaining fourall of whom are unofficial imams that the state does not recognizehave been sent for political reeducation. The other 13 have been serving sentences since previous sweeps during the 2000s, according to the party secretary. This week we have handed down verdicts for 13 out of the 35 [now held in jail] and delivered the official notices to their families, door to door, Hekim said. Sentences for the 13 ranged from two-and-a-half to 10 years in prison. The 35 listened to illegal religious sermons at least two times, because we usually only warn one-time listeners and let them go, he said. According to Hekim, the sermons did not contain any sensitive references to dividing the country or anti-government rhetoric often linked to unsanctioned religious activities. They were sentenced simply because they had listened to sermons by the unofficial imam Abdukerim at an unauthorized venue [outside of a government sanctioned-mosque], he said. Hekim provided RFA with a list of all 35 Uyghurs held amid the crackdown, as well as their ages. Among the 35, three womenBuhelish Nur, Heyrinsa Ehmet and Patima Seyittursunwere punished for inviting people to attend the sermons, he said. At least five sets of siblings were jailed as part of the recent sweep, including brothers Ahmat, Tursun and Imin Zayit, as well as sister and brother Nurimangul and Memet Talip. Ahmat Zayits family has no one of working age left at home, so there is no one maintaining their fields, he Hekim said. His kids have been taken in by his nephews family. Report of arrest RFA obtained confirmation of the 52 arrests in No. 2 village while investigating a report published last week by exile Uyghur website Hoylam.com, which claimed that a 73-year-old Uyghur woman named Helchihan Hoshur was detained after making disparaging comments about Chinese policies during a self-criticism session in Tomosteng townships neighboring No. 7 village. Party secretaries from three different villages in Tomosteng township, including No. 3 village chief Qembernisa Hashim, were unable to confirm Hoshurs detention. We do not have anybody like thatall the detainees in our village are males, Hashim told RFA, without providing details about the detainees there. We would have recognized her, since we conduct a lot of political educational work with her family members. RFA was unable to confirm the identities of the male detainees from No. 7 village or the reason for their arrests. China has vowed to crack down on what it calls religious extremism in Xinjiang, and regularly conducts strike hard campaigns including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material. While China blames Uyghur extremists for terrorist attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009. Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Serbian activists for gay and lesbian rights organized a demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in Belgrade on April 26 to protest the abuse of gay men in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Standing in silence, twenty activists held a rainbow flag and banners written in Serbian, Russian, and English with messages such as "Prison for (Vladimir) Putin and (Ramzan) Kadyrov," "LGBT rights are human rights," "Solidarity with the oppressed in Russia," and " Stop the violence against LGBT." According to media reports, the Chechen authorities have detained more than 100 gay men and held some in a camps where they were subject to beatings and torture. At least three were killed and many have sought to escape Chechnya. While international watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch have corroborated the allegations, the authorities in Chechnya, headed by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, have denied them. The protest in Belgrade was monitored by police officers but it ended peacefully. Two U.S. soldiers have been killed in fighting against an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Afghanistans eastern province of Nangarhar, the U.S. military says. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis on April 27 said the soldiers were killed during an operation on April 26 against ISIS Khorasan, an IS affiliate that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. forces have been battling IS-linked militants in Nangarhar Province, where they have established themselves to battle against Afghan government forces. On April 13, the U.S. military dropped its most powerful nonnuclear weapon ever used in combat, killing, it said, 94 fighters in what was suspected to be a major militant command center in Nangarhar Province. CNN cited a U.S. official as saying the two soldiers killed on April 26 were members of the U.S. Special Forces and that another soldier had been wounded during the fighting in Nangarhar's southern district of Achin. The Pentagon said the soldiers were killed during a raid carried out jointly with Afghan government forces. Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan has confirmed that communication channels between the United States and Russia remain open despite the war in Ukraine, the BBC reports. Sullivan, speaking in New York on November 7, said it was "in the interests" of Washington to maintain contact with the Kremlin. Sullivan's comments came after a report in The Wall Street Journal on November 6 that he had held undisclosed talks with top Russian officials in the hope of reducing the risk the Russian invasion of Ukraine spills over or escalates into a nuclear conflict. 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. A previous media report, in The Washington Post, said Washington was privately encouraging Ukraine to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia, as the State Department said Moscow was escalating the war and did not seriously wish to engage in peace talks. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said the request by U.S. officials was not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, but a calculated attempt to ensure Kyiv maintains the support of other countries. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told RFE/RL it was absurd to suggest that Western countries that are supplying Ukraine with weapons would push Kyiv to negotiate on Moscow's terms. "Ukraine receives from its partners, first of all from the United States, quite effective weapons," he said. "We are pushing the Russian Army out of territory. And against this background, forcing us to the negotiation process, and in fact to recognize the ultimatum of the Russian Federation, is nonsense! And no one will do that." He said suggestions the West was pushing Ukraine to negotiate were part of Russia's "information program," though he did not directly rebut a report in The Washington Post. Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on November 7 that he was open to talks with Russia, but only "genuine" negotiations that would restore Ukraine's borders, grant it compensation for Russian attacks, and punish those responsible for war crimes. Zelenskiy signed a decree on October 4 formally declaring the prospect of any Ukrainian talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin "impossible" but leaving the door open to talks with Russia. Sullivan told a public event in New York that the Biden administration had "an obligation to pursue accountability" and pledged to work with international partners to "hold the perpetrators of grave and grotesque war crimes in Ukraine responsible for what they have done." Sullivan did not elaborate on the communication channels that Washington and Moscow maintained, but insisted that U.S. officials were "clear-eyed about who we are dealing with," the BBC reported. Sullivan travelled to Kyiv on November 4 and pledged Washington's "unwavering and unflinching" support for Ukraine. His unannounced visit coincided with an announcement the same day by the U.S. Defense Department of another shipment of weapons to Ukraine worth $400 million. "I was just in Kyiv on Friday and I had the opportunity to meet with President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy and my counterpart Andriy Yermak, with the military leadership and also to get a briefing on just what level of death and devastation has been erupted by Putin's war on that country," Sullivan was quoted by the BBC as saying on November 7. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the U.S. media reports. "I've seen those reportings. So, you know -- and, look, people claim a lot of things about conversations that we -- that the United States has or doesn't have," Jean-Pierre told a news briefing on November 7. "I don't have any specific conversations to read out to you." The secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said on November 8 that the "main condition" for the resumption of negotiations with Russia would be the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity. Danilov said on Twitter that Ukraine also needed the "guarantee" of modern air defenses, aircraft, tanks, and long-range missiles. According to the report in The Wall Street Journal, Sullivan held confidential conversations in recent months with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev that were not disclosed publicly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on November 7 that while Russia remained "open" to talks, it was unable to negotiate with Kyiv due to its refusal to hold talks with Russia. With reporting by Reuters Education is among the top priorities for parents who are cutting household expenses and luxuries to pay for their children's tuition fees. For expat parents however, this can be a little more challenging than usual. By sending their child to an international school, expats choices are already more limited by default. And it turns out some cities are much more expensive than others. Here is a new study that reveals the cheapest cities to get your child an international education and how the prices for international schools compared with the overall cost of living in each city. Expatistan, the cost of living comparisons website for expats, analyzed international education costs around the world and we found something surprising. While the cities that topped the most expensive end of the list won't come as a shock to many (Shanghai, Singapore and Seoul all made the top 10, as did three cities in Switzerland), three at the lower end will. Some of the cheapest cities to get your child an international education include Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Abu Dhabi. Expatistan compared the prices of international schools with the prices for the typical monthly rent for expats in the same cities. For this comparison, Expatistan calculated the price of international schools as a percentage of rent prices. So, a 50% figure would mean that fees for the typical international school in that city would cost 50% of the price of one month's rent for the typical expat family. The results were interesting: In Shanghai for example, monthly international education costs, at an average, $2,783 for one child. Since China's global education ranking is steadily rising year on year, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. Until you compare it with the cost of living there, of course. When it is compared the cost of one month of tuition in an international school in Shanghai with the cost of the typical monthly rent there ($2,027), you can see that it would be 137% - more expensive than rent by a huge 37%! If you're an expat in Shanghai and have to shoulder the full cost of schooling yourself (instead of as part of an expat package, for example), don't expect to have much disposable income per month. Contrast this with Copenhagen, where the cost of education (only $345 per month) is just 17% of the typical monthly rent for expats (which is $2,018). If you're wondering how international education can be so affordable in a not-so-cheap nation like Denmark, it's because (long story short) government-approved private schools, including international schools, often receive the same amount of government funding as public ones. According to the Expatistans study, in the majority of cities both costs tend to go hand-in-hand, which means that cheaper cities tend to have cheaper tuition fees while more expensive cities also have more expensive international schools. This could suggest that international schools do not only depend on generous expat packages paid by big companies; they also (and often mostly) depend on locals and expats on locally-indexed salaries. This would explain why their prices fall in line with the local cost-of-living for expats. Estonia was getting hacked by Russia long before it was cool. In fact, a decade ago today the era of cyberwarfare began in earnest with a massive Kremlin-backed denial-of-service attack that hit the websites of Estonian banks, media organizations, corporations, and government ministries. It was a harbinger and it was a warning. Estonia was also the target of hybrid warfare long before anybody was even using that term. Ten years ago this week, ethnic Russians, encouraged by Moscow, rioted in the streets of Tallinn; and members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi blockaded the Estonian Embassy in Moscow. The cyberattacks and the rioting were ostensibly in response to Estonia's decision to relocate a Soviet World War II monument from the center of Tallinn. But in reality, the Kremlin was sending a message to its neighbors and to the West that it was ready to play hardball. And it was also a test drive of strategies and tactics that would later be deployed in Georgia, Ukraine, and in points much farther to the West. All the elements we've come to know all too well were there -- the manufactured crisis, the dramaturgy, the hacking, the use of ethnic-Russian proxies, the plausible deniability, and the disinformation. A decade ago, Estonia was the target of Web War I and Hybrid War I. And ever since, we've all been living with the sequels. Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. Estonia's defense minister says Russia may use large-scale military exercises to move thousands of troops permanently into Belarus later this year in a warning to NATO. Russia and Belarus intend to hold joint military exercises in September which some NATO members believe could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training. It would be the most extensive such exercise since 2013. Defense Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia and other NATO governments obtained intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus. Tsahkna mentioned plans to send 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus to transport Russian troops and equipment, and possibly to set up a military outpost on the territory of its closest ally. "For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told the Reuters news agency in an interview in Malta before a meeting of EU defense ministers. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analysing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises," he said. Russias Defense Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017. Based on reporting by Reuters Over the past five years, Iranian officials and state media have touted the "indigenous" ingenuity in the Islamic republic's mass-produced Mohajer-6 combat drone, which Russia has deployed in its war against Ukraine. But a new investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, has found that electronic components underpinning Tehran's production of the Mohajer-6 are far from homegrown. The Mohajer-6 drones contain components produced by companies from the United States and the European Union, both of which have sanctions restricting the export to Iran of such technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes dual-use technology. The presence of these components in the Mohajer-6 does not mean their producers are in violation of U.S. or EU sanctions, and RFE/RL does not have evidence that this is the case. The investigation also found Mohajer-6 components produced in China, including a real-time mini-camera made by a Hong Kong firm that said it was "very sorry" that its products were being used in war. At least one major foreign-produced component of the Mohajer-6 has previously been identified by reporters in a Mohajer-6 recovered from the battlefield by the Ukrainian military: an engine made by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Bombardier Recreational Products. But Ukrainian intelligence assesses that the Iranian combat drone contains components from nearly three dozen different technology companies based in North America, the EU, Japan, and Taiwan, the Schemes investigation has found. A majority of these companies are based in the United States. A Schemes reporter who personally inspected the foreign-made drone parts identified components produced by at least 15 of these manufacturers. These include parts made by the U.S. technology firm Texas Instruments, which said in a statement that it does not sell into Russia or Iran and complies with applicable laws and regulations. To identify these components, Schemes reporters examined parts of the Mohajer-6 drone that the Ukrainian military shot down over the Black Sea near the Mykolayiv region coastal town of Ochakiv. They also reviewed Ukrainian intelligence records on the sources of these components. The drone also contains a microchip bearing the logo of a California technology company and a thermal-imaging camera that Ukrainian intelligence says may have been produced by a firm based in Oregon or China. Both Western officials and experts on illicit technology transfers say Iran has built a broad, global procurement network using front companies and other proxies in third countries to obtain dual-use technology from the United States and the EU. "Exporters will look at the request coming from the [United Arab Emirates] or another third country, and they'll think that they're selling to an end user based there, when really the end user is in Iran," Daniel Salisbury, a senior research fellow with the Department of War Studies at King's College London, told RFE/RL. In September, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions specifically targeting Iranian companies that Washington links to the production and transfer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia for deployment in its war on Ukraine. Fighting rages with no sign of an end more than eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion on February 24. "Non-Iranian, non-Russian entities should also exercise great caution to avoid supporting either the development of Iranian UAVs or their transfer, or sale of any military equipment to Russia for use against Ukraine," U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement announcing the sanctions. Chinese Cameras, California Chips Development of the Mohajer-6, the latest model in a series of drones Tehran has used since the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, began in 2017, while mass production began the following year. During a ceremony commemorating the Islamic Revolution, then-Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said that the new tactical drone could perform surveillance, reconnaissance, as well as help destroy targets. Hatami extolled what he described as the drones domestic design, a portrayal echoed in later reports by Iranian media. "The homegrown drone was made through cooperation among the army, Defense Ministry, and Quds Aviation Industries," the English-language Tehran Times quoted an Iranian military official as saying in July 2019. The dismantling of the Mohajer-6 drone recovered by the Ukrainian military shows that the UAV is packed with foreign components. One of these parts is a bright-orange real-time mini-camera produced by the Hong Kong-based company RunCam Technology. Documents seen by Schemes show that Ukrainian intelligence has also identified RunCam as the producer of the camera, which likely assists in remote guidance of the drone. Founded in 2013, RunCam is involved in the development and production of so-called "first-person-view" real-time cameras. "Our users are our friends," the company's website states. The site says that RunCam has two authorized Iranian dealers. Reached by Schemes for comment about the use of its camera in the Iranian drone deployed by Russia in its war on Ukraine, RunCam said in an e-mailed response: "We are very sorry to know that RunCam's products were used in warfare. RunCam is specialized in producing products for model aircraft hobby. We never contact any customer related to military." The provenance of the Mohajer-6 drone-s thermal-imaging camera is more difficult to determine. A Ukrainian intelligence assessment reviewed by Schemes indicates it could be the Ventus Hot model produced by Sierra-Olympic Technologies, based in the U.S. state of Oregon, but that it also resembles a cheaper analog available for sale by the Chinese company Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology. Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology said in an e-mailed statement that the company did not "have any business with Iran," because "it will affect our business." The company said it specializes in marine services and is not involved in manufacturing. It also said that it did not have a single successful order for its online advertisement of the thermal-imaging camera resembling the one recovered from the Iranian drone. Sierra-Olympic Technologies did not respond to a request for comment on the possible use of its thermal-imaging cameras in Iranian combat drones in time for publication. Microchips recovered from the drone also featured the logos of the California-based company Linear Technology Corporation and its parent company, the Massachusetts-based semiconductor company Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI). ADI did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the possible use of its technology in the Iranian combat drone. Schemes reporters also observed among the components of the Iranian drone a voltage step-down converter produced by Texas Instruments. The company said in an e-mailed statement that it "does not sell into Russia, Belarus, or Iran." "TI complies with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, and does not support or condone the use of our products in applications they weren't designed for," Texas Instruments said. Schemes reporters also saw several components produced by the California-based technology manufacturer Xilinx, whose parent company is the multinational semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), also based in California. According to Ukrainian intelligence, one of these Xilinx components was integrated into a video data-link module located in the wing of the Mohajer-6 that helped carry out attack missions. "This module transmits information from the board to the missile head. That is, guidance for the missile. With the help of this module, it was possible to guide the missile to the target," a Ukrainian military intelligence representative told Schemes. AMD did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. 'No Authorization' Previous media reports about the components of the Mohajer-6 drone, including by CNN, have shown evidence that its engine was produced by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, whose parent company is the Quebec-based Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP). The Canadian company responded to the reports on October 21, saying in a statement that it "has not authorized and has not given any authorization to its distributors to supply military UAV manufacturers in Iran or Russia." "As soon as we were made aware of this situation, we started an investigation to determine the source of the engines," BRP said. . But Schemes reporters found that the authorized Rotax distributor listed on the Austrian manufacturer's website advertised itself as a Rotax aircraft engines distributor for Iran as recently as December 2020. The distributor, the Italian company Luciano Sorlini S.p.a., has posted multiple magazine advertisements on its websites in which it describes itself as a Rotax distributor for numerous countries. Prior to January 2021, Iran was listed among these countries. The Rotax website also lists a Tehran-based company -- MahtaWing -- as an official service center for its engines. The company, known in Persian as Mahtabal, conducts repairs of Rotax engines, including the Rotax 912 iS, the engine that was found in the Mohajer-6 combat drone recovered in Ukraine. BRP said in an e-mailed statement on November 4 that while Luciano Sorlini S.p.a. is the appointed distributor of Rotax aircraft engines in Iran, "since 2019, no Rotax engines have been sold in Iran, and we will not sell any engines to Iran moving forward." The Canadian company said it had "internal controls" that "significantly" restrict the sale of its products for military purposes. "For example, the sale of any BRP product to operators with any military activity in Iran, Turkey, and Russia is strictly prohibited," BRP said. "We conduct our business in compliance with all EU, Canadian, and U.S. applicable regulations." BRP described the Iranian company MahtaWing as a "local service center" that "offers maintenance services for previously sold aircraft engines." Shahriar Siami of RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report. A French appeals court has rejected Belgrade's request to extradite former Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to Serbia for prosecution on suspicion of war crimes, ordering his release instead. The move sparked outrage in Belgrade, where Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic called the April 27 ruling "a great victory for criminals." Vucic told a news conference his government "considers that the decision of the court is shameful, scandalous, contrary to the law, and deeply unjust -- and that it is, above all, political." He said Serbia's ambassador to France would be recalled for consultations and Belgrade would complain to the United Nations. Vucic said he also discussed the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an April 27 telephone call after the ruling. A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Lavrov called the French court ruling "political" and that "Russia shares Serbia's concern" over the decision to turn down Serbia's extradition request. The statement said: "All Kosovo politicians involved in military crimes must receive the punishment they deserve notwithstanding the posts they currently occupy." The Russian Foreign Ministry also accused France of employing "double standards, which shows a policy of connivance" in the face of what Moscow claims are aspirations in Pristina for Kosovo to become part of a "Greater Albania project." The "Greater Albania" charge refers to allegations that some ethnic Albanian politicians want to bring Kosovo and Albanian together into a single unified country. Moscow said such aspirations threaten to "destroy fragile stability and revive the bloody conflict in the Balkans." Haradinaj, upon his release following the ruling, said the procedure is now closed and Serbias extradition request has been turned down. "I am as of this moment a free man, and I hope I will be able to go back to Kosovo today," Haradinaj told reporters outside the court in the northeastern French city of Colmar. Haradinaj arrived late on April 27 in Kosovos capital, Pristina, where his family and crowds of supporters greeted him at the airport and continued to the city center to hear him speak at Zahir Pajaziti Square. At the square, Haradinaj told a cheering crowd that justice had won with his release, although he said his detention had been unjust. The speech was followed by a fireworks display. Before the April 27 decision, Haradinaj had been released on bail but told he could not leave France while he awaited the ruling. Haradinaj is wanted in Serbia on suspicion of committing war crimes, including kidnappings and torture, when he was a guerrilla commander during Kosovos 1998-99 independence war. The public prosecutor in Colmar has five days to launch an appeal. Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. It is recognized by 114 nations. Unlike France and most other European countries, Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former province. Kosovar President Hashim Thaci said on Facebook that the ruling on Haradinaj was "good news." He said the French court's decision was proof that the "slanders" of Serbia's intelligence services against the Kosovar fighters were "not valid and not taken into consideration by the democratic world." The Kosovar government said in a statement that the French judge's ruling confirmed that Serbian arrest warrants against Haradinaj and other KLA fighters "are political and have low intentions." Haradinaj's lawyer, Rachel Lindon, said on April 27 that the French court ruled against the extradition because he would not have had a fair and balanced trial if sent to Serbia. "He lost 3 1/2 months" of his life waiting for this decision, Lindon told the media, "but happily it's over." She said it is unclear whether he will stay in France. Haradinaj was detained by French authorities on January 4, and the Colmar court the next day ordered him to remain in custody. His arrest had triggered outrage in Kosovo, where the government called the Serbian charges "illegal, unfair, and tendentious." Haradinaj, 48, has been tried twice and acquitted of war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was elected prime minister of Kosovo in 2004 but resigned after 100 days in order to surrender himself for trial in The Hague. In June 2015, he was arrested in Slovenia on a Serbian warrant but was released two days later under diplomatic pressure. The standoff over Haradinaj's detention in France has prompted calls from some officials and politicians in Kosovo to halt EU-mediated normalization talks with Serbia. Normalized bilateral relations are considered a precondition for Serbia and Kosovo to gain EU membership, which both countries seek. But the EU-brokered deal between Belgrade and Pristina to improve and regulate ties between the two states has only been moderately successful. With reporting by AFP and Reuters Latvia has granted citizenship to Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet legend who was born in the Baltic nation when it was part of the Soviet Union but later defected to Canada and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Latvias parliament, the Saeima, said on April 27 that the unanimous decision was made in recognition of Baryshnikov's civic involvement and his "voicing of political beliefs in support of democratic values and human rights." Baryshnikov was born in Riga in 1948 to ethnic Russian parents. He spent 16 years in Latvia and started ballet lessons at the age of 11. He joined the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad in 1964, now known as the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. He defected in 1974 while on tour in Canada and moved to the United States a year later. Baryshnikov returned for the first time to Riga in 1998, after the country gained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. "When the invitation arrived from the Latvian government to take honorary citizenship, I thought what an experience it would be to return to my childhood, no longer as an outsider but as someone who belonged," the 69-year-old Baryshnikov said, speaking in Latvian. As Latvia allows dual citizenship, Baryshnikov will be able to retain his U.S. passport as well. Based on reporting by AF and AFP Scores of nationalist protesters in Macedonia broke through a police cordon and stormed parliament in Skopje after an alliance of Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties approved an ethnic Albanian politician as the speaker of parliament. Protesters severely beat Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, the head of a proposed governing coalition that includes ethnic Albanian parties, while others were also attacked in the building on April 27. (RFE/RL's Balkan Service) EU-Turkey relations have been severely hit by the actions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says. "The developments over the past weeks have severely hit German-Turkish ties as well as European-Turkish relations," Merkel told parliament on April 27. Merkel voiced concerns that a referendum earlier this month on expanding Erdogan's powers was not held under fair conditions. But Merkel said it was "neither in Europe nor Turkey's interest" for either side to turn away from the other. "We will work towards returning to dialogue," she said. Merkel also mentioned Ankara's arrest and treatment of German newspaper correspondent Deniz Yucel as "incompatible with a constitutional state." Yucel, a journalist for the Die Welt daily, a German-Turkish national, was jailed in February on terror charges and is awaiting trial. He is being held in solitary confinement and Germany has been allowed to make only one consular visit so far. Merkel said she would also use a summit with fellow EU leaders in Brussels on May 29 to discuss "which measures would be appropriate" for the bloc to take vis-a-vis Turkey. Relations between Germany and Turkey have worsened over disputes related to a failed coup in July and a subsequent crackdown on alleged conspirators. More Gulen-Related Arrests Merkel's statements came a day after Turkey detained more than 1,000 people accused of suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Erdogan blames for orchestrating the coup. Turkey also temporarily suspended some 9,000 personnel from its police force on April 26. It was one of the largest operations in recent months against the movement that authorities blame for last summer's failed military coup. Police launched simultaneous operations in all of Turkey's 81 provinces, detaining a total of 1,120 people connected to the police force, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. About 8,500 police officers participated in the operation, Anadolu reported. Hours later, 9,103 personnel were temporarily removed from the country's police force while they were being investigated for possible ties to Gulen's movement, the agency reported. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu described the nationwide operations as an important step toward the government's aim of "bringing down" the Gulen movement. The suspects are allegedly Gulen operatives called "secret imams" who are accused of directing followers within the police force. Soylu said the individuals allegedly "infiltrated the police, tried to lead it from the outside by forming an alternative (police) structure." Gulen denies any part in the coup, which was led by military officers. Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Russian antigovernment protesters are planning more mass demonstrations this weekend, after hundreds were arrested in rallies at the end of March. One activist has created a new smartphone app aiming to keep protesters connected if they are detained -- with one touch of the "Red Button." (Reuters, RFE/RL's Russian Service, and RFE/RL's Belarus Service) Alexandre Grant was relaxing in his Moscow hotel room last week, watching one of the cookie-cutter political talk shows on Russian state TV in which pro-Kremlin pundits slap down straw men brought on to defend the West. Grant, a Russian-language journalist who has covered crime in New York for decades, noticed a familiar face among the punching-bag panelists: Gregory Vinnikov, a Soviet emigre who ran a successful travel agency in Manhattan before allegedly stiffing clients and fleeing the country in 2012. "I was very surprised," Grant tells RFE/RL. "But at first I can't see in what capacity he's there. He's talking, defending Trump, explaining why America is right. And then I see written there 'Greg Vainer, Journalist, United States of America.'" Vinnikov's reappearance -- under a new name -- as a pro-American analyst has created a buzz among Russian-language social-media users, including political junkies mocking state-TV tropes and emigrants in the United States recalling claims that he absconded with his clients' money. The furor was kicked up on April 25 when Gennady Katsov, a veteran Russian-language journalist in New York, recounted Grant's discovery in a wry Facebook post noting Vinnikov's scandal-ridden past and his transformation into a Western counterbalance in television debates. "As Grant noted with irony, 'He represented the U.S. position on Russian television commendably,'" Katsov wrote. "After that, who would dare say that Russian television is biased?" Prime-Time Punching Bag Russian political talk shows in recent years have regularly featured analysts and journalists -- including foreigners -- to take on pro-government voices in debates that frequently descend into shouting matches and, sometimes, actual fisticuffs. Perhaps the most recognizable is Michael Bohm, a U.S. political watcher and former opinion editor with The Moscow Times whose demand on such programs skyrocketed in 2013 after he angered his opponents and the audience by calling Russia "primitive" on the issue of gay rights. The respected Russian television critic Irina Petrovksaya earlier this month described Bohm as "a pear being smooshed by repeated blows" during his appearances. Bohm has said he is trying to challenge misconceptions about the United States and U.S. policy. Kremlin supporters defend the shows as an example of free speech, while critics say the format is aimed at giving a veneer of pluralism while legitimizing Kremlin policies. Exactly how Vinnikov, 59, became a go-to foreigner on the Russian political talk-show circuit remains unclear. A native of St. Petersburg, he emigrated to Canada in 1980 and later moved to the United States, where, Grant says, he initially sold frames for eyeglasses by telephone before embarking on a career in journalism. Vinnikov, who did not respond to a Facebook request for comment, later launched a travel agency based in Manhattan that, according to clients and acquaintances, thrived by offering cheap airfare, visas, and hotel bookings. In 2012, however, Vinnikov effectively vanished, allegedly leaving numerous clients in the lurch. Vladimir Kozlovsky, a well-known Russian-language journalist in New York, says he lost $1,000 for a plane ticket he'd purchased through Vinnikov's company. Kozlovsky, who counted Vinnikov as a friend, wrote in 2012 that his disappearance "saddened me deeply." Grant tells RFE/RL that dozens of Vinnikov's clients contacted him after the businessman left for Russia and asked him to help them get a criminal case launched. Brooklyn prosecutors said they didn't have enough evidence to go on but that a civil suit would be possible, Grant says. "It didn't go anywhere," Grant adds, noting that Vinnikov had an excellent business reputation before he left the country. "They didn't have the enthusiasm to pursue it." Katsov, the journalist whose Facebook post this week ignited the commotion over Vinnikov, claimed in a 2012 article that the travel agent had called him, saying he'd put his apartment up for sale and pledging to "return all the money to people." Enter 'Greg Vainer' Vinnikov began making appearances on national Russian television as "Greg Vainer" as early as November 2016, following U.S. President Donald Trump's victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. He has made six appearances on the show Open Studio on the St. Petersburg-based Channel 5, owned by a holding company controlled by Yury Kovalchuk, a longtime associate of Putin who was sanctioned by Washington over Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. During his spots on the show, Vinnikov has pontificated on Ukrainian politics -- taking some light ribbing for boasting that he is Facebook friends with former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk -- as well as on the conflict in Syria and Trump. Vinnikov, whom Open Studio host Inna Karpushina identified as a member of the Republican Party, has repeatedly defended the U.S. president and spoken positively about Trump's policy proposals, including the controversial construction of a wall along the Mexican border. Karpushina did not respond to a request for comment about Vinnikov sent to her account with the popular Russian social-networking site VKontakte. Vinnikov last week also appeared on the popular Sunday evening talk show on state-owned Rossia-1 hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia's most famous television personalities. Vinnikov's appearances on Channel 5 have been largely free of the yelling, interruptions, and stern rebukes that punctuate the most popular political talk shows on the two major state television networks and the Kremlin-loyal network NTV. But Vinnikov got a dose of this debate style in his appearance on the talk show First Studio, broadcast on April 18 on state-owned Channel One. During the program, which was focused largely on Washington's escalating standoff with North Korea, he was shouted down as he argued that the United States was the "guarantor of democracy" in the world. Following Katsov's Facebook post, which was accompanied by a screenshot from Vinnikov's Channel One appearance, Vinnikov took to his own Facebook page to defend his use of the journalist moniker. He posted several links to interviews he'd done more than a decade ago with Russian-language media outlets, including the respected Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy. "I think it's enough to convince of my 30 years of journalistic experience," he wrote. He did not explain why he was using the name "Greg Vainer." Amid the controversy over Vinnikov's reemergence in the public eye, Facebook users recalled both his controversial U.S. business dealings and his new role in the Russian political landscape. One Facebook user claimed to have lost $900 to Vinnikov, but that the businessman still clicks the "like" button on his Facebook posts. The prominent Russian journalist Oleg Kashin, meanwhile, weighed in with: "The new Michael Bohm!" Solovyov, for his part, appeared to defend Vinnikov's credentials, saying on Twitter: "He's an American citizen. Worked in the media in the U.S. So what kind of journalist is he?" Police have searched a Moscow office of Open Russia, an NGO backed by Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, stepping up pressure on the group two days before street protests it's seeking to organize. Activist Maria Baronova said that 15 riot police came to the office at 4 p.m. on April 27 (1200 GMT/UTC) along with several other police. She said they presented no court order and gave no explanation for the search. Open Russia Chairman Aleksandr Solovyov also reported the search on Twitter, saying the police had barred staff members from using their telephones. "Authoritarianism in frontal view and in profile," Khodorkovsky said in a tweet with a photo showing camouflage-clad officers in an office hallway. The search came a day after the Prosecutor-General's Office declared Open Russia to be an "undesirable" organization under a 2015 law the government has used to ban foreign organizations it claims pose a threat to the country. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said the designation applied only to Open Russia entities registered abroad, but the search increased pressure on the organization. Open Russia has called for protests against President Vladimir Putin's government on April 29, seeking to build on anticorruption demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of people into the streets on March 26. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on April 26 that the authorities would react "within the framework of the law" if the unsanctioned rallies went ahead. The March 26 protests were organized by opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who is trying to get on the ballot in March 2018 election in which Putin is expected to seek and win a new six-year term. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest businessman, built up Russia's largest oil company before he was imprisoned on charges his supporters say were trumped up, and the company's assets were stripped away by the state. Khordorkovsky became an exile following his release in 2013 after 10 years in prison and lives in Britain, where he has gradually been building up Open Russia's profile and positioning it as a leading opposition force in Russia. He has called on supporters to back Navalny's presidential bid. PETROZAVODSK, Russia -- Historian Yury Dmitriyev has a morbid talent for finding mass graves moldering beneath the forests of the Russia's northern Karelia region. "I remember he told me once that when there is a burial site, as the organic material turns to dust, the earth settles around the spot," says Yury Brodsky, a historian who studies the Solovki GULAG labor camp. "And he told me how in the spots where these burials were, although they aren't visible, in the early morning you can notice how the dew there evaporates quickly and how in the depressions you can see what he called 'weeping grass.'" For half of his life, 61-year-old Dmitriyev has worked to tease out tragic secrets of the Stalinist era in his region. He painstakingly assembled a Book of Remembrance that includes the names of 13,000 Great Terror victims. But in December, he was arrested in his apartment. He now faces charges of "preparing and circulating child pornography." His trial could begin as early as next month, and, if convicted, he faces between eight and 15 years in prison. He also faces an illegal-weapons charge stemming from a piece of a vintage hunting rifle that investigators found in his flat -- a relic his lawyer says the historian recovered during a research dig. Dmitriyev denies all the allegations, and colleagues both in Russia and abroad argue that the case has been trumped up to punish him for his past research and to silence him in the future. He has been held in remand prison since his arrest. 'People, Don't Kill Another!' In 1997, Dmitriyev, who is the head of Karelia's chapter of the rights-advocacy group Memorial, and his colleagues discovered the Sandarmokh mass grave, where more than 9,500 prisoners representing over 60 ethnic groups from the Solovki GULAG camp were executed and buried by Stalin's secret police in 1937-38. In addition, over strong resistance from Karelian security agents, Dmitriyev lobbied tirelessly to have the spot memorialized. As a result, today there is a large stone memorial at the site bearing the words that Dmitriyev chose to honor the spot: "People, don't kill one another!" Most recently, he participated in a Memorial project to create an online database giving details about some 40,000 agents of Stalin's secret police, who were directly responsible for the murders of some 1 million Soviet citizens during the Great Terror period, as well as the persecution of millions more "Dmitriyev got phone calls about the 'executioners' database,'" says Irina Korneichuk, who has known Dmitriyev for years and has worked with him on expeditions to Solovki, in the far north, and Lodeinoye Polye, near St. Petersburg. "A lot of them." Russia this year marks the 80th anniversary of 1937, the deadliest year of Stalin's murderous rampage. Images Of Foster Daughter Prosecutors say the case against Dmitriyev began with an anonymous denunciation. Investigating the tip, authorities found a folder on his computer containing 49 nude photographs of his foster daughter, now 11, that were taken between 2012 and 2015. The folder was labeled "Child's Health." Dmitriyev and his wife took in the girl, Natasha, when she was 3 with the intention of adopting her. She was malnourished and in poor health. Dmitriyev's attorney, Viktor Anufriyev, says medical workers asked Dmitriyev to monitor her health and development. Each photograph was accompanied by notation of the girl's height, weight, and general health. Many of them appear to have been taken ahead of scheduled visits by social workers, possibly to document that Natasha had been well treated. According to social-services reports, nothing suspicious was ever noted. Memorial activist Sergei Krivenko tells RFE/RL that Dmitriyev successfully completed a state training course aimed at would-be adoptive parents. "During those courses, he was told that it was essential to closely monitor the child's development and to record everything in notebooks -- to record the state of her development and so on," Krivenko says. "And this fit exactly into his character as a researcher. He always took meticulous care with things that had to be recorded accurately. That is why he decided to keep this photographic record of his daughter's development." Fellow researcher Brodsky makes a similar observation. "In general, he photographed everything, particularly during a dig," he tells RFE/RL. "Life taught him this habit. It was his approach, his methodology. He photographed everything and he wrote everything down. That's just the way he thinks. And he did everything so Natasha would flourish and develop physically. This wasn't a normal, healthy child -- but precisely a neglected child that he put on the right path." Rallying Support Dmitriyev's defense team has not been allowed to see the anonymous letter and is at a loss to explain it because the historian insists he never showed the photographs to anyone. But shortly before his arrest, Dmitriyev was unexpectedly summoned to the police station. When he returned home several hours later, he says he discovered that someone had been using his computer. Memorial colleagues suspect the authorities were looking for information about his latest research or about the "executioners' database" project and may have stumbled on Natasha's records accidentally. "I lived in Dmitriyev's home and saw him relating with his foster daughter, Natasha," says Irina Korneichuk, who worked with the historian on several expeditions. "They were related souls, saw things eye to eye and understood each other immediately. It was exactly what many people are missing in their lives. Maybe he was more of a grandfather to her than a father." "She traveled with him on his expeditions," Korneichuk continues. "She was on all his trips. Listened to those grown-up discussions, worked with the kids from the film schools [who were documenting the expeditions]. She had an interesting, colorful life full of understanding and concern." After Dmitriyev's arrest, the film students with whom he'd worked in recent years opened a fund to pay for his legal defense. More than 7,000 people have signed an online petition denouncing the charges against the historian as "a provocation." Historians and activists from Ukraine and Poland have published open letters of support. "We are certain that the criminal case against Dmitriyev is the persecution of a historian and archivist for his public activity," Memorial's Krivenko says. "The accusations against him have nothing in common with everything that is known about Dmitriyev." During the investigation and while Dmitriyev was in custody, the historian's latest research -- 450 pages of meticulous investigation -- and his entire research archive disappeared without a trace. Robert Coalson contributed to this report 14 Russian fishing boats on Shikotan, one of the smaller disputed islands. With the prospect of the United States establishing a military outpost on the Kuriles if returned to Japan, Russia is unlikely ever to agree to a handover of all the disputed islands. But one possibility could end the dispute in what Russian President Vladimir Putin has called a "hikiwake" (the term for "draw" in judo). ON MY MIND Dmitry Medvedev's political obituary has been written so many times that -- like Medvedev himself -- it's become something of a punchline. And every time the pundits declared him politically dead, he's lived to fight another day. There are several reasons for this. Medvedev is a convenient foil for Vladimir Putin -- he gets the blame for everything that goes wrong while Putin gets the credit. Call it the Good Tsar and the Bumbling Boyar. Putin also doesn't like to do anything under pressure and he doesn't like to do what is expected. And finally, there appears to have been a tacit understanding between the two that Medvedev would serve as prime minister for Putin's entire third term. But with Putin's third term drawing to a close, there is now a growing expectation that Medvedev will be replaced after the presidential election/coronation in March. In a piece featured in yesterday's Morning Vertical, Valery Solovei claimed that the Kremlin intrigue over who will replace Medvedev has already begun. Which leads one to wonder whether all the corruption allegations and plummeting poll numbers we are seeing now are an accident. IN THE NEWS European lawmakers say Russia and Iran are among a group of countries that are increasingly abusing Interpol red notices to seek the arrest of political opponents, contributing to a fivefold increase of red notices during the past decade. Russia's top prosecutor has blacklisted a nongovernmental organization set up by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- a move that puts the group in legal jeopardy just days before a street protest it has been planning. Russia's Federal Security Service said that it arrested 12 people in Kaliningrad for suspected involvement with an Islamic extremist group. A new opinion poll shows growing dissatisfaction among Russians with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, with as many as 45 percent saying he should step down. Activists in Russia's Tatarstan and Mari El republics were celebrating the Tatar and Mari languages on April 26 as part of events marking Language Day. A Russian court has sentenced a Crimean Tatar man to 12 years in prison, drawing swift condemnation from Ukraine for what Kyiv called a politically motivated ruling. A group called the Imam Shamil Battalion has claimed responsibility for a deadly subway bombing in the Russian city of St. Petersburg and said the attacker was acting on orders from Al-Qaeda, a U.S.-based organization that monitors extremists says. A U.S. government commission on religious freedom is recommending that Russia be designated as a "country of particular concern," putting it in a group of the world's worst offenders of basic rights on religious worship. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has compared the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl nuclear disaster with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine's east, adding that "Russia is conducting an undeclared war against his country." The Ukrainian Security Service raided the Kyiv offices of the country's largest investment bank looking for illegal software on April 26, drawing a dismayed reaction from Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman. EU ambassadors have approved visa liberalization for Ukraine, a key step toward closer ties and visa-free travel to the EU for Ukrainians. WHAT I'M READING Spinning An Atrocity A New York Times video investigation has revealed how Syria and Russia distorted the facts surrounding the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun. Medvedev's Troubles In Republic.ru, Yekaterina Alyabyeva takes a closer look at a Levada Center poll claiming that trust in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is tanking. And in his column for Bloomberg, political analyst Leonid Bershidsky argues that recent polls show that the message of an opposition figure like Aleksei Navalny can resonate even in an authoritarian system. And Bloomberg Businessweek has a piece asking whether Medvedev's job is at risk. Putin Has The Best Words In War On The Rocks, Stephen Benedict Dyson and Matthew Parent analyze Vladimir Putin's foreign-policy rhetoric. Other People's Words David Filipov, The Washington Post's Moscow bureau chief, has a witty and humorous piece on how "Russians are fighting a war of words with the U.S. using American words." Web War I On The Atlantic Council's website, Teri Schultz looks back at the Russian cyberattack on Estonia that took place 10 years ago today. The Federalist Cure For Autocracy In a piece for Republic.ru, Vladimir Pastukhov, a visiting fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, argues that only true federalism can save Russia from autocracy. Russia And The Southern Gas Corridor The Atlantic Council has released a new report, The Caspian Sea And Southern Gas Corridor: A View From Russia, authored by retired CIA analyst Bud Coote, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center. Ukraine's state security service raided the Kyiv offices of the country's largest investment bank looking for illegal software on April 26, drawing a dismayed reaction from Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman. The SBU announced it had discovered eight companies using what it said was illegal, Russian-made software that can be used for hacking into private computers and phones, prompting the raid on Dragon Capital and seven other companies it did not name. Bank spokeswoman Olha Beloblovska said Dragon Capital, which is affiliated with the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, has always operated within the law. "They have a court order to remove computer equipment. They say it's about the illegal use of software. But the firm bought this program legally and officially. They want to take all the computers and paralyze our work," she said on Facebook. Dragon Capital's website says it handles the largest share of trades on the Ukrainian stock market, carrying out about a third of all transactions. It said it has raised more than $5 billion in new capital for the crisis-battered country. News of the raid prompted Hroysman to interrupt a cabinet meeting and express his surprise, warning that such raids could hurt business and investor confidence in Ukraine. "This doesn't help to build the investment climate," he said. "I don't have the right to meddle in the work of the SBU, but I think that everything should be done properly, without paralyzing [Dragon Capital's] work." Ukraine has a reputation for endemic corruption, and businesses often complain of harassment from law-enforcement bodies. The SBU defended what it said were court-approved raids on Dragon Capital and other firms it said are using the prohibited Russian software. "Russian special services are interested in getting access to information on critical infrastructure and also on businesses that have great defensive value," it said. "Information gained clandestinely is used to damage the sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability, defense capability, and the state, economic, and information security of Ukraine." Gas producer Ukrhazvydobuvannya said the SBU had also raided its office and removed computer equipment. "These actions could destabilize" the company, it said, adding that all company software had been purchased legally. With reporting by AFP and Reuters The repercussions of a Taliban massacre of more than 130 Afghan soldiers at an army base in northern Afghanistan last week are being felt widely. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani moved swiftly to sack the top leadership of the Afghan security forces as his administration scrambles to deal with the fallout from the bloodbath in Mazar-e Sharif in which 10 Taliban attackers tricked their way into the 209th Corps headquarters, Camp Shaheen. In the ensuing shooting spree and firefight that went on for hours on April 21, the militant killed scores of soldiers. Most were offering their Friday prayers at the bases mosque. Some were killed as they ate lunch in a dining hall. The attack is considered one of the worst against Afghanistans army, which is mostly trained and funded by Kabuls Western allies. Amid rising fears and anger over the governments failure to prevent the attack, the massacre looms large over the morale of an overstretched Afghan National Army fighting an expanding Taliban insurgency. Afghanistans 350,000 security forces are already struggling with high casualty rates, indiscipline, and corruption. To analyze the fallout and consequences of the massacre, we turned to Michael Semple, a former senior EU and UN diplomat in Afghanistan who is now a visiting professor at Queens University Belfast. Luke Coffey, a former U.S. Army veteran and director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation think tank, joined our conversation from Washington. I chipped in from Prague, and as usual RFE/RLs Washington-based media relations manager, Muhammad Tahir, stirred our conversation. Listen to or download the Gandhara Podcast: The views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL. Three food-related businesses emerged as the top choices in the semifinal round for the SCORECard Business Model Canvas Competition. Robert Stout is building a carry-out and delivery hot dog business in Richmonds Scotts Addition neighborhood. Ames Russells startup business sells Virginia wildflower honey, infused with red chili pepper flavoring. Brandon Bruce wants to build a business providing chef-inspired precooked meals for people to send to family and friends as gifts instead of flowers. Those three startups were selected from among six semifinalists to advance to the final round in this years business pitch competition. The event was held at the Richmond Times-Dispatch building Wednesday evening. The Richmond chapter of SCORE, a nonprofit association that provides mentoring for entrepreneurs, organizes the annual competition along with the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park and The Times-Dispatch. Each of the six semifinalists made a 10-minute businesses pitch to a panel of eight judges, who then asked each entrepreneur questions. Food is always a comfort, said Bruce, a Richmond resident whose startup business, Food Not Flowers, would enable people to send precooked meals as gifts for friends or family to help them through major life events such as the birth of a baby or the death of a loved one. We are a practical gift people would use, especially in their time of need, he said. Stout already operates a hot dog truck in Richmond, and he has now set up shop with a takeout and delivery hot dog place in Scotts Addition, which has become a growth spot for breweries, distilleries, cideries and apartments. He has order kiosks located in two breweries there. We felt there was an opportunity to serve those people, Stout said. Russell has been working a full-time job while building a market for his pepper-infused honey, Ames Hot Southern Honey, which already is being sold in 44 retail stores in Virginia. The process of preparing a business pitch itself has been educational, Ames said of the SCOREcard competition. The six semifinalists were selected from 22 startup businesses that submitted applications, based on a performance analysis used by SCORE to evaluate the potential success of a startup enterprise. The finalists each will make another presentation on May 17 at the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park. The top three winning companies each will receive cash prizes. First prize is $5,000 and includes a year of free office space for one person in 1E, the collaborative workspace in The Times-Dispatch building at 300 E. Franklin St. Second prize is $2,500, and third prize is $1,000. The other semifinalist startups and their creators were: Gimmee Shelter, created by Bill Martin and David Hazlett, to provide a patented corrugated plastic enclosure for post-disaster housing and global homeless housing; Le Bleu Central Virginia, owned by Tom Garnet and Christine Probst, that provides ultrapure bottled water for companies and homeowners; and Lifelong Home, created by Matt Woolman, that would provide nonmedical services for age 65 and older homeowners who wish to remain in their own homes through retirement. Virginias agritourism industry accounts for $2.2 billion in economic activity, according to a new impact study. The report, conducted by Virginia Techs Pamplin College of Business, shows that the economic activity attributed to Virginias 1,400 agritourism businesses supports 22,000 jobs, contributes $840 million in income, and injects $135 million in state and local taxes. The study is the first statewide benchmark report to measure the economic and fiscal impacts of Virginias agritourism sector. The words retirement and pregnancy arent usually uttered in the same sentence unless youre reading the tabloids in the grocery store checkout line. Then again, most people dont retire in their mid-30s. So ask Richmond Ballet veterans (and husband and wife) Kirk Henning and Valerie Tellmann-Henning what they plan to do immediately after their last performance as professional dancers on May 14 in New York City, and Tellmann-Henning quickly gushes about the trip theyre taking to Jamaica to relax and, well, let nature take its course. Were going to have a very good time in Jamaica, Tellmann-Henning said with a wide grin this month as she sat with her husband of nearly two years in the quiet lobby of the ballets headquarters on East Canal Street. They were joined by another seasoned dancer, Thomas Ragland, because all three are about to embark on the next chapters in their lives. The Hennings will retire from dancing on May 14, while Ragland leaves Richmond Ballet (and classical dance, in general) on June 4 for the bright lights of New York City and a new world of contemporary repertoires. Theres still time to catch them on stage one last time, however. Ahead of Richmond Ballets trip to the Joyce Theater in New York City the May 9-14 visit closes out its 2016-17 season the ballet presents its New York City Tour Preview from Tuesday, May 2, to Friday, May 5, at its Studio Theatre. Join them if you can otherwise, its adios, Tellmann-Henning said. *** The circumstances may be different, but Ragland and the Hennings all agree that there are moments in a dancers life that signal to them the need for change. For all three, those signals led to now. Ragland, 30, came to the ballet at age 12 after a mentor within Richmonds Pine Camp Arts and Community Center saw something in him and encouraged him to pursue dancing. He rose through The School of Richmond Ballet in his first year there, he landed the role of Nutcracker Prince in the ballets The Nutcracker and this year marks his 10th professional season. Despite loving Richmond, the ballet and his time here, Im just moving on, he said. Ragland will join a nine-member company Jessica Lang Dance on June 12. He met Lang, a choreographer, through her work with Richmond Ballet throughout the years. Over the past year or so, hed been thinking about his next career move. He contemplated working as a dancer on cruise ships, but when Lang reached out to him upon hearing that he was looking for a new venture, she made him an offer he couldnt refuse. I just know that I wanted something different, and honestly, I really just want to travel, Ragland said. I want to see the world. Hes not just leaving his place as a dancer with Richmond Ballet hes also leaving behind young souls who were once like him. Ragland has been teaching in the school for four years. After the Joyce Theater performances in New York, he will return to Richmond to close out the last of his students performances. Where hes going, he said, that outreach will continue. Im excited for that part, Ragland said, referring to working with young dancers. Thats something that I want to do in my future. He added: Im excited and nervous, but Im ready for it its a good challenge. The Hennings, on the other hand, face very different challenges parenthood, corporate America and the reality that comes with a complete 180-degree change in their daily routines. Family-planning excitement aside, while Tellmann-Henning is stepping down from dancing, shes not going far just two floors down to the first floor of the ballet, where she will become its public relations and content manager, something she is thrilled to take on. She notes that she was tapped throughout her career to do public interviews about the ballet, and shes happy to now extend those skills into her next job. Like Ragland, she rose through the ballets school. This is her 16th professional season. I just love talking about the ballet, Tellmann-Henning said, adding that the thought of working in its administration never occurred to her until the position became available. This would be a great way to continue to sell the ballet, just in a different way, she said. Instead of being a performer, I get to sell the performers, (and) Im very excited about bringing in new audiences and tapping into different parts of Richmond that dont know about the ballet. Kirk Henning, meanwhile, continues studying toward a degree in computer science. He has another year of online classes, after which he hopes to work in the software or network engineering fields. He has been dancing on and off with Richmond Ballet since 2004. There are lots of exciting new changes coming up, and weve sort of been waiting for them, Tellmann-Henning said, joking that she feels theyve reached this weird mid-life crisis zone as both are leaving the lives they knew for something completely different. As she mentions often Tellmann-Henning wants to start a family, though the number of children is still up in the air. No dancing means no more having to schedule their nightly Epsom salt bath times, or carefully plan meals around the next days performances. Kirk Henning said he has almost gotten used to sitting for his four-hour online classes almost. Im not used to that, he said, referring to sitting for long stretches. Were used to being up, moving around, doing something all the time. The urges to get up and move, however, are slowly going away. Now Im definitely more used to it, Henning said, and I cant wait for when (I can) use my fingers and not my legs. *** In a company with just 17 main dancers and 10 secondary dancers, losing three at one time is unusual, said Stoner Winslett, the ballets founding artistic director. In seeing off these three, she said, the hardest part wont be their absence during big performances. Rather, it will be the little things shell miss, like entering a studio to teach a class and not seeing them at their usual spots at the bar. Its like this gaping hole, she said. Winslett said she understands the Hennings moves, acknowledging their desire to start a family and for Kirk Henning to earn his college degree. Ragland surprised her a bit with his decision to leave, she said, though she encouraged the move. We will miss (Ragland) terribly, but Im happy for him because this is what he wanted to do, she said. They are three very different individuals, and each one has brought something very special to the life of this company, Winslett said. I feel very good about where theyre all going. POWHATAN A Prince Edward County teen was sentenced Thursday to serve more than eight years in prison for the death of a Powhatan County man who was killed when his car was struck by a stolen SUV fleeing police. The victim was en route to buy Christmas gifts for his grandchildren. The defendants lawyer claimed his clients behavior was triggered by a psychotic episode, but a prosecutor argued that he simply made a bad choice. Powhatan Circuit Judge Paul Cella said he didnt believe Andre T. Eanes, 19, intentionally set out to kill anyone, but his actions, nevertheless, caused the death of Thomas R. Rutledge Jr., 73. The cancer and heart-surgery survivor was fatally injured in a crash as Rutledge and his wife, Shannon, 60, were on their way to Walmart to buy presents. Eanes, then 18, was being pursued by police on U.S. 60 with speeds topping 100 mph. After a nearly two-hour hearing, the judge sentenced Eanes to a total of 20 years in prison with 11 years and three months suspended. The punishment was at the high end of discretionary state sentencing guidelines, which called for an active term of three years and seven months to eight years and nine months. Defense attorney Charles Cosby, relying on testimony from a clinical psychologist who twice examined the teen, argued that Eanes was suffering from the beginning stages of schizophrenia and experienced a psychotic episode that caused the quiet and respectful, churchgoing teen to do something that was totally out of character. He wasnt insane, but he had this mild psychosis rising up inside him that triggered his troubling behavior on Dec. 15, 2015. Nothing like this ever happened before, Cosby said. But Deputy Powhatan Commonwealths Attorney Robert Cerullo, who disputed many of the conclusions about the teens mental state, said Eanes was before the court not because of a psychotic episode but because he made a series of bad choices. They began with stealing his buddys Chevrolet Tahoe that was parked in the lot of the Prince Edward Career & Technical Education Center, where Eanes was a student. The keys were left in the ignition. Cerullo agreed that Eanes behavior was uncharacteristic and inexplicable based on his history. But the prosecutor said it wasnt any more the result of a psychotic episode than it was because a crow told him to do it, as Eanes claimed in an interview with Dr. Evan Nelson, who developed a psychological profile of the defendant for sentencing purposes. Eanes told Nelson that he experienced a bad day at school on the day of the offense and felt like he needed to get out of there. And while he was debating whether he should take his friends car, he saw a crow in the parking lot that told him it was OK to take the vehicle. But Nelson acknowledged under cross-examination that Eanes didnt say anything about a crow, or any delusion he experienced, to police after he was arrested, or to any other mental health professional who had interviewed him later. Early in the case, Eanes was sent to Central State Hospital to be evaluated, and doctors there said that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. But they advised he could likely be restored with medication and his condition later improved. He was eventually deemed mentally competent. The teen was first diagnosed as having a pre-schizophrenic condition, and then later exhibiting full-blown symptoms of the disease. But it was unclear in testimony Thursday whether Eanes developed the condition before the crash or later, while incarcerated, after the trauma of the event. In an agreement between the prosecution and defense, Eanes pleaded guilty in February to involuntary manslaughter reduced from felony murder as well as eluding police and unauthorized use of a vehicle in a series of crimes that began in Prince Edward, passed through Cumberland County and ended in Powhatan when Eanes plowed into Rutledges car. After Eanes took his friends SUV and drove from Prince Edward into neighboring Cumberland, a state trooper clocked him traveling 79 mph in a 35-mph zone on U.S. 60 through the Cumberland Courthouse area. When the trooper activated his emergency lights and siren, Eanes drove away, and a pursuit was initiated with Eanes driving in excess of 100 mph and swerving recklessly around cars. As the pursuit continued into Powhatan, deputies stopped traffic at the intersection of U.S. 60 and U.S. 522 to allow the pursuit to pass through. Powhatan deputies also deployed a tire-deflation device at the intersection. But as Eanes approached, he made an abrupt lane change to the right to avoid the tire-deflation device and slammed into the Rutledges small car. Moments earlier, the couple had spotted the deputies blue lights and stopped in the turn lane on the right side to get out of the way. He destroyed two families with his actions, Cerullo told the court. In testimony, Eanes father, mother and pastor all described the teen as a quiet, humble, obedient and respectful boy who attended church regularly and never caused any trouble. The father said he remains baffled to this day at his sons conduct and the direction he took after stealing his friends car. Kim Rutledge-Pologruto, one of the victims daughters, and Shannon Rutledge, the victims wife who suffered a back injury and fractured ribs in the crash, testified they still experience nightmares and their family struggles daily with the loss. Its been devastating, Rutledge said. But Rutledge, who described herself as a Christian, also struck a merciful tone. I forgave him in my heart a long time ago, she said of the teen. I know he did not set out (to cause harm). He made some bad choices. None of the pet owners have seen the person or people shaving the cats, and no witnesses have come forward as of yet. Capt. Kelly Walker of the Waynesboro Police Department said the cats of two separate Tree Streets residents have been shaved in the underbelly, groin and leg areas. He said it appears the shaving was done with a razor of some kind. The cats were not otherwise harmed, Walker said. Walker said at least two residents of the neighborhood have reported the shaving. Police were made aware of the incidents earlier this week. Collectively, this involves seven cats that are indoor and outdoor cats," Walker said. He said the cats are clearly pets and not stray or feral cats. The cats are wearing collars and are well-groomed, Walker said. One of the cat owners asked Walker if he could post street signs to make residents aware of what is going on. Walker has given his approval for the signs, which reference contacting the police. Otherwise, Walker said that if someone sees someone bothering a cat that is not theirs," they should let the police know as soon as possible. CHARLOTTESVILLE The University of Virginia has plans to open a new interdisciplinary autism research center in the next five years. The purpose of the center will be to bring together the work of autism researchers and clinicians across schools the Curry School of Education, the School of Medicine and the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences all have different projects focusing on autism. At a conference on Monday morning, Dr. Jaideep Kapur, director of the U.Va. Brain Institute, envisioned a range of services offered by the center, including clinical care for patients and training for parents and teachers of autistic children, in addition to research. We dont have enough pediatric neurologists to take care of all children, Kapur said. It will take a community of teachers, of speech pathologists, of institutions like U.Va. training a group of people who can provide services to every child. On the research side, the university has separate projects looking at potential causes and contributing factors of autism, including work by the Kipnis Lab exploring the connection between the brain and the immune system. Researchers also are exploring genetic and neurological factors, and Kapur said the investigators in each of these projects must piece them together in the context of the bigger picture. If the university can do that, Kapur said, it has the chance to be a leader in the field of autism research and treatment, which is becoming increasingly important. Not only do we have a big challenge, we have a tremendous scientific opportunity to provide good care, Kapur said. The center is still in the earliest planning stages. It will need to raise about $6 million in combined institutional and philanthropic funds, said Gerry Starsia, executive director of the Curry School Foundation. Proponents already have requested about $3 million from the universitys Strategic Investment Fund, Starsia said, and they will make their case at the next board of visitors meeting in June. For now, everyone involved is moving forward with the work of connecting faculty members with one another, Starsia said. The Curry School and the School of Medicine already have begun to hire additional faculty members. The opportunity is to work more purposefully and collaboratively in order to get bigger returns, he said. The keynote speaker at Mondays event was Ron Suskind, a U.Va. alumnus and journalist who wrote a book and later produced a documentary on life with his autistic son, both titled Life, Animated. Suskind will be on the centers board of directors. Suskind said hes hoping the center will not only provide treatment and services, but also will help shift public attitudes about autistic people. Those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders do have problems that need to be treated, but many of them have compensatory strengths that are too often overlooked. The peers of autistic people often simply avoid them or dismiss them as unworthy of their time, Suskind said, rather than trying to understand their personalities. That is an attitude Suskind says he wants to help change by helping autistic people out of their shells. Autism is a unique web of strengths and weaknesses, Suskind said. The key is to help ameliorate and support them so they can unleash those compensatory strengths. JOHNSTOWN, Pa. Mark Critz was on top of the world. Seven years ago this May, Critz, the longtime district director for the powerful Western Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Jack Murtha, won his late bosss seat in a hard-fought special election. He held the seat for Democrats, handing then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a symbolic victory that she could point to as proof that Democrats were well on their way to expanding their majority that November. Seven months later, Democrats lost 63 seats in the House their worst electoral defeat in decades as disaffected centrist Democrats, conservative-leaning independents and Republicans turned out big. Voters cast their lots against then-President Barack Obama and against the Democratic Party, and handed the House majority to Republicans just four years after sweeping them out of office for essentially the same reason: being out of touch and out of sync with Main Street Americas economic concerns. Critzs victory wasnt the only special election that Democrats won that year; they won six of them in the lead-up to Obamas first midterm election cycle. Reporters and pundits in Washington were quick to report after each of those wins that any suggestion of 2010 becoming a wave election year for Republicans was a poor calculation. They were all wrong. So, what happened? How could six special elections in one cycle all go to the same party and that party end up getting shellacked a few months later? The answers are complicated. But, simply put, special elections are not harbingers of what the next midterm elections outcome will be not in the same year, and certainly not two years ahead of the next Election Day. Two weeks ago, the political class, the progressives and the Republican establishment all glued their eyes to a special election in Kansas to replace Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, who joined President Trumps administration as CIA director. The state treasurer, Republican Ron Estes, won, beating Democratic rival James Thompson by 8 percentage points. Immediately, Democrats cried victory. Why? Well, because Estes didnt win bigger. Headlines and tweets proclaimed a political earthquake, a major shakeup and a harbinger for the 2018 midterms. All of them claimed the race was a referendum on Trump. They were wrong. Special elections are just that: special. They are typically driven by local issues and rarely understood by national political reporters who parachute into a district and cover the race from a national perspective, overlooking the local issues that drive voter sentiments. Everyone looks to interview that one voter who dislikes President Trump, who blames him for switching their vote from reliable Republican to Democrat, and then calls it a story. The truth is, it is more complicated than that and it is that kind of reporting (or pontificating) that led to a lot of political professionals getting last years election results so horribly wrong. A couple of things were at play in Kansas. The states Republican governor, Sam Brownback, is really, really unpopular; that baggage hurt Estes, who serves with him in state government. The thing Thompson got right was messaging. Despite his past life as a Bernie Sanders activist, Thompson wisely portrayed himself as a working-class kid who joined the military, got a college degree and is living the American dream through hard work. Also, he knows how to shoot a gun an assault weapon, to be specific. Thompson ran on family values, his service and a message of fighting for jobs, traditions, veterans and liberty. In short, he ran as though he were a Republican. His ad was strikingly similar to the ads run by centrist pro-gun pro-life Blue Dog Democrats who ran and won big for the House in 2006. The money raised for him by outside progressive groups in small donations was remarkable, too. The larger lessons of this specific special election have been wildly missed, but the evidence is right under everyones nose. First, Democrats are super-energized; they proved that with the amount of money they poured in for Thompson. Second, it is clear that they are willing to go there with a moderate economic message at least in this race and that is important. And third, the biggest lesson of this special election is that Democrats are going to run candidates everywhere; there will be Republican incumbents who have not seen a competitive race in their congressional districts for several cycles but will see one next year. Mike Mikus, the Democratic strategist who guided Mark Critz in his special election victory and again the following November, says Democrats would be wise to repeat the formula they used in 2006, when they recruited candidates in House districts who reflected the values of the region. And message is everything in House races. Look, when Critz ran, our tagline was Pro-life, pro-gun, pro-jobs, said Mikus. You cant recruit progressive candidates to run in a place like Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and expect them to win. The lessons that we should be focusing on with all of these special elections is not necessarily the outcome, but what message worked and how did we do in fundraising, he said. That is our blueprint for 2018, not how many wins we notch. Republicans need to get disciplined on message and busy raising money if they want to hold on to their majority. And Democrats need to learn the real lessons of this special election cycle and ignore the empty flattery and hype if they want to make any headway in 2018. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. During an online auction Wednesday, Roanoke-based Metis Holdings purchased the former Allstate insurance building on Electric Road in Roanoke County for $4 million. Metis Holdings, an insurance and insurance-related services company, has been headquartered on Franklin Road in the former HSMM building. The company said it might not move into the former Allstate building until next year. It said the newly acquired building will provide space to add staff and expand service offerings. Chris Carey, president of Metis Holdings, said the company employs about 90 people full time and has another 30 or so workers employed through a staffing agency. It counts among its biggest clients VACORP, the statewide, Roanoke-based mutual insurance entity for Virginia counties and schools. Metis said it initially will occupy up to 75,000 square feet of the 165,000-square-foot building and will seek to add a tenant or two. Carey said the building, which Allstate vacated after constructing a new office building off Loch Haven Drive near Hanging Rock, would need to be reconfigured to suit Metis needs, a process he said could take up to nine months. And outfitting the building, which Carey described as absolutely enormous, with current technologies could require more time, he said. Carey said the company will either sell or lease its 1315 Franklin Road building. Metis acquired the former HSMM building in December 2014 for about $2.7 million. On Thursday, Roanoke County officials celebrated the purchase of the former Allstate building, which the county said was built in 1970. Its great to see that building put back in use, said Jill Loope, the countys director of economic development. A 14-year-old girl accused of seriously injuring her newborn child waived a certification hearing Thursday in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. As a result, the three felonies the girl is charged with which include attempted murder and child neglect will now be considered by a grand jury in June. Through her waiver, the teen also saw the most serious charge against her reduced by prosecutors from aggravated malicious wounding to simple malicious wounding. Malicious wounding carries a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison, but penalties for aggravated malicious wounding can range from 20 years to life. Both attempted murder and child neglect carry 10-year maximums in Virginia. It limits her exposure considerably, defense attorney Anna Bagwell told Judge Frank Rogers of Thursdays move. Bagwell also said in court that even if she had presented all of her evidence at a certification hearing, and had successfully argued that the charges are unfounded, prosecutors likely would have moved to indict her client anyway. She has decided this is in her best interest, Bagwell said. Police were called to the girls home on Jan. 5 after classmates of hers received texted photos that alarmed them and led them to believe she had given birth that morning in secret. Prosecutors said the classmates first asked a bus driver what to do, then they went to a teacher, who called 911. When approached by police, the girl denied the presence of a child repeatedly, but an officer eventually heard a babys muffled cries and ultimately discovered the newborn wrapped in a towel and hidden inside a plastic storage tub that the girl was sitting on. That search was recorded on police body cameras. At Thursdays hearing, Roanoke Assistant Commonwealths Attorney David Billingsley said crews were on the scene for 26 minutes before they found the baby and could start treating it. It was a cool and calm denial, Billingsley said of the girls claims. Detectives at a bond hearing in January said the male infant suffered brain bleed and possibly some type of asphyxiation, but Billingsley said Thursday that the childs physical condition is still under evaluation. The boy remains in foster care, he said. The teenager also has told police that the father of the child is an adult, and she has said the encounter was not consensual. The Roanoke Times is not naming her at this time because it does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault. CHRISTIANSBURG Two Democrats vying for the chance to oppose Del. Greg Habeeb, R-Salem, in Novembers general election on Wednesday held their first of two scheduled debates. When asked questions about Medicaid expansion, immigration, gerrymandered General Assembly districts, the Mountain Valley Pipeline and finding solutions to the opioid crisis, the two candidates largely agreed while mostly keeping in line with the national Democratic platform. But Bryan Keele of Roanoke County and Steve McBride of Salem varied on their top priorities should they be elected to represent the 8th House of Delegates District, which covers Salem and Craig County and parts of Montgomery and Roanoke counties. Keele, an accountant and small business owner, said he would push for state funds to generate loans for emerging small businesses. The micro-loan program would give small business owners funds to explore if their business ideas are feasible. He also promised to fight for Medicaid expansion, which the Republican-controlled House has successfully resisted in recent years. Keele also pledged to block worthless pipelines, like the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline that would run through parts of the 8th District. The federal government regulates such natural gas pipelines, so the General Assembly largely has no ability to intervene, though members of both houses have introduced legislation to control when and where pipeline surveyors can enter a homeowners property. Keele also proposed expanding broadband access in rural areas, which characterizes a large part of the 8th District. Its time that that [broadband] stop being a political pawn thats played every time theres an election, he said. McBride, a Virginia Tech graduate student, pledged to support small businesses and provide training and retraining options so people have multiple opportunities to join the workforce. That translates to making community college and trade schools more affordable, he said. McBride also proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour as a way to reduce poverty in Southwest Virginia. Keele countered by offering loan forgiveness programs and free community college for the first two years of school, and loan forgiveness programs for students who stay and work in Virginia. McBride also suggested offering incentives to students who want training in high-demand job fields. Its not all about college. Four-year degrees arent for everyone, McBride said. Even community college isnt for everyone. Making technical school and apprenticeship programs more accessible and free as well would be great. The candidates will debate again sometime in May in Salem. Democrats in the district will choose their nominee in a June 13 primary. Habeeb, R-Salem, has represented the district since he won a special election in 2011. By Bob Gibson Berlin today is a vibrant city that, as Germanys capital, brings together people from many nations in artistic and business endeavors that create an atmosphere of international dynamism. A green city full of parks, museums and a strong sense of history, the Berlin of 55 years ago was a Cold War hot spot torn apart into east and west and divided by a pernicious symbol of demarcation: the Berlin Wall. This ugly artifact, a piece of which sits as a museum exhibit on the University of Virginia grounds today, quickly became a symbol of freedom versus captivity and sparked hundreds of daring escape attempts praised in the west and feared and fought in the east. A timely book that examines that 1962 history is a helpful reminder that government lies and repression of facts remain challenges facing a free media. The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill, by Greg Mitchell is a 382-page reminder that the first casualty of any war, hot or cold, is truth, and that walls often hide reality. Mitchell outlines how it wasnt just the Russians and their puppet government in East Germany who were caught lying and hiding things time and again as the Berlin Wall masked their failures and hid the desperate lives of people seeking freedom at great cost. Lies and spies inhabited both sides of the Wall and flew out of official Washington from a government facing a nuclear flashpoint in Cuba. The Kennedy administration was determined not to let Soviet Russia transfer the Cuban flashpoint to Berlin, where Americans and their allies lived on a tripwire defense line deep in East German territory. Stories of bravery and deception told by Mitchell chronicle how young West Germans, aided by others including two American television networks, risked their lives to dig tunnels under the hated wall from West Berlin into the citys well-guarded eastern sector to rescue relatives, friends and complete strangers seeking to escape into the west. President John F. Kennedys administration was not sympathetic to the tunnelers and used threats and intimidation to try to block tunnels partially funded by NBC and CBS. The administration sought to quash the stories to avoid situations that could spark confrontations with the Soviets, according to the carefully researched book. One East German Stasi secret police informer infiltrated a group of West Germans quietly advising and funding a CBS-sponsored tunnel. CBS Correspondent Daniel Schorr had worked to engineer some support to the tunnelers, including handing over 5,000 deutsche marks, in exchange for exclusive TV rights to their story of a mass escape. When American officials learned of the tunnel plot, they told Schorr and CBS to back away from the probably compromised tunnel project set to take place almost one year after the wall went up in August of 1961. Kennedy meanwhile had approved secret wiretaps of a pair of New York Times employees in response to a leaked story that the Soviets were hardening their nuclear missile silos with concrete covers to protect their weapons from an American nuclear attack. Americans were similarly safeguarding their own nuclear missile silos, but Kennedy was angered that the Times story included leaked information that U.S spy planes could detect the Soviet retrofitting. As Kennedy met with top aides and approved new methods to stop government leaks, the White House received word from Berlin that sensational coverage of a new tunnel escape under the wall was being planned by Schorr. Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a warning to CBS news director Blair Clark to order Schorr off the story out of concern that the mission would fail, raise tensions and endanger lives. Hours before the escape was planned to take place, Blair said he would seriously consider ordering Schorr to abandon the tunnel story. Meanwhile, the book reveals, NBC correspondent and rival tunnel sponsor Piers Anderton learned of the CBS tunnel and resolved to beat CBS to the story as the plot was unfolding and the Stasi was preparing to storm the east end of the tunnel to capture or kill tunnelers and escapees. A coded telegram went out into the east, You can pick up your tickets for the opera tomorrow at 3 p.m., telling potential escapees the hour was approaching. A man, his wife and 16-month-old daughter prepared for the operatic tunnel escape along with nearly 90 other easterners and the secret police. As this was happening in Germany, Blair called Schorr in Berlin from Rusks office in Washington and ordered him off the tunnel story, saying it would provoke the Soviets and that the State Department doesnt want any unnecessary trouble at the Wall, Mitchell writes. Rusk dictated a cable to Berlin asking that the tunnel be surveilled and that East Germans hoping to escape under the wall be warned they could be walking into a trap. Without any such warnings and with the plans in the hands of secret police, parents holding their infants and toddlers unknowingly approached the trap being set for them and the tunnelers. As a reader, this portion of Mitchells book hits close to home as my own daughter, Helen, her husband, Niko, and their 3-year-old daughter, Ella, live near the eastern end of another tunnel that NBC helped sponsor in Berlin. A strikingly successful escape by many dozens of East Germans took place there a month after the CBS tunnel disaster. On August 7, 1962, with Schorr staying away, the Stasi started making arrests where trucks were set to pick up and transport escapees to the east end of the CBS tunnel. No warning came from the west as officials were not sure what the Stasi knew. Police in the west knew of the escape plans as Stasi arrests of men, women and children, even infants, mounted nearby in the east. Eventually three heavily armed tunnelers drilled and axed through the floor of a house on the east side and entered the homes living room with armed police only feet away. Warning shots and shouts from the west end of the tunnel, where police had observed the waiting Stasi, led the three men back into their tunnel and a hasty retreat to safety. No one was killed in the raid that netted more than 44 arrests in East Berlin. The American media continued to cover successful and tragic escape attempts both over and under the wall. Some seeking to escape were shot and killed as they fled. Many in Berlin did not see the Americans as supportive of what they viewed as brave German bids for freedom. At the same time, Americans monitored Soviet military shipments of missiles to Cuba and some wondered if Moscow would offer to leave Cuba if Americans left West Berlin. Kennedy faced down the Soviets on Cuba, proved the missile sites were set up there and instituted an embargo on such weapons being shipped to Cuba. Much of Mitchells book recounts harrowing stories of the months-long digging and success of the NBC tunnel, through which as many as 90 or more East Germans made their way to freedom starting on Sept. 14, 1962, and the months-long fight with the Kennedy administration over stories of the tunnel escapes. NBCs documentary The Tunnel aired Dec. 10, 1962, and in May of 1963 won three Emmy Awards and much praise for the stories told. Kennedy visited the Wall in June of 1963, famously declaring Ich bin ein Berliner five months before he was assassinated. Kennedys administration had tried to kill the documentary and delayed its airing for nearly three months while spreading what Piers Anderton considered lies about him and his work. NBC stood by its correspondent for months but eventually reassigned him to India. The network also admitted it had funneled money to some of the tunnelers for the rights to tell their stories and show the dramatic escapes. The Wall fell in 1989, 28 years after it went up in a divided Berlin. The city is greatly healed and Berlin is a peaceful city now, but international tensions still dominate the news. Tensions persist between the media and governments in Berlin, Moscow and Washington and are hauntingly familiar to readers of Mitchells prescient and timely book. Gibson is senior researcher at the Academy for Civic Renewal in the University of Virginias Cooper Center for Public Service. IMMIGRATION Trump vows fight on sanctuary cities President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday bring his fight against the sanctuary city movement to the Supreme Court after a federal judge blocked a White House move to withhold funds from municipalities refusing to cooperate with immigration officials. The decision Tuesday by a federal judge in San Francisco dealt another blow to the Trump administration. In a series of tweets Wednesday, Trump vowed that the White House was ready to bring the case to the Supreme Court and blasted the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which was part of legal decisions blocking Trumps travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries. U.S. District Judge William Orrick - who imposed a temporary nationwide injunction against Trumps Jan. 25 order - does not serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, though those judges would review his decisions. Orrick pointed to discrepancies in the administrations interpretation of the executive order, which broadly authorized the attorney general to withhold grant money from jurisdictions that do not cooperate with immigration officials on deportations and other enforcement actions. Office on immigrant crime opens WASHINGTON Stymied on his top immigration initiatives, President Donald Trump is making good on one plan: opening an office for victims of crimes committed by immigrants Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Wednesday opened the office dubbed the Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement, or VOICE. He said it will be used to keep victims informed of the immigration proceedings of suspects and generally walk them through the complicated and often drawn-out immigration court process. The office will be staffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees. Kelly focused his brief remarks on immigrant criminals in the country illegally, saying they never should have been in the United States and able to carry out crimes. But the ICE officials will also aid victims of crimes attributed to immigrants living in the United States legally, a group that could include permanent residents. Critics have denounced the plan as fearmongering and studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. Brent Wilkes, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the office is unnecessary because ICE has long had the authority to keep crime victims informed. Business News The Number Of People Working In Shops Is Collapsing | RobinsPost News & Noticias They have options in where to shop ... state you do business out of. An employer identification number (EIN), which is a federal tax ID that allows you to hire employees to work at your ... Read More JPMorgan's work-from-anywhere policy restricts where staff work while working remotely. This means no hotels, coffee shops, shared co ... This might sound like good news for home-sharing platforms ... Read More Employees who find their work meaningful also tend to outperform those who dont. The good news ... with the people who benefit from their work. I suggest bringing in a customer or business ... Read More La La Land Kind Cafe is a coffee shop ... peoples day. The cafe, however, also has an initiative for workers that stands out among the efforts of other businesses. After learning about the ... 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Read More Air Liquide Far Eastern, a joint venture between Air Liquide and Far Eastern Group, will invest a total of approximately 500 million euros ... technologies, will produce a total of up to 2 billion ... Read More BENGALURU (Reuters) - India' UPL Ltd said on Friday U.S. investment firm KKR & Co Inc and others would invest $500 ... business and other global non-crop protection businesses for $241 million. Read More REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee BUENOS AIRES, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Appliance maker Whirlpool Corp (WHR.N) is set to inaugurate a new factory in Buenos Aires after a $52 million investment, with plans to ... Read More Air Liquide Far Eastern, a joint venture between Air Liquide and Far Eastern Group, will invest a total of approximately 500 ... EUR2,096 million in revenue in 2021, the Electronics business ... Read More UPL said KKR would invest $300 million for a 13.33 per cent stake in its unit Advanta Enterprises Oct 21 2022, 16:49 ist updated: Oct 21 2022, 16:49 ist A verification email has been sent to your ... Read More Business News Taiwan S President Said A Direct Phone Call With Trump Could Happen Again | RobinsPost News & Noticias Last Fridays phone call between U.S. President ... areas where Taiwan could benefit from additional U.S. support. Given previous interaction between the Tsai administration and Trump advisers ... Read More Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen told visiting British minister of state for trade Greg Hands on Wednesday that she looks forward to Britain joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for ... Read More China considers Taiwan a province, and news of the official outreach by Trump is likely ... world know that, Green said, adding, The president-elects phone call may have been ... 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Trump and was not sure she could be fair to his business ... Read More Donald Trump's billionaire friend Tom Barrack said Monday that his ties to the former president were "disastrous" for his business dealings, multiple outlets reported. Barrack, who informally ... Read More Taiwans President Tsai ... go down that path. I call on the Beijing authorities that resorting to war must not be the option for cross-strait relations, Tsai said. Read More Former President Donald Trump lashed out at a judge who found that Trump knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud while fighting his loss to President Joe Biden. U.S. District Judge David ... Read More Business News Manufacturers In Egypt Turn To Local Sourcing As Prices Soar | RobinsPost News & Noticias Inflation is relentlessly high and food prices in particular are soaring. In this environment, customers are turning to McDonalds even as the burger chain raises its own prices. In the ... Read More The two companies join the growing list of manufacturers that are generating ... as neighbours supply to the city Brace for higher fuel prices over three years as regulator digs in Notice ... Read More Many medical device manufacturers are bringing their packaging processes ... "The purchase of FFS equipment depends on economics," says Jerry Bennish, business director at Rexam Medical Packaging ... Read More Container freight rates, which soared to record prices at the height of the pandemic, have been falling rapidly and container shipments on routes between Asia and the U.S. have also plunged ... Read More ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New research finds that more than 90% of foodservice operators use frozen foods in their menus, with the healthcare, convenience store and fast casual categories ... Read More You can consult with Score (opens in new tab), the nations largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors or with a local attorney to select the right form of ownership for you and your ... Read More Subchapter V, created in 2019 through the Small Business Reorganization ... on its head. When suppliers cannot reach a deal to pass costs through to customers, they turn to legal options, and ... Read More By Alex Weprin Media & Business Writer At NBCUniversals upfront presentation at Radio City Music Hall in May, the speeches, clips, and musical performances were interrupted by a skit. Read More The two companies join the growing list of manufacturers that are generating electricity for their internal consumption as they seek to reduce power bills, increase electricity reliability as well ... Read More Inflation is relentlessly high and food prices in particular are soaring ... McDonalds has proven to be successful in just about any business environment, he noted. Read More Press Release Teleste To Publish Its Interim Report Q1 2017 On Thursday May 4th Invitation To Press Briefing | RobinsPost News & Noticias Press Release, 11 October 2022 at 14:00 EET Sanoma will publish its Q3 2022 Interim Report on 27 October Sanoma will publish its Interim Report for January 1 30 September 2022 on Thursday 27 ... Read More Skanska's Interim report third quarter 2022 will be released on Wednesday, October 26 at 07:30 am CET. To participate in the telephone conference, with the possibility to ask questions ... Read More (UPM, Helsinki, 18 October 2022 at 10:00 EEST) UPM will publish its Q3 Interim report 2022 on 25 October ... will present the Q3 results in a press conference held in the Finnish language ... Read More Renewcell') will publish its interim report for the third quarter of 2022 on Thursday, October 28, at around 08.00 (CEST). On the same day, at 10.00 (CEST) Renewcell will hold a webcast at which ... Read More REDMOND, Wash. 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Read More Politics News House Russia Investigators Agree On Schedule Get New Access To Documents After Reset | RobinsPost News & Noticias Donald Trump in the final days of his presidency repeatedly threatened to out government sources involved in the Trump-Russia investigation ... Solomon access to some of the documents. Read More The U.S. and Russia are slated to discuss the resumption of nuclear weapons inspections after months of no contact due to Russias war in Ukraine. State Department spokesperson Ned Price ... Read More The general belief in Trump World is that this is much ado about nothing and the sooner we get past it ... classified documents he retained after leaving the White House. In earlier court ... Read More Get the full experience.Choose your plan For two years, Trump had insisted that it wasnt. He took to calling the Russia investigation ... House to spy on electronic data. Trump and the Fox News ... Read More As Russia ramps up its airstrikes against Ukraine, a new investigation has revealed that remote control killers allegedly programmed Moscows missile attacks. A six-month investigation ... Read More The investigation that led to the discovery lasted roughly six months and was done in collaboration with The Insider, a Russia-focused independent media outlet, and Der Spiegel, the largest news ... Read More But Mr. Durham uncovered an email in which Mr. Dolan had conveyed a minor claim about office politics in the ... showed how the Trump-Russia investigation started: After Moscow hacked Democratic ... Read More The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances ... @fox.com Election season is here! Get the latest race updates, exclusive interviews, and more Fox News politics content. Read More After Onorato finished ... Later, Durham tried to get Auten to agree that the FBI was more alarmed about Papadopoulos ties to the Middle East than his ties to Russia. Auten wouldnt go ... Read More And while a divisive political ... investigation into Russia's intervention in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel appointment of Durham in October 2020 came more than a year after ... Read More However, the House speaker came around to the idea after it was discovered ... the idea that the House speaker weighed politics over a thorough investigation, telling Politico the book is a ... Read More Politics News Trump Is Giving The Pentagon More Power To Put Troops To Iraq And Syria | RobinsPost News & Noticias Rep. Josh Gottheimer defeated Republican Frank Pallotta in New Jersey's 5th Congressional District. The 5th District stretches through northern New Jersey. Gottheimer had $13.7 million of cash on ... Read More CNNs John King said Mehmet Oz might be able to pick up votes in western Pennsylvania that eluded former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. King said Trump was unable to win over some voters ... Read More Politics News Chomsky On The Gop Has Any Organization Ever Been So Committed To The Destruction Of Life On Earth | RobinsPost News & Noticias Both parties were notching victories in some of the most competitive races in Tuesdays midterm elections, with several Democratic incumbents winning key suburban ... Read More The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is set to dissolve no matter who wins Tuesdays midterm elections but a GOP takeover of the House leaves a near zero ... Read More Politics News Oklahoma Struggles To Pay For Schools After Slashing Taxes | RobinsPost News & Noticias Voters in West Virginia rejected four proposed amendments to the state constitution on election day. That includes two proposals that would have given the Republican-dominated legislature more power t ... Read More The biggest bond issue in Oklahoma City Public Schools history, worth $955 million in total, passed Tuesday, inching past the 60% threshold for approval. Proposition 1, which asked for $936 million ... Read More Search RobinsPost News & Noticias Potus News Trump Tells Canada And Mexico He Will Renegotiate Not Withdraw From Nafta | RobinsPost News & Noticias Science News China S Three Year Itch The Signposts To A Cyclical Slowdown | RobinsPost News & Noticias up from 0.4% in previous quarter BEIJING -- China's economic growth rises to 3.9% over a year ago in latest quarter, up from 0.4% in previous quarter. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More The third 'Tiangong class' begins at 3:45 a.m. EDT (0745 GMT ... Related: The latest news about China's space program Wednesday's lecture will introduce the Wentian module, capillary effects ... Read More China declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal, the final salvo in a crackdown that had been gathering pace for years. The governments move sent convulsions through the local crypto ... Read More The consumer price index increased by 2.8% last month from a year ago, matching expectations from a Reuters poll. That marked the fastest pace since a 3.3% ... slowdown in China's producer price ... Read More Chinas export growth weakened in September while imports rebounded from a contraction as economic growth improved In this photo released by Xinhua News ... rises to 3.9% over a year ago in ... Read More Beijing (AFP) China's economy grew 3.9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, according to official data released Monday, beating forecasts a day after President Xi Jinping was re-elected ... Read More Abudukel's father was arrested in 2017, she says following pressure from the authorities to force her to return to China from her studies abroad. A year or so later her brother and mother also ... Read More Chinas gross domestic product grew by 3.9% in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, Chinas National Bureau of Statistics said Monday in a data release that was unexpectedly ... Read More Get ready for your week with the weeks top business stories from San Diego and California, in your inbox Monday mornings. Read More Science News Dna From Extinct Humans Discovered In Cave Sediments | RobinsPost News & Noticias Dating of sediments and bison bones at the site suggests the Neanderthals lived in the cave between 51,000 and 59,000 years ago, while the DNA shows ... mystery ancient humans found lurking ... Read More Under the aegis of the University of Oslo, an international research team has extracted and analyzed plant DNA from the sediments of the Armenian "Aghitu-3" cave ... plants found to human involvement. Read More Fossilized bone fragments of a father, teenage daughter and other related Neanderthals were found alongside stone ... or Neanderthal DNA in cave sediments, or any other of the things that are ... Read More DNA extracted from Neanderthal remains found in a Siberian ... another type of extinct human which lived, around the same time, in the nearby Denisova Cave. Denisova Cave, which is a little ... Read More The oldest known human DNA ... analysed the DNA of two late British individuals who lived towards the end of the Old Stone Age. One of the individuals was found in Gough's Cave in Somerset ... Read More New research indicates that two genetically separate populations of people migrated to the United Kingdom after the last ice age. Scientists analyzed the remains of two humans who lived about 15,000 ... Read More This discovery is providing new insights into Neanderthal social organization. RELATED Researchers uncover earliest evidence for prehistoric humans ... Neanderthal DNA in cave sediments, or ... Read More Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data from more than a thousand people who lived across Europe and Asia over ... Read More Sign up for CNNs Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. The riverside ... Read More 25 (UPI) --Scientists have sequenced the oldest human DNA discovered in Britain and discovered ... for the International Space Station. Science News // 3 days ago Chinese rocket re-enters Earth's ... Read More Internet News Google Becomes First Foreign Internet Company To Go Live In Cuba | RobinsPost News & Noticias That is why Cuba and the UK are set to reach new cooperation agreements on energy, financial services, education and culture, to the benefit of both our nations. As the first British Foreign ... Read More Google and Cuba ... company Etecsa signed an agreement to improve the speed of access to Google products on the Internet, which means an improvement in Internet access on the island, where Google ... Read More Googles parent company, Alphabet, activated its local cloud ... AWS is expected to activate its cloud region in Israel during the first half of 2023, the Finance Ministry said. Read More NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) A new study shows that internet companies may be discriminating against low-income and non-white neighborhoods. "The Markup" -- a non-profit news outlet -- looked at ... Read More Technology news live updates cover ... at least as per the ad the company has recently posted on its official HP Store Reddit account. Google announces new Android 13 (Go edition): Features ... Read More Google could be reacting to Apple, the company that ... If users go through the process of managing their preferences, ads they see across Google's platforms could become more relevant to them. Read More Cuba's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernandez de Cossio listens to Phil Peters, founder of FocusCuba, during a conference in Havana, Cuba. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini ... Read More Web browsers are a must for surfing the internet ... that's not worrying enough, Google Chrome is the only browser with multiple new vulnerabilities discovered in the first week of October ... Read More Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) posted the proceedings of its second-quarter earnings call on the metaverse, becoming the first Indian ... the world tracking the company can toggle with slides ... Read More A Blackburn woman who did not even have access to the internet while at university has become a coder for a national company. Carmen Charnley worked for her local council for almost a decade before ... Read More From writer/director John Ross, Grimcutty features an internet meme turned boogeyman ... Grimcutty gains momentum as she visibly becomes more anxious and fearful of the horrific information ... Read More We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Home. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations. Whether youre living your best #vanlife in a $150,000 Sprinter conversion ... Read More Internet News Google Becomes First Foreign Internet Company To Go Live In Cuba | RobinsPost News & Noticias Google and Cuba ... company Etecsa signed an agreement to improve the speed of access to Google products on the Internet, which means an improvement in Internet access on the island, where Google ... Read More Googles parent company, Alphabet, activated its local cloud ... AWS is expected to activate its cloud region in Israel during the first half of 2023, the Finance Ministry said. Read More NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) A new study shows that internet companies may be discriminating against low-income and non-white neighborhoods. "The Markup" -- a non-profit news outlet -- looked at ... Read More Technology news live updates cover ... at least as per the ad the company has recently posted on its official HP Store Reddit account. Google announces new Android 13 (Go edition): Features ... Read More Alongside the first network expansions in five years, the upgraded speeds suggest Google is getting back to Fiber's roots. That is, it's both raising expectations for truly fast internet access ... Read More Unfortunately, we dont know which Tensor G2 is using. Either way, given how companies love to tout their use of smaller nodes, Googles wording makes it quite clear that Tensor G2 is not ... Read More Technology News Recode Daily Trump S First 100 D Oh S | RobinsPost News & Noticias Will Wilkerson, an early executive of Trump Media & Technology Group, has since sought official whistleblower protections. (Cornell Watson for The Washington Post) ... Read More Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates Truth Social, is expected to make the app available in the Play Store shortly, Google said. For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's ... Read More Ive been a bit quiet on Democratic Ohio Rep ... Vances servility to Trump in vivid detail, recalling how Trump told rallygoers about Vance wanting his endorsement. J.D. is kissing ... Read More A liberal journalist argued on a New York Times podcast that former President Trump's ... News Digital. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first ... Read More Tech Turmoil ... to a former employee, Trump once called his co-founder, Andy Litinsky, and asked him to give some of his shares to Trumps wife, former First Lady Melania Trump. Read More Experts say if sources or technology were revealed, information about adversaries could dry up. WASHINGTON As U.S. intelligence agencies gauge the potential damage from Donald Trump storing ... Read More Trevor Noah is with Donald Trump on this one. The Daily Show host on ... as an executive of Trump Media and Technology Group last week after coming forward. Noah was unsympathetic. I am totally on ... Read More Thats why the blockbuster subpoena for Mr. Trump by the ... for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in September 2007 and is based out of Washington, D.C. Election season is here! Read More D.C., Court of Appeals to rule on whether Trump was acting outside the scope of his presidential duties when he allegedly defamed Carroll. This second issue is key to determining whether the U.S ... Read More U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected a request by Trumps lawyers that the planned testimony be delayed. The deposition is now scheduled for Oct. 19. The decision came in a lawsuit ... Read More The Truth social network logo is seen on a smartphone in front of a display of former U.S. President Donald Trump ... mainstream tech platforms. News of Google's approval was first reported ... Read More Travel News From Cape Coast To Monkey Neighbours Read About Bbc S The Travel Show Presenter Ade Adepitan S Time In Ghana More | RobinsPost News & Noticias This time of year can be a fantastic (and more affordable ... the 11 best U.S. destinations to visit during the fall off-season. And check out Boston.coms Cape Cod Travel Guide for Cape ... Read More Audience levels are falling, most dramatically in linear television; and surveys show that trust in the corporations news ... The BBC had first-mover advantage with the iPlayer more than ... Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations ... If you'd like to get even more micro, Time Out also shared a list of the world's ... Read More Yesterday morning, I consulted a BBC News article ... the rest of Britains media. It would be several more months before the BBC even got its own offices. Very few people would have noticed the BBC ... Read More Its that time ... travel for the holidays, identical to last years numbers. Thats up from 17% in 2020. Travel is holding steady from 2021, but also hasnt grown. Instead, the data show ... Read More Presenter Martine Croxall is being investigated by BBC News for a ... "Can we even show you the front pages just yet, have they arrived? No they haven't arrived. It's all a little bit, you ... Read More A BBC News presenter was left trapped in a work ... His comment provoked Radio 1's breakfast presenter Greg James to reply. He jokingly told Ben: "Ill give you a shoutout if youre still ... Read More Paul Muir, ITS2022s president, recalled when the New York Times Travel Show was launched 20 years ago, with the final one happening in January 2020. Muir noted that while that final show was ... Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations opening, inspiration for future adventures, plus the latest in aviation, food and ... Read More So, you may be inclined to deny or refuse travel insurance as a way to cut costs. But sometimes that decision can end up costing you even more ... It's picking the policy that can take time. Read More Colorado is amazing, but there's more to explore ... And since travel is ultimately subjective I reserve the right to fall in and out of love with every state as I revisit each one again and again. I ... Read More The PA news agency ... date by the time we received them." Croxall also suggested during the programme that her comments could have breached BBC guidelines. Responding to a guest's joke aimed ... Read More Travel News Itb China Connects Bloggers With The Travel Industry | RobinsPost News & Noticias ITB Asia is one of the worlds largest travel trade shows. With thousands of pre-qualified international buyers, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with people and businesses and ... Read More The travel technology industry is flourishing. The global travel technology market size reached $8.6 billion in 2021, and its projected to reach $13.4 billion by 2027. Read More Trip.com Group believes that its enormous base of users across China and travel content delivery will enable it to assist travel and tourism partners in maximising recovery potential once China ... Read More Besides the helpline numbers, which make people wait for a long due to the heavy number of callers, we have WhatsApp chatbots to connect ... travel industry. With the rising influence of travel ... Read More China is working on a plan to end a system that banned individual flights for bringing in passengers infected with the COVID-19 virus, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with ... Read More A new report indicates the travel industry in Asia-Pacific may be the ... Just under half of the new jobs are expected to be in China and India, according to the WTTC. Indonesia, Thailand and ... Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations ... sign up in its metaphorical door: China. Here's what that means for the world's ... Read More China repeatedly emphasised its commitment to its zero-COVID strategy, dashing hopes that Beijing may soon start exiting a policy that has all but shut its borders for travel. read more A record 9 ... Read More Only a year or two ago, lack of demand for hospitality services was monopolizing travel industry news, with Skifts take being that the impact on the industry was severe to say the least. ... Read More This week in travel: some of the destinations in Asia with the most strict Covid policies are finally reopening, an annual ranking of the world's coolest neighborhoods provides inspiration for ... Read More Japan is already seeing an increase in inbound travelers since relaxing its COVID-19 border controls last week, but a full recovery will remain elusive until China ... travel hub was an indication ... Read More Travel News David Cameron Warns Travel Industry Not To Dismiss Immigration Concerns | RobinsPost News & Noticias 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 & Tourism Economic Impact" report an annual publication by ... Read More Travel powered international business and cross-cultural exchange. And then it all stopped. Not since World War II has the global travel industry ... and cost concerns put pressure on companies ... Read More Otherwise, its just greenwashing and we see that in travel all the time, he added. The travel industry generates 8-11% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. Photograph: David Levene ... Read More Muir noted that while that final show was very successful, the then-emerging COVID-19 pandemic began impacting and ceasing the travel industry two ... company is not involved with ITS2022. Read More Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Ed Miliband has reshared David Camerons 2015 tweet that the UK faced a choice between himself as prime minister or chaos ... Read More "Individuals at all stages and walks of life continue to recognize the opportunity to join the travel industry and to set themselves up for success with the right educational foundation when they ... Read More The Doncaster North MP dug up an old tweet from David Cameron, who had posted in 2015: Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with ... Read More "How to travel better" is a five-part series focusing on uncomfortable or inefficient travel experiences and how the industry can do ... reached out to voice their concerns over what grieved ... Read More Behner boasts a career of more than 30 years in the travel industry, including more than eight years as a national sales manager with Travel and Transport. Most recently, he was director of business ... Read More Us News Delaware Trooper Shot Outside Wawa Dies Suspect Surrounded In Home | RobinsPost News & Noticias on Sunday by Delaware State Police. The victim, identified as David W. Pfeffer, 57, was found lying unresponsive Saturday, Oct. 22, outside his home in the 1600 block of St. Lukes Road near ... Read More President Biden said Tuesday that Delaware firefighters nearly died battling a small fire in ... black smoke, Biden said of the blaze at his home in Wilmington, Del. And from the basement ... Read More Delaware authorities are investigating a shooting that took place outside a Wilmington grocery store Friday night. At around 7:10 p.m., Delaware state troopers responded to the Concord Pike ACME ... Read More A 46-year-old California man is in critical condition after he was shot by a ... gun violence in Delaware Police reported they found multiple shell casings on the ground outside the 41-year ... Read More The 19-year-old who died ... Delaware State Police. They brandished handguns and "demanded an unknown item" before shooting the victims, police said. An infant and two other people were in the ... Read More (AP) A Connecticut police ... 35, died from a gunshot wound to the neck with spinal cord injuries. Sgt. Dustin Demonte and Officer Alex Hamzy were gunned down outside a home where they had ... Read More Four people were discovered shot to death inside a Virginia home Monday in what local police believe was a targeted domestic attack. Prince William County police said they have detained a person ... Read More Officers were serving a warrant on a suspect wanted for homicide and other violent offenses. Police sources ... learned that the officer shot in the hip was sent home with the bullet still lodged ... Read More A Black teenager in Mississippi has died days after police shot him in the head outside a discount store ... Gulfport police said in a news release that the shooting occurred around 2:30 p.m ... Read More MINNEAPOLIS -- Minneapolis police say a woman is in the hospital with potentially life-threatening wounds after a known suspect forced his way into her home and shot her Monday morning. Read More An 82-year-old Home Depot employee in North Carolina was "brutalized" Tuesday when a suspect stealing a cart ... the Hillsborough Police Department said Wednesday. "We need YOUR help in ... Read More DETROIT A 58-year-old suspect was fatally shot by a Detroit police officer after exiting a home with a gun and pointing ... Chief James White said during a news update. During the incident ... Read More Us News Pennsylvania Cop Killer Eric Frein Sentenced To Death | RobinsPost News & Noticias It has been a long, tough five years since Officer Eric ... sentenced to about five years. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 17. Despite the jury not finding him guilty of third-degree murder ... Read More Editors' Blog / Analysis & Opinion News Live Blog Morning Memo ... 29, more than two weeks after Eric Frein allegedly opened fire on a Pennsylvania state police barracks, killing one trooper ... Read More FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Former Los Angeles Angels communications director Eric Kay was sentenced to 22 years ... Skaggs the drugs that caused his death. Judge Terry Means said he was "dreading ... Read More The driver charged with murder in the I-85 traffic stop death of a Greenville ... He then sentenced to Kelly to life in prison on the murder charge. Like us on Facebook to see similar stories ... Read More Convicted killer Richard Darren Emery is ... her two children and her mother in 2018 was sentenced to death Tuesday. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Read More A former Los Angeles Angels baseball executive was sentenced to 22 years in ... laced pills that contributed to the death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs. Eric Kay, 48, was convicted in February of ... Read More Eric Kay had ... Angels employee, was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on Tuesday for having provided drugs to the pitcher Tyler Skaggs that led to his overdose death in Texas. Read More An Iraqi court has sentenced a man to death over the 2019 killing of an activist ... lk-gde/tgg/ami/lg The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. Read More Former Angels public relations staffer Eric Kay was sentenced ... others with killer drugs need to be held accountable, she said. If anything good can come of Tylers death and this ... Read More Eric Kay has been sentenced to 22 years in prison in the wake of the overdose death of former Angels pitcher ... But for their actions, Tyler would still be with us today. ... Read More Former Angels communications director Eric Kay was sentenced to 22 years in prison in connection to the drug-overdose death of pitcher ... the drugs himself. CBS News Forth Worth reported ... Read More A Texas judge sentenced former Los Angeles Angels director of communications Eric Kay to 22 years in federal prison Tuesday in connection with the 2019 death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs. Kay ... Read More Us News Weaponized Drones Connecticut Bill Would Allow Police To Use Lethal Force From Above | RobinsPost News & Noticias As people headed to the polls Tuesday to vote on a constitutional amendment that would allow early voting in Connecticut, a Superior Court Judge in Hartford was hearing a lawsuit arguing that the ... Read More The Connecticut gubernatorial debate got heated Tuesday after GOP candidate Bob Stefanowski blamed the killing of two police officers last month in Bristol on ... Read More (CNSNews.com) Iranian personnel are on the ground in Ukraine, helping Russian forces use Iranian-supplied combat drones to attack civilian and military targets, the U.S. government alleged on ... Read More Two Bristol, Connecticut, police officers have been killed in the line of duty, while a third was seriously wounded. The officers were answering a possible domestic disturbance call between ... Read More One bipartisan group of senators is pushing a bill that would allow the U.S. to sue OPEC for abusive business tactics, saying its time to get tough. We call it NOPEC, Sen. Chuck Grassley ... Read More Randy Cox was arrested by Connecticut ... was injured while in police custody and how obviously these officers had biases against him, he added. In a statement to ABC News, New Haven mayor ... Read More Us News Georgia Police Beating 1 Of 2 Wanted Gwinnett Officers Turns Himself In | RobinsPost News & Noticias The department said officers responded to a call about a suspicious person regarding a man with a gun who was walking around a soccer field. Read More Suspect dead in shooting involving officer in Gwinnett County, police active at scene The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is responding to the scene. By WSBTV.com News Staff November 04, 2022 at 1:57 ... Read More Gwinnett County police shot and killed an allegedly armed man who was carrying a note during an incident near Norcross. Read More A Georgia police officer was shot during a chase with two armed robbery suspects. One of the suspects was eventually arrested while the other ran away. Read More The suspect was out on bond on charges related to his ex-girlfriend in a nearby county at the time of the murder. Read More Gwinnett police quickly identified a suspect in her death as Edward Smith, who they considered armed and dangerous. Investigators confirmed that Smith turned himself ... 2 Action News is speaking ... Read More US Capitol Police officers on Wednesday arrested an 80-year-old man from Georgia after he admitted he had guns in his vehicle, according to the agency. Tony Payne, of Tunnel Hill, Georgia ... Read More At some point, police said the man pulled out a gun on the officers and that was when the officers opened fire on the man. Read More Two highly respected police officers were killed Wednesday night and a third seriously wounded when a suspect fired over 80 rounds at them while they were responding to a domestic disturbance call ... Read More Thousands of police officers from around the country have gathered in a football stadium in Connecticut for the funeral for two officers shot to death in an apparent ambush EAST HARTFORD ... Read More Quinton Simon's mother is the only suspect, police said. Police in Savannah, Georgia, believe missing ... Chatham County police chief Jeff Hadley said at a news conference Tuesday, adding that ... Read More Us News Suspect In Killing Of Delaware Trooper Id D After Being Shot Dead In Hourslong Standoff | RobinsPost News & Noticias A homicide suspect is dead after a confrontation with police in Fairfield Township Saturday night. It all began around 7 p.m. when officers responded to a Marathon Gas Station on Fairgrove Avenue ... Read More LAS VEGAS (AP) A veteran Las Vegas police officer patrolling an area that officials identified as a hotspot for crime died after being shot early ... and a suspect was killed in a shooting ... Read More PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Three SWAT officers serving an arrest warrant were wounded and a suspect was killed after ... he was pronounced dead just after 7:30 a.m. Action News is told one of the ... Read More Franklin St. before being escorted outside of the lounge, according to a news release from ... identify the second suspect, police say. UPDATE: Damaso Bravo, 21, IDd as suspect in LIT ... Read More A police officer who was wounded in an apparent ambush that killed two of his fellow officers fired the shot that killed the suspect BRISTOL, Conn. -- A Connecticut police officer who was wounded ... Read More A victim in a Los Angeles carjacking was killed Thursday after being dragged behind a vehicle for a mile and a half as police ... reported to be dead at the scene. The murder suspect then got ... Read More A suspect in a Sunday morning shooting was appointed an attorney from the capital defenders office during his first court appearance Monday. Rony Julian Sanchez-Rivera is being held without ... Read More Authorities in southwestern Ohio say police shot and killed a man who ... that left one man dead of a gunshot wound at around 7 p.m. Saturday. Police said the suspect fled in a vehicle that ... Read More A carjacking victim died Thursday evening during a wild police pursuit in Inglewood, Calif., after they were dragged from the back of their vehicle, CBS Los Angeles reports. Authorities are ... Read More David Nathaniel Maine, 24, was arrested on four counts of murder, Prince William County police ... After the incident, the suspect left the residence and called 9-1-1 to report that someone had ... Read More BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) A Connecticut police officer who was wounded in an apparent ambush that killed two of his fellow officers fired the shot that killed the attacker, police said. In a ... Read More World News Venezuela To Quit Organization Of American States | RobinsPost News & Noticias Editors' Blog / Analysis & Opinion News Live ... The United States on Monday asked the countries of the Western Hemisphere to suspend Venezuela from the 35-nation Organization of American States. Read More Venezuelas intelligence agencies are committing crimes against humanity as part of a plan orchestrated by the Nicolas maduro regime to repress dissent, warns a mid-September United Nations (U.N.) ... Read More Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile The head of the Organization of American States unfairly ... U.S. in opposing Cuba and Venezuelas socialist governments ... Read More Venezuelas government and opposition parties are poised to restart political negotiations after the US midterm elections next week, a move that could lead the US to start easing some sanctions on the ... Read More The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela will have a face-to-face meeting Tuesday for the first time in six years as Colombia's new leader moves rapidly to improve long-frigid relations with a ... 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 Reducing news to hard lines and side-taking leaves a lot of the story untold. Progress comes from challenging what we hear and considering different views. Read More As the Russian army continues to falter in Ukraine, the world is worrying that Vladimir Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon. Maybe -- but for now, I think Putin is assembling a different weapon. Read More Germany has become an economic satellite of Americas New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions ... Read More Climate experts say US has acted in bad faith for decades; president of Malawi among leaders calling for more to be done ... Read More MIAMI (AP) The head of the Organization of American States unfairly maligned the ... he made common cause with the U.S. in opposing Cuba and Venezuelas socialist governments, once even ... Read More of American States Boss Slammed Over Watchdog's Removal By JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press MIAMI (AP) The head of the Organization ... U.S. in opposing Cuba and Venezuelas socialist ... Read More World News Egyptian Artist Paints Church Murals Unfazed By Attacks | RobinsPost News & Noticias a new mural now stands in remembrance of the ten lives taken in the tops mass shooting. After five months since that racist attack, Gary Heard, and several other artists of the cold springs ... Read More In the painting ... artist said, her voice breaking, in footage captured at the meeting by WZZM-TV, a local news station based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One man at the meeting called the mural ... Read More Ibrahim Salah also uses other materials, such as old car tires to create sculptures inspired by symbols of Egyptian heritage (Artist, Ibrahim Salah) "Metal as a material is very unique and the art of ... Read More Authorities suspect that the assailants in the latest attack in Kogi had specifically targeted the church and its members. It looked like it was organized against that particular church ... Read More Jose Hernandez, a Little Rock artist who painted some of the murals that line the street, has lost count of the number of times he's had to paint over vandals' efforts to deface the art pieces. He ... Read More She has 36 other murals on display in the city. I am a Christian, the artist said. I feel pleasure when I paint. Whether I ... Want more WLOX news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe ... Read More On Monday, a Pakistan-based social enterprise called Phool Patti Truck Art Collective shared photographs of their mural on social media. The painting ... The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will ... Read More I want them to learn more about the area, really just have more of an appreciation for the art and how its giving back to the area, she said. The mural features characteristics of the ... Read More A team from Pakistan painted mural in Doha, Qatar which is on diplay at Doha Museum ahead of FIFA World Cup. The group Phool Patti led by Ali Salman Anchan completed painting the mural after two ... Read More GPS says the student received approval to paint images ... the student artist said, her voice breaking, in footage captured at the meeting by WZZM-TV, a local news station based in Grand Rapids, ... Read More World News Us Wants To Bring North Korea To Path Of Dialogue | RobinsPost News & Noticias WASHINGTON -- The United States continues to remain open to dialogue with North Korea without any preconditions, a spokesperson for the US National ... still a diplomatic path forward to this ... Read More And events in other parts of the world will not have been overlooked in Pyongyang. "North ... it wants to terminate US security alliances in the region, particularly with South Korea and Japan ... Read More N Korea warns of powerful response as more than 240 US and S Korea aircraft take part in Vigilant Storm exercise. Read More Sang-Hun: North Korea is protesting recent military exercises by South Korea, Japan and the U.S. But more frequent weapons tests are also part of Kims long-term goal. He wants to expand his ... Read More North Korea Says It Will Not Overlook Any Kind of ... spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency. "In the future, too, our army will never allow any provocation ... Read More "We agreed that an unparalleled scale of response would be necessary if North Korea pushes ahead with a seventh nuclear test," South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong told a news ... Read More North Korea has been consistently developing and advancing nuclear weapons capabilities and is now threatening not only (South Korea) but the entire world, but I think there is nothing North ... Read More North Korea's recent flurry of ... after large-scale navy drills by South Korean and US forces, state news agency KCNA said on Monday. North Korea fired two ballistic missiles early on Sunday ... Read More SEOUL, South Korea North Korea on Friday launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters and flew warplanes near the border with South Korea, the Souths military said, further ... Read More 25 to Oct. 9, North Korea's KCNA news agency reported on Monday local time. Kim vowed to strengthen the country's military operations going forward, adding there is no need to have dialogue with ... Read More The U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted a joint river-crossing drill Wednesday, the latest exercise in a large-scale operation designed to counter North ... name in news delivered first ... Read More North Koreas leader Kim Jong Un has ... Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful ... Read More World News Ramadan Fasting To Start May 27 Or May 28 | RobinsPost News & Noticias "Family and prayer should be my only focus this Ramadan," he said. "But I will have to sacrifice the time with my wife, kids and prayer just so I can bring home an income." The practice of fasting ... Read More In another survey of 52 Muslim parents of children with diabetes (92% type 1), 27% said their children fasted during Ramadan ... may need to have your child take a nap in the afternoon." As for ... Read More During the month of Ramadan, Muslims won't eat or drink during the hours of daylight. This is called fasting ... 2 April and will end on Sunday 1 May. Ramadan starts when the new Moon first ... Read More NEW YORK (AP) The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, adding to an autumn mix of viruses ... We will do what we need to do. There may be some good news: COVID-19 cases have been ... Read More Much of the negative information on intermittent fasting has come from studies on mice or rats, she said, calling for more research of the effects on people. For this study, the r ... Read More If youve been hankering for a fresh start in New World, Amazon Games had some good news to share today that youll be excited to hear about. Specifically, how New World players will have the ... Read More In this article, we will look at some of the world's top fast food chains. You can skip our discussion on fast food industry growth and go to the 5 Largest Fast Food Chains in the World. Read More Blood glucose concentration was significantly lower (4.50.3 vs 4.90.4 mmol/l, p=0.003) and urine specific gravity was significantly higher (1.0180.006 vs 1.0060.004, p=0.001) at the start of ... Read More The Kiw-born brawler, 27, came up against five-time former world champion Australian Susie Ramadan, 43, in a tooth-and-nail fight at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on Saturday. The second round saw ... Read More Some Muslims have been unable to fully observe Ramadan because of the soaring cost of living. Over the past month, about 55,000 Muslims in Wales have been fasting during daylight hours and ... Read More World News Abbas To Stop Funding Electricity In Hamas Run Gaza Says Israel | RobinsPost News & Noticias The deal was signed on Thursday by a leading figure from the Fatah Party of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and by the chief of Hamas, which rules Gaza. Abbas himself was not ... Read More But Hamas fighters rout pro-Abbas ... for electricity supplies and civil servants salaries in Gaza. In May, Hamas issues a new policy document, easing parts of its stance on Israel. Read More In Israel, the PA president is no longer seen as a partner for peace, but since he is a bulwark against the likes of Hamas and ... pro-Mahmoud Abbas slogans during a rally in the Gaza Strip ... Read More After a week of deadly street clashes in June 2007, Abbas ... electricity supplies and civil servants' salaries in Gaza. In May, Hamas issues a new policy document, easing parts of its stance on ... Read More A Palestinian man from Gaza ... Israel, has been seen as sympathetic to the Palestinians. In 2020, a Gazan imam was sentenced to a year in jail for smuggling funds from Malaysian charities to ... Read More The Shin Bet found that the West Bank suspects were in contact with Balal Basharat, a Hamas operative Israel's Shin ... Hamas operatives from the Gaza Strip transfer funds and armaments to ... Read More The comments also follow a crisis of confidence between the Palestinians and the US after the Trump administration cut funding ... the state-run Russian news agency TASS, Putin told Abbas that ... Read More Payoffs are no guarantee of long-term quiet from Hezbollah; Hamas attacked Israel periodically over the years despite the cash influx from Doha. Meanwhile, the claim that the deal will stabilize ... Read More The cost of the gas field's development is estimated at $1.2 billion Israel has responded to Egyptian efforts to allow the Palestinian Authority to produce natural gas off the coast of Gaza ... Read More chairman Mahmoud Abbas and by the chief of Hamas, which rules Gaza. Abbas himself was not present. (Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in ... Read More World News After Gm Flees Their Country Venezuelans Take Sides Over Who Is To Blame | RobinsPost News & Noticias A day after ... their journeys and couldnt pay their way back to their country of origin. By noon, Pina, her partner, and another Venezuelan woman decided to try their luck again and walked ... Read More Any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama after Wednesday will also be ... An estimated 6.8 million Venezuelans have fled their country since the economy tanked in 2014, mostly to ... Read More A landslide in central Venezuela ... more than 50 missing after a river overflowed, officials said Sunday, in the latest deadly disaster caused by heavy rains to hit the country. Read More "The news hit us like a bucket of cold water," Gilbert Fernandez said Thursday, a day after ... Venezuelan migrants at U.S. airports while Mexico agreed to take back Venezuelans who come to the U ... Read More US Will Take in Some ... migration from Venezuela, which leapfrogged over Guatemala and Honduras in August to become the second largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexico. Read More World News Ecuadoran Journalist Seeking Asylum In Peru Still Sees Mission In Writing | RobinsPost News & Noticias These three young men (I am not using their names to protect their identities) risked their lives crossing the Darien Gap, one of the worlds ... York City while seeking asylum with no plan ... Read More A top Maltese investigative journalist, Caruana Galizia, 53, had written extensively on her website Running Commentary about suspected corruption in political and business circles in the ... Read More The Morning Meeting with Al Tompkins is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas worth considering and other timely context for journalists ... to the rest of the worlds problems. Read More Haitis Ministry of Culture and Communication said it learned with horror the news of the assassination ... keeping began in 1987. Journalists also are still seeking justice in the March ... Read More The official Philippine News Agency (PNA ... The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, and killers often go unpunished. A total of 155 journalists and ... Read More The Honduran NGO Comite por la Libre Expresion (C-Libre) has reported that a journalist in the country ... Like us on Facebook to see similar stories ... Read More But the veteran journalist used that experience to show women of color the power of resilience in her new book, Black Women Will Save the World ... the narrative is by writing your own story ... Read More Haitis Ministry of Culture and Communication said it learned "with horror the news of the assassination ... keeping began in 1987. Journalists also are still seeking justice in the March ... Read More Iranian Journalist Who Broke News on Mahsa Amini Pays Heavy Price By ... 16, was the first sign to the world that all was not well with 22-year-old Amini, who had been detained three days earlier ... Read More Niloofar Hamedi, an Iranian journalist specialising in women's rights ... was the first sign to the world that all was not well with 22-year-old Amini, who had been detained three days earlier ... Read More 24 (UPI) --Prominent Pakistani journalist ... World News // 11 hours ago COVID-19 world weekly cases down 18% but Japan, South Korea spiking Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The coronavirus situation is still ... Read More The archipelago nation is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists ... who named his three other co-conspirators still at large -- also said he was told he would be killed ... Read More World News Trial Delayed For Burkina Faso S Former President | RobinsPost News & Noticias Burkina Faso's latest coup leader is now officially the country's transitional president OUAGADOUGOU ... more with Russia rather than France, the former colonial power that has been helping ... Read More Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president Friday ... to work more with Russia rather than France, the former colonial power that has been helping fight jihadis ... Read More OUAGADOUGOU, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Burkina Faso's military officials, political parties and civil society leaders on Friday officially designated army captain Ibrahim Traore as the country's ... Read More OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) Capt. Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president Friday, two weeks after he seized power in the countrys second coup this year ... Read More OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) Capt. Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president Friday ... Nelson Mandela said Friday. Former world leaders in the group known ... Read More Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) Capt. Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president ... the former colonial power that ... Read More Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president Friday ... to work more with Russia rather than France, the former colonial power that has been helping fight jihadis ... Read More OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) Capt. Ibrahim Traore officially became Burkina Fasos transitional president Friday ... Russia rather than France, the former colonial power that has been ... Read More U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says he thinks the reports Wednesday that the Trump administration was considering leaving the North American Free Trade Agreement was a negotiating tactic and that the pact has been good for agriculture. Grassley spoke with reporters from the Quad-Cities on Thursday after meeting with a delegation to Washington, D.C., led by the Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce. The delegation is in Washington this week for its annual meeting with area lawmakers and executive branch agencies. Grassley, who has long been a champion of free trade, said there were two options floating Wednesday renegotiation or withdrawal. "I think the withdrawal one is posturing," he said. President Donald Trump has long complained that NAFTA was a bad deal for the United States. And late Wednesday, there were reports that the Trump administration was preparing an executive order to withdraw from NAFTA. Later, the president tweeted that he would renegotiate with Mexico and Canada instead. Trade is an important part of the Quad-Cities economy, and Grassley said it has been good for Iowa agriculture. On Thursday, the president told reporters he would seek to renegotiate, but he left open the option of terminating the pact if negotiations are not successful. DES MOINES Fresh from a meeting with the president and USDA secretary, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says he is willing to join them in Washington if presented the right opportunity. I dont know what role that might be, Northey said after meeting with President Donald Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue on Tuesday at the White House. I certainly would love to work with him as Iowa secretary of ag. If there is another job that is offered, I would be very willing to consider that as well. Northey made clear there has been no offer, but there might be jobs that would appeal to him if the experience and the difference he could make made them worthwhile, Northey told reporters Wednesday. Northey was mentioned as a candidate for governor if Gov. Terry Branstad didnt seek re-election in 2018. However, he was quick to pledge his support to Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds when it became clear Branstad would be leaving midterm to become ambassador to China. He thought about, but didnt run for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2014. Northey has kept his options open whenever asked about opportunities beyond the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Taking a post with the USDA could involve giving up his farm interests. I love living in Iowa. I love being here close to family and close to the farm, he said. If he was offered a USDA job, that absolutely would be part of the consideration. Whatever job hes doing, Northey is looking forward to working with Perdue. So whether its working with him from here or working with him there we will work very closely together, he said. ATTENTION! This journalistic investigation is directly related to the interview given to Rough&Polished by World of Diamonds, and we strongly recommend reading both texts to have a complete impression. An opportunity to conduct journalistic investigation is a rare stroke of luck in the work of any journalist. People engaged in illegal activities usually behave very carefully, and to detect them is a big problem. Nevertheless, sometimes even scammers make a blunder. As a rule, they are let down either by greed and thirst for glory, or by pathological confidence in the stupidity of others. Today we will show you just such a case. There are many diamond mining companies in the world. There are companies operating in Canada and Russia, in Africa and Australia. There are public companies that are traded on the stock exchange, and there are small-scale artisanal miners, who are panning gravel for diamonds using iron sieves. There are companies that comply with all the trade rules, and there are companies that violate the requirements of the Kimberley Process. But we were lucky to discover a completely new kind of diamond mining company, and we are proud to present it to you. Ladies and gentlemen, meet a virtual miner. World of Diamonds led by Mr. Karan Tilani is the owner of a very large, but, unfortunately, non-existent diamond field in Russia. We first discovered the website of this company last year, but at the time did not pay much attention to it, considering it an inept joke. However, it was sheer underestimation on our part: as it turns out the joke has acquired an unprecedented sway in recent months. In April, several trading companies received business propositions from World of Diamonds - obviously, they were offered stones from that non-existent diamond field. And the company itself has given a dozen interviews in recent months, including the proposal to give an interview to Rough&Polished. We consider it our duty to warn the market about this questionable activity. It's terrible to think how many illegal deals can be pulled off under the cover of a website describing non-existent projects and hiding behind a large number of laudatory publications in the media. Below is a long enough narrative with a number of screenshots. We have checked all the information about World of Diamonds that we could find - from the photos on their website to the incorporation data on legal entities in this country, and tried to make our explanations as detailed as possible, so as not to leave any doubts. Part 1. Photoshop and plagiarism. Formerly, in order to position oneself as a solid company, it was necessary to rent an office and at least hire a secretary to answer phone calls and give smiles to people at the reception. Times have changed, and today any acquaintance with a company begins with its website. Well, it's even convenient: one may avoid spending money on renting an office and just upload a few webpages with photos, thus turning a businessperson. There is one stumbling block on this way, however: if you are making a website of a production company, you have to show photos of its assets. But such a delicate situation can be circumvented. This is the picture we see on the main page of World of Diamonds website. It depicts the "Tarskaya mine," which WOD calls its main asset. Impressive, isnt it? It is immediately evident that you are dealing with serious people having rich experience in mining. Source: The "official" website of World of Diamonds. You bet! The experience of the miners at this mine is really rich, because in fact the photo shows the Diavik diamond field in Canada, which is being developed by Dominion Diamonds and Rio Tinto. Dear staff of Dominion and Rio, how do you like the news that you, as it turns out, are working in Russia? Or the news that someone is misusing your photos? In this photo, you see the Diavik open-pit mines. Lets take another photo from the WOD website - this time, it is obviously depicting a workers village or something like that. Source: The "official" website of World of Diamonds. Unlike the diamond field, the village on the photograph cannot be identified by eye. All workers settlements are similar to each other. But for such situations, major search engines (including Google, to whose "services" we have resorted) have introduced an image search. You upload a picture and immediately see where it was published before and to whom it belongs. And this workers village belongs ... ... belongs to a well-known photobank, which sells stock photos for money. By the way, the photo is not at all related to diamond mining, depicting just the "exterior of a plant". Let's try one more photo. Here, apparently, we are shown the process of mining diamond ore at the Tarskaya mine. Source: The official website of World of Diamonds. Whereas Google is somehow convinced that this photo belongs to Phillips & Stevens, a Canada-based land surveying company. Shall we have another try? This is also a photo of an operating production asset belonging to WOD. Source: The "official" website of World of Diamonds. Or not to WOD? World of Diamonds has many beautiful photos. I especially like this one. Source: The "official" website of World of Diamonds. I hope all readers understand that this image is not real, as it is only the result of Photoshop witchcraft. However, it is an instance of quite mediocre witchcraft, I should say - many high school students would have coped better. To start with, the open pit (which, it would seem, is in the foreground) is disproportionately small in comparison with the buildings that are seen in the distance. Never mind the buildings it does not match the bushes, which are supposedly growing on its sides! These growing bushes are higher than the height of one tier of the spiral road inside the open pit. And the dumper creeping up the road is exactly the size of an ant. However, we should not find fault with the buildings - they are not real and are cut from some other photos. Actually, the only thing that exists on the original image is the hill, snow-covered grass and the house on the right side. All the rest is carefully added by the hands of a novice photoshopper from Latvia (yes, you can also get a country record from the source file). Gentlemen, if you paid him money for his work, then you spent it for naught. In general, we tried very hard to find at least one real-production photo on the World of Diamonds website. We tried indeed, but could not. All of them are either stolen from other diamond mining companies or taken from publicly available photobanks. Part 2. The non-existent mine. However, the use of other people's photos does not prove anything by itself. No one knows, but what if the website of World of Diamonds is simply maintained by lazy and incompetent contractors? Instead of using original images on this website, they did not bother much and stole photos from the Internet. This, unfortunately, also happens. To accuse people of fraud, one should have more substantial arguments. According to the information on the website of World of Diamonds and in their interviews, the company's main activity is carried on in the Srednekansky District of the Magadan Oblast (Magadan Region) in Russia. According to World of Diamonds, they have here the Tarskaya diamond mine, which was discovered in 2006 and is being developed since 2010. There are 6 kimberlite pipes (out of the existing 38!!!) with open pits dug to the depth of 100-490 meters, from which the company has already extracted 18.7 million tons of ore yielding about 35.4 million carats of diamonds, the WOD website says. Let's start with a simple thing, typing in Russian (which stands for "minerals of the Magadan Oblast") in the search bar. This is a truly resource-rich area. According to the official information on the website of the Magadan Oblast government, there are "reserves of gold, silver, tin, coal, molybdenum, cobalt, tungsten, lead and zinc along with significant manifestations of copper and iron." There is not a word about diamonds in this long list. In their interviews, the representatives of World of Diamonds often repeat that typical of Russian companies, the Group has not sought public exposure. This is an excellent argument for throwing dust in the eyes of foreigners, but, unfortunately, it does not correspond to reality. Despite the fact that many people abroad consider the Russian market closed and not completely civilized, in practice it is quite transparent. Under Russian laws, it is impossible to conduct any kind of business activity in this country without being registered with appropriate official agencies and without disclosing information about such activity . If, of course, we are talking about legal activity, and not about a criminal group. It is especially true for diamonds. In Russia, it is impossible to own diamond deposits (the more so, large ones) without anyone knowing about it . The Russian Federal Agency for Subsoil Use (Rosnedra) regularly publishes and updates the list of subsoil plots of federal significance (which include all diamond deposits). In the list containing 373 items, there is not a single deposit, site or anomaly named "Tarskaya" ( in Russian) or any of its variations. Moreover, there are only 5 sites in the Magadan Oblast having the status of "federal subsoil plots" and all of them are gold bearing. The list of Rosnedra does not contain a single diamond manifestation in the territory of the Magadan Oblast . To make the picture complete, let's turn to the well-known service of Google Maps. This is how the Nyurbinskaya and Botuobinskaya diamond pipes developed by ALROSA in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) look from above. Purposefully, we did not take huge diamond mines like Mir and Udachny for this demonstration. The Nyurbinskaya diamond pipes are much smaller in size, but they are still clearly visible. Looking from the satellite, it is difficult to confuse a diamond pipe with something else. And now using the Google Maps service, let's have a look at the Srednekansky District of the Magadan Oblast. Specifically, let us inspect the right bank of the Kolyma River in the place where it turns to the left - it is exactly there, where, according to the map on the WOD website, there are 6 kimberlite pipes of the Tarskaya diamond field. There is nothing like a diamond open pit. The area is dotted with mountains and does not give any indication of the ongoing mining of minerals. Any reader can easily open Google Maps and scrutinize the whole Srednekansky District and even the entire Magadan Oblast - and will fail to find there anything like a diamond mining operation. For those who have any doubts, we would like to bring to their notice the following. In response to the request from Rough&Polished, Liliya Lazareva ( ), the official spokesperson of the Magadan Oblast Government said that the authorities of this region "do not know such an enterprise and added that diamonds in the Magadan Oblast have never been mined." You are free to draw your conclusions yourself. Those for whom words are not enough may be convinced by numbers. In their interview, WOD claim that they produce about 7 million carats of diamonds annually. According to the Ministry of Finance of Russia (which oversees the country's diamond industry), the country produced 41.9 million carats of diamonds in 2015 and a similar figure is given in the Kimberley Process report. Of this volume, ALROSA produced 38.3 million carats and Grib Diamonds about 2 million carats. And where are the "7 million carats" produced by WOD? Part 3. " The Boss of It All." Honestly, until the last moment we cherished a hope that an interview with World of Diamonds would clarify something. Despite the obvious facts, it was difficult enough to realize that right under the nose of everybody there is an evident forgery, which for some reason no one sees. We believed that we could communicate live with someone from WODs management and understand the essence of this companys business. Instead of communicating live with their CEO, our correspondent received written answers to her questions. And a photo of Boris Voronov, CEO of World of Diamonds. Here it is: In fact, even with the naked eye you can see that something is wrong with this photograph. The strange blurred background making your dizzy and a very sharp, contrasting figure on it with a strange face whose right side is shaved and the left side is not. But let's refrain from guessing about the mans appearance. For such cases, there is the Error Level Analysis (ELA) of photographs. This program analyzes the areas with different compression levels on the photo and based on this draws a conclusion about whether any sections of the photo were added new elements or edited. This is a very convenient service, recently gaining momentum to combat fake news. The results of Error Level Analysis can be seen here. Judging by the analysis, the mans figure is inserted into the photo of the interior, and the figure itself was also subjected to a significant correction its entire face (especially the eyes), neck, tie and the contour of hands were edited. And if you turn to the already familiar search for the original source of photo in Google, you can find the man himself. Meet Patrick Mathiew, CEO of Armacell. Only for the photo in the interior of World of Diamonds, they gave him other eyes (without much respect for the proportions and their arrangement on the face), edited his mouth (finally spoiling the location of shadows in the photo), inserted another tie, and at the same time drew new hands, since the original was only a chest photo. Incidentally, the fact that the hands are "borrowed," is very noticeable in the photo: the color of the skin on these hands is much darker compared with the face color. So, for the publication of their interview World of Diamonds provided a photograph of a non-existent person, saying it was their CEO. I have exactly two options: either Chief Executive Officer Boris Voronov is hiding and does not want to be photographed, or Boris Voronov, CEO of World of Diamonds does not exist in this world at all. This caused big questions about the management of World of Diamonds. We checked all the people listed on the company's website in the sections "Senior Management" and "Board of Directors". None of them has profiles in social networks or LinkedIn. Which is strange in itself - if they are such well-known professionals in their field, as it is described on the WOD website, why are they not known to anyone and do not have a network of business contacts? We also checked all these people through the SPARK system (Russia's integrated data base on legal entities and their management) and did not find any of them mentioned on the WOD website. The only coincidence was Sergey Anosov (he is listed as a member of the board of directors of WOD). However, we cannot be sure that we found the right Sergey Anosov and not his namesake (there is no data on his birth or patronymic on the WOD website). But if we are not mistaken, and this is the right person, the result will surprise you. The individual entrepreneur, as well as OOO TZK incorporated under the name of Sergey Anosov do have licenses for the trade in diamonds and precious stones, their processing, production and sale of jewelry. And in general, Sergey Valentinovich Anosov is mentioned in an unofficial (and sarcastic) "Rating of Russia's Greatest Entrepreneurs" as a man who established about 300 shell companies and was the CEO of more than 150 of them. At the same time, we also checked , which WOD mentioned in an interview with Rough&Polished. According to Boris Voronov (it is hard to say to what extent you can believe a person existing as a drawing), was established in 2001 and is the backbone of the whole World of Diamonds Group. Unfortunately, the SPARK database has pay access, so instead of a link, we have to submit a screenshot. According to Russias integrated register of legal entities, there is only one company bearing the name of in this country. It was incorporated in 2013 and not in 2001. Its CEO is not Boris Voronov, but Roman Murashov (though, most likely, he is also a "dummy," because under his name, besides this company, there are incorporated a dozen of others selling everything from construction materials to bed-clothes). The company is said to have a staff of up to 5 people (and what about the 9,000 employees mentioned on the World of Diamonds website??) and the authorized capital of 100,000 rubles (which is the average salary of one resident of the Magadan Oblast for 2 months). Eventually, we could find neither any real legal entity, nor almost anyone of the World of Diamonds management. Almost nobody, except one person. This person is called Karan Tilani. On the WOD website, he is named the head of the company for the Asian market, while in social networks and LinkedIn, he is mentioned as the director of the entire World of Diamonds Group. He is the only person whose photos can be found on the Internet in publications about WOD (and he is indeed often photographed). Actually, a letter asking for an interview came to us on behalf of his assistant, Elena Garbellini (who, judging by LinkedIn, lives in Romania, and not in Russia or any other "diamond" country). By the way, the request from the "Russian" company for this interview was not directed to the Moscow office of Rough&Polished, but to our correspondent in India. Lars von Trier has a wonderful comedy, "The Boss of It All." In it, a flaccid business owner comes up with an imaginary "big boss from America" in order to dump all unpopular decisions on him and thus avoid unpleasant conversations with employees and eventually any responsibility for his own actions. On behalf of this ghostly boss, he fired people, made deals, and even corresponded with counterparts. I have a big suspicion that World of Diamonds does not just resort to a similar scheme, but even improved it. Why conduct real business, if you can invent a diamond mine in a far-away place of snowy Russia, about which no one knows anything? For greater substantiality, it is possible to invent a row of "directors", and even give interviews on their behalf in various publications. And all this is quite easy to do alone, or well, with the help of a very small group of people. Part 4. Creating added value In their numerous interviews, World of Diamonds and Karan Tilani emerge before us as ambassadors of the world of luxury, and I would even say, "extra-luxury." For example, they are widely promoting a swizzle stick graced with diamonds worth $ 1 million - but it will only go to someone ready to buy from their partner, Dreammaker, an exclusive expensive travel tour for $ 14 million. Another project is a ring with a blue diamond worth $ 2 million, named after actress Jane Seymour - which, however, is not sold separately, but is included in the "most expensive dinner in the world." In all these projects, WOD appears as the company that extracted those diamonds, cut them and set them in jewelry pieces. And its representatives in all their interviews say that they try to confine their work to exclusive orders only and never deal with mass retail. We have already found out that World of Diamonds does not mine anything. It remains only to find out what it is trading in. And their interview was really helpful to understand this. Here's what WOD told Rough&Polished about their business activities: We streamline operations with some of our affiliate companies where the lower value diamonds we mine get manufactured and traded through them, while the higher value diamonds evolving from their mines passes through us. <> World of Diamonds Group specializes in supplying polished diamonds as we have the capacity and expertise to cut, polish and distribute finished stones. <> Polishing diamonds are a value added service to our clients, and so we do not have plans to offer rough diamonds. It is really very convenient to trade polished diamonds, because unlike rough diamonds, polished diamonds do not require a bunch of documents and KP certificates. If you are deft enough, you can buy several polished diamonds in one corner of the globe, and the next day resell them to jewelers in quite another part of the world this time saying they are your own independently mined product. Do you still have some doubts? But we have a website, and there are publications about our company in the Internet! An article floating on the Internet, too, you know, gives some added value to a diamond. Nevertheless, if you position yourself as a Russian diamond mining company, you will probably need to have some quantity of Russian rough diamonds with KP certificates stating that the "country of their origin is Russia" - just to show them to your counterparts for more authenticity. And if you do not have your own mining operation, then you will have to buy these diamonds somewhere. Do you follow my thought? When our correspondent Aruna Gaitonde sent questions for the interview, she asked only about the company's production activities. However, World of Diamonds, on their own initiative, added another question to the interview, which apparently seemed to them important. This one: "World of Diamonds Group only sought visibility through internationalization in early 2013, about the time Alrosa went public. Both mining consortiums have interests in Africa and WOD Groups registered entity, OOO takes after the famous (Mir) mine owned by Alrosa. WOD Group seems to have resource sharing arrangements with a leading Russian diamond mining company and Russian media noted that some of WODs key employees have been spotted at Alrosas offices. How is World of Diamonds Group related to Alrosa?" As a person working in the Russian media, I can say with confidence that no one ever wrote about "WODs key employees spotted at Alrosas offices." It is your egotism that betrays you, gentlemen: even with all their interest to Alrosa, Russian media do not keep vigil at the door to the office of this company, looking out for all visitors. And even more so, a visiting foreigner would not cause any excitement among the local public: overseas customers come to the company every month by hundreds. Nevertheless, World of Diamonds deemed it necessary to mention this and disown any connection with the company, although in previous interviews they never raised this issue. I have only one assumption: it is most likely that quite recently some market stakeholders saw the gentlemen from World of Diamonds at a trading session of ALROSA, buying diamonds. However, if WOD in engaged in reselling rough and polished diamonds produced by ALROSA, this is not the worst option. WOD has time and again repeated that it has "interests in Africa" - and it means that under the guise of diamonds from their Tarskaya mine they can sell, for example, rough coming from Zimbabwe, or some other country that does not comply with the KP requirements at all. And Karan Tilani in his recent interviews spoke very warmly about synthetic diamonds and confirmed that World of Diamonds was producing them as well, although in small volumes. I wonder if the diamond set into the mentioned $2 million ring is natural? One of the market stakeholders told us about his little experience in communicating with World of Diamonds. According to him, the sale offers made by WOD looked, to put it mildly, very strange and questionable for a serious member of the diamond market, and were safely thrown into the basket. However, such an offer to buy an exclusive polished diamond may seem attractive to people who do not understand the market well enough - for example, for novice jewelers or for wealthy people who want to buy an exclusive piece of jewelry. Under the cover of media support, one can sell anything to such people. P.S. While preparing this article, I had to give up journalistic ethics not allowing World of Diamonds to comment on the results of my investigation. First, I am almost sure that they would have answered "there is some mistake", or "we are a small private company, so nobody knows about our business." Secondly and much more importantly, I did not want to scare them away - probably, having received such a request, World of Diamonds would immediately delete their website and hide for a while. However, my task is first of all to warn diamond market players about the danger and show them this danger (by the way, if WOD still decides to delete their website, we have screenshots of its pages). However, we will certainly listen and publish all the arguments of Mr. Tilani in his defense (although something tells me that he will not have any desire to enter into a dialogue). If he wants, Mr. Tilani can even file a claim against Rough&Polished for damaging his business reputation. We will eagerly respond to his offer to meet in court, because according to the laws of this country, the actions of World of Diamonds in terms of "conscious distortion of the truth" are qualified as fraud. P.P.S. Frankly, the current situation turns me into bewilderment and mild horror. Requesting for an interview, World of Diamonds sent a list of publications about their company to Rough&Polished. Among others, this list also mentions large and usually trustworthy media, like Forbes, Mining Global and even some diamond industry portals. According to these media, World of Diamonds is "one of the worlds largest privately held diamond corporations." Dear journalists, what's the matter with you? Why did it not occur to anyone to check the information on this company? Okay, you do not have correspondents in Russia. But why not send a request to those who work in Russia? Russian media, or at least to the press service of ALROSA, which, perhaps, could give you some answer. It is this journalistic negligence - posting press releases without paying attention to their content or publishing articles for money that helps people like World of Diamonds to conduct their dishonest business. Elena Levina for Rough&Polished The World of Diamonds Group of Companies says on its website that it was established in 2001 and has a diversified holding in the industry. With over a decade of expertise and involvement in five continents, the Group provides fine jewelry, rough and polished diamonds to prominent diamantaires around the world, the company says, adding that with a full ownership in the Tarskaya diamond mine it has joint interests in several other diamond mines globally. Recently, World of Diamonds asked Rough&Polished to do a story on their operations and we settled on an interview by e-mail with Mr. Boris Voronov, the Groups Chairman, Managing Director & CEO. Its all below, as is. And above, there is a commentary to this interview. Can you run us through the workings of your Group ' World of Diamonds ' right from inception to date, for the benefit of our readers? Please give details of all your Group's varied activities, affiliates and their activities and so on. At a young age, I had access to classified diamond reports which contained data on the composition and structure of the Earths crust, and which stated the presence of diamonds in Russia through indicator materials, tracing back to several Archaean cratons underlying the country that were detected in aerial magnetic surveys. My interest in geology and gemology grew, and I pursued that academically. During my education and the years following that, I developed relationships with financiers and individuals who eventually assumed roles in the government. Meanwhile, I had opportunities to be involved in diamond prospecting activities, overlooked small scale diamond mining operations and eventually acquired significant shares in larger projects after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The mining group I was with focused on large scale volume based production and with my age reaching 50, I was happy to have my own business. We needed an entity in Russia to develop and market the larger, investment quality fancy colored diamonds. OOO , or World of Diamonds Group as we are known today, was established in 2001. WOD Group initially invested in 3 major mines in the North-Eastern and North-Western parts of Russia, primarily in the Yakutsk region, the capital city of the Sakha Republic, and in the Republic of Karelia. We noticed stable growths in production, close to 60% of the diamonds mined were gem-grade and the collective annual output of the 3 mines reached over 4 million carats by 2005. We reinvested some profits for exploration in other parts of Russia as well as South America and Africa. In 2006, we discovered the Tarskaya diamond mine, which contributes to most of the Groups revenue today. WOD Group is vertically involved from diamond mining, rough diamond processing, diamond cutting and polishing, and distribution to select trade players and jewelry houses. The Group used to have a manufacturing facility in Belgium but that has since moved to Russia in 2014, due to sanctions. We still maintain relationships with diamond cutters in Ramat Gan, Antwerp and New York, and have an arm for fine jewelry creation located in Geneva. Most of our operations within and outside Russia are done through our affiliates, so that we can be appreciated as an international brand. Tarskaya Diamond Mine - Aerial View As your Group is into diamond mining, can you elaborate on this aspect of your business...where are the mines situated in Russia; do you own mines in Africa as well; number of mines owned totally and production levels of each mine; open-pit or underground mines and where is the concentration plant located, etc. Tarskaya diamond mine which accounts for over 95% of our revenue in the mining business is situated in the North-Eastern part of Russia, on the outskirts of the Arctic circle. It is in Srednekansky District, Magadan Oblast, with the nearest airport in Seymchan. In the early 2000s, we were exploring Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Namibia, Botswana, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Between 2005 and 2007, we had a workforce of about 300 in Africa, but were faced with challenges of the civil war so we gradually exited the region. Tarskaya diamond mine has 38 commercially viable kimberlite pipes, while we have started production in 6 of them. These 6 open-pit mines produce around 7 million carats of rough a year, and because this area has been largely untouched and undeveloped, most of the diamonds are gem-quality. Our mines have a depth of over 160 meters to about 500 meters, and we do not plan to consider underground operations due to the exponential costs and risks involved. With our mining concessions, we are best suited to explore the adjacent kimberlite pipes and to expand our areas of operation laterally. It is important to pace ourselves in production to match global demand and to maintain price stability, given that we have good reserves. Also, we streamline operations with some of our affiliate companies where the lower value diamonds we mine get manufactured and traded through them, while the higher value diamonds evolving from their mines passes through us. It allows our employees to specialize on a particular class of diamonds, and when marketing to the luxury brands, it is a matter of brand positioning. Tarskaya Diamond Mine - Upclose Can you give us an idea of what kind of rough diamonds you are producing currently... in terms of size and color? Does the WOD Group intend to expand its mining explorations in other countries in the future? The average rough diamond we mine is about 8.70 carat, but this is greatly reduced after polishing. Depending on the cutting style, rounds can lose up to 60% of their weight while radiant cut diamonds can lose as little as 20%. Generally, because of the desirable clarity grades (Tarskaya mine is a dependable producer of type Ib, IIa and IIb), we do not have to always navigate around inclusions. We mine diamonds of all colors, including colorless (whites), yellows, pinks and blues. There have been some green diamonds, and a few red and orange ones recovered over the years. There is a misconception that certain mines produce more of one color over another. While it may be true that Argyle is famous for pinks and Cullinan for blues, Tarskaya has seem some very rare fancy colored diamonds. Among the spectacular roughs we have recovered is a 21.47 carat blue which resulted in a 12 carat intense blue heart shaped diamond and several smaller blues, a 53.85 carat reddish orangy pink which contributed to a 37.49 carat cushion diamond, and a near 6 carat red diamond which gave birth to a 4.05 vivid pinkish red, marquise cut diamond. Since the lifespan of our Tarskaya diamond mine is expected to last for over 45 years or more, it is unlikely that we have to diversify mining operations into other areas immediately. However, we have a substantial annual budget for exploration activities to factor in global growth, and Africa is in our consideration. How, and to whom, and in what way does your Group sell rough diamonds? Do you have selected buyers to whom you supply on regular basis? On what basis can a customer apply, to be your regular rough buyer? Who are your major buyers now globally? World of Diamonds Group specializes in supplying polished diamonds as we have the capacity and expertise to cut, polish and distribute finished stones. As a mining company, we have the upper hand in understanding certain trait characteristics of our diamonds and can better align their structural planes with our cutting and processing equipment. Polishing diamonds are a value added service to our clients, and so we do not have plans to offer rough diamonds. We supply to a select number of diamond wholesalers, and to most luxury watch and jewelry brands that have their manufacturing facilities in Europe and America. Most of our business is conducted through long-term contracts, where our clients commit a minimum dollar value of diamonds per year. We guard the profiles of our clients since the retail scene is highly competitive. Should end consumers know that diamonds under several brands are mined and supplied by the same source, the whole industry becomes more price competitive. Where are your diamond processing facilities situated? What is the size of the unit/units; and what is the volume of diamonds processed per month? Do you process large high-end stones or smalls, or both? We set foot in Belgium in 2001, and had a 36,000 sqaure feet diamond cutting and sorting facility in Antwerp shortly after. However, we ceased operations there in 2014 due to sanctions against Russian corporations, and took the opportunity to relocate to our new facility in the WOD Building, adjacent to the Tarskaya diamond mine. Initially, it might have seemed like a hasty decision, but we were not pleased that our clients were being vetted and scrutinized. Over the years, we had been grooming our Russian employees who had adopted rotational jobs in Antwerp, and this paid off when we were moving our operations to Russia. Today, we still have partners in Antwerp, New York, Amsterdam and Israel, but are more discreet about it. The WOD Building in Tarskaya has high quality manufacturing units which operate at the highest level of efficiency. We have multi-tiered recovery systems comprising of screening and advanced micro-crushing machinery, dense media separation plants, scrubbers, x-ray fluorescence separators, grease belts, diamond processing equipment, laser marking and sawing instruments, refractometers, sorting and polishing departments, a diamond grading and assessment center, a marketing and administrative office and a research center for diamond technology. This facility spans about 62 hectares and includes housing, education and medical facilities for our 9,000 employees. Since relocating to the WOD Building in October 2014, we have processed about 5 million tonnes of ore, yielding around 9.3 million carat of diamonds. We polish mainly larger diamonds, but smaller ones if they are fancy colored. The smaller diamonds are generally cut through our affiliates, which work closely with India and China. WOD Facility in Tarskaya Was World of Diamonds Group created to supply diamonds directly to trade buyers, since Alrosa had contracts with De Beers in its earlier years? Do you have your own diamond processing units in other parts of the world like Africa, China, India, etc.? Or, what's the equation between your Group and the overseas partners or associates, if any? Do you process only your own roughs or use other mining companies goods as well in the overseas facilities? WOD Group is a separate entity from Alrosa, and was established for its own purpose. Alrosa works more with Asia, including India and China. We have various subsidiaries and partners that have diamond manufacturing units around the world. Within the Group, we coordinate our operations. As jewellery manufacturers and distributors, can we get a total picture of all your associates situated globally? With which companies/leading houses is your Group in JV with in Europe, Americas and other countries in terms of polished diamonds as well as high-end jewellery supply? WOD Group supplies mainly to brands in Europe and the Americas, but not because we discriminate against Asian brands. Our clients are mostly luxury names and they typically have their jewelry houses in Geneva, Paris, England, and in America. The ultra-luxury retail brands you see through boutiques in Asia, Australia and Africa do not engage in fine jewelry manufacturing within those regions itself, but in the West. Analyzing Diamond Mining & Lattice Formation World of Diamonds Group only sought visibility through internationalization in early 2013, about the time Alrosa went public. Both mining consortiums have interests in Africa and WOD Groups registered entity, OOO takes after the famous (Mir) mine owned by Alrosa. WOD Group seems to have resource sharing arrangements with a leading Russian diamond mining company and Russian media noted that some of WODs key employees have been spotted at Alrosas offices. How is World of Diamonds Group related to Alrosa? World of Diamonds Group and Alrosa are separate entities and would like to be known as that. Wrapping up, what's your opinion of the current global diamond/diamond jewellery industry? As it is facing numerous issues like slow demand due to economic slowdowns in consuming centres; and challenges like mixing of synthetics, conflict diamonds, competition with lifestyle/luxury products etc, do you see a 'light at the end of the tunnel' for the industry? There will always be a demand for diamonds. With a growing population, there will be an increase in marriages, weddings and celebratory occasions a diamond is the best representation of love, and it is usually set in jewelry. WOD Group is more focused on larger and fancy colored diamonds, and diamonds are undoubtedly the worlds most portable wealth. Economic slowdowns may be assumed from the surface, but the world is generating wealth through more sophisticated means. Everything is about technology and we learn to embrace it, including exploring diamond growing technology. Element Six, an arm of De Beers, has been in the diamond growing business since 1946. Diamond Foundry, which has investors including 12 billionaires along with Leonardo DiCaprio, has developed a reputation in recent years. As a mining company, we best understand the structure of a diamond, and have invested in technology that can create diamonds under certain conditions. Ultimately, disclosure is important. Synthetic diamonds will be a threat only to a small extent, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Consumers who were never attracted to diamonds due to the suspicion of their conflict provenance and lack of environmental friendliness, now have an option. Competition in the luxury space will always exist, but branding is key. Over the years, we have focused more on internationalizing ourselves and being able to connect with selected clients, while some of our creations have gained more prominence. For example, we were behind the worlds most expensive perfume collection in partnership with a Spanish perfume house, worlds most expensive dining experience that comes with a blue diamond ring named after British-American actress Jane Seymour, and the worlds most expensive trip with the most luxurious amenity being a collection of gold and diamond encrusted swizzle sticks. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished Botswana to host KP permanent secretariat The Kimberley Process (KP), a multilateral tool for the prevention of conflict diamonds, unanimously elected Botswana to host its permanent secretariat. The secretariat is scheduled to become operational by 2024, according to Reuters. Zimbabwes artisanal miners depend on forests to survive Hordes of artisanal gold miners throng parts of Mazowe village in Zimbabwes Mashonaland Central Province, where they have cut down thousands of trees to process gold ore. They are some of the miners who mine without a permit, says a report in IPS. Shanta Gold posts high-grade results at Kenyan gold project East Africa-focused gold producer, developer and explorer Shanta Gold has reported high-grade results at its West Kenya project. Company chief executive Eric Zurrin said visible gold was identified across several of the intersections. Petra suspends operations at Williamson after wall breach at tailings storage facility Petra Diamonds says the eastern wall of the tailings storage facility at its 75%-owned Williamson mine in Tanzania was breached, resulting in flooding away from the pit into certain areas outside of the mine lease area. Petra said mine production... Firestone Diamonds said it produced 103,000 carats during the third quarter of its fiscal year, including 31 special stones larger than 10.8 carats, from Liqhobong mine in Lesotho. The diamonds were recovered at a grade of 16.1 carats per hundred tonnes and this was an improvement from the second quarter, which saw the company producing 58,000 carats at a grade of 14.1 cpht. Scheduled plant commissioning modifications carried out during the quarter under consideration resulted in a higher grade of 20.1 cpht achieved for March, it said. The final commissioning phase has seen the mine achieve nameplate capacity on numerous occasions which is very positive, particularly during the rainy season, said company chief executive Stuart Brown. We are now starting to move towards the better quality ore areas which will be treated towards the end of the current quarter..." Firestone also produced a 110 carat gem-quality light yellow diamond post the period end, which was the largest diamond recovered to date by the company. The company was now expecting to finish the financial year end having recovered approximately 300,000 carats due to its focus on implementing the final modifications to the plant in the quarter. While this is below the lower end of previous estimates, the company is very pleased with the increasing grade and recovery rates which puts Liqhobong in a strong position ahead of processing the better quality ore in the coming months, it said. Meanwhile, the company held two diamond sales in February and March in Antwerp, which saw all 127,590 carats offered for sale being sold achieving an average price of $107 per carat for total sale proceeds of $13.7 million. It also had $5.0 million cash on hand as at 31 March, which excludes proceeds of the second diamond sale of $5.5 million received post quarter end, with a further $15.0 million available under the standby facility. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished Mountain Province Diamonds reported that its diamond sales from the Gahcho Kue project fell below expectations during the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. During the quarter, Mountain Province completed three pre-commercial sales of diamonds mainly from the Northeast Lobe of the 5034 kimberlite which achieved below-than-expected realized prices. Meanwhile, the company expects this situation to improve as market conditions normalize and more production is sourced from the Center Lobe of the 5034 kimberlite. These sales results will be reported with the Companys first quarter financial results on May 11, 2017 Mountain Province President and CEO Patrick Evans commented: The first quarter diamond sales reflect the experience of a new entrant to the market, as buyers develop familiarity with the sell-through value of the Companys production. The unexpected headwinds from demonetization in India compounded customary weakness during the price discovery period. Importantly, we have seen a steady improvement in our early sales results and are very encouraged that 72 percent of the winning bidders at our March sale were repeat buyers. We expect to work our way through the price discovery period by the middle of the year when we expect realized diamond prices to reflect market conditions. For the first quarter of 2017 the Gahcho Kue mine treated approximately 492,000 tonnes of ore through the process plant and recovered approximately 867,000 carats of diamonds on a 100% basis for an average grade of approximately 1.76 carats per tonne. Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow ROCKFORD | A North Iowa man was detained on a federal warrant this week after being indicted on methamphetamine dealing and firearms charges. The indictment against Travis D. Counsell, 47, follows a search warrant conducted at his rural Rockford residence Feb. 7. Among the items seized were narcotics, drug paraphernalia, an AR-15 rifle, a pistol, ammunition, body armor and $9,675 in cash, according to Cerro Gordo County District Court documents. Counsell pleaded not guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa to possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Counsell possessed 500 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of meth or 50 grams of pure meth with intent to distribute, according to the indictment. A status hearing is set for May 31. Mary Pieper Sociedade Mineira Do Lulo (SML), which is 40 percent-owned by Lucapa Diamond recorded a 54 percent drop in sales to $10.7 million during the first quarter of the year from $23.1 million, a year earlier. It sold 4,498 carats during the quarter ended 31 March for gross proceeds of $10.7 million, a 133 percent increase when compared with 1,931 carats sold for $23.1 million, a year earlier. However, the first quarter sales for the year were lower than the comparative quarter due to the recovery and sale of the record 404 carat for $16 million. Lucapa said SML had unsold diamond inventory of 2,545 carats at the end of the quarter compared with 1,346 carats, a year earlier. Meanwhile, the company said SML recorded a 33 percent increase in production to 4,098 carats during the quarter from 3,087 carats produced during the same period last year. This, it said, included a 58 percent increase in specials to 38 further underling Lulos ability to regularly produce large and high-value diamonds. The specials included Angolas second biggest recorded diamond a 227 carat Type IIa D colour gem along with other large stones weighing 92 carats, 62 carats and 65 carats. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished Sothebys New York auction fetched a total of $29 million in jewelry sales on Tuesday. An unidentified private Asian buyer spent $5.3 million on a pair of diamond earrings with square emerald-cut, D-color, internally flawless diamonds, one of which weighed 20.29 carats and the other 20.02 carats. The pre-sale estimate for the piece was $4.5 million to $5.5 million. Five of the lots on offer at the auction garnered seven-figure amounts, Sothebys reported. A pear-shaped, 11.19-carat, fancy pink, internally flawless diamond pendant went for $2.4 million, or $215,594 per carat. Another emerald-cut, 5.07-carat, fancy gray-blue, VVS2-clarity diamond went under the hammer for $1.6 million, or $310,158 per carat. Separately, the Stotesbury emerald-and-diamond ring, designed by Harry Winston, sold for $996,500. The whereabouts of the34.40-carat Colombian emerald had been unknown since 1971, when it last appeared at a Sothebys auction, the company said. Todays excellent results spanned each of the categories that have driven the auction market in recent seasons: top-quality diamonds and gemstones, signed and historic jewels, and pieces with notable provenance, said Gary Schuler, the North and South America chairman for Sothebys international jewelry division. Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow HRD Antwerp inaugurated its new lab & office premises in Mumbai on 25th April 2017 in the presence of His Excellency Secretary of State for Foreign Trade of Belgium Mr. Pieter De Crem. On the occasion Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director of HRD Antwerp India said, "HRD Antwerp started its activities in India back in 2012, to provide faster and more convenient service to Indian diamond companies.The demand for HRD Antwerp services in India and worldwide has grown steadily over the years. We expect this growth to increase further, so we have invested in the latest technology and equipment to offer world class facilities to our customers. We also just re-launched our education program in India. We specifically chose the new premises in order to be closer to our customers: they are now about 5 min. walking distance from the Bharat Diamond Bourse." To celebrate the inauguration of their new office, HRD Antwerp is also offering exceptionally 5ct+ grading services this week, in fast and superfast service only. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished Energy giant Total SA (TOT,TTA.L) reported Thursday that its first-quarter net income group share was $2.85 billion, 77 percent higher than last year's $1.61 billion. Adjusted net income was $2.6 billion or $1.01 per share, compared to $1.6 billion or $0.68 per share a year ago. On average, four analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.96 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Revenues from sales increased to $36.09 billion from last year's $27.52 billion. Analysts were looking for revenues of $35.79 billion. Hydrocarbon production was 2,569 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day or kboe/d in the first quarter, up 4 percent from last year. Average Hydrocarbon price grew 44 percent. Average liquids price climbed 59 percent and average gas price grew 18 percent. The company announced interim dividend of 0.62 euros per share payable in October 2017. Looking ahead, Total said it continues to reduce its breakeven by cutting costs in line with the $3.5 billion savings target for the year and benefiting from project start-ups. Total is launching new projects in a favorable cost environment and acquiring resources under attractive conditions, as demonstrated recently in Brazil and Uganda. In the Upstream, the company maintains its production growth objective of more than 4% in 2017. In the Downstream, refining margins remain favorable going into the second quarter. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News BP plc. (BP.L,BP_UN.TO,BP) on Thursday announced that it has agreed to sell its 50% stake in the Shanghai SECCO Petrochemical Company Limited or SECCO to a unit of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP) or Sinopec for a total consideration of $1.68 billion. BP will sell the stake to Gaoqiao Petrochemical Co Ltd, a unit of Sinopec, BP's joint venture partner. The sale is subject to a number of regulatory approvals and other conditions, subject to which, it is currently anticipated to complete before the end of the year with the consideration payable in instalments. SECCO is currently owned by BP with 50% stake, Sinopec with 30% stake and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited with 20%. Sinopec holds a majority interest in Sinopec Shanghai. Based in Shanghai, SECCO is a major producer of olefins - ethylene and propylene - together with polymers and other derivatives including polyethylene, polypropylene, acrylonitrile styrene, polystyrene, butadiene and other products. Rita Griffin, Chief Operating Officer, BP Global Petrochemicals, said, "This decision aligns our petrochemicals in China with our global focus on areas where BP has leading proprietary technologies and competitive advantage. China is a key region for our chemicals business and BP will continue to look for opportunities to build on our position in the country." BP said it intends to use the proceeds from the disposal, most if not all of which are anticipated to be received in 2017, for general corporate purposes. In London, BP shares were trading at 447.50 pence, down 1.36 percent. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Early signals are pointing to a tough start for Canadian stocks Thursday, as oil prices tumbled. WTI light sweet crude oil for June was down $1 at $48.58 a barrel, the lowest in a month amid oversupply concerns. Yesterday, the TSX Composite Index was down 95.65 points, or 0.61 percent, to 15,649.54, down from a 2-month high. Investors will assess another batch of mixed earnings news today. Potash Corp Of Saskatchewan Inc. (POT.TO) released earnings for its first quarter that advanced 99% from last year. Goldcorp Inc. (G.TO) said its bottom line came in at $170 million, or $0.20 per share. This was higher than $80, or $0.10 per share, in last year's first quarter. Drug store operator Jean Coutu Group profit declined despite higher revenues. Suncor (SU.TO) boosted its buyback program, and reported first-quarter earnings of $1.4-billion, or 81 cents per share, versus $257-million or 17 cents in the same period a year ago. The oil company also cut its production outlook for Syncrude. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Market Analysis Internet giant Google's servers officially went live in Cuba on Wednesday, thus making it the first foreign search engine in the island nation. "GGC nodes in Cuba finally went active in the past 24hrs," Doug Madory, director of Dyn Research, wrote in an email. "It is a milestone as this is the first time an outside internet company has hosted anything in Cuba." "The internet in Cuba will still be a painfully slow process. This is just another somewhat rare step forward. For Google services, which will be hosted in country, it will be a milestone." Google Global Cache or GCC nodes allows users to store content from Google services such as Gmail and YouTube on local servers, in this case those of the state telecommunications monopoly ETECSA. The agreement between Google's parent company Alphabet and ETECSA was signed in Havana in December. "This will only improve Cuban users experience with Google webpages, with the most notable improvement being in loading YouTube videos," Madory explained. "Video is very traffic intensive and caching popular videos locally will improve load time and relieve strain on ETECSA's congested international links." Former President Barack Obama had re-opened US's diplomatic relations with Cuba in July 2015 after being cut off from island nation for decades. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News FERTILE | Phyllis Willis is being remembered today as a kind, caring environmentalist and animal rights activist. Willis, 74, died Wednesday night at her home in Fertile. Willis was a champion of clean air and water causes as well as animal rights; pigs and chickens roamed freely at Niman Ranch, her family's land with 140 acres of native prairie grasses near Thornton. "She had the Mother Jones philosophy pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living," said Tom Willett, an activist who knew her well. "Only she would have said it in a softer tone." Most recently, she was active in opposing the proposed Prestage hog-processing plant in Mason City where the City Council rejected it and in several other areas in North where it was being considered. At a meeting nearly a year ago in Northwood, she told Worth County supervisors, "I would just hope you would be opposed to it. It's really bad for the state, bad for the country. What can I say? We need our water and our air." Willett said, "She was an awesome person kind and polite, dedicated; she fought for decades for animal rights. She loved nature and was an expert at identifying native plants. Willett said one of his fondest memories of her were the times she would pick him up in her vehicle and they would go along the countryside picking up garbage from the ditches. "She had this contraption she would use where she could reach down and pick the stuff up without it every touching her. And she knew the history of the area so well. We'd drive a long and she'd talk about where everyone once lived. She was just a remarkable person." Clear Lake area farmer Chris Petersen said, "Phyllis had the biggest, caring, honest heart in the world. She loved everybody. And she stood up for what she believed in the farm, the animals, the planet. "But when she expressed her views, she had her own special touch. She was a special person." BRADFORD | Runoff from poultry litter in Franklin County reached a stream leading to Maynes Creek the Iowa DNR announced Wednesday. The investigation began after a complaint about chicken litter dumped in a crop field near the intake to an underground tile line one mile north of Bradford. According to the DNR, certified commercial manure applicator Joe Scallon of Iowa Falls dumped the litter so he could remove his manure spreader which had been stuck in a wet spot near the tile intake. Water samples from pooled water around the litter showed high ammonia levels where runoff entered the tile line. Though the tile line was partially plugged, the DNR said some runoff flowed underground. Ammonia levels in the tile line were low by the time it flowed into a small stream leading to Maynes Creek. DNR staff found no dead fish in the stream. We recognize that accidents happen and some things cant be prevented, Jeff Vansteenburg of the Mason City DNR field office said in a press release. Scallon removed contaminated litter and runoff and land applied it to crop fields. Repairs to the tile line should occur this week, weather permitting. By SA Commercial Prop News 27 April commemorates the day in 1994 when the first democratic election was held in South Africa. Freedom Day marks the liberation of SA from the apartheid regime. SOUTH AFRICA today celebrates 23 years of Independence. Twenty-two million South Africans cast their votes in the national elections on 27 April 1994, marking the dawn of democracy. 27 April commemorates the day in 1994 when the first democratic election was held in South Africa. Freedom Day marks the liberation of SA from the apartheid regime. There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires. These are famous words by the infamous late former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela who spoke on the countrys freedom in 1953. The ANC, South African Communist Party (SACP), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and other organisations were unbanned on 2 February 1990, and a non-racial constitution was eventually agreed upon and adopted in 1993. On 27 April 1994, the nation finally cast its vote in the first democratic election in the country gaining international attention. The ANC was then voted into power, and Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa on 10 May. This year Freedom Day is celebrated under the theme; The year of OR Tambo: Together deepening democracy and building safer and crime-free communities. President Jacob Zuma and his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa will lead the main Freedom Day celebrations in Manguzi, northern Kwa-Zulu Natal Thursday morning. South African Economy However, 15 years into our democracy, many of these issues are still rife in our country, facing new challenges such as growing inequality among South Africans and political and economic instability in the region. The role of white monopoly capital in post-apartheid South Africa has been in the news lately. In the South African context, it can be understood as the white populations extensive control over the countrys economy. The debate reflects a recanting view against the rainbow nation dream sold when the country gained political freedom 22 years ago. The idea is that white monopoly capital is the source of the problem of multiple failures of the South African political economy. The response has been a rising chorus of white monopoly capitalism deniers who argue that the governing African National Congress (ANC) is using the concept as a shield against criticism. Instead of addressing its failings such as a faltering economy, widening inequality, unemployment, corruption and incompetence, the argument goes, the ANC is deflecting attention for the countrys difficulties by blaming white monopoly capital. Some in this camp add that South Africa has recorded significant progress in redistributing the countrys wealth, mainly via the allocation of equity in formerly white companies to black economic empowerment groups. They quote figures that they say reflects rising levels of black ownership on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). But by relying on a single indicator, they ignore other key pointers which are critical to understanding the stranglehold that white capital has over the South African economy. The exclusive focus on the JSE ignores the fact that the stock market is just one of many forms of capital. Others include land probably one of the most contentious of all forms of capital in South Africas history home ownership and human capital, in the forms of knowledge, skills and education. SA may still be on track for more than 1% growth in 2017, with data from February suggesting the economy is growing. The Reserve Banks composite leading business cycle indicator was up 1.1% on a month-to-month basis in February. The indicator is a strong projection of SAs economic growth cycle for the next six to 12 months. Reviewing the progress towards handling and resolution of grievances related to the Railways, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that "strictest possible action" will be taken against railway officials found guilty of corruption. The Prime Minister asked the Indian Railways to work towards a unified single telephone number for all grievances and queries, including helpline in the case of an accident. Modi also reviewed the progress of vital infrastructure projects in the railway, road and power sectors, spread in states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland, an official release said. Reviewing mission 'Indradhanush' for universal immunisation of children, Modi asked officials concerned for targeted attention in strict timeframes for the 100 worst performing districts in this regard. He said youth organisations such as NCC and Nehru Yuva Kendra could be involved in the outreach effort to ensure that no child was left without the benefit of immunisation. Modi reviewed implementation of Swachhta Action Plans and said events such as Swachhta fortnights should be converted into movements towards permanent solutions. The Prime Minister urged all government secretaries to come up with concrete plans and objectives for transformative change, to be achieved by the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022. Five including three soldiers and two militants were killed while another five soldiers were injured in Thursday's fidayeen (suicide) attack on an army camp in Kashmir's Kupwara district. "Fidayeen terrorists attacked the Panzgam army camp in north Kashmir close to the Line of Control (LoC) around 4.30 a.m.," Defence Ministry Spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia told IANS. "The three soldiers killed, included a captain and a non-commissioned officer (NGO)," the spokesman added. The five injured in the attack in Jammu and Kashmir have been airlifted to Srinagar for treatment, defence sources said. Searches were going on inside the camp to ascertain whether or not the militants managed to sneak into the camp. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first Rs 2,500 an hour flight from here as part of the government's UDAN scheme that makes air travel cheaper and accessible to lower middle class families of India and plans to enhance connectivity with more airports across the country. The first regional flight under the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has put the fare at Rs 2,036. "I want to see poor people fly," Modi said, addressing a gathering here. "If the middle class of our country gets a chance they would change the image as well as the destination of the nation. The lives of the middle class will transform and their aspirations are increasing," he said, adding the scheme is going to help tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh and other places where it would be launched soon. The aviation scheme caps airfare for an hour-long journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter at Rs 2,500. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15 last year. On March 30 this year, the central government under the scheme awarded contracts to five companies to operate flight services on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the first Rs 2,500-an-hour flight from Shimla as part of an UDAN scheme that makes air travel accessible to lower middle class families. It also plans to enhance connectivity with more airports in the country. The first regional flight under the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off between Shimla and Delhi from Jubbarhatti, the tabletop airport located 2, 196 metres above sea level and 22 km from here. During his day-long visit to the Queen of Hills, which saw mild showers in the morning, Modi underscored the thrust on keeping the air fares within the reach of the middle class. " My dream was to see a person who wears a 'hawai chappal' to fly on the 'hawai jahaz' or plane," he said in his almost 20-minute address in Hindi. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air, which will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight, has put the fare at Rs 2,036. He said the UDAN scheme caters to the aspirations of the people of India, making flights cheaper than taxi fare. "The lives of the middle class are being transformed and their aspirations are increasing. Earlier, aviation was considered to be the domain of a select few. That has changed now," Modi said. The Prime Minister foresees tier-II and tier-III cities as "growth engines" with the country's aviation sector filled with opportunities. "If aviation connectivity in tier-II and tier-III cities is enhanced in these places, it will be beneficial," he said. "We had the opportunity to frame a civil aviation policy, which caters to the aspirations of the people of India. "The UDAN scheme is going to help the tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh," Modi said. Accompanied by Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Union Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Jayant Sinha and J.P. Nadda, Modi simultaneously flagged off the inaugural UDAN flights on the Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad sectors through video conferencing. The Shimla airport had been shut for scheduled flights since September 6, 2012, affecting tourists and business travellers. Air India subsidiary Alliance Air will operate the Delhi-Shimla flight. The seating capacity of the airlines under the UDAN scheme will range from 19 to 78. Fifty per cent of the seats in every flight will have a fare cap of Rs 2, 500 per hour. The airline companies chosen are Airline Allied Services (Alliance Air), SpiceJet, Turbo Megha Airways, Air Deccan and Air Odisha. The operations under the scheme are intended to provide air connectivity to unserved and remote routes, with airfare capped at Rs 2, 500 for an hour's journey of around 500 km, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement. The scheme caps airfare for an hour-long journey of approximately 500 km on a fixed wing aircraft or for 30 minute journey on a helicopter at Rs 2,500. The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released on June 15 last year. On March 30, the central government awarded contracts to five companies to operate flights on 128 routes that will connect 70 airports. This was Modi's third visit to Himachal Pradesh and the first to the state capital since he became the Prime Minister in 2014. A helicopter of the Indian Air Force was damaged on Wednesday while landing in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, but the two crew and five CRPF personnel had a providential escape, the police said. The Sukma Superintendent of Police said the chopper was on its way from Sukma district headquarters to Chintagufa area ferring five Central Reserve Police Force officers and men. Its rotor was damaged after hitting a tree while landing at Chintagufa in the evening. However, the two pilots managed to land it safely. The Jharkhand assembly unanimously passed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, 2017, at a specially convened session on Thursday. Jharkhand Urban Development Minister C.P. Singh tabled the GST Bill in the house. Main opposition Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) legislator Stephen Marandi had suggested two amendments but those were not moved. As the bill was passed, the JMM legislators came to the well of the house shouting slogans against the amendments to two key land acts of the state. "GST has been passed unanimously. The JMM legislator did not move any amendments. Now it will pave the way for one country, one tax," Singh told reporters. "Jharkhand is a producing state and it may suffer some losses. The central government has agreed to compensate the losses taking 2015-2016 as the base year," the minister said. MASON CITY | Purdue University is acquiring for-profit Kaplan University, which has a campus in Mason City, to boost its online education capability. The acquisition will result in the creation of a new public university, according to a statement released by Purdue Thursday. All Kaplan campuses will transfer to Purdue once the transaction closes, which is expected to take six to seven months, according to Stephen White, vice president of communications for Kaplan Higher and Professional Education. "We believe this is great news for Kaplan University, its campuses and most importantly KU students as it will expand access to higher education for more and more adult learners, including those who have some college experience but no college credential," he told the Globe Gazette. Mason City students study online and get one-on-one personal support from the campus staff with tutoring, as well as educational advising and career services, according to White. The Mason City campus supports 200 students across North Iowa and southern Minnesota, he said. Purdue officials say the Kaplan acquisition is meant to address the need for post-secondary education for working adults and others unsuited to traditional campus study and the growth of online technologies as a means of delivering education to students of all types. The transaction will not require an upfront purchase price, according to Purdue officials. They say the new university will enter into a long-term transition and support agreement, with a buy-out option after year six. The agreement also will provide certain financial guarantees by Kaplan for the new university to ensure it is able to continue to meet its mission to serve adult learners. Kaplan University has 15 campuses and learning centers in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Maryland, Maine, Missouri and Wisconsin. It has 32,000 students and 3,000 employees. All existing Kaplan University students and faculty will transition to the new university, which will use the Purdue name in some fashion not yet identified. The new university will be distinct from others in the Purdue system, relying only on tuition and fundraising to cover operating expenses. No state appropriations will be used. Purdue currently serves students on two levels -- its flagship campus in West Lafayette and at two regional campuses. The new entity will become a third level in the Purdue system, and will operate almost exclusively online. Betty Vandenbosch, Kaplan Universitys current president, will become chancellor of the new university. A subsidiary of Kaplan Inc. will provide various non-academic services through a long-term transition and operations support agreement covering areas such as technological support, human resources, facilities management and other administrative functions. Both Purdue and Kaplan universities are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The Kaplan campus in Mason City was formerly Hamilton Business College, which was founded in 1900. Kaplan and Hamilton merged in 2007. Notice has been issued to 30 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, including Kanhaiya Kumar, to join the probe into alleged raising of anti-national slogans on the campus in February last year, Delhi Police said. "They have been given time by the Delhi Police Special Cell to be present at the administrative block of JNU from 12 p.m. onwards between April 28 and April 30," a senior police officer said. A copy of the notice has also been sent to the JNU Vice Chancellor. "Their statements will be recorded as the Investigating Officer has been directed to start the probe afresh," the officer told IANS, adding that "Legal action will be taken if the students failed to join the probe". A fresh probe was ordered by the top brass of Delhi Police, which went through the draft charge sheet prepared by the Special Cell. The Legal Wing, which also got to study the draft, found that more probe was required to prove their offence, the officer said. "The Investigating Officer has been told to complete the recording of the students' statements within three days," he added. A final report along with the draft charge sheet was submitted to Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma in January. The officers connected with the probe had then said that he would give the go-ahead to file the charge sheet. "Since it is a case of sedition, prior approval of the Lt. Governor's office is also required," he said. "The draft report said there is enough evidence to prosecute Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for sedition. It identified nine 'outsiders' who raised anti-India slogans," the officer said. The case was transferred to the Special Cell in March 2016. The Patiala House Court in August 2016 granted regular bail to JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar and two others -- Khalid and Anirban -- in the sedition case. The Delhi High Court in September 2016 extended the interim relief given to Khalid and Anirban, who have also been charged with sedition. Khalid, Anirban and Kanhaiya are accused by Delhi Police of raising anti-India slogans on the campus at a meeting organised on February 9 last year in memory of 2001 Indian Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has called for wider and more active use of social and new media for publicising work being done by the central and the state government, an official said on Thursday. The Chief Minister gave the direction during a late night review of the working of the Department of Information and Public Relations. He said with changing times, the governments also needed to change old and traditional styles of working so as to ensure that people were made aware of the work being done for their welfare. Asking officials of the department to effectively develop and use social and new media, Adityanath said that a strategy be stitched up to use mediums like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the schemes and policies of the government. This, he added, would enable the people to know what all was being done for their welfare. Adding that the credo of the state government was 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas', the Chief Minister asked the Information Department to play its role well in this regard and make Uttar Pradesh a front-ranking state in the country. He also directed the department to prepare a statewide action plan on occasion of the birth centenary of Jan Sangh ideologue Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to inform people on various projects, schemes and programs being undertaken by the state and the Centre. Yogi Adityanath also called for special steps to take these schemes to the Dalits, poor, marginalised and the oppressed. He also called for work in the direction of taking forward the "Swacchta Mission" (Cleanliness mission) and cashless economy. Stressing on the need of better coordination between information and other departments, the Chief Minister said the latest technology should be used by the department and for it, arrangements should be made to train the personnel. The northeastern region, long considered backward in growth and business terms, is poised to add heft to India's dominant position in global software exports and the IT industry, a top official said "Aiming to further boost India's software exports and strengthen the IT industry, six IT parks and hubs have already been set up in six capitals or cities of the northeastern states -- Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal, Aizawl, Kohima and Agartala," Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Director General Omkar Rai told during a visit here. "A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the Arunachal Pradesh government to set up another IT park in Itanagar. These IT parks and hubs in the region would further strengthen India's software exports and IT business across the world," he added. Rai, who was in Tripura in connection with the opening of northeast India's sixth and largest IT hub in Agartala, said it is the STPI's 57th centre in India. Built at a cost of Rs 50 crore ($8 million), the Agartala IT hub was jointly set up by the Tripura government and STPI, an autonomous society under the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT. The STPI chief said that total volume of India's IT industry is $144 billion and the total software, and IT services export of the country was estimated at $108 billion dollars in 2015-16. "Currently India has an excellent, strong position in software and IT services export and IT business around the world. We would be penetrating further in the coming years across the world if the Indian and multinational companies work together." "Our aim is to beat the US, China and a few European countries in software exports, IT services and IT business. To realise this goal, the government of India, the states and private industries must work collectively." Rai said that with the setting up of third International Internet Gateway (IIG) in Agartala through Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, eastern India would be able to boost India's ambitious plan to capture the global IT market. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, along with Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, on March 23 last year inaugurated the 3rd IIG through videoconferencing from their respective offices in New Delhi, Dhaka and Agartala. The Agartala IIG is the third such internet gateway after Mumbai and Chennai. India has spent Rs 19.14 crore to create the infrastructure for the Agartala IIG to get access to the 10 gigabit bandwidth from Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL). For this, an optical fibre cable link has been established between Akhaura (along Agartala) and Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh. India has to give BSCCL around Rs 8 crore per year as rent. Rai said that according to the agreement signed between Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and BSCCL, if the demand increases, BSNL can avail up to 40 gigabit bandwidth using the same infrastructure. Government data shows that IT software services exports from STPIs has grown steadily during the last three years from Rs 2.73 lakh crore in 2013-14 to Rs 3.19 lakh crore in 2015-16. The government extends several incentives to the IT sector. These include, customs duty exemption on imported goods, reimbursement of Central Sales Tax (CST) and Excise Duty exemptions on procurement of indigenously-manufactured goods. "These measures have been major contributory factors for the sector to flourish and have taken the country to a dominant position in IT services in the world," Rai maintained. India's Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari arrived in Warsaw on Wednesday evening for his a three-day State visit to Poland. He is accompanied by his wife Salma Ansari. They were received at the airport by officials of the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry. Indian Ambassador Ajay Bisaria and other Indian Embassy officials were present on the occasion. Ansari is a leading a team of high-ranked officials and others. Minister of State for Small Industries Giriraj Singh and MPs Sitaram Yechury, D.P. Tripathi, Vivek Tankha, and Thupstan Chhewang are part of the delegation. Preeti Saran, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs, heads the official team. Formal bilateral talks will begin on Thursday morning with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who will lead her country's delegation. After the deliberations, a few agreements will be signed, followed by a special lunch for the visiting dignitaries. In the afternoon, the visiting Vice-President will call on Polish President Andrzej Duda who has returned from his official visit to Mexico. The Vice-President will be the main speaker at the Poland-India Business Forum, organised by the Polish Ministry of Economic Development. The event is likely to be attended by 150 businessmen from both the countries to strengthen economic ties. In the evening, Ansari and his wife will attend a special dinner hosted by Ambassador Bisaria and have interaction with the Indian community based in various Polish cities. The US Air Force has test-fired an unarmed long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, according to the Air Force Global Strike Command. Deployed from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the missile travelled roughly 4,200 miles on Wednesday to a test range near the Marshall Islands, CNN reported. An Air Force statement called the test "an important demonstration of our nation's nuclear deterrent capability." The test launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from the Airborne Launch Control System on a Navy E-6 Mercury jet, according to the Air Force. The US regularly tests its intercontinental weapon system to verify its accuracy and reliability -- with launches scheduled long in advance, according to defence officials. But while the Air Force has conducted a similar missile test as recently as February 7, Wednesday's launch was notable in that it occurred amid rising tensions and military flexing over North Korea's own nuclear program, CNN said in its report. The Minuteman III is traditionally known as the only land-based leg to the US nuclear triad. However, Wednesday's test highlighted the Air Force's ability to also launch the intercontinental ballistic missile from controls in an aircraft -- a measure primarily used in a back-up role in case another deployment system fails. "Today's test launch used an intercontinental ballistic missile pulled randomly from a silo on F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which was then transported and reassembled at Vandenberg, and launched by crew members," the Air Force statement said. The other two parts of the triad are the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile and nuclear weapons carried by long-range strategic bombers. First deployed in the 1960s as part of the US nuclear deterrent program, the Minuteman system is supposed to ensure that missiles can be launched quickly and at any time, CNN said. Missiles are dispersed in silos and connected to an underground launch control where crews are on standby around the clock. The US currently has 450 Minutemen III missiles in silos at Warren AFB, Malmstrom AFB in Montana and Minot AFB in North Dakota, according to the Air Force, CNN reported. Pakistani authorities on Thursday detained 29 Indian fishermen on charges of violating the country's maritime boundary, officials said. The Maritime Security Agency (MSA) said five boats of the fishermen were also seized, a Pakistani news TV reported. The detained fishermen were handed over to police. They will be produced in a court. Last month, nearly 100 Indian fishermen were taken into custody and 19 boats were seized. India and Pakistan routinely arrest fishermen on charges of entering each other's waters Relations between India and Italy are set on the path to recovery, after strains that developed over the past years, with the Joint Economic Commission slated to meet in Rome in May after a gap of eight years, it was announced here on Thursday. Visiting Italian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Ivan Scalfarotto said at the Italy-India Business Forum here that Indian Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be leading a delegation for the joint commission meeting scheduled to be held in the middle of May. Scalfarotto is currently in India at the head of a 140-member delegation, that includes representatives of 60 Italian companies, in a bid to boost bilateral trade and investment relations. Bilateral relations were affected following the death of two Kerala fishermen at the hands of two Italian marines in the Enrica Lexie case in 2012. "This India-Italy Business Forum is the official launch of a new partnership between both countries and involves the sharing of knowledge and experience," Italian Ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni said addressing the packed venue. Noting that some Italian companies like Fiat and Ferrero Rocher are household names in India, Additional Secretary Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Atul Chaturvedi said the government had asked India's ambassador in Italy to start an outreach programme to attract small and medium industry to India, on the lines of a similar programme started in Germany. "This is the first Italian business delegation to India since 2011 and signals the revitalisation of our relationship after its slowing down over the past some years," Licia Mattioli, Vice President of the Italian Industry Association Confindustria, said. "Despite the political and bilateral uncertainties of the last few years, Italian companies in India played a central role in keeping our cooperation going," she said. Bilateral trade in 2016 amounted to around $7.3 billion. There are over 600 Italian companies present in India. Italian foreign direct investment in India amounts to around 5 billion euros. Between Mumbai and Delhi, around 900 business-to-business meetings are planned during the ongoing bilateral business forum towards increasing collaborations. Italy is offering collaborations in areas of its expertise including food processing, infrastructure, heavy machinery, renewable energy, advanced technology, as well as information and communication technology. Talking to reporters on the Italian marines' case, Scalfarotto said it is now with the International Court under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and relations between the two governments are back on track, as signalled by the meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome last year. Regarding a free trade agreement, he said negotiations were on between the European Union and India and Italy is encouraging the EU to expedite the signing of an FTA. KENSETT | A semitrailer crash knocked out power in Kensett for seven and a half hours on Thursday. The lights went out about 2:30 a.m. when a big rig on Highway 65 hit two power poles near 410th Street. Power lines also fell across the road. No one was hurt. Approximately 175 Alliant Energy customers in Kensett lost power. The highway was blocked while repairs were completed. Power was restored and the highway reopened around 10:30 a.m. The crash was still under investigation Thursday. -- Molly Montag. Here are the unofficial results for Saline County in the 2022 election The new Chief Executive Officer of the Samoa National Provident Fund, Pauli Prince Suhren already has a strategy set out to achieve his goals in his first three-year term. It is prioritising the needs of contributors like you and me, he said firmly. The focus is to get back to the roots; and that is to take care of our major shareholders who are the contributors. His appointment was approved by Cabinet on 15th February this year. We need to look after their interests first and foremost," the new Chief Executive Officer said. When I came on board, I had a discussion with the Minister and that was about putting our contributors first. He said by putting the needs of the contributors as the priority, the emphasis is back in helping people. "That is why the S.N.P.F. was set up - to help the people of Samoa (Tagatanu'u) and contributors, so their interests will come first before anything else." Every major decision I will take, whether its decisions on loans, investments or operational matters, I will consider and be open to suggestions and advice from management. Pauli said these will be the first things he will consider, especially how it affects our contributors. There are two basic rules; first; the maximization of returns for the contributors and the second; the minimization of risk to those returns. According to Pauli it is these two important factors that as new boss, he plans to base all N.P.F's decision - making on for the next three years and possibly beyond. Moreover, he said, policies and guidelines are already in place for the N.P.F. to follow for any type of investor. The N.P.F. also has in place what governs how we deal with people who want small loans, people who want short term loans, people who are investors and we have different equity investments including the Samoa Submarine Cable company. he said. We are also looking at investors. I mean everything that is still under the law of Samoa, that is where we are working on now. Pauli also pointed out that there is a certain view from the general public that N.P.F. only collects contributors monies. That is not correct, he said. If that was the case, then there would have been no dividend given every year of at least 4 %. But most of the time in the last five years, it has been 7 % or more. So we cannot give the contributors that return if we dont have the flexibility to invest peoples money." He reiterated that the decision making is there, the policies are there the guidelines are there, and the law is there to protect peoples investment Like Ive mentioned before, this comes back to my original statement, there are two main things; - maximization of returns for contributors, and the minimization of risk as much as possible. I cant comment about investment decisions before my time but in the future, those are the two main things that we need to look at. Does it maximize the return of contributors like you and me and everyone in Samoa? Is there a risk to the investment? So every decision is going to be based on that. As for his new role, Pauli said he was humbled when he was appointed as the new C.E.O. of the Samoa National Provident Fund. I can honestly say that when I was appointed on the 15th of March this year, it was only because of the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. What I said to the panel at the time, is that whatever decision that is given, that is the Lords decision. Whichever way it falls, I would accept somehow the Lord made it fall on my side. So Ill look forward to the next three years and possibly beyond, to serve the government and the people of Samoa. Pauli is married and hes 32 years old. PAULI PRINCE SUHREN EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND 1990 - 1997 Pesega Primary School 1998 - 2001 St Josephs College 2002 National University of Samoa Achievement: Certificate of Attainment Awarded an NZAID scholarship for undergraduate study in New Zealand 2003 - 2005 University of Auckland, New Zealand Achievement: Bachelor of Business and Information Management (BBIM) (Double major in Accounting and IT Management) 2010 Awarded an Australian Leadership Award postgraduate Scholarship 2010 - 2011 Bond University, Australia Master of Business and Information Technology (MBIT) 1st Trimester First in Class for e-Business Placed on the Vice Chancellors List of Academic Excellence 2nd Trimester Placed on the Deans List of Academic Excellence 3rd Trimester First in Class for Global Business 4th (Final) Trimester First in Class for Technology Management Recipient of the Melbourne IT book prize for Excellence in Postgraduate Studies. Membership of Professional Organizations Institute of Public Accountants (Australia) Member (MIPA) Institute of Financial Accountants (United Kingdom) Associate Member (AFA) Samoa Institute of Accountants (Samoa) Member (CA) Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi is set to release his memoir recounting his experiences as one of the most powerful men in Samoa and the Pacific. Set to be launched in June, the memoir recounts the Prime Ministers young childhood from the rural village of Lepa to globe trotting through his studies and working in the political arena. According to Victoria University Press, It follows his journey from Lepa to Apia, Wellington, Brussels, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, London, New York and many other international destinations, always returning to Lepa and the Faasamoa that shaped him. Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi is Samoas longest-serving Prime Minister. His premiership has been marked by political and economic crises, natural disasters, regional tensions and local challenges. Tuila'epas political career started during turbulent times but has resulted in an unprecedented period of political stability and economic development through his leadership in modernizing the economy, improving education and health and reducing poverty in Samoa. The memoir captures the voice, documents the life, and places in context a record of the most significant Samoan political leader of this generation, and contains many useful insights into the social, cultural and economic development of Samoa and the wider Pacific region. Palemia is written in collaboration with renowned autobiographer, Peter Swain. . Dr. Swain has spent much of the last 25 years managing development programmes throughout the island nations of the Pacific, and was International Programme Manager for Volunteer Service Abroad New Zealand. Dr Swain has written extensively on the Pacific and is an Honorary Research Associate in Development Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington. Dr. Swain also has connection to Samoa through his wife, Luamanuvao Winnie Laban. People have already hailed the memoir as an incredibly written piece of art about Tuilaepas life. Professor Stephen Levine said: In collaboration with Peter Swain, a superb conveyer of information, Tuila'epa narrates his entry into politics and his rise to power. The book is a fascinating biography and provides a stimulating, thoughtful, original and authoritative perspective on Samoan political life from the inside. A large group of members attended the monthly Chamber of Commerce meeting on Monday evening hosted by Digicel at the Hotel Tanoa Tusitala. The formalities were followed by a short explanation from M.C.I.L.s staff on the Competition and Consumer Act, 2016. Members were then treated to an interesting and informative Power Point presentation, The Internet of things by the Digicel Sales Director, Matteo Catanuto. Matteo spoke on the evolution of the Internet and the generation of users. He pointed out that we are now in a very exciting age of technology and Samoa, while not there yet, is fast moving to a digital/paper-less economy. He also pointed out the data plans available at Digicel and answered questions on the effect that the cable will have once it lands in Samoa. In answer to questions he said that of course, we can expect prices to go down but it will require testing first and there wont be any significant changes straight away. Digicel is committed to providing ICT services to Samoa and any savings made from the cable will be passed onto our customers, said Matteo. The evening ended with the customary refreshments and networking. The Samoa Returnees Charitable Trust has been extremely busy of late. The Returnees Trust is in the midst of running their Second Chances Counselling Workshop. The Director of the the Samoa Returnees Charitable Trust, Magele Vernon Mckenzie told the Samoa Observer , We want to promote our latest counselling initiative. We have been instrumental in pushing for stronger laws (legislation) such as the Sex Offenders Registry and something similar to the Returned Offenders Act between Australia and New Zealand in regards to criminal deportees having similar parole or probation conditions mandated by the courts. This is managed by Corrections in partnership with Police and Probation for enforcement purposes. These two countries see the deportation of high risk offenders as a real threat to the community, and rightly so. Magele is proud of the work he and the Trust are doing to ensure a safer Samoa. There is nothing wrong with visibility and awareness to inform the public of our services and contribution to reducing re-offending through rehabilitation for a safe and stable Samoa, he said. Along with their Second Chances Workshop, Magele also shared the Trust has reached another milestone in terms of progressive counselling initiatives, which is also a prelude to their latest enterprise, the Toefuataina Support Centre. With all these successful initiatives underway, the Trust has caught the eye of several major backers. An audience with U.N.D.P.s Resident Coordinator, Lizbeth Cullity as well as the Samoa International Finance Authority has provided some financial contributions to back the Trust. I brokered some support from S.I.F.A. and invited our board, government stakeholders, civil society networks and the diplomatic corps. I have now gotten the attention of a regional donor partner and have a meeting with Ms Cullity to discuss future collaborations. Magele said there are between four to five hundred deportees who have been repatriated to Samoa over the years who need to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into our society. After speaking to the Village Voice yesterday, it is clear that Maligi Aoao is not only a hardworking farmer, but a positive one. The 40-year-old comes from Tanumapua and he understands how life has changed so much over the past few years. Mr. Aoao is a father of five children, four of whom are attending Levaula School while one is still a baby. The only thing Im good at is being a farmer and that is why I do what I do. But even if I was good at doing another job, I couldnt just take it because Im the man of my family and my wife needs help with managing our children and our home. Im not the type to be pressured about how life is now. I think its important to always remember who you are because with the many changes, one can easily lose themselves. Mr. Aoao said that he works in his plantation to get food for his family. The plantation is our source of food and our source of income but I only sell my crops when I think we really do need the money. Thats either in times when we need money for electricity or when the children need something. But so far, what we have is more than enough. Powers good, waters good even though it stops running sometimes, but its never for a long period of time. You know, its enough for me and my family to just have a faalifu taro and sip on a cup of Samoan cocoa to survive every day. Life is going by so fast, so you need to try to live with what you have, or you will have nothing. The name of the person known as O le Palemia has been cause for conjecture on social media for weeks. With the police now involved in a search, Ilia L Likou asked the people on the street whether they thought it was worth the effort. Here are their thoughts: Malia Tili, 27 Samata i Tai We should find O le Palemia. Man if youre keen to spit it out, show your face and come forward. Just show people that you have a heart to stand against what is right and what is wrong. Rhema Autagavaia, 45 Vailoa Palauli The government is wasting too much time and resources in trying to find O LE PALEMIA. Come on, we are living in a free world where everyone is entitled to their own opinion and just be mindful that what other people think of you and me is none of our business...just let them be. I know the police are after O le Palemia because of his posts about Opapo and his daughter. For Mr. Opapo, let God be the judge, I know you understand the power of forgiveness, it doesnt make us weak, it sets us free. Tifa Howard, 37 Vaitele-Fou The fact is, no one wants to know who O le Palemia is. What really matters is to find a solution for Toaipuapuaga. To be honest, Toa is not right. She needs deliverance and love. The demon is everywhere; they are dangerous, wicked spirit creatures who want to destroy us and bring destruction amongst Gods children. To Opapo and his family, please seek Gods guidance and I recommend Ps. Viliamu Mafoe to talk to for counselling and deliverance of Toa. Yes, we need to pray and love one another for God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God. Salote Aliivaa, 48 Apia I dont really care who O le Palemia is, what if O le Palemia stays in Iraq. Good luck! If the government sends someone to handcuff O le Palemia (from Iraq) then that person needs to have a farewell dinner with his family and loved ones before heading to Iraq. Surely, she/he will die in a bomb attack or the plane will explode in the air before landing. The best thing that the government must focus on - is the high cost of living that most of our people are struggling with everyday instead of wasting too much time finding O le Palemia. Aukuso Pulemau Vaitele-Uta Who cares? But, personally, O le Palemia must be a spirit of a person who has died, and what if the spirit is in hell? Then whos going to handcuff the spirit of O LE PALEMIA from hell? We need to be able to let go and move on. Think a minuteThere was a man who thought he was going crazy, so he went to the doctor for an expert opinion. The doctor examined the man and told him: I have to agree with you. Youre crazy. But the man got angry and said: I want a second opinion! So the doctor said, OK, youre ugly too. Sometimes we dont want to hear the facts. A survey in America showed that 90% of Americans say they believe heaven is real, but only 25% of those same people say they believe hell is a real place. Thats like saying you believe there is light but no darkness, that there is right but no wrong. Common sense tells you that doesnt make any sense! Just saying a place is not real doesnt make it true. Its like saying the North Pole is not real just because we dont think so. The fact is Jesus Christ talked about hell much more than he did heaven. He said hell is a real place thats full of the worst pain and endless suffering for everyone who rejects His good life by choosing to live their own way instead of the true way He created us to enjoy. Jesus repeatedly explained that the reason He came to give His innocent life was to pay the penalty for all our sins. God the Son came to save us from suffering in hell forever, even though it cost Him His own divine life. You see, we cant say we believe Jesus Christ spoke the truth about some things, but that He lied about other things like hell. He cant be God and be a liar too. Remember, since God is perfectly good and pure, its simply not possible for Him to live together with any kind of wrong or evil. Otherwise, He wouldnt be God! Just like light and darkness cannot be in the same place together. But if we want God to leave us alone, He will. After all, Hes the One Who gave us our freedom to choose in the first place. He will never force us to love Him and live the way He created us to enjoy. Jesus said that even though our body dies, our soul will live forevereither in heaven or in hell. So its up to us to choose whether we want Jesus gift of forgiveness and way of living, or our own way. Heaven or hell. But youre the only one who can send yourself to hell, because Gods already done everything He possibly can so you dont go there. The choice and risk is yours. Just Think a Minute BEIJING (AP) China has launched its first aircraft carrier built entirely on its own, in a demonstration of the growing technical sophistication of its defense industries and determination to safeguard its maritime territorial claims and crucial trade routes. The 50,000-ton carrier was towed from its dockyard just after 9 a.m. Wednesday following a ceremony in the northern port city of Dalian, where its predecessor, the Soviet-built Liaoning, underwent extensive refurbishing before being commissioned in 2012, the Ministry of National Defense said. Development of the new carrier began in 2013 and construction in late 2015. It's expected to be formally commissioned sometime before 2020, after sea trials and the arrival of its full air complement. The carrier program is a key part of China's naval expansion at a time when it is looking to beef-up its regional military influence to match its economic might. While China says it maintains a defensive military policy, its ambitions are rattling some neighbors who see Beijing as fueling already enflamed tensions in the region. Chinese naval strategists see the carrier program not only as a means to protect their country's maritime interests, but also to have "naval power commensurate with China's international status, to impress both external and domestic audiences," said Michael Chase, an expert on the Chinese military at U.S. think tank the RAND Corporation. The new carrier "is likely to be seen as further evidence of China's desire to become the most powerful and influential country in the region," he said. That will be especially worrying to Indian security analysts who are already concerned about Beijing's ambitions in the Indian Ocean, he said. India, along with Japan and Taiwan which also view Chinese carriers as threats, will likely respond by building new submarines and anti-ship missiles, said Ian Easton, a research Fellow at The Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia. China's "expansionist behavior in the South China Sea and its aggressive efforts to undermine the security of Taiwan and Japan, in particular, have translated into a situation where few countries now trust that Beijing has benign motives," Easton said. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang reiterated China's contention that it maintains a purely defense military posture and "sticks to the path of peaceful development. "The purpose to develop national defense forces including the navy is to safeguard our national sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as the peace of the world," Geng told reporters Wednesday at a daily news conference. China has offered little information about the roles it expects its carriers to play, although its planning appears to be evolving as it gains more experience. The Liaoning was initially touted mainly as an experimental and training platform, but in December was declared to be combat-ready and has taken part in live-firing exercises in the South China Sea, where tensions have risen over China's construction of man-made islands complete with airstrips and military structures. Earlier this year the Liaoning sailed through the Taiwan Strait, which was seen as a message to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory to be brought under control by force if necessary. Wednesday's launch was presided over by the vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission and Communist Party Central Committee, Fan Changlong, and came just three days after the anniversary of the People's Liberation Army Navy's symbolic founding in 1949. Also attending was navy commander Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, a former commander of the South Sea Fleet responsible for defending China's claim to virtually the entire South China Sea. Reports of the launch said a bottle of champagne was broken across the ship's bow and other craft in the port sounded their horns in celebration. Like the 60,000-ton Liaoning, which was purchased from the Ukraine, the new carrier is based on the Soviet Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style deck for taking off and a conventional oil-fueled steam turbine power plant. That limits the weight of the payloads its planes can carry, its speed and the amount of time it can spend at sea relative to American nuclear-powered carriers. The main hull of the new carrier has been completed and its power supply put into place. Next up are mooring tests and the debugging of its electronic systems, the Defense Ministry said. China is believed to be planning to build at least two and possibly as many as four additional carriers, with one of them, the Type 002, reported to be already under construction at a shipyard outside Shanghai. They are expected to be closer in size to the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered 100,000-ton Nimitz class ships, with flat flight decks and catapults to allow planes to launch with more bombs and fuel aboard. According to Chinese reports, the new, as yet unnamed, carrier will carry 24 Shenyang J-15 fighters, based on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33, along with 12 helicopters for anti-submarine warfare, airborne early warning and rescue operations. That compares to 85-90 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters carried by a Nimitz-class carrier. As China expands its navy, it is projected to have a total of 265-273 warships, submarines and logistics vessels by 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Naval Analysis. That compares with 275 deployable battle force ships presently in the U.S. Navy, China's primary rival in the Asia Pacific. The U.S. operates 10 aircraft carriers, has 62 destroyers to China's 32, and 75 submarines to China's 68. The U.S. Navy has 323,000 personnel to China's 235,000. Poor implementation of the bilingual policy has affected student literacy and numeracy in English. The current bilingual policy that prioritizes Samoan as the language of instruction in primary levels also calls for the integration of English instruction as students progress through school. This is one of the many problems pointed out in the Pacific Benchmarking for Education Results (PaBER) report which was published last year. PaBER which was released last year has indicated a number of challenges and ways in which this may hinder literacy and numeracy outcomes. Firstly, the teaching standards and competencies expected of teachers are clearly articulated with respect to pedagogy but do not address the language competencies of teachers. Teachers have in fact indicated that they prefer to work with the Samoan version of materials, and also indicated that language and terminology in the English curriculum resources is too challenging to teach. As a result it is highly likely that while a bilingual policy is in place, the majority of teaching and learning goes on in Samoan. This is evident in the relatively weak performance of Y6 in the PILNA (Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment) literacy assessment, which is undertaken in English. Furthermore, the report points out that school leaders are not consistently monitoring the implementation of the bilingual policy in classroom teaching, and there is no systematic data collected on the use of language in the classroom. Also the professional development programmes do not address the English competency of teachers. The report points out that student assessment at national and regional levels is administered in English and this situation is almost certainly having an impact on measured literacy and numeracy outcomes. At the classroom level, where teachers are using assessment, it is likely to be a combination of Samoan and English. If the language of the resource is too challenging for teachers to engage with in constructing assessment, those assessments are likely to be less effective or will be done in Samoan preventing students from demonstrating their knowledge in English. Samoa has a relatively well-established, enabling environment for the recruitment and preparation of teachers, there is an inconsistent and unplanned provision of professional development and school level support which undermines the quality of teaching and learning. The professional development is currently at two levels the system-based where MESC organise and facilitate targeted professional development for teachers and principals nationwide and; a school-based professional development programme in which the principal takes more autonomy in determining the content and frequency of sessions. Schools conduct ongoing professional development sessions, however, research showed that these sessions are usually unplanned, not well organised and ad hoc. There are no clear guidelines for schools to follow when it comes to planning, developing and implementing a more inclusive school- wide professional development programme that promotes high-quality teaching and leadership in supporting students achievement, well-being and engagement. The PaBER research on school governance indicated that principals lack the skills to plan, develop, implement, monitor and evaluate school-based professional development. Content of professional development sessions are designed and organized around the principals subject area of expertise and competence and are usually not properly monitored and attendance is not compulsory. The limitations identified illustrate how teacher professional development could be acting as a key bottleneck to improving learning outcomes. This is impacting on teachers understanding of and ability to deliver the curriculum; the use of assessment results to improve teaching, and is linked to school management capacity. Any solutions will need to address these links, and ensure overall coherence and guidance nationally, with associated resources, strong school based capacity to deliver, and appropriate systems to monitor. According to an experienced teacher who spoke to Samoa Observer on the condition of anonymity, in many schools in Samoa government and some mission schools, it is common to find teaching of all subjects done in the Samoan language simply because the teacher is less fluent in English. This is not limited to pre-schools and the first three years of primary school; it is quite common right through to tertiary level, he said. This means that for those students whose parents do not speak English at home, their knowledge, learning and usage of English is extremely limited and poor and is often dependent on poor modeling from television programmes. There are instances in schools where even the teaching of the subject - English, is done using the Samoan language, he said. More from the PaBER report in later editions. HONOLULU (AP) The mother of a Hawaii boy who disappeared 20 years ago was released from jail Thursday after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the 6-year-old's death. A judge granted supervised release for Jaylin Kema, who has served a year in jail. She was allowed to leave the Hawaii Community Correctional Center soon after returning from a court hearing, said state Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Toni Schwartz. She pleaded guilty last year in what was the first official confirmation that her son, known as "Peter Boy," was dead and agreed to testify against her husband, Peter Kema Sr., if he went to trial. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this month. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors will seek a sentence of 20 years in prison if he provides information about the location of the boy's remains. On Sunday, he led police and prosecutors to a site in the Big Island's rural Puna district where he says he dumped the remains, Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth said. When the mother pleaded guilty in December, she agreed to facts prosecutors laid out in court about abuse suffered by the boy, her failure to get him medical treatment and his eventual death. Prosecutors believe the boy died from septic shock from not getting medical care for an arm injury. Despite having health insurance, his mother did not get her son medical treatment and did not report the abuse because she was afraid of her husband, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rick Damerville said after her plea hearing. She is scheduled to be sentenced on June 13. Her plea agreement calls for 10 years of probation and the year she has already served in jail. Her release before sentencing is contingent on her undergoing drug testing, not leaving the Big Island and having no contact with her children, Damerville said. She plans to return to the Puna home where she lived when she was arrested on welfare fraud charges, said her court-appointed attorney, Brian De Lima. The Kemas were separated at the time, he said. The Kemas have long been suspects in the disappearance of Peter Boy. But prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge them until last year when a grand jury indicted them on murder charges. Keeping them apart during their incarceration was key to the case because prosecuting them without a body would be difficult, Roth said. If Peter Boy's remains cannot be recovered, his father must take a polygraph test to show he is being truthful about the location, Roth said. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 9. Carlsbad police investigating a babysitter and her boyfriend, who are accused of conspiring to molest two girls in her care, said Thursday that they have uncovered evidence that more children were victimized and now they are trying to figure out who those children are. On Thursday, police officials said that 23-year-old Brittney Lyon, of Escondido, had advertised her childcare services online, and they appealed to the public for information to help find families across Southern California who may have hired Lyon who they suspect used both her real name and the assumed identity of another person. Lyon and boyfriend Samuel Cabrera, also 23, were arrested in July on multiple charges of conspiracy and child molestation, in a case that authorities said left them disturbed and outraged. Advertisement Police say Lyon repeatedly brought two of her charges including a developmentally delayed 7-year-old girl to Cabrera in his Carlsbad home, where he allegedly molested them. Lyon and Cabrera have pleaded not guilty to multiple felonies, and remain jailed in lieu of $2.6 million bail. Each faces life in prison if convicted. On Thursday, Carlsbad police Capt. Mickey Williams said that detectives have since uncovered evidence that the pair allegedly molested several more children whom they now are trying to identify. To think that there are suspects .. that would conduct the type of crimes upon children that have occurred in this case is horrific, and that is what is driving our department to continue this investigation, to try to identify every potential victim we can, to make sure that the suspects are held responsible for their actions, Williams said in a video posted on the departments Facebook page. Carlsbad police found that Lyon had publicized her services on a few websites, including sittercity.com, where police suspect she was listed under her true name and also under the assumed identity of another person. Lyon had also advertised her babysitting services on care.com and sitter.com. The victims, police said, could be in Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Detective Steve Stallman on the police departments hotline at (760) 931-2293. The preliminary hearing for the two defendants, both San Marcos High School graduates, has repeatedly been postponed. The hearing a key pretrial proceeding at which a judge decides if there is enough evidence to order a trial is now set for September. At the couples arraignment in July, Deputy District Attorney Jodi Breton said that not only did Lyon provide the 7-year-old victims to Cabrera, in some instances she helped undress them. She tricked the parents and the children into thinking they were going to be doing something fun and then betrayed them, Breton said at the time. Neither of the children knew each other. One is from Escondido and the other is from Oceanside. One of the girls is developmentally delayed and was unable to communicate what happened to her, Breton said last year. She also said that Lyon was a family friend of one of the girls. Breton said Lyon and Cabrera had been friends since high school, and he initially convinced her to take cameras into gyms and store dressing rooms and secretly videotape women while they were changing. That progressed into Cabrera asking Lyon to bring children to his home so he could molest them, Breton said. The allegations came to light last year when the child from Oceanside disclosed the alleged abuse to her mother, who then contacted police in that city. Oceanside police contacted the Carlsbad Police Department. A search of a home on Greenhaven Drive in Carlsbad, where Cabrera lives with family, turned up a ton of recorded material, stored on computers, hard drives, video sticks, GoPro cameras and other electronics. teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT UPDATES: 6:35 p.m.: This article was updated add information and to reflect clarification issued by Carlsbad police regarding a suspected alias. This article was originally posted at 12:45 p.m. Ten years ago today, Pappalecco was born in San Diego with its first cafe in Little Italy. This month, the companys founders Tuscany-raised brothers Francesco and Lorenzo Bucci are celebrating their companys recent expansion into North County. In January, they opened a location in Del Mar Heights and on May 3, theyll host a grand opening party for their new cafe in Cardiff. As at all the other locations, the Cardiff celebration will feature a free round of imported aperitivo (Italian after-dinner digestif spirits) for all comers over 21. The new North County cafes bring the total number of Pappalecco locations to five. Francesco, 44, and Lorenzo, 35, grew up in Pisa, where their family is in the hospitality business. Their brother, and silent partner, Giovanni, runs a restaurant just a few minutes walk from the citys famous leaning tower. Advertisement A dozen years ago Francesco said he acted on a long-incubating dream to move to the U.S. after getting some good advice from an Italian friend and his American wife after they tasted some of his homemade pistachio gelato. They told me if you sold this in the United States, you could make a killing, Francesco said. With his younger brother Lorenzo, who also dreamed of moving to the U.S., Francesco chose San Diego as their new home at the recommendation of a fellow Italian expatriate. After opening their first shop in Little Italy on April 27, 2007, they expanded to Hillcrest and Kensington. Theyve also opened a headquarters office and commercial kitchen in Point Loma that supplies all the stores daily with homemade pastries, breads and gelatos. Francesco, who lives in Bankers Hill, oversees the business operations and self-trained chef Lorenzo, who lives near Talmadge, oversees the food operations and menu. The company employs about 70 full- and part-time employees. The brothers describe Pappalecco as a traditional Italian cafe that serves simple, authentic (and often organic) food and drinks. The company name was created from the Italian words pappa (a nickname for gelato that translates as baby food) and lecco (to lick). The recipes and many of the ingredients are imported from Italy. Those ingredients purchased or produced locally are prepared in the Italian style. The panini breads and pizzas are made with imported Italian flour, which is lower in gluten than American flour and easier to digest. Some of the gelatos are made with imported ingredients, like pure pistachio, hazelnut and vanilla bean pastes. The organic wines (served by the glass and bottle) are all Itailan, including Campo de Marzo, Castellani, Il Burchino and Barbaresco brands. And the Pappalecco-brand coffee is roasted in the Italian style (smoother and less bitter) by an Italy-born roaster who lives in Temecula. The brothers say their goal is to re-create the style and flavors of the Italian cafes they grew up with. The key, Francesco said, is menu purity with each item made from just a handful of fresh ingredients and no additives, preservatives or fillers. Simplicity is our trademark, Francesco said. Thats the Italian way. The companys top-selling items are its Pappalecco gelato (chocolate and hazelnut), its Toscano panini (with imported prosciutto, mozzarella, tomatoes and basil) and its coffee drinks made with imported Italian espresso machines. Coffee prices range from $2.65-$4.75, gelatos from $5 to $7, paninis from $9.95 to $13.25 and breakfasts from $6.75-$13. Francesco said the company plans to continue expanding, even beyond San Diego County, though for now they want to keep the ownership in the family to ensure quality and authenticity. Both brothers say they spend every day driving from one location to another for every meal and coffee break to ensure consistency and a good guest experience. I love it, Lorenzo said. I can be my own boss and keep my own schedule and keep a close eye on things. Customers who would like to attend the free grand opening event from 5 to 7 p.m. May 3 are required to RSVP since alcohol will be served. Visit https://bit.ly/2okAyX6. Pappalecco Hours: Open at 7 a.m. weekdays, 7:30 a.m. weekends. Closing hours vary from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., depending on location. North County locations: 2101 San Elijo Ave., Cardiff. 12925 El Camino Real, Suite AA5, Del Mar Heights. Phone: (760) 230 2940 Online:pappalecco.com pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com When her school took part in the Knockaround Sunglasses Class Acts design contest last year, Lilli Hayes didnt have to look far for an idea. Knockaround founder Adam Moyer was showing us a video on inspiration, like in nature, or something in your house, she said. I had a costume, which was a peacock. Peacocks are my favorite bird. I do know a lot of information on them. I also like the pattern. Peacocks it was. Lilli, a fifth-grader at Ramona Elementary, drew a design for sunglasses with peacock eyes dotted along the temples, bright green feathers around the frame, and electric-blue lenses. Advertisement She called her design Peacock Life. And she won. I fell back on my chair, recalled Lilli, when she learned her design had been selected. I screamed and fell back. But I didnt hurt myself. It was exciting. All the proceeds from the sale of the special sunglasses, which made their debut Monday on the Knockaround website, will be donated to ArtReach, a nonprofit that sends artists to elementary schools to augment the students arts education. Lilli will receive $300, plus sunglasses including her Peacock Life version. She plans to continue her artistic interests. I thought of becoming an art student when I was little. I also like making dresses and designing stuff. Because of her Knockaround win, she said, I get to do a lot of things. I get to have a tent in Little Italy, representing ArtReach. That would be as part of the Vivid Expression: Mission Federal ArtWalk from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, taking place across 17 blocks in San Diegos Little Italy. Thousands of folks will be viewing and buying artwork, enjoying live music and dance, and joining in interactive art experiences. Other artists will also be donating some of their sales to support ArtReach. Lillis Peacock Life Premiums are priced at $30 a pair on the website, or $20 at ArtWalk, said Moyer in an email interview. One hundred percent of the proceeds go to our partner in this project, ArtReach an incredible local organization that brings more art into elementary schools. To date, weve donated over $40,000 to ArtReach through the Class Acts program. The program is now in its fifth year, said Moyer, who created Knockaround in 2005 in San Diego as a graduate art student at UC San Diego. Billed as quality shades that wont break the bank, the colorful sunglasses with vivid lenses range from $10 to $35. Every year, the companys employees visit elementary schools to talk about why art is important, and then turn students loose to design a pair of sunglasses. Designs incorporating sharks, rainbows and nachos are among previous winners. We aim to have about 300-400 design entries each year, said Moyer. We find that gives a large pool .. to choose from, without becoming too overwhelming. Each year we go to two to three schools. ArtReach helps set up the design workshops at the schools, proposing new locations each year. This year, Ramona Elementary and Iftin Charter School in San Diego were chosen for the program. This year we received a TON of great designs, which made it especially difficult to choose just one, Moyer said. The team at Knockaround sorts through all the entries and gives their vote. In the end, there is usually one design that stands out as the winner. Lillis wildly colorful concept and confident message rose above the rest. Visit knockaround.com. laura.groch@sduniontribune.com The Vista Unified School District is rolling out a system in which students scan their fingerprints to buy lunch at the cafeteria, employing technology used for airport security, government clearances and law enforcement. The program uses biometrics, which records human measurements for identification purposes. The technology which has been around for decades has become a popular feature on cellphones and other devices, and Vista is one of hundreds of school districts across the country relying on it for school lunch programs. Vista Unified officials say the system expedites lunch lines and protects students accounts from theft or accidental misuse, but critics of biometrics have complained that using the technology at schools is overkill, and could expose students to identify theft and privacy risks. Advertisement The products provider say the system doesnt store or share fingerprint images, and encrypts them in a way that would be extraordinarily difficult to hack. Students are automatically enrolled in the program, unless parents request that they be excluded. The Vista district first launched the program a year ago and has so far installed the scanners at 19 campuses. On Friday, it will begin collecting student fingerprints at Madison Middle School, the 20th of 22 schools that will eventually be equipped with the devices. The fingerprint scans eliminate problems with student ID cards and PIN numbers, allowing lunch lines to move more quickly, officials said. Over the many years that we have been dealing with PINs they have been very problematic, with students (not) remembering and sharing numbers. Brock Smith, executive director of facilities and operations for Vista schools, said in an email interview. The younger students have been especially problematic, he said. In past year, we have used a card system for them that involves not just the (nutrition) department, but also the teachers and a daily transfer of these cards back and forth to the classroom. For these and other reasons, the new technology was explored as a viable solution. The startup cost of the system was $65,901, Smith said, and maintenance is $200 per building annually. School officials held meetings at the first couple schools that used the scanners, but parents voiced little concern. So far, only four families have opted out of the program, said Donna Caperton, assistant superintendent for business services. The system, IDConnect, by Educational Biometric Technology, scans fingerprints and then applies a mathematical algorithm to generate a unique number for each student, said company owner Bob Engen. When children check out at the cafeteria, it scans their fingers again and matches students to their lunch accounts. Our system is really fast, and really brings a lot of accuracy to them, and doesnt store any personal information like fingerprint (images) or even measurements of any fingerprints, Engen said. Privacy advocates doubt that such systems are inviolable, and argue that whole fingerprints can be reconstructed, or reverse-engineered from the numeric codes. Saying that you only store the mathematical representations of a fingerprint is like saying that you only store the mathematical representations of a JPEG, not the actual paint, canvas and frame that it depicts, blogger Cory Doctorow wrote in a Boing-Boing post on biometrics at Disneyland. Its true, but it sure doesnt mean that you havent captured something important. The ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties had not reviewed details of Vistas policy, but said the organization has broad concerns about student privacy and parental notification of the systems. It also questioned whether fingerprinting systems long used in criminal justice are appropriate for identifying school children. As new surveillance technologies emerge, the use of biometric systems should be thoroughly vetted with parents to mitigate their significant privacy and civil liberties concerns, the organization stated in an e-mail to the Union Tribune. Lastly, we urge parents, teachers, school administrators and the community at-large to be mindful of what additional lessons were teaching our children when we use the same tools to track their everyday activity that law enforcement uses to process people arrested for criminal activity. Others in the biometrics field say theyre familiar with wariness on the part of parents, but argue that its not warranted. We find a small sliver of the parent base dont want anything to do with it, said Rob Gray, chief operating officer of Food Service Solutions, another school biometrics firm in Pennsylvania. They dont want their child fingerprinted. They fear a Big Brother scenario. You cant really blame them, because of the way things are spun. But youre not putting fingerprint images in the system in any way they could be used. Its not strictly impossible for someone to reconstruct a fingerprint from the data, he acknowledged, but it would require would take an extreme amount of work to do that. And since childrens fingerprints arent routinely collected for other purposes, it wouldnt enable a hacker to access social security accounts, school records, or other sensitive information, he said. I wont rule it out completely, but the probability of someone being able to do it is extremely low, Gray said. For reasons of privacy as well as practicality, however, its not clear that biometrics will become the standard for school ID. In Los Angeles campuses, officials experimented with similar systems before abandoning them. We did try the biometrics at one of our schools, but it was too expensive, L.A. Unified School District spokeswoman Ellen Morgan said in an e-mail. L.A. Unified uses pin-pads that require a specific code and we get the same results. Note: A previous version of this story cited Engen as saying that it is not strictly impossible to reconstruct a fingerprint scanned through biometric systems. Engen said it is not possible to do so. deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan Music isnt just an art form, its a community. Just ask Kathleen Hansen, artistic director of the 125-member San Diego Womens Chorus, which is celebrating its 30th year with celebratory concerts Saturday, May 6, and Sunday, May 7. The program Reflections: Looking Back on Our First 30 Years will take audiences on a musical journey from the groups inception to today. Q: Thirty years! Thats a long time. What do you feel is the reason for such longevity? Advertisement A: The chorus motto is come for the music, stay for the heart. Singing together promotes a unique bond and we arent singing just any music. We sing about human rights, social justice and equality for all. We also sing music that is popular or humorous. Once people are in the door, they discover and become a part of a strong sisterhood. Q: Talk about the upcoming May 6 and 7 concerts? What can we expect? A: We will be performing some of the best and most meaningful songs that we have come across over the last 30 years. Our oldest was written for the womens suffrage movement in the late 1800s, our newest was written by Janis Ian and arranged just for us. We will be performing music made popular by Sweet Honey in the Rock and Holly Near. The concert has quite a lot of variation: protest to pop music, Broadway to comedy. Q: It seems everyones in a choir these days, or perhaps theres just more visibility for these groups. Whats the reason, do you think, for its popularity? A: I would love seeing everyone in a choir! On the national level, shows such as Glee, American Idol and The Voice certainly have encouraged people to keep singing. At a local level, the Choral Consortium of San Diego (which is made up of 47 local singing organizations) has worked hard to promote singing in the community. There really is something for everyone. Q: How do you ensure that choirs like yours continue to be relevant during these changing times? A: We work hard to keep our message and our music relevant. There is great beauty in the music of the past, but its important to find ways to tie it in to the now. That being said, the human need for love, acceptance, community and fighting for what you believe in has certainly been around longer than any of the music we sing. It is sobering to pick up a piece of music from 50 years ago about marching for peace, love and equality and finding that we still struggle with those needs. Q: The arts, especially music, have been an important part of the fabric of this community, this nation. What are you doing to make sure this continues? A: Music really can provide a great soundtrack for life. We sing not only at our concerts, but community events of all kinds. In the last few years, we have sung at Padres games, Pride events, rallies, marches, memorials, a wedding proposal, and in honor of veterans. When the tragic shootings in Orlando happened, we lent our voice to the community vigil. When marriage equality was enacted nation-wide, we were there to celebrate in song. Q: Everybody has a different reason for joining a chorus. In your experience, though, is there a commonality that makes the experience universal for chorus members? A: When you join a chorus, you become part of something greater than yourself. It doesnt matter if the person next to you has the same background, passions, or education you all come together as one in song. Reflections: Looking Back on Our First 30 Years When: 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6; 4 p.m. Sunday, May 7 Where: University Christian Church, 3900 Cleveland Ave., Hillcrest Tickets: $20 in advance and $25 at the door, with discounted pricing available. A select number of VIP tickets, which entitle ticket holders to premium seating in a reserved section of the venue, are available for $30 and will be sold in advance only. Online: sdwc.org Twitter: @outdoorlivingsd michael.rocha@sduniontribune.com Two Broadway shows with La Jolla Playhouse origins are making plenty of noise in the annual round of New York theater-award nominations, boosting chances theyll be in contention for the Tony Awards. Both the musical Come From Away and the play Indecent have received multiple nominations for the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and other awards programs. Next up: the Tony nominations. The field for those prestige Broadway honors is set to be announced this Tuesday. Advertisement A refresher: Come From Away is the 9/11-connected show that had its world premiere at the Playhouse in 2015 under the direction of Christopher Ashley, the theaters artistic chief. Written and composed by the Canadian husband-and-wife team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein, the musical is based on the real-life story of how a tiny Newfoundland town sheltered and comforted thousands of stranded air travelers after the 2001 terror attacks. Indecent, which builds its story around the history and impact of the Sholem Asch play The God of Vengeance, represents the Broadway debut of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive). The Playhouse staged the piece in 2015 in association with Yale Rep, where it had its initial run. The shows director is Rebecca Taichman, who created Indecent with Vogel and has directed several other shows at the Playhouse and Old Globe. Indecent is likewise Taichmans Broadway debut. In the most recent nominations, for the Drama Desk Awards (announced today), Come From Away earned nine, second only to the latest revival of Hello, Dolly (starring Bette Midler). Come From Away wound up in a tie with Anastasia, directed by former Old Globe resident artistic director Darko Tresnjak (who is now artistic chief of Hartford Stage and earned a Tony in 2014 for the Globe-connected best-musical winner A Gentlemans Guide to Love and Murder). Among the Drama Desk noms for Come From Away were in the categories of outstanding musical, director (Ashley) and featured actress (Jenn Colella). Its worth noting that the show was not up against Dear Evan Hansen likely to be its biggest competition for the Tonys because that musical was eligible previously in its off-Broadway incarnation. Indecent, whose off-Broadway rather than Broadway production was considered, earned nominations for outstanding play and lighting design. The Drama Desk Awards, which honor a much broader range of New York theater than the Tonys, will be presented June 4. Indecent earned a much bigger tally of six including outstanding new Broadway play and outstanding director in the Outer Critics Circle nominations, which likewise honor both Broadway and off-Broadway shows. That total left the play tied for third; Anastasia was again at the top, with 13. Come From Away earned seven nominations, including outstanding new Broadway musical, director, featured actress (Colella again) and choreography (Kelly Devine, whos now at the Playhouse working on the new Jimmy Buffett musical Escape From Margaritaville). Once again, Dear Evan Hansen was not eligible. (The Outer Critics honors will be presented May 25). It was, however, up for the Drama League Awards, announced last week, and earned an outstanding-production nomination and two acting nods. Come From Away and Indecent each earned a production nomination for the Drama League honors, which group numerous nominees into a small number of broad categories. Those awards will be announced May 19. And earlier this month, the Vineyard Theatre production of Indecent (which subsequently transferred to Broadway) earned four nominations for the Lucille Lortel Awards, which honor only off-Broadway theater. A couple of other breaking awards notes: Vogel will receive the lifetime achievement award at the Obie Awards, which honor off-Broadway theater and will be presented May 22. (No nominations are announced for those awards.) And it was announced this morning that James Earl Jones will receive the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. The Tony nominations will be announced early Tuesday morning; the awards themselves take place June 11 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Look for our Tony-nominations prediction piece here tomorrow morning, and in this weekends edition of the U-Ts Sunday Arts section. Twitter: @jimhebert jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com With the San Diego-based Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group sailing toward an increasingly aggressive North Korea, the Pacific Fleets top submariner reminded everyone Wednesday that one of his underwater hunters got there first. In a morning address to the San Diego Military Advisory Council, Rear Adm. Frederick Roegge commander of the Pacfic Fleets Submarine Force noted the Monday arrival of the Michigan in the South Korean port of Busan. What I can tell you is what the Seventh Fleets press announcement said that the USS Michigan, one of my guided-missile submarines, carries about 150 Tomahawk missiles, Roegge said. Its equipped to support the Navy SEALs, the Navys special warfare warriors. I can tell you that our ship is visiting our friend and partner and ally of South Korea on a scheduled port visit. Youre on your own to draw your own conclusions. Advertisement North Korean officials continue to build and test nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to strike America. Repeated statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other top officials that all options are on table to confront Pyongyangs proliferation programs should give military commanders pause and take them seriously, Roegge said. But Roegge isnt just watching North Korea. Headquartered in Hawaiis Pearl Harbor, Roegges command stretches from the coast of Washington to San Diego and Guam. During his speech Wednesday, he termed the Indo-Asia-Pacific region straddling his command the demographic center of gravity. Drawing a circle with an epicenter in China, a circumference running through Japan, Indonesia, India and western Russia, he noted that more people on Earth live inside the circle than outside it. China and Beijings neighbors continue to contest territory in the Western Pacific and the South China Sea. Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan spar over a wide range of disputes. And the region continues to serve as a global center of economic activity. Fifteen of the worlds 20 busiest seaports are in Asia, six in China alone. Because America is a maritime trading nation with vital interests in the region, Roegge said that the speed, stealth, endurance, lethal punch and electronic connectivity of his submarines help keep the peace. His underwater arsenal includes attack submarines that hunt enemy warships; the ballistic missile boomers that help to maintain Americas deterrence against an enemys first strike nuclear attack; guided-missile submarines like the Michigan; and an increasing fleet of submerged drones. They dont hold an underwater monopoly on military might. Fourteen different nations rimming the Pacific Ocean deploy 309 submarines, with another 63 under construction, and competitors are gaining against the U.S. Navy. During the Cold War, American shipyards launched three to four new submarines every year, Roegge said. Those subs are being decommissioned at about the same rate now, but Americas industrial base can sustain only a pair of replacements annually. Congress appears committed to supporting 66 nuclear submarines, with the top priority given to replacing aging ballistic missile submarines. Beginning in 2031, the Columbia-class of nuclear submarines promises to go four decades without refueling twice as long as the subs they will replace. Often overshadowed by San Diegos large number of surface warships, Navy aircraft and Camp Pendletons Marine Corps units, five Los Angeles-class attack submarines homeport here and two more will join them in 2021, part of an ongoing pivot of Americas military power to the Pacific Ocean. The Navys Undersea Rescue Command also is headquartered in San Diego, ready to save distressed submariners worldwide, and the local sub forces boast a floating dry dock for maintaining the vessels. At sea, Roegge served aboard the submarines Whale, Florida and Key West and commanded the Connecticut before he took the helm of Submarine Squadron 22 and Naval Support Activity La Maddalena, Italy. He took command of the Pacific Fleets sub force in 2015. 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 most dangerous time during a patrol is the end, when your guard is down on tired last steps at the threshold of friendly lines. The Corps is at that point now, Gen. James Amos said, pacing an auditorium filled with Marines during a recent visit to Camp Pendleton. Returning to garrison after 12 years of combat, Marines are vulnerable to a new enemy, one within their ranks reckless or criminal behavior, poor discipline and shoddy attention to standards by a small percentage of Marines who were first to fight but failed to follow the rest of the Marine hymn, to keep their honor clean. Commandant Amos and Sgt. Maj. Michael Barrett, the services senior enlisted Marine, are worried about serious problems like alcohol and drug abuse, sexual misconduct, domestic violence, hazing and suicide. Advertisement Sloppiness like failure to wear uniforms correctly or maintain fitness levels is also a concern, indicative they say of a breakdown in order leading to tactical mistakes. We can tighten these things up. The fabric itself is not fraying, but some of the edges on the fabric are fraying, Amos said in an interview. After fighting hard in Fallujah, Ramadi, Marjah and Sangin, among other battles, invading Iraq in tanks and Afghanistan by ships far from shore, Marine Corps stock is high among the American public. But this insurgency of wrong doing is invading our homes and destroying our credibility, Amos and Barrett said in a letter to all corporals and sergeants, the non-commissioned officers and backbone of the Corps leading 83 percent of Marines. To rein in those who harm themselves and fellow Marines, civilians and the Corps they pledged to serve, Amos said: We just need our NCOs to stand up and lead. I just need you to go back to the soul of the Corps, which is that discipline, and standards and caring for one another. Reawakening The hour and a half presentation at Camp Pendleton, like one in October at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, is the centerpiece of the Reawakening campaign Amos and Barrett launched this fall. The kneecap-to-kneecap pep talk and lecture from the two dads of the institution at Marine bases worldwide is accompanied by a reading assignment on leadership as well as controversial new procedures to make barracks safer. To enlist the support of corporals and sergeants in policing their ranks, the Marine leaders stressed their pride in their performance. No other time in our nations history have we been engaged in continuous combat like now. Twelve years weve been at war. and we are doing it as an all-volunteer force, Barrett said. There is no more honorable or noble a profession than to serve people, to wear this cloth and do our nations bidding, he said. You could have done anything in your life but this is what you chose, and thats humbling. Then the spanking began, so to speak. A huge slide projected before them showed a collage of pictures and words about incidents in recent years that shamed the Corps. Marines urinating on enemy corpses in Afghanistan, or posing with the American flag next to one for the Nazi SS. Marines involved with a prostitution ring pushing a woman out of a moving car. Marines raping Marines. A corporal hazed so badly he killed himself. I want you to stare at those pictures. Take it in, digest it. Because that is not who we are, Barrett said. We are ethical warriors. We are of the highest moral and ethical character. Yeah, I got it, combat, battle is inhuman. But we are better than that. All but about 2 percent are making mission, kicking butt and keeping their honor clean, Barrett said. The behavior of the rest is sobering. He spoke of a Marine who drank himself to death with a blood alcohol content at .56 percent. I was in the room when his eyes popped out of his head because his brain swelled up so much. The doctor had to drill a hole through his head to release the pressure. Then they had to tape his eyes shut. The sad part. The more sad part, other than another hole in our heart, another family devastated, was he was consuming booze with guess who? Other Marines. That 2 percent let him. Barracks Since most of the Marine Corps consists of single teenagers, the barracks around midnight on weekends is the trouble spot. For example, more than half the sexual assaults reported in the Corps last year occurred on base. To make the barracks safer, security cameras are being installed in the older barracks that still lack them, the Corps ordered duty officers to wear more formal uniforms instead of camouflage utilities, and assigned the job to higher ranking Marines. At Camp Pendleton, 20,624 Marines and sailors live in 149 barracks. Officers patrolling those halls are being trained now to carry a weapon. And they must rove the building on duty, no more watching TV or posting to Facebook from a desk. The Reawakening campaign and its focus on the barracks crystallized during a leadership seminar last summer on sexual assault and other destructive behavior. Lieutenant colonels and sergeants major said they were concerned about young Marines alone in the barracks after hours. We are really not 24-7, 365 leaders back in America. We are that way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and youve seen that, but we are really not doing that back home, Amos said. Gen. John Kelly, testifying during an administrative hearing related to the corpse urination case, spoke of the importance of leadership to enforce standards. Marines will do anything well tell them to do. Theyll take Iwo Jima, theyll blouse their trousers, Kelly said, according to reporting by The Marine Corps Times. But, they have to be supervised. If they arent disciplined enough to wear their uniforms correctly, its a slippery slope to urinating on corpses, to raping women, to murdering kids, Kelly said. As Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green, the top enlisted Marine for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, put it to his Marines during the Reawakening talk at Camp Pendleton: You dont work at the frickin post office! People lose their lives when you dont follow directions. Be committed. Its not a job, its a way of life. We cant be Marines by day, somebody else at night. Its not working. Were losing too many. History Amos has been through three postwar drawdowns in his 43-year career as a Marine. He was commissioned as an officer in 1970 and checked into his first unit in 1972. Todays Corps is not anything like the one he joined during the Vietnam War. Back then Lt. Amos carried a .45 as duty officer in the barracks. Your life depended on it, he said. Officers walked through clouds of marijuana smoke when they entered squad bays, and Marines ran for the toilets to flush bags of drugs. At night rival gangs fought race riots on base. It wasnt just time and the end of the draft that rid the Corps of miscreants. It was a concerted effort over eight years by two commandants who instituted progressive and not always popular measures like mandatory urinalysis, Amos said: Those two commandants saved the Marine Corps. The Corps today is in far better shape, but the leadership lesson stuck with him. I dont want anybody to think the Marine Corps is that messed up, Amos said. We see this fraying on the edges. This is not hard, but lets fix it now. Because we really do have to reset this Marine Corps to get it moving for the next decades. Some of his closest friends have criticized Amos for adding security cameras in the barracks and other unpopular changes, saying he is going too far. Im not setting out to make enemies, Amos said, but he and Barrett bear a serious responsibility to set the institution on the right course. Isolated incidents reverberate around the world in this era of Internet and cable news. For instance, when the photo of Marines urinating on enemy corpses went viral, I cant tell you how many people pointed their finger at me in front of the Congress and other people saying, I thought the Marine Corps was an ethical organization, General Amos what happened to the moral fabric of the Marines? That was really bad behavior by just a few Marines, but people were judging the entire Marine Corps by that, like you guys are a bunch of cowboys. At Camp Pendleton, Amos reminded his Marines that it is a privilege to serve as the nations shock troops when the order goes down to send in the Marines. We have the trust of the American people. We have the trust of the leadership of our country. And I will tell you what, we cannot afford to lose that. CLEVELAND, April 26, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cuyahoga County, BioEnterprise, HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) and The Global Center for Health Innovation (GCHI), are pleased to announce the inaugural Medical Capital Innovation Competition All Things Data in Healthcare winners: OPEN DIVISION 1st Place/$50,000: MedRespond, Pittsburgh, PA Patients often have questions about their medical treatment. Sometimes they dont know what to expect and are thus nervous, or misunderstand instructions given in the doctors office. MedRespond simulates a conversation online, providing answers to medical questions while also collecting vital patient information. 2nd Place/$25,000: Rubitection, Pittsburgh, PA Rubitections product is a low cost, noninvasive handheld tool for early bedsore assessment. Utilizing optical technology, the Rubitect Assessment System includes a measurement probe with a sterile cover and data tracking software. 3rd Place/$15,000: Hyr Medical, Cleveland, OH To address the many problems of hospital staffing, Hyr Medical connects doctors and hospitals via a web-based platform bypassing inefficient locum agencies. COLLEGIATE DIVISION 1st Place/$6,000: NeuroRad Vision, Cleveland, OH NeuroRadVision is a computerized decision support software toolkit, employing novel and advanced artificial intelligence and image analysis algorithms to differential recurrent brain tumors from benign radiation-induced treatment effects. 2nd Place/$3,000: HealthTech Solutions, Iowa City, IA HealthTech Solutions is developing a mobile application called Organizer, which facilitates instantaneous communication and information flow for organ procurement organizations. 3rd Place/$1,000: EXAID, Pittsburgh, OH EXAID is developing a HIPAA-compliant clinical trial matching application to quickly match oncology patients with trials and expedite the drug validation process. Innovation and entrepreneurialism are a part of the spirit of Cuyahoga County, said Armond Budish, Cuyahoga County Executive. I am honored to congratulate the winning teams and I invite them to keep their hearts and minds connected to Cleveland, where our world-renowned healthcare facilities, educational institutions and public-private partnerships foster continued growth in the healthcare and biomedical industries. Together we can build a thriving and prosperous region. The Innovation Competition attracted 180 applications from industry professionals and university students from across the world. The final participants included 27 teams 22 Professional and 5 Collegiate from 11 U.S. states and Canada. In addition to cash prizes, the winning teams will receive meaningful assistance, including mentoring and access to world-class healthcare systems and collaborators. Open division first place winners also receive an opportunity to demonstrate innovation at the HIMSS18 Conference in March 2018. HIMSSs vision is better health through the best use of IT. And, the Medical Capital Innovation Competition takes us all a step closer to realizing that vision, said Carla Smith, executive vice president of HIMSS. We champion competitions such as this because they support a culture of innovation, solve problems the health sector faces, help businesses flourish, and support job creation. I have been truly impressed with the caliber of the professional and collegiate teams from around the country; Im eager to follow their progress towards improving the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of health and healthcare. Competing teams represented a variety of big data healthcare categories including patient engagement and compliance, clinical trial optimization, EHR (electronic health records) optimization, and decision support. For a complete list of participating teams and their product solutions go to www.MedicalInnovationCompetition.org. This major health IT innovation competition was held here in Cleveland, The Medical Capital for several reasons, said Aram Nerpouni, president and CEO, BioEnterprise. Its home to more than 45 health IT companies including IBM Explorys, Hyland Software and OnShift; health IT investment more than doubled to $50 million in 2016; and the region is home to world-class healthcare and research assets that young companies want to collaborate with to grow their companies. About The Medical Capital The Medical Capital initiative is a collaboration of Clevelands internationally renowned clinical, educational, and research institutions, philanthropies, government, and economic development engines. Convened by BioEnterprise, the initiative promotes the vibrant biomedical and healthcare industry in the 18-county Northeast Ohio region. The Medical Capital includes more than 700 biohealth companies, 30 clinical, research and educational institutions, 230,000 biomedical and healthcare workers, $650 million annually in research funding, and $200 million annually in private startup funding. For more information: www.TheMedicalCapital.com. About BioEnterprise BioEnterprise is a business formation, recruitment, and acceleration effort designed to support the growth of bioscience companies. Located in Cleveland, BioEnterprise provides management counsel and support services to health IT, medical device, and biopharmaceutical companies. BioEnterprise founders are Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals. Additional technology partners include the NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland State University, and BioOhio. The initiative comprises the collective activities of BioEnterprise and its partners commercialization offices: The Case Office of Technology Transfer, Cleveland Clinic Innovations, and University Hospitals Cleveland Center for Clinical Research. The combined efforts of these groups has created, recruited, and accelerated more than 300 companies in 15 years. For more information: www.BioEnterprise.com. About Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County is home to world-renowned healthcare facilities, including Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and the MetroHealth System. It is also home to 1.2 million people and is comprised of 59 unique and distinctive communities, with Cleveland as its nucleus. The county is the economic center of Northeast Ohio. The County has a booming biotechnology and biomedical industry. There are over 700 bioscience-related companies within its borders. The healthcare and biomedical industry together employ over 230,000 individuals. About HIMSS HIMSS is a global voice, advisor and thought leader of health transformation through health IT with a unique breadth and depth of expertise and capabilities to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health, healthcare and care outcomes. HIMSS designs and leverages key data assets, predictive models and tools to advise global leaders, stakeholders and influencers of best practices in health IT, so they have the right information at the point of decision. Through its health IT network of over 1 million experts, over 200 knowledge exchanges and collaborations, including 64,000-plus members, HIMSS drives innovative, forward thinking around best uses of technology in support of better connected care, improved population health and low cost of care. HIMSS is a not-for-profit, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with additional offices in North America, Europe, United Kingdom and Asia. About The Global Center for Health Innovation The Global Center for Health Innovation was built in Cleveland to serve as the focal point for healthcare innovation, conventions, and industry-specific meetings, and is home to internationally-recognized brands such as GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips Healthcare, Cisco Systems, Cardinal Health, and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) along with Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. Under the direction of the Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corporation (CCCFDC) and managed by SMG, the Global Center is home to 45 of the worlds leading healthcare brands and more than 300 industry meetings annually. Each tenant partner space displays innovation and technology contributing to the overall mission of improving patient outcomes and lowering costs for healthcare providers and consumers. To learn more, visit the Global Center website at www.theglobalcenter.com To learn more about Cleveland as the nations medical capital, visit www.TheMedicalCapital.com. As Congress works on legislation to make it easier to fire bad U.S. Veterans Affairs Department employees, President Donald Trump is using an executive order to create an accountability office. Trump is expected to sign the order Thursday while on a visit to the VA, according to the Associated Press. The office is supposed to identify barriers that make it hard to fire or reassign workers who are deemed unfit, VA Secretary David Shulkin told reporters at a White House press briefing on Wednesday. Advertisement Welcome to The Intel, a blog examining the hot military news of the day It will also look into reports of retaliation against whistleblowers who expose bad conduct at the VA. Its unclear if Trumps order will supply new funding for the office. Shulkin said there could be substantial cost, but he didnt have an estimate. The new effort is expected to use existing VA employees -- despite widespread staff shortages and a decision to leave thousands of positions unfilled after the federal hiring ban has been lifted. I think what this is doing is its elevating the office directly under me so that this is a direct report to the secretary. So its taking accountability up to the highest level, Shulkin said. And if (we) do identify that there are resources requirements needed, that we address those and that we make sure that theres an immediate focus on on this issue. In March, the House passed the VA Accountability First Act of 2017. It would give the VA secretary more flexibility to remove, demote or suspend employees for misconduct. In addition to giving more protection to whistleblowers, it would allow Shulkin to cut someones pension if he or she commits a felony on the job and recoup ill-gotten bonuses and moving expenses. Most of the major veterans organizations have endorsed the effort, according to the House veterans committee leadership. The Senate is working on its version. Shulkin said Wednesday that he still needs the legislation. Despite the coming executive order, We know that thats not going to be enough to get done what I want to get done, which is to be able to, once we identify people that need to leave the organization, to get them out quickly. The VA already has an Office of Accountability and Review. It also has been ordered to stand up a central whistleblower office. Shulkin said one of the jobs of the new accountability office will be to make sure theres no duplication of effort. 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 jen.steele@sduniontribune.com Facebook: U-T Military Twitter: @jensteeley A judge dealt a setback this week to the plan for a Frank Gehry-designed mixed-use complex in Hollywood, saying Los Angeles leaders failed to comply with the states environmental review process when they approved the project. In a 55-page ruling, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Amy D. Hogue said the City Council had failed to make the required legal findings before signing off on demolition of an architecturally significant bank building on the Sunset Boulevard site. The decision delivered a victory to the Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation group pushing to save the Lytton Savings building, a 1960 structure known for its zigzag roof. Conservancy leaders said Hogues decision should prompt a redesign of the Gehry project that allows the building considered a strong example of the angular Googie architectural design popular at midcentury to be preserved. Advertisement Weve worked with many architects and developers to successfully integrate historic places into new development, and now that can happen here, Adrian Scott Fine, the L.A. Conservancys director of advocacy, said in a statement. Blending old and new is the wave of the future in Los Angeles. The City Council approved the project in November, allowing developer Townscape Partners to build a 229-unit complex that includes two residential towers, 65,000 square feet of commercial space and a pedestrian plaza. At the time, the projects developers made clear that they had no intention of retaining the bank, located at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards. Gordon Hart, an attorney for Townscape Partners, had no comment after the ruling on whether his client would be interested in preserving the bank. Hart said Townscape was evaluating its legal options, including filing an appeal or continuing to work with the city on the approval process. The judges ruling calls for approval of the project to be sent back to the city, he said. In order for the project to go forward, the city would have to revise its findings justifying the reasons for demolishing the bank, he said. Advocacy groups filed four separate lawsuits offering an array of arguments against the project. Opponents had claimed that the city failed to adequately analyze the projects impact on traffic and improperly reconfigured an intersection as part of the project. Hogue said the city properly handled those issues. But she concluded that officials fell short in their decision to allow demolition of the bank, a move expected to have a significant environmental impact. When they approved the Townscape complex, officials rejected two alternatives that would have avoided the banks demolition. City leaders needed to provide substantial evidence showing that those alternatives would not be feasible which is to say, would not accomplish the projects basic objectives. The city did not provide enough evidence to comply with the states environmental law, the judge said. Preservationists have argued that the Townscape project could be built in a way that would leave the bank building intact. This weeks ruling means the citys approval of the project must be set aside, said Susan Brandt-Hawley, the conservancys lawyer. City Atty. Mike Feuer said Wednesday that he had not seen the decision. But he noted that Hogue had ruled in favor of the city on the vast majority of the arguments lodged by the projects opponents. Rob Wilcox, Feuers spokesman, said parties in the lawsuit will submit proposed judgments and orders to determine what happens next. This next step will provide more clarity regarding the status of the project approvals and what the city is required to do to comply with the courts ruling, Wilcox said in an email. david.zahniser@latimes.com Twitter: @davidzahniser In case youre wondering, Bob Filners new self-published book, Trumping Trump: Making Democrats Progressive Again, is not a few things you might expect it would be. Its definitely not a memoir, though bits and pieces of Filners life story are stitched into the 177 carefully crafted pages. Despite a wealth of material at the authors disposal, a literary remembrance of things past from 18-year-old Freedom Rider to History Professor to Brash Congressman to Disgraced Mayor its not. The writing is academic, not lyrical. Advertisement Its also not a personal confession, though in the first chapter (headlined What Was I Thinking?), the former San Diego mayor, notorious for his boorishness toward women, freely admits that, thanks to extensive therapy, he sees that after years in office he became addicted to sexual conquest (with the emphasis on conquest). Now I can see, he writes, that it wasnt the sex I was after; it was the power. And the abuse of that power led to my downfall. Spoiler alert: The lubricious details are absent from the narrative flow. If youre hoping for titillation, dont buy this book. Trumping Trump is also not a full-frontal attack on San Diegos Republican Establishment, Filners blood enemies. Its not an indictment on the citys ruling class, though Filner does repeat his belief that a lynch mob, manipulated by the power brokers, forced him to resign while facing a swarm of civil lawsuits. He resists settling a menu of personal scores, but, as he told me in a phone interview Tuesday, he does believe a Republican would have weathered the tempest that sank his boat. Neither is the book, now available on Amazon, a denunciation of the triumph of Trumpism, which the title would suggest. He does, however, argue that his grassroots brand of progressivism can be fashioned to appeal to tea party and Trump voters. No, Trumping Trump is, at its core, a flattering self-portrait of Filner, the unabashedly anti-war, pro-vet politician who in his own childhood home was challenged to fight for civil rights by an American demigod, Martin Luther King Jr., when Filner was just 13. The marching orders young Filner took from King emboldened him as a congressman to threaten to arrest Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, during the Great Recession if a veteran committed suicide after the bank foreclosed on his mortgage. It was a stunt with teeth, one of Filners crowning moments. Close to home, Filner fought for stop signs for overlooked minorities in Sherman Heights; he marched in and ordered a wheelchair for a vet lost in the VAs bureaucratic maze. To him, politics was performance art, the more newsworthy the better. The goal: Creative tension, the human condition of change. In trumpeting the tangible good hes done, and downplaying the bad, Filner makes the case that his career truly mattered. If the Democrats are to return to power, theyre going to have to believe in what he believes, behave the way he behaved in the service of constituents. So we return to the basic question. While in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, why write a book that appears unlikely to make money or command the interest of a wide audience? Two reasons, I suspect, both directed at San Diego. First, on a personal level, Filner, 74, needs to validate his long career as an SDSU history professor, school board trustee, City Council member, 10-term congressman, and, finally, a mayor with an aggressive agenda to solarize San Diego, solve the Chargers stadium dilemma, and bring the Olympics to the region. He was undermined by his runaway id, as more than a dozen women publicly attested, but his current ego needs to believe that he could have been a contender to be San Diegos greatest progressive mayor, a champion of the common man. But theres another, more intriguing, rationale. Even at his lowest moments, I never believed that Bob Filner, even as a lion in darkest winter, would go quietly into the night. Despite everything, he still inspires loyalty, as his book keeps underlining. Minority neighborhoods always saw him as their champion at the school board, City Hall and Congress. They mourned when he fell from grace. Even on the home front, a friendly fire still burns. His family calls him The New Bob. In what has to be a first, Filner dedicated the book to his children and his two ex-wives. (Both women vouched for his character as he faced criminal charges.) Could he run for office again in a minority-based City Council district? (Wouldnt that drive us crazy?) Could he return to San Diego and play a role in local progressive politics, possibly as a liberal talk-show pundit? Anything is possible now. Remember, Filner was charged with three criminal counts. In a plea bargain, he agreed to three months house of arrest and three years of probation. That period of time in which Filner couldnt dare offend probation officers ended in December. This book is a signal that the muzzle is finally off, he tells me. HIs debt paid, Filner is unleashed, ready to lunge back into the arena. At his sentencing, Filner said, I am confident I will come out of this a better man. And I look forward to making further contributions to the city I love. Is Trumping Trump the first step of a political comeback that defies all the odds? I need to see what kind of reception the book gets, Filner tells me. I need to get my voice back. But will San Diego listen to the New Bob? Thats the question Filner is asking himself in the City of Fallen Angels. logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com Unlike some of the marches since President Donald Trump took office, the Peoples Climate March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday will have a clear message. According to the events website, the marchers will be opposing Trumps entire fossil fuel agenda. That theme also applies to a rally in downtown San Diego Saturday, one of hundreds of climate marches planned that day around the world. The organizers of the San Diego event also plan to demand local politicians take specific steps to fight global warming. Among the demands are reforming the San Diego Association of Governments, the regions planning and transportation agency, and promoting the adoption of an alternative energy program known as community choice aggregation that allows local governments to buy their own electricity, including from renewable energy sources, rather than rely on a utility like San Diego Gas & Electric. Advertisement I think the whole point of the march is to influence political will, said Masada Disenhouse, co-founder of the climate change group SanDiego350 and a lead organizer with the march. Being specific allows us to let our elected representatives know theres a lot of interest in these topics and that people want to see action. Marchers are expected to start gathering around 10 a.m. at Waterfront Park in front of the County Administration Center at 1600 Pacific Highway. Last weekends international March for Science drew an estimated 15,000 people in San Diego. The Peoples Climate March is scheduled to kick off at 11 a.m., looping around the waterfront before heading back to the park for music and speakers. Rally organizers plan to pass out fliers directing participants to call San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer from the event and ask him to adopt community choice aggregation. The City Council is expected this fall to take up the community choice proposal, which is included in the citys nationally recognized Climate Action Plan as a path to satisfying a legally binding pledge of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com After getting scrapped by budget cuts, a tunnel connecting the Central Jail in downtown San Diego to the new Superior Court building may be on solid ground because of a new deal between the county and the state. County Supervisors unanimously approved a complex deal with the Judicial Council of California on Tuesday that could revive old plans for the tunnel. Under terms of the agreement, the state would transfer ownership of the old county courthouse to the county, and would be absolved of its obligation to demolish that facility and build the tunnel. Advertisement In return, the county will find a developer to demolish the old court buildings and old jail, and possibly use the land for new homes, offices, cultural facilities. The developer would also be responsible for building a tunnel between the Central Jail and courthouse, which is currently under construction a block away. If all the hurdles are cleared, it means that the tunnel, a feature that was included in the new courthouses original blueprints but was later scuttled because of its $25 million price tag, could eventually be built. The agreement was approved on the boards consent agenda, and Supervisor Greg Cox was the only member to speak on the matter. I never gave up on searching for an alternative to assist the sheriff and maintain the security that is provided by having a prisoner tunnel, he said. The deal satisfies needs for both the county and the state, a letter from county staff to supervisors says. It meets the Judicial Councils objective of returning unneeded property to the County as quickly as possible while it helps the county with its objective of obtaining the Inmate Tunnel in a way that minimizes County risk and cost, the memo says. The Sheriffs Department has long said a tunnel was a necessity for security and efficient operations. Security risks in new courthouse call for $3M more in staffing Without the tunnel, deputies and community services officers will ferry inmates the short distance between court and jail, an extra step thats estimated to cost $3.3 million per year in expenses. Cox said there will be a period between when the new courthouse opens and when the tunnel is built where prisoners will need to be bused. The deal, which needs state legislative approval to be finalized, has several elements that could potentially be derailed the plan: The Judicial Council will return to the county properties the state acquired in 2009 that were previously county-owned. They include the current County Courthouse and Old Jail (sometimes referred to as the U.S. Marshal Services Western Region Detention Center) between Union and Front streets and A Street and Broadway. The courthouse partially extends into a county-owned block. The state will also turn over space it uses in county owned facilities in Ramona, and Kearny Mesa to the county. The county will give the state control of the countys portion of the South Bay Regional Center in Chula Vista. The state will no longer be obligated to demolish the courthouse or build the inmate tunnel. The county will seek and evaluate proposals to build on the three blocks currently occupied by the court house. Housing, commercial space, or cultural facilities might be included. The developer would also build the tunnel between the Central Jail and the new courthouse. The deal requires the old courthouse to be vacated. Construction on the new, 22-story courthouse is expected to be completed next month and open to the public in July. Full operations are expected the following month. That will allow the county to put in one location operations from the criminal courthouse on Broadway, Family Court on Cedar Street, and the Madge Bradley Courthouse on Ash Street. Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 San Diego is launching a new academy to expand on the citys recent success using employee ideas to cut costs and streamline services like answering 9-1-1 calls and collecting trash. Boosting efficiency and reducing costs is particularly important for the city, with rising pension costs prompting officials to predict increasingly leaner budgets in coming years. The academy classes aim to reduce the need for layoffs and cuts to services, while also improving quality of life for residents who rely on the city to pave roads, trim trees, replace street lights and accomplish other tasks. Advertisement They build on a 2015 program called San Diego Works, where more than 500 of the citys 11,000 employees suggested streamlining and cost-cutting ideas that now save the city about $1.3 million per year. But in that program the employees only came up with ideas for city managers to put in place, while the new operational excellence academy aims to teach the employees how to both come up with ideas and implement them on their own. City employees know their departments better than anyone else, which means they are in a position to find efficiencies, enhance customer service and save taxpayer money, said Mayor Kevin Faulconer. The OpEx Academy trains employees to be efficiency experts and it empowers them to turn their ideas into reality. Inspired partly by a similar program in Denver, the academy classes encourage employees to pursue efficiencies by analyzing every step that goes into completing a task and searching for ways to compress or eliminate some. While large efficiencies save more money, small efficiencies are also important, said Almis Udrys, director of the citys Performance and Analytics Department. You talk to the employees, you develop a team, you listen to them about what doesnt work and what could work better, he said. And all of these little things add up. Employees are also encouraged to break away from the mindset that procedures should remain in place simply because thats the way the city has always done things. The employee ideas from 2015 included revamping trash routes, using cheaper envelopes, shrinking overtime by shifting schedules for maintenance workers at city pools and reducing printing costs by using less blue ink on city stationery. Since then, the citys Performance and Analytics Department has found additional efficiencies by carefully studying the procedures city workers follow to complete certain tasks. They have included quickening replacement of streetlight bulbs, improving the sorting of library materials, strengthening responses to storm drain violations and sharply reducing the answering time for 9-1-1 calls. On 9-1-1, their efforts included boosting computer screen visibility for dispatch managers, a new shift schedule and more effective ways of re-routing non-emergency public safety calls. But the relatively small department cant tackle every city procedure, so Udrys said they came up with the idea to teach any city employee interested how to find and implement such efficiencies. Employees can take the classes, which began in February, on a voluntary basis. And there are three levels geared for how serious they are: a two-hour summary, an eight-hour seminar and a weeklong advanced class. Its definitely a much deeper dive, Udrys said of the advanced class. Its the signature class for employees who are really into process improvement. During one of the eight-hour seminars on Tuesday, two instructors helped a few dozen employees analyze every step it requires for someone taking a flight to go from their house and end up in their airplane seat. The employees then had to search for steps that could be compressed, such as waiting in line to check luggage or go through security, and steps that could potentially be eliminated, such as checking monitors for flight information or taking off shoes and belts. Workers were also taught about a variety of common inefficiencies. They include producing reports no one needs, delays created by dependency on others to complete tasks, disorganized workplaces, excessive inventory and under utilizing talents or equipment. Wilson Kennedy, a manager in the Public Utilities Department, praised the classes. I was definitely wowed by the positive impact our OpEx Academy had on me and will have on the Public Utilities Department, the city as a whole and ultimately the citizens of San Diego, he said. The content was fun, engaging, hands-on, high impact, succinct, meaningful and immediately transferable to our lives both professionally and personally. Udrys said his goal is having 1 percent of the city workforce, or about 1,100 employees, take on at least one efficiency project each year. He said the city expects to have trained at least 300 employees by December. This will be an evolving program that we would hope at some point might even be of interest to other governments around the region, he said. david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick A house fire in Serra Mesa that caused $4,000 in damage Wednesday displaced four residents and a dog. One of the four adults suffered a minor hand burn and was treated by medics without going to a hospital, a San Diego fire official said. The garage of the home on Heraldry Street, east of Sandrock Road, was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived about 3:50 p.m. The blaze spread to the kitchen and dining room before crews extinguished it, said San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokeswoman Monica Munoz. Advertisement The Red Cross was called to assist the residents with temporary lodging. Investigators had not determined the cause of the fire. They said it caused $4,000 in damage. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez The Air Force test fired an unarmed intercontinental missile from central California early Wednesday a common event that took on deeper meaning due to deepening political tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. The Minuteman III left Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:03 a.m. and travelled about 4,200 miles out into the Pacific, the Air Force said. Tonights launch was an important demonstration of our nations nuclear deterrent capability, Col. John Moss of the 30th Space Wing said in a statement. Advertisement Test launches like this one are vital to validating the effectiveness and readiness of our operational nuclear systems, so it is critical that they are successful. The Air Force regularly test fires unarmed Minuteman IIIs, which belongs to a family of missiles that have been in operation for 60 years. The launch came on the same day that President Trump gave US Senators a special briefing at the White House about the state of the countrys relations with North Korea. Earlier this week, North Korea threatened to sink the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, which is currently operating south of Japan. The New York Times contributed to this story. Science Playlist On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds Twitter: @grobbins gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com Aker Solutions will publish its first-quarter results for 2017 on Tuesday, May 9, at 07:00 CEST. We invite investors, analysts and media to a presentation of the results at Aker Solutions' headquarters, Oksenyveien 8, Fornebu. Date: May 9, 2017 Time: 09:00 CEST Location: Oksenyveien 8, Fornebu, Norway Language: English To attend the presentation, please pre-register using this link: http://akersolutions.com/registration We kindly ask that you pre-register even if you are not yet certain whether you will attend the presentation in person. The presentation will be broadcast live on http://akersolutions.com/webcast at 09:00 CET. Dial-in details are available here: http://akersolutions.com/dial-in The first-quarter 2017 presentation will be available on http://akersolutions.com and http://newsweb.no ENDS Investor Contact: Per Christian Olsen, tel: +47 67 51 36 58, mob: +47 900 29 077, e-mail: per.christian.olsen@akersolutions.com Aker Solutions is a global provider of products, systems and services to the oil and gas industry. Its engineering, design and technology bring discoveries into production and maximize recovery. The company employs approximately 14,000 people in about 20 countries. Go to http://akersolutions.com for more information on our business, people and values. This press release may include forward-looking information or statements and is subject to our disclaimer, see http://akersolutions.com This information is subject of the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. The California Public Utilities Commission declined on Thursday to release scores of emails to and from the Governors Office related to the failed San Onofre nuclear plant, upholding an agency staff recommendation without debate or discussion. The decision means at least for now that the public will not see more than 60 exchanges between commission President Michael Picker and Gov. Jerry Brown or his aides as the commission considered how to divvy up billions of dollars in closure costs between utility shareholders and customers. Regulators have argued the emails are privileged communications and not subject to open-records laws. Advertisement A commission vote in 2014 assigned $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion of those premature closure costs to customers. Within months of the vote, revelations in The San Diego Union-Tribune and elsewhere shed light on the deal having its origins at an undisclosed meeting between regulators and a utility executive in Poland. San Diego attorney Michael Aguirre sued the commission in 2015 after it refused to release the records. A Superior Court judge agreed to review the emails for possible release, but an appeals court said Aguirre had not exhausted his administrative remedies at the commission level. Aguirre, who vowed to return the complaint to the appellate court, said regulators improperly declined to enter his 44-page argument for why the emails should be released into the public record. He also said it was inappropriate for Brown or his staff to be involved in communications about San Onofre closure costs. These are ex parte discussions, he said. The governor has no jurisdiction over the CPUC except for his appointments. Otherwise, you could just run the commission out of the Governors Office and you wouldnt need any regulators. After a favorable ruling by a federal appeals court in a separate lawsuit, Aguirre succeeded in getting majority plant owner Southern California Edison to enter mediation talks aimed at renegotiating the San Onofre costs to make them more favorable to consumers. Those sessions are scheduled in June. Watchdog Videos On Now Sexual misconduct accusers worry deputy is being protected 6:16 On Now City funded $2-million waterfront bathroom 1:26 On Now Public water district charges customer for legal work, response to records request On Now Video: Tiny homes won't be reused amid housing, homeless crisis On Now Attorney General seeks documentation for Miss Middle East On Now Rep. Hunter probe covers possible fraud On Now Video: SDG&E delaying solar credit for some low-income housing tenants On Now Video: Former San Diego Junior Theatre teacher sentenced for sex with teen girl 0:24 On Now Video: Shelter volunteers believe they were fired for finding a dog a home 0:49 On Now McKamey Manor is leaving San Diego 3:35 jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald The Federal Election Commission on Tuesday questioned the campaign of Doug Applegate, a Democrat running against GOP Rep. Darrell Issa in 2018, about why it failed to report expenses including large media buys on disclosure forms covering Applegates unsuccessful bid for Issas seat last year. Two letters posted Wednesday on the FECs website question Applegates campaign about the payments, including two previously-undisclosed media buys in 2016. Both expenditures $211,868 on Oct. 27 and $93,629 on Oct. 3 were paid to The New Media Firm in Washington, D.C. Doug Applegate (Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune file) Advertisement The campaign disclosed the payments and other smaller expenses in amended financial reports filed with the FEC last month. The media buys account for most of an unexplained $376,408 overnight reduction in the campaigns coffers between Nov. 28 and Nov. 29 a drop-off first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune and then questioned by the FEC. The FEC most recently asked the campaign for clarifying information as to why this activity was not disclosed on your original report. A response to the inquiries is due May 30, the letters say. Since Jan. 1, 2015, the FEC has issued Applegates campaign nine letters addressing concerns including mathematical errors, identification of contributors, failure to adequately describe expenditures and discrepancies in accounting for loans Applegate made to the campaign. The campaign missed deadlines for response to five of the FECs letters. Issas campaign received four such inquiries during the same time period, and responded promptly to each. Applegates campaign has conducted an internal audit and filed seven amended reports since the Union-Tribune began asking about its accounting in February. The amended reports disclosed for the first time the media buys plus 11 payments totaling $28,147 to reimburse Applegate for expenses he paid on the campaigns behalf, including office rent and media consulting. The campaign also made numerous smaller adjustments in both spending and receipts, the reports show. Other adjustments corrected reporting errors, mathematical mistakes, and other issues the FEC identified in its requests for information. The campaign did not immediately respond to the Union-Tribunes request for comment Wednesday. A spokesman for Applegates campaign told the Union-Tribune last month that the the two media buys were paid by wire transfer and somehow had not been recorded on the books. The statement did not say who was responsible or how the transfers slipped through the cracks. Applegates campaign hired a new treasurer, Jennifer May, late last year, according to a report filed with the FEC on Dec. 28. Experts in election law have said the campaigns reporting problems were extensive, but not necessarily alarming, given Applegates novice status as a candidate for federal office and the closeness of the race. Both Applegate and Issa raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the final weeks leading up to Election Day in November, FEC reports show. Applegate, a Democrat and retired Marine colonel from San Clemente, is no longer the only prominent Democrat proposing to run in 2018 for the seat held by Issa, a nine-term incumbent from Vista. Another Democrat, Mike Levin, an environmental attorney from San Juan Capistrano, announced earlier this month that he would run against Issa in 2018. Republicans in Congress have made a priority of protecting Issas seat, enrolling him in their Patriot Program, a special fundraising and campaign operation that helps incumbents get re-elected. Watchdog Videos On Now Sexual misconduct accusers worry deputy is being protected 6:16 On Now City funded $2-million waterfront bathroom 1:26 On Now Public water district charges customer for legal work, response to records request On Now Video: Tiny homes won't be reused amid housing, homeless crisis On Now Attorney General seeks documentation for Miss Middle East On Now Rep. Hunter probe covers possible fraud On Now Video: SDG&E delaying solar credit for some low-income housing tenants On Now Video: Former San Diego Junior Theatre teacher sentenced for sex with teen girl 0:24 On Now Video: Shelter volunteers believe they were fired for finding a dog a home 0:49 On Now McKamey Manor is leaving San Diego 3:35 morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com On Saturday, the United Nations Economic and Social Council elected 13 new members by secret ballot to join the UNs Commission on the Status of Women in its mission to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women worldwide. The election of one nation Saudi Arabia is causing a firestorm online. One critic equated it to making a pyromaniac into the fire chief. Saudi Arabia received 47 votes from members of the UN Economic and Social Council to join the body for the 2018-2022 term. The decision has sparked outrage from human rights advocates and feminists many of whom cite the countrys dismal record with womens rights as a sign that the UN has turned its back on Saudi Arabian women. In 2016, the World Economic Forums annual Global Gender Gap report ranked Saudi Arabia 141 out of 144 countries in terms of gender equality. If one can recall, Saudi Arabian women only recently received the right to vote. However, despite marginal steps towards progress, the country continues to uphold policies that not only ban women from driving, but also legally require women to have male guardians for basic everyday tasks a policy infamously known as the guardianship system. The country has also started to use text messaging to monitor Saudi Arabian women, alerting male guardians when women under their custody leave the country. Here are some of the responses from the international community: The news of the controversial election first broke when non-profit watchdog organization, UN Watch, released a report on Saturday. Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, cited the countrys poor record on womens rights and said that Saudi Arabias inclusion in the UN body was akin to making a pyromaniac into the fire chief. Heres what he had to say on i24 News, an Israeli news channel based in Tel Aviv. In response to the tide of criticism, the Saudi Arabian governments Bureau of International Communication and Media has been working overtime to counter the accusations. Their Twitter account which seemed to only post sporadically before the controversy has sent out a couple responses to France 24s article covering the story. Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand and former administrator of the UN Development Program, also defended the vote in a tweet. A spokesperson from UN Women argued in a statement to Fortune that Saudi Arabias interest in the body is an indication that the country wants to play an active role in the world of this important body. This could be true: the kingdoms Vision 2030 plan for economic development in the country sees boosting female employment as a way to diversify the countrys oil-reliant economy. However, feminists and human rights activists who see the country as one of the worlds worst places to be a woman still question the countrys place in the UN body. And while we may never know which member nations voted for Saudi Arabias seat on the commission or why they did so, some have already started to speculate that money was somehow involved. Neuer referenced a Wikileaks release in 2015, which indicated that Saudi Arabia sent money to Russia for a vote to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council. Neuer, in his report, argued that it is common for countries to strike backroom deals to elect each other on human rights bodies. On Wednesday, Hera Hussain, a human rights activist, agreed with Neuers argument in an Independent article. She wrote: We know that eight of the members of the UN Economic and Social Council including the UK, USA, France, Germany and Italy sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Incidentally, Saudi Arabia is the worlds largest arms importer and has bought arms worth $4.2bn from UK, 760 million from Germany and $20 billion from US in 2015 alone. Apart from being a key ally in the conflicts raging in Middle East, the US is also the second biggest importer of oil from Saudi Arabia. Others pondered a potential conspiracy as well. Will Saudi Arabia do better for women? Taking a look at the countrys first Girls Council meeting held last March, liberation may be miles away. Twitter: @anthonyberteaux President Donald Trump on Wednesday tempered his threat to pull the United States out of NAFTA after an eleventh-hour phone call with leaders from Canada and Mexico who informed him of the consequences of abandoning a trade deal worth more than $1 trillion. The White House issued a statement late Wednesday night saying Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time after a brief phone conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump instead said he would renegotiate the trade deal. So just how close did Trump come to pulling the U.S. out of the North America Free Trade Agreement? Heres a brief timeline of events. Advertisement 2016 In an interview with CNNs Chris Cuomo on May 9, 2016, Trump derided NAFTA and blamed former President Bill Clinton for signing the agreement. The agreement was actually signed by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush in 1992 and went into effect in 1994 after Clinton signed the NAFTA bill Congress passed into law. These trade deals have sucked everything out of our country, Trump told Cuomo. NAFTA is the worst deal, one of the worst deals our countrys ever made from an economic standpoint. One of the worst deals ever. On numerous occasions during the presidential race in 2016, Trump described NAFTA as a total disaster, one of the worst deals ever and a terrible one for the U.S. and American workers. A number of times he said he would either get rid of it or terminate it or renegotiate it. The New York Daily News has a comprehensive list of Trumps remarks on NAFTA, but here are just two out of several tweets Trump sent during the campaign. How can Crooked Hillary put her husband in charge of the economy when he was responsible for NAFTA, the worst economic deal in U.S. history? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2016 I will renegotiate NAFTA. If I cant make a great deal, were going to tear it up. Were going to get this economy running again. #Debate Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2016 January In a series of tweets that ended in the cancellation of a meeting between Trump and the Mexican president in January, Trump called NAFTA a one-sided deal that benefits Mexico and not the U.S. The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017 of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017 Monday and Tuesday Because Trump has traditionally complained about NAFTA in terms of trade with Mexico, this week he surprised many when he shifted his attention to Canada. On Monday, Politico reported that the Commerce Department announced it would issue tariffs on more than $5 billion worth of lumber imports from Canada. The next day, Trump complained about Canadian policies that have reportedly blocked American dairy exports at the northern border. Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2017 Wednesday Trumps head of his National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, and chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly drafted an executive order on Wednesday that would have led to the U.S. pulling out of NAFTA, Politico reported. News of the order spooked high-ranking Republicans who then urged the White House to hold off on such an order. Among those who discouraged Trump from signing the order was Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who on Wednesday tweeted, Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy @POTUS shouldnt abandon this vital trade agreement. Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs & economy - @POTUS shouldn't abandon this vital trade agreement John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) April 26, 2017 Several other Republicans also echoed McCains concerns, including Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, who in a statement said Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea. GOP pushback on the White House's reported NAFTA planBen Sasse: "Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea." pic.twitter.com/eXkGciUtOB Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 26, 2017 Wednesday night It all came to a screeching halt late Wednesday evening after Trudeau and Pena Nieto called Trump to talk him out of singing such an order. Canadian reporter Cormac Mac Sweeney on Thursday tweeted that Trudeau said the U.S. president was ready to pull out. Trudeau says Trump was ready to pull out of NAFTA but Trudeau pointed out economic consequences & they agreed to sit down and renegotiate Cormac Mac Sweeney (@cmaconthehill) April 27, 2017 At 10:30 p.m. local time in Washington D.C., the White House issued a statement saying the U.S. agreed not to terminate NAFTA, as several journalists reported late in the day. Here's the White House statement that says he will not terminate NAFTA "at this time." pic.twitter.com/LKlUQHZZjW Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 27, 2017 Thursday On Thursday, Trump admitted that he would terminate NAFTA as of two or three days from now but was swayed by the calls from Trudeau and Pena Nieto who urged him to please renegotiate. I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate, Trump told reporters. Now, if Im unable to make a fair deal, if Im unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But were going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. Trump: I was going to terminate NAFTA as of 2 or 3 days from now but Trudeau/Pena Nieto asked could you please renegotiate & I like them pic.twitter.com/N447uS2IbV Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 27, 2017 NAFTA lives to see another day, but for how long remains to be seen. Will Trump manage to renegotiate NAFTA to benefit the U.S. as he has promised or is this the beginning of the end for the trade deal? Should the U.S. exit NAFTA anyway? Share your thoughts on this fascinating story. Have some thoughts to share? Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet. Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @RunGomez Read The Conversation on Flipboard. A former pastor of St. Michaels Church will become an auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego. The Rev. John Dolan was pastor of the Poway parish from 2014 to 2016. His ordination will be held at St. Therese of Carmel in Del Mar on June 8. Attendance is by-invitation-only. However, Dolan will celebrate the 5:30 p.m. Mass at St. Michaels on Sunday, June 11. It will be followed by a reception so locals can share their well-wishes with him in person. The 54-year-old is a native San Diegan who grew up in Clairemont, earned his bachelors degree in philosophy from the University of San Diego, graduated from St. Francis Seminary in San Diego and earned both his Master of Divinity degree and a Master of Arts in theology from St. Patricks Seminary in Menlo Park, California. He was ordained at San Rafael Parish in Rancho Bernardo as a priest for the San Diego diocese 27 years ago by then-Bishop Leo T. Maher. It was announced by the Vatican on April 19 that Dolan was appointed by Pope Francis to be an auxiliary bishop of San Diego. The position means he will be assisting the Most Rev. Robert McElroy, bishop of the San Diego diocese, with various duties including operation and management of the diocese and performing sacramental duties like confirmations. The diocese covers 8,852 square miles and serves a Catholic population of more than 1 million, about 30 percent of the regions residents, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolans most recent parish assignment has been as pastor of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Hillcrest and St. Vincent de Paul in Mission Hills plus the dioceses episcopal vicar for the clergy. Before coming to Poway his assignments since ordination included the dioceses other St. Michaels parish, located in Paradise Hills; along with Santa Sofia Parish in El Cajon; St. Mary Star of the Sea in Oceanside and St. Rose of Lima Parish in Chula Vista. From 1992 to 1994 he was also the dioceses director of vocations. email: rbnews@pomeradonews.com Man and boy, North Korea has been the bane of both my personal existence and that of this nation for about 65 years. I won my first three battle stars during the Korean War at age 17, and learned again of North Koreas brutality when the USS Pueblo was seized with her crew in 1968. I organized the national Remember the Pueblo campaign as a personal representative of the family of the commanding officer, Lloyd Mark Pete Bucher. My activity did not endear me to the U.S. Navy and contributed to my somewhat truncated naval career. Allen Hemphill Pete had been a shipmate in submarines and shipmates take care of one another. Pete and more than 80 of his crew were being held by the most repressive, tortuous regime in modern history. Previous POWs of that repressive regime alerted me with stories of the grisly tortures of North Korea, and those were confirmed by Pete and the crew upon their return. Make no mistake, negotiations are worthless absent a serious kinetic backup. This nation has kicked the can too far down the road and although President Obama warned then-President-elect Trump that North Korea was this nation's most pressing problem, President Trump didn't do much, if anything, to challenge the North Koreans, except to accurately share the blame with previous administrations. Regardless of who is at fault, we are here and we have to deal with the North Koreans, whose hatred of us is measured in generations so that it has seeped into their DNA. Placing the Hawaiian Islands, or a California coastal city as a hostage to the good diplomacy of China is clutching a thin reed indeed. China entered the Korean War while I was there, and its troops killed many Americans with massive troop surges, but that nation is now a rising commercial power with a new international emphasis. Russia keeps the flaccid United Nations on the sideline as a diplomatic force, not that North Korea cares what anyone thinks. The Korean conflict was a United Nations war, and we are only in a truce so I suppose the UN could theoretically resume the war without a vote of the Security Council, but it is unlikely. Our stumbling block is Seoul. Its 20 million people are hostages because even a massive preemptive strike by the United States will activate 15,000 North Korean artillery pieces. You will know the crisis has reached crunch time when Seoul is evacuated. This would result in an enormous refugee problem for the south, and the disruption to the economy of South Korea would be immeasurable. My tension level would increase if the submarines at Point Loma were being provisioned with food for an extended patrol. If all available submarines go to sea, that would be one level higher. One wonders if the evacuation of Seoul would be considered an act of war by the North Koreans, because we would be removing their hostage. There are no actions being taken that alert me to actual concern. Reach Hemphill at ahemphill@cox.net. BOX OFFICE LEADERs Fate of the Furious PG13 While Dom and Letty are honeymooning, a mysterious woman woos Dom back into a crime ring and challenges the gang. The Boss Baby PG A suitcase wielding baby arrives to an expectant family, and the 7-year old brother soon recognizes a sinister plot starting to unfold. Beauty and the Beast PG Disney brings the classic love affair of a beautiful woman and a hideous prince to the screen with this live action musical. Born in China G A poignant documentary filmed in China, focuses on a panda bear caring for her cub and the survival of other endangered species. Going in Style PG13 In this modern remake of three old-timers gone crooked, the old boys decide to rob a bank to pay their bills and help the kids. Smurfs: The Lost Village PG Smurfette and her blue buddies Brainy, Hefty, and Clumsy discover a secret map that will reveal a huge Smurf secret. Unforgettable R A couple divorces and hubby finds a new wife, but life is far from pleasant as the ex-wife works at making their world a living hell. Gifted PG13 A single father is challenged in taking care of his mentally gifted daughter as her mathematical abilities grow and relatives seek control. The Promise PG13 As the Ottoman Empire falls into chaos, a med student, dance instructor, and photo journalist are caught in a love triangle and war. Phoenix Forgotten PG13 On the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of three teens by a mysterious light, new footage surfaces that may explain it. Kong: Skull Island PG13 A team of explorers discover an uncharted Pacific island and decide to explore it, unaware of the monsters that await them. ***ALSO PLAYING IN THEATRES*** The Case for Christ, Colossal, Free Fire, Get Out, Ghost in the Shell, The Great Father, Life, Logan, The Lost City of Z, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, Power Rangers, T2: Trainspotting, Their Finest, Tommys Honour, Truman, Your Name, The Zookeepers Wife. Coming to Theatres April 28 The Circle PG13 A young woman is employed by a mega tech company but will soon discover the intrusiveness of their business threatens everyone. Stars: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane Directed by James Ponsoldt. How to Be a Latin Lover PG13 Dumped after years of marriage, a man discovers he is not the heartthrob he used to be and must embrace family. Stars: Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell Directed by Ken Marino. Sleight R A street magician and his sister are orphaned, but his illegal activities cause his sibling to be kidnapped and now he must plot to save her. Stars: Jacob Latimore, Sevchelle Gabriel, Dule Hill, Storm Reid Directed by J.D. Dillard. Coming Soon: Alive and Kicking, Graduation, Their Finest, SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock, Norman, Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent, A Quiet Passion, Leap!, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City New on DVD May 2 A Dogs Purpose PG A dog begins to realize his purpose in life as he returns after each of his lifetimes encountering a new owner and challenge. Rings PG-13 The mystery surrounding a videotape reveals a death curse and a film within a film discovered by a teen bent on saving her boyfriend. Gold R A prospector joins a geologist in finding gold in the hidden jungles of Indonesia but keeping their riches will be the most difficult task of all. Foreign, Classics, Documentaries, and more: I Am not Your Negro, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, The Salesman, The Comedian, The Red Turtle, The Age of Shadows, Beyond the Gates, Fear Inc., Mindgames, Unleashing Mr. Darcy, Simon Pegg: Fantastic Fear of Everything, Things to Come, The Void, A Street Cat Named Bob. Television: The Last Ship s3. Guy Hanford retired after a 39-year teaching career in Ramona. From superior court judges to casual newspaper readers,residents of San Diego County already know of the connectionbetween violent crime and methamphetamine abuse. What may be surprising, however, is the frequency of theconnection. With an almost eerie dependability, meth has beenassociated with many of the most sensational crimes in the countysrecent history. Advertisement Infamous, chilling and just plain bizarre acts have beencommitted by people on meth: Brutal slayings, kidnappings andsuicidal assaults on police are just some of the more violentones. Methamphetamine, a stimulant that can be smoked, snorted orinjected, is a highly addictive drug that can cause paranoia anddelusions in long-term users. Addicts have turned to petty andsophisticated crimes to supply their habits, but often it is thesenseless, unmotivated crimes that attract the most attention. San Diegans likely will never forget Army veteran Shawn TimothyNelson, who slipped into the National Guard Armory near MesaCollege on May 17, 1995. With his house in foreclosure, his life in a downward spiral andhis brain ravaged by meth, Nelson pried open the hatch of an M-60Patton tank, climbed inside and barreled down Clairemont Mesastreets, flattening cars and snapping lampposts like matchsticksbefore getting stuck on a Highway 163 median, where he was shot todeath by a police officer. In a similar incident with a less tragic ending, Cameron Taylorreportedly was on meth when he hijacked a San Diego bus atknifepoint in 1997, leading a police chase over 70 miles in 2 1/2hours before he was captured. On Death Row Meth users have killed in moments of confused delusions orplotted and committed murders in cold blood. One of the countys most disturbing murders occurred in ChulaVista in 1995. Veronica Gonzales was caring for her niece, 31/2-year-old Genny Rojas, with her husband, Ivan, because Gennysfather was in prison and her mother was in drug rehabilitation. But Gennys aunt and uncle were on meth, and in no shape to carefor a young child. They tortured the little girl for six monthsbefore eventually scalding her to death in a bathtub. They became the first married couple sent to Californias deathrow. Meth also was involved in what prosecutors at the time calledthe most heinous crime ever seen in the county. David Allan Webbwas 16 in 1991 when he kidnapped Amanda Gaeke, 9, in NorthPark. For 36 hours, Webb drugged the little girl and kept her in hisbedroom in his mothers house, torturing and raping her when he washome and tying her under his bed when he went to school. Heeventually killed her and hid the body in a canyon. The crime wentunsolved until he was arrested and pleaded guilty in 1997. Webbs attorney said he believed methamphetamine and other drugsplayed a significant role in the crime. American Beauty The headline-grabbing story of Kristin Rossum also had amethamphetamine connection. In what was called the AmericanBeauty murder because of a similar scene in a movie by that name,Rossum covered her husband with rose pedals after poisoninghim. As a toxicologist with the county medical examiners officer,Rossum used chemicals that she believed would not be found in hissystem, then tried to make the murder appear to be a suicide. Investigators discovered she was having an affair at work with aman who did not report her drug use. A former addict, Rossum hadreturned to methamphetamine before the murder. More recently in North County, meth may have played a role inthe February death of a man shocked by deputies with a stungun. Oceanside resident Martin Mendoza, 43, reportedly was claimingthat someone was after him and acting erratically when a deputyused a stun gun to subdue him. Mendoza stopped breathing and wastaken to Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, where he died threedays later. His was the first death associated with a Taser since theSheriffs Department began using them the previous year.Methamphetamine intoxication was listed on the death certificate asone of several conditions that led to his death. Vistas bloody summer In Vista, the summer of 2005 was one of bloodiest the city hadever seen. Three Latino men were shot to death by sheriffsdeputies in just five days, sparking accusations of racism fromresidents. But county District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis noted that the menhad other things in common besides their race. Each had a criminalrecord, and all three had meth in their systems when shot. Meth also was associated with the grisly murder of Nicole"Nicci Sinkule, beaten to death with a claw hammer in herOceanside home Oct. 16, 2005. Sinkule was murdered by her boyfriend, Eric Marum, a formerNational Merit Scholar semifinalist and a 2002 graduate of UCLA,where he was a track athlete with Olympic aspirations. He began using meth in 2004, and at the time of the killing wassuffering from what a county forensic doctor called"methamphetamine-induced psychosis. As he would later explain in his confession, Marum struckSinkule on the head 13 times with a hammer because he thought shewas evil. He was sentenced to at least 16 years in prisonfollowing his guilty plea to second-degree murder. Unlike many cases in which methamphetamine was said to haveplayed a role in a crime, the drug was called the major factor inthe Sinkule killing. "(Marum) was sorry for what hed done, and he understands it wasa mistake, and but for him using methamphetamines, he wouldnt havetaken her life and ruined his own, said his attorney, DeputyPublic Defender Dan Segura, who also said the case should be usedto tell others not to use the drug. Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 orgwarth@nctimes.com. Ninety years ago today, women in the United States were granted the right to vote. The 72-year struggle for suffrage began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y., during the first womens rights convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented her Declaration of Sentiments, which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and addressed issues that troubled women. They wanted the right to own property, to keep their own wages, to divorce, to gain custody of their children, to attend college, to vote and to serve in the professions of theology, medicine and law. Of these, womens suffrage was the most controversial. Two separate factions divided the Suffrage Movement: those in the National Woman Suffrage Association believed a federal constitutional amendment would result in enfranchisement more quickly for all women, while those in the American Woman Suffrage Association adopted a strategy to amend every state constitution, state by state. The most famous suffragists in the NWSA included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joselyn Gage; proponents of the state-by-state strategy were Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. In 1890, the two associations joined forces to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Susan B. Anthony appears in this undated photo. ( / AP) Advertisement The state-by-state strategy was painfully slow. From 1893 to 1918, 56 state referendums provided male voters the opportunity to vote in favor of suffrage for women, with 15 states approving it by 1918, including California where it passed on the second try in 1911 after failing to win a majority in 1896. In California, the movement was led by suffragist Clara Shortridge Foltz, whose determination was reflected in her life story. During the 1870s, Foltz, a widow with five children, wanted to practice law but was ejected from the new Hastings School of Law because she was a woman. She studied law on her own and won the distinction of being the first woman admitted to the Bar in California. In the late 1880s, she practiced law in San Diego and edited a daily newspaper, the San Diego Bee. She accomplished other firsts in her life, including being the first woman to run for governor of California, at the age of 81. The Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles was renamed the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Building in 2002. After fighting for womens suffrage for more than 50 years, and a month before she died, Susan B. Anthony traveled from Rochester to Baltimore to speak at a womens meeting where she optimistically predicted that failure is impossible in achieving enfranchisement. With her death, the Suffrage Movement seemed to languish until the arrival Alice Paul and Lucy Burns who brought to the suffrage stage the militant techniques learned from the Pankhurst sisters in England. Beginning in 1913, Paul, Burns and members of the Congressional Union marched, demonstrated and even inflicted property damage on those politicians who opposed womens rights. They protested U.S. entry into World War I, with their banners considered close to treasonous. Almost 100 women were arrested and imprisoned and went on a hunger strike. Burns refused to eat for almost three weeks before her jailers finally managed to force feed her. During congressional sessions, Womans Party President Paul lobbied members for a suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution, while NAWSA President Catt supported both state and national amendments. After both houses of Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919, it was sent to the states for ratification. On Aug. 26, 1920, it had been ratified by 36 states. In February 1920, Catt helped to found the League of Women Voters. With almost all states having a woman suffrage association, Catt hoped to draw the 2 million NAWSA members into the league. This organization would educate new voters on ballot issues and advocate for those public policies it had studied. Thus, the League of Women Voters stands on the shoulders of millions of suffragists. In 1971, Congresswoman Bella Abzug urged Congress to adopt a resolution honoring the dedication of the millions of suffragists who fought for womens rights by declaring Aug. 26th Womens Equality Day. Since then, we have celebrated this day not only to promote womens suffrage, but also to acknowledge that the other rights enumerated at Seneca Falls in 1848 were achieved, too. Happy Womens Equality Day! ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING RESULT The 2017 Annual General Meeting of Admiral Group Plc was held at Cardiff City Hall, Cardiff, CF10 3ND on Wednesday 26th April 2017 at 2:00pm. All resolutions were decided on a poll and all resolutions proposed at the Meeting were passed. Resolutions Votes For Percentage For Votes Against Votes Total Votes Withheld 1 To receive the Financial Statements and the reports of the Directors and the Auditors 182,894,274 99.91% 172,385 183,066,659 86,215 2 To approve the Directors' Remuneration Report 173,833,258 94.92% 9,309,064 183,142,322 10,552 3 To declare the Final Dividend on the ordinary shares of the Company 182,967,415 99.90% 174,852 183,142,267 10,607 4 To appoint Justine Roberts (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,486,407 99.10% 1,654,360 183,140,767 12,107 5 To re-elect Annette Court (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 176,244,075 96.24% 6,888,142 183,132,217 20,657 6 To re-elect David Stevens (Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,560,349 99.14% 1,580,750 183,141,099 11,775 7 To re-elect Geraint Jones (Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 179,521,086 98.02% 3,620,013 183,141,099 11,775 8 To re-elect Colin Holmes (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,213,266 98.95% 1,918,951 183,132,217 20,657 9 To re-elect Jean Park (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,559,617 99.14% 1,581,150 183,140,767 12,107 10 To re-elect Penny James (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,168,096 98.92% 1,972,671 183,140,767 12,107 11 To re-elect George Manning Rountree (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 173,306,420 94.63% 9,834,347 183,140,767 12,107 12 To re-elect Owen Clarke (Non-Executive Director) as a Director of the Company 181,414,721 99.07% 1,707,100 183,121,821 31,053 13 To appoint Deloitte LLP as Auditors of the Company 183,139,406 100% 786 183,140,192 12,682 14 To authorise the Directors to determine the remuneration of Deloitte LLP 179,433,351 97.98% 3,707,748 183,141,099 11,775 15 To authorise the Directors to allot relevant securities 174,626,790 95.44% 8,341,274 182,968,064 184,810 16 To dis-apply statutory pre-emption rights on up to 5% of the issued share capital of the Company 180,521,710 98.57% 2,618,170 183,139,880 12,994 17 To dis-apply statutory pre-emption rights on an additional 5% of the issued share capital of the Company 177,365,233 96.85% 5,774,647 183,139,880 12,994 18 To authorise the Company to make market purchases 183,004,122 99.93% 127,536 183,131,658 21,216 19 To authorise the Directors to convene a General Meeting with not less than 14 clear days notice 170,158,114 93.27% 12,274,546 182,432,660 720,214 At the close of business on 26th April 2017, the issued share capital of the Company was 284,782,447ordinary shares. The full text of each resolution is contained in the Notice of Annual General Meeting, which is available on the Company's website: www.admiralgroup.co.uk. In accordance with LR 9.6.2, copies of the special business resolutions passed at the meeting have been submitted to the FCA's National Storage Mechanism, and will shortly be available to view at www.morningstar.co.uk/UK/NSM. Mark Waters Group Company Secretary Latvian English Riga, 2017-04-27 11:04 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the first quarter of 2017 Capitalia reported total revenues of EUR 293 thousands, which is an increase by 45% compared to the respective period in 2016. In the current period we achieved EUR 32 thousands profit that more than covers losses of the previous year. The first few months of 2017 were difficult for a number of our clients and as a result our provisions for loan losses increased higher than expected. However, by the end of the March most of our clients in difficulties have manage to stabilize their situation and return to regular payment schedules. For the following three months the key focus of Capitalia will be to grow loan portfolio in all of the Baltic States. We have successfully issued and are continuing to offer our bonds to investors. We want to make sure that any new resources acquired from the sale of the bonds are distributed towards financing to small businesses as soon as possible. We are also very eager to soon launch our own crowd-financing platform. We will be the first specialized pan-Baltic platform that will offer businesses to attract mezzanine loans of up to EUR 1m through crowd-funding. ---------- Capitalia is the largest non-bank lender to small and medium enterprises in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. To date Capitalia has financed working capital and investment needs of more than 1000 companies investing over EUR 20 million in growth of these businesses. When Americans became concerned about FBI eavesdropping on private citizens, the editors of the Post dismissed such fears as paranoia. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join A Look at the Posts Occasional Lapses in Judgment When Americans became concerned about FBI eavesdropping on private citizens, the editors of the Post dismissed such fears as paranoia. There has been a lot of arguing recently about who is to blame for the large amount of electronic eavesdropping done by the FBI, but it seems worth asking why there should be any blame at all. It seems only reasonable that most of the information the police would like to get by eavesdropping is information that would lead to the prevention or solution of crimes. Is it not possible that our unthinking anxiety about Big Brother eavesdropping on us is a sign not of civic virtue but of paranoia? Why Get Bugged about Bugging? Editorial, January 14, 1967 Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today This article is featured in the March/April 2017 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives. 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: OZ Management LP and Och-Ziff Management Europe Ltd (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a): The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates: Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Standard Life plc (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken: For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 26 April 2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer? If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" NO If YES, specify which: 2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security. (a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any) Class of relevant security: 12 2/9p ordinary (ISIN: GB00BVFD7Q58) Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 25,038,373 1.265 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: TOTAL: 25,038,373 1.265 All interests and all short positions should be disclosed. Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions). (b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options) Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages: 3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in. The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated. (a) Purchases and sales Class of relevant security Purchase/sale Number of securities Price per unit (b) Cash-settled derivative transactions Class of relevant security Product description e.g. CFD Nature of dealing e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit 12 2/9p ordinary CFD Reducing a long position 36,000 GBP 3.65 12 2/9p ordinary CFD Reducing a long position 9,000 USD 4.68 (c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options) (i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit (ii) Exercise Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit (d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities) Class of relevant security Nature of dealing e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable) 4. OTHER INFORMATION (a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer: Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" (b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to: (i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or (ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced: If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" (c) Attachments Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? NO Date of disclosure: 27 April 2017 Contact name: Janine Frederick Telephone number: 020 7758 4420 Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129. The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk. Paradise, NV -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/27/2017 -- Stephen Hopkins was from Hampshire, England. He married his first wife, Mary, and resided in the parish of Hursley, Hampshire. They had three (3) children: Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles; all baptized there. It has long been claimed that the Hopkins family was from Wortley, Gloucester, but this was disproven in 1998 with the discovery of his true origins in Hursley. http://mayflowerhistory.com/hopkins-stephen/ Stephen Hopkins went with the ship Sea Venture on a voyage to Jamestown, Virginia in 1609 as a minister's clerk, but the ship wrecked in the "Isle of Devils" (Bermuda). Stranded on an island for ten months, the passengers and crew survived on turtles, birds, and wild pigs. Six months into the castaway, Stephen Hopkins and several others organized a mutiny against the current governor. The mutiny was discovered and Stephen was sentenced to death. However, he pleaded with sorrow and tears. "So penitent he was, and made so much moan, alleging the ruin of his wife and children in this his trespass, as it wrought in the hearts of all the better sorts of the company." He managed to get his sentence commuted. Eventually the castaways built a small ship and sailed themselves to Jamestown. How long Stephen remained in Jamestown is not known. However, while he was gone, his wife Mary died. She was buried in Hursley on 9 May 1613, and left behind a probate estate which mentions her children Elizabeth, Constance and Giles. Stephen was back in England by 1617, when he married Elizabeth Fisher, but apparently had every intention of bringing his family back to Virginia. Their first child, Damaris, was born about 1618. In 1620, Stephen Hopkins brought his wife and children Constance, Giles, and Damaris on the Mayflower (child Elizabeth apparently had died). Stephen was a fairly active member of the Pilgrim group shortly after arrival, perhaps a result of his being one of the few individuals who had been to Virginia previously. He was a part of all the early exploring missions, and was used as an "expert" on Native Americans for the first few contacts. While out exploring, Stephen recognized and identified an Indian deer trap. And when Samoset walked into Plymouth and welcomed the English, he was housed in Stephen Hopkins' house for the night. Stephen was also sent on several of the ambassadorial missions to meet with the various Indian groups in the region. Stephen was an assistant to the governor through 1636, and volunteered for the Pequot War of 1637 but was never called to serve. By the late 1630s, however, Stephen began to occasionally run afoul of the Plymouth authorities, as he apparently opened up a shop and served alcohol. In 1636 he got into a fight with John Tisdale and seriously wounded him. In 1637, he was fined for allowing drinking and shuffleboard playing on Sunday. Early the next year he was fined for allowing people to drink excessively in his house: guest William Reynolds was fined, but the others were acquitted. In 1638 he was twice fined for selling beer at twice the actual value, and in 1639 he was fined for selling a looking glass for twice what it would cost if bought in the Bay Colony. Also in 1638, Stephen Hopkins' maidservant got pregnant from Arthur Peach, who was subsequently executed for murdering an Indian. The Plymouth Court ruled he was financially responsible for her and her child for the next two years (the amount remaining on her term of service). Stephen, in contempt of court, threw Dorothy out of his household and refused to provide for her, so the court committed him to custody. John Holmes stepped in and purchased Dorothy's remaining two years of service from him: agreeing to support her and child. Stephen died in 1644, and made out a will, asking to be buried near his wife, and naming his surviving children. BAPTISM: 30 April 1581 at Upper Clatford, Hampshire, England, son of John and Elizabeth (Williams) Hopkins. FIRST MARRIAGE: Mary, possibly the daughter of Robert and Joan (Machell) Kent of Hursley, co. Hampshire, prior to 1604. SECOND MARRIAGE: Elizabeth Fisher on 19 February 1617/8 at St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, co. Middlesex, England. CHILDREN (by Mary): Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles. CHILDREN (by Elizabeth): Damaris, Oceanus, Caleb, Deborah, Damaris, Ruth, and Elizabeth. DNA HAPLOGROUP: R1b-M269 Contact Adam Green! c: 801-809-7766 e: g3president@comcast.net Master Christopher Jones and several business partners purchased the ship Mayflower about 1607. Its origins prior to that remain uncertain. Its first documented voyage of record was to Trondheim, Norway, in 1609. Andrew Pawling hired the ship to take a cargo of London goods to Norway, sell them off, and buy Norway goods (lumber, tar, and fish) to return back to England. Unfortunately on the return voyage, the Mayflower encountered a severe North Sea storm and the master and crew were forced to toss most of Pawlings goods overboard to lighten the ship. The home of Master Christopher Jones: Harwich, co. Essex, England. http://mayflowerhistory.com/ Following that, Christopher Jones seems to have stuck with safer trading routes. The Mayflower made numerous trips primarily to Bordeaux, France, returning to London with cargoes of French wine, Cognac, vinegar, and salt. The Mayflower could freight about 180 tons of cargo. The Mayflower also made occasional voyages to other ports, including once to Malaga, Spain, and twice to Hamburg, Germany. Upon returning from a voyage to Bordeaux, France, in May 1620, the Mayflower and master Christopher Jones were hired to take the Pilgrims to Northern Virginia. This was the first recorded trans-Atlantic voyage for both ship and master, though Christopher Jones had several crewmembers, including pilot and master's mates John Clarke and Robert Coppin, who had been to the New World before. The Mayflower was supposed to accompany another ship, the Speedwell, to America, but the Speedwell proved too leaky for the voyage so the Mayflower proceeded alone. Departing on 6 September 1620, the ship was at sea for 66 days, arriving November 9. The ship and crew overwintered with the Pilgrims and departed back for England on 5 April 1621, arriving back to England on May 6. Christopher Jones took the ship out for a few more trading runs, but he died a couple of years later in March 1621/2. The ship was appraised for probate purposes in May 1624, and was referred to as being "in ruins." It was only valued at 128 pounds sterling, and was almost certainly broken up and sold off as scrap. Paradise, NV General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Introduces New Geneology Resource Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.ImAdamGreen.com Women of Early Plymouth: Governor William Bradford reported that the Pilgrims were worried that the "weak bodies of women" would not be able to withstand the rigors of a trans-Atlantic voyage and the construction of a colony. Prior to the Mayflower, very few English women had made the voyage across the ocean. Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colony arrived in Virginia in 1587, and amongst those 120 colonists there were 17 women: a baby girl, Virginia Dare, was born after arrival. When re-supply ships came from England, they could not relocate the people. The colony had mysteriously disappeared, and was never seen again. The Jamestown Colony was founded in 1607, but relatively few women had yet made the voyage and taken up residence there. The Pilgrim husband, as head of the household, had an important and difficult decision to make. Building a colony would be hard on a woman's "weaker body." It might be safer and healthier to leave her behind, and have her come later once the houses were built, and the general safety and successfulness of the colony were better established. But that could be several years. Could he live several years without his wife? How strong was his wife anyway, could she really handle it? Was it right to put your wife's life in danger in this manner? As the Mayflower left England for America, there were 18 adult women on-board. Three of them, Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White, and Mary Allerton, were actually in their last trimester of a pregnancy. All the adult women on the Mayflower were married; there were no single women--although there were a few teenage girls nearing marriageable age. While no women would die during the Mayflower's voyage, life after arrival proved extremely difficult. In fact, 78% of the women would die the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. Dorothy Bradford was the first woman to die, and the only woman who died in the month of December. While many of the men, including her husband, were out exploring on Cape Cod, she accidentally fell off the Mayflower into the bitter cold waters of Provincetown Harbor. Most of the women's death dates were not recorded, but we do know that Rose Standish died on January 29, Mary Allerton died on February 25, and Elizabeth Winslow died on March 24. Most of the women died in February and March. The extremely high mortality rate among women is probably explainable by the fact the men were out in the fresh air, felling trees, building structures and drinking fresh New England water; while the women were confined to the damp, filthy and crowded quarters offered by the Mayflower, where disease would have spread much more quickly. The two-month voyage was long enough; the women, however, remained living on the ship for an additional four months while the men built storehouses and living quarters on shore. Many of the sick were no doubt cared for on-board the ship by the women, increasing their exposure to colds and pneumonias. William Mullins died on February 21, apparently on-board the Mayflower since his will was witnessed by the ship's captain and ship's surgeon. His wife Alice and son Joseph had not yet died, but it wasn't too long before they did, orphaning their teenage daughter Priscilla in the New World. Only five women survived the first winter. One of the five survivors, Mrs. Katherine Carver, died in May of a "broken heart," her husband John having died of sunstroke a month earlier. Weak bodies or not, by the time of the famous "Thanksgiving," there were only four women left to care for the Colony's fifty surviving men and children. The four women were Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna (White) Winslow. http://mayflowerhistory.com/women Adam Paul Green was born to a multi-talented beauty queen Mother and a Father who, in addition to being a US Army Spy and a Counter-Intelligence Special Agent, was also a highly accomplished entrepreneur. Adam was taught at a young age that, in both life and business, loyalty is a requirement for success. He's had the honor of working directly with his father in several of the family businesses. In fact, this is where he learned crucial entrepreneurial skills and honed his talents with international business strategies and venture capitalism. http://www.AdamPaulGreen.com , http://www.ImAdamGreen.com Adam earned his Bachelors of Science Degree in International Business and Marketing from the University of Utah. He was hand-picked by the President of the University's renowned School of Business to compete with dozens of other ambitious nationwide-graduates for the opportunity to secure a lucrative job within a prestigious Fortune 100 company. http://www.Twitter.com/AdamPaulGreen Adam's hard work and creativity helped him land this job of a lifetime. He obtained incredible business experience there and spent years innovating, improving processes and setting sales records. Although this dream job in Traditional Corporate America was a fun challenge for him, and something he truly enjoyed mastering, Adam's natural entrepreneurial spirit kept nudging him to do something more significant with his time and talents. http://www.MyChocolatePod.com , http://www.Facebook.com/AdamPaulGreen Since 2001, Adam has been involved in the Health and Wellness Industry as a successful Entrepreneur, Broker, Product Developer and Manufacturer of Cosmeceutical products. During his career, he has worked with some of the most recognizable Fortune 500 businesses along with many top international Network Marketing companies. Adam has consistently proven his unique ability to help his clients achieve their goals through creative Distribution-Channel Placement, innovative Product Development and custom Manufacturing. Adam currently owns three profitable businesses. Admittedly, Adam was not initially a fan of Network Marketing. He did not understand the business model because it was new to him. However, once he learned that the REAL focus of Direct Sales is to help average people get a taste of entrepreneurialism --- with minimal risk and at a low cost --- Adam was absolutely convinced of the potential with Multi-Level Marketing. http://www.ImAdamGreen.com About MayflowerHistory.com MayflowerHistory.com, the Internet's most complete and accurate website dealing with the Mayflower passengers and the history of the Pilgrims and early Plymouth Colony. The website was first created back in 1994 (when the web was still mostly text!) as a simple, but complete, passenger list of the Mayflower. It has grown over the past twenty years as the author, historian Caleb Johnson, has researched and compiled material. http://mayflowerhistory.com New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/27/2017 -- Global Sodium Methylate Market: Introduction Sodium methylate, also known as sodium methoxide (molecular formula CH3ONa), can be produced by an exothermic reaction between elemental sodium and methanol. Sodium methylate is a white to pale yellow color, odorless solid, obtained in powder form. It is a flammable compound, but not explosive, and it can be decomposed when exposed to high heat. Commercially, sodium methylate is available either in solid or liquid form. Generally, sodium methylate is sold as a 25% to 30% solution in methanol for various applications, such as the production of vitamin A1, B1, trimethoprim, sulfadiazine, and analytical agents, among others. It is also widely used as a catalyst in biodiesel production. Sodium methylate can easily react with oxygen. Hence, it is necessary to avoid the contact of sodium methylate with moisture or water, and air at high temperatures (above 1260C) to avoid its decomposition into sodium hydroxide and methanol. Sodium methylate is highly soluble in alcohols, such as methanol and ethanol, whereas it is insoluble in toluene and benzene. Sodium methylate finds various applications as a catalyst, especially in biodiesel production. A sample of this report is available upon request @ www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14953 Global Sodium Methylate Market: Dynamics The global sodium methylate market is mainly driven by the increasing demand from various applications, especially in pharmaceutical and agriculture industries, and in the organic synthesis of various products. Rising demand for sodium methylate as a catalyst in applications, such as edible oil processing, grease, and synthetic detergents is further expected to drive growth of the market during the same period. Moreover, sodium methylate market is expected to be driven by anticipated steady growth in biodiesel production where it finds application as a catalyst. Growing demand for biodiesel, coupled with government initiatives in various countries over its blending has in turn resulted in an increase in biodiesel production capacity. This increase in production capacity of biodiesel has led to an increase in the demand for sodium methylate. Besides this, the presence of mercury in sodium methylate solution during its manufacturing leads to contamination of the product and has an effect on the catalytic activity of sodium methylate. Thus, the development of alternative methods with other raw materials in order to avoid mercury presence will help in growth of the global sodium methylate market. Global Sodium Methylate Market: Segmentation On the basis of type, the global sodium methylate market is segmented into: - Solid - Liquid (Solution) On the basis of application, the global sodium methylate market is segmented into: - Pharmaceutical - Agrochemicals - Plastics and Polymers - Personal Care - Analytical Reagent - Biodiesel - Others (paint and varnish, etc.) Global Sodium Methylate Market: Regional Outlook Geographically, the Asia Pacific (APAC) region dominates the global sodium methylate market. In APAC, China dominates the sodium methylate market with a relatively higher share in both, production and consumption, followed by India and Japan. Growing demand from pharmaceuticals and chemical industries, among others in APAC is expected to help propel the demand for sodium methylate over the forecast period. It is expected that APAC will register a healthy CAGR over the forecast period. North America, followed by Europe is a large market for sodium methylate in terms of consumption. Rising capacity of biodiesel production in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., etc. has resulted in an increase in the demand for sodium methylate in Europe and North America. Furthermore, in Europe, government initiatives to encourage the use of biofuel and reach a 10% mark in terms of consumption in the transportation sector is expected to boost the demand for sodium methylate over the forecast period. North America and Europe are expected to register significant growth over the same time frame. Latin America and the Middle East & Africa region are expected to register slow growth during the forecast period. Global Sodium Methylate Market: Market Participants Examples of some of the market participants in the global sodium methylate market, identified across the value chain are BASF SE, Evonik Industries, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Anhui Jinbang Medicine Chemical Co. Ltd., Zibo Xusheng Chemical Co. Ltd., Dezhou Longteng Chemical Co. Ltd., and Inner Mongolia Lantai Industrial Co. Ltd, among others. To view TOC of this report is available upon request @ www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14953 The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application, and industry. About Persistence Market Research Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance. To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes. Owensboro, KY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/27/2017 -- Warrior 180 Foundation, a Christ-centered organization established to reach out to military, veterans and their families with the saving grace of Jesus Christ, is launching a suicide kayaking awareness in Mississippi River. The kayaking trip is to bring awareness to the 22 veterans a day who commit suicide. In 2013, the United States Department of Veteran Affairs released a study that discovered suicides from 1999 to 2010, which showed that approximately 22 veterans commit suicide a day, or one veteran every 65 minutes. This shocking finding has, therefore, necessitated the move by Warrior 180 Foundation to create a kayaking awareness and show support for veterans. Two men, Jeff and his son, Logan who is a wounded veteran, will be hitting the water in Itasca Minnesota with their two kayaks, to spend two months kayaking the Mississippi River to bring awareness to veterans' suicide. Jeff is a son of an Army veteran, and himself is also a veteran who grew up in South Dakota. He served eight years in the United States Army Reserves as the Battalion Chaplain, and he is a Master trainer for the US Army. The event will kick off at Itasca Minnesota all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. The two veterans are expected to cover 20 miles per day, and 2355 miles altogether during the two months of kayaking the entire Mississippi River. The event will kick-off on May 1st, 2017 and will hopefully end by June 30th, 2017. There will be daily updates online at every location in the River so as to keep the general public abreast of the progress and happenings of the event. About Warrior 180 Foundation Warrior 180 Foundation is a Christ-centered organization established to reach out to military, veterans and their families with the saving grace of Jesus Christ, by teaching and training in local communities. They work with the military, veterans and their family members to provide comfort, support, resources, hope and help for the struggles they are facing. They also teach suicide intervention and offer crisis intervention. Media Contact: Warrior 180 Foundation Email: connect@warrior180.org Phone: 270-925-9874 Website: www.warrior180.org Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/pg/kayak4veterans Researchers digging at the Cerutti Mastodon site, an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch near San Diego, California, found animal remains and stone tools that show the first humans were living in North America much earlier than previously thought. The Cerutti Mastodon site was discovered by San Diego Natural History Museum researchers in November 1992 during routine paleontological mitigation work. This site preserves 131,000-year-old hammerstones, stone anvils, and fragmentary remains bones, tusks and molars of a mastodon (Mammut americanum) that show evidence of modification by early humans. An analysis of these finds substantially revises the timing of arrival of Homo into the Americas, according to a paper published this week in the journal Nature. This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World, said Dr. Judy Gradwohl, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Until recently, the oldest records of human activity in North America generally accepted by archaeologists were about 15,000 years old. But the fossils from the Cerutti Mastodon site named in recognition of San Diego Natural History Museum paleontologist Richard Cerutti, who discovered the site and led the excavation were found embedded in fine-grained sediments that had been deposited much earlier, during a period long before humans were thought to have arrived on the continent. When we first discovered the site, there was strong physical evidence that placed humans alongside extinct Ice Age megafauna, said lead co-author Dr. Tom Demere, curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Since the original discovery, dating technology has advanced to enable us to confirm with further certainty that early humans were here much earlier than commonly accepted. Since its initial discovery, the Cerutti Mastodon site has been the subject of research by top scientists to date the fossils accurately and evaluate microscopic damage on bones and rocks that authors now consider indicative of human activity. In 2014, U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dr. James Paces used state-of-the-art radiometric dating methods to determine that the mastodon bones were 130,700 years old, with a conservative error of plus or minus 9,400 years. The distributions of natural uranium and its decay products both within and among these bone specimens show remarkably reliable behavior, allowing us to derive an age that is well within the wheelhouse of the dating system, Dr. Paces said. The finding poses a lot more questions than answers. Who were the hominins at work at this site? We dont know. No hominin fossil remains were found. Our own species, Homo sapiens, has been around for about 200,000 years and arrived in China sometime before 100,000 years ago, the researchers said. Modern humans shared the planet with other hominin species that are now extinct (such as Neanderthals) until about 40,000 years ago. If a human-like species was living in North America 130,000 years ago, it could be that modern humans didnt get here first. How did these early hominins get here? We dont know. Hominins could have crossed the Bering Land Bridge linking modern-day Siberia with Alaska prior to 130,000 years ago before it was submerged by rising sea levels, they said. For some time prior to 130,000 years ago, the Earth was in a glacial period during which water was locked up on land in great ice sheets. As a consequence, sea levels dropped dramatically, exposing land that lies underwater today. If hominins had not already crossed the land bridge prior to 130,000 years, they may have used some form of watercraft to cross the newly formed Bering Strait as glacial ice receded and sea levels rose. We now know that hominins had invented some type of watercraft before 100,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean Sea area. Hominins using watercraft could have followed the coast of Asia north and crossed the short distance to Alaska and then followed the west coast of North America south to present-day California. Although we are not certain if the earliest hominins arrived in North America on foot or by watercraft, recognition of the antiquity of the Cerutti Mastodon site will stimulate research in much older deposits that may someday reveal clues to help solve this mystery. The authors also conducted experiments with the bones of large modern mammals, including elephants, to determine what it takes to break the bones with large hammerstones and to analyze the distinctive breakage patterns that result. Its this sort of work that has established how fractures like this can be made, said co-author Daniel Fisher, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, and director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. And based on decades of experience seeing sites with evidence of human activity, and also a great deal of work on modern material trying to replicate the patterns of fractures that we see, I really know of no other way that the material of the Cerutti Mastodon site could have been produced than through human activity. Theres no doubt in my mind this is an archaeological site, added lead co-author Dr. Steve Holen, director of research at the Center for American Paleolithic Research. The bones and several teeth show clear signs of having been deliberately broken by humans with manual dexterity and experiential knowledge. This breakage pattern has also been observed at mammoth fossil sites in Kansas and Nebraska, where alternative explanations such as geological forces or gnawing by carnivores have been ruled out. The scientists also created 3D digital models of bone and stone specimens from the Cerutti Mastodon site. The models were immensely helpful in interpreting and illustrating these objects, said co-author Dr. Adam Rountrey, collection manager at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. We were able to put together virtual refits that allow exploration of how the multiple fragments from one hammerstone fit back together. The 3D models helped us understand what we were looking at and to communicate the information much more effectively. _____ Steven R. Holen et al. 2017. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA. Nature 544: 479-483; doi: 10.1038/nature22065 [SAO PAULO] Brazilian researchers have described the three-dimensional structure of the NS5 protein responsible for the replication of Zika virus in infected cells an important step towards developing an antiviral drug. To do this, they stimulated a bacterium to produce large quantities of the NS5 protein, which were then purified and separated from the other substances produced by the bacteria. The researchers then transformed copies of the protein into crystals and mapped the spatial location of the 9,600 atoms that form its structure. The study may be essential to developing new drugs with specific antiviral activity against Zika. Guilherme Milanez, State University of Campinas With this data, they built a detailed computer model of the structural organisation of all atoms of the protein. The complete findings were published in Nature Communications last month (March 27). The characterisation of the molecular structure of the NS5 will allow us a more precise definition of each molecule capable of linking with specific regions of the proteins and interrupting their activity, says physicist Glaucius Oliva of the Institute of Physics of Sao Paulo University and lead author of the research, which is supported by the Brazilian research foundation FAPESP. Protein NS5 is capable of copying the virus RNA thousands of times until Zika breaks through cell walls, spreading through the body. The protein is produced by viruses of the genus flavivirus, which cause diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever and hepatitis C. Because of its crucial role for virus replication in the human body, it has long been subject to research aimed at the development of drugs that can disrupt its activity. The main drug candidate is sofosbovir, commonly used against hepatitis C and this could quickly become a therapeutic option against the Zika virus, says Oliva. According to a paper published earlier this year in the journal Scientific Reports, sofosbovir succeeded in halting the multiplication of the virus in tissue culture, which the study says reduces the damage caused by the Zika infection. Biologist Guilherme Milanez, from the Institute of Biology at the State University of Campinas, believes the study may be essential to developing new drugs with specific antiviral activity against Zika. Because NS5 is produced by different flaviviruses, it is likely than a single drug [such as sofosbovir] will have antiviral activity against the dengue, hepatitis C and Zika viruses, he pointed out. However, Milanez warns that studies are still in the early stage of development and there is a long way to go until the final formulation of a drug. The study, published in Nature Communications, is supported by the Foundation for Research Support of the State of Sao Paulo (FAPESP), one of the donors of SciDev.Net. This piece was originally published by the Latin America and Caribbean desk. Fossils unintentionally found in South Africa are most likely the most seasoned growths at any point found by an edge of 1.2 billion years, reworking the transformative story of these life forms which are neither flora nor fauna, as per the scientists. The report was prepared by a group of scientists on Monday. According to Phys.org, these discovered fossils can be the earliest known specimens in the formation of life, to which the human beings belong. The research report was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. If the fossil is verified as both multicellular and fungal, this can be the 2.4 billion-year-old minuscule creatures. Till now, the first discovered fossils trace of eukaryotes is dated to only 1.9 billion years ago, called as the superkingdom, including animals, plants as well as fungi, except bacteria. As per the estimates, the planet earth is itself 4.6 billion years old. AFP reported that these fossils were found 2600 feet beneath the South Africa's Northern Cape Province. They are significant not only for their age but also for their origin. Until the present time, it was known that the first fungi developed on land. However, the recently discovered fossils lived and flourished under an old sea seabed, tucked in the fissure of the volcanic rock. According to the co-author of the research paper Birger Rasmussen, the fossils were discovered accidently as nobody was searching for it. The scientists were only examining samples of lava from the Ongeluk Formation for age determination. Birger Rasmussen is a geology professor at the Curtin University in Bentley. While examining the lava, Rasmussen found series of petrified gas bubbles after increasing the microscopic magnification. The bubbles had a number of filaments in it which supported a form of life, which were the fossils. The examining lava was thought to be 2.2 billion years old, but after deep research, it was found to be 2.4 billion years old. The additional 200 million years was huge on the grounds that it straddles a basic limit in Earth's land history called the Great Oxidation Event-a quick and enormous overflowing of oxygen into the air. This fungus-like creature or the fossils were living in the dark and were lacking oxygen. The discovery of these fungus-like creatures has challenged the current theory of the history of eukaryotes, that when and where they evolved. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the accepted gold standard for non-invasive 3-D imaging. On the one hand, it can help in diagnosis of diseases like cancer, while on the other it can track the delivery and in vivo activities of drugs. For the past many years, scientists have been trying to enhance the efficiency and applicability of MRI. High-performance ultra-low-field MRI is one such modified method that was invented in 2015, by the scientists of Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital. Scientists are now proposing the application of nanodiamonds for obtaining high-contrast MRI images. Nanodiamonds are nanoscale synthetically prepared industrial diamonds. They have been proposed as efficient drug delivery vehicles that can be used for targeted delivery of therapeutic drugs. However, the application of these synthetic diamonds in the field of medical imaging was restricted due to the unavailability of suitable non-invasive methods for tracking and imaging them. According to a recent published article in the Nature Communications journal, scientists have developed a new method of obtaining high-contrast images of MRI by using nanodiamonds as the source of contrast. Most conventional methods of MRI enable imaging only for a few hours after the contrast material is injected. However, the new non-invasive method developed by David Waddington and his team employs the Overhauser effect to activate the magnetic properties of the nanodiamond particles so that they can be used for imaging for prolonged time periods. The Overhauser effect helps in amplifying the weak magnetic resonance signals. This amplification is achieved by aligning the nuclei of the nanodiamond particles, a process called hyperpolarization. Scientists believe combining Overhauser effect with high-performance ultra-low-field MRI could help in tracking the delivery and therapeutic manifestation of anticancer drugs, Phys.org reported. According to Science Daily, the new method can also be used for making accurate diagnosis of lymph node tumors, which may further help in the treatment of chronic cases of prostate cancer. Furthermore, its increased sensitivity makes it a useful tool for imaging and estimating the permeability of the blood-brain barrier. Such highly intricate analysis will further help in clinical assessment and treatment of ischemic strokes. Doing so can be crucial in determining the overall clinical outcome of the patients. The scientists are now preparing for a follow-up mission to the dwarf planet Pluto. At this point, there would be an orbiter that will fully investigate the fascinating Pluto. It has been years since NASA's New Horizons had a reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto. Alan Stern, the principal investigator of New Horizons, told Gizmodo that they are planning to return to Pluto with an orbiter mission that would remain and examine the planet for years. This time it would not be just a simple flyby like New Horizons. Stern added that it would have much more advanced instrumentation and could map every detail of the planet and uncover all the complexity they discovered. Stern and other 34 scientists have met in Huston, Texas, a few days ago to map out what an orbiter mission would look like. Some of them are the New Horizons members. Stern also said that this coming October, they plan to have a workshop on their new mission idea at the 49th meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences. They are hopeful that their idea of coming back to Pluto will materialize in time for the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey. This is a comprehensive report prepared for NASA and Congress by the planetary science community. Stern said that the next Decadal Survey will begin being compiled by 2020. Meanwhile, New Horizons had captured stunning images of Pluto during its flyby in 2015. It showed Pluto with huge plains of nitrogen ice and mountain ranges with the altitude of about 11,000 feet tall. The scientists also speculated that Pluto has a liquid ocean underneath its surface, even though it is located around 10.67 billion miles from the Sun, according to The Verge. Dogs are man's best friend -- in more ways than one. While it is difficult to map the different dog breeds and how they came to be, it seems that a new study regarding canine genomes can help with research on human diseases. In a study published in Cell Reports, scientists examined the genomes of 1,346 dogs to create a diverse map for tracing the relationship between their different breeds. The said map showed the types of dogs people crossed to create the ones that they now know. The study revealed dogs that perform similar fuctions do not necessarily share the same origins. In fact, analysis showed that an ancient type of dog may have even arrived in the Americas long before Christopher Columbus "discovered" the New World. Science News noted that the study discovered several new things about man's best friend. Among these discoveries are the following: DNA from hybrid dogs are backed up in historical records. For instance, genetic backtracking indicated that mixing bulldogs and terriers started in Ireland between 1860 and 1870. This linked the breed to a dog-fighting fad that crossed breeds to make better dog fighters. Geography played a role in dog breeding. Genetic diversity was apparent in herder dogs. But when humans shifted from hunting to farming, the herding dog breeds may have emerged independently in different areas. This explained why the United Kingdom and Mediterranean people use different herding tactics. Big dogs were not bred to be large. European mastiffs and Mediterranean sheepdogs do not actually share recent DNA changes, which means that their size traits rose for different reasons. For instance, mastiffs used their size to intimidate humans, but sheepdogs used theirs to overpower animal predators. Their sizes, however, were suspected to be among the first traits that attracted human breeders in the first place. So how can these findings help humans? Scientific American noted that dogs and humans can suffer from similar conditions, such as epilepsy. Humans have hundreds of genes that can influence such illness. But because dogs are normally genetically isolated, scientists can look at the genes individually for a more efficient study. Any student in the medical field (or avid fans of Grey's Anatomy) know that infants born extremely prematurely rarely live more than a few hours. Extremely premature infants face a slew of health issues that came from having underdeveloped organs. Doctors have tried to mimic the complex environment in a mother's womb, but to no avail. However, according to ABC News, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia revealed a new device that could save the lives of these premature infants. The device acts as an artificial womb, and a "biobag" mimics the natural uterus that allows the development of a fetus. Dr. Alan W. Flake, a fetal surgeon at the Center for Fetal Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a statement that "Infants have an urgent need for a bridge between the mother's womb and the outside world." He also said that if there is a way to develop an extra-uterine system to support growth and maturation of an organ, doctors can dramatically improve the outcomes for extremely premature babies. Infants born between 23 and 25 weeks have a low chance of survival, due in part of their underdeveloped lungs, liver, kidney and brain. All of these organs will have to start working months earlier than what is normal. Also, although they technically work, they are at a stage where they are still very immature. Neonatal intensive care doctors will have to support their growth with as little harm as possible, which is not always ideal considering the environment in a mother's womb is very different to that of an incubator. The study, published in Nature Communications, is set to develop organs with a system incorporating a pumpless oxygenator circuit connected to the fetus. It is maintained within a closed "amniotic fluid" circuit that almost reproduces the womb environment. Today, the device is still being tested on animals. But if successful, the "biobag" could support a human infant for up to four weeks. NOVI, Mich., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- What spicy words have you used today? At Childtime, preschoolers are learning fun and powerful new ways to express themselves with surprisingly sophisticated vocabulary. Words like enormous, creeping and fierce are celebrated as children first discover, then try out newly acquired expressions. A photo and video accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0db6a7e1-6167-4d00-96b4-4d01b11f496f http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a2b878de-e9cb-4f0d-882b-95d23e04e855 Children need to have a rich and robust oral language vocabulary in order to prepare them for success in school, said Dr. Susan Canizares, Chief Academic Officer at Childtime. We celebrate spicy words in our classrooms every day, introducing children to precise and intriguing ways to describe concepts they already know. This is the basis of oral language learning, helping lay the foundation for language children will encounter as readers beginning in second grade and into adulthood. For children at Childtime, discovering spicy words is a favorite part of every school day. The teacher reads a book aloud, the class finds the spicy words, the teacher posts them on the word wall in the classroom, and children enjoy using them in daily learning activities throughout the week. Early Start in Vocabulary a Key to Close the Skills Gap Encouraging vocabulary development in preschool is an important step to supporting reading proficiency in elementary school and ultimately ensuring a skilled future workforce. According to a recent study from the Business Roundtable, an association representing leaders from top U.S. firms, 93 percent of CEOs rated reading and writing as very or somewhat important for current job openings in their companies. Forty two percent of CEOs reported difficulty in finding qualified applicants with strong enough skills in these areas. The shortage is pronounced in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields, where workers need advanced literacy skills to effectively communicate about technical topics. Improving early reading proficiency offers a powerful way to address the growing skills gap impacting the U.S. economy, said Canizares. Before they can grow into strong readers, children first need to build a rich oral vocabulary during their formative years. Exploring Spicy Words at Home Storytime offers a natural opportunity for families to discover and celebrate spicy words at home. Reading together is one of the most important ways that a parent can set their child up for success and have fun at the same time, emphasizes Canizares. By reading to your child for 15 minutes every night, youre introducing the world of literature, encouraging language development, supporting problem solving as your child explores what characters in a book are doing and why theyre doing it, and bonding with your child socially and emotionally. When you read a picture book aloud with expression and fun in your voice, children will automatically hear the spicy words and latch onto them. More tips for introducing spicy words at home: Connect spicy words to words your child already knows. spicy words to words your child already knows. Explore new spicy words in thematically related groups such as feelings, activities, and weather. new spicy words in thematically related groups such as feelings, activities, and weather. Keep conversation flowing Maintain a running play-by-play during activities to explain what youre doing, using familiar and new words. Maintain a running play-by-play during activities to explain what youre doing, using familiar and new words. Encourage questions. Applaud your childs attempts to experiment with new verbiage. Be gentle when correcting pronunciation or misuse. your childs attempts to experiment with new verbiage. Be gentle when correcting pronunciation or misuse. Repeat and repeat Encountering the same new or spicy word several times, in appropriate contexts, will help deepen understanding. Use a new word multiple times in scenarios that are meaningful for your child. For more on spicy words, check out this YouTube video featuring Dr. Susan Canizares. About Childtime Childtime is a leader in early childhood education, with more than 200 schools throughout the United States. Headquartered in Novi, Mich., it is part of the Learning Care Group portfolio of schools offering early education and care to children ages 6 weeks to 12 years. Childtimes educational philosophy is based on the Reggio Emilia approach, which focuses on three components of a quality early childhood education experience: developmentally appropriate practices, a home-like learning environment and quality teacher-child interactions. Its proprietary School Readiness Pathway supports the development of the academic and social skills needed for a smooth transition to elementary school. For more information, please call (844) 213-3964 or visit www.childtime.com Washington, D.C., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The USHCC is strongly encouraged by President Trumps proposal to significantly cut the corporate tax rate. For too long, small businesses have paid the price of having to comply with an antiquated and globally uncompetitive tax rate consequently hindering entrepreneurs from unleashing their true economic potential. Our association also applauds the reduction of the top tax rate assessed on pass-through businesses, including small partnerships and sole proprietorships, to 15 percent from 39.6 percent. An equitable reform of tax rates for all businesses, small and large alike has been long overdue. We are confident that the Administrations proposal to meaningfully reduce taxes will have a positive impact on our nations 4.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses by providing them with additional capital, allowing for them to continue growing and creating jobs. The USHCC looks forward to working with Congress to advocate for providing our nations small businesses with the necessary tax relief, so they can continue creating two-thirds of all new jobs and remain globally competitive in an ever-evolving 21st-century economy. About the USHCC The USHCC actively promotes the economic growth, development and interests of more than 4.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses that, combined, contribute over $668 billion to the American economy every year. It also advocates on behalf of 260 major American corporations and serves as the umbrella organization for more than 200 local chambers and business associations nationwide. For more information, visit ushcc.com. Follow the USHCC on Twitter @USHCC. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/efe1e5ea-b345-4bda-8180-32f015bade19 Net Income: $4.5 million in Q1 EBITDA: $14.7 million in Q1 Operating Surplus: $9.5 million in Q1 Quarterly Cash Distribution of $0.4225 per unit; $1.69 per unit annualized 100% of available days fixed through 2018 Strong Balance Sheet MONACO, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Navios Maritime Midstream Partners L.P. (Navios Midstream) (NYSE:NAP), an owner and operator of tanker vessels, reported its financial results today for the first quarter of 2017. Angeliki Frangou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Navios Midstream stated, We are pleased with our results for the first quarter of 2017. We reported $14.7 million of EBITDA and $4.5 million of net income. We recently announced a distribution of $0.4225 per unit, providing an annual yield of about 14%. Our total unit coverage ratio for the distribution was a healthy 1.1x for the quarter. Angeliki Frangou continued, Investor sentiment in the MLP sector has materially improved since early 2016. However, we have been experiencing uncertainty regarding the potential oversupply of VLCCs. We are being patient and cautiously reviewing market opportunities. We believe that our patience and prudence will be rewarded. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Cash Distribution The Board of Directors of Navios Midstream declared a cash distribution for the first quarter of 2017 of $0.4225 per unit. The cash distribution is payable on May 11, 2017 to unitholders of record as of May 5, 2017. Long Term Cash Flow Navios Midstream has entered into long-term charter-out agreements for its vessels, with a remaining average term of 4.1 years, which are expected to provide a stable base of revenue and distributable cash flow. Navios Midstream has currently contracted out 100% of its available days for 2017 and 2018 expecting to generate revenues, including the backstop commitment provided by Navios Maritime Acquisition Corporation (Navios Acquisition), of approximately $86.7 million and $86.6 million for 2017 and 2018, respectively. The average expected daily charter-out rate for the fleet is $39,580 and $39,559 for 2017 and 2018, respectively. Continuous Offering Program Pursuant to the Continuous Offering Program in place, Navios Midstream issued 315,846 common units in 2017 and received net proceeds of $3.8 million. In connection with the issuance of the common units, Navios Midstream issued 6,446 general partnership units to its general partner in order for it to maintain its 2.0% general partner interest. The net proceeds from the issuance of the general partnership units were $0.1 million. FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS For the following results and the selected financial data presented herein, Navios Midstream has compiled condensed consolidated statements of operations for the three month periods ended March 31, 2017 and 2016. The quarterly 2017 and 2016 information was derived from the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements for the respective periods. EBITDA and Operating Surplus are non-GAAP financial measures and should not be used in isolation or substitution for Navios Midstreams results. (in $000 except per unit data) Three Month Period Ended March 31, 2017 (unaudited) Three Month Period Ended March 31, 2016 (unaudited) Revenue $ 21,100 $ 24,149 Net income $ 4,502 $ 7,495 EBITDA $ 14,700 $ 17,688 Earnings per Common unit (basic and diluted) $ 0.22 $ 0.36 Operating Surplus $ 9,469 $ 11,271 Maintenance and Replacement Capital expenditure reserve $ (2,461 ) $ (3,580 ) Three month periods ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 Revenue for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 decreased by $3.0 million to $21.1 million, as compared to $24.1 million for the same period in 2016. Time Charter Equivalent (TCE) was $38,547 for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 and $43,476 for the three month period ended March 31, 2016. The decrease in the TCE was mainly attributable to the decrease in the market rates during the first quarter ended March 31, 2017, as compared to the same period in 2016. EBITDA decreased by approximately $3.0 million to $14.7 million for the three month period ended March 31, 2017, as compared to $17.7 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease in EBITDA was due to a: (a) $3.0 million decrease in revenue; and (b) $0.2 million increase in other expense; partially mitigated by a: (i) $0.1 million decrease in time charter expenses; (ii) $0.1 million decrease in management fees; and (iii) $0.1 million decrease in general and administrative expenses. The reserve for estimated maintenance and replacement capital expenditures for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 was $2.5 million (please see Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures in Exhibit 3). Navios Midstream generated an Operating Surplus for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 of $9.5 million. Operating Surplus is a non-GAAP financial measure used by certain investors to assist in evaluating a partnerships ability to make quarterly cash distributions (please see Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures in Exhibit 3). Net income for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 was $4.5 million compared to $7.5 million for the three month period ended March 31, 2016. The decrease in net income of $3.0 million was due to a: (a) $3.0 million decrease in EBITDA; and (b) $0.1 million increase in direct vessel expenses; partially mitigated by a $0.1 million increase in depreciation and amortization. Earnings per common unit for the three month period ended March 31, 2017 were $0.22. Fleet Employment Profile The following table reflects certain key indicators of Navios Midstreams core fleet performance for the three month periods ended March 31, 2017 and 2016. Three Month Period Ended March 31, 2017 (unaudited) Three Month Period Ended March 31, 2016 (unaudited) FLEET DATA Available days(1) 540 546 Operating days(2) 537 545 Fleet utilization(3) 99.5 % 99.8 % Vessels operating at period end 6 6 AVERAGE DAILY RESULTS Time Charter Equivalent per day(4) $ 38,547 $ 43,476 (1 ) Available days for the fleet represent total calendar days the vessels were in Navios Midstreams possession for the relevant period after subtracting off-hire days associated with scheduled repairs, dry dockings or special surveys. The shipping industry uses available days to measure the number of days in a relevant period during which a vessel is capable of generating revenues. (2 ) Operating days is the number of available days in the relevant period less the aggregate number of days that the vessels are off-hire due to any reason, including unforeseen circumstances. The shipping industry uses operating days to measure the aggregate number of days in a relevant period during which vessels actually generate revenues. (3 ) Fleet utilization is the percentage of time that Navios Midstreams vessels were available for revenue generating available days, and is determined by dividing the number of operating days during a relevant period by the number of available days during that period. The shipping industry uses fleet utilization to measure efficiency in finding employment for vessels and minimizing the amount of days that its vessels are off-hire for reasons other than scheduled repairs, drydockings or special surveys. (4 ) Time Charter Equivalent (TCE) rates: TCE rates are defined as voyage and time charter revenues less voyage expenses during a period divided by the number of available days during the period. The TCE rate is a standard shipping industry performance measure used primarily to present the actual daily earnings generated by vessels on various types of charter contracts for the number of available days of the fleet. Conference Call details: Navios Midstream's management will host a conference call today, Thursday, April 27, 2017 to discuss the results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. Conference Call details: Call Date/Time: Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 8:30 am ET Call Title: Navios Midstream Q1 2017 Financial Results Conference Call US Dial In: +1.866.703.4207 International Dial In: +1.636.692.6440 Conference ID: 2535 3934 The conference call replay will be available two hours after the live call and remain available for one week at the following numbers: US Replay Dial In: +1.800.585.8367 International Replay Dial In: +1.404.537.3406 Conference ID: 2535 3934 Slides and audio webcast: There will also be a live webcast of the conference call, through the Navios Midstreams website (www.navios-midstream.com) under Investors. Participants to the live webcast should register on the website approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the webcast. A supplemental slide presentation will be available on the Navios Midstreams website under the "Investors" section by 8:00 am ET on the day of the call. About Navios Maritime Midstream Partners L.P. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners L.P. is a publicly traded master limited partnership which owns and operates crude oil tankers under long-term employment contracts. For more information, please visit our website at www.navios-midstream.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements (as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) concerning future events and expectations, including with respect to Navios Midstreams future dividends and Navios Midstream's growth strategy and measures to implement such strategy; including expected vessel acquisitions and entering into further time charters. Words such as "may", "expects", "intends", "plans", "believes", "anticipates", "hopes", "estimates", and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements include comments regarding expected revenue and time charters. These forward-looking statements are based on the information available to, and the expectations and assumptions deemed reasonable by, Navios Midstream at the time these statements were made. Although Navios Midstream believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates which are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond the control of Navios Midstream. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, the creditworthiness of our charterers and the ability of our contract counterparties to fulfill their obligations to us, tanker industry trends, including charter rates and vessel values and factors affecting vessel supply and demand, the aging of our vessels and resultant increases in operation and drydocking costs, the loss of any customer or charter or vessel, our ability to repay outstanding indebtedness, to obtain additional financing and to obtain replacement charters for our vessels, in each case, at commercially acceptable rates or at all, increases in costs and expenses, including but not limited to: crew wages, insurance, provisions, port expenses, lube oil, bunkers, repairs, maintenance and general and administrative expenses, the expected cost of, and our ability to comply with, governmental regulations and maritime self-regulatory organization standards, as well as standard regulations imposed by our charterers applicable to our business, potential liability from litigation and our vessel operations, including discharge of pollutants, general domestic and international political conditions, competitive factors in the market in which Navios Midstream operates; risks associated with operations outside the United States; and other factors listed from time to time in the Navios Midstream's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 20-Fs and Form 6-Ks. Navios Midstream expressly disclaims any obligations or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in Navios Midstream's expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based. Navios Midstream makes no prediction or statement about the performance of its common units. EXHIBIT 1 NAVIOS MARITIME MIDSTREAM PARTNERS L.P. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (Expressed in thousands of U.S. Dollars) March 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 38,262 $ 52,791 Restricted cash 10,000 Accounts receivable, net 3,804 2,264 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 3,357 1,168 Due from related parties 11,368 4,864 Total current assets 66,791 61,087 Vessels, net 372,888 378,444 Intangible assets 24,427 25,164 Deferred dry dock and special survey costs, net 10,306 11,086 Total non-current assets 407,621 414,694 Total assets $ 474,412 $ 475,781 LIABILITIES AND PARTNERS CAPITAL Current liabilities Accounts payable $ 2,620 $ 2,386 Accrued expenses 592 602 Deferred revenue 1,731 2,494 Current portion of long-term debt, net of deferred finance costs and discount 665 661 Total current liabilities 5,608 6,143 Long-term debt, net of deferred finance costs and discount 196,342 196,515 Total non-current liabilities 196,342 196,515 Total liabilities $ 201,950 $ 202,658 Commitments and contingencies Total Partners capital Common Unitholders (9,991,641 units and 9,675,795 units issued and outstanding at March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively) 127,299 125,635 Subordinated Series A Unitholders (1,592,920 units issued and outstanding at March 31, 2017 and none at December 31, 2016) 26,256 26,593 Subordinated Unitholders (9,342,692 units issued and outstanding at March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016) 113,576 115,552 General Partner (427,087 units issued and outstanding at March 31, 2017 and 420,641 issued and outstanding at December 31, 2016) 5,331 5,343 Partners capital 272,462 273,123 Total liabilities and Partners capital $ 474,412 $ 475,781 NAVIOS MARITIME MIDSTREAM PARTNERS L.P. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (Expressed in thousands of U.S. Dollars, except per unit amounts) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2017 (unaudited) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2016 (unaudited) Revenue (includes related party revenue of $1,155 and $0 for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively) $ 21,100 $ 24,149 Time charter expenses (285 ) (411 ) Direct vessel expenses (780 ) (636 ) Management fees (entirely through related party transactions) (5,130 ) (5,187 ) General and administrative expenses (724 ) (826 ) Depreciation and amortization (6,293 ) (6,401 ) Interest expenses and finance cost (3,131 ) (3,156 ) Interest income 6 Other expense, net (261 ) (37 ) Net income $ 4,502 $ 7,495 Earnings attributable to: Common unit holders $ 2,108 $ 3,384 Subordinated Series A unit holders $ 336 $ 577 Subordinated unit holders $ 1,971 $ 3,384 General Partner $ 87 $ 150 Earnings per unit (basic and diluted) Common unitholders: $ 0.22 $ 0.36 Subordinated Series A unitholders: $ 0.21 $ 0.36 Subordinated unitholders: $ 0.19 $ 0.36 General Partner: $ 0.21 $ 0.36 NAVIOS MARITIME MIDSTREAM PARTNERS L.P. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Expressed in thousands of U.S. Dollars) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2017 (unaudited) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2016 (unaudited) OPERATING ACTIVITIES Net income $ 4,502 $ 7,495 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 6,293 6,401 Amortization of deferred finance fees 344 351 Amortization of dry dock and special survey costs 780 636 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: (Increase)/ decrease in prepaid expenses and other current assets (2,189 ) 35 Increase in accounts receivable (1,540 ) (379 ) Increase in accounts payable 234 1,404 (Decrease)/ increase in accrued expenses (10 ) 12 Increase in due from/ to related parties (6,504 ) (6,588 ) (Decrease)/ increase in deferred revenue (763 ) 563 Net cash provided by operating activities $ 1,147 $ 9,930 INVESTING ACTIVITIES Acquisition of vessels (500 ) Net cash used in investing activities $ $ (500 ) FINANCING ACTIVITIES Loan repayment (513 ) (513 ) Dividend paid (9,019 ) (8,742 ) Proceeds from issuance of general partner units 79 Proceeds from issuance of common units 3,777 Increase in restricted cash (10,000 ) Net cash used in financing activities $ (15,676 ) $ (9,255 ) Net (decrease)/ increase in cash and cash equivalents (14,529 ) 175 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of year $ 52,791 $ 37,834 Cash and cash equivalents, end of year $ 38,262 $ 38,009 Supplemental disclosures of cash flow information Cash interest paid $ 2,777 $ 2,837 EXHIBIT 2 Owned Vessels Type Built Capacity (DWT) Shinyo Kieran VLCC 2011 297,066 Shinyo Saowalak VLCC 2010 298,000 Nave Celeste VLCC 2003 298,717 Shinyo Kannika VLCC 2001 287,175 Shinyo Ocean VLCC 2001 281,395 C. Dream VLCC 2000 298,570 Option Vessels(1) Type Built Capacity (DWT) Expiration date Nave Buena Suerte VLCC 2011 297,491 November 18, 2018 Nave Neutrino VLCC 2003 298,287 November 18, 2018 Nave Electron VLCC 2002 305,178 November 18, 2018 (1) Navios Midstream has options, to acquire up to three VLCCs at fair market value from Navios Maritime Acquisition Corporation until November 18, 2018. EXHIBIT 3 Disclosure of Non-GAAP Financial Measures 1. EBITDA EBITDA represents net income before interest and finance costs, before depreciation and amortization and income taxes. We use EBITDA as a liquidity measure and reconcile EBITDA to net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities, the most comparable U.S. GAAP liquidity measure. EBITDA in this document is calculated as follows: net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities adding back, when applicable and as the case may be, the effect of: (i) net increase/(decrease) in operating assets; (ii) net (increase)/decrease in operating liabilities; (iii) net interest cost; (iv) amortization of deferred finance charges and other related expenses; (v) provision for losses on accounts receivable; (vi) equity in affiliates, net of dividends received; (vii) payments for drydock and special survey costs; (viii) gain/(loss) on sale of assets/subsidiaries; and (ix) impairment charges. Navios Midstream believes that EBITDA is the basis upon which liquidity can be assessed and presents useful information to investors regarding Navios Midstreams ability to service and/or incur indebtedness, pay capital expenditures, meet working capital requirements and make cash distributions. Navios Midstream also believes that EBITDA is used (i) by potential lenders to evaluate potential transactions; (ii) to evaluate and price potential acquisition candidates; and (iii) by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in the evaluation of companies in our industry. EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the analysis of Navios Midstreams results as reported under U.S. GAAP. Some of these limitations are: (i) EBITDA does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, working capital needs; and (ii) although depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, the assets being depreciated and amortized may have to be replaced in the future. EBITDA does not reflect any cash requirements for such capital expenditures. As a result of these limitations, EBITDA should not be considered as a principal indicator of Navios Midstreams performance. Furthermore, our calculation of EBITDA may not be comparable to that reported by other companies due to differences in methods of calculation. 2. Operating Surplus Operating Surplus represents net income adjusted for depreciation and amortization expense, non-cash interest expense and estimated maintenance and replacement capital expenditures. Maintenance and replacement capital expenditures are those capital expenditures required to maintain over the long term the operating capacity of, or the revenue generated by, Navios Midstreams capital assets. Operating Surplus is a quantitative measure used in the publicly-traded partnership investment community to assist in evaluating a partnerships ability to make quarterly cash distributions. Operating Surplus is not required by accounting principles generally accepted in the United States and should not be considered a substitute for net income, cash flow from operating activities and other operations or cash flow statement data prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States or as a measure of profitability or liquidity. 3. Available Cash Available Cash generally means for each fiscal quarter, all cash on hand at the end of the quarter: less the amount of cash reserves established by the Board of Directors to: provide for the proper conduct of Navios Midstreams business (including reserve for maintenance and replacement capital expenditures); comply with applicable law, any of Navios Midstreams debt instruments, or other agreements; or provide funds for distributions to the unitholders and to the general partner for any one or more of the next four quarters; plus all cash on hand on the date of determination of available cash for the quarter resulting from working capital borrowings made after the end of the quarter. Working capital borrowings are generally borrowings that are made under any revolving credit or similar agreement used solely for working capital purposes or to pay distributions to partners. Available Cash is a quantitative measure used in the publicly-traded partnership investment community to assist in evaluating a partnerships ability to make quarterly cash distributions. Available cash is not required by accounting principles generally accepted in the United States and should not be considered a substitute for net income, cash flow from operating activities and other operations or cash flow statement data prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States or as a measure of profitability or liquidity. 4. Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures Three Month Period ended March 31, 2017 ($000) (unaudited) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2016 ($000) (unaudited) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 1,147 $ 9,930 Net increase in operating assets 3,729 344 Net decrease in operating liabilities 7,043 4,609 Net interest cost 3,125 3,156 Amortization of deferred finance cost and bond premium (344 ) (351 ) EBITDA $ 14,700 $ 17,688 Cash interest paid $ (2,777 ) $ (2,837 ) Cash interest income 7 Maintenance and replacement capital expenditures $ (2,461 ) $ (3,580 ) Operating Surplus $ 9,469 $ 11,271 Cash reserves $ (447 ) $ (2,529 ) Available cash for distribution $ 9,022 $ 8,742 Three Month Period ended March 31, 2017 ($000) (unaudited) Three Month Period ended March 31, 2016 ($000) (unaudited) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 1,147 $ 9,930 Net cash used in investing activities $ $ (500 ) Net cash used in financing activities $ (15,676 ) $ (9,255 ) FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OmniComm Systems, Inc. (OTCQX:OMCM), a leading provider of clinical data management technology, recently signed two additional contracts to provide OmniComms proprietary TrialOne clinic automation solution to two major hospitals in China, including Guangdong General Hospital. With a fourth and fifth contract, OmniComm now has a total of five TrialOne agreements in China, which were all signed since December 2016, when TrialOne made its debut in China. The deals were sparked by a strategic partnership with Tri-I Biotech (Shanghai) Inc., a market-leading China-based solutions provider to the life sciences sector. TrialOne was selected for several reasons, including its status as a market-leading EDC and site automation system for early-phase clinical trials. Additionally, TrialOne supports the Chinese language and provides the opportunity for research organizations to greatly improve productivity and efficiency during clinical trials. As a system that is compliant with global industry standards and best practices for Phase I clinical research, TrialOne allows user organizations to ensure the quality and integrity of the data collected and managed during the clinical trial process. TrialOnes ability to enable users to comply with Chinese FDA regulations aimed at harmonizing local practices to global standards was also a key factor influencing the adoption of TrialOne. Regulatory changes in China have increased the importance and necessity of clinic automation systems during clinical trials. Currently, early-phase research centers lack the systems needed to manage clinical trials, while addressing the regulatory requirements for data quality and integrity. TrialOne is rapidly being recognized as a solution that can help Phase I clinics and early-phase research organizations in China to standardize their processes, manage compliance with regulatory requirements and international standards, secure data integrity and data quality, while at the same time increasing the efficiency of their operations, said Wolf Ondracek, managing director and senior vice president at OmniComm. These two new customers one located in Guangzhou add to the geographical spread of TrialOne implementations in China, and this strengthens our confidence in the potential for impressive TrialOne growth during the course of the year. TrialOne is a comprehensive set of modules that drive efficiencies, reduce timelines and costs through faster and more directed volunteer recruitment, easy-to-build schedule-based workflows, real-time bedside data collection, direct data capture from devices, sample processing automation and modern data processing. The browser-based, tablet-compatible system provides an advanced platform for automating clinic operations, complies with FDA 21 CFR part 11, and supports data standards such as CDISC for faster and easier exporting and reporting of data. Supporting References TrialOne OmniComm Systems Announces Reseller Agreement with Tri-I Biotech Shanghai Inc. OmniComm Systems Experiencing Rapid Adoption of TrialOne in China About Guangdong General Hospital Founded in 1946, Guangdong General Hospital is one of the largest general hospitals in China. The staff of 5,252 includes nearly 4,000 medical professionals. The hospital has more than 2,800 beds and annually discharges about 106,001 patients. Additionally, more than 4 million outpatients are treated in the hospitals six outpatient departments. Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences was reset up in May 2008 to boost the clinical research of Guangdong and ultimately merged with the hospital. Affiliates include Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Geriatric Institute, Guangdong Mental Health Institute, Guangdong Eye Institute, Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute and Guangdong Neuroscience Institute. Moreover, the hospital has strong capacity in medical treatment, rehabilitation, teaching and research. To learn more, please visit: http://www.gdghospital.org.cn/EN About OmniComm Systems, Inc. OmniComm Systems, Inc. is a leading strategic software solutions provider to the life sciences industry. OmniComm is dedicated to helping the worlds pharmaceutical, biotechnology, contract research organizations, diagnostic and device firms, and academic medical centers maximize the value of their clinical research investments. Through the use of innovative and progressive technologies, these organizations drive efficiency in clinical development, better manage risks, ensure regulatory compliance and manage clinical operations performance. With extensive global experience from more than 5,000 clinical trials, OmniComm provides comprehensive solutions for clinical research. For more information, please visit: www.omnicomm.com Trademarks OmniComm, TrialMaster, TrialOne, and Promasys are registered trademarks of OmniComm Systems, Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. New York, NY, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lime Brokerage (Lime), a Wedbush company, is pleased to announce that its final stage of rebranding is complete, with the launch of the new LimeBrokerage.com. The look and feel of the new site provides clients a more user-friendly interface, new tools, and the visibility reflective of a leader in the FinTech space. In partnership with Wedbush Securities Marketing Team, the site was designed and developed by Los Angeles-based design firm, Ludlow and Kingsley. The new website better aligns with the forward strides in branding over the last year to reflect Lime Brokerage as, first and foremost, a pioneer in the Fintech industry. The look and feel of the new website espouses Limes ethos as a technology firm, epitomizing its mission to supply clients with an intelligent trading platform that promotes high-performance, with risk mitigation as a central consideration. Lime Brokerages new website reflects our expertise in providing customized solutions with exceptional reliability and scalability to all our clients, states Tony Huck, President and COO of Lime Brokerage We look to build upon our successes as a Fintech firm by providing a brand experience that is authentic to our company values and best serves the needs of our clients. Lime Brokerage CMO, Sarah Gosler adds, The new site is very much focused on the functionality of the user experience, and it serves as the finishing touch in the cohesiveness of the Lime brand. Lime invites you to visit www.limebrokerage.com to find latest industry news, and a comprehensive overview of the customized products and services the firm provides, to best meet your FinTech challenges. About Lime Brokerage Lime Brokerage offers the industrys most advanced trading technologies and execution services, providing systematic traders access to automated, high-volume electronic trading markets. Limes systems provide exceptional reliability and scalability with leading low latency. Developed to handle the demands of the automated and electronic trading community, Limes technology caters to a diverse and sophisticated client base. The result is a robust, highly reliable, agency-only system that includes market data and trading platforms. It allows clients to trade efficiently and anonymously across all major lit and dark market venues. Follow us on Twitter: @LimeBrokerage # # # About WEDBUSH, Inc. WEDBUSH, Inc. is a leading financial services and investment firm that, through its holdings, provides private and institutional brokerage, investment banking, equity research, fixed income, clearing, sponsored-access and execution, private capital, commercial banking, and asset management, to individual, institutional, and issuing clients. Founded in 1955, the firm's largest holding, Wedbush Securities, is one of the largest full-service investment banking and brokerage firms headquartered in the western United States, with nearly 100 offices nationwide. WEDBUSH is devoted to delivering its clients dedicated service, financial safety, continuity, and advanced technology. Follow us on Twitter @Wedbush. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a4d3ff4d-c15b-4910-a796-9a05a6a8bcfd HOUSTON, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TPC Group Inc. today announced that it will post its results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 on its website on Wednesday, May 10 at 1 p.m. EDT (noon CDT) and that it will host a conference call for holders of its 8.75 percent senior secured notes, analysts and prospective investors on Thursday, May 11 at 10 a.m. EDT (9 a.m. CDT). Financial results and conference call details will be available to current bondholders and prospective investors who register on the Investor section of TPC Groups website: www.tpcgrp.com. About TPC Group TPC Group Inc. is a leading producer of value-added products derived from niche petrochemical raw materials, such as C4 hydrocarbons, and provider of critical infrastructure and logistics services along the Gulf Coast. TPC Group sells its products into a wide range of performance, specialty and intermediate segments, including synthetic rubber, fuels, lubricant additives, plastics and surfactants. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, with an operating history of more than 70 years, TPC Group has manufacturing facilities in the industrial corridor adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel and in Port Neches, Texas, and operates a product terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana. For more information, visit TPC Group's website at www.tpcgrp.com. Long-time Dearborn resident Peggy Richard has made a career out of throwing events and bringing people together, be it in her former role as Director of Events for Dearborn Chamber of Commerce, her current role as PR Director for DFCU Financial. But for 2017, Peggy wanted to do something different; she wanted to get involved on a personal level and do something on her own. So much so, in fact, that she made it her New Year's resolution to do just that. And after just four months, Peggy will have made good on that resolution. On Sunday, April 30, members of the community are invited to an informal sitdown with Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad for a coffee chat at the Starbucks in west downtown Dearborn. It's an opportunity for residents to ask questions or have a simple conversation with the chief. The event is called Cops and Coffee and runs from 2 to 3 p.m.Peggy organized the event to help facilitate conversation between the community and its police force."We don't want anyone to be intimidated to speak," says Peggy. "It's just sitting around a coffee shop like people do all the time and having a conversation."Peggy has lived in Dearborn for over two decades, and both she and her husband have spent most of their careers here, she says. Rather than send their child to private school, the Richard family sent their daughter to the city's public schools to expose her to the city's great diversity of people, which is something Peggy loves about Dearborn.It was a conversation between mother and daughter that helped spur the Cops and Coffee event. Peggy had been speaking a lot with her daughter about the Black Lives Matter movement, and they had participated in the demonstrations at Detroit Metro Airport together following President Trump's first immigration ban. But Peggy wants people to appreciate police officers, too. She says she believes there's potential understanding from simply talking with one another."I want people to know they can feel safe in this community," says Peggy. "We have so many great things in common."Got a development news story to share? Email MJ Galbraith here or send him a tweet @mikegalbraith Bam: Submit to democracy, let people choose their barangay, SK leaders Let people choose their barangay and youth leaders. Sen. Bam Aquino issued this statement as he called for an extension for the voters registration of the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections, which is set to end on April 29. "Importante na ang mamamamayan ang pipili ng kanilang mga pinuno sa barangay at Sangguniang Kabataan," said Sen. Bam. Sen. Bam stressed that government should investigate and prosecute barangay officials involved in the illegal drug trade and launch an information drive to help the people make an informed choice. "Huwag nating alisin sa ating mga kababayan ang karapatang mamili ng mga susunod na lider ng kanilang mga komunidad," Sen. Bam stated. "While we are open to issuing a hold-over status for previously elected barangay officials, let's make sure our SK elections push through," he added. Sen. Bam maintained that the reforms passed under Republic Act No. 10742 or the SK Reform Act will go for naught if the SK elections will be postponed again. "Sayang naman ang mga reporma na pinagpaguran ng kabataan at mga mambabatas kung hindi na naman matutuloy ang SK elections," Sen. Bam, who pushed for the law's passage as co-author and co-sponsor in the 16th Congress during his time as chairman of the Committee on Youth. The SK Reform Act is the first legislation in the country with an anti-dynasty provision. It prohibits relatives of elected officials up to 2nd civil degree of consanguinity or affinity from seeking SK posts. The law adjusts age limit of SK officials from 15-17 to 18-24 years old, making them legally capable of entering into contracts and be held accountable and liable for their actions. The law also requires SK officials to undergo leadership training programs to expose them to the best practices in governance and guide their development as leaders. Press Release April 27, 2017 STATEMENT OF SEN. LEILA M. DE LIMA ON THE FILING OF MURDER CHARGES AGAINST TWO POLICE OFFICERS IMPLICATED IN THE KILLING OF BERTESES I commend the Pasay City Prosecutor's Office for the indictment of PO2 Alipio Balo Jr. and PO1 Michael Tomas for their role in last year's murder of JP Bertes and his father, Renato, inside the Pasay City Jail for their alleged involvement to illegal drug trade. When the Senate Justice Committee which I formerly chaired led the investigation into the killing of the Berteses, among others, it found out glaring evidence that these two police officers did not only blatantly ignore the standard operating procedures in arresting suspected drug offenders but also deliberately and permanently silenced the Berteses to cover up their own involvement in the illegal drug trade themselves. While we should continue to support the fight against illegal drug trafficking in the country, there should never be a trade-off between law enforcement and the rule of law. Our police authorities should strictly adhere to the rights of the accused, including but not limited to due process of law and the presumption of innocence, as guaranteed by the Constitution even to suspected criminals. Our government must, however, step up its efforts in resolving several other cases involving extrajudicial and summary killings and imposing strictest penalties, including imprisonment, especially against erring and abusive law enforcers. We need to send a strong signal that any police excesses will never go unpunished. Press Release April 27, 2017 GORDON CALLS ON FILIPINOS: BE A MODERN-DAY LAPU-LAPU, FIGHT THE INVASION OF ILLEGAL DRUGS, KILLINGS AND OTHER CRIMES As the nation commemorates the 496th anniversary of the Battle of Mactan, Senator Richard J. Gordon called on Filipinos to be modern-day Lapu-Lapus and fight harder to free the country from illegal drugs, killings, corruption and other crimes. Gordon pointed out that Lapu-Lapu, the ruler of Mactan, was the first Asian to defeat the colonial invaders from the West after he and his warriors overpowered and defeated a Spanish force fighting for Rajah Humabon of Cebu, under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in the battle. "Lapu-Lapu, even 496 years ago, refused to be cowed into bowing to the colonial invaders and instead fearlessly chose to battle with them. He and his warriors defeated the invaders despite their superior weapons. His monument in Bagumbayan or Rizal Park has even been tagged as Asia's Sentinel of Freedom. Hence, like Lapu-Lapu, we must rise up against illegal drugs, killings, corruption and other crimes that have invaded our country. Let us borrow courage from Lapu-Lapu and ensure that we defeat the invaders," he said. In a related development, Gordon has filed a bill proposing to change the rays of the sun on the Philippine flag from eight to nine to symbolize the community of Muslim leaders who defended the country throughout history. "With their bravery, our Muslim heroes left an imprint on national history that, at the very least, must be given due recognition in the most heraldic item of national importance the Philippine flag. They are our forgotten heroes, and through this proposal we seek to inculcate in the minds and hearts of our people a just pride in their native Muslim brothers who sacrificed their lives for the country's freedom," he said. The Philippine flag is designed with the mythical sun (with a face) common to many former Spanish colonies; the triangle of Masonry; and three stars representing the three major geographical divisions of the country: Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. The eight rays represent the first eight provinces that revolted and were placed under martial law by the Spaniards during the start of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, namely: Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Manila, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, and Tarlac. Aside from Lapu-Lapu, among the most valiant soldiers were Sultan Kudarat, who united the Muslim clans in Cotobato, Lanao, and Basilan, and ruled for 50 years. He led many raids and battles against the Spanish from 1634 up to 1668 and inspired the Maranaos to oppose the building of a Spanish fort near Lake Lanao. There was also the story of Sirongan, the Rajah of Buayan, who successfully pushed back the enemy into the coast of Rio Grande, thwarting the first Spanish attempt to colonize Buayan. There were Kaliph Pulaka, Datu Amai Pakpak, Kapitan Laut Buisan, Sultan Jamalu'l Alani, Sultan Muwallil Wasit, Paduka Batara and Panginan Sarikula, who all fearlessly led their men in battles against the Spanish. "I first filed this bill in 2009 as a unifying piece of legislation. Filipino Muslims were the first to fight foreign invaders and this bill seeks to give them due recognition as we have recognized heroes from other regions who valiantly fought foreign invaders. We almost got the bill passed in the Fourteenth Congress, it was passed on the third reading in the Senate and the second reading in the House of Representatives. I hope it will finally be passed into law this Congress," Gordon said. Las Vegas, Nevada, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Praxsyn Corporation (OTCQB: PXYN) is pleased to announce the promotion of Stephanie Kaitz to the position of Financial Controller. Praxsyns Chief Executive Officer, Greg Sundem, commented, Stephanie has always been a person who can get things done in the office. Stephanie brings a strong cash management skill set to her new role, and is working closely with our auditing firm to finalize our financial reporting and will keep our filings current in the future. I am thrilled to have her on our team and that she made the move to Nevada as we continue to work on efficiencies and a broader sales base. Stephanie will be a key asset in our continued expansion. Kimberly Brooks, Praxsyns Secretary and General Counsel, commented, Stephanie has been an integral part of the company for the past three years and has been an amazing employee. She has worked her way up the ladder starting in Data Entry all the way up to Director of Operations for both subsidiaries. It is an honor and a joy to work with her in the companys new pharmacy endeavor in Las Vegas. Stephanie has over 15 years of accounting experience, including acting as an accounting manager at a real estate firm and credit counseling firm. Most recently, Stephanie worked for the company as the Director of Operations for both Mesa Pharmacy, Inc. and Nevada Health Rx, Inc. Stephanie earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Business Administration and a Masters of Arts degree in Management from the University of Redlands in Redlands, California. Justin Cary is no longer acting in his position as Chief Financial Officer of Praxsyn or any of its subsidiaries, and Stephanie shall take over all of his job duties, including, but not limited to, oversight of the financial reporting, accounts payable and receivable, and cash management. About Praxsyn Corporation Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, Praxsyn Corporation is a holding company that finds solutions to fit the needs and goals of medical professionals and their patients. Both Nevada Health Rx and Mesa Pharmacy work to realize the vision of medical professionals to improve the lives of their patients. Additional company information can be found at www.praxsyn.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements made in this press release are forward-looking in nature (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) including but not limited to statements in this press release regarding hiring a new financial controller, and thus accordingly, are subject to risks and uncertainties. The actual results may differ materially from those described or contemplated and consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in the reports as have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BOCA RATON, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Q.E.P. CO., INC. (OTC:QEPC.PK) announced today the acquisition and asset purchase of several companies. Q.E.P. Co., Inc. has acquired from GCP Applied Technologies Inc. certain of the U.S. based assets that they acquired with Halex Corporation, a supplier of tack strip and underlayment flooring products. Halex had been one of the leaders in this technology and products for a number of years. Q.E.P. Co., Inc. has assumed the leased locations in Ontario, California and Bensalem, Pennsylvania as manufacturing and distribution sites for the Halex products. Lewis Gould, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Q.E.P. Co., Inc. commented: The addition of these products for our industrial and distribution channels enhances Q.E.P.s product line as category leaders in the floor covering and installation business. For further information please participate in our investor conference call which will be held at the end of May, 2017 to discuss these acquisitions and our year-end earnings. In addition, Q.E.P. Co., Inc. has acquired AC Products Co. of Apple Creek, Ohio, a prime manufacturer of ceramic bathroom accessories. AC Products is one of the premier American manufacturers creating these handcrafted bathroom accessories not only for the distributor market but also Home Centers. AC Products is located in the heart of an area that has artisans paying great attention to the quality of the product line. Lewis Gould commented: We are pleased to add these American made products to our ever expanding product offering. The addition of AC Products gives Q.E.P. an opportunity to enter into new marketplaces and customers. These handmade products have the ability to allow Q.E.P. to expand the product line using AC Products ceramic technology to manufacture a wider variety of products and use Q.E.P.s distribution, marketing and selling abilities to rapidly grow this company. In addition, Q.E.P. Co., Inc. has acquired certain of the assets of Southern Cross Building Products. This company was a nationwide distributor of a number of products complementary to those of Q.E.P. for distribution in the Home Center channel. Lewis Gould commented: The addition of Southern Cross Building Products to our family of companies has enhanced our ability to penetrate new markets, add new products and generally revitalize areas of our business. The terms of the transactions are confidential. Q.E.P. Co., Inc., founded in 1979, is a world class, worldwide provider of innovative, quality and value-driven flooring and industrial solutions. As a leading worldwide manufacturer, marketer and distributor QEP delivers a comprehensive line of hardwood and laminate flooring, flooring installation tools, adhesives and flooring related products targeted for the professional installer as well as the do-it-yourselfer. In addition the company provides industrial tools with cutting edge technology to all of the industrial trades. Under brand names including QEP, ROBERTS, Capitol, HarrisWood, Fausfloor, Homelux, TileRite, Nupla, HISCO, Ludell, Vitrex, Plasplugs, PRCI, Porta-Nails, Tomecanic, Benetiere and Elastiment, the Company markets over 7,000 products. The Company sells its products to home improvement retail centers, specialty distribution outlets, municipalities and industrial solution providers in 50 states and throughout the world. The Planning Commission is expected to weigh in Thursday on the highly charged fight over how much affordable housing builders should be required to include in market-rate developments. But before the hearing could even start, a pregame skirmish broke out over whether one of the seven commissioners should be allowed to vote. Critics say that Christine Johnson, one of four commissioners appointed by Mayor Ed Lee, should recuse herself because she recently took a job with SPUR, the urban think tank that mostly, but not always, takes positions favored by the citys development community. Johnson told Lee in February that she planned to step down from the commission, but she agreed to stay on until the mayor found a replacement. In the meantime, she sought the advice of City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who sources say has determined that there is no conflict that would prevent Johnson from voting on the affordable housing policy legislation. In an unusual act, the San Francisco Ethics Commission on Monday voted to send a letter asking that Johnson recuse herself. The vote was taken despite the action being a violation of the Brown Act, which regulates open meeting laws for legislative bodies in California. Under the Brown Act, those bodies are forbidden from taking action on items not on the agenda the Johnson matter was not on the agenda. During the hearing, Commissioners Peter Keane and Quentin Kopp both said the Brown Act violation was justified because with the Planning Commission vote Thursday it was imperative the letter be sent right away. Ethics Commission Executive Director LeeAnn Pelham cautioned the commission against violating open-meeting laws, suggesting individual commissioners write personal letters to Johnson. Those letters would get the same message across without compromising the commissions commitment to open government processes, which we do believe is important, of course. Johnson did not return calls or emails, but sources said she would release a statement Thursday at the Planning Commission meeting. As for the inclusionary housing vote, it pits a group of moderate supervisors London Breed, Katy Tang and Ahsha Safai against stalwarts of the progressive wing Aaron Peskin and Jane Kim. The vote is a follow-up trailing ordinance triggered by Proposition C from June 2016, which required developers to make 25 percent of units affordable. Peskin and Kim favor a law that requires developers of big projects to designate 24 percent of rental units as affordable 15 percent for low-income earners and 9 percent for moderate-income earners. Breed, Safai and Tang want to require builders to make 18 percent of on-site units affordable, but want to make a higher percentage of units available to moderate-income households. Planning staff support the more moderate plan, which is in keeping with a city controller report on the percentage of affordable units that is economically feasible given the cost of land, labor, materials and capital. We agree with the controllers analysis, which we think was a solid piece of work, said Planning Director John Rahaim. We have had a number of developers say that 25 percent doesnt work, that its too high. J.K. Dineen Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider, @sfjkdineen This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As a San Francisco sheriffs deputy taped an eviction notice on the door of a Bernal Heights artists collective, residents shuffled out with their essentials: blankets, clothes, laptops and toothbrushes. Most of them did not know where they were going next. I feel defeated, said resident Tony Burgess, as he gathered up his shoes to put into a cardboard box. Their removal was one of the first court-ordered evictions carried out in a San Francisco artist collective since a deadly fire broke out at the Ghost Ship, a disheveled Oakland warehouse that housed artists and musicians amidst makeshift stairs and other jury-rigged structures. That fire, which killed 36 people, spread a jolt of alarm among landlords and fire and safety regulators around the Bay Area, leading to a rash of inspections of shared warehouse spaces. Some tenants departed their homes under pressure by landlords without official action. ALSO Survivors of Oakland halfway house fire file lawsuit Artists flock to these spaces as a refuge from the citys expensive and competitive real-estate market, seeking venues where they can live and work for an affordable price. The artists at the warehouse on Peralta Avenue, known as Bernalhaus, received a notice to vacate shortly after the Dec. 2 fire. The note contended that the space south of Cortland Avenue, near the Highway 101-Interstate 280 interchange was used only commercially, not as a living space. Commercial leases in California can be terminated with 30 days notice. The warehouses occupants say they lived there with the landlords knowledge for years. Under California law, residences, even illegal ones, have protections against evictions that business tenants lack. The tenants argued against the landlords unlawful detainer action in court and sought to place the unit under rent control, which would give them more protections. But on Wednesday, as the decision on rent control was still pending before the San Francisco Rent Board, seven deputies carried out the eviction. Hillary Ronen, a San Francisco city supervisor whose district includes Bernal Heights, was surprised to hear of the incident. There are several legal processes that are still not finished, she said. While we must make sure that people are safe, we have to do everything to prevent displacement. The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire. The supervisors called for a plan to address safety concerns in such spaces while minimizing displacement of their occupants. Shortly after the December notice, resident Nathan Cottam said he and his fellow residents spent about $20,000 to bring the warehouse up to fire code. They added windows and smoke alarms to every sleeping area and created an extra exit door. Joanna Kozubal, an attorney for the owner of the building, could not be reached for comment. The warehouse is also the site of a planned 49-unit apartment complex valued at $7 million. Its developer applied for a permit in July, leading the people who live there to believe their landlord is trying to get them out to make room for the new building. Back in December, eight people lived in the brightly painted building, which was a melange of bedrooms, a sound studio and a dance studio. Guitars and pieces of pyrography hang on the walls of the multiple common areas with couches, where the residents frequently hung out together. Some of the residents, like 42-year-old Cottam, built rooms out of empty space in the warehouse. He laid cork on the dusty floors and added a bed, some couches and a rug. Cottam, a dance instructor, also built a mini-ballet floor out of reclaimed poplar wood for space to practice. Cottam said he moved in the space about three years ago because it was the only thing he could afford. It was a place where he could both live and run his dance business on a tight budget, he said. On Wednesday, as Cottam and his housemates waited for the deputies to show up and carry out the eviction, most of the artwork on the walls was gone. Some rooms were emptied out, and residents were slowly loading up a U-Haul truck. While a handyman changed the houses locks part of the official eviction procedure the residents watched in the misty rain as they were permanently shut out of their home. Chronicle staff writer Michael Bodley contributed to this report. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Wells Fargo branches across the country deliberately targeted undocumented immigrants to open savings and checking accounts in order to meet aggressive sales goals, according to court documents. In sworn declarations obtained by Burlingame plaintiffs attorney Joseph Cotchett, former employees describe a scheme in which Spanish-speaking colleagues would visit places they knew were frequented by immigrants (including construction sites and a 7-Eleven), drive them to a branch and persuade them to open an account. Some employees would give the immigrants $10 apiece to start an account. The events described in the declaration go back a decade. The conduct we have come up with is scandalous, Cotchett said. Its outrageous to think that regulators let the bank get away with this. The alleged scheme appears consistent with earlier reports of a runaway sales culture at Wells Fargo, where branch employees faced pressure to meet high sales quotas. But it raises fresh questions about whether bank employees merely deceived customers by opening accounts in their names or further crossed a line. Under federal law, banks must verify the identities of customers. The declarations offer no evidence that Wells Fargo skirted those requirements. These allegations are inconsistent with our policies, values and the relationships we work hard to build with all parts of our community, company spokesman Ancel Martinez said in an email. Wells Fargo has long been committed to providing banking services to immigrants in a manner that complies fully with the law, and we have controls in place to ensure we comply with requirements. These assertions are offensive, because they run counter to the expectations of Wells Fargo, and would be a violation of policies we have in place to safeguard against abuses, he said. But given Wells Fargos well-documented rush to hit sales goals, experts say its quite possible that employees did not follow procedures. In any case, targeting immigrants to hit sales goals should have raised red flags among the banks many compliance and risk officers, banking experts said. The crude nature of the bank employees actions suggests that the bank was more interested in opening accounts than doing the necessary due diligence and sincerely wanting to help immigrants with their financial needs, said Clifford Rossi, a former chief risk officer at Citigroups consumer lending unit who now teaches finance at the University of Maryland. Its hard for me to think that they were trying to do the right thing, he said. The documents were filed Wednesday as part of a shareholder lawsuit filed by Cotchett in San Francisco Superior Court against Wells Fargos top executives. Last year, the San Francisco banking giant admitted that thousands of employees created up to 2 million fraudulent accounts in the names of real consumers without their consent. Wells Fargo ultimately fired CEO John Stumpf and paid $185 million in fines. A report commissioned by the board of directors concluded that the banks aggressive culture pressured employees to commit fraud. But the report absolved the directors of any wrongdoing, blaming Stumpf for failing to detect the fraud and inform the board. Cotchetts lawsuit specifically targets the board, arguing the directors were negligent and violated their fiduciary duty to shareholders. If they didnt know about (the fraud), then they are at least incompetent, Cotchett said. At Wells Fargos annual shareholders meeting Tuesday, the directors all won re-election, though narrowly in some cases. The latest accusations add a twist to the Wells Fargo scandal, as it suggests a level of sophistication and coordination among employees at disparate branches that the company has not previously acknowledged. The board report, for example, does not mention any acknowledged fraud involving immigrants. Under the USA Patriot and Bank Secrecy acts, banks must develop a customer identification program that would give them reasonable assurance that account holders are who they say they are. Undocumented immigrants can open accounts, as long as they have an address, drivers license and Individual Taxpayer Identification Number from the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS grants such numbers, akin to Social Security numbers, without regard to immigration status. Some banks also accept foreign passports or other forms of identification, like Mexicos matricula consular. Wells Fargo said it accepted such consular cards as a form of identification. We have no indication that consular card customers were disparately impacted among the 2 million accounts we analyzed that may have been unauthorized, Martinez said. In his declaration, Denny Russo, who worked at Wells Fargo from 2008 to 2011, said the branch manager told employees of Latino descent to corral Hispanic day laborers who would gather at a 7-Eleven store in Petaluma. The Wells Fargo employees were instructed to round up a group of the undocumented workers and drive them back to the Wells Fargo branch to open up checking and savings accounts in exchange for waiving check-cashing fees that the day laborers would otherwise have to pay, Russo said. My colleagues constantly went to and from this location to try to meet their sales goals, he said. Based on discussions with other Wells Fargo employees and managers, I was aware that these practices ... were also widespread throughout the state of California. In her declaration, Kelsey Hess, who worked as a teller in Draper, Utah, from 2013 to 2014, described a similar scheme in which employees would target immigrants at construction sites and a nearby Coca-Cola plant. Many of the factory workers could not have bank accounts because of their immigration status, Hess said. With management permission, tellers promised to give the factory workers cash to sign up new accounts. Julia Miller, who worked as Wells Fargo branch manager in Macungie, Pa., described Hit the Streets Thursday, in which bankers and tellers of Latino descent were told to patrol the streets and local security offices for new potential clients and ... get them into local branches and pressure them into opening new accounts, according to her declaration. Banks in the past have courted Latino immigrants, who are often unbanked and who represent a potential rich pool of new customers. Fifty-three percent of Mexican immigrants and 37 percent of other Latin American immigrants are unbanked, compared with 20 percent of immigrants from Asia and 17 percent from Europe, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. Winning new customers is very difficult; to do so, banks will either open new branches or acquire competitors for their customers, said Mike Arnold, co-owner of Alco Partners, a consulting firm that advises financial institutions on risk management. But once you get a customer, that person is unlikely to change banks because of the inconvenience of closing down an account and opening a new one, he said. The stickiness of the customer is what makes them real valuable, said Arnold, a former executive at Citigroup and Bank of America. But Arnold said he has never heard of a bank targeting immigrants living in the country without legal permission. The risk to the banks reputation and operations would be severe, he said, if Wells Fargo did not make sure employees complied with identity-verification rules. Many immigrants who entered or remain in the country without authorization avoid mainstream financial institutions, and experts say it hard to believe Wells Fargo employees were able to overcome their fear of banks during these round-ups. Undocumented immigrants are also concerned that banks will share their information with immigration officials, or that they wouldnt be able to access their funds if they are deported, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Va. This is a real fear among undocumented immigrants and a potentially high barrier to overcome, because it could mean the difference between staying and working in the United States (and sending money back home) and being forced to leave the country, the report said. Richard George, a San Francisco-based principal of the Bank Experts Group, a firm that provides expert court testimony to financial institutions, said he has never heard of a bank targeting immigrants living in the country without permission in order to meet sales goals. But that it happened at Wells Fargo seems about right, said George, a former executive at Citibank and consultant at McKinsey & Co. It doesnt surprise me that some enterprising branch manager under pressure to meet sales goals would come up with all sorts of ways to open new accounts, George said. Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate President Trumps tax proposal for individuals would give California taxpayers some tax breaks but take away others. Without more details, its impossible to say what the net effect would be, but here are a few things we can surmise from the bare-bones plan released Wednesday. Taking away the itemized deduction for state and local income and property taxes would hurt people in high-tax states such as California more than those in low-tax states. High-tax states tend to be blue or Democratic-leaning. This could put pressure on states to cut taxes, because they would no longer be subsidized by the federal government. On the other hand, Trumps plan to kill the alternative minimum tax would offset, to an extent, the loss of the state and local tax deduction. Thats because state and local taxes are not deductible under the AMT. For people subject to AMT, losing the state and local tax deduction while escaping from AMT could be a wash. Again, the AMT hits people in high-tax states more than low-tax ones. The Trump plan could, at the margin, make renting a home more attractive financially than buying one. Even though the plan would retain the mortgage interest deduction, it also would double the standard deduction, so fewer taxpayers would itemize deductions. As a result, fewer people would benefit from the mortgage interest deduction, although those with Bay Area-size mortgages probably would. Doubling the standard deduction and killing the property tax deduction would effectively nullify the current tax benefits of owning a home for the vast majority of tax filers, and could cause home values to plummet, the National Association of Realtors said in a press release. Trumps plan to kill the estate tax would help Californians, who pay a disproportionately large share of the tax. The plan, which also included corporate tax cuts, was announced Wednesday in a one-page document and press briefing by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Director Gary Cohn. It would create three tax rates for individuals 10, 25 and 35 percent. Thats a little different than the 12, 25 and 33 percent rates Trump proposed during his campaign. Today, there are seven brackets, ranging from 10 to 39.6 percent. Cohn and Mnuchin would not say what income those rates would apply to. Nor did they say what would happen to the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax that applies to incomes over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single), but Trump in the past has proposed axing it. Long-term capital gains and dividends would be taxed at a top rate of 20 percent, doing away with the 3.8 percent Medicare surcharge that high-income people pay on investment income over certain amounts. All itemized deductions, except for mortgage interest and charitable contributions, would go away. This includes the deductions for state and local income and property taxes, medical expenses and miscellaneous items. The plan would double the standard deduction. That would take it to $25,400 for married couples and to $12,700 for singles. Today, about 40 percent of households dont pay any federal tax, so lowering tax rates or increasing the standard deduction wont help them, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow with the Tax Policy Center, a think tank. About 70 percent of households take the standard deduction. To itemize under Trumps plan, a married couple would need more than $25,400 in mortgage interest and charitable donations combined. The interest on a $600,000 mortgage at 4 percent interest works out to around $23,000 the first couple of years. The plan is mum on the personal exemption, which lets households deduct $4,050 per person. During the campaign, Trump proposed eliminating it, in connection with doubling the standard deduction. More on Tax Plan White House unveils dramatic plan to overhaul tax code in... The proposal would kill the vexing alternative minimum tax. People calculate their tax under the regular system and under the alternative system and pay whichever is higher. National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has been imploring Congress to repeal this nightmare for 15 years. Trump would repeal the estate tax, which affects the portion of estates that exceeds about $5.5 million per person. In 2015, the tax brought in $17.1 billion, of which 26 percent came from California, even though California accounts for only 12 percent of the U.S. population. The plan would retain deductions for retirement savings, but said nothing about a host of other deductions that can be taken even if taxpayers do not itemize. These above-the-line deductions include such things as student loan interest, college tuition and fees, educator expenses and certain moving expenses. It also says nothing about a bevy of tax credits available to individuals, including the earned income and child tax credits. I have not seen any proposals to eliminate those, so presumably theyre safe, said Kyle Pomerleau, director of federal projects with the Tax Foundation, a research organization. Trump proposed cutting all business taxes to 15 percent. This would affect companies large and small, including pass-through entities such as partnerships, limited liability companies and sole proprietorships. These entities pay no tax at the corporate level. Instead, the owners pay tax on their share of the profits at their individual tax rates. A 15 percent business rate could create incentives for employees, who under the plan would be taxed at rates up to 35 percent, to become independent contractors, and pay just 15 percent. Mnuchin said the administration would work with Congress to prevent that from happening, but didnt say how. Keith Hall, CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed, doesnt see how to create a tax that applied to sole proprietors but not freelancers or independent contractors. Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender Key points of Trumps tax plan For individuals: Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Reduces the number of tax brackets from seven to three 10, 25 and 35 percent Eliminates the 3.8 percent Medicare surcharge that wealthy people pay on investment income over certain amounts Eliminates itemized deductions, except for mortgage interest and charitable contributions Doubles the standard deduction Kills the federal estate tax Does away with federal alternative minimum tax Provides unspecified tax relief for households with child and dependent care expenses For businesses: Reduces the top corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent Reduces the maximum tax rate on pass-through business income to 15 percent from 39.6 percent Moves to a territorial tax system, which would exempt business income earned outside the United States from U.S. tax Allows companies to repatriate foreign untaxed earnings at a reduced, but unspecified, rate This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Francisco judge dismissed the majority of the criminal charges against a man who was shot during a video-recorded confrontation with city police officers at his Ocean View home in January, the public defenders office said Wednesday. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ross ruled Tuesday that prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to proceed to jury trial on eight of the 10 charges filed against 43-year-old Sean Moore, who was seriously wounded in the Jan. 6 incident. The charges that were dropped include assaulting a peace officer, making criminal threats and resisting arrest. Moore, who remains in jail, still faces one count of battering an officer and one count of violating a restraining order that had been filed by a neighbor. Public Defender Jeff Adachi called for District Attorney George Gascon to drop the case entirely. Max Szabo, a spokesman for the district attorneys office, said another judge who presided over a three-day preliminary hearing of the evidence had found there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial on almost every charge. Ross made his ruling after the public defenders office filed a motion challenging the earlier decision. Yesterday, another judge that reviewed the transcripts from that hearing came to a very different conclusion, Szabo said. As such, we are weighing our options. The incident began when Officers Kenneth Cha and Colin Patino tried to speak to Moore through a locked gate about a suspected restraining order violation at about 4:15 a.m. Moore, whose family said he suffers from mental illness, responded by yelling profanities at the officers and telling them to leave. The shooting was the first to be captured on the departments new body-worn cameras, but the footage yielded dueling narratives about what happened and should have happened. Authorities said the footage showed Moore reacting violently, prompting the officers to deploy pepper spray and use a baton to strike him. When he reacted to the use of the less-lethal weapons by kicking Patino in the face and punching him, Cha fired his gun twice, police said. The public defenders office said the footage showed the officers escalating a situation that could have been resolved peacefully, with Moore acting in self-defense against officers who were not acting lawfully. This (ruling) is extraordinarily significant in that it demonstrates that the majority of these charges were unfounded, Adachi said at a news conference. 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. Deputy Public Defender Brian Pearlman, who represents Moore, said the judge validated his argument that the officers should have left Moores home after he said, Get off my stairs. They ended up escalating the situation, he said. And now you have a victim of police violence sitting in jail. Police officials declined to comment on the ruling. Earlier, police said the officers had used great restraint in dealing with a large suspect with an unknown object in his hand. They released a photo of Patino with his face bloodied from a blow to the nose. Adachi said the Moore case revealed shortcomings in investigations by the district attorneys office into police shootings. In September, Mayor Ed Lee approved a final round of funding for a unit that would allow Gascons office to take over the lead in the investigations from the Police Department. During the preliminary hearing, Adachi said, Judge Ethan Schulman said he was troubled to see that statements by Cha and Patino describing the shooting were nearly identical. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo Five years after allegedly shooting and killing seven people at Oaklands Oikos University, One Goh, 48, appeared Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court, saying little before being taken back to the locked psychiatric center where hes been held since the grisly crime. A judge ordered him to return to the courtroom at 9 a.m. Tuesday to enter a plea and set a trial date. Goh pleaded not guilty to seven counts of murder in 2012, following Oaklands deadliest mass shooting, but the Korean citizen who was studying nursing at the college was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. Recently, court-appointed doctors said Gohs mental capacity had been restored and his case could proceed, according to David Klaus, Gohs attorney and deputy public defender. We dont know at this point, Klaus said as to whether Goh will again enter a not-guilty plea. ALSO BART seeks arrest warrants after identifying teens in mob robbery Investigators believe Goh plotted to kill an administrator at Oikos University when he was unable to get his tuition back after withdrawing from classes. The administrator, unbeknown to him, had left her job shortly after he dropped out. Goh walked onto the school campus April 2, 2012, with a .45-caliber handgun, took the school receptionist hostage before fatally shooting her and six students, and wounding three others, authorities said. He then took a car belonging to one of his victims and drove to a nearby Alameda store before surrendering himself to store employees who contacted police, according to authorities. Oikos University is a small, private Christian school near the Oakland airport that has a vocational-nursing program and offers courses in music, Bible studies and Asian medicine. Goh was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to Napa State Hospital, a locked psychiatric facility. 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. When they are restored (to competency), they will commonly be kept at the hospital in order to maintain their competence until the case is resolved, Klaus said. In the courtroom, Goh occasionally looked at the court gallery through his dark-rimmed glasses. He spoke only once, softly to the judge, to acknowledge the judges instruction before turning to his interpreter. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Group Ten Metals Inc. (TSX.V:PGE) (FSE:5D32) (the Company or Group Ten) is pleased to announce results from the first phase of drilling conducted on its Black Lake-Drayton gold project in the Rainy River district of northwestern Ontario, and to provide an update on the Companys 2017 exploration plans. Group Ten commenced the initial phase of its planned Black Lake-Drayton exploration activities with a modest, 527-meter diamond drilling program conducted on one 40m long outcropping section on the north-east end of the Moretti Deformation Zone in September and October 2016. This preliminary program, which consisted of seven shallow holes, was designed to test the area directly underneath the Moretti Main Trench where historic bulk samples returned 8,062kg at 14.01 g/t Au and 4,087kg at 18.65 g/t Au, in addition to grab samples up to 1,212 g/t Au and drill intercepts of 0.24m at 190.7g/t and 0.65m at 19.78g/t Au (historic results not independently verified by the Company). These select surface samples are not necessarily representative of the mineralization on the entire target area. All seven holes intersected the targeted zone, with the best intercept being 0.5m at 15.62 g/t Au from 19.2m to 19.7m depth in hole BL_16_01. The remaining six holes intersected quartz veining with anomalous gold values including intercepts of +1m at +1g/t Au in holes BL_16_05 and BL_16_06. The core is now being re-assayed using metallic sieve techniques following the observation of visible gold in hole BL_16_01. The Company is currently planning follow-up activities utilizing exploration strategies developed at neighbouring First Mining Finances Goldlund project and Treasury Metals Goliath project, which share similar geology with Black Lake-Drayton. The 2017 program is anticipated to include additional, wider-spaced drilling to test the remainder of the Moretti Deformation Zone, which is the most advanced of numerous historic targets on the project with work to date defining a 1,500m long by 10 to 30m wide zone of quartz-carbonate vein-hosted gold mineralization. President and CEO Michael Rowley commented, We are pleased to have confirmed the presence of significantly high gold grades previously identified by historic bulk sampling and the effectiveness of our modelling in identifying quality targets. The team is currently finalizing the first technical report encompassing the entire Black Lake-Drayton property, which is expected to generate and prioritize multiple additional exploration targets that will form the basis of our next phase field program. First Minings recent drill results on their adjacent Goldlund property are very encouraging for the area, as is the start of production at Rainy River which New Gold anticipates later this year. In addition to the progress on its Ontario gold project, the Company anticipates announcing further advances with respect to the Catalyst, Spy and Ultra nickel-platinum group metals-copper projects adjacent to Wellgreen Platinum in the Yukon Territory. Results from a sampling program conducted in fall 2016 are expected to be released in May and the 2017 field exploration program, consisting of sampling, geophysics and drilling, are in the final stages of design with commencement anticipated in June. Michael Rowley further notes, The Company has been working diligently on a number of project and corporate initiatives, including prioritizing our field exploration campaign efforts and assessing a number of compelling potential acquisitions in keeping with our business model. We look forward to providing frequent updates over the coming weeks. Black Lake Drayton Project Overview The 8,900 hectare (89 square kilometer or 35 square mile) project includes 30 kilometers of largely untested strike length contiguous with and along strike from First Mining Finances (TSX.V:FF) Goldlund project. Group Ten has consolidated this highly prospective land package via property deals and direct staking from 2012 through present (see April 6, 2017 news release for most recent acquisition). The project includes an archive database with 20 historic occurrences, multiple high-grade bulk samples and over 127 drill holes, in addition to geological, geochemical and geophysical data. Although 43% of past drill holes intercepted gold or copper mineralization, they did not adequately test the mineralized zones which are now better understood in the area. On a regional scale, the project is located in the AbramsMinnitaki Lake greenstone belt which is south of and parallel to the Birch-Uchi belt, another archean greenstone belt that is home to a number of high-grade gold producers including Goldcorps Red Lake mines. Despite its proximity to the Red Lake area and the Birch-Uchi belt, the Abrams-Minnitaki greenstone belt remained underexplored into the 1990s due to persistent ground cover and limited road access. In the past two decades, new roads and improved exploration techniques have led to the delineation of multiple multi-million-ounce high-grade gold reserves on numerous projects in the belt, including Rainy River (New Gold), Goliath (Treasury Metals) and Goldlund (First Mining Finance), among others. Yukon Project Overview Group Tens Yukon assets - the Catalyst/CKR, Spy and Ultra properties represent the premier land position in the Kluane Ultramafic Belt; an emerging world-class region that is highly-prospective for large-scale nickel, platinum group metals and copper mineralization. The projects are located in the southwest Yukon Territory adjoining, and on strike with, the Wellgreen PGM-Ni-Cu deposit, and feature excellent access infrastructure via all-weather roads and the Alaska Highway. About Group Ten Metals Inc. Group Ten Metals Inc. is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of high-quality mineral exploration assets in North America. The Companys core holdings include a large land position adjacent to, and along trend with, Wellgreen Platinums Ni-Cu-PGM project in the southwest Yukon Territory and the Black Lake-Drayton gold project in the Rainy River district of northwest Ontario. On Behalf of the Board of Directors GROUP TEN METALS INC. Michael Rowley Michael Rowley President, CEO & Director info@grouptenmetals.com Tel: (604) 357 4790 TF: (888) 432 0075 Quality Assurance / Quality Control The quality assurance/quality control program for the 2016 drilling program consisted of the submission of duplicate samples and the insertion of certified reference materials and blanks at a rate of approximately one blank or standard for every 10 samples. All gold results were determined using fire assay fusion and an atomic absorption spectroscopy finish by ALS Laboratories in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Dr. E. Max Baker, Ph.D., P.Geo, Project Manager of the Drayton-Black Lake project, is the qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101, and he has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Forward-Looking Statements Statements which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. It is important to note that actual outcomes and the Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, economic, competitive, governmental, environmental and technological factors that may affect the Company's operations, markets, products and prices. Readers should refer to the risk disclosures outlined in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis of its audited financial statements filed with the British Columbia Securities Commission. 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. As a fitting follow-up to Earth Day, on Monday, April 24, at the San Francisco Opera House, the Goldman Environmental Prizes were handed out. The awards go to heroes whose efforts to protect the Earth make a difference. Despite the corporate greed and government corruption that necessitate their struggles as demonstrated in the Mill Valley Film Groups mini-documentaries about each awardee it is reassuring that its possible to make a difference. And when Michael Franti has got the whole audience singing and dancing to Say Hey (I Love You), its euphoric. The winners words always sound radical. Money still speaks louder than the need to protect our environment. This must change, said Australian Wendy Bowman, who fought mining companies (four of the six prizes had to do with fighting mining companies). Prafulla Samantara of India, fighting mining, too, described a model of capitalism which is the cause of global warming and climate change. These activists have not taken to the streets wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Nor has John Goldman, who, on behalf of the Goldman family, warmly welcomed the crowd to the ceremonies and then strongly criticized the current administration: We have been beset with a president who doesnt believe in climate change, he said, and is ready to scrap any and all regulations, as well as cabinet members who put profits over people every day. The mini-doc videos focused on the winners environmental work and were not intended in any way to be a resume or list of professional and educational achievements. They are heroes, but they are human, with everyday lives. At a reception afterward, I spoke with the Samantara family: his wife, Usha, a retired professor of research biology; his daughter, Sushree, who has a Ph.D. in environmental science; Sushrees husband and their child. Samantaras antimining campaigns have required him to spend lengthy periods sharing information with those who would be affected mainly indigenous populations in remote areas. Since childhood, said Sushree, I have been seeing him as an activist. He did not spend time with family. I and my husband have been been telling him to stay home with Mom. But we are feeling proud. KQEDs production of American Masters: Jacques Pepin The Art of Craft had its world premiere at the Castro on Tuesday, April 25. (Its TV debut will air on KQED at 9 p.m. May 26). The event was a lovefest for the 81-year-old chef, who was surrounded by fellow icons of the food community (Roland Passot, Narsai David among them); young chefs he has inspired; a film crew headed by director Peter Stein, who had produced many of the chefs KQED programs; and more than 1,000 just-plain-folks who over the years have feasted on his more than 20 books and 14 TV series. Leah Garchik/San Francisco Chronicle The biggest challenge of making the movie, said Stein at a reception before the screening, is dealing with a very rich life. Pepin began working in the kitchen at 5 years old, went pro at 13, cooked for a firemens ball banquet in France at the age of 16, and came to America at 23. The movie is as much a biography as a celebration of food, he added. His mastery doesnt come out of nowhere. The filmmakers intent was to shine a light on someone who came from another country and changed the culture. The Pepin depicted in the film was in sync with the Pepin who took the stage afterward for a Q&A: likeable, not too impressed with himself, practical, funny. As a young man, he cooked for Charles de Gaulle. He turned down multiple invitations to become White House chef during the Kennedy administration. His series of shows with Julia Child depicts a friendship marked as real friendships are by bantering and rolling of eyes. You come away with the feeling that hes savvy about the camera and his image, but sincere. The event marked the first time hed seen the whole film. I wish my mother, my brother, my dad could be here, he said. And the chef choked up. P.S. Pepin was wearing a mushroom bow tie made for him by his friend Narsai David, who is a tie-making hobbyist. This is a practical bit of chefs gear: It doesnt fall in the soup, said David. Meanwhile, International Dance Day is Saturday, April 29. To the 1 in 10 Americans who dance in front of their mirrors, think of Michael Franti (see above) and take it to the streets. Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @leahgarchik Public Eavesdropping This office is less dysfunctional than my family. Woman working at UC Berkeley, overheard by Mike Palmer So the future may be shaping up to be just as horrible as the pessimists have been predicting, but with a few unexpected twists. Yes, people will become enslaved, but not to governments, but to social media and search-engine companies. And yes, people will be watched and monitored, but not against their will, but with their permission. Theyll just give it all away, freely. The Circle, based on Dave Eggers novel, is as chilling as the most frightening horror movie. Yet the world it depicts is practically our world, just a tiny leap into the near future. Heres a proposal: Lets put together a time capsule and make guesses as to how people 50 years from now will see this movie. My guess is theyll consider it a quaint throwback to when people were still fighting it, before they realized that love is hate, and two plus two equals five, and that the computer in the sky loves us all very much. Directed by James Ponsoldt and adapted by Ponsoldt and Eggers, the movie tells the story of a young woman who goes to work at the Circle, a company thats like a hellish cross between Facebook, Apple and Google. Young Mae (Emma Watson) is thrilled to be welcomed onto the Circles campus. Everyone is so cool. Everyone is so friendly, and everything is so weird. The place is run by its two founders, who, in an inspired bit of casting, are played by the inherently likable Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt. What harm could those guys do? In an early scene, the more extroverted of the two, Eamon (Hanks), does a presentation in an auditorium full of employees. He is wearing egalitarian jeans and a T-shirt, and he introduces the companys new product, as the employees cheer as though at a Pyongyang pep rally. The company will soon be marketing a new camera. It costs next to nothing, and you can wear it. It will record every moment of your life, follow every step and log facial recognition data for everyone you see. Sounds great, right? The story of The Circle is basically about all the events that spring from Maes agreeing to becoming the first person ever to go transparent. Aside from a few timed bathroom breaks, her life is out there, being broadcast and commented upon, all day and every day. And the world is following her. What makes The Circle so valuable is not only that its showing us a ghastly possible path that the world may take, but also that it articulates the mentality that could create and sustain it. According to Eamon, complete transparency strengthens democracy nothing untoward can happen behind closed doors. It enforces morality people tend to be at their worst when theyre sure no one can see them. And anyway, privacy is a form of theft, isnt it? After all, if you have a great experience offline, youre essentially robbing others of the possibility of vicarious participation. This is demented thinking, but it has a certain logic to it, and a shred of truth. Privacy may not be immoral, but it is most definitely subversive, and thus it would have to be classed as immoral by the people in power. Its in privacy that people decide how they really feel and what they really want. The privacy of the masses is the greatest threat to totalitarian control. Outside the enclosure of privacy waits the online goon squad, always ready to reinforce the stupid consensus through an idiotic stream of commentary. The online comments shown here are dead-on and maddening. They are offensive even when theyre friendly, in that they contain the built-in presumption that people have the right to comment on the private lives of strangers. The Circle is very much a plea for the preservation and sanctification of privacy, but its nicely constructed in that no one character expresses the films distinct point of view. Mae remains more technology-friendly than the filmmakers. Meanwhile, her boyfriend (Ellar Coltrane from Boyhood) is an antitechnology absolutist, not at home in the modern world. And Maes parents (Glenne Headly and the late Bill Paxton) seem amiable and lost, trying to mind their own business and create their own safe space. Alas, older people are so naive. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle The Circle Drama. Starring Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt. Directed by James Ponsoldt. (PG-13. 110 minutes.) To see a trailer: https://tinyurl.com/jdgrueg Putting the political dessert before the vegetables, the Trump administration Wednesday announced a plan for massive business and personal tax cuts, but provided only vague indications of how to pay for them. While Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin promised that the tax cut will pay for itself with (economic) growth and with the elimination of different deductions and closing loopholes, he declined to provide any numbers. Today were putting out core principles, he said. The tax reform package, which Trump had promised since early in his 2016 presidential campaign, is about creating jobs and creating economic growth, Mnuchin said at a White House news conference. And thats why massive tax cuts and massive tax reform and simplifying the system is what were going to do. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images The plan calls for slashing the business tax rate to 15 percent from its current 35 percent, and potentially allowing many more small businesses to take advantage of that much reduced rate. Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, head of the presidents National Economic Council, admitted it remains a work in progress. The top personal tax rate would drop from 39.6 to 35 percent, and the standard deduction would be doubled to $25,400 for a married couple. The plan also would eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. We know this is difficult, Cohn said. We know what were asking for is a big bite. Democrats were quick to slam the plan, which they argued would funnel most of the savings to the countrys richest taxpayers. President Trumps tax outline is a wish list for billionaires, said San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House. Besides which, nowhere does President Trump indicate how his deficit-exploding tax plan will actually be paid for. Even GOP congressional leaders, who will have the final say on the tax plan, sounded noncommittal, although not opposed, on all the details of Trumps proposal. Weve been briefed on what theyre going to do, and its basically along exactly the same lines that we want to go, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said at a news conference before the White House rollout. We see this as progress is being made, and were moving and getting on the same page. Like any presidential program, the new tax plan is the product of plenty of political decisions. Thats probably why the none-too-detailed outline was released just a few days short of Saturdays 100th day of Trumps presidency, a traditional milestone of a presidents early success. Trumps plan, for example, will eliminate all tax deductions except those for home mortgage costs and charitable contributions, both overwhelmingly popular. But it also will dump the current deduction for state and local taxes, which is a major hit for California taxpayers. Its not the federal governments job to be subsidizing the states, Mnuchin said. All 10 of the states with the highest tax burden, which will be most affected by the change, voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in November. By contrast, nine of the 10 states with the lowest taxes and the least damage from the proposed change backed Trump. That blue state-red state chasm is even more visible when the congressional delegations are compared. In the 10 high-tax states, which include California, New York and Illinois, Democrats in Congress outnumber Republicans, 107 to 40. In the small states with lower taxes, its 23 congressional Democrats to 52 Republicans. While Cohn admitted that he expected the tax plan would take hits from the left and the right, he said the plan as laid out Wednesday is what Trump wants to see enacted, even though the president is open to negotiating with congressional Republicans, since Democrats have not been involved in the tax talks. The president owns this plan dont be mistaken, Cohn said. The attacks already are coming. Trumps plan, for example, calls for an end to the alternative minimum tax, which was originally designed to ensure that the wealthy, who often have robust deductions, pay at least some taxes. During his campaign for president, Trump railed against the tax, promising to kill it. But when a partial copy of Trumps 2005 federal tax return was leaked to the press in March, it showed that $31 million of the $38.5 million he paid in taxes on his $153 million in income was because of the alternative minimum tax. Without that tax, Trump only would have paid about $7 million in taxes. When reporters at Wednesdays news conference asked if the president would release his tax returns to show how he would be affected by the proposed tax changes, Mnuchin quickly dismissed that possibility. The president has no intention of releasing his returns, he said. I think the American population has plenty of information. The elimination of the estate tax also has plenty of implications for a man as wealthy as Trump, since it currently only affects individuals with estates of $5.45 million or higher, which represents a tiny fraction of American taxpayers. Other changes in the plan also could mean millions in savings for Trump and other wealthy Americans. Mnuchin and Cohn both said a lot of work remained to be done before the tax plan is put into a final form, and that talks are going on with GOP congressional leaders. Admitting that much of the proposal was a broad brush, Cohn said much more information is coming, only not yet. We will let you know the details at the appropriate moment, he said. If those details were easy to resolve, though, there already would be a bill moving through Congress. And while Trump and his supporters insist the tax changes will unleash a tsunami of economic growth, others are less optimistic. This idea that growth can pay for these kinds of huge tax cuts is operating in fairyland, Leon Panetta, a former Monterey County congressman and one-time Clinton administration budget director, told MSNBC. That just doesnt work, so if youre going to do a tax cut, then show how youre paying for it. The net cost of the tax bill is important, since Republicans want to pass it by the reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority in the Senate, rather than open it up to an inevitable Democratic filibuster, which can only be broken by 60 votes that the Republicans dont have. But by Senate rules, a bill passed by reconciliation cant significantly add to the deficit 10 years down the road, a requirement tax experts say Trumps plan cant meet. An alternative, which was used by GOP President George W. Bush in his 2001 tax bill, is to put a 10-year sunset provision in the tax bill, ending any new rules a decade after they are passed. Its a possibility, Mnuchin said at a presentation held before the news conference. The goal is to make (the tax cuts) permanent, but theres lots of levers here, he said. If we have them for 10 years, thats better than nothing. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth Readers, I feel your pain. So today were taking a break from the dark side and focusing on personalities not named Donald Trump. Or Bill OReilly. Or Marine Le Pen. Lets begin with Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, whose organization is helping lead the mass Peoples Climate March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, with sister actions in Oakland and other Bay Area communities. I recently sat down with Brune in his office at the Sierra Club headquarters, high in a downtown Oakland tower with a sweeping view of the shimmering bay. Normally Olympian office suites like this give their occupants the feeling they own the world. In Brunes case, it clearly impels him to save it. For most of its 125-year existence, the Sierra Club was known as a narrowly focused conservationist group, a bastion of overwhelmingly white nature-lovers who didnt give much thought to their fellow inhabitants of Mother Earth. But since taking over the Sierra Club in 2010, Brune has steered the group in a more aggressive political direction, linking arms with a wide spectrum of other organizations from labor unions to Planned Parenthood to Black Lives Matter and engaging in civil disobedience for the first time in the clubs history. In the first such action, Brune was arrested with other progressive leaders, including the NAACPs Julian Bond, when they chained themselves to the White House fence at a 2013 demonstration against the Keystone XL pipeline. The old conservation movement avoided controversy but the new environmental movement is entwined with issues of race and class, Brune told me. The Sierra Club is moving in a more confrontational direction. Under Brune, the Sierra Club is leading the opposition against President Trumps assault on environmental regulations, with mass protests like this weekends climate marches and court actions to block Trumps effort to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. If we dont do everything we can to make climate change a priority over the next four years, even under Trump, were genuinely screwed, said Brune. Well, they might not be saving the planet, but members of a citizens panel appointed by the San Francisco Airport Commission are struggling to find the appropriate name to attach to the facilitys International Terminal. Lines have been drawn between camps supporting Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the martyred gay leader Harvey Milk. STF/Associated Press Former Supervisor David Campos, who first proposed naming the entire airport after Milk, is now urging the panel to name the International Terminal after the citys first openly gay official, who was assassinated by ex-Supervisor Dan White in 1978. Its a dispute that recalls the jostling between the centrist, buttoned-down Feinstein and exuberantly progressive Milk when they served together on the Board of Supervisors. 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. Harvey has more international significance than Dianne, Campos told me. Especially considering all the continued struggles for LGBTQ rights around the world today. Just look at whats happening in places like Chechnya, where gay men are being rounded up, tortured and killed. Naming the International Terminal after Harvey would send a signal around the world about San Francisco values. But panel member Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, makes his ardent case for naming the terminal after the citys former mayor and Californias senior senator. Most of the airport was either built or remodeled while Feinstein was mayor, or owes its funding to her work as senator, he said. Lazarus suggests that another terminal be named after Milk, or perhaps the circular road that brings people to and from the airport. The panel has three months to make its recommendations. No SFO terminals have celebrated names attached to them now. Feinstein herself declined to comment, but a source close to the senator said she would like the honor of seeing her name on the most glamorous of the airports terminals. Personally, I would like my name on Terminal 2 after Im, um, terminated. Its where I generally take off into the great beyond, courtesy of Virgin America. And it has the best restaurants and best bookstore in the airport. Airport Commission, please take note of my final wishes. San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Talbot appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Email: dtalbot@sfchronicle.com DENVER, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Janus Foundation this week revealed the winners of its J Tank competition, which will channel $215,000 to non-profit organizations nominated by Janus Capital Group Inc. (NYSE:JNS) employees. The second annual J Tank challenge allows the Janus Foundation, which has distributed more than $39 million to non-profits since its inception in 1994, to directly benefit causes that matter personally to its employee community. Employees submitted 28 proposals considered for the finalist round, where seven finalists made their case to a panel of judges why their non-profit should win the top $75,000 prize. The winning non-profit, Camp Boggy Creek, will receive a $75,000 donation from the Janus Foundation. The first and second runners-up, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver and Operation Underground Railroad, will receive $40,000 and $25,000, respectively. All finalists will be awarded a $5,000 donation for their charity, and Operation Underground Railroad will receive an additional $10,000 for winning the employee vote. The winners included: Camp Boggy Creek , $75,000 Grand Prize Winner Sponsored by INTECH employee Patricia Flynn, Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer of INTECH; Sponsored by INTECH employee Patricia Flynn, Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer of INTECH; Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver , $40,000 1 st Runner Up Sponsored by Janus employee Wendy Schorsch, BMP Business Analyst at Janus Capital; Sponsored by Janus employee Wendy Schorsch, BMP Business Analyst at Janus Capital; Operation Underground Railroad, $25,000 2nd Runner Up and $10,000 Employee Choice Sponsored by Janus employee Riley Horlacher, Director of Advisor Solutions at Janus Capital. In addition, judges awarded $5,000 to their favorite employee-nominated non-profit. Winners included: Seeing is Believing , sponsored by Janus employee Richard Martin, Sr. Fund Tax Accountant, and picked by David Edinger and Jessica Oh; , sponsored by Janus employee Richard Martin, Sr. Fund Tax Accountant, and picked by David Edinger and Jessica Oh; Operation Underground Railroad , sponsored by Janus employee Riley Horlacher, Director of Advisory Solutions at Janus, and picked by Amelia Earhart; , sponsored by Janus employee Riley Horlacher, Director of Advisory Solutions at Janus, and picked by Amelia Earhart; Pat Tillman Foundation , sponsored by Janus employee Justin Steele, Director of Advisor Solutions at Janus Capital Group, and picked by Reggie Rivers and Bruce DeBoskey; , sponsored by Janus employee Justin Steele, Director of Advisor Solutions at Janus Capital Group, and picked by Reggie Rivers and Bruce DeBoskey; Light the Night, sponsored by Janus employee Zach Forster, Internal Sales Consultant, and picked by Tiphani Krueger. In addition, Sunrise Cambodia, sponsored by Janus employee Gwen Colin, Director of Strategic Initiatives, was named a finalist. "Its heartwarming to see so many employees bringing causes that they care passionately about to the Janus Foundation for consideration," said Tiphani Krueger, President of the Janus Foundation and Executive Vice President, Human Resources, at Janus Capital Group. "The second annual edition of J Tank far exceeded our expectations, and we are proud to have built upon the success of last years inaugural event. This year, we received 28 applications from our employees, and more than 450 employees voted in the competition." The winning submissions were judged by Krueger and her fellow judges former Denver Broncos player and President of Corporate Kickoff Reggie Rivers; Jessica Oh, Anchor at Denvers NBC affiliate 9 News; Amelia Earhart, Reporter at Denvers NBC affiliate 9 News; David Edinger, City and County of Denver and philanthropic strategist Bruce DeBoskey, owner of The DeBoskey Group. About the J Tank Winners Camp Boggy Creek Camp Boggy Creek was founded in 1996 by Paul Newman and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, with one simple premise in mind, that every child, no matter their illness, could experience the transformational spirit and friendships that go hand in hand with camp. http://www.boggycreek.org/ Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity is a global nonprofit housing organization that builds strength, stability and self-reliance in partnership with people and families in need of a decent and affordable home. https://www.habitat.org/ Operation Underground Railroad Since being founded in 2013 Operation Underground Railroad has gathered the world's experts in extraction operations and in anti-child trafficking efforts to bring an end to child slavery. https://ourrescue.org/ Seeing is Believing Seeing is Believing is Standard Chartered Banks global community investment program to tackle avoidable blindness in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. http://seeingisbelieving.org/ Pat Tillman Foundation The Pat Tillman Foundation invests in military veterans and their spouses through academic scholarships building a diverse community of leaders committed to service to others. http://pattillmanfoundation.org/ Light the Night Light the Night is a series of fundraising campaigns benefiting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) funding of research to find blood cancer cures. http://www.lightthenight.org/# Sunrise Cambodia Sunrise Cambodia is a world-class charity working on the ground in Cambodia to give much-needed help to at-risk kids, struggling families and poor communities in some of the most poverty-stricken provinces of the country. http://sunrisecambodia.org.au/ About Janus Capital Group Inc. Janus Capital Group Inc. (JCG) is a global investment firm dedicated to delivering better outcomes for clients through a broad range of investment solutions, including fixed income, equity, alternative and multi-asset class strategies. It does so through a number of distinct asset management platforms, including investment teams within Janus Capital Management LLC (Janus), INTECH Investment Management LLC (INTECH), Perkins Investment Management LLC (Perkins) and Kapstream Capital Pty Limited (Kapstream), in addition to a suite of exchange-traded products. Each team brings distinct asset class expertise, perspective, style-specific experience and a disciplined approach to risk. Investment strategies are offered through open-end funds domiciled in both the U.S. and offshore, as well as through separately managed accounts, collective investment trusts and exchange-traded products. Based in Denver, JCG has offices located in 12 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The firm had complex-wide assets under management and ETN assets totaling $204.7 billion as of March 31, 2017. Encouraged by viral news coverage, the left and right alike imagine UC Berkeley is a hotbed of student activism. The left: liberal students protest hateful Trump-inspired speech. The right: social-justice-warrior students kill free speech. The reality is much less exciting: sleep-deprived students, ill-prepared administrators and widespread apathy. How did studying for finals become the front line of the battle for free speech? This most recent spat began when Berkeley College Republicans invited conservative pundit Ann Coulter to speak on campus, originally scheduled for Thursday. Administrators feared her appearance would cause a mob-like protest similar to what happened at the Milo Yiannopoulos event in February. So they insisted on postponing Coulters speech to next week so they could find a less exposed venue. Coulter claimed the postponement was in effect a cancellation, because next week is Cals dead week the week before finals when no classes are held and students would be less likely to attend. The Republican club and its outside-of-Berkeley supporters, the Young Americas Foundation, responded by suing the university for infringing on their First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The backers then pulled their support of the event citing safety concerns, prompting Coulter to ultimately cancel her appearance. The one thing everyone has gotten right is that this is no longer the heyday of Berkeley activism that birthed the Free Speech Movement not because free speech is dead, but because the vast majority of students are not involved. When Yiannopoulos came to campus nearly three months ago, he was met with modest student protest and violence from non-student activists. Yiannopoulos, an alt-right provocateur, gained notoriety for racist, sexist remarks, and ultimately was disowned by members of his circle for comments defending pedophilia. In the run-up to his event that eventually was canceled, masked members of an antifascist antifa anarchist group, which is not a registered student group, smashed windows and set off fireworks. Pictures of their violence made headlines and Berkeley took the the fall. President Trump weighed in on Twitter: If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view NO FEDERAL FUNDS? There should have been better crowd control, no question. But blaming students for the chaos and declaring colleges enemies of free speech plays right into the provocateurs hands. Coulter and Yiannopoulos belong to a class of commentators who exist to stir the pot. Yiannopoulos has even admitted, I dont care about politics. I only talk about politics because of Trump. They say outlandish things about people of color, immigrants, women, gay people and others, come to college campuses, get banned, and have the perfect gotcha! moment. Meanwhile, free speech is alive and well on campus, just in less headlining ways. The Berkeley College Republican president has a weekly column in the school paper. The Republicans counterpart, the CalDems, hosts its own speakers and events. These quiet forms of speech on campus are more important than cries from the loudspeaker Coulter got to hold in this debacle. She should have been allowed to speak, and just like the students, we should have ignored her. Madeleine Chang is a Chronicle editorial writer. Email: mchang@sfchronicle.com Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle For some of our most vulnerable citizens, Californias trial court system is the place of last resort for justice. With many of our existing protections and support systems under attack by the federal government, the last thing we should do is cut the funding for our judiciary system. Gov. Jerry Browns proposed budget for the courts would hurt the people the system is supposed to protect. The proposed funding for our consistently underfunded and often overlooked trial court system will result in layoffs, reduce court hours and cut self-help services that the public relies on for equal treatment under the law. Since 2008, nearly 4,000 court staff have lost their jobs, more than 200 courtrooms have been closed and 2.1 million Californians have lost access to a courtroom in their community, causing many to wait longer to have their day in court. With President Trump about to get graded Saturday on his first 100 days in office, its also a good time to evaluate the anti-Trump resistance movement. As a cage match, its not even close: The resistance has had the better early run, mostly by playing defense. So no, the resistance didnt push through any major legislation. But neither did Trump. The resistance often seemed chaotic and unfocused. But that was tame compared with the administrations rollout of its travel ban. The resistance helped to sink the GOPs Obamacare overhaul by publicly shaming wobbly Republican congressmen. Then again, Trump helped to sink the GOP Obamacare overhaul by publicly shaming GOP congressmen. And the resistance is growing: The Indivisible group alone has more than 6,000 chapters nationwide. Meanwhile, Trumps approval rate is stuck in the low 40s. But theres one difference thats bigger than any other: Barring unforeseen events, Trump will be president for the next four years. The resistance lives day-to-day, fueled primarily by anger and a sense of justice, as San Francisco resister Pat Walker told me. Sometimes there is so much bad stuff going on that you dont know where to focus your attention, said Walker, 70, founder of the Zulu Education & Empowerment Foundation, which provides educational support for rural Zulu women in South Africa. Two weeks ago, there were demonstrations urging Trump to release his tax returns. Last week, there was the Science March. On Saturday, there are climate marches in Washington, D.C., Oakland, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities. On May 1, pro-immigrant and pro-labor demonstrations are planned across the country, with the biggest expected to be in Los Angeles. Thats a blistering pace even by protest-a-day Bay Area standards. And then theres all the other stuff that people are doing. Every Sunday afternoon, Walker and 25 to 50 fellow resisters gather in a friends house to spend an hour or two writing postcards to members of Congress about the latest issue of the day. How do people with day jobs and families keep up? And thats the core of the resistances post-100 day challenge: How to keep people from burning out. How to stoke the fires of anger and justice long enough so activists are still engaged when Trumps potential reckoning day, the 2018 midterm elections, comes around. But theres a long road from now to then. An online survey of 1,000 activists in March by the new resistance group Citizenbe.org found the average resister participated in 2.5 activities last month but was planning on participating in only half that many this month. They enjoyed the visceral thrill of marching in the streets, but not so much the drudgery of making calls to Congress. Still, it raised a minor alarm among some activists about how to keep the faithful focused. Their challenge is that even though politics lives on Twitter time, neither movements nor presidencies are measured in 100-day increments. Movements take time to develop. Heres a big hit of perspective: Many remember the 1963 March on Washington as a pivotal event in the civil rights movement. That march was first proposed in 1941, said UC Irvine sociology Professor David Meyer, author of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America. Rosa Parks was an activist for years before she took her iconic bus ride. When it comes to the fledgling resistance movement, Meyer sees the mass demonstrations as more like the punctuation marks as part of the larger story. If all you have are punctuation marks, you dont have a compelling story. Hes been impressed by the diversity of the resistance as it opposes Trumps policies on immigration, the environment, taxes, womens health and the economy. Thats very, very unusual, he said. Colleen Chien has seen a deepening of the activism engaged in by some people in 70,000-member Bay Area-based resistance group Wall-of-Us that she co-founded. Every week, Wall-of-Us gives its members a handful of digestible actions they can perform to resist. The resistance is noisy now, and thats OK for where were at, said Chien, who has been helping some of the other resistance groups better coordinate. To combat fatigue and burnout in the post-100-days world, Walker and other resisters have developed some tips for, as we like to say in the Bay Area, self care. Tip No. 1: Focus, people: You have to choose what really speaks to you. And then go support that. Otherwise, you could go to a march every Saturday around here, Walker said. Saturdays climate march? Thats not my thing. Im about freedom of the press and Trumps connections to Russia, she said. So I try to keep pressure on the House Oversight Committee to get them to do something. Tip No. 2: Link arms with an established organization: Given that its run largely by volunteers, sometimes the resistance can be a little spotty, she said. So Walker recently joined the American Civil Liberties Union, which keeps her posted on their major operations. Tip No. 3: Dont get distracted: Those shiny sideshows like conservative commentator Ann Coulters efforts to speak in Berkeley despite the university not being prepared for her? She is minor to this whole thing, Walker said. There are so many more important things to think about than Ann Coulter. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Online extra To see a map by date of Bay Area protests since President Trump took office, go to www.sfchronicle.com/trump-protests. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police braced for mayhem Thursday as battle-ready protesters vowed to converge on Berkeley, but only spirited speeches broke out rather than the type of violent clashes between right and left groups that have turned the city into a political combat zone. On the UC Berkeley campus and at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park a few blocks to the west the site of recent riot-like brawls scores of cops took a more assertive stance as they monitored protesters, many of them upset by the cancellation of a visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, which they called an attack on free speech. They had traveled from the Bay Area or other parts of the country. Many were backers of President Trump who displayed American flags as music blared from radios. Some expressed extreme views, with one showing off an Allah is Satan shirt. But aside from chants of, USA! USA! USA!, the atmosphere was more picnic than protest. By the early evening, after Berkeley police received help from Oakland officers and Alameda County sheriffs deputies, the crowds had dwindled. As many as 100 counterprotesters showed up across the street from the park at one point and chanted, Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go. Those in the park ambled over to watch, as dozens of police officers cleared a line between the two sides. Its all right, said Linda Perry, 62, who had motorcycled in from Folsom. We can agree to disagree. But its good if they stay on that side and we stay on this side. The calm stood in contrast to clashes in Berkeley in recent months that produced bloody assaults and many arrests plus second-guessing of the ability of police to intervene. The demonstrators in the park on Thursday said they had not come to fight. Were going to all the liberal places to show you dont have to hide, Joey Gibson of American Freedom Keepers, one of more than a dozen speakers at the park rally, said to a cheering crowd after he drove in from Washington state. We will make the West Coast red again. There was no sign of the conservative groups adversaries self-described anti-fascists who have shown up to pro-Trump and white nationalist rallies with their own weapons, wearing black and covering their faces, employing what are known as black bloc tactics. At UC Berkeley, the threat of violence passed by early afternoon amid an even heavier police presence. Students and others entering the campus were subject to bag searches, while barricades filled with water lined Sproul Plaza. By 3 p.m., two men had been arrested one for refusing to identify himself or remove a surgical mask and another for allegedly carrying a knife. Berkeley, synonymous with liberal activism, has in recent months become a target of the far-right. Canadian radio host Lauren Southern, one of the speakers at the park, said those on her side won Thursday because they were able to hold the park. More for you Ann Coulter backs out of UC Berkeley speech Conservative groups have accused UC Berkeley officials of stifling free speech in their response to plans by a Republican student group to host controversial speakers Coulter and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Neither has actually spoken, which the black-clad forces view as a victory against hate. Coulter was expected to speak at UC Berkeley Thursday, but officials determined there was no facility available to accommodate her given safety concerns. Other dates offered by the university were rejected by Coulter, who said she would still come even if that meant speaking at Sproul Plaza. But Wednesday, Coulter said she wouldnt show after the groups sponsoring her backed out. Those who nonetheless showed up at Civic Center Park on Thursday included Jonathon Paull, a 46-year-old Houston attorney, who wore a bulletproof vest and a helmet. He said he doesnt agree with anything Coulter says, but believes she has a right to speak. Ive never been to something like this before, said Paull, who calls himself a moderate Republican. I came out here because Im scared for our country. Annette Roman, 51, of Berkeley, was among a smaller group of anti-Trump demonstrators in the crowd. She carried a sign bearing a Coulter quote: Earth is yours. Take it, rape it. She called Coulter scary and said the conservatives who traveled to Berkeley only wanted to provoke trouble. I hate being here, but I have to be, she said, explaining that her father was a Holocaust survivor. They couldnt speak in their time, so Im speaking in mine. Berkeley has been a battleground since Feb. 1, when UC police canceled a speech by Yiannopoulos at the last minute after rioting broke out. A month later, 10 people were arrested after a confrontation between Trump supporters and opponents at Civic Center Park. On April 15, 11 people were injured and 20 arrested after a park rally turned even uglier. This time, city and campus police were more visible and emphatic. Berkeley police said in the evening they had made five arrests of people connected with the political events. On campus, some students reflected Thursday on the conflict playing out in the city. Jacob Gill, a 22-year-old student, discussed with a friend whether it was right that nonstudents were coming to campus to protest. Im against using violence and intimidation to shut down speakers, said Gill, who supports Coulters right to speak, even though he disagrees with her views. Use good speech to combat bad speech. Student Hyelynn Koo, 22, strolled through the barricaded Sproul Plaza sipping a smoothie. One of her four classes had been canceled over fears of violence. Im really annoyed ... I pay out-of-state tuition, she said. I just think its ridiculous because most of the rioters arent Berkeley students. Its giving our school a bad name. San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Lizzie Johnson and Michael Bodley contributed to this story. Jill Tucker, Sarah Ravani and Kevin Fagan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @sarravani @kevinchron Two small ride-hailing companies are combining in an effort to slow the march of Uber Technologies Inc. around the globe. Gett Inc. of Tel Aviv said its paying $200 million to acquire Juno, a New York startup that endeared itself to drivers by offering company stock and better pay than Uber. The Gett app is available in about 100 cities and is among the most popular ride-hailing services in Europe. But Uber has been gaining ground quickly there and is dominant in Junos sole market, New York City. Gett said the team behind Juno will oversee the combined U.S. group, which includes Getts operations in New York. Junos strategy of catering to drivers has been effective in New York. Drivers said they like that Juno takes a lower commission than Uber or Lyft and appreciate the ability to take a stake in the business. By last summer, Juno had nearly overtaken Lyft by total drivers in New York, although it began to lose ground in the fall, according to statistics kept by the local taxi regulator. In recent months, Juno has been exploring an expansion into other American cities. The deal marks the end of Junos program to distribute restricted stock units to drivers, spokeswoman Keren Kessel said. She said eligible drivers will receive a payout based on an independent valuation of their stock. She declined to provide details on how much drivers should expect to receive. In the future, drivers will be eligible to receive bonuses, Kessel said. Chicago Starbucks big Roastery Starbucks plans to open a four-level Roastery flagship on Chicagos Michigan Avenue, its largest space yet for the high-end concept that the coffee giant is rolling out around the world. Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said the company plans to bring its Starbucks Reserve Roastery showplace to the current Crate & Barrel building at Michigan Avenue and Erie Street in 2019. The Roastery is an interactive format where customers can see rare, small-batch Reserve beans roasted, brewed and packaged. Its not a coffee store, the essence of it is the theater and romance and something so experiential, Schultz said. Schultz first had the idea for the Roastery stores in August 2009, when he wrote about a plan to create the Willy Wonka of coffee. Schultz recorded that idea and others in a journal he kept about his plans for the chain. Starbucks confirmation of the Magnificent Mile showplace comes 30 years after Starbucks opened its first coffee shop outside the Seattle area in Chicago at 111 W. Jackson Blvd. It was so vitally important, because if Chicago didnt succeed I doubt we would have been able to build a global brand like we did, he said. At 43,000 square feet, Chicagos is the largest among six Roastery emporiums that Starbucks has announced. The size will eclipse a planned 30,000-square-foot space in China, which had been the largest one announced to date. It will be the third Roastery in the United States, following one that opened in Starbucks hometown of Seattle in December 2014 and another expected to open in New York in 2018. Roastery stores are set to open in Shanghai this year and in Milan and Tokyo in 2018, the company said. Executives HSN boss joins diet company The CEO of the heavyweight of home shopping on TV is leaving that job to take the top spot at Weight Watchers International Inc. The companies said separately Wednesday that Mindy Grossman is leaving HSN Inc. on May 24 and assuming the role of president and CEO of Weight Watchers in July. Grossman replaces James Chambers at the weight-loss program operator. Chambers stepped down in September amid the companys struggles to build on the momentum it garnered from an alliance with Oprah Winfrey. Weight Watchers says that until Grossmans arrival it will continue to be led by the members of the interim office of the CEO. Chronicle News Services Memphis, TN, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VNUE (OTC: VNUE), in conjunction with its strategic partner DiscLive, and legendary CREED vocalist Scott Stapp announced that they are teaming up to give fans unrivaled access to him through instant recordings on his upcoming 2017 touring cycle meaning fans can literally walk out of the concert with what they just heard! DiscLive, the pioneer in the space of instant recording, will offer fans the chance to purchase each nights show on a limited edition, individually numbered collectors double CD set they can take home that night. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each of the $25 DiscLive recordings will benefit ChildFund International. ChildFund helps deprived, excluded and vulnerable children have the capacity to improve their lives and the opportunity to become young adults, parents and leaders who bring lasting and positive change in their communities. Memphis music and technology entrepreneur Zach Bair, CEO of VNUE and DiscLive, said, We are very excited to be working with Scott on this tour, as he celebrates the 20 year anniversary of Creeds My Own Prison. These intimate acoustic performances will capture the raw power and emotion of this incredible music, and the fans will be able to walk out with a fully mixed and mastered recording of what they just experienced. Scott Stapp said, I'm excited to partner with DiscLive and VNUE for my Live And Unplugged Tour. I think it's special that fans and concert goers can take home a high quality live recording of the show they just experienced. Stapps tour kicks off May 11th in Mobile, AL, and this leg will continue through June 20th at RockHouse Live in Memphis, TN. The limited edition CDs sets for each show currently 23 dates - will be available for pre-order starting May 1 by clicking through www.scottstapp.com, or directly on www.disclivenetwork.com. Since these products are limited edition runs of 500, once they are sold out, there will never be any more produced so these will be true collectors items. Ticketholders may reserve their copy to be picked up at the show, or fans from around the world may have it shipped directly to them. Later in the year, the VNUE mobile app will be released on the Apple App store and Google Play, and will provide downloads of select recordings, available immediately after shows. ### About VNUE, Inc. (www.vnue.com) VNUE, Inc., (OTC: VNUE) is a VNUE is a music technology company dedicated to further monetizing the live music experience for artists, labels, writers, publishers, and literally all stakeholders, by creating new and exciting products; by leveraging automation technology and second-to-none experience in the instant live space; and by identifying issues such as lack of transparency with performance rights organizations and solving this through innovation and our patent-pending solutions. The VNUE team is the most experienced in our space, a group of technology entrepreneurs, artists and songwriters who are passionate about the future of the industry, and ensuring that the value of the rights holders are not lost in the context of new and ever-changing technology. Our team has produced live content and created experiential products for such artists and companies as Peter Frampton, Bad Company, Devo, Blondie, Wind Up Records, EMI, Capitol Records, and many more. By (a) selling only live content through our platforms, to include not just major and independent label content, but creating and scaling our own instant live exclusive content, (b) processing and paying mechanical royalties on instant live content, and (c), ensuring proper accounting and payment to rights holders of material played in venues, VNUE has a perfect trifecta of solutions that will revolutionize the live music business. About DiscLive (www.disclive.net) DiscLive Network, formerly known as Abbey Road Live, and before that, Immediateks DiscLive, is the longtime pioneer in the field of recording artists live and releasing quality content to fans immediately after the show. Lead Zach Bair, the DiscLive team is the most experienced in the space, and also provides all live production and operations for VNUE. The DiscLive team has recorded concerts around the world and has produced exclusive content for such artists as Slash, Peter Frampton, Seether, Bad Company, REO Speedwagon, and many others. DiscLive provides live music fans with an exciting, high-quality replacement for bootleg recordings. For additional information, please visit www.disclivenetwork.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements and information in this press release are forward-looking statements and may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this press release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking statements based on our current plans and expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Accordingly, these forward-looking statements should be evaluated with consideration given to the many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements including those risks set forth in our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors or to assess the impact of such risks on our business which could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above. Accordingly, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, after the date of this release. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Women, blacks and Latinos are far more likely to quit jobs in tech than white or Asian men, according to a new report by the Kapor Center for Social Impact. The Oakland nonprofit commissioned an online survey by the Harris Poll, which asked 2,006 people who voluntarily left tech jobs in the past three years about why they quit. It found women were twice as likely to leave as men, while black and Latino tech workers were 3.5 times likelier to quit than white or Asian colleagues. The most common reason they gave for their departures was workplace mistreatment. Cat Perez, who participated in the survey, once woke up every morning dreading the thought of going to work. She disliked most of her colleagues at a male-dominated tech company where she previously worked. Perez felt like her boss frequently hovered behind her as she worked, and recalled women being delegated tasks like ordering lunch for co-workers and putting up office decorations. It was toxic, said Perez. It wasnt an environment I could grow or do my best work. I didnt like how others were being treated, I didnt like the ethics of the leader and these experiences added up. Perez left and is now the co-founder and chief product officer of HealthSherpa, a startup with offices in San Francisco and Sacramento that helps people obtain health coverage. Women held 25 percent of computer- and math-related jobs in the U.S. in 2016, while blacks and Latinos made up 14.7 percent of that workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Firms like Facebook and Google have started disclosing the gender and racial makeup of their workforce, but recent company-issued diversity reports suggest the industry is making at best glacial progress. Many of those reports specifically examine new hires, showing that companies are making progress in diversifying their recruiting. But the Kapor report suggests that not enough attention is being paid to retaining workers. Other reasons for employees departures included being poached by another company, seeking better opportunities or dissatisfaction with their role or work environment. Of those surveyed, 37 percent said they left their jobs because they felt they were unfairly treated; 78 percent said they had experienced some form of unfair treatment; and 85 percent said they had witnessed ill treatment happening to someone else at work. Black and Latino employees, the study said, were more likely to leave due to unfair treatment at work than white or Asian colleagues. This study is one step forward in demonstrating that there is a problem across the tech industry, said Allison Scott, the centers chief research officer. Weve seen the anecdotes and stories written lately and what we found is that those are not one-off stories, these are experiences happening across the sector and its a driver for people to leave. The study estimates that the tech industry loses $16 billion annually from employee turnover due to unfair treatment. Scott said one employees departure could cost a company $144,000 in lost productivity and recruiting a replacement. Driving employees away through mistreatment could also raise a companys hiring costs. The survey found that 35 percent of those who left said they were less likely to refer others to their former employers, and 25 percent said they wouldnt recommend others buy or use the companies products. Jason Stomel, CEO of Cadre Talent, a tech recruiting firm, said clients have been explicitly looking to hire more diverse employees. Having a diverse team (or) female-founded companies is something we will build into our company pitches, he said. We believe is a huge positive for a company and we typically feature that statement prominently when discussing opportunities with candidates. But he questioned whether every company was sincere in seeking diversity. The valley is notorious for exuding sheep-like behavior, he said. Do they really care about improving their diversity or is it just a PR thing? That really all depends on each company and its morals. A lot of companies view diversity as a nice to have as opposed to a need to have, said Daniel Malmer, chief technology officer of Blendoor, a recruiting startup that released a diversity ranking for 138 Silicon Valley companies this month. He said some companies appeared to be engaging in diversity theater where they hire more underrepresented workers but dont nurture them on the job. Inclusion is just as important as diversity and these types of things start at the top, said Malmer. The management needs to set the priorities and influence the culture. Nicholas Cheng is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ncheng@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @nichocheng A Los Angeles ice cream shop called Little Damage has attracted the attention of the internet thanks to its odd-looking black soft serve flavors and cones. The ice cream at the shop, which Buzzfeed and others have labeled "goth," gets its color from activated charcoal and is almond-flavored (though it recently announced Wednesday the shop would switch up the flavor to "black roses"). The Cassini spacecraft, on a historic and eventually fatal orbit that dives between Saturn's body and its rings, has re-emerged from its first dive and fired back some closest-ever photos of the planet's atmosphere. NASA lost contact with the spacecraft yesterday during the dive, but reacquired contact just before midnight last night with its Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California's Mojave Desert. NASA said in a news release: "In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. As it dove through the gap, Cassini came within about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops (where the air pressure is 1 bar -- comparable to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level) and within about 200 miles (300 kilometers) of the innermost visible edge of the rings. The agency explains that the gab between the rings and Saturn's atmosphere is about 1,500 miles ... a narrow window for a spacecraft being guided from so far away. "No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape." Cassini will make its next dare-devil dive through the gap on May 2. Jake Ellison can be reached at jakeellisonjournalism@gmail.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Former President Barack Obama has agreed to accept $400,000 to speak at a health care conference this year sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment bank. The lucrative engagement, reported earlier by Fox, was confirmed by a person familiar with the speaking agreement. A spokesman for Obama declined to comment on the speech. Out of office for about three months, Obama has begun the process of cashing in. In February, he and his wife, Michelle, each signed book deals worth tens of millions of dollars. And Obamas spokesman confirmed last week that he is beginning the paid-speech circuit. A $400,000 speaking fee for addressing the Cantor Fitzgerald conference is a sharp increase from the amounts typically paid to his predecessors. Former President Bill Clinton averaged about $200,000 per speech while former President George W. Bush is reportedly paid $100,000 to $175,000 for each appearance. Obama, who was paid $400,000 a year as president, frequently criticized big banks and warned against what he said was a growing inequality in the country that was undermining civic life and the economic fortunes of the middle class. He also pushed for the Dodd-Frank law that regulated Wall Street. I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: making sure our economy works for every working American, Obama said in a speech in December 2013. But Obama also courted Wall Street donors and other wealthy supporters during his eight years in the White House. And since leaving office, he has spent most of his time in lavish locations, vacationing with Hollywood celebrities and wealthy friends. The Cantor Fitzgerald speech is part of what his aides have described as a series of public and private events that Obama began on Monday in Chicago, where he held a discussion with a half-dozen young people about the issue of civic engagement. Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech in Boston on May 7 at the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation. In May, he plans to hold a similar, public conversation with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. Aides said private, paid speeches are also planned in Europe next month. To be sure, there is no rule against Obama doing this. But critics say there is the precedent that it sets or rather, continues to set. The more that Wall Street firms give out-of-office presidents and big-name politicians these paydays, the more they become the norm. Other presidents will know that such payments are on the table, and it risks coloring their decisions with regard to Wall Street and special interests. The Washington Post contributed to this report. Michael D. Shear is a New York Times writer. San Francisco-born actor Rob Schneider, perhaps most famous for his roles on "Saturday Night Live" and movies including "The Hot Chick," and "The Waterboy," took to Twitter Wednesday to criticize UC Berkeley for its handling of a controversial appearance by conservative pundit Ann Coulter. Schneider, who has voiced conservative viewpoints in the past, seemed to be condemning the East Bay university for its failure to hold a talk featuring Coulter. ARCHBOLD, Ohio, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc., (OTCQX:FMAO) the holding company of The Farmers & Merchants State Bank, today announced that it has again been named to American Banker magazines Top 200 Publicly Traded Community Banks and Thrifts. The listing is based on a three-year average return on equity (ROE) as of 12/31/2016. It is an honor to again be named to American Bankers Top 200 Community Banks and Thrifts list, said Paul Siebenmorgen, President and CEO. We are proud of our talented team of bankers who have helped us to achieve consistent success in the communities we serve and were optimistic about our positive growth trends and momentum thus far in 2017. About Farmer & Merchants State Bank: The Farmers & Merchants State Bank is a local independent community bank that has been serving Northwest Ohio and Northeast Indiana since 1897. The Farmers & Merchants State Bank provides commercial banking, retail banking and other financial services through its 24 offices. Our locations are in Fulton, Defiance, Henry, Lucas, Williams, and Wood counties in northwest Ohio. In Northeast Indiana we have offices located in Allen, DeKalb and Steuben counties. Dayton, Ohio, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MacAulay-Brown, Inc. (MacB), a leading National Security company delivering advanced engineering services, cybersecurity and product solutions, announced today that it has developed a unique approach to thinning hyperspectral image data for evaluation by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). Under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), data thinned at different levels will be evaluated by AFLCMC for compatibility testing with existing tools used by the U.S. Air Force to analyze hyperspectral data. The research and development agreement is for investigating innovative ways to shrink a variety of data types with an emphasis on ensuring that mission-critical, back-end processing is not compromised. Results delivered so far have demonstrated low complexity methods for thinning optical images and audio files. By using software developed by MacBs Advanced Technology Group (ATG), hyperspectral image files that are thinned exhibit excellent image quality at half the size, while also making use of industry standard data types. A successful outcome on the AFLCMC evaluation means that on future projects, customers could cut the data rate for transferring hyperspectral images in half, by using just a few lines of code. The CRADA work is part of a larger in-house Multi-Intelligence Statistical Technology research and development program at MacB. ATG personnel are currently exploring a variety of approaches in data compression and thinning, with an emphasis on simple and reliable methods that can be easily implemented into existing frameworks. Some techniques include a thinner for formatted Portal Network Graphic (PNG) images, and a unique approach to steganography that retains maximum fidelity in the masking image. Also under consideration are theoretic enhancements to Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression images. We have a proud history of researching and developing innovative technologies for our valued customers, said Tim Lawrence, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MacBs Advanced Technology Group (ATG). This AFLCMC CRADA agreement is an incubator that allows us to research and test unique solutions to help solve some of the governments most critical problems in managing, processing and transmitting imagery and other large files. By working directly with government researchers, we are able to continue focusing on critical issues of the day." ABOUT MACAULAY-BROWN, INC. (MacB) For more than 37 years, MacAulay-Brown, Inc. (MacB) has been solving some of the Nations most complex National Security challenges. Defense, Intelligence Community, Special Operations Forces, Homeland Security and Federal agencies rely on our advanced engineering services, cybersecurity, and product solutions to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. With Corporate Headquarters in Dayton, Ohio and National Capital Headquarters in Vienna, Virginia, our more than 1,500 employees worldwide are dedicated to developing mission-focused and results-oriented solutions that make a difference where and when it matters most. Learn more about MacB at www.macb.com. Follow MacB ### BLAIR, NEB., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Great Plains Communications, the largest privately owned middle-mile and last-mile provider in Nebraska has kicked off their 2017 construction season with several projects scheduled to enhance and extend the reach of the 8,000+ mile fiber network. Plans include expansion in several Nebraska communities including Fremont, Columbus, and Seward, as well as upgrades in or near Gordon, Rushville, Tryon, Ringgold and Wynot. Enhancement and expansion will also be conducted in the areas of Neligh, McCook and Broken Bow where the company will add Voice to the list of current business and residential services that include high speed Internet and Cable Television. In the Omaha metro, the company will continue to extend their current fiber footprint of over 300 miles to capture additional business customers. These plans follow the company's January completion announcement of 100G capable upgrades to their entire network. "Our journey of continuous network improvements continues," said Todd Foje, CEO of Great Plains Communications. "This year we will continue to diversify and differentiate our network, while expanding strategically to provide enhanced services to more business and residential customers throughout Nebraska. We'll also continue to connect and serve our wholesale customers through our highly diverse transport network that's now 100G capable." About Great Plains Communications Great Plains Communications is the largest privately owned telecommunications company in Nebraska and is headquartered in Blair, Nebraska. At the core of their service offering is an 8,000-mile regional fiber network encompassing the state of Nebraska and extending into Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming. They currently provide 92+ Nebraska communities with High-Speed Internet, High-Definition Cable Television, and Local and Long Distance Telephone services. Their business solutions range from traditional voice and data products to installation and support of large business networks with scalable Ethernet solutions. The company also prides itself on their progressive approach to accommodating the unique needs of regional and national telecommunications carriers, LECs, ISPs, and wireless carriers. Great Plains Communications recently celebrated their 107-year anniversary, and are in their fourth generation of family ownership. CLEARWATER, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Florida chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog group established by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, announced that according to the Annual Report of Baker Act Data, 13,856 individuals 65 and older were sent for involuntary psychiatric examination in 2015. Throughout the month of May, CCHR Florida is inviting the public to visit their center at 109 N. Fort Harrison Avenue in downtown Clearwater where they can learn more about patient rights under the mental health law, commonly referred to as the Baker Act, and the dangerous trend of drugging the elderly. The President of CCHR FL, Diane Stein said, While the 13,856 number of individuals 65 and older who are Baker Acted is only about 7% of the total number of initiated involuntary examinations, it is known that there is a real danger of harm being caused in the transfer of senior citizens from long-term care facilities to Baker Act facilities i. CCHR Florida is holding an open house for Older Americans Mental Health Week in order to educate seniors and their care givers on the over drugging of seniors and patient rights under the Baker Act. The number of retirement-age Americans taking at least three psychiatric drugs more than doubled between 2004 and 2013, said Diane Stein. Almost half of these seniors had no mental health diagnosis on record and this abuse needs to be investigated and stopped. ii It is know that the rate of psychiatric drug prescriptions increase sharply with age and that community-dwelling older adults are 7 to 18 times more likely to be on psychotropic drugs compared to their middle-aged counterparts. Even more disturbing is that the statistics are worse for those diagnosed with dementia. According to the Office of the Inspector General, 304,983 elderly nursing home residents in the U.S. were given dangerous and often deadly antipsychotic drugs, of which 88% were prescribed off-label for dementia.iii For more information on the open house, the drugging of seniors or the protection of elder rights under the mental health law, please call 727-442-8820 or visit www.cchrflorida.org. About CCHR: Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHRs mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the free world tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of mental health. For more information visit, www.cchrflorida.org i A Brief Literature Review of the Effects of Relocation on the Elderly http://www.heu.org/sites/default/files/uploads/research_reports/HEU_Literature_Review_Sept23_2002.pdf ii Sharp Rise Reported in Older Americans Use of Multiple Psychotropic Drugs, Benedict Carey - February 13, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/health/psychiatric-drugs-prescriptions.html?_r=1 iii Psychiatric Abuse of the Elderly, CCHR International https://www.cchrint.org/issues/protectelderly/ Congress returned from another half-month vacation this week to confront a national job-approval rating wallowing in the low double digits. Hard to understand why its that high. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have slipped into their own brand of do-nothing dysfunction. With the dearth or death of political moderates on Capitol Hill, each political party has strutted into its distant ideological corner to utter daily talking points in order to rally its fervent faithful to no end whatsoever, fundraising aside. This might have been understandable when Congress and the executive branch were controlled by separate parties with no incentive to get together and (whispering) compromise to earn their salaries of 172 grand a year. For nearly a decade now, voters across the country have been edging toward giving Republicans the ignition keys to virtually everything: 33 governor offices, two-thirds of state legislative chambers, both houses of Congress and now the White House. Under President Barack Obamas me-first leadership, his party lost nearly 1,000 local seats. Understandably, impatient voters have an expectation that now, finally, some changes will get done in D.C. to fix health care, cut waste, reduce regulations, spur the economy, restore the military, overhaul taxes and heres a novel idea pass an actual budget with an eye beyond, say, the next 180 days. Yes, the Senate did confirm a Supreme Court nominee to end a yearlong vacancy. But only after weeks of kabuki-like partisan maneuvering that forced GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to kill an arcane rule requiring 60 yea votes. Good riddance! And health care? For years, Republicans jabbered about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. They had some three dozen pro forma House votes to do just that. Now, they have a GOP president with a pen who ran on the same thing. But they couldnt do it. With minority Democrats watching in delight, a watered-down Republican R&R plan ran aground on its members ideological rifts, even with intense presidential coaxing. Turns out, the majority party is really a collection of stubborn factions putting professed principles over actual governing. Not the lasting image of a GOP action plan promised last year. Nor one that can endure long. Now we are led to believe a new repeal plan is almost ready. Its just not quite all written down yet. Yeah, right. Back to your regularly scheduled programming. Oh, and a government shutdown looms at months end unless, first, Republicans and then perhaps some Democrats can agree on what should be in the budget. Realize, this plan is good just through September. Then, the theater, the posturing, the principled pontificating begin again. Tax changes that could goose an economy that appears to be sputtering again? Well, folks, that reveals similar ideological rifts within Lincolns party. Oh, and its tax cuts were built upon savings from the Obamacare repeal that didnt happen yet. Maybe next year. At least we can agree on national defense, which protects everyone, right? Uh, no. Some Republicans dont think the proposed spending hike is large enough. Democrats want a matching hike in domestic spending. Meanwhile, too much military equipment is grounded for unaffordable spare parts. Good thing there are no brewing foreign crises that might require a military defense. Speaking of Democrats, their congressional leadership consists of shortsighted septuagenarians from the coasts. Their state-level political farm teams in the heartland have been devastated by Republican successes. If those are not overturned in next years midterms, the GOP again will control redistricting after the 2020 census. The Dems current hero is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist who denounces the wealthy while owning three homes and isnt even a Democrat. On a so-called unity tour with party chairs this month, Sanders reminded crowds of that. He was cheered. Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez was booed. Deputy Chairman Rep. Keith Ellison blamed Novembers upset loss partly on Obama. In some respects, political parties reflect their constituencies. Theres no doubt American society is riven with numerous fractures. But no one forced these politicians to run. They volunteered for leadership. The hope is that their collective efforts, fueled by wisdom, a dollop of courage and compromise, lead to a roughly united 50 states of America. A democracy like ours requires a chief executive with vision and leadership, and two functioning political parties to compete, to push, to challenge and to balance the other with energy and better ideas. We dont have that now. 2017 McClatchy Washington Bureau Andrew Malcolm is an author and veteran national and foreign correspondent covering politics since the 1960s. Twitter: @AHMalcolm MENLO PARK (BCN) Two iron workers at the construction site of a new Facebook building in Menlo Park were injured Wednesday after part of the building collapsed, causing them to fall, fire officials said. According to Menlo Park Fire Protection District officials, at 5:21 p.m. fire crews responded to Facebook's new building 21, which is currently under construction. At the scene, fire crews were escorted by other construction workers to the two injured men. According to workers who witnessed the incident, both victims were assembling steel framing about 40 feet above ground when a steel beam they were standing on and attached to dropped about 20 feet. The beam caught on a lower floor assembly and catapulted the two men toward the ground. Their safety harnesses and rigging broke and stopped their descent before hitting the ground below, fire officials said. According to fire officials, one victim is in his late 20s and the other is in his early 30s. Both men were conscious after the fall and complained of significant pain to their lower extremities, as well as puncture wounds. Both men were treated at the scene, then transported to Stanford Hospital and Trauma Center. In a statement, Menlo Park fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said, "Fortunately, the iron workers were wearing their safety harnesses and rigging, which probably helped save their lives along with, as we understand it, the fact that the beam they were attached to caught on a lower floor assembly, miraculously insuring their survival." A number of steel upright and cross beams were damaged in the collapse, according to fire officials. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health will be conducting an investigation of the collapse. Icelandic English At the Annual General Meeting of Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company of Iceland, held today, the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs appointed Board members and reserve members for Landsvirkjuns Board of Directors. Members of Landsvirkjuns Board of Directors: Jonas or Gumundsson Ragnheiur Elin Arnadottir Haraldur Flosi Tryggvason Alfheiur Ingadottir Kristin Vala Ragnarsdottir Today marks the first time that women are in the majority as Board members of Landsvirkjun. Leaving the Board were Jon Bjorn Hakonarson, Helgi Johannesson and orunn Sveinbjarnardottir. They have been members of the board since 2014 and were thanked for their work. Reserve members of the Board: Asta Bjorg Palmadottir, Paley Borgorsdottir, Larus Eliasson, Ragnar Oskarsson and Albert Svan Sigursson. The Annual General Meeting confirmed the Board of Directors report and consolidated accounts for the past financial year. Deloitte ehf. was elected as the audit company for Landsvirkjun as recommended by the Icelandic National Audit Office. Jonas or Gumundsson re-elected Chairman of the Board Jonas or Gumundsson was re-elected Chairman of the Board and Haraldur Flosi Tryggvason was elected Vice Chairman of the Board, at the first meeting held by the Board. 1.5 billion ISK dividends for the year 2016 The Boards proposal for the payment of dividends to owners in the amount of 1.5 billion ISK, for the year 2016, was also approved at the Annual General Meeting. More information: Magnus or Gylfason Director of Corporate Communications Magnus.Thor.Gylfason@landsvirkjun.is + 354 5159000 CLEARWATER, Fla., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Addressing a situation that is spiraling out of control, on April 22nd the Scientology Volunteer Ministers Florida Chapter went to the Greenwood Neighborhood in Clearwater to pick up trash for the third week in a row. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/49fc3418-3204-4e68-a592-4ecaeb4a23a7 People are bringing their trash to Greenwood and dumping it there. It isnt right. The motto of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers is Something Can be Done About It, said Glendy Goodsell, the organizations Executive Director. This area of town needs some help and we are here to give them a hand, theyre our neighbors. The volunteers picked up a cumulative 110 bags of trash and other objects including a mattress, 5 tires, 6 TVs and a propane tank. The volunteers, working their way through the neighborhood, attracted attention from the locals. People came out of their homes to personally say thank you to those helping. Others asked how they could help with the community cleaning. A group of twelve teenagers walking down the street saw the volunteers in their yellow shirts and asked them what they were doing. The teenagers got their own garbage bags and pitched right in, picking up trash with the rest of the volunteers. Joe Creek, a Scientology Volunteer Minister, said that the best part was when people came out and saw that something can be done about the litter situation in their neighborhood. Ms. Goodsell explains the inspiration for the VM program, Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, Founder of the Scientology Religion said, If one does not like the crime, cruelty, injustice and violence of this society, he can do something about it. That is why the Volunteer Ministers feel so strongly about helping others in time of need. To find out more or to get involved with the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, please contact their office at (727) 467-6965 or email glendy@volunteerministers.org. About the Church of Scientology: The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard. The first Church of Scientology was formed in the United States in 1954 and has expanded to more than 11,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups, with millions of members in 167 nations. Based on L. Ron Hubbard's words, "A community that pulls together can make a better society for all," the Church of Scientology regularly engages in many humanitarian programs and community events. To learn more, visit www.scientology-fso.org. NEW YORK, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Law Offices of Vincent Wong announce that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of investors who purchased U.S. Concrete, Inc. ("U.S. Concrete") (NYSE:USCR) securities between March 6, 2015 and March 23, 2017. Click here to learn about the case: http://www.wongesq.com/pslra-sa/u-s-concrete-inc?wire=1. There is no cost or obligation to you. According to the complaint, throughout the Class Period, the Company issued materially false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Company lacked effective internal controls over financial reporting; and (ii) as a result of the foregoing, U.S. Concrete's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On March 24, 2017, U.S. Concrete filed a Current Report on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, announcing the resignation of the Company's Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Tusa, and advising investors that the Company had dismissed its previous auditor, Grant Thornton LLP, and engaged Ernst & Young LLP as its new public accounting firm. If you suffered a loss in U.S. Concrete you have until May 30, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesnt require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. To obtain additional information, contact Vincent Wong, Esq. either via email vw@wongesq.com, by telephone at 212.425.1140, or visit http://www.wongesq.com/pslra-sa/u-s-concrete-inc?wire=1. Vincent Wong, Esq. is an experienced attorney that has represented investors in securities litigations involving financial fraud and violations of shareholder rights. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Extension to the USA of the Sarcopenia clinical program Confirmation of the good safety profile of Sarconeos in SARA-PK clinical trial Authorizations to launch SARA-OBS clinical study, in which sarcopenic patients will be pre-recruited for phase 2b Strengthening of the team, and of the research platform in aging science Cash at year-end 3.3 million Completion of a private placement of 3.7 million, and implementation of a financing line of 15 million, early 2017 PARIS, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BIOPHYTIS (Alternext Paris:ALBPS), a biotechnology company specializing in the development of drug candidates for the treatment of aging-associated diseases, released its financial results today, and reviewed its activities in 2016. 2016 was a year of significant progress for Biophytis. We have launched an ambitious clinical program, in Europe and the USA, with potentially high value-creation on our drug candidate Sarconeos in Sarcopenia, Stanislas Veillet, CEO of BIOPHYTIS announced. SARA-PK, successfully completed, has produced very promising data on Sarconeos. The network of clinical centers in Europe and in the USA, where the phase 2b clinical trial SARA-INT will be conducted, has been established. The authorizations to execute the pre-recruitment clinical study SARA-OBS have been granted. With regards to Macuneos, we have started production of the clinical lots. Finally, we have continued to reinforce our scientific potential by moving our platform within University Pierre & Marie Curie, nearby our partners: Institut de Biologie Paris Seine, Institut de Myologie, Institut de la Vision. Biophytis has presented 6 scientific communications in ICFSR, SCWD and ARVO. He added : Early in 2017, we have reinforced our financials, allowing us to focus on our goals for this year, namely carrying out the international phase 2b of the SARA-INT clinical study and launching the MACA clinical program. KEY EVENTS OF FISCAL YEAR 2016 Over the course of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, the Company significantly advanced the clinical development of its products, particularly Sarconeos (BIO101), the leading drug candidate for the treatment of sarcopenia. To accomplish this, the Company continued to strengthen its team, which in addition has been reorganized to be closer to its scientific partners on the campus of lUniversite Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris). In April 2016, the Company announced an ambitious clinical program aimed at maximizing the value of the products developed. Its highlights include: A strong development in the United States, the largest market for biotech. The ambition of Biophytis is now aimed at the clinical development of its drug candidates concurrently in the United States and Europe, in order to be part of the North-American scientific community for the pathologies dealt with, and to better prepare for the clinical and regulatory requirements of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). A significant expansion of the size of the phase 2b clinical studies with inclusion of patients in clinical centers in the United States, both for Sarconeos (BIO101) for sarcopenia and for Macuneos (BIO201) for dry AMD. This policy of internationalizing clinical trials, initially pursued only in France and Belgium, is intended to increase the statistical power of the studies conducted, thus adding value to the products developed. Over the course of the fiscal year, this plan was carried out in accordance with the schedule announced, more specifically: Completion of the SARA-PK study aimed at evaluating the safety, tolerance levels and pharmacokinetic profile of Sarconeos in elderly (>65) healthy volunteers. The study was conducted in two phases: administration of single ascending doses (SAD), then of multiple ascending doses (MAD). Both phases of the SARA-PK study were completed successfully. Launch of the SARA-OBS study, whose goal is to recruit more than 300 patients and observe them for six months, over the course of which multiple parameters of the severity and development of the condition will be monitored. The data obtained will permit sarcopenia patients to be better characterized for recruitment into the phase 2b, SARA-INT study. To achieve this, the Company doubled its staff, bringing it to a total of 14 people, notably including Susanna Del Signore, who was recruited at the position of Chief Medical Officer in replacement of Phillipe Guillet who now serves the company on the Scientific Advisory Board. The whole team was relocated in December 2016 in its new premises on the campus of Universite Pierre & Marie Curie, in order to be closer to the companys scientific partners: Institut de Biologie Paris Seine, Institut de Myologie, and Institut de la Vision. Forecast developments in 2017 focus on three areas: Execution of the SARA clinical plan in accordance with the program announced. Launch of the MACA clinical program for the drug candidate Macuneos for the treatment of AMD. Intensification of research efforts to keep the company at the leading scientific edge. FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS The Groups Income Statement, Consolidated Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows have been drawn up in accordance with IFRS. The consolidated financial statements have been audited. The financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2016 were approved by the Board of Directors on April 25, 2017. The certification report has been issued on April 27, 2017. The annual financial statements will be made available on the Companys website on April 27, 2017. Net loss of 8.0 million, up by 2.8 million from the previous year, mostly due to investments in the clinical program. The table below summarizes the key figures of the income statement: In thousands 2016 2015 Net Research and Development Costs (5,121 ) (1,969 ) Research and Development Costs (6,788 ) (2,501 ) Grants 1,667 532 General and administrative expenses (2,820 ) (3,074 ) Operating income (7,942 ) (5,233 ) Financial income (13 ) (190 ) Net Income (7,954 ) (5,233 ) Of which, share-based payments (994 ) (2,502 ) Net Income excluding share-based payments (6,960 ) (2,731 ) The increase in development costs (regulatory studies, completion of the SARA-PK study, and the launch of SARA-OBS) of 4.0 million, was the main reason for the significant increase in R&D expenses. As a consequence of strengthening the team, personnel expenses increased by 0.8 million. This increase is partly offset by the associated increase in the Research Tax Credit, to be received in 2017, for 1.2 million. General and administrative expenses bore the full-year impact of the increase in administrative fees associated with fulfilling the obligations of a publicly listed company, for 0.6 million. It should be noted that the accounting charge relating to the issue of warrants for employee share subscription (BSPCE), which are share-based payments, is sharply down by 1.5 million, since no new plan was put in place in 2016. This charge does not affect the Companys cash. Cash was down to 3.1 million as of December 31, 2016, offset in April 2017 by a capital increase of 3.7 million and the implementation of a quasi-equity financing line of 15.0 million. The table below summarizes the key figures for Company cash: in thousands 2016 2015 Non-current financial assets (liquidity contract) 98 272 Cash and cash equivalents 3,036 9,398 Short-Term deposits 2,001 9,002 Bank accounts 1,035 396 Other debtors * 0 50 Available Cash 3,134 9,720 *: payments received in connection with the exercise of share subscription warrants The significant increase in development costs led to a negative cash flow from operations (i.e. after elimination of items not affecting cash) of 6.8 million. The working capital requirement decreased by 0.2 million, as the increase in the Research Tax Credit to be received in 2017 was offset by an equivalent increase in trade payables. To remedy the 6.6 million decrease in cash and be able to fund the clinical studies, the Company carried out a capital increase in April 2017, which was subscribed by several private investors and the management, in an amount of 3.7 million, and implemented a financing line of up to 15.0 million in the form of 1,500 note warrants for Bonds Redeemable in Cash or New or Existing Shares carrying Share Subscription Warrants (ORNANEBSA). ABOUT SARCONEOS: Sarconeos is the first representative of a new class of drug candidates based on the activation of the MAS receptor (major player of the renin-angiotensin system), stimulating anabolism in the muscle, inhibitor of myostatin and favoring muscle mass development in animal models of muscular dystrophies. Sarconeos is developed in the treatment of sarcopenia, an age-related degeneration of skeletal muscle and strength, leading to a loss of mobility in elderly people. This new pathology, for which no medical treatment currently exists, was first described in 1993 and just entered the WHO International Classification of Diseases (M62.84), affects more than 50 million people worldwide. About MACUNEOS: Macuneos is the first representative of a new class of drug candidates, agonists of nuclear receptor PPAR. Macuneos protects retinal pigment epithelium: Biophytis has shown in animal models a protection of retinal cells against phototoxic effects of A2E in the presence of blue light (oxidative stress), a reduction in accumulation of A2E, and eventually a slowdown of the degenerative process of the retina. Macuneos is a drug candidate against the dry form of AMD. AMD affects the central part of the retina, called the macula, causing severe visual impairment and irreversible loss of central vision beyond 60 years old. About BIOPHYTIS: Biophytis SA (www.biophytis.com), founded in 2006, develops drug candidates targeting diseases of aging. Using its technology and know-how, Biophytis has begun clinical development of innovative therapeutics to restore the muscular and visual functions in diseases with significant unmet medical needs. Specifically, the company is advancing two lead products into mid-stage clinical testing this year: Sarconeos (BIO101) to treat sarcopenic obesity and Macuneos (BIO201) to treat dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The company was founded in partnership with researchers at the UPMC (Pierre and Marie Curie University) and also collaborates with scientists at the Institute of Myology, and the Vision Institute. BIOPHYTIS is listed on the Alternext market of Euronext Paris (ALBPS; ISIN: FR0012816825). For more information: http://www.biophytis.com Follow us on Twitter @biophytis BIOPHYTIS is eligible for the SMEs scheme Disclaimer This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the Company's actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors (Facteurs de Risque) section of the Listing Prospectus upon the admission of Companys shares for trading on the regulated market Alternext of Euronext Paris filed with the AMF, which is available on the AMF website (www.amf- france.org) or on BIOPHYTIS website (www.biophytis.com). This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to shares in BIOPHYTIS in any country. Items in this press release may contain forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties. The Companys actual results could differ substantially from those anticipated in these statements owing to various risk factors which are described in the Companys prospectus. This press release has been prepared in both French and English. In the event of any differences between the two texts, the French language version shall prevail. WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Postal Service will soon release a first-of-its-kind stamp that changes when you touch it. The Total Solar Eclipse Forever stamp, which commemorates the August 21 eclipse, transforms into an image of the Moon from the heat of a finger. The public is asked to share the news on social media using the hashtag #EclipseStamps. The back of the stamp pane provides a map of the August 21 eclipse path and times it may appear in some locations. Visit NASA's website to view detailed maps of the eclipse's path. Tens of millions of people in the United States hope to view this rare event, which has not been seen on the U.S. mainland since 1979. The eclipse will travel a narrow path across the entire country for the first time since 1918. The path will run west to east from Oregon to South Carolina and will include portions of 14 states. The June 20, 1:30 p.m. MT First-Day-of-Issue ceremony will take place at the Art Museum of the University of Wyoming (UW) in Laramie. The University is celebrating the summer solstice on June 20. Prior to the event, visitors are encouraged to arrive at 11:30 a.m. to witness a unique architectural feature where a single beam of sunlight shines on a silver dollar embedded in the floor, which occurs at noon on the summer solstice in the UW Art Museum's Rotunda Gallery. Thermochromic Ink The stamp image is a photograph taken by astrophysicist Fred Espenak, aka Mr. Eclipse, of Portal, AZ, that shows a total solar eclipse seen from Jalu, Libya, on March 29, 2006. In the first U.S. stamp application of thermochromic ink, the Total Solar Eclipse stamps will reveal a second image. Using the body heat of your thumb or fingers and rubbing the eclipse image will reveal an underlying image of the Moon (Espenak also took the photograph of the Full Moon). The image reverts back to the eclipse once it cools. Thermochromic inks are vulnerable to UV light and should be kept out of direct sunlight as much as possible to preserve this special effect. To help ensure longevity, the Postal Service will be offering a special envelope to hold and protect the stamp pane for a nominal fee. A total eclipse of the Sun occurs when the Moon completely blocks the visible solar disk from view, casting a shadow on Earth. The 70-mile-wide shadow path of the eclipse, known as the "path of totality," will traverse the country diagonally, appearing first in Oregon (mid-morning local time) and exiting some 2,500 miles east and 90 minutes later off the coast of South Carolina (mid-afternoon local time). A total solar eclipse provides us with the only chance to see the Sun's corona its extended outer atmosphere without specialized instruments. During the total phase of an eclipse the corona appears as a gossamer white halo around the black disk of the Moon, resembling the petals of a flower reaching out into space. Art director Antonio Alcala of Alexandria, VA, designed the stamp. The Total Eclipse of the Sun stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp, which is always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce price. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm. For reporters interested in speaking with a regional Postal Service public relations professional, please go to about.usps.com/news/media-contacts/usps-local-media-contacts.pdf. Follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/usps), Instagram (instagram.com/uspostalservice), Pinterest (pinterest.com/uspsstamps), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/usps), subscribe to our channel on YouTube (youtube.com/usps), like us on Facebook (facebook.com/usps) and view our Postal Posts blog (uspsblog.com). For more information about the Postal Service, visit usps.com and usps.com/postalfacts. A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=42335 WICHITA, Kan., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Airbus Americas Engineering today officially opened its new Engineering Center on the Wichita State University (WSU) Innovation Campus. In a ceremony attended by the approximately 300 Airbus employees who work at the center and special guests, including Lt. Governor Jeff Colyer, the company recognized the importance of locating academia and industry together to improve innovation and competitiveness. The company also relaunched the Airbus Foundation Flying Challenge in Wichita, which will see Maize USD 266s Maize High School and Maize South High School junior and senior students building an airplane in partnership with Airbus and Tango Flight. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d7e73eff-e70a-498e-af95-1952de652cd7 Airbus employees are creative people, said Barry Eccleston, CEO of Airbus Americas, Inc. As they develop engineering solutions they naturally discover new ideas and concepts that could potentially enhance products and business processes to create value for our customers. The question is, how do we support our employees as they transition good ideas into value? Our presence on the Innovation Campus will help us do that. The campus provides an environment that fosters faster transition of innovative ideas into real-world uses and value for the company. Being a resident on the campus provides a support infrastructure to Airbus Engineering that would otherwise be cost prohibitive to duplicate in a stand-alone engineering center, including access to engineering labs, research faculty, conference facilities, educational opportunities, and easier collaboration with other members of the Innovation Campus. As a resident of the campus, Airbus is partnering with WSU within the universitys Applied Learning Model, which engages students in real-world engineering projects, helps develop critical skills that are needed for engineering now and in the future, and helps produce graduates with experience, while also boosting Airbus competitiveness. Wichitas talent pool of aerospace and aviation experts is among the richest in the world, said John OLeary, Vice President-Airbus Americas Engineering. The aviation expertise here is recognized within Airbus and around the world. The Innovation Campus is only going to help Wichitas expertise grow. And with the relaunch of the Airbus Foundation Flying Challenge in partnership with Tango Flight and Maize Schools, were investing in the future of that expertise. The Airbus Foundation Flying Challenge is a global program that leverages aviation to inspire young people to continue their education, find their professional vocation and realize their dreams through mentoring with Airbus employee volunteers. The program initially launched in Wichita in 2012 with a focus on middle school students. The 2017 challenge will focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at the high school level through the construction of a flying aircraft. The program will build on the existing Aerospace Engineering curriculum at Maize USD 266, which incorporates Project Lead The Way (PLTW) in its curriculum. Airbus mentors will work with students to build an FAA Licensed RV-12 kit plane. The students will be exposed to aircraft design, engineering and production activities, as well as project management, team work and finally, the freedom of flight. Partnerships and opportunities like these are key as we continue to create ways to introduce our students to experiences, skills, mentors, and potential jobs that will help their college readiness and future careers take flight, Maize USD 266 Superintendent Dr. Chad Higgins said. We welcome mutually beneficial relationships with businesses and other organizations that strengthen our students learning environment while enriching the community. Tango Flight will provide the Airbus Foundation with a unique turnkey solution including an integrated aerospace engineering curriculum, aviation training, aircraft ownership, aircraft insurance and mentor program development. We are very excited to work in partnership with Airbus and Maize High to expand this Program to the Air Capitol, said Dan Weyant President and Co-Founder of Tango Flight. About Airbus Americas Engineering in Wichita: The companys first engineering and design facility outside of Europe, the Airbus Engineering Center in Wichita was opened in June 2002 as home to approximately 30 engineers dedicated to wing design for the Airbus A380 aircraft. Today, Airbus Engineering-Wichita has approximately 300 employees who are engaged on all Airbus commercial products. Airbus utilizes an extensive supply chain of U.S.-based companies, including significant work with companies in South Central Kansas. About Airbus Foundation: The Airbus Foundation, chaired by Tom Enders, CEO of Airbus, includes Airbus, Airbus Helicopters and Airbus Defence & Space as founding and contributing members. It is the companys vehicle for corporate philanthropy, using the groups resources, aeronautic and space products, competencies, diverse workforce and culture for driving innovation to address societal issues. The Foundation supports the global humanitarian community and inspires and prepares young people for the challenges of tomorrow. Since its launch in 2008, the Airbus Foundation has facilitated more than 50 relief or goodwill flights to numerous destinations around the globe. More information can be found at www.airbusgroup.com/foundation. Follow us on Twitter: @AirbusFdn. About Tango Flight: Tango Flight is a 501(c)3 non-profit Texas corporation created to support the construction and operation of experimental Light Sport Aircraft (eLSA) by high school students for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs. www.tangoflight.org. IRVINE, Calif., April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Khang & Khang LLP (the Firm) announces a class action lawsuit against Grana y Montero S.A.A. (Grana y Montero or the Company) (NYSE:GRAM). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between July 24, 2013 and February 24, 2017 inclusive (the Class Period), are encouraged to contact the Firm by the April 28, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline. If you purchased the Companys shares during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esq., of Khang & Khang LLP, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. There has been no class certification in this case yet. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Grana y Montero made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that Grana y Montero was aware that its Brazilian partner Odebrecht S.A. paid bribes to former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo to win construction work on a road traveling from Peru to Brazil; and as a result, the Companys statements about its business, operations and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. On February 24, 2017, Reuters published an article highlighting a report that Grana y Montero knew about $20 million in bribes paid to former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo by its partner Odebrecht. Upon release of this news, the Companys stock price decreased materially, which allegedly harmed investors. If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit, or if you have any questions regarding this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Wednesday marks the 32nd anniversary to the Chernobyl disaster, history's worst nuclear accident. In April 26, 1986, poorly trained staff and a flawed nuclear reactor resulted in a radioactive steam explosion in Chernobyl, killing two and fatally poisoning 28 people weeks after the incident. The cost of the disaster is still felt to this day. In Belarus, where 70 percent of the radiation fell as a result of the accident, one-fifth of the country's annual budget is dedicated to curbing the long-term effects of the incident. EARTH DAY: Clever signs from the March for Science Shockingly, two million people in Belarus still reside in heavily contaminated zones. Chernobyl, once a city of 150,000 people roughly the same size as Pasadena is now a ghost town, ruled by animals like horses, deer, wolves, and moose who don't seem to mind the region's high levels of contamination. Chernobyl and the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, have made many people question the safety of nuclear energy. Fukushima and Chernobyl are the only two major accidents in more than six decades of nuclear energy. OTHER TRAGEDIES: History shows that April has been a month for tragedy Texas is home to four nuclear power reactors which generate 8.7 percent of the state's electricity. The closest power plant to Houston is the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station in Bay City, roughly 100 miles from Houston. No Texas plant has ever suffered a fatal accident. Click through above to see photos of the now-abandoned city of Chernobyl. English German Basel, Switzerland, April 27, 2017 - Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) reported that at today's Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders for the financial year 2016, shareholders approved all agenda items proposed by the Board of Directors. The shareholders approved the annual report, the financial statements, and consolidated financial statements for the business year 2016, and approved the release of the members of Basilea's Board of Directors and Management Committee. Shareholders also approved carrying forward the accumulated deficit, and re-elected PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, Basel as Statutory Auditors for the audit of the stand-alone and consolidated financial statements for the business year 2017. The shareholders elected Dr. Nicole Onetto as a new member of Basilea's Board of directors and re-elected Domenico Scala as Chairman and Prof. Daniel Lew, Dr. Martin Nicklasson, Dr. Thomas M. Rinderknecht, Steven D. Skolsky and Dr. Thomas Werner as members of the Board of Directors. The shareholders also re-elected Dr. Nicklasson, Mr. Skolsky and Dr. Werner as members of the Compensation Committee. Dr. Caroline Cron was re-elected as Independent Voting Rights Representative. The terms of all these individuals last until the end of the 2018 Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. "I am delighted that Nicole Onetto has been elected as a new member of the Board of Directors," said Domenico Scala, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "Her wealth of experience both operationally and strategically in developing and bringing innovative oncology drugs to patients will further strengthen the Board's oncology expertise." The shareholders also approved the increase of the authorized share capital. Finally, the shareholders approved the proposed maximum aggregate amount of the compensation for the Board of Directors for the period until the 2018 Ordinary General Meeting, the maximum aggregate amount of fixed compensation for the Management Committee for the period of July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, and the maximum aggregate amount of variable compensation for the Management Committee for the period from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. In a non-binding advisory vote, the shareholders also approved the aggregate amount of the Management Committee's variable compensation for the business year 2016. In his presentation to the shareholders at the meeting, Chief Executive Officer Ronald Scott highlighted the achievement of the key company goals set for 2016. He reported that the antifungal drug Cresemba (isavuconazole) was launched and is available to patients in key European markets. Additionally, Basilea concluded development and commercialization partnerships for Cresemba and Basilea's antibiotic Zevtera (ceftobiprole) covering more than forty countries. Moreover, Basilea entered into a contract in 2016 with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the clinical phase 3 development of ceftobiprole. He explained that the total contract amount could reach up to USD 100 million in non-dilutive funding. Mr. Scott said: "Our first achievements in 2017 include the agreement of Special Protocol Assessments with the US FDA for two ceftobiprole phase 3 studies. We are now preparing to initiate these studies in bloodstream and skin infections with the ultimate goal of gaining regulatory approval of ceftobiprole in the United States." In addition, he indicated that Basilea continues to focus on increasing the sales of Cresemba and Zevtera, entering into additional collaborations to make Cresemba and Zevtera available in further territories around the world, and advancing its oncology compounds. At the meeting, 31.5 percent of Basilea's share capital was represented. Currently, 60.5 percent of the total shares outstanding are registered in Basilea's share registry. About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a biopharmaceutical company developing products that address the medical problem of increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company uses the integrated research, development and commercial operations of its subsidiary Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. to discover, develop and commercialize innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com. Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD Head Corporate Communications & Investor Relations +41 61 606 1102 media_relations@basilea.com investor_relations@basilea.com This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. English French PRESS RELEASE Cegid Group's 2016 Annual Financial Report will be available on the Company's website www.cegid.fr (in French, link "investisseurs") as of April 28, 2017. The Shareholders' Meeting will be held on Thursday June 29, 2017, at 6.00 pm, at the head office, 52 quai Paul Sedallian, 69009 Lyon (France). Among the items on the agenda is the approval of the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2016. Cegid Group had previously announced that it would change its dividend distribution policy. In light of the Company's strategy for growth and investment, the Board of Directors believes it is important for the Company to improve its financial flexibility and to focus its financial resources on its operations and on the financing of its plans for capital expenditure and development. As a result, the Board of Directors decided at its meeting of April 27, 2017 to recommend to shareholders that they not pay a dividend on 2016 earnings. The Company's future dividend policy will be based on its financial needs and on its growth and development. Consequently, as the new controlling shareholder Claudius France announced at the time of the tender offer, there can be no guarantee as to the distribution of dividends in future years. The invitation to the Shareholders' Meeting will be published in the Bulletin of Legal Announcements (BALO) by the date required under the law and will include the draft resolutions to be submitted to a shareholder vote during the Meeting. This English translation is for the convenience of English-speaking readers. However, only the French text has legal value. Consequently, the translation may not be relied upon to sustain any legal claim, nor should it be used as the basis of any legal opinion. Cegid Group expressly disclaims all liability for any inaccuracy herein. Financial communication Cegid Group 52 quai Paul Sedallian 69279 Lyon Cedex 09 Tel : +33 (0)4 26 29 50 20 dirfin@cegid.fr /http://investors.cegid.com Stock market: Euronext Paris Compartiment B ISIN Code : FR0000124703 Reuters : CEGI.PA Bloomberg : CGD FP ICB : 9537 Software Indices : CAC ALL SHARES - CAC ALL-TRADABLE - CAC MID & SMALL CAC SOFT. & C.S. - CAC TECHNOLOGY - NEXT 150 Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/22595084-bd1f-4f85-9a7c-53a54d7bca51 With my intense travel schedule, I savor detours where I put away the schedule and notes and simply enjoy the moment. And for me, theres no better detour in Europe than visiting a public bath or spa for a relaxing, good soak. Some Americans are prudish when it comes to enjoying public baths in Europe especially when the dress code is just a towel. I understand the hesitation; my first time was awkward too. I was with friends a young, good-looking German couple. As they got naked in the changing area, I felt like the Road Runner just beyond the cliffs edge. Then I eased up and got naked. It wasnt sexy simply open and free. One of my favorite bath experiences is in the German town of Baden-Baden. Its said that the Roman Emperor Caracalla may have soaked away his rheumatism here. Today the town has two very different baths. The Roman-Irish Bath (Friedrichsbad) is traditional, stately, indoors, contemplative and relaxing its just you, the past, and your body. The Baths of Caracalla (Caracalla Therme), with both indoor and outdoor areas, are more perky, modern and social. I prefer the Friedrichsbad a steamy world of peaceful pools, exquisitely tiled sauna rooms, and complete nudity where, for the cost of a good dinner, you get the works. Multilingual signs lead you from room to room. Highlights include the soap-and-brush massage (rough, slippery and finished with a good Teutonic spank); the central pool, where women and men glide like swans under a divine dome; and after all that hot water, the cold plunge (dont wimp out; its invigorating). Afterward, you lay in a silent yellow room, swaddled in warm towels. After the Friedrichsbad, youll feel, as they say, five years younger or at least no older. And in the Bavarian valley town of Schwangau, the Royal Crystal Baths (Konigliche Kristall-Therme) offer just what a body needs after a day battling crowds at Neuschwanstein Castle. As you soak, enjoy the poolside view thats as grand as King Ludwigs or even better, considering it includes his inspiring castle. In spa-loving Germany, you dont have to make a special trip to find a public bath; many towns have one. Like Germans, Hungarians enjoy a good bath. Hungary has more than a thousand hot springs, and Budapest alone has about two dozen mineral baths. Of these, the most accessible and fun is the Szechenyi Baths. Located in the middle of City Park, Szechenyi has indoor pools and a stunning outdoor complex, including a fun pool with jets, bubbles and circular rapids. Youll see locals of all shapes and sizes squeezed into tiny swimsuits, babushkas floating blissfully in the warm water, and the Speedo-clad old boys club gathered around chessboards. One of my strangest spa experiences was in the Czech town of Trebon. Home to a peat spa, it attracts patients from all over the world, who come for weeklong stays to get naked and buried in the black, smelly sludge thats thought to cure aching joints and spines. Envisioning the elegance of Baden-Baden, I had to give it a whirl. After climbing into a stainless steel tub, the attendant pulled a plug. I quickly disappeared under a rising sea of peat broth, my toes poking out of the hot brown and glassy-still sea. After my peat bath, I showered off the sludge and was ushered into the massage room. My attendant laid me face-down for a full-body massage (despite my insistence that I had to leave). I walked out with a mucky massage cream causing my shirt to stick to me, and without a clue what soaking in that peat soup was supposed to accomplish. Still, the experience was worth it, if only to experience the surreal One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest atmosphere of Czech medical institutions. Another memorable spa experience is the Finnish sauna, which has particular appeal during the long, cold winters. Finns say the sauna is a great equalizer here, wearing nothing and slapping your back with birch twigs (which supposedly enhances circulation), there are no bosses. Everyones equal. Just inside the door is a big cooler stacked with frozen bundles of birch twigs and B.Y.O.B. bottles (if you want a beer, you bring your own). Each time I sweat with strangers in a Finnish sauna, I walk away impressed at the way 5 million people can maintain a distinct culture here in this far-northern corner of Europe. Whether in a German spa, a Czech peat bath, or a Finnish sauna, a fun part of travel can be getting naked with strangers. Let go of your inhibitions. Youll likely enjoy a fun time and warm avalanche of acceptance and have a great story to tell when youre home. Rick Steves writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It was the summer of 2012, and Jared Kushner was headed downtown. His familys real estate firm, the Kushner Cos., would spend about $190 million during the next few months on dozens of apartment buildings in tony Lower Manhattan neighborhoods including the East Village, the West Village and SoHo. For much of the roughly $50 million in down payments, Kushner turned to an undisclosed overseas partner. Public records and shell companies shield the investors identity. But, it turns out, the money came from a member of Israels Steinmetz family, which built a fortune as one of the worlds leading diamond traders. A Kushner Cos. spokeswoman and several Steinmetz representatives say Raz Steinmetz, 53, was behind the deals. His uncle, and the familys most prominent figure, is the billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who is under scrutiny by law enforcement authorities in four countries. In the United States, federal prosecutors are investigating whether representatives of his firm bribed government officials in Guinea to secure a multibillion-dollar mining concession. In Israel, Steinmetz was detained in December and questioned in a bribery and money laundering investigation. In Switzerland and Guinea, prosecutors have conducted similar inquiries. The Steinmetz partnership with Kushner underscores the mystery behind his familys multibillion-dollar business and its potential for conflicts with his role as perhaps the second-most powerful man in the White House, behind only his father-in-law, President Trump. Although Kushner resigned in January from his chief executive role at Kushner Cos., he remains the beneficiary of trusts that own the sprawling real estate business. The firm has taken part in roughly $7 billion in acquisitions during the last decade, many of them backed by foreign partners whose identities he will not reveal. Last month, his company said it had ended talks with Anbang Insurance Group, a Chinese financial firm linked to leading members of the ruling Communist Party. Dealings with the Steinmetz family could create complications for Kushner. The Justice Department, led by Trump appointees, oversees the investigation into Beny Steinmetz. Even as Kushners company maintains extensive business ties to Israel, as a top White House adviser, he has been charged with leading U.S. efforts to broker peace in the Middle East. Jesse Drucker is a New York Times writer. BERLIN A German army lieutenant appears to have taken advantage of his countrys chaotic system of processing refugees in 2015 to pose as a Syrian asylum-seeker with the intention of carrying out an attack, authorities said Thursday. Prosecutors said the soldier, whose name was not released, was a 28-year-old German from the city of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, who was stationed with the army at the Illkirch base in France, near the German border. He is suspected of planning a violent attack, weapons violations and fraud, prosecutors in Frankfurt said. They were not aware of any specific targets, said Nadja Niesen, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors. The man first caught the attention of Austrian authorities in January, when he stashed a loaded pistol in a cleaning shaft in a restroom at Vienna International Airport. He was detained on Feb. 3 when he returned for the weapon, prosecutors said. Investigators discovered that the suspect, using a false identity, registered in December 2015 with German officials in Giessen, about 40 miles north of Frankfurt, as a Syrian refugee. It was not clear what steps officials took to verify his claim, given that he appeared to speak no Arabic, Niesen said. Why that did not catch their attention, I am not able to say, she said. The man was processed as a refugee and assigned to an initial processing center in Zirndorf, in the southern state of Bavaria, where he submitted an application for asylum. He did all of this parallel to his duties as a soldier, Niesen said. He appeared to live a double life. More than 1 million people poured across Germanys borders in 2015 and 2016, straining the registration system and leaving it vulnerable to exploitation. Since January 2016, the suspect had been drawing the monthly financial stipend provided by the German government for refugees, prosecutors said. This knowledge, as well as anecdotal evidence indicating the soldier had a xenophobic background, lead to the suspicion that the defendant had planned to carry out a violent criminal act, an attack, with the weapon hidden in Vienna airport, prosecutors said. About 90 officers searched the mans home, as well as locations in France and Austria, prosecutors said. Melissa Eddy is a New York Times writer. 1 Kashmir conflict: Human rights groups have long accused Indian forces of using systematic abuse and unjustified arrests in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The Indian government has acknowledged the problem exists, but denies it is part of a wide strategy to intimidate residents. Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuses for some years, but several recent clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election April 9, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests. The rights group Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society estimates that at least 200,000 people have been tortured during Kashmirs decades-long separatist conflict fueled by anti-India sentiment among a mostly Muslim population and a deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops. 2 Political crisis: Venezuelas government said Wednesday that it will begin withdrawing from the Organization of American States in reaction to growing international pressure on the socialist-run South American nation. Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said President Nicolas Maduro will send a letter to the OAS in Washington renouncing its membership in the hemispheric body. Rodriguez said Maduros administration has been forced to counter what it sees as an attempt by the OAS and conservative regional governments to topple Maduro. 1 Turkey referendum: Turkeys electoral authority on Thursday released the official tally of the countrys referendum, saying President Recep Tayyip Erdogans yes camp won narrowly in the vote that will greatly boost the powers of his office. The referendum, disputed by the opposition, approved a series of constitutional amendments transforming Turkeys parliamentary government system into a presidential one, abolishing the office of the prime minister and granting the president executive powers. The High Electoral Board said the yes side received 51.41 percent of the votes in the April 16 referendum, while the no votes garnered 48.59 percent. The turnout was 87.45 percent. 2 Macedonia unrest: Chaos swept into Macedonias parliament Thursday as demonstrators stormed the building and attacked lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-old deadlock in efforts to form a new government. Clashes over several hours injured 77 people, including 22 police officers and several lawmakers, authorities said. Neighboring countries along with the European Union and United States expressed concern at the small Balkan nations escalating political crisis. President Gjorge Ivanov went on TV to appeal for reasonable and responsible behavior. ALPER BOLER/AFP/Getty Images ISTANBUL A Russian naval intelligence ship sank Thursday after colliding with a merchant freighter in the Black Sea near Istanbul, the Turkish coast guard said. All 78 crew members on the Russian vessel were rescued. The crew of the freighter, a Togo-flagged ship traveling from Romania to Jordan and carrying 8,800 sheep, was unharmed and the ship suffered slight damage to its bow, according to local media reports. By definition, something is better than nothing. But city of Santa Fe employees who just two months ago heard Mayor Javier Gonzales propose a 5 percent raise tonight learned theyd have to settle for 2 percent. Its too little and its been too long, said Miles Conway, communications director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest city employees union. We came to the table last year and asked how AFSCME can help. We gave up positions to help the city. Amid continuing debate over which city employees should get raises and how much they should be, the Santa Fe City Council passed a $327.5 million budget for the fiscal year that beings July 1 that anticipates cost-of-living raises of 2 percent for city employees. It also sets aside $409,000 for a what amounts to a pilot program for a merit pay system. Union members balked at the merit pay suggestion. Tony Ortiz, a 20-year veteran of the city's Transit Division, called the merit pay "kiss-up money." "If you come in early and bring your boss a burrito and talk with him, that's how you get merit pay," Ortiz scoffed outside council chambers. The raises, meager though they may feel to some, come with the promise that the city will revisit further pay raises once it better understands the future of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. The university, which rents its St. Michaels Drive campus from the city, recently announced its plans to close its doors in May 2018. The schools lease payments covered the citys mortgage for the property. After dealing with a $15 million shortfall last year, the council had a general fund surplus of $1.2 million. But the budget approved Wednesday set that money aside in case the city has to start paying the $2.23 million annual lease. Its disappointing, said Gonzales. But given the situation with the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and the uncertainty there, I think this is a responsible budget that gives us the flexibility to come back to the issue of pay raises. We want to keep the employees we have and make sure they dont go looking for other jobs. While the City Council approved the budget unanimously, some councilors voiced concern about moving too hastily to repair some of the damage done by budget cuts in recent years. I feel like the minute were realizing any kind of a surplus, were obligating it right away, said Councilor Joseph Maestas. Were not out of the woods yet. Maestas worried about the possibility of state government accelerating the phase out of so-called hold harmless payments to cities as part of the elimination of the gross receipts tax on food, though the mayor said legislators did not expect the state to make such a move as it, too, looks to finalize spending for next year. Councilor Peter Ives made a brief attempt at a handful of changes to the budget. Most of Ives moves were unsuccessful, including an attempt to create a Historic Preservation Division director position, which city payroll shows often carries a $50-per-hour salary. Ives argued the position would benefit the citys image and tourism industry. Finance Committee Chair Carmichael Dominguez balked at the last-ditch attempt to add positions to the budget. We need lifeguards, we need more police. I dont believe this is necessarily the place to do that, Dominguez said. The mayor voiced support for the position. It goes to the heart and soul of our community whether were talking about our places or our people, said Gonzales. Seventy percent of our budget is driven by gross receipts taxes. And a large part of that is tourism. And a large part of that is our historic preservation. Ultimately, Ives withdrew his proposed amendment, with the only change being a plan to reinstate a day of leave that had been taken from non-union career managers at the city. Santa Fe Reporter Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy says there is a limit to further dairy intensification in New Zealand and growing exports in the future will depend more on increasing the value of products rather than the volume. The number of dairy cattle in New Zealand has surged as farmers were lured by higher prices for dairy products while demand for sheepmeat and wool waned. The latest agricultural statistics for 2016 show New Zealand had 6.5 million dairy cattle, up from just 2.9 million four decades ago. Dairy products are the country's largest commodity export worth $11.3 billion in the year through February, and the government aims to double the value of primary sector exports to $64 billion by 2025 from $32 billion in 2012. However, a recent string of reports has singled out dairy intensification as one of the key factors, alongside urbanisation, putting pressure on the country's environment, valued for its pristine natural wilderness. "It will be challenging for the dairy industry to grow," Guy said. "There's no way that we can double the number of cows in New Zealand. One big opportunity the dairy industry does have is about increasing the value, not the volume." In the past two months, New Zealand's worsening environmental record has come under the microscope of the OECD, Vivid Economics and the Prime Minister's chief science adviser Peter Gluckman, adding weight to previous reports by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright. That's prompted a slew of editorials and opinion pieces in the country's major newspapers and a new freshwater policy from the government which aims to improve the 'swimmable' rating of lakes and rivers. Today, New Zealand published its first Fresh Water report under the Environmental Reporting Act which showed urban areas have the biggest problem with polluted freshwater, but rural areas are showing a faster-declining trend in the quality of fresh water in lakes, rivers and streams. The environmental reports come ahead of a general election this September and Guy acknowledged they had heightened awareness going into the campaign. He said farmers were working to improve their environmental standards, having voluntarily added about 26,000 kilometres of fencing over the past decade to exclude dairy cattle from waterways, and investing about $1 billion over the last five years to meet environmental obligations such as upgrading effluent systems, fencing, riparian planting and monitoring fertiliser usage. He said new technological advancements, such as more affordable nitrate probes and new cow breeds which produce fewer nitrates would assist farmers in the future. "We realise that agriculture does have an impact on the environment. What has been lost in the recent debate has been the focus that farmers have on their environmental performance," Guy said. "What farmers and growers want is scientific tools in the toolbox that can help them address these challenges. There are moves afoot to allow farmers to make the changes that they need to make on farm." He said the government was assisting the industry through putting extra funding into growing international trade, and its primary growth partnership and national science challenge initiatives, however he noted the focus was on "adding value as opposed to volume". The debate should focus on what was the appropriate land use for the different catchments in the country, rather than what was the appropriate number of cows, and science would help inform those decisions. "Those are decisions that regional councils will make on behalf of their community when it gets down to understanding their different water bodies and also they can place conditions on consents which they do do." Guy said there was a "disconnect" between rural and urban communities, which the government and industry were trying to address by getting more urban children to understand farming. "It's an ongoing challenge that anyone that's involved in the primary sector is very aware of," he said. "In the past, often children had the opportunity to get on their grandparents' farms and that has probably changed over time. If we can get more young pupils to understand where their milk comes from and where their meat comes from then that has got to be a good thing." (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. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: TEM - Market Abuse Regulation, Article 19, Paragraph 11 NZME updates FY22 guidance & announces new dividend policy November 9th Morning Report 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 Summerset Group's board came under pressure regarding its plans for wage-earners who won't benefit from a recent government-funded lift in caregiver wages at its annual meeting in Wellington, but said it plans to be proactive. Earlier this month the government announced it would implement a historic pay equity pay deal for aged and residential care workers worth $2.05 billion of extra pay over four years for some 55,000 people close to 2 percent of the total New Zealand workforce. Summerset chief executive Julian Cook said "we are very pleased that a settlement has been reached and that wages for caregivers and the funding to match this will come into place shortly." However, several shareholders questioned what the company was going to do about the workers who won't benefit from the deal as well as the potential flow-on effect with other workers, such as nursing staff given the reduced pay gap. Directors Grainne Troute and Andrew Wong - both elected Thursday - were asked what they were going to do to ensure that the benefits of the equal pay settlement extended to other staff. Troute underscored it as a challenge the board "will be grappling with" and the need to be able to attract the best quality of staff applies to all areas of the business while Wong said that people will be looking at what they earn and what it means for the jobs they do and "we will have to respond to that if we want to get the best people to do the jobs we are asking them to do." Chairman Rob Campbell, also re-elected Thursday, stressed that the board hasn't seen the detail of the settlement and said that "some of these matters are matters for negotiation." He recognised there "will be flow-ons but exactly what those flow-ons will be I don't think anyone on the board is really in a position to say at this stage." Cambell emphasised the company will be proactive and said "we don't see the future of this business as being dependent on low wages or exploitation. We want to have a business that is based on paying people fairly and equitably and we will do that," he said. In the year to Dec. 31, Summerset's employee expenses totalled $40.5 million and made up more than half of its $71.1 million in operating expenses. Across town in a pre-Budget speech the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, Finance Minister Steven Joyce today downplayed the potential ripple effect of the government's move into other sectors. The barrier is rightly set high because a flow-on to other sectors would mean going back to the old relativities that these workers have just won the right to get away from. According to Joyce, "if you have a number of employers and you have people being competed for with different employers you tend to find a rate which is effectively a market hourly rate rather than something that's a bit artificial" where there's a central funding body such as the government in the case of the caregiver settlement. Looking ahead, Summerset did not offer any new guidance at the annual meeting but did warn that it was beginning to see some impact from capacity constraints in the construction market. "Auckland based developments are currently being delivered in a construction market which is feeling much strain," said chief executive Julian Cook. The company is insulated to some degree as it acts as the main contractor on site, but "we are not immune from these pressures completely. We have seen one-to-two month delays on some projects and have also seen cost pressures coming through," said Cook. Contractor availability is also an issue given the high workload in the market. It remains on track for a retirement unit build of around 450 units this year, however, "shareholders should be aware that these issues exist," he said. In calendar 2016, Summerset improved its development margin to 22.2 percent from 20 percent benefiting from internal management and design of its construction sites, and its larger scale. Today, Cook said there was clearly more pressure on the construction process but "we are expecting the development margin to be there or thereabouts what we are delivering." The shares were trading down 1.3 percent at $5.22 but have gained 19 percent over the past year. (BusinessDesk) WASHINGTON, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) continued to express strong opposition today to provisions included in the Financial CHOICE ACT of 2017 which eliminate the requirement that investment advisers to private equity funds register with the SEC. In a letter to the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, the ILPA asserted that Sections 858 and 859 of the bill will hurt limited partners (LPs) and their beneficiaries by removing regulatory oversight that has successfully enforced transparency and ensured compliance with mandatory reporting procedures since its inception. Such protections would not otherwise be afforded to LPs. In the letter addressed to Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA), ILPA CEO Peter Freire stated: As a result of increased SEC oversight and, in particular, through the efforts of the SECs Private Fund Examination Unit, our members have seen increased transparency and disclosure of fees and expenses by fund managers, improved fund manager compliance with the terms in the contracted investment agreements and a significantly improved culture of compliance and voluntary disclosure from fund managers. A strong SEC enforcement regime, which could not effectively operate without registration, is evidenced by the 10 significant settlements reached with major private equity fund advisers since 2014. This enforcement regime has ensured that the SEC has the power needed to ensure a level and fair playing field for all parties. The letter cited the 2014 speech by head of the SECs Office of Compliance, Andrew Bowden who asserted that the SEC found in their examinations violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50% of the time. The ILPA shared that its membership comprises more than 400 institutional investors around the globe. These investors or limited partners who serve as the primary source of private equity capital represent millions of beneficiaries including retirees, teachers, first responders, universities, charitable and research foundations and insurance policy holders, all who have benefitted from the oversight and transparency that SEC registration and enforcement has provided. The ILPA urged the Committee to remove Sections 858 and 859 from the CHOICE act to allow the private equity industry to continue to flourish in a safe environment. About The ILPA The ILPA is the only global, member-driven organization dedicated exclusively to advancing the interests of private equity Limited Partners through industry-leading education, research, advocacy and networking. The New Zealand dollar rose from a four-month low after US President Donald Trump agreed not to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement just yet, giving investors some relief that the world's biggest economy is adamant in raising trade barriers. The kiwi rose to 69.10 US cents as at 5pm in Wellington from 68.68 cents earlier today to be little changed from 69.26 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index was unchanged at 75.05. Trump told his Mexican and Canadian counterparts he won't immediately kill Nafta after earlier reports citing an unnamed White House official indicated he planned to sign an executive order ending the deal as early as this week. The North American nations will instead seek to renegotiate the trade and investment deal, which Trump has blamed for hollowing out US manufacturing. His administration's anti-trade rhetoric, which has included the imposition of new tariffs on Canadian lumber this week, has weighed on commodity-linked currencies whose nations rely on export industries including the New Zealand, Australian and Canadian dollars. "The kiwi's come back a bit today on the news that Trump has decided not to kill Nafta straight away," said Graham Parlane, private client manager at OMF. "The worries over the trade theme, the diminishing yield advantage generally, the contraction of credit in New Zealand, the housing market pulling back to a more normal pace, immigration heading into the election, these all for me are factors that are likely to weigh to I'm biased to the downside in the near term." The kiwi rose to 13.1026 Mexican pesos from 13.0666 pesos yesterday and slipped to 93.60Canadian cents from 93.92 cents yesterday. New Zealand's two-year swap rate was unchanged at 2.31 percent and 10-year swaps were also unchanged at 3.38 percent. Imre Speizer, senior market strategist at Westpac Banking Corp, said Trump's underwhelming tax plan pushed yields on US Treasuries lower overnight and that the next big thing on investors' radars was the deadline to lift the debt ceiling at the end of the week to avoid a Federal government shutdown. "If they can't get that through then I think we'll see a big slide in rates" with the end of the "Trumpflation" trade that's been in place since November, he said. New Zealand Finance Minister Steven Joyce today announced plans to cut the government's net debt target to between 10-and15 percent of gross domestic product by 2025 and boosted planned infrastructure spending over the next four years. Joyce will unveil his first budget next month and left the door open for tax adjustments. The local currency rose to 92.32 Australian cents from 92.06 cents yesterday. The kiwi fell to 4.7651 Chinese yuan from 4.7674 yuan yesterday and declined to 76.87 yen from 77.05 yen. It edged up to 63.37 euro cents from 63.28 cents yesterday and declined to 53.70 British pence from 53.94 pence. (BusinessDesk) Private equity firm Navis Capital has acquired a majority stake in Mainland Poultry, whose businesses include New Zealands biggest egg producer, and is reportedly interested in buying Freshmax, the Australian-registered, NZ-based fruit and vegetable producer. Navis, which has offices in Asia and Australia, planned to "transform Mainland into the pre-eminent agribusiness in the Oceania region with strong export linkages into Asia," it said in a statement. Mainland had solicited proposals after hiring ANZ Bank to advise on options for the business, which requires capital investment to meet new welfare rules for its 1.2 million layer birds. Mainland needs to replace equipment to meet the requirements of the Animal Welfare (Layer Hens) Code of Welfare 2012, which calls for the staged phasing out of battery cages in favour of larger colony cage systems or free-range. Managing director and a founding partner Michael Guthrie has said existing shareholders werent getting any younger and may want to have a pathway to liquidity. No price was disclosed and Guthrie didn't immediately return calls. The Australian newspaper reported the price was about $350 million. The Navis statement also didn't say what size stake it is buying, although founding shareholders of Mainland "will retain a significant shareholding in the business" and senior managers will be retained. The deal needs Overseas Investment Office approval. Mainland Poultry produces one-third of New Zealands eggs, through its Zeagold Foods unit, which has the Woodland and Farmer Brown caged and free-range egg brands, processes eggs products for the food industry, and produces a range of animal feeds through MainFeeds. It operates as a vertically integrated business and the feed unit had been set up as part of that but now sold to other customers and exported. Navis is no stranger to poultry, with what it calls "significant portfolio investments in chicken and duck operations in the UK, Europe, Thailand and China". In 2016 it sold Golden Foods Siam, one of Thailand's largest exporters of "higher value breaded and roasted chicken products", to Brazil's BRF for an enterprise value of US$360 million, having taken a controlling stake in the business in 2009. It teamed up with Rabo Capital in 2013 to sell duck processor Bangkok Ranch for 5.7 billion Thai baht, having bought that business in 2007 for an enterprise value of 4.3 billion baht. Navis manages about US$5 billion in equity capital, invested across the Asian region. It was advised by Ernst & Young and Bell Gully on the Mainland deal. The Australian also reported that Navis is interested in buying Freshmax, controlled by Maui Capital and being marketed by Goldman Sachs. Freshmax had a net profit of $2.17 million in the 12 months ended Sept. 30 last year on sales of about $219 million. It imports, wholesales and distributes fresh produce including apples, pears, stonefruit, kiwifruit and avocados to a wide variety of countries. (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. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: TEM - Market Abuse Regulation, Article 19, Paragraph 11 NZME updates FY22 guidance & announces new dividend policy November 9th Morning Report 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 Fairfax New Zealand and NZME will have to wait one more day before finding out whether their arguments have swayed the Commerce Commission from its draft decision to reject a merger between the country's two dominant newspaper publishers. The antitrust regulator will announce the decision on May 3 instead of the previous announced May 2, it said in a statement. The ruling will end an almost year-long review by the commission on whether to approve a merger between the two companies, which they say is necessary to stave off global internet companies poaching their advertising revenue. The regulator will announce its decision before the market opens next Wednesday, having delayed a final ruling several times as the media companies vigorously lobbied to convince officials they'd got it wrong in their draft determination to reject the deal over fears the aggregated soft power wasn't worth the economic efficiencies from laying off staff, cutting duplication, and pooling their resources in a more targeted fashion. The news organisations have previously said the merger would give them a fighting chance against Google and Facebook which dominate digital advertising markets, and have downplayed the size of editorial job cuts, which would account for about 10 percent-to-13 percent of the projected $136.5 million to $218.7 million of quantified benefits over five years. If the deal doesn't proceed, Australian parent Fairfax Media Group has indicated it still plans to quit the New Zealand business and previously confirmed the Kiwi organisation has attracted a low-ball offer from a secret suitor. NZME was already carved out from its Australian parent, APN News & Media, as a standalone business listed on the NZX and ASX, and was pitched to investors as a stock offering regular dividend payments, attracting substantial stakes from the likes of including Forager Funds Management, Perpetual, Westpac Banking Corp, and Morgan Stanley. NZME shares last traded at 87 cents and have jumped 47 percent so far this year. (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. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: TEM - Market Abuse Regulation, Article 19, Paragraph 11 NZME updates FY22 guidance & announces new dividend policy November 9th Morning Report 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 Navis Capital, a private equity firm with about US$5 billion of investments, says there would be between $40 million and $80 million of capital expenditure required for Mainland Poultry, building a company with export opportunities and with the potential to go public down the track. Phil Latham, a Sydney-based partner at Navis, said he has to be a little circumspect in commenting on Mainland, after his firm agreed to acquire a controlling stake in the company, because the deal still requires Overseas Investment Office approval, a process expected to take at least three months. But he talked enthusiastically about Mainland's highly-productive operations and the ability to export its intellectual property as well as its output to other markets in Asia. He said the laying percentage for Mainland's birds is among the highest in the world and exceeds the average 80 percent level - the number of birds that lay an egg every day - achieved across Asia. New Zealand had a very high standard of biosecurity and its poultry industry didn't face the perils in Asia such as disease borne by migrating birds. Added to that Mainland had its own feed mill and was focused details such as tweaking feed for the time of year or age of the bird. "You will not find that same level of focus in a typical Asian bird," Latham told BusinessDesk. "The Kiwi management team is extraordinarily good" and that capability could be exported he said. "Mainland may well invest in laying businesses elsewhere in Asia using their techniques," he said. "They've not done that because they've been an indigenous business but we believe they can now export New Zealand technology and that's going to add significant value when it's applied." First, though, Mainland has the capital costs of meeting new welfare rules for its 1.2 million layer birds. It needs to replace equipment to meet the requirements of the Animal Welfare (Layer Hens) Code of Welfare 2012, which calls for the staged phasing out of battery cages in favour of larger colony cage systems or free-range. "What we would want to do is to quite quickly enable Mainland to make the investment to go from cage to colony (cages) to free-range," Latham said. "We would like to see a very large portion of what Mainland does in five years being free-range and barn. We're very much in favour of the regulations. We think we can be quicker than it has taken in Europe. The current owners couldn't get their hands on the level of capital to do that." Mainland anticipated the capex would be "a minimum of $40 million and could be as high as $70 million to $80 million". The investment would be a mix of equity capital and third-party lending and Navis "was prepared to bring more than its share of the capital". The details would be subject to the shareholders' agreement. Navis is no stranger to poultry, with what it calls "significant portfolio investments in chicken and duck operations in the UK, Europe, Thailand and China". In 2016 it sold Golden Foods Siam, one of Thailand's largest exporters of "higher value breaded and roasted chicken products", to Brazil's BRF for an enterprise value of US$360 million, having taken a controlling stake in the business in 2009. It teamed up with Rabo Capital in 2013 to sell duck processor Bangkok Ranch for 5.7 billion Thai baht, having bought that business in 2007 for an enterprise value of 4.3 billion baht. In a statement, confirming the deal, Navis said it planned to "transform Mainland into the pre-eminent agribusiness in the Oceania region with strong export linkages into Asia." Latham said there was latent demand for processed New Zealand eggs from Asian food manufacturers, who would welcome their disease free, and GMO-free status. Processed eggs for the food industry was a side of the business with a large capacity to grow, he said. Neither Navis nor Mainland founder and managing director Michael Guthrie have released details of the deal but Navis is understood to be acquiring about two-third of the shares for about $300 million. Mainland Poultry produces one-third of New Zealands eggs, through its Zeagold Foods unit, which has the Woodland and Farmer Brown caged and free-range egg brands, processes eggs products for the food industry, and produces a range of animal feeds through MainFeeds. It operates as a vertically integrated business and the feed unit had been set up as part of that but now sold to other customers and exported. Asked how long Navis would hold the investment, Guthrie said: "I think Mainland could well be listed on the New Zealand stock exchange in the future." It held Golden Foods Siam for seven years and Bangkok Ranch for six years. Latham said worldwide there is a move toward food production that ensured animal health and Navis wanted to be involved in the "step-change" in New Zealand. He also confirmed Navis may be interested in buying Freshmax, the Australian-registered, NZ-based fruit and vegetable producer controlled by Maui Capital that is being marketed by Goldman Sachs. "We're aware Freshmax is available. We haven't indicated to the parties that we're hot on it," he said. "It may be something we would be looking at appropriately but we haven't said it's an important one for us." Freshmax had a net profit of $2.17 million in the 12 months ended Sept. 30 last year on sales of about $219 million. It imports, wholesales and distributes fresh produce including apples, pears, stonefruit, kiwifruit and avocados to a wide variety of countries. Navis was advised by Ernst & Young and Bell Gully on the Mainland deal. (BusinessDesk) English Danish Aalborg, Denmark, 2017-04-27 19:24 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the Annual General Meeting of TK Development A/S was held. Items 1 - 3 on the agenda were considered and adopted in accordance with the submissions. No dividend will be distributed for the 2016/17 financial year. The Board of Directors proposal for approval of fees payable to the Board of Directors for 2017/18, was adopted, see item 4.1.1 of the agenda. The Board of Directors proposal to amend the Articles of Association was adopted, see item 4.1.2 of the agenda. In accordance with item 5 of the agenda, the proposal for the Board of Directors to be composed of four members for the time being was adopted. Niels Roth did not stand for re-election. Peter Thorsen, Arne Gerlyng-Hansen, Kim Mikkelsen and Henrik Heideby were re-elected. At the General Meeting, it was announced that one of the four committees set up, the asset management committee, will be abolished. The future composition of the remaining committees will appear from the Companys website. The Board of Directors proposal that one auditor be elected was adopted. Deloitte, Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab, was elected as the Companys auditor; see item 6 of the agenda. After the General Meeting, a meeting was held for the purpose of electing officers, with Peter Thorsen being elected as the Chairman, and Henrik Heideby being elected as the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors. TK Development A/S Peter Thorsen Chairman of the Board of Directors Contact information: Frede Clausen, President and CEO Tel. +45 8896 1010 MADONA, Latvia, April 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quest Management Inc. (OTC-PINK:QSMG) has previously announced the signing of a Stock Purchase Agreement (the Agreement) between Quest Managements President, Mr. Dmitrij Ozolins and TN3 LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company, whereby TN3 agreed to acquire 46,045,000 shares of common stock owned by Mr. Ozolins, which represents all of the shares owned by Mr. Ozolins. The parties expected the change of control to be on or about April 15, 2017. The parties expect the change of control to take effect May 15, 2017. At the time of closing, Mr. Dan Martin, the CEO and controlling shareholder of TN3, will be appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Quest. Mr. Martin, thereafter, intends to cause TN3 to vend into Quest, TN3s assets, subsidiaries and divisions in equity swap transactions. Mr. Martin is an accomplished C-level executive with success driving results across a broad base of middle-market companies in direct sales, technology, distribution, product development, and others. He has been an entrepreneur, corporate officer, and consultant. Starting his career in the 1990s while obtaining a BSBA in Finance from John Carroll University, he was co-founder of an Internet company which over the next five years achieved a 4% national market share in its niche. Since then, he has been actively involved in mergers and acquisitions, and bringing new products and services to new markets globally. His primary expertise is understanding the needs of growing organizations, evaluating and defining the strategic objectives of a business, and communicating with stakeholders to successfully execute company objectives. TN3 has numerous diversified initiatives created specifically for development within an environment such as Quest. One initiative is in the Biotech sector, which includes Cancer treatment technology currently being commercialized in partnership with a top US hospital in the United States. The work includes patents achieved in the area of immunotherapy for brain tumor patients. This Biotech initiative also includes scientifically advanced anti-aging and other human focused technologies. These have significant market potential for sales and one patent filed, with multiple subsequent patents expected, and feature the participation of multiple, notable scientists. TN3 also has a rapidly expanding subsidiary that provides telemedicine (the ability of individuals to remotely access medical advice) to both English and Spanish speaking people living in the U.S. TN3 has other traditional business interests, including durable goods distribution, which will be discussed at a later time. Presently, agreements for the acquisition of these assets are being negotiated, and Quest will disclose them to the public in the near future, as the agreements are entered into. Quest and TN3 are confident that the change of control of Quest will lead to various acquisitions that will commence generating income within twelve (12) months and result in appreciable shareholder value. http://www.questmgmtinc.com Safe Harbor Statement: This news release contains "forward-looking statements", which are statements that are not purely historical and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, the development, costs and results of new business opportunities. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with new projects and development stage companies. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.